The Team House - MARSOC's First Deployment, and Subsequent Persecution | Fred Galvin | Ep. 148

Episode Date: June 4, 2022

Fred Galvin served twenty-seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps, beginning as a seventeen-year-old who rose from the enlisted ranks to become an officer. Serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and elsewhere, he led the first special operations company in the Marines and earned forty-nine military medals and ribbons, including the Bronze Star. Following his retirement, he became a business entrepreneur, nonprofit executive director aiding families of service members killed in action, and a consultant to the Marine Corps, coordinating activities in the areas of cyberspace, electronic warfare, and psychological operations. A Few Bad Men is the incredible true story of an elite team of U.S. Marines set up to take the fall for Afghanistan war crimes they did not commit—and their leader who fought for the redemption of his men. Fred's book: A Few Bad Men: The True Story of U.S. Marines Ambushed in Afghanistan and Betrayed in America https://www.amazon.com/Few-Bad-Men-Ambushed-Afghanistan/dp/163758413X Today’s Sponsors: SAP Gear (Stately Asset Protection) https://SAPGEAR.com Veteran-owned company, Stately Asset Protection’s retail store specializes in handmade and unique survivability products. Use the code “TEAM” for 15% off your order! https://SAPGEAR.com Boikey's Biltong https://BOIKEYS.com/ Think beef jerky but tastier and healthier! Go to https://BOIKEYS.com/ and use the promo code “TEAM10” for 10% off your purchase. For all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed Subscribe to our Patreon!👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 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/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to The Team House. This is episode 148. I'm Jack Murphy, here with co-host David Park, deproducing here behind the scenes. Tonight, our guest on the show is Fred Galvin. He is the author of A Few Bad Men. Fred spent, geez, what was it, 27 years in the Marine Corps?

Yeah, 27 years in the Marine Corps, served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait. And he was also a Marsok officer. He was the officer that was out on what? what became an infamous deployment, Marsox's first deployment overseas, that saw him and his men persecuted really by the military in many ways. And Fred has taken the story of him and his men and compiled it into this book that is coming out on June 7th. We'll post a link to Amazon for you guys to go and check it out. But this episode, we're going to be talking to Fred all about his career and about this first deployment of Marsoc and the fallout that came from that. Before we get into it with

Fred, Dave, you want to give a shout out to one of our sponsors here? Sure. Which one? Oh, Boykees. You guys, we love Boykees. It's Bill Tong. It's better than beef jerky. It's a healthy snack.

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Perfect. Yeah. So, Fred, thank you for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it, man. To just kind of jump right into it, could you tell us a little bit about sort of your origin story, about your upbringing and the path that sort of brought you into the Marine Corps? Well, basically what's going on that led me to join the Marine Corps was a young,

young kid there in Kansas growing up. Our family took a trip back to the battlefields of the revolutionary and civil wars in the East Coast. And my mom was actually a travel coordinator. So she met with all these different tour planners, National Park Service rangers, tour guides, and went on some incredible tours there and had for the first and only time explained to me that what was going on there. I never had heard anything like that before my life. And so all of a sudden, you know, here I am seeing, you know, these reenactments,

you know, hearing very descriptive stories about how incredible it was to, and these guys fight for our freedom. Also like in the Civil War fight to end depression. So it was really moving. And at 10 years old, I didn't have any prior military experience or any family that were in the military, but I knew right then and there, like, that's something that I wanted to do. And that lasted all the way through going through high school. A buddy of mine in high school said, you know, if you want to fight, this was in 1987.

It's like, the Marines are the first to fight. That's their slogan. And so I'm like, okay, that's what I want to do. And join the Marine Corps. Actually, that guy that talked to me about the Marine Corps, Because I didn't know the difference between the Army and everything else. He ended up, he enlisted and he had a contract going a week right after high school. And he's smoking dope on spring break.

So he lost his contract. And the recruiter told me, he was like, hey, man, are you interested in going into a ring to boot camp a week after high school? I was supposed to wait until July. And so the guy said, it was about 35 years ago, you know, we got a ticket for you. And I'm like, this is like a dream come true. So I went to boot camp one week immediately after high school. and went out here to the west coast, stationed in Camp Pendleton, just north of San Diego. And that was like a dream come true.

Deployed overseas in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and into Saudi Arabia, liberation of Kuwait, came back. I had previously taken an endoc to get into recon. However, my company executive officer held that against me. you know, this is just a bunch of glorified grunts, you know, and held that against me and held my head underwater for that entire deployment. I thought I was trying to get out of the deployment, which was nonsense. But even afterwards, after returning, I was not able to go over and join reconnaissance. So I got out, went to college, and then became a stockworker for two years. First, with an investment

banking firm in La Jolla, and then I joined Smith Barney when they were the large. firm on Wall Street and then but I really had a desire to get back into the Marine Corps that took two forms I tried to enlist again and I was a sergeant so they didn't have any boat space for sergeants this is a drawdown in the military 1995 President Clinton was there so severe cutbacks and so I put a package in to get commissioned and I picked up immediately and went off and then did the year in Virginia getting trained as an infantry officer, went straight back out to California to serve as a platoon commander in the first Marine division and then went over to force reconnaissance.

Did two tours, three years as a force recombatun commander, one in Okinawa at fifth force recon. Then I went out, I think the Army calls it a Treydoc tour, not operational. I was an instructor at the Marine Corps's version of Top Gun in Yuma, Arizona. It's called the Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course. I was the guy on the ground that reconnaissance instructor that coordinated Helleborn raids and airstrikes. So we'd control massive formations of road-growing and fixed-wing close air support

for these massive exercises where an infantry company would come in via helicopter, mortars and artillery would be firing and we have a team of us. One of us would control the jets, one control the attack helicopters, and then other parts of this, what we'd call the fist team, would control the mortars and then the other artillery. We do all that in about a 15-minute time period with massive amounts of ordinance going on in support of the infantry. I did that for 15 months.

Then there was a training fatality in Kansas, Camp Pendleton with First Force Reconnaissance Company and they removed the chain of command. The platoon commander, platoon sergeant, team leader. The shooter ended up being in prison for a while for shooting, accidentally shooting a that was through negligence, killed a role player. So I kind of got early released out of Yuma and went to Camp Pendleton, California for my second tour as a force recomb, platoon commander. did that for three years, then got promoted, moved over in the ops role for the

force recon company, and then they got slated as the first commanding officer, Marine Special Operations Command. We deployed in 2007 as a task force to Afghanistan on the border of We did an interview with, was it Pete Perry? A few episodes back. And so an enlisted soldier, enlisted Marine, talking about this experience when he was forced recon and they came back from training and like some staff guy was like, you guys are now this thing called like Mansoc or something like that. He's like, what? So you're telling it from the officer's side.

What was that like for you from your perspective, the formation of Marsok and transitioning from force to Marsok to Marine Special Operations? Well, good question. And I'll back it up a little bit. So we have some perspective of data points, some trends. So the Marine Corps was forced to do to get into special operations back in World War II. What preceded that was the British Royal Marines. Winston Churchill wanted a commando organization to go behind German lines and re-cavick with their command and control headquarters.

So they formed a little assessment selection up in the Scottish Highlands. And they had, it was from all joint services. but it was under the British Royal Marines and they had a Commando force. So when Churchill did that, FDR wanted the same and told the Marines make it happen. Marines didn't want even the name Commando. They settled on the name Raider. They had four Raider battalions. They fought.

They were activated in February of 1942. And while they were fighting in the South Pacific during the island hopping campaigns, two years after their activation, they were disbanded. stroke of a pen one sentence from General Vandergriff to comment on the Marine Corps to is not in the best interest the Marine Corps to have a leap with an elite. So, boom, away they go. They mostly assimilated back in the infantry and fought several of them did on the Battle of Okinawa. Why is that important?

Well, as you both know, in 1987 when they stood up the activation of the U.S. Special Operations Command, what did the Marine Corps do? That's right. Nothing. second data point. You know, they didn't want to participate again. And uh, because it's basically dethroning. Every Marine is supposed to be elite. That's with consideration. Marine Corps is very ego-driven, self-righteous organization. I love it. But, uh, to tell an infantryman in the Marine Corps that there's somebody that can possibly train more and have more special skills,

that's a, it's like sacrilege. So that's second data point. Third data. point 2001, we attacked, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and said, I want all of the joint services to increase capacity of their special operations forces. So what happened, as you guys both know, Green Brays added a battalion per special forces group, those fourth battalions, the SEAL teams added SEAL team seven and eight. The Marine Corps, they just took a little relax and then they got a little bit more pressure. They sent some liaisons down to Tampa at Special Operations Command. They got a little bit more pressure. They tried to slow roll it by doing this Marine Corps Special Operations Detachment 1, a proof of concept for two years and stretched

into three years that the intention was to slow roll. You know, Bush was expected to be a one-term president like his father, remember the younger junior. They thought he's going to be gone. he got reelected and well we know what happened there he kept rumsfeld on a second administration rumsfeld put the pressure and said marine corps make it happen so uh there was three separate periods in the marine corps history that the marine court didn't want and was forced to do this so when you talk about the activation ceremony jack uh it was i was there in camp leggeum in February 2006. It was officiated this arranged wedding by the godfather himself, Dr. Rumsfeld. The common on the Marine Corps. General Hage was there. It was General Brown was there from

Socom, you know, the husband and wife. We were the loved child that resulted in the first Marine Special Operations Company. The intention was to abort this, have us die on the operating table. And I got the sense far before we deployed in conversations with the general that we're not going to have any military construction. We were living in trailers that, you know, the previous in force recon, you had actual 021 recon Marines. You had 100 in, you know, five platoons. We had six on paper. But so you basically had a, you know, 100 guys, actual operators on the East Coast, West Coast, and three platoons overseas. So roughly 300 pipeters that are doing the job of commandos.

The rest, you know, support personnel now. Marsok stood up a 2650 man organization. So it kind of opened the floodgates of all these people. They knew they could scale it back, but where did all these people go? Trailers. There was no plans for, you know, putting roots down. I said, hey, what about, you know, on the way of, you know, on the way across when I was at First Force Recon in Camp Pendleton,

I stopped by Nellis, I'd been stationed at the Ring Corps version of Top Gun, so I went out to Red Flag, talked, I realized we're going to fight jointly. So I went to coordinate with Air Force. I also drove out to Fort Campbell, talked to the fifth group guys,

talked to the 160th, because I knew this time in 2006, a lot of people were getting killed and blown up, dying and losing limbs from roadside bombs. So I knew we were going to need assault support aircraft to transport us as much as possible. So that's why I was coordinated with 160th. Went down to Hurlburt. This is all in the nine days across country from Camp Pendleton there in San Diego out to Camp Lejeune where we were activated.

Went down to Hurlberg, talked to Air Force Special Operations Command, swung through Bragg, talked to J-Sococ, talked to Usa Sock, showed up at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. And it was like having the brakes put on. Everything was, you know, I'm talking about, you know, hey, Usa Sok, you know, they got all this brand new sniper rifles, binocular night vision for depth perception, all this kit and this. No, no, no, you're not going to get it. I'm like, hey, it's program and record and special operations command. It was everything to shut any type of innovation and technology down. and I'm like, hey, if we do not participate and register these requirements, that just means the Rangers and the Green Braves and the seals are going to get more money.

And AFSOX is going to take the lion's share of it. So, like, we are really doing a disservice to these. And they didn't call them Raiders at the beginning. The Marine Corps didn't want that term used. It was a special. That has a different connotation. And it also means there's some roots being settled down. And a lot of the World War II Raiders had still lived and wanted that.

So there was this big resistance to that. We'll just call Marines. And everything was the McDonaldland menu, McSobb, Marine Special Operations Battalion. We're the M-Soc. There was actually, this is not a group of alcoholics, but there was a Marine Special Operations Support Group. That's not a sausage menu, but it was the M-Sossage. And it's all these ridiculous terms.

It made no sense. And so you'd show up and. You're talking to Green Brays. You're talking to Rangers and, like, we're the Marsock guys. It's like a boy band. You know, we're the, we're the Marsok guys. You didn't have any kind of green bray or seal type. You don't really need that, but there needs to be some differentiator on,

you have a special skill and a capability or not just some singing group called the Marsock guys. Right. When you were going around to these different elements initially, like, like doing that world tour. Were they welcoming? Did they keep you at an arm's distance? Like, how were they at the 160th and down in Tampa

and, you know, all these units that you went and sort of connected with? Well, at first they didn't go to Tampa, but everybody else at the regimental levels and below were very welcoming. They didn't have any, the more specialized, like a J-Suck, that, you know, immediately brought all of our human and signals intelligence guys and started having them

integrate and they shared everything it was that was awesome it was at the higher echelons where i sensed a lot of competition not it at all in the enlisted ranks it was in uh feel great and above a lot of jealousy a lot of envy uh without name and names of fifth group commander was like don't even bother talking to the uh 160th you know they were a really Originally they were designed and spread loaded across the green braid battalions, but then what do you say? Then, you know, tier one unit swallowed them up and, you know, that's all they're, they're not going to support you. They don't even support us. And this is an assumption.

But at that time in 2006, this first company that I was a commanding officer of, we were the shiny little object in the room. And the 160th is like, hey, you know, let's, these Marines seem like a, you know, I had had that experience is a weapons and tactics instructor in Yuma, Arizona. So I could talk the lingo with close air support and ISR drones. And so we made this great training evolution happen with the 160. And that kind of rubbed some people at the 06 and above levels off. They're like, hey, how come they're playing with the Marines and they won't even give me support? again, sort of like the story in the Bible about Joseph,

you have some favored son that everybody else gets pissed off about. You know, they're not, it doesn't necessarily make you happy. Same thing with AFSOX. So by the time we deployed, we had 11 months, we did our own training up in Hawthorne because we thought we could go to Afghanistan. But then as you both know, if you look at that tale of the tape from back in 2006, you had this full paper ad in the New York Times with when the, surge happened called General Betrayus, who's John Petraeus was in charge of all American forces in Iraq,

and they surged 100,000 personnel in there. It was a very bloody and deadly time. So that was not popular. The Marine Corps to meet that surge pulled every Marine out of Afghanistan and surged everybody into Iraq. And so there was a strong tendency that we thought we were going to go to Iraq. however the first thing I did is let's go up to the high desert in Hawthorne, Nevada. And if we can operate in that type of terrain, and it's just hedging our bets. You know, I've been a stockbroker. I'm always trying to, you know, do the what-ifs, mitigate risk. Let's get our combat SOPs in a desert in a high altitude environment.

And then we moved on from there. But we were thinking the whole time. And then sort of to the latter part of our workup, oh, you're going to go to Afghanistan, and then that died off. You're going to go to Iraq, and it was unknown. So in comparison to the guys that weren't in special operations at that time, what was going on? Well, you guys can tell the story. Jack, when you finish the Q-course and you get a green bray, you know what group you're going to go to,

you know what country you're going to go to. You're probably already told which fob you're going to be in for your entire deployment or be based out of. And same thing when guys get their tried in. They first become a seal. They know, hey, we're going to go to Iraq. We're going to go this part of Iraq. With us, you know, they were just like,

Daddy needs a new pair of shoes. Yeah, just rolling the dice. And, you know, special operations have a lot of capabilities. But when you have time to plan, it's the, you know, adage, you know, one third for the seniors to make their plan, two-thirds at the tactical level to make their plan. Every week we are having meetings, we were the only company in Marsok at that time.

We're the only ones that formed and existed. So it's not like there was a lot of hustle and bustle, miss, you know, focus. I mean, you had one company. So each week, and there was no battalion above me. So I was talking to the general in his G-staffs. I had three questions asked, If I can, and these were asked weekly by me to the general, what are these are my commander's critical information requirements?

What is our mission? Are we going to be doing advise and assist? Are we going to be training the monkeys? Are we going to be flying the space shuttle like Chuck Yeager and Dayton the prom queen? Are we going to be doing that ourselves? Or are we going to be doing like these greenberry monkeys and training the monkey? I need to know because that changes how our tactics are. Do we have to get language skills? So second was, who will we be working for? So I can coordinate with that. commander and his staff and get their intentions on how we can support them. Three, I don't need a 10-Gy grid. I need, but I do need a sub-region. I realize we're going to, there was a little hint that we're going to go to Centcom, but as you both know, that leaves a lot open to your imagination,

and you can't properly train your force. I mean, Centcom goes from the Horn of Africa to, you know, to India. So lots, a lot of things can change in there. So, but these weeks. weekly discussions, you know, it fell on deaf ears weekly for 11 months. We found out when we got on the USS Baton in Norfolk and started heading east towards Europe. So, you know, that's, that is a big deal. I know the Marines, it wouldn't be such of a big deal if we actually had the group of ships that we deployed on, and I'll talk about that in a second. You know, if we had support from

them. But this first task force that we had was ironically engineered to be to look exactly like the Marines when we deployed on the ships before is a force recon platoon. So we had a force recon platoon. We had an infantry platoon that was our security element and we had a massive amount of intelligence capability, which when we got into theater and you know from doing the DOD, the Department of Defense's pre-publication security review. They don't only use certain words, but so I'll talk around it, but there was, I'll just say special forces, units in the same area that we were operating in. And there was other government agency personnel in there,

but they all looked at our, especially our signals intelligence, like, hey, they started wanting to cherry pick, you know, those goodies. Right. And get their hands on our guys. So that didn't really happen. but I'm just saying we came in with a lot of capabilities. There was a lot of room at that, hey, these Marines kind of clean the slate. They did evaluations with AFSOC and 160th and even in MARSOC

and with the conventional Marine Corps on the groups of ships, and they rocked it. So that made a lot of people a little concerned about what, this isn't forced recon, this is MARSOC, they put us on ship. And I think the Marine Corps wanted us on the ships. why because of control. Right, right. You know, a couple years ago by another election and we'll keep it organized the same way as it was when they were on ships before.

We'll just change the name back to force recon. And that ended up, as we all know now, not happening. However, we did deploy a week after we were on the boats. We found we're going to go to Afghanistan. Fred, one second. Thank you. I'm going to ask you to pick it up right back. I just want to give a shout out to another sponsor for this show, SAPgear at sappedgear.com.

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no-mex or whatever tactical gloves, like step up your game. Step up your game. And also check out our Patreon link down the description. If you want to get access to these episodes ad-free, and there's also bonus episodes and bonus segments and cool stuff. So we appreciate all you out there who support this stream. Speaking of Patreon, I'm going to put the link for a few bad men for the pre-order in the chat. Which again is Fred's book, which is coming out June 7th, so just a couple of days from now. But you can go and pre-order it right now. Yeah. It's also in the description for everybody who listens afterwards. It's right in the description. Yeah. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting.

Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. So real quick, Fred, I want to ask you, because you guys went from being forestry cond to sort of like, you know, this, this, you know, unholy matrimony and, you know, getting dubbed Marsock.

And then you, and then against the will of the greater Marine Corps, you got a little, you got a little bit of that money. You got in on that, you know, that special operations budget. 160th birds, man, you're a big deal now. So what was it like going from, you know, the same guy. basically doing the job of Forrest Recon with like PBS5s and field telephones, Vietnam era field telephones, to actually getting, having some real money and getting that, you know, PBS 7 Charlie money and that, you know, setcom money. You know, there's some credit that is due to the guys, especially some leaders out on the West Coast

that had procured some equipment that was all of a sudden we were using equipment. People were looking at especially Intel equipment, some of our communication equipment. Yeah, we didn't have all the high-speed mini guns right off the bat, but the stuff that really made the difference as far as in the reconnaissance community, can you communicate? When we're doing personality targeting, can we find the enemy actually, and with a making calculated risk so that we had cutting edge stuff and when we went in the country like the tier one guys the other agency guys they're like oh you know they really so on that aspect

and there was in that i need to give credit to a lot of enlisted and officer senior officers who made things happen argued cases and got a lot of influence and persuasion to the right levels. And we had communication equipment. Yeah, we had some, we didn't have the best. And even I was doing that when I was stationed out in Yuma, Arizona, I learned that the aviators, that they have to think big in terms of dollars in order to have that technology and innovation.

They have to think jointly. So as far as having gone through several combat deployments with force recon in Iraq, I was, you know, I'm this weirdo because I love controlling aviation. You know, so we had a ton of high-powered designators. We had a lot of, you know, I was coordinating with a lot of units for training with close air support. So getting ordinance off the rails of aircraft was like a specialty that we really, that was important to me, but there was a lot of other people developing that. So when we first got in there, there was not parity, but close to us.

it with what we could do controlling aviation assets, with our intelligence assets and our communication assets, we were at or above where a lot of other units were just because a lot of people made the case. And then when the sad thing is, like I described, stuff with binocular night vision, stuff that was expensive per man to get. When those floodgates open, the Marine Corps was trying to shut the floodgates and like, no, no, everything you need. I'm like, hey, this stuff is literally life-changing.

People are going to get killed if you're driving a vehicle across the desert at night in these wadis, and you don't have that depth perception. This is critical gear that we need. And there was such a, there's like a thermopylae defense, you know, this total resistance. Like, stop, don't, don't get that technology. That's so crazy that the Marine Corps is like trying to sabotage the Marine. Corps. You know what's funny is, you know, the Marine Corps has, you know, that motto, improvised, adapt, and overcoming for, and for good reason, right? Because they've had to. But it's sort of like,

it's sort of like, well, you know, just because you can make a landmine out of bubblegum, tin foil, and Robert Ban, doesn't mean you have to when you can get real ones. So, Fred, can you talk us then through, you know, you said that you've found out. out, you were getting deployed to Afghanistan. Can you walk us through some of those main questions? Where specifically were you going? What was the mission? What did you guys start doing?

Okay, good question, because we anticipated that there was going to, that we were going to go into CENTCOM. We did not know where. And this Rumpel-Stillskin secret was said a year prior. So we left in January, but the year prior in February at the activation ceremony, that is when General Brown, of course he works for the Secretary of Defense. So even though he may not have wanted the marriage and the baby, if you're a general, why did the war last 20 years?

I've diverged to reconverge here in a second. Well, it didn't take us 20 years to kick somebody's ass like the Taliban. There's incentives when a war with people using weapons made two years after World War II, and homemade explosives, run around in sandals are engaging in being decisive against us. That's because you hamstring people with rules of engagement. But it goes back to, you know, we were not given, you know, the information, but I did know at the activation ceremony, General Brown wanted to please his boss because he wants to go work for what?

Boards of directors. So they have a house and they're going to get flown in on the corporate jet. you've both been to Dolos and National. You read the names on the top of the buildings around the Pentagon and intelligence community. That's who these, look who's on their boards. And, you know if you need a badge to get access into the Pentagon unless you're what, in 2009 or no 10. And what are they paid to do? They're paid to influence and persuade and dangle that carrot.

Like, hey, Jack, how's the wife of kids? You know, it was very promoting your last 20 years. but you've heard this company, Oshkosh, we need a rep up there. They make these mind resistance, you know, armored protective vehicles. And well, Dave, we're going to need somebody like you to, you just think about, you know, where you're going to transition to and we'll get you on the board. So it'll look at where they all go. Where'd Mattis go back to General Dynamics?

Where General Dunford, when he became retired for being Secretary of Defense? Oh, that's right, Lockheed Martin. Second death right now, Raytheon. I'm not making the stuff up or embellishing it. But the moral of story is General Brown saw the carrot. I got to please the Secretary of Defense. And so he said at the activation ceremony that when they hit, I think it was the 31st parallel.

I went back after I heard that and got on the computer. Oh, he's talking to Suez Canal. He said, when they hit that parallel, they will be working for the Theater Special Operations Command. And so I'm like, okay, that means we're going to be working for Soxcent. And I immediately started calling down to Tampa at Soxcent and found a Marine, Lieutenant Colonel Reese Rogers and their G35, the J35 and said, hey, boss, what are you hearing? You're down there with your ear to the ground.

Where are we going to go? Of course, I bypassed and a lot of people got pretty pissed off. I got in Fred Galvin for jumping all the way down where the point of friction is at Soxcent, where those decisions would be made eventually. But again, there was just a lot of resistance. You know, the green braves, it's having Marsok come in to your AO is a task force of, you know, just like a tier one task force, you have a 45-man assault element, a security element, tons of trucks, guns, and intel out the ass, well, guess what is going to happen?

You're, you know, this task force is going to go there and, you know, start checking people on the ice. And so that's kind of like the mistress meeting the wife. It's not necessarily the competition that the house wants there. And so there was some rivalry, especially I noticed with the field grade officers. Yeah, there's, you know, there's some comparison of some anatomy parts when you got there with some of the, non-commissioned officers on the enlisted side, but it wasn't like cutthroat, like, screw you and we're not going to support you at all.

It's just, it's normal Neanderthal male behavior is you're trying to figure out who's who in the zoo and like who are these commandos checking in here and because really we had been focused entirely on Iraq since the start of the war. And we really had, we had a couple guys' deployments to Afghanistan,

stand, but, you know, standard butt sniffing type of stuff. But the upper echelons of the Army that were the ones that were, and you read in the book, and the book is just, it took me 11 years before I even left the Marine Court to put in these Freedom of Information Act requests. Right. And to fight twice with two different attorneys in federal court to get the article 15-6 investigation released, as well as the transfer. from the court of inquiry. And again, I should go in here, talk about what this story is all about.

Yeah. War crimes, but there's no need for this to be classified at all. So we get into Afghanistan. We do 30 patrols. Army officers, one thing about them, they're not stupid. They go to these schools and, you know, they have to be very specific. And I've been to some of these schools with the Army and they're real detail-oriented Army officers. You're saying it. So an area of operation is defined by boundaries. Those are grids or geographic train features. And it's not just some imaginary, you know, stream of consciousness,

like some guy with a cigar, you know, making a mark on a map. But that's what it was. We went into Bogram there. Like, just circled a blurb up there. We did, and I anticipated, so we withheld all our intel guys from deployment. on the ships because we knew that there would be a decision soon made. It was days after we got on ship. And then those guys that had to fly into Afghanistan.

And they pushed that echelon out to eastern Afghanistan where we were going to be in Jalabah, by airfield. And but we got out there. And, you know, at first I got this guidance from the siege of Sotom, of commander, the Army Greenbrae Colonel from third group that put a big circle on the map up of Torbore Mountains. This is the last place of Sondlandland, was seized. you know and it's a you know so what do Marines haven't been to Afghanistan thinking like

I sound bin Laden you're just like oh this is going to be some good stuff man like I'm like we're the shit now right so of course you know we're you know we're motivated and a high five like this is going to be great but he gave me some uh restrictions he said I can't afford to have another operation red wings and that had happened about two years before seals. This is a book for those who don't know about loan survivors, that book and movie was created about. We did an interview with Tony Brooks, who was one of the Rangers that went and recovered the remains of those guys if people want to go and watch

a past episode. But yeah. Yes. So the siege is just sort of commanded rightfully. So he said, hey, you must have a quick reaction force that's able to immediately reinforce you. But he wanted us up in those mountains, and the French did that before us, the French special forces that were there. And of course, the French and the Alps, you know, that's good times. And, you know, nice boondogle to yomp around the Torbore Mountains in the middle of winter. But our intel team that was there for a month prior to us was quickly informing me that, hey, Americans built this nice, paid for this nice road, the first paid for

road in Afghanistan, connecting the capitals of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and there's all this opium and poppy getting exported in this training sanctuary right next door here. We're right on the Afghan Taliban Taliban are training and fully radicalizing these foreign fighters right over here in the sanctuary that we can't get to. They all come not over the mountains in the middle of winter, 14,000 foot snow-covered peaks. They're coming right across this, you know, checkpoint that they easily, bribe this border guard and they're in and then they what's this first town call it's called the logistics node that's where they link up with their handlers and they get pushed out to kanderhar

khabel sangh valet everywhere to get their jihad on and kill the infidel so that's what was going on but we were still you know we're following our orders we'll get up there in the mountains they approved one overflight for visual reconnaissance and you know i had been an instructor the marine corps's top gun i saw all these Assault support aircraft, 47s, Blackhawks sitting on the airfield, there in Jalalabad, right in front of us. Sitting. That I said, sitting. Yeah, that's right. Doing nothing at all.

And so there was this disconnect and this disparity from, you know, your verbiage to your actions. And that was at the siege of soda. So they wanted us to get up there. Obviously, you've seen the Torbores. You can get up on foot. It's a little bit challenging when it's covered in snow. that does prevent us from immediately reinforcing them. So we identified from this Army military police base

that was right on the Afghan Pakistan border and our imagery analysts that we had with us, organic to us. We saw some of the areas that were snow melted and we decided, okay, we'll push east and we'll be able to get up there with our vehicles and we'll stage a quick reaction for us on this base. They can move up there in case they're needed immediately.

We will do it without the helicopters, but the Army, their field grade officers or majors and above are like, you're not obeying the colonel's orders. Get up there in those mountains. It's like, you heard what the colonel said, you know, that involves certain resources, helicopters, which you won't give us for some reason. You just won't. You know, it's a catch 22. And we have to have a quick reaction for us.

So, you know, we sorted that out. We didn't know this village that we had to pass through to get. to where the quick reaction force base would be staged, had, I mean, this was a logistics note, buddy co. We knew there was four suicide bombers. We had good intel on the actual building that they were in. So on that day of the 4th of March, we had a threefold patrol. We're going to go out and do some face-to-face coordination with the Army and military police

to coordinate what they said. But I wanted to look them in the eye, talk to them, and make sure that our Marines that are going to be stationed there as a QRF are not going to be some burden. or, you know, screwed around with. And so that face-to-face coordination occurred. We got there that morning, roughly about 645-ish, and the Army and military police had their patrol lined out. You know, they were doing their immediate action drills. Contact front, contact right?

And their procedure is our whole patrol of 30 Marines saw. They would duck down in their turrets and they'd drive, drive, drive. So they're rehearsing to duck and run. And if you've been there to Torquem Gate, you see it's surrounded by steep mountains. So what's on an elevated ground observers and observing their tactics and procedures. So anyway, we were just shaking our head. We made the coordination. We push out south from that base at Torquam Gate and headed into the Torbor Mountains

for a mountain of reconnaissance patrol to see firsthand exactly what's going on. and those mountains how we can get in and out. We spent some time there. And then we got back out on the road for the third purpose of our mission. One, to do that coordination, two, to do the mountain reconnaissance. Three, to do a tribal leader engagement in the body co. As we entered that village baseline completely shifted from what it was three hours earlier when we passed through there originally.

When it was men, women, children, hustle and bustle now. We just see fighting age men lined up on the side of the road, staring at us. So as soon as I saw that shift, you know, came out of the radio, hey, watch out. Then a car bomb detonated blew up right in front of our second vehicle, which was a, that was the anomaly vehicle. It was a high back at the steel plates with an open-air troop compartment in the overhead. That was used as an ambulance in case we needed.

The rest of the five vehicles were fully enclosed steel armored vehicles. I believe that was likely intentional that they attacked that one that was perceived to be more vulnerable. As soon as that vehicle went off, it knocked the communications equipment out of the vehicle, went off on the bumper right at the very front of that vehicle, knocked the turk gunner down in the vehicle. He was on fire, immediately stood to his feet. We stopped there at the kill zone, preparing for us to counterattack. The vehicle came to T-Bone,

sports utility vehicle, it's a Toyota Prado driver and then three passengers, three passengers hanging out the windows, firing AK-47's fully automatic at us, trying to finish off that vehicle number two. The gunner and the turret stood up on fire, extinguished himself,

grabbed the medium machine gun, command who out of the back troop department stood up with his light machine gun. They both aimed in and killed those guys. The driver bailed out, was continuing to fire at us with his AK-40s. and we received once we killed the passengers and the vehicle stop we started getting pined by dismounts on the right side on the opposite side of the road so they were having a suppressing

element and then the others would bound towards us so they were doing fire and maneuver we received fire from a sniper fire from a hillside and that the u.s. army criminal investigative laboratories down in georgia later on they analyzed their metatollary metatologists analyzed the armor on the sides of our vehicles that was impacted by the rounds of a Soviet Draganoff sniper rifle which I'm going to speed forward here a little bit but we had an Air Force investigator come out to do the army to the article 15-6 preliminary investigation you know call me crazy that's kind of like having a plumber be your proctologist it can be done it's probably not recommended you know maybe if you don't want to

sit down the right way for a while but this guy kind of jacked us up pretty good. And it came out. And after the interviewing the first two vehicles of Marines, no Afghans decided to kick us out of the country. So now I'm going to go back to the ambush. So we started getting hit with on the right side of the vehicle, sniper fire. They had a mob of fighting age men swarm at us, drag a vehicle across the road, trapping us in there. So we're there five minutes.

We assess that we could move, although we didn't have communication. communication with second view. We did an arm signals. Okay. So after five minutes, killing the fighters on both sides of the road, we fired far above the heads of the unarmed mob in front of us. That separated them like the Red Sea. There's a smart move. And at this time, Marine Corps had this real age old, antiquated edict that every shot is a lethal shot. Right. So the sergeant did a really good job at not firing it. People. I mean, we needed to get out of the kill zone at this point. We were being trapped in there.

But he fired above their heads. That got them out of the way and we bypassed around that vehicle, came back to the base. And within 20 minutes from being ambushed to arriving back on the base, we get this, you know, a Marine gunnery sergeant comes up in my vehicle, says, hey, sir, this is on the BBC radio already that you guys killed Afghan civilians. And so at that point, you know, you're in this damage control mode. We go into debrief to get all the information, and we started sending that up to both the special operations task force in Byram, as well as the local battlefield commander. So they got that information immediately. The court of inquiry that was later held a year later, you know, it's on the record stated that they heard our radio transmissions when we were on the X at 9 o'clock in the morning that we were in troops in contact. We got hit with a suicide-borne improvised explosive.

device. You know, we did a countertacks. So they got that voice and data instantly from myself and the platoon commander that were transmitting that from the kill zone. So, but there was all this room. And of course, these army majors were like, the Marines, they had to, they didn't, they didn't know and they were keeping this a secret. They, uh, Colonel, Colonel, Colonel Haas, he had to get this information from the media. He didn't even know about this. You know, and the Marines failed to report. It's like, again, in the book, a few bad men, it describes how information was received chronologically. So you had all this room in hearsay, conjecture that, you know, was going on.

You hear in the front of the story how the Afghans, you know, use these stringers to do this information operation campaign. Right. Now, push all this information out. That was reinforced with mass rioting across Jalalabad, the nearest town. town there. And then the president, or provincial governor, Sharsai complained to

the president of Afghanistan, Hamidi Karzai, who publicly condemned us. Then didn't take long for the generals to buckle and kick us out. And that was after the first two vehicles of Marines, no Afghans were interviewed. So the investigation took a

month, but after the second day that the investigator was there, the determination was to kick us out. And just like in the Pat Tillman, case. There were facts that were known, but, you know, they're going to make the narrative fit what the decision of this senior leaders are. You know, I've told you this before. I mean, and just to kind of illuminate for the public hour, the audience out there, I was in the special forces qualification course when this

happened, and the rooment was incredibly strong. And the rument, the rumors that were going around about you and about your men were that you went through this village in Afghanistan and just wantonly lit up every civilian home there just mowing down Afghans for no good reason, which is like a black and white day and night difference from the complex ambush that you just described that you actually witnessed when you were there. So this was the rumor that was going around within special operations at that time. Yes. Jack, I've heard you mentioned that. and I've heard others that went to Army's command and staff. Just down the road here in Monterey,

I had a naval postgraduate school doctor who actually deployed on the ships with us. He was a cultural expert. He provided a lot of good information to us about the Afghan culture. And it was completely coincidental that he was on the ship. You know, the Marine Corps Court of Inquiry tried to say, the Marine Corps put a minute, like the Marine Corps didn't know a dam. they withheld trying to find any information out.

This guy just happened to be on the ship. And then he was going over. And he flew in from Europe to go into Afghanistan to do some studies for Naval Postgraduate School. But I talked to him years later. And he said, after this happened when he was in Afghanistan, he heard when he was there. And he said, and this was only just a few years ago, he said, and I've heard to this day from all these senior special operations officers that come through here that you guys. killed all these people and got away with murder. And a friend of mine who I'd known before, he was a Marine and he's working for his other

agency that was just say they train local commandos, civilian organization. And he came back from the village that morning and shows up, this is described in the book, and says, hey, Fred, that locals are saying that you guys were drunk and went door to door just like sport killing these people. And I'm like this guy's serious, he's they swung him. Like they convinced him.

I'm like, I'm like, okay, we left at 6 o'clock in the morning. Do you see me on the sauce? I mean, is, you kidding me? I mean, I was a by the book guy. I'm not saying I had every pair of boots with, you know, right over left with a bridge

on the bottom, you know, like, you know, but we didn't roll out the gate drunk and we didn't even dismount of our vehicles, let alone kill women and children. Women and children were gone. You've seen how in Afghanistan, you know, when they're getting ready to fight, they did this mass exodus of the civilians and women, kids. And that's what we saw and that's what we sense. And that's what, you know, had our heightened sense, like, okay, and we could taste what's about ready to come. But I say that wrong way. Yeah. So let's lay on us then. What happened? I mean, you said they start an inventing

But like only two days into it, you guys are kicked out of theater at that point. That's right. So then we told Csol operations, we headed to Kuwait. And, you know, they were, of course, we knew like, okay, they have to cut my head off. And they cut my senior and listed his head off too. And we knew they were trying to play like, yeah, we're going to figure out what's going on. my battalion commander was going to come over there. And he didn't even, honestly, I think he just lacked the courage

because I've never seen or heard of this any time before or after. He had me relieved myself. He was right there, you know, instead of having the guts to say, hey, you're relieved and telling the Marines, whatever. He had me go up in front of the command. And I think he did this probably to, you know, inflict the pain. But, you know, they try to act like he hurt us out. But in his actual first question, he was believing what the local elders said.

Is it true? You guys were drunk? And I'm like, if you had spent any amount of time during the 11 months before we deployed. Right. If you had known my depot my reputation, because he had previously been the CEO of Second Force Recon. I was at first Force Recon. We had one active duty platoon that we deployed, you know, go over on these flower deployments. And that's what first and second force recon did for the first three and a half years, the war in Iraq, is we would do a six month on, six month off rotation between the east and west coast force recon company.

So he had seen that these guys went over to Iraq, ran up the score. These guys were like stacking bodies up like cordwood. He knew what the deal was and, you know, that we're not going to roll out and that's the whole idea is ridiculous. Like, where are you going to get enough alcohol in Africa out in the outskirts of Afghanistan? to get 30 men drunk to begin with. I mean, I can believe that maybe a handful of guys, you know, talk and get their stories straight on something, but 30 Marines cooking up a story.

And then on top of that, you have all the physical evidence that was collected of the ambush. Like, come on. But so tell us what happened next. Yes. So it's kind of interesting. And we get kicked out, go back. There's seven of us they focus on that. the Air Force Colonel, highly qualified guy, who coincidentally, the Soxsend commander that

ordered the investigation on us, and he's in charge of all Special Forces of the Middle East, Major General Frank Kearney at the time, he had previously, six months prior to that, orders an investigation against ODA 374, who, you know, their team leader, Captain Dave Stafel had been out with his team on. on an approved capture kill mission. They positively identified the insurgent, who was a bomb maker, and one shot from his master and Troy Anderson,

his team sergeant shot the guy in the head, one bullet on an approved capture kill mission, and General Kearney also did the same thing to Captain Dave Stafel and Master and Troy Anderson charged him with homicide. So they ended up beating that. But the thing is, is the same Air Force colonel goes out there. And even CID who investigated the ODA situation said, hey, this was legit.

There's nothing there. No, Colonel Bahana, he's one of the few bad men mentioned in the book. And you don't just, you know, here, you see their picture and you read their testimony that is now, there's no reason to be classified. what I described to you. You know, Dave and Jack, that is completely, it's a gun battle.

There's not, I'm not talking about Jason Bourne's knock list or locations of submarines at sea or satellites in orbit. This is a gun battle. No reason to classify this. What happened is the rusted decision, we get back. They, you know,

we lawyered up the seven of us. And we're talking, this isn't, you know, jaywalking or, you know, some crazy allegation. This is mass murder. This is the largest number

of alleged Afghan civilians killed by direct fire weapons in the war. You know, you hear Eddie Gallagher, one guy, this isn't one guy killed. This is the 19 killed and 50 wounded. This is 69

Maudeans. They said that we went sport killing. Right. And had some bloodlust. We were just gotten down. No. So anyway, We lawyer up. I take a polygraph from the Terrence Victor O'Malley, President American Polygraph Association, send that to the convening authority. So the Article 15-6 goes from CENTCOM to SOCOM and Special Operations Command to for some reason they send it to the Marine Corps, and the Marine Corps sends it to.

For some reason, this is how weak general officers, you know, they wash their hands. now the cases obviously goes where it should with the soft side the Marine Special Operations Command should have adjudicated it, but General Halic, you know, he punts it to down to Tampa Marine Special Operations or Marine Central Command. The conventional force commander, not other than Lieutenant General Jim Mattis, who was in charge of all conventional Marines in the Middle East at the time, he was the convening authority. He's the one that decided where this was going to go. After he received my polygraph, I was on the patrol. I was one of the seven alleged mass murder. What does he do? He says, I'm going to have four,

he unleashed 45 criminal investigators out on us, four prosecuting attorneys, seven to one odds against us. And then it narrowed down to two of us, myself and one other. We're determined we're going to be to aim parties. in the court of inquiry, a very rarely used trial. So this trial was used. A court marshal couldn't be convened. There was no crime of face evidence.

There's no bodies. There's no blood. There's no bullets. There's no pictures of bodies in this case. Later, they had pictures. And some people said, oh, those were from this incident. They didn't have any of that. So we went to this court of inquiry.

Right. The risk of a court of inquiry, I'm not a lawyer or a C lawyer, but it's, there's no rules of evidence. so you can inject hearsay conjecture and you can turn into this kangaroo court which it became so what happened was and when you read this book and i want to do a total spoiler in the beginning of the book you receive information that the media had so what well you receive the prosecutions side of the story because they slam us and have all these afghans you know televised from this base i'm in this gurney i'm paralyzed that these guys you know

shot my son we need to go to america we need more money uh help me help me, Mr. Mr. So you hear all this and you're like, damn, these Marines are, they need to go to Leavenworth permanently. And next, you start to, and then if the book goes into life stories, some of the character development, but then in the end, you're reading like, what, when we went to defend ourselves, why was the Republic Affairs officer that came up from Tampa that worked directly for the convening authority, a lieutenant colonel for three and a half weeks. I mean, a media handler may be,

I mean, Jackie, you've got experienced this. I mean, when you're covering news and stuff like that, you may have a corporal or a sergeant, not a lieutenant colonel coming up for three and a half week, for the better part of a month to handle the media. But if you want to control the narrative, and if you're wanting to make sure you control information and nothing's leaked, you need a wise guy. But the Marine Corps should not be compared to or be the mom. You're not there to manufacture evidence. You're there to present evidence. And what they did was during our defense witness, the colonel, there's a legal advisor. The court of inquiry doesn't have a judge as a legal advisor. So the colonel worked for the convening authority. We're going to go to close session.

We don't have anything to talk about, even character witnesses. So, go through all the media reports back in 2008 during the trial and find one character witness that says anything about me. I mean, the press was there. Right. I mean, these are guys that at that time, the Marines, these senior officers hadn't been in Afghanistan. Right. And just for people, you know, who to give them an idea, in this court of inquiry, you have Afghans who are appearing as witnesses saying, oh, he killed my family. family, they killed my family members, they killed this.

That this is, that this even, and they've got no proof at this point in time, right? That this is all going off of like their, as soon as you guys hit their logistics node, they, they plan to ambush you. They do ambush you when you go into their logistics node near Torquem gate passing into Pakistan. They, you, you, you lay some hate, kill. the people trying to kill you. They get pissed, so

they send their PR people to, whether it was the military or whether it was Red Cross or whoever it was, yeah, to say these Marines were drunk going house to house shooting people. An Air Force

investigator, like nobody looks at your vehicles to see that they've taken fire. At this time, an Air Force investigators like, oh, sounds legit. Interview the 30 Marines that were there. Right. And if this is a murder investigation, the first question, where are the bodies? Where's the body?

Where's the body? You need a body. You need a murder weapon. Right. This is some, I'm not Sherlock fucking homes here. Right. Right. Right. But an interesting point about the bodies and the numbers. So this is what happened on tell the tapes of Afghan National Army's police and then Afghan border police immediately show up. Then that military police patrol, which was rehearsing, and I believe the ambush was aimed at them because they knew what would likely happen. And the twofold type of attack, whether it's Connecticut and they kill Americans or Americans succeed and they have a information warfare arm that's launched, they're going to win either way. However, they hit Marines.

And we didn't duck and run. We stood in counterattack. However, the Afghan National Police, the Afghan Border Police that show up, there was, they said immediately afterwards, and then the U.S. military police roll in. The only body you see this all over the media is the headless corpse of the suicide bomber. So those guys that we killed that had weapons of shooting at us were immediately, you know, removed. So there was no evidence right there.

but however all these stories that came out from different investigations from different media sources there were six bodies there was eight bodies it was 10 12 13 16 18 finally they went to 19 but what investigation in america would have a question on that i mean if unless it's a you know a plane crash the civilian plane you know no manifest or i mean there's usually a quantified number. You can have, you know, enumerate on a manifest who was killed. This was, I mean, it was a kangaroo court, you know, these Afghans, you know, every NCIS went over there two months after, and this is a whole other story where they dogpiled on us. So NCIS wrote this operation order of how they're going to do it. They're going to, which made the operation order, I'll give it to

them, made sense. We're going to send a team to Kuwait, investigate Marines. going to send a team to Afghanistan and investigate the crime. They called it a crime scene. Right. There's a little bit. Right. You go somewhere and you use terms and you report the victims and the crime scene. It's possibly been influenced.

And then when you say you're going to have two teams conduct this simultaneous investigation for, you know, rapid recovery of evidence and then you spend a month dog piling Marines in Kuwait. and you don't get to Afghanistan for two months. And you only spend 60 minutes out on the objective. But they did, they did uncover a lot of evidence. It was really important. And that's what's in the book. So that was like classified and I got a declassified. You know, it's, oh, they, so there was brass found in the vehicle that was shot,

that we shot up. the one that's shown all over New York Times, there was brass found in the dry riverbed. So when you hear the information of the beginning of the book and it's all this negative stuff, you're thinking that these Marines need to go to hell. And then towards the last half of the book and you see everything that's in the courtroom,

all this made up stuff, now you hear senior military officers under sworn statements that they thought they would be protected for the rest of their lives because this kangaroo court was going to classify this whole thing. You read their statements. This isn't, Fred,

These are quotes of sworn statements on the stand, these senior officers making this. You know, like, wait a second, this guy is now a four-star general. He's retired. All these guys got retired. The guy who's being nominated right now by and he's going to have his confirmation hearing with Center Armed Service Committee, Coli, he was in on this fix. He's getting, he's going to, he's been nominated for the Supreme Alley Commander of Europe. You see all these guys.

and it's weird how, I mean, you look at, you know, people that are up there, I mean, you look at the secretary or the chairman of joint chiefs of staff, warrior or well-nourished, you know, guy. I mean, be honest. I mean, the guy was a died team leader, so he had to been physically fit at one. He knows what the standard is. Right. But are we being led by the best? Why are all these guys getting promoted so fast? And you read in this particular case, And you wonder like the morale, especially, you know, diverge again here for a second. When you look at what's going on in Russia and you see that they have a superior number, superior technology, their training that they have every advantage. So what's the disconnect? Why are they to standstill? I would submit it's not because their supply lines and logistics, I'd say a huge portion is the morale.

And when you have non-commissioned officers and frontline foot soldiers, in the trenches who don't trust and don't respect those above them. Are they going to fight with everything they have? Or are they just going to kick the can down the road? So this should be important to every American right here because we don't have a choice. If the people's liberation army pushes 96 miles across the streets, we're not going to watch it on TV.

Americans are going to go in and fight. We're going to get dragged in by a treaty. And we don't have a choice. So China decides like we're going to do our reunification time now or whenever it is, we have to be ready and we have to have forces with high morale. And you guys have interviewed other people. I'm not the only one. You've got a pulse on what's going on with the morale of those on the front lines.

And I just started working at Tesla a month ago. I spent four years working as a civilian for the Marines and Special Operation Command Pacific out in Hawaii. We all know what's going on in our forces right now. And for those that don't, because you're not in the military or haven't been for a while, you need to put your ear to the ground and figure out what's going on and are we ready? What is the senior echelons like? Is it corrupt? I mean, how was Afghanistan handled last August?

Has anybody been held accountable? How does that affect morale after people fought there, had many friends died and wounded there, and nobody's taken accountability? We have this goat rope retreat is what it was. I'm not talking to a massage retreat. I'm talking about a retreat, a full retreat like what we did. That is embarrassing, and that's why it's less than a year later, Russia invades in Ukraine.

Something else you don't hear about in the news, which is happening left and right is, you know, old Uncle Kim is launching missiles out of North Korea left and right. What are we doing about it? Why is that happening? so much because we're a joke. Our military leaders are perceived in the international arena as weak. What do you think, did you ever draw a line between, like, these officers that went on record,

but they didn't think it'd be on record because they thought everything would be classified, which is, again, weird because it wasn't, yeah, it was, it was all classified. And it's, and like you said, it's not, it wasn't some super secret, like operation you guys were running. It was, it was a criminal investigate. they, well, you know, is this. But did you ever find, like, what, what happened? Did somebody, you know, jump to a conclusion there, but I'll start piling on? Did their dislike of a Marsok and wanting to get rid of Morsok?

Did that have anything to do with it? It almost feels like personal the way they came after you. And it's like, did Fred sleep with a commandant's wife or something? Like, what the hell is this? What is this really about? You know, I mean, you know what I mean, Fred, that, like, it's so clear that there's so much evidence in this case that this was a legitimate military engagement. And yet even after that began to come out, they continued to, I'll use the word persecute your Marines. And to Dave's point,

I mean, were you ever able to connect the dots there as to why that happened? Well, some of that involves an assumption that, because I'll use the hallmark phrase, when you care enough to send the very best, you send 45 criminal investigators. That's unprecedented. That didn't happen in Haditha. That didn't happen in Hamdania. It happened in our case.

So in those cases, we're going on simultaneous to ours with nearly as large numbers, but just in, well, in the hominia case, but in Iraq. He, fill mine up to you?

Anyway, I could just take a pull from the jug. Anyway, Yeah, it did feel personal because, you know, this was a situation, you know, at the 20-year mark that I had been in service, like nothing. I mean, here was the elite of the elite. And I really did feel that, you know, there's resentment just because the Marine Corps didn't want to get into this. Right. And we were going to be the fall guy.

Right. We were the disposable heroes that they wanted to go down into. So some things going on that I've learned since, you know, being. from Kansas, I wasn't politically, I didn't grow up with a political identity or anything, didn't know politics, period. But what was going on in the background in 2007, we're heading into a general presidential election cycle. So like I just had mentioned previously, there was this ad with a surge, a full-page thing, General Betrayus. It was really ugly in Iraq. And what did you have going on in Afghanistan now? Now this narrative, false narrative, now these Marines are killing

civilians. You know, who's the incumbent, a Republican? Why are we putting these guys in Afghanistan? So making this whole, you know, you see these themes and messages and information operations, and I realize that we were a pawn in this political play. People were felt we were expendable. And so I didn't realize that right away. But then I realized that once they made their decision and they kicked us out, we were

the first unit. unit in the Marine Corps to ever be kicked out of the theater. The Marine Corps, you know, it is an awesome organization formed in a bar there in Philadelphia by a bunch of, the bar owner was pouring booze down these guys necks. You know, that guy was their first comment on the Marine Corps, Samuel Nicholas. And he was telling these mates like, hey, lads, we're going to, you know, of course they were drunk. That's a given. And like, we're going to kill these. British. You know, we're going to, we're going to savage them. And, you know, so it's a good organization. This book isn't about anti-American or anti-Marine Corps. It's about a few bad men,

just like the title says. And I don't care if somebody's done all these great things, but if you betray and you come after to cut the throat of your Marines when you know they're innocent, I mean, they had my polygraph. They had all the statements. They had 30 statements from the Marines, every one of us on that patrol. And you go along with a narrative that you knows a lie. It's not like this hasn't happened. Everybody understood what happened in Coral Pat Tillman's case. They knew what the truth was.

And they made a decision to go in a different direction. They knew what the facts were. Facts can't be changed, but they did change the narrative. And we evolved, Jack, Dave. We've been involved in information warfare and psychological operations. That's part of the maneuver. that we integrate into, and you can do that to the enemy. You cannot do that to your own forces.

You cannot do that legally to the American people, not with the Department of Defense. And that is, as you said, Dave, you know, some of this, you know, was classified. Well, they classified it. It's really, truly for what it is, is censure. It is not American. It's not what any Americans, we don't agree on, I mean, some people went after, are going after my boss, Elon, because he's, you know, wants to have free speech. That is an American, you know, one of the things that we should all agree on is freedom of speech,

freedom of repress, for a vote, freedom of bear arms and worship. But, you know, the, they decided what people were going to hear and they're not going to hear. A few bad men is an open kimono story about what truly happened. And I fought for 11 years to get. get that information declassified. Here it is. So let's continue with your story. What was the ultimate result of that court of inquiry? What ended up coming out of that?

Very good question. So three and a half weeks in the courtroom, the longest trauma and court history, the longest war crime and for the largest alleged number of alleged killed and wounded by direct fire weapons, machine guns and rifles. But three and a half weeks in the courtroom, media out of it most of the time. And they deliberated.

They presented in April. Usually you have a verdict the next day. Why they took that long. And this was very sensitive, but when you have to wait so long, there's political reasons. It's not that the boss is so busy. I mean, this was a big case.

This was international media. You guys were hearing it all over the military. It's all over the news around the globe. But they briefed the convening authority. and they used non-legal terms. So they didn't say innocent. I mean, you guys, I'm not asking if you've been the accused, but you've probably observed as a spectator, maybe the accused.

But military justice cases end in either innocent, guilty, or dismissed. But in the longest war crime of the largest number, and you say, and you put it out to only one news source on a Friday night, just like tonight. And we know in the media world that's called a Friday night news dump, especially when they selected the day four days after, four months, four months after the trial.

Yeah. On Memorial Day weekend. Oh, yeah. They're trying to bury it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Because what happens four months on a Memorial Day weekend, there's very few, because we know like this time of year, there's not a lot of holidays after President's Day and Martin Luther King, so they waited and waited and waited. and waited and waited. And then they put it out in what happens in the Pentagon when you want news to be buried with what happened in the stock market, what happened overseas and this and that. You're going to have all these other higher priority events that over a four-day military weekend, which it was, they dumped it on Friday night and Memorial Weekend.

You know, 14 years ago last Friday, they dumped it. And they used this phrase, the Marines acted appropriately according to the rules of engagements and tactics, techniques, and procedure for a complex ambush. And some people can say, well, you guys were exonerated. Really? Why did the media, you know, for another eight years until I retired and got out. And we just kept getting, you know, these drive-bys in the media scandal, they got away with murder.

Right. They kept saying they never said they were innocent. Right. And that's true. So the media was reporting the information that the media had. Right. But when you don't give them anything or you don't use legal terms such as innocent, guilty or dismissed. Right. They leave it open for interpretation, however somebody wants to interpret it.

And the statements of your men are all classified at this time. Right. They were. And actually, when you talk about censure, they gave us a quote unquote protective order. So you tell me if this is protecting you or is this more aligned to censure. The order was, you know, while General Mattis was a convening authority, it stated that if any of us, to include our attorneys, speak to the press during, before or during this trial that we will be punished according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And because we had civilian attorneys, they said that we will send a letter to the bar requesting that they beat this bar. So I don't think that's even lawful. I don't think you can lawfully say that to a civilian attorney.

Yeah. Well, I've got the letter. I've got a copy of the letter. And so we had this gag order put on us. And I complied with that. And then I retired. The day I retired, Jack, military times run this hit ad on me saying you know

Fred Galvin killed 19 and wounded 50 blah blah blah I contacted that managing editor I'm now friends with but he all he did is change the words that we killed up to 19 in wounded 50 and I gave him my polygraph I gave him the executive summary from the court of inquiry I told him like what you're writing

is not based on any facts right you need to stop writing it He just modified it, but it had the same meaning. Six months later, after I retired, as the Marine Corps' high holy day called the Marine Corps birthday, Marines found it in a bar there. We all celebrate it. We all get drunk.

And like everybody, that's the intention to do, to celebrate, eat some cake and drink some rum. And then, so on that day, they did another drive-by. Same new source. They used the phrase, we killed up to 19-1-50. So at that time, I'm like, I'm not calling the managing editor. I'm a business owner.

I'm going to call the president of the Gannup Media Corporation. And I had an earful with him. He sent two guys out for six days at two separate times out to Kansas, where I was from and moved back to. They interviewed me. I had a lot of that information that I fought to be classified. It was coming in. I got more as a time went on.

But I gave to them just a ton of it. They wrote a five-part series. I remember that. In 2016, won the Presidential Ford Foundation Award for reporting on the Department of Defense. So I started, you know, I had a business. I was going to grad school. I was taking care of her dying sister and had a gold start charity. I was busy trying to move on with my life.

But they would still do some more Washington Post did a drive-by. And that's what led me, Dave, to want to, you know, put this in a form, request all the information. Right. So Americans know everything about what went on. Right. From their sworn statements. These are what these senior officers said under oath, in court, it's unadulterated. It's not paraphrased.

I know Nick Kaufman, he wrote several articles. And when I was in China on an NBA residency, I was his enigma machine because I was giving him all this declassified information. that had no reason being classified to begin with you know the security classification guide prohibits anyone from classifying something for the purpose of saving someone from embarrassment right as his textbook just that again it's censure so i was the enigma machine that was defining what nouns who was talking about what uh to to nick as he was writing that series in the soft rep in 2016 which was very very in depth and described in nick he just post

in page after page it. I mean, it's it was redacted, but he put in who was talking from what I was giving him. But nothing, like this book is the same way. It's not paraphrase. It's not edited here and there. But it is,

as you guys both know me, you know, my game. I just learn to walk up right. I'm still, you know, half caveman. And this is not written in military jargon. It's in plain language. It's written by Salmana, who's

written other books, written for Playboy, and Los Angeles Times, he's a professional and journalist, and it's written in a very clear, understandable language. Right. The story comes, it's,

you, you will be kind of twisted and turned several times based on how this information warfare played out chronologically. You'll think we're guilty, and then you'll think we're innocent, and you'll think we're guilty again. You know, Fred,

it's interesting because, you know, the military put it, gag order on you. And yet they also released your name to the public. So, right, like your name was released to the public. People knew, like, you don't know who random Marines are, right? A Marine serving right now, you don't know who they are. But the public knew your name, but the details were classified what people are saying, right? Yes. So that's a good point, too. It fits along with this information warfare. One of the things you're trying to do.

information warfare is caused doubt and demoralization. So without trying to turn this into psychological operation one-on-one, they did use not just our names, they allowed the media to take our photographs. There was two of us, myself, and one of their co-defendant. I was the one I entered the courtroom in the front of the courtroom, so they took the pictures. You see those on the internet, me entering the courtroom, but what was I wearing? Now, this is a court, military court.

War crimes case, a serious one. Do you see any other cases, Homania, Ditha, where you see where in their camouflage utilities? I'm not talking for an Article 32 hearing. I'm talking a court. Right. Name one where you see a Marine walking in and out. This isn't some non-judicial punishment.

Right. In front of the battalion commander. This is a court. What do you see me wearing? I mean, do you want to put Marines, some of the most decorated Marines, wounded in action, multiple combat deployments, highly decorated force recon commandos,

first Marine Special Operations Task Force Commander, you want to have them walking in their service uniforms? Looking like Jack Nicholson, no, not at all. We were ordered to wear our cameys. So not only did they use that tactic and give our names out, let the media photograph us, they gave our, we're not boasting, this is just fact. We were Marine Special Operators, accused of killing mass murdering Afghan civilians.

And when you give what they did is they gave our names, our hometowns, our age, is, I mean, that kind of publicly identifying information is how sound is that? Right. When these, I mean, we were under fire. We fought our way out of an ambush. We're getting dumped on in the courtroom. And then the military, it doesn't leak. They just give it to them. But is that taking care of your Marines?

Is that protecting them? What was, Fred, I'm just curious to know. What was the impact that all this had? What happened to those 30 Marines? What's happened to your enlisted men and NCOs in the aftermath of this? Yes, great question. So there's two of us that went in the courtroom. The other one ended up having some severe cancer at F surgery and radiation.

Severely affected him. His platoon sergeant, who was, when these were forced recon guys, just going back and forth to and from the war for several years and then going, smart socks activated, going back out. You know, he ended up getting diabetes. So like the stress from that, the three of the four of us who were married, you know, we did strong point our youngest Marine because the attorneys that I hired, they said, who's your youngest and who's married. and we had our youngest Marine, he had a one-year-old son. And I said, I'm going to make the deliberate intention that we're going to have, the civilian attorney that lived, who just had retired and lived outside the gate, Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Like, you know, hooks, you're going to be, we're matching you up with Phil Stackhouse because I need you to be able to go see him face-to-face anytime you're stressing out about this. Because they did the whole Terminator moment. They cut their arm, pulled it back. And we had a, whoa, shit, this is real moment where it's like, hey, they said they're going to come after the youngest and who's the most vulnerable. They're going to dog pile on him.

So we made the intentional decision. So to answer that question a little bit more clearly, it affected our guys. But Hooks who, he's still in the Marines. He's a raider. He's deployed. right now. And his marriage survived. He's got a great family. It's incredible. So some of these guys did pull through this, this, you know, scandal, if you will, and emerged on the other side of it.

Yes. You know, in the long run, they did. I won't say that there was not a long struggle. And some of them, I will say this. And, you know, just talking to people now and sense that when you have some crucible moment, you need to. to get yourself away from the whiskey and the prescription medications, you need to be on a straight and arrow. I've had one of these gals I used to date. She was a Navy nurse. She said, Fred, you know, she went on to do some mental health credentialing. And she said, what we have found is it, unless you believe in a higher power, when you truly, you're not, oh, I'm crazy. But when you have some severe post-traumatic stress that if you don't believe in that higher power, the

chances of your recovery, she says, were negligible. Like, it's almost, you're going to be affected negatively the rest of your life. So, but I did have a friend of mine that I went to a tactical error control party school calling an air strikes to be a joint terminal attack controller. He was Navy SEAL, the two Navy SEALs, I went to the school with. And one, as soon as I mean, there's not a course you take at the Marine Corps basic school that says, oh, when you're accused of war crime, here's the procedures you need to follow. Right. You know, it's enumerated here.

Just follow this. And you'd be good. There's nothing like that. So I was like, where do you go? Right. And I reached out to some strange bed company and talked to these Navy steals. I went to school and they were my friends. And there's one guy before you hung up the phone and he said, hey, Fred, one other thing, you know, make sure you PT.

hard, get as hard of exercise as you can every day. And he did. And his, that was the guy was the platoon commander, his assistant platoon commander who I was a closer friend to, who when we went through the school and then I brought him out to Yuma and we were controlling air strikes, this dude was just a mountain of muscle, just a total, total beast. And he's a longest surviving person to this day with baboon lungs replacing his. So, all I'm saying is this has severe physiological and mental side effects on people when you're accusing them of war crimes and then not just that when you are innocent and you fought yourself out heroically from a fight right and you get back and you expect the Taliban to do this information

warfare but when your own are betraying you and that's the key point in this book is not just the betrayal but how do you overcome it right and that's what a few bad men is all about is we as Americans, you think, man, we got inflation right now, we got high taxes. We're paying full price. You know, the number one line item, the non-discretionary spending on it, after all entitlements are paid is the Department of Defense. Right. So this isn't cheap. Right. Why not get what we're paying for? What? What do you? I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. Go ahead. Finish that thought I apologize. I'm just saying like, if you're driving to Rolls-Royce, you better get the full package and everything it comes with in that warranty

and better not let it fall apart. And that's what's going on right now with our military. We've seen a hijacked. You see all this stupidity and re-engineering going on and the morale is so low. But it's not like we're getting it at a discount. It hasn't become any cheaper. It's getting

more expensive. And we will be called on it. China isn't doing these amphibious rehearsals for general purpose. They're not just like, we don't have anything better to do right now. They're doing it because they're planning to take Taiwan and they're going to push across those straits. It's going to come and we're going to be in a fight with them and we better be ready and we better have morale.

And that is not going to be some enemy that's wearing flip-flops. That's going to be a determined enemy that has fifth generation fighters, drones, everything. And we're going to be, we're going to be needing our very, very best. And are these leaders that you read a few bad men, it'll make you sick to your stomach. Do my recommendation, I've told people, I just recently re-bred the hardcover is, the advanced copy is, do not read this before you want to go to sleep. It will,

it will piss you off that bad. Yeah. It will make you so angry that this happened to warriors and that these leaders got away with it. And these people went on to get promoted four stars. Right. And we saw that like with Danny Colson too. We,

you know, where people, well, no, I'm not sorry, I'm sorry, not, was it Danny? No, who was blamed for, uh,

who is that we interviewed who was blamed for the Waco? That was Danny. It was Danny, right? Yeah. Where, you know, they have these stellar careers like yourself, you know, you, and then leadership somewhere in the government speaks and, and it's treated as law before they're even given it, before you're even given a chance to defend yourself.

Yes. One, one thing I will also, I really want to, emphasize this is not a one-off and I wish it was and I hope to God there's no sequel to a few bad men too. However, a current mission in progress is the Marine Special Operations Command, the command I was in when this happened, is hunting down three of their own right now from a situation, as you may know, that three guys from Marsok to Marine Gunnery Ser, E7 and a corpsman were out in an air bill and retired green bray hit him punched Danny Dreher the media doesn't want to cover any of this why I don't know Danny was a gunnery sergeant African

American punched in the face twice guy coming in a third time his mate punches him in the face one time retired green bra is 275 pounds hits his head on the ground dies four days later in Germany from a fixation on his vomit tragedy. That was not intended. These guys used one punch. They did not just what special operations teach, used the middle amount of force. They do what Marine Corps martial arts program. Every Marine is trained and has to be qualified in this self-defense tax. They picked them up and took him to the hospital too, didn't that? They reported it immediately. They took him back on the base. They said, hey, make sure Chief Eric Gilman treats him. He was the 18 Delta Corman. And they did. And they

observed him. But it was, it's totally unintentional. So now all three, does this make sense? Because everybody's like, that's crazy. All three are charged with homicide. And then get this. So the prosecuting attorneys attempted this last year to put a gag order on these three as they're heading into their court marshals and courts marshals, tries to put a gag order on it. The judge, Colonel Scott Woodard, who was, you know, in the, and the, and the, and the, their arraignment hearing as they try to say, hey, we want a gag order on them. Colonel Scott Woodard was the defense attorney for my co-defendant in our Marsock 7 trial. It was like, absolutely not.

There will be no gag order on these guys. And then is this has gone on dragged on for three and a half years. So we have the situation that occurred this last November and December. So in November, the case has gone on for three and a half years because it's a weak case for the government. You know, it's basically saying you don't have the right. to self-defense. Sad situation somebody died, but when you're attacked, this is why grown men should not be fighting,

especially grown men trained to kill others. So the government's case is weak. A colonel from Headquarters, Marine Court, Judge Advocate Division, up in the Pentagon, goes down to Camp Lejeune and tells eight defense attorneys that your fitness reports can protect you, but on the promotion board, the colonel, who's the staff judge advocate, he'll know who you are and you're not protected. So he states this to these eight marine attorneys who all sign half a baby. Undue command influence right off the bat.

Exactly. And then so the judge and so the first trial has occurred with Chief Eric Gilman, who's charged with homicide. And he medically treated Rodriguez charged with homicide. charged with homicide. He threw his case out with, dismissed it with extreme prejudice. Notice I use the term dismissed because that's a legal term.

But he dismissed it with extreme prejudice. Right. The government's wanting to file an appeal in that case, but the two Marine gunnery sergeants, their Marine raiders, are still in the gauntlet under fire. And, you know, mainstream media doesn't even want to talk about this at all. Right.

So my point in this tragedy highlights that when good men do nothing, you know, evil prevails, the old saying, it actually emboldens those with the criminal mind that think that, you know what, we did this before. We just run a number six on them again. You know, we have absolute power. Now Marsox that close a loop. They're even bringing all the Marine Raiders out of Kent Pendleton, California, back to Lajuns. So if you're in this loop that you're not, going to get out of and you're all in one base what a strategic and tactical nightmare but do you think the convening authority who's major general glenn the commanding general for marine special operations command do you think he's holding a after three and a half years a court marshal for no reason do you think those marines have any pressure or any influence by the convening authority on their promotions or retentions their arrest assignments. In the civilian court, you don't have a jury under that kind of influence.

Fred, I mean, again, the question I have is why. Why is the Marine Corps persecuting Marines? Like, what's the point? And let's be honest with ourselves. The American public itself doesn't give a shit about this case. Like, a couple of Marines punched a guy in the face in her bill. And as you said, it's tragic. And I don't blame anybody for doing an investigation into it.

it. But John Q. Public doesn't give a shit. And even in your case, unfortunately, a bunch of Afghans get killed supposedly. And some Taliban people say maybe some people got killed. The American public couldn't even point to Afghanistan in a map. And again, I believe in accountability and oversight and doing an investigation to get to the bottom of it is the right thing to do. But my question, when I say it doesn't matter or people don't care, what I mean by that is what is the incentive, what is the point of the Marine Corps persecuting Marines when there's no, it doesn't seem like there's any tangible public, well, public good or public interest. Or a public outcry, like pressure being put on them to, you know, to lie. You know, it's like they're

eating their own because for their own gratification, not because of anything else. Which would be weird, too. Again, what's the point? Two points that you guys make that I'll address. So one, because the public doesn't care, I mean, again, this is the nation's largest employer until just recently, if you stacked up Amazon and Walmart on top of each other as far as head counts of employees, it wouldn't until just recently, the two of them combined just exceeded the total number of active results. civilian and contractors in the Department of Defense. So this isn't, but should we care the nation's largest employer? Now, Amazon can't put you on bread and water.

Walmart can't, you know, imprison you for life. Right. The Department of Defense sentenced the former major Hassan Nadal, rightfully so, to death. Right. He will receive the death penalty. So there's extreme consequences in this type of poker game. And now you ask motive, like, why would they do that?

is this this is supposed to be a merit-based organization. If you guys, when you're a green bray, have you ever been looked cross-eyed by some guy in the conventional forces? Or have you ever been in a special forces group where somebody who's slacked off and starts to look at you like a competitor who, when you are at your very best, maybe it's just intellectually, maybe it's physically, maybe it's tactically, maybe it's all the above. And you start to eclipse some of those that maybe they're more senior rank. You ever

read that chapter in the Bible where they said, Saul has killed thousands and David has killed tens of thousands. Did that encourage Saul? No, it pissed him off. And the Marine Corps is a very similar, very prideful, egotistical, and self-righteous organization. And the leaders, you know, need to be able to not have that affect their emotions and their decision making, but they did. And when you read this book, you see point in blank how these senior leaders testified under oath. Like, they're not making sound logical decisions. Right, right. they're letting emotions and they're letting a narrative that they all went along with influence what they're saying coming out of their mouth and they just they all fall their

sword and that's that's why it was so important for me because I was the defendant one of two in the in the trial and you're you're I'm listening to all this stuff and it was bizarre that the media is not there that none of this is public and I thought it would never be public and I had to fight like hell to make sure it was. And here it's in one place. And again, if you care for our national security, if that means anything to you, if you think that you're a little pissed off that the price of gas here in California is $6.37 a gallon and inflation in some areas is over 28% year over year. If that makes you mad, just see what happens when we go to war with China and all the chemicals that we use for everything in our homes.

right doubles and triples and they have control look what one belt one road did in the last 20 years when we were horser around in the middle east and these guys were brokering deals with client states from one side of the globe to the next and you know who was getting rich a lot of retired general officers right who are who are the you know the the made men in this circle game that you know they leave they retire where where do they all go is fred galvin making is up or just just look where they go. General Mattis, remember that company at the Rannos

that he was the board of directors for? I mean, and they said this last year, he testified, the general didn't know. I had my own money in it. Of course, you're hoping to get rich, but you can't say because

when you were forced our general in charge of Central Command, all the force of the Middle East, you sent emails at Pentagon saying, tell me what obstacles need to be removed so that we can use it in Afghanistan. So if you're pushing it,

if you're coercing people to use this stuff, And then you go work for their board, you better damn well know it's going to be working and what it's all about if you're advocating this being used on people before the FDA approves the damn thing. Right. Friend, can't plead eagrance. Tell us then, since you know, you're pretty passionate about this subject and it's the title of your book. Tell us who are the few bad men in your book. Let's throw some. Yeah, let's get a little spicy here.

Let's throw some shade since we have you here. I mean, who are the bad men? What did they do? And where are they now? Okay. You guys may want to knock a few of these back while I'm telling this story. Because this book does, it not only names them, as you're reading about these people, it shows the photo, the black and white, if you get the hardback version.

It's in black and white because I know a lot of Marines like myself, we like to crayon. Sometimes we'll even eat the crowns. You can fill it in. And as it describes them, it gives their testimony, which these guys thought would never be made public. I fought, and here it is. So I realized it's a matter of time before I'll likely be assassinated. I'm just joking, but it's probably been in somebody's head. This is coming out like a piece of radioactive waste delivered by Amazon in a lead suit, your doorstep.

This is not friendly to general officers, but who are the made men? one is Colonel Patrick Pahanna Air Force Special Operations Officer. He was the one that General Frank Kearney, who was the commanding general Special Operations Command Central, he was General Kearney was the Geppetto pulling the strings on Pat Pahana, having him do what he did to ODA 374 in a steering investigation in a knowingly wrong way. then what happened there is you know sock sent referred it to socom like I said

socom sent it over the Marine Corps the Marine Corps is like you know what we're not going to let this Marine Special Operations Command handle this we'll give it to somebody a little bit more senior Marine Central Command we got a guy over there that he knows what to do they gave it to General Mattis

do I think General Mattis is innocent when he had my polygraph and he had he ordered 45 criminal investigators and four prosecuting attorneys to come after the seven of us and then just aim in on the two of us and then just aim in on me. I think that's coincidental. No? I see that happened in other war crimes cases going on. There's a reason we're called Marsok 7. There's the hominae eight. There's a Haditha eight. Ours was given some special treatment.

And yeah, I'm a little pissed off because our guys got that wire brush and it's affected their lives, some to this day. That doesn't feel good. And we've asked, I mean, Congressman Walter Jones is one of the good men. He stood up, the congressman, late congressman from the district we were in North Carolina second district. He, having not known or seen us, he said, these Marines' rights have been maligned. He was, why has their presumption of innocence been discarded?

He's one of the good men. You had Colonel Nicholson. Now, you know, he's a four-star general, John Nicholson, is retired. He's in charge of all forces in Afghanistan, which how'd that go over in Afghanistan. Exactly. But, you know, he was the one that made a public statement voluntarily to the press, to the Pentagon Press Corps, live from Afghanistan. And you guys remember this.

This is the one thing that was famous about our case because nothing before has ever, have been said so condemning against Americans. He said this was a terrible, terrible mistake. This was a stain on her honor that American Marines killed innocent Afghan civilians. And he

humbly and respectfully asked for forgiveness. And then he went around and paid salation payments the equivalent of four years average annual salary to everyone he could at this sure. So yeah, he's

He's highly featured in this book. And then there's just other Marines that could have, you know, supported us. And they weren't as criminal, but we did have a Marine liaison to, that was over there in Bagram at the combined Joint Special Operations Task Force headquarters. And he was the dirtiest one of all, Major Scott Euckely. and he sabotaged us, he drafted up this brief, totally condemning us. He threw every stone he could find against me and our task force. And why you would do that to your own that you're sent over there.

Right. Right. Advocate for as despicable. And the thing is, is, you know, especially for the Marine Corps, where, you know, Espri da Corps, you know, Semper Fidelis, where that is like the blood that is supposed to run through the vein of a Marine. And it's not. Always faithful.

Yeah, always faithful. And it's not that, you know, it's not that that would justify a cover-up, but it would certainly justify even hadness, fair treatment. And the desire, the desire to see your Marine Corps unblemished and unstained instead of just like, oh yeah, these guys must be guilty. Because the Taliban and AQ have never, ever lied about anything. Oh, no. Straight, straight shooters.

Yeah. That's not a tactic they use. Yeah. And then, so the one last thing is, God rest his soul, late Congressman Walter Jones. He did fight for us literally to death. he received an injury and he ended up dying slowly. But he always told me, he said,

Major Galvin, if it's the last thing I'd do, I will clear your Marines names. And so he sponsored House Resolution 21 and the 115th Congress. And for that two-year congressional session from 2017 to 2019, unfortunately, unfortunately, until the day he died, fell on deaf ears. And the purpose of that, it says you can Google search,

H-period, RES, period, 21, and the 150th Congress Senate says to have the common on the Marine Corps make a public statement stating that the Marines of Marine Special Operations Company Foxtrot were not at fault in the ambush on 4 March. Sat on deaf ears, the commonon was indifferent, did nothing indifferent, didn't clear our names. People say, well, you know that you guys were finally exonerated, and let me be very clear about this, the Department of Navy had senior civilians that did an investigation. It was released the day after General Mattis was fired. General Mattis was a committee authority in our case.

Mattis was fired. And on the 2nd of January 2019, this panel that had been formed in May of the previous year, who knows, I mean, if the Secretary of Defense was the boss in this investigation, now he's the boss, depending on, you're probably going to be really careful. But the day he was fired, this thing came released, and it's a 12-page report.

I know Nick Kaufman, when he's in Soft Rep, released the whole thing. There's a link out there, and Soft Rep has this 12-page report in it is explicit. My attorney was like, Fred, I've worked on these cases my whole career, and I've, with the Department of Defense, all I usually see is a one-page.

It's so vague. You don't even know who they're talking about or what happened. Just know that the petitioner is now all clear. Because in your case, they name names and the verbiage in there, which is included in the book, A Few Bad Men, is so over the top that they described who was immoral and unethical.

They said things were unjust. It completely exonerated us, but I'll go back and be very clear about what I first said. That was senior civilian leaders in the Department of Navy, and Marines of the Department were the Men's Department, but we're in the Department of the Navy. And that's, they set the record straight in 2019. So, yes, we've been cleared.

We've been fully exonerated. I just wish there was moral courage demonstrated by the senior leaders. We talk in the Marine Corps about, you know, standing up for your brains, looking out for the morale. Where is it right now in the Marsoc 3 case? You think those Marines and their wives and their kids have high morale? I mean, two of them were selected for promotion to include the chief who's, his case has been dismissed. they still haven't promoted him. He was selected for promotion.

That's, I mean, the whole thing started because they were out, you know, enjoying themselves. Spended animation. Right. Three and a half years later, you think that's, you think you're looking out for people's morale? Right. Even after a guy's case is dismissed. Right. He's not promoted.

Right. Fred, the next point I wanted to get into. And, I mean, I think he did a really amazing job outlining this and documenting all of it. And I'm really glad that you wrote this book to tell the story of your, self and your men. But I did want to circle back around on one point. If from your perspective, a lot of this, when I say this doesn't make sense, what is this about? If from your perspective, the conclusion that tell me if I'm wrong was that a lot of this had to do with the Marine Corps just did not want Marsok. You alluded to that this was not something. This was the redheaded

stepchild within the Marine Corps from the get go. There is no long term planning for it as if they plan to dissolve it before too long anyway. And now this incident happened and this was a great, you know, never let a crisis go to waste, right? This was the opportunity to just disband Marsock entirely. Yes. And I will say things completely unclassified here that right now, down in Tampa and Special Operations Command, there's still those, there's plans to scuttle Marsoc. That it was ever wanted. And then to this day,

Dave and Jack, do you think there's a plan to similar with the use of sock? You think they're going to roll up the flag down there and brag and shut it down? No. No. When you look at what happened, when you talk about senior leader of corruption, um,

am I making something up that you had a general you, the last commanding general of, Marine Special Operations Command. He made some land acquisition right outside of Camp Lejeune and decided made the order to these two Marine Raider battalions, the only two in Camp Pendleton to move to Camp Lejeune. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. I mean, did he get punished? No, he got selected for his third star, but he just quietly, he made a decision.

He just was going to retire. Have you guys ever known a two-star general that selected for his third star and just walks it off? You know, like, yeah, I got some other, he doesn't have any better offers on the table. Who does that? But the problem is we're tone deaf. We got problems in our Marine Corps, the senior leaders, to include in the Marine Special Operations Command. I'm telling you trends, this isn't good. currently we have three Marine special operators.

One is a corpsman. That's a whole other stupid story that they won't even, the Navy won't allow them to be called raiders. But can you imagine, you know, any other service that you go through this training and you do the same mission, but you're not a, you know, you're not a full-fledged member.

Anyway, but we got problems when our guys right now who are out there are mistreated like this. There's a reason that these guys just want to get out at 20 years here. I just left the military last month and all these guys, you know, most of which I knew and was friends with went from an enlisted to officer. And they're like 20 years and one day I'm retiring. They don't want,

they can't say anything about it because there's some of these hot button topics. They're like endangered species that you really can't say anything about or you're going to be, you know, taken back and, you know, buried in a shallow grave. But the morale is so low right now. This is an issue. I'm not the unfaithful one that's breaking ranks. I'm just the one making everybody aware that we've got a problem.

We've got to take a close examination. What are you trained at when, you know, you get hit? You know, you do an evaluation. You check yourself like, what other injuries do I have? Right. You don't ignore it and sit there and like, God, that'll go away, you know. No, we have to pay attention to what's going. on right now if we plan to be effective against these great power competition fights that we're

going to face in the future so the the book is a few bad men the true story of u.s marines ambushed in afghanistan and betrayed in america by our guest major fred galvin fred uh start wrapping things up here i i think we understand at this point why you wrote the book i think i think everyone gets you're pretty passionate and fired up about it needs it's a story that needs to be told. Like at some point, you know, at some point the common out of the Marine Coordinates, whoever it is at whatever point in time, he's to come out and publicly state these guys were innocent. And what was what was the process like writing the book? Were there any new revelations that you dug up during the process of writing this?

Has there been a response from any of your men, your peers to the book so far? A good question. You know, the thing is, just factually stating done hundreds of interviews since I retired in 2014, really started going public in the media in 2015. The Marine Corps is not disputed a single word, anything that I said. And as a retired officer, there is no statute of limitations for misconduct. So I'm on the pension. They can come back and prosecute me for anything misconduct.

So, but the Marines, especially those on the ambush, you know, they've constantly, they're glad and they want to see this out, tell our side of the story, the full events. But, you know, I will also say this, six months ago when this book was announced that's coming out, I had a LinkedIn account and a Twitter account that were created. one said I was Lieutenant Colonel, which I've never been promoted, Lieutenant Colonel, others, but these fictitious account saying I was crazy, I was dying, and I was going to, you know, painting me as this madman.

A month ago, I had my Facebook account hacked with a link in there that was sent out for my own Facebook account. So all family and friends, and I know got this thing. I think they saw the sales of the book trending, you know, as a number one new release. And as I'd sent stuff out in the phone,

family and friends that, you know, this kind of corrupted that, set it back a little bit. So, but there is a lot of this information warfare. I saw this one gentleman on LinkedIn saying, oh, you know, don't buy this book. It's a book of gripes by Fred Gov, and I'm like, a book of gripes a little bit more than that. Yeah. Mark S. I said, okay, Mark Sutton, it hasn't been published yet. How do you know what's inside it? Isn't that censure? I mean, you, is that what you're advocating for? Or is it because your, your brother is in a military attorney, Lieutenant Colonel at Headquarters, Marine Corps and the Staff Judge Advocate Division? I mean, I think he probably does know what's inside here because it's gone through the Pentagon's

office pre-publication security review. So I will say that some high-level leaders probably aren't so thrilled. This is not going to be on the Commandant's reading list. It's probably not going to be in any military post-exchange's bookstore. But if America wants to know, the health of the military, they need to understand the good and the bad. And I'm not talking about all the good things that people have done. Now this book has, and I equate this to the candy, it's got our combat operations in Iraq in Afghanistan, but the trial is the meat and potatoes. So don't get filled up on, you know, the hors d'oeuvres and the detriment.

You know, you want to get into that trial, and you'll see this is the stuff that makes it extraordinary. This should never have happened, nor should it ever happen again. But it's going to, and just like evidence with these guys in the MARSAC 3, we've got a problem and we cannot ignore it. If you have something terminal in your life, cancer, or, you know, if you were the young green beret that went out and married the stripper and she's just been in your money, you've got to make a decision and take some action and survive. Because if you don't, it's going to end up, you know, killing you. The book comes out in just a couple days, June 7th.

It's up for pre-order now on Amazon. I'm definitely going to order a copy. You shared a PDF with me, but I want to get a hard copy this book, Fred. A few bad men. Check it out. It's, it'll depress you. It'll shock you and depress you. One thing about it, gentlemen, is it's with supply chain issues, I recommend pre-orient.

that's what I'll say. Don't try to wait to pick it up to a bookstore. Is there likely going to be some disappointment from you? Don't wait until after the seventh algorithms figure the amount of production. So if you pre-order it, you will split what the publisher says is you'll be guaranteed a copy. All right, friend. They don't charge you until it actually ships. Twist in my arm with your sales pitch. I'm going to go ahead. Yes, order it now. So it's on Amazon, Barnes & No Books and Millian. books are still. And the link is down in the description, guys. So it's easy to get a copy of it. So if you're a caveman and you don't like to read, it is on Audible so you can have it read to you. It's on Kindle, for those that like Kindle, the book does have all the diagrams, glossary of acronyms and terms. It's very well written by Salman. It's easy to understand anybody in your family. A young kid can understand what's going on in this book. Yeah, I think that some people are going to be very shocked.

And look, I know you've had your day in court. I hope you and the other members of Marsock have like your day in the press. I hope that there is widespread acknowledgement of not only your innocence, but a bit, but the the hostile actions that were taken taken by people in your own ranks against you and the unjustified hostile actions that and we need to have military justice reform just like the case of this Marsock three similar to what's going on in sexual assault in the military that has shown precedences you know they're taking that out of the hands in the military I know there's a lot in the Pentagon senior ranks of like we can't lose control of our military justice.

But when you're proven that you can't do it. You have this unlawful command influence. When you have to influence the military defense attorneys by threats, you're not big boys. Well, and you know, and that's not. We've lost our way. Yeah. And that's not just in your case. Like Jack's talked about this and written about this extensively too.

It goes the other way sometimes where, where like in civil case when there are cases on bases and things like that that are very real the command for its own self-interest will brush them under you know like like there needs to be yeah there's a very weird dynamic that i've never quite understood about the military about how they will really persecute people who didn't do anything wrong right oh but then they will sweep things under the rug where people really did some bad things and um is that usually senior officers yes uh but And it does feel more like a feature than a bug, unfortunately, of the system. Fred, just a couple questions from viewers before I let you go. How likely is it that MArsoc will have a counterterrorism contribution to J-Soc and what advantage would could they bring to the fold in comparison to some of the other special mission units? Yeah. I'm not able to officially speak on their part.

I'm not part of that command, but I would say highly unlikely. Highly unlikely means probably won't happen. but what could they do? I'll just say they've been doing it in small numbers, is all I'll say. J-Socke is a joint command. I'll leave it at that. And those men which I have tons of friends in close respect for have been doing it at the highest levels. And one thing Marines, it's like a cult.

It's very, I mean, They do a good job at brainwashing guys and getting these guys to do extreme things. I mean, Marines were coming alongside in ships swinging over in ropes with swords, killing people. That's some pretty wild stuff from some of the earliest days in the American Revolution. So Marines can definitely, if they had been given that opportunity, as an organic marine force, that would be a phenomenal portion of our national security. But I doubt that will ever happen, unfortunately.

BP Izzy, thank you for, thank you for your donation. Again, our guest, Fred Galvin, the book is A Few Bad Men, up for pre-order on Amazon. Next episode is going to be Kim Carruthers. This dude served in the Ranger Battalion in Special Forces and Worst. and also worked as a private security contractor. Kim, I think he's one of those dudes that kind of did it all. I'm really excited to talk to him. I've been going back.

He's all teed up for next week, so really excited to have him on the show. And we'll see you guys next Friday. Fred, thank you again for coming on the show, doing this interview, writing this book, and telling the story of your men and what really happened out there. Yeah, thank you, Fred. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much for it. let me get this word out to your listeners.

I really appreciate it. Absolutely, folks. So we'll see everyone next Friday. Thanks, everyone. Buy the book. That's right.