The Team House - Retired Delta Force operator and Green Beret George Hand, Ep. 36

Episode Date: April 4, 2020

George Hand served in Special Forces as a Green Beret and then as a operator in Delta Force. In this episode we talk about George's deployments to the Balkans, Somalia, and Colombia as well and planned ops in Haiti and Libya. We also get into the Advon Troop AKA "the funny platoon" that includes women assigned to the unit.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Says we are now live. All right, people. We are live with episode 36. Eventually with Mr. Hand, George Hand, we had a test call with him. about an hour ago and he should be joining us shortly. But in the meantime, we figured we'd just get started

and George will pop in probably in the next five minutes. George, our guest tonight, he served in first Special Forces Group and then he was a Delta Force operator and has done a lot of interesting stuff since then, particularly working counter-human trafficking. So thanks for joining us tonight and we should get George up here shortly

Of course, this is the team house. I'm Jack Murphy. This is my co-host here, Dave Park. I am streaming from the bugout location, and Dave is still down the city. And I noticed, Dave, that the reason why our videos, the last two videos, got demonetized, I think it's because we mentioned the RONies. And YouTube is just demonetizing anything that mentions the Rona. Really? I believe that's what's going on there.

Well, they also said that they also said that like there's going to be AI censoring because, you know, most people are working from home. So a lot of it is going to be AI. And they said that the AI would probably be oversensoring. But if I remember my, if I remember right in the original canon, I'm pretty sure this is how SkyNet started. Yeah, me too. Oh, man. So how are, you know, I don't really want to focus on the Rona so much.

I think there's enough of that out there. But how are you doing down there in the city? It's quiet. You know, it's as quiet as one with, quiet as a church mouse, as it were, or whatever. Yeah, it's quiet. You know, I don't know if they are in, I mean, a lot of places are closed. I don't know if they're enforcing any type. Like, I have not been stopped when I've gone out for groceries.

I haven't been stopped when I went to work. Subways are pretty much dead, but they're also running much slower now. They're running on a restricted schedule. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of people cooking that don't normally cook, you know, a lot of people. But, I mean, there's plenty of toilet paper. Plenty of toilet paper. So it's not quite the end of the world.

Not yet. Not yet. I mean, you know, if a lack of Charmin is the precursor to the apocalypse, we are not there yet. Okay. Well, my mother, she works in a hospital, and it's definitely stressing people out. You know, it's here in New York. Sure. And here's George, just so you know.

Okay. Mr. Hand is connecting to his audio. So we will have George up in two seconds. George. Yeah, test. Yeah, we got you. Oh, you're a live streaming, brother. Okay. Did the video come through this time? Yeah, yeah. It all looks great. So, George, welcome to the show. You know, whoever's joining us here today, really appreciate having you on. Every time I have ever jumped onto a phone call with George. He's got something fascinating to lay on me. So, I know. There's going to be no shortage of anything to talk about.

And before we actually go deep into it and dive right into it, I do want to bring our viewers a quick word from our sponsors who are sponsoring this interview. We are sponsored by Ned, which you can see right there. Ned is a wellness company. and this is their hemp oil product that they sent to me that I've been using. And you can maybe you can see there. It's about halfway empty. I have been using this.

I don't know. Do you have any experience with hemp oil, George? No. We did try it. We gave it a shot. And I didn't get results and didn't like some side effect that I got from it. Oh, really? Did it like make you like groggy?

Yeah, it did that, isn't it? I definitely wasn't in my typical state of mind when I took it. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. So it's just a thing that just isn't for me. That's all. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it could be what you were using because I have no idea.

Yeah, stuff in local Albuquerque here. It might be a little stronger than what's street legal, if you know what I mean. This stuff that I'm that I'm showing here, Ned's hemp oil, it's 0.3%. sent THC. So it's definitely not going to get you high. It's not going to give you that kind of feeling at all. I was also, excuse me, I was pretty skeptical of it when they first sent it to me, but I've been using it for about three weeks now. And I've actually had very good results with it. It's really helped me get to sleep and have a much deeper sleep. So when I wake up in the morning, I just have a lot more energy than I normally do. Because I'm that type of person, probably like you,

George, like very like overactive mind, like thinking. Not that I'm necessarily smart, but I think a lot. And I have a hard time getting to sleep at night. I'm always that guy. Like I'm not asleep until two in the morning most of the time. That's so good, man. Yeah, with this, especially you got to wake up in the morning. You got to go to work.

That's a nasty cycle to be on. But since I've been using this, it's actually really helped me get into like a more, you know, responsible and comfortable cycle of, you know, sleep. So I've had very good results with it so far. And Ned offers a discount for the listeners of our stream or viewers of this stream. If you guys want to go and check them out, you can find them at hello ned.com. And if you go to hello ned.com slash team house, you get 15% off and you get free shipping on your first order. So it's H-E-L-O-N-E-D dot com slash teamhouse.

So I go check it out. It's there. And otherwise, let's get down to it. George again, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Jack and Dave. Great to have you, George. Great to have you. So, George, I mean, I don't even know where to start with you because we just end up circling around at so many different topics. But we had, I guess, pre-gamed a few things as far as, excuse me, what we wanted to talk about today. I know I was, I'm very interested because we had talked to some previous guests. We'd talked to H.K. Roy and others who were with the CIA operating in the Balkans during the 1990s. And you've been, you were over there on the J-Sox side.

So I was really interested in hearing your whole perspective about how that spun up and some of your deployments over there. I think it'll dovetail really well and kind of tell a more complete picture of what was going on over there at the time. Well, I have about nine months total in country there. Three of it was unrelated. It was PSD stuff, you know, buttering the country commander around. But the other six months were two deployments that were specifically Pithwick focused. We were, you know, they have their deck of cards list of mostly generals, you know, that were indicted by the Hague. you know, specifically from Uycos, former Yugoslavia, to stand trial for war crimes.

George, could you just elaborate for viewers who don't know what Piffwicks are? Yeah, Piffwick breaks down to his persons indicted for war crimes by the Hague. And, you know, I mean, the trials and the tribunals that went on in the Hague were responsible for coming up with the essential list of persons. you know, by priority, of which, you know, I mean, Slovada Mos Milosevic was there, but the guy on the top was Radvon Karajic, the big hair. And it took years and years to get that guy, but yeah, we finally did get him. I was not on the actual capture, but we went after some other, you know, fellows further down the list, and we, I was involved with three roundups of,

of generals or ex-generals, wherever you want to call them. But we worked, you know, we worked in safe houses in town. We had direct ties with the agency who were also in their safe houses in towns. And they're, the bread and butter from the agency,

which is really essential in getting these capture missions done is that they were running assets on the ground. And that's a really difficult job. I have about zero zero formal experience in recruiting assets. And I was happy to leave it to those guys. It's like, well, one more thing I don't have to specialize in, you know, let somebody else do it.

But they would, you know, they had to work in and among the population. They had to figure out local people that they thought they could trust, you know, whether they could buy their trust, you know, with money or whatever that was. And I don't really know how they did it. I just always understood that they were decent means. In other words, they went out there extorting people

or blackmail and were trying to do that sort of thing. So they were coming up with assets. And then those assets were giving them some, you know, essential elements of information of intel. And, you know, once we all come to an accord that there was enough actionable information. intelligence to actually go, you know, pick this person up, then they would launch a force from J-Soc, the Delta Force, would launch a team of guys over, you know, in just a matter of hours.

And they hit the ground. We'd formulate a quick plan. Or we'd turn over the plan that we had put together being there on the ground. Just like, here's a basis for you guys to come up with the plan that you want to execute. And it was a long, pretty painful process. I did a lot, we did a lot of reconnaissance. Every day was at least a five to six hour drive, you know, just to get to get to a city and just drive down one street and get one chance to look at one thing. And then come back and vet it.

So there was a lot of that. And the missions were good. Like I said, we collected about three that were wanted by the Hague and are actually in prison there as well. But that's about the one over the world of how we operated, you know. So you guys were operating at a safe houses with the, at least working in tandem with the agency guys. The actual operators who did the assault, they were holed up in a hangar, weren't they? Yeah, and it was a, you know what a clam shell is. You know what a clam shell is.

Yeah, yeah. Semi, a rigid shell that opens up like a clam. TF 160 birds would be in those shelters. And we would rouse to a group from back at Bragg. They'd hit the ground and everybody would operate in and around that, that hanger, that clam shell. But it wasn't, there was not a force there. like on retainer. They weren't just, you know, there in case something happened.

It was, we sent for them, you know, on a case-by-case basis. Like, well, we got the Intel, go ahead and, you know, spring the force, bring them over. And probably pretty cool mission for those guys because there's no, you know, there's no hangar life. Not really. There's not, you know, just laying around rotting for day after day waiting for something to happen. It was just like a sprint to get from Bragg, you know, in country to Bosnia and probably, you know, I mean, working stuff up immediately with the potential to launch that very same day.

Were there some pretty frustrating experiences though when, you know, where you spun up the boys from Bragg and they all show up and then, you know, the intel doesn't pan out or your recon shows something different. It's like, eh, we got to call it all off. I know that it happened. It didn't happen while I was there. in my experience it was all uh all three missions went off and they all three were successful and you know everybody rejoiced it was a great good track record three for three yeah for sure

yeah yeah you know and but at the same time i'm i'm thinking that had a little bit of bearing on on the the uh assault criteria it's like well we know that you know we have to we have to be so sure that this is this is going to happen because we're we're going to spring this delta force unit all the way overseas right him all the way over here and if it's screwed up then yeah yeah it's a big deal so and i i just kind of was worried a little bit that that that you know kind of raised the bar for what they're willing to accept you know to bring the oh oh that the intel had to be like 100% solid before they were. Yeah. Yeah. And it almost, I mean, at times it almost seemed like it was it was not even realistic. Like we can't, you know, I mean, the things you're asking for, the way I'm

going to, the only way I'm going to get him is like, I might as well just grab the guy by the collar. Right. You know, hey, you know, never mind the assault. I got him because, you know. Which is interesting because, you know, when you get into Iraq and Afghanistan, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. threshold for Intel for a hit. I mean, there's much, much lower. It's like, well, you know, maybe, maybe this phone number might have been connected to this guy at some point in time and we'll go in and, you know, clocked up every military agent male and see if he's in there. Or even better, Dave, where you hit that house and it turns out they're not there. But the guy who lives there is like, well, I'm not a bad guy, but I know where a bad guy lives. The next thing you know,

you're blown down every door on the block. Yeah, yeah. Or why? locking like seven clicks to some village out in the middle of nowhere to roll up one of his, one of his arch enemies. So, yeah, interesting. So was like a target-rich environment, Dave, then? Target-rich and also, also it was target-rich, but it was also the threshold for intelligence just wasn't that high. and I think part of that is because there was so much circular reporting.

Part of that was because everybody was there and everybody wanted in on the action. So it's like missions galore. With your element, George, I mean, they had the whole varsity team to focus on that mission. Right. And it sounds like you guys were really able to bring it. Yeah, absolutely. And the threshold for you guys, because how many times can, you bring a U.S.-based unit over to Bosnia over there and strike out before people start

going, hey, you know what, this isn't working. Jack, I will tell you one of those, one of the three was, well, when the force got there, and this is, this is a Pat McNamara was there on this. you know Pat Sure, sure. But he, they scrambled, you know, B, B Squad, and B Squader came all the way out and they went to snatch the guy. And when they showed up to, you know, the location where it was supposed to go down,

you know, there was a car there and there was a couple of local boys, you know, that waved him over. There was this dude. And he had that they were after. So he was hog tied and was gagged. and he had blood running down his face. But that frustrated them because, you know, they didn't get to get to do a capture mission.

I think that was like already captured and just handed over. So they were calling him a gift wig. And yeah, so they just, you know, picked up their parcel and threw him on a black hawk, you know, and rotored back to the base. And of course they, since they were, frustrated. They went ahead and had a whole bunch of really great photo opportunities, some great Kodak moments, you know, with the gift work propped up. He's still blindfolded,

blood run down his head, you know, and all the boys taking turns. I've seen the picture, but I, there's no way it's available anywhere possible. Well, thankfully that was before Instagram. It was. Yeah. We have a couple of questions that are kind of pertaining to this. First, First off, well, David, thank you for the donation. I'm going to get to your question just a moment. So, Jim, thank you. And DJ, thank you. Peter, Pistol Pete, Peter Blaber in his book,

talked about a snatch in Bosnia, where it was considered using a dude in a bigfoot suit. Anything on that story. 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. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Yeah, I was not there for that, but I'm aware of the story, and Pete and I are actually good friends. And, yeah, there is truth to that. I mean, it was just one of those things

that it was so bizarre that it should work, you know? It's just so crazy. It has to work. Yeah. And I don't, and I mean, that was after my time. Like I had already been out of Bosnia, and then Pete went in and guys went. But it just made me think of wonders. Like what the locals' superstition is

towards a thing like that, like a bigfoot creature. And, you know, it would have been interesting to find out, make some pretty interesting conversations while in country. But I imagine there's just about like anybody else is on the planet. It's like nobody wants the big hairy creature creeping outside in the snow. So I got to wonder like who pitched that con op to what officer? Like so you see, sir, we're going to have a guy dressed up like Bigfoot. I would say because I know that this was the case in some other missions,

is that it happened so short string, they didn't really have time to brief it up to to too many people. And in fact, the words of one of the better missions that happened in there, Sergeant Major Rick Hall was in charge of it. You know, it was a big deal back to brag. And when I got to Bosnia, I was like, you know, I was pat him on the back. Like, man, that's fantastic. It's really wonderful.

That mission you executed. He goes, well, you know, honestly, we just didn't really have the mission long enough to fuck it up. You know what? I know, I know what I mean. It's like, you get the plan. and the plan's good today. You start messing with it and messing with. It's pretty soon.

You've got a plan that you've been working on for a week and it's like ridiculous, you know? Every good idea fairer in the world just comes in and gives their input. Oh, yeah, man. You've got to be the smartest one in the room, you know? Yeah. What's interesting?

I'm sorry, go ahead. You go in and embarrass it. I promise you it'll work. What's interesting to me, though, is that this mission is on a short hook. but somehow getting a bigfoot costume is not outside the logistical concerns, which makes me wonder if somebody is just tooling around the country or on deployments with a bigfoot costume, you know?

Like, it's not like they're ordering off Amazon. Yeah, I don't, I just don't know, man. But, you know, I read, I'm a, I'm ghost writing a book for a guy. he's a task force 160 ah age 6 driver so he's an attack helo driver and he was

he supported delta on the siege of had it the dam and he also supported them heavily as he was like the airborne commander in a specter gunship orbiting over objective gecko on d day of Afghanistan

oh yeah yeah where where of course the Rangers were at Rhino parachuting and seizing that airfield. The Delta came in on a gecko, which was Mullah Muhammad Omar's compound. This guy, he was key to that, but then the had the damn piece. And then some other things, a ghostwriting a book for him. And he threw a chapter at me today. You know, and I started skimming through the chapter.

And it's, it's, he's mentioned Pete in there. And, and I immediately got. on the computer, I had to say, Greg, is this, what is this true? But he's describing how Pete went to, like in their talk, he went to adjust this big old metal fan. And they heard a swing ding ding noise and they saw Pete's finger go flying across the room. And yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I. And some dude collected it for him and brought it, gave him his finger back.

And he was saying how unbelievably embarrassed he was. that this happened because now they had to send him back overseas to get his finger right now and so he was going to miss out on some important things that's all that mattered to him not his finger flew across the room but that he was going to miss out on some of this this action it's going to be a good read yeah well i get to he he regurgitates his stuff and i just put it in I get to shack it up, you know. Bell and shit and all this other sort of things, how I want. Oh, that's awesome.

I guess I brought that up because it's a coincidence. You mentioned superstition, like using sort of local superstition. Is that something like, is that something that you had seen before? Is that something that people you knew or had been part of? Is that something that had been exploited in other places and other areas that you knew of? This is as close as I can get to that, Dave. So me and my partner, this female, we drove X number of hours. We took about three hours to a particular city named Vlasonica.

It was over the Zoss, over the zone of separation. So it was effectively in the Republic of Syska. you know, I'm a bad guy territory. So we were there to, you know, collect a piece of information and to look for a person just basically do our one drive through that city.

And we did not know because we're a little bit out of touch with environmental news, you know, because it had meant nothing to us. You know, all it mattered was like this mission. But there was a solar eclipse that day. And we didn't know that. And we just were driving along and noticed it was starting to get weirdly dark.

And I made a I'm our sat call back to, you know, our base. And they said, yeah, you're right in the middle of this, you know, partial eclipse. I'm like, oh, well, that's just interesting, but nothing more than that. And as we got to the outskirts of the city and started driving, you know, entering the city, there was not one single person to be seen anywhere. I saw a cat because it moved and caught my attention. I'm like, a cat. But there was nobody looking out windows.

They weren't standing in yards. Nothing. No cars, nothing. And it's because of a really severe superstition that the Bosnians have regarding solar eclipses. I think to be out in it, it's going to cause them some kind of just, you know, severe physical distress which just ends their life. Fascinating.

Yeah. No, that's wild. I mean, do not know, have a clue about any of that made for really bizarre. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like New York during the coronavirus. Oh, yeah. You said it, George. Oh, you said it, Dave. Oh, I'm sorry. I just demonetized this, didn't I? You're going to get us banned. It's okay. Well, George, that's actually a good segue because I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about your part of those deployments over there to the Balkans. hunting down Piff Wicks. I mean, what were you doing? You mentioned driving around town with a woman in the car. I mean, yeah, can you guys elaborate on some of this stuff for us? Yeah, I was, I mean, I had a, my other 50% of my team was a female, a unit female.

And her whole job was to just knock, was to knock down my profile. well. You know, that was mainly the job. So instead of just, you know, one militant looking guy driving around all the time in a car, it's like, well, that guy's, you know, he's nothing, he's innocuous, you know, he's got his wife in the car with him. You don't need to worry about him. It's not a threat if he's got his girlfriend there. And then on top of that, of course, she has all the potential in the world to collect intel as well, you know, to see things, to notice things, take notes, even more so than me because I'm actually driving. And in Bosnia, females don't drive, particularly, you know, if there's a couple in a car, the female will not

be seen drive in a car. And I'm sure that after this many years, you know, there's somewhat liberated females are probably slowly getting behind the wheel, you know, and learning how to drive. But in those days, yeah, that just wasn't seen. So, and unfortunately, that meant we couldn't trade off driving, you know, all day long. I just, just, I had to stay behind the wheel. But, yeah, she could do communications, shots, and plenty of other things. And that is how we did our recons. and of course we were easily able to get into restaurants and other establishments

and sit there for a couple of hours hoping to see a certain person or something of that nature. So that is really, that was, that's how I did my operations when the operations were going on. And when things were slow, since I had the language ability, they kept me busy as hell doing just administrative things like going out and finding new safe houses. That was a big thing for me. I just drive it along until I saw a sign, you know, that says for rent and just knock on the door and just talk to the, talk to the locals and figure out everything, you know, like how much, is the utility, is it connected to the city sewer or is it on a septic tank,

the power, the water, what works, what doesn't work, and negotiate a price. So how did you come to speak Serbo Crow at? Well, I checked out two volumes language set from the unit three months prior to going. And it came with cassette tapes, you know, old school cassette tapes. So I had three-month head start. And I would listen to these tapes at night, you know, for several hours. and by the time I got there, I mean, I had a good enough basis under me that I could continue to learn the language

by interfacing with the people without books now. So, and yeah, I mean, after that many months, I got back to Bragg, and I was real curious how I could do, so I went and set up a D-Lab test, defense language institute test, and tested out of it with a good score, enough to get payment. That's amazing. That's a great.

Sustainment pay, yeah. George, you're one of those few people I know that's able to do that. That's just self-taught, you know, able to learn languages like that. After so little time, you were able to test out. So, like, people who don't know what George is talking about, the D-Lab is just a test that they give to people in the military to see if they are fluent in the language or not. What proficiency are they able to speak this language?

And that George was able to get paid for it meant that he was, proficient. I mean, and were you a three-three or a two-two? What does it have to be to get paid for, George? The language are, they're different based on their category of difficulty. Like, for instance, I would have to test higher in French to get pay than I would for a Slavic language like Serber Croatian or the Asian language like Mani. and Cantonese Chinese. So, and I think I was at a two and a two with no plus signs for Silver Croatian, and that's plenty to get, uh, yeah, yeah, two, two.

And, uh, what else do I want to say? Yeah, even though I tested it out and high enough for pay, I couldn't get the pay because I was already drawing maximum language pay for Cantonese, Chinese. I think I'm the only guy in the army that was taking that test once a year. you know. That's amazing. Yeah, and you were self-taught when it comes to that, too. I mean, that started when you were a kid working in a Chinese restaurant, right? Yeah. Yep. Yep.

That's amazing, George. Yeah. Yeah. No, go ahead, Dave. Well, I was just going to say the D-Lab is the aptitude battery to get you into a, into like language school. And then the DLP is the proficiency test. Thank you. Yeah. Exactly. Just for the people who will come on afterwards and,

and say, George, working with the, I'm sorry, working with the woman in the unit, like, that, that's kind of an interesting segue into, like, women in the unit, how are they selected, how are they trained, were they trained differently than you guys? And do you feel like that's the precursor to women being in the soft community now? Or, like, how, what, and how was it received at the time? Well, I wish everyone had read Jack's article on that subject there. I'll put a link down in the description for people later. Yeah, yeah, because that would really help.

You know, that really helps back from the blue light days and how it carried over. And of course, you know, my relevance with the unit's not good at all, having been out away from them for like 16 years. But, and so meaning that I don't know how they are doing business. now or what it's like with them. Are they, have they take the women, have they taken up a bigger role, a more, you know, that's more less more equal to like the guys that are assaulting? Or has that diminished into something much more administrative?

I just don't know. Yeah, I don't even. At the time, I mean, while I was there, Dave, you could have, you know, you could have just separated the assaulters into two groups, man. And one group is the non-believers, right? Yeah. The other group is the believers. And that's it.

And some just absolutely refuse to work with him, you know. I mean, they could come knock the women, could come knocking at the door, saying, I'm being assigned to your squadron for this mission coming up. And the senior guy would look at her, shake your head. I've seen this happen. He just says, hey, you know, I'm sorry. And shake his head. I'm not a believer.

I should go, well, I appreciate that. Thanks. Go back to go home. But they're not going to be forced. You know, back then they weren't going to be forced to accept the assistance of the women if they didn't believe in the product. Were these women in-house? Were they a part of the unit some other way or were they coming from someplace else? It's everything.

Okay. And even assaulters is the same way. I mean, some of two really good assaulters in my unit came from our signal squadron, you know, radio operators. operators that sort. They went through selection just like all the other candidates and had absolutely zero advantage. There's no such thing as an advantage in selection, you know, and they made it. But yeah, the women came from all over.

I actually got to participate in a portion of their selection. It was an urban exercise in one of the cities in America. And I got to go participate with that. And I was, I'll tell you what, I think I know I've told Jack this before, but something that really shocked me, you know, left me like speechless for like five or ten minutes. I remember talking to a couple of the cavalry females, one in particular that I was going to Bosnia with. And we were interviewing some of the candidates. we were grading some of their stuff.

And so she's interacting with them being the female. And when I had a chance, I asked her, I said, you know, if I didn't know better, I would think you didn't want any of these girls to pass. You know, because I compare that to being in West Virginia as a cadre, you know, running the course there. And the guys are like constantly,

they're for like everybody there. Like, yeah, yeah. They latch on to certain candidates and say, hey, do you see my boy today? Do you see his time? You know, just constantly rooting for all these dudes to make it. Because they want, we need help on the teams. We want the men coming in, passing fairly and making it to teams. But I asked her that.

I said, it just seems like you don't want like anybody to pass. She says, oh, absolutely. Yeah, we don't want any of them. She said, we like all of us women in the unit do not want the other women in. because it's territorial. They don't want them there. Even if they're down, we're down to just like

such a small fraction of what we need to maintain the mission, they don't care, they've just soon everyone flunked. They were the last one standing person there. And that's a shitty way to think. It's interesting because we had

we had on Tracy Walder a couple weeks ago, and she said that the FBI selection was kind of the same way that the women were very much... Like, worse than the guys were... ...territorial, territory is the word she used. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, you had mentioned... You told me when we talked about it, George,

you were like, you know, this is very destructive, a very destructive attitude to have because you're destroying your own unit. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting.

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$35 order minimum, restrictions may apply. Subject to availability. You can save an extra $10 when you spend 40 or more on a great selection of participating items. Just look for the signs and save at Bakers. Yeah. Yeah, that's, it's almost treasonous. And it made me wonder, too,

is that when the few, who did make it all the way through to where, you know, they're sitting in team rooms. It's like, how are they getting, how are they getting treated now? Right. There's a female that nobody wanted in. None of the other women wanted. But now she's in. And how are they going to, what are they going to do with her?

Well, and for the women who don't make it, when they go back out to the big army, if, you know, if anybody ever, any other females ever listened to them are like, no, don't go. It's horrible. It's horrible. Don't go. You know, like you will be like treated poorly and you know, like people might say that about like sear. Like don't go because it's it's like, you know, sitting on a on a cold stool naked and hitting your nutsack with a hammer.

Yeah. But they, but they're not saying don't go because you're going to be treated with some sort of prejudice or something like that. Yeah, man. You're absolutely right, Dave. There's no such thing as that. I want to add a thing just because it's funny is that one of the persons that I was assigned to for the entire day to follow around, you know, as she did accomplish all these tasks. Well, I mean, ideally they didn't want the candidate to know that they were being followed. But in certain circumstances, you had to compromise that.

and it's for safety, for example, because they sent them through some pretty rough neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. and had them loiter, like, sit outside and, like, do a sketch of a church. You know, that's going to take a while. Sure. And now, so here they are by themselves,

this female in this neighborhood. And, yeah, the command says, okay, you know, choke up a little bit, get close, get close. Or, okay, just go set right next to her. and you know to to demonstrate to the people that are showing interested in her that she's not alone yeah yeah so i just sit there and then did you know the deal i know the deal but so anyway i've followed this person around i got in an elevator with her i had to so the in the so she knew i was there and she recognized me and i still did my standoff um but it was just like it was a joke

by that time. Yeah. And the last thing I did was follow her to the airport so she could fly away. You know, and she saw me at the airport, okay? And she flew away. And she didn't make it, okay? And years later, about two-ish years later, I was traveling, again, by myself. And it was the Charleston, the Charleston Hub, Jack, Jack's already grinning.

But I was moving to the airport, and ahead of me was the same person. you know she was just it was just dumb luck now she's traveling somewhere and i'm traveling somewhere and we ran into each other at this airport with the way she saw me was she turned around and and saw me behind her that looked at her face was so so horrified she thought this guy's been following her two years yeah and that's it occurred to me that too once i saw her face i'm like oh my God, she thinks, oh, and I wanted to say something, but it just wasn't convenient, so I let her think that. She probably thinks I'm still following her after 30 years. She probably sees you everywhere. Yeah, she just like, constant head whipping back. You, you know, you had shared with me once before

because, you know, when you were a recic guy, you know, presumably you were with a recie troop when you were doing these operations in the Balkans, doing this rat reconnaissance and target reconnaissance and all that, you had shared some other stories, funny stories with me about doing live recie missions out in the wild and coming across unit members in the airport. And you guys recognize each other, but you kind of have to be like, I don't know who those guys are. Yeah, it is like that. And again, it's specifically, it's in the, that Charleston Hub, you know,

because all the guys coming and going out of Fayetteville, that's like their first and they're next to their last stop. Yeah, and we are constantly running to each other around the, world, mostly in airports, but we don't know what each other's doing. So it's just kind of a silly game, you know, like we sit several rows apart and just kind of look at each other out of the corners of our eyes. Yeah. And walk by each other. Certainly of the time. Trying to gauge whether it's okay, call to say, hey, Dave, how you doing, Jack? How you do it? Because I, yeah, I did approach a guy once that he was, he was traveling with a different name.

he was under cover and I came up right up to him hey boy the guy's his face sunk yeah yeah that whole uh I've I've experienced that too walking up to somebody and they give you the kind of the the the slow shake and you're like and so you're walk towards and you just kind of turn and we'll start walking the other direction because it's like okay yeah yeah um one of the name the name that I used in the Balkans was a is a very good friend of mine still. And we were both on the Green Beret A team, dive team together. And his full name, I use his name, you know what I mean?

And I was in the Balkans and I ran into a guy in civilian clothes who was good friends with me when we were in the Green Berets together. And he was also good friends with the guy, the guy as even better friends with this dude whose name I was using. and he comes as if he goes, George. He looked at the name. And I think he thought he was going crazy for,

but if he looked down and saw John Smith, he would go, ah, excuse me, ah, you know, but he saw a completely different person who we also knew. I think he thought he was going nuts. We have a question from David Maynard. Thanks, David. And now, the three of us probably don't know

exactly what he's talking about, But he says, let's start with his dislike of certain orange groups. But whether we, you know, whatever that's about, are there certain SMUs that you don't Oh, yeah. He wants to know why George doesn't like TFO. I don't even know if that's true or not. But I don't like anything that we ever did together, me and TFO. It was unbelievable how.

poor their performance was. I just, I don't even know what to say about them. The missions they compromised, it was just incredible, you know, this credible, sloppy work. I mean, all the way down from something as petty as, you know, one of those guys borrowing one of my lock picks and destroying it, you know, by, I mean, he was, he had the thing jammed into the lock. He was twisting it so hard, they actually corkscrewed it and bent it.

And anybody that has even a little bit of lock picking experience knows that those are the light, light touch instruments. You don't really put any pressure on that. Yeah, you're not the rake or not the, but the tension bar basically. You just kind of cranked it. Yeah, you just put your finger on. No, he used my pick. He didn't even use a tension bar. So he was trying to rake, you know, across the pins,

and he was using the pick to turn as well. That's how, so you didn't know how to pick locks. I don't even know why he, he saw me do it. He saw me throw open a lock and he goes, hey, can I borrow those? You know, like Donald Savvy, and, you know, me thinking you knew what he was doing and it didn't. So that compromised a video, remote video surveillance camera that was watching a bridge entrance, you know, to pick up license plates of all the cars that turned down the bridge, right?

So these two orange guys went and put that thing up. 24 hours later, they went back to recover it, and it was gone. So they came back and they're telling my supervisor, blue supervisor, he says, well, can you tell me everything about how you put that in? It turns out they put it in about 1,600 hours in, you know, in daylight. they put it up in broad daylight we didn't see anybody so again you know

it's like and I know they got not the best crew that they had out with you I guess no well both those stories are different got different persons and then they

they also pulled into a safe house I mean we have safe houses all over Bosnia and you just know where they're at So, you know, wherever you're at in your mission, depending on how it went, you could, you could, you would know where a close one was where you could go stay there. Even if there's people already there, it's okay. But these guys pulled up in their car, they were, they were tired, man, you know, because they had a long day. So they were tired.

They were too tired to pull their radios and their weapons out of their car. So they went and, you know, took their naps. And while they were doing that, some local stuff. their car, pushed it out to the street and jumped it. So these guys lost assault rifles and they lost radios, you know, with fills. With crypto, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, let's let's let's let's throw the rest of it in.

Remember the the Chinese embassy and bail grade? Yes. By bombs by accident. Guess who was lazy than that? Not you? Not me, brother. I would love to lace it today, but yeah, back then it was a TFO guy that was lays in the wrong building. There's allegations that it was done intentionally.

I don't know what your thoughts are on it. My thoughts are I would love to do that intentionally today still. But no, I have no educated remarks one way or the other about that, whether it was intentional or not. So. Thank you, Chris, for Ian. Ian asked which units the females came from, but I think that we kind of address that. They were, yeah, they're the troop that the unit has for that purpose. And that's kind of where we're, hey, George, I mean, I know that you've done a lot of interviews and you've talked with Jack before, but for our guys or for our viewers, guys and girls, girl maybe, I'm not sure.

But for our viewers who may not be familiar with like your superhero origin story and your backstory, can you tell us like how you came up, how you got in the Army, like, you know, where you went from there and how you got to be who you are now? Yeah, sure. I honestly felt like I wanted to go into the Army, you know, and carry a rifle to be one of the guys since I was five years. years old. I'm positive. I can remember that. So that is what I did. I got when I was old enough, I just went straight into the army and was a, you know, an infantry guy carrying a rifle. So I was okay with that. Yeah. And this was between wars. You know, this is like a peacetime army. And it was awful. You know, two years, I was in for the shortest amount of time possible two years in case I didn't like it. And it was horrible, you know. It was just a bunch of thugs and hoodlums and

it's just a really poor crowd of people there. So I wanted to, I wanted to get away from that unit. And the best way to do it, you know, talking to the right people was I wanted to get out, you know, go to the Green Berets. Decided that's what I wanted to do. But the problem with that is that you had to be airborne. And I have, to this day, I have tremendous fear of heights, man. Wicked fear of heights. It's almost unreasonable. You know, you'd be ashamed to see it.

But the way I described is that for two years in that infantry unit, I was ready to jump without a parachute. And I just had to get out. So I did get out. I went to, I went to Airborne School. I went to the Green Berets. And it was okay. It wasn't all that, but I learned the, the tree.

of the crop on the teams was the dive guys, you know? Get your Halo guys. They were kind of lazy, but the dive guys were working. I feel attacked. But the dive guys were working hard all the time, man. And so I did that. I got on a dive team. And even after all that, when it came right down to, you know, going to war,

I said, I did not want to go to war with that team. I was on. I thought we were not, we were just not nearly as good as we were touting to be. I mean, even on an official level where our team warrant officers telling the company commander that we could walk, you know, 40 miles a day with 80 pound packs and that we could and we could and we could. And I said, when have we ever, chief? When have we ever done any of the shit you're telling? And that really started to bug me a lot. And I think I got hypercritical. But I decided I needed to get the hell out of the Green Berets.

And my whole career in Green Berets, guys would tell me, you need to go, Delta. Why are you ruckin? We're not ruckin today. You need to go to Delta, Delta, Delta, Delta. And the clear matter of fact in my head was that I could not make it is why I didn't go, simply because I couldn't make that. So it's just a matter of time. And I was in Key West.

I was an instructor there at Key West in dive school, teaching diving, and had a really dangerous relationship with the company commander there. You know, dangerous. He was talking like jail and this and that. And I said, well, okay, the only way out of here,

because we were at war. There's no way to get out. out of a force multiplying unit except Delta. Delta is the exception to everything. You know, none of the rules applied to Delta. I said, the only way I can get away from this guy and get out of here is selection. And ironically, that company commander was from Delta.

He was a Delta captain. He got the boot for really poor performance. Well, why do you want to throw you in the clink, George? We were, well, insubordination. Because we were, the, the caddia was really, was not happy. They were upset, man. The guy was destructive. No one wanted to be there anymore.

And that's all we did it all day long is, excuse me, just talk about, you know, the boss, this, the old man, that. We shoot this and we should that. I said, let's do it, man. You know, let's go to his office. this is, you know, at 1630, let's meet at a soft of school in there and let's tell them why we're unhappy. Come 1630, there's nobody there but me.

You know, and is, he's not, sorry, your hand, is there some reason you're standing outside by off? So I go in there and go, wow, look here, boss, you know, and we'd have a conversation and I called him a, I called him a dick, right? I said, you know something, sir, you're a dick. And he looked at me, he was really shocked. Like, what do you say to that? And he goes, well, you know something, Sergeant Ann, you're a dick too.

You know, I was like, oh, that's what you are. That's your comeback. But anyway, and it went like that for about three days straight. You know, 1630, the guys are roaring and they were gone. In the three days, we shook hands. But I knew that this guy was headed out for me. He wasn't going to overlook those three days. You went to selection, and correct me if I'm wrong, if I misremember.

You didn't make it the first time. No, I did make it the first time. You did? I did. I totally didn't expect to. Not too many people did. But I made it through the first time. Why do I have this, this story?

Were you training up for it and you got hurt so you weren't able to go? Yeah. What I did is I trained, I mean, you know, there's a sheet they publish. It's a recommended training regimen. You should be able to do these things. And I tried to keep pace with it. And I could not do all those things that they recommend. I couldn't do them.

and I trashed myself, you know, trying to meet that their goal. And as I describe it, it's like the day I left for the airport, you know, I grabbed my bags and I was limped into my car. You know, and I opened up the trunk and threw one bag and the next bag and then I sat there. I'm like, what just, what just happened here? You know, what did George just do? He just limped to his car. You cannot limp to selection. No.

Yeah. that's not where you go to recover. That's where you go to tear down. Yeah, so I threw my, I pulled the bags right out of the bag, put it back in my house, and called that Sergeant Major and said, I'm not going to be able to make it, you know. And he goes, do you want another date? I'm like, I don't really, I don't have an answer for you right now. So, you know, went back to businesses as usual, you know, the boss glaring at me.

I'm like, holy cry. I have to say real quick, though, when I made it and came back to Key West, he was a different guy. We were buddies, man. His arm around me, smiling all the time. Look at my boy. Look at my boy, you know. But so I, what a two-faced idiot. So I'm back to just an instructor, you know.

We have our next class in, and I was standing outside on a firescape with one of the students. and he was looking at me. And he goes, you're, you're starting first class hand. Huh? I said, yeah, I am. And he goes, did you have a date to,

go to selection recently? I said, yeah. Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact. How do you know that? He said, well, I just came from there. This last class, I didn't make it. But I had a bunk. And the top bunk was empty,

but it had a name on. It said Sergeant First Class George Edward Hand, the fourth. And when he told me that, I was just like kind of crushed. Yeah, yeah. You know, it should have happened. Like my name was there. My name was on that freaking bunk and I was not there. So, man, like that same day, man, it's like strapping the bag back on

and headed to climb the stairs ten times. And, you know, just did the best I couldn't. when you were able to go to selection like you mentioned i mean you went right through everything was kosher yeah yeah i mean everybody had their days um i i had i had a day that i didn't there was no way that i could have recovered physically well enough to you know to to continue the next day it was just too much pain you know it was just it was a god awful pain and somehow, man, I woke up that next morning and felt like I could continue. And I just, I did continue.

And, you know, I remember at one checkpoint, there was a medic there. At a rendezvous point, there was a medic there. And, you know, they tell you, oh, you get some water. There's a medic there if you think you need medical treatment. And I went ahead and went over to the medic because I wanted it in the record that I saw a medic before I quit, you know, that I kept trying. You know, I didn't just like, oh, I got pain and I quit. Now, I wanted them to see that I first went to try to get medical aid so that I could keep going. So I went and saw the guy and he gave me indeson.

He gave me some indeson because I still have two of the indeson. You know, they're like 20 years old and they're in this pill bottle as a souvenir. I'm pretty sure the shelf life is shot, but I still got them. And I took the Indicent and I was able to continue. And I just kept, I just kept on. That's amazing. So was Indicent at the time? Is that like, was that like Motrin?

It was vitamin M basically. It was something. Yeah, it was a, it was an insid. I think it was in the insid class. Okay. Yeah, and I had zero faith in it, but I don't know if it helped me or not, but I'm not going to have to say it did. What year was this, George? This was in 89, it was what it was.

And after like that, I mean, the self-doubt leading up to it, I mean, for a while, right, not thinking you can make it and then the challenge and putting off the class and then in the course, in this election, like feeling like you were going to quit, but wanted, you know, wanted the justification. When you found out you were selected, what was that like for you? Well, at the end of the long walk, yeah, I mean, it was dark, and it took me like 18 and a half hours to walk that walk. And I stumbled into the sergeant. I couldn't see him, but I could, I could, because he got out of front.

is at Sartant Hand, you just, you know, passed whatever, the, you know, the Virginia portion of selection and assessment. And my gosh, Dave, I just don't know. Otherwise, I would have answered by now. I don't really, I mean, I wasn't like jumping up and down saying, I'm the man, I'm the man, you know, I wasn't feeling superior. I was just feeling like, like I had a good day. Yeah.

I accomplished everything I set out to do today, and I did it well, and there were no failures. And then, like, when you were in OTC, through OTC, when you got to the unit and things like that, I mean, did you find that self-doubt creeping back up, or did you feel as though, did you feel more settled, like, in your heart about you being there and about you belong there? Yeah, I felt, I didn't really feel like this great surgeon. of confidence, but like I had zero, I had zero fear at all that I would be too scared to do something. You know, I was like, well, I didn't sign up for this shit.

Right. It wasn't like that. It was like, and we even talked about it amongst ourselves. It's like, you know, they could ask us to do anything and we'd try it. You know, I know, I know we'd try it. Might make it, but we'd give it a shot. I mean, Dave's asking, again, for the viewers, Dave's asking about the operator training course that you guys do to, you know, become qualified operators in the unit. And is that like just a straight up boys summer camp?

I mean, like just the most awesome thing ever where you're training to do like taking down aircraft. And I just imagine all kinds of high speed stuff in the back of my mind. Yeah, it really is. I mean, and it's like five months of that. and it's it's all it's the real mccoy you know what i mean it's not nothing is there's no half stepping through it like well we're going to simulate that you know we're going to simulate that that that this box is is a really uh you know it's not like that uh like when it came time to do NBC you know some NBC training um you know we didn't just like take out the

chemical take out the alcohol pads and like wipe for one minute the back of our free hand, you know, not doing NBC training. That I'm discarding that one. No, they flew us to someplace in Alabama. And we did, we did training with live serin G.B. Nerve agent. What? Yeah, I'm not, I shit you not, man.

So, you know, we're putting on the full, the full mop, you know, the full mop. Yeah, mop level four, yeah. Yeah, mop four. And we went out there and there's, there's some dudes there with, with droppers. And we were briefed ahead of time. It was like, we're going to do live age training. You know, we're going to be contaminated with Sarin, G.B.

They're going to put it on our persons. And we're going to have to decon ourselves and our buddies. And we're going to have to do it right. I'm like, yeah, we're going to have to do it right. I mean, the consequences, you're not going to feel very good. And your eyes are going to water. Yeah, I mean, Sarin, I'm not a chem expert or anything. Is it, does sarin asphyxiate you?

Or is it one of those things that it touches your skin and you're fucked? It, you can't really even endure a pin size drop on your bare skin. I mean, it's going to start, it's going to start locking up every muscle in your body, you know. So it's going to contort you into a really weird shape. And it's also going to, yeah, you're not going to be able to breathe because the breathing is done by a muscle. So, yeah, it's a really, it's a really horrible death. And so they contaminated us with that stuff, and we decontaminated, you know, very thoroughly and re-decontaminated and decontaminated and decontaminated each other. And there was a lot of, it was like we were swimming in the end.

There was so much water everywhere. I was talking to somebody just this week about a former unit member. that you cross paths with. And this person was telling me about this operator had to get into MOP4 to do some work overseas in the 1990s, WMD work. And the other civilians, the other people who were part of this program

could not get into a Mop 4 suit in the heat, in the summer heat, in the desert. They passed out in like two seconds. And this one dude from your unit was such a bad-ass guy. he got in there every time and went through the work, did everything that he had to do. And when they pulled him out of the suit,

it was just like buckets and buckets of sweat because nothing gets out, right? So once he takes it up, it's like buckets of sweat coming out. And they were like trying to fucking put ice blankets and that kind of stuff on him. It's like, no, no, I got to finish the job. It got back into it and went and did it. And I was just like, God, damn.

It's nuts. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think, well, I don't think. I know we attacked a WMD. It was in Virginia. I believe it was an underground facility that was owned by AT&T. That's what it was. So it was deep underground, man.

It was everything blast valves, you know, the exhaust tunnels. Yeah. It was everything, huge vault doors. And we, I mean, we flew to that. We left Bragg already masked up, you know. So we had the entire transit of the Hilo. We had the whole mission, you know, and then the transit back,

and we went through a decon there in the pine woods, like at midnight or something. But the whole time, you know, total time of transit from beginning to end, I was masked up for eight and a half hours. Oh, my God. With never, never cracking that thing to cheat, you know, because. So for our viewers who have never been in MOP,

which is, What military, what is it? What's military-oriented protective posture? Right. And it is a suit that basically like the old sweatsuits that people that people used to wear. If you imagine wrapping your body in a non-breatable. Yeah. In a non-breatable, like complete from head to toe, heavy kind of glossed sort of boots,

a mask with, you know, fit it with a gas mask. it's just just your own body temperature is going to heat it up and cause sweat. Then any activity under that is going to, you know, just. And because these are operators, they've got all their gear with them, right? Right. So they got your guns, your ammo, you got your breaching kit. Carver full combat load. Whatever's moving quickly.

Yeah. And George, this training was to sit. stimulate cracking into an underground facility and securing a weapon of mass destruction if I'm following. Score. It was a warhead. New core head. That's some pretty gnarly stuff.

I mean, obviously you've thought about it quite a bit, George, but I mean, for the average American to think about that we have these dudes, these operators who are standing by, you know, worst case scenario that like some of all fears type stuff who can go in and execute that type of operation if it became necessary. Yeah, it, I think about it still. I just, I mean, me and my, the mission that me and one of the guys who is KAA now, Guy Catino, they were going to, we were going to, we cut a grading that's on the ground. It was the exhaust vent, you know, for air in, air out.

And it's about 30 feet deep. So they cut the grading open through, we threw a, fast rope down there and me and Guy slid down this damn rope to the bottom. So it went down 30 feet and then it elbowed and it went back in about 15 or 20 feet, right? And our mission was to see there was supposed to be two blast valves. Blast valves are like this big, you know, metal, thick, heavy metal and there's there's a rod on them and they're designed to if there's a nuclear blast, the concussion of the blast will come in and it'll slam those valves shut. so it doesn't get inside the facility.

And, you know, of course, they could be remotely open and closed. And me and Guy were to go down there to see if those blast valves were open. That was our whole mission, the first piece of the mission. And if they were closed, the no-go, we just pulled back out and we leave this whole shaft alone. There's nothing for us there. but if they're open, then, you know, we can get in there with an ex-thermic torch, and we could cut that shaft that they're on, and you'd, boom, boom, boom, boom, and we'd have a hole that we could like start diving through.

So me and guy got down there, slid down the rope, saw that the valves were open, that was a good thing, but about then, the guys up top started torching the rest of the grading to get rid of it. So they're burning these exothermic torches, brocos, and all those damn slag is just pouring down the shaft. It's splattering. Oh, my God. It's splattering right at the elbow where me and Guy are at. And we started creeping back until we had our backs up against the concrete, just watching this, you know, this fire avalanche.

And we started, he's yelled at it. He goes, I don't think I can breathe. And I'm like, yeah, man, we're losing some air. We got to get out of here. Because all that slag of the torch, it was burning the freaking air up, you know? Yeah. So we're calling to these guys like, stop, seize fire, seize fire. You know, give us a chance to climb the hell after.

So we climbed out. These other dudes went back, the breaches went back in and started working on those valves. They come very quickly. How did you climb out in Mops? Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. We should have known this beforehand, but none of us thought about it. But as soon as we're sliding down that fast foot, like my elbow is banging into the thing. Bunk, bunk, it's rungs into the concrete.

Every shaft is going to have rungs, you know. It's going to have something. There's a nice laddery rungs, you know, like every three feet. So, yeah, so we just climbed our way out of there, like normal human beings. But I mean, presumably, you know, thankfully this was a training exercise, but in real life you couldn't assume there's a ladder there unless you had somebody with eyes on, right? Right. Unless there's eyes on, man, we've got to bring everything,

everything that we are positive that they should have. We have to bring it. So, yeah, that was a great mention. I mean, we had two troop breaches on either side of this thing, trying to get in the main vault doors, you know, because once we threw those things open, we could, like, bring in Penscowers and all of the big stuff. Penn Scowers are

six-wheeled vehicle. They're vehicles. So when he's talking about a Pensgower, they're talking about actually bringing vehicles into the bunker, into the, yeah. I should know better, but I'm looking at Jack the whole time. And he's already knows all this stuff, so I keep forgetting.

You're right on. That's why we're here. So how long were you in Delta, George? I was there for 10 years. Okay. So we thank you again, David. And we have a question that kind of for the from the time you went

from the conventional army to SF and the 10 years that you were in Delta David Maynor Mayer says I've seen Larry Vickers picks of early Colts with flashlights

duct taped what was the gear evolution like and was there a point it felt like a sci-fi movie for you the we we had

we had decent lights on our colts. They were manufactured, I want to say surefire. It was good intentional gear that we had for our long guns and our secondaries, our pistols, rather. It was a decent light. It looked like it was made at a decent place, not a garage that fits correctly and has a sensible switch. You know, in my case is a pressure switch on the on the pistol grip. You know, if I wanted light, I just squeezed a little harder and I had light. And on the, the M-4s, well, they're car 15s at the time.

But the same thing. Most of the guys put a forward pistol grip. And that's where my gunlight was, was on the forward pistol grip. And it also had a pressure switch on it. And I also tilted my forward pistol grip about just a little bit. because that it's just not as natural as that. Right. So it was a really comfortable ergodynamic thing to pick up and shoot that I really appreciate it.

And, you know, being in Rucky, maybe we can talk a little bit about that for the people who don't know. But being in Rucky, like, were there things that you were exposed to technology that you had, things like that surprised you and, you know, was like, oh, my God, this is amazing or so cool. or as you were there, evolved, things like that? I have to clarify, correct something. I was not officially in a recry troop. Okay. I did the hell out of the recid mission, but I was never assigned to that troop.

Okay. Actually avoided it. I avoided just a little bit. Didn't want to do it. Why was that out of curiosity? You know what? I'll tell you. And it has nothing to do with the mission or the equipment.

or anything, but it actually had to do with the guys there. I mean, Rekke only took senior persons, right? And that's beautiful. That's a beautiful thing. Well, senior persons are also older persons. And I started noticing that in the Reky troop, there was guys there that were not physically up to standard. And who knew it and who didn't give a shit.

and I also noticed that even when I got there as a brand new guy, I noticed that there was at least one or two dudes in this Rekky troop that never said a goddamn thing to me, never said good morning or, hey, how's it going? And just noticing, noticing things. Like I noticed when we did loadouts, I mean, those are a bear. You're lifting like a million pounds of gear, you know, like 40 pounds at a time and 50 pounds. And I noticed that some of those reckey guys would open up their team room doors and they would drag their gear over to the pile. Then they'd go back in their team room and shut the door.

And I noticed that from up on the cargo truck where I always positioned myself. So I could lift every single person's bag in the whole squadron. So, I mean, it was just, it was an attitude. It was a it was a demeanor. It was an affect that came from those guys that. I just wasn't quite ready for. And by the time I was done in squad and I was never ready for it, so I went to Advon for my last two years. And what exactly is Advon for the people who don't know?

An Advon is a, it's a unit that we deploy all over the world to spot. where it is expected that the unit is going to have to deploy to and the intent is to get there ahead of time or in advance and that's what admon stands for get there to advance and do battle space preparation you know prep the prep the area with in terms of intelligence with logistics that's a big one and operationally get as much accomplished for the squadrons so that when they hit the ground You know, they're not living in pup tents, trying to figure out where they're going to get water and that sort of thing. Because they only deploy with like enough stuff to last 72 hours. So beyond that, that's my responsibility as Advon. And of course, Advon turned into this wicked recon and hunt for these Piffwicks. So when you were hunting for the Piffwicks, you were actually acting as Advon and not as RECC. Oh, yeah, I was there as Advon.

on. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. And hey, I'll tell you, Dave, man, we had a warehouse, brother of, it was filled with cars from the local economy. It's full of Volkswagen Jeddhas, some B of W's, Audis. But they're not cool ones like we get in the States, you know?

Yeah. They're different. They never leave. They make a different kind of Volkswagen Geo and Volkswagen JETA than the ones that show up in the United States. I mean, those are actually nice cars, man.

But over there, they're like soup cans. But we had like 30, 35 more of every kind of car, vans, even trucks. I mean, when I was there,

me and one of the guy, we purchased an actual tractor trailer, their version of a tractor trailer, semi, you know, big, fuck cab. And us,

too, that bought it, We had CDLs back in the state, so the unit sent us to CDL, you know, Tractor Trailer Driving School is what it was for 30 days in Charleston. With the express intent that we could drive tractor trailer rigs with our interests inside the trucks where nobody can see them. And I didn't like that idea at all. I don't want to be a long haul truck driver. But I looked down, the longest trip I had to make was to Vermont and back. and then a couple of shorter excursions in North Carolina.

The Trojan horse. But we bought this, we bought this truck and the plan was, it was like, well, every, every recon recal record we have is this sedan. You know,

it's always, we back the sedan up next to the apartment with cameras in it. So we wanted to break that profile up completely. So we went, you know, we went like, left and got an entire truck because that's never been seen as part of a recqy profile. No one cares about all these millions of huge transport cargo trucks, park rallies,

don't care. Right. They start to get suspicious a little bit with the same looking, you know, Volkswagen's. Or the exterminator van down the street, right? And I mean, allegedly, that ended up going forward in Afghanistan where the Trojan jingle truck got used on certain operations from what I understand. Yeah. Now, we owned a few Mercedes-Benz trucks, we call them Apple Cards. And they were at all kinds of bizarre configurations in them like false backs.

for example, you throw open the doors and there's like, it's jammed from ceiling to floor with lumber, right? Where in reality that lumber is only like a couple of feet long and it's a facade. So it's a false, it's a false cargo facade. And when you get behind that facade, it's the big open space with a bunch of pissed off dudes. So when you talk about, you know, the sedan with the cameras in the back or or this Mercedes. Sadie's, you know, sort of Trojan horse type thing. Who was doing your tech work? Were you guys doing it?

Was the Army doing it? Was the agency doing it? I mean, can you comment on that? Like, we were internal efficient with tech. Okay. Damn good tech. Yeah, with a whole section. And, you know, every one of those guys, every one of those guys was a green beret.

you know now they're working in the tech shop sure sure you could just talk to them and describe a concept you know that you're dreaming of and explain it to them well enough and boy they would turn something back around that was pretty impressive

yeah tech people are kind of unsung heroes and in every field like that's really well said Dave because because they really really really really are. And I thought a bunch of times it's like, man, you know, if I got if I had to like suck down a magazine of

8K rounds and I couldn't really assault anymore, I'd like to work in that tech section with those guys. Those were some really great guys and I really like that mission, that creative. And I got to I got to use a whole bunch of that when I was doing counter human traffic is, you know, I'm thinking about what I need

and I got good support budget. And I built a lot of the things that I used, you know, to collect intelligence. There was, it reminds me of a gentleman, you and I both know, George, working out of Iraq back in the day. And I remember the unit guys would bring in a car, just a vehicle they had presumably bought off the street. and I have no idea who this guy was, a big fat guy flown in from the state somewhere and he'd come in with all the armor and he would up armor these vehicles inside

for the unit members so they could go out and do their operations and low visibility vehicles, but it was just really impressive to see, you know, them bring this guy in from the states and he could rig these things up and they looked like normal cars. Yeah, yeah.

It's amazing. So Mason, thank you for the donation. Nicky, thank you for the donation. Mickey says, no question. Great show. And we have George the thanks for that. And Ashley, Mason gave us a bigger donation. So let's try this again.

Tech is hard. I recognize those names. Mason Flake? Yeah. And talking about techies. That guy. Yeah, we're tech buddies. Yeah, he's a network engineer genius, man.

and on a weekend he'll send me like five to ten pages of of just ramblings on a certain internet protocol you know like you're you're really good with that stuff too george uh i wanted to do that when i got out of the army just didn't i went to the school for it got got the qualification um i've always had a great interest in it haven't had the best aptitude in every case um and And yeah, that's just something I have to admit that it's like, oh, it doesn't matter how much I love that stuff. My aptitude is not the best for it. Yeah. That is that doesn't destroy me. I mean, I still, I got guys like Mason Flake, you know, it's like, well, he'll explain it to me his way.

You know, like router information protocol, rip. He's explaining that one to me now. And it makes a difference, you know, to hear that guy explain it to me. Then what is what I'm reading off the internet. Sure. And some people just get it, you know, and that was, you know, that was my experience where in tech people is that I might have like an idea, but I had no idea how to implement it. And you tell a person what your idea is and it's like magic what they do, you know, and what they're capable of. Yeah, I've always been impressed.

George, I wanted to also ask you about, you know, this was during the 1990s. So some operations got off the ground and some didn't somewhere in the planning stages which presumably to this day there's plenty of operations that never get off the ground for one reason or another um but one of the things i wanted to mention that uh i felt was really interesting when i've talked to people about it was the planning that went into Libya um yeah you know at the time at tarhuna Gaddafi had a underground chemical weapons uh factory going yeah you bet and i i I was able to talk to one person who told me about the kind of, you know, the tactical ground plan they had put together for J-Soc. But I know you were in the unit at that time, you know, part of, you know, the guys getting spun up for that.

And I was wondering if you could talk about it from your perspective. Oh, let me see. You know, yeah, I do, I do recall going into our upstairs classroom for a couple of days of planning on a target, you know. And it was, there was a, the instructions were just get up there, you know, and get busy and get involved and get in this planning. And so, yeah, I mean, we had some, we started with just some, looks like some engineer drawings, not red line drawings or as built, has builts rather. But, yeah, it looked like a pretty complex target. And I read the name, and that was the name of it. And it occurred to me sometime during the first day that I didn't know where the hell it was. I go, well, where is this this Taruna?

You know, and they go, well, it's, you know, it's in Libya. I'm like, holy crap. And so, yeah, we planned on, we did two days of planning on that of what ifing and straw manning and spitballing and all that sort of thing. We had a damn good intel man there. I mean, that was his area. He was there with us the entire time, you know. You could just spit a question at him at any moment. He'd throw back an answer.

And we ended up with, you know, a package that got put on a shelf with a whole bunch of other packages. You know, Haiti was another one. And we actually did our hate. We did our planning for Haiti in Mogadishu, you know, because, yeah, because things were so over, you know, about halfway through our stay there, that there was nothing to talk about in the morning about Muhammad ID, you know, and we had our pilot back.

Mike Duran was rescued because it went from going after Adi to just like trying to get Mike Durant back. That was the focus in this mission, you know? And a couple times we'd say, oh, yeah, Adid. But, you know, so we got Mike back, and that was like really over. But Haiti was coming down. So we spent our last days in Mogadishu talking about nothing but Haiti. I mean, our intel guy came at 0800, giving us our morning intel brief, and they had nothing

in there about Mogadishu. It was all Haiti. So we did days of planning for Haiti. And we were quite prepared and willing, you know, to fly right out of Mogadishu and right into freaking Haiti. It didn't matter. It's like, well, we don't need to. go back to brag. Why, why do we want to do that to our laundry? No, let's,

eat some laundry, eat some normal food for a couple of days that, no, let's let's hit him now, hit him now, you know. What was the, what was the mission for Haiti? Was it, um, uh, they're, I'm trying to get the names of the, those in power, Papa Doc. Aristride. Aristide and Chevalier, regardless, that civil unrest was going on, you know, between, guess what, the correct horrid guy in power of the country at the time and the other people that are trying to overthrow him. So you got that civil unrest go in a possible civil war. The very, the specific things that we were going after, my troop was aware.

house, lo and behold, once again, it was a warehouse. But inside it were two combat fighting vehicles, armored combat fighting vehicles. The makeup of which was French, and our mission was we had to own those. You know, we, there were not a lot in there, you know, and they were in control by the, the unfriendly side, such as America chose at the time. So we wanted to get those away from the unfriendlies, own them. use them if needed and if all else failed is to get rid of them, destroying with thermite. So our plans were just selecting routes to try to get to this warehouse and and how to, I mean, we used buildings at Mogadishu airport that looked quite a bit like the

warehouse on the ground. We used those for rehearsals. Just did what we could. you know, dude, the most effective use of this downtime to try to prepare for the next big thing coming up. Was that in kind of an unusually active time for you guys? Or had you been pretty active prior to the Mogadishu and then spending up for Haiti and things like that? It was pretty par, Dave, par for the course. Yeah. I mean, nobody was reeling in the saddle. Like, oh, my God, we got too much going on, you know.

Yeah. Well, and George, you were. were in Columbia before you popped over to Mongadish, you weren't you? I was after I was in Columbia after after okay yeah like around the 90 Mogadish was 93 I was doing my stuff in Columbia like the night gosh darn it the 94-95 and then I think Bosnia was at 96 okay and on until you you were hopping and popping the whole time then even though even though it was a peacetime military basically. Yeah, man.

Yeah. So, I mean, I've got my greens, my dress greens look strange because I have a, I forget how many. I could run to the closet, but I'm not going to do that. But I got a whole lot of the short straight stripes for time in, you know, hostile fire zone. And it, it, it looks weird compared. to the amount of years I have in the service, those hash marks. Sure.

And I ask people, go, how can you have that much time in a hostile fire zone? You know, when you've only had this many years in the service, like, there's a math problem, and it solves correctly, you know? Yeah. So just to go back to, I'd actually be interested to hear about Columbia, but just to go back to Tarhuna for one moment, just because the way I understood it, the plan was like something out of a James Bond movie, that this was an underground chemical weapons factory.

And at least one iteration of the plan that was pitched was to come over the beachhead in Marine Corps hovercrafts out to whatever range they could get, drop ramp, get off in vehicles, and then convoy out to the location of this lab. But they would have had to bring engineers out, and they would have brought mining equipment, drilling equipment, drilled a hole through the ground down into the underground weapons lab, and then pour an explosive slurry down the shoot to flood the factory and then pop the fuse and blow it.

That's an amazing plan. I had never heard that plan. It sure wasn't part of. You know, Jack, all we did was actually. on the objective, like we never even figured out or were asked to figure out how we're going to get there. It was like, here we are. Right. You know, this was before the unit had had a Dug's or, you know, capability.

You know, very heavy breaching, drilling, core cutting, and that sort of thing. But it is that target that started steering the unit that way. So now instead of just like a foot thick concrete wall with a little bit of rebar in there, we're going down range of the engineers have poured this big old wall that's like three feet thick, you know, with a whole bunch of heavy rebar in there. And we got to breach it. So the breaches were getting bigger. So the support, the logistic requirements was really ramping up.

like we were having to figure out how to get way underground, how to get, how to cover a lot of distance underground, how to get communications from underground to the top, or even from one end of the underground to the other. And we were just like solving problems, solving problems. Like, okay, we're going to get ATVs down there. So, wow, there's no air down there. Okay, we're going to push air in, you know, with these above-ground devices.

they're going to force air into the tunnel. The ATVs are going to foul the air with the exhaust. Okay, the ATVs are getting equipped with freaking rebreathers is what they are. You know, that cycle that exhaust through and scrub it, clean it, so that they're not contaminating the air, the little bit of air inside the tunnel with fumes. And that also introduced the unfortunate necessity to have, to carry contained breathing devices on our backs with the rest of our salt kit.

And we were carrying actual dregor rebreaters, you know, that are pushing pure O2 with a soda lime scrubbing that are allowing us to keep breathing our same breaths over and over for like three and four hours at a time. And that was great except the weight, you know. Sure. Well, I remember the first we tested those. basically we just we're just like wearing them around kind of slick you know just shorts and a t-shirt that we take off running you know around a building a few times to see you know what kind of

what kind of cruise speed we could maintain with that and still breathe you know with that volume that those things are producing and then slowly kidding up into a really just absolutely ludicrous configuration with so much stuff you know and in the end it turned into And thankfully, it wouldn't the boys complaining, but the command recognized that the men are, they can't do the fight and they can't do the breach at the same time. So that's what brought like a whole different group of guys, all from Green Berets, again, 18 Charlie, engineer types. They would do the heavy breach and we would just do the fight. Right. You know, a simple genius, man, I'm just so glad that it happened that way.

And there comes a time where when it comes to breaching, like, P for Plenty just doesn't work. Like, you have to, people have to actually know what they're doing. Like, they have to know the math. They have to know how to cut, or how to do something as opposed to like, let's just stack more on here. Yeah, you're right, man. And the P for Plenty went out the window on a particular target that was attacking, chemical reactor vessels, you know, they're huge, huge mixers, cauldrons, to destroy them without spilling the liquid inside. And to me, that was almost like a joke. You know, it was like,

you know, I was checking to see what day of April it was. But, but it made sense and we actually came up with techniques to be able to put that vessel out of action without cooking a hole in it and spill in the contents. Yeah, it's like blow up this glass of water, but don't spill the water. Right. That's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I was actually, I was already out of the unit at the time. I knew that that was a problem we had been looking at. But the effort continued, and lo and behold, where they came to test the new explosive design charges against chemical reactors, they came to the Nevada test site. where I was working, you know, it was just dumb luck. And they came there, the project was called Sidecar. And they said, hey, George, you want this project? And they started to describe it to me.

I'm like, holy crap, that could only be the unit. So, yeah, I took the project. And they hit those vessels and they did it, you know? I mean, we filled them up with this, this chemical precursor that was not dangerous, but it was one of the chemicals that was involved in the actual slurry or mixed, you know, that we were going to attack. And it smelled very strongly of pears, the fruit, right? And I used to say the shit smelled more like pears than actual pears. Oh, tongue and cheek.

But yeah, they fired on those vessels and destroyed the insides, the coatings on the insides, which was good. glass, essentially it was a glass, which completely fouled the contents. But when you went out there, you know, you smelled no pairs. And that wasn't the test. It wasn't, well, if you don't smell pairs, then you're a success. No, we had, you know, 100-pound heads out there with some real sensitive collectors that are collecting parts per million and sniff in the air for that chemical. So, I was really proud of them. They did a good job. They were successful.

It's something that I had absolutely no idea of path forward at the time. I love the gung-ho attitude that a lot of so many unit guys have that they're like, hey, let's get it done. This is a problem. Let's solve it. It's just really cool to hear some of that stuff. And I guess I'd be remiss then if I didn't kind of continue the story a little bit and ask you about Columbia because you would have rolled over there after Escobar.

got deep-sexed. Yeah, you're right on, Jack. Yeah. It's a coincidence. It's not an irony, but it's a coincidence that I just recently finished watching the season of Narcos. Like people say, you've got to watch it. You've got to watch it. I'm like, so I finally did watch it.

And it was, it was, it was, it was eerie. It was eerie watching it. because all the names, you know, that they're using, that they're using them. I'm like, oh, holy crap. Yeah, I know those names. And I've been trying, I've talked to Stephen Murphy a little bit. I'm trying to get him on this show. So, Stephen, if you're out there, hit me up.

Return my phone calls. I want to get you scheduled. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the unit went to assist the local blocky buskeda in Medellin. in that cartel when Pablo had power, then he got taken out of power. He was already in cahoots, I guess,

with the Cali cartel, you know, with the Oruela brothers, and Paco Herrera is the other guy. So, I mean, they were doing business, they were doing dirty deals to each other, you know. It was not going well at all, but when Pablo got taken out, then the Cali cartel just sucked the power right up, and they became the number ones. So they sent us, they said a couple of us in the country to honestly just try to wrangle

the damn assault force, the Colombian assault force, and into action. and to, you know, we had a really robust Intel package that was working at the embassy in Bogota. And they were doing a splendid job. And we were in SATCOM communications with them in the mountain hideout where we were just on the outskirts of Cali, Colombia. And we had a force of about 20 guys, 20 commandos, especially select. that these are the guys are going to be used to go after the frigging cartel, these brothers

and their couple of associates. And it ended up being I started feeling kind of like a butler to these guys, you know? I mean, I was there for a long time and just, you know, daily trying to get the

to get the commanders, you know, to let us go do something based on this intel we're getting. And it was really a hell of a job. And we tried to keep them motivated, provide training for them, you know, to keep them fit somehow and keep their motivation up somehow. But what it ended up being was a classic Green Beret mission, you know? Yeah. Is what it was.

Training these guys. All the things that Green Berets, would be doing. And the main guy I was with was also, him and I both were from seventh Special Forces, so we speak Spanish. We're like a couple of the only Spanish speakers in the unit. That's why we got picked.

So so far, Spanish, Serbo-Croat, Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Anthony's Serbo-Croatian. Yeah, I mean, yeah, hell of an asset to the team, obviously. I'm not saying that just to be a kiss-ass, but I mean, it's rare to find somebody who speaks that many languages. Yeah, I mean, if I had a, all my deployments kind of reflect that. Well, I came into the Army already with, with Cantonese, Chinese, and I learned Mandarin on my own.

and the others, I had some deployment, got me something, you know, sparked you have to want to learn those languages. And so I did. When you order Chinese food, do the people look at you like, how does this gringo know all of this? I got a lot of corny stories about that that you've probably already heard before. But I will say that not so much now, you know, because like I haven't grown up a mature guy. but when I was 19 I could draw a crowd at Chinatown

you know a freaking crowd people just stopped dead in their tracks and they're all looked like I was running for office you know

they just was pouring around me just listening you know say something else say something else no so in in Colombia

it was more by with and through the host nation yeah yeah and I mean it was

there's such a mess I mean you got president, Sampere was his name, then we had a brigade level colonel who, I swear to God, you know, this sounds like another episode of Narcos, but it's not, man. This, this colonel was on the cartel salary. Of course. He's the guy that gave permission to our captain and our major hiding in the mountains with us. that gave them the permission to execute, you know, which he wouldn't do it because he was on the

cartels payroll. And I can just sit here and say that we had this colonel that was on the cartel's payroll, but he really was on their payroll and it came out in the news. And it came out in, he made the cover of Columbia's, uh, answer to People Magazine. Okay? So People Magazine is, that's not something you would write your book reports on. But there's still, I mean, there's a bunch of truth in there. He came out on the cover of the magazine, laying in bed with a hooker.

It was a cartel set up hooker. You know, and it wasn't a great picture, but, you know, you, especially the, I have, I have, I have the cover. I tore a cover off and I still have it today. But I think I Xerox copied the cover. So it's a very poor rendition of an already pretty poor clandestine camera shot of him laying with his hooker. But you can clearly tell that's a dude and a female, you know, all twangled up. So that's how they were blackmailing him even further past, you know,

what he would do on their payroll. So they pretty much had, they had him lock, stock, and barrel with the blackmail. And his, listen to this, the airplane we flew on between Santa Fe Bogotao to Santiago, the Cali, was an agency aircraft. You know, it was an otter, twin-engine otter, two engines. And I was on the plane once with,

A couple of people, oddly enough, is this attractive young lady with a baby, right? And to come to find out is that that was the colonel's wife. So that was his wife, and he used the agency aircraft to fly her back and forth numerous times, you know, unauthorized, I'm sure. But I found out that was his wife, his baby, and he had to break the news to his young wife and baby that he had to, you know, and baby that he, he was on the take for the cartel and that he was, you know, seen with this prostitute and that People magazine is going to show the story pretty soon. So he's like, I got to tell her, I got to tell her, you know, because she can't be walking through.

Bigley Gaining and pick up this people. That's why my husband, you know. So the rumor was, and I'll say this time it was a rumor, the rest of, and I know that that is the way it is. But he took her to see a movie. I think it was clear and present danger. he took her to see that movie and he's what do you think of this movie you know and they got into discussion about the movie and he goes well i'm suffering a very similar fate at present

and i got to tell you about it so i mean whether that's uh you know just a rumor it's still funny but i mean shit the shit was over for us with that guy in his position so so the unit had to kind of like step back from that We did. We pulled out completely. I was there when we I pulled the mission out, everything out, and brought it back to the states. But but even before that, so some were past the halfway mark. They had national elections, right? So we had to pull out, come back to Brad because we didn't know who was going to get elected and what their policy was going to be towards the gringoes physically in country hunting the cartel. I mean, if Sampere got reelected, that didn't necessarily mean his policy was going to carry through. And the new guy, yeah, we would have no idea if they wanted us there or not. So we came back to the states. The election happened and Sampere got reelected and his policy was still, you know, the same.

So we scrambled back and picked up the mission again and just let it fizzle the hell out. until I got the word to bring everything back. It just never went anywhere. There was never a culmination as such the way there was with Pablo Escobar. No, no. I mean, those guys did get hammered, but it had nothing to do with me being there. And it was, you know, it was later on. Yeah, they all got scarfed up.

Oh, who took him out, a rival cartel? No, they got scarfed up by authorities. Okay. Yeah, yeah. and I think the closest thing we ever had to get to Miguel Orjuela was we've got some intel that he was a he was a he had to have a dialysis kidney dialysis you know however many times that is every other day or something like that we got wind of the hospital he was going to be getting the dialysis at and the day so that was. pretty that was pretty big because we could send in our we had some reconnaissance bubbas that could go walk through buildings so we could send that guy in there and we sent him in and he did a walk by of of the room where Miguel was supposed to be in and he said yeah man there was

there was a dude on a dialysis machine in there that looked awfully a lot like like uh Miguel and yeah we launched the forest the force the force got around the building And they did nothing. Somebody mysteriously called him back, you know, to base. And that was like the closest thing we ever came to do to anything significant. I mean, we were not authorized to go on these assaults with them. But on one assault, they came to a door that was locked. And the lawyer, they took a lawyer with them on the assault.

It was, it wasn't a full-up lawyer. It was like an al-gado, it was like a licensialo. some subset, a very small subset of a full-blown lawyer. And we don't have them in this country, so I don't know what to compare it to. But they would take these people on the assault. And they would, can we do this? They flipped their book. Yes.

You know, they came to the door and they needed behind this damn door. And it was locked. And they wanted to charge it. I'm like, yeah, slap a charge on that thing. It cut it in half. And the lawyer said, oh, no. so we couldn't do the explosive. And so I said, ram that son of a bitch, you know, kick it down,

throw a dude up against it. Rangers prove that works. And the lawyer wouldn't let them damage the door. So out of our frustration, the assault force was called back to the pulverina where we were hiding and saying, we need Carlito. That was me. I was Carlito in country. They go, we need Carlitho's here to pick the lock, you know.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm down with that. So I went. And, you know, I had assault gear. And I put on a balacolava, you know, with the eyes and the mouth as a disguise. And I just went it up forward of the stack. And I worked on that door. And got it open after an embarrassingly long time, you know, because I was all cool. I showed everybody's like, yeah, Carlito, yeah, yeah.

the next thing you know it was like kind of nodding off to sleep and I'm still working on the I don't know Colombian doors but I got it open then I immediately backed away and let those guys go in and they got they got stacks of freaking pesos of money that you could have built you could have built like a throne out of and sat in it for photos they got so much money that was clearly cartel money but they didn't get any persons just got some basic intel, some photos, all that freaking cash. But yeah, I mean, no persons. So it's just a story.

Anything really to brag about. As you're talking about this, George, it kind of reminded me of something else. I don't think I've ever asked you about or really asked anybody about. But the Japanese embassy in Peru, when that happened, is it true that there were that the unit was involved in that as far as taking the embassy back there were there guys on the ground yeah yeah there's i mean in waco texas there were guys on the ground you know but the capacity in peru is a mystery to me because i never bothered to ask or find out but um but my troop sergeant every time we did a scenario for cqb you always go okay you're in a hangar

in Peru. You know, I'm like, how many more times we have to live this hangar in Peru? You know, clearly he was there, you know, so he has to relive the hangar in Peru. The thing with Waco, though, is you had told me before, I mean, when you say there were boots on the ground, I mean, it was like a guy five miles away in a cafe, right? Oh, yeah, he was probably five miles away. It was like a Denny's or a big boy or something like that. But he sat in there all day long, reading efficient magazines, you know, and drinking coffee. And he never went forward, you know, to the Koresh building. And he was never asked to go forward.

And he was never asked for any kind of advice. And this guy was definitely not about running around going, hey, use me. Listen to me. He just wasn't that kind of guy. He says, make it known. I'm sitting here. If you got a question, come on up. And other drug enforcement agency guys and FBI guys,

they're all decked out of this kit sitting in this damn denies, you know, eating scrambled eggs, you know. So come on, guys, you know, relax, take the gear off, leaving the car, guard the car. Years ago, I wrote an article about Operation Pocket Planner, I believe it was called. I'd have to go and look it up again. But it was the Georgia Prison Riot story.

and yeah and then there were that that was in the 80s and there were there were unit guys there in the background but you know boots on the ground take that for what it's worth nothing actually happened no we we had we had long gunners there I knew actually knew and breaches huh and breaches yeah yeah yes and when you say long gunners you're talking about snipers correct yeah yeah snipers just just for yeah thanks or viewers are not familiar with the lingo. Okay. So we had snipers there, you know, and they were actually laying behind their guns. Not like they were going to take shots, but, you know, they've got their glass there. They've got, you know, high-quality Shorovsky sniper scopes that are very powerful. So they could, they watched in the prison, you know, during the riot. And certainly they'll take shots if they're ever authorized.

somehow, which is pretty slim. But I remember one of the guys, these guys were my instructors when I was in OTC, these snipers, senior guys. And they started talking about that situation because there are photos hanging out in the hall, you know, of them standing on steps of the prison and doing different things.

You know, I think they had ATF jackets on, wearing ATF jackets. Maybe FBI. I. Maybe. Because HRT was out there with them. All right, it's bingo. That was it.

So that was cool. They got to wear FBI jackets and get photos. But to look at the photos, there's just like nothing. You know, it's like, what am I looking at here? So we asked our instructors, hey, what's that? They go, all this is the Georgia prison riot. Tell us about it. Tell us about it.

So nothing really. The fires burning. We're just gawking at them through our sniper scopes. They're like, what was it like? What did you see? What could you see? And they said, you have to trust me. You don't want to know.

Well, there's really want to know that. Well, I mean, I don't know what that's about. But the one interesting anecdote about that. So it was a Cuban prison riot. Fidel Castro had sent all the empty Cuban prisons as part of the Muriel boat lift. You know, supposedly they were refugees. But he emptied his prisons and sent them here. So these dudes had a prison riot in a couple of different prisons across the United States.

And so the Cubans had this uprising in the prison. There was also white supremacists in the prison. And one of them was just such a lunatic, like a crazy murderer, that the Cubans actually bawled this guy up, hog-tied him, and just left him at like the front gate of the prison. It was like, hey, FBI, you're like, please get this guy out of here. Like, take him, just take him, get him out. out of here. And so the Cubans just delivered that dude up to the to the authorities.

It's amazing, man. But it was a, it was a negotiated end to the prison riot. So that's why, you know, you guys in HRT, they didn't have to breach any walls or shoot anybody or anything. Yeah, yeah. And an annoying thing about the Waco piece was, I remember Janet Reno, you know, she got, she got hammered with. that Waco problem and she was just like barely in office. So I have a little bit of sympathy for her because what a mess, you know, and she's got all these people breathing out down her neck. What are you doing about it?

What are you doing about it? Then when it went south and it was a mess, I remember her saying, we had the Delta force there and that annoyed me. It's like, well, okay, we're even there in the first place that just like as a, you know, I was like, well, we did everything we could. I mean, look, we got Delta. So, if we did bad and they were involved, then it's probably an impossibility that it ever would have been a success or some shit like that. But I just didn't like the fact that it was it was fucked up that they threw the unit under the bus.

Jerry Boykin writes about it in his and his memoir about how they were asked to consult. And so like the FBI or DEA or whoever it was, they consulted with Jerry Boykin, who was the commander of the unit at the time. Yeah. And like maybe his sergeant major, I don't know who else they also brought into that to consult. And, you know, according to what Boykin says, like we told him, hey, don't do this stupid stuff. You do this frontal assault. It's going to be a disaster, et cetera, et cetera. And then they went ahead and did it.

It turned into a shit show. And then they threw you guys under the bus after the fact. as if it was your plan or you had advised them or something like that. Yeah, you're right. It's kind of messed up how they did that. Yeah. Yeah. So there's that.

Ironically, the guy that was sitting there, you know, reading the fishing magazines and drinking coffee, he actually got booted years later from the unit for going fishing. Yeah, he just, Check it out, man. Stay with me here. We were on alert, so we had a 50-mile restricted radius, and he wanted to go to a bass fishing tournament.

So he has permission, and the boss said no. You know, wouldn't let him break the 50 miles. Well, he went anyway, is what he did. And the way he got caught is he won the tournament. The boss saw the guy on TV, you know, on the news, you know, so-and-so, and he wins the bashed fishing tournament, there's his man.

So the next day of work, he's like, Joe, I need to talk to you. Yeah, he fired him. Then he had to come talk to us, the men, you know, and explain to him why he, that he let this guy go, man. He had fucking tears in his eyes. He said, man, yeah, I bet.

He's just, ultimately he said, you know, I lost the trust. I lost the trust, you know. So I have to let him go. So he did that. And to finish that story with some more irony is the guy Joe, he was, he was being, he had been put in for some awards. You know, I don't know what they were. So they brought him back to the unit months later, you know, to get his, to get his awards presented by the boss.

Well, he showed up wearing a fucking. and bass fishing tournament t-shirt. And the boss had to pit him on that t-shirt. But they laughed. They both laughed about it. That was nice of them that they didn't, you know, didn't try to send him out with too much bad blood. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the guy was wrong, man. He deserved him, I guess. Oh, man. Yeah, I know another unit member. It cannot be the same guy because this dude would be significantly younger. who's a professional bass fisher in retirement. And there's probably some diligent viewers out there who can piece two and two together

and figure out who he is. Really nice guy, really good guy. But that's his thing. Bass fishing loves it. Yeah, Pat McNamara is addicted to bass fishing. Oh, really? No, I didn't know that. Yeah, he'll tell you, man.

He says, like, if he has an hour of free time, an hour, he thinks, he believes that is enough time to race to this, you know, the creek or the pond and get his boat down and cast like 13 times. I can get 13 casts in. You know, he's addicted to it. No bones about it, man. He's serious. Pat is just a super interesting guy.

I wish I could get him on here to tell some of his stories, but he won't really tell like unit stories. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's not his thing. But he's, and I respect that. but he's a really good guy. Do you feel like a lot of guys or a significant portion of the guys from Delta have that type of personality trait where there's something they focus on?

Like, I don't want to say compulsive in a bad way, but that they have like this, I don't know, quoting John Wick, like a singular focus, but they're able to, that they grab hold of something and they become very good at it, whatever it is, whether it's bass fishing or whatever else. I mean, for you, I mean, it's been the languages and the tech. And like you're able to grab hold of something and focus on it, unlike most of us. I did.

I always noticed that the guys had some pretty unusual hobbies. A lot of them did. And yeah, they were pretty immersed in those hobbies. in my squadron for some reason we had we had a pretty large number of woodworkers like cabinet grade woodworkers that you know, and I was one of them and we would work feverishly on weekends

you know building the next piece of really nice furniture for our houses until there was nothing left to build and we'd start getting rid of the oldest pieces that we built that we viewed as pieces of shit now after, you know, a couple more years of working under our belt. But we had those, all those productive type hobbies, you know, guys working with metal. We had a bunch of knife smiths, man, measure smits. Yeah.

It uses some ungodly quality freaking knives. I mean, I bought a knife from, like, the guy in B squadron. You know, I said, oh, I'm going to carry this knife, you know, in combat with me. What satisfaction would that be, you know, having a knife? is built by one of your buddies. Oh, it's probably after your time. I was thinking of a guy named with last name of H who built knives, made knives.

Yeah. Yeah, I have, that's my, that's my knife, a horridon knife, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's got a twin brother John where we've stayed in close contact. Yeah. It's kind of weary for me, man,

because I look at John and it's like, you know, Bob. Yeah. And Bob passed away in Al-Qayim, right, in 2005? Yeah. Yeah. Him and his newest junior guy on his team. Basically, they both got headshot in, like, the last room of a last building, some shit like that. And Bob was actually, he, well, you hear this a lot.

He was not even supposed to be on that mission because his, he was flying back to the States to retire from the Army. So the only reason he went, he volunteered to go because he wanted to give that new guy, just that one last, you know, assault with him. Right, right. You know. Like some, like last bit of mentoring before he left him.

Yeah, you know, yeah. So, and I'm sure that, I'm sure the guy had something to do with it too. He's probably like, you know, Bob, because that's just, I could just see Bob. That would be him. It's like, oh, that dude had to, he had to ask, but he asked. And now, you know, Bob's going to do it. You're like, I sure wish you were on this, just this one more.

I can see that because he definitely wasn't like, you know, I'm going to bless you with one last, you know, hour of my president. Absolutely not. So I'm pretty sure that's the way it played out. Wow. Now, George, I really appreciate your time tonight. And Dave, I don't know if you have anything else. I thought that maybe for our bonus segment, George,

we could talk to you about some of the submarine ops. That stuff was really cool that you had mentioned to me. We do have some questions we need to get to. And I apologize to everybody for like sort of going out of order, but I was trying to keep the questions like pertinent to the conversation. Sure. But Andrew, thank you very much. Ask George if he has any stories about soft personnel clashing with or not seeing eye to eye with regular army personnel.

How about officers versus NCOs? Well, we got a story about an NCO versus officer clash. But were there problems like when you're in Bosnia, Columbia, any place else where you had problems with big army? not I did I did not have any problems when I was with the unit but I do I there was trouble getting along with big army when I was in us when in the green berets okay yeah there was that on their part on your part was it a mix yeah the man that's almost like a finger point finger pointing session he was like well he was an asshole. Well, he thought I was asked. But I was forewarned that we went to Japan and we took the Schofield Barracks from Hawaii, men from there. And we met them there and we trained him in skiing and cold weather subjects, you know, shelters and all that sort of thing. And the skiing. And his, his, the company commanders, his staff, you know, some captains and such, they, they told me ahead of

times. Like the boss don't like, he didn't like SF. You know, he doesn't understand him. He thinks there are a bunch of cowboys and, and I immediately got it. Like,

yeah, yeah, you know, there's, there's a basic load of O's that, that view SF that way. You know, they're cowboys and they,

they put their hands in their pockets. For Christ. Right, right, you know, and their hair's too long, their moustaches aren't regulation. And that's just petty,

absolute petty non-s. You can't even, you can't even talk to somebody like that. They're so fucked up, you know. So they hate you in the first place. They don't know, they don't understand your mission. They don't know how to employ you when they're in charge of you. And I see, I hear it from Greenboro A teams, you know, in the sandbox, you know, they fall under a command that's,

doesn't know how to employ, they didn't know what to do with them. And those guys end up just like sitting on their hands. for so many days. But I didn't run into anything with Delta because we were just so isolated from that. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And it just walked all over big army. Yeah. I mean, we were answering to National Command Authority. Right. And that was a group. That was a great thing. It was nothing but a plus, really. But being in Green Berets,

it was difficult. the clashes were definitely there. Yeah. Gordon, thank you very much. George, which country or group of countries are you the most concerned with in terms of threats to the West? Have the Russian Chinese soft

evolved much, soft special operations forces for those of you, evolved much since the Cold War days? China is it. That is the biggest threat right now, the way I see it. And I've always thought they were a tremendous threat.

And I got a lot more vocal about it since the pandemic. You know, like I've, I've been far less PC about it and about, you know, speaking my mind about what's been bothering me about them for so long. But man, yeah, I absolutely see them as the number one. threat to us. And do you feel as though there are special operations capabilities are comparable to ours, or do you think it's more just economic or intelligence-wise or like where, you know, like I don't know how much you stay on top of it or if you have an assessment?

I don't have, I don't have a technical assessment about their capabilities. I just, I frankly don't think they're ever going to be as effective fighters as the West, just because of their, the extent of their culture and what's more important to them, you know, as opposed to what's the most important things to us. Right. National disgrace and humiliation and, you know, cutting your guts out because of that. Right. You look at Midway, the Battle of Midway, and you got Nagumo that, you know, lost his freaking ship and cut, did Harri-Kiri, cut, killed himself.

That you got, oh, man, Fletcher. You got, you got the American counterpart, got his flagship sunk out from underneath and he just packed his bags and moved to the next ship. Right. So that's Asia, and that's the West. Well, what was the book? Somebody from either Jack, one of you guys will know or somebody from our viewer audience will know. There was a book, something carnage, I think, or I don't know, I'm thinking comment books right now, absolute carnage. But maybe it was even carnage.

But there was a book maybe 15 years ago or whatever about East versus West conflicts. And essentially what happens when that occurs. And the individualism of the West and how it tends to prevail in these. armed conflicts. And I'm not I'm not talking about the U.S. versus China on like this national economic level right now, but just in terms of the Greeks versus the Persians and, you know, and all these different types of situations where a Western culture went to war on an individual basis with an Eastern culture. And sort of the fatalism with that a lot of Eastern cultures have and how the West tends to prevail in those situations because of that.

You know, it's very, do you guys know what I'm talking about? No, I do. I just, I'm not going to, I'm not going to make up some comments to fill time. I've got to have something worthy of saying. Yeah, I'm just trying to remember what book that title was. Okay, anyway, Shane Brownlee, thank you very much. She says great work fellows. Bill or Vassila says, hello, Gio, keep up the good work, Jack and Dave. Dat Cohen asked, how well do you know Larry Vickers?

Pretty damn well. Pretty damn well. We go way back. And I can contact him anytime. But he's not the type and I'm not the type. Just say, hey, call to see how you're doing. No, it's, you know, Larry, I got to have something specific to be pestering Larry. Like, help me hide this body.

Larry's a damn good guy, man. You know, I'm aware of his personality, and, but, man, we've pretty much celebrated that guy ever since we've known him. And we go back to Green Berets together in first group, you know, like in 1983. or 84 and he he was actually the armor the seventh group armor of our battalion because he was just this guy that just was so nuts about you know weapons he was so good with weapons he knew more than an your average armor and he wasn't an armor but they let him do it so he was that good yeah then you know we all disappear for a decade and show up you know in delta Yeah. Ian, thank you very much. Ian says, I hate to ask, but George was at the source of the rumor. A big rumor coming out of Mogadishu was the decreased lethality of 556 and that everybody wanted Shugart's M14. Can George speak to that?

The, yeah, there's truth. I mean, definitely a 556, button heads with the 7-6-2, you know, 51, in, in terms of penetration. So, I mean, even if it's in the jungle, you know the deal. I mean, guys in Vietnam, they would pick up an AK if they had a chance, and they would want to use that. And that wasn't so much an ammunition, the ballistics issue as it was, you know, the damn rifles, the very brand new machines, man, they had trouble. Right.

Yeah, trouble. So, but I mean, again, that's, so you got a really fast moving bullet, a much slower moving bullet, but one that penetrates so, so much better. I mean, yeah, the 556 is not penetrate much in an urban, in a mount setting, an urban setting. It's not going to go through the glass, but it's not, they'll go through a lot of the wood, but it's not going to go through. So what they're up against is like all that masonry, uh, um,

whatever you call it, those masonry bricks, the cinder block brick type stuff, you know. So our guys are shooting 5, 5, 5, 6. It doesn't penetrate that, but the 7662 is knocking it apart. Yeah. So just in light of that alone, you know, was making some folks reel in the saddle a bit. And there was a discussion, man, for years afterward. And it came down to, we were hauling in everyone out. there that was making an assault rifle in 762 and H&K was fielding a lot of damn good weapons in 762 and they were all every day there were somewhere down range you know just floating around

because the command wanted guys to get behind these guns, 762 and see which ones were the best you know which was more accurate which ones were putting more rounds through without preventative maintenance. So we were looking you know, at getting away from the 5-6 and go to a 7662. Then when the M4 carbine came out, that didn't go away, but it quieted a lot of that worry down. And the bottom line is that, again, you know, in Big Army, there's your M4, that's all you get, man.

But, I mean, guys could go and check out anything they wanted from the arms room any day for any specific mission. A guy on my team, man, his suppressed weapon, a choice was an M3 grease gun suppressed. Boy, he loved that thing. And man, I think it would knock some shit down, you know, and he loved it. I'd go for the Mac 10, the suppressed Mac 10 in the briefcase myself. That's just me. That's just me.

A briefcase gun, man. I mean, we had a couple of briefcase guns. They were fitted to heckler and cocked curtains. Yeah, the cat. K. Kurtz. Yeah, it mounted in there it snapped down and all this crap and it had a trigger that

ended up being like this wooden dow that came out right in the handle. And you push that dial down and it's like Pff. But and you didn't fire that thing like hanging to your side. You could, but that was, you're not fooling anybody. Hey, someone's raking us

with machine going to fire. It's not that guy because he's just carrying a brief. No, fire and guys would pick that thing up, you know, and hold it up high and try to aim it somehow and stabilize it, point it. So, but it freaking worked. I can only imagine like just smoking inside that briefcase with 30 rounds of expended brass. Yeah, yeah. He could hear it all clinking around inside there as it ejects. Yeah. Yeah, I never, never used it, never even remotely came to a situation where I thought I was going to use that. that stupid thing. I'd have to be wearing a Dick Tracy hat.

With a big watch. Yeah, well, everybody has big watches now, so it doesn't matter. Yeah. And the girl from the Advon troupe dressed up like Carmen San Diego. Thank you, Andrew. And I should have gotten to this earlier. But when you're talking about the semi, you know, with the reccy vehicles, the reconnaissance vehicles and the sedans being kind of people suspect it. And then you guys get this or get a big truck. Andrew says nobody would ever expect the wrecky monster truck.

And I expect that that's probably said in the same tone as nobody would ever expect the Spanish inquisition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ian, thank you. George's French is also good enough to stop me in my tracks. And I've spoken

it since I was a kid and get by fine in France. George, how many languages you guys might, how many languages do you feel I don't think we got to five five six six and I claim those because I have a DLPT exams to back them up at some point George and although if we weren't talking about DLP but let's say that you just wanted to go somewhere and hang out let's you know you didn't need need to be fully mission capable but you wanted to be able to get around town how many

languages would you say you could do that in I think eight Dave I think I could do that debate. So jealous. Irene, thank you very much. She said, enjoying the show guys. Great job. DJ. Wow, DJ.

Thank you very much. Very generous donation. Great show, guys. At Jack and Dave. It ages with a single malt. Or ages like a single malt. At George, thank you for writing and sharing your wisdom, especially your articles on behavioral health issues

and solving the problems thrown your way. That's pretty gracious to him. And Andrew, thank you again. And it was Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson. Oh, okay. That was good. That was good. Yeah.

Carnage and culture. Yeah. And it was a fascinating book. I can't remember when it came out maybe 15 years ago. I don't remember when I read it. But it was basically about the culture, how when the West meets the east in these battles, how the sort of the individualism of the West tends to prevail over sort of the more fatalism of the East. You know.

Nice free, guaranteed. It's very interesting. Ian, thank you again. Thanks very much, George, for the answer on 762. And Andrew says, I am now positive that it was Victor Davis Hanson. So thanks again, Andrew. So, yeah, so those are the questions. I mean, a lot of people have chatted.

I mean, we'd have to go through the whole chat. But thank you for, and guys, we don't, if you ask a question in the chat, we don't mean to dismiss it. We're just on very limited time. Yeah, we've already kept George for two and a half hours. And I'm going to try to twist his arm for a little bit to talk a little bit more for the bonus segment, if that's okay with you, George. Good go.

Oh, appreciate it, man. really do. You know, thanks so much for spending some time with us tonight. Dave, do you have anything else before we call it in night? No, that's George, thank you. It has been amazing. Hey, guys, we haven't actually said, but please, if you have not subscribed to our channel, subscribe, hit the little bell for notifications,

and you might get a notification every now and again if YouTube decides to deem you worthy. We have a Patreon, which Jack links in the district. description. Even a dollar a month, guys. And look, we know times are hard for a lot of people right now. So if you can't, you can't, but keep us in mind, a dollar a month helps us keep our place rented and lights on and everything. And that's about it. George, do you have anything that you want to promote? Yeah. Oh, no. No. All right on, George. When some of these writing endeavors get off the ground. You want to come and talk about your book or whatever. We're more than happy to have you to talk about that. And actually already doing that, you know, this format has been

pretty much. Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you. But we can do it again anytime. And yeah, otherwise, thanks again. And we'll do the bonus segment talking about some of your experiences, working on submarines with a dive team and locking out of subs. That stuff's really interesting. And next week, we're going to have Robert Adolfon. He is a retired lieutenant colonel, had a special forces career. Primarily, what we're going to be talking about is his second career after he retired from SF and he went to work for the UN, doing UN security. And he has the notoriety of having been twice demoted and twice promoted in the UN.

And I'm reading his book now. I get that done. He was in Sierra Leone during the bad days with the RUF. some other stuff over there. So, and he's actually, he's in Rome now. He lives in Rome. So he's dealing with all that stuff over there. So we'll get into all of it with him.

And that'll be next week. So George, we'd love to have you back sometimes. I mean, just to talk about the human traffic, the anti-human trafficking and stuff like that's fascinating too. Yeah. That's very fascinating stuff. Yeah, that's spent the last four years doing that. That was fantastic, fantastic time.

Amazing. We'll say that for next time. Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you, everybody. We really appreciate it. Thanks to our guest, George Hand. We really appreciate you. And we'll see you guys next week.

Stay healthy. Yeah, thank you. And go on. I'm going to do this. And...