The Team House - SEAL Team 6 Leaves a Man Behind | Rob Harrison | Ep. 354

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

This interview features AC-130 aircrew member Rob Harrison, providing his firsthand perspective on the Roberts Ridge mission. It presents a detailed examination of the critical decisions and complex events concerning John Chapman's Medal of Honor. The discussion aims to clarify the complexities and controversies of this significant military operation, offering insights into its historical record from an eyewitness.Today's Sponsors:StopBox USA⬇️Get firearm security redesigned and save with BOGO the StopBox Pro AND 10% off @StopBoxUSA with code HOUSE at https://www.stopboxusa.com/HOUSE GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start09:00: SEAL team inserts; Roberts falls during initial contact.15:00: Aircrew prioritizes finding Roberts over pre-assault fires.53:32: SEAL team unexpectedly lands directly on target (the "X").58:05: Chapman engages Bunker One alone, then Bunker Two; sustains mortal wound.1:00:09: Aircrew spots new strobe, indicating Chapman may still be alive.1:15:24: Mission video tapes confiscated; digital copies later recovered.1:34:00: Medal of Honor review initiated for Air Force valor, with Chapman as focus.1:40:00: Air Force presents MoH evidence; Slab's story contradicts video.2:06:00: Allegations of false narratives by SEAL leadership regarding the events.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, welcome to Team House episode 354. I'm Dave. This is Jack.

Join tonight by our guest, Rod Harrison, a former Air Force Intel guy, with some very interesting stories about his own crew. and also about the Chapman incident on Robert's Ridge as a firsthand, has some firsthand accounts of that. And then the aftermath also. So Rob, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Thanks, guys. I appreciate you all having me. My name is Rob Harrison. I spent about 26 years active duty in the Air Force and retired in 2021.

So, Rob, the first thing we always like to ask is our, you know, guest origin story. What led you, how did you grow up and what led you to the military? The path, yeah, I would say there's some poetry references in here somewhere, but I didn't take a traditional path. Like many young men out there, I might not have known exactly what I wanted to do. I graduated high school. I was always a good student. Ended up on an academic scholarship to a local junior college where I was going to go ahead and knock out my general education requirements before going off to a bigger university. And had always had the military in mind, specifically the Air Force, based on some family lineage folks that had also served. And I ended up deciding, I came up with this awesome plan.

I was like, all right, well, I'm going to party my first semester, and I know that I need to have a 3.0. So I'll squeak by the first semester, and then I'll pull a 4.0 in the second one after I get it all out of my system, and everything will be good. But there was this fine print in my scholarship, and I needed to maintain a 3.0 for each portion of the academic year. And so I got the regret to inform you, Mr. Harrison, but we're going to have to pull your academic scholarship. So I had to tuck my tail between my legs. Go back home to mom and dad, fess up to him what had happened. And my dad said, well, what are you going to do about it? So I decided not to put that burden on anybody else. And so, well, I think I'm going to go talk to the Air Force recruiter. And he said, I think that's a good idea.

And so you went to the recruiter. And how did you? choose the job that you ended up with? So that's another, there's a story of irony with this one. I went in, I wanted to fly. I knew that if I was going to join the Air Force, I wanted to be on airplanes. That's what the Air Force does, right? We fly, fight, and win.

So I went into the recruiter. The recruiter said, yes, sorry, I don't have any of those jobs available for you. But I took all these aptitude tests and I qualify for all this stuff. And he says, well, you want to be a linguist. And I said, I'm a redneck from Mississippi. I can barely speak English. What do you mean, you know, study foreign language?

He said, well, you know, you qualify for this test. You've done it. You passed it. You could go do that. And I was like, I don't think so. So I went in open electronics. And in week five back then in Air Force Basic Training, they gave you your job assignments. And I grew up, you know, having family connections to the Air Force that had served in earlier generations.

I knew enough about that. And thanks to the Discovery Channel's wings, you know, episodes way back when, I knew enough about the Air Force to know that to be a missile maintenance guy and the bottom of a silo was not a garden spot. Right. And so I raised my hand in the middle of week five of basic training and said, somebody said that. I could be a linguist and I passed for this test and so forth. And the guy stopped and he said, anybody else take that test and somebody caught on to what was going on. And they raised their hand.

A side door opened up. An in-service recruiter came and rescue this for a few hours out of basic training. We went down a side hallway into a private room. Signed new contracts, got a Coke and a smile and became, you know, contracted to become an airborne photological. linguists. Fascinating. And so, so then I assume, so was DLI the next step for you? Yeah, after basic, you would go through DLI, pick up your basic language acquisition. I studied Persian Farsi. I finished that and went into the intelligence and the air glue chain pipelines.

So you go through your intel analysis schools. We do that in a place called Goodfellow Air Force Base. in San Angelo, Texas. Then most of our survival stuff, most of it happens up in Washington State. And then by June of 97, I'd spent just shy of two years in the initial accession pipeline. I made it to my first duty station at Offit Air Force Base

outside of Omaha, Nebraska in a little town called Bellevue. Fascinating. And so what were you responsible for there when you're there at Offit? At Offit, I was a new cryptolinguist. We were assigned to the RC-135s. I got a chance to qualify on what we call the rivet joint,

the combat sent, and the cobra ball. I flew probably about 10 different deployments. Fortunately, they were all relatively short aircrew deployments by normal deployment standards. It all has to do with aircrew hours and keeping folks physiologically from being like overflowing, if you will. So back and forth to the sandbox, you know, this was Operation Southern Watch, Northern Watch.

Most of my deployments would have been to Prince Sultan Air Base. I did one up to Insulate Turkey. And that happened to coincide with events that were unfolding in 99 for Allied force. But on my very first deployment, I went out with the combat sent in the Cobra Ball. excuse me, the combat sent and the rivet joint. And we redeployed back through Ramstein, Germany. And there I ran into an AC130 Specter crew, and a guy that the personality sticks out.

His name is James Patterson O'Brien. And if you could imagine, he's from Boston. And he's got family members that were cops and firemen and probably one that was a priest. But OBB, as they called him, he was an intimidating fellow because he had this cool specter patch and he was wearing all of his subdued patches and my aircrew patches all look like a bright shining rainbow uh compared to his and he's he looks at me and gives me this stern you know evil look he's like what are you a fucking dizzow

and uh i i had to look at my supervisor at the time i'm like what what is he talking about is i don't speak that he's like well you had asked you know could you ever go down and uh and do our job in Florida. And he's like, that's what he's talking about. He was like, oh. So I was like, we can fly on gunships. And so at that point, it dawned on me on my very first deployment that I was not in the airframe that I was most suited for. You know, the ribid joint was cool.

I like to say it can spy on the devil and talk to God. There's enough whiz-bang gadgetry on this aircraft to handle. to handle all of today's work. And you have a 12-way adjustable captain's chair, you know, like all kinds of comfort on this aircraft. So anyway, I find out on that very first deployment that I can go work with Air Force Special Operations and from that planted a seed.

And so I had to figure out like, okay, how do you chart that path? What do you have to do? How do you qualify to get considered to go and do that sort of work? So fast forward, that's what I did. And by 2000, I had done a number of deployments around the world. And I went down to do assessment for what we called Commando Look. And that was so that I could become an Intel professional supporting Air Force Special Operations on their various airframes, whether it was AC130 gunships, MC 130 talons.

They had 53 pavlos. and then ultimately they ended up Ospreys and so on. I got a chance to do and fly all of those. It sounds kind of challenging. Just even rivet joint, it sounds kind of challenging because when you talk about, you know, somebody who is doing signals intelligence at like a regional collection facility or something like that,

you know, obviously there is that real-time aspect, but they can also record it, they can go back, they can, like, assess it. But they're kind of depending on you guys for real-time, like, side-by-side interpretation or translation as you're flying, right? Yeah, there's a number of aspects, like ways that you would look at it from the intelligence process that goes along with all of it. But, you know, like first and foremost, you know, any intel professional that is assigned

to one of those crews, your duty is to the platform itself. And then, oh, by the way, you know, whatever, you know, national priority requirements, might be levied upon you for tasking and that sort of thing. Right. So you basically triage based on prioritization. So preservation of the platform itself comes first and foremost, and then going after whatever national requirements might be tasked to you. Right.

Was it a, I don't want to say riveter in particular, but it was an NSR platform that was brushed and downed by the Chinese a few years ago, right? So it wasn't a it wasn't a rivet joint. I think the one that you're talking about is the Navy P3 and the Hinen Island incident. And oddly enough, I was just having a conversation with somebody about that story today. You know, fast forward towards the end of my career. I got a chance to be a superintendent of the Intel squadron that that handled all of the flyers for the RC-135 specifically for the Pacific. And that Hinen Island incident was one of our alum.

He was what we would have called a Niner, the 390th Intelligence Squadron. Kirk Towns, his name. He actually happened to be an airman that was augment in that Navy P3 crew when the Hinen Island incident happened. And I had several mentors that were part of the repatriation process and so forth. But that was an interesting story, maybe one for another episode. But there's a lot of opinions out there on whether or not landing at Heimann Island is the right call under those circumstances. Right. And then I guess that not to go to, but I guess that there wasn't a, they didn't do a sufficient burn of everything on the aircraft either. Yeah. There's a, there's a ton of story that I would, that I'd love to share with you one day over, over a beverage when we're, when we're not on this call.

Sounds good. Sounds good. So anyway. That's a deep story. But just to just kind of point out that, you know, you talk about intelligence on an AC 130 versus like a 135. And those those 130, you know, most ISR platforms are fairly defenseless. Like they're out there kind of hanging it out, right? Yeah. I mean, you operate within, you know, international standards, you know, what is known.

you know, everybody's going to do some form of reconnaissance on one another, you know, intelligence gathering, what have you. But yeah, you go out there, you typically, you know, at altitude, you're in international airspace or within an area that you're approved to fly. And then, you know, you're executing your mission, you know, depending on the AOR. I've done everything from off the coast of the Kachaka Peninsula to, you know, in the Pacific theater, whether it be, you know, North Korea, China, across the Middle East. Most of my deployments and the rest of my formative years were on the Apsok side. So majority of my time was spent deployment to Iraq, Afghanistan, Horn of Africa, that sort of thing.

Yeah. So you make it through this selection, and I assume that there are. you know, additional training for you then at that point. Yeah, the worst part of selection is the, is the psych eval. I hated that part. It was too damn long and they asked the same question over and over. So I despised it. It turns out the guy that was doing my position with OB on that, that Spectre crew,

ended up being on my board when I was going through the selection process. And so Jack is his name. Jack ends up telling me, yeah, the psych doc came in and debriefed how irritated you got with the number of questions and that you thought that it was bullshit because there wasn't any, like, actual correct answer and the five choices that they gave you. I was like, yeah, that's about right. So he gives the readout on the situation and everybody's like, well, okay. And they did their vote around the room.

Everybody slaps a table on approval for Rob. And then I just started laughing. And I was like, well, what was so funny? I was like, because the psych doc said the same thing when I assessed. So I just laughed at all of them, said, you just let another one of me in the guinea you dumbasses. So you end up at the 25th Intelligence Squadron at Hurlbert. And what's it like for you when you first show up there?

Back then, really small squadron. We were maybe 80 strong. Small unit, it hadn't exploded yet. And when I say exploded, a lot of stuff, you know, coincided with 9-11, War on Terror, the deployments that resulted from all of that. But we were 80 people strong. Always a young guy coming from the RC-135 arena trying to figure out, out, okay, how do I do an intelligence job to support, you know, Air Force Special Operations

Platforms and so on? I had several guys. One of my mentors, a buddy named Ted Gambogi, another guy named Shane Kemet, you know, we lost Shane in 2002 in an aircraft accident in Roosevelt Roads. But those guys kind of helped steer me, you know, down the successful path of how to navigate from the traditional strategic ISR platform down to the soft side and, you know, how to operate in the weeds and do, you know, how do you fit in within that crew? And it really, you know, boiled down to airmanship and learning your airframe, learning your craft and being able to mix and mingle with whether it be a special operations airlift mission or a strike or cast platform or rescue, you know, with the rotary lift, you name it. So they helped me navigate it. Jack was one of my primary instructors. And I leaned on him heavily because in the late 90s, Jack and another guy named John Scott had been in some key missions over in Bosnia and Serbia.

And Jack specifically, he was the Dizzo on the Pavelo mission that flew in to rescue at the time that was Lieutenant Colonel Wolf Fiend. He was a squadron commander, I think, of the triple nickel, the 555th out of Aviano, if I have all that historically authoring. And when Goldfein went on to become the chief of staff of the Air Force, that night, he described it as, he said it was his least proud moment when he successfully intercepted an SA3 missile, meaning he got shot down. So anyway, Jack and the crew get, the Pablos get, get, get tasked to go and recover those guys, recover him. And if you can imagine, like, where his F-16 gets shot down, like, it's in an heavily defended, you know, air defense, surface-to-air missile type environment. So Jack, as an intel capability on the Pablos, helps them navigate through low-level terrain masking, threat avoidance, threat warning, sort of thing. These guys literally fly the gauntlet in order to go and pick up Goldfein and

Goldfein, you know, lives and becomes the capabilities of Air Force Special Operations and specifically the ones we call the steel horse, the Pablos. That's wild. That's wild. So while you're at the 25th on your first tour, that's when 9-11 happens. Yeah, 9-11 happened. you know, obviously September 11th that year, I had just by by about July time period, I had gotten qualified on the U model gunship known as the spooky AC130 U. And when once 9-11 happened, immediately everybody is in deployment mode. Like you're just waiting, you know, you know, that the orders are going to come. It's just a matter of like the tasking flowing and that sort of thing.

So our unit immediately starts spinning people up on additional airframes so that you can maximize, you know, support and, you know, expand capability and so on. They build out the deployment team. And there's a handful of people that know this story, but Rick Cops, if you're listening, I apologize for what I'm about to say. Sorry, not sorry. They were building out the initial deployment team, and I wasn't on the list. And I was recently, you know, like I was the guy who had just assessed into the unit, but I was the one who had most recent, you know, experience in our Intel mission in that AOR. And so our guys were looking at the seasoned folks, and Rick Cox's name was on the list as one of our folks.

And he was out in the Pacific Theater. And as they're going around the room with the initial deployment plan, a fellow named he becomes Colonel Sip. But Captain Sipowitz, big tall, athletic dude, grizzled jaw. You know, he just sitting there stone cold, you know, killer, planning, you know, the deployment operation for our mission set. And he does the around the room. And I'm like, yep, new guy here.

I got a question. And I made my pitch. I was like, I'm the most recent. I'm newly qualified on this, but I've got recent experience in this AOL. I've been busting my ass and my name's not on that list. I want that changed. And he stops and he listens, goes around the rooms. A whole bunch of people said thumbs up.

He's like, all right, Cox is out, Harrison, you're in. And that story has come back, especially after I had made chief. He was like, I remember the day when you. And it was just a moment where open mouths get fed. You speak up. Yeah. And in this case, I had reason to. And, man, if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have made the initial deployment and things

wouldn't have unfolded the way they did in my career. Anyway, sorry, not something. So let's talk about that initial deployment because Gecko, Rhino, Anaconda, Robert, like, you were there for it. Yeah. Yeah. So I had, I was extremely fortunate. So I was brand new. And to say brand new amongst, you know, an operator crowd, I didn't even know what a rock drill was. So I was new. You know, when it came to that level of operations, I had some senior folks, a felon named Ken Wellborn that took me under his wing. He showed me the ropes. Hey, guys, it's your pal Jack. I just want to take a little bit of. moment to tell you about the sponsor for this show, which is stopbox. Stopbox makes this very cool box to secure your items in, your valuables or weapons, could be a firearm, knife, things that you

want to keep away from kids. It opens up like so. And the way it locks is very interesting. And you can change the combination, by the way. So you have these actuators on the side, and in this case, for demonstration purposes, the code is to hold down the index finger and pointer finger and then come over and there's a thumb, hit that, and it opens up. So that's the code. And this thing is proudly made in the U.S. of A, so they keep the quality very high. It's also TSA compliant, so you can throw this in a bag and travel with it. And Stopbox also offers a range of other innovative products, including their vehicle safe, chamber lock, and other essential gear designed to keep you prepared and protected wherever you are. For a limited time only, our listeners are getting a crazy deal.

Not only do you get 10% off your entire order when you use the code house at stopboxusa.com, but they are also giving you a buy one, get one free for their stopbox pro. That's 10% off and a free stopbox pro when you use the code house at stopbox USA.com. Discover a better way to balance security and readiness with Stopbox. So your first deployment with them is that includes Gecko and Rhino and a condo along with Robert's Ridge. Can you tell us about that deployment and how it starts out for you? Yeah, so I had just mentioned a fellow by the name of Ken Wellborn, who was our, he was our senior guy and had taken me under his wing, showed me the ropes.

and kept me from walking into propellers and all kinds of stuff. Ken was the typical, you know, he was the epitome of an awesome senior NCO. He had done a ton of cool stuff in his career. And so at this point, like this might have been towards the end of his actual active duty career. So he put me, you know, out in front as much as he possibly could. I had the fortune of being on the very first AC130 that crossed into Afghanistan airspace after 9-11. And then that led to that initial mission at Gecko and Rhino, which was the airfield seizure

that the Rangers had taken over what became Rino and Camp Rino, I think, is what the Marines called it once they took over from the Rangers. And to all the Marines, the Rangers were there first. Then Gecko was Mullah Omar's Palace. And that night, that was a huge joint special operations mission. Tons of rotary wing aircraft, fixed wing. I remember charging at the border. And we had three gunships and three talons.

So six C-130s line abreast trying to hit tankers as we're pressing in. And the tanker crews were hilarious because they're like, like, no, this tail number is supposed to be behind this tanker. And we're like, dude, we don't give us shit, just give us gas. And so they gave us gas and we pressed on because they were about to screw up time zone target. So anyway, we push in. The airborne mission commander is Pete Blaber. He's on board the aircraft that I'm on. And yeah, it was wild. Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting because, you know, having been involved in all this stuff. You know, the AC130 is a platform that's sort of been under fire, you know,

like we don't need any more since Vietnam. And it's, and from what I hear, it's under fire again. I mean, but with, with, as they continue to update it, do you see anything else that can replace its capabilities? Man, I, I think we'd have to sit here and go to the white board with some sci-fi capabilities. You know, when you talk about, you know, persistent cats, and so on. The debate nowadays is, you know, penetrating platforms and, you know, having an environment that, that allows for a persistent cast platform. Right. Right. The debate is over the A10 that is, you know, phased out and said to be replaced by the F-35. Like, you know, nothing will ever, you know, purposely, specifically be able to replace what the A-10 Warthog could do, just like nothing would ever be able to specifically replace what an AC-130 can do.

Um, I could there be something? Yeah, uh, but I'm, I'm, I'm your typical, you know, uh, I'm a, I'm a soft guy at heart, you know, so what do we do? We think outside the box. Uh, I, I could come up with a number of bar napkin, uh, ideas on, on how we could do that. Um, but I don't know. I, I think there are certain platforms that are always being near and dear and sentimental. So I would, I'd vote to keep it around as long as you can because, I mean, look at what's going on in Iran and Israel right now. If Israel is able to, you know, establish, you know, air superiority, well, now you have the ability to penetrate with those platforms that weren't initially designed to penetrate. Right. So I'd say there's still a need, still a capability that would exist and still in the future, you know, if push came to shove,

you would allow, you'd create the environment that would allow their, their operations to continue. Yeah. So, so let's go on to Roberts Ridge, if you don't mind. Can you tell us sort of the mission brief for you guys, what your responsibility was and how it all played out? Yeah, so that initial deployment was, you know, October. Robert's Ridge is associated with Operation Anaconda. So we've got to fast forward to February, March time period of 2002. So just chronologically, you've gone through, you know, Pabal has fallen,

Kandahar has fallen, the North has fallen. The Al-Qaeda fighters and Taliban had moved to Tora Bora, and we've gone through the winter time where they've they've kind of retreated into their high ground, if you will, basically pages out of the playbook that they had used against the Russians in the 80s. Ironically, that was required reading for us as we were going in. I remember books, you know, showing up by the case for the bear went over the mountain and the other side of the mountain. So it was 80s, you know, war story perspectives, one from, you know, Russian commanders and others from commanders of the Moja Hedin.

So we obviously cared what the other side of the mountain looked like. And what was unfolding in Operation Anaconda was exactly what we anticipated based on how they had behaved against the Russians in the 80s. So the mission brief is that this is the spring offensive. It's briefed as hammer and anvil. You're going to have special operations, Overwatch, calling in fire support. You're going to have soft working with indigenous pushing up against the anvil that is a conventional force, and it's all going to happen right there in the Shaiyakou Valley. For anybody that follows the Afghan critical battles and stuff, the nearest town that would be significant is that of Marzac.

There's areas like the safe houses up in Gerdez, some of the forces. had come out of Barram down to this area. But anyway, Operation Anaconda is going to be the kickoff of all of that. Ironically, the very first night of Anaconda gets delayed with weather and so forth. And then once we start to move, you know, American forces into position, it becomes immediately obvious that the enemy is already there and they already have a foothold in the high ground. We essentially don't have enough dedicated close air support on station during the very first night of Operation Anaconda, which causes a shuffle of the scheduling plan for the next night.

And then we just basically saturate it. So we've got three gunships coming out of the north, out of Uzbekistan. We've got three gunships coming out of Masira. Six birds on station staggered over the period of darkness to make sure that there's plenty of capital. to go around and not to mention, you know, the platforms that were well beyond, you know, just the AC130s. You had other other fixed wing capabilities in the area as well. For our specific mission, when Roberts Ridge is unfolding, we are the emergency on-call cast platform. We don't have a dedicated customer that night. Our goal is to basically

take off, fly right through Afghanistan airspace, immediately hit a tanker in Pakistan, top off our tanks, and then just stand by for any emergency that may pop up. While that happens, one of our sister ships, a nail flight, I think it was nail 2-0. They were originally tasked for the Mako infill via the Razor elements. So Razor was the MH-47. Some of your listeners, the audience may be familiar with Alan Mack. He's the chief warrant officer that was pilot in Razor 03. He's the guy who's taking in the SEAL team that is MACO30, and their combat controller is MECO30 Charlie, John Chapman.

We are on tanker while Nail is supposed to be covering that infill. Well, there's a series of delays, some of its maintenance-related, and in meanwhile, CAUST, Airfield comes under attack. So since the infill that nail is supposed to cover is delayed, airborne command and control decides to re-roll the nail element to cover the troops in contact situation that erupts at Koust. And when this is going on, we're literally flying right by that airspace. And we even come up on the radio going, hey, they've got a dedicated mission.

Are you sure you don't want us to cover that troops in contact since we're the emergency on call platform? They're like, nope, nope, nail's got it. the other guys are delayed. You guys proceed to tanker and don't mess up the tanker flow. So we proceed to the AR track for air refueling. We're topping off our tanks when all of a sudden you hear Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, any grim, any nail. This is Mako-30 Charlie. And when you hear that, you know, everybody's, you know, quiet as, you know, you can hear a pin drop on the aircraft, believe it or not. we're in the middle like the 130 gets heavy behind a tanker and we have to execute what they call a toboggan

so you're descending with the tanker in order to maintain airspeed and stay connected all while this mayday call is going on so pilots talking to the engineer I'm getting a location of a downed aircraft over some special equipment that I have on board they execute an emergency breakaway from the tanker and I pass the of the downed aircraft and the source of where John Chapman's on the radio, and we just make a B-line to their location. Censors flew to those specific coordinates, and we just fly straight there and establish an orbit over what is now downed Razor Zero 3 in the valley

just north of their original infill position that was at Tucker Gar at the mountaintop. So you guys are looking at the downed aircraft, Meanwhile, things are going on on the ridge line. Are you paying attention to both or do you have a priority there? So when we fly in, we're trained to trained. The sensors are specifically looking at the coordinates and what turns out to be like the actual helicopter. And you can see friendlies around the crash site. As we're flying in and establishing that orbit,

Chapi's on the radio as 30 Charlie telling us that they lost a teammate on top of the mountain and says, hey, we've got a friendly up there. Can you shift eyes and shift your orbit to that location? And so we hadn't even established a full orbit, but we just slide, immediately slew the sensor to the mountain top. That's where we see an active IR strobe and an individual laid out on the mountain top. We've got a sister ship, another Grimm element that picks up an orbit around the helicopter, and then we just slid our orbit over to the mountain. So there's two Specter gunships in neighboring orbits covering the helicopter's crash site

and the original infill location. So we're eyes on the infill location, and we are Grim 3-2. Okay. And is at this point at this point that, well, are you sure, are you guys, there when when Slabs team comes in? So when they initially tried to infill, no, we were not. So we didn't see any of that.

What I have seen of that mission is from old historic footage. And I can't find that stuff anymore. I know it still exists, but there's some interesting story and all of that because that's where Fifi, Petty Officer Neil Roberts, was the guy who fell out. out of the back of the helicopter.

There's a variety of accounts of what happened in that immediate aftermath. I was not specifically there, but I've spoken to one of my mentors was the Intel guy that was supporting those airframes out of Uzbekistan. And he literally debriefed those crews. And so the story is that Fifi fell out of that helicopter. He got jostled loose as they had positioned getting ready. for the infill. So the team is up and they're,

they're positioning towards the, the ramp. And then once they're coming in, the enemy activity is seen by the, the crew of the helicopter. And they start taking enemy fire. They wave off of the infill. And that's when Roberts gets knocked loose.

And the, the 47 gunner that was there, it would have been a crew chief in the back. He's the tail gunner. if you will, that's what we would have called him in the Air Force. But he said that when Fifi fell, it was happening in slow motion. And all I could see was him smiling back up at him. And so there's different accounts on how exactly that fall happens.

And I'll save part of that story for Frank Daly since he was the one who debrief those guys. But anyway, the gunner, the crew chief had fallen. Fifi's involved in helping recover that guy and then Fifi falls after all of that. And the story is that Fifi survived that fall and Fifi's seen engaging the enemy. But that footage was out there and then that footage got scrapped. Like it got, I don't know what the circumstances are. But I remember seeing Fifi fight against the enemy out there. And this is all before, like, before our gunship.

when I say I saw it, it was after the fact. I had seen video of this, but I haven't seen it since. And so our perspective, when all this unfolds, that helicopter is now leapt off north of the valley. Interesting stories from Alan Mack on how all that happens. Amazing airmanship involved all the way around on that crew. Well, by the time we see what's going on, we've put eyes on based on in Chappi's direction, Petty Officer Roberts is laid out with an active IR strobe, and we see him just laid out stationary on top of the mountain. Upon further inspection, our sensors can see what turns out to be

foot pads, and it looks like if you were to do an explet, like a spliced view of an ant hill, it's like you could see the little foot foot pads, and the difference is because the heat of the of the melted snow where where they've been walking back and forth versus the cold of the the snow top you know mountain and so you've got the hot spot of Robert's body you've got dark dark what I call rat lines for the foot pads and then all of a sudden the enemy just come out of the woodwork and they just surround it so at that point the strobe is extinguished we don't know the fate of Roberts we have to assume that we have we have we have that we're dealing with a potential survivor. Next thing you know, Roberts is positioned up against the area that they call the boulder. And so that's the big rock outcrop. So if you're looking up slope where the teams would have infilled to the top of that mountain and then fighting uphill towards what was known as Bunker 1 and Bunker 2,

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they rock check them out i love ghostbed thanks guys well Roberts gets propped up right there and we assume that the enemies wounded him and propped him up and left him his bait knowing that the americans are going to come back for him and basically lay in an ambush for anybody that comes back right and is he on the from from where we see um chappies infill is he on the near side or the far side or the top side of the bottom side of the boulder do you remember roberts is on the near side so where the where you look at videos that show the maco three zero element and chapman all you know infilling and then going up the mountain that you can actually see the hot spot that is petty officer roberts okay and he's kind of if if you're looking at the the boulder and bunker one he's

closer to Bunker 1 than he is the far side of the boulder. Okay. But he's propped up against the boulder. Yeah. I don't know if that was included in the video and the analysis that what was his, the gentleman who wrote the book, I can't remember. But on the YouTube. Yeah, it's Dan Schilling.

Right, Dan Schilling. Right over my shoulder here, Lori Chapman Longfritz and Dan Schilling wrote to Lone at Dawn. Yeah. There's a great video out there that Dan narrates, and that's based on the culmination of all of the Air Force's research that went into the John Chapman Medal of Honor package. So you can see what's in that book,

and you can look at that video and hear what Dan narrates, and you can take that as gospel. Yeah. Okay, so then how long before the MAKO3 team goes in, for the recovery. Yeah. Without having the times right in front of me, I can't give you an exact one.

Roughly. I would say it's probably about an hour before they get the, they re-insert to try and recover Roberts. And the difference is that, so Razor Zero-3 is down in the valley, 0-4 had infilled a separate Mako element, but they're the second of,

of the MH47s because normally, you know, any rotary lift is usually going to fly in a two ship so that they have self-recovery capability. But they had two distinct teams and two separate infill locations that they were working, but zero four is not going to come home until they've, you know, gotten words on zero three. So he's orbiting in what we would describe as a black hole, you know, away from populated areas, but he's terrain massed from a line of sight on the on the radios with his, his teammate, where is zero three who's now crashed. So zero four is talking to us.

We're talking to zero three and we're giving them an update. And Chappie as as three zero Charlie is is coordinating the pickup. And there's an interesting storyline there because you can look at some of the videos and Slab says that he ended up having a mission change and now his mission became to rescue that air crew.

And as a team main, as a soft team on a helicopter that crashes, unless you literally gather those guys and you ex-fill on the ground away from that, you're not rescue in anybody, you're being rescued. Right. Unless you're the combat controller who is trained to coordinate rescue assets

coming in and doing that sort of thing. So Chappie is 30 Charlie is the one who actually coordinates via Grim 3-2 to Razor 04 to come in and pick them up. and then they reconstitute at the safe house, figure out their plan of attack, and then they come back to the top of the mountain to recover Roberts. So there's videos out there. It's part of the growing, you know, false narrative that the Navy pushed with Brits Leibinsky and one of those elements of what I would consider stolen valor. You know, John's the one who affected the rescue of that crew,

but the people that did the rescuing were Razor 04. Right. So anyway. Start splitting hairs, but I think it detracts from the credibility of slab and the rest of the drama that goes on with all of this. Yeah. So are you guys on station then when that insertion happens? Yes. So we're on station. And what sucks during all of this is anybody under these circumstances, you would want a close air support platform to potentially soften targets, to do some pre-assault. buyers, but we are a gunship thinking of a survivor on the ground and everything is danger, close proximity. Right. And oh, by the way, we were a crew that was involved in a fratricide the very night before.

And so you can, you know, armchair quarterback it, I would tell you that the fratricide event that happened the night before, while it was in the mind of the crew, this crew was seasoned and professional enough to put that piece aside and deal with the same. situation at hand and the fractricide event from the night before did not, you know, actually impact like the reason why we didn't shoot. We didn't shoot pre-assault fires because we didn't know for sure the status of Roberts and he was literally danger close and by definition there was nobody there that could give us the authority to fire our munitions right there, danger close proximity when when he wasn't in comms giving us the authorization because he was the one in in harm's way.

But for instance, you said that you guys could identify through thermal, the rat lines and stuff. So you could see the termination points. So you could essentially in a way identify the bunkers, correct? Yeah. We knew at times you could see the personnel and then other times they would mask themselves, right? Camouflage, concealment. But you knew where positions were. You could see where some trenches.

You could see where some paths were. you could see areas that would definitely be of interest for us to put down fires. But every one of those would have been in the danger close proximity of where Roberts was because of how close that area is. Well, and I don't want to Monday morning quarterback this because obviously I wasn't there and I'm like, and the good idea of ferry always happens afterwards. But do you guys have like smoke capability on your bird? So there would have been, back in the day, we would have flown with what they called Willie Pete Rounds.

Okay. You're probably familiar with the white phosphorus. Yeah. We didn't have them on board during these. But yeah, their capabilities, yes. And then one of the other things, you know, discussion that had happened between whether it was command and control, us on board, that sort of thing, there were ideas of laying down fire on the far side of the ridge and walking them up. towards the fighter positions and then keeping our fires on the other side of the boulder that them would have shielded the officer Roberts.

So there were a number of tactical considerations that were given that ultimately like they wanted pre-assault fires. We didn't give them as a result of, you know, not knowing the fate of Roberts and again, danger close. Sure. And then we were identifying the spot that we were. we wanted them to infill to. And the idea was that they would come in, get on the ground, establish two-way comms with us, and then they would talk us onto targets, and then we would

establish their position on the mountain. Well, I think the tactical debate, and this is, you know, to put words in the mouth of the team leader, you know, and maybe it's not even that. I've seen interviews and heard his take on it, but they didn't want to fight. up hill. There was a sense of urgency. They had a teammate that was down. They wanted to get right back to the X. And so the normal consideration of either doing an offset or landing where we had marked for them didn't make tactical sense to them. And so they chose to blow right through our spot and then infield literally right back on the X caught us by surprise because we were literally lazing where we wanted them to go. Right. And then they blew right through it. And I remember

you know us talking about it because you know somebody's like hey keep eyes on on this keep marking the LZ and we're like they're already back on the on the X like they've already hit the ground yeah and some of the crew that didn't have eyes on the sensors that was them catching up on the reality of what was going on so it happened pretty quick yeah so um so they land on the X you guys see you guys see somebody fall um and you yeah you think that it is due to enemy fire. Later we found out he just like, it was snow like he fell.

Yeah, so after actions, you know the order in which the team, Mako-30 all exits, the aircraft. Slab was first. He doubles over, according to his account, in the snow, not realizing how deep that snow was. From an aircrew perspective,

we literally thought they had been hit by enemy fire and that he was, down down. That's what put Chapman on point because Chapman leapfrogged over Slab at this point. And he's recovering from snow in the face and goggles and everything else. And so Chapman's on point going up the slope as the rest of the team gets together to include slab. And they form a little circle. Some folks would call it a wagon wheel and Chapney's slightly up slope from them. So he's between their formation and Bunker 1 closest to the most formidable threat, which is Bunker 1 at this moment. Right.

And then they start taking fire from three different directions and all hell breaks loose. Right. So Chappie, it looks to me like watching the video, Chappie moves to contact. And he is, he's probably expecting the people on his six to move to contact with him. And they decided, you know, I'm not saying they're wrong. I don't know their tactics, but they're not moving to contact. They are deciding what they're going to do next. Yes.

So I'm going to piece this together just culmination of stuff. And this is access to people who had done the analysis, other seals that had analyzed it, other Air Force Special Tactics folks that had looked at it. What you had, you had two different thoughts, trains of thought. the move to contact and then those that didn't. And there was a difference in training of tactics that that was going on within that community according to Eric Deming. He had explained it to me as the close quarters defense guys, that school of thought moved

to contact. And then whatever this other variation of training tactics was, they didn't do it the same way. And so John goes towards the gun and is attack the attacker. You've got to go through the ambush as it was explained to me. He's doing that and a wedge never forms behind him. Instead, they're breaking off into two-man fire teams. So the only person that actually follows behind Chappie is slab himself. Because two guys are covering downslope. Two guys are going towards what if we just consider there infill point and look up the mountain. I'll just say left and right.

Two guys go over to the left of the boulder. And then that would put Chapman on point, slab a good distance behind him going towards Bunker 1. Right. And Chappie is the one who is, you know, laying hate to Bunker 1 eliminates Bunker 1. Eventually Slab catches up to him, but it's after Chappie's eliminated that threat.

He's gone through a magazine or two. he literally goes inside that bunker and, you know, eliminates them at point blank range. And then after all of that, after he's going in and come out on the other side, that's when Slab finally closes that distance and he fires some confirmatory shots into the bunker. And then Slab and Chappie are both then engage in what we call bunker two that's higher above that. And it's actually a bigger threat. It was masked by the tree and the rock there. So Chappie's on the far right, and then Slab is approaching Bunker 2 between the boulder and the tree that is right there at Bunker 1.

So he's got some cover and concealment, but they're both in the fray, and they're both trying to direct fires at Bunker 2. And that's when Chappie sustains a mortal wound, gets taken out of the fight, incapacist. incapacitated and ultimately Slab believes he's killed and and then he ends up breaking contact from the bunker two engagement coming up with a different plan you can see that unfold on the video there's a gunner that climbs up on top of the rock enemy frags the top of the grenade the top of that rock with a grenade the the gunner falls down and then shortly thereafter Slabs assessing the situation and the team makes a collective decision to

tactically retreat. They throw some smoke grenades to cover their movement and they break contact. And all of this is unfolding before our eyes and we do not have two-way radio contact with the team at all. Right. And so,

yeah, and that difference in tactics is definitely to me and Jack, you've seen the video, like to me, Chapman was moving like a ranger. Like it was you know it was it was infantry tactics right uh movement to contact and the seals were not necessarily following that same protocol they had their own sort of their own sort of protocol um yeah it was chaffy wasn't foreign to this team you know so he had worked with them and uh and he had

not only been in the field he had done pre-deployment stuff with the with these same same teams he was he was no no newbie uh when it came to work him with uh with this particular uh seal team. Yeah. Yeah. So then is there any point like during that operation where you guys real time realize that Chapman is still alive? There's a moment of fog and friction and it happens right as they break contact. So the main element of Mako breaks contact. We assume that all of Mako 3-0 is together except for Petty Officer Roberts. The radio call comes across, and it is, it's now a slab on the radio, and it is, hey, Grimm, this is MAKO-30.

We are no longer on top of the mountain, got troops down, possible KIA, need fire on tops now. And it's an unconventional nine line is what he's telling us, right? We know where they are. we've got a strobe on their main element. As you can imagine, you get on top of an objective. If everybody has their strobe emitting, then it presents confusion for sensors that are out there. So there'll be like one main guy that keeps a strobe on for the team. And then everybody else has the other marking, you know, capabilities.

And we can see who's who. I will say that we momentarily lost eyes on what would have been chappy. when he sustains that initial mortal wound and is incapacitated. Because when they break contact, Chapy's kind of under the cover of the branches of that tree next to Bunker 1. And we think that that whole team is together. And when he says possible KIA, we assume that he's talking about Petty Officer Roberts.

Right. Because they were literally right next to Roberts up against that Boulder. Right. So we're literally seeing them right next to each other. Right. So, you know, the only thing that seems to make sense is that, but again, you assume, right? So we didn't, you know, TTPs have since evolved and we're way more deliberate about, you know, number of personnel that go on an objective and calling out all of those key elements of information

so that you keep tabs on all the right stuff. But at that moment, no, we didn't know. And he calls for fire and we immediately start trying to put down rounds. Well, on board the gun ship, we're trying to shoot with the 40 millimeter bowfors. And on the specter, we call that gun five. There's a gun malfunction with gun five. The gunners have to take that down. So we switch over primary weapon to gun six, the 105 howitzer.

We had proximity rounds loaded in the 105. So the gunners have to do a round change because that proximity round, the way that thing's going to work, it's going to spin up. And the way the fuse works on that thing, after it gets so many feet above the ground, it's going to airburst and it's going to shrapnel. Right. So since you've got a potential friendly and unknown, you know,

unknown status, we don't want to shoot the prox rounds unless we're literally, we know that we're shooting at soft enemy targets. Right. So they switch over to a point detonate in round. That takes the better part of half an orbit. So we're talking from the call for fire to the initial rounds impacting probably about a minute and a half or so have transpired. So we start going hot with the 105.

The infrared sensor is primary on that gun. The TV sensor, he can see all light level TV. So think of this like an NVG capability. He can see the ambient light that's magnified 60,000 times that of what it actually. is. So he's looking for light sources and a gunship's tactics will end up being where, you know, if one sensor is firing, another sensor will always be primary on the friendlies. So that sensor is the TV, Chris. Chris is primary on the friendlies. So he's scanning back and forth where the IRA is engaging and where the friendlies have egressed to. And that way we can

keep tabs on what's going on. And then he can also look for light emissions around. round where we're actually engaging. Well, it's in that moment of those initial rounds that we put down that are all 105 on those known fighting positions up around the higher, higher terrain elevation, that Chris says, hey, Focco, that's the fire control officer that's in charge of the sensors that are actually doing the shooting. He's like, hey, Focco, I've got another strobe up here. But this one doesn't look like the others.

I've got like the main element of friendlies are here, and I've got this other strobe here. And so as a crew, they start to de-conflict, like what they're actually seeing. What we're seeing doesn't match what we just heard from slab as MAKO-3-0. And then before you ever get a chance to really communicate that particular fog and friction, the enemy starts lobbing mortars in on top of the LZ, and they're walking them close to where the MAKO element is. So you're on to the next closest alligator to the boat. So we saw that strobe come active and I've seen it.

I saw it in real time. I saw it better, you know, in the aftermath of all the analysis. Well, you see Chappie literally crawl back into Bunker 1 at that point. Holy shit. And so what makes sense to me is that his strobe looks different either A because he was using a different, different strobe like maybe a backup strobe. We had little, little IR fireflies, we called them, that's stuck on the end of, nine-volt batteries. If it wasn't that, if he was used in the same exact strobe, then perhaps it was

the dispersment of light based on the tree canopy or the any covering that would have been over the bunker area. So anyway, there was a distinct, you know, light emission difference when you're looking at those from the from the footage. And then we're literally going after, you know, the mortar situation and trying to cover the team's movement and they're moving further further down the mountain at this point and we'd never come back to the idea of there being one of their original team that went back after Roberts being left up there we never knew that they left a teammate behind yeah we did see that strove come active and that was the the aha moment um but you're now covering the movement of the team you're on to something else you don't have radio coms with

anybody else up there and the sun's coming up and command and control is ordering us off station right you name it it's like murphy had a party up there that night so yeah and and one of the things about the AC platform that maybe the viewers don't know is because it is a slow moving low flying uh aircraft the air force is not like them up uh when the sun is up yeah it was expressly against our doctrine to operate during during daytime operations. And it stems back to the first Gulf War. There's an aircraft that everybody in the gunship community knows Spirit Zero-3. They were done with their mission. There were Marines that needed support. There wasn't believed to be certain surface-to-air missile threats in the AO in that area of operations at the time. And the

gunship stayed in daylight to help out some Marines that needed close air support. Lo on behold, a shoulder launched surface to airman, you know, missile, man pad, man portable air defense system gets launched up at them and it takes out Spirit Zero3 and kills the crew. So that is, you know, it's one of those things like when you go through gunship training, when you go through any of our formal training, it's they have a Spirit Zero3 award in the formal schoolhouse. you know, for that top student and that sort of thing. So, like, you know this story if you fly gunships. So everybody knows don't fly during daylight at this point in time.

So anyway, they're literally ordering us off station. Sun's coming up. It is, you know, past that moment of what we call beginning morning nautical twilight. So it's when you can first start to distinct, you know, daylight from, from darkness type of deal. We had shut off a couple of command and control radios, because we didn't like what we were hearing from them. And they were kind of muddying up the airwaves from our perspective.

So we didn't like being told to go home. So from a from a cruise standpoint, we had all checked in nose to tail on call at the direction of the pilot. Like, hey, we know what's going on here. Stay or go. Everybody check in. And it was unanimous from nose to tail that we wanted to stay and not leave those guys behind.

But higher headquarters prevailed, ended up getting a hold of us, even though we had shut off that particular comnet, they found us on another one and we couldn't hide from them anymore. And we had to break contact. So as we were doing that, we facilitated a handoff with a two ship of F-15E strike eagles. It was Twister 51 and 5-2, gave them the lowdown, gave them that last known position of Roberts in that bunker where we had seen the strobe, gave them the, the last known position of the main Mako element, told them what was going on, told, you know, hey, it's hot. Don't go back up there. And then in that fog and friction, none of that information makes it to the QRF, the quick reaction forced helicopters that are Razor 1 and 02 with the Ranger elements that are coming in to help build those guys out. They do a 17 plus hour stand.

At this point, we've recovered up in Uzbekistan. So I'm not there. for the rest of that battle, but it was a significant one, and the rangers saved the day. So in Schilling's video, because we see, like, the time after Chapman recovers and then re-engages, what, and that's one video, I believe, right? It's not a compilation video. So it's one video that he has narrated. There are splicing a, different sensors at times during that, but they're all time synced. So it is as accurate of a depiction as you could get from the totality of footage that existed. So do you recall what the other, because you left as Chapman crawled back into Bunker 1?

And then there's still like Chapman, like there's hours after that, correct, hours where he continues to fight. Do you know what other platforms were involved in that? Yeah. So there's a, there's a Navy platform that nobody wants to talk about. There's a predator that is up there. That's the majority of the other footage. But the, when I mentioned the Roberts footage before, the Navy possesses the footage that showed what Roberts did up there that night. And they're part of why you don't see it anymore. Yeah. So

at any point in time so with these predator feeds and these other platforms are there people real time watching Chapman continue to fight? Yes. Yeah, so the theories,

if you go back to the book that was written by Malcolm McPherson called Roberts Ridge. He had, you know, access to the people and the studies and the information that was out there at the time. I think that book published in 2005. The theories were, there were three of them. People thought that that person still fighting up there was Roberts. Then there was the Air Force's, you know, side of it, that it was Chapman. And then the competing theory was that it was red on red as an enemy fighting enemy in broad daylight in close quarters shooting each other in the face right i wonder who is that one that one does not hold water yeah and that that continues to be

part of the um the counter narrative that the navy pushed the whole time uh so that they didn't have to face the music that chapman survived he was unfortunately left now at the time in real time like They didn't know. Sure. They, I believe that they, they assume that he was taken out. Sure.

Okay. I think that was just straight up fog and friction of war and an honest mistake. And under the tactical circumstances, whether the SEALs ever want to admit that they left somebody behind, it just is what it is. And that's what happened in this case. Yeah. So like,

I don't fault anybody for that at all. You know, look back in the, you know, the cases that I tell you where our mistakes were. You know, pre-assault fires, the fracture side the night before, you know, clarifying, hey, we saw a strobe in the midst of all the day. Like, there's so many things that could be hotwashed and debriefed and everybody could learn and be better and be stronger the next day for it. If people would have the integrity to just own your mistake and accept it and make yourself and your organization, your unit, bigger, better, faster, stronger tomorrow.

Well, you know, and there's obviously there's a reason or at least a perceived reason why they don't, whether it's internal, you know, higher going, oh, you know, you messed up or it's the public not understanding fog war. You know, we can look at stuff like Tillman, like we can look at all these things and people have been in common and say, you know what, shit happens, unfortunately. Like there is the fog war, you know, their mistakes happen all the time. It's horrible. We try to mitigate it, but they happen. And the civilians often won't get that. They don't understand how those things happen. And also if there's, you know, punitive stuff going on.

But I thought what was really interesting with this is you told us something that we had never heard before. That this looks like, or how, I don't want to say, well, to me, I'll say, to me it looks like it was a cover up from the very beginning because you said that, that DeGrope actually sent people up to confiscate the video. Yeah, the very next day. The very next day. So, you know, that period of darkness is three to four March. All right. So we're landing in the early daylight hours of four March.

By the next day on the fifth, somebody had showed up at Uzbekistan at Karsikhanabad and confiscated the tapes. did they even have like the authority to do that because you guys were in like separate commands that's a good question you know so a couple of dudes showed up said handed over you know i i i went there when when that piece happened i know who was i've spoken directly to him he said it was two guys from blue that showed up in uh in suits not in uniform and said you'll hand it over and was based on their commander, John Barum. So I think exactly what authority they cited.

But yeah, at that point, we, we fell subordinate to what would have been task force dagger. And then, you know, there's a, there's a handful of elements. I don't want to misstate anything, but I went, I was part of everything from TF Sword to dagger to support in K-bar and somewhere in there, TF11 showed up. So like, there's a, there's a whole, you know, change of like who's running what show but it wasn't it wasn't like somebody coming down from joc for instance it was directly from the command itself from from dev group coming which is what makes it particularly odd or irregular now that's my understanding now i don't know you know

i think everybody that is familiar with this knows that general trebonne was the the the DCG, the deputy commanding general at the time that was there forward with them. So I don't know if they cited his name or authority or what, but yeah, they confiscated it. Yeah. That, you know, so here's the funny thing, and I'll fast forward a little bit, but those tapes are initially recorded on VHS. They're converted to the digital and stored on a CD-ROM and the VHSs get recorded over and, you know, rinsed and repeated, you know, on, you know,

mission after mission. So they're washed out of the VHS. They're stored on the digital. Well, the analyst had already uploaded that stuff to DoD because of the significance of what had happened. So that stuff had transited via email over a server that was deployed with this. We called it the Terra server.

Well, in the end, they confiscated the CD-ROMs. What they didn't realize is that the packets of information that transited over that terror server still resided on the terror server itself. They just happened to be partitioned into 2,000 little chunks. So in the end, during the Air Force research, they pieced all of that together, complete with all the correct timestamps. I know the individual that did it. Jackie did a hell of a job on that one.

So between her and Frank Daly, the analyst that was there at the time. and started out as the initial analyst to do the research for John Chapman's Medal of Honor. What would have been the, it was like a higher Valor Review Board or something, Valor Declaration Board or something that was commissioned by the Air Force Special Operations Command based on guidance from the Secretary of the Air Force. Rob, just one quick follow-up to that. In your career, how many times do you have MIBs show up and comment? confiscate tape like that. Yeah. Do you ever see anybody from red or green or anybody else? Or another

command, a superior command, a subordinate command, anything. Yeah. So when the moment we landed, our number two in command for the spectres that were deployed, he met us at the aircraft the moment that the crew door opened and said, give me the tapes. Not welcome back, not how you doing. Just give me the tapes. So we gave him the tapes. We knew that, you know, something significant had transpired. How we just covered the mission, right? So as that's going on, he's going back into the talk.

I don't know what he's doing with the tapes at that point, but they have to get immediately triaged, right? So they had to transmit stuff. They got that piece done before the men in black showed up and confiscated what was believed to be the only copy. So when that colonel showed up and said, give me the tapes, we had deplaneed, and there were a couple of us from the tack crew who had met up underneath the left wing. And that's where we're having that initial conversation of Chris is like from the TV sensor. He's like, there was somebody still up there when we left.

He's like, we left somebody alive fighting on top of that mountain. He was still up there. And so that thought is in our mind. but at the same time, we just landed. We're immediately going into crew rest, and you're going to fly the next day to cover the next group of guys that need your help. So the debrief is somewhat hasty.

It's done. They've got the tapes. They'll triage it. We give them what we can from an intelligence standpoint, and then we're on to the next mission. So this thing essentially, like when they show up and they say, give me the tapes, like that thing is put to rest.

It's put to bed until, you know, service secretaries say, hey, what about, how come, you know, the question was, what does it take to win the Medal of Honor? I think is the quote from the article from the Secretary of the Air Force at the time. Because there is a ton of significant valor stories, especially out of the Air Force Special Tactics Community. I could think of a handful that should be on a list for consideration for Medal of Honor upgrade. But Chapman's story, resonated with those that recalled it. It was the strongest case for evidence for an upgrade.

And with the ability to piecemeal all of the 2,000 chunks of the original footage back together, then they were able to make the case. And then it only got stronger from there. There's a number of elements of analysis that went into all of this, from the imagery analysis to the medical forensics, you name it. It goes further. So let's continue with your chronology because this does come back. What we're talking about right now, the review and everything.

You're actually a part of that around 2014, right? But between this point in 2014, I want to continue with your story. And we'll roll back to this. So from that deployment, which was roughly a six-month deployment, you then go re-language. Right? Yeah. And then you get involved with the MC12 project. Yes.

So between 02 and 11, I had stayed essentially in that particular mission as a direct support operator for various AFSOC platforms, re-languaged, you know, picked up Somali. I came back to the unit. At this point, I'm an experienced seasoned operator, instructor evaluator. We end up having a new mission that emerges, that we call it a light ISR mission, as in light aircraft intel surveillance reconnaissance. We're doing precision geolocation, working with a lot of full motion video. Essentially, we're the find and fix to find in all the bad guys that are out there. So we were building this capability as a seasoned operator on one side.

I was asked to help stand that up. So we had a 100 new airmen that showed up in this flavor over the span of about a year, year and a half. Hell, I probably personally trained about 55 of the first 100. But we built out this capability to do this new mission set. and that led to me getting selected to help, they called it normalizing the MC12 platform. So MC12 was birthed out of a contingency need, and they were trying to expand this same mission of precision geolocation matched with full motion video sensors to conventional forces beyond just that

of a traditional soft customer. And so while that was being done, it was all done as a pickup game. So the capability is literally bought and fielded within six months. It rivaled that of the P-51 Mustang. This thing got all kinds of accolades over the year. They even competed for what they call the Collier Trophy. It's a national aeronautic association. So think of the Mars lander and Felix Baumgardner who, you know, parachuted from outer space.

We were competing against the likes of those. platforms for the most significant contribution to aviation, all based on the speed and scope of the project liberty. So anyway, when they do that mission, that mission is birth from idea. It's being fielded by the Mississippi Air National Guard, my home state. And then everybody basically goes down to Mississippi, gets trained up on the aircraft, gets qualified, and then goes forward and operates them, you know, whether it's in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever they happen to be forward deployed to at the time. This is the capabilities fielded around 09. And so by 11, the Air Force has said, okay, we're no longer going to make this just a pickup game. We want them to have a traditional,

you know, host wing that owns that mission. And they decide to make the ninth reconnaissance swing at Beal Air Force Base out in north of Sacramento, California, the home station for it. And so I get I get tasked to go out there, stand up a unit of intelligence operators that are going to operate the back of it. And yeah, the rest was history. Spent three years with that mission based on prior experiences, you know, kind of handpicked for it. Grew a capability with some some awesome young airmen. They really kicked butt. And then after three years of that, I got brought back down to our parent ISR group, you know, an echelior.

on above the squadrons as an op superintendent and then eventually made chief out of there. And that's when I got, that's in that 14 to 16 time period where I was brought on to the Chapman research project. So, and I didn't mean to skip so far ahead if we missed anything significant in the rest of your time in and out of the 25th because, you know, from 2001 to 2011 is quite a tour. Did we miss anything significant? Well, so, I mean, a couple of just quick, I guess, brief highlights, but you mentioned Pat Tillman. I was in Afghanistan in 2004 when that, when that unfolded.

I was not airborne in the midst of the firefight that took Pat's life, but the aftermath of his unit going after the guys that ambushed them, I was there for that. That was interesting. I was on the ramp. I was in the hangar when they recited the Ranger Creed, got to listen to all of the stanzas, and we sat out there and did the honor guide on with our headlamps as we repatriated his body via Humvee onto a C-17,

and he was flown back stateside. Fast forward. I was on a mission in the Horn of Africa. So most people know about the marriage, the Mersk, Alabama. After that, there was the, there was a blue water yacht that had been pirated. I was, I was overhead that aftermath, and that one was a mess. Not the way things typically go down. And there's some, there's some historical, you know, seal, you know, information that that coincides with how the Alabama went down. and then what happened with the Blue Water Yacht incident.

And so the seals had basically been put on a leash. And so the hostage piracy recovery type of mission, the way you would typically think it would unfold, did not unfold the way you would have expected during that Blue Water Yacht deal. They had been handcuffed so bad that essentially they, they coaxed the head pirate off of the boat, brought him on board a naval warship, and he was going to negotiate, you know, the transaction for payment and all that kind of stuff. Well, obviously, once we had him in our custody, they weren't going to let him go.

And so then you had a bunch of idiots, idiot pirates that are left. And they all flip out. And in broad daylight, the assault takes place. Everybody dies. it was horrible. But I was overhead that one. That one just sucked. But if you think about the storylines that go along with some of the narratives

that get spun out of some of the SEAL war stories, I'm not saying the entire community is tainted. But when we look at the Chapman incident and how all of that stuff unfolded, you look back at who has the high ground here. And that is the Air Force, okay? Because when it comes to seals and stories, you know, off the battlefield, dude, we could sit here and have a three hour episode going through

just just up over the last 20 years. Yeah. Like I remember going through Joint Special Operations Senior Enlisted Academy. Votel was the commander at Socom at the time. And one of the biggest things that we were hitting, This is in the late 15 time period. And we were still hitting on that incident where they had fragged the hostage with the grenade.

And they had lied about using grenades on the objective. And everything was about the integrity and why it was important to own your mistakes and to fess up and so forth. And we're coming out of all of that. And it's like nobody ever learns anything. All they do is just create another false narrative, pin a medal on somebody and move on and just continue this legend. You know, it's, I find it distasteful. I don't think it does them any real honor. I would love to respect the Trident, but right now there's a handful that just tarnished

the shit out of it for me. Yeah. Yeah. Now, when you said they were handcuffed on the Blue Water Yacht, was that because of actions that they took on the Mariska, or was it? That's my understanding. Now, like, I wasn't directly involved in the Marisca, Alabama. of a piece. But it was my understanding that those guys went off a little half cocked and how they

executed that one. They were successful. You know, like they did it. And, you know, there's a great story that comes out of it. There's another interesting one that Matt Cole tells about him, his book in Code Over Country. But anyway, that was, it was dubbed a success. From a leadership standpoint, internal to socom channels, I don't think that everybody was in agreement in how that mission unfolded. And so when the Blue Water Yacht piece happened, they were literally handcuffed. So like nothing about that unfolded the way you would have imagined the recovery of a pirated vessel. Yeah. Like when do we move on that in Broadway? Right, right. Yeah. Like, yeah, I mean, nothing about it made sense.

Yeah. And I was I was there from the moment that the, that the naval warships, you know, initiated what they would have called the stalk. And so they were just over the horizon. And then, you know, that vessel is going back and further and further towards Somali waters. And then you're up against a timeline of trying to, you know, figure out how you're going to deal with this situation before they get into waters that technically we shouldn't have entered. under the circumstances, I don't think it would have mattered, you know, whose flag of waters they were in. We were going to get it one way or the other. But none of that ever unfolded the way you would have imagined, you know, without getting into specific TTPs.

It just, none of it made sense. Yeah. And in the end, it ends up being broad daylight. Everybody dies. So that is obviously not a success. Yeah. When you say everybody dies, you're talking about the pirates and the hostages. Yeah, the pirates executed the hostages,

and it's pretty obvious that when the assaulters got on board, nobody else lived. Yeah. So you, this brings us to 2014, where you are at the 361st. Yep. And the, and I believe wasn't it an article, the Secretary of the Air Force, for some reason,

I believe it was an article about airmen, about the Air Force, not having won a medal of honor since Vietnam, and only one was awarded then. And it's sort of like, what does it take for an airman to win the Medal of Honor? And the Secretary of the Air Force, like, that's a good question. And can we review acts of valor that our airmen and airwomen have performed

during the GWAT and see if there's anything that would qualify. Yep. That's the way I recall it. It picked up Steam based on an Air Force Times article, and I think that headline was, what does it take to win the Medal of Honor? Right. And it was based on a number of Air Force crosses and things like that

that had specifically come out of the Special Tactics community. But anyway, the service secretaries across all the services ordered a review of top valor awards to to make sure that we hadn't left a stone unturned if you will so when the air force did their initial look they had a short list but at the top of their short list was that of john chapman and the the story of roberts ridge so it it worked in the air force's favor that you know they still have that terror server, thanks to Frank Daly. The funny story he told me was the young analyst that was with them was like, hey, those guys came and confiscated the videos.

I just found all these clips on the terrorist server. Do you want me to go ahead and delete those? He's like, no, no, do not save that. And so if it hadn't been for Frank, that stuff could have been lost and never recovered. But ironically, in the next. midst of all of this, once we really picked up steam, and we had already briefed a Mako element, this is like September of 16, but between then and 18, when the, when the final, you know, like valor boards are being done at a four-star level and so forth before it goes to the sec-death,

all of a sudden an unmarked envelope shows up. And inside the double-wrapped package are the original classified handwritten marked CDs and Frank Daly's handwriting because he's the one who had marked those original CDs from the original deployment. Yeah. And so wherever that stuff came from, I don't know if it came from Damnack or if it came from a treasure trove down in Tampa out of Socom, I don't know. It was not marked. Like when you send something classified, there's specific rules and ways that you

packaged stuff, but there was no way to tell exactly what the source of this was. But somebody wanted to make sure that we got all of it and they sent it to us. And finally, we had everything to include the original gunship footage that showed our conversation on board and the second strobe and him getting in. And then, oh, by the way, now you had all the rest of the predator footage and all of the rest of those clips that had been pieced together. So it made for an airtight case. especially with all of the imagery analysis that went into it.

There's a guy, I don't talk about him because he's still working a certain mission. But when they went in, they did the imagery analysis on this, they mapped this thing down to the, to the Nats ass. Like, you could, you could, you know, basically put a pin drop anywhere on that mountain. You could put me in a laying prone, kneeling, standing tall, crouched, whatever. and you could look around and give me 360 what my specific field of view was from that point on the mountain. And they did that over the entire area. And that's how we knew that there were inconsistencies in some of the SEALs narrative on,

hey, I looked and saw the rise and fall of a laser. I could see him. I verified. I crawled right over the top of him. Right. Well, none of that was true. You know, there wasn't a laser illuminated. For that laser, it was a momentary switch.

it would have meant that John would have had to have fallen incapacitated and something had direct pressure on that switch, right? And then we would have seen that with our sensors because I can see when their lasers are active on their rifles. You use those as marking devices at times and then they let you know like where they're pointed towards. So enemy on the far side. Anyway, none of this stuff matched.

Air Force's research is airtight. The crazy part was the Navy leadership. I'm kind of getting off script, you know, as far as time and order of all of this, but lo and behold, we briefed make the surviving members of Mako-30 and what would have been Dev Group's commander at the time Captain Jeremy Williams. We briefed them in a DC facility September of 16, and they had their instance. I always get the dude's name mixed up.

But they had their intel guy in the room as we're briefing all of them, our findings. And I say this because later on, Hartwell is the one who shows up at all the valor boards with this other version of events. And this is the Navy's version of events, not like what all the research actually showed. And so they constantly say that John died within the first three minutes, and they still stick to that story today. So there's a handful of people working on their own documentary, all funded by seal money, whatever it is. They still stick to that. Slabs that current accounts still says that John died right beside me on the initial assault.

Well, no, he didn't. One, because you were never right beside him anyway. But nevertheless, John was the one who went and did all that stuff. And then by the time he's killed, it's after the element has broken contact, John is still up in, up around Bunker 1, and the QRF is inbound. And he knows that if he doesn't put down suppressive fire after being up there for an hour and 20 minutes by himself, if he doesn't do that, then the helicopter is going to suffer the same fate that they did when they came in. So at that point in 2014, when you first get kind of picked for this, were you aware of the extended fight that happened while you guys were grounded?

Yeah, you're talking about the extended fight on top of the mountain? John, when he recovers and continues to fight, were you aware of any of that between like your involvement with that operation and 2014? I knew that between the time of the event and me being brought on to the research team, I knew that there were three variations of the story. We knew that there was somebody that continued to fight up there after the Mako element had broken contact, and before the QRF arrived. That was Captain Self and his Rangers, right? I knew that the competing theories were Roberts and then Chapman and then Red on Red.

I didn't believe the, like, we knew after the fact that the predator could confirm based on the sawing motion that they could see that they called, they would have told you right then and there. If we had been in direct comms with them, they would have told us right then and there that Roberts had been killed already. We didn't know for sure. Right. We weren't in comms with them. So there were people out there that knew that Roberts had been killed at that. point that the enemy moved his body and propped him up by the by the boulder there right um that only leaves chappy and the and the red on red theory and the fact that the fighting is literally close

proximity i mean like we're talking you know inside of 20 meters in broad daylight for guys that had had occupied that mountain for months you don't shouldn't you don't shoot each other in the face in broad daylight. There's no red on red at that distance. I'm sorry. Like that absolutely does not hold water. Right. And there's a funny story when all this stuff came to be the final brief to Secretary of Defense

Mattis. He asked what's the prevailing view of others? What's the leading competing theory? They explain that. And Mattis is like, yeah, I don't buy it. Yeah. Especially because there was actually hand-to-hand at that point, too. Yeah.

Yeah, you can see that in the footage. Like they're literally hand to hand. And Chaffy prevails in that engagement as well. Yeah. Yeah. And oh, by the way, he was, so when we say that he was incapacitated, the medical forensics showed that that was a mortal wound. Without attention, he would have died from that wood, right?

Well, he's still, he's still, my, this is Rob's theory, but. I think a 105 going off right next to your position is one hell of an alarm clock. Yeah. I think if you're a seasoned combat controller, the first thing you're going to do is illuminate a strobe and find cover. Yeah. And that happens. That's what happened.

That's what made sense. Yeah. Like it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put all this stuff together. But oh, by the way, we had so many different layers of evidence that, that prove. Like, there's no question about John, his actions or the status of his metal, you know, like he earned his stuff, right? Yeah. If there's ever any question, it's why didn't they, you know, present two?

Instead, the Air Force literally chose to combine the elements and make it one airtight case. Right. But you could split those and you could provide a basis for two medals of honor for John Chapman. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, out of curiosity, because you said there was a shortlist of airmen who probably qualified, Do you think that the Air Force suffers from the fact that they are their attachments and so often do not get the recognition they deserve? From firsthand experience.

So I'm not a special tactics airmen, right? But I'm a special intelligence capability that exists within Air Force special operations. So my parent command is not Air Force Special Operations Command. So when our guys go out and they operate, you got different chains of command. So I've got my administrative chain. We're all, you know, chopped to the same people operationally to execute our missions. But when it comes time to decorate everybody, there's different ways that that can happen. The operational authority can do that from theater and submit and cover everybody.

or if it doesn't happen in time and it comes to light later, now you're geographically separated, you're with your administrative chain of command versus the operational one that you were attached to. And yeah, I think that absolutely plays a part in this. Yeah, it's got to be frustrating. So you see this through 2014, 2016, you guys put it all together. The awards go up.

If you weren't directly involved in the politics behind, like, how the decisions were made, then I don't want to get involved in that. But like at what point do you kind of hand this off and you're done with it? So the last significant piece for me, you know, it's, if you think about the joint soft community, you know, with the point that you had just made, you know, the Air Force is often attached, right? Like, very seldom are we like the primary, like, you know, unit that is executing a mission. Unless it's like an airborne platform, you know, that's just typically not us.

Our specialties are there to exist other soft teams and elements, right? So when we're going through the information process, the boarding process, that initial brief in September of 16, I'm talking with what would have been the 24th SAL commander. So he owned, you know, those respective special tactics airmen. Airmen. And as we go in, you know, you've got the medical professional, you've got the imagery analyst, you've got Jay Hill, who was on an adjacent mountain who heard Chappie come up on the radio, Asked 30 Charlie, knew him personally, recognized his radio etiquette, recognized his voice, tried to talk to him, but never had positive two-a-cons, but he heard Chappie, and it was after the

gunship had departed, but before the QRF had showed up. So between that and me are articulating the eyewitness testimony from our video that's literally playing showing Chappi's strobe illuminate and crawl into the bunker and recounting the audio that is showing Chris explaining to the focal, hey, I've got a second strobe, this doesn't look like the others, and then they hear the rest of that mortar attack come in. Like, you can't refute that. Right. So as in the spirit of having to play nice with others in the joint soft community, the special tactics community just said, hey, here are the facts.

And we're going to let the experts and the witnesses speak to these points. So, you know, if there's a preparation, you know, going into it, it's like, hey, Rob, don't hold back. Like when you get up there, I want you to tell your side of the story and just don't back down. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, you don't have to tell me that, Colonel. Like, I got you. I knew exactly what was going on in the situation that we were walking into because you knew that there was pushback already. And literally in that meeting, that's the moment where Slab changed his story because he went from the rise and fall of a laser on the chest to literally, it was, you remember the baseball drug scenario where Raphael Palmero says, I did not use performance in handy.

I did not use steroids before Congress. Slab has a moment like that and says, I crawled right over the top of jump. Right. And we're literally showing in the video that has all of the breadcrumb data showing, like we've gone back and established the order in which they exited. We have signed an IR signature to each individual

and we can follow the chain of custody greater than 90% chance of accuracy based on the totality of all that information. And we can literally see the area where Slab says, I crawled right over him. Like, no, you didn't, you crawled over, you crawled over Roberts. Right. And you guys still say that y'all never saw Roberts.

Right. You were right on top of Roberts. At the Boulder. Yeah. At the boulder. He would have had to crawl over Jappy up near the bunker. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And at the point, like, you follow their egress. The only time that he would have had eyes on Chappie being incapacitated was when they were both engaged in Bunker 2. And Slab would have been to the left of the tree up against the boulder. The boulder's on his left facing up towards Bunker 2 and Chappie's on the right of that tree. But we also dropped breadcrumbs there and showed Slab what his what his field of view would have been. Like we could literally spin him around. Like the entire area was scanned to include under the tree.

Like you could see this is what the canopy was. This is where your terrain was. This is what you could see. And if, if Chappie had fallen and he was laying out prone the way you described, you literally can't see him from where you said you could. Right. Right. And so anyway, his story changed in that briefing at that moment,

said he crawled right over the top of Chappie. The only person he crawled over the top of was Petty Officer Roberts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird because, you know, there have been a number of attempts to, you know, like after some of this came out, then the, I think there was an argument that, well, you know, Chappie was out of his lane. He was there to provide, you know, to provide to be the CCT.

He shouldn't have been assaulting. Like, you know, there have been so many attempts to sort of like. Yeah. There was also the theory, right, that. he saw Roberts and thought that was Chapman. Right. Fog of war, yeah, I don't know what the truth is there, but maybe. Yeah.

I don't think a boat team would ever misidentify one of their original six or the seventh combat controller that was augmenting. Like, I don't buy it. Yeah. So that's part of your, to have. and a half years at the 361st. Yeah. And then, then you go to the, to work with the RC 135?

Yeah, I, I ended up in my unit of assignment, I got voted off the island as I had promoted. You know, there were, you know, limited number of positions. They were already filled. I drew the straw to go out to what turned out to be the best assignment of my career. I love the mission that we were just talking about. But as far as best overall assignment for me and my family, going out to Okinawa and being the senior enlisted leader for the 390th Intelligence Squadron, that was freaking cool.

And the reason is, is that that's the birthplace of airborne ISR from a modern standpoint. Now, I got a former commander who's a historian, bona fide. He's a professor. he would tell you that the birthplace of airborne ISR started in the European theater. There's he's absolutely true. I'm not going to argue with him. But as far as the Air Force specific units that we support with RC-135, there's a mission that used to be the Combat Apple. That's what became and grew into the RC-135 that we know today. And it was stood up by a gentleman by the name of Doyle Larson.

Most of the folks in the in the ISR community like know who this is from an Air Force perspective our buildings named after him I got to go out there was there during that unit's 50th anniversary I know that doesn't seem like much we just celebrated the Army as 250th but hey you know give us a break the Air Force is still young But our squadron had turned 50 out there I got a chance to be part of that unit While we were doing what we called the the pivot to the Pacific so I Iron was flowing from the central theaters over the Middle East, away from Central Command, back over to what is now Indo-Pacom.

Our unit, they covered everything from the summit in Singapore, you know, where Trump met with the leader in North Korea to the Olympics, and then hell we would help take care of the South China Sea, you know, with the, the Chinese like to expand their maritime claims a little bit further than what it is internationally recognized. That's fascinating. And then from there, you became the IG superintendent for the 16th Air Force. Yes.

And can you tell us about that? So now you're like a big boss. Yeah, yeah, kind of, I guess. always the number two. So as a senior enlisted leader, you know, we're advising those commanders. If you look back at some of my past experiences, you know, from just from the service, it was a nice kind of twilight assignment there as the IG superintendent, because your whole goal is to speak truth to power, hold people accountable,

you know, take care of airmen that are out, execute admission and so on. So that was a pretty sweet moment to be able to do that at the end. And then, you know, to have had, this is around the time period, you know, I saw 18 is when, August of 18 is when Chapman is awarded his Medal of Honor. I got a chance to attend that at the White House as a guest and member of the research team. Then I had reassigned there at the end of 18 to 16th Air Force. So I was, you know, home was San Antonio. And then, yeah, towards the end of the IG tour, you know, you do your best to, you know, speak up for, for airmen, hold people accountable when, when necessary, and just make sure that mission is executed the way it should be.

was there any heartache on the part of like the research team obviously there are stories about the back the backroom deals that had to be made with the navy in terms of you know but those are stories but what we do know is that Slabinsky was awarded a medal of honor and he was awarded the medal of honor not at the same time as Chapman they made sure that his was awarded like prior to

So, yeah. So back up to September of 16, I told you we brief the surviving members, Captain Jeremy Williams and MAKO. So all the surviving members of MAKO 3-0 are either present in the room, three of them in the room, and one on a telecon. And it's us presenting information to them. And then the only other extra person in the room is Commander Hartwell. at the end of that meeting we're getting ready to shuffle out the door and Jeremy Williams is sitting right next to a standing next to slab close to the exit he's just looks over at side he's like huh maybe we should look at upgrading yours this is September of 16 by December of 16 Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabas makes a trip out to damn neck Brit Slavinsky in his own work in an interview. I've got clips. Hopefully I get this to D and y'all can get these uploaded. But, but Britt describes the first time that he was informed that he was going to be receiving the

Medal of Honor. And that's when the SECMAV shows up in September or December of 16 and makes the announcement to their home unit at Damnack. And Britt's not even, like, he's out of the service at this point. He was brought back as a guest under the ruse of somebody else's award. And then, oh, by the way, the SECNAB makes that announcement. So you don't go from September of 16, Captain Jeremy Williams saying, maybe we should look at upgrading yours to SECNAV showing up within 90 days. Right. Like, medals of honor do not happen that fast. Right. Especially ones that are from events that are, you know, what would that have been? 16, go back to. that would have been 14 years old.

Yeah. And it's not as if new information came out favoring Slavinsky. Were you an Intel guy? I mean that as a compliment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. So, yeah, no. There's no new information for Slab.

So, like, everybody knew. All right, so back up to the original decorations that were hands. handed out for Britt Slabinsky and John Chapman where their respective service crosses. Slav was awarded the Navy Cross. Chappie was awarded the Air Force Cross. And that was for them being credited to storming and eliminating Bunker 1, saving the team. Right. We'll go back and look at the footage.

Tell me who eliminated Bunker 1. Right. And wasn't Britt Slavinsky. Right. Was he present? Was he part of all of this? absolutely i won't take anything from the dude except for when you want to go down the road of stolen valor and maybe false narratives right that's that's crap and then now you're tarnished in the

legacy of john chapman now it's submitted in the history books right chappie has his medal of honor and it is what it is but then fast forward to after all of this and the you know the museum and then they just take a big dump all over the guy again well it's it's it's Navy SEAL Museum sponsored by the Medal of Honor. Tadda. You know, so, yeah. And then for you, you wrap up at Joint Force headquarters, Cyber. Right?

Yeah, we were downsizing the Inspector General team. I still had a little bit of time left before I was actually retiring. And so for my last 12 months, I served. as a senior enlisted leader for a cyber element that was there in Texas. There's a number of them on the Joint Force headquarters side. They align to U.S. Cybercom, and then they execute various missions based on their geographic alignment, depending on who's in the lead. Like the Army runs one, the Navy runs one, the Air Force runs one.

Fantastic. And so what about now? Like what are you doing post Air Force career? So I retired from active duty. I didn't go too far from the herd. You know, I think we kind of like to stay with our tribe. I got a wife who's not very risk averse. My goal was to not be a government mule.

I wanted to move as far away from the actual service. I wanted to go hit industry and, you know, see where I could make my mark. as a civilian truly. Sure. She was like, no, no, no, no, no. That's cutthroat. I'm like, yeah, that's fine with me. I'm going to survive.

But anyway, it becomes a family decision at that point. So I stayed close by. I'm still working in the intelligence community as a government civilian now. I did a transition moment as a contractor, as many people do after their active duty career. And so I work on strategic plans for an Intel directorate for a training command in the Air Force. And life is good, man.

I'm surrounded by good people, have a good culture, good team. The mission ain't near as sexy as what it used to be. Sure. But you're around good people. So that I can deal with. That's awesome. Did we leave anything out? Do we, where can people, are you on social media or anything like that?

Where can people find you if they're looking for you? So I'm not a super public guy. Yeah, I've got a persona out there. But there's also a handful of folks that aren't necessarily my biggest fans that are busy pushing what I call the seal false narratives. Sure. So I don't get too far into that. Where you will find me is with individuals like y'all that have the ability to use your platform. for those of us interested in speaking truth to power.

And for that, I say thank you for the bottom of my heart. What I'm sure many people have mentioned this to you on the side, but I'd like to say it here. The initial, the initial, damn it, I just had a senior moment. When we, what the hell do you call that thing that people sign? Like an affidavit? No, the one that you started, Dave.

Oh, the petition. The petition? The petition. Yeah, yeah. Damn. Okay, so the petition that you signed, like, that kick started a lot. It wasn't until between that and Laurie's actual post as to what was going on at the Medal of Honor Museum, that's what was going on at the Medal of Honor Museum. That's what smoked me out on this.

So I didn't, like, I thought this was all. water under the bridge. Yeah. Slab got his medal, Chapman got his, and I thought we had all moved on. Right. Well, I didn't realize that Slab had landed, like, key board positions and that he was involved in such a high manner with the Medal of Honor Museum, not to mention the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

Right. And then I start looking based off of what Lori's Post was, and I was like, son of a gun. I could I was I could not believe that they were literally going out there and sticking to the false narrative that they used to try to subvert Chapman's metal upgrade to begin with yeah yeah that's the point where it's like all right well I'm not naive I understand where people have power and people have connection and so forth and if they're not going to be held accountable all right that's on somebody else but I'll tell you this they won't get away with it. So I will do my best to make sure that the truth is known and understood. Chapman is a bona fide friggin' hero. 100%. That is an amazing one. And I can't wait until that story becomes more broadly understood. There are efforts underway to do all of that. But you just, like, you have to take with a grain of salt. And I hate to say this because it then tarnishes the rest of the

good seals that are out there. Yeah. But if you hear a story about seals and heroics, you might want to consider that like a barroom legend. You know those stories where you just have to have 10% truth? Yeah. And then it makes for a great story. There's too many of those that are out there, especially of late.

And all of that stuff ties right back to the specific personality that was Tim Zemanski. and then you can follow the lineage down with key leaders. Wyman Howard is one of them. He's the guy that they called Hatchet Man, documented in Matt Cole's book. I don't have to go any further, but how he connects to the Chapman Medal of Honor upgrade, when the Seals went down the road of their false narrative, they went and recreated their own videos. Well, guess where Wyman Howard was assigned while all that was going on? he was the DO of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

So if you want to recreate footage, if you want to recreate anything, like the same people that mapped that mountaintop and did everything that I was telling you that we could do, he was the DO, a general officer at that premier agency. All while this was going on with the Medal of Honor upgrade and the board and the seal false narrative and the subversion efforts. Weinman is a interesting guy.

You know, I've had like people tell me in the past that like he was totally different than like the General McChrystal's and the Scotty Miller's, you know, the like calm, cool, collected kind of personality that Weinman was like, he would like seethe. Like there's like anger vibrating off of this dude. So my experience when I met him in person, like, I didn't meet him face to face, but that same deployment, it's the 2011 time period when the Blue Water Yacht deal goes down. He comes and pays us a visit based on, you know, at the time, he's the dev group commander. And they were in charge of that particular AO.

He comes in and gives us a hoo-ya speech and a hanger. Well, they showed up on one of the slick jets. they step off in what we all call the smooths you know he's got his suit on but but open collar no tie he strutted into that damn hanger you would have thought it was tom brady like just swagger um and and i don't like not a i don't think that he just exuded arrogance i'm not saying that but just like you were looking at a dude that you knew was a significant individual and he just had that executive presence about him that that was what my person experience, you know, being in at least in the same hangar within, you know,

throw in distance of the, of the guy. But, but it wasn't until I, like, I knew, I know folks that work with them directly. Um, yeah, I've heard good stories. I've read bad. Um, you know, I don't think that's for me to judge, but what I would do is I will, I will, leave you with the connective tissue that when they created their false narrative against John Chapman surviving that initial mortal wound, Wyman Howard was the GO, the director of operations at the National Geos Spatial Intelligence Agency. Wow. At that same time, Jeremy Williams had fleeted up to the Dev Group position.

So he's the CEO at Deb Group. And the commander of Naval Special Warfare is Tim Zemanki. So how do you go from slab medal of honor from September of 16 to SEP now of making the announcement in December of 16? Because Zamansky was sitting on that and had it ready to go. With no new information, nothing to expand beyond the basis of his Navy Cross unless we add in that, hey, I rescued the air crew. Hey, I was in combat for 14 hours. Right. Well, like, dude, they were in combat for like 10 minutes and they broke contact.

Right. And they weren't engaged, you know, like after they broke contact. Right. Did he have wounded? Like, was there in a huge prey initially? Absolutely. Right. Won't take anything away from it.

But look at the basis of his, of his Medal of Honor, and I can poke holes in it left and right. Well, they basically took a lot of what was on Chapman's and just transferred it over. Basically a copy and paste. So. Yeah.

So there's a nugget of information on that one. And I'll speak cryptically about this, but when I say, that Jeremy Williams is a seedy character, like he's a seedy character. This dude is a, he's a general officer right now competing for a potential three-star position. If this man goes into a three-star position as a seal naval special warfare officer, that means that he's going to be commanding in a joint environment. All right. How does a guy go into a three-star joint command position, whether it's command or a senior staff position that's at a three star level, how do you do that in a joint

environment knowing full well that you subverted an Air Force teammates Medal of Honor upgrade based on a bullshit false narrative? Yeah. And so to take this further, the cryptic message is when I say that the Navy had every bit of the Air Force information, it wasn't just because the Air Force was willing to share it with them. All right. There was a moment with, Jeremy Williams deliberately took the information. Right. And I'll leave it at that. But there are specific people that know exactly what happened.

And that man continues to go unanswered because he was in some significant places also in 2011. So he's got a permanent get out of jail free card for some of his own command and his team's actions. It's bullshit. People need to hold these guys accountable. And I'm not in a position to change it, but I am in a position to speak out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on and sharing this.

This is a lot of firsthand. Yeah, do we got questions, Steve? Appreciate the respect and description regarding your teammate from Boston. Can you share a story regarding this Beantown badass? Thanks for the show, guys. That's got to be OB himself. No, that's from Matt. Matt Gab.

Okay, all right. Yeah, from OB being badass. Man, I never had to see him fight, but I would tell you that the Boston accent was enough to make anybody think twice. One more from Corbyn. Over the course of your career, would you say technology has helped to increase the effectiveness of communication between the tasked asset in the stack and the eyes on the ground tasking set asset

or is it just a mixed bag dependent on the people involved in the event? Yes on all phases. So inherently I'm a, you know, I'm a positive thinker. I'd like to say yes, it improves. But you got to take all that with a grain of salt. There's a, the Malani report regarding Roberts Ridge in the battle at Tucker Gar talks about the advent of technology and how that at times was believed to be the same as having true situational awareness for what was going on in the battlefield. And I think anybody that's been there knows that that will never replace boots on ground. If you listen to or if you've read any of Blabers books, that's one of the consistent themes that he espouses in his book, The Mission, The Men and Me, he always gives credence to the men on the ground.

His lesson is listen to the boots on the ground. So I think there's elements where the technology will never completely and totally replace that level of situational awareness. that absolutely it enhances as long as it's not abused or misused. That's it. Hey, Rob, thank you so much. We really, we deeply appreciate it.

It's fascinating. As I appreciate y'all having me, thanks for the opportunity. Most people want to hear the rest of the story on the Chapman piece. Thanks for giving me a chance to tell a little bit of what I would say is otherwise insignificant. You know, If I had to surmise like the key event in my overall career, it's literally having an impact on Chapman's metal upgrade and being there and what's actually carried forward to now. But otherwise, I'm just a small cog in a wheel, but happen to be able to speak truth to power when it counted for that matter.

And, you know, damn a seal false narrative. You want to tell lies in front of general officers, I'm going to call you out. out, Commander Hartwell. And for a bonus for our patron viewers, we are trying to get access to your G drive where you have basically documented, clipwise, slabs changing story over time. Yeah, I will work with D to get that drive at least over to you guys. you'll have like read only but however however you can technically make that available to your patreon folks dude this is all the public stuff and if nothing else you can look at the file names

and just google the stuff yourself it's out there on youtube like it's nothing that came from my own private collection yeah fantastic thanks again rob we really appreciate it my pleasure guys thank you all i appreciate you having me all right everybody thank you i have i got one thing My wife put in my ear, we were talking about the petition before. So you kicked off a huge interest in what was going on at the Medal of Honor Museum. Yeah. At the same time, Matt Kubler started a petition that ties back to Representative Paulina Luna out of Tampa, Florida. Yeah.

There was confusion amongst the audiences out there. And so what I wanted to relay was, A, thank you for what you did with your original petition. But if there's any way that you can spark interest towards the one that's tied towards Paulina Luna and having Congress take a look at this event itself. Yes. We would appreciate it. I absolutely will. In fact, I'll link. It'll be in the link below. We'll put it in links below. And I will also through the, through my petition, send out a link to Matt's petition. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you guys again. It was a pleasure being here.

Thanks. Thanks. Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it.

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