The Team House - SEAL Team 6 Operator | Andy Stumpf | Ep. 223

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Andy was born and raised in Northern California. From the age of 11 he knew that he wanted to become a Navy SEAL, and it became the single driving force in his life. He enlisted in the Navy while still a Junior in high school, entering military service in 1996. After completing boot camp he began the most grueling training program in the US Military - Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, known as BUD/s. Nearly 90% of all candidates are unsuccessful completing the six month program. Andy graduated and began his SEAL career attached to SEAL Team Five, in Coronado California. In 2002 he screened for and joined the most elite counterterrorism unit in the military, SEAL Team Six. This unit is tasked with conducting the nation's most critical missions, many of which have become the focus of Hollywood movies and books. While on a combat deployment an Iraqi insurgent shot Andy at close range with an AK-47. Doctors told him it would be years, if ever, before he recovered the use of his leg and returned to full active duty. In 2006, Andy returned to the Naval Special Warfare Center as the Leading Petty Officer for 2nd Phase BUD/s training. While completing his two year instructor tour, in charge of 13 senior SEAL instructors and 600 students, Andy submitted his package to become a commissioned officer. In 2008, he became the first E-6 selection commissioned through the Limited Duty Officer Program in the history of Naval Special Warfare. Upon commissioning, he joined SEAL Team Three and completed his final combat tour to Afghanistan. Throughout his 17-year career, Andy executed hundreds of combat operations throughout the world in support of the Global War on Terror. He was medically retired in June of 2013. Andy's podcast "Cleared Hot": ⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@ClearedHotPodcast Andy's website:⬇️ https://www.andystumpf.com/ Today's Sponsors: Kim Kipling's New Book "THE FLICKERING TORCH"⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Flickering-Torch-Kim-Kipling/dp/B0C5YQLBS5 A love story and action/adventure thriller, set in an all-too-real universe of the USA's accelerating political and social collapse. America is politically polarized, culturally divided and on the brink of civil war.  Grab it here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Flickering-Torch-Kim-Kipling/dp/B0C5YQLBS5 The Lite Sleeper⬇️ (VETERAN OWNED, US MANUFACTURED) the perfect addition for the light backpacker, ground sleeper, or prepper/survivalist. https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse click the link to get The Lite Sleeper and get 10% off your first order! https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse  The AARP Veteran Report⬇️ https://aarp.org/VETREPORT Free, Twice Monthly email newsletter that salutes military service & provides a mixture of inspirational human stories and practical info for vets. https://aarp.org/VETREPORT To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 #sealteam6 #devgru #jsocBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our. bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 223 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with David Park.

Our guest on tonight's show is Andy Stumpf. Andy served in the SEAL teams as a NCO and then as an officer. And he's also the host of the cleared hot podcast that I'm sure everyone who watches this show is familiar with Andy and his work. So Andy, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Yeah, thank you for having me. Are we going to do all that stuff that came in the intro? Like very special operations, espionage. Are we going to do that stuff?

Because that sounds awesome. We're going to talk about it. We can. All right. We're winging it here tonight, guys. No script, so be prepared. We might do a little improv later. We don't even know.

Perfect. Cool, man. So I'm going to start from the top like we do with pretty much all of our guests. I want to ask you a little bit about your origin story about, you know, what your upbringing was like, how you grew up and sort of how that took you, propelled you towards the Navy. Yeah. I mean, there was nothing special about it. I grew up dead center of the road, middle class in a beach town in what they consider to be northern California. But when I look at the map, it's still like right in the center, Santa Cruz, just on the north end of the Monterey Bay.

Aggressively average athlete, below average student. I think my final GPA in high school was about a 1.8. And I was really reaching for the rim on that one. And, you know, I come from a military family, but I know for a fact that it was not the path that either of my parents were looking for. So on my mom's side of the house, my grandmother actually started as a Navy nurse and was discharged due to post-traumatic stress of caring for people who were coming off of the front lines. Lied about it and joined the army to become a nurse again. Wow. I'm just savage in so many different ways and met her husband at the time who was a supply officer.

So Army on my mom's side of the house, my dad's side of the house was Navy. His dad and his dad's brother, like 99, yeah, those two were both in the Navy. And then my father was in the Navy. He was actually on the first squadron of jacuzzi propelled patrol boats in Vietnam, the Mark I, which fast forward, you know, decades later, I used to ride around on the Mark V's. So kind of the same pool, different water. in it for sure. Not a great experience in Vietnam like a lot of people had and he brought a lot of that home with him. So, you know, the drinking culture on the Army lived very vicariously, let's just say on my mom's side of the house. And on my dad's side of the house, it was

not necessarily drinking, but just men who didn't want to talk about their feelings because men aren't allowed to have feelings. They just go build things with their bare hands. them down. Neither of those are I've come to find out and probably knew before even experimenting with both are a very good choice when it comes to dealing with any issues you may have. But I say all that to say that, you know, I don't know if the military left a good taste on either side of my mom, you know, my mom or my dad. My mom, I experience it more from an upbringing perspective, kind of bouncing around being an army brat. My dad through a firsthand experience in Vietnam. And, you know, then I come home when I'm 17 years old and I have a, you know, Navy recruiter with me asking them to sign permission for me to join the delayed entry program, which is idiotic thinking back about it. All I did was make the recruiter's job easier that month because I still had to graduate high school and turn 18 anyway. I don't even still don't, to this day, don't know why that program exists. But that's the path that I took. And, you know, to their credit, they never tried to talk me out of it. Not a single, hey, you shouldn't do this.

This isn't what we would want for you. A lot of questions about, you know, why? Like why? Why? I am I interested in this? What do I necessarily want to get out of it? What do I think it's going to be? But never an attempt to try to talk me out of it, which I deeply appreciate to this day. And it's something that I've tried to pay forward with my own kids as well. And then from there, you know, the path into the SEAL community is unfortunately far too public, as is everything with the SEAL community. I'm sure there's several TV shows and probably an IMAX movie about enlisting in the Navy.

Could I just want to stop you for one second? just ask, what were the answers to those questions for you personally as a 17-year-old young man as far as like why, what you were hoping to get out of it? Where did that come from? I don't know. And I still don't have a good answer. I heard my dad was not a seal. He worked with seals occasionally in the Mekong Delta, obviously given the platform that he was on.

It would be used for insertion and extraction. So I heard the term from him first, but not like, hey, you should go check this out. But it intrigued me. And then we're talking like, let's see here. When I first heard that term, we were in the late 80s. And I say that to highlight that the internet wasn't exactly what it is right now. I didn't have a smartphone in my pocket that could access unfettered information. So I went to the library.

And most of the information that I could find was from Vietnam. You know, there's a little bit about World War II, but the UDT, the predecessors to the seal teams, you know, they weren't, they weren't doing that much. They were for amphibious reconnaissance and basically making sure that, you know, the catastrophes, that had occurred in some of the beach landings, you know, where the landing craft would hit a coral reef and drop the ramp and people would run off of it in non-boient gear, that that didn't happen again.

So not a whole lot, but everything that I could find was just fascinating to me. It was like this magnetizing pole. And I think at 11, I certainly didn't have an answer to that question. Like, I don't know, it sounds cool. But that's also part of the answer now when I'm 45. It did sound cool.

And it was cool. But it sounded hard. and it sounded like not everybody could do it and it sounded like they got to do really cool shit and at 11 that sounded awesome to me I had no you know I mean like you know looking glass forward I didn't have any idea about 9-11

or what the occupation would actually become the most accurate movie at the time was Navy SEALs starring Charlie Sheen which I thought was I considered to be a documentary much like I thought the Rogue Warriors series should have been in the nonfiction section as opposed to the fiction Both of them is galactically wrong.

But it just, it hooked me. And it was really weird growing up for people to hear me be able to, like, you know, it's actually a terrible question. I think we ask young men and women like, oh, what do you want to do with your life? Like, who the fuck knows what you want to do with your life at 14 years old? Right. But I had an answer for that. And not many people have that answer.

And then I got into the community and I was surrounded by people who had the same feeling and lack of ability to describe that desire and, why they wanted to do it and what they wanted to get out of it. So it became a really uncommon narrative to the most common narrative that anybody had when I served with, which is like a total non-answer to your question. But I still, even later, with a better vocabulary, have a hard time explaining or putting a pin in like the exactly why. It just, it was what it was. Yeah. I think that's pretty common, though, you know, no matter what, you know, special operations unit or what sort of military element people think about a lot of them you know a lot of people have this idea

early on and it could be the a team or the navy seals or gi joe it can be any of these things that make you think that to make you sort of separate that thing out and go that sounds hard it sounds fun it sounds challenging yeah i mean there's a reason why the navy back top gun multiple times you know, shockingly, fighter pilot recruitment went through the roof. Right, right. And for those you don't make it in the program, well, the Navy has a whole bunch of officers to choose from. You know, it's the same way. And there's that pesky contract you signed.

Oh, you wanted to fly jets and you failed. That's fine. We'll find a job for you. Oh, you didn't want to be a surface warfare officer. Yeah, it's too bad. Right, right. Yeah. So, Andy, I won't ask you if your Bud's class was hard or not.

I promise I won't go there. But, I mean, as- They're all equally the same. Everybody said it's like the hardest, but they're, but they're all the same. No, I know. I'm just not going to ask you to recount, you know. Did you have to carry a raft over your head?

We know. But I will. Who's going to carry the boats? I will ask you, you know, did you get the challenge that you were looking for as you started to go through that process and earn your trident? Yeah. I mean, the curriculum, I didn't understand the curriculum when I went through as a student. I made so much more sense to me when I went back as an instructor a decade later in my career. But the cool thing about the curriculum is it's been largely the same since the 40s.

And it just works. You know, there's something in there for everybody. And I think looking back on it, having gone through and then applying it to others, it's just trying to figure out what it is that bugs you. You know, is it cold water? Is it sleep deprivation? Is it exhaustion? Is it being hungry?

Is it all of those things? Let's find out what it is that bugs you and really suppress you as a person. down to your lowest point and then have you make decisions right while we watch you you know can you make good decisions can you follow procedure regardless of all those other external circumstances and you know it's i i think the curriculum works because for you know what's it like 80 you know about 80 years at this point it has been able to take people to that point and ask them those questions and net largely the people that we're looking for you know it's a selection course and and not there's no selection course that is perfect so it's a bell curve you get the good

bad and the ugly and everything in between but it does a really good job of finding a way to push people to that point which gives the instructors the opportunity to kind of take a peek into their psyche and into their soul a little bit yeah was there any particular challenge that you faced while you were in buds that you've that you thought would get you or were you kind of even keel the way the whole way through in a lot of ways it was what i thought it would be i mean the the attrition rate has been the attrition rate largely again since the 40s so that that shouldn't be a shock um to anybody and anybody with a double digit IQ should probably ask themselves well why is that the case and where does most of this attrition occur and it's

actually in the first five weeks in first phase where they're teaching you absolutely nothing And it's a physical, you know, the first 10 weeks of training in first phase, it's just purely physical in nature. It's where the, you know, the telephone poles and the obstacle course and the boats and the surf and all that stuff occurs. And where hell week occurs, where the vast majority of the attrition happens, usually, you know, starts on a Sunday, but most people have quit by about Tuesday morning. But there isn't, there was not any one thing. I describe Buds, and I'm sure this is true of any special operations pipeline that has the appropriate duration. It's not any one day or any one thing. It's the combination of all of the things.

It's like taking a piece of 80 grit sandpaper and going up to somebody and saying, hey, I need you to grate this across your knuckles once. You know, the first time they do it, it's not going to be comfortable. But if you tell me they only have to do it once, it's not going to be a problem. Buds is taking that sandpaper across your knuckles, you know, 182, 183 times. And when your hands are already bleeding and, you know, they're blistered and it's excruciatingly painful, it's the totality of kind of doing the same thing over and over and over again that gets people, not just one evolution in and of itself. It's physically challenging.

But, and again, this is, I think this is true probably of any special operations pipeline. The amount of testing that you have to do to show up. for your first day. Like, if you can pass all those tests, from a physiological perspective, you have the ability to graduate the course. It's what fails is the muscle that's above your neck, not the muscle that's below it.

So it's hard, but more people just give up than anything. Yeah. And then what year did you arrive at the teams? And what was that like kind of stepping in the door? Late 97, I checked into Team 5, and I mean, it was, I don't have the vocabulary for how awesome it was. I mean, since I was 11, like, it's all I ever wanted to do.

And then you walk across the quarter deck, which is the stupid naval terminology. Army guys probably just call it the front door, but we have to have some stupid term. And you're surrounded by your heroes. And it's bad ass. They're wearing, like, board shorts and flip flops, t-shirts, and sunglasses, and they're playing volleyball on Friday and having a kegger. And here's, hey, here's your, here's your M4. Go have a good time.

Here's a grenade, you know? Not that they would like give that to me in San Diego, but we would go out on, you know, training evolutions. It's like, yeah, I want to fly in a helicopter. Yes, I want to shoot the M60. Yes, I want to shoot the law and the AT4 and I want to do it all before lunch. And that's what they let you do. It was everything that I thought it could be.

That's fantastic. How was it with your team? You know, you're checking in. you're the you're the new guy um and oh you know how it was the god damn is the same thing it was for you shut up new guy here's you know like and you know i look back on it the single most dangerous point of my entire career and for clarity i mean to myself and the people that i was working with was right when i came across that quarter neck with a lot of book knowledge and absolutely no street knowledge whatsoever so it was like hey shut the fuck up i don't we don't

care what you think you know we'll tell you when we need you which is going to be never keep your mouth shut and just try to learn yeah yeah that's awesome so what was the process back then buds and then the land warfare portion and then would you get your how did that know okay so yeah it was uh they were just transitioning to what was then called what did they call it it was called s STT back then, SEAL Tactical Training. Before that, right before that in the late 90s, each team ran their own post-Buds curriculum, which we intuitively, all three of us know, that's a really shitty idea. Yeah.

Like, you have all people wearing the same uniform. I got an idea. Let's not share any information. Let's actually hide it from each other and fight for budget and relevance. And then decades down the road, when somebody actually attacks us, not going to really be able to work with them. Yeah. It was such a horrible idea looking back and I understand completely why they did it

because in the absence of an actual enemy, we're of course going to fight ourselves than our fellow servicemen. So prior to when I started, each team ran their own pipeline. You do about a year of a probation where the team would internally put you through their own training cell, all of those things. When I got there, they did the first class of STT, which is now become SQT. and I'm not actually even really familiar the whole pipeline that they go through. But it brought everybody who was going to be on the West Coast.

Most of them were guys that I had just gone through Buds with. And they put us through the group command that oversees all of the odd number teams, put the training on. So at least when we went back to the teams, we all had the same baseline level of training. And then, though, each team had a different process for awarding the Trident. So I had to go, you studied up a bunch. And I spent, it was two days, basically a two-day verbal and practical test where

you'd go to the armory and there'd be three senior guys sitting there and I mean there was an AR on the table there's an M60 on the table a SIG-2-6 and they're all disassembled it's like okay put them back together and also while you're doing so you know what's the maximum effective range what's the muzzle velocity coming out of it what's this the spring spring recoil guy like all you know like you're just the full on test of knowledge and then you'd go to the diving locker and it's like hey plan a closed circuit dive here's the tides here's the current land nav I mean have I mean have I was going to say night vision, but we didn't have any back then, no big deal. And, you know, you go through all the departments and then at the very end, they come together. The training staff comes together. And then they awarded the people their tridents who had passed the test. And then they retreaded and retreaded the people. There was, I think, one or two in the group that I was with. And then from there, you were integrated back into a platoon.

And then you were kind of handed back over to the group training cell to do the, like the operational level, the platoon level training. getting ready for your pre-9-11 deployment, which was just forward staging. Yeah. And so when you walk through the quarter deck, now that I know that term, what was like the mission profile at that time in the late 1990s? What were you guys training for? What were you looking at getting into? So it depended on your team.

So I was at Team 5. We were Southwest Asia. So specifically we were looking at North Korea and South Korea. Forget what the op plan was. It was like 5911 or something like that. So I was back in front. forth to exercise foul eagle a half dozen times

you know at least and so obviously that area of the world can get cold so we were more of like an arctic cold weather specialist and then literally a nine iron like a shitty nine iron shot south was team three and they were specifically focused on

the desert so they had like desert patrol vehicles different cannies you know they were doing hides in the desert I mean I'm talking not very much skill overlay so it really depended per team. I remember Team 8, no, Team 4 at the time. They were doing anti-drug

interdiction ops. And by that, I mean, what we would probably consider now, like, advise and assist. I think down in, like, Columbia. I think Team 2 was deploying to Europe at the time and maybe doing like a little bit of Pithwick stuff.

So personal indicted for war crimes. But like, it was, it was so dependent on what team you were attached to. So you can also imagine, if a team got to do something like a non-permissive boarding in the Middle East with their MP5s and handlebar mustache

which I deeply appreciate to this day you would see people who are trying to get to Team 3 from all the other teams because they're like God damn it we just went over to Europe and like yeah you were in like some beautiful country drinking amazing you know beers surrounded by beautiful women

like I think you're going to be okay but they wanted to be on the big Mish they wanted to go on the Argy Alpha so there was a lot of information fighting. It was, in, in hindsight, it was quite comical. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, SF is kind of like set up the same way with the different theaters. And, you know, especially like you talk about 97, like that was sort of the war on drugs, all the money was going into those sexy missions into, you know, Latin America. And it's, and then, you know, yeah, so I can imagine sort of the, the combat or the operational envy that, that was there. And some guys obviously were probably, I'm sure that some teams, you know, were like, hey, yeah, you know, we just went down to Columbia. We're running with the, you know, against the FARC or whatever.

And it's like, oh, my pocket. I mean, there was what they said they were doing. And then you come to find out they were doing shit. Right. Right. Right. It was peace time. I mean, it really was.

So we, I mean, we trained our asses off in the hopes that the big mission would show up. And we'd talk about the golden con Xbox and all the things that we would get and how bad ass we would be. And, yeah, that was kind of the life. But also, it was still awesome. I was working with my heroes. I mean, at the age of, I mean, I was, had my Trident before I was 21 years old. I'm flying around in helicopters, you know, shoot, move and communicate. Yes, please.

Like, I'll take two. Like, it's not a bad way to grow up. Yeah, for sure. We've got to give a quick shout out to our sponsors for the show tonight. The first one is Kim Kipling. We've had Kim on the show before about his biography of Dutch Worenga, kind of legendary paramilitary dude. Kim himself has a paramilitary background.

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We also needed to give a shout out to our buddy Dustin Ward, who created the light sleeper, which I'm afraid I don't have here today. I'm delinquent. I'm sorry. Jack took it to Iceland. I did. I took it on very. vacation. It's awesome. So basically he made a Wobie that you can put a sleep pad in. It has a pouch for that and another pouch for a pillow and then it flaps over. So and you can find that at Whitesleeper.com and WhiteSleeper.com slash Team House. If you go there now, you can pick it up. It's a cheap product too. I mean, he puts it out for like 70 bucks. So I mean, it's a hell of a good deal. Yeah. It's probably one of the greatest. I mean, the Wobie was the greatest invention. We can all agree that the Wobie is one of the only creations that you could get in the military.

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So, Andy, back to you. You're getting all this awesome experience or living the life. It's a young man, young Navy SEAL. We get to that point about like 2000, 2001. So where are you at, you know, personally and professionally around that time frame? I was in my second platoon. We were getting ready for really mission critical deployment to Guam, you know, just a very strategic location, a lot of stuff for us to do there, like drink and work out and go to strip clubs. Very strategic. And actually, I take that back. So right at the end of 2001, I had already made the decision that I wanted to screen for the East Coast command. And I had just gotten back off of that deployment about a month before 9-11, I think.

And was in the process of screening in between. I started selection in 2002. So between like July or August of 2001 to early 2002, that's kind of what my. process or not my process, but my mindset was, was complete the screening process and then just prep for the course. Were you at all concerned, like at any point did you think that you might withdraw your package or whatever because you were worried that the whole Afghanistan thing would be over so soon that, and you'd be in training during that time? No. I mean, the FOMO is real. I feel like just about everybody in the military probably felt that.

They're like, oh, my God. And I felt it again when the invasion of Iraq kicked off. It's like people were trying to squeeze an entire military career until like a 90-day deployment because they thought it was going to be a one and done. It's like, ha-ha. Jokes on you. There's more than enough for everybody and then some. So I had never, I mean, the FOMO was real for sure.

But what I didn't know a lot about when I joined was development group. I didn't know. And it just wasn't talked about. It wasn't publicized. And when people would screen, if they were successful, they just disappeared because they stayed there and did their job. But if they failed, they'd go to like an SDV team or they would go out to Yuma to be a free fall instructor. So you never got like a chance to really understand what the fuck was going on. Like what actually happens in selection?

Like what's the actual job? but I did have enough information to realize that if anybody was going to stay busy, it probably was going to be that command. So even if it like, you know, Afghanistan had been a, you know, very bright burning candle that had rapidly gone out, if anything else was going to help happen anywhere, the likelihood of being involved with that was exponentially higher out east than it was in Coronado. Right. Right.

Did they, how did you find out about it? Did they do recruiting trips to the teams, like to pitch anybody? Or is it just a word of mouth thing? In my second platoon, two of the guys, two of the senior guys, one of them was the head of the comms department. And I was his secondary. And the other one was the point man for the squad number one. They were both getting ready to go. And so I heard information about the first, I had the ability to pick their brand like, like, what is this?

Why do you guys want to go there? So I was able to like gain some of their knowledge. There was not a recruiting pitch by any stretch. There was just a Navy message that came out saying when the screening was going to be and then it had the requirements for the package, where to be, what to be prepared to do. And that was about it. There was not that much information about it. And so then what was the, I mean, we've had a few guests on here describe a little bit about the selection and training process.

But I mean, are there any points maybe or lessons learned or something from green platoon that you'd really like to highlight. No, I mean, what I would say is, because people ask me this all the time, like, well, what's the difference between Buds and going through Green Team? And it's like, well, and I think they call it selection and training now. I don't fucking know. I can't keep up with the acronyms, nor do I care. But it, Buds was, are you mentally tough enough to not quit?

Green team was, can you be technically proficient enough to operate at the level that we need to operate at. So it was no longer, hey, pushups, sit-ups, flutter kicks, pull-ups running, even though I think we probably did some of those, not the flutter kicks. Everybody is exhausted by those by the time Buds is over. I mean, there was physical components to it, but it was practical execution of special operations skill sets, and you are graded upon your performance as opposed to trying to get somebody to ring a bell to quit. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Andy, but one of the big differences between the way Army and Navy does it is, you know, all the army units have their own selection, their own training,

etc. But with the development group, it seems like the selection process is really from, because the only people who can go there are seals. So the selection process is buds, be successful at your platoon, and then green platoon. So it's kind of like a different sort of pathway where they're not having to maybe vet you as strongly as like a guy just showing up at SF selection or Delta selection who maybe came off the street, so to speak, or came from the conventional side? Yeah, I mean, Bud's is unique or relatively unique in the aspect that it's the origin

story for everybody who ever got a Trident. I mean, you're literally shoulder to shoulder with officer and enlisted. There's no ballooning out of the Bud's course. You share in the suffering and, you know, perceived reward if there is any. I mean, we hang that with the students like, oh, if you do this, you're going to get rewarded. It's a total lie for anybody listening. Don't expect a reward of any kind. It's punishment, follow.

by punishment as it should be, only because it happened to us, so we have to generationally pass that down to you. But so the initial selection of the individuals and then the mentoring in the community starts when you start at buds. And so you're drawing from the same pool. My understanding of CAG is, you know, they open it all to all services. So you're going to get a hodgeplots. You're going to get a buffet of people. you may not understand their background or origin story to the degree that you may understand it inside of the seal community. And again, I'll be the first to tell you that the selection process is not perfect.

We had people slide through who absolutely shouldn't, as is going to happen in every course. But, you know, it's, I feel like there is a level of strength and just knowledge of who the people are to your left and right, knowing that you all came through the exact same pipeline. Right. Right. Yeah. And even though there's not like the precursor sort of SFS style selection, because everybody already did buds, but there's still that winnowing, like it's still on your hall file is still, they're still checking in with people like, do you trust this person? Is this somebody you would want to operate with?

Which a hall file can be, you know, it follows you everywhere. and it can be, you know, very, like, selective. And it should be. You know, one of the things that they instituted when I was a Bud's instructor was peer reviews. And, you know, we all have, we all have our public face, like who we allow people to see us as or who we want to be. And then there's who you are when nobody's around. And fuck, I was shocked as a Bud's instructor. Some of the feedback on some of what you would consider to be the top.

performers resounding feedback on how they were basically just putting a mask on in front of the instructor staff and you know there were tools that we were allowed to use to try to expose those things and get rid of those people because I'm not looking for somebody who can wear a mask right like the the perfect selection course would be you could crack the mask and see who the person is behind and I think most of these selection courses are able to do that but in the absence of being able to be perfect like that I think those Hall five I in the student feedback I think it is absolutely essential you know buds is not a 365 day seven you know seven day a week 24 hours it's a Monday through Friday right other than they have a plenty of time as a class away from the instructor staff where they can show other students who they really are right and giving you students the ability to give us that feedback in a manner that didn't have their name associated with it uh peer reviews knew that there wasn't going to be punitive measures associated with it. It really helped pierce the mask on some people.

Yeah. Yeah. So when you were going through Green Team, because, you know, this is, what, were you there like pre or post 9-11 or was that part of your time there? I started selection in 2002, so shortly after 9-11. Okay. So during that time, was Green Team undergoing any changes due to like real, real world feedback that they were getting in Afghanistan at that time?

I don't think so. Well, I never saw a green team class before that. So I can't give a totally holistic answer to that. I don't think so because, I mean, 9-11 obviously happened in September. I'm in selection in March. Maybe they would have had 90 days worth of beta over Afghanistan. Right. And much like Iraq, early on, not very kinetic.

Right. Right. I mean, which is smart from our enemy. Maybe let's just sit this one back and see what our enemy is doing here before they go toe to toe. So a lot of the lessons that ended up being learned in blood had not occurred yet. Right. Right. So you get through a green team and what was it like, you know, stepping in now, you know, your first team. Yeah. For the second time.

What was it? They had just gone back off a rotation from Afghanistan. It was their first combat rotation to Afghanistan. and it was fucking awesome. You know, you go into a team room. Again, it's the same thing. It's like, the vast majority of guys in the SEAL community have no desire to go to development group, which is awesome.

Like, cool. Don't go if you don't want to go. Like, it's totally voluntary just like getting into the SEAL community. And some people have like a real hang up over that. And I don't understand why. Like, if you want to go do that, go do that. If you don't want to go do that, then don't go do that. To me, for me, when I,

heard about it. I was like, okay, this is like the next logical progression. Why would I not go do this? So it became again, entering into a room of people that were just like absolutely my heroes. It's like, holy shit. I just made it to the major leagues. There's a wall with everybody's name and the year that they graduated and you have a plaque with your name on it. Like, that's pretty fucking awesome because there's not a lot of names over there. Yeah. And you know, the command was rapidly, um, um, scaling up when it came to, fuck, everything from equipment to support personnel to operational personnel to operational tempo. And it was awesome. It was everything that I thought being a seal could and would be.

That's fantastic. When you did Green Team, not having an idea what was going on. So you had been a seal. And obviously you, as a seal, you're like, I'm technically, I'm tactically proficient. I have all these skills. And then you go to Green Team, where now they're teaching you a whole new things. What was that like for you, sort of having that veil pulled back?

I mean, at the J-Soc level, I did a workup and a deployment with the Army component of J-Soc as well with A-Squadern. And so I can speak broadly about what I think their mission set. is it's very closely aligned i mean at the jocl global it's very closely aligned the reason they're so good at that job is they strip away a lot of the other bullshit you know i i described conventional special operations as a multi-tool and let's say it's got 15 little levers that you can pull out a phillips head you know an allen key the shitty pair of scissors and an almost useless knife well at development group i was like it's two tools like you know not saying we only did two things but

But it was a reduction of responsibility that allowed you to hyper focus on a particular skill set that allows you to get really good at it. It's like, oh, well, I can invest my entire day, shoot, move, and communicate. That's literally all I'm going to practice. And it's like I have a multi, you know, $50 million kill house that has movable walls and ranges that I have access to 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. I can keep my guns in my cases. I can have a thousand rounds of ammo of any kind that I want to in my cage. like it had it was every opportunity to focus on essentially actions on the objective and that's why those commands are good at it. You know, they don't do as much stuff.

You mean, tasking development group of doing a hydrographic reconnaissance or a closed circuit dive, don't do it. I mean, they'll probably be able to get it done, but it's going to be fucking ugly, you know. But if you're taking hostage in a remote location somewhere, I really want a J. stock unit to come and get me. Right. Right. So what was like when you did get spun up for your first deployment? Well, where were you going? What was the mission at that time? And we know, kind of what's going on for you in your mind? So they finished us up with Green Team early and actually we augmented the Karzai detail, which was a different squadron than the one I was going to be attached to. But there was a it was the tail end it. It was after the assassination attempt. They were trying to wind.

it down. I think they turned it over to Dinacore. So that was my first actual trip overseas. I mean, that was wild, you know, waking up in Boggham for the first time and going outside and looking around. You're like, okay, this shit's real. And then, you know, driving up to Kabul and, you know, staying at the, you know, the yellow house right there and just doing all the security stuff. And there was like maybe, I don't know, 45 days. It was brief. Come back. And immediately on the radar was the invasion of Iraq. And for whatever reason, probably random timing more than anything or the George cycle.

my squadron got upselected for the invasion. So we started training pretty rapidly towards the target set that, you know, the Intel at the time was pointing us towards. Our main focus at the time was going to be the number one chem biose site in Iraq, because I mean, anybody alive during that time period can tell you it was originally pitched around WMD, which is a whole conversation in and of itself looking in the rearview mirror. Right. So it's like we had, I think, the first three. objective is that we were likely going to action. We already had the intelligence on them. We had models. We had, you know, air conditioning specialists coming and telling us why this level of air conditioning on the roof is, you know, it's definitely, this is definitely a lab. I'm like, oh, yeah,

it's also definitely hot as fuck there in the summer, too. So maybe the needs an extra AC units on the, on the roof. And, you know, that's what we were looking to doing. And then we got over there. So I was there, you know, when Bush gave him the, you know, the 24-hour speech and we were just sitting in tents and RR, Saudi Arabia getting ready to go. And then, Yeah, the first real world operation I ever did was in full-on, Mop level four, absolute nightmare, on what ended up being an agricultural school, which was the number one chem biotarget. We had Nelson Miller on the show. Yeah, he's with me.

Yeah, he's telling us about this. I was with him, however he would want to phrase it. Yeah, yeah. Can you walk us through it from your point of view? And also just for... I'm looking through goddamn soda straws sweating my ass off. There you go, object of number one. Yeah, so just for the...

I don't know, the enjoyment of our audience who may not understand what a lovely experience of mop gear is. Can you kind of tell us about it and how you operate in mop gear? I mean, not well is the answer. It's for mission-oriented protective posture. And just think of it as, who was that movie with like Lawrence Fishburn where it was an outbreak or Ebola or something like that? Those suits were nice. They look comfortable. They were big and they looked like they were air conditioning.

Or the big flat screen in front. Yeah. So imagine trying to replicate that, but you have to go run around and, you know, potentially fight people. And of course, it has to be camouflaged. So it's basically a, and there's levels like mop level one, I think is, what is it? You have to have your mask with you, but not on something like that. Yeah.

Level two. Maybe you put like the outer layer on. Map level three is, I don't know, maybe that's the mask. Mob level four is like you are fully chem-biod up, expecting. to encounter an agent of some kind. So I think the helicopter ride in, it was hours long on 47s, mid-air refueling and like 30 minutes out,

you're like 30 dudes in the back of 47, all trying to get their shit on and like tuck in each other's, you know, all the stuff that goes around the mask, get under the helmet, and you're just like, this is the worst thing ever.

Please, somebody kill me now. And then, you know, your night vision goggle is like touching the end of your gas mask. So you already can't see through a grade anyway. know it's farther away from your face. So it's just, just for people out there, just go wrap, go buy a Costco, a bag of trash bags, and then put them all on. And that's what mop level four is.

And then look through, you know, toilet paper, actually soda straws. And, you know, we started getting shot at like a minute out. And the door gunner got shot in the head right next to me. I was all the way up in the front of the aircraft. I didn't even know we were getting shot at because I couldn't hear, see anything and they nuked the power grid like this

transformer uh complex and then we landed the helicopter package in between the smoking burning transformer complex and the objective totally backlit just giving people the perfect opportunity to just take pot shots as which they did

um so there was like a gunfight going on out in the street i was in the assault element that started going inside of the the building we had little birds overhead we had snipers up in the little birds that were dumping people and i'm just like what the fuck is this like we can't keep doing this this can't be what this is like i can't see anything sweating to death i ripped my mask off like two minutes after being inside of that place because it was utterly clear that it was not a chem bio threat and i actually would have rather been killed by a chem biothreat than wear that mop level four anymore

and you know we get back to you know we fly back another three and a half four hours I mean, one of the blocking positions, a ranger took around, like, through and through, ran like 100 yards off, realized it was a bad idea, went and got back on the helicopter, you know, which is how I ended up meeting Pat Tillman because he was the guy who came in. He was like that guy's secondary.

It was crazy, all the things that ended up coming together. But I remember waking up the next morning, sitting there and talking to the buddy of mine, like, hey, man, I don't think it's going to go that well for us that this is how we're going to do business the whole time we're over here. So there you go. That was target number one. And then what was target number two or was it three or four, Jessica Lynch?

Two. It was number two. Yeah. And that was the exact opposite. It was like the intel was like there's this crazy threat. And I'm sure Nelson told you like, we can only fit so many people on the helicopters. And it's like you'll do anything you can for another service member. So we were going to take the risk that was being presented to us.

They're like, oh, yeah, it's a staging point for Fedaheen. Could be somewhere between 50 to 500. Like, I think we can fit 27 on this helicopter package. Yeah. But you're going to go. And then in the end, they had left like the day before. You know, there's not a single shot fired inside of the hospital. And it was what it was.

And unfortunately, it got, the person I feel the worst for is actually Jessica, because it got spun so completely out of control. It had nothing to do with her. Yeah. Everything to do with people. I mean, I remember the first news reports. They were talking about giving her the Medal of Honor. She should be the first woman recipient of the Medal of Honor because she fought until her last round.

And then, you know, she went dry and I don't know how she would have ended up getting knocked out. And then I actually had her on my podcast and was able to reconnect with her. And she told me her story from her side and I kind of explained it from mine. And, you know, she never even got a chance to fire around. Yeah. But it was just so, it was interesting. I wish I had paid more attention to the way that it was, twisted and manipulated at the time, but just quite frankly, we were busy and I didn't care.

Yeah. It took a long time for the real story to come out. Well, the other thing that was so weird is all the people coming out, because I remember all the stories coming out about it was, it was a hoax that the Rangers had blank adapters on their weapons. And like Bill O'Reilly was saying that, like CNN. Like all the, everybody was saying that. They were saying, this is what we've heard. And it's like, this is such. a weird spin on this on this operation we got on those helicopters fully prepared to get our shit pushed in to try to rescue an american service member yeah fortunately the you know the potential or the intel that we had about the enemy force they had moved on yeah it would have sucked

that they were still there but we still would have gone yeah and that's the thing you don't know what the result is going to be it's not about like what the result was like what's important is that you fucking nut up and you get your gear on and you get on the helicopter yeah was that a a A good morale boost, though. I mean, after hitting a fake WMD plant, I mean, rescuing an American soldier must have been a pretty good mission. It was pretty sweet. Yeah. But again, like, then we got back to RR.

And then within, I don't know, a couple days. We went and hit something up at Lake Thar Tharthar. And then shit shortly after that, we were on one of the first C-130s into buy-up. It's not like you had time to be like, we put one up on the board for us. You just, you know, next. Right. Yeah. And how did the rest of that deployment transpire? I mean, it was going after the deck of 52 at that point. Yeah. Fucking deck of cards. I mean, it was what it was. It was whackam. I mean, you guys know how it was like, oh, hey, we're going after this guy. It's like, sweet. Do you know where he is? No,

go look over here. Okay. You know, you would try to derive your own intelligence. You know, the human networks that, you know, the ASO guys were able to develop later on were not there. It was largely siggint but also again like so not kinetic in comparison to what it was later on because they did what was smart why go towed i mean i wouldn't go toe to toe to i live in northwestern montana you know if red dawn actually played itself out i'm not going to go out and shoot at a tank with an a r you know i'm going to sit back and be like i don't know where the droids are that you're looking for yeah because i'm taking notes and developing a plan you know right right so how does that trip like and for like first off you you know you're going after these high uh these high priority

targets um with kind of lacking intel at the time did you have any missions you felt were were really successful during that period of time hard to gauge success or failure I would say from a tactical perspective I mean we would go and go look for somebody and sometimes come back with them whether or not at that time it made a difference you know I mean, like later on in the war, you're talking about incredibly developed, uh, cells, right, of like suicide bombers or V and like, you could go and you would like, holy shit. Like there's 15 suicide vests that are being built right over there.

And then there's like three partially constructed VBids. And you can take that cell off of the board that those had much more of a feeling of this is making a difference than I think that early on, uh, deployments probably did. Yeah. So how does that deployment end up or wrap up for you? And then what's the next stage you get when you get back to Virginia? We ripped out with a Kag Squadron. And then because, again, like FOMA was real.

They had their first squadron there was out actually doing scud hunting because they thought that's where the jam was going to be. Right. You know, there wasn't a jam at that point. And again, I think a lot of people were viewing this like, we have to get it in now. So I think they kind of wanted us out of there because we were like we were going out every night. and they saw that and they're like how about you guys get the fuck out of here so we got the fuck out of there because we were working for an army general and then just started ping pong and back and forth between um afghanistan and iraq you know that the deployment cycle at a

jacock command at that time was going to be 90 days overseas 120 days back at nauseam until you break yeah and so one uh what with the next deployment 120 days later back to iraq sorry 180 it was uh so you had a nice 90, 30 trained up 90 standby. So yeah, it was 91, 80. 90. So about basically half of every year, you released overseas. But then, of course, you were gone doing training trips the entire time as well, too.

So it was busy. The opt-tempo was high. Yeah. Go ahead, Dave. Well, I was just going to ask. So at that point in time, did you guys become mostly focused in Afghanistan or Iraq? Or were you switching off? Or did you and Kag kind of like split it down the middle?

initially and this is you know my experience with the CA guys has been fantastic i still have very close friends that uh that i served there with at a squadron and i used to hear like you know like oh fuck those guys and what i think it actually was is at the higher levels when people are starting to argue for missions and budget relevance that probably exists right i didn't experience that shit at all right at the operator they're fucking awesome they just dude they were they were like team guys but they wore an army uniform. They would like define by our similarities, not by our differences. The same type of dude.

Yeah. Yeah. I never got a lick of like pushback. Like we went down there and did a full workup with them before we deployed with them. And we would host them up. It's like it was awesome. The higher ups though, I think saw Iraq as probably a more fruitful tree. So Cag for a bit focused on Iraq and DEMN for a bit focused on Afghanistan.

And again, I think Sanger had, uh, heads prevailed and they realized it's probably not a good idea to geographically specialize like that. So we started doing cross-training deployments and that's how we kind of bridge the gap. Nice. As the war evolved and these units evolved too with it, I mean, could you kind of tell us a little bit about how things that, you know, you mentioned the intensity of ratcheting up? I mean, how did it, how did the unit change? How did the culture change?

And how did the war itself change from your guys' perspective? So I left the command in late 2006, so I can't speak to any cultural changes past that. What I would say is that the theaters of war matured probably just as much as the units themselves. I mean, I don't know of a unit in 2001 that was like steeped in combat experience. I mean, it just really wasn't. And then, you know, you start talking like 2008, 2009, 2010. 10, there were units that were, I mean, it was their full-time J-O-B to be over there. And I think that more than anything, they just got really efficient at doing their job.

I think that's one of the nice things about being at the J-Soc levels. You can carve away all the bullshit and get rid of what doesn't work. You still have to deal with bureaucracy and all that stuff. But like the support to operator ratio is oftentimes like 12 to 15 to 1. That just doesn't exist, you know, at a conventional unit for a variety of reasons. But, you know, there were guys who had to be. just so much combat experience, which I often wonder whether or not that's like a good thing or a bad thing. I have, you know, pretty deep conversations with friends like, you know,

should combat exposure actually be limited? Is there a point where you start going down the back slope of that and it's irrecoverable? Again, I don't know if there's a right or a wrong answer to that, but I think it's an interesting thought experiment. But they just were so experienced with what they did, their ability to make real-time decisions on target was like nothing I've ever seen. The, I mean, I know in Afghanistan, particularly Iraq too, but the enemy was also evolving quickly in being able to pick up our, you know, when they put the charms on the cell phones that will let them know that their cell phone was being pinged.

Like they were getting better at knowing what our TTPs were and how we were developing targets and things like that. Yeah, we're not the only people who do AARs. Yeah. You know, yeah. For every drop hole that we've all been a part of hundreds of times, they send an interviewee out there as well. And that's why, you know, I mean, not to talk about how buildings and rooms are cleared,

but what I can tell you is when I was going through Green Team, they were still teaching hostage rescue clearance where you're running into every, you know, every door you're just running in there. And now, I mean, there better be a fucking compelling reason for me to cross the threshold of the door because there's ways you can do external. that reduced the risk to the person who's doing the clearance. Yeah. That came out, though, because people were starting to get their asses handed to them in the

corners of rooms where you had the tactical disadvantage for a moment when you were making entry. Yeah. Yeah. During that time frame is all of this is happening. I mean, are there any particular significant operations to stand out in your mind? Either things went really wrong or things went really well and you were like, hell, yeah. Or really funny things that happened.

Yeah. No, I mean, my career was pretty much down the middle of the road. I mean, I was, I don't have any super sexy stories to tell, which I think is probably, you know, it's as equally as good or bad. You know, like, a lot of times people are like, oh, I mean, why does that guy have a silver star or Navy Cross? I'm like, well, let me tell you about the guys who died in the occurrence of him getting that. Like, most of those awards and stories are tied to your friends die. Yeah. Things going catastrophically wrong.

and people displaying incredible amounts of heroism and courage because they had to, not because they wanted to. So, I mean, it just, you know, I did the deployments that I was asked to do. I did the operations that came up for our time period, did my time there, and then moved on with my career. You did mention that there were some times where you'd able to, or the unit, I should say, was able to, like, swipe a suicide vest cell off the face of the map. I mean, that must have been both the amount. of intelligence that goes into prepping a target like that and then you guys actually actioning in it

must have been a pretty big deal at the time well we had really good enablers you know the j2 or s2 or n2 depending on what you know code you want to use which is the intelligence department they when they do their job well it makes the guys on targets that's their job is pretty easy you know knocking down the wrong door day after day after day or night after night after night sucks right hitting the correct target the first time and actually having a measurable impact, it feels a lot better for sure. And all of that stuff, though, and that's one of the things that I really hate about the publicity in general when it comes to military operations.

Like, it just all the enabling personnel that actually make the sausage that actually allow all this stuff to happen, they never get their time in the light. And it sucks. Yeah. Absolutely true. All the logistics guys, the, the mechanics who repair the aircraft. And yeah, you don't hear so much. I'm not doing that shit.

I'm not out there throwing wrenches on a head. helicopter, like, come on. When it's 105 degrees outside and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you left the unit or in 2006, you said you left the unit and what happened at that point in time? Went to the West Coast and did kind of like a rehab tour as a Buds instructor for 18

months and that's where I picked up my commission and then went to Team 3 for my final operational deployment in 2010 to Afghanistan. So rehab tour, you got injured? Yeah, I got shot actually with Kag with a squadron on a target in Iraq. Can you tell us? Are you comfortable telling us about that operation? Again, it was like down the middle of the road. I think we were going after like a kidnapping cell.

We were using sensors to try to triangulate somebody. And, you know, sometimes you got to walk around. make some noise and you're trying to locate somebody. And me, sometimes you're not as sneaky as you think you are. So we came back and retraced our steps and it's like, oh, shit, the building that now has the lights on is the building that we need to go into. Sometimes people have the tactical advantage on you. And, you know, I spent years like, what did I do wrong? Like, how did I not see that particular person?

The reality is, like, I didn't do anything wrong. It's just, you know, it's just the way that it was. But again, like it wasn't anything like I got dropped. I got shot from like, I don't know, 15 feet away, maybe, the AK round and the hip, like flat on my back. Like, there's no, like, crawling through 60 link and grenade pins, like saving Private Ryan's story. It's like, okay, that sucked. I thought I was going to die. It was horrendously painful.

I was one of, I think, eight guys who got injured on that target. I mean, there were little birds coming in, picking people, taking them to the green zone. I got put into a Bradley driven there. So that shows you how much more substantially injured other people were. than myself. Medevacked out of the country and like, you know, had to figure out the rest of my career from there. And it's like, like, I wish there was a sexy story behind it, but I mean, I, uh, I picture in my mind, I remember being in Walter Reed just as a liaison, a ranger who had taken a, uh, AK round to the hip. And they made like an epoxy, like 3D printed sort of

thing of what his hip looked like. And the, the ball socket just exploded. And I mean, that's like a, that's like a pretty substantial injury you're talking about. I got lucky. It missed my femur by about a quarter of an inch. And it just fried my sciatic nerve. So my actual main complaint when I got to the hospital is that it felt like my ankle was just being smashed on with a sledgehammer. So they were very like gingerly cut my shoe off, you know, in the x-ray. And they're like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Your foot's fine.

I was like, fuck you. My foot is not fine. And so for me, like that don't get me wrong. Like getting shot didn't feel awesome. It felt like like a nine inch nail sticking. out of a baseball bat and let Jose Kinsekoh in the middle of the steroid years, wind up and take a swing at you. But the nerve pain was by far worse and still problematic. I have definitely reduced sensitivity and ankle stability in my left foot to this day.

So I got lucky from those terms. Yeah, if it had hit the bone, I mean, who knows? You guys know as well as I do. I mean, it was actually the first thought that went through my head. times that I've been told that you can bleed out into the quad space of your body if you get like an internal bleed, a femoral bleed inside of like contained like that was my first thought. I was like, well, I probably have a few minutes left. Yeah. Before. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a fast bleed if it's not addressed. So you get Netavac and a Bradley, how long was it before they got you back to the states? Or did you go to lawn stool first? Or like, how did that happen? Went to launch stool first, check myself out and flew Delta home to New York where the command sent a plane up and picked me up. So I was home in three and a half days. Shit.

Yeah. Wow. And then what was the rehab process like for you? They'd like, let us know when you feel better. It was early. I mean, fuck. It was 2005. There wasn't a lot of people who were rolling around that were injured.

I went to the naval hospital in Portsmouth. Virginia. I was having a interaction with the drugs that they had me on. And my sister, who was going through a nursing school at the time, actually identified it. But I was sitting there with like a resting heart rate of 150, sweating,

headache. And I go to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital and I check into like the E3 Corman. And he goes, what are you doing here? I was like, well, I have a gunshot wound to my hip. And it really fucking hurts. And he pauses and he looks at me and he says, self-inflicted? Jesus. That's where we were in the war.

You know, there's this whole thing going on or on terror? Yeah, but they don't, you know? Yeah, yeah. People are, you know, the Portsmouth Naval Hospital are going to see. The answer is almost done. Yeah. Yeah.

So you're kind of on your own as far as like physical rehab and all that. I was and it sucked. That does suck. Yeah. And I'm glad that they have very robust systems now. I wish that I had them at that time, but it is what it is. Yeah. So you go back out to the West Coast.

And this is about the time you made the, I don't know what the Navy term is, the green to gold jump, right? Yeah. What the hell do they call it? It would be green to gold. It probably blue to gold for the Navy. Yeah. So I don't have a college degree. And I was on my, you know, in the Navy, the big jump is E6 to E7 on the enlisted side of the house.

From a petty officer first class to a chief petty officer. You have to fill, though, specific. tours of duty along the way with leadership responsibilities for for your record to be considered for advancement. I was in the middle of my leading petty officer tour, which is required for advancement to E7 when I got shot. So they counted it as incomplete. So I had my record submitted to the Chiefs Board two years in a row and it was swiped off the table. It's not even considered if you don't have that wicket checked on the box. And I didn't even know why. I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And I finally got some feedback from somebody who was at the

board who was like and they're not supposed to say anything to anybody but the guy was like hey they're not even looking at your record because you don't have your lPO tour and i had just checked into buds where a guy had just started his lPO tour which you have to hold for two years at a shore command before it will count so i would have had to wait for him for two years then do mine for two years and then submit my package the next year so a five-year like hamster wheel And I started, I wanted to stay in the military and I started doing some research and I found this program called the LBL program, the limited duty officer program, which is the same commissioning for the seal community, at least that the Warren officers go through as well. It's the same package, same interview, just a different commissioning. And I did some research on it. Realize you didn't need to have a college degree. It was largely based off the merits of your service record, put a package in and got picked up, first look. Awesome. Wow. So with the, what rate were you when you? went in because we didn't talk about that at all, right?

OS. A radar scope operator because they made the change. Now everybody is an SO, which I think stands for special operator. So being a seal is now its own rate inside of the Navy before it was not. You had to pick in boot camp if you qualified for buds. I think there was a list of like 12 or 16 rates or MOSs for Army and Marine Corps folk that you could choose from that they would allow you to select. And I picked mine based off the shortest school, which would net me the fastest arrival time

at SEAL training. Right. And what, you know, and like you said, they've changed it now. But what a lot of, like, one of the challenges for like SEALs and divers at that time was that you had to compete. You didn't get promoted as a SEAL. You got promoted as an OS. So you were competing against people who were doing the OS job across the Navy every time you wanted to get promoted. And I had to take the OS test. Right. OS is operation specialist, which is a radar scope. operator, you do not want me looking at a radar scope. I don't know how to use one. The only time I've ever seen a mockup of one was at OSA school.

And then I had to take all of my advancement tests on questions based on that rate, which sucked. Now, with the limited duty officer, like you say, sort of like a chief warrant or whatever, where you don't need to agree, but it keeps you from doing it, does it keep you from being like a, like a, what's the main the surface warfare

like the surface warfare surface warfare is just a segment so you are I don't know what they're called but like chaplains right they're not they're not line officers so in the Navy if you want to have any level as an officer like if you want to have any input or ranking inside of like the tactical hierarchy you have to have a star on your sleeve meaning you're a line

officer. There are like chaplain is a good example of one. They don't have a star on there and I can't think off the top of my head what they do have, but there is a delineation between line officers and all other types of officers. Line officers can fall into that chain of command and be in positions where you're making tactical decisions that non-line officers cannot. So the LDO kept me inside of that line officer pathway. Okay. Okay. Great. And so your last deployment then was as an officer yes okay um could you tell us a little bit about that um i mean you were it was back to was team three did you understand to afghanistan to afghanistan yeah most of the time was spent in the nobohar province of afghanistan uh it was awesome i was the only person in that task unit who had

ever set foot in that country and as an officer i spent my time uh carrying around a 300 win bag and a javelin and shooting them both at people so not the traditional officer job no not a at all and it was fucking awesome. I mean, were you with a with a platoon at this point? Yeah. So I went over there and there was an officer whose wife was getting ready to get birth. So I did a little bit of filling in for him for the first two months, then hopped in between the two operational platoons as the operations officer. But because I was the only one qualified on the javelin, they all wanted me to go with them every time they went out there because

you can reach out and touch somebody with that thing. So I got to pick, you know, the position that I wanted to sit in and I had been doing terrain observation and studied that time for a long time. So let's just say I had some very choice vantage points that had a lot of overlapping fields of fire. And how did the war evolve from, you know, you were there early on the Karzai deployment. But I mean, now this is what are we talking about? 2007, 2010. 2010. Okay.

How did the war change from your perspective? It was getting far more constrained for some reasons that I agree with and other ones that I have a harder time palletting. You know, right before I got there, they came down with the no night raids guidance. And then another thing that was being really restricted was your ability to call CAS or close air support because they had just dropped a bomb on that school bus that was full of a wedding party. And, you know, those things, they have consequences. But, you know, the guidance at the time was, hey, no more night rates. So we're going to take your technological advantage and completely strip it from you.

And then the cast became an issue, especially if some people that you needed to leverage Cass against got to structures, they would not let you level the structure. You know, people always bitched about those ROEs. My thoughts on ROEs is they define for me pretty clearly my left and right limits. And it's for me to figure out how to navigate and operate inside of those, the maximum of my ability. So that's what I focused on because I'm not going to change, you know, the CGs guidance on, you know, literally you had to sign the cast statement and the night rate statement.

Partner force was starting to get pushed on us a lot more. And then the ratio started going a lot higher, you know, like one to six to one to three to one to one. And it's like, hey, man, we're in the desert in the summer in helicopters that can hold eight people. Like, what do you actually want us to be able to accomplish here? So complications. But again, it's not your job to sit there and bitch about the problems presented to you. It's your job to sit there and figure out how you're going to work inside of those problem sets, which is what we did. but it was definitely changing.

It was far more constrained. And again, for some reasons that I would agree with and others that I would probably push back on. But it was what it was. But definitely a different war. And the same thing was happening in Iraq as well, too, from my understanding. Is that why you fired off so many javelins because you weren't able to use casts the way that you guys wanted to? No, the javelin I ended up using because what, so we were at a fob in albahar that we literally built. Like we were staying with the A&A and A&P in their compound, which let me tell you, that's a fucking circus.

So we built a, we built a fob just outside of their area. And we had taken, I believe we had taken over Navajar, God, was it a team guy element or was it an ODA? Either way, there were some javelin missiles that were left there. But there was no clue, which is the firing unit you need to hook to the missile. And I'm like going through the armory one day. I was like, well, what are these things? I'm like, holy shit. I know how to shoot these.

And our enemy, like we've talked about, understands the effective range of both 556 and 762. And depending on what you had, which they could visually identify at that time and audibly tell, they would sit outside of that range. You know, a PKM, which is basically a belt fed 300 windbag, lobbing that shit in on you when you have an M4 to respond with sucks. They know that you can't hit them. So it was awesome because it totally surprised them.

And it was, I took a half shell ballistic helmet and traded it straight up to an ODA weapons guy for a clue. And he was like, that's, I swear to God, I'm like, I'll fucking trade you. He's like, no problem. And so I just started to launch these fucking missiles of people. And it was great because they had no idea the effective range. And the top down attack is just spectacular when people try to hide behind rocks. Awesome. So, so how to, I want to know how this happens.

You're just strolling around in the ODA armory, or you're just strolling around and you go, oh, look, a javelin. No, so it was in the armory that was left at Nabahar. It was part of the, the missiles were part of the munitions. Okay. But what I knew I didn't have was the clue. So then once I realized that I had the munition, I'm like, okay, now I need the magic piece. I need the clue.

Every time we would go to like a base where I knew there was an ODA, Because the teams did not have any clues. I knew it was going to have to come from the Army. So I would go find the ODA. I'm like, hey, what's up, guys? You guys got any clues? Can I have one of your clues? And I finally found, what do you get?

What's the Army? Is it a Bravo, a weapons guy? Yeah, yeah. He pitched it to his, uh, his O three. And the guy's like, I don't give a fuck. Those things are collecting dust. So I straight up $500 half-shell Hummet for probably a $50,000 clue. And we were off and running.

God, did he? The crew is the actual launching mechanism of the javelin. Yeah, you connect it. So you end up looking through the warhead and the final fire sequence. You're actually looking through the warhead because you have to lock the warhead. And then once you do it and you fire it, it's a fire and forget. And how many javelins would you say that you employed during your time there? I think it was like 14.

Those are $80,000 a piece. I will mind you, but taxpayers' money well spent. Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, I mean, as people have seen, you know, in Ukraine, it's an incredibly effective weapon. So, Andy, you come back from that. What's your kind of career? What's going on for you at this point? You know, you're a pretty seasoned seal at this point in time.

I realized on that deployment that that was probably my last operational lap around the track. I was having some serious issues with my ankle, especially carrying weight. And I rolled it to a degree a few times where I actually considered calling it a medevac for myself. Like I was getting to the point where I was on the battlefield, probably the biggest liability from a physical perspective. So I knew that it was unlikely that my operational career was going to continue. And then I got back and I talked to the officer, detailer. And she was like, oh, that tour didn't count either. So you need to do this one and then this one and then this one.

I'm like, what the fuck? And so I was just going to get out of the military. I was like, fuck you guys. I was just going to leave the military. I think it was at like the 15 year mark with nothing. And on my discharge physical, the doctor wouldn't sign it. And he ended up sending me to Walter Reed to Nike, which does like this robust dive, deep dive into your medical history, hundreds of pages of documentation. And it was that documentation that led to my medical retirement as opposed to just walk it away from the military.

And NICO, when was that stood up? Because that hadn't been around for a really long time at it. It was, I went there, 2011, 2012. It was probably 2010. Yeah, it wasn't brand new. Yeah, it wasn't brand new, but it was newer. Yeah. Yeah.

And really, they kind of saved you from. Yeah, I'm not intentionally. It's not what I was there for, but the doctor was like, I'm not saying. I mean, it's like anybody, I never went to medical. Yeah. You know, I would even like my, even getting shot, I think it was like five pages in my medical record. Yeah. Well.

And the guy's just like, no, you're not, I'm not fucking citing that. I was so pissed at him too. I'm like, bitch, I got plans. I got, he's just like, well, you're going to cancel him. And I was so furious. And we, we have reconnected. I mean, he's awesome. And now it's like, hey, dude, I owe you a lot because you did me an incredible soul.

Yeah, yeah. He's looking out for. for you. Yeah. That's amazing. So you get medically retired. I mean, what were your plans when you, when you left the Navy? I was already double dipping a little bit on the weekends and working for CrossFit. So I had found that methodology of exercising when I was rehabbing myself. And the company was founded in my hometown in Santa Cruz, like eight blocks away from my parents' house. So I randomly met the founders and they were at a time where they were really rapidly growing. So I had been working on the weekends and I had the opportunity to just rotate over and become a full-time

employee with them, which is what I was planning on doing absent the medical retirement. And so that just delayed that a little bit, but I was still able to just in my off-time continue to work for them. So it was a pretty seamless transition from one career to, I'll say, the next job. It certainly wasn't a career working for them. Andy, before we move out of your military career, because we can't really watch the chat so much, but a couple of things have come up that I think we have to hear. A tandem jump with a translator? That is a very long story that involves me trying to kill somebody who was vomiting on me

most of the way down and trying to steer the canopy, absent my permission or consent. Yeah, that's a story for, we don't have enough time for that one. It was a horrendous jumping experience in my life. And then monkeys stealing your gear. Yeah. Yeah, that was pre-9-11. I mean, we would train in the jungle and we would go to Thailand and the Philippines and we would do like jungle exercises and, you know, the guys who'd been there before like, hey, make sure you secure your backpack. Because there's shit out here that's curious that has opposable thumbs that can get inside of your stuff. And I woke up and there was a fucking monkey that had gone into my backpack and had taken my GPS and was up in a tree with it and I traded them for a five, five, five, six round. that's hilarious it wasn't at the time i was i was like all i could think of is the time was

i am so fucked for the paperwork that i have to do to get a new gps because again it's pre 9-11 right it's that on the plugger there's like a plugger or a mugger like this old school yeah yeah waterproof ones and you're like fuck it's it's not like that 150 dollar garmin that guys were getting later on it was like the military like secret to get like two of these things for the entire platoon and it was like a signature item and I'm looking up at a monkey that has it and you're going to go to your chief and say a monkey stole my plugger yeah so yeah I solved that one in the field yeah so how did uh so you got a uh at least some some a bit of a buffer there when you transitioned out of the military getting into crossfit um how did how did post service life treat you i mean

how did how did you adapt to to or you know a radical change in lifestyle I mean, it was hard, but not that hard at the same time. I mean, I constantly try to remind myself that what you do is not who you are. And if I don't care who, if you join at 18 and you have like the longest military career ever, say you do 30 years, you still have a lot of runway left in front of you and get out. And I have found that the people who the most closely associate their occupation with their personality or their sense of who they are have the hardest time letting go. So I took the job very seriously, but I tried not to take myself too seriously and remind myself that it's just an occupation at the end of the day.

I miss the guys. I miss the fact that sometimes you could make the news and I was stuck watching the news. But you can figure out ways to challenge yourself and do things that are enriching and rewarding, probably not to the degree of going overseas and going on target and trying to make a tactical difference. but you know, you're, you're fortunate that you ever got the chance to do that in the first place. Most people would never even understand what that's like. So fucking move on and find out what's going to be next in your life. Because otherwise, you're going to be the dude at the VFW. It was talking about it happened 30 years ago.

Probably most of the stories that you're telling are totally made up or at the very least they have been expanded on multiple times. And at the end of the day, nobody cares. And they shouldn't. The, I mean, what was it for you? What did you find that, uh, what ways did you find to challenge yourself that were also meaningful for you? I mean, it's, it's not hard. Like people, I mean, sit down for five minutes and write a list of things that you don't want to do. And then write a list as to why. And most people are going to determine that they don't want to do it because it's hard or it scares them. That's where the most growth is going to come from you as a person. Um, so I, I, I enjoy learning. And I actually look back on it. I think special operations in, general rewards people and by that i mean with either opportunities or advancement or you know just your your chance to do your job more it rewards people who who like to learn and that's really all we were expected to do was like hey here's a brand new skill set be as good of it as possible in five

days so like yeah roger that and so you learn how to learn and then you learn that you really like new things like that so i played around with being a pilot um i owned a gym for a while i started doing public speaking. I became a professional skydiver and base jumper to see how far I could take that stuff, which is what ended up leading me to being on my first podcast, which ended up leading me to get me of somebody's like, hey, you should start your own podcast. I'm like, okay, fuck. I don't know if I like the idea of like putting my thoughts out there or having conversations, but maybe I should explore that. And so I just continue to try to challenge myself. It's not that hard. People try to make it far more complex than it needs to be.

Could you get into that a little bit more? Because I think there's a lot of people who know you from, you know, doing podcasts and public speaking. I mean, could you get a little bit deeper into like how that came about? You know, I mean, you said it was kind of reluctantly in your case. If I would have, before getting out of the military, if I would have written down a hundred things that I thought I was going to do with my life, public speaking and a podcast would not have been on that list.

It was not even something I had considered. And the first time I ever publicly spoke, I remember, it was a buddy mine's company. he was like, hey, you, the place that you worked at was called a seal team, right? I was like, yeah. He goes, cool. Do you want to come talk to my business about teamwork? Because it's like, it's in the, you know, the name of where you used to work. So obviously, you know a lot about it.

Like, okay, I'll give it a swing, you know, for free. And then the second speech came from somebody who was sitting in that audience. And it just built over like years. I think I probably did, I don't know, shit, 30 free speeches before I ever had this, the sack to be like, hey, I'm going to, here's my fee. And I think my first fee was like 500 bucks. I'm just like, nobody's ever been paid this much money before. Yeah, but I had never, but also I had never done anything in my life where I had to try to put a value to my own time. And that shit's scary. Telling people what your time costs is scary

until you do it for a while and you realize that the worst answer that you're going to get is no. And if they're going to say no, you probably didn't want to do it anyway. And you know what I mean? Like just go lean into the shit that you are not comfortable with. And you'll probably get a lot of growth out of that. You'll get way more growth than you will doubling down on stuff that you're already good at. And the cleared hot podcast, I mean, now you're like a legit, you know, podcaster. You have people up to your place in Montana.

You're interviewing people. I mean, tell people what that podcast is about because it's not just military stuff either. I don't know what it's about. I mean, it depends on the guest. I, my litmus test for a guest is whether or not I think it would be an interesting conversation. What I love about podcasting is you get to sit across from somebody who is passionate about fill in the blank. And you can learn about something like listening to somebody talk about things that they are passionate about is fascinating to me. And the opportunity to learn is like it's unbelievable.

Just ask questions and fucking listen. It's not that hard. So it's provided a platform where I can kind of pick and choose who I want. to at least present the opportunity to. I do have quite a few military people on, just whether it's friends or connections, and that is a large part of what I used to do. But it's not certainly not like a requirement to come on the show.

I mean, shit, I'll talk to anybody who is passionate about something that I think is interesting. What these different things that you went through, you know, your time as a pilot. Now, did you work as a pilot for a while or was that just a... So some of my duties. inside of CrossFit eventually became, I was the pilot for CrossFit, and then I was doing charter flying as well in a Gulf Stream. So there was inside and outside of CrossFit, and then it became an issue of time. So I carved out, you know, or carved away from an economic perspective, the one that was providing the least benefit, which happened to be piloting at the time.

But yeah, I put my, you know, literal metaphorical hat in the ring for a bit when it came to aviation. That's fantastic. And then with the skydiving, the base jumping, you've done some of the flying suit stuff. Like, how did that evolve for you? That was kind of just natural. You know, like inside of skydiving, there's a variety of different disciplines. And some of them really hook people and some of them have really no interest. And the wing suit stuff came from a buddy of mine.

He was talking about trying to do something to raise money for charity. And he was like, oh, what about this wingsuit stuff? And I looked into it. I'm like, all right. I'll give that a try. And most of the things that I have done in my life have been on the suggestion of other people that are more successful than myself. And especially if it's in their wheelhouse, like, hey, this is what I've been doing for a long time. And maybe you should look at doing this as well because you seem like you'd be pretty good at it.

Like, pay attention to those people, you know, especially if they're an actual friend. They're probably telling you that for a reason. That's how I fell into podcasting. But the wing-suting stuff is what led me to being on my first podcast, which is what led me to, you know, guys like Joe who made the suggestion that I started a podcast. Yeah, but none of that had any architecture or a plan to it. I was just making shit up as I go. Yeah.

Do you have a preference when it comes to skydiving, base jumping, wingsuit? Like, is there, do you have a passion for either of those more than the other? Well, tandem jumping, we know, isn't your thing. Yeah, tandem jumping may not be your thing. I mean, I've taken like 1,500 people for their first tandem. It's fun to do. Oh, really. I only do it now for friends and family.

It's not what I want to do for a living. I mean, there are people who are out there who literally make their living doing that. Wing suit skydiving is really fun. You know, wingsuit base jumping is also very fun, but the consequences are right in front of your face. And the margins for error are very tight. And I just don't have the desire to stay current or competent enough to be able to do that. And I can just go mess around in the sky, skydiving. Not risk-free, but I can do it as safely as humanly possible.

And I'm not worried about the long-term risk. there. Right. Yeah. And then your podcast, like, how did that start for you? What was, you know, the, obviously it's evolved, you know, like it's, it's big and you're well known, but you started from somewhere. And how did that start? I was one of my skydiving sponsors was 511 tactical. And I was working with one of their brand managers at the time. And I had been on Rogan's podcast and he had made the suggestion that I start my own. And the brand manager was like, well, why don't we get the gear for you to get started? And we could like, you know, presented by 511 tactical. So they brought me by very first kit, which fit inside of a small Pelican case. There was no, no video. It was two

microphones on a stand. I was literally using rogue fitness weights to like hold them in place with a zoom in between. And it built from there to I think I changed the microphones out. Eventually got like a Sony handy cam. Uh, and just slowly and incrementally evolved over time. So I think it's getting close to six or seven years at this point. I mean, I'm sitting in the studio now. So I have a dedicated studio. I have a guy who does the camera switching like you guys obviously have behind the scenes now doing that.

You know, the production level stuff. And just, you know, it's everybody likes to talk about overnight successes. And I have found that they take somewhere between five to 10 years. And people forget that. Yeah. So it's all just slow incremental growth. So now things are home and old. long though, it seems, Andy. And I mean, I'm just kind of curious, like, what do you, what's the next

challenge for you? What's on the horizon, uh, the next thing that you want to take up? Well, I just opened a brick and mortar actual business, the first ever, uh, endeavor in that route. So I opened a black rifle coffee franchise here up in Cala spell, uh, which is, it's wild. You know, it's a different type of investment, you know, literally from a monetary perspective, uh, emotionally, physically from a bandwidth perspective, you know, kind of, creating a culture, creating a team that goes along with that, staying out of their way, letting the managers do their job. I am trying to do more of what I like and less of what I don't like.

I have adopted the philosophy that no is a much more powerful word than yes. And carving shit out of my life is what I want to do. So I spend my time doing, you know, traveling the world, doing jiu-jitsu with my wife, working in the coffee shop and being there and making sure that that investment, bears the fruit that we hope that it does and then focusing on the podcast and all of those things exist in a three block radius where i live for uh for your podcast you know obviously you have on other military people but what what are some of and i'm not going to ask you what your favorite episodes have been because i know how hard that question is to answer but we're have there been

episodes uh where you interviewed somebody that was outside your box of experience that you really just enjoyed and wish this that everybody could hear this person? There have been some Gold Star widows that have been powerful, whether their husband was lost in combat or made the decision to end their own life. And there's also been stories of people that are just like homesteading in Alaska, you know, that just have a fascinating passion for life and a willingness to just figure shit out, even if they don't know what the next step should be.

I've talked to a few people who have been running for office. those are okay. I mean, I think an episode that surprised people are like the people were shocked that I would be willing to do. And I know you guys talked to him, but it was like sitting down and talking with Matthew Cole. Like, I don't know why people think that like I wouldn't be interested in sitting down and talking with somebody who has critical or negative things to say about the SEAL teams. It's like getting fucking line. I have critical and negative things to say about the SEAL teams. Like, you know, right.

It's not, I'm not a fan of people avoiding topics because they don't want to hear what could potentially be said. Right. It's like if you don't agree with something, bring it into the light so we can investigate it. And shitty ideas, they just don't survive scrutiny. Right. Right. Do we have questions for Andy? We do. Let's see here. Cat Chaser, thank you very much for the sticker and the donation. Chief Justice Keefe. Thank you very much.

Andy Jack, David, in today's day and age, would you try out for the teams or for pararescue? Should I try to be a PJ or to stay near home? or go to Cali to be a seal. I don't think there's a wrong answer there. It's to give somebody advice on that, right? It kind of depends on what you want to do. I mean, make sure you research what PJ or CCTV guys do what their role is in the larger sphere of special operations.

And if that's what you want to do, then just dive into it headlong. If that's not necessarily what you want to do and being a seal or a range or a green beret or recont, like just make sure. sure you have an understanding of where they fit and that what that fit aligns well with what you want to accomplish in your career. Yeah. I don't think there's, I don't think there's wrong answers to that stuff. Yeah. And they're two very different jobs. So it's really more like which job.

Yeah. I mean, I know, I don't know what the SEAL team pipeline is like these days, but I know, you know, back on the day, PJCT had, like, their pipeline because of all the schools they got front loaded were the envy of everybody. But you have to like the job. job you're doing. Yeah. I mean, if you don't like T-T-T-TCC and being around like blood and shit, I don't know if being a PJ is probably for you. Yeah.

Joe's got you. Thank you very much. Did your gunjahe injury prevent you from returning to Damak or are you looking to move on to do other things? It would not have prevented me. I was able to again do that operational tour in 2010. But it was time for me to go for sure. go for sure. The opt tempo that I had been operating at was relatively high, young family at the time,

and it was the right decision for my life at that time. I probably could have gone back, not once I switched over to becoming an officer, but it was my decision to leave, and I do not regret the decision that I made for sure. Christian Holtzley, thank you very much. Thank you for your service in green team training. Thank you for the service. In green team training, do people die in training for hostage rescue or other will live fire around. I think just is there a risk during like the the green team training and stuff like that. Oh, God. I mean, the whole fucking job is risky.

As you guys both will know. I mean, people die in the basic seal pipeline. And it sucks that it happens. And what I'm about to say is going to piss people off. But I think it's essential that it does. I don't want anybody to die. And it's tragic. but I would rather have that occur there knowing that the training that is occurring is actually preparing people for the job than for it to be orders of magnitude higher because they're going into an environment and an occupation that they're not prepared for.

There's no way to completely reduce the risk on a live fire range. Accidents happen. The training is hyper-realistic. You know, people die and the execution of the training. It is not a safe career field. And you need to go into that with your eyes wide open. The odds are in your favor when it comes to a training accident, and they're actually in your favor when it comes to combat operations. But don't lie to yourself.

Consanza, thank you very much. I'm going to wrap your question in with somebody else. And he all says, I love both your podcasts and great interviews. Thanks. pimp down. Thank you. I always wondered why Andy doesn't speak more about his Navy career. I know he's a modest man, but the story is interesting. Remy is a beast.

Oh, so Remy was a guy I just had on, Remy Adelauckey. He was a guy put through training. He's a good guy. Yeah. He's fucking doing everything. Piece of shit. Director, writer, producer. Fucking disgust me with his success.

I had a fucking average career. I would rate my career as a C. I'm not like a war story guy because there's nothing to get like, oh, hey, there I was, cool. So, so there was a lot of other people there too, hundreds of people, thousands of people did the same shit that I did. Like, who gives

a shit? It's just not, there's nothing to like Harpon. It just was what it was. Andrew, thank you. Do each of the squadrons have a personality? Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's like, they're like a team. And I'd say probably the same thing for CAG as well, too.

Like there are four squadrons. They each have their own logo and they each have their own personality. And they have their own loyalty to the team as well. It's not very different than a professional sporting team. And then Jay Walker. So, Costanza, I'm going to wrap your question with this, just so we don't really harp on this topic. But Cassand has a question.

and they both kind of go back to the Matthew Cole. Did you get any flack for the Matthew Cole interview? And do you feel as though that there are issues in the teams that need to be addressed? Or do you feel as though it's more that it, do you think that is less widespread as has been portrayed? There are probably people who have an issue with the fact that they use the term platforming. how could you platform somebody like that? It's like, how about I'll do whatever the fuck I want to do with my own platform and you can eat a buffet of dicks. Right.

So there might be people who take issue with that. And there probably are a lot of people who take issue with some of the things that he said. But that doesn't make those things invalid. I'll be the first person to tell you that the seal community isn't perfect. And I'm sure both of you would be the first people to tell me that the Army, Ranger, CAG, Green Beret community isn't perfect either. Oh, yeah. And at the end of the day, the reason for that is we're talking about human beings.

And human beings bring human being problems. We've never had a period in the United States history where we had a consistent level of warfare to the degree that special operations were fighting inside of. There's going to be good and there's going to be bad. The only thing that I think we should focus on is balancing how much. time we spend talking about either because what you go looking for when you investigate those communities is what you are going to find so if you go into a community and you want to write a book or a series of books specifically the seal community you want to and if you want to write it about missteps if you want to write it about mistakes if you want to write it about things that shouldn't

have happened what you're going to find if you consistently look in the shadows is shit that's in the shadows that falls below the bar that this country should hold that community to. And what I'll say is that's the exact same thing that would happen in any other community that that level of scrutiny was applied to. So I don't think it's necessarily an issue of the SEAL community or the special operations community. It's a human being problem, especially when you task a very small section of human beings to do incredibly abnormal things for a long period of time.

It doesn't excuse their behavior in any way, shape, or form, but you shouldn't be surprised to find it either. Right. Right. Right. And the thing is, you know, and Jack, you know, has written quite a few very critical articles on, you know, what special forces and some of the things that have been going on recently, you know, with that type of stuff. And people can hate people for that. But it's also like we have to, we have to shine a light on these things in these communities. because we want these communities to be better.

Nobody hates these communities. We want them to be better. And you don't get better by ignoring, you know. Yeah. I mean, hey, don't hold your family hostage at gunpoint. No one will write about it. Right, right. It's not, you know.

Yeah. And again, it's like we're just talking about human beings. Right. I mean, we all, it's the suicide epidemic. Not that I like that term, but I have spent so much time trying to make sense, rational sense of an irrational decision. Now, and I know in that moment for a lot of people, it seems like the only rational decision. But if you look at it from a broader perspective, like it's not a rational choice. How the fuck did we get there?

You know, like it's statistically higher than a lot of other communities, especially just a civilian world. if you strip that way, EMS first responder, you know, that whole world. It's like astronomically higher. And everybody that I've ever worked with has a different capacity for stress, for, you know, their stress relief tool, whether it could be healthy or unhealthy. And it's just everybody gets to a breaking point at some point in time. And I think what's tough is nobody knows when that's going to be. And a lot of times people can really hide it.

And I wish we could figure out a way to not allow that to happen. But if my choice were to make sure that none of the things ever happened that people write stories about or destroy the operational ability of those forces, I would rather have those forces being capable and doing the job that they are tasked with doing and figure out a better way to try to manage the aftermath. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And then, Brian, thank you very much. Got to ask him about the two world records he set for charity. Oh, in January, we did a skydiving expedition. So we did seven jumps in seven continents in six days. And we were raising money for folds of honor. So we started in Antarctica to Chile to Miami, to Barcelona, to Cairo, to UAE, to Australia, which was pretty sweet. And yeah, all the money went towards charity. I think we raised a million and a quarter dollars for folds of honor,

which is educational scholarships for Gold Star families. And also now they've wrapped in first responders as well, which is awesome. And let me just check. Dan Bash wants to know if you'll rate his dick broom. I'd be willing to rate a quality dick broom. I can appreciate one. It's a mustache. If you two are wondering what the fuck I'm talking about.

A flavor saver. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know the Army term for that, but we're talking like full Magnum P.I just dusting off that shaft as it just goes into your mouth. Yeah. I mean, the best practice is. I mean, I'm from the Navy. Come on. You guys know all the gay jokes.

Yeah, yeah. I was a corpsman in the Navy. I was a penis machinist, so I'm right there with it. I have been assured that it's not gay if you're underway. Yeah. I've been told that it's not. About a million times. I've been told that it's not queer if you're near the pier.

fair I'm looking for confirmation guys don't play dumb I wasn't in a fleet so I couldn't tell you I'm just going to say that the village people did not do an in the army song he didn't

and I say that as a proud Navy veteran um Isaac thank you um I want to see how I can frame this he wants

did you ever work with any SMU or any intelligence SMUs. Yeah, it's kind of, it's more of a, I don't know that we can ask that, Isaac. It's more of a, of a sort of. Yes, Isaac, when you're at J-Soc, that's all you work with, and we can leave it at that. Yeah.

All right, this is a really long question, Josh. This would be a great opportunity to do some clarification. Andy has been very adamant about publishing, about the publishing of the Niger Ambris footage. and you had an SS Soldier's iPhone. However, without the footage, she never would have won any ground against the Afrikan leaders in defending her husband's legacy, not wanting to wash dirty laundry in public, but Andy and Jack have been on opposite sides of certain current events for a long time

and both being vocal about it from possible war crimes and corruption, troop discipline, and culture. This would be a great opportunity to show the world how people of integrity can discuss conversational topics in a beneficial way and not bother. and not othering or outbrowing each other. I have high expectations. Yeah, I mean, let's start with. How does this person know that the footage was an actual lever that made the difference?

The answer to that is, you don't. I don't think it did. Yeah. And so, I mean, the premise of your, of your assumption, I'm going to say is categorically false. Yeah, I had a huge problem with soft rep posting the footage and watermarking it. and I was very vocal about that. I mean, this is the first time Jack and I have ever had a conversation. I know that you worked with an individual that comes from the world that I came from,

and I don't know where anything stands with any of these people so people can fill in the blanks if you want. He who shall not be named. Yeah. Yeah, I have stepped away from there four or five years ago. So the man has a casual relationship with the truth. And I take issue with that. I have no issue with people being in business to be in business. I have people, I have an issue with people leveraging footage and watermarking it with the intention of getting eyes, but the actual intention is driving, driving traffic to their for-profit business.

If it was a mistake, it was a mistake. If it wasn't a mistake. And again, like, I know exactly what this person is talking about, but at the end of the day, I voice my opinion and I move on. There's nothing that I can do about it. I allowed one of the widows to come on and tell her story. and it was fucking powerful. And I'm glad that I did. My issue is with that individual.

I addressed it directly with that individual who then proceeded to block me because they're not interested in what I have to say. And that's okay. I don't give a fuck. And I guarantee you that that person would absolutely run to me if we ever met face to face. And I'll just say there's a reason why people like that don't associate with larger groups inside of the community. It's because they're not welcome and they're not supported. So you're going to have to do a little bit of connecting the dots on your own on that one because that individual is not the only person who's kind of in that boat. But at the end of the day, you know, I voiced what I thought and moved on.

That's all I can do. Yeah, there, I mean, there's a lot that goes into all this. But I mean, just from my perspective, but I'm not going to sit here and try to justify things or whatever. I just say that things were handled in a certain way. and they could have been handled in a much better way, in a much more professional way, and they weren't. I guess you're probably talking about Michelle. Michelle Black wrote a book.

And this is, I mean, maybe this is like the more positive way to take the discussion is to direct people towards Michelle's book. She wrote a book called Sacrifice, and she did a ton of research talking to all the people who were involved in that incident and what her late husband, through in Niger and wrote it into a book called Sacrifice. I read it this year.

I highly recommend people go and take a look at that book if they really want to know the true story of what happened out there that day. She and her unwillingness to take no for an answer uncovered far more than that video ever would. It's true. Yeah. And then Mr. Stump has interviewed. Several people involved in fighting human trafficking, does Mr. Stumpf have any insights into the reputation of Tim Ballard and his Underground Railroad OUR, among other professionals operating this area?

Tim Ballard and OUR portrayed in the movie Sound of Freedom currently and semi-frequent topic of discussion for a myriad of reasons. I know almost nothing about the man, so I'd be over the front of my skis saying anything about his organization or him himself. Okay. Gerald, thank you. As a big watch guy myself, I was wondering what Andy and his teammates were. I know Seals have a long history with Rich Watch as such as Seiko, Rolex, Panerae and G-shock. I'd say G-shock, I mean, that's what we got issued. The other ones you listed are far, far better. I cannot afford a Panery. The classic team guy watch was the Rolex Submariner. And I've never been like a huge watch guy. And the only watch I've ever bought for myself, And this is so dumb and gay to say. But because I like the James Bond filmed, the Omega C-Master, the blue one that Daniel Craig wore, when I got commissioned, I was able to justify first to myself and then to my wife that I needed an excellent time piece so I could sit in at the table with the other officers. I love it. Yeah.

I used to have an Omega C-master. I got stolen during a move. So, but it's great. Oh, that is fucked up. There's such great watches. Yeah. I mean, I don't ever wear the thing. but it's just like a timeless design.

Yeah. Jess Srickland, thank you very much. Dealer's choice based on the feeling of the interview story about J-Soc operator shooting a box of Pop-Tarts on base or if Andy had been shot and could go back with all the nods she's gained from that day up until now, would he have stayed in longer, gotten out sooner, or left him around the same time? I mean, I can answer both. I probably would have stayed in if I had been physically.

able to do so in the Pop-Tart story. It's not about J-Soc operators. It is about a J-Soc operator who was in a chow hall with a fucking box of Pop-Tarts and he was sitting there because this is how high speed we are. He would drop his mag, rack a roundout that was left in there, pointed at the Pop-Tart box, and pull the trigger. And let's just say one of the times he went out a sequence. Oh my God. He 12 ringed it, though. Yeah.

Nice. Did he get it? He went home right afterwards. I was going to say, did he get a pretty convenient flight home after that? Oh, yeah. Fucking chicken or steak, window or aisle. Two of one, baby, which is one. All expenses paid.

And Mark Olson, I'd be interesting here you guys touch on some of the thing in Matthew Cole's books. I mean, I feel like we kind of talked about that a little bit. Well, here's the thing, too. And because people ask me all the time about the stuff that he wrote. I was not present at anything that he wrote about in that book. So I can't talk about with any level of authority or experience about what he wrote. Can I tell you that the SEAL community has fallen short and committed war crimes?

Yes, it has happened. In the history of the SEAL community, it absolutely has. In the post-9-11, G-Watt era. But I was not physically there on the things that he wrote about. So I can't speak with any level of, Like I said, authority. I mean, if I could or I would have been there, I would tell the truth about it. Yeah.

But he is not writing about anything I was present for. Yeah. And, you know, we don't have any firsthand knowledge of anything like that. So, you know, R.S. Thank you. Why is Joe Rogan considered the podcasting goat? I would say probably because of, I mean, the sheer number of downloads. I mean, we're in the multiple billions at this point when it comes to downloading.

It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you guys probably hear it too, like, oh, I'm going to start a podcast. I'm going to be the next Joe Rogan. I'm like, no, you're not. Like, let's remember. Joe Rogan was famous before he started his podcast.

Right. You know, the Fear Factor dude who was already doing comedy, who was already doing news radio. And I'm not saying, like, you can't be successful without that. But let's also at least, like, have a relative idea of what's going to be possible. I mean, the difference in distance between where Joe is at and probably the next most successful podcasters, like trying to broad jump the Grand Canyon. I would say he's considered one of the goats because he's curious. And he will bring just about anybody on and talk with them about whatever they want to.

And I think he does a very good job of limiting what he says based around what he knows. And nobody's perfect about this by any stretch. But he's really honest about what he knows and what he does. And Andy, to one of your previous points, I mean, if you look at like the early Joe Rogan, it was kind of like haphazard and goofy and just sort of thrown together. Number one needs to go in a fucking time capsule. It was literally like a laptop screen with like little snowflakes coming down. And so yeah, overnight success 10 years later.

Right. Yeah. Have you found, do you feel, I know you say you don't really know what your podcast is about, but obviously, you know, you're at 122,000 subscribers. Like there's a measure of success there. Have you found your stride? Do you feel with it? Do you know, do you have a sense of what works and what doesn't work at this point?

Yeah, but I also, I mean, yes and yes and yes, but it's a double-edged sword. I don't want to pander to anybody because at the end of the day I'm doing this. I mean, I'm largely doing it for myself. It's just an extension of being curious and wanting to learn. Like you could, it'd be so easy to try to chase headlines. Like, oh, this just happened. Let's just go try to find an expert on that. And I don't want to do that.

I'm interested in things that interest me. And I'm honestly quite disinterested in a lot of shit that happens in society. And there are things that people care about that I don't. Like I don't give a fuck how popular the Kardashians are. I would rather suck start a pistol than sit down and have a conversation with one of them. I don't care. And the episode would probably crush, right? Because of the audience that they would bring.

Right. not willing to so it mean like but that would work right so to answer your question like you know it would work because podcasting is more about the i think the guest than it is the host but how much are you willing to whore yourself out i guess is the question that we all have to ask ourselves right demitri bingo yeah yeah no we we have those exact you know we will have on you know we stay in a certain wheelhouse but we'll have on an analyst and you know for a lot of people having on an analyst that's It's not having an operator, but it's still a great interview. But it's still an important part of the history that we want to cover, you know.

Yeah. Operators don't do shit without analysts. Right. Yeah. No. Well, so where can everybody find you? Obviously, cleared hot podcast. You guys, if you enjoy this show, you'll love, you'll love this show.

You probably already know that, but check them out. YouTube and all podcast platforms. Where else, Black Rifle Coffee, you know, in your hometown, your brick and mortar? Yeah. And then as far, like, I'm not crazy active on social media, but the platform the most active on is Instagram. I mean, it's just my name, Andy Stumpf, 212.

But yeah, I mean, I'm out there. Just kind of like all of us in the digital age. I mean, if you look hard enough, you can find everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else you want to plug anymore? Charity events coming up. up or anything on your horizon.

I have some stuff that I'm working on, but it's a little bit too early, probably to throw it out there. I've been on the, uh, been a little bit too eager in the past before and like, hey, guys, pay attention for this. And then it doesn't happen. I'm like, yeah, well, that didn't happen because I'm an idiot. And I said that that was going to happen before I was ready. So now I wait a little bit. Right.

Right. Right. Awesome. Andy, thank you for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. Of course. And, uh, everyone watching this Friday, we're going to be back with, uh, Gary Winderer, author of the Six Silent Men series. He served as a Lerp in Vietnam. Really excited to have him on the show.

We've done Ken Miller. We've done Larry. And now Larry wanted me to make fun of Gary as being the least handsome of the bunch. I mean, it's got to be somebody, right? We'll break Gary's balls a little bit. But no, he's a really good guy. And I mean, like we talk on this show all the time about what our influences were that got us to join the military and reading those Lurp books, those memoirs when I was like.

kid was what did it for me. So we're still. I don't know how they walk around with balls that big. Yeah. And their tiger stripes. No, yeah. I mean, when you interview those guys in, like the software in Iraq and Afghanistan was so tame compared to what those guys were doing in Vietnam. It's just insane.

I had John Stryker Meyer on. Oh, yeah. And he's talking about the shit that they did. And all I could think of when he was talking, I'm thinking to my head. how much trouble you would be in if you tried to put in like a risk assessment operation order based off what they were doing. Right. They would laugh you the fuck out of the country.

Yeah. John's the man, you know, and well, it's another whole conversation. People can go check out the interviews with John and learn more about that. Awesome, dude. So yeah, Andy, again, thank you, man, for doing this. appreciate you spending some of your evening with us tonight and hope to talk to you soon. Yeah, my pleasure. And for your listeners, you guys are going to come out and we'll do one of the cleared hot podcasts. I think we agreed on November. Yeah, November. November. Yep. Yep.

And right around the corner, but not too far away. Yeah. And who do you have coming up on your show that you want to plug? Well, hold on. Let's see what I got like four or five in the can. Let's see who I got here. Okay. Uh, shit. I got some psychedelic research, uh, stuff coming up. Uh, I have a firefighter, a repeat guest, a guy who actually survived a suicide attempt and now does a bunch of speaking in the firefighter first responder world about the trauma that they carry as well to, uh, a guy that I did, uh, X Green Bray officer actually who I did some work with teaching, uh, PJs and CCT, got into the marriage. marijuana industry and had his farm illegally rated by a sheriff's department in Los Angeles. I'm going to bring a little bit of light and hopefully some heat onto those fuckers.

It was on tribal land as well, too. So there's some nice federal guidelines. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. That's illegal as fuck. Yeah. It is 100%. Yeah.

It's almost as if there was, I mean, if only there was a software programmer app that you could use to look to see who own the property. Right. Onix. I don't know. And then a guy who started X.E.L. who started the beverage company, Kill Cliff. and talked a bunch about just being an entrepreneur and a post-911 seal named Todd L. Rick.

So that's kind of what's lined up coming up for the next month. Cool. Fantastic. So everybody, please check out cleared hot. You'll love it. If you haven't already. You know, surprise yourself. All right.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. We'll see you guys Friday. Yep. See you guys.