The Team House - SEAL Team 6 Operator | Andy Stumpf (throwback episode)

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your 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? Or 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, 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 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's, 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. 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 or tear 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 experienced it more from an upbringing perspective, kind of bouncing around being an army brat.

My dad threw a firsthand experience in Vietnam. And, you know, then I come home when I'm 17 years old and I have a 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 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 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 that the path into the seal community is unfortunately far to 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, 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're open to get out of it? Where did that come from? I don't know. And I still don't have a good answer. heard my dad was not a seal he worked uh with seals occasionally in the mokong 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 um but it didn't treat me and they were 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 is you know 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 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 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. me. It was like this magnetizing pull. And I think at 11, I certainly didn't have an answer that question. Like, I don't know. It sounds cool. But that's also 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 it 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 to explain. 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 G.I. 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. Right. 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 with the deal. 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 says it's like the hardest, 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. 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. It 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 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 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 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 a challenge that you faced while you were in buds 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, 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 them, you know, 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 a team 5 and i mean

it was i don't have the vocabulary for how awesome it was i mean it's since i was 11 like it's all i ever wanted to do um and then you walk across the quarter deck which is the stupid naval terminology army guys probably just called the front door but we have to have some stupid term and uh 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 there'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 at t4 and i want to do it all

before lunch. And that's what they'd 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. Oh, you know how it was. It's the goddamn exact same thing it was for you. Shut up, new guy. Here's, you know, like, and I, 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.

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, they were just transitioning to what was then, called what did they call it it was called s s t t 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, we're not going to really be able to work with them. 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'd 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. did the first class of STT, which has 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-226 and they're all disassembled. And 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, you know, the muzzle velocity coming out of it? What's this, the spring? Spring recoil guy. Like, 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. the tides. Here's the current. Landnav, I mean, 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 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 A plan was.

It was like 59-11 or something like that. So I was back and 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 camis. 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 the Pithwick stuff, so personal indicted for war crimes. But like, it was, 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. Right. With their MP5s and handlebar mustaches, which I deeply appreciate to this day,

you would see people who are trying to get to team three from all the other teams. Right. Because they're like, God damn it. We just went over to Europe. I'm like, yeah, you were in like some beautiful country drinking, 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 infighting. It was 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, you.

Yeah, so I can imagine sort of the the combat or the operational envy that was there and some guys obviously were probably, I'm sure that some teams 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 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.

We'd talk about the golden con Xbox and all the things that we would get and how badass 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 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. Hey, guys. a new sponsor that we have today. It's Brunt Workwear. They make great boots, great workwear. If you're, if you're a worker like me, if people who know me know I love to work with my hands, like a man, my hands and my body. And when you work with your hands in your body, you need a good pair of boots. And honestly, I was so excited that we had Brunt as a sponsor because I bought a pair of boots a year and a half ago from them. Look at that. These are used. worn

love these these are called the marines I love them super comfortable waterproof so if you're out there so you could sit and stand in standing water and mud or whatever gets the job done

Brunt workwear incredible product so if you're a man or a woman right who cares right babe if you're a man or a woman who works with their hands and their bodies

and you need a great pair of boots you go to bruntworkware.com you use the code team house for $10 off. That's bruntworkware.com with the code team house and you get $10 off. They're going to ask you who sent you. You know who sent you. It was the team house.

Bruntworkware.com. Teamhouse is the code for $10 off. I love you. Thank you. Thank you to Brunt Workwear for supporting the show. So Andy, back to you. You're getting all this awesome experience. You're living the life as 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 um like at any point did you think that you might withdraw your package or whatever because you're worried that the whole afghanistan thing would be

over so soon that and you'd be in training during that time no um i mean the fomo is real i feel like just about everybody in the military probably felt that like oh my god yeah 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 just like ha-ha yeah jokes on you there's more than enough for everybody um and then some so i had never i mean the fomo was real for sure but that i i i 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 Huma 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,

to the teams like to pitch anybody or is it just a word of mouth thing in my second platoon two of the guys uh two of the senior guys one of them was uh the head of the comms department and i was his secondary and the other one was the point man for uh 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. And I'm fucking no, I can't keep up with the acronyms. Nor do I care. But 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 you 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 in and listed. There's no ballooning out of the Bud's course. You share in the suffering and 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 followed by punishment, as it should be.

Only because it happened to us, so we have to generationally pass that down to you. 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 they open it all to all services. So you're going to get a hodgepots. You're going to get a buffet of people. You may not understand their background or origin story to the degree that you may. 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, 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, and even though there's not like the precursor. sort of S-F-S-F-AS-style selection because everybody already did buds, but there's still that winnowing, like it's still on your hall file, 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. Yeah, one of the things that they instituted when I was a Buds 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 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 files and the student feedback, I think it is absolutely essential. But, 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 plenty of time as a class away from the instructor staff where they can show other students who they really are.

Right. And giving the students the ability to give us that feedback in a manner that didn't have their name associated with it. Pure reviews. You know 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 there, 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 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 um what when you did green team not having any idea what was going on so you had been a seal and obviously you as a seal you're like okay 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-Socq 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, the J-Soc 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 describe 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, a shitty pair of scissors and an almost useless knife. Well, at Development Group, I was like, it was two tools. Like, you know, not saying we only did two things, 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 in. And I have a multi, you know, $50 million killhouse 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 is you know they don't do as much stuff you mean tasking development group with 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 um in a remote location somewhere i really want a j-sson 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, you 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 ended 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 it 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 Jort cycle. So 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 extra AC units 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 hours. speech and we were just sitting in tents and our our 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 and on what ended up being an agricultural school, which was the number one chem biotarget. We, we had Nelson Miller on the show.

And he's with me. Yeah, he's telling us about it. However, he was going to be a phrase. Yeah, yeah. Can you walk us through it from your point of view? And also just for looking through goddamn social. Dota straw is sweating my ass off. There you go.

Objective number one. Yeah. So just for the, I don't know, the enjoyment of our, 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's that movie with like Lawrence Fishburn, where it was,

Was it outbreak or Ebola or something like that? Those suits were nice. They looked comfortable. They were big and they looked like they were air condition. Or the big flat screen in front. Yeah. So imagine trying to replicate that, but you have to go run around and potentially fight people.

And of course, it has to be camouflaged. So it's basically, 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. My 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 know, you're like 30 dudes in the back of 47 all trying to get their shit on and like tucking each other's, you know, all that this stuff that goes around the mask and 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 grate anyway. And now it's far their way from your face. So it's just, just for people out there, just go rack, 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 or see anything.

And they nuked the power grid like this transformer 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. status, which they did. So there was a like a gunfight going on out in the street. I was in the assault element and started going inside of the building. We had little birds overhead. We had snipers up with 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. I'm 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 biothread. And I actually would have rather been killed by a chem biothreat.

and 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 a 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 a buddy of mine like, hey man, I don't think it's going to go that well for us if 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. Hey guys. Our show is sponsored by GhostBed. Check them out. Please, they make awesome mattresses, awesome pillows, awesome betting. Ghostbred provides high quality of super comfortable award-winning mattresses crafted in the U.S. and Canada.

Did you know that 60% of U.S. adults report being too hot when they're trying to sleep? That's me. I'm a sweaty little baby. That's why we designed all of our products with cooling features so you stay comfortable and asleep all night long. Pair any of our mattresses with GhostBeds award-winning adjustable base and get the ultimate sleep experience. Ghostbred rules are family-owned business, $60,000 plus five-star reviews. They have sleep experts on staff with 20 plus years of experience. So if you have any questions, you can hit them up and ask them, you know, maybe what kind of mattresses work for you.

20 plus year warranty. That's two times the industry standard. Free shipping and returns on mattresses. Most of the products ship out within 24 hours. They have in-house customer support and sleep experts chilling in Plantation, Florida. It rules. It's the best. They give you 101 nights risk-free to make sure that these beds are right for you.

If you don't like it after 100,000. to one night's you could send it back full refund. When you purchase a ghost bed mattress, your comfort guaranteed. I'm reading it right now and it's capital letters guaranteed. Okay. They do the right thing and they're a great company. If you're not sure which ghost bed's right for you,

like I said before, you could take their mattress quiz online or you can give a call to one of their sleep experts and they'll help you with exactly what you possibly could need what works for you and what doesn't. And the best news about this is team house listeners and viewers you get an extra 10% off site wide for a limited time you just go to ghostbed dot com slash house and use the code house at checkout one more time that's ghostbed

dot com slash house with the code house h o u s e at checkout for an extra 10% off site wide i want to thank ghostbed for their continued support i want to thank all the fans that listen and watch for their continued support without you guys we are nothing So thank you for supporting the show and thank you for supporting the companies that help support the show Ghostbed.com slash house for 10% off made in the U.S., made in Canada.

Shout out to our brothers in Canada. They rock. Check them out. I love Ghostbed. Thanks, guys. 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. It 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 and everything to do with people. 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. You know, 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, what 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. Unfortunately, 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 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 um but again like then we got back to r r and then within i don't know a couple day we went hit something up at like lake uh thar thar and then shit shortly after that we were on one of the first C-130s into a 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 whack-a-mo. 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 know, you would try to derive your own intelligence. You know, you know, the Huberant networks that, you know, the ASO guys were able to develop later on were not there. It was largely sigant.

But also, again, like, so not kinetic in comparison to what it was later on because they did what was smart. Why go tow to? I mean, I wouldn't go toe to toe. 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 AR. You know, I'm going to say. 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 what I mean? Like later on in the war, you're talking about incredibly developed cells, right? Of like suicide bombers or V. And like you could go and you would be like, holy shit. Like there's 15 suicide vests that are being built right over there. And then there's like three partially constructed V-bids. And you can take that cell off of the board. Those had much more of a feeling of this is making a difference than I think that early on deployments probably did.

Yeah. So how does that deployment end up or wrap up for you? And then what's the next stage 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. doing scud hunting because they thought that's where the the jam was going to be and you know there wasn't a jam at that point um 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 um 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 and then just started ping pong and back and forth between um afghanistan and iraq you know that the deployment cycle at a J-Soc command at that time was going to be 90 days overseas, 120 days back at nauseam until you break.

Yeah. And so one, what with the next deployment 120 days later back to Iraq? Sorry, 180. It was, so you had 90 overseas, 90, trained up 90 standby. So yeah, it was 9180.

So about basically half of every year you were at least 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 Kag guys has been fantastic. I still have very close friends 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. you for missions and budget and 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 they were like team guys but they wore an army uniform they would like defined by our similarities not by our difference 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 um the higher ups though i think saw iraqqqq is probably a more fruitful tree. So Kag for a bit focused on Iraq and DEMNK for a bit focused on Afghanistan. And again, I think Sainterhead 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 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, this really wasn't. And then, you know, you start talking like 2008, 2009, 2010. 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 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? You know, 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. Yeah. And being able to pick up our, you know, when they put charms on the cell phones that will let them know that their cell phone was being paid. Like they were getting better at 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 externally that reduce the risk to the person who's doing the clearance. Yeah. That came about, 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 are there any particular significant operations to stand out in your mind? either things went really wrong or things went really well and you're 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 like, oh, I mean, why's 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. Right. 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 know. You did mention that there were some times where you able to, or the unit, I should say, was able to, like, swipe a suicide vest cell all. 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. When they do their job well, it makes the guys on targets 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. 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 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. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely true. Although logistics guys, the guys, the mechanics, to 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 helicopter. Like, come on. When it's 105 degrees outside and yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So you left a 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 and sometimes people have the tactical advantage on you and uh 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 um 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 in the hip like flat on my back like there's no like crawling through 60 link and grenade pins like saving private Ryan 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. Metabact out of the country and like, you know, had to figure out the rest of my career from there. It's like, like I wish there was a sexy story behind it, but I mean, I picture in my mind,

I remember being in Walter Reed just as a liaison, a ranger who had taken a 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 ball socket just exploded. And I mean, that's like a, 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 give me wrong.

Like getting shot didn't feel awesome. It felt like a nine-inch nail sticking out of a baseball bat, but Jose Kinseko 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. The number of times that I had 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. 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 launch stool first? Or like, how did that happen?

I went to lawn stool first, checked 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, how many 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.

have very robust systems now. I wish that I had 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 would 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. 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 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 source 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. I realized 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. I was 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, 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. So OS is Operation Specialist, which is a radar scope operator. You do not want me looking at a radar scope. Because 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 Warren or whatever, where you don't need to agree, but it keeps you from doing, does it keep you from being like a, like a, a, what's the, 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, 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, um, 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, Chaplin 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 in the 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. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I mean, it was back to, was it team three, did you say? To Afghanistan. Most of the time was spent in the Nabahar province of Afghanistan. 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 carrying around a 300 one bag and a javelin and shooting them both at people. So not the traditional officer job. No, not at all. And it was fucking awesome.

I mean, were you 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. Okay. How did the war change from your perspective? It was getting far more constraint. for some reasons that I agree with

and other ones that I have a harder time palleting. 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 the CG's guidance on, you know, literally you had to sign, you know, 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. 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 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 out of Fob in Nabahar 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 was 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. So 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 03. 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? So the clue is the actual launching mechanism of the javel.

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 Nike, 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, but it was newer. Yeah. Yeah. And really they kind of saved you from. Yeah. I'm not intentionally.

That's not what I was there for. But the doctor was like, I'm not saying. I'm like, 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. Wow. 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. have to hear um 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 um yeah that's a story for we don't have enough time for that

it was this horrendous jumping experience in my life um and then uh monkeys stealing your gear yeah yeah that was pre nine eleven i I mean, we would train in the jungle. 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, five, six round.

That's hilarious. It wasn't at the time. 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 not one of the plugger. There's like a plugger or a mugger.

Like there's old-school. Yeah. Waterproof ones. And you're like, fuck. Yeah. It's not like that $150 garmin that guys were getting later on. It was like the military's secret. The platoon would get like two of these things for the entire platoon.

And it was like a signature item. 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, so you had a, at least some, some, a bit of a buffer there when you transitioned out of the military, getting into CrossFit. How did post-service life treat you?

I mean, how did you adapt to, to, 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, 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 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's 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. I mean, what was it for you? What did you find that, what ways did you find that? But what ways did you find a challenge yourself that were also meaningful for you? I mean, 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. So 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 chance to do your job more.

It rewards people who like to learn. I mean, 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. They're 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. 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 the idea of somebody 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 continued to try to challenge myself.

It's not that hard. People try to make it far more complex than it needs to be. Can 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? 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 um and then the second speech came from somebody who was sitting in that audience who 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 gonna here's my fee

and i think my first fee was like 500 bucks i'm just like nobody's ever been paid with much money before. 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.

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 Gulfstream.

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 wingsuit 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 this,

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 suiting stuff is what led me to being on my first podcast, which is what led me to, you know, meeting 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 5-11 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 is like, well, why don't we get the gear for you to get started? And we could like, you know, presented by 5-11 tactical. So they brought me by a 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 So you've got like a Sony handy cam. 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 ten years. And people forget that. Yeah.

Yeah. It's all just slow incremental growth. So now things are homing along, 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, the next thing that you want to take up? Well, I just opened a brick and mortar actual business, the first ever endeavor in that route. So I opened a Black Rifle Coffee franchise here up in Calispell, which is, it's wild. You know, it's a different type of investment, you know, literally from a monetary perspective. 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 knows 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 your podcast, you know, obviously you have on other military people. But 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 have there been episodes where you interviewed somebody that was outside? your box of experience that you really just enjoyed and wish 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 um 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 or like the people were shocked that i would be willing to do and i know you guys talked to him but it's 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 in shitty ideas they just don't survive scrutiny right right do we have uh questions for you we do uh let's see here um cat chaser thank you very much for the sticker and the donation uh chief justice keef uh thank you very much 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 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, they, like their pipeline because of all the schools they got front-loaded were the envy of everybody. But you have to like the job you're doing. Yeah. I mean, if you don't like T-T-T-T-C 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 gunjahat injury prevent you from returning to Danek 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. 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 either service and great team training. Thank you for their 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 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 also 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 Adelike. He was a guy put through training. He's a good guy. Yeah. 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 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 harp on. It just was what it was. Um, Andrew, thank you. Do each of the squadrons have a personality? Uh, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's, it's, they're like a team.

Uh, 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. Uh, 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 asked a question, 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 it is less widespread as has been portrayed? There are probably people who have an issue with the fact that they, they, they, they 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, um, 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. Um, 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 humans 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 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. 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 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 um and then uh brian thank you very much got to ask him about the two world records he set for charity oh in uh january we did a skydiving expedition so we did uh 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 ua e 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. I mean, the best practice. 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 you. 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 the 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. They didn't.

And I say that as a proud Navy veteran. Isaac, thank you. I want to see how. I can frame this. He wants, did you ever work with any SMU or any intelligence SMU's? 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. 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 ambush footage. And you had an SS Soldier's iPhone. However, without the footage, she never would have won any ground against the African 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 not othering or outbrowing each other i have high expectations yeah i don't know let's start with how do how does this person know that the footage was an actual lever that made the difference and the answer that is you don't i i don't think it did yeah and so i mean the the premise of your of your assumption i'm going to say is it's 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 an issue with people leveraging footage and watermarking it with the intention of getting eyes, but the actual intention is 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, 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 was 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, a ton of research talking to all of the people who were involved in that incident and what her late husband went 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. Stumpf has interviewed several people involved in fighting human trafficking. Does Mr. Stump 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 send me a 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 wore. I know Seals have a long history with wristwatch as such as Seiko, Rolex, Panerae and G-shock. Well, 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 panorai. 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 timepiece 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... 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. Just Rick and 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 non-lawful. she's gained from that day up until now would he have stayed in longer or gotten out sooner or left him around the same time i mean i can answer both uh 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 sock operators it is about a jsok 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 of 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-on-one, baby, which one one. All expenses paid. And Mark Olson, I'd be interested in you guys touch on some of the things. 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, 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, you're going to, 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, like, have a relative idea of what's going to be possible. And the difference in distance between where Joe is at and probably the next most successful podcasters, like trying to broad jump the Gray and 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 will. at like the early Joe Rogan, it was kind of like haphazard and goofy and just sort of thrown together. Jerry 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 that 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.

And 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. I'm not willing to. So, I 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, Dimitri. Bingo. Yeah. Yeah, no, we, we had 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 not, it's not having an operator, but it's still a great interview. But it's still an important point of, 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. And 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 or anything on your horizons? 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, 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 more. Right, right. Awesome. Andy, thank you for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. And everyone watching this Friday, we're going to. going to be back with 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 Mets. memoirs when I was a 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. 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 john's the man you know and um well it's another whole conversation people can go check out the interviews with john learn more about that um awesome dude um 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 Clear Top Podcasts. I think we agreed on November? Yeah. November? Yeah. And right around McWorham, 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 what I got here. Okay. Uh, shit. I got some psychedelic research 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 Cream Bray officer actually who I did some work with teaching PJs and CCTV, got into the American. marijuana industry and had his farm illegally rated by a sheriff's department in Los Angeles. 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 a guy who started X. Exceal who started the beverage company, Killcliff, and talked a bunch about just being an entrepreneur and a post-911 seal named Todd Elric. 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, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. We'll see you guys.

We'll see you guys. Hey, guys. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Teamhouse podcast, the Eyes on podcast, and the Highs on podcast. and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox,

and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Teamhouse and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy, and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once-a-week email. It'll slide into your inbox. and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week.

It's really good, man. Checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.com. Teamhousepodcast.com slash join. You go there and you enter into your email list, or you enter your email into the little thing on the website, and you're good to go, and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support,

and hope you'll consider signing up. The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.kitkiloindia tango.com backslash join you.