The Team House - Special Forces secret missions in Central America w/ Greg Walker, Ep. 27

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

The Team House, Episode 27 with Special Forces veteran Greg Walker. Greg Walker was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and is a graduate of the University of Alaska. He enlisted in the United States Army in October 1975. His career includes assignments with the 2/75th Ranger Battalion, 9th Division, 2/1st Infantry (Recon), 1/29th Infantry, B Company (Ranger) at Camp Rudder, Florida, the 10th, 7th, 3rd, 12th, and 19th Special Forces Groups, and USASFC as a a special projects officer for MG (ret) Kenneth Bowra. Greg retired from military service in 2005, and from his career as an Oregon law enforcement officer in 2006. Graduating from Portland State University on the VA Chapter 31 Program with a Batchelor in Science, emphasis of study on Veterans Issues, Greg worked for the USSOCOM Care Coalition and its CCRP program from 2009-2013. He transitioned to the private sector and served as a military liaison for two in-patient military care and treatment programs specializing in behavioral health, substance dependency challenges and military service connected suicide. Walker retired in late 2018. He is presently working on two new books. His military awards and decorations include the Washington National Guard Legion of Merit and the Combat Infantryman Badge (with Star). He is a Life Member of the Special Operations Association and Special Forces Association. Greg's past-time hobbies agate hunting, knife and tomahawk collecting, Yoga and Viking Lore. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MurphysLawstreamBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Now? Now, now, now, hello.

Welcome to episode 27. Episode 27 of the team house with your ever diligent, investigative reporter I feel like Wayne's World journalist extraordinaire Jack Murphy and I'm just some bum Dave Park Dave Park and we are here with our guests today retired Green Beret Greg Walker I Greg served in like half of the Special Forces groups if you look at his resume you had a really interesting career Greg and then also spent time in Iraq as a contractor spent time working

at the Special Ops Care Coalition, taking care of some of our soldiers who needed help. Greg has done a lot in his long life. And he's also an author, a journalist. One of the books that he wrote is At the Hurricane's Eye, U.S. Special Operations Forces from Vietnam, the Desert Storm. This is what it looks like. If any of you are interested, I highly recommend you go and pick this up. This is one of those books that anybody who's interested in special operations history really needs to

have. So without further ado, we'll get to Greg. What the, Greg, um, I'm sorry for the hiccough, but Greg, tonight, there are a lot of things we could talk about, but what I really want to talk to you about tonight is the history of U.S. Special Forces in Central America. You were one of those troops down in El Salvador, and you also spent a lot of time researching and writing about the topic and I feel like this is just a subject that there's a lot of mythology around there's a lot of BS but there's also a lot of heroism there's a lot of professional soldiering that happened down there but it's also I guess the backdrop of some really horrific war crimes and human rights violations and I thought you would be the perfect person on to talk about to really drill into some of the

nuances of what really happened down there oh well thank you for the opportunity Yeah, absolutely, Greg. We're both excited to have you here. I figured that a good place to start would be to introduce this topic by looking at the geopolitical situation at the time, though the wider conflict of the war against communism and how these deployments and soldiers, our troops were deployed down to Central America. I mean, I think it's important to remember that there were covert operations happening, in Afghanistan, Angola, other places around the world where we were trying to fight communism,

one of those battlegrounds became Central America. Well, the battlegrounds in Central America really have to include South America as well because they're all interconnected. They're all either very fraternal or no longer fraternal. And it goes back many, many, many years, of course, primarily. because of our corporate interests in these different countries. The low cheap labor that's available to our corporations and the strategic positioning of some of the different countries. Panama being the easiest to describe with the Panama Canal and the ability to transit warships through there and things like that.

So literally, if you go back, you know, 150, 160 years, almost every country down there has had some kind of either a revolution or some kind of an occupation or intervention by ourselves. What do you think made so many of the countries down there ripe for a quote-unquote revolution? One of the interesting books I read was Conflicting Missions, which talks about the history primarily of the Qaeda. Cubans and Kay Guevara trying to export the revolution from Cuba to Central and South America, when that didn't fit, when that didn't take, he pivoted to Africa. And when he blew out of Africa, he actually got chased out of Africa by the CIA and others. There was actually Navy Seals working as contractors there that helped chase Guevara out. But that's a whole other topic for another show.

Kay then went to South America and Central America. and really started trying to initiate these revolutions in earnest. I was wondering if you could just speak to a little of that. Am I exaggerating the Cuban influence? What made these countries so turbulent and susceptible to communist influence? Well, economic conditions, the poorness of the people, the richness of the land and the resources and the materials and the potential, and the very unequal disposition of wealth.

You have essentially early on, you know, they very wealthy, and then you had the very poor. And that's just a breeding ground. It's, you know, 101 for revolutionary warfare, regardless of what the political system is that is encouraging the insurgency or the conflict. The other, you know, within the 20th century, the interests of Russia to export communism, which was actually exporting its own form of imperialism into Latin America, South America, Central America. And the revolutionary groups, and the Russians obviously met with each year. other, spoke with each other, Wavara and the Castro brothers are, you know, a prime example. And it was, you know, will, essentially the Russians said, we'll, we'll supply you, we'll teach you,

we'll train you, and we'll also be a very big stick for you in terms of the United States. You know, they offer that they're going to intervene. We'll fight battles in the UN for you, which of course they did in Cuba. They did that in El Salvador, to a degree of Guatemala. Well, Guatemala went down very, very quickly. So you have, you know, you've got an A to Z. And the key is the Rikos, the rich down there, didn't want to give anything away or give anything up.

And the poor were, you know, ripe to be exploited by the doctrine that was coming in and then be armed and then go into the streets, into the mountains, into the jungles. Well, doesn't sort of the whole Marxist idea, it relies on that sort of class differentiation, that big disparity between classes? I mean, if it doesn't work with that, and they have to find some other type of wedge to drive between people, right? Yeah, absolutely. And Bolivia with Guadara, and the revolutionary movement that was already in Bolivia, it was also already in Argentina. In Bolivia, what Guavara found out was that the Bolivians living in the cities were actually pretty happy.

And the Bolivian government was actually doing that pretty good job. So there was literally, for all intents and purposes, there was no urban organizational structure that the Bolivian Communist Party could influence and ramp up and get them behind doing war in the cities. And the peasants out in the rural areas, well, they were pretty happy too, because the reach of the government into the Bolivian rural areas really wasn't all that strong. Yeah. So, you know, every once in all they had to put up with some silliness perhaps.

but they could pretty much do as they pleased and at the same time they they had these people coming in trying to agitate them that scared them and so they they did report you know we've got foreigners here we got strangers here with the guns that want us to do stuff and here's where they are so you know in that particular case he misjudged his his potential environment pretty badly yeah The documentary you asked me to watch, Craig, they pointed out that, you know, when the Salvadorian military responded to communist insurgency, I mean, they came down very hard on the civilian population with the assumption that anyone who was poor was a communist. I mean, is that something that you agree, something that further agitated the situation? Well, what's really interesting about that, and it's a great question, is in the late

50s, 56, 57, roughly, the southern, what they call the Southern Cone, which was Brazil, you know, the South American countries, primarily, they were very anti-socialist and anti-socialist anti-communists. And their thought process, they knew this is what they want to do and what they want to make of us. And they, of course, they just looked over to Cuba and watched it unfold there. And so long story short, they decided that they were going to take extra ordinary means to stamp out any kind of communist influence their presence in their countries. And they formed a confederation and then they started a program that was called the Condor program.

Yeah. And Condor was very much welcomed by the United States government and several administrations at the time. And so we ended up financing and providing training both in the United States, primarily down in Florida and in the countries. And Condor was a search and destroy operation. Yeah, there's an assassination program. And it led to an assassination on Embassy Row in the United States.

Yes. Yep, absolutely. They really took it to heart. They were very encouraged by us, the Latin American countries that were participating. They developed extraordinary means of interrogation, kidnapping, the suppression of the media, etc., etc., etc.

And utilized a number of different forms. There were a number of former Nazi officers, SS officers, and others, Gestapo officers, that actually were already living there in the different countries and we're acting as either consultants or as trainers or as contractors, as we would call them today. And they set up a lot of the programs that they utilized during World War II.

And so this seeped over into Central America. Condor got shut down because primarily, and this is a simplification, of course, primarily because of the dirty war in Argentina. It got so bad. They were killing so many people. If you read the book, The Condor years, there's a lot of consternation about did Kissinger withdraw his support or not?

Did he like fake withdraw it, but then send another cable resending his previous order? And the book was written by a journalist who's a professor at J school at Columbia. And I went to his office hours, even though he wasn't my teacher and spoke with him for a few hours. I'm sure you've read it, Greg, but it's definitely worth tracking down at the Condor years is the name of the book. Yes. Yeah. Basically, it seeped over into Central America and we just rolled with it and the Salvadorans were receptive to it. And the primary thought process at the time, if we focus on, focus on El Salvador, was the only good communists as a dead communist. and that anybody that even entertained or spoke out or seemed sensitive to what was perceived to be communism or socialism the only good one was a dead one and you

know that's how they proceeded. Montarosa and many other Salvadoran officers as young officers they didn't go to our schools and there's a lot made of the school of the Americas, of course, you know, the school of torture, the school of this and that and everything. Back in the early days in the 70s, in the late 70s, where these guys went to school was Taiwan. And they went to the counterinsurgency school in Taiwan. Really? And that school is extraordinarily hardcore, taking lessons from, of course, we had now in Indochina, Indonesia.

Malaysia and that's, you know, the tactics and techniques in Southeast Asia was basically, you know, find and fix them and kill them. And so they brought that back to El Salvador, for example, and instituted it through the officer academy. Of course, the officer academy, officers came down and that's what they tried to inculcate into the troops. And then you have the Condor countries as well as these. United States offering tactics, techniques, and strategies. Sorry, you broke up there a little bit, Greg. But if I'm tracking, you're saying that between the congore system, influenced to some extent

by literal Nazis and this school over in Taiwan both had a pretty profound influence on, you know, what turned into death squads in El Salvador. Yeah, that's best correct. And of course, the other side of the coin was you did have Russian communists. You did have the North Vietnamese become involved, the East Germans become involved. You did have all these really severe forms of communism, the pure form, so to speak. And they taught the same thing. You know, any means, any tactic, any technique in order to win was perfectly acceptable under

Revolutionary Warfare. Yeah. If you look at like the history that even just like the contras and the sentenesis, like nobody had clean hands when it came down to what, there were no angels in that fight. Yeah, absolutely. So, Greg, I mean, thank you for helping the flesh out the historical. context that this conflict happened. And I kind of now wanted to make it a little bit more personal and ask about you. And you find yourself in special forces as a young green beret. You're fixing

to get deployed down to South America. I mean, could you tell us a little bit about you're as a young man coming into special forces at that time? And what's going through your mind as you're gearing up for this mission in Central America? Let's actually, let's get a quick bio. Like, we haven't really introduced them to our guests. You want to, you? Well, I mean, I, I mean, I gave a little overview. I mean if we go into a full bio it's going to take a little while. Oh, I, you know, in a nutshell, I'd always from a very young age been interested in military type things. I was born in 1953, so I came up through the late 50s and the early 60s, particularly with world World War II in the background, with Korea in the background.

The television programs at the time, if you were a little kid, we watched Swamp Fox, we watch rat patrol, we watch combat, we watch garrisons, gorillas, you know, and so, you know, I was just absolutely fascinated with it. And my family's got a very fair military history going back, you know, a couple of different wars. But what really got me going was guerrilla warfare, you know, especially, you know, Swamp Fox and Francis Marion and all those guys out there doing stuff, not wearing uniforms, and, you know, beating the British and everybody else. So really, at age 14, when the Special Forces started to become popular in the media,

I was, you know, it was like, that's what I want to do. what I want to do, that's what I want to be. And it took me, it took me a while to get there, obviously, but I went into the service in 1975. By 1980, I was at the Q-course 3-80, and by 1981 I completed the Q-course, and I was at 10th group at Fort Devons at the time, and it was only there for about five or six months. Really good training in urban type thought processes because we were targeted at that time for Eastern Europe. And our particular country at that time was hungry. So I got some just excellent training and doing all sorts of clandestine urban type of thought processes.

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for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. We ran incredible, incredible missions in Providence, Rhode Island, and Fall River, Massachusetts, week long, running through the cities chasing teams and being teams chased and hitting targets and working with the police department and the corrections people. It was great special force of stuff.

But then I went to language school because that was one of the, you know, I came in the old-fashioned way. I was on my second enlistment. I was in E.5. I had new M.O.S.s. And, you know, it was a little. like okay if you're in special forces you got to speak a second language so I went to the LI in Monterey to take Hungarian and found out that while I was there

found out that I'd broken the tip off my right shoulder in the Q course and it was starting to give me some real problems so I had a shoulder surgery and Mrs. White and Mrs. Alexander who at that time were the two gals in DC that handled all special forces assignments and you know you you'd call Mrs. Alexander and Mrs. White you'd say you know I want to go here I'd like to go to that and then you send a big bouquet those gals must have had more flowers you know and they were wonderful and Mrs. Alexander said well you can stay at Monterey and get your shoulder surgery but you'll be out for 30 days on convalescent leave or you can go

to Fort Devons and get your surgery convales and come back out to DLI. And I didn't want to do that. Carol and I just had our first child and so I said, well, what happens if I stay here? And she said, well, you can, you know, you can take another language if you want. By that time, El Salvador was really starting to bumble and mumble. So I said, great, I want to go down to third of the seventh in Panama, and take Portia. Portuguese. So I already spoke Spanish. We had to take Spanish in junior high and high school. So I had a working knowledge. And that's what I did. Did 30 days convalescent leave and went into the Portuguese. And next thing I knew I was getting off the plane down at Howard Air Force Base. So I would like you to talk a little bit about 3-7. So at that time, we had special forces elements and we still do. We have. We have. some forward deployed to Okinawa, Japan. We have them in Germany. But we used to have some down

in South America and Panama at Fort Gubik. And before the War on Terror was the thing. Back in the old days, 3-7 was like the place to be because that's where all the action was. And there were some real heavy hitters down there at the time, Greg. Yeah, I got down there and that was, you know, quite frankly, like so many of us, it was like I've done a a lot of training for a lot of years here and now I want to go see if I can do it, you know. So there was, we had about 70 guys at DLI in Monterey from Special Forces. Colonel Roger Donlan was there for the Fayetteau course and so he was the unofficial groove commander for the West Coast and just, you know, some of the most phenomenal guys that I had met and a big slice

of them came down to 3-7. Another big slice went to debt A in Berlin at the time. So when I got down there, one, I knew a lot of the guys coming down and I knew they were, you know, they were top notch. And then when I got there and got introduced to the folks actually in the battalion, we were at Gulloch at that time. We, about six or seven months later, we moved over to Fort Davis. And it started a real deal. that there were a bunch of former McV. Sog special forces guys that had been brought down there. And my team sergeant, my first team was at McVe Saw. I mean, there was a bunch of them.

And that's who trained us. And the Army and the Special Forces have gone out and said, okay, we got this going on in El Salvador, we got this going on in Honduras, we got this going on down in Columbia, we got this going on in Nicaragua, because we still got to watch the Army. still got to watch that situation. So let's bring these guys down and have them essentially train the young pups and to do good things. And of course I've been a historian of Special Forces so I'm running into guys literally that I meet him and I go, holy crap, you're Joe Lopez from the mic force in Vietnam. I've seen pictures of you

and on and on and on. It was neat, and they were good. They were good. They knew a thing or two about jungle fighting. They knew a thing or two about fighting anywhere. You know, doing food in the SEO club and over at Howard Edwards Pace. Rowdy Gates, on the weekend, when we had our, you know, the different parties around the area. Routi used to like to wear shorts and a tank top or a t-shirt and he had a black MP helmet liner that he wore.

And the story behind that was that he took it away from an MP after he thumped him. And that was very normal stuff I learned. That was, you know, that was like, you know, stuff like that happened. They were a great group of guys. And the team sergeants, the team sergeants ran the teams. We had team leaders down there that were really good. We had a few that weren't, but that's the norm. But the team sergeants absolutely down there, they ran those teams.

And the team leaders listened to them. And that was pretty interesting. I was so new to special forces that, you know, half of me was in the glamour of it, and half of me was, you know, just trying to figure out, you know, how am I going to fit in here? So was your first deployment down to, or from Panama, I should say, up to El Salvador? Yeah, my first deployment came in 1983. After the company that I was with at the time after we did a, we had the opportunity to train the first Salvadoran, reconnaissance company down in El Salvador, the Prawl, which was long-range reconnaissance patrol.

And we had them for 90 days. The SOG influence and POI was definitely in there. We prepped for that for months. The soldiers that were picked were hand-selected. They had to know how to swim, they had to know how to read, they had to know how to do math, they had to take a PT test and a swim test when they got down to us. They had to be, you know, combat veterans. They were officers, their lieutenants in that, you know, had to be really sharp. We had a captain Herrera, who was the company commander, and they came down and we had them for 90 days, 20 days in classrooms, 70 days in the classroom, 70 days in the jungle. Wow. And those guys, those guys literally changed the course of the war in about two

to three years because of what they were able to do and what they could do and just how incredibly they'd take on anything. When they went back, we had two retired Special Forces guys who actually ran them, they were working paramilitary for the OGA. That was Mike Kim and Frisbee. And they were, they knew their stuff. Mike had been down at 3-7, so he knew the deal. And he was phenomenal. And they put him out of Ilo Pongo, and it was just like, it was like a mini, it was like a mini CCN. They had their own aircraft, they had their own barracks, they had their own weapons, everything was top shelf and they did it all.

They ran for three years before they took their first KIA, which was ridiculous, I mean, phenomenon. So after that in 83, when our team finally went up north, you know, that was the background. You know, that was the background. So you were bringing them down to Panama for a number of years and training them there. And then, I mean, was it, do you want to cover a little bit about the actual SF deployments elsewhere in South America and how El Salvador got capped? Because you make the point in your book that SF had been in Central America in the 1960s and the 1970s. There were already deployments happening.

Yeah, El Salvador at the time was extraordinarily unique because it was the one place in Central America and in Latin America that we were absolutely at war, the United States. And that really became apparent in 1982. And that's where our 10-year for the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal and other combat awards and decorations, ultimately in 1996, 1997 came from, was 82 to 92. Those were the critical years. And all the documentation that came forward after I had gotten out in 85 from active duty and we were working on that grassroots program

with the Congress. All the official documentation said, you know, these guys are at war down there. You'd draw an imminent danger pay. In 1986, it got so strange that the the JAG of the Pentagon was asked to do a legal paper because the officers down there at the Mill Group and with the teams, they were putting guys in for Purple Hearts,

they were putting them in for Bronze Stars, they were putting them in for ARCOMS with V's, putting them in for CIVs, and of course the administration, the Reagan administration, you know, their thing was, nope, they're just their training. All they do is just train. And the drag came back. You don't understand what we're talking about.

Basically, there was a non-declared war going on for those 10 years in which the troops involved, the special forces of soldiers involved, were not getting recognized as combat soldiers. They weren't getting the awards to the combat soldiers would be eligible. before they weren't getting the pay they weren't and so you were a big part of working on getting that recognized sort of backdated right yeah I had myself and Colonel John McMullen who had been down there who I worked with in Iraq it was just a labor of love couldn't figure it out after I came back and said you know we had a I wanted to join the VFW and the VFW guys in Bend Oregon said you got to have

Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. Right. You guys don't have one. And I thought, I'm just out of the Army after 10 years. I thought, well, how hard can that be? Yeah, right, I'll get something from the VFW and send it to the Pentagon. That took 10 years of blood, sweat, and tears, some just incredibly dedicated people along the way that came out of nowhere. finally successful. It's the only counterinsurgency that has ever been congressionally mandated after it was over. So the real question is, oh sorry, the real question is, did you ever manage to get in the VFW? Did I ever imagine what? No, did you ever manage to get into the VFW after that? I did. So all that effort paid off?

It was, you know, the more I got into it, and John McMullen was on active duty at the time and working out of the Pentagon. We had, you know, the Special Forces, El Salvador Mafia was alive and well. And, you know, it was one of the greatest clandestine operations to see this happen politically. not a, there was never a dime donated, there was never a raffle, there was never, this was just all just hard work 24-7. And the key players in that, myself, John McMullen, Andy Messing from the National Defense Council Foundation in DC, a number of Special Forces Generals and conventional generals have sent letters after a while, because we just

kept rolling. We just kept building evidence upon evidence and documentation upon documentation and then using the media, the different, any media to get the word out that this did happen, this did happen. Major General retired Ken Boeray, McVe-Sog, CCN, OGA, one of the finest special forces officers I've ever worked for. He was at Eustwick in the crunch period leading up to 1995. 1996 and he put our packet forward three times and three times or two times Department of the Army and awards and decorations kicked it back and and can just scooped it back up and his staff do what it needed to do and send it in I said you know

there were times where I said sir I had known him for a while and I'd work for him and I worked for him afterwards I said you know you're are you are you gonna hurt yourself career-wise doing this because nobody wants this up in DC and you're at that time he was a brigadier I thought you you know and and one thing that General Bore always said he said Greg if you do what's right and what's fair for the troops you will always be successful and he just looked to look to me and said it's the right thing to do and he sent it forward the third time and that was a charm they just said no moss. This was very controversial because our government had such a vested

interest they had already committed to this narrative that there were no combat troops in El Salvador and by giving you guys decorations your combat infantry badges your bronze starts with V devices it's essentially our government coming clean and saying well okay yeah actually they were at war. Yeah if you look at the if you look at the narrative throughout that entire period. It was definitely that. I watched a little clip with Ronald Reagan the other night where he was addressing Congress and he said, for all of you that invoke the memory of Vietnam and the tragedy of Vietnam, I can tell you right now that in, you know, there is no thought of sending American combat troops to Central America and Latin America.

They are not needed. And he got a standing ovation. Well, you know, we were already, you know, Our guys were already, we'd already had seen Purple Hearts awarded. That was weird too, because Purple Hearts could be awarded, but nothing else. And what was also weird is that the Marine Corps, in the period that the Army was denying everything and squashing everything, and the Marine Corps, which had people down there, advisors, they were giving combat action ribbons, which they could, you know, counterpart and bronze stars and the air force which was flying you know lots of overhead flights and doing surveillance and everything those guys were picking up air metals and so you know as you

see this documentation come in and all these different people and after action reports literally i'd get packages from people i didn't even know they had just seen or heard something they said i you know don't mention my name you might find this interesting It was like, this is totally schizophrenic. This makes no sense of all that. To start, Greg, if we could drill down a little deeper into it, because there was this cap on how many special forces soldiers we could have in El Salvador. It's capped at 55, if I'm not mistaken.

But there were other creative ways that our government found to go above that 55 limit. Yeah, 55 was an artificial limit. they sent a colonel down there to do because things are starting to bubble up and they said they go down to El Salvador and see what we would need to you know to help them down there to because Nicaragua had fallen and that that sent shutters throughout you know like nobody's business and Salvador was next and Reagan said and it's right there in a beautiful Rand report on El Salvador that we utilized quite heavily Reagan said red line in the

sand is El Salvador. And he was not kidding. It wasn't the Obama red line in Syria, which was really kind of not there. It was, it stops here. And so this criminal goes down and he comes back and he says, they said, well, you know, how many should we have down there? And he said, well, you know, we've had, they've had 50, 55 for a very long period of time. We had advisors there in the early late 70s, you know, but it was kind of a garden spot thing. You went down and, you know, you retired on active duty. And they said, okay, 55 said, with no real understanding of how much. Being a parent can be really challenging.

Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children.

That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parents. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Work needed to be done in every single level with the Salvadoran military and not understanding just how damn good the FMLN and the gorillas were. And so it's like, okay, 55 sounds good, you know, it's less than 100.

And that's what they sold them. Hey, we're going to send 55. But they found a way, I mean, weren't they also packing the defense attache's office full of green berets, and they were also attaching other SF guys to various CIA elements in deploying them in the country so they could get it up to whatever it was 150 or so? When we first got in there, when the country almost went down in 1981, when the guerrillas did their first final offensive, they almost took the country. And as kudos to the Salvadoran military, as rag-tag as it was, that they fended them off.

So when we actually got in there, the first team went in in 81, and then more teams started going in 82, 83, 84. But the FMLN became more and more and more active. They were formidable fighters. And so it was like, okay, you know, the mill group in El Salvador, and again, I'm oversimplifying things, the mill group down there was saying, hey, we need like more guys, you know, this 55 thing is, you know. But the Congress said, no, no, we're not doing another Vietnam. You said 55 and it's going to be 55.

So they got very creative and they said, okay, that's, that's 50, you're not doing. 55 at the middle group and 55 trainers, that's 55, okay, but we're also allocated 10 slots for communication specialists. So you would see communication special slots get picked up by special forces guys because, well, we can do communications too. Right. And all these little slots that, you know, so. We ended up, you know, the best that we named our organization, the BSOES, Veterans of Special Operations El Salvador, and the best number we could put, relying on an active duty still in, supplying us with information and the veterans on the outside working it and being the public face, was

we probably had 135 to 150, you know, advisors down there at any one time. And the Congress only cared about the magic 55, the double nickel. Right. And I'll tell you what, if you went to 56 and they found out they raised hell. That no group every day had to report on where, you know, where the 55 were. Yeah. I had a seventh group soldier tell me one time that he was, maybe they were in Panama and he's like we were waiting on the tarmac for our plane to take off to El Salvador.

Like we were waiting for guys to come out of El Salvador so that they could go in and the number remained at 55. Yeah, it was it was just really something and I think I got to say right here, I was just a new special forces guy. And I was just really fortunate to get down there and be able to do the job. There were so many other guys down there that did so much more and were so much better than I was. So any story that I relate personally about me, that's just because it's easy for me to remember my own stories. But there were guys down there that were just absolutely phenomenal. I will, there's one of those stories. I was number 56 for a day and nine.

for a day and night and that came in 84. I got, we had a SF composite team up on Tiger Island in the Gulf of Onseca. Oh yeah. And right off of La Aal Aneon. Well, my team had just come out of La Aal No and setting up the first Salvadoran training base, formal training base. So I knew Launo. And Tiger Island is a very large island out in the Gulf and it's about about five, six, seven clicks off the coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. And it was, the Marines at the time, and this isn't secret at all anymore, but the

Marines had a very important communications relay site up on the top of Tiger Island, and they could hear and capture everything. And then at the bottom of Tiger Island, the agency had a little house, and they were doing their agency. stuff against Nicaragua. So the Southcom commander said, you know, the Marines said, well, Tiger Islands are ours. Because we're at the top when we got this, Paul Borman. He said, oh no, he says, the Marines aren't going to have that island. I want to special forces presence on that island. So they created a composite team and sent a composite team up there. I got to send up for a rotation.

And so we had the bottom of the island on the OGA base, and the Marines had the top of the island. And long story short, our team leader was a very, very young team leader and wanted to make a name for himself. And got himself in a jam with the Honduran commander for Tiger Island. and basically they were having a children this weekend and our team leader was trying to get some building facilities and things for us and the major told him he said you know we have children this weekend this weekend yes I've heard that I've heard that he says if you will get a toy for each of the children for the weekend I will give you all those things you need to build whatever you want to build up there And so the captain said, we'll do it and committed us and came back and was very proud of that.

And our team sergeant, Larry Maker, was another former SOG guy, CCC, I think it was in the South. He just looked at the captain and said, you did what? Oh, all we got to do is get a bunch of toys to hand out to the kids on the weekend. He said, sir, we don't even have an operational budget. We're a composite team. We're nothing. We're a placeholder. And where are you going to buy toys?

He said, the major has just worked you over. And now that if we can't deliver, we're screwed because that's how it worked. And this was, you know, this was Q-Course 101, Robin Sage, you know, working with the G's and getting worked over by the G's. So I was sitting there and I said, you know, I know where there's a toy store and I know where we, if we take a collection amongst the team, we can, you know, we can, more toys than than not be as many as on the island because we had no idea, but we can get a lot of toys. And the captain said, okay, where is it? Where is it?

I said, it's over in La Lano, across the golf. What good does that? to us we can't go over there I said sure we can the OGA guys have a speedboat don't you know send me you know I'll go over and it's a little tienda it's right there in the town we'll send to spend the night I go down I'll buy bags of toys and then speedball bring me back over and you know the command is it should have said there's no way can't do that that's you know we'll all hang if you get over there well in the end he said go ahead and do it because he didn't want to see us get born but he he had me take another he had me take an EA with us there was another EA

besides Larry on the island and so we did we jumped in a speedboat and shot across the gulf one night and pulled into the long yon oGA base and spent the night the next morning i got up the EA would not go with me in the town he said i'm not going in there he said he just you just you go into town get what you're going to get okay fine that's fine fine so i took the multi-colored cars and trucks that you used to be able to get they were like a penny they were just little all sorts of little cars and colored trucks they had barrels of those so i bought some you know i think it was eight or nine garbage bags filled with these little trucks and cars and that. And so I, you know, I had to wait while they filled up the stuff.

So I went out on the sidewalk and it was right in the middle of town and pulled up a little metal chair and I was wearing the UDT trunks and jungle boots and a Go to Hell t-shirt and a bossy-na-viel baseball cap and my 45 slung low and my pistol belt. And I just kicked back on the on the chair and put the chair against the wall and had a pilsner beer and was just sitting there drinking beer waiting for the toys to be delivered and the team that was there at the sampa at the time and was living in town at the safe house uh came driving through that in the van and as they're driving by they see me and they stop and the team leader is in the passenger side and he looks out the window and he goes, Sergeant Walker, yes, sir.

He says, you're supposed to be in Honduras. Yes, sir. And I am. He, he literally, he told him, get going, get to the house. So he took off. He locked that team down for the rest of the day. Say, so that's a bad connection here. Sorry guys, I'm going to have to dial up Greg again.

He's on a Wi-Fi, so it's like in and out. So hey, everybody. Andrew, sorry, we'll get to your questions in just one quick second. Okay. The subscriber die? Sorry, guys, I'm just getting the connection back up. Usually we're better about this. So we have that weird.

Thanks for joining us tonight. Oh, please subscribe if you lost you there. audio and looking for visual to come up. I guess that was a story. Our cameras all out. No, our camera should be off. No, the camera should be on it. No, no, that's our front facing camera. There. There we go. Okay, okay. I think we're back on. So Greg, you got us to the point you were sitting there drinking a beer, and the team leader from another team came by and was like, hey, Greg, what the hell are you doing here? It's just being Honduras, right? Yeah, I'm just, you're just, you're

you're supposed to be in Honduras and I said, well, well, I am. You know, smart ass. And he told the driver, get to the safe house. And he locked that team down for the rest of the afternoon and all night. And then called the OGA over at the Navy base next morning and make sure I was gone along with the EA before he would let his guys out. So the didn't go over the 55? Pardon?

So he didn't go over the 55? Oh, we were over the 55. The E8 was, you know, I thought of myself as being 56 because I was actually downtown being, you know, an idiot. The EA was a safe 57. Yeah. He was behind the wire with the OGA. But, yeah, that was, you know, and I gathered up, I gathered up my bags of toys and and went down the street and around the corner and took them back to the OGA, took a couple of trips,

and had a really great lobster dinner that night with them. And, you know, we jumped on the cigarette boat and went blasting back across to Tiger Island. It's really important. And it was a wonderful success. The major over there, the Honduran major, was stunned that we had all these toys, and the captain was happy, and the kids were happy, and we got all of our building material and stuff like that. It's really important to understand the significance of Tiger Island and Swan Island in the context of this larger counterinsurgency campaign, isn't it?

Because those were both staging grounds. Yes, they were critical. Tiger Island, I think in particular because that communication site up there in 84, the tide of the war really swung towards the Salvadoran military by 86. The guerrillas were still extraordinarily formidable, but we had succeeded in training a significant number of non-commissioned officers in NCO corps. We had succeeded in influencing the younger officers, the lieutenants who would become captains who were on their way to major, to be thinking about how it was that they needed to fight these people. and how they needed to treat their own people and get away from that Taiwan counterinsurgency thought process and that condor stuff. And the equipment was getting into the different units.

We had to figure out, we couldn't figure out how to put a unit in the field that could fight the guerrillas successfully. in a counterinsurgency. So because we're dealing with a frontier national guard to start with 80, 81, 82, 83. So, and the guerrillas, the guerrillas by, in 1983 could move in the country in the areas they controlled in battalion size formations. That's what people don't understand. I mean, they could move and they could hit portals like crazy. So we it was like okay you can't send in you know really like guys because they'll get all massacred by the guerrillas who have this, this, this, this, this and this. So we created the heavy battalions. We called them heavies.

And they were ponderous. They were really well armed. They had lots of ammunition and lots of guys moved primarily by truck. And we found out that they were too ponderous. They couldn't get there fast enough. They couldn't get into the fight. They couldn't take advantage of having that overwhelming manpower if they were up against a smaller guerrilla unit. And then when the guerrillas bailed, they couldn't chase them because they couldn't move fast enough. So then it was back to the drawing board and we came up with the Beres, the immediate action,

light battalions. And so fewer guys, smarter tactics and techniques, better weaponry and equipment, and they moved. We had more helicopters there. And so they moved a lot by Air Mobile. And it was the beeries, the B-Ots for the heavies, the B-IATs. The Beery's proved to be very successful. And they were interfaced with the Prawl, with the reconnaissance guys who were going crazy doing great stuff and then on the Air Force side we successfully seen the parachute

battalion turned out and so now now you're jelling and you're creating a very formidable modern army in Central America that had never been seen before yeah so in addition to the training and the advising role many of you ended it up accompanying as well didn't you Yeah, absolutely. And again, going back to when we started this, in 1986, when the drag review was requested because of all the awards that were being put in, that were combat awards, they wanted to administratively come back and say, see, you can't do this, because this isn't a award, we're only doing this. They're trying to bolster the administration's

narrative, well the JAG officer who was a major, major black, he went on to become a general. I got a hold of that document. I had that document sent to me by somebody. He came back and in his three-page opinion, and it's in chapter nine of the book, he came back and he said, I've looked at everything. The staff has looked at everything. And then these guys should be getting combat awards. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting.

Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. There's nothing that says that what's being submitted shouldn't be approved. And of course that report was like, thank you!

The desk. But yeah, the matter of fact, during the final phase, our final offensive in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to enlist the formal aid of the FMLN. FMLN through a highly respected commandante named Hilberto Osorio, he was a colonel. And he was also a Salvadoran American from San Francisco and a Vietnam veteran. And he'd been down there fighting with the FMLN for years. And that's a whole other story. But Osorio came in.

I went down there for three days to San Francisco and spent three days with, this was 1993, and spent three days in the Mission District with Salvador and Borrellas and did a presentation, gave them back a flag and that. And the FMLN came out and said, we'll support your effort. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And that was my hope and my intent because when you have your enemy come out and the same,

come out and say after the war is over in 92. And they said, and it's in the documentation, it's in the public, they said, when the American advisors started to go to the field, and the Salvador Army started to really fight, that's when we were beat. Holy shit. And we did a 60 minute, we did two 60 minutes segments on this that really put us over the top. He said on 60 minutes, he said, I gave orders to my guys. He was with the PRTC, which was extremely radical group.

They were responsible for our Marines getting killed in the Zona Rosa, all sorts of stuff. He said, I told my guys, gals, you see an American advisor in the field with the Salvadoran troops. You kill them. They're not supposed to be here. Can you tell us about some of those events, Greg, where, you know, American Special Forces Soldiers found themselves engaged in combat with the enemy? Because there were firefights, there was even assassinations. I mean, I was reading in your book.

I mean, there were some really gnarly stuff that happened that I just don't think people are aware of. No, it was, it was, you know, it was very carefully and hidden away. And then they would do is that if a guy, well, they had the infamous, the first one was the infamous officer with the M16 walking in. And they were saying, you know, they only carry 45 and they don't have any, quote, offensive weaponry. And of course, we had M16 at the embassy and they were issuing them. And an American officer got caught walking in with his M16 checking out something, carrying it by the handle in civilian clothes. media said oh my god a special look and and they pulled that guy out destroyed his career

sure wasn't his fault and he was not wrong in caring had been issued to him and so that's when the that's when the lexicon really started up for El Salvador so we had the first thing smoking and had you got in trouble or anything you were on the first thing smoke and back to Panama up to the six And that's, you know, that was the deal. You're gonna be on the FDS buddy. So that's, you know, the other side of that coin is this. We had guys that got wounded,

that some of them saw Purple Heart, many others did not. We had, Greg Fornius was our first Special Forces advisor to be killed. They lied about Greg's. performance in combat at the El Pariso. They said that he was like hiding or something, right? When really he was actively engaged in combat with the enemy as the base was being overrun. The Elpariso was a key base in Chalotanango, Chalotanago, the world has owned it for a long, long time. They've been, and we had a Special Forces team there, rotating in and out.

Long story short, the team that was there went on Los Encio, for the weekend and went into the Capitol, some of the guys got to fly back home. Gus Taylor, who was a team leader, dear friend, dear friend. Normally you would keep two guys on base, at least two when that kind of licensia happened. Gus had the opportunity to go back to Panama to see his newborn child. And it had been very quiet around the base. And Greg told Gus, he said, go, go, go see your baby hide. I'll be fine. You know, it's only two days. And so Gus, are you sure?

Yeah. So Gus went back to Panama. The rest of the team went where it went. And the guerrillas hit them on, I think it was Saturday. And he was killed. The official story, because now you have the first Green Beret killed in, quote, in El Salvador. So again, the media is like this. And the guerrillas wanted us out of there.

So the international press, you know, was really on it. The story came back that, yes, Sergeant Fronius was killed. It's very sad, but he wasn't fighting. He was there on a training mission, and he was asleep in his bunk when a mortar came through the roof of the barracks and that's what killed. Wow. That, you know, that's what they told the family. And, you know, that's what Simmered had done.

well the word came you know great there Gus went back up immediately and long story short Colonel Stringham went in there for no group commander Joe Stringham Smokin Joe and they knew the truth and the truth came back down through the grapevine to Panama and we knew the truth and the truth was we brought this out and how Gus put Greg in for a posthum of Silver Star and that That was not going to happen. The Silver Star represents combat and it represents heroism at a pretty high level. So that wasn't going to happen.

And instead they gave them a meritorious service medal, which is a peacetime equivalent to a grand star with no V. It was a joke. No CIV. It was a joke. No Purple Heart was a joke. And sent the body back home. We had 20, 23 our guys were killed there, and they did it with almost everybody.

They died in a helicopter crash. How unfortunate. They, you know, the gorilla shot down a helicopter, but, you know, they died in the crash when actually the two survivors, Colonel Pickett and Spector Dawson were captured by the FMLN and were executed at the side of the helicopter, the crash all I have to. They lied about every single guy. they just said accident accident I remember there's one case in your book you mentioned where a green beret was shot in the leg and he's ordered to report it as an accidental discharge as if he shot himself

accidentally yeah yeah an AD that was that and I said this to the Washington Post when we were successful and we went out and dedicated our memorial in Arlington which was never supposed to happen. I was asked by the, in the Washington Post actually, a wonderful story. Thanks to Ann Messing, who was outselling in the Caribbean somewhere, I think, retired. So why are you doing this?

Why do you guys do this? You know, really for some medals, you know, for rhythm, stuff like that? What is and there were a couple spokesmen but I was I guess the primary spokesman put the fool up front I said no I said this is we didn't we did not fight a dirty war down there we did everything we could most of us buy the book and to play it clean and to really you know really be by professionals and special federal force of soldiers and hold the count accountable to people we were training, you know, ethically and morally correct. Number one,

they said in two, twenty, twenty three of us died down there and twenty three families were more or less lying to about it. So there's, there's, you know, kids and wives who don't know what happened or think this is what happened. There's benefits that are not allocated. They're not gold star families. And we were supposed to learn something from Vietnam. Right. And so that's why this 10-year battle has gone on. And Congressman Bob Dornan at the time was our champion in Congress.

And Bob was eloquent wherever he could be on exactly that thing. They did what we asked him to do. It was a war. They should be taken care of. It's the right thing. and we're going to do it. And so I'm proud to say that in the case of Greg Fronius, I wrote several articles about Greg.

And when we went to do the 60 Minutes interview, we were at the Weston in DC. 60 Minutes put us up there and they pulled a bunch, bunch of us in, plus the Gorillic Hvander and his girlfriend. And it's pretty interesting. And I got a call in my room. They said, there's a guy down here in the lobby that would like to see you.

his sister name is Gus Taylor. I'm like, holy crap. So I went down and Gus was in the front of the lobby. It was in a long coat and I mean, he looked like he was, you know, because he was still in, he was still active. And we said hi and went over and sat down on the corner and I learned that Gus had carried the weight of Greg's death forever.

And it was really crushing. him, survivor guilt. And, you know, he, in his mind, he was a superb officer. In his mind, he never should have left him there alone. And, you know, so just said, here's what happened. And he told me the whole story to include when he went back and policed up the 17 pounds that was left of Greg, because Greg had actually woke,

grabbed his gear, they had a reaction plan. And the plan was that the Special Forces guys would go up and protect the talk, which was a reinforced talk so the Salvadoran command could get into the talk and then direct the fight from the talk to include calling back to San Salvador and the No Group and then getting AC130s from Palma Rola Honduras overhead. We had a lot of stuff. So Greg's the only one there and it goes on his stuff and he runs out the party, he was up to his position, and who was a commander I interviewed, talked to this on 60 minutes as well, the Sapper team was actually trained by the North Vietnamese

over in Nicaragua to do those operations. And these guys, when you saw the bodies, they saw the pair of the bodies because they hit another team later on. You would swear those were North Vietnamese sappers lying on the ground at. They wore the same clothes, the same gear, they were camouflaged with mud and stuff. You know, they were good. So the sappers were coming in and they had to come down a stone staircase to get to a courtyard and the top was on the other courtyard. And so they were going to get down that stone staircase get across the courtyard and they were going to satchel charge the top and if they done that the base would have been you know severely lost so Greg sees this and Greg goes up to the

top of the stairs by himself and gets down and he starts engaging the guerrillas at the top of the stairs while the command and everybody is getting into the bunker from wherever they happen to be around the rest of the base in the midst of a firefight getting hit by mortars RPG sevens and regular you know light infantry guerreras so Greg's up at the top of the staircase and he is he is stopping the sapper unit they cannot get on that staircase and he's getting hit time and time and time again and the Salvadoran soldiers down at the bottom were yellow rojo rojo because he was red-haired you know come on come on get down here and Greg warned him off go go get to safety, protect the command, and fine, and warn him on.

And finally, he lost of blood. He tried to move apparently down the staircase and, you know, couldn't do it. Fell, roll down the staircase at the base of the staircase on the courtyard. Staffers come down, well, by now the talk is secured. And now they're calling down, they're calling in the world. And the sappers, no, we can't do it, we can't hit this talk now. So they check Greg and they discover, it's an American. And he's still alive.

They were so pissed off that they took a satchel charge, put it underneath his body, and blew it in place. Oh my God damn. And Gus told me that when he got there and they took shoes because he was doing the with the report, the inspection, right? And he gave me the original pictures. And there was a big couple of trees over that part of the courtyard, and Gus said that he was pulling bits and pieces of Greg in his uniform out of the trees.

You could only collect 17 pounds. That's all that was left. This is who we said, died in his bed sleeping when the mortar shell hit. And this is a guy, had he died in and say, Vietnam, I mean, maybe he would have been put in for a medal of honor for single-handedly defending the top the way he did. Yeah. Yeah.

So they got, you know, they put Greg and out of that. And, you know, when I had those pictures there at that 60 Minutes saying that was, that was it. Because Greg's brother, Steve had been flowing out as well. The story of Greg Dine had devastated the family. the mom had become unbalanced and was never right. You know, and Steve said, you know, we all thought Greg, you know, they killed in bed.

What? It is horrible and they did that to 23 other families and who knows how many paramilitary guys. So here's, here's this forces officer who's trying to unburden himself. And this is what really happened. Tell his story. And so we did.

You know, I got Ed Bradley up and said, look what we got and talked to the producer. And they were totally, you know, oh my God. And we got Steve up and I told Steve the story privately, which was very emotional for him and for me. Gus just disappeared out into the cold. He said, I can't be here or shouldn't be here, but I, you know. that was my guy. Yeah. So, here comes a story about Phronius. Now, caveat on this, I knew that he had been hit by ground fire

because I had sent a FOIA in long before, when I was writing the stories on Greg, I sent a FOIA in and asked for the records of that. And in full belief that I wouldn't get it. Of course, somebody up there, This is how it worked throughout the whole thing. Somebody out there, 45 days later, I get a package this thick. It's everything to include the autopsy report diagrams. To include that when they sent the body back, they tried to charge the family $265 in shipping.

Seriously? To include the metal recommendations for the Silver Star, three generals signed it saying, Downgrade to an MSM, no mention of combat. And I've got a diagram with a wound showing what was left of the body, and the report says, you know, a 5.56 military wound here, and they marked, you know, the wounds, he was hit multiple times. So when, you know, when Gus gave us the pictures and, you know,

backstory to it and then we had the guerrilla commander there who said yeah that's what happened because he was part of the proof that made sure they knew how to hit the base and he was fully documented. You know that that that was the deal when in 1998 in June they had the largest award ceremony, seventh group has seen since Vietnam at Fort Bragg. seventh group. I didn't go. I stayed in that story and I just wasn't, that was my thing. I wasn't going to go. I had my CIB orders, but I wanted, had my police chief, award me my CIB at the city council meeting with my family present because they put up for years with me doing this. So they had the CIP. They had the CIP. They had the CIP.

huge award ceremony on a beautiful day and Greg Froenius's now 12-year-old son, because the family was there, everybody was there from the Phronius's. His son walked up and received his father's star. Wow. Unbelievable. We ended up all total with a little star. I'm a very well-known special force of general. Greg's posthum of Silver Star. I think we had 24 bronze stars with Ballar for Valor. Most of them for major hits on quartels where the SF team fought through the night with their indigenous and pushed the gorillas back.

I put one of my team members in for a Archom with Valor, we got hit by snipers on a training range one day. And no, I put both Bob Kaufman and Hubert in. And those guys, we were getting hit by snipers, and we had this young company we're teaching. And these guys, I'm sitting there on the radio calling back to Major Zimmerman telling him, we're getting hit, you know. And Hubert Jackson and Bob Kaufman, Jackson was a E7 at the time, Coffman was an E5, he's a medic. I look up and these guys are walking back and forth as the rounds are coming in and the

Salvadoran soldiers are down on the ground trying to get behind trees and behind rocks. These two guys are walking back and forth as if nothing's going on. And they're telling, hey, get down, stay down. Oh, oh, hey, Solado, Solado, Abajo! you know absolutely maintaining order and discipline as if nothing was going on and we sent Zimmerman told me he says you guys are not to move you sent the Salvadorans up there to take those guys out and so we did and they ran them off and so those two are comes with valor the guy's got we have 79 80 the last time i checked

officially CIB's because the criteria for the CIB and CMB for El Salvador was harder than the criteria to get the same awards for the White Star Project in Laos. That's how hard the Army made it. Because they hated it. Secret war. Purple Hearts. Yeah, Purple Hearts, just on and on and on. We got two opossumous VFC for Colonel Pickett, the Aviator, the

the guerrilla shot down and executed after they took them prisoner and two posthumous POW medals. Pickett and Dawson. Who knew that we had US service members that were taken prisoner and executed? Right. I did. I mean this is stuff that I have not even heard of and I've read through your chapter nine of your book about this just yesterday. Yeah I mean and these these ceremonies the guy I called I called the guys at one of one of the parties in Fayetteville that night. And they said, oh, Greg, you should have been here. We, the veterans were there from that they gotten out.

And it was just Doug. Joe Stringham, General Stringham, was the host of the awards ceremony. That was huge. Greg, I'm really glad that we're able to have this conversation and talk about the, you know, some of the heroic acts like Greg Foronius and some of these people who, you know it took years of fighting for them to be properly recognized i do want to talk about the mazote massacre as well which is getting into the darker side of this conflict that i also don't want to ignore um let's take just one second i just want to remind everyone please subscribe to the channel

if you haven't already i appreciate all of you stopping by tonight hit the bell icon make sure you get notified and if we go live in the future um and also if you give us a little thumbs up comment on this video share with other people it all really helps us get noticed and also down the description there is a link for our subreddit and for our patreon page if you want to support us and support the stream a more substantial way and we really appreciate all of you who already are yeah and we have a couple of questions uh and thank you uh thank you editor for the donations we appreciate it um hey Greg why did those countries choose Taiwan to get like their their training um you know You know when you said that they went there for like their counter-adurgence.

Because they had relations with the Taiwanese military arrangements. El Salvador was very active in that. That was why it was a deal here not too long ago when El Salvador had cut relations with Taiwan to go with retina, which is now in El Salvador spending billions of dollars doing all sorts of interesting things. And they had a phenomenal, you know, a phenomenal school. So it was an exchange program, you know. Yeah. But that's where they, that's where their base counterinsurgency doctrine came from, and

that's to a degree why we had, you know, the very sophisticated massacres that took place, beginning with El Mazzote in 1981. Yeah. And then the other question was, have was considering the struggle to get your service recognized or the service force how do you feel about the Antarctic service medal that is issued after 10 whole days and what was that again considering what you went through to get like to get your combat service to get to get everybody recognized for the service that they did do you have any thoughts on the

metals like the Antarctic service metal that that requires 10 days of service in the the Antarctic to get? I'm not familiar with the Antarctic Service Medal, but my response to that would be I am a, I was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I went to school up in Alaska. I did a lot of work up there with the CARE Coalition in Alaska in the summer and the winter, and by God if there's troops up there in the Antarctic, they deserve a medal. They deserve it. They deserve a medal.

You go out and try to do stuff at 75 below. Yeah. You know, kill the metal. In 1981, we had the El Mazote Massacre down in El Salvador. It was a case of four Dutch journalists who were going out to a guerrilla camp to interview the guerrillas and, you know, do what journalists do, right? Cover the conflict. And on the way there, they were... there they were ambushed and killed by the Salvadorian military and Greg I know you did a lot of work

on exposing what really happened there because unfortunately there is a u.s special forces connection Greg it's a pregnant pause no we lost them again sorry for the bad connection tonight you guys it's a really bad connection this is like just to the point that it's unacceptable sorry guys just trying to call me on my phone It's ringing. We lost you again. So I just wanted to get into the... We're not supposed to talk about it.

Yeah, really. I was wondering if you could tell us about Mazote, what happened, and just kind of lay all that out, because, as I was saying, unfortunately, there is a U.S. Special Forces connection to that event. Yeah, there's two incidents that took place. In 1980, let's see, I had to get my dates correct. The four Dutch were killed in Shalatanango.

They were ambushed by a military unit that we were training. And it was a deliberate ambush because the Salvadoran military and the government at that time did not want the journalists going out and meeting with the guerrillas and covering the guerrilla side of the war, that goes back to your Taiwan doctrine. You know, journalists are bad, and if a journalist goes and makes contact with, then the journalist is a communist and off with his head. Until then, they had not targeted journalists. So Colonel Dureas Maynard, who was a commander out at Fourth Brigade, El Paso did target them and they were killed as they were hiking out,

walking out to a guerrilla base camp. And the original plan was the ambush party was supposed to take their bodies, disroved them, take them down to the Lumpur River and throw them in the Lumpur River, and then everybody would say, we don't know where they are. That didn't happen. They had a change out of lieutenants. The lieutenant that knew the plan got changed out at the last minute. The lieutenant didn't know the plan, just thought, I was supposed to go out and pick up bodies. So he went out, picked up the bodies and brought them back to the base. Oh, shit, I'm saying. And that's where the, we had a, he was a mill group staff member.

He's very well known. His name is Bruce Hazelwood. And this was, uh, uh, uh, this was, uh, uh, uh, uh, he was a, uh, uh, uh, there we had 23 special from uh... through who were training uh... this new light infantry battalion they had no idea that their guys pulled the ambush party that night as mena used them was because

or just regular soldados and so regular soldiers did not go how did not where the Tigers were, the ambush party had to move out about five or six clicks from the base, which was definitely Indian territory, and stay overnight, because they knew. They had great intel. They knew where these guys were going to be. So he tasked the commander of the unit. And so our 23 guys didn't know. Bruce knew what was going to happen. And he actually interviewed with the U.N. in 1991 and told him pretty much. He didn't tell him everything. That was part of the deal. But he had told Reyes Mena, he was there on an inspection for the milk group.

So he wasn't even a Special Forces advisory. He was special forces qualified and he was a plank owner with Delta. And a Vietnam Marine, phenomenal, phenomenal guy. But he was a in El Salvador for seven years, which many people thought was about five years too long. And Bruce basically told Reyes Mena, hey, you know, if you do what it is that you're talking about dual, that's really, really bad. You know, you can't, you don't want to do that. Reyes Mena, no, we're going to do that. Bruce's job was not to, you know, was to maybe counsel Reyes Mena and stop it if he could, but his job was to get on the horn or get in a car and drive back to El Salvador or San Salvador or a call, the mill group was saying this is what they're

trying to do. Get those Dutch guys to safety and send, you know, they'd have the middle group get involved and they, you know, you can't do this. He didn't do that. The Dutch got hit. They were disrobed. They were brought in. They brought in some of their kit and some of their clothes. And Bruce was still there. And he's on record. And it was in the documentary. And it was in the documentary I helped with that documentary you know mention why I get done here the the team Angel Chamee so was a legend the Angel Chimiso was a legend some time ago but Angel Chimiso was a legend in Latin America with Special Forces he was sitting around talking with some of his boys when some of the guys came back and they they were

said we got them we did this ambush we nailed them we killed guerrillas and we killed these bad white people and angel you know serge jubiso do you want to see they're in the truck andrew went yeah pretty neat you guys did it you how come we didn't know you guys were going so he said he went and looked in the back of the truck doos and a half looking the back of a doucen half and he said right away and his reports in the u.n i have a cop but a copy of all this and he's guy he said he's a divorce and he tore and so he immediately went back and informed the rest of the group I think we got a think we got a bad ambush here we got some journalists that have been killed well Bruce was talking to Reyes Mena who came out and saw that they weren't in the Olympa River, they were on his base. And so he's, A, he's furious and B, now he's in a panic.

You know, what does he do? So, so. Hey, great. Let's, we're going to take you off in here to see if that helps. You lost them. All right. Let's just call him back. Just a noise. It's frustrating, guys. When you test everything out an hour ahead of time and it works fine. And then the second. you start actually streaming like nothing works you actually have a text and tell them that we're just going to do voice and see if that works see if we can hit I mean jeez yeah I'm gonna tell Greg we're just gonna try to do voice let's see if that's a little bit better turn your video off we'll just do voice from here out yeah what did you want me to turn down just turn your video off

Turn it off. Yeah, turn the video off and we'll just do it by voice and we'll see if the connections stay stable. Okay, I've got the video off. Okay, great, Greg. Go ahead, please pick up the story then, you know, where Ray's Menace is like freaking out because now these bodies of these four Dutch journalists have been brought back to the base and he's trying to go into damage control. Well, he ends up talking to Bruce. Bruce advises him, you got to take care of this. You got to clean it up. And you can't just dump these guys. So, as he said in his UN report, which he now denies that he made. But it's kind of late to deny that. He makes the statement that Reyes-Mena, unlike the first time I talked with him, now followed my guidance. And what Drew should have done was immediately, you know, that was not our mandate.

It was not our mandate to play that kind of role. That's always been a problem with special forces. is a problem my address in my book at the hurricane's eye. We saw it in Afghanistan with Jim Gant and some others. They forget who they work for. Right. And they get too close to the, you know, they get too close to it. And, you know, they just go sideways.

I call it going sideways. I'm sure Bruce would say that's not the case. And I have a lot of respect for Bruce. What he should have done was got on the horn and said, we got a big problem, you know, and giving it to the embassy and let the embassy take care of it and get in there. That was the thing. Now, the problem was that the aid at the time

was in such disarray in terms of being guaranteed that it was very, very, a very real deal that this kind of, you know, showing the Salvador the government in the Army, you know, was not going to respect human rights. It was going to do exactly what it was that the Americans did not want to see done and was trying to, quote, train them not to do. And the Congress would just shut the aid off. And if they did that, the guerrillas would have taken the country. There was no doubt about that.

So how do you, you know, you can't, you know, if we would be really, we would be able to report this and what happened. Right. So what they did is they tried to dress the journalists back up and what clothes have been brought in. They put the wrong underwear

on the wrong guys because the Dutch had put their names, written their names in their underwear because they were living in San Sal and they were doing community wash. And they flew the bodies to a With a lack of a better term, the poor people's hospital in morgue and San Salvador, wrong place to fly them. I mean, now you got to put it on your best face.

They sent them there and the autopsies were done there. They collected up the film cans and cameras that were brought in. Some film was left out of the site was recovered later. They sent them to the Salvador intelligence people to go through. again, you know, battlefield, okay, that's pretty neat intelligence. You know, what pictures have you taken and of who? But you know, wrong thing to do. And in the end, it was very clear that the mill group got advised.

They sent out two guys. I talked to one of them, an officer and another guy, and they inspected the site along with the media and the Salvadoran press. And they came back and said, you know, the story that you told us about, you know, getting hit by a big bunch of guerrillas and blah, blah, blah, it doesn't fit at all. And the report the Mill Group said was more than likely, you know, this was a deliberate, you know, assassination of these guys. So Reyes-Meyna got tagged with that in the UN report in 92 after the conflict ended. They did the investigations on these war crimes in 91. And he kind of disappeared after the war.

So here comes the Dutch are after him, the Dutch war crimes people. It's a big, and you saw this, Jack. I mean, the pain on these people's faces of, you know. I'll put a link to the documentary in the description after we finish tonight, so people who are watching this can go find it. It was an interesting documentary, you say the least. It's phenomenally done. I thought it was very objective, very even balanced.

But they, you know, they were asking where Reyes Mena was. And of course, we were telling, you don't know, we don't know where that guy is now, you know? This is 2017 or 2018. Well, the Dutch investigative team found Reyesmina living in Washington, D.C. Wow. And confronted him.

And he was not a happy man, but he had immigrated here, like so many of Salvador and senior officers have over the years. And it managed to live a nice, comfortable life, despite the fact that, you know, for the UN, the guy was a, you know, war criminal. So that was one. Now, now he's, you know, I'm sure he's fighting. The Dutch are still planning to bring him out. they want him extradited either El Salvador to stand trial or to Holland to stand trial. I hope he goes to Holland and the Hague. And so that's the first one, Jack. That's the Dutch there.

Now El Mazzote happened about a year later roughly and took place out in Mora San, which was definitely controlled, that was a province definitely controlled by by the gorillas. And I'll be very brief. And if you want to go longer, I'm awake so we can do this, Jack. Another, you know, ten minutes or so on this and we'll try to come to a natural conclusion. Okay. And in the case of when you read about the El Mazote Master Curve, it was huge. It was a huge deal. it's still a huge deal and long story short the out-lacob battalion was the first biop that was trained and it was trained by three seven it was trained by captain dave morris and selected some of the best guys we had at three seven uh at the time and uh in the media and everybody else is

stuck with you know the atlacot train an elite outlacabat battalion trained by the United States conducted this massacre at El Mazzotti. Well, that's not exactly accurate. And General Morris retired now and is also with the Greenberry Foundation as a dear friend. He and I have been working with the, as research helpers for the gal who was the expert witness for this case, impartial witness more or less. She's an internationally known war crimes investigator. and just a phenomenal gal.

But anyway, that said, the Outlicat, the first-generation Atlacot was a just they pulled in, you know, just these poor kids and these officers that really didn't know what were going on. And it was billed as being, you know, the premier new battalion for the Salvadoran Army was going to take it to the guerrillas. and they called it a Bery, Battalion Infantaria Reaction Amediata, or Immediate Reaction Battalion. Well, the training, they did the best they could, and they trained them, they gave them classes in human rights and how to properly treat prisoners and stuff. That has never come out or been touched on. Well, when they graduated the battalion, the battalion went to the field, and it went up into the Morozoan in and around the village of the village of the village.

Tomazote, which was a pretty large town, and every fight it got into it got its ass handed to it. So the people up there started a little joke and they said they're not the immediate reaction battalion, they're the immediate retreat battalion. So Colonel Domingo Montarosa, who was the most phenomenal commander at the time, I met Monta Rosa once and I still enjoy the fact that I got to make the guy. He was something else. Well, Montarosa was a graduate of the Taiwan Counterinsurgency School and he was also with the Al-Lacott and he was humiliated by this first generation. So they, he took over and he cleaned it out and he brought in who he wanted and he excluded

American advisors being involved in the retraining of this battalion. So the second generation Al-Latat had no know we had no eyes on and no influence in what they did, how they did it, or why they did it. So, Monta Rosa takes a battalion out and they mount Operation Rescante, which is called Rescue, Operation Rescue. They go into the Morassan and the idea was to take the Morissan away from the guerrillas, rescue the Morassan. And they announced it and and blah, blah, blah. Well, the guerrillas saw this battalion coming in.

They had great intel. They knew this was a different kind of bird. And they weren't going to fight a fixed-speed battle. That's why it's called guerrilla warfare. So they fell back and did just little holding skirmishes. And the Montereosa's battalion could never make any kind of significant contact. And every time they went into a village or a town, the people would say they're not even here, you know.

So they got more and more frustrated. Montrose had more and more frustrated. And so he did what he had talked about, which was conducted a limpiazza or a cleansing operation. And in short, they killed all the elderly men, very few young men because they have left, women, elderly women, children and infants. and three other little bitty towns that were satellite towns around El Mazote, plus everybody in Elmazote. You know, they were the Einstein's group of World War II. And when they finally, when they started to go in there, and then they locked the village off so that nobody could see it, the world went out that it was a massacre. They said it wasn't.

Our, we sent the same, as a fact, the same guy that went out to look at the Dutch, went out and got in and got pretty close to El Mazote and then couldn't get any closer. And he said, everywhere I looked, everywhere we went, it was, you know, there was just, you know, devastation. The body count for El Mazote is 957. Jesus Christ. Half of those are children and infants. baynetted, shot, burned, unbelievable. And that was Montarosa's signal to the guerrillas that, you know, there's a new guy in town and then new tactics and you're either with us or against us.

Well, that was another, you know, oh my God, if it gets out that, you know, that the Army did this and the Alcott, who we initially trained, you know, this is, we're done, we're out of here now. And Reagan administration, again, had drawn the line in the sand. And so I am very confident, more than confident, in saying that our State Department people, through our Mill Group and through State, knew this massacre occurred 24 hours after it had happened, knew it. And what was the response? They obscured it, they covered it up.

They accused the guerrillas of making it up. they accused the witnesses of lying. They said they sent these two guys in and they couldn't come up with anything. Actually they rewrote the senior officer's report. I talked with them, I interviewed them. And it stayed this way for 38 years. So we prioritized our fight against communism in Central America over the human rights, over almost 900 civilians in this case, and something

like 75,000 dead civilians overall in the campaign. Yeah, exactly. And you know, the deal on this was, and everybody has their own opinion, and that's okay. But the deal was, you know, we're down there and we're saying this is if you want our aid, if you want our trainers, if you want our guys

putting their lives on the line, if you want our armament and our money, if you want reconstruction money, then you've got to do certain things. Right. You got to play by fear. Oh, whoa. Now wait a minute.

That sounds like quid pro quo, doesn't it? Well, this is where the lady came from. Yeah. So, you know, then we allow for a significant human rights thing to take place with the Dutch, and we obscure that and hide that. And then we have 957 people killed, 500 some being kids and infants, and we hide that. You know, that was, that's why it was called a dirty war,

and that was one of the reasons that so many of us got involved in the campaign to say, that is not what the majority of us, the 98% of us, did down there or put up with, many of us risked our lives. I know many of us risk our lives to report as we were directed to by the embassy and by the mill group commanders any suspicion of you know death squads or murders or rapes or kidnaps or torture the we actually we were all on hit list by the right wing because they knew we were doing that you know some of the guys went through you know really great great risks to say this isn't right you're not going to do this uh that's how we you know managed to turn that army

around in 86, 87 so that they fought a little differently. Greg, to start to maybe conclude this segment, and you know, we're going to have to have you on again because there's so much more to the things you've worked on over the years, both in Central America and elsewhere around the world. But to start to conclude this specific subject tonight, we're at the time right now where there's a lot of questioning about ethics and special operations. There are these reviews being done, which are also, in my opinion, kind of whitewashes. But it's very much in the public eye right now, this question about ethics, morality, etc.

I see the comments from a lot of younger guys, but also older guys, you should probably know better, who say, hey, the only war crime is not winning the war. So, I mean, my question to you is, I mean, do the ends justify the means? We got communism out of our backyard in Central America. Was it worth it? The ends never justify the means. That's, I'm doing some work now on some World War II stuff having to do with the Nazis and their policies. And if you want to say the ends justify its means, then I, you know, I can pull, that's exactly

what the National Socialist doctrine and theory said about murdering, you know, 6 million Jews, gypsies, romas, and anybody else that they figured it was undesirable and needed to be, you know, cleansed, communists, and whatever. And that's, sorry, you know, if that's how you think, then, you know, I feel really badly for you. The other is, yes, bad stuff happens in war, duh. but you know the American fighting man and the American soldier and the American military is for 260 or 70 years despite all the things that happened and that we have done certainly you know even in that wonderful movie both in saving private Ryan and geez what's the other one band of brothers brand of others you know it shows American soldiers shooting down German prisoners that happened

that happened and but you know we've always made a point of trying to limit the beast that comes out in our soldiers during war and we've always tried to you know there have been guys that have been tried and we're known for that and And it's one of the reasons why around the world we get to have our soldiers because these countries, you know, whether they're allies or not, they know, hey, you know, the American soldier, you know, he fights pretty fair. And so when you, that's why we have this, we tie this with these countries that we go into for whatever reason. And you're not going to get the military aid unless you stop massacring people just because you're not going to get, you know, the best of the best to come down and train you on this set or the other thing so you can defend yourselves and be part of our overall strategic defense if you don't stop, you know, doing this. And that was a key thing for the war in El Salvador was the human rights thing. I mean, they've been having mustanzas or massacres forever, just like in Guatemala, just like in Honduras, just like in Nicaragua.

You know, it was tied to that. And our mandate, part of our special forces mandate was, you know, to teach human rights, to teach proper prisoner handling, to teach that you can get information without sticking a cattle prod of somebody's ass. and you don't take and kill you know foreign journalists and strip them with their clothes and throw them in the lump of river

to make a point and so when you know to answer your question Jack when you have our guys who are taught and trained that for the moment we go into basic training with the Geneva Convention and the rules of engagement

and I don't want to hear anybody any more say they have rules of engagement are always screwed up and they hurt our troops. When I hear that, I think, you know, those are people that don't understand the rules of engagement at all. Yeah, sometimes they can be pretty restrictive. But, you know, for the most part, we pretty much get to do what it is that needs to be done. You know, we just got to do it smart. I'm not a fool. I've been in two wars.

I've got a star on my CIP and I spend 10 years on the street as a cop. you know, living under constitutional law of what I can and cannot do as a police officer. So, you know, that's, that's, you know, and I was brought up right. So to answer your question, when you ask our guys to go in there and be that model and try to impart that model to these forces, and they do so, and they do so at great risk to their own lives and then the government the same government that sends them there turns around and covers up these incredible massacres and and the political murders we can't control the guerrillas can't control them that's why they're the bad guys but we are supposed to control

ourselves you send a bad message into the military and into that young soldier or that young soft or that middle-aged soft guy who's got way too many deployments that you know anything that you start going off the rails anything that you can use to justify a bad actor overlooking a bad act leads to committing a bad act and you know we've been fighting for 20 years and it's it's just taken such a toll yeah and El Salvador down there and they've been saying you we've got to correct this we have to look at our own history and come to terms with us so we can begin a healing process and and that and and they finally have the the UN war crime is saying

the report came out in 92 almost immediately both the FMLN and the arena party which was the right wing guys passed a lot in the new peaceful El Salvador granting amnesty to anybody that was accused or alleged to be a war criminal. Wow. That must have been a long time coming. I mean reconciliation after such a bloody war. It's not easy. And so these guys, and there's plenty of FMLN war criminals and those are the ones that are next on the docket to start to get the UN went after them as well. The Army unfortunately committed, I think it was 87% of the, you know, legitimate war crimes by definition. But you know, there's some FML and politicians

down there that did some hideous things that they're up for trial next when Jalmazoti is over and they're scared to death and they should be. But the other question, I'm sorry, go ahead and finish your thought. I have one more question. In 2016, the Salvador and the Congress threw the Amnesty Act out. Elmazote was the first one to go up for trial. The FMLN and the arena tried to get a second amnesty law passed and the world came down. Literally, the world came down on them and said, you're not doing that. You are not going to hide this stuff anymore or you don't get anything from any of us.

That's kind of a gross simplification, but that was the message. So right now, right now, El Mazzote, the investigation is almost over. There's 18 former senior officers that are going to be on trial in another, I think, in three months. They can't leave the country. They have to report to their attorneys and to the court. The judge down there is unbelievably good and brave. and they're holding this whole thing in Morozan, in this little bitty courthouse in Morizan. It's not in the city.

And just this last week, General Bostillo, who was the commander of the Air Force, pretty sharp guy, he's one of the defendants. He blew everybody's mind. He came out in the investigation hearing portion, he said, I have something to say. And the judge said, what do you want to say? He said, I want to make a statement about who's responsible for El Mazzote. And the judge said, oh. And Bustillo's defense attorney said, Your Honor, I want the courtroom clear. You know, I don't want anybody in here, because I don't know what he's going to say.

I don't want my client to incriminate himself. And Bustillo said, no, uh-uh, I want everybody here because, you know, the civilians and citizens were there. a lot of them survivors and family members of people lost and the judge said you know whatever you can be used against you and lucio said it's fine and busillo came out and he said we did the army did commit this massacre and it was wrong and and you know we are responsible for this That has never, ever happened. It was certainly not expected that day. So this is enough to go forward into trial.

Now whether these old guys go to jail or not, it's hard to save. But the key is that there is going to be the first trial. This is the worst massacre in modern Latin American history, Latin American history. To actually have happened and now to come to trial 38 years later, The next one is the murder of the Jesuits by the Atlacot in 1989, Jesuit priests. And then after that, the Dutch is right behind that one, so Reyesvain is probably getting a little anxious. And the interesting thing yesterday, day before yesterday, U.S. State Department, Secretary of the State

Pompeo issued a formal State Department news really. release, naming 13 Salvadoran officers to include Bostillo that are now forbidden to visit the United States or to integrate to the United States because, quote, in the, I've read the news release, credible evidence shows that they are responsible for war crimes and the murder of the Jesuit priests in 1989. I saw that. I saw that. And I mean that is such a turnaround of our position on this for the last 38 years.

And I think it's probably, I think Bustillo may have known that was coming, which is why he decided he was going to say something. Because once we give up the archives that we've been holding back on who knew what, when for El Mazzote and for the Jesuits and for the Dutch, all those people that are charged in those, you know, They don't have, you know, America isn't hiding them anymore. Our government is not hiding them anymore. And Greg, my last question tonight, and I'll turn it over to Dave after.

Speaking of Mike Pompeo, this last week, he had this comment that Americans don't care what's happening in Ukraine, that no one cares about that. You can't even identify that country on a map. What's the big deal? I mean, we're talking about war crimes that happened decades ago in a small little country, El Salvador, why does this still matter? Why are you so passionate about this? Why are you still pressing the issue? Why do you think it's important for the ICC or whoever else, the Hague, to continue to attempt these prosecutions? Why does it, why should this matter to people here in 2020? What a great question. I, you know, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to paint my

myself as anything other than a sinner saved by Jesus Christ when he died on the cross thousands of years ago, you know, for me. I was raised and as I said when we started, when I grew up reading books about, you know, the revolution and reading about the Civil War, which my relatives fought in, and reading about the Marines on Tarawa and Guadalu Canal and reading about the American forces that liberated Treblinka and Daqqal and Buchwald and Halt Switch and how sick they got and how horrified they were when they saw the man's inhumanity to man times a hundred. The, uh, watching the court-martial of William Cali when he allowed his unit to

commit the Milai Magis massacres. Our government, you know, decrying the brutality of the North Koreans and the Red Chinese and the North Vietnamese and you know I thought that's what we are. You know, we're not the world's policemen, we're the we're the world's true good guys. We're not perfect and we made our own mistakes. But, you know, we're, we're, that's why people want to come here. You know, that's why I'm proud to be in America. My four kids went the service and did their time and G-WAT.

It has just so many others. That's how I was raised. You do the hard right over the easy wrong. And, you know, and as a special forces soldier, you know, and wanting to be one ever since I was 14. You know, my, my mentor, was Roger Domlin. And I've met Roger. I went to DLI with Roger. I sat with Roger when he came out here to Portland

for the Special Forces Association dinner. Roger mentored Leroy Petrie, Medal of Honor winner from Second Ranger Battalion at my request. Ken Beauree, you know, you do what's right and fair by the soldier, regardless of what may or may not happen with you. That's how I was raised. That's how I was trained. And when myself and John McMullen and so many of the other guys and the nursing corps, when we got Nellie Goosman, her Purple Heart, which I didn't

want to give her because I didn't want to say a woman was hit by fire in El Salvador as a nurse. The feeling I had back then went from, I want to join the VFW and at least you just get a little ribbon, how hard is that? The more I learned about this war and the more I learned about our culpability and our responsibility in it and talked with, you know, so many others, the more that I felt, you know, if we're going to, if we're going to fight a 10-year war to take care of our dead and their families and get a reward for doing that by being able to pin on a little, you know, CIB or a CMB or whatever, then we have a responsibility to the people whose country we fought in as well. And by standing up and getting involved, I mean, I was contacted. They found me,

you know, the Dutch found me, scared the crap out of me when they called because of the Salvador campaign and asked, will you help us try to find this guy and explain to us what was going on because we're in Holland and we don't really know. And that led to Alamazote. That's the hard right over the easy wrong. We didn't fight a dirty war.

And we're not going to, special forces should never stand by and say, well, you know, that's just the way it is. Yeah, yeah. That's, you know, there's too many good green berets out there, good officers and good enlisted guys and that, that just, you can't let the few rotten apples or those whose judgment has become clouded or those who have become bitter. Let 750-some little kids just disappear just because. And, you know, the thing of it is, it took us 10 years, but the hidden Warren El Salvador is now an authorized military campaign. Hopefully that's affected something as far as, you know, what we do.

And now, you know, I had people very close to me on Elmazote and on the Dutch who said, why don't you shut up? You know, why don't you, why don't you and Dave Moore shut that? Hell up. Who cares? Who cares? And I keep thinking, you know, that's exactly what the Nazis said. That's why I have it. And I said, you know, what I mean?

It's a question of me shutting up. I'm doing the right thing. The question is, why aren't you doing the right thing? Exactly. Yeah. And when I get a call from Major General Ken Beauree that says, Greg, I'm proud of you. And proud of the guys, Dave Morris. Good job.

You know, all the naysayers and the Bruce Hazel Woods and, you know, the politicians who lied their way through these things, that doesn't mean anything to me. So that's, you know, that's it. Let's see justice done. Let's make it, you know, let's make it right. Greg, thank you so much for joining us tonight. This has really been incredible. We really need to do it again because there's so much else to you and to what you've done over the years,

helping out special forces veterans and other veterans and other things in your special forces career. Dave doesn't know this. Greg, you worked with Dave's friend, Jeff Kirkham, in Iraq. Did you? Yeah, Jeff was the Alpha Company, we took 82 of us over there. Jeff became the team sergeant of my team over there that I was on, 912, and John Dextram, the former team sergeant, he got promoted as our major, John and I went over and became

part of an integration team monitoring all of the coalition and US soft operations. for the war and then went into Baghdad together but yeah Jeff Jeff was a monster on a midway he took a good team and made it a great team Jeff is an outstanding for sure well it's funny because I mean I read your books so long ago and you know it influenced you know a lot of the choices that I made you know coming up in the military and then and you've written for periodicals too, right, on knife tactics and things like that? Yeah, I've written a lot in the time I've been on the planet.

17 books and about 350 articles and edited two magazines and then somehow managed to stay involved with special forces and reserve capacity. And I just had a great, great career. OIF was my last run in uniform and I served with some phenomenal people. I'm blessed. Like I said, I was just a kid who just wanted to be a Green Beret and I wasn't anything special in a group of very special people. I just got blessed. I do want to say, I decided I want to share something with you guys before we get off.

And this is such a great place. There's only two people that have ever heard this before. I got a, in our campaign for combat recognition, I got a, I had just a very few letters. And then, you know, after we got the awards and that, you know, gee Walker, you know, you did this just for yourself, didn't you? You just wanted to get a C-I-B, so you did this just for yourself. And when I heard that, I thought, you know, that's such an insane statement because nobody in their right mind is going to spend 10 years and involve so many people and take the risks that I took physically and others did as well. Three days in San Francisco by yourself sitting around with 35 solid orange gorillas. Yeah.

You know, when I got into that room and looked around, I thought, you know, this might not be such a great idea but we got we got we get the the packet went up the second time and came back down and i got a call from bragg and uh they said yeah they rejected it again and i you know it was it was a beautiful packet i mean it was an incredible packet Plus all the awards and decorations for Fronius and for Leroy Sena and his team and this on and on. And so I called General Beauree, who was the U.S. as a commander at the time, and talked to him about it. I said, sir, what do we do? What else do you need?

What do you guys need? Said, we've got it all, Greg. They're just doing this because they're doing it. And he said, I'm going to send it back again. And I already mentioned that I, you know, he was my friend and mentor. And I said, you know, Ken, that's going to hurt you. That's when it came out. He said, no, hey, it's the right thing to do.

And I'm going to do it. Well, I knew I had pissed a lot of people off in D.C. Over 10 years period of time. And so I said, sir, I said, Do you think that my having an award in there, as somebody at awards and decorations or somewhere else, that they're just so furious that I'm now a real obstacle to this packet being passed? And that may sound, you know, grandiose, but I mean, at that point, after 10 years of fighting and going through unbelievable stuff and knowing who I pissed off and putting the Pentagon on six.

60 minutes when he lost so badly. I said, sir, do you think that, you know, somebody without a sheer spite, he said, what are you talking about? I said, sir, if you think that that, if you have the slightest thought that that's the case, pull my recommendation for a CIB out and send it forward and send a, send a note or whatever general officers do to say, you might want to review the list again. again there's a name that's missing and he said why would you do that and I said because this isn't about me and if for any reason it you know it is about me then

take it out of there and get it passed so the other guys so this you know so the real reason can come to fruition and there was a pause and this is why he's a major general he came back he said Greg I'm not doing that they said I'm going to do what's right and fair for every soldier that's involved in this and his name is in that packet don't ask me again yes sir he sent it forward a third time and uh went through so I guess my point on sharing that is that anybody out there that is listening to this and you know thinks that this was a self-motivated selfish action, it wasn't. Right.

Right. And I got, you know, I had a superior general officer reinforce, you know, what you asked about Jack, whose ethics and morals, whose combat background cannot be challenged by anybody, you know, stand up and say, you do what's right. regardless, you do what's right and take care of the troops. And that's what we need. We need more guys like Ken Bowry. 100%. So we have less guys like Eddie Gallagher.

Yeah, I wasn't going to go there, Greg, but I don't disagree with you. No, we're at sort of a cultural crossroads. And I was disinhearted to see the comprehensive special operations review that's so released this week on soft ethics which was conducted by a bunch of former socom officers who was basically an inside job and they said no institutional problems no systemic issues everything's great here well we'll have a few little fixes here and there little modifications and training but nothing to see here move right along and it's like are you fucking kidding me and the fact that

that guy, that SEAL Team 6 dude who killed Staff Sergeant Melgar on Molly. Yeah. He committed that murder got investigated and brought home. He was sent immediately back to the States for it and was

promoted. And the Navy promoted him. And that shows you no, it's not like bro culture at the troop level that's broken. It shows you that there is an institutionalized culture that goes straight to the top that condones that type of

behavior and and and what you just said is true straight to the top straight to a president would never serve a day on active duty and who thinks that you know the Charlie sheen represents what Navy Seals are and I mean you couldn't have said it any better yeah I kind of get fired over the same. We have two more questions that we need to address real quick. Jack, one thing I'll add to that. Three. I bet that people who did that study didn't go down the street and talk with and demand to see the database for the SOCOM CARE coalition that now I think has over 8,000 seriously injured, wounded, and ill soft members in it that is one of the the best databases ever in terms of accountability on wounds, deployments, medications, suicides, and soft which are at the highest rate that they've ever been, divorces at the highest rate

that they've ever been, and said, you know, give us the input that you guys are seeing because you're seeing the side that nobody wants to know about so we can make a true report. I can guarantee you that they didn't want to know and didn't want to hear and didn't want to see. Greg, we got to go to some user questions, but I have some people who are watching us right now. But just to dovetail off of what you just said, I had a conversation with someone today who studied soft suicides academically. And this person told me, in their opinion, so calm's attitude towards that very question, that very thing you just brought up, is that SOCOM's approach is no data and no problem. So they will brush all that data you just talked about under the carpet so they don't have to address it.

But anyway, what are the questions we have? So thanks again, guys, for the donations. We really, really appreciate it. You help us buy each bottle of scotch to share during the show. So a question, what can the U.S. and Mexico do to help stabilize the small. our Central American states. I had some really interesting conversations with Colonel Rex Applegate when he was still alive and Rex Applegate was a legendary OSS officer. Yeah. And one of the things that Rex did after World War II is he

became an official traveling expert for the US government in and around and about Mexico and this is years ago now but Rex shared some of the things that he shared with our government with me and you know what he was projecting you know many many decades ago have essentially in most cases become true so that's said that's why I'll answer the question in this way in my opinion the first that we could do and need to do is to stop, take a mature attitude with a mature leadership at the highest levels and to Mexico or have the appropriate Mexican officials come up to us and sit down at the table and say to them, how can we help you in good faith and not make

any demands and not make any threats or any of that nonsense but say we all know we got big problems how can we help you so that you can help us and help everybody else and start a process of honest negotiation and mediation and coordination and then tie it to you know like we always do the foreign aid bill just passed i read the foreign aid bill today If you want to read a very interesting document, sit down and read the foreign aid bill. It's pretty interesting. But you know, deal with them fairly and appropriately and honestly as much as possible. And our cooperation and our resources to, you know, you got to do certain things.

You got to have a quid pro quo. You got to stop doing this. You got to put a wall up here. You got to take these people back. You got to, you know, how can we invest in your country to make it better for your people to stay in your country because they have work? Right. And that impacts the illegal immigration problem that we have here in the United States. It's so many other things.

Yeah, well, part of our immigration, if anybody that's listened to the last two hours of their show, you know, is that we left El Salvador and it's a mess. and they can't live there. There's no work, there's no jobs. Their president is a very sharp young man who was interviewed several months ago and he said, our economy is broken. And that's why people are leaving.

They're scared to be in murder. They're scared of being kidnapped. They got no work. If you want to, you know, if you want to be a world leader, then behave like a world leader. Think out of the box. and get rid of the imperial hubris that we have.

Okay, somebody else said, can you guys briefly explain the Iran-Contra affair? I'm not that good in history of that incident. If you talked about earlier, what was your favorite meal in Central America? That's the best question of the night. My favorite meal in Central America was in El Salvador and Lawn when our team found a Floating Village at the far end of La Union on the Gulf of Fonseca, it was called Nick Village. And it had been put together by Nicaraguans who had fled Nicaragua, come across the Gulf, and they were living there.

They built this little floating village, partially on land and otherwise. And you could go down there and they had a bunch of restaurants. And the best meal after a day's training was you could get. Three huge Camarones, two lobsters, and two Pilsner beers for five bucks. Well, that sounds like heaven. If I imagine heaven, that's exactly what it sounds like. And to sit there in the climate on the little benches, listening to the music and looking out of the Gulf of Fonseke and saying, yeah, baby, this is what special forces is all about. And on a less delicious topic, do you want a brief history of Iran contra?

Man, that's a whole episode in of itself. But I don't know. Did you ever come in contact with any of the moving parts of what today is known as the Iran-Contra conspiracy or scandal? You know, I can answer to that pretty quickly because, you know, again, And they're not going to blame President Reagan. I like President Reagan. I voted for President Reagan.

Here again, our government, because it couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted to do in a more creative manner, you know, went over to the dark side. And, you know, we wanted to get Nicaragua back. And so we, you know, did the exchange for with a rata was stupid it was just as it was just a stupid thought process and the reason that it was stupid in my mind is because uh when number one samosa was a bad guy and and the only reason that we back samosa was because he was our guy big time and when uh you know we we just simply failed to you know to get it right just like when we went and sent the os s into

North Vietnam to meet Hocchemen and and our OSS guys came out and said, hey, we ought to back this guy, Hoccian, he's pretty squared away. And our government said, we're going to rack the French because we like them. That worked out real well. Right. Right. You know, so you have Nicaragua Fold of the San Anistas, very clever people, bad guys. And so they go and they raise the contrast.

the Contras of. Well, the Contras were the worst scum of the earth. And anybody that studies the Contras and what they did and their leadership and everything, those guys, all they did was get rich and plunder and rape and, you know, they literally, the Contras literally kept the Sandinases in power at a time when they had just taken power where they were the most vulnerable and pressure could have put on. economically and diplomatically to maybe do some different things. That's just a flat fact. So you know you screw up Iran, you have this huge nightmare just like we're having with this impeachment nonsense and the countries were not the answer to any degree for any reason.

It was just incredibly dumb. And last question, and hopefully this could be a short one for me. What does Greg think a la mano duro who uh la mano or manio dura

who is umanio dura la mano mano la mano dura la oh oh the

oh I think I know what that they're talking about the iron hand yeah the iron hand dora iron hand that's uh

If I can recall correctly, that's a really interesting question. That person asked a really interesting question. If I'm recalling accurately, Mano Dura was like Mano Blanca, the white hand. These were all death squad, anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-socialist, and anybody who was against the established regime and the business interests and committed. all sorts of interesting atrocities and crimes. What do I think of them? Yes, I think of them the same way when I was a cop that I thought about street gangs,

like the Crips and the Bloods and the Hells Angels and, you know, any number of other dirt bags who feed off of good people and create chaos and civilizations and take human lives needlessly for their own miserable benefits. So that's how positive time and put them in jail or execute them. Well, we actually kept Greg even longer than I thought we would. So Greg, thanks so much for joining us tonight and being so candid with us and sharing your experiences with us. We're definitely going to have to do it again at some point because we're just kind of scratching the surface. But we are going to do a second segment for our supporters after this.

And Greg is going to tell us the story of one of the more curious stories of this entire war in Central America is an American Green Beret who defected and went to the other side and joined up with the communist guerrillas. And Greg, it was something I looked into at one point, but Greg cracked this story wide open and got to the bottom of it. And it'll blow your mind. really is just wild but for everyone else who joined us tonight thank you so much for coming and watching I really apologize for some of the issues we had the

technical issues in the first half of the interview and I'm sorry to Greg also for having to deal with that we're gonna have to work on some of those things yeah but for now please remember to subscribe to the channel it's a work in progress we're gonna get there together guys and hit the bell so that you get notified leave some comments, give us a little thumbs up to help this video get spread far and wide. There is this link to the subreddit in the description and also the link to our Patreon page if you want to help us continue doing this. Yeah, and just $1 a month helps. If every one of our subscribers gave a buck a month, we'd pay the rent on this place.

It would be a done deal. Yeah, we'd be rich. We wouldn't be rich, but we would break even. We would break even. That's a good thing. We would break even. So if you have a dollar, send a dollar. We appreciate it, guys.

And thank you for joining us. We really appreciate that. Thanks to Gray. Thank you. Thank you. There are so many more questions I want to ask you, great. We'll have to do this again. Thanks, guys.