The Team House - Special Forces Vietnam: Mobile Guerrilla Force, Blue Light, w/ Ruben Garcia Ep. 53

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

Ruben Garcia is a Cuban immigrant who joined the Army in the 1950's and Special Forces in 1961. He did multiple tours in Vietnam, helped stand up the Mobile Guerrilla Force, was stationed in remote SFOB's on the Cambodian border, involved in search missions for Nick Rowe, and later served at Mott Lake running Special Operations Training for Special Forces. This is Ruben's story, from private to major as only he can tell it. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouseBecome 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. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the team house. This is episode 53. I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host Dave Park.

Today, we are really honored to have as our guest, Ruben Garcia. as you can see here this gentleman, Rubin is a Special Forces veteran, served multiple tours in Vietnam. He immigrated here from Cuba, joined the Army in 1956, joined Special Forces in 1961. As I've just mentioned, multiple tours in Vietnam, deployments elsewhere into Latin America, which will also get into. had an amazing career going from the rank of private to major. And today, Ruben, he went to law school after he retired from the military, and he continues to practice law to this day. And we're going to talk about all of this with Mr. Garcia tonight.

And I just want to say, Rubin, thank you so much for taking time out of your Friday night to join us here. My pleasure. Pleasure meeting you, too. Could we begin with you just telling us a little bit about your family backgrounds and how you immigrated to the United States? Yeah, that may be a little bit interesting, some kind of personal. My father apparently decided he needed to be somewhere else when I was three years old, and he abandoned my mother and me and my three-month-old brother. And my mother had four brothers who had served in World War II.

They had volunteered to join the Army in Cuba, the U.S. Army in Cuba, to serve in exchange for citizenship. And they went ahead and fill out the necessary paperwork to claim her. So my mom went to the military school where my dad had put us, and she kidnapped us, took us straight to the airport. Next thing you know, we were in Chicago. I ended up in the United States. I worked at various jobs, went to school, worked a various job, and when I turned 18, I decided I wanted to join the Army.

And that's what I did. May 28, 1956, two days after I turned 18 on the 26th. The rest is kind of like not a very interesting history, but a history. That's a very interesting history. You were, you know, you came into the Army in a very interesting time and were there in the early years of special forces. But before that, you know, your first assignment was with the 82nd airport, right?

I went to the 82nd and first to the 307 airborne engineer. I didn't like the engineers. So I finnacle a way to get over to the double nickel, the 505. In the 82nd, spend a short time there. Then I volunteered for special forces. At that time, it was kind of hard to get into SS. They wanted people who had combat experience already, and I didn't. But I kept hammering Annie, kept hammering Aaron, and eventually got and went over to what they called, then the training group.

And you receive your training there. We did some of our training in Camp McCall, the rest there around Bragg. had a training area called the great Gabriel demonstration area, which was named Gabriel, who had been killed in Vietnam, Sergeant Gabriel. And I ended up with a team, but first I was trying to get to Panama because I spoke Spanish. But the army and his great wisdom sent me to Okinawa. You know? And for a while there I was the armorer of B Company.

of the first Special Forces Group. I finally got on a team A113, Captain Fisher was the team leader, Master Sergeant Johansson was the team sergeant, Tosi, Mark Tossey was the Intel Sergeant, and Thurman Ramsey was the heavy weapons and I was light weapons. Rubin, could you tell us before, you know, I wanna hear more about your detachment,

but could you tell us a little bit about what it was like going through special forces training back in 1961? It was a little bit different, I think, than what they're doing today. Today, I think, is very much pattern like the seal training, you know, picking up heavy logs and all that stuff. Back in my day, the idea was, you don't have to train to be miserable. You don't have to train to be miserable. We train a lot over in people.

Piska and in the New Wari Mountain Range in North Carolina. And the people in that area were extremely good people, friendly people. They cooperated with us a lot. Of course, you'll be going up the mountain and you run into a big agricultural patch of corn. Well, that corn was there for a purpose. That corn was there to make moonshine. And they would say to us, you guys go right ahead, but walk between the roads. Don't knock down the corn.

Now they're growing other crops. And we went a lot of training out there. We did one training thing where we were trying to find a drop zone. And we're standing there looking at it. And this guy comes up, pulls up in a pickup truck. And he says, what are you boys up to? We told him we're planning to drive some paratroopers in here tonight. He said, well, don't do that, boy.

feel is full of rattledy snakes. And sure enough, you walked out there, rattlesnakes everywhere coming out of the holes. We had to find somewhere else. But the train was different than I think than it is today. Today they put emphasis on the physical fitness. You had to be fit in our day, but at the same time, this is what counted up here. Could you think your way out of the box? Could you get the job done?

could you go and get there without getting yourself killing coming back? It was a different concept. But now it's a little bit different, I guess. Ruben, it's funny because when you mention, you know, you don't have to train to be miserable. And you talk about SF training, if those had been like rangers out there and somebody had said, oh, you don't want to jump there, there are rattlesnakes.

Those rangers have been like, yeah, that's a good spot. Let the young privates deal with it and see what happens. I know. You know, when I came back from one of my tours, I went to the Camp Rudder in Eclan Air Force Base to be an instructor there. I was there with Dick Meadows, which was a great soldier, wonderful person. He's dead now. God bless him. And we train no matter what the weather. Hurricane blowing through the swamps and we're out there. 17 degrees. And we're walking. into swamp water and then it starts raining. So you got the water coming down to crack of your butt and coming up to your testicles in the swamp. And that was just the way it was. Yeah. Right. I diddle, dittle, straight up the middle. What was, you know, the concept in your mind? I mean, I guess we were already involved in the Vietnam conflict. So all of you guys must have

had some idea that sooner or later, after training, you were going to go to Vietnam? I think you're absolutely right. We all know. that was the destination sooner or later, depending on the route that you took. But I made it a point to study what had happened in Vietnam because I always felt there was more of a nationalist movement than a communist movement. And the reason I say that is because that was Ho Chi Minh's concept. I remember reading that he was interviewed when he was in France once, and he was asked,

how can you as Corrillas beat the French? And he said, we will fight them like the target fights the elephant. We jump on his back, we scratch him, we bite him, and we run away, and he bleeps a little bit, and we come back and we bleed him a little more. And that's what they did.

And eventually, this country got sick and tired of fighting with her, especially after Walter Cronkai came back and said, We lost. We had, you know, 68, we beat the crap out of them. But the problem was, the psychologically, we in the United States were not ready to keep going on that war. That's all there was to it. We had a contact one time. And contact left that I think about 27 hours, if I remember correctly.

We ran into a couple of battalions. We took them up. part pretty good. Eleven helicopters got shut down or damaged pretty severely and had to put down somewhere, bringing us ammo and stuff like that. And a general came out to visit us. I don't remember his name to tell you the truth, but I remember the little pistol on his hip. And he put some around my shoulder and he said, you guys are doing a great job.

We're going to be out of here in six months. That was in 1960. Captain Fisher looked at me and he knew that I was about to open my mouth and he said, general, these guys are tired. They've been up all day and all night. Let's let him go get some chow and some rest. And off we went. My ass. I'm sorry. No, it's okay. You can use some foul language on this show. I, back to your first deployment to Vietnam, the day. attachment 113, you're telling us about some of the men you served on that team with. Can you tell us about that deployment, about arriving in Vietnam? I mean, what year would that have been? It was still pretty early on in the conflict. 63.

That was 63. We flew in the first into Saigon. From there, we went on the train, and from there we deployed. And that was in Tainin. And we were working with a cow die. good people that caught die. The area was supposed to be like about 82% pro VC. And somebody mentioned, I didn't see the sign,

but somebody mentioned that there was a sign by the side of the road when we were driving in two and a half ton trucks that said, welcome to Vietnam Detachment 113. I don't know if, I didn't see the sign, but somebody said they saw it. So their intelligence was pretty, that was one of the problems,

at least back there. then. You didn't know who to trust or what you could do or who you could talk to. And when you plan an operation, you had to be careful. If you wanted to plan, you know, artillery fire or anything else, they were going to know where you went and what you did. And so you had to be very careful about that. You mentioned in, you know, some of the information you sent me about your deployment that the, this religious sect, the cow die, that they, that they, They revered Charlie Chaplin as like a quasi-deity. Right.

In the middle of the Tainan city, there was a temple. And inside the temple, there's this big eye. And that's the all-seeing eye of the Qatai. And they believe in Buddhism, Taoism. And Victor Hugo was one of their deities, Charlie Chaplin, because he had brought humor to the people and to work. And from the temple, there were four rows going out, going to the four points of the compass,

east, west, north, and south. Because their hope was one day that those roads will circumvent the world and bring people together. Good people. We had a little major by the name of a, who was Tanya, I think was his name. Into operations, all he carried was a little axe. and if he got out of line

he slapped him with the flat side of the axe on the side of the head. He was a brave man. He was up front all the time and we got caught up in one ambush and he had a bugler and he blew charge and we blew right through the middle

of that L in the ambush. Got on the other side and broke it up. He was quite a fella. He did not tolerate any crap for many of his men. The Caldai had fought everybody. They fought the Japanese.

They fought the Chinese. They fought the French. They were pretty independent people. And when you arrived there, could tell us a little bit about the SFOB or the A camp that you were in and what the mission was, what you guys were doing out there at that time?

At that point in time, 63, 64, we were going there on six-month tours. We weren't there for a year at that time. It was six month tours. And the concept to be quite honest with, just to go out in operation and denied the VC from being able to get to the villages because they were texting those people.

They were taking their rights, they were grabbing their men and forcing them to fight for the VC. But in that area, it became kind of problematic because like I said, there was supposed to be like about 80, 2% pro VC. So we would hear that there were some place collecting rice and grabbing men, and we rushed out there and try to stop them. We were also very near to a mountain that was called Black Widow Mountain. I forget the name in Vietnamese. I think of it probably as we're

talking along, but they had a lot of people there that had caves, and they pretty much operated out of there in that area. At that time, it was kind of a complex situation, because a lot of our people have been, by the people, I mean the indigenous soldiers that we had with us, they were recruited from jails. And some of them were being paid for the number of kills. So it got pretty hairy sometimes. So there were like criminals that had been hired and there were like bounties out on Americans. Exactly, they were recruited and then they were working for us. We armed them, we closed them, we fed them, and we go out in operations.

Because initially, it was very difficult to get civilians, you know, who were honest, rice field people, rice paddy people to come and work. They didn't want any, don't forget, from my point of view, the Vietnamese have been fighting everybody for everyone. and they're tired of it. They're tired. And so how did things go with these operations with the commander with his bugle and hitting people in the head with the side of his axe?

If a man did anything wrong, he hailed a trial. But of course, that's when we got back to camp. He put him in the middle of the circle there. And if they were proven that he had done something wrong, say he stole something or he fell asleep during guard duty. He woke up and he took the flat side of that hatchet and he goes bang, bang him on the head. And that was the law. That was it.

Case over. And you guys went out on operations. I guess you were searching for the Viet Cong out in the jungle. Yeah, at that point in time it was. It wasn't until later that we became aware that we were starting to get MBA coming down. On that one operation, I was telling you about all of a sudden we're up against people who were wearing khaki pants with the seam of the pants sewn in, Sam Brown belts. One of the guys we killed later on was identified as the commander of a battalion. Right.

Was that a big change for you guys to realize that it had moved it? It wasn't just Viet Cong now, but it was North Vietnamese regulars. Absolutely because they were very well trained now. They were disciplined. Maybe the discipline was because if they didn't do what they were told, they get shot, but they were disciplined, and they would fight to the last man. It was very interesting to see that transition. But the problem was you never knew who you were up against.

when the shooting started, you know, it gets very chaotic, very disorganized. Right. And sometimes you'll be out there for days, let's be honest. Sometimes you'll be out there for days and make no contact because they're avoiding you. They're running like hell or they're sniping at you. We had one operation where we had an L-19 airplane spotting for us. And he got shut down, but he landed the thing in a clearing. And he's between us and the guys on the other wood line.

And they're shooting past him at us. And all he's got is a little 38 that he carried in a shoulder holster. We finally got him out of there. The next time we saw that guy, he had an airplane full of armament. He had everything you could think of hand grenades, whatever he grew. Of course, in those days, we didn't have the M16 yet. I took out a Thompson submachine gun on one operation, never again. That damn thing is so heavy and the ammunition, never again.

From then on I just stuck with my, at that time we had the M14. Yeah. From that, I stuck with my M14. A couple of times I took out of carbine and we also had access to some of the French weapon, the mat. And we had some stint guns, some stint guns with silencers. We had all kinds of weird stuff back in those days. And of course, it's a weapons man. You had a training or the different weapons so you could use whatever you wanted

or whatever you found whenever you had to use it. And what did you prefer? Like what was your normal load out when you would go out? What did you like to carry? Well, back in that day, I probably carried a basic load of ammunition about 220 rounds. Sometimes you wish you had more. sometimes you wish you had less, but the bottom line was that you carried about 220 rounds and several hand grenades, and we were carrying claymores.

And when you set up at 9, you set out your claymores out in a perimeter. Yeah. And then what weapon systems did you, did you carry the other guys, like, what, what cars or did you like the AKs or what did you typically prefer? We didn't have access to AKs. We had access to M1s. Some of the guy, there was one guy that carried an M1 with the MC one, you know, with the scope and all that stuff. But we never got a chance to do much of that.

Most of the stuff was just, you know, you hear them out there. They hear you, they shoot, you shoot back. Sometimes you don't know if you hit anybody or none. You know when they hit your guys. Now theirs. Yeah. And they're very good about carrying their dead away. They did not leave their dead laying around.

They carried them away. I don't know whether that was a principle of no man left behind, which is a way of denying us knowing how successful we had been. Yeah. And you had also mentioned that Robin Moore showed up at the camp. Robin Moore, yeah. He came out to the camp and he was there. And about just before he left,

they got one of Ramsey Thurman's berets and gave it to him as a presentation. And a couple of days later, they sent some people out there to get him. He had been declared by the Vietnamese a persona non grata because he had made some comments about the poor fighting conditions of the Vietnamese and how poorly they fought and how they would run away sometimes during contacts.

And he, if you look at the first edition of his book, he mentions that about the beret and being with our camp and Tainan in in the last chapter. Since then, that book, I think, has been revised and he's added more to it. And I don't know if it's still in there or not. I'm going to bring up a picture. This might be from one of later deployments, but I just wanted to show people this. And there is Rubin on the right-hand side.

And the guy on the left is B.T. Collins. BT got out. Well, we were in operation up in the mountain. BT was down with a captain. God, I can't remember that guy's thing. I always have a hard time. He came in later. And B.T. got in a firefight in the swamp.

and there was a hand grenade thrown and he reached down into the water to get it and the hand grenade went up, took off his right arm and his left leg. His sister wrote a book about him called Outrageous Hero. After he got out, he went to Santa Clara Law School and then later on became

Governor Brown's chief of staff and later on became a councilwoman in California. California. Wow. He died of a hotel to listen to Colin Powell, give a speech. And all of us who knew him, Henry Cook and I, we say, well, BT always managed to, you know, just jump right in there and take the limelight. Is there any other like memorable moments from that deployment, memorable, either memorable people

or memorable firefights or any, you guys getting into trouble or anything that stands out? The entire camp used to be a French camp before we took it over many years before. But another team from the first had been there. And the entire camp was surrounded by a berm. And there were all these holes in the berm. And there were rats. Rats lived in there. And somebody got a bright idea.

Well, one night I was on guard duty. Let me digress for a second. I was on guard duty because we would keep guard of our own. own area, ninda pin on the Vietnamese to guard us. And I went into the mess hall, I cooked myself an egg, made myself an egg sandwich with some French bread, and I put my cup of coffee down by the sandbags.

When I went to reach down for the sandbag to grab the cup of coffee, I grabbed the rat. I tell you what, I jumped right out of my boots just about. But the Byrne was full of those bigger, I'm talking about big rats. I'm talking about a foot and a half long with a tail, another foot and a half long. Rubin, is that why you have that cat behind you on your desk? Because you have a permanent aversion to rats?

Absolutely. And the burn was full of all these tunnels made by the rats. And somebody got the wise idea to take one of those weed burners, and let's burn the rats out of there. And they did. the rats caught on fire and then started running through the camp catching hood hoods and hootches on fire and we never did that again but that is funny we had a guy come out he was a captain he had been an nCO before and he was coming out with some cryptopats for us you know one-time pets and he flew over

over the head in a caribou. And he jumped out, and he jumped out with a briefcase full of cryptopads, and he lands just outside our perimeter. So now we're standing on the burn waving at him, and he's coming toward us. The problem was he was coming right through the minefield. And we're waving at him, go back, go back,

and he's waving at us like, hello. Finally somebody shot around, and he stopped updating its cracks. And we, somebody got a megaphone and told him back up, you're walking through a minefield. And we had to go out and go around about a quarter of a mile to get him out of there. But those some, you know, something to laugh about. Rubin, for our viewers who don't know, or listeners who don't know, what is it cryptopad? Because we're talking way before modern encryption and things like that. Yeah. We used to get these pads. And you use one.

sheet to send one message and you every day you tore them up and they were like on tissue paper and then you destroyed it and every day if you had to send an operation message or you had to send a report of any kind every day you you wrote an update you used that pad and you used that encryption to encrypt the message to send it out because as you know are all of our guys were good with a more scope right the radio operators had to be able to send like 18 words a minute those are the rest of us who train just as a backup seven words a minute and if you know who was even if you didn't know who was sending you could tell by the way he he clicked that thing the rhythm that he used and that was the crypto pass that's amazing and they had to be hand

delivered. There's no other way to do it back then, right? You had to go get him. Either you went to Saigon and you picked them up and brought them back or somebody had to bring him to you. I'll be honest with you. I don't know why that guy was delivering them. Maybe he just wanted to jump out of that caribou. Yeah. Get his combat jump. No, I don't think he got credit for that. However, he almost would have been in combat if he'd step on any of those minds out there. Some of those mines have been there since the French were there. Yeah. And who, because we've talked to people, we've talked about the mountain yards before.

We've talked about the Hmong before. And you told us a little bit about the Kau Dai and they're sort of religious and spiritual beliefs. But were they also another indigenous tribe native to that angle? They are and not very well accepted by regular Vietnamese. But of course, among yours are up in, they were up in I-Corps, second-core. I was down in fourth core for this particular tour. As a matter of fact, both my tours were in fourth core. And so the bottom line is that, yeah, they had their own concepts, their own beliefs,

and they were generally not accepted by, for example, the Vietnamese special forces didn't like to really work with. We had a couple of Vietnamese special forces people with us in the camp, in that particular. But they didn't like, no, they didn't accept them. Was it just because of cultural differences, or was it more just sort of a racial sort of, kind of stereotyping or preference? I think it was a combination of both, to tell you the truth. You know, they had different concepts, different cultural beliefs. different religious beliefs, they live isolated from everybody else.

They didn't really want anything to do with the Vietnamese either. They just want to be left alone. Right. Just like the mountain yours. The modern years were good people. They just want to be left alone to live their life the way they wanted to live it. So tell us then a little bit about what happened after your first tour in Vietnam, that you went back to Okinawa and there are some other things in Asia that you got sucked up into, right?

Well, after I got back to Oki, we found out that the 503rd was being turned into the 173rd Airborne Brigade. And I got a call one day. They were going to be sent to Taiwan for a pre-deployment of Vietnam exercise, sort of a checkout. And we went over there, and then I was like a referee or an umpire with one of the battalions. And I was supposed to be with a captain. 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. I'm an officiado. I'm a sneakerhead. I'm a boody. I'm a gym rat. There are many names for enthusiast.

A fashionista. But there's only one way to become one. by going all in. The Lexus IAS sports sedan is our obsession, relentlessly engineered and designed to be the most responsive IS ever. It's what we call going all in on the sports sedan, the Lexus IS. Experience Amazing at your Lexus dealer. Click the banner to discover more. I remember his name, but I'm not going to mention it. We got to, they had to do a river crossing. And this captain said to me, you go with them, I'm going to take the Jeep and I'm going to cross on the bridge and I'll meet you on the other side.

Well, they went ahead and put the smoke to make the river crossing and they deployed the smoke too soon and too far up and it kind of blew all away and here came the Taiwanese jets strafing, you know, a mock strafing. Got to the other side and who do I run into? General Acosta. And he says, Sergeant Garcia, where's Captain so-and-so is it?

Sir, he's over there on the other side. And he said, did you grade these people? Yes, sir. He said, what did you think was their casualty rate on their river cross? I said about 35%. He said, yeah,

absolutely. That smoke was blown too soon. And they had no cover going across. in the river. So then he says, get in the Jeep. I got in the Jeep. He drove to where the captain was, and he said, Captain, you report back to a head course. You're going back to Okinaw and tomorrow. You should have been crossing that river with Sergeant Garcia. I was a sergeant at the time. Was this about the time that you started having thoughts about going to OCS and becoming an officer yourself? I did, yes. When I got back to OECN, I told my wife, she was there with my son.

I love the Okinawa people. Let me talk, Chris, a minute. I rented a house on the economy, you know, because I didn't have enough rank to get housing on post. And the people who I rented the house room were Okinawis. A couple of interesting stories there. So at night, we had a couple of people break in on two occasions. And one, I had a little bit of a te-a-te-te with.

we won't get into that. But enough that he left for my knife stuck on his neck. I'll say it much less it. Then I started to chase him and I realized, wait a minute, he's got my knife. He pulled it out and threw it on the middle of the room. I picked it up and that was that. So when I left for Okinawa and Taiwan,

the owner of the house, Okinawa, he came over one day with some people and he put bars on all the windows. So I would feel that my family was being protected while I was away in Vietnam or anywhere else. They were very nice people. When I pay my rent every month, I had to go over there and sit down and have tea with him.

It wasn't just walking and here's the money. No, it had to be like a little ceremony. We had to exchange greetings. We had to ask about the family. It was all very good. And one day I'm walking, I used to take the bus back from where my station was, where to where my family was living. And all that I'm walking down and I hear this voice say in Spanish.

Excuse me, do you speak Spanish? And I turn around and all I see is oriental faces. So I kept walking. The guy said it again. I turned around and the guy went like this. And he was an Okinawa. Interesting story. He lived in Argentina because in 1905, his father, who had fought in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905,

his father had been drafted by the Japanese and fought in that war. And he foresaw Second World War coming. And he sent his son to Argentina, the son, thought that it was because his father didn't love him. Now the father was dying, so he had to come back and take over the family. He loved to come to my house and have rice and beans because he said he was tired of no beans, he just rice. But yes, I did decide that I wanted to go to OCS and I applied, fell out all the form. When before a board, my team leader, Captain Fisher recommended me. and I went back to the United States in 1965 to go to OCS, Bainting School for Boys.

And back in those days, I think it's important to mention too, special forces wasn't a branch. It wasn't really like a career field. And what that meant was that for Rubin, for you, you had to fight to get back into special forces throughout your career. Absolutely, because we weren't exactly appreciated or anybody. thought very much of us. When President Kenny granted us the beret after a demonstration at Mount Lake, which later I ended up out there

with what was then called, previously called Blue Light, later became Special Operations Training. And we were like the bastard children, you know, nobody really wanted to have us around. The beret was at first totally denied When people went on the field, they wore boon. They wore the beret, but back in garrison, you couldn't.

Finally, Kennedy said, I granted it to you. Interesting point. They started wearing the beret for Bragg a year before we started wearing it in Okinawa. The first special force group was the last group to officially be allowed to wear the beret. And if you look at the flash for the first special forces, it's yellow, right, gold. And it has a black rim around. That black rim was in honor of Jack Kennedy in perpetual mourning. A lot of people don't.

The original one was solid yellow, solid gold. And then when Kennedy got assassinated, and I was in Vietnam in November of 63 when he was assassinated. Remember coming back from a patrol, and the flag was a half-mast. And I was immediately told, we were in triple-shot gun alert. And I said, why, I said Kennedy was killed.

And we were expecting the camp might be attacked. Of course, we weren't. But yeah, at that time, Special Forces was not exactly anybody's love affair. We were people that we were our own mind. We operated differently. We worked differently. Like I said, we didn't want to practice to be miserable. we just got the job done.

It was the old saying special forces. Carries a bigger low, penetrates deeper and stays longer. I thought it was, we fuck, we fight, we boo-goloo. Rubin, as a freshly minted lieutenant, I was wondering if you could tell us a story about going down to Venezuela

and train the soldiers in counterinsurgency tactics. After I, when I went, when I graduated from OCS, I got assigned much to my surprise to the eight special forces group in Panama. But it wasn't as clear as I thought it was going to be. When I got there, it turns out I've been assigned to the ninth side war detachment. Because down in Panama, they had what they call SAF, Special Operation Force, And they had an intelligence detachment, engineering detachment, and anything you could think of. So I got assigned to nine side.

I stayed there for about three or four months, maybe five. And then I went over to B company, and I got assigned to a team with Captain David Decker, who laid around was killed in that tall in November of 1963. No, excuse me. in 66. That was much later. And David was a fine officer, a good man. And we went to Panama, and we were staying in a little camp near the Colombian border. And we were training their soldier in counterinsurgency operations. You know, it's not easy for people to pick up that concept. It really is not. It takes a certain mentality to operate in.

what I would call a guerrilla environment. There's no high diddle dittle straight up the middle. You have to be oblique about it. You have to be able to keep your eyes and ears open and know and give the enemy credit for what he is. He is not stupid. He's smart. And he knows that jungle better than you do. And so we trained them.

Some interesting thing happened when we were there. One day we're out training and all of a sudden we hear this. incredible thunderous racket. And there was a river nearby. So we were running over there. Apparently the snow had melted up in the mountain. And the water was coming down on these rivers. And I swear to God, you believe this.

It was bouncing boulders, the size of houses. And that was the noise. Bang. They were banging again and going up in the air 30, 40 feet, landing back in the river or on the shore. And we had to get the hell out of there. another time I come back and six of my

guys are around something they're looking at it and they're jumping back and forth. It turned out to be a mamba. Wow. I said we used to, in the Panama we used to bring back whatever snakes we found anywhere so we

could use them to teach people how to identify. Do the same thing in Ranger training, right? And at least in the Florida phase of it. And I see this mama there. Now, you know you get bit by that thing. We're out in the middle of nowhere.

You're dead. I'm not having it. I took out my 45. I shot the mom. I said, now you can put it in the yard. But I wasn't playing with the thing. But we were there for eight weeks training them and went back to Panama. Out of the eighth, you might find this interesting.

The eighths pressure force. crew sent a team to Bolivia to train the Bolivian Rangers that ultimately killed Che Guevada. I wasn't part of that, but the eight special forces crew sent a team out of there. I think they've written a book about it, the team that went down there. And they're the ones with Rangers who eventually got Gavada. Rubin, you mentioned, you bring them some interesting points about counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare, that they know how to jungle better than you and, and, you know, not underestimating your enemy.

And I think we've seen that, you know, in almost every counter uncertainty, like including Afghanistan, you know, all these different places. They're just better in their environment than we are. And typically, for whatever reason, than the indigenous troops that we work with a lot of times also. How do, I mean, Americans generally grow up, and not quite as an insurmess. challenging environment, right? We don't have to rely on natural resources as much as they do, things like that. How do Americans compensate for that when they get into those environments? And then

how do we pass that on to indigenous soldiers that we are responsible for training? That's a wonderful question. I believe that our mentality, and by our, I mean, here in the United States and actually I think even most angles our mentality is straight shot you can't work that way when you're in a counterinsurgery environment is differently you get to a place you stop you listen you look you wait for the other guy to move if you move first he knows where you are. I'm sorry. My phone's ringing.

It's probably my wife. Apologize to her for me, please. Honey, give me a second. I'm on the web page Zoom thing. Okay? I'll call you back later. And so we need to have the patience to understand and get acclimated,

understand the environment. And you need to get into the other guy's head. You need to know what he's thinking. What is he planning to do? Well, you know he's going to work from an ambush standpoint. That's what he wants. He's going to hit and he's going to run. He's not going to give you a high diddle, dittle, straight up the middle of fight.

Right. It ain't going to walk that way. He doesn't want to do it that way. He's not in a position to do that. He knows you have artillery. He knows you have airplanes. He knows you have support. He knows he's carrying a certain amount of ammunition.

a bottle of water and a little packet of rice and maybe some dry fish. And that's it. By the way, when we went out in operations, I insisted that all my guys eat exactly the same thing that they were eating, that our troops were eating. Why? And no coffee. There's not, you know, tea smells different when it's brewing than coffee. If you're brewing coffee out in the jungle, the enemy knows. you're America. And if you eat something different than what the indigenous people eat, you smell differently.

When you've been out there several days or several, you know, when in the mobile guerrilla company, we were committed for a month at a time. By the time you got back, throw away that uniform and burn it. Don't even try to wash. Because as you're burning,

you're creating ammonia. as you're burning the protein in your body, you're creating ammonia and you stink. You really stink. And so you have to get ready to think in the terms of what the environment is and what you're up against. You have to learn to deal with yourself, not just the enemy.

Because he's smart. He knows the trails. He knows how to live out there. He's lived out there his whole life. And so I think it's difficult for us. Not only that, we think we can just use power. We can just come in with brute force and run right over them. And you can't, because they're not going to give you a fight.

They're going to drop back. They're going to rope a dope you. Rubin, that kind of brings us into your second tour in Vietnam, 1966, which sounds, and it sounded incredibly dangerous from what you described to me. I just wonder if you could tell us about it was detachment 415? Yeah, I got there and I think the name of the place was two in them, but I don't remember exactly. I've been there maybe like about four weeks. For a while I went to work with a indigenous civilian force, but at that time the area was flooded.

And somebody had the bright idea to bring airboats. Well, the airboat moved you over the. the swampy floated area. But at the same time, if you encounter somebody, what you had to do, you had to, if they fire at you from a hammock, let's say, and you're out there in the water, you've got to, I don't know if I can explain this, maybe you can see me. One airborne had to come in engaging in firing, and the other boy had to be right there engaging before you turn. because once you turn your back, they're firing into your

airboard. They're firing into the... And if they hit, and if they hit that propeller, that's it that airboat is down. Once that propeller took a shot, it shattered itself because it was out of balance. So you had to come in

like circling the wagons, engaging. Not only that, but the airboat is nothing but fiberglass. So whoever had that idea, maybe it was a good idea the first couple of times. They caught onto it. They sit in the wood line. They sit in the hammocks, and they just fired there.

I knew several guys that got killed out there on those airboat. But I've been there about four or five weeks. We're not maybe on two or three operations on the airbows. The plates had been flooded. You could see the watermarks in the hoochers. And I got a message that a helicopter was coming to pick me up. They flew me back to Cantor and the executive officer of the seat attachment who was Texas Sam. I always had trouble forgetting his last name. I think I wrote it to you.

Can you say it to me? I forget it. But he called me in. He says, Colonel Kelly has directed. Colonel Kelly was the commandant, commander of Special Forces of the Special Forces Group in Vietnam. at that time. And he said, Colonel Kelly has directed that every court is going to have a mobile guerrilla company. And we are behind the power curve on that. So I want you to pick the guys that you won. And I want you, we're going to give you a company of Wahau. Now, Waho were flatlanders. There were not people who worked in the months. And you're going to take him and you're going to train him, handpick the people you want. That handpicking kind of fell apart because None of the other team leaders wanted to give up their business, good guys, you know.

And we went to Fukuwa Island. Fuku Island is a little island that's just off the western coast of Vietnam. And we started training over there. We pitched tents right alongside the airstrip, and we started training. Now, we were supposed to train for eight weeks, but at the end of about four weeks, we got told that we're going up to Nui Koro, because the might force is coming in to jump in. from the train. Rubin,

major Sam Jeffers. Yeah, Sam Jeffers. Texas Sam. And the the Huahal were like a Buddhist sect or cult also, weren't they? They were a religious minority. The Waho they are, yeah.

And it turned out to be a problem because we ended up going up in the mountains for an operation. And the Wahia, didn't like being there. They said, we're not mountain people. We don't want to be here. Yeah. And they started discerting. And Colonel and Major Marichick, who at the time had the mic force, came in to round them up. And we went down the side of the mountain and then they surrounded them all. He took all their weapons, took all their equipment. We put them on caribus and flew them back to their homes. Yeah. It was a big, a big fiasco to tell you the truth.

Who decided that like planes people or flatlanders would make up a mobile force that would operate in the mountains? Where did that decision come from? Actually, it got me in a little bit of trouble because when I got back, wrote sort of a scathing letter and said, you know, just because you give them a fancy hat and a fancy name, mobile gorilla, whatever, you didn't give us enough time to train. We weren't ready to go up in that month, turn into a fee. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a substantial difference between, you know, working with people who have never been around mountains and training them to work in mountains and using people who grew up in the mountains and are just used to that way of life, the, you know, the elevation, walking in that kind of environment where it's constantly up or downhill. It's very different. They did not like it. They didn't know like it.

As a matter of fact, we had one bed instance there. We went up into Nuikai Mountain, which is the one that's the closest or fathers away from the Cambodian border. Because it's an area called the Seven Mountains area. And we went up there and at the base of the mountain, there was an airstrip in a camp of regular Arvin and U.S. advisors. and they did not tell us that they were going to go up in the mountain in the next three or four days for training. And they took a platoon up there and we had an ambush shut up and we shot them up. It was very sad and very bad and of course all kinds of repercussions. But that's what happens.

Yeah. We set up an ambush one night. This is a little kind of humor society. We set up an ambush one night. And it gets cool up in those mountains, even though it's Vietnam and you just think it's hot all the time. It's not. The temperature drops up there in those mountains. In some of those mountains, you can look down and see the clouds.

So we're in the ambush, and I'm laying there. Actually, I'm kind of sitting up because I'm pretty good at staying awake. But I most of just kind of nodded off momentarily. We've been up all night. and I heard a noise behind me. And I swear to God, I said, damn it, they got behind me. And I don't know how to explain this.

I tighten up every muscle in my back, like if that would stop a bullet, you know? And I turned around and I started firing without even looking. Let him get down. Well, it turned out to be a bunch of Havalese. Those of those wild pigs. They were out there rooting. And they come up and find them.

Care the hell out of a, but the next day those guys had a lot of pork to eat. Rubin, after that first kind of failure with the mobile guerrilla force and not maybe having the right indigenous force to train up, was there a second effort to stand up that force and create that unit? When I can't, I don't know if I should be saying this or not, but when I came. when I came back, I was already put in charge of that first company. And when I, and when after that operation went bad and major Marracheck, later he became a lieutenant colonel and he was up in a JFK center. I think he was the assistant S3 for General McMough. And I came back down and I was told to report to Tochow.

Tochow was going to be the camp, which is on the coast, just below a little town called Hattien, across the river. And to report out there, I didn't. And the reason was the person that they appointed to be in charge of the Moor Guerrilla Company at that time was someone I had no respect for. Absolutely none. I won't mention his name, but if he's listening, he knows. who he is. And I refused to go out there. And I just stayed in cantoe. One day I'm in the shower. And the colonel who was, the lieutenant colonel who was in charge of the seat team, saw me in the shower. He says, I thought you were going to Toshell. I said, not yet, sir. Not as long as so-and-so is

out there. Well, it turned out that this guy had done something that I won't get into detail that wasn't exactly kosher to use that word. And he got relieved. And then I went out there. At that time, B.T. Collins was the executive officer of one detachment. Henry was the executive officer, my detachment. And then later on, that captain who's in the middle of that picture that you should show a little while ago whose name I can't remember. Sorry, Rubin. This one right here. Yeah, he came in later, and he became the team leader of one team, and then when, and then about after that last operation, I got pulled back to Cantor and I became the assistant three, and he took over the camp.

And then later on, they started filling in other people, and I don't know any of them. Then what was this, you were part of the, a pretty significant battle. in that seven mountain region, you guys and Mike Force, could you tell us a little bit about that battle and what happened out there? Well, that's the one where Master Sergeant Kittleson got wounded in the nose. Like I told you, somebody sent me a message saying,

somebody's shooting at us. Well, we kept going up the mountain. We got to a certain point, and if we came around, that mountain has got some big granite boulders. I mean, huge things. And as we came around some of that rocky area, we took fire. And I'm sorry to say this, but the majority of the troops scattered.

When we finally rounded everybody together, I was missing 42 guys. And they weren't dead. They just decided they didn't want to fight. So Master Sergeant Kittleson and I came up behind one of these rocks. And I looked across, and I got to tell you, this is the only. only guy I'm sure I ever took down. He was wearing a Sam Brown bell. He had on a Pith helmet. He had a whistle in his mouth. He was blowing the whistle and giving orders. And he had a pistol in his hand. And at that time, I got an AR-15. And I brought it down in the middle of his chest. I pulled the trigger.

He slammed against the rock. The Pith helmet popped like this, and he slipped down. That's the only guy. can say that I'm sure that I killed in Vietnam. A lot of firefighters, a lot of chewy. Henry came running up, and I said, Henry gave me four men and put him over there on the left flank. And Henry said, Ruben, I don't have four men. They had scattered all away. Oh, my God.

Henry started running in the direction where he thought he was fine four men. And all of a sudden, I heard a shot. And I, you know, you get to where you can recognize the weapon by his report. You can tell the difference between an AK-47 and an AR-15 or an M-16. And I am sure that that was a sniper rifle and that it was a Mouser 8-millimeter. And it took the head right off of Henry's head. Miss Henry by a head, like he had a hole in his hat. Wow.

So Henry runs over to where a bunch of guys are hiding in a hole. Henry used to carry a sort of scurvy and he stuck it in there and he fired a burst and he chased him all out of there and took him over on the left flank where I wanted. That fire fire lasted probably for about 30, 35 minutes and then they withdrew.

I think it's because I took down that one guy. I don't want to give myself credit or anything like that I took down that one guy. Because he was like a captain or something like that. That time I was still a lieutenant. No, but the guy you shot, he had the whistle in his mouth. He was probably an officer. Yeah, he was the commander.

And he was blowing the whistle and given instruction. But I happened to see him. And Kyrson was right next to me. And we took a shot against the rock. And a piece of rock, the round had to have gone between us. I mean, there's no other way. The round had to have gone between us. And Kyrson took a piece of shrapnel in the night.

knows, either from the casing of the bullet or from a piece of rock. He was wounded in doubt. Could you tell us a little bit more about Pappy Kittleson? Because he's like a special forces legend. There's a book out there about him, incredible person. By the way, you know that picture you had of me with another guy standing neck to me and I got a cup in my hand. If you put your picture back up, I'll point something out to you. Yep, I'll pull that up.

Okay. One second. I'm sorry. Here we go. Okay. If you will look at that picture, there's a guy by my elbow who is bandaged up across the face down here. See him? See that bandage? He's got bandage all around, right?

He's got bandage around his face like this, and he's got bandage going around the back of his head. That was my radio, my indigenous radio operator. And you see the guy behind me holding his hand up? he got his finger shot off. That's why his bandage. Oh, yeah. I didn't see that initially. This guy down here by my elbow, he was my radio operator. As you know, the PRC 7 only has like about a seven foot cord, right? So he's right here behind me.

And the round came in front of my face, had to, because it went on him and one part of his joint lies in the other. That's why he's bandaged up the way you see. Wow. And that was on an operation up in the months. And as you can see, we all wore the same tiger stripes. And it's cold, so I'm wearing my little sweater there. And I wanted to see if you could tell us a little bit about Pappy Kittleson, though, before moving on.

When Master Shining Kittleson came out, I knew of his reputation. He had been a Sontay Raider. He had been in Burman with Merrill's Marauders under Bittinger Joe Stilwell during those operations. Those guys went through hell. You talk about jungle fighting. Those guys went through him. And Kittleson was well known. He was a massive man, big chest, as ball as I am now.

And when he reported out there, he hadn't been there. there are two days when we got the orders to go on that operation. And I said, Master Sergeant Kittleson, you just got here. If you want to wait and get acclimated a little bit, he said, no, lieutenant. When the team goes out, I go out with the team. And he was right there. And we went out on that operation. He was a tough soldier.

I don't know about his previous background, but when he was with me and one of the, well after that operation one of the highest compliments i think anybody ever pay me he said lieutenant i'll follow you anywhere you go and coming from messrs surgeon kiddelson i gotta tell you even today it chokes me up he's one of the probably most well-respected nCOs in special forces history to this day him and dick meadows I wanted to show you, and I know you've seen this before, Rubin, but when I was doing a little bit of research to prepare for this episode, this article I found that mentions you, and it mentions Pappy Kittleson, and it mentions this battle that we've been talking about, written by your teammate, Henry Cook. And there's one part in this article where Mr. Cook says that you, Lieutenant Garcia, the Operation Commander, called for the force to fix base. bayonets and attack to the front?

Well, I'll tell you the truth. They were, we all of a sudden we started taking pretty heavy fire. And I knew a lot of the guys had skeddaddle on me. We didn't have the people. And so I said to Henry, Henry, I don't know what's coming. Fixed bayonets and this may get to be hand to hand. And we gave the order, those that remain fixed bayonets. The other was,

Right, right. I don't know where the hell they went or where they were. But you know, you do what you think you need to do at that moment. You don't think about it. It's all a matter of reaction. If you ain't got time to stop and think, you give a command which you think you need to do something like that at that moment in time. Other than that, you just don't. Ruben, I'm sorry, Jack, did you want to continue that thought?

No, go ahead. Go ahead, Dave. Rubin, I was going to ask you, when Master and Kittleson said that he'd follow you anywhere, and it obviously means a lot to you, you know, and meant a lot to you and still does, did that have any kind of profound effect on you in terms of, I mean, had you doubted your own leadership ability up to that point, or, I mean, obviously there's always self-reflection going on. But was that like a solidifying moment in your career as an officer? You know, I believe that I think you hit the nail on the head because here was a man,

I mean, he had fought World War II against the Japanese. He had fought in Korea. He was now in Vietnam. And by the way, that operation was his first combat operation in Vietnam. I think he mentions that in the book Raider. Or at least the writer mentioned. that I have all the respect in the world for Master Sergeant Kittleson. I don't know who the writer was, never met him. He never talked to me. He never asked me anything about that operation. So apparently, he just either decided to make some things up to make the book interesting.

But he didn't need to because Kittleson was everything that any soldier could ever expect to be, want to be, and somebody that you want to have with you. He was right there next to me. His shoulder was against my shoulder when we were firing over that rock. And when that bullet hit the rock, and I don't know if it was a piece of the, you know, the copper of the bullet, or if it was a piece of the rock, they hit him on the nose. And he looked at me and he said, I got hit. And I said, yes, sir. And he was pleading for there.

But it wasn't a really bad one. He survived it. Thank God. I don't think I ever would have gotten over the fact I'd have lost him. Yeah, I think you're right. I think he had a great deal of meaning to me because here was a man who had proven his valor in his medal in three wars.

He was a son Tate Raider. What those guys did. You know what the risk they took going there. Yeah, made a great deal to me and to this day it does. When I think about it, I'm sorry, but I get somewhat emotional. When did the battle, when did the tide turn on that battle? Because you guys did take that hill eventually. We did. We did.

But the bottom line is, you know, in this environment, when you say take that hill, can I say that we drove them off or did they just the same? decided to withdraw. Right, right. I'm not going to bullshit you. I don't know. Maybe they had enough. Maybe they were anticipating, okay, we hit them, we took our toll, now let's withdraw

before they start calling in air or anything else. And yeah, we did. But I can't say that this was, you know, Custer's last stand. Absolutely not. Do you want to say anything about the legendary special forces after party that Henry Cook wrote about in his article? You know, I had a rule when we were back at camp. If we've been in an operation, the rule was, you know, a theme is 12 guys, right? Now I think it's 15, but they changed it.

the rule was six can drink and by drink I mean boosts and six have to stay sober that was the rule so that night it was henry's turn to drink we had a bunker where we kept our ammunition you know I dug in then build over and then glass of dirt and sand over it in the morning I didn't go in there I wasn't drinking so matter of fact I didn't drink a glass of wine until I was in my 60s, but the team sergeant comes, no, not the team sergeant. The team medic comes over. He says, sir, nobody hit the lieutenant. I said, what do you mean nobody hit the lieutenant? He said, yes, sir. He is. And what had happened was, Henry started drinking, celebrating his first combat experience and he's sitting on top of ammo boxes and when he went to step down he

misjudged how far the ground was and he went he hit one of those ammo boxes right there right there and you know those album boxes are that rough wood yeah yeah yeah and wide open so I said where's the lieutenant he says he's over in the medica check so I went over there and there's Henry laying there and I said Henry you're going to be a training aid and he said what do you mean I said everybody on the team is going to take one stitch I'm going to take two I'll take the first one and I'll take the last one and you'll always remember this and that way everybody's getting training in case they got somebody somebody up in the field and everybody took a stitch on Henry's eye and to this day well Henry said now he died of a he had to have a

little transplant and he didn't recover from it very well. I went to see him and he had the tube in him and all that. He couldn't breathe anymore. And he asked that they take the two bars so he could talk to me and he couldn't. He was gasping for breath. And he said, Ruben, I'm sorry. I said, don't worry, Harry. A couple of weeks later he passed away. Harry was very active in the Purple Heart. He got wounded later on in 1968. during the 10th offense, took a hit in the lake. Henry's an interesting story. He had been in the guard.

And when Vietnam started going, Henry said, I'm going active and he joined. And then later on, when the Kuwait thing parked up, Henry came back in and was up at Brown Tampa, working with special operations people up there. He was very much of a soldier, good man. And we stitched them up. Everybody got a little bit of practice and stitchy

because we all have to be cross-strain, right? I told him, Henry, every time you shave, you're going to remember who everybody was on this. We have a couple of questions, or maybe just one question, I think. Let me get to this real quick. And for those of you who are listening on Spotify or iTunes, or something else. There was a moment when Ruben said, Harry is

and then he mouthed fucked up, just so you know why Jack was laughed after that. And Rubin, you are more than welcome to maintain your own sense of propriety here, but just so you know, this is, this channel

is not for kids, so you can say whatever you want to say. Alex, thank you very much for your, oh, also everybody, If you're listening to watching us, please subscribe. Please like the, please hit the notification bell. Please like it. And, you know, leave some comments below the video when it's all said and done

because it really helps us get exposure. And more important than Jack and I getting exposure, it helps men like Ruben. People like Ruben and some of the other guests we've had on whose stories really need to be heard. They deserve to be told. I mean, Ruben, I mean, you're not. hero, you know, and I know that it, I know that this is a thing. And it, and it's the same way that, you know, you kind of felt when, you know, you received the compliment from, from Kittleston is that you do what you do. You don't think anything about what you do. It's your job, right? Kittleson

did the same thing. He did what he did. He didn't, he didn't think of himself in any particular terms. So when he, you know, says, I'd follow you anywhere. That's just one man telling another man. I'd follow you anywhere. But for you because you respect him so much, right? You respect him so much. It brings so much to the table for you. And yet you're giving us a similar type of experience by honoring us, you know, by coming on and talking to us and talking to our viewers and things like that. And we stood on your shoulders, Rubin.

You and Pappy and all those guys, we stood on your shoulders. And that's why we were able to do the things that we did. you know, Dave and I did over in the Middle East. Yeah. So let me get to this. Alex says audio is low. So we're trying to deal with that right now. And he says thoughts on the Portland situation.

I mean, Ruben, do you, you know, especially, you know, coming from Cuba, even though you left when you were young and spending these different, you know, all this time in these different locations. I mean, do you have any comments about like Portland or moderate? I mean, we don't want to get too political on. this because we don't want to divide our viewers. But do you have any thoughts in terms of, let's say, counterinsurgency warfare, guerrilla warfare, revolution, things like that in what's going on in Portland or America today?

Well, I do, and you're right, we don't want to get into divisive situations. The country's divided enough as it is. But here's the only point I would like to make. And I think I mentioned something about this to Jack when we talked on the telephone some weeks back. I have all the admiration in the world for the guys who are going over there now and have been going over there. Why? Because the Army is so much smaller. And these guys are doing multiple tours going back again and again and again. And I right now is very fashionable to say thank you for your service.

When we came back, there was no thank you for your service. As a matter of fact, during one of my trips, when I landed at Travis Air Force Base, and they were taking us in buses to the air, to the civilian air terminal, they put two big MPs in the bus, and the bus had bars on the windows. And I was wondering why. And as we pulled out of the base, people were throwing tomatoes and eggs and calling us everything in the book. And I guess the MPs and the bars were there so we wouldn't get out. and start kicking a bunch of ass.

But the guys today are not getting what they deserve. You know, we got these guys who are committing suicide at the rate of 20 some a month, 22, 28 a month, every month, every month. Ruben, it's 22 a day. It's 22 a day right now.

A day? Yeah. Oh, man, the person I had read. But they do. serve every bit of our support, every bit of it. And it's not enough to say thank you for your service. That's lip service. You know, get out there and complain about the service at the VA, complain about the fact that the Army is so small that these guys are having to go back and again and again and again, you know, that wears on you. That wears on you. There's some people who can take it,

but there are some people who cannot because they had this romanticized idea of a combat in military services. And I think I said something on this to Jack in my resume. A military life is not a career, it's not a job, it's a way of life. It's a way of life and you are dependent on the guy who's to your right, depending on you guys, to your life. When I had a basic training company in Jackson, South Carolina, went 18 months without a AWOL. At a time when people were

going AWOL all the time. And they sent some guy from human resources in Washington to follow me around in my company. And he said, you know the only difference, because they thought I was lying about not having any AWOL, the only difference I see is he says, you talk to your men

and you explain to them why they're doing this. And I used to tell, look, when the shit hits the fan, I don't have time to tell you, can you please load your machine N60 and go around over there on that? I got to say, right side cover it. That's it. That's all I'm going to say, I expect you're going to have that machine gun ready to work and it's functioning and you got ammo and you know what you need to do. There isn't time during combat to explain things to you. And I used to spend time with my men and tell

them that these were basic trainees. They were coming in right out of the street. They didn't know any. you've got to educate him. You got to train him. You got to put him into the right mentality. And that's what military services. You've got to be in the right mentality. This is my job. This is what I've got to do.

And there's no hesitation. I got to do it because the other guy is going to do it. If he gets you in his sights, he's going to pull the... Support the guys. Do all you can from. for them. When they come home, do all you can for them. They, especially over there with all those roadside bombings and all that stuff. They have a hard road of hole over there. I really do believe in. I think I said this to Jack. There's a tougher war than we ever fought in Vietnam. There were periods of

times in Vietnam where, yeah, it got rough. But the fact of the matter is that it's, you know, long periods of burden with seconds and minutes of panic. That's all there is. And I think it's like that in just about every one. But the guys over there, they're catching hell because they're doing so many tours. And some of these guys are reservists who are being sent over there.

They're not prepared. They're not ready up here, especially for guerrilla water. So please support the troops. Thank you. Thank you, Hammer Nails, for the donation. We really appreciate it. There is no question attached to that.

awareness scripts thank you very much for the journalist donation he says amazing how s f is the most decorated high casualty soft in the United States arsenal from the OSS to Vietnam Cold War and Giae proud of our boys and Rubin you had mentioned that you know after your tour your second tour

to Vietnam you had a basic training company assignment back in Fort Jackson went back to Panama did some training in Puerto Rico and and Salvador. Maybe we go and talk about, you know, afterwards you got sent to Camp Rudder to be a Ranger instructor with Dick Meadows. Yeah, Dick was there.

He had one, he had one committee, I had the other. And then later on, I became the three for the operations there in Camp Rudder. Originally, it was just the Florida Ranger Camp Swamp Face, and then they named it after one of the heroes from Point the Hawk where the Rangers climbed up the hit of the cliff and attacked the German artillery.

And it was named there. I got a picture somewhere. Maybe I should send it to you of some of the guys who had been Rangers and attacked at Pointe to Hulk. Oh, yeah. Named a Camp Rudder. Yeah, if you send that to us, we'll put it on

our Patreon for our subscribers for only $1. I'll send it to you. I got it somewhere. Just that over the years you accumulate so much stuff, sometimes I'm going through something, oh, there is, where is it? And where has it been? And they told you and Dick you weren't going to get promoted because you had been hanging out in special forces for too long.

Well, what happened there was all of a sudden we got we got a visit from a guy from human resources in Washington. And he called Dick Meadow and me and what was the other guy? I'll think of it in a minute. And he said, if you tell anybody this, I'll call you a liar. But you guys are not going to get promoted to major. You're too old. We were older than the average captain.

He said the Army is going to focus on younger people in order to be. able to have the officers for the long run. At that time there was a concept that we were going to be fighting the Russians in Germany. It was going to be urban warfare. And you guys are older, you're not going to get promoted. So I look at Dick Meadows. He looked at me and we said, okay. So matter of fact, I went over to the PX. We had a little PX there at Camp Brother. And there was a set of majors oak leaves and I wrote on them not for the over the bunch here and Christmas

row around about oh I guess nine, ten months later and I was out in I was in Eglon, the city buying a present for my wife and when I walked in the lady, I was in uniform and the lady said Captain Garcia

your wife says to preach call home She says it's not an emergency. Don't worry. The kids are okay. So I call her and she said, the Sergeant Major just called. He said as soon as you get back, the Colonel wants to see you. So I come back. I bought her present. I came back and I went to Sgt Major first before we're going to go see the Colonel. Sergeant Major, what the hell is going on? See, Sergeant Major always knows what's going on. he said, I can't tell you, sir. I said, come on, Sergeant Major, don't let me walk in there blind. What the hell is going on?

He said, I'll tell you part of it. And I said, what? He said, you and Dick Mayer were being promoted to Major Effective 1 February. I said, okay, great. So now I go in there. I know what the colonel is going to say. He says, Captain Garcia, sit down. he said, you've been selected for commanding general staff.

I said, I wasn't even supposed to get promoted. He says, yeah, well, you're getting that too. So I ended up going to the School of the Americas in Panama to attend the commanding general staff course there with Latin American officers and some officers from the United States, even including one Air Force officer. And then when I finished and graduated, they decided to keep me there to be an instructor

because I spoke the language. So I stayed there for another year. Then when I came back, I became the ex-o of the 2nd Battalion of the 5th Special Forces Group under Colonel McClure. And I was with him for about six months. And then the guy who was running, what used to be called Blue Light and now become the Special Operations Training. And I went out to Mount Lake and took over that. We still called the Blue Light. As a matter of fact, I got my plaque right there.

Hold on. I'll get it. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, what Rubin's talking about is that they retained the name, Blue Light. And actually, it was to make, it was kind of a deception to make the public think that Blue Light was still active because it was a cover for Delta Force. And if you look at old news articles from 1979 or so, you'll find the talk about this new counterterrorism unit at Bragg called Blue Light. And when really, yeah, it's interesting. So there we go.

Can you raise it? Oh, yeah. You can pull it back a little bit. That's amazing. Rubin, where's your nickname El Cid? Where does that come from? Well, somebody, you know, Hispanic. So somebody knew about Rodrigo or something or other from Spain who had been El Cid, and they nicknamed me.

I wanted to ask you before we talk about blue light. a little bit. Since you were at school of the Americas for a year, what do you make of the accusations that have been leveled that like it's an assassin school that we train death squads there and this sort of thing? Well, you gave me permission. Bullshit. Bullshit. The officers who go there are usually major lieutenant colonels and colonels. They don't know their business by now. They're really the Latin American wants to go there, go there to get a feather in their cap. They want to be able to go back and say,

I attended a military course with the United States. And that is good for their promotion list. And there's nothing like that. As a matter of fact, they're so out of shape most of them, they couldn't make a good assassin. Did you were Dick Meadows, ever find out why you did get promoted to major? Like who made that decision? How did that change?

Well, eventually, this officer who told us that he wouldn't, he wouldn't admit that he had told us that. Basically said that the army was concentrating on younger people. They didn't want to be reporting older guys like I was over 35. I think Dick was probably around 36, 37. And they just weren't going to wait to rank on us. We'd done our, our job. time to say goodbye. But Dick got promoted. I got promoted to major. And then I went to the command and general staff course.

And Dick retired a couple of years later. And then he went to work for Charlie Beckwith as a consultant with Delta, back of breath. As a matter of fact, when I was out of my leg with what we still call blue light, Dick came out to talk to me one day. I think he was doing a little bit of spying for Beckwith because they were worried this was the time that the hostages

7980 the hostages and they were getting ready to go and Beckwith I think was a little paranoid about anybody else stepping in his bailiwick but we weren't we were training people we were teaching snipers We were teaching assault of aircraft, friends, hostage rescue.

We had a 360-degree firehouse made out of tires. The Sergeant Stevens, you know who he is, created. What he did, I thought, was a great innovation. There was a place in Fayetteville called Kelly Tire. And Stevens went out there and he said, what do you do with your blemish tires and what do you do with the junk? We take it out in the ocean. He said, send it to me out of break.

He took and created a big square. And he put poles in the middle and then put the tire and packing with dirt. So now you got a wall of tire with a second wall of tire in between him. And you could go in there and then with wood and canvas create and simulate any the inside of any building that you were going to attack. and throw in a flashbang and then come in. The only guy we ever had wounded out there was he left his foot out there when he threw the flashbang. And he took a piece of shit in his leg.

But it was a wonderful training cycle. When the tire got all shot up on the inside, you just turned it a little bit. And it was his idea. He deserves credit for that. And we were out there. and we trained the sniper. Sniper, anything under 700 yards was a headshot. Anything over 700 yards was torso shot.

And we were shooting so much with 45s that we were cracking the guns. Wow. Sending them back to Springfield. Everybody who came out there in the two-week course shot 1,200 rounds. to 45. And we kept it simple. At one point in time, General McMuff called me in, said, we got some people here who thinks they can put up these great automated targets.

I said, I only got one question. What's the turnaround time when one of these things break? Wow. About six weeks. I said, I can't go over six weeks. I'm doing 12 courses a year. Right now, we got to. hooked up with suspension line that we get surplus from the quartermaster. And when the line breaks, we tie it not in it and we pull it. We don't have to fill out six forms. We never got automated out there. We kept it with us. Keep it simple. Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about the training curriculum? Because people who went to SOT like speak so highly of that training. This was and you have to keep in mind for our viewers. Obviously you know all of this Rubin, but this was like early on in the

years of counterterrorism, a lot of these ideas about throwing flashbangs into rooms, drawing a pistol from a concealed holster and firing. Like that was not normal stuff in the military at all. And it was the blue light guys, it was the guys at Montlake who helped innovate a lot of that. There are things that you learn as you do training. For example, this may sound kind of simple, but it's a fact. our people have a hesitation when they encounter a female terrorist. There's some, it's mama, is their daughter, is their girlfriend, is their wife.

So we had to overcome that. So we started in a room where one of the targets that would pop up would be a woman with a machine gun. And we would start with a BB pistol, believe it or not. The initial training was with a BB pistol. And there are things you have to learn and you have to overcome. You have to learn to judge distances. When we were training out there, we had no money.

We were robbing Peter to pay Paul. And General McMill came out one time where General Schumacher, who I believe was the chief of the trade hoc, training. And we had like a window thing, like a repelling tower, but it wasn't repelling. It was like steps and then like a window with a tie. Like a facade. Yeah.

And the sniper would shoot. So I went up there and we had two cinder blocks up here like this, about this far apart in my head. And I said, General, if you look behind you at about 700 yards, it's two snipers. On my command, they will fire. And he realized that I was going to stay right there. They did the fire.

and he went but by that time I had said execute a third time it was in the black's book he gave us two million bucks to improve the training a long time ago

a long time ago good memory good people you know I don't miss the army but I miss the people I miss the people I miss Henry David Decker Maurice Evans

Oakland all the guys who were willing to give their life and they're all and by their life I don't mean just dying I mean their living life

you know because like I said it's a way of life it's not our job it's not a career they gave it all they were there Kittleson

Dick Meadows I think they died of some illness. I don't know what it was. Rubin, I'm glad you're here, though, to tell their story. Well, I'm not really sure what you're referring to. Well, I mean, you're still here and you're around to be able to tell their story, because otherwise, I mean, no one would.

Or tell their story. Well, you know, you can never do justice to that. You can never do. I went to the wall with my youngest son. Where I dealt with my boys was that when they graduated from high school, we were born a trip together, whatever they wanted to do. And David, my youngest, wanted to go to Washington. He wanted to go to the Smithsonian Museum.

And, of course, while there, we went to the wall. Do you know, when you look, there's 58,000 plus names there, and over 200,000 that were wounded, left part of their body laying there somewhere. Look at Roy Benavides. I don't want to get too serious here. Please forgive me. But I get somewhat irate. When Michael Jackson dies and God bless him,

the whole world stops and you cannot turn on the television without hearing about Michael Jackson. Roy Benavides gets wounded 52 times in a period of about an hour and a half. cut to the bone. He's put in a bag. They think he's dead. His joy is broken. He can't talk. He can't tell him I'm alive. Get me the hell out of this bag. He dies and nobody ever even mentions it. And the same thing with any of those other guys, to lesser degrees or another. The last time I

saw Roy, I was doing a parachute demonstration where he was going to give a talk in Cluiston, Florida. and we saw each other and he gave me his book and here's what he wrote up. He wrote on and I don't know if you can read it. Can you read it? Master Sergeant Ruben Garcia or Major, retired Ruben Garcia I have traveled

some duty Go ahead Ruben Please read it for us He wrote to Major Ruben Garcia retired We have traveled heavy duty trails together See you again See, this guy, I gave that book to somebody to read the other day.

They couldn't believe it to somebody would do that. You know, he didn't have to jump in that helicopter and go out there and pull those guys down. I've been told, I've been told that Roy, it was like a completely, if you were to meet him, like a completely normal, down-to-earth guy, you would never think he was like a medal of honor recipient. Not at all, not at all. not at all down to earth and by the way without getting political when you look at that face you cannot deny who he is and what he is and when people start talking and becoming ethnic conscience let's call it that let's not forget you know Hispanic men and women have been

fighting for this country for a long time. 131 people named men named Garcia fought for the Confederate. 340 some fought for the Union. A Puerto Rican regiment in Korea was the most decorated regiment there and they were the last ones to leave Korea. So please stop the division. Stop the division. vision. There was a poster during, I have it in my phone. I don't know if I can bring it up. There was a poster during World War II. Let me see if I can get it. Yeah, here it is. I don't know if you can see that. Is Uncle Sam in a Mexican head and it says, I'll read it to you. I can't have glasses. It says, wait a minute. We are all Americans. Let's fight for victory in Spanish. We'll call for La Victoria. This is the four of my uncles fought for the United States Army.

They were Cubans during World War II. We're not just one group. We're all immigrants here, unless your name is Geronim. Rubin, when I was in fifth group, I served with a Cuban American. He was on the free fall team upstairs from us. We used to jump together on training exercises. Rubin, in the Cuban American, do you have any, and I know that you left Cuba Young, but in fighting these other locations where often it was Marxism or communism was the prevailing thing that we were fighting against,

do you have any thoughts about sort of a resurgence of Marxist's, you know, popularity in the United States right now, you know, communism, kind of on the rise? There's a tendency towards socialism. I believe it's simply because we are personally a frustrated people. I think most Americans are frustrated. Look what happened during 2008. One in every 15 homes was in foreclosure. I think the average American is looking around and he's saying,

what the hell happened here? I work all my whole life. I've done what I was supposed to do. I paid my taxes. I did what I was supposed to do. I served my country. And what am I leaving my kids? Nothing.

We are so divided right now and going in so many directions that we are simply don't know. And I think it's because we're frustrated. Frustrated, people are not earning what they should be earning. Nothing is going the way it's supposed to be going. You know, I'm not going to get into Trump versus Biden or whatever, but the bottom line is Trump got elected, in my view, humble as it may be,

because our Congress and our Senate was not doing their job. They weren't taking care of what. You know, jobs have been going out of this country for 30 years, not just recently. They've been going out of this country for 30 years. 30 years ago, I had a client who came to me and he said, he owned a dressmaking business here in Miami. And he had a cutter, cut the patterns. Put him in box, Senator Guatemala,

where he was paying a cent for 50 cents an hour. Now he didn't pay any tariff because it was U.S. goods coming back. So it's been going on for a long time. And those people in Congress who've been getting their worst just contributions in order to get reelected, they haven't been looking out for us.

and that's one of the things that frustrates me because I think something is going to happen where people are going to say hey you don't take care of me I don't take care of you goodbye there's some basic things you know a man needs a roof over his head

he needs to be able to eat he needs to be able to provide for his family those are basic things there is to it and if you're not watching out you can get elected and you now have medical for the rest of your life just because you serve sick years in the Senate. You got your own private social security.

You're taking care of. Nothing to worry about. Your family is well done. Joe Biden gets his son a job in the Ukraine. We have good luck with that. He wasn't qualified for that. Making for $50,000 a month? Where the hell does that come from?

That's because daddy was who he was. So if you're taking care of yours, you've got to take care of me. I don't want the whole pie. I just want my little slice of the pie. I just want my little slice of the pie. Let me have a little bite, and they're not doing that. And I'm sorry, I got off on the road. No, that's well said, Rubin.

It really is. And there are reasons why people are upset and why we have people drift in these political extremes, because, as you said, our government is not taking good care of us. Right. And it also benefits the politicians to keep people divided because that, because it doesn't matter if you're talking about Republicans or Democrats, none of them been taken care of us. And so as long as we're fighting each other and we're not holding them accountable, they're happy about that. And you know, is anybody stopping to think when somebody like Sanders or anybody else says we're going to have free medical, free education?

how about jobs so we can pay the taxes so you can pay for that education and that free medical. Somebody's got to pay for it. The government hasn't got any money and if they keep printing money without any funds, man, are we in trouble? We've been in trouble for a long time, but are we going to be even worse?

You can't have anything free if you don't have people who are paying taxes. I don't know where Sanders was getting that from, but and Warren God bless him if they could pull it off maybe they got a big piggy bank that I don't know about Yeah Rubin I'm gonna ask if you can stick with us

For a bonus segment after but for just like 10 minutes But before we kind of wrap up with the main portion With this interview I did want to ask you about your post-service military career Because I think it's really interesting you retired at I think you said 42 On April Fool's Day 19 maybe. That's correct. Yeah. I was supposed to retire on the 6th of April, but I went over there and there was a private there. That's who was fronting the place where they gave you your papers. And I said,

I'm supposed to leave here on the 6th, but I want to leave today. He said, yeah, here you go. So I retire on April Fool's Day. I looked around for several jobs. I got interviews in several places, but you know I kept meeting these people in three-piece suits and I said it felt like I knew them and then I realized there's no difference between a corporate in a three-piece suit and a general in a green suit. They're both corporates. They're both corporations. That's all they are.

And I'm just a tool. The army is a toolbox. The army's got micrometer, caliper. they make it to general and then they got guys like me I'm a sledgehammer or a crowbar that's who we were that's who we are and so I kept getting interviewed and I kept saying to myself what am I doing I left the army and I'm going to be falling into the same thing why because the higher somebody's up in the ladder who does he promote whether or in a company or in the army, the guy who came along the way he did. If you were a general who was a

platoon leader, a platoon leader, company commander, battalion commander, that's who you're going to promote. You're not going to promote the Maverick who was in special forces, jumping out of airplanes and eating snakes. That ain't who you're going to promote. If you're in the corporate ground, you're going to promote the guy who plays golf or tennis with you. And so I didn't want to do that, so I decided to go to law school. So I went to law school at Western Michigan University Thomas Cooley Law School. And then I came down to Florida,

started practicing criminal. I first tried to get a job with the DEA. I think I told you about that. But they told me I was too old. I was probably in better shape that any of them. You know, I could, if I ran the 20-mile dragon race in Fort Bragg in August in 90-degree weather

and came in seventh from my age group, 35 to 45. I knew I was in better shape than any of those DEA agents. And then I just... Also an rapid skydiver, I should point out. Yeah, I gave that up about 10 years ago, 8 years ago. No, 10 now. I stopped jumping in August, no, January the 29th, 2010.

So it's been 10 years, yeah, a little over 10 years. Has 7,186 jumps. Rubin, so if you applied to the DEA and you were talking to other like corporations and things like that, does that mean that law school was not really on your mind when you retired or prior to retiring? Kind of interesting that you mentioned that. Because here's how. When I first went to Okinawa, I got assigned to some little outpost somewhere in the island. It was called Machinado.

I think it was. I'm not sure. I may be wrong. Been a long time. And I remember reading a book. We had like a little room full of books, and I loved to read. And I remember reading a book that was called Never Pleak Guilty. And after I finished reading the book, I said, you know, I could do that.

So after I got out, I went to law school. I didn't want to work for anybody else ever again. Nobody was again going to write an efficiency report on me, especially somebody who knew less about my job than me. So I went to law school, came down here, solo practice from day one. Solo practice. Solo practice. I don't have a secretary.

I don't let anybody do any research. I do it all myself. I read every piece of paper, everything. Why? Because when I walk into a courtroom, I know the subject matter. I know the case. I have had cases where I've given. even a 45-minute closing argument without looking at a note.

Why? Because I did the work. And that's what I plan to do, till the last day when I can't do it anymore. What kind of cases do you typically try? Well, in the Southern District of Florida, the majority of the cases are drug cases. But however, you do have some Medicaid fraud. You have welfare cases where people, commit fraud, you have bank robbery. And in 2006 to 2009, I handled what was called the Turnpark murder case, where it was a drug case that went wrong. And an entire family was killed,

including a two and a three-year-old boy. This is the famous case where the hitman, they made a documentary about this didn't they? Yeah, they they read a lot of articles around it. I keep waiting for them to do the movie, but I don't talk about this specific to any client's case, but it was the mother, the father, and the two children were killed. It was happening, it was striding West Palm Beach. I tried it along with another lawyer by name of

Jim Isamber who's a very talented lawyer, very good lawyer. Before you went into law school or while you're in law school, when did you decide that you wanted to do criminal prosecution? It's kind of strange, you know, I don't think I have a good answer for that. I had a professor who was teaching a criminal law procedure and the rules of procedure. And I told him I was thinking of doing that. He said, I'll tell you this about criminal law.

Every case takes a little chip of your heart. He says, and you better be careful because the scar tissue starts to develop. But I tried to avoid that, and I think I've been able to. Each case is an individual thing. Are you allowed to my client, the ethics, the professional manner in which you handle the case? and I never talk about any of my cases to the press. Absolutely not, never. No matter what.

And why prosecution and not defense? Or, I mean, is it just... I do... I do defense. You do defense? Yeah, I don't do any prosecution. Okay, you do defense. Yeah, that's exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I applied for a judgeship one time in Broward County. And later on, somebody whispered in my ear that the reason I wasn't selected was because they were afraid I was going to be a hanging judge because I've been in the military. Really? Even as a defense attorney? Yeah. Yeah.

It's just what people think. It's the reputation, yeah, or the preconceived ideas. Exactly. That's exactly right. If he was a soldier, he was an officer in the military, he's going to be a hanging judge. Yeah. At that time, I had done nothing, at that time I had done nothing but about 12 years of defense work. Yeah.

But people have their ideas and you can't change them. Yeah. When I moved to Davey, Florida, somebody decided they didn't want a Hispanic in the neighborhood. They would put white supremacist literature on the windshield on my car. Really? On a Sunday morning and there would be eggs splattered all over the front of my house and I wash it out before my wife and my kids got up to see it. And but you know, I decided let him worry about it. I'm fine.

I'm earning a living. I got my health. I had a stroke seven years ago. And 29 days later, I walked out of the hospital. And I said some casual words to the clot in my brain, which included this, fuck the clot. I'm going to win. And I am still practicing law. Rubin, this whole thing is just such an incredible story.

I mean, it really is. Just such an amazing human being. Let's see here. We got a couple questions, and we need to get to before we close out. Ian Hutchinson, thank you very much. Sorry guys, like Joyner, maybe I missed it. Where's Ruben from originally? No Spanish from the home.

And what language did you study at D.L.I. Or did Special Force to send you to a language school? I did a little bit of French while I was in Okinawa, but I never used to tell you the truth. Because those of us that were learned by Okinaw, half the team took French, half the team took Vietnamese. I tried the French, but I didn't have a good ear for it, to be honest with you. Yeah.

And as we mentioned earlier, the beginning. Ruben is originally from Cuba. Did you speak Spanish in the house growing up? Was that something that you did? That's the only language my mother spoke. Spoke Spanish. She never wanted us to lose that, which I'm grateful for. And yeah, we, I guess you they said my first language. Yeah. With mom. Ralph Reed, thank you very much for the donation. Awareness with Chris. Thank you for the donation. What was the actual difference between Delta and Blue Light as far as counterterrorism and training? Okay.

I think the charter for Delta, and I was never with Delta, I got to say that right off the bat. The Charter for Delta was operational. Originally, the Charter for Blue Light was operational, but then when Delta came active, that stopped, and then we became solely a special operation training. counterterrorist, hostage rescue, that kind of stuff. And I think that's what worry, Colonel Beck with Hito, maybe we were going to try sneak into the operational phase of it. But,

excellent. Brad, I'm sorry, did I interrupt you? Okay, Brad Ork, thank you very much. Thanks for the donation. Ever defend some, oh, as an attorney, have you ever defend someone you knew was guilty and how did you deal with that? You know, under our system of justice,

everybody defends or deserves a defense. And what people have to remember is this. When someone is acquitted, the jury doesn't say he's innocent. The jury just says not guilty, which basically means the government who had the burden of proof of proving the guilt failed to do so. Right.

So if the kid's weak or at the judge, The evidence is insufficient, or if you're just sitting there and you weren't paying attention as a juror, and you decide, you know, I don't like the government. I don't like that lawyer, which I think happens. You know, I tell juries, you may find me repeating myself several times. And the reason is, because I don't know if you're listening, you may have had an argument with your wife this morning. You may be upset at your child because you caught up smoking marijuana. your car may have been wrecked. You may have lost your job.

I don't know if you're really, if your brain is here when I'm saying something that is key and important. But the basic of it is, a jury doesn't say that guy is innocent. A jury just says, you didn't prove it to my satisfaction. Beyond a reasonable doubt.

And when it's a criminal case, the standard is very high. Beyond a reasonable doubt. Not any doubt, but a rich will doubt. Yeah. It doesn't matter to me if the guy's, I may think he's guilty, but if he says, I'm not guilty, I didn't do it,

and I want you to defend me. My job is to make the government jump through the hoops to prove it. And if they cannot prove it, hey, then they shouldn't have brought the end diamond in the first place. Right. And I think defense attorneys in the United States, you know, get a really bad reputation, people don't understand that if you're innocent, you want a defense attorney who's going to fight with you, fight for you with every fiber and through any means. And simply put,

they have to fight for everybody in that exact same way because they don't know, you know, who's innocent, who's guilty. And it's not their decision, you know. Do you remember, remember when, uh, what was the guy? Thomas Moore, Thomas Moore, his son, in law wanted to get rid of Cronwell. And he said he would do whatever he needed to do, get rid of Cromwell, even if it was breaking the law and Cronwell. He said, oh, I would join the devil to get rid of Cromwell. And Thomas More said, and when the devil turns around and comes after you, who will help you? The government is a very powerful force. It really is. They have all the resources and everything that they need to do with case. My job is to investigate the case. You don't win the case in the courtroom. You win the case by your preparation before you get into the courtroom. And if you learn everything, you need to learn, you know, and you look to see for where the weaknesses are in the government's case. And those weaknesses are not weaknesses that I'm going to take advantage of. They're there because they're there. And I owe it to the client ethically to do. do the best I can point them out. And then you say you decide. You decide. Did they prove the case or not? And you know, I'm sorry, go ahead. And the police do make mistakes. They do. How many people are being exonerated now because of DNA? Even people who are made to confess.

Now something with DNA. In a rape case, the DNA is the proof. But before, it used to be just an identification. And as a lawyer, you learn that the worst, the worst evidence is ID by a human being, what the moment that something happened is excited, it's scared, is frightened. You can't rely on that. You can't. How many people have been pointed out? Especially people that were not overly familiar with, such as Hispanics or African,

Americans. There is no doubt that there's been a great deal of mistakes made. And I think as a defense lawyer, my job is to create that bar that the government is going to have to jump over. And they have to do a good job. If they do a good job, that case that we were talking about, about the murders on the term park. I lost that case. The government did his job. They proved the jury that They were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And for me, it's never personal. I would shake the hand of the prosecutor and then go on. But I try to do the best I can.

Rubin, this has been an incredible interview. And I'm so glad that, you know, you were able to come and spend some time with us tonight. And with, you know, there's like 75, 80 people watching this live. And many more will watch it in the subsequent weeks. And I'm just so happy that they're going to get to. hear your story. I hope that I can seal like maybe 10 more minutes of your time afterwards, if that's okay. Okay. And so that's going to be the show for tonight, guys, episode 53. Next week, we're going to have Joe Goldberg on the show, who's a retired CIA officer,

worked in their disinformation office. And I don't know how much I'm going to be able to twist his arm and get him to tell us, but Joe's a very interesting person. So we'll be talking to him. next Friday. And otherwise, you know, please like, share, subscribe this video, leave us some comments. And if you're interested in supporting the stream, there's a link to our Patreon down below. So that's it. We're also on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher SoundCloud. So, you know, if you don't have time to watch the whole thing, or in the future, because you'd probably watch the whole thing if you've gotten to this point. But in the future, you can check us out on any one of those platforms also.

All right. Rubin, thanks again, and we will talk to you in just two seconds.