The Team House - The Life & Death of One of America's Secret Soldiers: Michael Froede | Kate Rocklein | Jul Bonus Ep

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Dr. Kemplin earned her BNSc at Queen’s University, MScN and Doctorate in Nursing Practice at Loyola University (New Orleans), and PhD from Rush University (Chicago). Kate was a civilian emergency/trauma nurse specialist for the United States Army before becoming faculty in Nursing and Operational Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia with subsequent appointments in the University of North Carolina and University of Tennessee systems. In early 2020, Kate was appointed Chief Nursing Officer of Columbia/Presbyterian’s 220-bed COVID hospital during New York City’s worst pandemic surges to date. Dr. Kemplin returns home to Queen’s from the University of Windsor Faculty of Nursing where she directed the Kemplin Lacesso Research Lab. SOF suicides are a major area of her research, and her ex-husband Michael Froede sadly took his own life in 2019 while assigned to a secretive Army intelligence unit. Michael Froede suspected he was being followed. For weeks after he returned from a highly classified mission in Vietnam, he would see people watching him in Washington, D.C. They’d be parked outside his house or tailing him while driving. Sometimes while on the road, Froede would pull a U-turn and swing back around on the suspected surveillance team to take their pictures, to let them know that he knew they were there. At 9:30 a.m. on June 23, 2019, Froede drove his Dodge Ram to the third floor of the Carroll Creek parking garage in Frederick, Md. After backing into a parking space, he sat back in his seat, lit up a Camel cigarette and flicked the ash out the window. Froede was a member of a secret Army unit known by the innocuous-sounding cover name Communications Technology Research Activity, or COMTECH, part of an elite group of Army hackers who received tasks from the National Security Agency. Working from the U.S. or deployed abroad, Froede was one of America’s secret soldiers, a military spy. Read the rest at Yahoo News: https://news.yahoo.com/an-army-clandestine-operative-concealed-his-mental-health-problems-until-it-was-too-late-is-the-military-to-blame-100004941.html Supporting Veterans & Active duty on their terms and anonymously. 👇👇👇👇 https://sound-off.com (Not a paid sponsorship) For all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed Subscribe to our Patreon! 👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit:Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to a bonus episode for July of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. And our guests here is Kate Rockline. This is a kind of a special episode, a unique episode, a little bit different than a lot of what we've done in the past. Kate has the distinction of, or you have two PhDs, right? Yeah, the clinical doctorate and the research doctorate. And you work in academia. And your focus of much of your research has been into special operations suicides. Kind of, yeah, in a sense. And you,

again, you're in this very unique situation, I think, in that you've studied this subject, academically committed a lot of your professional life towards it, but at the same time, you also lived it because you were married to a soldier, Michael Frody, who served in a secret Army intelligence unit and took his own life. And, you know, I think what's in talking to you and learning about Michael, what's especially horrifying about it is that because of your academic background, you were studying TBIs way before. A lot of people even knew what a TBI was. Yeah, way before the Army really had quantified. Yeah. And so when you saw these things happening to Michael, you knew exactly what was happening. But even then, I mean, with that knowledge, could not stop.

I mean, you certainly tried, but you can't force somebody to get help if they don't want to get help. And, I mean, it's just so horrifying and heart-wrenching that, you know, I can only imagine being in your position and seeing Michael go down this very dark path and being unable to pull him back from the brink. And you too also have two daughters together, who are doing great today. Thank you. Thank God. And, you know, we linked up. I wrote an article for Yahoo News about Michael Frody. I interviewed you. I met your daughters. I interviewed Michael's mother. I interviewed other people in the intelligence community to, because there's a lot of unanswered questions about what happened to Michael, what he went through. You were great in the sense that, I mean, you gave me a stack of documents like that tall and had videos

and audio and all you, like, as far as like journalistically, like that never happens where like somebody has everything altogether for you. It never works out like that, but you had a lot of information to give me and that I could complete some of these interviews to try to, at least try to put the story together and learn what Michael did in the Army, what he went through, what. what his teammates went through with him. And I hope we can talk a little bit about that, about your story and Michael's story,

and also about, you know, you can also bring this sort of critical academic lens to this subject and analyze it in a way that I think a lot of people can't. So I'm really grateful that you were able to come and join us here in our studio today. I'm glad I was able to make the flight. So yeah, I'm glad.

Happy to see you again. So can we start sort of with your origin, where like, you know, what was your family like growing up? Did you, you know, did you have veterans in your family? What drove you into your specific, like your line of study? How did you, your ex, everything like that? Yeah, so actually my grandfather was a frogman. He was the UDT in World War II.

So precursor to the Seals. You know, Anne's uncle's not really in the military. My dad's side, my uncle's in the military. And then his son, my brother, went into the military. But I actually at Michael, kind of by a fluke. I was a trauma nurse in Pennsylvania. And he was in between college and going into SOPSY. And so we met and in true military form, got married like six months later.

So in Michael's words, like there's no way that I was bringing in a Ford Bragg single. Like, I was putting a ring on it. So I got married at the Infantry Chapel at Benning in 2004. And then he did airborne, moved to Bragg. And then I started working at Womack. Okay. As an ER nurse. And then I got stationed overseas after that.

And I was starting to see these soldiers coming back. So like 0405.06, just really like non-specific neurological symptoms. And I'm not like a neuro person. I'm not a psych person. And I like it when your limbs are falling off, you know, like serious resuscitation stuff. And being a military spouse, I would see women, you know, married to, you know, senior officers or sergeant's major. And they, a lot of them didn't have anything tangible in their own career to take with them when their husband's career was over, their spouse's career was over. And so I figured, you know, every duty station I wanted to get another degree or get a certification or something.

And so for my master's, when I had to choose a topic for that thesis, I thought, well, it's right in front of me. I'm seeing mostly, I don't want to exclude women, but it was mostly guys, coming back with these really life-altering blast injuries. How were they presenting themselves, these sort of undefined neurological things? Like what first started cluing you in that something's going on here? What really brought at home for me was I had some of the same. from Ranger Batsing in my office bawling his eyes out. His wife had left him. His life was falling apart. And maybe it was the trauma specialist in me. And the Army, to be fair, as a civilian, had trained me to the same level as a nurse officer, right? So instead of focusing on like

the psychosocial aspect of it, I was focusing on the clinical aspect of it. And I was thinking, what would make your life fall apart in six months to this degree? And then I was asking, Okay, so how are you sleeping? How are you thinking? I'm not sleeping. You know, my appetite's off. I can't focus. And I'm like, okay, have you been in an accident?

Did you have any kind of head trauma? And then he said, well, you know, I was around a lot of blast. You know, there's a lot of blast that went off. And I'm like, there you go. So when I asked him, I said, well, how many? And he just started laughing. Yeah. He's like, well, I don't know.

All of them. Yeah. Yeah. He was like, I don't know, how you, per day? Yeah. And he was just asking me per day. And then, you know, and then I was thinking. as well from what he was saying and then talking to other soldiers and clinicians that I worked with,

it's the armament as well. It's the caliber of weapons. It's, you know, all of that blast overpressure is really, really damaging to very delicate neurological tissues. And so the DOD in true form, I did my thesis work, you know, under their umbrella and they very kindly stole my data, which is fine. So I think in 2009, I had my, so my master's was focused on estimating the incidence of TBI and ground forces from Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2007. And I stopped at the surge because that would have skewed the data. And so the DOD and my data were pretty much aligned. I mean, statistically, there was really no daylight. And, you know, it's a good 21% at that time.

So that was like 2009. And then in starting my clinical doctorate, because I'd been looking at how TBI was evaluated in the military and Soft was doing it better. You know, better testing. Sean Kane, one of the physicians at Bragg, had written some articles. I reached out to him. And then just it's kind of like a force-cum situation where, you know, two, three years later, when I started my clinical doctorate, I was working with some 18 deltas just informally at Bragg.

We were teaching at the schoolhouse. And they said, you know, no, nobody's ever studied us. Our curriculum's from like 1970, 80-something. We're still doing stuff that has no basis in evidence or it's physician-driven. And being a nurse, you have to be able to drive your own curriculum. So for my clinical doctorate, I looked at the framework and kind of the paradigms for how soft medics are taught. Are they taught from their own narrative experiences being storytellers, right?

Or is it physician-driven? At the time, it was purely physician-driven. So statistically, I was able to show that when you have curriculum that's founded in your own experiences and your own practice and not driven by another discipline, it tends to be better received, better learn, you know, it's assimilated better cognitively. So are you saying that when it's physician driven, the physicians are saying this is what you need to learn as an S-F medic. And when it's more narrative-driven, that it is like the S-Fmetics going, this is what we've been seeing out in the field. And we don't like, these are the things we need to deal with. Right. Right.

Yes. I mean, you can dig deep into like, is it hermeneutics? Is it narrative pedagogy? You know, all that kind of stuff. And there's plenty of physicians in special operations who were long-tapped, who were 18 series something, right? But there's just as many who were never that way. And they've been assigned to teach and practice within special operations without ever, really of kicking indoors themselves.

Right. And so when you have that kind of mismatch between experience, practice, and teaching, it can create some chasms. Sure. And then in the midst of that, I realized, oh, well, if I, if I have a clinical doctor, then I can't run my own studies. Like, that would be difficult. I would have to recruit a PhD to, you know, structure them and that kind of thing.

And I don't know, maybe it was spite. Maybe I had something to prove. but on a whim I applied to like the best PhD program in the States and as a challenge I just kind of said I want to study like secondary trauma and actually in special operation spouses and then um 2017 uh Mike Montanuto who was a hockey player he was in the Disney movie Miracle he I think he was out on the west coast and first group but he was back at brag and he taught my daughter how to skate when we were at brag daughter how to play some hockey. He died by suicide within a day. He was at first group. Yeah, he, but I think he was up Brad for something, maybe for teaching, training, I don't know. And he died, I think, on April 23rd, 2017, and then within a day on the opposite coast, Ryan Larkin died. He was a SEAL SEAL and his senior medic was still as a good friend, someone that I cherish. And he called me

And he was like, this is just reaching epidemic proportions. And so, you know, as a researcher, as an academic, I went into the body of evidence. Like I'm looking through, you know, databases and journals trying to see, like, what is the incidence? And why are these guys dying by suicide? And at the time, it was all men. So I'm not trying to be exclusionary, right? But I'm thinking, these are like the most resilient people I know. Right.

And so why are they taking their own lives? Is it brain injuries? Is it what's going on? And like, if you've ever been midway through a PhD and you go to your advisor and you say, I want to switch my topic. I mean, they're looking at me like, you're out of your mind. Like, you know, you've got just a year and a half left or something like that. I'm like, sorry, this is happening in front of my eyes. Yeah.

So graciously, I all. like all gratitude to Rush University. You know, that's science. You know, you see a phenomenon unfolding in front of your eyes. And they said, yeah, go for it. So it tacked on a couple extra years. And I started looking into that, doing a lot of background research, looking at the evidence.

And there just really wasn't a lot. Socom actually hadn't published any suicide data since, like, 2016. Yeah, they keep it really on the download, don't say. It was almost like with the change of administrations. It used to be a lot more transparency from presidency to presidency almost. And then by 2016, it was just like a blackout. And I'm thinking, well, there's no data. Then, you know, the military, it's like, there's no data.

There's no problem. Right, right. But like the New York Times had published on it. There was a lot of print media about it, like about the emotional aspect of it or why these operators are dying by suicide, but in the academic, like, empirical literature, there was, is just nothing. And so scientifically, when there's no empirical data, you have to just start talking to people. So qualitative research, right? And I'm a quantitative person. Like, I teach graduate statistics. I like numbers. I like the analyses. And having those

experiences with within special operations and knowing a lot of the medics, I was able to access people who would talk to me because I had kind of a 10-year relationship with some people in the community where they would actually open up and talk to me. So it was anonymously, but I did my dissertation on resilience, actually, because that's the antecedent. That's the precursor. So we know that you all are probably the grittiest, the heartiest, the most resilient. Look at the training that you've gone through, the places that you go to, the things that you survive. We know that there's no issue with resilience. So why is Socom throwing millions at preservation of the force and family?

Why is there like comprehensive soldier fitness and master resilience training? Why are these being thrown at soldiers and families and why is it not working? So when I started digging into that, and I think I've talked to you about this, I realized that this positive psychology movement that Martin Saldeman from Penn and this, you know, this thinking happy thoughts kind of phenomenon, like gratitude and all that's really important. But I really don't know anybody in the community who's ungrateful or super negative. I mean, you're salty. Right. A binging soldier is a happy soldier. Exactly.

Yeah. If you have a traumatic brain injury, it's not a question of just like feeling a little down on yourself. No. You have a physiological problem. There's something physical has happened to your brain to change how you think and how you feel and your cognitive functions. And just like a little mental exercise of like here's how you should feel grateful. I mean, that's not going to help a person going through that. No, and actually for SOF, it's really damaging because positive psychology is if you are,

strange or weird or, you know, atypical, which all of you are, let's face it, right? Like, I feel like the big five personality traits for soft. You guys are a little, like, a little bit off the ranch, right? Yeah, yeah. And so when you, when you come out from that approach from that paradigm, that, you know, everything's normal. And if you just, you know, are mindful and you censure yourself and you think happy thoughts, which is kind of my, you know, encapsulation of it, that your, that your suicidality is going

know what go away right no and so it was kind of this merging of a bunch of different um issues at once and then dan pearl's papers started to come out of bethazza at walter reed where he was taking neurological tissue from operators or soft guys who had died by suicide and finding astroglil scarring so there there is a physiological basis what is this scarring can tell us what that is i will try Okay. Yeah. Let's imagine that your brain is like a cantaloupe, right? But in the inside it's just all jello.

Okay? And inside that jello, there's very intricate, delicate, connections between your neuronal bodies. And I'm not a neuroscientist, so just bear with me. But when you shake it hard enough or you hit it hard enough and you do that chronically over time, it'll actually separate some of these structures. And, you know, that separates your neural pathways. It separates, it prevents some neuroplasticity.

I mean, it really can mimic PTSD in a sense. But if you medicate that, the same way that you medicate PTSD, you're actually going to make it worse. You can actually precipitate suicide. That was actually going to be my next question. But first, you mentioned when you were, I think when you were in Germany, you mentioned that the results were 21%.

What was that? Those were mine. But what 21%? Ground forces. We're suffering from some, we're exhibiting some sort of. No, that they had been exposed to blasts. Okay. At least.

Okay. So that's, you know, just the baseline estimate. If you're looking at 100 soldiers, 20 of them are probably going to have TBI at the minimum. Okay. The number in soft. I have to pull out my dissertation. Anybody who's been at a door during a breach and like multiple breaches in nights and many nights in a row. To unpack this a little bit.

I mean, I think I quoted you in the article that I wrote. wrote about explosive breaching. Yeah. And I interviewed Sergeant Major Vining, and Chuck O'Connor, who were the Delta Force and Dev Group Master Breachers, respectively. And also some other folks interviewed a Army neuroscientist at one point. And so I thought one of the interesting things was that there's a difference between a blast TBI and an impact TBI.

Like what football players get, what people get in car crashes. My understanding, at least, it's like an impact TBI. your brain and your body will heal from it eventually. Yeah. But what guys, special ops guys or ground forces are experiencing with these blast TBIs is that blast wave just passes red through. Right, right. And since your body is like, what are we 98, 99% water or something like this.

Well, yeah, I mean, if you take a balloon and you squeeze it really, really hard, and then you let it re-expand, if you think about doing that to the brain and it's just crushed and then it re-expans, what happens is inflammation. Right. And what follows inflammation is scarring, to put it simply. So, yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. That's exactly what's going to happen. So this is, I think this is a really important point because I think that this has been missed for a long time.

You know, because when we talk about special operations, soldiers and suicide, it's like, well, that's really weird because like back in the 80s or the 90s, they did that study to find out that we had more neuropeptide Y, which helped us or whatever. So this stuff, but then all of a sudden you have, you know, this community, like you say, is sort of resilient by nature. Yeah, you're selected for that. Yeah. Yeah. And all of a sudden, they're not resilient. They're, you know, they are, you know, they are these people who have like singular focus or are able to, you know, handle massive amounts of stress are now like taking their lives. And I think that initially, you know, at least popular wise.

It was post-traumatic stress. They all have post-traumatic stress because they're sending them in combat. How were you able to peel that, peel TBI away? Because I'm sure that they are, you know, they're not mutually exclusive and, you know, they're synergistic probably. But how were you able to pull that TBI away and say, look, this, like, this is something different and it needs to be treated differently? So in keeping in mind, like, I'm a trauma specialist. Right. clinically, you know, I'm resuscitating, giving medications.

So there are far more erudite and educated people than I to speak to that, right? But this is my understanding of it. Sure. So post-traumatic stress, post-traumatic stress disorder, that's a behavioral response, right? That's a behavioral response to situations. And some of that's normal. Right. Like combat stress reactions, post-traumatic stress.

Like if you are functioning normally and you've been in this, you know, situation of extreme stress or extreme trauma, you should react a bit to it, right? Unless you're sociopathic. Which most soft people have sociopathic tendencies. You got a little touch to that, but you need a little touch to that, right? Which is why positive psychology and all this like resilience training doesn't really work. Right. At least on your population. So, you know, so they'll separate the behavioral response. You know, if you, say you have a broken arm, right? You know, you can't therapies or, you know, prey away broken arm. You actually need to set the arm and fix it. Right. You need neurological rehabilitation. You know, and of course throughout the 2000s, especially during

surges, and I mean, SOF has the most repetitive deployment cycles. I think, you know, as of 2018, 19, soft sustains 83% of combat fatalities. You know, the stress that the military has put SOF under is astronomical. And so, you know, when you have a physiological injury, you know, trying to treat it with talk therapy or any other kind of, it's not going to work. You have to find something different. Right. And I think, you know, the military is composed of extremely well-intentioned people who do genuinely

care about its forces. But I think that, you know, the good idea fairy has struck quite a bit. Right. And it has not borne out into good solutions. Right. Yeah. And, I mean, I mean, also traditionally, the military has had an approach to something they can't, they don't understand as, well, you're malingering. You're, you know, you're trying to get out of work.

Or, you know, and I'm sure that it's much different than that now. But, you know, they can only work within a certain realm. And if they find something they don't understand, then they don't understand it. Well, and also, if you think about it just politically, you know, if all the generals or all the commanders who would speak back, speak truth to power, have quit, or they don't want to be part of what's going on or an endless war and they've decided to just, you know, tap out and retire or whatever, then you really don't have anyone saying. Right.

The emperor has no clothes. Right. So then you're relying on academics to do it. Right. But then again, you know, there's very few people in academia because they're mostly civilians who have lived and breathed what you all have lived and breathed, or at least been married to it. So you've got like really great big name universities doing really well-funded research.

But then I'm looking through the research and I'm like, wait a second, you're, wait, like, you know, the Army Stars studies and that kind of thing, very well-funded, well-published. But then they would like, they would combine their groups as to, well, these are medics and these are special forces. And I'm thinking, do they not know that special forces has medics? And then, you know, well, special forces has like no risk of suicide. well, the special forces was like 0.2% of the population that you studied. So how are you not accessing these people, right?

So, you know, these conclusions that have been reached are just devoured by... That was as late as like 2018 or something like that, right? Yeah, it was like 2017 and 2018. And, you know... They were still saying like our soft population is like low risk. We don't really have this problem. Right. And you're...

But at the time they were saying that, soft suicides had tripled. more than like the last five years combined like it was just you know taking off and then and then it became this thing in in the academic literature of like well you know it's leveled off like oh I'm sorry is a plateau okay with you because I would prefer zero right right like zero would be a better number than just leveling off right which means they're still dying by suicide yeah exactly by mass numbers it's just it's not going up so it's good yeah like no data no problem yeah you know and it's interesting because I wonder how many army officers or senior army officers because you know they have to they have to get promoted right I mean and they can't make big waves often if they want to and how like for an officer

who's given data that says hey like these TBI presents these risks it's like well they're still functional like the you know the mission requires this kind of opt tempo we can't just bring in a whole new batch of guys there are no other guys. Their job is to prepare their unit to deploy and go to war. This PTSD-TBI thing is maybe arguably by necessity in afterthought. Right, right. The war

is your priority. Right. I mean, that's what happens when you don't draft people. Yeah. And as we know, like special forces cannot be mass produced. Right. And you know that bubble of mass-producing special operations personnel from like 2002 to 2006 or whatever it was, you know, just this like push to get a ton of special operations personnel into, you know, teams and operational stuff gets missed. Yeah. You know, and then the waivers

and, you know, all of like, just, you know, relaxing standards and it's, you get this, you get this bubble. And that's what we're seeing 20 years later. Here's the bubble. Right. Yeah. This is what happens when you ignore the soft truth. Right, right. And put the burden of the war on an increasingly smaller and smaller percentage of the military and the general population of the country. Yeah, I think it's like, I might, sorry, finish the ride. You are more than welcome to it. It's very much a team room vibe, so I think the whiskey follows. So I think just to maybe backtrack just a little bit and talk about, you know, some of, again, because these are things you've studied,

but they're also things you experienced. And that, well, yeah, eventually I did. Yeah. To roll things back in time to where 2007 or so, when your husband, Michael, was in the military, he was in the infantry, deployed to Iraq. His vehicle hits an IED. He's an EFP.

Okay, oh, he was an EFP? Right under his seat. Oh, my gosh. You happened to know the unit surgeon that he belonged to and called him. call them up because you knew about TBI's and you said you need to put Michael in an MRI machine and check out his brain and he responded to you something like, you know, if we put every soldier who had experienced blasts through an MRI machine, we'd set it on fire.

Yeah, and I think at that point they were spending a billion dollars a week on the war in Iraq. Yeah. But God forbid, like we have, you know, good diagnostic things. And I think my exact words to him in my email were, you know, Matt, I know just enough about TBI to be a real pain in your ass. And he was like, Kate, sorry. Like, I just, I don't have the, I can't evaluate it. I'm trying.

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Go ahead. Did you put in mood music on? No, it is. Anyway, I'm sorry. No, it's fine. So, yeah, I mean, I got, you know, Michael called me from Downrange. And, you know, I think, you know, as somebody like who handles trauma, handles emergencies, handles chaos professionally,

I just lost it because I was just screaming at him. I'm like, I need the details. I need to know. Were you unconscious? Did you lose consciousness? How many people were injured? Did anybody in your vehicle? Like I was like just trying to get some kind of like clinical triage information.

And when I calmed down for a second, you know, one guy had attached retina. You know, they were all sent to get a good night's sleep or whatever. And Michael was intact. He walked out and it was, he was in the most proximal zone. before but because he was walking and talking you know they just sent him to his connex to get some sleep and then I just I knew like I knew like um I don't know can I swear on this podcast yeah absolutely like um it was I knew like I was just preparing myself for the shit show yeah and uh he had like one good year after that I think while we were married

wow I remember going through his medical records that you provided for me to look through and he actually did have like some pretty I mean relatively speaking he did have some physical health issues I think with one of his legs I think he did have some eye issues and then he had psychological issues and I found a piece of paperwork where he had gone to a psychologist and army psychologist and reported feelings of paranoia that like people were following him around the commissary the cars would get too close to him feel that they're following him that they're tracking him and he went to self-reported that as his spouse, I mean, what did you see when he came back from that deployment? You know, it's interesting because I had this entree to Army medicine that a lot of spouses don't.

And so I was able to kind of shake some cages or rattle some cages and shake trees to get, you know, diagnoses into his medical record without being doubted. And there came a point I think we were back at Bragg in like 2011 or 12, 12, I think. where he was he was so bad it was like like just breakdowns every day and you know he would not go see anybody because of his clearance right and his training right and I was like I'm like listen man that they will not pull your clearance for this and he's like yes they will and I pulled in almost every favor that I'd you know gathered within the last eight or nine years and I finally got a command psychiatrist who great guy not going to name him but he said I will

see Michael off the books. I will prescribe anything that you need, you know, you pay cash for it, whatever, it won't go into the system, you know, anything that he needs, I'll get it done, and Michael still wouldn't go. Because if he was polygraphed for something sensitive or, I mean, you know, like, the answers that he would have to give, he didn't want to be dishonest. And I'm like throwing up my hands, like, I can't. Like, what do you do with that? With all of my training and background, I couldn't help him. Right. So I'm saying. thinking what are these other spouses and families going through it's got to be as bad or worse than what I'm going through because they have no idea right what's happening to this person

that they love that they've been with they've moved with they've PCS with like what's going on can you so can you sort of give us just kind of a a boilerplate of sort of what his personality or what he was like prior to the blast or prior to the event and then sort of what you started noticing or what happened whether it was overtime or suddenly any post left. I mean, no offense. But I mean, you guys, you guys are tough. I mean, it's not like, you're not snowflakes or corn flakes at all.

So, I mean, that was still there, right? Like, you know, the dark humor, the saltiness, you know, just that kind of, you know what I'm talking about. Like that kind of vibe, right? But he was mean. He just got really mean. And he had never really, in all, he had never been. No. I mean, like sarcastic, fun.

I mean, he was really, really funny and always was, but like, mean and dark and suspicious. And just this general, like, malaise of just not feeling well, you know, headaches, trouble sleeping. You know, sleep just became this, like, precious commodity. And God forbid, any of the kids made noise or I, like, checked my phone and woke him up. I mean, he was terrified of not being able to sleep. And I think the year before he, you know, got a certain higher level of security clearance, he actually was on antidepressants for, I think, a year in 2009. That was the best year. Like, he was just sailing.

He was doing much better. And then he went off of him because he had to go into a selection phase for some unnamed whatever unit. But, yeah, I mean, it was like, it was just like watching somebody disintegrate before your eyes. And eventually we had a marriage counselor who used to be a ranger, lovely guy in Fayetteville. And he asked for a private appointment with me. He's like, you've got to walk. Like, you're going to have to walk.

And I mean, I'm Catholic. I've talked to my priest. And my priest is like, this isn't marriage. Like, you can't. You just can't. Like, you're going to have to walk. So I did. I mean, nobody can fault you for that.

Like, you know, there's also an element of salt preservation and not just physically. And I don't know if that was the thing, but just mentally. No, no, no, no. Yeah, but just mentally, like, you know, you can't hold on, hang on to a drowning person, you know, without, without. And that was the metaphor that I used. I'm like, it's like, it was like he was pushing me under just to like come up for air. Yeah. And there's so many spouses and family members who have that happening.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, they are, they are absolutely trying to keep their service member afloat, keep the career intact. And when you look at the divorce rate, you know, in the military is just like so tacitly accepted, right? Right, right. But when you look at the divorce rate in special operations, you can almost use like marital disintegration as like a huge flag. Not because it's abnormal, but because when the family goes and the wife finally says or the spouse finally says, I'm out, they've put up with. much and tried so hard.

Right. I think that's really almost like a diagnostic tool to say this person's probably close to suicide. Right. You know, and instead we just accept that, oh, marriage is disintegrate because it's a hard life. As speaking

as a former spouse, we're pretty fucking tough. Yeah. Like, we can handle a lot. You guys disappear for months. Yeah. We don't know where you are, what you're doing. Like, we can hang. Like, there's a lot that we can put up. So when we finally say done, that service member is seriously, seriously screwed up. Right.

And command and the military is just like, oh, another divorce. And I imagine it's very hard as a spouse too because, you know, when you've got a family, I mean, not only for all the reasons that divorce is tough, but in a way you're responsible for this or you're not responsible for them, but you may feel responsible for them. And it's like, well, if I go and I take the kids, like, then what do they have left? But you can't get, that's not on you and you can't get caught up in that, you know. I think a lot of spouses, myself included, we protect their careers, like, like rigorously, protect their careers. So we're hypervigilant about not screwing them over career-wise.

Right. I mean, Michael did some really stupid stuff when I was divorcing him. and I really just kind of protected him from that because I didn't want his career to disintegrate. It's, I mean, it's funny, not funny, but, I mean, maybe darkly funny in retrospect, but I think, you know, like when you're in special operations, the narrative is always like, oh, this fucking woman, she's fucking around on him, she's ruining his life, she's ruining his career. and I mean I've worked as a journalist and I've talked to enough military spouses over the years that I realize there is very much two sides to that story. And a lot of times it's because there's a chicken and the egg kind of

aspect to this. I mean, is it because they're dealing with these post-traumatic stress issues and TBI issues? But I mean, these guys are putting these women through hell too a lot of times. And that's why you're seeing the marriage disintegrate. That's why you're seeing that, you know, this guy, was already heading down a very dark road and that's why his marriage disintegrated. It's not that it disintegrated. And then he went down. It's not that he's going down this dark road because his wife left

him. Right. And just anecdotally on outside looking in, I would just note that I think, I've seen several times when there is a perception from the soldier that their career is going to shit and their marriage is going to shit. That, like you said, it's a diagnostic. And when you see, that should be like huge red flag. Well, and a lot of the suicides and special operations, and I can find you the number, but it eludes me at the moment. Within six months of separation from their team

or pending discipline, that's when they die. When they're under investigation, you know, for whatever, you know, just... I'll get into that a little bit later in the story. Yeah. But yeah, when they lose that family structure. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Do the, you know, in talking about sort of the final separation, do those suicides go up even more after they leave service, even if they left after retirement? I don't know. Okay. We're not good at tracking that. And the VA doesn't delineate suicides by, they do it by branch, but they don't do it by MOS or specialty, at least not. I haven't been able to dive into it. I think if you were to dive into that, people would be shocked.

I think you would. I think they would be shot. Okay, so for example, I know that a lot of, or I've read that a lot of special operations, veterans have cardiac issues that eventually kill them very shortly after retirement. I mean, there's actually like changes to the cardiac axis and electrophysiology of the heart just from, you know, the stress and the circulating catacolamines and all this other stuff. Is that related to CAD? Corner artery disease? Yeah. It might be.

But also, like, you know, you are highly structured personnel. You know, you wake up, you do PT, you do all the stuff. When either, you know, the military structure or the family structure is gone, you're rudderless. Yeah. And that creates a lot of psychic, a lot of angst. Yeah. And that can also precipitate suicide as well. Yeah.

So, I mean, it's multifactorial. Right. It's going to be difficult to drill down into it. But that's what science is. Like, you have to start stunning it somewhere. Right. Right. Right.

So. Now, Michael must, I mean, if he was already having these issues before interviewing for other units, I mean, those selection processes are, are not nothing. Oh, they're insane. So he must have been very high performing and able to, and able to, like, hide that from them. Well, when I had the briefing in 2020, and I was actually here in New York and I did it over Zoom with, you know, whatever clandestine units. they were calling themselves. You know, kind of like 20 minutes into it. And you have the video of it.

I was like, can we just stop this shit right now? Can you just stop? Because this is literally like my lane. This is literally my research is like why these guys commit suicide. And I said, your selection process is second to none is one of the hardest in the world for any agency anywhere. Yeah. And you have all of the paperwork that I'm looking at.

And none of this jumped out at you. this is like, for me, this is like looking at a train coming down the tracks with the sirens going and the horn going and the lights going and you were just okay with this. And they just didn't have an answer, you know, like. Yeah, just the medical records you provided to me. Just the medical records alone. Yeah, I mean, he was, Michael's extremely high performing. He was very good at what he did. And they did conclude in the 15-6 into his death that he had a great persona. And he did. You know, he was able to just put this front up that. It's that while his like personal life was disintegrating, right?

That professionally he was just moving up and up and up. Right. And he transferred from infantry to human intelligence, became a huminter. And I showed his ERB to people in the field and they were like, this guy was like a machine. Right. Like he went to every qualification course. This dude was like in line to essentially like retire as an army human mentor and probably go work for the CIA for another 20 years. Like, it was just an amazing trajectory that he had.

And then I believe he received some cross-training, like, cyber warfare stuff. Oh, yeah. And was, like, learning computer coding. Oh, he was a great hacker. He had, he must have had a, you know, probably close to, like, a genius level IQ. He was hell of smart. Yeah. Really smart.

And that was my other question to the colonel and the lawyer from the NSA who was sitting in this, you know, debriefing with me after their investigation. And I said, these are all professional liars. You teach them how to lie and they're really good at it. They're gray men. They are absolutely 100% excellent at subterfuge and pulling one over on you. That's their job. And you're telling me that you don't have any way to mitigate that kind of bias in your evaluations. Yeah.

Like how dumb is that? How dumb is that? That is just baffles me. I think probably in not knowing that I think probably one of the challenges if you think of these organizations that are hiring at this point in time

everybody they're looking at everybody they're looking at has been in combat they all have been in combat they all probably have some board of TBI you know what I mean? Yeah. All of them

and so it's sort of like yeah I mean we can you know we can look at his records and say, oh, look, like this, like you said, like, this is a train going off the rails, but you can probably, you know, people don't start out in units like that. They've been other places. Yeah. And they've done something to earn a spot or earn the, you know, the sort of recognition, a recognition, sorry. Recognition.

Yeah, recognition from an organization like that. And so at this late stage in the game. everybody's in combat probably like they're like well if we don't take somebody like this like right who would we take okay so they are pulling from like a participant pool that has like the same kind of issues but here's where it's different and you know I don't want to sound like I don't want to like insert any like woo or like voodoo into this but I remember one day in February of 2019 I mean Michael's really never happy that I left let's just put it mildly, like not happy with me.

But so communications were pretty fraught. So I was not, you know, predisposed to reaching out to him and being like, hey, how you doing? But there was one day in February where I was like, oh, this is, ooh, I'm like, ooh. And I finally texted him and I said in February 2019, I said, you know, I felt all day like I did the day that the EFP went off underneath your seat. Like I know something's wrong. Are you okay? And he said, I'm not, but I can't talk about it. I was like, okay, well, if it gets dark, if it gets deep, call me.

And that was when, in his records, that same day, when he finally met to behavioral health because he was not doing well. So Michael had a four-month almost lead up, or more, more than four-month lead-up of severe symptoms before he killed himself. And so that's where, that's where the negligence comes in. You know, that's where, you know, such, like, this is a unit with more money than God. They have everything at their disposal. Anything that these guys or women need, they get. And they knew it. They noticed it.

And they just did not intervene. They didn't intervene. Before we get there, I do want to hit you on a few interesting points, I think. And I mentioned just recently on this podcast about the extortion 17 crash and how that affected so many people in the special ops community. I was wonder if you could tell the story about how Michael intersected with that story. Yeah, so it was 2011. God knows where he was, right?

But he really good about calling me, talking to the girls, and he called me, and something was up. Something was up. And, you know, nothing in the news had really hit yet. And I'm like, what is wrong? Like, what's going on? And he couldn't say. Like, he couldn't tell me where he was.

You couldn't tell me what he was doing. And he said, call, he said, call this person, a friend of ours who had been in Ranger Bat and kind of in the same line of work, let's say. And so I was like, okay, so I pick up and I called him. And he said, it hasn't hit the news yet, but let's just say that Mike's office is really empty right now. Could you elaborate? He's like, well, his office was full yesterday. And now it's empty. And so Mike woke up or went into work and almost.

everybody that he'd been working with is now dead. And I was like, okay. And then, and then that came out in the news. I mean, so I don't even know how to wrap my brain around that. Right. You know, can you imagine? He was doing human support to dev group at that time. Yeah.

I mean, you would know better than I. And like, you know, Jack and Steele in the gym with those dudes and then comes into work the next day and all these dudes are just not there. Vaporized. Done, gone. Yeah. You know, he was a lot different after that, too. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, it's hard to, I only realize it in retrospect also in talking to people

and interviewing people. And I did that story about Bill Mulder also, who was a dev group operator, was having real problems already and said he needed a break, went down to Texas on a recruiting job, and that extortion 1-7 happened. All of his friends were dead. and him and his wife were both like, we have to go back. So they went back to Damneck, and he didn't get better. He got worse.

And again, the family unit disintegrated. He left the family. They had a bunch of kids together, and then he got on a FaceTime call with the girls one day, with the kids. And the wife took the phone because he was scaring them, and he shot himself on a FaceTime call with his wife. And I'll try to bring this back up at the end of this. but his widow and his brother-in-law, who's a former CIA officer, set up this app called SoundOff,

and it's designed for people like Michael. Michael is like the guy. He could be the prototype of the person and be helped by this app. People who are afraid they're going to lose their security clearance. People who are afraid they're going to face professional repercussions can get on this app

and talk to clinicians who have some sort of background in special operations. I talked to one of them I know who the people are behind this company, like they're for real. And somebody in the community who's having these problems can get on this app and talk to a clinician anonymously, completely anonymously. And if the person wants to, they can then take it the next step and meet in person with a clinician.

And the military, the intelligence community, the CIA, wherever you work, is not going to know about this. So it's just a way to try to get that help to people exactly like Michael, people exactly in that. situation what we're talking about. Yeah. I mean, they didn't have embedded psychiatry or psychology in Michael's unit. That's amazing. These people have to lose their identities and pretend to be somebody else and then come home and pretend to be who they are again. Right. And you don't have them, well, they're not embedded because they don't have the knowledge of the trade craft or the requisite security clearances. And I'm thinking, and? Right. So?

Right. So send them. So give them the training. So get them the clearance. Read them on, yeah. Yeah, please do. Yeah. Nope.

And so the next step for Michael, as I understand it, was he did, so he did some intel support for third group. Yeah. Went on a secret mission to Chad doing a sort of reconnaissance with those dudes. That was like 2015, if I recall correctly. Yeah, 2015, 2016. Yeah. And then he went into the great skills program. Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Oh, yeah, he definitely did. Well, you know, maybe that's like my spouse training picking in. Like, I can't say that name. So, well, great skills is, all that is, it's like a non-traditional career path for human mentors. And then go into all these sorts of clandestine units and programs within the military. And so Michael went into that. That was his ambition, right? Right.

But still, my knee-jerk reaction is I don't know nothing about nothing. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I'm not going to say that out loud. You can actually. Yeah. There's some stuff released. And, yeah, and Michael then made it into the unit, their non-classified name is ComTech. Yeah.

Was it communications technology activities or something down on Belvoir? Well, you know, when we were at Bragg, we were at Charlie Mike's pub on Radley Road, and they have all the sailing tiles painted with the different unit insignias. And I pointed at one, I'm like, oh, I know what that is. And Mike's like, no, you don't. I mean, so, yeah, yeah. I knew where he was working, but it was kind of. tongue and cheek like yeah no living near fort meet are you but not really living yeah what do you do

logs yeah i'm an ethical hacker sure you are but yeah yeah so uh michael uh got married again he did yeah divorced again yeah sadly um she seemed like a nice lady too that's that's how do you recall about how long that married well god it was pretty kind of rocky yeah and then year maybe. I think they were together like three or four years, married for one and a half and then. Yeah. And then that fell apart in 2018. Because he called me in May of 2018. It told me that it kind of they had gone their separate ways. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry to go into like all of these details about Michael's life. I'm like we were, I really went into into all of them when I wrote this article. There's an issue in his unit where he was, you had a relationship with.

with a woman in the unit, which she had an affair on him while he was having an affair on his wife. Yeah. And then she was having an affair on him with a married officer in the unit. There's a lot of melodrama that took place during that time frame. And according to the letter that Michael wrote, he believed that this woman in their unit reported him as an insider threat in retaliation for her belief,

that he reported her for fractonization in the unit with a married man, which I have no idea if that's actually true. It could be part of the... That's not his style, so I don't think so. I mean, for all of his faults, you know, Michael really, really loved me, and I think he really, really loved his second wife. So it just, it doesn't track, right? Right.

I think that's the paranoia kicking in. Right. Yeah, and that was in his mind the rationale for what he believed there were surveillance teams following him around Washington, D.C. Well, when did the paranoia start much earlier than that? He had like fits and starts of it and that I was usually able to like kick it like, serious dude, like nobody's following us. Right. You know, get some sleep. Like, you're fine.

Nobody's following us. But then, you know, they call it like the MI shakes where they're just. just so attuned to being suspicious of everybody, everything. I mean, there would be points where, like, I'd come back from Target. Like, were you really at Target? Yeah, dude, do you want to see the receipt? Because I don't go to Target without dropping, like, 300 blocks. Like, trust me, I was at Target.

What do you do? And then at that point, too, I was working with some special operations, medical personnel on research and initiatives and that kind of thing. And so I was around men who actually really respect. that I was married, but that was not, I mean, that, like, increased the paranoia as well. So, yeah, I think it was just the paranoia really came. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about that, kind of like that last, like, six months where things

really went downhill, and that paranoia did kick in. Yeah. And Michael came, he was, so he got deployed to Vietnam, again, sort of like a recon prior to president. Well, he entered Vietnam. He entered through Vietnam. What he did after that is up for debate. True.

We have photos of him in Vietnam. Well, all right. Cruising around. Vietnam's really close to a lot of other countries that were interested in in that area. Yeah. And this was just prior to President Trump's meeting the summit with the North Koreans in Vietnam. Came back from that deployment, and it seems like that's when things really started to slide down downhill for him. Yeah.

From your point of view, what were you seeing? You know, it's interesting. All I could really see on my side was that he just wasn't showing up for his kids. And so, you know, being a normal ex-wife, you're like, well, what a deadbeat, like not seeing your kids, you know? And just thinking, okay, well, he's a jerk. But in hindsight, in retrospect, realizing now, oh, okay. okay, he really could not engage with anybody at that point. Right.

So I think that was part of it too. I mean, I actually, I was living, teaching at the University of Tennessee, and I drove the girls from Tennessee to D.C., actually. So that's a hike so that he could spend a weekend with him because I'm like, well, I'll be fucked if, you know, he's not going to see his kids. Like, I don't give a shit what the excuse is. I'll drive him up to see him. Right.

And that was the summer of 2018. some Christmas of 2018, and then I don't think he saw them again before he died. He was actually supposed to see them. Like, he died like two or three days before they were going to spend some weeks with him that summer. From the paperwork I looked through in the interviews I did with various people, I mean, some of the things that he had going on down there in the Washington, D.C. area, he thought there were surveillance teams following him around wherever he went. He was riding out on license plates, people, cars outside his home.

Oh, I got his phone after he died. The photo roll is full. of license, and cars. Well, and I mean, the, the challenge is, even if you're just doing training,

if you're out on a surveillance, like, like, like, like, you know, SDR and stuff like that. If,

if you, it's easy. It is the way people, like, look at you, you would never notice before. You're like, oh,

they're following me. Only because you're doing, like, honest with, like, it is easy to start getting it in your head that, that everybody's looking at them.

Here's an interesting detail, Dave, about that, is that in the records and what I found that I think speaks to Michael becoming increasingly irrational was what he was doing when he thought people were following him, he was doing things like pulling a wild U-turn, getting up behind them, jumping out of his car and taking pictures of them, which is the exact opposite of how we train people to do surveillance. But who said he was doing that? He did. Oh, okay. He did. He told a coworker about that. He's like, I want them to know that I'm trained. Yeah, he was going into, yeah.

He was going provocative, which you should never be. Yeah, so he was compared to the point where he was not using his training. There was another document somewhere I was reading about how a coworker from work came to check on him. And he was unscrewing all the light bulbs in the house because he thought there were surveillance devices. Which is bizarre. Like, that's not how they would surveil him. Light bulbs, really? Like is it 1940?

It speaks to the irrationality. That's what I'm saying. He's showing the behaviors not of a trained professional intelligence profession but rather something more akin to like schizophrenia. That's exactly it.

He was starting to show schizoaffective symptoms and that's what really pisses me off is that he would be at work and reading the reports and then talking to his coworkers after he died or even while he was in ICU.

I'm thinking he was starting to not be able to recognize faces. People he worked with colleagues. Right. And commands just like, okay, we'll go home and get some rest. Are you fucking kidding me? Right. And then, uh, let's see, a few months before he died, he wrote that letter to his command sergeant major, uh, requesting to be taken off mission. And I read that letter and it is the, I mean, a non-clinical term, it's the ratings of a madman. Like this is like, this is really serious. Yeah. So you have this high,

speed, highly sought after, highly trained, I mean, workhorse, like best of the best. And then you're seeing him disintegrate and your thought as a commander or as the sergeant major is just like, oh, well, you know, you're going on leave and that's a good thing. Seriously. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It boggles the mind. Yeah.

The, I'm sorry to say that the 156 investigation I read was a check the block. Oh, it was a mess. Like, I'm glad they were documenting. the name of the person who did it because I'd be like, were you born yesterday? Yeah. Like, have you ever been in the military? Yeah. It was awful.

Like, they didn't even, like, they didn't even get his family tree right. Like, and the thing is, they didn't interview me. They didn't interview his second ex-wife. Like, they didn't ask anybody with working knowledge of this guy's... They wanted it to go away. They really did. And that, you know, and I don't want to, you know, I don't want to become a conspiracy theorist in the midst of talking about all of this clandestine stuff.

Right, right. Why did you want it to go away so bad? Right. Because the last thing they want is somebody like me picking away and peeling away at it. Right. And talking about the unit and what they do. Like, you know, honestly, I felt kind of bad for them. Like, oh, you done fucked up.

And oh, by the way, you fucked up. And the first wife of the guy who died has a literal Ph.D. in this shit. Right. I hope you were losing sleep at night. Right. Because I'm coming for you. Yeah. Honestly.

This is such bullshit. So what steps did you take? Like what, how did you manage it? With your knowledge, your background, and your connections. Oh, sorry. The AC's really low, right now. Yeah, can we? Yeah.

What is it? Like, 140 degrees in the United States. It's like that. It's sweltering. Yeah. It's so bad. My hair was done before I got here. Say again.

Ask me again. So with your connections in that community, with your background, your education. Yeah. Like, like, how did you manage it? Because you had a lot more resources. and a lot more knowledge than a typical spouse would have. Oh, God. It's weird because he died like six months before COVID hit, right?

So not only did like a pandemic just completely shatter, you know, any kind of ability to really get anything done. But like, I don't know, where do you start? Like, hey, my ex-husband died and he's part of this unit that has no name. Right. Who do you call? Right. I call Jack. Right.

Because you had interviewed. me about tbi about the breaching thing right and then just like you know through happenstance we started talking about mike and his tbi so um the army wasn't listening that's for damn sure

and so you know being a former DA civilian a military spouse I figured well the military is afraid of two things lawsuits and press so I started talking to the press and I was in Canada I'd moved there after Mike died with the with my kids so

it was when Trump made those stupid comments about in Baghdad Al-Assad. Yeah, like oh they're just headaches. Oh really? Let me tell you what it's like to have somebody with just a headache. Let me tell you what's like to be married to somebody who just has like a headache. And that was terrifying. Like I'd never been I was not like a media hound. I really didn't want the attention. I wanted I literally moved to Canada to just like live a quiet life after my children's father killed himself. Like I just wanted no attention.

but there's families out there who know that it's not just a headache. And then after talking to that reporter and realizing like, oh, okay, this starts to shake some trees, okay. And so, you know, you're the fourth estate. Fifth state? Fourth state.

I think the fourth column. The fifth column, yeah. The fifth column, yeah. Yeah, you're the fifth column. Fourth of the state and fifth column. Yeah. And so that's, you know, that's why journalism and a free press is so important

because that's the check and balance. Right. So if the Army's not going to listen to me, Jack Will. Right. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation did. Right. CTV, like all these other outlets did. So just a few things to touch on before getting to that point.

Yeah. Michael out on a smoke break articulated his death plan to a co-worker a few days prior. I mean, like really specifically. Very specifically. He said exactly, he named the parking garage and said this is where I would jump from. Yeah. The colleague, I'm sure, feels horrible to this day. I meant to report it, but didn't report it.

And then what did we have the day of... He was about to go on leave and take the two of girls. Yeah, the girls were supposed to have and see him. And he drove his pickup truck up to the parking garage, smoked a couple cigarettes. I believe he left his cell phone inside the vehicle, and then he threw himself off the parking garage. Massive head wounds.

Yeah. And that was, you got an email from Michael that day. On Sunday. Yeah. Like, thank God I was like, 10-year track because you're terrified to not to miss an email.

And I was checking emails on a Sunday. And I got this email. I'm like, this is bizarre. It's like, you know, I'm being followed. I went to see behavioral health, but it was actually the CIA. And I can't sue the U.S. government, but you can.

And I picked up the phone and called his mom. And they didn't know anything, but they got a call from the police, and they were on their way from North Carolina, from Stanford, near Bragg, from North Carolina to Maryland. And so I, nobody knew anything, right? They had just gotten a call, like, start driving. Okay. And I think maybe it was his girlfriend who called them.

He left a deaf note for the girlfriend, which I read. completely off the wall. Oh, yeah, that was bizarre too. And so, you know, I'm thinking, like, okay, if he was severely injured and he was in Maryland, where would they fly him? Like, where would they take him? So I called Artem's Calais Shock Trauma,

and I called their, like, charge nurse line and, you know, the nurse mafia taking care of their own. I said, hey, here's the deal. I know what the hell's going on. Do you have a guy in your trauma base named Michael Frody? She's like, yes, I do. And I said, okay, I'm going to need a full report. And it was ominous.

So that's how that went down. And so you went down there with the family and... Oh, I drove really fast, yeah. And, you know, Michael was eventually taking off life support. He was not going to make it. He was not going to make it. He was in neurot trauma ICU. I got there about 11-ish, and his mother and brother were just spent.

They went to the hotel. and I went to the hotel and then it's kind of like Jurassic Park like when the kids were in the car and they're like we left him we left him and I remember I got out of the shower and I'm like just dripping and I'm like he's alone

and I got dressed and went back and then I spent the last night that he was alive with him gave him a bath talked to him, played some Mitch Hedberg so like just stupid shit that you know we used to just really enjoy and just talk to him

and then they took him the OR in the morning to get his organs. How did his unit respond to all of this? You know, it's really weird because, like, when I walked into the room, you know, into his ICU room, after, I don't know, 10, 9, 10 years of working with operators or medical guys or 18 Delta types and that kind of thing I walked in. I'm like, these are not door kickers. I'm like, this is odd.

You know, and I understand now that they were more intel kind of geeky tech types, which is fine. But they just, they didn't have, they didn't seem to just have the same kind of grasp of the situation where,

like if I'd walked into like an ODA. Right. Do you know what I'm saying? So the pure support wasn't quite there in the same way that it would be in a team. Yeah, they just seemed dumbfounded.

And I'm thinking, who are you people? Like, what? They hire these like virgins on these units to be like Intel dweaves and stuff like that. I don't want to call them dweaves.

I mean, they look at a lot of training. Like, they're very smart people. Yeah, I think, I think that a lot of it more is it. But they're socially stunted a lot of times. Well, I don't, I mean, I don't know that. I don't know about that. It's just, I mean, I'm a nerd. They work, I think part of it is, is they work more on an individual basis.

And, you know, they might do trips into Paris or whatever. But I think that generally, like, you don't have the same, the same cohesive type of. type of... Well, and that's the thing too. Sorry, I interrupted. No, please. So if you think about it, and I'm not trying to like, you know, any trade secrets, but you think about insulate versus isolate, right?

And I'm not saying they had any role in his death or that they could have prevented anything, but when you think about the cohesion and why guys and special operations are dying, they die by suicide when they're separated for their team, when they're being, when they're under suspicion or being disciplined or how they're somehow othered, right? Right. And that really is. contravenes this insulate versus isolated mentality. And so it's almost like

I would conjecture that Michael was isolated instead of pulling him back into the fold. And saying, buddy, we know you're hurting. Right. Something's going on. We got you. Right. You know, it's like, oh, what's going on here? And that makes it worse.

Right. He wrote that he felt ostracized by his fears. For sure. Yeah. For sure. And he was pending discipline. He was under investigation for God knows what. Right. For having an affair.

Like, who the fuck has not had an affair? right um so i think i think they were just really stunt right right because they maybe hadn't seen operational guys go downhill you know a few addendums to all of this uh you know a month after michael took his life you had a guy in tfo uh in task force orange or secretive joc intelligence unit took his own life i know what t foe about i know you do not all the people out there may not And then a month after that, a second operator in the unit took his own life. Well, in the Sergeant Major in Mike's unit, and then the commanding general. So sitting on top of Army intelligence, of course, is Intelligence Command.

The CSM of Intelligence Command was under investigation for, I think, technically, sexual assault. While intoxicated at a party in Japan, he, like, slapped a female soldier on the ass. So not like an totally irredeemable person, but he made a mistake and was under investigation for it. And he decided to take his own life. And then the commander of InScom, who would have overseen the investigation into Michael's death and into his own Sergeant Major's death. He did oversee the investigation into Michael's death. Yes. Because we have the paperwork with his name on him.

Yes, we do. And after he retired, he went out, as I understand it, went out for dinner with some other retired. officers, totally normal day, and then went home and killed himself. So if you were to dig a little deeper into InScom, inscomming has a constellation of different units, kind of scattered and around a few different places in the United States and Ocones, they have a real problem with suicides and even some murders. And my comment about, you know, somewhat tongue-in-cheek that, but it's true that in InScom, and I had a conversation with some people in InScom about this, they have some

very immature personalities. There are people who are maybe like a little bit on the spectrum, people who are not socialized properly. And again, this is anecdotal. This isn't based on any sort of clinical trial, probably because no such thing exists, right? Not in the military. God forbid we investigate something, right? Right. So they have had a series of problems with this. And there are, There are other issues in intelligence command that I haven't really written about or talked about. One thing that I was told about was how they have a lot of young guys, young dudes, doing document exploitation, is what we call it. And through that job, they are unfortunately exposed to a lot of child pornography all the time.

And that stuff, as law enforcement organizations understand, you have to cycle the police officers. Right. Right. Because they've foxed with them. Right. And they don't, as I understand it, have not done that in InScom and it's leading to psychological issues in some of their soldiers. So there's a strong case to be made that IG needs to go in and turn the place upside down. But as a friend of mine once remarked, how far does an IG investigation go inside a special access program?

Not very far at all. So there is definitely a case to be made for reform. and Michael, Michael's story is one part of a much larger problem that exists. Well, okay, so speaking of somebody who's like diagnostically on the spectrum, I mean, that doesn't really, it doesn't predispose you to being immature or suicidal. What it does do is it, can I isolate you socially? So you may, like, you know, you put me in a, like, a cocktail party that's like a nightmare housecape. You put me into a unit of people, like socially navigate that is, you know,

is atrocious. In the military, a lot of your career rests on your social acumen, right? So that's probably part of it too. We've talked about it with Soft a little bit that they're looking for people who are a little bit outside the norm, right? But now is the

CIA, I think, is deliberately making an attempt now, not saying that anyone's wrong. The higher people are more neural divergent. Oh, the FBI is as well. Because our pattern recognition is outstanding. Right. Yeah. Right. To do these increasingly technical jobs. You need people who are not quote unquote normal, right? But now you have people

who are abnormal. How do you compensate for that? How do you deal with that? How do you treat those people? Well, the thing is like, you know, being on the spectrum being neurodiverse and anything like that. It's not a behavioral issue. Right. It's a process of difference, right? It may predispose the person to certain things, the way soft personalities are predisposed towards risk-taking behaviors. Well, I mean, but I, I mean, and you can speak to this more than me, but I don't think that it predisposed. I think that, you know, it has to do with, with, but also, it's not that, like, if somebody is someone on the spectrum and has, like, social anxiety or not as much like, you know, if they're not, an extrovert or whatever, and they, they don't deal with that. That doesn't bother them. Like, that's not, that's not, you know, it's not, it's just a normal thing.

I prefer not to be around. If you look at you know like guys from Delta like they're just a big bunch of nerds right most of them yeah like you know you look at them you're like oh like then like yeah you don't really look like Rambo but fortunately they don't like you need that kind of diversity of perspective and processing right and like when when we talk about normal I mean I there's they're real I don't think there really is any normal I mean you know we're talking about kind of soft people earlier and you know and I remember when I took the MMPI I mean I don't think there really is any normal I mean you know we were talking about kind of soft people earlier and you know and I remember when I took the MPI I you know to go to sodic and stuff and you know and I was joking around with the doc it's like oh did I pass and he goes you did about you did exactly what we're expecting and I was like well what do you mean what you're expecting and he said you know you have an ego you uh you know you have sociopathic tendencies but you're not a sociopath that that that you have the ability compartmentalize he goes you know honestly he goes we see this massive sort of convergence is like test results between special ops people and the criminal population we just don't

know why one goes one way the other goes the other way but they have you know similar you know similar mentalities about so like we're not normal you know but i don't think that anybody is really norm like there's a real right but my point is like they're intentionally uh recruiting people who have a certain set of like personality behaviors and whatever those personality behaviors are i mean it comes with some baggage as well you think about the special forces guys who you're their dick gets them in trouble on six continents and drinking and everything else like that. It all kind of seems to go hand in hand. I mean, I would argue that it sort of starts that they're not like getting personality behaviors.

They are getting people that are capable of performing a job, whether that's cyber warfare, communication, special operations, like they want people who are good at that job. the people who happen to be good at those jobs often are like you say if people on the spectrum they're better at pattern recognition they're better at sitting down and focusing on something for a while you know you look at an executive or like a CEO there are you know the things that makes a person a good salesperson or a good CEO is like they can't like stop doing those things when they're not doing their job like in my line of work you know how can I resuscitate a dying baby right Because I'm able to suspend emotion.

Exactly. Because I'm able to focus on the task. Right. You know, how did I, and, you know, of course I would have to do, like, years of further research, but how did I come up with a model as to a theoretical model as to why these guys are dying? Right. What are the three main reasons? It's because, you know, I'm game to immerse myself and tons of research and my own research

and to just, like, marinate it until a pattern emerges. So, you know, you need those kind of aberrant untoward weird, weird kind of people to do it, right? Right. And, you know, maybe I was just the right person and the right ex-spouse at the right time because I did live it. I mean, when Michael was in the ICU, I was emailing my Ph.D. advisor and saying, hey, funny story. You know the research that I'm doing on suicide and special operations? Well, currently, I'm sitting beside the ICU bed of my ex-husband who's in special operations and he just tried to kill himself. So, and they, you know, them all being like normal, fairly neurotypical people, they really thought they were going to lose me that I was just going to quit.

And instead I'm like doubling down. Right. Like well this shit just at home. This is really real now. Right. And so if it's okay, I'll tell you like, this is what came out of the research that I did. Yeah.

Which was actually hard to do after Michael died because it's like any PhD that you're doing, you're staring at this stuff. You live and breathe it. And then I've got like two little girls who are traumatized. And you know, I'm like, oh, okay, I have to finish this. So this is what I found. After interviewing guys in Soft, Delta, you know, seals and all the secret shit where, you know, half of my study population was like, can't really tell you what unit I'm in, which is fine. So they were all male and they'd all been in Soft for over 10 years. Some of them had been in for decades.

And this is what I found. All of you are high performers, obviously, right? So when you have a high performing and self-concealing and professionalistic traits, those three things, and that's supported by others' research, and that triad seems to precipitate suicide and soft. So, yes, you all are high performers, and you are really great at not telling people what's going on. And so high performers, self-concealers, and perfectionistic, you are the best of the best, obviously, right? And I see this in students. And I, in students in my program, I see this. Now I see it everywhere. You know, who are the people who are most likely to just flip a switch and take their own lives?

Right. And I'm not talking about people with, you know, severe psychiatric issues or, you know, like complex trauma or that kind of thing. Who are the people that you never expect to die by suicide? Right. And it's the people who have those three characteristics. And to my knowledge, that is not something that the military has identified. Right. The military and Socom especially, they have this habit of othering.

Well, that's not who we are. That person who was suicidal or died by suicide, well, they had marital problems, and they had financial problems, and they had alcohol problems, and they had this problem, that problem. Those are indicators. Right. Those are indicators that this high-performing professional is going downhill fast. Right.

And it's so easy to marginalize and other, make that person an other. Right. There was a reason that they did that. Yes, they're not like that. They had all these problems. They're just, you know, an abeyrant finding. And, you know, the rest of us are just this, you know. We're alphas.

We're always put together. And, you know, never laid on a bill. And we don't buy trucks with a 20% APR and ownership rates. Do you have to say? Right. Yeah. Right. Like, we don't do that.

Right. You know, we're good Christian white guys who go home to their wives. No, you're not. Like, let's be honest. So when you see these, you know, normal, well-performing people who start to slide, you know, they're not sowing their oats. They are probably close to killing themselves. It's a cry for help. It is a cry for help.

And almost a year to the day after Mike died. So, you know, you had a traditional route to us off. I don't know you're out because I just met you. My route was pretty good. Yeah. So like you're in the infantry or you do whatever. You go to airborne. You go to selection. You're right.

Right. Do the key course, right? And then, you know, early 2000s, you have all these guys going through as 18 x-rays, right? So for lack of a better term, I'll call it a chalk, right? So in Mike's alphabetical chalk from, you know, A to F. So say there's eight guys, I think half of them are dead now from suicide. and one of the most put together, like, through all of our, you know, marriages, divorces, you know, life, whatever, like when Mike called me to tell me he was getting divorced for the second time,

I was in San Francisco at an 18 Delta's med school graduation that, you know, we were really close to. So all these guys that started out as, like, baby 18 x-rays together in 2021, the most stable family man put together whatever, Chris Baker killed themselves. in California. And I just spent, you know, months in New York running the COVID hospital at Columbia with Jeff Everhart, you know, also an 18 Delta, you know, also did SOPSE with Mike. Jonathan Branden was an 18 Delta. He's the physician whose med school graduation I was at when Mike called me about his divorce. So, you know, all of these like these intertwining lives that started together in 2004, 2005, you know, Mike and Chris are dead.

And Chris Baker, without going into details, because I don't want to, you know, insult his family, he was an 18 Delta and he knew how to make sure that he was not going to survive his injuries. Right. And, you know, I got a phone call saying, you know, Chris Baker drove to a parking garage and I'm just like, oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Like, if the most put together, you know, nuclear family kind of something's up. some things up and one dissertation can't solve it right I can't and there's like I you know

like we need a team of scientists to really look into that I honest to God have never done it because I don't have the heart to do it at this point but my company and Ranger Battalion the amount of guys who are not here anymore who died unexpectedly it's too horrifying to even like sit down and start writing the names out and figuring out like how many.

It's a lot. From what we know right now, from what you know and what your research and other people in the medical community, is there, especially if Michael's, you know, like his, the end was

started with that TBI, do we know if there's an intervention point that can stop that from happening? or is it basically are there medical interventions or is it basically just keeping them from self-harm?

Well, you know what's interesting is that when Mike had his TBI, I was working in Germany with this old crusty retired 06, he used to be an ER doc and we were working primary care and we're both emergency clinicians so we hated it, right?

They were like, where's the real stuff? Like, where's the gritty stuff? And when Mike got blown up, Bill Zash, funny guy. But anyway, he said to me, he's like, you know what? They would put all these guys in a few no barbitol coma for a couple of days and give them a complete neurological rest.

We wouldn't be seeing the shit that we're seeing right now. And I was like, you're nuts, but okay. But, I mean, there's no intervention because it's just, and I don't want to use the word cannon fodder, but it's like, okay, you had a night to sleep. Let's send you back out there to get blown up again. And it's sequential and it's chronic, right? and the breaching that you all do cannot be underscored.

Well, not only that, like, remember when they had the sensors on the helmets? The overpressure sensors. The overpressure sensors, and then you had guys going up with the little birds with, you know, whatever caliber, I'm not. The going on the helicopters would max out the overpressure sensors. Well, then, in firing weapons from a helicopter?

Like, they were just taking the sensors off and, like, thrown them away. I've talked to a J-Sox sergeant major who said, they used, yeah, they used them and they were pegged out all the time and it gets to the point, well, if we're not going to do things in an overpressure environment, very quickly is the point, well, we can't do anything. Right, right. And that's the challenge is it, you know, like you say, it says, okay, dust them off and put them back out there. But there are really no other, they don't have, you know, just a line of people standing behind.

People like, ready to take their spot when they need a break. Like it doesn't exist. They don't. I mean, your deployment cycles are unreal. There are, though, some, like Chuck O'Connor is really the guy to talk to about changing. And we did a past episode interview with him, if you guys want to check it out, where he talks about how we can adjust the TTPs, the explosive breaching, standard operating procedures. You know, he says how there's institutionally a feeling that breaching has to hurt, that it has to hurt. And he's like, that's just not true.

Right. You follow the correct procedures. It doesn't. And yeah, you don't have to injure your own met doing explosive breaching. If you do, there's like maybe that 0.01% chance that you have to do an explosive breach in a hostage rescue situation. There are maybe certain missions of such national importance that you do have to have the operators that close to the breach point. But that is very, very few and far in between. And there's no reason why we need to have soldiers and Marines standing for.

15 feet away from the breach point in training and subjecting them to that. 15 feet, I wish. You know, like, I mean, I remember breaches that, like, like, I drop to my knee because, you know, it, you know, and it's not, it's not the breacher's fault, you know. No, it's not. They are running up putting a charge on a door that they don't know what's supporting that door. So it's like, we're going to go in one charge.

Well, this is going to be the charge. P for plenty. We're getting in this door. And when you're like one, two, three bat, it's like there's the breach and then and then a while, you know, then however long goes by until you're actually like cognizant again and ready to go through the door. Well, you know, you remember in the 90s? It's like it's the economy stupid. Yeah. It's the brain injury is stupid.

Right. And, you know, the way at least in my estimation to make the military change their tune is like, like, let's make it profitable. If you could convince, you know, the military industrial complex that changing the way we fire weapons or the caliber with which we really need or the way that we breached or the way that we, you know, go to war. Right. If, you know, if there's a lot of money to be made and making it safer. Sure. Yeah. Then be all over that. Right. You know, so, so what's... Make it worth their while. You know, it just seems like we just have a lot of, like, you know, wet blankets in, you know, decision-making positions right now.

who just don't know what else to do. Yeah. Well, first of all, stop listening to people who are self-proclaimed gurus who come to you from an Ivy League institution. You're like, oh, well, I know how to help soldiers feel better about themselves. Fuck you. Right. Like, fuck you.

Right. Talk to the wives. Talk to the spouses. Talk to the families. We've actually lived and breathed it. Right. And we have this, you know, it's not objective, but we have a line of sight on what these soldiers and personnel go through that you can't get from, you know,

you know, some research institute, right? Right. You know, it just, and I'm not, I'm not blaming anybody because, you know, 2012, I think Casey was, was he sect of? I don't know, Casey General. I can't remember. There's a lot of names in my head right now. But, you know, if you have somebody coming to you from a prestigious institution saying,

I can help you with the soldier suicide problem, you're going to, you're going to bite on that hook. I get it. But even what, and I had to do this because I was in the middle of my PhD. I had to read the fine print of their studies. And for legal reasons, they don't assess suicidality and all of these post-deployment batteries.

And these guys know that they're not going to get redeploy and that their careers are going to go down the toilet if they don't respond perfectly to everything. Right. So they're gaming the system. Right. And there's this term in research called the screw you phenomenon

where, and it happens in the military, where, If they're forced to do all of these post-deployment or pre-deployment or everything, like, no, screw you. Right. Like, they're just going to game it. Right. And, you know, just the lack of statistical rigor and the lack of scientific rigor and some of these really large studies that the military is relying on is astounding. Right.

Like, my graduate students would not pass their, like, comprehensive exams if they'd done it with the same methods that the military is using the study four or 500,000 people at a shot. it blows my mind. That's, you know, it's, it's frightening because, you know, we were talking about people who are on active duty who are doing this, which I guess are numbers that can be tracked or that, that are tracked in some way. And, and I feel like people don't want to know what the post service, because while they're still in service, they still, like a lot of them, they still have, they still have that job to cling to, right?

Unless they do something that creates the discipline. But they still have that job to cling to. They still have people around them that they're performing for. Like I'm not going to let my buddy on the left to write down. But then you get out and you don't have that anymore. And then you're dealing with a civilian populace that doesn't give a fuck about who you were or what you did. Doesn't have the same type of. They do, but they just don't know.

Yeah. Like they really, really care. Yeah. There's no frame of reference. Yeah. You know? That's why you see these like Sergeant Majors and colonels. They retire and they just live in Fayetteville because they can go on the base.

People call them by their old rank, you know. Well, I mean, they can go into, you know, any restaurant. Right. And just have a chat with something. I mean, it's very, like, it's really hard. Even for me after, um, divorcing Mike, I stayed in Fayetteville for a couple of years. Yeah. Because how else am I going to explain my life?

It's a whole world. Yeah. It's, yeah. Like I'm teaching Canada, I'm in an administrative position, and, you know, to try to explain, like, yes, my first husband was literally a spy and he killed himself. And well, that's kind of a buzzkill. Like, how do you even have that conversation? Right. Right.

You can't. And even, I mean, like, even being at Fort Drum versus Fayetteville, just even, like, like, it's, like, it's a little, like, it. difference between specialties or branches. Right. Nobody understands that. Right. Nobody gets that. And that only increases, I think, when you get into these little compartmentalized intelligence

outfits that, you know, Michael was essentially part of like a sub-subculture. Like very few people who understand that and can relate to it. And who are you going to talk to about it? Right. Even from a family perspective. Right. Like, how do you go to a therapist about that? I mean, honestly, like, I, you know, when I first joined the VA here, they made me go through, like, this mandatory, like, six months.

And I, like, I hated him. He was a nice guy if I'm sure you never watched a show. Like, and this is years ago. But I hated, like, our sessions because I felt, you know, here was somebody with nothing. And they don't necessarily need to have our background to be able to talk to us. But it's also, like, I don't know you. I'm not going to open up to you. Like, I don't have any, you're not just going to sit there with your degree and think

you know what's best for me. And that's how I felt. Now, I could be completely wrong. But, yeah, like, you know, you want to feel if you're going to talk to somebody. I mean, here's an example, because there was a woman who I first met with who, I don't think she'd ever been in military, but she'd been around the VA for a long time. and like she talked too. Like she would relate.

She would tell, you know, I know that the therapist mode is to sit there and, and, you know, just kind of take it in. Receive it. Right. But like if she would tell me, like, time she had fucked up. Like, it goes, okay, now this is just a conversation that I'm having with another person, you know, instead of, like, me sitting here talking to some dude who doesn't, like, no shit about the world I come from.

You know, and it, I don't know. is very difficult. And so when you lose like that peer network, and it sounds like even though Michael was still active, like he, like the, because of how they were, you know, segregated or whatever. Right. That, um,

and him isolating himself more, but, but when you lose that peer network, you know, and I think that's even like post service, like that sort of peer support thing, like dudes flying places. Because you'll take another guy from,

you know, spec ops or another guy going, Hey, like, shut the fuck up. Put on your clothes. We're going to go grab a beer, you know, or whatever. But it's so easy to isolate and start going down, down, like in the civilian community. You know what's interesting is that Mike's Memorial Service on Fort Meade, you know, one half of, it's a big chapel. One half of the chapel is filled with, like, blusuits, right?

Everybody's in their dress blues. And then the other half of the chapel was all of my military spouse and Army family who had, flown in, driven in from everywhere, just to be there, like for like a two-hour thing. Like that was it. Just, you know, like ride or die just there. Yeah, that's amazing. You know, in the night before and the night after, like, I mean, when I, you know, took or walked down with the elevator or whatever, you know, they wheeled Michael down to the O.R. to get his organs. my first call was to a military spouse bestie that I'd been in Germany with who lived in D.C.

And I'm like, oh, Mike's dead. So can I come stay at your house because I'm really tired? Like, of course, like everybody took off work. I mean, no question. Like, we're going to sit there. We're going to drink all day and we're going to play cards. Like, just those are the people who walk through the fire with you, hands down. And I love.

love civilians. I work with civilians all the time. I'm technically a civilian, but to not have that kind of frame of reference, it's just so exhausting to explain yourself to somebody. It's funny because I ran into a woman who, a colleague who was having, I didn't know her from Adam, but she was in a really a hard day and I just wound up talking to her and she's like, I don't think you'd understand, like, you know, I'm married to a guy and this is in Canada, right? Like, I'm married to a guy and he's special operations and it's just really bad. And I'm like, Oh, really? Yeah.

Really? Try me, sister. Try me. Because I can, we can talk all day. Yeah. We can talk all fucking day about this, honestly. Yeah. Because I do know.

Yeah. I do know what it's like. I know what the sleepless nights are when you're on your knees crying. Yeah. Like, please make them better. Yeah. You do know. Yeah.

And there's only a certain select group of people who have lived that and walk through that. Yeah. And so to be apart from that, like, I get why all these veterans live in Fay and Phil. Yeah. Who else is going to entertain it? Right. Yeah. You know, nobody chooses living in Fayetteville.

Yeah. Like when I was driving here and I'm like, okay, I'm going to be just on time. And I figured like, I'll just tell him. It was kind of like Riley Road or like it was like dodging, dodging cars on Skybow because of the traffic. Right. There's just certain things that you're inculturated with that nobody else is going to understand. And if it's true for us and it's got to be true for the spouses, it's got to be true for the guys. So how, like, because we deal with both, you know, with, with, with, with, with, with,

a lot of our guests with both post-traumatic stress and with the TBI. And again, I don't know that the medical community at large is even, because even post-traumatic stress isn't a specific thing, right? It's a, it's a multi-order. Right. But I think that the larger, the medical community at large, it doesn't even have the awareness yet to try to separate those out. That if somebody goes in presenting of any kind of behavior than it's probably post-traumatic stress and we're going to treat for post-traumatic stress like how how do we deal with this how do we help people from this point moving forward um so that's loaded right um so you were in for over a decade easily eight years okay um so let's look at let's just look at like you know time-wise

So a bunch of people joined the military after 9-11, you know, patriotically. And now, so I'm 42, right? So I was 21 when 9-11 happened. And a bunch of you and a bunch of other people were like, hell yeah, I'm going to go fight for whatever because somebody attacked in the country. Well, now we're on, now most of those people are in their early 40s. Right. And, you know, time lost is brain lost.

So these are chronic degenerative issues that are going to get worse over time. and writing them off as a behavioral response is it's lazy it's clinically lazy because it's not just that yes we have behavioral responses to things but all of you are trained to the nth degree to deal with things behaviorally you're chosen for your ability to handle things behaviorally so a lot of this is going to be physiological and unfortunately for the military and for the medical community if there's not money in it then it might not get solved right but here's a really good idea. How about we not go to war for 20 years? Yeah. That's a great idea. That's a really good starting point. How about we not saying mission accomplished two years into it and then stay there for another 18? Right. How about we have a draft? How about we share the suffering? Right. Because the burden that has been placed on special operations is inordinate and in my opinion it's criminal. The fatalities, the injuries. I mean, just the lives wrecked by the opt tempo, the repeated deployment. And, in my opinion, it's criminal. The fatalities. the strain on your bodies, like all of you have the joints of 80-year-olds by the time you're 40, 50 years old.

Like, I mean, no offense. No, I just had another knee surgery, so I totally understand. And just like, you know, we're just really starting to understand like the neurohormonal aspect of chronic stress and what that does to, you know, your cardiac function, your neurological function, just your ability to receive and, you know, process emotions or be engaged or show love and emotions to other people. You know, God bless my kids, but they're like, Mom, we swear to God, if you date or even like, God forbid marry another guy in the military. Yeah. They're like, we'll disown you. Yeah. Because, you know, you are lovely, solid, patriotic, you know, strong, you know, kind people. But when it comes to a relational aspect,

it gets ruined after that many deployments and that much, you know, how do you come back from that? No, absolutely. So to answer your original question, I mean, it's going to take a consortium of independent researchers who are able to say no to the government, and unfortunately the government gives our funding. Right. And that was another thing like doing this research for my PhD, and especially talking to the media and suing the U.S. government for Michael's death, not suing, but the tort claim. I'm like, well, good thing I'm in Canada because I can kiss any federal funding to buy. I am sure I'm on plenty of black lists.

You don't find, fuck on there. I didn't want to ask you about that. And that was kind of like how we concluded the article about Michael is that when Trump signed the NDAA, I can't remember exactly what Europe was, but it put a crack in the Ferris Doctrine. It was Rich Stayskell. He was a SF guy, a brag who's lung cancer that you can't. could have seen from space on the scans was just missed. And yeah, he, God bless him. Like, he got that overturned, the Ferris Doctrine. And so the Ferris Doctrine for people who don't know

it prevented soldiers from suing the U.S. military. Yeah. Or their family members. Well, that was supposed to be, like, in World War II about, like, combat injuries. And then the military creatively expanded it. So that even, like, even, like, birth accidents or, you know, the spouses who received medical care on post couldn't sue. I interrupted, sorry. Well, so you and Michael's mother have both filed tort claims for damages, claiming damages for Michael's death. It's, correct me if I'm wrong, it's different than like, let's say, a trial where you're

looking for some sort of conviction or some sort of apology even or a concession from the U.S. government to say, we did something wrong here. it's really you're making a claim for cash damages essentially. And they're going to say yes or no. And they said no. They did come back to you and say no. To me and Mike's mom said it. Really?

When did that happen? Oh, um, April May or March or April. Holy shit. I didn't know that. Yeah, sorry. I should have updated you. Yeah. So they, um, there's like, yeah, there's no medical malpractice.

We're like, listen, idiots. That's not what we're claiming. Right. We're claiming negligence. Right. Because as federal employees, which, members of the military are, they are beholden. And Mike died in the state of Maryland, thank God, for small mercies, because in the state of Maryland there's also additional, you know, kind of

riders on that, is that they basically failed to intervene. They're not criminally negligent because it's a civil process, right? Right, right. But they sent him home to die. Right. So they denied it based on medical malpractice, and then I'm like, well, I don't know if you're illiterate, but there's two points to that. One, medically didn't intervene because nobody said, hey, this guy is psychotic, and you'll let him walk around the D.C. metro area with state secrets in his head. Right. Yeah. Right. That's kind of dumb. Like, I'm surprised that these people are still in their positions because that would get you fired. But, okay, so maybe there's a medical malpractice, but there's a whole other parts of the claim where it's negligence. It's just pure negligence.

And so that's the part that they didn't address that I can reclaim for. But also, I mean, does this now, are you now going to escalate this into a lawsuit? Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got time. And really, I mean, that is how, that's sometimes the only way. It is the only way to, I don't want to say, teach the government a lesson, but to get the,

them to course correct to change things is you have to make it hurt yeah and like you know it's my siblings and i we were just kind of communicate movie quotes and i don't know if you remember the movie like man on fire yeah there's like anybody who was involved anybody who benefited from it i'm coming for you yeah oh i can't wait yeah cannot fucking wait so have you guys i mean i'm sure you have i have do you have plans to expand that out to a class action for all families who's who's like you know special up people have I think that's a fabulous idea. But you know how they say, like, never be the first in anything? Sure.

I'm the first, pretty much to sue, or for lack of a better term, to sue the government for wrongful death for a suicide, especially post-Ferris, right? You were the one that told me that the Army only responds to shame in lawsuits. I'm thinking of having a tattooed on my chest. Yeah, yeah. Well, they, you know, the shame, it's so easy to not be ashamed by it because it's always somebody else's fault, right? Right, right. But if they have to pay out a couple million dollars and if I set precedent or when I set precedent Right.

Then hopefully other families can just be like, oh, see that precedent where like Rockline versus the United States government see that? Yeah. That's going to probably force to change. But the key is there's not a lot of attorneys who have either the balls or the experience to take it on. Right. And if they do, they're involved in like huge like other cases and they just don't know what to do

you just don't know what to do with it. Like it doesn't really fit medical malpractice. So it is wrongful death, but like who do they really go after? Right. So I would regret, I would hate to do this, but I'll just go after everybody individually. Right. I know their names. Yeah. I know the names of everybody in his unit. Yeah. And I'm sorry, man, like sorry, but I will go after you. Right. The person who heard him articulate his plans for death. You didn't do anything. You're negligent. Oh, I'm sorry that I'm going to ruin your career, but you were a sergeant major and you didn't do anything, I'm going after you. Because I'm, sometimes you just have to hurt feelings and step on toes so the shit doesn't happen again. Because if I could prevent that for like, you know, what my children have gone through.

Right. And they're doing really well. Right. But like, that was really hard. Right. It's still really hard. It never goes away. Right.

I would just prefer nobody else goes through that. And if that means that I have to start, you know, kicking indoors on Capitol Hill, I'll do it. Right. You want to sit me in front of a Senate Armed Services Committee? I have binders. Yeah. Like, I can sit there for hours. You're right.

And I can answer all the stupid questions that stupid people want to ask me. But there's also going to be smart people in that room, too. So. Are there any politicians who have, or retired military with cloud or anybody who has taken interest in this case, or not this case, but this cause? I don't know because I haven't gone there yet. Okay. Dave, I think Dee sent you some questions on your phone. Okay.

Just one. Oh. That one person who's watching. Probably that Sergeant Major that you're thinking. Please don't sue me. I have a 20% APR on my truck. So where are you today? What is your work taking you?

What are you working on now? I put it down for a little bit. That was a grind. It wrecks me for a bit. Like, it's really odd to, like, defend your dissertation and have pictures of your first husband in there, right? Right. So, I mean, I had to breathe for a bit. I also had to, like, go on antidepressants.

I mean, it's, not only is it, like, the aftermath of dealing with Michael's death, but also, like, oh, I have to finish. You're, like, reliving it all the time. Yeah. So it was re-traumatizing. So it's been a year. where I just, I didn't touch it. But what's weird is that it bleeds into other areas. So like emergency docs and nurses during COVID, you know, why are they now suicidal?

And people are like, okay, well, you've done research on this. So I started studying that. And actually, that's why I was overseas. I was in Scotland presenting on that. So I studied like, I did a study on suicidality in clinicians during COVID. And same thing. They're high performers or self-concealers. They're perfectionists.

And like, they're suffering. So there's, it translates to a lot of different professions, right? And I even see it in like undergraduate nursing students too. But as far as doing more research or continuing or like doing another round of interviews with operators or like putting out more, you know, trying to recruit more participants, I had to not touch it for a minute. I decided to take a break to after Michael's article in the one I wrote about Bill Mulder and I realized it took me so long to write those

and when I sit down at the keyboard to write and my hands would not move I realized like I've just been covering this stuff for too long like I need to take a break from it for a while has there whether it was part of your research or just you know in general because you know we've been talking about

the military and special loss but now you're talking about another community and like I've always had this idea that there's that suicide is also memetic right that it's also like it is a socially spread illness at times when when one part of a community starts doing that gives permission to the rest yeah it it puts it it's it's there you know like it's it's now sort of part of the thought process yeah people see it as a solution yeah or at least an option

yeah and especially like the more people you see from your community the more it seems like a valid because, you know, well, that guy wasn't weak. You know, he was tired. I'm just, I'm not, I'm not depressed. I'm just tired. I'm just, you know what I mean? And like, what else is there? I've done it all.

You know what I mean? So, so sort of that. That, I agree with you there. I also think there's a desensitization that comes, right? Like, and I, and I see this too in like my own clinical background is that death isn't scary anymore. Right. Like, I've seen a lot of people die and so have you.

Yeah. And no offense, but some at your own hand, right? Yeah. So it just like demystifies it. Yeah. And the older we get, like life is not simple. Life is complex. Life is hard.

And people die and, you know, it's tragic and you get heartbreak. And there's all sorts of good things too. But I mean, hence the antidepressants because I found myself thinking. I'm like, wow, Mike really is in a better place. Yeah. Because you leave all this tragedy in your way. wait. And it's a release, or it's an escape.

Right, right. So I see what you're saying about the mimicry of it, right? Like, it kind of gives people permission, but it also can be enticing. Right. No, absolutely. Like, God, if you're dead, you don't have to deal with all the shit that we have to. And you guys are dealing with a lot. There's a long war.

Right, yeah. And it's a long life after that war. Right. Right. And also, like, the relationships that, and I'm not saying, that all of you get divorced or all of you have bad relationships, but the ones that... I've only had two divorces. Jack's only had two.

Oh, and two? Yeah. Well, now I'm... Now I've got two, too, too. Yeah. You know, people who haven't gone through that in special operations are kind of unicorns. Right. So I think death is kind of welcome in a sense.

Right. I mean, that sounds really bad. No, I totally understand because it's not... I think that a lot of people when they look at, you know, a lot of civilians or a lot of people outside the community, when they look at... the Special Forest Community, if they think about suicide, it's like, oh, yeah, they must have seen some really horrible shit. And that's why, and really, I think that for a lot of people, that it's like, I was doing, like, everything I had ever dreamt of. And it's like, what wonders does life have for me now? Like, it's not the trauma of that time. And not that there wasn't trauma, right, and whatnot. But it's more, you know, outside of the post-traumatic. stress and outside of the TBI and outside of everything else, I think the thing is, is like, I had a good run.

I had a good ride. Like, I did what I wanted to do. Sometimes grown-ass men crying their eyes out because they miss their friends. Yeah. They're not on their team anymore. Yeah. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and

happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Well, in that, I mean, using my own experience, but I just nothing, like, I never put on a uniform, like, I'm not even pretending to know what that's like. But in my experience, from what I've seen is that it's not like you guys are really traumatized by what you've seen and done.

Like that's part of the job. You respect that. It's all the aftermath. Right. It's not being able to reintegrate with your family. Right. It's getting divorced and not seeing your kids because your ex-wife moved back home. Like it's all of that like emotional disengagement or obstacles to having like lighthearted,

fun, you know, just basic joys that you can't experience. anymore, right? It's the loss of humanity in a sense. Not that you're inhuman, but it's, I envy, I envy, even people within my own family. Yeah. Who have complaints or worries that are not life-altering. Right. How nice would that be? Like, um, and previously I'd be like, God, I can't believe you're bitching about this. Right. Yeah, you, I used to look down on people for like, bitch about first. I've gotten over that, but it used to be like, that's not a real fucking problem. No, I mean, I'm jealous.

I'm jealous of your small problems. I'm jealous of the fact that, you know, oh, your husband doesn't take your ass out. Well, mine jumped off a parking deck. So, I mean, you know, like in retrospect, in comparison, that would be. What is the chat have for us? So K Jam, thank you very much. Really appreciate it.

Any thoughts on Center for Deployment Psychology, Use of CPT, challenging internal dialogue for post-traumatic stress TBI patients being efficacious, especially for the high-performer personality cluster you outlined. So I think that any therapy is worthwhile. If it works, even if it sounds stupid, if it works, it's not stupid, right? I think what we run into is, so there was an ongoing study as of 2020 where, and this was a really interesting one because I looked into the researchers' work, and they were based out of D.C. for the military, very well-intentioned,

and they were looking at inflexible thinking, right, looking at, like, cognitive rigidity. And what was interesting about their interim report, because when you're funded, you have to provide interim reports, right? And their interim report said that none of the units would participate. Not because these commanders don't care. Right. And I'm assuming this is what I'm reading into it.

I don't think it's that they don't care. I think it's just they have been hit so many, times with these good idea fairies where it's like what is this going to do right and not only that reading like their premise and their proposal for this research you know they're very well-intentioned they're taking like civilianized ideas and trying to apply them to a special operations population and i'm thinking these guys and soft are some of the most adaptive creative people i've ever met my life like you can make something out of nothing every single time so it's not that you're inflexible or rigid or too concrete in your thinking, I think it's that the clinical community

doesn't understand how you think or how you operate. See, and I think that is one of the real challenges, both in dealing with civilians, you know, you know, the whole, oh, you were in combat, how did you, you know, did you have to kill somebody? How did you get over that? And it's like, there was nothing to get over. Like, they were bad guys. Like, people can't. And so that goes back to the therapy and probably these studies is that even the most well-intentioned and, you know, as objective as they can be people, when they put these together or when you're speaking with a therapist, and it's like they're projecting their values and what they think.

So, you know, how do you feel, you know, having been in combat, having killed people, that must really affect you. It's like, well, if that's where you're starting out from, like, your premise is completely wrong. I'll give me an example. So one of the first lectures that I give in when I'm teaching graduate statistics is the response to stressful events scale. Okay. So, and my dad, bless him, he's always like, how's your stress level? And I'm like, well, I don't have to move anywhere. and nobody's getting deployed, so I'm fine.

Yeah, I think it's good. But when you look at this scale of stressful events, the top three are like, somebody dies, somebody gets divorced, you know, somebody moves away, or like all of these, like, top huge stressors. And I use it as teaching for my students because you have to think about context, right? So for people like us, for lack of better term, you know, all that stuff is old hat.

Like, I can pack up a house and move. Like, I can move to another country. I can move to another country, 34 weeks pregnant, which I've done. Like, that's not stressful. And so when you have that kind of therapeutic context, I think those are very worthwhile ideas, but I think that it has to be administered by a therapist who absolutely has the context in their back pocket. Right. You know, and I think that, like, when I was divorcing Mike and I had the psychologist, marriage counselor who used to be a ranger telling me, like, walk away.

Right. Walk away now. that was important because he knew. Like he'd lived it, he'd breathed it. He knew, you know, he'd been to the circus, he'd seen the side shows. So I think all of that's really worthwhile. But I think we, even, there's such a distinct difference between like medcom in the army, like medical command and then, you know, soft medicine or, you know, mother army and special

up or EUSAX. So, or even within EUSAQ, like there's USAC and then there's SEP. So, you know, to have people who are actually. who have marinated and experienced all these things that they need to then deliver therapy for. That's extremely important. And they don't pull from soft enough to have clinicians or therapists or whomever. And I'm just thinking about like 18 deltas or, you know, Ranger Medics or whatever. Send them to grad school.

Like send them to programs where they can actually do therapy and they can deliver it to the people that they're used to operating among. And, you know, they might go to school, they might not go to school, but then they're lost to Mother Army or they're lost to Medcom when they could actually be back in the unit, you know, treating people where they actually understand the problems. So I think that I think all of these ideas have merit. And I do think that in the traditional research, if you look at like cognitive inflexibility or rigidity or that kind of like repetitive and flexible thinking, it does precipitate mental health problems and it does do bad things. but you're also talking to a population where like being flexible as part of the key yeah I mean I don't really think that's the problem I think getting caught in a loop

that you can't get out of is an issue right to see no way out I think that definitely precipitates suicide and also like just to allow failure right like failure is so important And to be able to fail and not lose your career is really important as well. Right. You know, you got a DUI. That was probably, well, that was a dumb decision, but why were you drinking?

Oh, well, you were drinking because of this. Right. You know, the zero-tolerance stuff is just like cancel culture. Right. There's no redemption if it's zero tolerance. Right. Oh, you have an alcohol-related incident and now you're out of the group. Seeing that happen to so many dudes who gave their entire lives to special forces and then they get one DUI because they're fucking, because they're married.

marriage has fallen apart yeah their kids are in another state they can't see yeah they're dealing with PTSD yeah I mean I know these people personally or or even worse than that is the unit we just fucks them they do they absolutely when you get in a bar fight you're not the one who started it because alcohol was involved it's an alcohol really in your out I'm gonna editorialize a little bit well not editorialize this actually happened and this guy is out of the army now but he got charged with an alcohol-related incident because he was going through some shit. And one of his army buddies called the police to his home.

Like, hey, you got to check out my boy. He's having some trouble. The police came to his house. He goes out on the front deck of the house out on his front porch. And he'd been drinking. Met with the police. The police talked to him. And they, I guess they, I don't know if they actually arrested him, like put him in cups or not.

But they're like, we're going to take you for, and for mental. for mental health. Okay, right. And because he was drunk at that time, the unit decided it was an alcohol-related incident and did everything they could have done to chapter him out of the Army when he had like 19 years in, boot him out of the Army and take his tab away. They did everything they could. Because I think he probably was legitimately a behavior issue at that point, but he like given his whole life to the unit. And now he was suffering and he needed help.

And they did everything they could to fuck with him. And it was only because of, maybe I can tell more of the story later on, but it took massive intervention to prevent that from happening. He's doing okay now, thank God. That did happen. And the reason I'm interrupting is because I am sorry, but I wanted what it gets up. There was a window, and I'm glad you brought this up from like 2011, 2014,

where they were pulling tabs from, from guys who went to their unit or went to whomever and said, I'm really struggling or guys who like self-admitted themselves would go to the ER get admitted to psych or whatever. They would just rip their tab. They would pull their tab because, you know, they were behavior issue or they were whatever. And, you know, I don't know who was making those decisions. I know who was in, you know, high command at that time and I think they're shitty decisions

because that's the isolating versus insulating. That's the marginalizing. But meantime, they're telling you something else. telling you you can get help. But it keeps suicides off the books. Right. That's the thing is it. It keeps suicides off the books.

So if we get these guys out of the regiment. Right. They're not our problem. They're not a problem anymore. If they're in the, if they're in Mother Army and they commit suicide, that's not on support. They're not pulling their tab because these guys have done something wrong. They're pulling their tab to cover their ass so that they're not a statistic.

Thank you. That's what they're doing. Yeah, exactly. It's self-serving. That's why a lot of, there's a big conversation now. People talk about wokeness in the middle. Before that is political correctness. In my opinion, it's really corporatization.

Yes, it is. It's that cover your ass corporate mentality that we're trying. It's about protecting careers at the end of the day. Sure. Sure. Yeah, it's something else. There are some really, really, really good soldiers whose tabs were pulled. I mean, one of my most beloved, you know, Army, family members, whatever, had his tab hold.

What an insult. I mean, what an absolute insult. It's like you're dealing with some. some shit. Let's cut your balls off. Honestly, when you've been in for 16, 17 years, whatever, the officer responsible for your tab, like, they haven't been in that position for very, you know what I mean? Like, they're making an expedient decision to protect their career. I believe it's the commanding general of the JFK Special Warfare Center that pulls tabs.

I think he's the actual authority that does that. From the school? Yeah, from the schoolhouse. Why would it be the schoolhouse? Because it's awarded by the schoolhouse. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I think they have authority over that. Well, let's go back and look who is committing the schoolhouse.

Well, and honestly, though, they may not be operating with all the other. Like, they don't personally know the soldier. They might just get the recommendation. Yeah, they don't know the soldier. I believe there is a packet that gets submitted. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is, whoever it is, like, it is absolutely bullshit.

I mean, it is, you know, again, it's that, it's that saying, hey, if there are problems, we want to help. But hey, let us know if there are problems so we can fucking dex your ass and so that you're not a statistic on our books. There's no problem here. Nothing to see here. No data. No problem. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. So wrap things up here. Like final thoughts. Is there, I mean, we covered a lot in here. Is there anything else you want to say about your work, about Michael, about where things stand today, about this issue in the military? Are they grappling with it better? No. No.

No. No, they're not. I mean, well, and the thing is, oh, the war's over now. Now they're the VA's problem. Right. I mean, no offense to the VA, because they're full of very well-intentioned, educated, dedicated people. But the VA doesn't really handle problems all that well today. No.

So now it's just some, it's just a kick the can. It's a kick-the-can. The medical staff in the VA, at least here in New York, they're phenomenal. But it's the VA. The system. It's a behemist. Yeah. It's a behemian.

Yeah. Um, so out of curiosity, like for people who might be watching who, because one of the challenges sounds like with Michael had and other people had is like you can, if you wanted to take a trite view of this, you can say, oh, if somebody's having problems, they should like man up and go see somebody and not like you whatever. Michael did. But not only that, but we're talking about people who honestly don't even know that they have a problem sometimes.

Like, nothing, things aren't right. but their perspective is shut down so much sometimes. Well, I mean, for Michael's case, he was literally psychotic, like psychosis, like a full-blown psychosis. Right. And they're just like, okay, go and leave, have a good leave. Right. So for either people, you know, are men and women who are either in uniform or who are veterans

or maybe they know somebody, they're a family member or they have a friend who seems to be going through these behavioral changes. how do you intervene? How do you get them the help they need? And how do you make sure they go to somebody who can differentiate that post-traumatic stress from the TBI from this? Like, what can people do if they find themselves

in a similar situation? So, you know, like Kate 1.0 would have probably said, you know, like start here and do this and, you know, see this person. If they don't give you the right answer you need, you know, go see this person because that's what I did and that's the process. At this point,

having, you know, a dead husband and, you know, to traumatize children, I would say just start screaming. Just start screaming to anybody who will listen, you know, like, screw the career. It's better to have them alive. Call your congressmen. If you get any flack or any kind of, like, ignorance from anybody, jump the chain. You know, like, the career would be there. You know, they might be pushing papers at, you know, Human Resources Command, but they'll be. be alive. And really just start rattling cages. I don't think that spouses

understand, and I certainly didn't, how much power you actually have, because we're so conditioned to not do anything to mess with their career. But, you know, if I'm doing a shoulda, what a coulda, like a decade ago, if I had just said to Mike, you know, fuck this,

like, we'll live in a trailer and I'll work nights in the ER and you'll be alive. We have a much different life. But I bought into it too, right? I bought into the mystique and the career and the cool guy shit and doing all the, you know, like, oh, I'm so proud of you. Like, yeah, you know, that's part of it. And the tabs are, long tabs are nice and all the I love me's and everything like that.

That's, yeah, don't buy into it. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't fucking matter. What matters is being alive. And then for, again, whether they're active duty or veterans, like, we've all heard the, sort of the suicide speech. Okay, if people start giving their stuff away, if they start doing this stuff,

like those are the people who watch, but you're talking about a community that is good at self-concealing. And so are there, you know, are there signs? Because I think a lot of us, I mean, all of us have known people who took their life and there was not, like there weren't these flares going up.

Like you're like, what the fuck just? It's almost like a switch flips, right? Right. Like everything seems okay and then boom, they're gone. Right. Yeah, that's a tough one, right? Because the traditional civilian signs are much different than the other science. That they're cries for help or they're indicators a lot of times.

I would say that from what I've studied and read is that if they are under investigation, if they have been disciplined, if they've fucked up, in some way career-wise, be hyper-vigilant. Okay. Hyper-vigilant. If their marriage is disintegrating, no, they didn't marry a ho. Like, she's not just walking off with another guy. Right.

If she is, it might be because that guy's nice and isn't, you know, torturing her. But pay really close attention to disintegrating marriages because it's not the lifestyle that's making the marriages disintegrate. It's like the emotional terrorism inside the house usually. And like, no offense, because we've all been married and divorced. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. I mean, occasionally we'll marry a stripper and it doesn't work out for some whatever reason.

You know, like, I understand that. Like, marrying a stripper sounds like a lot of fun, to be honest with you. And give her power of attorney the day before you deploy. Exactly, exactly. Who does that? Yeah, nobody. They're hot and they're fun. Why not?

And they really, really love us. Sure they do. I mean, I love TRICARE too. I'm in Canada now, so TRICARE is irrelevant. But yeah, he really closed attention to disintegrating families because it's not just part for the course. And I think I read it. It was like 2013 by Greg Zoroia, I think, in USA Today. And he interviewed a bunch of operators who marriages had disintegrated.

And like a good 20% of them are like, I just wish I'd never been married at all. And I think that goes beyond just normal regret. I think that goes to, oh, I am. I'm emotionally bereft and I cannot be married or be in a relationship. I think there are flags that we haven't seen our flags and they really are and it needs more study and I'm one person. Yeah, right. I think it needs a different analytical approach.

Right. And to stop, you know, stop militarizing civilian research methods and data. We're trying to solve this with civilian methods. and that's not going to work. It's contextually distinct. Right, right. So I think you really need people who have experience doing the research or have some perspective on it in context to do the research.

And you have to allow the research. Like, I know this community pretty well. And thank God I do, because that's why I'm the only person who's actually done what they call in vivo, like person to person. Like I'm literally the only person in the literature to my knowledge who's done face-to-face interviews about suicide and resilience with these guys. and all the rest have been like, oh, here's a survey. Right. Right.

You know, like you're not going to get answers about that. And what really affects these guys from what I studied and found is like, you know, pregnancy loss. And, you know, these normal things that you don't think would affect these really, you know, tough, gritty, you know, operator of door kicker type people. They are seriously affected by the same things that affect us. Like one guy told me about, you know, infertility and pregnancy loss, how that just killed him on deployment. Right. And, you know, how another was telling me about, you know, the time that they made him spend on resilience training, he just wanted to be with his family. Right.

Like, to have that dwell time and to just not be, like, the answers they gave were just mind-blowing. And so many of them sought refuge in, like, water, whether it was surfing or, I mean, just, all of this really rich information that you don't get from post-appointment surveys or anything like that. There's some thought, too, about military spouses frequently having miscarriages and why are there environmental factors on military bases. I have four. No reason. Again, I don't have statistical data on it, but I know there's anecdotally, there's a lot of people talking about it behind the scenes. Like, why is this happening so frequently to this population?

Well, Camp Lejeune just has a class action for what was in their water. These are not healthy places. And we know that on-based housing has had huge, huge issues. Yeah, that's been the biggest racket for years. Yeah. And issues with the, I mean, I've interviewed people who their kids had all kinds of problems because they got bad drinking water. Mold. Yeah.

Yeah, young kids and even special forces guys happen to have an inhaler suddenly because of black mold in the home. So that's like, that's a totally different. Well, no, but I mean, it's true, like atypical cancers in special forces. Like, I published on that and, like, you guys have really, really weird cancers at really young ages. I mean, there's a lot of exposures that we just don't know about. And that might be part of it, too. Yeah.

I mean, if you look at CTE, and that was part of the issue when I was doing my master's research with TBI is that there was no, like, I had to use all this proxy research with CTE and sports medicine. And it's just, it's so different. And there's so many different environmental exposures that. it's going to take independent researchers that have no affiliation with the government, because as soon as you tie research funding, that biases your findings. My first doctor, when I was studying SF medics, you know, like, initially I was working with command, right?

And then one of them I said is like, well, what if you find something that's really unflattering to our command? And I'm like, thanks, bud. No, I can't work with you anymore because you said that out loud. and now you just biased my whole study. So our relationship's over. Like, you know, just that kind of command influence, you have to do things without command influence. You have to be able to research without that.

Good luck. It's the DOD that's giving you money. Right. You know, they can pull strings a bit. So we need a lot of independence. And we need independent scientists to take a look at this. Because, I mean, you all are just going to age. Well, hopefully.

And it's just going to show more and more. Yeah. I mean, I think that it's sort of like the VA's grand plan is. That's why it takes like 30 days plus to get an appointment. They're just waiting for everybody to die. You know? Well, you joke, but there's some truth to that. Oh, I'm not really joking.

I'm not really joking. When they gave you an appointment for six months later, that interim before dying. Right. No, I'm not really joking about that. Like, they make it very inconvenient. But, yeah, I mean, and hopefully maybe like you were, your tortsuit, your loveless lawsuit and more the following, maybe at some point that will shake

enough trees that somebody will go, okay, you know, we need an outside, you know, an outside source that is independently investigating this and getting answers, hopefully because it hurts too much. We can't afford these constant lawsuits. Well, and, you know, without making it financially hurt, you know, a billion gazillion dollar organization like the U.S. military. And, you know, there's no, there's no fiber of my being that wants to put an enlisted family through a lawsuit. Right.

But you know what? I will. Yeah. If you knew that Mike was at risk of dying and you didn't do anything, I'll haul you into court. Yeah. And I'll make you answer for it. Yeah. And I don't want to do that to an individual.

But if I do that to an individual, other people might think twice about sending somebody home who's at high risk for death. Right. You know, because nobody wants that. Right. So, you know, I'm sorry, but there's going to have to be some sacrificial lambs in this. Yeah. Because my family, my kids, we sacrificed plenty. Yeah. And there's, it's time for people to pony up and give some answers.

Well, I really appreciate you coming in on a Sunday and doing this interview. This is like a very, this is like not a very common conversation that I think it's held, particularly on these like special Lops military podcast. Like we don't necessarily talk about these subjects enough. And with the sort of depth that you're able to speak to it, it's just very rare. It's really weird. I mean, it's like life imitating art, imitating life. Like, it is, like, obviously this is an issue.

If this is, you know, how much it's happened in my own life. Right. Right. Right. So, yeah, I really appreciate you, you know, being so open about it and, you know, sharing so much of, you know, Michael and ultimately your own life and your child's. your kids' lives with me that I did definitely feel like uncomfortable at some level where I was like inside Michael's mind for a while and seeing all these personal details of your guys'

life that I'm like, should I even really know about this? It feels very like I was invading mostly Michael's privacy. But I hope that through this conversation and through some of this stuff, the article about about him that we're able to hopefully help somebody else out there. And while we're on that subject, I'll go ahead and plug that sound off app again. I have nothing to do with it other than I know some of the people. Yeah, they're not a sponsor where this is just us. And they're a non-for-profit.

And so if you guys check the link down in the description, you'd find Sound Off. And again, that's for people in the intelligence community, special operations, anywhere in the military or governmental service, people who are afraid of being stripped of their security clearance, that they're going to face career repercussions, they can get on this app and they can get clinical help anonymously without informing their chain of command or their superiors. So I just plug that again. Maybe that can help somebody who's hurting out there. You know, there's no point in privacy if it just might as well share it all. I mean, yeah, and that app is really important, really, really important. All of this is important. So I know

I'm happy to share anything because you're trustworthy. You know, you understand. understand. And if we don't talk, it's just going to persist if we can talk about it. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, thank you again. And thank you everyone who joined us for this episode, for this bonus episode. And we'll see all you guys on Friday. We're going to be back in the studio. We're going to have an awesome guest on the show. We look forward to talking to him and seeing all of you again. So thank you, Kate. Thanks for having me. Thanks, thanks for having me. Thanks, everybody. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel unsubes certain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why

Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.