The Team House - US Special Forces Patch Problems & Havana Syndrome w/ Jack Murphy | EYES ON | Ep. 16

Episode Date: March 31, 2024

Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseToday we're joined by a very special guest our dear leader Jack Murphy to talk about the recently posted pictures of a 20th Special Forces group patch with Nazi insignia. We also talk about Havana Syndrome and the upcoming 60 minutes piece that has brought it back to life.Jack & Sean Naylor's substack where you can find all their articles:https://thehighside.substack.com/Find Andy here:Twitterhttps://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substackhttps://amilburn.substack.com/Andy's bookhttps://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554#specialforces #havanasyndromeBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. and when you sign up you get access to all of our episodes ad-free. That's the big bonus for that.

I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Jack, we're delighted to have you. I'm going to skip the intros today altogether if you guys aren't going to get too upset, except for Jack, who needs no introduction. So you lose an introduction too, Jack, consider it a compliment.

But really, the biggest compliment, and we've never said this to a guest. Notice us slavering up front. But please, tell us what is, just stream of consciousness. Tell us what is first and foremost on your mind right now. Why in the world, I'm awake. I knew that was coming. Yeah. On a fucking Saturday talking to you guys.

As much as I love you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, Jack, you're wasting time. I saw Jack like nine hours ago. Yeah. That's why you are the mogul who runs this show. Yeah, exactly. That's how I feel.

Yeah. All right. Listen, before we start getting complaints from our listeners about wasting time, I get that. Yeah. Jack, so yeah, what, aside from that, and aside from all the other things that normally trundle through your mind at this time in the morning, that our viewers definitely do not want to hear about.

What have you been writing about? Maybe I should. Jack's an investigative journalist, everyone, while he's warming up, gathering stamp here. For those of you who've been hiding under Iraq and don't recognize him. And I've written a lot of stuff lately about, let's see, the international sniper competition just came to an end, was writing about that. Third group, the third group logo? Well, the third group logo I haven't written about actually.

Oh, but do you want to talk about it very quickly? Yeah, yeah, we can jump into that. Or as long as you want, but I'm intrigued, that's why. Yes, so there's another. This is me guiding the master in his stream of consciousness. Okay, I'm like his yogi. So this whole thing started with 20th group, 20th Special Forces Group published a picture. And on the picture, there's a soldier wearing a patch on his helmet.

I'm going to stop you right there, and I'm going to get complained about. But I want to just reiterate what Jack said, 20th Special Forces group posted this picture, all right? and took enough time to blur out the faces. So they looked at it. Yeah. And then when you look at the patch that's on this soldier's helmet, it is the icon, the symbol or the patch of, I believe it's the third SS Panzer Division. Yeah.

It has a poultry in the background. Now, and it had the original had a swastika. in front of the palm tree, this patch had that swastika removed and instead was the SS death's head skull and crossbones replaced on there. So either way, I mean, the, the patch had, you know, Nazi iconography on it. Did they think no one would notice? There's been a lot of, yeah, just very quickly, there's been a lot of confusion about the reporting of this. For what it's worth, the emblem itself is,

is taken from, I mean, the skull itself is taken from the emblem of the third pancer division. Now, everyone may say a skull is a skull. No, it's a particular, it's the angle, it's the expression. It was unique to the third SS Panzer Division. Why, he said a big deal with the third SS Panzer Division was formed from guys who were in the SS Tottenkalt Fair Band, which is one of three parts of the SS. the Tottenkotrfer band guarded the concentration camps along with the Eisen Group. Eisen Group and someone's going to write in the bad.

But the guys who followed in trace of the forward units in Russia to exterminate partisans and Jews. So those were the Topen Kofir Band and the Eisen Group were two parts, two of the three parts of the SS. third part was involved in SS. Anyway, this division committed multiple atrocities. It never served in Africa. So I just want to be clarifying. It's actually a, what has happened here is the combination of two emblems. One is the Africa core, which had a swastika and the palm tree. And the other is the third SS Panzer Division, which had just the skull and crossbones. So they've taken both of those, put them together. So yeah, that that that kind of blew up. And the special forces command initiated an investigation on it. They've made, you know, public statements and, you know,

this isn't aligned with what we're trying to do here, what our values are, we're looking into it. And then in the meantime, you know, another, somebody else finds a picture, posts a picture of another, it's actually a sticker. a door down at Fort Bragg or Fort Liberty now. And it is yet another third special forces group team. I mean, the ODA number is on the sticker. So you know exactly where it came from. And it's the same motif of the palm tree with the death's head on it.

And again, it's not just like the skull and crossbones from a pirate flag or anything. It's very distinct that it comes from the S-ness. And so as I saw all this. this week. I actually went into my archives and pulled up a picture that I posted on the internet. And it is a picture of a third group team that I have in this entire team would wear it was the death's head, the SS death's head. And their version of the emblem that they made has wings coming out of the skull. And it says death machine. And they wore that in Afghanistan. you know i and i'll i read these things and here's what goes through my mind okay i'm playing devil's

advocate here uh and and trust me you know i've got i mean my my father's generation family was pretty much wiped down the second of war you know i mean so i have no reason to have anything um in uh in common with people who eulogize uh nazi mdzi emberts but Nazi emblems. But we went through the same thing in the Marine Corps, right? Here's my point with scout snipers and branding. And then, you know, when we delved down, we realized this was an ideological it's just ignorance and idiocy and the sense of, hey, this, you know, they had some vague notion that it was German and, but it, but it wasn't that these kids were, we're Nazis. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we don't have an extremist problem. We don't have extremists in the

military. Of course we do. But this isn't an indicator of it. This is just an indicator of woeful ignorance, especially in a special operations group, because we talk about being able to judge our environment and fit in. Well, how do you drag up, you know, a symbol like this and use it without even looking into its background? That's what concerns me to see immaturity. Yeah, who's doing the Photoshop. And the idiocy on the command level. You know, What the fuck, man? It's like put it on your unit website. I get it.

You guys are a service, but come on. Yeah, I mean, apparently that company that that team belonged to, they all knew about it and everyone was fine with it. And I have been told like, okay, but those guys weren't racist. You know, they're not Nazis. And maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. I have no idea because I don't know all the people involved.

and I can't, you know, look inside their hearts and see what's there. But, I mean, the question is, of course, if you're not that, if you're not a Nazi, then why are you wearing, why are you trying to affiliate yourself with it? And that's always the question. And like, why can we not, if we're not Nazis, why can we not just completely dispense with the Nazi insignia, just completely do away with it? We have plenty of our own stuff that's cool that's attached to. American military history that soldiers can wear.

There's a lot of stuff you can wear that's not Nazi. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let me ask, sorry to interrupt. Let me ask real quick because I'm still trying to understand all this. From what I read, this first popped up in 2022, I think, and the command said, hey, this is a no-go? And then is this new, is this picture that's popped up again new and it's come back again? Or is it somebody just dredged up an old picture?

Well, this was, the picture was posted by 20th Special Forces Group. So it wasn't a case of, you know, Jack Murphy dredging up the past. I didn't post the picture I had until this stuff all came out. And I was like, well, it's kind of interesting. No, the Army posted the picture. When the picture was taken, I don't know. Yeah, I guess that's probably going to be a part of their investigation. Gotcha.

Okay. So the third group spokesman said, hey, it's been taken out of context. I saw that and I was like, wait, what? Taken out of what? Historical context. If you're going to reach back 80 years. That's what I always ask.

When people say, like, we're taking it out of context, it's like, okay, what is the context? What's the context? Yeah. And by the way, the context, which has become so confused, yes, it was a bad, bad group of dudes. They did. But they never went to Africa, you know, the military. I think it was the military times, and military dot com reported that it was part of the Africa

Corps. It fought under Romel. Yes, it did fight under Romul but in Europe, all right, Romo, in the battle for France. And yes, they did commit atrocities against Africans. They butcher the thousands, hundreds, possibly thousands of Moroccan soldiers, but it was in France. But anyway, that's a minor point. My feeling is there's nothing to see here, right, here. My feeling is, yes, we have things to see as we dig up what happened on 6th January and the lamentable number of military personnel who were involved in that.

You know, there's, of course, there's extremist in military. You guys know all this. What do you expect when you take a cross-section of the American society who are not among the most privileged? You know, we always say, even at the height of our recruiting, we're not getting the top of the high school class. We're not getting the kids who are going to go to college with athletic scholarships or academic scholarships. We're getting the guys who are barely struggling. 75% of U.S. recruits come from one-parent families, right? As an example, that doesn't mean they're bad families.

I'm just saying this is the demographic. It's up to the military to change the way they think. And the change the way they think isn't giving them a Friday afternoon, you know, a class on why extremism is bad. It's learning. It's learning to face hardship and go through all the shit that we have and having to depend on the dude next to you who doesn't look like you. That's what undermines extremism and racism. It's putting units through that type of tough training. They don't have to go to combat. And if we just focused on that instead of all these classes, I think we'd be on the right path or chasing off the logos. You know, hey, absolutely. Ban it. and spank everyone involved to being just stupid beyond belief. But let's not make this an indicator

of extremism because it's the wrong tree. It's always the difficult conversation. I mean, sometimes with veterans, but also with civilians to try to like parse out some of the nuances that, you know,

you're right. When you point out there, there are studies that have been done that show, you know, extremism amongst military or military veterans is actually a little bit lower than baseline. And pointing out that, you know, the military isn't like an incubator for extremism or anything like that. But then if you drill down into the statistics a little bit more, you will find like some frightening numbers, you know, people who believe in the white replacement theory. What is that? What's the white replacement?

Let me explain it to you. No, I'm just kidding. Go ahead. Go for, go ahead, Jason. Let us know what you're doing to us. Yeah, what's your fucking plan, dude? I'll lose my car for this, but I'm just kidding. Let me say, seriously, though, so one of my, Andy, what you're going back to what you were saying,

and I am going to predict that this is going to be. Wait, what's the white replacement theory? Oh, no. No, go on, Jason. Isn't it called a great replacement theory? But we should explain what it is, right, if we mention it. I don't want to mention it. I don't know exactly what I've been at those meetings.

It's just a white supremacist conspiracy theory that's pretty prevalent that, you know, I mean, I guess the idea goes that we're opening up our southern border to let all of these immigrants, illegal migrants into the country. And the idea is that they will demographically displace white people and be a block, a voting block of leftists that will just vote for communism. Oh, oh, right. Yeah. kind of the demographic, the demographic shift that's removing the base on the, yeah, that time is not on their side.

I'm actually quite excited for that. Yeah, me too. Yeah. So yeah, one of my, my first, going back to what Andy was saying about learning, one of the, one of my first roommates in the barracks when I was in the Marine Corps was a kid, I won't say his name, but probably about a week or so after a week. first moved into these new barracks. He just pulled me aside. He's like, listen, man, I just need to be honest with you about something. I was raised in a clan family, you know, KKK.

And, you know, this is all really new to me. He said between boot camp and this first, you know. Did you tell him it was new to you, too? Yeah, exactly. Well, come on, man. I'm from this Jersey short. It's not new. You're my first plan rack mate.

Yeah. So we just sat and talked about it. You get a picture. Yeah, it wasn't like some. Hallmark moment we just talked about. And at the end of it, I was like, listen, man, are you going to fucking shoot me in the back when, you know, when we're, you know, when we're out there, he's like, no.

Said, are you going to have my back and we're out there? He's like, yeah, I was like, then I don't give a fuck. And that's how it was. And we just, we got along. He never, you know, he went on to do other things. He moved out of the unit. And we never had a problem with it. And I think, like you said, if we get away from the whole, you know,

here's a, everybody has to do a stand down on a Friday afternoon and, you know, just talk about it. I think if people are able to bring their experiences to these things and say, this is what I learned from it. This is what happened. This is what I learned from it. It'll not necessarily work itself out. And like you said, if the bullshit raises its head, whether it's a, you know, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever it is, you know, smack the ones who are the perpetrators and learn a lesson, keep it moving. You know, this once a year talking about it shit is just not

going to be, it's not enough. It kind of feels like very HR-y, like very corporate. Like, you're checking a box. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Checking a box. And like none of the information gets

anyway. Like they literally will hold people's leave until they've gotten this done. You know, they check that box along like cybersecurity and all the other shit. So it's just... This is, it's a usual approach. as of, you know, as of 030, 400 hours Zulu,

all racism will land. Yeah. In this unit. Sign here. Well, it's also the classic, like, this Afghan ANA unit is going from amber to green. Like, you know, it's like very, it's a very army thing. Oh, and then we're back to, then we're back to red again. How'd this happen?

Yeah. New commander. Yeah. And I'm sure we're going to get smacked on clickbait. and, you know, why are we being woke with all this? Well, it's, it's something that needs to be. You know, I hate to be that person that talks to the people in the comments, but you need to get over it.

This is real. It happened. It needs to be talked about. So if you don't like it, oh, well, go, you know, go follow somebody else. Yeah, I don't know. Jack, I was, no, go ahead. I was saying that I know we took you down that path and I feel bad. Now maybe you didn't want to go down that path, but it was very interesting.

Nevertheless. Nazi? Well, you know, I mean, the, I mean, the, the symbology, the lack of historical context, the fact that we really do have to understand that Americans don't learn about history in high school or anything. And so for the most part. And but that there is, you know, there is an issue and we address it. And it's, you know, not such, make such a big deal of that.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll see what happens. yeah i mean as you guys may be implied a little bit my guess is nothing happens but yeah yeah yeah i mean it's a big storm in a teacup and then i think next time when the whoever is doing the fucking photoshop maybe pick other skulls there's a plethora of them out there okay much easy all right yeah yeah what what next well i mean the havana syndrome's coming back and i know jack's it's a it's pretty nascent anyway like you're still working on it but He's right in a story.

Yeah, we've got our own personal interest with Mark, Mark P, who he has Moscow's syndrome, but it's very similar to Havana. Yeah. There is no Moscow. Incidents is the term we're using now. What is that? Anomalous health incidents, I believe, is the acronym. AHA. But I, yeah, I'm back on this story or researching it, interviewing people, talking to scientists,

and doctors and people who are very smart. And hopefully a story comes out of it. I mean, I think there's enough there. I've also been talking to some of the victims, people who are hit with something, an anomalous health incident. And I do believe, you know, I guess like, you know, not to bury the lead.

I mean, I believe that some of these people were indeed hit with some sort of a microwave weapon. And it's just, again, it's another one of these stories where you have to drill down into the nuances and you have to look at the data, look at the scientific studies that have been done on the victims. And some of these people have very odd abnormalities that in the MRI machine shows some of those abnormalities that I'll have to write about more in depth. So I don't know. It's, it's, it's an interesting subject. It's a very complicated subject to pick through. So, yeah, poor one out.

Do we have, do we have any numbers and any idea of how many people have been affected with this? I mean, somewhere between 200 and 1,000. I haven't, I haven't seen anything solid. I think there are probably, I think there's like maybe 220, like, people who are sort of like on the books, so to speak. And as far as the government's concerned. but I mean at a certain point this story

you know the victims the list expands and gets bigger and bigger and bigger and I really don't want to be dismissive of anyone certainly not out of hand but you do start to wonder are all of these people really being blasted with something

and it's a question of picking through all that it's like the bug pit thing right yeah because I happen to and I call it accidentally fall into X. I don't know how. And I was reading some of the comments about it. I guess 60 minutes is coming out with the story. About, you know, revealing some information or whatever.

But I was reading some of the comments. And a big majority of them were saying things that never happened for a thousand dollars. And, you know, just saying it never happened. You know, it's a bunch of crap. And I don't know a whole lot about it. but I was just curious if it was like 10 people, you know, or I'm assuming that all of these people probably share in common locations, you know, like Cuba, Moscow, stuff like that, or is it spread out all over the girl? I don't want you to tell too much of your information or gathering. Here's like a little like anecdote.

And there's many, there's many anecdotes that could be shared. But when people first started getting hit in Havana, There are three CIA agency personnel down there. All three of them get hit and get sent back home. Then they send another three guys to replace them on TDY. People who have no, they have no idea why the previous crew was sent back home. All three of them get. Like that scene in the big red one.

All of those three, the three replacements get hit. They send them back home. They send another three TDIers. down there and they get hit. And now by by this point, you have state department people who have also been hit down there. You have Canadians who have been hit. So the idea that this is some sort of like mass hallucination, like it's just this like psychosomatic shared hallucination that people are having is I think ludicrous. And I don't think it's supported by the science or the data. And because I'm especially when you consider that some of this was in the blind. I mean,

these people had no idea what Havana syndrome was. It's not like they were all talking to each other and comparing notes. You could make that argument today. Sure. But at that time, no. And so people started coming down being afflicted with these very similar symptoms. Crazy. And again, when some of those early Havana victims were looked at under functional

magnetic resonance imagery, the findings do show. a difference between them and other people who have traumatic brain injuries. Like if you were to look at baseline TBIs, their brains are different. Something different happened there. So, yeah, it's a lot to, it's a lot to pick through. Yeah. Cool, cool. And we, oh, go ahead, Andy.

No, no, no. Go on. No, I was going to say, and again, without you giving away too much of what you're writing about, Do we have a suspect here? I keep seeing China, but I mean, do we have any proof of anything? You know, I can say I don't have any proof. I think the United States government has actually quite a bit on this topic. Pretty much everyone is pointing the finger at Russia.

But have I seen proof of that? Do I know proof positive that the Russians were behind it? I don't. I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't show you. But, yeah, I don't, I don't want to go too deep into it. But I do know the United States government and, especially DOD. And like the J-Soc guys actually, to their credit, took this issue very seriously and like kind of leaned into it. Like, hey, let's fix the glitch. Let's fix the problem. How do we defend against this? Whereas the CIA was burying their head in the sand and just in denial. as things got worse and giving people settlements but also denying it well they gave a few people's settlements yeah um to you know almost it feels like hush money almost um but i mean i know other people who uh believe they've been hit with whatever this is they've experienced a anomalous health incident and they're like what are people talking about these settlements like we haven't even

given like a number to call to even like go like start this process so I think that it's been very selective in who they've kind of tried to help. Yeah. Gotcha. Jeff, what it intrigues me when you said directed energy weapon. Can you be, can you be specific about it? I know, you know, Mark P. talked about it a little bit. I can't be specific until, really because we haven't captured a device.

As far as I know, we don't have it yet. But I mean, can you, can you, I don't mean, but can you talk about the capability a little bit for the benefit of. So microwaves, and the way I'm kind of throwing around that term is a bit unscientific. Microwaves can encompass a broad band of different types of waves that can be beamed from a emitter. It could be a single point emitter. It could be two. There's one theory that it's two emitters. And they cross and they get the victim in the cross beam.

From the anecdotal, you know, victim statements, it seems like the device is able to target like an entire room or rooms in a residence. So like one guy was telling me about how it hit me in my living room. It was really bad. I went into my bedroom and I tried to like walk it off and pretend it wasn't hurting me. that's the thing isn't it the victims can point to at least for the most part a point in time when they when they felt suddenly felt something oh absolutely yeah and so it's not like legionaire's disease where it comes up later you know they all had that one thing in common it's like bang it suddenly felt all askew and when when this particular

guy left who's in his living room in his bedroom he was getting hit when he walked into his kitchen, he started to feel better. Like the kind of the pressure was relieved that he was feeling. There's, geez, you get me talking about this stuff, Andy. So there, I think it's interesting. The other interesting thing, I think, is that the United States has this technology. That's what else. That's what I was going to ask.

And that's why it's a little frustrating for the CIA to pretend, like, or I should say the headshed, the seventh four anyway. You know, DST, the Director of Science and Technology, I'm told in their classified assessment, they assessed that there was some sort of microwave beam weapon used on some of these people. But the seventh floor didn't want to hear that. And it's frustrating for a lot of people that the CIA still pretends that they don't understand what this is or what's happening. When we have the exact same technology, we have small man-portable microwave beam weapons. Now, I have not been able to find any accounts of them ever being deployed and used operationally for a military personnel to turn. that device on, it requires very high levels of approval and authorization, like up to NSA level, if not beyond, even to even to think about turning that thing on. But the point is, we do have it.

They can fire in a three to five second burst. And the idea behind it is that you can use it to blow some people out of a safe house. You know, if you got some tourists, kind of drone, kind of drone kind of swan. You can hit them with this thing. It makes them very, very uncomfortable. You'll have a headache, that sort of thing. And it'll get the guy up and moving around, hopefully out of his safe house, get him on his cell phone, making phone calls.

It's a way to coerce the types of behaviors that we might want to see at certain points. So we have this technology. It's not like some exotic novel. technology that is like this mystery. What is a mystery, though, is we've never, and because we have medical ethics laws in America, we've obviously never tested this device on human beings. So, there are questions about what type of beam do you hit people with that replicates the, the symptoms and the data that the Havana victims have? Because we don't know exactly how these waves impact the human body. We know that it's different than other traumatic brain injuries.

We know that a normal microwave will, you know, kind of give you a sunburn. But this is something different. They're getting through the skull and into the gray matter in your brain. And that takes a different type of calibration. And again, I'm not explaining that quite well because I'm not a scientist. My point is that it's just a different type of microwave that is being tuned in a way to create that impact in human beings. And we're still trying to study the victims and study microwaves to try to understand how a person, you know, essentially a person's brain is cooked from the inside out. it's um i mean it's potentially an extraordinarily useful weapon you know it's uh in in the end it's still i'm not i'm not minimizing what happened to the havana syndrome victims but for the sake of argument you know it's a non-lethal weapon um and as jack points out with uh with effects that are

perhaps more useful and diverse than kinetic weapons. And potential use, by the way, encountering swarms of drones. I had an old school guy. He was chief of station in Moscow. And he was telling me that, you know, the interesting thing about the Russians isn't that they have, they're not beating us in like the tech race or anything like that.

They don't have any technology that we don't have. But they think about technology. And they think about ways to use. use it that we would never consider. That's just an interesting, like, little cultural aside. I'll give you a great example of that. And that's a great point, Jack. I think it's very well put.

At the outset of the war in Ukraine, the Russians, the Ukrainians started getting a high number of percentage of soldiers with laser-burned eyes, right? Blinded. And two things, okay, resulted from this. was soldiers can deal with fear of general fear of death or wounding. But when they know there's a specific fear of being blinded and they've seen people happen, it's a terrifying. I mean, you can imagine that. And they don't know where it comes from. Well, Russians were using laser designators as reconnaissance by fire. You know, as they came to an area, they were just laze,

everything, a very likely O.P. And they were blinding guys, you know, blinding initially reconnaissance units. soldiers and the Ukrainians had to go into fast production mode on laser safe goggles that they pushed out to all of this this was this was in the first few weeks on the war as the russians were approaching kiev never made the news um but it but i you know i was i'm not saying i was there you know but but i was there and and and watching them you know react and then think through and adapt in an extraordinarily short period of time to counter this so yeah great example of what you were talking about not new technology, but being used in a way, which by the way we couldn't use it, but the Russians can always escape by saying, you know, hey, we were designating targets and

it's not awful people got in the way. Yeah, so then that begs the question as far as, you know, if this is being used seemingly exclusively against intelligence officers, how do you counter it? I mean, the operations still have to go on, you know, Intel some needs that we collected. would have people go out wearing the the literal tinfoil caps? You know, like how do we count? Well, it's funny you mention that. Jack has one right here. There is, I don't know how far along we are in developing countermeasures.

I can tell you some like initial conversations I've had with people. There's one idea is that, you know, we should have sensors that we can give to our people overseas that they can put inside their residents. and it'll warn them. At least you'll have some sort of a warning that something is happening. I spoke to one person who is an expert in his field, and he believes that we can design clothing, windows, drapes, things like that, that will actually block these beams.

He thinks it's possible. It takes some really high-end technology to do it, and it's not cheap. but there are ways to develop countermeasures. And the other, the not high tech option to your question, Jason, of course, is retaliation. Right. If there, you know, it's that scene, what was the, Sean Connery says, you know, they put one of yours in the hospital. You put one of theirs in the morning. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think that's, that may be actually the reason why the CIA has kind of tried to bury. this because they may not want to get into a global tit for tat with the Russians where we're disappearing people. That's a little speculative. But I just have to imagine, I mean, if this was real, okay, if the Russians were blasting American government personnel with microwaves, the president could quite clearly sign a covert finding because it'll be ruled in It's in self-defense and it's directly related to U.S. national security. And so he could sign a lethal finding for something like this.

Like, no questions asked, really. I'm not a lawyer, but I mean, as far as how I understand how the law works, they could do it. That's really an interesting theory. And I think there's some substance there, Jack, that it's an attribution puts you in a corner. I mean, explicit attribution now. I mean, it was the same thing. Yeah, what are you going to do it? The drone that hit Tower 22, you know, I mean, obviously an Iranian drone.

And yet, we don't, and obviously we know it, but we just, and they know it that we know it. Yeah, yeah. It's one of these things. It's rules of the game, you know. Exactly. Exactly. It's like this funny thing, like, you know, we talked about, you know, sabotage operations in Russia. And, you know, the Russians kind of like shrug it off like, oh, whatever.

you know or then i mean another example of course is the nordstream pipeline bombing i mean we still don't know what the fuck really happened there um but it blew up and like very quickly the governments of like denmark and sweden were like yeah we're done investigating like inconclusive inconclusive and it's just it's very funny like we we ignore things we don't want to address yeah much like it's filed evidently it just didn't react well to cold weather we just didn't think about this because we We don't, because we don't want to go down these, you know, both us and the Russians don't necessarily want to go down all these rabbit holes and get into a sort of tit for tat, be it diplomatic or, you know, maybe lethal. So, yeah, it's very funny how we kind of act like, you know, it's like, you know, a little kid coming downstairs and, you know, their mom's like, did you clean your room? And the kid is like, yeah, I did.

And the parent just doesn't want to know if they cleaned it or not. You know, you don't want to go upstairs and actually inspect. is just a very funny sort of dynamic. We are. We've typically in the past just not being subtle enough to play by rules of the game. But I think, you know, we are getting there. I think Syria taught us a lot. I think it was fortunate that we had mainly a soft footprint in Syria.

And so we had to, you know, we had guys who attuned to that to learn how to coexist in the same area with Russian forces. I'm not saying get along, obviously, know when to draw the line and spank them, but in between that, how to continue steady state. And where it really comes to the four is in the Middle East, right? You know, I mean, with Israel, Israel, Hezbollah, Iran, they're all, you know, Israel will kill Iranians, but outside Iran for the most part. Until recently, until recently when they blew up, well, someone blew up, gas pipelines in iran and by the way is behind the scenes there is an extraordinary cyber war taking place um with with uh pro-israel proxies um doing significant things to iranian infrastructure

what what made the news with gas pipelines but that that wasn't i don't think that was a cyber tank but anyway rules of the game yeah subtle understanding them when you when do you need to adhere to them and when to break them. Geopolitics 101. Yeah, and I think the second and third order effects of this whole, I keep saying Havana syndrome thing, because I don't remember the other thing you said, is when we do, yeah, when we do come up, if and when we do come up with a countermeasure to it or defense against it, now how then does that affect, again, intelligence or military operations? Because it's like, if it's expensive, as you say to do it, who do we give it to? And does that now point them out

as an intelligence officer? It's like, hey, this guy or girl coming into this country is state department, but we know that they just gave them this special type of window in their place, this, you know, special type of, whatever it is. So how does that affect those sorts of things? I mean, it's, it sounds, it sounds asinine, but I think there's also thoughts behind the scenes. Do we want to develop a countermeasure to a technology that we also have? have. Do we want to dump millions and millions of dollars into developing a countermeasure that once our enemies know it exists, they're going to develop that countermeasure as well. So yeah, it's convoluted, man. Yeah, definitely, cool. We will stay tuned to the high side.

I think Sean Nela paid me some money to mention that. I am told that your ratings shut up, Jack, please say yes, after our last episode of Aizond when you were a guest. But we had astonishingly high a number of views because your picture was on the front. But anyway, you or Sean very kindly mentioned that subscription rates for the high side went up after that episode, which is good because you should all subscribe to the high side. Absolutely. Yeah, not saying. Yeah. Yeah, when I finish writing this story about Havana, it'll be on the high side.

And a few other big projects that Sean and I are working on. Awesome. I'd like to, Dee, we've got a few minutes, right? We've got Jack. Jack's got, he'll be here all day if we need him. Oh, you know, I won't. Because I'm going upstate. Wait, wait.

No one contradicts D. on this show. Jack, what else? So first of all, as our guest, I mean, I've got a couple of questions for you that, but before we get to kind of rummaging around in the garbage, do you have,

what do you want to talk about on a more cerebral level? Because invariably whatever comes out of your mouth is cerebral. With the exception of that one Friday night in, where was it, down by the river in Alexander? I digress, go on. what came out of your mouth that night was definitely not cerebral it is way too early in the morning for me to have

cerebral thoughts about anything okay yeah what do you want i mean is for anything anything that's that's a burning topic that you think are the the more sophisticated eyes on listeners would would appreciate more sophisticated as opposed to the team house um no i mean that's that's about the gist of it, you know. I've got a question, I don't know. I've got a question to you. I don't know.

And this isn't me delving to prurrying and garbage. But I am intrigued about what exactly happened with the first group commander, former first group commander. And I'll tell you why, Jack, because for a while, that whole case, you know, you know the one I mean,

became within the soft community. it was and I may be at a date here but it was portrayed as being hey here's what happens when tBI and PTSD is left you know untreated and this guy had an exemplary record and then he suddenly went off the rails and then troubling comments started coming out and it concerns me when these things happen because I hate for all the fact that because it may have happened badly you know in one case that everyone is painted with that same brush. I worded that very badly, but you know what I mean over to you. But there are still people who eulogize this person and say that it was a case of PTSD that, you know.

Well, that was certainly his story. And I mean, the person we're talking about held his family hostage barricaded inside the house. Yeah, do you want to just give a quick synopsis of the story? I'm sorry, I jumped into it. Yeah, it was, this is coming back a few years, but it was Owen Ray. and he was the commander of first special forces group and then he went on to he was a guy who carried the nuclear football for Obama for a little while and then he went on to he was like a chief of staff at iCore um i believe this is going back a few years something yeah when you read his career

you know in apocalypse now when uh um willard captain Willard is you guys seen Apocalypse now right who has not seen that anyway Captain Willard's going through Kurtz's file and he's like it was perfect maybe too perfect and it's almost like Owen Ray's record right yeah yeah um and you know then yeah he has this this moment where he uh holds his family hostage and has an armed standoff with the police um and in which will affect your security clearance in the in the in the aftermath of all this you know yes he he tried to blame it on untreated PTSD and tbis and it you know a soldier story about and i mean there's there's a little bit of a in my opinion there's a little bit of narcissism involved in you know you're still going through

like your court trial here and you're already out front trying to like you know spin this story and kind of weave your memoir about a soldiers return home. It's like, you're not quite there yet. And I think he, again, as I recall, I believe he did catch a conviction in civilian courts and do some jail time. Yeah, I mean, we've had our own cases like their senior officers. It particularly upsets me when senior officers claim that they have PTSD. And then you delve into their records and you think, where the hell did they get PTSD? You know, it's, we had our own case, a guy named Shane Tompko.

Actually, you know, we had more than one. Very similar case, it wasn't holding hostage, but he did criminal stuff and is now in jail in Norfolk for among other things, sexual abuse of the minor. But he made Colonel in the United States Marine Corps and was same sort of career. You know, he did time at J-Soc and everyone's like, oh my god poor dude no he was a fucking criminal who masqueraded as a marine officer and made colonel you know not just not just did okay but but voltage and head so you know when we talk about extremism and patches i think our bigger concern is how we screen officers frankly i mean we have had i mean just look at

the papers across the board i mean we we have had a lot of reliefs for things that just shouldn't have shouldn't have happened. And those are the best of the best. Those are guys who get slated for command, you know? I mean, there is something fundamentally wrong. And I'd throw this out for comments for the listeners, obviously. But I can say, you know, last time I said, most officers and alt-wariers, I think that's necessary.

The United States military is a big bureaucracy. And I'm fine with that. I'm not fine with officers who develop this persona that everyone eulogizes, you know, short hair, big, you know, big guy. I don't like big guys anyway. Good looking, you know, deep voice. And they will go far in the military, all right, especially if they're physically fit. They will make lieutenant colonel. And they build up this iconic, hey, man, he's a warrior.

Yeah, he's a media. Yeah, the persona. Yeah. the persona building. Oh, God. And then it's impossible. It's not, but then everyone's like shot. I mean, we could reel after name after name to include many general officers

who develop the sun guard syndrome and do stuff that is really fucked up. Well, people, you're right. People are shocked when these folks come unwound. But a lot of that is also, there's like a lot of self- It didn't just happen. Because if you wind back the clock, there's a lot of warning signs with a lot of these guys. and the military the army has tried to put

some rail guards in place recently the screening they do for to see if someone is a toxic leader before they take that screening by the time that screening for commander I mean if they're a toxic leader

they shouldn't be a fucking officer they shouldn't have made it I know I mean you're still leading people let's wait till that lieutenant colonel then we're really going to screen them out. Like the dudes who are psychopaths, it's okay.

Don't get tape. Don't worry about it, man. Let them into OCS. By the time they reach 05, we'll get them out. But in the meantime, we've got lots of staff work. You're going to see that board that screens for toxic leaders. You see senior officers trying to intervene

because they're the sea daddy. They got their boys out there, their mentees that they're, you know, this guy fits the mold. He has the persona that the senior guy likes that wants to promote up the ranks. And but the, you know, the board convening on toxic leaders is saying,

nah, not this guy. And you see the officers trying to intervene in the board and find ways to subvert it. I mean, yeah. Is there an actual board? Hey, Jason, that would, that would never happen in the Marine call, right? Never. So there really is a board that screens for that. Yeah.

For, for, I believe it's for. people who are taking a battalion command. And yeah, there is, there is a process like decap or something. Again, I'm sorry it's so early in the morning. I can't remember the acronym. Yeah, it's a significant process. They brought it in a couple of years ago. And so when you are eligible for battalion command, you go through, you know,

they'll take your whole cohort. And it's like, I didn't know, it's like UCS, I mean, I haven't been through it. But when you read what they do, you know, it's, they do. do a PFT, they do interviews, they do a 360, you know, there's a 360 assessment done of them to that point, and then they get peer evals done as they go through this. They do the leadership reaction courses that we did at OCS, you know, we have to get across a crevasse, a fake crevasse, you know, with a plank and two pieces of rope and five idiots, you know, all of this stuff. I mean, it just seems bizarre that, and this isn't because the army is doing it. I would say the

same thing regardless of service, but it's just bizarre that we're testing people for leadership when they get to that stage. Because what is wrong with judging them on their, on their records, on their performance reviews? Well, it's because the performance review system is broken and it's too inflated. So six that, don't bring in this ridiculous, you know, uh, hey we've got to make up for all the shit screening we haven't done to this point three days. I don't understand where the toxic leadership would come out in any of those things.

Like maybe in an interview, like if you ask them a scenario question, it might be like, you know what, fuck, we kill them all. Believe me, if you are on time limit and some idiot drops the, you know, the package you're supposed to be carrying across that crevasse at the last minute, people revert to their true nature. But you know what? But people refer to their true nature.

They should have done. They should have, they've had all of company command to evaluate these people in effing command. Why are they waiting until Lieutenant Colonel to give them this weird board? I guess where my question is is like, do they know they're being screened for toxic leadership? Because if they do, why would they show that during the screening? They're going to put on their best face. So they go, I believe, again, I'm not totally schooled up on the whole process, but I believe they go in the interview like your subordinates and people like that. Gotcha. Okay. I'm a big believer in 360 evaluation. I think that's one way potentially that we prevent the natural progression towards inflation and performance reports. I am, yes, of course, you know,

the counter argument is, hey, you're going to get leaders who cater to popularity? No, a guy who's a decent leader isn't going to do that. And Marines and even soldiers can tell when an officer is simply, you know, catering to them or trying to suck up to them. And they despise that. They would rather have an asshole who was incompetent. I mean, an asshole who was competent, you know, who was going to keep them alive, even though he was an asshole,

than someone who was trying to be a populace. So I think 360 is a good way of doing it. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are some really good tools that they brought in during these three days. My point is why not just implement them as continual assessment, which is far more effective. You only do a three-day board when you haven't had eyes on the person beforehand. You know, for instance, like the Brits do a three-day commissioning board, all right, where they put them through all this stuff.

Anyway, you know, great, great initiative on me, but there are other things, you know, look at your performance evaluation, look at how you bring people in, look how you assess them. Do you got anything? No, I'm good. Cool. Jackalope, you got anything else? No, no. All right, guys, listen, don't forget to like and subscribe. Don't forget to check out the high side, substack with Jackalope.

and Sean Naler. Don't forget to check out Andy's Substack, Andy's Twitter. Everything will be in the bio and in the show notes. You can click those links there. It's very easy. My mind and Jack's book. Yep. Those will be there also.

And the most important thing, not the most, it's the most important thing. Patreon.com slash the team house. Help support the shows, both Aizon and the team house. YouTube is screwing us. I don't want to get into it. but I will Patreon.com slash the teamhouse please thank you

how much is that it's five bucks a month you get you get ad free audio and video you get a bonus bonus episodes per month with just the guys shooting the shit answering your questions you can have your questions

answered live on the team house too we do uh give the Patreon subscribers uh precedence for that so yeah there's a lot of benefits and it also the most important thing is it supports the show. That is. Yeah. It's something bigger than yourself.

Five bucks. There's absolutely nothing. Thanks, Jack. Appreciate it, brother. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Jack. Thank you, everyone.