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an email. We'll talk about special operations covert, ask me an the Team
House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey everyone, welcome
to episode two hundred and twenty six of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy
who at David Park, and our guest in studio this time is Gary Harrington.
We had Gary on the show once remotely were really happy to have him
here in studio this time. I think Gary had a pretty extensive career serving
in the Marine Corps and special Forces in Delta and then another governmental agency and
yeah, we're just really excited to have you here. Man. Well,
thanks, I appreciate you guys letting me be on last time, and hey
get to come up to New York and see you in person. So we're
to begin. We covered a lot last I think we did three hours last
time. Okay, we're gonna give a quick shout out to to one of
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medical dot com slash teamhouse. So Gary, I mean, I think like
let's start off a story about a young Gary Harrington. When you said you
were talking about being a young lieutenant in the Marine Corps, you had some
a story about a CS grenade that went awry. Yeah, well I was
the typical young lieutenant. Everything's black and white in the Marine Corps. Hey
high diddle, diddles straight up the middle, a lot of motivation. I
don't know if I said it last time, but I never was a great
person for or a respecting authority, And so right off the bat in my
military career I sort of bucked the trend. I think I talked last time.
I had a mustache as a marine officer, which wasn't looked well upon.
And in the basic school one time I challenged an issue that I thought
was unjust, and uh called the commander out on it and in front of
everybody, and he said, you know, Lieutenant Harrington, some day,
if your brains ever get as big as your balls, you might go somewhere
in the land Corps. And uh, you know, of course I ran
into him a few years later, but uh yeah, I was, you
know, I was a infantry platoon commander, and I thought, you know,
I was pretty hard on guys. I wanted to be a taskmaster.
I had worshiped, no, maybe worships a strong word, but really admired
Yoni net and Yahoo, and I read the book Yoni Hero of Entebbi,
and I wanted to emulate his training style and the things that he did to
prepare his people for what they did and then Tabby. So yeah, I
ran pretty harsh training scenarios and one time some guys weren't doing everything as they
should. They got lack of daisical on a tactical side. So I decided
to hit him with some CS. And I had the CS grenades or from
a grenade launcher, and I thought, it's CS, it can't hurt anybody.
And it was in the woods, and I didn't really think about being
a young, stupid lieutenant that hey, when his CS round hits a tree
trunk and starts ricocheting around, you know, winds up hitting somebody, it's
uh, you know, I mean that's almost like an ad right, So
yeah, that was a lesson that, hey, you know, things can
can hurt. What seems harmless is not. You know. Several years later,
I was in a training exercise and you know, it turned if you
ever done force on force, sometimes it turns into that argument, no I
shot you first, No you shot me an argument and I had some you
know, I was an officer. I had some young guy and his sergeant
standing there holding grenade launcher at me, you know, arguing with me.
Ever, who was right on this on this tactical call and I said,
moved that grenade launcher off my stomach, and he goes, it's just an
a loom round from from you know, from two feet away. That's going
to leave a forty millimeter hole in my yea. So you know, you
don't have to think about those kind of things. I think often when you're
really young, you know, then later many years later in SF, after
you've made enough mistakes that you've survived, or your senior friends make those mistakes.
I was the guy that when the new team guys had this, you
know, like, hey, what if you know, like in Kuwait,
we find a old bombed out mortar, sixty millimeter mortar, so we st
people start dropping a loom and grenade simulators down it to make all these things
happen. You know, I was smart enough in my old age to walk
over to the side and sit on this bank and look at him, go,
I'll patch you up when you when you need it, because I ain't
doing that. So going back to the CS and the forest, so you
shoot the CS this forty cus around it starts bouncing off trees. Did did
this CS actually deploy? Actually I don't remember that part because what I remember
is it hit a guy in the cheek? And then so did you tell
him to like, how did you responded? You apology? You tell him
to suck it off? No, I ran over to him and to see
how hurt he is, and I don't I can't remember if it knocked a
twoth out or you know, it wasn't a serious hurt. And to be
honest, you know, you know this was the whole Marine Corps. We
kind of just shook it off. And I was like, hey, you
know, I didn't know do that. You know, I planned on it
shooting it into the ground and deploying to see us and yeah, that was
it. So after that I learned my lesson, and like in the foxholes,
if I would crawl around in the middle of the night, foxhole to
foxhole, if I put him on fifty percent alert, and I would softly
call out the names of the people in the foxhole, and if I didn't
get an answer, I'd just pop a see Us grenade and drop it into
foxhole, which works really well when they're zipped up inside their sleeping bags.
As you probably all know, I don't you get away with that anymore.
Probably there's a lot of things yeah, yeah. You know, when I
was in the Corps, I it was the old days. You know.
I went through the PLC where you know, the sergeants took the young candidates
around the corner, and I thought, that's how things are done. And
you know, my first my first company in the Marine Corps infantry, I
mean, you know, the commander wanted to play rugby, so it was
his chance to to put you know, some licking on people. I might
have used physical inducement a few times in the Marine Corps. I got called
on the carpet for that. And you know, I understand all that now,
but at the time, you're you're taught that's how things are. And
in those days, again you're young. Everything's black and white, and it
was I have to get these people ready for combat. A weak person,
a person that doesn't pay attention is somebody going to get other people killed.
Therefore, anything I do to prepare them for that is justified. Right now,
of course, I don't view it that way anymore, but when you're
young and idealistic, I mean, that's that's how you think, right It's
how you justify doing those things, because it's like everything is so important,
well and especially in a peacetime military. I think that that the idea of
how to make somebody hard or how to make them ready is very different than
what the reality is because in a wartime milits are often they don't even they
don't have time for that. You know, it's like get them trained up
and get them deployed, and that's that. But in a peacetime military,
like that's what, that's what everybody thought. That's you know, the hazy,
the smoking all that is, like, yeah, that's how we form
unity, that's how we form a bond, and outside of combat, like,
how else do you do that? A lot of times, well,
it's part of ritualization and a crucible that everybody goes through which forms cohesion in
a shared bond. Absolutely. I mean it might sound sick to some people
that aren't used to that to the extremes that it can go, but you
know, it was all part of that going through some some ritual just as
like uh Indian braves were supposed to go through when they reached maturity. Right,
yeah, that's fascinating. So what And unfortunately I wasn't here when you
were on so I might if I ask you any questions that you've already talked
about. You know, I apologize and apologize, but or she doon't matter.
I won't remember. Great, I wouldn't remember either. So but so
what led you from the Marine Corps to the Army. So as a I
went from the regular infantry to recon and fib Recon school, Special Forces Scoop
of school, scout sniper instructor school, and deployed to Beirut. You know,
thought life was great. I'm living during the adventure twenty six years old.
Then I finished my time. I was on the platoon. They said,
oh, now you have to go be the training officer, like the
what the training officer up in the three shop? Yeah, so I went
to there reviewing other people's training instead of doing it. So that was a
big blow to me and what I thought I should be doing. And to
be honest, I started envying the sergeants and the corporals that were on my
recon team because they were doing the do and running things and leading the patrols.
And in a Marine Corps, you know, was foolish enough to promote
me to captain. And so I got to notice, oh, congratulations,
you're a captain, and now you get to go to Marine barracks duty and
I was like, not feeling, but that's not that's not me, and
you know, we're young. I thought my role in life was to die
in car you know, it's it's hard, and it's tied to some religious
beliefs I had and some events that I thought that was my role in life,
and like, you're taking that away from me. You're going to go
make me do what? And then yeah, there's a command path to follow
as an officer if you do that. But I at that time didn't want
any of that. So, you know, I looked for a way to
get out and I so I resigned and went to enlist in the Army.
I think last time we talked about I was in the middle of a map
station enlisting for Special Forces on an active duty when an officer recruiting officer ran
in stopped me from swearing in and said it showed us a line in the
rags, saying former officers of other branches of military may not enlist in the
United States Army. Oh wow. And I kind of was like what,
And you know, it was a shock. I came back. I'm pretty
good at workarounds, so I think, as you pointed out last time I
found I looked at the Army Reserve, that line wasn't in their rags.
So I enlisted in the Army Reserve Special Forces, got qualified as a medic
and then the Army had, uh I think R two ten dot whatever said
that if you got qualified in a shortage MOS, which as seth metics were,
you could come on active duty in the Army. So now I showed
up like and they said, wait a minute, aren't you the same guy
that we I said, yeah, but here's the difference. Now I'm this
so how do you want to look at it? And uh? When you
resign a commission, when you you know, resign you were a captain?
What what enlisted? Right? Because like if you're a college grad, don't
they give you E four or something like that? Like what what unless you
got E five five? I think the Army did me better than the agency
because later on life, you know, agency was telling me, you know
where I was out in the field when I was detailed, Yeah, GS
twelve you know like that, And I come in and they go eleven at
the very bottom eleven, Oh and case oo, case offcer operations officer.
No, but that's what the No, you can be a support officer and
maybe you work your way someday two to be in an operations officer. Yeah.
So uh so you go to SF, you go to SF Guard and
then you get active and I'm sure you guys talked about all this, so
Jack, oh, I'm just bad to w Yeah, I mean we can
cover briefly. So you find your way to s F and then from the
reserves into active duty. Right, seventh group And what year was this?
I probably showed up for it because I resigned Marine Corps in late eighty four,
went through SF training and medic course and all that. So eighty five
and probably six so probably no active duties seven group eighty seven. So seventh
Group at that time is like doing a lot of pumps down a like Honduras
and places like that. Yeah, I did the Honduras pumps training their special
there. There's a counter terrorism unit they trained, and I mean there's a
lot of going on down there at the time. But yeah, you know
when when I went, I actually went to Honduras as a Marine. I
think we mentioned last time, saw a secret one of those secret black sites
that had been active and in those times and I went back in the Army.
The first time, we were up at Lake Atchoa, way up in
the mountains. It's big lake because they actually for a while had a Honduran
Special Forces unit and we were training them and I was the medical on the
team and got to dive up in that lake for my first high altitude kind
of dive in a lake. Yeah. So I mean that was kind of
like also your first exposure probably to the special ops, but also what the
agency was doing down there in those days. Yeah. When when I went
as a marine, I somehow wound up in the little village one late one
night with a bunch of old former military guys who were applying me with drinks.
And they were people that were sort of working that program that was going
into Nicaragua. I think Frank McClosky we've had on here, Rick Prato,
Yes, well, and then not trying to drop down they were if they
were the ones applying you with drinks, well it was a lot, you
know. I was again, I was a Marine lieutenant and you know,
that's my first time with all these foreign people and sitting around at outdoor table
and and they just had lines of beers lined up and up plying me with
him. I remember I maybe in my life there had been five or six
times I've actually been knocked down drunk. That was one of them. I
remember getting back to where the platoon was, where the rest of the Marines
were, and getting my poncho and walking over to this mound of dirt and
just falling over on it, on top of the poncho, and that was
it. So this is just a very specific question, but which wings did
you choose to wear when you went to SF. Oh So, I had
not been to airborne school as a marine, but I went to Special Forces
Scuba School. So one of the pleasures I had during airborne school was I
showed up wearing a scuba badge and those instructors started calling me on it that
saying that I was a liar, that you can't get to scuba school unless
you've been to airborne school, and I said I was a marine and I
did so every day I got to pay some extra punishment for my badge and
did that. You know, But again, I think at airborne school they're
just looking for a reason to do that. One of the funny stories about
my time I went to Honduras a couple of times, but one of the
trips there, and I think I went down a third time for a medical
mission where yeah, one of the medcaps. And in one of the missions
there with my team, we were down in La Saba, down on the
coast, and I met this old coat in a bar, some old American
guy and I we were that's it's when we were training the guys up at
Lake Achoa and to get to Lasaba to have like a couple of days off,
I had ridden in the back of a steak bed truck for like six
hours, just some local guys truck to get there. So I'm trying to
figure outw I'm gonna get back back up to the end to the mountains,
and this old little guy says, Hey, I got a plane down here
I fly. He goes, I'm flying up to an airfield near there.
You can fly up with me tomorrow. And I was like, well,
hey, that that I mean that I would save a lot of trouble.
But but then I thought about it. I was like, something doesn't seem
right, so I didn't and it turned out this was that flight. I
don't know if you guys remember, but there was a guy that flew his
airplane and crossed into Nicaragua and was forced down and was held prisoner for a
while. He was kind of like a wannabe guy, I guess it turned
out. And you know, some people thought he was a contractor or something
with some of the activities going on. And I was thinking afterwards, like,
holy cow, if I was a US Special Forces guy on this plane
just trying to hit you ride, why so I could go to look Town
and have a few beers do a little recreating. Now I'm in a prison
in Nicaragua. The you know, thank god. So we got to give
a shout out to our sponsor here for the show you want to do the
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any other misadventures down in the Honduras that we should probably know about, uh,
not that I'm willing to talk about on a live screen without protection from
vpnout protection from a lot of people. So let's uh let's jump forward a
little bit on what would a seventh group What could a seventh group guy do
in a South American or Latin American country that they would be not want to
talk about we don't. There are a lot of there's a lot of church
or physics down there right there are very Catholic religion. Yes, And I'm
gonna stay away from the jokes that come to mind when I come to a
couple of kilos that go on the punching bag on the way home. Don't
do it, guys. I did. I did get stopped coming back out
of Honduras or Panama one time. Now I've been delayed. So you're there
and before you get on the bird to come home, I think they had
to change the engine on an aircraft. So we were stuck a few days.
And you know how they line all the bags up and bring the dogs
through. So we're all waiting, we're ready to get home. We've been
delayed and delayed and delayed. And then the dog hits on something, and
you know, we're all laughing. You're like, yeah, what stupid you
know, blah blah blah did whatever to cause this. And then they come
over there and they're holding my Bagio who owns this bag? And hey,
it's me and I went over there and they go a dog hit on it
for cocaine and I was like, well, I was open it. There's
snow cocaine, and they well, it was that a dog wouldn't hit on
it unless it had been cocaine in it, or it had been close to
cocaine. I go, it's not, it's you know, I didn't have
cocaine. They said, you know, well, of course the dog can't
be wrong. So somewhere you were there must have been cocaine there at some
time or other. I'm like, yeah, I mean I was I brushed
all that off, yeah, because I mean those dogs. I mean because
I think later when I was in Columbia with Delta in ninety two, some
DA guys brought some drug dogs through and they were like just old. They
were not I know, they were old, but joints laying around on the
ground, and the dogs never hit on any of that. I'm like,
really, are these dogs that good? Yeah? Or is the stuff that
old? I don't know. Right, Well, let's let's over to that,
because I think that's like a fascinating period of a Special Operations history.
In particular, is you know, the whole hunt for Pablico Escobar down there
in Colombia. At that point you were with Delta got the PoID down there.
I mean, can you tell us a little bit about you know what
that was like. I mean, it's it's like one of these things that
has entered into like mythology, the amount of in some cases nonsense that people
talk about it. But I mean, you guys really were down there,
you know, looking for him down there, looking for him my role there,
and I went because I spoke Spanish. To be honest, I was
fairly young in Delta time to be picked to go on a classified mission,
but it was because I spoke Spanish, and so I went. And I
was staying up at the prison that had the nice prison that I guess Pablo
funded. They had been built for him. And you know, I was
with person from a Sister Jaysucky unit that was had some cigin equipment, and
I was doing some surveillance with a long range lens on a couple of houses
that were, you know, a couple a few miles away down in the
valley and you know, take turns pulling security for each other to sleep fifty
two people. It's yeah, it's not really a great life. You're either
on a crashper you know, and uh uh, And I couldn't run the
cigate equipment, so we did that. And yeah, eventually I did get
down to Mediyan on my way out and got to go on the streets of
Mediyan. I remember that in those days, the local the cops, you
know, the local police had been getting hits because people right up beside the
trucks or the vehicles they were in, and they need to have a guy
on the front of a motorcycle, and the guy on the back of the
motorcycle was the gunman. And you know, I know, I rode in
the back of one of those trucks with these guys. So I decided the
first thing I need to do is they're all sitting on the outboard side facing
in, and I said, okay, the first thing is I need to
put you on the inside facing out. And at first, you know,
it's just like any traffic anywhere in a big city. Some people didn't want
to stop. And it first had bothered me because I was like, you
know, what can you do? Then I started thinking about it. I
go, hey, this is in America, so it's okay to lean over
the side of the truck with the with your rifle. And you know,
if somebody still has the guts to want to come up you maybe a round
or two in the hood. You know, nobody's gonna no care here,
right, So we didn't have to go to the rounds. But being able
to you know, drop the rifle over the side and was able to stop
vehicles from coming up beside you. So, uh, you know, I
felt that helped keep those guys. Yeah, the very similar tactics that they
use, like you know in Iraq and Afghanistan and stuff, when they you
know, with the VBID threat, they weren't as many like sparrow teams in
those countries, right right, But but the v the v BID, the
vehicle born I d s were a big threat. But in Colombia it sounds
like it was similar to like what it was like in the Philippines and uh
and whatnot where they had those sparrow teams that yeah, one of them got
row right yeah, yeah yeah. At that time, so this is ninety
two, Papulo's not in his custom made prison at this point right here,
So he left the prison and you guys are looking for him. Yeah,
well, what was your perception at that time about you know, where where
he was or where you guys were at in regards to the hunt for him.
You know, I'm I'm probably wasn't aware of all the the the details,
you know, because I'm the on the nug end of this frame out
there. But yeah, he was long gone. You know. The one
of the things I did was like look through the huts, just looking.
I'm I'm looking for intel. It's like, hey, wait a second,
has anybody really gone through this? Because I'm finding stuff like here's uh,
checkbooks that have account numbers and stuff like that. Has anybody done this?
And and and I don't I'm not sure that that had been done. But
again, you know, we're talking nineteen ninety two. You know, a
lot of that stuff didn't develop until after nine to eleven, so and nobody
had an idea where he was. And a lot of the local populace they
loved him, and you know, I wasn't sure we were going to get
him. And again, in nineteen ninety two, we did not have the
robust ability to track phones and and you know, to my knowledge, as
we certainly developed later and particularly with the army or with the military, that
capability out the guy with me had stuff he could listen to. But I
think that was much more refined and improved over that next decade. And I
mean it was a small team too, right, It was like what ten
guys down there? You know, initially two of us were where I was,
and then there were some it was there were some seal It was a
mixture of a few Seals and some Elta guys down in Metayen. But the
trail had had gone cold at that point. The trail had gone yeah cold.
I mean it's it's I mean when all of that did go down,
what the next year? I mean, did you have any like insights or
any any kind of takeaways from from that sort of campaign down there? No,
that campaign is where I actually wounded up getting kicked out of them so
or as a result of things that happened there. So you know what happened
after Yeah, having been there, I was curious and I looked at stuff
and then, uh when was it Bowden wrote the book and all that.
You know, some of that I felt accurate, some not. Yeah,
I was interested in it, but it's kind of like, uh, yeah,
yeah, then they sent you down there to do a job. You
did the job. It was out Yeah it's not. And that wasn't as
personal, like the whole thing with al Qaeda and been laden after nine to
eleven, it just seemed a lot more personal. And I mean, even
though you know, I think these stories are also interesting in regards to like
how we look back at a quote unquote peacetime military when guys like you were
like pretty active. There's that and you came you'd just come out a couple
of years prior or year prior from the Gulf War, right, yeah,
and the Gulf War. I yeah, I didn't deploy in the Gulf War.
I was doing training new and Delta, you know, so at a
certain point in OTC, I think when you've been through the enough shooting and
basic infantry tactics to where you're like a really good ranger, they say okay.
And I know Delta at the time had been talking about, you know,
Delta going in on a if they could locate Saddam Hussein and getting him.
And they said, okay, you guys in OTC, you're now trained
enough to the point that the rangers will be the outer security, but then
the inner security to hold off the Iraqi big Iraqi units, yeah, or
will be you and you're gonna fast rope in to these does on these street
junctions with a whole bunch of NI tank weapons and you're gonna hold them off.
And it was like, hey, that's a one way to It didn't
look like it had a real high survival rate, but you weren't a CQB
qualified operator yet, so it was like you're really, you know, high
speed cannon flotter. I think how I kind of looked at it at that
point, but in the in the run up to it though, before before
that, I mean, weren't either there with a Fifth Group in Kuwait.
I was. I didn't go to Fifth Group until nineteen ninety six, Okay,
okay, So in ninety six I was my first deployment to Kuwait.
Okay, okay. So that's what I want to mix it up. So
you're sort of going through training during during the Gulf War and then ended up
there during like the no fly zone years yep. And and then I went,
yeah, that was back after we had the Iraqi war plan. Everybody
assumed that Saddam was going to retake Kuwait at some point, so it was
you know, how can we slow how can the SF people here work with
the kuwaitis to slow them down? And give other forces a time to come
and you know, establish a beach hid and get in there. And you
told the story last time about you know, the how the Saddam had erected
this huge berm over there and there's this big trench line and you kind of
got stuck in it when you were moving an asset over back across the border.
You said, there's another time you went in there and you found a
skeleton. Yeah, so this is uh when I was detailed to the agency
from two thousand two to two thousand and four. So now it's after Afghanistan
in two thousand and one and two and I'm doing cross border stuff with some
Kawiti like their equivalent of FBI and a case officer and my job was to
get assets coming out of a rack and go into the un no goes on
and get those assets and bring them back to a secret debriefing place where the
agency could debrief them and then to get them back into a rack and the
you know, so there was this big berm and a fifteen foot deep,
fifteen foot wide trench along the border that part of Kuwait, and you had
to negotiate that if you wanted to get you know, the other side of
that ditch was I rack. So yes, technically, if you wanted to
get on a racky soil, you had to cross that ditch. And you
know, we got to the point I worked with that when I first got
there, I had to work with them just to get them out in the
desert, and then work with them and get them up to the berm,
and then work with them to get them, you know, further. And
so one of the times we were down there in the bottom of this trench,
one of the guys comes across a skeleton. They bring me over there,
and you know, here's this old dish dasha, which is the you
know, the flowing robe thing that men wear there, and there was a
skeleton inside it. There was no skull, and I don't think there were
hands or feet, but it was the torso of a of a skeleton.
And I looked at the you know, I remember looking at the label on
the dish dash of trying to figure out was it Iraqi or Kuwaiti. And
so I thought, well, so either somebody murdered somebody and dumped them out
here, or some person got in this ditch and you know, tried to
cross the border and got stuck in the ditch and eventually you know, expired.
Well, I thought where it's probably animals right, had taken it off,
or maybe not. And you know, when you when you've been pushing
a long time. We've all been on deployments where it's been a long time.
For me, you know, nineteen ninety eight and ninety nine, I
was in Yemen pushing hard. Two thousand, Kuwait on a classified thing,
pushing hard, two thousand and one two interrac our Afghanistan, pushing hard straight
to Iraq or Kuwait now two thousand and two. Three. You lose a
little bit of your objectivity and maybe just a scoche of your judgment. So
and you know, we're military guys. Your sense of humor is sometimes a
little different. So I'm like, well, what am I gonna do about
this skeleton? And I started thinking about the CIA chief back there in Kuwait,
and he was always you know, one of the games was predicting when
the war would start, because we'd had George Tennant come out and everybody talking
about, you know, what date will the war kickoff? Will it kick
off? And he goes, oh, yeah, it's gonna kick off.
But you know when and you know, I just kinda again, it's sort
of the thing about me in authority. I thought it would be funny.
So I took part of this skeleton and put it in my backpack, and
I took it back to station. And of course I always roll in at
night after everybody's gone, because I'm up on the border, you know,
I do a regular day's work, and then late that afternoon I jump in
a car, drive fast as I could up to the border and do this
stuff and get back like one am. So maybe sometimes midnight. Anyway,
I went. I came into the station and went into his office, and
I piled the bones up on his off desk, and I left a note
said, hey, you're always trying to read the bones about when the war's
gonna start. Maybe this will help you. I thought it was hilarious.
As a military guy, I'm like, it's hilarious. How how did that
go over with the CIA? Yeah? The next day, you know,
I remember, you know, he come on. I'm you know, I
typed with two fingers and I'm sitting in my desk waiting for Zzy comes in
the office that day and goes back to his desk. I think this is
gonna be funny. And then I hear her screaming, Garry Harrington, come
here. You know, it's like and they and I thought, you know,
it should be something to laugh about, but they did not consider it
a laughing matter. And it was where did this come from? And then
it was like, well here, because you tell me it's real, and
I'm like, well, yeah, it looks like it's real. And then
it turned into this, you know, and look now I do see a
different side of things that I didn't see in those days. In hindsight,
well, in hindsight, that is desecrating, you know, a dead person.
I feel whoever killed him and dumped them there and took away their extremities
might have desecrated them more. But you know, then they were it was
a big deal because then it was like, we're gonna get caught with this
in the embassy and it's going to be a big international incident. So then
it was you know, I got yelled at for a while, and then
it was you have to get rid of this immediately, and you have to
do it in a respectful way, in accordance with the traditions of this country.
And I said, understood, and gathered the bones wrap the mecca up
and I left and then I went to the nearest dumpster and dumped it.
I'm gonna wage hazard. A guess that this didn't make it up in the
cable traffic. That that no, no, no, it did not make
it into cable traffic. And then all I said it was like, is
that taking care of? I just said, it's taken care of. Oh
my god, I can imagine the entire office is freaking out. Yeah,
but you know, in the army it would be a whole different thing.
But again, you know, that's one of those lessons you have to learn
your environment, and that's a differnt. It's a very different environment. Especially
Oh yeah, it's different. Like sitting there in the embassy. Like in
Kuwait, Saddam was was launching scuds towards the embassy, and the chiefs of
all the different departments had those uh warning devices that would give them a signal
when they go off, and then you know, everybody in the embassy would
sound the alarm. You had to duck and cover and get under, put
a mask on, gas mask. Everybody practiced that. So here's embassy personnel,
State Department personnel, CIA officers that have never done this before, you
know, putting on gas mask, you know, and the times where those
alarms went off, people were really frantic because they weren't military, they hadn't
really trained it, and was always I know, I remember sometimes when it
went off, having to help people, you know, particularly women that get
the scraps caught in their hair and they're now they're frantic trying to get it
in. And it was having a hard time to get people mask because I
really wasn't in a hurry to get mine on. And I'm hoping I didn't
tell this last time, but one time, I'd been at the border the
night before, so I got in at like one or so in the morning
and came into the office at eight the next morning to start writing up what
happened at the border, and you know, you're smoked. I was tired,
and about mid day at lunchtime, I thought, I'm going to go
outside and this quate one hundred and twenty five degrees and I'm gonna get in
my car in the parking lot and turn it on and turn the air conditioner
on and take a nap. That's what I'm gonna do it for lunch.
And so I was walking to exit the embassy doors and one of those alarms
went off. Everybody had been on break because it was launched, and people
were outside, and I remember thinking, well, do I duck and cover
or if technically, if you're going somewhere and you can get there quickly enough,
you can duck and cover wherever that is. So I think I'll duck
and cover in my car in the air conditioning instead of paying attention to this.
So I get ready to go out the big heavy, you know doors
on the front of an embassy. And as I got to the door to
open it, I looked, and here came everybody from the office with eyes
when we say see the whites of their eyes. Eyes were like this,
mouths were open and gone like that, and it was like the running,
and it was like a stampede coming at me, you know, to get
inside to get in. So all I did was hold the embassy doors open
and let them all pass to go in and and duck and cover. And
then I went out to my car and got in there and turned on the
air condition reclined the seatback and was asleep like this. And after a while
I thought I heard a noise and I opened my eyes and I looked,
and all around me were these guys with gas mask on and white white suits.
And it was the marine security people that in the duck and cover.
They were doing their swear sweep and found me out in the car. I
don't you know, we're in the ship right now. Well, they by
that time they knew I was former marine. Is like we did people carry
their gas mass on them or did they like leave it at their desks and
stuff? Left it at their desk If you went out in a car,
you were supposed to, you know, take it. But so you had
mentioned a bit that you were on one of the ASOT teams and kind of
that got parlayed into Yemen, which then got parlayed into Kuwait. I mean,
you talk a little bit about like how that kind of progression took place
because your your career, like even as an operator or Green Beret or marine,
it's a little bit unconventional. It's more on the intel side. I
think, I feel like all along, Yeah, well, someday I'm I
want to write a book and it's going to be called against the Grain and
unconventional Man in unconventional War. And I don't know I it kind of goes
with my personality. I just I don't know, I don't like to.
I kind of follow along, but not all the way. You know,
I can't always buy into everything. And so with a soot you know,
I talked last time that my former Delta commander had asked me to help take
part in this push towards more UW with maybe a U twist to it.
And fifth group had some of the original guys I mentioned before, Steve Potit,
but Mark Vorpaul, David Stevenson. Those were guys that had been you
know, kind of pioneers and helping trying to formulate where we would go with
that. So you know, I went to a scot and maybe because I
had the TS clearance from having been in Delta and whatever else, I graduated
and again I was pretty lucky in in uh As. I think ASID you
know, trains you to be an effective pilot team member and they back in
my day and it was really emphasized that. So after graduating aside, just
a couple of months later, I got contacted by Socks Scent to come down
and talk about, you know, a program. So I wound up going
to Yemen to be the first SF person to employ the legally employee some of
the things taught in a side or you know, it was a test case
to see what what can we do? And that was in order to enable
me to make accurate assessments for the security of a O D A. I
think a ST at least in its original stand up, was so that you
know, your small detachments like a like a special forces team in a foreign
country has the ability to establish ways to gather information and make its own assessment
and and protect itself, uh from you know, coup, terror attacks or
whatever it might be because you don't have that big support force protection mechanism.
And so yeah, I was the first guy for the people who don't really
know what we're talking about out there. And I mean to the extent that
you're comfortable talking about about it. I mean, can you describe a little
bit about like what a SOT was if if I understand the history of it
right? I mean before that there was oh and I right, Operations and
Intelligent. I had been to that, which is more teaches you how to
be a good intel officer on an O day, and they had the rsts
AT group, which was the one RST that did the surveys. But yeah,
for so for ASOT, like they really did focus on like the final
exercise is you're you know, you're you play the role of a team that
has been inserted into a country that we used to have relationships with but abandoned.
So they'd been in guerrillas. You're supposed to re establish contact with this.
Come on, it's just like so and you know, they're a way
we learned the ways to communicate, let's say sort of the old uh,
you know, sticks and chalk mark things that that people did back in the
day and during the Cold War. So communications techniques and I would say,
and maybe some other stuff that you learned how to employ we can say human
and as a broad term, and trade craft like you essential trade craft,
essential trade yeah, right, yeah, And so they deployed you to Yemen
as sort of like a test bed to see like can we can we develop
this capability? Yes? And you you know, it's really an honor to
be the first person and an E seven to show up in an embassy and
tell the defense attache, the ambassador and the chief of station there that guess
what I'm here to do? Right, And I'm an E seven Army guy,
right, and and and they go no, yeah, no, none
of you. And uh it took a lot of doing, uh to try
to get permission to get them on board with them, get them on board
with that. But you know, but but if I think again before,
well, you know, and I think, you know, we talked last
time about about my assessment in Yemen and predicting that something like what happened with
the coal could happen and going against the status quo and all the other UH
intelligence entities and State Department and analysts there. And so I believe that that
sort of bears out that having that experience that I seasoned military person who's deployed
a lot and seen a lot can bring to bear with the proper clearances,
so you can see the right information and skills to be able to have the
freedom of movement and get out and operate and make your own personal assessment on
the ground. You know, I think it offers a different view. It's
not that you know, where operators an operators view isn't the only view,
but it's an important view. I think in a low intensity conflict, uncertain
environment, or hostile environment. To have other than that straight State Department SEI,
right, And with things like that, you know, both having a
background in UW and uncomming sure offer and counter terrorism, you know, you
have this experience that say an analyst or you know, any any other type
of surveyor wouldn't have in the sense of if I, if we were my
job to attack this thing, like how would I do it? And and
or if it were my ODA coming in would I want to do? And
there's I think that people who don't have that experience think that they can imagine
those things, but that often they don't necessarily have the on the ground experience
to actually understand how those attacks. And especially when you talk about like the
cool or you know, suicide bombings, like you can imagine you can kind
of push it out, how would I how would I attack attached or strategic
target if I weren't afraid of loss of life, if like, if if
I had people just willing to like to to kill themselves or whatever. And
in my career, I think I learned that with the military, we have
a preemptive and solutions based mindset. And there's a problem or here's a potential
problem, I'm going to solve it. Here's how I want to do with
a lot of the federal government and including you know, love the FBI of
a lot of people in there, but there there and after the coal it
was a lot of what we here comes from FBI investigation. But those are
more police oriented after the fact organizations. They are built that once a crime
has occurred, to preserve evidence, investigate and find somebody to prosecute and hold
accountable for that. And that's their role and it should be. And as
I think as a military person, you come again with that more red cell,
here's how I would do it, so I know better how to prevent
it, and and and and I'm going to treat it as an attack.
I'm going to go after a solution, right. And I'm not saying that's
always the right answer, I believe you know. I'm glad we have civilians
in the ultimate places of authority in countries and other places we go because hey,
if it's me, I'm going to give you that military answer right all
the time. You know, there's nothing we can't do, not given enough
uh resources and materials and personnel, we can make it, right, right,
yeah, And that's just not feasible, right right, And and so
how did you eventually, like, how did you because obviously, especially like
the chief of station here, you are somebody with with trade craft and you
want to go out and you know, maybe set up a little little sources
or do whatever, but you know, sort of do this advanced force type
of operation. How do you sell the chief of station on this when at
this point in time, obviously the agency in the military didn't necessarily have the
same working relationship that they do today. You know, the first time,
I'll be honest, I got told no. And even though I showed them
the the paperwork and all that said yes, they said no. So I
waited and I refigure, you know, I told the party line, did
stuff made myself valuable? Then I waited a few weeks and I you know,
went back through that rag and highlighted a few key phrases and all,
and came back and said I'd like to readdress this and here's this. And
then then I said, hey, look, I'm not trying to be you.
I'm not you. I don't want to do what you do. I
just had this little thing here and I'm not going to step on any toes.
I'll tell you and show you everything I do were they a little more
receptive if you did it pitch it as more of like a force protection and
I always from the beginning, you know this is I think things change much
later. But it was a forced protection issue because D miners were going to
come in a few months and a D mining contingent and another ODA to do
some train some FID or some training of some Yemeni unit. And it was
for forced protection for that and and and to be honest, the first time,
I'm a new person. They don't know me, and so it's no,
this looks funny and wonky. It's never been done. We're not doing
it right. And that's why you know, you need to be on the
ground a while and let them see who you kitchen and get to know your
some and then you know you need long enough to be able to pull the
wool over their eyes before you can get it past them. Right. But
ultimately that was the mission was successful. Yeah, you know I was allowed
to be on my own more and travel around and do stuff. And yeah
I got corraled once that Hey, you know, what are you doing driving
around yem and yourself and nobody does that, and you know you need to
get in your you know, you need to stay make sure you stay here
in this box. Yeah. But but I was able to, you know,
cut my teeth, get my feet on the ground, and talk to
people, which led to my assessments that predicted, you know, what might
happen regarding the attack on the coal And I remember you telling me that like
that was not well received. Nah. No, the ambassador. In all
my training, nobody told me that if you write anything, the ambassador has
the right to review it, change it, edit it. I mean,
it doesn't matter what it is. They have that right. And I thought
I could by pass ambassadorial comment and review by just sending a a area assessment
back, and that turned out not to be the case. The Ambassador was
angry. She flew down from SNA to Aiden and called all of us in
a room and you know, talked, talked to me specifically about my report.
But she reiterated, you know, some of her contingencies about now we
were just there to do a job and shouldn't have rifles we were, you
know, in her view, it seemed like just as much as a threat
as anybody else in the country because we might do something that might cause a
problem. Because her her line of diplomatic effort was more of like, I
don't want to say normalizing relations, but building diplomatic relations. Uh, you
know, you know, be honest, My opinion is her line of thought
was, I can't have anything that will in any kind of report that comes
out that makes this a dangerous place that causes Hillary Clinton to cancel her planned
trip here. So I mean, to be honest, that's I believe that,
and I don't. I don't think I could be convinced that was any
other reason for that. Yeah, I mean, and I understand I guess
the political implications, but this is also like the makings of the scandal too,
Like if if they do come there and then an attack happens, and
then there's a big, thorough review like the nineteen eighty three Bay Route bombing.
I mean, this is a big thing where there were people, you
know, we talked to Mike Taylor about this. I mean that you know,
there were people warning that, you know, something was percolating here,
something bad was going to happen, and then a bunch of people die and
after him. Yeah, and after the fact, it's like, oh,
we should have seen this coming. Well, and things on the ground and
Beirut changed over time, and it wasn't the place we first went into,
right, but where what? And and but yet but that that becomes that
that yin and yang between the civilian authorities, the ambassador and the military people
on the ground. I don't know if last time I told the story,
but in Beirut, you know, I was covering the beach and it had
my recomplatoon there on the beach outside the airport. It was down on low
ground and there was a big berm and a big highway right beside that.
Well, so to defend against that, because we're down in the low ground,
I built two giant sandbag machine gun placements up parallel to the road.
And at one point we took these big giant shipping crates, plywood shipping crates
that came off a ship and put it up on the machine gun emplacement and
put the sandbags around it. But then I was able to put a roof
on it and put three layers of sandbags on top. Why because I'm protecting
from RPG and grenades, and you know, I'm standing again. I'm a
second lieutenant in the Marine Corps and I'm I'm there. And one day this
probably a suburban or pulls up and some guy in a suit gets out and
he comes over me. He goes, who's in charge here? I am?
And he said, what's that's a machine gun in placement? Yo?
What's that on top of there? I said, that's a roof? He
goes, is that wood in there? I go it is? He said,
well, that looks like you're planning to make a permanent It makes us
look like we're establishing a permanent presence here, and I might know it's to
protect against this. He goes and he said, well, I want you
to take it down. I said, who are you? He said,
I'm ambassador to Crockett And I said, yeah, well I'm Lieutenant Harrington,
I said, And he goes, why you take that down now? I
go, know that protects the Marines. He said, I'm ordering you to
take it down now. I said, why don't you go on from here?
And when a competent authority in a marine corps tells me to take it
down, and I'll take it down. But you don't know, I know,
ambassadors have the ultimate authority. Yeah yeah, I thought, yeah,
I'm being just like yawning that yahoo. Yeah, I'm doing the right thing.
Yeah, when he leaves in about twenty minutes later, I get a
call in the radio from the Marine commander who's really upset and who informs me
that, hey, you know you need to take that down. But that,
for me was that whole thing of here, we are now putting personal
safety at risk for political messaging, and it's not even messaging. No one
in Beyirut believes that your little bunker's thing for your machine gun is a permanent,
persistent presence of marines. You're not building a headquarters bunker. What's not
a pill box carved into the mountain side. Yeah. I would like to
say that stuff can't happen in the military, but there have been a special
Forces aren't made or two who have wanted guys to go out and paint rocks.
Yeah, yeah, to beautify they Oh yeah, yeah, we know
so and so while I might be hard on, you know, that ambassador
for that thing at that time, and I'm pretty hard against uh about Ambassador
BNS Bodine's choices. Yeah, maybe there's a few military people that have done
the same. Oh yeah, I think area beautification is specifically a military term.
Yeah, they don't, they don't have Foreign Service officers out painting rocks.
Yeah, that doesn't happen. Yeah, So what what year was it
when you wrote this report that you know that the ambassador didn't. That was
nineteen nineteen nine. I went there. I went to Yemen in ninety eight
and stayed over into ninety nine. That was pretty prophetic. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean, and remember in January two thousand was the attempt by the
same guys on the USS, the Sullivans, and it didn't you know,
it didn't work out for them, and you know, so then they retried
and regrouped and retried in October. And the fact that they could that they
could try it once and not be successful and then do it and then that
that doesn't level, that doesn't raise like the threat level and everybody's defensive posture.
And maybe it did and it just didn't work. But the fact that
then they could turn around and do it on the coal you know, after
their tests run. Yeah. No, I understand that push pull between diplomacy
and military security, but I mean, come on, at a certain point,
it's like, no, it's not well. I think I told you
before that that the Islamic Army of Aiden I showed up. I'm told the
accepted story was it's three guys and a fax machine that just make threats against
Western and Western and there are very few Westerners there at that time. So
then you know, things go on, there's a few car bombings, they
get more active. I talked last time about the arrest of the Aiden's six
while we were in Aiden, you know, and you know their direct tie
to potentially trying to to hit us and where we were staying. And then
the hostage standoff, you know, in a fight and some hostages were killed.
So to me, all the analysts and the intelligence agencies failed to take
into account this escalation and again that whole thing of where we're military people.
So you know, again I have people. I have people that are dedicated,
that have proven that they have access to weapons, have proven they will
take violent action against Westerners and have a stated interest. And yes, I
did see the segent that you know, so I understood that why people said
it wasn't an al Qaeda place and there's never been any operations there and there
were no direct operational ties to al Qaeda at that time. Okay, I
get that, but I still have a bunch of inept guys that will do
whatever they're right told, they're getting better and yeah, and so again,
my my ultimate assessment with military experience was, Okay, what if they ever
accept operational control from delta, I mean from from the from al Qaeda,
and al Qaeda provides training and operational develops the operations, or they host a
cell right from al Qaeda. Well, and guess what the whole thing was
a cell that was hosted. Yeah, and a lot of those, a
lot of those what we would call like minor league or you know, third
tier whatever like organizations out there in Africa and you know in in the Middle
East who I mean in the Philippine wherever, who we would say, well,
they're not a Q, it's like, but but they want to be.
And so they're trying to make their mark so that a Q will like
send them funding and send like they're trying to like step on the stage.
So they're willing to go a little bit further. That's what happened with isis
isis quote unquote in air quotes isis in the Philippines. I mean they're really
just bandits, but they're trying to get the attention. Same thing and the
again quote unquote isis groups in Africa. They're trying to get the attention of
the bigger players. Get the money at the recognition, get the funding,
get the training, the exposure. So the way they do that is they
go out and they try to make these big things happen so that the parent
organ you know, they're the organization, will look back and go, hey,
yeah, we'll pick you guys up too well. And even on a
smaller scale like go to go to Syria. Right when you first had the
trained terrorists coming in from Afghanistan, the Khakistan uh To into Syria, the
people they hooked up with became successful in the battlefield. Right. So now
here's this guy. Now, the local that has brought in, you know,
a host of a cell is becoming successful. He's becoming bigger and more
popular and more powerful. So now his competitor fifty miles away, hey I
need one of those night and and and so now you get this and people
are welcoming these franchises, yeah, because it grows their power. It's really
that much different than us going into Afghanistan with suitcases of money and right,
and more lords today on our side. Right. So, speaking of which
I mean well, jump a little forward ahead. I mean, we talked
about Yemen, we talked about Kuwait the last time we spoke the previous episode,
we talked a lot about going in Afghanistan and Tora Bora, some really
incredible stories there. But I want to jump a little bit further forward into
the Cowst bombing and sort of your your awareness of that. I think we've
had a number of guests on the show who have talked about the Cowst bombing.
CIA personnel. Do you want to talk about it from from your point
of view and what happened in the aftermath. Sure. So this is one
of those incidents, right that it's a very siminal incident, and it's very
emotional to a lot of people. So you know, I want to capiat
to anybody out there that this is my personal view, all right. You
know, we had FBI has or in law enforcement. There's this saying the
lust for the bust. So it's sometimes you get ahead of your skis lean
too far far forward because you want to make that bust. So here al
Qaeda played the agency masterfully, right, Yeah, they dangled this guy,
they let photos leak of him with very senior Al Qaeda people you know,
so the whole thing with you when you have an asset, you know,
who is this guy? What does he claimed to be? Can we verify
that? Okay, he's who he says to be. What is his access?
Okay, how we verify that access? So who? What is everybody
looking for? Access to the top tier? So oh wait a second.
If we have what we think of his proof that this guy has access to
the top tier, now, then you know that desire to do something becomes
very strong, and you know there are a lot of patriotic reasons that we
all want to do that too, right, But then in any bureaucracy,
I think there's also some career minded people that like to latch onto things that
that have a big result because of what it does for their their their careers.
And I'm not pointing to any person in specific on this, but because
of the desire to get a big hit against a big person, the standard
precautions, a lot of those were thrown to the wind. I'm sure your
other guests have talked about just the tactical part, not not searching the guy
before he came in. That can't be you know, I've I've brought assets
and some of them were bad guys onto A, you know, the Ariana
hotel compound, but not until I or the GRS guys the with me searched
them to make sure they did not have anything on them before I would ever
bring them somewhere where I would risk other people to them. And in this
case, right, you have this guy that gave a reason he did not
want to be searched, so they call was made not to search him,
and of course, you know he that enabled him to detonate himself. And
then what compounded that was because you know, I worked on another top five
al Qaeda targeting event and I saw how that that draws people. And if
it's a top ten person or you get some help from headquarters and you sometimes
help you don't ask for, and help that you can't refuse, and a
lot of them and everybody's coming in and giving their expertise and chipping in and
a lot of that stuff is helpful, right, a lot of it is,
but there's just a lot of it. So the day that he came,
there are a lot of people that you know, finally, finally we
have someone. So it's just sucked in, which would never happened. No,
No, and why is that? I mean that kind of goes to
the bigger question. One of the things I loved about Special Forces and particularly
Delta was that it was an NCO driven operation and that you know, if
you were if you as an we're in charge of this part of a takedown
wherever it was left to you, well, you know, they don't have
that same mentality or ethos in somewhere like the CIA, so you know,
and and like taking if you're in a regular infantry unit in the military and
you get this sort of big thing, Okay, the senior officers are gonna
come in, right, yeah, the general going and uh so, yeah,
I think you know it. It drew people in and it was this
big deal. And then when you I think maybe some people excused or you
know, you you rationalize in your own brain why we're not doing this that
we would normally do because well, so and so is senior and they're here
and they're buying off on this, So okay, I buy off on it.
And you know that that happened, you know, so it was you
know, it was Yeah, it was a shock throughout and then that I
think that's the first time it really hit the agency hard because we've lost people,
of course in different assaults and different attacks, and going back to Beirut
and throughout the history, you know, we have the wall where people in
the agency, you know, have have given their lives. But here it
was like in the War on Terrace since nine to eleven, here's a time
where they actually targeted and attacked us in a larger scale and it was successful.
So there was a lot of anger and and and angst about that.
You know, the agency was able to through different through multiple sources of intelligence
to figure out after the fact where that attack came from or where the guy
that in charge that was in Pakistan, and you know, it took a
while because you have to verify and just that whole process to verify I was
involved in trying to verify that it was. It was a rough time because
every single day I was getting pink from head quarters. You know, have
you verified? You know, you know, because people really really wanted to
do something in response to that attack. But yes, eventually the agency was
able, that's out in the press, to go after and get Hussain or
who's saying al Yamini, who was the person responsible for the who did they
tag him in a drune strike. Is that how that? Yeah, it
tagged him in a compound in in Pakistan, and you know it was a
compound that was attached to you know, a housing unit, so you know
it was but then over time, you know, they saw what we're al
Qaeda coming in and out of that house. So eventually the strike was taken.
Uh. You know, at first, there were quite a number of
people in that building, and we think about the bombs and how efficient they
are. I think there there were a number of missiles fired into that building,
and yeah, it's a mud you know, the buildings that we've all
seen in Pakistan and and Afghanis and Afghanistan. So it destroyed a lot of
the building. But let's see, I think there were like nineteen people in
that building. As they got ready to shoot, two walked out like five
seconds before. And then you know, if you think everybody's done for but
a lot of people were just shaken and rubble and got up and walked away.
But the focus of the attack was on the It was during cold weather,
so on the central room, and you know, the the people in
that room were you know, perished. So and then they al Qaeda comes
and all came out with that guy getting getting killed. So so the CIA
did get some measure of revenge for on the people that helped initiate the attack
on coast. You know. On that note too, I mean, since
since we have you here, I can't help but ask if you had any
situational awareness on all the stuff that went down with the bin laden targeting.
Uh I did not. You know, the we all at some point and
when I was chasing after some top tier al Qaeda personnel, of course bin
Ladden was always a discussion, and I spoke with some analysts from that team
flew out and talk to me about what I was doing. So we talked
about that. But I don't know that. I do know, like there
is a guy, a former u SF an Orange guy that was one of
the key people that for many many months helped put together that target package.
And this is a guy and a al out there. I'm not gonna say
your last name, but you know, this is that guy. That's that
guy, does he al is? You know, he's a he's a really
really nice guy, and you know that. You know, I just wish
that people could know that here's this guy who's never gotten any credit or acknowledgement
for you know, all that work that he did, and yet you know
he's that guy. You know, I talked about being the guy with the
experience to be in the right place at the right time, to be able
to make calls like on the coal and stuff. Well, here's the guy
that had all that experience and knowledge that was able to be in that role
to help put together that which I think, you know, helped lead to
that successful take out of Ben Ladden, right, And uh, I just
wish that that guy was the kind of guy you guys could have. Yeah,
I know we would. I mean, it's it's interesting. We've also
talked on the show about the the guy who was the first one to that
shot Ben Ladden, who has never gone public, never said anything about what
he did, and the dev Group operator, and it's just it's it's interesting
and uh to hear that there are these guys out there that like, did
my job and that's enough walk away from it. And I mean, I
hope they're sitting on the beach drinking my ties somewhere enjoying life. Yeah,
yeah, that's true. But with that said, al and Red, I
guess, yeah, if you ever want to go to the show. Could
you talk then a little bit about like the secrecy around it, like when
it when it when it went down, I mean, did you know it
was coming or was it like so compartmentalized you were just like what no?
After after the fact, Yeah, right, Uh, sure everybody was really
happy, everybody on the inside, you know, I'd say, I'm sure
all the intelligence and law enforce maidencies, you know, you get you before
the headlines hit, you get that first reverberation through, and and there was
a lot of happiness, excitement. I wasn't smart enough as some people were
to save and use papers with with the h excuse me, the headlines and
stuff and so yeah, but but the other details and and that's one of
those things where I didn't I'm not one of those people that I wanted to
try to dig and call the people I knew and try to get him and
talk about it, because it's like, hey, I have somebody else's gig
and they did it. And and it also sometimes it makes people uncomfortable,
right, like to you know, when when you're friends with somebody, you
try to pry that you know that's you know, secret stuff out them or
whatever. They're like, you know, it's it's almost like you're leveraging your
friendship right in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know,
and and you know, and I was busy doing other things too, So
yeah, it was a great day. And part of it, part it
let's let's be honest. And in some ways it's like this, we're in
for a change now that parts ye over and and and and it does change.
Certainly the war on Terror didn't end with him, but it turned a
page I think in the hearts and minds of the American people. And maybe
it's important right that we need to you know, we're on our end in
the military and intelligence agencies. We're out there pursuing those goals and those objectives
to lead that way. But then there comes that time when it's time to
turn the page on that, right, And you know, if you give
us like right right with MacArthur ever stopped in Korea, right, we're out
calling in China. But but we need those people to say no, it's
time to turn the page on that. And I think that's I think it's
so doing this. This podcast has been like so cool because getting to talk
to people like you who are there early on and Mark Paulmeropolis gave us that
print that's behind you about the invasion We've had justin sapp and j R.
Seeger on the show those like initial teams that went in Afghanistan and we're kind
of all you guys were there for American like a very dark time. Whether
there's this period of time like are we just helpless? Yeah? And I
feel like you kind of showed that like no, we're We're not. We're
definitely not helpless, like there is a way to fight back. And then
the chapter on that part of American history closed with the Bill Laden Rate.
I would say, I think it did did the two again to a large
and and that whole part of answering are we helpless? Right? And and
you know, and I go back, what what whatever people think about George
Bush. You know, we will get to and you know a lot of
us believe that, and we would never stop. It's true that sometimes our
government says no stop, but but there are Americans that will give the best
years of their lives to pursue these goals and the efforts right right well,
and you know, you it's interesting to me when people talk about Afghanistan,
how we lost in Afghanistan, because if you were just to take what our
initial goal was in Afghanistan, which was to eliminate al Qaeda, like we
did that fast. Like we achieved that goal in Afghanistan very quickly, and
then it became sort of this you know, sort of nebulous, ambiguous sort
of war against the Taliban and other elements. But when it comes to what
we set out to do initially there, we did it very quickly, you
know. So it's uh, yeah, it's you know, you talk about
bush and like when we went into Afghanistan to elemit al Qaireda, you know,
like talk about justin sapp and you know, the guys we've had on
like you know, like Jared' cigarette, like they rolled through that country quickly.
It was so I was on four of those teams and with and last
time we talked about it, I stood in Tora Bora on top of the
mountain with in my op and I was telling those guys, yeah, you
know, this is easy. Now. It's like playing King of the hill.
We've got the aircraft, we're knocking them off the hill. But to
stay here, right And at the time, I said, ten years from
now, we'll still be here, and it's not going to be this easy.
I didn't realize it'd be twenty right, right, right, But and
you know that's just the way it goes. Yeah, you know, we
we we're talking about some serious things here. And I mentioned before to you
that I would tell you some funny stories about frank Tony. Frank Tony,
so General frank TONI. When I met General frank TONI was when this coincides
with that whole ASOT thing we talked about. So he was the commander of
SOXEM and I go down and and meet frank Tony, and frank TONI is
known he was a hardcore, uh military guy, you know, more rangerish
than special forces. Yeah, you know, I'd say I was gonna see
like a marine in an army Union. Yeah. And the famous quote for
frank TONI was I don't need to speak no foreign language. I speak five
five six, Right. He's like, yeah, I don't need no blankety
blank foreign language. You just shoot people and that's all the count So,
I mean that's the way he was. And he would he liked things more
of the way a rangers liked things. So you know he's you know,
I go off and I go to Yemen to be this guy. Well,
I'm in Yemen, so I'm wearing civilian clothes. My hair grows out.
You can't hardly ever get to find a barber anyway, So who cares,
you know, I'm and I'm working the position they gave me in the embassy,
was working in the Defensivettache's office as the operational NCO because they they didn't
have one. So it's just like two guys and a warrant officer, a
colonel and me. And yeah, I'm in civilian clothes. I'm trying to
fill that job while I'm trying to learn about Yemen and and make my assessment
about the security situation there. And General frank Toni's coming out for a visit.
So the embassy, you know it, gets it, gets all ready
for this visit, and a defense attache and the major and I because I'm
the NCO. So I'm going to carry suitcases and stuff go out to meet
the General coming in on his little airplane. And I'm like, whoo,
you know, I know the stories about frank Tony. I really need to
get a haircut and shave my mustache, but I was too busy. I
didn't have time, so you know, I'm i'm I'm I'm not looking like
a soldier would look. And he lands, and now I'm nervous because he's
known to be pretty mercurial in his temperate as well, and I'm just trying
to stay out of his vision and line might and not talk to him.
And they he comes, he gets off the plane, they greet him,
They come over with with that, with his bags, and they're sitting there
on beside the tarmac and then the major from the Defensive tache's office says,
Sarin Harrington, take his passport over and get expedited and get get that through.
And I start to go, and he goes, did you call him
sergeant? And this major, who didn't like the fact that I was Special
Forces and didn't like the fact that I claimed to be allowed to do some
of the things that I said I was going to do because of a side,
took that opportunity to say, hell, General, he's one of your
special forces boys. And Frank Tony looked at me. He just went like
he went, I just started staring and looking and uh, and he goes,
you are special Forces. I say, I'll get your passport and I
took off to go expedite his passport, and I think for the next couple
of days and I just tried to like, he just would stare at me,
and I just tried to stay. The next time you saw him,
did you have a hind tight na? I couldn't get it right, But
then you know, if some things happened. The embassy didn't really want to
deal with him, so they kind of like and it was a holiday coming
up, so they were all like planning on taking off and he's there.
He's like, I'm gonna be taking around and showing around, and every right
turned to me and goes, he's kind of your responsibility, and we okay.
So I became his driver and try to take him around, and I
think one of the first times he really did not like me. And I
think the first time we started breaking ice was there was a Special Forces detachment
that was training a Yemeni unit down on the Red Sea on the coast,
and he was going to take a helicopter down to visit them. So I
drove him out to this base and we're there and it was just chaos.
The Yemeni military was It was just a group of dudes. And eventually a
hip started coming in and there was like nobody knew, there was no guidance,
no anything. So hey, I do what a Special Forces guy would
do. I get out there, I start providing guidance to the helicopter and
trying to get it to land, and of course it's it's not, but
it eventually lands, and so we're gonna get myself, General Tony and a
few Yemeni officers are going to get on this aircraft and fly down to the
coast. And so they get on. One of the Yemeni generals has his
kid with him and he's smoking a cigarette, and you know, they all
just get on this aircraft and there you could see from inside the door there
was a big, like fifty five gallon drum painted red head JP fuel in
it, and the guy's leaning on it like this, smoking a cigarette and
his kids in there. And then they decide that we need to send some
security guys. So I don't know what they say to everybody, but then
next thing, you know, everybody wants to be the person to do that.
So they all rushed the helicopter. I mean like eighty people rushed the
helicopter. And yeah, the n CEO and you comes out. So I'm
like, you know, blank this. So I waded into the people and
I start Yemenis are not real big, right, and so I start grabbing
people and throwing them to the side. And I get my way to the
door and I'm grabbing guys and just pull them and throwing them out. And
I climb up on the aircraft and I look and everybody looks at me like
that, and so I'll start walking down And the first thing was that Yemeny
general leaning over the fuel with his cigarette. I went up to him and
smacked his hand and face with the cigarette and to knock it out of his
hand, and I, you know, stumped out the cigarette and went like
that. And I walked down the line, and you know, there were
guys that had their rifles facing up, and so I grabbed their rifles and
turned them down and h walked back in. General Tony was sitting at the
back and when I got back there, he just looked at me kind of
laughed like, yeah, that's my guy. And we got on this aircraft
and I don't know how we ever made it to where we were going and
coming back. But then while we were there at this unit. I didn't
want to encroach. There was an odia there. They hosted the general.
They were in uniform. They all went in this room where the officers were
gonna eat this luncheon, and so I stayed out because I went in civilian
clothes with all the juneys, you know, the really low level Yemeni guys,
and hey, I'm in there in the middle, you know, with
my hand, go grabbing and rice grabbing and eating with my hand and having
a good time. After that, I said, well, nothing speaks the
language like training. So I went outside and was doing some disarming techniques and
I was letting people with knives try to, you know, see if they
could attack me. And I was doing some takeaways and stuff like that.
So I had this big group around me, and I guess the luncheon finished
in there and they came outside, and I guess the general came outside and
sees this crowd of people around there, and then he comes and I'm in
the middle of it, and he goes, what are you doing? And
you know, he saw what I was doing, and I think, you
know, and he was like okay, And so he looked at me a
little differently from that point because he didn't see me as this filion guy with
long hair, right stuff. And we go back and it was funny because
it's a holiday. We get back and he's supposed to go to some dinner,
some big dinner that night, and we are late and it's running behind
and I'm driving him, and so I pick him up after he give him
a chance to get cleaned up, and I pick him up in the car
and he wants to go to the Marriott Hotel and go to the gift shop.
He said, I was here six months ago. And so we go
in the gift shop and he's looking for a souvenir to take home, and
you know, we're looking and looking and I'm looking at my watching like he's,
you know, I'm supposed you're supposed to be at that dinner like already,
you know, And and he's looking and looking and he's now and now
he'll talk to me, and he goes, sertain Harrington, what do you
think of this? And what are you think of that? And I'm like,
yeah, okay, sir lt. And then then he tells me,
you know, and I just want to think about that. But somebody,
because he's passed now then you know. At some point he looked at me
and said, yeah, you know, I got to buy something to take
home because you need one of those uh things that it's not at his exact
words, but that lubricates things to h to take home and h. He
used a different terminology, but uh. And I was like okay. And
then I go away. I'm like, moh man, it's getting late.
And he calls me over there again, like the third time, and he
goes, oh, I sorry, herts, I can't decide on this.
He goes, I swear I was here six months ago and this thing was
forty or fifty dollars cheaper, and they want uh ninety dollars or one hundred
dollars for this this painting or whatever it was at that point, and we
were so late at that point, I'm like, hey, I guess i'll
throw it all on the line now. So I said, so he said
what do you think? And I looked at him and I said, I
don't give a flying f about that. I goes, you're a g D
general And it seems to me if you want to buy a blanking one hundred
dollars painting to take home and get the effect, you said you wanted,
then you want to be able to buy it. And at first I thought,
oh my god, I've overstepped my head because he looked at me like
he went red like that. He glared at me, and and I was
like, oh, I have really stepped into it. And he stared at
me, and then he broke out laughing, and he goes, there,
you're right, he goes, and he bought it. And then and then
we get in the car and I started driving like hell, I'm you know,
cutting across mediums and driving, and he was I guess he was nervous.
He was doing like this in the seat and I was like, what's
up, sir, And he goes, well, I need to stop and
get a gift for the hostess. I go, you have that bag of
stuff that your aid has. The'll just give her something some of that.
We don't need to stop, and he goes, yeah, sometimes I just
get keyed up. He goes, man, I just wish I could have
a beer. I go the only place to have a beer is back at
the Marriott where we just left. He goes, well, I wish I
and I and I turned a car across the medium and we went back and
grabbed a beer at the Marriott, and then I took him to his dinner
and all that, and uh, you know, it was funny because after
that, you know, my my thing and yemming ended. I went home.
Oh oh, more and more thing on frank Tony. So he gets
that, he gets ready to leave the country. He goes down to the
sook and he buys this big sword. Everybody came through buying stuff. Matter
of fact, General Zenny had a plane that came through with all his staff
and they simply to go souvenir buying in Yemen. It's okay, but he
couldn't get his sword on the plane to go a commercial plane to go home.
So he left it with me, can you get this home? And
it was a few months later he was already home and General Zenny's small plane
came through for because he came in for a visit. And I was like,
I'll get your sword at home, So you're going to Tampa, okay.
And I made a deal with the pilots and I'm gonna stick his sword
on the on the plane. So I sent a note back. You know,
of course, as I've already put this into play, I sent a
note back to Tampa that hey, I got that, and then it came
back do not put that sword on that plane because he did not want to
be perceived as impinging on General Zenny to get a personal thing back. And
I was like, yeah, too late, it's gone, and I sent
his sword back. But you know, after that, you know, I
did a follow on classified thing where I went to Kuwait to do the first
AFO office thing where I supervised some oda's doing some battlefield you know, preparation
of the battlefield activities and uh and General Tony was the guy I had to
brief, you know, And it is interested because I you know, he
we got were we knew each other, had a long time to get a
haircut at that point in time or well, of course I did get a
haircut at that point in time, but it was just that funny. Yeah.
Well it's interesting too because you know, prior to the g Watt right,
like, you know, you'd see guys from maybe debt A and Germany
or whatever that, but but relaxed grooming standards wasn't a thing. And and
and you know maybe with like Delta or whatever, but but in general,
lack grooming standards was like like people didn't like it. They didn't. It
wasn't a thing. And it wasn't until we became more active, I guess,
you know, as a force on the world stage, where where it
became just more of an accepted practice. Dude, I had I had a
memo from my commander that said, I was'm relaxed grooming standards and like I
got kicked out of post gyms, like you can't work out here really.
Well, it's like the SF guys at Fort Campbell, you know, if
you didn't wear the ankle over the ankle white sox, Serge majors would chase
you down and and that. But what like what it's so crazy like the
things that especially a peacetime military, I mean even in the wartime. I
remember I remember uh a uh bogram how once like major commands that settled in
how everybody was supposed to wear a PT belt at all hours and that's the
nature of it, right, But let's be honest. When when I went
to Delta, right we say relaxed groomy standards. What you want to do
anywhere when you go when you're a new person, is you want to fit
in right and you want to assume the identity of the people ahead of you.
So back in the day when I went, you know, talking about
nineteen ninety ish, that the Delta uniform was to grow your air longer.
And you couldn't have a beard, but you grew that mustache out further than
you could. Now. It wasn't supposed to go down like this, but
you could go past the ends of the borders of your lips, which the
military, you know, the rest of the military, uh didn't allow.
And then what else the polo shirt and the straight legged, three button five
oh one jeans and the hush puppy high top shoes. So what you're doing
is I'm not wearing a uniform because I need to blend in. But what
I'm doing is wearing an exact form, right, just a different uniform,
right, and and and and we did that religiously, and we thought,
and what did I tell myself, I'm blending in? Yeah, like that,
But what I really wanted to be do was to be identified with those
people other people that I saw, right and then, and I think that
was true. I mean that was true of like every organization and that tried
to blend in. Is that all of their here was either from Arii or
North Face like it was. It's also it's also here, but it's also
yeah yeah, yeah, that's yeah. But it's all five to eleven and
Arii and you know, and well that used to be the thing in the
agency when I was out there that you know, then you the agency before
somebody would go to the war zone. They give you this uh payment to
go out and buy clothes. So a lot of people went to Orvius or
like you said, Arii, but a lot of to Orvius. And you
see that guys show up. It's wearing the Fisherman shirt, the car new
Cargo pants and Keene or whatever brand boots and all that stuff. It's all
brand new stuff. And you that you know, and that's and and look
what they're doing their job. One of my favorite stories is about it's from
the Indians and the Pakistanians went to war in Kashmir and I think it was
nineteen ninety nine and the Indians, like their mountaineer troop shows up at an
Arii in the UK and they're like, yeah, we want this and we're
going to be in the mountains. We need this and that, and they're
like, oh, you need this, this, and this, and they're
like, oh, how do you know that? They're like, oh,
the Pakistinians, we're here a week ago. Yeah, what it's like in
Uh, when I went to coast to open up the Coast base in Afghanistan,
we parachuted in all these the cias sent all these crates that we parachuted
in that had you know, in addition to the arms and ammunition, we're
clothing winter clothing because nobody had winter clothing. So we're getting all these things
that have the parkas, the field jackets, boots, Uh, what's the
browns? Poly polypro, wool caps, booney caps, all that stuff.
So you know, we start giving it out. Well here we are used
to Americans, and we had to hold a class because next thing you know,
here it comes guys out wearing polypro on top of their of their other
clothes and there's a guy wearing a booney cap and on top of that is
a wool cap stuck on top of that. And when it was like comical,
stuff is like, okay, we have to give him a class on
how to wear the globes. Yeah, it's crazy, it's you're you're absolutely
right, that like it becomes a look and by the time it ends up
on like twelve inch action figure g I Joe's that it like it's a look
A lot of people are trying to repel. Well, I wouldn't even I
mean by the time it, you know, ends up in Brooklyn where all
of a sudden, beards are super fashionable again and everybody's wearing some sort of
everybody's wearing a schimager, you know, some sort of you know, something
around their neck, you know, when it's like part of hips or culture.
Like, Wow, this is really progressed from you know, because we
you know, it's about that we all want to be part of some group
and identified with some way. Sure, and it's I think even some ways
subconscious that we sure. Absolutely, Yeah, Gary, I'd like to like,
since we're a little bit jumping around, but I would like to jump
back into into your time dealing with Syria, because like that's a period that
I'm kind of fascinating but fascinating and have some experience in precisely because you tell
us about like what your intersection was with the Syrian conflict, civil war,
whatever you'd like to call it a little complicated, but we're when did that
come up on your radar? Sou for me in as early as like twenty
eleven, super earlier that I came back from the country I've been in for
the last two years and was assigned to New East Division and the office that
handled three countries, Syria and a couple other countries, a couple other No
Iraq it did. It did not include Iraq, and it did not include
Turkey, and it did not include Lebanon because that was that EU r U
europe Folk base. So but they said at the beginning, well, you
got all this wartime experience, and things in Iraq aren't going well, and
we think that will become the next hotspot, the next place. So we
want you on to be here early to be able to set the table,
you know, sort of like I did in the military, right to to
step into to build this up, so to transition ultimately when things get bad
enough, into a task force to you know, to focus on Syria.
So so that's what I did, and you know, regular stuff for a
while, and then gradually things started deteriorating in Syria. What does that look
like as you move from like phase zero operations to like, you know,
kind of phase four. Maybe you know, I really think your Special Forces
training really helps you see that. Maybe we're people around me didn't so you
could see that. And I think one of the first things for me,
and given my experience in Yemen and given my experience in Afghanistan, one of
the very first things I said was, Hey, this eventually is going to
get big enough, it's going to shift to the military. So what I
want to do is from the beginning, I said, I want to include
so calm and socks sent in on what we're discussing. We can get people
the right classifications to talk about it, but we need to engage them from
again, because how does it always start in a conflict? The CIA comes
in first, it's under covert action authorities, so we start right, and
then we go up that ramp and hostilities escalate right and then at some point
it turns over generally too special forces first and then to bigger army. So
having been in the conflicts I'd been, and I was like, let's make
this a little less difficult. Let's make it. Let's include them at the
beginning. So there's a smooth transition, but you know, organizational differences and
the folks above me in the CIA, We're like, no, we can't
know, we can't do that. And you know, at some point I
went with somebody down to brief at at at SITCOM and in later so calm.
But the first time I was like, let's just share and talk about
it. It's like, no, we're not gonna tell them everything, and
uh. And I was a little bit disappointed with that. But you know,
I understand. You know, the military has it's it's uh in some
areas, doesn't trust the agency completely. You know. It was my experience
in Afghanistan with John mulholland and the whole reason I got put in there,
and it's the same with the Agency in the army. And having been in
both, I see why there is some justification for each of those. But
I feel that the overall effort for the United States suffers one of the humorous
things. And I hope that whoever this guy is, sorry, I don't
remember your name, or maybe it's a good I don't. But you know,
I'm sitting now in this Agency office when we're gonna detail a fifth group
team to the Agency to go do some initial stuff there. So I'm like,
wow, things have changed. I'm not that guy. Now I'm on
this end, you know. And this team shows up and you know,
I'm I'm I'm proud of my fifth group guys, and I want them to
show a good face. And and they come in and they start processing,
and then like the second or third day, there's a guy that comes in
in a suit and he's wearing those five fingered and a suit that's we didn't
tie. Yeah, And he came in and I'm like and and of course
people and astre looking at me, like, heyse are you And I was
like, what are you doing? And he said, I got blisters because
I don't wear dress shoes. And I bought those dress shoes and game here
and I got blisters the first two days, so I'm wearing knees. And
I said, oh no, no, no, you go home. You're
a hotel whatever, and get on. I don't care what other shoes it
is, but you're not coming in here that way. I said, you
represent your group and uh and he so we sent him back. No,
I'm gonna tell you, I hate to say this haven't been one, but
if it wasn't an officer, who's the next guy? You would guess the
next position on a team warrant officer. It was the medic So so the
five fingers, if you guys haven't seen them, they're they're basically like athletic
shoes that have a slot for each toe, but they're just it's like it's
they're like wearing like rubber ballets birds with with us with each of the five
time. At that time, there was a there's an artifact of the time
that Yeah, I mean they were great for the gym, you know,
they were they were great for what they were for, which was working out
that that's what they were. You know, then that might might be old
school, no, but but to where when the suit is ridiculous, you'd
be better off whar in your O D green jungle boots. Yeah yeah,
yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah, that was so there's a
bit of a culture clash, is what you're saying. And the whole serial
thing for me with just reminiscent of of of Lebanon as as a marine of
what happened with the coal, of what happened with Yemen, it will Yemen,
and then thirteen hours oh Benghazi, Benghazi. It was you know,
sort of the same thing that I got feeling I was somewhat more experienced and
unconventional warfare. At the very beginning, I was arguing about how we were
going to prosecute the war in Syria. And there was this big group of
people led by I think a lot of people on the National Security Council and
Hillary Clinton at the State Department, and senators like McCain that were really pushing
the Free Syria Army as the people that the America needs to tie up with.
And the Free Syrian Army was of a group of retired Sunni generals that
lived the good life in Turkey, and they claimed they had all this access
and influence inside Syria. And the appeal to people, to senators and senior
government officials was that hey, here's somebody in Turkey that I can fly into
Turkey, go have a nice dinner and sit down with these people and talk
about mutual goals and how they can help, and I can promise them money
and I've achieved what I need to achieve for my personal and national political right.
And you know, I was arguing that based on my experience, that
it's not that general outside that used to be out there. It's the guy
on the battlefield that's going to gain influence. And then when we started seeing
I forget what we called them at first before they became liceis the trained guys
trained at the Afghan terror camps, the Corussian group. Yet the Corrossan group
came into Syria that those it helped, those local commanders become the people that
had the influence on the ground. And we all know you lead from the
front and that you know, politicians may talk about the big picture and guys
in in Turkey, but it's the other people that are in the game popularity.
And I disagreed with the way we prosecuted that in you know, I
felt that if we're going to get involved, we should send teams to go
and you stay and you live, and you you're there for the duration and
you go. But you know, we've just morphed as a society, as
a in the national defense arena where it's easier to build bases in Jordan or
surrounding countries and pull people out and you send people for ninety days, you
know, because that's not disrupting everybody too much. And so I can go
here and I can have my gym and my chow hall and train people for
ninety days and you know, we'll all feel good about sending them. That's
exactly what happened. And I was against that, but you know that was
main interagency programs in Turkey and Jordan. And I mean, I've had a
lot of people from CIA, and I don't think there's really such a controversial
view, but I'd be interested here your take on it. People said that
we got involved, that we got invested in the civil war, the Scherian
Civil War, way too late, that maybe if we had invested a little
bit earlier on, we could have found quote unquote moderate rebels, but by
the time that we did get involved, it was kind of too late.
All those so called moderates had all the defected to extremist sides because they were
the ones that had the cloud, they were the ones who had the funding
from the Gulf States, and that, like we had just gotten involved,
we missed the ball on it. And well, if we're going to get
involved, we gotten involved in a real way too late. But even in
the beginning I questioned why, And I'll tell you that from what I gathered
coming from the National Security Council and the White House and the State Department,
was that the people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and other people that are
still players in National Security Council, that they all considered Libya a big,
a big win for them because the President said he should go they're a little
they're a little And so I know some of the details about how and what
happened in Libya, and so from my standpoint, it was an abject failure.
And there and we had no influence in Libya right after zero with our
boy after well and and and here's the reason why. Again, my whole
thing about these generals in Turkey is that the US wanted to be involved,
but not really involved. So when you're the guy that whispers in the guy's
ear that you should do this and that, but you're not the guy that
will go out with him and do it. Yeah, you're not the guy
he's going to turn to when it chips her down. So when Libya ended,
we had no influence. And but then politically and in the press at
home, Libya was a success. Right, President says this, The good
daffy went down, and we didn't do a whole lot other than wink air
strikes and right, yeah, but then it was like so this is what
we're gonna do. And because I was like, do we really need to
get rid of a side? Right? Do we really? Because we have
this, But then there's that the I think the backside of that that I
don't know how many people talk about, is that we upset a lot of
our allies in the Arab world, particularly in UAE and Saudi Arabia and cutter
because we took you know, Iraq, which was Shia majority but ruled by
Sunni minority, but somewhat stable, right, and we flipped it, and
we flipped it all right, and it was it was it was mostly secular,
you know, like say what you want, like Saddam. Saddam was
a horrible person, Yeah he was, but then he and and he liked
to talk about his heritage back to you know, through the Quran and everything.
Right, But but and it was and it was a Kiran. I'm
in no way saying that he was a good person or there were benefits to
him, but but it was but it was a it was a mostly secular
like he didn't care about religions so much as he cared about Stath Party,
Communist party guy. Yeah. Yeah, But but when we when we look
at that at a side, people saw the opportunity and and and to me,
yeah, yeah, I really try to stay out of the political realm.
But I view I became to view this as all political right that there
were people that we're looking at possibly potential future presidential runs, and and a
current president that like that, wait a minute, If I make this statement
and he must go or here's my line and we make that happen, then
I've won a political It's a big farm. And and like I said,
those three Arab countries put a lot of pressure on us that you took a
Sunni ruled country and flipped it over to Shia. Well, next door here
is a Sunni country ruled by Shia. So let's balance the legend. The
other interesting wrinkle in that too is the Russians also that we told them that
this is not going to be a regime change operation in Libya, but pretty
much from day one we were engaging a regime change operation. Libya was the
biggest, if not maybe the second biggest client state of the Russian military hardware
after Gadaffi's gone. Next one up is Syria right where they where they have
they're only well yeah, they're only warm water port. Yeah yeah, and
it's and it's Russia's second, Yeah, I believe second. Yeah, it
would have been second large just quine of military hardware. So and they got
involved in both of those countries. And then the whole Iran thing was yeah,
yeah, it was Yeah, it was a mess. And you know,
I didn't understand why we really had to go with that. But but
I'm a military at heart, a military person that if we're going to do
it, then here's the way we should do it. And I'm I'm for
let's go for it, all right, and not this let's pressure from the
borders right here and are on my and and it's never gonna work. Yeah,
and and and it's weird that we have this, this fascination with the
Middle East, and is you know, overthrowing these regimes, these tyrants,
and they are you know, they they are dictators. But we don't provide
a viable solution after that, like if if when we look at Libya,
like not saying that life was great under Kadafi, but it didn't get much
better after him, when you consider that they reopened the slave markets in Tripoli,
like it got bad, and you know, even Libya, which we
would consider a third world country, refused American diplomatic efforts at first. We
won't even see him, right, So yeah, yeah, and now,
and it's really funny that I think during the Obama administration, we people like
to ridicule the Bushes uh foreign policy with Bush rice, where it was,
let's make the places that are hot beds for terrorists, uh, for for
building terrorists and and creating terrorists and make them into viable countries where that people
can have are in a living and be more democratic, and then we won't
have the things that So that was all the Bush doctrine because was ridiculed.
But yet here we went in stay that's sort of the same thing. We
go to Libya to do this. Now we go to Syria right right,
and it's like in these places that that are dictat it's almost the opposite where
the Bush doctrine was naive and the idea that we can go in and sort
of you know, give these places like a means to not be these terrorist
hot beds. You know, we flipped it with the Obama administration too.
Let's go to these places that you know are stable but not not sort of
our definition of stable or the way we want them to be stable and make
them unstable and then and then we've got the same issues. Yeah, it's
our foreign policy. I think throughout history has been just very misguided. You
know. I feel like in World War One and World War Two, we
understood, like we understood what need to be. If you break it,
you buy it, and then you said it right, and and since then
we've just been kind of this half, you know, toes in until we
we decide that it's too cold, let's back out, leave it to it
to themselves. That might almost be like not the worst thing in the world
to like see like, well, who's gonna win and then we'll bat But
instead it's like we kind of go all in and it turns into a big
shit show. I think last time I had mentioned that I had an argument
with a Taliban guy. Before that, I was seeing this guy and he
was really pissed with me, and he said, you know, in the
a these we work together and we defeated the Russians, and then you abandon
us, so now you're here fighting us. It's not our fault you abandon
us. And I said, yeah, but that's America. Yeah, right,
just you know, if you if it's China, okay, you got
a twenty five year and a fifty year plan. But in America we have
a four year or eight year plan. Yeah, and we're That's just the
way it is America, and honestly, we shouldn't apologize for it. And
I have come to think that the way American politics is the way our society
runs, and and and I'd say politics, but it's politics as it affects
our national defense strategy, that we would be better off at a opting a
more a stance, more like Israel does, which is to tolerate x amount
of punishment or aggression, and then when it reaches a certain point, we're
gathering intelligence and we're doing that, we're gonna go and we're gonna make a
strike and we're gonna decimate some centers and disrupt and set you back, and
then we're pulling out. Now, we're not going to fix your country.
We're not going to try to stabilize it, we're not going to try to
rebuild it, we're not going to try to do any of this. It's
really punitive and disruptive. But then you don't wind up in the twenty year
conflict and you we're in right now with Niger and the coups happening, and
we have a couple of drone bases there that we I don't want to maintain,
and yeah, it becomes a foreign entanglement. What right we are?
Wrong? Way? But I mean we keep doing it. Yeah, So
towards the end of your time at the agency, you had a senior ops
job. I don't want to put any words in your mouth, but what
can you say about that? So, you know, I think I made,
you know, with the agency a lot of things going on. I
think religiously, I was being pushed. My faith was pushing me towards things
that were unsettling me. And I became discouraged after I had some success on
some pretty high level operations in the agency. You know, That's where I
started really seeing what the folks in the National Security Council and at the from
the White House and the Department are saying. And I'm up on, you
know, in briefs on the seventh floor and and I'm like, it's not
What was that conflict for you? Was that a question of like the truth
isn't being told? Or was it a question of like your morality feeling like
it was well, I would say it's some of both. I think the
morality part was more maybe personal, and that I was a person very focused
on getting a mission done, so I believe the I would do whatever it
took to get a mission accomplished. Now that sometimes came into conflict with who
I believed I was on the inside and spiritually. And there comes a point
where you've if you've lived that life for so long, that you've become in
so much conflict with yourself. It starts manifesting itself and emotional, mental,
physical as that outreach. But then for me, just the hypocrisy of it
all that we all want to believe that we're doing the nation's work, we're
defending the people were there, and we're willing to give our lives for our
fellow citizen. And then when you start seeing that the weight or impact that
politics has over that, and when you see lives lost, and some of
that may the root cause of that may have been political or personal professional and
you know greed or you know desire to get ahead reasons. It starts.
It's not a good feeling bad right, Like I ate that steak, but
damn it was something wrong with it, so that you know that that all
started having its impact on me. And you know, I was in this
job where you know, I came back from this country. I thought,
yeah, I think I'm gonna look at something different. So I took a
job that was a senior leadership job. It was the ops officer for a
group uh in the agency. But but it was not it was not one
of those get ahead political jobs that you need to have to move to the
senior levels in the agency. And I, you know, a lot of
friends said, why aren't you doing this, because like all my buddies and
people at I'd done some stuff with We're in really key positions in the agency,
and so you're doing this And I was like, yeah, because I'm
doing it because I got a change. And you know, I think I
knew that I wanted to get out, but I sort of needed some time
and space to do that. Also, like moving a little bit away from
the kinetic operations. Yeah, for me, yeah, I'd been in super
high stress. Now it's it changed. I was in operational stress, either
from being undercover or chasing a significant target and having everybody in the from the
president down in my business every day that that you know, super high stress
too. Now it shifted where I guess I took that energy and focused it
back on the leadership of this group that was hurting. The agency does not
develop doing a good job developing leaders And I went back to the basic leadership
that I learned as a Marine officer, and I felt I was making an
impact. There were you weren't using CS on them though when they weren't,
I know I didn't. I didn't use CS and I did. I would
like to say that it was a hard and long learning curve for me,
but I think I did eventually learn. And uh so, you know,
I just focused on the leadership thing, and but I kind of used that
time to to start thinking about there's got to be something different as as somebody
who you know had a pretty illustrious and unique career in the military. I
mean, you were an officer, then you went enlisted, and then you
know, you were in the agency, and you saw sort of both sides
of that. Do you we like I get the impression, I don't want
to speak for Jack, I get the impression that it's very hard to move
into the general officer arena or the sis arena without I don't want to say
selling your soul, but without becoming a sort of a spoke in the wheel.
If it were you know that that play the game, that you have
to make certain compromises, would you say that's true? Or would you say
that my impression is false? Like what was you? Because you have a
lot more persiand knowledge than I ever would on this, you know, so
I would say a that that is true, there are compromises. Is that
much be reached? But I think my life experience says that you know,
it is this constant give and take between close end focus and a wider focus.
When I was a young lieutenant, my focus was like this, and
that's what Marine Corps wanted from me. My focus is like that. Then
you start getting more senior, you start looking wider. You know, as
a platoon commander, there were times I ordered my people to do certain things
or adhere to certain things, and sometimes I did not really believe in what
I ordered them to do, but I was ordered to do that, and
so my vision went wider. And then, through either your seniority you rise
in authority and rank, you have to have that wider vision that a leader
has to see not just what needs to be focused on, but what's to
the left and right and what's over the horizon. That worked for me in
Yemen, and it's worked for me in some other places. The I think
the challenge of senior officers is that you can get so focused on that wide
thing that then when something key comes up that needs to be narrowly focused on,
you might miss that and it's like do we have That's where I feel
like a lot of foreign militaries and places like the agency fall short, is
that there's not enough development and that nco lower level leadership thing where that these
people can leave it to them and trust them like you know, uh,
you know in a delta squadron, that troop that's gonna do this part of
that hit, they got it, you know, And this troop's going to
make that assaultant aircraft that that that's it. You know, officer, you
can come under this aircraft after we clear it and tell you to come up,
and and that's you know, we need that wide view of leadership,
but you also have to have it tied to here. And uh, I
think that's that's the the challenge for senior officers, you know, And and
you know, God help them. There's some that do a damn good job
of that and there's some that that don't. And I feel, you know,
I can say, you know, I personally don't think that people in
charge now do that. I think they've sold their souls to the political side.
And you know, one of the things that we wanted to ask you
about, and I think you wanted to talk about a bit, was with
that you just touched upon, was, you know, some of the key
takeaways from your experience across the Marines, the Army, Central Intelligence Agency,
you know, even philosophically speaking, What were some of the big things that
you came away from that experience with that you don't have to share with people.
For me, one of the things is lessons I think I learned.
It was about judging people. Again, we mentioned earlier that when you're younger,
everything's black and white, and I think I used to make pretty snapped
judgments about people. I think my first lesson that that might not be the
right approach was as a Marine officer. I had a guy in my first
infantry platoon who was overweighted. Now we're talking to the eighties, right,
and he parted his hair in the middle. Now, you know, in
the eighties, if a guy parts his hair in the middle, he's a
doper. And I mean that's how you know he parts his hair in the
middle, he's a guy to be a doper. And and he was a
little overweighted, and he just wasn't that image of the marine. Yeah,
and he was a problem at guy, always gotten trouble and getting arrested.
And this I, you know, had to go down to the jail and
see him a few times, and you know, so I made certain judgments
about him, and I put him on my list of I'm going to do
my best to get this guy out. But then I looked into his record
and I'm like, hey, well this guy, you know, his first
assignment is in Okinawa and he goes into a burning laundromat and saves some old
Okinawan woman that was watching people's clothes in there and out, you know,
and he gets some award for that. And I'm like, wait a minute,
here's this and here's that. And then my young in my youth,
I thought those two things can't go together. You have to be the squared
away guy. That's that's strack and and this way to be that, and
then you know, I had to reevaluate my assessment of this young guy.
And you know, I remember calling him in and saying like, hey,
I read this about who are you? Because here's what I see, but
who are you? And then I learned he just didn't fit that mold or
think the way I thought. So I gave him some kind of like kind
of admin duties and stuff and quit expecting what I thought I should out of
a young hardcore charging marine and he performed well, and I was like,
wow, I didn't know that. And then if you go forward a bunch
of years later to being me being kicked out of Delta and having to go
places or want, you know, explain myself and my career to other people
that I want to to trust me and and and give me jobs, that
I was like, wow, you know, I really hope people don't judge
you just parts of their hair in the middle. Yeah, as the guy
that parts the hair in the middle. I just want to say that in
the eighties, front of you here in the middle and feathering was very fashionable.
I'm I'm not saying there are any photos of me like that going around.
I'm just saying it was fashionable and it may it may have been,
but but it's young marine. Yeah, So you know, I think that
was a big thing for me. The other thing was, you know,
just different different perspectives, like, I'm lucky enough to be here with you
guys and telling my story. But there are tens of thousands of people and
they all have those stories, and they may be different in the detail and
the location, but their stories. And we're in the military, right,
so we're we all got a really focused life experience for whatever number a year
in some peculiar incubators, and but we're no better. There's no delta operator
that's any better than any cook in the army. Different job, different motivations,
different drivers, but if both do their job well, that man is
no better than the other man. And those of us in the military or
intelligence agencies who have been fortunate enough to go forth and live these dreams and
these these adventures, but what about the people back here that are sitting at
home working in the factory. They're really no different than we're no better than
them. And I think sometimes we can close ranks about what we've done and
who we are and say that other people aren't the same as us. They
don't know, they haven't lived it, so they're not there to speed.
Yeah, yeah, and yeah that's true. But you know, when when
I first you know, I think in the first episode, I talked about
my rural background, my family, and when I was traveling around the world
and seeing the sights of the world, and I've been to the Great Buddha,
I've been to Shinto shrines, I've been to some of the biggest things
sites that a person should see, and and thought, wow, how fortunate
am I and how disadvantaged are my relatives that are living back in you know,
Stony Point or Taylorsville or Hickory, North Carolina, and that I'm really
seeing the world as it is. Then I but eventually I realized, no,
you know, they have lives, they have family, they have church,
they have community, they're happy, they're contributing to life. My life
is really you know, in some ways my life is different, but in
some ways it's not as good as theirs. You know, the person I
admired the most is my brother, who never started a day in the military.
He's been a great family guy, worked for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes,
been a pharmaceutical salesman for a lot of years, never did any of
the things that I did. But you know, you know, I feel
very privileged to be where we are and the brotherhood that we're in. But
you know, I don't think it's it's any better than other people. Is
different, and it's fortunately we don't see those guys, and there's no podcast
focusing on this, right not right. I think that and we've talked about
this for I think one of the things that you know, people in our
field have to admit, is it there there was an amount of selfishness to
our lives that we we were doing exactly what we wanted to do, and
we left family, We left people behind, with wives behind, some of
the left kids behind, Like we left people behind to go do Like we
can say it was all for the service and was all for the count,
and it was but for us, but but we also did it for us,
like we all either grew up wanting to do this or at some point,
you know, some way alongline, decided we wanted this life of high
adventure or whatever, and we did it. And it's like you could look
at Lewis and Clark and say, yeah, you know, they did these
things by exploring the States. But they also wanted to do that, like
they weren't nobody compelled them to do that. And and so you know,
and one when you're talking about people in the conventional military or parts the agencies,
in the intelligence community, the logs people, the cooks, the mechanics,
the people that don't get any credit but were especially like out in Afghanistan
and Iraq. They were out there working in a one hundred ten degree weather.
Or cooks who like get up at three in the morning to start food
prep, like nobody appreciates them, but but they work their asses off,
you know, mechanics out there fixing vehicles in Iraq. Nobody wants to be
that person the air conditioning Yeah. Good guy, Yeah, a good guy.
I like him. Yeah. And they were every bit as as you
know, as significant to the war effort. And then even outside the military,
you're right, like people who are grounded and who have roots in who
have just dedicated their lives to their families and to their careers and to their
community. Like there's no superiority that I think the people from the military and
the special operations community can like ward over we we we chose our paths just
like they choose their past, and no neither path is superior to the other.
I think our stories are generally more fun, you know what I mean,
they're they're they're different, you know if you like, have you ever
like when I went to the agency, you know, you try to blend
in. Okay, So I was a little bit older than most of the
people I was around, and people are sitting around telling stories, and you
know, eventually, like I generally asked the quiet, but eventually you wouldn't
tell a story. So here's people telling stories about this time where I was
doing this where I was almost scared to death and all that, and then
so like then they turn to you, so you won't tell a story.
So you tell a story about somebody dying on a free fall, like or
somebody splatting on a free fall accident, or don't like that, and then
they all go and then you realize and everybody just shuts up. Yeah,
and it's like and then like, here's another subject. Well, well one
time, you know, I did this thing with these women, and you're
like, yeah, well one time, and then like and everybody it then't
after a while you're like, yeah, it's like it's like, but but
it's that context thing. It's like people tell these stories but like, well,
okay, maybe not everybody came into contact with dead bodies and other things,
and so it's like, yeah, yeah, you have to learn to
like yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh that's come
into cont A lot of people have learned when they get out of the military.
Is it your stories are not like the same? Yeah? Literally,
like you really need to read the wrong But that goes with the other.
I'm curious as to your two transitions. Like for me, I was so
mission focused and and let's be honest, my when I went to Asot was
right after my first wife left me and took off with my kids, and
uh, I was I was not in a good place right, So adventure,
excitement and all these other things come my way, and it's a way
of putting all that behind me. I was mission focused for from nineteen ninety
eight until two thousand eleven. I was just mission, mission, mission mission.
I would go to a place and I would focus my life on that
mission, and I would live that mission, and I don't care what happens
back home. I've given my parents power of attorney whatever happened, happens,
and I'm just here to do this mission and I was successful. And then
in the government I got in the agency, I continued being successful. But
it's like, Okay, I can write a proposal and get funded for this,
and in the government, given permission, authority and money, I can
make all kind of things happen, really successful, good things. When I
left the agency, I thought, I just apply that same focus to civilian
life and I'm going to be successful. And I was like, and that's
not the way it has worked for me. And I'm used to life doesn't
matter mission and then well, I think the struggle I've had over the last
but seven eight years after leaving the agency is that, Wow, it's not
the mission and end result isn't as important as that daily grind, routine and
process. And it's like, wait, I'm never a processed person. I'm
a mission focused, results oriented person and I'll do this And it's like,
yeah, well, you know what I know. And you also have time
to fill your life with something the whole rest of your life. And it's
like, what does that consist of? Yeah, well, and for me,
you know, to be honest, at this point, some of that
is cooking and cleaning and shopping and real trying to establish a business and doing
this and that and all the other things and taking care of the dog and
all that stuff, and it is like, you know, and and to
be honest, for years, it's like, ah, I'm crazy because I
need to focus on a mission. Yeah, and like how I do it?
Like this, I gotta stop, you know, Yeah, And it's
it's a hard, hard transition. And I think some of the issues we
have with PTSD and the suicide rate for veterans is is tied in some respects
to that. You know, I agree with you, Like I don't.
I don't even know if, like if we can split between TBIES and post
traumatic stress and then the lack of purpose and mission, Like I don't even
know how those threads can be entangled to say what is post traumatic stress?
But some they've called it the operator syndromes, the combination of PTSD and t
B I. But but also, but again, like you say, there's
also that existential thing of even if I find a mission, even if I
find a purpose and something like that, the stakes are so much lower,
Right, how do I how do I care about something where the stakes are
so low, you know, you see and and not in look like human
suffering is all relevant. So it's not to say when you're under heavy fire
that that somebody undergoing office drama that they're not feeling the same stress levels because
there's almost there's only so much stress we can feel. And I had those
of the agency that you know people I supervise that and you know, and
it was hard for me. Yeah, it's hard to relate and you're okay,
yeah, it's it's hard to relate, and it's hard not to dismiss
sit, you know, because you do have to have that empathy to realize
it. It looked just because their life is an online doesn't mean that they
don't feel like distress and things like that. But yeah, I agree with
you, like, but there there is an element, I believe, and
I certainly don't want to be misinterpreted or to come across as as implying that
there's an ego factor to PTSD. But but there's a thing of and I
get this from former Marines they you know, before combat, you know,
back recon Marines. I know that that was my life. That was when
I was my best best, That was when I was who I was,
and that's when I met everything and nothing I've done since counts or matters,
and I just wish I was back there. And I think that it's and
particularly for people in roles that aren't maybe combat related, but that are adjunct
to that or close to it, participants in it, that that here I
am now and everything I do is valued and worthwhile and means this and now
after I'm this, yeah, and this is and this is who I am,
and that's you know, that's that's a sad thing. And and and
what bothers me now is that as veterans, it seems like we have taken
on a tenor of like almost this power of darkness, and that our service
needs to be couched in the damage it's done to us and and and the
hardships we face, and that those are real, They are real people suffering
every day. But what I hope that that we could do as a group
of veterans is to focus on the experiences I have equipped me for this world
that is changing, this world that faces some probable uncertainty and difficult times to
come. And no one is better able to face those and meet those challenges
than we, Based on the experiences we had, so I am not crippled
by my experience. I am am prepared empowered by it. Can also provide
like a contrast to appreciate, like our lives today. How fortunate are we
to live in a country like this and to be able to like raise a
kid in a world like this or in a country like this. Yeah,
and it might not be like perfect, but yeah it's pretty good. Yeah.
Or I might not be the guy that's out doing it, but I
might be the guy that's explaining this experience too much, right so that they
well, you're you're honestly right now you're also explaining it to other young soldiers
and giving them a sort of pathway. Yeah, and civilian. And you
know, it's interesting because you mentioned something that I don't think is like brought
up enough. Is that like we talk about you know, combat arms,
particularly special operations, but combat arms in general, like going from sixty to
zero into the civilian life. But if you're if you're like a cook who
loves your job, like a military cook who loves your job, and you
know the people you're cooking for, and you like you know what you're doing
in particularly in a combat zone, where like food is literally like it's a
huge it's a huge morale issue, right, or you're a mechanic out sweating
your ass off for a logs officer who's moving or logs person who's like moving
stuff constantly, and then you like and you know you're contributing to the fight,
even if you're at trading lead, you know, downrange or whatever,
but you know you're contributing the fight. And then you come out in the
civilian world and you have a job, like you can get into logistics or
into the culinary field or whatever. Does it Does it have the same feeling
for somebody who's cooking for a restaurant, you know what I mean? It
has something, there's something there. But but but the thing is, is
it I'm sure that you know, we haven't really talked about that much,
but I'm sure there's something for those people too who have who have you know,
gone from use support roles in those environments and feeling that same purpose and
that same I'm given one hundred and ten percent for you know, for this
effort, and then I'm out and you know, you deal with the world
is feeling. Yeah, it's it's a challenging environment. Do we have questions?
For Gary? I just realized, actually real, Quicky, what are
you working on now? Like what's uh where are you now? And what
are you working on? Because you're working on some kind of exciting things right,
Well, I hope they're exciting. Uh. So you know, for
me, you know, we've been talking about our past experiences and what that
does for you, and and I guess I believe that it's not like why
did I go through the things I went through? The good things, the
bad things, the hardships. Uh, there are many, you know,
some we didn't talk about over these two podcasts and your death experiences where I
somehow made it through and came out, What's what's the reason for that?
And you know, I guess that I came to view that as that the
lessons I learned from those experiences. You know, we all went overseas to
fight against terrorists or what we perceived as bad people. Why because we wanted
to go over there and fight the enemies so that the people back here would
have a peaceful, relaxing life, so that people could be safe and have
peace of mind here. Well, so we all learned special skills and principles
and techniques to do that. But then things changed doing when we started,
you know, back, you know, some years ago, with a few
with terror attacks here, you know, I'm telling Post nine eleven, like
the couple that shot people and in San bernard San Bernardino and some of the
other terror attacks. Well, now due to changes in law enforcement and policing
and stuff, we have random violence. We have more acts of random attacks
and mass shootings and all these things. So now the things that we all
fought for to keep away from home, they're here, and any of our
loved ones are a turner two, or a neighborhood or two, or an
incident or two away from running into a potentially deadly conflict or action or circumstance.
So I started thinking that how do we take what we all earned,
all those principles that you learn through all your training and all your expertise and
techniques, and convert that over into a system or a way that families here
can take advantage of those you know, I think it's not just that we
that our society has become more violent and there's more animosity towards each other,
but it's also a fact that our youth are more distracted and have less learning
opportunities than we did. So we have, on one hand, a group
of potential victims our families that are less prepared, and on the other hand,
we have a society that is more inclined towards violence, and those two
interact. So what I did was trying to take the lessons and the principles
and techniques that I learned and developed both for myself and then later when I
had a family living undercover in some foreign countries to keep myself and my family
safe, provide for security and self sufficiency right into a system that we call
the Power of Prudence. So that is all those principles and techniques that we
learn adopted to families here, and we'll be releasing that soon a course from
the Power of Prudence that's called the Prudent Parenting Course. So what that does
is walk people like us or younger parents through the process of how to mentor
those same principles and some of the habits and techniques that we all know into
their children's daily lives so that they are more able to take care of themselves.
That'stic. How do you like, how do you sort of divide that
teaching kids prudence and being that parent from just being paranoid and worried all the
time about everything. You know, one of the things I teach people like
I travel and work with individual families and some family offices to teach these subjects.
And I said, no, you know, when I tell you these
things and I show some random attacks and stuff, I'm not saying that you
live your life like this looking around all the time for an attack. You
can't live that way forever and be saying or healthy. So you have to
learn when to relax and when to dial it on. But but yet some
of the things that we're teaching our kids, like today, Hugo and I
were driving up here from Virginia and we stopped at a rest stop to eat,
and there was a mother that had her stroller with twins in it,
and I would say they were maybe one and a half two years old.
And these twins each had identical iPads them from and they were just like like
this. So, you know, we we start at an early age of
indoctrinating our kids, pacifying our kids to be involved in this and not what's
around me. And part of that thing is that that you know, and
like, so I teach like I have two young daughters, they're now fourteen
and twelve. That Hey, when we go to a public place, here's
our checklist we always do when we as we settle, let's look for exits.
Here's the exit we came in, were alternate exits. Next thing we
look for is cover. Here's what cover is is something that protects you from
bullets or projectiles. So here's what cover is, and here's what cover isn't.
And then we look for concealment. So what happens if something bad happens.
We're moving towards that exit, but we're using cover and concealment to get
to that exit to get out. And then I you know, it just
progressives. You teach them more, and you know, those are the things
you know that maybe a generation or two ago, we're inherent in people's lives,
but now our society became so reliant on somebody else taking care of our
safety and security that now that that's crumbling or falling apart, we're not We're
not prepared. So yeah, we're are people going to be able to find
these courses? Well, one of the places they're going to be able to
find it is through you. Okay, and we're gonna offer your listeners a
discount to be able to pre buy this course. I haven't. Finally we
have the course finished and most of it finally edited, and it will be
coming out in a couple of weeks. But you know, we want to
offer that to your listeners first, and then we will, you know,
offer this course called the Prudent Parenting Course for sale and the other the so
at Gary Harrington dot net. They can find the Power of Prudence right,
Uh, like they can find you there and some of your stuff there.
But Parenting with Prudence is a prudent parenting course where parents will come out and
I haven't we we haven't really put that out on social media yet and uh,
but yes, that will be coming out in the next few weeks.
Fantastic. Let's hear cool questions. I did see one question or like,
we can't watch the chat, but I saw somebody ask something that sounded like
an inside baseball question because they wanted us to ask those They wanted us to
ask you if a hot dog was a sandwich? Is a hot dog of
sandwich? Yeah? Is that not a Is that not an inside Maybe they
were just I figured that was an inside thing. You know, I don't
know what a question, but I'm gonna say no for my personal opinion.
Yeah, but because explain your reasons scary. I think my reasons and and
and God help me. I'm I'm sorry to all my friends out there who
know me as a nice person. You have an opinion, it's okay,
go with it. This is it, okay. So I think the hot
dog versus sandwich thing is sort of that Asian versus Caucasian equation. Is the
white say that one time Asian versus Caucasian equation, but the hot dog is
like pretty uniquely American. I think the hot dog is kind of vertical,
uh huh, and the sandwich is kind of holding on. So is a
hamburger sandwich? So a hamburger is a sandwich. It is sandwich. Yeah,
I mean it makes sense. It's a hamburger sandwich, right, But
it's it's all depending on perspective too, because like, how do you I
mean, granted everyone you all the hot dog like that, I'm it is
it is meat between two pieces of bread. Yeah, yeah, that I
mean that really is like we're peeking behind the curtains into the mysteries of the
universe right now. Yeah, I'm sure that the Earl of sandwich. Yes,
they did not have the technology yet to make dogs, so they made
sandwich. But at that time the earl of sandwich. But in Germany at
the time, were they're making brons and putting them on bread? What are
they making brons or beaners? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I don't We're
gonna happen. But here's the question. We're gonna next. What what we're
the Chinese doing? Dude, this is racking my brain right now. We're
creaking out. I mean, pork buns, but those obviously are not a
sandwich because they're enclosed. That's true. Well, come on, no no
better questions than that. There's no better. Actually, we only have Louis
uh Lewis Basquez with thank you your donation saying thank you. I mean he
just appreciates the content. Are we talking New York NYC Ballpark hot dogs?
Chicago style? I mean Chicago stat hot dogs are really the only way to
eat a hot dog the pepper. I think that the pepper on it is
well, the only the only true like real sandwich is the sandwich used to
get at a small race car track in southern America and that's the fried Bologny
silence with onion and pepper on it. Well, I'm I'm equally a sacrilegious.
I think the sausage, peppers and onions is better than a hot dog
probably probably true. Yeah, well Gary, thanks, and you know again
check out GARYT. Gary Harington dot. Now are you on social media?
People finding on social media? I'm on social media at on YouTube and on
yeah, pretty much all the social media, not ticktime and not some of
them weird ask things that but the real Gary H And you know, on
YouTube and put out a lot of YouTube content. I put out YouTube content
every Friday I have. Okay, so you're pretty regular. Check out Garry
on the real Gary H. And you LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. Yeah,
but no, only fans. I think that's what our guests are.
Our only fans. Yeah that I mean the fans only stuff. Uh No,
I I don't personally, I'm not a purveyor and yeah and I'm not
yet. It's okay. You use your VPN service, not only that stuff.
You know, we don't even know, we don't heard. There's some
good VPNs available. VPN everybody do that, you know, and and and
if you carry that the next step further, there is some good medical resources
that can help check your records to and that's important. That's important because the
VA, everybody you get it to V acts like the money is coming from
their pocket. So so getting medical, getting re medical is like, so
actually, I actually want to note that because you know, I've I probably
need to address that issue myself. Re Medicals your place, like I we
did some research into them. They've got great people have said that that they've
really helped them out. Like just if you go on Reddit and see like
people remdicals really help people out, It's good. You know that, either
that or being a three or four star general really helps that. Yeah,
if you don't have a Congress one in your pocket, medically the way to
go. Why is it that all the three and four stars get one hundred
percent this ability and a lot of people know did you? I didn't realize
this until recently. Some told me when you're a retired four start you get
base paid for life. I didn't know that. I didn't know that.
So coming up this Friday, the next episode, I'm not gonna be here.
I'm going to be absent. You guys, have a story. Yeah,
we have First Special Forces. That's really good. D thank you,
Yeah, thanks thanks for that. Yeah we have sty Yeah you really you
really hype that, you really hype that hype that for the viewers. Thanks
man, Gary, thank you so much for spending a Friday or Tuesday night.
Tuesday. Yeah, thanks for driving up man. I appreciate it.
To have you up again sometime. No, thanks, Hey, good to
see you guys, Good to meet d and uh look forward to working with
you guys in the future. So yeah, yeah, absolutely, I'm watching
you guys now, so seeing but no, you know, it's it's it's
interesting content and I'm also uh somewhat curious as I'm watching your podcast and your
publications and I'll develop and grow. Yeah, and it's kind of good,
you know. I I kind of pull for everybody that's been one of us
and doing us and trying to do something different now yeah and see how that
goes. Yeah, it's it's odd. I mean throwing darts. Yeah yeah,
yeah, but it's fun. I can't complain. But it's good to
be throwing them instead of catching them. Yeah, there you go for sure,
for sure, So uh, Dave and d will catch you guys on
Friday and Gary again. Thank you so much man, and we'll see all
you guys next time. Thanks everybody,