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you just send us an email. We'll talk about special operations Obert ask me
and the Team House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Bark Hey,
everyone, Welcome to episode two hundred and forty of The Teamhouse. I'm Jack
Murphy here with Dave Park. Our boy Adam White is back there in the
darkness, Dee's pressing the buttons and our guest in studio. He's third appearance
on the show, but the first time in studio. We're really excited to
have him here. I haven't seen this dude in person for like seventeen years.
This Mike Edwards. Mike served in the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment. We
were in three seven five back in the day together, and he went on
to have a career in the Regimental Reconnaissance Company and then as a military freefall
instructor. So we're really excited to have you here. Man. Well,
thanks for having me back. I appreciate it. Yeah, good to see
you on person for real. Yeah, hell yeah. And oh, shout
out to a new artwork on the wall. That's from Invader Girl. If
you guys go check her out at Invadergirl dot invader girl art dot com or
follow her on Instagram. Yes, it's got amazing art. Definitely check her
stuff out. She has awesome stuff. That is sweet. So, Mike
Man, I'm gonna have you. Uh, I'm sorry if I have you
repeat yourself a little bit, but I'm gonna I think it got cut off
a little bit in our first interview actually, but I'm going to ask you
to tell us a little bit about like your origin story and sort of your
upbringing in like your path towards military service, Like, how did that come
about for you? Yes, So I grew up living out in the country,
just me and my brother playing in the woods, shooting baby guns,
hunting squirrels and you know, rabbits and stuff like that in rural Alabama.
Had a normal upbringing. Good mother, good father, you know, I
love them. Both were still close. My whole family's close cousins, aunts,
uncles, so I had a good bond there with family. Grew up.
As I got a little bit older, my dad went in the army.
He went in the Army kind a little bit later in life, like
in his thirties, and he became an officer. So once I got older,
Yeah, I never really thought about joining the military, but I was
probably about midway through high school and I just decided, you know, I
want to try out the military, you know, go in the National Guard.
So I joined the new National Guard. My dad wanted me to be
an officer, so I ended up doing boot camp and AI t for the
National Guard. Was in the infantry National Guard, and then went to marrying
military and suited to be an officer, So did two years there and then
I was good at Rotc's type stuff, the military aspect of it. But
I was too I was young and immature. I wanted to party, and
I was too worried about trouting, you know, drinking and partying and stuff
like that. So I didn't focus on grades as well as I should.
The military aspect, I mean, like all hundreds, but then you know,
PET score, good to go. But then some of the other aspects
I was struggling on. So I ended up withdrawing from school after two years.
It was a two year military school where you do two years, you
get your commission as an officer, and then you'd go to like University of
Alabama or Auburn or something like that. So I withdrew failing and just decided
to just move back in with my mom down in like Gulf Shores Folly area
of Alabama. Lived down there, did some construction work for a little bit,
but you know, the army thing was kind of always in the back
of my mind. So I ended up enlisting to go active duty. Started
off in third Infantry Division at Kelly Hill on Fort Benning in a mechanized infantry
unit. Did a little bit of time. There have some good friends still
keep in touch from from back then, but did some time there. Ended
up wanted to go Special Forces. Always thought like special Forces Green Beret was
like the way to go. My dad was like, hey, special Forces
is the brains. Rangers are the brawn. That's what my dad used to
say. And you know, I ended up doing everything to get ready to
set up for Special Forces selection and then you know, had did the prept
test, had a selection date setup, and then boom got popped for orders
to go to Korea. So I did a year in Korea and then nine
to eleven popped off, and then things changed and I ended up going to
the Ranger Regiment. So I guess that's kind of in a nutshell kicking it
off from childhood up to initial entry in the army. What what was it
like when you were in because I didn't even know if there is MC and
I an infantry anymore? There? Yeah, the Strikers, Yeah, Bradley's
Yeah, I was in a Bradley. No, No, it's not because
it used to be yeah loving Mike, Yeah, no I don't. I
don't think the ms exist really. Yeah, So like, what what was
that light compared to like straight leg infantry? It was it was completely different
we were at the mercy of those bradleys, right, So wherever the bradley
went, that was like our little that was like our shop, you know,
So it rolled around they did staying. We kept all of our gear
strapped to the outside of it, like our rucksacks are shopped on the outside,
MRIs and stuff like that. It would drop the rap. We would
go do light infantry stuff, but then we'd always come back to that bradley
and it actually we ended up spending a lot of time in those bradleys too.
I remember one time at NTC we were driving around. I think we
were like twenty something hours straight in the back of the bradleys. I mean,
you're just like sleeping like this, and then you're up and then you're
sleeping like everybody's piled in there. You're stacked in there like sardines, right,
And those things. I don't know if a lot of people know they
have a drain hole plug in the bottom of them because they're made to be
amphibious, right, So even the newer ones still have the legacy train plugs.
So we'd be in those things. You couldn't unhatch that thing. It
was like it was like you almost had to have orders to let the ramp
down, so twenty something hours in there, like we were popping those train
holes out and peeing out of the train holes. It was nasty in the
back of those things, just to be quick with it. But yeah,
it was. It was different, a lot different than light infantry. Yeah,
I never really experienced light infantry until I got to the Ranger Regiment.
Yeahah, what was it like for you in Korea because that's uh, that's
kind of a hardship to it, right for infantry. Yeah, that's what
I mean, that's what they call it. So for me when I went
there, it was prior to nine to eleven. When I initially got there,
it was we had a star major that was big on PT so,
I mean that kind of set me up for the Ranger Regiment. He was
like, I want everybody to run a marathon before the time you leave here.
In twelve months of your year. He's like, we're gonna do a
little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. So
we do these incredibly slow but yet long runs. So by the time that
year was up, I had run a marathon in a battalion formation like like
probably two thirds of the formation was gone, like because we were on Camp
Casey and then there was another base called Camp Hoby. So we'd run around
Camp Casey, then run around Camp Hoby, then run around Camp Casey,
and then around Camp Hoby's super small bases. Every time we passed by a
battalion area, like formation would just sheathe off, you know what I mean,
Like, oh so, but you know I couldn't quit because I had
that drive that got me to the Ranger Regiment, so that set me up
for it. We did a lot at rock marching and stuff and then eleven,
but you were stuck there on the base. There wasn't a whole We
did a little bit of training, probably trained a little bit more than I
did Stateside in the mechanized infantry, But then nine to eleven happened and they
like locked the base down. They had us pull in security. We were
doing like roving patrols around the base, and you know, everybody was like
on, you know, super high alert. But the thing that really got
me was that here we are now at war, right or like at the
very beginning we thought we were going to war, but they amped up security.
Yet I was carrying around in m sixteen with no AMMO in it,
literally no m or. At first they had us with axe handles, like,
beck, I'm I gonna do with an ax handle man, But they
had us with axe handles carrying it around. Then they gave us rifles,
but like you had to inspect the crap out of them and then you could
walk around, but you had no AMMO. Then eventually it finally got to
where we get IVAMMO, but your magazine, every round was counted and tape
was over the top of it, and it was stuffed in the magazine well
with tape on the top of it, so if you wanted to shoot anybody,
you had to take it out, take the tape off, put it
back in, and rack it. So it was frustrating. So it really
had like a disdain for the army. I really hated it and I really
wanted to get on it. And I noticed it before that we would guard
empty concrete pads for like hours while everybody was out, and I'm like,
why am I wasting my time doing this? And then nine to eleven kind
of perpetuated that. But I was now, we're at war and that's what
I joined the military for. So I just looked to re enlist, and
so I re enlisted for Ranger Battalion and that's where I went from there.
And what was it that took you to the Rangers instead of SF like you
had planned? Well, there was a guy that was in my unit out
there actually, And speaking of that, it was one of the things they
did in Korea was the Manchu Mile, so they called it. It's like
a thirty mile rock march. And I love rock marching so much. So
we're like hut like rocking about fifteen miles into this rock march and I'm just
like, everybody's sucking, but I'm like, dude, I love this stuff.
And this dude was like, if you love this, you need to
be a Ranger. And I was like, I was thinking about doing Special
Forces, but he was like, nah, you want to go to the
Ranger Regiment. He's like, you go to Ranger Regiment, You're gonna kill
bad guys if you want to do this kind of stuff in rock march took
you up with all the rock marching, you designed all your hearts yeahs.
So I said, okay, well I was so I started asking more questions.
I didn't know anything about Rangers. And then you know, that's ended
up being the route that I went. I went and re enlisted, and
I wasn't sure that I was going to go to Ranger Bertine because I think
they mixed it up with a Ranger school at first. But luckily, through
the coaching of that NCO, I was able to make sure that I went
to Ranger Batin and so I went and did that and then almost didn't make
it like I was selling out them today. I almost didn't even make it
into RIP because you know, they do vehicle inspections. At the very beginning
of RIP, well, I had a tellight that was out in my vehicle
and I can't remember exactly how it happened, but one of the cadre was
like, it's no big deal. You're not going to drive it while you're
in RIP, so it's just gonna be parked. You can get it fixed
after RIP, and I said, okay, cool. So then I ended
up getting questioned by another one of the cadre and I was like, well,
the caduret said that I could get it fixed afterwards, and they're like,
no, you got to get it fixed right now. He never told
you that, And I'm like wait, that's what he told me. They're
like, well, you're calling Cadre a liar. I was like, I'm
just saying that's what he told me, and I'm sorry if I mean,
if you think I'm calling him a liar. They're like, you're dropped from
the course, like right at the beginning, like I'd just gotten smoked up
a little bit, boom dropped from the course. Now I was in holdovers.
But I literally went like with tears in my eyes. I was like
please, and like I beg the Cadre. I was like, please give
me another shot. I like, I will do anything. I did not
mean to say that he was a liar. I was just saying what I
heard and I wasn't trying to call him a liar. Maybe there was a
misunderstanding or whatever, but I was like, please don't kick me out,
and so luckily he had compassion for me and let me start the next rope
class. So it's it's wild sometimes like these these edge moments in people's careers,
especially in military careers. Yeah, that can make or break them depending
on how it goes. Yeah, you know, that's totally out of your
control. It's totally out of your control. There's a lot of that that
happens. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what
so what was it like for you when you got to battalion. You're what
rank were you? I was an E four, so you're an import?
Yeah, I was an import untabbed E four no ranger tab getting there.
Luckily, I consider myself squared away. I mean, the guys that knew
me may say otherwise. I thought I was squared away, like I had.
I pretty much had the the seven dash shape memorized back then. I
was in physically, I was in really good shape. I was in way
better shape than most of the other privates, so I didn't have that hanging
over my head. I was knowledgeable, so I kind of was able to
kind of stay under the radar for the most part. But I mean,
you know how it is as a private ranger battalion. Yeah, you can't
stay under the radar. You're gonna get just destroyed constantly. One of the
big things that I remember was we went we had we had done a range.
Talking about Joe Capp, he was one of my He was one of
my guys in my squad at the time, Like I was a team leader,
and he was one of my guys. I think, I think at
the time we're he was. Maybe it was when we were sample teon,
but we went out to a range and it was either him or one other
guy. I had inspect my gear. We did a live fire and we
had remember we'd had that dude that got shot with the blank adapter on in
the Shootousember school. Yeah, that big deal. Four three or four sounds
about right, So that was a big deal. I was a brand new
corporal and that dude got shot with a live round to a blank adapter,
and so they were like really being scrutinizing on like Blake's blanks and live ammo
ammo shakedowns did. So we're at this range, I had my dudes,
I swear to god, I had my dudes shake me down, like check
my stuff, and they checked all my pouches and stuff, go back,
throw my my rack into the wallocker. And then about a week later we
had a range where it's a machine gun range and I was a brand new
RSO, like corporal. So they're like, you're gonna go be the RSO.
So I'm like all right, So I got go out there to be
the range safety officer and didn't shoot. Left my kid in the bust the
whole time. But then at the end of the range, they're like,
everybody, bring your stuff out and lay it out. And then they were
like and I was like, do you want me to grab mine? Sorry,
and they're yeah, yeah, grab yours too, and I'm like,
okay. I go to grab it out of the bus and you know how
it is like when you grab it and you're like, wait a minute,
what's that feels a little heavy. Yeah, it's a little weird. There's
there's a smoke grenade in one of my pouch, just a smoke grenade.
But I'm like, my heart sank right away, and I'm like, oh
my god, I hope and I know where that came from. They did.
They just didn't check that very backpack. It was one of those dump
pouches, but that zipped up. I was like, oh my god.
So I take this thing out there and I lay it out and I'm just
like I go over to the platoon so and I'm like, hey, sorry,
I got bad news for you. I was like, in that pouch,
I have a smoke grenade that was left over from another range. They
just laid into me. Oh that's it. They like started They're like,
you go stand over there, do push ups, and like I'm doing push
ups and push ups and push ups. And then they finished checking everybody else,
load everybody on the bus. This is at Red Cloud Range, so
not too far from the resident of the street, but it's like three miles
or so. They made me. They took the bus back and they made
me imt like, I'm up. He sees me, I'm down. I'm
up, he sees me, I'm down, all the way back three miles
of IMT's, dude, this is the beginning of it, right, And
meanwhile the bus just left me. They sent a humbie back to like monitor
me imting all the way back. So I get back. Then my squad
leader says, I want you to go all the way up. They basically
briefs me on all this stuff. He's like, you're gonna, uh,
You're gonna understand accountability of your equipment and how important this all is and making
sure you've got all your stuff. And I'm like, how does this even
have anything doing? You have a smoker name. But he made me imt
to the barracks and grab like just like the canteen cup, come all the
way back that imt all the way back. IMT you know, for the
crowd out there is individual movement techniques like I'm up running, Yeah, like
you're being shot at. You're taking cover the whole way, so you can't
just run there and back. So it takes a while. So I go,
then I get the canteen, then I come back, get the canteen
cover, then I go get the alice clips. Until all of my TA
fifty, all of my entire issue, this was about eight hours later.
Oh my god, all my issue was laid out in formation. So I
never ever took that, you know, AMMO shakedowns not serious ever again after
that because but yeah, it was embarrassing though as a corporal, you know,
brand new NCO, so they call it right and then here I am
just being just made made to look like crap in front all the privates.
It was the most embarrassing moment. Yeah, but it's a lesson that you'll
never forget. Yeah sure, yeah, did they have when you were the
skipping forward a little bit? But when you were the mortar platoon sergeant,
did they still have the huge amnesty box? Because one of the guys from
Mortars brought a like an eighty one millimeter round back from the range. Once
they had like an amnesty box one literally you could open it up and like
put things. I don't remember that. That'd be a good question for less
Dusky. I mean, yeah, I don't. I don't remember that.
But uh, dude, those guys are out of control guys. There were
some good dudes, man. I love working with those guys, but dude,
as I got to and I don't want to jump out too much,
but in the Mortple Tune, the discipline was still strong there. Like when
I went back to third range of Battalion, I mean, discipline was still
good in the regimen compared to anywhere else. But those guys really held it
to the next level still, And like I had to like kind of like
turn a blonde eye because a lot of what they were doing was like not
authorized. But I'm like, I'm good with it. You know, I'm
with you and the crap out of those dudes. But I'm over here.
Yeah. Years ago, we had uh Ian Karusha Gay and he was describing
mortar section. He's like, I think he described this most terrifying place and
raign for battalion. Oh I wouldn't. Yeah, it's it's no joke.
And there's some of the smartest guys too. Yeah, yeah, you have
to be. You know, these dudes could do a lot of that math
in their head and you're talking you're talking trigonometry, dude, and these guys
are just like cranking it out in their head. Oh like boom boom,
boom bom. No big deal, it's a I had a under respect for
that place until I went there to be the platoon sergeant. I was like,
man, these dudes are all geniuses. They just want to do the
best that they can. They all wish they were shooters in the line.
So one of the big things that I tried to do there was bring in
something new for them. You know. I was like, man, these
guys are not being utilized overseas the way they should. So I was like,
what can we do? So thinking about like what I did at RC,
so I was like, Okay, I send dudes over to RC to
do classes on like battlefield interrogation, because I'm like, that's cool. It's
something a new skill that they didn't get to do. But they could go
over there and learn how to battlefield interrogate. So now they're forced multiplierces.
If they're not shooting mortars, they'd be like, hey, I can interrogate,
right, Send a bunch of guys to Army Sniper School too, the
sniper platoon as you know, Like, I don't know if it was that
way when you were there, but definitely when I was a mort platoon sergeant,
we had our black side weapons, which all the weapons that were like
issued by Jaysack, and then you had the regular Army sniper rifles. Well,
nobody ever used the regular Army sniper rifles, but at that time it
was actually a pretty good rifles. The SaaS I think it was the I
can't remember what that stands for, but oh, you're talking about the yeah,
the five to five six No, not the SVR, you're talking about
RPR. This was a seven six to two gas gun. It was an
AR ten platform that the Army had come up with, like the sky one.
Yeah, yes, yeah, that's one ten. So they had those,
but nobody used them. But it was a solid gun, right,
But all the snipers would use the three hundred win bags or they would use
the freaking SR twenty five because yeah, it was cooler. You know what
I mean. But so they didn't use those others. So I got all
the sniper rifles assigned to the morpaltoon. So I had five dudes that went
to regular army sniper school, they were sniper qualified and then they had their
own signed sniper rifles. I tried to send them to cross train lots of
different stuff like that they could be force multiplars. We actually sent a couple
of just to SODIC too, you know the special courses sniper of course two.
So because they were just undervalue guys. I mean not that they were
undervalued, but you know, they weren't utilized to the best of their ability.
I mean they were taking them out, they were taking mortar to a
lot of times they weren't even taking the mortar tube. So it's like they're
just an extra dude sitting on a VP. So you can justify it though,
I mean, you need security around the mortar section when they're in the
field. Yeah, and you know that's just added value for the soldier or
whatever else. You know, he brings to the table. And you think
about on the vps, they're at a spot where they're going to get some
reach anyway, they're going to have some standoff. It's a good spot for
a sniper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it adds flexibility to them.
So, uh, you're a Ranger Battalion misspent youth as a corporal.
That was about the time when I met you, actually when you when you
came back from Ranger school and then you went on to become a squad leader
in second platoon, right, thirdton, third platoon? Sorry, yeah,
so I was a squad leader in third Bletune did it up trips to Iraq?
We did. One of the more notable trips was that one to Mosul
up there, which you were with us on that one. We did a
bunch of raids. We stayed hitting I think it was that deck of cards
or whatever the bad guys that they had, and we had a really high
success rate up there Mosul. I remember, I can't remember the exact stats,
but I think we had like a ninety something percent success rate. It
was at that time that trip our platoons specificlarly that task force at least had
the highest success rate I think of Iraq at the time. Do you have
any recollection of like how many raids we did on that deployment, because I
probably a thousand or more. I mean we were doing two to three a
day, yeah, every single day pretty much. Yeah, I mean,
I remember we had two platoons there, so we had a platoon that would
go in daytime hits because it was that busy that we were cranking targets during
the day, which is not normal for us, and then crank and targets
at night. Well, then we went to twenty four hours on and twenty
four off. Oh just a ball crusher, Yeah, dude, Yeah,
dudes were coming back just getting tanked with ivys like about to pass. We
were all so exhausted by the end of that deployment. But then you told
the story that you know, well on one of the previous interviews we did,
but when we were getting these missions going down into tell Afar a lot,
and both of our platoons got in the nasty firefights down there every time
we did that. And you guys weren't a pretty substantial firefight down there too.
Yeah, we we went to Talafar to hit three different targets. At
the time, the regular Army had this whole city court und off and they
weren't really going in there because if they were going in dudes were getting sniped
out of the tanker's hatches down there. Yeah. Yeah, it was tanks,
and they were getting like they have to pop up out of the tanks
so they can see where they're going as they're driving along, you know,
because that thing is so big. And the dudes that were popped up the
TC were getting smoked by snipers, so they kind of cordoned it off.
We were supposed to go in there smack some targets and loosen it up.
So we went in hit this one target, ended up like killing. I
think our snipers shot like two dudes that tried to flee. Not a big
deal. Went to the second target. We never even made it to the
third target because we went to the second target. It was kind of a
narrow street. I remember I was like we rotated who was like the leads
assault squad leader too, and I was kind of pissed because it wasn't my
day to be the lead assault squad leader. So I was across the way
doing cross coverage and we had two other squads on the other side, and
we get ready to breach and then a kiowa, like a regular army kiowa,
flew over top and it kind of woke everybody up. And I remember
our platooners specifically briefed them, don't fly any birds over top. We want
to keep this super quiet. So that bird flies over the top, the
bad guys start waking up. We hear like coms just saying like, hey,
there's moving on the roof and stuff like that. Well, our dude
is getting ready to donk the door with like the little battering Ramo type deal.
And as he's getting ready to rear back, the door opens up,
and this dude's staring him in his face, and he goes compromise, right,
So the bad guy slams the door and takes off. Our dude boots
the door in, goes right in. That dude dropped a frag, like
he shut the door, dropped a frag and ran. So soon as that
first assault squad went in, all those dudes took a point blank grenade blast,
you know, like all into their legs, you know, And you
know, like I like to tell people that don't know because you know,
you see the movies like Commando and stuff like that, dudes are like taking
machine gun rounds to the chest and like they just suck that up and keep
going. But grenade blasts like turn them into a pink mist. It's just
completely opposite. Like bullet like rifle rounds don't mess around like it causes serious
damage. If it hits a bone, you're probably gonna lose that limb.
But grenades, I'm not really too scared grenades. It's just kind of like
take it in the backside, and you're just they're so random and how they
like, how they like damage people. Yeah they are, I mean there
really are. These are also like ancient Russian he maids that are not probably
of the best quality. Yeah. Yeah, and you know I wouldn't want
to take a sixty seven, yeah, point blank. You know our frags,
Yeah, but the Russian and Chinese ones, I'm not too scared about
them. You're right now, if they're right on top of you, you're
probably gonna take, like like Captain lose end up having to lose a leg.
But I've been around countless grenade blasts from like from me to him,
and it's just kind of like it's like a beasting act whatever, you know
what I mean, barely goes under the skin. But these dudes were pretty
much point blank on it. They're all within like a couple feet of it,
so it really kind of messed them up pretty good. The second squad
that was getting ready to go kind of hesitated for a second, like I
think, like what is going on? And then I just took my squad
and blew past them, went right into the house because you know, I
was already chomping at the bit because I love being the first guy in anyway,
saw a roll in there, and it was it was sketchy. Man.
We didn't know where this was coming from. We didn't know if we
were going to take fire right off in there. We go in. There
was like two or three, like three or four rooms right away, like
a little like a corridor with like a couple of rooms, and then it
opened up into a bigger courtyard and went in, cleared the first room on
the left, cleared the first room on the right, and there's literally nobody
in there. The first room on the left was one of our guys who
was in there kind of like laying up against the wall. Blood was streaming
out of his arm, and I was like, hey, dude, you're
good, and he's like, yeah, man, I'm good. I'm like
all right. So we kept going because like my focus wasn't to treat him,
it was to keep finding the bad guys. Went into the next room,
so another ranger in there kind of dragging himself back in. He was
wounded in his legs, and we told him like, hey, dude,
do sulf aide and start patching yourself up. Medical being here. Shortly kept
going went into the next room, and I'm like stacked up on the door,
getting ready to go in, and then I heard like the sound of
like just like in the movie, like clink clink, like a grenade rolling
on the ground, and I like, see this thing roll between like from
me to your feet from me. I'm looking at this thing and it was
kind of like I had all the time in the world. I'm looking at
it. I'm like, I'm about to be another least some other things got
to blow up right in my face, but I just booted it, kicked
it out of the way, and then turned in dove and we had some
ranger casualties literally about from like right over here, like five feet away,
So I turned and dove towards them. Caught some grenade shopping on the back,
but it was pretty minor. Long story. Short went on to continue
to clear that place. One of my privates took a shot in the shoulder,
almost took his arm off, got shot in the knee with it.
I think it was whatever the sub I camera with the seven six to two
the machine gun RpK RpK, Yeah, got shot by that. I engaged
the guys. There was two dudes over there where the machine gun. I
engaged them. Me and some other guys did took those guys out. One
of my team leaders ended up treating that guy, which I didn't even realize.
I was kind of in the lead, received some fire turn return fire
suppressed that went to go ahead and clear this next room that we were getting
ready to go in, and we were moving, you know, meticulously around.
So even though I engaged that threat, I continued focus over here.
May not have been the right thing to do at the time, but that's
just what we did. Went in that room, cleared it, nobody was
in there. Come out, and I'm like, where the heck is my
squad? Like it was like five man assault teams is what we were running
back then. So I didn't have a lot of dudes, but I was
like, man, I'm missing some dudes. Well, one was walking down
a stairwell, another one was treating one of the other guys that got shot,
and then I had like another two dudes with me, so I was
like, oh man, one of my dudes is messed up. So then
we kind of regrouped. We took a bunch more frags. Actually, at
that point in time, I went back out and grenades would just started raining
down from the roof, Like dudes were on the roof just chucking them,
and the grenades kept going off and going off. I took grenades shopping all
on the hand then or in this wrist, several other dudes got wounded.
So then at that point in time, I pulled back and went outside to
try to see what was going on. Like our platoon leader and pl were
not even on comms. They were completely pinned down at the time. So
I ended up kind of taking charge of that whole situation. I was like,
what do our vehicles Like outside security was just jacked up, So I
went out reorganized security outside started bringing our metavac vehicles up because I'm like,
I know, we got casualties. This dude's jacked up. There's probably even
more that I don't know about. Brought the METAVAC vehicles up and then started
just consolidating casualti as the best possible and trying to like coordinate this firefight.
Meanwhile, our j tax were calling in air strikes and doing trying to do
little burg gun runs. I don't think they could actually at the time while
we were on target. It was just the bad guys were so close in
proximity to us that cast was just not usable. Yeah. So once we
pulled off, they pretty much leveled that entire city block. I think like
two hundred dudes or something with a yeah AC one thirty eight tens, probably
some sixteen's with some two thousand pounders blowing them up. Yeah. Yeah,
I was telling you before the show, your direct leadership one to put you
in for a DSc for that, uh that whole action. That's crazy.
Yeah, and you know it kind of my understanding was to go through because
above our platoon level, it was they felt that it wouldn't look good if
you know, an n c O got a d SC and not an officer.
Yes, it's that's how it works. We need to we need to
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Check it out. So talk to us about uh, you know,
I know we're retreading some previous ground here, but I mean talk to us
about you know, when you decide to go to RRC, Like how did
that come about? Like what when? When did the ID even come to
your head? What did you know about them? So you know, I've
seen the guys around. I saw dudes with like hair like literally as long
as this, big long beards over there, and I might just super fit
dudes. I mean, like, you know, Rangers are fit dudes.
Compared to even other soft units. They are typically pretty fit guys. But
it was just a whole other level of fitness man and like more mature guys,
you know, older guys. I'm like, who are these guys?
I'm like these dudes CIA, you know what I mean? Like when I
was in Ranger of Time, like these CIA dudes like walking around here,
I had no clue. I went to podc as an E five and met
a guy, uh named Kurt Conklin, who was at the time he was
in the company was r D at the time, and went to PODC with
him and we talked about it, and I was like, oh, you're
over there, like what do they do? And like he couldn't tell me
a whole lot because they were like super secretive, but it was enough that
it kind of intrigued me. So I was like, I kind of want
to do that. I was already kind of getting tired of Groundhog Day and
Ranger by time. Yeah, you know, because you get a new private
and you kind of got to start back at the basics all over again.
Yeah, you got good gear and you got great training opportunities, but you're
always having to kind of back it down a little bit and then ramp it
back up for the most part. And then so I was kind of tired
of that. I wanted something new. I was gonna go to Delta Force
Selection or or and now I heard about r D and so I was considering
that. Got wounded on that trip in tal Afar, I had to get
some surgeries and stuff, and then did another deployment and then after that I
went to be a RIP instructor. It was RIP Cadre did that for a
while, enjoyed that. Well, then you know, the Star major came
to me and was like, hey, we need somebody for this Omega program.
Do you want to go do this omegapron? I was like, I
don't even know what that is. Sounds good and he was like, yeah,
you get to grow your beard out and throw your hair out and stuff
and deploy over on. Yeah, like it sounds good, you know,
like because you know, as a line betind ranger, you're not doing that.
You see the snipers get to do it, the batinon recky guys get
to do it. But I didn't, you know, I didn't know like
occasional guys. So I get to go do that and wear civilian clothes overseas,
and I thought that was kind of cool. So I deployed and did
that. And when when I went over the first time, I was with
my friend Rodney Brown and some of the Seal Team six dudes that he was
with there and uh and get go. But the second time I did a
second trip. And you know, I know, we'll talk probably more about
that o other stuff later, but I did a second trip. Because you're
talking about why did I go to r D. So the second Omega trip
that I did was in two thousand and eight and I was at Oregon E
and I and the guys I swapped out with there was RC team three at
the time, r D Team three, and I was like, man,
this is what you guys do. Like you guys are like, this is
what you guys do. And they're like, ah, this job is kind
of lame, you know what I mean, Like we're going on to bigger
and better things. And I was like, this is lame. This is
like the coolest deployment I've ever done, and to you guys, this is
kind of like to them, it was kind of lame because it was kind
of dead at the time. And they were like, yeah, we're doing
some other stuff and so they were like, come to selection and I was
like okay. So then I was like that's what I want to go do.
So then I just started training up really running at high altitude up there,
trying to get back in good shape again. I mean I was in
shape, but I like, you need to be in really good shape for
that selection. And then after that went back as a rip cadret and then
put in my pocket went to selection. You know, so that's how it
started. I bumped into an overseas doing the Omega stuff. Yeah, and
we've talked about selection before with you, but it's it's it's it's a unique
selection like it really it really focused on the demands of the job. Yeah,
there's you have to be physically fit to pass it. It's similar to
you know, like Delta Force selection. It's really based a lot off of
that. A lot of walking in the mountains, navigating long distances with a
rucksack on. So you're gonna walk, you know, anywhere from i'd say
fifteen to eighteen twenty miles a day in the mountains, and then you're just
getting assessed the entire time. There's dudes out there paying attention to what you're
doing. I on gona go on too many details because I know they like
to try to keep that stuff under wraps. But I think what's the most
unique about it is is the OTC pipeline. I think they call it RTC
now the Reconnaissance Training Course. But that course, you know, like a
lot of the other guys, like Delta Force and stuff like that, there
are programs about six months long to go through. RCAs is like eleven or
twelve months long. It's almost a full year, and you walk some distance
like we walked forty miles with a tactical reci rock, Like I've walked forty
miles with a rock weighing over one hundred pounds before in mountainous terrain just to
get to the top. Like that was just to get to the mission,
right, and then the mission goes for like several days and then you walk
out right, so right, we did freefall infiltrations. We were big on
free fall stuff. That's how I kind of got into the free fall realm.
But yeah, they didn't there was no holds barred man. A lot
of the training that we did. I'm like, dude, if somebody knew
that, they left us out here flapping like this, like somebody'd probably be
in trouble because I mean, no joke, Like nobody is like they didn't
care. We're out in the middle of the desert, twenty miles from anything,
with our own supplies and nobody to talk to, you know. At
times, Yeah, like I can't believe this is allowed in the military.
It was good stuff though, yeah, And I mean for people who have
not you know, rucked, you know, maybe you go on hikes.
I guess rucking is a new health fab now though. Yeah, rucking.
But but anyway, for people who haven't rucked, when Mike says that,
like they were rocking miles of a mountainous strain, one mile, two miles
over a mountain is not like rocking a mile or two miles, because it
may be a mile is the crow fly? Oh yeah, by four or
five miles. Yeah, this isn't some ultra light bullshit either. Yeah.
They got you carrying radios, batteries, battery water. Yeah, I mean,
no joke. On one of them, we were out near Arizona.
We walked forty miles on infill and that one and I remember the Caduret were
like, why are you guys going so slow? And were like, I
feel like we're going really fast, you know what I mean. So they're
like, hey, meet us at this road intersection. One of the few
times that during a movement like that they had actually interacted with this. So
they told us, hey meet us at this road intersection. So we meet
them at that road intersection. They pull up and they're like, lay your
rucksacks out and they're like, you don't need all that crap, get rid
of that, get rid of this. So they slimmed our loads down from
I think I was the RTO on that one, and I met I weighed
my rock, it was like one hundred and twenty something pounds, and after
that it was into about one hundred pounds, and some of the guys had
a little bit lighter rucks, probably down a ninety or eighty something pounds.
But I mean, we just had too much stuff because we didn't want to
fail the mission. So we had instead of two extra cable for the cable
that we had the primary, we had like two extra cables of this,
two extra batteries for every battery. And we were just carrying way too much
stuff. So we but we learned. I mean, that's what part of
it was about, like learning what your limits were and what you could carry,
and then also learning other ways to come up with solutions to these problems.
Like, for example, water, we got these little purification little deals
that we can carry, so we didn't have to carry as much water because
water is super heavy, it's the heaviest thing. We carried that in food
and batteries. But then we got these little straws that we could literally,
you know, decontaminate any type of water, and that saved us so we
could carry less water weight and then always just refill if we could just find
a water source, that was the key. And decontaminate doesn't necessarily make water
taste good. Nah, it can still be nasty looking too, right,
Yeah, some of those filters later on got a lot better. It would
make it clear too. Yeah. Yeah, back in the day they tasted
like charcoal. Yeah. Yeah, I missed it a little bit less as
I popping off in the chat we Love you last, but he mentioned something
about when you were at a betting having a problem with the woman across from
three seven to five something about a dip. Can Did I get that right?
Lest I can't get back to that part of the chair. I used
to dip, so it probably had something to do with me dipping. I
used to dip Copenhagen back in the day, and a lot of people don't
think that's the cleanest, you know, habit to have. So I'm sure
somebody probably got pissed off of me for a spinner or something. What do
you say, I don't know, Maybe maybe he'll pop back up with it.
Yeah, I just wanted to. I saw that earlier in the chat.
But what what was life like for you going from so you had seen
three this is your third aspect of the military. You've been mechanized infantry,
conventional infantry, and then you range of battalion and now you're r RD.
Did it just feel like life kept getting better or did it open your eyes
like different aspects of the military that you know that you didn't know where possible.
Yeah, I mean it did open my eyes because you know, like
in the regular Army you're only read on to like this very little bit.
You get the range of battie, you're read on to, like you know
what Delta Force students look like, and like you work with them regularly,
Seal Team six, all that kind of stuff or see you guys. But
then when you get to RC, like you you've already known what all those
guys are about, but now you know the background behind how they do what
they do because you're helping do what they do, like you're facilitating it with
a reconnaissance piece. And then you're read onto so many different other programs because
there's all these different skills that we have to have to do our job that
most people don't know about and that stuff that you know, shouldn't probably be
talked about. But just a lot of the trade craft and stuff that we
learn and I I didn't know. I'm like, dang, I get to
do this. It was the greatest thing in the world. Like going through
OTC, it was the best time ever. Physically demanding and always under the
gun, you know what I mean. You never know if you're gonna get
fired at any point in time or if you're not going to pull the standard
because the standards are super high and you're competing against the other guys that are
there with you too. But the training was just amazing. I mean it
was some of the cool stuff. I got to learn how to pick locks
and pick out a handcuffs and like at at one point in time, I
could pick out any set of handcuffs and like a matter of seconds, you
know what I mean, Like you know, ten fifteen seconds. We get
to do a lot of cool stuff like that, learn how to you know,
resist interrogations and all that kind of stuff. The shooting, you know,
long range shooting, pistol shooting. I really got into the pistol shooting
there too, because we did a lot of the low viz concealed carry stuff,
so at ends up being a pistol. So we did a lot of
pistol shooting courses and that became a passion that I really liked, was pistol
shooting. It's something you got to really work out a lot to get good
at. Do you want to tell people, maybe for the young rangers out
there who still to this day don't know what RRC is, Do you want
to make the little recruitment pitch and tell people what RRC is, what those
guys do, or it's not just rangers anymore. Yeah, it's open right,
Yeah, you should be just rangers. Well, I think it's uh
like our one of our old n C ycs said, he said, it's
like the best kept secret in the army. Really, I think it is.
The funding is when I was there was so immense because you've got we
had like six six man teams at that most, and that was if the
teams were full, so you're talking like thirty six operators and we had just
the best funding in the world. Anything like any training that we wanted to
do, we could do. I mean, you you name it, you
think outside the box, you look at on the online to the most craziest
course you could be taught by some Jazoos civilian over here about this whatever it
is, if you could justify it, which everything really is justifiable for Recky,
you know what I mean, especially when the clandestine stuff. You submit
it, and we could do it. I mean literally, I never we
never got turned down for anything. It was if it didn't happen, it
was because the timing just didn't line up right. So there's that aspect to
it. But we got to work with a lot of really good people.
I mean, some of the best guys I've ever met in the military,
some of the smartest guys. I mean, you got really smart dudes in
all of soft But that place had some really smart guys that still this day
some of the most impressive guys I've ever worked with. Excuse me, the
physical fitness aspect of it, you've got to be super fit, and we
had some ridiculously fit guys there too. But I think it was a great
place to work. I mean, I don't know if it's changed since I
left, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I mean, I
got to interact with all the different agencies, with all the other like Tier
one units that were out there, and it was it was definitely gratifying for
sure. Did you see a lot of an answer to this to your comfort
level? Obviously, but obviously back on the nineties, RRD was you know,
like a sort of more like a force ree con sort of you know,
actial wreck. Yeah. Yeah, it was a tactical wreki. And
then all of a sudden, I don't say all of a sudden, but
but you you guys proved your worst so much that you brought more onto the
national stage as a national asset as opposed to a regimental asset. Did you
did you see like the training expanding sort of based on the mission sets and
things like that. Yeah, it definitely did. So we did. All
the teams were trained in tactical reki, the Greenside recue like you were saying,
and we were really good at that and that was our bread and butter.
But then we also trained in like the AFO piece to the the CTR
type stuff, blending in you know, all the different aspects of trade craft
that you can do there too, and that's where a lot of that other
training came along, uh, learning how to hack into computers and stuff like
that. Like I suck at technology to this day, but when I would
go through those courses, I was pretty good at this stuff for a little
while. And then if we used it. A lot of stuff we didn't
use that often, but it did come in handy, Like we would have
to learn how to ENCRYPTUF because I may have to travel to a certain location
with a civilian computer and have to hide stuff on there, and like,
obviously I want somebody to be able to look at it real quick and not
be able to find what I have, right, So they taught us to
do that. But it came in handy really. When we were training the
ARU, the Afghan Reconnaissance unit that we created in Afghanistan, we taught them
a lot of tech trade craft. We taught them a lot of like physical
trade craft too, because those dudes were our proxies, you know, in
Afghanistan. They lived in the world. These dudes were running like a taxi
service or a cell phone shop or whatever, doing what we needed them to
do, collecting on how we needed them to collect. But they but they
were out there flapping. They weren't attached to a military base. They were
all by themselves with no backup, like if they were on a mission,
you know, if it got really bad, we could possibly leverage some assets
to come get them. But most of the time, those dudes are just
going to be just stuck. Like Chuck, I remember you telling me that,
like it was very rare that you would have like physical face to face
contact with them because they were just so deep. Yeah, it was,
and it was frowned upon a lot, although I did it more than a
lot of people did and I got some heat for that. Where I was
at up in Condu's it was pretty conducive for me to drive outside the base
and go low viz and link up with these guys. And I can't remember,
but for some reason, we were collecting a lot of data off the
cameras and there's no way to get that except for to physically get the SD
card because it was old school right in the IT networks in Afghanistan. It's
not five G right, no, yeah, back then, it was not
even close to anything. So we would what I would do is we and
these guys were trained just like tradecraft that you learn at the agency, you
know what I mean, Like similar, but we had to kind of wider
it down to be within the REGs to teach that stuff to them. But
I would have my dudes. You know, they were accurate with time too,
So I would say, hey, I need you to drive by this
location at this exact time plus or minus one minute, and I want you
to put your SD card wrapped up in a napkin and a water bottle because
there's trash water bottles everywhere. I guess that chuck it on the ground,
and then I would be driving so that my timing was just so that as
this dude went down this street, I was literally about a couple hundred meters
behind him or maybe just barely could see him going away. So I see
him go, I can see him do the act, the operational act,
and then I can come by pick up the trash, so we never face
the face contact. But now I have his SD card and I can go
back download the video footage off of it for a target that we were we
were doing. So it's funny, you know, it's funny that you mentioned
like they were good with time, because I think for people who didn't have
to deal with that aspect of you know, Afghans or Iraqis or whatever,
that when you are dealing with like an in shah Alah. You know the
culture. You know that maybe today, maybe tomorrow, if God will next
week, Like time isn't always does matter, It doesn't matter for the most
part. And so to find, you know, people in those cultures that
that can kind of stick to those operational requirements, it's not easy to do.
No, it's not. It's just not part of their culture. So
we had to really assess for that, and we really harped on it.
We put them through a selection and an OTC pipeline two, and we harped
on that being timely and being reliable and being predictable and stuff like that.
But you're right, I mean we lost a lot of guys because they just
didn't you pull the candidates out of the KKA or the KANDAT commandos. Yeah,
they Yeah, that's where most of them came from. They were either
yeah, the KK or the commandos, and so they were already elite trained
dudes that were trained by special Force to shoot, yeah, or or they
were trained like the KK trained by Rangers and Sealed Team six dudes and Dulta
Force guys. But then yeah, we would select from those dudes and then
that was the cream of the crop, we would put them through a whole
other selection otc. Yeah. The other interesting thing about the whole ARU program
is that it's not something that most people associate with rangers. Like your dad
said, rangers are the brawn. Yeah, they are not the guys.
This isn't a ranger thing. And I'm just curious if you had any sort
of insight into how that program came about, like whose brain child was that,
where the requirement came from? It was very interesting. I mean obviously
you guys did it very well, but yeah, thinking about that, I
know, so there was some dudes senior to me and the company that were
involved in the setting up and creating of that stuff. So I don't know
exactly where the who the brain child was. It might have come from within
the unit. I'm sure there was probably some direction from Jaysak as well.
But yeah, we were good at it. I mean, it's it's not
that rocket science, you know what I mean. We just had to teach.
You just have to be a good teacher. I mean, most guys
in you know, a leadership position, and the NCO in the military should
be a good teacher, you know. Yeah, and that's all it is
you We were teaching them to do what we do, you know, that's
all we did. We taught them to do what we did because in that
realm we couldn't actually do that as well, because you just stick out like
that's that country. It's like it's like if you take you know, your
average never been in the military in New York her and drop them in Southeast
Alabama where I live, They're gonna stick out like a sore thump, right,
you know what I mean? The way they talk, the way they
look, the way they walk, and it's even more of a star contrast
in Afghanistan, you take a six foot two white American dude and drop them
off. Now that the white skin color is not the biggest thing, because
there's a lot of light skin people, but like the way we walk,
the way we carry ourselves, the way we talk well. And also when
you get into like cover for status, cover for action type things like they
because of the culture and because of how they know the culture, like there
are things that they can come up with that Americans would never even think of,
Like you know, in the sense of a lot of these villages are
a lot of these places they were surveilling. We're very small. Everybody knows
everybody else. They know you don't belong to the tribe there. And so
if they get like pulled over and it's like, what are you guys doing
here, and they say, oh, my sister. You know, my
sister was supposed to get married and she ran away and we're looking for her,
they can play that off. They play off, and they know that,
and that's a perfectly valid excuse for them to be like trolling these neighborhoods,
like, exactly right, where's where's this wayward sister. We have to
kidnap and take her back to make her marry this guy. Yeah, yeah,
no, you're exactly right. And and that's why we had to use
those guys as our proxies. We could do certain things, but for the
most part, we used them and we just trained them and use them,
you know, And we would sometimes tag along with them on certain things.
We'd go out and we would be out, like a lot of times.
We would also task them with training missions because you know, the missions weren't
always as busy for them as we would necessarily want it to be sometimes,
so to keep them from being lazy, because you know, a lot of
them just happened to just kind of default into doing whatever they're doing, and
they just kind of forget about the military, especially when they're living out there
like that. So we would bring them in and task them with training targets.
Yeah, and I would have them wrecky something, and I'd be out
in town doing counter surveillance on them, just to see if they're actually trying
to be sneaky or if they're just like, hey, what's up right?
Stand out on the street taking a picture thinking they can get away with it.
You know, Now, how tough was it for you guys providing bona
fides for these guys when it was their intel that might be launching a raid,
putting American lives at risk, you know, like like validating their intel
to the battlespace commander or you know whomever. Typically, yeah, typically their
intel was just confirmation. Okay, so there was already something else like singing
or whatever that we would have, but then we we may just need to
develop this target a little bit more. So. Our guys their intel a
lot of times just confirmation. Sometimes they would just build power in a life,
so we knew that there was a dude in and around this area.
Then they would just refine the powern a life or do it doing the close
end wreki that you wouldn't send an American to do. I take it.
Yeah, exactly, like getting facial recognition photos of this dude at this house.
Yeah, I mean, so we have this blurry, crappy picture that
you know is on your little cards that you got and we're like, is
that really And then we send the dudes out to mingle around and they get
a no joke picture. Now we can update that picture and like, yeah,
that was him, but here's a better picture. Yeah, you know,
so stuff like that. Yeah, whatever the task force needed, that's
what we tried to provide. Yeah. Yeah, and how was it because
he's you know, one of the things that was always challenging in those countries
was like teaching people how to read maps, teach him how to look at
look at imagery and understand it from a top down perspective because they just don't
have that perspective. How how challenging was that for you guys that that definitely
was challenging at times. But you know, our guys, we we we
just it was part of the training pipeline and they just picked it up after
a while, and a lot of these guys just got better as time was
so they would graduated a certain standard which would be good enough, but a
lot of them would speak a little bit of English. But then after like
years of that program running, some of these guys were sending me PowerPoint.
I mean they could do PowerPoint by the end of their OTC, But after
like a couple of years, these dudes were sending me PowerPoint in English,
So I mean was impressive. I mean, some of the guys really wanted
to do good and they tried to impress up, impress us, and it
was impressive. They were doing that stuff in English. They were encrypted stuff
and send it to us encrypted because everything that we did with them was not
associated with the military. So I mean, even the computers that we communicated
with them on were not associated to the military. So we didn't want it
to any way tie these guys to us if for some reason they got busted.
You know, Yeah, how was that for you and for the other
guys in our city, Because you obviously you have this job. You're in
a way action heroes, right, Like you've been through all this training.
You're out there to be on the pointy edge and now you're working through proxies.
Was it frustrating? Was it gratifying? It was I'd say a little
bit of both. Some guys hated it. I mean there were guys that
hated it, but I think you just have to look at what you're doing
and just you know, find the good part of it. I actually thought
I was gonna hate it, but I really awaited Yeah, I really did
enjoy it because, I mean, we still got to do cool stuff,
man, we still got to go. It was like the best of us
both worlds. When I was up in Condus the last time, we had
a Delta Force troop there hitting targets every night and a Ranger batoon. They're
hitting targets every night. So during the daytime I was going out Loaviz,
linking up with my dudes doing dead drops and stuff like that, or maybe
going and picking them up, bringing them back, debriefing them or whatever.
Or maybe I would be going out with some dudes wreckying routes during the daytime,
like we would wrecky some of our own routes in and off of the
plateau there, excuse me. But then at night I was going out kicking
indoors with the Rangers or the Delta Fores dudents every single night. So I
got the best of both worlds. I thought it was great. Yeah,
I get to do a lot of this cool stuff that's lo viz, you
know, clandestine stuff, and then at night I'm going out and doing what
Rangers and Delta Force dudes do, you know, kicking indoors and killing bad
guys just as much as they were you know. Yeah, So I enjoyed
it, but it was so that dynamic was unique, not just for me,
but I coming from Third Ranger and I had rapport with Rangers and with
Delta Force dudes. There were dudes that had come from the Big Army to
RC that didn't know these dudes, so they wouldn't get they didn't get to
go out on missions with them, so they were just stuck doing the low
viz stuff when they did it, and depending on where they were at,
it may have been less eventful even And so a lot of those guys,
I think that's why they didn't like it, because they didn't get the best
of both worlds. Where it's like me, I knew dudes in the battalions.
I knew dudes at Deltafores because I've been working with my whole career.
So I'd just be like, hey, you guys need anybody Actually, yeah,
sure, we need an extra sniper, we need an extra battlefeld interrogator.
And so I'd go out and do that. A lot of bit TQ
is what I did. I thought that was where I was most valuable.
They got all the shooters they need, they don't need another shooter, but
they're squad leaders of tarrogating dudes, where here I'm a master sergeant. You
know, I've got more experience doing it leaves him to doing his squad leader
stuff. So I did a lot of that stuff. Yeah, that's cool.
I mean it's also like the total integration of the intelligence piece into the
ops. It really is. Yeah. Yeah, And that's kind of the
way I looked at it. And I had my interpreter teaching me Dary,
so by I did like I think three trips to Kandu's, and by like
the third trip to Kandu's I was able to do battlefield interrogation without an interpreter
in Dari. Yeah. I mean, now it was mission specific stuff,
like I knew pretty much anything that had to do with bombs, explosives,
guns, Who this guy is? Where are the mosques? Where are the
schools? You know? How many people are here? North? South,
east west? Like what kind of vegetables? You know? Like I knew
I had a good grasp with the language by no means fluent, but target
related I could do. And I could also talk my way through checkpoints and
stuff like that too. I learned that much. So, like you said,
you went in and became did language stuff. Yeah. I never was
interested in it until I got to RRC, and I was like, this
is beneficial, Like if I can prove to the chain of command that I
can speak good enough to do this, maybe they'll let me go do more.
Right, because there were things that we wanted to do as Americans out
that I felt confident doing, but the chain of command didn't see it that
way, right, So, you know, being able to speak the language
and stuff like that adds another layer to where they would probably accept it.
And it goes beyond the piece of like I speak five five six and seven
six two you know like it? Yeah, it opens up a whole new
world of interaction with the local populace. Yeah, you know, especially when
when the raids you know, the intelligence isn't always accurate, like you need
to find out what's going on target or like you said, like all the
operations that you guys do, a lot of those ops come from resets,
you know. You do your OT Yeah, your battlefield interrogators, you know,
and your exploitation guys get information and it's like, okay, let's go
hit this target now, so that these guys don't go to ground when they
find out they rolled up this guy. Yep. Yeah, A lot of
a lot of our missions were like that. I mean, not so much
like our see, we were always playing a piece in that, but in
the line range of times, dude, it was like boom boom, boom,
bom boom. Like you said, probably a thousand missions on that one.
The climate like three months because we're back to back to back. They
could never react because we were slamming them right fast, and a lot of
those a lot of those raids are sort of self propagating, where one raid
leads to another one based on the intel you got off that initial rate.
Yeah, we would hit targets in Iraq back in the day and literally the
pl would be with this little laptop like this on the back of the striker,
planning out the grids for the next target because we took intel from that
target to go hit the very next target. Yeah, literally planning them on
the fly. Yeah yeah, yeah, And well, I mean that led
to the whole debate to operations drive intelligence or does intelligence drive operations? But
what you're talking about with a ARU program, that's definitely intelligence driving operations.
Yeah. It was a good program, you know, one of the things.
You know, we were talked about it beforehand, and that's where I
met well, I met Adam from having done the podcast. He reached out
to me before and then he and his good buddy Brian Fitzgibbons came in with
me to Project Exodus really, which is a nonprofit that I created myself.
Rodney Brown, one of my Seal buddies that I was tied in with a
lot of us, got asked to like try to help people with Afghanistan,
and yeah, I was like, I'll help wherever I can. But then
come to find out there was you know a lot of these dudes were reaching
out to me, like people were giving these guys my number and actually a
nut your podcast set all this stuff up. There was a Teamhouse, bump
it did. It really did. Like the thing like what I do now
all really came from the teamhouse because I did the teamhouse. A dude from
Alabama saw me on the Teamhouse and he reached out to me because I gave
my email up that time and he was like, hey, brother, I
know you don't know me from Jack, but he's like, I was in
the Army, did this, that and the other. He's like, I
worked with some of the ARU guys. He worked with him as a contractor
when he was working as a civilian. After he got out, he was
like, not Blackwater, but one of those other contract companies. And he's
like, these dudes are asking me to help him in Afghanistan and I have
no clue what to do. So he reached out to me. That's how
I got involved. Brought this ad hoc group of guys that we're just communicating
with on signal chats, you know, like talking about like Sharon Intel,
like where the Taliban are looming for these guys and stuff like that. And
then all of a sudden, I'm like, dude, we need these groups
talking together. This this is where military dudes, This needs to be a
military cohesive unit. So I started reaching out to Task Force Pineapple with Scott
Man, super good dude. Yeah, I love Scott reached out to some
of his guys. I didn't know him at first, but I was reaching
out into his organization, trying to like, hey, who's the leader,
Let's let's sync this thing up. Reaching out to the Task Force Argo flanders
Fields is another group, Task Force Freedom Birds, like, there's tons of
other groups out there, and I was reaching out to him. I was
like, let's put this together, and nobody seemed to want to like really
work together at first. So then I just brought all these guys together that
I had. We called a Project Exodus Relief. And then, like I
said, I met Adam. Adam was on the podcast, reached out to
me. He ended up coming on board with us helping out. He brought
on his best buddy, Brian Fitzgibbons, who is an amazing dude. I
work with him now with USPA Nationwide Security, and you know, we can
get into that stuff later, but that's you know, it all came about
trying to advocate for these guys, these Afghan Special Ops guys that we trained
some of the best out of the Afghans, the most loyal guys out there,
and nobody was advocating for them, nobody cared about them. These guys
are just left flapping. Yeah, could you give us a little update on
where that project is now? You know, after the Afghan the evacuation as
it were, and all these guys that got left behind. And I mean,
we've we've had Scott Man on the show to talk about it. I'd
be interested to hear your perspective of like where that Mick, and I'd be
interested to hear like your perspective of like where that effort is at today.
It's really stagnated. We we you know, have talked to politicians all over
the place. I've spoke at the AI World Forum on the Afghan panel,
myself and Mike Waltz, the Republicans politicians from Florida, Me and him and
what's his name is a marine? I think y'all might have had him on
here too, But anyway, we spoke on that panel, and there's a
lot of people that seem to be concerned about it, but nothing ever happens,
right. You know a lot of these politicians were like, hey,
yeah, yeah, man, we got your back. You know, you
know, Democrat and Republican would act like they wanted to help, but nothing
ever really happened. We have guys that, you know, legitimately legit creds
have been verified by the Ranger Regiment worked for the program, that we've literally
taken their documents, handed it to the House of Representatives and like, can
you help us get this guy's SIV approved. Never happens, man, It
just literally never happens. So where we're at with Project Exodus is we've been
we raised some money through some of the public speaking events that I've gone to
and some other things we've run, and we've been we've successfully through through my
one of my guys, Dean, who's run our ground operations program, super
great dude, former Ranger, former one some five dude Delta for SKAT.
He runs our ground operations stuff and he's been running a food network where we've
been feeding two thousand ARU dudes in their families. So there's not that many
ARU dudes, but there's probably I don't know, probably still alive one hundred
aar you guys maybe less out there, but a lot of these guys are
the basically the secret service of Afghanistan. That Dean, My guy Dean trained
his guys and we've been feeding them in their families for the last two and
a half years. I got like about two years now, but we just
pretty much ran out of money this month. So wait, is there a
Is there some place people can go to donate money for that? Yeah,
if if they want to go to blog dot pro Exodus Relief dot com,
they can go there and check out our website. There's also links to donate
at the web site too, So if people want to do that, it's
it's a good cause man. Like right now, I still advocate for these
guys. I've been talking to lawyers. There have been some guys who've trickled
their way into the United States, not through our help, Like we've tried
to advocate for them, but we didn't specifically get them here. But I've
written letters of recommendation for some of these guys and it's come back to me
through Like I've got a lawyer that reached out to me that's helping advocate for
one of our guys, helping get his like SIV, And so it's been
good. Have they have a lot of these guys managed to get out of
Afghanistan and now are in like refugee camps in other countries, or they still
stuck in Afghanistan. Most are still stuff stuck in Afghanistan. There's there's been
a handful that a flee to Iran. There's some that have. I've had
one of my guys go through Iran all the way to Iraq. Then he
went back and I was back in Afghanistan. Just they can't find employment like
Afghans. I didn't realize that in Iran they're looked down upon and they won't
employ them there. So these guys are in high hanging out, couldn't get
a decent job. Ord. I had one guy that was in with a
Christian group that was trying to get him in sad story, but he was
in with a so called Christian group that was trying to move him through into
Iraq and a Turkey and stuff like that, and he was end and up
like he was trafficked, man, Like people were trafficking this Christian group is
trafficking human beings and guns and narcotics. Yeah, so they're there. Yeah,
it's kind of a lot of corruption out there, man. A lot
of these groups that you think are gonna be good and helpful like this guy.
I was like, I don't know this group. Yeah, I don't
want to have anything to do with it. I said, if you,
I said, you're the grown man man, you run your household. I
can't personally help you. So I said, if you trust these people,
I support you all the way and I'll help you however I can. And
the dude ended up getting all of his documents taken. He's trying to get
him back. Yeah, some of these guys ended up getting beat up and
robbed and mugged by these people. But yeah, Christian groups out there like
mugging people, trafficking drugs, traffick and narcotics all in the underground. Man,
it's all over the place out there. Yeah, it's that you think
would help. It's so sad, I mean, and you know, like
immigration is is, you know, a heated top of the United States,
you know, and people take very firm sides, but it's but it's wild
that it was the same thing in Vietnam, where it was the effort of
like the Special Forces guys and what tell then help the Montaon yards and the
Mong and and everybody who worked with us, and and and now we can
even help these people who you know, who worked very hard, who shed
you know, blood, sweat and tears alongside of us. It's because our
government literally doesn't want it to happen. You know. I don't know why
exactly, but I don't know if Scott Man said the same thing. But
that's our biggest hurdles that we've run into is our government. Nobody everybody,
they'll say they want to help, but nobody does anything. Literally, whether
it's at the highest level, I don't know where it is, but nobody
can make anything happen. I mean, there's all these bills. They try
to push these bills up, the Afghan Adjustment Act and stuff like that,
and I don't even really follow that stuff that much anymore because it's just frustrating.
Yeah, like I said, we just have been focusing on using our
funds to the best that we can. We can't move people anymore, so
we've been using it to feed people, you know, the ones that are
stuck hiding from the Taliban, or they don't feel safe that they can get
out and work. I can't get a meaningful job. We've been feeding them,
you know, supplemental food. We try to let them be like really
needy before they come to us so that we use the funds in the best
manner possible. We don't want to just be like making these people rich,
you know what I mean. Right, So, yeah, we feed the
average family about once every three months. They'll come back to us for some
supplemental food. Yeah. Yeah, if you could just go and get them
to Chili, then they can get in no problem. I know, I
know, it's crazy. The southern borders wide slap open. We got terrorists,
we had Isis, we got Palestinians coming through this the border like crazy.
But our Afghans, we actually had some Afghans that figured their way on
their own to get to Brazil came up through. And that's another interesting thing.
Afghan special ops guys caught at the border are deported never to return again.
Jesus, Yeah, they are. I mean there's been multiple guys that
it's been in the news. We've like, I helped advocate for some of
these guys. One of them was a commando guy. I'm trying to think.
I think Flanders Fields was helping that guy and he got hung at the
border. I called some border patrol guys that I knew that tried to help
him out, and one of my border patrol buddies told me straight up,
He's like, if I even look into this, dude, it's gonna spike
on the radar. And I was like, really, He's like, any
Afghan special Ops guy that comes through the border is immediately deported, never to
return again. I'm like, but we're letting everybody else through the border.
It makes no sense, man. It's it's been a frustrating battle, but
it has been one of the most frustrating things I've ever done in my life,
yet also the most rewarded, you know, I mean, because we're
helping me out, really helping people out. Yeah. Yeah, I was
really very disappointed, like in the American population left right whatever, when you
know, when we were getting all these you know, uh Afghan, these
Afghans in and be like, well, we don't even know who they are,
and it's like a lot of research has been done into you know,
like the Afghans who are being brought in, like people are voluing for them.
I mean, if they were our guys, like we have their biometrics
exactly. You know, they're they're a known entity, you know what I
mean, very well known like a lot of these guys had Polly's and tons
of background checks, essentially some type of security class, you know, not
really but kind of. Yeah, And a lot of them have fought and
died next to Americans and they still remain loyal to this day. Yeah,
you know, yeah, sad, It's very sad. It's up, is
what it is. Yeah, yeah, it really is. Yeah, it
really contributes to and and you know, we've talked about this before on the
show. Is the moral injury that it creates in this and so you know
veterans who who because not all veterans were very involved with Afghans or Iraqi's you
know they you know, but others were, and there's that moral injury that
happens that you know that we just leave these people that we know, we've
kind of left them to the wolves. Basically. Well, there's a an
organization that, like I was kind of the beginnings of helping stend that thing
up to along with another guy named Travis Peterson, called the Moral Compass Federation.
And that's where we kind of finally got all these groups together with Tasors,
Pineapple, Scott Man and those guys and and started working as a group
advocacy, and that group is still doing a lot of good stuff, advocating
on the hill and stuff like that. Progress is still, like I said,
non existent pretty much, but they're there. Yeah, that came up
big time. A lot of guys there were having really big issues because when
it was in the heyday, like the first six months after the collapse of
Afghanistan, like I personally was working eighteen hours a day. I was on
my phone eighteen hours a day, texting, coordinating logistics, making phone calls
on meetings VTCs. I mean, it was like running. It was like
being the battalion commander of a battalion sized element. Like we had a fifty
man intel cell. At one point in time, the dudes were pumping me
intel. Like it got to the point where I had to have like dudes
that just handled the intel because I couldn't handle it all. We had dudes
that were just handling the ground the ground stuff. We had dudes that were
just handling air operations, trying to get guys manifested. But after that all
fizzled out. It got to the point where like the onset finally kicked in
with like, hey, these dudes are screwed man yeah, and we can't
and we're just watching them get killed by the Taliban and there's nothing we can
do. So the moral injury thing became a real thing at that point in
time, and it's really bothering a lot of those guys. Yeah, and
especially you know, depending on whether it's this government for us or the next
any government you know, after this withdrawal, how they deal with the Taliban
government is just sort of salt in the wound. Oh yeah, yeah,
And you know there's there there were entities from our government liaising with the Taliban
this entire time. One of the things that I found out too, was
that the US State Department was flying one hundred Taliban out on US State Department
funded aircraft. Yet we couldn't get our Afghans on there. Taliban, dude,
they were flying them out on US State Department aircraft like crazy. And
this was around about like what the year what was the fall? Was it
twenty twenty or twenty twenty one? I got it all mixed up now twenty
twenty one, So it was like around December twenty twenty one January twenty twenty
one when this was happening. I think I went on Newsmax or somewhere talking
about that, and it was reported all over the place, but like nothing
ever happened, Like why are we flying Taliban? Oh, we're It was
one of the things that they said, we're flying the Taliban out so that
they'll let us fly aircraft in and out, like really one hundred a week
to the United States? Yeah, come on, man, what's up of
that? So, and it's frustrating when you got these Afghan Special Ops guys
that should be able to get on those planes in but they don't have the
right credentials, they don't have an SIV completed, they can't fly. But
a Taliban dou that has nothing can fly here, come right. It's it's
a kick to the nuts, you know what I mean. Yeah, So
that adds that moral injury. A lot of guys, just like just like
me, saw this happening and we're like, how is this even possible?
You know? It's frustrating, Yeah, yeah, But the way I can
look back on it is that we did the best that we could, right,
and we're still trying to do the best that we can for these guys,
and we're feed them. You know, we're there. There have been
guys who their lives have been made better because of the efforts that we've all
done collectively, not just me, these guys helping out to the other guys,
the Moral Compass Federation and groups like that. Yeah, how are like,
are a lot of those A lot of those dudes, Like for the
ARU, are like, are they in hiding basically in Afghanistan? Are they?
Like? Do the Taliban know who they are? They targeting them their
families? Yeah? I Well, to take it back, I believe it
was worse than we I believe we thought it was worse than it actually was.
Okay, So in the beginning we were like, oh, man,
they were killing some dudes, but they, uh, they were beating a
lot of dudes. And actually one of my guys I had an after one
of my ARU dudes that had a source within the Taliban leadership and and due
to the safe ouls that he was in, so I found out that I
was able to get a lot of guys released. I had a lot of
guys released. I'd call my guy, I'm like, hey, can you
check with with the general that's what we called the guy, and like,
can you check with the general and see if they have this guy in custody.
If so, he's one of our guys, man can have them released
every single time they release him. So the Taliban would actually release guys through
my proxy, like my source had that much influence with them and this so
I found out. I don't think it was as bad as we thought.
I don't know why they were detaining these guys, roughing them up, making
it look rough, But I don't think they were killing them in the numbers
that we thought they were at first. Uh huh. I don't know why.
It seemed like it was a fear campaign to make them scared, to
make them hide at first, But now a lot of them have kind of
kind of let up, you know, they're kind of going out and doing
the normal stuff in society. Yeah. Yeah, Now are we are we
worried? Has there been in the indication of the Taliban basically recruiting these guys
in the sense of obviously these guys fought against the Taliban and they're not for
the Taliban, but also human nature is just to make life easier for you
and your family. So now we have not just the a Aru, but
you know, we have you know, the conduct we have CPTT ctpts we
have, we have all these forces that were trained and I think a lot
of the CTPT got out, But we have these forces that have been trained
by American Special operations. We didn't do right by them? Or are we?
Are we concerned? Has there been any concern that they're going to the
other side? Yeah, there has been concern in There has been some of
that happening. Not not so much with the AARU. I haven't heard of
any AARU doing that. I'm sure there probably have been, but not that
I've heard of. And the more smaller, more elite units, not so
much. I have heard of like rare occurrences of like Commando's doing that,
and I think it was more of like other different forces out there that we're
doing. But it has happened, but a lot of them, a lot
of the KKA actually joined the National Resistance Front with was Okaman masud Uh leading
that effort? Am I mixing them up with his father? I can't remember
Akaman Masud. I think it's Okamah Masud the son that's leading the national result.
I can't remember which is the son and the father Bab Yeah, I'm
pretty sure it's Yeah, I don't know why. I'm having a brain full
at the time. But our guy, a lot of the KKA guys were
linking up with those guys and they were taking it to the Taliban at first,
like they were literally they almost pushed the Taliban. The Taliban were pushing
up in the the uh Hanger chain, came the pan Sure up in that
area, and these guys were pushing them all the way back, had pushed
them all the way back almost to Cobble. Then Pakistan sent over some drones
and did drone strikes on them, yeah, and killed a bunch of them
and kind of thwarted that whole thing and stifled it. But they were they
were this close to taking taking couple back. We were cheering them on.
We're like, yes, yes, let's do this. And then Pakistan sent
over some some aircraft and some drones and did strikes on them and pushed them
all back, kind of killed that whole effort. It's so weird to me
because it never goes well for Pakistan when they like like they've always supported the
Taliban and AQ and whatnot, but it doesn't go well for them. I
think that they just want the problem to be in Afghanistan. And not well,
now they got to live with their creation. Yeah yeah, right next
door. Yeah yeah, yeah. A lot of these guys, like I
said, they went to the good what I considered the good side, but
they've kind of I don't that effort's kind of stifled too. But they're there.
Definitely have been something that's gone to the badside, confirmed that I know
of, but not as big as you not as much as you would think,
right, And and I imagine for a lot of them, it's not
that they're going to the bad side. Is just trying the only thing they
got. Yeah, it's not that I hate America, it's it's literally survival
mechanism for them. I mean, and I don't blame on one bit.
It's just like when when Russia started recruiting them for for it's the name of
that group, uh, the Russian contractor Wagner, Yeah, Warner group or
Yeah, they were recruiting those guys, and I was like, hey,
I don't blame them. You know, if if you're getting out of here,
you know, and they're gonna put you up and give you nice accommodations
and treat you like one of their civilians, you know, I don't blame
them. It's not what I would do, but it's not that I would
blame we. Actually we had huge efforts to try to get them to Ukraine
too, Like with this whole event going on Ukraine, like, hey,
these dudes right here will come fight with you. Just get them out.
Yeah, nobody, nobody would touch it. Nobody would touch it with a
ten foot pole. Like I talked to people in Parliament and Ukraine. I've
talked to people here in the United States advocating for it. It's crazy,
the dynamic this thing is all turned. I actually met with a donor and
another interesting thing tying to the Wagner group was there was this donor that we
were told about that that he had helicopters fixed wing he was moving dudes currently
out of Afghanistan. We're like, dang, this is like the golden ticket.
Like if we can convince him that Project Exodus has the capabilities that we
have and we have the quality of dudes that he wants, maybe he'll get
him out. Because we didn't know why he was trying to help at the
time, we were like, we set up a meeting. So we set
up a meeting with this dude, and you know, just like a Google
meet. He comes on, his chief of staff comes on. Mind you,
this dude's a billionaire. He's a mega billionaire. I can't remember his
name, like Garrity or something like that was his last name. This guy
supposedly spoke at Sea Pack. He's like big tight end and the conservative politicals.
Well, he came on to our meeting. We were talking about different
things. We're briefing on all the operations we had going on with the food
program and this stuff, this, that and the other. One of my
guys was like, hey, we need to caution our guys to stay away
from Wagner Group and we just need to make sure that they're not doing that
because it's just going to look bad in the as the United States and we
can't support it. Then boom, this dude and is chief of staff popped
off the call. We're like, what the heck man, this dude just
ditched the call. We're like maybe they lost connection. So we're like texting
on the background, like hey, what happened? What did the guy drop
off? Come to find out the dude was a recruiter for a Wagner group.
The US dude tied into states. Yeah, I have pushed the dude
as a ghost on the internet though literally he's a ghost on the Internet.
I pushed everything I can to other people and like, dig into this dude.
This is an American citizen. I passed it to the agency. I
passed the FBI, and they're like, we can't do anything. He's an
American citizen. I'm like, he's an American citizen, but he's also got
British citizenship as well, and he's super wealthy, and he's tied in the
political sphere here in the United States. But he was recruiting for Wagner Group.
That's who he's moving people for too. He admitted he told that to
our people who got this guy on the call. Isn't that crazy? So
we're like, what kind of tail spin is this going to take next?
You know? I mean I can see the CIA saying we can't like he's
an American sist and what the FBI like, I'm pretty sure the FBI can
process. That's their yeah, think, yeah, that's their purview. Yeah,
but well Treasury too, right, if you're breaking uh finance laws,
Yeah, yeah, that's I really would like to find out what the truth
is behind that guy. Like I said, all I know is what I
was told. I was told that he's he spoke at c PACK. Somebody
sent me like a Twitter clip of him speaking there, tied in with a
lot of big conservative politicians, and I was like, huh interesting, you
know what I mean. Yeah, my thought when a lot of that stuff
was going down and what I thought the missed opportunity was. And it's not
my job, but my thought is like, we have all these guys we
trained up in the KKA, the ARU, the CTPTS. Why are we
not evacuating them to a third country? Not America, but a third country.
That did happen, But I mean, why isn't the agency moving them
into a third country? And you have an element that you can use for
completely deniable operations? Oh absolutely, dude. I've been trying to pitch that
to the agency for the last year and a half. Like I've literally have
a guy that I've been talking to and I'm like, Hey, this is
the capabilities we can bring. We actually had like a covert medical program we
were going to use. We had everything, we just needed a little bit
more funding. I was like, you guys, fund it. Now you
have an ambulance company in Kabul, Afghanistan that has access everywhere. We were
going to build false bottoms in these vehicles so we could transport people and supplies.
We were literally trying to build packages to sell to them, like,
hey, here's a capability. Nobody wants it. Yeah, I mean you'd
have a group of Afghans who are well versed in putting, you know,
a suppress twenty two to the back of somebody's head. Sounds like maybe something
somebody could use. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I don't. I don't
you would know that the agency will touch like medical stuff. Well, that
was just one aspect to it. Yeah, but we were we were trying
to think of ways to have better the ability. So one of the things
that was people were having issues was moving people around. We're like, we'll
create a medical company because there are medical issues that are possible up right right
right, So we were going to treat it was going to be a real
medical agency or ambulance company for the lat lack of a better term, but
we were going to also be able to use it to smuggle people and or
supplies under the nose of the talent as a you know, ambulance we had,
I mean, we got a pretty good Intel Networks still over there.
We've kind of kind of let it go because we it's no no need to
pimp these guys for information all the time, and we can't give them anything
in return. I can't get you outn right, Right, Let's talk a
little bit about the further adventures of Mike Edwards. Uh, your life after
service after all this stuff, going to work with us PA and and others.
I know you have some interesting stories there. Yeah. Like I said,
the whole stemmed from your podcast, you know, people reaching out.
We started Project Exodus, I met Adam and Uh, then Brian Fitzgibbons,
and then you know, I did some work with those guys. Well,
then I ended up I had a job that I had as a government contractor
for a while, ended up losing that job various things, and then I
saw his jobless for about a year. Us PA Brian hit me up.
Brian Fitzgibbons hit me up and he said, hey, would you like to
work with us for this contract? And this was last December. I said,
yeah, sure, we're going down to Miami. I'll bring you down
there. It's just like an executive protection gig didn't really know what it was
about him, Like, yeah, sure, he bought me a plane ticket.
I was on a plane, flew down there and ended up me and
Rodney Brown, one of my seal buddies who was with Project Exus. He
they contracted him too. Adam was there running the static securities. We had
like of like fifty guards guarding this art exhibit for Madonna. It was that
like Eve Saint Laurent is what it was called. So Madonna had this sex
art show that she had of like pictures of herself naked all over the place
inside there. Yeah, and all these celebrities, like a list celebrities.
I don't remember the names of any of them. You know, Adam were
better than me, but Madonna was the key. The head won, right,
So she did that and then had like a big after party. So
me and Ridney Brown were her personal bodyguards for that event. So it's kind
of interesting. Yeah, we were the muscle really just blocking her from the
paparazzi. But we did that manage the security event for that. We do
for the most part, we do nationwide, even international armed executive protection security
bodyguard work and firewatch. Firewatch is a big thing that we do where for
example, if you're building is under construction, they may have to shut down
the fire sprinklers system, and you don't want to shut the business down.
So by law, most places you have to have basically like boot camp firewatch
guy in there paid and so we we do that a lot. We provide
that service all over the country. But the key thing with that is,
uh fifty of all the earnings from USPA goes into the Kingsman program. The
Kingsman is the nonprofit arm of USPA. Mike Evans, the owner of the
company, such a nice guy, such a big hearted guy, and Dan
Manning the CEO, like they you know, will accept these different missing persons
cases or traffic children or for example, battered women cases will come in and
that's part of one of the things I'm paid to do to his advice on
that stuff. So we'll we'll get cases like there was a girl Ashland gill
Up in Massachusetts, wasn't Massachusetts that went went missing in the cops we're looking
for for like thirty something days. We got on the case and found her
within three days and had her back to her family. Wow, there was
another one. I won't say the name, but it was an adult girl
down in Florida who was tied in with a basically international conmt. This dude
had con many women, like good looking younger girls. He was probably like
about my age, and then he was getting not as handsome, yeah,
definitely not as handsome, and getting these younger twenty something to thirty year old
girls to spend all their money, literally millions of dollars he sucked out of
these girls just traveling around. And I reached out some of my network that
came from the Project Exodus stuff, some of that stuff that I was tied
in there was able to bring in a guy that can dig on people's phones
and basically sig it type stuff and find where these people are at. So
we used him to find where these people are at and ended up handing off
the locations to the FBI and to the sheriff detective down in Florida who actually
was in third range of re time with us in the same platoon actually for
a little bit, so it was interesting bumping into guy. But we helped
federal law enforcement and local law enforcement apprehend this basically, like I said,
international con man, and freed this girl up so that she suld go back
to her family. She you know, she was willingly with him, so
the family asked us to help her, but we couldn't force her to leave.
She's like, it's more like a deprogramming in a way, right,
Yeah, And that's what we're going to try to do, is kind of
call her out, deprogram her the best of our ability. Yeah, but
what we figured out the most viable route was to just help the cops detain
him. Now he's out of the picture and she's free, right, you
know, So that's what happened. Yeah. Well, we do a lot
of that stuff, man, cases that pop up. We try to help
people as much as possible. Like I said the kingsman, fifty percent of
our earnings goes to that to funding these different programs. Yeah, and those
programs are expensive, I mean with the surveillance to tech, you know.
If it's like recovery, uh you know, you know, and I don't
know if you guys, because you said internationally, right or well, most
of the recovery stuff we do here in the States. Yeah, we could.
We have done some internationally as well, but most of us here in
the States. But international is like the security stuff, executive protection stuff all
over the place. Yeah. Yeah, And how are you enjoying that?
Like, how is that back to your Rekie days? Yeah? You know
because one of the things, one of the things we talked about, I
can't remember if it was your first time on your second time on, was
like the post traumatic stress and like the like pulling people out of cars isn't
like necessarily like normal behavior, right, Yeah, And and I and I
identify with that. One ever said like you know where sometimes my girlfriend's like
let this go, and like, yeah, it's hard to de escalate some
times. Yeah. How like, how has it been for you not only
with like the postmatic stress going back sort of into this world, but also
the sense of mission, the sense of purpose that you had and then you're
and then then you're looking for does just kind of fulfill that role for you?
Yeah? I think you know, that's one of the things when when
USPA I asked me if I wanted to come on full time working with them,
I was like, man, I'm so happy that you all asked me,
because this is something that can definitely get behind because I knew what they
were doing because I kind of helped a little bit on the side with that.
But you're right, I've never had PTSD, I guess per se.
I don't know why. But I did have other issues right that I that
I had And we can speak on that stuff if you guys have time.
I want to. But I never had PTSD. But yeah, it is
right, It is good. You know. Whenever I retired, I was
doing the free fall stuff. There was in a lot of free fall contracts.
I was teaching wrecky courses and long range shooting courses and stuff different guys,
and I enjoyed that. You're still with the boys, still walking in
the mountains, still doing military type stuff. Right when you completely pull away
from that, it kind of it's like a sever that you can feel,
you know, it just doesn't feel right. So I pulled away from that
for a little bit. But this definitely fulfills. It feels that niche you
know what I mean. Am I I'm sorry, my memory is horrible,
but I was it was It was it not you. We were talking about,
like getting angry on the on the road and roadbridge I did. I
Yeah, I used to get like that. Yeah, yeah, that was
a period of time. For a while. I was just angry at the
world. Man. I don't know why. It was, but I was.
I was angry, dude. I mean, you know a lot of
guys are scared to talk about this stuff. Yeah, but you know,
suicide is a big deal. Like we've had friends that died from that.
Yeah, dude, to be honest with you, I've had a pistol to
my head snatching the slack out of a trigger before. I'm not scared to
tell people about that because that was a weakness that I was at it.
I'll never be back there again, do that now. But at the time,
man, I was being haunted. I don't know why or what it
was called. None of this ever happened while I was in the military,
right. It was. Once I was out of the military and I was
just at home with my wife and kid. I was drinking a lot to
like kind of mitigate pain and stress and stuff like that, taking like pain
pills and ambient and all that kind of crap, met self medicating. I
don't know why I was doing it. I felt like I needed it to
sleep, I felt like I needed it to be RESTful. But dude,
I would lose control, man, Like I was angry. I was.
I was. I was so mean to my wife, you know, thank
God, I've got a good Christian wife. And my wife was praying for
me all the time, Like I call her, I tell her, I
think I said that on the second one. She's the most valorous soldier that
I know because I was her worst enemy. I was attacking her left and
right, and she just prayed for me and prayed for me and prayed for
me. And then boom, I'm I'm completely changed. I'm not even close
to the same guy I was the last time I was on this podcast.
Man, You know that goes into my new passion is like studying the Bible,
like I have studied the Bible for the last four years now, And
at first, like I was telling you, I chucked that across the room.
I get pissed off on like this book is stupid, it's trash.
Who could even understand this thing? But now I've studied it so much that
I do understand it. Now, I do understand it clearly, and I
teach people on the side. I put together Bible studies and lead groups of
Bible studies for this, and there's a lot of people coming around to the
truth with this. Now. One of the most shocking things. A lot
of people don't like to accept it, but I mean the Bible predicted this.
The Bible predicted that in the end times, the entire church, the
entire church would be apostate, you know, meaning that it's completely against God.
Right, Yeah, that's exactly where we are. We are. It
says, you know, that the ministers of Satan would come the ministers of
righteousness. That's what's going on. Like it literally says false apostles as the
apostles of Christ. So all of this, the Bible told us that in
the end times, Satan's ministers would be in the church teaching false doctrine.
But a lot of people have too much pride to look at the Bible and
be like, this teaches totally different than what my preacher said. A lot
of times it hits them deep and they just refuse it. They refuse it,
and like the Bible says, they harden their hearts against it because of
pride. It's interesting, like from what you've described, it sounds like you're
kind of like self taught, Like you didn't really go to church so much
as as much as you like forced your way through the Bible initially, like
line by line. You know, even I think he said, you didn't
really take to it, you didn't really understand it, but you kept add
it until it started to make sense to you. I really did, Like
a lot of the seminary schools that are out there teach, they teach this
corrupted doctrine that's out there. It's antibiblical. Man. If you really do
take a forensic study of the Bible itself, it takes immense amounts of hours,
Like I mean, I have thousands and thousands of hours of studying to
this, and then you start unlocking pieces because there's, like you know,
Jesus spoken different parables and things like that. A lot of those parables you
think there's a surface layer understanding to it, but when you understand more depth
of the scriptures, it unlocks the parable's true meaning and a lot of that
stuff. It doesn't come alive until you've really studied in depth. And you're
right, I studied on my own, and I believe that's the purest form.
And the Bible says that that we're not supposed to have anyone else interpret
the scriptures for us. We're supposed to individually between you and the scripture,
but it's between us and God. He interprets it for us, and it
actually interprets itself too, So I mean we're not really like a religious podcast
per se. But since this is like something that means something to you and
has been like beneficial for you, I would like to ask, like in
your own words, then what is the Bible to you? What? What
what did you take out of it? What are like the big threads that
changed you? Well, I think the Bible is the manifestation of God himself,
you know what I mean. Like it does say in the beginning was
the word, The word was God, and the word was with God.
The word became flesh and dwelt among us. So there's codes in that,
right. The word is scriptures, and it's saying that the Word was God
and is God. And so like I believe that studying those scriptures it cleanses
you. It says that it does, and it has cleansed to me.
You know, my wife don't fight, but we used to. I don't
drink like I used to drink every single night all the time. Now I'll
have an occasional drink here and there, never get drunk. I don't take
any of the pills that I used to take. I've cleaned up my language,
you know what I mean, my acts, my culture. It's just
and I didn't try to do this. It did it for me, right,
you know, it was just like it just naturally happens, do you
You know, because you talk about this anger and and you know, and
I think that a lot of veterans, you talk about suicide and things like
that, and I think a lot of veterans, especially a lot of special
operations veterans for whatever reason, where you know, there's this blanket sort of
idea of post traumatic stress. But you know, as we've talked about on
the show before, there's also blast injuries and TBI. They get meshed in
with that because we've we've we've all stood way too close to way too many
breaches. Yeah, and you know, and then there's also going from sixty
miles an hour to zero miles an hour. I think that has a lot
to do with it. Where you have this purpose. You are an elite,
you know, you're you're an elite in the world. You're like a
child actor whose time ends. Right, you're at the top, you're at
you're at the top of your game. Yeah, with purpose, with a
fulfilling mission, and then you're back out in the civilian world where there's none
of the camaraderie, none of the purpose, none of that. And so
that with the pro dramatic stress that may or may not be there, with
the blast injuries and TBIs, it all blends together to this situation. Yeah,
exactly, it really does. And I think it's easy to be overtaken
by that. It's really easy. I mean, I'm telling you I've been
like with a block, snatching the slack out of the trigger, Like I
was lucky to overpull that thing. I could have easily been one of those
statistics. And like, who knows if those guys are doing the same thing,
never intended on killing themselves, but just so angry. They're just like
you will. You will think I'll do this, you know what I mean
at your wife, you know. And it's very momentary. I mean,
I have very momentary I've kicked in a door and taken a pistol out of
friend's hand before, and and he's no longer like it was a momentary thing.
Yeah, and and and he's not at risk anymore, thank god.
But the thing is is that it's such an insidious spiral that that we don't.
We don't see it for ourselves when we're in it. You're right,
You're exactly right. It's like, you know, I ap preached it my
buddies all the time, and like I got like Rodney Brown, you know,
he he always tells me, he's like, hey, bro, if
you ever need me, call me, like, and he's specifically talking about
that. Not because at the time when he would say that to me,
it's not because he knew that I had had these events, because I definitely
didn't tell him, right, you know, because like i'd like, I'll
talk about the stuff out in the open. I'll tell it to anybody because
it's an issue that does need to be talked about because we all deal with
it, you know what I mean. We all deal with it at some
level. Maybe not as bad as that or like to the point we actually
do it, but we all deal with it at some level, and it
just depends on how far out of control it gets. But yeah, I
wouldn't call him when those times, having I wasn't call him, right,
you know what I mean. It's one of those things. You're right,
you have to. It's hard to get out of, it's hard to overcome
that weakness and admit that you're weak, right, you see what I'm saying,
right, right, And yeah, And it's one of those things where
issue you're right, like, people don't reach out like people who expect like
veterans or probably anybody in this situe, not just veterans, but people who
expect people to reach out to a professional or even a friend, it's not
gonna happen. That's when you have to like do those buddy checks and like
like you just go in and assume an assault team basically, yeah, and
and you know, give the knife hand and you get lucky. Like there's
there's people that I've worked with that I was lucky to get on the phone
with and talk them. I fell off of it. Guys that worked for
me called me one time and was like, Hey, there's this one guy
and that used to be in our in our group, in our platoon,
and he's struggling right now. We think he's gonna kill himself. And they're
like call him, and I'm like, please, God, let's do answer
to the phone. I called. He answered the phone, and I don't
know if I helped him. Maybe I got to intervene at that right time.
But that's why, like you said, those buddy checks, doing them
routinely because that dude's not gonna call you. You know. Luckily, somebody
saw triggers from that guy on like maybe social media, right, and then
they started alerting people that network worked for that guy, right. But it
doesn't always work, man, And that's why I think being honest about it.
Like, that's why, Like I saw one of my buddies, DJ
Shipley, who was uh it made him did some free fall contract stuff together.
I watched the podcast he did on Sean Ryan and he talked he talked
very open about that, and I was like, dude, like I can't
believe, Like, like I'm like, if he's talking about that, I
should be able to talk about that stuff. Yeah. So I'm like that
that like changed me right there. I was like, dude, that is
awesome on him to have spoken out about his weaknesses. You know, stil
Team six operator like admitted his weaknesses. Man. More people need to hear
that stuff. So when I heard that from him, I was like,
dude, I need to do the same thing if I ever get the opportunity,
be honest about it, because you know, people will realize because we're
bad at on special ops. Guys, right, we can't be weak,
but in that situation, you have to admit when you're weak. What was
what was the turning point for you? You know, I really don't know.
It just it kind of like slowly happened with my Bible study stuff.
Like I said, I just stuck with it and stuck with it. It's
like God just took it from me. Man, he took the anger away.
Wow, he took the like, the the want to to do that
stuff. I don't get angry. Like the things that my wife used to
do that made me angry don't make me angry anymore. I don't make her
angry like I used to because she's changed too. She's in the same boat
as me, but on the other side now. So our whole family has
changed because of that stuff. I just I can't explain it, man,
Yeah, I can't explain it. But it's definitely for the better. No,
that's fantastic. I mean it really is. And and it's you know,
definitely a topic that definitely needs to be talked about man more often.
Well, and and you know, we've we've had people on who have who
have been through this and who have been through, uh psychotropic medicines that you
know, uh still like ganglion blocks, you know, uh four key with
like the breathing and things like that, like all these different things. But
you know you're bringing something that that hasn't really been talked about on the show
before, which is is just faith true. I do believe with everything in
my entire being that that is the ticket. It's not the easy ticket though.
It comes with like like the scripture says, those who diligently seek him,
he will manifest himself to you. So you can't just do it at
a surf la surface layer. You can't just half asked, you know what
I mean. You got to go into full bore. And that's the way
I looked at him. I was like, I'm going to prove that this
is either a legitimate, divinely inspired book or I'm gonna prove it's trash one
of the two. And I went at it myself tearing. It was such
a typical Ranger there's no right right, It's either all the way in.
But it definitely I believe that's the ticket because I've tried the the different stuff
out there. We've got a ranger buddy, grant them, Miles grant them.
Yeah, he travels around and helps guys with this, with the toad
stuff. Right, And he came and like, and I don't want to
say too many details, but he put me through one of those toads.
I've I've interviewed him about it before, about hyahuasca and stuff like that.
So me and Miles were in the same platoon. We were both in snipers
together. Yeah, I knew you were, and then we reconnected. We
stayed in touch after we got out of the military, and we used to
have dinner once in a while. And he lived up here in New York
and yeah, he's doing executive protection stuff. Oh that's right. And for
better or worse, I convinced him he should go to Columbia, he should
go enroll up there, and he majored in political or no, he majored
in computer science. And then he got on board with all the hyahuasca stuff.
And it did him. I mean he's talked about it publicly before.
I mean it's done him a world of good. And like you said,
now he goes around helping other guys with it. He called me like he
was hitting me up. He was like, dude, you need to do
this stuff. You need to do this stuff. I'm like, man,
I just didn't want to because I was working and I was afraid i'd be
like hungover or weird afterwards. A lot of the times he was trying to
catch me, you know places you know out west, and I'm like,
I just can't do this in the middle of the work trip. It's just
I just don't feel right about it. He's like, it's over with,
like super fast. So then he finally hmmed me up. And everything was
so bad with my wife at the time to where she was like, I
don't care. She was totally against it. She's like, that's stuff satanic,
you know what I mean. And she's like totally against it. But
then she's like, I don't care. If it'll save our marriage, just
do it. I said, all right, So I hit him up and
I said, yeah, I'm good if you want to do it. So
he literally personally did one for me and a couple other guys, another Ranger
body, and then an SF dude that I met at Walter Reid came down
and did it for me in my backyard man, and it was it was
the most amazing thing. But I don't think that's what fixed me. I
didn't. I still had issues, significant issues after that. I do know
that there are guys that do it to say it's life change. Do you
think it gave you space to like examine the rest of it, Like if
it didn't change everything immediately for you, do you feel like it created a
space for you to do that, to like examine things. I believe so,
because I do believe. This is what I try to tell people.
Like my wife was against it all, but I was like, God created
those things for a reason, right, you know, if there's God and
he's real, he created these planets and these things for medicine. I believe
it's for guys like us who are too hard to break through to that spiritual
peace, you know. Like so, I think what that did do for
me is it showed me because you go and meet God when you do that
stuff, that's what it does. It takes you into what they call the
spirit realm. Like that's literally, I mean that's what they talk about.
You're going into the spirit world, and that's where you go. With hyahuasca
and the toad medicine is even more potent. And that's the stuff that I
did, and I think it showed to me that God is real and he's
out there. So then that kind of intrigued me because it was about after,
right about after that when I really started studying the Bible, So maybe
it did kind of catalyst it in because I'm like, yeah, God's real
for sure. Now this book's better be real or wrong. I start started
digging in. I think Jim Morris, you know, had like a really
interest and comment like after Vietnam he started experimenting with LSD back when no one
knew about that, Jim Morrison from the Special Forces in Vietnam, and he
said that, you know, the the psychedelics can get you out of the
box you're in into like the room of the house, but as far as
like if you want to explore the rest of the house, you kind of
have to do that on your own. That's a good point. I think
he's right about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it did because
you know, thinking back on it, maybe it was the catalyst that pushed
me into the realm that I'm at now, because yeah, it kind of
breaks down like I think, you know, like how older people get to
where you know, they're stuck in their old wage can't take teaching old dog
new tricks. We tend to compartmentalize ourselves in our brains or what the norm
is, right, and that thing. I do believe it helps step you
outside of that box of the norm to where you're like, well this exists.
Let me get busy with that, you know what I mean. So,
yeah, no, it's it's fascinating. You know, I've talked,
well, we've talked to people. I've talked to people personally about the ayahuasca,
the ibu gaine, you know, the different types of plant based medicines
that are out there. Yeah, And what's really interesting because you even mentioned
LSD, and we can talk about like uh d MT and and uh and
uh molly or uh you know, like these were all being researched heavily,
like in the fifties or a lot of these were, yeah, and sixties
and then when they broke out of a lab and became part of the counterculture,
was all shut down. But but it but there was already efica efficacy
being shown, yeah, like decades ago. Yeah, sure with these things,
and it's you know, all coming back around now, like and I
think you have to be careful with it. But I haven't seen any special
operations guys that have done it that have had bad negative effect. I've never
had one of them come back to me and say like they you got a
bad experience, right. Like another one of my buddies from the Ranger Regiment
just did it, and I won't say his names. I don't know if
he won't start out, but he's just like he's like me now, like
he's studying the Bible, like he's digging in hardcore. This is a retired
sarm major, you know, he's he's like, no joke. Like he
did the ayahuasca and I think the iba gain, I think the toat he
did like a big thing down in Central or South America where it's like totally
legalized, so like they were able to do a longer treatment. Yeah,
and he was like, man, it changed his life, and yeah it
has. I see it in him. I look at that guy like he's
talking to me about the Bible now. I'm like, what it's like me
talking about the Bible like a couple of years ago though, be the last
thing you hear me talking about. But that guy's talking about it now.
Yeah, I'm like, man, and I've seen that from a lot of
the guys that do it. It's really interesting to see, Like, and
I've seen it a lot because I've been out of the military for what like
twelve thirteen years now, so I've gotten to see a lot of guys get
out of the military and they have their post military journey transitioning out, and
for a lot of them, it is a rough ride. I mean I
had something of a rough ride too, the transition out for a lot of
guys with substance abuse to anger, like a lot of anger. Yeah,
and then find something and then we've talked about a bunch of different things.
People find different things in different ways. For some people it's more traditional therapy,
whatever that happens to be, and then they sort of like even out
and find the next thing in their life. It's just very interesting and I
find it very i don't know why, gratifying in a way to watch these
guys sort of evolve, you know. And unfortunately, the unfortunate thing,
of course that we've talked about too, some don't make it. Yeah,
yeah, thankfully there are some that are making it. And to know what
the solution to that is, I don't know. I do I do believe
that, you know, the whole faith thing. I do believe that's the
key. I just don't know, like I said, even in my own
process, I don't know how that came about necessarily. Well, what's interesting,
though, is the faith thing isn't even it's not new like alcoholics.
Anonymous was sort of based around faith, you know, not necessarily Christianity,
but a higher power and giving giving over to that higher power. You know.
However, a person recognizing it's it's just that you know, we we
often you know, we're a secular country at this point in a lot of
ways, and and we we stray away from faith. We also have people
who like push the faith a little, you know, too much. Yeah,
and they're pushing it in the wrong ways honestly. Yeah. Yeah,
there's more too than that. Yeah, And they make it very they make
it like a very scary, judgmental like thing. It's like a social club.
Yeah, I mean, it's really like a social club. Like you
just do this thing and hang out here and like I act and you're cool.
But they they're they're just as loss as anybody else, honestly. Yeah,
when you dig into the Bible about it. But but you're right,
man, it definitely. It's it's something that has gone away because I think,
you know, in America, we're all about making money, making money,
money, and even you're working hard, you're making tons of money,
you have more incentive to work even more hours. But then there's the people
that are poor as well. They're working two jobs, three jobs just to
keep afloat. Right on top of that, you got your children in sports,
gymnastics, piano lessons, all these things. It occupies all your time.
You cannot you do not have the time that I have to read the
Bible. Like I was unemployed for an entire year. Yeah, that's really
what COVID year. Yeah, yeah, I was unemployed for an entire year,
and that entire year, I spent a lot of time in the Bible
itself and I and I found out that that thing is true. And I
feel pity for people. I'm like, I just wish everybody had that time
and and I wish something would urge them to do it because it is life
changing. But bottom line is, in this world, we just everything is
out there to take you away from that instead. Yeah, yeah, so
less said that, Uh, there used to be a truggle and that work
at the p X crossed from the lay Mike went into purchase DIP and she
would not allow him to even though he was in uniform. Oh, because
I didn't have my ID card. I remember that I went over there to
buy my DIP. I literally walked across the street, so like I forgot
left my ID card or something like that. I'm in uniform, master sergeant,
right, so I'm like, obviously I'm probably older, you know what
I mean, And she would not sell it to me. I got soaked
pull a gun on her. Probably should have, dude, That lady was
mean. God I had. I had one of my privates in handcuffs at
the p X because he uh went to go buy a pack of smokes forgot
to pay for it and walk out the door. Dang yeah, man,
the the NPS came and slapped handcuffs on. First sergeant had to come down.
Oh yeah, dang yeah. People with the PX can be dicks.
Man. Yeah, I had. I'm trying to remember. I don't even
want to tell that story. It'll get done a whole Another rabbit hole that
was that the clothing and sales one time, not a good situation at for
betting. A lot of those ladies that worked on places on for betting were
not nice. Well, and the thing is is that they could take it
out on Joe's right like privates. Yeah, what's a private gonna do to
somebody who works at the PX A little bit of power? Yeah, yeah,
you mouth off? All they got to do is call your boss and
you're straight done. Yeah you know what I mean at that point. Ru
Yeah, they do have power, I mean, and they oh, they
abuse the crop out of it. Yeah, have any questions for Mike,
we do. Let me uh, let me get into them now. I'm
going to uh preface these questions by saying I saw a couple of them go
by. There might be no no, but there might be like some there
might be like some t TP type questions going on, and I will I
will ask Mike the questions you guys asked. But understand that understand that,
uh give us the nuclear launch codes broke? Yeah, oh you know you
like, we don't. We don't like gotcha questions on this channel and whatnot.
But we're gonna we're gonna lay one out. You talked about getting read
onto all these programs. Tell us about the aliens, man, tell us
about area fifty one and what was read onto. Oh I wish, I
wish I knew, although uh oh yeah, that's I really wasn't read on
any of that stuff. Although there's a guy that has a biblical perspective on
that that that ties Caunds think about it. You know New Jerusalem, which
is like Heaven comes down from Heaven. It's gonna what is it gonna look
like? It's gonna be like twelve thousand prolongs with twelve thousand prolongs, It's
huge. It's gonna be like a massive spaceship probably. And this one dude's
perspective on it, I don't know hundred percent on it, but he believes
it could be a deception, you know what I mean to like lure people
into the fal Scott who knows the UFO cult? Yeah, who knows?
Let's see he uh so. Brian Fitzgibbons, thank you very much friend.
Mike Edwards and Adam White, two of the greatest of all time. I
love you too. Adam come over here and sit down, man, come
come saying Yeah, if you guys have not watched Mike's previous two shows and
Adam's previous show, like you gotta Jackson, Thank you very much. People
have said RC prepares guys best for Delta selection given RC selection process and mission.
How true is that in your opinion? Also, what's the working relationship
with Delta. Yeah, we worked directly with him, just like anybody else
does within the community. And I would say, yeah, if you wanted
to go to Delta force selection and you've been to RC selection, more likely
to be successful because they're very similar, and vice versa. Guys that go
to Deltimore selection would be more likely to be successful in RC because they're the
selections are very very similar. If I can't say exact, but sure pretty
close. But would it be similar to going from like like Apple to IBM
that that you're that people aren't going to r r C to prep for Delta.
It's not like deltas you're wasting your time. Delta's not like the next
step up because they're they're very they're like equal, they just do different things.
Yeah, it's it's not like, yeah, you're not gonna go to
one of those to go to the other one because you're going through this arduous,
arduous program to then go to another arduous, ardiss program. I just
think that's ridiculous. Now I've seen guys that have tried every one of them
and then finally get to one of them. Yeah, you know, like
you went through all of that, but it's not the best route. But
you're right. So if you go to r C, it's because you're interested
in more of the Reki piece or if you're going into delta, for sure,
you're more gonna be interested in the DAP so like they kicking indoors kind
of stuff. So the way I like to explain it is Delta force they
do a higher level of CQB like Range of Battalion does a ton of it,
but those dudes do it at the highest, highest most precision level,
right you know, Joe's gotcha, Thank you very much. Uh yeah,
so this very interested. Yeah so so, uh so this is one of
those questions. Uh, did r C have in how singan capabilities when you
were there or did they have to rely on sod a's or TFO to fill
that role? No worries if you can't comment. Yeah, we have our
own, you know, abilities within the regiment. You know, the regiment's
pretty robust, so yeah, we have our own capabilities within that Jackson,
thank you very much. How much shooting CQB REC training did you do as
an RC operator compared to your time as a ranger in alignment? Also,
how often do you see green berets or seals or MARSOC guys at our RC.
We did a lot of shooting, a lot of a lot. Like
I said, we got a lot more to the pistol shooting piece because it's
the concealed carry aspect of it. We need that a lot. So we
shot a lot more pistol in RC than we did in the ranger betines.
As far as rifle shooting, we probably shot about the same amount, although
we probably shot sniper rifles more in RC. As far as like dealing with
special forces in Marstok and guys like that, I never really worked with special
forces or MARSOC dudes overseas that much. I would occasionally see them. But
when I worked at the free Fall School, I worked with those guys and
I helped that. If that person doesn't know, I helped create, you
know, with my buddy of mine, helped create marsk's freefall program. What
we stood up the first couple of courses, and I helped work all those
courses and helped build a lot of the TTPs for it, so uh ntat
channel. Thank you very much. Greetings gentlemen, listening in and being in
artilleryman, that's a task in itself. Suns out, guns out, That's
true. Artillery and mortars are tough jobs. Yeah, they are, dude.
And that goes Leslie Sandusky and all the other mortar guys that were in
my platoon back in the day. I was super impressed with those guys.
I still keep in touch with a lot of those guys still to this day.
They're a whole other level of ranger. I mean, no joke.
They're so underappreciated. Those guys are some of the smartest guys in the Ranger
regiment and so underappreciated too, you know. Yeah. Yeah, and it's
like they carry like, no matter what everybody's carrying, they're carrying even more.
Yeah, for sure. That's another good point. They're carrying the heaviest
loads by far. Like you never want those guys coming down the fast rope
after you, no, because that's a really fast rope when they're coming down.
Yeah, grease that rope. Yeah. USBA National Security thank you very
much for the very generous donation cheers. Oh nice, awesome, thanks guys,
DJ Snead, thank you. Match. How does r r C different
from Force recap Con and Air Force Special Reconnaissance? Uh? Is that the
customer or capability is omega, like a f and AFO team are better.
I think that's there's like a good question in there. I'm speaking to Adams
Mike about a lot of people wonder about, like the difference between reconnaissance units.
There's like G Squadron, Black Squadron. Everyone has their own recon element
if you want to talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So,
uh, like the the G Squadron and Black Squadron guys. We worked with
those guys a lot too. They're more I'd say they probably delve into slightly
different things that we did in RRC, but we had a lot of overlap
of capabilities, just like the guys up at in Virginia as well, a
lot of overlapping capabilities there. Now, the Force Recon guys, I would
say like that, they're super solid dudes, some of the best guys.
Like dude, I love marines period. There's a lot of great marines out
there, especially in that realm. But they're their capabilities and their assets weren't
just weren't near what we had, like we just had immense funding and uh
and who else was it that they compared it to, Like, uh,
air Force, Air Force SRR guys, the Air Force Special Reconnaissance started off
as like the Air Force weather guys. I actually trained a bunch of those
guys last time, and they're just their focus is more on the Air Force
aspect of it. So and I don't want to get into a whole lot
of the details on that because a lot of their stuff that they do is
pretty classified as well. Yeah, and and like enabling fast movers to do
their job, so it's like different than us defeating those types of targets.
But yeah, it's cool. It's a cool thing, but it's all needed
out there. Like you can't just like RC. You could probably do all
that different stuff and vice versa. But we all have our little niche that
we really specialized in, and ours was broad like Wrecky, the WRECKI niche
is pretty broad, yeah, and ours was pretty broad. But a lot
of those guys, like the s the Special Reconnaissance guys, there's a little
bit more focus in this area versus these other guys a little more focused here.
The the reforce recon guy's more of the tactical reckie focus. From what
I've seen, totally capable unit, though, I mean, eventually it probably
comes down to in a bar, how much do you have to explain your
job versus how much do people already know your job? Right? And that's
the thing with RC. Nobody knows about it. Literally nobody knows about it,
Like it's all people. A lot of times I was in probably one
of the smallest, you know, little secretive units that you've never heard of,
you know what I mean, because you probably haven't heard of it.
Yeah, that's what's cool about it. Yeah, can you get a chick
by just saying what you did? If not, then nobody knows about it.
Only if you're in Navy seal, right, only if you're all you
gotta do is Bavy seal boom. Yeah, you got chicks, you got
jobs, you got everybody books, books. I don't know that people know
about it though, like, like you know about it, But I don't
think people know about it. I just answered I literally knew about it because,
as Jack Murphy posted on the Team House like RRC, like I I
mean like, we won't say the numbers. It is fucking remarkably small.
We were talking before, like like I was number seventy nine. I think
you said seventy eight. I don't remember. I got the coin much later,
either seventy eight or seventy nine. Memory, I remember seventy eight.
Okay, seventy eight. I'll take your eight. It was number seventy eight
that ever graduated through the pipeline as of when I graduated in two thousand and
eight or whatever. Yeah, yeah, two thousand and eight, two though,
yes, some yeah, uh, bigger hitch. Thank you very much.
Tell us your UFO stories. Oh, I will tell you a really
cool one, actually very recent. I don't know what this thing was,
but I reached out to a pilot body of mine who works for skunk Works
now, and he was like, yeah, we have this capabilities in the
OS military. I was teaching special Recallaissance dudes from the two four STS guys
in their OTC pipeline. We were out out in the desert out west.
I want to say anything specific, because you know, dudes want to keep
theirself secret too, But we were out there just doing just some basic patrolling
techniques. Right, We're like doing it at night with night vision. I'm
stand out there with our thirty one's on. I'm looking up and I look
at the dude that was with me, who was a Delta Force dude that
was, you know, teaching the course with me, and I look up.
I'm my, holy crap, look at that. We look up.
There's this thing that looks like a boat. It's like ripping across the sky,
but it's leaving like a wake behind it. I'm talking. It covered
from one horizon all the way to the other horizon a matter of seconds.
But it was way up there. You couldn't tell what it was or you
couldn't hear anything. There was no sound. It was not as fast as
like a shooting star, but near as fast, but it had a wake
coming off of it the whole time and then just disappeared. Yeah, it
was like some sort of hypersonic aircraft. And I told my buddy about it,
explained it to him. He was like, yeah, he's like,
we have aircraft like that, and then you that are hypersonic, and I
was like, holy crap, hypersonic. I think it's like seven times the
speed of sound. Because I looked it up. Something like that. I
was like, what, like, if you ever want to like talk to
somebody who will geek out about this stuff and knows their shit and is just
a blast to talk to. Talk to Alex Hangings, just get just get
him on a call sometime and just talk with him because he knows so much
and he's so fun to talk to because he just loves it so much.
But he'll talk about hypersonics and like newest developments and all that stuff all day
long. Well, I mean, somebody came out recently with the UFO stuff
and said that that we have like the UFOs. They're like, we have
the capability in the US arsenal that are crafts that are capable of that kind
of stuff you've seen. So I'm like, dang, I wouldn't be surprised.
There's some there's some weird stuff out there. I have no idea for
sure what it is, but I mean what the SR seventy one was developed
back in like the sixties, So I mean the stuff that I knew we
could do in two thousand and like it, and for the viewers out there,
if we were read onto it, it was probably just this very just
the edge of it. There's this much more that was out there, Like
everything's so compartmentalized, like you have to have a need to know, and
if you don't have a need to know, you're not knowing about it.
Yeah. I guarantee you we have stuff that we couldn't even fathom out there.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean think about this. I went to Disney
about two years ago. The new Star Wars ride was out there. If
anybody's ever been to that, it's mind boggling like that. I saw stuff
happen in that ride that I'm like, how is this even possible? Like
there was this wall that I was leaning up against. All of a sudden,
it just literally melted. You could feel the heat coming off of like
someone cut it up with a laser beam. We walked through it and like
we were on this ride getting escaped through like these drones were shooting as lasers
are flying over, burning up the bulkheads. It was like being in a
movie. And the technology that we used for that, I guarantee you can
make cloaking devices. If you can make a laser like the whole bulkhead look
like a laser beams flying over, Yeah, and feel the heat from it
as it flies over Yeah, dude, it was the most realistic thing I've
ever seen. I think they just I don't. I didn't do any research
in this video, so you know, I saw it and I didn't really
care. But there was a video that I just saw that they said was
in a Chinese theater and it looked like flames were coming out of the screen
and across the top. Well, I don't know if it was philosophical argument
of why we're in the matrix, because like you start with like okay Atari,
video games were like this, right, and then video games got better,
and then they got better, and like philosophically, if you can concede
those points, that's the argument that we're all in this like matrix matrix like
video game. I'm still a philosophical argument. I'm still waiting for the virtual
reality Deep Dive MMRPG that I can just plug my brain into and like live
there. Yeah, you know, gain levels exactly exactly. My video game
is pretty dope. Uh. Brian Fitzgibbons, thank you guys. Someone called
Adam White and from behind the curtain where we got him got them? Yeah,
Danny Roberts, thank you very much. What was Omega? Like?
How are the team roles or how are they made up? Great interview,
Thank you guys. So Mega, It's not like anything like crazy, spooky
secret or anything like that. I don't I don't think it's a tactical element.
You have you know CIA dudes that are contractors like you were you know
running or were you you were contractor or your blue badge guy. Oh no,
but anyway, uh, they uh doing contract work over there. They're
actually controlling the endage, running around orchestrating what's going on on target. And
for us, as the military aspect of it, we were the uh we
were basically like the command control right. We were the tie to Jaysuck.
So Jaysuck could bring in the close air support fires out sets, we could
bring in the helicopters and things like that because we were there. So we
were just a force multiplier. They had their endage, the ground branch guys
controlled them and handled them there, and then we just were force multiplier and
the fires and the assets to them. And you guys had all the authorities
that US military Haddy, we could take custody of them. It was just
like I mean, they're over there just kind of helping out the fight and
we bring what we can bring to the table to you. Yeah. Yeah.
One thing tying back into Exodus that the audience like it deserves mentioned again
is that by design, these guys did not have affiliation or paperwork uh with
the Afghan government. So when the team when the time came to like try
and bring them to the United States, Like, the frustrating part was by
design they were literally I mean it sounds ridiculous at the bar, but they
were quite literally part of such a top secret program that they didn't have any
of the affiliations. A lot of it was mind blowing and it's strict irony
that it was like, but they're quite literally and it makes it hard for
them to get out. It was like the but it made me think of
the Omega program in the air you guys, you know, yeah, and
their guys are probably similar to that too, I mean, if not exactly
like that, but I know that's one of the frustrating things we're trying to
get those guys out is because there's not the best documentation kept on them.
I will say, quite quite literally, by by design, you know,
this literally mind blowing frustrating thing is like, no, these guys are yeah,
the Exodus thing was, you know, it's yeah, yeah, it
was like, you know, I cannot explain to you the frustration of like,
like these guys are so special that there's literally nothing for me to prove
you have, but you have people vouching for them America. But from the
eyes of like from the State Department, they're just he'll be from fucking right
right right right, you know what I mean, Like you heard it here
first the State Department hates Hillbilly No, but it was like a crazy Americans
exactly. Uh, let's see here body, Ah, thank you very much.
What does Marcellis Walls look like? Isn't that he's got afro? Doesnt
uh any huge difference between G Squadron and kag RECKI And again that's it's a
little different. I mean, that's not my purview to talk about, but
like you know, I've worked with those guys before and I couldn't really speak
on to that accurately. But you know, I think, you know,
the different aspects like the juice spot us are probably more on like this stuff
that we did kind of stuff. You know, we're focused what was it
the wreck? You guys are more like snipers from what I saw you know,
yeah, did do you know if we have anything from patroon so U
we we have. We have one of our our Patreon get our Patreon members
in studio tonight like breathing in the excellence. We got a few from Isaac.
I'm just gonna ask one. Did you work with I s A.
I mean obviously you did. You were in Jayson, Yeah, yeah,
I worked with those guys. Yeah. So so where can people find you
now if they want to? You know, we've we've talked about us p
A Nationwide Security, Yeah, dot com That's where I'm at. I'm like
the director of VIP security for us PA Nationwide Security. Yeah, do that
from day to day, selling security contracts and working that stuff. And then
when we have big events, travel and help manage those events, uh with
with our buddy Brian Fitzgibbons and and Dan Manning the CEO. And then you
know, Mike Evans, the owner of the company, is such a great,
great, gracious guy to bring me on to. I really appreciate everything
those guys have done for me. It's it's literally the best company you could
ever dream of working for. I mean, in my opinion, Yeah,
I've only worked for a few but I couldn't imagine anything better. That's fantastic.
You mentioned like mission earlier. It's it's like far from the flagpole for
us, like we you know, we bullshit chat. It's like it gives
us like it's like an Avengers kind of group, like and you know,
we do real stuff. Man. But yeah, it's it's been great.
I mean to be distance teammate and friend, like he's Mike Edwards. Is
Mike Edwards, you know, but yeah, it's uh, love you man,
cameras expect what happened to you? What happened a lot? Man?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot the Hawthorne effect. And I appreciate
ad him for letting me stay with him last night and he's last night was
hilter. So we just lit a fire, listened to the last Mohican soundtrack,
had Tito's and gatorade and ice cream sandwiches. Yeah, and talked about
like the Bible and everything else. Yeah, it was a good time.
The fire was perfect. Yeah. No, it's a it's a it's a
waits and Gatorie. What what is that called? I don't know, Tata
Rade, I don't know you guys shirts when no well Last Mohicans was I
mean, it's well, we were talking about it last time we were together.
We were in a hotel in Miami and I pulled my hair back to
like the Daniel d Lewis Last of the Mohicans look, and that's what we
were talking about. And then he put on the music. Yeah, no,
I have like the physical CD. Uh. Yeah, Last Time was
awesome, not that all that. It's one of the finest movies with one
of the finest that was it. Uh, it was a good movie.
Yeah. But the scene where he takes out like kill scene, yeah,
with a hatchet. Yeah, yeah, every warriors dream. Yeah, exactly
one of the reasons I carried a hatchet for a while. I never got
a kill and realized how absolutely uncomfortable it was. Yeah, but a gaudy
thing to be carrying. Yeah, but if it ever came out, if
it ever came up, it would have been amazing. It would have been
amazing. And like what sort of capabilities you guys were if you can talk
about it, like what sort of train you guys are doing? Well,
you know, like how did that go? That's a good question. Yeah,
I really loved that we did. We did a lot of jumps in
r see. We we a lot of people consider us to be in one
of the more proficient jump elements out there. But we would jump as high
as it goes high as thirty five thousand feet pre breathing oxygen jumping out.
Most of what our capabilities we trained around a lot was high, too high
opening, so jumping. The highest you can open a canopy via like us
Army rags is twenty five thousand feet. Wow, so we jump out at
twenty You can jump higher than that, you can't open it right, So
we jump out at twenty five thousand feet right off the ramp, deploy right
off the ramp. You're under canopy at like twenty four thousand, five hundred
feet on their oxygen nav boards down with like GPS and like modern day with
like GPS and stuff like that, and we can literally fly like different distances
depending on the winds, like thirty forty kilometers. That's amazing. So the
glid ratio of the ones we were jumping at, most of them are about
four to one. It depends there's some out there that are pushing close to
five to one. Different types of canopies, the ones that most you guys,
use are four to one, So when you're talking about a glade ratio,
you talk about the amount you can afford four feet to drive to.
And it depends on the wind too, so we're always going to jump typically
up win so we're running with the wind, so it magnifies that. So
we can cover a lot of distance. But yeah, we could jump anywhere
land pretty much anywhere at any time in pretty much any environment. Like clouds
kind of limit us. We can still jump through them, but it's super
dangerous and a lot of planning considerations. But I loved it, man,
I did it, taught it out the free Fall School, taught it as
a contractor for a while. I really enjoyed flying the canopy piece of it,
teaching the body flight. But my body was just tired of it.
So when I took the break, it was like, Eh, I guess
I'm done with it. Yeah, what what makes a cloud or jumping through
a cloud dangerous? You can't see, especially at night time, it's just
hard to see. And if you can't it's hard to see guys anyway,
Like when I used to jump with students, like with the Marsak guys,
I would be like stay tight going out because the plane's traveling at one hundred
and thirty knots across the ground. So as every dude goes out, they're
getting spread out by hundreds of meters. So you got a twelve man team,
a special forces team, whatever going out. By the time I'm the
last cout, the other dudes over a kilometer away from me. So at
nighttime picking that dude up, especially when you have city lights in the background
and they're all sparkling, you're like looking through night vision, it's really hard
to tell where your dudes are, where the strobe is versus the background city
lights. So being accurate with everything you do, like I used to harp
on, dudes, get out, fly your body, deploy, keep your
canopy on heading, and steer it to the direction we need to go to
the drop someone. Because one dude could turn the wrong way for ten seconds,
he's a half a kilometer in the wrong direction right, and trying to
round that dude up is just challenging. So there's a lot of precision that's
involved, and doing that very well accurately and like repeatable, that's like the
most amazing through the clouds like that. Yeah, yeah, oh, dude.
Yeah, you'll see what daytime and full disclosure at night. I can't
imagine. I've done jumps before when I didn't see another dude because we were
in clouds for ten thousand feet wow, and then we popped out of the
clouds and like, oh, where's everybody. Oh, everybody's kind of close
by. Thank god we didn't collide with each other. You can entangle canopies.
I mean you could run into another dude's canopy and entangle and you wouldn't
know, so it's already happened. Yeah, question you got. Why is
the MP seven still your favorite gun? I wouldn't say necessarily it's my favorite
gun, but it's definitely my favorite Lovz gun at the time. There's probably
better stuff out there now, who knows, but it was my favorite gun
for Loviz stuff, like, I you know, if you're if I'm going
into kick indoors and kill bad guys, I'm still gonna prefer to have like
an AR fifteen or something and some some sort of caliber. But for like
Loviz stuff, that was my favorite gun because it was small kind of at
the time, it was pretty modular and compact, and then it had that
suppressor on it. That made it, you know, pretty quiet too,
But yeah, it was. It was a unique gun. Yeah, I
liked it a lot. So I have a question because, like, as
an old school ranger who fielded like the first round of SR twenty five that
did not have a Ford assist, And let me tell you, not having
a Ford assist on an they are fucking built, like gun gun was horrible
when you're trying to be stealthy because you're trying to seat the round sometimes drop
dropping it hard. Took off the one ten which I had. Did they
ever put an afford a fist on an SR twenty five? I believe they.
I thought they did, but I may be wrong. I think they
did. I'd have to, you know, it was so horrible, like
if you would like because obviously I only use it on training exercises, but
like you get stand in or whatever and then you sit there and try and
seat the round and bab jumps. Yeah. Yeah, you know you saying
that they didn't have a Ford assist gets me thinking now because if you were
to just ask me, hey, does an s R twenty five? I
would have been like, absolutely, guys. The gun nuts are for melting
down, right, now they're melting since I've seen it SR twenty five.
Yeah, I mean they weren't cool because they were like, like you guys
said they were based on the they had a suppressor, like they were so
badass, but they didn't have a FOURD assist, which made it horrible.
That's crazy. I thought they did. So Yeah, all right, Uh,
if they're that's it. So next week we're gonna have Yaya Fanusi is
gonna be on the show. He was a CIA analyst. Dave's gonna be
out. Uh. So we're gonna have a special guest host, James Powell
coming back. Nice. Oh he's gonna be doing the interview with me.
Uh. And I also want to shout out to Costa Carabo Cigars uh providing
the cigars for this show, good friend of mine. These are the don
Nello Torpedoes that he gave us. Awesome cigars. I hope you guys will
go check them out COSA dot Com. I want to give a shout out
to Jack you love the Shadow and the Old time a Radio shows. A
buddy of mine put together a cole c o l E Steele st E l
E. It's an old timey style radio show on all the podcast platforms.
It's a comedy, but it's based off the old pulpit the old yeah,
exactly, all the old pulp like radio shows. But check it out on
Spotify, Apple or iTunes everything else. So, Mike Adam, any final
thoughts before we roll out tonight. Thank you all for bringing me back for
a third time. I appreciate it and good to see you in person again.
Guy. You guys are welcome back on anytime. Man. I really
really appreciate you coming all the way out here. Shoot. Yeah, I
enjoyed it anytime man, both video. Yeah, I mean I'm just happy
to be here man. Yeah, Like my life is a movie like you
guys. Yeah alright, so yeah, I will see you guys next Friday
with mister Powell. And that's awesome. Take