Speaker 1: Welcome to Stories of Special Forces Operators podcast. Listen to
Speaker 1: some of the bravest and toughest people on the planet
Speaker 1: share their stories, Sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome back, folks for another episode. Today, we have a
Speaker 2: great guest, Clark Impostato. He served eight years in the
Speaker 2: United States military. From nineteen ninety five to two thousand
Speaker 2: and one. He served in the US Navy on the
Speaker 2: USSS Shiloh and at Seal Team five Fox trop Platoon.
Speaker 2: During that time, he deployed to the Persian Gulf in
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia. After separating from the Navy, he served with
Speaker 2: the nineteenth Group Special Forces from two thousand and two
Speaker 2: to two thousand and three. From two thousand and three
Speaker 2: to two thousand and seven, he continued service as a
Speaker 2: private military contractor. He deployed multiple time to Israel, Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: and Iraq. Upon returning home to the US, though he
Speaker 2: didn't stop, he continued on and he's served with the
Speaker 2: Phoenix Police Department from two thousand and eight to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: He says, now after all that he's been rocking and rolling,
Speaker 2: joking and living, you can find him a good vised
Speaker 2: podcast with Clark and Pastato and Ryan g By the way,
Speaker 2: his last name is I am past at O. Before
Speaker 2: we get started, to make sure to share, subscribe and
Speaker 2: hit that like but you know we like it. It's
Speaker 2: not waste any more time. And welcome the former Navy
Speaker 2: CeAl Clark and Pistada.
Speaker 3: Welcome Clark, Hey, thanks for having me. I'm stoked.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being here. This is so
Speaker 2: much now. I've learned so much interviewing special forces, whether
Speaker 2: it's Navy seals to Green Berets. And I think next
Speaker 2: week we have sas coming on. Oh nice, because people
Speaker 2: don't really understand who you people are. They have a
Speaker 2: misting representation. But the amazing thing is how how would
Speaker 2: I put this? How amazing you individuals are not just
Speaker 2: because of what you did militarily but also psychologically, how
Speaker 2: much you've endured and how much you've overcome and your
Speaker 2: lives outside of that world. But before we get to
Speaker 2: all that, I guess my first question is always is
Speaker 2: whatever made you want.
Speaker 3: To be a Navy Seal.
Speaker 4: I think it was kind of a gradual increase to
Speaker 4: that decision I always attributed to My mom was a
Speaker 4: huge fan of World War Two. She was a kid
Speaker 4: during World War two. But as far as like when
Speaker 4: I was a kid growing up, she loved to watch
Speaker 4: World War two movies, you know, the Battle of Midway
Speaker 4: and all this other stuff. The Black Sheep Squadron, there
Speaker 4: was a TV show about the fire pilots, and so
Speaker 4: I just watching TV with her, I just really kind
Speaker 4: of fell in love with World War two and the
Speaker 4: concept of it, and you know, we're going to fight
Speaker 4: this Hitler dude, and then broke out in Pearl Harbor
Speaker 4: and we went out west and bought the Japanese and
Speaker 4: so I was just at our early age mesmerized by it.
Speaker 4: But then that it continued further with the course growing
Speaker 4: up in the eighties with all the Rambos and the
Speaker 4: commandos and the Schwartzeneggers. I mean, who didn't want to
Speaker 4: be a Greenberry army dude running around.
Speaker 3: Saving the world.
Speaker 4: And so I just it was always kind of on
Speaker 4: the back burner until I was in high school in
Speaker 4: the first Golf War kicked off, and I was glued
Speaker 4: to CNN at the time because that was the first
Speaker 4: for our news network, and so when.
Speaker 3: The golf War popped off, I was just like, I
Speaker 3: have to do this.
Speaker 4: This is amazing, Like I'm watching this almost real time,
Speaker 4: and I just thought, when I'm done with high school,
Speaker 4: like this is this is now off the back burner
Speaker 4: on one of the front burners, like this is gonna happen.
Speaker 4: I didn't have a timeline or anything like that, but
Speaker 4: when that kicked.
Speaker 3: Off, I this is something I gotta do. You know.
Speaker 4: I don't know how long I'll do it for or
Speaker 4: where I'm gonna end up, but that's when I really
Speaker 4: caught the bug.
Speaker 2: Was the first golf for what's a fascinating story. So
Speaker 2: your mom was the one that motivate I can't remember.
Speaker 2: It was Robert cottrad of that blank sheep squadron.
Speaker 3: I can't remember.
Speaker 4: I was so young, but I just remember watching that shows.
Speaker 4: I really would love to be an old school fighter pilot.
Speaker 4: That would be like my dream job. If timeline wasn't
Speaker 4: I could go back in time. That would be just
Speaker 4: you know, the Western specific campaign flying airplanes and shooting
Speaker 4: down zeroes and that just I was like, that's the
Speaker 4: bees and ease Man's that's cool stuff.
Speaker 2: That's so funny you mentioned that because I think it
Speaker 2: was just last weekend I visited the Lions Museum down
Speaker 2: in Orange County and they have all those warplanes from.
Speaker 3: The World War Two. Nice.
Speaker 2: It was really a trip. And I think some of
Speaker 2: the guys were there.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, they were old enough.
Speaker 2: I mean, no offense to them, but yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Getting harder to find them. They're getting they're getting older
Speaker 3: and older, those guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that generation is disappearing, unfortunately. And I know later
Speaker 2: on in the interview, I wanted to ask you a
Speaker 2: little bit about Hollywood, sure, and some of them movies.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll get back to Rambo. I'm trying to think
Speaker 2: of some of the Navy Seal movies but just can't
Speaker 2: remember when off the top of my head.
Speaker 4: It really wasn't except for the Charlie Sheen one that
Speaker 4: came out like in the nineties, and that was well,
Speaker 4: that's right, Yeah, that's what we thought the teams would be.
Speaker 2: Like you're saying, it's not, well, I'll get into that.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this about buds training. Everybody's always curious.
Speaker 2: You see the videos on YouTube and things of that nature,
Speaker 2: and it's one thing to watch a video a six
Speaker 2: minute clip, that's another to endure it. Tell us, Kyle,
Speaker 2: walk us through your very first moments of going into
Speaker 2: BUDS training. Did they shake your hands, say how you're
Speaker 2: doing pallor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, orders waiting for you in a cancierge service and
Speaker 4: say hey, we're stoked to have you. No, it's it's
Speaker 4: very overwhelming, and there wasn't a lot of information. I
Speaker 4: showed up to Buds in ninety seven, the summer of
Speaker 4: ninety seven, so.
Speaker 3: The internet really wasn't in full swing. There wasn't a
Speaker 3: lot of info.
Speaker 4: The Navy recruiter laughed at you and showed you a
Speaker 4: ten minute video called be Someone Special, and it was
Speaker 4: like an old black and white UDT diver video.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a lot of info.
Speaker 4: So what I liked about it is it was kind
Speaker 4: of a Scooby Doo adventure. You just each day was
Speaker 4: this new mystery that was unfolded in front of your eyes.
Speaker 4: Whereas now there's so much info out there. I think
Speaker 4: it kind of obviously you can't prepare for the real experience,
Speaker 4: but you have a heads up. I think it takes
Speaker 4: away a little bit of the mystery, the charm to it.
Speaker 4: When I showed up, you had no idea. I did
Speaker 4: have a neighbor when I was in the regular Navy
Speaker 4: that was a sniper at five and so I could
Speaker 4: ask him questions, but it wasn't enough pieces of the
Speaker 4: puzzle to really get that kind of bird's eye concept
Speaker 4: of what I was up against. Whereas now with all
Speaker 4: the documentaries and stuff, it just, in my opinion, kind
Speaker 4: of spoils it.
Speaker 3: But when I was there, it was just overwhelming.
Speaker 4: You can't believe I had to fight my way there
Speaker 4: from the regular Navy. It's been a year and a
Speaker 4: half in the fleet, chip and paint, so I was
Speaker 4: super pumped to be at seal training and we'll never
Speaker 4: have to grab a paintbrush again.
Speaker 3: So I was pretty pumped about that.
Speaker 4: And to be honest, that kind of did me a
Speaker 4: favor because a lot of guys go from boot camp
Speaker 4: to buds and I don't think they realize how special
Speaker 4: that opportunity is, and they throw it away a lot
Speaker 4: quicker than the guys that come from the fleet, because
Speaker 4: you know, if you quit that floating prisons waiting for you, you're
Speaker 4: going right back to the fleet. So for me not
Speaker 4: to get ahead of myself, anytime I was having a
Speaker 4: bad day and feeling sorry for myself, I would see
Speaker 4: a ship just off the coast of San diego and
Speaker 4: think I'm good. I don't want to go back to that.
Speaker 4: I'll sit with cold water and be happy. So I
Speaker 4: turned that negative into a positive and used my fleet
Speaker 4: experience to motivate me to get through the tough time.
Speaker 4: But I can't reiterate enough the awesome effect the first
Speaker 4: day of BUDS has on you.
Speaker 3: It's just like it's just this epic thing that's in
Speaker 3: front of you.
Speaker 4: But what I did realize is once you get settled,
Speaker 4: the instructors really do give you the keys of the castle.
Speaker 3: They tell you how to succeed.
Speaker 4: They tell you, don't look at this as a six
Speaker 4: month program because you'll freak yourself out and quit.
Speaker 3: They taught us how do you.
Speaker 4: Eat an elephant one bite at a time, And what
Speaker 4: they meant by that was survive the day. Maybe you
Speaker 4: just survived getting to lunch. Or more importantly, what I
Speaker 4: did is I just focused on the task at hand.
Speaker 3: Whatever evolution we were doing, that's all I worried about.
Speaker 4: So if we were doing a four mile time to
Speaker 4: beat run, I wasn't worried about the evolution after lunch,
Speaker 4: which might.
Speaker 3: Be the obstacle course or you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: A lot of guys are like, shit, I failed this
Speaker 4: and I got this company. They psyched themselves out. So
Speaker 4: I took on board early on what they taught us
Speaker 4: to focus on it. And really that's the entire mindset
Speaker 4: of the sealed community. You don't really realize that at
Speaker 4: the time because of budge're kind of especially first phase.
Speaker 3: You're kind of in kindergarten, if you will.
Speaker 4: So any little nugget of wisdom they gave me I
Speaker 4: latched onto and I realized these documentaries and YouTube videos,
Speaker 4: it makes it seem almost a little bit marine corpus.
Speaker 4: They kind of ham it up a little bit for
Speaker 4: the camera and they yell a little bit more. But
Speaker 4: I thought of Buds as more of a gentleman's course.
Speaker 4: In fact, sometimes it's so evil that they're being nice
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 3: You're kind of like, why.
Speaker 4: Is this kind of like whispering at me, Like it's
Speaker 4: just kind of instead of all this shouting energy, like
Speaker 4: they just whisper in your ear light.
Speaker 3: Now you look cold and wet. I got them purple
Speaker 3: in the van. All you got to do is quit
Speaker 3: like it's creepy, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: They really they get inside your head because as a
Speaker 4: human being. You can only do so many push ups
Speaker 4: and run so far, and some so far. They'll physically
Speaker 4: break you. But they even told you this little key
Speaker 4: for success. Never let us break you mentally. That's where
Speaker 4: you have to win. We're going to break you physically.
Speaker 3: I don't care who you are.
Speaker 4: They've had Olympic athletes, pro football players, all walks of
Speaker 4: life have gone through Buds, some successful, sometimes success. But
Speaker 4: the key ingreeting is you must never be mentally defeated.
Speaker 4: And I think that's something it's calmon in special operations.
Speaker 4: But Buds is different because of that cold water that
Speaker 4: will get inside your head when you're sitting in the
Speaker 4: drink for hours and hours and hours and the water.
Speaker 3: Temp is like fifty degrees and you're shivering.
Speaker 4: You could be the toughest dude in the world, Mike Tyson,
Speaker 4: but you don't want to sit in that cold water,
Speaker 4: so you quit. So that's unique, and it makes us
Speaker 4: a little different than other special operations selection processes. That
Speaker 4: cold water really has nothing to do with your physical ability.
Speaker 4: It's your state of mind, and you have to develop
Speaker 4: that early on and realize this is just a new
Speaker 4: part of my life.
Speaker 3: And I either accept it or I'm going to go away.
Speaker 3: And you start to see people go away, some.
Speaker 4: Bigger guys, some very athletic guys can't mentally handle that
Speaker 4: cold water, and so you realize early on, Hey, the
Speaker 4: key to this shit is your state of mind, your
Speaker 4: mental fortitude. And so luckily for me, I latched onto
Speaker 4: that pretty quickly and that served me.
Speaker 3: Well throughout Buds.
Speaker 4: It's just to remain calm, as they say, embrace the suck,
Speaker 4: except that this is your reality for now, and you're
Speaker 4: going to be wet all day, every day for six
Speaker 4: months if you're lucky. If you get injured or roll back,
Speaker 4: you could be in BUDS for over a year if
Speaker 4: you don't get through in one shot.
Speaker 3: So oh wow.
Speaker 4: Kind of an open ended course, depending on your success.
Speaker 4: You have to complete certain things along the way. If
Speaker 4: you get hurt or you get performance dropped. If you're
Speaker 4: a good dude, they might roll you back. They might not,
Speaker 4: they might drop you from the program. So it behooves
Speaker 4: you to.
Speaker 3: Do it right the first time.
Speaker 4: So's I did my best to stick to that, to
Speaker 4: that philosophy.
Speaker 2: So that's the fascinating thing. I do these interviews, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure folks have heard it before. Is the psychological
Speaker 2: mindset of people in special forces. And I don't want
Speaker 2: to overgeneralize your guys, but everybody has a similar mindset.
Speaker 2: Sure you'd already did it early where you reframed the
Speaker 2: scenario you were in and then able to strengthen your
Speaker 2: mental fortitude as well, which is something I've I found
Speaker 2: sometimes when I've interviewed I think we're a similar age.
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with Larry Holmes, a boxer, No homes okay,
Speaker 2: Larry Holmes. He fought Mike Tyson and he fought Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, and same thing with him. And I asked him,
Speaker 2: what do you think about when you got knocked down?
Speaker 2: I expected him to say something like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I got knocked down whatever he did, and he said,
Speaker 2: I got to figure out how to get back up
Speaker 2: and knock him out. And I thought, that's a whole
Speaker 2: different mindset. What a lot of people have. They just
Speaker 2: don't give up. And the Olympic athletes told me the
Speaker 2: same thing. Every time they failed or they didn't get somewhere.
Speaker 2: What they always came back to is how do I
Speaker 2: get it? I'm going to move aside? What just happened
Speaker 2: and go back to how do I get that goal?
Speaker 4: You have to compartmentalize your defeat, and they teach us that.
Speaker 4: For example, when I went through buds, you were allowed
Speaker 4: to fail something twice, So if I failed a four
Speaker 4: mile time run, they would retest me, but if I
Speaker 4: failed a second four mile time run, you're gone. So
Speaker 4: if you fail something, you know the safety net's now gone.
Speaker 3: You have one more chance at this.
Speaker 4: But what they teach you is to to you have
Speaker 4: to data dump that. It's kind of like in advanced
Speaker 4: training when you're doing CQB and cleaning rooms. If you
Speaker 4: have a bad run and let's say you know, you
Speaker 4: sweep a guy or you to hostage target and then
Speaker 4: make you reset, you have to completely wipe that from
Speaker 4: your mind that you just screwed up. You have to
Speaker 4: go back in that house and have a good run.
Speaker 4: You have to be able to just compartmentalize that. You
Speaker 4: can revisit that failure later. There's a time and a.
Speaker 3: Place for that, but it's not right then and there.
Speaker 4: So they really are good at like you're saying, the
Speaker 4: athletes can do. There's lessons to be learned from failure,
Speaker 4: but oftentimes you have to reperform immediately and you can't
Speaker 4: dwell on that, and.
Speaker 3: So that actually ends up serving you well in life.
Speaker 4: For example, if you're having problems at home, you have
Speaker 4: to compartmentalize that, go to work and be a professional.
Speaker 4: Or if you're having financial problems, you got to compartmentalize that,
Speaker 4: go to work and be a professional. So it really
Speaker 4: a lot of my buddies that are civilians, they dwell
Speaker 4: on things, and I'm like, dude, just put that in
Speaker 4: your back pocket for now. Get through the day. When
Speaker 4: you're done with work and get home, that's when you
Speaker 4: can analyze what happened. You know why this happened or
Speaker 4: that happened. And so buds really taught me that if
Speaker 4: you mess something up, you can't let it eat you up.
Speaker 4: You have to to learn from it when the time
Speaker 4: is appropriate and then come back stronger. You've got to
Speaker 4: Failure is not a bad thing. Everybody has a bad day,
Speaker 4: has a bad week, messing something up. We all have talents,
Speaker 4: you know. For me, I sucked at swimming. I had
Speaker 4: to swim scared, I had to basically run on the water.
Speaker 4: I'm from Colorado, I'm just a little hillbilly that grew
Speaker 4: up at eight thousand feet. I probably should have been
Speaker 4: a ranger or a Green Beret, but I got the
Speaker 4: seal shit in my head. So I honestly had a
Speaker 4: friend in college that taught me how to swim the
Speaker 4: sidestroke so I could back fire.
Speaker 3: Had no idea beyond that.
Speaker 4: And obviously there's a lot of water evolutions and buds
Speaker 4: and I was the worst swimmer in my class for
Speaker 4: a long time, but I didn't let that beat me.
Speaker 4: We would swim laps at the pool and I was
Speaker 4: the last guy to get to the edge. These guys
Speaker 4: had already been resting for fifteen twenty seconds. I hit
Speaker 4: the edge and they say go. So I had no rest.
Speaker 4: I was just back for just sucking in water. Thought
Speaker 4: I was gonna die. But in the true sp of
Speaker 4: buds and the instructors wanting you to be successful, they said,
Speaker 4: for those of you that suck at swimming, instructor so
Speaker 4: and so we'll be here Saturday at noon. I suggest
Speaker 4: you'd be here and every Saturday there would be an
Speaker 4: instructor there at the pool and they would completely come
Speaker 4: out of character and be cool, and they would teach
Speaker 4: you how to swim and it behooved you if you
Speaker 4: were struggling to be there every Saturday and learn how
Speaker 4: to swim, And eventually I became a middle of the
Speaker 4: pack swimmer once the technique set in and I was
Speaker 4: fighting myself in the water. You know, it's just like
Speaker 4: if you try to run sideways, you're not going to run.
Speaker 3: Very far, very fast.
Speaker 4: But if you learn the proper technique for anything, it
Speaker 4: becomes pretty easy. So unlike a lot of selection processes
Speaker 4: I've been through, buds has the time because it's six
Speaker 4: months to really if you're a good guy, that'll work
Speaker 4: with you and they'll get you.
Speaker 3: Up to speed. And in my case it was the swimming.
Speaker 4: So they do set you up for success, but you
Speaker 4: do have to compartmentalize those failures and not let them
Speaker 4: meet you up. And it does eat a lot of
Speaker 4: people up because it gets in your.
Speaker 2: Head, say it really helped a lot in your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does.
Speaker 4: I mean I still use that philosophy today. Like I said,
Speaker 4: if something happens on the way to work, I'm able
Speaker 4: to just put that in a little box, do what
Speaker 4: I got to do at work, and then go home,
Speaker 4: or or something happens at work, I don't have to
Speaker 4: bring that home and bring that nastiness into the home,
Speaker 4: and I can compartmentalize it and.
Speaker 3: Think about it the appropriate time.
Speaker 4: So Special Operations specifically because it's and they taught us
Speaker 4: this too, it's ninety percent mental, ten percent physical. And
Speaker 4: that's in any Special Operations unit. It's just such a
Speaker 4: vast variety of tasks you have to become an expert at,
Speaker 4: you know, any special operations. Guys is kind of a
Speaker 4: Swiss army, and I have kind of a jack of
Speaker 4: all trades. We're not just a screwdriver or.
Speaker 3: Just a hammer.
Speaker 4: You have to learn a bunch of stuff. So there's
Speaker 4: a level of intellect that's required. But more importantly, it's
Speaker 4: the psychological part of it. Being able to control your emotions,
Speaker 4: being able to maintain your professionalism in multiple challenging environments desert, jungle, snow.
Speaker 3: All that's a mental game.
Speaker 4: When you're extremely hot, extremely cold, the mission's impossible.
Speaker 3: You have to convince you so if you can do it.
Speaker 4: So that's why they say it's ninety percent mental, ten
Speaker 4: percent physical. And when they first told me that, I'm like,
Speaker 4: there's no way, because Buds is brutal.
Speaker 3: I mean you're running with boats on your heads.
Speaker 4: You got hell week, you're you know, log peet, you're
Speaker 4: doing two mile time to open ocean swims and second
Speaker 4: phase you do a five point five nautical mile swim.
Speaker 4: Took me four hours and fifty seven minutes to do
Speaker 4: for the four hours, almost five hours, four hours, fifty
Speaker 4: seven minutes, and it's just a complete there's no time requirement.
Speaker 3: You just have to do it.
Speaker 4: And of course it was in the wintertime and the
Speaker 4: water was freezing and you're cramping up and you see
Speaker 4: the pier down an imperial beach you have to swim around,
Speaker 4: and it's this tiny little blip on the horizon not
Speaker 4: getting closer to you. Of Course, I'm convinced that there's
Speaker 4: like five hundred great white sharks around me at all time.
Speaker 4: So there's always this mental battle of you just have
Speaker 4: to accept it and go for it, and like we've
Speaker 4: talked about, that really gives you some tools for later
Speaker 4: in life that you don't realize at the time. So
Speaker 4: I just very blessed to buds in and of itself
Speaker 4: is really a very pure selection process, and it.
Speaker 3: Is mainly you versus yourself versus nature. There's not a
Speaker 3: lot to the buds compound.
Speaker 4: There's an obstacle course, there's some pull up bars, dip bars,
Speaker 4: rope climb, and so when you get there your first
Speaker 4: day and you're looking around, you're like, there's not a
Speaker 4: lot to this place, Like, I mean, really, how hard
Speaker 4: can this be? You know, they're trying to psych yourself
Speaker 4: up right the pregame Jenners, You're like, you know, whatever,
Speaker 4: I could do this, But then you realize it. It's
Speaker 4: the soft sand, it's cold water, it's the long runs,
Speaker 4: the boats on the heads. They just do this stuff forever,
Speaker 4: for hours and hours, and that's when it shifts to
Speaker 4: that mental piece, how long can I tolerate this? They
Speaker 4: might have you do something and they will say we're
Speaker 4: gonna do this until somebody quits. It could be just
Speaker 4: walking down the beach with the boats on your head.
Speaker 4: There's no time limits. We're gonna do this until somebody quits.
Speaker 4: And eventually somebody does quit. So it's that that they
Speaker 4: want to see somebody break mentally, how that affects you?
Speaker 2: Well, you saw somebody break, does they are like, uh,
Speaker 2: does it give you? Like, oh, jeez, he broke. I
Speaker 2: can't believe he broke or something like that.
Speaker 3: No, it motivates you. You know, uh, day one of buds.
Speaker 4: They line you up in a heightline from tallis to shortest,
Speaker 4: and I remember, I've always been kind of a middle
Speaker 4: of the road guy, you know.
Speaker 3: I think at that time I was six.
Speaker 4: Foot probably one seventy five point eight, so just kind
Speaker 4: of your average build dude. But there are some bodybuilder
Speaker 4: Towartzenegger looking dudes and you're.
Speaker 3: Like, oh my god, look at that dude. He's going
Speaker 3: to crush it.
Speaker 4: He's the first guy to quit because he can't manipulate
Speaker 4: his body weight on the obstacle course. He can't run,
Speaker 4: he can't swim, he's just a big powerlifter dude. Or
Speaker 4: so when you see those bigger guys quit, you're like,
Speaker 4: it kind of motivates you.
Speaker 3: It gives you energy, Like that guy looked like he
Speaker 3: would fucking.
Speaker 4: Take your lunch money. But he's the first one to quit.
Speaker 4: Like holy shit. Pretty soon it's a bunch.
Speaker 3: Of little wiry guys that are left. You're like, damn,
Speaker 3: look at us.
Speaker 4: Then we're still So anytime I heard the bell ring,
Speaker 4: it motivated.
Speaker 3: Me in that I'm still here now. It was sad.
Speaker 4: They also teach you don't make friends with people right
Speaker 4: away because if your friend quits, you're likely to follow.
Speaker 4: So there's a little a little bit of stand offficseness
Speaker 4: at first. Obviously you bond with your boat crew a
Speaker 4: little bit. But if someone in your boat who quits
Speaker 4: and you're real close with that guy, maybe your roommates,
Speaker 4: maybe your carpool, maybe you knew each other before, that
Speaker 4: has a huge effect. If your battle buddy quits, you're
Speaker 4: like damn, because you really relied on them and their energy.
Speaker 4: And so it's it's tricky. You got to the further
Speaker 4: along you go, the smaller and closer the class gets,
Speaker 4: you know, second third phase. Then you're just this little
Speaker 4: little band of pirates and there's nothing they can do
Speaker 4: to you, and and you you're kind of safe. But
Speaker 4: first phase is we started with one hundred and seventy four.
Speaker 4: We graduated thirty nine originals. Just to give you an
Speaker 4: idea of how many people do spirit, it's about eighty
Speaker 4: percent attrition rate seventy to eighty percent historically, So that's
Speaker 4: a lot of your friends.
Speaker 3: They're gonna go away. So and that's that's fairly common.
Speaker 4: If you look across the the specops selection attrition rate.
Speaker 4: Whether it's SAS or Green Beret or Delta, they all
Speaker 4: have very high attrition rates and it's mainly due to
Speaker 4: that that formula of ninety percent mental ten percent physical.
Speaker 3: People just mentally can't wrap their brains around it.
Speaker 4: So if you just kind of focus on the task
Speaker 4: and at hand, it's right in front of you, accomplish it.
Speaker 3: Then the next one, the next.
Speaker 4: One, you're just gonna trudge along, and before you know it,
Speaker 4: you're gonna pick your head up and you're a week
Speaker 4: away from graduation.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, holy shit, I can't believe that
Speaker 3: was six months.
Speaker 2: Fascinating stuff. Again, we're talking to Clark and postaal I
Speaker 2: m p A S t A t O. You can
Speaker 2: find them a good vibes with Clark and Postyle and
Speaker 2: Ryan G. Can listen to that podcast. Clark, really amazing stuff.
Speaker 2: Can you share whether it's a story of whatever you
Speaker 2: mission or you went out that you were able to
Speaker 2: benefit from your training at BUDS. I'm sure there's plenty
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 4: You stand out, Yeah, no, absolutely, you know, not every
Speaker 4: mission is successful or happy. We had a situation in
Speaker 4: the Philippines in two thousands that we were involved in
Speaker 4: really in a support role for a Seal Team one
Speaker 4: and some Green Berets.
Speaker 3: There was a hostage situation.
Speaker 4: The ABUF had kidnapped some Western hostages and we had
Speaker 4: basically a task force trying to sort.
Speaker 3: It all out.
Speaker 4: And I tell you, we never found them, and so
Speaker 4: it was really hard psychologically. I mean, it's almost it's
Speaker 4: a needle in a haystack. I don't know if you're
Speaker 4: familiar with the geography of the Philippines, but there are
Speaker 4: just tons of islands that are part of this.
Speaker 3: Did you go to mind the now, No, we're actually
Speaker 3: based out of a Cubic not a longapup.
Speaker 4: We're based out of a longa pot of a hotel there,
Speaker 4: and so we linked up with our Filipino counterparts and
Speaker 4: you know, we trained up a little bit. What was
Speaker 4: funny is we were a Winter Warfare Team win a
Speaker 4: warfare platoon and we were poised out of Okinawa really
Speaker 4: to respond to anything.
Speaker 3: That might happen in North Korea, China, Russia.
Speaker 4: So we were a Winter team, Mountain Warfare Team, Team
Speaker 4: Wons jungle Dudes, but they were just overwhelmed and so
Speaker 4: we were in the area. We were out of Oki
Speaker 4: and I think we're actually training in Thailand at the time,
Speaker 4: and they flew us in.
Speaker 3: I remember telling my chief like, what are we doing
Speaker 3: in the jungle?
Speaker 4: Man, Like, we don't even have the right camouflage, and
Speaker 4: he was kind of getting snippety with me, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: one last question, Chief, So we're not going to need
Speaker 4: our snow shoes, is what you're saying, Like for us
Speaker 4: to go into the jungle, it was. It was weird
Speaker 4: because I've never been exposed to.
Speaker 3: It before and now we're just thrown into it.
Speaker 4: And again we're with our Filipino counterparts and they're trying
Speaker 4: to spin us up on jungle warfare, and they put
Speaker 4: us through ambush courses and we died every time simulated.
Speaker 3: Of course, you know.
Speaker 4: And these little booby traps they set and you realize,
Speaker 4: oh my god, a crazy place and at night there
Speaker 4: are all these crazy noises and shit, and we didn't
Speaker 4: know is that or is that like a tiger about
Speaker 4: to eat me?
Speaker 3: Or is it punky that's gonna steal my shit? It was,
Speaker 3: it was. It stands out because it's it was a failure.
Speaker 4: You know, we never located, you know, our target, no
Speaker 4: fault to our own geographies just against you. But it
Speaker 4: was very surreal, It was very weird. I felt very
Speaker 4: vulnerable being out there in the jungle. Obviously, the bad
Speaker 4: guys it's their backyard and they know it very well.
Speaker 4: Here we are not even trained up in this type
Speaker 4: of warfare, and so it kind of showed me the
Speaker 4: reality of the battlefield.
Speaker 2: Did you get more of an appreciation for the Vietnam veterans?
Speaker 4: Well, I thought about that a lot. I thought about,
Speaker 4: this is a very tough environment to fight in, and
Speaker 4: I'm sure they felt the same way. They had no
Speaker 4: idea where they were at. It was very difficult to navigate.
Speaker 4: You couldn't see the stars. You can't use GPS, not
Speaker 4: that they had GPS, but our GPS was ineffective. We
Speaker 4: had to do map and compass. We had to rotate
Speaker 4: pointment out because you had to keep slashing through the
Speaker 4: you know, the vines and the canopy and all that. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, you were moving maybe a mile a day,
Speaker 4: and you were just completely I had a bad rash
Speaker 4: down my back because the moisture and the mosquitoes, and
Speaker 4: you're worried about these snakes. You know, they say, oh
Speaker 4: if you're bit by one of these, You'll last about
Speaker 4: thirty seconds and all this shit going through your head.
Speaker 3: I wasn't even.
Speaker 4: Worried about the bad guys. I was just thought, Oh,
Speaker 4: the spider's going to kill me. The snake is going
Speaker 4: to kill me.
Speaker 3: They got bears and tigers.
Speaker 4: I'm like, what else is I mean that our predators
Speaker 4: in these jungles, these you know, the from the movie Predators,
Speaker 4: that one of them, Dude's gonna show up.
Speaker 2: You know, That's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker 4: To be honest, I was overwhelmed because that was the
Speaker 4: first time, well not necessarily, I was said that the
Speaker 4: first time I was put in a real world environment.
Speaker 4: In ninety six, we did some ship takedowns in the Gulf,
Speaker 4: but that was mainly administrative. We were enforcing UN sanctions
Speaker 4: against Iraq, so it was different. I felt a lot
Speaker 4: more comfortable climbing up the last out of a ship
Speaker 4: and you know, taking down the crew.
Speaker 3: In the jungle.
Speaker 4: I felt very, very scared, very vulnerable, way out of
Speaker 4: my element, and so for me that it just stands
Speaker 4: out because that was very pivotal as far as UH
Speaker 4: maturing as an operator as a shooter, because you realize, damn,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of things that are out of your control,
Speaker 4: and not every mission is a success, you know, like
Speaker 4: this one on paper is a failure, even though we
Speaker 4: did our best.
Speaker 3: I mean, we were just pounding away.
Speaker 4: We'd hit a different island every day, patrol through it,
Speaker 4: lay up at night, patrol around the next day, and
Speaker 4: then usually we would xpill and H. Yeah, it was
Speaker 4: it was. It was a tough one to walk away from,
Speaker 4: but I'm glad. Like we talked about before, you have
Speaker 4: to kind of compartmentalize your failures. Obviously we had debriefs
Speaker 4: and and uh again it.
Speaker 3: Really was no fault of our own. There was just
Speaker 3: too much area to cover.
Speaker 4: All you can do is pick an island, hit it
Speaker 4: for a day or two, and then go back and reset.
Speaker 4: So it was, uh, that was my first, my first
Speaker 4: real where the rubber meets the road type moment. Obviously,
Speaker 4: things changed after nine to eleven and I ended up
Speaker 4: bouncing around the Middle East quite a bit. I got
Speaker 4: nine rotations in and out of the Middle East, and
Speaker 4: so I saw the evolution of what was going on,
Speaker 4: the evolution of the battlefield, and did different ao and
Speaker 4: things like that. So I felt very lucky to kind
Speaker 4: of ride that wave. In the years, I did some
Speaker 4: pre nine to eleven stuff and then post nine to
Speaker 4: eleven stuff, and so I saw dramatically how the mission
Speaker 4: statement changed, how the tactics changed, the weapons changed. Our
Speaker 4: state of mind as a country and as a fighting
Speaker 4: force is very different during peacetime versus wartime. Not that
Speaker 4: peacetime really exists in special operations. I mean, you can
Speaker 4: look at the Blackhawk down incident. That's during quote unquote peacetime.
Speaker 4: Peacetime is probably the best time to be in special
Speaker 4: operations because then you're doing the sneaky peaky ninja shit right,
Speaker 4: because you're your places, you're well, you're in places you
Speaker 4: shouldn't be. There's a lot of eyes on type missions,
Speaker 4: a lot of reconnaissance type missions. One of our missions
Speaker 4: we got in that same deployment was to identify a
Speaker 4: target on this island. So we had a recon team
Speaker 4: free fall in and then pose as tourists, literally throwing
Speaker 4: on the Hawaiian shirt shorts and flip flops and just
Speaker 4: kind of cruising around this island until they located somebody.
Speaker 4: And then we passed off that intel to the appropriate
Speaker 4: individuals and so off like that is kind of how
Speaker 4: I envisioned special operations, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: When a war kicks off, you kind of become a
Speaker 3: navy ranger.
Speaker 4: Everybody armors up, everyone hops in an armored vehicle. You
Speaker 4: go smash down doors and snatch up bad guys. To
Speaker 4: be honest, everyone kind of has the same mission. You're
Speaker 4: going after high value targets. During this peacetime era, there
Speaker 4: was a lot of creativity. There was a lot of
Speaker 4: indigenous work where you went in and blended in with people,
Speaker 4: and a lot of you might you know, recon the
Speaker 4: beaches of North Korea to see if any of their
Speaker 4: fortifications have moved, or to see, hey if we have
Speaker 4: to land marines, or there are a bunch of rocks
Speaker 4: in the way. So you got to do a lot
Speaker 4: of digital imagery. And I found that stuff. It's not
Speaker 4: the cool, sexy gunfighting stuff, but that's the stuff that
Speaker 4: raises the hair in the back of your necks when
Speaker 4: you're creeping around a place you shouldn't be and you know,
Speaker 4: if you get compromise, you're screwed, and they'll even deny
Speaker 4: that you were there.
Speaker 3: That type of stuff.
Speaker 4: So that was kind of the pre nine eleven vibe
Speaker 4: was really like I said, you're sneaking through someone's backyard
Speaker 4: and you hope you don't get snatched up. That to
Speaker 4: me how I envisioned Special Operations more so, and throwing
Speaker 4: on your body armor, rolling out in the vehicle.
Speaker 3: And kicking down the door.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's everyone kind of blended into one type
Speaker 4: of operator overseas as the war went on throughout the
Speaker 4: mid two thousand, so I saw that shift, probably because
Speaker 4: I was brought into the community pre nine eleven. I
Speaker 4: always kind of missed those days, and I don't know
Speaker 4: if they're back now with the young operators out in
Speaker 4: the field. I think a lot of it is more
Speaker 4: of that indigenous type stuff, more of the stuff like
Speaker 4: we were doing in the Philippines, trying to look for hostages,
Speaker 4: low level stuff that doesn't make the news. Hopefully the
Speaker 4: community has gotten back to that stuff, because I think
Speaker 4: that's really the bread and butter of what Special Operations is,
Speaker 4: very small surgical stuff that nobody knows about, as opposed
Speaker 4: to you're basically doing the stuff that Marine infantry guys
Speaker 4: should be doing, smashing down doors and snatching people out.
Speaker 3: Let The infantry guys do that stuff.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating, fascinating take on it, And you're right, it's
Speaker 2: one of the things. People don't get to hear those
Speaker 2: stories about the seals or the Berets and all the
Speaker 2: stuff that they're doing, or extractions or anything of that nature.
Speaker 2: They just don't hear it. They see a movie or
Speaker 2: two then that we'll talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2: That changes perspective. I guess my other question would be
Speaker 2: you also worked as a military contractor, so I'm sure
Speaker 2: you can't say much about that, but was a different
Speaker 2: because you're not operating necessarily under the military per se.
Speaker 2: Now you're a private military contractor. Who knows who your
Speaker 2: boss is. But we won't get into that either, But
Speaker 2: how different is that for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was very different, and it was a very strange.
Speaker 4: I got into that in two thousand and three, so
Speaker 4: that was really sort of the infancy of it. There
Speaker 4: were a couple guys already on the ground that set
Speaker 4: it up, but we were really the first wave of
Speaker 4: sled dogs to come in and it was very weird.
Speaker 3: When I heard about it, I was very suspicious of it.
Speaker 4: It sounded like some Soldier of Fortune type shit, like
Speaker 4: what are we doing And how much are they paying?
Speaker 3: Like, that's weird.
Speaker 4: They're going to pay you that much, it must be
Speaker 4: dangerous if they're gonna pay you.
Speaker 3: You know, more than you were making as an E five.
Speaker 3: So I was very suspicious of it.
Speaker 4: But I had some buddies that were in it and
Speaker 4: assured me that as long as you got with the
Speaker 4: right group of.
Speaker 3: Guys, you were good to go. But it was very weird.
Speaker 3: It was very mysterious because.
Speaker 4: The book hadn't been written, the rules haven't been written yet,
Speaker 4: a lot of these government agencies figured out that their
Speaker 4: own full time employees have rules, but as a contract employee,
Speaker 4: you are technically a civilian. You don't have to abide
Speaker 4: by any of those rules. Nothing applies to a civilian.
Speaker 4: Not that you didn't have a conviction, not the Uniform
Speaker 4: Code of Military Justice. Nothing applies to a civilian. So technically,
Speaker 4: as a civilian, you could do things that their own
Speaker 4: full time people couldn't do. So basically what would happen
Speaker 4: is you would have one full time guy it was
Speaker 4: kind of your boss, and then you contractors would do
Speaker 4: his bidding. And it was very much known to you
Speaker 4: that if you ever got snatched up. They would just
Speaker 4: straight up deny you, like, we don't know who this
Speaker 4: guy is. He's a civilian, he has no affiliation with
Speaker 4: US government. So you knew there was a weird You
Speaker 4: knew you were a fall guy if something went bad.
Speaker 4: In fact, when I was in Afghanistan, there was a
Speaker 4: Green Beret dude who was a contractor who got snatched
Speaker 4: up supplying weapons to one of our friendlies, but the
Speaker 4: State Department hung them out to Part of our mission
Speaker 4: was to check on him in prison. I think he
Speaker 4: got like a seven year prison term out of it
Speaker 4: for gun running in Afghanistan and he had to serve
Speaker 4: it in a local prison. The State Department basically denied
Speaker 4: his existence. So part of our mission was once a
Speaker 4: month we would go with USA and make sure he
Speaker 4: wasn't being tortured or abused or starved and things like that.
Speaker 4: And he was happy as a pig of money. He said,
Speaker 4: when I get out of here, I'm writing a book.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna be a millionaire. So I'll just sit here
Speaker 4: for seven years.
Speaker 3: And think about it, you know.
Speaker 4: And he was always happy to see us, to see
Speaker 4: your brother, and a really cool dude. But it showed
Speaker 4: me as a contractor, if the wrong people catch you
Speaker 4: doing something, the government will just leave you out to
Speaker 4: drive real quick.
Speaker 3: So in the military, you.
Speaker 4: Know you're a valuable asset, whether you're a seal of
Speaker 4: Greenberry whoever. They have spent millions of dollars to train you.
Speaker 4: You're very valuable to them. Where as a contractor, they
Speaker 4: didn't spend shit to train you. They might have put
Speaker 4: you through an evaluation course, a two three weeks selection
Speaker 4: to make sure you can still shoot in PTE you're
Speaker 4: not an old has been, but that's it. They don't
Speaker 4: have to spend the millions of dollars in years and
Speaker 4: years to train you. They're just going to get you
Speaker 4: in the field and have you do their their bidding,
Speaker 4: oftentimes things they can't do. So a lot of it's
Speaker 4: reconnaissance work, a lot of it's intel driven, a lot
Speaker 4: of it is diplomatic security, protecting important people in dangerous places.
Speaker 4: Later on in Iraq, I got into the training side
Speaker 4: of things with the Department of Defense, so we were
Speaker 4: probably accidentally created isis looking back on it, A lot
Speaker 4: of our students our motto was training tomorrow's terrorists today,
Speaker 4: because who are these guys they're not vetted, and so
Speaker 4: a lot of these Iraqis we were teaching I you know,
Speaker 4: it was it was tough, and I think the US
Speaker 4: has a history of that.
Speaker 3: We basically will train our future enemies.
Speaker 4: For example, Osama bin Laden was CIA trained and funded
Speaker 4: to fight the Russians in the eighties and he ended
Speaker 4: up becoming Yeah, I mean that became out CADA, and
Speaker 4: so a similar thing happened in Iraq. Here we're teaching
Speaker 4: these guys sniper initiated assault CQB, explosive preaching. All of
Speaker 4: our tricks are now out there in their community. For example,
Speaker 4: when we taught them how to long run, we taught
Speaker 4: them sniper stuff. Sniper attacks on US troops skyrocketed throughout
Speaker 4: Baghdad almost immediately after we put on that long range course.
Speaker 3: So what do you think these students are doing.
Speaker 4: They're going back to their villages and they're teaching this
Speaker 4: skill set to you know, the people out there, the
Speaker 4: insurgents or the locals that are fighting against US. So
Speaker 4: I just I've seen that repeat throughout history. Why we
Speaker 4: continue to do that. Eventually ended up leaving that mission
Speaker 4: after a couple of rotations out there, because I just
Speaker 4: I didn't agree with it. I just thought, damn, we're
Speaker 4: teaching these guys pretty much our entire playbook. I mean,
Speaker 4: I can't think of anything that we haven't put them
Speaker 4: through in a course.
Speaker 3: So it's just.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that that's a slippery slope with contracting.
Speaker 3: Is you find yourself.
Speaker 4: For example, when I was active duty and we were
Speaker 4: training the Tie Seals, I was allowed to teach them
Speaker 4: shotgun breaching, but I wasn't allowed to teach them anything
Speaker 4: through the doorway, no CQB, not how to take a room,
Speaker 4: none of that. And I'm like, these are Tie guys, Like,
Speaker 4: no one's mad at Tie dudes. Fast forward, as a contractor,
Speaker 4: I'm teaching iraqis how to blow up shit, CEQB, all
Speaker 4: of it, motivate operations, attack on, motivated, attack on principal,
Speaker 4: defensive measures, defensive driving, basically our whole playbook. But we
Speaker 4: weren't even allowed to teach the Seals more than shotgun breaching.
Speaker 4: So active duty, there's a lot of rules and regulations
Speaker 4: in place. As a contractor, quite honestly, it's the wild West.
Speaker 4: You could do anti piracy shit off the horn of Africa,
Speaker 4: a lot of intel driven stuff. So it's It always
Speaker 4: reminds me of you open a door, you walk in
Speaker 4: a room, and across the room there's three more doors.
Speaker 4: So you pick a door, you walk through it, there's
Speaker 4: another room with three more doors. It's just like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you just it's a twilight zone. It spends how deep
Speaker 4: you want to go with it. So for me, that
Speaker 4: was a turn off. I missed sort of the nobility
Speaker 4: of the active duty days. You know, you are held
Speaker 4: to a standard, you are monitored, you are held to
Speaker 4: an ethos or a code. If you go haywire, you
Speaker 4: could be charged with war crimes and stuff. Whereas a
Speaker 4: contractor in the early days, if you did something squirrely,
Speaker 4: they would just send you to another country. They would
Speaker 4: just get rid of you. And I thought, that's bizarre,
Speaker 4: Like there's no repercussions. For there were stories I never
Speaker 4: witnessed it with my own eyes, but there were stories
Speaker 4: of a triple canopy guy in Iraq that was going
Speaker 4: to the airport to fly out and he said, oh,
Speaker 4: I haven't got a kill yet, pull over and he
Speaker 4: just shot up a car driving by and then went
Speaker 4: to the airport and flew out. So stuff like that,
Speaker 4: You're like, what is that dude, that's chicken shit, you know,
Speaker 4: that's that's contracting is this big gray area. When I
Speaker 4: came in, you had to either be sealed, delta SF
Speaker 4: that was it. But unfortunately they tapped that resource and
Speaker 4: so then they opened it up to this and opened
Speaker 4: it up to that, and then Blackwater flooded Iraq with
Speaker 4: thousands of dudes. So now anybody who is a security
Speaker 4: guard for half a day is running around Iraq with
Speaker 4: an AR doing weird shit. So contracting got watered down
Speaker 4: very very quickly, and in my opinion, became a big problem.
Speaker 3: Now. Being special operations guys.
Speaker 4: You always knew where your guys were at, so you
Speaker 4: knew which detail to avoid, or hey, these guys have
Speaker 4: this going on over here. It's diplomatic security, or it's
Speaker 4: a training gig or intel. So we we always clicked
Speaker 4: up and had it. I was always on good teams.
Speaker 4: Nothing squirrely happened.
Speaker 3: It was all sas dudes, Delta dudes, sealed dudes.
Speaker 4: But you could get wrapped up on a detail that
Speaker 4: just had these shit bags doing really bizarre stuff. Like
Speaker 4: you know, basically, as a contractor, you're supposed to be
Speaker 4: a defensive mechanism.
Speaker 3: You're not supposed to be offensive. It's the active duty guys.
Speaker 4: What we're doing in theory is freeing up all their
Speaker 4: shit so they can go do big boy stuff so
Speaker 4: that they don't have to train locals. They don't have
Speaker 4: to provide security for diplomats or generals or admirals.
Speaker 3: We're doing all of that stuff. We're not out there
Speaker 3: looking for a fight.
Speaker 4: Oftentimes we got ambushed and we would we call it
Speaker 4: the death blossom. We would give them the hornet's nest
Speaker 4: and get off the X. We're not there to fight.
Speaker 4: That's the difference.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: Sometimes if your vehicle's disabled, you might have to dismount,
Speaker 4: take down a building, wait for big army to roll
Speaker 4: in and save your butt. But the mission statement's very different,
Speaker 4: and some contractors didn't get that, Like, bro, you're not
Speaker 4: an offense. It's not your job to light this car
Speaker 4: up for no reason or you know it just there's
Speaker 4: some gray area with contracting, and so eventually that's why
Speaker 4: I left. In addition, I realized I had been away
Speaker 4: from home for eleven years and my toddlers were now teenagers.
Speaker 3: That was an.
Speaker 4: Epiphany moment because you get tunnel visions.
Speaker 3: And like they taught us at Budds, you're so folks.
Speaker 4: Just on the task in hand, you can oftentimes forget
Speaker 4: about things back home because you're halfway around the world.
Speaker 4: This is before video chats and all that stuff. So
Speaker 4: it was letters. Eventually, I think there was a couple
Speaker 4: Skype was coming online and what's another one I used
Speaker 4: to use. But anyway, communication was very limited, so your
Speaker 4: family wasn't necessarily on your mind all the time. It
Speaker 4: was very easy to get wrapped up in the culture
Speaker 4: of the men, the mission, all that type of crap.
Speaker 4: So for me, I saw contracting slipping and I realized,
Speaker 4: holy shit, my kids are teenagers.
Speaker 3: You know this this mess is now someone else's problem.
Speaker 3: I got to get back home.
Speaker 4: My conundrum was what am I going to do when
Speaker 4: I get back to the States. You know, I've been
Speaker 4: running a gun and for you know, my first deployment
Speaker 4: was ninety six. Here I am seven in Iraq, not
Speaker 4: knowing any other way of life, and it's a very
Speaker 4: tough transition for people.
Speaker 2: Amazing, I mean, you gave me so much insight into
Speaker 2: all the different worlds, and I'm sure everybody out there
Speaker 2: has learned so much I know, we got about about
Speaker 2: ten minutes left. Got to bring it back, Clark, got
Speaker 2: to bring it back. We learned so much from you.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to see which questions I want to start
Speaker 2: wrapping up this interview with. I guess one would be
Speaker 2: the Phoenix Police Department. I've talked to special forces who've
Speaker 2: worked in police as a police officer, and thank you
Speaker 2: again for both services as well, military and law enforcement.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: We're definitely indebted to you for that. How different is it,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden games change? You can't do things
Speaker 2: like you can't. You can't just draw your weapon and
Speaker 2: fire at certain individuals anymore, even though it may be
Speaker 2: a threat to you. How different was that?
Speaker 3: It was an eye opener. I had some buddies that
Speaker 3: were contracting that were.
Speaker 4: Cops, some swat dudes, one of them from Chicago, and
Speaker 4: so he recommended, Hey, if you're going to be a cop,
Speaker 4: go to a big city because it's busy and they
Speaker 4: want kind of crazier dudes. Not some small town in Nebraska.
Speaker 4: They don't need an ex seal there. They need you
Speaker 4: in you know, Chicago, Detroit, PI, Phoenix. My brother was
Speaker 4: living there. I applied for them to answer your question.
Speaker 4: The academy, to me, was amazing because I realized how
Speaker 4: smart cops have to be in a life and death situation. Okay,
Speaker 4: you're a spec ops guy overseas. You perceive a threat,
Speaker 4: you neutralize it, no questions ask no one gives a shit.
Speaker 4: For example, in Iraq, if we got in a gunfight,
Speaker 4: we would type up what we call a foxtrot report.
Speaker 4: It was basically three sentences. We email it to our
Speaker 4: team leader just in case state department or the Prime
Speaker 4: Minister wanted to inquire what happened.
Speaker 3: Otherwise that was it.
Speaker 4: Now, as a cop, if you shoot somebody, it's way
Speaker 4: more than a three sentence email to your boss, which
Speaker 4: I did get an officer involved shooting. We can talk
Speaker 4: about that the other time. But in the academy, I realized,
Speaker 4: holy shit, when a cop is faced with a threat,
Speaker 4: they have to use that use of force continuum and
Speaker 4: they have to be very accurate, very quickly with it.
Speaker 4: Am I using verbal skills to de escalate? Do I
Speaker 4: gotta go hands on? Do I have to go to
Speaker 4: the tool belt? And ultimately do I have to use
Speaker 4: my firearm? And if I present my firearm, I better
Speaker 4: be prepared to use it. So our academy, it was
Speaker 4: a multi jurisdictional academy called the Leah, and they were
Speaker 4: very good at their scenarios and the main firearms and
Speaker 4: tactical guy really he liked me.
Speaker 3: He knew my background, and he.
Speaker 4: Liked to see how I reacted to these scenarios. And
Speaker 4: one thing he said early on was Clark, you can't
Speaker 4: solve every scenario with your handgun.
Speaker 3: Dude.
Speaker 4: All right. There was some rewiring, for sure, but they
Speaker 4: did a great job at doing that, and I think
Speaker 4: it was interesting for them to watch. I think I
Speaker 4: was the first person of a special operations background that
Speaker 4: had been through the academy while that staff.
Speaker 3: Was in charge.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's been other guys that had gone through,
Speaker 4: but while that cadre was in charge. So they were
Speaker 4: very interesting to see how I would react to these
Speaker 4: tactical scenarios. And I really had to learn to the
Speaker 4: dial it back and rewire it. So they did a
Speaker 4: good job. By the time I got to the street,
Speaker 4: I felt very comfortable with what's my mission statement as
Speaker 4: a cop. Obviously it's not as an operator or even
Speaker 4: a protection specialist contracting, which you're still allowed to be
Speaker 4: very violent, very fast. If someone's trying to attack the
Speaker 4: first lady, yes you're allowed to fuck.
Speaker 3: Them up very violently.
Speaker 4: As a cop, you see two people fistfighting in a
Speaker 4: parking lot, and even if they come at you throwing punches,
Speaker 4: that doesn't mean you can shoot them. You have to
Speaker 4: really adjust your response. And so I credit that.
Speaker 3: To really good training at the academy.
Speaker 4: I think it was about four months long, and so
Speaker 4: they did a real good job. But I also liked
Speaker 4: that I still had a little bag of seal tricks
Speaker 4: in my back pocket that if shit did get violent,
Speaker 4: I could, you know, break glass in time of war.
Speaker 4: And my squad mates appreciated that. And I also shared
Speaker 4: a lot of knowledge with my squad mates. If we
Speaker 4: had a double squad day, I would tell my sergeant, Hey,
Speaker 4: there's an abandoned house.
Speaker 3: Let's do some TQB runs, let's do some room clearing.
Speaker 4: And so our squad was able to do additional training
Speaker 4: and get more comfortable with each other and movement and stuff.
Speaker 4: And so I think my background benefited my situation with
Speaker 4: Phoenix for sure.
Speaker 2: Absolutely amazing stuff on that one. Again, folks, Good Vibes
Speaker 2: dot com. So we can find more information good Vibes
Speaker 2: dudes dot com. Good Vibes dudes dot com. You can
Speaker 2: find more information about Clark. I guess in our last
Speaker 2: few minutes. I didn't want to miss this part either.
Speaker 2: There's been I guess more recently. I think maybe in
Speaker 2: the last decade, and I haven't actually even looked because
Speaker 2: I'm not a huge movie guy anymore. But there's been
Speaker 2: some Navy Seal movies out there. I think I think
Speaker 2: they're classifying the Navy Seal movies. Whether or not they are,
Speaker 2: I don't know. But Zero Dark thirty, I think thirteen
Speaker 2: hours MM. Can't look more for the older ones, I
Speaker 2: can't remember.
Speaker 3: My own Survivor Active Valid was one under Yeah. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: Steven Sagal Casey Rye Beckett.
Speaker 2: That's about It's all this thing is, You're gonna get.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's what I was hoping.
Speaker 2: What's your take on those type of movies. Do you
Speaker 2: think it hurts or helps or it's just so far
Speaker 2: fetch it doesn't even matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it does.
Speaker 4: I mean, I remember seeing the Charlie Sheen movie Navy Seals,
Speaker 4: and even as a kid, I'm like, I just enjoyed
Speaker 4: it for the entertainment value.
Speaker 3: The thing that I wish they would capture.
Speaker 4: And I will admit I've never seen the TV series
Speaker 4: Seal Team, which my mom watches. That a lot of
Speaker 4: people love it, and I think they try to hit
Speaker 4: it on more of a personal note, and I think
Speaker 4: it's a it's a good way to finish our conversation.
Speaker 4: Is any Seal movie that I've seen. They make the
Speaker 4: Seal seem too militant, too marine corpus, if you will.
Speaker 4: What I learned in special operations across the board and
Speaker 4: even in naval special warfare, the personalities of these due
Speaker 4: it's the funniest people I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 4: Like just almost like a violent Robin Williams. I mean,
Speaker 4: these people are hilarious. The personalities, even the way we
Speaker 4: talk with each other. There's really no difference between a
Speaker 4: Seal officer and a Sealing listed guy. If we're doing
Speaker 4: our thing, it's first name basis, like, it's very We're
Speaker 4: the most non military military unit out there. It's very casual.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, no, it's like hey dude, what's up?
Speaker 3: Bro?
Speaker 4: Yeah dude, you know, it's just it's they don't capture
Speaker 4: that in the movies, they make.
Speaker 3: It seem too militant, too.
Speaker 4: Yes sir, no, sir, hey go over there and do this,
Speaker 4: and bark park Park Park. That's not how the community is.
Speaker 4: It's it's a very laid back community. And other special
Speaker 4: operations are very similar, maybe not quite as laid back
Speaker 4: as they called my team a Seal Team five.
Speaker 3: They call it Surf Team five because we were so
Speaker 3: laid back and we would surfer pt.
Speaker 4: I wish the movies would capture that camaraderie, that bonding.
Speaker 4: They've tried to couple times. But we are very very human.
Speaker 4: A lot of seals specifically, and Special operations in general,
Speaker 4: very intelligent. They seem to portray us as kind of
Speaker 4: the Schwarzenegger dumb, muscle bound, you know, kill them all.
Speaker 3: Type people, very very capable.
Speaker 4: In the Teddy Bear world, A lot of my buddies,
Speaker 4: for example, when I was going through my first divorce,
Speaker 4: would kick in my door with bags of groceries and say, hey,
Speaker 4: I know you're hurting, so I picked up some groceries
Speaker 4: for you. Like there's really a hoggy Bear side to
Speaker 4: the community. We love each other. We always said I
Speaker 4: know more about you than your mother does because you
Speaker 4: spend so much time training together, You help each other
Speaker 4: through divorces, you help each other through all kinds of
Speaker 4: scenarios on and off the battlefield. It's really this bond
Speaker 4: that I wish they would capture. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you it's like capturing lightning in a bottle. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you can do it. But I have not
Speaker 4: seen that in a movie. All the tactics and the gunfights,
Speaker 4: and that's just it's really the behind the scenes, how
Speaker 4: we take care of each other through the ups and downs,
Speaker 4: the sense of humor, the pranks, the hazings. I've caught
Speaker 4: little snippets of it in these different movies, but it's
Speaker 4: just I just felt like I was at a stand
Speaker 4: up comedy show the whole time. These guys are amazing, intelligent,
Speaker 4: funny people, and so I wish Hollywood would would get
Speaker 4: that right.
Speaker 2: And the only thing I've ever seen close to that would
Speaker 2: be maybe Apocalypse Now had a little bit, but you know,
Speaker 2: that was kind of carried off a little too far
Speaker 2: too But yeah, yeah, Jarhead did okay with some of that.
Speaker 3: I saw the first one. I think they did pretty good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I did like Blackhawk down. The one thing
Speaker 4: they got well was they got the fog of battle.
Speaker 4: Remember when the dudes were lost, Hey are the Humpies
Speaker 4: coming to us? And we're supposed to go to the
Speaker 4: Humpies and they're kind of running around lost in a
Speaker 4: little village looking for the motorcade and yeah, and how
Speaker 4: loud the gun was and the dude couldn't hear, Like
Speaker 4: all that stuff in the eighties movies, everything had like
Speaker 4: little silencers and suppressors and everything. It's like pre picture
Speaker 4: perfect coming out of the repel from the ceiling and
Speaker 4: kill everybody, you know, and then you know, for real,
Speaker 4: you're just running around lost, tripping on ship, you lost
Speaker 4: this and that and you know. So I sometimes they
Speaker 4: get certain aspects of it correctly. But again, if they
Speaker 4: can capture the personality of Special Operations guys, I think
Speaker 4: they would have a hit movie on themselves, because I.
Speaker 3: Think people want to know who are we really? You know,
Speaker 3: there's these myths and urban legends about who we are.
Speaker 4: But I think if they saw that we're just kind
Speaker 4: of goofy, normal people, like it's we're just.
Speaker 2: That's our goal here, hopefully they'll get the different side
Speaker 2: of your personalities one.
Speaker 4: Of the Goofy your seals, So I'm a good ambassador
Speaker 4: for the Goofy to the team.
Speaker 3: So hopefully that comes through in the interview to your listeners.
Speaker 2: I guess it's a little bit of a throwback to
Speaker 2: mash and Hogan's heroes.
Speaker 3: Right there, you go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or maybe a little poly Shore in the army
Speaker 4: now if you ever.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's intense. Thank you so much again, Clark
Speaker 2: for doing this. We'd so appreciate it very much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, absolutely, I had a blast, Thank you very much,
Speaker 4: so much fun.
Speaker 2: Clark and Pastado, I don't know what they got that
Speaker 2: came by that. I am p A S t A
Speaker 2: t Oh. You can find them at good Vibes dudes
Speaker 2: dot com. He really does have good vibes. I have
Speaker 2: Good Vibes podcast with Clark and Pistata and Ryan g
Speaker 2: Uh do you want to send anybody anywhere else? Clark's
Speaker 2: is that good?
Speaker 3: Uh? Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you guys want to DM me, my
Speaker 4: personal Instagram account is Clark Underscore m Pistado. A lot
Speaker 4: of younger guys will will hit me up with questions about,
Speaker 4: you know, how to prepare for this or that or Hey,
Speaker 4: I'm married with a wife and kids. Should I be
Speaker 4: a sealer green Beret? How does it affect family and
Speaker 4: all that stuff? And so, if you want to send
Speaker 4: me a personal message my personal Instagram account, I reply
Speaker 4: to every DM I get and I'm happy to try
Speaker 4: to pay it forward if I can answer your questions.
Speaker 4: If not, I can hear you in the right direction,
Speaker 4: So feel free to hit me up anytime.
Speaker 2: Cool against Clark, Underscore, Impastado, and I am P A
Speaker 2: S T A t O. Thank you so much again, Clark,
Speaker 2: Thank you everyone for joining us. Make sure to share
Speaker 2: a subscribe, hit that I like button and leave a
Speaker 2: comment if you can. Thanks a lot, everybody,