Speaker 1: The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Bark.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, I'm Jack Murphy. This is the Team House.
Speaker 2: I'm here with our guest today, Joe England. Joe had
Speaker 2: a very interesting career, an unconventional career in several ways.
Speaker 2: He served as a SAUDA in Special Forces, and then
Speaker 2: he went on to be a second guy in the
Speaker 2: unit known as TFO or ISA, one of the Army
Speaker 2: Special mission units. And then he became a helicopter pilot,
Speaker 2: and today he runs a YouTube channel that talks about
Speaker 2: health and wellness and mental health. And also he's recently
Speaker 2: retired and had a bit of an upset on the
Speaker 2: way out the door that we'll talk about a little
Speaker 2: later in this interview. But Joe, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for taking some time this evening to talk to us.
Speaker 3: Absolutely appreciate it.
Speaker 2: So look, man, we were talking a little bit before
Speaker 2: the show. I'd love to hear a little bit about
Speaker 2: your childhood and growing up. I mean, you told me
Speaker 2: you have a really extensive military history in your family.
Speaker 3: Yes, so yeah.
Speaker 4: I come from a long line of pretty much officers,
Speaker 4: at least until May, dating back to the Civil War.
Speaker 4: My great grandfather was in Spanish American charge up San
Speaker 4: Juan Hill World War One, did a number of different things.
Speaker 4: And then he had three sons who were all officers
Speaker 4: of World War Two, including my grandfather who was one
Speaker 4: of Patent's company tank commanders. The other brother was in
Speaker 4: the eighty second, and I believe the other the third
Speaker 4: one was some sort of artillery officer. I'm not asware
Speaker 4: of it. And then my father was a colonel who
Speaker 4: started in artillery and then he ended in military intelligence.
Speaker 4: And then my brother was a eighteen Alpha who ended
Speaker 4: up becoming He led a dive team out of first group.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. And you guys, you know because you were
Speaker 2: in a military family, you guys grew up in Germany.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, So about six months after I was born,
Speaker 4: we moved to Germany.
Speaker 3: So from about then until we.
Speaker 4: Were there for ten years, but we did have a
Speaker 4: two year sit in between where we actually moved to Alaska.
Speaker 4: So the first time that I moved to the continental
Speaker 4: United States was when I was about thirteen years old,
Speaker 4: and we moved to Seattle, Washington, where where my father
Speaker 4: would end up retiring at Fort Lewis McCord Base.
Speaker 2: And you and your brothers were very involved in soccer
Speaker 2: from growing up in Europe.
Speaker 3: Yes, so we when we when we lived in Germany.
Speaker 4: I think my father had which I would always thank
Speaker 4: him for, is that instead of living on the American basis,
Speaker 4: he chose to live on the German economy. And Germany
Speaker 4: is just like a collection of small towns and like
Speaker 4: over here you play for soccer clubs. Well, in Germany,
Speaker 4: you play for your town and a town that maybe
Speaker 4: had like a couple thousand people and maybe you it's
Speaker 4: like only you could drive through this town in like
Speaker 4: a few minutes. That town soccer stadium would have practice
Speaker 4: fields everything, and you would play for your town. So
Speaker 4: by the time we came to the United States, we
Speaker 4: were probably at least a year or two ahead of
Speaker 4: all the Americans that we played with. And because of that,
Speaker 4: out of the five of us, four of us went
Speaker 4: to college on soccer scholarships.
Speaker 2: And I mean it sounds like you were having a
Speaker 2: really good time too in college, you know, playing soccer,
Speaker 2: but uh, really you had this accident not your fault,
Speaker 2: of course, but got into this car accident that kind
Speaker 2: of like it did shape the rest of your life.
Speaker 4: I feel like, yeah, it definitely changed everything that I
Speaker 4: essentially had a plan for. I had delusions of grandeur
Speaker 4: that I was going to finish college become a professional
Speaker 4: soccer player. But so I was driving home, this was
Speaker 4: my freshman year of college, and was driving home. We
Speaker 4: were going he was like three thirty in the morning.
Speaker 4: We were going to my girlfriend's place, who was attending
Speaker 4: you dub which is on the north side of Seattle,
Speaker 4: and we were on the south side of Seattle. I
Speaker 4: remember at one point in the drive and then I
Speaker 4: woke up in a hospital bed and I was like
Speaker 4: my I had believe it was a respirator or in
Speaker 4: so obviously I couldn't talk. I was basically couldn't move anything.
Speaker 3: And you know, I.
Speaker 4: Eventually when I come to my dad's there, I signaled
Speaker 4: for him because I realized I can't talk, and then
Speaker 4: I asked him if my girlfriend was okay because she
Speaker 4: was in the car. Because I don't remember anything, just
Speaker 4: remember waking up. I'm in a hospital bed, and I
Speaker 4: was just afraid that I'd killed her. And luckily when
Speaker 4: I wrote it was like, where's Karen, And he's like,
Speaker 4: She's fine, and then I was like similarly relieved, passed
Speaker 4: out woke up like twelve hours later. And then that's
Speaker 4: when my dad would tell me that I was at
Speaker 4: a head on car accident, drunk gut driver going the
Speaker 4: wrong way down the freeway where we apparently I turned
Speaker 4: the car at the last second. We would headlight to headlight,
Speaker 4: and then this swung around and all the power hit
Speaker 4: the left side of my car, which piece of the
Speaker 4: car went through my elbow, cutting that in half. I
Speaker 4: have pieces of car that went into my arm, and
Speaker 4: then it just kept traveling. Twenty nine stitches on this
Speaker 4: arm ruptured spleen, twenty nine stables to take that out.
Speaker 4: And then a brain hemorrhage, which was obviously the worst
Speaker 4: dangerous and actually I still have contusions on my shin
Speaker 4: bones and other parts of my bones that even twenty
Speaker 4: one years later are still visible. So and then yeah,
Speaker 4: and so the brain hemorrhage. I suffered a lot of
Speaker 4: brain damorrhage. I was assessed to have degraded to a
Speaker 4: second grade math level, which math was actually my best subject.
Speaker 4: I attended AP calculus, took the Pea Calcus examine high
Speaker 4: school and had major speech problems, memory problems, and yeah,
Speaker 4: I was a mess. And then tried to go back
Speaker 4: to school less than a month later, and that did
Speaker 4: not end well.
Speaker 3: I dropped out within a.
Speaker 2: Week because of you know what we now know. I
Speaker 2: don't know if they were applying the term so much
Speaker 2: as if as much was understood, But I mean, veterans
Speaker 2: know a lot about traumatic brain injury now, and you
Speaker 2: had one before you went into the military, and it
Speaker 2: sounds like it really affected you.
Speaker 4: It did, and I was I was little concerned. That
Speaker 4: was the hardest part of my recovery because physically, like
Speaker 4: most of all my injuries, with exception of the brain hemorrhage,
Speaker 4: they just kind of patched me up and send me
Speaker 4: on way and like everything would recover, like the elbow
Speaker 4: and bone grew back, my dominal wall obviously reconnected.
Speaker 3: But you know, I was.
Speaker 4: I was so frustrated because one I didn't even know
Speaker 4: if my cognitive abilities would ever return, and then secondly, like,
Speaker 4: what can I do about it. It's not like physical
Speaker 4: where I can you know, I can go to the gym,
Speaker 4: start working out, Like who knows what I can do?
Speaker 4: And then my family started blaming my girlfriend that it
Speaker 4: was her fault that we got hit by a drunk
Speaker 4: driver because if I wasn't dating her, I wouldn't have
Speaker 4: been on that road, and so just all together, then
Speaker 4: I got frustrated and I was like, screw it. So
Speaker 4: six months after the car accident, I went to a
Speaker 4: recruiter and then nine months later, nine months I think
Speaker 4: it was nine months to the day or almost to
Speaker 4: the day, I shipped off her basic.
Speaker 2: So it is the lovely year of two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: during the surge, and you walk in there, your body's
Speaker 2: still a mess, and they're like, we got something for you,
Speaker 2: and no problem.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I tried to, you know, because obviously I
Speaker 4: saw the movie Green Berets when I was ten years
Speaker 4: old with John Wayne. I was like, this is this
Speaker 4: is the this is what she got to be. So
Speaker 4: try to do the AT and X ray program. But obviously,
Speaker 4: you know, they they do the whole full medical thing,
Speaker 4: and obviously you cannot hide this giant scar which is like,
Speaker 4: you know, like twelve inches, and so obviously they learned
Speaker 4: I have a splein next to me, but I didn't
Speaker 4: know anything about the process, so I didn't think it
Speaker 4: was gonna be an issue.
Speaker 3: I was already back to normal running and everything.
Speaker 4: But it turned out that, and there's a list of
Speaker 4: things that disqualify you become Airborne Ranger and Special Forces,
Speaker 4: but one of the only things that to qualify you
Speaker 4: just from Special Forces is the absence of a spleen.
Speaker 4: And I, you know, I think I was told this
Speaker 4: was more of like an observation, but that this this
Speaker 4: medical doctrine was based back in the Vietnam era. You know,
Speaker 4: he's it's it's a part of immune system, but it
Speaker 4: helps fight fevers and that's really all that it does.
Speaker 4: And so so when I got turned down with that,
Speaker 4: I tried to acquire with the recruiter, Hey, can I
Speaker 4: get a waiver?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And he was like, yeah, no, maps doctor is going
Speaker 4: to assume that risk. But randomly he knew that there
Speaker 4: was a back route to get to Special Forces and
Speaker 4: he told me is like, once you get there, you
Speaker 4: have a bunch better chance of getting a waiver, once
Speaker 4: you're within a group. And I was like, well, how
Speaker 4: do I do that? And he was like, well, you
Speaker 4: can go be a linguist And I was like linguist.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to be a green right, Why wout I
Speaker 3: be a linguist?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: And he was like, oh, well, you get to go
Speaker 4: to California for a year, learn a language, and you
Speaker 4: get your associates degree. And when I heard California, I
Speaker 4: was like, okay, I like what you're saying. And so
Speaker 4: that's that's what I end up going with. Got urgent
Speaker 4: FARSI did the course in a year, didn't roll back,
Speaker 4: actually passed. I actually almost maxed the test despite all
Speaker 4: my cognitive abilities.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then and that's when I submitted for my first
Speaker 4: airborne packet, which ended up becoming slide of an issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us about that.
Speaker 4: So at the end of DLI, so about a month
Speaker 4: or two before we abt to finish, that's when they're like, hey,
Speaker 4: if you want to go to group, you have to
Speaker 4: submit an airborne packet, and then you have to submit
Speaker 4: a part of that. You submit a packet that says
Speaker 4: I'm volunteering for group, which a lot. I was surprised
Speaker 4: to find out that most linguists don't want to go
Speaker 4: to group. And of course what I would learn later
Speaker 4: on in life or later on in my career that
Speaker 4: as a linguist, there's no better job than being a
Speaker 4: sad absolutely no better job. So I do this Airborne packet.
Speaker 4: I volunteer for group, but I still have to be approved.
Speaker 4: So as I am going to outprocess after I passed
Speaker 4: my test and essentially graduated. On my final day, I
Speaker 4: go in there and I haven't received my airborne packet.
Speaker 4: So I go in to go see the doctor to
Speaker 4: get my final signature for my own processing and she's like, oh,
Speaker 4: and by the way, I have your airborne packet. I
Speaker 4: was like, okay, cool. She's like, you were rejected, and
Speaker 4: I'm like I was rejected. She's like, yeah, because you
Speaker 4: had a brain hemorrhage, you are rejected from going to
Speaker 4: Airborne and I was admitted. Like at first, I was
Speaker 4: like devastating. I was like, I will, like what do
Speaker 4: I do? But then she puts the failed airboard packet
Speaker 4: on my medical records, which were not digital you know
Speaker 4: this is two thousand and six. And then I start
Speaker 4: walking outside and I'm thinking about like what am I
Speaker 4: going to do? And then I looked to my left
Speaker 4: and I see a trash can as walking out and
Speaker 4: just hits me and I just walk over just and
Speaker 4: I just turned the you know, the medical record, and
Speaker 4: I let the failed airport package just slide right into
Speaker 4: the trash can. Yes, and then I PCs to San Angelo,
Speaker 4: Texas for the second part of our training, and I
Speaker 4: go in there to the medical facility and I'm like,
Speaker 4: I want to apply for airport backs and they give
Speaker 4: me airwor packet and they get to the part says
Speaker 4: have you ever applied for airborne this packing form? And
Speaker 4: I checked no, And then got to the part where
Speaker 4: have you ever had a brain injury or a TVI?
Speaker 4: And I said nope, And I was approved two weeks later,
Speaker 4: and I was I learned that my first PCs, after
Speaker 4: all my training and airport training, I would be fifth
Speaker 4: Special Forces Group.
Speaker 2: Your attempts at misconduct here clearly allude to your capacity
Speaker 2: to be an army spy. I think you pass the test.
Speaker 4: Yeah, uh, that's actually yeah, well you can actually that
Speaker 4: now that they think about it. That's an interesting thing
Speaker 4: that I will actually discuss about the particular part of
Speaker 4: the packet because at this point, and I can get
Speaker 4: into that later, but you know, at this point you
Speaker 4: obviously don't want to tell the military like everything because
Speaker 4: the eliot's screwed. But when it came to the is
Speaker 4: a packet you were encouraged to actually tell them the truth.
Speaker 4: And actually in the portion of the packet, I'll probably
Speaker 4: get any ahead of myself, but they actually tell you
Speaker 4: that whatever you say will not go back to the
Speaker 4: regular army.
Speaker 2: I hope that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least it wasn't the time.
Speaker 2: So you move on to the next phase of your training.
Speaker 2: And before we move on, I think we should, I'd
Speaker 2: like to ask you for the viewers out there, the listeners,
Speaker 2: do you want to tell them what a SAD is
Speaker 2: and what a SAD does.
Speaker 4: Yes, So, a SAUDA is a It stands for Special
Speaker 4: Operations Team Alpha. And at the time only linguists were
Speaker 4: allowed to be special operator or sauda's if you were
Speaker 4: the signals, because a linguist is actually a cryptological linguist, right,
Speaker 4: so not only are you a language but you actually
Speaker 4: have a sigate parsh portion of your job, and that's
Speaker 4: the cryptological part. There's another MS that goes alongside it,
Speaker 4: and that's the cryptological analyst. And they at the time
Speaker 4: were only allowed to be special operations bravos or sought bees,
Speaker 4: which are the analyst portions of that. So like thaught
Speaker 4: A's were the collectors and saw it and you would
Speaker 4: send your signals information that you collected back to the
Speaker 4: sought bees. But the interesting thing about because every other
Speaker 4: linguist would be in some sort of facility, the NSA
Speaker 4: or some sort of fob, but sauda's were the close
Speaker 4: access signals collectors, so all the devices and everything that
Speaker 4: you did were given and how you had to do stuff.
Speaker 4: You actually had to be on site with the teams.
Speaker 4: So during deployments, instead of being deployed with either the
Speaker 4: battalion Element or the company element, all saudas were deployed
Speaker 4: with the teams and you were attached to an ODEA,
Speaker 4: which ended up being amazing because you spend your entire
Speaker 4: deployment as just an extension of essentially these odas, and
Speaker 4: you get to, you know, sort of live that life
Speaker 4: as much as closely as you can. Ever.
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Speaker 2: this episode. I guess we'll get into it a little bit,
Speaker 2: but would it be fair to say that one part
Speaker 2: of the job is offensively looking for the bad guys
Speaker 2: and also maybe part of it is also like force protection,
Speaker 2: like I'm listening to the bad guys.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, So that's actually how the Sauda job started, because
Speaker 4: you know, before cell phones and everything like that, Sauda's
Speaker 4: were basically force protection because they go out with the
Speaker 4: teams and obviously they would get on you know, like
Speaker 4: the PRD thirteen and all these radio interception devices, and
Speaker 4: that's how they would detect if they were going to
Speaker 4: get in Wish or not, because usually there would be
Speaker 4: some sort of radio traffic like hey, they're coming up.
Speaker 4: So that was the job of Sauda. But then rolling
Speaker 4: into two thousand, the early two thousands when sing really
Speaker 4: started to go into the cell phone stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and that type of signal is actually short range, Like
Speaker 4: radios have a much longer range, but cell phones the
Speaker 4: way they talk to towers have a much short range.
Speaker 4: So what you ended up having to be is so
Speaker 4: you ended up becoming not more just for protection, you
Speaker 4: actually became offensive at least especially in the intelligence roles,
Speaker 4: and it was sort of like the heyday of when
Speaker 4: you know, we had the keys of the Kingdom. You know,
Speaker 4: there was less to no encryption and you know, uh,
Speaker 4: it was like the Wild Wall West when it came
Speaker 4: to those things were easy. They would later become much
Speaker 4: much harder, and our job became luckily I had left
Speaker 4: at this point, but almost became later on like obsolete
Speaker 4: as the technology upgraded from two G to three G
Speaker 4: and then four G and by the time we got
Speaker 4: defied G there was there was no more job, at
Speaker 4: least in that.
Speaker 3: Portion of it.
Speaker 2: And you get sent to the SADA at fifth group
Speaker 2: and what is it like from there? I mean, now
Speaker 2: you're kind of integrating with the teams going through the
Speaker 2: premission training and deployments are coming up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we got they they chose which ODA that
Speaker 4: we would attach with first. So on my first deployment,
Speaker 4: I technically we spent like half the deployment with one
Speaker 4: o DA and then we spent the second half of
Speaker 4: a different ODA, So the one that we were getting
Speaker 4: attached to first. When we did our pre dimission premission
Speaker 4: deployment training, we were actually with them the entire time,
Speaker 4: so we could, you know, really start to integrate with them,
Speaker 4: you know, because you know, as you know, when you're
Speaker 4: when you're running around in like Humby's, because especially two
Speaker 4: thousand seven, we were I think everybody else wasn't allowed
Speaker 4: to run around Humbi's except the SF guys. And usually
Speaker 4: because they still need guys back, sometimes they could only
Speaker 4: man two Humbies, but with the sad A team, we
Speaker 4: always could have three. So they definitely used this as
Speaker 4: extra guns. And you know, so we got a lot
Speaker 4: of premission deployment training and then I got we actually
Speaker 4: went on the deployment and there was the eighteen Zulu.
Speaker 4: His name is Boomer, and Boomer instantly took a liking
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 3: He was impressed with me.
Speaker 4: He learned that I being a saud Air being a
Speaker 4: linguist was not my original goal. I wanted to be
Speaker 4: an eighteen X ray and you know, and when the
Speaker 4: battalion commander the Italian CSM did their their visits to
Speaker 4: all the teamhouses during that deployment, he arranged for me
Speaker 4: to have a one on one meeting with both battalion
Speaker 4: commander and the battalion CSM about me potentially becoming an
Speaker 4: eighteen series and that interview went really well. The battalion
Speaker 4: CSM took it upon himself to research my waiver because
Speaker 4: at this point between them Boomer, they all felt that
Speaker 4: I would make a very good Green Beret as a
Speaker 4: good candidate for it. So they found out I needed
Speaker 4: a It needed to be signed by a general officer,
Speaker 4: which everybody knows or who doesn't know that the highest
Speaker 4: ranking officer in a group is a colonel, So they
Speaker 4: had to go above group, and you know, unfortunately that
Speaker 4: waiver would end up it would be approved by his deputy.
Speaker 4: But in between the week that the deputy needed to
Speaker 4: prove it and the general officer to prove it, somebody
Speaker 4: die in the Q course, if I remember correctly, from
Speaker 4: a supposed snake bite which they then was told. Then
Speaker 4: I was then told that the commander did not want
Speaker 4: to assume the risk for somebody who had a weekend
Speaker 4: or compromised immune system, I believe is the correct verbiage
Speaker 4: that they used.
Speaker 2: That might still have been kind of a kick in
Speaker 2: the knots, and that you went during kind of like
Speaker 2: during and as all that is transpiring, you're also rotating
Speaker 2: back overseas with.
Speaker 3: This team, right, say that one more time.
Speaker 2: That as as all of this, you know, this waiver
Speaker 2: submission is going through the process, you're also getting ready
Speaker 2: to deploy a second time with the team.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So so we came back.
Speaker 4: We went off for eight months, came back for six
Speaker 4: months because First Group replaced us, and then we we
Speaker 4: knew before we went on the first deployment we were
Speaker 4: doing back to back deployments, so we had six months
Speaker 4: in between and two months prior too. So one I
Speaker 4: did a second waiver, thinking that I, if I had
Speaker 4: stronger recommendations that that they would prove it. But that
Speaker 4: was a that was not to be the case. And
Speaker 4: then but during that training I went to what was
Speaker 4: called Permitteus Group at the time because it was it
Speaker 4: was done by the Permitteus Group company, but it was
Speaker 4: a pilot course which would later become the Advanced so
Speaker 4: Come Advance so COM's Advanced GSM second course. It was
Speaker 4: the pilot course for it. And during that training, that
Speaker 4: training was run by both Green and Orange operators, some
Speaker 4: support personnel, and the course director was a former TFO
Speaker 4: command sergeant major of a squadron and at the end
Speaker 4: of those eight weeks, he pulled me aside on the
Speaker 4: last day where they're giving up the certifications, and he
Speaker 4: told me that he had heard about the issues of
Speaker 4: you know, my waivers, how I couldn't get to SFAs
Speaker 4: and he was like, hey, we we we've been really
Speaker 4: impressed with you. We think that you have what it takes.
Speaker 4: And you know, he made the joke of why should
Speaker 4: skip Javi comes straight through VARs today, so and he
Speaker 4: was like, you know, would you want to be an operator?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And I was like, yes, that's exactly what I do.
Speaker 4: He's like, all right, here's the here's the recruiting information
Speaker 4: for at that time, the for the recruiters that were
Speaker 4: doing operators.
Speaker 3: I believe they were separate at the time.
Speaker 4: And so I went and on the second deployment, that's
Speaker 4: when I started filling out this ridiculous forty page application
Speaker 4: and submitted it, I think, right. I finished it like
Speaker 4: right towards the end of the deployment, and yeah, in
Speaker 4: that packet you're told, and you're actually told by the
Speaker 4: recruiter too, you can reveal everything and they won't have
Speaker 4: any sort of ramifications. And at this time this end
Speaker 4: up being true for me because that's when I actually
Speaker 4: revealed that I had had some issues and the stuff
Speaker 4: that I had sort of hidden from the army and
Speaker 4: that I wasn't this saint. But apparently that worked because
Speaker 4: they approved my packet right, and I went to selection
Speaker 4: the following April or ISA operator selection.
Speaker 2: Before we jump into that, I just want to ask
Speaker 2: you where was it that you deployed with this ODA,
Speaker 2: if there's any interesting stories from that time that you
Speaker 2: to tel Oh.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, So both deployments were actually in the Diala province
Speaker 4: of Iraq, which is it's like it's like east of Baghdad,
Speaker 4: but it's along the Ranian border, so you're really kind
Speaker 4: of on the edge of the world because there were
Speaker 4: no teamhouses east of us. It was US and then
Speaker 4: the Iranian border. But the second appointment was awesome for
Speaker 4: me because Boomer decided that he wanted to be on
Speaker 4: his team, to just be an extension as a team,
Speaker 4: and he told the battalion commander, I want Joe and
Speaker 4: only and if he's like if you send the entire
Speaker 4: sating team, I don't want any of them, right, And
Speaker 4: the battalion command was like, all right, cool, you get
Speaker 4: just Joe and I got to be the sole attachment
Speaker 4: to that team, and Boomer was awesome. The team was awesome,
Speaker 4: and they they they never treated me like a support personnel,
Speaker 4: like I almost felt like I was like like eighteen OJT.
Speaker 4: You know, it was an amazing deployment. I was an
Speaker 4: extension of that team, and to be honest, Boomer even
Speaker 4: like certain times even treated me as like one of
Speaker 4: the seniors, which I absolutely love and I will be
Speaker 4: grateful love to this day because it's probably one of
Speaker 4: my favorite depployments.
Speaker 3: I ever had my career.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. And so moving forward, we get into selection.
Speaker 2: I know there's some parts of it that they try
Speaker 2: to keep on the down low. But what are you
Speaker 2: allowed to say about the selection course?
Speaker 4: You know, it's it's very So let's just say I
Speaker 4: say selection was like in a lot of things, like
Speaker 4: when they were created, right, they caught, they cloned a
Speaker 4: lot of things from Delta, and they changed certain things. Right,
Speaker 4: Like I would say that CAG is probably slightly more physical.
Speaker 4: Ours is probably like more of a mental, you know thing,
Speaker 4: But like you probably heard, the difference between the walk
Speaker 4: and the law a very movement. But it's not the
Speaker 4: quite the forty miles. It's slightly shorter than that, but
Speaker 4: it was so I think it was like it's usually
Speaker 4: between four and five weeks. And it was the hardest
Speaker 4: part about like that style of selection is it's you.
Speaker 4: You don't have any negative or positive reinforcement, Like nobody
Speaker 4: yells at you the entire time, and almost everything minus
Speaker 4: like like a few days, everything is individual. So what
Speaker 4: I found was that, especially from a psychological standpoint of view,
Speaker 4: this was the hardest type of selection, the hardest type
Speaker 4: of selection you could go into, because when you're getting
Speaker 4: yelled at and people are telling you to quit, and
Speaker 4: you've got your buddies next to you, you kind of kind
Speaker 4: of sort of band on to each other and be like,
Speaker 4: you know what, f you, I'm not I'm not going
Speaker 4: to quit, right But in this environment one you're only
Speaker 4: giving instructions once, and they do it completely stoic, right,
Speaker 4: like they just say, you know, they.
Speaker 3: Give you the instructions.
Speaker 4: You're basically giving instructions once and then they tell you
Speaker 4: to go to to do the best as you can
Speaker 4: as fast as you can. They don't tell your times,
Speaker 4: they don't tell you if you've passed The only reason
Speaker 4: you even know if you fail is like every day
Speaker 4: when you muster for an event, they tell you to
Speaker 4: get in these individual trucks, and then you quickly learn
Speaker 4: as people start getting kicked out that if you ever
Speaker 4: get in a truck by yourself, it's not good.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So, but because you don't, you really have to have
Speaker 4: this level of mental fortitude because nobody's telling you if
Speaker 4: you're doing well, nobody's telling you if you're sucking. You
Speaker 4: just have to believe in yourself and you just concentrate
Speaker 4: on the event and then just put concert on the
Speaker 4: event in front of you. Don't think about like, oh,
Speaker 4: we're at week two, week through, because you have no
Speaker 4: idea when this is going to stop. Like everything every
Speaker 4: portion of the selection, you have no idea when it's
Speaker 4: going to ad, and when it does, it's this huge surprise.
Speaker 4: And then you're onto the next portion, which is you
Speaker 4: had like it goes places that you never thought selections
Speaker 4: would go to, like it is probably one of I
Speaker 4: would say it's a more unique selection.
Speaker 2: Than tags is because they sort of like test to
Speaker 2: you on some of the skills that they like operators
Speaker 2: in the unit to have right to see how you
Speaker 2: respond under stress.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, I think the logical model, but they also
Speaker 4: want to implement that you in that unit, right, like
Speaker 4: that more kind of like operative type of you know job.
Speaker 4: So there's like things within it that are more centered
Speaker 4: towards that, and we have a pretty like intimate knowledge
Speaker 4: because like of the difference between ours and CAGs because
Speaker 4: later in OTC we actually do our tactical portion of
Speaker 4: OTC at Camp Dawson, and we run the same lanes,
Speaker 4: but luckily not as selection like we're actually doing a
Speaker 4: training which later on I thought I was good at
Speaker 4: LANDAB until I went to that place.
Speaker 2: So you make it through selection, I mean that must
Speaker 2: have been a big relief to get go through the
Speaker 2: board and all that other stuff and finally get picked up.
Speaker 4: Yes, the board is the hardest part of selection in
Speaker 4: my personal opinion, because armatic, I would almost say.
Speaker 2: Because they dig into every aspect of your life and
Speaker 2: pick it apart.
Speaker 3: I would say.
Speaker 4: What I would say is you are presented with no
Speaker 4: win situations, and it is how you deal with no
Speaker 4: win situations. It is a hostile board. Like when I finished,
Speaker 4: when I got out of the board and I went
Speaker 4: into the waiting room while they deliberated. I knew I'd failed.
Speaker 4: I knew I was done, Like there was no way.
Speaker 4: I went into this little this room with kind of
Speaker 4: like a boister room, and I banged my head against
Speaker 4: this brick wall, and I kept saying, like, you're an idiot,
Speaker 4: You're an idiot, Like how could.
Speaker 3: You screw that up?
Speaker 4: But I walked back in there and they're like, we'd
Speaker 4: like to invite you to the next phase of training. Wow,
Speaker 4: that came as a surprise.
Speaker 2: And the next phase was the free fall course. The
Speaker 2: next phase was the free fall course.
Speaker 4: So you know that actually happened after OTC. So our
Speaker 4: OTC is a little bit longer. It's just shy of
Speaker 4: a year. I think it's like ten of like eleven months.
Speaker 4: And once we finish OTC, then you're all the operators
Speaker 4: get get to eventually go to free fall and then
Speaker 4: as soon as you get there, it's an o'mount like
Speaker 4: obviously the people who've been there the longest. But the
Speaker 4: one exception is the tactical detachment, and and most people
Speaker 4: don't get to go to the tactool detachment until they've
Speaker 4: been usually about the average like three years. Like you
Speaker 4: have to you already have to be basically senior operative status,
Speaker 4: and mainly I think maybe the size, maybe the way
Speaker 4: I look. You know, I don't quite fit in a
Speaker 4: lot of places. But I was made as an exception
Speaker 4: and within less than a year. Well I knew coming
Speaker 4: out of OTC that they were going to put me
Speaker 4: sort of an express lane to go to the tactical attachment,
Speaker 4: and I ended up probably six to nine months after
Speaker 4: I finished OTZ, I was officially in there, and then
Speaker 4: I got put to the to the OML for free
Speaker 4: Fall School. So within a year I was in Freefall
Speaker 4: Basic course and within a year of that I did
Speaker 4: Freefall Jumpmaster down at depp Grew in Virginia Beach.
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Speaker 2: That's awesome and especially I mean as a signals guy
Speaker 2: to have all those opportunities is really unique and really cool,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And one other things that I really enjoyed about this
Speaker 4: particularly is just because a part of that job is
Speaker 4: you actually because I say, kind of does its own
Speaker 4: thing with his own operations and everything like that. But
Speaker 4: the Tackle attachment actually supports Blue and Green. So we
Speaker 4: actually were like on the short cycle, and so I
Speaker 4: actually got to spend quite a bit of time with
Speaker 4: both Green and Blue, which you know, I felt like
Speaker 4: I had a unique perspective because I kind of got
Speaker 4: to see inside all three of these units, both the Orange, Blue,
Speaker 4: and Green, and you get to see the cultural differences,
Speaker 4: which are you know, pretty pretty shocking. And I think,
Speaker 4: you know, especially with how the difference between how Blue
Speaker 4: and Green treats their support personnel, that's kind.
Speaker 3: Of a huge difference.
Speaker 2: I've heard that that Green loves their support guys and
Speaker 2: Blue hates them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was explained to me in a very a
Speaker 4: very good way. Green these there sees their support people
Speaker 4: is that like they can't do their job without their
Speaker 4: support guys.
Speaker 3: Blue sees their support.
Speaker 6: Guys as they're in their way right and they have
Speaker 6: to tolerate them and it's so and one of the
Speaker 6: biggest I'll give you.
Speaker 4: So, at some point they made a mandatory for all
Speaker 4: assaulters to go to their intelligence squadron over at Green Yes,
Speaker 4: and because of that, like when you showed up, because
Speaker 4: when I started going, they'd already been implementing this. So
Speaker 4: when I I, i'd show up and almost always we
Speaker 4: were we would be attached to the REKI teams. And
Speaker 4: but when we would be there and we would have
Speaker 4: like our various different equipment and stuff like that, we'd
Speaker 4: have assaulters who'd come over who just got back from
Speaker 4: the intel squadron, like, oh, dude, I use that. Dude,
Speaker 4: it'd be super excited to talk to you about intel stuff.
Speaker 4: You know, here you've got these like badass assaulters who
Speaker 4: like want to get in with the intel and uh,
Speaker 4: let's just say.
Speaker 2: That never happened a blue Yeah, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: maybe it was you that told me this actually, but
Speaker 2: someone pointed out to me that, you know, Delta makes
Speaker 2: a point of putting operators in those intel eligence positions
Speaker 2: and they take it really seriously, like this is part
Speaker 2: of your career field. You're going to be really good
Speaker 2: at it. And it's resulted in, you know, the increasing capabilities.
Speaker 3: Of course, absolutely.
Speaker 4: So what I have found is that you know, both
Speaker 4: assaulters at both Blue and Green, like they are some
Speaker 4: of the most impressive individuals that I've ever met, right,
Speaker 4: and especially with like with the mentality and the level
Speaker 4: of maturity that you find at Green. When you take
Speaker 4: these like, you know, I almost think of like cheerwoord
Speaker 4: assaulters is like almost equivalent like Olympic athletes. They are
Speaker 4: the best. They have climbed that ladder. There is nobody better. Right,
Speaker 4: do you take someone who already has that mentality and
Speaker 4: then you're like, hey, here's a different job once you
Speaker 4: do this, right, And these guys, because they have that mentality,
Speaker 4: they see how intelligence import intelligence. They go in there
Speaker 4: and they become some of the best and then they
Speaker 4: do their you know, I you know, this might be
Speaker 4: a hot say, but like I would actually say that
Speaker 4: the intel guys who are the assaulters at Green would
Speaker 4: probably be superior to any guy that you find in ISA.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's pretty incredible that you would even
Speaker 2: think that that. They must have come a far away
Speaker 2: as far as your job, you're in the tactical squadron,
Speaker 2: How does your job differ from what you were doing
Speaker 2: previously as a SAD.
Speaker 3: So yeah, let's yeah, how much I can. So it's.
Speaker 4: So even even within the tactical side of things, I
Speaker 4: still did stuff outside of the tactical side of things.
Speaker 4: And if you understand that, you know essentially that you know,
Speaker 4: because everybody has pretty much general knowledge that the ISA
Speaker 4: was sort of like started as like the army's version
Speaker 4: of the CIA. So if you if you can kind
Speaker 4: of think about like what the CIA does and you know,
Speaker 4: especially when it comes to covers and clandestine work, so
Speaker 4: you have to do you do that type of stuff,
Speaker 4: and you know, learning how to you know, be somebody
Speaker 4: else for a deployment is that is definitely a skill
Speaker 4: that you have to learn. And I can just tell
Speaker 4: you it's not like in the movies. You know, you
Speaker 4: have to you know, you don't have this like team
Speaker 4: who comes up with all this stuff for you. You
Speaker 4: kind of have to make it up on the fly
Speaker 4: and you have to do your own research and you know,
Speaker 4: so that's that is definitely an interesting thing a side
Speaker 4: of things. And then while I was there, you know,
Speaker 4: because they have traditionally they have two main operational squadrons.
Speaker 3: You have the operation squadron, you have the SIGM squadron.
Speaker 4: And but they quickly is that they wanted to start
Speaker 4: making full spectrum operatives, which you had human guys who
Speaker 4: could do sigant and you could have sigant guys doing
Speaker 4: human And because we deployed in such small teams, they
Speaker 4: wanted to be able to have maximum capability in an individual.
Speaker 4: So like there started to be uh oh, definitely a crossover.
Speaker 4: Like one of my really good friends was actually the
Speaker 4: first SI guy to go to the farm.
Speaker 2: That's pretty interesting, And I mean, I think there's a
Speaker 2: couple of interesting topics around this, but one of them is,
Speaker 2: you know, you had already talked about how in Delta
Speaker 2: some of the operators had taken very well to the
Speaker 2: intel side. I'm wondering when you tried to or not
Speaker 2: you personally, but when the unit tried to mix human
Speaker 2: and singant, how did those personalities work, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of on an individual level, Like there's about both the
Speaker 2: person the personality aspect and also just the sheer amount
Speaker 2: of information that you can hold in your head and
Speaker 2: skills that you can maintain proficiency on.
Speaker 4: No, that's actually a great question, because I think not
Speaker 4: all second guys traditionally have the personality to do human right.
Speaker 4: I definitely think it's easier for a human guy to learn,
Speaker 4: you know, it's definitely different because it requires a certain
Speaker 4: type of personality to do human. So they were very
Speaker 4: selective on who they started to cross train, right, but
Speaker 4: the goal was to eventually cross training. And also because
Speaker 4: especially during certain times like the unit would be more
Speaker 4: employed when it came to certain intelligence disciplines. And so
Speaker 4: when let's just say that OS didn't really the human
Speaker 4: guys weren't having much of a job, and they were
Speaker 4: jealous because maybe the second guys were more gainfully employed
Speaker 4: and had more mission.
Speaker 3: They were like, well, let us, well, let's.
Speaker 4: Write some of the second stuff and they'll get us
Speaker 4: to get us working again. And then they kind of
Speaker 4: went back and forth and vice versa. So it was
Speaker 4: an interesting It was interesting to see the transition within
Speaker 4: the unit. And then you know, also the unit trying
Speaker 4: to find its own identity, if you will, because they
Speaker 4: struggled with that for years and I probably still struggling
Speaker 4: with them.
Speaker 2: Is that because their capabilities are duplicated in other parts
Speaker 2: of Jaysock.
Speaker 4: Or so this is my understanding, and this is what
Speaker 4: I was told of what was going on we were there,
Speaker 4: So obviously I say it was originally created too, and
Speaker 4: obviously you read about the secular e leap and a
Speaker 4: couple other books, but was to be that element of
Speaker 4: intelligence for both Blue and Green, and because we had
Speaker 4: a horrible relationship with the CIA in the eighties, but
Speaker 4: eventually the CIA came around and they're like, you guys
Speaker 4: are doing good stuff and it's kind of like our
Speaker 4: dey are when it was the analogy I used to
Speaker 4: the strange stepfather came home and it was like, hey,
Speaker 4: do you want to go around the world and in
Speaker 4: laden with us? And we were like hell yeah, dad.
Speaker 4: And so there was a time where I think that
Speaker 4: and this happened like before I got there, So I
Speaker 4: hear about this, like because out there twenty ten and
Speaker 4: this already was like they were still doing it when
Speaker 4: I showed up, but it was being calmed down at
Speaker 4: this point they were transitioning away from Operations CIA, but
Speaker 4: for a good portion of the two thousands they were
Speaker 4: running around the world of the CIA but not supporting
Speaker 4: Blue and Green.
Speaker 3: And that is my understanding. Was one of the main.
Speaker 4: Catalysts of why Blue and Green end up developing their
Speaker 4: own organic squadrons. So by that time, the week kind
Speaker 4: of sort of ended our crusade with the agency when
Speaker 4: we came back and we're like, hey, we're back, and
Speaker 4: they're like, now.
Speaker 3: We're good, bro, right right, we were good.
Speaker 4: And then when you show up right and you see
Speaker 4: what they're doing, You're like, yeah, you guys are good.
Speaker 3: You're really really not that much use for us.
Speaker 2: How do you think that bodes for the future of
Speaker 2: the unit? Do you think they're going to find their
Speaker 2: identity or their niche in the community.
Speaker 4: You know, they around the time that I left, they
Speaker 4: were definitely trying to find their specific niche, right, And
Speaker 4: I think that there were some good ideas, But I.
Speaker 3: Think that I don't know.
Speaker 4: This is my personal opinion. When it comes to intelligence
Speaker 4: centric organizations, there is especially when it comes to personalities.
Speaker 3: I find that there is.
Speaker 4: The personalities can be a little more toxic and probably eigence.
Speaker 4: Just in general, I feel like is a caddy can
Speaker 4: be a very caddy profession And I definitely of the
Speaker 4: three units, I definitely think that KAG is the most
Speaker 4: professional and the most mature and I think that there
Speaker 4: was some innate personality problems within ISA, which I think
Speaker 4: is still issues occasionally when I still talk to people
Speaker 4: who are still in the unit, they tell me all
Speaker 4: that I essentially I left it a very good time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the difference in a lot of ways is
Speaker 2: that the intelligence business is kind of people doing their
Speaker 2: own things, so to speak, whereas you know, you know
Speaker 2: from your experience being on an ODA or a ranger
Speaker 2: platoon or a seal platoon, it's very much a team,
Speaker 2: you know, a team event that you're doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and yeah.
Speaker 4: And then a lot of what they're doing is they're
Speaker 4: in like you know, occasionally there's like solo missions, but
Speaker 4: they're like two maybe three man teams, right, and you
Speaker 4: you have quite a lot of responsibility, and there's definitely
Speaker 4: like it is a level it is not an easy mission,
Speaker 4: like it's you know, it's very you know, you're out
Speaker 4: on your own, and especially whatever status that you might
Speaker 4: deploy in, you know, complicates things even further. And it
Speaker 4: is definitely a very hard environment. It's definitely it's it
Speaker 4: is a Tier one intelligence organization, right, But there are
Speaker 4: what I found, there were some inherent problems with that.
Speaker 4: And then honestly, like you know, you look at almost
Speaker 4: every like for example, take INSCOM, right, you have all
Speaker 4: these intelligence over arching umbrella organizations who no longer have
Speaker 4: a job, Like INSCOM doesn't have a job because every
Speaker 4: operational unit in the military has its own organic intelligence, right.
Speaker 4: And so I say, it's sort of like the INSCOM
Speaker 4: of Tier one if you want, right, And it's still
Speaker 4: luckily it still does its own thing, it has its
Speaker 4: own mission, right, but the portion of where it supported
Speaker 4: the other two has been greatly diminished.
Speaker 2: And you did a whole bunch of deployments with the unit.
Speaker 2: What are you able to tell us about where they
Speaker 2: sent you and what they had you doing.
Speaker 4: I can't really, especially based on certain missions that were
Speaker 4: in different statuses, but I would probably say that one
Speaker 4: of the things when I'm in fifth Group, you know,
Speaker 4: especially you think about this two thousand and seven, two
Speaker 4: thousand and nine, you know, Fifth Group was stuck in Iraq, right,
Speaker 4: and this was I was. I did my first deployment
Speaker 4: before the change of the Soap agreement where you had
Speaker 4: unilateral operations, and then when we came back to the
Speaker 4: second appointment, we were doing bilateral operations, which we also
Speaker 4: needed warrants from Iraqi judges, which you know, it took
Speaker 4: us a few months to realize that we had to
Speaker 4: go out of the tribal region because you know, you'd
Speaker 4: submit a warrant through a judge and then suddenly you
Speaker 4: hadn id waiting for you. Right, We quickly learned that
Speaker 4: we had to go out of the region, away from
Speaker 4: that tribe to submit warrants for judges. Actually, but it
Speaker 4: just completely slowed the tempo. And at that time, you know,
Speaker 4: we heard that like Afghanistan was still popping off. We're like, oh,
Speaker 4: can we go somewhere else? But we were fifth group,
Speaker 4: you know, that we owned Iraq, like we were stuck there.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that I wanted to do
Speaker 4: because that second appointment well was amazing because I had
Speaker 4: that great team experience with Boomer and the team, the
Speaker 4: Soul Attachment. I luckily deployments minus a single deployment was
Speaker 4: in other continents and I actually probably spent majority of
Speaker 4: my time.
Speaker 3: In Africa.
Speaker 2: Doing the tactical singing side for other JSK elements.
Speaker 4: To actually did both, I did.
Speaker 3: I did both the.
Speaker 4: The typical job that you would think of that an
Speaker 4: isa guy does. And I also did the tactle thing
Speaker 4: because I was you know, I was saying, didn't have
Speaker 4: any kids, wasn't married, and so anytime that there was
Speaker 4: a slot that opened up another detachment, or somebody needed
Speaker 4: to be relieved for whatever American Red Cross or somebody
Speaker 4: needed to come home for whatever reason, I was usually
Speaker 4: the go to guy to fill in for those people,
Speaker 4: so which I'm looking back in hindsight, I really liked
Speaker 4: because I went on probably more deployments and more varying
Speaker 4: different types of missions regardless of what I look like,
Speaker 4: which I don't think would have happened if they weren't
Speaker 4: desperate and needed somebody to replace. Then I was always
Speaker 4: available when I wasn't on certain aspects of the Jorge cycle.
Speaker 3: When I was available.
Speaker 2: From that time. Are there any like stories that you're
Speaker 2: able to tell. And I understand you need to be
Speaker 2: vague about where you were when it happened, et cetera,
Speaker 2: but if you could walk us through, if you have
Speaker 2: any stories you're able to tell things that were close
Speaker 2: called yes or got a little dicey.
Speaker 4: You know, it's really it's really hard to go into
Speaker 4: like any of that without especially during that time, because
Speaker 4: without you know, it'd be really hard to really say
Speaker 4: I will I will tell you so at everything that
Speaker 4: I did at at the unit. My favorite thing probably
Speaker 4: still this day, is about four years after I have
Speaker 4: passed selection, I got to come back as cadre for selection.
Speaker 4: And when you get to go behind the thing and
Speaker 4: you get to be the super stoic guy who because
Speaker 4: they do it all the time, Like candidates will come
Speaker 4: up and they'll be like, you know, they'll they'll they'll
Speaker 4: try to ask you for to reiterate the instructions and
Speaker 4: you just sit there, you know, with sunglasses on, you
Speaker 4: got your you know your shirt are you just go candidate,
Speaker 4: what were your instructions? And that's all you have to say.
Speaker 4: And you get to see everything behind the scenes. And
Speaker 4: that was really cool because then because while you're there,
Speaker 4: you also you learn these to be You learn the
Speaker 4: history of our selection and how it related to tags,
Speaker 4: how they change things, and then you also see like
Speaker 4: they actually had the reasons why they chose this psychology
Speaker 4: versus like how they went different than SFAs and various
Speaker 4: different things like that. But no, I would definitely say
Speaker 4: that the hardest part of deployments. I would actually say
Speaker 4: was being in alias, and I will say this, like
Speaker 4: if you're I would say that one of the transitions
Speaker 4: that I feel like kind of screwzing with you the
Speaker 4: most is that when you come back and you've essentially
Speaker 4: been somebody else for longer than you were yourself, it
Speaker 4: kind of like messes with you a little bit. And
Speaker 4: you know all the times we always joke about it,
Speaker 4: like you'll come home and then you'll be with your
Speaker 4: buddies at work, and then you'll go to the local
Speaker 4: food truck and you'll be like, oh, you know quarter,
Speaker 4: and they'll be like for who, and then you'd give
Speaker 4: out the wrong name because you've been somebody else for
Speaker 4: so long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of these situations where you wake up
Speaker 2: in the morning and you're not sure who you are,
Speaker 2: like what's my name?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they teach you early on, like the best
Speaker 1: way to do that type of stuff is you have
Speaker 1: to believe the lie.
Speaker 4: Right, And this is in like every CIA like handbook
Speaker 4: out there, Like you know, this is no secret, but
Speaker 4: like that's definitely the most effective way. So when you
Speaker 4: go around it and you basically you believe the lie,
Speaker 4: and then when you come back, it's a little.
Speaker 3: Bit of an adjustment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I can see. I mean, thankfully, I
Speaker 2: think you know you were single at the time, but
Speaker 2: I mean it's especially hard on the families, and it
Speaker 2: definitely can do and I can see why living the
Speaker 2: type of life you describe can drive people towards alcoholism, womanizing.
Speaker 2: You're out there trying to find a connection.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so yeah, and then also you have to remember
Speaker 4: also another part of that is you don't make that
Speaker 4: much money in the military. But I will tell you
Speaker 4: that TIERWOD operators do make money. Right, So like your
Speaker 4: SF guy, if I correct me if I'm wrong, Like,
Speaker 4: was it was it special Pro? Special Forces? Was Hazard's
Speaker 4: duty pay?
Speaker 2: You get hazardous duty pay overseas and you get pro
Speaker 2: pay for being SF YEP.
Speaker 4: Okay, so in the unit as in both Blue Green
Speaker 4: and Orange get this. All operators get this. So they
Speaker 4: get they get the SF pay at max out. I
Speaker 4: think it's like four fifty if I remember correctly, they
Speaker 4: get you get your all your everyone's pays, you get
Speaker 4: your demo pays and everything like that. But then you
Speaker 4: get AIP, which is my understanding. Only Blue Green and
Speaker 4: Orange operators get this, and it's one thousand dollars a
Speaker 4: month on top of all your other special pays. And
Speaker 4: so I am a twenty seven year old, you know,
Speaker 4: staff sergeant at the time, living in you know, a
Speaker 4: metropolitan city and getting getting getting a decent amount of
Speaker 4: BAH on top of all these like because I probably
Speaker 4: had about two thousand dollars in special pays a month
Speaker 4: and on top of that my ridiculous BAH. I was
Speaker 4: a twenty seven year old staff sergeant making over six figures.
Speaker 4: And you cannot get that type of money in my
Speaker 4: because even when I went to aviation, I took a
Speaker 4: huge pay cut and I was a warrant officer, you know.
Speaker 4: So there's the money, because you really can't you can't
Speaker 4: replicate at anywhere else in the military, not even like
Speaker 4: not even fighter pilots in the Air Force whatever, get
Speaker 4: that level of money.
Speaker 3: And then you can't recreate this job in the civilian world.
Speaker 3: Like it's very hard.
Speaker 4: Like you can go to ground branch, because that's where
Speaker 4: most of the guys go, is they eventually go to
Speaker 4: ground branch, Like especially the tacticle guys in our unit,
Speaker 4: they would eventually go to ground branch. And then that's
Speaker 4: when I had the fateful day. I was about I
Speaker 4: think I've been in the unit about six years. And
Speaker 4: our unit's CW five, who's this absolute legend who was
Speaker 4: a Green Beret ranger in the eighties, switched over and
Speaker 4: became a helicopter pilot one sixtieth he was in Blackhawk Down. Anyways,
Speaker 4: this guy kind of being like the CW five of
Speaker 4: our unit and he liked me. Saw him in the
Speaker 4: gym one day and he comes up to me and
Speaker 4: he's like, you know, and he was like this fifty
Speaker 4: year old, like fifty five year old man, and it
Speaker 4: had a ten pack, Like it's just stupid, right, you know,
Speaker 4: Just like I was like, you know, I'm like, bro,
Speaker 4: just just put it away, like you Like, I felt
Speaker 4: like it was one of the fittest dudes there. And
Speaker 4: he would just literally put me to shame all the time.
Speaker 4: And he used to come up and he'd like, fis
Speaker 4: pump you, but he'd like he'd hit you hard with
Speaker 4: the knuckles, right, and he'd do this every single day.
Speaker 4: So I'm in the gym, I'm about to work out,
Speaker 4: and he's like so he's like, Joe, what's a what's
Speaker 4: a you know, what's your plan? I'm like, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: probus to do legs and he was like, no, with life,
Speaker 4: you idiot. And I'm like, oh, you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: do with everybody else because i'd been a a I'd
Speaker 4: reached senior senior operative status at that point. For I
Speaker 4: think it's been like a one or two years and
Speaker 4: my and what everybody did was they they did their
Speaker 4: like twenty twenty twenty five years whatever, and then they
Speaker 4: all went to ground branch, especially the guys I was
Speaker 4: in the detachment with, and that was that was that
Speaker 4: was the life, that was the dream, right. And he
Speaker 4: comes up to me and he's like, he's like, do
Speaker 4: not do that. And I'm like why. He's like, look
Speaker 4: at all your seniors, look at your peers. All of
Speaker 4: them are divorced. I don't ever have, not barely any
Speaker 4: of them have any relationship with their children. He's like,
Speaker 4: he's like, you've done this like between group and here.
Speaker 4: He's like, you've done this, like what over a decade now.
Speaker 4: He's like, I can tell you. He's like, it doesn't
Speaker 4: get any better. He's like, the seniority in these jobs
Speaker 4: doesn't get you any better. He's like the best part
Speaker 4: is the first five years. That's the sweetest part. It's new,
Speaker 4: it's everything, you can do everything. And then once you
Speaker 4: start getting senior status, you would think that you get
Speaker 4: more freedom. No, that's the exact opposite. So and then he,
Speaker 4: being a guy who was a former ranger Green Bray
Speaker 4: and now a pilot, he was like, if you ever
Speaker 4: want to go to flight school.
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, who doesn't.
Speaker 4: He's like, dude, the army will pay, like they will,
Speaker 4: you know, you don't have to pay to get your
Speaker 4: private license. He's like, go do that. And then you know,
Speaker 4: probably within a year of that conversation, you know, I
Speaker 4: you know, due to some other like things that went
Speaker 4: on in the unit that I did that I saw
Speaker 4: that I didn't like. I was like, I'm out. You know,
Speaker 4: I put in my like I was it the forty
Speaker 4: one eighty seven and I applied for flight school warrant,
Speaker 4: and then you know, I had to put in an
Speaker 4: age and time and service favor and to being the
Speaker 4: oldest person in flight school, which the first sergeant down
Speaker 4: there was really happy.
Speaker 3: To tell me. You know, he's like, you're the old
Speaker 3: man now.
Speaker 2: That was Yeah, that was some really sage advice that
Speaker 2: you got from your salty warrant there. But you know
Speaker 2: he wasn't wrong, No, he wasn't.
Speaker 4: And actually his helicopter is actually if you usually go
Speaker 4: to the RVY Aviation Museum, is the is the actual
Speaker 4: helicopter in there and has his name on it.
Speaker 3: Oly shit like this, this guy, this guy is a legend.
Speaker 2: Yeah I did it all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this guy still a legend to this day.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you go to flight school and sort of
Speaker 2: first off, like what's your objective in going to flight school?
Speaker 2: What what airframe do you want to be on? What
Speaker 2: are sort of your goals here going into it?
Speaker 3: So at this time it was my understanding, so it
Speaker 3: was interesting.
Speaker 4: So when you go there, when you go to flight school,
Speaker 4: and if you either come from Ranger BAT, you come
Speaker 4: from group, or you come for one of the Tier
Speaker 4: one units, are when you finish flight school you are
Speaker 4: going to be allowed the option to go straight to
Speaker 4: one sixtieth. They only give this option for frame former
Speaker 4: ranger you know whatever, or the Tier one guys. Right,
Speaker 4: And I was told by the two CW fives, both
Speaker 4: of them who helped me write, who did my letters
Speaker 4: of recommendation, they were like, whatever you do when they
Speaker 4: give you this option, say no, do not go to
Speaker 4: one sixties.
Speaker 3: Straight out of flight school.
Speaker 4: And both of these guys were former one sixtieth guys,
Speaker 4: and they told me, They're like, hey, it's a doggy
Speaker 4: dog world. He's like you, when you go to flight school,
Speaker 4: they teach you enough to not crash. He's like all
Speaker 4: this other stuff like learning how to you know to
Speaker 4: launch guys, do airborne operations, fast roping, spies, fries. When
Speaker 4: you show up to one sixtieth, they expect you to
Speaker 4: know it already in gratuity. You know they're making an exception.
Speaker 4: But that learning curve is so short, it's like it
Speaker 4: adds a level of stress to your scene that you
Speaker 4: don't know what you need.
Speaker 3: And when I show up.
Speaker 4: To find school, there's only one other soft guy there.
Speaker 4: There's another green there's a green beret there. And we
Speaker 4: actually instantly become friends, right and we're sitting there like
Speaker 4: one of the first days, and I tell him what
Speaker 4: my CW five told me. He's like, dude, my CW
Speaker 4: five told me the exact same thing. Who his CW
Speaker 4: five was also a one sixtieth guy. So it quickly
Speaker 4: became this thing. But while I was there. You know,
Speaker 4: if if you're familiar, you know, like one sixtieth has
Speaker 4: sort of become like, you know, like the Tier two
Speaker 4: aviation unit sort of right, because like what does Green do?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: They needed, they need a capability they there was a
Speaker 4: time when you know, I think one sixtieth was their
Speaker 4: operations were getting too slow because they still had this
Speaker 4: bureaucadech you know, they're still in the army, right, and
Speaker 4: you had officers who would come along and just their
Speaker 4: their their speed of doing operations were not fast enough.
Speaker 3: So what did Green do?
Speaker 4: They end up developing their own aviation wing, and that
Speaker 4: aviation wing got so successful that it became its own
Speaker 4: separate unit. And I believe the colloquial term is the
Speaker 4: uh uh the Northern Virginia Boys.
Speaker 2: I believe is that, Yeah, the dev group one I've
Speaker 2: heard referred to as t W A t Weenie Airlines.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So So obviously knowing this and actually getting to work
Speaker 4: with them while was at the unit, that was like
Speaker 4: became my goal because I but I knew that they weren't.
Speaker 3: They were obviously not going to accept me right away,
Speaker 3: nor did I want to.
Speaker 4: So the goal was to get there and do my
Speaker 4: go to my first unit, get my couple of years
Speaker 4: in and then go and then apply for the Virginia Boys.
Speaker 4: And while I was there, one of my well, so
Speaker 4: I did the basic course in the UH seventy two
Speaker 4: Lakota and one of my contracting instructors we quickly learned
Speaker 4: where I was from, and he let me know that
Speaker 4: he this was a side job for him, but he's
Speaker 4: actually from the Virginia Boys, and he told me and
Speaker 4: I was, so we had a good conversation and I
Speaker 4: was like, Okay, what's the fastest way I can get there? Right,
Speaker 4: He's like.
Speaker 3: Blackhawks.
Speaker 4: He's like, if you do apaches, because there's such as
Speaker 4: short as apaches at least this is what he said
Speaker 4: at the time, was that you will have to do
Speaker 4: an additional year or two as an Apache pilot before
Speaker 4: they'll even allow you to take ADA. If you do Blackhawks,
Speaker 4: that's the quickest.
Speaker 3: Way that you can get there. So that was the
Speaker 3: reason why.
Speaker 4: So when I got to my wish list after graduating
Speaker 4: the basic course, that is why I put it on
Speaker 4: the top of my wish list.
Speaker 3: Was black Hawks cool.
Speaker 2: So, so then you had to go off to U
Speaker 2: age sixty school.
Speaker 3: Yes, went after U age sixty school.
Speaker 4: And it's funny because you hear there is like with
Speaker 4: any unit, you hear generalizations about like what the Apache
Speaker 4: instructors are like with the Blackhawk instructors, right, and you
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, you keep hearing these horror stories about
Speaker 4: the Apaches instructors, right, which end up being quite the
Speaker 4: opposite because you I find out when you get to
Speaker 4: the Blackhawk portion that the Blackhawk instructors are like the worst.
Speaker 4: Like the Apache guys are actually the coolest. The Chinook
Speaker 4: guys are, if not as cool as a patch you guys.
Speaker 3: Even cooler, right.
Speaker 4: But I think one of the reasons why the Blackhawk
Speaker 4: guys are so bitter is because they don't do anything,
Speaker 4: Like their airframe doesn't do anything well, and they're like
Speaker 4: the jack of all trades. But since you've been in Afghanistan,
Speaker 4: as you know, in Afghanistan, they don't have the power
Speaker 4: to do successful operations.
Speaker 3: That's why basically only Chinooks do anything.
Speaker 4: So as a unit commander, what are you going to do?
Speaker 4: REQUI because at that at that altitude, you can get
Speaker 4: like maybe three four guys with equipment on your black Hawk,
Speaker 4: So what are you in a request, you know, a
Speaker 4: request like twenty black Hawks or like one or two Chinooks,
Speaker 4: like it doesn't make any sense. So I feel like
Speaker 4: there was a These guys had a a bit of a.
Speaker 3: You know, some of them literally had a Napoleon complex.
Speaker 4: But yeah, some of them had like this like, oh,
Speaker 4: we need to prove ourselves, and it's just this negative attitude.
Speaker 4: And we quickly learned that the instructors in the black
Speaker 4: Cart course were definitely the most difficult.
Speaker 2: And as you're going through the course, it sounds like
Speaker 2: you started having some family tragedy.
Speaker 4: Also, right, Yeah, So my father at this point was
Speaker 4: had cancer.
Speaker 3: But then my.
Speaker 4: Sister in law who helped raise me because my mother
Speaker 4: died when I was fifteen, she actually left college her
Speaker 4: and my brother came home and helped raise me. So
Speaker 4: like she's my sister in law, but I always considered
Speaker 4: my sister because she helped raise me. And she died
Speaker 4: suddenly and unfortunately in the exact same way that my
Speaker 4: mother did when I was fifteen, and so I went
Speaker 4: home on emergency leave to be there for everything in
Speaker 4: the funeral, and then within a year my father died,
Speaker 4: so and I was already having issues with the current
Speaker 4: flight instructor who was the flight lead of my black
Speaker 4: Hawk flight, and so I used this as a time
Speaker 4: to roll out of that class and take care of
Speaker 4: family stuff. And then when I got put back into course,
Speaker 4: I randomly got put back into his flight and within
Speaker 4: a week or two I got had some issues with
Speaker 4: being a huge partner, created other issues within flight school,
Speaker 4: and then in combination of my family and a financial
Speaker 4: situation that was going on with all my real estate
Speaker 4: investment properties because of COVID, that's probably when I hit
Speaker 4: rock bottom and hit a level been depressed in my
Speaker 4: first time in my life.
Speaker 2: And we'll talk about this in a bit, but you
Speaker 2: know your YouTube channel, you talk a lot about overcoming
Speaker 2: some of these mental health issues. What was it you
Speaker 2: were experiencing at that time and how did you overcome it? Because,
Speaker 2: I mean, what you're describing it's not nothing. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is something that would take the wing, the air
Speaker 2: out of anyone's wings.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, no, that's a great question because this
Speaker 4: actually ends up being like one of the things that
Speaker 4: I tell people, especially when they're starting to lead the military.
Speaker 3: Is what I didn't realize at the time, but I
Speaker 3: learned quickly is that I.
Speaker 4: Had tied my identity to these aspects of my life,
Speaker 4: to my real estate investment, to my success within the military,
Speaker 4: because at this point I'd never failed anything obviously, you know,
Speaker 4: not passing waivers. I didn't really you know, consider that
Speaker 4: as failing. Right, every time that someone had given me
Speaker 4: the shot, I passed it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: In flight school, I had never at this point, never
Speaker 4: failed to test. Technically, I did get, I did get.
Speaker 4: I did fail one flight test in the Uge seventy
Speaker 4: two Lakota, but that's only because I fell asleep in
Speaker 4: the back. The instructor was not happy about it. So
Speaker 4: I failed that he failed me, even though I passed
Speaker 4: the flight portion. So I had to retake the assessment.
Speaker 4: That's neither here nor there so. And then now so
Speaker 4: between my financial, my professional I all these things that
Speaker 4: I had tied my identity that I was successful were failing,
Speaker 4: and I had no idea how to deal with failure,
Speaker 4: and I shut down completely. I didn't talk to anybody
Speaker 4: because I was ashamed. I was these things. I projected
Speaker 4: all these things, this is who I was, and now
Speaker 4: always no longer this How could I talk to anybody?
Speaker 4: And it wasn't until I finally, you know, because you know,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you want me to go into
Speaker 4: the details about the plan that.
Speaker 2: I met and I hit rock bottom, but whatever you're
Speaker 2: comfortable with.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, So I got a problemcause I've already talked
Speaker 4: about this on my YouTube channel. So I hit rock bottom,
Speaker 4: and I made a plan to commit suicide, right, And
Speaker 4: I made a plan. I planned to do it after
Speaker 4: my best friend's wedding, who I was. Strangely enough, I
Speaker 4: was a bridesmaid for her wedding. And the main reason
Speaker 4: why I didn't do it was actually because of my dog,
Speaker 4: because later on I would obviously realize that, know, taking
Speaker 4: your own life is one of the selfish things you
Speaker 4: can do, because you know, you think you're fixing your problems,
Speaker 4: but you're causing trauma to anybody who's ever loved you, right,
Speaker 4: and that when that's just horrible. Right. But this dog,
Speaker 4: who I had rescue from the streets of Baltimore, she
Speaker 4: had nobody else in her life, you know, who was
Speaker 4: I to like leave her in this world? And when
Speaker 4: she had nobody, who would she go to? Right? And
Speaker 4: so her was the main reason I didn't do it.
Speaker 4: And then every day I was just like I made
Speaker 4: a choice. I was like, I'm just going to do
Speaker 4: one thing. It's going to make my life better today.
Speaker 4: And then eventually I got out of it. And then
Speaker 4: you I think, what I didn't know, because I guess
Speaker 4: one of the reasons with this was so hard for me.
Speaker 4: I had never been depressed my life. I was at
Speaker 4: a sunny disposition because I'd never experienced this. I didn't
Speaker 4: know what to do. And finally I.
Speaker 3: Started reaching out to people. I started talking to people.
Speaker 4: And realized that it was okay to have done this
Speaker 4: right obviously, you know, mainly because I didn't follow through
Speaker 4: with it. And so every day by day I did
Speaker 4: something to make my life better. And then which you
Speaker 4: quickly realize it eventually, you know, when you pull yourself
Speaker 4: out of this thing, it's sort of I feel like
Speaker 4: it rewires your brain chemically a little bit, and you
Speaker 4: it's it's like this shadow that's always behind you. You're
Speaker 4: always going that depression is always lingering there. But it's
Speaker 4: how you perceive it, it's how you deal with it.
Speaker 4: You know, you understand that, like that's not an option
Speaker 4: and you're never going to allow yourself to do that,
Speaker 4: but like it's there you're lying if it's not like.
Speaker 3: And then there's like these sadness that you go through.
Speaker 4: And for me, I I frame it as this is
Speaker 4: the story that I one day will tell right if
Speaker 4: I was ever to write, if someone was ever writing
Speaker 4: a book or movie about life, which I don't think
Speaker 4: i'd ever do.
Speaker 3: I'm not that cool.
Speaker 4: But if they did, what would the viewers at the
Speaker 4: screen be yelling? What would the people in the movie
Speaker 4: theater be yelling at the screen right now for me
Speaker 4: to do right? And when you think about that, your
Speaker 4: success is built on failures. That was just this giant
Speaker 4: failure that would become one of the greatest triumphs I
Speaker 4: believe in my life to get over that particular period
Speaker 4: of my life so to the point where I'm actually
Speaker 4: it is one of the best things that ever happened
Speaker 4: to me because it has turned me into the person
Speaker 4: that I am today, and I am so if later on,
Speaker 4: when we talk about an investigation, if that investigation had
Speaker 4: happened five years prior, I don't know how I would
Speaker 4: dealt with it. But because this had already happened, my
Speaker 4: level of don't give a fuck factor was so high
Speaker 4: that I just didn't care. That to me, every day
Speaker 4: after that were bonus days, right, I'm just happy to
Speaker 4: be alive.
Speaker 2: You you emerged stronger after the fact, absolutely, yeah, And
Speaker 2: so you're kind of trying to beat this thing at
Speaker 2: the same time, how how are you kind of like
Speaker 2: wrapping up flight school and are you getting assigned to
Speaker 2: a unit.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So basically I had to go through this whole
Speaker 4: process of you know, I had to write letters to
Speaker 4: Congress and all these different things, and you know, the
Speaker 4: whole thing was a shit show. But eventually I was
Speaker 4: able to get out of there, and then I got
Speaker 4: DCS to Washington, d or to Washington DC area.
Speaker 3: And at this point I was.
Speaker 4: Because of the things that happened at flight school, I
Speaker 4: was done with the military. So I was like, I'm
Speaker 4: just going to write out the rest of my career,
Speaker 4: like because like now the concept of like, you know,
Speaker 4: doing anything else after that, I was like, I'm done.
Speaker 3: So and then about six months prior.
Speaker 4: That's when I started the YouTube channel because I was like,
Speaker 4: this is my purpose, Like, this is the one of
Speaker 4: the things that I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: And it was something outside of the military too, right,
Speaker 2: it was something you were doing on your own yes,
Speaker 2: yeah and so.
Speaker 4: And because I guess one of the catalysts when I
Speaker 4: wanted to do this was because I've obviously experienced toxic leadership,
Speaker 4: especially which I never thought I would, especially in ISA,
Speaker 4: like there was some definitely some very toxic leaders It
Speaker 4: obviously doesn't happen as much, but I feel like when
Speaker 4: it does, it's very potent. Like it was. The few
Speaker 4: individuals that were it was really bad. And I wanted
Speaker 4: to make videos about toxic leadership, but like to help
Speaker 4: teach people what real leadership actually looks like, because I
Speaker 4: feel like a lot of people actually don't know what
Speaker 4: real leadership looks like. So that became one of the reasons.
Speaker 4: And then now that I had this where I was
Speaker 4: able to get past taking my own life and I
Speaker 4: was on this like journey of like, you know, I
Speaker 4: got into Buddhism, Stoicism and all these different things, and
Speaker 4: I really kind of like went on this like spiritual
Speaker 4: journey to like find, you know, to understand my place
Speaker 4: in this universe.
Speaker 3: And what I eventually got.
Speaker 4: To I was like, I think that I had this
Speaker 4: innate ability to be able to break things down to
Speaker 4: retard level because I'm you know, kind of a retard
Speaker 4: myself because I have to break everything's down to the
Speaker 4: layman in stores. I got stories from Freefall School when
Speaker 4: I came to learning how to do Poe's exits, they
Speaker 4: literally had to break it down.
Speaker 3: A retard level for me.
Speaker 4: And then I'm not afraid to talk about the things
Speaker 4: that you know, guys don't want to talk about, especially
Speaker 4: in these hyper masculine communities. So I felt like that
Speaker 4: was my thing. So I started this channel, and that's
Speaker 4: what I started originally talking about, was the was the
Speaker 4: mental health stuff. I was talking about fitness stoicism, you know,
Speaker 4: That's why I called it the Stowing Viking.
Speaker 3: And then but people were then asking me because I.
Speaker 4: Had pictures of of like my time at fifth Group,
Speaker 4: a time at flight school, and then like time like
Speaker 4: ISA or whatever, or like the few photos that I
Speaker 4: did because I don't really have the many photos from
Speaker 4: that time for obvious reasons.
Speaker 3: And people started asking questions like why did you leave?
Speaker 4: Right, so, and I never said which unit I was from,
Speaker 4: and so I was like, Okay, I see this as
Speaker 4: a teaching lesson, right because so I phrased it. So
Speaker 4: I told the story of why I left and the
Speaker 4: reason why I left is because you know, I saw
Speaker 4: that there was no there was no future down that route,
Speaker 4: at least not for twenty thirty years, right. And the
Speaker 4: moral of the story was you can do anything amazing, right,
Speaker 4: but you don't need to sacrifice your entire personal life
Speaker 4: for the rest of your life life because of it. Right,
Speaker 4: And if you really think about it. And this is
Speaker 4: the advice that I tell everybody. Know, what you want
Speaker 4: in the military, go get it, do it for five years,
Speaker 4: and then lead and take that experience to the civilian world,
Speaker 4: because they will reward you, you know, for in many
Speaker 4: different ways. And you also have the freedom to like quit,
Speaker 4: like that's that's an amazing power, which you don't get
Speaker 4: in the military. Right.
Speaker 3: So I made this video and it it.
Speaker 4: At that point, I think my videos had maybe five
Speaker 4: hundred thousand views. This thing within like two days was
Speaker 4: like one hundred thousand views. And I started making more
Speaker 4: videos and people liked it, and people were asking about selections.
Speaker 4: So I kind of made a video selection about you
Speaker 4: know how the differences between Tier two and Tier one selections.
Speaker 4: Advice of how to pass Tier two and Tier one
Speaker 4: never gave any operational details never gave way any secrets,
Speaker 4: never still named, never named the unit. But people in
Speaker 4: the comments were starting to guess, you know, to hear
Speaker 4: Tier one unit and right, and I'm like, look, bro,
Speaker 4: like I wish, but uh no, that's not the that's
Speaker 4: not the one I went. So I started to imply
Speaker 4: through the comments that I was from a different one. Right,
Speaker 4: So everything's fine. The channels starting to get big, you know.
Speaker 4: I get Barbell Apparel reaching out to me, wanting to
Speaker 4: be a sponsor, you know, which was cool because I've
Speaker 4: already been wearing these guys's clothes. And and right around
Speaker 4: that time, I get this ominous phone call from my
Speaker 4: command and they're like, hey, we need you to come
Speaker 4: into work immediately and come see the commander. And anybody
Speaker 4: who's been in the military knows that is not a
Speaker 4: good sign. They that never results in anything good. Uh,
Speaker 4: that's always bad. So I show up and they whisked
Speaker 4: me directly into this conference room and uh, you know,
Speaker 4: my company commander, she's you know, she's only been an
Speaker 4: army for a couple of years, and she's obviously really worried.
Speaker 4: And I've only ever to smile on this one's face.
Speaker 4: I'm like, man, you okay, She's like, you know, like
Speaker 4: I don't. She couldn't tell me what was going on.
Speaker 4: So they slide this piece of paper in front of me,
Speaker 4: and it says that I'm investigated by the Army Criminal
Speaker 4: Investigation Division or the Post for the possible disc.
Speaker 3: Unclassified or of classified information.
Speaker 2: And I think you've probably you're probably aware of this, Joe.
Speaker 2: But there's sort of a larger context happening in the
Speaker 2: Special Operations community, going after all kinds of veterans who
Speaker 2: have spoken on podcasts or spoken in interviews or whatever
Speaker 2: the case may be. About a year and a half ago,
Speaker 2: DELTA sent out a letter to all of their members. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the letter, you know, it's kind of starts off
Speaker 2: where it's like, you know, warning people, you know, be
Speaker 2: careful about not dischools and classified information, which I think
Speaker 2: that's within their wheelhouse, right, nothing saying that, But then
Speaker 2: they ask veterans of the unit to socially shame other
Speaker 2: veterans of the unit that speak out in ways that
Speaker 2: they find inappropriate and that is completely beyond the purview
Speaker 2: of some command or at some unit at Fort Bragg,
Speaker 2: to try to suppress the First Amendment rights of private
Speaker 2: citizens out there in America. And I just had another
Speaker 2: friend he worked for one of the JASOX support units,
Speaker 2: and they came after him this last week because of
Speaker 2: an interview he did with us about a year ago.
Speaker 2: And there's nothing they can do, as we'll talk about
Speaker 2: with your case, there's nothing they can really do to
Speaker 2: him because he didn't say anything wrong, he did not
Speaker 2: divulge classified information. But what they will do is try
Speaker 2: to socially shame you within the community.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, And I already started to see this even prior,
Speaker 4: because I think I saw Sean Ryan talking about it,
Speaker 4: you know, doing these interviews and suddenly you know, they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: you have to take our videos down, and you know,
Speaker 4: and as Sean Ryan said, is like, you know, you can't,
Speaker 4: like you're allowed to talk about your lives obviously, don't
Speaker 4: give them any operational details. So and one of the
Speaker 4: reasons that I chose the path of my channel anyways,
Speaker 4: which was one not to be about operational details, and
Speaker 4: I wanted to be about stoicism, philosophy, life lessons, talking
Speaker 4: about the hard truths and these you know, the suicide
Speaker 4: mental health because especially when I was when I was
Speaker 4: in the unit. Even when I was in aviation, if
Speaker 4: you went to mental health, that was the end of
Speaker 4: your career, right, you couldn't go. It wasn't until like
Speaker 4: a couple of years later, like towards the end of
Speaker 4: my career, that it was okay to go to mental health.
Speaker 4: So that's what I want to talk about. And I
Speaker 4: never wanted to be about the unit because like, one,
Speaker 4: I don't think I'm that cool anyways, and two, like
Speaker 4: what am I going to talk about anyways? No, I
Speaker 4: was like, no, we're good. So yeah, So the the
Speaker 4: the intent of the channel was, you know, not to
Speaker 4: be about the operational details, you know, because one I
Speaker 4: don't think I'm that cool anyways, and then two like
Speaker 4: what are you actually going to talk about? Like it
Speaker 4: just it's such a murky road. Didn't want to do
Speaker 4: any of that type of stuff. And so the focus
Speaker 4: of the channel was, you know, obviously on the philosophy,
Speaker 4: the stoicism, you know, making the mental health especially because
Speaker 4: you know, when I was in the unit and aviation,
Speaker 4: if you went to mental health, that was a death sentence,
Speaker 4: like your career is over. And luckily, in the last
Speaker 4: couple of years, right before retired, it definitely shifted that
Speaker 4: that be okay, but it definitely like we had a
Speaker 4: guy in while I was in flight school who went
Speaker 4: to mental health. He was he was kicked out within
Speaker 4: a week, and obviously in the unit you definitely couldn't
Speaker 4: go to mental health like that was that was a
Speaker 4: death sentence on the death sentence. So but you know,
Speaker 4: I did my due diligence and I researched all this stuff.
Speaker 4: And whether Vieweditt likes it or not, there's plenty of
Speaker 4: books which I also have a funny story because I
Speaker 4: actually showed up the ISA select because at this time
Speaker 4: in twenty ten, I think the only book at that
Speaker 4: time was Killer Lee. Yeah, and you have to remember
Speaker 4: this is two thousand and two, that two thousand and nine,
Speaker 4: twenty ten, right, and what there was very little known
Speaker 4: about the unit, right, so I'll quickly go into this
Speaker 4: real quickly.
Speaker 3: I think it's a little it might be a little pertinent.
Speaker 4: Is at that time it was like whispers of what
Speaker 4: orange and green were, Like everybody knew what green was,
Speaker 4: but they're like, what is orange? And the thing that
Speaker 4: I was told by a green beret in the company
Speaker 4: that was in and because he was interested to go
Speaker 4: to like Orange. Actually he was like, if you want
Speaker 4: to be John Rambo, you go agree. If you want
Speaker 4: to be James Bond, you go to Orange, right, And
Speaker 4: obviously that could not be farther like that was such
Speaker 4: a disappointment. But you know this is to a truth,
Speaker 4: there is some truth to it that type of job.
Speaker 4: But when I but when you're applying right that, nowhere
Speaker 4: did they actually say the name of the unit, right,
Speaker 4: So you're applying, so you think you're applying for this job.
Speaker 4: So I show up to this selection and I'm still
Speaker 4: not one hundred percent sure, Dodd, I'm trying out for
Speaker 4: So I bring two books. I bring the book Killer
Speaker 4: Elite and I bring the book The Mission and a
Speaker 4: Menemy by People Labor, which was always one of my
Speaker 4: favorite books. I like how he taught life lessons in
Speaker 4: that book, which is sort of one of the things
Speaker 4: that modeled how I did my channel. So the first
Speaker 4: week that you do everything, it's a selection before you
Speaker 4: go off to the actual real selection, is all like
Speaker 4: PT tests interview CI and you're sitting down, you're doing
Speaker 4: polygraphs a stuff. I get called into one of my
Speaker 4: CI interviews one day and he's like, hey, you know
Speaker 4: you like to read and I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 4: like to read. He's like, did you bring any books
Speaker 4: with you? I was like yeah, I bought some books.
Speaker 4: He's like cool, Cool, what books did you bring. I
Speaker 4: was like, ah, you know, like you know, Mission and
Speaker 4: Mename and some other books.
Speaker 3: And he's like what other book?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, I remember having a conversation like an
Speaker 4: hour prior with some other dude who was in there
Speaker 4: talking about how like Killer Elite was like, you know,
Speaker 4: possibly about this unit, and so he's like, you know,
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, I'm just reading this book, Killer
Speaker 4: Elite and he's like, what is that book about. I
Speaker 4: was like, well, supposedly it's about this unit, right, And
Speaker 4: he's like do you think that's a good idea to
Speaker 4: read this? And then that immediately piqued my interest. Is
Speaker 4: like why does he not want me to know? So
Speaker 4: I leaned it and I was like.
Speaker 3: Should I not be reading this book? Like is there
Speaker 3: a reason?
Speaker 4: And he just like looks at me coldly and he's like,
Speaker 4: you should not be reading that book while you're here.
Speaker 4: So I get out of that interview. Oh no. The
Speaker 4: last thing I say is like, well, wouldn't you want
Speaker 4: to know what as much doubt, but you didn't to
Speaker 4: cheer your supposedly, and he looks at me coldly again,
Speaker 4: he goes, just don't read that book while you're here.
Speaker 3: So I immediately went straight.
Speaker 4: To my book and I was like halfway through it,
Speaker 4: and I've never read a book so fast in my
Speaker 4: entire life. And when I was done, I slammed it
Speaker 4: down and I was like, I've never been so disappointed
Speaker 4: in my life. There was nothing about selection. It was
Speaker 4: like the driest book that I've ever fucking read and
Speaker 4: there's nothing in there, right, But they made this whole thing.
Speaker 4: So going back to I did all this research. I
Speaker 4: made sure that everything that I would possibly talk about
Speaker 4: was already publicly available information, and I made very careful
Speaker 4: that I didn't imply any names. I used the most
Speaker 4: outed names within the unit, which was Isa and TFO.
Speaker 4: But you know, apparently they're not on the same page
Speaker 4: of believing that that's okay.
Speaker 3: To talk about.
Speaker 2: So how did this investigation against you shake out? That
Speaker 2: they're saying that your use of these terms is classified
Speaker 2: information that you can't reveal publicly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So so what ended up happening? Is you know, through.
Speaker 4: Unofficial, unofficial avenues. I was informed that one my former
Speaker 4: unit was chain of UH leadership, was in contact with
Speaker 4: my current Champion command and it was implied to me
Speaker 4: that that me posting any sort of information even even
Speaker 4: remotely relating to the unit was a bad precedent and
Speaker 4: that I they should maybe you know, made example of that,
Speaker 4: they should pursue as much as they can within their
Speaker 4: their legal capabilities.
Speaker 3: And then I.
Speaker 4: Learned about a week later from this similar unofficial source
Speaker 4: that that the shift went from they realized that nothing
Speaker 4: I had talked about was actually directly classified. They were
Speaker 4: now trying to see if they could put sort of
Speaker 4: an aggregate of me placing unclassed sources together and then
Speaker 4: like infirming things that that would actually be could be
Speaker 4: they could find some sort of you know, charge within there.
Speaker 4: But that luckily, that line of thinking did not work
Speaker 4: out for them, and ultimately, you know, I was not
Speaker 4: charged with anything.
Speaker 3: I was given.
Speaker 4: At the end of two months, I was called in
Speaker 4: and you obviously there's four options that could have had.
Speaker 3: One, I could have been charged.
Speaker 4: Criminally, Two I could have been charged under UCMJ, and
Speaker 4: then three is a gomar which is a general officer
Speaker 4: memorandom of reprimand I believe is the correct full term.
Speaker 4: And everybody who knows a gomar that is essentially a
Speaker 4: strong worded the letter that goes into your permanent profile,
Speaker 4: and of course nothing at all Scotch free. Everybody agrees, Hey,
Speaker 4: everyone's good. Unfortunately I'm not that lucky. So I show
Speaker 4: up and I receive a GOMAR, and it's a very
Speaker 4: vaguely worded letter, just basically saying that they were disappointed
Speaker 4: and I used poor judgment when posting on social media,
Speaker 4: and that's basically all it said. So you're allowed to
Speaker 4: do a rebuttal. You have seven days to do a rebuttal.
Speaker 4: But the good thing is is when you're allowed to
Speaker 4: do rebuttal, you are legally allowed to have all the
Speaker 4: investigative documents. So they handed me the documents and I
Speaker 4: have to word this very carefully. When I was given
Speaker 4: the documents by a member of the staff of the brigade.
Speaker 3: Team, I was cautioned.
Speaker 4: On of how severe my response should be or lack thereof,
Speaker 4: and if I was to resist that there would be consequences.
Speaker 2: Retaliation is the word they're avoiding saying, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of implications within this conversation, but
Speaker 2: I knew from my unofficial source that I already knew
Speaker 2: that they were they were if they could grow whatever
Speaker 2: that they were trying to find, they were digging, and
Speaker 2: so I knew at this point.
Speaker 3: Like, what a what a bluff? Right?
Speaker 4: And I told the guy who told me this right,
Speaker 4: who was a member of the staff, and I told
Speaker 4: him very politely. I was like, if they could have,
Speaker 4: they would have. So I went home and I googled,
Speaker 4: because so one majority of the stuff on this document
Speaker 4: was redacted, but you've been in the unit long enough,
Speaker 4: you know the terms. You can you can tell what's
Speaker 4: under the redacted portions, and I could tell that the
Speaker 4: two things that they were upset about was the use
Speaker 4: of one that acknowledging that I was even in the unit,
Speaker 4: which didn't make any sort of sense because I won't
Speaker 4: go too much in it. But when you leave the unit,
Speaker 4: you're actually on your erb. They finally put the existing
Speaker 4: acronym of the unit.
Speaker 7: Right, and you come out of the DASA er and
Speaker 7: everything else exactly, so you're you're allowed to acknowledge that
Speaker 7: you were at an SMU, right, Obviously you don't only
Speaker 7: go any of the details, and you avoid using its current.
Speaker 4: Name or any of the last like five or whatever.
Speaker 4: You know, so you know, but you know, people know enough, right,
Speaker 4: like they know what's in that area, they know like
Speaker 4: you know what unit used to be. You know, they
Speaker 4: generally know what you're talking about. So I go. And
Speaker 4: then the other thing was using the term ISA, which
Speaker 4: surprised me the most because of if you look at
Speaker 4: how much literature there are is out using the term ISA,
Speaker 4: which is.
Speaker 3: Obviously the unit's official original name.
Speaker 8: So I went home and I got on Google, and
Speaker 8: within two minutes I googled members of the BIAS and
Speaker 8: the plethora of profiles that came up one surprive me
Speaker 8: and with the most interesting.
Speaker 4: The top of all these profiles not only was actually
Speaker 4: a guy who is my unit commander while I was there,
Speaker 4: and actually I was I did lead one missions as
Speaker 4: a team leader, and he was actually the un commander
Speaker 4: while I was leading that team, So I actually had
Speaker 4: to do video chats with this guy every single week.
Speaker 4: So for that to be the guy that popped up.
Speaker 4: And then when I opened his Army profile like on
Speaker 4: an Army official website, of all the things, they could
Speaker 4: have said right. It said not only was did he
Speaker 4: attend ISA selection of all the names that could use,
Speaker 4: it also said that he was the commander of ISA.
Speaker 4: And actually right before this interview, I actually looked up
Speaker 4: and verified that it's still up and it not only
Speaker 4: did it verify that he went to isa's election and
Speaker 4: he was the commander of ICE, it gave the exact
Speaker 4: dates that he was.
Speaker 3: He did it right.
Speaker 2: So I put this all in my rebuttal, why is
Speaker 2: it classified when you say it, but not classified when exactly?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: I have a personal theory about that.
Speaker 4: So if you notice in certain units there is sort
Speaker 4: of a double standard, oh yeah, and you know there's
Speaker 4: various different reasons why certain people, and you know, I
Speaker 4: think it goes back to like you know, and for
Speaker 4: anybody who's been the military long enough, especially in soft
Speaker 4: there is definitely like for example, when it comes to awards, right,
Speaker 4: everybody knows that the higher rank.
Speaker 3: You are usually the higher rewards you get.
Speaker 4: You know, like if if like an E six was
Speaker 4: to do something that could merit a bronze Star, he
Speaker 4: may not get it. He might get an r com
Speaker 4: of the V device, But that major who was sitting
Speaker 4: back at the FOB. Oh he's getting it. He's getting
Speaker 4: a bronze star for sure. Right, And so I feel
Speaker 4: like there is one there's like this good old boys club,
Speaker 4: which there always has been, and then it's a combination
Speaker 4: keeps a certain level of rank that certain people get
Speaker 4: away with these things, like you know, there's been I
Speaker 4: think it's like, at least is my account, there's at
Speaker 4: least four books just specifically about the unit. And I
Speaker 4: actually know personally like two of them who wrote them.
Speaker 4: And uh, you know one of them is now the
Speaker 4: director of counter terrorism or was you mean, I don't
Speaker 4: know if he's still.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, so definitely there was like us. And I also
Speaker 4: knew in the way that I left the units, I
Speaker 4: was not there. There was definitely not the biggest Some
Speaker 4: people were not the biggest fan of me, like and
Speaker 4: I had this innate ability where we talked about earlier.
Speaker 4: Uh you know, I have a face that people want
Speaker 4: to punch, apparently, and uh so, and I've come to
Speaker 4: terms of this, right like people I rub people the
Speaker 4: wrong way for whatever reason.
Speaker 3: There's multiple different reasons.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter. So so I finished this rebuttal and
Speaker 4: I sent it to my company commander, and I'm proud
Speaker 4: because not only did I find this documentation I had,
Speaker 4: I had all the other u ur als and resources
Speaker 4: that that I had done my duejillises before even started
Speaker 4: the channel. So I gave all the books, all the references, everything,
Speaker 4: put it all on a rebuttal, and I sent it
Speaker 4: to my company commander, and I was really proud of this,
Speaker 4: Like in my mind, there was no way they would
Speaker 4: keep this going on. I my company commander, like, hey,
Speaker 4: did you get the reut and she was like, yes,
Speaker 4: but we need to talk about it because I was
Speaker 4: like really happy to hear what she thought of it.
Speaker 4: So I went in the next day. She takes me
Speaker 4: and she tells me. I was like, ma'am, did you
Speaker 4: like their buddle?
Speaker 3: She's like, I did.
Speaker 4: I thought it was awesome. You did a great job.
Speaker 4: But the brigade commander is furious. I'm like, what do
Speaker 4: you mean. She's like, they're claiming it's spillage. Like, what
Speaker 4: do you mean it's spillage? She's like, because you used
Speaker 4: his name in ISA in the same email. Not only
Speaker 4: did they pissed off about it, they have confiscated mine
Speaker 4: and first Sergeant's computers because and she she was at
Speaker 4: this point, she was completely on my side, and she's
Speaker 4: just like, this whole thing is so ridiculous. And basically
Speaker 4: it was a knee jerk reaction because they were frustrated
Speaker 4: with their inability to charge me. And obviously if it
Speaker 4: had been spillage, they would have charged me immediately and
Speaker 4: obviously after other than me coming again.
Speaker 3: Anything about that.
Speaker 2: It's very hard to charge somebody for spillage. You know,
Speaker 2: if you want to explain that term to folks, I
Speaker 2: mean that means like inadvertent disclosures.
Speaker 3: Right exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And because obviously you can't call it spillage when
Speaker 4: it's on an Army official website. Yes, exactly, it would
Speaker 4: have been one thing if they had not then and
Speaker 4: then I took this information putting together, and that's that's spillage,
Speaker 4: because then I put two things together which other people wouldn't.
Speaker 4: But it was on an Army official website, So that's
Speaker 4: why it wasn't spillage. But they were just so upset
Speaker 4: and they may not have known and like may have
Speaker 4: like to them, they're like, oh my god, you haven't
Speaker 4: this guy's naming a commander. And even though it's said
Speaker 4: where I found it. They may you know, I'll give
Speaker 4: them the benefit of doubt because this particular company, this
Speaker 4: brigade commander was not he's not from an SMU.
Speaker 3: He may not know, but that was their knee jerk reaction.
Speaker 4: They literally confiscated, as far as I know, it destroyed
Speaker 4: those computers just because they opened the email on those computers.
Speaker 4: And yeah, so I left, and you know, I never
Speaker 4: heard anything else about behind that and then but that
Speaker 4: was not quite the end of that. So I was
Speaker 4: given permission to start posting again. And this happened around
Speaker 4: October first. So prior to the investigation, I actually had
Speaker 4: a good relationship with the senior command at the unit,
Speaker 4: and I knew that there was a pending family financial
Speaker 4: issue that was going to come probably around November December,
Speaker 4: and my original retirement date was November first, So I
Speaker 4: reached out to them and I was like, hey, can
Speaker 4: I extend it four months just to get on the
Speaker 4: backside of the holidays?
Speaker 3: Can I go to February first?
Speaker 4: And they're like, absolutely, no problem because all it does
Speaker 4: is requires your brigade commander's decision. And everybody told me,
Speaker 4: we're cool. So this happened about two weeks prior to
Speaker 4: the investigation, and then when the investigation and when they
Speaker 4: you know, they hand me the sheet. I was actually
Speaker 4: very confident. I actually originally laughed when they gave me
Speaker 4: the document. And my company C was like, aren't you
Speaker 4: worried about this? I was like no, man, I was like, like,
Speaker 4: I knew that there was a possibility this might happen,
Speaker 4: but I did my due diligence.
Speaker 3: I know, I haven't talke about anying.
Speaker 4: Classic We're good, and they tell me at that meaning
Speaker 4: that they're going to sit on my extension until the investigation.
Speaker 4: Once the investigation's done, they're cool, they'll send it up.
Speaker 4: Everything's great. So the investigation that finishes around around October first,
Speaker 4: and they, through multiple different people, they lead me to
Speaker 4: believe that like it's going up, it's going to get signed.
Speaker 4: It wasn't until about a week prior. Because anybody who
Speaker 4: retires know that usually between your terminal leave, usually get
Speaker 4: at least a month of like free time away from
Speaker 4: work right when you retire, and I find out a
Speaker 4: week and I'm not ready to retire. I think I'm
Speaker 4: retiring March or February first, because I've been told multiple
Speaker 4: ocasions and they're like, oh, by the way, we're not
Speaker 4: signing your thing.
Speaker 3: You retire in a week.
Speaker 2: It's totally nuts.
Speaker 4: And I was like, oh my god, like, you've got
Speaker 4: to be kidding they And then I tried. And even
Speaker 4: the civilian who was actually who did my final out processing,
Speaker 4: he tried until the day of like he actually told
Speaker 4: them on the day I was supposed to my final out,
Speaker 4: he actually told me. He's like, and he's told he
Speaker 4: told my command. He's like, if you sign this this morning,
Speaker 4: He's like, I have even though it was the government
Speaker 4: checked out. He's like, I know the guy who proves this.
Speaker 4: I'll have that approved by lunch and you'll and you'll
Speaker 4: he'll be extended at February first they refused.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: And then my company commander, to her credit, she did.
Speaker 4: She's like, she told me. She's like, she called me
Speaker 4: right after I did my final at She's like, we
Speaker 4: failed you. Well, what happened here was not right. We
Speaker 4: failed you as an organization. And she's like, it's going
Speaker 4: in my AAR or whatever her or her command climate
Speaker 4: survey that she's gonna do that year she was a reporter.
Speaker 3: Whether she did or not, you know, I don't actually know.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker 2: I was big of her to at least call you
Speaker 2: and tell.
Speaker 3: You that, yeah, which I appreciated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, Joe. I think we got a couple
Speaker 2: of questions from the Patreon folks for you t those up.
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, when I called you up about
Speaker 2: doing this interview, I mean I think I said something like,
Speaker 2: you know, Joe, if you're not incarcerated right now, I'd
Speaker 2: love to do this interview. And if you if you are,
Speaker 2: we can do it from prison. You know, there's a possibility.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it would probably get better views.
Speaker 3: To be honest, it's.
Speaker 2: It's it's kind of a shame you in the hamburglar
Speaker 2: outfit with the black and white stripes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 5: What do we got d all right, we got one
Speaker 5: from j J. What do people get wrong about TFO?
Speaker 4: So I would say that one of the things that
Speaker 4: people is that the because obviously their original job was
Speaker 4: to support green and blue right, but and obviously they
Speaker 4: started as you know, the army's version of the CIA,
Speaker 4: because mostly it was a human organization, and granted it
Speaker 4: was I think it was eighties when Colonel Jerry King
Speaker 4: created it thing. It was like eighty or eighty one
Speaker 4: when he created it. Yes, and at that time, sing
Speaker 4: it wasn't really much of a thing like singing. It
Speaker 4: was just ringing heeos. Right, and then when and then
Speaker 4: when the unit really started to like make its business,
Speaker 4: like make money like they were the pioneers, especially like
Speaker 4: they the SIGT crushed and so they became this like
Speaker 4: full intelligence spectrum organization and they became so successful, which
Speaker 4: is one of the reasons that they started doing their
Speaker 4: own operations and now they're more of a The niche
Speaker 4: that they have tried to find is one because Green
Speaker 4: and Blue really doesn't don't need them any that they
Speaker 4: are this like this multi theater like world level intelligence organization.
Speaker 4: That that's what they try to be as like their
Speaker 4: own they run their own independent operations.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, if they can give intel back to the
Speaker 4: Greater Jaysa community, they can, but they are a lot
Speaker 4: they're very independent.
Speaker 2: Uh nowadays, and I think we got one more yep.
Speaker 5: How have you seen the operation operational preparation of the
Speaker 5: environment change over time?
Speaker 3: Think I lost you? I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: How have you seen operational preparation of the environment change
Speaker 5: over time?
Speaker 3: Okay, operational prep.
Speaker 4: So it has definitely changed, and it has definitely changed
Speaker 4: with technology. So and I can go for this for
Speaker 4: a couple of different ways. So from a tactical side
Speaker 4: of things, right obviously implementing drones and other things like that,
Speaker 4: and also from a force protection as our abilities to
Speaker 4: conduct force protection, like just on the singate side of
Speaker 4: things became very limited as technology increased and our ability
Speaker 4: like for example, I eventually in the unit, I went
Speaker 4: back to Iraq like later on during the ISIS invasion,
Speaker 4: and it was one of the first Americans back in
Speaker 4: and what we were doing six years prior, we couldn't
Speaker 4: even do a fraction of what we were doing there,
Speaker 4: and so we had to come up. Literally one of
Speaker 4: the things that I did is I actuallyt up getting
Speaker 4: awarth this. I actually helped create a new piece of
Speaker 4: equipment that the NSA ended up manufacturing.
Speaker 3: For that particular mission.
Speaker 4: So and then and the combination of us doing SIGAN
Speaker 4: and also combining clan skills in the human side of things,
Speaker 4: which then technology from an ALIAS standpoint of view, you know,
Speaker 4: biometrics started to change things. And you had ancestry dot Com,
Speaker 4: you had twenty three to meter which are obviously explicitly
Speaker 4: told not.
Speaker 3: To do for obvious reasons.
Speaker 4: And so it changed the way that we looked at
Speaker 4: the world and the way that we could do operations
Speaker 4: because it just it wasn't the old school like eighties
Speaker 4: and nineties. We had to incorporate the technology and then
Speaker 4: everything was becoming so digital but also in such small
Speaker 4: form factors that you couldn't even detect when people were
Speaker 4: using particular technology and you had like R five days
Speaker 4: sniffers and then you know, everybody's heard of a Faraday cage, right,
Speaker 4: we basically started in cases we were like iron men,
Speaker 4: like completely encased in Faraday cages of like everything that
Speaker 4: you could protect, and you know, we literally had to
Speaker 4: create SOPs, which I think was one of the cool
Speaker 4: things because we were on the cutting edge of like
Speaker 4: these intelligent operations and we did have especially when I
Speaker 4: was there, we had such a good relationship with the agency,
Speaker 4: And one of the things that we ended up doing
Speaker 4: and why we had such a close relationship with the
Speaker 4: agency is if anybody understands the different types of authorities
Speaker 4: like Title ten, Title forty, one of the reasons we
Speaker 4: started running and gunning with them was because we fall
Speaker 4: in our DoD they don't, and in certain situations there
Speaker 4: were loopholes where we could do things that they couldn't
Speaker 4: and vice versa. So we found that there was this
Speaker 4: scandem relationship that we could find loopholes between the two organizations,
Speaker 4: and so we actually built a really good so I
Speaker 4: actually spent a lot of time in CISAA spaces and
Speaker 4: a lot of different embassies throughout the world, which, to
Speaker 4: be honest, those were some of outside of the tactle stuff,
Speaker 4: some of my favorite missions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I SA is an interesting unit in the sense
Speaker 2: that you guys can conduct covert operations, clandestine operations or
Speaker 2: just normal overt military operations. Yeah, I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: think there are too many people that.
Speaker 3: Can do that.
Speaker 4: No, there's not. And I think that's, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: one of the things that people confuse, like they think
Speaker 4: r RC and ISA are very similar organizations, and then
Speaker 4: that's like the big difference is one you know, I
Speaker 4: don't think RC is nearly close to the size as
Speaker 4: ISA is and has the reach, but also the clan
Speaker 4: side of things and the covert side of things is
Speaker 4: like where we separate and we do that. RRC doesn't
Speaker 4: really do that much of And actually, I will say
Speaker 4: this we did. I never operationally worked for the RC,
Speaker 4: but I did a number of training exercises with RRC
Speaker 4: from the Tackle Attachment, and I want to say they
Speaker 4: are some of the most professional guys outside of CAG.
Speaker 4: I would say that r RC is probably one of
Speaker 4: the most professional organizations I've ever worked with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're wired type.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's just something about Rangers in general that I
Speaker 4: just think, like my advice to anybody, you want to
Speaker 4: go to Delta, don't.
Speaker 3: I would say, go to Ranger and then go to Delta.
Speaker 4: Like if you want to go to a staff, cool,
Speaker 4: But like I think you learn the greatest skills that
Speaker 4: you need to go to Delta from.
Speaker 3: The range of bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, no, range of Battalion's awesome. We got one more.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 5: It was a question about ISA and r RC interfacing
Speaker 5: and you literally just answered it, just answered it.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, Yeah, So we definitely interfaced on the tactical
Speaker 4: side of things, which you know we did. We did
Speaker 4: a number of free fall jumps together, We did a
Speaker 4: couple of different they were all training exercises, but yeah,
Speaker 4: they are definitely a very perfect national organization. You know,
Speaker 4: when you operate with Blue and Green look and I
Speaker 4: don't want to throw any of it out of the bus,
Speaker 4: but especially when you deal with Blue, right, I will
Speaker 4: put it this way. I went to so I got
Speaker 4: to Obviously I worked with them and I was on
Speaker 4: their jort cycle, but the most the first time I
Speaker 4: worked with them was actually in free fall dumb Master
Speaker 4: course and in Freefall jumb Master there one so they
Speaker 4: actually don't so both Green and Blue don't send their
Speaker 4: so they're singing and guys are support guys, right, So
Speaker 4: they don't go to free like like our sing and
Speaker 4: guys are actual like operatives, like they're not support side, right,
Speaker 4: So that's one of the biggest differences. And when you
Speaker 4: when you show up there.
Speaker 3: When I went to.
Speaker 4: Freefall jumb Master, obviously there's there's singing guys never get
Speaker 4: to go to free fall. So I'm there, and the
Speaker 4: free fall course is you got the frogmen are your psalters, right,
Speaker 4: and then you got your boat guys. And I have
Speaker 4: never seen like two groups of people who hate each
Speaker 4: other more than frogmen and boat guys. Literally, I went there.
Speaker 4: I was the only ISA student during this course, and
Speaker 4: we brought one of my mentors who was actually he
Speaker 4: was an instructor, so we actually helped instruct the course.
Speaker 4: We literally just sat there and we watched these two
Speaker 4: just basically rip each other in half like we're doing
Speaker 4: like jmpis and these guys are calling each other like
Speaker 4: almost going to blows on a daily basis, and dude,
Speaker 4: and the boat guys just hate the frogmen like that
Speaker 4: was my experience. And then the support guys there were
Speaker 4: just like they lived in fear from their assaulters. And
Speaker 4: then you go to Green and you're like, these dudes
Speaker 4: are my best friends, Like they love these guys, right,
Speaker 4: So yeah, it was a very interesting.
Speaker 2: And then how did the bros compare to that?
Speaker 4: They were very similar to CAG, Like they definitely were like,
Speaker 4: these guys are enablers, right, and especially when they started
Speaker 4: going to especially a CAG when they started going to
Speaker 4: the intelligence squadron. Because you will hear this a lot,
Speaker 4: especially from a singin, right, and it's like parful the course,
Speaker 4: especially from eighteen alpha's. You'll have an eighteen alpha will
Speaker 4: come up to you and be like, hey, can you
Speaker 4: do this wizardry right and be like, sir, that's not
Speaker 4: how RF energy works, right, you have to explained it
Speaker 4: to them, like that's not how any of this works. Right.
Speaker 4: And then when you started having the cag assaulters go
Speaker 4: and they start learning, you know, they learn human they
Speaker 4: learned singing, they learn everything, ohcent, you know, computer stuff.
Speaker 4: And then when they start going and they go back
Speaker 4: to the teams and now they're working along their sick
Speaker 4: guys and they're like, oh, I understand how the machine works,
Speaker 4: and they understand its limitations. So their true commanders, we're
Speaker 4: no longer giving these ridiculous requests like hey, could you
Speaker 4: hit the satellites beam it down and then get you know,
Speaker 4: all this stuff and his wife's stuff, and then you know,
Speaker 4: get me some you know, all these different things like no, sir,
Speaker 4: I can't do that, and then you know, and so
Speaker 4: just they just developed this really good professional relationship and
Speaker 4: they really they really started to appreciate their support guys.
Speaker 4: And they they appreciate all their support guys. They treat
Speaker 4: them so well, like as far as any organization I've
Speaker 4: ever seen.
Speaker 2: So you had a pretty wild ride there in the military,
Speaker 2: especially on the exit out. Now you're recently retired. Tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about where you're at today, what
Speaker 2: you're doing, what you'd like to do in the near future.
Speaker 4: So I have a couple of different things that I'm
Speaker 4: doing so right now, I really think that my purpose
Speaker 4: is to help other people, Like my goal of my
Speaker 4: YouTube channel is to add value to people's lives. For example,
Speaker 4: when I released this video about this investigation, the whole
Speaker 4: final third of it is what good leadership looks like? Right?
Speaker 4: Because I can sit here and complain all day about what,
Speaker 4: you know, what they did whatever, I don't care, like,
Speaker 4: if anything, another life lessons, another story that I get
Speaker 4: to tell, like these guys made me a stronger person
Speaker 4: because of it, right, and makes good content.
Speaker 3: You know, video is not doing too shabby.
Speaker 4: So but I would be remiss if I didn't show
Speaker 4: people what good leadership is, right, because why do we
Speaker 4: have talk to leadership because those people were never showed,
Speaker 4: were never demonstrated by their leaders what good leadership looks like.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So every video that I make is did I add value?
Speaker 4: That is the thing that I ask myself in every
Speaker 4: single video, Am I adding values to my life? Right?
Speaker 4: And then I also from the mental I stay away
Speaker 4: from how many views like vide I don't care if
Speaker 4: someone comes back. It was single comment like, hey, this
Speaker 4: helped me. That video is worth it, Like that's all
Speaker 4: that matters to me, right, And I feel like it's
Speaker 4: like my calling because you know, I'm able to break
Speaker 4: these things down. I'm a critical thinker and I have
Speaker 4: an ability to, especially when it comes to things that
Speaker 4: are geopolitical, to look at them from a strict history
Speaker 4: point of view without going into the political. Like I
Speaker 4: just released the videobout Understanding Somalia, and I was able
Speaker 4: to do it explain why their culture has sort of
Speaker 4: embraced anarchy, yes, and fraud and scamp without going into
Speaker 4: sort of a political thing, right. And I'm a subject
Speaker 4: matter expert when actually specially when it comes to Iran
Speaker 4: and I speak Farsi. So my next video that I'm
Speaker 4: actually doing is Understanding Iran, but in the same format.
Speaker 4: And almost all the comments that I got from that
Speaker 4: video was like, hey, you really broke this down. I
Speaker 4: really appreciate. So I'm putting my full Orkit focus right
Speaker 4: now into this. I am also at the same time,
Speaker 4: I am randomly I am actually studying to become a
Speaker 4: private wealth advisor. If essentially, if this doesn't work out.
Speaker 4: That's all I'm in the process of studying for my
Speaker 4: series sixty.
Speaker 3: Six right now.
Speaker 2: Is that like you manage like a wealth fund for
Speaker 2: a wealthy family.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: So the difference and I obviously I didn't know this
Speaker 4: until one of my friends got me into this is
Speaker 4: there's when people think of like wealth advisors.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Most people fall under what's called known as core wealth
Speaker 4: and then private wealth depending on the area. There's a
Speaker 4: minimum amount in an account in most places in the
Speaker 4: United States, at a minimum five million dollars, but if
Speaker 4: you go to like New York, it could be like
Speaker 4: twenty thirty three has to be in that account to
Speaker 4: be considered private wealth. So, but the interesting thing about
Speaker 4: it is it's because almost everybody who is in private wealth,
Speaker 4: their money has been in private wealth. Like they'd have brokers, right,
Speaker 4: so you make money off of oh, like essentially annuities,
Speaker 4: like you manage their money, you get one percent, right,
Speaker 4: But these people private wealth, These people already have wealth advisors, right,
Speaker 4: So what ends up becoming which is the difference with
Speaker 4: core wealth.
Speaker 3: It's a sales job.
Speaker 4: So the first couple of years you join a team,
Speaker 4: and then your first job is just to go get accounts,
Speaker 4: and you have to go get them from other people
Speaker 4: who already have wealth advisors. So it's a sales job.
Speaker 4: And they structure it like if you do if you
Speaker 4: end up getting a job through let's just say you're
Speaker 4: a broker through like Morgan Stanley, they structure it that
Speaker 4: the first year they pay you a salary, but then
Speaker 4: after the second year, your salary goes away and because
Speaker 4: they want is like so it's like a doggy dog world.
Speaker 4: I almost think of it as like it's like the
Speaker 4: tier one of private wealth management because if you don't
Speaker 4: make it, like you, if you don't have those sales skills,
Speaker 4: you're not going to make it. And so they design
Speaker 4: it to weed people out, which I find fascinating. So
Speaker 4: it's like it's definitely the hardest of all, but if
Speaker 4: you are able to make it. Every private wealth advisor
Speaker 4: that I know, and I know a bunch in loud
Speaker 4: in the county, which is of course country out here
Speaker 4: in Virginia, which is randomly the richest country in the
Speaker 4: richest county in the United States, all the guys who
Speaker 4: are private wealth advisors have the best work life balance ratio.
Speaker 4: These guys make money they work like two hours a
Speaker 4: day and then all they do is whatever they want.
Speaker 3: It's awesome.
Speaker 2: So tell folks out there listening where they can find
Speaker 2: you on YouTube, where they can find you on social media.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so my YouTube channel is the Stoic Viking. The
Speaker 4: Instagram like it's also the Stoic Viking. I think it's
Speaker 4: the Stoic Viking twenty twenty five. And so basically that's
Speaker 4: where I pushed majority of content YouTube is, Like, my
Speaker 4: main goal is long form content because they I'm allowed to.
Speaker 4: I have the ability to talk about things in the
Speaker 4: long form, which I feel like those are the issues
Speaker 4: that need to be talked about, whether it's mental health, fitness, health, nutrition,
Speaker 4: just overall philosophy going into life, how to deal with
Speaker 4: the hardships of life, grief, all these different things. I
Speaker 4: want to talk about the things that nobody wants to
Speaker 4: talk about and give a guys at avenue and also
Speaker 4: create a community where people are positive. Like one thing
Speaker 4: that you're never going to see me do, I'm never
Speaker 4: going to get involved in vento drama. Even if someone
Speaker 4: calls me out for claiming I did or did not something,
Speaker 4: I'm not responding. I don't care you do, you bro,
Speaker 4: we're over here. I and honestly, in any of my lives,
Speaker 4: if I hear anybody start talking about about somebody else,
Speaker 4: I give them one warning. If not, they're kicked out.
Speaker 4: Because that's weird about positivity. If we call out a problem,
Speaker 4: we're creating a solution. We're talking about it, right, because
Speaker 4: the only way you get a rid of a problem
Speaker 4: like toxic leadership is we ourselves have to promote what
Speaker 4: good leadership it looks like. Because that's the only way
Speaker 4: this ever is gonna change. It's gonna change overnight. No,
Speaker 4: but all we can do is do the right thing,
Speaker 4: be the better person, and all together that's how we
Speaker 4: make this this life a better world and how we
Speaker 4: found it.
Speaker 2: Joe, before we get going tonight, is there anything else
Speaker 2: you'd like to say? Is there any other topics we
Speaker 2: haven't covered that you'd like to hash out?
Speaker 4: Ah, yeah, that's a good question. I'll probably think of
Speaker 4: something like two minutes after we we hang up.
Speaker 2: It's okay, we can. We can do it again sometime
Speaker 2: if you want. And well, also for our listeners, we'll
Speaker 2: have links down the description to all of Joe's social
Speaker 2: media and YouTube and all that other stuff. You'll be
Speaker 2: able to find it down there.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and once again I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: It's been an honor and you are officially my first
Speaker 4: podcast since I started this whole thing. So we can't
Speaker 4: think of anybody better than the investigative Green Beret Ranger
Speaker 4: turn investigative journalists and.
Speaker 2: SOLF well, thank you for that. I mean, likewise, we
Speaker 2: try to avoid all out of the vet bro drama,
Speaker 2: keep it relatively positive about people's careers and relatively apolitical,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's just not worth anyone's time really to
Speaker 2: get into all that. But again, thank you, appreciate your time.
Speaker 2: Joe and everyone else out there. We will see you
Speaker 2: again next time.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, thank you again, sir.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, I want to tell all of you today
Speaker 2: about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both
Speaker 2: the team House podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the
Speaker 2: high Side news outlet which I run with Sean Naylor.
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Speaker 2: to come into your inbox and you're going to get
Speaker 2: the most current podcasts on eyes On, in the Teamhouse,
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Speaker 2: it's another way for us to get the information out
Speaker 2: to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and
Speaker 2: you never really know what you're gonna get. So this
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Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: You go there and you enter into your email list
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Speaker 3: Where's the link.
Speaker 2: The link will also be down the description if you're
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