Speaker 1: The Team House with your hope, Jack Murphy and David Bark. Hey, folks,
Speaker 1: this is episode three hundred and eighty one of The
Speaker 1: Team House. I'm Jack Murphy. With our guest tonight is
Speaker 1: Major General retired Pete Gallagher. He served for thirty five
Speaker 1: years as a signals officer, twelve of those in the
Speaker 1: Special Operations Community, seven of those years in Army Special
Speaker 1: mission units. All kinds of different interesting assignments throughout the
Speaker 1: War on Terror and beyond here that we're going to
Speaker 1: get into. Thanks Pete for joining us on the show tonight.
Speaker 2: Hey, Jack, it's my pleasure. Thanks. I want to give
Speaker 2: a shout out to Frank de Lesio. He obviously connected
Speaker 2: us a good friend from ATF, did some crazy things
Speaker 2: there for that task Force, and I'm glad he made
Speaker 2: the connection area you can.
Speaker 1: And folks out there can go and find Frank. On
Speaker 1: two episodes we've done in the past, Frank was undercover
Speaker 1: for ATF guy who's infiltrating Nazi motorcycle gangs. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: got some stories, so yeah, you guys can go back
Speaker 1: in time and find those if you want.
Speaker 2: But he also runs a pretty awesome Black River tobacco
Speaker 2: company he runs with a cigar lounge about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: For me, it's it's a it's like my cheers. I'm
Speaker 2: like Norm and Frank's like Sam, and that's my cheers.
Speaker 1: Is uh? Is that done in? Is it South Carolina?
Speaker 2: No, it's in North Carolina, Carolin right off I ninety five.
Speaker 2: So anybody out there listen, if you're traveling down I
Speaker 2: ninety five and you want a really nice cigar land
Speaker 2: to come in and smoke a stick and have have
Speaker 2: some brown water. You know, Frank's a great American and
Speaker 2: he'll take good care of you.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. So Pete, I'm gonna ask you the same
Speaker 1: question I ask everyone. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: how you grew up and how that eventually took you
Speaker 1: towards military service.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was born in a place called Pittsburgh, Kansas,
Speaker 2: in the southeast corner of the state. You know, right
Speaker 2: in the four state areas. You got Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: and Arkansas right in that area. And I grew up,
Speaker 2: you know, middle class family. My dad owned a construction company.
Speaker 2: He built those metal buildings and throughout the four state area,
Speaker 2: any industrial park would be you know, building you'd find
Speaker 2: a bunch of metal buildings built by Gallagher Construction company.
Speaker 2: My mom kept the books. I was the fourth of
Speaker 2: six kids. You know. They tried to do everything they
Speaker 2: could to give us a quality of life. I mean,
Speaker 2: sent us to a Catholic school there. Uh, and we
Speaker 2: had a swimming pool in our yard, but it was
Speaker 2: it was always leaking. It was nasty, it was miserable.
Speaker 2: By the time we got it clean in the summer,
Speaker 2: it was summer was almost over. It was. We had
Speaker 2: a little cabin by the lake, a grand lake that
Speaker 2: was never finished. It was one of these things. It
Speaker 2: was always a work in progress. My dad had a
Speaker 2: boat and it leaked all the time. So he tried
Speaker 2: to give us the great American you know dream. But
Speaker 2: it was it was interesting, you know kind of times.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, Yeah, he my two older sisters and my
Speaker 2: older brother, you know, they had moved out of the house.
Speaker 2: I was in high school. I had two younger brothers.
Speaker 2: My dad passed away when he was fifty one years old,
Speaker 2: and that was pretty significant for me because my mom
Speaker 2: was a wreck and she you know, every year going
Speaker 2: back to the you know, Catholic school and construction coming
Speaker 2: every summer, I'd work for my dad, right, and you know,
Speaker 2: I'd work with all these misfits, these wage grade misfit
Speaker 2: guys that were just you know, rude talking, you know,
Speaker 2: cuss every other word was a cuss word. Every night
Speaker 2: after work, they'd be, you know, pouring down the beers.
Speaker 2: And I'm this teenage kid, you know, trying to work
Speaker 2: out and get ready for high school football, working construction
Speaker 2: in the summer, and every time I'd start the school year,
Speaker 2: I'd have to kind of decompress and get back into
Speaker 2: making sure I wasn't saying something stupid in front of
Speaker 2: Sister Mary Elephant there at the Catholic school, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. But one year in particular, it was
Speaker 2: it was the summer of nineteen actually nineteen eighty. I
Speaker 2: was getting ready to go into my senior year in
Speaker 2: July twenty fifth. You know, typically, my dad would wake
Speaker 2: me up on a Monday morning and you know, kind
Speaker 2: of chew my ass, tell me it was time to
Speaker 2: get up and get ready for work. And that morning,
Speaker 2: my mom woke me up just in shock because my
Speaker 2: dad wasn't breathing and he had died in a sleep
Speaker 2: of a heart attack. And I kind of changed the
Speaker 2: game for me. I was, you know, a little bit
Speaker 2: of a I was a little bit of a hell
Speaker 2: and I you know, raised, I wasn't the best student
Speaker 2: in the world. You know, probably b's and c's occasional
Speaker 2: less than that. But I immediately had to grow up.
Speaker 2: I immediately had to I'm sixteen, almost seventeen years old.
Speaker 2: I had a kind of a shock to the system
Speaker 2: there where I really needed to grow up and take
Speaker 2: care of my mom and take care of my two
Speaker 2: younger brothers and kind of figure out life. And I
Speaker 2: kind of launched me into trying to become the adult
Speaker 2: in the house. Like I said, my mom was a
Speaker 2: wreck and so trying to navigate that because most of
Speaker 2: my all three of my older siblings were out of
Speaker 2: the house at the time. So that was a kind
Speaker 2: of a wake up moment for me. And then that
Speaker 2: same fall, I had a brand new high school football coach.
Speaker 2: He was just a model citizen. He was a math
Speaker 2: teacher in high school coach, and I really liked him
Speaker 2: a lot. I mean, he was you know, I was
Speaker 2: trying to do everything I could to you know, make
Speaker 2: sure he knew I was going to be his go
Speaker 2: to guy on the football team my senior year. But
Speaker 2: I was also pretty good at math, and so I
Speaker 2: was going through my senior year, I knew I wanted
Speaker 2: to go to college, and I knew I was I mean,
Speaker 2: I was looking at trying to play football. I didn't
Speaker 2: have any real offers. There was a couple junior colleges
Speaker 2: that you know, offered some scholarships, but Pitts State, Pittsburgh
Speaker 2: State University in Kansas, the Guerrillas. They were an NAIA
Speaker 2: football powerhouse at the time. Now they're Division two. But
Speaker 2: I decided to He recommended that I walk on of
Speaker 2: pitt State. And one of the other things he said,
Speaker 2: he had a really good buddy when he was going
Speaker 2: to college. That was ro OTC Catery at pitt State,
Speaker 2: an airborne ranger, a guy named Kurt Long, and Chuck
Speaker 2: introduced me to Kurt. And Chuck Smith was legend he's
Speaker 2: legendary football coach. But that was his first year there.
Speaker 2: But he said, you know, if I had it all
Speaker 2: to do over again, I would have I would have
Speaker 2: got commissioned and I would have served at least four years.
Speaker 2: He goes, I highly recommend you join r OTC at
Speaker 2: least for the first two years. Give it a shot.
Speaker 2: You'll learn a little bit about leadership. You'll get to
Speaker 2: shoot guns, you'll get to repel off the you know,
Speaker 2: Russ Hall, You'll get to you know, you'll learn a
Speaker 2: little bit about leadership. But you're also going to be
Speaker 2: able to boost your GPA. And so for me, I
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, you know, I'll do that. I'll try that.
Speaker 2: So as a freshman going into Pitt State, you know,
Speaker 2: I had a I had a girlfriend, ended up marrying
Speaker 2: her later. But I go into Pitt State and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm working at the library, I'm you know, majoring in mathematics,
Speaker 2: I'm playing football. I've got a couple of other part
Speaker 2: time things I'm doing. Uh And you know, my freshman
Speaker 2: year on the football team, I I didn't make. I
Speaker 2: didn't make the varsity. I was on the but I
Speaker 2: started on the junior varsity and we had like five games.
Speaker 2: So every other year back then, they would either red
Speaker 2: shirt the freshmen or they would allow them to play,
Speaker 2: you know, junior varsity. So I had the opportunity to
Speaker 2: play in a few games, starting at outside linebacker there
Speaker 2: at Pitt and UH, it was it was a lot
Speaker 2: of fun, and I went in through springball, I go
Speaker 2: through you know, summer, and I get to the fall
Speaker 2: of my sophomore year, and I feel like I'm doing
Speaker 2: pretty good. And I had a really good off season
Speaker 2: and kind of working to get ready, and I realized,
Speaker 2: you know, a bunch of Juco transfers came in that
Speaker 2: were freaking super fast, super strong, and they came in
Speaker 2: and I started noticing my position on the depth chart
Speaker 2: going down instead of going up. And so after we
Speaker 2: had a scrimmage and I kind of got I got
Speaker 2: juped by the quarterback and I missed the tackle. Uh,
Speaker 2: and I got yanked out of the scrimmage and I
Speaker 2: didn't get to go back in. And then Monday, it
Speaker 2: was a scrimmage on a Saturday. Monday, I go back
Speaker 2: in there and I see I've dropped two positions on
Speaker 2: the depth chart. I just started thinking about everything I
Speaker 2: was trying to balance, you know, trying to manage a major,
Speaker 2: trying to you know, do okay in academics, having a girlfriend,
Speaker 2: and load balancing all this stuff. And then I, you know,
Speaker 2: I was still having fun with the ROTC stuff, but
Speaker 2: I just didn't have time to do it. And so
Speaker 2: I made a decision to hang up my cleats and
Speaker 2: focus on something that I could actually maybe go pro in. Right,
Speaker 2: And there's my thoughts are, if I stuck it out,
Speaker 2: I may have been able to start as a senior,
Speaker 2: but you'd never know. And I just wasn't gonna waste
Speaker 2: the time and energy because it was college sports is
Speaker 2: like a full time job. And I don't think I
Speaker 2: was good enough, you know. I mean I had great hands,
Speaker 2: I was probably big enough, but I don't know if
Speaker 2: I was fast enough. There was a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of speechers coming in there, and it was just
Speaker 2: it was a consciousness vision. It was almost like one
Speaker 2: that you make it and you don't want to make it,
Speaker 2: but when you make it, you know it was the
Speaker 2: right choice. Right. So I did that, and I decided
Speaker 2: to kind of go all in on a military uh
Speaker 2: you know, at least do four years. And that was
Speaker 2: kind of what he said, you know, go try to
Speaker 2: go active duty and do at least four years. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, I got married in nineteen eighty four, ended
Speaker 2: up going to the ROTC advance camp, and I didn't
Speaker 2: I had no idea what branch I wanted to go,
Speaker 2: you know, and a lot of guys wanted to go aviation,
Speaker 2: A lot of guys wanted to go in am I,
Speaker 2: a lot of guys wanted to go infantry. I didn't
Speaker 2: know what I wanted to do. I wanted to what
Speaker 2: I thought is I was going to go in four years,
Speaker 2: and I wanted something technical to go with my math
Speaker 2: degree so I could learn something and be marketable. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, when I was out at Fort Riley for
Speaker 2: the Advanced ROTC Advance Camp, you know, I learned a
Speaker 2: little bit about Signal Corps and what they do, and
Speaker 2: I was like, you know, maybe I'll go Signal Corps
Speaker 2: and see what that's all about. And so I put
Speaker 2: that down. I ended up getting my first choice. I
Speaker 2: got commissioned in eighty five. I still had to do
Speaker 2: my student teaching, was I was majoring in math and
Speaker 2: phized at the time and had to do student teaching,
Speaker 2: and my wife had to do her student teaching as well.
Speaker 2: So we didn't actually you know, interactive duty until summer
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty six, and you know, I went to
Speaker 2: Fort Gordon, Georgia there and it was kind of the
Speaker 2: beginning of my Signal Core journey.
Speaker 1: That's cool. So you had to go through I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I should just ask you what's like that
Speaker 1: process of becoming a signals officer, Like what is your
Speaker 1: kind of like advanced individual training and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: that kind of pipeline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as an officer, every officer. Now they call
Speaker 2: it Bullock Basic Officer Leadership Course, but back then they
Speaker 2: called it SOBC Signal Officer Basic Course. And it's almost
Speaker 2: six months. It's at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and they train
Speaker 2: you on, you know, all the foundational stuff of how
Speaker 2: to be an officer, okay, and it builds on everything
Speaker 2: you get whether you're OCS or West Point or ROTC.
Speaker 2: They start building that foundation of Okay, this is what
Speaker 2: it's going to be like for you to be successful
Speaker 2: as a platoon leader or as a battalion level staff offers.
Speaker 2: These are the things you need to know, the things
Speaker 2: you need to learn, a lot of focus on PT,
Speaker 2: a lot of focus on maintenance, logistics, all the fundamentals
Speaker 2: you know, the accountability, maintenance, all the readiness kind of
Speaker 2: things that a good platoonier needs to learn and know.
Speaker 2: They teach you all that, but then they really focus
Speaker 2: on the technical skills, and at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: when I was at Gordon, I got pinpointed. Everybody was
Speaker 2: either getting Korea or Germany, and then a few folks
Speaker 2: would get like Fort Wachick, Arizona, Fort Hood, or Fort Bragg.
Speaker 2: Those were like the big you know, places where most
Speaker 2: folks were trying to go, and I didn't know much
Speaker 2: about any of those. I actually wanted to go to
Speaker 2: Fort Lewis, Washington, and I put that in as my
Speaker 2: first assignment, but I didn't I wanted to go there
Speaker 2: because that's my wife was born, and we were you know,
Speaker 2: thinking about, you know, going out there and just seeing
Speaker 2: what it was like. But I ended up getting pinpointed
Speaker 2: to third Infantry Division in Wurtzburg, Germany. And so after
Speaker 2: I graduated the Signal Basic course, I was actually, uh
Speaker 2: my wife got pregnant with our first son. It was
Speaker 2: actually it's interesting because his birthday is exactly nine months
Speaker 2: after my birthday. I'm not sure that's coincidental or not,
Speaker 2: but his uh, he was born in When I graduated
Speaker 2: Fort Gordon, I ended up going to write Patterson Air
Speaker 2: Force Base for this very technical school on computer networking,
Speaker 2: and I kind of realized it was a graduate level
Speaker 2: training at the Air Force Institute of Technology, and I
Speaker 2: went from six months at Fort Gordon to six months there,
Speaker 2: and it was it was kind of nerd, geekd, you know,
Speaker 2: one oh one kind of stuff. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: not in my wheelhouse, but I was learning about computer networks.
Speaker 2: I was learning all this stuff and it was it
Speaker 2: was a lot of studying, and it was it was
Speaker 2: a lot of work to learn all that technical stuff
Speaker 2: because I, you know, like I said, I was pretty
Speaker 2: good at math, but I really didn't understand all the
Speaker 2: computer networking and all that kind of stuff. But one
Speaker 2: of the things that happened is while I was there
Speaker 2: at Right Pat, my first son, my oldest son, was
Speaker 2: born and my wife was having some complications and I
Speaker 2: his birth was right by right. The night of his
Speaker 2: birth was the day before my computer networking final, and
Speaker 2: it was the hardest class I had. And I tried
Speaker 2: to get out of taking the final and getting it rescheduled,
Speaker 2: but the instructor was kind of a jerk and he
Speaker 2: wouldn't let me. So I ended up taking the test
Speaker 2: and I bombed it. And that was like I was
Speaker 2: doing pretty well in all the other courses, but I
Speaker 2: ended up getting like a C barely got a see
Speaker 2: in that class. And anyway, it was like it was
Speaker 2: one of those things where and the guy was a captain.
Speaker 2: He was an Army captain teaching at this Air Force.
Speaker 2: But it was like, I will never be like that guy.
Speaker 2: You know, if one of my guys or one of
Speaker 2: my soldiers, you know, if they have a family issue,
Speaker 2: you got to let them take care of that, and
Speaker 2: you can. You can reschedule a test, you can reschedule,
Speaker 2: you know, if somebody needs to come off a j
Speaker 2: RTC deployment or whatever. You know, allow them the opportunity
Speaker 2: to take care of their family if they need to.
Speaker 2: And so it just kind of left a mark. But
Speaker 2: my son was born there at Right Pat and now
Speaker 2: you know, actually he's serving. He's a major in the
Speaker 2: Army today. But yeah, it was a that was kind
Speaker 2: of the training path. And then I ended up going
Speaker 2: over to Germany for my actually before right after Right Pat,
Speaker 2: I ended up going to Airborne School Fort Benning, and
Speaker 2: then my wife, my my newborn baby, and I flew
Speaker 2: to Germany to begin our three year journey there in
Speaker 2: the third Infantry Division, Rock of the morn in Burtzberg.
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Speaker 1: a little bit about Army signals in general, Like for
Speaker 1: people out there, including myself quite frankly, that don't necessarily
Speaker 1: understand all the ins and outs of it is your
Speaker 1: job as a signals officer is primarily helping the unit
Speaker 1: communicate internally or helping units communicate with one another. What's
Speaker 1: sort of like the way that's framed out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's uh so, every unit has to be
Speaker 2: able to move, shoot and communicate. And every infantry unit,
Speaker 2: every even an a team and special Forces has you know,
Speaker 2: eighteen echos communicators on the team. There are specially trained
Speaker 2: experts that know understand, you know, have the expertise and
Speaker 2: the technical know how to be able to install, operate
Speaker 2: and maintain the communications systems that that unit requires. And
Speaker 2: the higher you are on achelon you know, so an
Speaker 2: infantry platoon may have a radio or two. Now they
Speaker 2: have a lot of Now they have Android devices and
Speaker 2: and all kinds of comps. But back in the day,
Speaker 2: they may have a radio uh and they'd be up
Speaker 2: on one single radio unit. As you go up the
Speaker 2: higher echelons, you know, company, battalion, brigade, there's more coordination
Speaker 2: and synchronization required, not only down and in with your units,
Speaker 2: but with adjacent units and higher headquarters. So there will
Speaker 2: be you know, requirements for communications at command posts where
Speaker 2: decisions are made. Uh. And and like the special opsit
Speaker 2: it would be a forward operating base for example, where
Speaker 2: you'd have additional communications. It might be satellite reach back
Speaker 2: or big HF systems that allow you to communicate you
Speaker 2: know with you know, be online a site to higher
Speaker 2: headquarters and things like that. And so so it's uh,
Speaker 2: it's really you're like the phone company for the for
Speaker 2: the army, you know. You know, it's like so like
Speaker 2: the Verizon or the AT and T for the army.
Speaker 2: And it's and you got to ensure that, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously the enemy gets a vote, and you know,
Speaker 2: if they have electronic warfare capability and all that, you
Speaker 2: have to have what's called a pace plan, the ability
Speaker 2: to have a primary alternative contingency and emergency, you have
Speaker 2: multiple options, so commanders can command because you know, decisions
Speaker 2: don't get disseminated down to the lowest tactical level if
Speaker 2: you don't have good communications.
Speaker 1: All right, and then you went to the advance course
Speaker 1: for special operations.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, oh h yeah. So I spent I felt
Speaker 2: like I was a pretty damn good signal officer. And
Speaker 2: in Germany, you know, we spent a lot of time,
Speaker 2: you know, uh, supporting what was called reforger Exercise Return
Speaker 2: of Forces to Germany. As an infantry division, we had
Speaker 2: we had our you know, tactical assembly areas. We would
Speaker 2: have these things called lariat advances, which were alert. There
Speaker 2: was a constant state of readiness during the Cold War,
Speaker 2: and at this time, you know, President Reagan had just
Speaker 2: actually when I got to Germany, President Reagan was still president.
Speaker 2: While I was in Germany, George H. W. Bush took over.
Speaker 2: And then in nineteen eighty nine, just cause happened, and
Speaker 2: I was over in Germany fighting the Cold War. You know,
Speaker 2: it was you know, concerned about Russia and USSR, the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, and we had our GDP locations. We were
Speaker 2: you know, training, we were doing maintenance, we were doing
Speaker 2: all the stuff that every good unit does, and I
Speaker 2: was I was really you know, I felt like I
Speaker 2: was a good platoon leader, a really good company XO,
Speaker 2: and I was learning how to be a good signal officer.
Speaker 2: And I was pretty excited about, you know what I
Speaker 2: was learning. But I also realized that, you know, okay,
Speaker 2: you have this thing called just Cause. And I've heard
Speaker 2: about all the units that went, and none of them
Speaker 2: were coming out of Germany. And then when I wrapped
Speaker 2: up that assignment, just as my wife and I were,
Speaker 2: you know, in our we had another son born and
Speaker 2: while we were in Germany. He's now a special ops
Speaker 2: communicator over in the third Group, but he was born
Speaker 2: when we were in Germany. And as our family was
Speaker 2: making its way back to the Signal Officer Advance Course
Speaker 2: at Fort Gordon. This was in nineteen ninety, Saddam invades
Speaker 2: Kuwait and I'm leaving the third Infantry Division and there
Speaker 2: were some guys that had the opportunity to get deployed
Speaker 2: to Operation Desert Shield. I get to the Signal Advance
Speaker 2: Course and I'm watching it on TV and units from
Speaker 2: Bragg are going. I mean, as you know, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of different units that ended up going to
Speaker 2: Desert Shield and Desert Storm. One of the guys I
Speaker 2: met and we became really good friends at the Signal
Speaker 2: Advance Course had just came from this Special Ops Signal
Speaker 2: battalion that had just stood up in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: called the one twelve, and he had a certain swagger
Speaker 2: about him, and he had a certain kind of you know,
Speaker 2: mindset and focus, and immediately kind of became really good
Speaker 2: friends with the Signal Advance Course, and he started telling
Speaker 2: me about this unit at Bragg called the one twelve
Speaker 2: Special Op Signal Battalion, And so the more I heard
Speaker 2: about it, the more intrigued I was. And it was
Speaker 2: and so for my class there was one slot for
Speaker 2: the one twelve, and I wanted it, and I told
Speaker 2: Signal Branch that I wanted it, uh, And then I
Speaker 2: went up to Fort Brag with him. I interviewed with
Speaker 2: the battalion commander, interviewed with the battalion S three and
Speaker 2: the XO, and I told them how bad I wanted
Speaker 2: to be in that unit, and so I ended up
Speaker 2: getting the slot. But while we're at at the Signal
Speaker 2: Advance Course, I was supposed to do a couple of
Speaker 2: following courses. The battalion commander calls me. He said, hey,
Speaker 2: we're getting ready to deploy to Desert Storm or Desert Shield.
Speaker 2: And it was right before desert storms started. He goes,
Speaker 2: I need you to cancel your following courses. I need
Speaker 2: you to come into the I want to I want
Speaker 2: to make my S one and then make you a
Speaker 2: company commander. So I was like absolutely. So you know,
Speaker 2: I you know, as a brand new captain, every captain
Speaker 2: wants to command a company at least or an O
Speaker 2: DA right, you want you want that green tab leadership position.
Speaker 2: And so you know, for me, it's like hell, yeah,
Speaker 2: I get to command in a special ops signal of attime.
Speaker 2: I'm in. Yeah. So I was like, you know, we
Speaker 2: couldn't leave Fort Gordon fast enough to get to Fort Bragg.
Speaker 2: And then I get to Fort Bragg and most of
Speaker 2: the unit is deployed. Uh, and I become the S one,
Speaker 2: the personnel officer, and they come back and my first
Speaker 2: duty is to run the awards ceremony for all the
Speaker 2: war heroes that had just come back. Right, So you
Speaker 2: got this big and I was like, you know, so
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, I missed just cause I missed
Speaker 2: Desert Shield and I was like, will my day ever come?
Speaker 2: And I really wasn't worried about it, but it's just
Speaker 2: one of those things I wanted to get to brag.
Speaker 2: I wanted to, you know, be part of something, and
Speaker 2: it was but I learned a lot and I had
Speaker 2: the opportunity to command Alpha Company. We called it Alpha Pride,
Speaker 2: and the focus was proud of who you are, what
Speaker 2: you do, and who you represent. And I took command
Speaker 2: of the company that it was probably the the weakest
Speaker 2: company in the battalion, and that was an opportunity for me,
Speaker 2: like on day one, actually it was actually on day one,
Speaker 2: I had a chance to make an impact. We had
Speaker 2: there's this thing called GMF, which I think it stands
Speaker 2: for Ground Mobile Force or something, but they manage all
Speaker 2: the satellite constellations out there. And so right after the
Speaker 2: change of command as a company, brand new company commander,
Speaker 2: my one of my platoon leaders comes up to me
Speaker 2: and he's and we had this ongoing exercise supporting usasac
Speaker 2: US Army Special Operations Command. It was a pretty high
Speaker 2: visibility exercise and we had what was called an eighty
Speaker 2: five van, which is satellite hub van right outside of
Speaker 2: the USASAC headquarters. They were running columns into you know,
Speaker 2: a bunch of the leaders in there. Well, we got
Speaker 2: notified from GMF, which they're like the big brother of
Speaker 2: all satellite operations, and they were you don't want to
Speaker 2: screw up. And so what happens They said, we tracked
Speaker 2: off the bird. They can't reach anybody in the van.
Speaker 2: They don't know, you know, what the heck's going on.
Speaker 2: So as soon as that my kind of welcome speech
Speaker 2: to the or to the company was over, I drive
Speaker 2: over to the USASAG headquarters and I see one of
Speaker 2: our specialists walking up with some bolt cutters and I'm like,
Speaker 2: specialist blants, So what do you do? He goes, I
Speaker 2: got to open the van and get us back on
Speaker 2: the satellite. I don't know what the hell. And then
Speaker 2: I see this guy named Sergeant Lewis walking up with
Speaker 2: a burger king band. He's got a burger king bag
Speaker 2: and he's like, you know, jaw jacket and just kind
Speaker 2: of loaf. I'm like, what the hell, I said, Sartain Lewis.
Speaker 2: He goes, yeah, sir, I had to go get something
Speaker 2: to eat. I'm like, okay, you are no longer the
Speaker 2: team chief for this Blant that you are now in
Speaker 2: charge of this team and started Lewis. I needed to
Speaker 2: see the first stargeant when you go back to the
Speaker 2: company here, I needed to see the first sargeant and
Speaker 2: he was one of these weak n CEOs. And what
Speaker 2: I noticed right then is number one I had to make.
Speaker 2: It was a leadership opportunity on day one, but it
Speaker 2: was also a guy like Blantet saw that I was
Speaker 2: willing to make a decision and Bert take away the
Speaker 2: burden of him having to work for a piece of
Speaker 2: crap NCO, you know what I mean, and this NCO
Speaker 2: and he he was a week link and it was
Speaker 2: pretty obvious. Uh. And so Blansip became a team chief
Speaker 2: and did a really good job. But for me, it
Speaker 2: was just it was kind of like day one in
Speaker 2: that unit. It was kind of an exciting opportunity. But
Speaker 2: we had, you know, several different exercises and events. We
Speaker 2: did a big exercise supporting soccer over in Augenbury, England
Speaker 2: and all across Europe. We had teams all over to
Speaker 2: include up in Norway. It was a great event we
Speaker 2: did that. We had a we were getting ready to
Speaker 2: plan for a Cobra gold over in Thailand. I had
Speaker 2: an opportunity to go over with UH to do the
Speaker 2: pre deployment site survey with our at the time, our
Speaker 2: Battalion command sergeant major. His name was Ronnie Beaver mccannon.
Speaker 2: If you ever met Beaver, he was a first Group guy,
Speaker 2: but he was the one twelfth command sarty major. And
Speaker 2: we were getting ready for all that, and then I
Speaker 2: was on a j RTC exercise actually j RT I
Speaker 2: believe we were at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas at the time,
Speaker 2: not Fort Poke, Louisiana, on a j RTC exercise with
Speaker 2: seventh Group and sock South. And I get a call
Speaker 2: from our Battalion XO and he said, hey, how much
Speaker 2: do you know about the Special Mission unit across post there.
Speaker 2: I said, well, I mean, I'm driven by the compound
Speaker 2: a lot. I don't really know anybody that works there.
Speaker 2: I don't know a whole lot about it, because well,
Speaker 2: they need a captain. They're standing up a new tactical
Speaker 2: communications troop and they need a captain for this job.
Speaker 2: And you know, the Tian commander is looking at one guy,
Speaker 2: but he goes, I think you'd be perfect for the job.
Speaker 2: Are you interested? And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm interested.
Speaker 2: It was just kind of like, so you go from
Speaker 2: conventional third Infantry Division to white soft and now it's
Speaker 2: an opportunity to go into a whole other part of soft.
Speaker 2: And so I ended up, you know, trying out. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't you know, I didn't have to do the
Speaker 2: alarm wock. I wasn't going to you know, West Virginia
Speaker 2: selection and doing all the stuff that an operator in
Speaker 2: that unit goes through. But you go through a lot
Speaker 2: of the other stuff. You eat the PT test, the
Speaker 2: psyche val, the background checks, you know, all the you know,
Speaker 2: the uh everything that goes into it, and then you
Speaker 2: go through this inner board interview board, which was pretty brutal,
Speaker 2: but it was it was you know, when it was
Speaker 2: all said and done, you get out of the board
Speaker 2: and you're like, holy shit, that was miserable. And then
Speaker 2: the sergeant major of Signal Squadron and I goes, well,
Speaker 2: how do you think you did? I said, I don't
Speaker 2: know how I did. He was, well, you did great.
Speaker 2: The guys love you. I'm like, awesome. So I go
Speaker 2: back to the one twelfth and I'm you know, I
Speaker 2: got to kind of finish up my time. I'm the
Speaker 2: assistant three after my company command. Uh. And while I'm well,
Speaker 2: I know, I'm going from one twelve signal over to
Speaker 2: the Special Mission Unit. They are doing rehearsals for operations
Speaker 2: in Somalia. And so I get my badge, I get
Speaker 2: a lot of my kit, I get my walllockers. I
Speaker 2: can come and go and go into signals squatter. And
Speaker 2: they didn't improcess me completely, but they gave me the
Speaker 2: signal Squadron commander wanted me to have access and come
Speaker 2: over and meet with the guys when I could, and
Speaker 2: he wanted me to be a role player for all
Speaker 2: the train ups for Somalia. And so I go out there,
Speaker 2: you know, while I'm still in the one twelve, while
Speaker 2: they're prepping for you know, operations in Somalia, I go
Speaker 2: out to the compound and they're doing all these rehearsals
Speaker 2: with the Rangers with one sixties Special Ops Aviation Regiment.
Speaker 2: And I'm watching these rehearsals happen with all these aviation assets,
Speaker 2: all these different units and everything that's going on, the
Speaker 2: number of role players and what they put into their
Speaker 2: training scenarios, and I'm like, Holy shit, they spent more,
Speaker 2: They spent more training budget on this one rehearsal, and
Speaker 2: we probably were able to spend in the you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it was just it was amazing. I knew
Speaker 2: that this was okay, this is a different kind of place,
Speaker 2: this is a pretty significant And before I signed into
Speaker 2: the unit, I actually went on a JR EX a
Speaker 2: joint readiness exercise started out at Fort Bliss and then
Speaker 2: we went out to the Nevada test site and it
Speaker 2: was with one of the squadrons in the Unit B Squadron.
Speaker 2: But the day we deployed for the RX, you know,
Speaker 2: I went into the Signal Squadron team rooms and I
Speaker 2: go in. It's I think it's in August of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, and I, you know, I'm starting to get
Speaker 2: to know the guys, and I get to go out
Speaker 2: on this exercise with one of the one of the squadrons.
Speaker 2: But I still got to go back to the one
Speaker 2: twelve and finish my job. And so I go back
Speaker 2: and I my last day in the one twelve Signal
Speaker 2: Battalion was a Monday morning. It was October fourth, nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, and so you know, it's my last day
Speaker 2: I'm getting ready to final out, take all my paperwork
Speaker 2: and two over one file everything and go from the
Speaker 2: regular system to the what's called the dasher, which is
Speaker 2: you know, where all the special mission units files. So
Speaker 2: I have to basically sign out on the personnel side
Speaker 2: in one unit, drive over across post to the new unit.
Speaker 2: And when I get to this unit, everything was different
Speaker 2: because every time I'd been in the team rooms, you know,
Speaker 2: it's typical team rooms. I mean like team house, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like a locker room. It's it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's alpha male's doing what alpha males do. And
Speaker 2: the you know, camaraderie, the team where the banter. None
Speaker 2: of that was happening. On four October. I walked in there.
Speaker 2: Everybody was laser focused. Everybody was moving with the purpose.
Speaker 2: There were guys in there, you know, packing their stuff,
Speaker 2: rolling stuff, getting it packed up. Nobody was saying shit.
Speaker 2: Everybody had total focused mindset and like it was. It
Speaker 2: was all on. It was mission was on and I
Speaker 2: hadn't seen the news. I mean, I got up, I
Speaker 2: did PT, took a shower, you signed out, and drove
Speaker 2: across post and one of the other captains in the
Speaker 2: unit is like, his name is John Hillebrand. He's like,
Speaker 2: I said, John, what the hell's going on? Why is everybody?
Speaker 2: So what's going on? He goes, you haven't seen the news,
Speaker 2: have you? I said no. He goes, uh, yeah, that
Speaker 2: was fucking here. So we go into the squadron conference room.
Speaker 2: They have two TVs on. One was on Fox, one
Speaker 2: was on CNN. And we walk in and I see
Speaker 2: the Somali kid bouncing on the rotor blade. You know,
Speaker 2: you remember that scene. It was on the news and
Speaker 2: you just it was all over. It was all over
Speaker 2: the news. Uh. And it was like holy shit, okay,
Speaker 2: you know because I saw those guys on the day
Speaker 2: I flew out to the j RX. Everybody's from Signal
Speaker 2: Squadron that was flying to Somalia. They were going out
Speaker 2: one way, we were going the other. So I and
Speaker 2: it was like wow. And this was probably around nine
Speaker 2: thirty in the morning. So I'm trying to sign into
Speaker 2: the unit through their Personal Services Troop, which is like
Speaker 2: the s one or their HR human resources entity. Those
Speaker 2: guys are dealing with the mass casualty. They don't have
Speaker 2: time to im process this new captain, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. So I'm just like, I'm just like watching
Speaker 2: and learning and saying, holy crap, this is these guys.
Speaker 2: They'll get to me when they can get to me,
Speaker 2: you know. The and the I remember the Personnel Service
Speaker 2: Troop Sergeant Major Angie Whitaker coming up to me and
Speaker 2: she said, hey, sir, I'm so sorry, but I said,
Speaker 2: you guys, do what you gotta do. And so I
Speaker 2: go down back down to the Signal Squadron, and uh,
Speaker 2: there was a legendary retired one officer, a guy named
Speaker 2: mister Z Paul Z Eastman. He was the deputy commander
Speaker 2: of Signal Squadron. He was up at the meeting in
Speaker 2: what's called the back with Rooms named after Charlie beckwot
Speaker 2: Ishes where the room where like he is, the command
Speaker 2: conference room basically. And he comes back down from the
Speaker 2: back with Room and he goes, all right, a squadron
Speaker 2: is going to deploy tonight. The d c O is
Speaker 2: going with them. John, he's talking to Hildebrandt, the other captain.
Speaker 2: He goes, you're going to go over with a squadron. Pete,
Speaker 2: you are going to be a casually assistance officer. They've
Speaker 2: they've identified you to be a casually assistant officer for
Speaker 2: a guy named Randy Schuger. He's he's missing in action
Speaker 2: right now. He's probably an escape in evasion mode. Hopefully
Speaker 2: we can roll him, you know, pick him up, but
Speaker 2: right now he's missing in action. But I need you
Speaker 2: to go to a meeting at one o'clock this afternoon,
Speaker 2: and um, like Roger that whatever I gotta do, you know.
Speaker 2: And so that moment, that first day in that unit,
Speaker 2: with that responsibility and knowing what happened, and I think
Speaker 2: everybody knows what happened afterwards. If you've seen black Hawk Downer,
Speaker 2: if you've read the book, I mean Randy Schugart and
Speaker 2: Gary Gordon, you know, both of the guys that went
Speaker 2: in too, you know, and gave their life trying to
Speaker 2: save the pilot Mike Durant at the at the second
Speaker 2: crash site. I mean, you know, they they definitely they
Speaker 2: were put in for and definitely deserve the middle of honor.
Speaker 2: But to actually be selected for a duty like that
Speaker 2: on day one, it was like for me, it was
Speaker 2: like nothing else mattered at that point. I mean, I
Speaker 2: knew I needed to learn how to be a you know,
Speaker 2: a communicator in the unit, but I needed to focus
Speaker 2: on that and I needed to, you know, and that's
Speaker 2: that's what mister z. This is no fail man, this
Speaker 2: is this is your job. Everything else can wait, but
Speaker 2: you got to, you know, do everything you can. And
Speaker 2: it was a couple of days I think before uh,
Speaker 2: you know, they got they identified the remains, and they
Speaker 2: notified you know, Stephanie Shugart and and uh and I
Speaker 2: was allowed and I got brought to her house to
Speaker 2: meet her and help her. And just what an amazing,
Speaker 2: amazing person I mean. And Randy's parents, Herb and Lewis,
Speaker 2: they were you know, the salt of the earth, dairy
Speaker 2: farmers from the great state of Pennsylvania, and just I mean,
Speaker 2: just to be able to just help this family navigate that,
Speaker 2: you know, this all the process that goes with, you know,
Speaker 2: losing a loved one in combat and everything else, especially
Speaker 2: with like a Medal of Honor recipient, everything that goes
Speaker 2: with it, because their ceremonies that I mean, it was.
Speaker 2: It was an interesting time for sure. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that you know, as we were going through it,
Speaker 2: there was a guy, one of the sergeant majors in
Speaker 2: the unit. His name was Craig Maxim. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you've ever heard of Craig or met Craig, but
Speaker 2: he was this wirey, wiry you know, just big old
Speaker 2: bushy mustache. He was an operator's operator. He was he
Speaker 2: was the man egg led every one of He went
Speaker 2: on every single notification to every family member of the
Speaker 2: guys from the unit that were killed. But he also
Speaker 2: led every one of the color details and they were immaculate, flawless.
Speaker 2: He had, you know all. I mean, there was a combination.
Speaker 2: We had a couple of guys from Signal Squadron. They're
Speaker 2: part of the color detail, but they did every single
Speaker 2: uh service, uh, you know, memorial service. Uh. But when
Speaker 2: I was getting ready for Randy's funeral, which was in
Speaker 2: Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania or not, it wasn't at Carlisle Barracks,
Speaker 2: but it was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. But one of a
Speaker 2: former unit member was actually going to the War College
Speaker 2: at the time, a Colonel Ike Ike Slaughter, So he
Speaker 2: was like magnificent. He was like one of those guys
Speaker 2: that you know, he was helping me kind of like
Speaker 2: my almost my advanced party where he was on the
Speaker 2: ground in Carlisle he could help me kind of orchestrate stuff.
Speaker 2: But if you can imagine the number of people that
Speaker 2: were coming in from all different locations and trying to
Speaker 2: orchestrate all this, and you know, planes, trains and automobiles,
Speaker 2: you know, VIPs coming from all over I mean General Downing,
Speaker 2: you know, just all these different cats and coming from
Speaker 2: different places, you know. And I was focused on the family,
Speaker 2: but you have all these heavy hitters, and you didn't
Speaker 2: want I couldn't have any hiccups, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So I'm laying out the plan I go into started
Speaker 2: Major Maxim's office. I'm kind of laying out the entire
Speaker 2: plant boom boom boom, you know, walking it through and
Speaker 2: trying to make sure I didn't miss a fricking beat,
Speaker 2: you know, because again before that, before Randy, before Randy's funeral,
Speaker 2: we had the memorial service when Sea Squadron came back,
Speaker 2: we had the memorial service at JFK Chapel there on
Speaker 2: Fort Bragg and Wayne Downing. I remember him telling me
Speaker 2: he was a four star commander in so Com at
Speaker 2: the time. He's like, hey, if you run in, he
Speaker 2: goes number one. This judy, this duty is sacred and
Speaker 2: you do not let anybody tell you no. Do not.
Speaker 2: If you run into a single brick wall, I want
Speaker 2: you to call me directly. And I didn't. There was
Speaker 2: no way in hell I was gonna call him. I
Speaker 2: was just not gonna left. I was going to breach
Speaker 2: any brick wall. But it was one of these things
Speaker 2: where I knew the pressure was on. I could not
Speaker 2: screw this up. I mean I could. There's probably things
Speaker 2: I did screw up when I was in the unit,
Speaker 2: but that was one thing I was making sure. There's
Speaker 2: no way in hell I can screw this up. So anyways,
Speaker 2: I'm getting ready for Randy's funeral and trying to, you know, again,
Speaker 2: take care of the family and all the all the
Speaker 2: people flying in and everything, laying it out for Craig Maxim.
Speaker 2: He's like, damn, sir, she got the ship wired tight.
Speaker 2: He goes, you consider being an operator, and that was
Speaker 2: like the greatest compliment because I knew this guy was legendary.
Speaker 2: And I was like, sorry, Major, I'm a I'm a communicator,
Speaker 2: and I think the unit needs communicators, and so that's
Speaker 2: that's where I can best serve the unit. But I
Speaker 2: appreciate the vote of confidence and you know, I thought
Speaker 2: about it, but I felt I knew my place, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, and and I knew, you know,
Speaker 2: what I brought to the organization, and but it was
Speaker 2: it was one of those really significant compliments at the time.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that was kind of my I guess, between
Speaker 2: the WHITESFF and the one twelfth and then joining that
Speaker 2: unit as you know, a fairly young captain. I think
Speaker 2: it was about ninety three. I had just turned thirty
Speaker 2: at the time.
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Speaker 1: I'm that's a bit of a baptism by fire arriving
Speaker 1: to the unit under those circumstances.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: How was the rest of your time there helping to
Speaker 1: establish this joint communicator unit or troop?
Speaker 2: Uh? Well so, so the tactical communications troop. It consisted
Speaker 2: of running the base station for the unit, the reach
Speaker 2: back basically the you know, the the lifeline for everybody
Speaker 2: deployed was the base station. So we had operators in
Speaker 2: the bay station, you know, and but we also ran
Speaker 2: we had a deployable team that ran the unit's command
Speaker 2: post every time it would deploy. They were the forward communicators.
Speaker 2: And then we had communicators with every Sabers squadn So
Speaker 2: every Savers quadron at the time had two communicators that
Speaker 2: had to go through the operator training course and get
Speaker 2: and be able to pass oh wow, OTC. They went through.
Speaker 2: They were direct sport communicators for the Sabers Quatters. Now
Speaker 2: I think they have you know, a lot more too,
Speaker 2: but back then it was only two. You had a
Speaker 2: senior and a junior and they were It's kind of
Speaker 2: like an ODA but on steroids a little bit where
Speaker 2: a Saber squadron had a couple of communicators there and then,
Speaker 2: but all of those worked for the tac Coom Troop commander,
Speaker 2: and so I didn't go to OTC, but I got
Speaker 2: to go to a lot of different training events that
Speaker 2: were related to OTC. So my first year in the
Speaker 2: in the unit, I went to the selection and training
Speaker 2: UH Squadron. I guess, and you've had like Paul hall
Speaker 2: On here before, some of the best operators teach s
Speaker 2: and t they teach operator training course, they run selection,
Speaker 2: but they ran a combat skills course for for support folks,
Speaker 2: communicators and medics and others. It was only a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks, but it was an abbreviated kind of basic
Speaker 2: focus on on you know the fundamentals, basic rifle marchsmanship,
Speaker 2: you know all the kind of you know PT tests,
Speaker 2: you did all the all the stuff that you know
Speaker 2: that they It was like an abbreviated condensed OTC. I
Speaker 2: mean we did ladders, we fast rope, we repelled off
Speaker 2: the tower, we ran the O course, we did CQB,
Speaker 2: I mean everything that they thought we might need to do.
Speaker 2: Or a support guy might have to do. They tried
Speaker 2: to take all the lessons from Samali and say, hey, look,
Speaker 2: never again are we going to you know, have to
Speaker 2: rely on support guys to go outside the wire and
Speaker 2: not have them you know, trained and ready on the basics.
Speaker 2: And so it was pretty awesome to go through that
Speaker 2: because I will tell you, on day one, you know,
Speaker 2: my basic rifle marksmanship, my target, it looked like a
Speaker 2: freaking shotgun blaff. But by the end of the two
Speaker 2: weeks when we had long gun competition, I kind of
Speaker 2: went from worse to first, So it was kind of cool.
Speaker 2: A lot of the guys in the squadron made fun
Speaker 2: of me, but it was one of those things. I mean,
Speaker 2: I wasn't I wasn't like a laser, you know, a
Speaker 2: dead eye shooter. But by the time those guys got
Speaker 2: done with me, I was a pretty damn good shot
Speaker 2: because they know what the hell they're doing and they
Speaker 2: focus on the fundamentals and you know. But so I
Speaker 2: got to go through that. We went through live agent training,
Speaker 2: you know where we went to Fort McClelland, Alabama with
Speaker 2: the OTC course. I did live agent training, did a
Speaker 2: lot of role playing, for the OTC classes they were
Speaker 2: going through all the different scenarios. I spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time you know helping S and T where they
Speaker 2: would always you know, request volunteers to be role players,
Speaker 2: and then ended up uh going to Halo School in
Speaker 2: June of with that OTC class that was going through.
Speaker 2: I got to go to Halo School with them out
Speaker 2: at Marana in Arizona, which was pretty cool. But that
Speaker 2: first year we did a my first real exercise with
Speaker 2: the unit was an exercise called Hadrian's Wall with Too
Speaker 2: two S a S over in U in Scotland and England. Uh,
Speaker 2: and it was it was pretty awesome. I mean it
Speaker 2: was my first time going out as the senior you know,
Speaker 2: representing the squadron and we were out there with a squadron.
Speaker 2: It was in December and it was I think was
Speaker 2: it the while we were at that exercise, we had
Speaker 2: members of the unit that were down in Colombia. We
Speaker 2: got notified that Pablo Escobar had been killed, but there
Speaker 2: was still a lot going on with the exercise or
Speaker 2: operations in Colombia, and so you know, I spent the
Speaker 2: time over with the two two S as great exercise
Speaker 2: kind of a little bit of a suckfest because the
Speaker 2: units tried to out do each other on the training.
Speaker 2: It was pretty cold, it was rainy, it was somewhat miserable,
Speaker 2: but it was all said and done. We went back
Speaker 2: to Hereford, you know, had a great after action review
Speaker 2: and you know, drink some SuDS together in a place.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the name of the bar, but they
Speaker 2: called it the Sticky Carpet, but it was it was
Speaker 2: just good bonding and camaraderie. And they had a similar unit,
Speaker 2: the two sixty fourth Signals Organization that some of the
Speaker 2: guys there we became pretty good friends. And then later
Speaker 2: on I ran into some of them when I was,
Speaker 2: you know, the JCU commander after nine to eleven. But
Speaker 2: it was it was a good first year. I spent
Speaker 2: Easter Sunday in nineteen ninety four in Bogota, Columbia, you know,
Speaker 2: going to visit our guys that were that were there.
Speaker 2: That was a time in the summer of ninety four
Speaker 2: we were planning very I mean very heavily for Haiti Haiti, yep.
Speaker 2: And you know I was the lead planner for Haiti.
Speaker 2: As you kind of know what happened there. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know they aborted the mission. I mean we had
Speaker 2: guys that there ready, but I did have communicators from
Speaker 2: my team with Colin Powell on the Grand Colin Powell,
Speaker 2: Sam Nunn, and Jimmy Carter. I had one of our
Speaker 2: signal squad on communicators was there and we had another
Speaker 2: one up at the White House. I mean that that's
Speaker 2: how you know, and I mean they handpicked this unit
Speaker 2: to send communicators. So what I learned there, I mean
Speaker 2: just you know, going through I mean just all the
Speaker 2: different every quarter you'd run a joint readiness exercise every
Speaker 2: and there was always training events where the squadrons are
Speaker 2: doing environmental training, whether it's winter training, jungle training. You know,
Speaker 2: they would do building training in urban areas. There was
Speaker 2: always a need to participate in those types of events
Speaker 2: and learn and do everything you can to understand what
Speaker 2: it takes for the operator on the X and everything
Speaker 2: that they need to have all the enablers to interconnect.
Speaker 2: And so I learned how important it was not only
Speaker 2: for the assault net, the fire's net, emergency resupply, KAZI VAC,
Speaker 2: you know, all the kinds of things where they need
Speaker 2: a lifeline and they need something. Now there's no time
Speaker 2: to blink. I mean, you've got to have the ability
Speaker 2: to connect those guys. And so I spent three years
Speaker 2: in that unit. I wanted as I was leaving, you know,
Speaker 2: I went through two different signal squadron commanders. I wanted
Speaker 2: to come back more than anything and be the signal
Speaker 2: squadron commander. I ended up leaving that unit and going
Speaker 2: to Commanding General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, which was
Speaker 2: pretty close to where I grew up. I spent a
Speaker 2: year there before I ended up going out to Hawaii.
Speaker 1: And what was the assignment out in Hawaii?
Speaker 2: So it was in the twenty fifth Infantry Division. It
Speaker 2: was interesting because I was at a before I left
Speaker 2: Fort Bragg. I want I knew I wanted to come
Speaker 2: back to Fort Brag because my wife had a teaching job,
Speaker 2: our kids, our kids had friends, and I had it.
Speaker 2: We had a house, we had bought a house. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a signal but brigade at Fort Bragg.
Speaker 2: There was a signal battalion in the eighty second and
Speaker 2: my goal was to get back to a conventional signal
Speaker 2: unit by a little bit of time and then get
Speaker 2: back to signal squad that's what I wanted to do,
Speaker 2: get back to Lovelworth, come back to Bragging and find
Speaker 2: my way back into signal squad. But when I get
Speaker 2: out to Fort Levenworth at CGSC, because my records were
Speaker 2: on the DASSER or they were hidden from the normal system.
Speaker 2: When Signal Branch came out to interview us and decide
Speaker 2: where we wanted to go, the branch assignment officers said, hey,
Speaker 2: I want to get you what's called branch qualified, which
Speaker 2: means via Battalian S three or an XO or a
Speaker 2: Brigade S six uh, and that even if it means
Speaker 2: going back to Fort Bragg. So I was trying to
Speaker 2: find a job back at Fort Bragg. When I get
Speaker 2: out to Levenworth, a new lieutenant colonel assignment officer and
Speaker 2: the major's assignment officer were interviewing all the majors from
Speaker 2: the Signal Corps. It was branch day and you're meeting
Speaker 2: with your assignment officer and they didn't have my O
Speaker 2: RB and they had everybody else's RB in there. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, I have a copy of it. They
Speaker 2: didn't have it because it wasn't I guess because I
Speaker 2: had just left the unit. It wasn't in the system,
Speaker 2: and so she looks at my o RB says, Germany,
Speaker 2: Fort Bragg. You spent six years at Fort Bragg. You're
Speaker 2: to going overseas. I said, well, wait a minute, I've
Speaker 2: been overseas. I was in Germany, I said. And the
Speaker 2: guy sitting next to her, I said, I can't remember
Speaker 2: his name, but I said, he told me I got
Speaker 2: to get branched. I can get branch call, and even
Speaker 2: if it means going back to Fort Bragg, I've already
Speaker 2: got units that want me to come back. And she goes, well,
Speaker 2: it's not fair for you to do back to back
Speaker 2: of Simonson Homestead at Fort Bragg and just oh show.
Speaker 2: She said, it's not fair for you to just hang
Speaker 2: out at Fort Bragg while other people are doing, you know,
Speaker 2: back to back tours in Korea. I said, ma'am, have
Speaker 2: you ever been stationed at Fort Bragg? I said, nobody
Speaker 2: just hangs out at Fort Bragg. I said, in the
Speaker 2: units of Fort Bragg, they're on mission, They're on every deployment.
Speaker 2: You've got the units with the highest level of priority.
Speaker 2: I said, you don't just hang out at Fort Bragg.
Speaker 2: I said, I want to go to Fort Bragg for
Speaker 2: the mission. It's not to hang out in Fayetville. But
Speaker 2: she goes, well, okay, but if you did have to
Speaker 2: go overseas, where would you want to go? And I said,
Speaker 2: it's like a stumped chump question. I said, okay, maybe Hawaii,
Speaker 2: Alaska of Italy. You know, I just kind of threw
Speaker 2: things out there. She was and she had just come
Speaker 2: from Alaska. She goes, why Alaska? Why not Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what am so? I'm like, holy shit, this
Speaker 2: didn't go as planned. So I go home and I
Speaker 2: talked to my wife. I'm like, I might be going
Speaker 2: to Saudi Arabia. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: It's got no beer in Saudi Arabia. Like hell with that,
Speaker 1: I'm going this.
Speaker 2: Did not go as plan. But then Scotty Miller, who
Speaker 2: was in the unit with me, was my next door
Speaker 2: was lived right across the street from me at Levenworth.
Speaker 2: We actually became really good friends while we were at
Speaker 2: CGSC together. He was, as you know, he was the
Speaker 2: Assault Force commander on the ground there in Somalia, and
Speaker 2: obviously I got to do him pretty well when I
Speaker 2: was working with Randy's family there. But Scott. Scott introduced
Speaker 2: me to the division commander of the twenty fifth Infantry
Speaker 2: Division at Levenworth. So I talked to him, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was basically over a beer at a place called
Speaker 2: the Havana Club there on Fort Levenworth. It was almost
Speaker 2: like an interview, and so I ended up getting the
Speaker 2: opportunity to go serve in the twenty fifth ID. So
Speaker 2: when I left CGSC, I go to a twenty fifth
Speaker 2: Infantry Division and I my first job is as the
Speaker 2: division It's called the ADSO Assistant Division Signal Officer. Now
Speaker 2: they call it the Deputy G six, but it's a
Speaker 2: major's billet. You're on the division staff, and you know,
Speaker 2: you do what division staff officers do, a lot of planning,
Speaker 2: a lot of you know, every all the different exercises.
Speaker 2: And in twenty fifth at the time, they have all
Speaker 2: these different exercises all across the Pacific, you know, Balacatan
Speaker 2: and the Philippines. You have Cobra Gold in Thailand. You
Speaker 2: have JRTC rotations where one of the maneuver brigades would
Speaker 2: rotate back to Fort Polk and go through j RTC.
Speaker 2: So you're always kind of planning, you know, division activities
Speaker 2: and events there. So I spent a year doing that,
Speaker 2: and then I became the Battalion S three at the
Speaker 2: one twenty fifth Signal Battalion. And the great part about
Speaker 2: that is the battalion commander was a guy named Tom
Speaker 2: Trowbridge who had spent time in the unit. He was
Speaker 2: in the unit before I was. He was a legendary
Speaker 2: communicator as well. He was he spent he was a
Speaker 2: Ranger Regimental S six, They spent in the Ranger Regiment,
Speaker 2: and he was the JCU commander of the Joint Communications
Speaker 2: Commander at JSOCK, and so he and I had a
Speaker 2: history and we had a lot of you know, had
Speaker 2: walked some of the same ground previously. And I got
Speaker 2: to be his S three for a year, which is
Speaker 2: really his operations officer, as you know, and so you know,
Speaker 2: it's conventional communications for a conventional for a conventional division
Speaker 2: in the Pacific. But I learned a lot and it
Speaker 2: was a great opportunity. And then I stuck around one
Speaker 2: more year to be I was trying to work my
Speaker 2: timing again to try to get back to Bragg, and
Speaker 2: so I stuck around one more year to be what's
Speaker 2: called the secretary of the General Staff, working for two
Speaker 2: different commanding generals, a guy named Tom Hill who ended
Speaker 2: up going to First Corps and then a guy named
Speaker 2: Kip Ward who came in after him. So as a
Speaker 2: secretary of General Staff, it's a it's an thankless job. Really.
Speaker 2: You run the staff for the general to aid, so
Speaker 2: you learn how our division headquarters runs. But it wasn't
Speaker 2: a job I necessarily wanted, but it was the job
Speaker 2: the CG wanted me to do, so I did it. Uh.
Speaker 2: But while I was in that job, I got UH,
Speaker 2: I got to go interview and put my name in
Speaker 2: the hat for JCU and I so I went and
Speaker 2: interviewed uh and interviewed with at the time Lieutenant or No,
Speaker 2: it was Major General Doug Brown. Doug Brown was a
Speaker 2: former one sixtieth guy ended up being the four star
Speaker 2: at so COM. But General Brown selected me to be
Speaker 2: the next JCU commander. And while I'm working for General Hill,
Speaker 2: he gets announced to go to ICORPS, the first Corps
Speaker 2: out at Fort Lewis. So he's getting promoted the three
Speaker 2: star and he and Doug Brown are are friends. They've
Speaker 2: known each other from and days in the hundred first
Speaker 2: together and They've known each other for a long time,
Speaker 2: and General Hill wanted me to be his aide and
Speaker 2: go like leave Hawaiian and go to Fort Fort Lewis.
Speaker 2: But I had just been selected for j CU, and
Speaker 2: I was like, there's no freaking way I want to
Speaker 2: go be his aide. I've been the STS for a year.
Speaker 2: But as like I said, Sir, I think it would
Speaker 2: be an honor to be your aid, but it would
Speaker 2: not be the honorable thing to do. I looked General
Speaker 2: Brown in the eye and told him I wanted to
Speaker 2: be as JCU commander and I am not. I want
Speaker 2: to be the JCU commander. That's what I want to do,
Speaker 2: and I want to command. So I had the opportunity.
Speaker 2: We ended up pulling our kids out of school a
Speaker 2: little bit early in two thousand and I took command
Speaker 2: on our anniversary on the twelfth Mallion in two thousand
Speaker 2: and At the time, everything was focused on the Balkans.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of work going on inside the
Speaker 2: Jaysock community. It was all about the Balkans, and you know,
Speaker 2: two's love all across Bosnia and Sarajevo. I mean, were
Speaker 2: they were hunting the you know, the war criminals of
Speaker 2: pif Wick, I think is what they called the operations.
Speaker 2: So you know, again, one of my first trips when
Speaker 2: I got to j CU was into to see what
Speaker 2: we were doing on the ground there in Bosnia. But
Speaker 2: we had a really awesome training cycle, you know, the
Speaker 2: Joint Operational Readiness Training Cycle for the JSUK units. Inside JCU,
Speaker 2: we have these named exercises that we run every quarter
Speaker 2: and we do everything from you know, basic establishment of
Speaker 2: the is SB, the forward staging base, mission support sites,
Speaker 2: you know, putting your communicators through the drills, just battle
Speaker 2: drill after battle drill. We had communicators that would go
Speaker 2: up and work in the National Capital Region with at
Speaker 2: the FBI headquarters for what's called the Emergency Support Teams
Speaker 2: where those guys were on a short string. They had
Speaker 2: to be wheels up within an hour and a half.
Speaker 2: So we would constantly every month we would we would
Speaker 2: do a rotation up there. We did we had we
Speaker 2: would do shipboard training where we would establish a float
Speaker 2: staging basis on a variety of Navy vessels. We would
Speaker 2: do that once a quarter. I got to do my
Speaker 2: first quarterly training brief to General Brown on the USS
Speaker 2: Teddy Roosevelt, which was pretty awesome. And uh but I
Speaker 2: will tell we had, you know, and we had a
Speaker 2: giant readiness exercise out in Guam and in the Pacific
Speaker 2: where we were on the USS Bellowood, and it was miserable.
Speaker 2: We couldn't get calms and I thought I was going
Speaker 2: to get fired. It was, it was, it was. It
Speaker 2: was one of those things where I thought I was
Speaker 2: gonna I thought I was gonna lose my job because
Speaker 2: we just could not There was there was problems with
Speaker 2: the satellite UH antennas on the actual ship and we
Speaker 2: had difficulty communicating where the JASAW commander had to leave
Speaker 2: the vessel because he didn't have reliable comps. And I
Speaker 2: was frustrated as hell because I felt like I let
Speaker 2: him down. But you know, we hotwa washed it, we
Speaker 2: figured it out, and you know, I mean the unit
Speaker 2: had succeeded so many times before that, and after that,
Speaker 2: uh he realized that there was a problem and it
Speaker 2: was beyond what our operators were able to fix at
Speaker 2: the time. But uh So, while we're going through all that,
Speaker 2: we have a change of command and Dale Daily takes
Speaker 2: over for h for Doug Brown, and Daly's the new
Speaker 2: Jaysaw commander and he starts stands up this capability called
Speaker 2: Advanced Force Operations AFO. And so they picked a former
Speaker 2: squadron commander over at the unit to lead, a guy
Speaker 2: named Scotty Miller. We've talked about before again, the same
Speaker 2: guy that was on the ground in Somalia. So Scott's
Speaker 2: personal friend of mine. We're neighbors. We live in, you know,
Speaker 2: in the same neighborhood there in Pine Valley in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: We you know, we would drink beer and share stories
Speaker 2: together and all that. So Scott's standing up this and
Speaker 2: I hand picked some of my very best communicators inside JCU,
Speaker 2: which is saying a lot because in JCU they they
Speaker 2: are considered the best communicators in the Department of I
Speaker 2: guess now Department of War, and so best of all
Speaker 2: the services. But I had him picked three or four guys,
Speaker 2: actually three guys that can function in this Loviz environment,
Speaker 2: that have the maturity, have the ability to help Miller
Speaker 2: stand end up this capability. And so we go through
Speaker 2: another we go through another joint readiness exercise out at
Speaker 2: Nellis Air Force Base, you know, kind of running the
Speaker 2: traps and getting our muscle memory and improving what we do.
Speaker 2: But then in September of two thousand and one, we're
Speaker 2: on this big exercise. It's the first real theater wide
Speaker 2: AFO joint AFO focused Joint Readiness exercise. And so we
Speaker 2: have folks spread out from England, Germany, Hungary and because
Speaker 2: we still had stuff going on in the Balkans, we
Speaker 2: had an operating base in Tuslam. We were flying from
Speaker 2: the UK in a C seventeen with I was I
Speaker 2: was actually with the Jasok J three and a bunch
Speaker 2: of the battle staff that we're flying into establish a
Speaker 2: staging base in Tuslam. When across the data net we
Speaker 2: get word, you know, the World Trade Center and the
Speaker 2: Pentagon had been you know, airplanes had crashed into the
Speaker 2: World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the communicator watching
Speaker 2: the data that force pulls us up. It's like this
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense because it had it was you know,
Speaker 2: we were it was everything. Almost all the traffic up
Speaker 2: to that point was exercise traffic. And get this. It's like,
Speaker 2: holy shit.
Speaker 1: Does that come across like this is this is not
Speaker 1: a drill, you know, not part Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't say that, it just but it was like
Speaker 2: it you know, it didn't say exercise, and it was
Speaker 2: just it was like bam. And so I get it
Speaker 2: and I give it to the j three He's like
Speaker 2: holy fuck, and you know, I'm it's like and so
Speaker 2: we're sitting there and we land. We land on the
Speaker 2: ground at the airfield in Tusla. As the ramp comes down,
Speaker 2: I remember a Master Sergeant Wayne had Dot, he was
Speaker 2: the jock and CEO. He walks up, meets us on
Speaker 2: the ramp and basically just told us in He was like, hey,
Speaker 2: the exercise has been canceled. You know, we're going into
Speaker 2: crisis action planning. So it was a few days before
Speaker 2: we could actually leave to get back on us soil.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was another kind of monumental moment there
Speaker 2: as as the commander of d O d's finest communicators
Speaker 2: I guess now Department of Wars Finess communicators.
Speaker 1: And what was kind of like the uh, the tone
Speaker 1: I guess when you got back to the States, because
Speaker 1: I mean, now you're planning for a real war, right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Yeah. So so we get back and it's, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, typically you're on a string for a four
Speaker 2: hour sequence, you know, you know what I mean if
Speaker 2: there's a JCS order to launch the National Mission Force.
Speaker 2: You typically, you know, it's fairly it's usually no notice,
Speaker 2: and it's you know the three hundred. I mean, you
Speaker 2: go through the drill. This was you know, crisis action planning,
Speaker 2: to deliberate planning, to you know, building concept of operations
Speaker 2: on what can we do, what will we do? What
Speaker 2: are we gonna you know, and all this stuff has
Speaker 2: to get briefed up to the president, right, And so
Speaker 2: we're going through the drill at Fort Bragg. We've got
Speaker 2: you know a bunch of different scenarios going on, and
Speaker 2: you know, we're we start pushing communicators out probably I
Speaker 2: think it was around the seventh of October. You know,
Speaker 2: we start sending L and o's to different different locations.
Speaker 2: And then I can't remember what day we actually deployed,
Speaker 2: but we ended up deploying to establish a staging base
Speaker 2: at masira Oman and then we had a a float
Speaker 2: staging base on the Kiddihawk. Coms were good, by the
Speaker 2: way on that one, which was the real world and
Speaker 2: it mattered, and when it mattered most.
Speaker 1: That was where the super long helicopter infill was flowing
Speaker 1: off the kitty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we're at Masira Aman with the staging
Speaker 2: base and you know, you got the whole task force there, right,
Speaker 2: And so the Rangers are getting ready for Operation Rhino
Speaker 2: and the unit, the Special Machine out of BRAG is
Speaker 2: getting ready for Operation Get Go and those are set
Speaker 2: to go down nineteen twenty October or uh. So we're
Speaker 2: going through everything. You know, a couple of things that
Speaker 2: I got in a couple of heated arguments with the
Speaker 2: J six at the time because they were they wanted
Speaker 2: to use what was they There was a deal with
Speaker 2: call signs. They didn't want to switch call suns from
Speaker 2: one squadron to another or something. So we had to
Speaker 2: we had to resolve that. We got that resolved, but
Speaker 2: there was a crypto was going to change on midnight
Speaker 2: on the twentieth. It was gonna yeah, And so I
Speaker 2: tell the JAY six, I said, hey, we got to
Speaker 2: talk to the sitcom J six and have them freeze
Speaker 2: the crypto key. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't and he didn't
Speaker 2: want to do it, and he didn't want to tell
Speaker 2: the ball He didn't want to tell the JSUT commander
Speaker 2: that we had we had a crypto changeover in the
Speaker 2: middle of the op and I said, we've got to no, boy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so I'm at a lieutenant colonel at the time,
Speaker 2: he's an Air Force colonel, and I tell General Daily.
Speaker 2: I said, they said, hey, Sir, we gotta we're gonna
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to either roll early or we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to uh freeze the crypto. But we can't have
Speaker 2: operators flying and be digging around with changing the crypto
Speaker 2: key in the middle of the app And so I
Speaker 2: ended up calling back to Jaysuk Jayson. I called the
Speaker 2: one of my buddies that was in the in Jaysuck
Speaker 2: at the time, and then I ended up calling personally
Speaker 2: called I kind of went over the head of the
Speaker 2: Jaysok J six and personally called Dennis Moran, who was
Speaker 2: a syentcom J six. I said, hey, sir, we got
Speaker 2: a little bit of a problem. I think you know
Speaker 2: you can make a decision, but we need to make
Speaker 2: a damn decision because we can't have this gown go
Speaker 2: down in the middle of the app. Uh. And so
Speaker 2: they ended up rolling early. But it was created a
Speaker 2: bit of a Kabooki dance because the guys go through
Speaker 2: the rehearsals and they're on one set of key and
Speaker 2: then they got to come back and reload all their
Speaker 2: crap with the new key. But they did it, and
Speaker 2: they were able to do all the commons. It's like,
Speaker 2: why don't we just freeze it? And you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. But it's one of those things. But if
Speaker 2: the J six at the time didn't have the guts
Speaker 2: to tell the boss that he needed to, you know,
Speaker 2: we need to do this. I was like, you can't
Speaker 2: just let it happen. We got to be proactive and
Speaker 2: like make it happen that you got to take care
Speaker 2: of the guys on the ground. You can't let them
Speaker 2: just you know, frustrated.
Speaker 1: One of those situations you mentioned where all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the reach back is cut off because the comma is
Speaker 1: rolled over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that's that's just that can't happen. You
Speaker 2: just can't happen. So then you know, we ended up
Speaker 2: pushing I mean, so so we we went kind of
Speaker 2: from that that mode of of the initial operations right
Speaker 2: now in Gecko to operation called relentless Pursuit I think
Speaker 2: or relentless Strike. I can't went from relentless. We ended
Speaker 2: up we kind of rolled from multiple operations multiple to
Speaker 2: the strikes UH to something called Relentless Pursuit, which which
Speaker 2: kind of took us into the Battle of Tora Bora
Speaker 2: UH and so UH at the time Miller had brought
Speaker 2: over a whole bunch of different operators from different units
Speaker 2: and started standing up this a a FO Task Force
Speaker 2: and they established Advanced Force Operations and they were some
Speaker 2: of the first elements and they and I added some
Speaker 2: additional JCU communicators with them to establish UH comps in Bogram.
Speaker 2: And this was when Bogram it wasn't there was no
Speaker 2: there was no green beans.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: It was. It was dusty, it was. There was minefield,
Speaker 2: there was there was mines out there, live minds, there was.
Speaker 2: It was. It was a very very rustic, to say
Speaker 2: the least. And so we get out there and we
Speaker 2: get set up and you know, guys, are you know,
Speaker 2: using the bathroom in a in a piss tube, you know,
Speaker 2: the white PVC pipe tube, you know, burning their stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was it was luxury living at its finest,
Speaker 2: but it was. And then I remember Gary Harrell had
Speaker 2: come over. He was leading an element from from Syncom
Speaker 2: and UH Miller was leading AFO, and that's when kind
Speaker 2: of things started happening where you know, the first quatern
Speaker 2: that came in was Peace Quattered, and then I can't
Speaker 2: remember who came in behind them, but we were kind
Speaker 2: of doing a rotation in about January, and so I came,
Speaker 2: I came back in January of two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: and I sent you know, we had a we kind
Speaker 2: of did a rotation and had some other folks out there.
Speaker 2: So I wasn't I wasn't out there during the Roberts
Speaker 2: Ridge or the what was it called Pete labor Into.
Speaker 2: I know Pete was on your show before. But Pete
Speaker 2: ended up replacing Scotty Miller as the AFO lead out there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what was the name of the operation Anaconda. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: so I had I had some guys out there, you know,
Speaker 2: supporting Jaysack at the time. That was a pretty ugly,
Speaker 2: ugly event, you know what went down with Anaconda, And
Speaker 2: I know, I mean, I don't know if Pete was
Speaker 2: able to tell you the story there, but yeah, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of a lot of hard lessons learned
Speaker 2: on that one. I ended up giving up command of
Speaker 2: JCU in the summer of two thousand and two, and
Speaker 2: then I got to go command another unit, so which
Speaker 2: I went back to the one twelve Signal Battalion to
Speaker 2: become the Signal Battalion commander. And while I was supporting
Speaker 2: Jaysak as JCU commander, the one twelfth had supported John
Speaker 2: Mulholland and the fifth Group up in you know, uh
Speaker 2: it's Bekistan, you know, on the early days they they
Speaker 2: had a company up there supporting him. And by the
Speaker 2: time I got to the one twelfth, they had been rotating,
Speaker 2: you know, in and out of in and out of Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: And when I took command on the in July of
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, the one twelfth had folks all
Speaker 2: across Afghanistan. They had a team up in Djibouti supporting
Speaker 2: Horn of Africa, and they had a team out in
Speaker 2: the Philippines supporting Siejasoda dash P or Combined Joint Special
Speaker 2: Operations Task Force Philippines. And so I think the picture
Speaker 2: that was on the on the splash page, that was
Speaker 2: me out at Oregonee on my first battlefield circ there,
Speaker 2: pulling a couple of guys out of Oregonee and switching
Speaker 2: out the teams there. There was a great opportunity, you know,
Speaker 2: to go from JCU to the one twelfth, continue serving
Speaker 2: in soft, continuing in command, continuing, you know, to support
Speaker 2: the fight while we you know, my first year in
Speaker 2: the one twelfth, about December of two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: we started planning real heavy for operations in Iraq. There
Speaker 2: was Sentcom level exercises that were all kind of set
Speaker 2: in the stage for what would we need to do
Speaker 2: if we were going to go into Iraq. And then
Speaker 2: the spring, obviously of two thousand and three is when
Speaker 2: Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off and I basically deployed a
Speaker 2: battalion tack Tactical Command Post CO located in luded Cutter
Speaker 2: with supporting General Gary Harrell, who was the Soxcent commander
Speaker 2: at the time. But we had one of my companies
Speaker 2: was in Romania supporting Charlie Cleveland and tenth Group, and
Speaker 2: I had another company in Jordan and spread out between
Speaker 2: Jordan and Kuwait supporting John Mulholland in fifth Group. And
Speaker 2: one company was just returned from Afghanistan and they were
Speaker 2: kind of our reserve back at Fort Brag So the
Speaker 2: majority of my battalion was deployed from two thousand and
Speaker 2: three for the initial phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Speaker 1: How did that kind of go on or how did
Speaker 1: it turn out for or you from like a signals perspective,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of times we hear the operator
Speaker 1: perspective or the soldier on the ground, the tank are
Speaker 1: kind of interested in the communications piece of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I would tell you that this. I mean,
Speaker 2: even though you're in special option, you have probably better
Speaker 2: communications capability than the conventional forces, at least we did
Speaker 2: at the time. They still our systems were still too big,
Speaker 2: too clunky, not as maneuverable as they needed to be
Speaker 2: to support up and support what needed to happen, And
Speaker 2: especially with you know, Tenth Group, where they established a
Speaker 2: staging base in Romania and you have this big satellite
Speaker 2: hub in Romania. Typically you don't jump a satellite hub.
Speaker 2: You jump the spokes, you jump the single dish, you know.
Speaker 2: But General Cleveland wanted to get his just sort of
Speaker 2: out of Romania and into northern Iraq, and so jumping
Speaker 2: the hub was a bit of an undertaking and it
Speaker 2: was so I mean, the guys you know, fought through it,
Speaker 2: but we learned a lot of lessons and we can't
Speaker 2: and what we were able to do though from the
Speaker 2: lessons we learned on OIF one. By the time I
Speaker 2: gave up command in two thousand and four, of the
Speaker 2: one twelve, we had pretty much modernized the whole battalion.
Speaker 2: We had, you know, supportive use of SoC and and
Speaker 2: so COM. Really so COM was in our corner helping us,
Speaker 2: you know, modernize the get smaller and lighter, more capable
Speaker 2: capabilities out there, and basically upgrade almost every team that
Speaker 2: we had in the inventory, which was good. But a
Speaker 2: lot of that was you kind of got to go
Speaker 2: to war with the kit you have, and then you know,
Speaker 2: you you build as you come, as you are, build
Speaker 2: as you go, and constantly improve, right, And that's what
Speaker 2: we were trying to do, is constantly improve and try
Speaker 2: to make things better for the commanders and the soft
Speaker 2: elements that were out in the field.
Speaker 1: So and after the invasion and everything, what was sort
Speaker 1: of the next step for you.
Speaker 2: You So I spent about four months over there, came back,
Speaker 2: and then we had downsized our support to about a
Speaker 2: company level, So we started rotating companies. You know, always
Speaker 2: had a company rotating over the whole time. I was
Speaker 2: the remainder of the time I was in command, and
Speaker 2: so and I took a couple more trips over to
Speaker 2: visit the guys, but I was not there, you know, permanently,
Speaker 2: after probably about I guess, back July of three. And
Speaker 2: that's when it started getting you know, after the initial
Speaker 2: phase of OIF started getting ugly into the you know,
Speaker 2: the insurgency, right, and so things were starting to get
Speaker 2: a little uglier there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and then what did you do after the
Speaker 1: one talent one to twelve?
Speaker 2: So I got selected on what's called this smooth board,
Speaker 2: the Special Mission Unit Selection Board, to command a mission
Speaker 2: support squadron for a special Mission unit up in up
Speaker 2: in Northern Virginia based out of Fort Belvoir. So I
Speaker 2: got selected. I got notified. Actually I got notified while
Speaker 2: I was in Iraq visiting. I was visiting the Task
Speaker 2: Force in Iraq, and I got a call and I remember,
Speaker 2: I got the call from the Deputy Commanding General of USask.
Speaker 2: And then I get to the units, the Special Mission
Speaker 2: Units Forward deployed headquarters in Baghdad, and I remember Bennet's
Speaker 2: Socolak congratulating me. It was like he already knew he.
Speaker 2: I guess a lot of folks knew before I knew
Speaker 2: but anyway, I got notified while I was there, and
Speaker 2: then the following summer I took command of the mission
Speaker 2: sports Quader for this special mission unit. And it was
Speaker 2: a unique, very unique command. Uh. Everything the unit does
Speaker 2: is you know, low visibility, kind of clandestine mindset. Most
Speaker 2: of the uh, you know, a lot of our you
Speaker 2: work very closely with the intel community. Uh. You know,
Speaker 2: we have you know, specialists in human intelligence and in
Speaker 2: one of our squadrons. We had specialists in signals intelligence
Speaker 2: in another one of our squadrons. And then I had
Speaker 2: the squadron that had all of the medics, all of
Speaker 2: the rigors, all of the logistitions, and all the communicators
Speaker 2: and everything we had to do, you know, if you
Speaker 2: have to do it in a clandestine environment in many cases,
Speaker 2: you know, not in uniform. Uh. In many cases, everything
Speaker 2: has to be unattributed, you know, non attributable. So it's
Speaker 2: all you know, you've got to be able to hide
Speaker 2: in plain sight and be able to you know, connect
Speaker 2: these operatives that are spread out in a variety of
Speaker 2: you know, very dangerous places and make sure they have
Speaker 2: everything they need to function and survive. And so it
Speaker 2: was it was a unique, uh, Cape opportunity there to
Speaker 2: command a similar but very different kind of unit. And
Speaker 2: so for me, it was six straight years of commanding
Speaker 2: in special ops. Uh, you know, between j CU one
Speaker 2: twelve and then this uh this other special sorry yeah,
Speaker 2: between JCU the one twelfth and then this other special
Speaker 2: mission unit. It was it was you know, I loved it.
Speaker 2: It was it was great. And uh. But while I
Speaker 2: was in that unit, every time the unit commander would deploy,
Speaker 2: I would he would put me in charge of be
Speaker 2: like the rear D. I was running the unit in
Speaker 2: the rear, and uh, we were constantly rotating a squadron
Speaker 2: commander over uh forward deployed to run all the unit
Speaker 2: operations that were happening between Afghanistan and Iraq and a
Speaker 2: lot of the adjacent countries. Okay, because a lot of
Speaker 2: what we were doing was you know, intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance
Speaker 2: and those types of things. And so as A in
Speaker 2: March of two thousand and five, I got to deploy.
Speaker 2: We had previously called this the Forward Deployed Element dead A.
Speaker 2: It was pre you know, you'd I think you'd talked
Speaker 2: about dead A in your book, actually, but it was
Speaker 2: a they named it. It was just our commander had
Speaker 2: called it that, but Macrystal wanted to change the name
Speaker 2: of the task force, and so he called it Task
Speaker 2: Force three five six. And the story behind the task
Speaker 2: force is one of our operatives was actually killed in
Speaker 2: a in a suicide bombing at the Moses Dining facility
Speaker 2: in December December twenty first, a guy named Rob Odelle
Speaker 2: Special Forces eighteen series. He was a member of the
Speaker 2: unit he got killed. And because our unit was kind
Speaker 2: of leading this task force, General Macrystal picked the number
Speaker 2: based on the Julian date of the date that Rob
Speaker 2: got killed, and so three five six was was what
Speaker 2: you know, the Julian date of December twenty first. So
Speaker 2: I was the first commander of Task Force three five six,
Speaker 2: which was pretty awesome. And I get over there and
Speaker 2: I'm replacing a guy named Sean. Sean mulholland who's related
Speaker 2: to John Sewan was he had one of the other
Speaker 2: squadrons at the time. But we did the battle handoff
Speaker 2: and then one of the big things that happened, you know,
Speaker 2: I had a tremendous team of in the task Force
Speaker 2: supporting supporting the task force. I had a smaller Task
Speaker 2: Force three five six that. We had a Foreign Fighter
Speaker 2: Exploitation Team, so I had members from our unit, some
Speaker 2: intel support. I had members from the FBI hr T
Speaker 2: that was on our team. And what we were really
Speaker 2: trying to do is understand and run the rat lines
Speaker 2: back to all these different countries that were fueling the
Speaker 2: insurgency with foreign fighters and so a lot of it was,
Speaker 2: you know, things that were coming off of computers. We
Speaker 2: had a computer forensics exploitation expert out there. We had
Speaker 2: we were getting information from the the Tactical Screening Facility
Speaker 2: the TSF, where they were doing before guys would go
Speaker 2: to to like a lot of the prisons, they would
Speaker 2: you know, there was there was interrogations going on to
Speaker 2: kind of exploit and analyze what was happening so they
Speaker 2: could you know, disseminate that information and find and fixed.
Speaker 2: So that was kind of there. We were there there
Speaker 2: during this whole thing called the F three E A
Speaker 2: D cycle. I think you're familiar with that fine fixed, finish, Exploit,
Speaker 2: analyze and disseminate. Where we came in was really the exploit,
Speaker 2: analyze and disseminate, Exploit, analyze and disseminate. We were we
Speaker 2: were trying to pull the thread on all of that
Speaker 2: stuff and working with the task force on the ground
Speaker 2: that we're doing multiple operations. Every single night we had
Speaker 2: there was a joint interagency task force being led over
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan, there was another one in Iraq, and then
Speaker 2: we had working directly for me. I had uh you know,
Speaker 2: operatives and analysts at various embassies and stations co located
Speaker 2: with their counterparts where really we would fuse the intel,
Speaker 2: put a plan of action together, and then give it
Speaker 2: to a force to take action. And you know, typically
Speaker 2: on the ground in Iraq Afghanistan, it was a direct
Speaker 2: action and one of the units would take it. But
Speaker 2: if it was in one of these other countries, it
Speaker 2: was usually internal law enforcement where they would take action
Speaker 2: based on information, you know, And so it became a
Speaker 2: pretty powerful machine. And one of the things that while
Speaker 2: I was there, we had this special event that we
Speaker 2: had planned where we brought in a chief of Base
Speaker 2: and one of my senior liaisons that was in I'm
Speaker 2: not going to say what country, but they came in
Speaker 2: with some equivalents to I would say probably equivalent to
Speaker 2: like the US FBI, where they brought in some investigators
Speaker 2: that were hardcore you know, no, really, they understood the
Speaker 2: culture and they were going to do the interrogations. And
Speaker 2: so we launched this thing at Abu Greb and it
Speaker 2: was on the second of April and two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: So I fly out there with my team and get
Speaker 2: everything set up, and you know, we're kind of going
Speaker 2: through our first day of planning. We're getting you know,
Speaker 2: kind of putting on our game face to figure out
Speaker 2: how we're going to do all this. We're coordinating with
Speaker 2: the staff there at Abu grab and you know, you
Speaker 2: have conventional units there, yeah, am I units. You have
Speaker 2: military police, you have you know, marines guarding the facility
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. So we're trying to get the
Speaker 2: lay of the land and figure out we've got this
Speaker 2: nasty little hoots we're staying in. You know, we set
Speaker 2: up our coms. We had a couple communicators from the
Speaker 2: Joint Communications Support Element with us that you know, it
Speaker 2: was kind of a mixed bag of teammates and we
Speaker 2: built this little, i'd say, a little cross functional team
Speaker 2: to go take on this mission. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: we get there on day one, we get everything set up,
Speaker 2: and that night at child right after the call for
Speaker 2: prayer at about seven oh six pm or nineteen oh six,
Speaker 2: you know, local time or whatever. We're we're eating child,
Speaker 2: we're at the dining facility and we hear damn, that
Speaker 2: was close. And we hear another one, and it's like,
Speaker 2: I call this shit. They're bracketing the dining facility. And
Speaker 2: then there's just and then all hell broke loose and
Speaker 2: for about two and a half hours, it was just
Speaker 2: constant state of rockets. Four there were four vehicle born
Speaker 2: id's that hit the towers of the camp. There was
Speaker 2: it was a gunfight went on for I mean, it
Speaker 2: went on for a long time. It was pretty significant,
Speaker 2: and we ended up a couple of our guys. I
Speaker 2: mean we went to chow. You know, we didn't bring
Speaker 2: our long guns with us ord nods, but it was
Speaker 2: getting dark and all, and so a couple of guys
Speaker 2: went back and they scooped up our long guns. We
Speaker 2: were stale still at the dining facility. They didn't want
Speaker 2: a lot of people running around the compound, but we, uh,
Speaker 2: we were kind of bracing ourselves for the Alamo moment,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, because it was we didn't
Speaker 2: know what the heck was going on. There was a
Speaker 2: I think like seventy some insurgents got killed. I think
Speaker 2: there was like forty four wounded, US wounded. We had
Speaker 2: one guy that basically had a shrapnel scrape on his arm,
Speaker 2: but that was about it. But it was U. I
Speaker 2: was supposed to leave that night at nine o'clock, I
Speaker 2: was getting the team set up and I was going
Speaker 2: to go back to Ballad. I called back and told
Speaker 2: General m. Crystal. I said, hey, there's threats. There's there's
Speaker 2: there's discussion of having like the threat in the case
Speaker 2: there may be more of this. And I don't really
Speaker 2: feel comfortable leaving my guys out here and not being here.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to stay for the week if you're
Speaker 2: okay with it. And I didn't have great comms with
Speaker 2: all the other outsides, which kind of but I had
Speaker 2: a good nco back at Blood that was taking care
Speaker 2: of all the other outside so I had good enough comms.
Speaker 2: But I and Blot I had great comms. But here
Speaker 2: I had but it was like I could do what
Speaker 2: I needed to do from ab Abu Grab for a week,
Speaker 2: and but I didn't want to. I didn't want to
Speaker 2: leave the team and not and go back to Ballad
Speaker 2: when you know, they thought there might be you know,
Speaker 2: this was this was during the heavy days of Zarkawi,
Speaker 2: just doing you know, brutal stuff in a variety of locations,
Speaker 2: and that same night it so I forgot to tell
Speaker 2: you this. But while I was at Ballade, my brother
Speaker 2: was also. He was in a conventional unit. He was
Speaker 2: a logistician in the first cost coms course pork Man
Speaker 2: and out of Fort Bragg. They were on the other
Speaker 2: side of Ballad. But every Sunday night or every Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 2: he and I would meet at our defect, our dining
Speaker 2: facility for lunch. We'd have lunch together and then we'd
Speaker 2: smoke a cigar and drink near beer afterwards and just
Speaker 2: kind of shoot the crap and tell stories about what happened.
Speaker 2: And so that's Saturday night when when all hell broke loose.
Speaker 2: I send him a note and I said, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be able to have to meet
Speaker 2: you for lunch and cigars tomorrow. Crazy thing happened. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you when I get back. And his response was yeah, no, kid,
Speaker 2: and me too. I'll talk to you when I can.
Speaker 2: And so come to find out, I get back to
Speaker 2: Ballod and he was leading a convoy of a logistics
Speaker 2: unit that was getting ready to go replace another unit.
Speaker 2: And they were about two and a half miles outside
Speaker 2: the gate of Abu Grave going to a logistics facility
Speaker 2: when their convoy got blown up by They actually lost
Speaker 2: guys in the convoy and they got they hit an
Speaker 2: id and they came to like a standstill and they
Speaker 2: you know, they had apache gunships called in and actually
Speaker 2: helped them get through that that situation. But that all happened,
Speaker 2: you know, myself and my brother, you know, within just
Speaker 2: about a three mile radius of each other on the
Speaker 2: same night, which was pretty crazy. When we told that
Speaker 2: story to my mom, she about lost her mind.
Speaker 1: But before we move on, I wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: sort of what you learned about the foreign fighter networks,
Speaker 1: because I mean, it's obviously kind of a nebulous thing,
Speaker 1: but I remember the intel we were getting at the time.
Speaker 1: But these guys were coming from all across North Africa,
Speaker 1: through Syria into Iraq, and what did you.
Speaker 2: There was there was a lot of them coming from
Speaker 2: North Africa. There's a lot of them coming through Jordan.
Speaker 2: The rat lines were running through Jordan and through Syria. Uh,
Speaker 2: there was a lot coming from places like Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 2: you know, other I mean it was yeah, there was
Speaker 2: no like single source of foreign matters. There there was
Speaker 2: a I mean they were coming from all over the place.
Speaker 2: And and zark cowi uh, I mean he was God
Speaker 2: rest his soul, but he was, I mean he was
Speaker 2: he was a vicious vicious uh he I mean he
Speaker 2: was doing everything he could to fuel the insurgency and
Speaker 2: wreak havoc on on on our forces on the ground,
Speaker 2: and I mean just ruthless killings of I mean, thank
Speaker 2: god he met his fate, you know, a few months later.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was it was pretty brutal. But I
Speaker 2: would say, I mean there was no single source. A
Speaker 2: lot of them coming from North Africa, a lot of
Speaker 2: them coming you know from I mean he had ties
Speaker 2: back to Jordan obviously, so some coming from Jordan. Uh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But the folks we brought over were brought over for
Speaker 2: a reason because a lot of them were coming from
Speaker 2: that particular their country. I'm just yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And around after this assignment, was this when you went
Speaker 1: to be a part of the Joint Recontast Force.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there was a lot of different units doing
Speaker 2: clandestine like stuff, right, and General McCrystal realized that we
Speaker 2: needed to establish some best practices and some capability. So
Speaker 2: you have the Ranger Recon Detachment, you had Operational Support
Speaker 2: Troop at the at the unit down at Fort Bragg. Uh,
Speaker 2: you had I can't remember the name of the squadron
Speaker 2: that that out of a dev group, Black squadron, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and and then you had you know, the unit I
Speaker 2: was in. And so what they did is they picked
Speaker 2: a guy named John Burnham. I don't know if you know.
Speaker 2: Johnny's a retired Navy seal, but John and uh, Heypman,
Speaker 2: I can't remember Heypman's first name, but he led the
Speaker 2: Black Squadron group. And then we had So what they
Speaker 2: did is they stood up this joint read this Task
Speaker 2: Force co located with our unit at our headquarters at
Speaker 2: Fort Belvoir and really trying to get a handle on
Speaker 2: who's doing what where and for what purpose. For all
Speaker 2: the clandestine it was related activities, you know, it was
Speaker 2: kind of advanced force operations. That Miller and those guys
Speaker 2: that stood up was a very small sliver, but all
Speaker 2: the units were building their own intel capabilities. They were
Speaker 2: all building their own you know, they were running sources,
Speaker 2: they were running you know and doing signals intelligence and
Speaker 2: all that, and so it was it was really trying
Speaker 2: to get it all organized and focused and and and
Speaker 2: they stood up a task force to kind of coordinate
Speaker 2: and deconflict that stuff so we wouldn't have folks tripping
Speaker 2: over each other, I guess, and and really trying to
Speaker 2: establish some best practices for a lot of that capability.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like JSOCK for the recon community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was really a JSCK entity that
Speaker 2: but our boss was asked to stand it up and
Speaker 2: at the time it was Conrad out and then Mike
Speaker 2: Nagata came and took over my second year there as
Speaker 2: the unit commander.
Speaker 1: And around this time, like what were you seeing from
Speaker 1: you know, the recon community? I guess you could say, like,
Speaker 1: how how did it evolved over the subsequent you know,
Speaker 1: ten years or so.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of it was, you know, having
Speaker 2: the process of the capability down for you know, getting
Speaker 2: guys to go to the farm and actually learn how
Speaker 2: to do human operations correctly, and then coordinating in that
Speaker 2: and deconflicting that with the agency. Uh, everything we did
Speaker 2: on the singing side had NSA oversight, you know, because
Speaker 2: and so making sure that you know, we weren't we
Speaker 2: weren't going to get out of sorts with with folks
Speaker 2: that really had singate authorities and stay synchronized with with
Speaker 2: the with the NSA. But a lot of things was
Speaker 2: really establishing best practices and best capable for technical technical capabilities,
Speaker 2: you know, clandestine comms, cove comp capabilities, you know, making
Speaker 2: sure guys could go in you know undetected, uh, with
Speaker 2: capabilities that we're going to allow them to do what
Speaker 2: they needed to do and be able to communicate in
Speaker 2: a clandestine fashion, and trying to find the best kit
Speaker 2: that wouldn't you know, send some sort of military signature
Speaker 2: where they could go in with something that you know
Speaker 2: just look like a phone or a laptop or or whatever,
Speaker 2: but it had you know, capabilities that could be used.
Speaker 2: We had some established some cover capabilities for logistics where
Speaker 2: things could be forward staged, you know, in a variety
Speaker 2: of locations, and just you know learning and working with
Speaker 2: Intel community teammates and counterparts to put some you know
Speaker 2: systems in place, using you know, diplomatic pouch to you know,
Speaker 2: get capability in and get it distributed to you know,
Speaker 2: different locations, just a variety of trade craft and field
Speaker 2: craft capabilities that constantly were evolving. Does I answer your
Speaker 2: question absolutely? Uh.
Speaker 1: And from there you were off to the War College.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I ended up. So when I was Mike Nagata,
Speaker 2: I was, I think so on the trip later I
Speaker 2: went back to Iraq and it was just a short
Speaker 2: visit visiting our guys. And the first time, I think
Speaker 2: Troutman was my boss. The second time, Mike Nagotta was
Speaker 2: my boss. And well, and I uh, I got selected
Speaker 2: for brigade command while I was we were in ballade.
Speaker 2: I remember we were kidnapped, getting ready to fly out
Speaker 2: on a on a helicopter out to the to link
Speaker 2: up with some of our guys that were in a
Speaker 2: safe house out on the Syrian border. And I was
Speaker 2: flying with Nagoda and a couple others and he gets
Speaker 2: the brigade command slate, and you know, commanders typically get
Speaker 2: notified when somebody on their organization either gets promoted or
Speaker 2: gets slated for command. And he raised my command Slaty said, well, Pete,
Speaker 2: looks like you're going to command a brigade. You got
Speaker 2: the DS Central Field Command, whatever the hell that is.
Speaker 2: He goes. You know, you can't spell disappointment without disso,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I never forgot that. So anyway,
Speaker 2: I get slated for command, and then I leave the
Speaker 2: unit and I go to National War College. And so
Speaker 2: I'm at National War College in two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and seven, my son, my oldest son, had
Speaker 2: just enlisted in the Army as an infantryman and he
Speaker 2: signed an airborne contract. He was supposed to go to
Speaker 2: eighty second. He's going through one station unit training at
Speaker 2: Fort Benning, Georgia, and he gets pinpointed to third Brigade,
Speaker 2: tenth Mountain Division, and at that time, third Brigade, tenth
Speaker 2: Mountain Division, the brigade commander was a guy named Mick
Speaker 2: Nicholson who later became my boss. But they were deployed
Speaker 2: and they were in the corn gall and they were
Speaker 2: all on what's considered Regional Command East. And I'm at
Speaker 2: the War College at National in Downtown d C. Spend
Speaker 2: in my year there before I go into Brigade Command,
Speaker 2: and I go down to my son's graduation, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's excited, he just made it through something I didn't
Speaker 2: even think he was going to you know, survive his
Speaker 2: teenage years, because he was he was more of a
Speaker 2: hellion than I was. But he ended up, you know,
Speaker 2: making it through basic training and a t as an infantryman.
Speaker 2: And he's slated to go to the tenth Mountain Division.
Speaker 2: When I go to his graduation at Benning, he can't
Speaker 2: wait to introduce me to his his drill sardant, and
Speaker 2: so I go meet his drill sardant. I was like,
Speaker 2: this is freaking awesome man. He's proud of his accomplishments,
Speaker 2: and his drill Targean told me some great things about
Speaker 2: him and all that. Then he gets to Tenth Mountain
Speaker 2: and he's up at Fort Drum, New York, and the
Speaker 2: brigade he's going to is deployed and he's going as
Speaker 2: a replacement because they've lost a bunch of soldiers and
Speaker 2: so he's in third Brigade and he slated to go
Speaker 2: to Afghanistani. He just doesn't know when. And I'm sitting
Speaker 2: at you know, I'm living at Fort Belvoir, I'm attending
Speaker 2: the National War College, and I started asking him about
Speaker 2: you know, It's like, Matt, what do you do for
Speaker 2: like pre combat training. He's like, we're not doing anything.
Speaker 2: We're freaking painting walls, moving wall lockers. I said, well,
Speaker 2: who's he goes, well, they got Rear D. Rear D,
Speaker 2: the rear Detachment n c O is that they're they're
Speaker 2: not the cream of the crop. They're you know, as
Speaker 2: proud as he was of his drill sergeant, he was
Speaker 2: frustrated as hell when he was, you know, in hurry
Speaker 2: up in wait mode, sitting back at Fort Drum, North Carolina,
Speaker 2: or at Fort Drum, New York. And so I'm like,
Speaker 2: this sucks. And I realized Mick Nicholson's n CEO, his
Speaker 2: command sergeant major was a guy named Jim Redmore. Jim
Speaker 2: was he was the fire support in CEO at the
Speaker 2: unit at Fort Bragg when I was there as a
Speaker 2: signal squad and we got to know each other pretty well.
Speaker 2: And so I sent Jim a note reach out to
Speaker 2: him on email. I said, hey, sorry, Major, I don't
Speaker 2: know if you remember we worked together in the unit,
Speaker 2: but my son is in the brigade and he's getting
Speaker 2: ready to deploy. And when I saw him graduating, I
Speaker 2: basically told the story about when he graduated, he was
Speaker 2: you know, he had nothing but confidence in the Non
Speaker 2: commission Officer Corps and he was as proud as he
Speaker 2: could be. But he's on his way to Afghanistan in
Speaker 2: a few weeks, and I want to make sure he's
Speaker 2: an asset not a liability because he's not getting any
Speaker 2: training right now. And he, uh, he goes, Sir, I
Speaker 2: remember you, I remember you well, he goes, my daughter's
Speaker 2: over in Iraq right now. Right now, I know exactly
Speaker 2: what you're going through. I got this and that weekend
Speaker 2: was Labor Day weekend, and Matt comes, he gets he
Speaker 2: gets a pass, and he comes down to visit me
Speaker 2: at Fort Belvoir, and you know, I had just left
Speaker 2: the unit and I had all the medics that that
Speaker 2: worked for me, and so there was a high speed
Speaker 2: Special Forces medic that was in the mission supports Quartern,
Speaker 2: and he brought over a dummy, and he brought over,
Speaker 2: you know, a manica, you know, basically brought over all
Speaker 2: kinds of training aids for for medical training. And so
Speaker 2: I'm cooking, We're having a cookout on our back porch
Speaker 2: for Belvoir. And the guy's name is Neil Glease and
Speaker 2: Neil is running Matt through a scenario after scenario of
Speaker 2: you know, first first responder combat life saver kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: and just the whole weekend and Saturday and Sunday and
Speaker 2: it's just just running him through drill after drill, and
Speaker 2: then he puts together a medkit for him and and
Speaker 2: he puts he has this laminated you know, training thing,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's just SF Medic one oh one
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. But by the time Matt got done,
Speaker 2: you know, drill after drill, just doing this, he had
Speaker 2: a lot of confidence in casualty collection, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, just treating a casually and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: and he was like motivated. It was like the first
Speaker 2: first bit of pre deployment training he had was by
Speaker 2: accident over beer with one of my buddies from the unit.
Speaker 2: But Matt left and Neil he built him a med
Speaker 2: kit with a little you know, in a canvas pack
Speaker 2: and he said, hey, man, when you get back up
Speaker 2: the four drum, when all you he when all your
Speaker 2: privates are sitting around pounding your PUDs waiting for leadership
Speaker 2: from an n c O and you're not getting it,
Speaker 2: just pull this stuff out and do everything. We did
Speaker 2: this weekend, do it with your buddies, and that's like cool.
Speaker 2: He loved it, and so he goes back up to
Speaker 2: Fort Drum. About that time, the ricochet effect had happened
Speaker 2: from Sergeant Major Redmore back to the rear d and
Speaker 2: they started, you know, putting them through their paces and
Speaker 2: running and taking them into ranges and doing all the
Speaker 2: kind of stuff that they should have been doing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: just you know, I mean, we owe it to those
Speaker 2: young kids before we put them out there, to make
Speaker 2: sure that we're not sending them out there, you know,
Speaker 2: And it hits home pretty hard when it's your own son,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. So so I called it
Speaker 2: a favor, but it was worth it and it needed
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: What was your son ready to drop his SFAs packet
Speaker 1: after that experience?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, I don't know about that. He was
Speaker 2: still a private first class, but he was. He was
Speaker 2: pretty motivated. But then he gets to what's funny is
Speaker 2: he goes back to Afghanistan and by this time, my
Speaker 2: brother that was with me in Ballade a few years
Speaker 2: earlier is now in Jaysaka as a logistician and he's
Speaker 2: in Bogram and so Matt flies into first he flies
Speaker 2: into K two, I think, and he flies into Bogram. Uh,
Speaker 2: and you know, my brother meets him at Bagram at
Speaker 2: the airfield and he's, you know, buffel backdrag carrying all
Speaker 2: this crap, and uh, you know, they go have lunch
Speaker 2: together or they go have chow together or whatever, and
Speaker 2: they and they get caught up and then he flies out.
Speaker 2: I think he ends up going out to Oregonee, same
Speaker 2: place where I was. I picked up my team from
Speaker 2: the one twelve, but he ends up going out there. Uh,
Speaker 2: they're in Burmeill. I think they think they end up
Speaker 2: in Vermeill.
Speaker 1: Is that I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's in I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 2: heard of the book by Sean Parnell called Outlaw Platoon,
Speaker 2: But Matt Matt was in that platoon two eight seven
Speaker 2: Company two eight seven, if I'm not mistaken, he was
Speaker 2: in se Sean Parnell was his platoon leader. By the
Speaker 2: time Matt gets there, there's six months into the rotation.
Speaker 2: So you got this this newbie showing up and he's
Speaker 2: fresh meat obviously, so he's got to like find his
Speaker 2: way amongst a unit as a as an FMNG, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of trying to earn his earn his stripes and
Speaker 2: figure out life. And the first time he goes outside
Speaker 2: the wire, one of the other they go to set
Speaker 2: up a casually collection point for another platoon that it
Speaker 2: got hit and everything that Neil toddyim on our back
Speaker 2: porch that day he was able to actually put into
Speaker 2: practice on this on his first mission outside the wire,
Speaker 2: which wow, crap. Yeah. Then that brigade, I don't know
Speaker 2: if you remember, but that brigade got extended. Typically they
Speaker 2: were doing twelve month rotations. That brigade got it. They
Speaker 2: were supposed to come home over the holidays, and in fact,
Speaker 2: some of the some of the folks advanced, they sent
Speaker 2: the they had already done the left seat, right seat
Speaker 2: with the brigade that was coming in behind them. Uh,
Speaker 2: and some of the elements of their unit had already
Speaker 2: returned back to Fort Drum and some of the families
Speaker 2: had left Christmas presents waiting for their arrival after right
Speaker 2: after the holidays where they were, you know, they left
Speaker 2: the tree up and they were left Christmas presents waiting,
Speaker 2: and they got notified they weren't coming back till like
Speaker 2: Memorial Day. So he ended up you know, spending all
Speaker 2: probably about nine months over there. But uh, when he
Speaker 2: was when he got back, he uh, you know, he
Speaker 2: was again. It was one of those moments where my
Speaker 2: other son and I went up and he meant Fort Drum,
Speaker 2: New York. We kind of went back to the we
Speaker 2: went to the welcome home thing and I flew up there.
Speaker 2: It was it was Memorial Day weekend. I remember it
Speaker 2: pretty pretty clear. But when they got back and they
Speaker 2: came in, he couldn't wait to introduce me to a
Speaker 2: squad leader. There's a guy named staff Startant, Jeffrey Hall,
Speaker 2: a former ranger who was in the Tenth Mountain. And uh,
Speaker 2: I asked started Hall. I was like, you know, like
Speaker 2: any dad would do. I guess, like, so, how do
Speaker 2: do you know? I'll tell you what, sir, He's fucking
Speaker 2: steady in a gunfight. I was like, holy shit, that
Speaker 2: was the greatest thing anybody could ever tell me, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. I was like, okay. I I
Speaker 2: was like, Wow, that's good to hear, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. And so anyway, later on, okay, after the war, college,
Speaker 2: I get to dis a Central Field Command and you
Speaker 2: can't spell disappointment without this on I'm responsible you know
Speaker 2: for all the like enterprise, the big pipes for all
Speaker 2: of the symcom AOAR you know. So we've got a
Speaker 2: lot of different things going on. You know, we're trying
Speaker 2: to build up capacity, network capacity, big pipes for reach back,
Speaker 2: you know, for a RAQ in Afghanistan, and at the
Speaker 2: time Iraq was hot and heavy, Petraeus was leading i RAQ.
Speaker 2: I can't remember who was leading Afghanistan at the time.
Speaker 2: But anyway, while i'm uh, while I'm at dissent, we
Speaker 2: go through a couple of major challenges. Number one is
Speaker 2: we had this we had this event called Buckshot Yankee
Speaker 2: and h Buckshot Yankee one hundred and first was the
Speaker 2: forward deployed in r C East Regional Command East. A
Speaker 2: good friend of mine was the was the G six
Speaker 2: there named Brett Reister. What had happened is there was
Speaker 2: cyber vulnerabilities being on all USB drives and they were
Speaker 2: able to kind of penetrate networks and move latterly through
Speaker 2: the networks, and they were considered a huge risk by
Speaker 2: at the time it was NSA and Joint Task Force
Speaker 2: G and O Global Network Ops. Before this was before
Speaker 2: Cybercomb actually stood up. But this operation became a freaking
Speaker 2: nightmare for everybody on the ground, and they were trying
Speaker 2: to identify, you know, all the risk and had to
Speaker 2: wipe a bunch of different machines, clean them up, and
Speaker 2: get rid of what they believed to be all of
Speaker 2: the cyber risk and the cyber threats on these It
Speaker 2: significantly changed a lot of tactics, techniques, and procedures of
Speaker 2: what people were doing when they were going out on
Speaker 2: aircraft and when they were going out in vehicles because
Speaker 2: thumb drives at the time were being used for almost everything,
Speaker 2: and it created quite a challenge. But that was kind
Speaker 2: of thing one that was pretty significant during my time
Speaker 2: at The other thing that happened that was really significant
Speaker 2: was there was a cable or an anchor drag across
Speaker 2: some undersea cables off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, and
Speaker 2: during this time it was it wiped out about ninety
Speaker 2: five percent of the intra theater or the reach back
Speaker 2: inner theater reached back comps from centcom A r to
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world. Basically, these big pipes it rely
Speaker 2: on these fiber optic cables that are go undersea that
Speaker 2: they carry a tremendous amount of data and when we
Speaker 2: lost that, I get a call in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night as the disissent command round in the theater
Speaker 2: net op center for all of Sentcom. So everything is happening,
Speaker 2: you know, from the network side, we're managing monitoring it
Speaker 2: and managing it and trying to you know, operate and
Speaker 2: defend and constantly improve the network. And we get this
Speaker 2: call that you know, we had a cable cut, and
Speaker 2: first things like okay, and what does that mean, Well,
Speaker 2: we have no reach back except satellite. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's pretty significant because the throughput on satellite and the
Speaker 2: latency and everything else just you know, it's it's with
Speaker 2: two major operations going on simultaneously. It created a real challenge.
Speaker 2: So we ended up, you know, figuring out how to
Speaker 2: execute something called minimize, where you minimize unnecessary traffic focus
Speaker 2: on the stuff that matters most. We had to bump
Speaker 2: up some add some additional satellite capacity to certain organizations
Speaker 2: out there, reduce for others. We were making all kinds
Speaker 2: of moves and at the same time, we're working with
Speaker 2: all these telecommunications because a lot of this is commercial
Speaker 2: telecommunications providers that do all this, and it had impact
Speaker 2: not on just operations, it was the banking industry everything,
Speaker 2: and we had huge impacts globally on you know, commerce
Speaker 2: and everything else. But you know, they had to get
Speaker 2: these cable repair ships out there and it took a
Speaker 2: while and we had to al wrap a bunch of
Speaker 2: that stuff. But all that stuff, you know, was happening,
Speaker 2: and then we had a general Petraeus ended up coming
Speaker 2: out of Iraq and taking over Syncom and I think
Speaker 2: that's when we went through Buckshot Yankee, which so the
Speaker 2: first cable cut thing actually happened first, But then then
Speaker 2: we went through Buckshot Yankee, which was the big cyber event.
Speaker 2: I had a new DISSA director and we were looking
Speaker 2: at how do we get you know, more capability over
Speaker 2: in the theater, more fiber connectivity, multiple routes, reduce the
Speaker 2: ad capacity, add resiliency, and reduce the single points of failure.
Speaker 2: So we spent a lot of time and energy working
Speaker 2: that and coordinating that and setting up different routes. And
Speaker 2: one of the things we were trying to do is
Speaker 2: establish a fiber ring around Afghanistan, around Ring Road and
Speaker 2: connect a lot of the keynotes. And we were putting
Speaker 2: beefing up the Comms and Cobble in Condehar and in
Speaker 2: Bob Raham and so as the distancing commander. I I
Speaker 2: go over in two thousand and nine. It's in the
Speaker 2: spring of two thousand and nine. I think it was
Speaker 2: right after Buckshot Yankee actually, and my son is deployed again.
Speaker 2: This time he's still in two eight seven, but now
Speaker 2: he's Sergeant Gallagher and not you know, Pfc. Gallagher. And
Speaker 2: while I'm visiting the hundred and first in Regional Command
Speaker 2: East and we're looking to set up you know, a
Speaker 2: big communications node there and add capacity, I get a
Speaker 2: chance to fly out to Fob Airborne, which is where
Speaker 2: my son was located. And so, you know, I hop
Speaker 2: my n CO I C and I hop on A
Speaker 2: forty seven and we start flying into Bob Airborne and
Speaker 2: we're gonna spend the night. I'm gonna meet with Matt's
Speaker 2: Battalian commander. We're gonna do midnight chow with him and
Speaker 2: his buddies, spend the night, and then we're going to
Speaker 2: link up with at the time, the Deputy commanding General
Speaker 2: of the one hundred and first and the G six.
Speaker 2: We're gonna meet us the next morning. And we were
Speaker 2: going to do go out to Pakistan and do some
Speaker 2: other stuff. And so anyway, I fly out to FOB
Speaker 2: Airborne and as we're flying in, they're getting rocketed and
Speaker 2: we get waved off, and so we end up landing
Speaker 2: at FOB Shank, which is where the third Brigade headquarters is.
Speaker 2: So I was going to go in and see my
Speaker 2: buddy Dave Hate. We were in the War College together,
Speaker 2: and I was gonna go tag up with Dave and
Speaker 2: kind of check in with the brigade commander. And we
Speaker 2: were on kind of a milk run. So we ended
Speaker 2: up catching a ride on a on a supply bird
Speaker 2: that was going from FOB to FOB. Right, so we start,
Speaker 2: We get off my n C and I get off
Speaker 2: the bird at Fob Shank. We start heading into the
Speaker 2: brigade talk when one of the crouchie from the aircraft
Speaker 2: runs up and grabs us and said, hey, we got
Speaker 2: the all clear from FOB Airborne and so we're gonna
Speaker 2: we're gonna head back over there. I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: So we get back in the helicopter and we go
Speaker 2: back to FOB Airborne and we land, we drop off,
Speaker 2: and it's like freaking pitch black and we see a
Speaker 2: couple of little lights and then my son walks up
Speaker 2: to me and goes, Dad, you're not gonna let a
Speaker 2: couple of freaking rockets cause you to puss out. You know,
Speaker 2: he's basically busting my chops. He goes, I can't believe
Speaker 2: you weren't gonna land here because of a couple of rockets.
Speaker 2: He's we get that ship all the time, all right, buddy.
Speaker 2: So anyway, it was it was pretty cool to see him.
Speaker 2: I mean, he had been downrange for a little bit
Speaker 2: and so and he we had. We ended up having
Speaker 2: midnight chow. He was in his uh he was in
Speaker 2: the same squad. He was actually a team leader now
Speaker 2: still working for Sergeant Hall. Uh and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: he showed me his hooch and everything and his living arrangements.
Speaker 2: We got to, you know, stayed up and had midnight
Speaker 2: chow with him and all of his buddies. Everybody was
Speaker 2: in his squad and you know, kind of telling stories
Speaker 2: like you do at a at a a combat outpost there.
Speaker 2: And uh, then we get back in. Uh then he
Speaker 2: gets selected to be a squad leader and he gets
Speaker 2: moved from that team in that squad for working for
Speaker 2: Sargeant Hall. Uh, and now he's leading a squad that
Speaker 2: does all the what's considered all the h oh Man
Speaker 2: one of the key leader engagement, so all the klis.
Speaker 2: When his battle when his battalian commander was doing battlefield circulation,
Speaker 2: they had a PSD and Matt led the security detail
Speaker 2: for Colonel Gallahu, the battalion commander. That was his new squad.
Speaker 2: So he got moved from I think B Company over
Speaker 2: to HHC. And so he got fleeted up to squad
Speaker 2: leader and moved to a different role. Well about a
Speaker 2: week after he got fleeted up the squad leader and
Speaker 2: moved to a different role, his squad Sergeant Hall and
Speaker 2: I think three or four other guys got killed by
Speaker 2: an IED blast. Oh my god. And so I'm sitting
Speaker 2: in my office back at Tampa and I get this
Speaker 2: call from Matt And I told my deputy. My deputy
Speaker 2: was a GS fifteen civilian. I said, Hey, if I
Speaker 2: ever get a call from my son, I don't care
Speaker 2: who I'm talking Terry, I don't care what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: If he calls interrupt me, I'll take the call. And
Speaker 2: so I had somebody in my office and said it
Speaker 2: was a little nervous. He didn't want to interrupt me,
Speaker 2: but he said, hey, sir, your son's on phone. So
Speaker 2: I get on the phone with him, and I could
Speaker 2: tell something was wrong. And I hadn't heard the news
Speaker 2: of this, and uh and he uh, he said he
Speaker 2: had sick. I mean, he had never dealt with like
Speaker 2: grief ever in his life. He had not. He hadn't
Speaker 2: even seen it, you know, one of his grandparents die
Speaker 2: or anything like that. He had not. I don't even
Speaker 2: know if he'd ever know a funeral up until that point.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, he calls me and he kind
Speaker 2: of is telling me what's going on, he said, he goes,
Speaker 2: he goes, I'm over here in h E C. And
Speaker 2: he goes, it's because those were my guys. Those were
Speaker 2: those were my buddies. I've been with these guys for years.
Speaker 2: That that was my squad, that was my team. Those
Speaker 2: were my guys. I should have been there. And he
Speaker 2: had significant remorse, you know, and he had he had
Speaker 2: guilt and and everything else, and he was he was
Speaker 2: dealing with it. He that was a long conversation about
Speaker 2: how to deal with grief and how to compartmentalize it
Speaker 2: and be able to you know, when you're sitting in
Speaker 2: your cot or when you're working in when you're working
Speaker 2: out at the gym or whatever, or if you're at
Speaker 2: the dining facility, you can think about all that. But
Speaker 2: when you're on the turret and you're out there and
Speaker 2: you're doing you know PSD, for those key leader engagements,
Speaker 2: you got to put that You got to lock that
Speaker 2: stuff in the box, and you got to focus, and
Speaker 2: you got to make sure you keep your head on
Speaker 2: a swivel and focus on the mission. That's why you're there.
Speaker 2: And it was a hard conversation for me, just to
Speaker 2: hear the pain in his voice, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And I had just had probably just a few weeks earlier,
Speaker 2: you know, had midnight chat with all those guys, and
Speaker 2: so I tried to make it a point to go
Speaker 2: to all their funerals. I hit all but one. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it was it was tough on him. But he you know,
Speaker 2: he's he's he's a studs. He's uh. But yeah, that
Speaker 2: was that was an interesting, you know, dad moment. And
Speaker 2: being the father of a of a of two soldiers
Speaker 2: and they both you know, between them, they've got you know,
Speaker 2: five combat deployment. So you know, Matt's had three, He's
Speaker 2: had two in the Tenth Mountain and one with the
Speaker 2: eighty second, and then his younger brother Jake had to combat.
Speaker 2: He was deployed in Operation New Dawn and you know,
Speaker 2: as a young paratrooper in the eighty second, and then
Speaker 2: he got deployed in Inherent Resolve. They were both in
Speaker 2: Iraq at the same time, so for in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that was a that was an interesting one,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean being you know, immensely proud but also
Speaker 1: very worried about your sons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd much rather be deployed myself than
Speaker 2: be worried about doing their deployed. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were probably every other parent too. And then
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine you're with the A F Pack
Speaker 1: Coordination Center. Pardon two thousand and nine, you were with the.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, so leave, yeah, I leave this assent
Speaker 2: right and uh uh. They have this big signal conference
Speaker 2: every year. It was down at Fort Lauderdale, and I
Speaker 2: get told by the Chief of Signal and by the
Speaker 2: Army c IO G six, uh or no, the netcomp commander. Hey, look,
Speaker 2: we're going to try to We're going to try to
Speaker 2: get you to Fort Gordon to be the chief of staff, uh,
Speaker 2: and it should be a great job for you and
Speaker 2: may make you competitive. I'm like, all right, cool, I'll
Speaker 2: do that whatever, whatever, whatever you guys need me to do.
Speaker 2: But so I think I'm going to Fort Gordon to
Speaker 2: be the chief of staff. And my wife and I
Speaker 2: are actually celebrating our anniversary. Were down at Key West, Florida,
Speaker 2: and I get notified, uh that I'm been by name
Speaker 2: requested by General McCrystal to stand up this thing called
Speaker 2: the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination. So it was actually Scott Miller
Speaker 2: who was on the Joint Staff as the d d
Speaker 2: s O, the Deputy Director for Special Ops at the time.
Speaker 2: Miller was or Miller was the Deputy Director for Special Ops,
Speaker 2: but Crystal was the director of the Joint Staff. And
Speaker 2: they're standing up this cross functional team on the Joint
Speaker 2: Staff to focus the attention of DC and all the
Speaker 2: inter agency and everybody on the main effort which President
Speaker 2: Obama made Claire was Afghanistan and Pakistan. So they built
Speaker 2: this thing and Admiral Mullin at the time was the
Speaker 2: chairman of the Joint chiefs. It was established in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine and I was one of the plaine holders.
Speaker 2: I had the chance to work between myself and there's
Speaker 2: a Navy seal was the other six, a guy named
Speaker 2: Tim Semanski. Miller handpicked both of us, basically got the
Speaker 2: crystal to sign the by name request. But they built
Speaker 2: the team with people they knew and trusted, and so
Speaker 2: it was pretty cool. Again, it was an opportunity to
Speaker 2: do something other than signal and go in there and
Speaker 2: be a deputy director for a very important entity. At
Speaker 2: the time. There was a lot of antibodies the joint
Speaker 2: staff J five didn't you know, he felt that that
Speaker 2: was his job. He didn't want some one star you know,
Speaker 2: having you know, the same credibility as a joint director.
Speaker 2: But if you know Scotty Miller, if you know Mick
Speaker 2: Nicholson who came in behind him, and every other pack
Speaker 2: director that came in, I mean they were all you know,
Speaker 2: high quality, you know, war fighting leaders, that were the
Speaker 2: right guys for the job. But it was it was
Speaker 2: an interesting opportunity. So when we first get there, you know,
Speaker 2: it's my crystal. When we first getting set out, my
Speaker 2: crystal just gets on the ground in Afghanistan and he's
Speaker 2: doing and he's doing his assessment and I remember, I
Speaker 2: mean it was late nights, every night, early mornings, late nights, weekends.
Speaker 2: It was probably of all the jobs I had in
Speaker 2: thirty five years of service, that was probably the worst
Speaker 2: grind because we were constantly and just churning out, you know,
Speaker 2: rit ahead material for the Chairman and the Sect Deaf
Speaker 2: and at the time the Chairman was Admiral Mullen and
Speaker 2: the Sect Deaf with Bob Gates, Secretary of Gates. And
Speaker 2: it was during this period where you know, my Crystal
Speaker 2: was going over there and he wanted to and they
Speaker 2: were ramping up the number of forces and he was
Speaker 2: doing his assessment. And I get a call on Saturday
Speaker 2: night from the Director of the Joint Staff's office and
Speaker 2: they said, hey, somebody leaked my Crystal's assessment and Bob Woodward,
Speaker 2: you know, Bob Woodward, the author, And he said, Bob
Speaker 2: Woodward has a copy of it, and he let us
Speaker 2: know that I need you to come in and we
Speaker 2: need to go through this assessment and we need to
Speaker 2: look for what should be redacted because he wants to
Speaker 2: give us a shot to redact things that should be
Speaker 2: redacted before he goes to the press with it. So
Speaker 2: that was good on him to do that. So, like,
Speaker 2: you know, call in a few guys at Dave Doyle
Speaker 2: and a couple of intel analysts and a few folks
Speaker 2: and we end up meeting at like nine point thirty
Speaker 2: on Saturday night and we're going through the Crystal assessment
Speaker 2: line and we and the guidance was, you know, if
Speaker 2: it's a risk risk to mission, risk to force, and
Speaker 2: risk to international relations, everything else is fair game. Okay,
Speaker 2: leave it in there unless it unless it will cause
Speaker 2: a risk to mission, the risk risk to the force,
Speaker 2: and risk internationally. So we went we spent all night
Speaker 2: going through that and making a recommendation of what should
Speaker 2: be redacted and why. And so the next morning, you know, Miller,
Speaker 2: he let us do all the work and then he
Speaker 2: meets us in the next morning with the Director of
Speaker 2: the Joint Staff, Admiral or General Cartwright, the Vice Chief
Speaker 2: the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Michelle Flornoy,
Speaker 2: who was OSD Policy and we're sitting in the Vice's
Speaker 2: office and we're going through it and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: some of what we recommended being redacted. They said, now
Speaker 2: that's common knowledge, that's not you know, we have to
Speaker 2: worry about that. So we finally get to a spot
Speaker 2: where we're comfortable saying, okay, you know, we leave this
Speaker 2: in and we'll take that out. So then it's got
Speaker 2: to go to Mullan. So Sunday morning we have the
Speaker 2: meeting with the Vice and Flornoy, and then the next
Speaker 2: day it has to go to Mullen and Gates, and
Speaker 2: so you know, we're churning all day on Sunday, and
Speaker 2: then it finally gets the Secretary, Gates and Mullan and
Speaker 2: they're satisfied. It's like, okay, we're gonna let this go.
Speaker 2: This this this should be no harm, no foul. It's
Speaker 2: fine if he prints it. Uh. And but then Secretary
Speaker 2: Gates is a press secretary, comes down and he wants
Speaker 2: me to email the redacted version to uh Bob Woodward.
Speaker 2: I said absolutely not, I said, I am not. I
Speaker 2: will give I will send you the redacted version, but
Speaker 2: I am not going to be the guy that pulls
Speaker 2: the trigger on an email to Bob Woodward.
Speaker 1: I don't blame you.
Speaker 2: He goes, damn, I gotta go log in. I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I'm not doing it. But anyway, Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: an interesting then, uh, you know, constantly supporting, trying to
Speaker 2: do everything we could to support General McCrystal, make sure
Speaker 2: that I SAFF was synchronized with SENTCOM, was synchronized with
Speaker 2: the Joint Staff, was synchronized with the services, and it
Speaker 2: was it was, it was good. We established a thing
Speaker 2: called the AFT Pack Hands. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: remember that. Or we were trying to get guys you know,
Speaker 2: trained on the language and the culture, and we there
Speaker 2: was folks identified from all the different services. It was
Speaker 2: a good idea. I don't think it actually uh delivered
Speaker 2: as as we wanted it to. But trying to get
Speaker 2: guys you know, culturally culturally astute and you know, learning
Speaker 2: you know, Dari or Farsi and trying to posh to
Speaker 2: and learning the languages and being able to go over
Speaker 2: there and actually you know, be difference makers. And some
Speaker 2: of them did better than others. I mean, uh, but
Speaker 2: by the time I ended up my next job, I
Speaker 2: ended up from there and went over to be the
Speaker 2: ICEF J six. But uh, it was a good year
Speaker 2: in the Pakistan Afghanistan coordination, so all but I could
Speaker 2: not wait to deploy, but a year of that churn,
Speaker 2: I was ready. I was ready to get down range.
Speaker 2: And so as we're approaching, you know, the spring, I
Speaker 2: think I'm going over to be General mccrystal's J six
Speaker 2: And then I don't know, if you ever heard of
Speaker 2: a lady named Sally Donnelly, you know who Sally is.
Speaker 2: She's a very she's a strategic communications expert. She's spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time. She was a special advisor to
Speaker 2: the chairman at the time, Admiral Mullen, and she spent
Speaker 2: some time in the media. She does a lot to
Speaker 2: prep people for, you know, going through congressional hearings and
Speaker 2: testimony and stuff like that. Very very knowledgeable. Anyway, she
Speaker 2: walks down with a couple of copies of the Rolling
Speaker 2: Stone article and drops them on my desk and Tim
Speaker 2: Semanski's desk, and we start reading it. And as soon
Speaker 2: as we read like the first paragraph and a half,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh crap, this is And then so the
Speaker 2: crystalines obviously resigning and gets replaced by General Petraeus. The
Speaker 2: good thing is I had met Patreus when I was
Speaker 2: the discent commander before, so I didn't I had never
Speaker 2: worked for him but prior to that, but I worked
Speaker 2: you know with him when I was down at Dissent
Speaker 2: and he was a Sincom commander, and when he was
Speaker 2: before that, when he was in Iraq. So I felt
Speaker 2: comfortable enough knowing, you know, if I wasn't going to
Speaker 2: work for my Crystal, I was going to be working
Speaker 2: for a good boss. So I ended up deploying in
Speaker 2: August of two thousand and ten to be the ice
Speaker 2: you know, J six there. It was a big push.
Speaker 2: There was really getting everybody on the Afghan Mission network,
Speaker 2: which was the coalition communications or computer network where everything
Speaker 2: was releasable, and really trying to get us off of
Speaker 2: SIPPER and really you know, writing for release and sharing
Speaker 2: information with coalition partners and actually you know, trying to
Speaker 2: operate as a coalition with everybody on the same network.
Speaker 2: It was a NATO job, so my staff was it
Speaker 2: was it was an interesting mix of people. I had
Speaker 2: a Canadian deputy when I first got there, he was amazing.
Speaker 2: I had a Polish frequency manager. I had a German
Speaker 2: sergeant major. I had a French plans officer, I had uh.
Speaker 2: It was. It was a mixed bag of doughnuts. Man,
Speaker 2: it was. It was awesome. And it was very difficult
Speaker 2: to find anybody on my staff that could speak clear English,
Speaker 2: let alone right, you know, clear English for staff products.
Speaker 2: It was. It was quite challenging. So I spent a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, a lot of time kind of
Speaker 2: really muddling through some stuff. But uh, it was it
Speaker 2: was an interesting time, you know. I learned a lot
Speaker 2: working for General Petraeus. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: trying to do battlefield circulations, trying to pull the whole
Speaker 2: J six community together from all the regional commands and
Speaker 2: and all the different units and and stuff that we're
Speaker 2: out there. It was a it was in the height
Speaker 2: of the surge, so there was a there was a
Speaker 2: lot happening during that time. Obviously, the biggest thing that
Speaker 2: happened was, and it wasn't I was not involved with
Speaker 2: it at all, was the Neptune Spear, the operation to
Speaker 2: take down you know, to kill Bin Lauden that happened
Speaker 2: while I was there, uh, but had absolutely nothing to
Speaker 2: do with it. You know. I come in the morning
Speaker 2: for our standard you know, battle update brief first thing
Speaker 2: in the morning and go in to try to make
Speaker 2: sure everything's working, you know, so when the commander takes
Speaker 2: his update brief, he isn't frustrated with the comms and
Speaker 2: the VTC and everything else. So I go in a
Speaker 2: little bit early, like I did every morning, and then
Speaker 2: I you know, they got the TV on and and
Speaker 2: they're getting ready for the Obamas speech after the operation
Speaker 2: that happened. But the operational security for that was was
Speaker 2: you know, from president on down, you know through Jaysuck,
Speaker 2: was was pretty tight. I mean I don't even think
Speaker 2: they let the trays know until the operation was ongoing.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's how clear know how good the obsect was.
Speaker 2: And then I happened right before shortly before I redeployed.
Speaker 2: After you know, I was there for about thirteen months.
Speaker 2: The uh I had the horrible crash of Extortion one
Speaker 2: seven where we lost all the special operators that were
Speaker 2: on the on the Chinook. That was a pretty pretty
Speaker 2: brutal incident as well. Through my time there, it was
Speaker 2: there was a lot of I think they've been making
Speaker 2: quite a bit of progress. I had portrays for probably
Speaker 2: the first eleven months, and then I ended up having
Speaker 2: John Allen for the last couple of months there, and
Speaker 2: then I came back and I was spent a year
Speaker 2: in as the EXO to the c IO G six
Speaker 2: back in the Pentagon. That was another, you know, interesting job,
Speaker 2: a little bit of a grind, not necessarily a job
Speaker 2: you really want until it's over, and then well, I was.
Speaker 2: It was a test of my resilience, I'll put it
Speaker 2: that way. You being deployed with guys like my Crystal
Speaker 2: and Miller and you know, Mick Nicholson and uh, you
Speaker 2: know Jove Hotel and all these different leaders you know
Speaker 2: that were just so calm and poised under pressure. Just
Speaker 2: going back to the Pentagon and seeing the stupid stuff
Speaker 2: people would just freak out over when nobody's shooting at you,
Speaker 2: and you know, and you just you just watch and
Speaker 2: learn and live working for some of the most poised
Speaker 2: leaders under pressure, and then you get in an environment
Speaker 2: where you know, they flip out over the craziest stuff.
Speaker 2: But anyway, it was it was an interesting year. I
Speaker 2: was kind of it was a position that they picked
Speaker 2: me for again, because this was probably about the third
Speaker 2: opportunity I was. I had to be looked at for
Speaker 2: for brigadier general, and while I was in that job,
Speaker 2: I ended up getting selected and so I ended up
Speaker 2: My next role was as they I got selected for
Speaker 2: one star and I went out to Fort Wachuca, Arizona
Speaker 2: and commanded what's called Network Enterprise Technology Command net COM,
Speaker 2: which is they run really all the IT infrastructure for
Speaker 2: all the post camps and stations for the Army. So
Speaker 2: it was more of an enterprise IT type role. About
Speaker 2: sixteen thousand people spread out all over the globe. Pretty
Speaker 2: big mission. But the biggest challenge I had in that
Speaker 2: role was dealing with seaquestration. So we were furloughing and
Speaker 2: we had a pretty heavy concentration of civilian workforce, and
Speaker 2: we had to go through the challenges of sequestration, trying
Speaker 2: to figure out how do we keep the network up
Speaker 2: when you don't have any money, you know, and trying
Speaker 2: to make sure we focused on ensuring that all of
Speaker 2: our Oconas connections weren't bothered, and we took all of
Speaker 2: our risk in Konas. And there was a method to
Speaker 2: the madness there is all your four star headquarters in
Speaker 2: the Army were in Konas, and all the Army senior
Speaker 2: leaders were in hous and if we could isolate everything
Speaker 2: forward deployed and indo pay comm in Southwest Asia and
Speaker 2: the UK and Korea and everything else and make sure
Speaker 2: that they could kind of focus and operate without any
Speaker 2: risk admission, we would assume risk and uh stateside, because
Speaker 2: we know the senior leaders weren't going to tolerate it,
Speaker 2: we would be able to get the resources we needed.
Speaker 2: So there was a little bit of method to the madness.
Speaker 2: But it was it was interesting times. We were trying
Speaker 2: to manage, you know, down to the dollar, every individual
Speaker 2: contract and a lot of this, you know, enterprise it
Speaker 2: is is a lot of its contract labor, and so
Speaker 2: it was it was creative contract management and just to
Speaker 2: try to make sure that you know, we could keep
Speaker 2: the phones up, keep all the VTCs up, and the
Speaker 2: network's running so the army could continue to function. But uh,
Speaker 2: it was an interesting time, especially for the civilian workforce
Speaker 2: because they were for a load for quite a bit
Speaker 2: of time. And from there, I spent a couple of
Speaker 2: years at Netcom. I was acting or the deputy commander
Speaker 2: for a few months, about a year, and then I
Speaker 2: ended up being the acting commander for the second year,
Speaker 2: and then from there I ended up going to Sentcom
Speaker 2: to be the J six for General Austin, who I
Speaker 2: had worked for when he was the director of the
Speaker 2: Joint Staff. He was the first four star in Sentcom.
Speaker 2: And so I get there in late May and I
Speaker 2: start my transition the first week of June, and my
Speaker 2: first day as the j six after the left seat
Speaker 2: right seat with my predecessor, was the day Moses or
Speaker 2: the day Isis went rolling into Moses, and so we
Speaker 2: ended up going right into crisis action planning for Operation
Speaker 2: what ended up becoming Operation Inherent Resolved. So that was
Speaker 2: again another this opportunity, another baptism by fire in a
Speaker 2: new role, but it was it was good, you know,
Speaker 2: pulling all the communicators together, trying to find creative ways
Speaker 2: to stitch together the coalition, rebuilding a lot of the
Speaker 2: big connectivity that had had been atrophied in Iraq, because
Speaker 2: there wasn't a whole lot left in Iraq, but there
Speaker 2: was still you know, there was still fiber and there
Speaker 2: were still capabilities that weren't hot. So we had to
Speaker 2: figure out what was available to us and what we
Speaker 2: could re establish and start building an interesting connection for
Speaker 2: this coalition that was that was forming under Operation Inherent Resolved.
Speaker 2: I did that for a couple of years. I ended
Speaker 2: up getting promoted to major general. I actually thought I
Speaker 2: was going to go to h They were looking at
Speaker 2: me to either go command was called CCOM Communication Electronic Command,
Speaker 2: or possibly the Cyber Center of Excellence. But then I
Speaker 2: get notified that I'm going to be what's called the
Speaker 2: AON director, the Architecture Operations Networking Space Director for the
Speaker 2: G six of the Army. And so so I ended
Speaker 2: up working for the new G six or the G
Speaker 2: six the Army a guy named Lieutenant General Bob Farrell.
Speaker 2: And when I get there and I have my first
Speaker 2: office call with him, I'm like, hey, I thought I
Speaker 2: was supposed to be going to SEACOM. What happened? He said,
Speaker 2: General Millie happened. Milly wanted you to come here to
Speaker 2: the Army G six. And part of that was because
Speaker 2: Milly got to know me when I was on the
Speaker 2: Joint Staff, and I think he trusted me and he
Speaker 2: brought me in. He knew there was that the Army
Speaker 2: network was pretty jacked up and that the Army didn't
Speaker 2: have the network it needed. And there was this report
Speaker 2: that was written from the Institute of Defense Analysis that
Speaker 2: was directed by the House Armed Services Committee, AirLand Subcommittee
Speaker 2: that really wanted to take a good hard look at
Speaker 2: the at the Army's network, because the network was not
Speaker 2: the network the Army needed to fight against the peer adversary.
Speaker 2: And so I got selected to what's called the Army's
Speaker 2: Network Cross Functional Team and spent my last four years,
Speaker 2: you know, leaning in to try to modernize the Army network.
Speaker 2: And that's everything from you know, multipath, you know, resilient
Speaker 2: communications in a contested environment, you know where you're in
Speaker 2: contested in space, the electromagnetic spectrum, and cyber trying to
Speaker 2: find resilient capabilities that can function in that environment. Being
Speaker 2: able to establish a common operating environment for computer, you know,
Speaker 2: for command and control, and being able to communicate and
Speaker 2: synchronize all the war fighting functions, trying to streamline and
Speaker 2: make our command post more survivable, more mobile, reduced signature,
Speaker 2: and then really working on joint interoperability. So those were
Speaker 2: kind of the three or four lines of effort we
Speaker 2: were focused on, and we were driving it pretty hard,
Speaker 2: you know. And I did that from twenty seventeen to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, and that's where I culminated my career
Speaker 2: in the Army. I ended up. We went through COVID,
Speaker 2: which was an interesting time. We went through some major
Speaker 2: you know, uh fielding of new capabilities to a lot
Speaker 2: of the units, called the Integrated Tactle Network, you know,
Speaker 2: providing units smaller, lighter, more capable comms connectivity than that
Speaker 2: they had before. And that's that's going to be a
Speaker 2: constant work in progress because technology keeps evolving, the threat
Speaker 2: keeps evolving, and so what we've kind of found and
Speaker 2: what we decided then is we made a decision to
Speaker 2: stop fielding capabilities that weren't going to it weren't going
Speaker 2: to be needed in the future fight, and we tried
Speaker 2: to fix the ability for immediately, for units to have
Speaker 2: better capabilities to fight immediately. Get them capability it was
Speaker 2: either being leveraged by the Special Ops community or by others,
Speaker 2: but get them new kit that was capable without trying
Speaker 2: to develop something new and take years to develop and
Speaker 2: spend you know, a fortune, and by the time you
Speaker 2: field it, it's obsolete. So trying to use a lot
Speaker 2: more stuff off the shelf and then capitalizing on stuff
Speaker 2: that the special mission units and the special Ops community
Speaker 2: was using, if it could scale to the army, we
Speaker 2: were trying to you know, feed you know, deliver that
Speaker 2: kind of capability into the army. So it was a
Speaker 2: great mission. I had a very small team. I like
Speaker 2: to call them the most powerful platoon on the planet.
Speaker 2: They were about twenty four people assigned, and I had
Speaker 2: about I would say attached. I had about another twenty five,
Speaker 2: so it was roughly about fifty folks that were really
Speaker 2: trying to you know, doing the heavy lifting of trying
Speaker 2: to modernize the army and get a network that will
Speaker 2: allow the army to do the cape you know, command
Speaker 2: of control that it needs to be able to do. Again,
Speaker 2: the focus was pure adversary think Russia, China, I think
Speaker 2: electromagnetic or electronic warfare and being able to fight through
Speaker 2: all that. So that was fun. It was a it
Speaker 2: was a good last few years. And then on July
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty one, I you know, hung up the
Speaker 2: uniform and I made my move into into industry.
Speaker 1: Did how did that feel after you know, thirty five
Speaker 1: years of military service and you know the way you
Speaker 1: describe your career, I mean it's a great trip, a
Speaker 1: great ride. You know, you did all the things you're
Speaker 1: supposed to do, got promoted to two star. What was
Speaker 1: it like to finally hang up the uniform.
Speaker 2: Everybody tells you you will know when it's time, and
Speaker 2: I knew, I knew it was time. I mean it
Speaker 2: was I mean, I was kind of seeing the riding
Speaker 2: on the wall. There was only a few other things
Speaker 2: that I could do if I was to I was.
Speaker 2: I hit five years in grade as a two star,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of like, Okay, it's time to get
Speaker 2: out of the way and make room for some other
Speaker 2: guys to move up. If I was going to be
Speaker 2: a three star, which I don't think I was going
Speaker 2: to be, it would have been the Army G six
Speaker 2: or DISSA or possibly the Joint Staff J six. And
Speaker 2: at the time, they picked a great guy to be
Speaker 2: the G six, a guy named John Morrison, personal friend
Speaker 2: of mine. They picked a Marine to be the Joint
Speaker 2: Staff J six, guy named Dennis Crawl. He and I
Speaker 2: served together in saintcam another great American great leader, and
Speaker 2: they picked an Air Force leader at for this, so
Speaker 2: I kind of knew that, you know, there was nothing.
Speaker 2: The music stopped and there were no more chairs, and
Speaker 2: I was okay with that because I didn't really want
Speaker 2: to do three more years of grind. I was, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of those jobs would have been in the Pentagon,
Speaker 2: and I it was it was time to move on,
Speaker 2: and I was very I served longer than I ever
Speaker 2: thought I was going to be able to. You know,
Speaker 2: I went in thinking I'd do four years, build a
Speaker 2: little technical you know, technical skills to offset my math degree,
Speaker 2: and figure out where it would take me on the
Speaker 2: commercial side. I ended up spending a lot more time
Speaker 2: and being able to do a lot more things than
Speaker 2: I ever dreamed possible. And I think it was good.
Speaker 2: It was the time was right for me personally, and
Speaker 2: so we uh, you know, I was looking I was
Speaker 2: looking at all kinds of different things. I reached out
Speaker 2: to a whole bunch of peers, a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: former bosses, Folks that used to work with me, Folks
Speaker 2: that used to work for me, Folks I had met
Speaker 2: in industry over the way, you know, and on my
Speaker 2: way out, it was kind of during the height of COVID.
Speaker 2: It was, you know, early summer of twenty one. COVID
Speaker 2: hit in twenty but you know, everybody was working hybrid.
Speaker 2: You know, at the time, almost all of my interviews
Speaker 2: were either zoom calls or teams calls or whatever, not
Speaker 2: a lot of space to face, and I kind of
Speaker 2: narrowed my search down to you know, I was looking
Speaker 2: at everything, and I felt like, you know, I've got
Speaker 2: thirty five years of experience. I need to be able
Speaker 2: to use that to give something back. And with a
Speaker 2: son that's you know, former infantry now special ops communicator,
Speaker 2: another son that's former infantry now is a military intelligence officer.
Speaker 2: The company I ended up joining, c ACI, was a
Speaker 2: perfect fit for me because I can leverage my you know,
Speaker 2: technical skills, my leadership, my domain experience, and be able
Speaker 2: to provide capabilities that's going to help those guys, you know,
Speaker 2: give them solutions that will allow them to do their
Speaker 2: jobs better. So for me, it was it was a
Speaker 2: good fit. And there was jobs I was looking at.
Speaker 2: Companies I was looking at that were big, that were
Speaker 2: big bureaucratic machines that would have reminded me of serving
Speaker 2: and the building. There were other companies that were big
Speaker 2: bureaucratic machines that would have reminded me of serving in
Speaker 2: something like this again. And then there was this company
Speaker 2: which reminded me a lot of Jasok because it's got structure.
Speaker 2: It's got tremendous I mean, it's forty plus percent veterans,
Speaker 2: a lot of support to the soft and the intelligence
Speaker 2: community and across all the federal government. But what I
Speaker 2: liked about is they had the structure in place, but
Speaker 2: they had been really on a trajectory of going from
Speaker 2: kind of butts in seats services to high end, very unique,
Speaker 2: very technical mission focus capabilities, everything from space to airborne
Speaker 2: platforms to terrestrial you know, everything from command and control
Speaker 2: communications to ISR, electronic warfare, counter uas. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was a great fit for me personally to feel like
Speaker 2: I could come in, I could bring something to the table,
Speaker 2: but I can also learn something. So it was a
Speaker 2: good one of the things people go ahead.
Speaker 1: And so I was just going to ask, you know, specifically,
Speaker 1: what do you do at KHAKI.
Speaker 2: So I'm a senior vice president in the It's called
Speaker 2: our C three I Communit Control, Communications, Intelligence line of business.
Speaker 2: So our primary customer base in the division. I'm in
Speaker 2: the division that does tactical and platform C three I,
Speaker 2: but our customers are Army at Aberde Improving Ground Huntsville.
Speaker 2: We support SOCOM with a big program at Fort Bragg
Speaker 2: North Carolina that supports all of so common with their
Speaker 2: deployable communications capability. We do some work with the Air Force,
Speaker 2: We do some work with Customs and Border Patrol. We
Speaker 2: run their Air and Maritime Operations Center Forum, and we
Speaker 2: run the dhs ICE Tactical Communications. I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: pretty good portfolio. It's kind of in my wheelhouse, but
Speaker 2: I like it. It's a and one of the things
Speaker 2: that when I was leaving, a lot of other retirees
Speaker 2: and folks tell me the thing they missed the most
Speaker 2: when they got out was the camaraderie. And the thing
Speaker 2: I like about this company because you got so many
Speaker 2: veterans in the from the CEO on down, everybody's so
Speaker 2: mission focused. The camaraderie is there. I mean, I feel
Speaker 2: like the people I work with, you know, the role
Speaker 2: I have, I feel like I can do good in
Speaker 2: the role people I work with, I feel like I
Speaker 2: can have fun, you know, and feel like I'm with
Speaker 2: like minded individuals that get the mission accomplished. And it's
Speaker 2: actually for me, it's been a pretty good fit. I've
Speaker 2: been doing it for about a little over four years now.
Speaker 1: And tell us about the six eight Alliance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so another great piece of advice I had when
Speaker 2: I was transitioning was you're going to want to do
Speaker 2: different things like be on boards or do consulting part time.
Speaker 2: And so I immediately when I transitioned back twenty one,
Speaker 2: I stood up in LLC and I called it six
Speaker 2: eight Alliance because the unit I was in up in
Speaker 2: Northern Virginia. The motto was Isaiah six eight when the
Speaker 2: Lord says, oomselle, who will go for us? And the
Speaker 2: Isaiah six A he says it is I Lord, send
Speaker 2: me and sent me was kind of the unit motto.
Speaker 2: And so I had to pick a name, and I
Speaker 2: was trying to find something that wasn't already taken. So
Speaker 2: I set up in LC in North Carolina. For really
Speaker 2: it's focused on consulting leader development. If I get to
Speaker 2: sit on any boards or anything like that, I'll do
Speaker 2: that through the Limited Liability Company. I'm also at the
Speaker 2: honor of speaking at a ROTC commissioning a few years
Speaker 2: ago at Campbell University. And we bought a house right
Speaker 2: outside Campbell r right on actually right on the golf
Speaker 2: course there at Keith Hills by Campbell University. And when
Speaker 2: the the president of the university found out I was
Speaker 2: moving there. He asked me if I wanted to be
Speaker 2: an adjunct professor, and so I met with the dean,
Speaker 2: I met with the UH, the the chair of the
Speaker 2: Homeland Security Department, and so I teached about I got
Speaker 2: four different classes I teach in the Homeland Security Department.
Speaker 2: I teach one on the foundations and concepts of terrorism.
Speaker 2: I teach a course on intelligence and national security, teach
Speaker 2: a course I'm getting ready to teach a course on
Speaker 2: homeland security, and another one on UH National and International Security.
Speaker 2: So they're they're they're all undergraduate courses, you know, two
Speaker 2: hundred through three hundred series. You know, it's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. It's good opportunities to do good and have
Speaker 2: some fun, stay connected to the to the youth, contribute
Speaker 2: to my local university there in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: I think I think we have a question for you
Speaker 1: from a viewer or listener. But okay, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: you might be working on a book.
Speaker 2: Also, Yeah, I'm putting some pen to paper. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to get a structured I am. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 2: what to call it, and I'm not sure exactly what
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's really going to be I think
Speaker 2: a bit of an autobiography and a leadership book. That's
Speaker 2: that's where I want to go with it. I'm just
Speaker 2: trying to kryd to make sure it will resonate. Hopefully
Speaker 2: it will resonate with with some folks beside myself, if
Speaker 2: nothing else, I want to leave it as something that
Speaker 2: maybe my kids and grandkids will read and able to
Speaker 2: hear some stories I wouldn't otherwise get to hear. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm working on it right now. It's it's a long
Speaker 2: way from publication though.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: I've got a bunch of stuff jumbled together and I'm
Speaker 2: getting trying to get it organized into some sections, and
Speaker 2: I still have a lot of editing I need to do.
Speaker 3: D What do we got we got from Sean? He asked,
Speaker 3: can you talk about the overall frequency of having to
Speaker 3: troubleshoot army comms issues and what's the most extreme action
Speaker 3: you've had to take or heard of to re establish communications?
Speaker 2: Good question, the most say that again about the frequency?
Speaker 3: Uh, I'm sorry about that. Hold Onald's what's the most
Speaker 3: extreme action you have had to take or heard of
Speaker 3: to re establish army communications? And the overall frequency of
Speaker 3: having to troubleshoot army comms issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I will tell you there was a I
Speaker 2: think the most extreme challenge I had was actually on
Speaker 2: a float staging base in the Pacific and we were
Speaker 2: operating out of Guam and we were on the USS
Speaker 2: Bellow when it was a Navy vessel and it was
Speaker 2: as well as the joint communications You commander and I
Speaker 2: had the best communicators on the planet on my team,
Speaker 2: and we were out there and we had done this
Speaker 2: multiple times before and we could not make it work.
Speaker 2: And the extreme I mean because it was a staging
Speaker 2: base and the Jaysock commander, who was a two star
Speaker 2: at the time and I was at the time, I
Speaker 2: was a major. I could not provide him the colms
Speaker 2: he needed. He had to depart the vessel and go
Speaker 2: back and go back to the intermediate staging base to
Speaker 2: command and control. It was frustrating. It felt like mission
Speaker 2: failure to me. We stayed there and tried to identify
Speaker 2: and isolate the problem and continue to work. One of
Speaker 2: the tier commanders from the Navy, he was on the
Speaker 2: vessel and I didn't want to leave the vessel and
Speaker 2: leave him stranded without console. Our guys constantly troubleshot it,
Speaker 2: and we realized it was a problem inside the system,
Speaker 2: inside the Navy ship where we just couldn't fix it.
Speaker 2: Our guys couldn't fix it, and the Navy couldn't fix it.
Speaker 2: And it was the only a float staging base where
Speaker 2: we've had that kind of a troubleshooting problem where we
Speaker 2: could not find a solution. I think another I mentioned
Speaker 2: the cable cut in Iraq. I mean that was significant,
Speaker 2: just the sheer impact it had on because at that
Speaker 2: time in two thousands, you know, seven two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: off the you know, having all two simultaneous wars going
Speaker 2: on in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the reach back
Speaker 2: requirements that uh those four star commanders on the ground
Speaker 2: back to sentcom back to the Pentagon, and the and
Speaker 2: the fact that you know they were operating basically on
Speaker 2: a on a shoe string, you know, with with satellite
Speaker 2: connectivity and significant reduction of bandwidth, a lot of messages
Speaker 2: couldn't go through. That was a that was pretty significant challenge.
Speaker 2: And I would say on the tactical side, at the
Speaker 2: lowest echelon, I think being in situations in Afghanistan where
Speaker 2: you've got all the different the crew systems and the
Speaker 2: counter ID systems, and you've got communicator you know, get
Speaker 2: communications systems on a lot of these convoys and platforms,
Speaker 2: and the spectrum was so congested that a lot of
Speaker 2: the if you had some of your counter i D
Speaker 2: systems up and running for force protection, a lot of
Speaker 2: the comms wouldn't work. And so we were actually we
Speaker 2: weren't we weren't being contested through electronic warfare, but we
Speaker 2: were congesting ourselves by just you know, mismanagement of the spectrum.
Speaker 2: We had stuff that was just co site interference on
Speaker 2: antennas and different things like that, and so you had
Speaker 2: to find creative ways to win, when to turn off
Speaker 2: and turn on the systems and and and be creative
Speaker 2: on kind of you know, establishing some TTPs for that.
Speaker 2: Hopefully that answered the question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so, Thank you Pete album. And before
Speaker 1: we get going tonight, is there anything that we didn't
Speaker 1: get to talk about that you'd like to mention?
Speaker 2: I mean, I just think that you know, I know,
Speaker 2: you know, you had Pete labor on here before. He
Speaker 2: talks a lot about common sense leadership. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I established something I called common sense leadership years ago,
Speaker 2: and it was a it was you know, and it applied.
Speaker 2: It kind of helped me out through the military a
Speaker 2: little bit. But it was one of these things where
Speaker 2: you know, having the five senses and I call him
Speaker 2: the five senses of leadership, and that's a sense of pride.
Speaker 2: And I think if you go into any organization and
Speaker 2: they have a sense of pride in what they do
Speaker 2: and who they are, what they do and who they represent,
Speaker 2: typically that's that's kind of the key to a high
Speaker 2: performing organization. And I think, you know, as a communicator,
Speaker 2: having a sense of urgency is important when you do
Speaker 2: have a problem with the spectrum, or you have a
Speaker 2: cable cut, or you may not be able to fix
Speaker 2: it immediately. You may not be able to get the
Speaker 2: answer from the top, but you've got to figure that
Speaker 2: downtime is measured in seconds and you got to get
Speaker 2: after it. You've got to have a sense of urgency.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to have a sense of direction,
Speaker 2: know where you're at, where you're going, and how you're
Speaker 2: going to get there. And that's not just when you're
Speaker 2: driving from here to you know, from North Carolina up
Speaker 2: to New York. If I was coming up to see
Speaker 2: you in person, I would need to have a plan, right.
Speaker 2: But it's also you know, if you're a leader and
Speaker 2: you're mentoring a young soldier or you've got an employee,
Speaker 2: it's like when you sit down for a performance counseling,
Speaker 2: it's like, here's where you're at, here's where I'd like
Speaker 2: you to go, and here's how you get there. And
Speaker 2: I think helping put that sense of direction in place.
Speaker 2: I think that's you know, it's a key part of
Speaker 2: counseling and mentoring, no matter whether you're in the military
Speaker 2: or in any world, in any job, I think having
Speaker 2: a sense of purpose too, understanding the big picture. I
Speaker 2: had a leader one time that had a little sign
Speaker 2: on his desk said he said, why leads what and how?
Speaker 2: And if if the leader knows why things need to
Speaker 2: be done and the people that are working for him
Speaker 2: know what to do and how to do it, typically
Speaker 2: they can usually be successful. But I think, you know,
Speaker 2: if you have a brick layer putting one brick on
Speaker 2: top of another, if he knows he's building a cathedral,
Speaker 2: he'll be a little bit more excited about putting one
Speaker 2: brick on top of another, you know. And I know,
Speaker 2: Sidney shack Now used to use this example. You know
Speaker 2: who Sidney shack Now is. He says, you got the
Speaker 2: guy and he's putting one brick on top of another,
Speaker 2: and he asks him what he's doing. He says, I'm
Speaker 2: putting one brick on top of another. And he asked
Speaker 2: the other guy, what are you doing? Hecause, I'm building
Speaker 2: a wall. Can't you see It's going to be a big,
Speaker 2: beautiful wall. And he asked the third guy, and the
Speaker 2: third guy says, I'm going to build the cathedral. It's
Speaker 2: going to be the most beautiful cathedral. He goes, that
Speaker 2: guy has a sense of purpose. He takes pride in
Speaker 2: what he's doing anyway, sense of purpose, knowing the why,
Speaker 2: knowing the big picture. And I think it's also important
Speaker 2: to have a sense of humor. Okay, uh this is
Speaker 2: you know. I was kind of a little bit of
Speaker 2: a smart ass growing up. I was sometimes a class clown.
Speaker 2: Like I said, when my dad died, I kind of
Speaker 2: had to buckle down and become become the man. But
Speaker 2: I feel like I haven't lost my sense of humor.
Speaker 2: I just got to know when to temperate and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, make sure I don't say the wrong thing
Speaker 2: in the run, you know, and offend somebody unintentionally. But
Speaker 2: I think it is important to have fun. I think
Speaker 2: it's important to be able to laugh at yourself. I
Speaker 2: think it's important not to be thin skinned, uh and
Speaker 2: be able to have a good time, because I think
Speaker 2: you can have a whole lot more fun, you know,
Speaker 2: being ready when when you know, when you can have
Speaker 2: you know, tell a few jokes every now and then
Speaker 2: and be able to take a joke. I think, uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I guess what I'd leave you with. Is
Speaker 2: my last kind of mantra that I lashed onto my
Speaker 2: youngest son when he was a he was a teenager
Speaker 2: and I was in the unit in Virginia. He was
Speaker 2: playing travel hockey. He was the captain of his hockey team,
Speaker 2: and he had he had what he called the three
Speaker 2: rules of Gallagherism, and he was the hockey captain and said, okay, Jake,
Speaker 2: talk me through this. He goes, find a way, don't
Speaker 2: be that guy and give him the business. I said,
Speaker 2: I'll explain it. He goes find a way, dadd and
Speaker 2: find a way to get the puck, find a way
Speaker 2: to score or find a way to win, find a way.
Speaker 2: All right, I like it, he goes, Don't be that guy.
Speaker 2: Don't be that guy gets a penalty when the game's
Speaker 2: on the line and we got to play a man down.
Speaker 2: Don't be that guy that you know violates curfew and
Speaker 2: you know has to set the bench. Don't be that
Speaker 2: guy that does stupid shit. And if you find that guy,
Speaker 2: give him the business. A little tough love, a little performance,
Speaker 2: a little uh, you know, wall to wall counseling, whatever
Speaker 2: it takes, give him the business. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 2: I can live with that. That's pretty good. So anyway,
Speaker 2: don't be that guy, give him the business. But I
Speaker 2: think the most important of those three was really find
Speaker 2: a way. And I think, you know, growing up as
Speaker 2: a special ops communicator, I mean I like to call
Speaker 2: myself a special ops communicator, even though it was only
Speaker 2: about a third of my career in special ops. I
Speaker 2: think that's what really gave me the fire in my
Speaker 2: belly to want to continue serving and want to keep
Speaker 2: doing this because I feel like, kind of like Abram's charter,
Speaker 2: you know, for the Rangers, if you can take back
Speaker 2: what you learn to the regular army and make it
Speaker 2: a better you know, make your unit better. I think
Speaker 2: you've you've you've done something there, and I felt like,
Speaker 2: you know, even though I was never a ranger, having
Speaker 2: the privilege and honor of serving in some of the
Speaker 2: best special mission units in the Army. What I've learned there,
Speaker 2: I've been able to take to some of the conventional
Speaker 2: assignments and I think make the organizations better. So for me,
Speaker 2: it's about being able to take something, you know, bring
Speaker 2: what you've learned, and be able to contribute to the
Speaker 2: whatever organization you find yourself in. So anyway, Jack, I
Speaker 2: want to thank you and forgive me the opportunity to
Speaker 2: be on this. This was really fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I really appreciate you spending your evening chatting
Speaker 1: with us. It's been really interesting and you know, insightful
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I know you have a lot of
Speaker 2: good shows with gun slingers and folks that are doing
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff where you know, and they're working
Speaker 2: on muzzle velocity and you know, you know, close quarter
Speaker 2: battle and there's some real I mean, you have some
Speaker 2: real no kidding, you know warriors and gun slingers on here.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm you know, I've worked around the nation's
Speaker 2: heroes and supported the best of the very best, and
Speaker 2: I've just been blessed, you know. Like I said, consider
Speaker 2: myself a special ops communicator and I've I've loved every
Speaker 2: minute of it.
Speaker 1: We've also had all kinds of other people, from CIA
Speaker 1: analysts to a combat weather man who is who is
Speaker 1: a hero in his own right. I'll embarrass him by
Speaker 1: saying that he has a Bronze star with Valor. All
Speaker 1: these incredible people that you know, you get to meet
Speaker 1: through doing a show like this. It's it's awesome. And
Speaker 1: I've tried to get special ops logisticians on the show
Speaker 1: before and I've had a hard time getting them to talk.
Speaker 1: But the logistics are as you know, I mean, it's paramount.
Speaker 1: It's none of the other stuff. Yeah, absolutely, But yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks again, Pete, and hope to talk to you again soon.
Speaker 1: And for everyone else out there watching, thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us on the Team House. Check us out on Patreon
Speaker 1: if you haven't already, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks Jack.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I want to tell all of you today
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