Speaker 1: Special Operations Cobertsbiona the Team House with your hopes. Jack
Speaker 1: Murphy and David bark Hey. Welcome to Teamhouse, episode three
Speaker 1: fifty four. I'm Dave. This is Jack. Joined tonight by
Speaker 1: our guest Rob Harrison, former Air Force intel guy, with
Speaker 1: some very interesting stories about his own career and also
Speaker 1: about the Chapman incident on Robert S. Fridge as a
Speaker 1: first hand. It has some first hand accounts of that
Speaker 1: and then the aftermath also. So Rob, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us tonight.
Speaker 2: Thanks guys, I appreciate you all having me. My name
Speaker 2: is Rob Harrison. I spent about twenty six year's active
Speaker 2: duty in the Air Force and retired in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: So Rob, the first thing we always like to ask
Speaker 1: is our guest origin story. What what led you? How
Speaker 1: do you grow up? And what led you to the military?
Speaker 2: The path? Yeah, I would say there's some poetry references
Speaker 2: in here somewhere, But I didn't take a traditional path
Speaker 2: like many young young men out there. I might not
Speaker 2: have known exactly what I wanted to do. I graduated
Speaker 2: high school, I was always a good student, ended up
Speaker 2: on an academic scholarship to a local junior college where
Speaker 2: I was going to go ahead and knock out my
Speaker 2: general education requirements before going off to a bigger university.
Speaker 2: And had always had the military and mind specifically the
Speaker 2: Air Force, based on some family lineage folks that had
Speaker 2: also served, and I ended up deciding I came up
Speaker 2: with this awesome plan. I was like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to party my first semester, and I know
Speaker 2: that I need to have a three point oh, So
Speaker 2: I'll squeak by the first semester and then I'll pull
Speaker 2: a four point zero on the second one after I
Speaker 2: get it all out of my system and everything will
Speaker 2: be good. But there was this fine print in my
Speaker 2: in my scholarship, and I needed to maintain a three
Speaker 2: point oh for each portion of the academic year. And
Speaker 2: so I got the regret to inform you, mister Harrison,
Speaker 2: but we're going to have to pull your academic scholarship.
Speaker 2: So I had to tuck my tail between my legs,
Speaker 2: go back home to Mom and dad, fess up to
Speaker 2: them what had happened. And my dad said, well, what
Speaker 2: are you going to do about it? So I decided
Speaker 2: not to put that burden on anybody else and said, well,
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to go talk to the Air
Speaker 2: Force recruiter. And he said, I think that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: And so you went to the recruiter and how did
Speaker 1: you choose the job that you ended up with.
Speaker 2: So that's another there's a story of irony with this one.
Speaker 2: I went in.
Speaker 1: I wanted to fly.
Speaker 2: I knew that if I was going to join the
Speaker 2: Air Force, I wanted to be on airplanes. That's what
Speaker 2: the Air Force does, right, we fly, fight and win.
Speaker 2: So I went into the recruiter. The recruiter said, yes, sorry,
Speaker 2: I don't have any of those jobs available for you.
Speaker 2: But uh, but I took all these aptitude tests and
Speaker 2: I qualify for all this stuff. And he says, well,
Speaker 2: you want to be a linguist and uh, and I said,
Speaker 2: I'm a redneck from Mississippi. I can barely speak English.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, uh, you know, study foreign language?
Speaker 2: He said, well, you you know you qualify for this test.
Speaker 2: You've you've done it, you passed it. You could go
Speaker 2: do that. And I was like, I don't think so,
Speaker 2: so I went in open electronics and uh, in week
Speaker 2: five back then in Air Force basic training, they gave
Speaker 2: you your job assignments, and I grew up, you know, having
Speaker 2: family connections to the Air Force that had served in
Speaker 2: earlier generations. I knew enough about that, and thanks to
Speaker 2: the Discovery Channel's Wings you know episodes way back when,
Speaker 2: I knew enough about the Air Force to know that
Speaker 2: to be a missile maintenance guy in the bottom of
Speaker 2: a silo was not a garden spot, right, And so
Speaker 2: I raised my hand in the middle of week five
Speaker 2: of basic training and said, somebody said that I could
Speaker 2: be a linguist. And I passed for this test and
Speaker 2: so forth, and the guy stopped and he said, anybody
Speaker 2: else take that test, And somebody caught on to what
Speaker 2: was going on and they raised their hand. A side
Speaker 2: door opened up, an in service recruiter came and rescued
Speaker 2: this for a few hours out of basic training. We
Speaker 2: went down a side hallway into a private room, sign
Speaker 2: new contracts, got a coke and a smile, and became,
Speaker 2: you know, contracted to become an airborne photological linguist.
Speaker 1: Fascinating and so so then I assumed, so was DL
Speaker 1: I the next step for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, after basic you would go through DL I pick
Speaker 2: up your basic language acquisition. I studied Persian FARSI. I
Speaker 2: finished that and went into the intelligence and the air
Speaker 2: flu training pipelines. So you go through your intel analysis schools.
Speaker 2: We do that in a place called goodfell At Air
Speaker 2: Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. Then most of our
Speaker 2: survival stuff, most of it happens up in Washington State.
Speaker 2: And then by June of ninety seven, I had spent
Speaker 2: just shia two years in the initial accession pipeline. I
Speaker 2: made it to my first duty station at off At
Speaker 2: Air Force Base outside of Omaha, Nebraska, in a little
Speaker 2: town called Bellevue.
Speaker 1: Fascinating and so what what were you responsible for their
Speaker 1: when you learn Offit?
Speaker 2: At off It, I was a new crypt linguist. We
Speaker 2: were assigned to the RC one thirty five's. I got
Speaker 2: a chance to qualify on the the what we call
Speaker 2: the Rivet joint, the Combat Scent and the Cobra Ball.
Speaker 2: I flew up probably about ten different deployments. Fortunately they
Speaker 2: were all relatively short air crew deployments by normal deployment standards.
Speaker 2: And it all has to do with aircrew hours and
Speaker 2: you know, keeping keeping folks physiologically from being like overflowing,
Speaker 2: if you will. So back and forth to the sandbox.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: This was Operation Southern Watch, Northern Watch. Most of my
Speaker 2: deployments would have been to Prince Salton Air Base. I
Speaker 2: did one up to insult Turkey, and that happened to
Speaker 2: coincide with events that were unfolding in ninety nine for
Speaker 2: Allied Force. But on my very first deployment, I went
Speaker 2: out with the combat Scent and the Cobra ball excuse me,
Speaker 2: the combat scent and the Rivet joint and we redeployed
Speaker 2: back through Ramstein, Germany. And there I ran into an
Speaker 2: AC one thirty spector crew and a guy that the
Speaker 2: personality sticks out. His name is James Patterson O'Brien and uh,
Speaker 2: and if you could imagine, he's from Boston, and uh,
Speaker 2: he's got family members that were cops and firemen and
Speaker 2: probably one that was a priest. But Obe, as they
Speaker 2: called him, he was an intimidating fellow because he had
Speaker 2: this cool specter patch and he was wearing all of
Speaker 2: the subdued patches and my aircrew patches all look like
Speaker 2: a bright shining rainbow compared to his, and he's he
Speaker 2: looks at me and gives me this stern, you know,
Speaker 2: evil look. He's like what are you a fucking dizzo?
Speaker 2: And I had to look at my supervisor at the time.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what is he talking about? Is I don't
Speaker 2: speak that. He's like, well, you had asked, you know,
Speaker 2: could you ever go down and and do our do
Speaker 2: our job in Florida? And he's like, that's what he's
Speaker 2: talking about. Oh so I was a wee can fly
Speaker 2: on gunships. And so at that point it dawned on
Speaker 2: me on my very first deployment that I was not
Speaker 2: in the airframe that I was most suited for. You know,
Speaker 2: the the rivid joint was was cool. I like to say,
Speaker 2: it can spy on the devil and talk to God.
Speaker 2: There's enough Wisban gadgetry on this aircraft to handle all
Speaker 2: of today's work. And you have a twelve way adjustable
Speaker 2: captain's chair, you know, like all kinds of comfort on
Speaker 2: this aircraft. So anyway, I find out on that very
Speaker 2: first deployment that I can go work with Air Force
Speaker 2: Special Operations and from you know, that planet a seed,
Speaker 2: and so I had to figure out like, okay, how
Speaker 2: do you chart that path, what do you have to do,
Speaker 2: what do you how do you qualify to get considered
Speaker 2: to go and do that sort of work. So fast forward,
Speaker 2: that's what I did, And by two thousand I had
Speaker 2: done a number of deployments around the world and and
Speaker 2: I went down to do assess assessment for what we
Speaker 2: called Commando Look, And that was so that I could
Speaker 2: become an intel professional, support and Air Force special operations
Speaker 2: on their various airframes, whether it was AC one thirty gunships,
Speaker 2: MC one thirty talents, they had fifty three payblows and
Speaker 2: then ultimately they ended up Osprey's and so on. I
Speaker 2: got a chance to do and fly all of those.
Speaker 1: It sounds kind of challenging, just even rivet joint. It
Speaker 1: sounds kind of challenging because like when you talk about
Speaker 1: you know, somebody who's doing signals intelligence at like a
Speaker 1: regional collection facility or something like that. You know, obviously
Speaker 1: there is that real time aspect, but they can also
Speaker 1: record it, they can go back, they can like assess it,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of depending on you guys for real
Speaker 1: time like side by side interpretation or translations as you're flying. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a there's a number of aspects like way
Speaker 2: that you would look at it from the intelligence process
Speaker 2: that goes along with all of it. But like first
Speaker 2: and foremost, you know, any Intel professional that is assigned
Speaker 2: to one of those crews, your your duty is to
Speaker 2: the platform itself. And then oh, by the way, you
Speaker 2: know whatever, you know, national priority requirements might be levied
Speaker 2: upon you for tasking and that sort of thing. Right,
Speaker 2: so you you you basically trioge based on prioritization, you know,
Speaker 2: so preservation of the platform itself comes first and foremost,
Speaker 2: and then then going after whatever national requirements might be
Speaker 2: tasked to you.
Speaker 1: Right, what was it a I don't want to say
Speaker 1: Rivet joint in parteriar, but it was a n I
Speaker 1: s R platform that was rushed and down by the
Speaker 1: Chinese a few years ago, Right, So.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a It wasn't a Rivet joint. I think
Speaker 2: the one that you're talking about is the Navy P
Speaker 2: three and the Hainan Island incident. Udly enough, I was
Speaker 2: just having a conversation with somebody about that story today.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Fast forward towards the end of my career, I got
Speaker 2: a chance to be a superintendent of the Intel squadron
Speaker 2: that that handled all of the flyers for the Arsenlum
Speaker 2: thirty five specifically for the Pacific, and that Heinen Island
Speaker 2: incident was one of our alum He was what we
Speaker 2: would have called a Niner, the three ninetyieth Intelligence Squadron.
Speaker 2: Kirk Town's his name. He actually happened to be an
Speaker 2: airman that was augment in that Navy P three crew
Speaker 2: when the Heinen Island incident happened. And and I had
Speaker 2: several mentors that were part of the repatriation process and
Speaker 2: and so forth. But yeah, that that was an interesting story. Uh,
Speaker 2: maybe one for another episode. Yeah, there's a there's a
Speaker 2: lot of opinions out there on yeah, and whether or
Speaker 2: not landing at Heinen Island is the right call under
Speaker 2: the circumstances.
Speaker 1: Right, and then and then I booked I guess that
Speaker 1: not to go to but I said, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: they didn't do a sufficient burn of of everything on
Speaker 1: the aircraft either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a there's a ton of story that I
Speaker 2: would that I'd love to share with you one day
Speaker 2: over over a beverage when we're when we're not on
Speaker 2: this call.
Speaker 1: Sounds good, sounds good.
Speaker 2: That's a that's a deep story.
Speaker 1: But but just to just kind of point out that
Speaker 1: you know, you talk about intelligence on an ac vers
Speaker 1: like A one thirty five and those those ones that
Speaker 1: you know the most is SR platforms are fairly defenseless,
Speaker 1: like they're out there kind of hanging it out right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean you you operate within you know, international standards,
Speaker 2: you know what is known. You know, every everybody's going
Speaker 2: to do some form of reconnaissance on one another intelligence gathering.
Speaker 2: What how do you but yeah, you go out there.
Speaker 2: You typically, you know, at alta tude, you're you're in
Speaker 2: international airspace or within an area that you're approved to fly,
Speaker 2: and then you know you're executing your mission. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: depending on the ao R. I've done everything from off
Speaker 2: the off the coast of the Chatka Peninsula to you know,
Speaker 2: in the in the Pacific theater, whether it be you know,
Speaker 2: North Korea, China, across the Middle East. Most of my
Speaker 2: deployments and the rest of my formative years were on
Speaker 2: the APSOX side, So majority of my time was spent
Speaker 2: deploy into Iraq, Afghanistan, Horn of Africa, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, so you make it through this selection, uh,
Speaker 1: and I assume that there's you know, additional training for
Speaker 1: you then at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the the worst part of selection is the is
Speaker 2: the psycho aw I hated that part. It was too
Speaker 2: damn long and they asked the same question over and over. Uh,
Speaker 2: so I I despised. It turns out the guy that
Speaker 2: was doing.
Speaker 3: My position with ob on that that specter crew ended
Speaker 3: up being on my board when I was going through
Speaker 3: the selection process, and so Jack is his name.
Speaker 2: Jack ends up telling me, Yeah, the psych doc came
Speaker 2: in and debriefed how irritated you got with the number
Speaker 2: of questions and that you thought that it was bullshit
Speaker 2: because there wasn't any like actual correct answer in the
Speaker 2: five choices that they gave you. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's about right. So he gives the readout on the
Speaker 2: situation and everybody's like, well okay, and they did their
Speaker 2: vote around the room. Everybody slaps the table on approval
Speaker 2: for Rob. He's like and then I just started laughing,
Speaker 2: you know, and I was like, well, what was so funny?
Speaker 2: I was like, because the psych doc said the same
Speaker 2: thing when I assessed. So I just laughed at all
Speaker 2: of them, said you just let another one of me,
Speaker 2: and they give the chief.
Speaker 1: Dumbasses, so you and at the twenty fifth Intelligence Squadron
Speaker 1: at Herlbert. And what's it like for you when you
Speaker 1: first show up there?
Speaker 2: Back then? Really small squadron. We were maybe maybe eighty strong,
Speaker 2: small unit. It hadn't it hadn't exploded yet. Uh. And
Speaker 2: and when I say exploded, a lot of stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: coincided with with my eleven War on Terror, the deployments
Speaker 2: that the resulted from all of that. But we were
Speaker 2: eighty people strong. I was a young guy coming from
Speaker 2: the rc WENT thirty five arena, trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 2: how do I do an intelligence job to support you know,
Speaker 2: Air Force special operations platforms and so on. I had
Speaker 2: several guys, one of my mentors, a buddy named Ted Gambogi,
Speaker 2: another guy named Shane Kimmitt. You know, we lost Shane
Speaker 2: in O two and an aircraft accident in Roosevelt Roads.
Speaker 2: But those guys kind of helped steer me, you know,
Speaker 2: down the successful path of how to navigate from the
Speaker 2: traditional strategic IR platform down to the soft side and
Speaker 2: you know, how to operate in the weeds and uh
Speaker 2: and do you know how do you fit in within
Speaker 2: that crew? And and it really you know, boiled down
Speaker 2: to airmanship and and learning learning your airframe, learning your craft,
Speaker 2: and being able to mix and mingle with whether it
Speaker 2: be a special operations airlift mission or strike or cast
Speaker 2: platform or rescue, you know, with the rotary lift, you
Speaker 2: name it. So they helped me navigate it. Jack was
Speaker 2: one of my primary instructors and uh and I leaned
Speaker 2: on him heavily because in the late nineties, Jack and
Speaker 2: another guy named John Scott had been in some key
Speaker 2: missions over in Bosnia and Serbia, and Jack specifically he
Speaker 2: was he was the dizzo on the Paveloat mission that
Speaker 2: flew in to rest to you at the time, that
Speaker 2: was Lieutenant Colonel Goldfiend. He was a squadron commander. I
Speaker 2: think of the triple Nickel, the five fifty fifth out
Speaker 2: of Aviano, if I have all that historically out theurate
Speaker 2: and when Goldfiend grew went on to become the chiefest
Speaker 2: staff of the Air Force. That night he described it
Speaker 2: as he said, it was his least proud moment when
Speaker 2: he successfully intercepted an SA three missile, meaning he got
Speaker 2: shot down. So anyway, Jack and the crew get the payblows,
Speaker 2: get tasked to go and recover those guys recover him.
Speaker 2: And if you can imagine like where his AT six
Speaker 2: team gets shot down, like it's in a heavily defended
Speaker 2: air defense serfs to air missile type environment. So Jack
Speaker 2: as an intel capability on the pablows. It helps them
Speaker 2: navigate through low level terrain masking, threat avoidance, threat warning,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. These guys literally fly the gauntlet
Speaker 2: in order to go and pick up Goldfen and Goldfien
Speaker 2: you know, lives and becomes to the capabilities of Air
Speaker 2: Force Special Operations and specifically the ones we call the
Speaker 2: steel Horse the payblows.
Speaker 1: That's wild. That's wild. So while you're at the twenty
Speaker 1: fifth on your first tour, that's when nine to eleven happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nine to eleven happened obviously September eleventh that year.
Speaker 2: I had just by by about July time period, I
Speaker 2: had gotten qualified on the U model gunship known as
Speaker 2: the Spooky AC went thirty U. And when once nine
Speaker 2: eleven happened, immediately everybody is in deployment mode like you're
Speaker 2: just waiting, you know, you know that the orders are
Speaker 2: going to come. It's just a matter of like the
Speaker 2: tasking flowing and that sort of thing. So our unit
Speaker 2: immediately starts spinning people up on additional airframes so that
Speaker 2: you can maximize you know, support and you know, expand
Speaker 2: capability and so on. They build out the deployment team.
Speaker 2: And there's a handful of people that know this story.
Speaker 2: But Rick, Cops, if you're listening, I apologize for what
Speaker 2: I'm about to say. Sorry, not sorry. They were building
Speaker 2: out the initial deployment team and I wasn't on the list,
Speaker 2: and I was recently, you know, like I was the
Speaker 2: guy who had just assessed into the unit, but I
Speaker 2: was the one who had most recent you know experience
Speaker 2: in our intel mission in that AOO and so our
Speaker 2: guys were looking at the seasoned folks and Rick Cox's
Speaker 2: name was on the list as one of our folks
Speaker 2: and he was out in the Pacific Theater. And as
Speaker 2: they're going around the room with the initial deployment plan,
Speaker 2: fella name, he become Colonel sip the Captain Sippowitz, big tall,
Speaker 2: athletic dude, grizzled jaw. You know, he just sitting there
Speaker 2: stone stone cold, you know, killer planning, you know, the
Speaker 2: the deployment operation for for our mission set. And he
Speaker 2: does the around the room and I'm like, yep, new
Speaker 2: guy here. I got a question and I made my pitch.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm the most recent I'm newly qualified
Speaker 2: on this, but I've got recent experience in this ar.
Speaker 2: I've been busting my ass and my name's not on
Speaker 2: that list that I want. I want that changed. And
Speaker 2: he stops and he listens, goes around the rooms. A
Speaker 2: whole bunch of people said thumbs up. He's like, all right,
Speaker 2: Cox is out, Harrison, you're in and Uh, and that
Speaker 2: story has come back, especially after I had made a chief.
Speaker 2: He's like, I remember the day when you and Uh,
Speaker 2: and it was, you know, just a moment where open
Speaker 2: mouths get fed you you you speak up. And in
Speaker 2: this case, I had had reason too. And man if
Speaker 2: I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have made the initial deployment,
Speaker 2: and things hadn't wouldn't have unfolded the way they did
Speaker 2: in my crew. And well, anyway, sorry, not something.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that initial deployment because Gecko, Rhino
Speaker 1: and Akanda Roberts like, you were there for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I had. I was extremely fortunate. So I
Speaker 2: was brand new and to say brand new amongst you
Speaker 2: know an operator crowd. I didn't even know what a
Speaker 2: rock drum was, so I was new, you know. When
Speaker 2: it came to that level of operations. I had some
Speaker 2: senior folks, a fella named Ken Welborne that took me
Speaker 2: under his wing. He showed me the ropes.
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Speaker 1: So your first deployment with them is that includes Gecko
Speaker 1: and Rhino and a condo along with Robert Fridge. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us about that deployment how it starts out
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I had just mentioned a fellow by the
Speaker 2: name of Ken Wellbornon who was our He was our
Speaker 2: senior guy and had taken me under his wing, showed
Speaker 2: me the ropes and kept me from walking into propellers
Speaker 2: and all kinds of stuff. Ken was a typical you know,
Speaker 2: just he was the epitome of a of an awesome
Speaker 2: senior nco. He he had done a ton of cool
Speaker 2: stuff in his career, and so at this point like
Speaker 2: this might have been towards the end of his actual
Speaker 2: active duty career, so he put me, you know, out
Speaker 2: in front as much as he possibly could. I had
Speaker 2: the fortune of being on the very first AC one
Speaker 2: thirty that crossed into Afghanistan airspace after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: and then that led to that initial mission at Gecko
Speaker 2: and Rhino, which was the airfield seizure that the Rangers
Speaker 2: had taken over what became Rhino at Camp Rhino, I
Speaker 2: think is what the Marines called it. They once they
Speaker 2: took over from the Rangers and to all the Marines,
Speaker 2: the Rangers were there first. Then Gecko was Mulla Omar's palace,
Speaker 2: and that night that was a huge joint Special operations mission,
Speaker 2: tons of rotary wing aircraft, fixed wing. I remember charging
Speaker 2: at the border and we had we had three gunships
Speaker 2: and three talents his sixty one thirties line of breast
Speaker 2: trying to hit tankers as we're pressing in, and the
Speaker 2: tanker crews were hilarious because they're like, no, this tale
Speaker 2: nuver is supposed to be behind this tanker and we're like, dude,
Speaker 2: we don't give a shit, just give us gas. And
Speaker 2: so they gave us gas and we pressed on because
Speaker 2: they were about to screw up time zone target. So
Speaker 2: anyway we push in the airborn mission commander is Pete Blaber.
Speaker 2: He's on board the aircraft that I'm on, and yeah
Speaker 2: it was wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know it's interesting because you know, having
Speaker 1: been involved in all this stuff, you know, the AC
Speaker 1: one thirty is a platform that's sort of been under fire,
Speaker 1: you know, like we we don't need anymore since Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and it's and from what I hear, it's under fire again.
Speaker 1: I mean, but with as they continue to update it,
Speaker 1: do you see anything else that can read place its capabilities?
Speaker 2: Man, I think we'd have to sit here and go
Speaker 2: to the whiteboard with some sci fi capabilities. You know,
Speaker 2: when you talk about you know, persistent casts and so on,
Speaker 2: the debate nowadays is you know, penetrating platforms and you know,
Speaker 2: having having an environment that allows for a persistent cast platform.
Speaker 2: Whether the debate is over the A ten that is
Speaker 2: you know, phased out and said to be replaced by
Speaker 2: the F thirty five. Like you know, nothing will ever
Speaker 2: you know, purposely specifically be able to replace what the
Speaker 2: A ten Warthog could do, just like nothing would ever
Speaker 2: be able to specifically replace what an ac Win thirty
Speaker 2: can do. I could there be something, Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 2: I'm your typical you know. Uh, I'm a I'm a
Speaker 2: soft guy at heart, you know. So what do we do?
Speaker 2: We think outside the box? I could come up with
Speaker 2: a number of Barnapkin ideas on how we could do that,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. I think there are certain platforms
Speaker 2: that always be near and dear and sentimental. So I
Speaker 2: would I'd vote to keep it around as long as
Speaker 2: you can, because I mean, look at look at what's
Speaker 2: going on in Iran and Israel right now. If if
Speaker 2: Israel is able to you know, establish you know, air superiority,
Speaker 2: well now you have the ability to penetrate with those
Speaker 2: platforms that weren't initially designed to penetrate.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So I'd say there's still a need, still a capability
Speaker 2: that would exist and still in the future, you know,
Speaker 2: it push came to shove, you would you would allow,
Speaker 2: you'd create the environment that would allow their their operations
Speaker 2: to continue.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so let's go on to Robert s. Fize
Speaker 1: if you don't mind, can can you tell us sort
Speaker 1: of the the mission brief for you guys, what your
Speaker 1: responsibility was and how it all played out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that initial deployment was you know October. Robert's
Speaker 2: Ridge is associated with Operation anacondas so we got to
Speaker 2: fast forward to February March time period of two thousand
Speaker 2: and two. So just chronologically, you've gone through you know,
Speaker 2: Pobbo has fallen, Kandahar has fallen, the North has fallen,
Speaker 2: the al Qaeda fighters and Taliban had moved to Tora Bora,
Speaker 2: and we've gone through the winter time where they've kind
Speaker 2: of retreated into their high ground if you will, basically
Speaker 2: pages out of the playbook that they had used against
Speaker 2: the Russians in the eighties. Ironically, that was required reading
Speaker 2: for us as we were going in. I remember books,
Speaker 2: you know, showing up by the case for the bear
Speaker 2: went over the mountain and the other side of the mountain.
Speaker 2: So it was eighties, uh, you know, war story perspectives,
Speaker 2: one from you know, Russian commanders and others from commanders
Speaker 2: of the muja haden, So we obviously cared what the
Speaker 2: other side of the mountain looked like, and what was
Speaker 2: unfolding in Operation at Anaconda was exactly what we anticipated
Speaker 2: based on how they had behaved against the Russians in
Speaker 2: the eighties. So the mission brief is that this is
Speaker 2: the spring offensive. It's brief as hammer and Anvil. You're
Speaker 2: gonna have special operations, uh overwatch, calling in fire support.
Speaker 2: You're gonna have uh soft working with indigenous pushing up
Speaker 2: against the anvil that is a conventional force. And it's
Speaker 2: all gonna happen right there in the Shaykope Valley for
Speaker 2: anybody that follows the you know, Afghan you know, uh
Speaker 2: critical battles and stuff. The the nearest town that would
Speaker 2: be significant is that of Marzak. You know, the there's uh,
Speaker 2: there's areas like the the safe houses up in Gardez,
Speaker 2: you know, the some of the forces had come out
Speaker 2: of barroom down to this area. But anyway, Operation Anaconda
Speaker 2: is going to be the kickoff of all of that. Ironically,
Speaker 2: the very first night of Anaconda gets delayed with weather
Speaker 2: and so forth, and then once we start to move
Speaker 2: you know, American forces into position, it becomes immediately obvious
Speaker 2: that the enemy is already there and they already have
Speaker 2: a foothold in the high ground. We essentially don't have
Speaker 2: enough dedicated close air support on station. During the very
Speaker 2: first night of operation Anaconda, which causes a shuffle of
Speaker 2: the scheduling plan for the next night, and then we
Speaker 2: just basically saturated. So we've got three gunships coming out
Speaker 2: of the north, out of Uzbekistan, We've got three gunships
Speaker 2: coming out of Mesira. Six birds on station staggered over
Speaker 2: the period of darkness to make sure that there's plenty
Speaker 2: of cast to go around, and not to mention, you know,
Speaker 2: the platforms that were well beyond you know, just the
Speaker 2: AC one thirties, you had other fixed wing capabilities in
Speaker 2: the area as well. For our specific mission, when Robert's
Speaker 2: Ridge is unfolding, we are the emergency on call cast platform.
Speaker 2: We don't have a dedicated customer that night. Our goal
Speaker 2: is to basically take off, fly right through Afghanistan airspace,
Speaker 2: immediately hit a tanker in Pakistan, top off our tanks,
Speaker 2: and then just stand by for any emergency that may
Speaker 2: pop up. While that happens. One of our sister ships
Speaker 2: a nail a nail flight, I think it was Nail
Speaker 2: to zero. They were originally tasked for the Maco infill
Speaker 2: via the Razor elements, so Razor was the image forty seven.
Speaker 2: Some of your listeners the audience may be familiar with
Speaker 2: Alan Mack. He's the chief worn officer that was pilot
Speaker 2: and Razors zero three. He's the guy who's taking in
Speaker 2: the seal team that is Maco three zero and their
Speaker 2: combat controller is MAKEO three zero Charlie John Chapman. We
Speaker 2: are on tanker while NAIL is supposed to be covering
Speaker 2: that infill. Well, there's a series of delays, some of
Speaker 2: its maintenance related, and then meanwhile Coust Airfield comes under attack.
Speaker 2: So since the infield that that NAIL is supposed to
Speaker 2: cover is delayed, Airborne Command and Control decides to re
Speaker 2: roll the NAIL element to cover the troops in contact
Speaker 2: situation that erupts at Coust. And when this is going on,
Speaker 2: we're literally flying right by that airspace and we even
Speaker 2: come up on the radio going, hey, they've got a
Speaker 2: dedicated mission. You're sure you don't want us to cover
Speaker 2: that troops in contact since we're the emergency on call platform.
Speaker 2: They're like, nope, nope, Nail's got it. The other guys
Speaker 2: are delayed, You guys proceed a tanker and don't mess
Speaker 2: up the tanker flow. So we set to the ar
Speaker 2: track for air refueling. We we we're topping off our
Speaker 2: tanks when all of a sudden you hear may day,
Speaker 2: may a made a any grim any nail. This is
Speaker 2: Maco three zero, Charlie. And when you hear that, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody's you know, quiet as you know. You can hear
Speaker 2: a pin drop on the aircraft, believe it or not.
Speaker 2: We're we're in the middle, like the one point thirty
Speaker 2: gets heavy behind a tanker and we have to execute
Speaker 2: what they call it toboggan. So you're descending with the
Speaker 2: tanker in order to maintain air speed and stay connected,
Speaker 2: all while this Mayday call is going on. So pilot's
Speaker 2: talking to the engineer. I'm getting a location of a
Speaker 2: down to aircraft over some special equipment that I have
Speaker 2: on board. They they execute an emergency breakaway from the tanker,
Speaker 2: and I passed the coordinates of the of the down
Speaker 2: to aircraft and the source of where you know, John
Speaker 2: Chapman's on the radio, and we just make a b
Speaker 2: line to their to their location sensors to those specific coordinates,
Speaker 2: and we just fly straight there and establish an orbit
Speaker 2: over what is now downed Razor zero three in the
Speaker 2: valley just north of their original infilid position that was
Speaker 2: at toccer Gar at the mountain top.
Speaker 1: So so you guys are looking at the downed aircraft.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile things are going on on the ridge line. Are
Speaker 1: you paying attention to both or do you have a
Speaker 1: priority there?
Speaker 2: So when we when we fly in, we're we're trained
Speaker 2: to trained. The sensors are are specifically looking at at
Speaker 2: the coordinates and what turns out to be like the
Speaker 2: actual helicopter and you can see friendlies around the crash
Speaker 2: site as we're flying in and establishing that orbit. Chappie's
Speaker 2: on the on the radio as three zero Charlie telling
Speaker 2: us that they lost a teammate on top of the
Speaker 2: mountain and says, hey, we've got a friendly up there.
Speaker 2: Can you shift eyes and shift your orbit to that location?
Speaker 2: And so we hadn't even established a full orbit, but
Speaker 2: we just slide immediately slew the sensor to the mountaintop.
Speaker 2: That's where we see an active IR strobe and an
Speaker 2: individual laid out on the mountaintop. We've got a sister ship,
Speaker 2: another grim element that picks up an orbit around the
Speaker 2: helicopter and then we just slid our orbit over to
Speaker 2: the mountain. So there's there's two specter gunships in neighboring
Speaker 2: orbits covering the helicopter's crash site and the original infill location.
Speaker 2: So we're eyes on the infill location and we are
Speaker 2: Grim three to two.
Speaker 1: Okay, and is it this point, at this point that well,
Speaker 1: are you sure? Are you guys there when Chappie, when
Speaker 1: Slab's team comes in.
Speaker 2: So when they initially tried to infill, note, we were not,
Speaker 2: so we didn't see any of that. What I've what
Speaker 2: I have seen of that mission is from old historic
Speaker 2: footage and I can't find that stuff anymore, like I
Speaker 2: know it still exists. But there's some interesting story in
Speaker 2: all of that because that's where Fifi Petty Officer Neil
Speaker 2: Roberts was the guy who fell out of the back
Speaker 2: of the helicopter. There's a variety of accounts of what
Speaker 2: happened in that immediate aftermath. I was not specifically there,
Speaker 2: but I've spoken to one of my mentors was the
Speaker 2: intel guy that was that was supporting those airframes out
Speaker 2: of Uzbekistan, and he literally debriefed those crews. And so
Speaker 2: the story is that that Fifi fell out of that helicopter,
Speaker 2: he got jostled loose as they had positioned getting ready
Speaker 2: for the info. So the team is up and they're
Speaker 2: they're positioning towards the ramp and then once they're coming in,
Speaker 2: the enemy activity is seen by the crew of the
Speaker 2: helicopter and they start taking enemy fire. They wave off
Speaker 2: of the infill and that's when Roberts gets knocked loose,
Speaker 2: and the the forty seven gunner that was there, it
Speaker 2: would have been a crew chief in the back. He's
Speaker 2: the tail gunner, if you will, That's what we would
Speaker 2: have called him in the Air Force. But he said
Speaker 2: that that when Fifi fell, it was happening in slow
Speaker 2: motion and all I could see was him smiling back
Speaker 2: up at him. And so there's there's different accounts on
Speaker 2: how exactly that fall happens. And I'll save part of
Speaker 2: that story for Frank Daily since he was the one
Speaker 2: who debriefed those guys. But anyway, the gunner, the crew
Speaker 2: chief had fallen, Fifi's involved in helping recover that guy,
Speaker 2: and then Fifi falls after all of that, and the
Speaker 2: story is that that Fifi survived that fall, and Fifi's
Speaker 2: seen engage in the enemy, but that footage was out
Speaker 2: there and then that footage got scrapped like it got.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know what the circumstances are,
Speaker 2: but I remember I remember seeing Fifi fight against the
Speaker 2: enemy out there. And this is all before, like before
Speaker 2: our gunship. When I say I saw it, it was
Speaker 2: after the fact. I had seen video of this, but
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it since. And so our perspective when
Speaker 2: all this unfolds, that helicopter is now limped off north
Speaker 2: of the valley. Interesting stories from Alan mack on on
Speaker 2: how that happens. Amazing airmanship involved all the way around
Speaker 2: on that crew. Well, by the time we see what's
Speaker 2: going on, we've put eyes on based on Chappe's direction,
Speaker 2: Petty Officer Roberts is laid out with an active IR
Speaker 2: strobe and we see him just laid out stationary on
Speaker 2: top of the mountain. Upon further inspection, our sensors can
Speaker 2: see what turns out to be footpads, and it looks
Speaker 2: it looks like if you were to do an exploit,
Speaker 2: like a spliced view of an ant hill, it's like
Speaker 2: you could see the little foot footpads. And the difference
Speaker 2: is because the heat of the of the melted snow
Speaker 2: where they've been walking back and forth versus the cold
Speaker 2: of the snow top, you know, mountain, and so you've
Speaker 2: got the hot spot of Robert's body, you've got dark, dark,
Speaker 2: what I call rat lines for the foot pads, and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, the enemy just come out
Speaker 2: of the woodwork and they just surround him. So at
Speaker 2: that point the strob is extinguished. We don't know the
Speaker 2: fate of Roberts. We have to assume that we have
Speaker 2: that we're dealing with the potential survivor. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 2: Roberts is positioned up against the area that they called
Speaker 2: the boulder, and so that's the big rock outcrop. So
Speaker 2: if you're if you're looking up slope where where the
Speaker 2: teams would have infilled to the top of that mountain
Speaker 2: and been fighting uphill towards bunk what was known as
Speaker 2: Bunker one and Bunker two, the rock out crop, the boulder,
Speaker 2: is that that big rock structure that's up there kind
Speaker 2: of center mass.
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Speaker 2: Well, Roberts gets propped up right there, and we assume
Speaker 2: that the enemies wounded him and propped him up and
Speaker 2: left in his bait, knowing that the Americans are going
Speaker 2: to come back for him and basically lay in an
Speaker 2: ambush for anybody that.
Speaker 1: Comes back, right And is she on the from from
Speaker 1: where we see Chappie's in phil Is he on the
Speaker 1: near side or the far side or the top side
Speaker 1: of the bottom side of the boulder?
Speaker 2: Do you remember Roberts is on the near side? So
Speaker 2: where the where the where? You look at videos that
Speaker 2: show the MAKEO three zero element and Chapman all, you know,
Speaker 2: infilling and then going up the mountain that you can
Speaker 2: actually see the hot spot that is petty Officer Roberts,
Speaker 2: And he's kind of if you're looking at the boulder
Speaker 2: and Bunker one, he's closer to Bunker one than he
Speaker 2: is the far side of the boulder, Okay, but he's
Speaker 2: propped up against the boulder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if that was included in the
Speaker 1: the video and the analysis that what was his uh,
Speaker 1: the gentleman who wrote the book, I can't remember, but
Speaker 1: on the.
Speaker 2: Kid, Yeah, it's Dan Shilling, right, Dan Shilling that right
Speaker 2: over my shoulder here, Lorie Chapman, Long Fritz and Dan
Speaker 2: Chilling road alone at dawn. There's a great video out
Speaker 2: there that Dan nir rates and that's based on the
Speaker 2: culmination of all of the Air Force's research that went
Speaker 2: into the John Chapman Medal of Honor package. So you
Speaker 2: can you can look, you can see what's in that book,
Speaker 2: and you can look at that video and hear what
Speaker 2: Dan narrates, and you can take that as gospel.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. So so then how long before the make
Speaker 1: A three team goes in for the recovery?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Without having the times right in front of me,
Speaker 2: I can't give you an exact one. Roughly, I would
Speaker 2: say it's probably about an hour before they get the
Speaker 2: they re insert to try and recover Roberts. And the
Speaker 2: difference is that so razors threes down in the valley
Speaker 2: zero four infilled a separate MAKEU element, but they're the
Speaker 2: second of the MH forty sevens. Because normally, you know,
Speaker 2: any rotary lift is usually going to fly into two
Speaker 2: ships so that they have self recovery capability. But they
Speaker 2: had two distinct teams and two separate infill locations that
Speaker 2: they were working. But zero four is not going to
Speaker 2: come home until they've you know, gotten words on zero three.
Speaker 2: So he's orbiting in what we would describe as a
Speaker 2: black hole, you know, away from populated areas, but he's
Speaker 2: terrain massed from a line of sight on the on
Speaker 2: the radios with his teammate ers zero three, who's now crashed.
Speaker 2: So zero four's talking to us, We're talking to zero
Speaker 2: three and we're giving them an update and Chappie as
Speaker 2: three zero Charlie is is coordinating you know, the pickup.
Speaker 2: And there's an interesting storyline there because you can look
Speaker 2: at some of the videos and Slab says that he
Speaker 2: ended up having a mission change and now his mission
Speaker 2: became to rest that air crew and as a teammates,
Speaker 2: as a soft team on a helicopter that crashes. Unless
Speaker 2: you literally gather those guys and you expill on the
Speaker 2: ground away from that, you're not rescuing anybody. You're being
Speaker 2: rescued unless you're the combat controller who is trained to
Speaker 2: coordinate rescue assets coming in and doing that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: So Chappie is three zero, Charlie is the one who
Speaker 2: actually coordinates via Grim three two two Razor zero four
Speaker 2: to come in and pick them up, and then they
Speaker 2: reconstitute at the safehouse, figure out their plan of attack,
Speaker 2: and then they come back to the top of the
Speaker 2: mountain to recover Roberts. So there's videos out there. It's
Speaker 2: part of the growing false narrative that the Navy pushed
Speaker 2: with Gritzlovinski and one of those elements of what I
Speaker 2: would consider stolen Valor. You know, John's the one who
Speaker 2: affected the rescue of that crew, but the people that
Speaker 2: did the rescuing were Raizor zero four. So anyway, so
Speaker 2: at splitting heres, but I think it detracts from the
Speaker 2: credibility of Slab and the rest of the drama that
Speaker 2: goes on with all of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so are you guys on station then when that
Speaker 1: insertion happens.
Speaker 2: Yes, so we are. We're on station. And what sucks
Speaker 2: during all of this As anybody under these circumstances, you
Speaker 2: would want a close air support platform to potentially soften
Speaker 2: targets to do some pre assault fires. But we are
Speaker 2: a gunship thinking of a survivor on the ground and
Speaker 2: everything is danger close proximity. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: we were a crew that was involved in a fracture
Speaker 2: side the very night before, and so you can, you know,
Speaker 2: armchair quarterback it. I would tell you that the fracture
Speaker 2: side event that happened the night before, while it was
Speaker 2: in the mind of the crew, this crew was seasoned,
Speaker 2: professional enough to put that piece aside and deal with
Speaker 2: the situation at hand. And the fratricite event from the
Speaker 2: night before did not, you know, actually impact. Like the
Speaker 2: reason why we didn't shoot. We didn't shoot free assault
Speaker 2: fires because we didn't know for sure the status of
Speaker 2: Roberts and he was literally danger close and by a definition,
Speaker 2: there was nobody there that could give us the authority
Speaker 2: to fire our munitions right there danger close proximity when
Speaker 2: when he wasn't in comms given us the authorization because
Speaker 2: he was the one in harm's way.
Speaker 1: Baby. For instance, you said that you guys could identify
Speaker 1: through thermal the rat lines and stuff, so you could
Speaker 1: see the termination points, so you could essentially in a
Speaker 1: way identify the bunkers.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, we knew at times you could see the
Speaker 2: personnel and then other times they would mask themselves, right,
Speaker 2: camouflage concealment, but you knew where positions were. You could
Speaker 2: see where some trenches, you could see where some paths were.
Speaker 2: You could see areas that would definitely be of interest
Speaker 2: for us to put down fires. But every one of
Speaker 2: those would have been in the danger close proximity of
Speaker 2: where Roberts was because of the how how close that
Speaker 2: area is well.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to Mandy Morning quarterback this because
Speaker 1: obviously I wasn't there, and I'm like in the good
Speaker 1: idea of fairy always happens afterwards. But you guys have
Speaker 1: like smoke capability on on on your bird.
Speaker 2: So there would have been back in the day we
Speaker 2: would have flown with what they called Willie Pete rounds,
Speaker 2: probably familiar with the white phosphorus. Yeah, we didn't have
Speaker 2: them on board during during these but but yeah, that
Speaker 2: the capabilities, yes, uh. And then one of the other things,
Speaker 2: you know, discussion that had happened between whether it was
Speaker 2: command and control us on board that that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: There were ideas of laying down fire on the far
Speaker 2: side of the ridge and walking them up towards the
Speaker 2: fighter positions and then keeping our fire on the other
Speaker 2: side of the boulder that them would have shielded Petty
Speaker 2: Officer Roberts. So there were a number of tactical you know,
Speaker 2: considerations that were that were given that ultimately, like they
Speaker 2: wanted pre assault fires, we didn't give them as a
Speaker 2: result of, you know, not knowing the fate of robertson
Speaker 2: again danger close sure, and then we were identifying the
Speaker 2: spot that we wanted them to infill to and the
Speaker 2: idea was that they would come in, get on the ground,
Speaker 2: established two way coms with us, and then they would
Speaker 2: talk us onto targets and then we would establish their
Speaker 2: position on the mountain. Well, I think the tactical debate
Speaker 2: and and this is you know, to put words in
Speaker 2: the in the mouth of the team leader, you know,
Speaker 2: And and maybe it's not even that I've seen interviews
Speaker 2: and heard his his take on it, but they didn't
Speaker 2: want to fight uphill. Uh. There was a sense of urgency.
Speaker 2: They had a teammate that was down. They wanted to
Speaker 2: get right back to the X, and so the normal
Speaker 2: consideration of either doing an offset or landing where we
Speaker 2: had marked for them didn't make tactical sense to them,
Speaker 2: and so they chose to blow right through our spot
Speaker 2: and then infield literally right back on the X. Caught
Speaker 2: us by surprise because we were literally lazing where we
Speaker 2: wanted them to go right and then they blew right
Speaker 2: through it. And I remember, you know, us talking about
Speaker 2: it because you know, somebody's like, hey, keep eyes on
Speaker 2: on this, keep marking the LZ, and we're like, they're
Speaker 2: already back on the on the X. They already hit
Speaker 2: the ground, and some of the crew that didn't have
Speaker 2: eyes on the sensors that was them catching up on
Speaker 2: the reality of what was going on. So it happened
Speaker 2: pretty quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so they land on the X. You guys
Speaker 1: see uh, you guys see somebody fall and yet you
Speaker 1: think that it's due to enemy fire. Later we found
Speaker 1: out he just like it was snow, like you fell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So after after actions, you know, the order in
Speaker 2: which they the team make O three zero all exits.
Speaker 2: The aircraft slab was first. He doubles over, according to
Speaker 2: his account, in the snow, not not realizing how deep
Speaker 2: that snow was. From an aircrew perspective, we literally thought
Speaker 2: they had been hit by enemy fire and that he
Speaker 2: was down down. That's what put Chapman on point, because
Speaker 2: Chapman leap frogged over Slab at this point and he's
Speaker 2: he's recovering from snow in the face and goggles and
Speaker 2: everything else. And so Chapman's on point going up the
Speaker 2: slope as the rest of the team gets gets together
Speaker 2: to include Slab and they form a little circle some
Speaker 2: folks WO call it a wagon wheel, and Chappy's slightly
Speaker 2: upslope from them, so he's he's between their formation and
Speaker 2: Bunker one, closest to the most formidable threat, which is
Speaker 2: Bunker one at this moment, right, and then they start
Speaker 2: taking fire from three different directions and all hell breaks.
Speaker 1: Right, So Chappy, it looks to me like watching the video,
Speaker 1: CHAPPI moves to contact, and he is He's probably expecting
Speaker 1: the people on his six to move to contact with him,
Speaker 1: and they decided. You know, I'm not saying they're wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't know their tactics, but they're not moving to contact.
Speaker 1: They are deciding what they're going to do next.
Speaker 2: Yes, So I'm gonna piece this together. Just culmination of stuff,
Speaker 2: and this is access to people who had done the analysis,
Speaker 2: other seals that had analyzed it, others Air Force Special Tactics,
Speaker 2: folks that had looked at it what you had with
Speaker 2: you had two different thoughts and trains of thought, the
Speaker 2: move to contact and then those that didn't. And there
Speaker 2: there was a difference in training of tactics that was
Speaker 2: going on within that community. According to Eric Demming, he
Speaker 2: had explained it to me as the close quarters defense
Speaker 2: guys that school of thought moved to contact and then
Speaker 2: whatever this other variation of training tactics was, they didn't
Speaker 2: do it the same way. And so John goes towards
Speaker 2: the gun and is attack the attacker. You've got to
Speaker 2: go through the ambush, as it was explained to me,
Speaker 2: He's doing that, and a wedge never forms behind him. Instead,
Speaker 2: they're breaking off into two man fire teams. So the
Speaker 2: only person that actually follows behind Chappie is Slab himself.
Speaker 2: Because two guys are covering down slope. Two guys are
Speaker 2: going towards what if we just consider their infill point
Speaker 2: and look up the mountain, I'll just say left and right.
Speaker 2: Two guys go over to the left of the boulder,
Speaker 2: and then that would put Chapman on point. Slab a
Speaker 2: good distance behind him going towards Bunker one, and Chappy
Speaker 2: is the one, who is you know, laying hate to
Speaker 2: Bunker one, eliminates Bunker one. Eventually Slab catches up to him,
Speaker 2: but it's after Chappi's eliminated that threat, he's gone through
Speaker 2: a magazine or two. He he literally goes inside that
Speaker 2: bunker and you know, eliminates him at point blank range.
Speaker 2: And then after all of that, after he's gone in
Speaker 2: and come out on the other side, that's when Slab
Speaker 2: finally closes that distance and he fires some confirmatory shots
Speaker 2: into the bunker. And then Slab and Chappier both than
Speaker 2: engaging what we call Bunker two that's higher above that,
Speaker 2: and it's actually a bigger threat. It was just it
Speaker 2: was masked by the tree and the rock there. So
Speaker 2: Chappy's on the far right, and then Slab is approaching
Speaker 2: Bunker two between the boulder and the tree that is
Speaker 2: right there at Bunker one, so he's got some cover
Speaker 2: and concealment, but they are both in the fray and
Speaker 2: they're both trying to direct fires at Bunker two, and
Speaker 2: that's when Chappie sustains a mortal wound, gets taken out
Speaker 2: of the fight incapacitated, and ultimately Slab believes he's killed,
Speaker 2: and then he ends up breaking contact from the bunker
Speaker 2: two engagement, coming up with a different plan. You can
Speaker 2: see that unfold on the video. There's a gunner that
Speaker 2: climbs up on top of the rock. Enemy frags the
Speaker 2: top of the grenade, the top of that rock with
Speaker 2: the grenade. The gunner falls down, and then shortly thereafter
Speaker 2: slabs assessing the situation, and the team makes a collective
Speaker 2: decision to tactically retreat. They throw some smoke grenades to
Speaker 2: cover their movement, and they break contact. And all of
Speaker 2: this is unfolding before our eyes, and we do not
Speaker 2: have two way radio contact with the team at.
Speaker 1: All, right, And so, yeah, and that difference in tactics,
Speaker 1: it's definitely to me, to me and and Jack, you've
Speaker 1: seen the video. Like to me, Chapman was moving like
Speaker 1: a ranger like it was, you know, it was it
Speaker 1: was infantry tactics, right, uh, movement to contact, and the
Speaker 1: Seals are not necessarily following that same protocol. They had
Speaker 1: their own sort of their own sort of protocol.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chappy wasn't foreign to this team, you know. So
Speaker 2: he had worked with them and and he had not
Speaker 2: only been in the field, he had done pre deployment
Speaker 2: stuff with the with these same same teams. He was
Speaker 2: he was no nubie when it came to working with
Speaker 2: with this particular seal team.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So then is there any point like during
Speaker 1: that operation where you guys real time realized that Chapman
Speaker 1: is still alive.
Speaker 2: There's a moment of fog and friction, and it happens
Speaker 2: right as they break contact. So the main element of
Speaker 2: make breaks contact. We assume that all of Maco three
Speaker 2: zero is together except for petty Officer Roberts. The radio
Speaker 2: call comes across and it is it's now slab on
Speaker 2: the radio and it is, hey, Grim, this is Maco
Speaker 2: three zero. We are no longer on top of the mountain.
Speaker 2: Got troops down possible, KA need fire on tops now.
Speaker 2: And it's a it's an unconventional nine line, is what
Speaker 2: he's telling us. Right, we know where they are. We've
Speaker 2: got a strobe on their main element. As you can imagine,
Speaker 2: you get on top of an objective, if everybody has
Speaker 2: their strobe emitting, then it presents confusion for sensors that
Speaker 2: are out there. So there'll be like one main guy
Speaker 2: that keeps a strobe on for the team. And then
Speaker 2: everybody else has the other marketing, you know, capabilities, and
Speaker 2: we can see who's who. I will see that we
Speaker 2: momentarily lost eyes on what would have been Chappy when
Speaker 2: he sustains that that initial mortal wound and is incapacitated
Speaker 2: because when they break contact, Chappie's kind of under the
Speaker 2: cover of the branches of that tree next to Bunker one,
Speaker 2: and we think that that whole team is together, and
Speaker 2: when he says possible Kia, we assume that he's talking
Speaker 2: about Petty Officer Roberts, right, because they were literally right
Speaker 2: next to Roberts up against that boulder, and so like
Speaker 2: we're literally seeing them right next to each other. So
Speaker 2: you know, the only thing that seems to make sense
Speaker 2: is that. But again you assume, right, So we didn't.
Speaker 2: You know, ttpees have sinse evolved and we're way more
Speaker 2: deliberate about, you know, number of personnel that go on
Speaker 2: an objective and calling out all of those those key
Speaker 2: elements of information so that you keep tabs on all
Speaker 2: the right stuff. But at that moment, no, we didn't know.
Speaker 2: And he calls for fire and we immediately start trying
Speaker 2: to put down rounds well onside on board the gunship,
Speaker 2: we're trying to shoot with the forty millimeter bofors and
Speaker 2: on the specter we call that gun five. There's a
Speaker 2: gun malfunction with gun five. The gunners have to take
Speaker 2: that down, so we switch over primary weapon to gun six,
Speaker 2: the one oh five howitzer. The we had proximity rounds
Speaker 2: loaded in the one oh five, so the gunners have
Speaker 2: to do a round change because that proximity round the
Speaker 2: way that thing's gonna work, it's gonna spin up. And
Speaker 2: when it the way the fuse works on that thing,
Speaker 2: after it gets so many feet above the ground, it's
Speaker 2: gonna air burst and it's gonna shrapnel.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, since you've got a potential friendly and unknown you know,
Speaker 2: unknown status, we don't want to shoot the prox rounds
Speaker 2: unless we're literally we know that we're shooting its soft
Speaker 2: enemy targets. So they switch over to a point that
Speaker 2: natan round that takes the better part of half in orbit.
Speaker 2: So we're talking from the call for fire to the
Speaker 2: initial rounds impacting, probably about a minute and a half
Speaker 2: or so have transpired. So we start going hot with
Speaker 2: the one oh five. The infrared sensors primary on that gun.
Speaker 2: The TV sensor. He can see all light level TV.
Speaker 2: So think of this like an MVG capability. He can
Speaker 2: see the ambient light that's magnified sixty somewhat thousand times
Speaker 2: that of what it actually is. So he's looking for
Speaker 2: light sources. And a gunship's tactics will end up being where,
Speaker 2: you know, if one sensor's firing, another sensor will always
Speaker 2: be primary on the friendlies, so that sensor is the
Speaker 2: TV Chris. Chris is primary on the friendlies, So he's
Speaker 2: scanning back and forth where the IR is engaging and
Speaker 2: where the friendlies have egress too, and that way we
Speaker 2: can keep tabs on what's going on, and then he
Speaker 2: can also look for light emissions around where we're actually engaging. Well,
Speaker 2: it's in that moment of those initial rounds that we
Speaker 2: put down that are all one oh five on those
Speaker 2: known fighting positions up around the higher terrain elevation that
Speaker 2: Chris says, Hey, FOCO, that's the fire control officer that's
Speaker 2: in charge of the sensors that are actually doing the shooting.
Speaker 2: He's like, hey, Folco, I've got another strobe up here.
Speaker 2: He's like, but this one doesn't look like the others
Speaker 2: I've got like the main element of friendlies are here,
Speaker 2: and I got this other strobe here. And so as
Speaker 2: a crew they start to deconflict like what they're actually seeing,
Speaker 2: what we're seeing doesn't match what we just heard from
Speaker 2: slab is Maco three zero. And then before you ever
Speaker 2: get a chance to really communicate that particular fog and friction,
Speaker 2: the enemy starts lobbing mortars in on top of the
Speaker 2: LZ and they're walking them close to where the make
Speaker 2: up element is, so you're onto the next closest alligator
Speaker 2: to the boat. So we saw that strobe come active,
Speaker 2: and I've seen it. I saw it in real time.
Speaker 2: I saw it better, you know, in the aftermath of
Speaker 2: all the analysis. Well you see Chappie literally crawl back
Speaker 2: into Bunker one at that point. And so what makes
Speaker 2: sense to me is that his strobe looks different either
Speaker 2: a because he was using a different, different strobe, like
Speaker 2: maybe a backup strobe. We had little little ir Firefly
Speaker 2: as we called him, that stuck on the end of
Speaker 2: nine volt batteries. If it wasn't that, if if he
Speaker 2: was used in the same exact strobe, then perhaps it
Speaker 2: was the the disbursement of light based on the tree
Speaker 2: canopy or the any covering that would have been over
Speaker 2: the bunker area. So anyway, there was a distinct, you know,
Speaker 2: light emission difference when you're looking at those from the
Speaker 2: from the footage, and then we're literally going after, you know,
Speaker 2: the mortar situation and trying to cover the team's movement
Speaker 2: and they're moving further from down the mountain at this point.
Speaker 2: And we'd never come back to the idea of there
Speaker 2: being one of their original team that went back after
Speaker 2: Roberts being left up there. We never knew that they
Speaker 2: left a teammate behind, but we did see that stroke
Speaker 2: come active, and that was the the aha moment. But
Speaker 2: you're now covering the movement of the team, you're onto
Speaker 2: something else. You don't have radio coms with anybody else
Speaker 2: up there, and the sun's coming up and Command and
Speaker 2: Control is ordering us off station, you name it. It's
Speaker 2: like Murphy had a party up there that night.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and one of the things about the AC
Speaker 1: platform that maybe the viewers don't know is because it
Speaker 1: is a slow moving, low flying aircraft, the Air Force
Speaker 1: is not like them up when the sun is up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was expressly against our our doctrine to operate
Speaker 2: during during daytime operations, and it's times back to the
Speaker 2: First Golf War. There's an aircraft that everybody in the
Speaker 2: gunship community knows, Spirit zero three. They were they were
Speaker 2: done with their mission. There were marines that needed support.
Speaker 2: There wasn't believed to be certain serfs to air missile
Speaker 2: threats in the AOH in that area of operations at
Speaker 2: the time, and the gunship stayed in daylight to help
Speaker 2: out some marines that needed close air support lo and
Speaker 2: behold shoulder launched serfs to airmen, you know, missile manpad
Speaker 2: Man portable air defense system gets launched up at them
Speaker 2: and it takes out Spirit zero three and kills the crew.
Speaker 2: So that is, you know, it's one of those things
Speaker 2: like when you go through gunship training, when you go
Speaker 2: through any of our formal training, it's they have a
Speaker 2: Spirit zero three award in the formal schoolhouse, you know,
Speaker 2: for that top student and that sort of thing. So
Speaker 2: like you know this story. If you fly gunships, so
Speaker 2: everybody knows, don't fly during day daylight at this point time.
Speaker 2: So anyway, they're they're literally ordering this off station. Sun's
Speaker 2: coming up. It is, you know, past that moment of
Speaker 2: what we call beginning morning nautical twilight, so it's when
Speaker 2: you can first start to distinct, you know, daylight from
Speaker 2: from darkness. Type of deal we had. We had shut
Speaker 2: off a couple of UH commandic control radios because we
Speaker 2: didn't like what we were hearing from them, and they
Speaker 2: were kind of muddy, muddying up the airwaves from our perspective,
Speaker 2: so you know, we didn't like being told to go home.
Speaker 2: So from a from a cruise standpoint, we had all
Speaker 2: checked in nose to tail on call at the direction
Speaker 2: of the pilot, like, hey, we know what's going on here,
Speaker 2: Uh stay or go? Everybody check in and and it
Speaker 2: was unanimous from UH from nose to tail that we
Speaker 2: wanted to stay and not leave those guys behind. Mhm.
Speaker 1: We all.
Speaker 2: Higher headquarters prevailed ended up getting ahold of us. Even
Speaker 2: though we had shut off that particular com net. They
Speaker 2: found us on another one and we couldn't hide from
Speaker 2: them anymore and we had to break contact. So as
Speaker 2: we were doing that, we facilitated a handoff with a
Speaker 2: two ship of F fifteen e Strike Eagles. It was
Speaker 2: twister five to one and five to two. Gave them
Speaker 2: the lowdown, gave them that last known position of Roberts
Speaker 2: in that bunker where we had seen the strobe, gave
Speaker 2: them the last known position of the main Maco element,
Speaker 2: told them what was going on, told you know, hey,
Speaker 2: it's hot, don't go back up there. And then in
Speaker 2: that fog and friction, none of that information makes it
Speaker 2: to the QRF, the Quick Reaction Force helicopters that are
Speaker 2: raisor zero one and zero two, with the Ranger elements
Speaker 2: that are coming in to help build those guys out.
Speaker 2: They do a seventeen plus hour stand. At this point
Speaker 2: We've recovered up in Uzbekistan, so I'm not there for
Speaker 2: the rest of that battle, but it was a significant
Speaker 2: one and the Rangers saved the day.
Speaker 1: So in Shillings video, because we see like the time
Speaker 1: after Chapman recovers and then re engages what what uh?
Speaker 1: And that's one video I believe right, it's not a
Speaker 1: compilation video, so it's one.
Speaker 2: Video that he has he has narrated. There are splicing
Speaker 2: of different sensors times during during that, but they're all
Speaker 2: times synced. So it is as accurate of a depiction
Speaker 2: as you could get from the totality of footage that existed.
Speaker 1: So you do you recall what the other because because
Speaker 1: you left as Chapman crawled back into Bunker one and
Speaker 1: then and then there's still like Chapman like there's hours
Speaker 1: after that, correct hours where he continues to fight. Do
Speaker 1: you know what other platforms were involved in that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a there's a Navy platform that nobody
Speaker 2: wants to talk about. There's predator that is up there.
Speaker 2: That's the majority of the other footage. But the when
Speaker 2: I mentioned the the Roberts footage before, the Navy possesses
Speaker 2: the footage that showed what Roberts did up there that night,
Speaker 2: and okay, and they're they're part of why why you
Speaker 2: don't see it anymore?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so at any point in time, Uh so,
Speaker 1: so with these predator feeds and these other platforms, are
Speaker 1: are there people real time watching Chapman continue to fight?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, so there the the theories like if you
Speaker 2: go back to the book that was written by Malcolm
Speaker 2: McPherson called Roberts Ridge, he he had you know, access
Speaker 2: to the people and the studies and the information that
Speaker 2: was out there at the time. I think that book
Speaker 2: published in five The theories were there were there were
Speaker 2: three of them. People thought that that that person still
Speaker 2: fighting up there was Roberts. Then there was the Air
Speaker 2: Force's uh, you know side of it, that it was Chapman.
Speaker 2: And then the competing theory was that it was red
Speaker 2: on red as an enemy fighting enemy in broad daylight
Speaker 2: in close quarters, shooting each other in the face, right,
Speaker 2: that one that one does not hold water. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that that continues to be part of the counter narrative
Speaker 2: that the Navy pushed the whole time so that they
Speaker 2: didn't have to face the music. That Chapman survived. He
Speaker 2: was unfortunately left now at the time, in real time,
Speaker 2: like they didn't know. I believe that they they assumed
Speaker 2: that he was taken out.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I think that was just straight up fog and friction
Speaker 2: of war and an honest mistake and under the tactical circumstances.
Speaker 2: Whether the Seals ever want to admit that they left
Speaker 2: somebody behind, it just is what it is, and that's
Speaker 2: what happened in this case. Yeah, So like I don't
Speaker 2: fault anybody for that at all. You know, look back
Speaker 2: in the you know the cases that I tell you
Speaker 2: where our mistakes were re assault fires, the fracture side
Speaker 2: the night before, you know, clarifying, Hey, we saw a
Speaker 2: strobe in the midst of all that. Like, there's so
Speaker 2: many things that could be hot washed and debriefed and
Speaker 2: everybody could learn and be better and be stronger the
Speaker 2: next day for it, if people would have the integrity
Speaker 2: to just own your mistake and accept it and make
Speaker 2: yourself and your organization, your unit bigger, better, faster, stronger tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, and there's obviously there there's a reason,
Speaker 1: or at least a perceived reason why they don't, whether
Speaker 1: it's internal you know, you know higher going oh you know,
Speaker 1: you messed up, or it's the public, the public not
Speaker 1: understanding fog wort. You know, we can look at stuff
Speaker 1: like Tilman, like we can look at all these things,
Speaker 1: and people have been in comberos, you know, what should happens. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: like there there is the fog war. You know, their
Speaker 1: mistakes happen all the time. It's horrible. We try to
Speaker 1: mitigate it, but they happen, and the civilians won't. The
Speaker 1: civilians often won't get that, they don't understand how those
Speaker 1: things happen. And also if there's there's you know, punitive
Speaker 1: stuff going on. But I thought what was really interesting
Speaker 1: with this is you told us something that we had
Speaker 1: never heard before, that that this looks like or I
Speaker 1: don't want to say it, well to me, I'll say,
Speaker 1: to me, it looks like it was a cover up
Speaker 1: from the very beginning, because you said that that Deak
Speaker 1: group actually sent people up to confiscate the video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the very naxt day, the very next day, so
Speaker 2: you know that period of darkness is three to four March, right,
Speaker 2: So we're landing in the early daylight hours of four March.
Speaker 2: The next day, on the fifth, somebody had showed up
Speaker 2: at Uzbekistan, at Karshi Kanabad and confiscated the tapes.
Speaker 4: Did they even have like the authority to do that,
Speaker 4: because you guys are in like separate commands.
Speaker 2: That's a good question, you know. So a couple of
Speaker 2: dudes showed up said handed over. You know, I went
Speaker 2: there when when that east happened. I know who was
Speaker 2: I've spoken directly to him. He said it was two
Speaker 2: guys from Blue that showed up in suits, not in
Speaker 2: uniform and said you'll hand it over. And it was
Speaker 2: based on their commander down the barroom. So exactly what
Speaker 2: authority they cited. But yeah, at that point we fell
Speaker 2: subordinate to what would have been Task Force Dagger, and
Speaker 2: then you know, there's a there's a handful of elements.
Speaker 2: I don't want to mistate anything, but I went I
Speaker 2: was part of everything from TIF Sword to DAG to
Speaker 2: support in k Bar and somewhere in there t F
Speaker 2: eleven showed up. So there's a there's a whole you know,
Speaker 2: change of like who's running what show.
Speaker 4: But it wasn't It wasn't like somebody coming down from Jaysock,
Speaker 4: for instance. It was directly from the command itself, from
Speaker 4: from DEV Group coming which is what makes it particularly
Speaker 4: odd or regular.
Speaker 2: That's my understanding. Now, I don't know, you know, like
Speaker 2: I think everybody that is familiar with this knows that
Speaker 2: General Trebone was the DCG, the Deputy Commanding General at
Speaker 2: the time that was there forward with them, So I
Speaker 2: don't know if they cited his name or authority or what,
Speaker 2: but yeah, they confiscated it.
Speaker 1: Yeah that you know.
Speaker 2: So here's the funny thing, and I'll fast forward a
Speaker 2: little bit. But those tapes are initially recorded on VHS,
Speaker 2: they're converted to the digital and stored on a CD
Speaker 2: ROM and the VHS is get recorded over and you
Speaker 2: know Rinston repeated, you know, on mission after mission, so
Speaker 2: they're washed out of the VHS, they're stored on the digital. Well,
Speaker 2: the analyst had already uploaded that stuff to DoD because
Speaker 2: of the significance of what had happened. So that stuff
Speaker 2: had transited via email over a server that was deployed
Speaker 2: with this we called it the Terror Server. Well, in
Speaker 2: the end they confiscated the cd ROMs. What they didn't
Speaker 2: realize is that the packets of information that transited over
Speaker 2: that Terror server still resided on the Terra server itself.
Speaker 2: They just happened to be partitioned into two thousand little chunks.
Speaker 2: So in the end, during the Air Force research they
Speaker 2: pieced all of that together complainte with all the correct timestamps.
Speaker 2: I know the individual that did it, Jackie, did a
Speaker 2: hell of a job on that one, between her and
Speaker 2: Frank Daily, the analysts that was there at the time
Speaker 2: and started out as the initial analyst to do the
Speaker 2: research for John Chapman's Medal of Honor. What would have
Speaker 2: been the it was like a higher valor review board
Speaker 2: or something valor decoration board or something that was commissioned
Speaker 2: by the Air Force Special Operations Command based on guidance
Speaker 2: from the Secretary of the Air Force.
Speaker 1: Rob Just one quick follow up to that.
Speaker 4: In your career, how many times do you have mi
Speaker 4: ib's show up and confiscate tapeline?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Do you ever see anybody from Red or Green
Speaker 1: or any.
Speaker 4: Or another command, a superior command, a subordinate command, anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the moment we landed, our number two in
Speaker 2: command for the specters that were deployed, he met us
Speaker 2: at the aircraft the moment that the crew door opened
Speaker 2: and said, give me the tapes. Not welcome back, not
Speaker 2: how you doing, just give me the tapes. So we
Speaker 2: gave him the tapes. We knew that, you know, something
Speaker 2: significant had transpired. How we just covered the mission, right.
Speaker 2: So as that's going on, he's going back into the talk.
Speaker 2: I don't know what he's doing with the tapes at
Speaker 2: that point, but they have to get immediately triaged, right,
Speaker 2: So they had to transmit stuff. They got that piece
Speaker 2: done before the men in black showed up and confiscated
Speaker 2: what was believed to be the only copy. So when
Speaker 2: when that colonel showed up and said give me the tapes,
Speaker 2: we had deplaned and there were a couple of us
Speaker 2: from the tach crew who had met up underneath the
Speaker 2: left wing, and that's where we're having that initial conversation
Speaker 2: of Chris is like from the TV center, He's like,
Speaker 2: there was somebody still up there when we left. He's like,
Speaker 2: we left somebody alive fighting on top of that mountain.
Speaker 2: He was still up there, So that thought is in
Speaker 2: our mind. But at the same time, we just landed,
Speaker 2: were imdiately going into crew rest, and you're going to
Speaker 2: fly the next day to cover the next group of
Speaker 2: guys that need your help. So the debrief is somewhat hasty.
Speaker 2: It's done. They've got the tapes, they'll triage it. We
Speaker 2: give them what we can from an intelligence standpoint, and
Speaker 2: then we're onto the next mission. So this thing essentially
Speaker 2: like when they show up and they say give me
Speaker 2: the tapes, like that thing is put to rest. It's
Speaker 2: put to bed until you know. Service secretaries say, hey,
Speaker 2: what about how come you know? The question was what
Speaker 2: does it take to win the Medal of Honor? I
Speaker 2: think is the quote from the article from the Secretary
Speaker 2: of the Air Force at the time. Because there is
Speaker 2: a ton of significant valor stories, especially out of the
Speaker 2: Air Force Special Tactics community, I could think of a
Speaker 2: handful that should be on a list for consideration for
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor upgrade. But Chapman's story resonated with those
Speaker 2: that recalled it. It was the strongest case for evidence
Speaker 2: for an upgrade. And then with the ability to piece
Speaker 2: meal all of the two thousand chunks of the original
Speaker 2: footage back together, then they were able to make the case.
Speaker 2: And then it only got stronger from there. There's a
Speaker 2: number of elements of analysis that went into to all
Speaker 2: of this, from the imagery analysis to the medical forensics,
Speaker 2: you name it. It goes further.
Speaker 1: So let's let's continue with your chronology, because this does
Speaker 1: come back what we're talking about right now, the review
Speaker 1: and everything. You're actually a part of that around twenty fourteen, right, So,
Speaker 1: but between this point in twenty fourteen, I want to
Speaker 1: continue with your story. I know we'll we'll back, we'll
Speaker 1: roll back to this. So from that deployment, which was
Speaker 1: about roughly a six month deployment, you then go relanguage, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then and you get involved with MC
Speaker 1: twelve project.
Speaker 2: Yes, So between between O two and eleven, I had
Speaker 2: stayed essentially in that particular mission UH as a direct
Speaker 2: sport operator for various assoc platforms relanguaged UH, you know,
Speaker 2: picked up Somali. I I came back to the unit
Speaker 2: at this point. I'm a I'm an experienced seasoned operator, instructor, evaluator.
Speaker 2: We end up having a new mission that emerges that
Speaker 2: we call it a light I SR mission as a
Speaker 2: light aircraft Intel surveillance reconnaissance. We're doing precision geo location,
Speaker 2: working with a lot of full motion video. Essentially, we're
Speaker 2: the find and fix to find in all the bad
Speaker 2: guys that are out there. So we were we were
Speaker 2: building this UH, this capability. As a seasoned operator on
Speaker 2: one side, I was asked to help stand that up.
Speaker 2: So we had one hundred new airmen that showed up
Speaker 2: in this flavor over the span of about a year
Speaker 2: year and a half. Hell I probably personally trained about
Speaker 2: fifty five of the first one hundred. But we built
Speaker 2: out this capability to do this new mission set and
Speaker 2: that led to me getting selected to help. They called
Speaker 2: it normalizing the MC twelve platform. So MC twelve was
Speaker 2: berthed out of a contingency need and they were trying
Speaker 2: to expand this same mission of precision geolocation matched with
Speaker 2: full motion video sensors to conventional forces beyond just that
Speaker 2: of a traditional soft customer. And so while that was
Speaker 2: being done, it was all done as a pickup game.
Speaker 2: So the capability is literally bought and fielded. Within six months,
Speaker 2: it rivaled out of the P fifty one Mustang. This
Speaker 2: thing got all kinds of accolades over the year. How
Speaker 2: they even competed for the what they call the Collier Trophy.
Speaker 2: It's a National Aeronautic Association, So think of the mars
Speaker 2: Lander and Felix Bombgardner, who you know, parachuted from outer space.
Speaker 2: We were competing against the likes of those platforms for
Speaker 2: the most significant contribution to aviation, all based on the
Speaker 2: speed and scope of the Project Liberty. So anyway, when
Speaker 2: they do that mission, that mission is birth from idea.
Speaker 2: It's being fielded by the Mississippi Air National Guard, my
Speaker 2: home state, and then everybody basically goes down to Mississippi,
Speaker 2: gets trained up on the aircraft, gets qualified, and then
Speaker 2: goes forward and operates them. You know, whether it's in
Speaker 2: Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever they happen to be poor
Speaker 2: deployed to at the time. This is the capabilities fielded
Speaker 2: around nine and so by eleven the Air Force is said, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're no longer going to make this just a pickup game.
Speaker 2: We want them to have a traditional you know, host
Speaker 2: wing that owns that mission. And they decide to make
Speaker 2: the ninth Reconaissance Wing at Beal Air Force Base out
Speaker 2: in north of Sacramento, California, the home station for it.
Speaker 2: So I get I get tasked to go out there,
Speaker 2: stand up a unit of intelligence operators that we're going
Speaker 2: to operate the back of it. And yeah, the rest
Speaker 2: was history. Spent three years with that mission based on
Speaker 2: prior experiences, you know, kind of hand picked for it,
Speaker 2: grew a capability with some some awesome young airmen. They
Speaker 2: really kicked butt. And then after three years of that,
Speaker 2: I got brought back down to our parent ISR group,
Speaker 2: you know, an echelon above the squadrons as an op
Speaker 2: superintendent and then eventually made chief out of there. And
Speaker 2: that's when I got that's in that fourteen to sixteen
Speaker 2: time period where I was brought onto the Chapman you know,
Speaker 2: research project.
Speaker 1: So and I didn't mean to skip so far ahead
Speaker 1: if we missed anything significant within the rest of your
Speaker 1: time in and out of the twenty fifth because you know,
Speaker 1: from two thousand and one to twenty eleven is quite
Speaker 1: a tour. Do we miss anything significant?
Speaker 2: Well, so, I mean a couple of just quick, I guess,
Speaker 2: brief highlights. But you mentioned Pat Tillman. I was in
Speaker 2: Afghanistan and four when that unfolded. I was not airborne
Speaker 2: in the midst of the firefight that took Pat's life,
Speaker 2: but the aftermath of his unit going after the guys
Speaker 2: that ambushed them. I was there for that. That was interesting.
Speaker 2: I was part of the I was on the ramp.
Speaker 2: I was in in the hangar when they recited the
Speaker 2: Ranger Creed got to listen to all of the stanzas
Speaker 2: and we sat out there and did the honor guide
Speaker 2: on with our head lamps as we repatriated his body
Speaker 2: via Humby on to a C seventeen and he was
Speaker 2: flown back Stateside fast forward. I was on a on
Speaker 2: a mission in the Horn of Africa. So most people
Speaker 2: know about the Marisk, the Marisk Alabama. After that, there
Speaker 2: was the there was a blue water yacht that had
Speaker 2: been pirated. I was I was overhead that aftermath, and
Speaker 2: that one was a mess, uh not the way things
Speaker 2: typically go down. And there's some there's some his some
Speaker 2: historical you know seal you know information that that coincides
Speaker 2: with how the Alabama went down and then what happened
Speaker 2: with the Blue Water Yacht incident, and so the Seals
Speaker 2: had basically been put on a leash. And so the
Speaker 2: a hostage piracy recovery type of mission, the way you
Speaker 2: would typically think it would unfold, did not unfold the
Speaker 2: way you would have expected. During that Blue Water Yacht deal,
Speaker 2: they had been handcuffed so bad that essentially they they
Speaker 2: had coaxed the head pirate off of the boat, brought
Speaker 2: him on board a naval warship and he was going
Speaker 2: to you know, negotiate, you know, the the transaction for
Speaker 2: payment and all that kind of stuff. Well, obviously once
Speaker 2: we had him in our custody, they weren't going to
Speaker 2: let him go. And so then you had a bunch
Speaker 2: of idiots, idiot pirates that are left and they all
Speaker 2: flip out and in broad daylight, the assault takes place.
Speaker 2: Everybody dies. It was it was horrible, but I was
Speaker 2: I was overhead that one. That that one just sucked.
Speaker 2: But if you if you think about the storylines that
Speaker 2: go along with with some of the the narratives that
Speaker 2: get spun out of some of the Seal war stories.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying the entire community is tainted, but when
Speaker 2: we look at the Chapman incident and how all of
Speaker 2: that stuff unfolded, you look back, who has the high
Speaker 2: ground here and that is the Air Force, Okay, because
Speaker 2: when it comes to seals and stories, you know, off
Speaker 2: the battlefield. Dude, we could sit here and have a
Speaker 2: three hour episode going through just stuff over the last
Speaker 2: twenty years. Yeah, Like I remember going through a Joint
Speaker 2: Special Operations Senior Listed Academy. Votel was the commander at
Speaker 2: SOCOM at the time, and one of the biggest things
Speaker 2: that we were hitting. This is in the late fifteen
Speaker 2: time period, and we were still hitting on that incident
Speaker 2: where they had fragged the hostage with the grenade and
Speaker 2: they had lied about using grenades on the objective, and
Speaker 2: everything was about the integrity and why it was important
Speaker 2: to own your mistakes and to fess up and so forth.
Speaker 2: And we're coming out of all of that and it's
Speaker 2: like nobody he ever learns anything. All they do is
Speaker 2: just create another false narrative, pinna metal on somebody and
Speaker 2: move on and just can continue this legend. It's I
Speaker 2: find it distasteful. I don't think it does them any
Speaker 2: real honor. I would love to respect the Trident, but
Speaker 2: right now there's a handful that just tarnished the shit
Speaker 2: out of it for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now we're when you said they were handcuffed
Speaker 1: on the Blue Water yayte. What was that because of
Speaker 1: actions that they took on the Marask or was it?
Speaker 2: That's my understanding now, Like I I wasn't directly involved
Speaker 2: in the in the Marisk Alabama piece, but it was
Speaker 2: my understanding that those guys went off a little half
Speaker 2: cocked and how they executed that one. They were successful,
Speaker 2: you know, like they did it and you know there's
Speaker 2: great story that comes out of it. There's another interesting
Speaker 2: one that Matt Cole tells about in his book and
Speaker 2: Code over Country. But anyway, that was it was dubbed
Speaker 2: a success from a leadership standpoint in internal to like
Speaker 2: Socom channels, I don't think that everybody was in agreement
Speaker 2: and how that mission unfolded, and so when the Blue
Speaker 2: Water Yacht piece happened, they were literally handcuffed. So like,
Speaker 2: nothing about that unfolded the way you would have imagined
Speaker 2: the recovery of a pirated vessel. Yeah, like when when
Speaker 2: do we move on that?
Speaker 1: And broadly right right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like yeah, I mean nothing about it made sense.
Speaker 2: And I was I was there from the moment that
Speaker 2: the that the naval warships you know, initiated what they
Speaker 2: would have called the stalk, and so they were just
Speaker 2: over the horizon and then you know that vessel is
Speaker 2: going back and further and further towards Somali waters, and
Speaker 2: then you're up against the timeline of trying to, you know,
Speaker 2: figure out how you're going to deal with this situation
Speaker 2: before they get into waters that technically we shouldn't have
Speaker 2: entered under the circumstances. I don't think it would have mattered,
Speaker 2: you know, whose flag of waters they were in. We
Speaker 2: were going to get it one way or the other.
Speaker 2: But none, none of that ever unfolded the way you
Speaker 2: would have imagined, you know, without getting into specific TTPs,
Speaker 2: it just none of it made sense. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: in the end it ends up being broad daylight. Everybody dies,
Speaker 2: So that is obviously not a success.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When you say everybody dies. You're talking about the
Speaker 1: pirates and the hostages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the pirates. The pirates executed the hostages, and it's
Speaker 2: pretty obvious that when the assaulters got on board, Yeah,
Speaker 2: nobody else lived.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you this brings us to twenty fourteen, where
Speaker 1: you are at the three sixty first Yep, and the
Speaker 1: and I believe wasn't it an article for the Secretary
Speaker 1: of the Air Force for some reason. I believe it
Speaker 1: was an article about about airmen, about the Air Force
Speaker 1: not having won a, you know, a Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: since Vietnam and only one was word then, and it's
Speaker 1: sort of like, what does it take for an airman
Speaker 1: to win the Medal of Honor? And the Secretary Air
Speaker 1: Force like, that's a good question, and can we review
Speaker 1: axe valor that our airmen and airwomen have performed, you know,
Speaker 1: during the g WATT and see if there's anything that
Speaker 1: would qualify. Yep.
Speaker 2: That's the way I recall it. The it picked up
Speaker 2: steam based on an Air Force Times article, and I
Speaker 2: think that headline was what does it take to win
Speaker 2: the Medal of Honor? Right, and and it was based
Speaker 2: on a number of like Air Force crosses and things
Speaker 2: like that that had specifically come out of the special
Speaker 2: tactics community. That anyway, the service secretaries across all the
Speaker 2: services ordered a review of top valor awards to make
Speaker 2: sure that we hadn't left a stone unturned, if you will.
Speaker 2: So when the Air Force did their initial look, they
Speaker 2: had a shortlist, but at the top of their short
Speaker 2: list was that of John Chapman and the story of
Speaker 2: Roberts Ridge. So it worked in the Air Force's favor that,
Speaker 2: you know, they still had that Terra server thanks to
Speaker 2: Frank Daily. The funny story he told me was the
Speaker 2: young analyst that was with him was like, hey, those
Speaker 2: guys came and confiscated the videos. I just found all
Speaker 2: these clips on the Terra server. Do you want me
Speaker 2: to go ahead and delete those? He's like, no, no,
Speaker 2: do not save that. And so if it hadn't been
Speaker 2: for Frank, that stuff could have been lost and never recovered.
Speaker 2: But I in the midst of all of this, once
Speaker 2: we really picked up steam and we had already briefed
Speaker 2: a Mako element. This is like September of sixteen, But
Speaker 2: between then and eighteen, when the when the final you know,
Speaker 2: like valor boards are being done at a four star
Speaker 2: level and so forth. Before it goes to the sect death.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, an unmarked envelope shows up, and
Speaker 2: inside the double wrapped package are the original classified, handwritten
Speaker 2: marked CDs in Frank Daly's handwriting, because he's the one
Speaker 2: who had had marked those original CDs from the original deployment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so.
Speaker 2: Wherever that stuff came from, I don't know if it
Speaker 2: if it came from from DAMNAK or if it came
Speaker 2: from a treasure trove down in Tampa out of SOACOM.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It was not marked like when you
Speaker 2: send something classified, their's specific rules and ways that you
Speaker 2: package stuff. But there was no way to tell exactly
Speaker 2: what the source of this was. But somebody wanted to
Speaker 2: make sure that we got all of it, and they
Speaker 2: sent it to us, and finally we had everything to
Speaker 2: include the original gunship footage that showed our conversation on
Speaker 2: board and the second strobe and him getting in. And
Speaker 2: then oh, by the way, now you had all the
Speaker 2: rest of the predator footage and all of the rest
Speaker 2: of those clips that have been pieced together. So it
Speaker 2: made for an air tight case, especially with all of
Speaker 2: the imagery analysis that went into it. There's a guy
Speaker 2: I don't talk about him because he's still working certain mission.
Speaker 2: But when they went in they did the imagery analysis
Speaker 2: on this. They mapped this thing down to the to
Speaker 2: the nats ass like you could, you know, basically, put
Speaker 2: a pin drop anywhere on that mountain. You could put
Speaker 2: me in a laying, prone, kneeling, standing, tall, crouch, whatever,
Speaker 2: and you could look around and give me three hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty what my specific field of view was from
Speaker 2: that point on the mountain. And they did that over
Speaker 2: the entire area. And that's how we knew that there
Speaker 2: were inconsistencies in some of the seals narrative on Hey,
Speaker 2: I looked and saw the rise and fall of a laser.
Speaker 2: I could see him. I verified, I crawled right over
Speaker 2: the top of him.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, none of that was true. You know, there wasn't
Speaker 2: a laser illuminated that. For that laser, it was a
Speaker 2: momentary switch. It would have meant that John would have
Speaker 2: had to have fallen incapacitated and something had direct pressure
Speaker 2: on the switch, right, and then we would have seen
Speaker 2: that with our sensors because I can see when their
Speaker 2: lasers are active on their rifles. You use those as
Speaker 2: marketing devices at times, and then you know they let
Speaker 2: you know, like where they're pointing towards, so enemy on
Speaker 2: the far side. Anyway, none of the stuff matched Air
Speaker 2: Forces research is airtight. The crazy part was the Navy leadership.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm kind of getting off script, you know,
Speaker 2: as far as time and order of all of this.
Speaker 2: But lo and behold, we briefed make the surviving members
Speaker 2: of Maco three zero and what would have been DEV
Speaker 2: Group's commander at the time, Captain Jeremy Williams. We briefed
Speaker 2: them in a DC facility in September of sixteen, and
Speaker 2: they had their intel guy, Commander Heartwell. I always get
Speaker 2: the dude's name mixed up, but they had their intel
Speaker 2: guy in the room as we're briefing all of them
Speaker 2: our findings. And I say this because later on Heartwell
Speaker 2: is the one who shows up at all the valor
Speaker 2: boards with this other version of events. And this is
Speaker 2: the Navy's version of events, not like what all the
Speaker 2: research actually showed. And so they constantly say that John
Speaker 2: died within the first three minutes, and they still stick
Speaker 2: to that story today. So there's a full of people
Speaker 2: working on their own documentary all funded by Seal money
Speaker 2: whatever it is, They still stick to that slabs at
Speaker 2: current accounts still says that John died right beside me
Speaker 2: and the initial assault. Well, no, he didn't, you know one,
Speaker 2: because you were never right beside him anyway, you know.
Speaker 2: But nevertheless, John was the one who went and did
Speaker 2: all that stuff. And then by the time he's killed,
Speaker 2: it's after the element has broken contact. John is still
Speaker 2: up and up around Bunker one and the QRF is inbound,
Speaker 2: and he knows that if he doesn't put down suppressive
Speaker 2: fire after being up there for an hour and twenty
Speaker 2: minutes by himself, if he doesn't do that, then the
Speaker 2: helicopter is going to suffer the same fate that they
Speaker 2: did when they came in.
Speaker 1: So at that point in twenty fourteen, when you first
Speaker 1: get kind of picked for this, were you aware of
Speaker 1: the extended fight that happened while you guys were grounded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're talking about you're talking about the extended fight
Speaker 2: on top of the mountain.
Speaker 1: That John when he recovers and continues to fight. Were
Speaker 1: you aware of any of that between like your involvement
Speaker 1: with that operation and twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: I knew that Between between the time of the event
Speaker 2: and me being brought onto to the research team, I
Speaker 2: knew that there were three variations of the story. We
Speaker 2: knew that there was somebody that continued to fight up
Speaker 2: there after the Mako element had broken contact and before
Speaker 2: the QRF arrived. That was Captain Self and his rangers, right.
Speaker 2: I knew that that the competing theories were Roberts and
Speaker 2: then Chapman, and then red On Red. I didn't believe
Speaker 2: the like we knew after the fact that the predator
Speaker 2: could confirm based on the sawing motion that they could
Speaker 2: see that they called. They would have told you right
Speaker 2: then and there. If we had been in direct comms
Speaker 2: with them, they would have told us right then and
Speaker 2: there that that Roberts had been killed already, we didn't
Speaker 2: know for sure. We weren't in comms with them. So
Speaker 2: there were people out there that knew that Roberts had
Speaker 2: been killed at that point, that he moved his body
Speaker 2: and propped him up by the by the boulder there.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That only leaves Chappie and the and the red On
Speaker 2: Red theory, and the fact that the fighting is literally
Speaker 2: close proximity. I mean, like we're talking, we're talking you know,
Speaker 2: inside of twenty meters in broad daylight for guys that
Speaker 2: had had occupied that mountain for months, you don't shoot
Speaker 2: each other in the face in broad daylight. There's no
Speaker 2: red on red at that distance. I'm sorry, like that,
Speaker 2: that absolutely does not hold water. Right, And there's a
Speaker 2: funny story when all this stuff came to be the
Speaker 2: final brief to Secretary of Defense Mattis that he asked,
Speaker 2: what the view that, what's the prevailing view of others,
Speaker 2: what's the leading competing theory. They explained that, and Mattis
Speaker 2: is like, yeah, I don't buy.
Speaker 1: It, Yeah, especially because there was actually hand to hand
Speaker 1: at that point too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you can. You can see that in the footage,
Speaker 2: like they're literally hand to hand, and Shappy prevails in
Speaker 2: that engagement as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And oh, by the way, he was so when we
Speaker 2: say that he was incapacitated, the medical forensics showed that
Speaker 2: that was a mortal wound with without attention, he would
Speaker 2: have died from that wound. Right. Well, he's still He's still, Mike.
Speaker 2: This is Rob's theory. But I think a one oh
Speaker 2: five going off right next to your position is one
Speaker 2: hell of an alarm clock.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think if you're a seasoned, you know, combat controller,
Speaker 2: the first thing you're going to do is illuminate a
Speaker 2: strove and find cover.
Speaker 1: And that happened.
Speaker 2: That's what happened. That's what made sense. Like it doesn't
Speaker 2: take a rocket scientist to put all this stuff together.
Speaker 2: But oh, by the way, we had so many different
Speaker 2: layers of evidence that that prove, Like there's no question
Speaker 2: about John his actions or the status of his medal,
Speaker 2: Like he earned his stuff.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: If there's ever any question, it's why didn't they present too? Instead?
Speaker 2: The Air Force literally chose to combine the elements and
Speaker 2: make it one air tight case. Right, But but you
Speaker 2: could you could split those and you could you could
Speaker 2: provide a basis for two medals of honor for John Chapman.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so you know, out of curiosity because you
Speaker 1: said there was a shortlist of error airmen who who
Speaker 1: probably qualified. Do you think that the air forces that
Speaker 1: the Air Force suffers from the fact that they are
Speaker 1: their attachments and so often do not get the recognition
Speaker 1: they deserve.
Speaker 2: From firsthand experience. So I'm not a special tactics hereman, right,
Speaker 2: But I'm a I'm a special intelligence capability that exists
Speaker 2: within Air Force Special Operations. So my parent command is
Speaker 2: not Air Force Special Operations Command. So when when our
Speaker 2: guys go out and they operate, you got different chains
Speaker 2: of command. So I've got my administrative chain. We're all,
Speaker 2: you know, chopped to the same people operationally to execute
Speaker 2: our missions. But when it comes time to decorate everybody,
Speaker 2: there's there's different ways that that can happen. The operational
Speaker 2: authority can do that from theater and submit and cover everybody,
Speaker 2: or if it doesn't happen in time, then it comes
Speaker 2: to light later. Now you're you're geographically separated, you're with
Speaker 2: your administrative chain of command versus the operational one that
Speaker 2: you were attached to. And yeah, I think that absolutely
Speaker 2: plays a part in this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got to be frustrating. So so you see
Speaker 1: this through through twenty fourteen, twenty sixteen, you guys put
Speaker 1: it all together, the awards go up. I if you
Speaker 1: weren't directly involved in the politics behind, like how the
Speaker 1: decisions were made, then I don't want to get involved
Speaker 1: in that. But like, at what point do you kind
Speaker 1: of hand this off and you're done with it.
Speaker 2: So the last significant piece for me, it's if you
Speaker 2: think about the joint soft community. You know, with the
Speaker 2: point that you had just made, you know, the Air
Speaker 2: Force is often attached, right, like very seldom are we
Speaker 2: like the primary unit that is executing a mission, unless
Speaker 2: it's like an airborne platform. You know, that's just typically
Speaker 2: not us. Our specialties are there to exist other soft
Speaker 2: teams and elements. Right. So when we're going through the
Speaker 2: the information process, the boarding process, that initial brief in
Speaker 2: September of sixteen, I'm talking with what would have been
Speaker 2: the twenty fourth sole commander, so he owned those respective
Speaker 2: special tactics airmen. And as we go in, you know,
Speaker 2: you've got the medical professional, You've got the imagery and analyst.
Speaker 2: You've got Jay Hill, who was on an adjacent mountain
Speaker 2: who heard Chappie come up on the radio ass three zero.
Speaker 2: Charlie knew him, personally, recognizes radio etiquette, recognize his voice,
Speaker 2: tried to talk to him but never had positive two
Speaker 2: A coms. But he heard Chappy and it was after
Speaker 2: the gunship had departed, but before the QRF had showed up.
Speaker 2: So between that and me are articulating the eyewitness testimony
Speaker 2: from our video that's literally playing showing Chappie's strobe illuminate
Speaker 2: and crawl into the bunker and recounting the audio that
Speaker 2: is showing Chris explaining to the folk, O, hey, I've
Speaker 2: got a second strobe. This doesn't look like the others
Speaker 2: and then they hear the rest of that mortar come in, like,
Speaker 2: you can't refute.
Speaker 1: That, right.
Speaker 2: So, as in the spirit of having to play nice
Speaker 2: with others in the joint soft community, the Special Tactics
Speaker 2: community just said, hey, here are the facts, and we're
Speaker 2: gonna let the experts and the witnesses speak to these
Speaker 2: to these points, so you know, if there's a preparation,
Speaker 2: you know, going into it, it's like, hey, Rob, don't
Speaker 2: hold back, Like when you get up there, I want
Speaker 2: you to tell your side of the story and just
Speaker 2: don't back down. Yeah, And I'm like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: you don't have to tell me that, Colonel, Like I
Speaker 2: got you. I knew exactly what was going on in
Speaker 2: the situation that we were walking into because you knew
Speaker 2: that there was pushback already. And literally in that meeting,
Speaker 2: that's the moment where Slab changed his story because he
Speaker 2: went from the rise and fall of a laser on
Speaker 2: the chest, so literally it was. You remember the baseball
Speaker 2: drug scenario where Rafael Paul Merrow says I did not
Speaker 2: use performance in Andy, I did not use steroids Before Congress,
Speaker 2: Slab has a moment like that and says, I crawled
Speaker 2: right over the top of Jump right, And we're literally
Speaker 2: showing in the video that has all of the breadcrumb
Speaker 2: data showing like we've gone back and established the order
Speaker 2: in which they exited. We have signed an IR signature
Speaker 2: to each individual, and we can follow them chain of
Speaker 2: custody greater than ninety percent chance of accuracy based on
Speaker 2: the totality of all that information, And we can literally
Speaker 2: see the area where Slab says I crawled right over him, like, no,
Speaker 2: you didn't. You crawled over You crawled over Roberts right.
Speaker 2: And you guys still say that y'all never saw Roberts right.
Speaker 2: You were right on top of Roberts at the boulder.
Speaker 1: At the boulder, he would have had to crawl over
Speaker 1: Chappie up near the bunker.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, And at the point, like you can
Speaker 2: follow their egress, the only time that he would have
Speaker 2: had eyes on Chappie being incapacitated was when they were
Speaker 2: both engaged in bunker two, and Slab would have been
Speaker 2: to the to the left of the tree, up against
Speaker 2: the boulder boulders on his left facing up towards bunker two,
Speaker 2: and Chappie's on the right of that tree. But we
Speaker 2: also dropped breadcrumbs there and showed Slab his what his
Speaker 2: field of view would have been, like we could literally
Speaker 2: spin him around, like the entire area was scanned to
Speaker 2: include under the tree, like you could see, this is
Speaker 2: what the canopy was, this is where your terrain was,
Speaker 2: this is what you could see. And if if Chappie
Speaker 2: had fallen and he was laying out prone the way
Speaker 2: you described, you literally can't see him from where you
Speaker 2: said he could right right, And so anyway, his story
Speaker 2: changed in that briefing at that moment said he crawled
Speaker 2: right over the top of Chappie. The only person he
Speaker 2: crawled over the top of was petty Officer Roberts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's weird because you know, there have
Speaker 1: been a number of attempts to uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: after after some of this came out, then then the
Speaker 1: I think there was an argument that well, you know,
Speaker 1: Chappie was out of his lane. He was there to
Speaker 1: provide you know to bride to be the CCT. He
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been assaulting, like, you know, there have been
Speaker 1: so many attempts.
Speaker 4: To sort of like, Yeah, there was also the theory
Speaker 4: right that he saw Roberts and thought that was Chapman, right,
Speaker 4: fog of war. I don't know what the truth is there,
Speaker 4: but sure maybe, yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think a boat team would ever
Speaker 2: misidentify one of their original sixth or the seventh combat
Speaker 2: controller that was that was augmenting Like, I don't buy it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's part of your two and a half
Speaker 1: years at the three sixty first and then then you
Speaker 1: go to the R to work with the RC third
Speaker 1: one thirty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I I I ended up in my unit of assignment.
Speaker 2: I got voted off the island as I had promoted.
Speaker 2: You know, there were you know, limited number of positions,
Speaker 2: they were already filled. I drew the straw to go
Speaker 2: out to what turned out to be the the best
Speaker 2: assignment of my career. I love the mission that we
Speaker 2: were just talking about, but as far as best Overhall
Speaker 2: assignment for me and my family, h going out to
Speaker 2: Okinawa and being the senior enlisted leader for the three
Speaker 2: ninetieth Intelligence Squadron. That was freaking cool. And the reason
Speaker 2: is is that that's the birthplace of Airborne I s R.
Speaker 2: From a modern standpoint. Now, I got a former commander
Speaker 2: who's a historian bona fide, he's a professor. He would
Speaker 2: tell you that the birthplace of Airborne I s R
Speaker 2: Started in the European theater. There's he's he's absolutely true.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to argue with him. But as far
Speaker 2: as the Air Force specific units that we support with
Speaker 2: the RC one thirty five, there's a mission that used
Speaker 2: to be the Combat Apple. That's what they came and
Speaker 2: grew into the RC one thirty five that we know today.
Speaker 2: And it was stood up by a gentleman by the
Speaker 2: name of Doyle Larson. Most of the folks in the
Speaker 2: in the ISR community like know who this is from
Speaker 2: an Air Force perspective. Our buildings named after him. I
Speaker 2: got to go out there, was there during that unit's
Speaker 2: fiftieth anniversary. I know that doesn't seem like much. We
Speaker 2: just celebrated the Army as two hundred and fiftieth, but hey,
Speaker 2: you know, give us a break. The Air Force is
Speaker 2: still young. But our squadron had turned fifty. Out there,
Speaker 2: I got a chance to be part of that unit
Speaker 2: while we were doing what we call the pivot to
Speaker 2: the Pacific, so iron was flowing from the Central you know,
Speaker 2: theaters over the Middle East away from Central Command back
Speaker 2: or to what is now Indo pe com Our unit.
Speaker 2: They covered everything from the summit in Singapore, you know
Speaker 2: where Trump met with the leader in North Korea, to
Speaker 2: the Olympics and then help we uh, we would help
Speaker 2: take care of the South China Sea, you know, with
Speaker 2: the Chinese like to to expand their their their maritime
Speaker 2: claims a little bit further than what it is internationally recognized.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Uh. And then from there you became the
Speaker 1: i G Superintendent for the sixteenth Air Force. Yes, and
Speaker 1: can you tell us about that? So now you're like
Speaker 1: a big boss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind of kind of, I guess always the
Speaker 2: number two, you know, so I as a senior enlisted leader,
Speaker 2: you know, we're advising the those commanders. If you if
Speaker 2: you look back at some of my some of my
Speaker 2: past experiences, you know from a just from the service,
Speaker 2: it was nice, a nice kind of twilight assignment there
Speaker 2: as the IG superintendent because your your whole goal is
Speaker 2: to speak truth to power, hold people accountable, you know,
Speaker 2: take care of airmen that are out executing mission and
Speaker 2: so on. So that was a pretty sweet moment to
Speaker 2: be able to do that at the end. And then
Speaker 2: you know, to have had this is around the time period,
Speaker 2: you know, some eighteen is when August of eighteen is
Speaker 2: when Chapman has awarded his Medal of Honor. I got
Speaker 2: a chance to attend that at the White House as
Speaker 2: a as a guest and member of the research team.
Speaker 2: Then I had reassigned there at the end of eighteen
Speaker 2: to sixteenth Air Force, so I was you know, home
Speaker 2: was and Antonio and then yeah, towards the end of
Speaker 2: the IG tour, you know, you do your best to
Speaker 2: you know, speak up for airman, hold people accountable when
Speaker 2: when necessary, and just make sure that mission has executed
Speaker 2: the way it should be.
Speaker 1: Was there, you know, was there any heartache on the
Speaker 1: part of like the research team. Obviously there are stories
Speaker 1: about the back the backroom deals that had to be
Speaker 1: made with the Navy in terms of you know, those
Speaker 1: are stories, but what we do know is that Slevinsky
Speaker 1: was awarded a Medal of Honor and he was awarded
Speaker 1: the Medal of Honor, not at the same time as Chapman.
Speaker 1: They made sure that his was awarded like prior to.
Speaker 2: So. Yeah, So back up to September of sixteen, I
Speaker 2: told you we brief We briefed the surviving members, Captain
Speaker 2: Jeremy Williams, and Mako. So all the surviving members and
Speaker 2: Maker through zero either present in the room, three of
Speaker 2: them in the room and one on a telecon and
Speaker 2: it's us presenting information to them, and then the only
Speaker 2: other extra person in the room is Commander Hartwell. At
Speaker 2: the end of that meeting, we're getting ready to shuffle
Speaker 2: out the door and Jeremy Williams is sitting right next
Speaker 2: to He's standing next to Slab close to the exit.
Speaker 2: He just looks over at Slily's like, huh, maybe we
Speaker 2: should look at upgrading yours. This is September of sixteen.
Speaker 2: By December of sixteen, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mavis
Speaker 2: makes a trip out to dam Neck. Britt Slavinski in
Speaker 2: his own words in an interview, I've got clips. Hopefully
Speaker 2: I'll get this to D and y'all can get these uploaded.
Speaker 2: But Britt describes the first time that he was informed
Speaker 2: that he was going to be receiving the Medal of Honor,
Speaker 2: and that's when the second MAV shows up in September
Speaker 2: or December of sixteen and makes the announcement to their
Speaker 2: home unit at Damn Neck and BRIT's not even like
Speaker 2: he's out of the service at this point. He was
Speaker 2: brought back as a guest under the rules of somebody
Speaker 2: else's award. And then oh, by the way, the secon
Speaker 2: NAB makes that announcement, so you don't go from September
Speaker 2: of sixteen, Captain Jeremy Williams saying maybe we should look
Speaker 2: it upgrading yours to sect navs showing up within ninety days, right, Like,
Speaker 2: medals of honor do not happen that fast, especially ones
Speaker 2: that are from events that are you know, what would
Speaker 2: that have been sixteen? Go back to two that would
Speaker 2: have been fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not as if new information came out,
Speaker 1: favorite Slavinski, Were you an intel guy?
Speaker 2: I mean that as a compliment, yeah, yeah, yeah, no no,
Speaker 2: so yeah, no, there's no new information for slab, so
Speaker 2: like everybody knew, all right, So back up to the
Speaker 2: the original decorations that were handed out for Britt Slovinski
Speaker 2: and John Chapman where their respective Service crosses. Slav was
Speaker 2: awarded the Navy Cross, Chappe was awarded the Air Force Cross.
Speaker 2: And that was for them being credited to storming and
Speaker 2: eliminating Bunker one, saving the team. Right, we'll go back
Speaker 2: and look at the footage. Tell me who eliminated Bunker one?
Speaker 1: Right, right?
Speaker 2: And wasn't Britt Slevinski? Was he present? Was he? Was
Speaker 2: he part of all of this? As of freaking lutely,
Speaker 2: I won't take anything from the dude, except for when
Speaker 2: you want to go down the road of stolen valor
Speaker 2: and Navy false narratives. Right, that's that's crap. And then
Speaker 2: now you're tarnishing the legacy of John Chapman. Now it's
Speaker 2: cemented in the history books, right, Chappy has his Medal
Speaker 2: of Honor, and it is what it is. But then
Speaker 2: fast forward to after all of this and the you know,
Speaker 2: the museum, and then they just take a big dump
Speaker 2: all over the guy again.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's the Navy Seal Museum sponsored by the
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor, tadda, you know. So, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: for you you wrap up at Joint Force Joint Forest
Speaker 1: Headquarters cyber right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this we were downsizing the Inspector General Team. I
Speaker 2: still had a little bit of time left before I
Speaker 2: was before I was actually retiring, and so from my
Speaker 2: last twelve months I served as a senior enlisted leader
Speaker 2: for for a cyber element that was was there in Texas.
Speaker 2: There's a number of them on the Joint Force Headquarters side.
Speaker 2: They aligned to US cybercom UH and then they execute
Speaker 2: various various mission based on their geographic alignment, depending on
Speaker 2: who's who's in the lead. Like the Army runs one,
Speaker 2: the Navy runs one, the Air Force runs one.
Speaker 1: Fantastic and so what about now, like, what are you
Speaker 1: doing post Air Force career?
Speaker 2: So I retired from active duty. I didn't I didn't
Speaker 2: go too far from the herd. You know we I
Speaker 2: think we kind of like to stay with our tribe.
Speaker 2: I got. I got a wife who's who's not very
Speaker 2: risk averse. My goal was to to not be a
Speaker 2: government mule. I wanted to move as far away from
Speaker 2: from the actual service. I wanted to go hit industry
Speaker 2: and you know, see where I could make my mark
Speaker 2: as a civilian. Truly, she was like no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: that that's cutthroat. I'm like, yeah, that's fine with me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to survive.
Speaker 2: But but anyway, it becomes a family decision at that point,
Speaker 2: so I stayed close by. I'm still working in the
Speaker 2: intelligence community as a as a government civilian. Now, I
Speaker 2: did a transition moment as a as a contractor, as
Speaker 2: as many people you know do after their active duty career,
Speaker 2: and so I work on strategic plans for an intel directorate,
Speaker 2: for a training command in the Air Force, and life
Speaker 2: is good, man. I'm I'm surrounded by good people, have
Speaker 2: a good culture, a good team. The mission near as
Speaker 2: sexy is what it used to be, sure, But but
Speaker 2: you're around good people, so that I can deal with.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Did we leave anything out? Do we working people?
Speaker 1: Are you on social media or anything like that? Where
Speaker 1: can people find you if they look for you?
Speaker 2: So I'm not a I'm not a super super public guy.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I've got a persona out there. But but
Speaker 2: there's also a handful of folks that aren't necessarily my
Speaker 2: biggest fans that that are busy pushing what I call
Speaker 2: the seal false narratives. So I don't get I don't
Speaker 2: get too far into that. Where where you will find
Speaker 2: me is uh with individuals like y'all that that have
Speaker 2: the ability to use your platform for for those of
Speaker 2: us interested in speaking truth to power, And for that
Speaker 2: I say thank you for the bottom of my heart.
Speaker 2: What uh. I'm sure many people have have mentioned this
Speaker 2: to you on the side, but I'd like to say
Speaker 2: it here. The initial the initial damn it. I just
Speaker 2: I just had a senior moment when we what the
Speaker 2: hell do you call that thing that people sign like
Speaker 2: an AFFI, David, the one the one that you started, Dave.
Speaker 1: The petitions, the petition.
Speaker 2: Petition, Yeah, yeah, damn okay, So the petition that you
Speaker 2: signed like that kickstarted a lot. It wasn't until between
Speaker 2: that and Laurie's Laurie's actual post as to what was
Speaker 2: going on at the Medal of Honor Museum. That's what
Speaker 2: smoked me out on this, you know. Like, so I
Speaker 2: didn't like, I thought this was all water under the bridge.
Speaker 2: Slab got his metal, Chapman got his, and I thought
Speaker 2: we had all moved on. I didn't realize that Slab
Speaker 2: had landed like keyboard positions and that he was involved
Speaker 2: such in such a high manner with the Medal of
Speaker 2: Honor Museum, not to mention the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
Speaker 2: And then then I start looking based off of what
Speaker 2: Laurie's post was, and I was like, son of a gun,
Speaker 2: I could I was. I could not believe that they
Speaker 2: were literally going out there and sticking to the false
Speaker 2: narrative that they used to try to subvert Chapman's metal
Speaker 2: upgrade to begin with.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the point where it's like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not naive. I understand where people have power and
Speaker 2: people have connection and so forth, and if they're not
Speaker 2: going to be held accountable, all right, that's on somebody else.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you this, they won't get away with it,
Speaker 2: so I will do my best to make sure that
Speaker 2: the truth is known and understood. Chapman is a bona
Speaker 2: fide friggin' hero that is an amazing one, and I
Speaker 2: can't wait until that story becomes more broadly understood. You know,
Speaker 2: there are efforts underway to do all of that, but
Speaker 2: you just like you have to take with a grain
Speaker 2: of salt. And I hate to say this because it
Speaker 2: then tarnishes the rest of the good seals that are
Speaker 2: out there. But if you hear a story about Seals
Speaker 2: and heroics, you might want to consider that like a
Speaker 2: barroom legend, you know, you know those stories where you
Speaker 2: just have to have ten percent truth and then it
Speaker 2: makes for a great story. There's too many of those
Speaker 2: that are out there, especially of late and all of
Speaker 2: that stuff ties right back to the specific personality that
Speaker 2: was Tim Zamanski And then you can follow the lineage
Speaker 2: down with key leaders. Wyman Howard is one of them.
Speaker 2: He's the guy that they called Hatchetman, documented in Matt
Speaker 2: Cole's book. You know, I don't have to go any further,
Speaker 2: but how he connects to the Chapman Medal of Honor upgrade.
Speaker 2: When the Seals went down the road of their false narrative,
Speaker 2: they went and recreated their own videos. Well, guess where
Speaker 2: Wyman Howard was assigned while that was going on. He
Speaker 2: was the DOO of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. So
Speaker 2: if you want to recreate footage, if you want to
Speaker 2: recreate anything like the same people that mapped that mountaintop
Speaker 2: and did everything that I was telling you that we
Speaker 2: could do. He was the DOO, a general officer at
Speaker 2: that premier agency. All while this was going on with
Speaker 2: the Medal of Honor upgrade and the board and the
Speaker 2: seal false narrative and the subversion efforts.
Speaker 4: Is that interesting guy? You know, I've had like people
Speaker 4: tell me in the past that like he was totally
Speaker 4: different than like the General mccrystals and the Scottie Millers,
Speaker 4: you know, the like calm, cool, collected kind of personality
Speaker 4: that Wineman was like he would like seethe, Like there's
Speaker 4: like anger vibrating off of this dude.
Speaker 2: So my experience when I met him in person, like
Speaker 2: I didn't meet him face to face, but that same deployment,
Speaker 2: it's the twenty eleven time period when the Bluewater yacht
Speaker 2: deal goes down. He comes and pays us a visit
Speaker 2: based on you know, at the time he's the dev
Speaker 2: group commander and they were in charge of that particular AO.
Speaker 2: He comes in and gives us a who yah speech
Speaker 2: and a hangar. Well, he showed up on one of
Speaker 2: the one of the slick jets. They step off and
Speaker 2: what we all call the smooths. You know, he's got
Speaker 2: his suit on but but open collar, no tie. He
Speaker 2: strutted into that damn hangar. You would have thought it
Speaker 2: was Tom Brady like just swagger and I don't like
Speaker 2: not a I don't think that he just exuded arrogance.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that, but just like you were looking
Speaker 2: at a dude that you knew was a significant individual
Speaker 2: and he just had that executive presence about him, that
Speaker 2: that was what my personal experience, you know, being at
Speaker 2: least in the same hangar within you know, throwing distance
Speaker 2: of of the guy. But but it wasn't until I,
Speaker 2: like I knew, I know folks that work with him directly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've heard good stories, I've read bad.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's for me to judge. But what
Speaker 2: I would do is I will I will leave you
Speaker 2: with the connective tissue that when they created their false
Speaker 2: narrative against John Chapman, surviving that initial mortal wound, Wyman
Speaker 2: Howard was the GEO, the director of Operations at the
Speaker 2: National GEO Special Intelligence Agency. At that same time, Jeremy
Speaker 2: Williams had cleaned up to the DEV Group position. So
Speaker 2: he's the CEO at DEV Group and the Commander of
Speaker 2: Naval Special Warfare is Tim Zemanski. So how do you
Speaker 2: go from slab medal of honor from September of sixteen
Speaker 2: to SECT now making the announcement in December of sixteen,
Speaker 2: because Zemansky was sitting on that and had it ready
Speaker 2: ready to go with no new information, nothing to expand
Speaker 2: beyond the basis of his Navy cross unless we add
Speaker 2: in that, Hey, I rescued the aircrew. Hey, I was
Speaker 2: in combat for fourteen hours. Well, like, dude, they were
Speaker 2: in combat for like ten minutes and they broke contact
Speaker 2: and they were they weren't engaged, you know, like after
Speaker 2: they broke contact. Now did he have wounded? Like? Was
Speaker 2: there a huge pray initially absolutely won't take anything away
Speaker 2: from it, but look at the basis of his of
Speaker 2: his medal of Honor, and I can poke holes in
Speaker 2: it left and right.
Speaker 1: Well be he They basically took a lot of what
Speaker 1: was on Chapman's and just transferred it over basically a
Speaker 1: cop and copy and paste.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so there's a there's a nugget of information
Speaker 2: on that one. And I'll speak cryptically about this, but
Speaker 2: when I say that Jeremy Williams is a CD character,
Speaker 2: Like he's a CD character, This dude is a He's
Speaker 2: a general officer right now competing for a potential three
Speaker 2: star position. If this man goes into a three star
Speaker 2: position as a seal Naval special warfare officer, that means
Speaker 2: that he's going to be commanding in a joint environment.
Speaker 2: All right, How does a guy go into a three
Speaker 2: star joint command his position, whether it's command or a
Speaker 2: senior staff position that's at a three star level. How
Speaker 2: do you do that in a joint environment knowing full
Speaker 2: well that you subverted an Air Force teammates medal of
Speaker 2: honor upgrade based on a bullshit false narrative. And so,
Speaker 2: to take this further, the cryptic message is when I
Speaker 2: say that the Navy had every bit of the Air
Speaker 2: Force information, it wasn't just because the Air Force was
Speaker 2: willing to share it with them. All right, there was
Speaker 2: a moment when Jeremy Williams deliberately took the information right
Speaker 2: and I just I'll leave it at that. But there
Speaker 2: are specific people that know exactly what happened, and that
Speaker 2: man continues to go unanswered because he was in some
Speaker 2: significant places also in twenty eleven. So he's got a
Speaker 2: permanent get out of jail free card for some of
Speaker 2: his own command and his team's you know actions, it's bullshit.
Speaker 2: People need to hold these guys accountable and and yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not in a position to change it, but I
Speaker 2: am in a position to speak out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on and sharing
Speaker 1: this first hand. Yeah, do we got questions to be
Speaker 1: one moment.
Speaker 6: I appreciate the respect and uh and description regarding your
Speaker 6: teammate from Boston. Can you share a story regarding this
Speaker 6: Beantown badass Thanks for the show, guys.
Speaker 2: That's kind of the Ob himself.
Speaker 1: That's from Matt Matt Gavin.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, yeah, from Ob being badass man. I
Speaker 2: I never had to see him fight, but I would
Speaker 2: tell you that the Boston accent was enough to make
Speaker 2: anybody think twice.
Speaker 1: One more from Corbin.
Speaker 6: Over the course of your career, would you say technology
Speaker 6: has helped to increase the effectiveness of communication between the
Speaker 6: task asset in the stack and the eyes on the
Speaker 6: ground tasking set asset or is it just mixed a
Speaker 6: mixed bag dependent on the people involved in the event.
Speaker 2: Yes, on all phases, so inherently, I'm I'm a you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a positive thinker. I'd like to say yes, it improves,
Speaker 2: but you got to take all that with a grain
Speaker 2: of salt. There's a the Malani report regarding Robert's ridge
Speaker 2: in the battle at Tucker Gar talks about the the
Speaker 2: advent of technology and how that at times was believed
Speaker 2: to be the same as having true situational awareness for
Speaker 2: what was going on in the battlefield. And I think
Speaker 2: anybody that's been there knows that that will never replace
Speaker 2: boots on ground. If you listen to if you've read
Speaker 2: any of Blabor's books, that's one of the consistent themes
Speaker 2: that he espouses in his book The Mission to Men
Speaker 2: and Me. He always gives credence to the men on
Speaker 2: the ground. He always his lesson is listened to the
Speaker 2: boots on the ground. So I think there's elements where
Speaker 2: the technology will never completely and totally replace that level
Speaker 2: of situational awareness, but absolutely it enhances as long as
Speaker 2: it's not abused or misused.
Speaker 1: Hey, Rob, thank you so much. We really, we deeply
Speaker 1: appreciate it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: As I appreciate shall haveing me. Thanks for the opportunity. Uh,
Speaker 2: most people want to hear the rest of the story
Speaker 2: on the on the Chapman piece. Thanks for giving me
Speaker 2: a chance to tell a little bit of what I
Speaker 2: would say is otherwise insignificant. You know, if if I
Speaker 2: had to to surmize, like the key event in my
Speaker 2: overall career, it's literally having an impact on Chapman's metal
Speaker 2: upgrade and being there and what's actually carried forward to now.
Speaker 2: But but otherwise, I'm just a small cog and a wheel.
Speaker 2: But happen to be able to speak truth to power
Speaker 2: when it counted for that matter, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: damn a seal false narrative. You want to tell lies
Speaker 2: in front of general officers, I'm gonna call you out,
Speaker 2: Commander Heartwell.
Speaker 1: And for a bonus for our patron viewers, we are
Speaker 1: trying to get access to your g drive where you
Speaker 1: have basically documented clip wise slabs changing story over over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will work with d to get that drive
Speaker 2: at least over to you guys. You'll have like read only.
Speaker 2: But however, however, you can technically make that available to
Speaker 2: your patreon folks. Dude, this is all public stuff and
Speaker 2: if nothing else, you can look at the file names
Speaker 2: and just google the stuff yourself. It's out there on
Speaker 2: YouTube like it's nothing that came from my own private collection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fantastic, Thanks again, Rob, Thank you for.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Guys. Thank y'all. I appreciate you having me
Speaker 2: all Rightyboddy, thank you. I have I got one thing
Speaker 2: my wife put in my ear. We were talking about
Speaker 2: the petition before, so you kicked off a huge interest
Speaker 2: in what was going on at the Medal of Honor Museum.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Matt Koubler started a petition that
Speaker 2: ties back to Representative Paulina Luna out of Tampa, Florida.
Speaker 2: There was confusion amongst the audiences out there, and so
Speaker 2: what I would what I wanted to relay was a
Speaker 2: thank you for what you did with your original petition,
Speaker 2: but if there's any way that you can spark interest
Speaker 2: towards the one that's tied towards Paulina Luna and having
Speaker 2: Congress take a look at this event itself.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely appreciate it, absolutely well. In fact, i'll link
Speaker 1: It'll be in the link below. We'll put it in
Speaker 1: links below and I will also through the through my
Speaker 1: petition send out a link to Math's petition.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you guys again,
Speaker 2: it's a pleasure to being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks. Thanks. Hey, guys, it's Jack.
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Speaker 2: Thank you,