Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to episode two hundred and forty of
Speaker 1: The Teamhouse. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. Our
Speaker 1: boy Adam White is back there in the darkness. De's
Speaker 1: pressing the buttons and our guest in studio. He's third
Speaker 1: appearance on the show, but the first time in studio.
Speaker 1: We're really excited to have him here. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: this dude in person for like seventeen years. This Mike Edwards.
Speaker 1: Mike served in the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment. We were
Speaker 1: in three seven five back in the day together, and
Speaker 1: he went on to have a career in the Regimental
Speaker 1: Reconnaissance Company and then as a military freefall instructor.
Speaker 2: So we're really excited to have you here. Man.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me back. I appreciate it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: good to see you on person for real. Yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 3: And oh shout out to a new artwork on the wall.
Speaker 3: That's from Invader Girl. If you guys go check her
Speaker 3: out at Invadergirl dot Invader girl art dot com or
Speaker 3: follow her on Instagram.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's got amazing art. Definitely check her stuff out.
Speaker 2: She has awesome stuff that is sweet. So Mike, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have you.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I have you repeat yourself a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna I think it got cut off a
Speaker 1: little bit in our first interview actually, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask you to tell us a little bit about like
Speaker 1: your origin story and sort of your upbringing in like
Speaker 1: your path towards military service, Like how did that come
Speaker 1: about for you?
Speaker 3: Yes, So I grew up living out in the country,
Speaker 3: just me and my brother playing in the woods, shooting
Speaker 3: baby guns, hunting squirrels and you know, rabbits and stuff
Speaker 3: like that in rural Alabama. Had a normal upbringing, good mother,
Speaker 3: good father, you know, I love them both.
Speaker 2: We're still close.
Speaker 3: My whole family's close, cousins, aunts, uncles. So I had
Speaker 3: a good bond there with family.
Speaker 2: Grew up.
Speaker 3: As I got a little bit older, my dad went
Speaker 3: in the army. He went in the army kind a
Speaker 3: little bit later in life, like in his thirties, and
Speaker 3: he became an officer. So once I got older, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I never really thought about joining the military, but I
Speaker 3: was probably about midway through high school and I just decided,
Speaker 3: you know, I want to try out the military, you know,
Speaker 3: go in the National Guard. So I joined the National
Speaker 3: Guard my dad wanted me to be an officer, so
Speaker 3: I ended up doing boot camp and AI t for
Speaker 3: the National Guard, was an infantry National Guard.
Speaker 2: And then went to marrying military and suit to be
Speaker 2: an officer.
Speaker 3: So did two years there and then I was good
Speaker 3: at Rotc's type stuff, the military aspect of it.
Speaker 2: But I was too I was young and immature.
Speaker 3: I wanted to party, and I was too worried about trouting,
Speaker 3: you know, drinking and partying and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So I didn't focus on grades as well as I should.
Speaker 3: The military aspect, I mean, like all hundreds, but then
Speaker 3: you know, pet score good to go. But then some
Speaker 3: of the other aspects I was struggling on. So I
Speaker 3: ended up withdrawing from school after two years. It was
Speaker 3: a two year military school where you do two years,
Speaker 3: you get your commission as an officer, and then you'd
Speaker 3: go to like University of Alabama or Auburn or something
Speaker 3: like that. So I withdrew failing and just decided to
Speaker 3: just move back in with my mom down in like
Speaker 3: Gulf Shores Folly area of Alabama. Lived down there, did
Speaker 3: some construction work for a little bit, but you know,
Speaker 3: the army thing was kind of always in the back
Speaker 3: of my mind.
Speaker 2: So I ended up enlisting to go active duty.
Speaker 3: Started off in third Infantry Division at Kelly Hill on
Speaker 3: Fort Benning in a mechanized infantry unit.
Speaker 2: Did a little bit of time there.
Speaker 3: Have some good friends still keep in touch from from
Speaker 3: back then, but did some time there. Ended up wanted
Speaker 3: to go Special Forces. Always thought like special Forces. Green
Speaker 3: Beret was like the way to go. My dad was like, hey,
Speaker 3: special Forces is the brains. Rangers are the brawn. That's
Speaker 3: what my dad used to say. And uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I ended up doing everything to get ready to set
Speaker 3: up for Special Forces selection, and then you know, had
Speaker 3: did the prept test, had a selection date setup and
Speaker 3: then boom got popped for.
Speaker 2: Orders to go to Korea.
Speaker 3: So I did a year in Korea and then nine
Speaker 3: to eleven popped off, and then things changed and I
Speaker 3: ended up going to the Ranger Regiment. So I guess
Speaker 3: that's kind of in the nutshell and kicking it off
Speaker 3: from childhood up to initial entry in the army.
Speaker 2: What what was it like when you were in.
Speaker 4: Because I didn't even know if there is mechanized infantry anymore?
Speaker 2: Was there? Yeah? The Strikers, Yeah, Bradley's. Yeah, I was
Speaker 2: in a Bradley. No, no, it's not because it used
Speaker 2: to be yeah loving Mike, Yeah, no, I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't think the ms exist really. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, like, what what was that light compared to like
Speaker 4: straight leg infantry?
Speaker 2: It was it was completely different.
Speaker 3: We were at the mercy of those bradleys, right, So
Speaker 3: wherever the Bradley went, that was like our little that
Speaker 3: was like our shop, you know, so it.
Speaker 2: Rolled around they did staying.
Speaker 3: We kept all of our gears strapped to the outside
Speaker 3: of like our rucksacks, a shopped on the outside, MRIs
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. It would drop the raft we
Speaker 3: would go do light infantry stuff, but then we'd always
Speaker 3: come back to that Bradley and it actually we ended
Speaker 3: up spending a lot of time in those bradleys too.
Speaker 2: I remember one time at NTC we were driving around.
Speaker 3: I think we were like twenty something hours straight in
Speaker 3: the back of the bradleys. I mean, you're just like
Speaker 3: sleeping like this, and then you're up and then you're
Speaker 3: sleeping like everybody's piled in there.
Speaker 2: You're stacked in there like sardines, right, and those things.
Speaker 3: I don't don't know if a lot of people know
Speaker 3: they have a drain hole plug in the bottom of
Speaker 3: them because they're made to be amphibious, right, So even
Speaker 3: the newer ones still have the legacy train plugs. So
Speaker 3: we'd be in those things. You couldn't unhatch that thing.
Speaker 3: It was like like you almost had to have orders
Speaker 3: to let the ramp down. So twenty something hours in there,
Speaker 3: like we were popping those train holes out and peeing
Speaker 3: out of the train holes. It was nasty in the
Speaker 3: back of those things, just to be quick with it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was. It was different, a lot different
Speaker 2: than light infantry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I never really experienced light infantry until I got
Speaker 3: to the Ranger Regiment.
Speaker 4: Yeahah, what was it like for you in Korea because
Speaker 4: that's uh, that's kind of a hardship to it, right
Speaker 4: for infantry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I mean, that's what they call it.
Speaker 3: So for me when I went there, it was prior
Speaker 3: to nine to eleven. When I initially got there, it
Speaker 3: was we had a star major that was big on
Speaker 3: PT so I mean that kind of set me up
Speaker 3: for the Ranger Regiment. He was like, I want everybody
Speaker 3: to run a marathon before the time you leave here.
Speaker 3: So in twelve months. If you're ye, He's like, we're
Speaker 3: gonna do a little bit more, a little bit more,
Speaker 3: a little bit more. So we do these incredibly slow
Speaker 3: but yet long runs. So by the time that year
Speaker 3: was up, I had run a marathon in a battalion formation,
Speaker 3: like like probably two thirds of the formation was gone,
Speaker 3: like because we were on Camp Casey, and then there
Speaker 3: was another base called Camp Hoby. So we'd run around
Speaker 3: Camp Casey, then run around Camp Hoby, then run around
Speaker 3: Camp Casey, and then around Camp Hoby's super small bases.
Speaker 3: Every time we passed by a battalion area, like formation
Speaker 3: would just sheathe off, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 3: oh so, but you know I couldn't quit because I
Speaker 3: had that drive that got me to the range regiment,
Speaker 3: so that set me up for it. We did a
Speaker 3: lot at rock marching and stuff, and then but you
Speaker 3: were stuck there on the base. There wasn't a whole
Speaker 3: We did a little bit of training, probably trained a
Speaker 3: little bit more than I did Stateside in the mechanized infantry.
Speaker 3: But then nine to eleven happened and they like locked
Speaker 3: the base down. They had us pull in security. We
Speaker 3: were doing like roving patrols around the base, and you know,
Speaker 3: everybody was like on you know, super high alert. But
Speaker 3: the thing that really got me was that here we
Speaker 3: are now at war, right or like at the very beginning,
Speaker 3: we thought we were going to war, but they amped
Speaker 3: up security. Yet I was carrying around at M sixteen
Speaker 3: with no AMMO in it, literally no or At first
Speaker 3: they had us with axe.
Speaker 2: Handles, like that, am I gonna do with an ax handle? Man?
Speaker 2: But they had us with axe handles carrying it around.
Speaker 3: Then they gave us rifles, but like you had to
Speaker 3: inspect the crap out of them and then you could
Speaker 3: walk around, but you had no AMMO. Then eventually it
Speaker 3: finally got to where we get IAMMO. But your magazine,
Speaker 3: every round was counted and tape was over the top
Speaker 3: of it, and it was stuffed in the magazine well
Speaker 3: with tape on the top of it, so if you
Speaker 3: wanted to shoot anybody, you had to take it out,
Speaker 3: take the tape off, put it back in, and rack it.
Speaker 3: So it was frustrating. So it really had like a
Speaker 3: disdain for the army. I really hated it and I
Speaker 3: really wanted to get on it. And I noticed it
Speaker 3: before that we would guard empty concrete pads for like
Speaker 3: hours while everybody was out, and I'm like, why am
Speaker 3: I wasting my time doing this? And then nine to
Speaker 3: eleven kind of perpetuated that. But I was now, we're
Speaker 3: at war and that's what I joined the military for.
Speaker 3: So I just looked to reenlist and so I re
Speaker 3: enlisted for Ranger Battalion and that's.
Speaker 2: Where I went from there.
Speaker 4: And what was it that took you to the Rangers
Speaker 4: instead of SF like you had planned?
Speaker 3: Well, there was a guy that was in my unit
Speaker 3: out there actually, And speaking of that, it was one
Speaker 3: of the things they did in Korea was the Manchu Mile,
Speaker 3: so they called it. It's like a thirty mile rock march.
Speaker 3: And I love rock marching so much. So we're like
Speaker 3: hut like rocking about fifteen miles into this rock march
Speaker 3: and I'm just like everybody's sucking, but I'm like, dude,
Speaker 3: I love this stuff.
Speaker 2: And this dude was like, if you love this, you
Speaker 2: need to be a Ranger.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, I'm thinking about doing Special Forces,
Speaker 3: but he was like, nah, you want to go to
Speaker 3: the Ranger regiment. He's like, you go to Ranger regiment,
Speaker 3: You're gonna kill bad guys. If you want to do
Speaker 3: this kind of stuff in rock March took.
Speaker 1: You up with all the rock marching you desire, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all your heart, yeah desire.
Speaker 2: So I said, okay, well I was, so I started
Speaker 2: asking more questions.
Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about Rangers, and then you know,
Speaker 3: that's ended up being the route that I went. I
Speaker 3: went and re enlisted, and I wasn't sure that I
Speaker 3: was going to go to Ranger Btine because I think
Speaker 3: they mixed it up with a Ranger school at first.
Speaker 2: But luckily, through the.
Speaker 3: Coaching of that NCO, I was able to make sure
Speaker 3: that I went to Ranger Batinin and so I went
Speaker 3: and did that and then almost didn't make it like
Speaker 3: I was selling out in today. I almost didn't even
Speaker 3: make it into RIP because you know they do vehicle
Speaker 3: inspections at the very beginning of RIP. Well, I had
Speaker 3: a tellight that was out in my vehicle, and I
Speaker 3: can't remember exactly how it happened, but one of the
Speaker 3: cadure was like, it's no big deal. You're not going
Speaker 3: to drive it while you're in RIP, so it's just.
Speaker 2: Going to be parked. You can get it fixed after
Speaker 2: RIP and I said okay, cool.
Speaker 3: So then I ended up getting questioned by another one
Speaker 3: of the cadure and I was like, well, the caduret
Speaker 3: said that I could get it fixed afterwards, and they're like, no,
Speaker 3: you got to get it fixed right now. He never
Speaker 3: told you that. I'm like, wait, that's what told me.
Speaker 3: They're like, well, you're calling Cadre a liar. I was like,
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that's what he told me. And I'm
Speaker 3: sorry if I mean, if you think I'm calling.
Speaker 2: Him a liar. They're like, You're dropped from the course, like.
Speaker 3: Right at the beginning, like I'd just gotten smoked up
Speaker 3: a little bit, boom dropped from the course. Now I
Speaker 3: was in holdovers. But I literally went like with tears
Speaker 3: in my eyes. I was like please, and like I
Speaker 3: beg the cadre. I was like, please give me another shot.
Speaker 3: I like, I will do anything. I did not mean
Speaker 3: to say that he was a liar. I was just
Speaker 3: saying what I heard and I wasn't trying to call
Speaker 3: him a liar. Maybe there was a misunderstanding or whatever,
Speaker 3: but I was like, please don't kick me out, And
Speaker 3: so luckily he had compassion for me and let me
Speaker 3: start the next rip class.
Speaker 4: So it's it's wild sometimes, like these these edge moments
Speaker 4: in people's careers, especially military careers. Yeah, that can make
Speaker 4: or break them depending on how it goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's totally out of your control. It's
Speaker 2: totally out of your control. There's a lot of that
Speaker 2: that happens. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, So what so what was it like for
Speaker 4: you when you got to battalion? You're what rank were you?
Speaker 4: I was an E four, so you're an import?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was an import untabbed E four no ranger
Speaker 3: tab getting there. Luckily, I consider myself squared away. I mean,
Speaker 3: the guys that knew me may say otherwise. I thought
Speaker 3: I was squared away, like I had. I pretty much
Speaker 3: had the the seven dash shape memorized back then. I
Speaker 3: was in physically, I was in really good shape. I
Speaker 3: was in way better shape than most of the other privates,
Speaker 3: so I didn't have that hanging over my head. I
Speaker 3: was knowledgeable, so I kind of was able to kind
Speaker 3: of stay under the radar for the most part. But
Speaker 3: I mean, you know how it is as a private
Speaker 3: ranger battalion. Yeah, you can't stay under the radar. You're
Speaker 3: gonna get just destroyed constantly. One of the big things
Speaker 3: that I remember was we went we had we had
Speaker 3: done a range. Talking about Joe Capp, he was one
Speaker 3: of my he was one of my guys in my
Speaker 3: squad at the time, Like I was a team leader
Speaker 3: and he was one of my guys I think, I think,
Speaker 3: or no he was maybe it was one of a
Speaker 3: sample team. But we went out to a range and
Speaker 3: it was either him or one other guy. I had
Speaker 3: inspect my gear. We did a live fire and we
Speaker 3: had remember we'd had that dude that got shot with
Speaker 3: a blank adapter on in the shootouse.
Speaker 2: Remember that school, Yeah, and that was a big deal.
Speaker 2: Four three or four sounds about right. So that was
Speaker 2: a big deal.
Speaker 3: I was a brand new corporal and that dude got
Speaker 3: shot with a live round through a blank adapter, And
Speaker 3: so they were like really being scrutinizing on like Blake's
Speaker 3: blanks and live ammo ammo shakedowns did.
Speaker 2: So we're at this range.
Speaker 3: I had my dudes, I swear to god, I had
Speaker 3: my dudes shake me down, like check my stuff, and
Speaker 3: they checked all my pouches and stuff.
Speaker 2: Go back, throw my my rack into the wall. Loocker.
Speaker 3: And then about a week later, we had a range
Speaker 3: where it's a machine gun range and I was a
Speaker 3: brand new RSO, like corporal. So they're like, you're gonna
Speaker 3: go be the RSO. So I'm like all right, So
Speaker 3: I go go out there to be the range safety
Speaker 3: officer and didn't shoot, left my kid in the US
Speaker 3: the whole time. But then at the end of the range,
Speaker 3: they're like, everybody, bring your stuff.
Speaker 2: Out and lay it out. And then they were like
Speaker 2: and I was like, do you want me to grab
Speaker 2: mine's are' and they're yeah, yeah, grab yours.
Speaker 3: Too, And I'm like, okay, I go to grab it
Speaker 3: out of the bus, and you know how it is
Speaker 3: like when you grab it and you're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: what's that feels a little heavy. Yeah, it's a little weird.
Speaker 3: There's there's a smoke grenade and one of my pouch
Speaker 3: just a smoke grenade. But I'm like, my heart sank
Speaker 3: right away, and I'm like, oh my god, I hope
Speaker 3: I like and I know where that came from. They did,
Speaker 3: They just didn't check that very backpack was one of
Speaker 3: those dump pouches, but that zipped up. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god. So I take this thing out there
Speaker 3: and I lay it out and I'm just like I
Speaker 3: go over to the platoons and I'm like, hey, sorry,
Speaker 3: I got bad news for you. I was like, in
Speaker 3: that pouch, I have a smoke grenade that was left
Speaker 3: over from another range.
Speaker 2: They just laid into me. Oh that's shit.
Speaker 3: They like started They're like, you go stand over there,
Speaker 3: do push ups all like I'm.
Speaker 2: Doing push ups and push ups and push ups.
Speaker 3: And then they finished, check everybody else, load everybody on
Speaker 3: the bus. This is at Red Cloud Range, so not
Speaker 3: too far from the rest on the street. It was
Speaker 3: like three miles or so.
Speaker 2: They made me. They took the bus back and they
Speaker 2: made me imt like, I'm up.
Speaker 3: He sees me, I'm down. I'm up, he sees me,
Speaker 3: I'm down. All the way back three miles of imts. Dude,
Speaker 3: this is the beginning of it, right, And meanwhile the
Speaker 3: bus just left me. They sent a humbie back to
Speaker 3: like monitor me. I am ting all the way back,
Speaker 3: so I get back. Then my squad leader says, I
Speaker 3: want you to go all the way up. He basically
Speaker 3: briefs me on all this stuff. He's like, you're gonna
Speaker 3: uh you're gonna understand accountability of your equipment and how
Speaker 3: important this all is and making sure you've got all
Speaker 3: your stuff.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, how does this even have anything doing?
Speaker 2: You have a smoker name. But he made me.
Speaker 3: Imt to the barracks and grab like just like the
Speaker 3: canteen cup, come all the way back. Then imt all
Speaker 3: the way back. IMT you know, for the crowd out
Speaker 3: there is individual movement techniques like I'm up running, Yeah,
Speaker 3: like you're being shot at. You're taking over the whole way,
Speaker 3: so you can't just run there and back. So it
Speaker 3: takes a while. So I go, then I get the canteen,
Speaker 3: Then I come back, get the canteen cover. Then I
Speaker 3: go get the alice clips. Until all of my TA fifty,
Speaker 3: all of my entire issue. This was about eight hours later.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, all my issue was laid out in formation.
Speaker 3: So I never ever took that, you know, AMMO shakedowns
Speaker 3: not serious ever again after that because but yeah, it
Speaker 3: was embarrassing though as a corporal, you know, brand new NCO.
Speaker 2: So they call it right and then here I am
Speaker 2: just being just made look made to look like crap
Speaker 2: in front all the privates.
Speaker 3: It was the most embarrassing moment. Yeah, but it's a
Speaker 3: lesson that you'll never forget. Yeah, sure, yeah, did they.
Speaker 1: Have when you were the skipping forward a little bit?
Speaker 1: But when you were the mortar platoon sergeant, did they
Speaker 1: still have the huge amnesty box? Because one of the
Speaker 1: guys from mortars brought a like an eighty one millimeter
Speaker 1: round back from the range. Once they had like an
Speaker 1: amnesty box, like literally you could open it up and
Speaker 1: like put things.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that. That'd be a good question for
Speaker 3: less than dusky. I mean, yeah, I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: remember that. But uh, dude, those guys are out of
Speaker 3: control guys.
Speaker 2: There were some good dudes, man.
Speaker 3: I love working with those guys, but dude, as I
Speaker 3: got to and I don't want to jump out too much,
Speaker 3: but in the mortple tune.
Speaker 2: The discipline was still strong there.
Speaker 3: Like when I went back to third range of battalion,
Speaker 3: I mean, discipline was still good in the regimen compared
Speaker 3: to anywhere else. But those guys really held it to
Speaker 3: the next level still, And like I had to like
Speaker 3: kind of like turn a blonde eye because a lot
Speaker 3: of what they were doing was like not.
Speaker 2: Authorized, but I'm like, I'm good with it. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm with you the crap out of those dudes. But
Speaker 2: I'm over here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Years ago, we had uh iaing Karusha Gay and he
Speaker 1: was describing mortar section. He's like, I think he described
Speaker 1: this most terrifying place in range for battalion.
Speaker 3: Oh I wouldn't. Yeah, it's it's no joke. And there's
Speaker 3: some of the smartest guys too. Yeah, yeah, you have
Speaker 3: to be. You know, these dudes could do a lot
Speaker 3: of that math in their head and you're talking you're
Speaker 3: talking trigonometry, dude, and these guys are just like cranking
Speaker 3: it out on their head. Oh boom boom boom boom,
Speaker 3: No big deal, it's a I had a under respect
Speaker 3: for that place until I went there to be the
Speaker 3: platoon sergeant. I was like, man, these dudes are all geniuses.
Speaker 3: They just want to do the best that they can.
Speaker 3: They all wish they were shooters in the line. So
Speaker 3: one of the big things that I tried to do
Speaker 3: there was bring in something new for them.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I was like, man, these guys are not being utilized
Speaker 3: overseas the way they should.
Speaker 2: So I was like, what can we do?
Speaker 3: So thinking about like what I did in RC, So
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, I send dudes over to RC
Speaker 3: to do classes on like battlefield interrogation because I'm like,
Speaker 3: that's cool. It's something a new skill that they didn't
Speaker 3: get to do, but they could go over there and
Speaker 3: learn how to battlefield interrogate. So now they are forced
Speaker 3: multiplier reces. If they're not shooting mortars, they'd be like, hey,
Speaker 3: I can interrogate, right. Send a bunch of guys to
Speaker 3: Army Sniper School too. The sniper platoon as you know, Like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was that way when you
Speaker 3: were there, but definitely when I was a more platoon sergeant,
Speaker 3: we had our black Side weapons, which were all the
Speaker 3: weapons that were like it by JAYSK, and then you
Speaker 3: had the regular Army sniper rifles. Well, nobody ever used
Speaker 3: the regular Army sniper rifles, but at that time it
Speaker 3: was actually a pretty good rifles.
Speaker 2: The SAS I think it was the I can't remember
Speaker 2: what that stands for, but oh you're talking about the Yeah,
Speaker 2: the five to five six No, not the spr you're
Speaker 2: talking about spry.
Speaker 3: This was a seven six to two gas gun. It
Speaker 3: was an AR ten platform that the Army had come
Speaker 3: up with like the Sky one ten. Yeah, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's one ten. So they had those, but nobody used them.
Speaker 3: But it was a solid gun, right, But all the
Speaker 3: snipers would use the three hundred win bags or they
Speaker 3: would use the freaking SR twenty five because yeah it
Speaker 3: was cooler, you know what I mean. But so they
Speaker 3: didn't use those others. So I got all the sniper
Speaker 3: rifles assigned to the mornpaltoon. So I had five dudes
Speaker 3: that went to regular Army sniper school, they were sniper qualified,
Speaker 3: and then they had their own.
Speaker 2: Signed sniper rifles.
Speaker 3: I tried to send them to cross train lots of
Speaker 3: different stuff like that so they could be for smalls.
Speaker 3: We actually sent a couple du just to SODIC too,
Speaker 3: you know, the special Courses sniper of course too. So
Speaker 3: because they were just undervalue guys, I mean not that
Speaker 3: they were undervalued, but you know, they weren't utilized to
Speaker 3: the best of their ability. I mean they were taking
Speaker 3: them out, they were taking mortar to a lot of
Speaker 3: times they weren't even taking the mortar tube.
Speaker 2: So it's like they're just an extra dude sitting on
Speaker 2: a VP.
Speaker 1: So you justify it though, I mean you need security
Speaker 1: around the mortar section when they're in the field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that's just added value for the soldier
Speaker 1: and whatever else.
Speaker 2: You know, he brings to.
Speaker 3: The table and you think about on the BPS, they're
Speaker 3: at a spot where they're going to get some reach anyway,
Speaker 3: they're going to have some standoff.
Speaker 2: It's a good spot for a sniper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it adds flexibility to them.
Speaker 1: So, uh, you're a Ranger Battalion misspent youth as a corporal.
Speaker 1: That was about the time when I met you, actually
Speaker 1: when you when you came back from Ranger school and
Speaker 1: then you went on to become a squad leader in
Speaker 1: second platoon, right, third plato, third platoon.
Speaker 3: Sorry, yeah, so I was a squad leader in third
Speaker 3: bullatune did a couple of trips to Iraq.
Speaker 2: We did.
Speaker 3: One of the more notable trips was that one to
Speaker 3: Mosul up there, which you were with us.
Speaker 2: On that one.
Speaker 3: We did a bunch of raids, we stayed hitting I
Speaker 3: think it was that deck of cards or whatever the
Speaker 3: bad guys that they had, and we had a really
Speaker 3: high success rate up there Mosul. I remember I can't
Speaker 3: remember the exact stats, but I think we had like
Speaker 3: a ninety something percent success rate. It was at that
Speaker 3: time that trip our platoons specificularly that task force at
Speaker 3: least had the highest success rate I think of Iraq
Speaker 3: at the time. Do you have any recollection of like
Speaker 3: how many raids we did on that deployment, because I
Speaker 3: probably a thousand or more. I mean we were doing
Speaker 3: two to three a day, yeah, every single day, pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I remember we had two platoons there, so
Speaker 3: we had a platoon that would go in daytime hits
Speaker 3: because it was that busy that we were cranking targets
Speaker 3: during the day, which was not normal for us, and
Speaker 3: then crank and targets at night.
Speaker 2: Well, then we went to twenty four hours on and
Speaker 2: twenty four off. Oh just a ball crusher, Yeah, dude, Yeah,
Speaker 2: dudes were coming back just getting tanked with ivys like
Speaker 2: about to pass. We were all so exhausted by the
Speaker 2: end of that deployment.
Speaker 1: But then you you told the story that you know,
Speaker 1: well on one of the previous interviews we did. But
Speaker 1: when we were getting these missions going down into tell
Speaker 1: Afar a lot and both of our platoons got in
Speaker 1: the nasty firefights down there every time we did that,
Speaker 1: and you guys weren't a pretty substantial firefight.
Speaker 2: Down there too. Yeah. We uh. We went to Talifar
Speaker 2: to hit three different targets. At the time.
Speaker 3: The regular army had this whole city court und off
Speaker 3: and they weren't really going in there because if they
Speaker 3: were going in, dudes were getting sniped out of the
Speaker 3: tankers hatches a tank down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: Tanks, and they were getting like they have to pop
Speaker 3: up out of the tanks so they can see where
Speaker 3: they're going as they're driving along, you know, because that
Speaker 3: thing is so big. And the dudes that were popped
Speaker 3: up the TC were getting smoked by snipers, so they
Speaker 3: kind of cordoned it off. We were supposed to go
Speaker 3: in there, smack some targets and loosen it up. So
Speaker 3: we went in this one target. I ended up like
Speaker 3: killing I think our snipers shot like two dudes that
Speaker 3: tried to flee. Not a big deal. Went to the
Speaker 3: second target. We never even made it to the third
Speaker 3: target because we went to the second target. It was
Speaker 3: kind of a narrow street. I remember, I was like
Speaker 3: we rotated who was like the leads assault squad leader too,
Speaker 3: and I was kind of pissed because it wasn't my
Speaker 3: day to be the lead.
Speaker 2: Assault squad leader.
Speaker 3: So I was across the way doing cross coverage and
Speaker 3: we had two other squads on the other side, and
Speaker 3: we get ready to breach, and then a kiowa, like
Speaker 3: a regular army kiowa, flew over top and it kind
Speaker 3: of woke everybody up. And I remember our platooners specifically
Speaker 3: briefed them, don't fly any birds over top. We want
Speaker 3: to keep this super quiet. So that bird flies over
Speaker 3: the top, the bad guys start waking up. We hear
Speaker 3: like coms just saying like, hey, there's moving on the
Speaker 3: roof and stuff like that. Well, our dude is getting
Speaker 3: ready to donk the door with like the little battering
Speaker 3: rainow type deal. And as he's getting ready to rear back,
Speaker 3: the door opens up and this dude's like staring him
Speaker 3: in his face and he goes compromise, right, So the
Speaker 3: bad guy slams the door and takes off our dude
Speaker 3: boots the door in, goes right in. That dude dropped
Speaker 3: a frag like he shut the door, dropped a frag
Speaker 3: and ran. So soon as that first assault squad went in,
Speaker 3: all those dudes took a point blank grenade blast, you know,
Speaker 3: like all into their legs, you know, and you know,
Speaker 3: like I like to tell people that don't know because
Speaker 3: you know, you see the movies like Commando and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. Dudes are like taking machine gun rounds to
Speaker 3: the chest and like they just suck that up and
Speaker 3: keep going. But grenade blasts like turn them into a
Speaker 3: pink mist. It's just completely opposite. Like bullet like rifle
Speaker 3: rounds don't mess around like it caused a serious damage.
Speaker 3: If it hits a bone, you're probably gonna lose that limb.
Speaker 3: But grenades, I'm not really too scary.
Speaker 2: Grenades. It's just kind of like take it in the
Speaker 2: backside and you're just they're so.
Speaker 4: Random and how they like how they like damage people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are, I mean there really are. These are
Speaker 1: also like ancient Russian hand grenades that are not probably
Speaker 1: the best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I wouldn't want to take a
Speaker 3: sixty seven yeah point blank. You know our frags, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but the Russian and Chinese ones, I'm not too scared
Speaker 3: about them. You're right now, if they're right on top
Speaker 3: of you, you're probably gonna take like like Captain lose
Speaker 3: end up having to lose a leg.
Speaker 2: But I've been around.
Speaker 3: Countless grenade blasts from like from me to him, and
Speaker 3: it's just kind of like it's like a beasting act whatever,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, barely goes under the skin.
Speaker 3: But these dudes were pretty much point blank on it.
Speaker 3: They were all within like a couple feet of it,
Speaker 3: so it really kind of messed them up pretty good.
Speaker 3: The second squad that was getting ready to go kind
Speaker 3: of hesitated for a second, like I think.
Speaker 2: Like what is going on?
Speaker 3: And then I just took my squad and blew past them,
Speaker 3: went right into the house because you know, I was
Speaker 3: already chomping at the bit because I love being the
Speaker 3: first guy in anyway. So I roll in there and
Speaker 3: it was it was sketchy, man. We didn't know where
Speaker 3: this was coming from. We didn't know if we were
Speaker 3: going to take fire right off in there.
Speaker 2: We'd go in.
Speaker 3: There was like two or three or like three or
Speaker 3: four rooms right away, like a little like a corridor
Speaker 3: with like a couple of rooms, and then it opened
Speaker 3: up into a bigger courtyard and went in cleared the
Speaker 3: first room on the left, cleared, the first room on
Speaker 3: the right, and there's literally nobody in there. The first
Speaker 3: room on the left was one of our guys who
Speaker 3: was in there kind of like laying up against the wall.
Speaker 3: Blood was streaming out of his arm, and I was like, hey, dude,
Speaker 3: you're good, and he's like, yeah, man, I'm good. I'm
Speaker 3: like all right. So we kept going because like my
Speaker 3: focus wasn't to treat him, it was to keep finding
Speaker 3: the bad guys. Went into the next room, saw another
Speaker 3: ranger in there kind of dragging himself back in. He
Speaker 3: was wounded in his legs, and we told him like, hey, dude,
Speaker 3: do sulf aide and start patching yourself up.
Speaker 2: Medical being here shortly kept going.
Speaker 3: Went into the next room and I'm like stacked up
Speaker 3: on the door, getting ready to go in, and then
Speaker 3: I heard like the sound of like just like in
Speaker 3: the movie, like clink, like a grenade rolling on the ground,
Speaker 3: and I like, see this thing roll between like from
Speaker 3: me to your feet from me. I'm looking at this thing.
Speaker 3: It was kind of like I had all the time
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm about to be an ugly thing about
Speaker 3: blow up right in my face, but I just booted
Speaker 3: it kicked it out of the way and then turned
Speaker 3: in dove and we had some ranger casualties literally about
Speaker 3: from like right over here, like five feet away, So
Speaker 3: I turned and dove towards them. Caught some grenade shopping
Speaker 3: on the back, but it was pretty minor. Long story short.
Speaker 3: Went on to continue to clear that place. One of
Speaker 3: my privates took a shot in the shoulder, almost took
Speaker 3: his arm off, got shot in the knee with it.
Speaker 3: I think it was whatever the sub camera with the
Speaker 3: seven six to two the machine gun RpK RpK, Yeah,
Speaker 3: got shot by that. I engaged the guys. There was
Speaker 3: two dudes over there where the machine gun. I engaged them.
Speaker 3: Me and some other guys did took those guys out.
Speaker 3: One of my team leaders ended up treating that guy,
Speaker 3: which I didn't even realize. I was kind of in
Speaker 3: the lead and received some fire turn return fire suppressed
Speaker 3: that went to go ahead and clear this next room
Speaker 3: that we're getting ready to go in, and we were moving,
Speaker 3: you know, meticulously around. So even though I engaged that threat,
Speaker 3: I continued focused over here. May not have been the
Speaker 3: right thing to do at the time, but that's just
Speaker 3: what we did. Went in that room, cleared it. Nobody
Speaker 3: was in there.
Speaker 2: Come out, and.
Speaker 3: I'm like, where the heck is my squad? Like it
Speaker 3: was like five man assault teams is what we were
Speaker 3: running back then. So I didn't have a lot of dudes,
Speaker 3: but I was like, man, I'm missing some dudes.
Speaker 2: Well, one was.
Speaker 3: Walking down a stairwell, another one was treating one of
Speaker 3: the other guys that got shot, and then I had
Speaker 3: like another two dudes with me. So I'm like, oh man,
Speaker 3: one of my dudes is messed up. So then we
Speaker 3: kind of regrouped. We took a bunch more frags. Actually,
Speaker 3: at that point in time, I went back out and
Speaker 3: grenades would just started raining down from the roof, Like
Speaker 3: dudes were on the roof just chucking them, and the
Speaker 3: grenades kept going off and going off. I took grenades
Speaker 3: shopping on the hand then or in this wrist. Several
Speaker 3: other dudes got wounded. So then at that point in time,
Speaker 3: I pulled back and went outside to try to see
Speaker 3: what was going on. Like our platoon leader and pl
Speaker 3: were not even on comms. They were completely pinned down
Speaker 3: at the time. So I ended up kind of taking
Speaker 3: charge of that whole situation. I was like, what our
Speaker 3: vehicles like, outside security was just jacked up. So I
Speaker 3: went out, reorganized security outside, started bringing our metavac vehicles
Speaker 3: up because I'm like, I know, we got casualties.
Speaker 2: This dude's jacked up. There's probably even more that I
Speaker 2: don't know about.
Speaker 3: Brought the metavac vehicles up and then started just consolidating
Speaker 3: casually as the best possible and trying to like coordinate
Speaker 3: this firefight. Meanwhile, our j tax were calling in air
Speaker 3: strikes and doing trying to do little burg gun runs.
Speaker 3: I don't think they could actually at the time while
Speaker 3: we were on target. It was just the bad guys
Speaker 3: were so close in proximity to us that cast was
Speaker 3: just not usable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So once.
Speaker 3: We pulled off, they pretty much leveled that entire city block.
Speaker 3: I think like two hundred dudes or something with a
Speaker 3: yeah AC one thirty eight tens, probably some F sixteen's
Speaker 3: with some two thousand pounders blowing them up.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was telling you before the show your direct
Speaker 1: leadership one to put you in for a DSc for that, uh,
Speaker 1: that whole action.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know it kind of my understanding was
Speaker 1: it didn't go through because above our platoon level, it was.
Speaker 1: They felt that it wouldn't look good if you know,
Speaker 1: an NCO got a DSc and not an officer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how it works out.
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Speaker 1: So talk to us about you know, I know we're
Speaker 1: retreading some previous ground here, but I mean talk to
Speaker 1: us about you know, when you decide to go to
Speaker 1: r RC, like how did that come about?
Speaker 2: Like what when? When did the ID even come to
Speaker 2: your head? What did you know about them? So, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd seen the guys around.
Speaker 3: I saw dudes with like hair like literally as long
Speaker 3: as this, big long beards over there, and I'm just
Speaker 3: super fit dudes. I mean, like, you know, Rangers are
Speaker 3: fit dudes. Compared to even other soft units. They are
Speaker 3: typically pretty fit guys, but it was just a whole
Speaker 3: other level of fitness man and like more.
Speaker 2: Mature guys, you know, older guys. I'm like, who are
Speaker 2: these guys?
Speaker 3: I'm like, these dudes c I A, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like when I was in Ranger time, like
Speaker 3: these CIA dudes like walking around here.
Speaker 2: I had no clue.
Speaker 3: I went to PODC as an E five and met
Speaker 3: a guy uh named Kurt Conklin who was at the time.
Speaker 3: He was in the company, was r D at the time,
Speaker 3: and went to PLDC with him and uh we we
Speaker 3: talked about it.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, you're over there, like what do
Speaker 2: they do?
Speaker 3: And then he yeah, I couldn't tell me a whole
Speaker 3: lot because they were like super secretive, but it was
Speaker 3: enough that it kind of intrigued me. So I was like,
Speaker 3: I kind of want to do that. I was already
Speaker 3: kind of getting tired of groundhog day and range very time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, because you get a new private and you
Speaker 3: kind of got to start back at the basics all
Speaker 3: over again. Yeah, you got good gear and you got
Speaker 3: great training opportunities, but you're always having to kind of
Speaker 3: back it down a little bit and then ramp it
Speaker 3: back up for the most part. And then so I
Speaker 3: was kind of tired of that. I wanted something new.
Speaker 3: I was gonna go to Delta Force Selection or or
Speaker 3: and now I heard about r D and so I
Speaker 3: was considering that. Got wounded on that trip in tal Afar.
Speaker 3: I had to get some surgeries and stuff, and then
Speaker 3: did another deployment, and then after that I went.
Speaker 2: To be a RIP instructor. It was RIP Cadre. Did
Speaker 2: that for a while, enjoyed that. Well.
Speaker 3: Then you know, the star major came to me and
Speaker 3: was like, hey, we need somebody for this Omega program.
Speaker 2: Do you want to go do this omegapro. I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 3: Sounds good and he was like, yeah, you get to
Speaker 3: grow your beard out and throw your hair out and
Speaker 3: stuff and deploy. Yeah, I'm like, sounds good. You know,
Speaker 3: like because you know, as a line betind Ranger, you're
Speaker 3: not doing that. You see the snipers get to do
Speaker 3: it at the batinn recky guys get to do it.
Speaker 3: But I didn't, you know, I didn't know like occasional guys.
Speaker 3: So I get to go do that and wear civilian
Speaker 3: clothes overseas, and I thought that was kind of cool.
Speaker 3: So I deployed and did that. And when when I
Speaker 3: went over the first time, I was with my friend
Speaker 3: Rodney Brown and some of the Seal Team six dudes
Speaker 3: that he was with there in.
Speaker 2: Gecko.
Speaker 3: But the second time, I did a second trip. And
Speaker 3: you know, I know, we'll talk probably more about the
Speaker 3: other other stuff later, but I did a second trip
Speaker 3: because you're talking about why did I go to r D.
Speaker 3: So the second Omega trip that I did was in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, and I was at Oregon E
Speaker 3: and I and the guys I swapped out with there
Speaker 3: was RC Team three at the time, r D Team three,
Speaker 3: and I was like, man, this is what you guys do.
Speaker 3: Like you guys are like, this is what you guys do,
Speaker 3: and they're like, ah, this job's kind of lame, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like we're going on to bigger
Speaker 3: and better things, and I was like, this is lame.
Speaker 2: This is like the coolest deployment ever done.
Speaker 3: And so you guys, this is kind of like to them,
Speaker 3: it was kind of lane because it was kind of
Speaker 3: dead at the time, and they were like, yeah, we're
Speaker 3: doing some other stuff and so they were like, come
Speaker 3: to selection and I was like, okay. So then I
Speaker 3: was like, that's what I want to go do. So
Speaker 3: then I just started training up really running at high
Speaker 3: altitude up there, trying to get back in good shape.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 3: I mean I was in shape, but I like, you
Speaker 3: need to be in really good shape for that selection.
Speaker 3: And then after that went back as a rip cadre
Speaker 3: and then put in my packet, went to selection, you know.
Speaker 3: So that's how it started. I bumped into an overseas
Speaker 3: doing the Omega stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we've talked about selection before with you, but
Speaker 4: it's it's it's it's a unique selection, like it really
Speaker 4: really focused on the demands of the job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a you have to be physically fit to
Speaker 3: pass it. It's similar to you know, like Delta force selection.
Speaker 3: It's it's really based a lot off of that, a
Speaker 3: lot of walking in the mountains, navigating long distances with
Speaker 3: a rockszach on. So you're gonna walk, you know, anywhere
Speaker 3: from i'd say fifteen to eighteen twenty miles a day
Speaker 3: in the mountains, and then you're just getting assessed the
Speaker 3: entire time. There's dudes out there paying attention to what
Speaker 3: you're doing. I don't want to go on too many
Speaker 3: details because I know they like to try to keep
Speaker 3: that stuff under wraps. But I think what's the most
Speaker 3: unique about it is is the OTC pipeline. I think
Speaker 3: they call it RTC now the Reconnaissance Training Course. But
Speaker 3: that course, you know, like a lot of the other
Speaker 3: guys like Delta Force and stuff like that, there are
Speaker 3: programs about six months long to go through RCAs is
Speaker 3: like eleven or twelve months long. It's almost a full year.
Speaker 3: And you walk some distance like we walked forty miles
Speaker 3: with a tactical recie rock. Like I've walked forty miles
Speaker 3: with a rock weighing over one hundred pounds before in
Speaker 3: mountainous terrain just to get to the target like that
Speaker 3: was just to get to the mission, right. And then
Speaker 3: the mission goes for like several days and then you
Speaker 3: walk out right, so right, we did freefall infiltrations. We
Speaker 3: were big on freefall stuff. That's how I kind of
Speaker 3: got into the free fall realm.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they didn't. There was no holds barred man
Speaker 2: a lot of the training that we did.
Speaker 3: I'm like, dude, if somebody knew that they left us
Speaker 3: out here flapping like it's like somebody'd probably be in
Speaker 3: trouble because I mean, no joke, Like nobody is like
Speaker 3: they didn't care. We out in the middle of the desert,
Speaker 3: twenty miles from anything, with our own supplies and nobody
Speaker 3: to talk to, you know at times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I can't believe this is allowed in the military.
Speaker 4: It was good stuff though, Yeah, And I mean for
Speaker 4: people who have not, you know, rucked, you know, maybe
Speaker 4: you go on hikes. I guess rucking is a new
Speaker 4: health fab now though. Yeah, rucking. But but anyway, for
Speaker 4: people who haven't rucked, when Mike says that, like they
Speaker 4: were rocking miles over a mountainous strain, one mile, two
Speaker 4: miles over a mountain is not like rocking a mile
Speaker 4: or two miles, because it may be a miles the
Speaker 4: crow flies, Oh yeah, bout.
Speaker 1: Four or five miles. Yeah, this is some ultra light
Speaker 1: bullshit either. Yeah, they got you carrying radios.
Speaker 3: Batteries, battery water. Yeah, I mean, no joke. On one
Speaker 3: of them, we were out near Arizona. We walked forty
Speaker 3: miles on infill in that one, and I remember the
Speaker 3: casuret were like, why are you guys going so slow?
Speaker 3: And were like, I feel like we're going really fast,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So they're like, hey, meet
Speaker 3: us at this road intersection. One of the few times
Speaker 3: that during a movement like that they had actually interacted
Speaker 3: with So they told us, hey, meet us at this
Speaker 3: road intersection.
Speaker 2: So we meet them at that road intersection.
Speaker 3: They pull up and they're like, lay your rucksacks out,
Speaker 3: and they were like, you don't need all that crap.
Speaker 2: Get rid of that, get rid of this.
Speaker 3: So they slimmed our loads down from I think I
Speaker 3: was the RTL on that one and I met I
Speaker 3: weighed my ruck it was like one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: something pounds, and after that it was down to about
Speaker 3: one hundred pounds, and some of the guys had a
Speaker 3: little bit lighter rucks, probably down to ninety or eighty
Speaker 3: something pounds. But I mean, we just had too much
Speaker 3: stuff because we didn't want to fail the mission, so
Speaker 3: we had instead of two extra cable for the cable
Speaker 3: that we had the primary, we had like two extra
Speaker 3: cables of this, two extra batteries for every battery, and
Speaker 3: we were just carrying way too much stuff. So we
Speaker 3: but we learned, I mean, that's what part of it
Speaker 3: was about, like learning what your limits were and what
Speaker 3: you can carry, and then also learning other ways to
Speaker 3: come up with solutions to these problems. Like, for example, water,
Speaker 3: we got these little purification little deals that we can
Speaker 3: carry so we didn't have to carry as much water
Speaker 3: because water is super heavy.
Speaker 2: It's the heaviest thing. We carried that in food, in batteries.
Speaker 3: But then we got these little straws that we could literally,
Speaker 3: you know, decontaminate any type of water, and that saved
Speaker 3: us so we could carry less water weight and then
Speaker 3: always just refill if we could just find a water
Speaker 3: source that was key and decontaminate.
Speaker 2: Doesn't necessarily make water taste good.
Speaker 3: Nah, It ca'd still be nasty looking too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: some of those filters later on got a lot better.
Speaker 2: It would make it clear too, yeah. Yeah. Back in
Speaker 2: the day, they tasted like charcoal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I missed it a little bit. Uh
Speaker 4: less is like popping off in the chat we love you.
Speaker 4: But he mentioned something about when you were at a
Speaker 4: betting having a problem with the woman across from three
Speaker 4: seven to five something about a dip. Can Did I
Speaker 4: get that right?
Speaker 2: Least?
Speaker 4: I can't get back to that part of the churin.
Speaker 2: I used to dip, so it probably had something to
Speaker 2: do with me dipping. I used to dip Copenhagen back
Speaker 2: in the day, and a lot of people don't think
Speaker 2: that's the cleanest, you know, habit to have. So I'm
Speaker 2: sure somebody probably got pissed off of me for a
Speaker 2: spinner or something. What do you say?
Speaker 4: I don't know, Maybe maybe he'll pop back up with it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I just wanted to I saw that earlier.
Speaker 2: In the chat.
Speaker 4: But what what was life like for you going from
Speaker 4: so you had seen three this is your third aspect
Speaker 4: of the military. You've been mechanized infantry, conventional infantry, and
Speaker 4: then you had been a range of battalion and now
Speaker 4: you're RRD. Did it just feel like life kept getting
Speaker 4: better or did it open your eyes like different aspects
Speaker 4: of the military that you know that you didn't know
Speaker 4: where possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it did open my eyes because you know,
Speaker 3: like in the regular Army, you're only read on to
Speaker 3: like this very little bit. You get the Ranger Betien,
Speaker 3: you're read on to like you know what Delta Force
Speaker 3: studentes look like, and like you work with them regularly,
Speaker 3: Seal Team six, all that kind of stuff or see
Speaker 3: you guys. But then when you get to RC, like
Speaker 3: you you've already known what all those guys are about,
Speaker 3: but now you know the background behind how they do
Speaker 3: what they do because you're helping do what they do,
Speaker 3: like you're facilitating it with a reconnaissance piece. And then
Speaker 3: you're read onto so many different other programs because there's
Speaker 3: all these different skills that we have to have to
Speaker 3: do our job that most people don't know about, and
Speaker 3: that stuff that you know shouldn't probably be talked about,
Speaker 3: but just a lot of the tradecraft and stuff that
Speaker 3: we learn and I didn't know. I'm like, dang, I
Speaker 3: get to do this. It was the greatest thing in
Speaker 3: the world. Like going through OTC, it was the best
Speaker 3: time ever. Physically demanding and always.
Speaker 2: Under the gun, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: You never know if you're gonna get fired at any
Speaker 3: point in time, or if you're not going to pull
Speaker 3: the standard because the standard are super high and you're
Speaker 3: competing against the other guys that are there with you too.
Speaker 3: But the training was just amazing. I mean it was
Speaker 3: some of the cool stuff. I got to learn how
Speaker 3: to pick locks and pick out a handcuffs and like
Speaker 3: at the at one point in time, I could pick
Speaker 3: out any set of handcuffs in like a matter of seconds,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, like, you know, ten fifteen seconds.
Speaker 3: We get to do a lot of cool stuff like that,
Speaker 3: learn how to you know, resist interrogations and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. The shooting, you know, long range shooting,
Speaker 3: pistol shooting. I really got into the pistol shooting there
Speaker 3: too because we did a lot of the low viz
Speaker 3: constialed carry stuff, so I ends up being a pistol
Speaker 3: So we did a lot of pistol shooting courses and
Speaker 3: that became a passion that I really liked, was pistol shooting.
Speaker 2: It's something you got to really work out a lot
Speaker 2: to get good at.
Speaker 1: Do you want to tell people, maybe for the young
Speaker 1: rangers out there who still to this day don't know
Speaker 1: what RRC is, Do you want to make the little
Speaker 1: recruitment pitch and tell people what RRC is, what those guys.
Speaker 2: Do, or well it's not just rangers anymore.
Speaker 4: So yeah it's open right, yeah you should be rangers.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's it's like one of our old
Speaker 3: n c ucs said, he said, it's like the best
Speaker 3: kept secret in the army.
Speaker 2: Really, I think it is.
Speaker 3: The funding is when I was there was so immense
Speaker 3: because you've got we had like six six man teams
Speaker 3: at that most, and that was if the teams were full,
Speaker 3: So you're talking like thirty six operators and we had
Speaker 3: just the best funding in the world. Anything like any
Speaker 3: training that we wanted to do, we could do.
Speaker 2: I mean, you name it.
Speaker 3: You think outside the box, you look at on the
Speaker 3: online to the most craziest course you could be taught
Speaker 3: by some wazoos civilian over here about this, whatever it is,
Speaker 3: if you could justify it, which everything really is justifiable
Speaker 3: for RECKI you know what I mean, especially when the
Speaker 3: clandestine stuff.
Speaker 2: You submit it, and we could do it.
Speaker 3: I mean literally, I never we never got turned down
Speaker 3: for anything. It was if it didn't happen, it was
Speaker 3: because the timing just didn't line up. Right, So there's
Speaker 3: that aspect to it. But we got to work with
Speaker 3: a lot of really good people. I mean, some of
Speaker 3: the best guys I've ever met in the military, some
Speaker 3: of the smartest guys. I mean, you got really smart
Speaker 3: dudes in all of soft but that place had some
Speaker 3: really smart guys that still this day some of the
Speaker 3: most impressive guys I've ever worked with.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, the.
Speaker 3: Physical fitness aspect of it, you've got to be super fit,
Speaker 3: and we had some ridiculously fit guys there too.
Speaker 2: But I think it was a great place to work.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know if it's changed since I left,
Speaker 3: but I wouldn't change it for the world. I mean
Speaker 3: I got to interact with all the different agencies, with
Speaker 3: all the other like Tier one units that were out there,
Speaker 3: and it was it was definitely gratifying for sure.
Speaker 4: Did you see a lot of an answer to this
Speaker 4: to your comfort level? Obviously, but obviously back on the nineties,
Speaker 4: r RD was you know, like a sort of more
Speaker 4: like a force recon sort of you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it was a tactical wreki and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: I don't say all of a sudden, but you you
Speaker 4: guys proved your worst so much that you brought more
Speaker 4: onto the national stage as a national asst as opposed
Speaker 4: to a regimental asset.
Speaker 2: Did you see.
Speaker 4: Like the training expanding sort of based on the mission
Speaker 4: sets and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely did. So we did.
Speaker 3: All the teams were trained in tactical reki, the greenside reki,
Speaker 3: like you were saying, and we were really good at that,
Speaker 3: and that was our bread and butter. But then we
Speaker 3: also trained in like the AFO piece to the CTR
Speaker 3: type stuff, blending in you know, all the different aspects
Speaker 3: of trade craft that you can do there too, And
Speaker 3: that's where a lot of that other training came along,
Speaker 3: learning how to hack into computers and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Like I suck at technology to this.
Speaker 3: Day, but when I would go through those courses, I
Speaker 3: was pretty good at the stuff for a little while.
Speaker 2: And then if we used it.
Speaker 3: A lot of stuff we didn't use that often, but
Speaker 3: it did come in handy, Like we would have to
Speaker 3: learn how to encrypt stuff because I may have to
Speaker 3: travel to a certain location with a civilian computer and
Speaker 3: have to hide stuff on there, and like, obviously I
Speaker 3: want somebody to be able to look at it real
Speaker 3: quick and not be able to find what I have, right,
Speaker 3: So they taught us to do that. But it came
Speaker 3: in handy really when we were training the ARU, the
Speaker 3: Afghan Reconnaissance unit that we created in Afghanistan. We taught
Speaker 3: them a lot of tech trade craft. We taught them
Speaker 3: a lot of like physical trade craft too, because those
Speaker 3: dudes were.
Speaker 2: Our proxies, you know, in Afghanistan. They lived in the world.
Speaker 3: These dudes were running like a taxi service or a
Speaker 3: cell phone shop or whatever, doing what we needed them
Speaker 3: to do, collecting on how we needed them to collect.
Speaker 3: But they but they were out there flapping. They weren't
Speaker 3: attached to a military base. They were all by themselves
Speaker 3: with no backup. Like if they were on a mission,
Speaker 3: you know, if it got really bad, we could possibly
Speaker 3: leverage some assets to come get them. But most of
Speaker 3: the time, those dudes are just going to be just stuck.
Speaker 1: Like Chuck, I remember you tell me that, Like it
Speaker 1: was very rare that you would have like physical face
Speaker 1: to face contact with them because they were just so deep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, and it was frowned upon a lot.
Speaker 3: Although I did it more than a lot of people did,
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 2: Got some heat for that.
Speaker 3: Where I was at up in Condu's, it was pretty
Speaker 3: conducive for me to drive outside the base and get
Speaker 3: low viz and link up with these guys. And I
Speaker 3: can't remember, but for some reason we were collecting a
Speaker 3: lot of data off the cameras and there's no way
Speaker 3: to get that except for to physically get the SD
Speaker 3: card because it was old school, right.
Speaker 2: And the IT networks in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: It's not five G right, No, yeah, back then it
Speaker 3: was not even close to anything. So we would what
Speaker 3: I would do is we and these guys were trained
Speaker 3: just like tradecraft that you learn at the agency, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like similar, but we had to
Speaker 3: kind of wider it down to be within the rigs to.
Speaker 2: Teach that stuff to them.
Speaker 3: But I would have my dudes, you know, they were
Speaker 3: accurate with time too, So I would say, Hey, I
Speaker 3: need you to drive by this location at this exact
Speaker 3: time plus or minus one minute, and I want you
Speaker 3: to put your SD card wrapped up in a napkin
Speaker 3: and a water bottle because there's trash water bottles everywhere,
Speaker 3: I guess, chucking on the ground. And then I would
Speaker 3: be driving so that my timing was just so that
Speaker 3: as this dude went down this street, I was literally
Speaker 3: about a couple hundred meters behind him, or maybe just
Speaker 3: barely could see him going away.
Speaker 2: So I see him go, I can see him.
Speaker 3: Do the act, the operational act, and then I can
Speaker 3: come by pick up the trash. So we never face
Speaker 3: the face contact. But now I have his SD card
Speaker 3: and I can go back download the video footage off
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: For a target that we were we were doing.
Speaker 4: So it's funny, you know, it's funny that you mentioned
Speaker 4: like they were good with time, because I think for
Speaker 4: people who didn't have to deal with that aspect of
Speaker 4: you know, Afghans or Iraqis or whatever, that when you
Speaker 4: are dealing with like an shah alah, you know the culture, you.
Speaker 2: Know that maybe today, maybe tomorrow, next week. It like
Speaker 2: time isn't always does matter. It doesn't matter for the
Speaker 2: most part.
Speaker 4: And and so to find, you know, people in those
Speaker 4: cultures that can kind of stick to those operational requirements,
Speaker 4: it's not easy to do.
Speaker 3: No, it's not, it's just not part of their culture.
Speaker 3: So we had to really assess for that, and we
Speaker 3: really harped on it. We put them through a selection
Speaker 3: and an OTC pipe line too, and we harped on
Speaker 3: that being timely and being reliable and being predictable and
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But you're right, I mean we lost a lot.
Speaker 1: Of guys because they just didn't you pull the candidates
Speaker 1: out of the KKA or the kandat commandos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they Yeah, that's where most of them came up.
Speaker 3: They were either yeah, the KK or the commandos, and
Speaker 3: so they were already elite trained dudes that were trained
Speaker 3: by Special Force to shoot, yeah, or or they were
Speaker 3: trained like the KK trained by Rangers and Sealed Team
Speaker 3: six dudes and Aultaforce guys. But then yeah, we would
Speaker 3: select from those dudes and then that was the cream
Speaker 3: of the crop.
Speaker 2: We would put them through a whole other selection OTC. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other interesting thing about the whole ARU program is
Speaker 1: that it's not something that most people associate with rangers,
Speaker 1: Like your dad said, rangers or the brawn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not the guys. This isn't a ranger thing.
Speaker 1: And I'm just curious if you had any sort of
Speaker 1: insight into like how that program came about, Like whose
Speaker 1: brainchild was that where the requirement came from. It was
Speaker 1: very interesting. I mean, obviously you guys did it very well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, thinking about that, I know, so there were
Speaker 1: some dudes senior.
Speaker 3: To me and the company that were involved in the
Speaker 3: setting up and creating of that stuff. So I don't
Speaker 3: know exactly where the who the brainchild was. It might
Speaker 3: have come from within the unit. I'm sure there was
Speaker 3: probably some direction from Jaysuk as well.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we were good at it. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it's not that rocket science, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: We just had to teach. You just have to be
Speaker 2: a good teacher.
Speaker 3: I mean, most guys in you know, a leadership position
Speaker 3: and the NCO in the military should be a good teacher,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, and that's all it is. You're we
Speaker 3: were teaching them to do what we do, you know,
Speaker 3: That's all we did. We taught them to do what
Speaker 3: we did because in that realm we couldn't actually do
Speaker 3: that as well, because you just stick out like that's
Speaker 3: that country. It's like it's like if you take you know,
Speaker 3: your average never been in the military, New Yorker and
Speaker 3: drop them in Southeast Alabama where I live, they're gonna
Speaker 3: stick out like a sort of right, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. The way they talk, the way they look
Speaker 3: the way they walk, and it's even more of a star. Contrast,
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan, you took a six foot two white American
Speaker 3: dude and drop them off. Now that the white skin
Speaker 3: color is not the biggesting because there's a lot of
Speaker 3: white skin, but like the.
Speaker 2: Way we walk, the way we carry ourselves, the way
Speaker 2: we talk well.
Speaker 4: And also when you get into like cover for status,
Speaker 4: cover for action type things, like they because of the
Speaker 4: culture and because of how they know the culture, like
Speaker 4: there are things that they can come up with that
Speaker 4: Americans would never even think of, Like you know, in
Speaker 4: the sense of a lot of these villages are a
Speaker 4: lot of these places they were surveilling. We're very small.
Speaker 4: Everybody knows everybody else. They know you don't belong to
Speaker 4: the tribe there. And so if they get like pulled
Speaker 4: over and it's like, what are you guys doing here,
Speaker 4: and they say, oh, my sister. You know, my sister
Speaker 4: was supposed to get married and she ran away and
Speaker 4: we're looking for her, they can play that off. They
Speaker 4: can play that off, and they know that, and that's
Speaker 4: a perfectly valid excuse for them to be like trolling
Speaker 4: these neighborhoods, like exactly Where's where's this wayward sister? We
Speaker 4: have to a kidnap and take her back to so
Speaker 4: we could beat her with ye and make her marry
Speaker 4: this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, you're exactly right.
Speaker 3: And and that's why we had to use those guys
Speaker 3: as our proxies. We could do certain things, but for
Speaker 3: the most part, we used them and we just trained
Speaker 3: them and use them, you know, And we would sometimes
Speaker 3: tag along with them on certain things. We'd go out
Speaker 3: and we would be out, like a lot of times.
Speaker 3: We would also task them with training missions because you know,
Speaker 3: the missions weren't always as busy for them as we
Speaker 3: would necessarily want it to be sometimes, so to keep
Speaker 3: them from being lazy, because you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: them just happened to just kind of default into doing
Speaker 3: whatever they're doing, and they just kind of forget about
Speaker 3: the military, especially when they're living out there like that.
Speaker 3: So we would bring them in and task them with
Speaker 3: training targets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would have them reky something and I'd
Speaker 2: be out in town doing counter surveillance on them, just
Speaker 2: to see if they were actually trying to be sneaky
Speaker 2: or if they're just like, hey, what's up right? Standing
Speaker 2: on the street, take a picture, thinking they can get
Speaker 2: away with it.
Speaker 4: You know, now, how tough was it for you guys
Speaker 4: providing bona fides for these guys when it was their
Speaker 4: intel that might be launching a raid, putting American lives
Speaker 4: at risk, you know, like like validating their intel to
Speaker 4: the battlespace commander or you know whomever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Typically their intel was just confirmation.
Speaker 3: Okay, so there was already something else like singing or
Speaker 3: whatever that we would have, but then we may just
Speaker 3: need to develop this target a little bit more. So
Speaker 3: our guys their intel a lot of times just confirmation.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they would just build power in a life. So
Speaker 3: we knew that there was a dude in and around
Speaker 3: this area, then they would just refine the powern of life.
Speaker 2: Or do it doing the close end wreki that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't send an American to do. I take it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, like getting facial recognition photos of this dude
Speaker 3: at this house. Yeah, I mean, so we have this
Speaker 3: blorry crappy picture that you know is on your little
Speaker 3: cards that you got, and we're like, is that really him?
Speaker 2: And then we send the dudes out to mingle around
Speaker 2: and they get a no joke picture.
Speaker 3: Now we can update that picture, like, yeah, that was him,
Speaker 3: but here's a better picture. Yeah, you know, so stuff
Speaker 3: like that. Yeah, whatever the task force needed, that's what
Speaker 3: we tried to provide.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and how was it?
Speaker 2: It could? You know?
Speaker 4: One of the things that was always challenging in those
Speaker 4: countries was like teaching people how to read maps, teach
Speaker 4: them how to look at look at imagery and understand
Speaker 4: it from a top down perspective because they just don't
Speaker 4: have that perspective.
Speaker 2: How how challenging was that for you guys.
Speaker 3: That that definitely was challenging at times. But you know,
Speaker 3: our guys, we we we just it was part of
Speaker 3: the training pipeline and they just picked it up after
Speaker 3: a while, and a lot of these guys just got
Speaker 3: better as time went. So they would graduate at a
Speaker 3: certain standard which would be good enough, but a lot
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: Would speak a little bit of English.
Speaker 3: But then after like years of that program running, some
Speaker 3: of these guys were sending me PowerPoint. I mean, they
Speaker 3: could do PowerPoint by the end of their OTC, but
Speaker 3: after like a couple of years, these dudes were sending
Speaker 3: me PowerPoint in English.
Speaker 2: So I mean it was impressive.
Speaker 3: I mean some of the guys really wanted to do
Speaker 3: good and they tried to impress up press us and
Speaker 3: it was impressive. They were doing that stuff in English.
Speaker 3: They were encrypting stuff and send it to us encrypted
Speaker 3: because everything that we did with them was.
Speaker 2: Not associated with the military.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean even the computers that we communicated
Speaker 3: with them on were not associated to the military. So
Speaker 3: we didn't want it to any way tie these guys
Speaker 3: to us if for some reason they got busted, you.
Speaker 4: Know, Yeah, how was that for you and for the
Speaker 4: other guys in our city?
Speaker 2: Because you obviously you have this job.
Speaker 4: You're in a way action heroes, right, Like, you've been
Speaker 4: through all this training, You're out there to be on
Speaker 4: the pointy edge, and now you're working through proxies.
Speaker 2: Was it frustrating? Was it gratifying? It was I'd say
Speaker 2: a little bit of both. Some guys hated it.
Speaker 3: I mean, there were guys that hated it, but I
Speaker 3: think you just have to look at what you're doing
Speaker 3: and just you know, find the good.
Speaker 2: Part of it.
Speaker 3: I actually thought I was gonna hate it, but I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed it. Yeah, I really did enjoy it, because
Speaker 3: I mean, we still got to do cool stuff, man,
Speaker 3: we still got to go.
Speaker 2: It was like the best of both worlds.
Speaker 3: When I was up in Condi's the last time we
Speaker 3: had a Delta Force troop there hitting targets every night
Speaker 3: and arrangeable too, and they're hitting targets every night. So
Speaker 3: during the daytime, I was going out loviz, linking up
Speaker 3: with my dudes, doing dead drops and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: or maybe going and picking them up, bringing them back,
Speaker 3: debriefing them or whatever. Or maybe I would be going
Speaker 3: out with some dudes wreckying routes during the daytime, like
Speaker 3: we would wrecky some of our own routes in and
Speaker 3: off of the plateau there, excuse me. But then at
Speaker 3: night I was going out kicking indoors with the Rangers
Speaker 3: or the Deltafest dudes every single night. So I got
Speaker 3: the best of both worlds. I thought it was great. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I get to do a lot of this cool stuff
Speaker 3: that's lo viz, you know, clandestine stuff, and then at
Speaker 3: night I'm going out and doing what Rangers and Delta
Speaker 3: Force dudes do, you know, kicking indoors and killing bad
Speaker 3: guys just as much as they.
Speaker 2: Were, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I enjoyed it, but it was so that
Speaker 3: dynamic was unique not just for me, but I coming
Speaker 3: from Third Ranger Battalion, I had rapport with Rangers and
Speaker 3: with Delta Fores s dudes. There were dudes that had
Speaker 3: come from the big Army to RC that didn't know
Speaker 3: these dudes, so they wouldn't get they didn't get to
Speaker 3: go out on missions with them, right, So they were
Speaker 3: just stuck doing the low viz stuff. When they did it,
Speaker 3: and depending on where they were at, it may have
Speaker 3: been less eventful even And so a lot of those guys,
Speaker 3: I think that's why they didn't like it, because they
Speaker 3: didn't get the best of both worlds.
Speaker 2: Where it's like me, I knew dudes in the battalions.
Speaker 2: I new dudes at Deltamores because I've been working with
Speaker 2: my whole career.
Speaker 3: So I'd just be like, hey, you guys need anybody actually, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: we need an extra sniper, we need an extra battlefield interrogator.
Speaker 3: And so I'd go out and do that a lot
Speaker 3: of bit TQ is what I did. I thought that
Speaker 3: was where I was most valuable. They got all the
Speaker 3: shooters they need. They don't even know the shooter, right,
Speaker 3: but they're squad leaders of tarrogating dudes who are here.
Speaker 3: I'm a master sergeant, you know, I've got more experience
Speaker 3: doing it leaves him to doing his squad leader stuff.
Speaker 2: So I did a lot of that stuff. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1: I mean it's also like the total integration of the
Speaker 1: intelligence piece into the ops.
Speaker 2: It really is. Yeah. Yeah, and that's kind of the
Speaker 2: way I looked at it.
Speaker 3: And I had my interpreter teaching me Dary so by
Speaker 3: I did like I think, three trips to Kandu's, and
Speaker 3: by like the third trip to Kandu's, I was able
Speaker 3: to do battlefield interrogation without an in Dari.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, now it was mission specific stuff, like I
Speaker 3: knew pretty much anything they had to do with bombs, explosives, guns,
Speaker 3: Who this guy is, where are the mosques?
Speaker 2: Where are the schools? You know?
Speaker 3: How many people are here? North, south, east, west? Like
Speaker 3: what kind of vegetables?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Like I knew I had a good grasp with the
Speaker 3: language by no means fluent, but target related I could do.
Speaker 3: And I could also talk my way through checkpoints and
Speaker 3: stuff like that too.
Speaker 2: I learned that much.
Speaker 3: So, like you said, you went and became did language stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I never was interested in it until I got to RRC,
Speaker 3: and I was like, this is beneficial, Like if I
Speaker 3: can prove to the chain of command that I can
Speaker 3: speak good enough to do this, maybe they'll let me
Speaker 3: go do more. Right, because there were things that we
Speaker 3: wanted to do as Americans out that I felt confident doing,
Speaker 3: but the chain of command didn't see it that way. So,
Speaker 3: you know, being able to speak the language and stuff
Speaker 3: like that adds another layer to where they would probably
Speaker 3: accept it.
Speaker 4: And it goes beyond the piece of like I speak
Speaker 4: five five six and seven six two.
Speaker 2: You know, like it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it opens up a whole new world of interaction
Speaker 4: with the local populace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, especially when when the raids.
Speaker 4: You know, the intelligence isn't always accurate, like you need
Speaker 4: to find out what's going on target or like you said,
Speaker 4: like all the operations that you guys do a lot
Speaker 4: of those ops come from resets.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: You do your OT Yeah, your battlefield interrogators you know,
Speaker 4: and your exploitation guys get information and it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: let's go hit this target now, so that these guys
Speaker 4: don't go to ground when they find out they rolled
Speaker 4: up this guy.
Speaker 3: Yep, Yeah, a lot of our missions were like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, not so much like our cee. We were
Speaker 3: always playing a piece in that, but in the line
Speaker 3: range of times, dude, it was like boom boom, boom,
Speaker 3: boom boom, Like you said, probably a thousand missions on
Speaker 3: that one the climate like three months because we're back
Speaker 3: to back to back. They could never react because we're
Speaker 3: slamming them.
Speaker 4: Right, And a lot of those a lot of those
Speaker 4: raids are sort of self propagating, where one raid leads
Speaker 4: to another one based on the intel you got off
Speaker 4: that initial rate.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We would hit targets in Iraq back in the day,
Speaker 3: and literally the pl would be with this little laptop
Speaker 3: like this on the back of the striker, planning out
Speaker 3: the grids for the next target because we took intel
Speaker 3: from that target to go hit the very next target.
Speaker 2: Yeah, literally planning them on the fly. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And well, I mean that led to the whole debate
Speaker 1: to operations drive intelligence or does intelligence drive operations? But
Speaker 1: what you're talking about with the ARU program, that's definitely
Speaker 1: intelligence driving operations.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was a good program, you know.
Speaker 3: One of the things, you know, we were talked about
Speaker 3: it beforehand and that's where I met Well, I met
Speaker 3: Adam from having done the podcast. He reached out to
Speaker 3: me before and then he and his good buddy Brian
Speaker 3: Fitzgibbons came in with me to Project Exodus Relief, which
Speaker 3: is a nonprofit that I created myself. Rodney Brown, one
Speaker 3: of my Seal buddies that I was tied in with
Speaker 3: a lot of us, got asked to like try to
Speaker 3: help people with Afghanistan, and I was like, I'll help
Speaker 3: wherever I can. But then come to find out there
Speaker 3: was you know a lot of these dudes were reaching
Speaker 3: out to me, like people were giving these guys my
Speaker 3: number and actually a nut your podcast set all this
Speaker 3: stuff up.
Speaker 2: There was like a gamhouse bump it did. It really did.
Speaker 3: Like the thing like what I do now all really
Speaker 3: came from the team House because I did the Teamhouse.
Speaker 3: A dude from Alabama saw me on the Teamhouse and
Speaker 3: he reached out to me because I gave my email
Speaker 3: up that time and he was like, hey, brother, I
Speaker 3: know you don't know me from Jack, but he's like,
Speaker 3: I was in the Army, did this, that and the other.
Speaker 3: He's like I worked with some of the ARU guys.
Speaker 3: He worked with him as a contractor when he was
Speaker 3: working as a civilian. After he got out, he was like,
Speaker 3: not Blackwater, but one of those other contract companies. And
Speaker 3: he's like, these dudes are asking me to help him
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan and I have no clue what to do.
Speaker 2: So he reached out to me. That's how I got involved.
Speaker 3: Brought this ad hoc group of guys that we were
Speaker 3: just communicating with on signal chats, you know, like talking
Speaker 3: about like Sharon Intel, like where the Taliban are looking
Speaker 3: for these guys and stuff like that. And then all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, I'm like, dude, we need these groups
Speaker 3: talking together. This this is we're military dudes. This needs
Speaker 3: to be a military cohesive unit. So I started reaching
Speaker 3: out to Task Force Pineapple with Scott Man super good dude. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love Scott reached out to some of his guys.
Speaker 3: I didn't know him at first, but I was reaching
Speaker 3: out into his organization, trying to like, hey, who's the leader,
Speaker 3: Let's let's sync this thing up. Reaching out to Task
Speaker 3: Force Argo flanders Fields is another group, Task Force Freedom Birds, like,
Speaker 3: there's tons of other groups out there, and I was
Speaker 3: reaching out to him. I was like, let's put this together,
Speaker 3: and nobody seemed to want to like really work together
Speaker 3: at first. So then I just brought all these guys
Speaker 3: together that I had We called a project Exodus Relief,
Speaker 3: and then, like I said, I met Adam, Adam was
Speaker 3: on the podcast, reached out to me. He ended up
Speaker 3: coming on board with us helping out. He brought on
Speaker 3: his best buddy, Brian Fitzgibbons, who's an amazing dude. I
Speaker 3: work with him now with USPA Nation Wided Toecurity and
Speaker 3: you know, we can get into that stuff later, but
Speaker 3: that's you know, it all came about trying to advocate
Speaker 3: for these guys, these Afghan Special Ops guys that we trained,
Speaker 3: some of the best out of the Afghans, the most
Speaker 3: loyal guys out there, and nobody was advocating for them,
Speaker 3: Nobody cared about them.
Speaker 2: These guys are just left flapping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, could you give us a little update on where
Speaker 1: that project is now? You know, after the Afghan the
Speaker 1: evacuation as it were, and all these guys that got
Speaker 1: left behind, and I mean we've We've had Scott Man
Speaker 1: on the show to talk about it. I'd be interested
Speaker 1: to hear your perspective of like where that Mick, and
Speaker 1: I'd be interested to hear like your perspective of like
Speaker 1: where that effort is at today.
Speaker 2: It's really stagnated.
Speaker 3: We we you know, I've talked to politicians all over
Speaker 3: the place. I've I spoke at the AI World Forum
Speaker 3: on the Afghan panel, myself and Mike Waltz, the Republicans
Speaker 3: politicians from Florida, Me and him and uh, what's his
Speaker 3: name is? I think y'all might have had him on
Speaker 3: here too, But anyway, we spoke on that panel, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of people that seem to be concerned
Speaker 3: about it, but nothing ever happens, right, you know a
Speaker 3: lot of these politicians were like, hey, yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 3: we got your back, you know, you know, Democrat and
Speaker 3: Republican would act like they wanted to help, but nothing
Speaker 3: ever really happened. We have guys that, you know, legitimately
Speaker 3: legit creds have been verified by the Ranger Regiment worked
Speaker 3: for the program that we've literally taken their documents, handed
Speaker 3: it to the House of Representatives and like, can you
Speaker 3: help us get this guy's SIV approved.
Speaker 2: Never happens, man, It just literally never happens.
Speaker 3: So where we're at with Project Exodus is we've been
Speaker 3: we raised some money through some of the public speaking
Speaker 3: events that I've gone to and some other things that
Speaker 3: we've run, and we've been we've successfully through through my
Speaker 3: one of my guys, Dean, who's run our ground operations
Speaker 3: program super great Dude, former Ranger, former one some five
Speaker 3: dude Delta for Scott. He runs our ground operations stuff
Speaker 3: and he's been running a food network where we've been
Speaker 3: feeding two thousand ARU dudes in their families.
Speaker 2: So there's not that many ARU dudes, but.
Speaker 3: There's probably I don't know, probably still alive one hundred
Speaker 3: ar you guys, maybe less out there, but a lot
Speaker 3: of these guys are the basically the secret Service of
Speaker 3: Afghanistan that my guy Dean trained his guys and we've
Speaker 3: been feeding them in their families for the last two
Speaker 3: and a half years. I got like about two years now,
Speaker 3: but we just pretty much ran out of money this month.
Speaker 4: So wait, is there is there some places people can
Speaker 4: go to donate money for that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if if they want to go to blog dot
Speaker 3: pro Exodus Relief dot com, they can go there and
Speaker 3: check out our website. There's also links to donate at
Speaker 3: the website too, So if people want to do that.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's a good cause man, Like right now,
Speaker 3: I still advocate for these guys.
Speaker 2: I've been talking to lawyers.
Speaker 3: There have been some guys who've trickled their way into
Speaker 3: the United States through our help, Like we've tried to
Speaker 3: avocate for them, but we didn't specifically get them here.
Speaker 3: But I've written letters of recommendation for some of these
Speaker 3: guys and it's come back to me through Like I've
Speaker 3: got a lawyer that reached out to me that's helping
Speaker 3: advocate for one of our guys, helping him get his
Speaker 3: like SIV.
Speaker 2: And so it's been good.
Speaker 4: Have they have a lot of these guys managed to
Speaker 4: get out of Afghanistan and now are in like refugee
Speaker 4: camps in other countries or they still stuck in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: Most are still stuff stuck in Afghanistan. There's there's been
Speaker 3: a handful of that a flee to Iran. There's some
Speaker 3: that have. I've had one of my guys go through
Speaker 3: Iran all the way to Iraq, then he went back
Speaker 3: and I was back in Afghanistan. Just they can't find
Speaker 3: employment like Afghans. I didn't realize that in Iran they're
Speaker 3: looked down upon and they won't employ them there. So
Speaker 3: these guys are in Iran hanging out and couldn't get
Speaker 3: a decent job. Or I had one guy that was
Speaker 3: in with a Christian group that was trying to get
Speaker 3: him in. Sad story, but he was in with a
Speaker 3: so Christian group that was trying to move him through
Speaker 3: into Iraq and the Turkey and stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: he was end and up like he was.
Speaker 2: Trafficked, man, Like people were trafficking. This Christian group is
Speaker 2: trafficking human beings and guns and narcotics. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 2: they're Yeah, it's kind of a lot of corruption out there, man,
Speaker 2: A lot of these groups that you think are gonna
Speaker 2: be good and helpful, Like this guy.
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't know this group. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't want to have anything to do with it. I said,
Speaker 3: if you, I said, you're the grown man, man, you
Speaker 3: run your household. I can't personally help you. So I said,
Speaker 3: if you trust these people, I support you all the
Speaker 3: way and I'll help you however I can. And the
Speaker 3: dude ended up getting all of his documents taken. He's
Speaker 3: trying to get him back. Yeah, some of these guys
Speaker 3: ended up getting beat up and robbed and mugged by
Speaker 3: these people. But yeah, Christian groups out there like mugging people,
Speaker 3: trafficking drugs, trafficking narcotics, all in the underground.
Speaker 2: Man, it's all over the place out there. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: groups that you think would help. It's so sad.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, like immigration is is you know,
Speaker 4: a heated top of the United States, you know, and
Speaker 4: people take very firm sides, but it's but it's wild
Speaker 4: that it was the same thing in Vietnam, where it
Speaker 4: was the effort of like the Special Forces guys and
Speaker 4: what tell the Mons Yards they help, the Monton Yards
Speaker 4: and the Mong and everybody who worked with us, and
Speaker 4: and and now we can even help these people who
Speaker 4: you know, who worked very hard, who shed you know, blood,
Speaker 4: sweat and tears alongside of us.
Speaker 3: It's because our government literally doesn't want it to happen.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know why exactly, but I don't
Speaker 3: know if Scott men said the same thing. But that's
Speaker 3: our biggest hurdles that we've run into, is our government.
Speaker 3: Nobody everybody they'll say they want to help, but nobody
Speaker 3: does anything. Literally, whether it's at the highest level. I
Speaker 3: don't know where it is, but nobody can make anything happen.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's all these bills. They try to push
Speaker 3: these bills up, the Afghan Adjustment Act and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and I don't even really follow that stuff that much
Speaker 3: anymore because it's just frustrating. Yeah, like I said, we
Speaker 3: just have been focusing on using our funds to the
Speaker 3: best that we can. We can't move people anymore, so
Speaker 3: we've been using it to feed people. You know, the
Speaker 3: ones that are stuck hiding from the Taliban er they
Speaker 3: don't feel safe, they can get out and work, I
Speaker 3: can't get a meaningful job.
Speaker 2: We've been feeding them, you know, supplemental food.
Speaker 3: We try to let them be like really needy before
Speaker 3: they come to us so that we use the funds
Speaker 3: and the best manner possible.
Speaker 2: We don't want to just be like making these people rich,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, right, So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we feed the average family about once every three months.
Speaker 2: They'll come back to us for some supplemental food. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you could just go and get them to chili,
Speaker 4: then they can get in no problem.
Speaker 3: I know, I know, it's crazy. The southern borders wide
Speaker 3: slap open. We got terrorists. We had Isis, we got
Speaker 3: Palestinians coming through the southern border like crazy, both our Afghans.
Speaker 3: We actually had some Afghans that figured their way on
Speaker 3: their own. You get to Brazil came up through it, and
Speaker 3: that's another interesting thing. Afghans special ops guys caught at
Speaker 3: the border are reported never to return again.
Speaker 2: Jesus, yeah, they are.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's been multiple guys that it's been in
Speaker 3: the news. We've like, I helped advocate for some of
Speaker 3: these guys. One of them was a commando guy. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to think. I think Flanders Fields was helping that
Speaker 3: guy and he got hung at the border. I called
Speaker 3: some border patrol guys that I knew that tried to
Speaker 3: help him out. And one of my border patrol buddies
Speaker 3: told me straight up, he's like, if I even look
Speaker 3: into this, dude, it's gonna spike on the radar. And
Speaker 3: I was like, really, He's like, any Afghan special ops
Speaker 3: guy that comes through the border is immediately deported, never.
Speaker 2: To return again. I'm like, but we're letting everybody else
Speaker 2: through the border. It makes no sense. Man.
Speaker 3: It's been a frustrating battle, but it has been one
Speaker 3: of the most frustrating things I've ever done in my life,
Speaker 3: yet also the most rewarded, you know, I mean, because
Speaker 3: we're helping people out, really helping people out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I was really.
Speaker 4: Very disappointed, like in the American population left, right whatever,
Speaker 4: when you know, when we were getting all these you know,
Speaker 4: uh and these Afghans in Bere, like, well, we don't
Speaker 4: even know who they are. And it's like a lot
Speaker 4: of research has been done into you know, like the
Speaker 4: Afghans who are being brought in, like people are voluting
Speaker 4: for them.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they were our guys, like we have
Speaker 1: their biometrics exactly.
Speaker 2: Yea, you know, they're they're a known entity, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, very well man, Like a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys had Polly's and tons of background checks essentially
Speaker 2: some type of security class you know, not really but
Speaker 2: kind of. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And a lot of them have fought and died next
Speaker 4: to Americans.
Speaker 2: And they still remain loyal to this day. Yeah, you know. Yeah, sad.
Speaker 2: It's very sad. It's up, is what it is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it really is. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It really contributes to and and you know we've talked
Speaker 4: about this before on the show. Is the moral injury
Speaker 4: that it creates in the sense of, you know, veterans
Speaker 4: who who because not all veterans were very involved with
Speaker 4: Afghans or Iraqis, you know they you know, but others were,
Speaker 4: and there's that moral injury that happens that you know
Speaker 4: that we just leave these people that we know, we've
Speaker 4: kind of left them to the wolves.
Speaker 2: Basically.
Speaker 3: Well, there's an organization that like I was kind of
Speaker 3: the beginnings of helping stand that thing up to along
Speaker 3: with another guy named Travis Peterson, called the Moral Compass Federation,
Speaker 3: And that's where we kind of finally got all these
Speaker 3: groups together with Tasor's Pineapple, Scott Man and those guys
Speaker 3: and started working as a group of advocacy. And that
Speaker 3: group is still doing a lot of good stuff, advocating
Speaker 3: on the hill and stuff like that. Progress is still,
Speaker 3: like I said, non existent pretty much, but there, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that came up big time. A lot of guys there
Speaker 3: were having really big issues because when it was in
Speaker 3: the heyday, like the first six months after the collapse
Speaker 3: of Afghanistan, like I personally was working eighteen hours a day,
Speaker 3: I was on my phone eighteen hours a day, texting,
Speaker 3: coordinating logistics, making phone calls on meetings vtc's. I mean
Speaker 3: it was like running. It was like being the battalion
Speaker 3: commander of a battalion sized element. Like we had a
Speaker 3: fifty man intel sell at one point in time that
Speaker 3: dudes were pumping me intel. Like it got to the
Speaker 3: point where I had to have like dudes that just
Speaker 3: handled the intel because I couldn't handle it all. We
Speaker 3: had dudes that were just handling the ground, the ground stuff.
Speaker 3: We had dudes that were just handling air operations, trying
Speaker 3: to get guys manifested. But after that all fizzled out.
Speaker 3: It got to the point where like the onset finally
Speaker 3: kicked in with like, hey, these dudes are screwed man, yeah,
Speaker 3: and we can't and we're just watching them get killed
Speaker 3: by the Taliban and.
Speaker 2: There's nothing we can do.
Speaker 3: So the moral injury thing became a real thing at
Speaker 3: that point in time, and it's really bothering a lot
Speaker 3: of those guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and especially you know, depending on whether it's this
Speaker 4: government for us or the next any government you know,
Speaker 4: after this withdrawal, how they deal with the Taliban government
Speaker 4: is just sort of salt.
Speaker 2: In the wound.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Yeah, And you know, there's there. There were
Speaker 3: entities from our government liaising with the Taliban this entire time.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I found out, too, is
Speaker 3: that the US State Department was flying one hundred Taliban
Speaker 3: out on US State Department funded aircraft, yet we couldn't
Speaker 3: get our Afghans on there.
Speaker 2: Taliban, dude, they were flying them out on US State
Speaker 2: Department aircraft like crazy. And this was around about like
Speaker 2: what the year what was the fall? Was it twenty
Speaker 2: twenty or twenty twenty one? I get it all mixed
Speaker 2: up now.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty one, So it was like around December twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one January twenty twenty one when this was happening.
Speaker 3: I think I went on news Max or somewhere talking
Speaker 3: about that, and it was reported all over the place,
Speaker 3: but like nothing ever happened, Like why are we flying Taliban? Oh,
Speaker 3: we're It was one of the things that they said,
Speaker 3: we're flying the Taliban out so that they'll let us
Speaker 3: fly aircraft in and out, like really one hundred a
Speaker 3: week to the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, come on, man, what's up of that?
Speaker 3: So, and it's frustrating when you got these Afghan special
Speaker 3: ops guys that should be able to get on those
Speaker 3: planes in but they don't have the right credentials, they
Speaker 3: don't have an SIV completed, they can't fly. But a
Speaker 3: Taliban dud that has nothing can fly here coming right.
Speaker 3: It's a kick to the you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that adds that moral injury. A lot of guys
Speaker 3: just like just like me, saw this happening, and we're like,
Speaker 3: how is this even possible?
Speaker 2: You know, it's frustrating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, But the way I can look back on
Speaker 3: it is that we did the best that we could, right,
Speaker 3: and we're.
Speaker 2: Still trying to do the best that we can for
Speaker 2: these guys, and we're feed them. You know, we're there.
Speaker 3: There have been guys who their lives have been made
Speaker 3: better because of the efforts that we've all done collectively,
Speaker 3: not just me, these guys helping out to the other guys,
Speaker 3: the Moral Compass Federation and groups like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how are like, are a lot of those A
Speaker 4: lot of those dudes, like for the Aru, aren't like
Speaker 4: are they in hiding basically in Afghanistan?
Speaker 2: Are they?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: Do the Talban know who they are? They targeting them
Speaker 4: their families?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I Well, to take it back, I believe it
Speaker 2: was worse than we I believe we thought it was
Speaker 2: worse than it actually was. Okay, So in the beginning we.
Speaker 3: Were like, oh, man, they were killing some dudes, but
Speaker 3: they they were beating a lot of dudes.
Speaker 2: And actually one of my.
Speaker 3: Guys I had an after, one of my ARU dudes
Speaker 3: that had a source within the Taliban leadership and due
Speaker 3: to the safe ouls that he was in, so I
Speaker 3: found out that I was able to get a lot
Speaker 3: of guys released.
Speaker 2: I had a lot of guys released.
Speaker 3: I'd call my guy, I'm like, hey, can you check
Speaker 3: with with the general that's what we called the guy,
Speaker 3: and like, can you check with the general and see
Speaker 3: if they have this guy in custody. If so, he's
Speaker 3: one of our guys, Man can have them released every
Speaker 3: single time.
Speaker 2: They release him.
Speaker 3: So the Taliban would actually release guys through my proxy,
Speaker 3: Like my source had that much influence with them and
Speaker 3: this so I found out.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was as bad as we thought.
Speaker 3: I don't know why they were detaining these guys, roughing
Speaker 3: them up, making it look rough, but I don't think they.
Speaker 2: Were killing them in the numbers that we thought they
Speaker 2: were at first.
Speaker 3: I don't know why it seemed like it was a
Speaker 3: fear campaign to make them scared, to make them hide
Speaker 3: at first, But now a lot of them have kind
Speaker 3: of kind of let up, you know, they're kind of.
Speaker 2: Going out and doing their normal stuff into society. Now
Speaker 2: are we Are we worried?
Speaker 4: Has there been in the indication of the Taliban basically
Speaker 4: recruiting these guys in the sense of obviously these guys
Speaker 4: fought against the Taliban and they're not for the Taliban,
Speaker 4: but also human nature is just to make life easier
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 2: And your family.
Speaker 4: So now we have not just the Aru, but you know,
Speaker 4: we have you know, the conduct we have cptt ccpts,
Speaker 4: we have, we have all these forces that were trained
Speaker 4: and I think a lot of the CTPT got out,
Speaker 4: but we have these forces that have been trained by
Speaker 4: American Special Operations.
Speaker 2: We didn't do right by them? Or are we?
Speaker 4: Are we concerned? Has there been any concern.
Speaker 2: That they're going to the other side?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there has been concern and there has been some
Speaker 3: of that happening, not not so much with the AARU.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard of any Aru doing that. I'm sure
Speaker 3: there probably have been, but not that I've heard of.
Speaker 3: And the more smaller, more elite units, not so much
Speaker 3: have heard of like rare occurrences of like Commando's doing that,
Speaker 3: And I think it was more of like other different
Speaker 3: forces out there that we're doing, but it has happened.
Speaker 3: But a lot of them, a lot of the KKA
Speaker 3: actually joined the National Resistance Front with was Akman Masud
Speaker 3: uh leading that effort? Am I mixing him up with
Speaker 3: his father? I can't remember Akaman Masud. I think it's
Speaker 3: Okama Masud the son that's leading the national results.
Speaker 2: I can't remember which is the son and the father. Baby, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it's Yeah, I don't know why. I'm
Speaker 2: having a brain fun at the time. But our guy,
Speaker 2: A lot of the KKA guys were linking up with
Speaker 2: those guys and they were taking it to the Taliban
Speaker 2: at first, like they were literally they almost pushed the Taliban.
Speaker 2: The Taliban were pushing up in the the.
Speaker 3: Uh Ha, the pan Shure up in that area, and
Speaker 3: these guys were pushing them all the way back, had
Speaker 3: pushed them all the way back almost to Cobble. Then
Speaker 3: Pakistan sent over some drones and did drone strikes on them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and killed a bunch of them. And kind of thwarted
Speaker 3: that whole thing and stifled it. But they were, they
Speaker 3: were this close to taking taking couple back. We were
Speaker 3: cheering them on. We're like, yes, yes, let's do this.
Speaker 3: And then Pakistan sent over some some aircraft and some drones.
Speaker 2: And did strikes them and pushed them all back, kind
Speaker 2: of killed that whole effort.
Speaker 4: It's so weird to me because it never goes well
Speaker 4: for Pakistan when they like, like they've always supported the
Speaker 4: Taliban and AQ and whatnot, but it doesn't go well
Speaker 4: for them. I think that they just want the problem
Speaker 4: to be in Afghanistan and.
Speaker 2: Now they got to live with their creation. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: right next door. Yeah yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3: A lot of these guys, like I said, they went
Speaker 3: to the good what I considered the good side, but
Speaker 3: they've kind of I don't that effort's kind of stifled
Speaker 3: now too, but they're there. Definitely have been something that's
Speaker 3: gone to the bad side, confirmed that I know of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but not as big as you not as much
Speaker 2: as you would.
Speaker 4: Think, right, And and I imagine for a lot of them,
Speaker 4: it's not that they're going to the the only thing
Speaker 4: they got, Yeah, it's not that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's literally survival mechanism for them. I mean, and
Speaker 3: I don't blame on one bit. It's just like when
Speaker 3: when Russia started recruiting them for for it's the name
Speaker 3: of that group, uh, the Russian contractor Wagner, Yeah, Warner
Speaker 3: group or Yeah, they were recruiting those guys, and I
Speaker 3: was like, Hey, I don't blame them. You know, if
Speaker 3: if you're getting out of here, you know, and they're
Speaker 3: gonna put you up and give you nice accommodations and
Speaker 3: treat you like one of their civilians, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't blame them.
Speaker 2: It's not what I would do. But it's not that
Speaker 2: I would blame we.
Speaker 3: Actually we had huge efforts to try to get them
Speaker 3: to Ukraine too, Like with this whole event going on
Speaker 3: in Ukraine, like, hey, these dudes right here will come
Speaker 3: fight with you. Just hit them out. Yeah, nobody, nobody
Speaker 3: would touch it. Nobody would touch it with a ten
Speaker 3: foot pole. Like I talked to people in Parliament and Ukraine.
Speaker 3: I've talked to people here in the United States advocating
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, the dynamic this thing is.
Speaker 3: I'll turn I actually met with a donor and another
Speaker 3: interesting thing tying to the Wagner Group was there was
Speaker 3: this donor that we were told about that that he
Speaker 3: had helicopters fixed wing. He was moving dudes currently out
Speaker 3: of Afghanistan. We're like, dang, this is like the golden ticket.
Speaker 3: Like if we can convince him that Project Exodus has
Speaker 3: the capabilities that we have and we have the quality
Speaker 3: of dudes that he wants, maybe he'll get him out.
Speaker 3: Because we didn't know why he was trying to help
Speaker 3: at the time, we were like, we set up a meeting.
Speaker 3: So we set up a meeting with this dude, and
Speaker 3: you know, just like a Google meet. He comes on,
Speaker 3: his chief of staff comes on. Mind you, this dude's
Speaker 3: a billionaire. He's a mega billionaire. I can't remember his name,
Speaker 3: like Garrity or something like that was his last name.
Speaker 3: This guy supposed we spoke at Sea Pack. He's like
Speaker 3: big tight end on the conservative political side. Well, he
Speaker 3: he came on.
Speaker 2: To our meeting. We were talking about different things.
Speaker 3: We're briefing on all operations we had going on the
Speaker 3: food program and this stuff, this, that and the other.
Speaker 3: One of my guys was like, hey, we to caution
Speaker 3: our guys to stay away from Wagner Group and we
Speaker 3: just need to make sure that they're not doing that
Speaker 3: because it's just going to look bad in the as
Speaker 3: the United States, so we can't support it. Then boom,
Speaker 3: this dude and his chief of staff popped off the call.
Speaker 3: We're like, what the heck, man, this dude just ditched
Speaker 3: the car. We're like maybe they lost connection. So we're
Speaker 3: like texting on the background, like, Hey, what happened? What
Speaker 3: did the guy drop off? Come to find out, the
Speaker 3: DUDEHS are a recruiter for Wagner Group. The US dude
Speaker 3: tied into what states? Yeah, I have pushed the dude
Speaker 3: as a ghost on the internet though literally he's a
Speaker 3: ghost on the Internet. I've pushed everything I can to
Speaker 3: other people. I'm like, dig into this dude. This is
Speaker 3: an American citizen. I passed it to the agency. I
Speaker 3: passed the FBI, and they're like, we can't do anything.
Speaker 3: He's an American citizen. I'm like, he's an American citizen,
Speaker 3: but he's also got British citizenship as well, and he's
Speaker 3: super wealthy, and he's tied into the political sphere here
Speaker 3: in the United States. But he was recruiting for Wagner Group.
Speaker 3: That's who he's moving people for too, he admitted he
Speaker 3: told that to our people who got this guy on
Speaker 3: the call. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: So we're like, what kind of tail spin is this
Speaker 2: going to take next?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: I mean I can see the CIA saying we can't
Speaker 4: like he's an American cityst and what the FBI like,
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure the FBI can process. That's their yeah, think, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's their perview. Yeah, but well Treasury too, right if
Speaker 4: you're breaking uh finance laws, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I really would like to find out what
Speaker 3: the truth is behind that guy. Like I said, all
Speaker 3: I know is what I was told. I was told
Speaker 3: that he's he spoke at c PACK. Somebody sent me
Speaker 3: like a Twitter clip of him speaking there, uh tied
Speaker 3: in with a lot of big conservative politicians.
Speaker 2: And I was like, huh interesting, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, my thought when a lot of that stuff was
Speaker 1: going down and what I thought the missed opportunity was.
Speaker 1: And it's not my job, but my thought is like,
Speaker 1: we have all these guys we trained up in the KKA,
Speaker 1: the a r U, the CTPTS, why are we not
Speaker 1: evacuating them to a third country, not America, but a
Speaker 1: third country. That did happen, But I mean, why isn't
Speaker 1: the agents moving them to a third country and you
Speaker 1: have an element that you can use for completely deniable operations.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, dude. I've been trying to pitch.
Speaker 3: That to the agency for the last year and a half,
Speaker 3: Like I've literally have a guy that I've been talking
Speaker 3: to and I'm like, hey, this is the capabilities we
Speaker 3: can bring. We actually had like a covert medical program
Speaker 3: we were going to use. We had everything, we just
Speaker 3: needed a little bit more funding. I was like, you guys,
Speaker 3: fund it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: You have an ambulance company in Kabul, Afghanistan that has
Speaker 3: access everywhere. We were going to build false bottoms in
Speaker 3: these vehicles so we could transport people and supplies. We
Speaker 3: were literally trying to build packages to sell to them,
Speaker 3: Like hey, here's a capability.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants it. Yeah, I yah.
Speaker 1: You'd have a group of Afghans who are well versed
Speaker 1: in putting, you know, a suppress twenty two to the
Speaker 1: back of somebody's head. Sounds like maybe something somebody could use. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't you would think.
Speaker 2: That the agency will touch like medical stuff. Well that
Speaker 2: was just one aspect to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we were trying to think of ways to
Speaker 3: have better the ability. So one of the things that
Speaker 3: was people were having issues with moving people around. We're like,
Speaker 3: we'll create a medical company because there are medical issues
Speaker 3: that are poppling up right right right, So we were
Speaker 3: going to treat it was gonna be a real medical
Speaker 3: agency or ambulance company for the la lack of a
Speaker 3: better term, but we were going to also be able
Speaker 3: to use it to smuggle people and or supplies under
Speaker 3: the nose of the talent as a you know, ambulance
Speaker 3: we had. I mean, we got a pretty good intel
Speaker 3: network still over there. We've kind of kind of let
Speaker 3: it go because we it's no no need to pimp
Speaker 3: these guys for information all the time, and we can't
Speaker 3: give them anything in return.
Speaker 2: I can't get you out, man, right right.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the further adventures of
Speaker 1: Mike Edwards. Uh, your life after service after all this stuff,
Speaker 1: going to work with us p A and others.
Speaker 2: I know you have some interesting stories there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like I said, the whole it stemmed from your podcast,
Speaker 3: you know, people reaching out. We started Project Exodus, I
Speaker 3: met Adam and uh then Brian Gibbons, and then you know,
Speaker 3: I did some work with those guys. Well, then I
Speaker 3: ended up I had a job that I had as
Speaker 3: a government contractor for a while, ended up losing that job,
Speaker 3: do various things, and then I saw his jobless for
Speaker 3: about a year. USPA Brian hit me up. Brian Fitzgibbons
Speaker 3: hit me up and he said, hey, would you like
Speaker 3: to work with us for this contract? And this was
Speaker 3: last December, and I said, yeah, sure, it's like we're
Speaker 3: going down to Miami. I'll bring you down there. It's
Speaker 3: just like an executive protection gig. Didn't really know what it
Speaker 3: was about him, like, yeah, sure. He bought me a
Speaker 3: plane ticket. I was on a plane, flew down there
Speaker 3: and ended up me and Rodney Brown, one of my
Speaker 3: seal buddies who was with Project Excess. They contracted him too.
Speaker 3: Adam was there running the static security. So we had
Speaker 3: like tons of like fifty guards guarding this art exhibit
Speaker 3: for Madonna. It was at like Eve Saint Laurent is
Speaker 3: what it was called. So Madonna had this sex art
Speaker 3: show that she had of like pictures of herself naked
Speaker 3: all over the place inside there. Yeah, and all these celebrities,
Speaker 3: like a list celebrities.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the names of any of them. You know,
Speaker 2: Adam were better than me.
Speaker 3: But Madonna was the key want the head won, right,
Speaker 3: So she did that and then had like a big
Speaker 3: after party. So me and Ridney Brown were her personal
Speaker 3: bodyguards for that event. So it's kind of interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we were the muscle really just blocking her from the paparazzi.
Speaker 3: But we did that manage the security event for that
Speaker 3: we do for the most part, we do nationwide, even
Speaker 3: international armed executive protection security, bodyguard work and firewatch. Firewatch
Speaker 3: is a big thing that we do where for example,
Speaker 3: if you're building is under construction, they may have to
Speaker 3: shut down the fire sprinkler systems and you don't want
Speaker 3: to shut the business down. So by law most places
Speaker 3: you have to have basically like boot camp firewatch guy
Speaker 3: in there paid and so we do that a lot.
Speaker 3: We provide that service all over the country. But the
Speaker 3: key thing with that is, uh, fifty percent of all
Speaker 3: the earnings from USPA goes into the Kingsman program. The
Speaker 3: Kingsman is the nonprofit arm of USPA. Mike Evans, the
Speaker 3: owner of the company, Such a nice guy, such a
Speaker 3: big hearted guy and and Dan Manning the CEO like
Speaker 3: they you know, will accept these different missing persons cases
Speaker 3: or traffic children or for example, battered women cases will
Speaker 3: come in and that's part of one of the things
Speaker 3: I'm paid to do to his advice on that stuff.
Speaker 3: So we'll we'll get cases like there there was a girl,
Speaker 3: Ashland gill Up in Massachusetts, wasn't Massachusetts that went uh,
Speaker 3: went missing in the cops we're looking for for like
Speaker 3: thirty something days.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: We got on the case and found her within three
Speaker 3: days and had her back to her family.
Speaker 2: Wow. Uh. There was another one.
Speaker 3: I won't say the name, but it was an adult
Speaker 3: girl down in Florida who was tied in with a
Speaker 3: basically international convent, the stude Ha con Any women like
Speaker 3: good looking younger girls.
Speaker 2: He was probably like about my age.
Speaker 3: And then he was getting not as handsome, yeah, definitely
Speaker 3: not as handsome, and getting these younger twenty something to
Speaker 3: thirty year old girls to spend all their money, literally
Speaker 3: millions of dollars he sucked out of these girls just
Speaker 3: traveling around. And I reached out some of my network
Speaker 3: that came from the Project Exodus stuff, some of that
Speaker 3: stuff that I was tied in there was able to
Speaker 3: bring in a guy that can dig on people's phones
Speaker 3: and basically sigate type stuff and find where these people
Speaker 3: are at. So we used him to find where these
Speaker 3: people are at and ended up handing off the locations
Speaker 3: to the FBI and to the sheriff detective down in
Speaker 3: Florida who actually was in third range of re time
Speaker 3: with us in the same platoon actually for a little bit.
Speaker 3: So it was interesting bumping into that guy. But we
Speaker 3: helped federal law enforcement and local law enforcement apprehend this basically,
Speaker 3: like I said, international command and freed this girl up
Speaker 3: so that she'd go back to her family.
Speaker 2: She was willingly with him. I only asked us to
Speaker 2: help her, but we couldn't force her to leave. She's like,
Speaker 2: it's more like a deprogramming in a.
Speaker 3: Way, right, Yeah, And that's what we're going to try
Speaker 3: to do, is kind of call her out, deprogram hers
Speaker 3: our ability. Yeah, but what we figured out the most
Speaker 3: viable route was to just help the cops detain him.
Speaker 3: Now he's out of the picture and she's free, right,
Speaker 3: So that's what happened. Yeah, Well, we do a lot
Speaker 3: of that stuff. Man cases that pop up. We try
Speaker 3: to help people as much as possible. Like I said
Speaker 3: the Kingsman, fifty percent of our earnings goes to that,
Speaker 3: to funding these different programs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and those programs are expensive. I mean with the surveillance,
Speaker 4: the tech, you know, if it's like recovery, uh you know,
Speaker 4: you know, and I don't know if you guys, because
Speaker 4: you said internationally, right or.
Speaker 3: Well, most of the recovery stuff we do here in
Speaker 3: the States. Yeah, we could. We have done some internationally
Speaker 3: as well, but most of us here in the States.
Speaker 3: But international is like the security stuff, executive protection stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all over the place. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And how are you enjoying that? Like how is
Speaker 4: that back to your Rekie days? Yeah, you know because
Speaker 4: one of the things one of the things we talked about,
Speaker 4: uh uh, I can't remember if it was your first
Speaker 4: time on, your second time on, was like the post
Speaker 4: traumatic stress and like the like pulling people out of
Speaker 4: cars isn't like necessarily like normal behavior, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 4: and I and I identify with that one, like you
Speaker 4: know where sometimes my girlfriend's like let this go, and.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, it's hard to de escalate some times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how like how has it been for you not
Speaker 4: only with like the postmatic stress going back sort of
Speaker 4: into this world, but also the sense of mission, the
Speaker 4: sense of purpose that you had and then you're and
Speaker 4: then then you're looking for does this kind of fulfill that.
Speaker 2: Role for you? Yeah? I think you know. That's one
Speaker 2: of the things when when USPA.
Speaker 3: I asked I wanted to come on full time working
Speaker 3: with them, I was like, man, I'm so happy that
Speaker 3: you all asked me, because this is something that can
Speaker 3: definitely get behind because I knew what they were doing
Speaker 3: because I kind of helped a little bit on the
Speaker 3: side with that.
Speaker 2: But you're right, I've never had PTSD, I guess per se.
Speaker 2: I don't know why.
Speaker 3: But I did have other issues right that I that
Speaker 3: I had, and we can speak on that stuff if
Speaker 3: you guys have time.
Speaker 2: I want to. But I never had PTSD. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it is right, It is good. You know.
Speaker 3: Whenever I retired, I was doing the free fall stuff.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of free fall contracts. I was
Speaker 3: teaching wrecky courses and long range shooting cosses and stuff
Speaker 3: to different guys, and I enjoyed that You're still with
Speaker 3: the boys, still walking in the mountains, still doing military
Speaker 3: type stuff. When you completely pull away from that. It
Speaker 3: kind of it's like a sever that you can feel,
Speaker 3: you know, it just doesn't feel right. So I pulled
Speaker 3: away from that for a little bit. But this definitely
Speaker 3: fulfills It fills that niche you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, am, I I'm sorry my memory is horrible, but
Speaker 4: I was it was Was it not you? We were
Speaker 4: talking about, like getting angry on the on the road and.
Speaker 2: Roadbrange I did. I Yeah, I used to get like that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a period of time for a while. I
Speaker 2: was just angry at the world. Man.
Speaker 3: I don't know why it was, but I was. I
Speaker 3: was angry, dude. I mean, you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: guys are scared to talk about this stuff. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: you know, suicide is a big deal. Like we've had
Speaker 3: friends that died from that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Due to be honest with you, I've had a pistol
Speaker 3: to my head snatching the slack out of a trigger before.
Speaker 3: I'm not scared to tell people about that because that
Speaker 3: was a weakness that I was at it. I'll never
Speaker 3: be back there again, do that now. But at the time, man,
Speaker 3: I was being haunted. I don't know why or what
Speaker 3: it was called. None of this ever happened while I
Speaker 3: was in the military.
Speaker 2: Right. It was.
Speaker 3: Once I was out of the military and I was
Speaker 3: just at home with my wife and kid. I was
Speaker 3: drinking a lot to like kind of mitigate pain and
Speaker 3: stress and stuff like that, taking like pain pills and
Speaker 3: ambient and all that kind of crap, met self medicating.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I was doing it. I felt
Speaker 3: like I needed it to sleep. I felt like I
Speaker 3: needed it to be RESTful. But dude, I would lose control. Man,
Speaker 3: Like I was angry. I was. I was so mean
Speaker 3: to my wife. You know, Thank God I've got a
Speaker 3: good Christian wife. And my wife was praying for me
Speaker 3: all the time, Like I call her, I tell her,
Speaker 3: I think I said that on the second one. She's
Speaker 3: the most valorous soldier that I know because I was
Speaker 3: her worst enemy. I was attacking her left and right,
Speaker 3: and she just prayed for me and prayed for me
Speaker 3: and prayed for me. And then boom, I'm completely changed.
Speaker 3: I'm not even close to the same guy I was
Speaker 3: the last time I was on this podcast.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: You know that goes into my new passion is like
Speaker 3: studying the Bible, like I have studied the Bible for
Speaker 3: the last four years now.
Speaker 2: And at first I was telling you I would chuck
Speaker 2: that thing across the room. I'd get pissed off.
Speaker 3: I'm like, this book is stupid, it's trash. Who could
Speaker 3: even understand this thing? But now I've studied it so
Speaker 3: much that I do understand it. Now, I do understand
Speaker 3: it clearly, and I teach people on the side. I
Speaker 3: put together Bible studies and lead groups of Bible studies
Speaker 3: for this, and there's a lot of people coming around
Speaker 3: to the truth with this now one of the most
Speaker 3: shocking things.
Speaker 2: A lot of people don't like to accept it. But
Speaker 2: I mean, the Bible predicted this. The Bible predicted that
Speaker 2: in the end times, the entire church, the entire church
Speaker 2: would be apostate, meaning that it's completely against God. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's exactly where we are. We are. It says, you know,
Speaker 2: the ministers of Satan would become the ministers of righteousness.
Speaker 2: That's what's going on. Like it literally says false apostles
Speaker 2: as the apostles of Christ. So all of this, the
Speaker 2: Bible told us that in the end times, Satan's ministers
Speaker 2: would be in the church teaching false doctrine. But a
Speaker 2: lot of people have too much pride to.
Speaker 3: Look at the Bible and be like, this teaches totally
Speaker 3: different than what my preacher said. A lot of times
Speaker 3: it hits them deep and they just refuse it. They
Speaker 3: refuse it, and like the Bible says, they harden their
Speaker 3: hearts against it because of pride.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, like from what you've described, it sounds like
Speaker 1: you're kind of like self taught, like you didn't really
Speaker 1: go to church so much as as much as you
Speaker 1: like force your way through the.
Speaker 2: Bible initially, like line by line.
Speaker 1: You know, even I think you said you didn't really
Speaker 1: take to it, you didn't really understand it, but you
Speaker 1: ken't add it until it started to make sense to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really did.
Speaker 3: Like a lot of the seminary schools that are out
Speaker 3: there teach, they teach this corrupted doctrine that's out there.
Speaker 2: It's anti biblical.
Speaker 3: Man, If you really do take a forensic study of
Speaker 3: the Bible itself, it takes immense amounts of hours, Like
Speaker 3: I mean, I have thousands and thousands of hours of
Speaker 3: studying to this, and then you start unlocking pieces because
Speaker 3: there's like you know, Jesus spoken different parables and things
Speaker 3: like that. A lot of those parables, you think there's
Speaker 3: a surface layer understanding to it, but when you understand
Speaker 3: more depth of the scriptures, it unlocks the parable's true
Speaker 3: meaning and a lot of that stuff. It doesn't come
Speaker 3: alive until you've really studied in depth. And you're right,
Speaker 3: I studied on my own, and I believe that's a
Speaker 3: purest form. And the Bible says that that we're not
Speaker 3: supposed to have anyone else.
Speaker 2: Interpret the scriptures for us. We're supposed to individually between
Speaker 2: you and the scripture, but it's between us and God.
Speaker 2: He interprets it for us, and it actually interprets itself too,
Speaker 2: So I mean we're not really like a religious podcast
Speaker 2: per se. But since this is like something that like
Speaker 2: means something to you and has been like beneficial for you,
Speaker 2: I would like to ask, like in your own words,
Speaker 2: then what is the Bible to you? What? What?
Speaker 1: What? What did you take out of it? What are
Speaker 1: like the big threads that changed you?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I think the Bible is the manifestation of God himself,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Like it does say in
Speaker 3: the beginning was the word, the word was God, and
Speaker 3: the word was with God.
Speaker 2: The word became flesh and wealth among us. So there's
Speaker 2: codes in that. Right.
Speaker 3: The word is the scriptures, and it's saying that the
Speaker 3: word was God and is God, and so like I
Speaker 3: believe that studying those scriptures it cleanses you. It says
Speaker 3: that it does, and it has cleansed to me. You know,
Speaker 3: my wife don't fight, but we used to. I don't
Speaker 3: drink like I used to drink every single night all
Speaker 3: the time. Now I'll have an occasional drink here and there,
Speaker 3: never get drunk. I don't take any of the pills
Speaker 3: that I used to take. I've cleaned up my language,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, my acts, my cloture. It's
Speaker 3: just and I didn't try to do this. It did
Speaker 3: it for me, right, you know, it was just like
Speaker 3: it just naturally happens.
Speaker 2: Do you You.
Speaker 4: Know, because you talk about this anger and you know,
Speaker 4: and I think that a lot of veterans, you talk
Speaker 4: about suicide and things like that, and I think a
Speaker 4: lot of veterans, especially a lot of special operations veterans
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, where this you know, there's this blanket
Speaker 4: sort of idea of post traumatic stress. But you know,
Speaker 4: as we've talked about on the show before, there's also
Speaker 4: blast injuries and TBI. They get meshed in with that
Speaker 4: because we've we've we've all stood way too close to
Speaker 4: way too many breaches. Yeah, and you know, and then
Speaker 4: there's also going from sixty miles an hour to zero.
Speaker 2: Miles an hour.
Speaker 4: I think that has a lot to do with it.
Speaker 4: Where you have this purpose. You are an elite, you know,
Speaker 4: you're you're an elite in the world. You're like a
Speaker 4: child actor whose time ends right and you're at the top.
Speaker 4: You're at the top of your game with purpose, with
Speaker 4: a fulfilling mission. And then you're back out in the
Speaker 4: sibilian world where there's none of the camaraderie, none of
Speaker 4: the purpose, none of that. And so that with the
Speaker 4: pro dramatic stress that may or may not be there,
Speaker 4: with the blast injuries and TBIs, it all blends together to.
Speaker 3: This catraphic situation. Yeah, exactly, it really does. And I
Speaker 3: think it's easy to be overtaken by that.
Speaker 2: It's really easy.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm telling you, I've been like with a
Speaker 3: block snatching the slack out of the trigger, like I
Speaker 3: was lucky at a overpull that thing. I could have
Speaker 3: easily been one of those statistics and like who knows
Speaker 3: if those guys are doing the same thing, never intended
Speaker 3: on killing themselves, but just so angry. They're just like
Speaker 3: you will you don't think I'll do this, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean at your wife, you know.
Speaker 2: And it's very momentary.
Speaker 4: I mean I have very momentary I've kicked in a
Speaker 4: door and taken a pistol out of friend's hand before.
Speaker 4: And and he's no longer like it was a momentary thing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and and and he's not at risk anymore, thank god.
Speaker 4: But the thing is is that it's such an insidious
Speaker 4: spiral that that we don't we don't see it for
Speaker 4: ourselves when we're in it.
Speaker 2: You're right, You're exactly right.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, I preached to my buddies all
Speaker 3: the time, and like I got like Rodney Brown, you know,
Speaker 3: he he always tells me, he's like, hey, bro, if
Speaker 3: you ever need me, call me, like, and he's specifically
Speaker 3: talking about that. Not because at the time when he
Speaker 3: would say that to me, it's not because he knew
Speaker 3: that I had had these events, because I definitely didn't
Speaker 3: tell him, right, you know, because like i'd like I'll
Speaker 3: talk about the stuff out in the open. I'll tell
Speaker 3: it to anybody, because it's an issue that does need
Speaker 3: to be talked about because we all deal with it,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, We all deal with it
Speaker 3: at some level, maybe not as bad as that or
Speaker 3: like to the point we actually do it, but we
Speaker 3: all deal with it at some level. And it just
Speaker 3: depends on how far the control it gets. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't call them when those times, right, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. It's one of those things You're right,
Speaker 3: you have to. It's hard to get out of It's
Speaker 3: hard to overcome that weakness and admit that you're weak, right,
Speaker 3: you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Right, right, And and yeah, and it's one of those
Speaker 4: things where issue You're right, like people don't reach out
Speaker 4: like people who expect like veterans or probably anybody in
Speaker 4: this situe, not just veterans, but people who expect people
Speaker 4: to reach out to a professional or even a friend,
Speaker 4: it's not going to happen. That's when you have to
Speaker 4: like do those buddy checks and like like you just
Speaker 4: go in and assume going like an assault team basically. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and and you know, give the knife hand and.
Speaker 2: You get luck.
Speaker 3: Like there's there's people that I've worked with that I
Speaker 3: was lucky to get on the phone with and talk them.
Speaker 3: I fell off of it. Guys that worked for me
Speaker 3: called me one time and was like, Hey, there's this
Speaker 3: one guy and that used to be in our in
Speaker 3: our group, in our platoon, and he's struggling right now.
Speaker 3: We think he's gonna kill himself. And they're like call him,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, please, God, let's do answer to the phone.
Speaker 2: I called.
Speaker 3: He answered the phone, and I don't know if I
Speaker 3: helped him. Maybe I got to intervene at that right time.
Speaker 3: But that's why, like you said, this buddy checks doing
Speaker 3: them routinely, because that dude's not gonna call you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Luckily, somebody saw triggers from that guy on like maybe
Speaker 3: social media, right, and then they started alerting people that
Speaker 3: network worked for that guy. But it doesn't always work, man,
Speaker 3: And that's why I think being honest about it, Like
Speaker 3: that's why, Like I saw one of my buddies, DJ Shipley,
Speaker 3: who was made him did some free fall contract stuff together.
Speaker 3: I watched the podcast he did on Sean Ryan and
Speaker 3: he talked He talked very open about that, and I
Speaker 3: was like, dude, like I can't believe, like like I'm like,
Speaker 3: if he he's talking about that.
Speaker 2: I should be able to talk about that stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm like that that like changed me right there.
Speaker 3: I was like, dude, that is awesome on him to
Speaker 3: have spoken out about his weaknesses. You know, Steal Team
Speaker 3: six operator like admitted his weaknesses. Man, more people need
Speaker 3: to hear that stuff. So when I heard that from him,
Speaker 3: I was like, dude, I need to do the same
Speaker 3: thing if I ever get the opportunity, be honest about it,
Speaker 3: because you know, people will realize because we're bad at
Speaker 3: the one special ops guys, right, we can't be weak.
Speaker 2: But in that situation, you have to admit when you're weak.
Speaker 2: What was the turning point for you?
Speaker 3: You know, I really don't know it just it kind
Speaker 3: of like slowly happened with my Bible study stuff. Like
Speaker 3: I said, I just stuck with it and stuck with it.
Speaker 3: It's like God just took it from me. Man, he
Speaker 3: took the anger away for a while. He took the like,
Speaker 3: the the want to to do that stuff. I don't
Speaker 3: get angry, Like the things in my wife used to
Speaker 3: do that made me angry don't make me angry anymore.
Speaker 3: I don't make her angry like I used to, because
Speaker 3: she's changed too. She's in the same boat me but
Speaker 3: on the other side now. So our whole family has
Speaker 3: changed because of that stuff. I just I can't explain it, man, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I can't explain it. But it's definitely for the better. No,
Speaker 3: that's fantastic.
Speaker 2: I mean it really is. And and it's you know,
Speaker 2: definitely a topic that definitely needs to be talked about
Speaker 2: man more often.
Speaker 4: Well, and and you know, we've we've had people on
Speaker 4: who have who have been through this and who have
Speaker 4: been through uh, psychotropical medicines you know, uh stelly ganglion
Speaker 4: blocks you know, uh yeah, fourty with like the breathing
Speaker 4: and things like that, like all these different things. But
Speaker 4: you know, you're bringing something that that hasn't really been
Speaker 4: talked about on the show before, which is is just
Speaker 4: faith true.
Speaker 2: I do believe with everything in my entire being that
Speaker 2: that is the ticket. It's not the easy ticket though.
Speaker 3: It comes with like like the scripture says, those who
Speaker 3: diligently seek him, he will manifest himself to you. So
Speaker 3: you can't just do it at a surfarate la surface layer.
Speaker 3: You can't just half asset you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: you got to go into full bore. And that's the
Speaker 3: way I looked at him. I was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: prove that this is either a legitimate, divinely inspired book
Speaker 3: or I'm gonna prove it's trash one of the two.
Speaker 3: And I went at it myself tearing. It was such
Speaker 3: a typical Ranger there's no right right, It's either good
Speaker 3: all the way in. But it definitely I believe that's
Speaker 3: the ticket because I've tried the the different stuff out there.
Speaker 2: We've got a ranger buddy grant them, Miles grant them. Yea.
Speaker 3: He travels around and helps guys with this, with the
Speaker 3: toad stuff. Right, And he came and like, and I
Speaker 3: don't want to say too many details, but he put
Speaker 3: me through one of those toads.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed him about it before, about hyahuasca and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So me and Miles were in the same platoon.
Speaker 1: We were both in snipers together. Yeah, I knew you
Speaker 1: were and uh, and then we reconnected. We stayed in
Speaker 1: touch after we got out of the military.
Speaker 2: We used to have dinner once in a while, and
Speaker 2: he lived up here in New York, and yeah, he's
Speaker 2: doing executive protection stuff. Oh that's right, and for better
Speaker 2: or worse.
Speaker 1: I convinced him he should go to Columbia, he should
Speaker 1: go enroll up there, and he majored in political science
Speaker 1: or no, he majored in computer science. And then he
Speaker 1: got on board with all the hyahuasca stuff and it
Speaker 1: did him. I mean he's talked about it publicly before.
Speaker 1: I mean it's done him a world of good, and
Speaker 1: like you said, now, he goes around helping other guys
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 3: He called me like he was hitting me up. He
Speaker 3: was like, dude, you need to do this stuff. You
Speaker 3: need to do this stuff. I'm like, man, I just
Speaker 3: didn't want to because I was working and I was
Speaker 3: afraid i'd be like hungover weird afterwards. A lot of
Speaker 3: the times he was trying to catch me, you know
Speaker 3: places you know out west, and I'm like, I just can't.
Speaker 2: Do this in the middle of the work trip.
Speaker 3: It's just I just don't feel right about it. He's like,
Speaker 3: it's over with like super fast. So then he finally
Speaker 3: hmmed me up.
Speaker 2: And everything was so bad with my wife at the
Speaker 2: time to where she was like, I don't care. She
Speaker 2: was totally against it.
Speaker 3: She's like that's stuff satanic, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And she's like totally against it. But then she's like,
Speaker 3: I don't care if it'll save our marriage, just do it.
Speaker 3: I said, all right, So I hit him up and
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, I'm good if you want to do it.
Speaker 3: So he literally personally did one for me and a
Speaker 3: couple other guys, another Ranger body, and then an SF
Speaker 3: dude that I met at Walter Reid came down and
Speaker 3: did it for me in my backyard man and it
Speaker 3: was it was the most amazing thing.
Speaker 2: But I don't think that's what fixed me. I didn't.
Speaker 3: I still had issues, significant issues after that. I do
Speaker 3: know that there are guys that do it. The state's
Speaker 3: life changing.
Speaker 4: Do you think it gave you space to like examine
Speaker 4: the rest of it, Like if it didn't change everything
Speaker 4: immediately for you, do you feel like it created a
Speaker 4: space for you to do that, to like examine things.
Speaker 2: I believe so, because I do believe.
Speaker 3: This is what I try to tell people, Like my
Speaker 3: wife was against it all, but I was like, God
Speaker 3: created those things for a reason, right, you know, if
Speaker 3: there's God and he's real, he created these plants and
Speaker 3: these things for medicine. I believe it's for guys like
Speaker 3: us who are too hard to break through to that
Speaker 3: spiritual peace, you know. Like so I think I think
Speaker 3: what that did do for me is it showed me
Speaker 3: because you you go and meet God when you do
Speaker 3: that stuff, that's what it does. It takes you into
Speaker 3: what they call the spirit realm.
Speaker 2: Like that's little. I mean, that's what they talked about.
Speaker 3: You're going into the spirit world and that's where you
Speaker 3: go with hyahuasca and the toad medicine is even more potent.
Speaker 3: And that's the stuff that I did, And I think
Speaker 3: it showed to me that God is real and he's
Speaker 3: out there. So then that kind of intrigued me because
Speaker 3: it was about after, right about after that when.
Speaker 2: I really started studying the Bible.
Speaker 3: So maybe it did kind of catalyst it in because
Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, God's real for sure. Now this
Speaker 3: book's better be real or wrong.
Speaker 2: It starts started digging in.
Speaker 1: I think Jim Morris, you know, had like a really
Speaker 1: interesting comment like after Vietnam he started experimenting with LSD
Speaker 1: back when.
Speaker 2: No one knew about that.
Speaker 1: Jim Morrison from George Special Forces in Vietnam, and he
Speaker 1: said that, you know, the the psychedelics can get you
Speaker 1: out of the box you're in into like the room
Speaker 1: of the house, but as far as like if you
Speaker 1: want to explore the rest of the house, you kind
Speaker 1: of have.
Speaker 2: To do that on your own. That's a good point.
Speaker 2: I think he's right about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it did because you know, thinking back on it,
Speaker 3: maybe it was the catalyst that pushed me into the
Speaker 3: realm that I'm at now, because yeah, it kind of
Speaker 3: breaks down like I think, you know, like how older
Speaker 3: people get to where you know, they're stuck in their
Speaker 3: old wage can't take teaching old dog new tricks. We
Speaker 3: tend to compartmentalize ourselves in our brains or what the
Speaker 3: norm is, right, and that thing, I do believe it
Speaker 3: helps step you outside of that box of the norm
Speaker 3: to where you're like, well this exists.
Speaker 2: Let me get busy with that, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, no, it's it's fascinating. You know, I've talked,
Speaker 4: well we've talked to people. I've talked to people personally
Speaker 4: about the ayahuasca, the ibu gain, you know, the different
Speaker 4: types of plant based medicines that are out there, and
Speaker 4: what's really interesting because you even mentioned LSD and we
Speaker 4: can talk about like h d MT and and uh
Speaker 4: and uh molly or uh. You know, like these were
Speaker 4: all being researched heavily, like in the fifties or a
Speaker 4: lot of these were, yeah, in sixties and then when
Speaker 4: they broke out of a lab and became part of
Speaker 4: the counterculture, was all shut down. But but it but
Speaker 4: there was already efficacy being shown, yeah, like.
Speaker 2: Decades ago. Yeah, for sure with these things.
Speaker 3: And it's you know, all coming back around now, like
Speaker 3: and I think you have to be careful with it.
Speaker 3: But I haven't seen any special operations guys that have
Speaker 3: done it that have had bad negative effect.
Speaker 2: I've never had one of them come back to me
Speaker 2: and say like they got a bad experience. But like
Speaker 2: another one of my buddies from the Ranger Regiment just
Speaker 2: did it. And I won't say his name. I don't
Speaker 2: know if he won't start out.
Speaker 3: But he's just like he's like me now, like he's
Speaker 3: studying the Bible, like he's digging in hardcore. This is
Speaker 3: a retired sarm major, you know, he's he's like no joke,
Speaker 3: Like he did the ayahuasca and I think the IBI
Speaker 3: gain I think the toad he did like a big
Speaker 3: thing down in Central or South America where it's like
Speaker 3: totally legalized, so like they were able to do a
Speaker 3: longer treatment. Yeah, and he was like, man, it changed
Speaker 3: his life, and yeah, it has. I see it in him.
Speaker 2: I look at that guy like he's talking to me
Speaker 2: about the Bible now, I'm like, what it's like, me
Speaker 2: talking about the Bible, like a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: be the last thing you hear me talking about.
Speaker 3: But that guy's talking about it now. Yeah, I'm like, man,
Speaker 3: And I've seen that from a lot of the guys
Speaker 3: that do it.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to see, Like, and I've seen it
Speaker 1: a lot because I've been out of the military for
Speaker 1: what like twelve thirteen years now, so I've gotten to
Speaker 1: see a lot of guys get out of the military
Speaker 1: and they have their post military journey transitioning out, and
Speaker 1: for a lot of them, it is a rough ride.
Speaker 1: I mean I had something of a rough ride too,
Speaker 1: the transition out for a lot of guys, the substance
Speaker 1: abuse to.
Speaker 2: Anger, like a lot of anger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then find something And then we've talked about
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things. People find different things in
Speaker 1: different ways. For some people it's more traditional therapy whatever
Speaker 1: that happens to be, and then they sort of like
Speaker 1: even out and find the next thing in their life.
Speaker 1: It's just very interesting and I find it very i
Speaker 1: don't know, like gratifying in a way to watch these
Speaker 1: guys sort of evolve, you know. And unfortunately, the unfortunate thing,
Speaker 1: of course that we've talked about too, some don't make it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thankfully there are some that are making it.
Speaker 3: And and to know what the solution to that is,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 3: I do believe that, you know, the whole faith thing,
Speaker 3: I do believe that's the key. I just don't know,
Speaker 3: Like I said, even in my own process, I don't
Speaker 3: know how that came about necessarily.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: What's interesting, though, is the faith thing isn't even it's
Speaker 4: not new like alcoholics. Anonymous was sort of based around faith,
Speaker 4: you know, not necessarily Christianity, but a higher power and
Speaker 4: giving getting over to that higher power. You know, how
Speaker 4: a person recognize it. It's it's just that you know,
Speaker 4: we often you know, we're a secular country at this
Speaker 4: point in a lot of ways, and and we we.
Speaker 2: Stray away from faith.
Speaker 4: We also have people who like push the faith a little,
Speaker 4: you know, too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're pushing it the wrong ways honestly. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's more too than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And they make it like very they make it
Speaker 4: like a very scary, judgmental like thing.
Speaker 3: It's like a social club. Yeah, I mean, it's really
Speaker 3: like a social club. Like you just do this thing
Speaker 3: and hang out here and at like I act and
Speaker 3: you're cool. But they're they're just as loss as anybody else, honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you dig into the Bible about it.
Speaker 3: But but you're right, man, it definitely it's it's something
Speaker 3: that has gone away because I think, you know, in America,
Speaker 3: we're all about making money, making money, making money, and
Speaker 3: even you're working hard, you're making tons of money, you
Speaker 3: have more incentive to work even more hours. But then
Speaker 3: there's the people that are poor as well. They're working
Speaker 3: two jobs, three jobs just to keep afloat. Right on
Speaker 3: top of that, you got your children in sports, gymnastics,
Speaker 3: piano lessons, all these things.
Speaker 2: It occupies all your time. You cannot you do not
Speaker 2: have the time that I have to read the Bible,
Speaker 2: like I was unemployed for an entire year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really what COVID year. Yeah, Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: unemployed for an entire year.
Speaker 2: And that entire year, I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: in the Bible itself, and I and I found out
Speaker 2: that that thing is true, and I feel pity for people.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I just wish everybody had that.
Speaker 3: Time, and and I wish something would urge them to
Speaker 3: do it because it is life changing. But bottom line is,
Speaker 3: in this world, we just everything is out there to
Speaker 3: take you away from that instead.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Less said that, Uh, there used to be
Speaker 4: a trouggle and that worked at the PX across from
Speaker 4: the Workla and Mike went into purchase DIP and she
Speaker 4: would not allow him to even though he was in uniform.
Speaker 3: Oh, because I didn't have my ID card. I remember
Speaker 3: that I went over there to buy my DIP. I
Speaker 3: literally walked across the street, so like I forgot left
Speaker 3: my ID card or something like that. I'm in uniform,
Speaker 3: master sergeant, right, so I'm like, obviously I'm.
Speaker 4: Probably older eighteen, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And she would not sell it to me. I got
Speaker 3: soaked people a gun on her. Probably should have dude.
Speaker 3: That lady was mean.
Speaker 1: God I had I had one of my privates uh
Speaker 1: in handcuffs at the p X because he uh went
Speaker 1: to go buy a pack of smokes forgot to pay
Speaker 1: for it and walked out the door. Dang yeah, man,
Speaker 1: the the NPS came and slapped handcuffs on. First sergeant
Speaker 1: had to come down. Oh yeah, dang yeah, people with
Speaker 1: the PX can be dicks.
Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, I had. I'm trying to remember. I don't
Speaker 2: even want to tell that story. It'll get down a
Speaker 2: whole nother rabbit hole. That was at the clothing and
Speaker 2: sales one time. Not a good situation at for Betting.
Speaker 3: A lot of those ladies that worked on places on
Speaker 3: for Benning were not nice, have their own they had
Speaker 3: yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, and the thing is is that they could take
Speaker 4: it out on Joe's right, like privates. Yeah, what's a
Speaker 4: private gonna do to somebody who works at the PX
Speaker 4: A little bit of power?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you mouth off? All they got to do
Speaker 2: is call your boss and you're straight done. Yeah you
Speaker 2: know what I mean at that point? Yes, rude. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they do have power. I mean, and they oh, they
Speaker 2: abuse the crap out of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have any questions for Mike, we do, let
Speaker 4: me uh let me get into them.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: I'm going to uh preface these questions by saying I
Speaker 4: saw a.
Speaker 2: Couple of them go by.
Speaker 4: There might be no no, no, but there might be
Speaker 4: like some there might be like some t TP type
Speaker 4: questions going on, and I will I will ask Mike
Speaker 4: the questions you guys asked.
Speaker 2: But understand that.
Speaker 1: Understand that, uh give us the nuclear launch codes broke.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh you know you like we don't we don't
Speaker 4: like got your questions on this channel and whatnot. But
Speaker 4: we're gonna we're gonna lay one out. You talked about
Speaker 4: getting read onto all these programs. Tell us about the aliens,
Speaker 4: man tell us about Area fifty one and what she
Speaker 4: was read onto.
Speaker 2: Oh I wish, I wish I knew.
Speaker 3: Although oh yeah, that's I really wasn't read onto any
Speaker 3: of that stuff. Although there's a guy that has a
Speaker 3: biblical perspective on that that that ties cauns.
Speaker 2: Think about it.
Speaker 3: You know New Jerusalem, which is like Heaven comes down
Speaker 3: from Heaven. It's gonna what is it gonna look like?
Speaker 2: It's gonna be like twelve thousand prolongs with twelve thousand prolongs,
Speaker 2: that's huge. It's gonna be like a massive spaceship probably
Speaker 2: And this one dude's perspective on it. I don't know
Speaker 2: a hundred percent on it, but he believes it could
Speaker 2: be a deception, you know what I mean to like
Speaker 2: lure people into the false Scott who knows the UFO cult? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 2: who knows?
Speaker 4: Let's see he uh so. Brian Fitzgibbons, thank you very much, friend.
Speaker 4: Mike Edwards and Adam White, two of the greatest of
Speaker 4: all time.
Speaker 2: I love you too. Adam, come over here and sit.
Speaker 4: Down, man, come come saying yeah, if you guys have
Speaker 4: not watched Mike's previous two shows and Adam's previous show
Speaker 4: like you Gotta Jackson, thank you very much. People have
Speaker 4: said r C prepares guys best for Delta selection given
Speaker 4: RC selection process and mission. How true is that in
Speaker 4: your opinion? Also, what's the working relationship with Delta.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we worked directly with him, just like anybody else
Speaker 3: does within the community. And I would say, yeah, if
Speaker 3: you wanted to go to Delta for selection and you've
Speaker 3: been to r C selection, more likely to be successful
Speaker 3: because they're very similar and vice versa. Guys that go
Speaker 3: to Dealtimore selection would be more likely to be successful
Speaker 3: in RC because they're the selections are very very similar.
Speaker 3: If I can't say exact, but sure pretty close.
Speaker 4: But would it be similar to going from like like
Speaker 4: Apple to IBM that that you're that people aren't going
Speaker 4: to r RC to prep for Delta. It's not like
Speaker 4: deltas you're wasting your time. Delta's not like the next
Speaker 4: step up because they're they're very they're like equal, they
Speaker 4: just do different things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's not like, yeah, you're not gonna go
Speaker 3: to one of those to go to the other one
Speaker 3: because you're going through this arduous, arduous program to then
Speaker 3: go to another arduous, arderiss program.
Speaker 2: I just think that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Now I've seen guys that have tried every one of
Speaker 3: them and then finally get to one of them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're like, you went through all of that, but it's
Speaker 3: not the best route.
Speaker 2: But you're right.
Speaker 3: So if you go to r C, it's because you're
Speaker 3: interested in more of the Reki piece, or if you're
Speaker 3: going into Delta fores, sure you're more gonna be interested
Speaker 3: in the dapece like they kicking indoors kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: So the way I like to explain it, is delta force.
Speaker 3: They do a higher level of CQB like Range of
Speaker 3: Battalion does a ton of it, but those dudes do
Speaker 3: it at the highest, highest, most precision.
Speaker 4: Level, right you know, Joe's gotcha, Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, so this very yeah so so uh so
Speaker 4: this is one of those questions. Uh, did r C
Speaker 4: have in how singan capabilities when you were there or
Speaker 4: did they have to rely on sod a's or TFO
Speaker 4: to fill that role?
Speaker 2: No worries if you can't comment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have our own and you know abilities within
Speaker 3: the regiment. You know, the regiment's pretty robust, so yeah,
Speaker 3: we have our own capabilities within that.
Speaker 4: Jackson, thank you very much. How much shooting CQB REC
Speaker 4: training did you do as an RC operator compared to
Speaker 4: your time as a ranger in alignment? Also, how often
Speaker 4: do you see green berets or seals or Marst guys
Speaker 4: at our r scene.
Speaker 2: We did a lot of shooting, a lot of a lot.
Speaker 3: Like I said, we got a lot more to the
Speaker 3: pistol shooting piece because it's the concealed carry aspect of it.
Speaker 2: We need that a lot.
Speaker 3: So we've shot a lot more pistol and RC than
Speaker 3: we did in the Ranger Betines. As far as rifle shooting,
Speaker 3: we probably shot about the same amount, although we probably
Speaker 3: shot sniper rifles more in RC. As far as like
Speaker 3: dealing with special forces in MARSOK and guys like that,
Speaker 3: I never really worked with special forces. Are MARSOC dudes
Speaker 3: oversees that much. I would occasionally see them. But when
Speaker 3: I worked at the free Fall school, I worked with
Speaker 3: those guys and I helped that. If that person doesn't know,
Speaker 3: I helped, you know, with my buddy might helped create
Speaker 3: marsk's free fall program. What we stood up the first
Speaker 3: couple of courses, and I helped work all those courses
Speaker 3: and helped build a lot of the TTPs for it.
Speaker 4: So uh ntat channel, thank you very much. Greeting as gentlemen,
Speaker 4: listening in and being an artilleryman, that's a task in itself.
Speaker 4: Suns out, guns out, That's true. Artillery and mortars are
Speaker 4: tough jobs both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are, dude, and that goes Leslie Sandusky and
Speaker 2: all the other mortar guys that were in my platoon
Speaker 2: back in the day. I was super impressed with those guys.
Speaker 2: I'll still keep in touch with a lot of those
Speaker 2: guys still to.
Speaker 3: This day, they're a whole other level of Ranger. I mean,
Speaker 3: no joke, they're so underappreciated. Those guys are some of
Speaker 3: the smartest guys in the Ranger regiment and so underappreciated too,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it's like they carry like, no matter
Speaker 2: what everybody's carrying, they're carrying even more. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: That's another good point. They're carrying the heaviest loads by far.
Speaker 4: Like you never want those guys coming down the fast
Speaker 4: rope after you, no, because it's a really fast rope
Speaker 4: when they're coming down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, grease that rope. Yeah.
Speaker 4: USBA National Security thank you very much for the very
Speaker 4: generous donation.
Speaker 2: Cheers. Oh nice, awesome, Thanks guys.
Speaker 4: DJ Snead, thank you very much. How does RRC different
Speaker 4: from Force recomp an Air Force Special Reconnaissance? Is it
Speaker 4: the customer or capability is omega like a f and
Speaker 4: AFO team are better.
Speaker 2: There's like a good question in there.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to Adam's Mike about a lot of people
Speaker 1: wonder about like the difference between reconnaissance units.
Speaker 2: There's like G Squadron, Black squadron. Everyone has their own
Speaker 2: recon element. You want to talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, uh, like the the G Squadron and Black
Speaker 3: Squadron guys.
Speaker 2: We worked with those guys a lot too.
Speaker 3: They're more I'd say they probably delve into slightly different
Speaker 3: things that we did in r r C, but we
Speaker 3: had a lot of overlap of capabilities, just like the
Speaker 3: guys up at in Virginia as well, a lot of
Speaker 3: overlapping capabilities there. Now, the Force recon guys, I would say, like,
Speaker 3: they're super solid dudes, some of the best guys. Like, dude,
Speaker 3: I love marines period. There's a lot of great marines
Speaker 3: out there, especially in that realm. But they're their capabilities
Speaker 3: and their assets weren't just weren't near what we had,
Speaker 3: Like we just had immense funding and uh in who
Speaker 3: else was it that they compared it to, Like, uh,
Speaker 3: Air Force Air Force SRR guys, The Air Force Special
Speaker 3: Reconnaissance start off as like the Air Force weather guys.
Speaker 3: I actually trained a bunch of those guys last time,
Speaker 3: and they're just their focus is more on the Air
Speaker 3: Force aspect of it. So, and I don't want to
Speaker 3: get into a who lot of the details on that
Speaker 3: because a lot of their stuff that they do is
Speaker 3: pretty classified as well airfields. Yeah, and and like enabling
Speaker 3: fast movers to do their job. So it's like different
Speaker 3: than us defeating those types of targets. But yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 3: It's a cool thing, but it's all needed out there.
Speaker 3: Like you can't just like R so you could probably
Speaker 3: do all that different stuff and vice versa.
Speaker 2: But we all have our little niche that we.
Speaker 3: Really specialized in, and ours was broad, like Recky, the
Speaker 3: WRECKI niche is pretty broad, yeah, and ours was pretty broad.
Speaker 3: But a lot of those guys, like the S the
Speaker 3: special reconnaissance guys, there's a little bit more focus in
Speaker 3: this area versus these other guys a little more focused here,
Speaker 3: the the reforce recon guys, more of the tactical RECKI
Speaker 3: focus from what I've seen, totally capable unit though, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, and eventually it probably comes down to in a bar,
Speaker 4: how much do you have to explain your job versus
Speaker 4: how much do people already know your job?
Speaker 2: Right? And that's the thing with RC.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows about it, literally nobody knows about it, like
Speaker 3: it's all people. A lot of times I was in
Speaker 3: probably one of the smallest, you know, little secretive units
Speaker 3: that you've never heard of you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Because you probably haven't heard of it. Yeah, that's what's
Speaker 2: cool about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you get a chick by just saying what
Speaker 4: you did?
Speaker 2: If not, then nobody knows about it. Only if you're
Speaker 2: a Navy seal, right, only if you're you gotta do
Speaker 2: is Bavy seal? Boom? Yeah, you got chicks, you got jobs,
Speaker 2: you got everything, books, books anymore.
Speaker 4: I don't know that people know about it though, like,
Speaker 4: like you know about it, but I don't think people
Speaker 4: know about it.
Speaker 6: I I literally knew about it because Jack Murphy posted
Speaker 6: on the team house like r RC like I I mean,
Speaker 6: like we won't see the numbers. It is fucking remarkably small.
Speaker 6: We were talking before, like like.
Speaker 3: I was number seventy nine. I think you said seventy eight.
Speaker 3: I don't remember. I got the coin much.
Speaker 2: Later, seventy eight or seventy nine memory, I remember, Okay,
Speaker 2: seventy eight. I'll take your number. Seventy eight that ever.
Speaker 3: Graduated through the pipeline as of when I graduated in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, two thousand and eight, two thousand yeaes some
Speaker 2: aroun there. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh Baker Hitch, thank you very much. Tell us your
Speaker 4: UFO stories.
Speaker 3: Oh, I will tell you a really cool one, actually
Speaker 3: very recent. I don't know what this thing was, but
Speaker 3: I reached out to a pilot body of mine who
Speaker 3: works for skunk Works now and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we have this capabilities in the US military. I was
Speaker 3: teaching special recallaissance dudes from the two four STS guys
Speaker 3: and their OTC pipeline.
Speaker 2: We were out out in the desert out west.
Speaker 3: I want to say anything specific, because you know, dudes
Speaker 3: want to keep theirself secret too. But we were out
Speaker 3: there just doing just some basic patrolling techniques, right. We're
Speaker 3: like doing it at night with night vision stand off
Speaker 3: there with our thirty one's on. I'm looking up and
Speaker 3: I look at the dude that was with me. It's
Speaker 3: a Delta Force dude that was, you know, teaching the
Speaker 3: course with me.
Speaker 2: And I look up. In my holy crap, look at that.
Speaker 2: We look up. There's this thing that looks like a boat.
Speaker 2: It's like ripping across the sky, but it's leaving like
Speaker 2: a wake behind it. I'm talking, it covered from one
Speaker 2: horizon all the way to the other horizon a matter
Speaker 2: of seconds, but it was way up there. You couldn't
Speaker 2: tell what it was. You couldn't hear anything, there's no sound.
Speaker 2: It was not as fast as like a shooting star,
Speaker 2: but near as fast, but it had a wake.
Speaker 3: Coming off of it the whole time and then just disappeared. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was like some sort of hypersonic aircraft. And I
Speaker 3: told my buddy about it, explained it to him. He
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, he's like, we have aircraft like that
Speaker 3: in the US that are hypersonic.
Speaker 2: And I was like, holy crap, hypersonic.
Speaker 3: I think it's like seven times the speed of sound
Speaker 3: because I looked it up something like that.
Speaker 4: I was like, what, Like, if you ever want to
Speaker 4: like talk to somebody who will geek out of about
Speaker 4: this stuff and knows their shit and is just a
Speaker 4: blast to talk to, talk to Alex Hangings, just get
Speaker 4: just get him on a call sometime and just talk
Speaker 4: with him because he knows so much and he's so
Speaker 4: fun to talk to because he just loves it so much.
Speaker 4: But he'll talk about hypersonics and like newest developments and
Speaker 4: all that stuff all day long.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, somebody came out recently with the UFO
Speaker 3: stuff and said that that we have like the UFOs there,
Speaker 3: like we have the capability in the US Arsenal, the
Speaker 3: crafts that are capable of that kind of stuff you've seen,
Speaker 3: So I'm like, dang, I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 2: There's some there's some weird stuff out there.
Speaker 1: I have no idea for sure what it is, but
Speaker 1: I mean what the SR seventy one was developed back
Speaker 1: in like the sixties.
Speaker 6: So I mean the stuff that I knew we could
Speaker 6: do in two thousand and six, like it's yeah reason
Speaker 6: and for.
Speaker 3: The viewers out there, if we were read onto it, it
Speaker 3: was probably just this very just the edge of it.
Speaker 3: There's this much more that was out there, Like everything's
Speaker 3: so compartmentalized, like you have to have a need to know,
Speaker 3: and if you don't have a need to know, you're
Speaker 3: not knowing about it. Yeah, I guarantee you we have
Speaker 3: stuff that we couldn't even fathom out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean think about this. I went to
Speaker 2: Disney about two years ago. The new Star Wars ride
Speaker 2: was out there. If anybody's ever been to that, it's
Speaker 2: mind boggling like that. I saw stuff happen in that
Speaker 2: ride that I'm like, how is this even possible. Like
Speaker 2: there was this wall that I was leaning up against.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, it just literally melted. You could
Speaker 2: feel the heat coming off of like someone cut it
Speaker 2: up with a laser beam. We walked through it.
Speaker 3: And like we were on this ride getting escaped through
Speaker 3: like these drones were shooting at us, lasers were flying over,
Speaker 3: burning up the bulkheads.
Speaker 2: It was like being in a movie.
Speaker 3: And the technology that we used for that, I guarantee
Speaker 3: you can make cloaking devices if you can make a
Speaker 3: laser like the whole bulkhead look like a laser beams
Speaker 3: flying over, yeah, and feel the heat from it as
Speaker 3: it flies over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude.
Speaker 4: It was the most realistic thing I've ever seen. What
Speaker 4: I think they just I don't. I didn't do any
Speaker 4: research in this video, so you know, I saw it
Speaker 4: and I didn't really care. But there was a video
Speaker 4: that I just saw that they said was in a
Speaker 4: Chinese theater and it looked like flames were coming out
Speaker 4: of the screen and across the top.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't know if it was philosophical argument of
Speaker 6: why we're in the matrix, because like you start with
Speaker 6: like okay Atari video games were like this, right, and
Speaker 6: then video games got better and then they got better,
Speaker 6: and like, philosophically, if you can concede those points, that's
Speaker 6: the argument that we're all in this like matrix matrix,
Speaker 6: like video game. I'm still a philosophical argument.
Speaker 4: I'm still waiting for the virtual reality deep Dive mm
Speaker 4: RPG that I can just plug my brain into and
Speaker 4: like live there, you know, gain levels exactly exactly. My
Speaker 4: video game is pretty dope.
Speaker 2: Brian Fitzgibbons, Thank you.
Speaker 4: Someone called Adam White and from behind the curtain, Well
Speaker 4: we got him. Yeah. Danny Roberts, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: What was MEGA?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: How are the team roles or how are they made up?
Speaker 2: Great interview? Thank you guys.
Speaker 3: So MEGA is not like anything like crazy, spooky secret
Speaker 3: or anything like that.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think it's a tactical element.
Speaker 3: You have, you know CIA dudes that are contractors like
Speaker 3: you were you know running or were you you were
Speaker 3: a contract or your blue badge guy. Oh no, but anyway, uh,
Speaker 3: they uh doing contract work over there. They're actually controlling
Speaker 3: the endage, running around orchestrating what's going on target. And
Speaker 3: for us, as the military aspect of it, we were
Speaker 3: the uh We were basically like the command control right,
Speaker 3: we were the tie to Jaysock, So Jaysuck could bring
Speaker 3: in the close air support fires, assets, We could bring
Speaker 3: in the helicopters and things like that.
Speaker 2: Because we were there. So we were just a force multiplier.
Speaker 3: They had their dage, the ground branch guys controlled them
Speaker 3: and handled them there, and then we just.
Speaker 2: Were forcedmultiply the fires and the assets.
Speaker 4: And you guys had all the authorities that US military had,
Speaker 4: we could.
Speaker 2: Take custody of them.
Speaker 3: It was just like, I mean, they're over there just
Speaker 3: kind of helping out the fight and we bring what
Speaker 3: we can bring to the table to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6: One thing tying back into Exodus that the audience like
Speaker 6: it deserves mentioned again is that by design, these guys
Speaker 6: did not have affiliation or paperwork uh with the Afghan government.
Speaker 6: So when the team, when the time come came to
Speaker 6: like try and bring them to the United States. Like
Speaker 6: the frustrating part was by design, they were literally I
Speaker 6: mean it sounds ridiculous in the bar, but they were
Speaker 6: quite literally part of such a top secret program that
Speaker 6: they didn't have any of the affiliations. A lot of
Speaker 6: it was like mind blowing and it's strict irony.
Speaker 2: That was like guys soul, but they were quite literally
Speaker 2: hard for them.
Speaker 6: It was like the but it made me think of
Speaker 6: the Omega program in the air, you guys.
Speaker 3: You know yeah, and their guys are probably similar to
Speaker 3: that too, I mean, if not exactly like that, but
Speaker 3: I know that's one of the frustrating things we're trying
Speaker 3: to get those guys out is because there's not the
Speaker 3: best documentation kept on them.
Speaker 6: I will say, quit quite literally by design, you know
Speaker 6: this literally mind blowing frustrating things like no, these guys
Speaker 6: are yeah, the Exodus thing was you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: it was like, you know, I cannot explain to you
Speaker 6: the frustration of like, like, these guys are so special
Speaker 6: that there's literally nothing for me to prove.
Speaker 2: Right, but you have people vouching for them America. But
Speaker 2: from the eyes of like from the State Department, they're
Speaker 2: just hillbillies.
Speaker 4: From fucking right right right right, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean, Like you heard it here first
Speaker 2: the State Department hates hillbilly No.
Speaker 4: But it was like a crazy yeah Americans exactly, Uh.
Speaker 2: Let's see here, body, ah, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: What does marcellis wass look like?
Speaker 2: Isn't that he's got afro?
Speaker 4: Does uh any huge difference between G Squadron and kg Reki,
Speaker 4: And again that's.
Speaker 3: It's a little different. I mean, that's not my purview
Speaker 3: to talk about. But like you know, I've worked with
Speaker 3: those guys before and I couldn't really speak on to
Speaker 3: that accurately. But you know, I think, you know, the
Speaker 3: different aspects like the juice smokings are probably more on
Speaker 3: like the stuff that we did kind of stuff you
Speaker 3: know we're focused was the wreck. You guys are more
Speaker 3: like snipers from what I saw, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Did you know if we have anything from Patron?
Speaker 2: So nothing right now. All we we have we have
Speaker 2: one of.
Speaker 4: Our our Patreon get our Patreon members in studio tonight,
Speaker 4: like Breathing in the Excellence.
Speaker 7: We got a few from Isaac. I'm just gonna ask one.
Speaker 7: Did you work with I s A? I mean obviously
Speaker 7: you did. You were in Jayson, Yeah, yeah, I worked
Speaker 7: with those guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So so where can people find you now if they
Speaker 4: want to? You know, we've we've talked about us p
Speaker 4: A nationwide security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dot com That's where I'm at.
Speaker 3: I'm like the director of VIP security for us PA
Speaker 3: Nationwide Security. Yeah, do that from day to day, selling
Speaker 3: security contracts and working that stuff. And then when we
Speaker 3: have big events, I'll travel and help manage those events,
Speaker 3: uh with with our buddy Brian Fitzgibbons and and Dan
Speaker 3: Manning the CEO. And then you know, Mike Evans, the
Speaker 3: owner of the company, is such a great, great gracious
Speaker 3: guy to bring me on too. I really appreciate everything
Speaker 3: those guys have done for me. It's it's literally the
Speaker 3: best company you could ever dream of working for.
Speaker 2: I mean, in my opinion, yeah, I've only worked for
Speaker 2: a few, but I couldn't imagine anything better.
Speaker 6: Fast you mentioned like Mission earlier. It's it's like far
Speaker 6: from the flagpole for us. Like we you know, we
Speaker 6: bullshit chat. It's like it gives us like it's like
Speaker 6: an Avengers kind of group, like and you know, we.
Speaker 2: Do real stuff. Man. But yeah, it's it's been great.
Speaker 6: I mean to be distance teammate and friend like he's
Speaker 6: Mike Edwards with Mike Edwards, you know.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's uh love you man, Cameras.
Speaker 2: I didn't expect what happened to you. What happened a lot? Man?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, uh yeah, a lot the Hawthorne effect.
Speaker 3: And I appreciate Adam for letting me stay with him
Speaker 3: last night and he's.
Speaker 2: Last night it was leter.
Speaker 6: So we just lit a fire, listen to the Last
Speaker 6: Time He Can soundtrack, had Tito's and gatorade and ice
Speaker 6: cream sandwiches. Yeah, and talked about like the Bible and
Speaker 6: everything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a good time. The fire was perfect. Yeah. No,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a it's a wait tinos and gatory.
Speaker 2: What what is that called?
Speaker 3: I don't know, tatrade, I don't know you guys shirtless
Speaker 3: when No.
Speaker 4: Well, Last Mohicans was I mean, it's what.
Speaker 3: We were talking about it last time we were together.
Speaker 3: We were in a hotel in Miami and I pulled
Speaker 3: my hair back to like the Daniel da Lewis Last
Speaker 3: of the Mohicans look, and that's what we were talking about.
Speaker 2: And then he put on the music. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 2: have like the physical CD. Uh. Yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 2: Nothing all that.
Speaker 4: It's one of the finest movies with one of the
Speaker 4: finest that was it.
Speaker 2: Uh. It was a good movie. Yeah. But the scene
Speaker 2: where he takes out like scene yeah with a hatchet.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, every Warriors dream, Yeah, exactly one of the
Speaker 8: reasons I carried a hatchet for a while, never got
Speaker 8: a kill and realized how absolutely uncomfortable it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but a gaudy thing to be carrying. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: if it ever came up, if it ever came up,
Speaker 2: it would have been amazing. It would have been amazing
Speaker 2: your training and like what sort of capabilities you guys
Speaker 2: were if you can talk about it, like what sort
Speaker 2: of training you guys are doing? You know, like, how
Speaker 2: did that go? That's a good question. Yeah, I really
Speaker 2: loved that we did. We did a lot of jumps
Speaker 2: in r see.
Speaker 3: We a lot of people consider us being one of
Speaker 3: the more proficient jump elements out there. But we would
Speaker 3: jump as high as it go, as high as thirty
Speaker 3: five thousand feet pre breathing oxygen jumping out. Most of
Speaker 3: what our capabilities we trained around a lot was high
Speaker 3: to high opening so jumping. The highest you can open
Speaker 3: a canopy via like us Army rags is twenty five
Speaker 3: thousand feet. Wow, So we jump out at twenty You
Speaker 3: can jump higher than that, you can't open it, right,
Speaker 3: So we jump out at twenty.
Speaker 2: Five thousand feet right off the ramp, deploy right off
Speaker 2: the ramp.
Speaker 3: You're under canopy at like twenty four five hundred feet
Speaker 3: under oxygen, nav boards down with like GPS and like
Speaker 3: modern day like GPS and stuff like that, and we
Speaker 3: can literally fly like different distances depending on the winds,
Speaker 3: like thirty forty kilometers.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. So the glad ratio of the ones we
Speaker 2: were jumping at, most of them are about four to one.
Speaker 2: It depends.
Speaker 3: There's some out there that are pushing close to five
Speaker 3: to one different types of canopies. The ones that most
Speaker 3: you guys use are four to one, So when you're.
Speaker 4: Talking about a glad ratio, you're talking about the amount
Speaker 4: you can afford.
Speaker 3: Four feet to drive to then, and it depends on
Speaker 3: the wind too, so we're always going to jump typically
Speaker 3: up win so we're running with the wind, so it
Speaker 3: magnifies that so we can cover a lot of distance.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we could jump anywhere land pretty much anywhere
Speaker 3: at any time, in pretty much any environment.
Speaker 2: Like clouds kind of limit us.
Speaker 3: We can still jump through them, but it's super dangerous
Speaker 3: and a lot of planning considerations. But I loved it, man,
Speaker 3: I did it. Taught it out the free fall School,
Speaker 3: taught it as a contractor. For a while, I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed flying the canopy piece of it, teaching the body flight,
Speaker 3: but my body was just tired of it.
Speaker 2: So when I took the break, it was like, Eh,
Speaker 2: I guess I'm done with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what makes a cloud or jumping through a cloud dangerous?
Speaker 3: You can't see, especially at night time, it's just hard
Speaker 3: to see. And if you can't it's hard to see
Speaker 3: guys anyway, Like when I used to jump with students,
Speaker 3: like with the Marsak guys, I would be like, stay
Speaker 3: tight going out because the plane's traveling at one hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty knots across the ground.
Speaker 2: So as every dude goes.
Speaker 3: Out, they're getting spread out by hundreds of meters. So
Speaker 3: you got a twelve man team, special forces team, whatever
Speaker 3: going out. By the time I'm the last cout, the
Speaker 3: other dudes over a kilometer away from me. So at
Speaker 3: night time picking that dude up, especially when you have
Speaker 3: city lights in the background and they're all sparkling, you're
Speaker 3: like looking through night vision. It's really hard to tell
Speaker 3: where your dudes are, where the strobe is versus the
Speaker 3: background city lights.
Speaker 2: So being accurate with everything you do, like I used
Speaker 2: to harp on.
Speaker 3: Dudes, get out, fly your body, deploy, keep your canopy
Speaker 3: on heading, and steer it to the direction we need
Speaker 3: to go to the drop someone. Because one dude could
Speaker 3: turn the wrong way for ten seconds. He's a half
Speaker 3: a kilometer in the wrong direction right, and trying to
Speaker 3: round that dude up is just challenging. So there's a
Speaker 3: lot of precision that's involved, and doing that very well,
Speaker 3: accurately and like repeatable that.
Speaker 2: Like the most amazing though through the clouds like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, oh dude, yeah, you'll you'll see and full
Speaker 3: disclosure at night. I can't imagine I've done I've done
Speaker 3: jumps before where I didn't see another dude because we
Speaker 3: were in clouds for ten thousand feet wow, and then
Speaker 3: we popped out of the clouds and like, oh, where's everybody. Oh,
Speaker 3: everybody's kind of close by. Thank god we didn't collide
Speaker 3: with each other. You can entangle canopies. I mean you
Speaker 3: could run into another dude's canopy and entangle and you
Speaker 3: wouldn't know it, so it's already happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Why is the seven still your favorite gun?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say necessarily it's my favorite gun, but It's
Speaker 3: definitely my favorite Lovaz gun at the time. There's probably
Speaker 3: better stuff out there now, who knows, but it was
Speaker 3: my favorite gun for Lovaz stuff. Like I you know,
Speaker 3: if you're if I'm going into kick indoors and kill
Speaker 3: bad guys, I'm still gonna prefer to have like an
Speaker 3: AR fifteen or something and some some sort of caliber.
Speaker 3: But for like Loviz stuff, that was my favorite gun
Speaker 3: because it was small kind of at the time, it
Speaker 3: was pretty modular and compact, and then it had that
Speaker 3: suppressor on it that made it, you know, pretty quiet too.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was it was a unique gun. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I liked it a lot.
Speaker 4: So I have a question because, like, as an old
Speaker 4: school ranger who fielded like the first round of SR
Speaker 4: twenty five that did not have a ford assist, And
Speaker 4: let me tell you, not having a forward assist on
Speaker 4: an AR fucking built like gun gun was horrible when
Speaker 4: you're trying to be stealthy because you're trying to seat
Speaker 4: the round, sometimes dropping it hard.
Speaker 2: It took the forward assist off the one ten which
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 4: Did they ever put an afford assist on an SR
Speaker 4: twenty five.
Speaker 2: I believe they, I thought they did, But I may
Speaker 2: be wrong. I think they did. I'd have to, you know.
Speaker 4: It was so horrible, like if you would like because
Speaker 4: obviously I only use it on training exercises, but like
Speaker 4: you get sand in or whatever and then you sit
Speaker 4: there and try and seat the round and bab.
Speaker 2: Jumps. Yeah yeah, you know. You saying that they didn't
Speaker 2: have a Ford assist gets me thinking now because if
Speaker 2: you were to just ask me, hey, does an SR
Speaker 2: twenty five before, I would have been like it, absolutely.
Speaker 7: Guys, the gun nuts are for melting down right now.
Speaker 7: They're melting since I've seen it SR twenty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean they weren't cool because they were like,
Speaker 2: like you said, they.
Speaker 4: Were based on the AR they had a suppressor, like
Speaker 4: they were so bad ass, but they didn't have a
Speaker 4: Ford assist, which made it horrible.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. I thought they did. So yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: Uh if they're that's it.
Speaker 1: Uh So, next week we're gonna have Yayainusi is gonna
Speaker 1: be on the show.
Speaker 2: He was a CIA analyst. Dave's gonna be out.
Speaker 1: Uh So we're gonna have a special guest host, James
Speaker 1: Powell coming back.
Speaker 2: Nice, He's gonna be doing the interview with me. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I also want to shout out to Costa Cigars
Speaker 1: uh providing the cigars for this show, good friend of mine.
Speaker 2: These are the don Nello Torpedoes that he gave us.
Speaker 2: Awesome cigars. I hope you guys will go check them out.
Speaker 4: I want to give a shout out to Jack you
Speaker 4: love the Shadow and the old timey radio shows.
Speaker 2: A buddy of mine put together a cole c O. L. E.
Speaker 4: Steele s T E E l E. It's an old
Speaker 4: timey style radio show on all the podcast platforms. It's
Speaker 4: a comedy, but it's based off the old pulp show. Yeah,
Speaker 4: exactly all the old pulp like radio shows. But check
Speaker 4: it out on Spotify, Apple or iTunes, everything else.
Speaker 2: So, Mike Adam, any final thoughts before we roll out tonight.
Speaker 2: Thank you all for bringing me back for a third time.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it and good to see you in person again.
Speaker 1: While you guys are welcome back on anytime man, I
Speaker 1: really really appreciate you coming all the way out here.
Speaker 2: Shoot. Yeah, I enjoyed it anytime man.
Speaker 6: Both video Yeah, I mean I'm just happy to be
Speaker 6: here real. Yeah, Like my life is a movie, like
Speaker 6: fucking friends of you guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, so yeah, I will see you guys
Speaker 1: next Friday with mister Powell and that's awesome.