Speaker 1: Special Operations Colbert Asbienna The Team House with your hosts
Speaker 1: Jack Murphy and David Bark.
Speaker 2: Welcome to episode three hundred and fifty one of The
Speaker 2: Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave in studio with
Speaker 2: Jonathan Hanckett. He is a former Marine. He's the author
Speaker 2: of the Theory of Irregular Warfare or irregular War, I
Speaker 2: should say, and the fourth coming book, Iran's Shadow Weapons,
Speaker 2: which is coming out this summer. Jonathan served in the Marines,
Speaker 2: worked in a second capacity, a human capacity, was with
Speaker 2: marsk all over the Middle East and West Africa, Central Africa.
Speaker 2: Plenty of stuff to talk about here. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: you and then we'll talk about your books and the
Speaker 2: theory behind your research. So thank you for joining us
Speaker 2: and coming in studio today. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Happy to be here. Yeah, So it would take it
Speaker 2: from the top if you tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about you know, what was it like for you growing
Speaker 2: up and like what sort of like took you towards
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps. So I grew up in Maine, way
Speaker 2: up north Caribou Mainz. Like most northeastern city the United States,
Speaker 2: a lot of snow loved the snow. Then we moved
Speaker 2: to Connecticut when I was about ten years old, and
Speaker 2: from there I met a couple of different people in
Speaker 2: the military, especially World War two and Vietnam people because
Speaker 2: I was that era. And I had a history teacher,
Speaker 2: mister Donahue, who fought in the Chosen Reservoir in the
Speaker 2: Korean War as a marine, and he was so down
Speaker 2: to earth, like a really nice guy, and you wouldn't
Speaker 2: imagine if he met him on the street that he
Speaker 2: had fought in the Chosen Reservoir, you know, like fighting
Speaker 2: in reverse and all the stuff that they were doing.
Speaker 2: So that's that's one guy that was like in the
Speaker 2: back of my mind, like something about him. I like
Speaker 2: that guy, you know. And then I met a family
Speaker 2: friend who fought in the Battle of Pelulu World War two,
Speaker 2: and he actually had a katana of one of the
Speaker 2: last guys that he killed on the island and he
Speaker 2: had it in his house. His name's Butch Watkins. He
Speaker 2: has two silver stars from that battle, and like all
Speaker 2: he's a crazy background. But if again, if you met
Speaker 2: him on the street, you wouldn't know that that guy
Speaker 2: did that. He was like, you know, if your car's
Speaker 2: broken down, he'd go over and stop and like help
Speaker 2: you fix your tire, even though you're a stranger, like
Speaker 2: that kind of guy. But you got to think, like
Speaker 2: back to that time, you know, he was doing that stuff.
Speaker 2: And there were people in my family who had been
Speaker 2: in like World War Two and things like that in
Speaker 2: the army, Like my grandfather was in France during the
Speaker 2: liberation of France, which is cool and awesome, but like
Speaker 2: there's something about the army where it's just kind of
Speaker 2: like the army goes rolling along, but there's a difference
Speaker 2: with the way the Marine Corps is and like like
Speaker 2: these two individuals, for example, like there's something about them
Speaker 2: that's more than just the military, you know. And I
Speaker 2: also like to be like a high achiever. I was thinking,
Speaker 2: like what's the highest thing I can do right now?
Speaker 2: And I was kind of a bad kid in high school,
Speaker 2: so like I stayed back in twelfth gradecause I didn't
Speaker 2: go to school for an entire year. I just didn't
Speaker 2: go and my mom was too busy working, Like the
Speaker 2: trumant officer would come and I wasn't home, and you
Speaker 2: can't do anything about that. So I couldn't go to
Speaker 2: college right away. I'm like, how do I get out
Speaker 2: of here? Well, I could do that Marine Corps thing,
Speaker 2: and so that's that's why I joined the Marine Corps,
Speaker 2: getting out of my town in Connecticut basically. And you
Speaker 2: came in the Marines doing scene. Yeah, so I didn't
Speaker 2: even know what that was. I knew I wanted to
Speaker 2: do something kind of like unconventional and unique, because that's
Speaker 2: kind of the way I grew up, was just like
Speaker 2: almost no rules, no boundaries, you know. And I didn't
Speaker 2: want to be boxed in the military ken box you in.
Speaker 2: But I told her recruiter, like, I don't want to
Speaker 2: be boxing. You gotta find somewhere else for me. So
Speaker 2: he's like, okay, take this test, the ASFAB the entry test,
Speaker 2: And back then it was on a like a you know,
Speaker 2: black and white screen old computers, you know. And I'm
Speaker 2: doing the test, and I'm doing the math test, and
Speaker 2: like the science tests, I'm answering the questions. They keep
Speaker 2: getting harder. I'm like, am I stupid? And I thought
Speaker 2: I got like a zero, you know, like I thought
Speaker 2: it did really bad. And they gave me the sheet
Speaker 2: and apparently I did really well. And I didn't know this,
Speaker 2: but the as bab back then. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it still does. They give you more difficult questions the
Speaker 2: more you answer correctly, Oh I did. I had no
Speaker 2: idea and I just thought I was dumb the whole time,
Speaker 2: you know. And I'm like looking at guys next to me,
Speaker 2: like are they all answering these correctly? Like what's going
Speaker 2: on here? You know? But then they're like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: can't do infantry because your score is too high. You
Speaker 2: can't do this because of this and this, And I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: I don't even know what to do anyway, because I
Speaker 2: don't know anything about this, Like we'll just you know,
Speaker 2: sign this contract. Hey, don't worry, and so yeaheah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So I did making our numbers. Oh yeah yeah. And
Speaker 2: actually he kept calling me, he's like, you want to
Speaker 2: go to boot camp like a little earlier because he
Speaker 2: had like a monthly quota. He's like, need to get
Speaker 2: you as soon as possible, you know, are you really
Speaker 2: serious about it? You show me you're serious. So I
Speaker 2: did actually went earlier. So I went there in October
Speaker 2: two thousand and four to boot camp and uh that
Speaker 2: was in Paras Island, good time. And then at the
Speaker 2: end of boot camp, I found out what my job
Speaker 2: would because I didn't even know like that contract I signed,
Speaker 2: no clue what it was, and like, hey, you're going
Speaker 2: to Pensacola, Florida. Well, we did Marine Corps combat training,
Speaker 2: which is what the the you know, non infantry guys do.
Speaker 2: They're like very basic. It was still like Vietnam era stuff.
Speaker 2: Back then. It was like two thousand and three, two
Speaker 2: thousand and four. We had like the old flackjackets, the
Speaker 2: tricolor flackjack like covers your whole body and all that,
Speaker 2: you know, and the h hardness chest brig that they
Speaker 2: used to wear back in the day. So we're doing
Speaker 2: all that like nonsense, like patrolling around like idiots. And
Speaker 2: then even though the war had already taught us stuff,
Speaker 2: we weren't learning those lessons yet, and like teaching us
Speaker 2: to do like the Turkey peak but with a long gun,
Speaker 2: which is so stupid. It was just like dumb stuff. Anyways,
Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, you're going to Pensacola after that. So
Speaker 2: I went to Pensacola, where the NSA actually teaches like
Speaker 2: a joint school to teach singgan collectors basically, so singles
Speaker 2: intelligence collectors. They collect foreign intelligence on nation states and
Speaker 2: any other target that we need, and so we learned
Speaker 2: all that stuff. And at the time, they were transitioning
Speaker 2: from the old way of doing sigan like against the
Speaker 2: Russians back in the day, to a new way of
Speaker 2: doing it, which was all digital because before that there
Speaker 2: was a lot of Morse code, especially during like the
Speaker 2: nuclear period, because Morse code is the only thing that
Speaker 2: will vibe a nuclear strike as far as communications are concerned.
Speaker 2: So like Russia, China, North Korea, and the United States
Speaker 2: all have Morse code backup systems. So of course that's
Speaker 2: a target that'd be very interesting to listen to, right
Speaker 2: because you could know what they're going to do in
Speaker 2: the event of a nuclear attack because they're always practicing
Speaker 2: that stuff. So we learn how to do that. We
Speaker 2: also learn how to do something called hand graphic analysis,
Speaker 2: where you listen to some stuff over satellite communications and
Speaker 2: you actually take a piece of graph paper and write
Speaker 2: down the bits on it and figure out where the
Speaker 2: bits start and end, and you can actually decrypt stuff
Speaker 2: this way. And I'm way over simplifying it, but we
Speaker 2: did that for like three months while there's a ton
Speaker 2: of trigonometry involved, and I am not good at math,
Speaker 2: so that took me a long time to master. I
Speaker 2: was spending a lot of extra hours in the schoolhouse.
Speaker 2: Eventually got it. The reason you trigonometry is because you
Speaker 2: can actually figure out like the angle, the amplitude, all
Speaker 2: these different things about the signal if you just do
Speaker 2: the math on it, really, which will help you solve
Speaker 2: the equation and figure out what part of this signal
Speaker 2: is protecting the data? What part is the actual data,
Speaker 2: Like what's the nuclear communication in there, and what's just
Speaker 2: the error correction stuff on the outside of it? And
Speaker 2: when you collect it, you don't know. You just see
Speaker 2: zeros once. So you got to figure out, like, first
Speaker 2: of all, where does it begin, because that will tell
Speaker 2: you everything else about the sequence and all that. And
Speaker 2: we were doing this on a piece of graph paper.
Speaker 2: They don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3: So this school, then, for seeing it is different.
Speaker 2: It's a different focus than the voice Inership school. I
Speaker 2: have a good fellow, so that is a complimentary school
Speaker 2: that is for the Air Force now, but it used
Speaker 2: to be that school used to be an analysis school. Only.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm sure I don't mean a good fellow. I
Speaker 2: mean not good fellow, I mean San Angelo. Oh okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a follow on school for a like a
Speaker 2: portion of this stuff. Okay, what we were learning at
Speaker 2: Pensacola is like broad oh interesting, from satellite communication interception
Speaker 2: all the way down to like tactical radio interception to
Speaker 2: digital communications, analog communications. We were using oscilloscopes and spectrum
Speaker 2: analyzers and like all this stuff. It's fascinating. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: then so I did that, and I was the honor
Speaker 2: graduate in the class, which meant I get to pick
Speaker 2: my duty station. And they listed all these places, and
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, like, I don't want to go
Speaker 2: to a Marine Corps unit even though I'm Marine, because
Speaker 2: I know if I go to Marine Corps unit, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get boxed in. So I was like, what's the
Speaker 2: least Marine Corps thing I can do? There was this
Speaker 2: thing on there that said NSACSS, which is National Security
Speaker 2: Agency Central Security Service Hawaii, and I was like, I'll
Speaker 2: do that. So I went to Hawaii to work in
Speaker 2: the tunnel, which is there's a walkway three quarters of
Speaker 2: a mile undergroundunderneath the pineapple field that people who work
Speaker 2: there will know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a
Speaker 2: dull pineapple plantation that the US government leases the soil underneath,
Speaker 2: and we have a gigantic three story building buried underground.
Speaker 2: It's no longer functionally, actually close a few years ago,
Speaker 2: so I can talk about it now. But it was
Speaker 2: a huge collection site. Thousands of people worked there twenty
Speaker 2: four hours a day, mostly monitoring Chinese and Russian stuff
Speaker 2: and North Korean stuff. So I was on a mission
Speaker 2: there monitoring some nuclear stuff and both listening to audio
Speaker 2: like you're talking about, but also looking at digital satellite communication,
Speaker 2: ship boarding communication, all this stuff because these countries have
Speaker 2: the nuclear triad, right, They've got subs, they got aircraft,
Speaker 2: they have ground launched all this, all this stuff, and
Speaker 2: they're communicating all the time. So we want to know
Speaker 2: what they're doing, just like they want to know what
Speaker 2: we're doing, right, because I mean, the whole point of
Speaker 2: intelligence is to reduce uncertainty because that makes a decision
Speaker 2: easier to make. So that's what we were doing out there.
Speaker 2: A lot of interesting things happen out there. One that
Speaker 2: stands out to me is one of our targets was
Speaker 2: using that old fashioned method of communication I was talking about,
Speaker 2: and we were using the old fashion method of breaking
Speaker 2: the code. And it was Christmas Day two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: I think, and I was on watch, was like three
Speaker 2: in the morning, and I decoded the message and it
Speaker 2: was a bunch of at symbols in the shape of
Speaker 2: a Christmas tree, and it said Merry Christmas, Americans. Holy shit,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, what am I even doing here? Why
Speaker 2: are you so secretive? If you know, like you know,
Speaker 2: I know, we know, like it was so like I
Speaker 2: felt dumb, you know, but it was kind of cool.
Speaker 2: And then you know, that kind of stuff went on
Speaker 2: for a little while, and then my three years there
Speaker 2: was up, so I had to go choose another station,
Speaker 2: and again I did not want to go into a
Speaker 2: Marie core unit, so I went to NSA headquarters and
Speaker 2: I actually got to work on a more advanced collection
Speaker 2: capability called expeditionary singgent kind of like exploiting targets that
Speaker 2: are like very specific with basically manufactured devices and kind
Speaker 2: of form factor stuff depending on what the mission is.
Speaker 2: So you know, for example, I can take a picture
Speaker 2: of the soil from space. See there like a rock formation,
Speaker 2: so I know what those rocks look like. I can
Speaker 2: use some other measurement and signature intelligence to figure out
Speaker 2: what the soil is composed of. Then in the laboratory,
Speaker 2: I can reproduce that sand and that stone and put
Speaker 2: a listening device inside of it and then kick it
Speaker 2: out an airplane into that country and it looks like
Speaker 2: a part of the desert that belongs there, and like
Speaker 2: you wouldn't know that unless you cracked it open that
Speaker 2: it was not that. So that's the kind of stuff
Speaker 2: we were doing up there, which is really interesting, and
Speaker 2: it was definitely the direction I wanted to go. Problem is,
Speaker 2: the more advanced I got in these things, they further
Speaker 2: from a window I became, and like the less sunlight
Speaker 2: I would see, and you know, I felt like I
Speaker 2: need to get outside and touch grass because I'm going
Speaker 2: to become like a shriveled vitamin D deficient in person
Speaker 2: pretty soon. Here, you weren't the guy that they sent
Speaker 2: up the telephone pole to the wire, you know, deep
Speaker 2: deep deep in the You were like a skiff within
Speaker 2: a skiff within a skill. Yeah. Yeah, it was actually
Speaker 2: funny because back then we hadn't like locked down like
Speaker 2: it was before Edward Snowden's, Like, things weren't as locked
Speaker 2: down as they are now. And uh I was a
Speaker 2: sergeant at the time, so I would just go around
Speaker 2: the NSA and the OPS building where I worked, and
Speaker 2: I would go into random conference rooms and just listen
Speaker 2: to meetings that were going on, and like nobody asked
Speaker 2: you if you were supposed to be there or not.
Speaker 2: Like I would just sit in the back with a
Speaker 2: notebook and pretend like, yeah, I'm supposed to be here,
Speaker 2: because I was. I was like so interested, like what's
Speaker 2: going on in here? You know? And like back then
Speaker 2: you could do that. You could just like go sit
Speaker 2: in on something I got. I used to sit on
Speaker 2: General Ordierno's IRAQ update, the mnf I update every week,
Speaker 2: and like I wasn't supposed to be there, but it
Speaker 2: was really cool. So the way that you found your
Speaker 2: way out of singing out of the caverns of the
Speaker 2: skiff was you made this interesting transition. I don't think
Speaker 2: too many people make. We've interviewed one or two, but
Speaker 2: not many people who go from singant to human. How
Speaker 2: did that take place for you? So I was wondering
Speaker 2: what will I do next, and the way our promotions work,
Speaker 2: I could see it coming where I was not going
Speaker 2: to be able to do operations anymore if I stayed Singan.
Speaker 2: I was like, how do I keep doing operations? Well?
Speaker 2: Human is there. I didn't know very much about it.
Speaker 2: I kind of took a risk on it and just
Speaker 2: said I'm gonna try it. If I don't like it,
Speaker 2: then I'm going to suffer. But if I like it, it
Speaker 2: might be cool. So I went. We did a screener.
Speaker 2: They do like a board where they sit down. They
Speaker 2: used to interrogate you for like eight hours with a
Speaker 2: group of dudes sitting across the table from you. Now
Speaker 2: it's not like that anymore. But I did that past
Speaker 2: the screener, went to the school and had no clue
Speaker 2: what I was about to learn, and so it was
Speaker 2: kind of a shock. I just was trying to get out,
Speaker 2: kind of like when I joined the Marine Carps, trying
Speaker 2: to get out of Connecticut. Similar thing where I was like,
Speaker 2: how do how do I pivot out here? And it
Speaker 2: was the right move?
Speaker 3: Was it difficult though, too, because I mean, here you are,
Speaker 3: we're seeing you have TSSCIO, so you know, some sat
Speaker 3: access toff like that were they were they reluctant to
Speaker 3: let you go from the sandfield, anywhere else, not just
Speaker 3: human but anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and actually more so, the Marine Corps was pissed
Speaker 2: that I hadn't served in a Marine Corps unit, and
Speaker 2: they were really resistant to approve my stuff. But they
Speaker 2: they the local leadership had no power over my package
Speaker 2: that I sent up. All they could do is non
Speaker 2: concur but it didn't affect the outcome, so I still
Speaker 2: got picked in the Marine Corps. If I remember.
Speaker 3: I working with some guys like.
Speaker 2: Aren't most of their human ters warrants?
Speaker 3: Or is there or I guess, can you tell us
Speaker 3: how it works, because I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I just remember working. So there have been some changes
Speaker 2: over time. It used to actually be two different fields.
Speaker 2: We used to have c I. Counter Intelligence separate from
Speaker 2: human just like the army. Okay, no longer is that
Speaker 2: the case. And there's actually a third field, which is
Speaker 2: interrogator translators that they rolled all three of these into
Speaker 2: a single MOS. So what you do is you have
Speaker 2: the enlisted people there and usually have some junior officers.
Speaker 2: They don't do this anymore. They did it for about
Speaker 2: ten years and then got rid of it. But like
Speaker 2: let's say you're a first attendant out of Quantico and
Speaker 2: your mos is going to be Cihuman officer. You would
Speaker 2: go through the class with us and listed just like
Speaker 2: the rest of us, like kind of like through a
Speaker 2: soft training where it's like there's no the rank is
Speaker 2: not important. What's important is the training. You know. It's
Speaker 2: very similar to that. The warrant officers have to come later.
Speaker 2: So you know, you graduate, get a couple of deployments
Speaker 2: under you. It used to be you need like three
Speaker 2: or four deployments during the war. Now that the war
Speaker 2: is over, like nobody's deploying, so they're just letting people
Speaker 2: go in. But it used to be a lot more competitive.
Speaker 2: They used to reject people all the time. Those warrant
Speaker 2: officers would become the team leaders and you'd have like
Speaker 2: between three to five CI Human collectors and a team
Speaker 2: leader on top, and then you'd go deploy to do
Speaker 2: either direct support or general support to a unit that
Speaker 2: needed you. Hey, guys, it's your pal Jack. I just
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Speaker 2: balance security and readiness with stopbox and what was your
Speaker 2: first assignment once you got into the human field. So
Speaker 2: I went to Afghanistan. That was like at the height
Speaker 2: of Marine Corps involvement in Afghanistan. Went there in twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: I was there for a year. Went to Helman Province,
Speaker 2: super interesting experience. I went there with multiple functions, so
Speaker 2: I was general support to the area that we were in.
Speaker 2: We were in Regimental Combat Team five, which was a
Speaker 2: portion of Helman kind of south west Ish all the
Speaker 2: way down to the Pakistan border. So I was doing
Speaker 2: interrogations in our debt FAC. I was going on raids
Speaker 2: with our Aerial and Addiction Forces, which is a out
Speaker 2: there and like looking for dudes crossing between Pakistan and
Speaker 2: Afghanistan with drugs, you know, land the helicopter right in
Speaker 2: front of the car and grab the dudes, take the drugs,
Speaker 2: go back. I would talk to him for a little
Speaker 2: while and be like, yep, you're going to bogram, you know,
Speaker 2: and then send them out or let them go, depending
Speaker 2: on what was going on. Did that at the very beginning.
Speaker 2: Then our policy in Afghanistan change. About halfway through the deployment.
Speaker 2: They started shrinking down base footprints, so they were closing
Speaker 2: down some of the bases like Dell Around, for example,
Speaker 2: they shut that down send a lot of those guys
Speaker 2: to Camp Leatherneck. They sent us to Camp Leatherneck. I
Speaker 2: was at Camp Dwire before, so when we went to Leatherneck,
Speaker 2: the mission change more to a CI focused mission. But
Speaker 2: I still had all my source network that I had
Speaker 2: developed in Southern Afghanistan, which was really helpful because one
Speaker 2: guy that I had been working with. It's kind of unusual,
Speaker 2: especially in the military, to do a cold bump with
Speaker 2: a guy, which means your very first contact, run it
Speaker 2: all the way through to recruitment. Usually that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: Usually it's multiple handlers are doing this over time, and
Speaker 2: then finally maybe the guy gets recruited. But this one
Speaker 2: particular source I had, I actually the week after I
Speaker 2: showed up, I met him, started developing him, and was
Speaker 2: able to recruit him in October the next year. So
Speaker 2: it's like less than a year. I was able to
Speaker 2: move through the entire recruitment cycle, which was like unheard of,
Speaker 2: especially in your first deployment. So when I transferred up
Speaker 2: to leather Neck, that guy stayed on my books, and
Speaker 2: I'm glad he did, because there was an attack in
Speaker 2: Camp Bashion in September twenty twelve. He had been reporting
Speaker 2: on that attack from February twenty twelve. He was giving
Speaker 2: information on the vehicle to be used, like a high
Speaker 2: lux white and red High Lucks pickup truck. He knew
Speaker 2: exactly where the safe house was, where they'd be staging at.
Speaker 2: He knew where they actually were going to come up
Speaker 2: to the fence line. And the guys actually did a
Speaker 2: three They did three dry runs cutting the fence, using
Speaker 2: very good methods to cut diagonally across the fence and
Speaker 2: the base. They ran all the way up and tagged
Speaker 2: their hand on the aircraft there and ran back just
Speaker 2: to make sure they'd be able to do it. Nobody
Speaker 2: caught them. The reason nobody caught them is because there
Speaker 2: were Tongans guarding those posts, and every other post had
Speaker 2: a silhouette, not a person. During this whole time, we've
Speaker 2: been telling General Kurganis, who was the major General in
Speaker 2: charge of the Marines there in RC Southwest, Hey, this
Speaker 2: is attack's going to happen, Like tell them in February,
Speaker 2: tell them in March, tell them in April. Like every
Speaker 2: month we were updating him, like, hey, we got even
Speaker 2: more information now we even know. We had a video
Speaker 2: of them training with In the video, there's a map
Speaker 2: of Camp Leatherneck Ambassi and they're aircraft on the map
Speaker 2: and the guy's there with a little stick like back
Speaker 2: in the old days teachers. He's like pointing to the
Speaker 2: points of entry and like the actually the place they
Speaker 2: had already dry run. He's pointing to that like you know,
Speaker 2: going through the whole thing. The guys are all sitting
Speaker 2: around like watching like school children, and we're showing them like, hey,
Speaker 2: we have like direct evidence that's going to happen. And
Speaker 2: this source is like an A one source, like very
Speaker 2: highly credible, very good veracity, like we've tested, we off
Speaker 2: seest them a lot of times. Very responsive. He's like, no,
Speaker 2: I know this base is impervious. There's no way they
Speaker 2: could get away with something like this. And we were like, sir,
Speaker 2: they already have three times. They've done a dry run
Speaker 2: successfully three times during the day, not at night, right,
Speaker 2: and he kept pushing back. It came around like July,
Speaker 2: I believe, maybe early August, and finally we got a
Speaker 2: report from that source saying the attack will be in September.
Speaker 2: Because Prince Harry is at the base. So they had
Speaker 2: this plan like in their pocket for over a year
Speaker 2: and they weren't doing it. They were waiting for like
Speaker 2: an opportunity where it would make the most impact. Which
Speaker 2: totally get that. Prince Harry was very vocal about his
Speaker 2: visit to the base. It was like widely covered in
Speaker 2: the news. Even wrote a book about it later, you know.
Speaker 2: But that drew their attention. They said, what if we
Speaker 2: could kill him. He was actually staying over by the
Speaker 2: Danish tents, which was pretty far away from the aircraft.
Speaker 2: They were able to go in and destroy the aircraft. They
Speaker 2: killed two Marines. These guys were on PCP and a
Speaker 2: bunch of other drugs. They were getting shot like over
Speaker 2: and over, and they kept going like zombies. It was crazy.
Speaker 2: The only way they were killed is when they were
Speaker 2: cut in half by the fifty calls from the helicopters,
Speaker 2: and the helicopters took time to figure out that this
Speaker 2: was going on. And you had one dude cut in
Speaker 2: half from the waist down, crawling like eyes wide open,
Speaker 2: trying to get a grenade out and open it, like
Speaker 2: didn't know his body was gone, you know. And the
Speaker 2: other thing is the guys they selected for this were
Speaker 2: mentally challenged. Yeah, they picked them this way on purpose obviously.
Speaker 2: Then they put him on drugs, and then they sent
Speaker 2: him on a suicide mission. Right. One guy survived. We
Speaker 2: called him Stumpy because he lost his hand during the fight.
Speaker 2: He was the one we interrogated, so my debt fact
Speaker 2: actually got him, and he was very mentally challenged. And
Speaker 2: it's sad because like, this guy obviously didn't believe in
Speaker 2: anything that was going on. He was just mentally challenged
Speaker 2: and convinced this is what you're going to do. Put
Speaker 2: on drugs, that's what you're doing. And while we're talking
Speaker 2: to him, we're trying to get him to talk, and
Speaker 2: he's like kind of cage. He doesn't want to talk.
Speaker 2: And finally we're thinking, like, how do we get this
Speaker 2: guy to communicate? And one of the other interrogators gave
Speaker 2: him a marker and he just starts drawing, and he
Speaker 2: starts drawing that map that was in that video. And
Speaker 2: I got to rewind a little bit because in July
Speaker 2: that year, my partner and I the counterintell agent, we're
Speaker 2: going around the base and Camp Blaveneck was huge at
Speaker 2: the time. There was like three to five thousand people
Speaker 2: at any given time living on that base in a
Speaker 2: small town. Well, there was a bus that would take
Speaker 2: third country nationals like Pakistanis and other people around the base.
Speaker 2: And there were maps that said, you know, this is
Speaker 2: the chow hall, this is the aircraft, this is the
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Those maps were secret no foreign maps
Speaker 2: that the Army Corps of Engineers printed out, cut the
Speaker 2: classification off of, and then slipped into a plastic thing
Speaker 2: and then screwed them up all over the base. Right.
Speaker 2: My partner and I went around and picked up over
Speaker 2: sixty of these maps, right, And we brought the actual
Speaker 2: stack of maps with us to this one meeting and
Speaker 2: we brought it to hit the general like, these are
Speaker 2: classified maps. Here are the originals we found with Buckeye imagery,
Speaker 2: which is classified imagery right here, And here's the map
Speaker 2: that's printed. It's the same, it's just missing this. And
Speaker 2: he's like, well, how are my guys going to know
Speaker 2: how to get around the base. We're like, sir, this
Speaker 2: is classified information. You can't release it to third country nationals,
Speaker 2: especially Pakistanis, who we already know are doing things over
Speaker 2: the border. Right, And he's like, but how will the
Speaker 2: third country nationals know how to get to the defact
Speaker 2: the chow hall and you know, to the gym like
Speaker 2: this is what this is what he was saying. It
Speaker 2: was like shocking to me. Okay, fast forward to the attack.
Speaker 2: Stumpy in his pocket is one of those maps, and
Speaker 2: it's just like mind blowing, you know.
Speaker 3: Was the same base commander there when the attack happened.
Speaker 3: What was his response and were there any repercussions for him?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, so I don't know what his personal response was,
Speaker 2: but he got relieved of duty, which is very unusual
Speaker 2: for a general to be relieved Yeah in theater, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure here I mean because usually I mean I
Speaker 2: think that we're just used to those guys getting off
Speaker 2: Scott no matter what happens. It was actually two generals,
Speaker 2: So there was Kriganis, who was the Infantry Division commander.
Speaker 2: Then there was the Marine Air Wing commander who was
Speaker 2: a one star broad Meadow I believe his name was. So.
Speaker 2: Right before that attack happened, like two weeks before it happened,
Speaker 2: the maw commander, that general came to visit us at
Speaker 2: Camp to Wire because we were doing some stuff down
Speaker 2: there with the Afghans, and we had reports that the
Speaker 2: Taliban wanted to kill a general like generally they didn't
Speaker 2: know which one or anything, but like target of opportunity,
Speaker 2: like hope it happens, you know, And we were telling
Speaker 2: that general like, hey, just so you know, the Taliban
Speaker 2: has been thinking about attacking a general, and no generals
Speaker 2: had visited this base in a very long time. If
Speaker 2: you come there, you're probably going to trigger an attack
Speaker 2: because they're gonna know that you're there. Give this giant
Speaker 2: entourage and he's like, no, no, no, I have to
Speaker 2: see the troops. I have to see the troops. So
Speaker 2: he goes there. He went to the Afghan side of
Speaker 2: the base, which was separate from our side of the base.
Speaker 2: There's this massive crowd of Afghans like on top of him,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's kind of like they're very excited
Speaker 2: all this stuff. And this one guy comes running up
Speaker 2: from behind and like plows his way through the crowd
Speaker 2: and he's got one of those stick minds that the
Speaker 2: Russians had back in the Cold War in Afghanistan, and
Speaker 2: he like lights it off and it blew his hands off.
Speaker 2: Didn't kill anybody because it was it wasn't a dud,
Speaker 2: but it was like not functioning order or whatever. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So like if that thing had worked, he would have
Speaker 2: killed that guy, that same general that got relieved later
Speaker 2: on for not listening to us about the other attack.
Speaker 2: You know. So that's some of the frustrations out of
Speaker 2: that deployer. And after that Afghanistan deployment, when was it
Speaker 2: that you went over to Marsak? So the following year. Actually,
Speaker 2: Scott Stalker was the Marine in charge of assignments for
Speaker 2: enablers to Marsak at the time, and I called him
Speaker 2: up and I said he was a master sargant at
Speaker 2: the time. I said, Master Sergeant, you know, I'd really
Speaker 2: like to come over to Marsak. I've heard a lot
Speaker 2: of things because I actually worked with them when I
Speaker 2: was in Sycad back during Debt one. I was making
Speaker 2: stuff for their unit and I said, you know, I'd
Speaker 2: love to come over there as a human guy. And
Speaker 2: he was like, Okay, let me see. Uh do you
Speaker 2: want East Coast or West coast? It was at the
Speaker 2: time when it was split across the coast, and I
Speaker 2: was like, well, I'm already in Camp Pendleton, California. Would
Speaker 2: be awesome. He goes, why don't you open up a
Speaker 2: marine online? So I opened up like our It's like
Speaker 2: the thing the Marines used to look at all their
Speaker 2: personal information. He's like, do you see any orders in there?
Speaker 2: And I was like yeah, he gave me orders over
Speaker 2: the phone, which was crazy. So they, you know, they
Speaker 2: risk on me. I went over there and just up
Speaker 2: the road it was. It was fantastic and greatest five
Speaker 2: years of my twenty years in the Marines. With enablers,
Speaker 2: they don't let you stay more than five years, so
Speaker 2: I stayed literally exactly five years and zero days over there.
Speaker 2: And you said something like you were part of a
Speaker 2: pilot assessment and selection course. Yeah, so in twenty thirteen
Speaker 2: they were piloting this assessment selection for enablers. So obviously
Speaker 2: not as hardcore as the operators, but they what they
Speaker 2: were trying to do is like, you know, week from
Speaker 2: the Chaff kind of thing, because at the time, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of unknown about Marstock, at least in
Speaker 2: the conventional side, like what is this place? So a
Speaker 2: lot of people were going there that might not have
Speaker 2: belonged there, So they're trying to filter that. So a
Speaker 2: lot of physical stuff, a lot of psychological stuff, but
Speaker 2: packed down into about seven day periods, so it's not
Speaker 2: as long as others. It was pretty grueling though for
Speaker 2: the time that it was. We slept like one or
Speaker 2: two hours a night the whole time, exhausted, a lot
Speaker 2: of like Okay, run down to the beach and I'll
Speaker 2: swim a kilometer out there. Go over here, put on
Speaker 2: your cameis, go run to the pill go do pool
Speaker 2: pte now go. Like it was like thing after thing
Speaker 2: after thing, you know, Like in midnight, we're going up
Speaker 2: over the Reaper, which is this really high inclined hill
Speaker 2: in Kent Pendleton, and as we're going up there, then
Speaker 2: we get ce us gas blown up on us, and
Speaker 2: then suddenly we got a casualty and then oh man,
Speaker 2: now there's some ammocans you got to carry too, and
Speaker 2: like the whole thing, you know, so like they were
Speaker 2: just throwing stuff at us the whole time, and like
Speaker 2: guys were getting injured. Almost everybody made it. Only a
Speaker 2: couple of guys didn't. I think there was like fifteen
Speaker 2: of us total, and then like two or three didn't
Speaker 2: didn't make it. But it was all the enablers at
Speaker 2: the time. They were going through so like intelligence analysts,
Speaker 2: dog handler, EOD. So they all the all the dynamic
Speaker 2: people together and uh, it was it was pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: They actually did a good job of like monitoring it
Speaker 2: and and kind of adjusting it. So like, for example,
Speaker 2: they had this like mental task. It was like the
Speaker 2: second to last day where they brought us into this
Speaker 2: conference room and they took a trash can full of
Speaker 2: intel reports and the guy stood up on the table
Speaker 2: and just dump the intel reports out all over the table.
Speaker 2: He's like, you have one hour to figure out when
Speaker 2: the attack's going to be. And like all of us
Speaker 2: like look at each other like ah man a right
Speaker 2: here we go, like we're all trying to read, like
Speaker 2: we can't read because we're tired. And me and one
Speaker 2: other guy who had worked on Asia stuff before started
Speaker 2: realizing like, oh, this is like an abusayaf thing from
Speaker 2: the Philippines. And actually he knew the thing that it
Speaker 2: was about, and I knew the thing that it happened
Speaker 2: before that that caused it. So like he and I
Speaker 2: were over in the corner like putting stuff together, and
Speaker 2: like they could see that through the glass and they
Speaker 2: came in and like pulled me and him and one
Speaker 2: of their dude out like, hey, guys, come to this
Speaker 2: other room. So they pull us over this other room
Speaker 2: and they're like, you have a new problem. You have
Speaker 2: this spaceship with I can't reader the exact things, but
Speaker 2: it was like there's a woman on there, she's forty three,
Speaker 2: she had a miscarriage. There's a man who's five foot
Speaker 2: ten and has a history of cancer in his family,
Speaker 2: and like they all these like interesting like things with
Speaker 2: each person, like pick nine out of the fifteen that
Speaker 2: can go to Mars and live there. And so like
Speaker 2: that was the problem. Like what so we're like we're
Speaker 2: trying to figure it out, you know, And they wanted
Speaker 2: us to use certain analytical techniques to like very quickly
Speaker 2: solve a problem. And actually we had a pretty good
Speaker 2: solution to it. So it's kind of it's very interesting.
Speaker 2: It was like the physical stuff and there was like
Speaker 2: a mental thing in between each physical thing. It's like
Speaker 2: forcing you to use your brain even though you're tired,
Speaker 2: So it's pretty cool. Then they did away with it
Speaker 2: because there was too much attrition for their liking, and
Speaker 2: instead of like calibrating it, they just got rid of it,
Speaker 2: which is unfortunate. And from there, I mean, you did
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of deployments all over the place. I mean,
Speaker 2: where was the first one that they sent you off to?
Speaker 2: So the first one was really interesting. It was to Indonesia,
Speaker 2: but it was supporting a Jasok preparation of the environment activity.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know that. I had no clue about
Speaker 2: any of this stuff. And they said, hey, you know
Speaker 2: you've been selected to do an interview. This is how
Speaker 2: it started. I'm like, okay, Like, but you can't do
Speaker 2: it in your uniform. You need to be in a suit.
Speaker 2: It's going to be at some early time in the morning.
Speaker 2: Came or what it was. It's because I was getting
Speaker 2: interviewed from a guy in Hawaii that was at the
Speaker 2: Joint Intel Support Element over there in sock pack and
Speaker 2: I get on there and it's him and some other people.
Speaker 2: He's a civilian guys talking to me, and they're like,
Speaker 2: what do you know about jam Islamiya? What do you
Speaker 2: know about Abusayav? What do you know? Like they're asking
Speaker 2: me like all these questions like like boom, boom boom,
Speaker 2: and I'm like answering to the best my ability, and
Speaker 2: like what do you know about these strategic things and
Speaker 2: these tactical things, like they're trying to like figure out stuff,
Speaker 2: and I feel like I didn't know anything, but I
Speaker 2: got the job. I don't know Wow or who else
Speaker 2: they talked to, but anyways, I got that. And they're like,
Speaker 2: now you're going to go to Sockpack for an unknown
Speaker 2: period of time. We'll determine when you're ready to go.
Speaker 2: So I went to Sockpack, and uh, for ninety days
Speaker 2: I worked with that guy that interviewed me. His name
Speaker 2: is Dan. He is like the Indonesia expert in sock Pack,
Speaker 2: amazing counter terrorist analyist and uh. He actually was not
Speaker 2: in the military or the intel community at all. He
Speaker 2: was a dendrologist major like studying trees in college and
Speaker 2: his master's degree in Indonesia. He like knows Bahasa Indonesia,
Speaker 2: he knows like other local dialects and somehow, like you know,
Speaker 2: one thing led to another and he started working for
Speaker 2: the government. So he's like a true cultural expert, which
Speaker 2: is really helpful. And he said, look, I know you
Speaker 2: don't know a lot about Jemmi Islamia, but I need
Speaker 2: you to master it in three months. I'm giving you
Speaker 2: ninety days. You can be in the skiff as much
Speaker 2: as you want or as little as you want, and
Speaker 2: at the end, you're going to brief the sock pack commander,
Speaker 2: Admiral Kilrain about what you learned. And then he let
Speaker 2: go of me for the next ninety days and I
Speaker 2: just went in there like twelve to fifteen hours a
Speaker 2: day reading every report since two thousand, I think it
Speaker 2: was no actually from nineteen ninety one until twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: which is when I was there, and I learned a
Speaker 2: lot about Jemmislimia, and I learned that there's a certain
Speaker 2: pattern about how they do their attacks compared to how
Speaker 2: they split into new groups, because they have a history
Speaker 2: of splintering into smaller groups, and there is a huge
Speaker 2: correlation between these two conditions, which is very fascinating. And
Speaker 2: I briefed that to the admiral and he said that
Speaker 2: he'd never heard that before and that was that was great,
Speaker 2: And he looked over to Dan. He's like, what do
Speaker 2: you think, Dan? And Dan's like he can go on
Speaker 2: the deployment, which is pretty cool. Yeah. So then that,
Speaker 2: like I mean with the Filipino groups too, is that
Speaker 2: like they split off because like there's like a piece
Speaker 2: deal is about to go in, and there's one group
Speaker 2: or one faction that feels like they're not getting a
Speaker 2: big enough slice of the pie. Like, well, from your analysis,
Speaker 2: why was that taking place? It's actually more a diversionary
Speaker 2: because if we're putting they know how we work. We
Speaker 2: know like, for example, al Qaida is an organization. Well,
Speaker 2: if there's a new group called JEM or JTWJ or whatever,
Speaker 2: we're like, well, that's not al Kaieda, right, and then
Speaker 2: like three years later like, oh wait, it is al Qaida, right,
Speaker 2: you know. Right, So they understand that, and they're very
Speaker 2: good at like splitting off at the exact moment where
Speaker 2: it makes sense for them to do that, and that
Speaker 2: group becomes a target later and then that group disappears
Speaker 2: and then this one comes up, and like it's the
Speaker 2: same two sense, you know. And actually Humbali, who is
Speaker 2: in jam Islamia, was one of the original AQ dudes.
Speaker 2: He was Indonesian. He's in Gitmo right now. He's still
Speaker 2: one of the last people in Gimo. He was arrested
Speaker 2: I think in Thailand. Yeah, that was an interesting thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I mean I've tried to like figure out exactly
Speaker 2: how that happened. Maybe you know better than I do,
Speaker 2: but there were rangers standing by in case things went sideways. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was the criff On one Charlie one one probably
Speaker 2: uh no, no, no, Ranger battalion. Oh okay, yeah, because I
Speaker 2: actually know the guys. Oh yeah, Yeah, there was a
Speaker 2: whole thing they went to timely in to do a
Speaker 2: j set, but there was a whole option to like
Speaker 2: switch it from training to live yeah, like actually issue
Speaker 2: them live ammunition. This was like two thousand and four. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that that happened, yep, And that that did not happen.
Speaker 2: They did not ever flip it green. I think it
Speaker 2: was a liaison ye thing that they arrested that guy
Speaker 2: over there. Yeah, it's fascinating too. I mean the whole
Speaker 2: Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia thing, I think it's like
Speaker 2: little understood or like poorly understood about like how pivotal
Speaker 2: the Jumma Islamia and other groups that were associated with
Speaker 2: them were to like the Bojinka plot, which was the
Speaker 2: original aircraft plot and all those things those were like
Speaker 2: planned in Southeast Asia, like the physically they were into
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia planning and stuff like Khalei Shik Muhammad also
Speaker 2: was over there in Bangkok, you know, in Marwan yep,
Speaker 2: all those Singaporeans Malaysians yep. Yeah, really fascinating. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that deployment was basically working at the embassy in Jakarta
Speaker 2: and it was me and an operator paired up and
Speaker 2: we would go around the country and look at places
Speaker 2: to do preparation the environment tasks, so like operational preparation
Speaker 2: the environment, which means setting the condition so that other
Speaker 2: forces can commit and do stuff. So big focus was
Speaker 2: like ports. For example, we wanted to have certain ports
Speaker 2: that we knew we could press a button and that
Speaker 2: port will be available if something happened, something like of
Speaker 2: a crisis happened. Let's say a hostage was going on.
Speaker 2: We need that to be secure so we can get
Speaker 2: to that airfield near this area and like without any hiccups,
Speaker 2: let it happen. So that's what we were doing over there.
Speaker 2: It was really cool because we were actually partnered with station,
Speaker 2: like our desks were in station spaces and the analyst
Speaker 2: I was paired up with the agency analyst. His name
Speaker 2: was also John, like me, but this guy was way
Speaker 2: different than me. He had a PhD in Islamic theology
Speaker 2: from Harvard University and this guy he was younger than me,
Speaker 2: and he knew like the deepest, deepest backstore of every
Speaker 2: single character in this counter terrorism story. It was crazy,
Speaker 2: like just the level of knowledge that he had. I
Speaker 2: felt like this big city next tip, you know. But
Speaker 2: it was an awesome team to work on because there
Speaker 2: are people like that on that team. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: So it was all like kind of ope, like just
Speaker 2: in case there's an emergency, yep. So we do the
Speaker 2: whole range of things from like driving from point A
Speaker 2: to point B to see how long it takes to
Speaker 2: drive during the day, like kind of mundane stuff like
Speaker 2: going out and trying to measure like the height of
Speaker 2: this stuff. So we knew if a helicopter could land
Speaker 2: there these things to like more advanced stuff like we
Speaker 2: actually flew up to Natuna Basar, which is an Indonesian
Speaker 2: island in the South China. See it's the only Indonesian
Speaker 2: territory in the South China. See. We went up there
Speaker 2: to do pe tasks, but we also had a secondary
Speaker 2: task to look at the Chinese overflights that were going
Speaker 2: on because China was like routinely invading their airspace every
Speaker 2: second day, so we actually got up there, and another
Speaker 2: third task we had was to confirm the location of
Speaker 2: a radar that the Indonesians had, and the Indonesians were
Speaker 2: like super hesitant to let us see it. So we
Speaker 2: had to figure out a way to like get a
Speaker 2: photo of us like with them with the radar in
Speaker 2: the background, which is what we actually ended up doing.
Speaker 2: So we got the picture, and they were really upset
Speaker 2: that we were trying to find like they knew we
Speaker 2: were trying to do it, but we never like openly
Speaker 2: set it. I mean, I'm a little surprised that the
Speaker 2: Indonesians gave you as much freedom and free access as
Speaker 2: they did, like from what I've been told anyway, that
Speaker 2: it's okay to like meet privately, but they're much more
Speaker 2: hesitant to have like a public relationship with American officials.
Speaker 2: It's funny you say that. So into Tuna Basar, it
Speaker 2: was only one hotel, It's a very small island, and
Speaker 2: the people onto Tuna Basar were not happy that we
Speaker 2: were there, Like the government people were not happy were there.
Speaker 2: We actually had liaisons with us from Jakarta, but they
Speaker 2: weren't happy they were there either. And so like we're
Speaker 2: rolling around the island, like taking pictures and like doing stuff.
Speaker 2: You know. We had this aircraft called Non standardy Aviation,
Speaker 2: which is like a small little prop plane. We're like
Speaker 2: flying around the island taking pictures, like doing stuff, and
Speaker 2: then we'd land. Well, one day we went out on
Speaker 2: the other side of the island, like two hours the
Speaker 2: other side of the mountain, and we'd come back and
Speaker 2: there's like, you know how you get that feeling like
Speaker 2: something's weird. Come to the hotel, go to the front desk.
Speaker 2: The lady like looks up, doesn't speak, and it like
Speaker 2: looks back down or like somebody's in here, you know.
Speaker 2: So like go up to my room. I had brought
Speaker 2: a suitcase and I had some other stuff. It's like
Speaker 2: dumped out in a pyramid on my bed, and there
Speaker 2: is a memory card on top of my clothes. It
Speaker 2: was a blank memory card because I had the real
Speaker 2: memory card in my camera, right, I had a backup
Speaker 2: that was blank, and I think they were pissed that
Speaker 2: it didn't have anything on it, and they like left
Speaker 2: their calling card like we knew you had a camera.
Speaker 2: Like okay, you know, like what are gonna do about that? Right? Right,
Speaker 2: there's just like a really interesting experience. What is their
Speaker 2: intelligence services? Like, is it composus? So Capasus is their
Speaker 2: special forces, which is actually for a while it was
Speaker 2: blacklisted because in Tamar they did a lot of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a little there's a little bit of like a
Speaker 2: prisoner execution happening. They're pretty heavily tainted. Yeah. Well, actually
Speaker 2: we came up with a solution for how to work
Speaker 2: with them still, so in twenty fourteen, we had to
Speaker 2: cut off if they had graduated from their academy before
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, we couldn't work with them. They
Speaker 2: graduated after we could, And then two years ago they
Speaker 2: just eliminated the entire blacklist. So now all of CAPOSUS
Speaker 2: is available because the President of Indonesia was in Capasus
Speaker 2: in Teamor and he was one of the guys that
Speaker 2: was implicated, so he can't blacklist him, you know, he's
Speaker 2: the president. And so what was the second one after Indonesia?
Speaker 2: I mean, you spent some time in West Africa, so
Speaker 2: that came later. I actually I came back from Indonesia
Speaker 2: and at the time it was twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: when Isis was really morphing into this new thing. So
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, I come back and they're like, hey, do
Speaker 2: you want to go on another deployment right now? And
Speaker 2: I was like yes. So they're like, we're going to
Speaker 2: send you to the Middle East. We're not exactly sure
Speaker 2: if you're going to go to Syria, Iraq or Lebanon
Speaker 2: yet because things are so dynamic right now, like at
Speaker 2: that time, like we didn't know what we were doing,
Speaker 2: like where to go and stuff like that, and so
Speaker 2: I said okay. So I started working up with a
Speaker 2: team a hotel company at Marsak and while we were
Speaker 2: working up, they were doing a deployment flarization training where
Speaker 2: they basically go out like practice the full mission profile
Speaker 2: in the United States before they go overseas. On that DFT,
Speaker 2: one of the helicopters crashed, the Raider seven helicopter, so
Speaker 2: we lost a big portion of our company's expertise. And
Speaker 2: also those guys that died were in leadership positions within
Speaker 2: their teams, so they had to completely restructure a lot
Speaker 2: of hotel companies teams. So I got pulled off of
Speaker 2: the Iraq deployment put on the Lebanon deployment as a
Speaker 2: result of this. So I went to Lebanon in early
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, and we were working with Lebanese special forces
Speaker 2: and the Magawirra Baja, which is the Lebanese Navy seals basically,
Speaker 2: and also the Mukafaja, which is like their ranger unit
Speaker 2: or kind of like a strike force, if you will,
Speaker 2: and we were training them but also at the same
Speaker 2: time enabling them. There were some other tasks we had
Speaker 2: in Syria that we weren't going into Syria. Instead, we
Speaker 2: were going up to the last line of cover and
Speaker 2: concealment with our partner force. They would go over there
Speaker 2: and do stuff we would also. It was a very
Speaker 2: interesting time. We would actually enable some of our enemies
Speaker 2: to do things to ISIS at that time. Is pretty interesting,
Speaker 2: controversial period of time. But we weren't like directly involved
Speaker 2: in that. But we weren't doing things to help. Like
Speaker 2: the Battle of Kuserra up in northern Lebanon where hes
Speaker 2: bullet defeated ISIS. You know, that wasn't like they weren't alone,
Speaker 2: you know doing that. Yeah, I mean it became like
Speaker 2: you know, how we outlied with the Taliban against ISIS
Speaker 2: later on, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, Webanon sounds interesting and uh and then Iraq. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in Lebanon, we're doing the training stuff and I'll
Speaker 2: just tell you oneleb story please yeah, move on. So
Speaker 2: we were doing visit board search and seizure training with
Speaker 2: the Lebanese Special Forces and we actually boarded a Chinese
Speaker 2: vessel that was parked in Patroon, which is the town
Speaker 2: in Lebanon, and the Lebanese are going up a caving ladder,
Speaker 2: which is this very narrow ladder in the width of
Speaker 2: your foot, and we're behind them as they're coming up
Speaker 2: off their rigid hole inflatable boat. They're going up the
Speaker 2: caving ladder. It's a pretty high boat. I mean it's
Speaker 2: a shipping vessel, you know, And the dude goes almost
Speaker 2: to the top, this one soldier and then he loses
Speaker 2: his footing and the way. You know. Sometimes they're called
Speaker 2: the Lebanese Special Forces, and some of them are really badass,
Speaker 2: but they're not all that way, just like any partner force,
Speaker 2: where like some guys are just there because there's someone's
Speaker 2: cousin or brother or whatever. Well, this guy was one
Speaker 2: of those guys, and he was wearing his helmet in
Speaker 2: such a way where like it wasn't clipped on to
Speaker 2: his chin, it was clipped on under here, and his
Speaker 2: rifle wasn't secured properly, and so like he flips backward,
Speaker 2: his kevlar goes back over his throat and starts choking him.
Speaker 2: He's like choking out up there upside down on the
Speaker 2: caving ladder, like I don't know, fifty feet off the
Speaker 2: ground or off the water, like swerving like this right
Speaker 2: over the whole of the boat. And if that dude fell,
Speaker 2: he would be like squashed like a grape on that
Speaker 2: because the front of the boat is metal. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: that's happening, his rifles swinging around like this, you know,
Speaker 2: And so we actually had to go up the other
Speaker 2: side of the boat and come rescue him from the
Speaker 2: top down. And we're just thinking, like one of these
Speaker 2: guys have to actually do one of these things. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was crazy. So like that was like two weeks
Speaker 2: before I left Lebanon. But yeah, in Lebanon, they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: because things are so dynamic in Iraq, are you willing
Speaker 2: to just go straight to Iraq instead of going back home?
Speaker 2: I was like yes, So I went directly to Iraq,
Speaker 2: like I flew from I think I connected in Jordan
Speaker 2: on an ENSAUV of the non standard aviation into Baghdad
Speaker 2: and then up to Reveal and then at that time
Speaker 2: we had just got an authorization to start doing a
Speaker 2: lot of air strikes. So my mission up there was
Speaker 2: human triggered strikes, where basically I have a source or
Speaker 2: a principal Asian who has his own network that's sitting
Speaker 2: outside of a building and can see there's fifty guys,
Speaker 2: bad guys meeting in there, and he's giving me information
Speaker 2: about it. Once we feel good about the information or
Speaker 2: that the place is safe, then I'm gonna be the
Speaker 2: one talking to the air officer. They're gonna start sending
Speaker 2: up aircraft and they're gonna blow that building up and
Speaker 2: kill those guys. So that's what that deployment was was
Speaker 2: one after another after another and after another, and actually
Speaker 2: not just our deployment, but that like six month period
Speaker 2: right before we retook Mosol, that the area we were
Speaker 2: in was around Mosol. Right before we retook Mosol, like
Speaker 2: the Joint Special Operations Task Force had killed like thirty
Speaker 2: thousand people in air strikes, just like those air strikes
Speaker 2: and that was mostly all of guys doing human triggered
Speaker 2: strikes all around northern Iraq. It was a really interesting
Speaker 2: period of time. And this is also is this the
Speaker 2: deployment where you met your missus? It is, yes, tell
Speaker 2: us about that because I think that's an interesting story. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I was working with the a Lebanese guy who
Speaker 2: was helping us in a support capacity out in Herbel
Speaker 2: in Dream City, which is like the nice part of
Speaker 2: Rebel And he had a huge mansion and he used
Speaker 2: to have talking about that part of the of Verbil
Speaker 2: that looks like Abu Dhabi. Yeah, yeah, real nice area.
Speaker 2: It's got the guys with the ak standing outside to
Speaker 2: make sure nobody unwanted goes in there, like not bad guys,
Speaker 2: but just the unwashed, you know. So they would let
Speaker 2: us in, so we'd go in there, and this guy
Speaker 2: used to have dinner parties and his you know, his
Speaker 2: big courtyard that had these like high walls and everything
Speaker 2: so nobody could see in. And there's probably like twenty
Speaker 2: or thirty people there. And we're around this like very
Speaker 2: long table and there's only one open seat, and I'm
Speaker 2: sitting next to that open seat. It's like ten o'clock
Speaker 2: at night, and she walks in on the other side
Speaker 2: and there's nowhere for her to sit, so she comes
Speaker 2: and sits next to me, and we start talking. And
Speaker 2: like I said, it's like ten o'clock at night. We
Speaker 2: talked to like three or four in the morning, just
Speaker 2: me and her, and like if you like you know
Speaker 2: when you do those like time laps and like everyone's leaving,
Speaker 2: but you can just see like people leaving the table
Speaker 2: over time, and it's just me and her like yapping
Speaker 2: the entire time. And we just talked for hours. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, she's amazing. And I think she had the
Speaker 2: same thought too, because now we're married. But she's an
Speaker 2: Iranian and she was actually interble working. She'd been living
Speaker 2: there for a few years. She was there when Isis
Speaker 2: came all the way up to the edge of herbel
Speaker 2: and she couldn't go home because she felt unsafe in Iran.
Speaker 2: So she was basically trapped in herbel right while Isis
Speaker 2: was coming up there pretty crazy time. And she's been
Speaker 2: through a lot on her own too, And we were
Speaker 2: able to get her to come to the United States.
Speaker 2: She got her green card and she got her citizenship
Speaker 2: last year, so really awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's a wild story.
Speaker 2: She didn't feel safe going back home because she has
Speaker 2: involved in some counter regime activities. Yeah. You know people
Speaker 2: in Iran. Most people in Iran do not like the government. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they will take to the streets to tell you that.
Speaker 2: You know, they're very proud of saying what they believe,
Speaker 2: even if they get punished or hurt for it. The
Speaker 2: problem is the government is going to hurt you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and people disappear all the time. So she was concerned.
Speaker 2: Back in two thousand and nine during the Green Revolution,
Speaker 2: John Boshi sobs. She was in that protest. A lot
Speaker 2: of Iranians were in that protest, and she didn't feel
Speaker 2: safe staying in the country after that protest because they
Speaker 2: were like rolling people up on the streets and they
Speaker 2: were just disappearing. You know, we're getting pushed off of
Speaker 2: buildings and like all kinds of crazy stuff. And so
Speaker 2: she went to Iraq because as an Iranian she can't
Speaker 2: really go anywhere else easily. Yeah. I mean, she's not
Speaker 2: from an affluent family. She's not the son or daughter
Speaker 2: of some Ayatola who can just go to Canada America
Speaker 2: and go to college like most of them do, or
Speaker 2: live in Paris and having Instagram accounts like they do.
Speaker 2: So she had to like really make her way out.
Speaker 2: And yeah, she went to Reveal doing you know, small
Speaker 2: jobs there and that's when I met her. So you
Speaker 2: guys are in love. It's great, but I do have
Speaker 2: to ask, like was this with the c I guys
Speaker 2: like crazy about this that one of their humantors is
Speaker 2: dating a Persian. Oh yeah, you have no idea? Yeah,
Speaker 2: nice bump, Yeah exactly. Yeah. Yeah that's you know, that's
Speaker 2: when the ignorance comes out too, because like my assignmus
Speaker 2: manager called me up like three years later and he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: are you aware that you're affiliated with an Iranian? And
Speaker 2: I was like yes, And I'm like, first of all,
Speaker 2: why are you calling me my assignment's manager, Like you're
Speaker 2: not even involved in this, you know, and like who
Speaker 2: is talking to you? And like what's going on here?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: But it was like that for the rest of my career,
Speaker 2: where like routinely I was having to answer for this
Speaker 2: sin of marrying or being with somebody who is from
Speaker 2: the other side, right, which is crazy because like the Germans,
Speaker 2: Koreans and Japanese are back during those wars, there were
Speaker 2: a lot of service members that married those people. Like
Speaker 2: that's not crazy, you know, but this is this is
Speaker 2: the worst, you know, some trips to terrain here in
Speaker 2: Jermy Yeah, didn't want to tell us about. I wish someday,
Speaker 2: I hope the government changes and I know me too. Okay,
Speaker 2: So you meet your future wife and as you come
Speaker 2: back home, I imagine carrying on this long distance relationship.
Speaker 2: And I know from my own experience getting a green
Speaker 2: card and immigration is that nightmare? Yeah, what's going on
Speaker 2: with the rest of your career in the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: as all that's going on and transpiring. Yeah, So twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: I'd come back from Iraq and actually I was in
Speaker 2: Turkey and Injulik Airbase. This is July twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 2: there was a coup and they told us to lock
Speaker 2: down and we couldn't leave the hotel. And it turns
Speaker 2: out that the leader of this coup was the base
Speaker 2: commander for inter Lick, which is where we have some
Speaker 2: very sensus stuff for NATO. But it's just wild to
Speaker 2: be like the guy with his finger on the button.
Speaker 2: Besides Airedwan, he's like, the closest dude to these things
Speaker 2: is the one with the coup. They rounded up and
Speaker 2: killed like three thousand people in like a month that
Speaker 2: they blamed this coup on. And they actually blamed it
Speaker 2: on a guy based in the United States exactly the Gulanists,
Speaker 2: the Ghulanistas. Do you believe that? I don't think so,
Speaker 2: but that happened, and so flew home. Then as soon
Speaker 2: as I got back, I actually went into our team
Speaker 2: room and we had a big whiteboard and there was
Speaker 2: the deployment schedule up there, and I was like, man,
Speaker 2: that was an awesome deployment like the Iraq one. And
Speaker 2: I looked up there and I'm like, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of cool stuff going on in Africa. And I asked
Speaker 2: our operations officer, like can I go on one of these?
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, but you just got back and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't care, I'll go right now, and he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, you're going to Senegal. So I worked up
Speaker 2: and went to Senegal right after that. And what were
Speaker 2: you doing in Senegal? If I remember, there's an Elevenese
Speaker 2: presence there. Yeah, so I was actually working with the
Speaker 2: Senegalese Special Forces, the FSS. And there's also a team
Speaker 2: that was going into Mali at the time because MANUSMA,
Speaker 2: which is the UN mission in Mali, a lot of
Speaker 2: the West African countries were actually like the ground forces
Speaker 2: for that UN mission and they were doing combat operations
Speaker 2: in Mali. So what we would do is train them
Speaker 2: in our countries that we were partnered with. Those guys
Speaker 2: would then go for three months or however long. Was
Speaker 2: this part of like one of those like constructs like
Speaker 2: Amy Salm and some of the others. Yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like it's like an official UN mission exactly, just
Speaker 2: like that. Yeah. But it's the weird thing is like
Speaker 2: all the training in preparation is not in Mali. It
Speaker 2: was outside Mali, at least for the military part of it.
Speaker 2: And then we would send the guys in there and
Speaker 2: they would go work with the Malians and stuff like
Speaker 2: that and try to figure the situation out, which they
Speaker 2: didn't do a very good job at And how did
Speaker 2: you like the car? It was a really interesting experience.
Speaker 2: Some say it's a good introduction to Africa, and after
Speaker 2: going to some other countries in Africa, I mean that's
Speaker 2: pretty true. I remember when I was landing in Waga
Speaker 2: Doogu and Burkina Fossil, I'm like, where am I There's
Speaker 2: not any pavement anywhere in the capital city, and then
Speaker 2: Nicher similar situation like whoa. But actually I liked Morocco
Speaker 2: a lot more than Senegal, even though you know, Dakar
Speaker 2: is a pretty easy city to work in, to live in.
Speaker 2: Just something about Morocco is different, like the mountains, the
Speaker 2: Atlas Mountains, Sahara Desert, you know, and the Moroccan special
Speaker 2: forces we worked with were really good people, like very
Speaker 2: good unit that we had. You ever see the movie
Speaker 2: I watched it the other day, rewatched it The Man
Speaker 2: Who Would Be King? No, I've never seen that with
Speaker 2: Sean Connery and Michael Kinan. It's supposed to be in Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: but it was actually filmed in Morocco. I gotta watch it.
Speaker 2: It's a fun movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Seank Sean Connery is the locals mistake him
Speaker 5: for a god and he starts drinking his own kool
Speaker 5: aid and you can only imagine that it does not
Speaker 5: turn out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you were also you did make your way.
Speaker 2: You said you mentioned Nijeer, Burkina Faso. What were some
Speaker 2: of these other trips that you were bouncing around. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So Burkina Fasso is interesting. There was a team up
Speaker 2: on the Mali Burkina Fosso border, up in a place
Speaker 2: called Kaya, which is like right up there on the border,
Speaker 2: and this was an army team that was there and
Speaker 2: we found out that they hadn't been debriefed on anything
Speaker 2: they were doing, and they were doing a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff in Mali, and at the time, we're like trying
Speaker 2: to figure out more about what's going on in Mali
Speaker 2: because our partner forces weren't involved in the things we
Speaker 2: wanted them to be involved in, and we were worried
Speaker 2: about Al Kaida, and there's other groups there in Mali
Speaker 2: as well that we're trying to figure out what's going on,
Speaker 2: like Jane m and the the Mira Batun was another
Speaker 2: big group that we're looking for. So I went up
Speaker 2: there for a couple of weeks and just spent every
Speaker 2: day debriefing the team guys on what they'd been seeing
Speaker 2: and doing in Mali and sent all that reporting back.
Speaker 2: And that was the first time we'd ever actually had
Speaker 2: reporting from that area of Burkina Fasso about Mali. So
Speaker 2: that was like a very fulfilling trip, even though it
Speaker 2: was short at school. So they were doing like human
Speaker 2: collection up there, so they were actually working with people there.
Speaker 2: They weren't human people there, you know, guys, and nobody
Speaker 2: was talking to them, you know, because they were up there.
Speaker 2: That was actually around the same time that remember the
Speaker 2: Green Bray got strangled by the guys Logan Melgar. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so one of the guys on my team was actually
Speaker 2: in that room, Kevin Maxwell. That happened at that time,
Speaker 2: at exact time, so like our task force got shook
Speaker 2: up quite a bit, so they started moving us around
Speaker 2: and things were changing very rapidly at that time. Any
Speaker 2: other West Africa adventures you want to tell us about,
Speaker 2: you know, Morocco was probably my favorite, like I said,
Speaker 2: really interesting. I actually went from the top of the
Speaker 2: country to the bottom, and it's twice the size of California,
Speaker 2: And that was a really eye opening experience because I
Speaker 2: had always thought Western Sahara was a country, because that's
Speaker 2: what the maps say. But then you go to Morocco
Speaker 2: and you ask a Moroccan is there such thing as
Speaker 2: Western Sahara. They're like, no, there's only southern Morocco. And
Speaker 2: that was a very interesting thing because the West, I
Speaker 2: think we don't understand that dynamic very well. We talked
Speaker 2: to an Irish guy who's part of the UN mission there,
Speaker 2: like I don't know, five episodes ago. Yeah, yeah, really interesting.
Speaker 2: There was an Irish guy in Lebanon, actually that was there.
Speaker 2: It's not related to that, but he owned a bar
Speaker 2: in Beirut and he had been there since the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties because a lot of the ira guys went to
Speaker 2: Lebanon and fought against the Israelis. Yeah, and that guy
Speaker 2: stayed behind and opened a bar. Like just interesting, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: And then there's also like some other sort of like
Speaker 2: this is more not not administrative, but just the way
Speaker 2: that things get done, in the way these missions get done.
Speaker 2: The one twenty seven Echo program you mentioned, there's also
Speaker 2: a Delta Echo Fox Trot yep. I mean they're controversial
Speaker 2: in some quarters. I mean, we want to explain like
Speaker 2: the reality of what those programs are and you know
Speaker 2: what your thoughts are about them. Yeah. So the thing is,
Speaker 2: we have foreign partners we want to work with in
Speaker 2: the conventional military. Usually that's a military unit. So like
Speaker 2: if I'm from the fifth Artillery Brigade, I'm going to
Speaker 2: go to a country that has an artillery brigade and
Speaker 2: train them on how to use their stuff and then
Speaker 2: we work together. That's pretty normal. Well, the one two
Speaker 2: seven Echo thing was like, it's so this is a
Speaker 2: legal authority that Congress says, here's money to do this thing.
Speaker 2: We're authorizing you to do it. And for a long
Speaker 2: time they didn't have that. There were some other authorities
Speaker 2: like twelve oh seven, twelve oh six, twelve o eight,
Speaker 2: which were these other like disparate authorities that kind of
Speaker 2: worked together, but they weren't really meant to work together
Speaker 2: for a while, and they were trying to make us
Speaker 2: so that we could partner with entities that were not
Speaker 2: exactly the traditional entities. They aren't the fifth Artillery Brigade
Speaker 2: in Estonia. Instead, they're an irregular force in Southeast Syria.
Speaker 2: That's got some questionable background, and we're not sure what's
Speaker 2: going to happen when we leave Syria. Like this is
Speaker 2: the kind of people that we're trying to work with
Speaker 2: because the enemy in my enemy is my friend, and
Speaker 2: they are the ones closest to the problem that we
Speaker 2: need to solve right now. So it's kind of an
Speaker 2: expeditionary requirement, like we need to cut the timeline on
Speaker 2: vetting these guys because the big controversy with one two
Speaker 2: seven ECHO, there's no human rights checks. There's no way
Speaker 2: heave adding there is not, So that's a problem. Of course,
Speaker 2: isn't the other controversy that these units get op cond
Speaker 2: to the United States? Right because they're working for us essentially,
Speaker 2: And that's how this law has changed over time. So
Speaker 2: like from twelve oh seven and twelve oh eight, one
Speaker 2: of them was equipment and the other one was training.
Speaker 2: With the new law one two seven ECHO, it's equipment,
Speaker 2: training and operations. And there's been two other things added,
Speaker 2: which is the Delta and foxtrot. Foxtrot is preparation of
Speaker 2: the environment activities that is now codified in law. For
Speaker 2: a long time, it wasn't and actually when I was
Speaker 2: Indonesia working on a Preparation the Environment mission. There was
Speaker 2: no law that said you can do preparation the environment,
Speaker 2: and it was very sketchy. The COCOMs didn't have like
Speaker 2: don't they have like the Human Intelligence Executor and all
Speaker 2: these other OPE authorities. So we were working under the
Speaker 2: ct exord, the counter Terrorism Exort, and the Al Qaeda
Speaker 2: Exword AQ Exword, which had language in it that said
Speaker 2: you could do these things, but there was no law
Speaker 2: because that's just the military saying that's not a law,
Speaker 2: all right. Yeah, So like there was no like thing
Speaker 2: to draw that from that would say like, hey, actually
Speaker 2: it's legal and there's money for it. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 2: what these these authorities do is they give you money
Speaker 2: and permission to go do something, right, So that didn't
Speaker 2: exist in twenty fourteen twenty fifteen, So we were doing stuff.
Speaker 2: We actually had a piece of paper. It was a
Speaker 2: one page piece of paper. So if a congressional delegation came,
Speaker 2: we would give them this piece of paper that explained
Speaker 2: what preparation of the environment is, and they said like
Speaker 2: advance force operations, INTEL operations, and operational preparation in the environment,
Speaker 2: each with one paragraph and That's what we were to
Speaker 2: describe to the Congress visitors, right, which is crazy because
Speaker 2: there was no law. So we were basically telling them like, hey,
Speaker 2: can you let us do this? This is what we
Speaker 2: think we're supposed to do. But then they eventually made
Speaker 2: it into a law. It was a slow process where
Speaker 2: it kind of transformed over time. This last Defense Authorization
Speaker 2: Act last year or this current fiscal year is the
Speaker 2: first time that the Preparation the environment one is actually
Speaker 2: in there. So now it's okay, after twenty years of
Speaker 2: doing it, it's okay. You talked a little bit. I
Speaker 2: mean maybe for folks you can describe a little bit
Speaker 2: of what ope is. I mean you described it. I
Speaker 2: think when we talk about Indonesia. Is there anything else
Speaker 2: you want to tell people that like what that means?
Speaker 2: Because a lot of things can be rolled up, you know,
Speaker 2: even the term operational preparation of the environment that could
Speaker 2: even that could potentially include you know, kinetic lethal absolutely, absolutely, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So there's another part of preparation. There's three buckets, Like
Speaker 2: I said, Intel Ops, Advanced Force operations, and operational preparation
Speaker 2: the environment. Advanced Force Operations is the really interesting one.
Speaker 2: From a kinetic perspective. For example, when we invaded Iraq
Speaker 2: in two thousand and three, there was advanced force operations
Speaker 2: going on in Iraq for a very long time before
Speaker 2: we invaded, basically preparing the environment for the moment that
Speaker 2: the President said go to war. All this stuff would
Speaker 2: fall into place and just happen. And it wasn't by
Speaker 2: accident that those things happen. And that's what preparation the
Speaker 2: environment does into it. For a large scale conflict like that,
Speaker 2: or for some smaller raid like for example, a hostage rescue. Well,
Speaker 2: you need to have an airfield, you need to have
Speaker 2: basing access and overflight. There are all these things that
Speaker 2: have to be ready to go tonight right now, like
Speaker 2: within hours, and the teams are like all over the
Speaker 2: world doing that. And the thing is like you don't
Speaker 2: know exactly what mission you're ready ing right right, So
Speaker 2: you're like, Okay, I'll do this this landing survey, I'll
Speaker 2: do this route reconnaissance, and like I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: these things work together. But some planner at whatever CoCom
Speaker 2: and whatever socom desk is taking all that stuff and
Speaker 2: like weaving it together within like three to eight hours
Speaker 2: or twelve hours or whatever it is before they're like
Speaker 2: National Mission Force is going in to do this tomorrow
Speaker 2: or this morning or whatever, and they're taking all that
Speaker 2: stuff you've collected over time and putting it together. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if the president pushes that button, everything's ready to go. Yep,
Speaker 2: and it's really fast around the world. We talked to
Speaker 2: somebody maybe a year ago now he's a human or
Speaker 2: talking about doing the ope for the Solomani strike, and
Speaker 2: I think they were like when it happened, they were like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, like that's what we were doing. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 2: uh okay, And so tell us about kind of like
Speaker 2: finishing out your Marine Corps career and then you went
Speaker 2: to work with the DIA, right, So I went to
Speaker 2: DIA while I was still in So I left Marsak,
Speaker 2: and my common theme is I didn't want to go
Speaker 2: to a Marine Corps unit. So I've actually only spent
Speaker 2: one year at a Marine Corps unit in twenty years.
Speaker 2: The rest of the time was somewhere else. So after
Speaker 2: Marsok was ending, I was like, first of all, I
Speaker 2: want to stay, like you can't stay. So I hit
Speaker 2: my five years and zero days and I wanted to go.
Speaker 2: I screened for this program at DIA and the Director
Speaker 2: of Operations to go to Defense at TACHE office, which
Speaker 2: is unusual for an enlisted person to do. So I
Speaker 2: went from very clandestine, low visibility stuff all the way
Speaker 2: at to strategic level over declared activities in a country,
Speaker 2: plus some other things that supported that right. So I
Speaker 2: actually went to Jordan to US Embassy Imon. We were
Speaker 2: supporting not only Jordan but also the Syria mission because
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve Syria closed US embassy, Syria closed and
Speaker 2: Damascus went to two different countries, Jordan being one of them.
Speaker 2: So we were supporting half of that mission as well.
Speaker 2: And there was a lot of stuff still going on
Speaker 2: with the Syria and especially southern Syria. There was a
Speaker 2: covert operation called Timber Sycamore that went on for quite
Speaker 2: a while, and there's a lot of support in Jordan
Speaker 2: for that. That infrastructure existed even after the covert operation ended,
Speaker 2: so we were helping a lot with some of the
Speaker 2: things that still existed in those structures, basically working with
Speaker 2: guys inside of Jordan, then working with them inside of
Speaker 2: Syria like at Tenef Garrison atg and also up in
Speaker 2: northeast Syria like Haseka and all those places and kind
Speaker 2: of continuing our operations there separately from what the old
Speaker 2: covert action was that failed essentially and was closed down
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen. Hasako is YPG. Yes, Yeah, yeah, Actually
Speaker 2: I was on a team where there was one of
Speaker 2: our guys on the same task force that he was
Speaker 2: in a picture in the media and he has a
Speaker 2: YPG patch on. This was when Obama was saying there
Speaker 2: are no troops on the ground in Syrias back to
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, and we're like looking at ourselves, like looking
Speaker 2: at our He's like, no boots on the ground. We're like,
Speaker 2: my boots on the ground in Syria, you know, like
Speaker 2: you're saying, we're not here you doing you know. It
Speaker 2: was just a weird time. Yeah, I was there at
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen in Hasaka. Okay, so you're working now for
Speaker 2: the defense at attached to the data YEP out of
Speaker 2: an embassy. What's that job entail? Because you say that
Speaker 2: this is like more over, like you're going out there
Speaker 2: and talking to government officials and things like that. It
Speaker 2: was really fascinating. I'll talk about the training first because
Speaker 2: it was very unique. So it's at DIA, it's a
Speaker 2: Joint Military attach h school. I think it's four months
Speaker 2: or something like that. They basically teach you how to
Speaker 2: be a diplomat, which sounds simple, but that means like
Speaker 2: teaching you how to use a crab fork properly, you know,
Speaker 2: or like these like very interesting utensils. You're actually graded
Speaker 2: on it. They bring in a wardrobe specialist to talk
Speaker 2: to you about why your suit sucks, and then they
Speaker 2: tell you, like how to cut this better so it
Speaker 2: looks better for you, Like all the stuff from there,
Speaker 2: all the way, there's a seer portion to it that
Speaker 2: is a huge surprise. Towards the end, the black hood
Speaker 2: goes over your head. Yeah, and they do it to
Speaker 2: the spouse's too.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: It's some very interesting stuff in there. They like everyone
Speaker 2: does a different job in the embassy, but they teach
Speaker 2: you kind of the baseline of what all people do
Speaker 2: in the defense att test say office, and every embassy
Speaker 2: is different, like if you've been to one embassy, you've
Speaker 2: only been to one embassy, and they teach you like
Speaker 2: kind of more theoretical of like the embassy writ large.
Speaker 2: And then you go to your country and you learn
Speaker 2: your actual mission in that country because it's very unique,
Speaker 2: and Jordan is an interesting one because it supports so
Speaker 2: much in the Middle East. We joke that it's like
Speaker 2: the world's largest land based aircraft carrier because that's where
Speaker 2: most of our jets are in the Middle East, besides
Speaker 2: the Katar But you know, so we're supporting that mission
Speaker 2: for Jordan, but we're also supporting the Syria diplomatic mission.
Speaker 2: So there's like stateless Syrians in Jordan that we're part
Speaker 2: of the resistance to us that we supported, so we
Speaker 2: would have to also meet with them too. And a
Speaker 2: day in the life is basically you're wearing a suit
Speaker 2: all the time everywhere. You're driving armored vehicles, You've got escorts, security.
Speaker 2: You're also setting up visits. So like if let's say
Speaker 2: the Secretary of Defense is coming to visit the country,
Speaker 2: you alone are setting up that visit. There's no like
Speaker 2: entourage to help you. So like you're the guy that's
Speaker 2: planning the aircraft landing. You're talking to the ice guy
Speaker 2: to get the correct correct amount of ice for the
Speaker 2: aircraft or the jet, like everything about it, plus the dinners,
Speaker 2: the security detail. You're going and investigating the hotel top floor,
Speaker 2: middle floor, bottom floor. You're getting other places, you know,
Speaker 2: for their comm suite. You're getting all that stuff booked out,
Speaker 2: and you're the guy doing it, like the point man,
Speaker 2: and they would rotate it around the office so that like, okay,
Speaker 2: you just got the sectaff this month, all right, dasdy
Speaker 2: Middle East is coming for you. You're gonna do that
Speaker 2: next month. The CoCom commanders coming out, you got that,
Speaker 2: Like they'll just we're just rotating all the time handling
Speaker 2: these diplomatic visits or this distinguished visits. At the same
Speaker 2: time we're meeting with our host nation liaison partners. So
Speaker 2: like the Defense at Tesche office represents the Secretary of
Speaker 2: Defense in that country, so you get to liaison with
Speaker 2: the Secretary of Defense equivalent in that country, usually a
Speaker 2: Minister of Defense. That's your primary contact, not his staff him. Right,
Speaker 2: So like on a weekly basis, the sdo DAT is
Speaker 2: going to meet with that guy. And in Jordan, that's
Speaker 2: pretty big because they're coordinating a lot of stuff around
Speaker 2: the area, especially ship visits for the Marine Corps Navy side,
Speaker 2: so a lot of those ships come to port in Akaba.
Speaker 2: I guess who gets to organize those ship visits? You know,
Speaker 2: one of US gets to pick like, Okay, the cure
Speaker 2: star is coming, you got it, and you got to
Speaker 2: go do all the diplomatic communications with the host nation,
Speaker 2: the ministry and all that at the same time that
Speaker 2: you're doing your overt collection activity, at the same time
Speaker 2: that some people are doing clandestine collection as well in
Speaker 2: that same mission, so you have like multiple hats. It
Speaker 2: was a very busy time. Yeah, I can only imagine.
Speaker 2: And what was your impression of some of these programs
Speaker 2: we had jetting into Syria? I mean, as far as
Speaker 2: the efficacy of some of those programs, it was very interesting.
Speaker 2: At the time that I was there, we had one
Speaker 2: major group left, the Magawirathaua the m AT, who was
Speaker 2: like a last vestige of the old program, and they're
Speaker 2: basically just like professional smugglers who really benefited from all
Speaker 2: the ammunition we gave them, and they didn't really do
Speaker 2: much counter terrorism. And at one point, especially like twenty
Speaker 2: one after we killed Solomoni, you know, Iran obviously responded
Speaker 2: to that. They Iran fled so many guys into Syria
Speaker 2: and that camp was surrounded by Hesbela Hesbela Syrians that
Speaker 2: supported Iran. There was like a ring around that base.
Speaker 2: It was completely ineffective, and so we got our guys
Speaker 2: stationed there training the mugwir thaua to do what I
Speaker 2: don't know, because they're completely surrounded. There's no way they're
Speaker 2: going out on any operations whatsoever. Right. And then the
Speaker 2: next thing you did was teaching a counterintelligence human. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I went back to the schoolhouse that I had
Speaker 2: gone to a long time ago, and I taught there,
Speaker 2: teaching interrogations kind of intelligence surveillance, detection routes, source handling.
Speaker 2: We do the whole gambit, you know, because we have
Speaker 2: both CI and HUMID. So the way the course is designed,
Speaker 2: it starts out very basic, like friendly four ste briefing,
Speaker 2: kind of like what I was talking about in Berkina
Speaker 2: fossl wor you're just like, hey, what kind of airplanes
Speaker 2: did you see? That's how it starts out, and it
Speaker 2: just keeps advancing and advancing. Then you get to interrogations,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of the filter point where we drop
Speaker 2: a lot of guys. Interogations is more dynamic, so you have,
Speaker 2: as an instructor more freedom to say that that student
Speaker 2: probably shouldn't be here, So you filter out quite a
Speaker 2: bit of people in interrogations. The ones that survive that
Speaker 2: then get to do source handling. So we go into
Speaker 2: military source operations first, which is you know, recruiting assets
Speaker 2: to support military defense collection things, and we move into
Speaker 2: more advanced primary or principal Asian operations, where we have
Speaker 2: the students running a guy who's got several guys under
Speaker 2: him that the handler can't see or communicate with, and
Speaker 2: that's one of the more complex ways to handle a source.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of towards the end of the course
Speaker 2: they're doing that, and then they do covert communications like
Speaker 2: dead drops, brush passes, brief encounters, things like that, and
Speaker 2: they finish out the course doing a final exercise that's
Speaker 2: about a month long where they're doing the full range
Speaker 2: of trade craft and they use the entire Hampton Roads
Speaker 2: area to do this, so it's you know, it's an
Speaker 2: artificial geography that they have and there's role players and
Speaker 2: bad guy land. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a lot of fun for the instructors. The students are
Speaker 2: under a lot of stress. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then you ended up retiring as a master sergeant I did. Yeah, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 2: what was like, I mean, you came up on your
Speaker 2: twenty and you didn't want to go back to the
Speaker 2: normal Marine Corps. That's what I'm what I'm thinking, So
Speaker 2: I actually, you're exactly right. I was talking to the
Speaker 2: assignments manager and he's like, yeah, I got to give
Speaker 2: you orders to North Carolina to be the intelligence chief
Speaker 2: for this thing. And I'm like, I'm not doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that. That would be a huge
Speaker 2: downgrade from the trajectory I've been going on. He's like,
Speaker 2: you have to give back to the Marine Corps. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm sure you can find someone that will go to
Speaker 2: North Carolina. I'm sure there are people in North Carolina
Speaker 2: that want to stay in North Carolina. Right. He was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. I'm like, what about these other
Speaker 2: four assignments that I listened off. Some of them are
Speaker 2: kind of concessions, like maybe he would say, yes, he
Speaker 2: rejected all of them. He's like, if you don't accept
Speaker 2: North Carolina, then you're gonna get retirement in lieu of orders,
Speaker 2: which is a thing in the Marine Corps like if
Speaker 2: you reject orders and you're at retirement, they forced retire you.
Speaker 2: That's what happened, because I'm not going to camplshit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think he thought I was bluffing. I wasn't bluffing.
Speaker 2: So we'll talk about your post service life a bit.
Speaker 2: But before we go there, I want to talk about
Speaker 2: your book, and I want to chop it up a
Speaker 2: bit about the theory of a regular war because this
Speaker 2: was you know, when you open up a book like
Speaker 2: this and this could be a pretty dry book about doctrine,
Speaker 2: you know, where's he going with all this? But actually
Speaker 2: I was I thought this was a great book, Thank you.
Speaker 2: I was really fascinated by it. And I think that
Speaker 2: the reason why I liked it was because you challenged
Speaker 2: the orthodoxy. Yeah, and you were willing to confront some
Speaker 2: of the failures of the past twenty twenty five years
Speaker 2: that we've had in the military with counterinsurgency theory. And
Speaker 2: you know, some of the younger people don't even remember.
Speaker 2: There's this whole field where people call themselves Koynistas. Yeah
Speaker 2: you remember that shit. I do. So anyway, let's let's
Speaker 2: jump into it. Counterinsurgency theory, the theory of irregular warfare.
Speaker 2: It's fraught with problems. There's a lot of over philosophizing
Speaker 2: that takes place. One of the things you talk about
Speaker 2: is like all the lingo, we're kind of baffling each
Speaker 2: other with bullshit ye words like kill webs cray zone,
Speaker 2: conflict and like all these where we're reinventing terms for
Speaker 2: you know, guerrilla warfare, things that have always been around.
Speaker 2: Start wherever wherever you want with that. As far as
Speaker 2: some of the problems and the faulty assumptions that we've
Speaker 2: made as we approach the theory, I'd like to starting
Speaker 2: before that, what caused your what was the genesis of
Speaker 2: you writing this? Like where did that idea start? So
Speaker 2: I was doing some personal research on the five Pillars
Speaker 2: of a Regular Warfare, which is like a very doctrinal
Speaker 2: Joint Pub Three Tax zero type thing, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: so there's like counter insurgency, there's counter terrorism for an
Speaker 2: internal defense, you know, like all those things. And I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 2: this isn't actually like what's going on. These are just
Speaker 2: descriptions of operations, and I'm like, okay, let's find out
Speaker 2: what's going on, like with the people. And the more
Speaker 2: I was reading, the more I was realizing, like that
Speaker 2: doesn't exist in military writing. It exists in like sociology
Speaker 2: or political science, where they're like talking about some conflict
Speaker 2: in some country, but the military is not looking at that.
Speaker 2: They're just looking at like, Okay, we've received information that
Speaker 2: we will now do this, how do we do it?
Speaker 2: Like they're skipping the first part where you need to
Speaker 2: like figure out why is this happening? Because if you
Speaker 2: can just solve that, a totally different outcome. It's not
Speaker 2: going to be perfect. It's not going to be like
Speaker 2: you won the war, but it's going to probably be
Speaker 2: different than if you just oh, I'm a hammer boom.
Speaker 2: Everything is a nail, right, And that's basically what we
Speaker 2: do with our doctrine. So I wanted to research more,
Speaker 2: and the more I was researching, the more I just
Speaker 2: started taking notes and thinking about it. I had a
Speaker 2: lot of assumptions that were incorrect. When I started out,
Speaker 2: I was a lot like these thinkers. When I first started,
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, yeah, there's got to be some
Speaker 2: like esoteric something you know, And that's not correct. That's
Speaker 2: not true. Instead, it's human beings want certain things. When
Speaker 2: they don't get certain things, they have reactions to those things.
Speaker 2: It's extremely basic, which sound like when I say it
Speaker 2: sounds very simple, it's not simple, especially when we don't
Speaker 2: look at it simply, you know, we come to it like,
Speaker 2: oh no, it's very complex. It's very difficult to solve.
Speaker 2: Oh this is a thousand year old problem between this
Speaker 2: party and this party. You know that's not true. It's
Speaker 2: because this country invaded in this year, and then these
Speaker 2: people reacted to that invasion and they don't like this
Speaker 2: other country invading their country. And then there's remnants that
Speaker 2: are now trying to take power because there's an imbalance
Speaker 2: in what's going on here. I mean, it's like super
Speaker 2: simple when you look like that, when you add like
Speaker 2: names of countries onto it, and I'd be like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: that's the country I like. I can't disagree with that
Speaker 2: because I like them, you know. So that's kind of
Speaker 2: what pushed me to research as deeply as I did.
Speaker 2: I read about five hundred books over a thousand journal articles.
Speaker 2: Like I was like steeped in this for a long time.
Speaker 2: It just so happened that COVID kicked off right after
Speaker 2: I started doing my research for this. I was like,
Speaker 2: this is the perfect time to spend twelve hours a day,
Speaker 2: reading every single day until this thing is over. I
Speaker 2: had no idea obviously when it would be over. So
Speaker 2: I did that the whole the whole time code was
Speaker 2: going on, I was, I was researching every day. Please
Speaker 2: say how many books and how many articles? Around five
Speaker 2: hundred books and about thousand journal articles. And and I love,
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 3: I haven't read this yet, Jack has I will, but
Speaker 3: I love that this is that, this is what you
Speaker 3: were able to boil it down to.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's the lemonade, yeah, out of many lemons. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I'll say it's it's short looking, but there's a
Speaker 2: lot in there.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of books are long because the
Speaker 3: author wants them to be long.
Speaker 2: Isn't that what Mark Twain or somebody said, like, sorry,
Speaker 2: I wrote you such a long letter. I didn't have
Speaker 2: time to write you a short one. I believe that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So from the bad analysis side, you know, you put
Speaker 2: your finger on you know some of these generals that
Speaker 2: came back and they wrote their memoirs and lawed themselves. Uh,
Speaker 2: some of the the Coynistas also, uh. And then also uh,
Speaker 2: this French dude who in Algeria and Vietnam, Yeah, completely
Speaker 2: failed coin efforts. Then he taught the Americans how to
Speaker 2: fail at coin also in his And it's funny because
Speaker 2: so they failed in Vietnam. In Algeria him specifically, I
Speaker 2: mean he was at the Battle of Dan Bampoo. We're
Speaker 2: talking about Roger Trinkiar here, battle of Dam Pimpoo. The
Speaker 2: Vietname has completely overwhelmed this massive French conventional force, and he,
Speaker 2: you know, tail between his legs, went to Algeria the
Speaker 2: dirty war starts. He fails at that, even after torturing
Speaker 2: all these guys, still not getting any help and information
Speaker 2: from that. And then he turns to the US Army
Speaker 2: and says, now that you've taken on our Vietnam problem,
Speaker 2: let me teach you how to solve the Vietnam problem.
Speaker 2: And that's how we learned our interrogation techniques at that
Speaker 2: time was from this guy. And if you look at
Speaker 2: his books during that time, like the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: that guy's name was everywhere. Trink hear, David Galula, all
Speaker 2: of them like oh wow, these guys are geniuses. But
Speaker 2: then you go back and look like trink here, for example,
Speaker 2: was out fighting in the Katonga secession in Congo, you know,
Speaker 2: fighting with a criminal organization against the congalse Like this
Speaker 2: is the guy right there? Are you sure you know? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean it was like learning to eat soup with
Speaker 2: a knight. Yeah, the accidental gorilla. They're all all these
Speaker 2: different like thought leaders at the time. Yeah. What do
Speaker 2: you think went wrong? Though? I mean, what were the
Speaker 2: faulty assumptions that we took into the war on terror
Speaker 2: that didn't pan out for us? I think we in
Speaker 2: the West have a problem with mirror imaging, where we
Speaker 2: not only do we see the enemy as we see ourselves,
Speaker 2: we want them to be like us. And like, even
Speaker 2: with new information, we still are like, no, no, no, they
Speaker 2: have to they have to want a democracy. They have
Speaker 2: to want like how we look at their at them
Speaker 2: and we when we put them up on a PowerPoint slide,
Speaker 2: we structure it like a military table of organization and equipment.
Speaker 2: It's like, wait, I'm not sure that's how the Taliban works. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I would add to that though, not only the enemy,
Speaker 3: but are our partner forced so like the country that
Speaker 3: were like, you know, to think that iraqis or at
Speaker 3: Any's wanted the same thing we want is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean, and also like with the Taliban.
Speaker 2: The Taliban was in power before we showed up, does one, right,
Speaker 2: Like they were the legitimate people running Afghanistan. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: got there and over through the government. The Taliban didn't
Speaker 2: see it as a legitimate change of power. They saw
Speaker 2: it as an invasion and insurgency, right, Like we were
Speaker 2: running an insurgency in Afghanistan. It was just with a
Speaker 2: large Afghan National army for us. Right. So when you
Speaker 2: ask a Taliban guy like, oh, who's the shadow governor
Speaker 2: of this province? Like that doesn't mean anything to him,
Speaker 2: But there is no shadow governor. He is the governor,
Speaker 2: right right, Like why are we calling him that when
Speaker 2: that's not what he is. But we'd have to admit
Speaker 2: that it's actually illegitimate that we were there, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: totally understandable why we went there. But the problem is
Speaker 2: how we're framing our discussion of the things the conditions
Speaker 2: that are there. You know, Like you have an Afghan
Speaker 2: that's running a village. It doesn't matter where he came
Speaker 2: from or if he's Taliban or not, Like, why is
Speaker 2: he running the village way he is? Why do the
Speaker 2: people think this about him or that about him? Like
Speaker 2: we're not looking at it like that. Instead we're like, well, no,
Speaker 2: he's a Taliban guy. He's a bad guy.
Speaker 3: And you know, I mean from their point of view,
Speaker 3: like we went in into Afghanistan and we won the
Speaker 3: war in the first thirty days. Our job was to
Speaker 3: destroy AQ YEP, and then once we destroyed AQ, we're like, well,
Speaker 3: why don't we just hang out for a while, yeah,
Speaker 3: and find somebody else to fight, And it was the Taliban.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, I mean, the Taliban
Speaker 2: are not a new phenomenon Operation cyclone. I mean, we
Speaker 2: basically created them or the conditions for them at the
Speaker 2: very least. And even like Hekmatyar and all those guys
Speaker 2: like those weren't new people. You know. It's just kind
Speaker 2: of shocking to look at it, Like we live life
Speaker 2: in little chunks of memory. Yeah, and we don't connect
Speaker 2: them altogether, Like yeah, these Mujahideen were the same muja hitden.
Speaker 2: It's not like new muja hideen showed up, Like right,
Speaker 2: they're the same Mujahideen. We didn't fund the al Qaeda,
Speaker 2: you know, or create al Qaeda the way some people
Speaker 2: would would assert. But you're right, we set the conditions.
Speaker 2: We normalized these wlawless, armed groups running around against the end. Well,
Speaker 2: we also allowed the Pakistanis to tell us everything to
Speaker 2: do in the nineteen eighties, like they were leading the show.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh yeah, this group over here, you should
Speaker 2: work with them, this group, Let's definitely give them weapons,
Speaker 2: you know, without really asking many questions about it, because
Speaker 2: our goal was to defeat the Russians, right, it wasn't
Speaker 2: just stop insurgence, right right, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, but
Speaker 2: that short sighted us again. It will bite us, and
Speaker 2: it bites us every single time. One of the assumptions
Speaker 2: you point to in the book that you alluded to
Speaker 2: a bit, but I think it's important to put our
Speaker 2: finger on is that one of our assumptions is we
Speaker 2: start with this idea that the insurgency is illegitimate and
Speaker 2: the government is legitimate. Yeah, but you and others I've
Speaker 2: read over the years point out, like in Afghanistan is
Speaker 2: a great example that you mentioned that a lot of
Speaker 2: times this isn't the case. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's ungoverned
Speaker 2: spaces or semi governed spaces, especially in Africa for example,
Speaker 2: like you go out to southern Algeria, there's a whole
Speaker 2: state within a state down there that believes that it's
Speaker 2: the Surawi Democratic Republic, right, the SADR, if you ask them,
Speaker 2: that's what they are. If you ask the Algerians, that's
Speaker 2: what they are. If you have some Rocans, that's not
Speaker 2: what they are. Right. But really all it's all about perspective,
Speaker 2: and that's a lot what I talk about in the
Speaker 2: book is like where does sovereignty lie and is it
Speaker 2: viewed as legitimate by that specific observer, Because it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter how we observe it. What matters is how are
Speaker 2: they observing it? And we need to understand that and
Speaker 2: then work within the conditions of their vision of it.
Speaker 2: And if we don't, we're just gonna be solving a
Speaker 2: problem the way we wish we could solve it and
Speaker 2: not the way it should be solved. Right, you get
Speaker 2: pretty in depth into the theory you want to tell
Speaker 2: us about the dysfunctional sovereign and the liminal sovereign and
Speaker 2: some of these concepts that you win in your book. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So the young governed space as I was talking about,
Speaker 2: it's kind of that liminal sovereignty. Like if you go
Speaker 2: to see the FARC in Columbia, for example, they govern
Speaker 2: a space or they used to. Right, yeah, exactly because
Speaker 2: the government, the legitimate quote unquote government cannot reach that
Speaker 2: space because of the way the terrain is structured specifically,
Speaker 2: and also because of local support and other things. That's
Speaker 2: sovereignty over terrain. That the cup that the legitimate government
Speaker 2: cannot control, so someone else is filling that space. And
Speaker 2: a liminal space is basically a gap, something filling in there,
Speaker 2: and that's in that case the farc and in other
Speaker 2: cases it's cindera luminoso in Peru for example. Right, not
Speaker 2: because people love these groups, but because there is no
Speaker 2: other sovereign to look up to, like, well, how else
Speaker 2: are we gonna have law and order? How else am
Speaker 2: I gonna be able to take my trash out and
Speaker 2: make sure it goes away. I was in Lebanon for
Speaker 2: a while when the government was not picking up garbage.
Speaker 2: This is a big thing in twenty sixteen, and there
Speaker 2: was like garbage lining the streets because society no longer
Speaker 2: had the ability to move trash, which is something very simple.
Speaker 2: But think about how that will affect a lot of
Speaker 2: other things in society. Right, we don't think about it
Speaker 2: like that. We're like, well, let's have an election and
Speaker 2: that guy's going to be the president, and we're gonna
Speaker 2: support him, like Honey Karzai for example, We're gonna support
Speaker 2: that guy. Well, what about the other people and how
Speaker 2: do they actually govern themselves? Typically? You know, then there's
Speaker 2: social order where the way the government and the people
Speaker 2: are structured is different in every country is everywhere? I mean,
Speaker 2: a country is a made up thing, you know, let's
Speaker 2: be honest, Like, the concept of a country is pretty new.
Speaker 2: It's four hundred years old. The Treaty of West Valley
Speaker 2: in sixteen forty eight is what made states. There were
Speaker 2: no states before that didn't exist. Even when you read
Speaker 2: like macis the Prince, there was no such thing as
Speaker 2: a state. There were really powerful cities like Florence, which
Speaker 2: is where he was. There wasn't like Italy, right, there
Speaker 2: were not until like late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So those are things that I think we ignore a lot,
Speaker 2: which is problematic because we look at our country that
Speaker 2: we have now we say, we have this wonderful country,
Speaker 2: which we do, we have this amazing constitution, but we
Speaker 2: forget like how did we get that, How did the
Speaker 2: revolution that we had go? How could it have gone sideways?
Speaker 2: You know, the Constitution is not something that was agreed
Speaker 2: upon by everyone that was at the convention. It was
Speaker 2: actually a fight document and the result was disagreements on
Speaker 2: a paper. That's what the Constitution is. Like the Constitutional Convention,
Speaker 2: almost everybody disagreed on something, and that document that came
Speaker 2: out of it is because people finally compromised. But then
Speaker 2: we go to place like Afghanistan and we're like, here
Speaker 2: is your new constitution we have written for you, right, Like,
Speaker 2: how do we expect them to do that? If we
Speaker 2: couldn't even do that, you know, and we were fighting
Speaker 2: over it. You know, there there were loyalists that were
Speaker 2: supporting the British and while we wrote the Constitution and
Speaker 2: the Declaration of Independence obviously, you know, but going back
Speaker 2: to that, the Declaration of Independence, if you read it,
Speaker 2: it has exactly the same stuff in it that a
Speaker 2: lot of these revolutionaries today say, you know, we want
Speaker 2: to shake off the burden of this and that, and
Speaker 2: you know, have our freedom and the ability to determine
Speaker 2: our own X, Y and Z, like these are just
Speaker 2: basic things that people want. And if there's group A
Speaker 2: and group B, and group B is doing it faster
Speaker 2: and better and more trustworthy than Group A, they're probably
Speaker 2: going to pick Group B, you know. And if we're
Speaker 2: Group A, we're kind of out of luck in that situation,
Speaker 2: just like Afghanistan, where like we're supporting the wrong side essentially,
Speaker 2: like it's not going to be the winning side, especially
Speaker 2: when you pull the structures away, which is us, and
Speaker 2: it just collapses.
Speaker 3: And I mean we really have this naive yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of view these things through a moral lens, yes,
Speaker 3: like and a cultural moral lens. Really it's like does
Speaker 3: their culture mirror hours? Do they do things that are
Speaker 3: would be acceptable here? And in the answer is no,
Speaker 3: then they're obviously bad people.
Speaker 2: We also do it in a really normative way where
Speaker 2: we say you should be this way instead of saying
Speaker 2: how would you like to be? We don't ask that question.
Speaker 2: What do you think is the policy prescription? As far
Speaker 2: as I mean you could use a specific example if
Speaker 2: you want, or just like broadly, how could we do
Speaker 2: this better? I think what we need to do is
Speaker 2: empower the military to actually ask why. It's not designed
Speaker 2: to do that for very obvious reasons, especially in a
Speaker 2: conventional war, you don't want people asking if you don't
Speaker 2: want that private on the front line. Are you sure
Speaker 2: we should go to that trench? Right? But in a
Speaker 2: non conventional situation, in a regular situation, or like when
Speaker 2: sovereignty is broken down, we need to really analyze that.
Speaker 2: In the military. We don't need to rely on someone
Speaker 2: else somewhere else saying here's a policy, go do it.
Speaker 2: We should be able to ask them why is the
Speaker 2: policy like that? And that is actually not that controversial
Speaker 2: because if you look at the State Department, they have
Speaker 2: something called the Descent Channel where they're allowed to dissent
Speaker 2: all the way up to the Secretary in an official
Speaker 2: channel that has archived and actually George Kennon's Long Telegram
Speaker 2: was one of the original Descent Channel telegrams. Is very long.
Speaker 2: It's why it's called a long telegram. But there was
Speaker 2: another one about the Syria policy during Operation Timber Sycamore,
Speaker 2: where the State Department said, this is really stupid. The
Speaker 2: way you're armoring these guys is going to end up
Speaker 2: falling back on you. These guys are affiliated with all
Speaker 2: News for Refront and all Kaida and you know it.
Speaker 2: And they wrote that in this dissent Channel memo to
Speaker 2: the Secretary and it's been declassified. You can actually read
Speaker 2: it now. But why can't the military do that? Right?
Speaker 3: It's almost though, I wonder how that would go because
Speaker 3: the military, least, I think some of the things that
Speaker 3: we deal with, the military lied, whether they were lying
Speaker 3: to themselves or lying to the administrations. You know, we
Speaker 3: fought a twenty year war one year at a time,
Speaker 3: and everybody's saying, that's great, victory is just around the corner.
Speaker 3: They never even really. I think that a lot of
Speaker 3: what the administration are doing were based on what the
Speaker 3: military was telling.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And I think there's a lot of high
Speaker 2: ranking officers, especially generals, that are very happy to have
Speaker 2: these wars because it means they get accolades, they get
Speaker 2: written up, they get all this credit and glory, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Because that's what they've been waiting their whole career for. Like, sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: i've been here forty years, it's my turn. And actually,
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, when we were in Syria and Iraq,
Speaker 2: we had twenty two generals in our training command of
Speaker 2: five hundred guys. That's one general for every squad. That
Speaker 2: is absolutely insane. It was it was nuts, Like to
Speaker 2: get author's age. Like those strikes I was telling you about.
Speaker 2: I was doing dynamic strikes, which means within like twelve
Speaker 2: hours we're hitting the target. There was also deliberate targeting,
Speaker 2: which is like days or weeks. Right, you had to
Speaker 2: get like five different generals to approve your deliberate strike,
Speaker 2: and each general had a different reason for being the
Speaker 2: one consulted. So like this guy is to determine whether
Speaker 2: this is a residential facility. This guy is to determine
Speaker 2: the right level of men, women and children in the house.
Speaker 2: This guy is the one that gets to determine the
Speaker 2: time of day. Like they had distributed among all the generals.
Speaker 2: Everyone gets credit exactly, well exactly, so many generals and
Speaker 2: not enough jobs. Absolutely, you know, it's everybody's kind of
Speaker 2: washing each other's. Oh yeah, they're no general left behind. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: The other thing that you know you mentioned in your
Speaker 2: book and we talked about before the show a little bit,
Speaker 2: was talk about the special forces side of things, unconventional
Speaker 2: warfare and the assumptions we get into going into that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the opposite of counterinsurgency. Now we are the insurgence. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, insurgency is basically a people rebelling against the
Speaker 2: existing sovereign, which is something I talked about in the book. Well,
Speaker 2: unconventional warfare is us supporting them doing it, right, So
Speaker 2: if we're doing it, then it's okay. We're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a legitimate unconventional warfare operation. If we're on
Speaker 2: the other side, though, if we're like the counter insurgents,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh no, that those insurgents are really bad,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's really interesting, like are they bad
Speaker 2: just because we're on the other side, right, and we're
Speaker 2: afraid to ask ourselves that. Right. And the new book
Speaker 2: you have coming out, Iran's Shadow Weapons, that's coming out
Speaker 2: this summer. Yep, you just got the proof copy, Yeah, today,
Speaker 2: tell us what that book's about. Yeah. So, I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people misunderstand Iran for various reasons. It's
Speaker 2: kind of looked at as this like evil monolith that's
Speaker 2: like God's fingers coming to take over the world and
Speaker 2: all this, and I think that's a huge misunderstanding. And
Speaker 2: what the book does is it looks at what is
Speaker 2: the regime actually doing and thinking, not just at like
Speaker 2: a strategic level of like big picture stuff, how are
Speaker 2: they actually spotting assessing and recruiting sources. How do they
Speaker 2: run SDRs, how do they pick safe houses and keep
Speaker 2: safe houses? How do they do kidnappings inside the United States?
Speaker 2: Like nitty gritty details and the really unique thing about
Speaker 2: this book. First of all, nothing like this exists in print.
Speaker 2: I guarantee you because I've read everything else just like
Speaker 2: this book other one. I did the same thing for
Speaker 2: this one. I read literally everything out there, including in
Speaker 2: other languages, to a lot of Farsi sources in this
Speaker 2: But the big piece is I got a bunch of
Speaker 2: stuff declassified. So there's a lot of stuff appearing to
Speaker 2: the public for the first time that was top secret, secret,
Speaker 2: no foreign ACCM. A lot of protected information that's now
Speaker 2: available showing things we knew, like for example, during the
Speaker 2: Iran Iraq War, we supported Saddam Hussein and we supported Iran.
Speaker 2: We supported Iran with Iran Contra and some other programs.
Speaker 2: We also supported stim Hussein because the goal there was
Speaker 2: not to defeat Saddam Musin or defeat Iran where each
Speaker 2: other down exactly, is to bleed them out right. But
Speaker 2: with this declassified stuff, you can see way more detail
Speaker 2: about like how that actually happened and the Iran Contra
Speaker 2: issue was only like one of many programs we had.
Speaker 2: And this is for the first time that people are
Speaker 2: gonna be able to read about this. And that's just
Speaker 2: one example. What were the other programs, like weapons programs also? Yeah,
Speaker 2: so actually, even after the war ended, we actually worked
Speaker 2: with the IRGC in Bosnia to arm certain Muslims in Bosnia. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And all the memos between Clinton and his staff are
Speaker 2: now released that are discussing that. In fact, the Italian
Speaker 2: president was sitting in the Clinton's office saying, you know,
Speaker 2: you can try to tell us not to give the
Speaker 2: weapons to the Iranians, but we know that you're doing
Speaker 2: it too. It's very fascinating stuff that no one has
Speaker 2: seen in public. Geez. And when does the book do out.
Speaker 2: It's coming out probably early August. Okay, I got the proofs.
Speaker 2: I got to hurry up and do an index for it.
Speaker 2: That's actually they could go. We'd love to have you
Speaker 2: back in to talk about that. I'd love to. It's
Speaker 2: so fascinating. And you're now at Yale law, so I'll
Speaker 2: go to Yale in August. Oh, okay, you're getting ready
Speaker 2: for that. I'm in a holding pattern, right, now just
Speaker 2: waiting for that. So how long's law school? Three years?
Speaker 2: Three years? Yeah? And what are you like interested in?
Speaker 2: You know, you have this extensive national security background and
Speaker 2: now you want to go and you know, take the
Speaker 2: bar exam, become a lawyer. What are you going to
Speaker 2: go into next? Do you think? So? I like doing
Speaker 2: hard pivots, So I'm gonna do like a ninety degree
Speaker 2: pivot away from the military and government unless I'm on
Speaker 2: the other side. So I want to work in a
Speaker 2: big law firm, either doing like international arbitration. Like recently,
Speaker 2: Facebook has had some problems in Ireland because they avoid
Speaker 2: US taxes by being in Ireland, but Ireland has some issues.
Speaker 2: I would be an attorney representing Facebook fighting Ireland essentially,
Speaker 2: which is kind of cool that like international level or
Speaker 2: doing things like export controls. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff that has dual use, which means it can be
Speaker 2: used for civilian purposes and it can be used for
Speaker 2: military purposes, like countries' nuclear programs. For example, Iran has
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff from Germany and the United States
Speaker 2: in a lot of their nuclear facilities. So let's work
Speaker 2: on the export controls of that and see how we
Speaker 2: can fix that problem or make it so that certain
Speaker 2: countries like Great Britain for example, has easier access to
Speaker 2: certain US technology that's national security and nature. But i'd
Speaker 2: be representing like the company for example, Boeing or Lockheed
Speaker 2: or something like that. And you're also involved in the
Speaker 2: Irregular Warfare initiative, that's right, Yeah, what is that? So
Speaker 2: that's a collaboration between Princeton University and West Point. And
Speaker 2: there's a podcast that's actually how it started, the Irregular
Speaker 2: Warfare Podcast. And then there is a series of articles
Speaker 2: that are published online kind of like the Small Wars Journal,
Speaker 2: and actually recently we've paired up with them to do
Speaker 2: like cross collaboration of sharing each other's articles, and it's
Speaker 2: allowing practitioners anders in the field to kind of come
Speaker 2: together and talk about these issues. You know, Like recently
Speaker 2: we had an article about Boko Haram, like up to date,
Speaker 2: we had one as soon as the India Pakistan thing
Speaker 2: kicked off, we had an author in India writing an
Speaker 2: article about what's going on in India on the Indian
Speaker 2: unconventional warfare side, So very interesting. It's not just US authors,
Speaker 2: so it's mostly US authors, but not you know, strictly,
Speaker 2: so pretty interesting space to kind of share that information.
Speaker 2: It's a nonprofit so it's just there for people to read,
Speaker 2: and it's actually open to anyone to submit articles if
Speaker 2: they want to, depending if it matches up with what
Speaker 2: we're looking for. But yeah, all very irregular stuff, so
Speaker 2: special operations on the military side all the way to
Speaker 2: some of the issues like I talk about my book,
Speaker 2: like the breakdown of society and what do we do
Speaker 2: about that kind of things. I mean, we covered a
Speaker 2: lot of ground here in a relatively short period of time,
Speaker 2: and thank you for sharing your experiences. Like is there
Speaker 2: anything else that you know we haven't talked about that
Speaker 2: you'd really like to discuss anything we overlooked. I think
Speaker 2: I would like to discuss the Iaron stuff in another episode,
Speaker 2: because that will go on and on. Okay, Yeah, shoot
Speaker 2: me a copy of the book when it comes out,
Speaker 2: or an advanced copy, and yeah, I'd love to read it.
Speaker 2: It sounds really interesting. Yeah. I actually have the IRGC
Speaker 2: station in Vienna line and block charted out completely. It
Speaker 2: tells you exactly who's who in the embassy and holy shit, fascinating. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm excited. It's amazing. Yeah too. Yeah, I'll get you
Speaker 2: on anything else. Do you like, where can people find
Speaker 2: you on the web? Where can people find your books?
Speaker 2: So I have a website Jonathan W. Hackett dot com.
Speaker 2: I've got my books listed there, and any podcasts I've
Speaker 2: been on are also there. Best place to contact me
Speaker 2: is LinkedIn. I'm the Jonathan Hackett on LinkedIn. The the yeah,
Speaker 2: because Jonathan Hackett was taken so I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: well I'm the Jonathan Hackett so that, yeah, LinkedIn is
Speaker 2: the best way. That's how I found you. Actually, that's
Speaker 2: how I found you, and that's how I found Millburn
Speaker 2: too on LinkedIn. Cool man. So, yeah, thank you for
Speaker 2: telling us about your career and you know, your academic
Speaker 2: works and everything else that's going on. And yeah, we'd
Speaker 2: love to have you back to talk about this second book. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I appreciate the time. Yeah, absolutely, man. Otherwise, we'll see
Speaker 2: all you guys next time. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I
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