Speaker 1: Special Operations, Cobert Ops Spionage. The Team House with your
Speaker 1: hosts Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to episode two hundred and twenty three
Speaker 2: of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park.
Speaker 2: Our guest on tonight's show is Andy Stump. Andy served
Speaker 2: in the Sealed Teams as a NCO and then as
Speaker 2: an officer, and he's also the host of the Queered
Speaker 2: Hot podcast that I'm sure everyone who watches this show
Speaker 2: is familiar with Andy and his work. So Andy, thank
Speaker 2: you very much for joining us tonight. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 2: for having me. Are we gonna do all that stuff
Speaker 2: that came in the intro, like very.
Speaker 3: Special Operations espionage or are we going to do that
Speaker 3: stuff because that sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about it, all right.
Speaker 4: We're wringing it here tonight. Guys, no script, so be prepared.
Speaker 4: We might do a little improv later.
Speaker 2: We don't even know perfect cool man, So I'm going
Speaker 2: to start from the top, like we do with pretty
Speaker 2: much all of our guests. I want to ask you
Speaker 2: a little bit about your origin story about you know,
Speaker 2: what your upbringing was, like, how you grew up and
Speaker 2: sort of how that took you, propelled you towards the Navy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there was nothing special about it. I
Speaker 3: grew up dead, center of the road, middle class in
Speaker 3: a beach town in what they consider to be northern California.
Speaker 3: But when I look at the map, it's still like
Speaker 3: right in the center, Santa Cruz, just on the north
Speaker 3: end of the Monterey Bay. Aggressively average athlete, below average student.
Speaker 3: I think my final GPA in high school was about
Speaker 3: a one point eight, and I was really reaching for
Speaker 3: the rim on that one. And you know, I come
Speaker 3: from a military family, but I know for a fact
Speaker 3: that it was not the path that either of my
Speaker 3: parents were looking for. So my mom's side of the house,
Speaker 3: my grandmother actually started as a Navy nurse and was
Speaker 3: discharged due to post traumatic stress of caring for people
Speaker 3: who were coming off of the front lines Vietnam. Lied
Speaker 3: about it and joined the army to become a nurse again. Wow,
Speaker 3: I'm just savage in so many different ways, and met
Speaker 3: her husband at the time, who was a supply officer,
Speaker 3: so Army. On my mom's side of the house, my
Speaker 3: dad's side of the house was Navy. His dad and
Speaker 3: his dad's brother like ninety nine. Yeah, those two were
Speaker 3: both in the Navy, and then my father was in
Speaker 3: the navy. He was actually on the first squadron of
Speaker 3: Jacuzi propelled patrol boats in Vietnam, the Mark ones, which
Speaker 3: fast forward, you know, decades later. I used to ride
Speaker 3: around with the Mark five's, so kind of the same pool,
Speaker 3: different water in it, for sure, not a great experience
Speaker 3: in Vietnam, like a lot of people had, and he
Speaker 3: brought a lot of that home with him. So, you know,
Speaker 3: the drinking culture on the army lived very vicariously, let's
Speaker 3: just say, on my mom's side of the house and
Speaker 3: on my dad's side of the house. It was not
Speaker 3: necessarily drinking, but just men who didn't want to talk
Speaker 3: about their feelings because men aren't allowed to have feelings,
Speaker 3: they just go build things with their bare hands or
Speaker 3: tear them down. Neither of those are, I've come to
Speaker 3: find out, and probably knew before even experimenting with both
Speaker 3: are a very good choice when it comes to dealing
Speaker 3: with any issues you may have. But I say all
Speaker 3: that to say that, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 3: the military left a good taste on either side of
Speaker 3: my mom. You know, my mom or my dad, my mom.
Speaker 3: I experienced it more from an upbringing perspective, kind of
Speaker 3: bouncing around being an army brat, my dad through a
Speaker 3: first hand experience in Vietnam. And you know, then I
Speaker 3: come home when I'm seventeen years old and I have
Speaker 3: a Navy recruiter with me asking them to sign permission
Speaker 3: for me to join the Delaight entry program, which is
Speaker 3: idiotic thinking back about it. All I did was make
Speaker 3: the recruiters job easier that month because I still had
Speaker 3: to graduate high school and turn eighteen. Anyway, I don't
Speaker 3: even still don't to day, don't know why that program exists,
Speaker 3: but that's the path that I took. And you know,
Speaker 3: to their credit, they never tried to talk me out
Speaker 3: of it, not a single hey, you shouldn't do this,
Speaker 3: This isn't what we would want for you. A lot
Speaker 3: of questions about, you know why, like why why am
Speaker 3: I interested in this? What do I necessarily want to
Speaker 3: get out of it? What do I think it's going
Speaker 3: to be, But never an attempt to try to talk
Speaker 3: me out of it, which I deeply appreciate to this day,
Speaker 3: and it's something that I've tried to pay forward with
Speaker 3: my own kids as well, and then from there you
Speaker 3: know that the path into the seal community is unfortunately
Speaker 3: far to public, as is everything with the seal community.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there's a several TV shows and probably an
Speaker 3: IMAX movie about enlisting in the Navy.
Speaker 2: Could and could? I just I just want to stop
Speaker 2: you for one second, just ask what were the answers
Speaker 2: to those questions for you personally as a seventeen year
Speaker 2: old young man, as far as like why what you
Speaker 2: were hoping to get out of it? Where did that
Speaker 2: come from?
Speaker 3: I don't know, and I still don't have a good answer.
Speaker 3: I heard my dad was not a seal. He worked
Speaker 3: with seals occasionally in the Maykong Delta. Obviously, given the
Speaker 3: platform that he was on, it would be used for
Speaker 3: insertion and an extraction. So I heard the term from
Speaker 3: him first, but not like hey, you should go check
Speaker 3: this out. But it intrigued me, and they we're talking like,
Speaker 3: let's see here. When I first heard that term, we
Speaker 3: were in the late eighties, And I say that to
Speaker 3: highlight that the Internet wasn't exactly as you know what
Speaker 3: it is right now. I didn't have a smartphone in
Speaker 3: my pocket that could access unfettered information. So I went
Speaker 3: to the library, and most of the information that I
Speaker 3: could find was from Vietnam. You know, there's a little
Speaker 3: bit about World War Two, but the UDT, the predecessors
Speaker 3: to the seal teams, you know, they weren't they weren't
Speaker 3: doing that much. They were for amphibious reconnaissance and basically
Speaker 3: making sure that you know, the catastrophes that had occurred
Speaker 3: in some of the beach landings, you know, where the
Speaker 3: landing craft would hit a coral reef and drop the
Speaker 3: ramp and people would run off of it non boyant
Speaker 3: gear that that didn't happen again. So not a whole lot,
Speaker 3: but everything that I could find was just fascinating to me.
Speaker 3: It was like this magnetizing poll. And I think at eleven,
Speaker 3: I certainly didn't have an answer that question, like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, it sounds cool, but that's also also part
Speaker 3: of the answer. Now when I'm forty five. It did
Speaker 3: sound cool, and it was cool, but it sounded hard,
Speaker 3: and it sounded like not everybody could do it, and
Speaker 3: it sounded like they got to do really cool shit.
Speaker 3: And at eleven, that sounded awesome to me. I had
Speaker 3: no you know, I mean, like, you know, looking glass forward,
Speaker 3: I didn't have any idea about nine to eleven or
Speaker 3: what the occupation would actually become. Most accurate movie at
Speaker 3: the time was Navy Seal starring Charlie Sheen, which I
Speaker 3: thought was I considered to be a documentary, much like
Speaker 3: I thought the Rogue Warrior series should have been in
Speaker 3: the nonfiction section as opposed to the fiction. Both of
Speaker 3: them is galactically wrong, but it just it hooked me,
Speaker 3: and it was really weird growing up for people to
Speaker 3: hear me be able to like, you know that it's
Speaker 3: actually a terrible question. I think we asked young men
Speaker 3: and women like, oh, what do you want to do
Speaker 3: with your life? Who the fuck knows what you want
Speaker 3: to do with your life at fourteen years old?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: But I had an answer for that, and not many
Speaker 3: people have that answer. And then I got into the
Speaker 3: community and I was surrounded by people who had the
Speaker 3: same feeling and lack of ability to describe that desire
Speaker 3: and why they wanted to do it and what they
Speaker 3: wanted to get out of it. So it became a
Speaker 3: really uncommon narrative to the most common narrative that anybody had.
Speaker 3: When I served with which is like a total non
Speaker 3: answer to your question. But I still, even later with
Speaker 3: a better vocabulary, have a hard time explaining or putting
Speaker 3: a pin in like the exactly why it just it
Speaker 3: was what it was.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's pretty common though. You know, no
Speaker 4: matter what you know, special operations unit or what sort
Speaker 4: of military element, people think about a lot of them.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of people have this idea early on,
Speaker 4: and it could be the A team or the Navy
Speaker 4: Seals or g I Joe. It can be any of
Speaker 4: these things that make you think that to make you
Speaker 4: sort of separate that thing out and go that sounds hard,
Speaker 4: it sounds fun, it sounds challenging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean there's a reason why the Navy back top
Speaker 3: gun multiple times. Yeah, shockingly, Fighter pilot recruitment went through
Speaker 3: the roof right right.
Speaker 4: And and for those who don't make it in the program, well,
Speaker 4: the Navy has a whole bunch of officers to choose from.
Speaker 4: You know, it's the same way.
Speaker 3: And there's that pesky contract you signed. Wow, you wanted
Speaker 3: to fly jets and you failed. That's fine, we'll find
Speaker 3: a job for you. Oh you didn't want to be
Speaker 3: a surface warfare officer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's too bad, right right, So Andy, I won't
Speaker 2: ask you if your buds class was hard or not.
Speaker 2: I promise I won't go there. But I mean, it's
Speaker 2: like the hardest, but they're all the same, No, I know.
Speaker 2: I'm just not going to ask you to recount. You know,
Speaker 2: did you have to carry a raft over your head?
Speaker 2: We know, but I will just going to carry the boats.
Speaker 2: I will ask you, you know, did you get the
Speaker 2: challenge that you were looking for as as you started
Speaker 2: to go through that process and earn your trida? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean the curriculum. I didn't understand the curriculum when
Speaker 3: I went through as a student. It made so much
Speaker 3: more sense to me when I went back as an
Speaker 3: instructor a decade later in my career. But the cool
Speaker 3: thing about the curriculum is it's been largely the same
Speaker 3: since the forties and it just works. You know, there's
Speaker 3: something in there for everybody. And I think, looking back
Speaker 3: on it, having gone through and then applying it to others,
Speaker 3: it's just trying to figure out what it is.
Speaker 2: That bugs you.
Speaker 3: You know, is it cold water? Is it sleep deprivation,
Speaker 3: is it exhaustion? Is it being hungry, is it all
Speaker 3: of those things? Let's find out what it is that
Speaker 3: bugs you and really suppress you as a person down
Speaker 3: to your lowest point, and then how do you make
Speaker 3: decisions right while we watch you? You know, can you
Speaker 3: make good decisions? Can you follow procedure regardless of all
Speaker 3: those other external circumstances, And you know it's I think
Speaker 3: the curriculum works because for you know, what's it like
Speaker 3: eighty you know, about eighty years at this point, it
Speaker 3: has been able to take people to that point and
Speaker 3: asking those questions and net largely the people that we're
Speaker 3: looking for. You know, it's a selection course and not
Speaker 3: there's no selection course that is perfect. So it's a
Speaker 3: bell curve. You get the good, bad, and the ugly
Speaker 3: and everything in between. But it does a really good
Speaker 3: job of, if finding a way to push people to
Speaker 3: that point, which gives the instructors the opportunity to kind
Speaker 3: of take a peek into their psyche and into their
Speaker 3: soul a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, was there any particular challenge that you faced while
Speaker 4: you were in Buds that you that you thought would
Speaker 4: get you or were you kind of even keel the
Speaker 4: way the whole way.
Speaker 3: Through in a lot of ways. It was what I
Speaker 3: thought it would be. I mean, the attrition rate has
Speaker 3: been the attrition rate largely again since the forties, so
Speaker 3: that that shouldn't be a shock to anybody, and anybody
Speaker 3: with a double digit IQ should probably ask themselves, well,
Speaker 3: why is that the case? And where does most of
Speaker 3: this attrition occur? And it's actually in the first five
Speaker 3: weeks in first phase where they're teaching you absolutely nothing,
Speaker 3: and it's a physical you know, the first ten weeks
Speaker 3: of training in first phase, it's just purely physical in nature.
Speaker 3: It's where the you know, the telephone poles and the
Speaker 3: obstacle course and the boats and the surf and all
Speaker 3: that stuff occurs. And where hell we co occurs where
Speaker 3: the vast majority of the attrition happens. Usually, you know,
Speaker 3: starts on a Sunday, but most people have quit by
Speaker 3: about Tuesday morning. But there isn't There was not any
Speaker 3: one thing I describe buds, and I'm sure this is
Speaker 3: true of any special operations pipeline that has the appropriate duration.
Speaker 3: It's not any one day or any one thing. It's
Speaker 3: the combination of all of the things. It's like taking
Speaker 3: a piece of eighty grit sandpaper and going up to
Speaker 3: somebody and saying, hey, I need you to grate this
Speaker 3: across your knuckles once. You know, the first time they
Speaker 3: do it, it's not going to be comfortable. But if
Speaker 3: you tell me they all have to do it once,
Speaker 3: it's not.
Speaker 2: Going to be a problem. Buds is taking.
Speaker 3: That sandpaper across your knuckles, you know, one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty two, one hundred and eighty three times, and when
Speaker 3: your hands are already bleeding and you know they're blistered,
Speaker 3: and it's excruciatingly painful. It's the totality of kind of
Speaker 3: doing the same thing over and over and over again
Speaker 3: that gets people, not just one evolution in and of itself.
Speaker 3: It's physically challenging. But and again this is I think
Speaker 3: this is true probably of any special operations pipeline, the
Speaker 3: amount of testing that you have to do to show
Speaker 3: up for your first day, Like, if you can pass
Speaker 3: all those tests from a physiological perspective.
Speaker 2: You have the ability to graduate the course.
Speaker 3: It's what fails is the muscle that's above your neck,
Speaker 3: not the muscle that's below it. So it's hard, but
Speaker 3: more people just give up than anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and what year did you arrive at the
Speaker 2: teams and what was that like kind of stepping in
Speaker 2: the door.
Speaker 3: Late ninety seven, I checked into Team five, and I
Speaker 3: mean it was I don't have the vocabulary or how
Speaker 3: awesome it was. I mean it's since I was eleven, Like,
Speaker 3: it's all I ever wanted to do. And then you
Speaker 3: walk across the quarterdeck, which is the stupid naval terminology.
Speaker 3: Army guys probably just call it the front door, but
Speaker 3: we have to have some stupid term, and uh, You're
Speaker 3: surrounded by.
Speaker 2: Your heroes and it's bad ass.
Speaker 3: They're wearing like board shorts and flip flops, T shirts
Speaker 3: and sunglasses and they're playing volleyball on Friday and having
Speaker 3: a kegger and there here's hey, here's your here's your
Speaker 3: M four. Go have a good time. Here's a grenade.
Speaker 3: You know, not that they would like give that to
Speaker 3: me in San Diego, but we would go out on
Speaker 3: you know, training evolutions. It's like, yeah, I want to
Speaker 3: fly in a helicopter, Yes, I want to shoot the
Speaker 3: M sixty. Yes I want to shoot the law in
Speaker 3: the eighty four, and I want to do it all
Speaker 3: before lunch. And that's what they would let you do.
Speaker 3: It was everything that I thought it could be fantastic.
Speaker 4: How how was it with your team? You know, you're
Speaker 4: checking in, you're the you're the new guy, and if.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know how it was, it's the goddamn exact
Speaker 3: same thing it was for you shut up, new guy.
Speaker 3: Here's you know like And you know, I look back
Speaker 3: on it the single most dangerous point of my entire
Speaker 3: career and for clarity, I mean to myself and the
Speaker 3: people that I was working with, was right when I
Speaker 3: came across that quarterback with a lot of book knowledge
Speaker 3: and absolutely no street knowledge whatsoever. So it was like, hey,
Speaker 3: shut the fuck up, I don't we don't care what
Speaker 3: you think. You know, We'll tell you when we need you,
Speaker 3: which is going to be never keep your mouth shut
Speaker 3: and just try to learn.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So what was the process back then?
Speaker 4: Buds and then the land warfare portion and then would
Speaker 4: you get your out of that one? Okay?
Speaker 3: So yeah, it was uh, they were just transitioning to
Speaker 3: what was then called what did.
Speaker 2: They call it?
Speaker 3: It was called s STT back then Seal Tactical training.
Speaker 3: Before that, right before that, in the late nineties, each
Speaker 3: team ran their own post buds curriculum, which we intuitively,
Speaker 3: all three of us know, that's a really shitty idea,
Speaker 3: Like you have all people wearing the same uniform. I
Speaker 3: got an idea, let's not share any information, let's actually
Speaker 3: hide it from each other and fight for budget and relevance,
Speaker 3: and then decades down the road when somebody actually attacks us,
Speaker 3: we're not going to really be able to work with them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was such a horrible idea looking back, and I
Speaker 3: understand completely why they did it, because in the absence
Speaker 3: of an actual enemy, where of course going to fight
Speaker 3: ourselves and our fellow servicemen. So prior to when I started,
Speaker 3: each team ran their own pipeline. You do about a
Speaker 3: year of a probation where they the team would internally
Speaker 3: put you through their own training, sell all of those things.
Speaker 3: When I got there, they did the first class of STT,
Speaker 3: which has now become SQT. And I'm not actually even
Speaker 3: really familiar the whole pipeline that they go through, but
Speaker 3: it brought everybody who was going to be on the
Speaker 3: West coast. Most of them were guys that I had
Speaker 3: just gone through BUDS with, and they put us through
Speaker 3: the group command that oversees all of the odd number
Speaker 3: teams put the training on, so at least when we
Speaker 3: went back to the teams, we all had the same
Speaker 3: baseline level of training. And then though each team had
Speaker 3: a different process for awarding the trident, so I had
Speaker 3: to go. You'd study it up a bunch and I
Speaker 3: spent it was two days basically a two day verbal
Speaker 3: and practical test where you'd go to the armory and
Speaker 3: there'd be three senior guys sitting there and I mean
Speaker 3: there was an AR on the table, There's an M
Speaker 3: sixty on the table, a SIG two two six, and
Speaker 3: they're all disassembled, and it's like, okay, put them back together.
Speaker 3: And also while you're doing so, you know what's the
Speaker 3: maximum effective range, what's the you know, the muzzlevelocity coming
Speaker 3: out of it, What's what's this the spring spring recoil guy?
Speaker 3: Like all you know, like you're just the full on
Speaker 3: test of knowledge. And then you'd go to the diving
Speaker 3: locker and it's like, hey, plant a closed circuit dive,
Speaker 3: here's the tides, here's the current land nov. I mean
Speaker 3: I was gonna say night vision, but we didn't have
Speaker 3: any back then, No big deal, and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: you go through all the departments, and then at the
Speaker 3: very end they come together, the training staff comes together,
Speaker 3: and then they awarded the people they're trying who had
Speaker 3: passed the test, and then they retested and retread to
Speaker 3: the people. There was I think one or two in
Speaker 3: the group that I was with, and then from there
Speaker 3: you were integrated back into the platoon and then you
Speaker 3: were kind of handed back over to the group training
Speaker 3: cell to do the like the operational level, the platoon
Speaker 3: level training getting ready for your pre nine eleven deployment,
Speaker 3: which was just forward staging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so when you walked through the quarter deck,
Speaker 2: now that I know that term, uh yeah, what was
Speaker 2: like the mission profile at that time in the late
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, What were you guys training for? What were
Speaker 2: you looking at getting into?
Speaker 3: So it depended on your team. So I was at
Speaker 3: Team five. We were Southwest Asia, so specifically we were
Speaker 3: looking at North Korea. In the South Korea. Forget what
Speaker 3: the op plan was, It was like fifteen nine to
Speaker 3: eleven or something like that.
Speaker 2: So I was back and.
Speaker 3: Forth to exercise foul eagle a half dozen times, you know,
Speaker 3: at least, and so obviously that area of the world
Speaker 3: can get cold, so we were more of like an
Speaker 3: Arctic cold weather specialist, and then literally a nine iron,
Speaker 3: like a shitty nine iron shot. South was Team three,
Speaker 3: and they were specifically focused on the desert, so they
Speaker 3: had like desert patrol vehicles, different cammies, you know, they
Speaker 3: were doing hides in the desert. I mean I'm talking
Speaker 3: not very much skill overlay, so it really depended per team.
Speaker 3: I remember Team eight, no Team four at the time,
Speaker 3: they were doing anti drug interdiction ops and by that
Speaker 3: I mean what we would probably consider now I advise
Speaker 3: and assist. I think down in like Columbia. I think
Speaker 3: Team two was deploying to Europe at the time and
Speaker 3: maybe doing like a little bit of Pifwick stuff, so
Speaker 3: personnel indicted for war crimes. But like it was, it
Speaker 3: was so dependent on what team you were attached to.
Speaker 3: So you can also imagine if a team got to
Speaker 3: do something like a non permissive boarding in the Middle East,
Speaker 3: right with their MP fives and handlebar mustaches, which I
Speaker 3: deeply appreciate to this day, you would see people who
Speaker 3: were trying to get the Team three from all the
Speaker 3: other teams, right, because like god damn it, we just
Speaker 3: went over to Europe and like, yeah, you were in
Speaker 3: like some beautiful country drinking drinking amazing you know, beers,
Speaker 3: surrounded by beautiful women, like I think you're gonna be okay.
Speaker 3: But they wanted to be on the big Mish. They
Speaker 3: wanted to go on the argy elephants. So there was
Speaker 3: a lot of infighting. It was in hindsight, it was
Speaker 3: quite comical.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean SF is kind of like set
Speaker 4: up the same way and with the different theaters, and
Speaker 4: you know, especially like you talk about ninety seven, like
Speaker 4: that was sort of the war on drugs. All the
Speaker 4: money was going into those sexy missions into you know,
Speaker 4: Latin America, and it's and then you know, you yeah,
Speaker 4: so I can imagine sort of the the combat or
Speaker 4: the operational envy that was there, and some guys obviously
Speaker 4: were probably I'm sure that some teams, you know, were like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, we just went went down to Columbia. We're
Speaker 4: running with the you know, against the fark or whatever,
Speaker 4: and it's like, oh my k yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean there was what they said they were doing,
Speaker 3: and then you come to find out they weren't to
Speaker 3: do it shit right right right. It was a it
Speaker 3: was peace time. I mean it really was so we
Speaker 3: I mean, we trained our asses off in the hopes
Speaker 3: that the big mission would show up. We'd talk about
Speaker 3: the Golden connex box and all the things that we
Speaker 3: would get and how bad ass we would be, and
Speaker 3: uh yeah, that was that was kind of the life.
Speaker 3: But also it was still awesome. I was working with
Speaker 3: my heroes. I mean at the age of I mean
Speaker 3: I was had my trident before I was twenty one
Speaker 3: years old, flying around in helicopters. You know, shoot, move
Speaker 3: and communicate yes please, like I'll take two. Like that's
Speaker 3: it's not a bad way to grow up.
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Speaker 2: So back to you. You're getting all this awesome experience.
Speaker 2: You're living the life as a young man, young Navy seal.
Speaker 2: We get to that point about like two thousand and
Speaker 2: two thousand and one sort of where are you at?
Speaker 2: You know, personally and professionally. Around that time frame, I was.
Speaker 3: In my second platoon. We were getting ready for really
Speaker 3: mission critical deployment to gum, you know, just very strategic location.
Speaker 3: A lot of stuff for us to do there, like
Speaker 3: drink and work out and go to strip clubs.
Speaker 2: Very strategic.
Speaker 3: And actually I take that back, so right at the
Speaker 3: end of two thousand and one, I had already made
Speaker 3: the decision that I wanted to screen for the East
Speaker 3: Coast Command, and I had just gotten back off of
Speaker 3: that deployment about a month before nine to eleven, I think,
Speaker 3: and was in the process of screening in between. I
Speaker 3: started selection in two thousand and two, so between like
Speaker 3: July or August of one to early two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: that's kind of what my process, or not my process,
Speaker 3: but my mindset was was complete the screening process and
Speaker 3: then just prepped for the course.
Speaker 4: Were you at all concerned, like at any point did
Speaker 4: you think that you might withdraw your package or whatever
Speaker 4: because you were worried that the whole Afghanistan thing would
Speaker 4: be over so soon that and you'd be in training
Speaker 4: during that time.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, the FOMO is real. I feel like
Speaker 3: just about everybody in the military probably felt that, Like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I felt it again the invasion of
Speaker 3: Iraq kicked off. It's like people were trying to squeeze
Speaker 3: an entire military career into like a ninety day deployment
Speaker 3: because they thought it was going to be a one
Speaker 3: and done. It's like hah ha, yeah, jokes on you.
Speaker 3: There's more than enough for everybody and then some. So
Speaker 3: I had never I mean, the FOMO was real for sure,
Speaker 3: But what I didn't know a lot about when I
Speaker 3: joined was development group. I hadn't I didn't know, and
Speaker 3: it just wasn't talked about, It wasn't publicized. And when
Speaker 3: people would screen, if they were successful, they just disappeared
Speaker 3: because they stayed there and did their job. But if
Speaker 3: they failed, they'd go to like an SDV team, or
Speaker 3: they would go out to human to be a free
Speaker 3: fall instructor. So you never got like a chance to
Speaker 3: really understand what the fuck was going on, like what
Speaker 3: actually happens in selection, like what's the actual job. But
Speaker 3: I did have enough information to realize that if anybody
Speaker 3: was going to stay busy, it probably was going to
Speaker 3: be that command. So even if, like you know, Afghanistan
Speaker 3: had been a very bright burning candle that had rapidly
Speaker 3: gone out, if anything else was going to help happen anywhere,
Speaker 3: the likelihood of being involved with that was exponentially higher
Speaker 3: out east than it was in Cornado, Right right?
Speaker 4: Did they how did you find out about it? Did
Speaker 4: they do recruiting trips to the to the teams, like
Speaker 4: to pitch anybody or is it just a word of
Speaker 4: mouth thing.
Speaker 3: In my second platoon, two of the guys, two of
Speaker 3: the senior guys. One of them was the head of
Speaker 3: the comms department and I was his secondary and the
Speaker 3: other one was the point man for the squad number one.
Speaker 3: They were both getting ready to go, and so I
Speaker 3: heard information about the first I had the ability to
Speaker 3: pick their brain, like like what is this? Why do
Speaker 3: you guys want to go there? So I was able
Speaker 3: to gain some of their knowledge. There was not a
Speaker 3: recruiting pitch by any stretch. There was just a Navy
Speaker 3: message that came out saying when the screening was going
Speaker 3: to be, and then it had the requirements for the package,
Speaker 3: where to be, what to be prepared to do, and
Speaker 3: that was about it. There was not that much information
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: And so then what was the I mean, we've had
Speaker 2: a few guests on here to describe a little bit
Speaker 2: about the selection and training process, but I mean, there
Speaker 2: are any points maybe or lessons learned or something from
Speaker 2: Green Platoon that you'd really like to highlight. No.
Speaker 3: I mean what I would say is because people ask
Speaker 3: me this all the time, like, well, what's the difference
Speaker 3: between BUDS and going through Green Team? And it's like, well,
Speaker 3: I think they call it selection and training. Now I
Speaker 3: don't fucking no, I can't keep up with the acronyms,
Speaker 3: nor do I care. But Buds was are you mentally
Speaker 3: tough enough to not quit? Green Team was? Can you
Speaker 3: be technically proficient enough to operate at the level that
Speaker 3: we need you to operate at? So it was no
Speaker 3: longer hey, push ups, sit ups, flutterkicks, pull ups, running,
Speaker 3: even though I think we probably did some of those,
Speaker 3: not the flutterkicks. Everybody is exhausted by those by the
Speaker 3: time Buds is over. I mean, there was physical components
Speaker 3: to it, but it was practical execution of special operations
Speaker 3: skill sets, and you are graded upon your performance as
Speaker 3: opposed to trying to get somebody to ring a bell
Speaker 3: to quit.
Speaker 2: I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Andy, But
Speaker 2: one of the big differences between the way Army and
Speaker 2: Navy does it is, you know, all the Army units
Speaker 2: have their own selection, their own training, et cetera. But
Speaker 2: with the development group, it seems like the selection process
Speaker 2: is really from because the only people who can go
Speaker 2: there are seals. So the selection processes Buds be successful
Speaker 2: at your platoon and then green platoon, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of like a different sort of pathway where they're not
Speaker 2: having to maybe vet you as strongly as like a
Speaker 2: guy just showing up at SF selection or Delta selection
Speaker 2: who maybe came off the street, so to speak, or
Speaker 2: came from the conventional side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Buds is unique or relatively unique in
Speaker 3: the aspect that it's the origin story for everybody who
Speaker 3: ever got a triedent. I mean you're literally shouldered to
Speaker 3: shoulder with officer in enlisted. There's no ballooning out of
Speaker 3: the Buds. Course, you share in the suffering and you
Speaker 3: perceived reward if there is any. I mean, we hang
Speaker 3: that with the students, like, oh, if you do this,
Speaker 3: you're gonna get rewarded. It's a total lie for anybody listening.
Speaker 3: Don't expect a reward of any kind. It's punishment followed
Speaker 3: by punishment, as it should be, only because it happened
Speaker 3: to us. So we have to generationally pass that down
Speaker 3: to you. But so the initial selection of the individuals
Speaker 3: and then the mentoring in the community starts when you
Speaker 3: start at BUDS, and so you're drawing from the same pool.
Speaker 3: My understanding of CAG is, you know they open it
Speaker 3: all to all services, So you're gonna get a hodgepot.
Speaker 3: You're going to get a bufet of people. You may
Speaker 3: not understand their background or origin story to the degree
Speaker 3: that you may understand it inside of the Seale community.
Speaker 3: And again I'll be the first to tell you that
Speaker 3: the selection process is not perfect. We had people slide
Speaker 3: through who absolutely shouldn't, as it's going to happen in
Speaker 3: every course, but you know, it's it's I feel like
Speaker 3: there is a level of strength and just knowledge of
Speaker 3: who the people are to your left and right, knowing
Speaker 3: that you all came through the exact same pipeline.
Speaker 4: Right right, Yeah, And even though there's not like the
Speaker 4: precursor sort of s SFAs style selection, everybody already did BUDS,
Speaker 4: but there's still that winnowing, like it's still on your
Speaker 4: hall file. Is still they're still checking in with people
Speaker 4: like do you trust this person? Is this somebody you
Speaker 4: would want to operate with which which a hall file
Speaker 4: can be. You know, it follows you everywhere, and it
Speaker 4: can be you know, very like selective.
Speaker 2: And it should be.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that they instituted when
Speaker 3: I was a BUDS instructor was peer reviews. And you know,
Speaker 3: we all have we all have our public face, like
Speaker 3: who we allow people to see us as, or who
Speaker 3: we want to be, and then there's r when nobody's around,
Speaker 3: and fuck. I was shocked as a BUDS instructor some
Speaker 3: of the feedback on some of what you would consider
Speaker 3: to be the top performers, resounding feedback on how they
Speaker 3: were basically just putting a mask on in front of
Speaker 3: the instructor staff. And you know, there were tools that
Speaker 3: we were allowed to use to try to expose those
Speaker 3: things and get rid of those people, because I'm not
Speaker 3: looking for somebody who can wear a mask, right, Like
Speaker 3: the perfect selection course would be you could crack the
Speaker 3: mask and see who the person is behind, and I
Speaker 3: think most of these selection courses are able to do that.
Speaker 3: But in the absence of being able to be perfect
Speaker 3: like that, I think those hall files in the student feedback,
Speaker 3: I think it is absolutely essential. You know, Budds is
Speaker 3: not a three hundred and sixty five day seven you know,
Speaker 3: seven day a week, twenty four hours. It's a Monday
Speaker 3: through Friday, right. Other than they have a plenty of
Speaker 3: time as a class away from the instructor staff where
Speaker 3: they can show other students who they really are, right
Speaker 3: and giving me a students the ability to give us
Speaker 3: that feedback in a manner that didn't have their name
Speaker 3: associated with it, knew that there wasn't going to be
Speaker 3: punitive measures associated with it. It really helped pierce the
Speaker 3: mask on some people.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So when you were going through Green Team,
Speaker 4: because you know this is what were you there like
Speaker 4: th or post nine to eleven or was that part
Speaker 4: of your time there?
Speaker 3: I started selection in two thousand and two, so shortly
Speaker 3: after nine eleven.
Speaker 4: Okay, So during that time, was Green Team going undergoing
Speaker 4: any changes due to like real real world feedback that
Speaker 4: they were getting in Afghanistan at that time?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. Well, I never saw a Green
Speaker 3: Team class before that, so I can't give a totally
Speaker 3: holistic answer to that. I don't think so, because I
Speaker 3: mean nine eleven obviously happened in September. I'm in selection
Speaker 3: in March, maybe they would have had ninety days worth
Speaker 3: of beta over to Afghanistan, right in, much like Iraq
Speaker 3: early on, not very kinetic, right, I mean, which is
Speaker 3: smart from our enemy and maybe maybe let's just sit
Speaker 3: this one back and see what our enemy is doing
Speaker 3: here before they go toe to toe.
Speaker 2: So a lot of the.
Speaker 3: Lessons that ended up being learned in Blood had not
Speaker 3: occurred yet.
Speaker 4: Right, Right, So you get through a green team and
Speaker 4: what was it like, you know, stepping in now you
Speaker 4: know your first team. Yeah, for the second time.
Speaker 3: What was they had just gotten back off a rotation
Speaker 3: from Afghanistan. It was their first combat rotation to Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: and it was fucking awesome. You know, you go into
Speaker 3: a team room again, it's the same thing. It's like
Speaker 3: they're the vast majority of guys in this seal community
Speaker 3: have no desire to go to development group, which is awesome,
Speaker 3: Like cool, don't go if you don't want to go,
Speaker 3: Like it's totally voluntary, just like getting into the seal community.
Speaker 3: And some people have like a real hang up over that,
Speaker 3: and I don't understand why, Like if you want to go,
Speaker 3: do that, go do that. If you don't want to
Speaker 3: go do that, then don't go do that to me.
Speaker 3: For me? When I heard about it, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is like the next logical progression. Why would I
Speaker 3: not go do this? So it became again entering into
Speaker 3: a room of people that were just like absolutely my heroes,
Speaker 3: It's like, holy shit, I just made it to the
Speaker 3: major leagues. There's a wall with everybody's name and the
Speaker 3: year that they graduated, and you have a plaque with
Speaker 3: your name on it, Like that's pretty fucking awesome because
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of names over there. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you know, the command was rapidly scaling up when it
Speaker 3: came to fuck everything from equipment to support personnel, to
Speaker 3: operational personnel to operational tempo. And it was awesome. It
Speaker 3: was everything that I thought being a seal could and
Speaker 3: would be.
Speaker 4: It's fantastic. What when you did Green Team not having
Speaker 4: any idea what was going on? So you had been
Speaker 4: a seal and obviously you as a seal, you're like, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm technically, I'm tactically proficient. I have all these skills,
Speaker 4: and then you go to Green Team where now they're
Speaker 4: teaching you whole new things. What what was that like?
Speaker 4: For you sort of having that veil pulled back.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: At the Jaysock level.
Speaker 3: I did a workup in a deployment with the you know,
Speaker 3: army component of Jaysok as well with a squadron, and
Speaker 3: so I can speak broadly about what I think their
Speaker 3: mission set is. It's very closely aligned. I mean at
Speaker 3: the Jaysuck level, it's very closely aligned. The reason they're
Speaker 3: so good at that job is they strip away a
Speaker 3: lot of the other bullshit, you know. I described conventional
Speaker 3: special Operations as a multi tool and let's say it's
Speaker 3: got fifteen little levers that you can pull out, a
Speaker 3: Phillips head, you know, an Allen key, a shitty pair
Speaker 3: of scissors, and an almost useless knife. Well, at development group,
Speaker 3: I was like, it's two tools. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: not saying we only did two things, but it was
Speaker 3: a reduction of responsibility that allowed you to hyper focus
Speaker 3: on a particular skill set that allows you to get
Speaker 3: really good at it. It's like, oh, well, I can
Speaker 3: invest my entire day, shoot, move and communicate. That's literally
Speaker 3: all I'm going to practice it. And it's I have
Speaker 3: a multi you know, fifty million dollars kill house that
Speaker 3: has movable walls and ranges that I have access to
Speaker 3: three hundred and sixty five days a year, twenty four
Speaker 3: hours a day. I can keep my guns in my cases.
Speaker 3: I can have a thousand rounds of AMO of any
Speaker 3: kind that I want to in my cage. Like it had.
Speaker 3: It was every opportunity to focus on essentially actions on
Speaker 3: the ejective objective. And that's why those commands are good
Speaker 3: at it. It's you know, they don't do as much stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, tasking development group of doing a hydrographic reconnaissance
Speaker 3: or a closed circuit dive, don't do it. I mean
Speaker 3: they'll probably be able to get it done, but it's
Speaker 3: gonna be fucking ugly, you know. But if you're taking
Speaker 3: hostage in a remote location somewhere, I really want a
Speaker 3: JASAUK unit to come and get me right right.
Speaker 2: So, what was like like when you did get spun
Speaker 2: up for your first deployment? Well, where were you? Where
Speaker 2: were you going? What was the mission at that time?
Speaker 2: And you know kind of what's going on for you
Speaker 2: in your mind.
Speaker 3: So they finished us up with Green Team early and
Speaker 3: actually we augmented the cars I detail, which was a
Speaker 3: different squadron than the one I was going to be
Speaker 3: attached to, but there was a it was the tail ended.
Speaker 3: It was after the assassination attempt. They were trying to
Speaker 3: wind it down. I think they turned it over to Dinacre.
Speaker 3: So that was my first actual trip overseas. I mean
Speaker 3: that was that was wild. You know, waking up in
Speaker 3: Bogram for the first time and going outside and looking
Speaker 3: around and you're like, Okay, this shit's real. And then
Speaker 3: you know, driving up to Cobble and you know, staying
Speaker 3: at the you know, the yellow house right there and
Speaker 3: just doing all the security stuff. And it was maybe
Speaker 3: I don't know, forty five days.
Speaker 2: It was brief.
Speaker 3: Come back and immediately on the radar was the invasion
Speaker 3: of Iraq, and for whatever reason, probably random timing more
Speaker 3: than anything or the George cycle, my squadron got up
Speaker 3: selected for the invasion. So we started training pretty rapidly
Speaker 3: towards the target set that you know, the intel at
Speaker 3: the time was pointing at Swards. Our main focus at
Speaker 3: the time was going to be the number on ken
Speaker 3: Bio site in Iraq, because I mean, anybody alive during
Speaker 3: that time period can tell you it was. It was
Speaker 3: originally pitched around WMD which is a whole conversation in
Speaker 3: of itself looking in the rear view mirror, right. So
Speaker 3: it's like we had I think the first three objective
Speaker 3: is that we were likely going to action. We already
Speaker 3: had the intelligence on them, we had models, we had
Speaker 3: you know, air conditioning specialists coming and telling us why
Speaker 3: this level of air conditioning on the roof is you know,
Speaker 3: it's definitely this is definitely a lab. I'm like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: it's also definitely hot as fuck there in the summer too,
Speaker 3: so maybe the racy units on the roof, and you know,
Speaker 3: that's what we were looking to doing. And then we
Speaker 3: got over there. So I was there, you know when
Speaker 3: Bush gave him the you know, the twenty four hour speech,
Speaker 3: and we were just sitting intense and our Saudi Arabia
Speaker 3: getting ready to go. And then yeah, the first real
Speaker 3: world operation I ever did was in full on mop
Speaker 3: level four, absolute nightmare and on what ended up being
Speaker 3: an agricultural school, which was the number one keem biotarget.
Speaker 2: We had Nelson Miller on the show and he's with me,
Speaker 2: yea with him however, you yeah, yeah, you can walk
Speaker 2: us through it from your from your point.
Speaker 3: Of view and also just for looking through goddamn soda straws,
Speaker 3: sweating my ass off as you go objective number one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so just for the uh, I don't know, the
Speaker 4: the enjoyment of of our of our audience. You may
Speaker 4: not understand what a lovely experience mock gear is. Can you?
Speaker 4: Can you kind of tell us about it and and
Speaker 4: how you operate mock gear?
Speaker 3: I mean not, Well, there is the answer for mission
Speaker 3: oriented protective posture. And just think of it as who's
Speaker 3: that movie with like Laurence Fishburn where it was it
Speaker 3: an outbreak or a bowler or something like that. Those
Speaker 3: suits were nice, they looked comfortable, they were big, and
Speaker 3: they looked like they were.
Speaker 2: Flat screen in front.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so imagine trying to replicate that. But you have
Speaker 3: to go run around and you know, potentially fight people,
Speaker 3: and of course it has to be camouflaged.
Speaker 2: So it's basically and.
Speaker 3: There's levels like MOP level one, I think, is what
Speaker 3: is it You have to have your mask with you
Speaker 3: but not on something like that, Yeah, top level two.
Speaker 3: Maybe you put like the outer layer on MOP level three.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe that's the mask. MOP level four
Speaker 3: is like you are fully kembuioed up expecting to encounter
Speaker 3: an agent of some kind. So I think the helicopter
Speaker 3: ride in it was hours long on forty seven's mid
Speaker 3: air refueling, and like thirty minutes out, you know, you're like,
Speaker 3: you got like thirty dudes in the back of forty
Speaker 3: seven all trying to get their shit on and like
Speaker 3: tucking each other's you know, all this stuff that goes
Speaker 3: around the mask and under the helmet, and you're just like,
Speaker 3: this is the worst thing ever. Please somebody kill me now.
Speaker 3: And then you know, your night vision goggle is like
Speaker 3: touching the end of your gas mask, so you already
Speaker 3: can't see through a grade anyway, and now it's farther
Speaker 3: away from your face. So it's just just for people
Speaker 3: out there, just go rap, go buy a Costco a
Speaker 3: bag of trash bags and then put them all on
Speaker 3: and that's what MOP level four is and then look
Speaker 3: through you know, toilet paper actually soda straws, and you know,
Speaker 3: we started getting shot at like a minute out, and
Speaker 3: the door gunner got shot in the head right next
Speaker 3: to me. I was all the way up in the
Speaker 3: front of the aircraft. I don't even know we were
Speaker 3: getting shot at because I couldn't hear or see anything,
Speaker 3: and they nuked the power grid like this transport transformer complex,
Speaker 3: and then we landed the helicopter package in between the smoking,
Speaker 3: burning transformer complex and the objective totally backlit, just getting
Speaker 3: people the perfect opportunity to just take potshots as which
Speaker 3: they did. So there was like a gunfight going on
Speaker 3: out in the street. I was in the assault element
Speaker 3: that started going inside of the building. We had little
Speaker 3: birds overhead, We had snipers up in the little birds
Speaker 3: that were dumping people, and I'm just.
Speaker 2: Like, what the fuck is this like?
Speaker 3: We can't keep doing this, This can't be what this
Speaker 3: is like, I can't see anything.
Speaker 2: Sweating to death.
Speaker 3: I ripped my mask off like two minutes after being
Speaker 3: inside of that place because it was utterly clear that
Speaker 3: it was not a KEM bio threat. And I actually
Speaker 3: would have rather been killed by a KEM bio threat
Speaker 3: than wear that mop level four anymore. And you know,
Speaker 3: we get back to you know, we fly back another
Speaker 3: three and a half four hours.
Speaker 2: Fuck.
Speaker 3: I mean one of the blocking positions, a ranger took
Speaker 3: around like through and through, ran like one hundred yards
Speaker 3: off realized it was a bad idea, went and got
Speaker 3: back on the helicopter, you know, which is how I
Speaker 3: ended up meeting Pat Tillman because he was the guy
Speaker 3: who came in and he was like that guy's secondary.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was crazy, all the things that ended up coming together.
Speaker 3: But I remember waking up the next morning sitting there
Speaker 3: and talking to a buddy of mine, like, hey man,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's gonna go.
Speaker 2: That well for us.
Speaker 3: If this is how we're going to do business all
Speaker 3: time we're over here.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 3: That was target number one.
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Speaker 2: I mean, what was target number two? Or was it
Speaker 2: three or four? H Jessica Lynch.
Speaker 3: Too, it was number two two, Yeah, And that was
Speaker 3: the exact opposite. It was like the Intel was like,
Speaker 3: there's this crazy threat and I'm sure Nelson told you, like,
Speaker 3: we can only fit so many people on the helicopters,
Speaker 3: and it's like, you'll do anything you can for another
Speaker 3: service member, So we were going to take the risk
Speaker 3: that was being presented to us. They're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a staging point for Fettian could be somewhere between
Speaker 3: fifty to five hundred, Like, uh, I think we can
Speaker 3: fit twenty seven on this helicopter package. Yeah, but you're
Speaker 3: gonna go. And then in the end they had left
Speaker 3: like the day before. You know, there's not a single
Speaker 3: shot fired inside out of the hospital. And it was
Speaker 3: what it was, and unfortunately it got the person I
Speaker 3: feel the worst for is actually Jessica, because it got
Speaker 3: spun so completely out of control. It had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with her, everything to do with the I mean,
Speaker 3: I remember, I remember the first news reports they were
Speaker 3: talking about giving her the Medal of Honor. She should
Speaker 3: be the first woman recipient of the Medal of Honor
Speaker 3: because she fought until her last round and then you know,
Speaker 3: she went dry and I don't know how she would
Speaker 3: have ended up getting knocked out. And then I actually
Speaker 3: had her on my podcast and was able to reconnect
Speaker 3: with her, and she told me her story from her side,
Speaker 3: and I kind of explained it from mine and you know,
Speaker 3: she never even got a chance to fire around, you know,
Speaker 3: But it was just so it was interesting. I wish
Speaker 3: I had paid more attention to the way that it
Speaker 3: was twisted and manipulated at the time, but just quite frankly.
Speaker 2: We were busy and I didn't care. Yeah, it took
Speaker 2: me a long time for the real story to come out.
Speaker 4: I think, well, well, what the other thing that was
Speaker 4: so weird is all the people coming out because I
Speaker 4: remember all the stories coming out about it was it
Speaker 4: was a hoax that the Rangers had blank adapters on
Speaker 4: their weapons, and like Bill O'Reilly was saying that, like
Speaker 4: seeing it, like all the everybody was saying that they
Speaker 4: were saying, this is what we've heard, and it's like,
Speaker 4: this is such a weird spin on this. On this operation, we.
Speaker 3: Got on those helicopters, fully prepared to get our shit
Speaker 3: pushed in to try to rescue an American service member. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: the you know, the potential or the intel that we
Speaker 3: had about the enemy force they had moved on. It
Speaker 3: would have sucked that they were still there, but we
Speaker 3: still would have gone. And that's the thing. You don't
Speaker 3: know what the result is going to be. It's not
Speaker 3: about like what the result was. Like, what's important is
Speaker 3: that you fucking nut up and you get your gear
Speaker 3: on and you get on the helicopter.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well was that a good morale boost though? I mean,
Speaker 2: after hitting a fake WMD plant, I mean, rescuing an
Speaker 2: American soldier must have been a pretty good mission. It
Speaker 2: was pretty sweet. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But again, like then we got back to our r
Speaker 3: and then within I don't know, a couple of days,
Speaker 3: we went and hit something up at like Lake Tharthar,
Speaker 3: and then shit, shortly after that, we were on one
Speaker 3: of the first one thirties into uh buyap. It's not
Speaker 3: like you had time to be like we put a
Speaker 3: one up on the board for us. You just you know,
Speaker 3: next right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: How did the rest of that deployment transpire? I mean,
Speaker 2: was it was going after the deck of fifty two
Speaker 2: at that point? Yeah, fucking deck of cards.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was what it was. It was whackable.
Speaker 3: I mean, you guys know, I was like, oh, hey,
Speaker 3: we're going after this guy. It's like, sweet, do you
Speaker 3: know where he is?
Speaker 2: No? Go loook over here, okay?
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, and you know you would try to
Speaker 3: derive your own intelligence, and you know, the human networks
Speaker 3: that you know, the ASO guys were able to develop
Speaker 3: later on were not there. It was largely sigant, but
Speaker 3: also again like so not kinetic in comparison to what
Speaker 3: it was later on, because they did what was smart.
Speaker 3: Why go toad? I mean, I wouldn't go toe to toe.
Speaker 3: I live in northwestern Montana. You know, if Red Dawn
Speaker 3: actually played itself out, I'm not going to go out
Speaker 3: and shoot it a tank with an ar you know,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna sit back and be like, I don't know
Speaker 3: where the droids are that you're looking for. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: I'm taking notes and developing a plan, you.
Speaker 4: Know, right, So how does that trip like? And for like,
Speaker 4: first off, you you know, you run after these these
Speaker 4: high priority targets with kind of lacking into all at
Speaker 4: the time. Did you have any missions that you felt
Speaker 4: were really successful during that period of time?
Speaker 3: Hard to gauge success or failure? I would say from
Speaker 3: a tactical perspective, I mean we would go and go
Speaker 3: look for somebody and sometimes come back with them, whether
Speaker 3: or not at that time, it made a difference, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like later on in the war.
Speaker 3: You're talking about incredibly developed cells right of, like suicide
Speaker 3: bombers or viba, and like you could go and you
Speaker 3: would be like, holy shit, like there's fifteen suicide vests
Speaker 3: that are being built right over there, and then there's
Speaker 3: like three partially constructed viba and you can take that
Speaker 3: sell off of the board that those had much more
Speaker 3: of a feeling of this is making a difference than
Speaker 3: I think that early on.
Speaker 2: Deployments probably did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so how does that deployment end up or wrap
Speaker 4: up for you? And then what's the next stage you
Speaker 4: get when you get back to Virginia.
Speaker 3: We ripped out with a CAG squadron and then because
Speaker 3: again like Foma was real, they had their first squadron
Speaker 3: there was out actually doing scud hunting because they thought
Speaker 3: that that's where the jam was going to be, and
Speaker 3: you know, there was no jam at that point. And again,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people were viewing this like
Speaker 3: we have to get it in now. So I think
Speaker 3: they kind of wanted us out of there because we were, like,
Speaker 3: we were going out every night and they saw that
Speaker 3: and they're like, how about you guys get the fuck
Speaker 3: out of here? So we got the fuck out of
Speaker 3: there because we were working for an army general and
Speaker 3: then just started ping ponging back and forth between Afghanistan
Speaker 3: and Iraq. You know that the deployment cycle at a
Speaker 3: Jaysuck command at that time was going to be ninety
Speaker 3: days overseas, one hundred and twenty days by at nauseam
Speaker 3: until you break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so one uh what with the next apployment
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty days later back to Iraq?
Speaker 3: I won eighty ninety trained up ninety stand by, so yeah,
Speaker 3: it was ninety one eighty ninety, so about basically half
Speaker 3: of every year you re leased overseas. But then of
Speaker 3: course you were gone doing training trips the entire time
Speaker 3: as well too, so it was busy.
Speaker 2: The op tempo was high.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so go ahead there, Well, I was just gonna ask, So,
Speaker 4: at that point in time, did you guys become mostly
Speaker 4: focused in Afghanistan or Iraq? Or were you switching off
Speaker 4: or did you and CAG kind of like split the
Speaker 4: split it down the middle.
Speaker 3: Initially? And this is you know, my experience with the
Speaker 3: CAG guys has been fantastic. I still have very close
Speaker 3: friends that that I served there with at a squadron,
Speaker 3: and I used to hear like, you know, like, ah,
Speaker 3: fuck those guys. And what I think it actually was
Speaker 3: is at the higher levels, when people are starting to
Speaker 3: argue for missions and budget relevance that probably exists, right,
Speaker 3: I didn't experience that shit at all. At the operation.
Speaker 3: They were fucking awesome. They just did. They were They
Speaker 3: were like team guys, but they wore an army uniform.
Speaker 3: They were like defined by our similarities, not by our difference.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I never got a lick of like pushback, Like we
Speaker 3: went down there and did a full work up with
Speaker 3: them before we deployed with them, and we would.
Speaker 2: Host them up. It's like it was awesome.
Speaker 3: The higher ups, though, I think, saw Iraq as probably
Speaker 3: a more fruitful tree, so uh KAG for a bit
Speaker 3: focused on Iraq, and Dymnic for a bit focused on Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: And again I think sander hate heads prevailed and they
Speaker 3: realized it's probably not a good idea to geographically specialize
Speaker 3: like that, So we started doing cross training deployments and
Speaker 3: that's how we kind of bridge the.
Speaker 2: Gap nice As the war evolved and these units evolved
Speaker 2: too with it. I mean, could you kind of tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about how things that you know,
Speaker 2: you mentioned the intensity of ratcheting up, and how did
Speaker 2: how did the unit change, how did the culture change,
Speaker 2: and how did the war itself change from your guys' perspective.
Speaker 3: So I left the command in late two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: so I can't speak to any cultural changes past that.
Speaker 3: What I would say is that the theaters of war
Speaker 3: matured probably just as much as the units themselves. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know of a unit in two thousand and
Speaker 3: one that was like steeped in combat experience. I mean,
Speaker 3: there just really wasn't. And then you know, you start
Speaker 3: talking like two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: twenty ten, there were units that were I mean, it
Speaker 3: was their full time job to be over there, and
Speaker 3: I think that more than anything, they just got really
Speaker 3: efficient at doing their job. I think that's one of
Speaker 3: the nice things about being at the jaysock levels. You
Speaker 3: can carve away all the bullshit and get rid of
Speaker 3: what doesn't work. You still have to deal with bureaucracy
Speaker 3: and all that stuff, but like the support to operator
Speaker 3: ratio is oftentimes like twelve to fifteen to one that
Speaker 3: just doesn't exist, you know, at a conventional unit for
Speaker 3: a variety of reasons. But you know, there were guys
Speaker 3: who had so much combat experience, which I often wonder
Speaker 3: whether or not that's like a good thing or a
Speaker 3: bad thing. I have, you know, pretty deep conversations with friends, like,
Speaker 3: you know, should combat exposure actually be limited? Is there
Speaker 3: a point where you start going down the backslope of
Speaker 3: that and it's irrecoverable?
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, I don't know if there's a right or a
Speaker 3: wrong answer to that, but I think it's an interesting
Speaker 3: thought experiment. But they just were so experienced with what
Speaker 3: they did. Their ability to make real time decisions on
Speaker 3: target was like nothing I've ever seen the uh.
Speaker 4: I mean, I know, and if in Afghanistan particularly Iraq too.
Speaker 4: But the enemy was also evolving quickly and being able
Speaker 4: to pick up our you know, when they put charms
Speaker 4: on the cell phones that will let them know that
Speaker 4: their cell phone is being paid. Like, they were getting
Speaker 4: better at at knowing what our TTPs were and how
Speaker 4: we were developing targets and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're not the only people who do AARs. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, for every drop hole that we've all been
Speaker 3: a part of hundreds of times, they send an interviewee
Speaker 3: out there as well. And that's why, you know, I
Speaker 3: mean not to talk about how buildings and rooms are cleared,
Speaker 3: but what I can tell you is when I was
Speaker 3: going through Green Team, they were still teaching hostage rescue clearance,
Speaker 3: where you're running into every threat, you know, every door,
Speaker 3: you're just running in there. And now, I mean, there
Speaker 3: better be a fucking compelling reason for me to cross
Speaker 3: the threshold of a door, because there's ways you can
Speaker 3: do externally that reduced the risk of the person who's
Speaker 3: doing the clearance. That came about though, because people were
Speaker 3: starting to get their asses handed to them in the
Speaker 3: corners of rooms where you had the tactical disadvantage for
Speaker 3: a moment when you were making entry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, during that time frame, is all of this
Speaker 2: is happening, I mean there are they Are there any
Speaker 2: particular significant operations to stand out in your mind, Either
Speaker 2: things went really wrong or things went really well and
Speaker 2: you were like, hell, yeah, that's how you doped.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I mean my career was pretty much down the
Speaker 3: middle of the road. I mean I was I I
Speaker 3: don't have an the super sexy stories to tell, which
Speaker 3: I think is probably you know, it's as equally as
Speaker 3: good or bad. You know, Like a lot of times
Speaker 3: people are like, oh, I mean, why does that guy
Speaker 3: have a silver Star or Navy Cross. I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: let me tell you about the guys who died in
Speaker 3: the occurrents of him getting that. Like most of those
Speaker 3: awards and stories are tied to your friends die, things
Speaker 3: going de'strophically wrong, and people displaying incredible amounts of heroism
Speaker 3: and courage because they had to, not because they wanted to.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean it just you know, I did
Speaker 3: the deployments that I was asked to do, I did
Speaker 3: the operations that came up for our time period, did
Speaker 3: my time there, and then moved on with my career.
Speaker 2: You know, you did mention that there were some times
Speaker 2: where you'd able to or the unit I should say,
Speaker 2: was able to, like swipe a suicide vest cell off
Speaker 2: the face of the map. I mean that must have
Speaker 2: been both the amount of intelligence that goes into prepping
Speaker 2: a target like that and then you guys actually action
Speaker 2: in it must have been a pretty big deal. At
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 3: Well, we had really good enablers, you know, the J
Speaker 3: two or S two or N two, depending on what
Speaker 3: you know code you want to use, which is the
Speaker 3: Intelligence department. They when they do their job, well, it
Speaker 3: makes the guys on targets, it's their job is pretty easy.
Speaker 3: You know. Knocking down the wrong door day after day
Speaker 3: after day or night after night after night sucks. Hitting
Speaker 3: the correct target the first time and actually having a
Speaker 3: measurable impact it feels a lot better, for sure, and
Speaker 3: all of that stuff though, And that's one of the
Speaker 3: things that I really hate about the publicity in general
Speaker 3: when it comes to military operations, like it just all
Speaker 3: the enabling personnel that actually make the sausage, that actually
Speaker 3: allow all this stuff to happen, they never get their
Speaker 3: time in the light.
Speaker 2: That sucks. Yeah, absolutely true. Although logistics guys, the guys
Speaker 2: the mechanics who repair the aircraft and yeah, you don't hear.
Speaker 3: Somebody that shit, I'm not out there throwing wrenches on
Speaker 3: a helicopter, like come on when it's one.
Speaker 4: Hundred and five degrees outside and yeah, yeah, so you
Speaker 4: you'll left the unit, or in two thousand and six
Speaker 4: you said you left the unit, and what happened at
Speaker 4: that point in.
Speaker 3: Time, went to the West coast and did kind of
Speaker 3: like a rehab tour as a BUZZ instructor for eighteen
Speaker 3: months and that's where I picked up my commission and
Speaker 3: then went to Team three for my final operational deployment
Speaker 3: in twenty ten to Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: So rehab tour, you got injured?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got shot actually with KAG with a squadron
Speaker 3: on a target in Iraq.
Speaker 4: Can you tell us or are you comfortable telling us
Speaker 4: about that operation?
Speaker 3: Again, it was like down the middle of the road.
Speaker 3: I think we were going after like a kidnapping cell.
Speaker 3: We were using sensors to try to triangulate somebody, and
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes you get to walk around, you have
Speaker 3: some noise and you're trying to locate somebody. Me eah,
Speaker 3: sometimes you know, as sneaky as you think you are.
Speaker 3: So we came back and retraced our steps and it's like,
Speaker 3: oh shit, the building that now has the lights on
Speaker 3: is the building that we need to go into. And
Speaker 3: sometimes people have the tactical advantage on you. And you know,
Speaker 3: I spent years like what did I do wrong? Like
Speaker 3: how did I not see that particular person? And the
Speaker 3: reality is like I didn't do anything wrong. It's just,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just the way that it was. But again,
Speaker 3: like it wasn't anything like I got dropped. I got
Speaker 3: shot from like I don't know, fifteen feet away, maybe
Speaker 3: the AK round and the hip like flat on my back,
Speaker 3: Like there's no like crawling through sixty link and grenade
Speaker 3: pins like saving Private Ryan story. It's like that sucked.
Speaker 3: I thought I was gonna die. It was horrendously painful.
Speaker 3: I was one of I think eight guys who got
Speaker 3: injured on that target. I mean there were little birds
Speaker 3: coming in picking people, taking them to the green zone.
Speaker 3: I got put into a bradley and driven there, So
Speaker 3: that shows you how much more substantially injured other people
Speaker 3: were than myself. Met it backed out of the country
Speaker 3: and like you know, had to figure out the rest
Speaker 3: of my career from there. And it's like I wish
Speaker 3: there was a sexy story behind it, but I mean
Speaker 3: I picture.
Speaker 2: In my mind. I remember being in to read just
Speaker 2: as a liaison arranger who had taken AK round to
Speaker 2: the hip and they made like an epoxy like three
Speaker 2: D printed sort of thing of what his hip looked
Speaker 2: like and the ball socket just exploded. And I mean,
Speaker 2: that's like a pretty substantial injury you're talking about. I
Speaker 2: got lucky.
Speaker 3: It missed my femur by about a quarter of an
Speaker 3: inch and it just fried my ssiatic nerve. So my
Speaker 3: actual main complaint when I got to the hospital is
Speaker 3: that it felt like my ankle was just being smashed
Speaker 3: on with a sledgehammer. So they were very like gingerly
Speaker 3: cut my shoe off, you know, and the X ray
Speaker 3: and the like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Speaker 3: Your foot's fine. I was like, fuck you, my foot
Speaker 3: is not fine. And so for me like that, don't
Speaker 3: get me wrong, Like getting shot didn't feel awesome. It
Speaker 3: felt like like a nine inch nail sticking out of
Speaker 3: a baseball bat let Jose Cansenko in the middle of
Speaker 3: the steroid years, wind up and take a swing at you.
Speaker 3: But the nerve pain was was by far worse and
Speaker 3: still problematic. I have definitely reduced sensitivity and the ankle
Speaker 3: stability in my left foot to this day. So I
Speaker 3: got lucky from those terms. Yeah, if it had hit
Speaker 3: the bone, I mean, who I mean, who knows? You
Speaker 3: guys know as well as I do. I mean, but
Speaker 3: it was actually the first thought that went through my
Speaker 3: head the number of times that I had been told
Speaker 3: that you can bleed out into the quad space of
Speaker 3: your body if you get like an internal bleed for
Speaker 3: moral bleed inside of like contained like that was my
Speaker 3: first thought. I was like, well, I probably have a
Speaker 3: few minutes.
Speaker 4: Left yeah before yeah, yeah, it's a fast bleed if
Speaker 4: if it's not addressed. So so you you get netevac
Speaker 4: and a Bradley. How long was it before they got
Speaker 4: you back to the States or did you go to
Speaker 4: launch stool first, or like, how did that?
Speaker 3: I went to lawn stool first, checked myself out, and
Speaker 3: flew Delta home to New York where the command sent
Speaker 3: a plane up and picked me up. So I was
Speaker 3: home in three and half days. Shit, yeah wow?
Speaker 2: And then what was the rehab process like for you?
Speaker 3: They'd be like, let us know an you feel better?
Speaker 3: It was early I mean fuck, it was two thousand
Speaker 3: and five. There wasn't a lot of people who were
Speaker 3: rolling around that were injured. I went to the Naval
Speaker 3: Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia.
Speaker 2: I was having a.
Speaker 3: Interaction with the drugs that they had me on, and
Speaker 3: my sister, who was going through a nursing school at
Speaker 3: the time, actually identified it. But I was sitting there
Speaker 3: with like a resting heart rate of one point fifty
Speaker 3: sweating headache. And I go to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital
Speaker 3: and I check into like the E three Corman and
Speaker 3: he goes, what are you doing here? I was like, well,
Speaker 3: I have a gunshot wound to my hip and it
Speaker 3: really fucking hurts. And he pauses and he looks at
Speaker 3: me and he says, self inflicted. That's that's where we
Speaker 3: were in the war. You know, there's this whole thing
Speaker 3: going on, the War on Terror. Yeah, but they don't
Speaker 3: you know people as you know the Portsmouth Naval Hospital
Speaker 3: going to see the answer is almost one yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're kind of on your own as far
Speaker 2: as like physical rehab and all that. I was, and
Speaker 2: it sucked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm glad that they have very robust systems. Now.
Speaker 3: I wish that I had had them at that time,
Speaker 3: but it is what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you go back out to the West Coast
Speaker 2: and this is about the time you made the I
Speaker 2: don't know what the Navy term is the green and
Speaker 2: Gold jump.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, well, I mean, what the hell do they
Speaker 3: call it? It would be green and gold probably probably
Speaker 3: blew to gold for the Navy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I don't have a college degree, and I was
Speaker 3: on my You know, in the Navy, the big jump
Speaker 3: is six to seven on the unlisted side of the
Speaker 3: house Petty officer first class to a Chief Petty Officer.
Speaker 3: You have to fill though specific tours of duty along
Speaker 3: the way with leadership responsibilities for your record to be
Speaker 3: considered for advancement. I was in the middle of my
Speaker 3: leading pettioffs, which is required for advancement to E seven
Speaker 3: when I got shot, so they counted it as incomplete.
Speaker 3: So I had my record submitted to the Chief Board
Speaker 3: two years in a row and it was swiped off
Speaker 3: the table. It's not even considered if you don't have
Speaker 3: that wicket checked on the box. And I didn't even
Speaker 3: know why. I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 3: And I finally got some from somebody who was at
Speaker 3: the board who was like, and they're not supposed to
Speaker 3: say anything to anybody, but the guy was like, Hey,
Speaker 3: they're not even looking at your record because you don't
Speaker 3: have your LPO tour. And I had just checked into
Speaker 3: Buds where a guy had just started his LPO tour,
Speaker 3: which you have to hold for two years at a
Speaker 3: short command before it will count. So I would have
Speaker 3: had to wait for him for two years, then do
Speaker 3: mine for two years, and then submit my package the
Speaker 3: next year, so a five year like Hamster wheel. And
Speaker 3: I started I wanted to stay in the military, and
Speaker 3: I started doing some research and I found this program
Speaker 3: called the LBL program, the Limited Duty Officer Program, which
Speaker 3: is the same commissioning source for the seal community, at
Speaker 3: least that the warrant officers go through as well. It's
Speaker 3: the same package, same interview, just a different commissioning And
Speaker 3: I did some research on it, realized you didn't need
Speaker 3: to have a college degree. It was largely based off
Speaker 3: the merits of your service record. Put a package in
Speaker 3: and got picked up first look, awesome.
Speaker 4: Wow, So with the what rate were you when you
Speaker 4: went in? Because we didn't talk about that at all, right.
Speaker 3: OS, I was a radar scope operator. Because they made
Speaker 3: the change. Now everybody is an S, which I think
Speaker 3: stands for special operator, So being a seal is now
Speaker 3: its own rate inside of the Navy. Before it was not.
Speaker 3: You had to pick in boot camp if you qualified
Speaker 3: for BUDS. I think there was a list of like
Speaker 3: twelve or sixteen rates or moss for Army and Marine
Speaker 3: Corps folk that you could choose from that they would
Speaker 3: allow you to select, and I picked mind based off
Speaker 3: the shortest school, which would net me the fastest arrival
Speaker 3: time at seal.
Speaker 4: Training, right, and what you know, and like you said,
Speaker 4: they've changed it now, but what a lot of like
Speaker 4: One of the challenges for like seals and divers at
Speaker 4: that time was that you had to compete. You didn't
Speaker 4: get promoted as a seal, you got promoted as an OS,
Speaker 4: so you were competing against people who were doing the
Speaker 4: OS job across the Navy every time you wanted to
Speaker 4: get promoted.
Speaker 3: And I had to take the OS test. Right, So
Speaker 3: OS is Operation Specialist, which is a radarscope operator. You
Speaker 3: do not want me looking at a radar scope. I
Speaker 3: don't know how to use one. The only time I've
Speaker 3: ever seen a mock up of one was it OS
Speaker 3: a school. And then I had to take all of
Speaker 3: my advancement tests on questions based on that rate, which sucked.
Speaker 4: Now with the limited duty officer, like you say, it's
Speaker 4: sort of like a chief warn or whatever, where you
Speaker 4: don't need to agree it, but it keeps you from
Speaker 4: doing it. Does it keep you from being like a
Speaker 4: like a A what's the main the surface warfare, like
Speaker 4: the surface warfare service warfare is just a segment.
Speaker 3: So you are I don't know what they're called, but
Speaker 3: like chaplains, right, they they're not they're not line officers.
Speaker 3: So in the Navy, if you want to have any
Speaker 3: level as an officer, like if you want to have
Speaker 3: any input or ranking inside of like the tactical hierarchy,
Speaker 3: you have to have a star on your sleeve, meaning
Speaker 3: you're a line officer. There are like chaplain is a
Speaker 3: good example of one. They don't have a star on there,
Speaker 3: and I can't think off the top of my head
Speaker 3: what they do have. But there is a delineation between
Speaker 3: line officers and all other types of officers. Line officers
Speaker 3: can fall into that chain of command in the positions
Speaker 3: where you're making tactical decisions that non line officers cannot.
Speaker 3: So the LDO kept me inside of that line officer pathway, okay, okay, great.
Speaker 2: And so your last deployment then was as an officer, yes, okay,
Speaker 2: could you tell us a little bit about that, I
Speaker 2: mean you're respect to was it Team three Thingshan? The Afghanistan?
Speaker 3: Yeah, most of the time was spent in the Navahar
Speaker 3: province of Afghanistan. It was awesome. I was the only
Speaker 3: person in that task unit who had ever set foot
Speaker 3: in that and as an officer, I spent my time
Speaker 3: carrying around a three hundred woe meg and a javelin
Speaker 3: and shooting them both at people.
Speaker 2: So not the traditional officer job.
Speaker 3: No, not at all, and it was fucking awesome.
Speaker 2: We were I mean, were you with a platoon at
Speaker 2: this point?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I went over there and there was an
Speaker 3: officer whose wife was getting ready to get birth, so
Speaker 3: I did a little bit of filling in for him
Speaker 3: for the first two months, then hopped in between the
Speaker 3: two operational platoons as the operations officer. But because I
Speaker 3: was the only one qualified on the javelin, they all
Speaker 3: wanted me to go with them every time they went
Speaker 3: out there, because you can reach out and touch somebody
Speaker 3: with that thing. So I got to pick, you know,
Speaker 3: the position that I wanted to sit in. And I
Speaker 3: had been doing terrain observation and study at that time
Speaker 3: for a long time. So let's just say I had
Speaker 3: some very choice vantage points that had a lot of
Speaker 3: overlapping fields of fire.
Speaker 2: And how did the war evolve from you know, you
Speaker 2: were there early on the cars I deployment. But I mean, now,
Speaker 2: this is what are we talking about two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: twenty ten. Okay, how had the war changed? From your perspective?
Speaker 3: It was getting far more constrained for some reasons that
Speaker 3: I agree with and other ones that I have a
Speaker 3: harder time paletting. You know, right, you know, right before
Speaker 3: I got there, they came down with the no night
Speaker 3: rates guidance, and then another thing that was being really
Speaker 3: restricted was your ability to call casts or close air
Speaker 3: support because they had just dropped a bomb on that
Speaker 3: school bus that was full of a wedding party, and
Speaker 3: you know, those things they have consequences. But you know,
Speaker 3: the guidance at the time was, hey, no more night rates,
Speaker 3: so we're going to take your technological advantage and completely
Speaker 3: strip it from you. And then the cast became an issue,
Speaker 3: especially if some people that you needed to leverage cast
Speaker 3: against got to structures. They would not let you level
Speaker 3: the structure. You know, people always bitched about those ros.
Speaker 3: My thoughts on ROS is, they defined for me pretty
Speaker 3: clearly my left and right limits, and it's for me
Speaker 3: to figure out how to navigate and operate inside of
Speaker 3: those the maximum of my ability. So That's what I
Speaker 3: focused on because I'm not going to change you know,
Speaker 3: the cg's guidance on you know, literally you had to
Speaker 3: sign you know, the cast statement and the night rate statement.
Speaker 3: Partner force was starting to get pushed on us a
Speaker 3: lot more, and then the ratio started going a lot higher,
Speaker 3: you know, like one to six to one to three
Speaker 3: to one to one, and it's like, hey man, we're
Speaker 3: in the desert in the summer, in helicopters that can
Speaker 3: hold eight people, Like, what do you actually want us
Speaker 3: to be able to accomplish here? So complications, but again,
Speaker 3: it's not your job to sit there and bitch about
Speaker 3: the problems presented to you. It's your job to sit
Speaker 3: there and figure out how you're going to work inside
Speaker 3: of those problem sets, which is what we did. But
Speaker 3: it was definitely changing. It was far more constrained, and
Speaker 3: again for some reasons that I would agree with and
Speaker 3: others that I would probably push back on, but it
Speaker 3: was what it was, but definitely a different war. That
Speaker 3: same thing was happening in Iraq as well too.
Speaker 2: From my understanding, is that why you fired off so
Speaker 2: many javelins because you weren't able to use casts the
Speaker 2: way that you guys wanted.
Speaker 3: To Now the javelin I ended up using because so
Speaker 3: we were at a fob in nw Bahar that we
Speaker 3: literally built like we were staying with the ANA and
Speaker 3: A and P in their compound, which, let.
Speaker 2: Me tell you, that's a fucking circus.
Speaker 3: So we built a we built a fob just outside
Speaker 3: of their area, and we had taken I believe we
Speaker 3: had taken over Nabahar. God was it a team guy
Speaker 3: element or was it an oda? Either way, there was
Speaker 3: some javelin missiles that were left there, but there was
Speaker 3: no clue which is the firing unit you need to
Speaker 3: hook to the missile. And I'm like, going through the
Speaker 3: armory one day, I was like, well, what are these things?
Speaker 3: I'm like, holy shit, I know how to shoot these.
Speaker 3: And our enemy, like we've talked about, understands the effective
Speaker 3: range of both five five six and seven six two
Speaker 3: and depending on what you had which they could visually
Speaker 3: identify at that time and audibly tell, they would sit
Speaker 3: outside of that range. You know three, You know a
Speaker 3: PKM which is basically a belt fed three hundred wind
Speaker 3: bag lobbing that it in on you when you have
Speaker 3: an M four to respond with sucks damn. They know
Speaker 3: that you can't hit them. So it was awesome because
Speaker 3: it totally surprised them. And it was I took a
Speaker 3: half shell ballistic helmet and traded it straight up to
Speaker 3: an ODA weapons guy for a clue, and he was like,
Speaker 3: that's I swear to god, I'm like all fucking trading.
Speaker 3: He's like, no problem, and so I just started to
Speaker 3: launching these fucking missiles of people, and it was great
Speaker 3: because they had no idea.
Speaker 2: The effective range and the.
Speaker 3: Top down attack is just spectacular when people try to
Speaker 3: hide behind rocks, that's awesome.
Speaker 4: So so how did I want to know how this happens?
Speaker 4: You're just strolling around in the ODIA armory or you're
Speaker 4: just strolling around and you go, oh, look a javelin
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 3: So it was in the armory that was left at Nabahar.
Speaker 2: It was part of that.
Speaker 3: The missiles were part of the munitions, okay, but what
Speaker 3: I knew I didn't have was the clue. So then
Speaker 3: once I realized that I had the munition, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: now I need the magic piece.
Speaker 2: I need the clue.
Speaker 3: So every time we would go to like a base
Speaker 3: where I knew there was an ODA because the teams
Speaker 3: did not have any clues. I knew it was going
Speaker 3: to have to come from the army, so I would
Speaker 3: go find the odea. I'm like, hey, what's OK. Guys,
Speaker 3: guys got any clues? Can I have one of your clues?
Speaker 3: And I finally found what do you get? What's the army?
Speaker 3: Is it a bravo? A weapons guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 3: He pitched it to his his O three and the
Speaker 3: guy's like, I don't give a fuck, those things are
Speaker 3: collecting us. I'd straight up five hundred dollars half show
Speaker 3: helmet for probably a fifty thousand dollars clue, and we
Speaker 3: were off.
Speaker 4: And running, launching mechanism of the javelin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you connected. So you end up looking through the
Speaker 3: warhead and the final firing sequence, you're actually looking through
Speaker 3: the warhead because you have to lock the warhead and
Speaker 3: then once you do and you fire it and it's
Speaker 3: a fire and forget.
Speaker 4: And how many javelins would you say that you and
Speaker 4: you employed during your time there?
Speaker 3: I think it was like fourteen.
Speaker 2: Those are eighty thousand dollars apiece. I will mind you,
Speaker 2: but taxpayer's money well spent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, as people have seen, you know, in Ukraine,
Speaker 2: it's an incredibly effective weapon. So Andy, you come back
Speaker 2: from that, what's what's your kind of career, what's going
Speaker 2: on for you at this point? You know, you're a
Speaker 2: pretty seasoned seal at this point in time.
Speaker 3: I realized on that deployment that that was probably my
Speaker 3: last operational lap around the track. I was having some
Speaker 3: serious issues with my ankle, especially carrying weight, and I
Speaker 3: rolled it to a degree a few times where I
Speaker 3: actually considered it calling in a metavac for myself, Like
Speaker 3: I was getting to the point where I was on
Speaker 3: the battlefield probably the biggest liability from a physical perspective.
Speaker 3: So I knew that it was unlikely that my operational
Speaker 3: career was going to continue. And then I got back
Speaker 3: and I talked to the officer detailer and she's like, oh,
Speaker 3: that tour didn't count either, so you need to do
Speaker 3: this one and then this one and then this one.
Speaker 3: I'm like, what the fuck? And so I was just
Speaker 3: going to get out of the military. I was like,
Speaker 3: fuck you guys, and I was just going to leave
Speaker 3: the military. I think it was at like the fifteen
Speaker 3: year mark with nothing and on my discharge physical, the
Speaker 3: doctor wouldn't sign it, and he ended up sending me
Speaker 3: to Walter Reed to Nico, which does like this robust dive,
Speaker 3: deep dive into your medical history, hundreds of pages of documentation,
Speaker 3: and it was that documentation that led to my medical
Speaker 3: retirement as opposed to just walking away from the military
Speaker 3: and NICO.
Speaker 4: When was that stood up because that hadn't been around
Speaker 4: for a really long time at.
Speaker 2: It it was.
Speaker 3: I went there twenty eleven, twenty twelve, it was.
Speaker 2: Probably twenty ten. Yeah, it wasn't running new but it
Speaker 2: was New Earth.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and it really they kind of saved you
Speaker 4: from yeah, like.
Speaker 3: You know intentionally, that's not what I was there for.
Speaker 3: But the doctor was like, I'm not signed. It's like
Speaker 3: anybody I never went to medic Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 3: was even like my even getting shot. I think it
Speaker 3: was like five pages in my medical record.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: The guy's just like, no, you're not. I'm not fucking
Speaker 3: citing that. I was so pissed at him too, I'm like, bitch,
Speaker 3: I got plans. I got He's just like, well, you're
Speaker 3: going to cancel him? And I was so furious. And
Speaker 3: we have reconnected I mean, he's awesome. And now it's like, hey, dude,
Speaker 3: I owe you a lot because you did me an
Speaker 3: incredible solt.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: So you get medically retired, I mean, what were your
Speaker 2: plans when you when you left the Navy.
Speaker 3: I was already double dipping a little bit on the
Speaker 3: weekends and working for CrossFit, So I had found that
Speaker 3: methodology of exercising when I was rehabing myself. And the
Speaker 3: company was founded in my hometown in Santa Cruz, like
Speaker 3: eight blocks away from my parents' house, so I randomly
Speaker 3: met the founders and they were at a time where
Speaker 3: they were really rapidly growing. So I had been working
Speaker 3: on the weekends and I had the opportunity to just
Speaker 3: rotate over and become a full employee with them, which
Speaker 3: is what I was planning on doing absent the medical retirement.
Speaker 3: And so that just delayed that a little bit, but
Speaker 3: I was still able to just in my off time
Speaker 3: continue to work for them. So it was a pretty
Speaker 3: seamless transition from one career, so I'll say the next job,
Speaker 3: it certainly wasn't a career working for them.
Speaker 4: And before we move out of your military career because
Speaker 4: I we can't really watch the chat so much, but
Speaker 4: a couple of things will come up that I think
Speaker 4: we have to hear. A candem jump with a translator.
Speaker 3: That is a very long story that involves me trying
Speaker 3: to kill somebody who was vomiting on me most of
Speaker 3: the way down and trying to steer the canopy absent
Speaker 3: my permission or consent. Yeah, that's a story for We
Speaker 3: don't have.
Speaker 2: Enough time for that.
Speaker 3: It was a horrendous jumping experience in my life.
Speaker 4: And then monkeys stealing your gear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was pre nine eleven. I mean we
Speaker 3: would train in the jungle. We would go to Thailand
Speaker 3: and the Philippines and we would do like jungle exercises
Speaker 3: and uh, you know the guys who had been there
Speaker 3: before like, hey, make sure you secure your backpack because
Speaker 3: there's shit out here that's curious, that has opposable funds
Speaker 3: that can get inside of your stuff. And I woke
Speaker 3: up and there was a fucking monkey that had gone
Speaker 3: into my backpack and had taken my GPS and was
Speaker 3: up in a tree with it. And I traded him.
Speaker 2: For five minus. That's round. That's hilarious. It wasn't at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 3: I was. I was like, all I could think of
Speaker 3: is the time was I am so fucked for the
Speaker 3: paperwork that I have to do to get a new GPS,
Speaker 3: because again it's pre nine eleven.
Speaker 2: Like, right, it's not the plugger.
Speaker 3: It was like a plugger or a mugger, Like there's
Speaker 3: old big yeah, yeah, a lotofes and you're gonna yeah signature.
Speaker 4: It's not like that one hundred and fifty dollars garmen
Speaker 4: that guys were getting later on. It was like the military.
Speaker 3: Secret to get like two of these things for the
Speaker 3: entire platoon, and it was like a signature item. And
Speaker 3: I'm looking up at a monkey that has it.
Speaker 2: And you're going to go to your chief and say,
Speaker 2: a monkey stole my plugger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, I saw that one in the field.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So how did so you got to at least
Speaker 2: some bit of a buffer there when you transitioned out
Speaker 2: of the military getting into CrossFit. How did how did
Speaker 2: post service life treat you? I mean, how did how
Speaker 2: did you adapt to a radical change in lifestyle?
Speaker 3: I mean it was hard, but not that hard at
Speaker 3: the same time. I mean I constantly tried to remind
Speaker 3: myself that what you do is not who you are.
Speaker 3: And if I don't care who, if you join at
Speaker 3: eighteen and you have like the longest military career ID
Speaker 3: say you do thirty years, you still have a lot
Speaker 3: of runway left in front of you to get out.
Speaker 3: And I have found that the people who the most
Speaker 3: closely associate their occupation with their personality or their sense
Speaker 3: of who they are have the hardest time letting go.
Speaker 3: So I took the job very seriously, but I tried
Speaker 3: not to take myself too seriously and remind myself that
Speaker 3: it's just an occupation. At the end of the day.
Speaker 3: I miss the guys. I miss the fact that sometimes
Speaker 3: you could make the news, and I was stuck watching
Speaker 3: the news. But you can figure out ways to challenge
Speaker 3: yourself and do things that are enriching and rewarding. Probably
Speaker 3: not to the degree of going overseas and going on
Speaker 3: target and trying to make a tactical difference, but you know,
Speaker 3: you're fortunate that you ever got the chance to do
Speaker 3: that in the first place. Most people would never even
Speaker 3: understand what that's like. So fucking move on and find
Speaker 3: out what's going to be next in your life. Because
Speaker 3: otherwise you're going to be the dude at the VFW
Speaker 3: that's talking about it happened thirty years ago. Probably most
Speaker 3: of the stories that you're telling are totally made up,
Speaker 3: or at the very least they have been expanded on
Speaker 3: multiple times. And at the end of the day, nobody cares,
Speaker 3: and they shouldn't.
Speaker 2: The I mean, what was it for you? What did
Speaker 2: you find that? What ways did you find a challenge
Speaker 2: yourself that we're also meaningful for you?
Speaker 3: I mean it's not hard, people, I mean, sit down
Speaker 3: for five minutes and write a list of things that
Speaker 3: you don't want to do, and then write a list
Speaker 3: as to why. And most people are going to determine
Speaker 3: that they don't want to do it because it's hard
Speaker 3: or it scares them. That's where the most growth is
Speaker 3: going to come from you as a person. So I
Speaker 3: enjoyed learning, and I actually look back on it. I
Speaker 3: think special operations in general rewards people, and by that
Speaker 3: I mean with either opportunities or advancement or you know,
Speaker 3: just your chance to do your job more. It rewards
Speaker 3: people who who like to learn. I mean that's really
Speaker 3: all we were expected to do, was like, hey, here's
Speaker 3: a brand new skill set, be as good of it
Speaker 3: as possible. In five days, you have Roger that and
Speaker 3: so you learn how to learn, and then you learn
Speaker 3: that you really like new things like that. So I
Speaker 3: played around with being a pilot. I owned a gym
Speaker 3: for a while. I started doing public speaking. I became
Speaker 3: a professional skydiver and bass trumper to see how far
Speaker 3: I could take that stuff, which is what ended up
Speaker 3: leading me to being on my first podcast, which ended
Speaker 3: up leading me to get the idea. You know, somebody's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you should start your own podcast. I'm like, okay, Fuck,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I like the idea of like
Speaker 3: putting my thoughts out there or having conversations, but maybe
Speaker 3: I should explore that. And so I just continue to
Speaker 3: try to challenge myself. It's not that hard. People try
Speaker 3: to make it far more complex than it needs to be.
Speaker 2: Can you get into that a little bit more? Because
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of people who know you
Speaker 2: from you know, doing podcasts and public speaking. I could
Speaker 2: you get a little bit deeper into like how that
Speaker 2: came about, you know, I mean you said it was
Speaker 2: kind of reluctantly in your case.
Speaker 3: I if I would have before getting out of the military.
Speaker 3: If I would have written down a hundred things that
Speaker 3: I thought I was going to do with my life,
Speaker 3: public speaking and a podcast would not have been on
Speaker 3: that list. It was not even something I had considered.
Speaker 3: And the first time I ever publicly spoke, I remember,
Speaker 3: as a buddy of mine's company. He was like, hey,
Speaker 3: you the place that you worked at was called a
Speaker 3: seal team, right. I was like, yeah, he goes cool,
Speaker 3: do you want to come talk to my business about teamwork?
Speaker 3: Because it's like it's in the you know the name
Speaker 3: of where you used to work, so obviously you know
Speaker 3: a lot about it. Like, okay, I'll give it a swing,
Speaker 3: you know, for free. And then the second speech came
Speaker 3: from somebody who was sitting in that audience who and
Speaker 3: it just built over like years. I think I probably did,
Speaker 3: I don't know shit, thirty free speeches before I ever
Speaker 3: had the sack to be like, hey, I'm gonna here's
Speaker 3: my fee. And I think my first team was like
Speaker 3: five hundred bucks. I'm just like, nobody's ever been paid
Speaker 3: as much money before?
Speaker 2: Yow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I had never. But also I had never
Speaker 3: done anything in my life where I had to try
Speaker 3: to put a value to my own time, and that
Speaker 3: shit's scary. Telling people what your time costs is scary
Speaker 3: until you do it for a while and you realize
Speaker 3: that the worst answer that you're gonna get is no.
Speaker 3: And if they're gonna say no, you probably didn't want
Speaker 3: to do it anyway. And you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 3: just go lean into the shit that you are not
Speaker 3: comfortable with and you'll probably get a lot of growth
Speaker 3: out of that. You'll get way more growth than you
Speaker 3: will doubling down on stuff that you're already good at.
Speaker 2: And the Queer Hot podcast, I mean, now you're like
Speaker 2: a legit you know podcast, or you have people up
Speaker 2: to your place in Montana, you're interviewing people. I tell
Speaker 2: people what that podcast is about, because it's not just
Speaker 2: military stuff either.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's about. I mean, it depends
Speaker 3: on the guest. I My litmus test for a guest
Speaker 3: is whether or not I think it would be an
Speaker 3: interesting conversation. What I love about podcasting is you get
Speaker 3: to sit across from somebody who is passionate about filling
Speaker 3: the blank and you can learn about something like listening
Speaker 3: to somebody talk about things that they are passionate about
Speaker 3: is fascinating to me, and the opportunity to learn is
Speaker 3: like it's unbelievable. Just ask questions and fucking listen. It's
Speaker 3: not that hard. So it's provided a platform where I
Speaker 3: can kind of pick and choose who I want to
Speaker 3: at least present the opportunity to I do have quite
Speaker 3: a few military people on just whether it's friends or connections,
Speaker 3: and that is a large part of what I used
Speaker 3: to do. But it's not certainly not like a requirement
Speaker 3: to come on the show. I mean, I'll talk to
Speaker 3: anybody who is passionate about something that I think is interesting.
Speaker 4: What these different things that you went through, you know,
Speaker 4: your time as a pilot. Now did you work as
Speaker 4: a pilot for a while or was that just a.
Speaker 3: So some of my duties inside acrossfit eventually became I
Speaker 3: was the pilot for a CrossFit, and then I was
Speaker 3: doing charter flying as well in a Gulf Stream, so
Speaker 3: there was inside and outside across fit, and then it
Speaker 3: became an issue of time. So I carved out, you know,
Speaker 3: or carved away from an economic perspective, the one that
Speaker 3: was providing the least benefit, which happened to be piloting
Speaker 3: at the time, but yeah, I put my you know,
Speaker 3: literal metaphorical hat in the ring for a bit.
Speaker 4: When it came to aviation, that's fantastic. And then with
Speaker 4: the skydiving, the base jumping, you've done some of the
Speaker 4: flying suit stuff, Like how did that evolve for you?
Speaker 3: That was kind of just natural, you know, like inside
Speaker 3: the skydiving there's a variety of different disciplines and some
Speaker 3: of them really hooked people, and some of them have
Speaker 3: really no interest in The wingsuit stuff came from a
Speaker 3: buddy of mine. He was talking about trying to do
Speaker 3: something to raise money for charity and he was like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's what about this wingsuit stuff? And I looked into it.
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, I'll give that a try. And
Speaker 3: most of the things that I have done in my
Speaker 3: life have been on the suggestion of other people that
Speaker 3: are more successful than myself, and especially if it's in
Speaker 3: their wheelhouse, like, hey, this is what I've been doing
Speaker 3: for a long time, and maybe you should look at
Speaker 3: doing this as well, because you seem like you'd be
Speaker 3: pretty good at it. Like pay attention to those people,
Speaker 3: you know, especially if they're an actual friend. They're probably
Speaker 3: telling you that for a reason. That's how I fell
Speaker 3: into podcasting. But the wingsuiting stuff is what led me
Speaker 3: to being on my first podcast, which is what led
Speaker 3: me to you know, meeting guys like Joe who made
Speaker 3: the suggestion that I started a podcast. Yeah, but none
Speaker 3: of that had any architecture or plan to it. I
Speaker 3: was just making it up as I go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, do you do you have a preference when it
Speaker 4: comes to skydiving based jumping wingsuit like is there? Do
Speaker 4: you have a passion for either of those more than
Speaker 4: the other?
Speaker 2: Well, fandom jumping, we know isn't your thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, tantam jumping may not be your thing.
Speaker 3: I mean I've taken like fifteen hundred people for their
Speaker 3: first tandem. It's fun to really, I only do it
Speaker 3: now for friends and family. It's not what I want
Speaker 3: to do for a living. I mean there are people
Speaker 3: who are out there who literally make their living doing that.
Speaker 3: Wingsuit skydiving is really fun, you know. Wingsuit based jumping
Speaker 3: is also very fun, but the consequences are right in
Speaker 3: front of your face, and the margins for air are
Speaker 3: very tight, and I just don't have the desire to
Speaker 3: stay current or competent enough to be able to do
Speaker 3: that and I can just.
Speaker 2: Go mess around in the sky.
Speaker 3: Skydiving not risk free, but I can do it as
Speaker 3: safely as humanly possible, and I'm not worried about the
Speaker 3: long term.
Speaker 4: Risk there, right, Yeah, and then your podcast, like how
Speaker 4: did that start for you? What was you know the
Speaker 4: obviously it's evolved, you know, like it's big and you're
Speaker 4: well known, but you started from somewhere and how did
Speaker 4: that start?
Speaker 3: I was one of my skydiving sponsors was five eleven Tactical,
Speaker 3: and I was working with one of their brand managers
Speaker 3: at the time, and I had been on Rogan's podcast
Speaker 3: and he had made the suggestion that I start my
Speaker 3: own and the brand managers like, well, why don't we
Speaker 3: get the gear for you to get started, and we
Speaker 3: could like you know, presented by five eleven Tactical. So
Speaker 3: they brought me by a very first kit which fit
Speaker 3: instead of a small pelican case. There was no video.
Speaker 3: It was two microphones on a stand. I was literally
Speaker 3: using Rogue fitness weights to like hold them in place,
Speaker 3: with a zoom in between. And it built from there too.
Speaker 3: I think I changed the microphones out eventually got like
Speaker 3: a sony handicam and just slowly and incrementally evolved over time.
Speaker 3: So I think it's getting close to six or seven
Speaker 3: years at this point. I mean, I'm sitting in the
Speaker 3: studio now, so I have a dedicated studio. I have
Speaker 3: a guy who does the camera switching, like you guys
Speaker 3: obviously have behind the scenes now doing that, you know,
Speaker 3: the production level stuff, and just you know, it's everybody
Speaker 3: likes to talk about overnight successes, and I have found
Speaker 3: that they take somewhere but in five to ten.
Speaker 2: Years, and people forget that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all just slow, incremental growth.
Speaker 2: So now things are home and along though it seems andy,
Speaker 2: and I mean I'm just kind of curious, like what
Speaker 2: do you what's the next challenge for you? What's on
Speaker 2: the horizon, the next thing that you want to take up.
Speaker 3: Well, I just opened a brick and mortar actual business,
Speaker 3: the first ever endeavor in that route. So I opened
Speaker 3: a Black Rifle coffee franchise here up in Callaspell, which
Speaker 3: is it's wild. You know, it's a different type of investment,
Speaker 3: you know, literally from a monetary perspective, emotionally physically, from
Speaker 3: a bandwidth perspective, you know, kind of creating the culture
Speaker 3: creating a team that goes along with that, staying out
Speaker 3: of their way, letting the managers do their job. I
Speaker 3: am trying to do more of what I like and
Speaker 3: less of what I don't like. I have adopted the
Speaker 3: philosophy that knows a much more powerful word than yes,
Speaker 3: and carving shit out of my life is what I
Speaker 3: want to do. So I spend my time doing you know,
Speaker 3: travel the world, doing jiu jitsu with my wife, working
Speaker 3: in the coffee shop and being there and making sure
Speaker 3: that that investment bears the fruit that we hope that
Speaker 3: it does, and then focusing on the podcast, and all
Speaker 3: of those things exist in a three block radius where
Speaker 3: I live.
Speaker 4: For your podcast, you know, obviously you have on other
Speaker 4: military people, but what are some of And I'm not
Speaker 4: going to ask you what your favorite episodes have been,
Speaker 4: because I know how hard that question is to answer.
Speaker 4: But have there been episodes where you interviewed somebody that
Speaker 4: was outside your box of experience that you really just
Speaker 4: enjoyed and wish that everybody could hear this person.
Speaker 2: There have been some.
Speaker 3: Gold star widows that have been powerful, whether their husband
Speaker 3: was lost in combat or made the decision to in
Speaker 3: their own life and there's also been stories of people
Speaker 3: that are just like homesteading in Alaska, you know that
Speaker 3: just have a fast passion for life and a willingness
Speaker 3: to just figure shit out, even if they don't know
Speaker 3: what the next step should be. I've talked to a
Speaker 3: few people who have been running for office. It was real, okay,
Speaker 3: I mean I think an episode that surprised people or
Speaker 3: like the people were shocked that I would be willing
Speaker 3: to do. And I know you guys talked to him,
Speaker 3: but it was like sitting down and talking with Matthew Cole,
Speaker 3: Like I don't know why people think that, Like I
Speaker 3: wouldn't be interested in sitting down and talking with somebody
Speaker 3: who has critical or negative things to say about the
Speaker 3: Seal teams. It's like getting fucking mind, I have critical
Speaker 3: and negative things to say about the Seal Teams, Like
Speaker 3: you know, right, it's not I'm not a fan of
Speaker 3: people avoiding topics because they don't want to hear what
Speaker 3: could potentially be said.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's like, if you don't agree with something, bring it
Speaker 3: into the lights so we can investigate it. And shitty
Speaker 3: ideas they just don't survive scrutiny.
Speaker 2: Right, right, do we have a questions for you.
Speaker 4: We do. Let's see here. Kat Chaser, thank you very
Speaker 4: much for the sticker and the donation. Chief Justice Keith,
Speaker 4: thank you very much, Andy Jack David. In today's day
Speaker 4: and age, would you try out for the teams or
Speaker 4: for Pair of Rescue? Should I try to be a
Speaker 4: PJ or to stay near home or go to cal
Speaker 4: Cali to be a seal?
Speaker 2: Hm hmmm.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's a wrong answer there. It's have
Speaker 3: to keep somebody like advice on that, right, It's it
Speaker 3: kind of depends on what you want to do. I mean,
Speaker 3: make sure you research what PJ or CCT guys do,
Speaker 3: what their role is in the in the larger sphere
Speaker 3: of special operations, and if that's what you want to do,
Speaker 3: then to dive into it headlong. If that's not necessarily
Speaker 3: what you want to do, and being a seal or
Speaker 3: a ranger, a Green Berey or reconn like, just make
Speaker 3: sure you have an understanding of where they fit and
Speaker 3: that what that fit aligns well with what you want
Speaker 3: to accomplish in your career. I don't think there's I
Speaker 3: don't think there's wrong answers to that stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they're two very different jobs, so it's really
Speaker 4: more like which job. I mean. I know, I don't
Speaker 4: know what the Seal Team pipeline is like these days,
Speaker 4: but I know, you know, back on the day PJCCT had,
Speaker 4: they like their pipeline because of all the schools they
Speaker 4: got front voted, were the envy of everybody. But you
Speaker 4: have to like the job you're doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if you don't like like t Triple
Speaker 3: C and being around like blood and shit, I don't
Speaker 3: know if being a PJ is probably for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Joe's gotcha. Thank you very much. Did your Gunja
Speaker 4: hot injury prevent you from returning to dank or are
Speaker 4: you looking to move on to do other things?
Speaker 2: It would not have prevented me.
Speaker 3: I was able to again do that operational tour in
Speaker 3: twenty ten, but it was time for me to go
Speaker 3: for sure. The op tempo that I had been operating
Speaker 3: out was relatively high, young family at the time, and
Speaker 3: it was the right decision for my life at that time.
Speaker 3: I probably could have gone back, not once I switched
Speaker 3: over to becoming an officer, but it was my decision
Speaker 3: to leave, and I do not regret the decision that
Speaker 3: I made.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 4: Christian hopefully. Thank you very much. Thank you for your
Speaker 4: service and Green Team training. Thank you for the service
Speaker 4: in Green Team training. Do people die in training for
Speaker 4: hostage rescue or other will live fire around I think,
Speaker 4: just is there a risk during the Green Team training
Speaker 4: and stuff like that? Oh?
Speaker 3: God, yeah, I mean the whole fucking job is risky,
Speaker 3: as you guys both will know. I mean, people die
Speaker 3: in the basic seal pipeline and it sucks that it happens.
Speaker 3: And what I'm about to say is going to piss
Speaker 3: people off, but I think it's essential that it does.
Speaker 3: I don't want anybody to die, and it's tragic, but
Speaker 3: I would rather have that occur there knowing that the
Speaker 3: training that is occurring is actually preparing people for the
Speaker 3: job than for it to be orders of magnitude higher
Speaker 3: because they're going into an environment and an occupation that
Speaker 3: they're not prepared for. There's no way to completely reduce
Speaker 3: the risk on a live fire range. Accidents happen. The
Speaker 3: training is hyper realistic. You know, people die and the
Speaker 3: execution of the training. It is not a safe career
Speaker 3: field and you need to go into that with your
Speaker 3: eyes wide open. The odds are in your favor when
Speaker 3: it comes to a training accident, and they're actually in
Speaker 3: your favor when it comes to combat operations. But don't
Speaker 3: lie to yourself.
Speaker 4: Concanza or Concanza, thank you very much. I'm gonna wrap
Speaker 4: your question in with somebody else. And he all says,
Speaker 4: I love both your podcasts and great interviews. Thanks pimped down,
Speaker 4: Thank you. I always wondered why Andy doesn't speak more
Speaker 4: about his Navy career. I know he's a modest man,
Speaker 4: but the story is interesting. Remy is a beast.
Speaker 3: Oh so, Remy was a guy I just had on
Speaker 3: Rey Remy ad Alci. He was a guy to put
Speaker 3: through training, and he's a good guy. Yeah, fucking doing everything,
Speaker 3: piece of ship producer. Fucking disgust me with his success.
Speaker 3: I had a fucking average career. I would rate my
Speaker 3: career as a c I'm not like a war story
Speaker 3: guy because there's nothing to get like, oh hey there,
Speaker 3: I was cool. So so there was a lot of
Speaker 3: other people there, two hundreds of people. Thousands of people
Speaker 3: did the same ship that I did. Like, who gives
Speaker 3: a shit, It's just not there's nothing to like, harp on.
Speaker 2: It just was what it was.
Speaker 4: Andrew, thank you do each of the squadrons have a personality.
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, for sure. I mean it's it's like it's
Speaker 3: they're like a team. And I'd say probably the same
Speaker 3: thing for CAG as well too. Like there are four squadrons,
Speaker 3: they each have their own logo, and they each have
Speaker 3: their own personality, and they have their own loyalty to
Speaker 3: the team as well. It's not very different a professional
Speaker 3: sporting team.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then Jay Walker. So Constanza, I'm gonna wrap your
Speaker 4: question with this just so we don't really harp on
Speaker 4: this topic, but asks a question and they both kind
Speaker 4: of go back to the Matthew Cole Did you did
Speaker 4: you get any flat for the Matthew Cole interview? And
Speaker 4: do you feel as though that there are issues that
Speaker 4: in the teams that need to be addressed or do
Speaker 4: you feel as though it's more that it. Do you
Speaker 4: think it is less widespread as has been portrayed.
Speaker 3: There are probably people who have an issue with the
Speaker 3: fact that they use the term platforming. How could you
Speaker 3: platform somebody like that? It's like, how about I'll do
Speaker 3: whatever the fuck I want to do with my own platform,
Speaker 3: and you can eat a buffet of dicks, right, So,
Speaker 3: there might be people who take issue with that, and
Speaker 3: there probably are a lot of people who take issue
Speaker 3: with some of the things that he said, but that
Speaker 3: doesn't make those things in value. I'll be the first
Speaker 3: person to tell you that the Seal community isn't perfect,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure both of you would be the first
Speaker 3: people to tell me that the Army Ranger cag Green
Speaker 3: Beray community isn't perfect either. And at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, the reason for that is we're talking about
Speaker 3: human beings, and human beings bring human being problems. We've
Speaker 3: never had a period in the United States history where
Speaker 3: we had a consistent level of warfare to the degree
Speaker 3: that special operations were fighting inside of there's going to
Speaker 3: be good and there's going to be bad. The only
Speaker 3: thing that I think we should focus on is balancing
Speaker 3: how much time we spend talking about either, because what
Speaker 3: you go looking for when you investigate those communities is
Speaker 3: what you are going to find. So, if you go
Speaker 3: into a community and you want to write a book
Speaker 3: or a series of books specifically to seal community, you
Speaker 3: want to write it about missteps. If you want to
Speaker 3: write it at about mistakes, if you want to write
Speaker 3: it about things that shouldn't have happened. What you're going
Speaker 3: to find if you consistently look in the shadows is
Speaker 3: shit that's in the shadows that falls below the bar
Speaker 3: that this country should hold that community too. And what
Speaker 3: I'll say is that's the exact same thing that would
Speaker 3: happen in any other community that that level of scrutiny
Speaker 3: was applied to. So I don't think it's necessarily an
Speaker 3: issue of the seal community or the Special operations community.
Speaker 3: It's a human being problem, especially when you task a
Speaker 3: very small section of human beings to do incredibly abnormal
Speaker 3: things for a long period of time. It should it
Speaker 3: does excuse their behavior in any way, shape or form,
Speaker 3: but you shouldn't be surprised to find it either, right, right.
Speaker 4: And the thing is is, you know and Jack, you know,
Speaker 4: he's written quite a few very critical licals on you
Speaker 4: know what, special forces and some of the things that
Speaker 4: have been going on recently, you know, with that type
Speaker 4: of stuff, and people can hate people for that, but
Speaker 4: it's also like we have to we have to shine
Speaker 4: a light on these things in these communities because we
Speaker 4: want these communities to be better. Nobody hates these communities,
Speaker 4: we want them to be better, and you don't get
Speaker 4: better by ignoring, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, I mean, hey, don't hold your family hostage
Speaker 2: at gunpoint. No one will write about it, right, right,
Speaker 2: it's not you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And again it's like we're just talking about human beings, right,
Speaker 3: I mean we all it's you know, the suicide epidemic.
Speaker 3: Not that I like that term, but I have spent
Speaker 3: so much time trying to make sense rational sense of
Speaker 3: an irrational decision now and I know, in that moment,
Speaker 3: for a lot of people, it seems like the only
Speaker 3: rational decision. But if you look at it from a
Speaker 3: broader perspective, like it's not a rational choice, how the
Speaker 3: fuck did we get there? You know, Like it's to
Speaker 3: stistically higher than a lot of other communities, especially just
Speaker 3: the civilian world, if you strip away ems first responder,
Speaker 3: you know, that whole world, it's it's like astronomically higher.
Speaker 3: And everybody that I've ever worked with has a different
Speaker 3: capacity for stress for you know, their stress relief tool,
Speaker 3: whether it could be healthy or unhealthy, And it's just
Speaker 3: everybody gets to a breaking point at some point in time.
Speaker 3: And I think what's tough is nobody knows when that's
Speaker 3: going to be, and a lot of times people can
Speaker 3: really hide it, and I wish we could figure out
Speaker 3: a way to not allow that to happen. But if
Speaker 3: my choice were to make sure that none of the
Speaker 3: things ever happened that people write stories about or destroy
Speaker 3: the operational ability of those forces, I would rather have
Speaker 3: those forces being capable of doing the job that they
Speaker 3: are tasked with doing and figure out a better way
Speaker 3: to try to manage the aftermath. That makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then Brian, thank you very much. Got to
Speaker 4: ask him about the two world records he set for charity.
Speaker 3: Oh, in January, we did a scott Having expedition, so
Speaker 3: we did seven jumps in seven continents in six days,
Speaker 3: and we were raising money for Fold of Honor, so
Speaker 3: we started in Antarctica to Chile, to Miami, to Barcelona
Speaker 3: to Cairo to UAE to Australia, which was pretty sweet.
Speaker 3: And yeah, all the money went towards charity. I think
Speaker 3: we raised a million and a quarter dollars for Fuld
Speaker 3: of Honor, which is educational scholarships for Goal Star families.
Speaker 3: And also now they've wrapped in first responders as well,
Speaker 3: which is awesome.
Speaker 4: And let me just check Dan Bash wants to know
Speaker 4: if you'll rate his dick broom.
Speaker 3: I'd be willing to rate, you know, a quality dick broom.
Speaker 3: I can appreciate one to mustache. Who are wondering what
Speaker 3: the fuck I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: A flavor saver.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know the Army
Speaker 3: term for that, but we're talking like full magnum p.
Speaker 4: I just dusting off that shaft as it just goes
Speaker 4: into your mouth. Yeah, I mean yeah, the best best practice.
Speaker 2: From the Navy.
Speaker 3: Come on, you guys know all the gay jokes.
Speaker 4: Mostly I was a corman in the Navy. I was
Speaker 4: a penis machinist, so I'm right there with you.
Speaker 2: I have been I have been assured that it's not
Speaker 2: gay if you're underway. Yeah, I've been told that it's
Speaker 2: not a million times. I've been told that it's not
Speaker 2: queer if you're near the pier.
Speaker 3: Fair.
Speaker 2: I'm looking for confirmation. Guys don't don't play them. But
Speaker 2: I wasn't an athlete, so I couldn't tell you. But
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna.
Speaker 4: Say that the village people did not do in the
Speaker 4: Army song. And I say that as as a proud
Speaker 4: maybe better Isaac, thank you. I want to see how
Speaker 4: I can frame this. He wants, did you ever work
Speaker 4: with any SMU or any intelligence SMUs. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 4: of it's more of a I don't know that we
Speaker 4: can ask that, Isaac. It's more of a yes.
Speaker 3: When you're at Jays, that's all you work with and
Speaker 3: we can leave it at that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, this is a really long question, josh uh.
Speaker 4: This would be a great opportunity to do some clarification.
Speaker 4: And he has been very adamant about publishing about the
Speaker 4: publishing of the Niger ambush footage and you had an
Speaker 4: SS soldiers iphon. However, without the footage, she never would
Speaker 4: have won any ground against the African leaders in defending
Speaker 4: her husband's legacy. Not wanting to watch dirty laundry in public.
Speaker 4: Banandy and Jack have been on opposite side to certain
Speaker 4: current events for a long time and both being vocal
Speaker 4: about it, from possible war crimes to corruption do to
Speaker 4: troup discipline and culture. This would be a great opportunity
Speaker 4: to show the world how people have integrity, can discuss
Speaker 4: conversational topics in a beneficial way and not bothered, not
Speaker 4: othering or out browing each other. I have high expectations.
Speaker 3: I mean, let's start with how how does this person
Speaker 3: know that the footage was an actual lever that made
Speaker 3: the difference. The answer to that is, you don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think it did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I mean the premise of your of
Speaker 3: your assumption, I'm gonna say, is categorically false.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had a huge problem with soft Rep posting the
Speaker 3: footage and watermarking it, and I was very vocal about that.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the first time Jack and I
Speaker 3: have ever had a conversation. I know that you worked
Speaker 3: with an individual. It comes from the world that I
Speaker 3: came from, and I don't know where anything stands with
Speaker 3: any of these people. So people can film blanks if
Speaker 3: you want.
Speaker 4: And it's he who shall not be named.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I have stepped away from there four or
Speaker 2: five years ago.
Speaker 3: So the man has a casual relationship with the truth,
Speaker 3: and I take issue with that. I have no issue
Speaker 3: with people being in business to be in business. I
Speaker 3: have people. I have an issue with people leveraging footage
Speaker 3: and watermarking it with the intention of getting eyes, but
Speaker 3: the actual intention is dropping driving traffic to their for
Speaker 3: profit business. If it was a mistake it was a
Speaker 3: mistake if it wasn't a mistake, And again, like I
Speaker 3: know exactly what this person is talking about. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, I voice my opinion and
Speaker 3: I move on. There's nothing that I can do about it.
Speaker 3: I allowed one of the widows to come on and
Speaker 3: tell her story, and it was fucking powerful, and I'm
Speaker 3: glad that I did. My issue was with that individual.
Speaker 3: I addressed it directly with that individual, who then proceeded
Speaker 3: to block me because they're not interested in what I
Speaker 3: have to say. And that's okay. I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 3: And I guarantee you that that person would absolutely run
Speaker 3: to me if we ever met face to face. And
Speaker 3: I'll just say, there's a reason why people like that
Speaker 3: don't associate with larger groups inside of the community, because
Speaker 3: they're not welcome and they're not supported. So you're gonna
Speaker 3: have to do a little bit of a connecting the
Speaker 3: dots on your own on that one, because that individual
Speaker 3: is not the only person who's kind of in that boat.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, you know, I
Speaker 3: voiced what I thought and moved on. That's all I
Speaker 3: can do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there, I mean, there's a lot that goes into
Speaker 2: all this, but I mean, just from my perspective, but
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna sit here and try to justify things
Speaker 2: or whatever. I just say that things were handled in
Speaker 2: a certain way, and they could have been handled in
Speaker 2: a much better way, in a much more professional way,
Speaker 2: and they weren't. I guess you're probably talking about Michelle Michelle.
Speaker 2: Michelle Black wrote a book, and this is I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe this is like the more positive way to
Speaker 2: take the discussion is to direct people towards Michelle's book.
Speaker 2: She wrote a book called Sacrifice, and she did a
Speaker 2: ton a ton of research talking to all the people
Speaker 2: who were involved in that incident and what her late
Speaker 2: husband went through in Niger, and wrote it into a
Speaker 2: book called Sacrifice. I read it this year. I highly
Speaker 2: recommend people go and take a look at that book
Speaker 2: if they really want to know the true story of
Speaker 2: what happened out there that day.
Speaker 3: She, in her unwillingness to take no for an answer,
Speaker 3: uncovered far more than that video ever would.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then mister Stump has interviewed several people involved
Speaker 4: in fighting human trafficking. Does mister Stump have any insights
Speaker 4: into the reputation of Tim Ballard and his underground railroad.
Speaker 4: Oh you are among other professions professionals operating this area.
Speaker 4: Tim Ballard and Oh You are portrayed in the movie
Speaker 4: Sound Freedom. Currently send me a frequent topic of discussion
Speaker 4: for a myriative reasons.
Speaker 3: I know almost nothing about the man, so i'd be
Speaker 3: over the front of my skis saying anything about his
Speaker 3: organization or him himself.
Speaker 4: Okay, Gerald, thank you. As a big watch guy myself,
Speaker 4: I was wondering what Andy and his teammates were. I
Speaker 4: know seals have a long history with rishwatch is such
Speaker 4: as Saco, Rolex, Panar and G Shock.
Speaker 3: I'd say G Shock, I mean that's what we got issued.
Speaker 3: The other ones you listed are far far better. I
Speaker 3: cannot afford a Panorai. The like classic team Guy watch
Speaker 3: was the Rolex sub Mariner, and I've never been like
Speaker 3: a huge watch guy and the only watch I've ever
Speaker 3: bought for myself. This is so dumb and gay to say,
Speaker 3: but because I like the James Bond filmed the Omega
Speaker 3: Sea Master, the blue one that Daniel Craig wore. When
Speaker 3: I got commissioned, I was able to justify first to
Speaker 3: myself and then to my wife that I needed an
Speaker 3: excellent time piece so I could sit in at the
Speaker 3: table with the other officers.
Speaker 4: I love it. Yeah. I used to have an Amegacy
Speaker 4: Master and I got stolen during a move, so but
Speaker 4: all that.
Speaker 2: Is fucked up.
Speaker 3: There's such great watch.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I never wear the thing, but it's just
Speaker 3: like a timeless design.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jess schreck On, thank you very much. Uh. Dealer's
Speaker 4: choice based on the feeling of the interview. H story
Speaker 4: about Jaysock operator shooting a box of pop tarts on
Speaker 4: base or if Andy Andy had been shot and could
Speaker 4: go back with all the nodge he's gained from that
Speaker 4: day up until now, would he have stayed in longer,
Speaker 4: gotten out sooner or left and around the same time.
Speaker 3: I mean I can answer both.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: I probably would have stayed in if I had been
Speaker 3: physically able to do so. In the pop tarts story,
Speaker 3: it's not about Jasonock operate tours. It is about a
Speaker 3: Jasock opera tour who was in.
Speaker 2: A chow hal.
Speaker 3: With a fucking box of pop tarts and he was
Speaker 3: sitting there because this is how high speed we are.
Speaker 3: He would drop his mag rack round out that was
Speaker 3: left in there, pointed at the pop tar box and
Speaker 3: pulled the trigger. And let's just say one of the
Speaker 3: times he went out of sequence, Oh my god, he
Speaker 3: twelve bringing it? Tell yeah nice?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: Did did he get he went home right afterwards?
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, did did he get a pretty
Speaker 4: convenient flight home after that? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Fucking chicken or steak window or aisle to one? Baby?
Speaker 3: Which one?
Speaker 4: And Markles and I'd be interesting, you guys touched on
Speaker 4: some of the thing in Matthew Coles. I think I
Speaker 4: feel like we kind of talked about that a little bit, like.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing too, And because people ask me
Speaker 3: all the time about this stuff that he wrote, I
Speaker 3: was not present at anything that he wrote about in
Speaker 3: that book, So I can't talk about with any level
Speaker 3: of authority or experience about what he wrote. Can I
Speaker 3: tell you that the Seal community has fallen short and
Speaker 3: committed war crimes? Yes, it has happened in the history
Speaker 3: of the Seal community. It absolutely has in the post
Speaker 3: nine to eleven g watt Era. But I was not
Speaker 3: physically there on the things that he wrote about, so
Speaker 3: I can't speak with any level of, like I said, authority,
Speaker 3: I mean, if I if I could, or I would
Speaker 3: have been there, I would tell the truth about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he is not writing about anything I was present for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, we don't have any first ten
Speaker 4: knowledge of anything like that, So you know, RS, thank you.
Speaker 4: Why is Joe Rogan considered the podcasting goat?
Speaker 3: I would say probably because of I mean the sheer
Speaker 3: number of downloads. I mean, we're in the multiple billions
Speaker 3: at this point when it comes to downloading.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah here.
Speaker 3: I mean, you guys probably hear it two like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna start a podcast, I'm gonna be the next
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan. I'm like, no, you're not. Like, let's remember
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan was famous before he started his podcast, right,
Speaker 3: you know, the fear Factor dude who was already doing comedy,
Speaker 3: who was already doing news radio. And I'm not saying
Speaker 3: like you can't be successful without that, but let's also
Speaker 3: at least like have a relative idea of what's going
Speaker 3: to be possible. I mean, the difference in distance between
Speaker 3: where Joe is at and probably the next most successful podcasters,
Speaker 3: like trying to broad jump the Grand Canyon. I would
Speaker 3: say he's considered one of the goats because he's curious,
Speaker 3: and he will bring just about anybody on and talk
Speaker 3: with him about whatever they want to. And I think
Speaker 3: he does a very good job of limiting what he
Speaker 3: says based around what he knows. And nobody's perfect about
Speaker 3: this by any stretch, but he's really honest about what
Speaker 3: he knows and what he does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Andy, to your one of your previous points,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at like the early Joe Rogan,
Speaker 2: it was kind of like haphazard and goofy and just thrown.
Speaker 3: The geary number one needs to go in a fucking
Speaker 3: time capsule. It was literally like a laptop screen with
Speaker 3: like little.
Speaker 2: Snows likes right coming down and awesome and so yeah,
Speaker 2: overnight success ten years later.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, have you found do you feel I know
Speaker 4: you say you don't really know what your podcast is about,
Speaker 4: but obviously you know you're at one hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: two thousand subscribers like that, there's a measure of success there.
Speaker 4: Have you found your stride? Do you feel or with it?
Speaker 4: You know, do you have a sense of what works
Speaker 4: and what doesn't work at this point?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But I also I mean yes and yes and yes,
Speaker 3: but it's a double edged sword. I don't want to
Speaker 3: pander to anybody, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: I'm doing this. I mean, I'm largely doing it for myself.
Speaker 3: It's just an extension of being curious and wanting to learn,
Speaker 3: like you could. It'd be so easy to try to
Speaker 3: chase headlines like, oh, this just happened, let's just go
Speaker 3: try to find an expert on that, and I don't
Speaker 3: want to do that. I'm interested in things that interest me,
Speaker 3: and I'm honestly quite disinterested in a lot of shit
Speaker 3: that happens in society, and there are things that people
Speaker 3: care about that I don't like. I don't give a
Speaker 3: fuck how popular the Kardashians are. I would rather suck
Speaker 3: start a pistol than sit down and have a conversation
Speaker 3: with one of them. I don't care. And the episode
Speaker 3: would probably crush, right because of the audience that they
Speaker 3: would bring. I'm not willing to so, I mean, like,
Speaker 3: but that would work, right, So to answer your question,
Speaker 3: like you know, it would work because podcasting is more
Speaker 3: about the I think, the guests than it is the host.
Speaker 3: But how much are you willing to whore yourself out?
Speaker 3: I guess is the question that we all have to
Speaker 3: ask ourselves right to.
Speaker 4: Metri Yeah, yeah, no, we we have those exactly. You know,
Speaker 4: we will have on you know, we stay in a
Speaker 4: certain wheelhouse, but we'll have on an analyst and you know,
Speaker 4: for a lot of people having on an analystsator. But
Speaker 4: it's still an important point of an important part of
Speaker 4: the history that we want to cover, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, operators don't do ship without.
Speaker 4: Analysts, right yeah, Now, well, so where can everybody find you?
Speaker 4: Obviously clear hot podcast. You guys, if you enjoy this show,
Speaker 4: you'll love you'll love this show. You probably already know that,
Speaker 4: but check them out YouTube and all podcast platform. Where
Speaker 4: else a black Rifle coffee, you know, in your hometown,
Speaker 4: your brick and mortar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then as far like, I'm not crazy active
Speaker 3: on social media, but the platform the most active on
Speaker 3: is Instagram. I mean it's just my name, Andy stump
Speaker 3: to twelve, But yeah, I mean I'm out there just
Speaker 3: kind of like all of us in the digital age.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look hard enough, you can find everybody.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, is there anything else you want to plug? Anymore?
Speaker 4: Charity events coming up or anything on your horizon?
Speaker 3: Have some stuff that I'm working on but it's a
Speaker 3: little bit too early, probably to throw it out there.
Speaker 3: I've been on the been a little bit too eager
Speaker 3: in the past before and like, hey, guys, pay attention
Speaker 3: for this, and then it doesn't happen. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: well that didn't happen because I'm an idiot, and I
Speaker 3: said that that was going to happen before I was ready.
Speaker 3: So now I wait a little bit bitter.
Speaker 4: Right right.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Andy, thank you for doing this, man, I really
Speaker 2: appreciate it, of course, and everyone watching this Friday, We're
Speaker 2: going to be back with Gary Winderer, author of the
Speaker 2: Six Silent Men's he served as a warp in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Really excited to have him on the show. We've done
Speaker 2: Ken Miller, We've done Larry and now Larry wanted me
Speaker 2: to make fun of of Gary as being the least
Speaker 2: handsome of the of the bunch, So I mean it's
Speaker 2: got to be somebody. We'll break Gary's balls a little bit.
Speaker 2: But no, he's a really good guy. And I mean,
Speaker 2: like we talk on this show all the time about
Speaker 2: what our influences were that got us to join the military,
Speaker 2: and reading those warp books those memoirs when I was
Speaker 2: a kid was what did it for me?
Speaker 3: So we're how they walk around with balls that big
Speaker 3: and they're tiger stripes.
Speaker 4: Now yeah, I mean when you interview those guys and
Speaker 4: like the software in Iraq in Afghanistan was so tame
Speaker 4: compared to what those guys were doing in Vietnam. It's
Speaker 4: just insane.
Speaker 3: I had John Striker Myron oh yeah, and talking about
Speaker 3: the ship that they did, and all I could think
Speaker 3: of when he was talking, I'm thinking to my head
Speaker 3: how much true you would be in if you tried
Speaker 3: to put in like a risk assessment operation order based
Speaker 3: off what they were doing. They would laugh you the
Speaker 3: fuck out of the country. John John, John's the man,
Speaker 3: you know. And well it's it's another whole conversation. People
Speaker 3: can go check out the interviews with John Ward more
Speaker 3: about that awesome dude. So yeah, Andy again, thank you
Speaker 3: man for doing this. Appreciate you spending some of your
Speaker 3: evening with us tonight and hope to talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my pleasure.
Speaker 3: And for your listeners, you guys are gonna come out
Speaker 3: and we'll do one of the clear hot podcasts. I
Speaker 3: think we agreed on November November November, yeah, right around mcmorn,
Speaker 3: but not too far away.
Speaker 4: And who do you have coming up on your show
Speaker 4: that you wanna plug?
Speaker 3: Well, hold on, we'll see what I got, like four
Speaker 3: or five in the can. Let's see what I got here.
Speaker 2: Okay, uh shit, I got some psychedelic research, uh stuff
Speaker 2: coming up.
Speaker 3: I have a firefighter, a repeat guest, a guy who
Speaker 3: actually survived a suicide attempt and now does a bunch
Speaker 3: of speaking in the Firefighter First respond to world about
Speaker 3: the trauma that they carry as well too. A guy
Speaker 3: that I did excreen bray officer actually who I did
Speaker 3: some work with teaching pj's and CCT got into the
Speaker 3: marijuana industry and had his farm illegally rated by a
Speaker 3: sheriff's apartment in Los Angeles. Gonna bring a little bit
Speaker 3: of light and hopefully some heat onto those fuckers. It
Speaker 3: was on tribal land as well too, so there's some
Speaker 3: nice federal guidelines that wo.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, yeah, that's illegal with the fuck.
Speaker 4: Yeah it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost as if there was I mean, if
Speaker 3: only there was a software programmer app that you could
Speaker 3: use to look to see own the property like onyx.
Speaker 3: Then a guy who started x Seal who started the
Speaker 3: beverage company kill Cliff and talked a bunch about just
Speaker 3: being an entrepreneur in a Post nine eleven sealed named
Speaker 3: todd Elrick. So that's kind of what's lined up coming
Speaker 3: up for the next month.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 4: So everybody please check out Cleared Hot.
Speaker 2: You'll love it.
Speaker 4: If you had it already, you surprise yourself, all right,
Speaker 4: al thank you very much, thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Andy.
Speaker 2: We'll see you guys Friday. Yeah, see you guys. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: I want to tell all of you today about a
Speaker 2: new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the team
Speaker 2: House podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the high Side
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Speaker 2: come into your inbox and you're going to get the
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Speaker 2: it's another way for us to get the information out
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Speaker 4: Checking it out.
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