#334 Clint Emerson - Inside SEAL Team 6's Spy Unit: Black Squadron

>> Clint Emerson, you're doing welcome to the show, man.

>> Thanks for having me. >> It's cold here. >> Thanks for coming. >> You got an awesome studio. >> Well, I appreciate that.

>> It is beautiful inside out. I mean, do people get to see the whole thing? Have you ever shown all of it or on camera? >> Yeah. >> Now we haven't shown all of it.

>> No, I mean, that's not a good thing.

“>> Some secrets in here. >> Yeah. >> But I think it's just,”

they get the gist of it. >> But it's got a spa vibe. >> Thank you. >> You're a man who loves massages. >> Oh, man.

>> But yeah, man, I can't believe it's taken this long to get you on here. >> Yeah, well, life, you know. >> But it is good to be here. I was going to tell you guys that you're like Oprah Ryan. So many tears have fallen on this leather chair.

>> Oh, my man, I hope I don't cry while I'm here with you. >> Hey, same chair, so that's episode one. >> Is it? >> Yeah, but, oh, nice. >> Yep, history. >> Same exact position, still.

>> Yeah, sure. >> So, smell this chair before I leave. >> But yeah, I'm excited about this. >> Yeah, I'm really excited. >> Yeah, it should be fun. >> Well, let me give you an introduction here.

We're going to get more under that towards the end of the interview, but I thought that was a great, great opener. Clint Emerson, your retired Navy SEAL, who spent more than two decades in Naval Special Warfare, including time with SEAL Team 6. During your career, you specialized in intelligence collection,

surveillance, and high-risk operations, and hostile areas, including missions involving Somali pirates, al Qaeda leaders, and other covert targets. You're also the best selling author of 100 deadly skills, where you break down the surveillance,

survival, and trade craft techniques that you learned in special operations for a civilian audience. The water of the Scott Fitzgerald Award for Excellence in Writing. Since retiring, you've worked in crisis management and security consulting, helping people and organizations prepare for threats like targeted violence,

kidnapping, and other high-risk situations. You are the only special operator included into the International Spym Museum in Washington, DC. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks, buddy.

So, typically, in these things, we started childhood, which we're going to do a little bit today, but we're only going to touch on a small portion of your childhood at the beginning, because this is all going to tie back down, back down, back to childhood at the end.

So, let's get rekind of the first time we've done something like this.

But everybody's going to start something in the gift. Oh, of course.

“You know, I think I tried these, but they came out of somebody else's”

vigilante gummy bear bag, and they were spectacular. So, I will definitely be gobble in these down. I would love to counter you with a gift if this is a good opportunity. Sure. All right, do that, or we can do it later on, whatever you want.

I don't know, I'm game, I don't know what works best for this whole, like I got to get up and get it and give it to you kind of thing. Let's wait till it's appropriate. Okay, perfect. Probably the second segment.

All right. That way, I love gifts. Yeah, it's so good for you. Thank you, like it. So, we'll start with, where did you grow up?

Well, I am a born in Texas kid, but at the age of eight, we, my dad got hired by Ramco, and we left the United States, moved to Abkake, Saudi Arabia, where he worked for the oil industry, until, I guess, I left for high school. So, I grew up in Saudi, which was in the eighties during the height of,

“well, terrorism has always been going on, hasn't it?”

But, it definitely was going on then. You know, that's back when TWA was nickname, terrorist world airlines, you know, because of hijackings and all the things that were going on during that time frame. And Saudi, obviously, was a very interesting place to grow up as a Westerner.

So, that could imagine. Yeah, not a lot of fun. What age did you say you went there?

Eight, eight years old, second grade, all we have to high school.

Wow, yeah. So, not a lot to do for Western kids. You know, you live on a compound. It's surrounded by any aircraft guns. Concenting a wire.

It's probably the first time I actually started paying attention to security. Because I was like, well, are they trying to keep bad people out? Are they trying to keep us in, you know, like, why do you have all this? You know, gate guards are the AK-47s and the Consentino wire part. Those are interesting, you know, razor blades at the top of the fence line and the

any aircraft guns that you could see out in the distance. And yeah, it was an interesting way to grow up.

Um, a lot of redundancy, you know, and there's always somebody around to see something

to ask you what you're doing. I wouldn't say it's a surveillance state because they're not that motivated. You know, there's some of the laziest people on the planet, but, uh, but they definitely had all the resources in place that made you question like, why, oh, he got all this, you know.

And then, um, then you quickly realize as a kid, like, oh, well, there's a lot of terrorism that you heard about in the news outside of Saudi. Um, there was plenty of events inside, right, co-bar towers, um, was during that time frame and, uh, a couple other events inside the kingdom and then you go, oh, okay, now you get it, right?

It keeps on keeping their own out and also keeping us in. I don't want you wandering, you know, yeah. Yeah. I mean, did you, I know you don't have anything to, you know, bounce it off a bit. Did you like it?

There's a kid. Uh, not really. I mean, you, uh, it's a radical Islamic state back then, you know, in BS, since then, is westernized Saudi and he's really trying hard. You know, he's a 30-something-year-old Prince of Saudi and he's doing a good job.

“I think opening the kingdom up and trying to create new venues, really following Dubai and”

how it's prospered and I think they see themselves as, as they had gotten behind, you know, and they, they're, they're values and they're dedication to the religion actually kind of kind of held them back, you know, because they're home of Riyadh or of Mecca, sorry, and, you know, there's a lot of weight in that for them.

And so I think Saudi felt like it could never actually modernize because of Mecca and

you have a lot of respect they're stilled for the elderly and older clerics and those really running Islam. And so I was there during the height of, you know, the most extreme aspects of Saudi religion. And if you look at Saudi as a whole, it was like 27 different tribes or clans, whatever they called themselves, all the way up to the 1950s.

Mm-hmm. And the biggest clan or tribe, pretty much gained power and, you know, became a kingdom. And ironically enough, the 1950s is when a Ramco was established, which AR is Arabian,

“A.M. is American and C.O. company, and started pulling oil out of the ground, right?”

And very quickly, became one of the richest countries in the world, liquid, and as a kid and 80s, that was the height of when a majority of Saudis didn't want you there, you know? You want Americans, Brits, or Canadians, because that's a majority of the folks working for the oil companies, pulling that oil, and you felt it, you know? And there was, there's a lot of privilege there for the Saudis.

I remember my dad, he would get just so irate, like if you're standing in line at the suit, right? To pay for whatever merchandise we were buying. Saudi citizens had a front-of-line privilege, no matter where you are in that country. If you're a Westerner, you're the back of the line.

You will always let a Saudi go first.

Now I always think, like, "Why aren't we doing that here?" [laughter] Just gonna bring that up. You imagine, like, American first and line, like, I can't imagine it. No, this is never America last.

Yeah. But as a Westerner, you're standing in line for an extraordinary long period of time, sometimes.

“My dad, I remember he would just turn red in the face, and it could just hear him under”

his breath and other fuckers, you know, like, just pissed that he had to let these people in front. It's part of their protocols, part of a, you know, when you get briefed up in Houston at, you know, at a Ramco headquarters before they put you on a dedicated 747 to Saudi, you know, they tell you, "Hey, these are the protocols."

They give you all these briefs and the culture, and so, you know, that was just the beginning. You noticed that, you know, you are second, right, third, right citizens, you know, like, even like the Saudis back then treated Indians, Pakistanis, and Filipinos, they were the slaves of that country, you know, literally. And even, you know, there was times we even had to get in line behind them.

Wow. So it was getting. Yeah, and if you didn't follow it, you know, it was all kind of like the threats were real, you know, you get deported and heartbeat, you know, for sometimes the simplest things. You know, they don't care.

I don't think there's anything wrong with taking care of your own.

There was something to learn.

Now, being a visitor, it sucks. But now as an adult, I can reflect on that culture and go, can't man, like, but then there's the other side. Back then, women, you know, we'd go on base, or there's a base, but on compound, they had two restaurants.

They had one called the date pet. You know, dates are very good. Great dates that grow on palm trees is, you know, one of their biggest fruits, if you

“will, or vegetable, and it's got one seed, right, so what does that make it?”

One seed is vegetable, yeah. And so it was called the date pet, good playing on words, but it was kind of like the fast food. And a lot of kids with those kids would go there, hamburgers, hot dogs, that kind of thing. And then they had the dining hall, dining hall was more of a sit down kind of restaurant.

But a huge partition down the center. The women would go to one side, the men would go to the other, really, to eat. Yeah. And that's where all the women would go, because you even had Saudi employees living on the compound.

And so you had to follow a lot of those traditional cultural rules, you know, basically social etiquette and protocol.

And yeah, everything was separate, you know, and it was always the women behind these

curtains separated from the men, you know, and the kids would always default with the women.

“And it didn't matter where you went, that's how it was, you know.”

There were a number of times that really made the living there in pleasant was that Saudi younger Saudi men, they're probably in their 20s, you know, and you got to remember, I'm like 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, you know, those age groups, and they'd go out of your way to like kick your ass, you know. And their favorite thing, you know, and I think we kind of joke about going in and out

of the Middle East, but their sandals, their sandals are this hard leather. And somewhere in their upgrain, they learn how to hit you pretty good with the blade of those sandals, they take those sandals off or they got really good at throwing these things like a damn Frisbee. And they would, I mean, you know, 20, 30 yards away throw that sandal at you and they

hit you in the head every single time. That was my damn, and they're good at this. And those sandals, the blade of them, I mean, it's like getting, you might as well get hit by the edge of a plate, you know, like a, you know, dinner plate, you know, it's hard and it hurts and it sucks.

And it's not to say that we probably didn't bring some of those beatings on ourselves, just being bored, Westerners with nothing to do and cause trouble, you know. So why did you come back to the States? They only go up to the eighth grade there. Okay, so a lot of Ramco kids go to Swiss boarding schools at 9th grade, you know, for

basically high school. So at that point, my dad had enough, you know, once again, he's a Texas kid growing up Texas kind of had that, like, I'm not gonna let somebody push me around that long. Yeah.

“You know, how go make a decent salary for a little while, see the world?”

You know, as we all have learned, Saudis are not bashful when it comes to money, you know, so then this is the 80s. They would make you leave the country for 30 days at a time. So they'd give you an 11 month visa and on the 12th month, they'd give you $5,000 per head in your family and say, leave.

So you'd go on a 30 day vacation and go see the world or whatever and, you know, you know, yeah, by the way, stop and get your visas renewed and then come back to work. So that aspect of it was actually really cool. It's got to see all the Europe one year, you go see parts of Asia another year and pretty much all paid for by the Saudis, you know.

And I always thought it's funny how this kid is, they were Mormons.

And so there was like eight kids in that family. So can you imagine they would take the $5,000 per head and then they would just go to Cypress and hang out for a month and not spend a dime. I was like, that's pretty smart. Yeah.

Just take all that money and put it away. So we've got your, we've got your interest in the seal tombs. Um, you went, you went to give him, you came back, went through high school, went to college. Yeah. So a couple things as on one of those trips, you know, we were traveling through Frankfurt

and airport and the first thing you want to do when you get out of Saudi is have a Coca-Cola. At least for me, because all they had was Pepsi, you know, pronounced the P word in Arabic. So it's bebzy. So you're stuck with bebzy Cola, the entire time you're in Saudi because a couple of reasons at the time Coca-Cola supposedly was run by Jews, right?

But they didn't allow Coke into the country. So, you know, they got a lot of reasons for a lot of stuff. And so if it's an airplane leaving Saudi, it's not going to have Coca-Cola.

So the first place, land in Frankfurt, whatever.

And we get to our gate, you know, my mom and dad and my brother, I go stage himself and I'd be lying to the little restaurant bar across from the gate and the first thing I do is go to the bar and ask for a Coke, fountain Coke. And there's this guy standing there and he looks kind of like us, you know, he's all tatted up and he's got like, actually he's got a black colored polo on could have been

Dick Marchenko himself, I don't know.

“And I'm a curious kid and I'm kind of looking at his tattoos, I'm like, what's that?”

He's like, looks down to me and he's like, what, what, he's like, has that tattoo right there? He's like, that's a trident. I'm like, what's a trident? He's like, it's a symbol represents, you know, military unit.

What military unit? The seals. Like what a seals doing.

He's like, kid, where, where are you from?

Like why I live in a Saudi. He's like, what are you living in Saudi for? I'm like, oh my dad works for Ramco and, you know, and he's like, huh, all right. Well, do you remember when we bomb Libya? Like, yeah, actually I do because, you know, at the time Vice President George Bush came

in country. I was a boy scout, so I'm color guard, hold the American flag and I've got my I'm proudly wearing my order, the arrow sash and he stood behind the podium and told all the Americans hey, you know, and next coming months there may be conflict and if anything happens, we're going to have C130s and everything set up for you guys, get the Americans out of country

“because you are the closest country for retaliation of some sort, right?”

So I tell this guy, it's like, yeah, it goes well, it was B1-11's had to come in extra low and I'm like, oh yeah, why? Like, well, so they wouldn't get shot out of the air and it gives me a lot of, I don't know, if it was even legit, right? He's like, me and my buddies though had to sneak in the middle of the night and we had to

take out the anti-aircraft guns so that these B1-11s could roll and drop bombs and roll out, not worrying about any threats from the ground. I'm like, what do you mean you took 'em out? Like, when we show up in the middle of the night, we shoot everybody on site and we put a bunch of explosives on the guns and run away and they blow up, like, holy shit!

That's what I want to do, right? And up till then, this is the '80s, right? I want to be a ninja, up till then, 'cause the movie Revenge of the Ninja was like my favorite movie, I was like, I want to be my favorite, I want to be a ninja, I want to be a ninja. I meet this guy in a Frankford Airport and like, okay, all right, I'll switch over to

seal now. But I want to be a seal. And of course later, you find out, like, well, if you murder people as a ninja, it's called murder. But if you murder people as a seal, we'll then get labeled a hero, it was like, just

a matter of picking the right side of the line in life, right? It's anyway, I switch from Ninja to seal and it's switch from Ninja to seal. And when we got back, I remember going to the library and starting to try and find these seal books. And there was only, I think there was one, and it was like a picture book and one, I think

it was one seal book that I could find in that library and the ab cake layer of library. Wow, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah.

It's actually kind of funny. So, now we have a whole section of why we have a boy. And so I find one seal book and I think it was like a picture book, you know, and it just had photos in it. Like, it's coming out of the water, the camouflage face, and the jungle hat, and different

things. And they're digging in and digging in, and, man, interestingly enough, they had this career-oriented MS-DOS computer system at the school. And you would sit at it during, I don't remember if it was during class or something. You would answer questions, click, click, click, green screen, asking you a question, ABC or

DA, ABC, DA, and you, you know, as a kid, I felt like 300 questions was probably 50. And you answered all, and then on the printer, you know, with the green line, green and white line printers, with the holes in the side, and up to TV business, the print it all happened.

“And it would tell you, you know, based on your interests, what kind of career path you should”

take.

And sure enough, the top three, the first one was offshore rigs, scuba diver, welder, right?

Base, marine biologist, and the third one was UDT, didn't even say seal yet, it just said, under water demolition, you know, United States Navy, and I was like, huh. So then that led to looking into scuba, I found out that I had met the minimum age for patty certification, which at the time was like 12 years old.

guy that would do classes at night. He worked for Ramco, but he was also a master diver, and had all the instructor calls for patty. And so we'd go to the local pool, and you do all your lessons, and deep end, and learn

“all the class, and you take the test, and then eventually you go do open water, right?”

You go out, and this is the Persian Gulf, right? Korea Beach, you know, and going out, walking out through sand, crappy, murky water, you know, the Gulf then is the same as it is now, go to the bottom, do your open water part, get in a circle, structures in the middle, make sure you take your mask off, and then you got to clear it, and all of the little things, and did all that, got my call, and my scout

master, an adult, who also was scuba qualified, was like, once he learned, I was scuba, I was like, hey, do you want to go do tire reef, I'm like, yeah, I'd heard about this tire reef, it was a reef made of the tires that they use on the big desert vehicles, you know, massive tires are the size of this room, and it's a whole reef where they've dumped them stacked them, you know, done different things with them that you can go to, so the

“way you get there is you go out to the end of a pier, we get to the end of the pier, and”

is the biggest swarm of jellyfish I've ever seen in my life. scout master like, yeah, don't worry, we're just going to instead of jumping in and giving me the okay, don't fill up your BC with any air, just take that leap, jump right through

them, sink to the bottom, I find John the bottom, I'm like, okay, this is my very first dive.

And so, you know, hold your face in the mask, take your step off the pier into the jellyfish, you know, of course it depends on needles, my face and my hands, everything, right, pass through the jellyfish, get to the bottom, there he is, it's murky, it's dark, but I see him, bubbles, okay, okay, okay, give all the hand signals off we go, and he has this rope, it's a long to bottom, and you just start going along the rope, and I write behind him,

we're just pulling ourselves, and it takes you out to the tire reef, and we get out to

“the tire reef, you're kind of cruising around, you know, you kind of get up and some of”

the tires are upright, and you can go up, blow a bunch of bubbles, create a big bubble,

go in there for a split second, clear your mask, whatever, put it back on, do what you're

not supposed to do, right, and then we cruise around some more, we'll be before you know it, I lose track of this guy, and he loses track of me, and I'm looking out in the distance for bubbles, I don't see bubbles, so I'm like, what the fuck, and I'm all by myself down 12 years old out the tire reef, so I circle this thing half a dozen times, looking in and out of the tires, looking around for him, and I can't find this dude, and then

I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'll just go back, okay, so now I'm looking for that rope, why didn't pay attention to where that rope came in on the reef, so now I'm on the perimeter, looking for this damn rope, which I can't find the rope, I'm like, well, now I'm starting to panic, all right, I'm like, what the fuck do I do now, so I'm like, I know there's the surface, and I can figure out my bearings, so I go ahead and start to make the

descent, hands up, you know, phone all the textbook rules, which I just learned, I get to the top, break the surface, fill up my BC, look around, it's choppy, it's horrible, it's cloudy, and I can't see land, and so I'm circling, circling, and a panic, but, you know, I'm only right here, so I'm like, well, it kick really, really hard, get myself way up, and

I do that bobbing basically 360 boom, see land, like, I'll thank God, fill up my BC, start

turtle backing, and it felt like it took an attorney to get back to that beach, I was way down from the pier, I drifted, get to the beach, it's 12 years old, your single little 180 tank, and your BC, it feels like it weighs 1,000 pounds, and I'm carrying my fins, and all my crap, and walking back, and he's sitting at a picnic table, oh, it was up man, was that fun or what, and I'm looking at what? I was like, you left me, and he's like a grown-ass adult, you know,

but I tell you what, I probably leverage that experience, and how many times and buds, you know, like, be high, anytime you're doing pull, comp, like that moment, I was like, oh, I've already, I've already been lost at sea, and you know, and try to figure this shit out of my own as a kid, you know, and not that pull, comp, or any of that stuff was easy, but you definitely, like, definitely leverage that moment out of the how many times, there's like, okay, you've been here,

you've kind of done something like this, kind of sort of at least once in your life when you're a kid, so you definitely handle isn't adult, you know. A lot of people get blood work done once,

the real value is seeing what changes over time, what's improving, what's getting worse,

“and whether the things you're doing are actually working, that's why I use super power.”

Super power starts with one simple lab test and gives you detailed insights into more than 100 biomarkers. I'm talking about cholesterol, testosterone, cortisol, and that's just the start.

The first test gives you a baseline, then super power AI builds evidence back, protocols,

around nutrition, exercise, supplements, lifestyle habits, and even prescription options when appropriate. But the second test is where it gets really useful, because now you can see if the changes you made are actually working. Your health is not just about knowing your numbers. It's about understanding the direction they're moving, and that's why people keep using it. 85% of members uncover early risk factors for disease, 79% uncover heart disease risk, and 49% slow their

“speed of aging. Super power keeps your data centralized in one dashboard, so you can see trends”

across multiple tests, connect wearable devices like Apple Watch, Ororring, or Loop, and actually make better decisions with your health data. Start building a smarter picture of your health with super power. For a limited time, our listeners get $20 off to unlock their membership. Head over to superpower.com, use code SRS for $20 off your super power membership. After you sign up, ask you how you heard about super power. Tell them the Sean Ryan Show

sent you to support the show. Pick up your phone. Look at it. Count the number of companies you've

never heard of that know where you slept last night. Nobody can, and that's the point.

App sure not even using or calling out to servers all day and all night. Reporting where you go, what you look at, and what you buy. Glacier security and S cuts those calls off before they connect. Not after, before. It's the same greater protection people with Clarence's carry, built by the guys who used to build it for them. And you don't manage it. Open the app once, hit the button, close it. Glacier. Download it today on the app store, and remember, privacy isn't paranoia.

It's protection. What did you go to school for? If you learned that early on,

“that's what you wanted to do, then why did you wind up going to college? So, good question, man. I always”

wanted to go to the Navy. I just didn't have the balls to actually sign up, you know, and I didn't

know, you know, back then you didn't. There was no information. There's no internet or anything to leverage to like, okay, well, how do you become a Navy seal, you know? I ended up going to University Houston of all places, and I ended up meeting a guy, Rick, Rick and Brian, but Rick was the guy I met, and he had been to Buds. I like, and he was like this gold mine of information. And I was like, so tell me all about it. He's like, well, he told me as far as he made it,

which was like hell weak, or whatever it was, and he ended up having an injury and ended out of out of the Navy. So he can only give me so much. He gave me enough to know that, okay, you got to be able to push-ups, pull-ups, this, this and that, and you just go to a Navy recruiter and sign up, and I was like, okay. So once I learned to, you know, very basics, and I started working out with this guy, and then we pulled in another guy, Brian, and then the three of us just were like,

well, I kind of motivated them in a weird way. They're like, well, why don't we just all go in together? I was like, you would go in again? Like, fuck yeah. So we went to the Navy recruiter, and at this point I had maybe a semester left on my degree. I was like, hell, got a scratch it, right? So we go to Navy recruiter, we sign up, and I didn't tell anybody and tell about, I didn't tell my family or anybody, because my dad, you know, he was like, big on college,

finished college, out of the, but I was like, screw it, I'm going, we signed the dotted lines, and about two weeks from leaving to go to Chicago for boot camp. You know, like, told my parents, of course, my mom cries, and my dad was kind of like, what? It was like, yeah, it's going to happen. He's like, all right. You know, off we went. The three of us went to boot camp at Great Lakes, Christmas. Left right before Christmas, it was great. Sideways snow, learning how to march,

you know, the deal. It's been eight weeks. Learn how to march and make your bed. That's Navy boot camp.

Kinesiology at the US. Okay. Yeah. So I was going to, I thought, it's like sports medicine. You know,

kind of had an interest in medicine from doing my first aid merit badge. And then I realized

basically Navy Corman school basically is the Boy Scout first aid merit badge. That's really it's three months. You learn really nothing. You know, you learn how to take pulse and count breaths and stop bleeding in some sort. And then, uh, and then you show up San Diego, Buds Class 203. 203. What year is this? 95 95. I think that started in 95. Gradually 96.

“Right now, started in 96. Gradually 96. Fuck. I don't know 95 to 96. I think. Yeah. What do you think of Buds?”

Um, Buds is, so you've had enough guys. So the only thing unique for me is my true true name is Smith, right? Everybody has a pen name, right? And, um, so there was, we started with 180 something guys in our class. And there was probably five or six Smiths, okay? And as you know, the end of every day of first phase, you go to the first phase classroom and you sign deficiency chips. I was sees Smith on the list. So of course, I ended up with every deficiency chip for all the other

Smiths, every single damn. And what is the one word we're only allowed to say all through Buds?

Who? Yeah. So mine always had a question mark at the end. You know, they'd say Smith pushups and

then they'd pull out another deficiency. Pullups, another one for, you know, the, the, oh course, the swim, the run. And I'd go up there. Who? Yeah. And sign every single one of them. There was like, you know, four to six a day to where eventually a couple of the instructors are like, pull me aside with this other kid Garcia and they're like, hey, you two, stuck. You guys are horrible. I mean, I don't understand why you show up to this course and you can't do pushups,

pull ups, you suck at the O course, you suck at runs, you suck at swims, you know, remediation.

Once you show up at the first phase office, when the day is done every day from here on out.

And this was an instructor who was fresh out of seal team six. He had a reputation for being wired a little tight. And he looked exactly like Richard gear and anybody from my era who here's

“this knows exactly who I'm talking about. And I remember showing up like, oh, this is going to suck.”

Right. Show up first phase office right next to the bell here's staring at that bell. He comes out. He's got a big old dip in, he's spitting, you're on the grinder, hold on a second. It goes back inside grabs his lawn chair folds this thing out and we're like, I kind of look over at García and we're in this for the long haul man. This is going to suck. And he's like eight count body builders begin and we just start going about 30 minutes into it, which is a long time doing

an eight count body builder. And he's like, go hit the surf. And so we take off like, I'll think, God. And that's a long run to the berm over the berm into the ocean back, you know, get wet and sandy the whole thing, come back, push ups, ready again. Start going push, eight count body builders

“begin, pull ups, begin, you know, fireman squats, putting him on my shoulders, doing squats,”

pulling on his shoulders, doing squats. Fireman carry to the surf, switch, come back. You know, so I carry him to the surf. We dump him in the water, get wet and sandy. Now he puts me on his shoulders, go back. And this goes on and it's starting to get dark. And I'm like, dude, they're going to, and while we're whispering to each other and then definitely while we're hitting the surf, like, dude, they're going to try and make his quid. It's going to suck, you know, don't quit. Okay,

don't quit. Yeah. And this goes on every day, a first phase for me in García. And we get about before hell week and hell week at that time was the sixth week of Buds. So we're probably week four of getting my ass handed to me after every day. And at this point, a couple other smiths had quit finally. I was like, thank God. Because these guys were screwing me over every day. And so García were doing push ups and he decides to cross his feet for some reason. Instead of that

attention, ankle side by side, he crosses, which is what instructors would do, right? They'd cross their foot doing push ups. And instructor gets out of that lawn chair and Thai kicks

push ups. You don't push up. Don't work. I didn't see anything. And then there was a hesitation. And instructors like, keep going, get your feet right. And he couldn't get that ankle to do what he needed to do, right? And he's like, you know, take him to the surf zone. So I throw him on my shoulders, fireman, carry him to the surf zone, throw him in. And this kid's borderline crying. He's like, not crying because of pain. He's crying because he knows that he's not going to be

“able to continue, you know, and he hits him hard. And he's like, he goes to, I think he broke my”

fucking ankle. I'm like, I think I heard something snap, but put some weight on. He kind of puts weight on. It kind of gives. And he's just like, and things start swelling up. I mean, throw him on my shoulders to bring him back. And then instructors like, no, you carry. You're supposed to switch. Couldn't do it. He couldn't even get me on the shoulders. He couldn't even stand. And so the beating stopped at that point. He's like, go, put ice on it. I'll see you guys

tomorrow. Next day, he goes to medical and never to see him again. I don't even know where that kid went.

That was him to his career. Crazy part is we get through hell week. We get to die phase. And I remember it was like day one or two die phase. The first phase instructors come in with second phase instructors.

“They're like, everybody drop in the whole room, right? We drop. We knock out whatever the required”

pushup is. What is it in die 40? We get bumped up from 30 to 40 or I can now. Whatever is. So we knock out our pushups. Now we're still in the lean rest. And one instructor is like, all right, whoever witnessed instructor so and so hit a student. A couple of weeks ago, stand up. And I'm like, nope, I'm not going to do it. Stay in the front lean rest. And then they go on start beating us and to wear the class leaders, even like whoever was, just identify yourself.

Nope. I'm not going down this path. I just held on to it, man. And they beat us a couple of

times during first phase. And I remember one night, we got back from one of the first night dives.

We still got the twin one, the eighties on. We still got our rubber on. And it was like once again. Who was the man who saw instructor in first phase hit another student? And I was like, I'm not doing it, not giving it up. And so they made us put our friends, you know, one in your left hand, one in your right hand, filled up our masks with water. And then we did the death march with

“our twin 180s on all the way down to the demo pit, demo pits, which is, I think it's a mile and a”

half down there mild out. So it's three miles. So you have your hands out, bends out, mask full of water, soft sand, march, twin 180s in rubber. And I still, even though everybody in that class at that point was basically like whoever was given up, give it up, just tell them, nope. This is the first time actually. I'm kind of like saying it out loud, you know what's funny is that fast forward 10 plus years. I, um, what the hell was I was? And some East Coast

locker room, and there he was. And he's a warrant now. No, she has instructor. Yeah. And I went up time and said, I don't know if you know this, but I'm pretty sure I saved your ass when you're a buzz instructor. And he just kind of looked at me, he's like, oh yeah, why? I was like, do you remember me? And he's like, looking at me. And I don't know, yeah, you look kind of familiar with cross paths, you know overseas, wherever, like, nope, there's buds. Buds class 203. And it was just this moment

and he's like, as eyes got little bigger. And I could see a little bit more of the whites in his eyes. He's like, holy fuck. Yeah. He's like, I almost got shit can't for that shit, man. You,

you were the guy that never came forward. You know, it's like, yeah. And we kind of laughed, you know,

it was like, wow. Wow. You know, but yeah, full circle, you know, that was fried the highlight of buds other than my trouble making side. You know, I carried a handy cam from first phase all the way through and made a video of our buds class. I snuck that thing around the whole time. Damn, no shit. And then had it edited out in town in San Diego. And they pieced it all together and

had all these moments. I had set the camera once once like in our cage. One of the cage area on the

beach. So I set the camera up there and hit record and we were just getting our asses handed to us out of the beach. And then there was a time where the instructors had us in the dip tanks, you know, trying to freeze us. You know, you know, and I had gone and set the camera up while we got our asses handed then. Oh, shit. Do you still have that? I do. I do. I have all the footage somewhere. That's awesome. Yeah. Oh, shit. I had something like that. Oh, yeah. It was, uh, it was a thing, you know,

“and then later we got, I got him. I had a burn to DVD and that's what I have left. Now, you know,”

I'm like, where's a DVD player? Yeah. That was buds. Right on. I'm looking for me. Right on. Yeah. Get my asses handed to me. And the beatings after first phase didn't end until then finally, when the last Smith quit, they stopped. No more deficiency chips.

It's crazy. Where did you want to go from there? I always wanted to get a team three. Why?

Who I'll growing up in Saudi and not liking the culture. And that was before force 21, you know, so force 21 is when the community was restructured so that everybody deployed everywhere, prior to that, the teams were all regionally focused. So seal team three was the Middle East. And so that little kid in me, right? It was like, I'm gonna come back someday, fuck with these people, you know. Right. And so that was, that was the driving factor, you know,

that eight-year-old client, man. It's like, you think about how powerful that is when things happen to you when you're a kid, right? Yeah. So you fast forward to us being a rack. And I remember looking at this kid probably around eight years old looking at me with the evil eyes going on out. Guess what I had. I had options. You're all I can be a doctor. I could be an attorney. I could do whatever the hell I want. And what did I do? I stuck with that passion.

That was put there when I was a kid. Interesting. Yeah. Now you look at these kids and you're like, what opportunities they have? It's a damn good point. Zip and zero, you know. Yeah. Well,

those moments of reflection, right? You know, a lot of people want to know. They always want to know,

you know, what got you through, but what was it? Man, in the moment, it was just pure desire to be better than who I was at the time. Like, I just, I saw myself before I went in the Navy. I was just going down. Even though I was in college, it was felt like a loser. You know, and I know what I wanted to do. And I had sealed on the brains since I was a kid. And so I just felt like I was destined to be a loser. And I was like, man, I'm going to do everything and anything

in my power to prevent that and needed to prove it to myself, more than anything. And, you know,

“and I think like a lot of us that come from like broken homes were just trying to prove to ourselves”

on a regular basis that were worthy and that we can be better than what we are. And in a minute, you achieve it. You're looking for the next thing to be better because it only satisfies you for about the 30 seconds. You get that tried and punched into your chest. And then you're like, I'm a fucking loser still. I'm a fucking loser. You know, and then you can make it to a national agency and be like, I'm still a fucking loser. And then you can get to a tier one command and be like,

"Oh, I'm still a fucking loser." And that's the drive. And it's sometimes, I feel like it's still there today. Just a fucking loser. And you're just trying to prove that you're not every single day. You know, are you pivoting to yourself or you're proving that to somebody else?

“Well, I think early on, I was probably doing it. I didn't even realize it. You know,”

you're definitely not doing it for yourself, right? I think early on, I was trying to prove it to family and friends and this and that. And then you get older, you get a little wise or any start reflecting a little more and you go, okay. Yeah, I'm definitely just trying to fill in your family where you're trying to prove it to. What's that? Who in your family where you're trying to prove it? I think early on, I was like, oh, just even for my little brother, give him, like, hey,

him be proud of me, kind of thing, or my mom, or your dad, or your friends, you know, maybe even, you know, who I was engaged to at the time, stuff like that, you know, you're kind of like,

proven to myself, but telling myself a different story. You know, yeah. Yeah, it's, uh, I think, you know,

that childhood stuff is sticky. Yeah, you know, for all of us, you know, you look at the community. It's what? Some crazy. I don't even know if it's been proved, but you hear it all the time, like, oh, 95 or 90% or from broken homes. And that special operations is a whole. Yeah. It's interesting. But I mean, I've learned that in here. Would you say almost every, is anybody come from like a normal home? You? I did. Oh, yeah. It's a mom, dad, stayed married, everything's happy.

Yep. Wow. Yeah. That isn't anomaly. In Mike, Ritland. Yeah. My parents been married for 50 years.

Yeah. But I know I'm an anomaly, you know, because the majority of you guys have been here. It's, uh,

child abuse, sexual abuse, like, it's just, it's, I had, I had no idea how common all those things actually were. Yeah. I started doing this. And, you know, the majority of guys and women, you know, that have been on the show, they've been through that at some point,

“that they're childhood. It's not the odd entire time. And I think that's what that's one of my,”

many sucks to hear it, but it's also, um, I think it's a beacon alike because you do realize how common it is. And that means billions, millions, millions, hundreds of millions of kids are going through right now. Yeah. You know, and they see this and they see, you know, that there is a, there's a way out of that that's that can be a tremendous success. Yeah. And so I think it's a beacon of hope, you know, I hope it is. Right. A lot of those kids that are going through that.

You don't, yeah. And you don't know any of it at the time. You think that's normal. That is your norm. Whatever your parents or your priest or whatever it is, it's going on in your life. You think it's the norm until you realize one day that it wasn't, you know, and, but until then, it's like almost like a superpower. It can drive you and you don't even know it,

“you know? I feel like a loser, too. You know, that's, I think that's what got me through. Yeah.”

But, um, not know that's what got me through. I didn't even give a shout about being a seal after a while. I was just like, I have to do this. Yeah. But, um, but I know you, um, you had a loss right at graduation. Correct? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, so, you know, it was graduated buds. And, uh, went to 18 delta, checked in to, yeah, is that the order? Yeah. 18 delta, then jump school, then checked in the seal team three. And, uh, checked in the seal team three, you know, and as

you know, back then, STT was what is now SQT. And it was all handled in-house in each seal team had its own training cell had gone through STT was on the tail end of it and it just jumped into a platoon. And this is back when your platoon decided when you got your try it. And, um, is the fourth-a-july demonstration? New guys are usually the ones to get chosen to go do the frog man version or all the frog man tasks. So, mine was the frog man

Drager, diver, three of us online coming out of the water with our guns and looking cool and walking through the crowd of people that are there for the rest of the fourth-a-july demonstration stuff. And it's that morning. My, my mom and dad had come to visit and they were going to watch the demonstration. And so, actually it was the day before the third-a-july and, um, my dad had gotten up that morning and I lived in a condo in downtown San Diego and so you could walk down the street,

get a newspaper kind of thing. So, he walks down and never comes back. And so,

“cell phones were still in their infancy then. You know, you had landline? I remember there was a cell phone”

involved. Either way, made, you know, communication far difficult to what it is now. And so, he left, he didn't come back, time goes by. I had to go to, I knew I was pressed for time on the rehearsal stuff. But it got to point where it was like concerning. You know, I had already driven the neighborhood, I'm looking for him. It's like, kind of, he's a very squared way to do it. Like,

because he's an engineer kind of guy. No, that wouldn't be it. You know, and you kind of do this

“process of elimination, creating excuses, driving around, starting to stress, stress, stress. And then”

by the time I get home, somebody had called the landline. It was my dad's brother and says, hey, your dad is at the hospital. I'm like, is he okay? And like, yeah, I heard him in the background. Like, oh, oh, did he say what happened? No. Okay. So, I drive over to that hospital. And I had also done paramedic school before this. So, and so I knew this hospital really well from doing all my paramedic runs. And so as soon as I walk in, do the name ID thing,

they start to walk and back towards the chapel. And I knew that those doors, and I was like, oh, fuck. And so the rest of the ERs to the right, and I saw a set of closed curtains. And so I'd be lying to there. I stopped following the dock that had bad news. And I just went

“straight over there. And I was with my brother. And he was, he's 11 years younger than me. He kind of”

followed me. And I didn't even think about it. Because I was like on a mission. And so I pulled back the curtain. And my dad was already in a body bag laying on the table. And he had a ET tube sticking out of his mouth. They leave it all that like that prior to the autopsy. And so then it was like, that's when I realized like my brother was looking at the same thing as me. And so it's like a very emotional thing. And so I just got my brother out of there. Because he was too young to be seen that.

And then yeah. And the part that really is crazy and sucked is that, obviously worse, and not anything worse than that. But he had brought this motorcycle, 1970s, triumphant trident. And he had rebuilt that whole thing, blacked everything out, chromeed anything that could be crowned. And then put two tridents on the gas tank. You know, it was pretty badass. Thing was made a Harley sound like a Honda. It was so loud because it was a triple three-cylinder

triumphant trident. It was the same motorcycle, evil carnival used to jump buses or whatever. You know, he used to do. Same kind of same exact making model. And yeah, I had that thing forever.

But that was like his gift to me for finally getting my bird and the whole thing.

But it was, uh, that was the kickoff to, you know, showing off the seal team three. Yes.

“It was a shitty moment for sure. And it used to bring me to tears. But I think, you know,”

as time goes by, because that was 1997. He was 46 years old. 46 had a massive heart attack in between two parallel parked cars. So when he dropped in between them, nobody could see him. He was young enough to probably have survived it. And I went into like investigation mode afterwards and went back to that area. And I talked to this lady who said, she thought she heard somebody yell, but she was had her hair dryer going. She turned the hair dryer off, because she

thought she heard something. Looked out her window. Her window was at an angle where he couldn't see him between the two cars. And then I talked to the paramedics and I knew those guys. And um, yeah, just a shitty way to kind of kick off the, the seal team three portion of the career. You know, I was like, man, and it's all this stuff that he would have loved. All of our stories,

you know, every dad wants to hear all of that. You know, and so it was like, I always had these moments

like, man, my dad would love to hear this or see that or shoot that gun or whatever. But yeah, it was a definitely a shitty way to kick it off. So you still have the bike. I had the bike for a while and my mom is a whole other story. She ended up selling that thing because she needed the money. So some guy in Texas has it. But yeah, it kind of nice to get it back. But yeah, she got rid of it a long time ago. She needed cash. Damn. Yeah. Yeah. But team three was, you know, the, you know,

the reputation like the West Coast, you have seal team one, which is like stalling team one, right, super strict. Then you had team five that was super laid back. There was no team seven back then. Then you had team three that was in the middle. Like, probably one of the coolest teams to be had had a little bit of both, you know, strict. But also, you could have fun, you know, it wasn't miserable. Like some of the guys at team one. And yeah, it was a good place to be.

Ah. Like, I think number one, it'd be thank you for, because I've always looked at any

any man who, see, this is that Oprah Ryan portion. You're trying to pull out of me. I'm going to leave tears on this chair with everyone else. If there was any guy, like any guy that takes on a

“mom and her three-year-old, because that's what he did. He wasn't my dad, you know. So any guy that”

will take up, he's doing his masters, he's working a full-time job, and he's taken on my mom and me at age three that to me is like a pretty honorable, amazing thing, right? So I don't think I got a chance to really get a, you know, thanks for taking that big step. That's a huge step for a 20-something-year-old, whatever age he was. You know, I'd definitely say thank you, because he was a, he was a rock of sorts, because my mom was not. So, and he did the best he could,

for sure, you know, feeling that role. So I'd definitely just tell him thank you. Yeah, you're almost got me on that one. That's cool, man. Yeah. Yeah, good dude. Yeah, the stories that he would have loved of her, you know, it's like damn, man. You know, that's the only guy you want, you don't care about telling your friends or, or, you know, even other team guys, it's like, you know, you've got to tell stories, it's the dads that want them and deserve them. You know,

we're not really anybody else. So, yeah, yeah, would have been cool, but, hey, you know, life goes on, just keep moving forward, right? Compartment lies it, deep-six it to the bottom of your soul, and deal with it some other day when you do eye-begin. If you met your biological dad, I did. Yeah, you did. Well, how old were you? Just a couple of years ago, I think.

Yeah, no. So there was a first time I met him. We came back from Saudi,

met at some park, and I just remember him asking my mom, "Ah, he's skinny. Do you ever feed him?" And that's all I remember of that. No kidding, yeah. And who knows, you know, his story,

“and then my mom's story in the truth is somewhere in the middle, right? So, but yeah,”

kind of, it was only what didn't meet him, because I think I was probably really nervous as a kid, not knowing what the hell to feel or think about that crap, but, um, and then fast forward, how many, how many, every years, till just recently, you know, met him again, pretty unadventful, kind of asked him, give it, get interrogated him on a couple of things my mom said, and just was like, "Hey, so why this, why that?" And he had pretty neutral normal answers,

and at this point he's an older guy too, so, you know, but it was, it was interesting, you know, it was, he's shorter than me, and, you know, he just seen somebody older, probably more frail than

“what he used to be, and so I think I had moments leading up to it. I was like, I'm gonna ask this”

motherfucker all kinds of questions and put him on the spot, and ask him this, and that, and but once you're there, you realize, you know what, it's already coming going at this point, doesn't matter, you know, anything I asked him was just curiosity, you know, most of it was just about my mom, because, you know, it was a little, she was a little on the crazy side, did you get anything out of that? I think, I didn't get much out of it, but I think, I think,

and I hope it gave him something, it was weird, I felt like I was kind of doing it, I felt like I wanted to do it for him, because you think, if you put those shoes on, you go, okay, all these years of gone by, I did play a role like reason this kid, I know, I kind of thought, like, well, maybe he wants to give him something, you know, I thought it would give me something, too, but really, I didn't really notice anything, honestly. No, it was, did you feel a sense of

guilt from him? I noticed a little bit of nervousness, I think, maybe a little bit of embarrassment

in there, it's hard to tell, because that's the first time to read him. I didn't notice any guilt,

I just kind of kept it simple, you know, about you, yeah, yeah, I didn't give him any stories,

“you know, that's what I've been kept for, the dad, the guy actually jumped in those shoes and did”

that job, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, let's take a break, all right, we'll come back, we'll get him to silt him three. If you spend any time off road like I do, you already know how

easy it is to end up second guessing where you're at, whether you're still on a legal trail,

or if the route ahead is even worth taking, that's why I've been using on X off road. It's an off-road navigation app that shows trails, public and private land boundaries, places to camp, and detailed trail info all in one place. And what makes it really useful is the amount of actual trail data. You can check difficulty ratings, terrain details, trail photos, even recent reports from other riders before you head out there. The other big thing is you can download maps ahead of time,

because once you lose service out there, your phone is pretty much useless, but with on X off

road, everything still works offline. And if you're riding with a group, they're location sharing

feature. Let's everybody stay on the same map so nobody gets lost or separated. What I like most about it is it gives me a lot more confidence when I'm exploring somewhere new. I'm not wasting time backtracking, accidentally ending up on private land or trying to figure things out once I'm already deep into their trail system. I can plan ahead, know what I'm getting into, and spend more time actually enjoying the ride instead of worrying about navigation the whole time.

Search on X off-road in the app store or Google Play. Again, that's on X off-road in the app store or Google Play. Looking for another way to support the Shon Ryan Show, head to ShonRyanShow.com and check out the latest drops from vigilance elite. We just release new gear including this beautiful moisture-wicking VE performance hat and SRS campfire mugs and you guessed it vigilance elite gummy bears. Oh shit! Every purchase directly supports the show

and helps us continue bringing you independent conversations without compromise. Visit ShonRyanShow.com and grab your horse today. All right, close back from the break, move it into your time at sealed team 3. So this is where you're in Mike Ritlandy capabilities, right? Right. Yeah, but guys go through Buds together? No, here's several classes behind. Oh, okay. So I'm at

“him and Glenn and all those guys. They showed up. I think I'd already done it deployment or two”

when they checked in as new guys all right on. Yeah, back when you could taste people, right?

I don't know. What do you think? The hazing thing. I always felt like it was such a great

thing. You know, like I equated to, you know, you either did it for celebration or correction and it worked either way. You know, if a guy was getting married to hazem, if he was birthday hazem, but if he's also really not performing the way that he should and or, you know, had a safety violation or something crazy. You know, you know, hazem. Yeah, you know, yeah, just seems too bad. I don't know what it's like now. Yeah, I've heard, yeah, I don't either ultimately, but I

heard it's all kind of not that way. The camaraderie is not the way it used to be. I didn't really get hazed. I got the shit knocked out of me. Well, okay, I didn't really get hazed. Yeah. Yeah, our guys when we showed up, they, I guess they had a really bad end up. So they made like a, they're like, we're not doing that to our guys. And what was that for you? That was, I don't know, I think I showed up. It was 0203. I can't remember. It's about when the ethos came out. But now, I wasn't any of that.

I mean, it was a rough crowd. There was a lot of bar fighting. There was a lot of bar fighting. Yeah. And I think they, they kind of more took an approach of will wait till they get cocky. And if they do get cocky, then we'll knock the shit out of it.

“And that's, that's what happened to me. So a couple times. But um, but anyways,”

yeah, any good hazing source. But yeah, let's hear about. Um, probably my new guy hazing, you know, because you get one when you check in, right? And it's like, uh, it was a thing. And

There was a couple of them in the 90s when I checked in that they had created the culture.

You know, Vietnamese Vietnam era combat vets created the culture of the SEAL teams, especially during all that time of like peacetime. We're not really operating. And um,

“so the hazing piece was such a big deal. And I remember we went to Shaw's new guy”

and uh, so after doing runs in the house all day long. And then we're in the weapons cleaning room, which was like part of a house out there at Shaw's at the time. And uh, me and one of the new guy kind of realized were by ourselves. No one else in here cleaning their guns right now. Where do they all go? And uh, just as we realize it, they roll in this back when you were flight suits, and by the clavas for all your CQB stuff, you know, so they roll in with their flight suits on. And

you know, tackle us, take us. And uh, and it's cold at Shaw's. It's like in the 40s at night, 30s maybe. I remember the swimming pool, we had a cover on it. Somehow we end up out there.

They strip us down butt naked and put in Justin, I'll just keep his first name. And they put

“Justin in the 69 position. And they tape us into the 69 position. And uh, and then they pull”

out the many blasting machine. Okay. And they had, I don't know how they pulled it off. We can do anything with duct tape. But they had somehow got it to where my head is basically shoved into Justin's ass. In his face is shoved into my ass, right? And there's enough flesh exposed on our asses for the for the lead wires of the many blasting machine. Oh shit. And puts, they duct tape those leads onto our asses. And they have two machines. So once they had them in place, and they're like,

"Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey." And then my ass would then clench his face because it sends that electrical current. So it's like teasing your ass, causing your ass to clench. And so interestingly enough, it was like my face kept getting sucked into his ass. Every time it would

“clench or like hers. You know, pull me in and pull me in closer. You know, and Justin, you know,”

he was, he loves squats. So his ass was definitely more powerful than my ass. So he didn't have it as bad. But uh, and then, of course, it's freezing cold. They pull out the houses. Uh, dranson us. And then the part that freaked me out was swimming pool. Do I go, let's just draw

him in? Well, he had a cover on it, right? And these guys aren't always thinking as you know,

like the smartest. And this is how people accidentally die. And when they're hazing going on, like it happened out at the, you know, on the East Coast, you had the guys that tied the guy, he was on a spine board. And they tied it off to a bridge and then chunked them off in the, the rope didn't hold. Holy shit, I didn't even know what he hit the water and it flipped over. And he drowned, because he was on the spine board. Wow, I did not know that. Yeah, there was a lot of

like stories about this thing gone wrong back in the day. But um, yeah. So, I mean, they were going to chunk us in and that cover would have just wrapped us up like saran wrap and he drowned it to death. You know, oh my, you're taped to the 69 position with, you know, your best buddy. But anyway, that that was uh, that was the, you know, welcome to the team's hazing out of shaw's memorable for sure. It sounds like it. Yeah, that team three early days. This is pre 9/11.

You know, your workups probably in retrospect were more about liberty than it was about training and you'd still train and you trained hard. But, you know, when you compare post 9/11 to pre, you realize, wow, we weren't really training that hard. You know, um, in operationally, you weren't doing much, except team 3, team 3, we were doing all the ship boardings and enforcing the embargoes against Saddam at the time. So, um, but training wise, it was pretty like,

you know, basic when you really reflect on it now compared to, you know, these guys were like run an advanced, you know, day one, which you would consider advanced if you were to compare it to eras, right? Um, but probably one of the most memorable, and haven't talked about this as much, but one of the most memorable training exercises I was paired up with my platoon chief.

you know, he never, you know, takes his boots off or lightens up his laces in the middle of a

10-click hump. He always leaves his rock on, never takes it off, you know, during, you know, an infill or next fell. One of those guys, right? Just loves being uncomfortable and never gives himself any grace or opportunity to just take a moment or take a breath. And uh, so one day they're like,

“hey, so we get an opportunity to dive against uh, the dolphins. I'm like, dolphins. What do you mean dolphins?”

And uh, they're like, yeah, dolphins. Like, what is that? Like some piece of technology or something? Like, no, they're real dolphins. What do you mean we're diving against real dolphins? They're like killer dolphins. They're not a kill people. They're like, and we're going to dive

against them. And like, yeah, man, it's going to be awesome. You know, like, oh, okay, so then it was a

14-man platoon. So seven dive pairs get put out broad daylight, middle of San Diego Bay. And all your toe told is like, yeah, these dolphins will come and, you know, they'll, they'll tap you and that's it. I'm like, I'm like, huh, all right. I don't even know what the hell they're talking about. I mean, this whole thing was like, completely foreign to me. And as we're in the zodiacs kind of head now, and our little points that we're going to drop each other off at,

you know, chief was like, all right, we're going to be near a peer. I'm going to grab onto one of the structures down below. I'll hold onto it kind of bare hug it and pretend to be, you know, a peer structure, a pile on. And then you, you know, you're on the body line. So you just get blown me and just kind of lay down on your stomach and the dirt and the sand down there and just pretend to be the sand. I was like, okay, I don't even, like, it's so foreign to me. Like, what am I doing? You got

a dragger? Okay, we'll put their draggers on. We go in. It's a beautiful day. Obviously, it's San Diego every day is beautiful. And we go down to get, we kind of make our way over to this peer. And we knew that there was a time when these these dolphins were going to be put in the water. It was either one or two of them. In the dolphin program, obviously it was like super hush-hush, then. And now I think there's a discovery channel thing and I've heard guys talk about them or whatever,

but, you know, these things are basically trained to detect combat or enemy divers. And then we'll kill them. And they have a harness that kind of slips over their head that basically gives them, it's like a weapon. And, you know, I'm not sure

details, details don't matter for the story, but they are incredible animals. I think we

all know mammal, these things are just as smart as us. And they communicate, we know that as a potter is a team, they can kill a great white, you know, they can get up to whatever it is, 30, 40 miles an hour into water. And if they hit you, you'll die, right? And so,

“I'm never forget, man, we're in the water. We get set, go down, heat grab. I kind of watch him grab”

on and pretend to be part of the peer structure. I stretch my body line out, I get on my belly, and I'm just kind of eating sand, kind of just hanging out, on Drager, just taking a moment, and kind of thinking to myself, like, what, I don't even know what to expect on this. What the fuck is going on, you know? And then you hear, and you're just like, what the fuck was that? And, you know, in the water, everything is omnidirectional, you don't know which way it's coming from,

and it sounds like it's right here, you know, and you just keep hearing, you know, and then you hear, and you don't know if it's getting closer further, where it's at. And, uh, and then all of a sudden, I feel like this big thump, right in the center of my back. Boom, just kind of drives me into the sand a little bit more. And I was like, oh, that must have been it. And so I just lay there still, and then now I hear my chief on Drager, and he's yelling through his mouthpiece, and

so I roll over and I look, and the sun is in the background, it's beautiful, and this dolphin is like just majestic, just hanging out hovering above and space, right there in the water,

“and you get the silhouette of my chief, and these two are taking turns punching each other, okay?”

So now chief's movement's in the water, a punch, right, is like, oh, it's just slow motion, and he kind of hits the side of the dolphin down below its eye, you know, and kind of yelling at it, like, good on here. And then that dolphin would just look at him and go, and then wham, he just hit him right in the chest, right in the Drager, and then back off and kind of look at

And then the dolphin would look at him and go, and then wham, and then hit him again, and then you

“hear him go, and each time this dolphin is hitting him harder and harder, right in the center of the”

Drager, and eventually chief, you know, the way they know whether they killed your nod is they have this styrofoam cone on their beak, and it's supposed to pop off after they hit you and go to the surface, right? And all this thing wasn't coming off, and so he eventually gets smart and kind of grabs the styrofoam thing and let's go of it, and they both look at each other, the dolphin just goes, and then just disappears into the water and like, but probably one of,

I mean, when it comes to like training and something, I mean, it was like funny and beautiful,

all at the same time, like, and I had that, I had my buddy lying stretched out as far as it

goes, because I was like, I do not want anything to do it. I'm good. Yeah, if it decides it needs to hit something else, because there was rumors about one dolphin named Jake who had broken a couple of team guys backs. I hit them so hard. Oh, rope ribs, they ended up retiring him, and supposedly had like kills and some harbor around the world where they deployed him. No kidding. Yeah, right on, like, yeah, super cool. Wow. But I mean, so point being is pre 9/11, you had time to give,

go be the training apparatus for dolphins. Right on, because it was more for, more for the dolphins, and it was for us. I didn't realize they deployed them. I thought they were all like base defense type stuff. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I used to think no more about forgotten at all, but yeah,

“I think they had deployed them a couple times on behalf of other harbors and other countries,”

kind of thing. Interesting. Yeah, it's thing. But yeah, other than that, or your, your deployments were args, you know, you'd have a couple of tons that have to sit on a ship and go do the entire ship deployment. And I'll bet that was horrible. It was horrible. Did two of those back to back.

Actually, that's when, yeah, I met Mike and and Glenn, that was theirs. So that was my second

arg, and that was their first. And it was, uh, it was a good career. So it made it kind of funny. I mean, Glenn Dorty, Mike Rillin, Shane Highett, and it's like, just the three of them alone is nothing but trouble. So, but, uh, yeah, we, um, I don't know if it was that one, but ship mornings in the Persian Gulf was like the thing before 9/11, like Team 3 was doing them all the time. And we kind of were like the pros at it. Why? What was going on? The embargo against Saddam at

“the time, oil weapons, anything that was coming out of Iraq. So there's a lot of smuggling going on.”

So these things would come out of the KAA completely blacked out. They would ride that international Iranian 12 medical mile line, completely, no lights. And we would pretend to be fishing boats kind of hanging out, watering. Once they pass by, because these are big tankers. And so we would slowly roll in behind them on this, you know, because the superstructure created a natural shadow that the radar couldn't see behind them. I can only see in front.

So you'd wait from the pass by and then you kind of slowly roll in and then, you know, crank up the speed and then, uh, get up next to these things. Those ribs would get skin to skin, hook, climb, get on board. At the time, it was like, this is the ultimate frogman off, you know, 29s, crappy sea state, you know, you climb up that ladder. You know, in a caving ladder is what six inches wide, little aluminum with, you know, steel, romp, you know, whatever the hell.

What other things made out? My titanium rungs and aluminum wire and up you go. You know, and you climb up, get to the bridge as fast as you can. Half of you go to the bridge, half of you go to the lowest, you know, lower steering and then, um, take that thing, turn it into international waters and hand it over to NATO forces and they take the oil or they take what ever is on board and then you get off, get back on your boats and do it again, because there was

another one coming. How many of you said were you guys doing? You know, you would do like between the big tankers and then a whole lot of dowels, you do a lot of dowels, you know, like those things were like 100, the big dowels are what, 150 feet long, something like that, you know, you do a bunch of those where you're literally pulling up next to like leaping, you know, from the rib over to the, to the boat. And, you know, it kind of depend on the night,

there's plenty of nights, you're sitting around doing nothing, but in a deployment, you definitely

and ladders and, you know, and started actually developing stuff and just to make it go faster,

“smoother, you know, and yeah, it was kind of the thing and it was the only thing going on.”

You know, I remember other teams were trying to get, you know, getting on the Middle East just so they could get that operational experience. But kind of goes back to, I think it was either one of our admirals else, and I think, you know, or maybe McCraven, you know, what used to be the op of the decade back then, you know, after night, I'm just became the op of the night, right? Yeah, everybody was, you know, doing something cool every single night. Yeah, but

pre 9/11, your life is good to be a team three because you're actually getting the work, you know, it was fun. But is it a good team and then, uh, and then what 9/11 happened and where were you when the 9/11 happened? I was, uh, I had just graduated boot camp. Oh, actually I just got out of a herds surgery. What their boot camp, hernia, huge hernia, oh, scared to tell anybody because I thought they'd kick me out of the program probably. And, uh,

I thought I just got so big. I was like, I had to go get a soda. I have to do something. And, uh, I was like super reluctant. I was like, uh, I don't want to get kicked out of the bud's program and they're like, you know, yeah, that's pretty good. Like, I wanted me to have this the whole time. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I just got now and then I was supposed to fly home, actually, uh, for recovery. Oh, yeah, perfect timing. Yeah, before, you know, we didn't fly home. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was driving across Coronado Bridge to work that day. And, um, at the time, my wife, ex wife, she calls and it's like, United States's under attack. And I was like, well, shit, you know, what are you talking about? And she'll have to team three and sure enough at the quarter deck. Um, there was a TV there and everybody was kind of staring at it. And just as I look over, what some guys shoulder, plane two and into tower two, like live and

watched it. And I was like, holy shit, that doesn't seem like a accident. It's kind of weird.

I mean, these planes just flying into buildings, you know. It's the first you think it's like some

air traffic control software glitch, you know, or like, uh, that's really weird. Then yeah, then it just obviously everything escalated after that. Or we had proteins that were about to deploy and everything shifted. And before you know, we're helping them build their pallets. And they just first placed, they went, it was afghanistan,

“you know, team three just kind of led the way. And I remember I was like trying to get in on one of”

them and couldn't, you know. But shortly after that, I racked kicks off. So before you know it now recover and team three was this still before Task Force 21. When they said, okay, now all teams and all are deploying everywhere now. Yeah. Before that, it was just, we were all doing the math. Like, how was team three going to maintain a war in afghanistan? And now I rack, you know, and then McCreev and who came up with the whole task force 21 thing, you know, did it the right timing

and seemed like they pulled that off overnight. Yeah, because before we know it, we push in Iraq and then team five relieved us and it just became a, I became the cycle, you know. What eventful operations were you on? I like, well, probably the biggest note where the, was the gas oil platform. Okay, because I kicked off the war and it was, we were sitting in Kuwait waiting for that whole thing to happen. I know it was times we didn't think it was going

to happen, times we did. So we're just all, you know, basically fucking around. There's a tent city,

“you know, and we had four, I think we had four to six tents that were ours, you know,”

and we had two tents across from one another and I think you've heard this before. We had these cardboard signs on the outside of each tent. One that said lions led by dogs, you know,

and then the tent across from it had a cardboard sign that everybody could see that said never

before have so few been led by so many, because all of a sudden there was, you know, dozens of O6 seals coming out of their reserve desk jobs, now wanting to check the box on war, that never got to do it during their tenure in the community. So we had never seen any of these officers before and they literally just reserve us, came over and then of course lions led by dogs, you know,

entryway into the area. So everybody read these big ass signs written, you know, a Sharpie's nice and thick

and and then we would just heckle people walking back and forth between our tents, you know, we had built a war garden, we had white picket fences, I mean during the time we were just hanging out waiting for war to start, we just got in trouble. And I was the LPO's and leadership position for that platoon. So of course, I had all the leadership coming to make, can you please tell your guys to just at least wear their uniforms or something and I'll try, I'll try. But, you know,

telling me it's not going to work, man. This is all about morale right now, like I'm letting them do

“whatever, because that beats the alternative trust me and they're just like, well, you need to,”

they need to blouse their boots. I said they're not blouse in their boots. No, that's happening,

not on this. Wow. You know, it was, yeah, it was an interesting time. But that was leadership ahead, no combat experience. So they were very risked versus probably the best way to put it, what a joke. It was, it was, it was interesting. Well, so then they're like, all right, you're going to take down the gas oil platform. So we, uh, we train, train, train to dive in, you know, set up a blowing go line and then you hook your dragors and to the sline and about 10 feet down and you blow and go,

you close the valve, weapons up, frogman style to the surface, hook climb onto the, we train that over and over and over again. And then at the last minute, at the time he was captain hour captain Harwood, uh, the guy who was very popular for wearing a mask on the news, the ball headed, now he's an admiral, but at time he was captain Harwood. And, uh, he makes

“the command decision like, we got to prove the value of these jet boats and we're like, what do you mean?”

You're just going to pull up, pull up to that go-plat with your jet boat. Well, I can't, we take the jet boats, you know, a nautical mile or two out and dive in, still prove the value. Now, you're going to pull right up to that thing and we're just like, wow, for somebody who is at risk adverse, you're putting us in, and this thing was lit up like a Christmas tree, right? It was huge light bubble around this thing. You'd see us coming in a mile away.

And, uh, so now is the command decision that we're just going to pull up to the surf deck of this go-plat, um, gas oil platform, and, uh, take this thing down. And, Intel said, hey, there's three bad guys in a hostage or something like that. And, um, like, wow, and even then, pulling up, they have, obviously, the high ground, the bad guys do, and supposedly it's wired to blow up. So, at least for diving in, you got to stealth on your side, element of surprise, all this and that.

You, you float in with some boats, that doesn't exactly give us the element of surprise. So, yeah, um, it kind of started to smell and appear like, you know, this total suicide mission, which is one of one of my new guys labeled it, you know, this is a suicide mission. Like, shut up, we're just, we're going to have fun with it, okay? Just do whatever we're told, you know, so that same new guy ended up actually quitting. He, uh, he, we, uh, yeah, he was, he ended up saying,

hey, this isn't for me. I remember Mike Riddland told me that when I interviewed him. Yeah, yeah, he, I was, I had asked him a couple times because of a certain questions he was asking in the

“briefs that kind of made you turn your head like, what are you doing, man? Why are you asking that?”

Like, is this smart? Should we be doing this? Is this our job? You know, he, and I remember confront and ask him, like, hey, man, you, you all right? And he kind of turns around, wait, are you all right? Are you the one that's scared? And I was just like, no, but you kind of ask him some questions that are concerning. Maybe you don't ask those questions anymore and for no leadership in front of us, you know, like, just stop, you know, and then eventually

ended up, yeah, gave up his bird, gave up everything, and was like, I'm out of here. I've never,

I've been, wow. Yeah, I mean, to go through all that training and earn your way, it's unfortunate, really, you know, but he had to, like, stay back in Kuwait, and we, after we took the gas oil platform down, you know, we got in our Humvees and drove north on Highway 1. I don't know, we're really no mission, just wait, go to, go to Iraq. It's like, okay, you know, little girl, we're on our way. With our Humvees, we borrowed from the army that had zero armor,

we like took the doors off, then it was horrible. But yeah, we ended up pulling up to that thing. I was boat one, number one guy jumped off on the surf deck, Shane was right behind me, we ended up

and boom, first gun shot, and I was like, holy fuck. And then on comms, I'm like,

“dynamic, dynamic, that was the word for, like, okay, the gigs up, just go. And we get to the top,”

and it's right near Berthing where the superstructure is, there's a guy standing in front of us, no gun, we're like, get on the ground, get on the ground, we kind of move up to him, break, look to our right, and there's like, I don't know, it's like a dozen dudes staring at us, and there's only supposed to be three bad guys, and a hostage. And I'm like, now we're like, holy fuck, you know, and now everyone else is catching up, and telling all these dudes to get on the

ground, get on the ground, looking at their hands, and it's kind of, there's an overwhelming moment,

because you didn't know who had what, and we're thinking triggering device, and now you got all these dudes, and why are they standing here and not like, so real time is just one big puzzle and you, what we do best, right, just start, you know, stick to your training and start figuring out solutions. So, get them all the ground, looking for guns, looking hands, and then start clearing the superstructure, the birthing, that was the priority to look for the triggering device, if there was any,

if the thing was wired below, anyway, we end up clearing it, and now you're clearing the entire, this thing was one click long, seven decks, so seven clicks, seven clicks of 3D environment, because the floors aren't floors, they're, they're great. You can see up, you can see down, and it's a horrible environment, you know, when you are like, now we're like, wait a minute, it's not three bad guys, there's more, now we got to go out, seven clicks of this, and clear it,

and so we just started clearing it from end to end, and deck to deck, and it was a long ass night,

“I remember we were so dehydrated now out of it, we weren't ready for it at all, I mean, if,”

you know, we're finding shoulder-fired weapons, any aircraft guns, and then it was wired to explode all sub-surface, so all the explosives were just below the waterline, and find the found the triggering device, we had some EOD guys with us, so they made everything safe, it took hours, and and then, and then we had Marines roll in, they kind of took over, so by the end of it, there was 27 bad guys, no hostage, and there was like 16 of us, right? If they really wanted to

man up with all the guns and the shoulder-fired rockets and the any aircraft gun, and then the place was wired to explode, I mean, it would have been interesting, you know, following Saddam's

first run, what did he do? He blew everything up and created these environmental disasters that made

bush, you know, the first bush looked dumb, right? And so our whole job was the mission was hey, prevent environmental disaster by taking the thing down before they could, you know, light themselves off, really, and yeah, so then we turned over to the Marines, and then we get back, we do a quick debrief, and kind of like, all right, what was the first shot fired? And uh, turns out one of the boat guys, arm in the 50-cal in the bow, was really nervous,

no way, and so his thumb hit the button, launched that AD, straight in to the very pipe of oil, yeah, we are there to prevent spilling, you know, into the Persian Gulf. Holy shit, yeah, and had choice words for him, and put him on a plane back to the US, and I don't even know what happened that kid, but yeah, who would have thought, right? And so now we take our Sanford and Son, who pleased that we got from the Army, these humvies that had zero armor, and we uh, you know,

load them up with MREs, water and fuel, and then we had law rockets and AT4 rockets, zip-tied, every horizontal vertical pipe, you know, every part of the vehicle, and then our guns and coms, and they're like, "Yeah, just drive up Highway 1 and uh, link up with the Marines." Like, oh, okay, interesting, that was it. And so we start driving up Highway 1, Kuwait, across the border,

“I'll never forget the pride, you know, looking to our left and looking to our right,”

the lineup of the Marine Corps, because the Marines had the eastern portion of Iraq, and then the

everything you can think of, racked and stacked, heading north, to just sweep the whole side of that country. And of course, the east had all the big cities for the boat, you know, had, you know, hit Baghdad, uh, Anosaria Baghdad, some others all the way up to decree, you know, and it was a

full push, and we were part of that first wave, and it was true, like, seeing true combat, you know,

like, when we got to Anosaria, the Marines were in trenches, whose trench warfare, you know, that's when Jessica Lynch convoy had just been hit. She was in a hospital that we could see right over there, you know, and, um, we're sleeping under our humvies, and, uh, they'd put the perimeter around, a medical waste site, so it was all nothing but hyper-dermic needles sticking out of the ground, and we were laying on them, I think, wow, why are we getting poked and you'd look? And in the sunlight,

you'd see the, the, the glitter, and you'd realize the glitter that was shiny on the surface

“was all hyper-dermic needles that they'd been dumping there for foolish, and that's what we were”

sleeping on every new series. It's crazy, right? And, uh, and then, uh, we kind of get settled in, we had these pop-up tents that we had bought in Kuwait last night, camping tents. I mean, you know, so we're setting up camp, and then I remember being Glenn, we're like putting up IR netting over our little, we had like, what, 10 tents, little dome tents, like north-face tents, and then putting up IR big night, our dome over that, for like, whatever reason for shade, and thinking,

okay, yeah, and we got our lawn chairs out and we're all sitting around like, oh, this is more.

The Marines were working hard, and they had like nothing for us to do at first, and then, uh,

and then at the time, Captain, or Colonel, Colonel Kelly, right? Who we later know is General Kelly working for Trump, Captain, or Colonel Kelly, O6 comes out under the battlefield, and he pulls a sign, he's like, all right, he might see us, right? Yeah, like, there's a city called suck-ass. It's probably called something else in Arabic, but I don't know it would just call it suck-ass. Population 80,000, okay? I want you, you go my seals, I want you to go over there and start killing

everybody. Well, like, wait a minute, huh? He's like, yeah, hunter killer ops, I'm turning it on. Okay, ready to go. And he turns around, walks away, and we're just like, looking at you, like,

“well, there's only like 16 of us, again, say 80,000, this ought to work out, right? Do you know?”

And, uh, and I believe right after I'm in Australia, he was the first Marine Colonel to be a awarded general on the battlefield since Korea. Wow, yeah, I think something like that. I have to look that up. Um, great guy, hard core. I mean, the Marines were not fucking around, man. It was, like, a sight to see. And so, uh, yeah, we'd set up some alien bushes, and we're kind of starting to get our feet under us operationally. Like, what are we going to provide? What are we going to do?

You know, our OIC, chief, and myself started going to all the leadership meetings just outside of on Nassaria, and really starting to kind of figure out the groove of where, where to special, because they didn't think special operation to play a role in this is conventional combat, you know, trench warfare, but the front is crazy, you know, and artillery going off that were set up behind us, and cobra helicopters rolling in regularly, lighten up the place day and night, you know, didn't matter.

You just constantly boom, boom, boom, really incredible to see. Um, and then, uh, then one night, you know, Glenn and I got pulled aside. And, uh, and at, um, Colonel Kelly's direction, we were told, like, hey, keep this between you guys, don't advertise it, but we need you guys to go up to the front line and, you know, start pulling dead Marines. Oh, these trenches. In the rumor time was at the

fetting, we're, you know, everyone was so tired. Like, I remember, I've never been that tired about

you didn't sleep days and days and days. There was just no sleeping. And so the same thing applied to these Marines up in these front trenches and supposedly the fetting, those were the guys with the baliclavas and black trench coats, they were sneaking in and like literally cutting throats while Marines were sleeping, because they were exhausted. It wasn't because it was their

“turn to sleep or anything like that. And so we had heard that and we were like, what the fuck?”

And so we, um, so we went up one night and it was just Glenn and I and we had like some

pull into the back of the line and it was probably the most emotionally intense thing that

“I had faced that point, you know, this is real and that's why they didn't want anybody knowing”

because it was all very discreet because they didn't want to fuck with morale, they want to fuck with the push and made sense, you know, like, hey, let's just get them, get the bodies, get them

wrapped up and get them home and yeah, it was, you know, I'd never even heard about that. Yeah,

it was pretty haunting and it's still haunting to think about, because you look at them and they're kids, you know, you can look at them in the eyes and you're like, holy fuck man. But yeah, it was a, it was a thing and there was a, there was some other, you know, events that we had to help out with those guys, but you know, on Nostaria was, was messy, you know, I think it was also for the Marine Corps first time for them to kind of get their combat legs under them too. It was like tanks wiped

“out everywhere, I mean, it was, it was like, holy shit, you know, because you wouldn't think that”

we didn't hear anything about an actual battles going on. You just thought, hey, United States military is just kicking ass. Until you got there, you're like, holy fuck, US tanks that are all burned out and fucked up and, you know, a tunnel like convoy vehicles that were burned out and, you know, had been attacked and just, you know, surprising to say the least. And some days go by, we kind of got into our rhythm. We had a reservist commander kind of takeover who was

very front-laning and finally we started to kind of like really work and, and we were doing 100 killer. So we were going to all of your, um, any scud that was pointed in any direction, but most of them were pointed towards Kuwait. We'd go find, we'd get reports about a scud, stuck a scud rocket or launching site, roll in, put demo on it, blow them up, keep on moving.

And that's kind of what we provide. As the line moved, we were always just a little bit ahead of the line.

Doing reconnaissance and taking out some of these scud sites, clearing buildings, ammo caches. And we did that pretty much all the way to decree. And then to decree it was supposed to be this, we meet up with the, the Marines, they set up a perimeter. We got into the center. There's a first time like, okay, now guys can take a break and sleep. You know,

“I remember one of the convoy's were part of our, our humbese stacked in the front was a tunnel”

like convoy vehicles in behind was a time we're kind of in the middle. In the sun's coming up, we're all sitting in our seats lined up. And I remember waking up. And I look at Zach to the ride. I look at my OIC. I'm sitting, you know, back seat left or point driver. He's passed out. And I step out. And I look up the line. The main convoy's already left. But there's vehicles in front of us. And I walk up to them. They're all asleep. And I look at the rest of the line. We're talking

I don't know, 20, 30, 40 vehicles. Sitting ducks is the sun comes up. And everybody is past the fuck out. Could not stay awake. All the drivers are asleep. While the front convoy and already left, you know, so yeah, I quickly, you start, we're going to run, start waking everybody up, waking you know, down the line, getting everybody awake, getting engines running, and then start moving. I mean, it was sleep became this, you didn't realize it. You just was rare. You just didn't

get any sleep at all. Every time you moved, you lay up for the night, you'd go out and do something, you'd lay underneath your Humvee to sleep. But you didn't sleep. You just had, I just had crazy nightmares of fettying guys, like cutting our throats in the middle of night once I heard that story. It's all I thought about. And yeah, and then we make our way to to create, you know, get inside this Marine Corps premiere. I'm like, all right, it's time to sleep. And you know,

I got told to guys, you know, just lay down, trying to get some sleep and me and L.T.

took the first watch. And I like when everybody's comfortable, all hell breaks loose. There's

a explosion and gunfire. I can shit coming at us. The Humvee, our front Humvee, got hit, got a bunch of bullet holes in it, and was take cover and trying to figure out what the hell's going on, because we're inside a perimeter of Marines, which 18 year olds on 50 cows, you don't know which way they're pointing these things, you know. And all hell breaks loose, get on nods, you can see saw this fetting guys in this tree line. So the Marines have basically put the perimeter around

next to the bad guys. So the bad guys are over there and we're over here. We're trying to go to

“sleep. They're waking up, shooting everybody. And so nods, lasers, probably not even 100 yards away.”

We engage them. Members first time like background, watch your background, you know. And uh,

ended up one of the guys ended up killing him. And then we get online, roll up there, search him. This is when you realize, first time nearly green tips will zip right through somebody, because we knew between us. There was, whatever, let's say, 12 rounds. There was 12 holes in this guy. But during the whole time, we're engaging him. It was like he didn't even know he's being shot. You know, this was O3. And so those, there were, you know, green tips are just so hot,

it just is zipping right through people. And he didn't even know it because he just kept on walking with his AK-47 like he's sneaking around, you know. And eventually he drops and, you know, he go up search him and then, um, and then, uh, and all the rumors of to create the next morning was going to be a blood bath. And so we went in, we knew we were taken, sedums, palace. And probably the most, everything is, as we roll in. And there was nobody there. It was like the whole town, it left.

And it was so quiet that that made it even a little more like sketchy, you know. We set up. And I guess the Marines had their, did whatever they did. But for us, it was on eventful. And you know, we set up for, I don't know, a couple of days a week and just, uh, you know, that's the the gold toilet, you know, seats and, you know, the place has already been looted and you know,

you know, the first kind of exposure to one of the sedums, palaces is birth palace, you know,

and all this and that. And yeah, that's probably the long version, but it was one big op, you know, this was before operations had names. What, what time spam was it? The whole first, a couple of months of the war, no shit. Yeah, so you're, yeah, I don't remember. I mean, it was just constant, you know, just moving, sleeping in the dirt. Oh, I remember. While we're hanging out outside on Austria, it's time for Jessica Lynch to get rescued, right? And we had heard like, oh, damn,

“next row and in, sure enough, they roll in. Their homers had a nickname called hammers, I think,”

because they had like supercharged motors and they were armored and they're very Gucci to out or whatever, you know. So they, uh, they're humbese, I don't know where they were staged, but they were staged for them, because they were staying in a five star and re-odd, right? And they get in their helicopters and they're starched camis fly to their homies, getting their homies, and then drive to us. And here we are, like, covered in dirt, grime, and sleeping in the dirt.

It was the first time where you could see like these guys get out of their homies, and they're kind

of looking at us like, whoa, like these white side conventional seals, kind of living in the dirt, in the combat, and this and that, and I knew a couple out there, you know, from the, you know, from team three guys and touch base with them and everything, and there's that, like split second where we felt like, oh, we've got the upper edge on these guys this time, because you know, the competition between the regular teams and seal team six, and that they rolled in,

and I'm fucking annihilated that thing that night, just, you know, one of my good friends was the gunner, and just, you know, weapons free, and just took out that entire bottom floor with 50 cows, just lit it up, overwhelming firepower, then then a salt team went in and floored, and something

“I think came from a roof, and got to her, grabbed her, got her out of there, it's pretty cool,”

I'm getting all mad. We watched it from afar. We watched it from afar. Back to feeling like it looser again. I'm still looser. I'm on a berm, and on us, Rhea, been here, living under my home V, and these guys roll in, pull the rescue of the year off, and then go back to their five star, and re-odd, yeah, that's pretty funny. I'm excited to introduce to you the newest member of my family. We call them Stanley.

We got Stanley this past Christmas, and pretty quickly my focus became making sure he was safe, while still giving him the freedom to actually be a dog. I went looking for the top rated GPS fence,

With spot on, I set up a GPS fence for Stanley right on my phone. No physical fence, no leash.

“I just walk my property line, or draw it on the map, and that's the boundary the color recognizes.”

I can create multiple fences, save them, and adjust them whenever I need to. So whether we're at home,

or traveling, Stanley always knows where his boundaries are. Another thing that's set out to me is

these colors are designed right here in the USA, and assembled a new Hampshire. By a team that's been working with high precision GPS technology for years, and you can tell a lot of attention one into making this thing reliable. The Nova color uses a dual band GPS system connected to more than 150 satellites. Along with an antenna that's over five times larger than typical GPS fence colors that keeps the boundary accurate, even around trees, terrain, and changing conditions.

Spot-on's true location technology has been independently tested in delivers 99.3% containment,

“which matters when you're trusting something with your dog's safety. It's incredibly durable,”

and on top of that, I can check his location in real time, send voice commands directly to the

color, and track his activity through the day. I use spot-on so Stanley gets the freedom to run and explore, and I get the piece of mind knowing he's safe. Let your dog roam with spot-on. Go to spot-onfense.com/SRS and use code SRS for $50 off the Nova color that's spot-onfense.com/SRS and use code SRS for $50 off. So did you... did you engage anybody in those couple months? Yeah, during that ambush, there was pop shots we would take, you know,

yeah, it's a midi, it's man. You kind of remember there are ways at the beginning where there really weren't, you know, once you're like every male of fighting age

became kind of like, okay, that's a bad guy, that's a bad guy, and you realize in that first

couple of months, dudes were taken their uniforms off and they were wearing civilian clothes. You weren't fighting an army. You were fighting what you thought were army guys dressed in civilian clothes, you know, and but there wasn't a lot of engagement at the beginning for any of this, any of those early seal plattons that ambush, I definitely was shooting at those guys, and uh, and then to the

“right of me, I think was the AOIC into the left of me, was it my comms guy's act? But everyone else was”

just still trying to figure out what the hell was going on, get on nods, and kind of get on line, by a time they even figured out was over, you know. And I know our 50 gunner up top on the homebie was taking shots from time to time at different staff, but nothing like what was to come, you know, the future of, you know, the seal teams in Iraq, or Afghanistan, I mean, holy shit, you know, it was game on, but we were at the beginning when, you know, you still had leadership

that was very, like I said, a little risk adverse. No one's dying on my watch kind of attitude, you know, of course no one wants to die on your watch, but I remember at our debrief at the end and it was uh, yeah, it was Captain Harwood and our seal team through headshad and a big portion of that was a let down, you know, and I told them like, hey, you know, when they're like, you guys have any comments or concerns, like, yeah, you know, like, this is the pinnacle

and could be the only opportunity that a seal has to, you know, shoot people in the face what he's trained to do and you guys kind of hamstrung it, prevent it, like you took, you took that away from a bunch of guys, you know, it wasn't for some of these reserve commanders, we ended up working for the Marine Corps, you know, probably wouldn't have been able to do anything, but once those guys kind of didn't have oversight over us, that was the only reason we were able to like actually

do some fun stuff, you know, man, yeah, but obviously it all changed once some more motivated aggressive leadership got in there, man, and then it game was on, right? So yeah, it was an interesting time, you know, it was awesome. I wouldn't take any of it back or change it because everything has to evolve, you know, just the way it is and when you take a bunch of seal teams and say, okay,

and you start with the training wheels and eventually, you know, get to the point where guys are just crushing the enemy left and right every night. It's interesting, you know, how you

describe a bunch of reserve officers who had never been to war. Yeah, all scurry and out, like a bunch

of cockroaches. Oh, yeah, going to war to prevent everybody to actually fight to go to war. Yeah, yeah, and I want you to push these, right, you know, yeah, there's a lot of unfortunate moments the leadership and you, I mean, even I'm probably given them excuses as we speak, but, you know, I don't know why all, you know, we hadn't been to combat, we hadn't done this, we hadn't done that,

“but the truth is the truth, the end of the day for those guys. Yeah, they know who they are, so”

there's a lot of them. Yeah, there's a lot of them. Yeah, so what do we go from here? Well, came back from that trip and that's when I was like, I was kind of disgruntled. I had my,

I was a sailor, the corridor sailor, the year, I put my officer package together. I was at

back at Team 3 and I was about to do my board. I think it was like the day prior, I took my, my, my, my, my OCS package and just, it was the OCS or Cminad and it was one of the programs. I just threw in the trash right in front of my CIOs, like I'm not doing this. I don't want to work with you guys. I want to stay with my guys, you know. So dumped it in the trash and then the next guy in line took it. I think he's still in,

actually, he's like, he's got to be a captain. But yeah, totally through that in a trash and it was like,

“just didn't want to be part of that, you know. And plus we both know, if you want to operate”

for the long haul, you stay enlisted, you know. And I wasn't there for the retirement.

And I wasn't even thinking about that. You know, I knew I was going to do 20, nothing more, nothing less. And I didn't care about the retirement. So every, every now and then I'm calling maybe I should have, but, you know, I wouldn't, I still wouldn't change it. The enlisted world runs the show and, and you, I got to confirm that once you get to the East Coast that, the enlisted do run the show out there. But, um, yeah, I got back through my officer package in the trash and then

uh, my master chief, um, you know, had told me about a new program and they were doing a screening and selection for. It sounded interesting. It sounded different. I was like, sure. So I went to war com. And it was a new initiative led by Admiral Kalin at the time. I'm walking to this conference room. I got like my dress whites on and, um, sit down. It's a bunch of people in civilian clothing. I didn't know anybody except for the master chief and he was in civilian clothing. I kind of

kind of look at him like, yeah, what's up? You sit down. They're like, hey, you're doing, like, good. Like, uh, go ahead and turn around in your chair. Like, okay, if I turn around on my chair, now they're all at my back and I'm looking at the door I walked in. I get handed a piece of paper that's on a clipboard and a pencil. Like, go ahead and uh, draw the quarter deck that you walk through two minutes ago. I'm like, oh, shit. Because I paying attention, you know, and I

started sketching overhead. You know, I remember, okay, there's the front desk, there's the doors, there's some doors over here, there's an American flag, American flag, you know, there's a dust, some chairs, and I put my, you know, cardinal bearing, north arrow down at the bottom. Like, this sucks. I don't fucking know if this is even right. I'm like, uh, okay, they're like, okay,

“turn around. Go ahead and tell us what you saw. I'm like, well, and I think I saw and I kind of”

describe everything in my drawing. I show them the drawing. I kind of go over it real quick and and then they're like, okay, and so then they start asking a series of questions, you know, like, you know, where are you been? What have you done? They gave me some scenarios. You know, you're in a bar overseas, you know, guy walks in with a slung AK47. What are you going to do? I'm like, oh, watch the guy, pay attention, make sure I take note of it. You know,

orientate myself properly inside that bar to wear this guy's at, you know, and they're like, okay, and there's a lot of questions like that. Very scenario driven, and then, uh, and then they, it wasn't with the, they had like a, the small little, like, cup, and they had a bunch of broken down

a, uh, stopwatch. They're like, okay, go ahead and put all those pens together. Okay, so dump it and I'm like, putting these, you know, spraying cartridge, put it down into the bottom, put it in the top, function test, okay, do the next one. They were all different makes and models of pens, and it's like, that's weird. Then they had some math problems. So they gave me the math problems. I wrote them down like, okay, they tie in it. It was like basic

algebra stuff, something like that did those, and then they were like, okay, turn back around, turn back around on my chair, and then like, starting from left to right, you know, everybody introduced themselves. Go ahead and tell who each person is. I was like, oh, shit. I'm like, that's definitely one thing I suck at, you know, I was like, but I'll give it

“my best try while I'm talking to this door in front of me, right? I'm like, okay, so I think the”

first guy was Frank. I know the next guy was Billy because I worked with him. Next guy, I think was,

you know, Phil, you know, or something, I just, you know, I don't even know. I didn't know anybody's name. I was just like, fucking fumble and threw it, and I could hear them kind of laugh in a little bit. So I was like, okay, thank God, at least they see the humor in my, in this, and they're like, okay, what were the first three questions we asked you? Like, damn it. It's like, you asked me to draw the quarter deck. You asked me to tell

what a little bit about myself, and then you guys started introducing yourselves, you know, and this thing I say, I think it was like an hour interview, really odd, you know, sounds like it. I had no idea what was going on, what was for, and they're like, okay, thanks. Like, all right, and I walked out. As I walk out, now there's like probably 20 other

seals in their dress whites all standing there waiting. I was the first, I guess that was the first

to go. I saw another dude. I knew I saw a couple other guys. I knew they all were going in for the same interview, you know, and go back to the team, and a couple of weeks goes by, and I'm really even thinking about it anymore. And my mask chief, Command Mask Chief, Team Three pulls me in, and he's like, hey, you know, we're going to, there was a program, I don't know, you know, you did your interview and stuff they called, and so, you know, we're going to send you over there,

like, TAD at first, see if they like you, and I'm like, something weird, and I like to work on. I'm like, well, what am I doing? I'm like, oh, they'll tell you that stuff and you get there. And so I get over there and check in, and there's nothing permanent, because they just want to, it was me, another guy that was in my platoon, actually, one of my lead comms, guys, and then it was like, two or three other seal, senior chief and a mask chief that I didn't really know that well,

but I knew of them, and they sat us down and said, all right, fine fix finish. We're really good at finish as a community. We're okay at fix, as long as it's like, rural-based reconnaissance, like,

“you know, Ricky Team snipers, that's about all we know about getting a fix on a target, right?”

We know nothing about the urban side of getting a fix on one. So what we are tasked to build

and with basically unlimited budget, and it's a ready-go work as fast as you can,

is build the fix and the find for the community starting right now, and we're like, well, what the, first time I've ever heard of fine fix finish, you know? So they kind of explain it to us, you know, fine is really all the ends at the time that we're really looking to say again, it was human. Now you got 100 of them, you know? We're like, okay, and we're like, what is that? You know, and it was just, hey, ready-go, go figure it out. And so with the power of the

admiral and unlimited budget, civilian clothes, and basically got blue-badged in every agency in DC,

“and carte blanche ready-go figured out. And that's what we did. And so we went to every one to figure”

out, well, how do you find bad guys? And, okay, now if we're going to build a program, well, what it look like. And we had, then we put together at the group level, group one and group two, we put little cells of guys together as force multipliers, as start helping on educating the force, and determining how to do this. And this was all pre-G what. And so we got really far, really fast,

So my buddy covered down on ASO, but the Army was the proponents for ASO, they ran that. And then we became the proponent for AFO, and we ran hours. And then I eventually got it certified

through so-com, and it became the first, like, joint course. And so there's a lot in there,

because we were deploying, we'd go overseas, work for an embassy, not really have a job,

“and come back and say, okay, I think this is what we need. And then go, all right, build a course,”

let's educate some guys, and then send them over to fill that void. And then, but what we realize is, once you have a foothold in an embassy, that is the magic in the whole program. And so it was like, all right, we need to get guys out of it. Well, we don't have enough seals. Okay, put an intel kit over there. So then we learned, oh, start grabbing people from the fleet,

start drawing in, and we're going to build this thing out. Get footholds in the embassies,

once you have a foothold operationally, then everything else comes from there. And so it was very, very strategic. It was very operational, and it was very tactical all at the same time. So I was learning through a fire hose agency level shit, you know, at the national level,

“then a operational, then at the tactical, and going, okay, well, how do we put all this together?”

And then you had Admiral Kalin, and even McCraven, because McCraven had started a thing called quantum leap. I think prior to all this, and I was pretty to it, when I was trying to learn,

like, well, how we build something in light speed, so that we can get our guys involved in

outside the theaters of war and truly operational prep of the environment, which used to be called operational prep of the battle space, Congress didn't like the word battle space, because it intends that we're going to do something nefarious there, so they changed it to environment. And we started just mapping it out. McCraven had one thing that was so sticky that I remembered, and I still used it to this day, and it was, if I were to send you, Sean, to China

right now by yourself, how would you take out an aircraft carrier by yourself? And it's a pretty impossible thing, getting into the country, the layers of security, when you dial in and look at the ports and harbours there, you're not getting close to an aircraft carrier in that country. But how can you take it out? And then the quantum leap aspect of it, when you start thinking strategically was, well, I don't have to get near that. I can go 20 piers down to the tugboats that

have zero security. And if I take out every single tugboat in that harbor, that aircraft carrier isn't moving, right? And then that just that one example just set my creativity and everything we

“started doing on fire was like, wow, you know, like, that's what we need to be doing. That's how”

you get ahead, because that is all about how you think and allow in frogman to be as creative as possible. The tugboat theory became duff theory, right? And so then it was like, okay, now we can build on that. So we started, we started with the education and the deployment simultaneously. So anytime I wasn't like putting a course together or testing out a course, then I was going overseas. And here it was awesome, because you got to wear all these different hats all the time

every day. And then, so then we partnered with army, use a sock for all the ASO billets, and then we started contracting. You know, you had a bunch of army guys get out and start companies that taught ASO, so then we started using them. And then I was running the AFO and defining it, like, okay, what is advanced force operations and mapping it out and really getting into it and what all does it include, you know, so we break out the doc trends, so it included up, you know,

joint RSO and I, which is reception staging, honored integration and movement. So RSO and I was like, okay, what is that? If the conventional level, it's how the army moves 100 Apache's to Kuwait, right, reception staging, honored integration into combat. If you think about logistics and nightmare, what does that mean for me and you, me as a single ten, it's like, how do I get a troop of 22 guys from the beach to the safe site, put them on target, they annihilate everybody

with non-attrib weapons and ammunition, back to the safe site, sanitize them, back out to the ocean,

Right, so that's what became RSO and I for Naval Special Warfare missions like that. And we knew there was people out there already doing it, but Admiral Collins, like, we're taking that from them, and we're going to do it through excellence and professionalism and creativity. And we started building these programs, we started putting people in embassies, I mean, everything all at once is fast as possible and it became a program or record and it became a big deal for Naval Special Warfare.

Yeah, it was a huge deal. You guys people had followed and it up learned in all the TTL stuff and

basically electronics like Trissey, like the AFO course I built, I mean, it was awesome.

I mean, you started with getting your concealed carry classes, we had district attorneys and all the major cities by off on it, you got crads, you got guns, you were packing the whole course and then and then you would go to initially it was TSS, technical surveillance science and New Orleans. They would teach you basic electronics electricity, modification of consumer products, lockpicking alarms. Once you got all the tech under your belt tracking, all that stuff,

then you would go into physical surveillance mode. We had the brids coming over, teaching physical

“surveillance, they were all in my five, in my six SIS guys. I took that course. Did you?”

Yeah, it was awesome. Did I put you through? No, it was just later. Oh, I think it was that course. It was a contract, right? Yeah. Yeah, we got took, we were, yeah, we were, we were going to do

the Bosnia thing. Oh, yeah. That's like when this first popped up on my radar, so I guess so to

then, oh, I believe. Yeah, it was on as in it is test. And then I got switched and I'm long to go to Afghanistan. But I want through the whole course. It's, it's, it's probably the best course I've taken. Yeah. And the teams. Yeah. So much variety and that thing, man. I was surveillance, counter surveillance, running knobs from Richmond of Virginia Beach. Yep. How to blend in. Like the show we were talking about this morning. Yeah. I remember they take us to, they, they, they put us in, we'd start walking

around them all and then it became a couple of city blocks and then it became all a Norfolk and then it became, then they introduced cars and vehicles and then all the way up from Richmond down and just getting into top floor, back of America building and all kinds of shit. It was awesome. And they put you in uncomfortable. They, you would have a target that you had to follow or whatever. They would

“always take you into the most awkward. Yeah. Torture a secret, maybe store places we don't belong,”

they'd feel uncomfortable. And then they would confront you there and you would have to act. You would have to figure out how to act normal or they'd, they'd walk into an elevator and one of the guys on a team would follow them out and they'd, what time is it? But it was, yeah. And there was no shooting, no explosives, no jumping out of planes and it, and it was my favorite course. Yeah. Some guys had a knack for it and loved it and some had a knack for it and shouldn't ever do it,

just because I was pissed. They were going to take me to, I guess I, I, I guess they were like, they had an augment to somewhere in the UK. Yes. And I got selected for it. You would have loved that. It was a great building. Yeah. I was, I was pissed. Yeah. And then I got, yeah, then we went to Afghanistan, which, whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's all of nothing but good deals back then. You know, it was like every day was a good deal. For me, running and building and kind of putting

that whole thing together, and then also deploying at the same time and testing it, you know.

“I remember the first, like, who offensive technical stuff, right? I remember it was in Djibouti.”

And our first sales pitch was, hey, our guys can do source vetting. Wow, how many guys do source and well, when you're vetting somebody and you haven't come to a hotel or whatever, we can exploit their car because guys know how to break into cars and we can exploit their briefcase. If they have a briefcase, you can involve a lot of you know, right? It was just to sell the technical capability that a guy can do these things, right? It was very defensive. And, um, but it worked.

Work like a charm, you know, hey, we can set up camera cars for you, right? Take the case officer's car, rip it apart, put cameras, outward looking, inward looking, put it all back together, because they learn all this stuff in the course, you know? And, um, the BW portion of the course,

I feel like, whether guys realize it or not, it was the most important aspect,

especially when you fast forward, you know, when things start to get more advanced, because that basic electronics, electricity, package, um, that's what allowed what later that I would call like a

whatever, the guys with their UDTs, a knife in their mouth, and fence, and a mask, and go get it

“done with a 22 pound haversack. And I was like, okay, well, you could take that concept, how do you”

play it now? The modern day version of the naked warrior is an operator who's transition to operative, right? Operator being a guy who wears body armor cam, he's night vision kicks indoors and shoot people in the face. Now you've transitioned that same guy with that same experience to an operative, where he's business casual, flying business class. He doesn't have 21 other dudes stacked up behind him. All the success, all the failure resides solely on him. He's got as much cash as he needs.

He takes off from dollars and goes overseas. He gets the job done and comes back. Right? And that's the dream job. And I was like, yeah, you know, a lot of guys didn't like that. No, that was what I was, I was very drawn to that from the get-goes. Yeah, this shit is cool. Yeah, it is sexy. Yeah,

“but yeah, yeah, and did I work put nut together? Oh, yeah, no, it was awesome. And it just”

just kept evolving it every year. And then we solidified it all, got rid of all the contractors. We housed it at the NSA. Now you could teach everything in a skip, secure it, lock it down, and then take it to the next level, which is kind of where it, where it ended up, that's where it's home and it's being majority of the co-workers run out of the NSA. And you had all their assets and everything that they brought to bear that made it like a thousand times more professional

made it very secure and then being that close to all the other agencies, it became like a reputable, you know, course of instruction that, like I said, even so come, signed off on it. And instead of work, I'm funding it, it became a so-called fun to ding and took off. So did you take this over to the development group, too? So that's kind of how part of it, yeah. So you went over there to black spotter, right? Yeah. And you, but it wasn't,

you weren't in a sulther, it wasn't like through green team and all that stuff. You went over to black spotter and that's kind of, from what I understand. This is what they do. Yeah. Yeah. I laughed because, you know, when you're a nongreen team or inside that fence line, let me tell you. Oh, yeah. Especially if you're a deploying, you know, guy inside of a troop, you know, it took a couple of years for me to build the trust. But yeah. So I had, once I built that course

and it was kind of like an auto pilot, then I moved out to DC, I was helping with the course. We built a NSW debt DC and it was one billet I sat in it and you were liaison to anybody. Like, I got pulled into so much stuff. I can't remember half of it. Like, if you're an enlisted

operationally operating, sitting in a basically a sea billet, right? A deployable billet in DC,

you'll have every agency coming, hey, can you go do this for us? How can you go do that for? I mean, it was pretty phenomenal. And at the same time, so I was attached in a say, but representing Naval Special Warfare inside the Beltway. And so I got pulled into countless things. I did a lot of cool deployments. That was where the initial, one of the deployments that kind of led me become and more independent and doing the single-ton stuff was Bin Laden's Boats, right? Bin Laden had 27

vessels. And they had like a three-ring binder of these vessels and pictures and stuff and

“they're like, man, we need to get these things like tagged, you know? And I think the initial idea”

was like third deck at Fort Mead, having this Tom Clancy room with all these screens and

being able to see, you know, all 27 vessels on a global screen, you know, I think that was the idea, but um, so the first little gig was, you know, hey, we got this boat called the, well, it was called the Jamil and it's a smaller metal tanker, not really that big, and it was supposedly sitting in the Jaboodi port and harbor, right? And so I was like, all right, let's go put a fucking tracking device on this thing. And so uh, that was like kind of like the first like, you know,

trial run. And I was working a lot with all of your TTL companies. Did you do it creatively?

So this is where you're covered, all that kind of stuff, right? We were kind of still learning,

but the duty free shop inside, well, inside the Jaboodi port harbor is a duty free shop. And a lot of times, if you're a Westerner, you can get away with going in there and uh, buying cigarettes, buying alcohol, whatever, right? And so there was a lot of wreckies involved. We built a camera car, you know, took a car, break it apart, outwe're looking cameras, put it all back together, and then drive through there. And it took some time to actually find it, but it was its color

scheme. It was green with a white superstructure. And so we knew, okay, got to get that. And um, and then once we I did it, they had literally taken paint and painted over, jamele, and like had some other name written on the side of it, you know, and in the nautical world, every, like like aviation, um, everything's English, right? So it got to, so it makes it a little more bearable to figure things out. And it had some other name. And um, but we knew which boat it was.

And um, and so once we kind of figured out the port, the the pattern of life of the port and harbor at night and different times a day. And then also the guys at the front gate, you realize, okay, they're lags. They're not like security. They're just guys checking vehicles coming in, just management of the flow of people coming in and out. And then uh, yeah, once we figured out, we like, okay, it was me and another team guy and like, let's go ahead and see if we can pull this off tonight.

“Oh, there was one other piece of this. So the uh, I think it was the agency had someone who had”

access who worked in the port and harbor. And so we built first generation camera with RF antenna

into a pack of cigarettes with a little pinhole. And you know, this was back when we're using these Sony X view cameras you could buy. You know, put it all together in this cheesy little RF device and it'd push back and that was it was video. So it wouldn't push very far. And we put it in the kids backpack. It had a mesh exterior pockets. We put the cigarettes down there, made sure that everything lined up just right, glued it all in place. Made this kid wear this backpack and then

he went on board. It was able to film the inside and it filmed locally, but it also pushed. Of course, once he got into scan, it went static. And then we were able to collect the wrist when it once came out. So we had new like, oh, okay. Now we know the inside of this thing, we need the outside and then went over there one night. They had a ladder going up, you know, to the side of the boat, no different than any other Navy vessel from the deck at the ladder and just kind of dressed

like they dressed, acted like we owned it, walked up and were able to drop the device. There was a, there was like wood paneling and wood deck on a portion of this thing. And any

“device, it has to be able to just see the sky. That's the most important thing and make sure that”

it's not behind the metal, right? It can be behind fiberglass wood. It can be pretty much behind anything, but it has to be able to get, it has to be able to see satellites. So the device knows exactly where it's at. And it also has to be able to communicate with us or whatever device it's talking to. Early on, they had what was called matte tags, multi-access tags. And so that was, it can communicate through seven cards, it can communicate through satellite, it can communicate RF,

if I do a drive by and collect the information off of it. Literally dropped it in there, there's nothing sexy, and then got out of that damn harbor as quick as we could. And Fred, the team guy with me was driving, get back in the car, was driving, and he was so fucking paranoid. He was like, "We're going to be involved." And we ended up creating our own little like crazy on the fly, SDR, back to where we're staying. And I don't think anybody was following us,

“but it felt like someone was following us, you know, and there was probably just, you know, I think”

it knows about at least in my experience. You just even paranoid. Yes, you know, you always feel like

somebody's following you or watching you in those situations. For sure. And we were fumble fucking through it, you know, we didn't know what we're doing. And then you come back and you go, "Okay, where did I fail on that?" And it's like, "Mess D.R.'s tradecraft, you know, just taking the risk of a harbor that was okay-lit, but we were fortunate that that one happened to be in dark. You know, we got lucky with a lot of the environmental that just didn't think to take into consideration.

You're just kind of like, "Fuck, let's just do it." You know, "You have any cover?" No.

We advanced the tags. These companies were working at building tags. And I mean, it just kind of grew from there. We had another bin Laden boat, another run. This one was called the Humor. It's named after the Persian Gulf has these huge fish, big black fish. They're like,

“bass of the sea, and massive, and they're not scared of humans, but they're called, I think they're”

called the Humor. This thing was named after it. Now one was anchored. They're like, "Yeah, go out there and tag it." There's like, "Okay, hold on." We weren't advanced enough for that yet. You know, you had turtle-high turtle-low systems. Remember those? You trained with, it's like a magnet. Man, we just, we thought about doing that, but those things can be seen if they pull into a port or harbor. But yeah, that was the kind of the kickoff, first vessel, and I think by the end of

the run, I was the only guy who tagged vehicles, vessels, and even like, a shoe. Solve the shoe. How'd you tag that? Oh man. So the lead negotiator and leader of the Somali pirates was standing on the side of the road in Basaso, Somalia one day, broad daylight on his phone. And some of our guys want to say are the piss, which is the Puntland Intelligence Service,

which is a bunch of some always that I went in a bunch of times and trained these guys, and there's

some crazy stories associated with that, but teaching them surveillance. And they like see these guys, they rolled them up. I wasn't there. I just come in like a couple of days later. So they see them on the side of the road. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, and so they square the block, come back and grab them and throw them in the back of their truck, right, and take them to the safe site. And it was, in at this point, this is, you fast forward,

we did now have NSW guys, part of the very program that I had kind of belt, the SA,

“you know, that I don't remember, they had these special activity teams that I've been given.”

I don't have a bunch of different names. What does basically come and a team guys that now

sitting in these houses in different areas now? I was like, wow, same as advanced, you know. So they're holding onto this guy. And so we roll in and they're like, so here's a deal, there's this whole like political issue. You got the three main plans in Somalia, and the elderly's have to kind of buy off on like, this guy going away. This is the guy that was on the radio talking to Jonas and those other

gold squadron guys and different people for, or Red's Red hybrid. You had Jonas though, Kilsaw, who's on, you know, distortion 17 guy, who was like on the radio and doing all the creative talking back and forth with the Somali pirate leader to go share. So when you're watching the movie Captain Phillips, there's the voice on the radio. This is that guy. Okay. These guys just roll up because they seem standing on the side of the road. Oh shit. Yeah. And he is, you know,

a rock star in Somalia. And he is brought, I mean, he brought in the biggest part of their economy.

“There, Somalia imports everything. And it only exports one thing. Can you guess what that is?”

It's the largest exporter of camels. God. Well, they import cut. They import cut from Ethiopia. Yeah. Those cop planes come in, land at about 11 am. Cock trucks go up to the cot stands all over Somalia. All the cot stands have caught by about one PM. And then by about three or four, the entire country, cheeks are full of cot and they're high and they're just wandering around like zombies with literally two, they got their cheeks full

and two cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. So you can count on them all being high and you

can get away with a lot during that time. Obviously when you, you know, just like we always do,

you just use the culture against them. But should have been a shorter story, but they wrap the guy up, gives you context to who he is. And then there's a, it's a thing. We couldn't just snag them if we wanted to maintain support with the little support we had in Somalia. So all of those like a piss, you know, the, the punt land intelligence service, we had the kind of the

you're going to take this guy who's the biggest part of our economy. All his ransom money was funding

“that country, right? Millions and millions of dollars, right? So it was political. They're like,”

we want to pull them. So there was this back and forth. And then there was this point when they were like, hey, we got a lot of them go. We're like, what? And I'm more, I'm there at that point.

And I happened to have always like carried all these different tags with me, everywhere I went. And

I had a black squadron tack with me. And they were like, well, hey, so how do we, we're told, hey, like, make sure you tag him. Like, tag him. You know, so, you know, they had stripped him down and put him in like some, you know, their own clothes and kind of took his own clothes. And we created this whole storyline on how to get his clothes and issues and everything. And then we're like, you, one thing about

“some olis is they always are interestingly, they're always dressed nice. They got slacks on,”

long sleeve shirts, untucked, somewhat clean and shaving. They're always kind of moving with a

purpose going from point A to point B and always like leather dress shoes with old school wooden

souls. And so we took a shoes, pulled out the insults, had a dremel, put the tag in there, put it back. We put his shoes on, walked around him, making sure it didn't feel different in the other. Make sure his heavily concealed, everything glued back in place. And then we're like, hey, here's the test, you know, it was the day to release him. And so, you know, they gave him his clothes and he got dressed, he put a shoes on, he didn't act any different, kind of watching them.

Let him out the front door, went or went and dropped him off, but basically let him go. Knowing that, okay, we got a potentially grab this dude, if he runs or whatever, clan leaders, you know, don't come to a decision on the sky. So, so I feel like a week or so went by and everybody agreed and then yeah, they ended up lighting up that area so that his tag would reflect back. It worked, kept track of him the whole time. It's really cool. And then eventually

rolled him up, they basically ran a rendition package on him, you know, we're moving from jet to jet. He doesn't touch sovereign territory so that he can't, you know, pull any bullshit with the attorneys. And then he showed up in New York one day and put on trial and he's sitting in prison in New York. Wow, all those crimes against, you know, US companies, citizens, all that, yeah, shit. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Yeah. Who would have thought though, you know, the guys just

wrote them in the back of the truck, you know, I stand on the side of the road. I mean, you know, it's got some times to get lucky. Damn. Yeah. And here's another interesting, you know, that particular tag was invented and created by no other than Mitch Bradley. So everyone knows who Admiral Mitch Bradley has been in the news a lot because of the strikes against drug boats and, oh, she's South America. He's our current Z-Southcom or whatever,

no idea. I guess he would be right. But when he was, you know, when he was an '04 or '05, he's at J. Sock, and I don't know where he worked in like science and technology or something, but he

“he created this tag, just fucking smart, right on there. Yeah. What were you doing in Yemen?”

We were always in and out there, primarily those were during the AAA days. And why are all

wacky? And why was controversial? Because he was an American citizen. He was the guy that was on back in the day YouTube allowed everything and censored nothing. Believe it or not. And so back then, you had people in Orange, pajamas getting their heads chopped off by Al Qaeda. You had everything on their man. And one of the most prominent propaganda guys for Al Qaeda was guy name Ann Oral, Al Qaeda. We nicknamed AAA. And he US educated US citizen, but from Yemen, his dad is a wealthy

guy in Sonah. But he was their lead propaganda guy. He had a magazine called Inspire to inspire people

provided, there's a true magazine printed and published. It had diagrams, how to build bombs,

s vests, midees, vehicle ID, I mean, you name it. And it was everywhere. And then he had his YouTube channel where he radicalized probably more people than bin Laden ever did. You know, if you look at the two Boston marathon bombers, they're radicalized by Ann Oral's videos. If you look at the Fort Hood shooter, radicalized by AAA. And there's plenty. The shoe bomber, the reason we're taking our shoes off at TSA for so long is because of AAA. The underwear bomber, right? Luckily,

we didn't have to take our underwear off at TSA, but I'm sure they thought about it. No underwear allowed. But he was he influenced more people and radicalize more young Americans and young Muslims than

“anyone else out of all of our kaita. And so he's basically considered, I think, number two.”

Once the command killed number one, you know, then he became number one. And he was in Yemen. And so a lot of our trips in and out there, it was just really targeting him. The CIA on drone strikes had missed him like two or three times in a row. He would come in the synoff from time

a time and they'd always try to hit him on the highway going back out to wherever he lived out

the middle of nowhere and it didn't work. And so then eventually, you know, once we had a foot hold at that embassy, you know, I think the agency was like, hey, what can you guys do? And so I went over and it was to tag his vehicle. And I was like, oh, this is cool, you know. And he had a driver that would always park outside of a 24/7 convenience store. And he would park that damn car

“right in front of the glass. And the cashier inside conveniently pointed outward towards”

cars parked right there. And over there, you know, the deal, they like park up on the sidewalk.

You know, so he would put this thing like danger closed, the bumper to the glass. I mean,

there's barely any room to actually walk on the sidewalk. And he could tell us with purpose. His driver did this on purpose. Keep that vehicle underwatch 24/7 or at least when it was parked there. And in a cross street, it was like this hotel, shitty ass hotel of sorts. And so once we kind of figured that out, we would roll in and set up wrecky cars, camera cars, park them, leave them, collect, go back, drive them away, see what we could

collect on the driver, get ID quality. This is all spread out over time. But eventually, we got ID quality of the driver, figured out which kind of car, then we'd go out in town, procure and/or comedy or the exact same car, bring that back to our place, break the car down, rehearse, figure out how we're going to do it, this and that. And then my, uh, my task force, SCA, it's like, hey, you know, you can be creative as you want on that. It's like, okay, what do you

mean? It's like, you know, if you got to like, steal a van or steal something, you know, and you know, come up with some creative so that you can park right next to it and knock it out real quick. And I was like, uh, okay. So took his hand, like, start looking around, like, okay, I need to steal a van now. You know, it's like, yeah, I'm looking forward to accommodating a vehicle for covert operations. Yeah. And um, the, believe it or not, the closest van,

or these army guys, like US guys. So I like kind of ask, discreetly, hey, can we just steal air van? It's like, yeah, you can do it every fucking honor. Like, yeah. So now I'm stealing these

“guys fan that they bought. And I'm just like, well, hell, that's the best way to do it. Take a van,”

known people, let her go steal it from them. At least don't tell them about just borrow it. So we borrow it. And then I have one of the texts go out and town by like a thermite torch. And we cut a hellhole into this floor of the van, right? And uh, in turn it into this hatch. And then we buckled down a spare tire to it. So if under inspection, it looked, you know, if you opened up the back of the van, you just saw a spare tire that, you know, it was locked down to the floor and, you know,

he just kicked it a great job. I mean, you did a good job, buddy. Give yourself a bronze star after this deployment, you know, like everyone else, you know. And so the idea was, you know, hey, we're going to pull up next to this thing. And um, and with that guy sitting inside his little cash register,

the van, underneath the target vehicle, and do your thing. And so um, we had one guy,

“I think he's a blue squadron guy. Pulled a wrecky, he was out on the street. He was our overwatch.”

And then uh, uh, I was team leader for this whole team of guys. And so I ran team lead and full disguise. I had my him and he's mask on and my man and my man dressed and the him and he's like to wear their like a blazer. It's kind of something that sets him apart. And they wear their head, head dress, instead of on their head, they wear it kind of over their blazer. And um, so as looking me, drop everything, drove the vehicle,

happened to be a parking spot, got lucky right next to the target vehicle. And uh, part next to it,

kind of looking at this guy, getting my light up a cigarette, start letting my mask smoke, crack the window, click. I'm just going to hang out. That's nothing unusual for that environment.

“And as soon as I saw him look away, he went back behind the curtain,”

he's all blacked out, kind of kind of kind of kind of how we had our own concealment built into the back of this van that didn't look anything weird or could pass inspection. Open up the door, hit the deck, roll into the vehicle, um, so had a new brand new tracking. It had double satellite hockey pucks. It had double cell phone antennas, which are like, look like black thumb depressors or tongue depressors, you know, on a wire.

Bottom line is you had like four or five things you had to conceal.

Um, rehearsals basically a piece of cardboard on your chest, once you're underneath this

thing and you're mixing these like super potent epoxy and you squeeze it out of the tube, squeeze it under or mix it around and then you start fucking, you know, start fucking glow and shit everywhere, doubles up tie, did everything, you know, make it look right back into the vehicle, get back to the front seat when the guy wasn't looking and then, uh, yeah, no big deal. The Overwatch cleared us. Everything was good to go. Pull out there, leave. Boom. Okay,

tracking device on Anwar on a Lockhees car. Go back, roll proud and happy. Pull it up. Tracking is good. Pinging on all four channels. This is awesome. So next day, things start to move in. Moving around synoth, this and that goes and does some things, login, we're able to kind of bounce all this information off other people and, um, and then, uh, write it like around the 24 hour mark. Drops. Nothing. One thing, double cell phone, dropped, double satellite, dropped,

and I'm like, the fuck just happened to this thing. Wait, you know, go get an oil change, the guy, you know, there's a risk to all this. Go get an oil change, put it on the rack and they see something, right? And then find something leads to everything else. You know, it's, there's risk and we're like, holy fuck, you know, it was a huge success, you know, and now it's not, you know, like, and that's the thing about that world. As you know, it's like all the success, all the

failure resides solely on you sometimes, or you and you know, if you got a couple of texts with you or whatever, fucker man. So then I'm like leveraging everything I have for me or in a say, dialing in on Yemeni's phone network trying to figure out where it lost and this and that and pulling all these resources, you know, and there are switchboards to figure out what happened, couldn't figure it out, time goes by, time goes by valuable time, valuable time, now we're back to

pulling surveillance on the hotel, now, you know, two or three nights later, he's not parking

“there anymore. Like, fuck, burned, possibly burned. I think about seven day mark, and I'm”

already stressed out, can't eat, you know, this is one of those things where you just don't want to go that way. And what were you guys going to do, drone strike it? There was a lot of courses of action. You can imagine, like, this was at the time, you know, McCraven was Jay Sock. And so very aggressive, Mitch Bradley, the same admiral, it's been in the news lately, it was my boss.

let's do it differently, you know, what that was, who knows. And so turns out, seven day mark,

after every phone call, I was talking to tracking companies, agencies, all of the tech components of everything, this isn't going to surprise you, but Jay Sock stopped paying the bill on all of the communication components of that particular device. Yeah, oh, and for me, I was like, oh, thank God, you know, because I'm running that off. It's mine, and of course, one minute, you're the rock star, and next minute, you, it's that whole hero to zero thing, you know, and definitely felt it in that moment,

and it was like, so then we know the problem, you could fire it back up, this point that thing,

“I think, a week later, started paying an out in the middle of nowhere, they just gone back out to”

where they lived. And, um, but a game valuable information, it gave a pattern of life that then was used later to eventually kill the guy. Yeah, yeah, I think we were there, I spent a lot of time in Yemen, we probably cross paths. Glenn, my favorite race to Portland, do you know that coffee shop that was supposedly owned by the American couple, they lived, and it was kind of, it was over by the embassy, it was walled in, it was out door, and sound. Yeah, supposedly owned by this much rock,

American near the shore of the spot owned by an American company, like, what's American couple, I don't know if I can coffee shop in Sanong, and it had all kinds of antennas on top of that because they lived there too. So I remember I was going in and Glenn was coming out, and he's like literally bumping in each other and like, oh, hey, American? American, yeah, speaking, yeah, you want to get a coffee with me? Sure, you know, we're kind of putting on the act.

I don't know if I'm trying to somebody's watching, go back inside, get coffee. It was fucking last time I saw the guy too. That was it, that was his trip to Yemen, he came back home, I didn't get to see him, and then going over to relief tie. There's the next trip. Yeah, it's pretty, uh, kind of such a small world in that world. Yeah, you know, you'd run into the same dudes and

you're always like, are we the only ones like doing this shit around the globe? Because that's kind

of scary if it's true. Everyone's going to recognize us at some point, you know? Well, shit, I mean today, you can't even do it. No, with all the facial recognition and all that stuff, I've heard that you can't even, you can't even get fake passports anymore. You can't really do any other stuff. No, yeah, when I was leaving, everything I think was going, you know, back to true, the agency was leaving the web, but yeah, you couldn't, and even with masks, you know,

with the, I have my, my air of mask and I have my Somali, and it even got to the point where there's

“certain thermal that if that's running, you can see it. So you have to assume like once there's a”

piece of technology out there that can burn it, that particular piece of equipment, and, you know, you can't, you can't ever use it. You can't trust it. It won't be seen or seen through or whatever. Yeah, you know? But it was powerful. The disguise was very powerful there for a while, you know? Like deception point of view, and we were the only ones really using it offensively,

Jeff and I, you know, the agency's always used to disguise as kind of like go meet a source you

never met before when you're shit in your own backyard kind of stuff. But we were the only ones kind of, those are hard to move. Those are hard plays to hide to even what the local garment was it's so tribal there. I mean, we would do, we would walk these assets and, you know, through the whole city and clean them, you know, welcome through metal detectors and malls and whatever. Yeah, you know, to clean them before they finally got to us. And yeah, we would even

women, you know, actually it was women. We just, we had burned every time. Not even realize it until the assets in the car. He's like, was that, was that your guys on the hotel, you know, to be in and be like, how did you know that, you know, the guys wearing the thing on the wrong

“side or he's doing this or he's doing that? I think it's impossible for, you know, an”

a Western art to really, to get it down. No, perfectly. Of course, glance, it's great, but, yeah, to actually do it, no way. And we had, we've had assets get killed because of the, I mean, it's, it's a tough place to blend. Yeah, I would say almost every, all of the places we went, you know,

you a black guy, but it only works because, you know, they're high on cotton. I'm doing it at night,

“you know, like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for CMOE, which is what, you know, your initial question”

getting pulled out out of NSA, it was because I ran a course for the four or five E-9s at damn neck. It's like a two-week course, they came up and I kind of put them through it and they realized, wow. Like, you know, what you're talking about and you've actually done this stuff, once you come work for us, and I was like, okay, so, you know, did the screening for damn neck, you know, the interviews and the psych tests, and then I actually said, hey,

all right, good idea, I go through green team. They're like, nope. And these are the E-9s at the time, we're like legends. And so what they said went, there's no arguing with them, you know, and so when once I got there, I got into a black squadron, you know, my job really didn't have

“anything to do with green team, but it's nice to check that box because it's a selection.”

And if you're a seal, you want to be a selected guy, but I put in like five different shits and they returned down every time, so there's a point when you just go, okay, and they just, you're not here for that, yeah, you're not here for that, you're here for CMOE, so I Roger that. But CMOE is Clandescent Methods of Entry, so we built the program there, which is basically lock in alarms, getting in, leaving zero attribution nine states,

government, zero forensics. And so Jeff and I had like a $10 million budget, which is nothing

compared to what guys have now, but the time were like, well, shit, just the two of us. And that was to build the capability, so we went to the two two SES's capability, went to SRR, while we're in England, they had a great small CMOE capability, very experience, get the IRA back in the day, went to FBI, TOS, their hole, there's a $100 million CMOE program, right, went to Pag, which is the agencies, that's another $100 million,

fucking, you know, entry program. And we're like, well, we got to build something in the middle, so we're just a two-man shop, and, you know, we got educated at the highest levels and

we're able to get, you know, ultimately the goal for anything is, you know, you want the squadron

to be able to own the target, so our main job was to provide reliable repeatable means of

“reentry. So that means make a key, so that's a school and it's all we did, it's roam around the planet,”

breaking in the shit, and most of the time there's only two reasons I'm going to be in your house, in your car, on your boat, and that is either tactical or technical. And you probably rather it be technical, and then tactical, because if I'm there, that means 22 guys are going to show up after me and fuck you up for the rest of your life or make you disappear at sea. It's technical, well, you get to live a little longer, and we're just going to listen to you, watch you,

and see where you go, you know. But it was definitely, I mean, like, you couldn't ask for a better job, single-toned world, you know. Well, like I said, I wasn't as deep in as you were, but there was my favorite stuff. Yeah, it was just, I don't know, I can't even really describe why. It's just, I don't know, it's just cool to be on your own doing that kind of shit. Yeah, that's it. It's the old-of-loved, old-done TFO. Yeah, I did classes for them. I get pulled up there,

really. Yeah, I got to help out with their selection, and then they've got a great history. I mean, that's the closest selection to OSS selection that there is in history to this day. Yeah. Super cool. But I would help them out out in Nevada. Fucking phenomenal. Of course. It was aspects of that, that I put into ours, because I was able to see it, and these guys are onto something. Well, that's really cool, Ben. Yeah. I did not know that you were the one that pretty much built that entire program,

at least at the beginning of the time, you know, beginning of time, beginning of it's time. Yeah. These like, very cool. 20 plus years ago at this point. So, yeah, it's old now. All news. I can't even imagine what they're doing these days. I thought it's pretty damn cool. Yeah, but it is.

But we're going to take quick break. Sure. I'm always listening to something on the road,

is it puts music, podcasts, and audio books all in one app. So now with Amazon Music Unlimited,

“you're not just getting music and podcasts. Your subscription also includes access to audio books,”

which makes it easy to keep something good going, no matter what you're doing. I've been listening to Project Hail Mary, and that's the kind of audio book that really works in this format. Hearing the story in the narrator's voice pulls you in differently. You get the pacing, detention, the personality of the characters, and it makes it easy to stay locked in, whether you're driving, training, or knocking things out around the house. With Amazon Music, you get music,

podcasts, and audio books, all in one app. Try it today.

The internet wasn't built with your privacy in mind, but Glacier was, open the app,

tap connect, done. You're protected. Remember, privacy isn't paranoia. It's protection. Take your privacy back. Download Glacier today.

“All right, Clay, we're back from the break. I think we've covered a lot of the singleton stuff”

and everything you're doing, or is there more to go into? I think that's plenty, right? I mean, people get the idea. It's really about, hey, you're taking season operators, turn them into operatives, and going and getting shit done outside the theaters of war, and, you know, creative way of taking out bad guys. It's really super cool stuff. And yeah, I mean, so what's some of the stuff that you carried back then or carried now? Let's do a quick

everyday carry pocket dump. Back then, it's going to sound weird. I mean, I always had a couple

of tracking devices. I had my lock equipment, smart jammers for alarm systems, and stuff like that. Recky stuff, urban wrecky, like cameras, and hide materials, and video, you know, and notice the first thing I mentioned is like, oh, an MP7, you know, some kind of whatever pistol, but you know, your tools, as you know, back then, or for that kind of stuff, is, you know, it's, it's commercial level stuff that you can explain away, you know, and so it's really, it's not about guns and all that.

It's, it's about having a great storyline. If you ever get pulled over and have something, you've got to have a story, you know, that matches what you have on you. And then that story also has to match the environment that you happen to get rolled up. And that's all you're thinking about the whole time, right? Because the layers of your cover come off as you get closer and closer to a target, to the point where if I'm on my knee, making a key to a lock, I really can't explain that away.

“So, that's why time on target is so important. You want it as minimal as possible,”

so that you can get your layers back on, because the further you get away from that target, the better, you know, my, you know, disguises, you know, obviously those masks come in handy, one of them was actually on display at the International Spy Museum in DC, and then I guess some agency attorneys went through there after it had been on display for like four or five years. You know, the agency purposely unclassified the sky stuff, so that someone can like,

you can throw it in the trash, because before then, if you threw it in the trash, oh, you threw away classified materials? So they unclassified all this crap. You know, and I didn't, what am I going to do with a mask that's built to my face, you know, so I just donated it, and the former deputy of Black Squadron was actually the director of the Spy Museum when I donated it, so he was good with it and was like, oh, okay, well, if he's good,

whether it's on, but they came through and took it, you know, stuck it in their new museum at headquarters, I suppose, I don't know, whether they threw it in the trash, you know, but um, it's actually, there's a, yeah, there's a funny story. This whole disguise thing, like, um, at the time, uh, pvh, you know, or the the CEO of seal team six, pull Jeff and I and he's like, you guys are, uh, my disguise guys? My, uh, I don't want to call us disguise guys. We just wear them

from time of time. Okay, there's a nanny cam, you know, and he's like, yeah, whatever. Here's a deal. Can you disguise a troupe, guys? Like, you know, with masks and stuff and he's like, well, whatever, I'm like, well, now I'll probably not the mask, because it takes six months to build those things, you know, or whatever it is. I said, we could probably use, uh, you know, some out, some LA guys,

Like, there's what? Like, I don't know, afghanies or something. Like, okay, so I call up, uh,

the first guy I call was the, um, stew seagull. Okay, stew seagull productions. He, uh, we used him

in the AFO course, and he is a producer that was in LA. He decided to open up his own production studios in San Diego, and, um, he had sats, and he had an afghan village that looked real realistic, and we can run scenarios there with actors and everything, and really get guys squared away on blending in, or building rapport, right, for some of the things that require communication. And, um, and so I call him up, and he's famous for all the 80s cheesy TV shows.

“So Pensacola, uh, buffy the vampire slayer. Remember, Renegade? Yeah. Um, hunter, uh, silk stocking”

martyrs, right? He produced all those in San Diego. Um, his claim to fame, though, was, uh, Jeremy the hedgehog. He started an imporn. So stew was a, was a porn producer and made Jeremy the hedge. Is that his name Jeremy the hedgehog? Famous? You know, the ugly little guy with the other

big talking about, yeah. Got a lot of meat on that guy kind of guy, but, um, never seen it though.

And so then he switched out of porn and started all those TV shows, has his own set and stuff. And then at the same time, I was like, well, who can do like really good at it? The Yager brothers. Now, the Yager brothers got their fame early on in the special effects world with Freddie Krueger, and they got all kinds of awards and stuff. I guess back in the day, and they became like the top special effects, uh, place in L.A. And so they could make really cool

masks, um, super detailed, but they're faster. So I was just like, okay, I can leverage all my resources and figure out who can knock this out the quickest. And stew, of course, like, I got you.

“We can knock this out. So, you know, stew is like a big barrel chested bearded. You should be a”

teen guy, but he's, you know, he's a Hollywood producer. And, um, so we fly these guys out there, the Afghan village, dress them all up, you know, they put prosthetic noses and bushy eyebrows, and, you know, and beards in this and that, and, and, uh, all these tanning, ointments, and got him looking all, you know, put, gave me a K-47 and then had him run around in this village, and we filmed it, because the, the special instruction was, hey,

film it with cell phones, film it with handy cams, film it with all kinds of just average crap, right, like average technology. And all you're at it, go ahead and use some high-end security cameras as well. And we'll just see how these guys look. Do it a day, do it at night, got to get it all thing. And, um, you know, oh my, what does this four, you know? And so we come back and kind of present it to the CEO and he looks at it and he's like, oh, okay,

there's really, all right, thanks. And that was it. Oh my god. Because we jumped our ass to make this happen. So did the, it was, uh, it was a, it was a, it was a troop out of Silver Squadron. And so we're just like, what the fuck was that for? Well, fast forward, turns out, one of the courses of action for, uh, the bin Laden raid was to let everyone do it into skies and then let Pakistan take credit for it. And so this was like, to see how they looked if they happen to get

captured on cell phone or cameras or whatever this thing is like, oh, okay, that's kind of cool. That's my big claim to fame and the bin Laden operation controversial bin Laden. Boy, how that would have changed the latest drama, huh? Yeah. What is it? What is it right now? With the, with the latest, you know, I mean, who's, is it, I, I kind of lost track, honestly, like, is it? Who's it? I don't know.

I can track either. Who's, who's winning? Is there anybody winning? Winning? Is this the who shot bin Laden? Oh, yeah, I don't know. Is that the current?

“I don't know. Well, what were you talking about? That's, that's what I'm talking about. Okay. I mean,”

it's been kind of like the ongoing, the ongoing thing, right? Yeah. It's just, like, had that up happened. How would a change of, uh, no one can say anything. And I think maybe,

you know, that's why the course of action was never what that seriously.

Well, these guys aren't going to keep that secret. I swear, God, it was me. I'm the one with the big nose. Oh, man. Yeah. That was a weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So, why did you leave? Well, boy, that's an interesting question. You just threw out there. Well, I was rolling up on my 20 to begin with.

paperwork out, 24 months out, two years out. As soon as you do that, it's supposed to kind of take you off the bench and you can take that last two years and kind of just do whatever you want, concentrate on your new future. At that command, it doesn't do that. You know, I put my paper work in, but kept working and still got pulled into stuff here and there, and plus you're addicted. So, you don't really say no to anything. Anyway, you want to be part of anything. And then,

but the way out ended up actually getting, having, you know, some drama attached to it

unfortunately, and it actually hinges on what we just joked about. So, there, basically, I'm sitting

at home one morning, and I get a call from my ops chief who I had gone through Buds with, and he's like, "Clent, don't come in, man. They've got your picture at all the check points." I'm like, "What are you fucking with me right now?" No, I am serious as a heart attack. They have your headshot at all the check points. And I was like, "Uh, okay." He's like, "I'll call you back once I didn't have more information." What check point? To get on base, to get to the command.

Okay, right. So, I'm like, "Still thinking, maybe he's fucking with me." Like, "Why would they put picture of me?" Oh, you mean there's a picture posted. I thought you meant pictures of you going through the check points. No, what? No, no, no, yeah, picture of me. This guy, like, if you see this guy bring him in tight shit, okay. Yeah, something. And I was like, "Ah, all right." So that was kind of like, obviously nerve-racking. Look. And I'm like, so I'm sitting at home. That all this shit really comes

in handy. What's that? Now all these masks really come in handy. Yeah. So I'm sitting there and I'm kind of like, "What the fuck could this be?" You know, like, there's nothing. Like, I've lived a pretty clean

“career. And you know, I'm sitting there going, "If I done something wrong, could I say something wrong?”

Could I, you know?" And anyway, a day turns in today's, and I'm starting to call people and nobody

knows anything. And as you know, or I always kind of compare it like to that Eddie Gallagher moment,

like knowing what it's like to have no control over your future, right? And I didn't, I got a fraction of what he got. But I had that feeling like, "Oh, you know, what does this mean?" You know, you start thinking. It's the 800-pound gorilla sitting on your chest right now. It's the United States government. It's this. It's that. Your mind just starts taking off in all different directions. And, you know, I just sitting at home. And I didn't know what was going on. Nobody gave

any word. And then, I think about a week went by. And then finally, my office chief, same guy, he calls me up and he's like, "Hey, you know, I hope you're doing okay. It's still real blurry around here. I have no idea what's going on." So just hang tight. And I'm like, "I've been hanging tight. Like, what the fuck is going on?" And he's like, "I'm sorry. I just don't have an answer for you." And I was like, "What the fuck?" You know. And then a couple more days goes by he calls. He's like,

“"Hey, meet me at the, I think it was Harris Teter grocery store." So like, meet me in the parking lot.”

I was like, "Okay." And so I, he's after work for him. So once he gets meet him over there in the evening, it's pouring rain. He's like, "Hey, do you have your access badges and all your stuff?" I'm like, "Yeah." So like, "Yeah, I've been told to take it." I'm like, "Holy fuck." You know, like, you're handing over, you know, all your NSW, I got a ton of them on there, too, because they give me access to places in DC. And that's that. And I handed over to him and,

I mean, he's like, "Sorry, dude." He goes, "I still have no idea. I was just told to come get this from you." He's like, "Just hang tight. We'll figure it out." Well, I'm great. So now I go home when that happened.

Now I start to branch out and call other folks. And so the first person jumped in my mind

was one of my buddies, I think he was a teammate and teammate was the one where they handed over a CIA source, or whatever it was. Remember this? teammate guy's hand them over. He's alive.

“And then when the agency got a hold of them, he magically died. Do you remember this?”

I don't. It was a bunch of team guys that ate, or wherever that we're getting, they're getting like court martial, and it was some crazy drama. And I talked to one of them, and they were like, "Call Louis Free." Because, you know, he ended up walking into the court room.

"You know, this is like a kangaroo court. This is ridiculous. Let these guys go. They didn't do anything

wrong, and you know it." And so the military judge respected and knew who Louis was. Point where he basically

“let those guys go, because it was a total sham deal or whatever the drum. I don't remember the details”

anymore, but so they're like, "Just call him, you know." And I'd remember there was a trip I took to Yemen in one of the houses. There was a kid named Justin Free, and I was like, "Oh, I've met Louis Sun. He's an officer, a team guy." So I hit him up and said, "Hey, I've been told to probably hit your dad up." What do you think? He's like, "Yeah, call him. Get him on your side now and get it over with." You know, that way you're, you know, you're good. And I was like, "Okay."

And if you don't know who Louis Free is, he's a former federal judge, former director of the FBI, and he owns probably one of the most reputable law firms in the country. He, his law firm took down San Dusky, right, though this was at like sex crime, sexual stuff.

“One of the universities, it took down the BP oil spell and the golf, you know, and that thing was”

dumping millions of barrels of oil per day. But great American, and he's a kind of an American icon, actually, kind of checked all the big boxes in the legal world. And so I called him up and said, "Hey, I have no idea what's going on." But, you know, I had all my badges pulled, I've been

basically sitting at home for a couple weeks. And, you know, here's this guy, I don't even know

when he's like, "Don't worry. It's going to be okay." Like, if you can't think of anything that you've done, it's that wrong. And it can't be that bad. And either way, I'll take care of it, you know, and it was like, "Wow." And it was the first time in that couple weeks feel like, "All right, now I got somebody on my side." And it's not just somebody, you know, he's got horsepower. And in fact, on that first phone call, he's like, "Do you want me to call 60 minutes? We can

we can light this up in a heartbeat, man." I was like, "No, not yet." I said, "If it comes to something like that, sure." And this is a long story. But to shorten it, you fast forward, they do this full investigation that I don't know what it is. I just know there's an investigation going

on. They're not really talking to me. I kept Louis up to speed, but I never told anybody that I

had him in my court and had him on standby to just start, you know, destroying people if it was necessary. And then one day I get called in, you know, I had to go to the visitor center. They took me to the MWR building, which is like, you know, you couldn't work for, you know, somebody who's been at the command for whatever, at that point, seven years, something like that, you know, it's like, "Dude, you're treating me like a maintenance guy, coming to fix something,"

right? And they pull me into the MWR and, you know, a seal warrant, who was in charge of the investigation or whatever, sits down in front of me, he pulls out this big binder, and I'm looking at the binder, I kind of see like it's like print offs from my website, okay? And so he's flipping through it, and he's like, "Do you have a company called Escape the Wolf?" Like, "Yeah, are you actively making any money right now?" Like, "No." Like, "Do you have some product that you're

offering?" Yep. There if you are a conflict of interest with this product, I haven't sold any product. So he's got all these questions that have to do with my retirement company and then he's like, "So, Matt Bissinette." And then I'm looking at like, "Yeah?" He's like, "Are you aware that there's a book that came out?" I was like, "I don't think so." No? He's like, "Hmm." So,

“are you friends with Matt? I was like, "I don't know, acquaintances." I think I went over to his”

he had a company called Element 5 or something like that. I can't remember. Anyway, I was like, "Yeah, I've talked to him a couple times, that's about it." It's like, "Uh-huh." Like, staring at this guy and he's like, "Well, a lot of what you've got going on right now." You know, looks in smells, kind of like what he did. I'm like, "Well, what did he do?" He's like, "Well, he he had wrote a book and he had sold rights." You know, to a publisher and collected that money while he was on

active duty here at this command. So what outside income are you collecting while you're here

set up online." You know, and that's part of the reason why you're sitting here and, you know,

“some people or whatever has some issues with all this. And I was like, "Uh, are you aware”

that I put in my retirement paperwork already?" He's like, "No." Like, "Yeah, so I've already put in for retirement." I held an investigation. You got to go out on her. And then he's like, "Uh, okay." And I said, "Are you aware that I also filled out a chit?" Respectfully requesting to start my retirement company called Escape the Wall. That'd be shipping me. And I have five signatures of my entire chain of command and all the paper

work is sitting in the Jags office. And he's like, "You have, do you have copies of this?"

I'm like, "Yeah, at home. You better believe it." He's like, "Oh." So this is like two or three months

later. Okay. And I had stressed out, I was down to like 160 pounds, thinking, "I know what to think." And it's them targeting, there's about 20 of us that they targeted, you know, to figure out who had outside sources of income, because they were comparing it to the likes of what Matt did with his book. And wanted to, they didn't have control of Matt. The CEO at the time was putting pressure on the DOJ, DOJ within was coming after Matt. But it was a dotted line. You know, it wasn't enough.

So when the CEO's job was threatened by the Joint Chief of Staff that, you know, "Hey, why do you have your guys getting out writing books about covert operations?" That same CEO saw his career passed in front of him. You know, his grandfather was an admiral. His dad was an admiral. And now I think he saw it as like, "Oh, well now I'm not going to make admiral because of this kid's, this person's book." Well, so I'm going to have to take it out on, take it out on his own people.

Then I just happened to get wrapped up into that 20 guys. And we all got tried imported and treated like criminals. They still did it. They still tried imported it. In order, well, the new, in order to close any case in Naval Special Warfare, it's the trident board that closes the case. So keeping your trident, but we got to finish the board. So in the board is when the true colors came out. And I'm sitting across from a master chief who boarded yourself for being a fucking

dumbass. Right. I mean, it was, well, it was all kangaroo court, you know, knee jerk reaction to try and burn a bunch of guys that they had control over because some other guy, you know, did something

“they didn't like. That's what you know, and so did the proper channels. I didn't board. The other”

19 didn't fare so well. But they still were like, "Hey, yeah, we got a board you to close this thing out." And so I sat down from a master chief who had an investigation on him that was ongoing. Right. And I knew about it. I don't even know if he knew he had an investigation going on on him. And he's like, "So, Matt Bisonette, am I going to go huh?" It's like, why didn't you disclose that you bought your house from him when you moved to Virginia Beach? What the hell did this?

And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, yeah, I bought my house, but Matt's out of town,

I'm out of town. My wife and his wife basically made the deal. Like, I said, I knew I was buying

a house from a team guy, but I didn't, you know, but that's it. Like, what do you mean? On and there's the site 2013. We're staying in Farad Bokleidung here. The greatest Vorteil from Shopify for me is, that we're for the Unterneams for a long time. We can all over the back end and the front end steuers. And as soon as you go to Dubai, the online shop. If you're shopping for Farad, then you'll get the platform

that's actually Farad. It's simply the main thing. Our whole business is over shopping for you. Now, there's a constant test on Shopify.com. I'm also a friend of Maldo Nadu and I'm the founder of Yaui. One of the chiefs of Kunstwerke and Handgefährdig. My wife feels on Shopify, because Shopify, in comparison to the other platforms that I've tested,

with Ambe Nutzer-Frontlisten, was. I've already thought about it before.

“All tools for the development of Verkaufs are important,”

for example from Lager, find the right in the dashboard. Start a constant test on Shopify.com. Now, what's here is what's interesting that I knew. Is the same master chief,

And so I was like, "Didn't you own this house at one time?" And he was like,

“"This is not the point." I was like, "Okay." And then it was over.”

They did their little kangaroo court. "Okay, you get to keep your trade in." I was like, "Well, good, because I'm like retiring next month, I'm thinking." But I mean, that was my exit out, you know, out of the Navy. It was fucking horrible and stressful and introduced. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Some of the other guys, man, they were sweeping the quarter deck for like a year. They got their tridents pulled, sweeping the quarter deck, told that after that year,

punishment will give you your bird back. Some of them once the year went by, they didn't get their bird back. Just let them see ya. It's crazy. And these were the season. They did. It doesn't surprise the season. None of the show's operators. And they, these were like troop chief level guys. You get up and spit you out like you're a piece of shit. I see a time and time and time and time and time and time again.

“Yeah. In here. Yeah. All the time. Yeah. Every unit. Yeah. That's what they do.”

Well, they say, you know, it's a fence line of sharks and eventually you get bet. Well, so got bet. It's kind of like they say, well, you can't make chief until you get in trouble. Yeah. Oh. It's like that kind of holds true a little bit. Yeah. The hypocrisy is just like, yeah, not that I've ever seen. It has left a bad taste on mouth for a really long time and then eventually you're just like, well, whatever, man. Like, I didn't do anything wrong and I was glad I was the only

one that filled out the right paperwork because you know us, enable special nobody fills out paperwork. Yeah. And then it's W. In the only reason I filled out that paperwork is because my deputy in black squadron, who was an army guy was like, yeah, you should probably fill out a chip and just cover your ass just in case. I was like, oh, good call on that. Yeah. And army guy. Because they're all about the admin stuff, you know. Wow. But yeah, I listen to them and it paid off. Yeah.

Fun fine, right? So we covered the escape to wolf stuff. Yeah. So let's talk about I began.

“Oh boy. I began. How'd that go for you? I think I benefited far more than”

I know. I feel like I went into it pretty ready compared to a lot of guys. I feel like a lot of guys. I don't know about you. But the sign up, the go down and they really hadn't done a lot of prep work,

you know. So I had had been through therapist after therapist after I was and I finally found

Scott out of Florida. And this guy is basically like part therapist, part Yoda, part poet, and has this very, um, he just has an ability about him. You can vomit all over his desk and he will take all of that and turn it into just gold bars of Winston or wisdom where you're sitting there going, yeah. Exactly. You know, if you tell like how you feel or what you're thinking, I don't know how many times at this guy, I would say exactly. That's exactly what I'm thinking. That's

exactly what I'm feeling. You know, two years straight are working with him and a prior die began and was able to just uncover the why to a lot of my own personal issues, you know. Is this the childhood stuff that we're coming back to? Yeah. I thought this was coming after I have a date. I'm sorry. No, it's, it was all during that. I began was like the grand finale for me, Dutch him. Yeah. And so he made me dig and, um, you know, and he, uh, there's one exercise

he had me do. That was so powerful that it kind of unlocked a lot of compartmentalized stuff from childhood.

And, um, he said, you know, it was before I grew up in, before I moved to Saudi, I was in Dallas. And, uh, I had this memory of standing in the bathroom doorway as like a four or five year old laying against the frame of the door. My mom's sitting on the toilet, right? She's got a cigarette hand in her mouth. And she's like, uh, clenny, you know, you're dad, uh, yeah, you know, he's not your real dad, right? And I'm just like, and then she just kind of left it at that.

You know, and in retrospect and through therapy, you learn like a boy's identity is through his father, you know, trust us through the mom and, you know, a whole lot of other things

over time, right? Things that I remember, you know, when I was learning to walk and talk, she was teaching me how to lie cheat and steal all at the same time.

“I remember I was going to grocery stores and she would always stage me in the toy section,”

be like, stay here. I'm going to go get her stuff. And, uh, you know, I'd stand there and look at all the toys or whatever and then when she filled up her basket, she'd roll by and be like, okay, pick something out that you want, okay, I'll take you know, whatever, GI Joe,

grab a GI Joe thing and then we just walk right out the door. We never went to the cash registers.

Almost every single time we go grocery shopping, never paid for anything. And I just thought, now it was normal, you know, I never thought it was like, oh, maybe, didn't even, I don't even know if at that age, it crosses your mind that you didn't pay for anything, like everyone else, you know. And at the groceries and the grocery basket aren't like all bags separately, you know, it's all just in there. And, um, you know, and I didn't, I didn't know any of

“this stuff. And, um, you know, and in any time she was lying in front of me, I always remember her”

looking at me and telling me in German, don't say anything. And, uh, I always look at her like,

hey, hey, you know, as a kid. So she knew she's bold face lying to somebody and then look down at me and, you know, as a guy, whatever it was, she said that Beth, you know, don't say anything in German. And so I just watched her for a lot of the childhood, do all her things, lie, cheat, steal like crazy. And, uh, but I didn't know any of that until Scott was like, hey, here's an exercise. You're going to figure out what apartment you lived in and Dallas.

And, uh, go find it. And so I look up my elementary school and Google Earth and then I kind of knew that I knew that, okay, that was the school. And I could remember fragments. I remembered what that, that swimming pool of that apartment complex look like. And so I was able to go, okay, that's the complex. And I, so now it's time to go do this experience. And, um, and told me, he's like, all right, I want you to drive there, you know, anchor yourself to the pool

and then walk the path to the apartment you lived in when you were that little boy, I was like, all right. And so get there, pull in. It is a shit hole, like shit hole, shit hole, Dallas apartment complex. And I even felt kind of like, oh, I don't know how I can heat, you know. And go to the pool, get on that path, make my way. And, uh, and I remember it was the bottom floor apartment. They were two story. And I'm standing right there. And I was like this over arching, feeling of insecurity

came over me, standing there, staring at that damn door. And he's like, all right, now you're just going to imagine, you know, close your eyes, whatever you need. Now you're going to walk through that door, I want you to picture it and describe it to him and I'm like, okay, living room is to the left, kitchen is, or living room is to the right, kitchen is to the left, you go through the dining room or the living room and off to the left down there, set of stairs, set of stairs,

go up to your bedroom. Okay, take those stairs, you go up. And then the door first door to the

“right was my bedroom and open up the door, look in, he's like, okay, so, you know, what do you see?”

And I see myself, it's like five, four or five year old, glad, what are you doing? And on my stomach and by myself and it was interesting, you walk into the room and for me, visualizing, I could feel the feelings of that kid, his fear, loneliness, sadness, depression, it's fucking crazy. And he's like, okay, walk over and then just lean down, put your hand on his back, what is he doing? And he's doing Superman, coloring book or whatever. And, you know, he's like,

okay, you know, let the kid let him let little Clinton know that you're there and, you know, and let him know I'm there and, you know, and then he turns and looks up and

man, it was like so powerful, I lost my shit, like right there, like even talking about it right now,

and, and it was all about like, hey, you're gonna, you know, get a little clant, get him to stand up, you're down at I level with them, you know, give him a big hug and hold on to him. And yeah,

and, yeah, you could feel all the feelings during that moment, even right now, like replaying it.

And, yeah, wow. So, you hug this little kid and you tell him, hey, everything's gonna be okay, you want to get out of here, you know, and little kids like, yeah, you know, a little clenze like, let's get out of here, you hold his hand, walk him down the stairs, back through that living room. This point, you meet yourself standing outside, now you've, you know, you've got your little version of yourself with you, and be a line into the car, literally opened up the passenger door

and visualized putting him in there, closing the door, going around, getting in the driver's seat

and driving away and leaving that place, you know, in the rear view mirror. And then,

“never forget, I went to this coffee shop that was nearby that I already kind of pre-locate, he had me kind of,”

said, hey, you know, when you get done, find a safe place and like, you know, give me a call. And so then I get there, get on the phone with Scott, and a fucking loss, my shit, and it just unpacked, didn't unpack it. It decompartmelized a big portion of, they're just the bad things during childhood, not just up to that moment in that apartment, but it allowed all that compartmentalization to start just bust an open, even post, partly moving the Saudi and things

in Saudi, and you know, all of it unraveling. And unraveled everything. And, you know, then that was just the beginning, you know, and in that two years with him, he was able to, you get to like just

“whatever, I don't know, maybe six months ago, he was able, I got kind of, you know, like we all”

do with any therapist, you get kind of frustrated with some of him like, okay, tell me what's going on, like, fix me, you know, and, you know, and you got to find the right one. I'll tell you, Scott's the one for a lot of, I feel like for a lot of us. And so he was, I got to kind of a frustration point when I was like, all right, come on, what the fuck? What's going on with all this? And he was able to take that red thread and sew it from when I was five all the way to that moment in time.

And, um, and I sat there and listened to him, and I was just blown away, because he took every single, like, even these fragmented things I would say in our discussions, he had made note of it, you know, things you don't think are anything important, you know, and um, he had made note of all these things over two years, I was able to just tie it all together, all the abandonment, all the trust issues, all the control issues. I mean, you name it. I had deep-seated issues

“that, you know, were, I think in some cases, like the most deep-seated and the worst heat ever,”

kind of dealt with, or tried to dig up out of somebody, you know, so your sign or symptom at the surface could be drugs, could be alcohol, could be women, um, but that's just a sign or symptom of something much, much larger. And what in the therapist world will call your 10%, right? That's just the 10. When somebody cries over a spilt milk, it's just 10%. It's not the spilt milk. It's not the drug addiction. It's not the alcohol. You know, it's not the womanizing. It's the 10% is, those are just signs

and symptoms. When you actually take time and fight in the right therapist, now you can excavate down into your core, into your soul, and find the 90. And that should be everybody's goal. Let's go, okay, I gotta go find my 90, because that 90% is the why you have signs and symptoms.

And when you never go figure out your why, well, then you can't really solve the problem.

And so for me, having those two years and getting to the why, when you show up to something like I began, where they tell you hey, intention is everything, right? Your intentions going in, your intentions coming out. You got to make sure those intentions, you know, are real and

issues from my mother, you know, trust issues from her, that led to trust issues and abandoned

“issues with women, which then, you know, the control issues, trust, I mean, it's all connected.”

But if you don't know that it was all connected, or unravel all of that crap from your past, well, then you can't really solve the problem. You know, you can go to eye-begining and go face your demons, if you will, but still, if you don't know the why, then you may not benefit as much from it.

So any time I'm talking to people now, like, dude, figure out the why first, so that you can show

up with the intentions that are connected to it, right? So if you're intention going under the mask, I don't know if you were doing it, but I was like, saying them to myself, okay. You know, trust, abandon it, all the, hey, thrown out with the old in with the new, right? Even when you do the fire ceremony, you know, you're burning the old so that you can bring in the new. And so mine are all trust abandonment issues, intentions, and getting rid of them so that you can now finally

kind of live free of all of it and live a normal productive life and get rid of all the bad habits, you know, and go find a guy like that, or gal, who gets you, who connects with you, who sees you, and then knows how to interpolate. He's nice to go. We just go these marriage therapists. I'm like,

you go to a marriage counselor who's never been divorced, you know, it's like they're, they're

not the one. You know, if you're going to be a marriage counselor, you probably should have been divorced a couple times and seen both sides of it the good, bad, ugly, and now you can talk to it.

“I think, you know, counseling across the board should be handled that way. If you're going to be”

you're dealing with addicts, okay? Well, hopefully you were an addict, you know, because that's where you benefit the most. Makes sense. Yeah. What did you piece together? Well, are the missing component? Um, I mean, for me, knowing the abandonment piece, the trust and how it was all anchored to my mom, I'm like, I had no idea, honestly. You know, plus I began what it did is allowed my conscious to come back to the surface.

You know, probably the first time on the post I began where it was nothing but every bad feeling for about 40 or 45 days straight, you know, grief, shame, guilt. There wasn't one good feeling for about 40 plus days. Every day I opened my eye knowing that this is going to suck. You know, I'd wake up and go, oh, god, there it is. I just feel it. In the random crying, you know, driving down the road, start crying and you can be at the grocery store, start crying.

I mean, it's just like it consumes you or consumed me for, you know, 40 plus days. And then there was the one morning where you finally wake up. You open your eye, you're kind of like, oh, maybe I'm back to neutral, right? Everything's not as bad and you kind of feel normal one more again, you know, but man, but ultimately, yeah, brought my conscious back, kind of reset my moral compass, probably, you know, and, uh, made feelings, um,

yeah, made me feel again, pretty interesting and powerful, right? I'd also say,

you know, with some of this psychedelic stuff, like I also noticed too, and I'm sure you've seen it.

“It's, I think they need to be careful with a lot of it, you know,”

think it's, um, you know, Colin Mettison and, you know, and, uh, capital. Capitalism is starting to get its hands on it. And I feel like when that happens, better be careful, you know, because it's before you know, to be readily available and won't cost so much and you won't need a non-profit or you won't need this, you won't need that and I think it just, they need to be careful. Pally. Yep. I don't know what to think anymore.

Well, me and you, I mean, that's the first time that you're brandably, we're a hotel, get ready to go down.

I don't know what I think about it anymore.

“This was your second time, right? So, did you have all the bad feelings like I did?”

Yeah, and still creeps in there. If you let it, yeah, me too. Like, it's weird. I can almost, as if the magic in the mask is off in right now, I could do, like, almost like a thousand-meter stare and good doesn't creep in. It's like a bad feeling that starts to come over me. Is that what you kind of? If you just let silence hang out a little too long and

think about it, do you believe in God? I do. Yeah, I, uh, I didn't always, but

even in the eye beginning, I asked, you know, you can get to about like whatever they tell you, like around seven or eight hours, you can start asking the eye beginning questions. And so, I don't remember saying, "Hey, show me God." And like a film strip coming down from the top of my mask in there, in cursive white writing, it said, "Show me God." Exactly what I was

“thinking. And then it kind of kept going. It's like a very, like a movie real almost, right?”

Then the very next thing that started to come down was this black medallion. It's like, look like it's probably this big when you're under the mask, right? And it had cutouts in it. And as you know, you try to focus on anything in there. It goes blurry on you, right? And so I was using my peripherals trying to make out what the cutouts had, but they're kind of the, the eerie part of the whole thing. It was it was backlit

by a raging fire. So the only reason I could see the cutouts on this medallion or coin was because it was backlit by this fire that was burning. And it slow, I tried to keep it there, but it just kept on moving down, down, and disappeared out of the bottom of my mask.

“It's really odd. You? What about me? What'd you, you asked, do I believe in God?”

Oh, yes. Something on the second run that there was, I mean,

I believe, I mean, are you a Christian? What I say, God, I mean, yeah, didn't believe in Christ. Yes. I don't know, but I'm not really, uh, don't know about the Christ part? Oh, no, I'm a hundred percent sure. Oh, God, I have a game part. Yeah. There's been a lot of good that's come from it. I am now ready to share everything that I've been through yet, and then I'm continue to go

through. Yeah. But I will say, I think there's a possibility that that is a problem that we as humanity should not have access to. Yeah. I think that a lot of deception can happen in that. I think we have a veil over us. I mean, I didn't, I'm very, I feel very in tune with the spiritual realm right now. All the shit that's going on around us that we can't see. And

I think that, you know, we can't see frequencies, we can't see certain lights. We can't see really anything. We only have, you know, five senses. But doing that, kind of proves that there's a lot more going on. And I think there's a possibility that

Yeah. This is more and more people get into this whole DMT on drip, hanging out in different

“realms for hours at a time. Sure, you've had people on here. You've heard about that. Yeah, I find”

it to do it. Nope. I'm good. They're talking about talking to entities. And that just seems like something that I don't really want to mess around with. And yeah, I don't think, yeah. I've been a huge proponent of it. And sometimes I feel like maybe that was a mistake, and maybe I'd fall. We had a lot of people in the wrong direction. But at the same time,

I'm not short, and I'm not really 100% ready to go there yet because I'm still trying to figure

out what it all meant and what it does mean. But that's kind of where I'm at right now.

“Yeah, I'm with you. I think people just need to be neutral on it. Don't get, don't become a huge,”

don't get under a lot of people get into that and then that becomes their God. That, well, it becomes their new addiction. It's their, it's talk, talking to the medicine. Yeah. You know, I think just, we've got to be careful with some of the language, but you know, the whole like God made it. It's natural to the earth and I'm like, well, you know, so rattlesnakes and crude oil, not drinking it every morning with my breakfast. You know, yeah,

you just got to, I think there's a lot of good that it's done and can do and I think they just

“need to keep it from getting capitalized upon because I think that's where once, you know,”

it starts going to market in any other way than how it is right now. I feel like that's when things go south, maintain the control over it and do it right, you know, yep, but yeah. Where's my gummy bears? You know, since you gave me these, start here so I appreciate you giving me these though, really, because I want now I want to give you something in return if you're okay with that. Oh,

that's that. Okay, so I'm going to get up or say it. You asked me about EDC, but I've got to take a moment here and, you know, counter you. You're going to be bears with at least a shadow systems. Okay, all the components, all the components built made in Texas. Okay, it's a better known company. These are West Point guys. Don't hold it against them. Trevor Ro, West Point, combat bat.

This is the MR920 and it's kind of their flagship compact. It's already set up, optics ready, obviously. That's number one. That's for you. Okay, shadow, obviously better known Texas company that, yeah, tell me how that feels. That's nice. Yeah, now it's been around. It's actually being carried by a whole bunch of law enforcement agencies. And then you are getting

the first ever, this thing that he do. This has been the shadow systems. You five, two, six.

This thing is ready. This is serial number 005. And they did not compromise on this thing. This thing dry is only 6.2 pounds. Didn't compromise on the barrel. It's twisted. It's chrome-lined. Beautiful. It's got user adjusted safety switch. You can put it in your 60 degrees or you can put it at 30 or 90. Right on. There's a lot of other perks to this. It's not your typical, you know, 556 rifle. And then we put the, or they put the EOTEC 2 dot. Have you

shot through the 2 dot yet? No. So it has two dots inside. The top dot is 0.50 to 200. And then the

obviously, I'm magnified there for you. Thank you. Yeah, man. And I was hoping I was the first to,

“yeah, see that, I don't know if it's on. Holy shit. So that's the other piece. I forgot. It's”

a two two stage 3 pound trigger on that thing. So you distinct first stage and that, yep, and then the second. Three pounds on that. The barrel stock. Dude, this is, uh, this is nice. I hope you like it. I love it. I was hoping I was the first encounter your guinea gummy bears with, with a weapon. You, you are good. That's all matters. And uh, well, I got something for you too. Oh, don't get it. We're at that point in our relationship. We are. Dude, this is damn, thank you. Yeah, I hope you get

get out back and tell me. Tell me how it does. I think you'll dig it, dude. Maybe we can do that real

quick before we leave. But, uh, I know we're pressed for time here, so I'll just never do it. So, uh,

not going to say a brazer gift. It's funny how these things are all. We're going into MP7 territory. Oh, shit. Damn. We're going into MP7 territory when you did the EDC, but you actually made fun.

“That's what I was like. Oh, shit. But, yeah. Yeah, so this is, uh, six hour rattle or 300 black”

out. I got a buddy over at SIG, his name's Jason. Everybody knows him now. But, um, yeah, I was, I was looking for a new bedside gun. And I wanted 300 black out because of penetration power. Yeah,

and it's not just flies to everything. As you mentioned, especially with green tip. Yeah. And, uh,

which we found out to kind of funny that you found out two years before we did. Yeah. So, if it's for whatever reason, that would be true. I didn't travel. But, um, yeah. So, SIG rattle or 300 black out, SBR with the new SIG optics got a SIG flashlight on it. It's got a SIG suppressor on it, folding butt stock, nothings that he super quiet. That's pretty. But, uh, yeah. And he knows SIG's an awesome top. Yeah. So, quick story about SIG. If you don't mind,

we, um, there's a sheriff's department that, that, that, the county over from here. And I got a friend that works there. Very poor county, not a big budget. Huge math problem. And he told me the shit that they're running over there. Yeah. And it is like 25 year old ARs, mixed matched, stuff, unreliable, famine all the time. And, uh, and like I said, it's a good friend of mine. And I know, it just, I was like, this is crazy, man, that you guys have to rely on this shit, you know,

especially in that county with what you're dealing with. And so, I, uh, I, I just, I was, I was like, how many he, he runs a SWAT team now? And I was like, how many guys are over there? I said about 30. So, I just, uh, I wanted to buy him 30 rifles that they're good to go. And, uh, I called Jason up at SIG and I said, hey, you guys have any old stock land around that I can just buy a cost and give to these guys. And, uh, he said, well, give me a couple of days. And, uh, it's like, look, I don't,

I'm not asking for you to give them or, I'll pay for them. You know, just be cool if you give them to me a cost. So, he gets back to me and he says, hey, yeah, we got the perfect, we're going to give

“them these. I think they're the, it's a 556 SPR. He goes, we're also going to have food and with”

optics. We're also going to have food and we're also going to have food and we're also going to out food them with suppressors. And I don't need you to pay for any of it. We're just going to get it right to them. And I was like, dude, that is, that shit's awesome. Yeah, you ought to be into. It's been American right there. Good company. Yeah, they make great shit. No, yeah, can't beat it. Rallar 300 black out, just sounds cool. Yeah. Awesome, man. This is beautiful. Thank you.

Well, Clint, that was an awesome story, man. Thank you for sharing all of that. And, uh,

I appreciate the voice. Probably the only one I'm going to do for, uh, the rest of my existence. So,

“this is podcast, interview, last one done. Yeah, thank you for having me, man. Appreciate it.”

Thank you for coming. God bless them. Yeah, you too.

No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all,

“anything. Please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you”

possibly can. And, if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.

I'm glad you're watching the show. I'm glad you're watching the show. I'm glad you're watching the show.

“All the tools that are available for the development of the show are important to you, so that you can find out the right way.”

Now, let's start with a post-notice.com.