#230 Keith Stansell - Operation Jacque & Surviving FARC Captivity

29:16Yep. Everybody there wanted to do the job. I didn't fly with a pilot or work with anybody there that didn't want to do the job. Man, that sounds like such a cool mission. I thought it was. I did not realize this was a State Department mission. Yeah. I thought this was an agency mission. No. State Department. It was run out of Patrick. Oh, shit. Where were you guys staged out of? LaRondia was one of our San Jose and LaRondia were two of our bases that we were staged out of. And, you know, we had some air tractors there and OB-10s and a mix of mechs from all different services and pilots and people that would do a job and do a good job.

29:52You know, it was all patriots, right? And Dine Corps used to get a bad rap about, yeah, you got a bunch of ex-enlisted beer drinking guys down there partying all over Latin America and doing a counter-drug mission. Well, yeah, that's what you attract. You're not looking for choir boys because you're not getting them. I've had this conversation so many times. But those same guys will do a kick-ass job, and they did. Yeah, yeah. Were you guys, was it specifically Columbia? Were you going into Peru? No, no, there was Columbia. When I was on that, that was all. We never left Columbia. That would not start until I got on with South Carolina Reconnaissance Systems.

30:34Then it was a different mission. Then it was a different mission. But, I mean, even sometimes I know you must have been in places like, man, this sucks. But if you think about it now, there were some lessons there you were learning, didn't realize. Oh, yeah. And I've got some great memories of some really good people there. I've got some really sad memories of one of our guys getting killed by accident with a minigun on his own, by his own best friend there on the base, which was really, really sad. You know, we had a, he wasn't an Indian. He was, I can't remember if he was from Ecuador. I think he was Ecuadorian.

31:17He was one of our Huey mechanics. Great guy. And one of his buddies was a retired Marine E7. And they were armors. or the one E7 was an armor. And so at San Jose, we had a little pad, and we had the aircraft there. And you know that minigun, I don't care what it is. If you just turn those barrels, if there's something in there that's going on, right? So his best, they were best buds. So the Ecuadorian was standing right in front of the minigun, and his buddy just turned. We all heard, boom, ran outside, and bullet went under his right armpits. I remember it came out here, just dropped dead like a stone, you know.

31:53And it was sad, really sad, because it was an accident, and it would become a whole legal thing afterwards. But two really close friends. And the American, it was a former Marine there, he was stuck on base for months until he cleared it. It wasn't on purpose, right? I felt so terrible for him, because he was just crushed. I mean, crushed. So, you know, it was a reminder, this isn't a joke. You know, these SAR birds, you know, they'd get it on sometimes. There'd be somebody shooting at them and just giving the guys in SAR aircraft a chance to get some rust off the miniguns. But, yeah, it was just a sad, sad event.

32:42Yeah. You know, I mean, for base security, we had a, seen old yellow tugs on a flight line. You've seen them a million times, right? and we had to come up with a base security plan. So we got a portable power generator that we used to start aircraft with, hooked it to the tug, then got a seat off of a bass boat and welded a minigun mount on it. So we had power for the minigun and put ammo racks on the side, and then we passed the base security plan for that. Did you guys, was there a lot of engagements? No, not really. No, any? When I would say engagements, it would usually be the gunships, if there was reported fire on a pass, they would dive down to engage.

33:37But who could you see? One or two guerrillas in the side of a jungle in the coca field? So full-on head-to-head combat? No, no. They didn't want that. Those guys in those helicopters were looking for that. They took it very serious to protect the package. Yeah. So you'd come back and even though you got hit sometimes, there'd be one or two or three holes in the aircraft, but there was no full-up Wild West gunfights with that. Let's go into, I want you to educate the audience on who the FARC is. Okay. Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia. Fuerzas is forces. armed revolutionary forces of Colombia.

34:19So the FARC manifested itself in 1964, same year I was born, and led by a guy, a campesino called Tito Fio, which is fixed bullet or fixed shot. And in the late 50s and early 60s, when the whole communist plague was taken over Latin America, they were basically an out, a derivative of that. And you have to think about Colombia is two different countries at that time. You've got Bogota at 8 ,800 feet where the wealthy and the political class lived. Then you had the rest of the country at sea level. No real infrastructure in the country to get and drive a truck here or there. I'm painting 1964, right?

35:05So you had basically a campesino kind of working class, as they called it. Maybe the proletariat want to pronounce that way against the elite class that had the money, right? But then they also owned all the big ranches and property in the countryside. So the FARC came about as a way to maybe, or we give them legitimacy there, to fight the political class and the elites for some fairness in the country. Definitely a class system, right? No doubt about it. But over the years, what infiltrated the FARC was the drug trade. So they became, I would say, I hate to use the word victims, but their revolution, you know, like any communist revolution is all a bunch of bullshit, right?

35:55You just, you trade one ruling class for another, right? And it really, really, in the late 70s, when the cocaine trade started, and that became the big money, then it became just a cover for the largest cocaine trafficking network in the world. And that's all the park's about. Now, that kid you've brainwashed as the 14-year-old campesino to become a gorilla, he believes in the revolution. But there's an interesting thing when I got rescued in 2008. I saw a newspaper article that came out, and it showed the FARC leadership called the Secretariat, right? This was the brain trust, right, where all their children were.

36:40Their kids weren't in the jungle. They were at universities in Europe and in Florida. I mean, they, you know, and you've got these guys that are ultra wealthy and running this big cocaine trade. And so you had the secretariat, then you had the commandantes, and you have different fronts, right, around the country that were divvied up. And so it just manifested itself into a type of cancer, I think. And what was once a revolution that I think they actually believed in. Now, from a certain level below, those worker bees believed in a revolution. But the ones up top, I mean, they were just corrupted with their own money.

37:21Yeah. My belief. I think many people support that. Is the FARC still active? Yes. This is what's sad.

37:30So let me see, seven, eight years ago, we had a peace process. No, nine years ago. So President Uribe, who was a hard line right wing guy, basically brought the FARC to their knees. And then the president that followed him decided to have a peace process, which they'd failed before. So we take the leadership to Cuba. They get fanfare. Some of our major politicians go down there. And they negotiated a peace process. And I think, I don't know what the number was, maybe 20 ,000 or so. They turned in their arms and they came out of the jungle. All right? But they really didn't do that. some groups stayed and refused to turn themselves in.

38:19The FARC were promised six seats, I think. Now I can be off on this number, in the Colombian Congress, called a carule. So you take these guys out, you forgive them for crimes against humanity, then you put them in the Congress. Wow. And, you know, this whole peace deal was— When was those? Gosh, FARC peace deal. This would be 10 years ago, 14 and 15, I think. So I'll never forget, Kerry's going to go down there and talk to him, and other people are going to talk to him. And I just saw our politicians going, man, you guys know nothing about these guys. And it's just kind of like the Taliban being a B team, right?

39:04And I was up in D.C., and I did an interview, and I can't remember if it was on CNN or Fox, but one of our senators, very famous, and he's deceased now and was a POW from Arizona. I don't want to disparage him, but he was making comments about the FARC and the peace deal. And I was on CNN and I shot back at him and said, hey, would you like to debate this? Or could I at least talk to you? I don't know who's briefing you. And he wouldn't do a debate with me or even anything. CNN tried to get us to do it together. But the thing was, he was so far out of base and some of the things that Kerry said, I was like, who are you talking to?

39:48What's going on? And so it was disappointing to see that peace process. People that should be in jail for life at a minimum get forgiven, but I get it was for greater good. Well, now what they call the dissidents fled back to the jungle and restarted the FARC, but now they're splintered. So they're not as powerful as they once were, but they're still there. And now we have an ultra liberal government that believes in this talk stuff, right? And it just buys them time. And so the FARC dissidency is what they call it, has really has grown. And you can look up a guy named Mordisco right now is one of them.

40:28He's backed by popular demand, you know? And so it's just a cycle. I think the peace process gave a lot of FARC members a chance to escape the jungle, some of the young people. But in my capture, there's a guy, we all had nicknames, right? But he was a guy who had us in the jungle personally for long as his name was Gaffas. So when we got captured and he was captured, Our government tried to extradite him, but the Colombian government wouldn't play ball. So Goffez was put into jail. He was released under the peace process. And the liberal president down there now wanted to make him a special envoy to the FARC dissidents, right?

41:16What did he do? He just went back and kidnapped the Colombian congresswoman. He just went back to his old tricks. He was just on the news a few months ago. And it was sickening to me to see this guy that was in handcuffs, right, next to the helicopter after our rescue, sitting up like this, like this to a female congresswoman saying, don't come back here again. Just released. And now he's, you know, El Sequestro. He's kidnapping people again. What he should have had was a fucking bullet between his eyes. This shit happens all the time. But look at all the people we've released from Gitmo. These are not good people.

41:59I understand it. I worked at Northrop Grumman with an interesting character, former 82nd Airborne, one-star Harry Axon. God rest his soul, he's buried in Arlington right now. And he made a comment because he was asking me about some of the leadership down there, and he was our corporate lead up there for SOCOM. and had a picture of him when he went into Panama. He was sitting behind Noriega's desk holding his sword. And I said, I said, Harry, like, what's your opinion? And he just looked at me and said, you know, Keith, unfortunately, some people just need killing. And it wasn't animosity, it wasn't with anger, but he was just like, these people are just going to do what they're going to do, right?

42:45I mean, so what do we do? I mean, I guess on the right of being human and humane, you want to maybe give them the benefit of the doubt or whatever it is, right? But some people are just murderers, man. And that's just, they're never going to change. And we have this way of always hoping to negotiate with the unnegotiable. Yeah. Never seem to learn a lesson. I don't understand it. How strong was, how many people were involved in the FARC at the time? Do you have any idea? I don't know. We've heard different numbers, right? I think they were probably maybe more than 30 ,000 strong at the height.

43:28So there's a very famous takedown of a post called Me Too. So the Colombian police and soldiers that were in captivity with us, the majority of them were taken from Me Too. way down south. There was no way for the Colombian military to really get down there. And they were much weaker. This is before Plan Colombia, right? They were much weaker then. So a few thousand FARCs around an outpost, man, and just start killing and capture them. And at one time in the Despeje, right in the Despeje, the FARC had over 400 police and soldiers in captivity. Are you serious? 400. Now, imagine this. Imagine this.

44:12Let's just say in this county in Tennessee, you had 400 American men and women in captivity because you were some security force. And the government or the state of Tennessee had given a display. It was much bigger than, I think it was the size of Rhode Island. And on the night, families, American families, have to see their own kids and grown men behind fences in their own country as they negotiate. And then we have American CEOs and business people wanting to do business with the FARC and flying down there and visiting them. And it's just a, they just gave them their own state. So what do they do?

44:58They just use that to grow stronger. Then they let the few hundred go of the soldiers and police, and they kept the officers and the politicians that they'd capture. Damn. So they always wanted el intercambio humanitario. That's the humanitarian exchange. We want all the FARC you have in prisons for our people. And that's what, as Tom, we got captured, always said, we're just hanging meat. And so they always wanted a dispehe to have another humanitarian exchange. But they were now a named terrorist organization. So what was the strategy? You got to declare us a legitimate military force. Then you have to openly negotiate with us and a dispehe and then we'll exchange prisoners.

45:52They were never exchanging body. We were just political currency. Just political currency. And I remember Rumsfeld, I heard it on the radio. They were talking about the three American hostages. And it was a news thing and it was a press conference. And Rumsfeld, our sect at the time, was just holding it. And our subject came up. He goes, we don't negotiate next. I was like, damn, today sucks. Did I want them to negotiate for us and trade us out? Yeah, of course I did. Who doesn't want to go home? But I knew that's a fantasy. And if you negotiate and you trade for me, then who's next after Keith or Tom or Mark?

46:36That's what's going to happen, you know, if you can leverage them. And so, you know, I always, all we wanted, and we stated in our first proof of life, we wanted to be rescued. I wanted our guys coming to rescue us, not the Columbians. And I remember, because the whole plan was, during a rescue, the first time I hear the helos, there's a disembark. They're going to, they just start, they did it. You know, in the first Colombian rescue operation, how sad is this? You had a group of political prisoners. I think there was 20 or so of them, you know, basically in a cage in the jungle, hidden in the jungle.

47:20So the Columban military flies over the camp, flies over the camp. You could see the boots hanging outside the Blackhawks. Then they fucking disembark like a mile away in the jungle. What happens? They just walk in there and they kill every single one of them. Not only does the FARC execute them and haul ass, then they send a guy back to shoot everybody in the head again. One of those guys survived. He was a, like, you could call him like a state legislator, wasn't a national. And he survived by hiding out of the dead bodies of his friends. Shit. And he told a story. What kind of, so do you want to rescue you from that group?

48:10You heard that while you were in captivity that several times. It happened, yeah. Shit. And what they were, they were a group of municipal legislators, the FARC dressed up like police, driving to a little town, right, running to the little courthouse where they're having them and say, hey, outside, you're at risk. Get them on a school bus. Start driving on the countryside and say, oh, by the way, we're not police. We're FARC. How about that? Damn. Damn. Well, Keith, let's take a quick break. Yeah. When we come back, I want to talk as descriptive as you can about the night you went down. Oh, yeah.

48:52And then we'll go through the next five years. And I will say one thing. They did come in to execute us one night, but the order got pulled off and we were this close. I mean, they were right there. Holy shit. We'll get into that. It went from terror to anger. It was so deep into it. and I mean if you want to say it now before we break real quick or not let's do it so being a crew chief for a long time right in Chinooks and cranes whatever I can hear I can just feel a helicopter from a long way you get used to it right everybody's like that so the biggest fear we had and this would affect me in freedom afterwards but the biggest fear we had was a disembark at night that wasn't done right So Condoleezza Rice, when she was Secretary of State, was visiting Columbia.

49:47And she made a very poignant statement. It was on the radio. Plan Columbia, we're going to have government presence everywhere. And she was right. That's what we needed. She's 100 % correct. But while they were down there, we noticed a lot of air activity, but it'd be way off. So we just figured it was just more aircraft mobilizing people. So one night, we hear these two Blackhawks. Then it breaks into one, and it starts circling the camp. But a giant, giant circle. We did not know, would not find out until later that they didn't have our camp spotted. So there was a couple hundred guerrillas guarding our camp because we had Colombian police and military on one side of the fence, and then the politicians and us, the Colombian politicians and the three of us.

50:35So they come to the gate to kill us, and they bring the guards. Every guard has one person assigned they're responsible to kill. So there's this pandemonium in our compound. And Mark actually, we had a little escape route plan. Mark was actually, he slipped out under the fence, and everybody's screaming. I sat down because we're in a box like this, and I said, man, they're just going to whack us. And there was a Colombian congressman with him. We had a nickname. We called him Big Cat, you know, whatever. Anyway, so I was terrified. I'm like, they're just going to shoot the fuck out. I said, I heard the guards talking.

51:14Man, is this real? Is this real? The guards were nervous because they knew they were going to shoot us. And so I went from being terrified, but when I say terrified, I mean, I didn't crap in my pants when I was close, to I got angry. And I don't know why. It was not a macho decision. I shot him. I'm not saying I was a badass. nothing like that i got fucking pissed because i felt like i was laying there like a rat and i got up and i walked to the gate and fair nay who was the evil uh boss of the guards i said you're gonna fucking kill us you're gonna kill us i said motherfucker shoot me like a man and the congressman big cat grabbed me he said keith don't say that don't say that i mean every it's it's total chaos i said you shoot me like a fucking man i don't you know and i i don't know why I said it.

52:02It wasn't like I was being a badass Sean or whatever, but I just went from terror, absolute terror, to just anger. If I could have got my hands on him, I mean, you know. And then the radio goes off and they shut it down and the Black Hawk went away. But we were this close. And Farney had his radio on and they're waiting. They're talking back and forth because the macho commandante who is escaping right now, okay, is talking to him on the radio whether or not to give them the order to kill all of us. Because we were the HVT of hostages. I was terrified, man. Terrified. Then I just got angry. I wish I could tell you why.

52:41There's no training, no matcha. I was just furious that you were going to kill me. How long after you were in there did this happen? A year and a half. Yeah, a little over a year and a half. What happened to your buddy that slipped through the fence? His ass finally got back and let her mark up. I said, man, you almost fucked up. He marked us hung by the... We didn't know what to do, right? And he slipped back in, tore his T-shirt with her. I was like... I talk about it now. Damn. Yeah. Keith, let's take a quick break. Yes, sir.

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53:52This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace And there it was The bike you'd been searching for You sent a message And it turned out the seller was super chatty Kind of funny And an avid cyclist The next thing you know You're in a cycling crew Well, a community cycling group The thing about Facebook You might find more than what you're looking for From a browse to a bike ride This summer, find more on Facebook

54:29All right, Keith, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into the night that you guys crashed and were held in captivity. But what was the name of the outfit you were running with? As far as, well, it's on your head. South Carolina Reconnaissance Systems. Isn't that wild? Under Plan Colombia. And when I saw your hat and it said SRS at first, just for a second, I wasn't thinking Sean Ryan Show because I was thinking back to Southcom Reconnaissance Systems. I said SRS because that's what we were. We were SRS. And so for a second, I'm like, oh, no, Sean Ryan Show. I wish I was that switched on, Keith.

55:10Otherwise, I would have said yes. Oh, my God. And so when I saw it, how just I don't know what you'd call it, right? But I'm sitting here doing the show with you with basically the same hat that I wore when I got captured. Kind of a little different, right? Well, we got you one. These are company only. Nobody else has them. Oh, really? Yep. Well, I won't share it. But small community. But it really is. It kind of boogered me up a little. I said, oh, I said, did he do that for, oh, no, it's Sean Ryan's show. All right, Keith, let's move into it. So what was happening that night? It was actually very early in the morning.

55:54So we had, as a mission commander, I'd get an intel box from the embassy for my mission of targets. We'd all meet at the airport, usually an hour and a half before we'd take off and confer with the pilots. And, you know, Mark, who was new, we had brought Mark into the picture to streamline our collection, right? He was an analyst in the Air Force, an intel analyst, and he also worked with our stuff in the embassy. So he was hired to help us, you know, make a better product, essentially. So he was training to be a mission commander because the funny thing about our bird was it's a Cessna Caravan.

56:42Everybody knows, you know, 10-place bird or whatever. But we had one Colombian that's a host nation rider that always flew with us to see what we're doing. People think, oh, the Americans running a Columbia doing what they want. No. We had somebody on board that knew what we were doing, was working with us, you know, and we didn't just go somewhere without permission and collect on targets. up front and breaks my heart, but CW5 retired, Tommy Janus. We're here because of Tommy. You know, 30 years, retired Delta. Guy was in unit forever. Right seat was Tom House, who had never been a military pilot, but he'd done a lot of work in Latin America in these type of missions.

57:20And though Mark was next to me to the left, number one side of the bird, I was on the right. And the sad, sad thing was Sergeant Alcettis Cruz was up front on his very first mission. That was his first mission. Young guy, wife, kids. And what's a bigger heartbreaker is he came with his buddy that morning. They thought they both were going to fly. And I said, I can't take two of you. I've only got space for one. He was super excited his first mission, right? And he'd never come back. Damn. And so it breaks my heart remembering moments after the crash, the conversation. It was really bad. But to start off the mission, we get in there, show the target to the chief pilot and left Cedar, and then we go over what we're going to do.

58:12Take off out of Bogota, cross the rocks, just a little bit high, and then we get down to Flatland and go do our mission. So we were going into a fixed base to get fuel. And right before the runway there, some rocks about, you know, we call them small hills, about 3 ,500, 4 ,000 feet. So we had a combination. I call it shoot-down engine failure.

58:40We were coming down at a 15 ,000 feet. We're on oxygen. And we're in a place where I used to look down and go, if we ever go down here, we're dead. We crossed it every day, but it was just mountain and stuff and no man's land. And I remember Tommy saying 12 ,000. I had altimeter in the back, but I knew, so we all took our oxygen off. And I hear the birds, no motor. so i said tommy what was that he goes that's an engine failure sir cool calm collected like like nothing's going on so they start trying to do a restart on the motor and i hear tommy tell tom in the right seat run the numbers he wanted to know if we if there'd have been no hills in front of us no small mountains we could have glided in it would have been a non-event.

59:35Tommy had already suffered a similar event off the coast of Columbia a year before and brought the aircraft back like it was nothing and landed at an airport on the coast. So I tell Mark, make the Mayday call. And I remember telling Tommy, I don't know why I did it, but just use his comedy. I said, Tommy, do some of that pilot shit, please. Just wait. So Tom in the right seat, the numbers were not adding up. And Tommy just said, fuck it, which he did the right thing. He looked and saw a valley next to us, and he just broke, and we started circling. And he was just burning off speed. And essentially what he did is he'd burn off airspeed until we actually crashed going uphill to slow the aircraft down.

1:00:26I cannot tell you. I mean, unbelievable piloting skills. And he was inducted last year. I came up here into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame. Well-deserved. I'm here only because of his piloting skills. We should have been dead right there on that. So I tell Mark, I said, Mark, make the Mayday call. Mark steps on the foot mic and his voice cracks. I said, give me the mic. You get the target stuff. So Mark starts organizing what's on there. I start making the May Day. So our boys in Key West and the boys in the embassy, I'm on the SATCOM. Everybody in the world is listening to us, right? And a friend of ours was in the office that morning in the embassy, and he gets on and he's upset.

1:01:13All I'm doing is just giving grid coordinates as we go down so they can find us. I told them how many souls were on board, just the standard stuff that you've trained to do. And I don't think any of us, I know Tommy Janus wasn't, was really scared when we were going down. Because we were just focused on securing stuff and Mark's securing stuff in the aircraft, so it just doesn't kill us when we crash in. But I remember Sergeant Cruz, he couldn't speak English, he's right in front of me. So I explained to him as best I could what was happening, I strapped him in the seat. He was upset. You could tell he was upset.

1:01:50What we did not know was that there was a column of gorillas, and they were on the mountainside right under us. They were there waiting for aircraft on approach trying to shoot them down. Shit. We didn't know. We did not know at that moment that our aircraft was getting filled with holes because we're just—the adrenaline is going right. We're just doing what we have to do. They're shooting the hell out of us right then. We didn't even know it. Now, did you guys have any type of a quick reactionary force ready to come get you? Yeah, they did. They had at the base, you know, they had the spray reaction force.

1:02:27They had those guys. But, no, we were an Indian country on our own. There was no QRF for us at all. And I remember Tommy saying as we're, you know, now I'm looking at Jungle Side above us, but he's just burned off airspeed. and Tom says, he said, you better put it down because about 15 foot in front of the aircraft was about a 400 foot cliff. That's how close we came to the edge of the cliff. So Tommy goes, hey guys, this is going to hurt. Then we hit first, broke off the landing gear, then we dug in. What I remember most is the side of the aircraft just opened up like just a can opener. Debris and dirt and everything are coming in.

1:03:15And we'd come to a stop. Mark and I are yelling at Tom and Tommy up there. We didn't know they were unconscious. Sergeant Cruz was okay. So behind me is a cargo door. So I said, Mark, you get the gun bag, get the target deck, right? And I'll get the pilots. So Cruz and I jumped out to get to the pilots. And the first thing I saw on the right-hand side, and I thought Thomas' house was dead, the whole flap of his forehead was cut open and covering his eye. And he was out of his straps and twisted up in the windshield of the aircraft. So I start pounding on the windscreen. He's not moving. I thought his neck was broken.

1:03:56I said, he's dead. He's fucking dead. I see Tommy next door, right, start moving. So we run around to that side and get the door open. And Tommy, how do you describe Tommy Janus, man?

1:04:1556, probably weighed a buck 60, buck 56, ran six to 10 miles a day, had a six-pack, as vain as vain can be, man, had his hair all blonde. I mean, Tommy was, but vain in the healthy way. Just Tommy Janus was a character and a half, and he's a product of his community. He really, he fits in there. And we get Tommy out. He stands right there. I said, Tommy, fuck, man. Thank you. Like, you just saved us, right? He just does like this. Then we hear him gunfire coming at us, right? He just puts his hands through his hair like this. He goes, how do I look? No way. I swear to God I'm my life. Then he reaches over and he always flew with polo socks over his danners.

1:05:05He straightened the sock up. He goes, how do I look? He jumped something down. I said, you look fucking awesome. Holy shit. That's Tom Janis. Damn. Like if you want to write a movie about a guy that flew, was a unit guy for years, and that was Tom Janis. That's why he's in the Aviation Hall of Fame. It's not by flipping accident, right? Who else does that shit at that moment? So Mark gets around, and Tom comes up, and Tom gets out. Tom's alive. Mark gives me just the gum bag of my M4, and we had just our Berettas. I threw that fucker over the cliff. And Sergeant Cruz was getting mad at me. He's like, shoot, shoot, because there's like 60 or 70 gorillas coming up the hill.

1:05:52I said, fuck, no, we're not shooting. We ain't dying today. We're not dying here. And we can't, I mean, we were uncovered ground. They were coming. There was nothing. It was over. The game was over. And Cruz is crying. But not out of being, and I don't want to disrespect him, but he was crying out of frustration. He wanted to fight, and he knew we couldn't. And he says, tell them I'm an American. Tell them I'm an American. I said, we will, but they know who you are, right? And the scary thing was, is Mark looks Latin. And at first, they thought Mark was a Colombian, too. You know, so I turn around, and then there's a couple guys in our face with AKs in our face.

1:06:35They had data up in that click. Yeah. Oh, they were on top. We crashed right in the middle of about 100 and some odd gorillas. The guys that were shooting at us, we crashed in the middle of them. Holy shit, man. So they split us up, right? And they took Mark and Tom and I down the hill first, and they took Sergeant Cruz and Tommy in another direction. That's what they do. They split you up so if a QRF or somebody gets there, they don't get all their golden eggs. And I'll never forget I remember this. I looked over, and I see Tom Janus dragging his right leg like he can't walk. He's got serious seer training.

1:07:16He all knows one thing. That first 30 seconds, 60 seconds, whatever, if there's ever a time to pop smoke, you're going to escape. He had a plan. I knew it would end up getting a kill, but there was nothing wrong with his leg. My theory is this. Tommy was dragging his leg, trying to give distance between a group of gorillas and just the two gorillas that were with him, trying to buy himself time. That's what he was doing. Tommy was just, he was at a different level. And so we never heard the gunshots. But what we would later discover, Tommy popped smoke. They shot him in the base of the head and the shoulder.

1:07:57Crews turned around. They shot him in the chest and threw the hands and into the chest and killed them both. And we wouldn't find that out for months. So they take us down a hill to another side. Hold on. Let's rewind. Okay. You speak Spanish? Si, mucho. So what were they saying when they— Here's the problem. I didn't speak Spanish then. I learned it in captivity. Shit.

1:08:25So, but I'll never, I watched Tommy. Tommy, once they separate them, Tommy's already planning, hey, I'm out. They take us down a hill to like a shack and there's a couple lemon trees and they strip us to search us and they make us flipping lemonade. A big bowl of lemonade for us, for everybody to drink. and we're sitting there in underwear on the side of a hill, right? And I look up the hill, and there's a girl who was leading the group who would later be killed. I've never seen a woman as physically capable as this woman leading a guerrilla group. If there was ever going to be a woman that, and people may not want to hear this, but if she legitimately wants to pass the ranger course, this one will do it.

1:09:14There'll be no pushback on her. She was a physical freak and had been leading guerrilla columns for years in her early 30s and a killer. She was a fucking killer. We'd find out about it later.

1:09:31But we get dressed. We're finishing up in lemonade. And all of a sudden, you can hear, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Here come the Hueys. They're coming to the grass site. And so she took an RPG and shot it through the bottom of the fuselage after they got all the stuff off of it. When the Hueys got there, there was two, but one was like in trail. One got there, starts circling us, right? But they can't shoot the gorilla because the gorilla grabbed up around us. as they circle around the head of bushes they light up i guess i don't know if anybody died or not but they shot at another group of gorilla so they pushed us on the ground then the gunfight starts between the other gorillas and them and in the middle of that i grab a tree to hold on mark and i on the side we don't want to fall further down just slide it wasn't like a cliff we're gonna hurt and this gorilla looks at me he sees my watch in the middle of that shit he steals my watch.

1:10:31I mean, right, so I've never talked to them, but I'm assuming the lead bird realized we're in the middle of that, so they just had to stop shooting, so they just start circling us. And I don't know how we got separated, but we were coming out onto a little coffee bean field on the side, and on the top of the field was a little tin hut that the Camposinos lived in. And I look up and I see Mark and Tom making it to the hut. And they're telling me, go, go, go. So I'm pushing up the hill and there's a giant, I don't know how big the tree was, but there's a tree stump that must have been about four foot tall, but probably three or four foot around.

1:11:13And all of a sudden, the bird gets back on top of us. Well, the gorilla is like 60 yards behind me and 40 yards ahead of me. There's all these guns pointing on me, and I get down next to the tree trunk because I'm thinking they're just going to shoot me before they let the helicopter hoist me out. And I remember the gunner looking at me, and we're—I mean, he's blowing shit all over me, right? We're this close. He just goes, sorry, man. That fucking sucked. Damn. And then that just started a nightmare, a three-week march into the Amazon basin. Real quick, before we go farther in, what were you guys collecting on these targets?

1:11:58Here's what really sucked on that target. God, that's getting worse. We were collecting on coca fields and illicit runways and labs. So each of the bosses had their own area, but the worst boss, Mano Hojoy, who was their military leader, we were collecting on his shit. and they captured that. So, not good. Yeah. And I remember one last pass by the bird and I think Tom and Mark and I were all together. I believe we were. We're on our backs and this gorilla got his arm around each of us. We're interlocked and we're in a little coffee bean field. The plants are small. The helicopter comes back and hovers over us.

1:12:47What can they do? Right? Then we made it into the canopy, and it was just a three-week death march. But I'll never forget the girl I said was a badass. Her name was Sonia. And I've just never seen a woman in the field this physically impressive. I mean, I've seen about 90 % of guys I know could not keep up with her. We would find out who she was later. But I think she was the only female column leader, had 75 to 100 people. and the sun is going down and we're all just hunched up together. And you can hear aircraft everywhere, right? They're looking for us. And she goes, your fucking microswitch, your microswitch.

1:13:33We're all laying there on the ground. She said, what? She goes, you have a microswitch? Like, what? She goes, if you have a microswitch, I will kill you. So she thought this was how, like, dinosaurs they were, right? Primitive. But they're scared of American technology. She thought that we had microswitches in our bodies, maybe, you know, injected somewhere, that could hear our conversations and locate us. No shit. And I'll never forget, I grabbed her hand. She had a Casio, like, G-Shock watch on. And I said, that's where your micro switch is at. But they didn't even know what a micro switch was.

1:14:16But our ass was on the line for it. That's quick thinking. And Tom, who spoke fluent Spanish, explained to her, no, we don't have it. But that's not a good thing at that time, right? You just came up with that on the fly. I didn't know what to say. I just said, no, you got a micro switch right there. What'd she do? Just kind of calmed down. And then I watched, and I didn't want to say anything, but we had our vests with our EPIRB and radio and all this stuff, right? One of those guys is carrying our vests, and I'm thinking, fuck, is the EPIRB on? Is it on? I didn't say nothing. Mark and I, if I remember, I'm like, what, what, what?

1:15:03And then a few minutes later, I see him taking it apart and taking the batteries out of it. So I don't know if it was ever on or not. They had, I think, did we have a set of MBGs? I don't remember. And then it just was a death march. You know, it was just a death march. What do you mean by a death march? So I'll just say this. Take a 14-year-old kid, put a rucksack on his back. He's from the mountains anyway. He's not from the flatland. And just put beans and rice and bullets on his back, and all he does for five or six years is just walk the mountains every day. Right? You're not keeping up with them.

1:15:39I'm sorry. I mean, you're just strong, right? So it was almost three weeks where they took us to where some members of the secretariat were to turn us over to them, where one fresh group would walk us for eight, nine, ten hours. Then they'd just turn us over to another group, right? And we'd just keep daisy-chaining like that. And we got separated in the march at times. But I remember it was a point where if we ever physically stopped, I'd just fall down on the ground asleep. I've never known exhaustion like that before. And my particular difficulty was I had a pair of Danner mountain boots on, and they were worried about tracks.

1:16:26In Ecuador, they make these cheap-ass black rubber boots that even the Colombian Army uses. They'll put their combat boots over their neck, but in the wet stuff in the jungle, you put that rubber boot on, it's worth$10, and it's the perfect. That's what everybody wears, right? And it works in the mountains. So they couldn't get me a pair of rubber boots that were big enough because they're all small people. I wear a size 12. So they took a pair of rubber boots, and they cut the front of the rubber boots off and made me wear those. And I lost eight of my 10 toenails in that three weeks marching like that.

1:17:00Three weeks. Yeah, we never stopped. We stopped to eat or something or whatever, but there was, yeah, just never stopped. Yeah. And so I always thought, and Tom did too, were like, are they just going to take us somewhere or try to interrogate us and kill us or something? We didn't know. We didn't know really how primitive they were, you know? And so I was super weak on the march, and I kept getting weaker every day. I didn't know I had internal injuries. And my ribs were separated from the front here. And on my two lower ribs, you could take and just stick your fingers through the ribs into my stuff.

1:17:40Mark was really strong on the march. Tom was much stronger than me. I was just going downhill like every hour. I couldn't figure out what was going on. But I knew I had to have something internally screwed up with me. And at one point, like two weeks into the march, I just laid down. I told Sonny, you can shoot me. I can't move. She goes, what do you mean? I said, I can't move. I can't do anything. You shoot me. I can't do shit. I couldn't. I didn't want to stop. There was nothing. I wanted to survive. I physically was incapable of doing it. I was broken. Those guys built a stretcher for me, put eight guys on it, and they carried me through the damn mountains for almost two days.

1:18:20And I wouldn't know what kind of injuries I had until I got back, was rescued, and we got, were taken care of. But yeah, I had some pretty severe intestinal injuries in my ribs. And then for comedy, if you want to hear a light note, right?

1:18:38We're all waiting for Tommy J and Sergeant Cruz to show up, right? We didn't know that they had been executed. And so they stop at this one spot and the three of us lay down. And the way they make a bed is they cut these palm trees just like a piece of wood, a stump. They stack it up about two feet high, then they fill it with dirt and put palm fronds under it. Then they'll put like a little, just a tarp over it, and that's what they sleep and live in. So we got to an old camp that had been young, but they put Mark and I and Tom in there, and they just lay us down in there. So they get me and take me down to the stream, and they take my clothes off.

1:19:22I mean, they left my underwear on, they take my clothes off. And there's like, you know, a dozen gorillas just looking at us like, oh, these are the gringos, right? Because we're like aliens. And these two young gorilla girls take their clothes off and just have their bra and panties on. And they start giving me a hand bath in this fucking stream. I'm like, is this like, it was nothing physical, but they're just cleaning me up. We didn't know that we're just like pets to take care of and keep alive until they can trade us, right? But I can hardly walk. And so I'm thinking, fuck, I bet they're going to take pictures of this, of them bathing me in the stream.

1:20:00So it's just my mind, something like that. So I go back up the hill. I'm just like, what the hell? This is surreal, right? We're two weeks into March. We don't know. This is La La Land. And Tom's grumpy. And I said, Tom? I said, what? I said, you're an old man. I said, go down the stream. He goes, what? I said, a couple of girls down there. they're just in their panties and their underwear, they're about 18, they're going to give you a hand bath. Shut up, motherfucker. Like, you know, it's like, he didn't know, right? So Mark got a bath and came back up. And Tom, the next day. Did he ask you how he looked before the bath?

1:20:34Oh, God. So the next day, Tom's like, really? I said, yeah, motherfucker.

1:20:41But I think especially with Americans, with our sense of humor and the worst moments, sometimes you just make a joke, right? Yeah. But, yeah, the death march was unbelievable. And, you know, we were going to be turned over to a group that was going to take care of us. Well, I call it taking care of us, right? Just keep us alive for the next few years. But that was physically the hardest thing that I ever put myself through ever. and it was, I remember one night we're in a river, it's just, I mean, just freezing, right? And, you know, we're up in the mountains and they finally found a pair of sweatpants, put on me a T-shirt and these boots.

1:21:31They put Mark and I on a rock in the middle of the river and it's freezing and Mark and I are huddled together like this, just trying to stay warm all night, you know, and survive. But it was shocking to me how freely they could move through the jungle without any, you know, they knew where the military was and where it wasn't, you know, and I was thinking, shit, these guys can go where they want to go to. And I'm not talking to eight or 10 of us, I'm talking 75 or 80.

1:22:07and it just, it was eye-opening to see how much freedom, or not freedom, I guess how much of control they were of where they were at. You know, and there's no fine in them. And the thing that was kind of disheartening, I can't speak for Tom or Mark, but I think the same, after a few days, the aircraft were going away. We knew we were getting deeper and deeper and we weren't being found. So we didn't know. I mean, were they just going to take us? We thought they were going to take us somewhere and interrogate us, right, and then just get rid of us. We weren't sure what was going on. We didn't really understand that there were a group of other Colombians that had been ahead of us.

1:22:52At that point, they already had been in five years and would be in five and a half more. Damn. You know? What was it like going through the jungle? Were you guys on a— Fuck, I'd bulldoze any square inch of jungle if I could. The jungle bites. It's not a friendly place. Every tree has a thorn. I mean, it's a difficult environment. And it's tough because it's like this where we were. We were in the mountains. We weren't down low. It's hot. It's sticky. You know, it's a miserable place. and I'm sure, you know, my wife and I just came back from a trip in Costa Rica and we rode ATVs up into some nice jungle for like a little lunch and all.

1:23:42And she's, how do you feel? I said, I'm okay now. That would have wigged me out a few years ago. But yeah, the jungle's tough, man. And that was really, our opinion was people said, well, why didn't you escape here? Why didn't you escape there? when we got deep into the basin, the jungle was the real jail. You know, I mean, it wasn't, what do you do when you're hundreds of miles from nowhere in a basin in the jungle? You have no, no anything. You don't know where you're at. You don't have a compass GPS. You don't have squat. Where are you going? Even if you get away, where are you going? So Mark and I came up with an idea that we would never just, at some inopportune moment, if we got a moment to escape, escape.

1:24:31We would only try something if we knew our chances were good or we were near something or we weren't just going to blow out.

1:24:41And I think it proved to be the right choice. But it's a harsh environment. Well, especially, I mean, even with those guys that are growing up and humping around those mountains in the jungle, I mean, they're going to get you. I think if we could have got enough separation, we could, because it's so vast, that we could have got away from them. But then what are we going to eat? Right? I mean, there was stuff there we could eat, but after a while it'd make you sick. Which direction are you going to go? You know, I'd read stories and there were a couple of stories of a couple of Colombian prisoners that had escaped and spent weeks and then finally came back because I couldn't find a way out.

1:25:28You know, and it's not like, you know, I used to teach land nav and NCODP and all that bullshit, right? Well, there's no reference. If it's overclassed and cloudy, it's not like I can look across and find another mountain to hold a reference point and I could motor to that and then get on top of it and do another one. You can't see where you go. You're going to walk. And so it was, we knew we were up Schitt's Creek, that's for sure. Before this, had you ever thought about what you would do if something like this happened? in a casual manner. I never believed in the mountainous terrain that we'd survive a crash.

1:26:17And our program was in the midst of transitioning to twin-engine aircraft just to make it safer. But what we were victims of at Southcom Reconnaissance Systems was our own success. We take this simple bird, and then we take two simple birds, caravans, and we're down there 24-7. So competing Intel platforms that come down for 45 days, then go, come back a few months later, that was our backyard. And let's say some other platforms that we collected with, they piped their data back to the States. get everything redacted, then send it back for us to analyze and to use. Well, we were only final secret.

1:27:10What we collected was you could disseminate it. So when we came back that afternoon, I had a target deck that was processed and ready to be used. It wasn't compartmentalized. It wasn't USIs only, whatever. And so we were a very simple, basic platform that collected real-time intelligence. So our mission creep became mission creep. Damn. And we were also too aggressive. We pushed it. We wanted to be that platform, and we were lobbying, and they were on the way for Twin Engine for King Airs to get there, but we pushed it too.

1:27:52We had an issue that was a mechanical issue, and I was supervising an engine breakdown in the States at a little site we had, and it was not good. So I called Tommy on the phone. Tommy and I had brought the aircraft back, right? And Tommy had just faced an engine failure where he came back and we had a canoe. I said, Tommy, what do we do? You're the chief pilot. He goes, man, what's sitting in the hangar next to you? I said, the replacement bird, and it's got two motors. He goes, let's keep it going. And what I wanted to do was shut down the bird that was downrange and do an inspection on the aircraft, which doesn't look good.

1:28:33You know, on the contrary, you're supposed to produce for your customer, right? And everybody wanted to keep the program going. And hindsight's 20-20, right? But we should have never been doing what we were doing. You know, should have never been doing. But you got a bunch of guys that are like doing a mission and I would have paid to do that job. Right? I mean, one day we go to Cali and I get a little target that's totally different. And there's a warehouse in a warehouse district, but it's not a warehouse, it's a house. And so a really nice house hidden in a warehouse district. So our bird doesn't draw any attention.

1:29:24It's a hide-and-plain site. And so we have this mission plan, and actually Tommy Janis flew it with me, and we circle. Then we get some really good measurements on this house. And the whole point of getting the measurements on the house was, was there room for a Blackhawk to set down on top of this? That was the whole purpose, right? Not an American in Columbia. So a week later, I'm in the embassy lunchroom, and my boss, Steve, walks up, and he throws their version, Samana Magazine, of time. He said, good job. And there's our target deck, right? there's the house and there's, they're disembarking on top of that motherfucker.

1:30:09But then you want it sucked on the bottom of the damn picture is all of our coordinates, all of our info. It's not supposed to be let out public because when it went through the Colombian pipeline, someone in the Colombian Intel side sold it to the magazine,

1:30:28you know, so stupid things you saw.

1:30:35And one of the most heartbreaking things I ever saw was our drug enforcement folks and FBI had informants inside the Columbia Intel that would put themselves at risk. So again, outside of Cali, there was this neighborhood in the hills, and it was not nice. You know, it was kind of, it was what you expect of maybe an impoverished area of Latin America. But there was like a meeting group where what they called the urbanos, which were the urban guerrilla, they'd get together and play soccer and stuff. So we had a friend of mine that was, I won't say which agency worked for, but he was handling this intel person.

1:31:24And we had to go out and find their missing person. Well, it ended up being two of them. And what had happened is they had given him a pickup truck and some intel. And he and his buddy had gone to a party where this stuff was going on. Man, it fucking sucks remembering this shit. While he's at the party, some people go out to the truck, start searching the truck. And he left his fucking ID in the truck.

1:32:03So the house was on a hill. So they shot both of them in the head. And it looked to me like the truck was halfway on fire, but it didn't burn. They flipped the truck at the beginning of the neighborhood on a hill upside down, and they hung them off the tire, if I remember. I'm trying to remember. I mean, this is 13, 14 years ago. And so we get there, and the first thing we pick up is 30 yards of blood just going down the hill and pulling up. at the bottom of the road there in the neighborhood. And you're like, and his handler, he was just sucked, right? And we didn't get that story. Once they did the investigation, they didn't find out, but we're just looking at this guy.

1:32:51So, I mean, there's a real price in the drug war. So this is not, you know, it may not be, hey, I'm a soft guy kicking doors and everything's thrown down, but there was a continuous price. And we might go on the North Coast and do operations or go to other places, but people got killed, you know. And it was the Columbians paying price on the ground there, you know. So, but to see that guy, I just remember the blood just, I mean, it was like 20 yards maybe down this hill. And then it was pooled up, you know, and it was just, wow, you know. And so it makes an impact, right? And, you know, I think the thing I would take away from captivity is you see, and in your formal job you saw it too, what people are really capable of.

1:33:49And it's really disgusting. You know, so when you see stuff like that, that just motivates you to work even harder. You know. But, you know, people pay a dear price on the front line of the drug war. And what bothers me personally, but it's, you know, I don't know who are the large groups in the U.S., right? We know who controls it down south. And people would always say, you know, X amount of cocaine gets to the states. X amount of cocaine goes here and goes there. And I'm like, yeah? Well, if we can't fucking stop it, how can we count it?

1:34:36That's a good point. If we can't stop it, how do we count it? And I've always wondered who's on the other side, who are the big distributors, especially in the Coke side of the world. But then, this was a couple years after our captivity, if my memory serves me correct, up on the north coast of colombia they they took down one of the largest distribution networks of cocaine in history there none of that shit went to the states and went to fucking europe then it got all then back from europe into the states but i was i would always see these experts this is where it's going on i'm like well wait a minute we're trying to stop it we can't stop it how can you count it were you pulling these numbers out of your ass to justify program needs or money, I get it.

1:35:27But how do you stop it? Semi-submersibles, right? When they first kind of came out, everybody goes, oh, there's one or two. It's a knockoff. No, there's fucking hundreds of them, right? Or we catch some bad guys from the sandbox that come in through Venezuela, and they're tagged with the Mexican cartels. Well, why do they want to get into Texas? They don't want to get into Texas to sell drugs. They want to get into Texas to hurt people, right? You know, chemical weapons, stuff like that. That's my theory. They don't give a shit. They're not going to go into El Paso and start a war. But why are they embedded with the cartels?

1:36:11Why? I mean, it's pretty open knowledge. you look at Iran and its proxies, what they do over there on their doorstep. Well, look at their relationship with Venezuela. Really? You know? And I saw, I can't remember when it was, but I remember the women from Black Lives Matter. either they went to Venezuela to meet with Maduro and Sean Penn and all those guys, you know, they're talking about, look at this, you know, Maduro, Maduro, Maduro, you know, and then it's uncovered that they have a plan to distribute cheap drugs into minority neighborhoods in the states to destabilize local political infrastructure.

1:37:03But you're down there kissing ass to this person because you want five minutes of fame that's destroying your own community. It's part of their, you know, they fight the long game. We don't. Yeah. I see it time and time again with all these terrorist organizations and the alliances that go on behind the scenes. What has come through? Look, I was raised a Southern conservative Democrat. They don't exist anymore. My parents were Dixiecrats. They were conservative educators Democrats. I'm a Republican. I don't see why we should be fighting over right or wrong or if you shoot somebody and kill them, should you pay for it?

1:37:48This whole discussion and fight politically in our country right now about crime. But I can tell you now that border is where it starts. But nobody goes down to where I worked to see what's at the other end. Or when you're buying cocaine in the states, do you see the death and destruction that it causes in other countries? And I'm not talking about guerrilla versus government forces. I'm talking about death and destruction on kids, on small, poor people, and what it does to them. When they say drug war, it's a war. It's a very serious thing. And there's very serious consequences paid for. But then go down and see where the stuff starts at.

1:38:32just my observation doing the job, not trying to poke somebody in the eye and say, you should believe this way, you should believe this way. You know, if our border's open, let me ask you a question. Do you have a front door in your house? I mean, when your little kids are at home, do you lock your door at night? I mean, that whole thing for me is personal because I know what goes on the other side of that border. You know? And I don't know. And I'm not rooting for anybody to win political favor over border control. I'm just saying we need it. Yeah. I think a lot of people share that sentiment.

1:39:12Yeah. Let's go back to the camp. Okay. What was it like after the three-week death march? They put us, we were fairly stable for the first year and a half. They put Mark and Tom and I into what was an old camp. What did it look like? Oh, man. So this old camp was just rotten.

1:39:39So think of like a little pole barn with aluminum roof. Instead of walls, this is where we stayed. This was chain link fence everywhere. Okay. And it's probably 12 foot by 20 foot. But what we did not understand, and there's two big poles going down at about four foot tall. That's where you tie your hammock. We didn't realize until we got locked up inside this cage that there had been 20 Colombian police and Army hostages in there years before us. We saw the writing on the wall. We saw stuff that they scribbled. And behind one door, and I think this is what caused Mark, his inspiration to carve the chess pieces, was a chess piece stuck in the door.

1:40:28So they take us to this camp. We meet Mano Hohoi, who was basically their bin Laden, right? One of the most wanted people in the world. He was the military leader of the FARC, an absolute assassin. and he's all polite to us, and they fix us empanadas, and they said, hey, we're going to open a camp just for you. And they point to Martine Sombra. You can look up Martine Sombra. He just died of natural causes here a few weeks ago in Columbia. He would be a cartoon character, terrifying, right? Nails about this long, whatever. So they load us in these pickups, toy land cruisers, and take us to this old camp.

1:41:10so middle of the day we're just driving in a dirt road i mean there's no threat i'm like damn these guys just moved we got a giant camp with a couple hundred gorillas and cars and trucks there are trucks everywhere so we get there somber sitting on a beach chair and he goes we have opened all of this for you we're going we're here to take care of you i'm like okay and i said well who's in charge. Summer goes, we're all equal here. Oh, bullshit, man. We just, right. But we're destroyed. We just want to get some food and get some rest. So the first couple of nights, they stick us in this big box.

1:41:51They build a bed off the ground, which when I say a bed was just palms cut, like poles, like fence posts, put some palm trees on it, put a tarp over it, and a mosquito net, and you lay in there 24-7. So they took Mark and Tom out there and left me inside the big box until mine was just going to get finished last, right? We were not allowed to speak to each other. And we actually, it was months before we could, we actually lost our voices because we couldn't talk. And so they throw in a couple of magazines that were printed by the FARC, you know, when they were strong, and they're talking about the Conhay, the exchange, humanitarian exchange, humanitarian exchange.

1:42:31So the FARC's big hope was, oh, we've never touched Americans before. Now the government's going to negotiate, right? Which was, I don't think that, you know, Rumsfeld and Bush are negotiating. That's one of the guys you want to talk to, right? And then the most right-wing president in years with a rebate, they were like, fuck that. So we're trying to educate ourselves on what's going on, but we're just, we're, I mean, it's like walking out to the street. to the grocery store, somebody hits you in the head and you wake up and you're bound and you got, and you're blindfolded and they stake out in the sticks and the world's cut off and you're trying to figure out what's going on.

1:43:11So they come and they give us journals. This is a month into it, right? Because we're just sitting there. I mean, we're counting bugs. We're just, I mean, we're, you come from a world that we live in and you're in that, in that box and your mind is just speeding up. So I get sick and I'm shitting all over myself. I can't stop it. And I didn't know if I had malaria or not or what I had. So Tom and Marker moved out and they put me back inside this box, just chain link around a wall, put me on a black piece of plastic and put a mosquito net over me. But they stopped taking me to the bathroom every hour or so because they were tired of doing it and you use the bathroom what's called a chunto they just dig a hole in the ground it's lengthwise and you squat over it and kick the dirt in it and keep going well i'm covered like from my belly button to my knees i i'm covered in my own feces and i mean it's not insanity but you start when i say you start just figuring out to do well i look over i'm laying there i look over and i see like half a dozen roaches just coming to me because they can smell me, right?

1:44:24So I just start killing cockroaches and stacking them up and counting them. I just wait for them to get there. It's all right, motherfucker. Here you go. And stack a cockroach. That's what I did probably for a week. And they finally came in and hung me upside down. They tied ropes around my stomach and forced me to drink this shit and hung my feet up on the wall and would hang me up there for hours thinking that was going to cure my stomach. It's insanity. I mean, I don't know what else to say. It's just pure insanity. What was it? What were you drinking? I don't know. Some concoction they came up with.

1:45:05And finally, after, I don't know, four or five days, I started feeling better. But I'm laying there covering them on feces, just counting roaches, trying to keep my mind busy. And I'm thinking, what do you do? Like, what did a POW do somewhere in Vietnam or somewhere else where he's just in a seven-by-seven on a concrete floor? You just start daydreaming. You want to keep this turned on, right, and just start to try and check out. I don't know how many businesses Mark and I came up with to run. And we got back to the States. You know, you're just, your mind goes into this mode to where it's kind of taking you out.

1:45:49And we would just spend days in there daydreaming. And for some reason, and I don't know why, I had the ability to just sleep like a cat for hours. So I'd just sleep. You know, wake up for when they fed us, and then that'd be it. And food then was lentils and rice, maybe some fried yucca, Kool-Aid. They loved Kool-Aid. You know, they use sugar water to power themselves when they're marching right, so there was always sugar, you know, and Kool-Aid. But, yeah, luckily my stomach got better and I was able to eat. And then they moved us about five. We heard chainsaws going, right? They were building a more permanent camp.

1:46:30So they moved us probably maybe a click away to three little buildings inside of like a horse corral, if it makes sense. And we were locked in there at night. And we could sit. Obviously, we were undercover with guards, with guns. But then we could sit outside of those. They had an old plastic chair or something during the day. And it was just we started to kind of get to know the guards, who was nasty, who wasn't so nasty. Because we were like something out of a movie to them. And these are young guys, you know, men and women, but only the men guarding us. So we were like, this is, it was like being in a zoo, but on the other side, you know?

1:47:18Damn. And, um, I remember some would creep up at night and, uh, they would bring us cigarettes, right? The boss would bring us cigarettes like we wanted to smoke. So the guards would come cause they wanted cigarettes, you know, at like midnight or whatever. and they might bring us a couple of pieces of yucca and we'd trade them cigarettes. You know, it was just crazy. And in that camp is where we got bombed.

1:47:51There must have been, and I'm only guessing because of the trails and the activity, but about, I don't know, I'm going to guess 500 yards away, must have been an old camp. because one night there were Kefirs, jets, then the OV-10s, and they came in and bombed the shit out of the camp. And that was pretty scary because you'd hear the shrapnel from the bombs just ripping through the leaves and the trees. And Mark is locked in a box. Tom's locked in a box. I'm locked in a box. They weren't letting us out, and they're bombing the shit out of the camp right next to us. Well, it wasn't like the U.S.

1:48:30was precision-guided. Weapons shake and go astray. That was pretty terrifying. Scared the shit out of me. I'll bet. You know? And what started scaring me worse was how open these guys were to detection. But I was surprised that nobody was detecting our camp. So they had a cistern. Anywhere in Latin America you see black tanks, 250, 500 gallons. and people put them up on the roof or something, and they fill them with water, and that's how you work. So for us, inside this little corral, they built this platform, and the platform had a black cistern filled with water. They'd pump water, have a little generator pump water out of the river to it.

1:49:12Had a toilet up there on top of it. You're like 15 foot off the ground or maybe 10 foot in a toilet, so you do your business sitting on a toilet. Hey, Tom Emmerich, what are you doing here? They're sitting there, but I'm like, I saw those from my aircraft all the time. I could tell you how much water is in it. It's just a heat signature, right? So if it's half full, you could tell, right? And it was out in the middle of nowhere, open, and a couple aircraft would be circling our camp. And I'm like, there's no way they can't see this. So what I was scared was they're going to see it and come back and bomb us.

1:49:50They didn't know we're there or not, but they never did. They never did. And then after that, we were moved to a larger camp where we put in with the politicians and the Colombian military. And they were separated. It was a big fenced-in area where there was like 20 of them inside like a little cabin that was built. And then, you know, the seven Colombian politicians and the three of us on the other side. And as big as it was, it was never found. I just, I mean, I'm just dumbfounded. Because I knew in our aircraft, if we got even anywhere in the vicinity of that, we'd have seen it. So I just didn't, what's going on?

1:50:32You know, I mean, something we skipped over is your wife is back home in the States pregnant with twins, correct? She wasn't my wife. She wasn't my wife. to be just open honest here. She was a Colombian flight attendant that I met and she ended up pregnant. And so, yeah, we weren't even married. And my moral compass didn't look so good because I had a girlfriend in the States too. You know, that wasn't, you know, I was wrong what I was doing, but nonetheless, that's the truth. And so, I'm thinking, oh, that's on my mind, right? What am I going to do? You know, what am I going to do?

1:51:26And it was a lot, a lot. And all you can do is think, right? All you can do is think. And I remember one day, I was worried about the three of us because I saw Mark and Tom in this little corral, and they had their plastic chair that we could sit on. We each got a plastic chair, and they got toothbrushes, and they're just cleaning their chair because, again, there's nothing. It's like, where are we going here, you know? Shit. And what I understand now, it's almost like decompression in the sense you're having to get used to and cope with your new environment, and that's a learning process, right?

1:52:08And I think as Americans, we are used to being in control of our environment and making decisions. There's absolutely no control. You're a rat in a cage. And you have to make an adjustment. Some people call it prisoner brain. That might be an accurate statement. But there are big changes. Thank God at the time that somebody didn't say, hey, you got 1 ,950 more days. I wouldn't have want to know that. So I would say. Did you have any idea of the concept of time? Yeah. Yeah, we had a rough idea of time. Guards had watches. They'd tell you what time it is, whatever. You know, but dates, weeks, months, no.

1:53:02We had a rough idea, but the concept we live on a day-to-day basis here, where you live here, whatever, no, no. And the thing for us is we had no information. We would not get to where somebody had a radio and some news for nine more months. Holy shit. So we had no idea what the status of our families was. You know, it would be, let me see, a year into it, a year and a half, until we did our first proof of life. Then we found out Tommy was dead, Sergeant Cruz was dead. You know, we had news about our families. How'd they do the proof of life? They took us into a village, and there must have been a couple hundred FARC, a little town.

1:53:57We drove in a truck. They had us in the back of a truck. But they took us by river through the jungle, and I'll never forget the bridge. And I thought, if I ever get out and I'm back airborne again, this is my—we find this fucking bridge, I'm going to find this motherfucker. It was over the river. I'd recognize it today. and um there enrique botero who's a liberal left-wing reporter had been in the states trying to contact our families but then he brings us newspapers miami herald and all from the airport in miami when he flew back because he knew he's going to film a proof of life with us didn't give what a piece of shit left-leaning reporter and so i remember they bring us to this like just a jungle kind of cabin, couple cabins.

1:54:46And we see these important people or people who we knew. And Botero comes in and talks to us for the proof of life. But the night before, Sombra comes in and goes, hey, if you hear an airplane tonight, don't worry about it. It's all good. So he flies in on a Cessna and lands on a strip, bringing gifts for us out of the airport in Miami and shit. What? Yeah, yeah. He's a reporter that works with the FARC. They let him come into the jungle and film us for political purposes. Yeah, he could have dined them out and, yeah, yeah. How about that? How about that? Are you fucking kidding me? Nope. You know, and we get there and they make us mashed potatoes and steak and, you know, but still in the jungle, right?

1:55:33And they're giving us what we want and we saw ice for the first time in almost a year. Here's ice water. I'm like, what the fuck's going on? It was just a setup to do the proof of life. And what do you say? What do I know about my family? What's going on? Who's alive? Who's dead? You know? And it was just for propaganda purposes. But sick to me that a reporter has this much info and doesn't. Have you ever met him? Yeah, yeah. How did that go? I'd kill him. If I could. I mean, it's, yeah. I mean, let him sense then. No, not after that. Not after the interview, no. No, no. He actually wanted to after we got out.

1:56:13I was like, no, I'm sorry. What would you say to him right now? I'd fucking kill him. What's his name? Botero. I think it's Jorge Enrique Botero, yeah. And he thinks he's doing some kind of job, but he's a lefty, out communist sympathizer. Tanya Niemeyer, she's a Dutch girl, and I believe she's got a red notice on her travel. I just talked to my FBI supervisor. Basically, they watch us a few months ago. And Tanya, she's Dutch, and she taught English. So she came to Bogota and became an urban guerrilla. Are you shitting me? Nope, nope, nope. And joined the fucking guerrilla. And yeah, yeah, Tanya Niemeyer.

1:57:05And so I don't know if she's been able to get out of Columbia or not because the FBI, we've got a red notice on her. She can't not travel because she wants to go home, you know, I guess back to the Netherlands, but she's living in Columbia. Yeah, I'd hang her from a tree. And I remember when we met her at the Proof of Life and here comes this woman all dressed clean in like new camo and got her sidearm on like she's a model or something. And her English was very, very good, perfect. And so I said, what color is your passport? She was like, that's funny, isn't it? I said, what color is your passport?

1:57:42I know you're not Colombian. What I thought she was, was the Cubans train students, right? And then they bring them in. So I thought she might have been one of the student communists out of Cuba that was brought in there, which turned out not to be true. So she just got recruited in Colombia, was a left-wing sympathizer, and joined the guerrilla. She's teaching people English in Colombia. Nothing, you know, just out there going to, you know, shit. So she was there to interview us in English. She conducted the interview. And Mano Ho Hoi, and there's a great video of him getting bombed and killed.

1:58:21He reads a pronouncement to the United States of America. And the reason that they're keeping us hostage is we violated Colombian airspace. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook.

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2:00:55Aura gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. What kind of questions did they ask you? Nothing. They set us up. And they told us, Mark, they told us that Tom and they got us in a room, and there's other gorillas behind us, right? And they purposely put a couple small female gorillas armed behind us to make us look big and them, you know, like to make them like weak Americans. And they put camo on us, which I didn't want to wear, but didn't everything else to wear.

2:01:32And they start filming, and she does the interview. And Botero said, oh, Mark, here's a message from your mom. You don't think Mark didn't break down? And then, oh, here's a Miami Herald. What was the message from his mom? Just news, right? And I didn't have anything from my family or Tom's. And so they wanted us to give a message back to our families on camera. They're just using our pain. So we just said, basic stuff, we love you. We didn't do anything more than that. That when Otero handed the fucking Miami Herald to us, I want to kill his ass. You know, he knows he's coming to see us. You're in a stage trying to get info from our families, so you're facilitating our captivity by helping our captors.

2:02:27What would you do? You know, so, and I've always had a special kind of distaste for Niemeyer because she came to a country of her own free will, educated, and decided to become a terrorist, right? And when the peace talks were going out in Cuba, she was there and all this stuff. But she's had a falling out with the FARC ever since. and I don't know what she's doing, but last time I saw a couple years ago, one of the liberal universities in Columbia gave her a fucking honorary degree.

2:03:08Wow. That's fucking enraging. That is fucking enraging. So people say, do you hate him? I'm like, no, because that would get me alive. I had to let it go.

2:03:25But, you know, when I see a guy who's in a supermax now, and you got an American lawyer saying he's a victim, and he's all this stuff, and I'm like, a victim? When he supervises what's been done to us? and then you see all these people get online and they're just, I don't know what they are, protesters. I'm like, there's a reason he's in a supermax. It's not because he's a sweetheart. So for me, if you get too wrapped around the axle, it's just going to drag you to the bottom, right? You got to step back. I've talked to other POWs from Vietnam because I was a hostage. We weren't, I always tell people we're the longest, at one point, we're the longest held hostages in the history of the United States.

2:04:11We're not the longest held POWs, and there's a difference. I don't want to take anything away from the POW community, right? You know? And so I have spoken with some folks who spent time in the Hanoa Hilton and stuff like that, you know? Funny how our minds kind of did the same thing just to survive. it. But, you know, we're just lucky to be here, man. I mean, two of us didn't make it after the crash. And then a few of our friends afterwards died in another crash looking for us in Columbia, close friends. When did you hear about that? I didn't hear about that until I think the proof of life, but I'm not sure.

2:04:59We're in a box. How did they tell you that your comrades had been, that they assassinated your comrades? They just let us know. I think, I don't know if it was Botero or if it was Tanya speaking English to us. Let us know. Oh yeah, it was her. They let us know that they were dead, but then she also told something. She goes, you know, you guys are probably going to die. I'm looking at her like, what do you mean? She goes, well, we had some other folks that were killed during a rescue, and they're planning to rescue you, but you're probably going to die. You're probably not going home. That's what she said?

2:05:39Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What would you do? I mean, like, well, it's beyond insanity, Sean. It's not like, you know, you're sitting here, this shit is actually going down. This isn't a story or a movie. We're here in the middle of it, you know? So that's when I say the cruelty of people can be, you know, unimaginable. Yeah, you guys are going to die. I was like, wow. Wow. And then what did you think when she said that? I remember Tom leaning over me and telling me, he said, Keith, just remember they're filming us right now. I think they're filming us. I said, yeah, okay, that's fine. I thought the odds are that we might die in a rescue if it wasn't done by the right people.

2:06:39But we were so overwhelmed with emotion at that moment. You're over a year in captivity, whatever, and here's information on your family, your buddies are dead. It just all hit us at one time, right? So I was just trying to process everything. Where did you think your buddies were at before that, before you found out? We didn't know. Well, maybe they're in another camp. Maybe they just separate us. We didn't know. We didn't know. Why did they kill them? Because they tried to escape. I knew Tommy's, there was, and Tommy would have never survived captivity. Hell no. He'd have killed them. You couldn't put Tommy in a cage.

2:07:17Sorry. You know, I actually, his wife just recently passed. And I was talking to one of his sons. And, you know, I said Tommy would have never made it. He couldn't have, he could have never been caged, my belief. Why do you say that? Just his personality. there was never a second never a second I know you know and he was my mentor he's the one that got me hired I knew as soon as he walked away from that plane I know Tommy he was just looking at the right moment to pop smoke that was his personality you know I mean and he would have never let me put it this way Tommy could do anything he wanted to do but He would have never let himself choose to be a captive.

2:08:13What was the – sorry for all the questions coming up from previous, but my mind's just spinning. When you threw the M4 and the Berettas down the hill, and I know the Indige guy that was with you was pissed off. What did the rest of them think? Nobody. Nobody was really – it was just Cruz and I. Look, there was – are you going to fight a fight you can't lose? Right? Fight a fight you cannot lose? No, fight a fight that you're not. I'm sorry. That you know you can't win. That you can't win. Are you looking at surviving or just going out? I wasn't looking to commit suicide. I get it. I'm just curious.

2:08:54I wanted to live to fight another day. Yeah. And so that was just, I looked. Cruz is like, we got to start shooting. I looked, and I'm like, no, we don't. I mean, there were ants everywhere. I said, no bad decisions. And I remember we're at the bottom when they gave us lemonade. And they took my wallet. And the only thing I had there I wanted to keep was a picture of my little 10-year-old son. And they wouldn't. It still makes me cry now. I said, can I have the picture? No. It's all right. And Tommy looks at me and he goes, what do you think, Keith? I said, we're fucked. He goes, what? I said, we're fucked.

2:09:36But maybe tomorrow we're not. all we're going to do is fucking live. My mindset was Marx was the same way. Tom, all of us, we just wanted to live. So I didn't care what it took to survive. I just, I wanted to live. I mean, it's not complicated. And you have a choice, step in a hole and just give up or just keep rolling. And all three of us did that. You know, we have very distinct personalities. But, you know, we all did it in our own way, you know. And so I remember the three of us being tied up in a box a quarter of the size of this room that was just a cage, right, you know. Hard to get along that way 24-7, isn't it?

2:10:28You're going to have some arguments, you know. That's just the way things are, but we made it out. What kind of stuff are you guys arguing about? Stupid shit. Like what? Mark and I had an argument one night over which fighter was better in World War II. It's like something stupid, right? You're like this. You're this. No, motherfucker. No, motherfucker. No, fuck you. No, fuck you. Like, it's got to let off somewhere, right?

2:10:59And I remember we finally got a radio because we started negotiating with the guards. And, you know, we had a covert headphone, and we, there was a, it's really sick, but there was a radio station called Voices of the Sequestros, Voices of the Hostages. And it was run out of Bogota. A guy did this. And on sunny nights between 12 and 2, everybody's family would go down there and leave messages, and it was shortwave. So you'd get messages from your family. We didn't get any, not for years, only occasionally. But how sick that every Saturday night or whatever, you go down at 1 o 'clock in the morning and you leave a message for your son or your husband who's been held in your country for six years.

2:11:43We live for those things. Shit. Yeah. That's the political situation, right? What kind of messages were coming in? People dying, birthdays, Christmas, love you. You know, hey, your father died. You know, we had a police captain. He was dying. And the Pope and his daughter got on the radio live, begging the FARC to let him go. He had been captured when she was like seven. And he was a fighting motherfucker, but now he was sick. And I don't know what the condition was, but his legs were purple all the way up to his chest. And when we had real pressure on him, us and we were on a death march, he was marching with us.

2:12:38He couldn't march, so he's crawling through the jungle with a chain around his neck on all fours, trying to keep up with the column. So the Colombian soldiers were going to go fucking nuts. It was too much for them to see. So they took him out of chains. And he's sitting on the ground next to me and Mark. And we had in our little bowls, we had five spoonfuls basically of watery red beans and rice like every 24 hours to sustain it. Then he goes here. You two eat mine. And we're like, no. What the fuck's wrong with you? He goes, I'm dying, man. You guys aren't. I'm dead. I'm already dead. And he fucking died.

2:13:22Soon later we were separated. He was just a skeleton. Couldn't just let him fucking go. He had no political value. We weren't eating his red beans and rice. We forced him to eat it. But he was giving it to us. He knew he was dead. He knew he was dying.

2:13:40And you hear his daughter on the radio, please, can you just let my father go? And the Pope, the Pope himself asked.

2:13:49That's crimes against humanity, you think? So you see this stuff and it's like, mercy on you motherfuckers? You know? When you got to the final camp where they had the politicals. Yeah, what a welcome that was. What was that camp set up like?

2:14:18show it's a big fenced-in area with a fence between it, living on one side for the soldiers and the police and living for the seven politicians. So we get there by boat, and they bring us up. And I remember as we're walking up, we see all the Colombian police coming up, right? And they were playing soccer, a little soccer ball. That's all I did all day long inside a fucking cage. Mark goes, look at the chains. So outside the gate to get into each side was a rack. And these chains are not like something you have a dog on. I mean, these are big, heavy chains. Chains and locks, chains and locks, chains and locks, chains and locks.

2:15:01I was going to bring it to show you, but I don't want to lose it anywhere on an airline flight. But I have my lock that was around my neck. And it's a paperweight on my desk. And so I'll send you a picture of it.

2:15:18But I was like, fuck, James. Mark spotted him first. He goes, those are for us, Dean. I was like, fuck. So they tour us around the little walkway, and all the Colombian soldiers come running up to the gate, right? One guy in particular, his hair was all the way down to his calf. he had not cut his hair since he'd been captured. And he says to us in broken English, I'm glad you're here, but I'm not glad you're here. I said, why? He said, because Americans never leave their people behind. So if you're here, they're going to find us. Kind of poignant, wasn't it? It'd take a few years, but it happened.

2:16:03you know so they did not want to be separated from us i would have been the same way you know i'd have been the same way but uh yeah we were in that camp for gosh nine months or so i might be off five months or two before we were moved and split up because the pressure from the military just got too much what kind of pressure just presence on the ground, cutting off routes on, you know, the rivers were like a road, right? So there's a video on YouTube of these three gorillas in Cayucas, which are their aluminum canoes with a 40-horse motor on the back. And they just turn, they got supplies they're bringing to a camp, and they run into Colombian army sitting on a river.

2:16:48And it was a massacre, man. I mean, they just, it was a massacre. What started to happen was the Colombian military started doing more permanent operations. Usually they go into an area for 45 days or 90 days and they leave. Well, now they're moving into areas and we ain't going over. We're here for six months, right? But it upsets the logistics network for the guerrilla who need beans and bullets and rice. And, you know, you need Kotex pads for women and uniform, like you break up their ability to live comfortably. And they started pushing. Now, I don't know if that was pushed by our people, but Plan Colombia changed a lot because it put the money and the horsepower behind the Colombian army to do things.

2:17:35But I think that we, the three of us, are one of the big factors that everybody got rescued. And it's not because Keith and Mark and Tom were politically important people. The moment you took the three gorillas or you took the three Americans hostage, you opened up the U.S.'s ability to work against the gorilla directly. Because under Plan Colombia, we couldn't, right? I saw a gorilla all the time. I couldn't do anything except report it when I got back. And I told the bosses, I said, you guys fucked up. I said, you gave your president that you hate so much. You gave him the biggest gift in the world.

2:18:13You captured us. Now we can help you guys freely. And that's what we did. that's what we did. It was a total miscalculation on their part. If it would have been me and I was running the FARC, I would have hand-delivered us, freshly shaved and showered with some extra cash in our pocket to go home to Disney World right to the embassy steps and said, sorry, I'm not fucking with you. Intelligence side, militarily, it was the worst mistake they could have made. Because when you start flipping rocks looking for us, you find other things. You know, and that's what happened. How many camps did you wind up in?

2:18:49Shit, I can't count them. Okay, I'll count the main camps. First one, second one, third one, there was another one. Maybe four main camps. A camp after that was just a hammock, a mosquito net, and a tarp over your head. We were just on the move. And how long was it before you guys could talk to each other? Oh, by the time we got to the politicians and all, we were talking then. How long had that been? Seven months, maybe? Seven months? Eight months, yeah. Seven months of no talking. Pretty much. Nothing. I could be off. Mark's memory is way better than mine. He always goes, no. But, yeah, we lost our voices, basically.

2:19:33And, you know, they were frustrating things, too. Like for poor Tom, okay, this is what sucked. Tom spoke fluent Spanish. And we didn't. So Tom was a translator. 24-7, we got to get him to ask for stupid shit for these guys, which put more stress on him, right? You know, it was pretty evil. And when we got to the camp with the politicians, that was even worse. Because they thought the one politician said, please don't let those nasty Americans in here. What, motherfucker? Oh, they sleep with whores. we sleep with whores. You're a calming politician. You haven't slept with a whore? Do you know what goes on?

2:20:18It's good. I was like, but there was just this arrogance, this arrogance that, no, we don't want them in here. They didn't want to share any space. They wanted us out in the mud instead of saying space inside there. Talk about a class system. That's where they treat their own people. Well, they have it. And I remember, I remember old Lucho, is a senator. Senator, right? One day we're sitting there in the compound and there's a table. So Consuelo was a congressman, had to listen to her husband die on the radio. And Big Cat, we nicknamed him Big Cat. He's this big dude and he's heavy, but he moved like smoke.

2:21:01Just a joke. So we just named him the Big Cat. So he's kind of trying to talk to me one day and And he's feeling me out to see, like, you know, do I have any money or what's it like in the States? And he's like, do you have a boat? And I'm like, yeah, I got a boat. He said, can you draw me a picture of it? So I drew a picture of this fucking giant, like, you know, Viking sport fish. And I watched Consuela. She knew I was sucking them down. Just, you know, the hook was going, the hook was going. And they care about platica, money, and what's your last name? And so, uh, big cat goes, holy shit. and he runs into the little hoosh and he shows Lucho what's going on.

2:21:39And Lucho goes, Keith, you know, what? He goes, what does an American contractor make? I said a whole lot more than a Colombian senator. That's what I'm a fucker. You fuck stick, you know. But that's how they judge people, right? And some people did stuff in captivity and said, oh, I was in captivity. It caused me to do those things. Bullshit. You find out who you really are in captivity. It's like peeling that onion layer back. You find out who you are. And I remember they would bring bowls. This camp we actually could sometimes get tomatoes and onions. They'd bring a big bowl of cut tomatoes and onions and maybe some yucca, then a big bowl of rice and a bowl of lentils, which I still love.

2:22:29I love lentils, man. So we'd get into a line. the dirtbag Americans, right? We're not politicians or any stuff. And so if Mark and I are there, we're like, okay, we'll just take what you need, right? We get there, everything's gone. We're all living in a box together, right? And so finally, the gorilla put a stop to that and said, hey, fuck that. And one of us would dish out the food so we could do it fairly. And they take, a couple of the politicians would take vegetables and I'll not even eat them, let them rot. We're starving. Well, I need those. I'm different. I thought we're all human beings here.

2:23:06So it was very disgusting, you know, some of the elitist, what you'd see them do. And I said, no, I know all the kid in that dress, you know. But disappointing, too, in humanity. You thinking something like that, we'd all kind of bond up? No. No shit. No. I never would have thought that. I don't want to sit here and, like, disparage them personally or whatever, because I've said some very nasty shit about one of them in particular. But it's like, hey, what's wrong with you? And that's where one of them was pregnant. That's where I was going next. And how she stayed sane, what she went through, I mean, we got into the, if you want to ask me the question, set it up.

2:23:58But, you know, we got into that camp, and there was a few women there, right? And so Clara was an attorney, and she was working on Ingrid Betancourt's presidential election. And then you had another woman there, Consuela, who was next to us. We called her Big Mama, but just like I said, she talked to Mark and I was very kind. Like, she had to listen to her husband die on the radio, or her daughter's tell her, your dad's dying. and then another woman, one of the senators. So Claire is a little eclectic. She's a little different, right? But she was a decent person. And Mark goes, hey, man, take a look at her.

2:24:38I'm like, what? He goes, look. And she had sweats on. She had that little egg shape. She's a very small, petite woman. Mark goes, I bet she's pregnant. I said, you think so, man? He said, yeah, she's pregnant. Mark saw it first. And so as it became obvious she was pregnant, she got no care, no anything. I think her prenatal care was an extra box of crackers and some fucking canned milk.

2:25:06And I remember, you know, she was taken hostage with Ingrid Bettencourt, right? And just trying to protect reputation, Bettencourt's like, oh, no, no, no, no, there's some other hostages, civilians, and they had a relationship. No, she slept with a gorilla. She was just trying to get free. She thought if I get pregnant, they got to let me go. Fuck no, they don't. And so... So they didn't rape her? No. It was a plan. No, no. It was a plan. That wouldn't have been allowed. Not allowed at all. Not giving the credit, but that wouldn't allow.

2:25:45So they take her out when she's about to deliver, but she's not delivering. And so one night we hear a baby screaming in the fucking camp. Now, of course, the women that are with us are either grandmothers or moms. They're, you know, their radar's up. Like three days later, maybe I could be off, four or five days. And we would hear the baby screaming.

2:26:14They bring the baby back with Clara into the camp, right? And the baby is wrapped up from head to toe, and they give it to us. Well, here's how Clara gave birth. They got a guy who's supposedly the medic that's never had medical training in his life, just self-taught guy of a book. They shoot her a morphine sticker on a fucking table, and they cut her guts open to try to get the baby out. Holy shit. I got to give a woman strength. You got to get whatever, man. And you've got to give, so in trying to get the baby out, Milton, who would later take over for us, never spent a day in a school or anything, broke the baby's arm in half trying to get her out of her stomach.

2:27:03So when they bring the baby back to us, the baby's drugged up and the arms wrapped.

2:27:12Emmanuel is what Clara named him. How Clara stayed sane with that, I give her kudos. And so Clara, eventually we couldn't stop the baby from crying. And Mark goes, I think they're drugging the baby up. Mark was pretty on to it. There's a reason that he was an anti-analyst. He would think, you know, I was pretty good, but he sees me. So they're drugging the baby up. So they took the baby from Clara. So here's Clara laying in a bunk next to me, just hard wood. When I say bunk, it's just wood pallets, right? And the baby's crying at night. She go call his name at the fence. Amen, well, amen, well.

2:27:54And then you see another gorilla girl carrying your baby when we're marching and leaving, and you're sitting there on the ground, and they won't even let you touch the baby. And you fucking stay sane? Give that woman credit. We didn't agree on a lot of things, but give her credit. They cut her. They cut her. They C-section. Cut her open to the C-section on a table in a fucking jungle. And when they sewed her up, it was like this, oh, oh, my God. And she survived. I got to say tough, man. She survived. And here was the worst thing. Or no, the best thing. they went and gave the baby when they separated claire from the baby they gave the baby to some campesinos that were farc sympathizers you know what the campesinos did straight to fucking government and handed the kid over so the kid got care got everything and a little while later on the radio and all the government's talking about hey amen well they don't even know that the kids with the government care you know here's what we did for the kid he's in good shape and the president comes out yeah he's in good shape we've had him we've had him for a fucking year so mud on the face of the leadership right and they released her on just like trying to gain some yeah but they released clara but i don't care you know i thought clara was a little odd and a little different but she's an attorney and uh but to see a woman go through that i got I got a lot of respect for him, yeah.

2:29:26Got a lot of respect for that. You know, and... How long was the baby in there before they gave it away? I think that once they separated the baby with Clara, I think from what I... Maybe months until that couple got out and turned it into the government, which was the right... I mean, they did. They might have got a reward or... I don't know. But Emmanuel, well, I haven't heard in a few years, but after we're freed, he's with his mom. He's healthy. They're living together. he's okay. Right? Got fixed. I mean, so a happy ending. But that's what animals are, and they're animals. You know? So for me, just sitting there watching that, you know, the pain that that person would go through was just unbelievable.

2:30:17More disgusting stuff that people are capable of. But how could you do that to a baby? Right? You know? I mean, so for us, another one of the Patreon folks had a question at the initial setup out there about what is captivity like in the jungle with the FARC. The best way I can say it is Groundhog Day for five and a half years or 10 years, no matter how long you're there. It's all green. You're going to eat rice lentils, lentils, rice. Maybe some fish if they catch them in the river. Hopefully a little fried yucca. Okay? And you're just going to move from spot to spot to spot to spot hiding. That's all you do.

2:30:56And you can never see more than 20 or 30 yards unless you're on the move and you see something. It's Groundhog Day. It's just what is going to come up next. You know, what problem is going to come up next? You know, we were being moved, and my company makes, I retired from, I have to say, Northrop did the right thing for the families. Northrop Grubin. And I can't say enough about what they did for the families while we were gone. What did they do for the families? A good example, my son said to me, he said, Dad, you want to know how to tell what size corporate jet you're on? I said, what's that?

2:31:36He said, the size of the flat screen TV. Making a joke. But they took care of the families. They paid us, which they didn't have to do. The government and Longshoremen's Act could have come in and paid us. They said, no, they're going to get full pay. They have their jobs. They had a family service person that would come and visit with each family regularly, update us politically. I mean, they did all that they could do. And they could have cut us loose. The government was like, well, we'll take this over. And they're like, no, no, no. They're our employees. We're going to do right by then. So I have to give them credit.

2:32:11You know, they did right by us. and I remember, you know, we're on the run one day and this is getting close to the end, to the rescue, maybe a year out, maybe less. And so this guy, we're sitting in there on the side of the damn river and we're just going down a river. We're running there. We know there's pressure on us.

2:32:36And this guy walks up with this tube, you know, and he said, the commandant wants to know what this is. Well, it's a camera system that sits on the ground. You guys have installed places. Well, this one was called Scorpion, and it's made by my company. Proudly so, right? So I was like, fuck, where did you get that? So he's trying to take it off. And I said, don't do that. And he goes, well, I said, because it's pressurized. And he said, well, will you explain this to us? And I said, yeah, can we have some coffee? Small trade. But this is one of our little ground sensors, right? I mean, you can just Google it.

2:33:12It's nothing, it's no big classified system, but I was thinking, fuck, our people are here. And we had just heard on the radio, and the U.S. government admitted that some of your folks in 7th Group were on the ground with the Colombians. I was like, shit, they're finally fucking here. So there's a GPS antenna that goes with it or whatever. The office is there, and he's like, can I plug this into my GPS to make it better? I said, no. And he goes, this is one of your cameras. I didn't say it was one of the North that we made. I said, yeah, it's a camera system. He said, well, how many do you guys have?

2:33:52You know? I said, thousands. I was trying to write. But essentially what happened was, but I found out later that a Colombian team had put this camera in. And I will leave. You don't just have one camera. I'll just leave it that way. You're walking into a net of shit. But it was fucked up. This camera was still white. They didn't even fucking paint it green or black or anything. And so it's buried in the riverside on some leaves, and the gorilla goes to take a piss, and he's peeing on him. I was like, fuck.

2:34:32So Goff is just looking at me. He goes, Keith, is this good? I said, not for you. What do you want me to tell you? I mean, I've been with him for years. I mean, he says, okay. So they gave it to a Cayuca to take to the bosses. I learned later that Cayuca got whacked and they got the camera back. But it's, you know, it's a ground sensor. It's no big top secret deal. Really, employment stuff is stuff that I'd never talk about. But I was like, fucking hey, motherfucker, someone's here. And that made them nervous. Because the Columbians would never operate in small teams, you know. you know our doctrine being a little bit different.

2:35:14Everybody was like, as soon as I got back, I told everybody what it was.

2:35:22There were some mistakes made in trying to get to stuff, but that camera actually didn't even get good pictures of us, and we all passed by it. So it's even better that they found it because the psychological impact on the gorilla was, the boss was like, oh, shit, they're in our backyard. they're fucking here. And we were like, I had a woody, dude. I was just like, hell yeah. How many years in was that? Four and a half. Four and a half years? Yeah, about a year before we got out, yeah. What kept you going? Just want to get home, man. All three of us, we just want to get home. Maybe for different reasons.

2:36:05I just, I wasn't dying there. It's just that I, look, I love my family. I miss my family and things like that. And you would do whatever you can to get back from that. But me, my drive was, I felt defeated dying there. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's the only way I can, you know, put it. You know, obviously you want to see your kids, right? I didn't know if my dad, my dad and I had kind of a rough relationship and weren't on good speaking terms like we should be, just stupid arguments, right? It's like, is my dad still alive? You know, you don't know anything. I just wanted to get home, Sean.

2:36:43And everybody has their own personal drive. I think, you know, I just think we're different. Look around this room, this country. I just think we're different. I just want to get back to this. I didn't care. I didn't care if I was working somewhere, We're hauling wood at a construction site, living in an old beat-up trailer. I just want to get home and have some ice. It was just, I'm not fucking dying here. Just to coach each other? Oh, we would both be up and down. Somebody's strong one day, somebody's weak the other day. Sometimes, you know, Mark's strong, I'm down. He's like, no, bro, no, bro, Tom.

2:37:29We called him the curmudgeon. I said, Tom, you know, your jokes were so bad before he got captured. It took us four years in the jungle to start laughing at your dumb ass jokes. And then we figured out that Tom's really funny. And you've heard every story that you can tell when you're face to face locked up with somebody, right? So there's nothing new.

2:37:54So everybody had a drive to get home. That was it. And I'm not necessarily going to say it was just their loved ones. It was just something amongst the three of us that we're not digging a hole here. I don't care. We're going one more day. And that was day-to-day. That's the way you get out of it. Any torture? So what do you call torture? Planned torture like our POWs went through in Vietnam? No. But I remember like one day I'm sliding in the river and through my boots, all these spines they're about two inches long going to my bed there's like seven or eight of them embedded in my bed so the medic there was a real asshole what they called their medic was fucking with me when he take the spines out of my toes and my feet and all just just making it they're like blades on them just making it you know just making it hurt on purpose shit like that but i think torture comes in many ways it's not necessarily breaking somebody's hands or or hooking a battery up to them like in the movies or something.

2:38:59Or, you know, torture is denial of basic, you know, human needs. Go in five years. Right? Torture is no food, no medical care. You know, there's a psychological component. I guess I've been interrogation type torture. No, they never, they didn't give a shit about what we knew. And Tom said it. Tom said it perfectly. He said, we're just hanging meat. They don't want anything from us. We're just a commodity, and that's all we were. I would have thought, like I told one of the commandantes, I'm like, you think we didn't see you all the time? They wouldn't believe me. We could be over you, and I'd just have one push of the SATCOM I could report, live physician, hit it with a laser and give away your coordinates.

2:39:47I wasn't allowed to do that. We were on a plane. We couldn't do that. We couldn't fight against the guerrilla directly. We were against drug targets. And the moment they captured us, that rule handcuffs were off. They didn't believe it. I've seen them a million times. No, not a million. That's exactly, but we saw them frequently. And I really didn't realize until captivity, some of the stuff we saw that we didn't think was gorilla was gorilla activity. Like what?

2:40:19I can tell you what a cayuca, which is a big aluminum canoe. You'd see it and wear their dress. You thought, oh, that's a couple of campesinos. Nope. Nope. Those are gorillas dressed like campesinos. I could tell all the way the boat is, what they've got in it, what they're hauling. You could look a little closer at them, especially the area where you're at. They're the only ones operating there. So a sad story was, I think it was four or five fishermen were murdered because of us. They saw us. Did you see it? No.

2:40:54One of, I would say, the most intimidating guerrillas I ever saw, hands down, was Hentiel. Hentiel Duarte. Supposedly, he was killed about 10 months ago. Mark and I are wondering if it was fake. He was part of the peace process in Cuba, but then went back to the jungle. He didn't agree with what was going on. He left Cuba to go back to the jungle to talk some guys in to some other leaders, say, quit fucking around, get a part of the peace process, and he just stayed with them. But we meet Duarte one morning. We're all uncovered just in hammocks tied to trees right next to a river, and they're going to move us.

2:41:35So they put us in a boat. It was like a runabout, some weird, you know, just, but it had like four benches in it, 200-horse motor on it. And they put me right behind Duarte and Mark right behind Duarte and then Tom was next to us and I look over there and the whole fucking floor there must have been a dozen RPGs. Their boots are on top of them. A couple of them 60s that I remember ammo and I'm like fuck I didn't know who this guy was but he had a presence about him. I'm sure you've seen guys that you know are serious guys. There's no and he was one of those. So he was joking around and kind of laughing and he took us and dropped us off at this spot on the river, which is basically the island felt like it was floating.

2:42:21We're just going to be there for a few days. So a few nights later, they pick us up at night and they're running us down a river. We're in the same boat that was his boat, but there's nothing in it. It's just some junior guys moving us. They're just moving us to a more permanent camp. Well, somebody yells, helicopter, helicopter, helicopter. And we look behind us. In the jungle, man, there's an ambient light. You're not around a city or town, right? it was a bright full moon, but it looked like a fucking spotlight from a helicopter. It was unbelievably bright. And the guy that was driving just beaches the boat in front of this fisherman's little shack.

2:43:05And they take us out of the shack really quick, and the fisherman walk out, and they see us face to face. They hide us behind the shack, and everybody goes, no, it's the fucking moon. It's not a helicopter. We get back in the boat, and everybody's looking at everybody. And the fishermen are two feet from me looking at me. I'm like, hey, amigo. We get in the boat.

2:43:27And another fisherman comes up in a little canoe. And they're saying, well, the Army's here. Because they're questioning, where's the Army? They're trying to avoid the Army. So they take us to this little place, like a concrete boat ramp in the jungle, on like a little field, but had canopy over it. And they put us there. Three days later on the news, on that river, it's live. Five fishermen executed by the FARC. And so I look at Big Head, who was one of our guards. We nicknamed all the guards. He had a cool head on him. He goes, yeah, I know. Big Head didn't feel good about it. But they killed him because they saw us.

2:44:08Shit. Did you develop relationships with the guards? Yeah. Yeah. How can you, how can you, we, you and I can hate each other and they can chain you to that chair and chain me to this chair. At some point we're going to start talking. Right. Do we have Stockholm syndrome? No. But when you got a guard that's like 17 years old or 18 years old and he's with you for years and you watch him grow up. Right. You're going to develop some type of relationship. Our theory was if we could treat them with respect, number one, we'd stay out of chains, which didn't work. But maybe, maybe that would buy us a second or two of hesitation for them killing us if a disembark came there trying to get us out in a rescue.

2:44:56That was our theory. And so a few of the guards secretly apologized for us being there, but said, hey, this is not in our control, right? But we were together for years, so hey, if we had extra smokes, because I didn't smoke, but I'd take the smokes that gives all the time, pass it off to the guard. Well, if the guard's girlfriend is small, take 10 pounds of her rice and sugar, put it in your ruck. He's sneaking you in leftover food at one in the morning when he's on guard duty. You know, just basic stuff. And I remember one of them that got killed, he went looking for food. His name was Mono.

2:45:47Little, you know, if you're dark, they call you Negro. If you're light skin, they call you mono it's just a latin culture it's not a racist thing or whatever and mono got killed and he was walking with one of the bad guys rogelio and i have to admit i felt a little like damn mono you could have been because he could have been something different right but i remember one night he comes in he sneaks in this was a if you would get caught sneaking in man it would have been his ass he brought mark and tom and i some sausages because this is all i can do guys and he said if you heard that i said something about it in our little communal meeting If I said something bad about you guys, well, I have to.

2:46:23He was risking his ass to give us food or sneak us a radio or batteries for a radio so we could hear the news. You can't have a little empathy for that? He's never going anywhere. We get rescued or not, he's there for life right there. He's never going anywhere. So, you know, they were very curious about the outside world. so we would we would tell them stories they're like little kids and I remember one of them was at Fort Campbell when the tornado came through and we lost like half a dozen Apaches or something and so the guy goes man all your helicopters are gone I said we have more than six helicopters right but their concept was not they just didn't understand I had no idea.

2:47:16Outside world. Tom came up with a fucking genius move. So there was a reward for us, each one of us, millions of dollars. So one night, Big Head says to us, he goes, hey, man, if I can get you out, would you manage my money for me? I can like that. I don't know what$5 million looks like. But he was serious. He was like, could you help me with that? We're like, big head, if you get us out, yeah, we'll help you with the money. But he was dead serious. It was just like a business there, right? So Tom realized, we knew it, but Tom came up with this genius thing. He starts drawing in his book. He drew like 10 pages of just cows, little bitty cows, 10 pages of cars, then a few pages of hot women, right, trying to go, you see all this, big head?

2:48:16That's what you get with this money. Boom, I got it.

2:48:24And so we thought, oh, we'd be Big Head's money manager, right? So I will never forget I'm giving a debrief. And this is political correctness gone fucking just stupid. And there are two women from the agency. And one was a handoff from England working with, you know, it's like a trade. And so I'm telling the story about what Tom wrote. She gets pissed off because I mentioned the women, the Tom Drew women, and you could have women, right? She just gets all offended. I'm like, the fuck? I'm not putting women down. Tom figured out a way to connect with these people, right? And what do you think a 19-year-old guard wants?

2:49:08I could tell you what he wants. He's been in the jungle by himself for years. He hasn't had a date, right? But I thought Tom's idea, and they were furious at a briefing. Are you serious? Dead serious, dead serious, dead serious. I couldn't make that shit up. But I thought, what a genius idea. He drew boats. He drew cows, women, trucks. But I thought that was pretty heads up, right? But they don't know anything. They ask us one time, this was really when I knew one of the guys that I have a distaste for, only because of his stupidity, but he was like a recruiter. So he would go out in the countryside and he would spread the communist word and recruit these young people in, right?

2:49:58So one time he's sitting there and he goes, hey, we want to know about your special forces. And what do you mean you want to know about our special forces? We need to know something about your special forces. Yeah. Did your special forces people teach Keanu Reeves those moves in the Matrix so we can't shoot them? I tell Keanu Reeves. I know that. But in the movie, when he's going like this and the bullets are going past him? They really fucking thought that? He was serious. Holy shit. What? I'm not bullshitting. Ask if you get to meet Mark or Tom. We're like, are you shitting me? Now, not all were that ignorant, but that was it.

2:50:40I mean, that's what you're dealing with. So I would say now, 15, 16 years later, it's not like that. But they were still pretty primitive. And it was, I came up with a torture, though. I came up with a torture for Martín Summer, the ignorant guerrilla guy. Martín comes to give us a pep talk one day in front of the other guards. that he wants to impress them. And he's talking about riding in a box. What? Riding in a box? Well, he had just built a box over us. It's barely enough for three guys to lay down in, which was bob wire and a chain link fence. And he said it was to protect us from the leopards.

2:51:24It was for our own protection. So he sits down and he tells us a story about he was in Bogota. Or I don't know if it was Bogota, one of the cities one time. He got to ride in a box. and all his little minions around him. Like, tell us about the box. Tell us about the box. He said, yeah, we went in the building. We just push a button. We go up, we get up, and then we're on top of the building. It's a fucking elevator.

2:51:48Wow. Sounds like Afghanistan. I'm just saying, you don't know. Yeah. We assume that somebody else uses our logic. That's our first mistake.

2:52:03That's our first mistake. So we didn't really understand. I don't think that we really understood the gorilla like we should have. I think we do now, but unless we're going to gauge against them directly. What would the—you guys were planning stuff a little bit. I mean, how would you do that? Were you monitored all the time? So here's what I thought was our hope one time. So one of the guys comes to us, and he's got a little handheld GPS, a little Garmin. And he also has a radio. And so he goes, I got an idea. It was Big Head, actually. He said, when we have our communal center, which every night they get together and do their little cultural hour and talk, it's brainwashing, right?

2:53:05He said, I'll get weapons and we'll kill everybody here. And I've got this ready in GPS and we can leave. And I'm like, how many people all armed during the thing? He said, there are about 30 down there armed. I said, okay, so we're going to get this. He said, I get two AKs. We'll just kill them all. Do you really think that we can walk down there with 30 armed motherfuckers and just kill them all in two seconds and walk out of here? And there's other camps around us, right, that are going to hear the shooting? I'm like, hell no. Mark and I looked at you, that's not a good idea. It's not like we're on a mountain with five people and we could just shoot them and be dead.

2:53:49We're surrounded by, there's other, you know, and I'm like, Big Head, you got to come up with a better idea. So I said, here's my idea. And Mark, I think, I don't want to take credit because Mark and I, I said, we get the radio and the GPS. We don't go towards town. We do. We go deep and we go high. And we'll get on the radio. Because they're going to think we're going to town. And we don't kill anybody. One night when you're on guard duty, we're just gone. how about we do that? Because that way, if we get caught, we're not going to get executed ourselves. I didn't think it was possible. I mean, do you really think it's possible for a couple guys in that situation to go into about 30 guerrillas at arm and just kill them all and get away smoothly?

2:54:37I think it depends on who you're with. Well, like I'm saying. But with all those camps around. Right. So I said, why do we have to kill anybody? Why attract attention? Why don't we just disappear? There's a little confusion there. But then he didn't want to, he backed out on that. Then they come by one day and they say, hey, why are you Americans down here flying around? I said, what do you mean? Well, all these helicopters are manned by Americans because they're speaking on the radio in English. I'm like, it's not Americans. said they're doing spray operations, and they're talking to different aircraft.

2:55:20Well, the number one language is English. Even here, it's not Spanish, right? But they thought it's Americans over them. No, it was Colombian pilots in a spray package communicating back and forth in English. So just strange stuff, Sean, out there. At what point did they present you with the M4 that you had tossed? They never presented it. We went to Miami, and we're in there. I don't mean them. I mean the girls. Oh, so this had to be a few months into captivity. We were being moved, and this guy rides up with the ponies, and he's on it. And he's got the M4, and he goes, you recognize this? He's like, oh, fuck.

2:56:05He's like, thank you. I'm going to kill your guys. I wasn't going to come. so he was carrying it you know and uh then they were asking about horses and we were each getting on a horse so i had horses i i was making fun of being a pony not a horse and you could the guy had a sense of humor right but he wanted to talk to us he wanted to engage because we're like this oddity right they've never met americans before and so i got up on the on the horse and he goes I said, man, this is not magic what you guys do. I said, everything you do in the jungle, you could teach us in two or three weeks. I said, what we do in the outside world, you couldn't do it in years.

2:56:48They're very simple. It's not a, you know, so I don't know. But to see the M4 in the evidence room in Miami, that was, especially with a hole in it, that was nice. we'll get to that at the rescue. Yeah. I want you to talk about Mark and his carbs too. Oh my God. And now Mark's, he's all super fit now. You want to do that now or later for Mark? Let's do it now.

2:57:20So we're starving and what we did to keep just, if you stop, you rot, right? So we would build what we call the jungle stair stepper and it would just be two steps. and you'd get on it for hours. But you could work up a real good swim if you're hauling ass. You built the steps high enough. So Mark gets some vines. The guards would give it to us, right? And they want to see us occupied. They're good at keeping people like this, right? So Mark ties up a pull-up bar, and he goes, I'm going to get to 20 pull-ups. And he did. He got to 20 dead hang slow pull-ups, right? And he's lost all his weight.

2:58:00One day after he gets his pull-ups, he turns around. He's like, fuck. I said, Mark, you got a six-pack, right? And we get these little mirrors. You can't see anything, right? And he's like, holy shit, you know?

2:58:11So I don't know if it was that day or whatever. Mark's not eating his rice. Like, we're starving. He's like, yeah, we just got to cut on the carbs, man. He's like all yoked. We're skeletons, you know? And he's, the lentils, man, it's good. The lentils, no, we got to ease up on the rice when I get fat. I was just, you know, we're insane at that point. But he was. He did his 20 pull-ups, and he had his six-pack going, and he's like there in a camp like this. It's like we're on beach on vacation, but we're there. Damn. Yeah. I mean, you're sitting there in your underwear with rubber boots on, and you're walking up and down like a homemade stair climber for hours just trying to stay sane.

2:58:55Is there anything else you guys would do? that was our main exercise thing. What about the chess pieces? I want to show you there's a picture in this book. This is super impressive what Mark did. And uh

2:59:17The chest sets in here, I believe. I haven't opened this up for a while. If not, he just sent me a picture. Here it is. So he got a piece of a machete from a gorilla with permission. I don't know how long it took him. This took him a year, maybe less. And every time we'd stop, Mark would start carving chess pieces. Right? And then we got all the chess pieces done. The gorilla gave us a piece of cardboard and tape, and Mark made the chess, the board. And the board would fold in half, and he had a little bag. He put his chess pieces in and carried them everywhere. And then the gorilla wanted to play chess too, so they would borrow it during the day if we were in a fixed camp, and everybody would play chess.

3:00:08Is that amazing what he did? Yes. By hand. We'll put this up on screen. And the most impressive thing about those chess pieces, there was so much oil on them for people just planting them for years, they were smoothed out. Wow. I'm like, Mark, you're a woodworker, dude. He's got that at the house now. How amazing. You know? He'd get there, he'd just start carving. He'd just start carving. He'd just start carving. I'm like, man. And I will tell you what, we owe Mark, seriously. This thing's going to do here. Everybody there in the jungle, probably some of the gorilla too. You know, Mark should get billed as a doctor because the therapy that that chess set brought to us was amazing.

3:00:59We would have chess tournaments that would last like days over a pack of crackers. You know, and Mark would be a smart ass. He'd start screwing me. We were playing chess, and he'd save his coffee. We'd just play for hours, hours and hours and hours and hours. We'd just sit there chained up in hours. Mark would take his leftover coffee, and he'd set it out on my side of the chessboard and just leave it there and not say a word and keep playing, trying to do a little psychological work because he knew I wanted that fucking coffee. But, yeah, that's what he did. Amazing. It's a, I don't know, people are capable of a lot.

3:01:36What are those Bible verses? So one of the best things that we got to read in captivity was a Spanish to English New Testament. So we read it cover to cover, cover to cover. So Mark, I would say, was the most religious out of everybody in camp. Like he really kind of got deep into it. So we would just share the Bible back and forth, reading and studying it. And those are some verses that he wrote down just for inspiration for himself.

3:02:13And something interesting was, obviously, the Bible wasn't written in English. It was written in Latin. So the understanding when you started translating stuff, when you read a verse in Spanish versus English, kind of came through a little bit clearer. And then I had a copy of Don Quixote, Latin, English. and I taught myself to read Latin, which I can't read now while I was in captivity reading Don Quixote. So the windmills, motherfucker, yeah. So you're, if you have time, you can do a lot. Did you guys pray? Yeah. Not as much as Mark. Tom, I don't, Tom, Tom, no. But I think my view on the Bible, right, especially the New Testament, changed when I started reading in Spanish versus English.

3:03:17And I look at it as a moral compass, not to say that I always followed that moral compass. I don't want to sit here and hold my hands up and, look, man, my closet's filled with skeletons, so I'm as imperfect as I get. But I think, and Mark and I would discuss this, especially the New Testament, if you take out what I call the fluff, maybe, and you go about, how do you treat your friends? How do you treat your family? How do you live as a person? It talks about how you, if you look at it, how you pay your bills, what kind of neighbor you are, what kind of brother, what kind of caretaker. It's just a simple moral compass for life.

3:04:02If you get through some of the stuff that's a little more, I don't want to offend anybody here, that's a little more, I call it a sales pitch. Maybe a little more, maybe we're not talking about somebody being in the belly of a whale. Okay? Maybe we're not talking something that's on a threshold for someone that's hard to captivate. But when it comes to the basics of how you should live and conduct yourself, that's what I think the strength is. And I would say Mark was a little more deeper into it than I was, for sure. But it gave us a—I don't want to use the word comfort—kind of a clarity about stuff, if that makes sense.

3:04:45Who gave it to you? I can't remember. Did the gorilla give Mark the Bible first? I don't know if he got it from the gorillas or I'm not sure. I can't remember. I mean, that's interesting. It's a guidebook, right? For what's interesting is, I mean, they're holding you in captivity. They're giving a woman a C-section in the jungle, and they're reading the Bible. I don't think that many of the gorillas were reading the Bible. I think some were, but they finally got it to Mark permanently. And I don't know where it came from. I can't remember. But Mark carried it, and it's his. You know, we shared it, but Mark carried it.

3:05:44And I don't know if, did Consuelo, did she give it to Mark, one of the hostages? I can't remember where he came from.

3:05:57But, yeah, it was a strength in her for sure. There's no nut about that. It's interesting how people convince themselves that they're doing the right thing. But I remember when I lived in Medellin, went to this church that the Sicarios, the assassins, would go pray at before they do a hit. I know. It's like, never occurred to you not to do the hit? I grew up in a Southern Baptist family. My grandmother was a fire and brimstone Southern Baptist. You were going to hell for anything, right? But I think that my father was a student of history, primarily really the Civil War, a little bit of world history and world religions.

3:06:53And he always would say, it's not—I'm trying to remember how to say it right. Basically, he didn't like how man distorted the word from the Bible. He wasn't a fan of organized religion. He thought, well, you see these megachurches now, how they really just—it's a money issue, right? It has nothing to do with what the scriptures really say, I think. Like what are the things about the big televangelists and their private jets? Can't fly them back with the heathens. Come on, man.

3:07:37So just look at the book of Eli, the movie, right? The bad guy knew that could be used to control everything. There is the Bible. so I think like you're saying it can be used in bad ways it can be used in good ways you know I mean I'm amazed and my wife and I speak about this a lot at the things that people are capable of doing and they think they're okay they're totally okay with it you know it's scary stuff you know I don't know. I don't know, but you have to remember, I mean, Latin America is a Catholic continent, right? So do those guerrillas that were probably brought up in very humble places and ingrained by their parents go into any little village?

3:08:35It's got a church, right? The church is a big part of it. Can they totally escape that upbringing? I don't know. You know? I mean, I never really thought about that in captivity, because we didn't really have a time to really engage with them on that level. But I'm sure, you just have to think, you know, that some portion of them can't escape that upbringing. Yeah. You know? But the communist salesman will try to erase it. Well, they get them young. It's an indoctrination, right? Well, you know, the little communist manifesto, it's only about that thick. I don't know if you've ever read it. And Milton handed me the manifesto one time, and he can't really read.

3:09:21I said, plus value, Marx, Engels. He goes, you read that? I said, yeah, I did a book report on it. I was in junior high school, man. Yeah, I read this. They were like, oh, you've read it? Yeah, I've read it. Well, what do you think of it? I said, it doesn't work. It's a pipe dream. And I started reading back to him, and he's like, you can read in Spanish? I'm like, yeah. I'm not a doctor, but I'm not a, you know. But the level of, you know, people that are, I don't know if it's right to use the word ignorance. I don't think that's maybe the right word to use. But a person that's ignorant can really be taken advantage of pretty easily if you're smart enough to do it.

3:10:06And so that's what I see much of what the young gorillas were. Basically just sold a bill of goods and brainwashed. You know? Yeah. How often were you guys chained up? Really not until the third year. I'd say two and a half, the third year that we got into it, that they started chaining us regular. And before that, they put 550 cord around our necks, and they have this thing that goes on. It's a knot, just a harness that they make that goes underneath your arms and around your neck, and there's just a hangman's knot on the back. So you're walking in front of your guard through the jungle, and if you try to run, he's got the 550 cord.

3:10:51He just pulls it that chokes you out. You can't do anything. That was much more comfortable in the chains. The chains were when times were getting desperate, And Mark actually figured out, we figured out how to break out of the locks with a fingernail clipper. The cheap Chinese locks were so terrible, you could just run the tumblers enough and they'd open up. So we'd open them at night and kind of undo a link so it was a little more comfortable to sleep. So it would be all the time. What's that? So you were chained all the time. At one point, yeah. Shit. Yeah. just dependent. I mean, they come and take the chains off or put the chains on, you know?

3:11:37Yeah. I've got about six inches of my chain and the lock that I use for paperweight on my desk. And there's some places I've gone to speak. I'd love to have brought it here or whatever. I don't want to risk losing that. I get it. You know, I'll send you a picture of it when you get home. And the worst thing was it sucks. It's a Chinese lock, so it's big and heavy. It's not like a nice little master log that's worth a shit. Damn. Yeah. What about holidays? I mean, what would Christmas be like? You know, they celebrate it. But you got to remember in Columbia, the big holiday is not Christmas. It's New Year's.

3:12:12And so they bring in candy. They bring in liquor.

3:12:20And I'm a drinker, but I wouldn't drink in captivity because I was scared about what I would do. and I remember one time getting liquored up on this cheap Chinese wine he put an ass cussing on the commandante in that camp, we're like you're gonna get shot he's just standing there just cussing his ass out man he had this oh you know it was from China and this stuff was just horrible and so then they have Aguardiente in Colombia everybody drinks, I couldn't worse stuff in the world but they would for New Year's of the holidays, they would bake breads and cookies if we were in a place you could do it and kind of like throw us a little, you know, give us some extra food and things.

3:13:07Really? You know? Strange, strange, strange. Wow. Well, Keith, let's take a break. Yeah. When we come back, we'll get into the rescue mission. Super.

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3:14:35All right, Keith, we're back from the break. I want to get into the rescue op. All right. How it went down. What happened? as descriptive as you can. Okay, a little outline on the rescue. I went back in the FARC, capturing us, opened the door for the U.S. government, especially in telling the side, to buddy up with the Columbians, right? And help them rebuild their intel system. They did a lot of stuff. They did a lot of stuff. But what happened with the rescue, we had an enlisted guy and he had a suggestion and it was about communications. And the way the FARC handled us, and this is something we don't do anymore and I worked on it afterwards, we don't HFDF, iFreak Direction Find, radio signals.

3:15:29So every FARC group we were with had an HF radio. They'd use an extension cord they'd cut up and go string an antenna, you know, because it's got to be long, the HF waves are much longer, and they would talk, all right? And they would talk to the commandantes run by the secretariat, and the secretariat would talk to our guys, and they'd say, you guys move here, you guys move there. They had their code, right? But that's how they handle our movements. Or they would send a person in, in a certain area, and just, you know, paper to paper. And I remember Cesar, who's in the first front commander, he's in the Supermax now.

3:16:10He said, can you guys hear everything? I said, yes, sir. He said, what's the best thing for me to do, just write an order on a piece of paper and send it to my guys? I said, that's what I'd do. And so the official story goes, which is true.

3:16:27I believe it was a sergeant that he basically said, hey, folks, why don't we cut off the communications link? Let's talk to the secretariat, to the commandantes, and pretend we're the guys that have the hostages. All right? And then let's talk to the people that are holding the hostages and make them think that we are the secretariat. Right? Just cut it. And then we'll just tell them to let the hostages go. No shit. That's a simplified version of what happened. So they broke the comms link, and they started talking to the bosses. Because you've got to remember, they listened to them every day.

3:17:09These analysts knew who the individual people were, what was going on. And they basically broke the comms link and then made some experimental moves with us to see if we'd follow the orders. and they found out that they had broken it successfully, and that was what was going to morph into the rescue. And you've got to remember, well, you can't remember stuff I've talked about here, every little small group, the commandante of the group will have a girlfriend, and she's the radio operator, right? So even in camp for years, I would hear other groups talking. If the radio was up, it would be the same voices and the same names.

3:17:49So essentially, it was just a really good intel spoof by, I believe it was a Colombian sergeant. I know it was enlisted, but I think it was a sergeant that did that. So the story and the debrief that we got was we were moved a few times, and then our guys were told that they were going to take us and turn us into the secretariat. Now, here's what was interesting. During that time, President Rebe let it be known publicly, and this was part of the spoof, that they were going to allow the Red Cross to come in and get access to us and assess us. They were going to allow the FARC to do that. And that came out in the news.

3:18:35So then our guys who were physically holding us, who weren't talking to their bosses anymore, like, oh, shit, this is true. We're going to go turn these folks in. They're going to see them. So I think it was one of really the best intel coups ever. Wow. It's a really interesting story. It's slick. And then it— So they were basically playing HQ. Yep. That's what they were doing. And then in the international news, in the news, the president's saying, hey, we're going to let an international commission come in and have access to the FARC and the hostages to check them out. So the FARC were going to get recognition also politically.

3:19:16It was brilliant. Where we were rescued at, it was kind of funny. It was basically a whorehouse. That's what it was. So you have what's called a Rasputin, and they're the guys that pick the coca leaves and the women, right? They go in and pick them.

3:19:38So we were being moved and hearing this news on a river. and all of a sudden we're seeing other FARC members, which we were never exposed to anybody. It was a deep secret where we were and who we were. And next thing we know, we end up in a coca field, giving us Coca-Colas. They brought us blue jeans and shirts and stuff from a store, and they're like being happy with us, and the whole group is moving to the coca field. And next to the coca field was just basically two big cabins. One looked like a bar where there were some pool tables. right there in the jungle, and another had all these beds in it.

3:20:16So Wancho, my buddy who's a major, had enough time to go from lieutenant to major and lieutenant colonel in captivity, 10 years. There's all of these mattresses in this jungle bordello, man, with plastic. And we're like, holy shit, we haven't laid on a mattress in years. Everybody gets, you know, we're laying on a bed and we're like this. And Wancho goes, you know what we're laying on, don't you? He goes, no, this is a whorehouse. I said, are you kidding me? He goes, no, Keith. What they do is the Rasputinis come in here, and they pay them to pick the leaves. Then they set up a cheap bar, and they bring in these girls, and basically they get their money back.

3:20:57They're paying it for them. So we were like, well, you know what? Cover the mattresses with plastic. We haven't been on a mattress in years. We're sleeping good. So everything gets lax all of a sudden. guards are there, but like they're, you guys want some soda? Like when do we get a Coke or cookies or extra food and all this shit? And we're out in the sunshine. We're not undercover. And I was like, we're out. We're uncovered. And other FARC members were coming through and they were looking at us and we're like, something was going down, right? We didn't know. And we had staged on the river farther down about, I don't know how many miles for like a week.

3:21:37and they were bringing us blue jeans and tennis shoes and shirts and all this stuff. And I remember I told Mark, I'm not taking any of that stuff. But Tom took a nice shirt on a nice set of jeans because he goes, my wife hasn't seen me in years. I just want to look presentable to my wife. It makes me want to cry because he was like, I just want to. So everybody's, but we're like, want coffee? What do you want? I mean, so we're in this place for a couple days. And I go out. I hadn't seen sun forever. And I take my shirt off and I just basically got a pair of underwear on. And I'm sitting in a chair in the sun just cooking like a clam.

3:22:18And we're all, what's going on here? And right across the river is another coca field where the helicopter sat down with a little house. But we have not been out undercover for five and a half years. There's no, we're not hidden. We're in the open. And, you know, they're talking on the radio to each other. And I'm like, what? What's going on? We knew something was going on, but we didn't know. And we had heard news, us also, that we were going to be able to get seen by some people outside the guerrilla group to check on us, get messages to our family. So there's an air of expectation. And one thing that happens in captivity, any little bit of hope, man, is like filling your gas tank.

3:22:59So they come in, tell us that more, just make sure we're packed. And one thing they did is they took our rucksacks from us. And we just had little bags, nothing to carry, nothing big. And they come over, and the death knell for us was here in helicopters. It was terrifying, right? Because we knew that's a disembark, infill, whatever. So they get us up one morning, and they put us out there. Everybody get in line. Everybody get in line. and there's a gorilla hostage. The commandante goes, hey folks, if you hear helicopters, don't worry, it's cool, there's no problems. I'm like, what the fuck is going on here?

3:23:35Mark and I are looking at each other. We're just trying to process this, right? All of a sudden, here they come, helos. We see the MI come overhead, just doing a circle. There's no panic, there's no anything. Other gorillas were there standing around watching us that had never seen us ever before. So we're like, holy geez, what's going down here? And did they look like Red Cross birds? There's been a lot of criticism about that. Yeah, they did. White and red. I get it. And I'm glad they did.

3:24:10So they go down and get us in the canoes and we cross the river and we go up into the coca field. And we're all standing there. And there's a film of us. There's a film online that's going down of me, we're all talking, so helicopter lands while we're all standing there and a fake news crew gets out. We're like, you know, and the lead Colombian officer from the operation, and you got to remember, this is all volunteer, right? So you just had a handful of guys and a woman who was a nurse, a Colombian, was she naval or army? I can't remember. A woman married with kids volunteered to go in as a nurse.

3:24:55They're all in civilian clothes. I think the pilots, all they had was a pistol stuck in their boot. That was it. They were on their own, man. If this cover was blown, everybody's dying. So the crew walks up and starts interviewing Cesar, the commandante, and Goff is there. And we're all like, what's happening? He walked away with the commandante for a little bit, and they came back and they had large zip ties, which we'd already been trained to break out of, right? But still. So I said, man, look at that. So some of the Colombian soldiers said, you're not putting those on me. A couple of the soldiers said, I don't care.

3:25:38You're not zip tying me before the helicopter. So this one guy is in front of us. He's got red hair and it's Mark and I and Tom. And he goes, he walks up to me and he's almost in tears. And I said, who are you? He said, I'm from Australia. So I grabbed his ID and I said, this is bullshit. I'm about to blow the whole thing actually up at the unit. I did the briefing. The Colombian colonel was up there with General Huttmacher. He said, yes, Dan's almost ruined the whole fucking rescue being a dumbass. So Mark gets next to me. He goes, I'm from Australia. I said, you're a lot. I said, Mark, you're not Australian and you're not from Australia.

3:26:24And he gets nervous and he starts to almost cry. And he goes, look. He said, yeah. You want to go home? I said, yeah. He goes, I mean, he was almost in tears. He goes, please come with us. We're taking you home. So I yelled Mark or to Tom. I said, Tom, put those fucking tie wraps on. And we, you know, but we almost blew it right there because Mark and I did not believe this guy, which we smelled about in a second. And when we did the debrief and saw him again, and Carolina's like, man, you just terrified me. I didn't know what to say to you guys. But I said, put on the tie wraps. once we put the tie wraps on, and you can see us, it's on YouTube.

3:27:06The video's there. I just say, Keith Stansel, five and a half years in the jungle. I didn't know who the fake news crew was, but they legitimately filmed. And we got on the bird. And so they're taking us to certain spots. So we were psychologically profiled, like who's going to be a troublemaker, who's not, you know, who's going to be a troublemaker, who's not. But I was in the troublemaker category. A couple other guys were. So I sit down for a second, and I start to stand up, and this Colombian soldier who was basically dressed like a civilian, he just grabs me, slams me in his seat. He said, here next to me, man, next to me, bro.

3:27:49I said, all right. And so I broke out of my wraps. Just the same trick we're taught, you know, to do that. I still start yelling at Mark. Mark's like, what are you doing? You're going to get in trouble. I said, break out of the rafts, break out of the rafts. And then Goffas and Cesar were supposed to give up their pistols, but I can't remember what Goffas did, but Cesar kept his. And he's right behind us. And so it was just a flurry, right? Everybody gets on the bird, and then they drop like a case of beer off next to the aircraft for those guys and wave at them. and they pulled up the doors and we just pulled up, you know.

3:28:29And I remember the guy looking at me next to me, he's, you know, a Colombian SF guy, but he's obviously, and he's like, Colombian Army motherfuckers, right? So we just all jump on Cesar because Cesar pulled a pistol. And Mark has the med kit next to him, and they're yelling at Mark, take the needle out and stab him, stab him, stab him with the needle. I just happened to be closest to Cesar, So I got on his chest, and that's what your assistant was showing my bloody hand. I mean, that got picked. I just hit him in the head a couple times, and then the Colombian really took over doing a number on him.

3:29:05But he had his hand with a pistol, and he disarmed him. And it was 30 seconds, and it was over. I mean, it was just over. And we're clapping and yelling. They're yelling, Colombian Army, Colombian Army, please. And, I mean, the euphoria.

3:29:22I mean, I got to be careful not to cry right now. It's just incredible. And I look at Tom. I said, Tom, man, we're on this Russian piece of shit helicopter. I hope we get back. We were just, it was a high. It was a high, right? Then Goff is, the abuser, the nasty guy, right? The old man Cesar pulled us. He was going to go down fighting in the helicopter. Goff is just like a little bitch just hit the ground. And they pulled his pants down around his ankles. And he's in his underwear, his little bikinis. And they're holding him. He didn't put up a fight at all. And he had been very abusive to Tom, you know, making Tom put 15 meters of chain, three, five-meter chains around his neck and marching and threatened to shoot Tom one time.

3:30:05And, you know, and so it's a couple minutes into it. Everybody's kind of calming down. We're all hugging and high-fiving. And they basically shot, I don't know what kind of sedative they gave to Cesar. And, you know, they're taking pictures and everything. And Tom goes over to Goff's, and Mark and I are looking, and he kneels down. I know, man, he's just going to, he's going to like, and Tom's an old curmudgeon, man. He grew up Cape Cod, Coahogin, paid for flight school that way. He's a grumpy old bastard, man. He, you know, he's just a no shit kind of guy and stuff. I thought for sure that Tom was going to do something to Cesar.

3:30:41He just leans over, gets in his face. He taps on my chest. He said, good luck. It was the coolest thing in the world, man. Wow. And then we're just, you know,

3:30:53then they flew us to a fob there, and we got off of that, you know, off the helo, got onto a 130, then we went into the Capitol. And I remember, I'd like to know who the guy was.

3:31:08I think all the guys there, I don't think there were any SEALs. I think it was all Delta that was on the ground right there for our bird. I'm not sure. Big old dude. He had an American flag on. I just walked up to him. I just put my arms around him. You know, I saw that flag.

3:31:29And I just like, I was like, we made it. We made it. And, but when I saw him, it was one of our people. I wish I knew who he was. You know, he was laughing at me. He's a big old jerk. I jumped on his ass and just hugged him. And we are going home. So we jumped onto 130, and they got us to basically another base, and we jumped on Uribe's Air Force one that flew us into Bogota. We got off of that, and then we got on the C-17 and headed home. But it was, I mean, it's still emotional. And, you know, I think basically four of my friends died looking for me. You know, Tommy didn't make it out. Farr and Cruz didn't make it out, you know.

3:32:26So there's a little bit of, it's apprehension, maybe a little guilt, you know, in there that we made it and they didn't. But I remember getting off the MI, and they've got Goffas and Cesar and Cuffs on the ground, you know. And I was just like, wow. But as I'm getting off the helicopter, I look down, and there's a pile of chains and locks on the floor. And this is sick. I recognized my lock. I'd been wearing it for so many years. So I grabbed my lock and my chain, getting out of the helo. I said, this is coming with me. So they cut off the majority chain for me. I got on the bird. But how sick you recognize your own lock.

3:33:18Man. You know. And then it was off to the races, right? You know, it's like what you do here on your show, Sean, is you give a voice to the community. That's why I came to do the show. Thank you. You know, where people can hear what's really going on. And we tried to give a voice, Mark and Tom and I, to the families of those that didn't make it out with us. And we, and it's a perfect example, the Colombian hostages did not have the same kind of support that Mark and Tom and I did. You know, we get on the C-17. The ambassador's giving us a big hug. We got a medical team. FBI's there. Now, we're civilians, and this is a new thing.

3:34:13We're kind of the guinea pigs, right? But we're doing basically a DOD mission. And some could disagree with that, but we know who directed things. and so there is my old neighbor on the bird i haven't seen in 20 something years doug sanders a former ranger and army helicopter pilot and he's in charge you know there in san antonio the reintegration program for hostages i'm like holy shit and he was having dinner with a friend of mine i hadn't seen in 20 years in savannah when the call got they'd he even tell them that he was going to be bringing us home right they're waiting on the op to go down and so um it's a small community and there's people are patting us on the back and there's an air force crew and it was fun it was kind of funny this air force the flight engineer was on there and i wear 44 long in a flight suit and they gave me a brand new flight suit and i'm like i gotta wash it like 10 times man this thing is too stiff and the the flight engineer i said i still got his name tag i said man is your flight suit broken he said hell yeah i said you want a new one he said yeah we changed right there on a bird i put his on because it was broken in and then um they let us calm down on the c-17 for a little bit but there was a lot of excitement on president ribase bird between the field and getting to bogota on the capital but when we came off the aircraft we didn't want to do this and be like the political scene in columbia we were hustled off and we rolled and we were taken care of, you know, and then you start catching up on the real news, right?

3:35:53Stuff that's been going on since you've been gone. And, you know, that's a whole nother wave of reality. But the rescue, I've looked in a modern history of military rescues. I can't find one that matches it without a shot. Not to say that it hadn't been other stuff that's gone down. not a shot fired. Total coup that a young sergeant, it was his idea, and then obviously support behind it. And the thing that I remember, the Columbians were in the back of a rebase jet, and they had us up front, and we had some people from our government, you know, up front. and I'm like, you got a map? And they're like, why?

3:36:44I said, we know where all the groups are here. And they had them surrounded and the government said, you know what? We're going to give you a chance to turn yourselves in. We didn't go after them. They could have swooped in there after the rescue and taken out half of the first front easy. Instead, they just let them roll. I don't understand it. Wow. We had them in the, had them, had them, had them. A few hundred gorillas right there. And they had the packages around. Now, ours, I don't think would have participated, but our folks were there. Our intel folks were there, you know. And they walked.

3:37:24I don't understand that political decision at all. We had them. And so the flight home was, you're just kind of opened up the radars on. And our two FBI agents I talk to occasionally every year or so, one Eddie, about once a year, they have a six-pack of beer, cold beer. And here's the joke. We were leached to have one cold beer, and then it disappeared. So I always say, hey, you guys stole this from us on the flight home or whatever. But we had to get a physical on the plane, you know, check us out medically and bring us into San Antonio. And you're just, everybody's talking to you and they're giving you news.

3:38:12And it's just, but what they did have, what they did have was pizza. And we ate pizza. and a wild ass story was Mark and I'll let Mark correct me I might mess this up Mark made a comment in the morning of my rescue he said man you know what I want so what he goes I want some homemade chocolate chip cookies and I want pizza

3:38:50I'm sorry it just brings a moment back right And so we get on the plane and we're like, fuck. I said, dude, you call this? We had fresh pizza on the plane. They come out of Bogota like Domino's Pizza or whatever. So the pilot in command was a female. And I remember, if I correctly, there was also a training flight going on. So I think they had an exchange pilot that might have been a Marine. But she walks back and she goes, hey, guys. I go, what? I don't know if you want these, but I got a gift for you. She's what? Here's a bag of chocolate chip cookies. Oh, shit. I don't bake. I don't know why, but I baked these and I brought them with me.

3:39:38Wow. How about that, man? Hmm. Hmm. the cookies were the shocker that's why like it was very intense feeling that's why i tear up here's your chocolate chip cookies like to bake no i just for some reason bake these like that was man you better start thinking if i have to explain it to you you know i mean so god patting down the back can you imagine that though no and i it wasn't me it was it was mark i mean it was mark said yeah, I want pizza and chocolate chip cookies. And I was like, dude. And then I remember an embarrassing thing. And my wife is upstairs watching. I don't know if I've told her this before or not.

3:40:32So I look like a bag of shit. I'm a skeleton. I'm 230 now. It's 154, 156, me 154. So there's a flight surgeon. There's like a little room on the C-17 behind with two bunks. It's the crew restroom, right? So we each have to get checked out. So we walk in. There's this flight surgeon, probably just this young, very attractive female flight surgeon. And she closes the door. She goes, you got a strip down. I'm like, in front of you? I said, do you have a fat girl on the plane? I'm just, I'm sorry with her. I was like, you got a guy? Like, you know, you have it. Like, you look like a bad guy. I'm like, ma 'am, I mean, really?

3:41:17Is this, you know, it's like, this is, you know, I'm wearing fucking bikini underwear.

3:41:25I said, do you guys have like an ugly doctor or something, you know? So I was embarrassed, but I did it. I followed through, but it was funny. You know, I'm like, fuck, I'm wearing bikinis, rubber poos. And I mean, that is, you know, and I didn't say anything to Mark. I said, Mark, just go on the flight searches in there. You know, he's like, oh, shit. You know, and, you know, it was just a little embarrassment there. You're like, really? I mean, like an old guy, you know, like an old 06 with a big beard or something, you know. And then Doug was laughing about that. And so we get through this, and it's all happiness on the plane, and it's really kind of just a blur getting into Texas.

3:42:12and we land, and I remember General Huber getting on the plane, and, you know, here's this big-ass Green Beret, and, hey, gentlemen, and we roll to the Blackhawk, and I just news cameras everywhere, right? And I'm like, shit, you know. I mean, it's just everywhere, news, and it's dark, you know, but there's lineup in the flight line, and we get on the Blackhawk, and boom, we pop to head over to BAMC to the hospital. And I remember just looking down at all the fast food places. Mr. Going across town, I'm going to eat there. I'm going to eat there. I'm going to eat there.

3:42:49And we got down on the ground and got into the general's, I don't know if it was a suburban or whatever. Or was it a van or something? But I remember the sec def calling him while we're riding over to the hospital. I said, damn. I said, Mark, is the sec def checking on us? I said, this hasn't really happened that often, right? So we get into the hospital, and they put us in a room. And it was funny. As we're walking down to the ICU, these guys are in spacesuits to handle us. They don't know what to do with us, what we have or whatever, right? People are from behind the glass.

3:43:28And each one of us, they kept us in the same room. They were worried about separating us. They had to evaluate us, right? They were worried about separating us because we'd been together for so long. But the TVs were on without the volume. So they were introducing stuff to us. And I remember I look up on the TV, and Mark's next to me, and there's A-Rod is dating Madonna, and then next to that headline is the three hostages are out. I said, man, we're famous. A-Rod, Madonna, they're headlining with us. It's funny. You had to laugh at that, right? You had to laugh at that. But one thing that I was nervous about was you have a smell in the jungle, right?

3:44:07One of the first things is when the gorilla captured us was their smell. You could smell them. That's a group, a big group, right? And it's just the smell of, you know, BO in the jungle and whatever, and it doesn't work. It's a human, it's something you had to get used to. And I worried. I said, man, am I going to smell like that when I see my family? I know it's a small thing, but in the back of my head. So we each get to take a shower. And you know in the hospital, you got that green disinfectant soap. I got in that shower, man, and you've got the handicap handle up there in the showers of the hospital.

3:44:46I wet a towel, and I tied that towel. I hadn't had a hot shower in five and a half years. I bet I was in there an hour. I turned the shower off. I got out, and I was like, mm-mm. I went right back in. I took two showers. I took two showers. And so we all got showered, and General Huber comes up, and there was a black female colonel. She was an Army doctor and very kind. And so he was like, gentlemen, this French restaurant's open. He had all these really nice restaurants open at midnight for us. And I'm like, sir, I appreciate it, but I don't want that. He goes, what do you want? I said, I want a cheeseburger, fries, and a fountain Coke.

3:45:35That's what I wanted. To me, it's just the American meal. That's the thing I could think of. And that female colonel, who was a doctor, she just leaned over and she tapped me. She said, baby, I'll take care of you. It was like your big sister, the most kind thing in the world. And I said to General Huber, I said, you know, sir, this is pretty good. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, I can't remember when I was a sergeant when a colonel and a general would cook me a damn cheeseburger at 1 o 'clock in the morning, but I'll take it. You know? And they took unbelievable care of us, right? And so one of the guys that was a psychologist or a counselor, because each one, we've got one signed.

3:46:18Everybody's looking at us. He comes in. I think it was Mark said, damn, that cologne smells good. And he said, you got any? He goes, I'll give you guys a bottle of cologne. So he came in later. We each had like a bottle of cologne. So we smelled decent and got us some clothes. And that was the part where the reunification started. And there'd be a lot of debriefing and head to toe taking care of us. Even though we were civilian, we volunteered. And so DOD there in BAMC took care of us. And then we really started catching up on the news over the next 48 hours, right? But everybody in the hospital knew who we were.

3:46:58There's news trucks surrounding the place out there, right? So it was kind of odd that everywhere you went, people are like, you couldn't. That's why I say the five minutes of fame. I was so glad when that was over. And anonymity is a big thing, right? Yeah, I'm sure you're learning that. And unbelievable care for us. And took care of us, housed our families, you know, and we had to reintegrate with the families, which that was a big deal.

3:47:34and that brings out a lot there. I remember my father, you know, Korean War vet. He's standing there wobbling when I get to see him, you know, and I just put my arms around him and he said, son, I knew you'd make it. I knew you'd make it. But what do you do when you, you know, I heard a message from my son. My son's 6 '7". He's 245. He's a big dude. He was a little 10-year-old when I got captured, you know, in a year and a half until we got into the jungle with the politicians. I hear a message from him, right? He's 11 years old, and he's apologizing for missing my birthday and Christmas. Like, ah, he's done something wrong.

3:48:20It broke my heart in captivity. You know, but that was the big thing there. I knew we were going to have a hurdle, an emotional hurdle, for the first time to get past. And it, I mean, even now, I'm not much of a crier, I don't think, but the emotion comes up and you just, you kind of relive that. And we, you know, I think all of us handle it in our own way, right? You know, like the funny thing was is Mark's mom was the squeaky wheel, man. Every news show, every politician in Columbia flying back and forth, riding President Rive's ass and all. So he gave her a special presentation later on in D.C.

3:49:09and gave her citizenship in Columbia for being such a pain in the ass trying to get her wife out. The president of Columbia, she actually broke his ass. That was good. And, you know, a lot of good stuff to come after that. But it's five and a half years, man. I mean, you're like, wow. And I remember my son, I had heard about iPods, a little bitty ones, but I'd never seen one. And so he walks up to me and I said, what do you have? It's an iPod, Dad. I said, give me that son of a bitch, right? I said, I just mean, he said, Dad, he said, what? He might not like all the music that's on there. I said, I'm good.

3:49:49Don't worry about it. But technology had also passed us by. You know, do you remember back in the day, a Motorola little Starlink, not the Starlink modern today, opened a flip-flown, 60 or 90 characters of text, and I carried a big sat phone. And that was like cutting edge, right? You know, I remember my company coming to the hospital, bringing us each a laptop, And they're like, log in. And I'm like, well, how do I do that? You know, we had, you know, things had happened. And so it took a little time for the wheels to catch up, you know, I think. And there's a picture here of Tom on the phone in a restaurant that opened on a Sunday that was closed.

3:50:41And he's on the phone. a guy that I want to give thanks to, Chuck Norris. He calls us. He goes, hey, guys. And we're like, what? You know, he goes, listen, a lot of people are going to be coming at you, dues and everything. And he knew the reintegration folks. He's a behind-the-scenes supporter, doesn't say a word. He said, my ranch is ready for you guys and your families if you need privacy. You can meet me there or not. It doesn't matter. you're welcome to come here you're welcome to come here if you need a place a safe haven wow he wanted nothing out of it nobody even knew he called us but the funny thing is here is a funny story i didn't know how much mark like norris is an actor so as we say we're arguing about everything we're laying in the jungle at night and this starts a fucking war mark's talking of how awesome an actor Chuck Norris is.

3:51:41And I'm like, Mark, he's a B movie actor. He's not an A movie. He said, he's the shit, man. And Tom goes, Tom was just needling Mark, right? He goes, shit. That's all bullshit. And Mark's no, because, I mean, Norris is a legit karate guy, right? It's legit. Tom's house, he says, shit. If I saw Chuck Norris, I'll whoop his fucking ass, right? Mark's like, you could never kick his ass. They're yelling, right? Mark's like, Tom's like, if I ever get to see him, I'm kicking his ass. Well, then on the phone, holy shit. Tom confesses to Norris. He said, Chuck, I got to tell you, I'm sorry. So when I told Mark in the jungle, or saw you whoop your ass, he said, I'm going to take that back.

3:52:26So, I mean, come on. Damn. You know, I mean, come on. And then, you know, the jungle the whole time, it was like, Tom's like, I could take Chuck Norris. You know, just silly shit. This is triggering me remembering stuff here, you know. But a lot of people that didn't want any credit, and Norris didn't want any. It was basically a secret call through actually Doug Sanders, who knew him. And he was just going to make that offer. And he said, we'll get you out here, get your family out here. You guys need a piece. You got all the time you want. So I thought that was pretty, we didn't accept it because we didn't need it.

3:53:05But the fact the guy took his time out to make the offer, and I found out later he's done a bunch of stuff, doesn't say a word. You know, I mean, come on. You know, that was. And then afterwards, laughing at Tom about apologizing to Chuck Norris about wanting to kick his ass, that was funny. You know, obviously Chuck took it, was laughing, and that was a whole joke. I mean, I would imagine coming back is just a whole mix of feelings and maybe some new fears. I mean, did you have any fears about coming back, about maybe your family had moved on? I did not have any fears. Obviously, my significant other that I wasn't married to, she moved on and got married.

3:53:48That was okay. um i that captivity buried the hatchet with my father and i so it repaired our relationship there um some tragedies you know people dying i had a first cousin who was like a big brother to me really more an uncle and i wanted to see him and you know my dad asked to pull me aside and said nobody got killed, you know, in a car crash, but, you know, truck crash. And then some of your friends, you know, some trap people had passed. You're like, oh, shit, you know, they were young. And then the whole thing where you guys were at, the whole thing in the sandbox, I mean, we weren't there watching it on TV every night.

3:54:37So the whole escalation of the war in the Middle East for us was like, holy shit, you know, to really see it. And just like I give an example of the CEO at the time of Verizon, we made comments, something about cell phones or whatever, and just a knock at the door one day in this backpack with all the skiffs and the latest and greatest, which then they called it a smartphone, it wasn't compared to today, was from the CEO. And he's like, hey, welcome back, guys. Maybe this will help you a little bit. And some anonymous people did some things for us, not necessarily monetarily right, but did some things.

3:55:20You're like, wow, somebody's really thinking. But just trying to adjust to life and something that I was telling about at Hilo was difficult for me. So my parents have a house rented for me. And it's a bigger, more beautiful home than I've ever lived in. and I roll in there. Can I afford this? And my dad's like, yeah, you can afford it. And, you know, I mean, the best savings program in the world is get six years of pay, right? So, you know, our company took care of us. The son of a bitch about that thing was the instrument holding pattern for rotor wing aircraft. So the airport was right over my flipping house.

3:56:07So I'm laying in bed the first night and I hear a helicopter and I sat up like, holy shit. You know, but then it became a joke, right? It actually helped me. But, you know, the Army each had a psych force. Mine was a wonderful guy, and we had a wonderful chaplain that really helped us. And so we were followed and we were helped. The company gave us six or eight months off, I think. And then they really took care of us. And we all had jobs. And so Mark basically retired almost immediately. He did some security work for the company, but Mark was ready to retire. Tom retired a little bit too. I was the only one that really stayed on.

3:56:54And so, but just getting your feet on the ground, just trying to, you know, get up and turn on a stove, just look at, oh, my God, I can turn a stove on. or used to urinate in a plastic bottle. So if I sat up out of my hammock, I had to ask guard permission to urinate and he'd put a flashlight on you, you'd pee in a bottle. It's like, well, I can get up and go to the bathroom on my own. I don't have to ask anybody. But this thing is ingrained in your head, right? So even though you know you can get up and go to the bathroom or go to the kitchen or do something, you're still kind of like, psychologically, you're just decompressing.

3:57:32So there was a large adjustment on that. I can imagine. A large adjustment on that. And I just thank God for the help that the three of us had compared to other people. And then we knew our future was going to change, right, for all of us. And I have not done—I can't remember the last time I did a television interview. But the first couple of years out, there was a lot of demand. And we wrote our book. We had to do like a book tour and stuff like that. And then, you know, it was the five minutes of fame. And I will tell you this, when that was over, it was fine with me. I learned one thing, especially up in New York City and you're doing these talk shows and all this stuff, right?

3:58:24there are some people who just eat that up and they want to just be in front of the camera they just want to I want to support our mission and what we're about and our book and all of that stuff but I didn't really necessarily want to do that and I'll never forget I'm leaving New York City I go to the airport and our book has just been launched and they say number one New York Times I'm dose number two, and the publishers are going back and forth and arguing. So I walk into a bookstore in the airport, and there's like 100 of our books stacked up in this big elaborate display, and there's a cardboard cutout of pictures of us.

3:59:05And I just stood there in front of it. Not a person recognized me. I'm on the news. We're on the news. I'm just standing there, and I'm like, it's kind of funny. And I'm sitting there with people picking up the book and buying it and looking at it, And I'm really humbled, but I was like, wow. And I'll never forget, I walked into a Target, and I didn't know that Starbucks was in Target or whatever, and I got a cup of coffee. And this guy walks up behind me, and he just whispers in my ear. He goes, hey, bro, I got the coffee. Welcome back. Wow. And walked away. didn't want to do anything else, you know, so I was like, wow.

3:59:56And then I got rolled up into the whole basically, you know, reintegration for other people and a guinea pig for the Bergdahl thing. And, you know, there were other things that were happening. And then you're balancing your professional life. And my company gave me a lot of leeway, right, and a lot of support. And so it ended up working out. But I think just that transition back, it was a few months in to where it was just a lot going on. I mean, you go to a—I was delivered to my parents' house first, right? We come off a private jet, and there's a security team, and there must be 50 news trucks out there, right?

4:00:44And so I asked everybody, I said, hey, I'll send my daughter and my son out to talk to you. I just need a little downtime. But you can talk to my kids. So they interviewed my children. And I went in with my old man. I sat out back with him by the pool and just, you know, he had that clarity of thought kind of telling me what I needed to do. And looked outside a couple hours later, the new trucks were gone. So the security guy from our company actually drove us. I don't know what it was to get. Oh, I know what it was. Wendy's Chili. My dad and my son would always make a run with my dad like Wendy's Chili.

4:01:23So we went to get that, and when we came back in, there was a reporter. Her and her cameraman were there, but the van was closed up and all. And they said, hey, we don't want to put a camera on it. We just want to just give you a hug and thanks. And they left. I thought it was very human of them to do that. But that's a lot of stuff, right? Right? I mean, for you, Sean, taking your show to where it's going, right? A transition where nobody knows you, you're in your garage doing your thing or whatever, then it's like, hey, can I have a little space or a little piece? Or everybody wants to touch the magic, right?

4:02:00And I don't fault them for it, but, you know, how many touches can you get before they start stripping stuff off you, right? So where's your responsibility? Kind of tell your story and support, but then keep this straight. so um i think we did a good job of it um you know we're all healthy and happy and you know tom's uh up in tennessee somewhere he's got a little cattle farm he's raising cows and um i think his son's up there with him we we don't talk to tom as much i mean every few months we check in or whatever mark lives you know less than an hour south of me so my wife and his wife and him were close.

4:02:41One of the seventh group guys retired down there, CW5, and a couple of my peers that weren't so common all are close, and we've got a good network of friends. But yeah, it's been... This has really come to do the show was kind of a reawakening of sense where I... And I know after this interview is done, stuff's going to pop into my head that I remember. But, you know, I think we all came out okay. You know, we always said, and I told, told Mark and Tom this, I said, look, we're, we're affected. We just don't know till we get home. Right. And I don't think anybody, I think everybody came out good.

4:03:27You know, our lives are changed forever. I think in the long run, this was a gift for me. but it's enabled me to do some things that otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do. I don't think so by the odds, but I wouldn't go back through it for anything. You know, and we have to forget some people didn't make it out. And unfortunately, the world's upside down, right? So some of the stuff that I did to support SEER when I came back and go talk to DOD folks in active duty was just a win for me is if I can give them anything that may help them if it happens to them or somebody else, it's a win. That's why.

4:04:07Just doing the show is just to give back to the community, you know, what you're already doing, you know. What was it like to see the twins? You know, my father was the hardest. The twins were kind of emotional for a few minutes, but then they had brought so many toys and gifts in for those two little kids, and they brought us into this room. They were just like, you know, hey, Dad, you know, whatever. And their mom had put a picture of me by the bed, so they knew who I was. But it was whether with my children, the twins, my father, any of my family there, right? I could only take about 10 minutes, and I had to get out.

4:04:55It was the, I'm looking for the right word, the energy. Overwhelming. Overwhelming. And they told us that. And when I walked in to see everybody, I was very happy. But then it got to where I almost couldn't breathe, and I had to roll out. I had to do it over the next day or so. So I had to take it in just chunks and pieces. And the psych was there saying, this is totally normal. You're going to be overwhelmed. And we were. And I remember the first night, having my own room, being by myself in my room in the hospital, just laying there, kind of breathing, nobody around you, solo for the first time in years.

4:05:46I was able to kind of decompress. And I remember talking to Mark the next morning. Our rooms were too far apart and said, how are you feeling? He said, yeah, man, it's a lot. It's a lot. And then the reunification with your family, then the reintegration process. But something that really shocked me was one of the psychs said, hey, Keith, the guys in the burn unit want to see you. if you guys would make time for them bamzy has an unbelievable burn unit for paraplegious everybody all wounded veterans right and so um i'm like okay let's go see them right they saw us on tv they know we're in the building these guys have lost arms limbs eyes you know and as we're rolling in there there's this kid and he was a guardsman he was like a spec four and he's in a wheelchair with all four arms and all four legs, and there's screws down every single leg and every single arm, right?

4:06:52You guys, you came. You guys came. We've been waiting for you to come. And his mom was with him. He goes, man, I'm sorry for you guys. I hate you guys had to go through it. And he's like this, you know. And I said, how are you? He was an IED. His truck got hit by. He said, I'm good. He said, why? He said, because I'm going to walk. And he didn't. And he said, once they get all these fractures done, he said, I'm good. He said, the guys inside aren't. And when I actually went in the unit and we just started shaking hands or stumps or, you know, and saw those guys, that's when the war set in. Like, whoa, this stuff's been going on now, you know.

4:07:33And to see the care that those servicemen were getting in there, tier one, just tier one. But to see, I remember the next day we had a tour of the facility, and they had a wave machine, right? And there was a sergeant in there, young black guy. I think he just had one arm. and he's the fucking wave machine instructor. That bitch got on the surfboard. He's on his stumps and he's like, what are you doing? He's got a purpose, right? He said, I'm rehabilitating people, right? And just like his attitude and everything, he had, I can't remember. I think he was below the knee and totally one-armed. He got up, put on, he's talking to us.

4:08:26Then another guy's in there. He's a shooting instructor. and the one guy to serve was burned over like 80 % of his body, just head to toe. And his attitude, man, was like, holy geez. Just like, and I'm looking at all these people, and I'm like, we didn't go through shit. So to see what all those men and women went through, right, and they're scarred forever, right? They're going to adjust the way they do things forever. It was very humbling. I was like, we didn't do anything. You know, we didn't do anything. But I'll never forget the kid. He's this young spec four, and he's like this, and he's like, no, I'm good.

4:09:15When they get this shit out, I'm walking fine. I'm like, okay. But, you know, he said, they're waiting for you. And his mom was thanking us for taking the time to talk to him. I'm like, no, man, that guy's, you know, talking to you guys. That's what it's about. it's amazing what the human mind can overcome. You guys, look at that. I think... Five years. Yeah. Yeah.

4:09:43It's amazing what so many of those people just went through. But to come back to everything that had been happening was an eye-opener, an eye-opener. Just taking for granted, getting in your truck and going and getting a burger. How long did it take you to reintegrate?

4:10:08I don't know. I saw a counselor probably for a year. I transitioned from the Army counselor to civilian counselor. It was more like checkups. I think we reintegrated pretty quickly within months because we were so busy. Right? And so we were going and visiting places, speaking, legal stuff started to happen. And so we were, you know, I had to find a house and everybody had needed furniture and clothing. And I mean, start from scratch, right? So there were things that kept you occupied. If we would have just come back sitting in a hospital somewhere, I don't know what would have happened. But I think we all, now we all had challenges.

4:10:58You know, I wasn't married, so I didn't come back to a divorce like Mark and Tom did. So for them, you know, they had a lot to take on personally when they got back. And they did amazing. But you have personal challenges and your professional challenges, or what are we doing, or we have a job. And, you know, it sounds funny, but it wasn't funny to us, you know. So, I mean, worrying about, of course we had a job, right? But we didn't know what's actually all going on. So I remember my father sent me down by the pool the night that I got back. He goes, take a deep breath. You got no more worries.

4:11:39He said, just let it unfold. You're okay. Just let it unfold. And then my father saw from A to Z, man. He just, he was like that. And it did. And it was bumpy. You know, some parts are, I'm saying it was like a kumbaya. We're all dancing in a rose garden. But we had good support around us, and we had each other, and we had an amazing legal team. You know, we've got two attorneys. One's never been in the military, and one is a 160th plank holder. So I told Mark and Tom, because I'd been through something with our attorneys before, or with one in particular when we saw the guy shot down there. He basically, I was telling a friend of mine, a retired 75th Regiment guy, about this.

4:12:38He said, oh, my brother is the attorney representing him down there. So I met him like a day later, and I was doing some other stuff he helped me with. And so when I was in captivity, I told Mark and Tom, I said, I don't care what anybody does, but this is the guy I'm going to. And I'm not going to mention him now, but people in the community know him, and he's a genius. And his other part that was civilian is all like brilliant too. So those two guys have taken care of all three of us. And you had somebody that had your back, but I told those guys, I said, I don't care if my family's done anything.

4:13:13This is who I have confidence in. This is who I'm going with. And they've made a difference in our lives. But they're Patriots too. So, you know, kind of funny in the community. Your lead guy is a 160th plank holder. And then the other guy was a college swimmer, U of M, brilliant. And those two took care of us. But like I said, see, we had this team of people that just kind of fell in around us that were there to help us 24-7. Man, that's good. And it made a difference. What happened to the guy that took the M4 and said he was going to kill anybody that rescued you with it? So the last time I saw him, he had the M4 around his chest, and he's all proud, and he rides off with his ponies.

4:14:06Right short guy, probably 5 '9", but a big fat belly. And so we're with the FBI in their offices in Miami, and we had a wonderful female agent down there who sees family care. Like, that's what she does. You know, she looks after victims, crime victims. Name's Dahlia, wonderful woman. And then Eddie, one of the guys that's on the plane is down there, and he goes, let me show you something. He brings in the M4. There was a hole through the magazine well. And I'm like, that's my M4? Obviously, Mill Group was signed out for Mill Group. He goes, yep. And I said, well, where'd the hole come from? Your boy, when they went in to bump his camp, he said that's where he took him around.

4:14:52So for me to see the M4 there with a hole through the magazine well that the fat guy was carrying, you know, I was like, I told him I wouldn't want to fight our people, you know. And I told him, I said, I don't want to fire dark guys. Why do you? It was just, it was bravo, right? And I asked him if I could keep the rifle, and obviously it's evidence, so I can't keep it. But I had to write a letter. You know, I wish they could demil it or something or let me have it. I mean, you know, put it above the fireplace, but that's a heck of a story, you know? Damn. But, yeah, I guess he, you know, I guess he had it on when he went down.

4:15:33Man. And you went back to work. Yeah. Yeah. You were on the bird domes. Yeah. So I was a guinea pig.

4:15:46So the reintegration folks, along with other government folks, were always training to bring him back and others. I was used with reintegration guys as kind of a guinea pig, like, how would I react? If you and your buddies come in to get me, what do you think I'm going to do? So it was all a profile issue. And what I learned about what really happened with Bergdahl, it wasn't the story that the news was painting. Did he do something wrong? Yeah. I'm not agreeing with the way it went down. Real quick, why don't you paint the story of what the media was saying? Well, he basically deserted, right?

4:16:40Which he did. He rolled up and he rolled out. I did not learn until reintegration, and a few soft guys who were in reintegration that handled his reintegration, And he had some legitimate concerns about what was going on. And I don't think that they were handled correctly. And Doug calls me one day from BAMC and said that Bo had handed out a few gifts to everybody. And I never met him face to face. I was just a guy. Now I interface with his parents. And so he said he brought us all a compass to give us so we never lose our way, right? Some kind of deep stuff there. And those guys who are hardcore, soft guys, their job was not to judge.

4:17:40Their job was to reintegrate. And I always told everybody the mission there, although difficult because the actions that were taken, you still got to stay mission focused, right? So I remember I was on CNN doing an interview, and Cuomo asked me, Chris Cuomo asked me about Bergdahl and what he'd done. And I said, it doesn't matter. And they said, what? I said, our job, he's got a green ID card, is we bring him back. then we judge them for right or wrong not the Taliban not anybody else but we judge them and I saw my guys that had to actually friends of mine care for this guy and they come from your community and all but then they also know what went down tough mission for them because they took a lot of criticism right a lot of heat a lot of people did not care for what he did understandably so.

4:18:38And I'm not justifying what he did, but imagine being in those shoes. But I believed in the reintegration mission that I don't care if you're a mass murderer or you're innocent, we judge you by our standards here, right? Guilty or not guilty. And so I thought that was an important mission to support. Now, I really didn't think it was going to take as long as it did to get him out. And I remember getting a call, and I have to be delicate on this, from the green side. And his father was kind of living vicariously through his captivity. And they wanted me to do the first initial talk. And I had a phone call with his mother, his father, and their attorney.

4:19:29And it was interesting. It was interesting. And I don't want to criticize anybody here. I don't think it's necessary, you know, but there was a reluctance on the active duty side to engage with them. And I understood why once I spoke with them. But I remember there was a funeral, and he was standing around a bunch of active duty guys who were at this funeral. Nobody even knew he was.

4:20:07So I think that I've heard a lot in the community about how many people died looking for him. I think that's been exaggerated. And I'm not demeaning any of that, but that's the truth. If you want the truth, Sean, that's the truth. And I just remember, we'd do a workup. I'd fly out. I was the guinea pig. And you had your HRT folks. You had your guys from the different places. And those guys, what's the plan? What do we do? We get them out. How do we do that? And the same with Levinson and I ran. We did the same thing with him. And I just thought it was very difficult to see two of my friends have to take on that mission, right?

4:20:45Because everybody's supposed to hate this guy, right? You're supposed to, he's a deserter. We hate him, all this stuff, right? Well, their job was to look past that, get this finished, and then command can take over with what they're going to do. And it was tough. It was tough. And one, Doug Sanders, God rest his soul, he's deceased now, but he led that up with some other guys and guys I have tremendous respect for. But to be put in that position, right, you're going to catch a lot of heat, but you still have to do your job. So, yeah, I don't agree with what happened at all. I don't support what he did at all, but I can understand the mindset.

4:21:36And that's another casualty of war, right, in a sense. People are put in extreme positions and they do extreme things. Not everybody handles it the same way. I don't think he handled it correctly, right? But you ask me, right, hey, are you willing to be a guinea pig? Would you come back? And we, well, of course. That's the mission. My mission is not to judge, right? Your folks, hey, whatever I can do. I still believe I made the right choices. I think the guys that reintegrated him did an unbelievable job. Would I have wanted to be in their shoes? No. No. I mean, would you? No. But given that mission, right?

4:22:22So that was pretty dicey. And, you know, a lot of people paid a price with that. I do think it might have been exaggerated. Some of the stories I heard did not fit with what I saw. But why argue about it, you know? And I was in no position of authority either. I was a supporter, right? Didn't make a rat's ass what my opinion was. I wasn't a decision maker, right? But people who I greatly, greatly respect, you know, from the soft community, I would say, man. But they did their job. They did their job. And I respect them for it. But, you know, how hard was that? Because that was a bad deal. Yeah.

4:23:18You know? But, I mean, I don't know. I just said, you want me to go do this? I'll do this. You know? I never thought my position was to make a call. They needed somebody to do something for. And like I said, I was just a guinea pig. That's all I was. You know? And then a couple debriefings with some folks. How would I react? What would I do? What do you think? Well, all I can do is give you my opinion, right? Another person may do a totally different thing. But the effort, and this is what I do respect, and this is what I think maybe is a better answer to your question. The effort that we put to get an American back, regardless of what he's done, is what makes us different.

4:24:10It can be distasteful, and I know it was for many, right? But that's what separates us. That's what makes that flag different than other flags. And so I always stood by that, you know, you got a green ID card, we'll bring you back. What happens after that? That's on you. But it also says to me, how about the future people? hey, if we'll go to this effort to get that person back, for sure I'm coming back. Right? If you rolled up other circumstances. So there's a bigger message sent there that I believe in. That's a damn good point. You know. That's a damn good point. You know. And I'm not saying to agree or not agree.

4:24:58I'm looking at a bigger picture. Yeah. I know one of those Colombians have said, we're glad you're here. Why? Because Americans are never abandoned. You know, there was a, was it a year and a half ago? And I haven't followed the Africa thing too much, but didn't we rescue a female American missionary with a, was it your, one of your, some of your guys? Was it a group of SEALs or was it a unit? But, and a British guy, right? And I don't know if you know the people that were in on that or whatever, but I saw the guy's interview and he said, you know what I was happy about? He said, what? said she was an American.

4:25:36Thank you, America. That was my biggest hope. I don't know if I had that story confused, but I was reading about it not too long ago. But I thought it was in Africa. Wasn't she a missionary or whatever? There's been a couple. Yeah. But his interview, all he did was thank the U.S. Armed Forces. That's all he did. He couldn't say enough about us. He goes, if it would have just been me, shit, I'm still there. So that is, I think, the message that I would want to send, that no matter the what, we're going to bring you back. Because that means others are going to believe in us and that we're coming to get them, right?

4:26:20So I think that overrides what he did. Because it's not about him. It's about us and what we do, and it's about sacrifice. It's a damn good message that I've never heard. I just happen to be around there watching the whole thing and play my little part. But I believe in that message more than, like, how do I get justice? How do Mark and Tom and I really get justice? How do the people that were looking for me that died get justice? I don't have the answer. I want to get healthy. I want to have happiness. What is justice? Like if I killed every person to have me in captivity, is that justice? Would it make me feel any better?

4:27:05No. Surviving is my justice, but that's the definition for myself.

4:27:13So unpleasant or not, I think we send a bigger message. Now, if I'm a family member that lost somebody that was doing an op, it's probably not acceptable for them. But I'd ask that same family member, what if you got somebody else and goes down? It's a family member. They know we're coming. There was no win in that either, I don't believe. How do you win in that, right? No matter what you know, we're going after them, right? We don't know what the price is. We don't know who's going to pay, but we're going. And I think when you sign the dotted line, you accept that responsibility. Right and wrong, I mean, shit, Sean, your show is all about what's right, what's wrong, right?

4:28:08How do you define it? So I don't know. But I think our message that we send is most important. And my heart goes out to anybody that made a sacrifice on that. I don't want to discount that at all. But I'm not making that judgment. Yeah. Does that make sense at all? It makes perfect sense. You know. It's an aspect I've never thought of. It's a bigger message in that. I mean, and they're not all public. There was, I'll just leave it as a foreigner, that was rescued by our people less than a year after me and was reintegrated, okay, through our own folks that I got to work with.

4:29:00And some operators showed up and got him out. And all he wants to be is a U.S. citizen with him and his family. And when I say patriot and an appreciation, and I was only working with him for a little bit, mainly telephone calls, right? I got to meet him and all, but he called me. I was really a part of a support network. I'm like, I called Doug. I said, Doug, I said, he goes, yeah, we do a lot of people. He said, we don't advertise it, right? And I said, what's he want? He just wants to be a citizen. He's the biggest convert ever, right? And so, you know, how many undocumented, let's say, or unadvertised have you and your friends done?

4:29:48Right? So that's a bigger message. But now let's just say I had a spouse or a brother or somebody that paid a price during that mission. It'd be pretty hard for me to stomach if I even could. Yeah. You know. Well, Keith, what are you doing now to keep busy? My wife says I'm getting fat.

4:30:16I retired about four and a half years ago. And so we lived down in Sarasota, and I love to hunt and fish. And my wife is a foodie, craft cocktail person, excellent cook. I never enjoyed anything as far as traveling or eating. So she's kind of exposed me to that. So now I drink some fufu drinks that I would have never drank before and eat some food that I never ate before. You know, I never ate a salad. I was 54 years old. I never ate a salad until I met my wife. And so we travel, and we've got some real estate rental stuff that we dabble in. We built a few things just for rentals, but we are considering a move.

4:31:05Everybody's moved to Florida. Thank you. I appreciate you guys having whatever, right? But we're looking at maybe moving somewhere a little more rural. We had some property up in Georgia that we just sold to my best friend a few weeks ago. Actually, it says S &S Properties, and his last name starts with an S. He's a redneck genius. He's a redneck that has a chemical engineering degree and had a third-generation tow truck company and took it to a different level. So that's his logo. He came up with it. That was our LLC. I wear this hat everywhere. But going to travel, get a little healthier. and we just came back from a great fishing trip and whatever else she puts on the calendar.

4:31:50Enjoying life. As best we can, as best we can. But that sounds negative. No, yes, we are. We are enjoying life. It's funny, though. I'm 60 now, and I don't feel 60 until I look in the mirror. I imagine myself a different way. And so it's kind of that time of change. you know but i want to make memories now um we're in a position where life is good and we can make choices but i wonder and i talk about what my good friends i said can i make it to 75 before she puts me in an orange flag wheelchair and remote controls me around or will i make it to 80 but there's like there's this physical window now right it's the fourth quarter and i um i was on a mountain last year on a sheep hunt and I finished my sheep Grand Slam.

4:32:43My mentor in the sheep world, 74 years old, he was out doing me on the mountain, right? I'm a flatlander or whatever, but with some of the stuff that we do, what's really been in my conscious now is how long will I be able to physically enjoy it? Now, I don't think in a year or two I'm out and I don't feel, I know people doing a lot of different things, but talking to my friend, I'm like my best buddy. And I said, what do you think? He said, no, Keith, it's the fourth quarter now. I don't know how long it is or how good we do, but things start changing physically a little quicker as you get older, right?

4:33:17So we want to travel, and we want to make memories. And I've been lucky health-wise. I've got great health. I've been very fortunate. But, you know, we've had a few friends that have died, you know. Someone we know now is just a few years older than me. He's just come up with a stomach cancer issue. So at this age, things start to drop, right? And so I want to take this time while I can still do things physically. And I don't think it's running out in 10 years or anything, but the point is it's got me thinking different. You've been through what you've been through, 1 ,967 days in captivity. Yeah.

4:34:03No getting that back. Do you value relationships more than you used to? Ooh, that's a tough question.

4:34:14I don't think so. This would be a little mercenary.

4:34:22I value a real relationship more than I used to. Well, that's what I'm getting at. Yes. A relationship with your dad, your son. Yes. A real relationship, yes. Your wife. Yes, yes. Those in the peripheral, it's a fact of life, people move in and out of each other's lives, right? And so where's your circle? Where's your circle? My problem is I have too big of a mouth and I'm too open. I don't think it's changing. I'm trying to, but let's see how that works out, right? my openness has cost me it's cost me and you know um i'm working on that i think my circle will only become smaller not that i don't like people or a social thing or making friends but you know it's uh it makes you kind of define is this a real true friendship or not or is this It's just something casual.

4:35:28I mean, the way I think about it is, you know, if you had 24 friends. Yeah.

4:35:40You're awake for, let's say, 12 hours a day. You want to develop those relationships. You can only give 30 minutes a day to each person. Right. But as your circle gets smaller and you get more particular about who you care about and who you give your time to, whittle that down to 12, then it's an hour for each person a day. Whittle that down to six, that's two. And so what I've noticed through my journey is, yeah, everybody wants to be your friend. everybody wants you know yeah and you got to be careful because the relationships that really do matter they suffer because then you start divvying up time right and nothing really grows right but when you do whittle it down to what really matters family close close close friends for me my team here we're like a family i mean when you can invest in the relationships that you that you truly value and they'll flourish beyond what you ever would have thought.

4:36:52Yeah, I think that, look, we'll take your position. So you've earned a lot of respect in the community for what you've given back on your show, probably some animosity to you for your success. And you meet like-minded individuals all the time. That if it was just Sean by himself, no family, no, you guys would hang out all the time. Hey, I'll go fish tomorrow, let's roll. Life, right? It starts to take up time, which you're talking about, and effort. So where do you focus your effort? And it is, it's just normal for people, right? To kind of want to be around certain things like we were talking about and, you know, be a part of something.

4:37:45but you got to whittle down where there's going to be real results you know because i know you know i've got some friends of mine i would call them friends we don't see each other very often right not my close i got three very very very close friends okay but outside of that there are people that i've met especially through this captivity everything that are just awesome folks, man, men and women, that I have tremendous respect for. And if there was time to hang out with them or something, probably would. But I think maybe understanding, this is going to sound a little shallow, but I believe in it, loving yourself first so you can love those around you, understanding what you can manage and not manage is part of defining that circle in those relationships.

4:38:42And let's face it, time becomes a commodity also. And my turn 60 last year, my wife surprised me with a beautiful trip to Ireland. We were fly fishing for brown trout, which I wanted to do for years. And I'm looking around and my wife's with me and I'm here and just this gorgeous place. And I said, you'll never erase this from my head, this memory. You'll never erase it from my head. So I want to focus on those in this second half, right? And you can't always please everybody, even though you may want to. Then you get straggled out, and then those that you need to be, like yourself, are dividing up your time.

4:39:28And I think it's okay to be a little selfish. I didn't say be unappreciated or anything, But sometimes, you know, I went through something here recently. My friend said to me, my best friend goes, it's okay to be selfish. It's all right, you know. And sometimes you've got to, you know, kick back and take care of yourself. And I mean, like how many people in the best way, especially with what you do, hey, Sean, come do this. With the best intentions, right? They really appreciate you and what you do. Just come on, let's come do this. What kind of invites do you get? All this stuff, right? You can't always just go do it.

4:40:03You know, and I would imagine for you, the demands on your time now must be astronomical. I guard it very carefully. But you're growing something, right? And so I say I value relationships, but also just because you're family doesn't mean you're more valuable than a friend, is a true friend. So sometimes family can disappoint you more than your friends, right? And that becomes a challenge also because there's a deeper, you know, maybe love or connection there. And that hurts worse too, right? It hurts a little worse. So I don't know. I think about that now because in this time, in this quarter, where are you going to cut up your time to be?

4:40:56Every time you say yes to somebody, you say no to somebody else. So if you're saying yes to people that, not that they don't matter, but it's not going to go anywhere, it's a dead end, then you're saying no to somebody that you love. Right. And starving them of their time. And overcommitting yourself. Yep. That's what I'm, in the past, have been guilty of. And I'm trying to maybe, when I make a commitment to something, does it have real value? is that just being a nice guy that can be noble or whatever, but does that have real value? And so my wife has helped me with that. Say, hold on a second.

4:41:41What are you doing? You got a good woman. She's got an instinct for that stuff. But, you know, I mean, I can only imagine for you, you've become a known quantity now, right? what about those days when nobody knew who you were when you pulled out of your driveway oh i think about that but this will all end one day no i know i know you know and the five instant fame was funny i it's not real it's not real i i was on an interview i think it was good morning america and uh we were doing a few talk talk show things and so i get an elevator and there's a, I'm not going to throw rocks at anybody, but she's left the country and she's over where I was fishing.

4:42:31Oh, I know who you're talking about. Yeah. And she's standing there in front of me and she wasn't rude or anything, right? And then Rob Lowe's there, right? He's just cracking me up and I just see this throng of women, man. Like, there must have been 100 women outside the studio. Rob, Rob, Rob, you know?

4:42:56And I looked at him. I don't know. He'll never probably remember me. I was on the show, too, whatever. I said, careful with that film. And we got caught, you know? He goes, yeah. I was like, you know. But I was just watching him, and he was sincerely nice, right? But there was just this throng of all these women of all ages just wanting to get next to him and touch him, you know? And so you get to meet some celebrities, and I've met a bunch more or whatever, but, man, imagine just going somewhere and being yourself, you know? Like, and I won't drop names here, but we're mentioning one of my best friends and who his best friend is, right?

4:43:36And I said, what's it like when you go somewhere with him, right? And he said, Keith, he's very humble, but, like, you can't move 10 steps without. And people don't mean anything bad. That's never going away, right? And now with social media and all this stuff, wow. Wow. But nothing's free, right? There's no free lunch. That's right. My father always said, if you said fair or free to my father, argument was over. Nope, done. We're finished. We're not going to talk about this. Well, Keith, we're wrapping up the interview, but so I got one more thing for you. Yeah. You know, you've seen the show.

4:44:16you see the majority of who I interview. Right. We talk a lot about reintegration after combat, after service. Right. What do you have? It's a big struggle throughout the veteran community. I mean, suicide's at an all-time high. Okay. So what I'm going to ask is, you know, I've never met anybody like you. You've been through it five years, captivity. What advice do you have for people that are reintegrating? It's a network. It's a network around you. I was surrounded, so was Mark and Tom. We were surrounded by people that were there to support us legally, professionally, emotionally. Don't be the lone man on the hill by yourself, right?

4:45:10And I think especially type A's from this community tend to be that way. They don't want to accept help and recognize you do need help. So it's a network is the biggest thing. And my fear, so I'm set. And I could go be on my own. I'll be okay, right? My wife and I can just go off into the distance and we're fine. What about that vet who is not set, right, that every day for the rest of his or her life, they'll put on, you know. On aesthetics. Yeah. Every day they'll have that physical challenge, right, of just getting through the basics in life. And what scares me is, as I called it the sandbox, right, but as the war wound down, do the networks and the support for the vets start to wind down too?

4:46:14Because they're carrying it for the rest of their life. The rest of their life. Well, when it's not 24-7, all the new fights on YouTube or on the news or whatever, and it's not in the public's eyes, does the support, although not meant in a bad way, dwindle? So the recognition of what sacrifices these people have made, I think, is an important key to keeping the support networks going. Right? When you see all this stuff on the news every day and they ask for a donation for vets, oh, they're coming. I mean, you see an organization like Tunnel to Towers, right, that's created something long-term.

4:47:04Is our long-term care for our vets there? I mean, when I see illegal immigrants in a hotel with a check, a cell phone, I'm not trying to hurt these people, right? All the support, and then I see a homeless vet, and I'm like, what's going on, right? And then also the psychological side of it. Not only do some of our folks have to deal with the physical trauma, but the mental trauma. Is that support going to remain a priority? Is it five years after the war, 10 years after the war, 15 years after the war, is that still going to be there? That's my fear for people who have paid a price. And this focus on, and not trying to go political here, but this focus on immigration over people that, okay, protected the right for that to even happen.

4:48:04I think they should be front of the line. I don't think the military is a place for social experimentation. I think the military is a place where it makes our country safe so we can have social experimentation. right and i just like your show does you keep the light on and i'm lucky not everybody's lucky so that's my worry personally for those folks is how how does that stay relevant i think it's just natural that people start to see other things and move on and think oh we were in war 15 years ago. Well, that person still doesn't have any legs, right? They're still struggling with long-term health issues, physical.

4:48:51We don't even know about psychological. How can they make a living? What can they do? So how strong is that compared to five years ago right now? I don't know. But I would say that's my fear, keeping the light on. And you see it, especially here with this, when it goes on. So I hope that we as a country can keep that going. But it scares me. It scares me that those people will be forgotten after time. But they're living with everything that they have until the end of their time. So some of these big organizations that have become well-organized, you know, I like that. But I just don't know. I just don't know.

4:49:45I mean, how do you feel about that? Do you think that the support is waning with time?

4:49:53I think that there are some great organizations out there that will continue to develop and do the right things. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the government. right but it's the

4:50:16how do i say this

4:50:21it's the giving back to the community that's going to keep it alive right taking care of each other that's what's going to keep it going right it's mentoring guys you know i got out I quit contracting in 2015. That's 10 years ago. But I'm still giving back. I'm still coaching. I'm still bringing exposure to guys that have done amazing stuff like yourself that can transform their business. And there's a number of other organizations out there that do that. Right. And so if you're asking what my advice would be, would be to seek those organizations out exactly what you said a network build a circle that you can lean on yeah yeah lean on each other except some help man because nobody's going to take care of us except ourselves yeah that's it and you know and it's not just us it's our families that suffer too you know you know i i've had a couple of relationships that were just damaged just by my absence.

4:51:27And so, you know, do those ever get back? You don't know. But yeah, I don't know, Sean. I think keeping the light on, isn't that Norm that says that in the hotel thing? Hey, we leave the light on for you, right? But the light's a beacon. Yeah. And I think it's important. And I like seeing folks, men and women, that have come out and turn it into a positive. For me, whether writing the book or—we wrote the book. I didn't write the book on, right? or going to teach a class somewhere or to speak to a group of people. That's me being selfish, winning for myself, right, just giving back. And that's a way to defeat those that at one time had me defeated.

4:52:19So that's where I'm at with that. But we've got a generation of really young folks that have suffered greatly, and they're going to need our support for a long time. And I don't think they're looking for a handout. I think they're looking maybe just for a little leg up. You know, yeah. And it's tough to see some of the folks that, you know, have gone through some things. I met a guy that's a wounded warrior when I was at Northrop Grumman, and he was a program manager. He was a Marine captain, and he was at Fallujah. Big guy, but he had a limp, and he was getting on a plane with me. We had an RPG round go through his thigh and not go off and get stuck.

4:53:18Right? And he was working for our company, totally fine. He has a little bit of a limp, but I said, well, tell me some stories about there because he was on the first end ramping. Wow. He's like, man, I'm lucky. His attitude was unbelievable. He's an officer, came back, whatever. And I was like, wow. Wow. So when you see it firsthand, when he's like, hey, I'm one of the lucky ones because there's a lot of his guys and other people, I mean, they're never. What are you doing? So, you know, maintain the respect for our service folks. And I like what's going on now, not to get political, but to shake up and kind of I would see it as a return to our core value of what we're about, right?

4:54:11Not a social experiment, not a DEI experiment. I mean, we're here to do one thing, defend this country. And that doesn't get done with a quality of outcome, and as noble as that might be. You know, I remember a cartoon years ago, and it showed this little kid, and he was kind of nerdy. And his dad was a little bit older and overweight, and he couldn't get on the football field. It was in high school. I can't remember why I married this. And his dad said, no worries, son. He goes, what? He's about 10 years old. all be working for you, right? But we all have our strengths, right? We all work to our strengths.

4:54:54So I like seeing what's going on. I mean, not everybody's smart. Some people are stupid. Not everybody's good looking. Some people are ugly, right? But this whole, hey, I don't even want to even see what my 40 time would have been when I was 18 years old. Probably would have been that fast, right? I just wasn't blessed with certain things, but I did have other strengths. So I'd like to see that stuff erased and us, everybody be who everybody is and accept who, what you can do and understand what you can't. I think that better prepares people for the future. I do too. It's called a reality check.

4:55:37The truth isn't always sweet. It rarely is. It really is. Well, Keith, it was an honor to interview you, man. Oh, man. Honored to meet you, brother. I really, really, really, you know, I, uh... Welcome home. Thank you, and thanks for the invite. I hope I could, you know, do justice to your show. It was awesome. Got a lot of impressive individuals here, like, in the show. You're one of them. Appreciate it. Thank you for being on that one. Thank you.

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