#259 Mike Durant - 160th SOAR Pilot Who Survived Black Hawk Down and 11 Days as a POW

29:30Wow. Yeah. But the point being, six hours, not a lot of time. But pretty much everybody figures out the hardest thing is hovering because hovering is, you know, you're having to do things with your feet and both of your hands and they're all doing opposite things. And it's just a coordination drill that you have to sort out. and most people get it. I would say more people probably have trouble with instruments than they do moving the sticks. The instruments is you can't see outside and you're flying based on indicators in the cockpit and, you know, bars and needles and it requires a lot of, I would call, you know, situational awareness, spatial awareness.

30:12And I would say if I had to compare the two, I think more people have trouble with instruments. but you know our class started with 80 we were cut in half and that was purely a throughput issue it wasn't that half got thrown out but we got cut to 40 and then you know i don't know what percentage ended up dropping out but i would say most make it through um and then so and then i ended up going to korea and again i didn't really want to go to medevac yet that's kind of lame I want to go to air assault battalion or something like that, where we're going to do multi-ship missions and support customers.

30:51I don't want to go fly patients around. But again, in the end, it's the freaking greatest assignment I ever could have got because I'm having to learn how to operate on my own. I was the first Blackhawk guy to get to that unit, and they still had Hueys. So I'm the most experienced freaking guy in the company with Blackhawks, and I'm 22 years old. And, you know, we flew, in the end, I flew 150 actual missions in Korea. And the only reason I know that number is because you'd get a little award every time you reached a milestone. And getting 150 was a lot. And I actually extended my time there in Korea because I liked it so much once I got there, and I was flying so much.

31:37The key to a brand new aviator is logging time. And it's hard now because helicopters are expensive. All platforms are expensive. So getting flight time, it's tougher and tougher. But to be really good and develop as a pilot, you just got to get time in the seat. I mean, that's just a fundamental truth. And so flying, I think I almost got 500 hours in my first year there, which is quite a bit for somebody right out of flight school. and they made me a unit trainer which means i'm teaching people how to fly along the demilitarized zone you had to memorize it you couldn't use a map because the idea here is if you get misoriented you got to know you know burned in your memory where the line is because if you fly over it they're going to shoot you down i mean it's just it happened i don't know if you remember this but It happened in the late or mid-'80s.

32:30A Kiowa, I think he was flying a Kiowa, a guy named Robert Hall overflew the border and the North Koreans shot him out. And that was basically, you know, what you were doing everything you could to avoid. But you would get medevac missions up near the border. So you had to know where it was. And because I was the first Black Hawk guy there, I'm the unit trainer, so that's where I got a lot of my hours, just flying and flying and flying.

32:59One other thing that was cool is the Koreans were big on building this Korean-U.S. relationship, so they sponsored a program to bring family members over. So my parents got to come over and spend some time traveling around, visiting the DMZ, but my commander let me take my father up in the Black Hawk along the DMZ. Oh, man, that's cool. It might have been the high point of his life. I don't know. I mean, he was beaming when that was over. And, of course, I did some slightly aggressive stuff for the aircraft. But, you know, in the end, we all got on the air. You scared the shit out of your old man.

33:35Oh, hell yeah. Wouldn't you? If I could have made him throw up, I would have. Which is actually not that hard. But anyway, so awesome experience, lots of missions, really cool missions, you know, and come out of there experienced and feeling good about who I was as a pilot, and then heard about this special unit. How did you hear about it? So it literally was in a bar. I mean, there's a guy there whispering about, yeah, well, they just formed this unit at Fort Campbell, counter-terrorist, you know, they were going to go in and rescue the hostages in Iran, because not everybody knows this, but there was a second attempt that was going to happen.

34:21Everybody knows about Eagle Claw, not everybody, but people that follow the military, but not everyone knows that there was a second attempt going to be made, and that's the birth of the 160th. The 160th was put together and conducting rehearsals and modifying aircraft in order to be better prepared for the second go-around. Because the reason Eagle Claw didn't work, as well as it should have, is it was just clued together. It was not treated like a joint readiness train-up. It was grab these helicopters here and these pilots here and stick them on this ship. And they're just going to all meet in the desert and go assault the target.

35:02There was not an adequate train-up or preparation, and the results were catastrophic. So anyway, so this unit's formed, and the best decision that could have ever been made with regard once the hostages got released, I'm sure most people may not remember this, but when Ronald Reagan took office within days, the hostages all got released. And so now you've got this task force that has been created to go do a rescue that doesn't need to be done. What do you do? Well, somebody went to the Hill and said, we got to maintain this. I mean, you just don't know where it's going to happen next. And if you try to throw together assets at the 11th hour, the outcome is probably going to be the same as it was in Eagle Claw.

35:48So there was a decision made to maintain the unit, and that was the birth of the 160th. So TF160, no shit, what year was that? Early 80s. I mean, probably 83, 82, 83. because I'm in Korea in 85, 86. So was the unit already, was TF-160 already stood up or were you one of the initial pilots? No, I'm not one of the plank holders. I wasn't too far behind, but some of the plank holders obviously were still there. But no, I was not. So I find out about the unit and I'm thinking, you know, I read Tom Clancy books. This sounds pretty freaking cool. And it did, you know, I was like, I'd love to do that.

36:33And I go to Fort Campbell. I'm assigned to the 101st. What year is this? 88. Shit, so they've only been around for five years? Yeah. Fuck, man, that's cool. Yeah. I mean, it was still in its early stages of development. Yeah. And again, I don't know how this works. So I sign in when I get to Fort Campbell, sign in at 101st, and then I go to the bunker. you know it's this clandestine looking place that no one would know was even there and and i i go talk to the recruiter for the 160th and said hey i'd like to assess and he says uh okay so what's your status i said well i just signed in 101st he said i mean we could go to bat for you and try to get you out of that but to us you're not that valuable because yeah you got a fair amount of flight time you know i think i had 800 hours but you haven't done a lot of multi-ship, you don't have a ton of night vision goggle time, why don't you do some time in the 101st, build up that experience, and then come back.

37:41And I'm like, all right. So I went and did two years in the 101st, went to instructor pilot course, built a lot of multi-ship formation time, night vision goggle time, and then I went back. And it's a pretty robust selection process and training process. And I'm fortunate in that I'm not a great athlete. I'm a decent scholar. I'm not all that good looking. I can't run all that fast, but I can fly a freaking Blackhawk. I mean, it was like it was an extension of me. That is how it felt. When I strapped that thing on, it's like I just felt part of it. and had enough, you know, intellectual capacity to be able to manage all the systems.

38:31And then another part of flying that I don't think most people appreciate, certainly those kind of missions, is you have to have a perspective that is larger than just yourself. You have to, you know, where's the ground force? Where's the other aircraft? Where's the threat? Where's the weather? Where's the terrain? You know, all those things, you're constantly, they're changing, they're dynamic, and you've got to keep track of all that. in addition to doing all this. So, and I was good at all that. I mean, I'm not suggesting I was the goat, but I was pretty damn good. And so, I didn't really struggle with assessment or the training at all.

39:08I mean, the washout rate is fairly high, but I got through it pretty well. And it's, you know, it's physical fitness, it's a psych eval, it's a swim test, it's land nav, it's, you know, And it was so early on in the development of the unit that we didn't have what is now Special Operations Aviation Training Battalion. We didn't have anything. The training was done by operational unit guys. So your instructor is a flight line guy who just got assigned to go provide flight instruction for these new guys. There was no... It was like an extra duty. Right. Now, my class was actually the first Green Platoon class.

39:57So it's just coming to life. They - What does that mean, Green Platoon class? It's the training. It's like Green Team, right? Yeah. It's the curriculum and the - So you're the first one that actually went through a pipeline. In Green Platoon, yes. It was the first class. Now, there's been training before, obviously, but it was all sort of ad hoc, right? Yeah. But we were the first ones to actually go through Green Platoon. Wow. So you're damn near a plank. You're a plank owner of the training platoon. I guess so. I guess you can say that. Right on. And I'm a world record holder. And you're a world record holder.

40:37So, like I said, it wasn't a huge challenge for me. Navigation's hard. You know, when you're in MVGs and there's not a lot of terrain to deal with, which is pretty much the case. in this part of the country. I mean, there's hills, but when you're up at a couple hundred feet, the hills don't pop out like you do when you're on the ground. The navigation's a bit of a challenge. If there's anything I'm not great at, I would say it's land navigation. But we were getting technology in the cockpit that was a huge help. You know, we had Omega systems at the time, which are rudimentary versions of GPS.

41:20Yes, they're not using satellites, but it's basically a digital navigation capability. Now, we were not allowed to rely on that. We had to use the map and planning and time and speed and figure all that out. I did it good enough to pass, is all I can say. But everything else I was really good at. And got through Green Platoon, got the beret put on by another fellow New Hampshire boy. uh the coach we call him now general retired daily uh great american just a great been shot down seven times in vietnam holy shit just just anyway i i have a there's a special place in all our our hearts who know him uh for him and he's he's still he's still with us but uh anyhow he put my beret on me and now i'm feeling really good right i'm a i'm a member i'm a card carrying member of this organization.

42:15And right out of the gate, the first training mission, we're going to Thailand with ST-6 all on one bird. And they arrive, two fast boats on the aircraft. We put two helicopters on the aircraft and fly over there for a training mission. We had been given what we call relaxed grooming standards, meaning we could grow our hair long. That doesn't happen all that often in the army, right? So I'm thinking, this really is a Tom Clancy book, you know? And, you know, who are we fooling? Nobody. But anyway, we land over there in the middle of the night, we offload all this stuff, stick it in a hangar, and we went about just doing everything under the sun for the next three weeks.

43:01Live fire. I mean, what amazed me is that these are not ranges okay the the the the thai special forces went out and basically told the people who live there we're going to shoot the shit out of this area and you need to clear out you can come back on saturday that's a range that's a range okay so we're out there firing miniguns everything else and i mean we we slept in the jungle one night uh you know because it It was a bilat between the six guys and the Thai Special Forces. And anyhow, we did some jumping with them. I mean, just everything. I mean, it was everything I imagined it would be. But that's got to be a staunch difference from the 101st to working with still Team 6 right off of that.

43:52Yeah, I mean, where you couldn't afford freaking pens and pencils to do your mission planning. Now it's like, what do you need? Yeah, the golden Connex box. Absolutely. I will say that the six guys, some of them, partied a little too much at the end. No. I know it comes in a shock. And they actually had to be dropped off in Hawaii because they were in that bad shape. They were so dehydrated. Maybe it was from their time in the jungle. I'm not sure. I'm sure. But I always love working with them. We work with them quite a bit. And, you know, this whole who's better, six or Delta, irrelevant to me, I'm honored to say I trained and flew both organizations fairly regularly and have tremendous respect for both communities.

44:43And anyway, you know, that's out of the game. And then within six months, I deploy on my first real world op, Operation Prime Chance. This also goes by the name of Ernest Will. The Iranians and the Iraqis were having a skirmish. And the Iranians, as part of this, were mining the Persian Gulf. And they were hitting oil tankers. And I think it was Reagan re-flagged some foreign ships under U.S. flag to justify using our military to defend these ships. That may not be exactly right, but I believe that that was the rationale behind the re-flagging. It's easier to sell if you say these are U.S. ships transitioning to the Persian Gulf at risk of being blown up by the Iranians.

45:40That's why we got special ops units on oil derricks in the Persian Gulf, blasting the boats, the Iranian boats that they catch landmines. It was winding down by the time I got there. Before I got there was the first ever engagement using night vision goggles. It was one of our unit guys, little bird gun. Dave Stone Cold caught the Iranians dropping the tail on this bog hammer, I think they were called. on video, and there's a mine, and they're pushing it off. And, of course, you've got to get frigging permission from the head shed all the way back in D.C., you know, like, are you sure? Yeah, we're sure.

46:23It's Iranian. They're putting a mine in the ocean. Okay, take them out. And they, it was the Iran-Ajar was the name of the boat, and the steering wheel for the Iran-Ajar is still hanging in the regimental headquarters at the unit. and they there were survivors and one of the survivors uh so one one of the rockets configurations for our 2.75 inch rockets is a flechette it has 2 000 little darts in it basically and it it flies out i don't remember what distance maybe 400 meters the the nose cone opens and these darts go out and you hit a much broader area obviously you're not going to take out you know an armored vehicle with it, but if you're trying to take out, you know, troops in the open or whatever, it's a very effective weapon.

47:11And one of the guys, one of the Iranians, had a flechette in his face when he got captured. And I don't remember which SEAL team it was, but they were on the oil derrick with us. So they boarded the ship, captured these guys, you know, put them on the helicopters, brought them back. Again, this is before I got there. But it was the first night vision goggle engagement in history. I will say this about that mission. It was the hardest flying I think I've ever done. Because the sandstorms blow through there, just like they do in the desert. But you're over the water. And you can't see shit. I mean, we would describe it as flying inside a ping pong ball.

48:01I mean, imagine what you could see inside a ping pong ball. Nothing, right? And you're 30 feet over the water and flying 100-plus miles an hour, 110 knots usually is what we flew. And, I mean, it was tough. And then we're landing on this very tight oil platform. It was not designed for helicopters. And we're putting Little Birds, Blackhawks, the customers, us, sport people, all on this thing. As I was coming up here, I was trying to think of what's the best way to describe this. And the thing that came to mind, never thought of before, was Thunderdome. I don't know if you remember the Mad Max movie where they're out over the water.

48:43That was kind of what it was like. I mean, it's coming out of the water in the middle of the Persian Gulf, and we're putting all these assets on it and launching these missions from this place. Our forward operating location was in Bahrain. And we would fly out to the oil platform from Bahrain when we did a crew swap or bring the customers out or back or whatever. But like I said, it was winding down by the time I got there. So flying inside the ping pong ball, I mean, this is where using your instruments really comes in handy, correct? Yes. Now, it's a combination. You know, the good thing is at this point with the night vision goggles, somebody finally had the idea, we need to cut the bottoms off of these.

49:29Because in the early days of night vision goggles, it was a full face goggle, meaning it's a box you put over your face and then the two tubes stick out the front of the box. So you can't see underneath the tubes at all. When I got trained on goggles in flight school, we wore full face goggles. and you would fly them in the daytime with filters over the tubes that replicated getting the right amount of light into the tubes so it seemed like it was at night that was freaking hard somebody figured out what this is we're making this way harder it needs to be let's get rid of the box and then we ultimately put you know a mount on there where they where they flip up instead of being sitting right on your face and now you can see underneath so you when you're down low over the water, unless it's perfectly calm, there's usually a little ripple.

50:20And you could kind of see that out of your periphery. But I mean, it's the margin of error is very, very, very small. And, you know, I try to explain to people part of why one pilot is on the controls, meaning you're responsible to keep the machine out of the water. The other guy does the radios and putting the navigation information in and all that stuff that distracts away and gets you inside the cockpit. And for people to understand how quickly that can go to shit, think about all the texting and driving problems we have. It's because people change their focus from looking outside the car and controlling the vehicle to their phone, and all of a sudden they're drifting over their center line.

51:11Well, if that's you in that helicopter at 30 feet, you're in the water. I mean, because it happens that fast. So, you know, very disciplined about who's on the controls, who's doing the mission management. And we also had infrared lights on the aircraft that you can't see without goggles on. And once you get down to 30 feet, you can start to see those lights reflecting off the water. So that's another, so you got the radar altimeter, which is giving you your absolute elevation above the water, which was 30 feet you're trying to maintain that and then you got that's this sort of peripheral where you can see your lights reflecting and then you can see in some cases the ripple of the water but you got i mean you got to be hyper focused yeah to make sure you don't and we've lost we've lost birds i mean we lost a bird last year in the water uh not really the same scenario but i mean overwater flying low level is to be taken seriously and again you know i i said earlier i think it was the hardest flying i may have ever done but you get better right you so you survive it you learn you gain new experiences and you move on you guys do some wild shit man do you do you happen to know alan mac yeah yeah i listen i listen to his podcast yeah he's also a new hampshire boy is he i think so man i think i love that guy yeah yeah a lot of good shit comes out of new hampshire it's not like miss it free or die right when we launched this show it didn't come with a handbook.

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54:50The best of luck got equal numbers. Dr. Del Dr. Del Mel Know

55:17We'll be right back.

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56:47And that will be the only one that I was on where we didn't lose somebody. And again, just great, great execution and great training and great assets. And just everything about it was, again, the unit lived up to my every wildest expectation and beyond. How fast was the unit growing back then? We were really small. And that's, again, you think about how fortunate I was is, you know, to get there at that point in history, it was very small. You know, in terms of numbers of helicopters, this is a guess. I might say 50? I don't know. 50 pilots? No, helicopters, you know, maybe a couple hundred pilots.

57:33Shit. It was really rough. I could be off by order of magnitude there. I don't know. But it was much smaller than it is now. Tight community? What's the camaraderie like? I mean, you know, I... I pretty much grew up as a SEAL, interviewed lots of Delta guys, lots of Green Berets, SEALs, Force Recon, MARSOC, Rangers, lots of ground guys. I've only done a couple of pilots. I don't think when I interviewed Alan Mack, I think we were talking about that offline. I don't think we really got into the team life camaraderie. What is that like? Super tight. It is. Oh, absolutely. A lot of competition among the platforms, right?

58:17I'll bet. Yeah. They're all idiots. Probably a lot of competition within the platform. Yeah. Yeah. To a certain extent. Yeah. Between the companies and that sort of thing. But it was all, to me, to try to get us to strive to be better. Our sole focus was meeting or exceeding the customer's expectations. We knew more than any organization I'd ever been a part of in my life. And of course, I was still fairly young, but the focus was on the mission and on the customer's mission. And we would do anything to make sure we were going to fill that need for that customer. Who was your customer? Delta, SEAL Team 6, Rangers, Air Force Special Tactics.

59:04MARSOC didn't exist at the time. And that was pretty much it. I mean, we rotate among those three entities. How do you rotate? Is it, I mean, is it like a, I don't know, is it like a cycle where Mike Durant's team is with Delta, then it goes to Dev Group, then it goes to Rangers? I mean, is it like a rotation or? Well, I think it was primarily driven by the customer's training requirements. You know, we'd have our own where we would do things just for us. But let's say, you know, ST6 needs to do a ship takedown with a half, you know, a helo assault force and a bath. Then they're going to reach out to us and say, we need whatever, four, six Blackhawks, four little birds for this training period at this time.

59:53And then, you know, we always had a standby mission. So we've got to keep that intact because there's a rapid response standby capability that is there 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. So that's the priority. Even if it's a real world, you've got to maintain that. So whatever assets are left, and sometimes you'd have to cross load between companies because, you know, whatever the requirements were. So I think it's really, again, I wasn't involved in the ops side all that much. I just kind of, hey, we're going to Bay Capes and we're going to go, you know, support ST-62, you know, ship takedowns.

1:00:35But it was, again, to me, for us, that's the ideal situation. And, you know, one day you're with this amazing group of people doing this crazy thing. And the next day you're over here with these guys doing that crazy thing. And they're all freaking awesome. And it was just, I mean, I miss it bad. But I don't want to say you grow out of it. You reach a point where, I can't do this anymore. This is somebody else's job. So anyway, Prime Chance. By the way, Prime Chance is the first combat action by US SOCOM. So US SOCOM is formed just before Prime Chance and in their history. I remember, I didn't know this until I read about it in the last couple of years, where they talked about that was the first, you know, real-world combat action by this newly formed U.S.

1:01:28Special Operations Command. Wow. Yeah. The unit had been in Grenada, the 160th, and that was their baptism by fire, but SOCOM hadn't been formed yet. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right, so we do all that, and then not shortly after that, this incredible guy named Cliff Walcott sort of enters my world. Cliff was a Cobra guy that had been in the unit a little bit longer than me, and he had this idea where he wanted to turn our Blackhawks into attack helicopters. And any other place in the world, they would have said, you know, go have your fantasy somewhere else. Meanwhile, just go do your job. But it was the 160th, and he had an ability to convince people of things that I could never do.

1:02:20We used to say he could sell coolers to Eskimos. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but that's a leap. I mean, to create a new—this is a dramatically different mission, training, capability, and it's coming from the ground up, right? And I was in the right place at the right time. I was pretty good at what I did. He and I got along, and I kind of became his, not necessarily his right-hand man, but pretty darn close. And so got to be part of the development of the armed Blackhawk from the moment we said, man, wouldn't this be cool, all the way to two conflicts later, shooting it in combat for the first time.

1:03:08Wow. And I mean, again, remember, this is 90-ish. We're designing this thing with pencil and paper. I mean, I actually went to Walmart and bought, you know, you buy them for kids, you can draw like squares and triangles with this little plastic template thing. Yeah. I went to Walmart and bought one of those so I could draw. It's basically an engineering diagram of how we wanted to manage the rockets and manage the guns through the system in the aircraft to provide to the engineers at Rockwell Collins who are actually going to write the software to do it. So, I mean, this is how primitive we are.

1:03:49Holy shit. We're handwriting this stuff. You know, I want to press on this button and it's going to take me to this page and then I'll get to pick from these different types of rockets. Because in a tube, like for us, we usually carry 19-shot rocket pods. You could put flechettes in there, HE in there, flares in there. I mean, you've got to mix. And you've got to know where they are so that you can pick the one you want when you pull the trigger. So that's basically very basics on mission management. So we're designing that. We're designing what we wanted the cyclic to look like because we need a different grip.

1:04:23We can't use the standard grip from a Blackhawk because it doesn't have enough buttons on it. So we're hand-drawing that. And what are we going to use as a sight? Now, the Little Bird guys were still using grease pencils. I mean, basically, you would put your seat in a certain spot in the aircraft, and then you would count the number of screws over and the number of screws down, and you'd put a PIPA right there, and that's your aim point. No way. Yes. Holy shit. And we did the same thing. And the difference with us is Cliff was the only guy who had gotten formal attack helicopter training. The rest of us, we'll just learn how to fly.

1:05:05I mean, I never went to a single formal training course on how to fly an attack helicopter. And within a year, I'm going to be cut loose flying for these units, danger close, live fire, and then ultimately in combat. And again, I think about the timing and how fortunate I was to be at that place at that time and be a part of all that. I mean, it just doesn't happen to be able to do that sort of thing. So anyway, we're starting to develop this. And early on, we sort of stuck to the basics. Miniguns fix forward, which they'd always been capable of doing that. When they first put the miniguns on there, they thought, well, in case we ever need to use them this way, let's come up with a way that we can fix them forward with some pins.

1:05:53And then the pilots can shoot with diving fire. So that was already there. but had not really been done much. And Cliff then sort of gave it a new life, and the first thing was rocket pods. So we could put, actually, we could have put four rocket pods on there, two on each side, 19 rockets apiece. So that's a lot of rockets and miniguns. And the bird's kind of ready, but it's not really been signed off by anyone, and Just Cause happens. now just cause before the op went down was called blue spoon and we've been practicing this thing i just kind of read up on it before that we we got together today according to this book we've been practicing it for two years i knew it was years but that's about when i got to the unit was two years before that so my whole time in the unit we've been talking about blue spoon which is take down Panama.

1:06:52And just before Christmas, 1989, all the criteria are met and we get to go. And it was, again, just that mission, I would argue, one of the most successful we've ever done as a nation. I mean, 26 targets at each hour. SEAL Team 6 had multiple targets. Delta rescued Kurt Mews out of Modelo Prison. I was at Rio Hado where we had the largest airborne drop since Vietnam. And like 21 other targets. And it was conventional forces. There was Marines, Army, Special Ops, all simultaneous. First time the F-117s had ever been used, that was at Rio Hado. I saw the bombs go off. And within a couple of days, we took the place down.

1:07:48I mean, it was incredible. And I'm flying with Donovan Briley. By the way, I mentioned Cliff a couple of times. Cliff's the first loss in Somalia. He's flying with Donovan in Somalia. So they're the first two combat losses in Somalia. Donovan and I are flying in just cause. And our mission is not glamorous. us. We're going to fly with two Apaches and at least two Littlebirds, maybe four. Littlebirds are the H6s, and these are gunbirds. And we're going to go take out, be part of the force to take out Riojado. So the airfield seizure is going to be done by the Rangers that are on all these C-130s coming out of Fort Benning.

1:08:31I think it was 17 C-130s. 17? Yeah, low-level drop. I think they dropped somewhere around 800 feet. I mean, they're just rangers falling out of the sky like rain. And we're right underneath it. I mean, it was unbelievable. Again, I said our mission wasn't glamorous. We were a FARP bird, which is forward area refueling a rearming point. So we had developed this capability where the Blackhawks or Chinooks could fly in, land, put out pumps, connect the hose to our fuel tanks and provide fuel, ammunition, and rockets to the Little Birds, so we're like a mobile gas station. And then they continue to do their mission.

1:09:12So that was, you know, they don't have a long range like we do. We got a lot greater range than they do because of the fuel that we can carry. I think it's the first combat FARP we ever did as a unit, I think, because I know we didn't do one in Grenada. We didn't do one in Prime Chance. We're out in the ocean. So might have been, not necessarily anything that anyone ever takes note of, but I think it was the first combat FARP we ever did. And Donovan and I, we take off. Were we leading? I don't know. We were ahead of the Apaches, but I can't remember if the Little Birds were ahead of us. I think they probably were.

1:09:49Anyway, our bird is so laden with rockets. I mean, we're floor to ceiling in the back, full of rockets, full of minigun. We were way over gross. I mean, meaning our aircraft's too heavy. But it's combat, right? And it's, yeah, I've been to Prime Chance. That qualified as combat. But it really didn't feel like combat. This was combat. We're going to go punch somebody hard. And I'm like, I don't give a shit how much this thing weighs. We're taking it down there. So we're skipping off the freaking runway. We had to take off like an airplane because the aircraft was so heavy it wouldn't fly. And, I mean, I think we broke the wire strikes off, which are these little devices that hang down from the landing gear in case you hit a wire, it'll cut the wire.

1:10:31I think we broke them off. But, I mean, I don't know what we weighed, but we were freaking heavy. And we skipped down the road. We skipped down and finally took off, start flying, get out of the ocean. We get down there, and there's a, I think it's a ZPU-4. It was an anti-aircraft gun on the end of the airfield. And I've read different accounts here, But I think it was the Apaches that were supposed to neutralize that gun. So we get there at H-hour, 1 o 'clock in the morning. Now, H-hour got moved up on a couple of elements of this mission because, you know, once certain things started happening, this Panamanians knew this shit's going down.

1:11:14And Kurt Mews was probably the most time-sensitive thing. So I think they launched a little early and ultimately rescued him. And that's a whole other story. I think you had one of the Delta guys on here talked about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Vickers. So you've covered that already. But anyway, that was our little birds that were flying that mission. We're down literally at 1 a.m., and I'm in the cockpit with Donovan. I'm saying, eh, I don't think it's going to happen. We always sort of saber rattle, and then, you know, everything winds down. And all of a sudden, kaboom, 2 ,000 pounder goes off right in front of us.

1:11:51and it was the F-117. They were brand new. No one even knew they existed. They dropped two of those birds, dropped two 2 ,000-pounders right there, right near the barracks. Again, there's some controversy here. They claim their mission was to just scare the shit out of the PDF, the Panamanian Defense Force, not kill them because the theory is we get Manuel Noria out, they'll all convert and they'll support the new military and the new leadership, and we don't want to kill them all, we need them, right? I think that's generally the idea. There's other theories that, well, the F-117 couldn't hit the freaking backside of a freaking barn, but I don't know what the right answer is.

1:12:32All I know is those freaking bombs went off at 1 a.m. on the nose. And that's when this AAA gun starts shooting because obviously they know they're being attacked. So it's firing into the night sky. And so we're over the ocean. We're not far over the ocean, but we're right there watching. And I'm like, okay, when's the Apache going to take this freaking guy out? Because these 130s are coming in. And, you know, it's just firing into the air. And the Apache comes on the radio and says, we're returned to base. We got mechanical problems. And 60 Minutes actually did a show on this. The Apache was brand new.

1:13:09It's a great helicopter. I'm not bashing the aircraft. Anytime you feel new capability, you're going to encounter stuff that just didn't get tested thoroughly enough or the requirements were slightly off. I think primarily it was a humidity issue with the Apaches because it's obviously very humid in Panama. But I know there was also a vibration issue where when they turned the turret gun, which is a 30-millimeter, it was creating vibration that was popping breakers, I think. Again, I don't know 100 % sure, but all I can tell you is they mission aborted like right after we got there. and i have one regret actually i have a couple we should have just maneuvered our blackhawk in and shot the shit out of that triple a gun because it's mechanically driven it's not a zsu 23-4 that's got electric motors that could just you know and then take us out it's a guy cranking this freaking thing and he's good and it only has so much down angle that it could get we could have come in right over the water and just hose the shit out of those guys and and taking them out And we talked about it, and I got talked out of it.

1:14:13And I really wish we had. I don't think there were any fatalities on the 130s, but they got hit. I mean, there were Rangers that got hit and didn't lose any birds. But still, you know, it was an opportunity where I wish I would have gone with my gut, which was if they're not going to take care of this thing, we need to. So then what talked you out of it? There was a guy on board from the Ranger Battalion. He got thrown on the aircraft at the last minute. And he said, no, no, you know, I don't remember exactly what he said. But there was also an AC-130 there. There was Little Bird guns there. And arguably, that's their primary mission is to take out shit like this.

1:14:55You know, that really shouldn't be our mission. But they weren't doing it. And the book I read said the AC-130 took it out. I don't know if that's actually what happened. It ultimately stopped, but shit, I thought they ran out of ammo. That's how much they freaking fired. And so at this point, the airdrop started. So our job now is to go land where we're supposed to and set up this forward area arming and refueling point. And we're close to the airfield. So I'm thinking all these freaking PDF guys that are, you know, vacating the barracks and hightailing it are going to overrun us if we stay here too long.

1:15:33So we had to shut the bird down because we're burning a lot of gas sitting there with the blades running. So we shut the bird down. We still got the auxiliary power unit running because that powers the pumps. And, you know, that lets us get off the ground fairly quickly, but it's going to take two or three minutes if we got to crank the engines. So we're obviously, you know, we got a crew chief on the guns. We got our weapons out because we're still in the cockpit. We're not getting out of the cockpit. And we put the rockets all out there, and the little birds come in, and they land, and we refuel them.

1:16:05But they hadn't fired yet, so they don't need any ammo. So they drain us. I mean, we basically got only enough fuel to get back. And I'm like, okay, do we just leave these rockets laying here, or do we just put them back on the bird and take them back? And I think, you know, we put them back on the bird and took them back. So we had refueled them, which basically gave them one ammo load and two bags of gas to work with. I know they did engage targets. I know they supported their airfield seizure. Somewhere in there, a chip light comes on. So this is like in your car where you get a check engine light, which means there's a piece of metal that has been detected within the main transmission, which now I'm thinking, oh, shit.

1:16:53We overstressed the transmission, and it's starting to come apart. But I'm like, we can't shut this thing down here. I mean, we're going to... The PDF is... Some of them got to come this way. And, you know, they're going to stumble upon us, and we're going to be in a firefight on the ground. And so I decided, we're going to fly this back. So we crank it up, fly back, land it on the airfield. Turns out the transmission wasn't trashed. It was just probably, you know, like, if you run a transmission in a vehicle in a gear that's never been used much, maybe there's a metal shard or something that wears off and ends up in the oil.

1:17:35Well, that's what these chip detectors are designed to detect. And it's got a magnet in there and it'll attract it. That's probably what happened. We put this thing in a mode that it hadn't been in. It's not a gear, but the weight of the aircraft, put it in such demand on it that it caused the chip to come loose. So anyway, we make it back, land on the airfield, find out about all the other shit that went down, find out about the whole Kurt Mews mission, how that went, which I think was also the first rescue of an American that Delta did. I'm not 100 % sure on that, but I think it was. And, you know, it's all good news.

1:18:15High fives all around. and then we rack out for the night. And then, you know, obviously leadership's got to figure out where do we go from here, what's next? Well, Nori Ag is not caught, right? He's on the loose. And so we're going to split up into two primary elements. SEAL Team 6 is going to go on the other end of the canal, Cologne, and Delta's going to stay on this side of the canal, and we're going to conduct ops when we get good intel. So I go to the Cologne side with 6. And we probably did, I don't know, four direct action missions where we're taking down targets. It was really bizarre for me is that when I was enlisted in military intelligence, I lived in Cologne.

1:19:01So we're flying all around places I used to go to. Now taking down targets, I mean, there's where I used to live. That's the bar we used to go to and all that. It was just crazy weird to be doing all that. And I got to tell you one story about a mission that the circumstances are somewhat similar to what ends up happening on the Bin Laden mission, which obviously I was not part of. So we're coming in. We got, you know, dudes in the back, the SEAL Team 6 guys. We're taking down a target. I don't know if I don't remember if the weather changed or we came in from a different direction. But the wind direction was not what we thought it was going to be.

1:19:43And in a helicopter, if you happen to be downwind of your buddy's rotor wash, that's not a good place to be if you're trying to hover because the air is already disturbed and it's already, you know, wants to suck you down, basically, if you're ingesting all of that, especially if they're higher than you and you're getting all that downflow, your blades can't bite, I guess is the simplest way to think about it. So we're supposed to fast rope our seals into a tennis court. So I come to a hover. I was flying, and I don't have enough power. I mean, again, I don't know if it's because now we've got a tailwind, we thought we'd have a headwind, but I just don't have enough power.

1:20:21And there's nothing I can do except that things go into the ground, whether we like it or not. And the crew chiefs are our eyes and ears in the back, and they're calling me down, you know, tail right, tail left, meaning if there's something back there that I can't see, they're the ones that are guiding me around this stuff and i'm pretty sure we landed right on the net because the net obviously is going to squash and i know the the operators are like i thought we were open and and all of a sudden we're just elevatoring down to the ground but somehow the blades fit inside the fence around the tennis court again i credit the crew chiefs i mean they're the ones i'm doing what they're telling me to do i can see in front but i can't see very well to the sides and I definitely can't see the back.

1:21:08And they guided me all the way down, got it on the ground. Guys got out. Now I got plenty of power because all the weight's out and we took off. You know, again, when you think about your career in military aviation, it's those moments that by a hair, you're still here or you could have been another name on the wall. You know, I mean, just, it's not necessarily skill, it's fate, it's luck, it's timing, it's you name it. It's somewhat random, you know? And there were many, many, many times in that career of flying where one variable was different and I'm on the wall. And I'm fortunate that I'm not.

1:21:54Wow. So we don't have Manuel Noriega yet. And a commander says, hey, Green Platoon's starting. Again, we hadn't reached a point where we have permanent staff in Green Platoon. So I got to go back and be an instructor to teach this class because we got students ready to go. And I'm like, all right, I miss Christmas already. Things are kind of winding down. We don't know where the hell—we called them Elvis, too. Every time we've chased somebody, we've called them Elvis. And, you know, we're getting Elvis sightings all over the place. But I don't remember. I don't think we found out he was in the Papal Nuncia yet.

1:22:30But either way, this thing is kind of wrapping up. So I'm going to go. And I mentioned fatalities. We lost a little bird doing a gun run. Sonny Owens and Hunter was his last name. And again, you know, it's small. So even though they're little bird gun guys, we knew them well. And they got shot down, crashed, and both died. Damn. And, you know, all that happened in those first few days. So I fly back, make it back for New Year's, not for Christmas, and watch it on the news when Manuel Noriega gives up. And oh, by the way, Cliff Walcott is the one who flew Noriega from the Papua Nuncia with his Delta Escort to the tail of the C-130 on Howard Air Force Base.

1:23:19And he's in custody and spends the rest of his days in prison. He was a bad dude. He was a very bad dude. I mean, if Maduro's as bad as Noriega, then he needs to go because Noriega was really bad. I mean, like, cult kind of stuff. What was going on down there? Well, I mean, he took control of the country. I mean, he was actually an MI. When I was there as a lowly NCO in the 470th Military Intelligence Group, Noriega came and had a meeting at our facility when he was a colonel in the MI, in the Panamanian Defense Force. So I had seen him. I mean, he kind of looked the same. I mean, he's a little short dude, you know, pineapple face with, you know, this same stature he had when he somehow took over.

1:24:12but Torrijos died when I was actually in Panama and that's the actually only highest priority message we could send as a as an intel unit that went out during my time there when Torrijos was killed I don't know if there was speculation that Noriega had anything to do with Torrijos that wouldn't surprise me because I mean he he aspired to take over and then you know he he was He was running drugs. I mean, we found boxes of shit marked drilling equipment that was weapons. I mean, he had bundles and bundles of cash with little address labels on there, Manuel Noriega personally sent to him. Wow. He had, I mean, he's a heavy drinker.

1:24:55He was into drug trafficking. I didn't read this in this latest book I read, but I was told in one of his offices, He had pictures on the wall of his adversaries and red X's through the ones that were dead. I mean, that kind of guy. Bad dude. There was an attempted coup before just cause. So again, you draw comparisons to what's going on in Nicaragua today. That would be ideal is to have a coup occur that takes Maduro out. Venezuela. I'm sorry. Yeah, Venezuela. Yikes. my geography test for the day. But there was a coup, an attempted coup, and he squashed it. He figured it out, and he got his loyalists involved.

1:25:41It was close. I mean, so I understand it. It almost worked. And then the people that were most loyal to him made their last stand, captured the people that were leading the coup. I think they killed him, pretty sure they killed him. And then, obviously, he survived that. and that's when we he declared war against the U.S. I know it's all sorts of stuff that happened and then he killed some American service personnel and all those things together were like okay we've had enough of this we're going to go do it and we were ready and I mean we've been practicing for two years and that's why I say I think if I had to pick what I would be most proud of that's probably it even though my role was pretty minor So, back home, teaching Green Platoon, furthering the DAP program, defense.

1:26:35We had to change the name. We wanted to call it the direct action penetrator, but there's something about fielding new attack aircraft that you got to call it something else. So, we had to change the name to defensive armed penetrator, which is what it's called now. But everyone knows it as a DAP. and now we want to get more sophisticated we're going to put a 30mm on here same one that's on the Apache exact same gun but we're going to put it in a fixed forward mode so it's not turret it's hanging on the wing I don't know by the way we can put two so we can put one on each side with 30mm magazines inside the cabin awesome weapon I mean that thing 625 rounds a minute, I think, of 30 millimeter.

1:27:26And what's weird is the sound. I mean, it's still a distinct variant. I mean, the minigun is... But the 30 is more like... Which doesn't sound like 625 rounds a minute, but that's what it sounded like. You could hear it. And it has either inert rounds or high explosive dual penetrator rounds. and the HEDP would, you know, explode, obviously, when they hit the ground. And then we'd put hellfires on there. And Cliff Walcott and I were the first ones to shoot a hellfire off a Blackhawk. And I still remember he let me push the button and we're out west somewhere. We got a customer lazing the target and, you know, kind of amped up.

1:28:09It was a hellfire, pretty famous, first ones to get to do it. And I pushed the button and nothing happened.

1:28:17and it's because it takes a second for the hellfire to leave the rail but i didn't know it you know i'm thinking it's going to be like a rocket as soon as you hit the button it's gone and i must have hit that button like eight times in one second trying to get it to shoot and finally it left the rail and goes up and because a hellfire comes up there's two modes lock on before launch lock on after launch lock on before launch it's it's it's getting it's identifying the coded laser first, which to me is lowest risk, because if you throw it up there and somebody put the wrong code in, it's going to just go nowhere.

1:28:52So we did a lock on before launch, but it's still going to climb, and then it's going to do its final trajectory down into the target, and boom, big explosion. Like, yes, you know, that was freaking awesome. And then, you know, we got to shoot them in training, and I get to teach people on them. So this thing is a badass I mean, we got every weapon you could ever want. And then the crew chief said, you know what? When we're covering the break, because the way we fired these things is we're in a diving fire mode, and you get, we're supposed to stay 200 meters or more from the target, which sounds like a long ways, but when you're diving at a target, 200 meters is not very far.

1:29:30And we break, which causes you to mush through a little bit, because, I mean, you got a lot of inertia going here. and they said, you know, we need a way to cover ourselves in the break. So let's put some M60s in the doors because the miniguns are fixed forward. And that way, when you're on the break, I can, you know, after you've,

1:29:50and then you're in the break and the crew chief is like, bang, bang, take that too. You know, it's like, but we let them do it. I don't know if they still do it because it's pretty sporty to be back there standing in the cabin while we're in a break, you know, trying to shoot at a target. But anyway, it was the Wild West. It was so freaking awesome. And, you know, we had to shoot a ton. I don't remember what the rounds were, but it's like, I don't know, I'll throw some numbers out there, 12 ,000 rounds of mini 72 rockets and 1 ,000 rounds of 30 per month. Nice. And I'm an instructor. So I get to do mine, and I get to go with you and you do yours, because you got to show me that you can do what you're supposed to be able to do with this stuff.

1:30:37So, I mean, literally thousands and thousands and thousands of rounds. And I found that I could shoot pretty good too, I mean, with an aircraft. Now, regular shooting, I'm okay. Shooting with a Blackhawk, I could hit the freaking target. And then Desert Storm rolls around. And now we're freaking ready. We got this. No, actually, I'm ahead of myself. We did not have Hellfire, and we did not have 30 for Desert Storm. But the Rockets and Mini were good to go. We're ready. We fielded. Cliff and I took the first check rides as brand-new DAP pilots for the unit. We took them on the same night because, again, this is brand-new capability.

1:31:23We got to somehow validate that we can do this for the customers. So first night, we got Little Bird pilots in the front seat with us. So there's a lot going on in the cockpit. So I'm now basically single pilot, gunnery, customers on the ground, flight of two, night vision goggle with a Little Bird guy who doesn't know shit about a Blackhawk in the other seat. It all goes okay. But when we get back to the debrief, and they're both Little Bird gun SIPs, standardization instructor pilots, like the head instructors, they said, this is not safe. I mean, we're not value-add in the cockpit. So let's put another Blackhawk guy in the front seat.

1:32:06We'll sit in the jump seat. So second night, it's a two-night check ride. They're in the jump seat. And I'm just telling this story because it goes back to my statement about the difference between still walking and talking and being on a wall. I'm chalked too. We roll in, we hit the target, we break off, and we could do it a couple different ways. We could do what we call welded wing, where both birds are flying in formation, we're both shooting at the same time. Or we stagger, lead shoots, and then you roll in, you shoot, and then you join up. We were staggered. So the guy in the other seat, who shall remain nameless, he's no longer with us, so there's no point in telling anybody who he is.

1:32:52He was fucked up. I mean, all I can say. He just... And this is my check ride, and I got a Little Bird guy that isn't all that interested in seeing another platform sort of hone in on their turf. So it'd be real easy to bust me if these two guys weren't really good dudes. And it's Fred Horsley and Randy Jones, the two Little Bird guys. Randy's a legend. Fred, unfortunately, passed a few years ago, but both legends in the Little Bird community. So they're giving us our check rides. And we shoot and break, and I'm in the break, and I'm joining back up on Cliff, and a fucking rocket goes off of my bird.

1:33:37And it goes right underneath the belly of Cliff's aircraft. Whoa. Now, I'm flying, right? So I'm like, what the fuck was that? And this other guy says, my bad. Yeah, you're fucking bad. You almost shot down our fucking lead aircraft on a training mission. I said, all right, we'll talk about it later. So we hadn't put those new cyclic grips in yet. And we're using buttons on the cyclic that were already there. We just rewired them to control the weapons. And a lot of guys, and it's stupid, would talk on the intercom by putting their hand. First of all, you got a floor mic. So if you're not on the controls, you should be using the floor mic.

1:34:29You push on the button. It's like the old high beam switch in an old car. Basically that same kind of switch. You should be using that, not touching the controls. But some guys put their hand on top of the cyclic, and then the microphone triggers are on the front, and would squeeze it like this to talk, even not on the controls. So he did that, and his palm pushed the rocket button, because that's what was underneath his palm. So not only did he not save the freaking weapons, he pushed the fire trigger off of the rockets. And I'm like, okay, my freaking checkride is toast. It's not my fault, but there's no way I'm going to get signed off.

1:35:13Anyway, we finished the mission. Everything else goes okay. We go back and land. And, you know, I'm not sure I would have been that much of a professional, knowing that we're about to kind of hone in on their territory. I mean, they own the gun bird world for the SOF community. And now we're introducing this competitive player here, and they're probably not all that thrilled about it. I know they were. They told us. But they signed me off anyway. And they should have because it wasn't my fault. But it gave them every reason to not, you know, for something like that to happen. So now I'm a full mission qualified gun pilot in the unit.

1:35:52Cliff is too. First time. And we're ready to rock and roll and start providing fire support for customers. So Desert Storm rolls around. Hold on, hold on. What happened to the guy that fucking AD'd a rocket? Nothing. I mean... Nothing? No. They didn't kick him out? No, we should have. Holy shit. Because actually, back to Panama, one of the Delta guys had an AD in the hangar, and he was gone. And I use that example sometimes when I talk to people about having standards and then maintaining those standards. I mean, the standard is, you have an AD in this unit, you're gone. Yeah. And I saw it. I mean, it freaking happened.

1:36:32And it's a lot of money and time invested in a quality guy, but that's the standard. And if that's the standard, you know, I agree with you, we should have. Wow. You know, everybody knew it happened. And I guess nobody felt like it was worthy of expulsion from the unit, but I agree with you, probably should have. So then Desert Storm happens. So we are going to rescue the hostages. So there were hostages being held when Kuwait was overrun. They're being held in Kuwait City. And our mission, called Java Man, is going to be to assault this target in Kuwait City and rescue the hostages. And we trained and trained and prepped.

1:37:23I mean, we launched off ships. We had mock-up targets on shore. We trained down off the coast of Florida. We simulated the targets at Bragg. I mean, we were freaking ready. and Desert Storm had not kicked off yet. And so we're thinking, I was literally going to be the number two bird over the beach in Desert Storm. And Cliff was going to be number one. So again, there's this theme here, same guys, event after event after event. And what I remember most about that mission is we got briefed afterward that we're probably going to see a 50 % casualty rate. And not a single freaking person said, I'm out.

1:38:07You know, everybody just sort of accepted the fact that, you know, that's why I came to this unit, to do this kind of shit. And we're going to, it's not going to be us. And that's, you know, you have to look at it that way. You have to look at it like, yeah, there's going to be some losses taken, but it won't be me. You know, I just, we call it big sky little bullet theory, meaning, you know, they can shoot at you all day long, but the odds of them hitting you is low enough where I'm going to just take this risk. So anyway, we're ready to go. We did the final demo. I don't remember who was there.

1:38:45It was at least a three-star, not a four-star was there to basically give us the thumbs up. Yep, you guys look ready. Because, I mean, we had mock-ups of where the barracks were. That was my target, where the barracks were for these reinforcements. And I went in there and laid down a whole bunch of rockets and blew the shit out of it. I don't remember what Cliff was hitting. and then the assault force came in right behind us, you know, and liberated the hostages. Well, they freaking let him go. So it's like, shit, there goes our mission, you know? And, you know, this happens over and over and the world is soft, but it's like, son of a gun.

1:39:22You know, good news is these people are all going to be fine. Bad news is we don't get to do this freaking amazing mission we thought we were going to do. Put it back in there. Yeah. And then, to make it worse, Desert Storm kicks off and we're still home. It's like, you know, we were like, besides ourselves. And what does any good SOF unit do in that scenario? Find a freaking mission, right? Figure out how you can contribute and get your ass over there. And that's obviously what Delta did. What happened is Saddam Hussein started using SCUDs. and he was launching scuds, the real threat was he was launching them into Israel.

1:40:06And the concern was if the Israelis join the fight in retaliation, the coalition is going to fall apart because the coalition, I mean, we're basing out of Saudi Arabia. So, you know, at the time, the Saudis today are much more willing to sign the Abraham Accords and, you know, and reach some sort of peaceful arrangement with the Israelis. But back then, it wasn't there yet. Right? And that was the concern. I mean, our whole freaking force is based in Saudi Arabia. And if the Israelis get involved and this thing unravels, what the hell is going to happen? So this becomes a major concern that these Scud missiles are—and that's why he was doing it.

1:40:45He wanted to draw the Israelis into the fight. So Delta's mission was neutralize the Scuds in western Iraq. And we were putting them in on the ground. and I'm flying a DAP at this point, attack version of the Blackhawk. The Chinooks are doing the infills because they need to bring their vehicles in. There's too much that needs to go in for a Blackhawk to carry. So we're escorting the Chinooks and we did several missions. It was cool. I mean, we put them in. We're in these attack helicopters, so we're orbiting, providing security, making sure there's nobody around while they offload the vehicles and get loaded up and go find their hide site.

1:41:26And on one night, I have an operational SATCOM radio, so I can talk to the JOC. These missions were long range. We were flying long ways into Western Iraq. And Colonel Brown at the time, Doug Brown, is talking directly to me, and he's telling me that they have a new mission for us. But we're in this orbit, and I'm getting like half of his transmission. and I wasn't the lead, but I had the working SATCOM. So I called the other bird and I said, hey, we're getting a mission change. Let me take the lead because I'm getting all the information. Roger. So I'm writing this shit down, this coordinate.

1:42:07And then he's saying something at the end and I don't know what he's saying. And I said, can you spell that phonetically? And he's Sierra, Charlie, Uniform, Delta. And when he got to Uniform, I'm like, holy shit, We're going to go shoot some scuds." And Cliff Walcott, who's back in the jock, he's on the other team that's not flying that night. He must have been so pissed, because it was his idea to arm this thing, right? And the first time it's going to get used in combat, he's not there. And I don't blame him. I would have been pissed too. But I'm like, sorry. You know, it's like... So I put the coordinates in, and we're flying out through the desert.

1:42:48The Chinooks have finished their mission. They're heading back. We go up over this power line. It's probably 200 feet tall. Start coming down the other side. And freaking right there is a Scud Tel launcher, like right in front of it. Oh, shit. And I'm like, weapons armed, rolled in. Minigun on it. And I'm too close to shoot rockets. You know, it's one of the phenomena that, you know, we learned enough about aerial gunnery to be familiar with. It's called target fixation. you know you're diving at this target and you want to hit it more than anything in the world right but you got to remember at some point you got to break it off because you'll fly right into the freaking target if you don't and again you're going to mush through probably a little bit so you got to be disciplined and you know i mean adrenaline is flowing like crazy here and this is a big deal you know and somehow had enough situational awareness to realize i'm too close to shoot rockets and I broke it off.

1:43:53As it turns out, that picture in my FLIR, which is an infrared sensor, ends up on the SOCOM calendar a few years later. I have a picture of it that I uploaded. And you can see the minigun rounds in the dirt. They're little black dots. And the picture has the crosshairs of the FLIR dead center on the scud. And basically what's happening is when I first started shooting, the rounds are low and left. So I'm walking them in to the target, and the way it would normally work is, okay, once the miniguns are on the target, you might have to do a nose adjustment because rocket ballistics are different than minigun ballistics, and you just, you learn that through training.

1:44:31You know, nose up, nose down, depending on where you are. But in this case, I'm too close for rockets, so I don't shoot them. But you can see the miniguns are closing in on the target, and then some of them start to hit the target, and then I break off. I think we're at 62 feet is what it shows on the image, which is not very high over the desert. I got to see this picture. Yeah, it's a pretty cool photo. And I mean, if you look at this picture and you think about you encounter this in the dark in the middle of night in the desert, that's a scud. I mean, there's no question. The road wheels are hot.

1:45:05You know, I mean, it's got thermal characteristics of a real—it's not a balloon, I can tell you that. So we come around, line up again. and now I'm ready, right? We know exactly where it is. We're going to shoot rockets at this son of a bitch this time. I come around, line up. My copie, Lance Hill, who was killed in a crash later on, arms the gun. I hit the trigger. Nothing. Lance, it's one fucking switch. Throw it. And he says, you're armed. So I look down. All right, I'm armed. You know, my first instinct was Lance fucked up, right? But I was armed. Hit the button again. Nothing. What? Tried the rocket button.

1:45:51Nothing. Come around. Let's try it again. Go to safe. Go back to arm. Nothing. Meanwhile, Chalk 2 is... You know, I'm doing rockets and mini. And really sharp guy, but not as good a shot as me. I mean, he just wasn't. And never blows the thing up. I'm so pissed. So we break off. And I said, look, we got a gun problem. We're going to go figure this out. We're actually pulling control heads out of the aircraft in flight and loosening and re-tightening the cannon plugs on the back. Because all I can figure is there's just a loose connection. Pull it, reconnect. Pull it, reconnect. Put the freaking box back in.

1:46:40roll back around, come back in, nothing. I was livid. I mean, I was livid, right? And the other guy now is technically lead because he was lead to begin with. So he says, hey, we've been here a long time. We got to get out of here. Son of a bitch. So here's the other regret, kind of like in Panama. I wanted to just hover up and clear, record this thing all around, you know basically slow hovering getting amazing video the whole thing and same thing you know it was a discussion now we need to get out of here this we've been here too long and we didn't do it now we had great imagery of it you'll see the picture and it's it's it's pretty obvious what what it is um but uh we we fly south next day crew chiefs go out avionics goes out testing the bird everything looks okay but i don't believe you i want to go shoot this so we load it up go out into this place in the desert uh everything works fine all right i don't know what changed overnight they didn't do anything park it wait a night because that's not our night to fly that's going to be the other team's night next night we go out we had a fire mission same freaking thing no way same thing it won't shoot this time i was so pissed i actually said i'm gonna crash this fucking aircraft in the desert i mean that's how upset i was we're going comic-con one of the crew chiefs who didn't know me that well because i was flying with the other uh company or platoon at least i think he's the other company didn't really know and thought, is this guy going to kill me?

1:48:28You know?

1:48:32And went back. And this is why I love the crew chiefs. If they respect you, which I like to think most of the crew chiefs respected me, they're going to try to help you out, figure out what the hell is going on here. And without anybody telling them, one crew chief thought of, OK, here's the only variable in this equation, time. When we went to the range, we only had the bird running for like 15 minutes. But on these long-range missions, the bird's running for like two hours. I want to put power to the aircraft for two hours and see if anything happens. And sure enough, a component in the freaking gun control box powered up for a long period of time was overheating and failing.

1:49:13And then it would cool off and it would work. And I don't know what electronic component that is, if it's a resistor or a diode or what the hell it is. So they went to freaking Radio Shack in Saudi Arabia. It's not really a Radio Shack, but a place like that. Bought a new component, came back, put it in, fixed the problem. No way. And then the war's over. I never got to shoot again. Damn. But I did fire miniguns on a Scud. And it was the first rounds in anger of the defensive arm penetrator. Well, that's pretty badass. So I got that. I got that to say. My last ordinance, by the way, that I did drop was a piss bottle I threw out of the aircraft before we crossed the border.

1:49:51At a Scud? Yeah. Before we crossed the border. So anyway, that's my life leading up to Somalia. And this is peacetime army, you know? Yeah. All in a five-year period. Pretty cool. Just crazy. You know, if you think about it, overwater combat, jungle combat, desert combat, and now urban combat in Somalia. Yeah. I want one more war story because, again, back to the you could be on a wall in a second. again me and donovan flying we're we're again this is a new aircraft so we're we're developing task condition standards for various things that we do with it so that there will be something to evaluate people by in the future when when the pilots come and and we did various things like you know simulate you just got taken off a c5 you got to put the aircraft back together put all the weapons on load them up and shoot as fast as you can click how long did that take Okay, let's put a little fudge factor on there.

1:50:53Margin for error, let's just say it's 40 minutes. I don't remember what it was. Well, this time we're going to do a hide sight, and we're going to go, which is essentially, you know, you fly in at night, camo everything up, sleep during the day. When it gets dark, you take the camo off, and then you go fly and hit the target. So we do this, and we're going to go shoot at Fort Knox, which is about a two-hour flight. So I'm in the left seat this time. Donovan's in the right. and we got approval to roll in hot. We didn't have to clear the range because we had eyes on the range before we got there, which is unusual.

1:51:28Usually, range safety is going to want you to do a dry pass, but they let us live fire right out of the gate. So we roll in. Again, there's two daps. We're about to shoot. I'm flying. I pull the minigun trigger, and these frigging miniguns, the tracers are doing this in front of the aircraft. And I'm like, as soon as I saw it, I let off. I never even got close to shooting rockets. And I said, that's the worst bore sight I've ever seen in my life. Because you have this little device that you set an aim point, like on a hangar door out in front, and then you, because these weapons come on and off, right?

1:52:09And rocket pods, and you have to adjust them to where they're going to point at least close to what you're trying to shoot at. It's not an exact science, at least it wasn't then, but this is way out of range here. And Donovan comes on there again, we're on night vision goggles. He says in his typical deadpan Donovan-Briley way, Mike, we got a problem. And I'm like, what's up? And I start to feel something in my eyes, and he puts his finger light up. So a finger light is just this little green LED light that we have, so you can read stuff in the cockpit under your goggles and still maintain light discipline.

1:52:51And he puts it up there, and there's bullet holes all through his cockpit. So the minigun, the bolt that's supposed to keep it from turning left and right, fell out on the way up. And when I pulled the trigger... Holy shit. You would think the gun's going to go this way because of the wind, but the barrel rotation caused it to go in. And we have these armor panels on the side of the cockpit, and we always put them forward, because you just don't know. You're going to have some kind of weapon malfunction. Shit's going to go flying and take you out. So he had his armor panel forward. I think the gun hit the armor panel and stopped, But it went in enough where bullet holes all through the cockpit, through his windshield.

1:53:41I mean, there's probably 10 bullet holes through the windshield. Missed his knee by like two inches. Holy shit. 2 ,000 rounds a minute. So we land, we check the bird out. We had a medic with us because we live fire, and we had a medic with us. He's rinsing our eyes out because it was grass. What I felt in my eyes was shrapnel from the windshield and dust in the air, you know, just shards of glass. And everything felt okay. I don't think I got any real, you know, shards of glass in my eyes. And so I'm thinking, do we leave the bird here or can we fly it back? And I'm thinking about what's in the regulation, and there's nothing in the regulation that says you can't have holes in the windshield.

1:54:28So I said, fuck it. Let's put some duct tape on the windshield over the holes, and all my instruments work fine. We're done shooting, that's for damn sure. And we'll take this bird back. And we flew it back and they repaired it. And we put a better pin in the minigun. Holy shit, man. Wow. How many aircraft are under TF-160? Aircraft total? Yeah, how many? I mean, no, not total, but how many different models? Okay, so you got gun little birds and assault little birds. and then you got Assault Blackhawks and Armed Blackhawks and there's 10 Armed Blackhawks now. I mean, back then we only had a couple.

1:55:10And then Chinooks and the Chinook Battalion is, and again, they reorg, so maybe they've changed this, but the quantities don't really matter. But then there's a Chinook Battalion with Chinooks and A Company, at least when I was there, were part of the, like the tier one support. Gotcha. But then we had a battalion in Savannah, which had Chinooks and Blackhawks also, and we have a battalion at Fort Lewis, which has Chinooks and Blackhawks also. Lewis is new. It wasn't there when I was in the unit. But the Little Birds only exist in 1st Battalion at Fort Campbell. Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. Well, Mike, I think we're getting ready to get into Somalia, right?

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1:59:13All right, Mike, we're back from the break. We're getting into the real heavy stuff now. So let's start talking about Somalia. Okay. I'd like to rewind and tell one more war story. Let's do it. Because, again, it speaks to something you asked about earlier, and that is how close we all were. I tell people I shot myself down five times. You just heard the story of the most dramatic, where the minigun rounds are going through the cockpit. The others were not quite that exciting. But another one that's probably worth sharing. So we're out at the range at night, and we're shooting. And again, I was an instructor, so I don't remember if I'm qualifying a guy or doing currency or whatever.

1:59:54But we're going to go out two nights in a row. So we shoot, go back, park the bird, button it up, come back the next day. We're pre-flighting, same aircraft. and there's a hole in the engine inlet so on a blackhawk up kind of over where the cabin doors are there's these two inlets because it's got two engines that are basically on the upper outside portion of the airframe and it's got a big opening in the front where the air gets sucked in and there's a hole pretty good size hole so the crew chiefs pull the cowling off and inside, laying there, in the front end of the engine, is a 30-millimeter round, like the projectile, not the shell casing.

2:00:40And we're like, what the hell? How did that happen? So it's got dirt on it, but it's not deformed. So there's no way that that round hit the ground or hit a tank or whatever, because we had tank hulks out there. Skipped up there. And flew up in the air, and then we flew into it. There's just no way. It would have been smashed, right? But it's got dirt on it. So that's kind of weird. But in the end, the conclusion was that we somehow sucked up enough dirt while flying that it got the round dirty. I don't know. So anyway, the commander's pissed, right? He thinks, Mike, you're shooting too close to the freaking target.

2:01:26If you're flying through your own projectiles, that's less than 200 meters, okay? And I'm like, I swear we didn't, you know? And Cliff, God bless him, he comes up with this theory. I'm like, run with it, brother. You know, you got it. Go to bat for me. and he briefed the leadership on his theory that it was a squib round, which means it doesn't have enough propellant in the jacket to fire it correctly. And what happened was it fired, but it was moving so slowly that it was in the air in front of us. And we flew in and caught up to it. Are you fucking kidding me? Did they buy that shit? And I'm like, I mean, when somebody's willing to go to bat for you with that story.

2:02:22Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, that's love. But we still can't explain it. If that wasn't it, I don't know. I mean, is somebody down there throwing projectiles back at us? I mean, this is at the range. We're training, right? Mystery never to be solved. But the bottom line is one of my other self-shoot downs is written off because of the Squid Brown theory. Damn. Thank you, Cliff. So now we're getting ready to go to Somalia. And Somalia happens because the Somalis ambush a group of Pakistanis back in June of 1993. You know, the initial invasion is in December of 92, where we're going in basically, when I say we, the U.S.

2:03:10military is going in to provide security for the relief operations because the warlords are stealing all the food. So the initial invasion is conventional forces primarily. There's some soft, but not a lot. Marines involved, amphibious landings, all goes very, very well. As I know it, I've never spoken to a person who says they shot or fired around during that initial invasion. The Somalis are just backing off. They know this is the U.S. military and we can't screw with them. I mean, you think about it, we're right on the heels of Desert Storm. And this is kind of how I explain this from a Somali perspective.

2:03:46And I mean, we kicked the shit out of Saddam Hussein in 100 hours, you know. And so the Somalis are looking at this as we can't win this. This is, we got to figure out some other way, turn it more into an insurgency, which is essentially what they did. And the initial phase of this operation is, I don't want to say it's a cakewalk, it never is when you enter into a country like that, but it goes really well. Security's provided, relief organizations got protection, food's getting to people who need it. Mission's over, right? Well, we have an election back here and we put a different administration in the White House, Bill Clinton, and they don't know shit about foreign policy.

2:04:27I mean, they just don't. They're very naive in thinking that, well, you know, we went there to provide security, but maybe we could help them kind of turn things around and, you know, build their economy back and get a government put back in place and all those things that sound really great. but go try freaking doing it. You know, I mean, it's very, very difficult to do. But that's the mission. So the mission transitions from security only to trying to gain control of the city so that a provisional government can be stood up into power. Because right now it's just warlords and warring clans got a rule in their roost.

2:05:12And in any change scenario like this, the person who's got the most to lose is going to resist the most. I mean, if you're Adid and you have 60 % of the support of the people and the Habergator clan is controlling the majority of Mogadishu, you don't want to see change. You got what you want. So he is logically most opposed to this change. Well, the tactical commanders, again, I'm not there yet. I don't know anything about any of this decision making, but there is an effort to disarm the population because there's a lot of weapons and a lot of violence. And I guess the theory is if we gather up all these weapons, they won't be able to fire at us and they won't be able to fire at each other.

2:05:58And that'll be step one toward our achieving our goal. Well, there's a UN force of Pakistanis in How are we going to do that? How? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Good frigging luck. It's a city of 800 ,000 people. I mean, that's why I say they were naive in thinking that this was something that could be done. It could have been done with decades of effort and hundreds of thousands of troops, but not with the numbers of troops we had on the ground. I mean, initially at our peak involvement, we had 38 ,000 U.S. troops involved. That's during the initial phase. By the time I personally get there, we have 1 ,500 left.

2:06:35total in a city of 800 ,000 people. But it's a coalition force. Now, coalition forces, you know, certain partners are very capable. Australians, Canadians, UK, a few others. But some are, you know. Yeah, probably the majority. Yeah. You know, it briefs well, and they got their flag out there and all that, but you don't want to go to war with them. So the Pakistanis actually deserve some credit here because they're going to come back into play later. But there's a Pakistani under UN command, UN soldiers. I mean, they're Pakistanis, but they're wearing UN markings and they're ambushed in the street.

2:07:23And these are the ones who are slaughtered and beheaded by the Somalis. and so obviously the un being ultimately responsible for these the loss of these soldiers issues a resolution they're going to find who's responsible and they put a reward on adid's head because they say he's probably the one that was behind this and he was so adid is starving his people he's got 60 support we got a coalition force with roughly a thousand troops a thousand americans a thousand americans so 1500 americans now why is he how does he have 60 of okay i knew you were going there so before adi there was this guy named siad bare who was the president and again you know you could put him in the category of saddam hussein right ruthless dictator i don't i don't know for sure i'm not you know i don't have a phd on somalia all i can say I know of him, and I know that at least what the Somalis told me when I was in captivity, he was bad news.

2:08:29Well, was he or wasn't he? I'm not sure. But Adid led a coup to run him out of the country. And that's how he became this sort of folk hero, and the Habergidder clan got to the point where they were supported by a majority of the population. The Somali people don't know he's stealing the food. I mean, you know, there is no internet, there is no TV. There is, the only thing being broadcast is radio Mogadishu, which he controls. So this sounds familiar. Yeah, doesn't it? Yeah. So not any different than any other country. Nope. So this is how, you know, he's basically positioned himself where he is.

2:09:14So when the Paki's are killed, UN issues the resolution. Now we start to spin up. And initially, Cliff is the flight lead. He goes to Bragg. And they come up with a brilliant plan. They're going to go in. We're not taking any helicopters. We're going to borrow Blackhawks that are already on the ground in Somalia. Shooters are going to come in. We're going to make some quick mods to these aircraft, like bolt some fast rope bars in or something. I don't remember exactly. But not a whole lot. Can't put miniguns because that's a big mod to the aircraft, but we'll get by with M60s, I think is what they had at the time, maybe 240s, I'm not sure.

2:09:52I can't remember. Low profile, clandestine force, Adidas still making public appearances. I got a question. Yep. Why would you not want to bring your own Blackhawks that you train in? Signature. Is that what it is? It's a signature? Yeah. They wanted to just get in low visibility because we're different color. We got different systems on. They didn't want anything to stand out. No. They just wanted it to be, hey, we've seen this helicopter a thousand fucking times. And we don't really need a lot of the fancy shit we got on our aircraft. I mean, you know, a basic Black Hawk could probably do the job for that mission.

2:10:30I mean, you know, we're navigating to a point in the city and putting the shooters on the ground, you know, and we don't really need a flare. We don't really need, you know, just a lot of the stuff that we had on our aircraft. Ideally, we would have it. But, you know, again, kind of like I'm sure you've heard over and over, the bad guys are inside the wire. I mean, they're working for the contractors. They're emptying your porta-potties. They're, you know, they're all around. You don't know who they are, right? So keeping these black helicopters with all this fancy shit on it under wraps, you know.

2:11:06Not going to happen. Well, it's hard. So, the president gets briefed. And the key point here is that Adid is still making public appearances. So, it'd be like Bin Laden, you know, out in the open with two bodyguards during the day. That's freaking low-hanging fruit. I mean - Very easy target. Easy. Yeah. Very few places in the world that we can't get that guy. and the president's brief i have no idea why i wasn't there what i've read is he was told the chance of success is one in four 25 why i don't know i think the success is 95 based on what i know about that plan and what was happening with the deed at the time he doesn't want to be embarrassed no politician does so he says we're not doing it missed the window of opportunity Had that mission gone down as planned initially, you never heard my name.

2:12:05I mean, I never go to Somalia. This thing goes down with two crews and a handful of shooters, and they apprehend the guy and turn him over to the UN, and it's game over. But that's not what happens. We're told we're not going, and okay, we're not going. So we continue on with all our various other things that we're doing. and we now 10th Mountain Division launches an attack on a suspected Klan meeting place. Now they did what they're supposed to do. Overwhelming firepower before they put troops on the ground, go in, clear the building, but everybody's dead. And unfortunately, about 80 of the people that are dead are women and children.

2:12:51So now Adid has everything he needs to turn the Somalis against us. And I'm not pinning responsibility on the 10th mountain. I'm just telling you what happened. They did a good job. I mean, they did the mission the way they were trained to do it. But the fallout of it is Adid now has information that he can share with his people to convince them that the Americans are not here to help you. They're here to kill our people and take over our country. It's not exactly what he was saying, but essentially what he's trying to get the Somalis to believe. And proof of how effective that was. President Bush went to Somalia after, well, he was about to leave office.

2:13:32And the people are in the streets celebrating. Viva President Bush, waving American flags. This is, I think, in January of 1993. Ten months later, they're dragging the bodies of Randy, Gary, and my crew through the freaking streets. Now, you talk about losing the hearts and minds of the people. That's the best example I've ever heard of. I mean, we lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the people. This went from fighting, you know, diehard supporters of Adid to essentially the whole population of the city because he was effectively convincing them of something that just wasn't true. He had radicalized the entire population.

2:14:15Essentially. Totally anti. Now, we didn't help. I mean, we were flying missions every day and every night. And it's a little thing, I guess, but, you know, when you're flying 10 freaking helicopters, rooftop every day, every night, initially, you know, they're waving at us. Later on, they're throwing rocks at us, flipping us off. You know, I mean, you could just tell. It was just a change in how they viewed us over just the time period that we were there. But the ultimate catalyst for things changing on our end is Habergator blows up a Humvee. Four U.S. soldiers, I think it's August 8th is when that happens.

2:14:58They're all killed. So now you've got the 10th Mountain Attack. You've got a direct attack against U.S. military forces, all killed. They're changing their tactics. They're becoming more hostile. we need a different plan so we reassemble at brag and now we're going to go with the full meal deal we're going to go with company rangers from third of the 75th we're going to go with you know two teams of attack helicopters we're going to go with uh my you know almost a full uh deployment package so that we got everything we need to take this on because you're home this whole time and all this until it's being passed to you guys and well we were sort of back and forth to brag back and forth we actually when i finally got the deployment order we were in texas not in somalia what i mean not in somalia we hadn't deployed it so when that humvee is blown up we all go back to brag so you guys are i'm sorry so you guys are stateside just bouncing around planning it's on it's off it's on that's off this whole fuck like how long is this going on well the packies are killed in june the uh 10th mountain attacks in july and the attack on the humvee is august 8th so about a month okay month and month and a little more and then after the humvee explodes we're like oh boy now this is because that was the trigger in panama like when they when noriega killed those i don't know if it's one or two i think it's one american service person that sort of put it at another level and so we're thinking all right now this is probably really gonna happen so we all go back to brag we're running rehearsals we had role players we and it's interesting i brought actually rehearsals for what for the scenarios that we were likely to encounter what were the scenarios where there was this is assassination on a deed we believe this was the yeah to capture a deed but this we believe this was the birth of these now used hundreds of times uh scenarios where we we're going to apprehend someone in a certain scenario.

2:17:06So I'll give you an example. This is my kneeboard from Somali. I mean, the reason I didn't have it the day I got shot down is the mission developed so fast I never ran back to get it because I didn't have time. So that would have been what I carried on every other mission. And it's got all the crews, it's got the frequencies, it's got the concepts. And the amazing thing to me is people didn't have computers back then. So we had one guy, we might not have one guy, but one guy that I remember that was tech savvy enough where he produced this stuff in 1993 when the average person doesn't even own a computer.

2:17:46And we're generating all this stuff. And, you know, again, you can handwrite it, but it sure looks a lot better done that way. And we developed these various scenarios. and those kneeboard packages show each of those possible scenarios and what we're going to do in case we face a versus b for example and it worked like a charm i mean it it was brilliant again i don't know who came up with it i don't know if the if the the delta guys did or you know it's a collaboration between the two of us but it allowed you to react quickly and which is what you got to do when you're after a person, right? You can't spend two days planning a mission if you're chasing a person.

2:18:35So we're rehearsing all this. So we had people driving vehicles around Fort Bragg, you know, simulating these various scenarios. And I would say we probably flew various versions of those profiles, I don't know, 20 times before we ever deployed. Wow.

2:19:01And I had reached the point where that's why I didn't run back and get it. I didn't need it anymore. Ray's got his, so I don't need to bring mine if it's going to cause me to run back and lose some time.

2:19:17So we're talking about the lead up. So we finally are told, okay, you're deploying. and this is uh august 28th i think because i i said to you earlier in another conversation i left one day before my first son's first birthday his birthday is august 18th so i left on august 17th and we're doing this bebop back and forth until we deployed i think we deployed on the 24th and we were mission ready on august 28th now that sounds like a long time but mission ready was we We've got all the assets in place and we've conducted a day rehearsal in country and a night rehearsal in country. And the leadership has said, all right, we're 100 % ready to roll.

2:20:00And then the thing is broken into phases. Phase one, well, phase one was pre-deployment and deployment. Phase two is capture Adid. He's all we're going to go after. I think there was two missions in phase two. Took down a target. Supposedly, it's where Adid is. He wasn't there in either case. Missions went well. I mean, you know, we still get the element of surprise. They don't know what we're doing. They can't react fast enough. We're trying to keep time on target to maybe 40 minutes or less. And, you know, some targets are big. They take longer to clear. Some are small. You're in and out faster than that.

2:20:36But, again, all went well. No losses taken. No aircraft damaged nothing. I do have a memorable thing for me, which may not make it above the cutting room floor, depending on how interesting this is. to the average person. But, you know, as you probably saw on the frequency card, we had a lot of frequencies we're monitoring. And we have four, maybe five nets at the same time in the cockpit. So when there's a lot going on, we call it a helmet fire. There's, I mean, you got to sort through a lot of comms. And sometimes, you know, the crew in the back sometimes will turn it off because they don't want to hear it.

2:21:16Now, the guys who really wanted to stay situationally aware, they're the kind of crew chiefs you want because they recognize, you know, my role could become important at any point and I got to know what's going on. Right. So they don't want it to be quiet. They want to be kept up to speed on all these. So you might hear the execution checklist. You might hear the air to air net where we're talking to each other. You might hear the ground force net. You might hear the fire net. And if you're listening to all of them, you got a pretty good picture of what's happening. Well, we're coming into the target.

2:21:47It's the first mission, actually. And it's a night mission. Everybody's blacked out. This place is freaking dusty. And there's dust clouds everywhere. And I can't see the building that we're going to. I just can't see it. And our guys wanted, this is the level of precision they wanted. There's an iron gate around the compound, small compound, and they want to be roped on the path inside the gate so they don't have to breach the gate because they don't know what the gate's made of and they don't know whether it's locked. And that's precision, under-high fishing goggles. And, you know, again, it's a city.

2:22:29You got GPS, but it's not that accurate. You've got to be able to see the target. So I called out on the air net. I said, somebody put a laser on the target building. And one of the crew chiefs in the first Blackhawk Inn, which was 6-1, I think. It might have been 6-2. Anyway, they're the first two birds in. So they're not dealing with the dust like we are. That crew chief's got his radio nets up. He hears me. And no delay. Instantaneously, infrared laser. right on the target building, and he makes this circle on it. And that's, you know, I tell that story because everybody's got a role. And that one small act could have been the difference.

2:23:14If this had gone hot, it could have been the difference between my guys being in the right place and able to support or being a liability put in the wrong place, or even worse, put in somebody else's field of fire because nobody knows where they are. And all that shit matters, right? I mean, it all matters. And as soon as I saw that laser swirl on the building, I'm like, oh, there it is. Hovered right on in there, saw the trail, saw the gate. They talked me in, roped them in. Mission accomplished. And, you know, it's just there's something like that that doesn't occur on every mission, but is the difference between success and failure when everybody knows their responsibility and their role.

2:23:55Everybody's aware and everybody's engaged. and that's just a positive example of that. So anyway, we only chased Adid for a couple missions and then we're kind of like, okay, this is an Elvis scenario again. He's not here. We need to broaden the scope of this thing. So it goes up the chain of command. Let's go to phase three. So phase three is to capture everybody in his infrastructure, which is about 50 people. And now it's a target-rich environment. I mean, these guys are everywhere, right? And so the next missions are after all these guys. And we had some success. I mean, from an execution perspective, it was 100 % success, but didn't always have something to show for it.

2:24:40I mean, the intel was bad. People were misidentified, whatever. But we didn't lose any birds, didn't lose any guys. I don't even know that anybody got wounded. I think maybe a couple people did, but nothing major.

2:24:54And we're starting to pile up some success here. In the end, we will have captured 27 people, I think, on the list and turned them over. The most successful mission was mission number five, and we're chasing Osmond Otto. He is the number two guy. And if you've seen Black Hawk Down, he's the guy that's smoking the cigar, acting all cocky. He wasn't cocky. Trust me. I mean, when he got rolled up, he looked like a guy would look that's just been manhandled by Delta operators and thrown in the back of a helicopter. You know, it's like Saddam looked when they pulled him out of the hole. You know, these guys don't look cocky.

2:25:30They look humbled like they should. Well, this one proved... You were on that. Yeah, we were all, I mean, we were all on it. Yeah. So... Can you describe it? Yeah. So initially we're told... Well, first of all, we went after Otto on mission number four. No, five. He had a piece of property called Otto's Garage. I mean, to think this is the richest guy in Somalia means he ain't all that rich. but I mean, it's a junkyard. Daytime mission, we're rolling in, and RPGs are going off around us. Okay, first time we've seen that. A threat, but not a huge threat, because they're air bursting, and they're not really all that close.

2:26:14They're not supposed to air burst, but they are. So something's going on here. But let's just call an alternate pickup zone. So we infilled right into the auto's garage, and our guys cleared it, took it down, captured eight of his people that worked for him. He was there. The intel was good. And you can see it on video as we're coming in. These guys are smart. They're not stupid. He didn't run. He looked up, saw the helos, and says, I'll be back in a bit, and just casually walked out of the compound, down an alleyway. I mean, you can see it. And, you know, we found out later that that was him.

2:26:52but his guys are left there and we captured them. And then like I said, we did an alternate pickup zone, which means you go in to extract from another location because you're thinking if they were shooting RPGs on the way in, they're probably gonna shoot a lot more if we go back in there. So we pick up from an alternate location, the ground force just has to maneuver on the ground to the new pickup zone, didn't take any fire at all, successful execution, just missed a really, really lucrative target by seconds. and we get a hit on him again a couple days later. He's in a meeting place downtown.

2:27:26All right, spool up, ready to rock. We launch. Oh, shit. He's in a vehicle. Well, no problem. All we got to do is switch contingencies. And that's the beauty of all that planning and all that rehearsal. We know exactly what to do now. We just got to change, you know, how we act in the terminal area with the helicopters, but everybody knows. All you got to do is tell the guys on board, everybody on the flight crews know, this is where we're going now that it's a convoy. As I understand it, the shooters shot so accurately, the belief is he's in the second vehicle. So they round in the engine block, round in the driver, but didn't hit the primary target.

2:28:12it. When his vehicle's disabled, he jumps out, runs into a building. So now we don't have the assault force on the ground yet. This thing is switched back to what we call a strong point. No problem. Just communicate to the guys. They know. We know where we're going to land. We didn't put my guys on the ground. We closed on the target, but I'm 99 % sure we did not put our guys on the ground. We just basically pulled off and held. And I think, you know, it's been 30 freaking years, but either way, the Delta guys go in, they're clearing the building, they find them buried under a bunch of trash, pull them out, photo, bingo.

2:29:00Execution checklist, code word goes out. We got the primary target. Man, that feels good. When you're on an op like that and you know it all comes together and you know how important this guy is to the mission and then i for some reason ended up flying back with cliff he ended up on cliff's bird and we landed together and that's what i say he sure didn't look cocky you know these freaking operators are taking him out of the back of the aircraft and and we're like yeah buddy your your your your day just turned dramatically from being the richest dude in somalia to the uh the richest dude in prison.

2:29:37And, you know, obviously he got interrogated. They moved him to some holding facility somewhere. And, you know, the experts said if we'd have stopped right there, Adid eventually would have lost all his ability to influence because he didn't have any money and it all would have happened. You know, it would have happened on its own. Right. Well, that wasn't our mission. Our mission was to keep going after him and his people.

2:30:04so the experts who are the experts yeah intel analysts you know and i'm not criticizing intel people it's a hard job i mean you try to predict the future right it's like it's never going to be 100 right it's a matter of how close to right can you be is this coming out immediately or is this all in retrospect all of retrospect plus everybody's 2020 vision in hindsight right yeah so we've we've re-kit we're ready to go you know let's let's do it the mission continues so there was a mission six i'm trying to think of what mission six was i can't remember i ended up on a mission to go extract some three-letter agency guys i think nobody told me who they were but they got compromised and they picked they picked me as lead and then another bird night vision goggles we had to fly to a location in the city we landed they were all position there with some of their gear loaded up on the burrs we brought them back i don't know why we didn't do it with the ground vehicles honestly but uh i mean it's kind of cool to be to be part of that i remember my chalk too speaks fondly of this story because he says you know i mean obviously thinks a lot of me and i appreciate that but he he said uh you know mike made this great call on the way he said you know normally we go in as a flight of two but we didn't know Mike didn't know if it was dusty, so he said, let me land alone and see what it looks like, and then you come in after me.

2:31:31Because, you know, I mean, if we went in there, we both browned out. Yeah. So anyway, I landed. It wasn't that bad. It was a soccer field or something. It was actually pretty good. And then he came in immediately, and I didn't really get a reaction from the guys loaded my bird, but he said those guys were like, yes, you know, thank you. I don't know what risk they were, but anyway. We got him on board, brought him back to airfield, never saw him again. And so I actually had a bonus mission somewhere in the middle of all that. And then mission seven of the real direct action missions happens on October 3rd.

2:32:06And, you know, we, let me back up. A few days prior, there was a Black Hawk from, it had 101st Airborne Pilots on board. but I think the bird was actually an asset from 10th Mountain. I'm not sure if that's all right. I know for sure the pilots were 101st Airborne. They're flying around at night. They're blacked out. They're on the move. There's not much else you can do in a helicopter to prevent yourself from being shot down. And they get hit by an RPG. Goes up through the belly of the bird, explodes in the back. Everybody in the back's killed instantly. the explosion. The two pilots survive.

2:32:56Bird's on fire. They crash land in the city. It's Dale Schrader and Perry Alleman are their names. I think it's Dale that pulls Perry out. I don't know for sure. One helps get the other one out. Everybody in the back's a lost cause. The aircraft's on fire. They get in an alleyway and you know again i'm secondhand telling this story but bottom line is they they're engaging the somalis there's a reaction force but it's a ground reaction force back at the airfield so it's going to be a few minutes before it gets to the crash site burning blackhawks tend to attract a lot of attention in the middle of a city of 800 000 people so you know they're fighting they're shooting they're evading and again don't hold me accountable here i only know what i've been told There's a Pakistani, I believe, with an armored personnel carrier nearby that says, American boy, American boy.

2:33:58And I think it's Dale that makes the decision. I mean, we can't hold these guys off. They're going to overrun us. I got to trust this voice. So he goes to the voice, turns out to be a friendly Pakistani. I don't know if it's an APC or some kind of ground vehicle. Gets them out of there and gets them to safety. They both recovered. They both stayed in the Army. They both kept flying. You know, takes a look and keeps on ticking kind of thing. What it meant to us was it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. You know, I mean, again, we're going into all parts of the city, day, night, lots of aircraft, stationary.

2:34:33You know, when you're putting operators on the target, if you're fast roping, you're hovering up in the air. I mean, you could be engaged by anybody within range. Yeah, absolutely. And we recognize that. And normally, with the assets we had on hand, if we lost a bird, we have a search and rescue helicopter dedicated to recovering the crew, getting security and medics on the site as soon as you can. But they're going to have to fast rope too. So if you do that, this guy just got shot down and you put another one right, what do you think is going to happen to that bird? Same freaking thing, right?

2:35:13Well, I wish I could take credit for it. I can't, I don't know whose idea it was, but somebody raised the flag and said, that's a dumbass contingency. We need another solution. And we concluded, we, general term, not me, that we needed a tank. Because a tank could have gone from the airfield to any crash site in the city within five minutes, maybe 10. request goes all the way up the chain of command, gets to SecDef, who says no.

2:35:50Why? Not because we don't have tanks all over the world. I've talked to so many tankers since then because they were put on standby. Somehow they knew that there was a potential they were going to be called upon to go. And they were, every single one I've spoken to said, We couldn't freaking wait. I mean, we wanted to go. We would have absolutely been able to go through those streets. We would have got to you guys. We were ready to rock and roll. And SecDev says no, and it's for political reasons. We had been, we took the forces out. We went from 38 ,000 to 1 ,500. That appeases the American people who don't want to be in a conflict.

2:36:34We took all the armor out. We took all the AC-130s out. And I've been argued by other people within our community that the AC-130s wouldn't have made a difference. Sorry, fellas. You're freaking wrong. They would have made a difference. Okay. Because I was in captivity when they came back, and the Somalis were scared to death of them. And by the way, that's kind of what you want. You want your enemy to be scared to death of the assets that you have. So anyway, we asked. What was the political reason? Do you know? Well, because we had been pulling shit out. And Aspen's like, we're telling the American people, we're cleaning this up.

2:37:11We're about to finish. We're not sending shit back yet. That was his rationale. And there's a letter that just got released within the last two years from one of the generals on the ground in Somalia to the leadership in Washington saying, we don't have control of the situation. Something bad is going to happen and we need more assets or we need to say we're done. I mean, if the priority wasn't high enough to give us more assets, then get us the hell out. I mean, you can't have it both ways. You can't give us a mission and then not give us the shit we need to be successful in that mission. So there's three things and I want to make sure I Don't forget about this because to me, this is what motivates me to keep talking about this thing.

2:38:01There are three, actually there's four, things that we got screwed over on. I haven't mentioned this yet, but we asked for an aircraft carrier. Why do we want a carrier? Two reasons. Force protection. If you're at sea, the Somalis have nothing to touch us. Nothing. I told you earlier Matt Ryerson would still be alive if one of these decisions had been made differently. That's the decision. If Matt's on a carrier, that mortar never comes anywhere close to him. But he dies after October 3rd, standing in the compound, because we're right there. The freaking bad guys are less than 100 yards from us, because we're told no for the carrier.

2:38:45We've got to live on the airfield. AC-130, firepower. There's no such thing as too much firepower. I mean, that's a fundamental truth.

2:38:58Tanks, using another helicopter for search and rescue in an urban environment in the daytime is a bad idea. We wanted a tank. We got told no. And the last one, I don't really understand the technology, but it's counter-battery fire. Basically, you can calculate the projectile that's inbound, calculate its location, and more effectively place counterfire on that. We asked for that, too, because they've been mortaring us almost every day the whole time. And, you know, we're sandbagging the aircraft. We're moving shit around, you know, but we're living in a freaking— It's fucking crazy. It is crazy.

2:39:35How many times throughout history our politicians and bureaucrats have fucking abandoned commandos and left them to die? It is fucking asinine. It's very troubling. And yet we keep going to do it, and we always will. And God bless those who still serve and still do it. But man, it pisses you off. There's a quote. There's never, ever any accountability for this shit. No accountability for the fucking politicians in this country. There never fucking has been, and there probably never will be. Well, it will come full circle on Les Aspen. And, you know, I mean, he's another human being. I don't wish him ill, but he ends up dying.

2:40:24And people that know him, and we're getting ahead here, but I'll go ahead and finish this thought. they flew me down to brag for for the delta memorial and you've been there you you've you've been there when the boots and the weapon and the helmet and the goggles are there representing the fallen and the families are there and we're all there and les aspen walks in i don't think he was well i know he wasn't prepared i mean i don't think he'd ever seen any light in his life i don't I don't think he ever saw this as anything but a chess match, and a political chess match. And when he... You could see it.

2:41:09I mean, you could see the look on his face when he walked in that room and he realized, we fucked this up. I mean, as civilian... Who was Les Aspin? He was a sec def.

2:41:23And why the hell Clinton picked him as a sec def is beyond me. he had a reputation as being anti-military i think again i'm not a phd on every politician that's ever worked in the administration but i'm pretty sure that's right but when these people don't give a fuck about their slot no just want the power i saw it in this last administration these people are so fucking hungry for power they don't give a fuck where they get placed they just want in the admin they just want in the administration you give them a fucking broom they would love it i agree no they're they know they're not the best place it's discussed this yeah it's another discussion i want to pollute the interview that's garbage no i i then you should be you should be upset we should all be upset that this is how it works but i will say that i i mean visibly you could see something some switch flipped in him and there are friends of his that said and I don't know if it's true, but I've read this, that he, I mean, physically, it just, he died.

2:42:26I mean, not long after, I don't remember, maybe it was years, but it was, he was supposedly never the same. But anyway, regardless. Died of what? I don't know, natural causes, I'm not sure. I mean, he didn't like take his own life, but he, they just don't get it. I just have no sympathy for these fucking people. Well, to your point, he just didn't get it. He didn't understand that this is real. These are people with their lives on the line, and your responsibility as civilian leadership is to make them, give them everything they need to be successful. That's it. That's the only job you have. He knew who else was never the same?

2:43:07Them. Yeah, everybody on the fucking ground who was doing the job. I don't give a fuck if that guy was ever the same. Fuck him. And their family. Fuck you. Yeah. Fucking piece of shit. Sorry.

2:43:25So all those things we asked for, none of them we got. So people say, well, why'd you go? Because that's our freaking mission. That's why we went. You know, when we were in Desert Storm, there was a crew who didn't want to go north of the border because they didn't feel like they had the right mission equipment on the aircraft and they were told okay pack your bags you're going home and two more guys came in and they flew the mission and nothing happened so uh you know again unless it's unlawful you've sworn oath to do it and and you want to do it that's why you're in the freaking unit right if you didn't want to do it you wouldn't be there and i wanted to go and on that day as we looked at this thing.

2:44:14Again, I'm a flight lead here. So I'm in this ops center with the leadership and we're looking at this thing and we all knew the risks. I mean, there were four risks on this one. Daytime. Don't have our technology advantage. We've done it six times. This is number seven. And they're changing their tactics with each evolution. They now understand what we're doing pretty much as well as we do in terms of general concept. It's in the worst part of the city. We're going into Bakara Market. This is where all the bad guys are. I mean, we're into the lion's den, and then you can't land the Blackhawks.

2:44:57So that complicates extraction. Fast roping, I mean, we're exposed a little bit more, but we can do it pretty quick getting them in. But the only option to get them out is rooftop, and that's a bad idea. I mean, if they've been on a target 40 minutes, and you come in with a Blackhawk, and you're sitting on the roof long enough to load. You know, for me, I had 16 Rangers. I'm exposed for way too long. That's a bad idea. So we were going to extract by ground. And that's why the convoy's out there. The mechanism to get everybody off the target is the convoy. All good decisions. And people said, you know, they've asked me over the years, were you comfortable?

2:45:37Fuck no, I'm not comfortable. I mean, you know that this is each time the threat ratchets up. But I was comfortable enough. I mean, I wasn't to the point where it's like, man, we shouldn't be doing this. No, that wasn't how I felt. I felt like, you know, we got to get in, got to get out quick. We got to do our job. And, you know, we'll talk about it when it's over. Well, that ain't how it goes. So in the infill, again, it's like 3.30 in the afternoon. We're going to put my guys on the target. So my guys are supposed to put a perimeter in. I'm leading the ranger element. So the delta guys are on the little birds and the two lead blackhawks.

2:46:18And then I've got another element behind. It's going to come in right behind them and seal it off. Because you don't want reinforcements coming in and you don't want leakers going out. Well, if you look at the video, it looks like we're crawling. Well, the reason we're crawling is on the initial infill. It's so dusty that a little bird does a go around. And if a little bird's got to do a go around, you know it's dusty because they don't generate nearly as much dust as we do. And now I can't go around because if I go around, it's like when you're flying commercially and ATC tells the aircraft, hold.

2:46:54I mean, it just takes too much time to make a loop. So we just decel. So I'm holding my flight off because I got to let that little bird come around, get back in, get his guys off and come out. and until I see him break the dust cloud, I can't close on the same locations. So we're flying pretty slow at this point, but we're trying to get in right on his tail. Doesn't matter other than we're a little bit more vulnerable because we're flying fairly slowly, but they didn't get any shots off at us at that point that I know of. Anyway, we get in our box formation. Everybody's roping in. It was super dusty.

2:47:30The only thing that I could see was a telephone pole out my chin bubble, and that's how I'm maintaining my position. I'm flying again on this one. You know, I keep talking about me flying. Ray and I, who is my co-pilot, we were rotating missions. He would fly one, I would fly one. And this just happened to be the day that I was flying. And so we get all our guys on the ground. We come out. The whole flight comes out. We go north of the city. and now I got them up there and we're holding. We're essentially done because we're going to exfil by ground. And we reached a point in the mission where we're going to consolidate, count heads, get everybody on ground vehicles, and get out of there when all hell breaks loose.

2:48:18Since 6-1, Cliff Walcott and Donovan Briley, the guys I've been talking about for the last two hours, they're in the first bird and they get shot down and they're killed instantly the aircraft far as i know came down hit a wall and then rotated and basically crushed the cockpit and miraculously guys in the back i mean not hurt bad the dan bush i don't think was hurt at all i think he gets shot later uh not 100 sure but uh for i mean it's on video one of the guys comes out and it sets up security to the tail of the aircraft. The crew chiefs survive. One of them's not really hurt hardly at all. I don't know how, because if you look at that crash, I mean, there's no survival space.

2:49:05I don't know how in the world they didn't all get killed. But anyway, they didn't. So now the commander's got target in contact, convoy in contact, crash site in contact, and we don't have the assets to handle one of these. And now we got three. so best idea they can come up with is consolidate on the crash site because they can't get cliff and donovan out they obviously need to provide security for the guys that are still alive so the idea is get everybody to close on the crash site we'll set up security get the bodies out load up on the vehicles get the hell out of here meanwhile i'm still holding and in my mind donovan and donovan cliff are not dead i mean i i'm like okay they got hit by an rpg they got it on the ground.

2:49:50We'll all, you know, yak about it later and tell war stories later and all that other shit. And then Carl Meyer, who's a flight lead of the Little Bird Assault Force, the MH-6s that put the guys on the ground right around the building. You can see it in the video. They make it like an L-shaped landing right around the target building. Gets on the radio and says, hey, I can land in the street. My aircraft's small enough. Why don't you let me land near the crash site and we'll get a couple of the operators that are most gravely wounded on board. Now, he doesn't have crew chiefs. He's just got two pilots.

2:50:28Freaking brilliant idea. Why we never really talked too much about that as a contingency before, I have no idea. But Commander says, do it. So Carl and Keith Jones land. Now, again, tremendous respect for Carl. He recently passed. tremendous loss for the whole aviation community. Just freaking thinking on your feet. If I was landing that bird, I would land at an intersection. But Carl is smart enough to realize if I land at the intersection, which gives me the most room, I got threats coming from four directions. Yeah, four fields of fire. Yes. I'm not sure I would have thought of that. He did.

2:51:09Well, Blackhawk wouldn't have fit anyway. But anyway, so he goes beyond the intersection, lands. Keith jumps out. Carl's the one that's talked about firing his MP5 down the alleyway as he's holding the controls with his knees. And, you know, RPGs are exploding on the wall. I mean, I thought he was borderline Medal of Honor, my personal opinion. But Keith jumps out and goes and gets one of the most gravely wounded Delta operators. And then I think they convinced Dan Bush to get on that aircraft as well, I think. Dan ultimately doesn't make it. It may not have been Dan. But anyway, they end up with, I think, two guys, neither of which make it, I don't think.

2:51:54And they get them to medical treatment. It would have been hours otherwise, a day actually otherwise, had they not done that. In the meantime, the commander says, send the search and rescue bird in. Remember the bad idea we just talked about? But it's all he's got. I mean, there's nothing else he can do. So they go in, they're roping their security and medical team near the crash site, and they get nailed by an RPG. Fuck. The American Revolution didn't just happen. The colonists didn't just wake up one day in 1776 and decide to declare independence from the British. There's 150 years of history that made the American Revolution possible.

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2:54:54There's a picture of the blade on the aircraft. How the thing didn't fail, I don't know. I mean, it looks like a giant took a bite out of the front end of this rotor blade. And the rotor blades, really the structure is all in the front. They call it a titanium spar. It's shaped like a backwards D. I guess if you look at it the right way, it's shaped like a frontwards D, but either way. And the rest is just aluminum. Well, it looks like the whole spar is compromised, but somehow that blade held on. There's a hole in the fuselage. I always thought they held their position. Dan Jalada, a good friend of mine, says no, they didn't.

2:55:33They started to take off. Still got guys on the ropes. The crew chief said, oh, oh, oh, we got guys on the ropes. They went back down, got them on the ground. cut the ropes, went back to the airfield. That crew actually jumps in a spare helicopter, and there's a few things that has to happen first that needed a test flight or something, because they just changed an engine, I don't remember. And then they come back out. They end up flying 17 hours, because they're the search and rescue bird, so they're flying all night.

2:56:03And now the commander says to me, hey, I want you to replace 6.1 over the target. it. Hell yeah. You know, but we don't have snipers on board. I mean, all we got is miniguns. So we go in and we join the orbit. This was a bad idea. I mean, you know, somebody should have realized before this happened that that just didn't make sense in the daytime. You're giving the advantage to the bad guy. I mean, you know, I got a 57 whatever foot long helicopter that they can shoot at. Meanwhile, I'm trying to, you know, my guys are trying to hit a two-foot wide target that has cover, and we do not. So all you got to do is wait for us to fly by, which is what they did, and then come out of the doorway and shoot the RPG at us.

2:56:51And, I mean, we can't shoot. I told the crew chiefs, I said, I'm arming you up, but, I mean, we got friendlies all over the place here. They've gone from the target to the crash site. We don't know where they are. we got to hold until we figure out where all the friendlies are. And then once we're comfortable, then we can start engaging targets. So they never fired around. I mean, we made it maybe around a target three times. And I'm doing, again, I'm flying. I'm trying to do everything I can. I am, was it a right-hand turn? No, I'm in the right seat. So we're in a left-hand turn, and we're in a bank.

2:57:31So I'm actually looking through the cockpit to the open door on the other side, trying to figure out what the hell's happening as I'm making this orbit, trying to change my altitude, trying to speed up, slow down to make it hard for us to hit because we know they're going to shoot at us. And, you know, guy steps out with an RPG, never saw him, never saw an RPG coming. And, of course, you know, they hadn't shot enough at helicopters to realize how much they needed to lead us. that's why cliff gets hit in the tail and that's why we get hit in the tail and i'm sure they were shooting at the main body of the aircraft and just because you know they don't know enough to lead it hits the tail which in the end is worse damage than if they'd hit you know the main part of the fuselage because if you lose a tail rotor on a blackhawk at slow speed you are fucked at low altitude.

2:58:22And that's the condition we were in. So it hits. I tell people it feels like a speed bump going way too fast in a parking lot. I mean, if you hit a speed bump 40 miles an hour, that's what it felt like. It jolted the fuselage. But I never saw it. So I don't know where we're hit. I roll the aircraft level, looking at everything. Everything looks okay. Controls are all working fine. And the air mission commander calls on the radio and says, you better put it on the ground. And I'm like, hmm, there's a freaking firefight going on down here. The airfield's right there. I mean, I can see it. No, I'm going for the airfield.

2:59:04And that's my prerogative. I'm the pilot in command of the aircraft. I mean, at that point, I am officially in charge of what we're doing. And it didn't matter if the The president himself called me. I have the authority to do what I think is right. So we start flying, and then I start to hear this whining, and it builds up very rapidly. And what had happened was the RPG hit the bottom of the transmission. We call it a gearbox. Underneath the tail rotor, it connects to the tail rotor. It blew part of it off, and now it's got no oil. So it's just gears that are probably damaged, turning at a super high rate of speed, and they just disintegrated.

2:59:47I mean, that was the whining that I heard. And the guy that was behind us, I believe what he said was, it looked like your tail rotor turned into vapor. I mean, he said it just completely disintegrated. And when that happened, we're still fairly slow. And that's the death sentence. Because if you lose your tail rotor and you're going fast, the airflow over the fuselage is going to keep that tail from kicking around. The wind is going to basically push it like a weather vane. But if you're slow, there's not enough push from that wind to keep the torque of the engine from spinning you around. So we start to spin.

3:00:29And initially, I mean, I've been flying these things for years. I got a fair amount of flight time. I felt like they were part of me. I'm looking at my feet like, am I doing the right thing here? Because it's the pedals that control this left-right movement, basically, when you're at slow airspeed. And I'm having to convince myself, no, you're doing the right thing. The aircraft's not responding correctly. And Ray and I reached the conclusion instantaneously we've lost the tail. And now we're in a flat spin. And I know it's maybe getting into too much weeds here, but what happens is...

3:01:09Center of gravity is a huge issue with helicopters. And it's called the moment of the weight. So if you think about something balancing, the further away from that balance point, it takes less force to move. So the tail is the furthest from the center of gravity of anything. So losing that weight, losing the gearbox and the tail itself, now makes that tail super light, which causes the tail to want to go up. Without changing anything else, the tail now is suddenly going to want to go up. Well, that's what happened. So the tail's going up. So I decel. What I'm actually trying to do is level the aircraft.

3:01:51But it's in fact decelerating the aircraft, which then causes the whale tail on a Blackhawk, as people might refer to it, it's called a stabilator. It's an airfoil on the back, right below the tail rotor, that as you slow down, it comes down. And what that's designed to do when they first designed the aircraft, when you're decelerating to land, if you didn't have the stabilator back there, your nose would get too high and you'd have a hard time seeing where you're landing. So they put that stabilator on there to basically give you a lift on the tail. so that's making it even worse. So now the stifler's going down, the tail's coming up, and I got to pull back even more, which is the opposite of what I'd like to be able to do, but I can't dive because I'm only at 70 feet.

3:02:37So we're in this impossible scenario where we're like, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. And all I could see is brown earth and blue sky, just the line. Everything else is a complete blur. And I said to Ray, I guess we better pull him off. And he's already going. I mean, he knows. And the reason he has to do it is the power control levers on a Blackhawk are up overhead. They control the engines. And the engines are what's creating this torque that's spinning the aircraft. It's not a great thing to not have engines. But if you can cut the power to the engines, at least the spin will stop. But then you're going to fall from the sky.

3:03:16So he goes for them. but we were spinning so violently and we talked about this actually on the ground we're both instructors so why you know why the hell would that be what you talk about on the ground because that's just what you do he said to me he couldn't hold his arms up that's how fast we're spinning the centrifugal force is driving his his whole upper body to spin away from the axis of rotation so he gets one to idle and gets one about halfway off so when When we hit the ground, we're still spinning, but somehow, pure luck, amazing skill, pick your number, we crash on the wheels. And that's the only reason I'm still, that's the only reason any of us survived.

3:03:59If you crash on the side, upside down, we're all dead, for sure. But we crashed on the wheels, yet we're still spinning. So there was some torque left in the airframe. It ripped the right landing gear off. I remember laying there on the ground looking back and I'm like, holy shit. I mean, I didn't know there was enough force in the world to rip that off. I mean, this is gigantic metal attaching point that the upper portion of the strut on a landing gear, the front landing gear on a blackout, there's a picture of one right there, you know, has, and it's completely ripped off. I mean, just, and, you know, when we hit my seat, which has shock absorbers in it, which helped, but it had enough vertical impact to crush my seat and everything underneath it.

3:04:46And I'm sitting in a hole, basically, because my seat is completely collapsed. My right femur snapped in two on the edge of the seat. The only explanation I have for that is I had my M9 in a low-slung holster right there. So it added some weight to my leg. I can't think of any other reason why my right femur would have broken off because there wasn't any bruising. Like the cyclic didn't hit my leg. I don't know. I mean, you can't explain everything in a crash. And my vertebrae were crushed. Not the discs, not the squishy things, the bones themselves. One crushed 30%. And because of the spin, they're crushed in a doorstop-like shape.

3:05:33So if you saw an x-ray in my back, which I have, I mean, I don't know how I can do what I can do. I really don't. They're disfigured and crushed, and I have what's called a kyphosis in my back. It turns 32 degrees at one point and then 13 degrees forward at another because when we hit, we're spinning, so I go forward and sideways with enough force to smash the bones. And, I mean, that's what hurt. I mean, when you have a femur fracture and you can't feel it, not because your nerves are severed, but because your back hurts so freaking bad you can't feel it, that's freaking being in pain. And it hurt.

3:06:14I mean, I can't even describe it. I can't even relate to it anymore because it's been 30 years. But I regain consciousness, and it takes a second to figure shit out, right? Like, where am I? What the hell happened? don't remember hitting the ground, push some metal out of the front windshield. And we think that's what Randy Sugar and Gary Gordon saw. We think they saw either me moving shit or Ray Frank struggling to get out of the aircraft. And that's when they got on the radio and said, hey, we got survivors. Let us go in. And initially, and I think this probably bubbles up to General Garrison, I'm not sure 100%.

3:07:00I never asked him. If it was him or Colonel Harreld, Gary Harreld, who made the call. But they said, no, there's no way. Why didn't you ask him? I'm off comms. I didn't know if you meant that you saw him later on. Oh, why didn't I ask? You know, I don't know. Does it matter at this point? Do you want to put him in an uncomfortable situation? I can explain why I think they made their call from my perspective. It's triage. I mean, now you got four fights. You had three. Now you got four. And the only operators left on a bird are Randy and Gary. Do you want to put them at an isolated crash site where they're surrounded?

3:07:49Or do you want to use them over here where the bulk of your force is? It's a command decision. I'm never going to second guess it. would I have made the same one? I can't say, but that's my explanation for why they made that decision. They didn't think it was possible to save us. And they were right, if you think about it. I mean, they were right. But Gary and Randy don't take no for an answer. They continue to orbit. In the meantime, Ray's getting out of the aircraft. He had a lower leg fracture and a back injury, but not as incapacitated as I was. I mean, with a femur fracture and a crushed spine.

3:08:29You're not going anywhere. You're not going anywhere. I mean, it's hard to get out of a freaking Blackhawk healthy. You know, you got to step over the controls and everything else. So I just decided I'm going to fight it out from the cockpit. But Ray gets himself out and we never said another word. We talked about the spinning and what we did and the power control levers. And that was it. I mean, the last time I saw him, he was standing by the cockpit, he had his MP5, and he's getting ready to go do his thing. I did some stuff that I still don't understand completely. I mean, I obviously took my helmet off.

3:09:05It's a flight helmet. It's not a Kevlar or anything. And then I had my wedding band on my watch band. And I took those off and I set it on the center console. Can't explain it. No idea why I did that. And then again, I settled on the fact that I'm going to do what I can from the cockpit here. And right about that time, Randy and Gary show up. Now, what happened that I am, you know, oblivious to is they kept orbiting and they kept seeing the movement and they insisted. And as I understand it, on the third request, they were speaking directly to either Colonel Harrell or General Garrison and said, look, if you don't let us in, they're closing in and we're We're going to lose them all.

3:09:51And I think it's General Garrison. I think he said, you know what you're asking me? And they said, yes, we understand. And he said, put them in. And so, Jim Yacone and Mike Gafina, who are flying this aircraft, Super 6-2, put them in. And they are put in behind me, so I don't see the aircraft. And I don't hear them until all of a sudden they're right there. and I'm like holy shit how did you get here you know like this is unbelievable I knew Gary not well not a personal friend but I he'd been on my bird I recognized him and I'm like damn freaking rescue force god bless you you know but we didn't talk this is just happening in my head and they lifted me up set me on the ground how you lift a guy you know I probably weighed 185 at the time with a broken femur and a broken back and not further injure him is beyond me in the middle of a firefight.

3:10:52But they did. I mean, I don't remember really feeling any more pain at all or anything bad happening to my leg or anything. I told them, you know, my leg's broken. I knew it was broken at that point. And I said, you know, and the movie has me saying my back's kind of weird. I think I said, you know, something wrong with my back. But anyway, they put me on a sitting with my back against what I think was a survival kit, which is a big box of shit that's in the back of the aircraft, and gave me my MP5. And then they go around the other side. So I'm on the right side of the aircraft. Bill Cleveland is behind me.

3:11:30He's hurt bad. I mean, he's moaning. I mean, he's probably dying. Tommy, probably same way, but I couldn't hear him. I think Tommy actually got hit by the minigun in his chest. It's on a pinto mount. And again, the spin and the crash was so violent that that gun smashed right into his chest. And I think, you know, that's probably what killed him. Not sure, 100%. But, and I'm taking shots here, taking shots there. But my gun, my MP5 keeps jamming. I'm like, what the hell? Clear a round, get another round in there. clear around fire jams again clear around i mean now over the years and i figured it's probably damaged because it was sitting on the magazine vertically and you know that vertical impact it's not designed to take that kind of force so the magazine was probably bent and or even maybe the rounds themselves were damaged i'm not sure but either way i mean it was shooting but it was shooting one maybe two and then i'd have to clear a jam and i got rounds laying all over me and anyway i end up winchester in the thing and are you hitting i i think i was i think i hit a couple guys but i mean it's it's hard to shoot sitting like that period and you know that's not a long-range weapon it's almost a pistol with a long barrel you know they didn't come back which is the desired effect so you know to me it was effective fire it did it did i was trying to hit I just don't know if I did.

3:13:02In the meantime... How long were you in the helicopter... Not long. ...before they showed up? Not long. I mean, in my mind, less than five minutes. What was the conversation like with you and your co-pilot when he exited the helicopter? Simply, we talked about the power control levers, and that was it. That's it? That's it. Why did he exit? Where was he going? I think he was going to try to take cover somewhere behind a tree or something. You guys didn't discuss it? Nope. Nope. When did you notice the Somalis closing in on the helicopter? Not yet. I hadn't seen any Somalis yet. And that's one thing the movie misrepresents.

3:13:37In the movie, they're showing me, like, killing half a Mogadishu from the cockpit. Never fired a round from the cockpit. I mean, I fired plenty of rounds from the ground, but not from the cockpit. So when they showed up, nobody was, they weren't closing in yet? Not yet. At least I hadn't seen them. How long afterwards? I mean, almost immediately. Seconds. Yeah. Yeah.

3:14:03And Gary goes down. He saw it. No, I heard it. Gary, for whatever, you know, what is it that you remember about people? You know, do people remember how you look, how you talk, how you posture yourself? I can't explain it, but I remembered his voice because when he had flown on my bird, you know, we did a pre-brief and he asked some questions or whatever, and I just remembered To me, there was something unique about it. And I heard him say, you know, damn, I'm hit, or something like that. It wasn't anything desperate. It wasn't, you know... I just thought he just took a round, honestly. As I understand it, if it wasn't that round, it was a round soon after that just hit a gap in the body armor and became a mortal wound.

3:14:50Randy comes around. How long? How long? Not long. Fuck, man. Not long. So Randy comes around, I mean, they've been shooting the hell out of the Somalis though. I mean, it was like being at the range. I mean, the Somalis say 27 Somalis were killed at crash site 2 and none of them by the aircraft. I mean, all gunfire. So that gives you some perspective when there's at most four of us, probably only three of us shooting. And I would say 99.9 % of that is Gary and Randy. Yeah, because you don't even know if you're hitting. Right, right. Not 100 % sure. You know, I mean, I would see a head pop up and shoot at it.

3:15:30There's some video of this corrugated tin wall, which was to my right. And I could hear movement behind there, and I'm just shooting through the wall. I mean, at this point, it's freaking survival, right? And, you know, if it's an American, they're going to call out something, you know. so I'm just shooting through the wall to get these people to stay away at some point and I had forgotten about this but now that I was reminded what I think was a hand grenade got thrown in here and I just heard it hit the ground and I'm freaking out like holy shit there's a freak and I remember swinging my weapon around because I couldn't see it and I'm hoping to just hit it, you know, and bang, it goes off.

3:16:15Nothing hit me. But again, just adds to the, man, you know, this is just off the chart, right? So Randy comes back asking, where's the crew chief's weapons? And I'm like, oh, shit. You know, I went from feeling pretty good about this to, man, we are screwed. And I told them where they were. You know, again, this is the importance of SOPs and standard operating procedures, There's, you know, doing things the way they're supposed to be done. Crew chiefs had their weapons exactly where they were supposed to be. They're not buried under some shit. Or there's this place we call the hellhole in the back that's behind a panel that, you know, sometimes you throw stuff in.

3:16:53No, they were right where they were supposed to be. And I told him where they were. He went in and he's out in like 10 seconds. Now he's got two M16s, freshly loaded, full magazines. And he gives me what I've always thought and still think was Gary's weapon. And at that point, I'm like, oh, shit. If this is Gary's weapon, he's down, like down hard. And now it's Randy and me. And he gets on the fire's net, which we had programmed in our survival radios, the fire net, because you pretty much know you're always going to be able to talk to somebody on that net. That's just how we did it. And there was an A and a B channel.

3:17:33I don't know what the B channel was. Maybe the SAR net or something. But anyway, so he calls. And I hear a familiar voice from one of the little birds saying, a reaction force is en route. All right, hold on a little bit longer. It's going to be eight hours before somebody else gets to our crash site. We don't know that. Randy goes around the bird, makes his last stand. I mean, it's just a matter of time. They had all closed on us. They knew we were lightly defended. they you know they had set up a matrix of the city just like us and they were sending out over handheld radios where the target was so that everybody would converge on it and they could overwhelm us with numbers which they they definitely had numbers and and now this time they were all converging on our crash site uh and they all assaulted from the left side Did you hear him make his last stand?

3:18:32No. I just heard the shooting stop. And then I could hear the voices. And it's Somali voices. And I'm like, this is it. There's nothing you can do. I'm out of rounds. I've shot all the rounds out of Gary's weapon. Why I never thought of my pistol, I cannot explain. I never thought of it. Never thought of it at all. I, to this day, cannot explain why. It probably saved my life. That's what I was just gonna say. It's probably a fucking good thing you didn't. But I never drew it because I just didn't think of it. So I've got the MP5s laying there. I got Gary's weapon across my chest. It's empty. I'm looking at the sky.

3:19:22I can still remember the clouds. And I'm just thinking, this is how it ends. and that's how it was going to end because they were... The only thing I've ever seen in my life that I think is comparable was the SEALs and Fallujah on the bridge. Not the SEALs, but the contractors. Contractors. Yeah. That, to me, is basically equivalent to what happened. It was pandemonium. I mean, it was things... And I just, in my mind, having the benefit of, you know, grown up where I did and being an American and a Christian and what's right and wrong, I just couldn't imagine ever doing what they did. I just couldn't imagine it.

3:20:15So initially, they're going to beat me to death.

3:20:21So when I first told this story, I said I got butt stroked. And it broke my nose, my cheekbone, and my eye socket. If I had you put your finger and run your finger along the bottom part of my eye socket, you'll hit a spot where it goes up about a quarter of an inch because this whole part of my face got smashed in.

3:20:43What I was surprised no one ever questioned me on, though, is if you butt stroke somebody that hard with a rifle butt, that's going to leave a mark, the shape of that butt. Well, if you look at my interrogation video, there is no mark like that. Why did I say that? Because I guess in some respects, I'm a protector. If I had to describe myself, I'm a problem solver. I don't have a lot of patience for incompetence and dishonesty, and I'm a protector. I didn't want the families to know what happened. Somehow in my naive mind, they wouldn't know. No one would tell them. And that would be better for them.

3:21:29What I didn't know is bodies are about to be dragged through the streets. Body parts are about to be turned over to the compound in bags. I didn't know any of that. But what they hit me with, I believe, was someone's arm. Because it was heavy and soft. And when it obviously had enough weight that when it hit my face, it smashed the bones in my face, but it was soft enough that it didn't create a bruise. And I remember looking at the guy that did it in disbelief. Like, humans can't do this, you know? Like one of... Yeah, one of our guys. One of your teammates' arms. Yeah. I mean, I can't guarantee you that's what it was, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was.

3:22:20Oh, man. And I remember seeing movies when I was younger about, you know, Vietnam and horrible shit. But it's a movie, right? You know, and you don't, you're horrified by it maybe if you're really drawn into it. But in the end, it's a movie. But this is actually happening. and I mean it shocked me I didn't say anything I just looked at the guy like holy shit you know and somewhere in this sequence and by the way they're they're split between people that are trying to take my shit and people that are trying to beat me to death so they're trying to get my boots off and I think this is where my femur goes out the back side of my leg because they're, you know, they don't take great care to really loosen your boot, right?

3:23:13I mean, they're pull the bow and then pull, pull, pull it till it comes off. Well, if your freaking femur is busted and somebody else is trying to get your, your, your, your boot off, it, it's going to create some havoc up here where the fracture is. Well, my femur goes out the backside of my leg. I mean, punches right through a hole, but the size of a half dollar. You know, my son played hockey, and every time I pulled his skates off, it reminded me of that. You know, try taking a kid's hockey skate off. It's hard. You're pulling hard on his leg. And that's what they were doing to get my boot off.

3:23:53And it was, anyway, again, because my back hurt so bad, I don't remember it happening, and I don't remember the pain of it, all I can tell you is there's a big-ass hole there and my femur was out the back. So anyway, somebody realizes you have value as a prisoner. Everyone else is dead, I think, or died. Did you see them dragging the bodies through the streets? I did not know that happened. I did not know. When you say that originally you had said that it was a buttstock, what were you protecting the families from? Knowing that that kind of carnage had occurred. Okay. I mean, I don't think it was a matter that I couldn't talk about it.

3:24:43Although, you know, let me tell you, when I first talked about all of this, it was pretty tough. I'll bet it was. And it's just been a healing process over the years. And I don't think you're ever 100 % healed. It's grief. I mean, you know, if you lose a loved one, car accident, whatever, I mean, you're going to feel some emotion about that probably for the rest of your life. You know, you think about them, you think about they're not there anymore. It's grief. And I think it's, it lessens over time, but it never goes completely away. For me, it's harder if I'm tired, if I've, you know, I've had a short night of sleep or whatever, and I'm vulnerable, I let my guard down a little bit.

3:25:27it's a little more difficult, but I'm as healed as I'm going to be. I mean, I'm not going to be healed anymore. I'm not saying I'm over it. I mean, if your friends all die, you shouldn't get over it. I mean, that's, you know, you should miss them. You should grieve them. And I do, you know. But anyway, somebody realizes I have value as a prisoner. And Mark Bowden is the one who discovered this. I didn't know. I don't remember this shot being fired. He claims he fired shots in the air and got control of the mob. I mean, at that point, the doctors told me, Mike, give yourself some slack here. You're in freaking shock, okay?

3:26:06You don't sustain injuries like that and then be overrun and beaten and not be in shock. You know, he said, your brain's probably not processing everything like you normally would. And I said, yeah, you know, Doc, you're probably right. I never really thought of it that way, but you're probably right. So anyway, the Somali claims he fired shots in the air, got the crowd to back off, and said, you know, we're taking you into captivity, and we're going to turn you over to Adid. Well, before they did, the only identifying thing— They told you that? No. Did any of these guys speak English? No. No.

3:26:47Mark Bowden told me that. So you have no fucking idea what these guys are saying, nothing. No, or who they are. I mean, I know they're pissed off, out of control Somalis. There's just people ransacking your body and trying to kill you. Some, obviously, civilians. Some, I mean, they didn't wear uniforms like a traditional military person would. But, I mean, you could tell they're SNA, Somali National Alliance people, the way just AK-47, kind of militaristic looking. The way they carry themselves. Yeah, yeah.

3:27:23So the only identifying things I carried, we had a green piece of cardboard that got us into the Task Force Ranger compound because it's secure, you know, and we have access points. And we would leave like to go run PT. We would run around the airfield. I mean, we carried our MP5s, you know, we had them slung on our backs when we'd run, but the airfield, I think it was like maybe six miles around. and we were actually training to go do the Marine Corps Marathon again. And another thing that I think helped me survive this is I was in pretty damn good shape. I mean, we were training to go run a marathon the following month.

3:28:02But when we got back, we'd have to show our credentials and it's nothing sophisticated. It's a green freaking piece of cardboard with a laminated, all right, Task Force Ranger. I also had my name tag on, which has a picture of a Blackhawk. It's got my rank on there, U.S. Army, wings, and I think that's it. When they were ripping all my shit off, one guy pulls this green cardboard, and he says, Ranger, Ranger, you die, Somalia. So I guess they did speak English. my correction. Sorry, I forgot about that. That tells you several things right there. They know what it takes to access the Task Force Ranger compound.

3:28:50I mean, as soon as he sees the green card, that to him is, this is my access. So this is why I said earlier, you don't know who the bad guys are. When you're in these third world countries, you're relying on locals to do different things, which we have to, because we don't have the support a lot of times to do it all with green suitors or blue suitors or organic assets. Anyway, then they threw dirt in my face and then they wrapped a rag around my head so I can't see and they hoist me up in the air. Now, it's possible my femur goes out here. Again, I don't know. And at that point, I'm being paraded around through the streets.

3:29:33So, I'm like the living version of what they do with the bodies. They're celebrating. They shot down an aircraft, they killed Americans, now they have an American, and they, I mean... What are you hearing? I'm hearing screaming. I always thought, and again, I can't see, so I felt like most of the loudest voices were female. I don't know if that's an accurate recollection, but that's what I recall. and then I'm getting hit. And I know if you kill a male in their family that that is something that the women seek retribution for, reparations for, and maybe that's part of why they're hitting me. I don't know, right?

3:30:20But I know we kill a lot of people there and rightfully so, they're attacking us. I mean, we're not killing people just because we want to. They're attacking us. I mean, we're essentially defending ourselves. So anyway, I describe a moment, and I've said this from the beginning. I left my body. I mean, there's a scientific explanation for that, and there's a spiritual explanation for that. All I can tell you is it happened. I remember distinctly looking down and seeing myself being carried through the streets, and the pain went away. I mean, it was like, wow, thank God that's not me, you know, because that looks like that really sucks.

3:31:10And it only lasted a few seconds. And then, bam, it is me. And the scientific explanation being your brain has a lot of capabilities that you'll never use. And one of them is it can trick itself if it's dealing with significant trauma. and try to figure out a way to tell you it's not real, that's the scientific explanation. The spiritual explanation is, I'm about to die, and God sent you back.

3:31:46Don't know. Yeah, you do.

3:31:55I know I've got a lot of people pulling for me that are up there. yeah that's no shit my grandmother in particular

3:32:08and you can't say no to her so i'm back in the moment and they're they're carrying me through the streets and then they they throw me on the ground and uh i'm trying to get sorted out just a bizarre little trivial thing. My desert tan flight suit is a two-piece, which looks kind of like BDU. It's not a traditional Air Force looking flight suit. And it's got really long pockets. And what had happened was the pocket, I had a pocket knife in it and the pocket flipped over. So if you reached in, you thought you were getting to the bottom of my pocket, but you weren't because it was flipped over. And they reached in there, they searched me, but they didn't see the pocket knife.

3:32:55So I had a pocket knife. What am I going to do with it? I don't freaking know. But I have a knife, okay? And I'm like looking at my situation. It's like, oh, man, this is bad. And they're arguing amongst themselves. They don't, you could tell they didn't know what to do. They hadn't really planned this contingency. And they suddenly come back in the room and they hoist me up again. and they run me out to a flat, like a truck with a big flat surface on the back, throw me on the back of that, throw a tarp over me, and then get on the back of the truck. Because, you know, in these third world countries, right?

3:33:37If you can fit 50 people, you can fit 51 on the back of the thing. And they all pile on. And basically, they don't want anyone to know, obviously, American or Somali, that I am there. Now, according to Mark's research, what actually happened here is that the people that overrun the site are not Habergator. They're some other clan. And they reached a deal, probably a monetary deal, with Adid to turn me over to him. And the group that comes to get me to move to the second location is Adid's people. And that's why they moved me so quickly to another location. I don't know any of this is going on.

3:34:17but that is apparently what happened. So I moved by ground. I don't know where the hell we're going. And they put me in a little octagonal room that had like, like some of the bricks higher up had like ventilation through them. So I could hear what's going on outside, but I couldn't see. The lower parts of the wall are solid. It's like a dirt, pea gravel kind of floor. No, it might've been concrete floor, but it's pea gravel outside, just like survival school, exactly the same way. And the beauty of it was I could hear them when they approached the door, just like survival school. I don't know.

3:34:55It's just a coincidence. But so during the night, they had chained me up. I call it a dog chain, just primarily to give you some sense of the thickness of the chain. It was fairly light. And I was sweating profusely. I mean, it's hot. You can imagine with all these injuries and all the shits going on in my body, I was actually able to get out of the chain. And I'm laying there. You know, I got the dirt out of my eyes. I'm straightening my leg out a little bit. It's starting to swell. I still have my trousers on, but they're very baggy. Eventually, my leg is going to get big enough where they're skin tight.

3:35:32And at that point, I'm like, there's no freaking way this leg is ever going to make it. and they're approaching the door and I rewrap the chain around my wrist to make them think that I'm still chained up and I look and AK-47 through the crack in the door bang, round goes off towards me but the person didn't take time to aim it hits the ground maybe five feet away from me the round ends up in my left arm and the shrapnel from either the round or concrete floor ends up in the back of my fractured femur leg. I'm like, Jesus Christ. You know, I don't have enough going on here that they're shooting at me in captivity.

3:36:21So I go to pull the round, the round had decelerated to the point where it didn't go in that far. And I went to pull it out and I burned the shit out of my fingers. A little lesson learned. If you get shot and you try to pull the round out, it's probably going to be hot if you don't give it very much time because it's obviously gone through the barrel at a high velocity. So I burned my fingers, got it out, threw it on the ground. All right, what's next, troops? And somewhere in that night, I don't remember if it was before I got shot or after I got shot, but I start hearing the convoy. And I'm racing through my mind.

3:36:53You know, we had reconnaissance birds out. Do you have any recollection of time? Yeah. You do? Yeah. but I, you know, the sequence was one before the other. Sometimes it's been so long. I don't really recall, but during the night, so probably it's before I get shot, I hear the convoy. It had to be the convoy because I mean, there's a lot of shooting both ways, coming in and going out. I mean, obviously the Somalis that are around where I'm being held are shooting. And I hear round, I swear I can hear what were, you know, probably large caliber rounds flying and hitting the walls. Were those RPGs?

3:37:40Not sure. I hadn't heard a lot of, I'd heard RPGs flying before. So I don't know. It could have been that. But either way, it's coming. And I'm like, man, they know where I am. This is a rescue. Because it's coming. It's getting louder and louder and louder. and I'm thinking, okay, a reconnaissance bird saw them capture me, followed me, kept eyes on the whole way. Now they know he's right where I am and they're coming to get me. Like, you know, is somebody else going to come in here and pop me? And it gets louder and louder and I'm surprised it didn't actually. It gets how close they got. But I don't, I think it was just a coincidence.

3:38:18They were just on their way to either crash site one or they had been at crash site one and they were on their way to the Pakistani stadium. I'm not sure timeline-wise which explanation makes more sense, but it had to be that. I mean, it was a large volume of people, and as soon as it apexed and started getting quieter, I was like, shit, they don't know where I am. They're just passing by. And so I woke up the next day. They came in, gave me a banana, which doctors later said that you shouldn't eat the banana i don't know something about the potassium or something it's not good for something that was wrong with me i don't know what it was you got all this shit going on that word about a fucking banana i don't know if i should eat a banana should never be sorry i'm on a diet yeah yeah uh and then they gave me a bowl of water nasty nasty but i knew i had to drink so i drank it and they gave me an mre that looked like it had been there for a decade.

3:39:24I mean, it was sun bleached, freaking, I mean, just like it had been laying in the sun for a thousand years. But I knew I had to eat. You know, I mean, you're going to die if you don't drink water and eat something. So I did what I could to try to eat it. Gave me a can of Pepsi. I think that was that first day. And I remember, you know, spilling some of it and ants were everywhere. Flies were everywhere. Freaking nasty, nasty, nasty and made it through the first day and that night they said uh will you do a video and i said hell no i'm not gonna do a video and they said they didn't seem to push the issue and then i started thinking well i can't really stop them if they freaking come in here and start videoing me.

3:40:12What am I going to do? Well, I started thinking about blinking, you know, blinking something. And without getting into something that could be considered sensitive, I couldn't remember how to do it. So I thought, all right, let me just do what they taught me to do in resistance training in survival school. Because I had been to Special Forces C-level SEER. It's the same SEER the SF guys go through. They go through with us. I mean, we're all together in the camp. And I was actually the first person to ever go through SF C-level SEER that used it in the real world. Wow. For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider, and they stand by their values.

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3:43:14One more time, that's seanlikesgold.com. Performance may vary. You should always consult your financial and tax professional. Find the vacation you're looking for in Missouri. Whether you're searching for this, wanting something like this. Oh, that's cute. Maybe up for something like this. Or just really, really need something more like this. You'll find the vacation you want in Missouri. Missouri, it's the getaway that gets... you. Plan your fun at visitmo.com. I gave them high marks. I mean, everything they did, although the scenario is probably different. It was structured more around a Vietnam, at the time, more a Vietnam scenario, which doesn't really happen anymore.

3:44:06But all the fundamental stuff that they taught worked. And again, it's kind of sensitive, so we won't get too much into it. But, you know, the resistance stuff is kind of common sense, right? It's basically given meaningless information. and one thing that helped me was they didn't have a clue what my rank was they wanted to know and again it's on my name tag right so there's no issue telling them what my rank is and it's the big four anyway right even if you tried to be hardcore it'd be big four nothing more you know rank is one of them so i'm wasting a lot of time with these guys trying to explain what at the time I was a CW-3, trying to explain what a CW-3 is.

3:44:53And I went like, I went private, sergeant, warrant officer, lieutenant, captain, you know, basically that fundamental, right? Showing we sort of sit somewhere in the middle. I'm like, I don't know what the heck you're talking about. We don't understand. So they finally settled on, initially they thought I was a lieutenant colonel, and then they settled on that I was a major. And I'll show you something in a bit here that actually addressed to me from them. It says to Major Durant. But, you know, if you can waste time with that kind of crap, you know, that's a victory. So they never figured it out.

3:45:38And then without warning, this pretty big entourage shows up and not always says it's possible Adid was there, I don't know. If that was him, he just stayed in the background. It was actually a CNN camera guy that the Somali National Alliance went out and said, hey, you with the camera, come with us. And he did. And he filmed the interrogation. And initially, I'm doing everything they taught me to do. And time's a-wasting. And I'm having to hold my weight up because I'm sitting. They had me propped against the wall, and my freaking back is crushed, and I'm getting... This is very painful, and I'm getting to the point where I can't hold myself up anymore.

3:46:27And they threw a blanket on my right leg to cover the femur fracture up, and they're asking me questions about this and that. And I basically told them I'm a Blackhawk pilot. Well, they captured me next to a freaking Blackhawk. I have a Blackhawk on my name tag. It's probably okay to say that, you know? And then they got into the political questions, which you have to give them credit knowing that to them, the most important thing was not, you know, how many people are in Task Force Ranger? You know, how many aircraft do you have? They weren't asking that. They were asking the political questions.

3:47:07They knew that if they could get me to say something politically significant, that it could affect policy. That was their theory. CW3, Mike Durant, U.S. Army.

3:47:31U.S. Army. I'm a Black Hawk pilot. Black Hawk pilot. How do you think this operation is good? How do you say, this operation is good? How do you think this operation? A soldier asked to do what I'm told.

3:48:00You know, the people in the city.

3:48:12And that's the pressure you're under, right? It's like, how do I get past this point and not do that? So the two questions they asked me were, how do you think this mission in Somalia? And I probably didn't answer it for a while, or I didn't say anything. And then they kept asking, and I finally said, I'm a soldier. I do what I'm told. Okay? and then they said, you killed the people innocent. Obviously what they want me to say. And I said, innocent people being killed is not good. Who's going to argue with that, right? I don't think they knew what they had. When I answered that second question, pretty sure it ended right there.

3:48:59And they ran out thinking, this is what we wanted. In the end, the survival people will tell you, it helped me. it didn't help them because now they have proof of life. I'm a prisoner. They're accountable. They don't care about the Geneva Convention, but the rest of the world does, and they're going to hold them accountable. So it really helps improve my chance of survival. Not what they were thinking, gave them nothing. They had damage control to do beyond anything I've seen in my life because of what they did with the remains of everybody else from Crash Site 2. So that was much more significant than, you know, more about being accountable for me.

3:49:44And it ended up helping me. Not what it felt like. I mean, you know, you're being interrogated in captivity. It ain't going to end with you feeling good. I mean, one way or the other. You know, you either said something you weren't supposed to say or you're like me. I thought I did what I was supposed to do, which I did, but are they going to manipulate this into something different? There's no way to know. It's very, very difficult. And they train you and the training was good. It was effective and I know they've used my video a million times since to train other people on what you're supposed to do.

3:50:24And it was over. And then they realized, whoa, way too much attention here. Word's going to get out that Durant's here. We got to move him again. So they packed me up, dragged me out. Now they, this time they stick me in the backseat of a car. My leg is still, no, the doctor came. Sorry, Dr. Kadia. And great that he was a U.S. med school trained doctor, spoke a little bit of English, but he had nothing. I mean, he had aspirin and betadine solution and gauze. That's it. Because he'd been treating all of their people. And they had, you know, estimates are anywhere from 600 to 800 killed and 2 ,000 wounded.

3:51:11Now, that's the high end. But it's a lot of casualties on their side. And they got nothing left. I mean, their supplies were exhausted. He wanted to get me to dig for hospital because, you know, he wanted to see what's going on with my leg and my back. but the Adid's people wouldn't let him do it. And they said, no, he's not going there. So he put a splint on my leg. Did this, you know what? I'd have to go back and look at my notes. I may get this out of sequence. It's not really that important anyway, but he puts a splint on my leg. And it was basically like, you know, the wire shelving. It's kind of like that.

3:51:54But he splints me all the way down to my foot. so my ankle can't turn, my knee can't bend, and my fracture's so high, he can't stabilize. There's not enough bone left for the fracture to actually stabilize. There's, you know, maybe, I don't know, eight inches of femur in my upper femur, and then there's, you know, whatever, 12 inches, and then the rest of my leg. So the only place it can pivot is the fracture. So he has stabilized everything else that's not messed up. And now when they're moving me around, it's like, oh, my God. I couldn't feel my femur before, but I freaking can now. And I'm like, there's no way my femoral artery is not going to get cut because my leg's moving around, and it's all pivoting right there at the fracture.

3:52:46I think they move me like that. So they stick me in the back seat of this car, throw up tarp over me, And then two guys get in the back seat on top of me. At this point, I'm in so much pain. I'm hyperventilating. I mean, the sweat is coming out of me like a cartoon character. And, I mean, I think I'm going to freaking die. I mean, it's just off the chart. And we're driving through the city, and we get to the next destination. We stop, and everybody else gets out, and they leave me there. And I'm like, son of a bitch. they got the video and now they're just abandoning me in the city and they're letting the people do what they will with me was what i thought and i'm waiting and i'm waiting and there's nothing going on and then i kind of move the tarp out of the way and i'm like could i possibly get in the front seat of this freaking thing and make a getaway here i wonder if they left the keys in it but i don't even know if it's it's probably a standard shift i mean i can't drive that with a with one freaking broken leg, you know, but I'm thinking about it, which is a positive sign.

3:53:57I mean, I'm thinking about how do I solve the problem, which is again, my nature. And about that time, they all come back. All they had been doing, I believe, is just going out and reconning and make sure, you know, it is what they thought it was in terms of presence of other people. There's nobody around. So they come back, they get me out, they bring me in. And I call this the hotel nowhere. It was basically like a Motel 6, this row of doors down a balcony. And there was a woman that sort of kind of ran the place. And I saw her the next day. She showed up. And it was just bizarre. There was times when people would come and they'd open the door and look in, like, come see the American, you know, and little kids and not a huge volume of people that I'm sure like maybe it was her relatives or something or other people that lived there out of curiosity coming to look at me.

3:54:49And, you know, again, I'm just trying to tread water and stay alive here. And nothing happened for a couple of days. And then

3:55:00things started getting weird. I was being visited by this propaganda minister named Abdi, clean dressed, obviously a person of stature, spoke pretty good English. And I described it as he would come and try to tell me bedtime stories. And he was trying to indoctrinate me. He was telling, this is where I learned about Adid's role in ousting Siad Barre and how Adid was really a national hero. And I'm like, yeah, he's a freaking national hero. All right. And, you know, they're basically just trying to convince me to sympathize with them. Again, I've been trained on all this. I know what's going on.

3:55:42And I'm just, yep, okay, whatever you say, you know, sounds like a good story. You know, why don't you tell me, you know, the old lady in the shoe next. You know what I mean? It's like this is just made-up shit. And that's happening. And they asked me if I wanted anything. And my standard answer had become at some point along the way, I just want a plane ticket home. That's it. I don't want anything else. And they liked that. They respected that. They liked that. They did. And I'll tell you how I found this out in a minute. But they, you know, I wasn't saying, you know, I wasn't hostile. I wasn't disrespectful.

3:56:26You know, they're Muslim. They would actually pray in the room. And, you know, I was quiet and reverent when they were praying. And in the end, they're going to do the same for me when I get the Bible.

3:56:40And, again, some of this I was just winging because it's common sense, right? But I just listened to his stories and just sort of filed them away. And then he said, would you like a radio? And I said, yeah. I mean, one of the lessons I learned in survival school, they offered me a candy bar and I said, no, not unless everybody in the class gets one. And in the debrief, they said, well, that's a bad call. You need the candy bar. We're not asking you to do anything to earn the candy bar. You know, just eat it. So I'm like, okay, I'll take the radio. And they show up with a little transistor radio.

3:57:24And from that point, I'm listening to the Armed Forces Network broadcast. I'm listening to BBC. So now I have a connection to the outside world. Hugely important for morale, right? And then something weird starts to happen. I think it was on the 8th, which is like five days later, or five days after the shoot down. They come in, they start sweeping up all the dead flies in the room. They bring a mattress in. There was a guy named Ferimbi that had been introduced along the way. He was the head guard. And as I found out later, he was basically charged by a deed with my well-being. Ferimbi was responsible.

3:58:03If I was killed, it was Ferimbi's fault. If somebody else stole me, Ferimbi's fault. If I was captured, Ferimbi's fault. So he was the man. And most of the time he spent in the room with me. But they're cleaning all this shit up. They give me some pajamas, some clean pajamas. They bring a mattress in. And I'm like, what the hell? Am I going to get released? What's happening here? And again, all this stuff is going to help me survive. So, okay, you know. And then in walks a Caucasian woman, blonde hair, from the Red Cross. Suzanne Hofstetter. I'm like, this is incredible. It's like, just hold my hand.

3:58:50You're an angel. You are the only non-hostile person I've seen in five days. And don't leave. And that's how I felt in what I said. And she just wanted to check on me. She said, I have a box of stuff for you. but they wouldn't let me bring it. They gave us no notice that we were going to get to visit you. They came and asked. I volunteered. They stuck a bag on my head. I have no idea where we are, but we're doing everything we can to get you released. And she said, would you like to write a letter home?

3:59:30Yeah. So I wrote a letter home. Always, again, trying to be that lighthearted, sarcastic guy you know saying uh you know i've been eating something but unfortunately uh no pizza or something like that and that set off a bit of a firestorm in the world i got pizzas from all over the world when i finally got released and what what seriously though what what did you write well i did i wrote i wrote i'm i'm okay these are my injuries you know i told him i had fractured femur. I thought I had a broken back. I was shot, probably broken bones in my face. You know, I've been eating okay. You know, not sure what happened to everyone else, you know, that kind of stuff.

4:00:20And I spelled femur wrong. I think I spelled it F-E-M-E-R. I didn't go to med school. you know surprisingly i knew it was a femur um that set off a bit of a what's he trying to say you know uh but i wasn't trying to say anything i was i was just trying to explain what my injuries were and then i said hey can i write another letter and they said sure who you want to write it to i said i want to write it to the guys at the compound so basically did the same thing i said you know these are my injuries don't know where everyone else is and I signed an NSDQ and I was trying to tell him something and unfortunately the Red Cross with their commitment to neutrality thought it was a code so they scratched it out but you could still read it and it's our unit motto Night Stalkers don't quit.

4:01:21And basically, I'm trying to tell them my state of mind, right? It's like, I'm still in it. You know, you guys come, I'll do what I can to try to help you with the rescue. Don't worry about that. But there's not much else value I can add. You know, I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if anyone else had survived. I just, I didn't know anything. They were dropping hints that no one else had survived, but they didn't really come right out and say it.

4:01:52And so that letter made it to the compound. They knew it was NSDQ at the bottom. I'm told they put it on butcher paper, blew it up and posted it in the jock as a way to motivate some pretty demoralized folks after the losses that we took in that battle. and uh you know at least now they know hey this has got somewhat of a sense about him and and we need to continue to try to figure out where he is until recently i never discussed this but somebody put it in stars and stripes so it's in the public domain they were broadcasting songs from an air from an aircraft because they found out i had the radio and the and the brilliant thing was they were broadcasting a different song in different parts of the city so if it comes if it comes back hey, I heard ACDC, Hell's Bells.

4:02:44No shit. Brilliant, right? And I would have thought we wanted to protect that, but again, it was in Stars and Stripes. That's pretty slick. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was all kinds of brilliant shit that came out of this, just all kinds. Now, I didn't know that's what they're doing, but hopefully I will stumble into making some mention of the music that I'm hearing. And I did hear. And then they started requesting songs for me when they found out I had the radio. And the one I remember is a song called Seminole Wind that I think had come out.

4:03:24That's Summer.

4:03:28And Donovan was Indian. And he would sing that song all the time. Because he was proud of his Indian heritage. And they dedicated it to me from him. So I'm thinking, all right, Cliff and Donovan are okay. Anyway, this goes on. soon as the Red Cross Suzanne leaves they follow it up with two reporters from the Guardian which is a paper I think out of Paris and reporters man I am freaking vulnerable at this point I just wrote a letter to home and I let my guard down a little bit were they smart enough to come up with that strategy I don't know But I thought about, okay, if I tell them what happened from the moment the RPG hits the aircraft, nothing wrong with that.

4:04:28That's intelligence that will help maybe solve some part of this puzzle for our guys. So I said, all right, I'll tell you what happened from the moment the RPG hit the aircraft. So I go through it all. And then at the end, they said, you know, I've been talking for a while, and they said, what do you think? What do you think's going on here? And I said, the only thing I said in captivity that I would take back if I could, and it isn't that big a deal. You don't have to be a freaking rocket scientist. But I felt if I screwed something up, this was it. I said, something's gone wrong here. Yeah, something had freaking gone wrong.

4:05:10It was a train wreck. But I felt my standard was, that shouldn't have been said. And that's the quote they ran with. I mean, that was the money shot, which, again, is it that valuable? No. I mean, there were already plenty of people saying, hey, this thing is way out of control. And the movement toward we're pulling everybody out had started with the bodies being dragged. I mean, that was really probably the shock that almost forced. It shouldn't have forced. But in a political person's mind, that's the rationale for saying we're coming out. We didn't want to come out. I can tell you I didn't want to come out.

4:05:54Nobody else wanted to come out. Everybody else wanted to finish the job. But politically, that, I think, is what caused it. That's my theory. Not right. I'm not advocating that. I'm just saying that's what caused it. So anyway, now there's been all this activity again because you've got the reporters, you've got Suzanne, and then they think, okay, his location is probably going to be compromised. Let's move him again. So stick me in another car, take me to another location. Never saw the mattress again. I did keep the pajamas. And now I'm in the final location. And I remember I'm laying next to a window.

4:06:35It's just an opening. There's no glass. But I started thinking, am I going to survive long term just laying here? I mean, no, I'm not. I mean, I got to eat. I got to drink. And I got to do something to keep my physical condition up. So I started doing pull-ups on the freaking windowsill just to get my heart rate up. You know, thinking, again, that's all very positive. That's showing you're optimistic you're going to live. You just got to figure out how do I help my condition? What can I do? I came up with another idea, which was I asked them to wash my brown T-shirt, thinking, you know, if they wash it, they're going to have to hang it on the line to dry.

4:07:22And maybe, again, this is a stretch, right? But I got pretty limited freaking resources here. And if they hang it on the line to dry, maybe when the helicopter flies over, they see a brown T-shirt. You know, it's a stretch, right? But they don't know where I am. That's the issue, right? If they know where I am, boom, they're launching an assault. No doubt. And that's what they were prepping for. And if you're going to get rescued, who the hell would you rather have come rescue than that? You know, they're already in country. They're there. You were fighting with them. Now, you know, C squadron was augmented with A squadron by that time.

4:07:55But it's still, you know, the guys, right? That's who you want doing this mission. So anyway, there was, and you know, again, it was sensitive at the time. Now it's not sensitive because the technology is pretty commonplace. But they were going to try to give Adid a cane with a beacon in it. Somebody was going to try to ID his location. So it wasn't for me, it was for Adid. That was another thing that was going on that they were still trying to make happen. And the gift never got to him. You know, I doubt he would have thought through that and not used it. So maybe they could have found him that way.

4:08:35So there's all kind of shit that was going on to try to, again, keep this mission moving forward and accomplish what we were actually after. And again, I'm listening to the radio. I'm hearing stuff. And this guy's name, Robert Oakley's name, comes over the broadcast. Former ambassador. Clinton now has sent Robert Oakley over to straighten things out. If we had a thousand Robert Oakleys in this world, we'd have a thousand less problems. The guy was, I mean, they trusted him. They called him a shoot straighter because they didn't speak very good English. Obviously, they meant straight shooter. But as soon as his name came across the wire, the whole mindset changed.

4:09:22Now, other things changed. Again, A Squadron comes in, carrier battle group comes back, AC-130's back, tanks are on the ground. All the shit we asked for now suddenly materializes because we have a fire that was preventable that now we have to put out politically, which proves the shit was all available. You know, it wasn't a matter of that. Yeah, it wasn't available. And I still remember when the first two jets flew over where I was being held. Again, you know, the Somalis are like, you know, they mean business. And then I had worked with AC-130s. I knew what a 105 round sounded like in flight.

4:10:04And I can hear it. And it's, you know, whistling as it's coming down. And boom, the 105 round blows up in a vacant lot in the city. And the freaking Somalis come in and they're pointing at the sky. They're all agitated. AC, AC bad. And I'm like, yeah, motherfucker, AC is bad. Bad for you. And, you know, this is why my point is it would have made a difference. Could they have done danger close engagements across the street? No. But outer perimeter? Hell yeah. They could have smoked the intersections. Even if that was the whole point, was just to get the presents and they didn't have to light a fucking round off.

4:10:43100%. So I'm right, and the guys who don't agree with me are wrong, and apparently you agree with me, so I appreciate that. The guys on the ground had it right. The fucking assholes in D.C. didn't. Yeah. But I've heard this story about a million fucking times. I don't know.

4:11:03So... I'd love to slap those motherfuckers around. Well, it'll eventually motivate me to run for office, but that didn't end well. I guess it did end perfectly for me, but not for the country. I think that was a blessing in disguise. Yeah, absolutely. But anyway, once Oakley, and he's since passed, but I met with him a couple of times, so he's told me this personally. He said, look, I met with him, and I said, you people have two choices. You got serious damage control to do with what you did to the remains of the American soldiers. Now, you could make that a little better by releasing Durant or not.

4:11:46And if you don't, eventually we're going to figure out where he is. And if you haven't paid attention, the carrier battle group's back, the tanks are here, AC-130's back. we've plussed up the force to I don't know I don't know how many 10 ,000 maybe and we're going to wipe out your clan your call within 48 hours they let me go he said he didn't make a deal all I can tell you is what the man told me I didn't want them to make a deal I honestly did not I wanted to live but I didn't want us to throw away everything we had accomplished to liberate me. And I really don't think that deal was made. If it was, I'm not privy to it.

4:12:32Again, I just think it was politically. Once I was released, the administration didn't have the guts for a tough fight. And they said, we're out. And I know every member of Task Force Ranger still on the ground that was able to fight was pissed off because they wanted to finish it. And you know, the thing about it is, it's tough. If you think about me personally, I'm three in one, right? Prime Chance was a success. Just Cause was a success. Desert Storm was a success. But what everybody ties me to is Somalia. And I don't see some, I don't see me as three in one. I'm four and oh, we kicked the shit out of those guys.

4:13:15All right. We would have stayed, we would have finished the job and we would have accomplished the mission had we been allowed to. If the standard is you can't take losses, then don't send us downrange because we are going to take losses. I mean, this is not an easy task. These people fight back and we are going to lose people. And I'm not saying it's okay to have 18 and if you count that 19 casualties. But if you just compare the numbers, 500, 700 to 18, that's not a loss. I mean, we captured the two guys we were after. They were turned over to the UN. We took fucking losses. I mean, more than we wanted to.

4:14:01And I know it's tough on the families. And I know it's tough on everybody in the unit that was friends with these people. But we didn't lose that fight. We kicked the shit out of those guys. Our little birds alone, well, miniguns too, because they got the same guns, fired 175 ,000 rounds of ammunition. That's how much shooting went on that night. Now, again, I wouldn't never count any ammo. That's what I'm told. So if that's not right, I need some slack there because that's what I was told. 175 ,000 rounds, all right? One guy who I think is going to get inducted in the Aviation Hall of Fame this go around, Little Bird guy, awesome warrior.

4:14:46He had blood on his windshield. Shit. I mean, that's how close in they were providing fire support for the guys fighting all night long. And anybody you talk to that was on the ground at the target is going to say those Little Birds were just there all night. you know, providing fire support. There was no other fire support. I mean, again, no AC-130s, no artillery, no mortar positions, nothing. I mean, it's whatever they had on their backs and the little birds, that's it. And anyway, it's very, very frustrating that it's viewed as, I hate to even use the F word, a failure. I don't think it was a failure.

4:15:30I feel like a lot of people feel like it was, but it wasn't. We got it done, but we took some heavy freaking shit because we weren't resourced. If we had been resourced, I mean, I gave you Matt as the example, there's other examples of other people that probably would not have lost their lives if we had the tanks and we had the carrier and we had the AC-130 and the counter battery fire and all that thing that we talked about. So it's very, very, very, very disturbing that we go into harm's way and our hands are tied, we're set up for failure, whatever you want. Now, in the end, General Garrison takes responsibility.

4:16:11He handwrites a letter to Clinton saying, it's on me. I mean, I appreciate that he did that. I don't know what else he could do. I mean, can you say, hey, you don't give me the shit I want. We're not launching, maybe. I don't know. But again, I think we all felt comfortable enough. Nobody thought what happened on October 3rd would ever happen. Nobody thought that based on our track record up to that point. And it is what it is. I'm truly sorry for the families that the hole will never be filled. And you can't fill it. I mean, there's nothing you can do other than remember them. You know, I like the philosophy, and I'm sure you've heard it, is a soldier dies two deaths, one when he stops breathing, and the second time the last name is ever said.

4:17:09And we got to, you know, make sure that second time never happens. you know we talk a lot about dealing with loss on the show you know through through stories like this and i think the general consensus is you know you you you have to live how they would want you to live and they would not want you to live miserable depressed feeling sorry for yourself drowning yourself in a fucking bottle or in a bottle of pills and and and they'd want you to of hell yeah you know and and stephanie schugart's letter to me says it better than anyone ever could and you know i can't quote it but it's in my book and if you read it and you don't get choked up you're made of something different because it's pretty freaking heartfelt and uh you know and that's what i've tried to do you know uh my wife's a gold star wife lisa is her husband

4:18:19I told her that I do pretty well until I get to this part. Because it's her. She was pregnant. And her husband was in the unit. I didn't really know him. We had met. I didn't really know him. and he was flying on a Chinook, an MH-47. He was in the jump seat because the guy in the front was doing an assessment for the unit. And there was a material failure, we call it in the aviation world. Water intrusion in the Chinook caused the aircraft to completely go out of control. And they were in the clouds, I think, and it spun out of control and there was no surviving. I mean, it was a hole in the ground.

4:19:16She gets woken up the next day. Your husband's not coming back. And now she's got a baby to have, and he already had one, two. And she's on her own. and uh you know she's helped me a lot because i always have a hard time figuring out like what do you say you know and and she said

4:19:45she said it doesn't matter what you say because they're not going to remember it anyway she said i can't remember a single thing anyone said to me after pierre died but i knew they were there fuck man and that every time i think about it she's an amazing woman you know i told you earlier she's she's also a helicopter pilot outranks me airborne qualified but you never know and she's a great mom and a great wife and uh i'm lucky to have her i'm happy for you mike

4:20:30you okay yeah it's just thinking about that moment you know when you love someone and you think about situation when they were in unfathomable pain or sorrow and that hurts me worse than my own experience by far and uh it's i i can't help it it's the one thing that still really gets to me and that daughter who she was pregnant with just visited us in Alabama, expecting her third. They already have two, and she's expecting her third. She's a great mom. Kids are fantastic. So you carry on. It's like you said, you know, you carry on. What else would they want you to do, you know? They want you to carry on and remember them.

4:21:20One of the most profound things that was sent to me, I couldn't possibly read all the letters, But I read a bunch of them, and it was a cancer survivor who, during treatment, was in a group. And in the end, she was the only survivor. And everybody talked to her about survivor guilt and survivor guilt. And I don't remember if she said she had it or didn't have it, but she said, look back, but don't stare. Meaning, you know, think about them. When I think about them, I think about the positive. I mean, I think about me and Donovan, you know, standing there together getting our air medals from Just Cause, and I have a picture of it.

4:22:07He probably made some kind of stupid-ass joke and we're both smirking when the commander's putting the air medal on us, you know? That's the shit I remember. Just all the... We had such good times. We were such a good bunch of guys. I mean, we really were. We love what we were doing. We love the mission. And we would have been in no other place or time than where we were. And I just feel fortunate to have done what I did. I didn't mention the Bible. Holy cow. So this is the Bible I got from Suzanne. And it came to me in that box of stuff she said she had for me. Came later. Some weird stuff in there.

4:22:48There was this and then a couple of paperbacks, which I never read. I did read this. I don't even remember. A dog bowl. It was very strange. I don't know what they thought I was going to do with the dog bowl. At least I thought it was a dog bowl. But I read it, but I also kept a journal in here. The Somalis didn't know I was doing it. They thought I was reading the Bible. But I felt like I needed to capture everything that happened, again, from the moment the RPG hit the aircraft all the way through, so that I would have a completely accurate account of every event. Wow. And they, I don't know if you want to take a look at it there, but whoops, they let me leave with it.

4:23:33I had it in my hand. And again, that goes back to, I was reverent when they were praying and they respected my reading the Bible. and again used it as another tool but it was valuable in the debrief for sure because i was able to go event by event right through the whole thing and what were we trying to do obviously is we're trying to figure out okay if this happens to somebody else you know what what what might we learn from your experience what are the doors look like all that stuff you know and uh again man, positive sign that problem solving, thinking about the future and how to, you know, learn from this, leverage what I know.

4:24:18Wow. You wrote all this in there. Yeah, and no one else can read it. I'm the only one that's made up. I made up symbols and abbreviations and stuff that only I can decipher. So if they did discover that I was writing it, they wouldn't know what the heck it said.

4:24:41And then the last thing I brought, truth stranger than fiction, is I get a call from a guy who says that there's a Somali that wants to meet with me. This is after I'm back and partially recovered. And I'm like, hmm, not sure I'm really up for that. so I went and talked to our intel officer still still in the unit I stayed in the unit eight more years and uh I uh I asked him I said what do you think I gotta do and he said your call if you want to meet with him go ahead just you know you know what's classified what's not I'm like man that seems kind of loose but okay so I told him I meet him in Nashville actually and you know again I'm not trained on this stuff, but it seems pretty logical.

4:25:35I got there early, got sort of where I could see what was going on, and I spotted the guy as soon as he came in. I mean, Somalis have just a very unique look to them, and I knew it was him. And making sure, did he come with three guys that split up and a couple went somewhere else? No, he came by himself. I don't see anything else going on here. Let him sit for a few minutes. He's watching his watch. I said, all right, I'll go down. So I walk up, and he says, you know, as cordial as he can be, he gives me a freaking T-shirt that has a Somali hand and a Caucasian hand shaking hands, and it's got, like, U.S.-Somali national alliance, like we've made peace with each other.

4:26:30And he wants me to be an advocate for forgiving the Somalis. Essentially, I'm summarizing here. And I'm like, no freaking way. I mean, you got the wrong guy. There's wounds here that are not going to heal for a long time. Not mine, but we lost people in a bad way. And I am not going to get up front publicly and say, you know, we ought to forgive these guys. No way.

4:27:03And then he gave me some letters. So I brought the letters. And one of them is from Adid himself. Are you serious? Yeah. With an official seal. And then one is from Farimbi, the head guard. And there's a translation in English. Farimbi's was in, I don't know if it's Arabic. I don't know what it is. Do you mind if I read this? No. This is from Adid. Dear Major Michael Durant, 8 November 1993. I'm sending you and your family my best greetings and that of the Somali people. I and the Somali people who saved your life in the course of the unpleasant event on October 3rd, 1993 Are hoping you a fast recovery and a good health This letter is to be delivered to you by our special envoy to the U.S.

4:28:06Mr. O 'Hamed Iman And I hope that you will one day visit Somalia But in a different and happier circumstances and that you will develop a sense of friendship with the Somali people. I am confident that you will explain to the American people your real experience during your stay in Somalia by telling them the truth about the events in Somalia. Yours truly, Muhammad Farah Adid. Wow. I mean, for saving my life, thank you very much. That's sarcasm if people are not picking up on that. Wow. Yeah.

4:28:51Fuck. So I didn't respond. And I told him no. Now, I did take the opportunity to say, I don't remember if it was Stephanie or Carmen, which are Randy and Gary's wives. One of them, I think it was Stephanie, had asked if there's any way we could find Randy's wedding ring. and you know the odds are pretty slim but i said you know if you want to try to heal some wounds if you can find a wedding ring one of the guys that was killed at crash site 2 i'll get it to his wife but i you know i'm not gonna commit to doing anything just you know it's your call if you want to make a gesture and you know i'm sure they never found it and they never they certainly never reached out.

4:29:42Now they did have my dog tags, I know that. Adid's son had my dog tags actually because I did have those on and he was kind of proud of that I guess I'm told from people who met with him. And then Adid gets killed sometime later in some sort of skirmish. So he got what he deserved, took a little bit longer than we would like to have seen but he got killed. And then as I alluded to earlier We were given the withdrawal order, and everybody left. And we turned over all the people we'd captured, all 27 of them, or 29, I don't remember exactly. And now, you know, you basically just kicked us all in the nuts, you know what I mean?

4:30:25How were you released? Oh, well, Robert Oakley, and we'll have to remade that, I'll call it a threat. I mean, it was a threat. Within 48 hours, they agreed to let me go. You said that, but how? Who came to get you? So they brought a Nigerian prisoner in, which I don't even think we knew they had. He was really happy. I don't know how long he'd been in their custody, but he was being released with me. A Red Cross doctor comes in, and again, we're trained, you know, keep your guard up. Don't believe everything they're trying to make you believe. So I'm like, is this guy real? Is he not? Morphine shot.

4:31:04Okay, he's probably real. You know, that feels really good. your legitimacy just went through for me. And then this entourage, it almost looked like the three wise men. I mean, they're all dressed in formal, traditional wear, drinking tea, all come in the room, like to celebrate this momentous occasion that I'm being released. And I'm like, this is too weird, you know? And then they put me on a litter. and they're trying to take me down the hallway. They're trying to turn corners. They can't turn a corner. They got to angle the thing. I'm sliding off. They finally get me in the street. I'm covered in this sheet because what shows up on the news is it looks like blood, but it's just a sheet that's got a lot of red in it.

4:31:57And they load me in the back of a van and there's media in the street. So they had told them where I was at that point and that I was being released. They stick me in the back of this van. And, well, the doors won't close because the litter's too long. So two guys, Ferimbi's one of them, is sitting on either side holding the door manually, okay, with my litter sticking partway out. Well, we get to a traffic intersection, and there's traffic backed up, and there's a truck next to us. I can see through the windows. It's got like 25 Somalis on the back, and they're all looking down, and they see me.

4:32:33and I think the concern is, oh shit, you know, these are potentially a threat. We got to get out of here. Jam on the gas. I go sliding halfway out the back before these two guys get a good grip on it. I mean, it was like Keystone Cops. It really was. And they finally get to the UN compound. Farimbi goes through security at the UN compound. One of the guys, I don't know if he was on our list of 50, but he was pretty high up. has got credentials to get in. I'm stunned. And then all hell breaks this because they realize it's me. And the next person I see from Task Force Ranger is actually the JAG, the attorney who happened to be over at the UN compound for some reason and finds out that I just came through the gate, comes on over there.

4:33:26I recognize him and I'm like, okay, this is absolutely real for now. and in the mayhem, Ferimby disappears. I don't know where he went. I don't know how long he stayed inside the wire, but he's gone. And anyway, they take me over. They put me under. I start having surgeries after surgery after surgery. And then our company commander comes over with the guys and I'm half unconscious and I'm looking around and I'm like, where the hell is Cliff and Donovan? and Herb Rodriguez is our company commander, big heart, big guy, big heart, just breaks down. I mean, he's like, we lost him. And I'm like, Jesus.

4:34:10You know, there have been enough loss, you know, and now there's just two more close friends that are also gone. I was like, get me the hell out of here. You know, this is just too much. And then right after that, I get a call from Clinton, and I'm like, you know, what the hell are you going to say, right? I don't know what to say. Caught me off guard. I just said, yeah, I'm proud of being American. You know, click. What did he say? I honestly don't remember. I think it was something, you know, like a politician would say, we're so proud, you know, to welcome you home and, you know, hope you'll come visit me.

4:34:46Well, I did get an invitation. Can't remember who it came through to go to the White House. And let me tell you, and rightfully so, there's a lot of anger levied toward him and Aspen, both of them. They're both responsible. I know it was either Jamie Smith's father. Jamie Smith is the one who bled out at the target. He was on my aircraft. And I don't know if it was his father or Randy's father, but one of them just chewed Clinton's ass. I mean, you're responsible. The blood is on your hands. And I knew that. And I felt the same way. And I'm like, there is no freaking way I'm going to White House for a photo op.

4:35:36So I totally blew it off. I didn't go. Good for you. Yeah, no way. And I did go to the Medal of Honor ceremony, but that included all the families. And I felt like I should have. Both those guys got the Medal of Honor and were found with empty magazines. And I didn't know this, and I believe this is true still. First time that award has ever been earned, I use the word earned, by two people for the same act. Didn't know that. There's a Medal of Honor museum in Chattanooga, actually. and uh they're they're they have efforts underway to build an exhibit for randy and gary and they've been in touch with me a couple of times and i just found out that it's moving forward uh and that's where i learned that that they said that that was the first time that it ever happened and it's right across from the aquarium for people that are familiar with the with chattanooga i'll check it out yeah it's right there literally across the the pay my respects yeah yeah mike Let's take a quick break.

4:36:46All right.

4:37:26A lot of dark stuff going on in the world right now, and it's to the point where I don't even believe my own eyes anymore, because I cannot verify what people are saying about all the political violence, the division. I partnered with this production company called Ironclad, and we're doing an eight-part audio series on psyops, on why foreign countries, governments, maybe even our own government would conduct a psyop on its own people. And I just think that this series is going to be extremely important because it's going to open the eyes of people on why these things happen. You can head over to psyopshow.com, order it today.

4:38:10I think you're going to get a lot out of this. Who's pulling the strings? Who's pulling them?

4:38:21All right, Mike, we're back from the break. Thank you for going through all that. I know that was really tough. So I just want to say thank you for digging deep and revisiting that. Well, it's my wife part that I struggle with, but she's the... Anyway, she's doing great now. Good. Good. Let's move into... You know, there was a documentary made recently, and my friend Tom Satterly was, I think he was pretty excited to do it because when he came here, he had said that this would be the last time that he talks about October 3rd, 1993, ever again. And then Netflix came around and he asked, he said, hey, I know I told you this, please don't fucking hate me.

4:39:17I'm like, dude, that is you. and um but i know it wasn't uh it didn't turn out the way that he had liked and it sounded like anybody on the american side at least was extremely fucking pissed off had the wool pulled over their eyes and uh and uh sounds like it felt a lot like a betrayal 100 and i understand how I mean, a lot of times I'm like, I can't talk about this again. You know, I mean, it's been a long time, talked about it 100 and 100 and 100 of the times. But I personally feel an obligation and I do it because some of the stuff we can't lose sight of. It's too important and I'll just do it, you know.

4:40:09On the documentary, yeah, I was very upset when I saw it. They started out by saying, we're going to interview 80 people. And I'm like, well, I have a unique perspective on a part of this story. I'll participate because no one else can tell the story. And as it turns out, they may have considered talking to 80 people, but they didn't talk to 80 people. And I thought by talking to that many people, they'd have a better handle on the big picture. Like Adid is the villain. We're there to help feed the freaking people. They kill our people and drag our soldiers through the streets. Pretty clear who the bad guys are.

4:40:50They twisted it around to make it almost seem like we're the villains, which I was shocked at because I like the producer. I felt he was being straight with me. What was his name? I honestly don't remember. I'd have to look it up. You know, and I don't know whether ultimately he's calling the shots. I really don't. I don't know who was wanting to put this angle on it, but it's dead freaking wrong. You know, I will tell people that Black Hawk Down is accurate enough. The Netflix surviving Black Hawk Down sucks. I mean, I was glad to hear Tom's version of it. Glad to hear the Rangers version of it.

4:41:30But that asshole Somali they talked to. Anyway, the villain in this story is Adit. I mean, did they put in the fact that they brought Tom's best friends back in fucking trash bags at the gate? Did they put that in there? Did they put in there that you were being beat in the face with a fucking arm? No. From another service member who we don't even know who it was? Who the fuck are these people? Man, I wish you knew that producer's name. I'm tempted to go get my phone and look it up right now. Yeah, I can find it. Fucking piece of shit. Whoever chose to take that tack is, I don't know, fucking anti-American.

4:42:11It's like these assholes. Everyone in Hollywood is fucking anti-American. Well, you know, I guess that's true. Everyone in Hollywood is anti-American. I guess that's true. It's unfortunate. Everyone. All of them. They're all fucking pieces of shit. All of them. Well, they didn't even... And one of the specific comments was, you didn't even mention Randy Sugargar and Gary Gordon. Medal of Honor, okay? Not even mentioned. I mean, I was shocked. I was fucking excited about this. I was excited for Tom. I was excited for everybody involved, and then Tom told me, don't fucking watch it. So I'm not going to watch it.

4:42:46Yeah. But, man, like, what the f... it's not... You know, I tried to convince them to course correct by doing sort of a follow-on with, you know, some additional footage or something, because, I mean, the can's open at that point. But by the time I see it, it's in the public domain. They didn't give us an opportunity to provide comments, edit, nothing. I mean, they took what we said and then packaged it the way they wanted. I'm sorry, dude. There's, like, shit that just really makes me fucking angry. And, like, Hollywood, politics, and fucking with little kids is at the top of the list. Well, that's a perfect segue to the next thing we're going to cover, politics all right let's get into your run for senate so i had been saying god you didn't get elected by the way i wake up every day saying that for the past 30 years it's not like it happened every day but people would ask me well you should run for office right because i think you got some notoriety and you know you could stand up in front of an audience and talk that you know that automatically makes you a candidate for politics and i would always say when i have my own company, which we're not going to get into, but I had my own company for 15 years.

4:44:01And I always said, I don't like the politics of business. I can assure you, I would despise the politics of politics. And that's why I didn't want to do it. And then it occurred to me, you know what? I'm the perfect person for it. Because if you don't like politics and you aren't politician. That's the kind of person we want to elect. So I allowed myself to believe naively, quite frankly. That you could make a difference. That I could make a difference. That it was a fair fight, which it's not. I can't say it's never a fair fight, but it certainly wasn't a fair fight in my situation. And I have, my personal credibility was impacted, which probably bothers me more than anything else.

4:44:55Because I've worked really hard and I think been fairly successful in portraying a positive image for the unit, for the people we supported, for the military in general, for myself, for my family. That matters to me. I want people to think, you know, people like him are squared away. They're patriots. They're, I'm not going to say necessarily fearless, but super squared away, which I said earlier, is something that I admire and I respect. And what happened to me in the campaign, I think, tainted that to a certain extent. But it's almost like as soon as you say you're going to run for office, people are suspicious of you.

4:45:39because they're so conditioned to being lied to, to people don't turn out to do what they said they were going to do. And I kind of understand how difficult it is to stay on that track as you learn more. I'm not trying to be sympathetic, but man, it's a freaking difficult thing to do. I just can't. I just, man, it's just so fucking bad out there. Like, we were talking to breakfast. We have a mutual friend. He's running for Senate. People ask all the time to come on the show, and I fell into this shit in the last presidential election of giving people a fucking platform. I don't know if I can do it anymore.

4:46:34You know, I got friends that are running for office, and I'm like, I can't fucking trust you anymore because you're telling me this and every fucking time I have a politician, whether it's fucking Trump or some fucking congressman, they all fucking lie. They lie right to your face, just like we are sitting across from each other and it doesn't even fucking bother them. And so I tell them now, I said, you know, you get your ass elected, spend a couple of fucking years in there and if you're actually about what the fuck you're talking about then i'll give you a chance on your next fucking run yeah but fuck no man i've seen so many people go in there and they just it's like it's like they never had any values to ever even to begin with yeah they're just fucking trash yeah well you know sorry my i was very naive about how it would work.

4:47:35I mean, you have to do an assessment, right? Do you really think you can win? I mean, if you don't think you can win, why would you ever do it? I mean, I thought I had a really good shot. I mean, people are against career politicians. That's who, there's really three primary candidates. One's a career politician. One has been working in politics her whole life and me, who combat veteran, special ops guy, business owner. And this was a successful business. This wasn't, I just did some consulting work. I mean, we had 700 people working for me from zero. Holy shit. Yeah. So I understand how to lead.

4:48:17I understand what impacts business. I understand how the government works. I understand the implications of foreign policy. I lived it. I was on the point of the spear. You know, I felt I'm a slam dunk better qualified than anybody else here. And the polls revealed that. I was ahead by double digits. Now, polls are not always right. But, you know, we came in with a splash. We made an amazing campaign video. I'm flying a Blackhawk, which we rented. And I'm, you know, saying various things in the cockpit. And there was an amazing narrative that was going on in the background. In fact, I know President Trump saw it because, I mean, they had that kind of splash.

4:49:03It was like, wow, this is good. You know, this is the kind of thing you want to start your campaign with. And, you know, we really came out of nowhere. And all of a sudden, I'm out front. And that didn't happen immediately. But I was, as we're getting close to the, and this is the primary we're talking about. and I spoke I'm just gonna use names because you know what they didn't hesitate to fuck me so why would I not use them I don't know why you would protect any fucking political prostitutes you're right that's what they are they are fucking prostitutes so the U.S. Capitol is the biggest most elite whorehouse on the fucking planet that's the truth so the dynamics here is Mo Brooks, who was in the House, ran for this office against me and Katie Britt, who ultimately won.

4:50:01Katie Britt was Richard Shelby's chief of staff. I don't know who that is. Richard Shelby? A longtime senator from Alabama. One of the most powerful senators to have served in recent history. I mean, he was in the Senate for decades. Of course he was. Aren't they all? Look at Mitch McConnell. Well, he's coming up next. Very influential. I mean, very influential. And because of what happened between Mo Brooks and President Trump, President Trump was really pissed off at Mo Brooks, and he did not want him to win. So I get introduced into the process because nobody thinks Katie can beat Mo. So I'm, again, more qualified, arguably, and better chance to win.

4:51:02And when the poll came out that showed I was ahead, Katie was second, and Mo was third, leader mcconnell mitch mcconnell called me and said hey we just saw the polls just want you to know mo's in third we're out meaning we just the most important thing to us is that he does not win yes sir okay got it within two days the super pack that put out the shit that was not true about me received either$5 or$10 million from a fund that I believe he controls or controlled. Who's he? McConnell. So somebody twisted his arm. It had to be Shelby. It had to be. Because he really wanted Katie, his chief of staff, to win.

4:52:00I met with a surrogate of Senator Shelby. and it was it was a you know in an office sitting across from each other richest man in alabama actually and he was nervous as if he were on trial and i'm like i'm looking at my consultant like you know what's up here and you know he's not saying anything i mean he's like rubbing his palms and sweating and he starts talking about when he ran for office how they exposed a video of him from from when he was in college and how it totally trashed his reputation and then he talked about just weird stuff everything sounds like this sounds like you know when they send somebody and they it's like they're your fucking parent like i'm just i'm just looking out for your best interest, Mike.

4:52:55I just wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you. How about you get the fuck out of my office before I fuck start your head on this parking curb? Get the fuck out of here. I should have had you with me. So again, I'm new to all this, right? So I'm not quite sure how this is, why this is playing out the way it is. But then he gets to the point after probably 45 minutes of going all over the place with all kinds of weird shit. I mean, he point blank says, we want you to drop out of the race. And we want you to run from Mo Brooks's seat that he's vacating instead, and we'll support you. And I'm not quite sure what to do here because I don't want to do that.

4:53:40I don't want to be in the House of Representatives. I mean, it's fucked up enough to be in the Senate. But if you've got to deal with 450 other morons, some of which are incredible that these people got elected. who they are, what they represent, what they stand for. I could not work with those people. There's no way. Mike, look at how weak these people are. Look at them in the fucking face and look at how weak these people... Those motherfuckers are installed because they are so weak. They are easily manipulated. They don't even know what the fuck is going on. Which is probably, again, another part of why I get steamrolled here.

4:54:21But this meeting is about basically the warning, right? That if you proceed, we are going to bring you down.

4:54:31Again, I was naive. I was shocked. I didn't know quite what to do. So we leave, and I'm like, does this kind of shit happen all the time? No. He said, I've never seen that happen before. And I said, well. and then my advisors all said, well, it's your call. And I'm thinking, well, I mean, I don't know of anything that they could bring up that would bring me down, you know? And they said, well, then we should press on. And we decided to press on. Well, I was doing a presentation on Somalia at the War College at Carlisle Barracks, which is Army War College in Pennsylvania, a friend of mine who was in 06 at the time invited me to come up and do it.

4:55:25If you watch the whole presentation, this is the irony of it all. If you watch the whole presentation, at the beginning, he says, this is non-attribution. Now, for those who aren't familiar with that, what it means is nothing said there should ever be attributed to the person speaking it officially, ever. They put the fucking briefing on the internet. I didn't say anything in the briefing. I wouldn't say again. But what, and I said it to you during this podcast, I said, disarm the population. That's what our UN task force was doing in Somalia. And I was just explaining that this is what happened leading up to the Pakistani massacre.

4:56:11They took that soundbite out of that presentation and said, he is anti-Second Amendment. He wants to, and then they have the video of me disarm the population. I mean, how incredibly dishonest is that? And I mean, pretty much that alone pretty much tanked me. And then my sister got on there. And that's a complicated story. But I mean, she should be thanking me, not doing what she did. I don't know if they paid her. I don't know what. But she got on there and said some shit that just was not true. And it was at that point, it was over. And I came in third. and you know i met with president trump and for like an hour and he never endorsed anyone but in his mind i was another john mccain because we're both military pilots we're both pow's and he will never forgive john mccain for his vote on obamacare and i think only interested in yes men yeah that is donald trump a person that surrounds himself with yes men and that's why i think serving in what i thought was a noble capacity to represent the state of alabama and the interest of the citizens of the state is is not really what i ever envisioned it to be it's i mean to be the kind of senator that they want right now you just vote party i mean just vote whatever whatever the leader wants you to vote, you vote.

4:57:53I mean, there's very few exceptions to that. And most of the time you probably should, but not all the time. And I don't know, I dodged a bullet. Honestly, I would have hated every moment of my life. Somebody asked me at a, it wasn't really a fundraiser. I hated doing fundraising. This woman asked me, why do you want to be a senator? I said, I don't want to be a senator. I'm willing to do it because I think we need people like me doing it. And it shocked her. It was like, you don't want to be a center. Why are you running? Because I think people like me need to do it. Maybe we can make a difference.

4:58:29It probably would have been a lost cause. I would have hated my life. I don't know. We'll never know. I'm sure as hell not trying again because it cost me a lot of money. I mean, I put a lot of personal money into that race. I mean, a lot. You have to. I mean, Alabama is a big state and to get you know media is the king although social media is a kind of a cost-effective way to do it these days but now there's so much ai out there that you don't know what you're reading is this ai generated is this real you know it's really really fucked up right now that's where podcasts come in mike you go that's why i'm here establishment doesn't own podcasting yet so actually i'm sure they own a great portion of it but they don't own i don't think they own any of the top people and um and uh you know then podcasting is what really influenced this last election unfortunately we had shit candidates but in my opinion but uh one more thing to add so this jackass parker griffith who's a a former uh member of the house i think also a doctor He gets on the radio and says that I, I have PTSD.

4:59:50I never met the man. Who is this? His name is Parker Griffith. He was a former member of the House from Alabama. And again, he's just one of the cronies that they're trying to apply to discredit me. general flynn again i don't know where you stand on him but he was supportive of me you know he was you know alabama is very pro-trump state and i i like most of what he's doing um and getting support from anybody associated with president trump helps you as a candidate in alabama and you know he came out this lambasting this parker griff before he didn't imply it he came on it, said it, that if you served in combat, you are damaged goods.

5:00:35That's basically what he said. And he said, we can't elect somebody to the Senate that is damaged goods and has PTSD. This is a doctor who's never seen me before, never met me, saying this publicly to discredit me. I mean, I was so pissed off. And what really disappointed me, honestly, is the veteran community didn't stand up. If every veteran in the state would have said, That is fucked up. That guy should not be doing that. That is wrong. This is a guy who served the country and is willing to go serve six years, six more years. We should support him. They didn't. I don't know why. Man, if I would have known about that, that would have gone everywhere.

5:01:21So hopefully, we just didn't hear about it. Yeah. You know? But that would have been all over that motherfucker. Yeah. So, and I, you know, I hate these people, Mike. I fucking hate them. I mean, I felt like I had grounds for a lawsuit. I really did. I mean, this is stone cold lies, misrepresentation, whatever you want to call it. But, you know, legal battles are terrible. You know, I don't like attorneys much more like politicians. I have some friends that are attorneys. Forgive me, guys. But I just, I can't stand it. I mean, it's all just technicalities and loopholes and, you know, this little bit of language over here.

5:02:07And it's not, you know, nothing's about what's right and wrong. It's, I don't know, just very, very frustrating. So I just let it go. And I just consider myself fortunate to not have won. I regret doing it because I feel like there are some people who really do think I'm anti-Second Amendment, which is ridiculous. and I spent a lot of money. Those two things I would like to undo but can never be undone. I mean, I shouldn't say can never be undone. Well, you just accepted a new SIG MCX SCAR or not SCAR, SPEAR here. So I think it seemed pretty pro-Second Amendment to me. We clarified where the comment came from.

5:02:44I mean, so, yeah. Unreal. Man, I'm sorry. It's just...

5:02:54I thought it was a fair fight, and it was absolutely nothing like a fair fight. It is, I mean, you're just dealing with people that are, like, more than willing to sell their fucking soul for... They don't even know what they're getting. Yeah. Walk it into there. They don't even know what the fuck they're getting, but they are overwhelmingly... willing to sell their fucking soul to get into that club it is fucking wild yep but well let's talk about some good stuff all right let's talk let's talk about you know we were talking at breakfast about a couple of different non-profits that you're affiliated with and uh and so i'd like you to go ahead and i know you're sitting on the board of one Would you like to talk about that?

5:03:44Yeah, I'm on the board of a few, actually. The one I'm most active in that I think resonates the most with our community is the Special Ops Warrior Foundation. It was founded at Desert One. Most people are familiar with that term, but if you're not, this was the first attempt to rescue the hostages in Tehran back in the 80s. And there was an accident. there were eight American fatalities and 17 children left without a father and good on them I mean the guys that were associated with I don't know if it actually happened you know right then and there but at some point immediately after this incident they all got together the survivors of the mission and said let's pass the hat and help fund college education for these 17 kids that are left fatherless.

5:04:36And it eventually evolved into the Bull Simons Scholarship Fund, I think it was called, Bull Simons, legendary SF, Led DeSante Raid, you know, I mean, his accolades go on and on. And now has become the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, not Wounded Warrior. A lot of people that aren't associated with the community confuse the two, but it's Special Operations Warrior Foundation. It's specialops.org is the website. Specialops.org. Correct. It'll be in the description. All right. And here's the charter, which I don't know how you could find a more noble cause than this, is that the children of every fallen special operator or people who were supporting special ops missions.

5:05:31So let's say you got operators on the ground and they got a fixed wing air support and the crew goes in, those kids would be covered because they're on this mission. Now it has to go through a process to validate that this was part of a special operations mission and children of Medal of Honor recipients and now severely wounded. Because a lot of the severely wounded, I mean, yeah, they're going to get disability, but there's a lot of gaps still for some of them. So they get financial support as well. I don't think you've talked about what exactly their financial support is. Yeah, so the support is to send the children of these people who qualify or these families who qualify to school from cradle to career.

5:06:22Meaning, if you're a three-year-old and you have special needs and you need a tutor, that qualifies. 100 % funded. All you got to do is send in the bills. As long as, you know, your fallen parent was within the special office community or in support of it. And it goes all the way to graduate school, 100 % funded. Along with stipends, computers, I mean, everything. I mean, this is, it's a heavy lift. I mean, right now, I think we have 284 students in the program currently. So they're in school at some level. And since inception, there's over 2 ,000 kids that have gone through the program and been paid for.

5:07:06And, you know, it's a commitment to them. So for the organization, not only do we have the counselors and, you know, administrators. And, I mean, we do things like bring kids in. The headquarters is in Tampa. So bring them in and let them experience the college life to see, you know, is this really what I want to do? We also pay for not everybody needs to go to college. I mean, you know, I've been advocating that for years. It's not right for everyone. So let's encourage and support the trades as well. And same thing. I mean, if you want to go learn how to be a welder, you want to learn how to be an electrician, you want to whatever.

5:07:42All you got to do is submit the paperwork. And if you're a qualified, supported member, it gets paid for. and again i i don't know of a of a more that's awesome worthy organization than this you know something you said that breakfast too that that um obviously really stuck with me is that um man i fucking hate saying it but um

5:08:13suicides are covered too and uh i've lost way more friends to suicide than i have in battle that is that is uh that's a real problem it is it is uh a shock to me to see the percentage of kids in the program that are in the program as a result of a suicide. We've got to fix the problem. I mean, we've got to figure it out because these are great people that have already proven their ability to do things that go far beyond what the average person can do, and, you know, there's something there, and we just need to get to the bottom of it. How many kids have been put through school? Over 2 ,000. 2 ,000.

5:09:03Yeah. And because it is a commitment, there's a big fundraising requirement to this. I mean, obviously, college gets more expensive every year. I mean, they can go to Harvard. They can go anywhere they want. And we do an actuarial that looks at, you know, statistically, here's the number of students you can expect in the future and what college is going to cost. And we don't have enough funds yet to cover that. It's a big number. And, you know, that's what we're working toward is to make sure that if things play out the way statistically they look like they probably will, plus or minus, then we're driving toward getting to that number.

5:09:43And so a lot of what we do is fundraising. And there's a lot of very generous people who support the organization. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, we'll be making a donation. Wow. Well, we appreciate that very much. I love what you guys are doing. And it's getting the word out. You know, I mean, the more people that know about it, I think once you realize what we do, and I use the word we loosely, I'm on the board. I'm not, you know, I don't work in it day in, day out, but I'm proud of my association with the organization. And it's just, it's God's work. I mean, it's just really, really significant in the lives of families and people that are otherwise, you know, hurting.

5:10:24That's awesome, man. I love it. Love that. Special Operations Special Ops Special Ops dot org dot org special ops dot org. Mike, if you had three guests to recommend for this show, who would they be? So, you know, I've thought about this before coming up and there's a lot of military guys. I mean, you know, there's a lot and they deserve the platform. but thinking about you know things that i've encountered here recently in my life that either inspire me or i think uh showcase something that deserves also deserves a broader audience my daughter who you met a couple years ago bought me a book for christmas called outlive and it's by a dr peter uh atla or atia are you familiar with it at all i've interviewed him no i gotta send it to you you already checked the block he's fucking awesome man, Peter Atiyah.

5:11:24I'm one for one. Okay. And I'm trying to do it actually, if you, you know, I'm sure your podcast covers it, but it's basically, you know, you can add five, 10 years to your life if you focus on fitness, weight, high intensity, cardio, which, which is kind of the rotation I'm in now. I hope it'll work because I kind of enjoy being around, but a good deal. All right. Well, we think alike then. So he was a good one. So the, the other two I have, uh, is, I don't know if you read about this guy. I would just be interested in hearing him talk for two hours. His name is Killian Jornet. Do you know who he is?

5:12:02He's an extreme ultra mountain climber. He just did all the 14 ,000-foot mountains in the continental United States in 31 days without a car. Holy shit. He went from mountain to mountain with his bike, okay? His cumulative, I think it's 61, 14 ,000 foot peaks. I don't have the bike mileage right. It might be something ridiculous like, well, it's thousands of miles on the bike. 400 ,000 vertical feet. I mean, he basically just went nonstop for 31 days, climbing mountains back down, riding his bike, get to the next one, climb mountain back down. I mean, I've done 14ers. They're hard. I mean, after I've done even an easy one, I need a couple days.

5:12:57And this guy's like, bang, bang, bang. Raniere is how he finished. And with Raniere, because I did it with this same daughter a few years ago, if you do it with a climbing company, you're going to start at, I think 5 ,000 feet is where they bring you by car. Well, he didn't start at 5 ,000 feet. He rode his bike up to 5 ,000 feet. Damn. And then he climbed the rest. I mean, this guy's unreal. He's a machine. I mean, you and I have been around a lot of physical freaks, but this guy, I don't understand. I really don't. And I don't know if he'd do it, but I'm just in awe of his accomplishment. I'll check him out.

5:13:36We'll look him up. And then the third guy is this guy, Brian Stern. And he started Gray Bull Rescue. Have you ever heard of Gray Bull Rescue? I think I have. Yeah. I know someone else said they'd mentioned him. What they're doing is pretty amazing. And actually, it's an opportunity, I think, for folks who have missed being part of the kind of missions we were all part of to get back involved in this kind of stuff. So basically, it's a nonprofit. But wherever there's a crisis, they go. I mean, you know, whether it's the fires in California or the hurricane in Jamaica or Israel when everything happened there, getting Americans out.

5:14:25I mean, it's pretty insane. They do some trafficking stuff, too. They do. Anti-trafficking stuff. Yes, yeah. So, Brian, who's sort of the engine behind it all, I think he'd be a good guest. You know, you might have to rein him in. I don't know if that's going to be on a podcast, but because he's very, very high energy and like going a million miles an hour. But what they're doing is I'm impressed. And I'm on an advisory board there, but I told them I don't do a lot. I mean, I see all the traffic on Signal of all the stuff they're doing. It's like, jeez, I cannot believe what you guys are doing.

5:15:06And they're helping a lot of people. I mean, thousands of people. It's a lot of people. We'll do a deep dive into that, too. And it started in Afghanistan, actually, during the pullout. No shit. Where they were getting people out. They were one of the groups in there? Yep. That's pretty cool. Yeah. All right, well, we already had my first, but. Well, Mike, this is where we ended.

5:15:34And, man, once again, I just want to say it was an honor. And thank you. Thank you. I appreciate, you know, getting to tell the story of these amazing people to such an audience, you know, that otherwise may sort of skip the wavetops but not really understand what these people sacrificed and what their true capabilities were. I mean, it's just incredible. If you could recreate it in other sectors, you'd be unstoppable. and I'm just proud to have been part of it. Yeah. You're a hell of a human, man. I'm just so fortunate to still be alive and wake up every day thanking the Lord and thanking Randy and Gary for their sacrifice and focusing on all the positive things that I have in my life.

5:16:25I think if more of us did that, we'd probably be a lot happier overall. We've got a hell of a lot to be happy about and we tend to focus on the negative. and I don't get it. I am definitely guilty of that.

5:16:38But thank you, Mike. All right, you're welcome. God bless, brother. Thank you.

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