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

27:47It's protection.

27:55What did you go to school for? I mean, if you learned that early on, that's what you wanted to do, then why did you wind up going to college? So, good question, man. I always wanted to go to the Navy. I just didn't have the balls to, like, actually sign up, you know? I didn't know. Back then, there was no information. There's no internet or anything to leverage to like, okay, well, how do you become a Navy SEAL? I ended up going to University of Houston, of all places. And I ended up meeting a guy, Rick. Rick and Brian. But Rick was the guy I met. and he had been to Bud's. I was like, and he was like this gold mine of information.

28:41And I was like, so tell me all about it. And he's like, well, he told me as far as he made it, which was like hell week or whatever it was. And he ended up having an injury and ended out of the Navy. So he can only give me so much, but he gave me enough to know that, okay, you got to be able to do pushups, pull-ups, this, this, and that. And you just go to a Navy recruiter and sign up. And I was like, okay. So once I learned the very basics and I started working out with this guy and then we pulled in another guy, Brian, and then the three of us were like, well, I kind of motivated them in a weird way.

29:13They're like, well, why don't we just all go in together? I was like, you would go in again? It's like, fuck yeah. So we went to the Navy recruiter. And at this point I had maybe a semester left on my degree. I was like, hell, got to scratch it, right? So we go to Navy Recruiter, we sign up, and I didn't tell anybody until about, I didn't tell my family or anybody, because my dad, you know, he's like big on college, finished college, but I was like, screw it, I'm going. We signed the dotted lines, and about two weeks from leaving to go to Chicago for boot camp, you know, like told my parents, of course, my mom cries, and my dad was kind of like, what?

29:52I was like, yeah, it's going to happen. He's like, all right. Off we went. The three of us went to boot camp at Great Lakes at Christmas. Left right before Christmas. It was great. Sideways snow, learning how to march. You know the deal. Spend eight weeks, learn how to march, and make your bed. That's Navy boot camp. And then A school, I picked corpsman. I was going to school for kinesiology at the U.S. Okay. Yeah, so I was going to, I thought, oh, it's like sports medicine. You know, kind of had an interest in medicine from doing my first aid merit badge. And then I realized basically Navy Corpsman School basically is the Boy Scout first aid merit badge.

30:36That's really it. It's three months. You learn really nothing, you know. You learn how to take pulse and count breaths and maybe stop bleeding of some sort. And then you show up to San Diego, Bud's class 203. 203. What year is this? 95? 95. I think that started in 95, graduated in 96. No, started in 96, graduated in 96. Fuck, I don't know. 95 to 96, I think. Yeah. What'd you think of Bud's? Bud's is, you've had enough guys. So the only thing unique for me is my true name is Smith, right? Everybody has a pen name, right? And so we started with 180-something guys in our class, and there was probably five or six Smiths, okay?

31:30And as you know, at the end of every day of first phase, you go to the first phase classroom, and you sign deficiency chits. I was C Smith on the list. So of course I ended up with every deficiency, Chet, for all the other Smiths every single day. And what is the one word we're only allowed to say all through Buds? Hoo-yah. So mine always had a question mark at the end. They'd say, Smith, push-ups. And then they'd pull out another deficiency, pull-ups. Another one for the O-course, the swim, the run. And I'd go up there, hoo-yah, and sign every single one of them. There was like, you know, four to six a day.

32:15Where eventually, a couple of the instructors were like, pull me aside with this other kid, Garcia. And they're like, hey, you two suck. You guys are horrible. I mean, I don't understand why you show up to this course and you can't do push-ups, pull-ups. You suck at the O course. You suck at runs. You suck at swims. You know, remediation. I want you to show up at the first phase office when the day is done every day from here on out. And this was an instructor who was fresh out of SEAL Team 6. He had a reputation for being wired a little tight. And he looked exactly like Richard Gere. And anybody from my era who hears this knows exactly who I'm talking about.

33:02And I remember showing up like, this is going to suck, right? show up, first phase office, right next to the bell. You're staring at that bell. He comes out. He's got a big old dip in. He's spitting. You're on the grinder. Hold on a second. Goes back inside, grabs his lawn chair, folds this thing out. And we're like, I kind of look over at Garcia and I'm like, we're in this for the long haul, man. This is going to suck. And he's like, eight count bodybuilders, begin. And we just start going about 30 minutes into it, which is a long time doing eight count bodybuilder. He's like, go hit the surf.

33:41And so we take off like, oh, thank God. And that's a long run to the berm, over the berm, into the ocean, back, you know, get wet and sandy, the whole thing, come back, pushups, ready, begin, start doing push. Eight count bodybuilders begin, pull-ups begin, you know, fireman squats, putting him on my shoulders, doing squats, put on his shoulders, doing squat. Fireman carry to the surf, switch, come back. So I carry him to the surf. We dump him in the water, get wet and sandy. Now he puts me on his shoulders, go back. And this goes on, and it's starting to get dark. And I'm like, dude, they're going to, and while we're whispering to each other, and then definitely while we're hitting the surf, like, dude, they're going to try and make us quit.

34:23This is going to suck. Don't quit. Okay. Don't quit. Yeah. And this goes on every day a first phase for me and Garcia. And we get about before Hell Week. And Hell Week at that time was the sixth week of Buds. So we're probably week four of getting my ass handed to me after every day. And at this point, a couple other Smiths had quit finally. I was like, thank God. Because these guys were screwing me over every day. And so Garcia, we're doing push-ups, and he decides to cross his feet. For some reason, instead of at a tension, ankles side by side, he crosses, which is what instructors would do, right?

35:05They'd cross their foot doing pushups. And the instructor gets out of that lawn chair and Ty kicks him so hard in the ankle, snaps it. Breaks the kid's ankle. No shit. And I'm like, oh, God, just keep doing pushups. Keep doing pushups. Don't look. I didn't see anything. And then there was a hesitation. And the instructor's like, keep going, get your feet right. And he couldn't. He couldn't get that ankle to do what he needed it to do, right? And he's like, you know, take him to the surf zone. So I throw him on my shoulders, fire him and carry him to the surf zone, throw him in. And this kid's borderline crying.

35:42He's like, not crying because of pain. He's crying because he knows that he's not going to be able to continue, you know? And it hits him hard. And he's like, he goes, dude, I think he broke my fucking ankle. I'm like, I think I heard something snap, but put some weight on it. He kind of puts weight on it. It kind of gives. And he's just like, and the thing starts swelling up. I mean, throw him on my shoulders to bring him back. And the instructor's like, no, you, Kerry, you were supposed to switch. Couldn't do it. He couldn't even get me on his shoulders. He couldn't even stand. And so the beating stopped at that point.

36:19He's like, go put ice on it. We'll see you guys tomorrow. And next day, he goes to medical and never to see him again. I don't even know where that kid went. And that was the end of his career. Crazy part is we get through hell week. We get to dive phase. And I remember it was like day one or two of dive phase. The first phase instructors come in with second phase instructors. And they're like, everybody drop in the whole room, right? We drop. and we knock out whatever the required pushup is. What is it when you die at 40? You get bumped up from 30 to 40 or whatever it is. So we knock out our pushups.

37:01Now we're still in the lean and rest. And one instructor is like, all right, whoever witnessed instructor so-and-so hit a student a couple of weeks ago, stand up. And I'm like, nope, not going to do it. Stay in the front line and rest. And then they go on and start beating us. And to where the class leaders even like, whoever it was, just identify yourself. Nope. I am not going down this path. I just held on to it, man. And they beat us a couple of times during first phase. And I remember one night we got back from one of the first night dives. We still got the twin 180s on. We still got our rubber on.

37:50and it was like, once again, who was the man who saw an instructor in first phase hit another student? And I was like, I'm not doing it, not giving it up. And so they made us put our fens, one in your left hand, one in your right hand, filled up our masks with water. And then we did the death march with our twin 180s on all the way down to the demo pits. which is i think it's a mile and a half down there mile and a half so it's three miles so you have your hands out bends out mask full of water soft sand march twin 180s in rubber and uh i still even everybody in that class at that point was basically like whoever was give it up give it up just tell them nope this is the first time actually i'm kind of like saying it out out.

38:47You know, what's funny is fast forward 10 plus years. I, um, where the hell was I was in some East coast locker room and there he was and he's a warrant now. No shit. Instructor. Yeah. And I went up to him and said, I don't know if you know this, but I'm pretty sure I saved your ass when you were a buds instructor. And he just kind of looked at me. He's like, Oh yeah. Why? I was like, do you remember me? And he's like looking at me and I don't know. Yeah. You look kind of familiar. We crossed paths, you know, overseas, wherever. I'm like, nope, it was Buds, Buds class 203. And there was just this moment.

39:31And then he's like, his eyes got a little bigger and I could see a little bit more of the whites in his eyes. He was like, holy fuck. Yeah. He's like, I almost got a shit can for that shit, man. You were the guy that never came forward. And I was like, yeah. And we kind of laughed. It was like a big thing. But yeah, full circle. That was probably the highlight of Buds, other than my troublemaking side. I carried a Handycam from first phase all the way through and made a video of our Buds class. I snuck that thing around the whole time. Damn, no shit. And then had it edited out in town in San Diego, and they pieced it all together and gave everybody.

40:14Back then, it was cassettes, VHS cassettes. Everyone got one when we graduated, and it had all these moments. I had set the camera once, like, in our cage. Remember the cage area out on the beach? So I set the camera up there and hit record, and we were just getting our asses handed to us out on the beach. And then there was a time where the instructors had us in the dip tanks, you know, trying to freeze us. Yeah. You know, and I'd gone and set the camera up while we got our asses handed in. Oh, shit. Do you still have that? I do. I do. I have all the footage somewhere. That's awesome. Yeah. I wish I had something like that.

40:48Oh, yeah. It was a thing, you know, and then later I had it burned a DVD, and that's what I have left. Now I'm like, where's the DVD player? Yeah. That was Bud's. Right on. Them looking for me. Right on. Yeah. Getting my ass handed to me. And the beatings after first phase didn't end until then finally when the last Smith quit, they stopped. No more deficiency chits. Right on. It's crazy. Where did you want to go from there? I always wanted to go to Team 3. Why? Well, growing up in Saudi and not liking the culture. And that was before Force 21. You know, so Force 21 is when the community was restructured so that everybody deployed everywhere.

41:39Prior to that, the teams were all regionally focused. So SEAL Team 3 was the Middle East. And so that little kid in me, right, was like, I'm gonna come back someday and fuck with these people, you know? And so that was the driving factor, you know, that eight-year-old Clint, man. And it's like, you think about how powerful that is when things happen to you when you're a kid, right? Yeah. So you fast forward to us being in Iraq. And I remember looking at this kid, probably around eight years old, looking at me with evil eyes, going, well, guess what I had? I had options. Eight-year-old, I can be a doctor.

42:22I can be an attorney. I can do whatever the hell I want. And what did I do? I stuck with that passion that was put there when I was a kid. Interesting. Yeah. Now you look at these kids and you're like, huh, what opportunities do they have? That's a damn good point. Zip and zero, you know? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of those moments of reflection, right? You know, a lot of people want to know, they always want to know, you know, what got you through, buds? What was it? But man, in the moment, it was just pure desire to be better than who I was at the time. Like I just, I saw myself before I went in the Navy, I was just going down.

43:08Even though I was in college, I just felt like a loser, you know? And I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I had seal on the brain since I was a kid. And so I just felt like I was destined to be a loser. And I was like, man, I'm going to do everything and anything in my power to prevent that. And needed to prove it to myself more than anything. And, you know, and I think like a lot of us that come from like broken homes, we're just trying to prove to ourselves on a regular basis that we're worthy and that we can be better than what we are. And then the minute you achieve it, you're looking for the next thing to be better.

43:50Because it only satisfies you for about the 30 seconds you get that trident punched into your chest. And then you're like, I'm a fucking loser still. I'm a fucking loser, you know? And then you can make it to a national agency and be like, I'm still a fucking loser. then you can get to a tier one command and be like, yep, I'm still a fucking loser. And that's the drive. And it's sometimes I feel like it's still there today. Just a fucking loser. And you're just trying to prove that you're not every single day. You know, are you proving it to yourself or are you proving it to somebody else? Well, I think early on I was probably doing it.

44:36I didn't even realize it. You know, you're definitely not doing it for yourself, right? I think early on I was trying to prove it to family and friends and this and that. And then you get older, you get a little wiser, and you start reflecting a little more, and you go, okay, yeah, I'm definitely just trying to fill it. Who in your family were you trying to prove it to? What's that? Who in your family were you trying to prove it to? I think early on, I was like, oh, just even for my little brother, give him like hey him be proud of me kind of thing or my mom or your dad or your friends you know maybe even you know who i was engaged to at the time stuff like that you know you're kind of like but it's not till later you realize no i wasn't i was i was definitely proving it to myself but telling myself a different story you know yeah yeah it's uh I think, you know, that childhood stuff is sticky.

45:35Yeah. You know, for all of us, you know, you look at the community, it's what? Some crazy, I don't even know if it's been proved, but you hear it all the time. Like, oh, 95 or 90 % or from broken homes. And that's special operations as a whole. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, I've learned that in here. Would you say almost everybody, has anybody come from like a normal home? You? I did. Oh. Yeah. So mom, dad stayed married, everything's happy? Yep. Wow. Yeah, that is an anomaly. And Mike, Ritland. Yeah, my parents have been married for 50 years. Yeah. But I know I'm an anomaly, you know, because the majority of the guys that come in here, it's child abuse, sexual abuse.

46:20Like, it's just, I had no idea how common all those things actually were until I started doing this. and the majority of guys and women that have been on the show have been through that at some point in their childhood, if not the entire time. Man, I think that's one of my – I mean, it sucks to hear it, but it's also – I think it's a beacon of light because I do realize how common it is, and that means millions and millions and millions, hundreds of millions of kids are going through it right now. And they see this and they see that there's a way out of that that can be a tremendous success. And so I think it's a beacon of hope.

47:11I hope it is to a lot of those kids that are going through that. Yeah, and you don't know any of it at the time. You think that's normal. That is your norm, whatever your parents or your priest or whatever it is that's going on in your life. You think it's the norm until you realize one day that it wasn't. But until then, it's almost like a superpower. It can drive you, and you don't even know it. I felt like a loser, too. I think that's what got me through. Yeah. But I know that's what got me through. I didn't even give a shit about being a SEAL after a while. I was just like, I have to do this.

47:54Yeah. But I know you had a loss right at graduation, correct? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it was, we graduated BUDS and went to 18 Delta, checked into, yeah, is that the order? Yeah, 18 Delta, then jump school, then checked into SEAL Team 3. And checked into SEAL Team 3, you know, and as you know, back then, STT was what is now SQT. And it was all handled in-house, and each SEAL team had its own training cell. Had gone through STT, was on the tail end of it, and had just jumped into a platoon. And this is back when your platoon decided when you got your trident.

48:57And it's the 4th of July demonstration. New guys are usually the ones that get chosen to go do the frogman version or all the frogman tasks. So mine was the frogman, Drager, Diver, three of us online coming out of the water with our guns and looking cool and walking through the crowd of people that are there for the rest of the 4th of July demonstration stuff. And it's that morning, my mom and dad had come to visit, and they were going to watch the demonstration. And so, well, actually, it was the day before. It was the 3rd of July.

49:37And my dad had gotten up that morning, and I lived in a condo in downtown San Diego, and so you could, like, walk down the street and get a newspaper kind of thing. So he walks down and never comes back. And so cell phones were still in their infancy then. You know, you had landline. I don't even remember if there was a cell phone involved. Either way, it made communication far difficult than what it is now. And so he left. He didn't come back. Time goes by. I knew I was pressed for time on the rehearsal stuff. But it got to the point where it was concerning. I had already driven the neighborhood.

50:16I'm looking for him. He's a very squared away dude. He didn't get lost. He may have gotten distracted looking at architecture homes and stuff because he's an engineer kind of guy. No, that wouldn't be it. And you kind of do this process of elimination, creating excuses, driving around, starting to stress, stress, stress. And then by the time I get home, somebody had called the landline. It was my dad's brother and says, hey, your dad is at the hospital. I'm like, is he OK? And like, yeah, I heard him in the background. Like, oh, huh. Did he say what happened? No. OK. So I drive over to that hospital.

50:55And I had also done paramedic school for this. So, um, and so I knew this hospital really well from doing all my paramedic runs. And so as soon as I walk in, do the name ID thing, they started walking back towards the chapel. And I knew that those doors and I was like, Oh fuck. And so the rest of the ER is to the right. And I saw, um, a set of closed curtains. And so I beelined it there. I stopped following the doc that had bad news, and I just went straight over there. And I was with my brother, and he's 11 years younger than me. He kind of followed me. And I didn't even think about it because I was on a mission.

51:39And so I pulled back the curtain, and my dad was already in a body bag laying on the table. And he had an ET tube sticking out of his mouth. They leave it all like that prior to the autopsy. And so then it was like that's when I realized my brother was looking at the same thing as me. And so it's like a very emotional thing. And so I just got my brother out of there because he was too young to be seeing that. And then, yeah. And the part that really was crazy and sucked is that, obviously worse, and not anything worse than that, but he had brought this motorcycle, 1970s Triumph Trident. and he had rebuilt that whole thing, blacked everything out, chromed anything that could be chromed, and then put two Tridents on the gas tank, you know.

52:31It was pretty badass. The thing made a Harley sound like a Honda. It was so loud because it was a triple three-cylinder Triumph Trident. It was the same motorcycle Evel Knievel used to, you know, jump buses or whatever you know, he used to do. Same exact make and model. And yeah, I had that thing forever, but that was like his gift to me for finally getting my bird and the whole thing. But that was the kickoff to, you know, showing up to SEAL Team 3. Yeah, it was a shitty moment for sure. And it used to bring me to tears, but I think, you know, as time goes by, because that was 1997, he was 46 years old.

53:1646? had a massive heart attack in between two parallel parked cars. So when he dropped in between them, nobody could see him. He was young enough to probably have survived it. And I went into like investigation mode afterwards and went back to that area. And I talked to this lady who said she thought she heard somebody yell, but she had her hairdryer going. She turned the hairdryer off because she thought she heard something. Looked out her window. her window was at an angle where you couldn't see in between the two cars and then i talked to the paramedics and i knew those guys and um yeah just a shitty way to kind of kick off the the seal team three portion of the career you know i was like man damn man and it's all the stuff that he would have loved all the all of our stories you know every dad wants to hear all of that, you know, and so it was like, I always had these moments.

54:12I was like, man, my dad would love to hear this or see that or shoot that gun or whatever. But yeah, it was a definitely a shitty way to kick it off. So you still have the bike. I had the bike for a while and, uh, my mom, it was a whole other story. She ended up selling that thing because she needed the money so some guy in texas has it but uh yeah be kind of nice to get it back but yeah she got rid of it a long time ago she needed cash damn yeah yep um but team three was a you know the you you know the reputation like the west coast you have seal team one which is like stalling team one, right?

55:02Super strict. Then you had team five that was super laid back. There was no team seven back then. Then you had team three that was in the middle. Like probably one of the coolest teams to be at. It had a little bit of both. It was strict, but also you could have fun. You know, it wasn't miserable like some of the guys at team one. And yeah, it was a good place to be. If there's anything you could say to your dad right now, what would it be? Oh man.

55:33I think number one, it'd be thank you for, because I've always looked at any man who, see, this is that Oprah Ryan portion you're trying to pull out of me. I'm going to leave tears on this chair with everyone else. If there was any guy, like any guy that takes on a mom and her three-year-old because that's what he did. He wasn't my dad, you know? So any guy that'll take up, he's doing his master's, he's working a full-time job and he's taking on my mom and me at age three. That to me is like a pretty honorable, amazing thing, right? So I don't think I got a chance to really go, Hey, you know, thanks for taking that big step.

56:23That's a huge step for a 20-something-year-old, whatever age he was, I'd definitely say thank you. Because he was a rock of sorts, because my mom was not. And he did the best he could, for sure, filling that role. So I'd definitely just tell him thank you. Yeah. You almost got me on that one. That's cool, man. Yeah. Yeah, good dude. But yeah, the stories. that he would have loved to have heard, you know. It's like, damn, man. You know, that's the only guy you want. You don't care about telling your friends or, you know, even other team guys. It's like, you know, if you're going to tell stories, it's the dads that want them and deserve them.

57:12You know, not really anybody else. So, yeah. Yeah. Would have been cool. but hey you know life goes on just keep moving forward right compartmentalize it deep six it to the bottom of your soul and deal with it some other day when you do ibogaine have you met your biological dad i did yeah you did how old were you uh it was just a couple Years ago, I think. Yeah. No. So there was a first time I met him. We came back from Saudi, met at some park. And I just remember him asking my mom, wow, he's skinny. Do you ever feed him? And that's all I remember of that. No kidding. Yeah. And who knows, you know, his story and then my mom's story and the truth is somewhere in the middle, right?

58:11Right. So, but yeah, I kind of, it was really what didn't meet him. Cause I think I was probably really nervous as a kid and not knowing what the hell to feel or think about that crap. But, and then fast forward, how many, how many of her years till just recently, you know, met him again, pretty uneventful, kind of asked him, gave it, interrogated him on a couple of things. My mom said, and just was like, Hey, so why this, why that? And he had pretty neutral normal answers and at this point he's an older guy too so you know but it was it was interesting you know it was he's shorter than me and you know you're just seeing somebody older probably more frail than what he used to be and so i think i had moments leading up to it where i was like i'm gonna ask this all kinds of questions and put them on the spot and ask him this and that and But once you're there, you realize, you know what?

59:10It's already come and gone at this point. It doesn't matter, you know? Anything I asked him was just curiosity, you know? Most of it was just about my mom because, you know, she was a little on the crazy side. Did you get anything out of that? I think I didn't get much out of it, but I think and I hope it gave him something. It was weird. I felt like I was kind of doing it. I felt like I wanted to do it for him. Because you think if you put those shoes on, you go, okay, all these years have gone by, did play a role in raising this kid. I know I kind of thought, like, well, maybe he wants to give him something.

59:54You know? I thought it would give me something, too, but I didn't really notice anything, honestly. Nah. Who knows? Did you feel a sense of guilt from him?

1:00:08I noticed a little bit of nervousness, I think. Maybe a tad of, maybe there was a little bit of embarrassment in there. It's hard to tell because it's the first time to read them.

1:00:24Yeah, I didn't notice any guilt, but I think he was a little embarrassed. Knowing, right? He knows his own truth. And once I sensed that, I just kind of kept it simple. you know gotcha yeah yeah but i didn't give him any stories you know those are would have been kept for the the dad the guy who actually jumped in those shoes and did that job you know yeah yeah yeah yeah well let's take a break all right we'll come back we'll get into still team three if you spend any time off-road like i do you already know how easy it is to end up second guessing where you're at, whether you're still on a legal trail or if the route ahead is even worth taking.

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1:01:58What I like most about it is it gives me a lot more confidence when I'm exploring somewhere new. I'm not wasting time backtracking, accidentally ending up on private land, or trying to figure things out once I'm already deep into the trail system. I can plan ahead, know what I'm getting into, and spend more time actually enjoying the ride instead of worrying about navigation the whole time. Search OnX Off-Road in the App Store or Google Play. Again, that's OnX Off-Road in the App Store or Google Play. Looking for another way to support The Sean Ryan Show? Head to seanryanshow.com and check out the latest drops from Vigilance Elite.

1:02:39We just released new gear, including this beautiful moisture-wicking VE performance hat and SRS campfire mugs and, that you guessed it, Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears. Oh, shit. Every purchase directly supports the show and helps us continue bringing you independent conversations without compromise. Visit SeanRyanShow.com and grab yours today. All right, Clint, back from the break. Moving into your time at SEAL Team 3. So this is where you and Mike Ritland became buddies, right? Right. Yeah. Did you guys go through BUDS together? No. He was several classes behind. Oh, okay. So I met him and Glenn and all those guys.

1:03:28They showed up. I think I'd already done a deployment or two when they checked in as new guys. Oh, right on. Yeah. Back when you could haze people, right? You know. I don't know. What do you think? The hazing thing. I always felt like it was such a great thing. You know, like I equate it to, you know, you either did it for celebration or correction. And it worked either way. You know, if a guy was getting married, you haze him. If it was his birthday, you haze him. But if he's also really not performing the way that he should and or, you know, had a safety violation or something crazy. Well, then, you know, you haze him.

1:04:11Yeah. You know? Yeah. It just seems too bad. I don't know what it's like now. Yeah, I've heard. Yeah, I don't either, ultimately. But I heard it's all kind of not that way. The camaraderie is not the way it used to be. I didn't really get hazed. I got the shit knocked out of me. But I didn't really get hazed. Yeah? Yeah. Our guys, when we showed up, I guess they had a really bad. And so they were like, we're not doing that to our guys. and what year was that for you that was i think i showed up it was oh two or oh three i can't remember that's about when the ethos came out but no it wasn't any of that i mean it was a rough crowd there was a lot of bar fighting there was a lot of bar fighting yeah um and i think they kind of more took an approach of we'll wait till they get cocky and if they do get cocky then we'll knock the shit out of them and that's that's what happened to me so a couple times but um but anyways you got any good hazing stories yeah let's hear one um probably my new guy hazing you know because you get one when you check in right and it's like uh it was a thing and i feel like a lot of this was leftovers because you know you look at the vietnam guys that were left there's a couple of them in the 90s when i checked in that they had created the culture you know vietnamese vietnam era combat vets created the culture of the seal teams especially during all that time of like peace time we're not really operating and um so the hazing piece was such a big deal and i remember we went to shaw's new guy and uh it's after doing runs in the house all day long and then we're in the weapons cleaning room which was like part of a house out there at shaw's at the time and uh me and one other new guy kind of realized we're by ourselves there's no one else in here cleaning their guns right now where did they all go and uh just as we realized it they roll in this is back when you wore flight suits and biclavas for all your CQB stuff, you know, so they roll in with their flight suits on and their ninja hoods and they systematically, you know, tackle us, take us.

1:06:40And, uh, and it's cold at Shaw's. It's like in the forties at night, thirties, maybe I remember the swimming pool who had a cover on it. Somehow we end up out there. They strip us down, butt naked and put his Justin. I'll just keep his first name and they put justin and i in the 69 position and they tape us into the 69 position and uh and then they pull out the mini blasting machine okay and they had i don't know how they pulled it off with you can do anything with duct tape but they had somehow got it to where my head is basically shoved into Justin's ass. And his face is shoved into my ass, right?

1:07:31And there's enough flesh exposed on our asses for the lead wires of the mini blasting machine. Oh, shit. And puts, they duct tape those leads onto our asses. And they have two machines. So once they had them in place, and they're like, and then my ass would then clench his face because it sends that electrical current. So it's like tasing your ass, causing your ass to clench. And so interestingly enough, it was like my face kept getting sucked into his ass every time it would clench. It was like, you know, pull me in and pull me in closer, you know. And Justin, you know, he was, he loved squats.

1:08:18So his ass was definitely more powerful than my ass. So he didn't have it as bad. But and then, of course, it's freezing cold. They pull out the hoses, drenching us. And then the part that freaked me out was the swimming pool. They're like, let's just throw them in. Well, it had a cover on it. Right. And these guys aren't always thinking, as you know, like the smartest. And this is how people accidentally die. And when there's hazing going on, like it happened out at the, you know, on the East Coast, you had the guys that tied the guy who's on a spine board. and they tied it off to a bridge and then chunked him off and the rope didn't hold.

1:08:57Holy shit, I didn't even know that. He hit the water and it flipped over and he drowned because he was on the spine board. Wow, I did not know that. Yeah, there was a lot of stories about easing gone wrong back in the day. But yeah, so I mean they were going to chunk us in and that cover would have just wrapped us up like saran wrap and you drowned to death while you're taped to the 69 position with, you know, your best buddy. But anyway, that was the, you know, welcome to the team's hazing out of Shaw's. Nice. Memorable, for sure. Sounds like it. Yeah, that team three early days, this is pre-9-11.

1:09:39You know, your workups probably, in retrospect, were more about liberty than it was about training. And you still trained, and you trained hard. But, you know, when you compare post 9-11 to pre, you realize, wow, we weren't really training that hard, you know. And operationally, you weren't doing much except Team 3. Team 3, we were doing all the shipboardings and enforcing the embargoes against Houdam at the time. So, but training wise, it's pretty like, you know, basic when you really reflect on it now compared to, you know, these guys are like running advanced, you know, day one, which you would consider advanced if you were to compare the two eras, right?

1:10:24But probably one of the most memorable, and I haven't talked about this this much, but one of the most memorable training exercises, I was paired up with my platoon chief. And he was a former Marine gone SEAL, hard as nails, one of those guys that never takes a break. You know, he never, you know, takes his boots off or lightens up his laces in the middle of a 10-click hump. he always leaves his ruck on, never takes it off, you know, during, you know, an infill or an exfil, one of those guys, right? Just loves being uncomfortable and never gives himself any grace or opportunity to just take a moment or take a breath.

1:11:08And, uh, so one day they're like, hey, so we get an opportunity to dive against, uh, the dolphins. I'm like, dolphins, what do you mean dolphins? And, uh, they're like, yeah, dolphins. I'm like, what is that? Like some piece of technology or something? They're like, no, no, they're real dolphins. I'm like, what do you mean we're diving against real dolphins? They're like, killer dolphins. They know how to kill people. I'm like, and we're going to dive against them? They're like, yeah, man, it's going to be awesome. You know, I'm like, oh, okay. So then it was a 14 man platoon. So seven dive pairs get put out broad daylight, middle of San Diego Bay.

1:11:43And all you're told is like, yeah, these dolphins will come and, you know, they'll, they'll tap you and that's it. I'm like, I'm like, huh. All right. I don't even know what the hell they're talking about. I mean, this whole thing was like completely foreign to me. And as we're in the Zodiacs kind of heading out and our little points that we're going to drop each other off at, you know, chief was like, all right, we're going to be near a pier. I'm going to grab onto one of the structures down below. I'll hold onto it, kind of bear hug it and pretend to be, you know, a pier structure pylon. And then you, you know, You're on the buddy line, so you just get below me and just kind of lay down on your stomach in the dirt and the sand down there and just pretend to be the sand.

1:12:23I was like, okay. It's so foreign to me. I'm like, what are we doing? We got Draeger. Okay, we put their Draegers on. We go in. It's a beautiful day, obviously. It's San Diego. Every day is beautiful. And we go down. We kind of make our way over to this pier. And we knew that there was a time when these dolphins were going to be put in the water. It was either one or two of them. And the dolphin program obviously was like super hush hush then. And now I think there's a Discovery Channel thing. And I've heard guys talk about them or whatever. But, you know, these things are basically trained to detect combat or enemy divers and then will kill them.

1:13:05And they have a harness that kind of slips over their head that basically gives them, it's like a weapon. And, you know, I'm not sure details, details don't matter for the story, but they are incredible animals. I think we all know, man, these things are just as smart as us. And they communicate. We know that as a pod or as a team, they can kill a great white. You know, they can get up to whatever it is, 30, 40 miles an hour underwater. And if they hit you, you'll die. Right. And so I'll never forget, man. We're in the water. We get set, go down. He grabbed, I kind of watch him grab on and pretend to be part of the pier structure.

1:13:51I stretch my buddy line out. I get on my belly and I'm just kind of eating sand, kind of just hanging out on Drager, just taking a moment and kind of thinking to myself, like, what? I don't even know what to expect on this. What the fuck is going on, you know? And then you hear. And you're just like, what the fuck was that? And, you know, in the water, everything is omnidirectional. You don't know which way it's coming from. And it sounds like it's right here, you know? And you just keep hearing. You know? And then you hear. And you don't know if it's getting closer, further, where it's at. And then all of a sudden, I feel like this big thump right in the center of my back.

1:14:29Boom! just kind of drives me into the sand a little bit more. I was like, oh, that must have been it. And so I just lay there still. And then now I hear my chief on Drager. And he's yelling through his mouthpiece. And so I roll over and I look and the sun is in the background. It's beautiful. and this dolphin is like just majestic, just hanging out, hovering above in space right there in the water. And you've got the silhouette of my chief and these two are taking turns punching each other. Okay? So now chief's movements in the water, a punch, right? It's like, it's just slow motion. And he kind of hits the side of the dolphin down below its eye, you know, and kind of yelling at it, like, get out of here.

1:15:25And then that dolphin would just look at him and go, and then wham, and just hit him right in the chest, right in the drager. And then back off and kind of look at Chief, and Chief would look at the dolphin and then, oh, another big swing and miss or hit. But it was nothing, right? And then the dolphin would look at him and go, and then whack, and then hit him again. And you hear him go, oh. And each time this dolphin is hitting him harder and harder, right in the center of the draker. And eventually, Chief, you know, the way they know whether they killed you or not is they have this styrofoam cone on their beak.

1:16:05And it's supposed to pop off after they hit you and go to the surface, right? And all this thing wasn't coming off. And so he eventually gets smart and kind of grabs the styrofoam thing and lets go of it. and they both look at each other, and the dolphin just goes, and then just disappears into the water. Holy shit. But probably one of, I mean, when it comes to, like, training and something, I mean, it was, like, funny and beautiful all at the same time. And I had my buddy line stretched out as far as it goes, because I was like, I do not want anything to do with this thing. I'm good, yeah. If it decides it needs to hit something else.

1:16:42Because there was rumors about one dolphin named Jake who had broken a couple of team guys' backs, hit them so hard. Holy shit. Broke ribs, and they ended up retiring him. Supposedly he had, like, kills in some harbor around the world where they deployed him. No kidding. Yeah. Right on, man. Yeah, super cool. Wow. But, I mean, so point being is pre-9-11, you had time to go be the training apparatus for dolphins. Right on. Because it was more for the Dolphins than it was for us. I didn't realize they deployed them. I thought they were all like base defense type stuff. Yeah. I mean, I used to, I think, know more about forgotten at all.

1:17:23But, yeah, I think they had deployed them a couple times on behalf of other harbors and other countries kind of thing. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. But, yeah, other than that, our deployments were ARGs. You'd have a couple platoons. I'd have to sit on a ship and go do the entire ship deployment. Yeah, I'll bet that was horrible. It was horrible. Did two of those back-to-back. Actually, that's when I met Mike and Glenn. That was my second ARG, and that was their first. It was a good crew, so it made it kind of funny. I mean, Glenn Doherty, Mike Ritlin, Shane Hyatt. It's like just the three of them alone is nothing but trouble.

1:18:11So, but yeah, we, I don't know if it was that one, but shipboardings in the Persian Gulf was like the thing before 9-11. Like Team 3 was doing them all the time and we kind of were like the pros at it. Why? What was going on? The embargo against Saddam at the time, oil, weapons, anything that was coming out of Iraq. So there's a lot of smuggling going on. So these things would come out of the KA, completely blacked out. They would ride that international Iranian 12 nautical mile line, completely no lights. And we would pretend to be fishing boats, kind of hanging out, loitering. Once they pass by, because these are big tankers.

1:18:56And so we would slowly roll in behind them because the superstructure created a natural shadow that the radar couldn't see behind them. It could only see in front. So you'd wait for them to pass by, and then you'd kind of slowly roll in and then crank up the speed and then get up next to these things. Those ribs would get skin to skin, hook, climb, get on board. At the time, it was like this is the ultimate frog man op, you know. 20 knots, crappy sea state. You climb up that ladder, and a caving ladder is, what, six inches wide, little aluminum with steel, whatever the hell, what are those things made out?

1:19:41Titanium rungs and aluminum wire, and up you go. You climb up, get to the bridge as fast as you can. Half of you go to the bridge, half of you go to lower steering, lower steering, and then take that thing, turn it into international waters and hand it over to NATO forces, and they take the oil or they take whatever's on board, and then you get off, get back on your boats, and do it again because there was another one coming. How many of these were you guys doing? God, you would do like between the big tankers and then a whole lot of dows. You'd do a lot of dows. Those things were only like 100.

1:20:18The big dows were what, 100, 150 feet long, something like that? You know, you do a bunch of those where you're literally pulling up next to it, like leaping, you know, from the rib over to the to the boat. And, you know, it kind of depends on the night. There are plenty of nights you're sitting around doing nothing. But in a deployment, you definitely get your fair share of hooking climbs. Right on. Yeah. And Team 3 started, like, inventing protocols and ladders and, you know, and started actually developing stuff and just to make it go faster, smoother, you know. And, yeah, it was kind of the thing.

1:20:55And it was the only thing going on. You know, I remember other teams were trying to get, you know, get in on the Middle East just so they could get that operational experience. But it kind of goes back to I think it was either one of our admirals, Olsen, I think, you know, or maybe McRaven. You know, what used to be the op of the decade back then, you know, after 9-11 just became the op of the night, right? Yeah, everybody was, you know, doing something cool every single night. Yeah, but pre-9-11, you're like, it was good to be a team three because you're actually getting to work, you know? It was fun.

1:21:32But it was a good team. And then, what, 9-11 happened? And where were you? when 9-11 happened? I had just graduated boot camp. Oh. Actually, I'd just gotten out of a hernia surgery. Went through boot camp. Hernia? Huge hernia. I was scared to tell anybody because I thought they'd kick me out of the program. Probably. And then it just got so big, I was like, I have to do something. And I was, like, super reluctant. I was like, I don't want to get kicked out of the BUDS program. And they're like, you know, mass. I'm not going to get like, how long have you had this? The whole time. Yeah. But yeah, I'd just gotten out, and then I was supposed to fly home, actually, for recovery.

1:22:21Oh, perfect timing. Yeah, before, you know, I didn't fly home. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was driving across Coronado Bridge to work that day. And at the time, my wife, ex-wife, she calls and is like, the United States is under attack. And I was like, well, shit. What are you talking about? Then show up to Team 3, and sure enough, at the quarter deck, there was a TV there, and everybody was kind of staring at it. And just as I look over some guy's shoulder, plane 2 went into Tower 2 live and watched it. I was like, holy shit, that doesn't seem like an accident. It's kind of weird. One of these planes just flying into buildings, you know?

1:23:06So first you think it's like some air traffic control software glitch, you know? It's like, it's really weird. Then, yeah, then it just obviously everything escalated after that. We had platoons ready that were about to deploy, and everything shifted. And before you know it, we're helping them build their pallets. And the first place they went was Afghanistan, you know? Team three just kind of led the way. And I remember I was like trying to get in on one of them and couldn't, you know. But shortly after that, Iraq kicks off. So before you know it, now we're covering Team 3. This was still before Task Force 21 when they said, okay, now all teams and all are deploying everywhere now.

1:23:50Before that, we were all doing the math. Like, how is Team 3 going to maintain a war in Afghanistan and now Iraq, you know? And then McRaven, who came up with the whole Task Force 21 thing, did it. The right timing and seemed like they pulled that off overnight. Yeah. Because before you know it, we push into Iraq and then Team 5 relieved us and it just became the cycle, you know? Yeah. What eventful operations were you on? uh like well probably the biggest noteworthy um was the gas oil platform okay because that kicked off the war and it was we uh we were sitting in kuwait waiting for that whole thing to happen we i know there was times we didn't think it was going to happen times we did so we were just all you know basically fucking around there's a tent city you know and we had four i think we had four to six tents that were ours.

1:24:50We had two tents across from one another. I think you've heard this before. We had these cardboard signs on the outside of each tent. One that said, Lions led by dogs. Then the tent across from it had a cardboard sign that everybody could see that said, never before have so few been led by so many. Because all of a sudden there was, you know, dozens of 06 SEALs coming out of their reserve desk jobs, now wanting to check the box on war, but never got to do it during their tenure in the community. So we had never seen any of these officers before. And they literally just reservists came over. And then of course, lions led by dogs, you know, that went over well.

1:25:44I'll bet. What's funny is none of them said remove those. And we were like the entryway into the area. So everybody read these big ass signs written, you know, with Sharpies, nice and thick. And then we would just heckle people walking back and forth between our tents. We had built a war garden. We had white picket fences. During the time, we were just hanging out waiting for war to start. We just got in trouble. I was the LPO. I was in the leadership position for that platoon. Of course, I had all the leadership coming to me. Can you please tell your guys to just at least wear their uniforms or something?

1:26:21I'm like, I'll try. I'll try. I'm telling you, it's not going to work, man. This is all about morale right now. I'm letting them do whatever because that beats the alternative trust me and they're just like well you need to they need to blouse their boots i said they're not blousing their boots none of that's happening not on this wow you know it was yeah it was an interesting time but that was leadership that had no combat experience so they were very uh risk adverse is probably the best way to put it what a joke it was it was uh it was interesting Well, so then they're like, all right, you're going to take down the gas oil platform.

1:27:00So we train, train, train to dive in, you know, set up a blow and go line. And then you hook your draggers in to this line at about 10 feet down and you blow and go. You close the valve, weapons up, frogman style to the surface, hook, climb onto the, we train that over and over and over again. And then at the last minute, at the time, he was Captain Harwood, the guy who was very popular for wearing a mask on the news. The ball-headed. Now he's an admiral, but at the time, he was Captain Harwood. And he makes the command decision, like, we've got to prove the value of these jet boats. And we're like, what do you mean?

1:27:43You're just going to pull up. Pull up to that go-platt with your jet boat. Why can't we take the jet boats, you know, a nautical mile or two out and dive in and still prove the value? No, no, no. You're going to pull right up to that thing. And we're just like, wow. For somebody who's risk adverse, you're putting us in. And this thing was lit up like a Christmas tree, right? It was this huge light bubble around this thing. You see us coming a mile away. And so that was the command decision that we're just going to pull up to the surf deck of this GoPlat gas oil platform and take this thing down.

1:28:28And Intel said, hey, there's three bad guys and a hostage or something like that. and um like wow and even then pulling up they have obviously the high ground the bad guys do and supposedly it's wired to blow up so at least for diving in you got stealth on your side element of surprise all this and that you you float in with some boats that doesn't exactly give us the element of surprise so it um it kind of started to smell and appear like you know this total suicide mission, which is one of my new guys labeled it. You know, this is a suicide mission. I'm like, shut up. We're going to have fun with it.

1:29:09Okay. Just do whatever we're told. So that same new guy ended up actually quitting. He, uh, he, we, uh, yeah, he was, he ended up saying, Hey, this isn't for me. I remember Mike Ritland told me that when I interviewed him. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I had asked him a couple of times cause there was certain questions he was asking in the briefs that kind of made you turn your head like, what are you doing, man? Why are you asking that? Like, is this smart? Should we be doing this? Is this our job? You know, he, and I remember confronting and asking him like, Hey man, you, you all right. And he kind of turned around, wait, are you all right?

1:29:44Are you the one that's scared? And I was just like, no, but you're kind of asking some questions that are concerning. Maybe you don't ask those questions anymore in front of leadership, in front of us, you know, like just stop, you know? And then eventually ended up, yeah, gave up his bird, gave up everything, and was like, I'm out of here. I've never, I mean, wow. Yeah, I mean, to go through all that training and earn your way, it's unfortunate, really, you know, but he had to, like, stay back in Kuwait, and we, after we took the gas oil platform down, you know, we got in our Humvees and drove north on Highway 1, you know, with really no mission.

1:30:23Just, hey, go to Iraq. It's like, oh, okay. We're on our way. With our Humvees, we borrowed from the army that had zero armor. We took the doors off. It was horrible. But yeah, we ended up pulling up to that thing. I was boat one, number one guy, jumped off on the surf deck. Shane was right behind me. We ended up taking those stairs at Mach speed, got about halfway up the stairs to get to the superstructure and boom, first gunshot. And I was like, holy fuck. And then on comms, I'm like, dynamic, dynamic. That was the word for like, okay, the gig's up, just go. And we get to the top and it's right near birthing where the superstructure is.

1:31:07And there's a guy standing in front of us, no gun. We're like, get on the ground, get on the ground. We kind of move up to him, look to our right. And there's like, I don't know, So it seemed like a dozen dudes staring at us. There was only supposed to be three bad guys and a hostage. And I'm like, now we're like, holy fuck. And now everyone else is catching up. And we're telling all these dudes, get on the ground, get on the ground, looking at their hands. And it was kind of an overwhelming moment because you didn't know who had what. And we're thinking triggering device. And now you've got all these dudes.

1:31:42And why are they standing here? and not like, so real time, it's just one big puzzle and what we do best, right? Just start, you know, stick to your training and start figuring out solutions. So get them all to the ground, looking for guns, looking hands, and then start clearing the superstructure, the birthing. That was the priority to look for the triggering device. If there was any, if the thing was wired to blow anyway, we ended up clearing it. And now you're clearing the entire, this thing was one click lung, seven decks. So seven clicks of 3D environment because the floors aren't floors.

1:32:17They're great. You can see up, you can see down. And it's a horrible environment. You know, when you are like now, we're like, wait a minute, it's not three bad guys. There's more. Now we got to go out seven clicks of this and clear it. And so we just started clearing it from end to end and deck to deck, and it was a long-ass night. I remember we were so dehydrated and out of it, we weren't ready for it at all. I mean, we're finding shoulder-fired weapons, anti-aircraft guns, and then it was wired to explode all subsurface. So all the explosives were just below the waterline. And I found the triggering device.

1:33:00We had some EOD guys with us, so they made everything safe. It took hours. And then we had Marines roll in. They kind of took over. So by the end of it, there was 27 bad guys, no hostage. And there was like 16 of us. right wow if they really wanted to man up with all the guns and the shoulder-fired rockets and the anti-aircraft gun and and then the place was wired to explode i mean it would have been an interesting you know following saddam's first run what did he do he blew everything up and created these environmental disasters that made bush you know the first bush look dumb right and so Our whole job was, the mission was, hey, prevent environmental disaster by taking the thing down before they could light themselves off, really.

1:33:57Yeah, so then we turned it over to the Marines, and then we get back, and we do a quick debrief, and kind of like, all right, when was the first shot fired? And it turns out one of the boat guys, arm in the.50 cal in the bow, was really nervous. No way. And so his thumb hit the button, launched that AD straight into the very pipe of oil that we are there to prevent spilling into the Persian Gulf. Holy shit. Yeah. And had choice words for him and put him on a plane back to the U.S. And I don't even know what happened to that kid. But yeah. Who would have thought, right? No. And so now we take our Sanford and Son hoopties that we got from the Army, these Humvees that had zero armor.

1:35:01And we, you know, load them up with MREs, water and fuel. And then we had law rockets and AT4 rockets zip tied to every horizontal vertical pipe, you know, or, you know, every part of the vehicle. And then our guns and comms. And they're like, yeah, just drive up Highway 1 and link up with the Marines. Like, oh, okay. Interesting. That was it. And so we start driving up Highway 1, Kuwait, across the border. I'll never forget the pride, you know, looking to our left and looking to our right, the lineup of the Marine Corps. because the Marines had the eastern portion of Iraq, and then the Army had the western portion.

1:35:50And that's full on everything. Tanks, artillery, all of the Cobras, everything you can think of, racked and stacked, heading north to just sweep the whole side of that country. And, of course, the East had all the big cities. It had, you know, hit Baghdad, Anasaria, Baghdad, some others, all the way up to Tikrit. And it was a full push. And we were part of that first wave. And it was true, like, seeing true combat. You know, like, when we got to Anasaria, the Marines were in trenches. It was trench warfare. You know, that's when Jessica Lynn's convoy had just been hit. She was in a hospital that we could see right over there, you know, and we're sleeping under our Humvees and they put the perimeter around a medical waste site.

1:36:44So it was all nothing but hypodermic needles sticking out of the ground. And we were laying on them. Wow. Why are we getting poked? And you'd look. And in the sunlight, you'd see the glitter. and you'd realize the glitter that was shiny on the surface was all hypodermic needles that they'd been dumping there for holy shit and that's what we were sleeping on every night serious it's crazy right and uh and then uh we kind of get settled in um we had these pop-up tents that we had bought in kuwait last minute camping tents i mean you know so we're setting up camp and then i remember me and Glenn were like putting up IR netting over our little, we had like, what, 10 tents, little dome tents, like North Face tents, and then putting up a big IR dome over that for like whatever reason, for shade, and thinking, okay, yeah.

1:37:38And then we got our lawn chairs out and we're all sitting around like, oh, this is war. The Marines were working hard and they had like nothing for us to do at first. And then at the time, Colonel Kelly, who we later know is General Kelly working for Trump. Colonel Kelly, 06, comes out onto the battlefield and he pulls aside. He's like, all right, you my SEALs? We're like, yeah. It's like, there's a city called Suck-Ass. It's probably called something else in Arabic, but I don't know. We just call it Suck-Ass. population 80 ,000 okay i want you you my seals i want you to go over there and start killing everybody we're like wait a minute huh he's like yeah hunter killer ops i'm turning it on okay ready go and he turns around walks away and we're just kind of like looking at each other like well there's only like 16 of us against 80 ,000 this ought to work out great you know and uh And I believe right after Onosiria, he was the first Marine colonel to be awarded general on the battlefield since Korea.

1:38:46Wow. Yeah, I think something like that. I have to look that up. Great guy, hardcore. I mean, the Marines were not fucking around, man. It was like a sight to see. And so, yeah, we'd set up some L ambushes and we're kind of starting to get our feet under us operationally. Like, what are we going to provide? What are we going to do? You know, our OIC chief and myself started going to all the leadership meetings just outside of Anasaria and really starting to kind of figure out the groove of where, where to special, because they didn't think special operations play a role. And this is conventional combat, you know, trench warfare up at the front.

1:39:29It's crazy, you know, and artillery going off that were set up behind us and Cobra helicopters rolling in regularly. lighten up the place day and night. You know, it didn't matter. You just constantly boom, boom, boom. It was really incredible to see. Um, and then, uh, then one night, you know, Glenn and I got pulled aside and, and at, um, Colonel Kelly's direction, we were told like, Like, hey, keep this between you guys. Don't advertise it, but we need you guys to go up to the front line and, you know, start pulling dead Marines out of these trenches. And the rumor time was at the Feddine where, you know, everyone was so tired.

1:40:16Like, I remember, I've never been that tired. You didn't sleep days and days and days. There was just no sleeping. And so the same thing applied to these Marines up in these front trenches. and supposedly the Fetien, those were the guys with the baliclavas and black trench coats. They were sneaking in and like literally cutting throats while Marines were sleeping because they were exhausted. It wasn't because it was their turn to sleep or anything like that. And so we had heard that and we were like, what the fuck? And so we went up one night and it was just Glenn and I and we had like some Marines that were just kind of providing security and really just starting to pull bodies and kind of pull them to the back of the line.

1:41:00And it was probably the most emotionally intense thing that I had faced at that point, you know. This is real. And that's why they didn't want anybody knowing because it was all very discreet because they didn't want to fuck with morale. They didn't want to fuck with the push. And it made sense, you know, like, hey, let's just get them, get the bodies, get them wrapped up and get them home. And, yeah, it was... I'd never even heard about that. Yeah. It was pretty haunting. And it's still haunting to think about. Because you look at them, and they're kids, you know, and you can look at them in the eyes, and you're like, holy fuck, man.

1:41:42But, yeah, it was a thing. And there was some other, you know, events that we had to help out with those guys. But, you know, Annasaria was messy. You know, I think it was also for the Marine Corps, it was the first time for them to kind of get their combat legs under them, too. There was, like, tanks wiped out everywhere. I mean, it was like, holy shit, you know, because you wouldn't think that we didn't hear anything about an actual battle's going on. You just thought, hey, the United States military's just kicking ass until you got there. You're like, holy fuck, U.S. tanks that are all burned out and fucked up and, you know, a ton of like convoy vehicles that were burned out and, you know, had been attacked and just, you know, surprising to say the least.

1:42:37Then some days go by. We kind of got into our rhythm. them. We had a reservist commander kind of take over who was very front leaning. And finally, we started kind of like really working and we were doing hunter killer. So we're going to all of your, any scud that was pointed in any direction, but most of them were pointed towards Kuwait. We'd go find, we'd get reports about a scud rocket or a launching site, roll in, put demo on it, blow them up, keep on moving. And that's kind of what we, as the line moved, we were always just a little bit ahead of the line, doing reconnaissance and taking out some of these scud sites, clearing buildings, ammo caches.

1:43:22And we did that pretty much all the way to Tikrit. And then Tikrit was supposed to be this, we meet up with the Marines. They set up a perimeter. We got into the center. It was the first time like, okay, now guys can take a break can sleep. I remember one of the convoys we were part of, our Humvees stacked in the front was a ton of like convoy vehicles and behind was a ton. We're kind of in the middle. And the sun's coming up. We're all sitting in our seats, lined up. And I remember waking up. I look at Zach to the right. I look at my OIC. I'm sitting backseat left, our point driver. He's passed out.

1:44:08And I step out, and I look up the line. The main convoy's already left, but there's vehicles in front of us. And I walk up to them. They're all asleep. And then I look at the rest of the line. We're talking, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 vehicles, sitting ducks as the sun comes up, and everybody is passed the fuck out. Could not stay awake. All the drivers are asleep while the front convoy had already left. You know, so I quickly start, we run, start waking everybody up, waking, you know, down the line, getting everybody awake, getting engines running and then start moving. I mean, it was sleep became this.

1:44:45You didn't realize it. You just was rare. You just didn't get any sleep at all. Every time you moved, you'd lay up for the night and you'd go out and do something. And then you'd lay underneath your Humvee to sleep, but you didn't sleep. You just had, I just had crazy nightmares of Fettien guys, like, cutting our throats in the middle of the night once I heard that story. That's all I thought about. And, yeah, and then we make our way to Tikrit, you know, get inside this Marine Corps perimeter. I'm like, all right, it's time to sleep. And, you know, I got told the guys, you know, just lay down, try and get some sleep.

1:45:19And me and LT took the first watch. and then like when everybody's comfortable, all hell breaks loose. There's this explosion, gunfire, fucking shit coming at us. Our front Humvee got hit, got a bunch of bullet holes in it and we take cover and trying to figure out what the hell's going on because you're inside a perimeter of Marines, which 18-year-olds on 50 cals, you don't know which way they're pointing these things. And all hell breaks loose. Get on Nod's. As you can see, I saw the Spedding guys in this tree line. So the Marines have basically put the perimeter around some bad guys. And because it was at night, they didn't clear it.

1:46:01And then we ended up inside the perimeter next to the bad guys. So the bad guys are over there and we're over here. We're trying to go to sleep. They're waking up shooting everybody. And so nods, lasers, probably not even 100 yards away. We engaged them. I remember his first time, like, background, background, watch your background, you know. And ended up, one of the guys ended up killing him. Then we'd get online, roll up there, search him. This is when you realize, first time, you know, all these green tips will zip right through somebody. Because we knew between us there was, whatever, let's say 12 rounds.

1:46:42There was 12 holes in this guy. But during the whole time while we were engaging him, it was like he didn't even know he was being shot. You know, and this was 03. And so those, you know, their green tips were just so hot. They're just zipping right through people. And he didn't even know it because he just kept on walking with his AK-47 like he's sneaking around, you know. And eventually he drops and, you know, you go up, search him.

1:47:11And then all the rumors of Tikrit, the next morning was going to be a bloodbath. And so we went in. We knew we were taking Saddam's palace. And probably the most eerie thing is, is we roll in, and there was nobody there. It was like the whole town had left, and it was so quiet that that made it even a little more sketchy. We set up, and I guess the Marines did whatever they did. But for us, it was uneventful. And, you know, we set up for, I don't know, a couple of days, a week. And just, you know, that's the gold toilet, you know, seats and, you know, the place has already been looted. And, you know, the first kind of exposure to one of Saddam's palaces, his birth palace, you know, and all this and that.

1:47:57And, yeah, that's probably the long version, but it was one big op, you know. This was before operations had names. What time span was it? The whole first couple of months of the war. No shit. Yeah. So you're, yeah. I don't even remember. I mean, it was just constant, you know, just moving, sleeping in the dirt. Oh, I remember while we're hanging out outside on Nasiria, it's time for Jessica Lynch to get rescued, right? And we had heard like, oh, damn, Nick's rolling in. And sure enough, they roll in. Their Hummers had a nickname called Hammers, I think, because they had like supercharged motors and they were armored and they were very Gucci'd out or whatever, you know.

1:48:47So they, their Humvees, I don't know where they were staged, but they were staged for them because they were staying in a five star in Riyadh, right? and they get in their helicopters and their starched camis fly to their humvees get in their humvees and then drive to us and here we are like covered in dirt and grime and sleeping in the dirt and it was the first time where you could see like these guys get out of their humvees and they're kind of looking at us like whoa like these white side conventional seals kind of living in the dirt and in the combat and this and that. And I knew a couple of them, they were, you know, from the, you know, from team three guys and touch base with them and everything.

1:49:31And there's that like split second where we felt like, Oh, we've got the upper edge on these guys this time. Cause you know, the competition between the regular teams and seal team six and, but they rolled in and fucking annihilated that thing that night. Just, you know, one of my good friends was the gunner and just, you know, weapons free and just took out that entire bottom floor with 50 cal, just lit it up. Overwhelming firepower. Then the assault team went in on the floor and something, I think, came from the roof and got to her, grabbed her and got her out of there. It was pretty cool. We watched her from afar.

1:50:16Back to feeling like a loser again. I'm still a loser. I'm on a berm and on ossaria. I've been here living under my Humvee and these guys roll in, pull the rescue of the year off, and then go back to their five-star Riyadh. It's pretty funny. I'm excited to introduce to you the newest member of my family. We call him Stanley. We got Stanley this past Christmas, and pretty quickly my focus became making sure he was safe while still giving him the freedom to actually be a dog. I went looking for the top-rated GPS fence, the number one, and that's how I found Spot On. Stanley wears their Nova collar.

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1:52:35Let your dog roam with Spot On. Go to spotonfence.com slash SRS and use code SRS for$50 off the Nova collar. That's spotonfence.com slash SRS and use code SRS for$50 off. So did you engage anybody in those couple months? Yeah, during that ambush, there was pop shots we would take. You had some idiots, man. You've got to remember the ROEs at the beginning were, there really weren't any. You know, once, like every male of fighting age became kind of like, okay, that's a bad guy. That's a bad guy. And you realize in that first couple of months, dudes were taking their uniforms off and they were wearing civilian clothes.

1:53:30You weren't fighting an army. You were fighting what you thought were army guys dressed in civilian clothes. But there wasn't a lot of engagement at the beginning for any of those early SEAL platoons. That ambush, I definitely was shooting at those guys. and then to the right of me, I think, was the AOIC and to the left of me was my comms guy, Zach. But everyone else was just still trying to figure out what the hell was going on, get on Nod's and kind of get online. By the time they even figured out, it was over, you know. And I know our.50 gunner up top on the Humvee was taking shots from time to time at different stuff.

1:54:16But nothing like what was to come. you know, the future of, you know, the SEAL teams in Iraq or Afghanistan. I mean, holy shit, you know. Yeah, it was game on. But we were at the beginning when, you know, you still had leadership that was very, like I said, a little risk adverse. No one's dying on my watch kind of attitude, you know. Of course no one wants to die on your watch. But I remember at our debrief at the end, and it was, yeah, it was Captain Harwood and our SEAL Team 3 headshot. And a big portion of that was a letdown, you know. And I told them, like, hey, you know, when they're like, hey, you guys have any comments or concerns?

1:54:59Like, yeah, you know, like, this is the pinnacle and could be the only opportunity that a SEAL has to, you know, shoot people in the face, what he's trained to do. and you guys kind of hamstrung it, prevented it. You took that away from a bunch of guys. If it wasn't for some of these reserve commanders we ended up working for, the Marine Corps, probably wouldn't have been able to do anything. But once those guys kind of didn't have oversight over us, that was the only reason we were able to actually do some fun stuff. Bad. Yeah. But obviously it all changed once some more motivated, aggressive leadership got in there, man, then it game was on.

1:55:44Right. So, yeah. It was an interesting time. You know, it was awesome. I wouldn't take any of it back or change it because everything has to evolve, you know, it's just the way it is. And when you take a bunch of SEAL teams and say, okay, now we're going to war and it'd been, you know, 20, 30 years since anybody had really been true combat, then And you start with the training wheels and eventually, you know, get to the point where guys are just crushing the enemy left and right every night. It's interesting, you know, how you describe a bunch of reserve officers who had never been to war. Yeah.

1:56:25All scurrying out like a bunch of cockroaches. Oh, yeah. Going to war. Yeah. To prevent everybody to actually fight. Together war, yeah. Yeah. A bunch of pussies. Right. You know? Yeah. There's a lot of unfortunate moments with the leadership. I mean, even I'm probably giving them excuses as we speak, but, you know, they're like, oh, well, you know, we hadn't been to combat, we hadn't done this, we hadn't done that. But the truth is the truth at the end of the day for those guys. Yeah. They know who they are, so. There's a lot of them. Yeah. There's a lot of them. Yeah. So where do we go from here?

1:57:07Well, I came back from that trip, and that's when I was like, I was kind of disgruntled. I was a sailor of the quarter, sailor of the year, put my officer package together. I was back at Team 3, and I was about to do my board. I think it was like the day prior I took my OCS package and just, was it OCS or Seaman Admiral? It was one of the programs. I just threw it in the trash right in front of my CO. I was like, I'm not doing this. I don't want to work with you guys. I want to stay with my guys, you know? Wow. So dumped it in the trash, and then the next guy in line took it. I think he's still in, actually.

1:57:54He's like, he's got to be a captain. But, yeah, totally threw that in the trash and was like, just didn't want to be part of that, you know? And plus, we both know if you want to operate for the long haul, you stay enlisted. And I wasn't there for the retirement. I wasn't even thinking about that. I knew I was going to do 20, nothing more, nothing less. And I didn't care about the retirement. Every now and then, I'm kind of like, maybe I should have. But I still wouldn't change it. The enlisted world runs the show. And I got to confirm that once you get to the East Coast that the enlisted do run the show out there.

1:58:39But, yeah, I got back through my officer package in the trash. And then my master chief, you know, had told me about a new program. And they were doing a screening and selection for her. It sounded interesting. It sounded different. I was like, sure. So I went to WARCOM. And it was a new initiative led by Admiral Callen at the time. I walk into this conference room. I got my dress whites on and sit down. It's a bunch of people in civilian clothing. I didn't know anybody except for the Master Chief, and he was in civilian clothing. I kind of look at him like, hey, what's up? You sit down. They're like, hey, how you doing?

1:59:21I'm like, good. Go ahead and turn around in your chair. I was like, OK. So I turn around in my chair. Now they're all at my back, and I'm looking at the door I walked in, I get handed a piece of paper that's on a clipboard and a pencil. I'm like, go ahead and draw the quarter deck that you walked through two minutes ago. And I'm like, oh shit. Was I paying attention? And I started sketching overhead. I remember, okay, there's the front desk, there's the doors, there's some doors over here. There's an American flag, American flag, some chairs and I put my cardinal bearing north arrow down at the bottom this sucks I don't fucking know if this is even right I'm like okay and they're like okay turn around go ahead and tell us what you saw I'm like well I think I saw and I kind of describe everything in my drawing I show them the drawing I kind of go over it real quick and then they're like okay and so then they start asking a series of questions, you know, like, you know, where you been, what have you done?

2:00:28They gave me some scenarios, you know, you're in a bar overseas, you know, guy walks in with a slung AK-47, what are you going to do? I'm like, oh, watch the guy, pay attention, make sure I take note of it, you know, orientate myself properly inside that bar to where this guy's at, you know, and they're like, okay. And it's a lot of questions like that, very scenario-driven. And then... And then they had this small little cup, and they had a bunch of broken down writing pens inside. All the springs, the ink cartridge, the tops and the bottoms. And then they had a stopwatch. And they're like, okay, go ahead and put all those pens together.

2:01:22Okay, so I can dump it. I'm like putting these, you know, spring cartridge, put it down into the bottom, put it in the top, function test. Okay, do the next one. They were all different makes and models of pens. And I was like, that's weird. And then they had some math problems. So they gave me the math problems. I wrote them down. They're like, okay, they time it. It was like basic algebra stuff, something like that. did those and then they were like okay turn back around and turn back around my chair they're like starting from left to right you know everybody introduced themselves go ahead and tell who each person is i was like oh shit i'm like that's definitely one thing i suck at you know i was like but i'll give it my best try while i'm talking to this door in front of me right i'm like okay so i think the first guy was Frank.

2:02:17I know that the next guy was Billy because I worked with him. Next guy I think was, you know, Phil, you know, or something. And I just, you know, I don't even know. I didn't know anybody's name. I was just like fucking fumbling through it. And I could hear them kind of laughing a little bit. So I was like, okay, thank God. At least they see the humor in my, in this. And then they're like, okay, what were the first three questions we asked you? I was like, damn it. It's like, you asked me to draw the quarter deck. You asked me to tell a little bit about myself. And then you guys started introducing yourselves.

2:03:02This thing, I think it was like an hour interview. It was really odd, you know. Sounds like it. I had no idea what was going on and what it was for. And they're like, okay, thanks. I'm like, all right. I walk out. As I walk out, now there's like probably 20 other seals in their dress whites all standing there waiting. I guess I was the first to go. I saw another dude I knew. I saw a couple other guys I knew. They all were going in for the same interview, you know. and go back to the team and a couple of weeks goes by and I'm not really even thinking about it anymore. And my match chief, command match chief at team three pulls me in and he's like, Hey, you know, we're going to, there was a program.

2:03:48I don't know if, you know, you did your interview and stuff. They called. And so, you know, we're going to send you over there, like TAD at first, see if they like you. And I'm like, send me where? And they're like, to work on like, well, what am I doing? They're like, Oh, they'll tell you that stuff when you get there. And so I get over there and check in and, um, there's nothing permanent. Cause they just wanted to, it was me, another guy that was in my platoon, actually my, one of my lead comms guys. And then there was like two or three other seal, um, senior chief and a master chief that I had, I didn't really know that well, but I knew of them.

2:04:20And, uh, they sat us down and said, all right, fine, fix, finish. We're really good at finish as a community. We're okay at fix as long as it's like rural-based reconnaissance, like recce teams, snipers. That's about all we know about getting a fix on a target, right? We know nothing about the urban side of getting a fix someone. So what we are tasked to build with basically unlimited budget, and it's a ready-go, work as fast as you can is build the fix and the find for the community starting right now. And we're like, well, what the, I don't know, it's the first time I've ever heard of find, fix, finish, you know?

2:05:03And, uh, so they kind of explain it to us, you know, find is really all the ints at the time that we're doing with, there was SIGINT and there was HUMAN. Now you got a hundred of them, you know? Um, we're like, uh, okay. And they're like, what is that? you know and it was just uh hey ready go go figure it out and so with the power of the admiral and unlimited budget civilian clothes and basically got blue badged in in to every agency in dc and carte blanche ready go figure it out and um that's what we did and so we went to everyone to figure out, well, how do you find bad guys? And, okay, now if we're going to build a program, what would it look like?

2:05:49And we had, then we put together at the group level, group one and group two, we put little cells of guys together as force multipliers to start helping on educating the force and determining, you know, how to do this. And this was all pre-GWatt. And so we got really far, really fast and built the entire ASO program for Naval Special Warfare, then built the AFO program. So my buddy covered down on ASO, but the Army was the proponency for ASO. They ran that. And then we became the proponent for AFO and we ran ours. and then I eventually got it certified through SOCOM and it became the first joint course.

2:06:40So there's a lot in there because we were deploying. We'd go overseas, work for an embassy, not really have a job, and come back and say, okay, I think this is what we need. And then go, all right, build a course. Let's educate some guys and then send them over to fill that void. and then, but what we realized is once you have a foothold in an embassy, that is the magic in the whole program. So it was like, all right, we need to get guys over there. Well, we don't have enough SEALs. Okay, put an intel kit over there. So then we learned, oh, start grabbing people from the fleet, start drawing in, we're going to build this thing out.

2:07:19Get footholds of the embassies. Once you have a foothold operationally, then everything else comes from there. And so it was very, very strategic. It was very operational and it was very tactical all at the same time. So I was learning through a fire hose. Agency level shit, you know, at the national level, then at the operational, then at the tactical and going, okay, well, how do we put all this together? And then you had Admiral Callen and even McRaven, because McRaven had started a thing called Quantum Leap, I think, prior to all this. And I was privy to it when I was trying to learn, like, well, how do we build something in light speed so that we can get our guys involved in outside the theaters of war and truly operational prep of the environment, which used to be called operational prep of the battle space.

2:08:11Congress didn't like the word battle space because it intends that we're going to do something nefarious there. So they changed it to environment. And we started just mapping it out. But McRaven had one thing that was so sticky that I remembered and I still use it to this day. And it was, if I were to send you, Sean, to China right now by yourself, how would you take out an aircraft carrier by yourself? and it's a pretty impossible thing getting into the country the layers of security when you dial in and look at the ports and harbors there you're not getting close to an aircraft carrier in that country but how can you take it out and then the quantum leap aspect of it when you start thinking strategically was well i don't have to get near that i can go 20 piers down to the tug boats that have zero security.

2:09:10And if I take out every single tugboat in that harbor, that aircraft carrier isn't moving. Right. And then that just that one example just set my creativity and everything we started doing on fire. I was like, wow, you know, like that's what we need to be doing. That's how you get ahead because that is all about how you think and allowing frogman to be as creative as possible tugboat the tugboat theory became the theory right and so then it was like okay now we can build on that so we started uh we started with the education and the deployment simultaneously so anytime i wasn't like putting a course together or testing out a course then i was going overseas and it was awesome because you got to wear all these different hats all the time every day and then um so then we uh we partnered with army use of sock for all the aso billets and then we started contracting you know you had a bunch of army guys get out and start companies that taught aso so then we started using them and then i was running the afo and defining it like okay what is advanced force operations and mapping it out and really getting into it.

2:10:31What all does it include? So we break out the doctrine. So it included joint RSO and I, which is reception, staging, onward integration and movement. So RSO and I was like, okay, what is that? At the conventional level, it's how the army moves a hundred Apaches to Kuwait, right? Reception, staging, onward integration into combat. If you think about it, it's a logistics nightmare. What does that mean for me and you? Me as a singleton, it's like, how do I get a troop of 22 guys from the beach to the safe site, put them on target. They annihilate everybody with non-trib whippings and ammunition back to the safe site, sanitize them back out to the ocean.

2:11:16and then I go around, sanitize everything they did before the sun comes up and start my day job. Right? So that's what became RSO and I for Naval Special Warfare. Missions like that. And we knew there was people out there already doing it, but Admiral Cowan's like, we're taking that from them and we're going to do it through excellence and professionalism and creativity. And we started building these programs. We started We're putting people in embassies. I mean, everything all at once, as fast as possible. And it became a program of record and became a big deal for Naval Special Warfare. Yeah, it was a huge deal.

2:11:55You guys, people that followed, ended up learning all the TTL stuff and basic electronics, electricity, like the AFO course I built. I mean, it was awesome. I mean, you started with getting your concealed carry classes. We had district attorneys in all the major cities buy off on it you got creds you got guns you were packing the whole course and then uh and then you would go to initially it was tss technical surveillance science in new orleans they would teach you basic electronics electricity modification of consumer products lock picking alarms once you got all the tech under your belt tracking all that all that stuff then you would go into physical surveillance mode we had the brits coming over teaching physical surveillance they were all mi5 mi6 sas guys i took that course did you yeah it was awesome did i put you through no it was just them later oh i think it was that course it was a contract right yeah yeah we i took we were yeah we were we were gonna do the bosnia thing oh yeah that's like when this first popped up on my radar so i guess that would have been oh four i believe yeah four or five it was presented as test and then i got switched and i wound up going to afghanistan uh but i went through the whole course it was it's it's probably the best course i've taken yeah and the teams you know i had so much pride in that thing man i was surveillance counter surveillance running ops from richmond to virginia beach yep how to blend in like the shit we were talking about this morning yeah i remember they'd take us to they they'd they'd put us in, we'd start walking around them all, and then it became a couple of city blocks, and then it became all in Norfolk, and then it became...

2:13:41Then they introduced cars and vehicles, and then all the way up from Richmond down, and just getting into top floor of Bank of America building, and all kinds of shit. It was awesome. And they'd put you in uncomfortable... You would have a target that you had to follow or whatever, and they would always take you into the most awkward... yeah Victoria's Secret right baby store places we don't belong that you feel uncomfortable and then they would confront you there and you would have to act you would have to figure out how to act normal or they'd they'd walk into an elevator and one of the guys on the team would follow them in and they'd what time is it but it was uh yeah and there was no shooting no explosives no jumping out of planes and that and uh it was my favorite course yeah some guys had a knack for it and loved it and some had a knack for it and shouldn't never do it just because i was pissed they were going to take me to i guess i guess they were like they had an augment to somewhere in the uk yes and uh i got selected for it you would love that it was a great building yeah i was i was pissed yeah and And then I got, yeah, then we went to Afghanistan, which whatever, you know what I mean?

2:14:55Yeah. There was all nothing but good deals back then, you know? It was like every day was a good deal. For me, running and building and kind of putting that whole thing together and then also deploying at the same time and testing it, you know? I remember the first like, ooh, offensive technical stuff, right? I remember Zen Djibouti and our first sales pitch was, hey, our guys can do source vetting. Wow, how do you guys do source vetting? Well, when you're vetting somebody and you have them come to a hotel or whatever, we can exploit their car because guys know how to break into cars. And we can exploit their briefcase if they have a briefcase and blah, blah, blah, you know, right?

2:15:30It was just to sell the technical capability that a guy can do these things, right? It was very defensive. But it worked. It worked like a charm. You know, hey, we can set up camera cars for you, right? Take the case officer's car, rip it apart, put cameras outward looking, inward looking, put it all back together. because they learn all this stuff in the course, you know. And the BEE portion of the course, I feel like, whether guys realize it or not, was the most important aspect, especially when you fast forward, you know, when things started getting more advanced because that basic electronics electricity package,

2:16:14that's what allowed what later that I would call like a true, like back to our roots and naked warrior program. If you look at, you know, World War II, whatever, the guys with their UDTs, a knife in their mouth and fins and a mask and go get it done with a 22 pound haversack. And I was like, okay, well, you can take that concept. How do you apply it now? The modern day version of the naked warrior is an operator who's transitioned to operative, right? Operator being a guy who wears body armor, camis, night vision, kicks indoors and shoot people in the face. Now you've transitioned that same guy with that same experience to an operative where he's business casual, flying business class.

2:16:54He doesn't have 21 other dudes stacked up behind him. All the success, all the failure resides solely on him. He's got as much cash as he needs. He takes off from Dulles. He goes overseas. He gets the job done and comes back. Right? That's the dream job. And I was like, yeah. You know? A lot of guys didn't like that. No. That was what I was, I was very drawn to that from the get-go. I was like, this shit is cool. Yeah, it is sexy. Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. Nice work putting that together. Oh, yeah. No, it was awesome. And it just kept evolving it every year. And then we solidified it all, got rid of all the contractors.

2:17:37We housed it at the NSA. now you could teach everything in a skiff secure it lock it down um and then take it to the next level which is kind of where it where it where it ended up that's where its home ended up being majority of the course was run out of the nsa and you had all their assets and everything that they brought to bear that made it like a thousand times more professional made it very secure and then being that close to all the other agencies, it became like a reputable course of instruction that, like I said, even SOCOM signed off on it. And instead of ORCOM funding it, it became a SOCOM-funded thing and took off.

2:18:23So did you take this over to Development Group too? So that's kind of how... Part of it, yeah. Because you went over there to Black Squadron, right? Yeah. Yeah, but you weren't an assaulter. It wasn't like through green team and all that stuff. You went over to black squadron, and that's kind of, from what I understand, this is what they do. Yeah. Yeah. I laugh because when you're a non-green teamer inside that fence line, let me tell you. Oh, yeah. I've heard. Especially if you're a deploying guy inside of a troop, you know it took a couple of years for me to build the trust but um yeah so i had once i built that course and it was kind of like an autopilot um then i moved out to dc i was helping with the course we built a nsw debt dc and it was one billet i sat in it and you were liaison to anybody.

2:19:27Like I got pulled into so much stuff. I can't remember half of it. Like if you're an enlisted operationally, sitting in a, in a, basically a C billet, right? A deployable billet in DC, you'll have every agency coming to you. Hey, can you go do this for us? Hey, can you go do that for us? I mean, it was pretty phenomenal. And at the same time, so I was attached to NSA, but representing Naval Special Warfare inside the beltway. And so I got pulled into countless things. I did a lot of cool deployments. That was where the initial one of the deployments that kind of led me becoming more, you know, independent and doing the singleton stuff was bin Laden's boats.

2:20:14right bin laden had 27 vessels and they had like a three ring binder of these vessels and pictures and stuff and they're like man we need to get these things like tagged you know and um i think the initial idea was like the third deck at fort mead having this tom clancy room with all these screens and being able to see you know all 27 vessels on a on a global screen you know i think that was the idea. But so the first little gig was, you know, hey, we got this boat called the, well, it was called the Jamil and it's a smaller metal tanker, not really that big. And it was supposedly sitting in the Djibouti port and Harbor.

2:21:02Right. And so it was like, all right, let's go put a fucking tracking device on this thing. And so that was like, kind of like the first like you know trial run and i was working a lot with all of your ttl companies did you do it creatively yeah yeah we pulled it off how did you do it literally went in there and put it on there so this is where cover and all that kind of stuff right we were kind of still learning but the duty-free shop inside well inside the jibouti port and harbor is a duty-free shop. And a lot of times, if you're a Westerner, you can get away with going in there and buying cigarettes, buying alcohol, whatever, right?

2:21:46And so there was a lot of reckeys involved. We built a camera car, you know, took a car, break it apart, put outward looking cameras, put it all back together and then drive through there. And it took some time to actually find it, but it was its color scheme. It was green with a white superstructure. And so we knew, okay, got to get that. And, um, and then once we ID'd it, they had literally taken paint and painted over Jamil and like had some other name written on the side of it, you know, and in the nautical world, every, like, like, like aviation, um, everything's English, right? So you gotta, so it makes it a little more bearable to figure things out.

2:22:27And it had some other name and, um, But we knew which boat it was. And so once we kind of figured out the pattern of life of the port and harbor at night and different times of day, and then also the guys at the front gate, you realize, okay, they're lax. They're not like security. They're just guys checking vehicles coming in. Just management of the flow of people coming in and out. And then, yeah, once we figured out, we were like, okay, it was me and another team guy. and like, let's go ahead and see if we can pull this off tonight. Oh, there was one other piece to this. So the, uh, I think it was the agency had someone who had access who worked in the Port and Harbor.

2:23:13And so we built first generation camera with RF antenna, um, into a pack of cigarettes with a little pinhole. And, you know, this was back when we were using these Sony X-View cameras you could buy online. You know, put it all together in this cheesy little RF device, and it would push back. And that was, it was video, so you wouldn't push very far. And we put it in the kid's backpack. It had a mesh exterior pocket, so we put the cigarettes down there, made sure that everything lined up just right, glued it all in place, made this kid wear this backpack and then he went on board and was able to film the inside and it filmed locally but it also pushed of course once he got into skin it went static and then we were able to collect the wristwood once it came out so we knew like oh okay now we know the inside of this thing we knew the outside um and then went over there one night they had a ladder going up you know to the side of the boat no different than any other navy vessel from the deck up the ladder and just kind of dressed like they dress, acted like we owned it, walked up, and were able to drop the device.

2:24:26There was like wood paneling and wood deck on a portion of this thing. And any device, it has to be able to just see the sky. That's the most important thing and make sure that it's not behind metal, right? It can be fiberglass, wood, can be pretty much behind anything, but it has to be able to see satellites so the device knows exactly where it's at, and it also has to be able to communicate with us or whatever device it's talking to. Early on, they had what was called mat tags, multi-access tags. It can communicate through SIM cards. It can communicate through satellite. It can communicate RF if I do a drive-by and collect the information off of it.

2:25:13Literally dropped it in there. It was nothing sexy. And then got out of that damn harbor as quick as we could. And Fred, the team guy with me, was driving, get back in the car. We were driving and he was so fucking paranoid. He's like, we're being followed. And we ended up creating our own little like crazy on the fly SDR back to where we were staying. And, you know, I don't think anybody was following us, but it felt like someone was following us, you know, and it was probably just, you know. I think in those, at least in my experience, you just human paranoia. Yes. You know, you always feel like somebody's following you or watching you in those situations.

2:25:54For sure. And we were fumble fucking through it, you know. We didn't know what we were doing. And then you come back and you go, okay, where did I fail on that? And it's like SDRs, tradecraft, you know, just taking the risk of a harbor that was okay lit, but we were fortunate that that one happened to be in dark, you know. We got lucky with a lot of the environmentals that you just didn't think to take into consideration. You're just kind of like, fuck it, let's just do it, you know. Did you have any cover? No. I didn't think so. Nothing. And then we just advanced it from there, everything. We advanced the tags.

2:26:31These companies were working with building tags. And, um, I mean, it just kind of grew from there. We had another Bin Laden boat, um, another run. This one was the, uh, I think it was called the Hamor. It's named after Persian Gulf has these huge fish, big black fish. They're like bass of the sea. They're massive. And they're not scared of humans, but they're called, I think they're called the Hamor. or this thing was named after it. And that one was anchored. And they're like, yeah, go out there and tag it. And it was like, okay, well, we weren't advanced enough for that yet. You know, you had turtle high, turtle low systems.

2:27:11Remember those you train with? It's like a magnet, and just, we thought about doing that, but those things can be seen if they pull into a port or a harbor. So, but yeah, that was the kind of the kickoff first like vessel. And I think by the end of the run, I was the only guy who tagged vehicles, vessels, and even like a shoe. Like, sole of the shoe. How'd you tag that? Oh, man. So the lead negotiator and leader of the Somali pirates was standing on the side of the road in Basaso, Somalia one day, broad daylight, on his phone. and some of our guys, when I say are the piss, which is the Puntland intelligence service, which is a bunch of Somalis that I've been in a bunch of times and train these guys.

2:28:14And there's some crazy stories associated with that, but teaching them surveillance. And, uh, they like see these guys, they rolled them up. I wasn't there. I'd just come in like a couple of days later. So they see him on the side of the road. And so they square the block, come back, and grab them and throw them in the back of their truck, right, and take them to the safe site. And at this point, you fast forward, we now have NSW guys, part of the very program that I had kind of built, the SA. I don't know if you remember, they had these special activity teams that had been given, I don't know, a bunch of different names.

2:28:55But it was basically a command of team guys that now are sitting in these houses in different areas now. I was like, wow, this thing is advanced, you know? So they're holding on to this guy. And so we roll in and they're like, so here's the deal. There's this whole like political issue. You got the three main clans in Somalia and the elderlies have to kind of buy off on like this guy going away. This is the guy that was on the radio talking to Jonas and those other gold squadron guys and different people for Red Hybrid. You had Jonas, though, Killsaw, who's an extortion 17 guy, who was on the radio and doing all the creative talking back and forth with the Somali pirate leader negotiator.

2:29:48So when you're watching the movie, Captain Phillips, there's the voice on the radio. This is that guy. Okay. These guys just rolled up because they see him standing on the side of the road. No shit. Yeah. And he is, you know, a rock star in Somalia. And he is brought, I mean, he brought in the biggest part of their economy. Somalia imports everything and it only exports one thing. Can you guess what that is? It's the largest exporter of camels. Cot. Well, they import cot. They import cot. From Ethiopia. Yeah. Those cot planes come in, land at about 11 a.m. Cot trucks go out to the cot stands all over Somalia.

2:30:35All the cot stands have cot by about 1 p.m. And then by about 3 or 4, the entire country. cheeks are full of cot and they're high and they're just wandering around like zombies with literally two they got their cheeks full and two cigarettes hanging out of their mouths so you can count on them all being high and you can get away with a lot during that time obviously when you you know just like we always do you just use the culture against them but um should have been a shorter story but they wrap the guy up gives you context to who he is And then it's a thing. We couldn't just snag them if we wanted to maintain support with the little support we had in Somalia.

2:31:20So all of those, like the PIS, the Portland Intelligence Service, we had kind of the same version, other places. And so they all had to kind of agree, right? They're like, hey, you're going to take this guy who's the biggest part of our economy. All his ransom money was funding that country, right? Millions and millions of dollars, right? So it was political. They're like, we want to pull him. So there was this back and forth. And then there was this point when they were like, hey, we got to let him go. We're like, what? And I'm there at that point. And I happened to have, I always carried all these different tags with me everywhere I went.

2:32:01And I had a black squadron tech with me. And they were like, well, hey, so how do we, we were told, hey, like, make sure you tag him. We're like, tag him? You know, so, you know, they had stripped him down and put him in like some, you know, their own clothes and kind of took his own clothes. And we created this whole storyline on how to get his clothes and his shoes and everything. And they were like, one thing about Somalis is they always are, interestingly, they're always dressed nice. They got slacks on, long sleeve shirts, untucked, somewhat clean and shaven. They're always kind of moving with a purpose, going from point A to point B.

2:32:43And always like leather dress shoes with old school wooden soles. And so we took his shoes, pulled out the insoles, had a Dremel, put the tag in there, put it back. We put his shoes on, walked around him, making sure it didn't feel different than the other. Made sure it was heavily concealed, everything glued back in place. And then we were like, all right, here's the test. You know, it was the day to release him. And so, you know, they gave him his clothes and he got dressed, put his shoes on. He didn't act any different, kind of watching him. let him out the front door, or went and dropped him off, but basically let him go, knowing that, okay, we got to potentially grab this dude if he runs or whatever.

2:33:28The Klan leaders, you know, don't come to a decision on this guy. So, I feel like a week or so went by and everybody agreed. And then, uh, yeah, they ended up lighting up that area so that his tag would reflect back. It worked, kept track of them the whole time. It's really cool. And then, uh, then eventually rolled them up. Um, they basically ran a rendition package on them, you know, where we're moving from jet to jet. He doesn't touch sovereign territory so that he can't, you know, pull any bullshit with the attorneys. And then he showed up in New York one day and put on trial, and he's sitting in prison in New York.

2:34:15Wow. All those crimes against, you know, U.S. companies, citizens, all that, yeah. Shit. Yeah. That's pretty badass. Yeah. Who would have thought, though, you know, the guys would just throw him in the back of the truck, you know, while he's standing on the side of the road. I mean, you know, it's kind of... Sometimes you get lucky. Damn. Yeah. And here's another interesting, you know, that particular tag was invented and created by no other than Mitch Bradley. So everyone knows who. Admiral Mitch Bradley has been in the news a lot because of the strikes against drug boats in South America. He's our current.

2:35:01Is he Southcom? Or whatever. I have no idea. I guess he would be, right? But when he was, I don't know, when he was in 04 and 05, he was at JSOC. And I don't know where he worked in, like, science and technology or something. But he created this tag. It was fucking smart. Right on, man. Yeah. What were you doing in Yemen? We were always in and out of there, primarily those were during the AAA days. Anwar al-Awlaki. Anwar was controversial because he was an American citizen. He was the guy that was on... Back in the day, YouTube allowed everything and censored nothing, believe it or not. And so back then you had people in orange pajamas getting their heads chopped off by Al-Qaeda.

2:35:58You had everything on there, man. And one of the most prominent propaganda guys for Al-Qaeda was a guy named Anwar al-Awlaki that we nicknamed AAA. and he uh u.s educated u.s citizen but from yemen his dad is a wealthy guy in sanaa um he uh but he was their lead propaganda guy he had a magazine called inspire to inspire people to radicalize it it had a lot of radical islam articles in it but it all the biggest thing is it always provided it was a true magazine printed and published It had diagrams to how to build bombs, S-vests, IEDs, vehicle IEDs. I mean, you name it. And it was everywhere. And then he had his YouTube channel where he radicalized probably more people than bin Laden ever did.

2:36:59You know, if you look at the two Boston Marathon bombers, they were radicalized by ANWAR's videos. If you look at the Fort Hood shooter, radicalized by AAA. And there was plenty. The shoe bomber, the reason we were taking our shoes off at TSA for so long is because of AAA. The underwear bomber, right? Luckily, we didn't have to take our underwear off at TSA, but I'm sure they thought about it. No underwear allowed. Um, but he was, he influenced more people and radicalized more young Americans and young Muslims than anyone else out of all of Al Qaeda. And so he was basically considered, I think, number two.

2:37:46Once the command killed number one, um, you know, then he became number one and he was in Yemen. And so a lot of our trips in and out there was just really targeting him. The CIA on drone strikes had missed him like two or three times in a row. He would come into Sana 'a from time to time, and they'd always try to hit him on the highway going back out to wherever he lived out in the middle of nowhere. And it didn't work. And so then eventually, you know, once we had a foothold at that embassy, you know, I think the agency was like, hey, what can you guys do? And so I went over and it was to tag his vehicle.

2:38:32I was like, all right, this is cool, you know. And he had a driver that would always park outside of a 24-7 convenience store. And he would park that damn car right in front of the glass. and the cashier inside conveniently pointed outward towards cars parked right there. And over there, you know the deal. They like park up on the sidewalk, you know, so he would put this thing like danger close, the bumper to the glass. I mean, there was barely any room to actually walk on the sidewalk. And you could tell it was with purpose. His driver did this on purpose. Keep that vehicle under watch 24-7 or at least when it was parked there.

2:39:12And across the street was like this hotel, shitty-ass hotel of sorts. And so once we kind of figured that out, we would roll in and set up recce cars, camera cars, park them, leave them, collect, go back, drive them away, see what we could collect on the driver, get ID quality. This was all spread out over time. But eventually we got ID quality of the driver, figured out which kind of car. Then we go out in town, procure and or commandeer the exact same car, bring that back to our place, break the car down, rehearse, figure out how we're going to do it, this and that. And then my task force, SCA, is like, hey, you can be as creative as you want on this.

2:39:59I'm like, okay, what do you mean? I was like, well, you know, if you've got to steal a van or steal something and come up with something creative so that you can park right next to it and knock it out real quick. And I was like, okay. So, took his hint, like, started looking around, like, okay, we need to steal a van now. You know, it's like, yeah, I'm looking forward to commandeering a vehicle for covert operations. You know, and believe it or not, the closest van were these Army guys, like U.S. guys. So, I, like, kind of ask discreetly, hey, can we just steal their van? He's like, yeah, you can do whatever the fuck you want.

2:40:39I'm like, yeah. So now I'm stealing these guys' van that they bought. I'm just like, well, hell, that's the best way to do it. Take a van, known people, steal it from them. At least don't tell them about it. Just borrow it. So we borrow it. And then I have one of the techs go out in town, buy like a thermite torch. And we cut a hellhole into this floor of the van, right? And turn it into this hatch. And then we buckled down a spare tire to it. So if under inspection, it looked, you know, if you opened up the back of the van, you just saw a spare tire that, you know, was locked down to the floor.

2:41:16And, you know, this kid did a great job. I'm like, man, you did a good job, buddy. Give yourself a bronze star after this deployment, you know, like everyone else. And so the idea was, you know, hey, we're going to pull up next to this thing. And with that guy sitting inside at his little cash register, you can have guys in the back, open up the trap door, drop down to the street, roll from underneath the van to underneath the target vehicle, and do your thing. And so we had one guy, I think he was a Blue Squadron guy, pull the recce. He was out on the street. He was our overwatch. And then I was team leader for this whole team of guys.

2:42:05And so I ran team lead in full disguise. I had my Yemenis mask on and my man dress. And Yemenis like to wear their blazer. It's kind of something that sets them apart. And they wear their headdress. Instead of on their head, they wear it kind of over their blazer. And so I was looking at me, everything, drove the vehicle. happened to be a parking spot got lucky right next to the target vehicle and uh parked next to it kind of looking at this guy get my light up a cigarette start letting my mask smoke crack the window look like i'm just going to hang out that's nothing unusual for that environment um and then as soon as i saw him look away went back behind the curtain he's all blacked out kind of kind of kind of kind of like how we had our own concealment built into the back of this van that didn't look anything weird or could pass inspection open up the door hit the deck roll into the vehicle um so had a new a brand new tracking it had double satellite hockey pucks it had double cell phone antennas which are like look like black thumb depressors or tongue depressors, you know, on a wire.

2:43:25Bottom line is you had like four or five things you had to conceal. Rehearsal is basically a piece of cardboard on your chest once you're underneath this thing and you're mixing these like super potent epoxy and you squeeze it out of the tube, squeeze it on the, mix it around. And then you start fucking, you know, start fucking gluing shit everywhere. Double zip tie, did everything, you know, make it look right, back into the vehicle, get back to the front seat when the guy wasn't looking. And then, yeah, no big deal. The overwatch cleared us. Everything was good to go. Pull out of there, leave.

2:44:11Boom. Got a tracking device on Anwar Alaki's car. Go back. We're all proud and happy. Pull it up. Tracking's good. Pinging on all four channels. This is awesome. So next day, things starts moving. Moving around Sanaa, this and that. Goes and does some things. Logging. We're able to kind of bounce all this information off other people. And then right around the 24-hour mark, drops. Nothing. Not one thing. Double cell phone. dropped, double satellite dropped. And I'm like, the fuck just happened to this thing? What did he, you know, go get an oil change. And the guy, you know, there's a risk to all this.

2:45:04You go get an oil change, somebody puts it on the rack and they see something, right. And then find something leads to everything else. You know, it's, there's risk. And we're like, holy fuck. and it was a huge success, you know, and now it's not. And that's the thing about that world is, you know, it's like all the success, all the failure resides solely on you sometimes or you. And, you know, if you've got a couple of texts with you or whatever, you're like, motherfucker, man. So then I'm like leveraging everything. I have Fort Meade or NSA dialing in on Yemeni's phone network, trying to figure out where it lost and this and that, and pulling all these resources on their switchboards to figure out what happened.

2:45:53Couldn't figure it out. Time goes by. Time goes by. Valuable time. Valuable time. Now we're back to pulling surveillance on the hotel. Now, two or three nights later, he's not parking there anymore. We're like, fuck. Burned. Possibly burned. I think about seven-day mark. and I'm already stressed out, can't eat. You know, this is one of those things where you just don't want to go that way. What were you guys going to do? Drone strike it? There was a lot of courses of action. You can imagine. Like, this was... At the time, you know, McRaven was JSOC. And so, very aggressive. Mitch Bradley, the same admiral.

2:46:39It's been in the news lately was my boss.

2:46:46So, yeah, there was a lot of courses of action because drones hadn't worked. So it was like, let's do it differently. You know what that was? Who knows? And so turns out seven day mark after every phone call, I was talking to tracking companies, agencies, all of the tech components of everything. this isn't going to surprise you but jsoc stopped paying the bill on all of the communication components of that particular device yeah yeah um and for me i was like oh thank god you know because i'm running that up it's mine And of course, one minute you're the rock star. The next minute you, it's that whole hero to zero thing, you know, and definitely felt it in that moment.

2:47:41And then it was like, ah, so then we know the problem. You could fire it back up. At this point, that thing, I think a week later started pinging out in the middle of nowhere. They'd just gone back out to where they lived. And, um, but it gave valuable information. It gave a pattern of life that then was used later to eventually kill the guy. Yeah. Yeah. I think we were there... I spent a lot of time in Yemen. We probably crossed paths. Glenn, I ran into Glenn. Do you know that coffee shop that was supposedly owned by the American couple? They lived, and it was kind of... It was over by the embassy.

2:48:18It was walled in. It was outdoor cafe in Sanaa. Yeah. Supposedly owned by this American... near the shawarma spot. Yeah. Owned by an American couple. You're like, what's an American couple own a fucking coffee shop in Sanaa, Yemen? And had all kinds of antennas on top of it because they live there too. So I remember I was going in and Glenn was coming out. We was like literally bumping into each other and like, oh, hey, American? American. Yeah. Speak English? Yeah. You want to get a coffee with me? Sure. You know, we're kind of putting on the act just in case somebody's watching. Go back inside, get coffee.

2:48:52It was fucking last time I saw the guy too. That was it. That was his trip to Yemen. He came back home. I didn't get to see him. and then going over to Relief Tie was the next trip. Yeah. It was pretty, God, such a small world in that world. Yeah. You'd run into the same dudes, and you're always like, are we the only ones doing this shit around the globe? Because that's kind of scary if it's true. Everyone's going to recognize us at some point, you know? Well, shit, I mean, today you can't even do it. No. With all the facial recognition and all that stuff. I've heard that you can't even get fake passports anymore.

2:49:34You can't really do any undercover. Yeah, when I was leaving, everything I think was going back to true. The agency was leading the way, but you couldn't. And even with masks, I have my Arab mask and I have my Somali. And it even got to the point where there's certain thermal. that if that's running, you can see it. So you have to assume, like, once there's a piece of technology out there that can burn it, that particular piece of equipment, then, you know, you can't ever use it. You can't trust it. It won't be seen or seen through or whatever. Yeah. You know? But it was powerful. Disguise was very powerful there for a while, you know?

2:50:24like uh deception point of view and we were the only ones really using it offensively jeff and i you know the agencies always use disguise it's kind of like go meet a source you never met before or when you're shitting in your own backyard kind of stuff but we were the only ones kind of it was a hard it was a hard place to hide to even with the local garm yeah because it's so tribal there um i mean we would do we would walk these assets and you know through the whole city and clean them you know walk them through metal detectors and malls and whatever yeah you know to clean them before they finally got to us and yeah we would even women uh actually it was what we we just we get burned every time not even realize that until the assets in the car he's like was that was that your guys in the hotel you know what i mean and be like how those how did you know that you know they'll be like oh he's wearing the thing on the wrong side or he's doing this or he's doing that i think it's impossible for you know a westerner to really to get it down no perfectly at first glance it's great but yeah to actually do it no way and we had we've had assets get killed because of it i mean it's it's a tough place to blend yeah i would say almost every all of the places we went you know somalia my mask probably there and you know you got gloves that go up to your armpits to make you a black guy but it only works because you know they're high on cot and i'm doing it at night you know like yeah yeah yeah for cmoe which is what you know your initial question getting pulled out of NSA, it was because I ran a course for the four or five E9s at Damnec.

2:52:15It was like a two-week course. They came up and I kind of put them through it and they realized, wow, like, you know what you're talking about and you've actually done this stuff. Why don't you come work for us? And I was like, okay. So, you know, did the screening for Damnec, you know, the interviews and the psych tests. And then I actually said, hey, all right, good idea. I go with your green team. They're like, nope. And these E9s at the time were like legends. And so what they said went, there's no arguing with them, you know. And so when, once I got there and got into Black Squadron, you know, my job really didn't have anything to do with green team, but it's nice to check that box because it's selection.

2:52:56And if you're a SEAL, you want to be a selected guy. but I put in like five different chits and they were turned down every time so there's a point when you just go okay and they just you're not here for that gotcha you're not here for that you're not here for that you're here for cmoe I was like roger that but um cmoe is clandestine methods of entry so we built the pro I built the program there which is basically lock and alarms getting in, leaving zero attribution, United States government, zero forensics. And so Jeff and I had like a, God, we had like a$10 million budget, which is nothing compared to what guys have now.

2:53:36But at the time we're like, holy shit, just the two of us. And that was to build the capability. So we went to the 2-2 SAS's capability, went to SRR while we were in England. They had a great small CMOE capability, very experienced. Get to IRA back in the day. Went to FBI, TOS, their whole, theirs is a$100 million CMOE program, right? Went to PAG, which is the agencies. That's another$100 million fucking, you know, entry program. And we're like, well, we got to build something in the middle. So we're just a two-man shop. And we got educated at the highest levels, and were able to get, ultimately, the goal for anything is you want the squadron to be able to own the target.

2:54:27So our main job was to provide reliable, repeatable means of reentry. So that means make a key. So that's all we did, is roam around the planet, breaking into shit. And most of the time, there's only two reasons I'm going to be in your house, in your car, on your boat and that is either tactical or technical and you probably rather it be technical and then tactical because if i'm there that means 22 guys are going to show up after me and fuck you up for the rest of your life or make you disappear at sea it's technical well you get to live a little longer we're just going to listen to you watch you and see where you go, you know?

2:55:10But it was definitely, I mean, like, you couldn't ask for a better job. Singleton world, you know?

2:55:20Like I said, I wasn't as deep in as you were, but that was my favorite stuff. Yeah. It was just, I don't know. I can't even really describe why. It's just, I don't know. It's just cool to be on your own. Doing that kind of shit. Yeah, that's it. Would have loved to have done TFO. Yeah. I did classes for them. I'd get pulled up there. Really? Yeah. I got to help out with their selection. They've got a great history. I mean, that's the closest selection to OSS selection that there is in history to this day. Yeah. Super cool. But I would help them out in Nevada. Fucking phenomenal course. there was aspects of that that I put into ours because I was able to go see it and these guys are on to something.

2:56:15Well, that's really cool, Ben. I did not know that you were the one that pretty much built that entire program, at least at the beginning of time. Beginning of time. The beginning of its time. Yeah. Very cool. 20 plus years ago at this point. Yeah, it's old now. All old news. I can't even imagine what they're doing these days. I'll bet it's pretty damn cool. Yeah, I bet it is. But you want to take a quick break? Sure. I'm always listening to something. On the road, working out, walking around the house, traveling, whatever it is. And what I like about Amazon Music is it puts music, podcasts, and audiobooks all in one app.

2:56:58So now with Amazon Music Unlimited, you're not just getting music and podcasts. Your subscription also includes access to audiobooks, which makes it easy to keep something good going no matter what you're doing. I've been listening to Project Hail Mary, and that's the kind of audiobook that really works in this format. Hearing the story in the narrator's voice pulls you in differently. You get the pacing, the tension, the personality of the characters, and it makes it easy to stay locked in whether you're driving, training, or knocking things out around the house. With Amazon Music, you get music, podcasts, and audiobooks all in one app.

2:57:39Try it today. The internet wasn't built with your privacy in mind, but Glacier was. Open the app, tap connect, done. You're protected. Remember, privacy isn't paranoia, it's protection. Take your privacy back. Download Glacier today. Thank you.

2:58:07All right, Clint, we're back from the break. I think we covered a lot of the Singleton stuff and everything you're doing, or is there more to go into? I think that's plenty, right? I mean, people get the idea. It's really about, hey, you're taking seasoned operators, turn them into operatives and going and getting shit done outside the theaters of war and, you know, creative way of taking out bad guys. It's really super cool stuff. and yeah so what's some of the stuff that you carried back then or carried now let's do a quick everyday carry pocket um back then it's gonna sound weird i mean i always had a couple of tracking devices i had my lock equipment smart jammers for alarm systems and stuff like that But recce stuff, urban recce, like cameras and hide materials and video, you know, and notice the first thing I mentioned is like, oh, an MP7 and, you know, some kind of whatever piss it off.

2:59:08But, you know, your tools, as you know, back then or for that kind of stuff is, you know, it's commercial level stuff that you can explain away, you know. And so it's really, it's not about guns and all that. It's about having a great storyline. If you ever get pulled over and have something, you've got to have a story, you know, that matches what you have on you. And then that story also has to match the environment that you happen to get rolled up in. That's all you're thinking about the whole time, right? because the layers of your cover come off as you get closer and closer to a target to the point where if I'm on my knee making a key to a lock, I really can't explain that away.

2:59:54So that's why time on target is so important. You want it as minimal as possible so that you can get your layers back on because the further you get away from that target, the better. Um, you know, my, you know, disguises, you know, obviously those masks come in handy. One of them was actually on display at the International Spy Museum in DC. And then I guess some agency attorneys went through there after it had been on display for like four or five years. You know, the agency purposely unclassified disguise stuff so that someone can like, you can throw it in the trash. Because before then, if you throw it in the trash, oh, you throw away classified material.

3:00:33So they unclassify all this crap. And what am I going to do with a mask that's built to my face? So I just donated it. And the former deputy of Black Squadron was actually the director of the Spy Museum when I donated it. So he was good with it. I was like, oh, okay. Well, if he's good with it, then... But they came through and took it and stuck it in their new museum at headquarters, I guess. Supposedly. I don't know. Well, they threw it in the trash. Who knows? You know, but it's actually, yeah, there's a funny story to this whole disguise thing. Like, at the time, PVH, you know, or the CO of SEAL Team 6 pulled Jeff and I and he's like, you guys are my disguise guys?

3:01:23I'm like, I wouldn't call us disguise guys. We just wear them from time to time. In case there's a nanny cam. You know, and he's like, yeah, whatever. Here's the deal. Can you disguise a troop of guys? Like, you know, with masks and stuff? And he's like, well, whatever. I'm like, well, no, probably not the masks because it takes six months to build those things, you know, or whatever it is. I said, we could probably use, you know, some LA guys. And he's like, yeah, yeah, okay, figure it out. I want you to take 22 guys and get them disguised. I'm like, as what? He's like, I don't know. Afghanis or something.

3:02:02We're like, okay. So I call up, uh, the first guy I call was the, um, Stu Siegel. Okay. Stu Siegel productions. He, he, uh, we used him in the AFO course and he is a producer that was in LA. He decided to open up his own production studios in San Diego. And, um, he had sets and he had an Afghan village that looked real realistic and we can run scenarios there with actors and everything and really get guys squared away on blending in or building rapport, right? For some of the things that require communication. And, um, and so I call him up and he's famous for all the eighties, cheesy TV shows.

3:02:47So Pensacola, Buffy the Vampire Slayer remember Renegade? Yeah. Hunter Silk Stocking Murders right? He produced all those in San Diego. His claim to fame though was Jeremy the Hedgehog. He started in porn. So Stu was a porn producer and made Jeremy the Hedgehog is that his name? Jeremy the Hedgehog famous? You know the ugly little guy with the really big Yeah I know what you're talking about. Yeah. got a lot of meat on that guy kind of guy, but, um, never seen it though. Uh, and so then he switched out of porn and started all those TV shows, has his own set and stuff. And then at the same time, I was like, well, who can do like really good at the Yeager brothers.

3:03:33Now the Yeager brothers got their fame early on in the special effects world with Freddy Krueger. And they got all kinds of awards and stuff, I guess, back in the day. And they became like the top special effects place in LA. And so they could make really cool masks, super detailed, but they're faster. So I was just like, okay, I can leverage all my resources and figure out who can knock this out the quickest. And Stu, of course, like, I got you, we can knock this out. So if you know Stu, he's like a big barrel chested bearded, he should be a team guy, but he's, you know, he's a Hollywood producer.

3:04:09And so we fly these guys out there to the Afghan village, dress them all up. They put prosthetic noses and bushy eyebrows and beards and this and that, and all these tanning ointments. Got them looking all, gave them AK-47s and then had them run around in this village and we filmed it. Because the special instruction was, hey, film it with cell phones, film it with handy cams, film it with all kinds of just average crap, right? Like average technology. And while you're at it, go ahead and use some high-end security cameras as well. And we'll just see how these guys look. Do it a day, do it at night, kind of did the whole thing.

3:04:50And, you know, I'm like, what the, what is this for, you know? And so we come back and kind of present it to the CO and he looks at it and he's like, oh, okay. And it was really, all right, thanks. And that was it. I'm like, well, what the, because we jumped through our ass to make this happened so did the it was a it was a troop out of silver squadron and so we're just like what the fuck was that for well fast forward turns out one of the courses of action for uh the bin laden raid was to let everyone do it in disguise and then let pakistan take credit for it and so this was like to see how they looked if they happened to get captured on cell phone or cameras or whatever I was like, oh, okay.

3:05:38That's kind of cool. That's my big claim to fame in the Bin Laden operation. Controversial Bin Laden operation.

3:05:46Boy, how that would have changed the latest drama, huh? Yeah. What is it right now? With the latest, you know what I mean? Who's, is it, yeah, I kind of lost track, honestly. Like, is it, who's, I don't know on track either. Who's winning? I don't know. Is there anybody winning? Winning. Is this the who shot Bin Laden time? Oh, yeah, I don't know. Is that the current? I don't know. What were you talking about? That's what I'm talking about. Oh, okay. I mean, it's been kind of like the ongoing thing, right? Yeah. It's just like, had that have happened, what a change of... Well, no one can say anything.

3:06:21And I think maybe that's why the course of action just was never looked at seriously. Like, all right, these guys aren't going to keep that secret. I swear to God, it was me. I'm the one with the big nose. Oh, man. Yeah. That was weird. But, you know, yeah. Yep. So why did you leave? Well, boy, that's an interesting question you just threw out there. Well, I was rolling up on my 20 to begin with. And so let's see. That was 2000. So, you know, the deal with retirement, you can put your retirement paperwork out. 24 months out, two years out. As soon as you do that, it's supposed to kind of take you off the bench and you can take that last two years and kind of just do whatever you want and concentrate on your new future.

3:07:18At that command, it doesn't do that. I put my paperwork in, but kept working and still got pulled into stuff here and there. Plus you're addicted, so you don't really say no to anything anyway. You want to be part of anything. But the way out ended up actually having some drama attached to it, unfortunately. And it actually hinges on what we just joked about. So basically, I'm sitting at home one morning, and I get a call from my ops chief, who I had gone through buds with and he's like clint don't come in man they've got your picture at all the checkpoints i'm like are you fucking with me right now no i am serious as a heart attack they have your head shot at all the checkpoints and i was like uh okay he's like i'll call you back once i have more information what checkpoints to get on base to get to the command okay right so i'm like still thinking maybe he's fucking with me like why would they put a picture of me oh you mean there's a picture posted a picture posted i thought you meant pictures of you going through the checkpoints no what no no yeah picture this guy like if you see this guy bring him in type shit yeah okay yeah something and i was like uh all right so that was It's kind of like obviously nerve-wracking.

3:08:45And I'm like, so I'm sitting at home. Now all this shit really comes in handy. What's that? Now all these masks really come in handy. Yeah. So I'm sitting there and I'm kind of like, what the fuck could this be? You know, like, there's nothing. Like, I've lived a pretty clean career and, you know, I'm sitting there going, have I done something wrong? Did I say something wrong? Did I, you know? and anyway a day turns into days and I'm starting to call people and nobody knows anything and and as you know or I always kind of compare it like to that Eddie Gallagher moment like knowing what it's like to have no control over your future right and I didn't I got a fraction of what he got but I had that feeling like oh you know what does this mean you know you start thinking it's the 800 pound gorilla sitting on your chest right now.

3:09:39It's the United States government. It's this, it's that. Your mind just starts taking off in all different directions. And, um, you know, I just sitting at home and, uh, didn't know, uh, didn't know what was going on. Nobody gave me any word. And then, uh, I think about a week went by and then finally my ops chief, same guy, He calls me up and he's like, hey, you know, I hope you're doing okay. It's still real blurry around here. I have no idea what's going on. So just hang tight. And I'm like, I've been hanging tight. Like, what the fuck is going on? And he was like, I'm sorry, I just don't have an answer for you.

3:10:20And I was like, what the fuck, you know? And then a couple more days goes by. He calls. He's like, hey, meet me at the, I think it was Harris Teeter grocery store. He's like, meet me in the parking lot. I was like, okay. And so it's after work for him. So once he gets, meet him over there in the evening. It's pouring rain. He's like, hey, do you have your access badges and all your stuff? I'm like, yeah. He's like, yeah, I've been told to take it. I'm like, holy fuck. You know, like you're handing over, you know, all your NSW. you. I got a ton of them on there too, because they give me access to places in DC and this and that.

3:11:01And I hand it over to him. And, uh, um, I mean, he's like, sorry, dude. He goes, I, I still have no idea. I was just told to come get this from you. He's like, just hang tight. We'll figure it out. Why, great. So now I go home when that happened. Now I start to branch out and call other folks. And so the first person jumped in my mind, um, was one of my buddies at, I think he was at teammate and teammate was the one where they handed over a CIA source or whatever it was. Remember this teammate guys hand them over, he's alive. And then when the agency got a hold of him, he magically died. Do you remember this?

3:11:46I don't, there was a bunch of team guys at eight or wherever that were getting, they were getting like court-martialed, and it was some crazy drama. And I talked to one of them, and they were like, call Louis free. Because, you know, he ended up walking into the courtroom. The judge knew who he was. Everybody knew who he was. Louis basically looked at the judge and said, you know, this is like a kangaroo court. This is ridiculous. Let these guys go. They didn't do anything wrong, and you know it. And so the military judge respected and knew who Louie was, the point where he basically let those guys go because it was a total sham deal or whatever the drum.

3:12:27I don't remember the details anymore. But sort of like, just call him, you know. And I remember there was a trip I took to Yemen in one of the houses. There was a kid named Justin Free. and uh and i was like oh i've met louis son he's an officer team guy so i hit him up and said hey i've been told to probably hit your dad up what do you think he's like yeah call him get him on your side now and get it over with you know that way you're you know you're good and i was like okay and if you don't know who louis free is he's he's a former federal judge former director of the fbi and he owns probably one of the most reputable law firms in the country.

3:13:10His law firm took down Sandusky, right? What was that, like sex crime, sexual stuff at one of the universities. He took down the BP oil spill in the Gulf, you know, when that thing was dumping millions of barrels of oil per day. But great American, and he's kind of an American icon, actually. He's kind of checked all the big boxes in the legal world. And so I called him up and said, hey, I have no idea what's going on. But, you know, I had all my badges pulled. I've been basically sitting at home for a couple weeks. And, you know, here's this guy I don't even know. And he's like, don't worry. It's going to be okay.

3:13:52Like, if you can't think of anything that you've done that's that wrong and it can't be that bad. And either way, I'll take care of it, you know. And it was like, whoa. And it was the first time in that couple of weeks feeling, all right, now I got somebody on my side and it's not just somebody, you know, he's got horsepower. And in fact, on that first phone call, he's like, do you want me to call 60 minutes? We can, we can light this up in a heartbeat, man. I was like, no, not yet. I said, if it comes to something like that, sure. and um this is a long story but to shorten it you fast forward they do this full investigation that i don't know what it is i just know there's an investigation going on they're not really talking to me i kept louie up to up to speed but i never told anybody that i had him in my court um and had him on standby to just start you know destroying people if it was necessary and um and it and then uh one day i get called in you know i had to go to the visitor center they took me to the mwr building which is like you know you couldn't work for you know somebody who's been at the command for whatever at that point seven years something like that you know it's like dude you're treating me like like a maintenance guy coming to fix something right and um they pull me into the mwr and you know a seal warrant who was in charge of the investigation or whatever sits down in front of me pulls out this big binder and i'm looking at the binder i kind of see like it's it's like print-offs from my website okay and so he's flipping through it and he's like do you uh do you have a company called escape the wolf like yeah are you uh actively making any money right now?

3:15:40Like, no. Like, do you have some product that you're offering? Yep. Or is there a conflict of interest with this product? I haven't sold any product. There's nothing. So he's got this, you know, he's got all these questions that have to do with my my retirement company. And, uh, and then he's like, so Matt Bissonette. And then I'm looking at like, yeah. He's like, are you aware that there's a book that came out? I was like, I don't think so. No. He's like, Hmm. So are you friends with Matt? I was like, acquaintances. I think I went over to his, he had a company called Element 5 or something like that.

3:16:27I can't remember. Anyway, I was like, yeah, I've talked to him a couple of times. That's about it. He's like, oh, uh-huh. Like staring at this guy. And he's like, well, a lot of what you've got going on right now, you know, looks and smells kind of like what he did. I'm like, well, what he do? He's like, well, he, he had, uh, wrote a book and he had sold rights, you know, to a, a publisher and collected that money while he was on active duty here at this command. So what outside income are you collecting while you're here at this command? And I'm like, none. And, uh, he's like, Hmm, well, you've got a lot of infrastructure set up online, You know, and it's part of the reason why you're sitting here and, you know, some people or whatever has some issues with all this.

3:17:21And I was like, are you aware that I put in my retirement paperwork already? He's like, no. Like, yeah, so I've already put in for retirement. Hell of an investigation you got going on here. And then he's like, okay. And I said, are you aware that I also filled out a chit, respectfully requesting to start my retirement company called Escape the Wolf. You gotta be shitting me. And I have five signatures of my entire chain of command, and all the paperwork is sitting in the JAGS office. And he's like, you have, do you have copies of this? I'm like, yeah, at home. You better believe it. He's like, oh.

3:18:04So this is like two or three months later. And I had stressed out. I was down to like 160 pounds thinking I know what to think. And it's them targeting. There's about 20 of us that they targeted to figure out who had outside sources of income. Because they were comparing it to the likes of what Matt did with his book. and wanted to, they didn't have control of Matt. The CO at the time was putting pressure on the DOJ. DOJ then was coming after Matt, but it was a dotted line. It wasn't enough. So when the CO's job was threatened by the Joint Chief of Staff that, hey, why do you have your guys getting out writing books about covert operations?

3:18:56that same CO saw his career pass in front of him. You know, his grandfather was an admiral, his dad was an admiral. And now I think he saw it as like, oh, well, now I'm not going to make admiral because of this kid's, this person's book. Well, so I'm going to have to take it out on, takes it out on his own people. And I just happened to get wrapped up into that 20 guys and we all got trident boarded and treated like criminals. They still did it? They still trident boarded you? In order to close any case in Naval Special Warfare, it's the trident board that closes the case. So keeping your trident, but we got to finish the board.

3:19:43So in the board is when the True Colors came out, and I'm sitting across from a Master Chief who - You should board yourself for being a fucking dumbass. Right. I mean, it was all kangaroo court, knee-jerk reaction to try and burn a bunch of guys that they had control over because some other guy did something they didn't like. You did the proper channels. I did. Bored? The other 19 didn't fare so well, but they still were like, hey, yeah, we got to board you to close this thing out. So I sat down from a master chief who had an investigation on him that was ongoing, right? And I knew about it. I don't even know if he knew he had an investigation going on on him.

3:20:29And he's like, so, Matt Bissonette. I'm like, uh-huh. it's like why didn't you disclose that uh you bought your house from him when you moved to virginia beach what the hell dude and i'm like what are you talking about like yeah i bought my house but matt's out of town i'm out of town my wife and his wife basically made the deal like i i said i knew i was buying a house from a team guy but i didn't you know that's it like what do you mean? Find the family fun you're looking for in Missouri. Whether your crew is searching for this, up for something more like this, seeking adventure like this, or just really, really need something more like this.

3:21:21Your family will find the perfect vacation in Missouri. Missouri, it's the getaway that gets All of you Plan your family fun at visitmo.com Are you seated? Do you know what's coming next? You probably really don't It's Annie Luani here from Culture Shock The podcast where celebrities, all sorts of culture makers People and everybody in between We just get on And we're trading rehearsed answers for some unexpected Chalking questions, maybe sometimes dumb That you may ask yourself sometimes And you want to see someone else ask them With all things plenty of laughs, surprises, and just enough chaos to keep everyone on their toes, you might enjoy this podcast.

3:22:00Be sure to check out Culture Shock wherever you stream your podcasts online. And obviously, you're going to like this. I'm sure of it. And here's what's interesting that I knew is the same Master Chief had sold that same house to Matt when Matt moved to Virginia Beach. And so I was like, didn't you own this house at one time? And he was like, that's not the point. I was like, okay. And then it was over. They did their little kangaroo court. Okay, you get to keep your trident. I was like, well, good, because I'm retiring next month. Thank God. But I mean, that was my exit out of the Navy. It was fucking horrible and stressful and immature.

3:22:43Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Some of the other guys, man, they were sweeping the quarter deck for like a year. they've got their tridents pulled sweeping the quarter deck told that after that year punishment we'll give you your bird back some of them once the year went by they didn't get their bird back just let them yeah see ya it's crazy these were seasoned that dude it doesn't surprise me these and none of the operators and they these were like troop chief level guys get you up and spit you out like you're a piece of shit i see it time and time and time yeah i'm again yeah In here. Yeah. All the time. Yeah.

3:23:23Every unit. Yeah. It's what they do. Well, they say, you know, it's a fence line of sharks, and eventually you get bit. So, got bit. It's kind of like they say, well, you can't make chief until you get in trouble. It's like, well, it kind of holds true a little bit. Yeah, the hypocrisy is just like nothing I've ever seen. It had left a bad taste in my mouth for a really long time. And then eventually you're just like, well, whatever, man. Like, I didn't do anything wrong. And I was glad I was the only one that filled out the right paperwork. Because you know us, Naval Special, nobody fills out paperwork in NSW.

3:24:03And the only reason I filled out that paperwork is because my deputy in Black Squadron, who was an Army guy, was like, yeah, you should probably fill out a chit and just cover your ass just in case. I was like, oh. Good call on that. Yeah. An army guy, because they're all about the admin stuff, you know? Wow. But yeah, I listened to them, and it paid off. Yeah. Fun, fun, right? So we covered the Escape the Wolf stuff. Yeah, so... Let's talk about Ibogaine. Oh, boy. Ibogaine. How'd that go for you?

3:24:44I think I benefited far more than I know. I feel like I went into it pretty ready compared to a lot of guys. I feel like a lot of guys, I don't know about you, but they sign up, they go down, and they really hadn't done a lot of prep work. So I had been through therapist after therapist after therapist, And I finally found Scott out of Florida. And this guy is basically like part therapist, part Yoda, part poet, and has this very, he just has an ability about him. You can vomit all over his desk and he will take all of that and turn it into just gold bars of wisdom where you're sitting there going, yeah, exactly.

3:25:39You know, if you tell like how you feel or what you're thinking, I don't know how many times with this guy, I would say, exactly. That's exactly what I'm thinking. That's exactly what I'm feeling. You know, two years straight of working with him and prior to Ibogaine and was able to just uncover the why to a lot of my own personal issues, you know? Is this the childhood stuff that we're coming back to? Yeah, yeah. I thought this was coming after Ibogaine. I'm sorry. No, it was all during that. Ibogaine was like the grand finale for me. Gotcha. Yeah. And so he made me dig and, you know, and he, there's one exercise he had me do that was so powerful that it kind of unlocked.

3:26:25a lot of compartmentalized stuff from childhood. And he said, you know, before I grew up in, before I moved to Saudi, I was in Dallas, and I'd had this memory of standing in the bathroom doorway as like a four or five-year-old, leaning against the frame of the door. My mom's sitting on the toilet, right? She's got a cigarette hanging over her mouth, and she's like, ah, Clenny, you know your dad. Dad, uh-huh. Yeah, you know he's not your real dad, right? And I'm just like, I mean, she just kind of left it at that. You know, and in retrospect and through therapy, you learn, like, a boy's identity is through his father.

3:27:08You know, trust is through the mom. And, you know, a whole lot of other things that carried a lot of weight in that moment. and then she stacked a whole bunch of other stuff on over time, right? Things that I remembered, you know, when I was learning to walk and talk, she was teaching me how to lie, cheat, and steal all at the same time. I remember us going to grocery stores, and she would always stage me in the toy section, be like, stay here. I'm going to go get our stuff. And, you know, I'd stand there and look at all the toys or whatever. And then when she filled up her basket, she'd roll by and be like, okay, pick something out that you want.

3:27:56Okay, I'll take, you know, whatever, GI Joe. Grab a GI Joe thing, and then we just walk right out the door. We never went to the cash registers. Almost every single time we go grocery shopping. Never paid for anything. And I just thought that was normal. You know, I never, I was like, oh, maybe I didn't even, I don't even know if at that age, it crosses your mind that you didn't pay for anything like everyone else, you know, and that the groceries in the grocery basket aren't like all bagged separately. You know, it's all just in there. And, you know, and I didn't know any of this stuff. And, you know, and then anytime she was lying in front of me, I always remember her looking at me and telling me in German, don't say anything.

3:28:48And I always look at her like, what do you mean? You know, as a kid. So she knew she's bold-faced lying to somebody and then looked down at me and, you know, like, it's a geist or whatever it was she said that, you know, don't say anything in German. And so I just watched her for a lot of the childhood do all her things, lie, cheat, and steal like crazy. But I didn't know any of that until Scott was like, hey, here's an exercise. You're going to figure out what apartment you lived in in Dallas and go find it. And so I look up my elementary school and Google Earth, and then I kind of knew that, okay, that was the school.

3:29:27And I could remember fragments. I remembered what that swimming pool at that apartment complex looked like. And so I was able to go, okay, that's the complex. So now it's time to go do this experience. and he told me, he's like, all right, once you drive there, you know, anchor yourself to the pool and then walk the path to the apartment you lived in when you were that little boy. I was like, all right. And so get there, pull in. It is a shithole, like shithole, shithole, Dallas apartment complex. And I even felt kind of, I was like, oh, I'm glad I'm packing heat, you know, and go to the pool, get on that path, make my way.

3:30:12And, uh, and I remember it was the bottom floor apartment. They were two story and I'm standing right there. And it was like this overarching feeling of insecurity came over me standing there, staring at that damn door. And he's like, all right, now you're just going to imagine, you know, close your eyes, whatever you need. Now you're going to walk through that door. I want you to picture it and describe it to me. And I'm like, okay, living room is to the left. Kitchen is, or living room is to the right. Kitchen is to the left. You go through the dining room or the living room and off to the left down there is a set of stairs.

3:30:49A set of stairs go up to your bedroom. Okay, take those stairs, go up and then the door, first door to the right was my bedroom. And you open up the door, Look in. He's like, okay, so, you know, what do you see? And I see myself. It's like four or five-year-old Clint. What are you doing? I'm on my stomach. I'm by myself. And it was interesting. You walk into the room, and for me, visualizing, I could feel the feelings of that kid. It was fear, loneliness, sadness, depression. It was fucking crazy. And he's like, okay, walk over and then just lean down, put your hand on his back. What is he doing?

3:31:35He's doing Superman coloring book or whatever. And he's like, okay, let the kid, let little Clint know that you're there and let him know I'm there. And then he turns and looks up and man, it was like so powerful. I lost my shit, like right there, like even talking about it right now. And, um, and it was all about like, Hey, you're gonna, you know, get a little client, get them to stand up. You're down at eye level with them, you know, give them a big hug and hold on to them. And, uh,

3:32:20yeah, I just remember you're hugging this little version of yourself at that age and um yeah you could feel all the feelings during that moment even right now like replaying it and uh yeah wow

3:32:48so you hug this little kid you tell him hey everything's gonna be okay hey, do you want to get out of here? And the little kid's like, yeah. Little Clint's like, let's get out of here. You hold his hand, walk him down the stairs, back through that living room. At this point, you meet yourself standing outside. Now you've got your little version of yourself with you. And beeline it to the car, literally opened up the passenger door and visualized putting him in there, closing the door, going around, getting in the driver's seat, and driving away. And leaving that place, you know, in the rearview mirror.

3:33:26And then, I forget, I went to this coffee shop that was nearby that I'd already kind of pre-located. He had me kind of said, hey, you know, when you get done, find a safe place and like, you know, give me a call. And so then I get there, get on the phone with Scott and fucking lost my shit. And it just unpacked, it didn't unpack it. It decompartmentalized a big portion of just the bad things during childhood. Not just up to that moment in that apartment, but it allowed all that compartmentalization to start just busting open. Even post apartment, like moving to Saudi and things in Saudi and...

3:34:16It just kept unraveling. it unraveled everything. And, um, you know, when, you know, then that was just the beginning, you know, and in that two years with him, he was able to, you get to like, just whatever, I don't know, maybe six months ago, he was able, I was, I got kind of, you know, like we all do with any therapist, you get kind of frustrated with some of them, like, okay, tell me what's going on. Like, fix me, you know? And, uh, you know, and you got to find the right one. I'll tell you, Scott's the one for a lot of, I feel like for a lot of us. Um, and so he was, I got to kind of a frustration point when I was like, all right, come on, what the fuck, what's going on with all this?

3:35:00And he was able to take that red thread and sew it from when I was five all the way to that moment in time. And, um, and I, and I sat there and listened to him and I was just blown away because he took every single, like even these fragmented things I would say in our discussions, he had made note of it, you know, things you don't think are anything important, you know, and he had made note of all these things over two years and was able to just tie it all together, all the abandonment, all the trust issues, all the control issues. I mean, you name it i had deep-seated issues that you know were i think in some cases like the most deep-seated and the worst he'd ever kind of dealt with or tried to dig up out of somebody you know so your sign or symptom at the surface could be drugs could be alcohol could be women um but that's just a sign or symptom of something much, much larger.

3:36:10And what in the therapist world will call your 10%, right? That's just the 10. When somebody cries over spilt milk, it's just 10%. It's not the spilt milk. It's not the drug addiction. It's not the alcohol. You know, it's not the womanizing. It's the 10 % is, those are just signs and symptoms. When you actually take time and fighting the right therapist, now you can excavate down into your core, into your soul, and find the 90. And that should be everybody's goal. Just go, okay, I got to go find my 90. Because that 90 % is the why you have signs and symptoms. And when you never go figure out your why, well, then you can't really solve the problem.

3:36:57And so for me, having those two years and getting to the why when you show up to something like Ibogaine, where they tell you, hey, intention is everything, right? Your intention's going in, your intention's coming out. You got to make sure those intentions, you know, are real and anchored ideally to your why. So I showed up knowing exactly like, okay, I got these abandonment issues from my mother, you know, trust issues from her. That led to trust issues and abandonment issues with women, which then, you know, the control issues, trust, I mean, it's all connected. But if you don't know that it was all connected or unravel all of that crap from your past, well, then you can't really solve the problem.

3:37:51You can go to Ibogaine and go face your demons if you will, but still, if you don't know the why, then you may not benefit as much from it. So anytime I'm talking to people now, I'm like, dude, figure out the why first so that you can show up with the intentions that are connected to it, right? So if your intention going under the mask, I don't know if you were doing it, but I was like saying them to myself, okay, you know, trust, abandon it, all the, hey, thrown out with the old, in with the new, right? Even when you do the fire ceremony, you know, you're burning the old so that you can bring in the new.

3:38:29And so mine were all trust, abandonment issued intentions and getting rid of them so that you can now finally kind of live free of all of it and live a normal productive life and get rid of all the bad habits, you know, and go find a guy like that or gal who gets you, who connects with you, who sees you, and then knows how to interpolate. I used to go to these marriage therapists. I'm like, you go to a marriage counselor who's never been divorced, it's like they're not the one. If you're going to be a marriage counselor, you probably should have been divorced a couple times and seen both sides of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, and now you can talk to it.

3:39:17And I think counseling across the board should be handled that way. If you're dealing with addicts, okay, well, hopefully you were an addict, because that's where you benefit the most. Makes sense. Yeah. What did you piece together? What were the missing components? I mean, for me, knowing the abandonment piece, the trust, and how it was all anchored to my mom, like, I had no idea, honestly, you know. Plus the Ibogaine, what it did is it allowed my conscious to come back to the surface, you know. Probably the first time on the post-Ibogaine where it was nothing but every bad feeling for about 40 or 45 days straight, you know.

3:40:07Grief, shame, guilt. There wasn't one good feeling for about 40 plus days. Every day I opened my eye knowing that this is going to suck. I'd wake up and go, oh God, there it is. And I'd just feel it. And the random crying. You know, you'd be driving down the road, start crying. You'd be at the grocery store, start crying. I mean, it's just like it consumes you or consumed me for, you know, 40 plus days. And then there was the one morning where you finally wake up, you open your eye, you're kind of like, oh, maybe I'm back to neutral, right? Everything's not as bad. You kind of feel normal one more time again, you know, but man, but ultimately, yeah, brought my conscious back, kind of reset my moral compass probably, you know, and made feelings,

3:41:18yeah, made me feel again. Pretty interesting and powerful, right? I'd also say, you know, with some of this psychedelic stuff, like I also noticed too, and I'm sure you've seen it, I think they need to be careful with a lot of it. I think it's calling it medicine and capitalism is starting to get its hands on it. And I feel like when that happens, you better be careful. Because before you know it, it'll be readily available and it won't cost so much and you won't need a non-profit or you won't need this you won't need that and i think you just they need to be careful how they yeah i don't know what to think anymore well me and you i mean that's the first time i met you randomly we're at the hotel getting ready to go down you went to a different house and i don't i am uh

3:42:35i don't know what i think about it anymore

3:42:42this was your second time right so did you have all the bad feelings like i did yeah and still creeps in there if you let it Yeah, me too. Like, it's weird. I can almost, as if, imagine the mask is off, and right now I could do like almost like a thousand meter stare. And good doesn't creep in. It's like a bad feeling that starts to come over me. Is that what you kind of, if you just let silence hang out a little too long and think about it? Do you believe in God? i do yeah i um i didn't always but even in the ibogaine i asked you know you can get to about like whatever they tell you like around seven or eight hours you start asking ibogaine questions and so i remember saying hey show me god and like a film strip coming down from the top of my mask in there in cursive white writing It said, show me God.

3:43:56Exactly what I was thinking. And then it kind of kept going. It was like a movie reel almost, right? Then the very next thing that started to come down was this black medallion. It looked like it was probably this big when you're under the mask, right? And it had cutouts in it. And as you know, you try to focus on anything in there, it goes blurry on you, right? And so I was using my peripherals trying to make out what the cutouts had. But kind of the eerie part of the whole thing was it was backlit by a raging fire. So the only reason I could see the cutouts on this medallion or coin was because it was backlit by this fire that was burning.

3:44:49And it's slow. I tried to keep it there, but it just kept on moving down, down, and disappeared out of the bottom of my mask. It's really odd. You? What about me? Would you ask, do I believe in God? Oh, yeah. Is there something on the second run that... There was, I mean, are you a Christian? When I say God, I mean, do you believe in Christ? Yes. I don't know. Because I'm not really... Don't know about the Christ part? Oh, no. I'm 100 % sure. Oh, got it. The Ibogaine part. Yeah.

3:45:42there's been a lot of good that's come from it

3:45:48i am not ready to share everything that i've been through yet and that i'm continue to go through. Yeah. But I will say I think there's a possibility that that is a realm that we as humanity should not have access to. Yeah. I think that a lot of deception can happen in that.

3:46:37I think we have a veil over us. I mean, I'm very, I feel very in tune with the spiritual realm right now. all the shit that's going on around us that we can't see. Mm-hmm. And I think that, you know, we can't see frequencies, we can't see certain lights, we can't see really anything. We only have, you know, five senses. but doing that kind of proves that there's a lot more going on and i think there's a possibility that god put that veil over us because we are not ready for that you could see that But yeah, especially as more and more people get into this whole DMT on drip, hanging out in different realms for hours at a time.

3:47:50I'm sure you've had people on here. You've heard about that. Oh yeah. I find that like... Nope. I'm good. They're talking about talking to entities. Mm-hmm. And that just seems like something that I don't really want to mess around with. No. and uh yeah i don't think yeah i've been a huge proponent of it and sometimes i feel like maybe that was a mistake and maybe i'd follow let a lot of people in the wrong direction but at the same time i'm not sure and i'm not yeah i'm not really 100 ready to go there yet because I'm still trying to figure out what it all meant and what it does mean.

3:48:40But that's kind of where I'm at right now. Yeah, I'm with you. I think people just need to be neutral on it. Don't become a huge, don't get under. A lot of people get into that and then that becomes their God. Well, it becomes their new addiction. It's talking to the medicine. Yeah, you know, I think just we've got to be careful with some of the language, but, you know, the whole like God made it, it's natural to the earth. And I'm like, well, you know, so rattlesnakes and crude oil. I'm not drinking it every morning with my breakfast, you know. Yeah, you just got to, I think there's a lot of good that it's done and can do.

3:49:24and I think they just need to keep it from getting capitalized upon because I think that's where once you know starts going to market in any other way than how it is right now I feel like that's when things go south just maintain the control over it and do it right you know yeah but yeah

3:49:53Where's my gummy bears? You know, since you gave me these, start here. So I appreciate you giving me these though, really. Cause I want now I want to give you something in return. If you're okay with that. Oh, love that. Okay. So I'm going to get up for a second.

3:50:17You asked me about EDC, but I've got to take a moment here and, you know, counter you, your gummy bears, with at least a Shadow Systems, okay? All the components, all the components built made in texas okay it's a veteran-owned company he's a west point guy don't hold it against him trevor rowe west point combat vet um this is the mr920 and uh it's kind of their flagship compact it's uh already set up optics ready obviously that's uh number one that's for you okay shadow obviously veteran-owned texas company that yeah tell me how that feels that's nice yeah that one's been around it's actually being carried by a whole bunch of law enforcement agencies and then you are getting the first ever this thing's the heat dude

3:51:31this is the new shadow systems u526 this thing is ready this is serial number 0005 dude and uh they did not compromise on this thing this thing dry is only 6.2 pounds didn't compromise on the barrel it's twisted it's chrome lined beautiful um it's got user adjusted safety switch you can put it at your 60 degrees or or you can put it at uh 30 or 90 right on um there's a lot of other perks to this it's not your typical you know 5.56 rifle and then we put the or they put the EOTech two dot. Have you shot through the two dot yet? No. So it has two dots inside. The top dot is zero 50 to 200 and then the bottom dot is 200 out.

3:52:35No shit. So all you do is change the focus of top dot or bottom dot and obviously a magnifier there for you. Thank you. Yeah man. And I was hoping I was the first to... Yeah. See that? I don't know if it's on. Holy shit. So that's the other piece. I forgot. It's a two-stage, three-pound trigger on that thing. So you distinct first stage. Yep. And then the second. Three pounds on that. The barrel. The stock. Dude, this is nice. Yeah, I hope you like it. I love it. I was hoping I was the first to counter your gummy bears with a weapon. You are. Good. That's all that matters. Well, I got something for you, too.

3:53:39Oh, yeah? We're at that point in our relationship? We are. Dude, this is... Damn, thank you. Yeah. I hope you get out back and tell me. Tell me how it does. I think you'll dig it, dude. Maybe we can do that real quick before you leave. But I know we're pressed for time here, so I'll just get right to it. So, I'm not going to say I raised your gift. It's funny how these things roll. I thought we were going into MP7 territory. Oh, shit. Damn. them we're going into mp7 territory when you did the edc but you actually made fun of it so i was like oh shit but yeah so this is uh sig sour rattler 300 blackout i got a buddy over at sig his name's jason and uh everybody knows him now but um yeah i was i was looking for a a new bedside gun and i wanted 300 blackout because the penetration power yeah and it's five six just flies through everything as you had mentioned especially with green tip yeah and uh which we found out too kind of funny that you found out two years before we did yeah for whatever reason that board didn't travel but um yeah so sig rattler 300 blackout sbr with the new sig optics got a sig flashlight on it's got a sig suppressor on it folding buttstock nothing's the heat super quiet that's pretty but uh yeah and you know sig's an awesome company yeah so quick story about sig if you don't mind we um there's sheriff's department that that uh the county over from here and i got a friend that works there very poor county not a big budget huge meth problem and he told me the that they're running over there yeah and it is like 25 year old ars mixed matched stuff unreliable jamming all the time and uh and like i said he's a good friend of mine and i it just i was like this is crazy man that you guys have to rely on this shit you know especially in that county with what you're dealing with and so i uh i i just i was i was like how many he runs a SWAT team now and i was like how many guys are over there they said about 30 so i just i wanted to buy him 30 rifles that they're good to go and i called jason up at sig and i said hey you guys have any old stock laying around that i can just buy a cost and give to these guys and uh he said well give me a couple days and uh it's like look i don't i'm not asking for you to give them or i'll pay for them you know just be cool if you give them to me at cost so he gets back to me and he says hey yeah we got the perfect we're going to give him these i think they're the it's a 556 sbr he goes we're also going to outfit them with optics we're also going to outfit them with flashlights and we're also going to outfit them with suppressors and i don't need you to pay for any of it we're just going to get it right to them damn and i was like dude that is that shit's awesome yeah you know what i mean so uh good american right there good company yeah they make great shit no yeah can't beat it the rattler 300 blackout just sounds cool yeah awesome man this is beautiful thank you well clint that was an awesome story man thank you for sharing all of that and uh and it was an honor to interview no back at you it's great to just be here with you finally and i appreciate the voice probably the only one i'm going to do for hell the rest of my existence so this is podcasts interview, last one, done.

3:57:49Right on, man. Yeah, thank you for having me, man. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming. God bless. Yeah, I do too.

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