Rob O’Neill: Near-Death Experiences, Top Secret Area 51 Helicopter, & the Disgusting Push for War

22:07The NFL on Fox is streaming live on Fox 1. Download the app today. So you go from that to... Well, the 9-11, and it's just... How soon did you realize, like, this changes everything? The second, the minute the second plane hit the tower, the South Tower, and we just assumed, because we were already overseas, they're just going to keep us here and we'll go to Sudan, because that's where a lot of Al-Qaeda is. We didn't know, we didn't think Afghanistan, us, but someone knew somewhere. So, but we stayed over there for another month and then we went back and then, and then redeployed. To where? Well, we were heading over to invade Iraq.

22:44I was on a boat. It was 2003. We were on with Marines. They're going to go through Turkey, but then something happened in Liberia. So they sent the Marines off and then we turned around and had to swim into Liberia to do, to do a hydrographic reconnaissance for the Marines to come in and save people out of the embassy. And I mean, that was a different, that's a different place to be too, because it's a civil war. Liberia is named after Liberty and then Monrovia is the capital named after President Monroe because they sent us. I was there then that year, summer of 2003. The most dangerous thing we were thinking about was sharks or saltwater crocodiles.

23:19When we got there, the people loved to see us. They thought we were liberating them. No shots fired, but there was a civil war going on and like cannibalism. Oh, yeah. It's kind of an awakening, but we missed the invasion of Iraq and then turned around and then I went. In Liberia? Yeah. Did you see General Butt Naked when you were there? No. He was a major commander. Yeah, no, I didn't even, I'm not familiar with that at all. Gentle butt naked. It describes his uniform. So you're in Liberia, wow. Yeah, when they're invading Iraq. So they're already in Afghanistan. They're invading Iraq and we're in Liberia, which is just weird.

23:51But, you know, yeah, that was that. And then went back and then I screened for SEAL Team 6, went through selection. Then my first deployment to Afghanistan was 2005. Went to Jalalabad right around the time that the Turbine 33 was shot down, Red Wings. lone survivor. What is SEAL Team 6 and why did you want to be in it? SEAL Team 6 is the National Mission Force. And so they were designed to rescue American hostages at sea. If a cruise ship gets, like, so Delta Force will do the airplanes and stuff, and then we'll do the water on paper. And that's just where the best SEALs go. Because half of the guys that get selected to try out don't make it.

24:30These are Navy SEALs. like experienced Navy SEALs, usually five or six years in the SEAL teams. And then they try out for SEAL Team 6. And it's just a hard selection course. There's a lot of close quarters battle, a lot of drills designed to make you fail and just to see how you handle failing. Because they don't really care if you succeed. They want to see how you handle failure. It's not about physical fitness. No, well, you do at least a 10 mile run every morning. And then you get into the training. And like skydiving, high altitude, high opening jumps. That's when you jump out of a plane. you can go to a spot 11 miles away under canopy.

25:04Like even looking down at your GPS, you can't feel any wind, but you're going 90 miles an hour. It's a crazy experience. Jumping at night, jumping bundles, jumping tandems, jumping gear, testing stuff out. And that's scary. I mean, when you can't see anything, but you know you're at altitude, you know you're at 25 ,000 feet. Like you think you're looking at Tucson. Oh wait, that's actually Phoenix because I'm so high up here. And then, you know, like even on a 25, We would do 25 ,000 foot halos, so high altitude, low opening. And it's weird. We were wearing the old school altimeters with the dial and watching it get to zero.

25:39And knowing you're not going to hit the earth because you got another 13 ,000 feet to go, it's a crazy feeling. But it's so dark, you can't see it. You got to trust your... How long is the fall in a halo? For that would be about two minutes. Normally, when we jump at 13, it's about a minute, depending on what you're doing. If you jump a tandem, you have to set a drogue shoot, like a six-foot drogue shoot, to stay at terminal velocity with everyone else. We're jumping a bundle. What's a bundle? A bundle is a huge barrel that weighs about 400 pounds and it's full of extra gear. So it'll be radios, batteries, bombs, bullets, just stuff that guys can't carry.

26:11So the bundle master jumps all of it and then you break it out and you hand it out when you get down there. And some guys like it because it hits, like when you're jumping at night, under night vision, you can sort of see the ground, but you can't, like you want to flare when you get to the bottom and that turns the back of the parachute down so you can stop. Yeah. But if you flare too high, it needs to eat again. Then it'll just drop you from 10 feet. So you kind of judge where you want to do it. But the bundle will hit the ground first and you hear it hit and then it just kind of pulls you down.

26:38But the entire time, the bundle's trying to kill you on the way down. So you're connected to a 400 pound barrel? With a 10 foot tether, yeah. I mean, that sounds unappealing. It is. And it's one of those things, I did it just because I wanted that qual. I want to say that I'm a tandem master, a bundle master. I just want that qualification. What can go wrong when you're jumping with a forearm pump barrel? A lot of stuff can go wrong. Everything from when you start, you've got to set your drogue parachute. If that doesn't set, you have to know it by feel that you're now going faster than everyone else.

27:08And you've got to get it set out there. You've got to get that thing out there. Then once you're falling with it, I've had an occasion where when I pull. So when you pull, like little things, like remember to cross your legs because you don't want to snap your nuts off. Because you've got this thing. Little things. Little things like that. Details. In my case, anyway. But once that pulls to, then, you know, you got to check your canopy, make sure it works. You got all nine cells up there, make sure the brakes work, and then you do a little test. But I've had it before where only half the parachute opened, and then it's in a dive, and I'm in the middle, and this thing's spinning violently.

27:39Oh, oh. The 400-pound barrel is spinning violently? Yeah, and I'm in the middle of it. And this driftable force is pulling me to the—I had a line twist behind me, so it's pinning my head to my chest, and the cutaway for the bundle's right here. and I'm lucky I pulled on a high altitude jump at 10 ,000 because normally you pull at 5 ,500 and I actually burned about 7 ,000 feet in the spin if I would have, and so I remember saying to myself, if you ever want to see your daughters again, you got to get this now because it's like, I can hear it and the ground's coming. I pulled it, the thing shot off.

28:10It's got a parachute on it. So it landed in former Browns Field. I landed by myself under this 400 foot canopy and my buddy Phil came out to me. He didn't see the malfunction, but he came out and he goes, you look like you just saw a ghost. Are you okay? and I said, somebody needs to change that. This high-speed canopy with that low-speed cutaway has got to change because we just changed the new parachutes, these high-performance parachutes. Someone's going to die. And a year later, Lance Vaccaro died of the same malfunction because they didn't fix it. And then they fixed it. It's like, why didn't you fix that?

28:39What happened to him? Same exact malfunction, except he pulled a 5.5 and he couldn't get it out and he smacked into the ground. And like some of my buddies went out there to him. They had a, they criked him with a pen, like a writing pen, cut his neck and put it in there, try to get him to breathe. And he died out there. And that's in training. Training. And this is during war. Like he, I don't remember what year that was, 2008 maybe. But yeah, I mean, the training's dangerous, but it has to be done because, well, we do all that. We do all the jumps, all the wind tunnel time, indoor skydiving, because that one jump that you need to nail the exit, you can't.

29:14Like Captain Phillips, like everyone there had been in the tunnel, had done the jump. That's just because you got to nail that exit. When you leave an aircraft, especially a C-17, you're hitting the relative wind at first. So 130 knots. So you're actually hitting that wind straight until it transitions you to go down. So when you jump out, especially with the rucksack, it's going to pull you. And if you mess with it, you can flip. And then if you pull on your back, your canopy can come out in a horseshoe and wrap around your neck and people have died that way. So you've really got to nail an exit.

29:42So we train that much for that one jump. How many jumps are you doing? I've had over 1 ,000 probably. 1 ,000? Yeah. That's not a lot either. Like some of our instructors, 20-some thousand. Because we hired civilians, like Arizona Arsenal out in Marana, Arizona, best skydivers in the world. So we started to hire the best in the world to teach us this. Like the best fighters, the best skydivers, the best shooters, the best drivers. Just to teach us how to do what they do. And they taught us how to do exits and learn how to fly canopies. You have over a thousand jumps? So that's multiple jumps a day.

30:13Yeah. Well, I'd go out there a lot. I would do about eight trips a year to Arizona for two, three weeks at a time just to skydive. How often are you skydiving when you're out there? Every day. Six a day. Six jumps a day? Maybe more, depending on your attitude. Like guys would say for 10. Or guys just wanted to get back to the Trident Bar and Grill where Nelson Miller owns that place. It's just fun to hang out. Did you lose your fear of jumping out? Yeah, there was never a fear of jumping. It was the first jump is like looking through straws. Like you really lose your periphery. But then it starts to get easier and easier.

30:45And then, so jumping is not, I mean, when you're strapped to a bunch of stuff at night, it's definitely sporty. But it's not fear. It's like, I know how to handle this. And I'd rather, like the Army jump static line where you connect to the thing and you jump at 2 ,500 feet or whatever. Like, I don't want to be connected to the aircraft I'm jumping out of. No, no. I'd rather have time to, I've got a minute to work any high-speed malfunction or low-speed malfunction. I can solve it. But that's low. I mean, 2 ,500 feet doesn't give you a lot of time to react. Well, that's why, that's like the 82nd Airborne.

31:13Like they're just throwing hundreds of people at once and like vehicles and stuff like that's ranger stuff. Like we can take an airfield and ours is a high, high opening because we can ideally jump in and then float without anyone seeing us. And I've had friends do that. I had one of my really good friends is he led the jump to into Somalia to rescue Jessica Buchanan. And they jumped, I think, 17 dudes in 40 knot winds that like we wouldn't have jumped in training. but he did that and they let it and they killed like 22 terrorists and rescued both hostages. And that, again, that's just because he was prepared.

31:47His team was ready. Like they did so many training jumps that we can, we can do this when we need to. You said that training for SEAL Team 6 was heavily psychological and they make you feel like a loser. They make you fail on purpose. What, what does that consist of and what's the purpose? They, they just want to see how you handle failure. And even when we're training later, when we get into SEAL Team 6, in a debrief, even after a combat mission, on a debrief, I would say, okay, what did you screw up? I don't want to sit here and listen to how awesome you are. What did you fuck up? Tell me. And we'll learn from that.

32:19So they purposely get you into situations that you can't pass. Just to see, like, when they ask you, what were you thinking? Your answer should be, I'm an idiot. That's it. Deflate it. Don't get in an argument you can't win. But the guy that starts to explain, Well, here's what happened, blah, blah, blah. You know, thanks for the debrief. You're out of here. I don't want to hear your excuses. Just you're an idiot, and I'll learn from it. So sometimes when people sell products on TV, I love this product, I use this product, there's the question in the mind of the viewer, does this guy really use the product?

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34:01Download the app today. So what would they make you fail? House runs. That's when, in a kill house, like when a hostage rescue team comes into a house, you'll see it in action movies and stuff, where they just come in here and they clear the whole area. There are definite steps, distances, movements, and angles based on covering each other's backs in fields of fire. So each, like one man goes here, two men goes here, three, four. And they just, they make it really, really difficult. target identification. Like they'll, stupid paper targets where someone's pointing something at you and you shoot them, all of a sudden it's just a cell phone.

34:36So that's a safety violation. You're probably fired. Or they'll have something holding a hostage and if you shoot the wrong, well, if you shoot the wrong person, you're out. But just little footwork stuff or too far off the wall, too far over penetrate, long hallway, stairwell, just you screwed something up. You didn't go by the, by the standard operating procedures, but they'll let you keep going to see if you, like when you first take a step into a room, are you the person who comes into a situation and makes a mistake and then realize worrying about that mistake right now is not gonna help?

35:11I have a job to do. And we'll talk about that later if we live. Or are you the person who comes into a situation, makes a mistake, and then you can't stop thinking about that mistake? And even though you're moving this way to clear that corner, you're dwelling on this mistake. And because you can't stop thinking about that mistake over here, that's where you make a bigger mistake and that's where they get you. And then you're fired. So it's make a mistake, get over it. And then keep going. And the house run can be another 20 minutes. And you're still thinking about that first entry point that you screwed up.

35:37But you got to get that out of your head. How do you do that? You just get over it. I mean, it's as simple as just stop thinking about it. That no longer matters. We're just here. Your failure no longer matters. Nope. Because, I mean, everyone's still alive. I screwed up. I came in with the wrong foot. Whatever. So they make you feel incompetent. Yes. Like every run. And at the end of it, you get debriefed on how bad you, and like the whole, like, green team, we call it the selection course. Just telling everyone how they screwed up, and then everyone gets punished for it. And then as soon as you're done getting punished, you're right back in there again.

36:12And the whole point is, can you get over it? I mean, that sounds harder than running. It's hard. and I've seen dudes that when they just freeze, they screw up too many things and they just freeze. Yeah, because it's a perfectionist who gets into this business anyway. Like who wants to be a Navy SEAL? Only someone who wants to test himself, be the best, right? Yeah, I think so. Yes. Someone's got something to prove. Exactly. And they want to be the best. And then, I mean, it's even unique going to SEAL Team 6. Not everyone knows that SEAL Team 6 is a different animal. Like a lot of the Navy SEALs you see out there now weren't at SEAL Team 6.

36:50And they know that. And a lot of people don't talk about it. That is the best command in the world. I mean, those are the guys that they call when Osama Bin Laden pops up, SEAL Team 6. So how do you, I mean, how do people fail out? I mean, these are all SEALs with five or six years. Just usually safety violations. Like I was talking about with the wrong foot or shooting the wrong target. You can have minor safety violations or majors. If you get a major, they're going to boot you. But if they like you, they might keep you. Like if they personally like you, if they hate you, you're in a bad, you're starting off on the wrong foot.

37:23There's a point during the screening process where they just hand your picture around to the guys that have made it. And if you get too many thumbs down, like I've seen this guy, I don't like him. You're not going to, you don't even get to try. Like it's a, it's a good old one. Really? Yeah. Yeah. You want to. What percentage is the attrition? 50%. When I went through half the guys didn't make it. And you knew them all, I assume. Oh, I knew all of them. And it was just bizarre because one minute you're having breakfast with your buddy, then you go to the, and there were guys I had breakfast with and I never saw them again in my life.

37:50They did something wrong. They're out. They would walk around with the instructors and they're all SEAL Team 6 guys, these instructors. And they've been through this course. They'd walk around with like two airplane tickets back in the day when you'd have paper tickets. They'd be like, all right, we're not done until two of you guys go home. So we're going to keep training until two of you guys fail. Like it's a tough course. How long is it? Nine months. Nine months? Yeah. Does anyone fail out at the end? Not usually. When you get through the initial part of close quarters battle, they keep you around.

38:19The initial down in Tennessee, or not in Tennessee, in Arkansas. Where the hell are we? Mississippi. If you make it through that and jumping, they'll usually keep you around because you've proven you can do that stuff. Plus, they spent a lot of money on you. So they might keep you around. But you can get shit canned at any time, too, when you're at the command. If you screw up, we can. So you graduate, you become part of SEAL Team 6. Yeah. you made it to the top. What do they do with you next? They split us up into squadrons and they're just, you go from being a number team to a color team. So like I was at SEAL Team 2 and then I went to SEAL Team 6 for Red Squadron.

38:54So I was at Red. And it's even funny out in town, like you see some of the local groupies and they would talk to SEALs like, number or color? It's like, first of all, fuck you, but second of all, red. Are there better colors than others? No, it is funny that, no, when you get to that level, everyone is on the same level. There's different attitudes, personalities. Like Red Team was known for training way too hard. Gold Team was known for telling people to F off, like you can't tell us what to do. And Blue was awesome. When we finally started Silver, this is kind of funny, because Delta was going to go to four squadrons, so we went to four squadrons.

39:31And the rumor that Gold Squadron started was, yeah, I heard the next one's going to be Silver Squadron. And that rumor just started and it turned into Silver. and we finally asked Gold, why did you keep saying it was Silver? And they go, because Silver is not quite as good as Gold. Second place. Yeah. But no, I did one deployment with Silver also and the guys are just the best of the best. How many are there in Seal Team 6? About 200, I think at any time. And that was a unique place because I was excited to get out of bed because every day I could go to work with people who were better than me.

40:00And we all thought that way. We all acted that way and nobody ever undermined anybody else. like if someone was out shooting me like in a speed drill i would i'd go up to him and say hey why did you switch your holster to here what why did you put that pouch over here what do you what what time you wake up and what do you what workout do you do in the morning what do you eat i want to find out what you're doing to make what made you better than me today and try to get better and then we'd help each other instead of like trying to steal their job or whatever we'd help each other and then when we i mean at that level when we first started going to iraq because i'd only seen Iraq on television.

40:34Suicide bombers everywhere. Car bombs going. The first three months in Iraq, I was like, are we missing something? Because we're really good. This isn't even close. The enemy's not even getting a shot off. We got to a point where we stopped blowing up doors and stopped talking to each other and went quiet, went silent. If we were silent, we were faster. And we got to a point where instead of blowing up a door and waking, instead of landing a helicopter right on the house, we'd land way over there, walk in, pick the locks, break the glass quietly, go in. We would have competitions on who could touch more terrorists while they were sleeping.

41:07Like, walk up to them and you test their vest for a suicide vest. And then you put your hand on their lips and go, shh, shh, shh, and you wake them up. And then they shit their pants. And then what happens? You arrest them. Unless they have a suicide vest on them. They find out if the 72 virgins are real. When was the first time you saw someone killed as a SEAL? Do you remember? I want to say in Ramadi. I didn't, you know, because we dropped bombs on people in 2005. And then I went to Iraq in 2000, late 2005. And that's the first time I killed someone. Me and actually the sniper from the Captain Phillips mission, we got our kills at the exact same time.

41:48What happened? We were doing a combined hit with, it was SEAL Team 6, Delta Force, and the Special Air Service. So we got a good crew coming in and we're splitting up this, this like SAS has this, Delta's got this and here's our target. And we crept in. We had just started that tactic of not going on white lights, not moving fast, going dark, not talking. Like when I see people at war just screaming, go, go, go, all that bullshit. It's like, shut up. Why aren't you just yelling? Here we are. Just shut up. And like, if you point this way, I'll assume you see something and we can just read off each other.

42:20So we went into this house, four of us. One of the guys was from the SBS, special boat service. and we're walking down this long hallway, four of us. And this dude came out with an AK and he could have killed all of us, but he couldn't see us. So he went back in the room and then we hit the room and killed him. Then we came outside as the whole town started to light up and me and the sniper went out and we did this cross pan thing on a building. And as like when you're crossing, like I'm covering here, he's covering there. And you can wave and take your corner or whatever. But these two dudes just popped up, two Al-Qaeda guys.

42:49I blasted him, he blasted him. And I go, oh shit, I just killed that guy. And my buddy goes, I just killed that guy. I'm like, what do we do now? I guess we do one of those bounding things and find more Al-Qaeda guys. But it was almost like the first kill wasn't, it didn't bother me. It was more of a, okay, now I'm part of the club. Because now I have friends that have kills, now I have a kill. And then, you know, the floodgates opened and everyone started killing people. When was it? It was 2005? 06 and 07 was when it really got hot. And then over in Afghanistan. Did you, that night after you'd killed somebody, did you think about it?

43:23uh not really um i no i mean it was just a kill it was um everyone's everyone's trying to get there everyone's trying to do it so i'm just part of the club it didn't bother me at all and again just working with these guys i i thought i was different mindset so it didn't and that guy still doesn't bother me he had a gun he was maneuvering on us so whatever he was he's definitely al-qaeda and then you know we we just did that and we were really good about it we we the more latitude that we had as far as collateral damage the the fewer innocent people got hurt because sure because we're the good guys yeah and we're not going in there to murder people and if you if you give me that then but then i mean it got to the point right before i got out there if you're in a gunfight and there's a cave i remember one there was a cave we're trying to call it hellfires and the boss is 200 miles away said we're not saying there are women and children in that cave but we can't prove that there are not it's like what are we even doing here but we got good at it um every night we're going out and we um uh general mccrystal decided that we should be hunting um Sunni terrorists.

44:22That's what Al-Qaeda, they're Sunnis. And they were terrorizing the locals. And that's kind of where I got an affinity for locals because they got to deal with us. Then they got to deal with Al-Qaeda. All they're trying to do is get on with their lives. Like most people in a combat zone are not combatants. They just want to live. Of course. And so they deal with Al-Qaeda in their house. But so then we would go to their house and then that's when we got into interrogations, try to find the bad guys and root them out. And we were given the latitude to, if you see, kill them on sight. How would you know who they were?

44:47Well, I mean, usually if they go to their guns or they sleep outside with guns buried, you can kind of tell they're bad guys. And, you know, if they don't have guns, we don't kill them, even though we know they should be. But again, we're the good guys, so we're not trying to do that. But they'll usually hop up and fight, you know, or they're in the trees, you know, get shot at from rooftops and things like that. But interrogating them was actually funny. I mean— How do you do that? The way I started to do it—because I never had training. We just learn on the job. And so what I would do is I would take my interpreter and like have him stand here and put the Al-Qaeda guy right in front of him.

45:22So they can't look at each other, but I talk to him and he talks to you. And then you tell me what he says and I'm going to be very direct. I'm just going to ask, who's the man of the house? How many guys are here? What are their names? What's your name? And then let him go. But then like I've run in - Why do you ask that? Because if there's seven, usually it's like a rule of threes. Like if there's seven dudes, there's going to be 21 women, 16, God knows how many kids. So the guys are the bad guys. And so if there are seven dudes, five of them are going to be, they live in the house and those two are, they came in from Jordan, that's Al-Qaeda.

45:54And just separate them. Then you arrest them and bring them back to prison and stuff and they can interrogate them there. So you look for contradictions. You ask them all separately. Yeah, because the two guys are lying. They don't know who the guys in the house are. They don't know their names or how many people are here. The five guys that live here do. And then the one that I really liked was like the 12-year-old kid, the boy, the oldest of the children because you could prop him up, like dust him off and say, all right, finally, I'm talking to the man of the house. What's going on here? Who are these dudes?

46:21And then he just, yeah, I am the man of the house. Well, these two are assholes. I was like, all right, cool. Or even bring them in a place where they can't see him, like put them behind a sheet or something and I'll bring these guys in and you just point to the, like a lineup on TV. And then those are the bad guys and they don't know who the kid is. And then you just roll them up that way. And I mean, it sucks because then you send them to prison, they're out in 30 days and you're find him again. Where, where, where was the prison? Abu Ghraib, usually in Iraq. And then Bagram, we'd taken there and we sent a few guys to Guantanamo.

46:49Um, you know, that was, but at the time too, it's almost like it, it's, we were at a time where we're just fighting for the guy next to me. The overall plan, like Bin Laden's a ghost. We're never going to find him. Like I would even joke with dudes I was interrogating. Like, uh, who's the man of the house? Whose house is this? Where's Osama Bin Laden? And I'd see terrorists laugh at me. I'm like, I don't know. Like, I know you don't know. I don't know either. I just figured I'd ask. But like, I've run into English speakers where like, like he didn't need the interpreter. And he'd say, I know the deal.

47:20I remember one guy said, I go, you know the deal? He's like, yeah, I know the deal. You're going to send me to prison. I'm going to get out in 30 days. I'm going to kill your friends again. And I said, so you've dealt with Americans before, huh? And he's like, yeah. I'm like, did they look like me? Like with the beard, short sleeves, tattoos, do they look like me? You never dealt with us. we're not here on accident we're here for you and then again watch al-qaeda shit their pants it's pretty funny i mean what a heavy life though i mean yeah well it was but everyone was doing it so it seemed normal did you ever talk about it i mean you're just the people you're the guys you're working with sound like smart people i mean they're screened for intelligence and self-control and like they're not shallow people.

48:03No. Right. No, they're deep thinkers. I can tell. But just like everyone around you is doing it. So it seems normal. It was not uncommon to see a guy at the team that just made headlines around the world and say, hey, dude, you just made headlines. Cool. You want to go to the gym? Just blow it off. When my buddy rescued Richard Phillips and we were on the ship and I said, this is obviously before the... Can you explain the Richard Phillips story for those who don't remember? Yeah, it was the Maersk, Alabama was a ship carrying crate around the Horn of Africa. And Somali pirates had started taking the ships as criminals because the insurance company is always paying the ransom every time.

48:42So it's going to be a lucrative business. Yeah. And they captured the Maersk, Alabama, and Richard Phillips was a captain in order to save his crew because there was a fight on board. He got in a lifeboat and then the four terrorist criminals got in a lifeboat and then they went off to sea because he was going to just send them out. But they took him as a prisoner because they could sell him to Al-Shabaab or whatever they're going to do. And eventually the USS Bainbridge, a destroyer, started towing it. So they're towing this around, not sure what to do with them. They got terrorists inside there and an American prisoner.

49:15I mean, even to the point that he jumped out once and he was looking at the Navy like, are you going to go hot? Like, you can go shoot now because I'm in the water and they didn't even shoot. Like you're putting his life at risk because if they get him back, so they tied him up and all that stuff. And then that's when they called us. And I was, it was my birthday, Good Friday, April 10th. And I was at my daughter's Easter tea party at her preschool and I'm getting her cupcakes. I got a pink plate and I walked over to four years old and I got a message that you're going to get them now. So I had to kiss my daughter, like look her in the eye.

49:44Like that's the hardest part too of combat. Look her in the eyes and kind of realize this could be it. This could be the last time we ever see each other. you know and there's a huge difference between kissing your kid goodnight and kissing your kid goodbye yeah that's and she was always there like she was four during that when she was one after uh lone survivor she was seven going after bin laden but he's saying goodbye to her giving her a kiss and then uh um well i we had a set amount of time to get to work we don't we've been selling it since 1980 but we'd never done it and i have a about an hour to get selling it selling that we can be wheels up at a certain time and we can be anywhere in the world in 24 hours we've been selling it to like JSOC, the army in the White House.

50:22And you got to figure the Obama administration had only been in office for a few months. So there, this is very serious. But the funny part of the story was I was ahead of schedule and I stopped at a 7-Eleven on the way. There's a 7-Eleven outside of the base. And I got a log of Copenhagen, a carton of cigarettes and as much cash as I could out of the ATM. That's the spirit. Because I knew we're going to be jumping on the East Coast of Africa, but there's never a perfect plan. We might not land where we want. I'm the lead jumper and And we might not end up where we want. If I land in a semi-permissive environment, I might be able to barter with the locals with the tobacco or pay my way to safety with cash.

50:56What brand of cigarettes? I bought Parliament Lights. Parliament Lights? Yeah. Interesting. But I was in there to get it. And there was one dude in front of me. And he was buying a USA Today. And the headline was about Richard Phillips, about the mission we're trying to do. I'm right behind him. And he slammed it down on the counter and kind of announced to the whole store, Man, I'm sure someone would do something about this. And I'm behind him recognizing the irony and looking at my watch. And I tap him on the shoulder and he turns around. I go, buddy, pay for your shit and we will. Like, I'm not even kidding.

51:29Like the national security timeline is squarely on your very broad shoulders. Did you make it within? Yeah, I made it in time. And then 15 hours and 46 minutes after I got the message, we were in the Indian Ocean with 103 guys, full headcount. And then a day and a half later on Easter. How'd you get in the Indian Ocean? We jumped out of the C-17. We flew from Oceana, refueled, and then I led the jump out. And we had a dude behind me that he wasn't a SEAL and he didn't have any skydives, but he was a communicator. He set up the radio so we could talk to the White House. But then we're like, we might need better communication when we get down there.

52:00So I'll handle this. And I went over and kind of kicked him and said, hey, he was changing plans, homie. Guess who gets the skydive? And he's like, oh, no, I didn't join the Navy to be a SEAL. I don't want to skydive. And I was like, you're half right. Have a nice jump. And so we - You told him on the plane that he was jumping out over the years? You're going to strap up to my buddy here and he's going to jump. Well, that was a funny story too because I'm on the ramp. We just launched the boats. I'm the lead jumper. I'm the first guy to bring the guys down. And I turn around at the end is this poor kid doing his first tandem.

52:28And before I jump, I'm in a great mood, right? Because I hooked him up. I'm a tandem master. So I'm doing the personnel inspection on him. He's just the radio guy. He's a radio guy. And I could have ordered him to go, but I'm like in a good mood. And I'm like, dude, chicks pay for the shit on the weekends. And that water's like 90 degrees. This is gorgeous. It's going to be so fun. And he's scared to death. So I'm getting ready to jump and I turn around and I kind of give him a like thumbs up and I'm getting nothing. And my buddy who I connected him to, his head comes around and kind of gives me a thumbs up.

52:54And then this kid looks back and they're like in each other's intimate space. And the last thing I heard my buddy say was, well, don't look at me, bro. I don't know what half this shit does anyway. Before he jumped him. And then we had, so we jumped in. So the kid actually went up the plane? Oh, yeah. He stayed scared the whole mission. Well, yeah. Yeah. But then it ended on Easter. So you land in the water. Land in the water. What happens? Sink the parachutes. We sent four boats out. So we hop on the boats and we go to the USS Boxer and then we put the snipers on the Bainbridge and then we were coming up with plans because no one had thought of a lifeboat being towed by a destroyer.

53:25So literally everyone come up with a plan and we'll write them down and we'll come up with the top five. And as we're doing that, the snipers got a good look. They were looking at them for a while and they got the shots and they just took it. And yeah, and one of the stories, I don't know if it's true because I wasn't with him, but his story is awesome. One of the snipers, there's an obstacle at SEAL training called the slide for life, where you climb the structure and then you slide on top of a rope all the way down. And we always thought, what's the application, the reality of it? When are we ever going to need this?

53:55Yeah. That one guy needed it at that one time when he crawled down to rescue Richard Phillips. So he crawled down there. And again, this is his story. He said he pulled his pistol and he's getting ready to go in that small hatch in the back. And just being an arrogant Navy SEAL, he's like, this is the only time I'm going to rescue someone. I got to think of something cool to say. What do I say? SEAL team here to get you out, whatever. He said he went in there, and now he's in this lifeboat. They've been using it for a toilet for five days, and it's in this hot African sun, and now there's three dudes laying in it with their heads blown off.

54:25And he said he looked at Richard Phillips, and the first thing he said was, I'm going to need therapy after this shit. That's what I say. I'm going to need therapy. Did he? I don't know. And I don't know if he had said that, but the story is awesome. So it's... Was there, I mean, to crawl into a, you know, a latrine filled with guys that had their heads blown off, pretty heavy thing to see. It is. What I was getting at though was when my buddy did that and I talked to him afterwards and they did a really good job in the movie, the sniper shoot, they put their bipods up and they leave. I talked to my buddy and I said, you realize that you've just done the most important thing in the history of the SEAL teams.

55:05And his response was, cool, can we go home? How long did it take you to get home? About two weeks. We went to Qatar and hung out at the pool for two weeks. Karaoke night, R &R. What a weird life. I don't know. Yeah, well, because we never, because we'd never done that mission before. We'd been selling it since the 80s. And that actually reminds me of the mindset. Because, you know, getting to SEAL Team 6, the mindset. Those snipers were sleeping in their own beds on a long weekend. and their guns did not need to be sighted in for the most difficult shots of their lives, but their guns were sighted in for the most difficult shots of their lives.

55:41If they would have, they didn't get complacent. Complacency kills. Complacency is caused by success. Too much success and you have a tendency to say the worst thing you can say when you're running a team. Well, this is the way we've always done it. Those guys could have said, I'm gonna sight my gun in on Tuesday. I can drink beer all weekend. And that's a shortcut. That's being complacent. And they weren't complacent and it saved the man's life. Those shots, I mean, they're shooting through a window in two moving boats. You know, there's some serious, and if they miss, they're going to kill him right away.

56:10Like, if you miss the shot, he's going to execute, and it's on you. I mean, that's a lot of pressure. How do you hit something when both the object you're standing on and the object the target is standing on are moving? They've done it 10 ,000 times in training. Muscle memory. They, shooting at movers, walkers, cars, shooting in wind when someone's walking, like having a moving target in wind. So it almost looks like you're shooting behind him, but you know the wind's going to take it into him. Anticipating the, what the sea state is like, and you're leading them. I didn't take the shot. It was just awesome shots.

56:47They were, yeah, they were pros. Really good dudes. So how long between that mission and? Bin Laden? Yeah. Two years. What'd you do for that two years? As soon as Captain Phillips was done, we went over to Afghanistan and I was on the base when Bo Bergdahl walked off. And so we tried to rescue him. That's a weird story too. Because wherever you are, be there. Be present. And I happen to find myself on all these major missions just because I was available. I've had Army guys joke with me. They said that I'm the Forrest Gump of the Navy, only I'm not as good looking and I can't run as fast. I'm not sure how to take that.

57:25But Bo Bergdahl walked off. Because the way that we would work overseas is we say - So who is Bo Bergdahl? Bo Bergdahl was the guy that the Taliban grabbed him and they held him for five years in Pakistan. And then the army flew in and traded out those five Taliban guys for Bo Bergdahl. So he was a POW, but he walked off because he was an idiot. Right. And the way that we would work - He walked over to the Taliban. He walked out just because he was going to start a new life in the mountains. And it's one of those things where just because you don't think you're at war with someone doesn't mean they're not at war with you.

57:53Well, exactly. When he walked off the base, I went into the Tactile Operations Center with a coffee, and they said, yeah, this dude just walked off the base. And I was like, what do you mean he walked off? He said, yeah, we intercepted this phone call from the locals calling the Taliban. They said, we found this American soldier. Do you want him? And they said, the Taliban said, what do you mean you found him? They go, they said, we found him on the side of the road taking a shit. And the Taliban's response was, yeah, we want him, and he'll never shit right again. And that dude was held for five years.

58:20And I've been asked before, too, should he do jail time? is like, no, he needs therapy because he's been punished. He realized he made a huge mistake. Whatever happened to him? Do you know? I don't know. I think he got court-martialed. I don't know. I should look that up. Wow. So you went to Afghanistan after the Indian Ocean. What was that like? The same. It was summertime, so they don't really fight in the winter. They do the spring offensive and they fight all summer. And we'd just been authorized a few years prior to actually fight the Taliban because we were fighting just Al-Qaeda as a tier one unit.

58:52And then they authorized as the Taliban so we could fight anybody. And it was just, I mean, same stuff, looking for targets that weren't as important as our government tries to make them. They like words like shadow governor and here's the spider web of this leader. It's like, or you mean a farmer. Where's Al-Qaeda? Well, they're in Pakistan. Why aren't we in Pakistan then? Why weren't we in Pakistan? Well, I don't know. We were running sources in and out and then the agency was right there. My actual deployment right before the Bin Laden raid, I was running several outstations working with the agency.

59:25And the bin Laden team was there and I didn't know him. And it was, I used to give the agency shit. I was like, the biggest problem with the CIA is they make too many cool movies about the CIA. They're not that cool. But the bin Laden team was there and they were that cool. And I just didn't know it. And then I met them later. Were they really? Yeah. They lived up to the hype. When I met them at first, when the commanding officer, SEAL Team 6 came in with a team of women and said, the reason you guys are here, this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden. and they explained to us how they found them.

59:52I was like, okay, this is their tier one unit. This is a good team. But the whole time they were there, because we got back from Afghanistan like in February or March. My last, well, my second to last deployment was like my 12th deployment, I think. And then we went to Miami for diving. We were still thinking Somali pirates and the mothership. Like we're gonna make up tactics how to dive in currents in the middle of the ocean so you can hit an anchored ship. And plus we're in South Beach. Like we just finished war and we'll train all day and then we'll go out, have fun on the patio with happy hour with our friends.

1:00:26And then we got recalled to Virginia, just the senior guys. And when we first got there, they said, this is real. This is not a drill. We found a thing and this thing is in a house and it's in a bowl in these mountains and in this country. And you're going to go get it and you're going to show it to us. And we're like, cool. What's the thing? Can't tell you. Okay. Which country is this? Can't tell you. How are we getting there? I can't tell you. Huh. How much air support we got? None. Okay. That's an answer. And then we assumed it was Libya. Qaddafi, the Arab Spring, whatever that was, was happening.

1:01:00So this is April of 2011. We assumed, okay, we're going to fly off some Ospreys off a flat top. And they don't want to tell us because Ospreys have a shady track record. They've crashed before. Yeah, I've noticed. So we're going to go there, get them, and bring them back. That's got to be it. So we were actually training for that. And, oh, they said also you're not taking any Air Force guys. So if you used to carry a radio, you're the radio guy. If you used to be a corpsman, you're the medic because we're not bringing PJs or CCT. And so we're adjusting our gear for about a week. And even other dudes from other color teams were coming up to us like, hey, the super secret mission, what is it?

1:01:32And I'm like, I don't know. And they're like, come on, you can tell me. I'm like, I honestly don't know what it is. And then on a Friday, they briefed us again and said, all right, go home, be with your kids, come back Sunday at about 5 a.m. And we're going to leave and we're going to drive you to a place and read you in. How many men, by the way, had kids, would you say? I think all of us. Wow. Maybe one of the guys on the mission didn't. Maybe two. I could be wrong, but most guys were family men. Most guys were in their early 30s, married. And then they were briefing us. This is actually a funny story.

1:02:08Come in on Sunday, and I remember asking, who's going to be there at the read-in? They said, well, the vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of the Navy. It's like, Jesus. But they're going down the list and they said, CTC pad will be there, blah, blah, blah. And they kept going. And I didn't say anything, but CCT pad is a counter-terror pack Afghan. If we're going to Libya, that doesn't make any sense. No. So I went home and then we came back. They split us up. This is a funny story. They split us up, four dudes in vans. And we're driving down to North Carolina. My boss is next to me.

1:02:36My two buddies are driving. And I told them exactly that, CTC pad. And I said, this isn't Qaddafi. They found bin Laden. and my boss looks at me and he goes, that's exactly what I was thinking. So we're just calmly discussing it and my buddy driving, as bad as it sounds, he looked me in the rear view mirror and goes, man, O 'Neill, if we kill Osama bin Laden, I will suck your dick. Just like that. Rude. But three weeks to the day, we're standing over his body and I went, hey, now's as good a time as any. He's like, oh, hell no. I'm like, you said it. But then we went down to the thing and the team was there and we weren't joking anymore.

1:03:11We're all serious. And they said, yeah, this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden. And the head targeter explained, she must have talked to us for three hours about how she found him to the point where it's like, okay, we just believe you. I don't need to know anymore. I don't need to know how the sauce is. I trust you. We're going. So let's train up on it. Can we go now? What was she like? Just cool. As cool as you can imagine. Just an awesome professional. Like she's the reason that when I was saying, okay, this is the real tier one CIA. She was like that badass. the team was badass, but she was like in charge of it.

1:03:43She even came with us to Jalalabad. Really? She stayed with us the whole time. Yeah. Just didn't go to ABED with us. She stayed at the talk in JABED. But we trained... For a couple weeks, just on the exterior, because I don't want you to tell me what you think is inside. Like if you tell me there's definitely going to be a right turn, there's going to be a left turn. It's like almost when we go to a target, I don't want you to tell me how many men, women, and children you see. Tell me how many people you see, and I'll figure out who they are when I get there. Just let me do that. So we trained on the exterior.

1:04:14We came up with the perfect plan. We talked about contingencies. The youngest guy in the room one night said, well, the helicopter could crash in the front yard. Let's talk about that for 30 seconds. and that's what happened. And then we went out west to, well, we would stand around this table at night talking about it. And this was in Jalbin? No, this is in North Carolina. Someone who made a two-scale model of his entire place. And like, SEALs are funny. Like we have a good time. And guys were joking. And I'm usually the guy telling a joke or whatever. But I said to the guys like, hey, you should take this a little more serious because this is a one-way mission.

1:04:49Like we're not coming home. This is it for us. we're you know we're gonna get shot down there's gonna be a fight and if anyone's gonna blow his house up when we're in it's been lying we're gonna run out of fuel like take this serious and then we went out out west to nevada and we met the helicopters and we turned a corner we saw these things and everyone's kind of laughing and i remember someone said to me why are you laughing now and i go well there's a better chance we're gonna live because i didn't know we were going to war on transformers these helicopters that they got so we trained on them for a while and what What were they?

1:05:16Stealth. Helicopters that no man invented. Like these things. I can't even describe them. They're just awesome. And we were training with them. What makes them different from a convention? I don't know. It's got to be the angles of the outside, the structure, and the paint. Had you ever seen one? No, no one had. The president didn't know about them. The president didn't know about them? When they were talking about what are they going to do? Are we going to bomb the place? And the Air Force said that to bomb it, we got to put 22 JDAMs on that house, 2 ,000 pound bombs. Like, you'll never know he was there.

1:05:52And then I guess the chief of staff of the Air Force said there's one more option. And he told them about the helicopters. And that's when we went out to train with them. So the president didn't know that his own military had these. Yeah. And he was cool, too. There was no partisan politics on this mission. This was just, this is the right thing to do. When we first presented a plan, two helicopters, 32 minutes, and then fly out, you might run out of fuel so they were going to run over the Hindu Kush. Like, we got to get back to Afghanistan. If we get compromised, it's going to be because of the local police.

1:06:26It's like if someone invaded near West Point, it wouldn't be cadets going after them. It would be the cops. The sheriff, yeah. And then we're in a weird spot because I don't want to kill cops. I don't want to kill Pakistani police. They're just doing their job. We're here without their invitation. so what we said is we're going to we'll hard point it and then you need to send someone to islamabad and negotiate our release or whatever because we're not going to surrender or whatever but that was our plan and uh i guess barack obama again looked at the chief of staff of the air force and said what do you need to rain hell in pakistan my guys are not surrendering to anybody good for him which is some south chicago politics right there it was awesome so we got a guerrilla package we got more helicopters more stuff juiced up and i don't even know what we had over overhead but i mean when we finished and they launched f-16s i know we had something up there that convinced them to turn around.

1:07:09But these helicopters, was anyone aware that these existed? No. No one knew about them. I mean, these are helicopters. So the U.S. military can just have a helicopter. It takes a lot to build a helicopter. That's very weird. And I can't get too much into it because... No, right. To the extent you can. They're like, you're not even allowed to talk about what you think you saw here. There's some serious shit going on. When you say they were out in Nevada, where in Nevada? I can't say that either. Yeah, but I think we know. We probably know. Yeah. Near Vegas. that's where we stayed. That's crazy.

1:07:41I mean, it was, it gave me faith in what we can do if we need to. I just find it very, not to, I never thought I'd be focused on the helicopter. Like who cares? But, and it was, but that's the weirdest thing I've heard in a long time. Yeah. And then you got to figure the pilots had never heard of them. And so they, they got to practice for what, five days. And then they're flying us into Pakistan. Those are the heroes, the pilots. How do you get a machine like that from Vegas to Jalalabad? I think they probably put it in a C-17, flew them over. And then when they put them together, they're in the middle of an airfield.

1:08:14They're covered during the daytime, and then there's bright light shining out so no one can see them. They would put these things in the hangar so Chinese satellites couldn't see them. They're pretty serious. What's it like to ride on one? It was comfortable. It was quiet, and it was just cool. There was more room. They look kind of like 60s. Because there's no engine, right? It's just all anti-gravity. There's something up there. Yeah, they're flying by magnets. Yeah. But no, they were cool. And it was comforting because, I mean, once you take off and cross the border, they tell you that you're in Pakistan.

1:08:47It's like, okay, now we're going to find out if this works. And then again, the mindset comes in like worrying about a missile is not going to stop it. So I'm not going to worry about it. You know, if like you're worried about anything in life that your worry doesn't affect, why are you wasting your energy? Yeah. So what I do, I learned as a sniper was count. So I would count from zero to a thousand, thousand to zero. And I would just get that in my head, you know, counting, changing the cadence up, just counting, you know, looking at the watch. We had 90 minutes to get in there. Cairo, Cairo, the dog was sitting next to me, the Malinois.

1:09:18No easy, no ordinary dog. There's a book written about him. His handler, Chesney, was right here. Good dog. He's the best dog. He was the best dog I've ever worked with. Cairo was the best. What made him? I don't know. He was just a, he was smart. He was just a good boy. He'd been shot before in the chest in a gunfight. Wait. Yeah. And when a dog gets shot, he's just dead. And it was a really weird gunfight a couple years before. We were doing vehicle interdictions. Taliban and Al-Qaeda were figuring that we were coming after them at night, so they would start driving their motorcycles right around dusk across the border of Pakistan.

1:09:52And then we just started hunting them on their motorcycles. And if you've never hunted men out of a helicopter on motorcycles, you have not lived. Take pig hunting. That's nothing. Hunting guys on motorcycles. So we got in a fight one night where we found the low ground. And ended up in the low ground. We had to split it up. I had to flank some guys up here. And these guys went down there and there was, we could hear my guys in a fight and they said, hey, we got a friendly wounded in action. And I asked, who is it? I wanted a call sign. Cause you know, if you tell a call sign, you don't know who it is, but I know exactly who it is.

1:10:22And they said Cairo. And I'm like, he's dead. That just, he got shot in the chest and the arm. But the guy with him, who was actually the point man on the Bin Laden raid, got to him and like shaved him and put a chest seal on him. The pilots came in under fire and pulled him out. No way. And the surgeons were waiting for him and they saved him. So Cairo lived and he actually - Like the pilots landed under fire to save the dog? Yep. You know, that does make you love America. Yes, because he's one of the guys. Yes. We're his pack. Other countries don't do stuff like that. And so he went on trips with us again and he actually got PTSD because we'd be on targets and we'd tell him to go in a room and he'd kind of, you sure?

1:10:59I'm like, yes, that's your job. Get in there. But then he went on the Bin Laden raid. And he was - So why do you, pardon my ignorance, why do you bring a dog on a raid? He can smell them. He can find them. People hiding. I've had them open secret doors for me. Like get on their hind legs and push something and it opens in a castle. Just weird Afghanistan stories. They'll chase people down. They'll corner them. Just like finding a grouse. Yeah, yeah. And they're amazing. Well, even a Cairo, I read stories that he had some$20 ,000 titanium teeth, which is bullshit. He had one tooth because of a gum disease.

1:11:31He was there for his nose and his job was he had one tooth. He was just a good boy. But on the, yeah, and he was with us always. He was one of the dogs that could, when we were overseas, we would have like the stadium seating with leather couches to watch when we're not working, watch TV and everyone can sit there. And once you take their vests off, they're just part of the pack now. So you can pet them, you can play with them and they want their ball more than a treat. But then they'll do stuff like if they're up on the same level as you and put upon you, you got to push them off because they're trying to get up there because like his handler is his dad and you're an uncle.

1:12:04And if they start doing that paw shit, they're trying to get up the chain of command. They certainly are. They're trying to dominate. But then you got to be careful because he doesn't have a muzzle on. If you piss him off, maybe he'll bite. But Cairo never would. None of the dogs ever bit. Well, one dog probably did, but he was just a good boy. He never would do that. He wouldn't even try to challenge for hierarchy. He was just awesome. Just a great dog. That book's amazing. An ordinary dog is amazing. and they can find people anywhere yeah they'll you're not hiding from him and you're not gonna outrun him he'll if you uh if you score it because it's been you know it's better to send a dog to get him than to just shoot a guy you can he'll bite him and then we'll arrest him because you don't know he might be running because he's afraid or i'm not under bin laden and this is not a culture in afghanistan or pakistan where people keep dogs at home right no they hate dogs but they have dogs they have them like one of the hardest things to get used to is the 30 dogs that are barking as you roll up on a house they're just out there barking all the time But they're not pets.

1:12:56No. But our dog, that's cool to watch our dogs with those dogs because they don't give a shit. Like, I'm so much better than you. I didn't even pay attention to the other dogs. Really? Uh-huh. Like, I'm the one wearing a vest. I'm carrying extra magazines. You're nothing. They carry extra magazines? They carry magazines. They wear a flag, and he had his Redman patch, yeah. And so I was sitting next to Cairo. He was asleep on the plane. And it was a funny conversation just to what, because, not conversation. I was looking around the helo flying into bin Laden's house just to see how my guys were handling.

1:13:27We could get shot down. How are you guys dealing with this? And one of my friends was asleep. He put his headphones on. He was asleep. And I kid you not, what I said to myself was, you're asleep literally on the ride to Osama bin Laden's house. Like you have ice in your veins and I actually see why women find you attractive. That's badass. That is badass. And then we banked to the south 10 minutes out. And it sounds Hollywood, but I was counting still. And I don't know how I remembered the quote, but I said, 5.56, 5.57, freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended.

1:14:00And it kind of sunk in 10 minutes from Bin Laden's house. Like, holy shit, this is the mission. This is the team and we're going to kill them. Holy shit. And then like the air crew guy who never gets credit, he reached over and opened the door two minutes out. Like the crew chief's job was to keep the helicopter flying and open the door. That's it. But how important is that? What if we couldn't have figured out the door? Like just sitting in a helicopter can't get out. And if we got hit with a missile, he's got a family too, and they'll miss him. But no one ever mentions him. He's a hero. He opened the door.

1:14:27He was the first step of us getting into Bin Laden's house. Who are the pilots? Not by name, but who do you get to fly a machine like that? They are Task Force 160 at the Night Stalkers. Talented? They're the best in the world. The Army helicopter pilots are the best helicopter pilots in the world. And we got the best four. and we're lucky we did because the flight lead saved everyone's life on the first helicopter by crash landing it in the front yard. How did you crash land a helicopter like that without killing them? He told me, I'm not a pilot, but he told me when they were coming into fast rope, which is when you hover 30 feet, 20 feet, whatever, ropes come out, snipers are watching, guys just slide down, they're going to separate to where they're going and we're going to drop some guys off and Cairo outside and then my team's going to the rooftop and we're going to hit them that way.

1:15:10But as soon as he started to hover, he realized he couldn't hover. Like there was an updraft, some with the fences were different than the ones we were training on and it was a little bit warmer than we were used to so they're not going to get much that much lift oh and he said an inexperienced pilot would have powered it up and rolled it and everyone would have died but he realized in the blink of an eye if he can turn it and put the tail on the 15 foot fence and pin the nose everyone might live and he made that decision quicker than i just explained it and he just smacked it into the ground and then uh our pilots was bringing us to the rooftop was anyone injured in that?

1:15:43Yeah, but not like at the time. They have bad backs now. They're spying stuff. But nobody got hurt right then. And plus the adrenaline was pumping. I'd imagine just getting dropped off in a crash helicopter in the front yard of the number one terrorist in the world. And you don't know what the resistance is going to be. And so our guy lifted up, but he saw them and then put us down. And he knew they couldn't hover. He probably couldn't hover, but we didn't know they crashed. So he kicked us out. So now we're outside of Bin Laden's house looking at a 20-foot wall in this and I can see his house.

1:16:13And I remember just thinking, I guess, I guess we start the war from here. We know what we're doing. There's a door right over there. Let's go blow that one up. So we went to the Northeast corner where there's a double door and, uh, the, uh, I called a breacher up. Who's a breacher is the methods of entry guy. He's going to get you in. He'll, he'll pick that lock. He'll break that glass. He'll blow that door. So he decided to put a seven foot charge of C6 on the double door, which will open anything. And he blasted it and we tried to go in and there It opened like a tin can, but there was a brick wall behind it.

1:16:42Why was there a brick wall behind it? Fake door. He just made a fake door. Oh, smart. And the breacher turned around. He goes, fake door. This is failed breach. This is bad. And I said, no, this is good. That's a fake door. Nobody does that. He's in there. So now we know this door opens over here. It's a carport. So we got to go past his house to this double door that we knew opened because we'd seen it open. And we heard them saying dash one going around. dash one going around because we assume they took fire and they're doing a racetrack and they're going to re-engage but they were saying dash one going down so we didn't know they crashed and we said hey this is so and so we're going to blast the uh carport they said no no no don't blast it we'll open it and before that could even register the double doors open and a thumb came out with a glove that we recognize and it's like okay it doesn't matter i don't know why they're in there but doesn't matter they just are they're in there and that's that's a point in life like sometimes it doesn't matter why exactly we're just it just is and the clock's ticking i told you yesterday about the football team when i talked to the offense like it doesn't matter why it's second and 15 it just is and you can complain about it but the clock's ticking we got to make a make a move so then we there was already and this is a weird thing about rules of engagement too one of my guys was outside of the house and he shot through the window at uh i think a brar one of the couriers and his wife jumped in front of him so he shot her too and he looked at me this is how fucked up the rules of engagement are he goes and this is the SEAL Team 6 guy.

1:18:03He goes, she just jumped in front of him. I just shot her. Am I going to be in trouble? And I go, dude, who cares? Let's go find Bin Laden. Then we'll worry about rules of engagement. But why is that in your mind right now? Because your leadership is so poor that you're thinking about going to jail right now? So then we got inside the house. These are all guys from the other helicopter. They're going down a long hallway, and I hopped into a room. I hope you're never in this position, but if you're in a gunfight in a house, get out of the hallway. That's just good business. So I'm in this thing, and I'm looking for bombs.

1:18:34because he's going to blow this house up. He's got to be a martyr. And one of the guys behind me just said, helicopter crashed. And I said, because we had extra helicopters. So I thought they were 45 minutes behind us. They weren't stealth. So I thought we just lost two helicopters full of my friends. And I'm like, my God, what helicopter crashed? He goes, bro, our helicopter crashed in the front yard. I think he walked right past it. You didn't even notice that? No, I didn't even notice it. But now it makes sense. Okay, now that's why they're in here. And then even the sniper who was with Cairo running around.

1:19:02He saw the tail on the fence. So he's running around and the tail was right there. And his response, he came over the radio and said, all right, guys, be on alert. They're ready for us. They have a training mock-up of our super secret helicopter in the front yard. And then there was silence. He thought it was Ben Laden. They're training on it. Yeah. And the boss came over and goes, no, jackass, that's ours because we crashed. And he goes, that makes a lot more sense than the shit I was just saying. So these are the conversations. And it's crazy to think that guys still have their sense of humor.

1:19:30But then I'm just, and I'm behind my guys and I'm watching them and it was just so cool. I'm just so proud of them. Like we could die at any second and it's not even phasing you guys. You're just doing your job. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. No one's freaking out. Just you're escalating as necessary. You know, you're kick the door, try the door, kick the door, go mechanical, go explosive, boom. And then the woman told us you're going to run into a stairwell and you're going to run into Khalid bin Laden. So the head - Who's Khalid bin Laden? His son, his 20 year old son. And she said, And she ended up being 100 % right on everybody in the house.

1:20:02This was the CIA targeter. Woman, sorry, not chick. I doubt she'd care. I don't think she gives a shit. But yeah, he was right there and he hopped behind a banister. And we got eight dudes going up the stairs that kind of turn. They go up and turn back and they're separated by just a banister. And they're both armed. They're both grown men and they want to kill each other. And so instead, normally I'd pick some guys back and move them out of the way. Because in an urban environment, if they start throwing grenades. Of course. But we're going to die. so I want to see how this goes down. I got to see this.

1:20:31And he just whispered to him because we're quiet. We're not saying anything to each other so we confuse the shit out of him. And he whispered something along the lines of come here, come here in Urdu and Arabic. And he said his name twice, Khalid. And Khalid leaned over. He's got a gun. He leaned over and goes, what? Blasted him right there. How did he know how to say come here, Khalid in Urdu and Arabic? That's how smart he was. He just knew he would need to know how to say that. Just certain things. Like I was kind of arrogant when someone tried to teach me how to say drop your gun. I was like, I don't need to know how to say that.

1:21:01I can say it like that. I'll just shoot him. He'll drop his gun. But this guy learned it. And like, he just was smart. And that saved, I don't know how many lives. Because if we turn that corner with an AK, I don't care how much body armor you have on at that range with a 7.62. Yeah. But he killed him. And I remember walking over his body thinking, okay, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. And I was right for about seven seconds. And then I saw Bin Laden. That was cooler. But we went to the second floor. I'm about seven or eight. I forget the number back. And guys start to split off because you got unknowns.

1:21:28There are people in here, rooms over there and there. So they're clearing that. And then we're down to two guys now. It's the point man that killed Khalid and then me. And the way that works is he's looking up and I'm looking back. And I have, you want to have not control, but you want to let the point man know you're there. So either hold his leg or hold his shoulder. And he's feeling that. And he's always looking forward. And wherever his eye goes, his gun goes. So he's looking at the top of this curtain and he can see people moving behind it. And so he starts to pimp me. Doesn't know it's me, but he knows it's one of his shooters.

1:21:59And he just starts saying, we got to go now. Come on, we got to go. We got to go. Because he's saying those are the suicide bombers, but we can beat him. But we have to go right now. And for me, it was just, it wasn't bravery. It was like, he's right. I want four. I want, I'll take two, but it's going to be just us. And I, and I just, we're going to blow up now. I'm tired of thinking about it. And I just squeezed him and he went up. And there's a curtain at the top of the stairs, not a door. And he moved the curtain and there was these two women there. and he assumed those were suicide bombers.

1:22:27So he just jumped on them, which is most courageous thing I've ever seen. He jumped on them? He like tackled them to absorb the blast so the guy behind him could get a shot. Like it's crazy. You can't say that man's name. No, but he should have a medal of honor. Someone knows who he is and it's not hard to figure it out. And just be, and simply because he went this way, I turned left and there's Bin Laden standing there. What was Bin Laden doing? He had his both hands on Amal, his wife, and she was shorter and he was tall and he was maneuvering he was skinnier than I thought his beard was kind of gray taller than I thought he'd be skinnier I remember skinny but I was looking right at him and that's his nose I've seen that nose a thousand times did he look at you?

1:23:06I think so but it was dark and he's a threat I gotta kill him and the way you kill a suicide bomber is shoot him in the mouth or in the head so I shot him twice in the head then once more on the floor because all they need to do is suicide I've dealt with suicide bombers and it is terrifying and it's permanent and it's loud it's scary and all they need to do is have like a negative and a positive, they just got to touch the leads. So they can do that like this and they just go boop and then everyone blows up. So, and I was even giving some shit about that. Like, why just shoot him in the face for positive identification?

1:23:35It's like, well, shoot him in the chest. People live for a couple seconds after you shoot him in the chest. You want to kill him. He needs to go down. What'd you shoot him with? Five, five, six. Yep. Hollow points, 77 green. H and K 416. How long between when you identified him and shot him? Probably second. maybe a second. Like, the saying we had is, you have a second to convince me not to kill you. And he didn't do it. And that was his bedroom? Yeah. What was his bedroom like? Big bed, king bed. I think he and, I think they were, him, his daughters, and his wife and young son were all in there.

1:24:12I think it was two daughters, I think. At the time when you shot him, they were all there? Yeah, they were all there. Well, it was the daughter that actually said, finally, it was, that's Sheik Osama you got him. That's before we did the Geronimo call. Because we, this is cool. We had a dude from another squadron who had been teaching himself Arabic. So he was already deployed with Blue Squadron and we were Red Squadron. And we flew over to Jalalabad. He was there. And because he taught himself Arabic, we're bringing you. Because you're a shooter. SEAL Team 6, you're coming. So congratulations.

1:24:39So he was the one that was speaking Arabic. And even his buddies were giving him shit because we had stopped going to Iraq and we're just in Afghanistan. It's like, why are you still studying Arabic? Exactly. You don't need it. Well, it's like the skydive. I might need it once. And the daughter was trying to say, wasn't him. She finally said, yeah, that's him. That's Sheik Osama. You got him. His daughter said that. Yes, his daughter said that. And then when we came over the radio for God and Country, Geronimo Eka. And that wasn't, we didn't, we got shit for that too, because we said, we used the word Geronimo as a pro word.

1:25:08We didn't name him Geronimo. That would be an insult to Chief Geronimo. It was a pro word in honor of Chief Geronimo. Instead of saying, hey, I'm in Bin Laden's room and he's dead, you say Geronimo Eka, meaning Geronimo means I'm with Bin Laden right now. And you have different pro words. Instead of saying, hey, I'm at the front gate, you say something else. How did the kids and the wife respond? They were shocked. They were surprised. Then they were scared. They were the same as every target. They huddled in a corner and you try to calm them down. Try to reassure them you're not going to get hurt now.

1:25:39Just sit here. And then when you're leaving, you say, all right, stay here until the sun comes up. We do have aircraft, so don't go outside. Until Pakistani military gets here, then you'll be fine. We're taking him. Is he the only person you took? We left everybody else there. What else did you take? We found a bunch of intel. We didn't know if he was running Al-Qaeda, but he was. He had, it might've been two or three offices. So we took, they had the old school towers for a home computer. So we crushed those, took the hard drives out. We found a bunch of CDs and a bunch of papers and anything electronic or written, we just threw it in a bag and brought it back.

1:26:16And then we spread it up with the intel analysts when we got back and they went through. I didn't really go through anything. I've heard rumors of missions and porn and all that stuff. But I think the porn might have been there because they were, they embedded missions on that. So if someone looked at it, they would just see porn, but not the mission they're trying to send, I guess. And again, that might not be what happened, but that's what someone told me. But I didn't go through any of the intel. The inside of his house, was it like the house of a rich guy? No, it was kind of standard. Like, I think he might've been the only one with a bed bed.

1:26:50The rest of them had like floor mats, just kind of like everywhere over there. And then, you know, there's animals and trash that they burn. And it's not a, I mean, there's a garden. They were growing their food and three-story house, but it wasn't, I mean, it looked like the outside. It was a stone inside. There wasn't a lot of decoration. There was a couple things hanging up, you know, Korans on shelves and shit like that. But how did it smell? I don't really remember. It's when I got in there, it smelled like bombs going off because my guys had breached a few times. So it smelled like a training area.

1:27:17and again it was one of those things where you're just kind of taking a snapshot I remember saying like you remember this because this is going to be it like this is going to blow up just remember this and then you know I killed bin Laden we got bin Laden and I was just standing there I'm going to go take a picture and one of my guys came up to me and he goes hey are you good and I said what do we do now because we're still alive and he's like now we find the computers every night we do this hundreds of times right and I said yeah you're right holy shit and he said yeah you just killed Osama bin Laden your life just changed now get to work and I knew what work was.

1:27:46So we got to get him in a body bag, got to find the intel, bring him his body outside, blow up a helicopter, call in another helicopter and then hopefully live for 90 minutes and get back to Afghanistan. Did you take books? Possibly. I was more working on the computers. I was in the, I'd imagine they took pretty much everything they could. How many people were killed in the raid? Four. One, two, three, four, five. Five. Yeah, we killed the courier. The other courier, his wife, Khalid and then Osama. What happened to Osama Bin Laden's body? Well, when we got back to Bagram, we flew him to Jalalabad.

1:28:22We showed him to the woman that found him. We showed him to - The CIA targeter. Yep. She was there. She wanted to see him and she saw him, said, I guess I'm out of a job and left. That's it? Didn't even stick around. She said, yeah, she kind of looked down like, I guess I'm out of a fucking job. She was, the only reason we were there because of her and she gave up her life to find him. She was so cool. No husband, no kids, 20 hours a day, only on this. And once she saw him, that's it. Like when I saw her later, I said, because no one at the agency believed her, really? Like 70 % maybe? And when they got back, she said like everybody got awards and I didn't even get a parking spot.

1:28:57Yeah, but we showed them. She sounds like a hard case. She's badass. She's like, if anyone knows her, hire her. Like, I'm not going to say her name or what she looks like, but yeah, hire her. Do you have any idea what happened to her? No, I don't. I mean, I've heard, no, I don't know. probably on wall street or something she should be but yeah we brought him back to jbad we showed him to admiral mcraven um who was awesome uh and he you know we yeah we had a just a moment looking at him and i remember he put his hand on my neck kind of like that it was like really uh just a cool team thing like here's the boss here's the guys there's bin laden what was what was bin laden wearing he had on a i think it was like pajamas like white pajamas might have been gray uh it's kind of hazy for me.

1:29:40But then we brought them to Bagram, laid them out. They were doing the DNA tests. And this was a weird time for me too, because we're still in our gear. We laid out all of our intel. The smart people are going over that. The TV was on and they brought us breakfast sandwiches. And President Obama with a red tie came down the red carpet and he said, tonight I can report to the people and to the world. The United States conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda. I hear President Obama say Osama bin Laden, I looked at Osama bin Laden and I thought, how in the world did I get here from Butte, Montana?

1:30:13And then I had a bite of the sandwich. I mean, this is the best breakfast sandwich I've ever had. And then they did, and then we handed him on. And oh, and then we were looking at the TV and we're just like, say it, that no one was hurt. You got to say it. Say it. And he finally said, no Americans were hurt. I'm like, thank you because our parents were now watching this back home. And they'd figured out by this point. At this point, yes. Because we, well, I called my dad before I left on the mission. I couldn't even tell him what we were doing. I called him in my gear, in Jalalabad, I grabbed one of the phones in one of the B-huts.

1:30:40And I called him, and I would call him on missions before. And I would just say, hey, got to go to work, whatever. And he would always say, I wish I was going with you. And I would say, you know what, Dad, I wish you were too. And this one, I called him, and I just was saying, hey, you know, thanks for teaching me how to be a man. I got to go to work. And he said, I wish I was going with you. And I said, well, I'm with some really good guys. Don't worry. And then I left. And he was at home, and I'm getting a little emotional now. he was at home in a Walmart parking lot. And he sort of realized that we're going somewhere important.

1:31:10He didn't know I was overseas. And he went into Walmart and he ran into his sister, who's a registered nurse. And she saw him. And my dad says he was his two favorite words, apoplectic and catatonic. And she said, what's going on? And he goes, I don't know. I think something's going on. And then we got back and he saw the TV and said, holy shit. Because my dad always thought that I was on the big mission. And he's going to think that was it. And he was, I even called my mom. I'd been joking with my mom my entire life, even in high school. I would say, don't worry about me, mom. I'm here to do something important.

1:31:43I'm going to be safe. Don't worry. I'm here to do something important. And I called her from Bagram and I said, hey, mom, you can start worrying. Because that important thing, I think it just went down. That's amazing. And then we handed him to the army and they flew him out to a ship and threw him over into the ocean is what they told me. Not only is that an amazing story, you did an amazing job telling it. How long after you killed Osama did you get out of the Navy? My end of obligated service was January of 12. So I was going to get out then. But then on August 6th of 11, Extortion 17 was shot down.

1:32:22Yes. And we had 31 Americans on board and some Afghans. And we lost a lot of guys from SEAL Team 6 on that. I knew pretty much everyone on that helicopter. So then I was definitely going to get out because I want to see my daughters get married. And the unfortunate truth. So what, I mean, that changed your perspective? Yeah, because it can all, everything that's ever mattered to you can end with one bullet. Yeah. And a bullet never lies and it needs to be right once. So, but then we also had to backfill those guys because we lost a troop of SEAL Team 6 guys. So I went to a different squadron to deploy one more time.

1:33:00And my thought process was I came in through the front door. I'm going to leave through the front door. So I'm going to go to war one more time to prove that I didn't just come here to kill bin Laden. I'm going to do one more deployment. And actually bin Laden wasn't the last guy I killed with that gun. I went overseas again and I went with Silver Squadron. We had a winter deployment. Got in a couple fights, but it was winter in Afghanistan, so not a lot. Actually, my last mission was an L ambush, which is the oldest tactic in war. The only time I've ever done it is when you set up an L and someone either walks or drives right into it and you got them in two ways.

1:33:35So we were able to do that with a vehicle. We were watching a vehicle start in this village, drive around a mountain. This is Afghanistan. In Afghanistan. And then they were waiting for Americans to ambush. And Americans didn't show up on Monday, so they went back to their house. They did it again on Tuesday, and then we're watching them now. and then Wednesday and Thursday. And then I remember watching them saying, if they do it tomorrow on Friday, their day of prayer, they're definitely going to do it Saturday. So if they do it tomorrow, we're going to set up on them Saturday. So they did it Friday.

1:34:04Now we're going to set up on them. And this is the winter. It was a car and no one else is driving this road. So we just, we inserted, we set up on these rocks, put some snipers up. So we have an L ambush and we're going to wait for them. And everything, everything that can go wrong will, no matter what you're doing. The mission was so simple. someone is going to be in a plane watching them and then they're going to give us a green light yellow light red and that's when we're going to pop out and I was even telling the army when we're selling them I'm like yeah I'm going to pop out and I'm going to stop the car and he's like what if he doesn't stop I'm like I'm going to shoot him this is pretty easy I'm just going to tell him to stop and if he doesn't I'm going to kill him so we set up there and naturally their car wouldn't start so we actually took out cigars and lit them up waiting for them to try to figure out how to start their car so they're on this other side of this mountain and we're waiting over here.

1:34:51Car won't start. Like, I almost want to walk over there and help him put it in gear and jump it, and then I'll run back to the rocks. But then we're waiting on him, and we're starting to get the calls, and a van full of women and children drives right past us. And it's like, what was that? Like, where did they come from? Like, imagine if we weren't well-trained and we just lit up an entire family for no reason. So a van drove by, and then these dudes finally drive up, and we step out, and I tell him to stop, and he didn't want to stop, so we killed him. him and he's like they tried to get out cut the rpgs and we killed five of them i think and that was it last mission and then the same rifle you used to shoot bin london what happened then i brought it back and uh i asked them if i could keep it and they said no so i had to i turned the gun in and i don't know if someone else got it i don't know if they hung it up somewhere i don't know what you have no idea what happened no i kept the firing pin though i have that but they kept the gun so they might have given it to some one of those radio guys that is going to skydive for the first time.

1:35:48He just happened to be carrying the Bin Laden gun. That's pretty funny. Did you tell him this is the Bin Laden gun? Everybody knew. Yeah, and even the gunner's man. He was cool. He let me keep the firing pin. Even the gunner's man. I was like, easy. Come on, dude. Let me keep the gun. I'll give you$10 ,000 for the gun. What kind of gun was it? H &K 416. Good gun. Never had an issue. Never had a jam with that gun. So you come back from your last deployment to Afghanistan and then... Well, then I get done and I had a bunch of terminal leave, they call it. You get 30 days of paid leave a year and I hadn't taken any.

1:36:20So I have a like 90 days of leave where I can still get paid, which is good because now I have until August to figure out how to get a job. Cause it's weird to leave the military without a degree because I know guys now that would, they'd rather go to war than fill out a resume because war makes sense. The resume doesn't. I don't know what shoes to wear with a suit, crap like that. So I, I, uh, I had to learn what to do. Uh, and it just, I'm fortunate that I can tell a story. I'm fortunate that I can, uh, manage stress and, solve problems. I got on the speaking circuit. Again, just being present, got offered with leading authorities out of DC.

1:36:55And the first speech I gave was to, I think, 2000 airline pilots. And I had no experience speaking, never taken a class. And I remember being backstage looking out at this audience. I'm like, I called my agent. I'm like, hey, I've been to combat, but am I going to faint when I get out on stage? I have never been looked at like this. and she said to me, here's what you do. Here's the key. Three glasses of red wine right now. Not two and not four. That was her prescription. Three and you'll be fine. And then I didn't have them, but I walked on stage and they were pilots. So there was a lot of Navy guys, a lot of Marines in the audience.

1:37:26And one of the Marines, former Marines, he kind of heckled me. And that clicked like, oh, they're friendly. Okay, good, good. This is a fun crowd. And so I gave my first speech like that. And speaking is just, you can't really market it. You just, if you're good, someone in the audience hears you and hires you. That's exactly. So it's like I did one in November and then two in December and then five in January and then 10 in February. And I just started speaking and then helped guys transition. How was your transition? I mean, it was difficult because, you know, I don't necessarily miss the missions, but I miss the guys.

1:37:56Of course. The skydive trips to Arizona, there's nothing like those. You know, skydiving with 30 of your best friends, going out to dinner when you're done jumping, talking about the, how close that jump was and then jumping the next day. And, you know, I miss that. I miss the workouts, the morning stuff because even at SEAL Team 2, And every Tuesday, rain or shine, we had the two-mile ocean swim. And I'm talking like February in Virginia Beach is not fun to do it. But the bus ride to get there is hilarious just because it just sucks. And we all know we're just going to take a big bite of this shit sandwich, but we're all in it together.

1:38:25Let's go swim. I miss that. Yeah. If I never do an ocean swim again, that's fine. But I do miss that bus ride. What is PTSD? PTSD is real. and it takes for me and a lot of my friends, a lot of my Marines, a lot of SEALs, some of them don't have it, but for me, it seemed like a seven-year thing. Like right around the seven-year mark, it starts to sink in what you were doing. Seven years out? Seven years out of the Navy is when it started to hit me. Really? Yeah, and that's just - Had you ever had any symptoms of what you would now describe as PTSD when you were serving in the Navy? No. Or for the first seven years out?

1:39:02No, no. Oh, interesting. Yeah, it just seemed like that's what we were supposed to be doing, But then, you know, you get older and you realize that, you know, I was in houses killing people in front of their families. I mean, even to the point where you're like, okay, I did kill that guy in front of his two sons. Now, did I get rid of a terrorist or did I make two new ones? What are they going to do when they get older? What are they doing now, now that they're in their 20s? I mean, they're not going to forget me killing their dad in front of them. The guy that I killed in front of his wife, he's not, and I killed his brother right before I killed him in front of his wife.

1:39:29They still remember that. They still hate my guts. So you start to think about, I mean, I'm convinced I never killed the wrong person. but also I start to think, could I have talked them out of that? Because the one guy that I talk about, I try to talk him out of getting his gun. Like he got up and was trying to kick me. Where was this? What happened? It's in Ramadi, Iraq. We just went into a house and as soon as we went in to the, it was a big like Saddam mansion type place. As soon as I went in, there's a guy with a gun. So I blasted him. Then other guys were coming in. There's an open door here and I did a one-man entry, which you shouldn't do.

1:40:01But I went in there and there's a guy in bed with his wife and I'm standing above him. and I can see a gun, and he's right there, and he's waking up, and he threw a kick or something, and I remember thinking, okay, he just woke up. Give him a courtesy 10 seconds because he's groggy, and then he starts looking at the gun, and I was like, no, don't do that. And he went for it, and I killed him. And then I put a white light on him, and his wife now sees him, and so she screams, and then I'm like, man, why? And then later I started thinking, why did I shoot that guy? Well, because he went for his gun, but why did he go for a gun?

1:40:32Well, because I'm in his room at 2 in the morning. And then you start thinking, why am I in his room? Well, George Bush had a problem with Saddam Hussein, so we invaded Iraq. And that's why I just killed that guy. And again, everything that ever mattered to that dude doesn't matter anymore because I just took it all away from him. And that just starts to, you know, that can eat you up sometimes. Me, anyway. Some guys don't have a problem with any of it. And he was a terrorist, so whatever. But you still think about it. And the thing that I bring up, too, is if I had met that dude in Paris over coffee, did he know a joke?

1:40:59You know, that's the weird shit. And then for me, it's PTSD is anger, like a quick anger. And then hyper-awareness. Like even if I'm downstairs making a sandwich in my kitchen, I got to be looking at the doors just to make sure no one's coming in. You know, yelling at the wife for not locking the door. Arm the alarm. Here's the shotguns. Here's how it works. And she probably doesn't need to know all that. But that's part of it. Because one of my sayings is it's a large planet, but it's a small world. And people can get here really, really quickly. And we've done it to them. And they can do it to us.

1:41:31And it's one of those things that it's so dark and bad. And I know what people are capable of doing to each other. And I don't want to see it again. But, you know, if they come here, I mean, I'm ready for them. But you get an October 7th type thing in this country. People are not prepared for what they might see. Because people are worse than animals as far as violence. We can do some of the most horrific shit to each other. That gets to me to the point where, like, I do Ibogaine now. I do psychedelics. I'm actually going back down with a company called Ambio in a couple of weeks to do Ibogaine.

1:42:00I do it once a year just because when I start to get a short temper or just like if I have to have green noise on to sleep so I can't hear what's going on in my head, it's just time to get back into the psychedelics. And what the psychedelics do is they get me structured. So there's like a four or five month window for Ibogaine that it works and that's when you're supposed to structure yourself. So like for me, it'll be the barefoot walking in the grass at least five minutes after you wake up and before you go to bed. And then meditation, yoga, and working out. I mean, you got to work out. Just get the endorphins going.

1:42:35But I've again, helps you get back in that. And then once you're in that system, then you can stick with it. So that's how it helps. But yeah, PTSD can be anything. I've seen guys try to drink their way out of it, which is horrible. Because it's like, I've had friends say, yeah, I'll take a drink of alcohol to get rid of the pain. But then I got to have one more drink of alcohol to get rid of the pain. And then I'll wake up the next day while I have a hangover. But you know what, we'll get rid of it, another drink. And there's a vicious cycle in there. But the alcohol doesn't help. The psychedelics do, and that's why they're not legal here, because it works.

1:43:03And I don't know why they won't help the veterans with that. I think they're working on it now. I know there's a company also in Texas called Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, and they partner with Ambio, and we get veterans and first responders to Mexico, but we should have it in New York at the VA. We should have it in Virginia and California. Veterans should be able to get Ibogaine administered medically, and that's how they do it in Mexico. It's a doctor. You're on a heart monitor. They watch you the whole time, and it just gets in your brain. It shows you stuff and it really, it kind of cleans out the closet.

1:43:30It's terrifying. Ibogaine is. DMT is not. It's awesome. But it breaks everything up and then it kind of pushes it out for you. Why is it terrifying? Because it opens your, like when people say you use 30 % of your brain, it's like you use 30 % for tennis and then a different 30 % for chess or for whatever. But this one opens all of them and it all talks. And so stuff that you've suppressed, trauma as far back as your childhood, it'll show it to you. that you wanted to stop thinking about. And then you have to deal, like you have to deal with it. Like the medicine shows you things and you can tell it, I don't want to, I'm not ready to see that right now.

1:44:05But if it keeps, like for me, it's demons. If it keeps showing you stuff, you have to deal with it right now. Demons? Demons, like black gum, yellow teeth demons. Yeah. Just staring at me at first. And then it gets rid of them. But what do you think those are? I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, it's just an evil face, but it's a bunch of them. Uh, and then with your mind working, if, if, if you're, do you think they're real? Yeah. I think so too. I do. I think, I think there's, there's real evil in the world too. And guys like me that were never supposed to be killing people, they're going to, they're going to taunt me a little bit, but when your mind gets creative, what do you mean guys like you who were never supposed to be?

1:44:43Well, I wasn't supposed to be a, uh, a killer. I was supposed to be a chef. I was supposed to be a stockbroker. Um, so, I mean, I'm, I have a big heart. Like I'm, I, I, I don't want people to go to war. You know, I don't want people to be shooting each other. I don't want bombs dropping on innocent people. But when you, under Ibogaine, as creative as you can get, you can start thinking of horrible shit. And because you're in a state, you actually see it. You can see it. It's a vision of like awful, awful shit. And so you have to deal with that. But it goes back and forth. And the medicine kind of like guides you.

1:45:16And the coolest thing it said to me was the only people who go to hell are people who think they deserve to. So it's a healer. but it's just, it's, it's really scary. And then there's a 24 hour period where you're just, it's like a really bad hangover. You're depleted. So you get a bunch of IVs and stuff. You do a Reiki massage, which is an energy massage. And then they give you 5-MeO-DMT, which is the God molecule. And you go to, you go wherever heaven is and you see it for, you lose track of time. The first time I did 5-MeO, I asked them when I was done, how many days have I been asleep? And they said a minute and a half because you'll lose track of every, like you can't describe it.

1:45:51And I've heard other people talk about psychedelics. You can't, it's the most beautiful time lapse. Like you lose track of time. And I get, I feel like I'm being lifted by my stomach. And there's like, there's family everywhere and a maternal voice. And it was telling me I was home, but in a language I didn't understand, but I couldn't understand it, but I knew what she was saying. And like my grandmother, my dead grandmother was there and she was just saying, we're not waiting for you. We're just here. Like, we're here now. And it sounds crazy right now, but it's— It doesn't sound crazy. It really opens your mind to what next.

1:46:29I mean, everyone that's done it, too, like I went through with—I'm talking Sergeant Major and Delta Force guys, 30 years in the Army. And they finished this Ibogaine Reiki DMT, and they told me to give a message to Amber Capone. She runs Vets, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions. to please tell Amber that she saved my life because I was going to kill myself next week. This was my last shot at doing something for myself. And it cured him. It's cured a heroin addiction overnight, like dope sickness. Like I heard a story of a woman that was addicted to heroin and she did. I began, didn't have any visions, just slept.

1:47:06And she said, I don't think it worked. And they said, well, are you dope sick? And she goes, no. And he goes, no, it worked. So now just set your patterns. So it's, I mean, every veteran that's seen combat should, Everyone that's had any trauma in their life should get a shot at Ibogaine because it's a life changer. What are the symptoms of PTSD? You said anger and paranoia. I'm paraphrasing. Yeah, just awareness. Awareness, hyper-awareness. But like over-aware. Like I can't concentrate on the show because I'm always looking at the door. And then the anger. I mean, that's not me. I don't like getting angry, but I'll just, I'll get really pissed off.

1:47:39Where do you think that comes from? Yeah, it's just got to be all the stuff that we saw. because even, you know, shooting people is one thing. Not all of them bother me. A couple of them bother me just because kind of what if I did it differently. But then, you know, you see other dead people. You have friends. Like the worst conversation is when someone would come up to me and say, hey, did you know Scott Neal? What do you mean, did I know? What happened? You know, did you know Robert Reeves? Yes. What happened? You know, just did you know? It's like, I knew no, what happened? You know, did you know Neal Roberts was the first one I heard, Fifi, the guy that fell out of the helicopter.

1:48:15We were a team in Afghanistan. And yeah, I knew him. He was the first SEAL I met. He brought me, we went to Arby's my first day because he was an older guy and he brought two new guys to Arby's to tell us what SEAL Team 2 was like. Yeah, I know him. I knew him. So just losing friends and knowing their families, it's just, I think it's a lot. I mean, and it's like anything, like just the older you get, the more shit you start to realize. Of course. But there's, I mean, there's a lot of dramatic stuff. Even like, I remember a house I went into in Iraq and we're going into two, three in the morning.

1:48:43I went into the wrong house and the only people inside was a woman and her, her young daughter. And I'm standing, they came out of the room to look at me. Here's some dude with a green face and a gun getting mud all over the white carpet, wrong house. And I remember looking at him just thinking, I understand why they hate us. Like I wouldn't want to wake up to this guy in my house. No, not at all. And just thinking, what did I, did I traumatize that poor young girl for nothing? So just shit like that. Maybe I'm too sensitive, but we, they asked a lot of us. We did a lot of stuff over there. What are you haunted by?

1:49:17Are you more haunted? Well, I can see probably haunted by everything. Why wouldn't you be? But is it the killing or the seeing? No, you know what it is? It's haunted by stuff that's probably not going to happen, but I'm anticipating it. The October 7th-style attack on a gun-free zone in Arizona, when suicide bombers go to an elementary school, when the sleeper cells activate and they're cutting heads off somewhere. That bothers me. it doesn't bother me if they come after me i can handle them i got them yeah and i'm so morbid sometimes it's like well if they get me at least that's an ending finally but uh no i mean i'm you know i got shotguns like we said yesterday whatever but just thinking about i i don't want i don't like the idea of innocent americans getting killed here just because uh political uh ideologies left our borders wide open and they're here and they haven't forgotten about us they they've always said to us that uh you know the americans have the clocks but we have the time And they're not going to forget.

1:50:09They hit the World Trade Center in 93. They came back in 2001. So that bothers me. And it's almost like the idea of something bad happening bothers me. And it probably never will. You shouldn't be worried about stuff that won't happen. But that's part of my PTSD. It's always struck me as weird that combat veterans kill themselves, which they do. They do. Of course, we're much higher rate than non-combat veterans. But, you know, they survived. And some of them really beat the odds to survive. Yeah. And then they wind up killing themselves. Why? I think, again, it's the, they can't live with the guilt.

1:50:45Or I know some guys that killed themselves because they had traumatic brain injury and they can't live with the headaches. Ibogaine cures that too. I mean, guys need a shot at this. They don't need to be taking all the pills the VA gives them. What do you mean the guilt? I think just talking to some guys, like some Marines I know from Fallujah, just the killing, the watching guys get killed. Like, could I have saved my friend? Like, I'm fortunate. I don't think I've ever killed the wrong person. I've actually never seen one of my friends hurt in front of me, which is crazy going to that much combat.

1:51:15But some guys have. I mean, I was talking to guys that were trying to put their buddy back together when he was blown in half. Like his best friend. Like, just that guilt. I'm tired of living through this. Is there guilt over killing? I don't even think even guilt. I do think about that one guy every day. But again, he was a bad guy. But could I have talked him out of it? Like, was it worth it? Probably, maybe not. But the unknown. And then just, you know, again, wondering how did that affect them? How did that woman that the dog bit, you know, bit her arm or whatever? Yeah. And just, I mean, because, again, why are we here and why are we doing this to this group of people right now?

1:51:55And it was never the weapons of mass destruction. And now I'm fighting for the guy that came in the room behind me, the guy who's in front of me. That's who I'm fighting for. We're going to win. Yeah. And Americans win every fight toe to toe. but what's the reason we're here? You said this hit you, and it commonly hits people, I think you said seven years-ish, years after. They're safe and living in some leafy suburb with a pretty wife, and, like, everything's fine, but they're not fine inside. How many conversations did you have in all the years you were in, all these 12 deployments or whatever, about why you were there, about the meaning of taking another man's life?

1:52:31We didn't talk about it at all, not when we were in. it was just the job the only person that brought it up was one of our personal trainers because we have these trainers that will you know do everything from strength coaches to helping you stretch a bad back type stuff yeah and i remember he said uh every one of you guys has changed you just don't realize it like every single one of you guys you're not the same as you were when you checked in here for selection like you guys are all different now and it was just because of the because of the missions whether whether they admit it or not i mean it's it's a It's a lot.

1:53:00We were good at it. Well, undoubtedly, you know, the best. Yeah. I just think it's interesting that the U.S. government or your officers, I mean, why is it left to your personal trainer to note something that obvious? And I don't think they have interest in mental health or even helping you separate because you're not sticking around to do the job they need you to do. And they might be getting better now, but I doubt it. They're certainly not doing psychedelic work. What about the moral questions? How many people you served with were faithful believers in God? A low percent, maybe 5%. Wow. But the further we're out now, more guys are going back.

1:53:46I've noticed. A lot of Christians. I'm Catholic and I'm going back to church now. I didn't go to church. The only time I went to church in the Navy was at funerals. and it doesn't make any sense. You think I would have been better with Jesus doing that? And even when they would bring a pastor out to pray before a mission, we're like, whatever, let's go kill these fuckers. But now it's kind of like, all right, maybe take a rap off that too. Fair. But yeah, it's - I guess I'm making a point, which is it seems like they're treating you like animals or machines. They're not considering the effect on you.

1:54:19That's just, sorry to say that, but that's the way - No, they, I mean, they cared about a professional development. They cared about us going to sniper school. They cared about doing training, but I can't remember. I mean, they, okay. They started to get good with retreats. I remember they would do some retreats. Like you get to take your, they would pay for you and your wife and kids to go to like great wolf lodge and do the water park. And, and they would have classes about like, it was more marriage counseling. Cause we're all nuts anyway. Um, so they did, they did, they, I don't want to say they didn't do anything, but they, they certainly aren't keying on.

1:54:47It's almost like if, if someone's got a psychological problem, then do we, do we trust them to be the lead jumper on that jump? Do we trust them to be the one man, you know? Did you see people go crazy? Yeah. I saw people freeze. It's a different animal. What does that mean, freeze? Just freeze. Like if someone shoots an AK-47 at you in a house, it's really loud and scary. I can't imagine. And I've seen guys just stop. It's not, I mean, nothing on them. People react differently. I just say, I was just dumb enough to go after them. But some guys quit. Some guys, I'm not doing this anymore. Well, after Neil Roberts fell out of the helicopter, a lot of poster child SEALs hit it, beat it.

1:55:30Can you tell that story quickly? I'm not familiar with it. That's when they were going after Al-Qaeda, Operation Anaconda. And it was mainly, it was like the 10th Mountain, some Army infantry, Delta, and SEAL Team 6. And they were trying to put SEAL snipers on top of a mountain called Takar Gar. and they went and they're being flown by tf-160 the best pilots in the world al mac was actually flying the best pilot in the world um razer zero three is his book stud he's he's so cool i had a shirt made that said i know al mac like he's a badass but and he saved everyone's life but when they were inserting they started taking fire they got hit with an rpg and neil was on the on the um the ramp he was going to be the first guy off he's carrying a saw squad automatic weapon belt fed machine gun and he fell out and he fell so hard he actually bent we have the gun it bent the barrel.

1:56:17So he's without a gun now on the mountain. The helicopter takes off without realizing he fell out. So now Neil's by himself with Al Qaeda and they did him dirty. He fought for a while, but he ended up getting killed pretty bad. And then they came back in to get him. And that's when Britt Slabinski and Chappie was John Chapman, CCT guy who, they were both awarded medals of honor. John Chapman should have been awarded two medals of honor for what he did on the mountain. He actually ended up, they ended up fighting it out close quarters, like inside bunkers with each other. They found Neil. They ended up, they left John Chapman.

1:56:51Rangers went up and got him later. Really shitty fight, but Neil was the first casualty that everybody knew and loved. Like his O course time, he was the fastest obstacle course runner at Buzz is on his headstone. So he was the first one that died. That's when a lot of guys started. Like when we started training after that fight, everything that we'd been trained on, change it because you're not going to do that stupid shit you're not going to stand up pirouette and say send her appeal you're going to get the fuck down because these bullets are coming right here uh so change everything now we're going back and we're fighting in the mountains with guys who've been fighting their whole lives to the point where like i i i remember fighting guys were saying to my guys as we're getting ambushed this is going to end one of two ways we're going to die or we're going to win that's it and save one bullet for yourself because you do not want to get captured by these guys so it's it's it's very intense i mean i i'm in one fight i was in i ran into a guy that looked like me, red hair, red beard, shooting a bell-fed machine gun at me, yelling Allahu Akbar.

1:57:48And that realization is, okay, that's a Chechen. And those dudes are very serious. That's Al-Qaeda, like 100 % Al-Qaeda. And you're gonna have to kill him or kill yourself because it's on. And yeah, I mean, I was on a border bombing. Did you kill him? Yeah, with the Air Force. We ended up getting, we got ambushed for a full hour. I'd actually I'd heard about from Vietnam guys they used to wear we used to wear a gear in lines like third line first line, second line, third line first line gear is on your body it's the most important shit you have so it's on your belt and your pockets so your second line's your second most important so like bullets, grenades, and water third line's your least important stuff in a backpack like foot powder, extra socks, sleeping bag the reason you carry it that way is so if you're running for your life you can start getting rid of it third line, first, second line you can sprint and I never heard of anyone doing it, but I dropped it and had to go to my radio guy because we're getting ambushed on this mountain.

1:58:44It was just a horrible day. And I told them to call, you know, we got to, I can see this checkpoint up top where the leadership has bombed them first. And they said, well, we don't have any air. There's no air support. We got nothing. So we had to lay there and take fire as they're surrounding us. And they got close. I mean, tracers flying in between my hand and my face, like in between two tracers is five real bullets. Zip it. where you're almost thinking like, now, is it going to hurt when I get shot in the face? Or do you feel it? Or do you go to heaven? Or what happens when you're like, that's like airburst RPGs and stuff going off.

1:59:17And finally he'd snap me out of it by saying, I got one, I got a jet. And I said, cool, hit that checkpoint. And he said, I can't because the batteries just died. And I'm a big believer in not micromanaging. And I said, change the batteries. He said, I can't, I'm not carrying the spares. Remember you are. I'm like, oh shit, it's in the backpack. I dropped a hundred meters that way. now I got to run and get that damn thing as they're shooting at me here. And that, you know, got the batteries and threw them to him. And he called in, I think it was a B1 because he said bombs away two minutes out.

1:59:44And like two minutes out, what did the space shuttle drop these things? We need them on us. And then you just hear him sizzling and like bacon. And then we just start bombing the side of this mountain and they start running back into Pakistan. And we pursued him into Pakistan and bombed them for three hours. Um, because we could, we had positive identification troops in contact so we can bomb them. But then we get back and Pakistan, we killed 11 Pakistani soldiers and I don't know how many Al-Qaeda. And they started saying an unprovoked ambush, Americans started bombing Pakistan. So the boss I talked to said, well, here's the deal, because I was the ground force commander for that.

2:00:14And he goes, well, you're either going to get a Silver Star or you're going to Leavenworth. So we'll let you know. It's like, when? I have to wait three weeks to find out if I'm going to jail now. Did you get the Silver Star? Yeah. That was my first. I got two.

2:00:31But, I mean, again, with those, it's not, it's almost like I'd give the Silver Star back to not have that memory. Yeah, no, I bet. So when you're tormented by what we refer to as PTSD, like, what are you thinking? I wouldn't say tormented. It's just more, it's just the awareness and the, just thinking thoughts that I don't need to be thinking. Just knowing if someone got to someone I loved, what they would do. And I don't like thinking about that. So it almost, again, not tormented, more of a protector, like an overprotector. Yes. And, you know, just make sure everyone has guns. So that's a lot to go through, you know, in your 40s, you know.

2:01:15Well, and to consider, like, I just joined to get out of town. It's like that poster of the dude chucking a grenade and says, I just joined for the college money. So, given everything you've just told us for the last two hours, how do you feel when you're driving in your car or looking at your phone and you see some political figure saying, hey, let's have a war with country X? Well, a good indicator is if anyone's referred to as a war hawk, they've never been to war. And they just love the idea of the military-industrial complex. They're going to get paid. Their friends are going to get paid.

2:01:50They have no skin in the game. and they've never been up close when, I mean, getting bombed in a house you're in has got to be the worst thing ever, buried alive in that heat. And they just love doing that because we'll get a contract to build more bombs. And just the threat, I mean, as long as I've been alive, there's either been war or a threat of war. And if you keep people afraid, we'll slowly give up our liberty. The Patriarch sounded great on 9-12, but a week later, it's like, wait, what are you watching? Why are you watching us now? Did you guys ever talk about that? No, it did. No, because it was red, white, and blue and apple pie.

2:02:24Like, we're Americans and we're the good guys. When you were in the service, like the whole time, you never... No, I didn't question Iraq. It's like, I wanted to go. Like, let's get me in there before this ends. When did you start rethinking... About seven years. You're the most famous trigger puller in the war on terror. I think that's fair to say. So, and a lot of positive reinforcement because people are impressed by your bravery and amazed by all the things that you saw and you are kind of the Forrest Gump of the war on terror. I think that's true. But at what point did you start to question, like, what was that?

2:02:58Yeah, it was seven years. I know after Iraq, after we pulled that, started to pull out and ISIS was formed, it was like, at first for me, it was more of a, we never should have invaded, but we also shouldn't have left like that. And then you got that line, that convoy of ISIS coming in from Tikrit. It's like, bomb them. We have A-10s, that's ISIS, kill them all. But they didn't. and then ISIS turned into ISIS. And, you know, it's all part of the Islamic Jihad. It's all the, you know, ISIS. And even though they're different sects, Hamas, Hezbollah, and all those, everyone down to the Houthis, it's all, you know, but then they're fighting us because we're there.

2:03:34Guys were leaving countries like Jordan and Syria to go to Iraq because, well, we can fight Americans and I got nothing else going on. Just, it's easier to kill them there than it is to get to Afghanistan. Oh, of course. And so we're just fighting to fight. You know, we forgot about WND but a couple of months into it. And then it turns into a surge and it turns into, well, we got to kill ISIS. Well, we got to kill Zarqawi. Well, we got to kill, you know, first it's Hussein, Uday and Kusei, and then it's Zarqawi. And then it's now it's ISIS and then it's Baghdadi. And then you got Qasem Soleimani from Iran.

2:04:05And then you got the Iranian influence everywhere in Afghanistan. You know, they're all in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda is working with Iran. The Sunni, the Shia are all together. It's like, it's, you know, it's a mess. And, well, I mean, hopefully now it's going to get better. I mean. Yeah, well, that's always the hope or commanded to hope. If the bombs in Iran worked, great. I mean, you know, Iran's one of those things where I don't want them to get a nuclear weapon, for sure. For sure. But then I was also saying, if you're going to bomb them, you better be all in and be right. This intel cannot be wrong.

2:04:36And they hit them and it's like, well, I mean, and again, I wasn't necessarily, I definitely didn't want a land war in Iran, but if you're going to, now that you hit them, now I'm 100 % in with you. because it doesn't matter why we're here. We are. Did it work? Because you're betting a lot on that. And if, yeah, I don't want troops on the ground there. What would that look like? Well, I mean, it will look like everything. We go in, we kick someone's ass, but then we decide a nation build. And that's where they get us. No one's going to mess with us. But our, like, the Marine Corps is not there to build schools.

2:05:06Marine Corps is going to break stuff, kill people. And then the way we handle Iran is great. Punch them in the face and tell them no. And then leave. or destroy the whole country. That's it. But this whole nation building, we've proven, I mean, it didn't work in Vietnam. We're still in a conflict with Korea. What happened in Grenada? What happened in Panama? What did we do in the first Gulf War, second Gulf War? Afghanistan, you know, we got Bin Laden, but he was in Pakistan. You know, why are we giving money to Pakistan if they're harboring terrorists? You know, it's very complex. Why are we doing that?

2:05:38I don't know. I don't know why we give Egypt all that money. They built a wall they won't let any Palestinians in. Well, we're doing it at the request of another, I mean, we're not doing it for Egypt, right? We've been asked to do that, of course. But why do you think we went into Iraq where you almost got killed? Yeah, I think because Saddam Hussein said he was going to assassinate George H.W. Bush. And George W. Bush, you know, loves his dad and never let that go. And I had friends that were flag officers in the Pentagon a week after 9-11, and they were already planning the invasion of Iraq.

2:06:13and some of these officers were like, why? What are you talking about? They had nothing to do with this. Why are we going to invade Iraq? And we shifted all of our assets to Iraq instead of Afghanistan. We should have been fighting Al-Qaeda here, find Bin Laden, kill them, and then hopefully that's it. But now we're in Iraq, bogged down. And I mean, even taking down Baghdad, it's like, what are you going to do next? Well, they'll rise up and then they'll start their own government. And we were saying, well, what if they don't? Well, they will, but yeah, but they might not. What if they don't? Yeah, but they will.

2:06:41No, they won't. And then they didn't. And it's chaos. Oh, they didn't? No. They're in there robbing the museums. But it's almost one of those things too, like the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Yes. These people have been under a dictator and maybe they need a softer dictator because they're not ready for democracy. Obviously. And even in Afghanistan, you think the people in the Shuriak Valley want our style of democracy? I've talked to farmers. I've eaten rice out of the same bowls these guys and had probably Taliban guys saying, why would I send my son to school when I can teach him on a farm?

2:07:15He doesn't need to sit in a school. Why would you build this one? We don't want that shit. Because it's different. And we don't do any research. We don't know the history of places. We just think, yeah, we'll go over there. They love U.S. I'd love to break it to a lot of the politicians. Most people don't like the United States, and especially in that part of the world. Wait, there was no research done? No, there were officers that thought Iraq and Afghanistan were the same. they didn't officers thought that oh yeah what's the difference going to one or the other it's like there's a huge difference like if you run if you run into a dude from Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan he's a foreigner to them too big time he's a foreign fighter he looks nothing like them by the way I ran into one dude and I think the only reason I didn't shoot him is because he made me laugh he didn't speak English but his t-shirt said I'm not kidding it said it's not a beer belly it's a fuel tank for a sex machine yeah he didn't know what it said but I thought Where was this?

2:08:11That was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. It was one of my first missions in Afghanistan, in a house in the city. And he had no idea what it said. No idea what it said. It was awesome. Give him a quick gut punch and tell him his shirt's funny. So, but you think there were, you know that there were officers who thought Iraq and Afghanistan are basically the same? I had an officer. I told you about the L ambush. When we were selling, you had to sell your mission. Here's what we're going to do. Here's who's there, blah, blah, blah. I was selling this to him. And I said, we're going to insert here and we're going to set up an L.

2:08:39and an officer said, what's an L? And I said, an L is the second thing they teach you after you join the army. The first being, there's your bed. This is an L ambush. And he goes, who invented it? And I'm like, Sun Tzu, I don't know. The art of war, man, an L. I'm gonna hop out and stop. He's like, what if he doesn't stop? I'm gonna kill him. Why am I talking right now? It's an L. It's not hard. And yeah, but I mean, they don't do, not all of them. I've worked with great people, but there are people that are making decisions and they shouldn't be making decisions. Like I said yesterday, once you stop carrying your own luggage, you shouldn't be in charge of anybody.

2:09:13You're just surrounded by, and it gets political. Like you get to that level, like a captain in the Navy or a colonel. Now they're just trying to make admiral or general. So they're doing the politics. And if you don't do the politics, you're not sticking around. So then you're thinking about my next star. When am I going to go work for DynCorp? What's my political thing going to be when I get out? So it's just political as shit. And then the guys below them, they're just yes men. and they're going to tell you what you want to hear, not what's real. They don't want to tell you the truth because you might actually know what's going on on the ground.

2:09:42Go talk to some E-4 Marines. They'll tell you what's happening. And we're not winning this war right now because we're out there building schools or giving people a shit ton of money to embezzle and they're saying they're building a school, but they're buying a house in Qatar. Like you go to Afghanistan where they don't, they don't know what time is. They don't know how old they are, but give them a briefcase full of cash and see what they do with it. The corruption, I mean, it's horrible, but they don't think ahead like that. because they think everyone's just like us. People are different. Do you think that those wars had a corrupting effect on the United States?

2:10:14No, I mean, I think the invasion of Afghanistan was good. I think we had, I mean, but we're right back where we started. Bin Laden's gone, a lot of Al-Qaeda's gone, but they're going to get replaced. Almost 30 training camps over there, terror training camps in Afghanistan again. God knows what's going on in Iraq. I mean, that's - How does that make you feel? You fought in both, you killed Bin Laden? I mean - No, I mean, it's fulfilling because we were able to prove that if you're a bad guy, we have people that will come find you. We proved it. And we cut the head off Al-Qaeda, the snake. They know that we can do that.

2:10:45So it was worth it. We took a lot of Al-Qaeda off the battlefield. I think we slowed down their ability to attack this country for a while, but they're getting close to coming back. You say we're hated in a lot of the world and don't know it. Why are we hated? You know what? It's almost a jealousy thing because we are the most powerful country. And we just proved with what we did in Iran that like we can, China and Russia are watching. Like we can fly pilots over you. You'll never know though they'll hit you. They'll be home the next day. Like they'll leave from the middle of the country, anywhere in the world.

2:11:17And you can't, there's nothing you can do about it. So I think a lot of them are jealous in that aspect. But we're also the, we're the big, dumb, tough guy in the bar that doesn't know he's tough until he has to be. So, I mean, in the Middle East, just because we're there. and like forward defense. I know that the world's a safer place with a strong United States and the forward defense and alliance solidarity is great. The carriers are awesome. But, you know, just people get sick of us. You know, we're still in Germany. It's only been 80 years. Yeah, right. What are we doing there, by the way?

2:11:51Do you know? I mean, I've been there. It's fun. We're going to Oktoberfest. That was awesome. Yeah, it's great. I don't know if it's been great for them, but did anyone ever explain, you're at the highest levels. They were saying, we're in Germany for this reason, we're Japan for this reason. No, we just had a unit there and we can forward stage out of there so we can be somewhere like Bosnia quicker. We can fly to, we stop in Ramstein on our way to Iraq and Afghanistan so we can get there quicker. We get Air Force bases over there too. I mean, we have a great relationship with the Germans. You must, you deal with a lot of, you've met a lot of politicians.

2:12:23I know that. You worked at Fox for a while, always politicians there. Did anybody ever apologize to you? No. There's nothing. No, I don't know if there's anything. What do you mean? They sent you, I mean, you sign up for the SEALs, you know you're going to risk your life. That's on you. I think that's fair. But what's on politicians and policymakers is to only ask you to risk your life for really good reason. I think that's fair too. Yeah, it is. No, no one really has said anything. George Bush wrote me a handwritten letter, which was cool. Just thanking me for it. Because I said that quote, freedom itself was attacked this morning.

2:12:58So he thanked me for remembering his words. That was cool. I mean, I don't think an apology is necessary because at the time, I wanted it more than anything. Yeah. I mean, seriously, 9-11 happened. Let's invade everybody. I'm ready. Let's go fight. Everyone felt that way. Just, I mean, again, as time goes on, maybe there, a lot of them are thinking, well, we did make a bad decision. But at the time, everyone was ramped up. We had Democrats voting for war. Oh, they love war now, though. All but one, Barber, Lee of Berkeley. I mean, you live still in a world surrounded by people who had jobs similar to yours.

2:13:31Yeah. Are they rethinking their views or rethinking what they went through and what it meant? They're rethinking their lifestyles. Like, I was always impressed when some of my friends told me they quit drinking. They left out the part that it was because they did Ibogaine. I said, oh, you quit drinking. That's great. Well, I did Ibogaine. And so they're rethinking their lifestyles and getting into more healthy stuff. Yeah. But I haven't heard a lot of my friends talk about Iraq the way I talk about Iraq. They don't, I'm not sure if, I mean, we went in there just because there was a vendetta. There was nothing tactical about that.

2:14:11Does it make you wonder, like, there are all these theories about bin Laden, who he was really working for. Was he behind, actually behind 9-11? in? Was that really him who you shot? Do people ever say that to you? Yeah, I've I had someone tell me it was a body double that I shot. And I my response is, well, I killed the guy that was in bed with Bin Laden's wife. So either way, he had it coming. But it was 100 % him. That was definitely him. You know, even meeting the CIA people before we went, like I was convinced because of the especially that one woman that was it's him. Definitely him. All the stuff we found, he was definitely still running al-Qaeda.

2:14:46But how the hell did he live in Pakistan for 10 years? Had to be with the ISI. The intel service had to be monitoring him. Because I think they have vested interests in keeping al-Qaeda a little bit out bay, which is good for everyone because you don't want al-Qaeda getting their nuclear weapons. But they're a massive recipient of U.S. aid. Yeah. But they're basically our enemy. Well, I mean, we were funding the Mujahideen in the 80s and Bin Laden was a part of that. Because the big enemy was the Soviet Union. So let's fight them in Afghanistan and start pumping money in there through Pakistan.

2:15:17So they've been involved forever. What was the role of opium in all this in Afghanistan? You know, that was kind of dumb because all we're doing, I mean, heroin's bad, but you're taking away someone's livelihood. So what are they going to do if they can't grow opium? They're going to fight you. They're going to be Taliban. Why do you care? Stop worrying about the opium. Let them grow it. Who cares? But that became a major thorn in our side because we're worried about opium. How about we just kill the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? Who cares? What about female literacy? Was that a good reason to go to war?

2:15:49No. For war, no. That's more, I don't think, that's for... I'm just joking. Well, I'm just saying... You always hear people say, well, the female literacy rate's got up, and it's like, okay. No, that's on them. Take care of your own house. If your women can't read, I'm not coming to shoot people over that. So you never thought of that as you broke into someone's house? No. Your girls can't read! It's almost like, well, we want women to vote, and I'm like, why? I'm joking. Yeah, sort of. I'm half joking. I'm not. But, wait, sorry. Were the guys, did you ever talk politics? Not really. Because I remember I would read political books before 9-11.

2:16:31Especially on the ships. I remember reading like Sean Hannity's books. And I read Alan Combs' book just to try to get both sides. That's kind of where I got my politics. Like, well, this is crazy. That makes sense. but no one was really interested in that with me. I couldn't get anyone to play chess either. But yeah, I've always been political, not political, but trying to pay attention. And I honestly believe the media was telling us the truth for a while until again, COVID or whatever. Yeah. You don't believe that anymore? No, that was a scam. So last question on a happy note. So you made, basically made the case without saying that a lot of the flag officers, senior military leadership, not impressive.

2:17:11And that's very obvious to me. Who is the most impressive senior officer you've known? Bill McRaven. Wow. Admiral McRaven. That didn't take long. No, he always has been. I knew him. Can you tell people who he is? Admiral McRaven was in charge of Joint Special Operations Command when we took the bin Laden raid. He's the one that sold it to President Obama. He's a SEAL Team 6 guy. And he just, he'd always, I think he was an admiral the whole time I was in the damn military. but every time he showed up, he was, he looked and sounded like an officer. And the way I described, like he looked like a seal.

2:17:45He sounds like a seal. He's got, he's really sharp. Like, and I shouldn't bad mouth all flag officers because he's included. He's just a badass. He knew it really good at everything. And the way I would describe it is like, I understand why Al Qaeda was afraid because like 23 Bill McRavens just came in your house at night to get you. And that's scary. So, but just, he was, he was just sharp, sharp as a tack. And honest. Oh yeah. Yeah. He, I mean, yeah, Yeah, he's the guy. Like, it doesn't take, it didn't take me a second to answer that question. How did he get to that? How did he become an admiral?

2:18:17I don't even know how that works. I, you know, obviously got to take command of different places. So, you know, run a platoon at a SEAL team, run operations. You get promoted to an executive officer, then a commanding officer, which is an 05 level. Have a command move up to like the group level. So you got like a couple different groups. And like dev group being one of them, SEAL team six. Commander there. and then just start getting stars. So he was the second four-star Admiral ever. I think Admiral Olsen was the first one. Great officer too. I was fortunate. My SEAL officers were, for the most part, really good.

2:18:50Like Jocko. He was one of my guys. No, I was one of his guys. And he was a dude that I learned. What I learned from him is I've never seen him lose control or yell. But what he was really good at when you screw up is, man, I expected so much more out of you. oh yeah i'm never gonna let you down again that he was incredible he reenlisted me in kuwait and then uh yeah i've worked with some i've been fortunate to work with really good officers but mcraven best yeah by far rob thank you of course thank you for having me dougar i appreciate fun we want to thank you for watching us on spotify a company that we use every day we know the people who run it good people while you're here do us a favor hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode.

2:19:36We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter. Telling the truth always. You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell. We appreciate it. Thanks for watching.