Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:00]

American killed. Had a catastrophic failure and crashed. $100 million helicopter, MH-47. Our guys didn't even have uniforms. What do you think of working with the Seals? It was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys. A week later, Bengasi happens. The number one priority for me is... I've been dying to ask you this question. You got out September 3, 2001. A week later, September 11th happens.

[00:00:06]

We immediately deployed to Afghanistan. So I was in charge of all of them. As a new guy. And they didn't want to be the guy that failed their mission and got an American killed. Had a catastrophic failure and crashed. $100 million helicopter, MH47. Our guys didn't even have uniforms.

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What do you think of working with the Seals?

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It was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys. A week later, Bengasi happens. The number one priority For me is...

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I've been dying to ask you this question. You got out September third, 2001. A week later, September 11th happens. The towers go down. What is the first thing that went through your head knowing your primary mission was or your primary goal was to a Green Beret in special operations, kicking fucking doors in, going to combat that whole lifestyle, and then you immediately know we're at war.

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Yeah, it was-And you're not in it. The biggest kick in the balls that I've ever had. Because backing up a little bit, I had the option to reenlist. Obviously, I was on retention's radar for like, Hey, this guy's an airborne ranger qualified dude. He's an E-5. I made sergeant when I was 20 years old. I was a team leader in the infantry, had good in. It's like, Hey, man, this guy is a good guy. We're going to keep in the military. But I told them That I want sniper school, and I want halo school in route to 18th Airborne Corps LURS, or Long-Range Reconocence, or a ranger battalion. I was adamant about that. I actually went into a Sergeant Major's office who was the military district of Washington. He was a Command Sergeant Major. He knew my uncle. He said, Mike, what can I give you to stay in? I said, This is the things that I want. He goes, which I found out later is true, halo or freefall school is not a reenlistment option, and it's not. Back then, you didn't have a lot of incentive for staying in, so they used to give you schools to stay in.

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I said, Sergeant Major, we can make it an option, right? Because that's what I What do you want? He's like, Mike, I can't do that for you. I'll call and I'll try. He did, but it's not an option. A CSM even can't make it an option. I said, Okay, that's my... I gave the options on the table, and they decided not to facilitate what I wanted as a dream, and so I decided to get out. I had a buddy who reenlisted with me that I went to ranger school with or reenlisted without me, and he went to third ranger battalion. He jumped into Afghanistan on October 19, 2001.Son of a bitch. The moment it happened, I was actually in college, and I had gotten out of the military, obviously, but I had transitioned into the National Guard component. Okay. I'm sitting in a chow hall at Fayetteville Technical Community College, getting my associate's degree so I could further my education, and saw the events happen. I did some crazy shit, man. I immediately started making phone calls. I went home. I packed a duffle bag of my equipment. I threw my battle dress uniforms, my camo uniforms in the washer and then I had them and was making calls like, What are we doing here?

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What's happening? At the time, I was in 30th heavy armor separate brigade, and I was in the scout platoon, and I was a team leader. I had a little minuscule position That could affect something. But I knew we were going to war. So I had a choice to make, which was really easy, which was I'm going back in the fucking military. So on September 12th, like 09:00 in the morning, I'm making phone calls to get back in.

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I mean, that had to be at the exact same time that's happening, two completely separate emotions. One, tragedy. We'd just been attacked, and a lot of people died. On the other hand, you know what comes after, and everything you've ever wanted to do since you said you were 10 years old becomes a reality, and you're not there. I mean, that had to be... Was one more overpowering than the other?

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Yeah, it was... I felt for the people, obviously, but I knew that I was in a unique position to make a difference in the fight because I was an NCO. I mean, I was a noncommissioned officer, and I knew that there was an opportunity for me to get in the military and fight and get some vengeance. And that's what I wanted to do. I joined the army to fight. The reason I got out because there was no fight to be had. If there was a war, if there was something going on, I would have been in it. I think something important to note is the biological instinct in men, most men, the men I associate with, to fight. It's to fight each other in training because that's what we do as kids. We fight and we grow up in those environments where we're displaying your masculinity. There's a whole bunch of psychological and physiological things that are associated with that. I don't think we grow out of that. We grow up and we want to fight and defend. That's what men do. So it definitely was part of my character and my DNA. And I don't think it was fake.

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I think it was something very real, and I wanted to fight, so I had to go back in.

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How did you get back in?

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It was a battle because the army didn't really know how to handle a whole bunch of dudes who were prior service guys that wanted to go back in.

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Was there a lot of guys that wanted to come back?

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There was a lot of guys. There in that time period, a lot of people who were prior service who had gotten out, even older guys who had gotten out, wanted to come back in and serve. So I had to go through the whole process again, which was... Holy shit. I had to go through MEPs as an E-5, going back through MEPs, The whole duck walk thing, all that stuff. I had to go back through all that to get back in. And they had a program which is similar to what's called 18X right now, where you can come in off the streets and try out for selection. And if you make it, they'll I'll send you to Special Forces training. And if you don't, you simply just go back to your sister unit. Or if you don't have a unit, whatever your job is, they'll find a job for you in that position.

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Now, how old are you at this point?

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At this point, I'm 21 years old.

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You're 21 years old. You just saw the towers come down. And the only thing on your mind is, I got to fucking get back in there. No shit.

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I mean, Wow.

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That's a lot of courage.

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I was young. When I hit the ground, I was running. We immediately deployed to Afghanistan.

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How many guys are on your team, roughly?

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I think at that time, maybe 10. Ten dudes. Yeah. Most attachments are light by nature of guys coming and going. And like I said, my 18 Bravo senior was in surgery, so he had to get a surgery, And so we deployed that year to Afghanistan with a little bit of a light package.

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What year?

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This was '05, early '05.

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So that's a hot year.

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Yeah.

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Now, are you running Indage?

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Yeah. Part of the job is running Indage. When I reported as an 18 Bravo, I was in charge of about 144 Afghan commandos.

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Holy shit. So there are 10 SF guys running a 144-man army.

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Yeah. And basically, I was the commander of them, so I was in charge of all of them.

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As a new guy. As a new guy. Holy shit.

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I'd never forget. He said, Hey, your guys are formed up waiting on you. Wait, waiting on me? Yeah, you're the 18 Bravo. Get out there and be their commander. Because everybody else had other stuff to worry about. The 18 Charlie's had to run the fire base, which is a full-time job of the base security and the actual physical structure, the generators, the water system, everything. The commo, base defense. The commo guys are in the grid.

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What are your living conditions like?

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Shit. I mean...

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Tents, complexes.Living.

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On a cot. Living on a cot surrounded by stacked sandbags in a concrete-ish, just mud hut. Okay. On the second floor of a little structure.

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So you're way the fuck out there at your own fire base. There's no PX. Nothing. There's no Chow Hall. Nothing. None of that shit. Are you eating local food?

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A lot of the time we were, or Mermite or MRE. We were the furthest northern fire base on the border with Pakistan, and we had really not a lot of support. The closest Chris's support was J-Bad, which is still hours away. I mean, if something went bad.

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So how trained up? You show up in country. You're now the commander of 144 Afghan Force. How well are they trained? Was there a changeover from another team, or are you starting from scratch? No.

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Some of them were trained up by prior ODAs. Days. I think first group was there before us. Before that, there was another third group team. And so they had a little bit of training. But that's... I mean, man, when you're talking about Afghans in a rural province of Afghanistan that have no education, have no aptitude, don't know how to read, right? Yeah. I mean, it's all relative.

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I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I'm assuming the first thing you want to do is figure out what they're actually capable of doing.

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Yeah, you have to... No matter what the condition or the situation when you come into a new fire base or fall into new endage, you got to vet them. You got to put them through some process to be able to see what their current capability is. We did that. It wasn't much. So we started from scratch. Wow. We were doing small unit tactics every single day. I was doing small unit tactics with them every single day that we weren't operating. And this would be the force. This is before Afghan Commando Units, Afghan border police, Afghan National Police. This is before all that. So they didn't have a job. Their job for us were, they were Afghan commandos working for Special Forces guys. We paid them directly cash. So These were our first line of defense and QRF, if anything went wrong.

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So you show up in country, you got to get to know these guys. You got to train them. You got to figure out what their capabilities are. You got to improve those. How long do you have before boots on the ground, first operation?

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Well, I mean, again, that's relative as well, because when you infield into a remote fire base, the one we were at in the middle of nowhere was surrounded by high ground. It was just a couple of Americans in the middle of the Wild West. So we were getting rocketed. We were getting Reports of attacks and all these things that were happening. So we were in it. We were in the thick of it already. But we didn't have any time. It was immediate. I think we went on an op two days, three days after we hit the ground. Immediately went and did a link up with one of the Afghan seniors or Afghan elders in a village. And that's a movement to contact. You're just rolling, hoping you're not going to get blown up, hoping you're not going to get in a tick with the guys that you haven't vetted yet.

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Holy shit. We're talking two fucking days.

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Two days.

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And you're out the door with them on a movement.

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Yeah, we had no choice.

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How did that go?

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It went uneventful. We had activity, but nothing significant happened, luckily for us. And we just started building more rapport with them, vetting them, training them, and it improved our situation over time.

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So you're out, you meet the village elder, you come back, you debrief. Are you happy with what you've just been handed with the 144 guys? Or are you going, holy shit, we have got a lot of work to do?

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No, I will say Here's just a little bit of forward history on the guys that I trained. Those same guys that I trained had worked with Special Operations, including Special Missions Unit from the Navy. Okay. Prior to working with us. So there were some good dudes. And when I left that firebase, a guy by the name of Rob Miller ripped into that firebase and was with those guys as an 18 Bravo from third Special Forces Group when he was killed and earned the Medal of Honor. Postumiously, of course. Those men, those Afghans that were with them, were the Afghans that I trained, that were trained prior. So they were squared away. They had heart. They were disciplined. They wanted it, man.

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You were impressed with them.

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Yeah, I was impressed. A good example was they instinctively knew when When or if there was a potential significant act going to happen, call it Cig act, and they would immediately get to the high ground, and they were good about displacing themselves and then talking to the local community. Because you have to understand that these people lived in that same community, so they knew everybody around them, and they didn't want to be the guy that failed their mission and got an American killed. So they had buy-in. So, yeah, I was impressed with them. We had a lot of work to do, obviously, but they had a good base. And all the guys in Nurestan province that I operated with that were Afghan in the village of Nurey and Asadabad, and Barakout, all great men.

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What are these guys carrying? Do they have nods? Do they have helmets?

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At this time in the war, no nods, no helmet. We eventually evolved into that, but we were straight AK-47s and flip flops. Oh, man. Our guys didn't even have uniforms. They were rolling around in whatever we can get them. I actually exploited a program that was a nonprofit that was providing clothes and toiletry items to soldiers overseas and got this nonprofit to send me helicopters full of equipment to be able to outfit my Afghans with just clothes. With just toothbrushes because they didn't have it, and we weren't paying for it. So they needed stuff. I mean, it's so funny seeing these dudes running around with Harley-Davidson shirts and flannel jackets and USA ball caps. But we had to do what we had to do.

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You finish that deployment, you come home. What's next?

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I get back from that deployment, and Iraq was getting bad, and I wanted to go to school. So I went to put my name in the hat to go to Sephardic, Sephardtec, which is Special Forces, Advanced, Target, Reconnaissance, Target, Acquisition, Interdiction, Exploitation, a whole bunch of words and an acronym that doesn't even look right. It's Sephardtec, whatever. People call it Sephardic. It's our CQB, advanced schoolhouse for hostess rescue, for direct action, for vehicle interdiction. We learn all that stuff there. It's, I believe, an eight-week school, maybe nine weeks, so it's pretty long. It is the minimum qualification that you need to serve in a Commander's and Extremist Force, which there's one of those per group, which is a reinforced company that's designed to conduct Haas's rescue and crisis response across the world.

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How much CQB do you have? What's your background in CQB before you How does that go up to that school? What is the basic mold for an SF guy?

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Usually at the team level, you learn... It's called Sefawik. You learn basic CQB Sometimes it's strongwall. I think at that time, it was probably strongwall. Real basic CQB. You don't learn points of domination. You don't learn Haas's rescue considerations. Maybe a little bit, but there's not a lot of it. Okay. So at the basic team level, if you don't have a Sephardic qualified guy, you might not know a lot. You might think you know a lot, but you really don't. And I thought I knew a lot, but I didn't know anything. I showed up and didn't know shit about CQB until I got there. I knew how to shoot. I was a decent shooter with pistol and carbine, but I didn't know much.

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After that school, let's fast forward to the next deployment. Did you utilize that a lot, or was it back to to what you were doing before?

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No, it was... In fact, I was in Charlie Company, second Battalion. The CIF was Bravo Company, second Battalion. One company designated per group, so they were right next door. I used to see those dudes come in and they had longer hair, they had cooler uniforms, they had better guns, and I wanted to be in the CIF. At that time, you had to have two years team time to even think about going in the CIF. But I had real good rapport with my company, SART Major. He went next door to take the CIF. He was my SART Major. He became the SIF SIF major. Long story short, I wasn't supposed to go to SIF as a new guy with only a year and some change on the team. But I went to Sephardic and came recommended out of Sephardic. So they pulled me over. I wasn't supposed to deploy to Afghanistan for another year. But I went next door and I was in Iraq a month later. Out of Sephardic, from that trip, I came back. I went straight to Sephardic, which is two months. I had 30 days, and I was straight back in Iraq.

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So you did a nine-month deployment, come back for roughly 90 days. Two months of that is Training. Becoming an assaulter at the highest level, and then you redeploy. Yeah.

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Redeployed in Iraq for a counterterrorism mission, which is all CQB.

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Were you married at the time?

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At the time, I was married Married, but I was married young and didn't... To be honest- You came secondary to the mission. Absolutely secondary to the mission. We barely knew each other. On the ground, I had a couple of months with her. So it was turning to burning. In fact, I had a hasty marriage because I saw some dudes get killed our trip. I was part of Operation Red Wing that trip. And we had a couple of other Chinooks that were down. We had guys that we lost in the company. So it was a bad trip. It was a bad year. A lot of Americans were killed that year.

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It's a fucking small world. The fact that you were there, I came there right after that, which means we were there at the same time. And as we talked a couple of days ago, you met my fucking best friend who just passed away. It's fucking crazy.

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You know how small the world is. It is a small world, man.

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So you did utilize... Sorry, sidetracked there. But so you did utilize that school on that next appointment?

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Every operation. I explosively breached every other target every other night. We went out every night, sometimes twice a night, going after bad guys. And it was a real active campaign. It was us and I believe SEAL Team 8. And we did joint ops, where it was like two SIF guys and five Seals, and we went out with our endage and conducted counterterrorism missions.

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What do you think of working with the Seals?

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My first impression of them weren't great because we had a few interactions with them where I'll never forget. At the time, I was, I believe, still in E6. I hadn't made E7 yet, but I had a combat rotation behind me, and I was on my second deployment and had been in training for years, had been in the military and the infantry, and so I had a background. I'll never forget one of the young Sils being told by one of my guys who was a senior guy. I was the most junior guy in the SIF. A SIF, a Commanders and Extremists Force, is filled with the most senior guys in the group. I think my detachment, years later, everybody made Master Sergeant the same time. Like an entire senior team with guys with multiple deployments. I had the least amount of combat. Guys on average had three or four rotations. And this is early GWAT. He said, Hey, maybe you should hang out with these guys because we could do some cross training and maybe teach you guys some things. And he said, What How does your guys possibly teach mine?

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You got to be shitting me.

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He said that. I was humbled to the fact that a lot of my own guys were so senior and already legends in the community. There was already a lot of stories about them, so I paid attention. We had a lot of experiences like that with the young Seals, but a lot of them weren't. I mean, Jeremy Wise, who eventually went to work for the CIA, and he was killed, unfortunately, in a suicide bombing. He was there. He was great. A couple of guys that are now in other Special Mission units were working with me, and they were great. I didn't have a horrible experience, but it It was different. I mean, a young seal coming out of training, 21, 22. And even at that time, I was 26 at the time. So it was different. But we got along good. We didn't have problems with operating with them. And we had a lot of action. We had a lot of fun that rotation.

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What is your next assignment? So you're at third group. You go to the Cef. What comes next?

[00:24:29]

Another Another rotation in the SIF. The SIF is a grime. I did three SIF rotations there, Iraq, back to back. Going to war, coming back. Going to war, coming back. Going to war, coming back. I eventually moved up into reconnaissance in special operations and became a sniper. Went to sniper school, went to freefall school, and started specializing my efforts on long gun. Between unilateral operations, which is working with Task Force, the Joint Task Force, I think at the time, we were working with Tom D. Tommaso, who's a famous Black Hawk down platoon leader, and he was a Special Missions Unit Commander. We operated under him and under Task Force 16, which is Stanley McChristol's big kill capture conglomerate of the best units in the world. We were part of that effort when we went out and crushed bad guys for years. It was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys. I did that for three rotations in a row.

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You've got a hell of a career, Yeah.

[00:25:44]

Thanks, man.

[00:25:46]

You leave there and then- I leave and start grinding to build up this unit, hire and fire a couple of guys, and build up a skill set for special reconnaissance in the continent of Africa to be able to respond to crisis that potentially happened.

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There was no, at the time, organization that was covering down on Africa because it used to be third group's responsibility. But because of the war, we had a change in hands and change in responsibility. We stood it up. It was a grind. We got validated by Special Operations Command. That was, ironically enough, September first of 2012, we got validated. A week later, or September 11th, Bengasi happens. I had already been notified prior to Bengasi happening that my team and myself was going to be the first guys into Libya to run what's called a 12-way program program, which is a congressionally mandated counterterror program to counter Al Qaeda, which therein lies the bene, therein lies the point, which is Before September 11th, 2012, I had already been identified, We're going to go in there, stand up a counterterror force to counter Al Qaeda. It's often been said that, Hey, there was no threats there. There was threats. There was threats, there was bombings, there were shootings. There was attacks on the UN, foreign nationals, embassy staff. I was getting all those intel sit reps before That happened. Then obviously, that happened and it changed everything.

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Where were you when that happened?

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Ironically enough, I was back in a Special Mission Units compound doing a a cross-talk brief with basically a key leader engagement with the team lead from Team Libya that had been designated, and me and the other guy from my unit because we were former unit members of that unit, we were there doing a cross-talk. I'll never forget, I went there and met up with a J3, which was at the time a colonel, and he told me, Last night, this just happened, and this is what's going on. And so I stayed an extra few days to assess the situation and to get tied in, because at that point, it was my unit's responsibility to react and respond outside of, obviously, the primary main effort, that unit that I was in, this responsibility of responding to that crisis.

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So was this happening? Was Bengasi happening real-time when you found out? Yes.

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It was happening real-time. It was still active, and it was still happening. I was watching on ISR, things unfolding. Jesus Christ.

[00:29:09]

Is this what ultimately led you to separate?

[00:29:17]

Yeah, so that's exactly right. Long story short, I deployed to Libya soon after that and stood up a 1208 program. We I had all the right things done to go after the guys that were responsible for the killing of the four personnel that were killed in Bengasi, Ambassador Stevens, Smith, and then Glenn Doherty, and Tyrone Woods. We went there. I was deployed there for over six months. I busted my ass and tried everything I could to Kill or capture those guys, with obviously other Special Operations Units that were there. One other Special Operations Unit that was there. We offered up a full platter. Kill capture, bilateral mission, unilateral mission, whatever you want, we'll do. We were told that the political climate wouldn't allow for it, so we're not going to do anything. Let's just say I was disgruntled when I came back. I had a lieutenant colonel that I was co-located with that was a reserve officer from Africom who was a fucking piece of shit, who was drinking every night, getting drunk, who didn't give a fuck about the mission, who was making excuses every single day about not wanting to work, not wanting to do the op.

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And so when I got back, I said, Go fuck yourself. God, are you serious? Yeah.

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I know how fucking tough that can be. I didn't watch. We didn't have pred feed or anything like that. But to watch an It was an event going down, that's one of the most... When you know you can fucking help, it's one of the most helpless feelings in the fucking world. And I've experienced that as well. We were working with a foreign counterpart and should have been on that fucking up, but we weren't. And their helos went down, and we listened to the entire thing on the fucking radio. And then we saw them when they got back. And And the event that you had to stay on the sideline for us. I mean, I could see how you could be that disgruntled. I mean, you got out with 18 fucking years in, right? Yeah. Two years to retirement.

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Yeah. I got back. I did get recruited by the CIA at the time. They recruited me for a job, and I had finished my college degree, my bachelor's degree, the year prior to that. So that was a prerequisite to become a staffer for them. I came back with the anticipation of doing that job, but the sequester happened, which was a stop loss on all or a hiring freeze on all jobs. I wasn't able to do that job, which fucked me up. I was prepared to do that. I transitioned off active duty and then went into the National Guard component, where I took a team in Texas, a 19th Special Forces Group, and was just waiting on the word.

[00:32:40]

In field craft, it seems like you guys do a lot of prepping. And and are masters of it. And I don't know about you, but a lot of the clients that I've had think that there might be something they need to prepare for. They think something might happen, not necessarily the end of the world, But they just want to be ready in case of a natural disaster, an EFP. There's a thousand different scenarios. What would you say for somebody that's completely green, they don't know how to shoot, they don't own a gun, they don't have food storage, anything, what would you say the number one priority would be? Where do they start?

[00:33:26]

The number one priority for me is personal defense because the first principle of patrolling is security. If you can't secure yourself, you can't secure your family, you can't defend your life, you can't defend your family's life. So I would say it starts with a personal decision to buy a firearms, learn how to utilize a firearms, and carry that firearms daily.

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What firearms would you suggest starting with pistol or rifle?

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I think, universally, I carry different guns for different reasons. But, universally, a Glock 19 is probably the staple, concealed carry pistol. In contracting, we carry Glock 17s, typically, but Glock 19s is the right frame size for most. It's the right size frame for concealment. It has the most accessories per gun in the industry. It's a good platform. It's reasonably priced. And I've used a Glock 19 when the military got them in special operations. And I've seen them throughout my military career, and I've never seen one fail. So a single action, only Glock 19 is the start point.

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I would definitely agree with that. It's like the Toyota Corolla of handguns. Yeah, absolutely. They just never fucking die.

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Yeah, 100 %.

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And then So next would be... So you would say pistol and then move on to rifle?

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No, the next priority for me is med.Med?Med, Absolutely. 30,000 people a year die in vehicle accidents. I wonder how many of those could have been prevented. I mean, 400 idiots a year follow their tree stands and hunting and break their legs and do dumb shit. So we're prone to accidents. We're prone to traumas. Trauma. I've treated trauma in real life. I've saved people's lives with tourniquets. Tourniquet, which is a $2,99, $99 piece of equipment from North American Rescue, which we sell on our website at fieldcraftsurvival. Com, is the number one piece of equipment in med that you need to carry. Stopping an extremity wound, a traumatic bleed from a femoral or brachial artery is life-saving. If you don't do that, you simply just go to sleep and die.

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Are you guys teaching meds?

[00:36:02]

We absolutely do, yeah. We teach TCC, tactical combat casualty carrier, which we were required by our contract to train. We teach a certified TCC course through N-A-A-M-T, the the certification on tactical med training, trauma training. I just taught a CPR lifesaver course at my Tribe Expo recently. So we frequently teach med, And I expect that if in contracting in austere environments, we are required to carry a tourniquet based on our own understanding of what we could run into, that a civilian should do the same, whether that's in your Inside your waistband, because we do sell inside the waistband tourniquet holder, or that's inside of a bag or inside your vehicle, somewhere within arm's reach, where if you're experiencing trauma, you could save your life.

[00:36:57]

Interesting. Would So number three, what would the number three thing be? We got pistol, we got med.

[00:37:06]

If we're talking about equipment-specific things that you need to carry, the next piece of equipment would be the way in which you carry it, which would be the bag in which you carry. A lot of people don't think about it, but the extension of your capability of what you can carry on your person is limited. You can only fit so much shit in your pockets and your pants. And if you If you have a bag, meaning an everyday carry bag, that might be your purse, your Merce, your European man's satchel, it sets you up for an extended capacity. That's how we look at vehicles. If I have a Med kit in my back pocket that's a minimalist, low-vis Med kit. Well, I want my fucking car to be an ambulance. I want there to be enough Med equipment to treat my family, myself. Then you upgrade that to your house as well. I want a damn hospital at my house. Having the ability to carry all their stuff is super important. In that bag, I would definitely include a survival kit, a modern survival kit that has the staples of survival, including the ability to contain water, purify water, start a fire, signal, communicate potentially, sat irridium, VHF, UHF, the list goes on.

[00:38:28]

Gummy bears. Gummy bears that are fat-free, that have lots of carbs, lots of sugar, lots of calories. They're survival bears.

[00:38:37]

That's what we call them. They're survival bears. No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. If you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.