Transcript of #153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up

Chris Peranto, welcome to the show, man. It's a

long time coming. I would probably say it, but thanks for and you and you're so tolerant, man. That was so cool that you're just willing to wait and then just, hey. I'm gonna be in town, and I hope you don't have to bump anybody. If you did, sorry, guys.

But just you're you've always been a stand up guy with me. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's really cool. Yeah.

Thanks, bud.

My pleasure. I'm just happy you're here, and I'm, extremely patient. So

There aren't many stand up guys in it in there in the world and even coming out of our community anymore in this public figure world. So it's nice to still find a few out there like yourself. I try to be, but I'm not always a stand over guy. That's why

Oh, I'm sure you are.

Talk to my wife, man. I need to bring you home, talk to my wife about how nice and reasonable I am because I don't get that respect at home, man.

Well, Chris, I wanna do a life story on you. Yeah. You know? And, obviously, talk a lot about Benghazi and what you're doing now, but we're gonna cover the full spectrum here. Okay.

And, so everybody starts off with an introduction.

So are you gonna read? Don't make me feel like a pretentious asshole.

Oh, no. You're good. Everybody gets 1. Chris Peranto, former army ranger, second battalion, 75th regiment.

Yeah.

You responded to the Benghazi 2012 attack. You're the author of the Ranger Way and the Patriot's Creed, coauthor of 13 Hours, the inside account of what really happened in Benghazi. You're a motivational and public speaker and the cohost on Battle Line podcast. Yeah. You're the founder of the 14th Hour Foundation, owner of Battle Line Tactical, and coowner of Tanto Vodka.

Yeah.

You're the host of a pro military documentary series, War Heroes. You cofounded E3 Firearms Association, and you're the father you're a father, husband, and a Christian.

That's the most important there at the bottom.

That's right.

You could have cut out everything else and just read that at the bottom, and I would have been perfectly happy, right?

That right there just tells everybody what a great man you are.

I appreciate thank you, man. Thanks, man. Thank you. It's cool you say.

You're welcome. What is the E3 firearms association?

Well, you know, and we it's so difficult. I don't know if you know Adam Paintschod. Adam was a SIG firearms, he started SIG Academy. Okay. A trooper in New Hampshire.

It is a training website. It has been so difficult though to get that thing off the ground. It was just running to roadblock after roadblock, because of Google. Because I hey. And if you don't think there's state run media and state run, state run Internet web there is.

You have to be dumber than a bag of hammers to not see that out there, but it's it's we've tried to get it going. There's a lot of training materials on there, videos out there, and, you know, you get sponsorships to come to Battle Line tackle courses. If you're a member, you come to my courses for free.

Oh, wow. I mean,

it's just it's a it's a So

is it an online training platform?

It's an online training platform, but it's a paid online training platform.

How many how many lessons are on there?

Oh, man. I know just hip pocket training stuff where I'll just jump on and do a 10 minute video, we've gotta have 50 or 60 videos on.

Oh, right on.

And Adam's a wonderful, wonderful instructor. He is I am the loosey goosey, hey, man, let's just go out and shoot. I'm gonna give you some lessons. Adam is which is which is great. It's a great dynamic because he you you do.

There are people that respond to that kind of training better. The by the book lesson about where some guys respond to, just tell me what I need to do. This is what you need to do. But, you know, it's it's it's been we've we've had it going for a few years now, and it's just always trying to improve the website, get that flowing. It's e 3 does a and it's a whole association, so it's not just farms.

There's camping. It's outdoor. Oh, wow. Camping, aviation. John Rain Waters runs the aviation side of it, you know, RV ing, off roading, and I say I so I tell the e 3 owner, his name's Brian Brian Brian Johnson, I tell him, yeah, farms is like the redhead stepchild of e 3, e 3 because all those are cruising, and ours is just it's it's been very difficult.

And I and I get it too because, you know, it's a paid website where there's a lot of YouTube sensations out there that are showing training, and you can get that for free. Yeah. So it is, and it's I I won't do the the free video stuff, and and the reason being it's not a money thing. It really is. You you really don't have any control of who those videos are going to.

And where do I get that from? Well, I I spoke at an FBI Academy conference, which had a lot of law enforcement officers, a lot of former FBI trainers, and I sat down with them, and they're great guys. You know, of course, it's not all formal functions. I'm with a bunch of cops, man. So of course we're gonna go to the bar a little bit and enjoy enjoy, have some food.

But I remember coming back and I sat with 1 of the officers and he goes, you know, you've had Don Shipley on. I know. He goes, you know, I I watched Don's videos, but now it's starting to bother me, a lot of these videos out there because they're teaching all these tactics and they don't know, they have no control of who's getting them. And the Dallas, police office Dallas chief of police came in and they had that tactical shooting where some officers died, and he was 1 of the speakers at that event as well. And it kinda hit home to me.

I was like, man, he's exactly right. We're putting all these videos, and and god bless him. I I have nothing wrong to say about Don. I don't know Don. We've never met.

I support what he does. I think, you know, he's a from what I've seen, he looks like he's a stand up guy, and I'm I'm just throwing that as an example because that's what the law enforcement officer said the police he's from Philadelphia. He's like, we just you know, we're we're really we're really getting not upset, but he says we're really worried that the bad guys are starting to watch these videos out there.

Well, I mean, there's a caveat to that too. You know? I mean, what the are people supposed to do? We've defunded the police. The border is wide open.

Yeah. They are actively sending $87,000,000 a week to the Taliban.

And that did that's

Sorry, man. You know what I mean? But people have to be able to defend themselves, and that's where they go to do it.

And they go on it. And so And that stuff's out there no matter what. And that's where it's just it's it's where I can at least have some control though. And, you know

what I mean? I mean, people are I a 100% get your point.

And I get your point. Said it too. Yeah. Till he said, like, I never wrote the

whole bible. Context. There's a things aren't the same as they used to be.

Not at all. That people,

it's dangerous out there. I mean, Chicago is the murder capital of of the country, and more people are dying there than they did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it's no shock that that is 1 of my most I have arranged there with a Chicago cop. The VOD Defense, Daniel Lombard, tremendous guy. We've got a range called the compound. I don't think that's any coincidence that the majority that those are the biggest classes that I will have when I teach out there. At the compound in Crete, Illinois, it's run by Daniel Lombard, the VOD Defense is his training company, but he's a he's a lead farm instructor for Chicago PD.

He's getting older now, so he's off the street now he's teaching. But but you're right. It's just this where where do I find some responsibility? And again, I never thought of it that way until I talked to it. I was like, you know, he's he's got a point, so I'm not gonna stop doing videos.

Don't care. No. That's not gonna happen. But where can I at least have some control? I'm not gonna stop teaching tactics Mhmm.

With my classes. Well, Donald, you're a hypocrite. No. At least have some control. I know who I'm teaching.

I at least have something, and if and have we turned students away when I couldn't verify whether they could carry a criminal? Yeah. We have. I've done it. So I'm not ever gonna tell guys to stop teaching tactics.

Yeah. And it's an outlet for us too. It's therapeutic for us. But I I would just say after talking to that police officer and then getting back to the e 3 stuff, being a paid website, I'm a problem with it being paid because we have some control of at least who the members are and who's watching. And if it's somebody that maybe is a criminal, shouldn't be owning a weapon, we have some little control that we can alright.

I'm like, I can't stop them from learning from other guys, but you're out. We can't teach anymore. But getting back to the e 3 again, it has been an uphill climb with it because it is a paid website, and you can get the training for free on YouTube or Instagram. And but, you know, from tactics are tactics are tactics. Shooting is fundamentals.

There is no secret sauce. There's no Jedi mind trick. You're not gonna I'm not gonna be teaching you how to use the force. The way I shoot, you can go watch another shooter, and you're gonna get the same stuff. It it's just the presentation.

Who do you like? What what resonates with you? So, yeah, E3 has been good, and I think it's wonderful because we're part of an outdoor we're telling them, hey, go go do something. Fire shooting is outdoor. Shooting is relaxing, at least in my opinion.

Shooting is you're outside in the fresh air, or you're at least doing something active. It's a sport. Yeah. It really is. I mean, shit.

You have you have the competitions, the USCCA, you have all those. The tag games, it's a sport now. Yeah. And it should be like that. The reason I'm getting into why I talk about it and the paid and not paid is is really why I don't do more unpaid YouTube videos online.

I don't I don't do that. That's why I don't is because I don't have control of who's watching it, and and it was that conversation with that Philadelphia police officer and listening to he spoke before I spoke, the Dallas chief of police, and now he wasn't condemning it at all. He's just saying this guy knew what he was doing. He had some tactics, and he didn't say no what he was doing. He knew how to pie.

Yeah. He knew how to he knew how to edge a corner.

Well, Chris, before we get too deep into the interview, everybody gets a gift.

Oh, no. Man, you you're all gifted.

Nothing but hospitality. Oh, man. They're gummies. That's right. Those are legal in all 50 states.

Fortunately or maybe unfortunately for you, I don't know. But they are made here in

the USA. Oh, that's what we

And, yeah. So there you go. Some vigilance leak going on. Those are hard to come by, by the way.

Listen. Actually, this is going on my side by side when I get home. Nice. Right on. It'll be at the range, man.

Nice.

And thank you. Thank you so much. And do you we need to bring manufacturing back to this country, man. The only thing we're manufacturing now is drama and freaking political bullshit. That's right.

We need more manufacturing. Thank you, man.

You're welcome. Thanks. 1 last thing Yeah. Before we get in. I got a Patreon account.

They're my top supporters. They've been here with me since the beginning, and, they're the reason I'm here and you're here. Yep. So, 1 of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. Uh-oh.

And so this 1 is from Moose.

What's up, Moose?

What was it like for you to see the Obama administration blatantly lie about something you saw firsthand? Blame the attack on something unrelated and refused to call it a terrorist attack. How did it feel to be on the ground at the annex and realize that help was not coming? I understand. I'm like Let's do 1 question first.

Well, let's go first first with the help not coming, so that's we'll just go on a time line there.

We can skip that.

We'll do that. We'll do that. Okay. So give me give me a number because the feeling What was

it like for you to see the Obama administration blatantly lie about something you saw first?

Yeah. I mean, I can tell you, watch Fox and Friends, the last last, interview I ever did on Fox and Friends with Pete Hixeth. It was back in 2014 or 15 where he would somebody caught him on a cell phone. It was either at Loyola or 1 of those 1 of those liberal colleges there in Chicago. I I can't remember which 1.

And he said Benghazi was a conspiracy. He didn't know he was being filmed, and of course, they threw it on the TV. It's at 6 in the morning. I was just I was in actually in Springfield. I was gonna go gonna go speak at a, an event that was sponsored by the guy that owns Bass Pro.

So I was staying out at the Bass Pro Resort up there and told Pete I couldn't be there. I said I gotta zoom in, so I zoomed in at 6 AM, and I'm half asleep. I've been, this was my 5th speaking event in like 7 days, just spent. And pissed me off. Why why would it?

Of course, it pissed me. I mean, all those lines continually it was angry. It made me feel hate. And what did I say? And you can watch it.

It's out there on YouTube somewhere. I'm sure. He said, what did you feel after you watched Benghazi? And I said, well, Pete, I said I wanted to reach for the TV, and I wanted to choke his ass. I I wanted to choke him out.

And Pete, his eyes got big. He goes, you have probably don't wanna be threatening a former US president. I said, Peter, you asked me. That was my last ever Fox interview, actually, I ever did. And I did get visited by the Secret Service 2 weeks later.

Luckily, I knew the guys. They showed up in my house. Like, Chris, we we gotta be here. You're threatening the president on national TV. And, but if that tells you my anger right there, I mean, without even thinking, skipping a beat, and it wasn't to create, it wasn't to troll accounts, it wasn't to do clickbait, it was an immediate reaction.

As soon as I saw it, it was like, that mother. And I didn't wanna kill her. I'm, let's get in the ring. I'm gonna put you in a lock, and let's see how you feel, man. That's what I felt.

So, of course, I was angry. I was angry for a lot of years. And I think if you watch even your speeches that I've done out there, I just still do corporate talks. I just did, you know, that's why I'm in Nashville and do your show and I did a talk at the at the Gaylord there. In the early days, the speeches were very very angry because nobody was being held accountable.

Mhmm. And there were people that were calling us liars,

you know.

And it that's that's hard to it's hard to be called a liar, guys, when I saw Roan and I was shooting over their heads when that last those 3 mortars threw a fire for a pick, hit right on top of building c. The 5th attack that night, and I was shooting, and it wasn't the movie showed it as daytime, it was actually, it was, before morning on Audical Twilight. You know, it was right before this, you know, you know what that is. Your viewers can Google that. It's right before the sun comes up, so it's still dark.

So my night vision was still on. My 15s were on, and I remember the first 1 hit, blew up, on the backside of building ceilings. It was right over the top. Roan spun. He went cyclic on that belt fed, which was pretty freaking awesome, because all I'm seeing is a laser beam as he turns and they're coming to attack us through the through the sheep slaughterhouse here.

I put a few rounds over his head, because I wanna get in a fight even though I can't see them because I'm I'm back behind them on building a's on Belize C. Dave's there's Dave Rubin shoots, Oz is up there, he shoots, Bubba's up there, he's shooting. So I'm seeing all this far. Shooting, I'm thinking, shit, mortars this way, they gotta be bringing that whole force following those mortars in. So I turn around, make sure nobody's coming, nobody's there, come back, 2 more shots.

I see 1 hit directly right on top. My vision goes completely white. You know, this is overbund. It's like white. As it comes back, I saw 4, and now there's 3.

So the guy disappeared, and I can hear him screaming. Even in all of that, I can still hear him. It was Dave. I didn't know it at the time, but it was Ubin. Just sheared it sheared his leg off, sheared his arm, they were hanging.

So not completely gone, but he's legs this way, arms this way. How do I know that Tig got up there when he saw Dave? Tig told me what his arm his arms for legs looked like. Take a few more shots, because what can you do? We're still getting attacked, we're in the middle of a fight.

You know, as you don't you can't stop fighting. What am I gonna do, run off my building and go help? He's got 3 guys up there. I gotta keep fighting. I got my sector behind me I gotta take.

I turn around, I come back, they're still shooting. I took 2 more shots, and then I saw boom boom boom. If you've been in artillery, you call for fire and you know what that is. That's fire for effect. They're right where they wanna hit.

Night vision goes white, and as it comes back, all I see is the pixie dust. It got quiet. It got silent. Really weird. I thought they were gonna keep coming.

And, all I saw was the charged particles because, you know, blow ups, explosion, the debris, the dust gets heated or charged, and it looks like it does. It looks like pixie dust coming down with those, with my night vision starts to come back and refocus from the the white light, and they were all gone. And it it it my brain my brain said, your team just got turned to dust. It's like, holy. I mean, it was it was it was and it maybe it felt like longer than what it was.

It was only a few seconds, but I put my head down. And I remember thinking, it was the 1 time negatively I thought that every other time, man, there was negative things happening, that was the 1 time where it was like that, holy shit, we might lose this. And I said, man, we can't beat this. I'm thinking to myself, we don't have any air support. They're gonna fucking keep hammering us.

And, you know, God God God was there all night, man. And God kicked me in my ass and said, get your gun up, ranger. And I know people are gonna, oh, fuck. That's no. Making no.

That's what happened. What do you

mean God kicked you in the ass and said get up?

Quit whining. Quit feeling like a victim.

So you Is that a feeling you got? Is that a voice you heard?

Voice in the back of my head right there. I still feel it. I still get chills. And maybe it was my mom saying it, you know, but it was to me, it was that voice of God. It was something saying, we don't quit.

You don't quit. Get your gun up. Keep fighting. And I said, get your gun up, Ranger. That's what I heard.

And that's being a Ranger too, and that's what Rangers are. When you're at the 75th, get your gun up. Get your gun up. You're not quitting. Keep fighting.

Keep pressing through. You learn that from Rip, which is option 40. Now harass now, you learn that throughout. That's what's instilled in you. Rangers before you, what'd they do in Vietnam, the 100 killer teams?

They ran towards the fight. What'd they do when they jumped into Rio Hado? They ran towards the fight. There's no cover. They shot their way off the off the earth the tarmac in Grenada.

What'd they do? They ran towards the fight. Now get your gun up, Ranger. Why and so why am I so angry? Because when somebody calls it conspiracy, and I watched I watched Roan I watched Roan and Bob and Dave and Daz at the time.

I thought all I watched them evaporate. That's what I do with my friends. Like, holy shit. Those guys are they they're gone. I've seen death before, but have you ever saw where your friends just like, they're there and they're not?

So when he said it was a conspiracy, it's like, hell yeah. I was pissed off. And I was pissed off for many, many years, and it it did hurt a lot of relation. It hurt my relationship with my wife and my kids at the time. So to ask that's I mean, it's a great question, but it also points to how how irresponsible politicians are with their words.

Yeah. And and how they they don't give a shit, and him especially. You know, Hillary got what she deserved. She wasn't present. She was humiliated.

She lost. Is she gonna get more? Yeah. She's gonna get more. When she when she stand before her, make her with God, God's gonna judge her, and I hope he judges her, and he's going to.

He's gonna judge her well, how she should. Obama is the 1 that got over Scott free. He was the commander in chief. Come on, man. Who's supposed to help get people to us?

Is it Hillary in state department? Granted, she was hugely responsible. So was Leon Panetta. General Ham could have done something. But who was the commander in chief?

Who was general Ham? He was the he was the Eurocomp commander. He was the 1 that

And for everybody knows Leon Panetta was director of CIA at the time.

At the time, and then he went to the SECDEF, you know, and became SECDEF and all that. But actually, but, you know, he could've done something too. And, but Obama is the 1 that really is the 1 that's held should have been held responsible for it all. You know? And also with the rhetoric, Al Qaeda remember, people forget that.

What was his platform at the time? Al Qaeda was on a run. Terrorism is dead. He knew it wasn't. That's who attacked us.

You you had Sir on. She knows a better name, but who was the 1 that masterminded that? Yeah. It's our Harry. What he's number 2 Al Qaeda.

So, bro, the the guy that got away with it, and then continued to try to press a narrative, which we see happening now. Question.

I don't wanna get too deep, and I wasn't expecting to get this deep inside.

That's just me, man. I I go down rabbit hole all the time. What I

wanna ask though is is I can see I can see the rage returning right now.

Yeah, it does. Of course it's gonna come.

So what what was the what was the turning point that kinda eased that rage?

That interview was 1 because It's like with Pete Eggseth? Yeah. That was because it was it was it was the last mainstream interview I ever did. Was that Was that

your terms or theirs? Mine.

I said I'm not gonna do anymore. I I told them, so I'm done. It was mine. I'm not doing that because I got I did get asked 2 times to go on Tucker, and nothing against him. I like him.

I just I'm not doing that because that's what they wanna get. I started to realize that's what they wanna get out of me. They wanted they know Tono's gonna come in and say something that's gonna clickbait and gonna be pissed off because that's how I always was. I am very I get I'm animated. I'm gonna say what's on my mind, and if it pisses somebody, so what?

I'm gonna tell you how I feel, and that's great for ratings. It is. And I but and nothing against I got friends down there. Sean's a nice Hanami's a nice guy, man. You know, the the the Deuceys are they're nice people.

You know? Martha McCollum, she's really nice. She's treated me very, very well. They're not it's just was ruining my family and my relationship because I got divorced at that time as well. So that anger had carried over to where my wife and my kids, like, we don't want you around anymore.

Your toxicity is here. You're you're just always pissed off. You're never happy, and we had gotten divorced. So when I did that, we were actually divorced at that time, and it was I gotta get myself right because

So it was it was doing the interviews that brought the rage back.

I think just reliving it all and not being able to handle it and finding a silver lining to it, which there always is a silver lining. God gives us a silver lining for everything that we do. We just gotta find it.

How do you feel about doing this interview?

That's I'm good because I'm at peace with it all. I don't have a problem getting I know it's gonna bring anger out of me, but does it make me angry when I leave? No.

Because I

don't have to see my kids. And I want to tell this because I still talk to Ty's mom, Cheryl Bennett, wonderfully. Love her. I'm she's she I'm her second I mean, she's my second mom, and telling this keeps their memories alive. Where back then, it was more of, it's about me.

I need to show you how angry I am. I need to show you how pissed off

I am.

I need it was selfish. It's very now it's I'm a tell you because I want people to know that so when they hear a liberal, they hear on Obama, they hear Hillary, they hear hear a Biden say, now it's conspiracy. You know, it's videoing a protest. They can say no. I know that dude's telling the truth, because just look how emotional he gets.

And if of course, it's emotional. I saw my teammates die. They were my friends. I remember we weren't best friends or nothing, but they were still my teammates, and they still were my friends. And so they tried the powers that be tried to cover it up.

But that was a turning point somewhat, because 6 months later, I did put a gun in my head. We'll get there. Yeah.

For starters

Yeah. Where did you grow up?

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Colorado. Alamosa, Colorado. Loved it. Grandmother and grandmother grand, my grandmother and grandfather were were immigrants from Mexico. My Garcia, man.

My mom's dad's West Texas. Mom's a Garcia. But so we grew up, we grew up in the, you know, lower middle class, but it was wonderful childhood. Alamosa's small little town in the Sangre de Cristo range out there in Southern Colorado. And then we go to visit my grandmother and grandfather who were pickers and then they owned their own farm.

So I saw them, just the hard work man, it was amazing. I loved I loved being a Parenteau, but I also loved being a Garcia. I mean, my middle name is after my grandfather, Joaquin, Christian Joaquin. So it was it was awesome, and it was just always happy. You know?

Always playing. I'd play with the web we called them the webbacks. I know that's a that's a that's a, politically incorrect term, but that's what we the migrant workers that would come over work on my grandfather's farm. Webex, man. Pickers.

Yeah. I remember going out, and they we would play baseball with them when they come from the field. I remember 1 actually saved my life. I'm playing hide and seek in a back potato truck, and I was running away from my cousin, hit a bar that was across the top, cracked my head open, and I laid there for about 5 minutes before 1 of them carried me out. Family bleeding all over, and he carried me out to my grandmother's house.

I mean, it just it was amazing fun. It was a rough it was a rough childhood. You know, it was a rough fun. Skin your knee up, ride dirt bikes

Great.

Take your lab out, go little hunting with the 22 or or with a with a pellet gun. It was wonderful, man. Skin crack your head open once or twice. Brothers and sisters? I have 2.

I have a brother and a sister. And, you know, me and my sister, we have our issues, but we're close. It's a close family. It's not like there's no any hatred. My brother no.

My brother, he's awesome. Now him and I are it's 1 of those relationships so it's like he'll call us and then I'll say, what's up, jackass? Hey. I say, yeah. What's up, douchebag?

It's like, I love you, man. And 2 years younger than me, we played sports together growing up, and athletics was huge in the family. My dad was a football coach, NCAA football coach. So when we were at Alamosa, he was the head coach at Adam State and the athletic director. Then we moved to Brigham Young.

We moved to Utah because he got a job, as an assistant at Brigham Young University and that was a 1 hell of an experience. I look back at it now and it's like, wow, I was blessed because that was during their their glorious. So I got to hang around a clubhouse with G McMahon and Steve Young and Bobby Bosco and and national championship team and, you know, you're taking it for granted. You had Lil Val Edwards, who they don't make coaches, you know, that was like the iconic coaches when coaches were actually coaches and not public figures. You know, Lovell Edwards, Paul Bear Bryant, you know, guys like that.

Woody, you know, it's just the old school. He was awesome. But, you know, you had Mike Holmgren there who was the offensive coordinator who later became the coach of the Packers, won 2 Super Bowls. Norm Chow, who was a he was a legend in the NCAA, went to USC. Wow.

Andy Reid was a graduate assistant there at the time. Of course. So, you know, I looked back, like, man, I was around some cool and you just and all I'm doing, I'm a kid running around the clubhouse playing catch with Steve Young, going to the grad school. Yes. So, so sports were big, you know, and I wanted to play football, and I played football.

We moved to Oregon State, and I got a job at Oregon State, and we it was wonderful there. Gotta be around, you know, the Pac 10. I was a ball boy on the sidelines for the Pac 10. That was so fun just being at the games, you know, and that was that was Pac 10 at the time. I mean, that's Washington, UCLA, USC when they were I mean, they're still good, and I guess, but they was it was amazing.

It was just good good time being around college when college was college, when it wasn't Yeah. Propaganda. Let's protest about everything. It was it was college. It was PCU, man.

It was where people would make fun of that. Yeah. Let's go have a you know? So and it was a it was college towns. Now bringing me on was a little different.

It's Mormon. You know? There's it's you're not gonna find a lot of Drake in there. But, and then we he got a job, in Colorado back in Colorado, and, we moved. And, still he's still coaching at Mesa it's called Colorado May it's called Mesa College at the time.

It's called Colorado Mesa University now. And, we moved there, and, of course, being around at sports forever, and I my dad was a football player. My mom was a pretty good athlete in her own right. You know, I I got some good genes in me, and I managed to get a scholarship to play football, and I played football for 4 years at actually, I I did. No kidding.

Yeah. I I, I was I was I was I had a good time, man.

So Your dad wasn't the coach?

He was the AD at I went to that and to be What does that mean? He was the athletic director at that college. But, I didn't go there first. I I wasn't I was a typical college football player. I'd rather drink and party than go to class.

So my 1st year at Mesa, I flunked out of college and had to go to a junior college to get my grades up so I could continue to play football. So I went to, it was called Dixie at the time. Because of the wokeness and political correctness, now it's called something else, but we were called the Dixie Rebels. I'm still at Dixie Rebel for all you whatever you call the college now. It was awesome.

That was a wonderful experience because it Dixie was like the program where BYU, UNLV, University of Utah would send all these truants to get their grades up, and so we were a football fan. I mean, we were awesome. We were number 1 in the nation. We finished number 2 1 year, so I'm around there, and I'm around gangsters, man. I'm around the Donner Street Crips.

I'm around West Coast Bloods, Tonga Crip Gangsters. Then you got farm kids coming from Utah, big farm boys, and we had this it was such a wonderful experience. It was wonderful to see so many I was out on you know, so many people of different backgrounds and nationalities come together for a focus to win games.

Sounds like the military.

It does, and it sounds like you know, that's why I laugh when I hear all these DEI pro albus. So we had diversity way back then, guys. And guess what? We were called the Dixie rebels too, and not 1 black dude gave 2 shits. We were proud to be called the Rebels.

That's what we were. And I was, you know, I I wasn't as true I mean, they were hardcore I just flunked out of school. Now, you know, I I ain't gonna lie. My ethnicity did help. It does.

He's Mexican, dude. And they my grandpa, yeah, it was it it it it allowed me to at least have a have a foot in the door where, okay, we can kinda trust this guy. And and stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. I have no problem with that. But it was 1 hell of an experience because we were so good.

It was fun playing on a team of so many different characters. And what got me is that was back in the day when Bloods and Crips, they were you know, that was a big deal. There's gang violence all the time.

And there

was a guy named Stacy. He was a West Coast blood. He came from Los Angeles, and and then we had a guy named Chuckie who was best athletes I've ever seen in my life. He was a Donna Street crip from Vegas. And I went to Stacy 1 day, because I I didn't get I'm I'm this naive kid from Colorado.

You know? And I don't know what I can ask or what I can. I say, hey. How come you guys aren't killing each other? You know, I'm being an idiot.

Should I say that? I don't know. I'm 19 years old. Who I don't why am I saying the right thing? And Stacy looks at me, and he goes he goes, on the streets, man?

Yeah. He said, we would. I I said, I'd I'd shoot that motherfucker. But here, I just wanna win. It's like, wow.

That just makes so much sense. Wow. And that's also when I started going to military and then even GRS, a lot of people don't know. Oz and I don't get along. We never have.

I was gonna

wait till the end of the interview.

No. Wait. And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump

into that. Let's well, I mean, you brought it up. Let's do it now. And I've always I've I mean, obviously, I've been following you guys.

I mean,

we were in the same profession. Of

course. Yeah.

And I remember after it happened, you guys, you know, you did the book. Yeah. It came out. Lots of speaking events. I thought you guys used to speak together.

We

had to. Yeah.

And then it seemed like everything kinda I mean, look, What happened? Why don't you guys get along?

Well, it's just personalities. They're nothing Oz is a wonderful wonderful person. He is in his own right. It's just personalities. Very I'm very outspoken.

Whenever we do speeches or things like that, he always wanted to kinda play like the politician. I gotta make both sides. I was like, screw this. Say what happened. So we went at odds, but even when we were downrange, it just was personalities, man.

It just was you just there's just some guys you don't get along.

Did you guys butt heads before

Yeah. Benghazi? It's the first place we worked at together. I'd never worked in before. That was the first first base that I worked with Oz at.

And immediately butted heads. It's just 1 of those base where, you know, the guy come a guy comes in and you're man, we just don't jive. He doesn't he doesn't like my Jack Ashry. I don't like him being so damn uptight. But we were both professional enough, and this is this is a kudo to Roan as well.

Roan really was our was our team leader. We had an official team leader. Rowan was our assistant team leader. We had a, you know, we had a staffer that was our team leader. But Rowan is who we listened to.

The staffer we never listened to. Isn't it

funny how that's like the I know. Common theme?

Well, when you don't hold the staffer the same

every I know. GRS team that the staffer is always the weakest link.

When you don't hold them to the same standard, then they're not always gonna be

They get mad at me when I say this stuff.

Tough shit, dude. There it's it's the truth. I mean, I can count good staff, and I'll tell the staff there are some that but the majority of the good staffers were the ones that had the same background.

We'll get into this later.

But anyway, yeah, with with us, it it was nothing where and it wasn't a hatred. It just was we don't like each other, man.

Yeah.

And you get to an age at 42 at that point. We're maybe in the early days in our thirties, maybe we woulda f you f you, just but it wasn't like that. It was just you're you're I'm 440. He's 45. I'm 42.

It's like there's no reason to create any more drama. Deal with care how we need to. Just win. Because that still kept going in my head where Stacy said to me about the Crips and the Bloods. We just wanna win.

Let's put the differences aside so we can win the focus. And that's that's that's also wrong keeping us on, hey. What's the what's the main focus here, guys? Everybody goes home. Put your stupid differences aside, shut the hell up, and do your jobs.

You got your right and left limits, you got your right and left limits, and we stayed within those. And it wasn't like a, man, you're a douche. It wasn't like that. It was just, you know, you're in a room you're you're just in a room with somebody that you just don't get along with. So you stay in there as long as you can, and then you get out and you go do your thing, and you'll go do his thing.

It is a lot more difficult because you've been on a lot of those bases doing this where you're on top of each other, so it's harder to get away get away, but we did. You know? And, you know, and Rowan wasn't dumb enough to put us rooming together in the same room. You know? It was 1 of those things, let's let's make it as as possible.

And there you always, at least at that point in time, because of my age and experience, and I think this is important for everybody, even on people you don't like, you find things that you can respect about them. I do. Again, I I he's tough as nails. The dude got hit with a mortar and tried to get up and shoot. I saw him I told you in the beginning, I saw a guy get up and try to shoot after that mortar mortar stopped, and he the gun kept falling.

Because he would get up and he'd shoot, and I'd see the rounds. Boom. Well, his arm he hadn't realized his arm had gone fall. So when you watch 13 hours and you see him getting up like that, that hap that wasn't movie magic. That happened.

So do I respect his toughness? Hell, yeah. And he said 1 of the coolest things I'd ever heard in my life, when we drove to the airport, he's bleeding out. His arm's about coming off. We wanted to help get him on that plane, that executive's jet, and he said this.

And I'm giving him crudos for it because it was some Clint Eastwood shit. He goes, I walked into this country, I'm walking out. That wasn't a movie magic, that wasn't a line written in, he said that. And I remember when I heard it, I was like, alright. Aza may not get along, but that's some cool ass shit right there.

And I said and and so you cannot get along, so that's fine. But you still find ways to respect each other and work together because the goal is to win. And I kept thinking about Stacy, the West Coast blood. The most intellectual wise thing I heard was from a 20 year old gangster Man. From Los Angeles.

We just wanna win. It's that simple, and I think that's why when I talk to corporations, it I tell that's part of my speech. Just win. You said that that's the goal. Let's win.

Yeah. Put the differences aside. And, that's why also when we were out doing our speaking and you're seeing us on TV, alright, we gotta put on a united front here. We're stronger together. And because there wasn't hatred there, it just was a dislike.

Just didn't like, didn't care. Our personalities just didn't mesh. It wasn't that hard to go in there and do an interview together, and Oz had great things to say because he was there. He saw things that I didn't that helped expose the BS. Because we were in different spots the whole time.

Mhmm.

Let's let's move back to Yeah. Kind of

Growing up.

We're past we're past childhood. I wanna get to this, but I want it to all be in 1 piece, if that's okay.

No. No. No. No. You're good.

And so what so your football

Football, golf ball.

College. Yeah. Yeah. What got your interest in the military?

God just path. When you're short and you're slow, you're not gonna go to the next level. And I was I was really short and but I was super slow, so the NFL didn't come knocking at my door. So I I remember I I was just walking through the student union building there at Colorado Mesa. Mesa College was called at the time.

And, you know, at the graduation, there's job fairs at these colleges. If you go to college, you're always gonna see a job fair. And I'm walking through, and, all these jobs are there, but of course, who's there with all the all the occupations, all the corporations? The vultures are over in the corner. The army recruiter, the marine recruiter, the navy recruiter, the air force recruiter.

And, you know, long story short on that 1, which is not gonna be the theme here, but they yelled. They said, hey, you. I was a stupid enough 1 to look in that direction. I walked over there.

They said,

hey, what are you gonna do after and, you know, I had thought about FBI. I had thought about federal police. Every time I went to apply for 1, I'd get a call, hey, you need experience. You gotta go become a police officer. You gotta go endure, you gotta go to the military.

You gotta and police just didn't sound fun to me. So I walked over there. I saw the ranger I saw the recruiting video, which was the 75th ranger video. So they're jumping out of planes, fast roping. They showed me the SEAL challenge video, the navy guy did.

So I'm watching the helocasts, and I'm watching the low cast, and I'm seeing all the cool stuff.

You

know, the marines, they're landing on the beach. You know, the recon they're showing me recon guys, the air force 1. I always make this a joke. I say I saw the air force 1, and, you know, they were in a air conditioned room, nice, comfortable with good food. Now they're showing the jets and things, and I just thought the rangers was was the best 1 for me.

And so I said signed up. I signed up. I enlisted right there after I got my bachelor's degree. No kidding. And, yeah, 30 days later, I'm off to Fort Benning, and, did that.

You literally signed up right there at the job fair. And the scariest thing that I'll leave. Shit. I tell you. About an impulse group.

It's just

like it's like I was like, what am I gonna do? And then, you know, I had, well, FBI. They said military. And I do remember telling the recruiter, I asked him, I go, is that hard? He goes, yeah.

I go, do people quit? He goes, yeah. Alright. Let's do it. And, so move on, and we go to Fort Benning, Georgia, and, it it did.

I was like a a a round peg in a round hole. I just fit. You know, I was I went to, it was Sand Hill at the time. It was echo company 258, called the House of Pain. I was supposed to be the hardest 1 there, but come on, they're all the hardest.

Every every basic training, Depot's the hardest 1. But the Stinger's honor graduate, I did really well. It just it just fit. It just made, you know, I was physically fit. I got the the athletics completely prepped me for it.

You know, the teamwork aspect of it. You just had to get used to the yelling and they were still smacking us around. It was 1995, which if you didn't deserve to get smacked around, then you didn't get smacked. And that made sense to me. It was based on merit.

You worked your ass, it's merit based. You're gonna perform, you're gonna do what you're told, we're gonna move you up. You're gonna be a smart ass, you're gonna be lazy, you're gonna be a fat body? No. Then you don't.

It's easy. It's a piece of cake. Yeah. And, went to airborne school, but I was married to my first wife at the time, and nothing against she's a wonderful person. We just got married way too young.

Just nothing bad to say about her, but she was having an affair. So I got my Jody letter. Yeah. Hey. I want a divorce.

And it really was hard from there on out, airborne school on out, because that wasn't something I ever expected. That wasn't something in my family that happened. Divorce didn't happen. To me, that wasn't even on my radar. Yeah.

And it was, woah. What this is so I'm fighting airborne school. Airborne school is easy. Just all you gotta do is learn how to fall and break yourself, and then jump out of a plane. It was it was memorable.

There was a memorable thing about airborne school though that was awesome. And again, god looking out. My first 2 jumps, 1st day jump and 1st night jump, I was the first 1 out the door. It was so awesome. Being able to have the door open, 1st jump, and I'm watching, that was cool.

It's memorable. I threw in the night jump too. I was like, how lucky am I to be how did that happen? I got lucky to be the first 1 out the door. So, you know, your door opens, you get to watch all that shit for about 30 seconds before you go.

But Airborne School then went through Rip, got through Ranger Rip, went 2nd bat, and we're there. I was there for about 8 months. And, you know, you're an untapped guy, and you've been around rangers. You know, for untapped at ranger battalion, we're shit. We're Mhmm.

Piece we're we're getting hazed. I mean, it's it's just it's miserable. You're hiding in your team room on the weekends because you don't want the tab spec 4 to come in there and smoke your balls and haze the shit out of you. So you just, like, either hide or you take off for the weekend. And, but, went on a GRX training mission at Bragg.

About 8 months in, I was at battalion, and the joint readiness exercise, so we're doing a a joint readiness exercise with blue, green, some pjs, and then the air force guys at Polk, the spec ops, the specter, and you know, and the task force was there too. Night stalkers were there too. So it's a big yeah. It was it was pretty awesome. So I mean, I'm a private.

I'm just but I'm fighting this divorce. I mean, I'm my wife's cheating on me, you know, and and it's just killing me.

Did you know who she was cheating?

No. I I mean, I at that that first 2 week, it was it was a it was a 2 week GRX, the 1st week. I still hadn't figured it out. I I was in denial more than anything. You know?

That's no way she's doing that. And this is for the admitted cell phone. Cell phones are a big thing. So to go home to call, you had to go actually go to a pay phone. So it wasn't like I could call and check all the time like you could now, which maybe that would have made it worse.

Maybe this made it better. This 1 but I'm a new private. I'm around all these tier 1 guys. I'm just holy shit, dude. I'm should I you know, and and when you're a new guy, you you have that bravado, but should I be here?

You know, tab spec fours, you got tabs squad leaders, TAB e fives. These guys this is old hat to them. I'm like, oh my gosh. And so the the stress levels for me, don't fuck up. Don't fuck up.

I got 2 hernias on my first jump too. So I'm don't wanna tell nobody because I got 2 little aliens going there when we jumped in. Is it Sicily at Bragg? I can't remember the the drop zone. But, anyway, it all came to a to a head, and, I called home and I threw an answer.

So I finally called my brother, Mike. Love him. I go, hey. What's going on with Stacy, man? He goes, dude, I I I don't wanna tell you.

And as soon as he said that, you know, I I was like, bro. Because it was in the. And I went home on block leave because right after that, we're going on block leave. We're trying before Christmas. And, I just I went to the guy's house, and I hid in his bushes.

I was gonna kill him. And I came to my senses, which was great on my end because I got out of there, but it was also where I even felt like a bigger failure because, like, man, I can't even do this. I'm the biggest pussy in the world. But God has God has got me. Yeah.

God has and but, of course, everybody found out, small town, Grand Junction, Colorado. Military found out, of course, because I was very lucky. I instead of going to jail, I gotta go to the VA there in Grand Junction. They threw me in the mental ward, like, to check on me. Of course, to the military.

So the wheels are turning that I'm gonna get.

So hold on. Did you get caught?

Actually, I what I did is I went back home. I drank myself silly, and my friend found me on the floor. My ranger buddy who I joined with that is home too on leave, he found me on the floor just I was just drunk and took a bunch of Tylenol, and yeah,

it's just So you tried to kill yourself?

Yeah. 1997, 6 or 7. 96, then 96. Holy shit, guys. Yeah.

It's just 1 of those things because it it it's you're young, you're piss vinegar, you're full of fire. You're a ranger, dude. Someone was gonna you know? But I wasn't ready. It just was being young and stupid and and doing stupid things impulsively that young people do, especially young guys like myself and myself were just were not thinking.

We're just action first, consequences later. And, but the military found out.

And of

course they are. And we of course we called the commander, and the commander found out. And I had I had wonderful so blessed. First sergeant was Frank Grippi, ranger legend, sergeant major Grippi, fucking, you know, he was dropping mortars and tubes in, in Torbjorn, Anaconda, and he was a sergeant major. He was my first sergeant.

And we also had captain, Paul Lacamera, who I think he's a 3 star general now. He may have just retired. But he was my CO. And they I mean, I wasn't gonna stay in. There was no way I could stay in, but I managed to get an honorable discharge.

I didn't I didn't deserve it. So I only finished 2 years out of my first 4 year contract. Well, how long did it, take you to snap out of that? Well, I I went home. It took me 2 year well, I had 2 years.

I didn't have a choice. The, we got out let me sorry. Let me Yeah. Yeah. So you left I left the army You left the army.

At the end of 1996.

At the end of 1996, and then went back to your hometown?

I went back to my hometown, and was like, I can't do this anymore. And and What were you doing in your hometown? Nothing.

Just being miserable? Being miserable.

You know, your It was as miserable as but as with family. You know, my family my mom's there, my dad's there, my brothers are there, so I'm surrounded by family. My friends are still there because I'd just really been 2 years out of college. I still had guys I'd played football with that are still finishing up. And, I had a buddy of mine named Brian Edwards.

He goes, dude, you look like shit. And I moved in with them. I I hung out with my buddies. You know, my parents were there, but I I moved into a room at 1 of their old ex football players. They were still playing 1 of my teammates' houses, and they went on a and that's what I recommend everybody to do when you go through a divorce.

I went to South Padre Island for spring break spring break. He goes, wait. What happened there, Chris? She's like, dude, you look miserable. We're going to spring break.

Come on. Get in the car. We're going. I was like, okay. We went.

And I went to South Padre for spring break, and I remember this. I can't the lord I am beyond. The lord works mysterious ways. I'm serious. It's just so may you I look back at it now.

I'm like, my gosh. God really does have control. I go there. Hold on.

Can I can I make a prediction? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Did you meet your current wife there? Get the It

was Are you serious? Shit. I went there.

Hold on. Hold on. How long had you been? Were you divorced?

We were yeah. We well, we had been unofficially divorced for only about 6 months, but we she had tried to divorce me and get rid of me at basic training. So it didn't

So you're, like, depressed at home Yeah. Depressed. Yourself to death Yeah. Trying to commit suicide with a bottle of Tylenol.

And now I wanna what am I gonna do with

the bike? Like, we're going to stop

by spring break. I need you to smile again. And Brian I love Brian. He is he is all he is and he was a he was a he was a really good football player, outstanding wide receiver out there, but we go there, and this is what's so funny, and it's funny, but I also I do believe there's Cupid is out there, because we're at Charlie's. It's a bar there.

No. It's Louie's. We're at Louie's. Louie's Louie's bar and something, and I'm dancing, you know, and but I'm still jacked. I'm a ranger, shredded, you know, I'm jacked up, shirts off, because I'm the, woo hoo, I'm spring break drinking, drinking, and all of a sudden, this searing pain all flows down the side of my face and my eyes.

Well, it was before Fireball, so when they had those shots of cinnamon snobs that the little ladies would carry around, somebody knocked the whole thing on me. And I look, and it was my wife, my current wife. I look, and it's it's like Cupid's arrow. It's like Wow. And we danced.

We were inseparable that whole spring break. I stayed with her.

Wait. Hold on. What was the 1 liner?

There there Picked up who? Actually, I still think she's and I told her, I said, you spilled that that cinnamon schnapps on me on purpose, didn't you? Because you saw my heaving chest and I was showing her, didn't you? She was like, that was so there but that's the that was actually the joke. And it was that, because I still believe, like, you saw me and you did that on purpose, didn't you?

Just so I look at you. And I looked at her, and she's a volleyball player from University of Nebraska in Omaha. I mean, she'd say, you know, volleyball players, come on. Watch watch college volleyball. And, you know, she's taller than me.

She's 5 10. I'm 59. She's 5 10. And, just athletic, and, man, that was it. And then, again, the whole spring break.

So there wasn't a 1 liner, but it was I do give her shit. Like I said, you did that shit on purpose because you saw my man boost from all them push ups. And, it was awesome. And, so when I went home, it gave me a direction. So I went back home, like, okay.

I the stipulation is my honorable discharge is I had to still I had to stay up for 2 years. I couldn't reenlist for 2 years. It came in the in my my file. And my dad had a doctorate. My mother, she's a teacher.

She had her master's. What's the logical step here? Let's go back to college. So I applied to University of Nebraska Omaha, took the GRE, got accepted, and I got into my Bronco too, and luckily, I made it to Omaha. I lived in a $100.10 a month, room in in the slums of Omaha.

Omaha is a wonderful place, but it was the poorest Omaha. No air conditioning. Nothing in it was wonderful. It's wonderful. It was just it was just it was like I'm an out of a terrible element, and here I am by myself, no money.

Bronco twos don't run, so it's in a crappy car. I'm still fighting double hernia surgery because I hadn't got my hernias fixed yet, but it was like, man, this is awesome. And the only person I know is this woman that spilled drinks on me that I spent 4 days with at. And she was she was awesome. And we just we dated, and and I just got my life together.

I went back to school. The VA got my chit fixed. I got my hernias fixed. There was there. Grad school to me was was the school, I don't say it's easy, but the ability to to go to school and then also work, and it wasn't hard because military was so you you you know, it was regimented.

You you could do multiple things and not get enough sleep and still get it done. Oh, it was easy. So I got a job at Mission of Omaha working as a security guard, go to school, and my classes I could take at UNO, a lot of the grad classes were in the evening, so I would take classes. And a lot of those graduate school classes, I was in for criminal justice, so I was still thinking maybe the feds down the line even though I had done. But it was 1 week, so 1 3 hour class a week I could take, and then it was just study, study, study.

And to me, studying was awesome. The library was peaceful. So I would get an internship. So I worked at the library, I could study. I worked at Misha Wilma during the day, so I was making money over there.

And and I was going to school, and I was with this woman that was was young woman that was just hotter than all hell as you are. I mean, volleyball players, man, squats and jumps, obviously you can tell what kind of man I am. She was amazing. And, and she turned out to be just a just a a very wonderful person that, you know, in social media, you see all the all the women on social media. She's not that she didn't have a social media account.

She doesn't believe it. She's just a just a good home homegrown Nebraskan girl.

Nice. And

she took care of me, and she really did. She she got me back up on my feet. She got me she just got my the whole situation got my life back together, but she was the main focal point on that. And 2 years, got my master's degree. I actually went from being a security guard to where I became an insurance adjuster.

So when you watch the movie where they say, you know, you'll be happy being on that that argument did happen. I fell asleep during the ambassador's speech. I heard so much political I I I didn't care. I would have been up half the night, dude. I was up half the night.

I got up in the morning. I'm like, screw this. Do I really have to go wrong? He's like, Donald, get in there. And I'm sitting in the back.

But, anyway, when the argument said, yeah, there that happened, he goes, you'd be happy going back home and being an insurance adjuster, it's because I was. I still am a licensed National Flood Insurance Program FEMA insurance adjuster to to this day. I still can run claims if I want, but that's what I did. I went to got that certification and started working at Mission of Omaha, and and eventually, I got back in the military. And I remember I I I it was hard.

I went through 8 different recruiters because nobody was gonna help me when they found out what I did even though I had an honorable discharge. My renter code was a 3, which is very bad. That means you you got an honorable discharge, but there's an asterisk there. And, the last guy saw, it was a recruiting command. It was right by my house too.

I came I'd missed it for 2 years. I don't know what happened. Lord works mysterious ways, my friend. I'm driving home to go home. I'm like, well, I guess the military's done.

I I got my master's, but I guess the military's out of question. I see it in the corner, and I'm like, how did I miss this for years when I'm by my house? And my my 1 room in the house I lived. And I drive in there and the Nebraska recruiting command sergeant major's in there. I walk in, he's in there.

I'm talking to a recruiter. He overhears me telling pleading my case to this recruiter. Hey, man. You please. I really wanna go in.

I need to finish what I started. He walks in. He says, I'm hearing what you're saying. He said, do you really wanna go back in soon? I said, yes, sergeant.

He goes, Roger, though. He signs me the paperwork over. I sign it. He takes it back from me. As he's holding it, he goes, there's just 1 stipulation.

You have to do it all over again. Roger? Yeah. So I did it all over again, basic airborne ranger, did it twice, and went back in. And I I I did it all twice.

Yeah. Yeah. If you want something bad enough though, was it it you'll do it. And it really lot of that, and you know this is, when especially when you're early on, it's a mind game. It's fuck fuck games.

I knew it was coming.

I

was in great shape because that's all I did. I worked. I went to school. I hung out with my my my girlfriend at the time who was a volleyball player there, so what did I do? She was half the time, she was at the gym.

So I worked out all the time. I was running 5 minute miles. You know, I could I could do 120 push ups in 2 minutes. I mean, I was you know, and I'm very lucky. I had good genes from my family.

You know, playing sports helped as well. So when I went in, I could outdo the drill sergeant, but I saw I saw how the military in those 3 years went from or it was actually 4 years. That was from 1995 when I first went into basic training till when I went back in in the beginning of 1999, how had it gotten easier?

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I do the drill signs. When I went in the first time, every drill instructor, infantry drill instructor, except for 1, was tabbed. They at least had a ranger tab. They don't come from ranger pad, but they at least had a tab. Or they were mechanized, and they'd seen some combat, or been in their deserts.

I mean, they were hardcore. The 1 that didn't, and he was 1 of my drill sergeants, drill sergeant Hardney, the devil. Love that man. Big black dude, 6, 7, looked like a demon from hell, but I love him. He was actually the, NCOIC for Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, if that tells you anything about his qualifications.

He may

not have his tab, but do you think he's disciplined? Yeah. Standing 8 hours at yeah. So when I went in the 2nd time, 2 guys had tabs, no CIBs, not that much in shape. The only 2 guys, the the senior drill instructor, he was from 3rd bat, so he was a ranger.

He was TAB, and then our commander, our CO was TAB, and and it was easier. They weren't throwing us around. They couldn't even get in our face. They could still do the shark attack, but it was the the standards had lowered. The mile max, the 2 mile run was 1154 when I first went in.

It moved down to 13, so it was easy. I was like, geez. This is cake. I was you know, every all the standards had lowered, and and it wasn't it was. It was just it was a hell of a lot easier.

And of course, it was a lot easier because I knew what what was coming. Airborne school was easy. Rip was hard like Rip should be. I mean, it was just it was a kick in the ass. RIP should be a kick in the ass.

The only thing is is those 2 of the instructors there, I joined in in 1995. So when I came back through, they were both e sixes, e fives and e 1 was e 5, 1 was an e 6. And they're like, what the hell are you doing? Faye? So I mean, it would why I tell people that's because it was I didn't feel the, oh, shit, you know, the the nervous you know, like like you do when you went through hell week or you these guys are maintenance.

Like, I know that dude. I could outrun him 5 years. So it was and then go back to battalion, went there, got my tab, became a team leader, and then my platoon leader found out I had my master's degree and that I'd been at battalion before. And he says, you need to become an officer, son. And so I became an officer.

I got to my commission.

No kidding. You you became an officer.

Don't tell him, buddy.

I did not. I did not know that. You would have not been invited to the show.

It wasn't long lasted though because, I did. I got my commission, and in 2003 oh, it was yeah. 2003, I was going through IOBC, entry officer's base, of course. I actually joined 19 Special Forces Group too. So I I stayed enlisted in the Guard as I was getting because I did green to gold.

I didn't go to officer candidate school. I just had to do a year of green to gold at Creighton University. So I joined the Guard 19 Special Forces Group is where I linked up with my partner that does my vodka with me, Ben Morgan, for 1st ranger bat. He was on ODA 993. They brought me into ODA 993, so we were we got to we were friends and we grew up in Grand Junction, but that's where we really developed a great friendship because he went to a different high school.

We didn't really hang out. Gotcha. But, anyway, I still had I got my commission, and I entry, got it. And, at the end of the course, I was standing out there at the Malone ranges, and, my stomach was really hurting bad. Terrible.

I was feeling awful. But I'd just been out the can in the night before drinking. You know? I was like, it's normal shit. We're out there sweating our balls off, just drinking.

I ate a ton of pizza. Of course, I and I, you know, I had passed gas. I let a fart go, and I charted. I chipped myself. But it the pain actually increased when that happened, so I was like, that ain't right.

And I went and dropped trowel, and I had blood all over. Just I had what? I had blood. Just I I had, well, they rushed me to Martin Almond Hospital, and they I figured I I had ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, and it was really bad. And I remember the the GI doctor, yeah, I just had blood all over the place.

I'd shed blood. Because that's what I it when it becomes extremely inflamed, for those who don't know what ulcerative colitis is and all Crohn's disease, it's your lower intestines and your colon become inflamed, and they just have ulcers all over. And it looks like you've got road rash. It's like when you and I'm I've I'd had it for years. I just didn't really, you know, I didn't really notice it because it I was going at such a high level, and I think the focus was there to finish what I started that it I wasn't gonna let anything hamper that.

But it got so bad that now it was affecting my nutrients, it was affecting my energy levels because I couldn't that's where you process all your food. That's where when you eat everything. And when it's all like that, your food, it doesn't process. It just shoots right through you. It's blood, mucus, and food, and that's what was starting to happen.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I got discharged. I got discharged in 2003, and I was a kick in the balls, dude.

That was my 1 1 time where, in my life where god was I was mad, or or I was like, man, I wonder if god really exists. Because, like, holy crap, I went through all this. All this. And and I did I remember lying on that gurney looking up at him going, really? Why?

What the hell? And and sorry. He he has pain. God always has patience, and I see he, you know, he pities us, which he always he always pities the 1 that needs the most pitying too. It was at that time was me.

And, I went home, and I lost 30 pound I mean, it was like Ranger score over again. I lost £30 in about a

week, so I couldn't eat. Were you just, like, completely devastated? It was. You were a bit discharged again?

Yes. Because it was that wasn't the plan. The plan was I had already

I What did you think you were gonna do?

I had no idea. I I had no idea. No idea. I was I I didn't know. My wife was there.

She was very supportive. We had actually got married. We had got married before we went to ranger school. She's that's how wonderful she is. We got married at a courthouse, and I was off to ranger school the next week.

But she was there, and, what did your wife do at the time? At the time, she was actually she stayed in Omaha, and she was managing Gold's Gym. She was a Gold's Gym. She was just working. She had a business degree, and that was you know, I fit her.

She's athletic. Gold's Gym at the time, that was when Gold's was really big, so she had a good job. You know? So not that you know, it was about $40 a year. That's tough for 2 people to live on.

Couldn't do that anymore, but that time, we were okay. We're living in an apartment, and all I'm all she cares about, we're just healing. So I'm trying to find natural remedies to heal myself. I'm going to nature store because I'm on prednisone, but prednisone is rough. So through the next year, all I'm doing is, first of all, I'm I'm eating things, and if it if it goes right through me, I write it down, I cross I can't eat it anymore.

So I'm figuring out what I could eat, my diet. And then I'm taking the medication, and then I'm going to go into nature food stores, organic food stores. You know, it wasn't a Whole Foods at the time. You had to find the little mom and pop ones and trying to find out what could I eat to start to build my body back up, because I couldn't take whey protein. I couldn't do anything that was dairy related, and I just tried to build my body up for the next year, and I found this goat colostrum, which they they don't I wish they still made it goat milk.

I could do that. And then I I could eat corn stuff. I could eat stuff that was rice related. I could eat anything in the bible. If it was manna, manna bread, I could eat that.

For some reason, it didn't didn't disagree with me, and I built my body back up for the next year. And at the end of 2003, I got a call on the phone from Blackwater Security. Blackwater called me first, and then 30 sec 30 minutes later, Triple Canopy called.

How did they get in? I mean, did

you Well, at that time, it was just word-of-mouth. And, I remember they got a hold because 1 of my ranger buddies at both places were already working for him, and they had recommended my name to him. Him. Interesting. And, yeah, they were they were good.

Actually, Blackwater was a gentleman. He and he's a great guy. Brian Mastrafini was his name, and he had recommended that, as Rangers, let's give him a shot. He didn't know I was sick though either. Yeah.

But they, they got my phone number because he, you know, he was a friend. He had the phone number, so he's like, here it is. And they called me, and the only reason I went Blackwater Blackwater is because they called me first. And at that time, they were both great organizations. You had Eric running that, and it was still relatively small.

And they had Lee Van Arsdale running, who's a, you know, a Delta legend, running triple canopy. It was it was pretty good shit. And

and they had Was it for, OGA?

No. That time, there there wasn't there was peak. It was called Polar Quest. It was just starting to come online, but at that time, it was Bremer, the Bremer detail. What year is this?

2004. End of 2003, beginning of 2004. So Karzai had already been going. The Karzai detail was a lot of your brothers were on on at Karzai, and they had just started to move to Iraq, and they were starting to pick up guys to go on the Brimmer detail, which was gonna be the Nagar Pani detail down the line. It was it wasn't state department either.

It was the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Interesting. How'd you like that?

The beginning, it was great because it was like OGA.

I remember showing up at GRS and everybody was talking about

the property. That was that was the good old days. That was when it was state department really didn't have their hand in it, so it was it was the wild west. I mean, that was, you know, that's where Saxx started. Saxx was he was that's where he became really a legend over there with in the GRS was he was 1 of the original Bremer guys.

Love Saxx. But anyway, yeah, that's that's what I and I went and I went to the first class where I met Boone. Boone and I were in that first it was called the Did you work with Sachs on that? Not in the Brimmer detail. No?

No. He moved on. He was 1 of the first guys moving over to GRS.

Okay.

So that Sachs was the trendsetter on on contracting, but rightfully should be, and he's he was

What a great guy, man.

He's just he is. He's that's the 1 thing. He is an opera, but he's just a nice guy.

I love that dude.

He was I obviously, I'm mentioning him, so he he had an effect on my life, a positive effect. But, yeah. I went there and went through the training, which was basically 3 weeks at Moyoc of Delta, Long Tabbers, white soft, blue, rangers, and marines fighting with each other.

Oh, I changed throughout your entire

contracting career. Dude, it was, dude, it was so hilarious. We didn't learn a damn thing during that. We we went through all the shootings, so you had to pass the shooting, but as far as the PSD stuff, we didn't learn a thing. Because they were just always everybody was always

Arguing tactics.

And then you're having the the wipes was the wipes off the the, you know, the seal, the the white the vanillas, the the the seal teams outside of blue. The Miis. They were

the regular ship bag Navy SEALs.

Come on. Shit. I believe you, man. I'd I'd rather work the vanilla guys knew infantry stuff better than the blue guys. I was always saying, man, you guys know your infantry shit down.

You guys had it. Mike Hain, Sawbones was a guy who worked quite often. He was awesome, and he hated blue. I was like, fuck, dawg. But I he was awesome.

Bones was the man. And, anyway, they're running the course. So do you think a blue guy is gonna take shit from them or Delta? And it was I remember sitting on the bleachers week 2, and we're trying to do through we're trying to learn basic formations, walking formations, diamond, you know, and then how to react to contact within those formations, and it just turned into a big argument shoving.

From a bunch of guys that none of them have done personal protection.

The other ones that were teaching it. Been insulting. Yeah. You had been there and the ones that were teaching it, you know, they'd been down range for, what, 6 months.

Guys, we're gonna go on defense now. I know. What's that? What's that? I don't know.

Figure it out and teach it.

That's what it is. It was so but it was it was it was awesome because it was a beautiful day. You know, it's it's it's early spring in North Carolina, Moyock. It's sun's out. It's starting to set.

I'm in the bleachers, and 1 of the instructors come over to me, his name was his call center was Shrek. He come over to me and he goes, what you smiling at for, Ranger? I said, you guys are paying me because I I hadn't made shit for a year. Yeah. You guys are paying me $250 a day to sit out here in this beautiful weather, get a shoot gun, and I get to watch you guys just clown show me.

This is awesome. I don't lose I'm just unbelievably, like, how how lucky might have been right here watching this shit show go on. And it was so awesome. It was wonderful. And then, you know, I finished the course.

I had to go home for, like, 2 months because my clearance still hadn't cleared yet. Mhmm.

And

I hadn't got my clearance yet from the state department. You know? That's when we started to figure out, oh, they're you know, DOD, NSACI have their own clearances? Oh, I didn't know that. I thought as you get 1, they all they don't cross over.

So I had to wait for my state department clearance, got it, went home to my wife, I said, please don't divorce me, but I'm going to Iraq. That's when the contracting life for the next 10 years took over, man. That was it. In early days, and it was it was the wild west, man. It was, man, sitting up on top of a building on Haifa Street with my ranger buddy and pigeon shit overwatching 1 of our PSD teams, watching Bradley shoot down Heifers Street spinning.

The guys in their turrets, they spinning because they're that was I still remember. That was so cool. So they because their their gut the up gunners, they're spinning, making sure they're looking, and they're not gonna get shot because Heifel was bad at that time. That was real bad. And, yeah, I'm ducking because they don't know if I'm a good guy, but I don't wanna shoot me, but just that was wonderful times, man.

Driving down Biop, driving down Irish, Route Irish at a 100 kilometers an hour, fucking making sure that you don't get hit on that overpass or

There

are not

a lot of people that say they've had a great time running up and down Route Irish.

Oh, yeah. You're 1

of the few.

I I loved it. Yeah. And I had an awesome team. We had a wonderful just an awesome team. Again, another 1 just guys that just I don't got along, but it just it worked.

So for those listening that don't know about Rout Irish, Rout Irish is most likely, unanimously, the most dangerous road in Bagdad.

It it was for a time. I mean, there were other dangerous roads too. Like, Haifa Street was very dangerous. Route wild, when you got up to Sodder, was pretty damn dangerous. And even route 10 at some points were dangerous.

And then, of course, route 10 when it got into the Ramadi and Fallujah, of course, were extremely dangerous. And god bless him, Helvasten and and the guys, you know, that that that got hung and died there. You know? You know? But Irish was always hot.

Mhmm. Always something that he was dying or getting hit on Irish, and I loved every minute of it. And I had the best drivers in the world. And you see when when you see a motorcade with 3 cars and they know the drivers know what they're doing, and I was very lucky enough that I moved being from the trunk monkey to eventually I became the team leader. So I'm on that rear vehicle making the calls and just watching drivers do their thing, blocking and screening at a 100 k.

Dude, it is beautiful, man. And I just get chills thinking about it because I was like, man, it got to a point where it's like a great football team where coach didn't need to say a thing. Everybody knew what they were doing, and they just did it. It was amazing having my 2 left and right door gunners cracking doors. If they needed to hit somebody, they'd hit them.

If they didn't, they didn't. You know, getting out and even when I got to be a door gunner on the left rear, when you're going a 100k and you gotta crack that door and you're hanging out the side, like, that's almost the same as hanging on a bench of a little bird as it's spanking in. It's it's it's wonderful, man. Who gets to do that? That was that was fun times, and we we were up and down that thing.

In a 2 month period at 1 point, we had to run it 6 times a day. Not stupid. It was state department. 6 times a day. A day?

You had to We were we were Woah. We were protecting times a day on route Irish.

We were protecting the rhino bus, and we got gas for that. It. And, 6 times a day, and it was we violated every security principle that you're supposed to have.

Were you guys 1 of the crews that had the with

with what? I don't know.

Somebody dressed up like a dinosaur at the at the back of a truck and rode that day.

No. No. That that that wasn't us as far as, you know, I don't think. No. It wasn't it wasn't us.

It wasn't us. It wasn't us. That was later down the line. It was a Dyncore team. That was later down.

Yeah. That was down the line. It I I went it was team 5, I believe, that did the Dyncore team, because we would rotate with Dyncore on this because we were still didn't have enough people. So we would take it, then they would take something. I love the Dyncore guys too.

But that that was not seriously, that was the Dynacore team, which I wish it would have been. That was that was some funny shit. That was hilarious. YouTube that stuff, guys. Dinosaur around Irish.

But, yeah, we were time and place predictable, we were a big target, and we were slow. Everything you didn't wanna be on route Irish, we were

And did you guys did you guys take contact?

Just sniper fire from away, you know, on right when you hit route Irish, you have those that that where the, where the Edinburgh Risk guys got hit. That's that famous that I say famous, that infamous video where those guys are on and there's an SF guy in there that everybody hammered because he ran and hid in a little ditch. I've not seen that. It's a it was Edinburgh risk where where, it's right at the beginning of when you when you get out of the green zone and you start hitting around Irish, it's still Iraqi urban areas right there. And it's it's about 300 meters off the road, and they would sit PKMs or snipers on there, and they because there was also a building that had been bombed and burnt out that they would sniper fire about a 100 meters away when you're going.

And, so anyway, we would take every once in a while, but we got didn't get hit with a car bomb. We got very lucky. The Dyncore team that took over for us got hit the next week. So we would just take and, you know, urine ping. Alright.

Well, we're good. Everybody good? Yeah. Alright. It just added to the flavor, man.

And, and, you know, it was something to say that for the team as well, how how awesome they were and how a good motorcade operations if you're running it right. They're gonna hit somebody that's not doing it right. They're and but I do remember that it was when we got the task to do it, and I was a TL, I was like, can you guys do this? Well, yeah, you know, what am I saying? No?

Of course. We can do it, but I went to the team, and you should have seen the looks, man. Half of them were stoked. The other half were like, I'm not going home. Yeah.

And you're trying to keep everybody pumped up and in my head going, holy shit. 6 times a day? Just the odds Yeah. That we're we're gonna get hit with the VBI ID. I said, we can take small arms for because we're gonna keep moving.

We're gonna keep pushing through. Just don't stop. Don't create your own kill zone like the Edinburgh Risk guys did that got hit, where you get caught in a traffic jam there, and then you push everybody out right and left. So you're basically you you you've just given them an ambush zone. You've given them a big target, but we could just keep pushing.

Don't worry about the Rhino. It's got much armor on it. It's the state department armored bus that a m 1 Abrams has. It's gonna be able to take a hit. Just be able to med vac them or get them out of there if it goes down, but just keep moving.

And it was very we we just did everything right, and we got lucky. You know, a lot of

nice things. You you never got blown up on Irish.

I never got blown up on Irish. That is

It's like It's a running 6 times a day, time and place predictable with a huge bus as a target. I mean It was That is incredible.

It's lucky. I it is very lucky. It is because, again, I said when Dyker took over the next week, team 5, they got hit. The car bomb hit him. Hit the hit the rhino rhino.

Hit him. Boom. And, you know, I wanna attribute it to that. K. Yeah.

We were just that awesome. Now we're just

that lucky. That's luck.

We're just that lucky. But it still brought the team together. It was wonderful. It was wonderful, and it was very tiring days because you are distressed. That should be

I'm not diminishing your team, by the way, by saying that it's just luck. I'm just saying.

No. No. Yeah. But I'm

telling you it's just VFPs and shit. I mean, there was

Well, and they were and they were starting to drop the grenades with the little Yeah. Little shoots off the overpasses as well. No. Of course, it it there is some there is some hey. We did what we we did what we had control of.

We planned what we had to. We ran our route right. The motor kit operations were great. We were doing what we needed to do. We kept moving.

We didn't ever stop.

Let me let me say sorry.

No. Go ahead.

I get I get yelled at if I don't talk about these acronyms. So EFP for the audience. An EFP is, basically a bomb.

It's a platter charge. It's a forced projectile. Yep. I wanna say I always say I always say electrically, but that's not right. I don't know why my head say it.

It's a platter charge. They put a piece of copper on it. It's a forced projectile. I always forget what the e stands for. You guys can hammer on me later about that.

But it's where it goes, and then that platter of that copper turns into molten lava, so it'll go through the armor. And then when it goes through it, it cools, and then it becomes it becomes a projectile, a hard projectile. And they were starting yeah. Remember that? They were starting to hit us with that, and and that was always Well,

they would even put those thermal sensors on. Yeah. So when they when they sense the heat of the engine, that's what would

turn off. Because we were able to counter their first of all, their wires were we could see them a lot of times, which, you know, you just give me, but we're able to with all the countermeasures, we could counter the cell phone. So that was huge. Yeah. And, yeah, I had a we had a buddy that next month, a guy named Wee Man, that got hit with they got hit with the EFP when they were driving the Mambas around.

You know, Blackwater had those white South African, and it went right through that armor. Yeah. And, you know, I I always say I love Wee Man. I love Chris. He was a great guy.

He was actually our he worked in the mail. I mean, it sounds kind of of of, cliche, but he worked in the mail room. He he came in, and he didn't have he was not special ops. He worked in a small town police department, and he came in, and he wanted to get on the road, and we would never let him on the road. Or, like, no, dude.

You don't call. Just this is where you belong right here. And finally, he got out on the road and got hit with an EFP, and he fucked him up. Damn, man. And but I still love him to death, but, yeah, I'll be honest.

I think I I think I think I don't wanna say he wanted that. I because I I would never say it on anybody, but I do remember when they because we didn't go pick him up the qr f team that responded they went to to help or my team was the psd team And I do remember when they came back 1 of the guys on the qr f team kept saying I said did you see wee man? He goes, yeah, he goes What was he saying? He said just he kept asking me to take a picture of him. It's like, I mean, sometimes you get what you wish for, man.

Man. And, yeah, I'm not not to guess he's he is awesome. We and he's braver than shit. He is. But some be careful what you I always that's always a reminder to me.

Be careful what you wish for. Yeah. But, yeah, we did that, and and then, I did another year, and then I went back home. And in between, I was instructing at Blackwater, so I was a farm synthetics instructor in between contracts. So I I really never went home.

Even when I So did you move to Moyock? No. I stayed normal. She had a great job. So it was it was 1 of those things where we were just apart a lot.

It was I was gone or I'd go home for a month, and it was hard because my son was born, my first my 19 year old, he was born, 1st 2 months I was over in in Bagdad, my first 2 months on the contract. So I did come home to see his birth, and then I went right back for another 7 months. And then I and, but that was, you know, at that time, that's that's what I wanted. There's nobody to blame but myself.

Man, what is what is it? My whole career was pre kids. And so, I mean, as you know, today was my son's 1st

day of school. Congrats on you. I'm so happy that he's just, like, dad, I'm out, man. It Yeah.

Well, I was expecting, like, a little, you know, I'm an issue. Mom and dad. No. He's, like, I don't give a shit. I'm like, hey.

See you guys later. But but, I am I I I missed his first open house because of a I interviewed Trump. Yep. And, otherwise, there's no way I would have missed it.

You gotta do what you gotta do. You gotta make sure.

When my wife sent me pictures of my son, like, with his backpack Yeah. On walking into that school, I was, like you know? And and it just every time I have an experience like that, I just wonder, like, how the how did my buddies do it back in the day? How would it how how do you

Yeah. How do you rationalize that

comfort zone with it? To come home. You met your son when he was a when he when When he was a baby?

He was born. He was 1 month.

And then you come back, he's 7 months old.

Now today, at that time, it was it was just what it was. Mhmm. It was this is what I'm doing.

This is

what I gotta do. I'm providing for you're rationalizing because this is I'm providing for my family. Yeah. But it's also a little ego. This is what I wanna do.

This is where I've been this is what I've always wanted to do. And and when, you know, when I got discharged from the military, my buddies were jumping into Afghanistan. So, like, I thought I missed my war. You know? I yeah.

God. Well, no. I got my war. This is where I need to be. I'm going, and and I did have a good time.

I was enjoying it. It was wonderful. Now looking back now and experiencing you're getting experienced the little kid time with my 9 year old that I have been with him growing up, now it's now it hurts. And now it's like, man. Damn.

Do you feel I missed I missed him, and we had to we had a coming to Jesus when he was 16 because we didn't know each other. And even when I was home as a contractor, you don't get there's no decompression.

Yeah.

There's no demobed. You're off a plane, a commercial jet, and you're going home. And it takes about 30 days just to get your head right. You're not you're not home. And then you have 30 days of downtime, and then you're back out again.

So that's why I think it was even easier for me just I think maybe that was a defense mechanism for me. I don't wanna go home and be angry and just just let me keep working. That's and I'd go back and continue to instruct it more, and I wouldn't go home for more in a couple weeks or I'd fly them out to me. It was dude, it it at that time, it wasn't hard because I thought we were doing it for something bigger than you know, it was patriotism. They attacked us.

We're now looking back, I'm like, man. Gosh. I missed that. I would have enjoyed being a father then, and luckily for us, him and I are very close now. I'm happy to hear you.

But and so we were able to come to terms, same with my daughter too.

What did that what did that mean? Did it come to a head and there was a conversation?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When he was 16.

What what was that conversation?

We, my wife and I had reconciled. We we were back together. You know, we we it was 2 I'm sorry. Not when he was 16, so it was right around the year of 2018 where I got my shit together, and him and her and I are back together. And we're out at a family dinner, and we're out at Olive Garden, Council Bluffs, Iowa.

I remember it vividly. And, you know, my little guy, I'm being able to be a father with him. Even though I'm speaking and I'm not I'm starting to whittle the speaking down, I'm starting to be home a lot more. You know, I'm hugging all over him. The stuff I really didn't do with the other 2 because I was just so detached when I was home.

It was I wanted to, but I didn't know how. I mean, it really was because I wasn't always there. My my brain was sandbox, Afghanistan. Brains half brain's there, half brain's family. Where now my brain is all there with the family.

And, my little guy did something, and I I sorry. I can't say it. My my wife well, you all well, many people know, but I just my wife is all good. My little guy, Peanut, all my kids have call signs. Peanut.

He does something that the other 2 at Olive Garden. He's doing something. He's having starting to get angry, have a tantrum because he got those little games there at Olive Garden. You can play on the little monitors. In the past, when those kid when my when my other 2, Kiki and Bubba, when they were growing up, I'd get angry, just lose it because I was back home, a lot to handle.

I'm not getting mad at him. I'm actually being a dad. I'm actually I mean, I'm being disciplined, but I'm having some patience. He he looked at me, and it killed me, dude. It did.

He looked at me and goes, why don't you get mad at him like he used to get mad at me? And it was like, woah. I mean, it's just knife in the chest, and, I didn't have an answer. I couldn't tell him what was because of the war. It's because of Iraq.

I mean, that's an excuse, kind of. He's not gonna understand that. And that was where I realized that he was angry with me for being gone for many years. And Kiki, my daughter, is the same way. Because I was.

My little guy, Peanut, got treated a lot better, a lot less hand spanking on the bottoms or whatever than the other 2. And that's attributed to my mind state being coming back. Because, you know, you come back and you have that excuse. I mean, what are you guys crying about? You see this little Iraqi kid, he said on the street, you don't have nothing to eat, and you're trying to compare the 2.

Yeah. But it's completely different. But that's how I am coming back. That's my rationalization. I may be yelling at you, but you could have it a lot worse.

And I know a lot of guys a lot of fathers now are realizing that because we're comparing their lives to these Afghani Afghani that's walking down the street carrying water up a 5 miles up a hill or, you know, or this or the kids that are caught in a crossfire because or a car bomb goes off and it blows up a busload of kids going to school. You know? We're trying to compare that, and they don't understand that. And that's not a fair comparison. But that's how I was until I was finally home more and able to come to terms with what was going on over there, that that was a life, but now my life is as a father here.

And my actions were completely different with my younger son than it was with the other 2, and I didn't realize it until he said that. How did you reconcile this? Became a present. Hug on him more, love him more. I I told him, I said, when he pushed away from me, given him his space, but then come back and just be, hey.

You okay? Son, I love you, man. Or even now that and with the advent of cell phones, that's 1 positive is that I can just always, I love you, Bubba. And even if I get back, yeah, because he's a teenager. He knows.

And you know how I know we reconciled because his junior year, he was an athlete as well. When he played basketball, he played football his freshman and sophomore year, but he had 3 concussions, so I pulled him out. I said no more. You're down to football. Play something else.

He loves soccer anyway, so he went to soccer. He changed his number to 13. I was like no way. I went to a game, and I'm like I was, you know, my wife Tanya was sitting there. I was like, is that oh, shit.

I said his name. Sorry. Is that Bubba? Thank you. I said, is that Bubba?

She goes, yeah. He He goes, he's number 13. She goes, yeah. And that's when I knew that he'd finally forgiven me, and we are very close now. Yeah.

I love I love that boy to death, and he is just a good kid. His mom raised I mean, he is he wasn't he's nothing like me. He doesn't drink. He went to school. He had a soccer scholarship to go play at Northwestern College there.

It's a Christian school in Iowa, and he's up there. And I thought it'd be alright, and he's like, dad, I don't I I don't do any all the guys go to go to Sioux Falls and drink, and they and I he goes, I don't do that. He goes I go, well, then come home, and you have a track scholarship to the small college in in Kansas. Write that coach up and tell him you wanna come in. That's what he did.

So he was he was wonderful, man. He's just how about your daughter? She's headstrong, man. But now that she we're starting to we're starting to get better because it's it's the daughter's way different. Little boys, you know, boys, you can be a little firmer.

Girls, you you you don't really wanna in my opinion, you don't because you don't want them falling in with a man that that bosses them around. But you you also you know, she's still your daughter. She got a discipline. So what do I do? Mama, handle this.

But it came to a point to where yeah. And my daughter's as far as her outspokenness is like me. My oldest son, he's not you know, he's very very very quiet. He's strong, but he he, you know, he doesn't argue back. He doesn't.

He he he knows that I got he goes, I got it. I'll fix it. My daughter, she's gonna argue. Argue, argue, argue. And there were times where we would be yeah.

We'd be yelling at each other, like, because the disrespect that was there. And, my wife finally said, I she goes, just let me let me let me handle it. And this was a couple years ago, and so done. You just default to my wife who who and my daughter responds better to her mom. And a lot of it has to do with me being gone a lot.

But now we're we're no. We're getting back again. We're we're we're we're reconciling, and we're at a point where and she's not very I think she got she's not very, affectionate. She doesn't like the hugs and the and the kisses like my little guy does and my oldest son who I said, I'm a hug you till you're 40, till you're 50 years old, son. They like it.

I mean, my son doesn't hug back, but he lets me. She she doesn't like it. She doesn't and I I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, her growing up and me and her mom, you know, sometimes having some issues. We got divorced at 1 point, and me being an angry angry man coming back from deployments. But she knows I love her and, you know, there was an issue at our school that I love it.

She wrote a letter to the school saying how she had a problem with 1 of the 1 of the dress code issues. I'm like, heck yeah. And I remember I called. I said, I got your back, darling, because I believe you. I said, and I know you're doing the right thing.

And that's what I love because that is something Tonto would do, like selling telling Pete Hixep that you're gonna choke out a former president. Hey. She got her opinion. Hell yeah. I got you.

And I called her, and she was she, you know so it's it's a lot of time when I'll tell her I love her. I love you, Donna. Yeah, dad. I love you. I love you too because I called her and I said, you write what you want.

You know I got your back. Tell them how you feel. I said, I love you. And she goes, I love you too, dad. And that was actually just last week.

Good for you, man.

So it it just it's being a father, man. You you just have to figure it out. And there are it's okay to be a disciplinarian. There's nothing wrong with that. But you also your kids are all different.

And for us at Deployed, we do have to relearn. We have to change ourselves. You know? Warriors don't retire, like Ron said, and I know we put it in the movie, but he said that. But it's the truth.

But we don't ever retire, but we can't be a warrior at all. You can be a dad, and but you have to figure out a way how to reach your kids. And and luckily for me, my kids are smarter than me, so they would maybe not tell me, but they would say things where I was astute enough to pick it up, like my son or like my daughter. And they don't always have to say they love you, just an an action like my son wore number 13. I just know right then.

Like, he he he he he get he he forgives me. He's we're good, and we have been perfect since. And I'm happy to

hear that.

Thanks, man.

That's pretty good. Let's, let's take a quick break. Yeah. When we come back, we will get into how you got into the OGA contract.

You got it, brother. Perfect.

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Alright, Chris. We're back from the break. Yeah. And, we just went through a small portion of your career. Well, I guess not a small portion, but we went

through a portion. Of my life. Small portion of my life. Let's put it that way.

But, now we're getting ready to get into how you got picked up for

Yeah.

OGA.

That was you know, again, I I and I keep referring this. God's path. The Lord works mysterious ways. It really it wasn't anything I wanted to do. I was doing fine doing I was working with Blackwater, doing state department stuff, but then also I was working with Greystone, which was Eric's he was trying to make, like, kind of an executive outcome sort of, but it was Greystone.

So it was still Blackwater, but it was like a little offshoot. We were going out What's executive outcomes? That was the old South African PMC where it was really a PMC mercenaries where

Oh, that was like De Beers shit.

Yeah. That was where they were going and actually getting hired by governments to take down terrorist organizations or or actually do direct action missions.

That wasn't the De Beers shit.

That wasn't the De Beers shit. No. This is this was the old and you were

Real mercenaries.

Yes. The where the term mercenary, I would say well, the term mercenaries back in the beginning of time, But that was where the government stopped in and said we gotta stop doing this because there were 60 South African you know, those guys were 60 South African strong of former military, and they were taking out huge armies at the behest of some of the African governments. Read about them. It was pretty interesting stuff. They're they're badasses.

What is this called again? They were called executive outcomes.

How the hell do I not know about this?

I'm not so surprised too, man. That's that's a big deal. That's a I'm

a dumbass sometimes.

You'll I don't know if anybody's still alive from any of those. You know, it was early, long seventies, eighties, I think it was. But anyway, Greystone was supposed to be or it's kinda like a offshoot of that. So it was black order, but we're called Greystone. But we were know Greystone either.

Yeah, dude. I got a lot of that

dark oxygen. Very small. It just last but it was Eric wanted to keep that

Was it the agency stuff?

No. It was private stuff. We were going out South America and training local South Americans to go and protect bases overseas. So protect Blackwater bases more. So instead of using an epoese, the Gurkha Gurkhas, you know, that we were trying to

Alright. Hold on. Let's go let's talk about Greystone. I've had Eric on here 3 separate times. We have not talked about Greystone.

It was I don't think it lasted very long. It was very small. It really was more training going down there and vetting locals that we could use from South America to Central America. So I went to Peru and El Salvador, and then we all set teams going to Colombia, and it wasn't anything nefarious. It's not like we're going down there and starting to execute.

We we weren't pulling we weren't pulling inks. Let's put it that way. We weren't doing that. And we were we were we were going out there to train and then working with the and helping them train a little bit. So it was like a FID mission.

It was it really was. But it I think Eric wanted to get to a point where it was, like, its own self sustaining army. Gotcha. But it just never morphed into that because then state you know, that's when those times is when state department started to take over high the CPA now was high threat protection, then it went to that whips worldwide personal protective and state department getting their hands in. And that's when the microscope started going up Eric's

Yeah.

Keister where they were trying to come back from for stuff. Because they and whatever. I like Eric. I I protected his family in between contracts. I'd go to Tyson's Corner and, you know, I'd go run with him in the morning because I was the only guy that he was he was a beast.

He was physically I could run with him in the morning, and I go take his kids to school because that code pink, that liberal terrorist crazy women group was always threatening him. So we had a team that would help him and I was on that as well. I was the detail leader for that. But anyway, we did that, and I got to go somewhere in South America in between contracts. So I was state department, and then do you wanna go Greystone?

You wanna go to South America? Hell, yeah. So we went to Piero, Peru, went to, San Salvador, went to Lima, Peru, and it was fun. It was it was a good time. Again, my Spanish comes back, so I don't really feel like it's a deployment to me.

You know? And and ate some good food, went to a couple spin classes there in Lima, you know, Shakira on bikes in spandex. What can go what? Anyway, anyway, it was a great and then it was and then the training too. You know?

And and, and working with the Forza De Especial, especially in El Salvador was pretty cool. But then, I came back and I was still teaching eye threat protection, getting ready to do another contract, and Marty Strong, Seal Lieutenant, great guy. He's written a few books himself, but great guy. He was 1 of the program managers on the Blackwater contract, the state department contract, and Randy Leonard was running starting to run the OGA side house. We call it the victory.

We call it the victory program, and AOB, Army of Blackwater program, which was the static CA guys, the base security guys. Marty comes to me and says, hey, you wanna go work OGA? And, like, Marty, man, I'm in state department, and I thought the requirements were still like 8 years or 9 years spec ops. I only had 6. So I was like, I don't qualify.

And it was 6. He but I he he goes, you qualify. I go, alright. Yeah. Because I was jogging in Moyock.

I lived out in the back at the PTC, the private training center, which was out. So I was jogging 1 day and he was driving home, and that's when he he yelled out his window. He goes, you wanna go do OGA? I was like, man, I don't qualify. And I'm still trying to run.

He goes, you qualify. Alright. Sure. Put my name in the hat. And then the next day, Randy came and there was 7 of us instructors that had been working contracts, and there was the Victory program which we ran to get guys certified for OGA.

It was it was easy. It wasn't anything tough, to be quite honest with you. We're coming back, and I remember, we're we're getting done training. We're teaching a class for the day to send guys over on the whips contract. I was doing a high threat protection side of the house on that side.

And he pulls all these guys, and and what get these are all these are all tough guys, man. All pipe hitters. Right? Cool. Yeah.

Everything. I can do anything. And Randy comes in, and TDC had gotten a name for itself. It was hard. People fail.

A lot of people were failing. Mhmm. And so Randy comes in, and there's 7 of us. He goes, we have a slot for TDC. Who wants to go?

It was crickets. All these pipe fitters, man. Everybody's look. You're not looking somebody say something. I was like, fuck it.

I'll go. I I was like, I'll do it. And it was like everybody would because if he 1 of us didn't volunteer, Randy was gonna pick 1. Mhmm. And, you know, if you if you don't pass it, well, then you may be able to come back on whips, but you're never working.

It was. It was it's literally pass or fail. You pass. If you fail, never OGA ever again.

For those listening, OGA stands for other government agency. So we weren't calling We're getting into the intelligence world.

Intelligence stuff. Yeah. The clowns in action. We're getting into the clowns in action. True.

True. But we didn't call it GRS. I didn't know what that was called. I didn't know it was GRS, you know. He said OGA, which I knew what it was, but it wasn't called GRS at that time.

If it was, it wasn't that wasn't a term used around the head shed there. Yep. So I say I did, and Randy says, okay, we need to get you spun up. Then he brought in Dan Simpson, 30 Dan, 1 of the original makers of TDC with Randy. They they, I mean, they started with Dan, Another Dan, he started Jiras.

Great guy. I wish I could remember his last name. I can't. But It's probably better you don't. No.

You're right. Even though he's pro well, he left and started Ossen Hunter Group,

which is Oh, maybe different.

So he he's a but I well, no worries. But, anyway, he goes, we need to get you spun up. And if you're a ranger and seals, you guys use pistols. SF, they get good at pistols. Rangers, we get a pistol, we're throwing it in a rucksack.

We don't shoot this. Like, I mean, we're rifling a machine. We can that's our thing. Rifles, machine guns, Gustavs, that's our thing. And Randy goes, get out there.

I need to start training. And at the time too, I wasn't using broom handles, which Oh, shit. You know? Because we don't that wasn't you guys did. Blue Blue and and WhiteSoft did.

A broom handle is a forward grip that was on the front of an AR 15.

That wasn't a thing. High Redis.

Or m 4.

M 4, what, m 4, AR 15, SBR, PDW, whatever. Yeah. You get all you gun porn people can can call it whatever you want. They figure it out. Yeah.

Exactly. But, I remember, and and I never we never did high ready. That wasn't a thing. It was low ready, low carry. Low carry, low ready.

So that's Ranger. Right? You gotta teach your high ready. So I get out there at Dan. The high ready actually came pretty natural.

The broom handle, I love it's like, man, where did why have I not been using that thing? And it was this I used the Deeter. I like the Deeter for the fore grip, the CQD fore grip. It was excellent. It was perfect.

It fit my hand right. And, so I got the rifle stuff down. That was pretty quick. The pistol, jeez. I mean, I could pass a state department call it the pistol, which is a joke.

The TDC pistol was

Not a joke.

That was like, woah. How am I gonna do this? There's and we worked on that continually for about a week. And then it was like, you're gone. Go see you.

And we went, my TDC course was held in Danville. Not Danville, ITI. That's where it started. The the racetrack, the out there. ITI, which what is that?

West Point, Maryland? I don't remember. It's it was called ITI.

It's, it's in Virginia.

It's in Virginia. Yeah. It but we did it there, went there, you know, did the PT test. Easy. I mean, actually, I'm running 5 minute miles.

It's nothing. I think I ran that whatever it was in 9 minutes where you had to run a half mile, carry the body, run back. I mean, I was just it's it's I was I was very blessed. I've been blessed with good Aztec running jeans. The, rifle part, I mean, it was tough.

It was challenging. I wouldn't say it was easy. It was challenging. No. It's tough.

It was the the time standards, they're they're tough. Got through that. The night stuff, again, we used night shit. I I was used to infrared lasers. I was used to I was so it was awesome to actually not have a 14, a cyclops on, and it wasn't the 15s we were using that time.

They were 20 threes.

They were a little bit bigger. Oh damn, those

old school ones. Those little school ones. It was real heavy, but it still was alright. I got used to it because we had stronger necks back then. We were tougher back then.

The vehicle stuff was PC it was just tactics. It was battle drill 1 alpha, man. React contract, break contract. You know, it's from battle drill squad attack, battle drill 1 alpha, and then you're either break contract or you flank, and it was the vehicle attacks were pretty simple. It's just bounding.

Often, sex it was infantry. And house stuff, no problem. Just don't flag your buddy. The high ready eliminates that, which made it a lot easier. And just get on your target, think.

Use your this that's where I started. This needs to start kicking in more than this. More than the shooting, the chess game. Be 3 steps ahead of your enemy. If you're racing towards your gun, you're already screwed.

You you've screwed yourself. That's why I don't get into the YouTube. Let's go fast fast. Because if you have to go fast, you fucked up somewhere. And that was what was t that's what Randy really Dev Guru ran, seal team.

Horse cock Randy. You know where his holocall site came? He really harped into that with me along with my platoon sergeant Randy Battallion, which I didn't really start to put together till TDC. Be 3 steps ahead so you don't have to react fast. It's a chess game.

And we had a Mi 5 and Mi 6 guys train in there too. They were part of our vetting team too. They were and for some reason, I don't know if this was your every Mi 5, Mi 6 guy I met was either named Mick or Moe. We had a Mick and we had

a Moe. Okay. Well Standard issue call sign up.

But they were 1 was an SBS guy, the other 1 was a Royal Marine that went to SAS, and they were a part of our instructing cadre too.

Okay.

And they were those guys think. That I mean, that's fine, fix, and then eliminate, but they're always thinking. And that's the it so it really became now where things started to slow down. You know, your adrenaline, fire breathing, let's kick through that door. That's actually where I started, hey.

Take a breath. Let's start to slow it down, Ranger. Alright? Be aggressive we need to, then bring it down. And it it really it just started to all make sense.

So the room clearing was actually it was great. It was it's like, man, I'm getting this. I'm I'm actually becoming an operator here, you know? And, you know, it only took 10 years, but I'm there. I'm getting there.

And, the pistol though, I was so worried. We went on and did the pistol, and you get I don't was it 2 tries? You get you do practices. They have us do some practice runs through, so it's not like they put you on their cold, you'd be practicing. This has changed.

And I I I don't because we got we had a day of practice runs, yeah, of that morning, and then they said, okay. Qual. We went out and called. I I blowed the head. Alright.

You get 1 alibi. And I went and I the body was fine. I was making the times. I couldn't hit the head because I my grip was I just didn't have the right grip. I didn't have the mechanics.

I was really because I didn't shoot a pistol a ton at range battalion. We just didn't do it.

So

we're out there, and I mean, luckily for me, fundamentals are fundamentals are fundamentals, so I'm trying to find the front sight, trying to do whatever, and doing it within that time frame, which the 1 that got the the 1 that was getting me was the 2 to the body, and then you have to, you know, you start at the 10, and you have to run at the 2 and put 1 in the head. So it's like, go. Draw, you run, and you have to put 2 to the body, then you have to run down to the 5 or to the 7, and then you gotta put 1 in the head within, like it was it was stupid. It was, like, 3 seconds or something

like that. I think these are different calls, though.

They might be different now. They might be. And I still got my calls. If you ever want me to send them to you, I I've still got those Qualls because I used to teach the course after. Yeah.

I get it. So I've still got those. I've got them too. And they may I'd like to see what you have. So I I mean, I can always use more training material, man.

I love Qualls, but it was that was getting me. I could get the body, and then you had to run fast down to the 3, and it was like 10 to the 3. Or no, I'm sorry. 10 yeah. It was 10 to the 3.

I'd have to look, guys. Forgive me, guys. You guys all know, I will maybe I'll I'll send that. We'll put it online, but it was it wasn't ungodly. It was tough, and I kept blowing the blowing the head shot.

Because you did that twice, and if you didn't get in that the the a box both times, it didn't matter, you failed.

Yeah.

You could get everybody shot in the world, but you had to hit a box, not outside yet. And

Basically what he's talking about is there's a slot that we call the credit card

The credit card. In the head. The prefrontal cortex lobe, right? The eyes. And,

so if you miss, if you hit outside of

the credit card You're you're done. You're done. It's it's on those IPSC targets, the ISPC I IPFC targets. And the last 1 I got, I didn't know anything different. I just got lucky as shit.

Body was fine. Physically, I was fine. I was fast still. Still could run fast. I got there, so my job was, k, get there, get those bodies out.

You're gonna hit them because they're easy. You know, all you do is a or b, which is here or here. That's a big spot from 10 yards. That's that's not hard to do, especially if you've been shooting a lot. Probably couldn't do it now, but no.

Much back then. But and then use my speed and run as fast as I could so I could get a stable position, and then just pray. So it was run like this and pray, and I did it. Got it. Nice.

And I and I got it. I hit the first 1 center, and I broke the line on this. Break the line, it counts. Yep. And I was like, oh, yeah.

And that was it. I made it to your s, and, went back, and it was a good feeling because you weren't looking down at guy, but it was like yeah. Because not many guys had passed TC. We lost half the course that we had, and all of them were ranger seals. We had 1 d boy and, SF, And we we had 10 guys, 5 passed, 5 failed.

Yep. And and, yeah, I went back and, they said, where do you wanna go? I said, I don't care. And I they sent my first trip. I went to the secondary, went to Afghanistan, went to Kabul.

And that was the end of o 5, beginning of o 6. And I forgot we called it the secondary. The second I remember the main and the secondary. What,

when did you realize that the OGA contract was for CIA?

At TDC.

At t they told me?

Yeah. Because they would sit us down, and they would tell us. And Afterwards

or during the course?

During the course. During the course, we we would we would know. And Randy Randy started the program. He'd been agency for a while. Gotcha.

We knew. I mean, he didn't have to it was, hey, guys. This is OGA. Wink wink. You know, we we knew.

Yeah.

It wasn't but, officially, when we got there, because it was a it was a Cordonoff training area, it was like a private training area where

Yeah.

There were no outsiders.

A private training area within a private training.

Yep. Exactly.

So we're at the same spot all the way on the back.

Yep. Yep. And so I so that that's when I knew, and and what I was so cool about is that the teams it was always the the for me, the pain was better. It was. It was great.

It was great. Patrick and I weren't getting pain well before, but it was still great. But the the smaller teams were what was cool to me. I thought that was neat. Being you and a buddy, and that's it.

Yeah. And you're out there on your own, and then sometimes you're out on your own, but on your own on your own where I did a lot walking within the cities on my own, which was awesome. I love that.

Finally Where was your first deployment?

Cobble. Ariane. And I, when I grow this out, I can blend pretty good. Not that I wear, but I could look like a business. No.

You you don't have to draw on the man wear the man jammies. There's a lot of government workers out there. Yep. You know, just wear what they're wearing. They were button down shirts, man.

And in the wintertime, they wore long coats, and you could buy 1 off at the park down by the movie theater, you know, right where the not the Serena Hotel. That's the 1 that got hit, but there's that other hotel downtown that they had that park, and you could just go buy stuff. And I would I'd stop, and I'd buy local stuff. Throw it on. Yeah.

You know, just make sure you delauce delauce. You're gonna smell a little bit, but it worked. And and I loved walking on my own. Like, and Saks, he trusted me. Or maybe he just thought, well, he's expendable.

I don't know what Saks, but he liked Gaetano. He's like, do you wanna go for a walk? And I loved it. A lot of guys didn't, and I get it, man. I mean, when you're a white dude tatted up down to here and you eat well and you're always buffed out, you're not gonna blend very well.

I get that. It wasn't that they were afraid. It's just they didn't blend. I'm a little guy. I'm I have a I have a brown complexion.

You know? I know how to handle myself, and I wanted to. And so I got then I went to the Mottie Market walking it was like Indiana Jones. I gotta walk in some of those alleyways. It it was I I have pictures of it.

Now sometimes I'll post them. It was it was where I was acting, and I was walking with a CIA case officer. We were back there doing a recon, just seeing, and I think, honestly, I think she just wanted to go back there to see it was cool. And this was, I threw an MP5 in a computer bag, and my Glock 19 on me. I wore just local I wore just what they wore.

I wore khakis and a button down shirt, and we went back. It was by CNN Circle. It was back, like, by the soccer field, where you go across the river, and the Mahdi Market's where the river is, and then if you come out the back, the front side is where that 2 story mosque, their their famous mosque is. Well, if you get down in the market in the river, there's the river here, and then you see people walking to shopping, there's a whole other shopping alleyways through that, and you have to find your way in there. It was so cool.

You just walk in, and it's like, it is like the movies. It's like this tight alleyway, and you get through it, and a whole other world of shopping opens up. You've got spices. You've got fighting quails that are about this big. You've got naan everywhere, and there's people being crazy everywhere.

There's I'm not crazy, but just it's just people shopping, Afghani shopping. You've got police. I remember walking in 1, and you do have a lot of shit and a lot of trash piled up on us because, you know, the open sewers and so forth. I remember walking, and we right out of this right left alley, and there was this police officer with a, a blackjack, you know, beating sticks. He was beating the shit out of some Afghani, just whooping the back of his legs, like just disciplining him.

And I remember walking, and we did have a local guy. So that was a that was, you know, that was a plus. I have a local Afghani with us. He's with us. And I said what what the hell, man?

He's beaten a shit up. And you know, first instinct as an American does this step in. I gotta stop this. No no no. Let it it's Afghan.

Let it go. What what they would do is is when they would go shopping, they'd hire guys to pull those you see guys carrying pulling donkey carts around? That was for people that didn't want to carry all their supplies back to their vehicles or their home. They'd hire these guys to put in the donkey carts and they'd walk them. The the tuk like kinda like a little tuk tuks, I guess.

Donkey carts is a better explanation. Little little pull wheelbarrows. I said why is he kicking the shit out of them? And he goes, he was parked his donkey cart in the wrong spot. It's like, there's Afghanistan for you.

But it was it just it was fun because I got to I wasn't on a military base. You know, I wasn't always being a DA guy. I I was I was getting out and doing surveillance and counter surveillance and just getting atmospherics, and that was fun. That was so cool. And getting to experience the food and hanging with the locals a little bit, and and it was it was awesome.

That first trip, and all the trips after were awesome. Because after I would do a couple of those and Saks and the agency found I was a guy that could they could rely on to do that, I'd they sent me out to do a lot of

stuff.

I'd go out in the Makaurin district, and they said, can you go take pictures of this apartment building? We think there's a government worker that's part of the Taliban, and I go, yeah. Sure. And we'd set it up, so I'd have Keur Ref around. Great guys I could trust, like Popeye was 1, Sacks was another.

You know? Otto, marine buddy that runs Photonis Defense, he was a Girozka. So they'd be close by. They'd be orbiting the area, so if I was 911 dude, I'm getting wrapped up, come help me. But I could go out there and they just let me go, and I would just walk around the city.

It was fun. I loved it. Yeah. I I that was the job on GRS that I love. But that was anyway, that was the beginning of GRS was right there where I got the taste, and that's where the bug got me.

It was it wasn't even the protection. It was that, holy crap. I have freedom to actually get to know these cities and see the stuff that I only saw in movies and National Geographic. Yeah. It was awesome.

Those were good times.

Yeah.

Yeah. Those were good times for the most part.

For the most part. Just dealing with this and then you had to come back to the to the agency and put a with the bullshit or or go, you know, try to stay clear of the Talibar so somebody's getting in a fight or drinking too much.

You weren't a Talibar guy?

I went in there a couple times, but I wasn't a big drinker. No. I wasn't. It it was too much drama. Yeah.

There's drama or, you know, some

A lot of drama. A lot

of drama. You just stay away from there, and, you know, a lot of women the women that were there, you know, it just A lot

of things happened on that pool table.

And you said it. I didn't. I but it it was too much drama. It's just, you know, it's just alpha men women, alpha males and females, and no. I always said I was my best person when I was overseas because I focused on the job.

I had fun. Gyms were good. There always was a gym. I could always work out. I had no problem running around the area, and I loved running even though the hour getting all that crap in your lungs.

Well, I'm getting the crap in my lungs in the gym with the with the little with the little, it's mini splits. You know? So I loved it. And that first trip was all 1st 7, 8 months was off and on to the cobble. That's where I went.

Kept going, kept going, kept going. It was fun, and I had a great time. What was your favorite place to work? Kandahar, Gekko. Gekko by far because all the ops were at night, so you could sleep all day.

Favorite place in Afghanistan or favorite place?

Favorite place for me was Gekko. No shit. I did love it. I love Kandahar, And I love I gotta do a lot of flyaways there. A lot of Losch hasn't spun up yet, so we were setting up Losch Gagarin Spin.

Those places were still they were thinking about setting them up, so we were doing a lot of flyaways and landing in the middle of the night in a soccer field, running off the back of a of a hip, which I hated flying those things. I felt like I was flying in a death trap because, you know, it's slow. It's just but laying in a soccer field in the middle of night, having the local guard force can pick you up, then you'd go stay in a bombed out building with some ratty, old blankets and worth but you'd go with your Canadarm security force too, so we'd always take guys with us. And I I got real close to them, and I was also in part I was also, in charge of the training. So we I'd run the training with the locals too, with our local QSF guys, you know, and the local guys that worked with us.

So that was fun. So I you know, I'd go over there, and even though there was a language barrier, I'd go in there with their CO, with their head guy, and we I drink chai, and we just sit and we try to communicate, and it was fun. I I enjoyed it. I played soccer on that Rocky soccer field where PT was. I remember PJ, whenever he get I I don't wanna say his name, but he broke his ankle out there because there's just rocks everywhere, you know, and then we'd run up gecko, you know, run up the mountain, do PT in the morning, and it was just it was it was awesome.

And we had a great team there. No. The team was that team rivaled the Benghazi team. That was 1 of the best teams where everybody got along. Myself, Kerley, the TL we had there, Rebel, he was awesome.

1 of the best TLs. Again, another guy that qualified if he was a contractor, but he became a staffer, 1 of the good staffers. Kerley x Bixler Joseph, who passed away, in a motorcycle accident, you know, the following year, he just he got hit while he was driving his motorcycle too fast. And, Mushroom, who is a old 4th degree car marine, old marine Who doesn't like an old old crusty marine? Great guy and then Joe dirt.

Joe's, Joe Zarq, Joe dirt deer take the dirt, Joe dirt, 10 special forces group guy. And, everybody just got along. It was wonderful. It was just and everybody it was 1 of those again, teams where you could go out and do stuff, and nobody really needed to say anything. You didn't even work together.

You just everybody just knew what everybody was gonna do. Yeah. And you just roll out, and I loved it because it was all at night. And going out and wrapping up guys at night was fun. I mean, we didn't it was hot, so we didn't get a lot of ops.

It wasn't like you guys where you guys were constantly going, but when it was, it was fun. And it was like and then at that time too is when also when we lost Jeremy Wise and we lost Southside at Coast. So, you know, so that's when the tactics changed too, or the the the standards operating procedures changed where we had to search people that were actually coming in. They wouldn't just let them on the base because you know, for those that don't know, I don't think the movie's that great, but I do like that scene actually is pretty pretty good. It was 0 Dark 30, where they showed what happened, where the CIA chief of base let the double agent on too too far and then blew up.

That's that was accurate. That south side, that was Jeremy. Doc Wyatt didn't die. He came to AAA later, but he was 1 of the ones injured, and they lost that real good targeter. But that's what we had to do as well.

And I there was 1 I remember. There was a defining moment for me there of how to handle because we would we'd have Taliban people coming on, or we'd go grab them, and we have to bring them in, and we'd search them again there

on a facility outside.

And X was hardcore seal, outside. And X was hardcore seal. He wanted to kill every I loved him not, but he just was mean. He'd be the nicest guy to us, but Taliban, I don't care who you are. You do what I tell you to do, you do it now, I'm gonna slam you.

And we brought this Taliban guy in, and we were searching him, and he wouldn't let us search him. But we're at an outer facility, so it's so if anybody gets blown up, it's gonna be us. You know? Say, we're expendable. It's alright.

Well, he wouldn't let him I remember, and it was, he was trying to search him, and we had the Afghan we had 1 of our interpreters there, and and I'm trying to play good cop we're fighting a good cop, bad cop, I'm trying to be the nice guy. And x is grabbing him and trying to get him to do what we're telling him to do, and he was just fighting it. He's Italian, he's fighting it. It. And I I go, so what's going on, man?

Why why is he not letting him search him? Is he hiding something? Is there a bomb here? Because now my spider senses are going up because I think he's gonna blow us up. And he goes, no.

No. He's he says, it's because he's got his Quran in his top pocket. He's got it in his charma camis up here. And I I always carried my pocket bible, and the little green ones we get going down change, the new testament, I had 1 here. I always carried it every day.

I pulled it out of my pocket. I said, here. You give this to him and you tell him he can touch it. We're saying God, I believe in God, I respect his God, he respects my God, we're good to go. And I said you say that, and you always said you don't know the truth, but I said you say that exactly how I said it.

Don't change it. Don't try to change the words. You say it just like that. And he did it in in Pashto, and the Taliban guy stopped fighting. He looked at me, and he says, okay.

I said, I'm shaking his head. I said, I go, so we good? We cool? He goes, yeah, we're cool. And he let me search him.

And I was like, man, you know what? The little diplomatic relation, but also the religious side, man. God is God. I don't wanna disrespect your God. You don't disrespect my god.

We have to search him. I said, tell him, and I did tell him this, that we tell him we have to search him because I don't want him killing me with a bomb. And he said it, and we searched him. Now X was in all his rights to throw that guy around. And believe me, I wanted to as well.

He's Taliban, man. Yeah. But there's gotta be more way to remedy this than just throwing his ass around and all of us getting scuffed up a little bit because nobody roadhouse man, Patrick Swayze, the great philosopher Patrick Swayze said, no 1 wins a fight, and he's right. Somebody all of us are gonna get scuffed up a little bit. We're gonna win because we're gonna throw them down, but somebody's gonna get scratched.

Somebody's gonna get beat. Somebody's gonna get hurt. You know what? Screw it, Kent. Let's try to do this.

Be the nice guy first. And it worked, and he gave us good info. Case officers were very happy with us because they didn't get a belligerent guy trying to give information. He he gave up at least that's what they said. I don't get into it.

But that was Kandahar, and that was how Kandahar was for me because it just it it the team fit, the work fit. I enjoyed going out at night. I enjoyed that it was very hot. You know, guys were getting or you had I don't know if you talked about it, but you had Bradley on, Don, lucky. You know, he got massive car bomb there when you were with the teams.

I mean, that was that was Kandahar. Yeah. But then also, I love that we got a punch out all over in the Laskergar and the Helman the Helman province and the Kandahar province, and we got to fly and Yeah. It really felt like cloak and dagger type shit. It was really cool.

Yeah. That was a good place to work.

It was. It was.

Let's move into let's move into Libya. Yeah. You ready?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it.

You wanna skip right to it? I'm good for whatever you are, brother. Every I if I if it hurts, then that's what I'm supposed to feel. That's what people need to see.

If you lead the way and I'll guide.

Yeah, yeah. I went to Tripoli first. My first trip wasn't in Benghazi, it was to Tripoli. And 1 of the things that I enjoyed about GRS, and especially then, is by that time I had started to stop moving, I stopped working for like the secondary companies. I wasn't doing contracts for Blackwater or Sauk who took over the contract, or, those were the main 2.

I don't know who Gaz'em anymore. Osen Hunter, we had another contract where I would do teaching with Osen Hunter. That's where I got to I mean, that's me and Evan Hayford worked on those contracts together. Great contracts. But they started a program called the Direct Hire Independent Contractor.

You know that, you've worked it. To those that don't, it's funny because what's the acronym? DHIC, we were dicks. And that was the joke, and I were dicks. You wanna be a dick?

Sure, I'll be a dick. And so they would come recruiting for from the Black Waters and whoever else, and if you had a good record, you've done a lot of time, and your c 1 at those places would write you a good eval, you could come and be a be a jerk, be a dick. And that's what I did after Kandahar actually. I said, yeah, do you wanna go? Because it gave us the opportunity to just because it gets mundane going from the secondary to the main to the secondary.

I mean, you're going after SNR. Right? When you're doing that 10 years, it's just you get bored. So it gave me the opportunity to go out to different places, and and Libya was 1 of them. So I was like, yeah.

And so I went to Libya, went to Tripoli. It was fun. Again, it was another place where, you know, you you get from the American government that these these dictators and all that are just awful people in these countries are shit holes in. I went there and, like, this isn't a shit hole. Wow.

Alright. There's still the hotels are still open, man. There's still a Sheraton here that's still open. Man, this this little resort down by the Mediterranean is still open even though it was a burning tank down the road. I mean, it was that's where I I I I didn't ever really question foreign policy and things like that until Libya.

It's like, okay. I'm not really sure this was right, but who cares? That's not my job. I don't it's not. I'm here to to do what my job is, and it was fun.

That's where I met Bob. I met Glenn. He was there, and and it was just it was less protection and more atmospherics. It was more surveillance, counter surveillance, and, trying to see if there were terrorists that were moving into the country because of the vacuum of power. Who was on our side?

Who was not on our side? And that was fun. Because it wasn't so much protection anymore doing like we did in a lot in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was more just a lot more tradecraft. It was.

It was and and and it was, it was a lot of times where where, you know, you're getting to see things or like even getting to go places that you wouldn't get to go in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not talking about just nature. There's there's the ocean right there. You know, you got Leptis Magna, the old Roman Colosseums that are right there. And a lot of this job took us to those places.

So you're getting to work in some historic places. They're like, wow. I didn't know Rome was here in in Libya, you know, or you're seeing, you know, the the Battle of Tripoli, and you're seeing the marine gravesites. Or and we wrote about in 13 hours when the there was a consulate that was attacked in Libya way before ours, and we write about in the book and getting to go see that. So it was almost you know, it's not like a music.

I'm on I'm on a job, but I'm also on a historical Tour. Tour. And it was awesome, man. And, the guys were great, because if you're on the on the dick program, you're generally, you've been there for a while. So everybody, even if you didn't know, hadn't worked that person, maybe in an area, because I worked in Kurdistan as well.

Love that place. I love Sue, Sully and I loved Derbeul and I loved the hook, but you would know the guys. So the guy you hear the name, oh, I've heard of him. Oh, yeah. I know.

He knows it. So you're not getting a new guy coming in with a chip on his shoulder. Everybody's man, they're chill, man. They're like you. They're like me.

I'm probably the most wired. They're like you. They're just chill. Got a job to do, it's time to do the job, flip the switch on, let's go kick some heads in, then turn the switch off and just relax. And that's how it was.

And the agency there, you know, I I I learned I had learned how to deal with them. You know, I I I knew what I I knew what to expect. And, Bub was awesome. Bub was always a CrossFitter. He was always out working out, and so was I.

Loved working out, but he did the CrossFit stuff. I wasn't a big CrossFitter. We'd watch, you know, we'd go watch movies in our downtime. He was the only guy that would watch black dynamite with me. I love that blaxploitation movie, and every guy hated it there except for Buck.

He was the only 1 that would sit through it with me. But the first trip was pretty it's normal. Nothing really big was happening. You'd see some black flags going on. You'd you'd see the terrorist flags, Al Qaeda flags.

You're used to that timing. You see them everywhere. So so what? There's some black flags. You weren't really thinking of it.

Went home, and then the next trip, they said you're going to Tripoli, so I'm getting ready to go to Tripoli. And then right when I got to Sudebay, Greece, which is where our stopping point was, where part of the 5 55th Fighter Wing is, They said, no, we need people in Benghazi or going to Benghazi. It's like, okay, AAA Benghazi. So what? Head out there.

I get there and, you know, you just felt it was different. You just walk, you get on Benina, and the movie did an excellent job show, showing that, man. You just get off the plane. We do have an expediter there. We always, you know, we have expeditators at all these airports, but you have a guy waiting for you, a GRS guy waiting for you by himself.

So because we that was where we were doing a lot of movements, single per 1 person movements, which was even better. That was even more fun. Guy waiting on himself. He get off a plane, Libyan air probably, flying in, you know, flying flying that first class flight, which is love how the movie did it just right. You have a first class ticket, but on those planes, there's no first class, so you just get the whole row to yourself.

So you watch the movie again, Jack's flying first class, he has that whole row to himself. That's just the little things that they got right. Well, you got the plane, you go in there, they get you off, and then you go to you go to the base. And it just, like it wasn't secure. You know other places, there's shit going on, but it felt somewhat secure.

At least there's Big Brother's kind of watching you. There you just, you did. You were like, which was fine, but it just felt different. And there was, the work was pretty, the work was fun, enjoyed it. Did a lot of, again, a lot of tradecraft, more surveillance than any protection.

I remember towards the end though, and this is where it started to get hairy, where we're just, me and Boone are there, and Boone's been out a long time today. He was starting he's been doing longer, just as long as I have. And we're out on an op, and it was about 3 weeks before the attack. And Sarah, you've had Sarah on. She's she's like, hey, we've got reports that AQI's here.

There's this camp, and we had all on our falcon view, we had all the terrorist camps marked, and we were spot on. We had 10 digit grids on each 1. Rafal Asahate, Anshariah, AQIM, and she goes, there's a Rafales Ajate camp that they think there's AQI in there. Can you guys go sit on it? Now Boone's for those that don't know, Boone's black.

Mexican, I grew my beard out. Now I always thought he was Mexican. I could never figure out. He's he's he's weird looking. I thought he was Tongan once, and I thought he was Polynesian, or he was black, and then he's like, are you Mexican?

But he's he's mulatto, but what I'm saying is he looks he can fit, he can blend. Yep. So we take our local car out, and we go to this Rafaela Sahate camp service. Go to this 1, and we sit on it for a little bit. And there's this opening within the within the compound that their camp is.

It's it's walled, but there's an opening, and we can we're sitting there in our vehicle and we can see through it, and actually we do look like locals, and nobody's gonna monitor us, and the sky walks by, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. And I looked at Boone, and I said, do you see that, man? He goes, yeah. That's AQI. I was like, fuck.

Yeah. That's that's Al Qaeda, man. They're here. And it it looks just like we were people we were fighting in Iraq, man. He looked just, you know, the you could even the dead eye.

I mean, we're it was. I don't know. And we weren't super close. I mean, like, I but it was just it was a you just knew. It was like, that's that's AQI.

Holy crap. We rushed back, like, sir, they're here, man. You guys are giving reports. AQI's here. And we got chewed out for that.

Yeah. For what? That was beyond our scope of duties. We weren't supposed to be sitting on camps. Bob came and chewed our ass out, and chewed Sarah out.

She goes, you guys, and Sarah was pissed. She's like dude, I just got chewed out. Bob came and got us, because you guys are going beyond. You don't need to be doing that. That's not what our job is here.

And me and Boone are like, yes it is. It's like, chief, that is our job. And Boone's pretty laid back. I used to, like, chief, yeah, that is our job. That's our job.

And he did rip Sarah more than us though, because he can. She's a staffer. And she was pissed. She was just, and you know Sarah, she does. She's a pit bull man.

And I remember that after that, she said, we can't go sit on camps anymore. You just can't. We're not doing that. I said, well, what the fuck are we doing here then? Because it it was towards the end.

You know, I'd already gone through the fights with all the CIA peace case officers, made fun of them, you know, chubbed their shit. I I've been doing that for for 2 months now. And I was like, well, what the fuck are we even doing here? And 2 weeks later, the attack happened. And then 2, 3 weeks.

And it was like it almost like they they knew it, and I I I still don't understand why the job that we're supposed to be doing, we found a target, we verified that target, let's action that mountain rocket target, why we got in trouble for that. And the only 1 that can ever answer that is Bob, maybe our TL. I never got an answer. Sarah, maybe she knows, but I I don't know if she really does or not, because I don't think she even got an answer. She got reprimanded.

But that was Benghazi. It was like it was. We were and that was even Libya. Even some of the state department officers will tell you, they're RSOs. It's like we were fighting Al Qaeda in our own offices.

And and that was that was it. It was it was a lot of just doing a lot of great work, getting to be on our own a lot, singles, but then when we did our jobs, we get reprimanded for it. We took some we got another time we got reprimanded as well. Before that happened to Wisera, we some BT Garv guys came in, the the listener guys. And there was a hospital there that they we were want they wanted, and that's part of our job.

We'll take them around. We'll drive by the areas that they think they can hear, and if they have or gather information, suck out text messages with their little stuff that they do, the cool stuff. And and we took them out because there was a hospital that they thought Iranians were in, and so we drove by it to see if they could find out. And then, as we came back, we came in, Bob was outside, he was waiting on us like we were in trouble for something, and he's called the BTR guy. Guys in the staff they were staffers and called him in.

They were on a plane out the next day. And I was like, what happened? He's like, he didn't want you going and listening in on this hospital, or and he doesn't want you doing any of that stuff, and these guys shouldn't have done that. They weren't supposed to. I don't have an answer.

I asked somebody why. I I don't have an answer. I I still I don't know why. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing. We're getting good intel.

We're giving action. Guys were in there. He somebody had brought them in for some reason. Yeah. We did what we're supposed to do, and every time we do something and get headway where we could action on a target, because we're not the action guys.

You know, we're the we're the collectors. We're the protectors. But when we did, it would get we get it get we get condemned for it. He would jump on our shit, and it was it was just I just like and I did it a lot of times. What the hell are we doing here?

Why are we even here then? I don't get it. What's the deal? And, then the attack happened on on 911,012. And, you know, there were some precursors to that.

You know, the the British ambassador had got hit by RPG. We were I didn't respond to that. I was in Tripoli when that happened. The gRS guys that were there at that time did respond to it. That's when they moved out of the country.

They got hammered. 1 of their security officers got the RPG lodged in them, but they were out. Red Cross had been attacked once, which is news. That was a big news thing, and they had also blown a hole in the consulate once already before the attack. They had tried to breach the wall.

So the signs were already there. Yeah. And, you know, we were always over there at the concert. They were good guys. Alec was a good guy.

You know, they were. Dave was awesome. And they're they're I have nothing bad to say about them. They were just they were they were overwhelmed, and they were These

are the state guys?

Yeah. Alec Henderson, Scott Wicklund, who was the ambassador's body man, Dave Rubin were the 3 guys that were mainly there, and people, oh, they were chickens. She ordered a chicken. What would you have done? You got a massive 40 man force running in.

You're out there smoking. Hook it, chill and relax, and you don't got nothing but m fours, and you're not allowed to even carry them because state department policy says when you're on the compound and you're not pulling work, you gotta keep them in your in your armory, which was over by the kitchen. I don't blame them doing what they're doing. They ran to they did what they needed to do. Scott ran towards the ambassador to protect, and that was his job.

Alec ran to the talk. That's where we were supposed to go. Dave ran to get a weapon. They were just overwhelmed like that. It's done.

But that being said, you know, our conversations with them, we would constantly warn them. And that's the scene from the movie where Pablo or me being that asshole, I did do that. I remember looking at their compound. We came and we did a evaluation of their compound before the attack, and I remember looking at Scott, looking at Alec. I was looking at the walls.

There was a big building over here that I thought you could put sorry about that. Put sniper fire in. And I remember looking at him, and I said, guys, your walls are soft. Your guards ain't for shit. You know?

They're local guards. Half your guys don't even have guns. Blue Mountain Group didn't even carry guns. I said, you're sniper's paradise. I said, any big element gets in here, you're all gonna fucking die.

And I remember Scott's eyes went, and I did feel bad a little bit. I didn't, but Rome was there. He covered. He's like, guys, if you ever need us, we'll come get you. And we get they had radios, we gave him our radios.

We all had ICOMs to talk to each other, and they did request more security. Their RSO Eric Nordstrom in Libya and Tripoli did. So they did try. They were just turned down. They requested 240 Bravo, they requested more armed security, and it was turned down by Patrick Kennedy and Charlene Lamb.

Patrick was the undertone secretary for Hillary, and so was Charlene. She was in charge of case security and all that. Those people also get away scot free. They should have been held accountable as well, very much accountable. But but when the attack happened, it still was a shock to me because the ambassador at that time, his he did have a security detail attached to him.

It was 10 special forces group. It was this it was the SIF team. That was his security. For some reason, they had been pulled off him when he came to Benghazi. I don't know why.

No shit. I do not know that. When you watch the movie and it says JSAOC team repositioning to 4 position, that was his team. They had been pushed out for a training mission in either Croatia or Spain. I can't remember.

Interesting. Yeah. But because I knew because a lot of those guys when I was in 19th special forces group, a lot of those guys from 19th, I was in Colorado, the act when they did active detour, and they were 10 special forces, so we knew a lot of the same people. And they'd come eat with us when I was in Tripoli because their food at the state department facility sucked. So they'd come and eat dinner with us.

And that's why, actually that's why in the movie when we're talking to Bob and the the basher's coming, and we had that conversation, like, the basher's coming. You guys you know? And I was like, so who gives a fuck? We're in the state department. And Bob's like, dude, there's not he's not coming with his detail.

I was like, where the fuck is this detail? They're not with him. And they were they were hardcore pipers. There was a SIF team, and they pulled him out. So that's why we stayed, and 3 of us did extend.

Myself and Boone and Rowan were supposed to go home to each other before the attack and we stayed because we had a great team. We didn't wanna mess that chemistry up. You know? And and sometimes that pisses some people off because, of course, if I would if Rowan would've went home, he'd still be alive, of course. But I know Rowan wouldn't change it because if he wouldn't have stayed and we would have new players in there, not saying that we're we're awesome tactically any better than anybody else, we just had a good team.

I don't think the outcome would have been the same. Not because of skill sets or anything. Everybody's got great skill sets. You worked yours as well. You know the deal.

We all got great skill sets. But it's the the team Yep. That and that team, whether we got along or not, we meshed well. And, yeah. So people have been, oh, why'd you guys make it so dramatized that when you said during that film that 3 guys were supposed to 3 guys extended?

Well, because 3 of us did extend, myself, Boone, and and Roan. And, you know, it's also very telling of how awesome Roan was and maybe he just foretold everything before the attack. We had just done, and I don't, Osmay have said this during his, I don't know, because it really sticks out with all of us. The day before the attack, we had just done a full on CASAVAC training op, where Roan put us through a huge scenario of if the compound gets attacked, this is what we need to do medevac wise. And we had ketchup, We had tourniquets who were teaching all the CI case officers going through a huge CASOVAC plan.

Wow.

It was just isn't that just the most I said, the lord I I love god. I just love I mean, I do. As much as God looks at me and goes, man, that man, I cannot keep this guy straight, isn't it? It's just he did it, and I didn't wanna go to me. Me being Tano, like, bro, eat shit.

I've done enough. I'm gonna do this shit, man. Tano, get out there. Oh, fine. And, yeah.

It it saved lives. It did. It was just it was a 24, 36 hours before the attack. We went through base wide training, medevac, casevac plan, how do we handle mass cash, Mass cash. Damn.

Yeah. So that just shows you how awesome Mona is.

So Yeah.

But the attack happened. I remember I remember we were just laying there, and me and Boone were on Cure Off. We always had a, you know, we always had a team on Cure Off standby. Every team would be off and then we always had guys that were on a that's all they did all day, 24 step, 24 hours. We were on that Curef, so end of the day, we're thinking quiet day.

My gosh, Almost time to go home. You know, I got a few more days left, extension. I even remember, we were watching 2 of the greatest movies ever made. I had just watched Battleship, and I was watching Wrath of the Titans. And, we get a call on the radio, and you can hear the gunfire, but it's not really because there's always gunfire.

Yeah. I

thought maybe somebody's having a wedding or something to get to hear the prump prump, and, we get a call on the radio, and it was from our our team leader, Jiras, because Jiras and he's in the team room. Room, and it was about that monotone. Not a lot of excitement, and at least I didn't think it was. I didn't hear the excitement. So Boone did roll over me, and he's like, dude.

He's like, what the fuck did you do now, Tom? Because he thought I'd pissed somebody off again. And I go, dude, I ain't done anything. I've been a saint all day, dude. I swear I

just wanna go home.

Man, because 9 times out of 10, if we got called, I I did something. I either put I had a placard from the movie Tropic Thunder where sergeant Cyrus, the Robert Downes junior character, I actually, it wasn't a placard. It was a piece of paper, and I laminated it, and it said never go full retard. And if a CI case officer did something stupid, I'd put it on their desk so they'd see it in the morning. And so I do stuff like that.

I just love picking. I love picking on them. The the Jason Bourne's. So The Jason Bourne. So so, Boone Boone's and Boone's been with me for 10 years.

I mean, we hadn't worked together, continued, but we've been in different spots for 10 years, from state department on to OGA. So he knows me. He's like, dude, what the hell did you do now? You son of a bitch. It's like, nothing, bud.

I've been good. I promise you. And then the then the urgency came. It was about 30 seconds later though, it said, Juris, we need you in the team room now. And it was and you just you you've been doing this long enough.

I've been doing this long enough. Alright. It's time to go. And I look at Boone, and we're getting our gear because we kept some of our gear in our lockers, but our our quick ready gear, our body armor, and our m fours, our shore our our pea shooters, we kept right by our bed on QRF. So it was right there.

Radios were right there, of course. All the night vision, all the heavy weapons were still in our lockers in the team room. We start getting our shit on and Gun's smiling. I'm smiling. It's awesome.

I'm smiling just like this. I still remember. I still remember looking at him. He's smiling. I'm smiling.

I go, man, we could do some fun tonight. And we headed out our door, and as soon as you got out the door, our door from where we were in building Charlie, where it opened up, the annex was directed at 12 o'clock. So as we opened the door, you know, and we're seeing the treasures, it's you can see the firefight. It's going off. So now, all that popping, you know, now it's starting to, oh, that's what it is.

You know, every the brain is starting to realize, oh, it's just some some crazy night in Libya. This is holy shit. Constance getting attacked. And the Jason Bourne, so the ones I saw were like it was like casting firecrackers at them. They're just going everywhere.

And I saw a team, I saw Roan, we all had tasks, and we all had responsibilities. My responsibility was heavy weapon, Mark 46, get that. And then I was gonna drive the SUV. Boone's responsibility was to get the keys for it, get it out. My responsibility was to make sure we had it ready to go.

And actually, we all had our different tasks, and it was beautiful, dude. It was just beautiful. I saw leader leaders acting like leaders, and it wasn't the barking orders. It wasn't the yelling at each other. It's everybody shut the fuck up and did their jobs, and it was it was awesome.

Because even in that elements there, you you don't always get that. You're always gonna have maybe 1 guy that thinks he's in charge, and everybody respected enough each other and trusted each other enough that nobody needed to say a word. And it was it was like Mozart. It's just

Wow.

Wonderful. And that's what it reminded me. I mean, I was I was, like, seeing notes, man. And, we're 5 minutes. We're ready to go.

5 minutes. It's time to go. And I remember I looked at Roan, he's got the sedan, he's got Jack in taking that, Boone's a rock star, he's got our shit together, the SUV's ready to go, I got my 46, you know we're geared up, we got our night vision on, we got all the stuff that's in our lockers. Got the ammo, Ron goes like this. I look at him, that's all I need.

He's good to you? Alright. Good. Chief's here. Our team leader's here.

They're on their cell phones. I go, chief, we're ready to go. He didn't bother him to look at me. I said, chief, we're ready to go. He looks at the team leader, still isn't looking at me, on his phone talking to somebody.

I don't know who it was, still to this day. He says to the team leader, tell these guys they need to wait. That motherfucking disrespectful. Fine. And the same word, I'm just what?

The team leader looks at me. He starts to tell me that. I go, dude, I I got it. I fucking got it. I walk back to my car.

Roan's like, dude, Tanya, what's what's happening? What's going on, man? I said, boss, tell us we gotta wait. Now the movie where Jack and Roan got stopped and we tried to get to him in the beginning, that happened, but it was at night. So we had already been through that before.

So we're like, shit, he ain't gonna let us go again. So that wasn't part of movie magic. It just dawning we changed it to it was nighttime when that happened, and Rowan gave bluff his way out of it. And he just had a CIA chief of support lady with him when that happened. It's pretty awesome.

But we'd already been through that where he would not let us go. But we're waiting. You know, we're we're we're still thinking at that point in time. Maybe he still does know something we don't. Maybe the SIFT team is on its way.

Maybe they're sending a bird in. Maybe something's coming in. Maybe there's marines off the coast, and they're you know, we don't we're trying to play the benefit of the doubt by not creating more drama because more yelling and screaming is not gonna do any good. It's not. And that's why that team was so awesome because we all knew that.

If we had all been younger with this and vinegar, we probably would have been fighting with them, and what would that have done? Nothing. So we're waiting. We're continually going scenarios, at least I am through my head. I know the team is.

You know, you're war gaming. You're what ifing through your head. You're going through your head going going through scenarios that you win to keep the adrenaline in check. So I'm going through my head. I'm going, okay.

If we get hit with mortars here, what am I gonna do? Alright. How do we win this fight? Fine. We get out the gate, we get ambushed.

On this road, what do I do? How do we win that fight? So you're you're just it's it's what you do in the corporate world too when so you don't this, you're just going through scenarios that you win, and you and the only way you can do that is through hard training or experience or both. And by that time, I'd been through a lot of hard training and a lot of experience. So So I was able to pull from that.

And I know the other guys were doing the same thing, because nobody was panicking, everybody was, Rowan's taking the lead, he's our charge, he's going to take care of this. And we trusted that. So Roan's talking to to the chief. Tigg's there too. Tigg's talking to the chief, and the time's just going by.

The the fighting is intensifying. And then instead of just hearing AKA and PKM fire, then you know what this sound, we start hearing a, movie shit, dude. I said, dish Kim. Holy fuck. We gotta go.

And, can't do it. We're still waiting. And that's when I saw Tig and Bob arguing. That's when the the the 1 huge interaction. We didn't put it in the movie.

It wasn't gonna have a place in the movie. It didn't need to, but they were arguing. It's in the book, where and that's where Tig was told, Bob, Tig's like, motherfucker, we gotta go. We gotta go. We gotta go now.

And that's where Bob told, stand down, Bob. You guys gotta stand out. He told Tig and Tyrone in Jack's car right there. And I don't think it was malicious. I don't think it was nefarious.

I think he just was shitting down his leg. The later was nefarious with the military not coming. That was purely political nefarious actions from the power that be, commander in chief and secretary of state and all of them. But that, I could be wrong, but regardless, we were told to stand down. And, so we're told to wait once, stand down 15 minutes later, and then at the 25 minute mark of us waiting there, because remember, the state department guys have our freaks, have our icon freaks.

They're calling us on the radios, and that was heartbreaking, man. That really was because we're listening to them, and they're like, Jiras, where are you? Jiras, where the fuck are you? We need you. Jiras, they're we've been overrun.

Jiras, they're lighting the buildings on fire. We're hearing all this, and we're like, guys, we're rocking that.

Is the chief of base here

in this, Bob? On the he's it's all on the talk because they're open mics.

What's, I mean so he's hearing this, and he's still not letting

us go.

What was the relationship like then before this night?

We didn't get along. I he was condescending as hell. I didn't get along with him. I didn't like him. I didn't care for him.

We worked in Mosul together as well. Didn't like him there. I thought we made him pretty. Well, I think that was the combination of characters. We we had a team leader, and we had the chief.

Chief was very fast. This guy doing now? He became he got assists. So he got his he got his his top tier to retire as a assist, assist level, and then he became a contract instructor at the farm. Now I don't know if

he's still doing that. Are you fucking kidding me? They took that fucking clown

Yep.

And put him at the farm to train all the incoming class.

He may not be doing that. He's made enough I mean, it's just level retirement.

What a fucking joke.

I know. So he's he's What a fucking joke.

Take that guy and put him in charge of the fucking up and coming case officers. Wow. And that's why that fucking agency doesn't do shit anymore.

It's a shit show. It's a clown show. What if? Ian, bro, he's probably retired now living in Williamsburg or somewhere nice with a 1,000 acre. I mean, he's made plenty of money.

He got the CIA, you know, he got the highest level of the CIA.

What do you think he thinks about every day?

I don't think they give a shit, dude.

You don't think he gives a shit?

Well at night. I hope he doesn't. But it's like asking me, you know, does Kamala Harris sleep well at night? You know she sleeps like a because they think they're right. All the time, he was, I'm right, you're wrong.

I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but, you know, we're we we he seriously was gonna stay there to collect intel when we were leaving out. When after the mortars hit, after the bombs hit, after Ronan Bub died, we had to force his ass out of the compound because he still was gonna stay there and collect intel. And that's that was him. They're they are so elite. They're they are the they're elitist, and they just think they are the smartest people in the room.

And that's 1 of the reasons why I always would fuck with them because they're not. And here's this knucklehead hayseed from Kansas giving you shit because you think you're the smartest person in the room, but that was him. And when we heard Alec, and he's in the talk, so he's watching his team basically get decimated. They're lighting the buildings on fire. He's watching it all on the CCTV cameras.

He says, Jiras, if you don't get her, I'm all gonna fucking die. Just it was a movie magic. That's what he said. Tyrone went, like, hey. Tyrone's awesome.

He's in the sedan. You're an armored vehicle. I just can't roll the windows down, so he cracks the door, and he just does this. I was like, wow. That is I still get chills thinking about it because, you know, I don't he was big.

His arms are like that. And, he looked he had a beard like Leonidas. He had dyed it black, so he looked like Leonidas. She'd give me shoes. Like, you're trying to look like Leonidas, aren't you?

Yeah. But I remember thinking to myself when I saw that, I was like, man, I go to your combat Leonidas. This is fucking awesome. And I gave him a thumbs up, and we started to head out the gate. Now we didn't quite make it out the gate because and I I, you know, I I like I said, I'm wargaming.

We're still going through our heads. It's a chess game. Stay 3 steps ahead. Don't rush, you know, if you're racing your gun, you failed somewhere. We need something.

I don't know what we need and then I realize it. I said we we need we need them all. I'm not gonna tell you his real name, but the interpreter. We gotta get them all. Now, dude, he looked pretty good in the movie, like young guy, kinda young forties, in shape.

He didn't, dude, he didn't look like that. He was he looked like Bob Newhart. Seriously. He looked like an Egyptian Bob Newhart. He was adorable.

Glasses, droopy cheeks, old dude, bald. We need him though. He we don't combat terps, so I'm calling him and trying to find him. You have faith. I'm gonna find him.

I say stop the cars. We get I get out of the car. I think I don't have to run around this damn base to try to find this guy, and lord works some steerage ways, brother. I get out. I come in the front of my hood.

Think I'm gonna have to run to his hooch and then run to the skiff to find him, and he's walking right in front of my car. Thank you. I said, we need you, man, and it was awesome. It was because he he did. He he got an argument.

Not an argument. He's was just shitting his pants because he he doesn't wanna go. Bob Newhart doesn't go to combat, man. It doesn't happen. And his eyes are huge, and I said, dude, we need you, man.

We we need you. I don't speak Arabic well enough. None of us do. We don't want blue on green, you know what that is, but for the Eurydians that don't, a friendly fire incident with the foreign force because of a language barrier, blue on green. And, I said dude, we need you man.

And he goes, Tano, I'm not a combat tripper. I said I know that, bro. He goes, I'm not weapons qualified. I said, I know that, and I had a Block 19 on my hip. I handed it to him.

I said, you're on. I'll go get your stuff. It was freaking all. He took it, and he ran back into building c. And, initially, I thought I lost my weapon.

Boone did too. Boone Boone was looking at me shaking his head when he ran away. But he came back out, he ran back out, and it was awesome because it was he was he he didn't have the cool Gucci gear like we do. You know, the form fitting shit, looking cool. He had to borrow somebody's helmet.

It was way too big for him, so it was all jingling on his head. I I mean, it could even have been on backwards. I mean, it just didn't fit him. He didn't have body armor. He had a flak jacket because that's all he could find.

He's got his finger in the trigger wheel as he's running towards me. He's flagging the shit out of me, and all I could do was marvel at it that whole time. I just marveled. I was like, this is freaking off. This little dude that looks like a little turtle is running towards me right now, flagging the shit out of me with his gun, and I have never felt more motivated in my life because this dude had no business going.

He's not a SEAL. He's not a marine. He's not a ranger. He's not security. He's not law enforcement.

He's a little interpreter that he is giving of himself, and he's coming with us. And I'm like, that is what heroism is. That's braver. Yeah. Selfless service.

That's it, man. And he got in the car. I did take his finger out of the trigger wheel. I said, put you again, because I didn't want to shoot me in the back. He had to go behind me, and then we took off.

Then we hit it started to head down there, and that was our trek towards the consulate. And then it just got even hairier from there from there. But we get there. We stopped on a road called Gunfighter. It was called Gunfighter.

It wasn't movie magic, that's what we called it. We had a Gunfighter here, and Adidas was the other road on the other side. And there was locals there. They were looked like they were shooting back. Now it looks like in the movie, we get up and it's creeping up.

They actually were already in a firefight. They were already shooting back and forth. We didn't know who friend or foe was, but they weren't shooting at us, so we get out of the car. Boone and myself did tell Henry. We said, Henry, get this figured out.

We had our TL with us in the car, so we said, you still stick with the TL, tell us what the hell's going on, and then again, leaders took over. Leaders do what leaders do. Rome parked, Jack parked, Tig parked, we parked behind him, and we started to move in position to engage. And you get close to that wall, and you start hearing those cracks. Just crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, because, you know, the bullets are going by your head.

Breaking the soundbar. You're hearing a shh every once in a while, and then there was a a block center block wall behind us, so you'd hear a smack from around 762 hitting a wall hitting a wall, and it was freaking it was all you know, it's it's freaking awesome. It's it's awesome. And I saw Rowan start to engage. Nobody said a word, and everybody just started to engage, and we started to move.

And Tig got us Tig got our 203, you know, our 123, cracked a breach, put that HE DP round and that high explosive dual purpose round, and he just started throwing rounds down range. And Boone came up to me and said, as we're shooting, he goes, you know, we knew there was a building off in the distance that we thought we could get up there and put machine gun fire, sniper fire, and so he goes, Tano, let's get high, man. Let's get high. Roger that. So he went and got his SR 25.

I ran and grabbed the 46. So I had my m 46 my 46 m 4 covered. I was wearing shorts. Hey, boy. That's go, are you wearing shorts?

Yeah. I was. Actually, they were just a grayer version of the they were a tan version of these. They were shorts I'd made in Canada or from old Truspect pants. I was also wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt, but we couldn't put that in the movie because, I guess Disney didn't like Mickey Mouse shooting terrorists, but I had Mickey Mouse.

Probably the closest thing he could get was the was the was the panda shirt, but it was a Mickey Mouse shirt. But, yeah, I we, and we just started climbing walls, man. And it was hard. I I wasn't ready. I wasn't no spring shaking anymore.

8 foot high block walls with all that gear on that, you know, a 200 a 200 round drum on, a nutsack on the, a 100 rounds on the 46, you know, magazines all over me, magazines all in my pocket, and just sucked it up. And you just, and you know, I tell you what, the the first wall we climbed over, I was just getting ready to get shot in the butt or the head. So I I I did I looked over, didn't say anything, and then I went butt first. So I figured, well, I'll get shot in the butt. I could still probably fight.

If I got shot in the head, I'm fucking out. But I'll be quite honest, the 3rd, 4th wall, I didn't care anymore. It's like, just so smoke. Get me over this wall. And we it's only 400 meters.

We're 400 meters from the compound at that point. Jack, Tyrone, and Tig went down and fought their way down and suppressed the weapon, just like the movie did. They went down the main alleyway to the front gate, and they suppressed because Tig had that 203, and he's just knocking them back. And we had some local out, PKM, a guy with a PKM and some AK 47 guys, and but half of them didn't know what the hell they were doing anyway, but at least it was it was gunfire. Boone and I did have 2 locals that we took with us.

They did. The movie is 2 guys came to me before we jumped that first wall and said, hey, mister, can we go with you? And I looked at him, and they knew they were kids. And at first, I just felt like I could trust him. I go 17th Feb, they said, yeah.

I said, come on. And Boone's like, what the fuck are you doing? I said, dude, I said, force of fire team, man. And I said, I'll stay in the front. You just stay in the back.

If they well, then you kill them. So then they went with us that whole time. And we jumped Wallace, got onto that building, and it was it was that disheartening. If you, again, watch the movie, it's pretty spot on. We cleared that building, And, you know, you're not just clearing buildings, going upstairs, and I got that gear.

I'm clearing it with a 46, and I'm smoked. And we get to the top of that building. You know, Boone's got his m 4, but he's also got an SR 25 on him, so he smoked too. And we get up there, and we looked down, and we couldn't see anything. It was like, man, all this energy you wasted.

Because the consulate there are trees that surround the consulate, well, they were all on fire. So you you just couldn't see anything in there, and it's like, god. Yeah. Because you're trying not to get pessimistic, but, like, you know how many calories I just watched? How much water just doing all this and for nothing?

Put it out of your head. And what snapped me out of it too is Rowan came across the radio because he's still moving because he needs our he he needs us to suppress. He at least that's what he thinks anyway. He's doing a damn good job on his own. That all 3 of those guys.

He goes, Tano, I need your eyes, man. I need your eyes. I go, I go, Ron, this roost is a bus, man. I said, shoot, move and communicate. I'll meet you in the middle.

And that's what we did, and we ran down the stairs and went to the back gate and just like the movie, we just climbed over the back gate. What was awesome is there was a commander that pulled up just like that move. He pulled up with his vehicle. I actually wanted him before we jumped over the gate. He got there before we jumped over the back gate.

I wanted him to push it open with his car. So it's like, push this open this car. He goes, wait, mister Waite, and he got on his phone, and he started dialing a phone number. And I was like, who the fuck are you calling, man? He's like, just wait.

Wait. I go, who are you calling? He goes, I I'm calling the bad guys. I'm negotiating surrender. I said, who the I said, you're doing the what?

He said, motherfucker. And Boone's yelling at me because he's already inside. He climbed over the gate already. And Tig's yelling at me to get inside on the radio. He's like, we need you, Tano.

Quit fucking around. And I just let it go. And he was 1 of the guys that was gonna facilitate the counterattack later, but I didn't know. And so that little argument you see me get in with, that wasn't that that actually did happen. That happened as well.

And I got in there, and we fought. We we pushed him off. It's a 9 acre compound. And for the next hour, we just we're trying to find the ambassador running in the burning building, trying to locate all the state department guys because they were spaced out everywhere while fighting off the bad guys, pushing them off. We're really that initial when we got on there, I think they were so shocked it was Americans, and luckily we have that still that air of air of, intimidation.

Americans are coming, we gotta go. They wasn't much of a gunfight coming up on. We were got in there. Americans here. We got our night vision on.

Even though I'm wearing shorts, I still look pretty Terminator ish with all the gear on, and, they ran away. And, we found Alec. You know, we got him out of the skiff. Dave was Dave did awesome. Dave was already out.

He was already trying to find the ambassador. He was already over at the consulate trying to find the ambassador, and, then we just took turns running in that burning building trying to find it, and it was tough. We almost lost Ron. Ron went in the most. Jack and Ron went in the most.

Table was probably close to it. Me and Boone put a lot of security, and then we'd take our turns. We'd spell people. But I I tell you what, I would and I oh, I admire and thank you. All you firefighters out there, I admire the hell out.

I'd rather get shot at again than ever running into a burning building filled with diesel smoke ever again. I remember going in and trying to go in the first time, and I tried to run-in, and the doors are wide open, and you can see and it's open. There's fire, you know, alive on the ceilings, and there's it's just smoke everywhere. And, I hit I ran in the and it's almost like I hit an invisible wall. I just that is hot as shit.

It was so I felt like my eyeballs are gonna melt. It's like you really have to just I just had to go suck it up. Don't it's gonna hurt. Just go. And it was awful.

And, you know, your body gets used to it a little bit, but it was so hot. It's like running into a pizza oven filled with diesel. And Rowan did that. I mean, that's how badass Rowan and Jack are. They went in there multiple times.

I went in there, like, twice because they were just kept going in, and it was hard to find. We did lose Roan almost once where he got caught way back in the back, and we had to play Marco Polo with him to get it out. We had, like, Roan, we're here. Jack kept yelling from Roan this way. Roan, Roan, Roan, because he got stuck and he almost lost his way because he got disoriented from his neck.

But that just shows how badass and Tig as well. You know? Tig's long as they're currently fucked, so are Jack's screwed. Eventually, Scott got out, you know, and I I have no qualms against Scott. Nothing at all.

People, why he left the ambassador? Well, what the hell would you have done, dude? Seriously? You're you're dying of fire in the heat. I I can tell you to test in the heat, that was unreal.

What would you have done, man? Really? Okay. But he got himself out, and that's when it started to go to hell again because that's when they started to counterattack. And, I do remember before that they did find Sean's body.

Dave Ubin, Tig, and Jack managed to pull him out of a window. And, the movie, I wish they would have put this in the movie more so than what they did. They did a little bit of it, but it was pretty remarkable. It was 1 of the most defining moments to me of human spirit and sacrifice that I'd ever seen in my life because Sean was out and I see him pull, Jack pulls him out, Dave's pulling him out, Ubin, Tig is, and Scott's on some stairs, and he's sitting there, and he just keeps rocking back and forth, and he keeps saying he was just with me. He was just with me.

He was just with me. And I see Chuck. Jack, for some reason, he starts to do chest compressions and CPR on a dead body. Jack knows he's dead. Then he's dead.

Sean's dead. It's obvious. He's blues. He's dead. And I couldn't figure it out.

I was like, I'm sitting there watching this whole thing unfold from about from me to probably that desk there, about that far. And I wanna say something, but before I get the word out, it hits me because I'm looking at Jack, and every time he does a chest compression, he looks up at Scott, and he goes, we're still in this fight, man. He is being positive over a dead body to get Scott out of his shock so we don't have another casualty. He's just it's unbelievable. It's just like and I'm sitting here just marveling it going, wow.

These fucking dudes are awesome. I love this. I love Jack. I and I still love Jack. They're there.

But it just to me, it just defined selfless service again. And, you know, people think selfless service is giving yourself giving up your life. Well, essentially, he did because that he's doing chest compressions on a dead body to get some guy back up on his feet to back in the fight. Who thinks like that? Yeah.

Obviously, he did. And it was awesome. And another motivating thing, just another reason why Benghazi was the greatest night of my life. 1 of them, per se, but it was defining. We get it.

Scott comes out of his shock because, you know, big Tyrone, like Superman, I don't know where he came from. It's like he flew out of the bushes, but I I know he's ruined the building, but he just and you I see Tyrone come out of nowhere, and he just puts his arms around Scott, and he goes, man, we are still on this fight. We need you. And you just see Scott come right back, and it was like, wow. This is awesome.

I love these guys. That's why Rowan is so that's why he's he was Superman to us. But, we load Scott's body on. Tig and Jack and Dave Ubin did. They put him in the back of our SUV that our team leader and the interpreter drove up after we cleared it, said it was clear.

Yeah. Our team leader, yeah, he waited till we cleared it, then they drove up. I don't blame the interpreter for doing that, but come on TL. But anyway, we go back to Poland Security, and then

Was was the TL, like was he even?

He was former Secret Service. No military.

I know who he is.

Yeah. Yeah. I know who he is. I was gonna say you know who he is.

What I'm asking is, was he

Scared?

I know he was scared. I know who he is. I'm trying to figure out how to ask this question the right way.

I'll wait. I I got I gotta get a drink of water.

Take your time. I guess what I'm trying to ask was, did you guys even keep him informed? Was he even What? Really part of the team, or did you have you totally just

He had a just like him. Just like any blue, he had his he had, you know, he had his uses, you know, he he could he would give us get intel because he was, you know, he was a blue badge, so but as far, you know, just everyday activities, he had the runs, control the runs, you know, and but really me, I let Roan handle that. I stayed I mean, he's just a liaison. It really was. That's what he was.

Basically. And that night, he was with us, and no, we didn't pay attention. It wasn't, we were allowing him to pull cover. We were allowing

Like 99% of the staffers in GRS, they're just liaisons.

And that's

They're not operators. They're just, like, they aren't Just go liaison.

Go liaison. Give us the intel, and that's kinda what he was at.

We don't even really know what you do here.

We're not qualified to be here. You do here. Still favorite movies that we

I can't fucking stand them. I'm so I'm just I can't stand them. It's probably something I'll never get over.

But you

The amount of worthless fucks that were in charge of me and you and all these other, like, stellar performers, and then you get these chumps.

When you don't hold people to the standards that everybody else has upheld to, that high level standards, what do you think you're gonna get? And I'm we're we're we're daving off a little bit, but I'm gonna say it. Look at the Secret Service that is protecting Trump. Yeah. Yeah.

That is what you got with JRS TLs. For them, unless they were former spec ops guys that were contractors

I think they were always just supposed to be liaisons though. And then at some point in time, they, like, concerted themselves to be some fucking leader, and it's, like, back to your desk, go get your fucking pen or your pencil, and get the fuck out of

my mouth. Face. And that was him.

But you can't say that because he'll fire you.

But you can still You say it anyways. You can still I did.

And then you get fired.

Well, I I I I I I did. I I got I got told after, after I fell asleep, I had an argument with Bob, and then the TL called me in, and we had an argument. And we're like he's like, Tona, I know who you are. I saved his ass from getting his ass beat by a bunch of seals when his first trip went to coast.

Why did you do that?

Because I felt sorry for him.

He was

it was his first trip. I didn't I didn't to be honest with you, I did I didn't know him. I'm like, he's the first trip. I'm trying to be that guy that's your first trip. Let me tell you how it is, bud.

Alright? Don't go in there like you're knowing everything. You're working with a bunch of top notch dudes. Go in there, shut your mouth, and fucking listen. Yeah.

But he didn't it'd been you know, that was 2006, now it's 2012. So he's got years 6 years now, he's salty. But, Real experience. Yeah. Exactly.

It showed too. Yeah. Didn't it?

It showed. It is. Yeah. It was funny because when we did our debrief too, they did ask about him. They said, what did you think of the TL?

I said he did a great job. I could because he stayed the fuck out of the way. Oh, man. The head shit at Langley, the g r s they didn't wanna hear that. But that's what I said.

Boone started laughing. He was doing our AR when we got back to after Benghazi. You said that? I said it dragged back to the

it's

me, dude. I don't give it. What are you gonna do? Fire fire me then.

Yeah. If

you haven't fired me yet, you're not gonna fire me. But the argument I had with him where in Libya, after I got dressed down by Bob, which I just it wasn't dressed, like, eat shit. I've been through enough of this pomp and circumstance crap enough, rah rah politics in progress, a 1000000 fucking times. I don't have to stay away through this shit. It's the same shit.

Well, he pulled me in, he goes, I'm gonna write, I got written up. You know, I got wrote up, wrote up. I didn't get written up. And they wrote me up, and he goes, I'm gonna write you up for this because you fell asleep, you're being disrespectful. And I remember I said to him, because I saw GRS kinda go into more like a state department, button down.

I saw it, and I said, we're going more state department, aren't we? Button down, need guys to say yes, sir. No. Nobody talks back. No fucking guys that cuss every once in a while.

You know, you don't need guys like me anymore, do you? I guess guys like me are dinosaurs, aren't they? And he said, yep. Pretty much. I saw my thing.

When we got home, I sent him an email. I I said good thing you have dinosaurs like me, That night, and I didn't get a response back from him. I still got the email. My a o I had AOL. I said my AOL shows you how old I am.

But he said that, and I said, you looks like guys like me are dinosaurs. I'm sorry.

When did he try to write you up? He wrote me

up right after I got ripped right after I fell asleep before the ambassador. It was right before it was before the attack. So when I fell asleep and Bob Bob dressed me down, where we got in that argument, He says, well, I'll write you up. Well, it did get written up. We didn't put it in the movie because how boring is that seeing some guy get written up.

But I went back to my room.

You mean people don't wanna watch a pussy pencil pusher write up a write up a real man? I'm gonna write you up? Because I'm not a real man. I'm just a bitch.

I got I got written up. Fucking hate these people. An hour later, he called me in, and I I got written up. Like, I don't give a shit. Fine.

It's like getting a, you know, ticket, but you got a 100,000,000 parking tickets. Pay your parking tickets y'all, but you know what I'm saying? And I threw it in, like, whatever. It's probably

what he was doing before this.

He was a actually, he was a, for those that you know him, but he wasn't, he wasn't a protect he was in check forgery. And that was his in the Check forgery. It was in that division, the secret store where they do forgery and money laundering.

So Whatever.

Anyway, but, they drove up. Yeah. He's and that night, it was. We just if if we need you, buddy, just stay in the rear, man. If you wanna add your gun to the fight, fine.

Just keep just make sure there's no ammo in it. Just, dude, just stay away from but he didn't fire his gun that night, and he stayed hidden. He stayed protected. And we didn't really worry about it because we knew he wasn't getting a fight. It wasn't gonna happen.

So that's why we put we put, we put, like, I don't wanna say his real name almost there. So we put Amal with him, but eventually the mall even saw what was going on, and the mall got attached to Jack. The mall kept following Jack around, when Jack wasn't running in the burning buildings. So we go back and we even found the ambassador, and I remember on the backside of the villa here, because we're pulling security because that that gate was left open. I told that fucking commander, close the back gate when you bring your guys through before I really knew who he was.

I thought he was friendly. He left it wide open.

And I was

like, that motherfucker forgot to close the back gate. I said, guys, this jackass didn't close the back gate. I said, get ready. Because I knew it was gonna I mean, he just no. It's like shit, dude.

And I'm kicking myself for not going back there and closing it as well and trusting, right? I knew I shouldn't have. And then all of a sudden, I I take a knee and I hear a big explosion goes off, so I'm here, explosion blows off this way on the Baronville, and because the angle, so lucky again. Thank you. Because the angle shrapnel's this way.

But I do catch the overpressure because I'm not more than, you know, 20 feet away from the explosion, so it knocks me, catches the overpressure, but the force of it goes this way. I didn't hear the initial boom. So I didn't think it was an RPG. I mean, you know, unless you're from a very far distance, RPGs don't go and you see vapor trails, and they go it's not like that, unless, you know, it's a way distance, and then you might see it later after it hits. You'll see maybe a little puff of smoke or something.

But you always hear boom, because that's the propellant that makes it go. It doesn't there's a boom, and as I go back to post security, get back up on my feet, because I'm thinking some guy runs in front of me and he's missing his hand, he's holding his wrist. I go his profile, and I go up and his hand's missing. He's holding his wrist, like, trying to stem the bleeding. It's just mangled, and then his buddy comes out, runs from behind him, and he's holding pieces of his butt.

And it's no farther than me and you. I'm, like, right here falling, and I go, what the fuck? What happened? I don't even know if he doesn't speak English. But that's all I can get out of my head, because I'm a little I'm a little rattled.

Brain's knocked a little bit. I'm seeing this dude running by with no hand. He's just bleeding everywhere. I'm seeing his buddy chase him. Just holding pieces of his hand.

So I'm looking at him, and I'm in my head going, dude, you forgot your hand. Go, thank you. That's what I'm going through my head. And I'm like, I say what happened. I didn't say that.

All I could get out was, what happened? The guy goes, grenade. The guy holding pieces of it, he goes, grenade. So I'm thinking, oh, you're a fucking idiot. Next time when you cook a grenade off, I'm thinking this in my head, you hold it for 2 seconds instead of 3 before you throw it.

And I'm thinking of my dad, West Texas, from from Lubbock, Texas. His voice comes in my head, and all I hear is rub some dirt on it. You'll be alright, kid. And, as I come back to pull security, because they're not a threat, I do hear a boom from a distance. Like, shit.

I know that's an RPG. I go post security, and I just go like this, because I know I'm dead. If it's anywhere near on this side, I'm dead. There's nothing I can do, there's no cover. I can get down and roll, but by that time I hear that boom from that distance where it's only a 100, not even more than, I would say 75 meters away if that, I, I'm dead.

So I'm just hoping I hear the second boom. Because if I do, I know I'm alive. And I do. I hear it, boom, blows up. This 1 actually is closer, and I catch building, I catch the concrete, knocks me down in the middle of the road.

Again, because of that angle, and I know that's what saved me, it was the shrapnel, most of it went that direction, or got embedded in the wall. And, the movie showed me getting up and having a wall for cover. I didn't. I got knocked in the middle of that road that was shotgun from the front gate to the back gate, and all that came in my head was ranger baton. What's your cover, ranger?

Bullets. What do you do when somebody's shooting at you? You shoot back. And I took a knee on that road, and I just started shooting. And I shot and I shot and I shot, and I was thinking of the guys from Rio Hondo, because we get hammered pan you know, Ranger's got a great history.

You know, urgent fury, just cause, Somalia. You know? We shoot. Fuck you, guys. We're fucking you come out, man.

You're gonna catch a bullet in that tooth, and that's all I'm thinking, and I'm just putting around. And I remember Boone, he told me later, he says, I was watching you, and all I could think of was you're a fucking idiot, Donald. Take cover. And I've never felt the hand of god before. I've never felt it again.

I've had that night, and I know I do really believe we all get 1 1 1 hand of god moment where they he steps in in protection. I did. I he's looking down at me, and I say this during my speeches too, because I honestly believe this. I think my guardian angel's, like on this chair, God's up here on this chair. My guardian angel and God are looking at this idiot getting shot at, because there's the world's opened up.

There's just crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, it's all going around me, and my guardian is looking at god going, see what you tasked me with, god? You tasked me with this fucking idiot that doesn't have half a brain, and, and god's like, pity God pity is the 1 that needs to be pitied, and he says, I got you. And I felt a golden cocoon come on top of me, and that's not I'm not saying that at any other reasons, that's what I felt.

You actually felt it in that moment.

It was a golden egg. That's why I remember my golden egg. I got you. Just warm. Just

Was it was it like a intuitive feeling?

It was a physical feeling. No. It was physic. It was warm, gold, I got you. And I guess intuitive too.

It's just safe. I was like, I'm I'm good. And I kept shooting, and then, Did it give you confidence? Yeah. I wasn't well, I got this.

Nobody's gonna get me. I'm on stage. You felt

that before you started shooting or in the middle of it?

In the middle of it. No. When I was shooting When were you there? In that position there about 5 seconds before I felt that, and I'd already went. I'd always already hammering away.

Because, you know, there that was a game. It was really easy. I'm just nobody's coming through there. It was about 5 seconds. Hey, I mean 5 to 10, it was it.

Wow.

It was it was awesome, though. And then, I am taking a knee. I'm not I'm not getting in the prone, so I'm just I feel fine. I'm I'm god's got me. My right eardrum blows out.

I remember that. And I look, and there was a Libyan that had taken a knee right next to me, his AK 47 was shooting with me right next to my head, and that was amazing. Because I was thinking to myself, ain't this the damnedest thing? God just gave me a little Libyan angel and put him right next to me. Because he had a button down shirt, slacks on, like he got off work, and he's sitting there with his AK 47 shooting with me.

I never saw him again here that night. I don't know where he went. And then boom. I'm running, and boom comes and boom takes a knee right on the other side of the road, and he starts shooting with me. And then Tate gets his gun into the mix on the top of the roof, and it was awesome.

It was just freaking awesome. Now we moved a little bit. After that, we started to move back to vehicles and started to kind of peel out because we had to get out of there, but that moment there for me was, and I always tell people that, and I said, guys, I'm not saying hand to God's ear all the time. Again, I've never felt it after, I didn't felt it before, but I felt it that night. So when people say, do you believe in God?

I say, no, I know there's God. And he took pity on somebody like me that's probably broken every command well, not probably, has broken every commandment that we're supposed to keep. No, it was there. I felt it. And they were, bullshit.

Fine. You don't blame me. I don't care.

I don't think it's bullshit.

And I know and and it was amazing. Again, I I wish I could see it, but it's a golden egg. It was like a like a Willy Walker golden egg, warm, protected. Nothing's gonna get you, I got you. And we fought him off, and we peeled out, and it was hard to leave, because we did have a drone overhead watching everything.

The ISR had come on station, and Rowan's like, guys, we gotta go. We get they're they're massing, you're gonna attack the annex, We gotta get out of them. Like, Ron, we haven't found the ambassador yet. He's like, I know, but we gotta go and you you gotta make a decision. Leaders always make decisions even if they're hard decision.

It sticks with me because you know our credo, dude. Part of the fist stands at a range of credence. You never leave a fallen comrade to fall in the hands of the enemy. Every unit has that same, not in those words, the same thing, you leave no man behind. And we did because we had to get back to the annex, and it wasn't the wrong decision.

We would have lost 24 if we hadn't gotten back, but it still bothers the fuck out of me Because we left him we left him. Now we didn't know he was there. That's still no excuse. We still couldn't, you know, kept trying to find him. But he he had gotten so far back in that safe haven area that we just couldn't get back there, and when the fire died down and the fighting moved back to our annex, the locals pulled him out.

He was dead of smoke inhalation. There's been talk that he was mutilated and all that. I didn't see it, and I inspected his body when they brought him to the airfield.

You inspected his body?

I looked at it. I didn't no. I didn't pull his drawers down. You know, I didn't do that. I mean, they may they did cut his genitals off.

I I'm not gonna I'm sorry. I'm just guys, I'm not gonna do that. To me, I looked at it because what I'm thinking again, ranger battalion, what am I thinking? Randy Shugart, Gary Gordon. Dragging his body through the streets.

So of course I'm gonna look. I'm gonna see if he's scuffed up. I'm gonna see if his face is scuffed up. I'm gonna see if he is cut in places I can see, but he was clothed, and I didn't see any marks on his face, I just saw lifeless eyes, and he still had like smoke from the diesel all over. So what I saw, I didn't see mutilation.

But am I 100% sure? No, because I didn't pull his pants down. And for those that want me, wanted me to do that, they can go fuck themselves. Don't do that. No.

I'll leave that. I mean if I was an autopsy guy, sure. But not in that situation. No. And that's and I wasn't thinking mutilation.

I was thinking dragging through the streets too. But we left him. But I I I I stand by the decision, and all of us still do. And as, you know, leaders, you've been a leader, you know you make hard decisions. You have to.

And sometimes those hard decisions, even if they're the right ones, are gonna stick with you for the rest of your life, and that's 1 that does. And, but it was the right decision, and we got back to our annex. We had Sean's body in the back of the vehicle, so that was a little surreal, because we all piled into 1 vehicle. So we had Tyrone, we had Tig, we had Tyrone, we had, yeah, Tig. We had myself.

We had the interpreter. We had the TL, and Jack was sitting on the top of Sean's plane as we're driving back in the SUV, and they trailed us. You know, they were following us. We could it was easy to pick up, and we're like and I I wish they would have put this in the movies in the book, but I wish they would have put this in there. I actually was making the calls back.

I was like, guys, I was telling the gate gates, get get the gate ready. Everyone's like, get the gate ready on it. And they said, what's your status? You know, you always say, we're coming in red, we're coming in black, we're coming in yellow, but and I said or we're coming in hot, we're coming in cold. And I don't know.

I was just trying to make somebody laugh. I said, guys, we're coming in lukewarm. It was stupid, but it was like, I'm just trying to get people to laugh because we've been through a lot at that point. We come in the gate and, the state department guys where they tried to get out of there, you know, where we we got them out, the ones that were still they they did go the wrong direction. They went towards Adidas.

2 houses down was where Anastasia had a safe house. The consulate was right next to the terrorist safe house. State department knew it. We told them a 1000000 times. We'd taken pictures of it.

There's a scene in the movie where you see us driving by and I'm taking a picture of those fuckers and you're flipping me off. That's it. That happened. They didn't do a damn thing about it. So when they went out the gate, Jack kept telling them, and you hear it on the radio too, and that was during the fire, that's where the confusion happened because when we were getting attacked and I was shooting, that's when we were trying to get them out of there.

It was during all that chaos that Jack's I heard on the radio because I'm I'm got a piece in, and I hear Jack saying, guys, you're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way. Because we said go to gunfire when you go out the gate. Do not go to Adidas. You go left, you do not go right.

They went right, and they got crushed. And so when we pulled in, the armor held, they managed to get back on run flats to our place, that car was just on fire, just flames everywhere. And I thought, you know, they're all dead, but none of them died. The armor held. Scott did a great job pushing through, so did Dave getting through.

They just went through a gauntlet of gunfire and RPG fire and got chased until they got back to our compound. So that wasn't movie magic at all. They got hammered, and it it just was in the chaos. He just went the wrong direction. And luckily for them and again, I I kudos a lot to Dave.

Dave Ubin did an awesome job, but I wouldn't end that vehicle, but if I was to guess, I would say they all kept their heads pretty good, but Dave probably did the 1 that was like, get the fuck. We'd go push through, push through, push through. But we got back, it's on fire. We get we get refitted with whatever we need as far as ammo. Tig did did drop our grenade launcher.

That wasn't movie magic. He actually dropped it. He didn't it was a 69, h k 69. He hadn't rechanged the the normal lanyard that's on it. You know, we get that the lanyard that comes with it sucks because it just slides through.

We usually cut it. We put 5 50 cord on it or something that sticks, and he didn't. So when he was running, it fell off and it fell on the ground. But it was weird, and I I don't have an answer for you. I wish I did, but we had a second 1 as well, and for some reason, I was looking for it and I couldn't find it.

I don't know what happened to it. I ran around for 5 minutes before I went up on my rooftop looking for that other grenade launcher, because Tig's like, dude, I'm sorry I dropped it. Like, son of a bitch, Tig. And I ran around, you know, and you know how we are. We stage it where it needs to be.

It's in the team room. It's in 1 of the gun lockers. That's where it needs to be. I didn't take it with me because I had a 46, and and he had the 69, and we didn't put it in the CURA vehicle. So I ran and I couldn't find it, and I thought, well, maybe Boone did put it in our vehicle.

So So I ran and looked in the vehicle. I could not find it. It disappeared. To this day, I have no idea what happened to that 69. And I'm thinking, why on earth would would Bob I'm thinking malicious, but, like, what would that have done?

So I don't know. So I couldn't find another 69, and we had 2, but I couldn't find it. And grab more ammo, ran up to building. 1st, we went up to building a, vantage point was terrible, and then we jumped up to building c where we could see over zombie land and this sheep slaughterhouse. So we had compounds building here, building here, building here, building here, front gate here, zombie land, parking lot where they were amassing, families houses right there that they were using to come through before they got into zombie land as cover, because they knew we weren't gonna shoot the kids because there were kids in there.

So So we're gonna shoot the buildings, and then the sheep slaughterhouse, the sheeplet was over here. So we got up there. A was not a good vantage point, so me and Boone moved over to c. Oz and Tigger in a little fighting position right here overlooking Zombieland, and they just start moving on us. And you're just seeing it through the night vision, and it was like kids playing hide and seek, man.

So either just I I don't think they thought we had night we had night vision or they didn't think it was that good because they were just running from bush to bush, and Ron was awesome. And I, you know, I talked about Nick and Paul, the Raven 23 guys. That was heavy on our minds at that time because they had gone to prison for defending themselves. So we weren't gonna shoot. We're like, Ron, man, I don't see guns, but they're moving on us, man.

They're moving. The drone's even overhead feeding us intel. You got asymmetric movement, you know stuff's coming. Ron's like do not fucking shoot. You see a gun first, then I'll give the command to shoot.

And he goes, because I don't wanna go to prison. And he was referencing step 3 guys. So that was on our end, so we just let him get. They just kept coming and coming, and they got closer and closer. And then finally, Boone goes, I got AKs.

And they were probably about 25 meters from Oz's position when he saw that, and then this fist comes over the back gate right when he says that, and it was a gelatina bomb. And I saw it because gelatina bombs is like a stick of diamond. They light a wick so you can see in her night vision, and it comes over the back gate. And it goes over to Oz's and takes position, and I'm like, man, this is gonna miss him, man. It's gonna miss him.

This is good news, and then this figure comes out of nowhere and this bomb's coming this way, and ticket's got out of position to go get water. What are the fucking odds? Yeah. I mean, the odds are just like winning the lottery. He's here.

The bomb's coming. I'm just watching in slow motion, and it just blows up. And all I see is the white light coming and the world opens up. You know, that was the that was the that was the indicator to start the attack, and they just started shooting, and we fucking destroyed them. I mean, we were we had our sectors of fire down.

We had our our, we had all the avenues of approach locked down. We knew the dead space. I mean, I wish I would've had that 203, we would've killed a lot more of them, but we just crushed them. And everybody was so disciplined. Sector, sector.

We stayed within our sectors. We trusted each other on their sectors, and it was interlocking sectors of fire, and it was like coming it was like coming into a frickin' woodchopper. And we just everybody did awesome. Well, it only took about 5 minutes, really. It's about as long as it was.

And a lot of you guys been in fire unless you've been in Afghanistan at a base where they just keep hammering you, most firefights are only about that long. Yeah. They're gonna and, it's like a boxing mess. You know? You're real quick, and then there's some dead time unless there's just a massive massive force, or you get stuck and they got the advantage.

But they're losing their ass, they're gonna break contact, get back, and figure out something, and they did. Well, when that ended, I looked, and I'm thinking, I'm gonna go get let's go pick up Tig, because I figured the dude was dead. How many, I mean, do you guys have any estimate? In your in your head

Yeah.

Yeah. How many do you think that I I think and I think the major I mean, it's it's it was hard, but I think we got attacked by maybe over that whole course and period, not at 1 time, 200, 300 people.

2 to 300 people.

But not it you know, it was like that initial 1 was probably 40. 40 guys fought them off, and then there's another 40. So it could have been the same guys. I mean, we didn't kill 40. I wish we were that good.

You know? And we're good at what we do, but come let's be realistic. But you know? And then at the attic, at the consulate, yeah, easily, 40, 50 that we got counter I mean, it was 40, 50 at a pop. And, yeah, we were killing them.

I mean, I we we'd shoot them, and that's that's the that's the you know, a lot of us, unless it's within a lot of us that have been in combat, and I'm not saying in a bravado thing or a ego thing, it's just how it is. At a distance, 556, if you hit somebody, sometimes it doesn't keep them down. Yep. If close you're in, it's going to. If it's me to you and I hit you, yeah, you're going down.

You're not getting back up. But at 50, 75, a 100 meters, you might, but generally they're gonna be able to get back up, and they'll they'll they'll probably bleed out or they're out of the fight depending on where you hit them. I mean, or but that was where it could have been, you know, how many I would we have estimates. I've seen estimates in Wikipedia like a1000. No.

200, 300 over the whole night. And who knows? Some of those could have been attackers, the same attackers. We killed. I don't know.

I've got reports again. I've seen reports a no. I think we killed I I know I I think a 100, 200. I think we did. Oz had our had, had contact at the at the hospital there, and, you know, Oz and I still talk.

We get along or not, we still talk every once in a while. And I remember when we got back, I asked him. I said, do you want your contact? Because, you know, we're Americans. We like to keep score.

Right? And I said, dude, did you ever get a word how many we got, man? How many we killed? And he goes, I didn't ever get a number, but he my contact at the hospital said that they just kept bringing bodies and injured in all night. So I was like, well, that's good enough for me.

And then after that, it didn't matter because it was nice seeing them turn tail and run. That's even more and, but, yeah, we fought him off, and the reason Tig didn't die, the gelatina bomb hit him, and it landed right by his feet and blew up is just because he's so big. It would have stopped my heart. You know, it's just a big it's just a huge flashbang. It's used for fishing.

It's for dropping in the Mediterranean and blowing when fish come up. You know? It's it's Mediterranean redneck fishing. And, but it fucked him up. He still has problems.

His shoulder goes numb, his back's out of whack, but he got up. And that's a testament to how tough he is. He got up and he got back in the fight, and he actually got hit. Around we round hit his armor, it was a piece of the round. It hit hit the metal post and sheared either the post or something come and hit him and knocked him down, and he got up and kept fighting.

And he's a tough son of a bitch. He's a tough redneck. Takes good good people, man. And but that was it was awesome. And it gave us a wave of confidence.

It did. It's like, okay, we got this. Our battle plan, our force protection plan, our sectors of fire, they're on. Alright. Let's keep doing what we're doing.

And throughout that time frame, you know, we're still thinking Americans are gonna help. We're still thinking that the IRS is seeing everything, and we're thinking somebody's coming, cavalry's coming, but they weren't. But at that point in time, we still had some faith that they were because they normally did. Everywhere else I was at, cavalry came. Whether it was another GRS team, whether it was a Scorpion team, an NSA, you know, the GRS equivalent at the NSA, whether it was military, somebody was Brits, somebody was common.

And, between that 2 hour low of 1 AM to 3 AM where the next attack happened, that's where we started to come to realization nobody's come. And, and the reason is because we had a, we didn't put him in the movie, but we had a old Vietnam veteran that manned our radios, our 117. He was a staffer with the agency. Great guy. RTON Vietnam.

Wonderful guy. He still cries every time we see him because he apologizes for not getting us help. We already had Curef elements on station. You know, it was you know, we had a 911 call we could call because that's what we do. GRS is what our jobs is, is to coordinate with the other units.

So if we need people, we can just hit a button, go on 10 Alpha Common on 17 on the 117s and say, we need help. And we're at 117. And every so often throughout the next couple hours, Boone would come to me and say, hey. We gotta hold the Delta man. They're on our way on their way.

And little did we know they had were coming, but they got diverted to Croatia. 5 55th Fighter Wing. That was our big we we always thought we had them. They had 2 jets at Sudobay, Greece. Sudobay, Greece is 5 minutes with afterburners to Libya, and then they had the 5 55th Fighter Wing, the whole unit up in Aviano.

It's a QRF base. That's what it's there for. We figured they were coming. Boone's like, no. They're not coming.

The fast company marines, there was 1 in Spain and there was 1 in the med up near Sigonella, and we thought they were coming. They he'd keep coming back to me every after he told me somebody was coming, he'd come back and say, no. They're not. We're we're not getting words. There's no confirmation they're coming.

And then that SIF, the the master's old, the master's primary security team, the commanders and the extremist force that had been, in Croatia and got repositioned to the staging area. That was when I really knew nobody was coming because when he said, no, they're they're not on their way anymore either. He came and said, hey. That SIF team. The commander's team's coming.

You guys actually went through this entire checklist?

That's his job and that's our job. Yes. We went down the line. Every that's why politicians and that's why the CIA pisses me off. That's our job.

They know that. Well, politicians may not know that, but the agency knows that. That's what our main response is as GRS. We're protective services, and it's also to protect our asses if something happens, to get the assets needed that we assets that are in the area to us if we need them. So we had them all.

We knew them all. It was I I was in charge of that when I was there, but it's always paying every time it's passed down to somebody. So it's always refined and improved and refined and improved, so it it was the RTO, the Vietnam RTO, that was that was his job and he was very good at it and he and he was very supportive of us. And the reason he cries when he sees us now, I remember and I remember I saw him in Texas when I was doing a lot of speaking back in 2016, and I got pissed at him. We're out did a speaking event there in Fort Worth, and his wife's a wonderful lady.

They came to have a drink with me, and, I think Tig was there as well. And I got pissed. I got drunk, And he hadn't said anything as far as testimony yet. And he can blow the doors off all the help that was around there. He could verify what we saw.

And I'm like being a fucking pussy, dude. Stop. Go tell him what happened. And he got up, and I saw him. I felt bad.

He got up. I saw him. I he had tears in his eyes, and he walked away. His wife's sitting there. His wife's texting from hard as nails.

I go, ma'am, I'm sorry. She goes, no. I've been telling him the same thing to tell. And I said, well, why hasn't he? He goes, because they're gonna pull his pension if he does, where he don't get his retirement.

And I I was like, okay. I'll I'll never say anything about it again. I love the guy. I love him. And he has a lot of info out there, but I do respect people and their family.

And if that's not for my selfish reasons or anything else, I understand that. I never bugged him about it again. And I never will again, because I I respect that. I do. Is it right?

No. I don't think it's right, but I still respect his decision. And he did try. He did try his asshole. Well, 3 AM, we get hit again.

And, it was like the movie show, and we just it was just they did the same tactics, and we just crushed them. It's like waves hitting a retaining wall, man. And it was, it it it was very, very satisfying, but it was, man, how long is this gonna keep up? Because we had a ton of m 4 ammo, tons, but we're eventually gonna run out. We're eventually gonna get tired.

We're eventually they're eventually gonna get it figured out and hit us with a car bomb. I was so shocked they hadn't hit us with a car bomb yet because that was in Iraq or Afghanistan, that's probably what they would have just done. Yeah. They drove a car and blow up the wall, but they hadn't. So I was really shocked at that.

But, you know, you think about your family a little bit. And before that second attack, I had thought about my family, and I just remembered the phone call, and I just remembered it briefly, and I I thought about them, and I just remembered that the last thing they heard from me did I tell them I loved them, and I did, so I was okay. Didn't think about it the rest of the night. It's those are the last words, and my daughter, my son, and my wife know that I love them. Before I got off the phone, yeah, I told them I loved it.

Down in my head the rest of the night. And by 3 AM, you're starting to get in what I was doing at that point in time, having some self reflection, getting motivated that they are gonna breach the walls probably eventually, and then I'm I gotta get it in my head that we may need to start it's gonna get close quarter, and we're gonna maybe start stabbing. It's gonna start knifing, and that's a totally different animal than shooting. It's intimate, and that's my if you're used to that, there's something wrong with you, mental my opinion. I mean, shooting, I understand.

I've done that. It's it's kinda impersonal, and because of the way we're trained, it's almost like you can imagine targets, and also they're terrorists. Who gives a fuck? But when they're up and you got a stab, that's different, at least to me. Maybe not to others, but it is.

And I I gotta get my mind right if that's gonna happen. So I'm starting to get the mind set of hand to hand. You know? So I respect those guys from World War 2 and World War 1 fight trench fighting. Wow.

It's like, god. Those guys are bad. I ain't shit. Those guys are bad ass. But, and the tunnel rats, you know, from Vietnam.

But, we get word bubs coming in, and, I didn't know this for for several years, but Bub actually ponied up money from his own bank account to rent that old executives yet. I don't know if he was ever paid back. Are you kidding me? I found that out actually, I found that out from his his best friend, Sean, who runs Bub's Naturals. But he came on my podcast, and I had no idea that I didn't know that.

Wow. But that tells you how Bub is.

Yeah.

We need up money. I'm sure he was I think I think what Sean said is the Seal Foundation came in and actually reimbursed. I don't know if see I ever paid him, which fucked him anyway. But anyway, that's Bob, man. That's Bob.

He's owed money. And they rented his our executive's jet. It was it was like a g 6. It was it was nice. It it did have flight attendants on there.

Serious no shit flight attendants, because they were waiting for us when we got to Menina. And, but he gets there, and they got there actually at midnight, and they just it took them so long to coordinate to get the 10 kilometers to our place. By the time they got to our place, it was about 5 AM. And, they get there, and I remember them coming in, and I remember I was being my smart ass self. I was saying, hey, fucking welcome to party, motherfuckers.

Better late than never, man. Did Should you bring me something to drink? And I remember Bob Bob walked by and the TL that was with him, he was a former BW guy that went to the dark side because he started sleeping with the case officer. Sika married her though. Wasn't bad, he married her.

But he even become the staffer, but they both went they walked by me, and they did, like, fucking Tano, and they both flipped me off. I was giving them shit. And, they went back. All of them all the GRS guys aside from Bob went into building c. There were 2 Delta guys that were worked with us in Tripoli.

They went into building c 2, and Bub was the only 1 that came up to build I mean building, building yeah, building c. Yeah. The the the headquarters building. And then Bub went on top of building c. So like I said, keep in mind here.

I'm on building a, building c's, I'm sorry. Building a here, building c here, b, they're in b. I'm sorry. That's the headquarter building. Building b and then building a or building, I'm getting confused here.

A, b, c, d. Sorry. A, they went in building c, d's here, Jack's here. Boone's still up here. I went on the front gate building, which is a.

And I need to take a crap. Couldn't get anybody to relieve me, and, Boone said, go take a shit. So I scurried down you know, bollifunction is still happening. You guys you know that. They they don't stop.

Scurried down the stairs, took my shit, got back up, and all of a sudden, there and it didn't sound like a mortar. It didn't. And I don't know. I my hearing had been shot out. You know, I had earpiece in winter, but I didn't wear hearing protection in the other.

So and, boom, been shooting an s r 25 by my ear all night, and I'm shooting ear my m 4 or 46, so my hearing's gone. And I went, did you guys hear that? It sounded like somebody's it's you know what it sounded like when we used to hear the the, 1 0 sevens come in and I ride here, that that's what it sounded like. I thought it was a rocket. I said, did you guys hear that?

And then, I don't know, something in me said mortars. I go mortars mortars. And so they said take cover, the first 1 hit, and hit on the backside of building c. And that's when the world opened up again. And I remember Roan, he just spun.

He spun and he went cyclic on that other 46, and he's just over where the sheep slaughterhouses. They're trying to come through there. Now like idiots, they're walking their their troops into where the mortars are coming. Fine with me. They can take out their own guys if they want.

But Roan is just so I'm seeing this laser beam because it's not daylight. Movie shows us daylight. It actually was a burp before morning nautical twilight, so it's, you know, it's right when the sun's made, but night vision, you still need your night vision. So I'm watching all this. I'm seeing 1 guy turn and start to shoot that direction.

I'm seeing another guy turn, which was Oz. The next guy was Bob, and the next guy was Dave Rubin. And of course, I wanna get my gun to fight, but I can't see the targets because they're here. I'm here. The targets, they're coming from this direction.

Mortars are coming from this way. So I'm shooting over their heads. I put a couple rounds down, and I look, and I thought, you know, we kinda already went through this before, but I look behind me and make sure there's nobody coming from my 6 because I still got areas of responsibility, nobody's there. I turn out, get a couple more shots, and I see the next 1 hit, and this 1 hits on building c. It's right by the parapet wall.

Boom, blows up. As my night vision goes white and it comes back, those 4 guys that were shooting are now 3. So it's like it was it's like you know, close your eyes, you see 4, open your eyes, there's 3. Dave's hit, Dave got hit with a 81. It sheared half his leg off.

It sheared half his arm off. They were on, but they were just hanging by tendons, and and he's screaming. And he I go, how did you hear that? I don't know how I heard it, but I heard him screaming. I'm hit.

He's yelling. He's screaming. I hear it all. I could hear it. I'm still shooting.

They're still shooting. I turn around to make sure nobody's coming again because I still got my 6. We still gotta fight. We gotta finish it. You can't quit.

They gotta take care of Dave. I'm not run off from my position to help him. Somebody I'm just expecting maybe the Delta guys or somebody to come up and help, but who I don't know. We got a fight to go. I put 3 rounds over the top of the red.

I went boom, boom, boom. And as soon as I did that, 3 round 3 mortars, fire for effect. Boom, boom, boom. And when they did that, my night vision went completely white because of the overbundance of light, and as it came back, they were gone. And I saw the pixie dust.

I saw the charged particles because any of those explosions, if it's fine particles or dust and and there's not a lot of wind and there wasn't and there's not a lot, you can see the particles coming down, because they'd be a charger heated. So I'm watching the pixie dust come down, and it it it really did look like they got turned to dust. My brain's like because they're gone. All of a sudden they're gone, and there's a cloud of dust. I'm like, man, I we can't beat this.

We don't need air support. I put my head down, sit for a minute, and god's and I know it was god. It was god or my mom, and he said, get your gun up, Ranger. I kept fighting, and Jack kept fighting, and Boo kept fighting. And we fought those guys off that were coming for us, Boone and Jack Palmer.

They had better avenue fields of fire than I did, but and they did awesome, but, the mortar stopped. And at the time, I was like, wow. I wonder why they stopped. I mean, they hit with the building they wanted to hit. It was far for effect.

They had that thing locked in. That's our main building. That's a skiff. That's where all of our troops are. That's where all of our equipment is.

That's where all of our all of our comms are is that building. They knew which building to hit. And unlike David Petraeus who needs his ranger tab pulled and said, well, it must have been a truck, and they just ran a truck and they just rap haphazardly put a mortar tube in the back of a truck. Come on, man. Come on, man.

What's up, infantry officer? And I got respect for Patrice, but when he said that, I'm like, dude, come on. Anyway, the reason they stopped the movie, I wish they would've edited it a little bit better. You see the militia take off before the mortars came. They actually took off after that first when I heard that they must have heard it.

They'd I don't know. They must have known what it was, more me, which, again, my hearing had gone to shit. They took off, and then that first 1 hit, they went and took the mortar team out for us. Their commander had actually come in with our team, and he was in the building c when those mortars were hitting. So there, that first 1, they're they scattered because that's their tactics.

They knew something was coming. Mortar was coming in, so they're moving their vehicles.

So

they're not part of the carnage, and then I could hear in the distance tires screeching, gunfire, then the direction where the mortars were coming from, and they went and took the mortar team out for us because their commander had got caught in building c when the attack happened. Lord works mysterious ways, bro. Yeah. No. I didn't.

And, the ironic thing is too is the mortar team, that whole militia belonged, they were former Omar Gaddafi commanders.

Wow.

We gotta say, you know, we gotta say Omar Gaddafi. So, yeah, so for anybody to think that we went in there to overthrow Omar Gaddafi, that's bullshit. We went in there to to stabilize a region so the Muslim Brotherhood could come in and stabilize it under that foreign policy under the Obama administration, and we needed Gaddafi's weapons to go and give to the friendly militias as McCain would say. But anyway, they saved us and mortar stopped and then at 7 AM, you know, a militia was coming in and I remember there was just me and Boone and Jack left. Nobody, and it would piss me, nobody would come and relieve us.

It was like, dude, it was like, guys, US guys, Delta, would somebody come give us a break? I mean, come on, it's like having a patrol base and you don't, you gotta give guys breaks. Nobody would come and relieve us. So we stayed up there, and I remember Bob said, Tano? Delta guys didn't come up?

No. And I'm I got no heartache with I I did forget big time.

What were they doing?

I don't know. I that's a good question. I have no idea. And I they're Delta. I know they do hardcore shit, and I got no heartache with them.

I'm not trying to throw them under the bus here. It's just it is what it is. And I know they're they're fucking warriors because they're Delta. You you get you kinda have to be to be at the unit. Now I've seen guys bolo shoots us at from the unit too going through TDC and and going but, like, anyway, they have bad days, but they're I I just I don't know.

Maybe they're on our I would I I would like to know. If you ever get them on, I would love to know what the hell they were doing. Maybe it was document destruction, destroying classified documents of why we're I don't know. I mean, that's what we put in the movie. Michael Bay actually has a pretty good he has a pretty good he has his own peeps within the agency that feed him shit in DOD because they love him, because he makes them look really good, which he should.

He's honoring. He loves veterans. So maybe that's maybe he put that in there because that's what they were doing. I don't know. I and but all I know is they couldn't they wouldn't relieve us, because I kept calling for them.

Then I kept making fun. Like, hey, d boys. You think you could come and relieve us? I gotta get a drink of water. You know, I was just on the the open mic so everybody could hear it.

So I was being my normal jackass pissed off stuff. But, anyway, when the militia was coming in, Bob says to me, he goes, Tanya, you got the front gate. He goes, make sure this militia that we got coming is friendly. All I had left was my Amphora. That's all I had ammo left for.

That's all I had. My pea shooter. It's daytime now, and I remember asking Bob, I go, roger that, chief. I got front gate. I understood.

Can you give me some description of who I'm looking for? He goes, I don't know, Tano. I said, Bob, I said, chief, do you have vehicle colors? Insignia, I can ID. He goes, we don't have any of that information.

And I'm the TL needs to be start chipping in. I'm asking the TL the same things. I go, are there uniforms I can look for? Do I have communication via cell phone? My my my burn phone, can I call somebody?

You guys have communication. We lost communication. I go, give me a number, Bob, at least. He goes, our team leader comes across right and he goes, Tono, the the numbers between 30 to 50, they're all technicals. Holy fuck.

And I got on the radio, and we didn't put it in the movie, but I I said, and you guys expect me to fight these fuckers off with a pea shooter? I said, Roger that. And again, no response because why why keep poking the bear? Because I'll I'll keep giving them shit. And I just said to him, I go on the radio, I clicked it 1 more time, I said, Bob, you've been a plethora of information.

I really appreciate him being a smart ass. And I went dark and I saw him coming. Pablo played it. I it still breaks, I mean, it does, it breaks my heart when I see it because he played it so spot on because that's how exactly I felt. I'm watching these technicals, and it is a huge motion.

They bat you know, you know what technicals are? It's those Hiluxes with those dish guns or antarircraft guns in the back or a PKM mounted, and it's it's badass militia. And as they're coming in, I get behind that parapet wall at 3 foot high, and I made myself as small as I could, and I had an EOTEC, that was on, and I put the EOTEC on the passenger, because I'm thinking to myself, you know, this ain't over. It's not over till it all over. It's not over till it ends, man, and I'm dead or they're dead.

It's probably gonna be me, and all I'm thinking is that dish goes gonna rip me in half, and I hope it's quick. But I'm thinking to myself, I'm at least gonna get 1 of them, and I got my infrared dye, I mean my, EOTEC on the passenger, who looks like a commander, I don't know, but he's pastured, and then I'm just rotating back and forth from the DSHCA gunner to the pasture, because if I see the Dischka gunner move and he hits that fly, I'm gonna hit that fly then, fly trigger. I'm gonna pull up, pull my trigger and at least get him, and then I'll get ripped up. But I just couldn't think of anything else. I had no way to connect them.

I learned the jambo in Mosul at Marez because we had Sudanese guards, and every time we leave the gate, they would throw up the jambo to me in 2,008. So 1 day I stopped and asked them. I said, what does that mean to you? They it means good morning. It officially is Swahili.

It means good morning. You'll see it on shirts and after. Guess it jambo. But because the shaka is much cooler, it's be cool, they've kind of adopted that. That's what they told me.

I said, so it just means be cool. So I would throw that up, and every time I threw it up, if I wanted to see if somebody was friendly, I if I got it back, well, I'm here. So 9 times out of 10, it was friendly. And I couldn't take anything else, and I went like this, and I man, I was I I was you could've bought a lump of Colt in my ass. It would've been a diamond like that.

I was like, just tight. And they're both chewing cot. I remember the cocks had big wads of cot in their mouth. For those that don't know what cot is, it's amphetamine, they dip before they go into battle. It's like a leaf, but it's it's like chewing copay it's like mixing Copenhagen with cocaine and steroids.

It's what it is. And it rots your teeth, it turns your mouth brown, you chew it all enough, it's it's it makes you look like a heroin addict if you chewed it. I mean, it looked like they've been chewing it forever, just gross

and caught

everywhere. I remember doing this, I went like this, and I'm thinking to myself, this is gonna hurt. And the pastor reached out and he smiled at me. He smiled, huge cot, brown teeth, and he went, and he was that close. I could see him that vividly, and he smiles through the jaw, woke up, and the disk gunner got took it 1 hand off the fly, took off that disk in the back, and he went like this.

No. And it was Shit. And I said, people watched the movie, like, that's so that's so dramatized. Like, oh, that's the fuck what happened. And I said, my wife is gorgeous.

My kids are beautiful. Beautiful smiles. But they know this. And I told them, I said, honey, I love you. Now you got a beautiful smile, but that smile that that caught feels still just the most beautiful smile I've ever seen in my life.

And and I did I did lose it. It was like, for briefly, I did. I just kinda let it out. And I got on the radio and I went, there with us, there with us. And I I mean, I'm hoping the movie, what all of them felt, like you see in the movie, I'm hoping that's how they felt in there where it just was somebody.

What had happened? And I don't know how Bob didn't get this fucking information since the commander was right in there. The buddies that took the the militia that took the mortar team out, they went and got more of their buddies. So they just got more Gaddafi people, so we got saved by Gaddafi twice. Wow.

And that and, and then we got out of there, you know, and got to the airfield and there were some there were some fights over our vehicles. I mean, in the movie it showed a few guys. There was actually probably about 15 guys that wanted our vehicles. It was kind of comical because some guy, indeed, is AK when they were fighting over our vehicles. So we're in the middle, and we're trying to get people on, and in this game, this is the respect I have for Oz, and I've said it before, I think it was either with you or with, but again, you respect, even if you don't like people, you respect and give respect when it's due.

And he, again, he did. He was John Wayne. He said the coolest fucking thing, and he did say this. When we got there, we were trying to help him off the back of the truck and get on the plane, and he wouldn't let us help him. He climbed his own yeah.

For real, no. No. He climbed his own ass down from the building bleeding. I don't know if he said it during his interview. He may have, but that was pretty fucking impressive.

He was down pepper shrapnel, arms fling off, and he he climbed down the ladder 1 handed. He slipped on a rung and caught himself with his elbow, and then he walked himself down. So me and Ozzie may not get along, but he's 1 of the toughest son bitches I've ever been with. And when he said that, I was like, god dang. I wish I would have said that.

And I said, damn. That's some John Wayne Clint Eastwood shit right there. And he walked in there, and the flight attendants were out there.

Say again?

I walked into this country. I'm a walk out. He said it wasn't movie. It wasn't script. That's what he said.

We're all standing there. And all of us were like, damn.

Man, I'll say it's, it's just nice to hear you guys have a healthy respect for each other.

We do. You have to. You go through that, and, actually, you don't you're not gonna get along with everybody. You can't hang out with everybody. I'm not for everybody.

Believe believe me. They'll be like, man, I hate that son of a bitch, but if I need him and I want him on with me in the front with me. And there's some that don't. Some that hate that son of a bitch. I don't want him anywhere near me.

And there's some that, man, if we go through the gates of hell, I want you standing right next to me. That's just that's just humans. That's just how we are. You're not gonna like everybody. But if you have a job to do, and this goes in corporate world, this goes in the military, anywhere, private military, you have a goal.

You need to reach that goal. You better be all on the same focus, the same path. Now we may have different jobs, but don't create more drama by not liking each other. And that that's a good leader that puts you in positions that don't make you commingle all the time, which Roan did. He put us in jobs and responsibilities that if we had to do stuff together, we did, but if it wasn't necessary, then he wasn't forcing us.

So we had a healthy dose of each other when we needed, but if we didn't we didn't ride all together. It wasn't necessary for us to me and him do do the do the I can't call him anyhow. He's got names for it. It wasn't necessary for us to do the meetings and the pickups and all that together. You didn't do that.

You didn't and you had leaders that would force guys to ride. You don't want no. We didn't like each other. So the other guys, Oz, Tom, you guys don't have to ride together. There's plenty other people here, and they put us in different vehicles.

Yeah. So but what was funny and comical on that is is it only showed in the movie that the flight attendant put 1 towel down on the stairs because Oz was bleeding over everything. She actually came down and was putting multiple towels all along the stairs and was putting them in the fuselage. Shit. Because she was more worried about blood getting all over the plane than than Oz helping Oz into the plane.

She didn't give him a hand nothing. Just let him walk up. They're like, wow. If that ain't honestly, that's probably more closer to humanity today than how people are today than it really was back then. But he got on there, and, Dave, god bless Bob, dude.

Bob sacrificed his life, saved 2 guys. He gave himself. John 15 13. Man, he exemplified that. Dave and Oz would have bled out.

Dave was bleeding out. He went into, he went into, convulsions twice because our his tourniquets kept coming loose. He was losing so much blood. We were out of IVs. But because that plane was there, we had a little bit of a miss a little bit of a problem when we got everybody on the plane.

As we got everybody on the plane, we heard a pop. Somebody shot their gun on the plane. The heating and air guy had a pistol. If all the contractors had sidearms if they were weapons qualified. Our HVAC guy that was a contractor there with us, he had a pistol.

He took it out to clear it, dropped the magazine, and instead of racking the slide, he pulled the trigger and he shot the plane. So the plane sat there for an extra 10 minutes while we tried to locate the bull because the pilot wouldn't fly if there was a hole in the fuselage, and we got lucky. It lodged in 1 of the iron frames of the back of a seat. Wow.

To

add insult to injury and just comical comical. Wow. And finally found it, that's when it got out of there. And there was a Libyan, a western trained Libyan doctor, and 1 of the deltas had 18 deltas had got back to Tripoli, from that. I I don't know if it was from the SIF team or he come in from Djibouti or but there was a delta that was waiting there, an 18 delta, from 1 of the groups that was working in the region.

And I still don't know who it was. I just know it was an NSF guy. And they got they got him stabilized, Dave stabilized, Dave good to go, they got Oz good to go, and then we sat and waited. And that's when I inspected the ambassador's body. They brought his body on.

I opened up the body bag. And again, I don't think he was desperate. You know, his genitals were mutilated. I didn't look, and I didn't see blood down there, but that didn't mean nothing. They could have cleaned it up and just pulled his pants on.

But I didn't see any marks that indicated he was drugged through the streets, which is what I was looking for. Tig looked at him too, and Tig didn't see anything that indicated that as well. So we're saying no. Could it have happened? Sure it could have, but we didn't see it.

The C130 landed at 10:30, and as I'm seeing it come in, you you know, you've been around, you know the telltale signs even from a distance of what a 130 looks like coming in. It's beautiful, coming in, dueling, just cracking, looking at the tail boom, and I'm thinking to myself, fine. Well, better late than never, America. And, as it gets closer, I'm like, are my eyes just seeing me? That that's red, green, and black.

That's not an American flag. And as it gets closer, I verified it's a Libyan flag, and it lands. And I remember thinking, what? It's like still and I said it to myself, out loud to myself. I said, still no Americans.

Whatever. Goes down, I figure we're gonna hot load it, so it's gonna drive, it's gonna drop its ramp, and we're gonna it's gonna turn, and then we're just gonna run-in and take off. It didn't. It went by us, went down about 400 to 600 meters, banked right, shut its engines down, you know, that's odd. Okay.

Well, maybe they need to refuel. And I look at my t I look at the TL, I go, is that for us? He goes, I don't know. And our country TL was there as well, and I asked him. I go, is that for us?

We jumped in some cars that we had left. We jumped in our our we had an another interpreter, that was our expediter from the airport. He had a vehicle, jumped down there. They were all sitting in the room drinking chai. They were they were maxing relaxing.

Went to the pilots. We're like, is this for and they had no idea what had just happened. They had no idea what had just happened. And we ended up talking them into flying us out. Have faith, man.

Wow. Have faith. I always tell people, never lose your faith. It's amazing that if you have faith, your luck increases. He just showed up.

And that was something that, honestly, I pushed when we were doing all the testimonies, and I and nobody really ever cared.

Wow.

So I just let it go. I I don't push it anymore. But I like to tell about it because it is a, of course, it is a, man, God still in control, man.

Yeah.

And, I am gonna talk about the I do because this is why I don't like, Obama or anyone, Mike Rogers, he's republican. He talks shit about Benghazi. He's a terrible man. Whenever they call a conspiracy, or they say, oh, it didn't happen the way they said they did. When we got on that plane, and forgive me Katie and Bob's family, but I do wanna talk, because this is this is why politicians need to shut their fucking mouths, is Bob's rigor mortis had sit in, so his arm was when we got on the plane, we loaded the bodies in.

We didn't have body bags for everybody, so we had to put sheets a sheet over Bub because we didn't have enough. And he had he had gotten dropped off the roof by the d boys. They dropped him. I don't know why. Again, I've come to terms with that.

I'm not gonna beat those guys up. They're they're they're amen. They're d boys. I know they serve their country well, and they're they're they did well. You if you ever have 1, you can ask them.

But his arm was up in the air, so it was you know, we had him covered with a sheet, but his arm was like this the whole time. It's like an elephant in the room. You're on a C-130, and I'm on the we're sitting on this side on the webbing, and they're sitting on that side on the webbing, and you're seeing these dead bodies here, and everybody's pretty much covered up, but Bob's arm is out there, and and everybody's just staring at it. And I was like, what the fuck? Okay.

I was like, fuck. If I have to be the 1 to do it, and I didn't say it, but that's what I thought, and I walked over there. And I thought it was disrespectful to leave him like that, so I just grabbed his arm, and I went crap, and I ripped it down, and I felt everything ripped, but I could tuck his arm underneath the sheet so it could so we couldn't see it anymore. And, you know, I I don't I don't know if that was right or not, but I just I couldn't ride an hour watching his and everybody was staring at it, and it was just silent on the plane. It's like nobody wanted to acknowledge that that had that was going on or maybe what had just happened.

And it was like, fuck. It was all I and it maybe this is the I have a everybody I have a little sociopath. It's like, man, do I always have to be the 1 to to do the do the dirty shit? That's what I kinda wanna felt, but it but I'm glad I did, because I I I know I I thought it was more disrespectful to leave his arm up in the air and leave him in that position and get him settled, get his arm underneath, and have him be in a respectful position, and that still bothers me. And I don't really talk I don't talk about that too much, because 1 of all, I don't talk about it a lot because, it bothers a shit on me, obviously.

But because I I don't wanna disrespect the Doherty family by saying that that, you know, maybe they they would think of it like a desecration, and that's not what it was for me.

I mean, you did it out of respect, man.

That's that's what I that's what it was, and and that's not a rationalization, and I but I also you call

You're just doing the best you can.

That's it. You always respect family, though. You always respect other people's family because especially people you serve with because you want them to respect your family, and and I love I think Katie and what she's done with the Glendarden Memorial Foundation and and and and Glenn's brother with the they're amazing people. And, missus Doherty passed away, oh, I think a few years ago. But, now I have the utmost respect for them because they lost their son needlessly.

And, I just don't wanna harp on it, but I do want people to understand and know that so when they hear a politician say Benghazi is is a conspiracy or Benghazi didn't happen, or those guys are not telling the story right. I want them to hear stuff like that because that's that's why I get angry.

Nobody believes politicians. They

don't. I hope not. Well, regardless that happened, and we got back to Tripoli, and we went back, and, you know, we we got off the plane, we went to the, the annex there in Tripoli. I I took a shower and got some food, and I was a big Copenhagen dipper at the time, so I was like, man, does somebody have Copenhagen? I need some COVID.

Big dip in. There's actually a picture, there was 1 picture taken of me sitting on the steps of the annex in Tripoli. I borrowed somebody's New York Yankees hat. I didn't have any clothes because I wasn't able to get my gear, So I borrowed somebody's white under t shirt, and I had somebody's pants on that didn't fit me, so it looks like I'm a lot bigger than what I am down there, but I'm not because they were tight too tight on me. And I'm have a big old dip in, And my sunglasses on, and I'm trying to come to terms with it all, and I got some food in my belly, and then then we they load all the contractors, none of the staffers.

They load all the contractors on a motorcade. The GRS guys are there, we load in their cars, we drive down the airfield. The air force crew chief, she was awesome. Broke every reg in the world to let us load those flag draped coffins. They already had the flag.

She was incredible. She already had them flag draped coffins, ready to go, pristine. It was you couldn't have done any better than at Dover. She was incredible. And the the pilot, Eric Stahl, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Stahl, who was a C 17, wonderful.

Every reg in the world, they broke to accommodate us. They had already loaded. Oz is Oz was already on. I gotta I'm not gonna post it, because it's it's for Oz, you know, but I got a picture of him where he's in his gurney. IV's in.

He's coherent, and he's doing this to me. But he's on the plane. Dave is sedated, of course. He's out because he's massive, massive trauma. Get the coffins on.

Ramp closes, we take off, and we fly to, fly to Germany. And then we get to Germany and, plane lands. I didn't let go of my rifle all the time or my ammo. Give 2 fucks. It's not going anywhere.

It stays right next to me with my ammo. So we get there, and I wish I would've known what I know now about general Ham, but he's on a way to greet us, the Eurocom commander. He's the 1 that controls the Eurocom forces, or he's the 1 that can sacrifice his position and tell Obama and Hillary to go f themselves and send us troops. Well, he gets on, and I don't even remember what he said, to be honest with you. I just remember he said something positive to us.

You know, he's an infantry guy, ranger cab, all that. And all I remember is I remember going up to him and saying, hey, sir. Is there an amnesty box anywhere? Because I got a bunch of ammo I need to I need to download. And that's my conversation with him, but if I had known that he didn't, he could have sent people and he didn't, then I probably would have had a different conversation, but I didn't know at the time.

Yeah. He goes, yeah, sir. He's a he's a good job. He goes, great job, man. And he goes, it's right over there, and I walk over there, and there's a sergeant in arm like a sergeant, I would say sergeant arms, but whatever the ammo draw and there's a there's a sergeant there, and I gave a tech sergeant, air force guy.

I gave him the ammo, and, that's why I always tell people, support the USO because they were already there waiting for us. And this lady come she was the nicest lady, 50 something lady, blonde hair, about 5 foot 6. She comes up to me and she goes she goes, she they already know what happened. They know what happened. They know the story.

They know where we're coming from. Anyway, they don't know her agency, they just know that there was a battle, there's some deaths, there's some military and some civilians coming in, get your shit ready, and they already had stuff laid out like toiletries, underwear, you know, clothes, shoes, and she comes up to me and she goes, what'd you lose? She goes, what'd you, you okay? I said, yes ma'am. She goes, what'd you lose?

I said, ma'am, I lost everything. She goes, okay, and she started taking me around and got some, you know, I got some jammies, I got some sweats, USO sweats, and and I got my toiletries, and then when we got to the end of it, she goes, write down what you need. I said, ma'am, she goes, no. I need you to write down what you need because you might be here for about 4 or 5 days. I said every what and she goes, anything.

So I'm just doing, you know, I lost my tennis shoes, I lost my jeans, I lost my t shirts, and I gave her a list and it was it was a full page of stuff I lost. I wasn't being a dick. I lost it. I, you know, lost my PlayStation. I it was like stuff.

I I handed it to her and I go back to my room and they put us into a nice room. It's air force. It's nice rooms, man. It's like a hotel. I don't it felt like a hotel.

They put us in right next to the b x, which Air Force Base Exchange, Army PX Post Exchange, but it's Air Force b x. And I lay down for a second. I can't sleep. I knock on my door at 1 AM, because we're we got in real late. We got in, like, at 11 to the to Germany when we finally got there.

And it was her, and she had 2 bags. She goes, here. She goes, I got your stuff. And and, I didn't I didn't break down in front of her, but I did order. I closed the door because it was well, first time I'd felt where pea where someone generally cared, like, actually gave a shit, not like Bob who came after her when we were a triple, and he goes, thanks, man.

Thank you. And I I think he was trying to be sincere, but when you're that long in the agency, your sincerity is never not there anymore, or having somebody say, hey, man. Great job. It it wasn't. And the g r s guys, they don't know what's you know, we what do we say?

You know? It's I know it's sincere, but it's a it's a good job, fist bump. But actual, like a mother figure saying, caring, it meant a lot. And, and then I, you know, I put the clothes on. She got me some jeans.

She got me some running shoes. I felt normal, and, the torture took a shower. And then, I slept for about 4 or 5 hours, and then I got up and I turned the TV on, and I saw Susan and I saw her already on TV. And I remember I called Jack, and they were saying a video and a protest, and I was like, I said, are you seeing this fucking shit? And we turned it on, and I just turned it off.

And I he turned it off, and we didn't wanna watch it. Because we figured at that point, we're like, somebody's gonna tell the truth. You still have some optimism that there's some heart and some integrity within the government that somebody is gonna say something, and we still had that at that point. It had only been a day. You know?

Who knows? If I'd have known what I know now, 12 years later, I probably would have been more vocal at that point in time, but we still had that we still had that faith that there was still integrity and ethics and morality in DC. We hadn't seen behind the curtain yet. We had a little bit, but not really, you know, because we didn't that wasn't our job. And we stayed on there, and then, I remember that night we got super pissed drunk.

There's still a picture that I'll post every once in a while of me, Jack, Boone, and Tig, and actually the stage for Alec was on 1 side, but I'll crop him out because I just I don't know if he wants to be seen. And I'm smiling a little bit, and I still I I honestly feel bad that I'm doing it, like, what the I'm looking at going, what the fuck am I smiling at? But I remember that I'm just trying to get through it. And I remember that I was I would drunk her and shit, dude. I was so drunk.

We had been laughing together, healing together before that picture was taken. Because Tig was telling me, man, did you man, this is what I did, and boom. And some of the shit is comical. That's why I'm glad we got the comical shit in the movie because that's you know, you know, that happens, man. They miss the bravado's there in all the movies.

Lone Survivor, American Sniper, Blackhawk Down, you know, even ours, but they miss a lot of the Jack Ashbery, and that's 1 thing we like, Mike. We gotta get that in there because that that happens. That's actually more relevant, more prevalent than the bravo bravado. And so I remember we were telling a story, and I I can't remember the story that it was, but we were laughing because I was like, holy shit. I can't believe that just I think it was I think it was Tig talking when he said when he, 1 of the 1 of the spouse, 1 of the base security guys that we had there, called Tig into the office, said, can you come look at the monitor?

I've got some problems in, in, the sheep slaughterhouse area. And he went down there to look, and the sheep were jumping on each other. And he's like, yeah, I went down there and I was just watching these videos and the sheep were running around in a circle and they were jumping on each other and jumping on each other. Well, all the sheep are doing, they're trying to get away, but they can't get away because they're in a pen, they're in a circle, and it looks like they're humping. And he did say that the the bay the spogue goes, so do you think people are sneaking under there?

He goes, I don't know. Is he or that or the sheep are humping? And the the spogue goes, well, what do you think it is? He goes he goes, man, it was like 2:30 at night. He goes, I don't know nothing about sheep.

So it was just funny. It was dumb, but it was funny, because it was just, again, ludicrous shit. So when you see that in the movie, you're like, was that part of the no. That actually that that happened, and that's that's what's so funny about and it is funny. And and with 13 hours, but it's just the night in itself is just just the stupid shit, the stupid stuff that we said to just to make each other laugh, or just stuff that comes out of your mouth, or rub some dirt on a kid, you know, after a guy blows his hand off.

I mean, it it's it's it's there, and and and I I still remember laughing and getting in that picture because of that story that Tig told. And but when I look back at the pic, though, it still hurts me a little bit because I there's nothing I need to be smiling about there. We'd just lost 2 guys. We'd just lost an ambassador. We lost Sean who hadn't seen that's 2 weeks.

I've been doing that for 10 years, and I've been pretty relatively unscathed. He's dead. And here I am smiling a day after the attack, all of us were. And it it it bothers me. That picture, I still will post it because I do wanna tell us, oh, any pictures that I post on social media, I know it's not the cool thing to do, always have a story behind it.

Because I want it's therapeutic for me, but also maybe somebody will learn from it. You know? But, yeah, we're there, and then we went home. The reason they kept all the staffers there, including Sarah, she can tell you more about than I can. She has already, she's already talked about it, and they flew us out is because they didn't want our input on how they were gonna write the report of what took place, So they flew all of us contractors out.

I didn't know that either. If any of us would have known that, we thought they were just being cool. It's like, oh, they're getting us out of here. We gotta go home. It was no, because they're gonna fly betray us in so they can get debriefed without us.

Here's the agency for it. That's it. Wow. We went back to, went back to Langley. You know?

You you stop. You turn in your dep passport. You do your debrief. That's where I we did our big debrief up on the 7th up on, 7th floor, and we went through, this is what happened. We mapped it all out.

We stayed there for an extra day. We went through what we all did, and you know they did a big, like really it was just a big AAR like you do in the military. We were up there and this is for remote. And then we went downstairs and we sat with all the GRS head shit out of that worked out of Langley there, the guys that worked out of the building and that's where we went through another AR. They're like what'd you do, what happened?

And that's when they asked me, like I just said, whenever we talked about it earlier about our TL, they go, so how did the TL do? And they said his name. And I said he did great. And they said, really? And Boone kinda looked at me like, and I said, yeah, he did great because he stayed out of the fucking way.

What was their reaction? What are they gonna say to me? It was 1 put his head down and snickered because he knew who he was. The other 2, they just looked at me. They didn't say a word, and I didn't say a word, and I looked right back at him.

And Boone was laughing the whole time too. Boone's laughing. So what could they say? I got no what are they gonna say to me? I ain't gonna not a been around long enough.

I know who you guys are. You know who I am. We can and I will What

would a normal human being say to you? Nothing. And, These people, who the hell knows?

Well, I was also and not that I'm I've got I've got I've gotten my ass kicked enough times, but I'll fight if we need to fight. And that's where it was, like, stay out of the fucking way. And it was stay out of the fucking way, and then in my eyes, I'm going, what the fuck are you guys gonna do about it? Yeah. And, yeah, they probably won't.

I'm a little guy. I'll get my ass

Oh, no. No. I get

I get the situation. But it's it's that I

mean, there's just so many staffers that have no concept of what that might be like because They haven't done it.

They've never done anything. And, nothing. And do you know what? That's I don't that's why I didn't get any response back, because if they would've had a set of balls, they would've somebody would've said something. But I do also think the 1 that was laughing, that snickering and smiling, giving a little smirk, He had been down range before I'd worked in a few times.

They also knew the truth. They knew. What were they they knew. They knew that he wasn't gonna do anything. So that's why 1 was in the corner going, you know, it's good.

Boone's sitting there going, after he looks at me and I said it, he's like he just started laughing. Boone doesn't laugh. We all like that. He just started laughing, and everybody's on our side snicker, and so what are they gonna say? They know him.

Right? And if they did, then they would, but nobody said nobody said anything. And then I also continue to work. What's that? The staffer.

Who did? Oh, yeah. He's still working. The r the TO? He's still working?

I'm pretty sure he's still working. He's still oh, come on. You know the deal. He ain't going nowhere. He he he played the role.

He didn't say a word. When he testified, he testified against everything that we said. He never testified with us. He testified on his own. He testified once with Tig, because Tig was still working.

Tig was the last 1 to quit. All of us went to Yemen, Tig went to Lebanon. So myself and Jack went to Sana'a after we took our 30 day our 60 days off, and then we went back to Sana'a. Boone went to Aden, Tig went to Lebanon.

You only took 60 days off?

I took 75. I took an extra couple weeks.

Yeah. That's a

I had to get back on that horse, man.

What was the what was the first conversation like with your wife and kids?

I actually called her from the airfield. There's a wonderful, wonderful I'm glad they got this right in the movie. You just see Jack's perspective where he calls home. We paraphrase in the movie because we got all what we all said then, they had a wonderful writer named Chuck Hogan who mashed it together and got all of our base our words in into that monolog when Jack's on his phone or Krasinski. And I remember I called her on the tarmac, and I said, hey, you're gonna see something on the news.

That's us. I said, I'm fine. I love you. I said, I'll be home as soon as I can. And then she goes what happened?

I said I can't really talk about it, but we lost 1. And I'm at Rome. And yeah, this still bothers me a little bit too because I really wasn't thinking about Bub, I was thinking of the teammate even though Bub had come from Tripoli. But I said we lost, and I said on an open line, I said we lost Rome. And I said that's all I can say.

I said I'll talk to you when I get to and I didn't know where I was going. I said I'll talk to you when I talk to you, and I hung up the phone. And, yeah, I I every 1 of us had a phone call like that. Jack's Jack was the closest to Roan out of all of us there, Roan and Bob. So his conversation was a little bit more emotional than than ours, but it was it still was, hey, you're gonna see someone in the news.

It's over. We're okay or I'm okay. Yeah. We we lost some people. Be home when we can.

Love you. Bye. And then, my conversation when I got to Germany was a little bit more in-depth, but I had to be careful because we're on open lines. And it wasn't I was worried about the bad guys listening to us. It was I started to figure it out.

Yeah.

You know, Toto started to open that curtain where the great and powerful Oz was, and I started to see who the enemies not really are because terrorists are the enemies too, but that we also have enemies in our own house that don't want the truth to come out. So I was I was more careful about what I would talk about on an open line. And then when we got back to Langley and all that, know, there are debriefs. I did also tell them as well because of that because of that, 203 incident where TIG lost the 203, and I couldn't find that other 1. I sat down with them because you can bitch about a problem, but if you're gonna bitch about a problem, have a solution to it.

And I remember sitting there with him, I go, you guys know that for some reason, we didn't have enough 60 nines out there. I said, if we would've had enough 2 0 threes for all of us, the fight would've ended way before it did, you know, at 5:30. We would've crushed them. They would never have touched us again. So in the future, every Juris operator, it has to be just like when we're in the military.

Everybody has to have a 46. Everybody has to have m 4. Everybody has to have a 203. Everybody has to have an SR 25. Everybody has to have the right gear for the right op, and then they get to pick which gear they need when they head out because this is bullshit.

I said, we're the agency, and we don't have enough 2 0 threes. I said, what the fuck is that? Obviously, it fell on deaf ears. Then I even said, I said, even ground branch has every weapon system they need, and I get it. They're DA.

We're not. But that's horseshit. This is why everybody needs every weapon system, because if this happens again and we lose 1, we're not out an entire weapon system that could have been a game changer, a force multiplier, like a 203. And from what I heard, and you kept working, I don't think I think that fell on deaf ears. It didn't

It fell on deaf ears.

So fuck those fuck those pieces of shit. Because how hard is it to get an extra 203 or an extra 46 for the guys when especially when there's only 5 guys on it on a team or an extra GLM something. You know? So but I remember saying that to him because I was pretty pissed. I was I was pissed at that.

Because, again, I felt like, we're the runt of the litter. And so what if we are? But guess what? The throwing of litter just turned the tables without any assets at all. It's not easy being a ranger or a Delta or seal.

It's not. You're doing DA stuff, but it is nice, and it is heartening to have a Specter gunship fucking overlooking you. It is nice if you are a SEAL team going out there to have a platoon of rangers that got your back or vice versa. When you're on your own and that's it, and you don't have all those assets, it's it can be a it can it can be a little bit more scary that you don't have Yeah. All those protections, and so that's why give us everything we need, and I'm not asking for much.

It's not like I'm asking for a DAP cover. I'm not asking for you know, I'm just asking for, can y'all get us at least each of us have a 2 or 3? And How

long did it take you, Chris, for I mean I mean, you were abandoned by the US government Yeah. In all aspects.

That's that's I wish I could tell you different, but that's that's what happened.

How long did it take you to rid yourself of that anger?

2000, the end of 2017, 2018 when I reconciled my wife. I tried to from 14 on 6 years. 6 years. Yep. Because all that time in between, and that's when we had gotten divorced.

I was sleeping around. You know, that's why we got divorced. It was me and my me and my infidelity. I was drinking a shitload. I was drinking all the time.

I was gone all the time. I was speaking.

How did you reconcile that?

1st, you have to reconcile with God, man.

How'd you do that?

Stood in the mirror and said, God, I need your help. Carry me. I can't do this anymore. After, I don't even remember exactly what I was I was I was, at home by myself. It was, you know, they'd lived out.

I lived by my own. I was by myself. I was, you know, I was a divorcee. Our little I still had our little guy. You know, our little guy was still a baby, so that was hard because I was like, holy shit.

I'm missing childhood a a child again because of my own stupidity. But I remember I was in the shower doing the crying game thing in the shower. It was like, my life sucks. This is awful. You know?

And I had, you know, I had millions of followers, so I this is before I shit canned all my social media accounts. So I had, like, shit, I don't remember, 275,000 followers on Instagram, and I think I had 300 on Twitter. When it was Twitter and social Facebook was like 4 you know, I don't that was what was important in my life. Right? That is so fucking ego centric, vapid.

But that's what my focus was, is myself, ego, and I realized that that wasn't that was leaving me hollow than the toxic relationships. Then trying to fill it with alcohol, then trying to fill it with money. I had a lot of money, tons of money. Didn't make me happy. And, it was when I realized that I can't do this anymore.

God, I need you. I I do. I need you. I was in the shower. I did the crying game thing, crying in the shower, naked.

Got out of the shower. I had my Glock. It was right there, and, I looked in the mirror, and I did. I I put it right here, and I thought back. You know, I thought, just briefly, I said, okay.

Hard life. Yeah. You've had it not hard as but you you know, it was rough. You you you you got this disease that you're you're winning. You're winning the Crohn's disease fight.

You got it under control. You got kicked out of the military. You fought your way to get back in. You made it, And you got to Ranger School and you did what you wanna do there. You conquered that even though their odds were against you.

Your your grandson of immigrants that worked their asses off to give you everything, you've got that gene of that you don't give up like your grandma. You're huela and a huela. And then 10 years overseas, seeing death and seeing life and getting through all that, making a bad call in Iraq that I made a bad call in Iraq where a little Iraqi girl died that I could've saved her in 2005 in the district. You went to Benghazi, and you got through that, and now the devil's gonna win this battle for your soul. That's what I thought.

And I looked in the mirror, and that's when I said I looked in the mirror, I said, god, carry me. I can't do this. And I just put the gun down, and I stopped crying. And I went and grabbed the phone, and I called my my she was my ex wife at the time, Tanya, and they were on vacation at Disney World. They had taken off for Christmas.

They were going on vacation. In a divorce, she got the DVC membership, but they were there. And I said, can I come spend Christmas with you guys? And no hesitation, she goes, yes. Come on.

And and, I mean, it's it's like god answered me like that. There was no there was no delay. There was nothing. I got a plate. I got on, you know, I got on, you know, I by that time, I had more miles to orbit the sun on every freaking airplane in the world.

I got on, Delta, got a ticket, flew out the next day, and they were staying at the Polynesian Village in 1 of the little huts there on the water, and it was freaking awesome. Best vacation ever. And with that, that was the life that really, that was it. The life changed. Stopped doing the media.

I did 1 more written Fox interview for Fox Emedia. It was and that's where I said, I'm done. Anger's gone. God's got Hillary. God's got Obama.

He will take care of him. I don't need to judge anybody. Who am I to judge anybody? They will be judged, let it go, and life's been gravy ever since. I stopped doing so much social I stopped doing a lot of I don't do 60, 70 talks a year anymore.

I do like 10. I shit can all my social media. I just got rid of all of it. Now I got back on when I got my head right. My wife is a big part of that too, so she's it's not just me.

It's me and her, do it, but that was huge. It was that was so toxic. And and, that's why I I don't I I give guy people shit for protecting those accounts for making them so important because they're not at all, and I got rid of all of them. And business wise, went a different direction as to as far as business goes, which means I minimized it. So I had some battle line stuff, but I stopped doing the traveling course courses as much, and I focused on being home.

And we also ended up getting remarried, so worked on a relationship. It took time. And how that worked is we just started dating again. It wasn't like we got right back in it. It was we still live separately, and then we would just start going on dates.

How did your kids react when

he came back in the picture? They I mean, they were happy that dad was there, especially at Disney. We're having fun and but it was it was awkward for the 2 older ones because they really didn't know what to think. I mean, is dad going again? Is he gonna be here this time?

Is he leaving? But also, at that time, they were so used to me being gone anyway, even when we were married from a point, it wasn't it wasn't anything that it was odd and they were pushing me away, and also because mom and dad aren't arguing anymore. They're not yelling at each other anymore. So it was it was happier environment. If it was like a a a normal I had a normal job, 9 to 5, or all of a sudden I disappeared and I came back, maybe they would have been a little bit more, it would have creeped him out, worried him out a little bit, but because dad was always gone anyway, I I saw them being a little happier.

But as we talked about earlier, they still were very reserved, and I don't know if this is for real. You know? Yeah. My dad was mean. Whenever he come back from her, actually, he's gonna be mean dad, and and he makes he makes mom cry, and that's what they would see.

You know? And so it just took time, a year of dating, of just more dating, of them spending more time together, of them, the kids ended up maybe staying over, then eventually just ended up to, like, just like a normal where you're dating somebody and it develops into a into a a relationship that a marriage, and we had to do it that way. And it it was a little weird, but it was fun doing it that way because I I got to, you know, I got to do things that maybe I didn't do the first time I quartered where I did. So it was it was like a do over, and, it was awesome. No.

It was great. It was everything was fantastic. I did have some I I did have some where I would still get angry from times because just because it's just seeing what you saw. Not anything where it was infidelity or anything like that. No.

That's terrible. I'm a terrible person. I hate even saying, but I I'm gonna be honest with you, man. And she I mean, obviously, she knows. I wrote about it in some of the books that I've written this, but there are times still where I would get angry.

You know? The the and post traumatic stress, whatever you wanna call it, shell shock, you just you remember, and you just the the anxiety was there, but they said the CBD really did help. I did get it on an anxiety medication, but all the VA does is just and I I got good VA. Midwest, they did take care of you, but all that does is just create more problems. The CBD helped.

I stopped drinking. You know, even though I have my own vodka, when I say stop drinking, I have a drink with my wife maybe once a month, you know, and I also made it a point to be a father, be home. This is where I wanna be. And I did realize that in 2017, 2018, I did a contract, My last contract, it was to, Costa Rica. It was an anti kidnapping contract for a private firm in Texas to find an American that had gotten kidnapped, and so I was still contracting a little bit.

I wasn't going to the Middle East anymore, but I was still doing some South America stuff. And I was it was Halloween time, and I was there for Halloween, and my wife sent me a picture of my son, Peanut, my daughter going out to the trick or treat. And, you know, that feeling that you gotta go down range, I gotta, it was gone. I was like because all I could see was the picture, and all I'm thinking to myself is, what in the fuck am I still doing this for? And, you know, I finished my contract.

Those those and luckily, those things are real short. You know, they're you you find the guy or you don't. He's you're gonna find him alive in a few weeks or you're gonna pass it on to the next guy or he's gonna be dead, and he did. They it was an American that, they held for ransom. They they did find the culprits, and we found he was dead.

They he was but contract's over. I flew back, and, man, just everything. My son, I reconciled my 16 year old boy. We had that ending at Olive Garden, that incident where How'd

you propose to your wife?

The first time? 2nd time. The second time? I didn't get down on my knee or she's not that kind of woman, dude. She's not that type of woman.

It was honestly very nonchalant, and it it was just you know, we saw the rings, and I put my ring back on. She said, are you still wearing your ring? I said, where I am now? I said, where's your ring? It's in the box.

I said, do you wanna do this again? And, of course, I knew the answer. And she's tough as nails, dude. And, it was back at Disney. You know?

And most people hate Disney, and I their their politics are horseshit, but it still can be a happy place for the family. A lot of happy things happen there. And we were actually run running around, what's it called, the, Polynesian Village. There's another 1 out there where there's a massage place. The white 1, it's it's it's like a southern resort, southern I can't remember the name of it, but we're running out there jogging, and we stop.

And I said, will you bury me again? And she just laughed. It's just like, because it was so corny. I'm such a nerd. It's so corny.

And she laughed, and just, yeah. And really, it was the smile, and she has a beautiful smile when she really wants to smile. She doesn't like smiling because she thinks her smile is ugly, but it's gorgeous. And she just gave me her gorgeous, squinty eyed, big ass smile, and we sold her house. She had a second house in Omaha.

We went back. She got it ready for sale. We sold it. She moved back into my house in Omaha or or say our house because it was our house. That's what we we bought it together when I was in the military.

And then we stayed there for a few years, and it was it was it was married. I was and I was I was a husband, finally. She was always a wife. I couldn't ask for a better wife. You know?

I couldn't ask for a better partner. I couldn't ask for a better woman because she's just she's just a wonderful, wonderful person. And, she's wonderful for me because she's not sappy. If I'd went down on my knee and did all that stuff, she would have told me no. It had to be doing something athletic.

We're out running because that's how she is. And me just throwing it at her and her being and

And that's how you are.

And that's how I am. Yeah. And she knows that. And she put a ring back on, and and I even asked her. I said, I'll buy you a huge because, you know, I I had a little bit of money at that time.

I'd and, I said buy you a huge rock. What do you want? I'll get you a huge rock. She goes, I you know I don't want those huge. I don't need diamonds.

I don't I don't wear I wouldn't wear that. It's because I'm fine with what I have. It was our original ring that I bought her when we got married in the courthouse in Tacoma before we went to ranger school when I was at second ranger battalion. And, and then we stayed there in Omaha for a while, and Omaha changed just like all cities do. And, it wasn't the Omaha that I remember, you know, good values, and there are good people in Omaha.

There are wonderful people in Omaha, but it started to turn like cities do. Amazon moved in. Google moved in. Warren Buffett is Warren Buffett. The tearing down cornfields, there was even riots and protests in Omaha at the time, and we're like, we're out.

We're not here. And and we moved to Kansas. And I

That is a good woman.

She is. She is wonderful. And and then we because nobody you were the first person that's asked me that. Because nobody's ever asked me that. And I think it's an awesome I do.

I think it's awesome because it it just to me, it reminds me of how awesome she is and how she's not a girly girl. She doesn't want the girly girl stuff, and and I did think about proposing to her, like, doing the proposing and on a down because we're in a we're in Disney, and we're we're at the resort. I wish I could remember that damn it's right next to Polynesian Village. It's the old southern resort. It's the perfect place for it.

You know, got the gazebos and and, and but I never would do that. I got, like, there's no way, because I did think about that. Like, man, I gotta propose her to write, come on, on a beach somewhere. It's like, no way. If I did that, she would think I was such a she wouldn't believe me, first of all.

She'd be like, what did you do? And not you. It was out running and being athletic. It was out, and it was it was perfect for us. And then what'd we do after that?

We went to the gym and we worked out together. It was awesome. And I was so I just it was it was the the best, and it still I still have those feelings when I go home. That's why I love where I live, where I just walk in and everything is just and I don't need anything. I don't need any anything else but that.

It's it's wonderful, and she's there. And she has her life. You know, she doesn't she doesn't need me to we don't need to be doing things together all the time. She coaches volleyball. She's very independent, but she'll still come home if she wants to, and she'll make dinner.

I don't need that, but it's not required. I like to cook too. But, you know, she'll or she'll come home and she'll say, get your ass up and go make me some food. Yes, ma'am. Yes, darling.

And, no. She's she's my angel, and I have a tattoo up here. And, you know, I had a cross that she gave me. This she gave me this before Libya. I've had it since Libya.

But I had another 1 that I had. She gave me as a military, and it said love love on her courage, and I have a tattoo up here on my chest, is that cross. And then I haven't put peanut on there yet, but it has the call signs of all my other kids. It says, 1 said she's angel. My wife's angel.

My daughter used to be princess, but now she's like my wife. She's not a prince dad. I'm not a princess, don't call me that, but that was her call sign when she was little. Now she's Kiki. And then I have Bubba, because Bubba is Bubba.

And that's them. They're always right there.

Well, Chris, there's a lot more we could dive into, but I think that's a perfect way to end it, brother. And, I just wanna tell you, man. I saw you speak. I saw how much pain you were in. You know, probably probably getting close to probably getting close to 10 years.

Not quite.

Where did you did where did you

Boca Raton.

You saw that? Yeah. Oh my god. That was that was that was that was demon time.

And, Wow. I'm just really happy for you, man. Thank you. I can tell you're at peace now, and sounds like you got a great family

and an

amazing life, and, you deserve it.

Thank you, brother. And and you're right back at you. Appreciate being patient with me, and that's that's cool that you did see that and and seeing your pictures downstairs with your kids and your wife. It sounds like, yeah, you ain't the boss of the house either. Are you, bro?

And we don't need to be. We need somebody that's gonna boss us around and tell us, hey, our shit stinks sometimes. And That's right. It's wonderful to have some thank you, brother. Thanks for having me.

It was an honor, brother.

No. The honor is not. Thanks for letting me go down the outermost like I do. I just need, brother. Thank you.

God bless, Chris.

God bless you too, brother. Thank you. Named 1 of the best personal finance podcasts, the Stacking Benjamin Show with Joe and his friends makes financial literacy fun. Draymond Green has a podcast. He was asking Mark Cuban why at the beginning of 2024, Cuban sold a huge part of his company.

He's like, did you see

how much money I got? I'm sure there's a more graceful answer than that, but, dude, I bought it for 200,000,000 and sold it for 6,000,000,000. Like, what the heck? I don't think it was that much more graceful than that.

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