Transcript of #294 Pete Blaber - Part 2: Delta Force Commander on Pablo Escobar, Takur Ghar, and Pat Tillman New

Pete, I don't know how much more of this shit I can take for one day, man. Yeah, but it's important work we're doing, so let's press on.

Okay. Um, so, you know, I guess we'll kind of do a segue because we're in Afghanistan and 2002, just 2 years, not even 2 years, about a year and a half later, 8 kilometers to the east of Takur Ghar is where Pat Tillman and his platoon are doing searching for weapons caches. The how I got involved in this was was kind of twofold or two-pronged. First, in 2017, Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, found an intermediary that contacted me, and she sent me an email and it said, I read your book. I know you were in Afghanistan and you were a Ranger. If you have time to talk, I'd love to talk to you. And And so I called her immediately on the phone, and she said, you know, she told me her story. She said, it's been 13 years, and I still don't know how— whether my son was killed on purpose or whether it was an accident. I have a massive, uh, 3,500 pages of videos, uh, reports, testimonials, if you have time, would you mind taking a look? And I was— said, told her, hey, I'll be up there, you know, tomorrow. I drove, uh, about 400 miles.

I think they lived up around San Jose. I drove up, met her at her place of work. She came out at lunchtime. She gave me this big bin of documents, and, uh, I took the documents home. and, you know, I was smoked because I did a round trip, uh, in, in 24 hours. And I just opened one binder and I started reading, and, you know, next day I found myself like with dribble coming out of my mouth, collapsed into the binder I'd already highlighted, tabbed, um, because what I was discovering was, you know, just shit that Every page, I was like, you've got to be kidding me, you got to be kidding me. And so she—

there's speculation that he was killed, he was murdered.

Well, she didn't know, and she didn't know because she— the Army lied to her. Um, you know, it took them 35 days from the time Pat died, it took the Army 35 days to tell the family, to include the brother who was in the platoon. 35 Pat was killed by friendly fire. And so when she found out— excuse me— that Pat— it took 35 days to tell that. The original story, which was, uh, embedded and told via the Silver Star narrative, was he was shot while charging uphill to counter an ambush. That's what his Silver Star read. So, you know, once her, her quote was something to the effect of You know, if you're telling— if, if that's the way he really died, why would you make up such a massive lie to cover it up? And, you know, that's what happens too, is, you know, once you're lied to, uh, lied once, then lied twice, and still no, no truth, you don't believe anything you're told. And I think that's the mode that her, the rest of the family was in, and, uh, quite frankly, a lot of people who looked at it and still look at it.

This is why the entire US government and every fucking institution inside of it is in the position that it's in right fucking now.

Yeah, you're right. The credibility, lack of consistency, lack of telling the truth. And you know, in this case, there was no reason for it except the same old thing— pride, careerism, uh, covering up, you know, something that was very embarrassing. But You know, I went into it with eyes wide open. I told her, hey, I'd be happy to take a look, but I just want to tell you right now, because I didn't believe he was murdered right off the bat. And so I just said, I just want to be frank with you. I'm going to tell you exactly what I think after I read this, and it may not be what you want to hear. And she said, I'm fine with that. I just want to hear what you think and how— what we can do to prevent it from happening again. So, you know, I was super busy at the time. I just opened a new business. I was trying to finish my second book, which was a complex book, The Common Sense Way. But, you know, I did what anyone would do when a Gold Star mom asked them for help. And that's, you got it.

I'm in. And I started working on it, working on, you know, basically the research for that. I did not initially think I was going to write it into a book. I just decided that at some point a few months in because I realized the same thing. The only way to get the truth out is to put it in on paper so people can read it and memorialize it. So, you know, I started right away. The first thing I did was talk to some old Rangers who— not old, but Rangers I knew when I was in the regiment. And I served in 2nd Ranger Battalion twice. I told you I was a lieutenant. I went back once from the unit for 18 months to be the S3 of 275. So I went back as a major for 18 months. A mentor of mine who told me, hey, I know you love it at the unit, but in the same way you joined the military to pay something back, you ought to go do some time in the regiment and pay something back to them, you know, share some of the knowledge you learned in the unit.

And I like that, and I love Fort Lewis. I'm not pretending it was some massive sacrifice, and I loved every minute of being back in the Rangers. Same thing. I had a great battalion commander while I was there, a great bunch of captains, NCOs. So, um, you know, I knew 275 very well. I still— many of those NCOs who I knew even as lieutenant were now first sergeants, sergeant majors. So I knew a lot of guys in the battalion still, uh, when I started working on it. And, you know, Right off the bat, I just started calling up Rangers, getting Rangers to give me other Rangers' numbers, guys who were involved, and started talking to them. And, you know, I think 3 things I learned right off the bat. One, what unbelievably harrowing situation these guys were in, uh, when they were ambushed. I mean, when you hear the details of it You know, there's not many ambushes like this, this ferocity. They were in the most daunting terrain and that was inhabited by the most obstinate and difficult to ally with or reason with tribes in all of Afghanistan. These are ancient Pashtun tribes, tribal sects.

Of the Pashtun tribe who are known to be bandits, smugglers. They're right on the border with Pakistan where this area is. It's called Speridistic Khost Province. And like I said, it's 8 kilometers east of Shahikot and about from where Pat was killed, about 5 to 8 kilometers to the Pakistani border. Uh, so unbelievable area, ambush, most intense ambush. But the thing that really stood out was I think the platoon was— when they were out there, they were about 40 guys. I didn't get a hold of everybody. Some guys went, so they, they're so wounded psychologically by it that no one knows where they're at. But out of all the guys I talked to, I think 20, a little over 20, still had PTSD from this event. At least 2 of them were still suicidal. And so, you know, right off the bat, I was like, 20 years, almost 20 years after it happened, all these guys are still suffering. And from talking to them, what you discover is most of their trauma is from the investigation, is from the way the whole thing was handled. Because the platoon ended up— they scapegoated the platoon after it happened.

They made it— they told the rest of the regiment, they told everyone higher, you know, this platoon fucked up and that's what caused it. It was a massive you know, series of errors by the platoon, and nothing could be further from the actual truth. When I looked at it, pretty much across the board, you know, and anyone can second-guess platoon on little, on anything you want, but pretty much across the board, they did all the right things, to include the young platoon leader who was only a lieutenant at the time. So those were the 3 things that struck me. Uh, you know, I ended up learning a lot more about PTSD that I didn't know. Um, and one of the things that I think is most important for our viewers is, uh, a universal principle of, of how you help people heal from PTSD, and it's, it's, it's this: Psychological wounds only heal with truth and community. So guys who, whatever they're diagnosed with psychologically from war, the two salves they need are truth. They need to know what really happened, and they need community. They need guys, you know, preferably the guys who were in their unit, but it can just be guys in the community telling them, hey man, I would have shot that guy too.

You know, don't, don't torture yourself. Uh, he was standing there with a gun, you know, you shot him in the head. And, you know, I talked to a lot of my former colleagues about this. You know, one of the things you— another thing you learn about PTSD is mostly it's a young man's disease. It can accumulate to be in a more senior guy, a guy in his 30s. You can have it in your 40s, 50s. But most of the guys who get the severe PTSD are the young guys. And part of that is what we now know biologically— the, the male brain doesn't fully develop till you're 25 years old. And what the part that doesn't develop is your neocortex, your thinking brain. So a lot of these guys, you know, aren't even— their brains aren't fully developed. And so they can't handle a traumatic event like an older guy who who just what I just gave an example of, the way you deal with emotions is you use your thinking brain, the logic-based brain, to make sense of the emotions. And as an example, anxiety makes sense when you think about it as a way for your subconscious to tell you there are things that you're not addressing in your life that need to be addressed.

That's what anxiety is. You know subconsciously you're not doing something, and anxiety is produced from that. Guilt is the same way. Guilt is actually a productive emotion. Guilt is your subconscious way of telling you that something you're doing could have serious negative effects on a relationship you have. And it can be wife, girlfriend, anything like that. That's guilt. And it could be your brother, your son, any— it doesn't have to be sexual. It's just logic makes sense of our emotions. And a younger guy has a harder time making sense of it. And my good buddy from the unit, Kevin M— I'll go by his nom de guerre, Predator— He's the guy who pointed this out to me, and he said, remember, remember that time we were sitting there after, uh, after an op in Afghanistan? It was you, me, and the third guy. I won't say his name. I'm like, yeah. And he goes, we were doing the AAR, went to like 3:30 in the morning. I'm like, yeah. And when the AAR finished, uh, I said, come on, let's go get a shower and get a beer. And you were like, okay. And you and me stood up and we looked over at our buddy and he had his head in his hands.

And he— we were all right next to each other on this target that we were talking about. Everyone saw the same thing, everyone shot at the same targets, but that guy, uh, took it differently. Something about it, and I didn't know it at the time, but what it— probably the difference was he didn't see all the same things we did. And, you know, one of the problems we have as victims of PTSD— we're men and we're hard men, and we don't like talking about our injuries, and we don't talk— like talking about our, you know, our frailties. We don't like admitting it. We want to fix it ourselves. And, you know, what really— instead of putting your heads in your hand, you know, the most important thing to do is to, you know, say out loud what's bothering you, because then your buddies will say, dude, you know, I shot him too. Or you may not even hit him. I hit him twice, and I have no problem with that, you know. But certain things set people off. You can never tell. Everybody's got a different brain. Everyone's got different past experiences. But the main thing is truth and community.

And I started seeing that real time because as I'm piecing this whole thing together, I talk to these guys every day, at least one of them every day. I never logged a call that went less than 2 hours. I had some calls that went 3, 4, 5 hours. Wow. And at the end of these calls, I couldn't get the guys off the phone. And I'm— I want to thank them, but they can't stop thanking me. Thanks for listening to me, man. And just— and none of them, it turned out, none of them were allowed to read. There were 4 investigations, so none of the guys in the platoon were allowed to read the investigations. So again, holistically, I end up knowing, because I've read now all 3,500 pages watched the videotapes, been over the maps. I've been there myself. I drove through that area. I now know it better than them, and I can piece shit together for them. So you're— so, you know, it's both truth and community they're getting. They're getting the truth. No, that's not what happened. There were guys who thought, you know, he shot at me. I'm like, no, he did not shoot at you.

He was shooting at the target up on the ridge, and you were in the line of sight below him, but they were not shooting at you. I didn't know that. You know, I've been pissed at that guy for all these years. And I'm like, yeah, he did not. That's not what happened. And it's right here, you know, and two guys witnessed it. And he's like, fuck, I wish I had seen that. A couple of guys called each other for the first time, said, hey, man, you know, like, I'm sorry I was mad at you. Oh, shit. Real, really, in aggregate, I'll just jump forward.

These guys apart.

It did it. And that's what I mean. There are guys, you know, they're in the prime of their lives. They're mid-40s now. I mentioned a couple of them were suicidal. A couple of them can't work. They've got anger management. So you're in your mid-40s and you're already basically disabled from working, you know, your— the best, most productive years of your life. Really sad. Uh, again, jumping forward, I made it—

why were they not allowed to read the investigations?

They just didn't, you know, the— I don't know what the exact reasons they were given. They just weren't allowed because the investigators didn't want the actual fucking truth. I believe that's what it was. I believe that the investigation never could withstand any scrutiny by an objective observer/reader/investigator. And this goes up again to the JSOC commander at the time. He signed off on the Silver Star. He signed off on the Uh, um, the, the repercussions— the platoon was punished. The platoon leader was reprimanded. Uh, 4 guys were thrown out of the regiment. The squad leader was fined like $3,000. I mean, they punished these guys, but none of the, none of the guys who actually caused it, uh, were ever punished.

Of course.

So yeah, just, you know, on a I don't want to—

short shot, Commander. No, this was all a fucking lie.

Uh, by day, by at least a lie. Yeah, by at least day, by 72 hours after everyone knew.

Because how the fuck can you expect— I mean, isn't integrity ingrained in every branch of the fucking service? And you have the fucking JSOC Commander, the fucking top dog, the person every fucking body wants to work for. JSOC. Is a lying fucking piece of shit. Yeah, signing off on fucking lies to protect his sorry fucking ass. Yeah, what's his fucking name?

McChrystal.

Oh, another fucking SEAL?

No, he's, uh, Army. Tried and true Army guy. Okay, so you're thinking of McRaven.

Mm.

But, you know, same thing. And I'll tell you what he did that is really egregious. So let me just go through the, you know, I'll start at the end. The result was my finding that I delivered to Mary Tillman first before the book. And by the way, she would not ever read anything I wrote. And she didn't read that book till it was published. She didn't read a word I wrote in that book until it was published. That's my final report to her. That's what I decided. I'm like, I'm going to have to give her a massive report. And then I was like, I should make this a book because there's so many foundational lessons here, especially about toxic leadership. And the lesson of the Pat Tillman incident is the title of this book, Common Sense Leadership Matters, Toxic Leadership Destroys. And it does. And until we internalize that and institutionally say to ourselves, we will seek out and fire every toxic leader that comes up on the radar, we're not going to fix the problem. It's got to be treated, you know, worse than whatever the worst DEI offense was over the last 4 years, because toxic leadership is a killer.

And Ironically, toxic leaders seem to get promoted when their peers who take care of their people don't. So even more reason to fix the problem. But my findings, basically, just to summarize, Pat Tillman was killed by— in a tragic friendly fire accident. But that friendly fire accident was not caused by the fog of war, battlefield friction, enemy acumen. Instead, the death of Pat Tillman and the friendly fire incident was caused by the sum total of senseless choices made by the toxic chain of command and their staff officers who issued the orders.

Who probably were not even fucking there.

They weren't there. They were 44 miles away in this newfangled version of what I was telling you, now called the CFT, the cross-functional team concept, which essentially made every TOC in Afghanistan the same. And they consisted of a wall of VTCs, a U-shaped table, each side was 10 staff officers. One side worked on current ops, the other worked on future ops. Don't ask me what that means. I can't, there's no such thing in my mind. Every op is a future op. And the current op, you just stick with the op that's going. You don't have 10 staff officers and 10, and then the commanders sit at the base of the U at the top. Their days were defined and I'd say gaged by how many VTCs they participated in, and usually it was 4 to 5 VTCs. Most of those were higher headquarters back at Fort Bragg, CENTCOM, anywhere else that they needed to talk to. So, and while the VTCs were going, uh, no one, none of the commanders in the VTCs were answering radios. So, uh, the radios went to people manning the radios. And again, one of my recommendations is the military needs to set out an edict.

If you're a commander, you do not issue an order to subordinates who are in the field unless you— it— that order comes out of your mouth. You don't pass it to a staff officer to pass. You don't send it out via email or secure text. You say that order out loud. Same thing I told you before, saying it out loud is our best common sense litmus, because when we say it out loud, we make it physical. And when we make it physical, our own senses and those of the people around us can pressure test it to see if it actually makes sense. But they don't say it out loud anymore, and the The takeaway is technology hasn't made saying it out loud obsolete, it's made it absolute. And we have to get back to that. Every order you give, and if you can't talk on the radio, like we just talked about at Takur Ghar, that Air Force general never came on the radio. He never said a word. He had a major, a field artillery major commanding the battle. If you can't command a battle on a radio, You're not— you do not deserve to be a commander.

That's part of what you're supposed to be able to do. That's how you issue orders. That's how we get this back and forth we talked about. Hey, that doesn't make sense. Can you explain to me the purpose of that? But you can't do that if you're not talking to the person who issues the order. So it has to come back. Pat Tillman's— what happened to the platoon is just a cavalcade of senseless orders. And, you know, it's hard to believe all of them. Essentially, they were given an order, a made-up order, to go clear grid zones in this area, one of the most daunting and dangerous areas in all of Afghanistan, and that's saying a lot. So they were riding around in Humvees that were constantly breaking down. They drive up to a remote village try to find a village elder, tell him, hey, we're here to check for weapons caches, we need to check every house. Then they'd go in, toss the house, you know, search for their weapons caches and go out. About 6 days into it, they had found a rusty machete, a couple of old RPG rounds, and just an assload of marijuana.

A lot of people think of Afghanistan as pure poppies when they think of drugs, but weed grows everywhere. It grows wild. It's a cash crop also. And most— where Pat died, there was a weed field below where he died at. So incredible waste of time. Terrain kicking their ass. They're low on food, low on water. Uh, I think they were 7 days in when one of the vehicles broke down, and it was a Humvee that actually Pat Tillman happened to be riding in. Uh, now it broke down while they were static at a place called Border Crossing Point 5. So it's up on a raised elevation, manned by Afghans, secure fence. HLZ inside of it. The Humvee breaks down. They call back to the rear, say, hey, the Humvee's broken. And the rear says, well, fix it. You know, you guys are already behind schedule. So in the TOC, the TOC is monitoring everything with this color-coded sync matrix. And if you got a red box in your sync matrix, it means you're behind schedule. Each green box means you, you have already cleared the grid zone. So, you know, you got 9 platoons in a battalion, you got 9 rows of green blocks, and then this one platoon is starting to fall behind.

But there's— this is a made-up mission, the S2 of the battalion made it up. There's no intel that UBL and Zawahiri are living here, and there's a, you know, every weapon that is owned by Al-Qaeda is hidden here. Nothing like that. Just made up.

This is the kind of bullshit we did in Afghanistan. Yeah, a lot of people did a bunch of like—

what, busy work?

The fuck is this busy work?

This is fucking special operations. Yeah. Well, I should add too, again, back to remember the time. It's 2004 and everybody, every leader at the time in the military lays their head on the pillow at night and dreams of getting lucky the next day and capturing Osama bin Laden, being the one. So when you see some of these far-fetched missions, they're far-fetched, but they're far-fetched because guys are willing to do anything, no matter how painful for their guys, if there's even a slight possibility they might find UBL. And I think that was the case here. So these guys call from border Border Crossing Point 5, BCP 5, and say, request a spare part. They thought at the time it was a fuel pump. It ended up being a solenoid. So fuel pumps flown out there, they try it, still doesn't work. Platoon leader calls back, says, hey, it's deadline. I know you want us to get moving, recommend we leave the vehicle here at BP 5, which is a secure site. A helicopter can come in, airlift it out, or a helicopter can come in with a higher-level mechanic who's qualified to fix, you know, a solenoid.

This guy was not. Negative, we want you to tow it with you. And the tow to the route they needed to go to get to this town they had to clear called Mana was taking in the opposite direction of Caust, which is where they had to tow back to. So they were basically telling them, hook it up with nylon straps and tow it through the most difficult terrain on the planet for about 55 miles, maybe 60 miles off. You know, this is crazy. It is insane. So off they go, trying to get through the fucking Rocky Mountains. It's on a trail. Yes, yes, on a fucking trail. Yes.

Wow, these people are so fucking disconnected.

Yeah. So off they go. Um, they leave in the day, driving along. The average speed is 1.5 miles an hour. Imagine towing a Humvee with nylon straps. So there's a guy—

1.5 miles an hour for 55 miles. Look at that, 50 hours.

Well, right, but at the end of 4 and a half hours outside a little Stone Age town called Maghara, the vehicle's had enough. The wheels collapse outward, tie rods break, this thing will never drive again. So once again, they get on the radio. Now they're in this town. So most of these rural tribes are friendly in Afghanistan. You probably experienced this. But that doesn't mean the part that you're seeing is friendly. But the young men and whatnot are almost certainly not, especially here. And they break down immediately. The townsfolk— there's about 100 people living in the town— surround the vehicles. So they got a security situation. Call back to the rear. It's 11:30, and they say, hey, we got a vehicle deadlined. It's not going to move. Request CH-47 to airlift it out. The answer is, uh, roger, wait, you know, basically we're busy, we'll get back to you. Half hour later they call back, negative, there's no helos available, uh, we want you to— we want to send a wrecker, which is a military tow truck, to pick it up, but the wrecker is not allowed to go more than a kilometer off the main highway, so we need you to get the wreck or to get the Humvee to the Khost-Gardez Highway, which is still about 15 kilometers away.

The platoon leader does the right thing. He says, that's 15 kilometers, you know, how am I— like, roger, we want you to do it.

Also, it can just sit in a fucking boneyard at Khost, right?

Thing's not worth anything. And then, uh, let's fast forward a few years. We left $85 billion to include something like 3,000 Humvees in Afghanistan. So, uh, the absurdity of it cannot even be described with adjectives.

Here's what should have happened: blow it in place, leave it the fuck alone, never talk about it.

Well, the next thing, they wanted to blow it, uh, and same thing— negative, don't blow it, tow it. And in one of the testimonials, they interviewed the one of the commanders, and he said, we— the reason we didn't blow it is because that's, number one, it's against Army policy, and number two, the enemy would use it for propaganda. They'd get on top of it, they'd take pictures, and that would not be good. So what I add in the book is there is no Army policy, nor was there ever an Army policy against blowing a vehicle. If you're— I had just in Iraq in 2003 had one of my M1A2 tanks that we asked to have attached to us to pretend we were a tank battalion. It flipped over in a ditch. So the guys amazingly came out the bottom escape hatch, The tank is in a ditch 20 feet down, upside down. It's over. To get a crane out there, uh, would take, uh, 3 days and require guards for 3 days, and then it would probably take another 3 days for the crane to get it out. So you guys rolled a tank? Yeah.

Yep, upside down.

Nice work.

And, uh, and so I said to the guys on the ground, what's your recommendation? They said Well, we got 2 tanks left. Let's fire a SABO round into it and just leave it. And I'm like, roger that. And I didn't ask permission. I told them, fire that SABO round in there, hanging out. We're not going to guard a tank and get a Ranger killed. We had been in a massive firefight a few days before that with Fedayeen, like 28 of them in pickup trucks, killed most of them. One of our guys got killed. but it just showed you they were still coming out, and I was not going to leave Rangers in the middle of the desert. And we, we blew it. I didn't ask permission to blow it, um, and no one ever second-guessed us. No one ever, uh, wanted to know, why'd you blow that vehicle? We're doing an investigation. And, and the M1A2 tank was, I think, worth either $2.5 or $3.5 million at the time. So, you know, again, when you're talking about toxicity, you're talking about making decisions that are divorced from taking care of the men. In fact, they're designed in spite of taking care of— to exert more pressure, to, you know, we'll show them they're behind schedule, we'll show them, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna pay the price for it.

That type mentality, that's where toxicity comes from. So, so they, they're trying to figure out— they war game. They figure there's a driver comes up to him from Maghrib, he's got a jinga truck, and he says, hey, I can tow that thing for $150. Calls back, gets permission, platoon leader gives the guy $150. They chain this Humvee to the back of the jinga truck. Now I need to explain, two wheels are up off the ground, so the rear wheels are the only wheels that are touching the ground. The front is elevated on the back of a jinga truck, and now they're going to drive all the way back that way, or attempt to drive. So it's going to get worse. Now they get it set up and they get another call, and, uh, The, the TOC, it's now been 4 and a half hours they've been sitting there, and the TOC calls in the CFT and says, okay, here's what needs to happen. You need to split the platoon. One half of the platoon will escort the broken-down Humvee to the KG Highway, which is up, take this route up north. The other half of the platoon will drive directly to Mana and get, get boots on the ground in Mana before nightfall.

So the platoon leader, again, he's new, uh, you know, a lot of platoon leaders would have shrunk from the moment, but he's like, well, why do we, why do we need to get to Mana tonight? We're not allowed to clear villages at nighttime. It's against SOP for good reason. Uh, women are in there, you know, not fully clothed, uh, and You know, you're going to get someone shot at nighttime. You won't see squirters, uh, which we— and, and so they rogered that. He said, so we're just going to drive to Mana and sit there and get some sleep till the morning and then wait till the other guys come back? Yes. Okay, well, as far as splitting the platoon goes, if we split the platoon, then only one element will have a.50 cal and we'll only have one SATCOM. They actually had two, but he was right. They would— their radios would be limited if they split the platoon because the SATCOM's the only thing that would work. Line of sight doesn't work when you've got a mountain between you and the guy you're trying to talk to. Negative. You know, the answer was, uh, do what— do the— do his plan, do what you're told.

He— the platoon leader before leaving. So now it's starting to get dark, time is, you know, sand slipping through the hourglass. He tries one more time, hoping that maybe he can get through to some other people if they can hear the predicament, to include Ranger Regimental Headquarters, which is at Bagram. So he gets on the red sat. I did not mention that the whole conversation up to this point has taken place on email. And the guy answering him is his company XO. His company commander's not talking, the S3's not talking, and the battalion commander's not talking to him. Um, there are VTCs going on. Uh, all he's getting is emails, emails telling him split the platoon. So all this is memorialized. It's all— this stuff's all in the investigation, the emails. But you know, you're reading them, you're going, a fucking email? You're denying— you're telling them they can't blow the vehicle over email? You're telling them to split the platoon over email? Again, one of the hallmarks of toxic leadership climates is that they don't communicate. They don't respect subordinates, and they don't communicate. Everything is passed down through staff officers and intermediaries and emails, and, you know, always indirectly.

Which is kind of the coward's way of issuing an order.

Passive-aggressive fucking coward. A pussy.

Yes. So he gives one more try, switches from email to the RedSat. So red for Rangers. Everybody's on this. This is monitored 24/7 in and out of country. It's the RangerSat. He gets on it. You know, says his call sign, asks for his company commander. Once again, company commander doesn't answer. XO answers, hey, you got me. And he's like, okay. He ran the scenario by again. XO said, nope, still stands. No one else chimed in. No, no one else at Ranger Regimental Headquarters who was at Bagram. No one in the talk. No one else chimed in. This platoon leader was, you know, really just begging for a lifeline. And as much as he was begging for a lifeline, this is where platoon leaders need leaders, where junior leaders need senior leaders. He just wants a sounding board. He's under incredible stress. He's got this platoon looking at him like, are we fucking really doing this? He's in this incredibly harrowing situation. He's new, so he doesn't have a lot of experience to draw on. But this is where you need someone to get on and go, okay, tell me what's going on. What's your recommendation?

And why does that make sense? And walk them through and use logic and reasoning with them. And again, the irony of doing that instead of avoiding it is you save yourself from making, as a leader, some incredibly catastrophic mistakes, which is what's about to happen here. You know, one that will go down in history as one of the biggest senseless chains of decisions that were ever made. So, you know, they're in Maghreb, they're broken down. Now they got to leave. They've got the vehicle rigged. the first serial, they called it Serial 1, Serial 2, with the platoon leader leaves out 5 vehicles, drives to Mana. It's only 3.2 kilometers, but to get there you go through a slot canyon. And I don't know if you've ever been to the Narrows in Utah. A slot canyon's like the Narrows. It's got 1,000 to 1,500-foot walls and a creek runs through the middle of it. This one, the creek was only a trickle, but the creek bed was full of massive geometrically sized boulders. And so just getting through this— the slot canyon is shaped like a mushroom. So it comes up, goes out, goes around, switches around again, comes down and goes out.

That's how you get— most slot canyons are in a U-shaped format. This one was like a mushroom. So the first group gets through. Every guy, uh, in his statement says a different version of the same thing. I got a bad feeling about this because you're in— if you get ambushed in there, you could be killed by rocks. You don't even need bullets. You can be killed by rocks. That's how vulnerable this area was. First group makes it through, makes it all the way to Mana, pulls up on the outside. They believe the other group who comes out of Maghura is going to take a right and follow the route to the KG Highway. The first two vehicles do that, but when the jinga truck comes, he slams on the brake and he ain't moving. Everyone's like, what now? So they get out, the interpreter's riding with them, and the interpreter begins translating for the platoon sergeant. Says, he says that route is impossible. They actually knew that. They drove that route to come in. It was— they almost rolled their vehicles like 3 times. Humvees could barely make it. So the driver's telling them, you can't get a Jenga truck, much less a Jenga truck towing a Humvee over that ridge.

It's 6,950 feet. But here's the thing. This other route, the Route 01 just went on, is not only faster than that route, it's way safer. There's no hills. It's like an open highway. We'll get there faster, we'll get there safer. Platoon Sergeant, okay, let's go. But before he goes, he gets on the radio and tries to call the platoon leader and tell him, hey, we're changing direction, we're coming in behind you. No comms. He tries and tries on line of sight, then he gets on SATCOM, that doesn't work. Then he gets on the SATCOM again and it's 6 o'clock. So the biggest VTC of the day is at 6 o'clock. He calls back. To the CFT, the battalion headquarters. He's doing the right thing. He's calling back to get them to bridge comms. So when you can't make comms with an adjoining unit, you call higher so that higher can call relay between the two units and then stay there as long as needed to make sure that you're passing— conflict, right? But, but there's no answer from battalion, so he starts driving. And now, you know, if you read the statements, there are some senior guys in Serial 2, the— and Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother, is in Serial 2.

Pat's in Serial 1. Um, and everyone said the same thing: we had no idea we were driving, that Serial 1 was anywhere near us, much less right in front of us. And Serial 1 The guys in Zero One said, we had no idea where Zero Two was, much less do we think they were right behind us. But they're behind them now, like about 10 minutes, because they've stopped. So Zero Two turns around. So they tell the Jinga, that's okay. Jinga now pulls out into the lead. You know, now you're getting into the 7 mistakes before a catastrophe. And, you know, They know it's only 3.2 kilometers. They can see on the map, but he's out in front to, you know, the narrow— the road's narrow enough just to get to change that position. It's going to take a kilometer and a half to find the right spot. So they— he leads the Jenga truck. There's two Ranger NCOs sitting in the front seat with them. They pull into the slot canyon. Same comments: I get a bad feeling about this. But they really have a bad feeling because all the platoon Humvees are behind the Jinga truck now, and he's moving at about 1 mile an hour.

So I mentioned the geometric boulders. Not only do you have to zigzag to follow the creek, but you got to zigzag within the zigzags because the boulders don't let you go, you know, cross at the spot you want to cross the creek or move up the little sand dune that you want to use to get to the next spot. So it's almost impossible driving. How this Jenga truck got himself in the Humvee even 100 meters in is amazing, much less the whole canyon. But about 100 meters in, two explosions. Some guys think they were RPGs, other guys said they were mortar rounds. They blew up on the canyon wall to the west of them where the sun's going down. A massive boulder gets loose, comes crashing down the size of, you know, like an F-150, goes right between two vehicles. Uh, you know, everyone's watching it. Luck would have it, they immediately do the right thing. They get out of their vehicles because they weren't sure if it was an IED or, or, you know, someone shot something at them. And then the RPK machine guns open up from up on top on the ridge.

The Rangers return fire, and like, you know, only Rangers can do, they've got a lot of firepower. They've got Mark 19s,.50 cals, they've got, you know, they've got AT-4s, mortars, and they just start opening up. It's actually the right thing to do. They took some criticism for this, but to suppress the enemy You know, you gotta blanket them, drown them in shrapnel, and, you know, rounds flying over their head to keep their heads down. So they, they, they, you know, your first recourse when you drive into an ambush is to drive out, but they can't drive out because the Jinga's in the lead. He ain't even in the vehicle. He's scared shitless, hiding behind a rock. And at first, some of the guys thought you know, hey, he's in cahoots with the bad guys. They set us up at this last town. He wasn't. He was just scared shitless, and he's in the middle of a firefight. So they force him back in the vehicle, get moving again. And, you know, if it wasn't so deadly, it's farcical. They're moving through. It's like a Monty Python thing. You're moving through an ambush at 1 mile an hour, stacked up, you know, 4 vehicles behind a jinga truck and a towed vehicle.

The jinga truck stops again in the middle of the slot canyon. They get out, heated discussion happens. One of the squad leaders, you know, gets in what was called almost a fight with them, smashes his window. The driver goes, you know, berserk, but he gets back in the vehicle and starts driving again. Finally, they come to the end of the canyon and the canyon opens up. The, uh, the Jenga truck can move over and let the Humvees go by. They'd been in— they've been now firing for 12 to 14 minutes. So we talked about making sense, how important it is in combat. And, and one of the definitions of making sense is the only way to make sense is with your senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. So when you lose any sense, you're losing a major ability to make sense of what's going on around you, especially sight and sound. But if you expose the human ear to a decibel level of 130 decibels or more for over 30 seconds, temporary deafness sets in. And temporary deafness is a variable thing. It can go anywhere from minutes to hours to days. There, the lowest decibel weapon they were firing was the M4 at 150 decibels.

No, almost none of them had earplugs on because they're not a mech unit. They don't drive around. They should have been driving with Peltors on, but they didn't have Peltors. Only the mortar guys did. But they didn't even have earplugs on. So 12 to 14 minutes, they were exposed to machine gun, mortar, and rocket fire, you know, at the 150 decibel range. Almost the entire platoon is now deaf, and it's in every statement. You know, my squad leader had to get up and yell in my face, and still I couldn't hear him. I could just read his lips. So they're now seriously, you know, seriously handicapped because they can't hear. The light's also going down. Now, before we come out of the canyon, let's go back to Serial 1. Serial 1 pulled into Mana, which is— they're about to drive up toward Mana, Serial 2. They got out to do a map check, and just as they got out to do the map check, they heard the boom boom, and they could tell it came from back in the slot canyon. They, they got on the radio, still no comms, no one to talk to.

So the decision was made, let's get up to the high ground, see if we can overwatch the position, provide suppressive fire, and/or kill the enemy. So The squad leader and the platoon leader have a hunch that it's, it's the rest of the platoon behind them. The rest of the platoon has no idea. They just think, you know, we're going up to shoot the enemy. So up they go. They leave the vehicles and all their crew-served weapons. A couple guys stay with the vehicles, and the rest of them run up, 11 guys, up this incredibly difficult, uh, slope up to what's the terrain feature is a spur, which sticks out from a ridge like a tongue. And they occupy this spur thinking, here's where we'll be able to get comms and provide fire support. They try the comms, still no joy on the comms. So that's out. Fire support, there's still a whole nother, a whole nother ridge between them and the canyon. So they can't see into the canyon. But they can see down right to where the canyon opens up, where Zero Two is about to come out. Um, now as soon as they get up there, they come under fire from the high ground.

So 6 guys in Zero One said they saw enemy up in the high ground to the west. They don't know though that Zero Two is shooting at the— that same enemy. So you can kind of extrapolate that rounds are bouncing off rocks, looking like even more fire. These guys said they saw guys up there. Pat Tillman, who— I should go back. When they said split the platoon, something happened that is, you know, violates a major part of any fighting element strength. Everyone was in a position based on where their squad leader, team leader was, and then how they sat in the vehicle was based on that same organic relationship. You always want to be with your fire team, your squad, whatever. When they split the platoon, because they were told, don't just split it, here's how to split it— send 2 mortars, send 2 snipers, send these guys—

yeah, they fucking broke it all up.

Broke the organic relationship of the platoon apart.

They micromanaged it all the way to that.

So now Pat's with a squad he's never worked with before. He's a team leader of one. He's— his— the other team is in the other serial. Um, the squad, no one, no one tasked the squad with, hey, Pat's attached to you. So same thing in Serial 2, you got guys in vehicles. In the lead vehicle, which has the most firepower, is the weapon squad. But this weapon squad leader is not in the front seat. One of the rifle squad leaders is. And so where does that matter? Unless you've gone over all your hand and arm signals for fire, what direction, ceasefire, you got no way to control those guns when you're driving and, you know, the guys are in the back. So the organic nature of the platoon's been, been broken apart. Pat gets up the top of the spur. The squad that he followed up there you know, did their immediate action, laid out beautiful linear formation, military crest of the ridge. Pat, there's no more room. So Pat goes, hey, how about I take me and my guys down by those two boulders right there? And they're about 20 meters lower on the east side of this finger.

He means two guys because he's got one Ranger private, that guy's really attached to him, and one Afghan. So these Afghans came with them from border crossing point 5, and one of them decided to follow Pat Tillman up the mountain. So he's now with them. The— this is not a great position. It could have been sufficient, but they weren't good boulders. They didn't provide, uh, full protection for the most likely spot you'd be shot at, which is right down on the canyon road. But they get down into that position and the— now, so they're, they're set, uh, and, and just to give you an idea, so a spur is like this, it's like a tongue. Pat's down here, the squad's up like this, the canyon comes out right like this. So the, the rest of the platoon is behind this ridge, but they're about to come out in the canyon right in front of them. And, you know, you can hear them because you can still hear them shooting. And to Pat and the private, they're, they're new guys. And one of the things I cover in the book is that, you know, friendly fire is a constant.

Uh, as you read, I've been to combat in Panama, Colombia, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and I've experienced friendly fire in Panama, Colombia, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq. Friendly fire and experience in combat go hand in hand. It just tells you friendly fire is a reality of combat. So what does that mean? That you just shrug your shoulder and go, no, it means you're always expecting friendly fire. Your brain's always extrapolating. Well, if he goes over there, these guys could be shooting at us. It becomes second nature and you expect it. For new guys, they're— that's not going to be in their, you know, locus of experience. They're not going to go, if, if that's— that might be 2nd Platoon coming around. They're not alerting themselves, hey, they're not going to know we're up here. We didn't tell them we're up here. They're going to start shooting at us. And remember, Pat's squad leader, who is a fairly experienced guy, he's down riding in the Jenga truck. So if he was up there with them, I know because I talked to him, he would have done what I would have done if I was there. And it would have been, guys, get up, get out of here, get back behind the military crest of the spur.

This is totally exposed. When they come around that corner, they have no idea we're up here. They're going to be shooting. And that's pretty much what happened.

Fuck, man.

Within a couple of minutes Out they come around the corner. The lead gum jeep has a.50 cal, a saw, 203, and, uh, yeah, two saws and a 203, I think. And they're firing full up because when they come around the bend, the Afghan who doesn't speak English will not get down and the Ranger Private are trying to tell him, dude, get over here, down, down. But he's not getting down, whatever reason, uh, language, how he didn't understand. There were 2 or 3 rounds landing like 50 meters away. So froze, he probably fucking— yeah, whatever. But he's firing his AK too, like from the hip. He's firing up at where they had seen enemy across the road to the south. So Serial 2 comes around this bend blind. First thing they see is a guy with a beard in these weird khaki camos, uh, AK-47 firing away. The squad leader, uh, who's now pretty much in reptilian brain mode after 12 minutes of firing and fighting with the truck driver He just puts his M4 up to his eye, looks through his ACOG sight, drops him, fires 7 shots, hits him. The guy was hit 7, at least 7 times.

So shot him, you know, at about 50 to 75 yards, dropped him. When a, when a machine gunner does not get a verbal command, they're trained to shoot where their squad leader shoots. So this is a new, this is a squad leader hasn't been working with them. He just shot at the Afghan, so all the machine guns swing around, including the.50 cal, and start firing right at that Afghan. 10 meters behind the Afghan is Pat and the private behind these insufficient boulders, especially for Pat's hulking muscular frame. So they begin opening up, and I mean, it's a hail of fire. These guys are on their back And suddenly the firing stops. So they, Pat and the private, think the Afghan's down, but they don't know that yet because they didn't see him drop. But Pat and the private think, oh, they figured it out. So again, you know, what really happened was these guys came to a corner. There's a rock wall down there that fences, made of rocks, that fences this marijuana and poppy patch that's grown by the creek. To get around it, they had to make a right turn. But to make the turn, to make that right turn, there was a depression.

So the Humvee sunk into the depression and the guns wouldn't elevate over the rock wall. So they paused their firing while they— until they came back out of that depression. Pat and the Ranger Private thought, hey, they must have figured it out. They stand up, start waving their arms going, hey, it's us, it's friendly. Pat's like, it's me, Pat Tillman. Rangers, Rangers. Well, they also don't know they're deaf. And they're even deafer now because they've been firing.50 cals right next to their already damaged eardrums. They get back down again. Somehow they survived the return fire. He's like, what the fuck? And the Ranger private, who, you know, is a great guy, he just— he stayed in the Army the whole time after this, became a sergeant major, passed on Pat's legacy to every soldier he, you know, he taught throughout his career. But he's a brand new guy, months in the Army, he knows nothing. He starts praying. Pat tells him, "Hey, man, now's not the time to pray. You gotta— we gotta pay attention to what's out there. And if you pay attention to it, 'You'll save your life.' And the Ranger Private writes, 'And he was right, because by refocusing my brain on where they were shooting from, I was able to inch my body around with the boulder to get the max cover out of it and avoid getting hit.' But right when he did that, Pat said, 'I got an idea on how to stop this.' Pat had a smoke grenade, and he got up to his knees to throw that smoke grenade.

And this was probably the last couple hundred rounds shot by this lead vehicle. They were about to be again occluded by terrain, and the saw gunner had swung around, and the saw gunner saw him come up and hit him with 3 rounds right in the head and killed him. You know, Pat went down, the platoon The, the private's screaming. Uh, finally these guys see there's a bunch of Rangers up there. Ranger, Ranger! It's getting dark. Serial 2 comes riding in. They're like, what the fuck happened? They've got, you know, the platoon sergeant. There's actually the new regimental sergeant major, great guy, are in the rear vehicle. They come up, what happened? Because no one knows. And, uh, and now word comes, hey, there's— we've got an Eagle KIA up here. What's his initials? PT. And, uh, the whole platoon but Kevin Tillman, the squad leaders and platoon sergeant, hear that. They know Pat's dead. Devastation, uh, falls upon the platoon. Some of the guys, you know, broke into tears up, uh, when they saw his body. Um, you know, one of the, one of the conspiracy theories that he was killed was that he was killed by the platoon and I can vouch for the platoon.

They revered him not because he was a football player, but because he was a great guy. And he was this guy who sacrificed to do exactly what they did. You know, these kids from small towns across America who didn't have nothing but a high school job, like we talked about earlier. And here's this guy who's doing the same thing as them for the same reasons, but he gave up a $2.2 million contract and a career in the NFL. And he was just a great guy. You can read all the independent statements, uh, even squad leaders who normally in the Rangers, you know, don't interact a lot with junior guys, they loved talking to him because he made everyone feel like they were being listened to. And like, you know, he was a great conversationalist, asked great questions, super intelligent. But just a good person. And so the platoon is devastated. The platoon sergeant comes up, starts piecing things together. He finds the platoon leader who was from Serial 1. He's injured. He was hit by a mortar round that was— or a 203 round that was fired by Serial 2 and hit him in his RTO.

Um, he's bleeding, going into shock. Uh, so they got to get him medevaced. They got to secure the perimeter because there's still enemy out there. So this chaos, and it's dark, it's getting dark, and no one knows where anybody else is. You know, they're spread out. This is sheer utter chaos. And, you know, they did it. They called in a medevac, medevaced Pat's body, the Afghan's body, and medevaced the platoon leader, his RTO. Both were hit. RTO was shot in the knee again by the first vehicle. They confused them too. They saw them, shot them also. Um, and Kevin Tillman went along because it's his brother, and he was despondent, uh, you know, once he found out that it was Pat.

Fuck, man.

Yeah, so they have a memorial service back at Khaost, you know, uh, at the airfield there. In Kals, which is, you know, the base. Memorial service for Pat. At the end of memorial service, his body's going to be flown to Bagram first and then off to Germany and back to the US. And Kevin is going to go with the body, accompany the body all the way, you know, back home. So before that morning, I should say— so this is, this is 2 days after— the morning, the next morning The battalion commander shows up and they do an investigation. He walks up to the site where Pat was killed, asks the first sergeant, "What do you think happened?" He said, "Sir, I'm pulling.50 cal rounds out of the rock Pat was behind. This was friendly fire." By 12 noon, every guy in the platoon who was still out knew Pat was killed by friendly fire. The battalion commander knew he was killed. The battalion commander in his statement said, I called the regimental commander at 12 noon and told him Pat was killed by friendly fire. So anything you hear now when we go to the 35 days, just remember that, that these guys knew it was friendly fire.

So now the next day is the memorial service, and they're going to put Pat's body and Kevin onto this Chinook. Before they get on, the body's loaded, the battalion commander and the S3 pull Kevin Tillman aside and, you know, give them their condolences and say, look, we just want to let you know, uh, we're going to find these guys, and when we find them, uh, there's going to be hell to be paid. They knew he was killed, but they had been told by the regimental commander, keep this under, you know, under your hat. We got to do an investigation before we say anything. But this is a member of the platoon, so he's both a brother in arms and a brother in blood. He, of all people, knows how chaotic it was. He was in Serial 2. His gun had its buttstock torn off by one of the canyon walls. His Mark 19, thank goodness, jammed. If he had opened up with that Mark 19, he probably would have killed multiple guys in Serial 1. So he's in the back of the— for the ambush, 12 to 14 minutes, he's He's got a 9mm. He fired 8 rounds out of his 9mm in that canyon.

So of all the people who knew how chaotic it was, Kevin Tillman knew how chaotic it was, knew how difficult it was to identify the enemy, knew the volume of fire they were up against, knew that you couldn't see anything, knew they were following a senseless order, but they don't tell him. So Kevin, goes, gets on that helicopter, flies to Bagram, still doesn't know, but he's going, "Why isn't anyone talking to me?" And he tries calling the Ranger Private who was next to Pat when he died. He demands they put him on the red phone from Bagram. They put him on the red phone and the battalion commander tells him, "You say anything, you're gonna pay the price for it." So they make him—

To his fucking brother?

Yep. They make him lie to the brother, not be truthful. He did whatever he— I don't know, I don't know. And, you know, him and Kevin get along great. Kevin now knows he was coerced into doing that. And again, if you freeze the moment in time—

Fucking shit.

And think of what these guys did by not telling Kevin. When Kevin landed in Bagram, he went right to a phone, a secure phone, called his mom and Pat's wife, Marie. And gave them the bad news. And he did it in the way that there's no sugarcoating it. Mom, Pat was killed in one of the most chaotic ambushes I've ever seen today. I'm flying home with the body. Mother devastated, wife devastated. There's no sugarcoating telling family members that their loved one's been killed inaction. But you can only make it 1,000 times worse by not telling them the truth about how he killed, especially when the truth about how he killed is friendly fire, and you're telling him he's killed in an ambush. So for the next 35 days, so they— I'm not inside this chain of command's head, but somehow they're, no, no, no, hold it off. The— to, to, to just be completely objective and fair, for 48 to 72 hours they could have said, we don't know for sure. They— I would have told Kevin everything I know. Kevin, we don't know exactly the bullets that killed Pat, whether they came from friendly or enemy.

They didn't know that, and they could have still come from enemy. But what we do know is the guy who is laying next to him, the Ranger Private who's still alive, is telling anyone who wants to hear that Pat was killed by friendly fire. They came under fire from the lead gun jeep, and he believes he was killed by friendly fire. I want to tell you, we're going to continue the investigation. They're doing an autopsy at Bagram before they ship the body. When— as soon as I get a definitive cause and what killed him from the autopsy, you'll know everything I know. And if you need anything in the meantime, the battalion is at your service." That's what I would've told them, instead of, you know, "Let us know if you need anything. We'll get these guys." And off they went. But Pat— But Kevin would've told the mom and Marie right there, not just that he was dead, but he was killed by friendly fire. And the whole thing that went on, for basically 20 years would have been nipped right there with just the truth. So, you know, the old adage, you know, the truth doesn't get any better with age, you know, bad news doesn't get any better with age, is, you know, on steroids here.

But they're aging it, and they're aging it 35 days. A memorial ceremony in San Jose where they read this Silver Star citation, charging up a hill, to counterattack an enemy that ambushed his comrades. And so here's the other part. On day— 3 days after it happened, the platoon comes in back into Khost, into the base in Khost, and they do a hot wash. They're directed to do, and they do a hot wash. No one from the chain of command attends that hot wash. In the hot wash you can really be, you know, I, I'm, was very proud of these guys because each squad leader got up. The first squad leader who was in the gun jeep that shot Pat said, it's not, it's not my guy's fault. We thought we saw an Afghan. We had been shooting in that direction for 12 minutes. They only shot up there because I shot. I'm the one who shot the Afghan. They did what they were supposed to do and shoot where their squad leader is. Don't blame my guys. Taking full responsibility. Next squad leader gets up, says, I was up on top of that spur. I knew Pat was down there.

I didn't know he was supposed to be under my supervision or whether he was or not, but I know he doesn't know much about friendly fire or positions because he doesn't have experience in combat. Pat was a very common-sense, astute guy. So I take responsibility for it. So two guys get up, two squad leaders, 24 years old, and they take full responsibility like leaders are supposed to. And as I point out in the book, there's a huge difference between responsibility and blame. Responsibility means accountability, which is by default if you're a leader, you take accountability for what happens to your men in a combat zone. Blame means you are admitting that it was your fault. So these guys took responsibility, not blame. But then by taking responsibility, this thing was flipped completely into blame. It was their fault. They should have made comms. They should never agreed to split the platoon. They should have known that their one element was behind the other.

Should have never agreed to split the platoon.

They were ordered to—

came from the fucking XO.

Yep, the S3. So here's one that'll get you. The S3 gave the order to split the platoon. He lied about it when he was first interviewed for investigation. So the first one, he said the company commander did it. Finally admitted the battalion commander said no, the S3 gave the order in a separate interview. Then the S3 admitted it once he heard the battalion commander say, yeah, I told him too, but you know, because they needed to hurry up, they were behind schedule. That guy was a major at the time. He just got promoted to 4-star general.

What's his fucking name?

I can't remember right now, but I'll get it for you. But he's a 4-star general.

Of course he is.

And he was— he's probably under Pete Hegseth. Yeah, right now. Yep.

Pete Hegseth has a fucking lying piece of shit who's too much of a pussy to take fucking responsibility under his command.

Yeah. Yep. Scapegoats the guys.

And I wish you knew this fucker's name.

Yeah, I'll remember.

Four-star fucking general. Oh, remember. A four-star fucking general with an integrity problem.

Hodney.

Who's probably going to wind up being the Secretary of War sometime.

Well, not—

What's his name?

Hodney.

General Hodney.

Yep. Yeah, so wow. So it just goes—

could you imagine watching 24-year-old fucking kids take responsibility? And then you fucking get promoted to 4-star. This, this shit happens all the fucking time.

Yeah, and it would never— no one would ever know the difference if you didn't have a mom resilient. You're not going to tell me to shut the fuck up, Mom. One of the things she told me in the beginning was, you know, everyone— that people won't talk to me, people hang up the phone on me now in DOD and whatnot. And she said, you know, if the roles were reversed and Pat was— I was the one killed, Pat would never give up till he found the truth. And so I'm going to do the same thing. And she did. And You know, I write a letter to her at the end of this book of what an amazing mom she is. And, you know, I say, as a son of an amazing mom myself, I know Pat would be incredibly proud of you to know how you fought, how you never took no for an answer. Uh, you kept at it. You somehow found me, contacted me, you know, uh, were able to work and figure this whole thing out. And, uh, You know, she got some closure out of it, but it doesn't make it any less painful, uh, the reality of what happened and the fact she was lied to.

Once again, once again, General Hogni.

Wow. Yeah.

Wow. How many of these fucking people do you think there are?

Well, I think this is the tip of the iceberg. Like you said, I think it happens way more than we know about. And, uh, they just find a way to scapegoat their way out of it. And again, the tragedy is they prevent current and future warriors from ever learning from it, learning what the real lessons are, and preventing it from happening again. And, and that's what happened here. And, and, you know, my recommendations are, uh, we need new studies on group PTSD. This group PTSD. Find these clusters of PTSDs, and when you find them, you're probably going to find a chain, a toxic chain of command above them, because the PTSD comes from no truth, no community. These guys were ostracized when they got back to 275. No one would talk to them. Uh, the word was already out. They fucked up. They got Pat killed. This was a huge embarrassment.

These fucking leaders will stop at nothing. Nothing. They will fuck anybody over. They will lie. They will fucking cheat. They will do any fucking thing in their power to get that next fucking star.

Yeah. Yep.

And so, you know, would you say this is the majority of the fucking military?

Uh, I, I wouldn't say that. I just think there's a number of these incidents out there, a lot of them that, uh, you know, still need to be uncovered, you know, talked about, uh, any incidents off the top of your head that need to be dug into? Well, I think you already mentioned the Red Wings thing needs to be corrected. The truth on that needs to come out, especially because of Red Wing, all the guys who died on that helo, uh, you know, flying back there They dropped, they dropped the ropes. You don't fly back to an HLZ where you drop the ropes the first time. When you drop ropes, you've compromised that position. They left those ropes. So, you know, what happened to that team was just a string of errors when they were compromised by the goat herder. Any experienced sniper recce guy knows compromise is mission abort. There's no question. As soon as you compromise, it's abort the mission. They weren't going to disarm a nuclear weapon. That would be maybe an exception to that rule. They were going on a tipper that a low-ranking Taliban guy lived up there and hung out with his gang up there.

So this was also a fishing expedition. But these guys were watercraft guys. They weren't sniper reconnaissance guys. Who would know that? When you're compromised, it's abort the mission. There's no debate. Do we kill them? Do we tie them up? You get the fuck out of there. You call for exfil or use shoe leather express to exfil yourself. Uh, no and ifs or buts about it. Uh, so, and you know, in, in Littrell's book, that's not covered. He criticizes I think the lieutenant for saying no, don't kill him. And he, you know, the book goes into some diatribe on, you know, we should have killed him or something. And you don't fucking kill non-armed combatants. You abort the freaking mission. You've been compromised. He almost as surely has a cell phone in his pocket. Someone knows he's out there. He didn't show up. You're compromised anyway, and now they're going to be coming after you. So, you know, there's plenty out there. Um, but yeah, with, with Pat, uh, you know, it's a tragedy. Pat Tillman to me is, uh, you know, a role model for future warriors, future leaders, uh, you know. And in a time where we don't have a lot of role models, this guy represents You know, one of the purest that I can think of, and, uh, he deserves— his name deserves to live on, his legacy deserves to be carried on.

People need to know his sacrifice. And ironically, you know, if you watch Pat's speech he gave on September 12th, uh, he says, you know, it makes you realize what's important to life. Same thing about freedom. And he says, you know, my— all my relatives served. My grandfather was at Pearl Harbor. And, you know, I look at my life and I haven't done a damn thing. And then the next day, the media swarmed him and he said, look, I'm joining the military. I'm not giving any more interviews. This isn't about me. Treat me the exact same way you treat every other private, every other soldier in the military. And ironically, that has ended up, you know, what happened to him. There was no special dispensation for this platoon because Pat was in it. They were treating this— toxic leaders treat everyone with the same disdain, and that's the way they were treating this platoon. Just tell him to do shit just in spite of what they wanted to do, almost like, you know, a bad parent punishing his kid for not doing something that they expected. And, you know, and Pat paid the price for it.

But his memory and what his mom did, I think every, every parent out there can draw inspiration from what she did. I certainly did and certainly have a lot of respect for her and the Tillman family in general. So, you know, not to beat the horse again, but this is exactly what happened at Thakurgarh. It's a disconnected chain of command trying to make decisions and solve problems, micromanaging the guys on the ground when they have no ability to make sense despite their wall of high-resolution screens, satellite imagery. They have no ability to make sense of what's happening on the ground or sensible choices for the guys on what to do next.

What advice do you have for the Secretary of War?

Uh, change the way the military thinks about leading and organizing. Um, the current way does not work. There is another way. It's called the common sense way, and, uh, I'd be more than happy to explain it. It's not invented by me. It's invented by our ancient ancestors. It's all based on the way the brain works, the way we're biologically hardwired to make decisions and solve problems. And we need to go back to that. We need to teach it. We need to teach people to stay calm in a crisis. If those guys knew about diaphragmatic breathing, they could have been breathing. They were stressed out to the max. When they came around that corner, it was like coiled springs with.50 cal machine guns and Mark 19s. Every heavy caliber weapon you can name. Uh, that's the times where you've got to calm down. And remember, panic, like calm, is contagious. So when one guy's panicking and flipping out, the whole vehicle is. But we really need to change the way we think about leading and organizing, and specifically change this trajectory on command and control. It is hard fucking broke. And if we keep going down this path that these generals are telling him works, it's never worked.

There's no nothing on record that shows this working. And someone might go, well, we had it for the Maduro raid. Well, the Maduro raid was a set piece operation. It was a one in and out thing. That's where you have to have a talk somewhere. So but the same thing that was done probably with $10 million of Wiz Bank shit. Could have been done by a squadron commander with two SATCOMs and a couple of RTOs and an intel guy sitting next to him like I had for all of Anaconda-Shahiko. That's all I had. It's all I needed. And I was not maxed out in any way, shape, or form. So yeah, I'd tell them, we got to change the way, and there is another way, and we need to start teaching our people how to use their brains to make good decisions and solve complex problems that set the condition for our soldiers to succeed.

I hope he listens.

Me too.

Take a break.

Yeah. Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of Vigilance Elite's The Watch Floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. Explain to you why it matters and then aim to leave you feeling better informed than you were before you hit play. Terrorists, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime. Not everything is urgent, but this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know.

All right, Pete, we're in the 9th inning. Want to chat with you about getting out, your journey out. And, and, um, we talk a lot, a lot of heavy stuff today, and, and I think it would be good to end on a positive note and, and talk about some things that some things that guys could think about, you know, that are out, that are struggling, that are getting ready to get out. I mean, you know, we're coming off the ass end of 20-something years straight of war.

Yeah.

And, and guys are already back at work, you know. I mean, we didn't even talk about the Afghan withdrawal, but something I wanted to, you know, tell you about is— I think everybody needs to hear this shit— is you know, I got— still have a lot of friends in, and I don't want to say what unit, group, any of that, what even what branch they were in, but, but, uh, a good friend of mine just came back from Syria about a year ago, saw a lot of shit there, bonded with the Kurds who we have now abandoned already. And he fucking texted me this morning and he said, man, he's like, we went in there, we did this fucking regime change, we abandoned the fucking people that I was fighting with, and now they're being slaughtered in the fucking streets and they're asking where we're at. And man, I just read that shit and I just— I can't believe it's happening again.

Yeah.

And I just said, man, I'm, I'm fucking sorry, man. Seems like every fucking American generation goes through— a veteran goes through this shit. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, fucking everywhere we go, we do this shit.

Yeah, well, you said it earlier. Like, part of the responsibility of veterans is not that you're a veteran of going to combat or a veteran of serving. It's you're a veteran of knowing what was said before you joined and went to combat and what happened afterwards. And when you look at it in, you know, in a cohesive way, beginning, middle, end, it shines a different light on, you know, everything you thought and everything you believed in the beginning and what you now know. And what you end up saying is what you said earlier, uh, you know, which is advice to, you know, young man, you'll, you know, you're gonna see, don't, don't be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed What you think you're doing may not be what you're doing. And what they do after it's over might shock you because you went in under this belief system, like Afghanistan. I think we're all, you know, still suffering internal pain because every single one of us in some way, shape, or form, whether verbally or through other means, told the Afghans, we're here, we're going to support you guys. And, you know, there's a lot of freedom-loving Afghans, and they thought they had their country back.

And when they still had it, you know, they still could have defeated the Taliban if we had just let them. But they were told to stand down by the, you know, the fleeing American generals and admirals. There was an admiral on the ground too. So, you know, war is not just what you learn in combat, it's what you learn afterwards. You know, was, was it worth it? Were those great men— you know, who— that's why it's always important to keep some of these guys top of mind, because they're gone. You know, that's an evolutionary change to the planet. These incredible human beings are gone. And what are they gone for? Well, you know, based on the way our government, you know, treated it, nothing. Because I guess the, you know, our president at the time, Joe Biden, was saying, hey, none of this ever mattered, uh, these people don't matter, and we don't care that you gave your word that we'd always be there to protect them.

Pretty soon we're not gonna be able to go anywhere in the world without that fucking reputation.

Yeah, I agree.

This country fucking does.

I'm with you. And that's what I— so again, if we had Hegseth in here, I'd tell him, you know, everyone needs— that needs to be brought up when these decisions are being discussed. You know, we— the Kurds especially, that goes back to the Gulf War in '91. They've been our allies, you know, incredibly valuable allies. And they should still be. They're the finest fighters in the Middle East, in my opinion. They should still be protected as the go-to guys if anything ever flares up over there again. We can count on them, you know. Not anymore. Yeah, no, it's disgusting. I did not know that till you brought it up.

And not anymore.

It's despicable, man.

But why did you get out?

Yeah, thanks for asking. You know, you never make a major life choice based on one single variable. So if you think about all the major life choices you made, there's no one reason you make it. And getting out is a complex decision, and it was very hard for me. I was promotable. I was already a full colonel. I was on the brigade command list, both regular infantry and for special mission units. But, you know, I had been thinking about it for a long time. Um, you know, Afghanistan, I, you know, told the commander, you know, I— when he said, uh, you know, the whole story I told you, he was not happy with that. Iraq, we didn't get to Iraq, but, you know, when they told— when he told me to send my guys into Tikrit in unarmored vehicles, I said, we're not doing that. That's not the mission I gave them. They're already pulling out. And, uh, they don't have the combat power to go in, uh, in there anyway. So good for you. So yeah, that was, that was part of it. Um, the other parts, uh, I never saw them. I never saw the military as defining my whole professional life.

And, you know, I'd had a couple, uh, what's the Christmas Carol movie, you know, he sees the ghost of the Christmas future. And like, I remember this one of the few times I had ever been in the Pentagon while still in the unit. And I was walking through there seeing all these old broken-down white-haired colonels, and, you know, and a lot of them were civilians working their GS-15, and that's cool. But I looked at them and I'm like, I do not want to be that guy. And, you know, I want to, I want to try something new. I want to reinvent myself. So that was, that was part of it too. And then you know, my— I had two kids at the time, and I just wanted to spend more time with those kids. And it was bothering me that I was, you know, not able to go there because of GWAT, Afghanistan, Iraq, back to back, and then non-stop tours. Um, so, you know, all in all, it just— it was the right thing for me to do, and— but hard to do. And So when guys ask me about it, I tell them, you know, first off, the brain can only think of one thing at a time.

So the way you get around that is when you want to make a complex decision, you have to understand all the key variables of that decision. So sit down with a pen and paper and just ask yourself a question: Why do I want to get out? And then start writing. Don't— no filters. You know, you might throw in there, I want to make more money. There's nothing wrong with that. That might not be one of your priorities, but you should still go in there. I'm sick of the mindless shit. All those little things are important too. They may not end up being the 5 key variables, whatever, your marriage, you never saw yourself, you always wanted to do something different, you want to live somewhere different. Things like that matter, but write them out so that you're consciously aware and you can make a good decision. Because I think it's such a hard decision, a lot of people default. And the military institutionally will pressure you unless you're in a very special, you know, situation where people who really care about you are, you know, advising you. Usually they'll pressure you. That Sergeant Major I just told you about who was laying next to Pat, they almost wouldn't let him retire in his 21st year.

You know, they wanted to keep him in. And I remember quite a few operators that happened to, uh, during GWAT, you know, instead of— you know, when a guy comes to me and says, I want to retire, I want to go to another unit, I say, tell me about it. Okay, what can I do to help? You know, that's your job. Even when they want to leave, your job is to help them make that transition. They— you owe it to them. They've given their blood, sweat, and tears to you. Now it's time to give them a little back, a little something back that helps them in their life.

So they wouldn't be what they were anyways because their fucking heart isn't in it anymore.

Yeah. Yep. If you're thinking about it, and that's huge, if your heart's not in it, get the fuck out before you get get, you know, killed. And never have a regret, never look back. Uh, every one of these accidents— any one of us could have been in one of those accidents, could have been in one of those friendly fires, plane crashes, helicopter crashes. There's a lot of shit.

So it's a damn shame the real fucking good ones never seem to stay in to make the difference. Yeah, it's always the fucking shitbags, much like politics.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think you can be a general without, you know, compromising your integrity. You've got to genuflect to not only your own— yeah, yeah, I mean, you got— you have to. And, uh, I never had any interest in that. Uh, you know, I kind of knew what I was doing when You know, in Anaconda, I was told, stop sharing information with the CIA and the 10th Mountain, or the command— you know, JSOC commander is going to bring you home. And I was like, well, you know, it— he's— I guess he's gonna have to bring me home because I'm not gonna do that to my guys or their guys. And, uh, I never regretted it, but I knew even at the time you know, that I was, you know, in some ways, you know, digging my career grave. But I didn't give a shit. It was like liberating. And then when it happened again in Iraq, you know, I was like, I had no doubt, you know, you know what the right thing to do is. So, you know, I was happy to get out. I also had a thing, you know, I like I always was intrigued by business.

It's like another frontier, you know, and it's got actual metrics, black and white. You either make a profit or you lose. So, and, you know, in 2000, before I'd even just, you know, made the decision, I enrolled in an MBA course at Fort Bragg, go to school on Saturdays. Other part was online, and then you went in the summer. It was a year and a half long. And so when I initially deployed to Afghanistan, I had one book with me, an organizational behavior textbook, and I read the thing from COVID to cover. But I loved it. You know, it was like a different— and it sounds kind of geeky, but It's, you know, someone once said to me, you know, you gotta, you've gotta reinvent yourself every few years or you're not, you're not taking advantage of this thing we call life. And I think that's good, good advice.

I think business is a just, it's the perfect thing for guys that are hard chargers to get into. Yeah, you can put as much into it as you want. You can never put as much— you can never put too much in, you know. And, and I mean, you will just— it's just you never hit the end.

Yeah.

You know, and so, so I think, you know, if you're a guy getting out, in my opinion, you know, it's entrepreneurship, business. If you got the drive You don't fit in society, don't take authority very well. This is, this is it, man. It'll be the hardest fucking thing you ever do and the most rewarding, but you control it, especially if you own your own business.

It's not as easy. Everyone, you know, thinks you're living this easy life and it's full of pitfalls and stresses and all the stress, right?

Yeah, plenty of that to go around in business.

But, but you, you said it, you know, uh, I think a lot of guys don't understand what they possess when they come out of the military. And, um, you know, you hear all the shit, but the main thing you possess is you've got discipline. And discipline is a strong neocortex. That's how you strengthen your thinking brain, through resistance training. So you resist temptations to strengthen your thinking brain. You resist temptation and train the brain by reading. And, you know, things like standing in formation require discipline. So when you come out of the military, you are at a level of intellectual discipline that surpasses almost anyone except maybe the most geeky, hardworking, fanatical scientist. You can sit down and read. You can sit at a project and work for hours on end, and that shit's gonna start, you know, ebbing away the longer you're out of the military unless you stay on some kind of intellectual discipline program. Um, same thing writing a book. People ask me a lot about writing a book, and I don't write with ghostwriters. I write by myself. I wouldn't— a ghostwriter is not your book. In my opinion. But people ask me, how do you write?

Were you always a writer? I'm like, no. And like I told you, yeah, I was dumbass in high school and college. I did not do well. You know, if you gave me an English test, high school, college, I'd come close to flunking it or getting a D. Nothing about it was a talent that I possessed. But what— there's two variables you need to write. Experience and discipline. It's an everyday thing. You know, I woke up in the mornings. I like to wake up early, 5:00, 5:30, and just start writing. And when you first start, you try to write an hour, move to 2 hours, but very quickly you can get to 3, 4, 6, 7, 8. And that's an incredible thing to be, you know, self-contained, no distractions, no internet, you know, no social media. And you become a machine and you realize it while you're doing it. And like I said before, if you don't keep something up, it fades. And so, you know, I wrote that first book in 2008 and I didn't start on the second one, Common Sense Way, till like 2016 or something. And when I first started out, I was like a guy going into the gym who hasn't lifted in 5 years.

I was weak. I had to go back to an hour, 2 hours. Now, knowing that the strength is there makes it easier to do. But I had to build up my discipline, my neocortical strength. And I did it. But it reveals the same thing. When you go out into the corporate world, you might It's easy to be intimidated, think, oh, you know, these guys, highfalutin colleges, they're also smart. They're not. And most of them don't have any intellectual discipline. You've got discipline. You've got stick-to-itiveness. You know how to interact with people. You know how to motivate and inspire people. So I feel like a lot of military guys underestimate how much potential they have in the corporate world and how much they're appreciated. You know, in good companies, a military guy that'll travel anytime he's told to travel and not bellyache about it, you know, will take a report that needs to be done over and go, okay, I got it, and go do it. Those are the things that make you stand out. And, you know, you feel like you're behind when you go into any company, but every company, the turnover rate in every company these days is so huge.

You're not far behind anyone, and you'll close that gap immediately the same way we close it in the military. When you start a new job, you immerse yourself, you read everything, you become an expert. And when you do that in the corporate world, you start memorizing formulas, memorizing specs on whatever the job is, and you become a guy people are suddenly like, wow. And you force other people to pick up their game. But it starts right here with what we call discipline, but it's really neocortical strength. It's you've got this resilience, this ability to concentrate, and ability to self-discipline yourself without distractions.

I would add work ethic too.

Yeah.

We brought that up at some point in this marathon. And, uh, you know, but I mean, one thing that I've found is just fucking brute work ethic.

Yeah.

And most people don't have it on the outside, especially for, you know— and I just don't have any time in conventional units, but I mean, it's where I grew up in the fucking SEAL teams. I mean, you're up at 5, you're working till 1, 2 in the fucking morning every single fucking day.

Yep.

These people don't know how to do that shit. Yeah, but they sure as fuck take nope when they see it.

Yep.

Everybody here does, but not anywhere else. And if you don't have it here, you don't fucking last long. And I think that's a big, big reason that we've wound up in the position that we're at, is we have a fucking work ethic.

Very impressive. Insane, man.

And, and so I think, I mean, we look for that.

And well, you should, you should talk about it. You've you've launched an amazingly successful business here, and, you know, you should put your thoughts down and, and do an episode on that, man.

I talk about it all the time.

Do you?

You know, I talk about it all the time, and, uh, and that's, it's really what I love doing here is, is plucking guys out that are grinding and putting them in a spotlight and watching their businesses flourish. It's, it's really, really It's the most rewarding part of this whole thing is being able to, to do that.

So amazing.

Yeah. Did you struggle with any stress, PTSD, TBI, any of that kind of stuff?

No. Um, you know, I mean, when I, when I showed up, I got a job in a biotechnology company, so super high-tech. Super highly educated people. I showed up my first day and walked in this meeting, and this female vice president was talking about launching a new product. And she was like, all right, bottom line is we've got to take a toehold on the beachhead, expand the beachhead, move inland. And she's still using all these military metaphors. Are you serious? Yeah. And then as I'm kind of laughing to myself but not wanting to I don't want to, you know, look like I'm laughing. And I'm looking at her and I'm going, and she looks just like the Deputy Chief of Mission in the Budapest Embassy. And the takeaway to me was human nature is human nature. And so what the other thing, you know, military guys are going to find, find an industry where value-based people work. And I would tell you that In a lot of sales organizations, salespeople are that way. They eat what they kill. So they kind of get that mentality and they're just good, solid people, especially tech sales. But you know people, you've been in the military, you've been studying people.

And so don't be shy about about like recognizing the common ground and applying the same thing you do in the military with difficult bosses, good bosses, common sense people. You know, glom on to people that will talk to you, people that, you know, respect you, um, and then pass it on. You know, make sure you pass it on. And everybody, I think, admires guys with military experience. So You know, don't, don't shy away from that. But you said it, you know, all you've got so many advantages, work ethic, that discipline, intellectual discipline, and just the ability to, you know, accomplish a purpose, to set your sights on it and do what it takes to accomplish your purpose.

Problem solving.

Yeah.

Contingency plans.

Yeah.

It's fucking hilarious. Every time we run into, we've run into a problem here. My guys know I already have 15 ways to fucking— 15 different avenues we're going to go down. Or not 15, but you know, it's— they give me shit because I've already solved it 50 different ways.

Well, that's a good sign too. If they're giving you shit, that, that's reflective of being a good leader. And that's what I said about freedom of choice. When your guys can make jokes about you, when they can, you know, do little back and forths with you That's, that's an open environment. They feel comfortable, and that's the way they should feel. Yeah, you know, uh, friendship is an important aspect of leadership. You know, it doesn't mean you're, you buddy-buddy with all your employees or treat them like, you know, with special dispensation. It just means that, you know, if you want trust and loyalty like you have with your friends. You got to treat people that you want the trust and loyalty the same way you treat your friends. And, uh, and, you know, I always remind people, remember, friends don't let friends drive drunk. And when they do drive drunk, a real friend will take you to task for it. And that's part of, part of that, you know, contextualizing friendship. This doesn't mean you don't take them to task when they screw something up or don't, you know, or let something fall by the wayside.

But, you know, friendship is important, and it's a— it's, I think, a harbinger of your leadership philosophy and the culture you're setting amongst those people. So very clearly you're excelling at that. Thank you. Yeah, no, it's very obvious. Well, we love you.

I learned a lot from you today.

Likewise.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I just want to say that, man, I'm really thankful that we met. And I just think you are a hell of a guy.

Thanks, Sean.

Thanks for being here.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for being you. Takes a lot of courage to do what you did.

Thanks, man.

What you're doing. Cheers. Want more from the Sean Ryan Show? Join our Patreon today for more clips and exclusive content. You'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode. Plus, unlock bonus content like our Extra Intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions, our new SRS on-site specials, and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. And the best part? Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission, and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story. Pete, welcome back.

Good to be back, Sean.

Same episode. So yeah, so yeah, just, uh, I just want to throw some context out for the audience. So I just looked And we went, I think, 7 hours and 3 minutes on camera last, last time you were here and got about halfway through the outline. And I was just so enraged with the institutions that we were talking about, the leadership, um, the top tip-top leadership that, man, I couldn't fucking sleep. And And I think we were both exhausted. And I remember saying, I think we got the point across here. And then I went home and I was talking to my wife and tried to go to bed, couldn't sleep. And I was like, this, this isn't complete. We have to finish it. It's important. I think it's important that we finish it. So I called you and asked if you would be willing to make the trip halfway across the country again to wrap this thing up. But I just think it's such an important topic and people need to know this stuff. And you know what's weird is after— we're talking a lot about institutions and after you left, the next couple episodes were all about institutions.

In fact, one of them which hasn't been released yet and it'll probably actually release before this is a— he actually read your books and used a lot of your pillars all of them for his leadership. He told him you were here.

Wow.

And he like lost his shit. But he was, uh, two-time chief of station for CIA, um, got hit with Havana syndrome in Southeast Asia.

She's real.

Yeah, it's real, all right.

And how, how is he? How's he doing?

Not well. Not well. And, uh all to protect a fucking institution.

And is the institution doing anything for him? For him? Nothing. Unbelievable.

Nothing.

That's unbelievable.

Wouldn't even give him his retirement. They told him— I mean, the guy couldn't even walk, had something I can't remember what he called it, but it was way worse than vertigo. Can't tell up from down. Says he's got about 2 to 3 hours a day where he can get clear thinking, where he's super engaged. But if he utilizes that 2 to 3 hours, he's down for a week after that. And, but yeah, the— if I remember correctly, the CIA told him his options were come back to work, unbelievable, go part-time, burn, leave, or quit.

And he's the chief of station.

Yep, two-time chief of state, the most exalted position in the CIA.

You know, it's the top operational position. It's unbelievable.

Told me here on camera that the, the whoever he met with— I can't remember if it was 7th floor or whoever, one of his his colleagues and said, you know, I'm being forced to pick between people and protecting the institution, and I'm going to protect the institution. Is that fucking crazy?

Yeah, I don't get how it's protecting the— unless, you know, the agency was doing some experimental thing.

They lied about it.

Well, exactly.

Why wouldn't they come out They told him, they told him that they would, knowing they would wittingly lie in front of Congress to cover this up. They told him that to his face. So if you have the CIA lying to Congress, I mean, how can we trust any, anything that comes out of there?

You can't. And you're right, that's the thing about institutions. There's got to be accountability. Most of these people making these decisions are non-elected officials, uh, you know, which when allowed, bad people will do bad things, uh, but the only thing that stops them is accountability. That's why we have, you know, a penal code. That's why, that's why you go to prison if you rob a store, and you know, that's why The death penalty was created as a deterrent against killing other humans, uh, and, you know, to, to extend— some extent they, they work. And certainly the penal code works because people think twice.

What is the penal code?

Well, just meaning it's our whole criminal justice system. Oh, you're going to go to jail, you're going to go for 2 years if you do an armed robbery or whatever the whatever it is in whatever state you're in. But if it's not enforced, you know, then they can do whatever they want. And shit like that, you know, uh, same thing with the guys from DOD who were kicked out for refusing the vax. Yeah, there should be no boards. Everyone who was kicked out for refusing the vax should be allowed back in and should be given back pay. And the reason is very simple: There's no doubt anymore this was an experimental substance. It's not a vax, it's a shot. And I work— I was an executive in the biopharma industry, and there's one overriding principle in biopharma: never take a, a new molecule, a new therapeutic that does not have long-term safety and efficacy record, with massive emphasis on safety. If there's no safety record, you don't take it unless you're a stage 4 terminal cancer or other life-threatening disease type person who's been told, we've tried everything, there's no hope for you. Then you can try.

But before that, no one ever tried. No one would ever do in the pharma, biopharma industry, anything. Any shot would be put in the body that didn't have a long-term safety record. So we launched that thing. And then forced it upon people with no safety record, no efficacy record. They called off the phase 3 clinical trial that most drugs have to go through and that are highly scrutinized. They called that off. They unmasked the blinded side, the placebo side, gave them all the drug. And that's a classic technique used by drug companies to hide serious adverse events. You unmask the placebo group. So now everyone has the drug. So now you can't see any difference between drug and no drug. And, you know, heart attacks are happening with everybody in both groups. And unless there's an asterisk every time you call that out, and they didn't do that. And then they lied about the efficacy. They said it was 96% effective initially. It wasn't. It was 96% relative risk ratio. And I won't go into it. It's a kind of complicated thing, but relative risk ratio is made only for cancer drugs. And the term relative should tell you all you need to know about it.

It means it's not factual. It's just in a relative sense, you'd have this much more of a chance of living if you take this drug than if you didn't, given your terminal condition right now with cancer. So it's You know, they— everything about it has been proven. And, you know, as Jason and I were talking about, especially the crime against humanity was especially pronounced against these, the junior NCOs and the low-ranking soldiers. So if you're an E-6, a staff sergeant, you probably have 2 to 4 kids. You're living on post in military housing. You're making— I don't know what they make. It's not a lot. And during the pandemic, you're told either take this drug or you're out. They have nowhere to go. There's nowhere to get employed during the pandemic anyway. You already sacrificed your livelihood to serve your country. So, you know, you don't— you can't— most guys can't go back out and pick up, you know, a job, a skill that's transferable. So, you know, we did an unbelievable disservice to those, those individuals who were kicked out because of the vax. And it's the same thing you're talking about. It's institutional accountability.

Uh, and, you know, I tip my hat to you for exposing it and, uh, providing a, you know, a platform where it can be talked about and people can, you know, become aware of these things.

Thank you for saying that. I mean, you What you said the first time you were here, all the things that we talk about, it just, it really got my head spinning about, about institution and how history is documented. And really, we only went through two events where the institution was covered up, but there's multiple. We talked offline about some really big events that happened in the SEAL teams, uh, but are complete bullshit. And I don't, I don't know who to talk to about it. And I won't, I won't talk about what they are unless I'm talking to somebody with firsthand knowledge like you, because otherwise it's just fucking hearsay, right? I mean, I know it's, I know it's a lie, but I have to find the right people to talk about. And so, I mean, right now, the bin Laden raids, like, huge controversial topic in the veteran community. It's a fucking embarrassment. Yeah, you know, it makes me wonder. It's like, was the fucking guy even real? I hate saying it, but it's like we kicked his body off a fucking boat in the middle of the sea. We can't figure out who shot him.

Yeah, I think we can figure that out. I think it's— what it's—

it's just it in, in, in what you— in what we talked about with Anaconda and what we talked about with Tillman. Those are two events. Yeah, two events from two separate institutions. And one of those institutions has a lot of events that are lies that I know personally. And I don't know much about Red, but, and then after our interview, it just made me think how we enter. I just talked about the CIA with the Havana syndrome. I mean, the FBI, it just goes on and on, but we're talking about two events that happened where history was totally manipulated to cover up a lie, documented it like it's accurate history. And that's just two institutions and two instances that the American public have no idea what actually happened. And they turned it into a fucking heroic event. Yeah. You know, and so that's two instances in a 20-plus year war. And then we, we take— and then you think about it, it's like, man, that's just two incidents. How many incidents happened at each one of those institutions? How many institutions is this shit going on in? Probably all of them. How many institutions are in the country?

A lot.

How many institutions are in the world?

A lot.

And then you think about the time, you know, that we occupy. It's a sliver in the grand scheme of things. Yeah. And so kind of what I'm getting at is man is just a fucking liar, you know? And then you take all the history from the beginning of man to present day. How much of that history has been manipulated into a fucking lie?

Yeah.

Is anything real? What do you think?

Well, it's a great question. And, you know, again, I don't want to blow sunshine up your rear, but that's, you know, that's— I think what you're doing is why it's so important. Look, you know, we talk about accountability and that's definitely a main factor of it. But here's the bigger factor. The evolution of our species. How did we get here today? We got here today, humans, we're 200,000 to 300,000 Homo sapiens, 200,000 to 300,000 years old is our species. That's what they believe. So how do we make it? How do we make it? And at one time after one of the ice ages, it's believed that only 600 humans were left. So 300, they call it 300 breeding pairs were left on the face of the Earth. How do we make it back? We have no claws, we have no fangs, we're not fast, we're not camouflaged. How do we make it? Well, a lot of things, but the main way we made it is we have this neocortex that allows us to learn to adapt. And the way we learn to adapt— adapt means change. So if you— we all experienced 9/11, but if you didn't learn from it, You didn't, you know, if you didn't change after 9/11, you didn't learn a thing.

Learning is change. And literally in our brain, that's what happens in our brain. Every time you learn something new, you know, axons in your brain change, reconnect with another neural cell, and your brain changes. So we learn through this learning feedback loop. And when you take away that learning feedback loop, we're not learning anymore. So why is it important to know what really happened when guys died? It's the learning feedback loop. We owe it to the guys who are currently in those positions and all the future guys who are going to be in those positions to present them with the truth for their own evolutionary potential. They need to be able to learn the reality of what happened so that they can change too. And the individuals who take that away, who cover it up, who lie and do it supposedly for the greater good of the institution, are denying all of those individuals their freedom to adapt. And if you don't adapt, you can't change. And if you don't change, you're going to go the way of 99.9% infinity of all species that have ever walked the face of this Earth, and that's extinction, man.

So, you know, it's, it's not a little thing. Uh, we've got to learn, and that's what motivates me. That's what, you know, I'm not on here, I don't make money off telling people what happened. I'm doing it because I have a responsibility. I was fortunate enough to have the privilege of leading in the military and in the corporate world. And so I have a responsibility for the rest of my life to pass on what I learned. And that's especially applicable to the military because we are the people of this country. We represent the people of this country, and we owe those people the truth after we experience these lessons again so that they have the right to survive, adapt and survive in the future.

Man, that's another aspect I never even thought about. So thank you for saying that. It's just, what good is an institution if it's not there for truth? Yeah. I mean, it's just sad. But all right, let's get in. Before we get into it, you know, everybody gets a gift.

So another bag of those. My son loved the last ones.

So, uh, oh man, I guess we had a little problem with the, uh, with the Spear going to California. So, so, uh, I know you already talked to Jason, but this is the, uh, Sig Cross chambered in.308. And, uh, beautiful. I believe this is what they're sending you.

So, yep, yep.

But I thought you might want to take a peek at it. That stock folds gorgeous too. Maybe you can grab a nice elk with that.

Yep. And I know the stack— the stock folds inward to enable you to put it in your backpack. Yeah, it's beautiful. And, you know, thanks to you, thanks to Sig. Love it, man.

Right on. All right, so I think we, we left off at, um Operational working dogs back in 1999.

Okay. Yeah. So the dog program, to me, is a prime example of, you know, since we're talking about institutions, the way every institution should approach whatever their product is, whatever their industry is, and that's with this culture of never being satisfied, you know, with what you have. Everything needs to be turned upside down, inside out, looked at. You know, if you have— if you find something wrong with a methodology or a piece of equipment, you need to have the freedom to say that out loud, to share it with other people, to explain the logic of why it makes sense. And the unit's just naturally like that. It's always been this incredible engine for innovation. From the time I got there, it was already— that culture was already well established. And, you know, to give you an example, unit operators invented the SATCOM top hat antenna, you know, the one you put on the ground, fold out.

Oh, you guys invented that?

Yeah, that was— I did not even know that. That was invented for, you know, Desert One. to be able to walk out of an aircraft, put down an antenna. You know, normally from, from that location you'd face south to the Indian Ocean. Um, that's what it was invented for. And the unit was like that the whole time. Uh, you know, I'll tell another Larry story. Uh, Larry was a team leader for me and we got this new high-speed device. He's probably sitting at home going, oh no. And it was like an all-in-one gyro-stabilized laser thermal sight. And, you know, brand new off the shelf, like off the— out of the laboratory. And this company brought it right to us. Hey, can you test it? And, you know, I gave it to the guy who, you know, would obviously do the best job at testing in lab, says, yeah, I got it. Well, he leaves my office. He comes back about 45 minutes later. He goes, it doesn't work anymore. I go, what happened? He goes, well, you know, I wanted to make sure it was waterproof, so I threw it in the pool and it doesn't work.

And I go, Lav, don't you think that could have been the last test you ran? Don't you think you should have shot the thing first? And he's like, maybe. And I, you know, we got a big kick out of it. And they, they were able to send us one almost immediately and we tested it. But it's that That's what, that's the engine that makes that unit so great and why it continues to invent so many things. And, you know, if you look in at the Ukraine war right now, they're all wearing the same equipment and accoutrement that our soldiers all had when Afghanistan ended in 2021. They got the MOLLE helmet, the half helmet, They've got the BDUs with pockets on the side. They've got, you know, a chest plate with their magazines stuck up top, nothing constraining their hip flexors like the old LBE did. And the helmet, that uniform was invented by unit operators, not going telling some guy in R&D in a company, here's what we need. These were guys on sewing machines sewing this shit in to make the prototypes and then wearing it. And then everyone's seeing it and going, "That's a great idea." You know, the sleeve thing was invented by snipers.

They're like, "You can't get anything out of your cargo pockets when you're laying in the prone. It has to be up here." So you put shit you want to access when you're laying in the prone up here. So ergonomics, uh, you know, I'm looking at you in that helicopter right there, and you got the big side, the sleeve pockets on right there. So, you know, that's why I said before, to me, the, the culture of the unit is the culture of common sense. So, so the dog thing, you know, it started, uh, I was the, the B Commander at the time, and, you know, I, I would never say we came up with the idea because people have been talking about dogs from the very first time I got there. Senior guys. Uh, one guy in particular had a bunch of, uh, German, uh, German Shepherds, the, the black German Shepherds. I forget what they're called. And he had them in the back of his house, and he said, hey, can you come to my house? I want to show you this. And I had him in the back of his house. Yeah, well, he was raising— he was a dog trainer.

He was raising these dogs, and he goes, I think this would be a great addition for the unit. And let me show you some of the stuff these dogs can do. And he just showed, you know, basic, uh, training stuff that military working dogs, you know, all can do today, or most of them can do today. So the idea was around— it was still controversial, you know. There's plenty of— another beauty of the unit is it's incredibly diverse. Nobody is the same, you know. Everyone's from different states, different cultures. They share the patriot, you know, common ground, but they're very different people. And so you have very different perspectives. And, and some people were totally against, you know, dogs. It'll take operators away from their primary job of shooting, moving, and communicating. Uh, you know, we'll spend valuable resources on, on keeping them alive and sustaining them. So there it was not a no-brainer. But at some point, uh, in our squadron, we just started talking about it. We're like, we need to figure out a way to do this, to experiment with it. And sure enough, right within our own organization, we had one guy, he was a medic who was trained— Lackland Air Force Base is DOD's center for dog training, always has been.

Dogs were huge in Vietnam. When the Vietnam War ended, all operational dogs in the US military were done away with.

Why?

I don't know. They just were. There was no longer an operational dog. The only dogs that were trained at Lackland were MP dogs to sniff out, you know, weed and whatnot out of guys' lockers or rooms, and then bomb-sniffing dogs for, in case there was a bomb on post somewhere. So those were the only military working dogs in DOD in 1999 when we started the program. So, so, you know, we had a subject matter expert and we had a number of guys who just loved dogs, knew a lot about dogs, uh, you know, anecdotally. And we just started talking about it and all the things dogs could do, um, you know, CQB always has been and always will be kind of the, the foundational skill of the unit because it's target discrimination, which is what the unit's so good at. This room could have 10 people in it. 9 of them could be civilians. 1 could be a crow, a bad guy, and they could come in here and look in an instant And guys would coalesce on that one guy and he'd be the only one shot. I'd be confident that that would happen 10 out of 10 times.

That's how good they are. That's how serious they are about target discrimination. So CQB was the first thing. It was like, hey, imagine if we had a dog. First off, stairs are the most dangerous thing in CQB. You've taught CQB. A dog runs up that step. Steps are clear. You know, he stops at each floor. You can train them any way you want. You can go all the way to the top, clear the whole thing. Now you can move with speed, right? Because you know it's clear. One of the big missions has always been deeply underground, deeply buried underground facilities. That's where everyone hides their nukes. And to get to a deeply buried underground facility, almost always there's a tunnel and it's not just a shaft. There is a shaft for people to go down an elevator, but it's, it's a series of ramps so they can drive trucks down there, move heavy equipment in and out. And so to get to the deeply buried underground facility, you have to go down this funnel of death. And everyone who ever practiced it, you know, in a real site was like, like, this is kind of a suicide mission.

So as soon as you think about a dog with a camera attached, you know, to his head or his collar and sensors on it also, you're like, no-brainer. And then, you know, you can put a dog, you can halo a dog in on your chest, tandem them in. Dogs, you can add dogs to the MH-6. There's that little space in the back on Little Birds. So the dog doesn't even need to sit. On the, on the bench. He can sit inside. So just when you think and say out loud all the advantages that dogs can provide— and, and I didn't mention sentry, uh, you know, acting as sentries in your patrol base, which, you know, I'll get to when we talk about Iraq. They were huge, a huge asset in Iraq for us when we were behind enemy lines living out in the desert. So it made total sense. Now we had to figure out how to do it. And again, you know, in this book here, The Common Sense Way, I talk about this concept called developing the situation. And developing the situation, I didn't make it up. It's the common sense way humans are hardwired to not only make decisions but solve any type problem.

And, you know, when we talk about problem solving, you can't talk about it without opportunity seizing. So we didn't have a problem. You know, this is what I mean about the culture. The culture is it's always a problem. Every piece of equipment can be better. Everything on your body can be more ergonomically positioned, can be better ergonomically positioned. So it's continuous improvement. And that was the case here. It was just, hey, this will take us up another notch. But we got to figure out how. So the first thing we did was, you know, get our— got our shit together, our facts, found out, you know, where we needed to go to, to get approval. Lackland Air Force Base. Uh, we read the DOD, DOD Pam 112 or something like that, that covers, you know, dog care and sustainment. Uh, you know, we were like, we can do all this. The fact my medic was Lackland Air Force Base trained meant we had a legitimately certified dog trainer already in the unit. At least we were, you know, we figured he met that threshold. So first thing we did was go to the unit commander, was Colonel Harrell.

And this just shows you, you know, how important good leaders are. So many other commanders I worked for there would not have approved of it. And in fact, you know, I know of at least two who thought it was, you know, insanity, thought it was another high, just ridiculous idea coming out of, you know, guys who didn't understand what really made the unit tick. But he was like, okay. I could see that makes sense, but how are you going to get this approved? And I was like, sir, let me, let me work that. I'll keep you updated at each step. We're going to get it approved, but, you know, we need to do some traveling. So the first thing we did was flew out to Lackland Air Force Base. And same thing on leaders, you know, it, it matters. Leadership matters. And the right guys at the right time are why You know, we have every great invention, every great breakthrough that mankind's ever experienced. And this guy, I think his name was Vance, Vance Zieder, Colonel. He ran the dog school. So he had every reason to be like, you know, reticent, like to be parochial, to go, you know, what are these special ops guys that now they want to, you know, cut into my dog thing?

He was not like that. You know, we walked into the conference room, he had 3 of his chief trainers there with him, and we walked in and we go, sir, uh, here's where we're from, the unit we're from, here's what we want to talk to you about. Uh, and he goes, okay, stop. Does everybody take the batteries out of your cell phones? Yeah, it's funny today, and it's funnier because People are like, battery in the cell phone? Well, batteries— before the, uh, before the iPhone, cell phones had batteries in them that you could pull out. And that was how, you know, the secure thing— when you were going into a skiff or whatever, you separate— you could bring your cell phone, it just couldn't have a battery. So he goes, everyone take it. And we're like, fuck, I've never— how do I get the battery out of this? So we got it out, and then he goes, okay, go ahead. And then we We just explained it to him, and you could see in his face as we were going, he was a lover of dogs, lover of— he, a believer that dogs should be doing more than just searching for marijuana in guys' lockers and sniffing out bomb— fake bombs in around a military post.

So he's listening with great interest. And he said, well, tell me what you want to do. And we had the whole thing set up. We talked about deeply buried sites. We talked about CQB. We talked about, you know, squirters. So, you know, in Somalia, a bunch of squirters got away by running into the crowd. Well, you got a dog, that crowd does not save you. He's on your scent. He's going to go. You could have 10,000 people. He'll still zero in on the one guy he's been chasing. So on every level, you just, you know, it makes sense.

How do they, how do they know? I've never— I was never afforded the opportunity to work with dogs.

Yes, because their, their nose brain is so much more sensitive to ours. And apparently humans used to have a nose brain similar to dogs.

Really?

Yeah. We used to be able to sense stuff out. We used to be able to smell water. We used to be able to smell, obviously, fires from long distances. You could smell humans. And we know there's all kinds of olfactory things about, you know, attraction that happen at the unconscious level because we're not conscious anymore of them. And I guess a good description would be, you know, if you're ever going wine tasting and you want to impress someone, You need to, before you go, put out a thing of cinnamon, a thing of chocolate, a thing of like raisins, caramel, whatever, all the ingredients, and then smell each one and then say out loud what each one is that you're smelling. Because that's the only way our brain knows that's what cinnamon smells like, that's what chocolate. So when you sniff the wine, you can actually identify the scents in that type of wine. And that's what we've lost. We no longer need to smell water, you know, smell an animal sneaking up on our position. So we've lost that sensitivity. Dogs have it. Our smell works. The reason you smell is molecules are attaching to sensory receptors at the top of your nose.

So, you know, there's nothing invisible. Real molecules are entering your nose. That's why you're smelling. So You know, when you smell a good meal, you're smelling little— at the molecular level, little pieces of that good meal. And, you know, when you smell shit, the same thing applies. So, um, that's what— that's how dogs do it. Once that guy runs, that's a scent. He knows that's my target, that's what I'm going after. And every human smells slightly different, so he just is able— he's, he's that sensitive to discriminating smells that he can find a guy in a crowd. How?

But so, I mean, how does he— how do you get him to smell before you hit the target?

You teach him. Oh, to smell? What do you mean?

I mean, if he's looking for a certain individual.

Yeah, we don't— I was never involved in that. I'm sure maybe there's— you could do that if you had great insider info, like maybe if you were trying to find Maduro and you had an insider give you one of Maduro's shirts or something, you could train the dog, but you have to condition the dog ahead of time. The squirter thing is just he's running after him. So, you know, behind him is this, you know, non-visible to the naked eye trail of not just scents, but, you know, we exfoliate skin 24/7. So little little chips of skin are flying off every time you run or every time you move, and the dog is smelling that, and he just is locked on to that specific smell, especially a good disciplined dog who knows he's only rewarded when he finds his target, you know, item. So, you know, so we were in there, and this guy just believed in— as we talked through all the different mission sets, he right off the bat was like, you know, I'm, I'm going to support your pilot program. I'm going to write you a waiver. Uh, please share all your lessons learned.

We can't do that here. We can't expose them to gunfire here. We don't have the explosions. Uh, we can't, you know, expose them to helicopters because all this stuff has to be done. Do you have a dog? I do. Yeah. So I do too. And, you know, all the same training principles of a working dog apply to your own dog. Dogs are smart, you know, they're mammals. And people think you just train your dog, and lazy people, you can send your dog to dog trainers. And I'm not criticizing dog trainers, they're great things, but you've got to train your dog and it never ends. It's kind of like a kid. You don't stop telling your kid to wash their hands or, you know, clear the table or whatever you tell your kids, make their bed. You don't stop. It's continuous. And the dog's the same way. A dog's training will fall off as they get older unless you continue it. And so, you know, like with my dog, I still do the find-it game. He's got an amazing sense of smell and he loves it. Bring him in the back room. I tell him, "Lay down." I tell him, "Stay," with the hand and arm signal.

He lays there. I go hide the item. I take these jerky strips. I cut them into 5. I hide them around a room in the front of the house. And then I whistle to him, and I tell him, "Find it." I show him nothing in my hands, and he works that room methodically. And he lives to do just that. You know, a couple times a week. He lives to train because your dog wants to please you. You know, dogs want to— they're like kids. They want to do something that you go, wow, great job. And, you know, that's a hormonal thing. There's all kinds of neurochemicals that reinforce success. So that's the way dogs are. And this guy, this head of Lakeland, you know, deserves all the credit in the world. He goes, I'm signing the waiver. You guys can start the program immediately. You know, yeah, we walked out of there high-fiving each other. We went right from there. That's Lackland Air Force Base. We went to, uh, the one of the— at the time, the biggest dog training facilities in the world was in San Antonio. I think it was called World Dog Training.

And, uh, we visited them. They had a direct pipeline to Belgium where the best Malinois are raised, bred and raised. And we're like, we want the very best they have. And they're like, you don't know what you're talking about. First off, you got to go to Belgium and it's going to be a hefty price. We're like, yeah, no problem. So 2 days later, 2 of my guys flew to Belgium. 2 guys, members of a team, both flew to Belgium with, you know, I told them, you find the dogs, you're cleared to spend whatever you think makes sense. And at the time, you could get a quality dog for between $10,000 and $15,000, like the best dogs, the best lineage, you know, the best breeders. And so we bought the 2 best we could find in Belgium and brought them back. They were the first operational dogs to run our pilot program.

Program.

Yep.

Why did you— why did you guys pick the Malinois?

Uh, just all our research and our one subject matter expert said they're the best working dogs. They're the— you know, they're bred to, to be working dogs. They're bred to— you know, dogs like different things. Bones, they like, you know, uh, being petted. A Malinois Lives to taste blood. And Malinois, the first thing the breeders told us was, we asked him, how long you think it'll train? How long will it take to train him to do what we want to do? And he said, oh, you'll get him trained, but he'll never hit the kind of PhD level until he tastes blood. And then you'll notice your dog completely This dog will be a completely different dog. He'll be 100 times more focused, more dedicated to, you know, finding and capturing a guy that you release him on. So, you know, I went back to my commander. I said, you know, I said, sir, we got approval, we got dogs, we're ready to go. He goes, all right, man, you know, you got it. He goes, but you got one year. Proof of concept, and, uh, you know, just keep me updated on what you do.

And, you know, I already gave him credit. I give him more because that's, you know, that's the essence of what commanders do. You don't then micromanage the shit out of it, make it happen the way you want it to happen. You know, let— release your hounds, your human hounds, and let them explore. Let them innovate. Let them adapt. And that's what they did. You know, the first thing was conditioning the dog to be around the rest of the unit. We knew what was important. Again, we're tapping into all these experts, the breeders in Belgium, the, you know, 30-year trainers at this facility in San Antonio. And we're, we're getting smarter as we go along. That's part of developing the situation that I was talking about, problem-solving techniques. You get smarter as you go along. And so we're learning things about these dogs. You know, we got the bite suits out and, you know, everyone was volunteering to be escorted. And, you know, you could go out at any lunch for hilarity and watch someone try to escape the dogs and get attacked. And then, you know, you can't even imagine the debauchery that was going on with some of them.

Because boys will be boys. But very incrementally, you could see these dogs, the utility of these dogs, and that they were very quickly becoming habituated. They would sit in the squadron. We'd bring them in. We have a squad. Usually there's a bar in most of the common areas so that after a mission or whatever, you can have a beer or something. And so on, like Fridays would be a big day that people would meet down there. So we'd always have the dogs down there during that time. And, you know, you have to act differently around a dog. Like, I never— so Arco was our main dog. I never petted Arco. People were like, you know, Panther, you brought him in, man. I want you— and I go, because that's not what this dog's for. You don't get down and talk baby talk to a military working dog. They respect you. I show no fear around them. I walk right up to them, but I don't start, you know, hey, smoochie, and making out with them, all the crazy stuff that deconditions dogs. Malinois are like the dog you have in your house. They have to have an alpha male.

And what we're trying to do with these Malinois was train them that they not only have an alpha male as their trainer, but they have like friends of the alpha male, sub-alpha males that are also ahead of them in the pack. And that's the rest of the squadron. We got them on helicopters. We got them into tunnels. We, we did all the technology stuff, huge breakthroughs in cameras, scent detection devices. And then so one year later, '99, it's March of 2000. We did a demo again, no-brainer. The commander was like, wow, these things are incredible. They— we had them jumping out of MH-6s. They can jump out of a helicopter from 10 feet off the ground and take off. So you don't even need to hold them. All of ours are taught, you know, and they're taught in Belgium, Belgique commands. So, you know, they don't get confused. They only understand that. But you take the dog, he sits, you just put your hand right on top of his head so that he can see the edge of your hand. That's how you point to where you want a dog to go. Yep. And they were able to do all that.

They were able to find things. So passed with flying colors. Again, just to show the diversity in that, you know, change, no matter where you are, always comes slowly. There were plenty of people were like, yeah, whatever. You know, those guys that why they're out there wasting time with Pucci, you know, we're shooting better. And, you know, how many rounds can you shoot on the range? Uh, you know, like, that shot group— yeah, is pretty good shot group. Taking it down to that is, you know, for competition and whatnot. So there were still guys who didn't believe, uh, that would change in the coming years. We took them to Afghanistan They, they were very helpful in Afghanistan. There were a couple patrol bases we used, you know, they were like sentries. We used them when we capture guys to, you know, keep them from thinking, hey, I'm gonna make a run for it, I'm gonna fight, because people have a natural fear of dogs. But it was in Iraq in 2003 when we got our first bites. We, the first phase of combat was over with. I'll get to that a little bit later. We had moved into Baghdad.

We were staying in an abandoned home as our safe house, and it was right on the edge of Baghdad. And one night, a couple of insurgents, they were armed, tried to sneak into where we were. There was a We had a good standoff area. It's why we picked it. There was a lake in front of us and then, uh, a couple of acres of, of flat ground, uh, to the back of us before you hit a road. And they came through that side, and, uh, the dogs were out at the time, uh, took off, uh, got bites on both those guys. And, uh, they were completely different dogs after that. Were they really completely different? One week later, ARCO gets taken out on a mission. It was a routine mission. It was in this house is two of Saddam's Deca 52. Go in and capture them. So we get on the ground, we isolate, we go, we breach, we secure. Only one of the guys was in there. Were calling in a medevac for the guy because he was injured and we didn't want to take him by road all the way back because he needed to be interrogated immediately.

And all of a sudden, sniper fire opens up from behind, behind this house, about, I'd say, about 1,000 meters behind the house. And like a lot of places in Iraq, around the Euphrates River, long sawgrass, you know, probably up to here. So you can't see anything. And this guy has got us pinned down. And, you know, the urgency was not like one of our guys was injured, but we wanted to save this guy. He hurt himself. He fell down the steps. We didn't shoot him or anything. And we wanted to save him because he was valuable intel. And so You know, we were pinned down. I was like, fuck. And it didn't dawn on all of us at the same time. The dog guy, without anyone telling him, just at a low crouch, moved up, did what I just showed you, put his hand over his— this dog's head, pointed him where we believed the sniper was coming, and then unleashed the, you know, the latch on his collar. And that thing, he'd already tasted blood. He took off like a bullet. And we all just, you know, everyone just sat there. No one was shooting.

This guy's still shooting. No one's shooting back. Seconds pass. They seem like minutes. All of a sudden you hear this orgasmic howling from the dog. And I mean orgasmic. It wasn't pain. We knew he wasn't injured. It was some sound we had never heard before. And so the rest of us, kind of like that story I told you about when we saw the shepherd, we just started cracking up and running as fast as we could out there. And, you know, still had our weapons facing forward and everything, but we just ran to where the sound, the orgasmic noises were coming from. And we get to this little spot, and there's Arco, and there's this sniper, his, uh, SVD sniper weapon is off to the side. Arco has his face in his mouth. His whole face is in this dog's mouth and the dog's just, oh, orgasmically. And the guy's like, ah, help, help, help. And we called it off. And, you know, he had bite marks on both sides, but he— this sniper was looking through his scope when And the last thing he saw was a massive mouth of a Malinois, which took his face in like a vice grip and then held on.

The dog won't release, won't break his jaws until you give them the Belgian command. Gave him the command, took that guy back. So we were in business. And then, you know, to finish with the dogs, and they've just gone to incredible levels. They do things. That you just can't believe. Some I don't even want to talk about here because I don't want to give away the capability. But maybe their most high-profile mission was Uday and Kuseh. So Uday, we found Uday and Kuseh. They were, they were in a house, second floor of a house, holed up. The, the approach, and I wasn't there on the ground when this happened, but the approach was isolate it, and it happened up near Mosul, I believe. And so they isolated it. I can't remember the division, it might have been the 101st. So it was surrounded by every weapon, every gun jeep, every mech vehicle, and our guys were there. And so our guys went in to clear, and they got through the first floor, got up to the stairwell, and gunfire was coming from the not the top of the steps, but the hallway that those steps led to.

Same thing. They— now it's two new dogs. They released these dogs. They ran up the stairs, went one way, nothing, came back the other way. Udi and Kuse were in the same room. We heard them. You could hear what happened. No one saw it. You could hear them go in. You heard Udi and Kuse scream in terror. Then you heard them open up with their weapons. And as soon as we heard that, we followed. It's like a flashbang. You know, they're distracted. Let's go. So the team ran up. And but by the time they got up to the top, you know, first off, both the dogs have been killed. Both of them have been shot. But if they didn't know that, then they pulled back because Uday and Kuse were still firing on automatic. There was, you know, a funnel of death in the door. They're like, fuck this, we're not gonna go try to clear them. They just pulled back out. The dogs were dead. I think they pulled one of them out. They couldn't get the other. And then they knew what room they were trapped in, went outside, fired— I'm not sure what anti-tank weapon was fired into that room.

And that's how Uday and Kuse— wow. Came to an end. But those dogs, you know, and I— and then, you know, in the years since then, they've saved so many lives. They've enabled, you know, guys to accomplish missions that we would never have been able to accomplish as quickly and as efficiently as without them. So, so yeah, it's just a story of innovation and adaptation. It's what, again, since we're talking about institutions, I think every company should be like, every corporation, your people should know, your culture should be never be satisfied with what we got, continuous improvement. And it starts with you. You're the subject matter expert. Fiddle with things, throw it in the pool after you've tested it and just have that innovation. You're all scientists. And I really think when you're in the unit, you feel that. You feel like you're a research scientist. That's part of your job. And no ideas are bad. Nothing's out of bounds. There's been some crazy shit invented there that you would never think is possible. But the guys do it. And that's where dogs came from. Those were the first operational dogs since Vietnam. Once everyone saw what they were doing in Iraq, you know, it started the tidal wave of we got to get dogs.

And now every— I think almost every unit, every infantry unit in the military, I think, has dogs at some level. The Rangers have dogs. Everybody has dogs now.

So how quick did you see the other squadrons Yeah, it's a good question.

It took a while because we didn't use them in combat for, you know, that's '99, now 2003. So it took 3 years to get those bites. So it was kind of all theoretical. Guys could see them in Afghanistan, you know, your prisoners are not going to run, they're not going to try to fight you when you've got a dog snarling at you and a guy with his hand on the the quick release. So it took a while. And, you know, but that too, I think, is an important part of that innovation culture. You got to have people who are— it's okay to go, well, that's— I'm fucking not doing that. That doesn't make any sense to me. And it may not. You know, like with equipment, ergonomics is everything. So what is the best, you know, gun for you and me might not be the best gun for Jason or anyone else. And so they got to be able to feel, you know, the freedom of speech to go, yeah, I don't fucking believe that. And then it makes you think deeper about the logic of why you're doing it, you know. And the most controversial thing was who should be the handlers, you know.

Should we bring in outside handlers or make operators handlers? Well, we believed that you should make operators handlers. So, and as far as I know, that squadron still is the only one that uses operators as handlers. And oh shit, yeah, and we did that for a lot of reasons. Like first, by rotating guys through, and, and, and I was shocked at how many guys wanted to do it. So it shows you how many guys love dogs and can see the utility of it. So there's no shortage on guys who wanted to do it. You gotta have the right guy, but there's no shortage on that. And then you just get into operational dynamics. So, you know, to get to target areas, most of the time you're flying in a helicopter. And if it's me, I'm flying on an MH-6 if I have any choice of it. And there's only 4 seats on an MH-6. So you know, if you're— if you got 4 MH-6s, that's only 16 guys. You're going to take— you're going to— you're going to sacrifice one operator, one shooter, uh, for a dog handler, a guy who's, you know, no matter what you say, he's not going to be fully integrated into the unit.

He can live there, but he's not going to get that full integration. Um, and so it's just more difficult to do And that was very controversial too. But most units tried the operator. I think now the combat's ended, some of them have gone back to doing, you know, having a full-time handler. Interesting.

Yeah, man, that's, that's cool.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's, it's, I mean, what, I mean, what do you, it's just cool. I mean, you implemented it, you and your team implemented it. Now it's It's in every unit, every spec ops unit, every police unit. It's, it's everywhere. All stemmed from that.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's pretty wild. It's common sense, though, you know. And yeah, it is wild. And it's a great, you know, it's just one of those things you're— you feel lucky that you were part of that, to be there at that time. Anytime you're, you know, you and I had this conversation, anytime you're starting something new and you're like, you're heading full speed into uncertainty, there's no right answers. No one's ever done it before. The more those conditions are in place, I think the more motivated we are to be part of it and to make it work because that's life, right? That's the complexity of life is what we, you know, what jazzes us, is what we feed off of. It's what makes us human. And so, you know, again, I think it's a— it should be recorded as, you know, an example of the innovative culture that every organization should have and should instill in their people. And the rewards are, you know, inestimable. Because they're so huge on the breakthroughs you can make on all types of things.

It's crazy how fast things are innovating now. I mean, I just— just, shit, I think it was yesterday. I just— I never really messed around with the FPV drones. You know, that wasn't a thing when I was in. It came long after I was in. And then— but I didn't see them at the— when I was contracting for CIA either. And I talked to— I got a buddy that's up at 5th Group, and he just got back from Syria, and he, he's just— he talks to me about some of the shit they're using now. And I saw this picture yesterday of this guy, I mean, dressed up just like, you know, we used to dress up, but he has these fucking goggles on, you know. And yeah, he's flying these mini drones, and she's first of all crazy. Man. It's like he looks like he's like hiding in a cave or something, and his fucking drone's doing— I mean, he's doing the work, but it's just—

it's—

I don't— I don't think I would even recognize the battlefield now.

Yeah, well, you know, it's the same thing whenever these big technology changes happen, but then context is everything. So, you know, we're watching the Ukraine war, which is fought the equivalent— it's the equivalent of fighting a war in downstate Illinois and Iowa. So it's farm fields with rows of trees to break up the wind that line the roads or bisect the properties. That's it. You know, there's folds in the terrain. There's not a lot of significant topographical features. There's folds and terrain, has a lot of rivers. Obviously too, but it's flat. And so now think if that war was fought in Vietnam, we'd be barely hearing about these drones because they can't see through the trees and they can't fly through triple canopy. Uh, you know, they'd find some places to go in, but they have nowhere near the effect they have there. Uh, same thing, you know, the Russians do most of their movements in bad weather now which has always been the way, except we were stymied for that by the helicopter. You know, we became helicopter-centric. And so when the fog and rain would come, we'd be like, mission's off. It's like, why?

Fucking enemies all buttoned up in, you know, their trenches, in their shelters. Now's the time to infill. The helicopters can't fly. But that's why now the Russians move, because the drones can't see. You know, and they can't fly in heavy winds and heavy snow and stuff like that. So, you know, and to every technology advancement, there's a countermeasure. The counter-drone stuff has taken off, you know, amazingly to the lasers. But you're right, the drone, just what you can do with the drone. And it's the same thing. That's all innovation. That's all, you know, guys forward. Adapting to the battlefield, adapting the equipment to the battlefield to make it as effective as possible.

It's really interesting. I mean, we— I interviewed this guy, uh, the founder of Skydio. I don't know if you've heard of that company, but they— and they hadn't even thought of it, but they're using drones. They live in these mini garages, they charge up, and they just deploy from there. And they're putting them on fire stations, police stations, all over over the country, and it's, it's responding to stuff. And they gave me one.

Wow.

And so this thing comes out of the garage, patrols the property, it can fly to other properties. Wow. It's all done by AI. It can follow somebody for— so if somebody breaks in, the damn drone will follow them for like 45 minutes to an hour.

Wow.

And just broadcast it. You can talk to them, you can put sirens, you can play music, you use thermal, it's and it's all AI. Did you just tell her what to do? He sent it into the woods. He's like, watch this, sent it into the woods, it just finds its way out. It's— that's— and then they have ones that go indoors too, and they'll, they'll, they'll rove around your house or building or whatever and notify the police. It does all that shit. I'm just like, holy shit, man, this This world is changing so, so fast.

Yeah.

In Ukraine, I mean, we were talking— I know we talked about Ukraine and the first time you were here, but do you think there's any part of that war that keeps going on because so much innovation is coming out of it at another country's expense? Somebody else's lives are on the line.

It's definitely one of the things that has been stated repeatedly. If you listen to like the, the generals, the 4-star generals, American, who— EUCOM commanders who have been commanding and controlling this thing since, you know, it started in '22. Um, they, they— when they get in front of Congress, you know, and do their report outs, they always say You know, one of the biggest benefits is what we're learning, you know, about equipment. But what they never say is what Russia has already learned, you know, and it's very clear Russia's already figured out how to neutralize our Patriot anti-aircraft, anti-missile batteries. They've figured out how to neutralize our ATACMS, which are, you know, kind of like precision rocket artillery fire. Uh, you know, they've— they have reversed, jerry-rigged all of our primary equipment over there. And I don't really see, you know, to me, the advances— I always ask, like, there's a— you know, this just happened. They just were in front of the Senate, this 4-star general, and I, I wanted the, the senator to go Have him name something that's changed. Because if you look at the Ukraine war, it is just old school light infantry.

Drones have taken out any mech, any armor potential. I mean, they still use them sparingly. They bring forces up. And if there is a big, if they find a big salient, a big weak spot, they might charge through it, or at least charge forward in armored vehicles, and that to disgorge the guys. But armored and tanks are not being used on that battlefield. It's 100% light infantry battle, and Russia's fighting it the exact same way they defeated 3 German armies, uh, on the Eastern Front during World War II. And it's, it's, it's the tactic of choice anytime you're on flat terrain. You probe, you find the enemy's defenses, then you go around them on both sides. You envelop them until panic sets in because they realize they're caught in a cauldron. And if you just look at what's happened in Ukraine, every big city that's fallen has been caught in a cauldron because there's some point, and, you know, I think I said this in our original one, there's some point where that guy laying in his defensive position He's been staring out in front of him for days, weeks, months, thousands of hours, and he knows if those guys get past that copse of trees over to my right, we're fucked.

You know, we're surrounded. And so once they pass that copse of trees, panic sets in and defense always invariably breaks down. And, you know, the big problem for Ukrainians is they have a command and control a disconnected command and control element that, you know, disconnected hierarchies don't give a shit about the guy on the ground. They can't because they're looking at screens in air-conditioned TOCs. In the case of Ukraine, 1,300 and 500 miles from the front lines. So, you know, what's happened in Ukraine is the same thing Hitler— mistake Hitler made. His generals were like, request permission to fall back to the Volga River. You know, it's a better position. We can no longer sustain this positioning. And Hitler had the same answer every time. Not one inch. We're not giving one inch to them. Hold every position like it's the last position you'll ever hold. And that's why three German armies were annihilated. Like 150,000 men died in one massive battle. Yeah, surrounded, you know, brigades, divisions surrounded and then cut to pieces by artillery and direct fire and eventually direct fire weapons. So, you know, the Ukraine war is a light infantry war.

It just goes back to why, you know, as high speed as everything's gotten, it's still the thing that matters still today is your competency at shooting, moving, and communicating. and all three of those things have to be wrapped together because as a light infantryman, you know, you got to be able to shoot, but you got to be able to move, and you got to be able to move with everything you got is on your back. And that brings on huge decisions about protection versus speed. Do you wear Kevlar or do you go light? I never wore a Kevlar vest in Afghanistan or Iraq. I would have if I was clearing a building, but I never wore one driving. I never wore one in the Battle of Shahi Kot because I wanted speed. I wanted to be able to get behind a rock, to get over a wall like that and not be tired. Then once I assess where the enemy is, I'm going to try to flank him. But you can't do that if you're not in shape or if you're carrying too heavy of a load. So the Ukraine war is a light infantry war on steroids, and It just reinforces all the things that, you know, hardcore ground guys have been emphasizing, you know, those old sergeant majors for decades.

And it's still as relevant today as it was back in World War II. Yeah.

You know, another thing, this is kind of a rabbit hole out of left field here. But I mean, since we're talking about Ukraine and innovation and all this other stuff, I mean, Um, decentralization of the military is a huge strategy that's, that's, that's coming up now with all these drones and stuff. And, and, and I never really— I mean, I've heard it, you know, talked about, and it never really clicked until I had Brandon Sang from, uh, he's a SEAL, he's the founder of Shield AI. Are you familiar with Shield AI?

I don't think so.

They just came out with this, um, They just came out with the X-Bat. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a drone. And they put a 3— I think it was a 3/4 scale model out here on the front yard. It's like 20 feet wide, 20 feet high, vertical land, vertical takeoff. The way Brandon describes it, it— every pickleball court in the world becomes a launch pad. But what's interesting is, I mean, Operation Spider— was it Spider or Spiderweb where we took— where they took all the drones and blew up all the, you know, strategic bombing base? Exactly. And you think about how we do, and it's like, shit, all our jets are on a fucking aircraft carrier. They're all at Bagram Air Force Base. They're all— it's all centralized. But now that they have these vertical takeoff and land drones, and I think it has 12 or 1,400 nautical mile, um, radius it can go with payload. It's fucking wild. Yeah. And so that means that you could have one at a forward operating base of Delta guys, you know, and have one guy stay back and operate the damn thing, or, or whoever.

It's just they could be spread all over, not centralized at all.

How does the payload on that thing— like, what can it carry? It sounds—

man, I can't remember, but, uh, I'll send you the episode. And actually, I don't think he could tell me what, what all it could carry, but, uh, I think, I think he, I think he told me the weight, but he didn't tell me, you know, what all they were putting on. And they're all modular, so you can kind of put whatever the hell you want on them. But it's, it's I mean, what they've invented and what they've developed is just— it, it's, it, it, it literally changes everything. Yeah. And, and then you think about how do we even— how do we even start to decentralize everything? It's, it's almost like you're just, you're recreating the entire U.S. military at that point.

Well, it needs to happen.

I'm with you.

Yeah. I mean, we talked in the last episode, to me, the lesson of 25 years at war which includes Ukraine, because our generals were commanding and controlling the battle until 2025, this year, out of Wiesbaden, was the main lesson is that decision-making and problem-solving made by disconnected chains of command who aren't there never has and never will be capable of making sense of what's happening on the ground nor capable of making sensible choices for what the guys on the ground should do next. And the reason for that is not theoretical, it's biological. The— our nervous system makes sense through our senses. The Ernst Mach principle, which came in 1869 and still stands today, is that the only way to reveal scientific fact is through our senses. So in other words, there's no reality unless you can prove it with your senses or sense-enhancing devices like a microscope. So by very nature, a disconnected chain of command, by the nature of its definition, cannot make sense of what's happening on the battlefield. So you can line every wall with 50-inch high-resolution flat-screen TVs, you can have every sensor out there, and you're still just looking at a one-dimensional view of the battlefield from your air-conditioned darkened TOC with coffee pots humming all over the office.

It does not work, but that's what we've adopted, and we've adopted it because the senior guys love it. It allows senior guys to be captains again because you can micromanage the battlefield with your SATCOM radio while watching the Predator feed. But that Predator feed is not the reality of the situation on the ground. It's a one-dimensional depiction And with AI, it's even worse because you can get hacked and have a fake video feed and tell it to do shit. But in every case, that's why we've had so many friendly fire, you know, drone deaths. That's why we've had so many mistaken targets, because they're making decisions that are disconnected from reality. So what I'm advocating is we end the disconnected chain of command. These massive multimillion-dollar jock talks that we set up everywhere. They— we, we named them something new, the tactical support facility. And that's what you are. Even as an overarching commander, you're in support when you guys are on the ground. That's why the question is, what's your recommendation? That's why it's so powerful, because those guys are the only guys that can come up with a valid recommendation, and you have to tap into that.

You have to let them know they're the guys in charge. The decision's got to come from them. And I'm concerned about AI too. I saw some of the prototypes for the new C2 system, and it's full of these AI feeds. And, you know, I see two problems with AI. First, I'm not yet convinced that it's smarter than a human, certainly on rote stuff. Of accessing data. It is, it can do it quickly, but it's not smarter than human because it has no emotions, it has no feelings. And so remember, everything matters. The temperature on the ground matters, the light level on the ground matters. You know, they're looking at it through a thermal scope, you're looking at it at night. So what you're going to do is highly dependent on that light level. But the bigger thing I'm— I I think AI is problematic about is that once we take away that decision-making from the guy on the ground, that, you know, that like a little kid when you're playing, you know, hide and seek or ditch, you're thinking, your brain is 100% focused on that task right there. Lay still, lay still. He's walking by me.

Okay. Once he gets around the corner, turns that corner, he can't hear me anymore. I'm going to get up and run the other way. You know, those decisions. Instead, you're going to be looking at some heads-up display on your helmet telling you, you know, in 5 seconds, get up and run for another position. It'll be safer. There's no learning feedback loop there. You didn't come up with that. What it's teaching you is to depend on this electronic advice, which can be broken like all electronics. There's still no breakthroughs. In antenna reach, power capacity, you know, the ability to carry a battery that provides continuous power and also enough power to send a signal to wherever you need to send it to. So I think we should be continued down that road, continue developing all this stuff. I'm not anti-AI. I just am anti-AI in conjunction with these disconnected hierarchies as an answer to what you know, the future warfare. The future warfare is teach guys how metacognition, how the brain thinks and makes decision, become consciously aware of that and understand how your brain works, and then understand how to make good decisions and solve complex problems.

And once you do that, you know, to me, the tactical and operational world is your oyster.

Yeah. Have you— I'm just curious, have you seen the new Eagle Eye helmets that Enduro's putting out?

Yeah.

What do you think of those?

They look cool. And I mean, in concept, it looks like a, you know, it has promising aspects to it. But that thing's full of AI too, with data that's coming in. And, you know, I'm just— yeah, I'm— you're from Missouri, so the Show-Me State. So you're going to have to show me and you're going to have to put it into action. And You know, I'd put that thing on a bunch of, you know, from every level. I'd put it on the E-5, E-6, team leader, squad leader level primarily. I'd put it on the sergeant majors, the platoon leaders, the company commanders, and, you know, let them throw it in the pool and, uh, and, you know, figure out what, what its strengths are and what its weaknesses are. But I don't think there's any replacement for your senses and your brain's ability to collate sensory information and make good decisions and solve complex problems. And again, if we take that away, it's kind of like the same drawback of GPS. GPS has created some generations of warriors who've can't fucking read a map, right? Read a paper map. And not only read a paper map, but just read terrain in general.

Uh, from reading a map, you learn to read terrain. You can look at terrain and go, that's where we need to go, that's where the defensive position needs to go, that's where we need to avoid, because— or if they take that ridge over there, we're fucked. Uh, so that which makes it key terrain. I need to put an OP up there for early detection, uh, to tell us if they're trying to take it. So those are the things I'd be concerned with. But I, I saw the Anduril thing and it looks, you know, looks cool.

Yeah, I thought, uh, I talked to Palmer about it. He actually kind of— I can't say he unveiled it on the show, but he made the announcement here or at the other, at the old studio. But some of the capabilities of that thing are just fucking out of this world.

Like what? What?

Well, it can— it, it can— it can identify aircraft, helicopters, whatever, and based on its maneuvering, it will tell you this is the probability of what's about to happen. It's about— based on the way it's flying, it's about ready to come and do a bombing run on you, so get the hell out of here. Um, another thing is you can see see people through walls.

That's cool.

You can see through people through walls. It will identify every member on your team, where they're at.

See, now I'm all for that. Sense enhancing. Thermals.

I get what you're saying. Yeah, but you still have to— if the helmet goes away, you still have to understand how to fucking— how to operate out there. But it's so enhancing that I mean, I don't know what the bugs are. They worked out. I actually made a suggestion to him. I asked him if it could, you know, if they'd, if they had done anything with hostage rescue stuff. And, um, that's a great question. He had said no. And I said, if you figure out a way, maybe if you can put facial recognition in it or something like that, if you can figure a way out to identify the hostage, if they dress them up, no matter what, it identifies the hostage, it would, it would, it would speed that process immensely, and which would make us more successful.

They should have paid you consultant fee. I know, I know, right?

He said, he said he, they, he didn't think he could do facial recognition, but that they might be able to do something where they take the exact height of the hostage and plug it in, and then it will identify.

They're usually sitting that person into the room. They're usually tied up.

I think what, what he's saying is the AI would be able to maybe see bone structure or something and get the exact height, whether they're sitting, standing, leaning over, no matter what.

Wow.

Compute it and then outline that hostage in blue or green. Enemies are all red. I was like, if you could fucking pull that off, dude, that's incredible. That would be— that would be— that would—

exactly.

Incredible. But I'm excited about a lot of this stuff. I think it's— I I think it's really, really neat what all these younger innovators are bringing to the table.

Yeah, with him, you can't help but appreciate his passion, his patriotism, you know, that seems to sit at the foundation of what he's doing. And, uh, you know, the best scientists are mad scientists, so, you know, you've got to have guys who are fanatically dedicated to figuring shit out. And he seems like one of those guys. So yeah.

Yeah. Well, Pete, we're getting ready to move into Iraq and I think this is going to be a very long segment. So let's, let's take a break.

Sounds good.

Perfect. Want to stay up to date on all things SRS? You bet your ass you do. Our newsletter brings you the latest SRS news and critical updates. Updates. Get instant alerts on the newest episodes. Never miss a beat. Exclusive intel briefs from counterterrorism expert Sarah Adams. You've seen her many times on the show. She's going to give unfiltered insights on global terrorist activity. For Patreon exclusives, you're going to get epic range days with me and damn near every guest that's come in the studio. You're also going to get behind-the-scenes content and guest updates. You're going to get first dibs on new merch drops and limited edition items that will never be sold again, plus exclusive offers from our partners you won't find anywhere else. So subscribe to the Vigilance Elite newsletter right now. All right, Pete, we're getting into The Iraq invasion. So you were the interim Delta commander during the invasion, destroying al-Qaeda pockets and accelerating Saddam's fall.

Hmm. Uh, yeah, we start here. That's a good question. I guess start where it started for me. The Iraq War started for me in Afghanistan. So I was doing my third tour, 2002. So we already talked about you know, Battle of Shai Kot slash Anaconda slash Takur Ghar. After that, I went to Pakistan, uh, did a tour in Pakistan.

Uh, and you did a tour in Pakistan?

Yeah, we opened— so remember I told you in that story, we followed the Trail of Tears out of Shai Kot, the bandages. These guys were discarding equipment. They were, you know, the foreign fighters and the Taliban were retreating, and they— we followed their route. This is day 13 from the first day of the battle. Everyone else was gone. It's just the original AFO guys left. And like, what do we do now? And I'm like, fucking let's follow a man and destroy every one of them we can find while we're following them. And we followed this Trail of Tears, went through that Spira District, Khaus Province, which is you know, where Pat Tillman was killed, 8 kilometers from Takur Ghar. And that's from Takur Ghar, it's about 13 miles to the Pakistani border. So the Trail of Tears went right to the Pakistani border, which like all borders is on some sort of line of drift. This one's on a ridgeline. So we stood up on this high ridge looking into Pakistan. There's no line there. The Durand Line. Looking into Pakistan, you could see still bandages. There was a piece of equipment about 500 meters down the other side of the slope, the Pakistani, and we could see Miram Shah.

And so it was obvious they went to Miram Shah. So we went back and I had my agency counterpart with me. Spider. So he and I went back and we both sent up through our separate chains of command, hey, the enemy, the enemy that survived Shai Kot fled to Pakistan. Request permission to go into Pakistan to talk to the Pak military to see if we can find these guys and destroy them. Where they went, there's probably more of them. Franks, everyone said no. Just like before, Franks is like, send them. So we got on an aircraft— I won't talk about the aircraft— flew into an airfield— I won't talk about the airfield— and linked up with our Pakistani counterparts, special ops counterparts. And they were, they were good guys, you know. And I say that because you could see right away all they cared about was making Pakistan, you know, a first world country. They were very, you know, Pakistan hates India and India hates Pakistan. It's a religious thing mostly, but they wanted to be like India. And the first day I got there, the commander showed me that. He goes, look, look at this.

And I read the headline. It's like, India produces 9 millionth Honda motorcycle. And, you know, it was like the headline of an Indian. He goes, see that? That's what we need to do. I'm like, oh, okay, I guess, uh, I guess we're gonna talk business. Instead of fighting al-Qaeda. But I— but, you know, the point of it was he was showing me that he cared about his country, and he kept talking about his kids and the shitty schools, you know, that— and Pakistanis are like Indians, super intelligent, uh, people. This guy certainly was, and he just wanted good schools. So they were very much in on the fight. But he said, look, our generals are like yours. They're not going to believe any of this. And it's like, well, you know, they have to. We have evidence. So the second day we were there, they took us to the equivalent of the Pentagon, and we were brought into this room, me and Spider, you know, dressed in REI beat-up clothing. We had been fighting a battle for, you know, we were all hairy and disheveled. And they're all, you know, it's Pakistan military is the Brit military.

It's like the stepchild of the British military. So everyone's got a teacup, the fine china's out, everyone's in a perfectly appointed uniform. You know, they even have English accents when they speak English. And so it was every 4-star general in the Pakistani Army around the table. And They turned it over to us first, and I went first, you know, because they asked me to. And I just told them about Shahid Qutb and what happened and how we followed the Trail of Tears. I had pictures, and I said, these al-Qaeda are hiding in the Northwest Frontier Province, and we want to— we don't want to do it ourselves. We want to do it with you. You know, we want to link up with our counterparts and get them out of your country. And if you don't, they're going to do the same thing they did, you know, in Afghanistan.

Holy shit.

We then turned it over to them. They went around.

You're the one that's having that discussion?

Yeah. Yep. And then, then we went around.

What do you think about that? I mean, I'm just curious. You just, you're coming from Anaconda where the top head shed fucking inserted themselves somewhere they have no fucking business being. They probably have business being at something like that versus on the— I mean, it just seems ass backwards to me.

Yeah, I mean, uh, does it to you? Yeah, I will. But dealing with American military, you know, teaches you that you know, you got to go to the Pentagon. If you ever been to the Pentagon, it's a surreal experience, too. And you— I don't want to be too harsh about this, but I'm not saying you should. I'm not.

I'm not. Let me rephrase. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have been making those calls or been in that room by any means at all.

Yeah.

I'm just saying that it— from the outside looking in, it would be a lot more fitting if the roles were kind of reversed there. Yeah, but just in mind—

yeah, yeah, no, it's a great point. I haven't thought of it that way.

Um, you know, I think you're convincing Pakistani top generals to allow operations to happen and kill bad guys inside of their borders.

Yes.

But you're not allowed to actually handle what you're supposed to be fucking handling on the ground. Not that you aren't supposed to be handling that, but it just seems more of the job description than foreign war policy.

Yeah, that was a great— wow, wow. But, you know, remember, just like we did when we talked about, uh, Shy Coat, Anaconda, you've got to go back to that time and you got to put yourself in that time. So, you know, it was the equivalent of after Pearl Harbor still you know, we were highly motivated. There was no doubt about our purpose. Our purpose was righteous. We were trying to neutralize this terrorist organization to prevent them from inflicting further combat power against the West. And we knew because, you know, the Twin Towers were still, you know, the image is still indelibly etched in your head. So, you know, the passion is there. You knew what, what we were doing mattered, or we believed what we were doing mattered. And of course, you know, these were, these were real fighters, and we had just fought them. And, you know, I—

how many days prior was this? Was Anaconda to—

uh, well, we've, we fought, so the 13th day I Anaconda started on the 28th of February, I think, uh, 27, 28, and then it went 13 days, uh, till when we got— when we went and walked to the border, 12, and then the 13th day was we came back, uh, and then we sent it up the flag. So it's only 2 and a half weeks.

So the leadership was busy trying to come up with the lie and how they're going to turn Anaconda into this heroic event?

Well, the— while you were over here doing foreign policy, our immediate chain of command was— but I think the Franks was— and I'm not like a man of Franks, you know. However, my interactions with him were always— he was spot on. He's the guy that told me, here's your mission: find the enemy, then kill or capture them. And I was like, yeah, you know, I told you I had to suppress my urge to pump my fist before I got out of the room and go, that's the fucking greatest mission I've ever been given. And he was also the guy who said, who told every general, you guys need to be more like AFO. We can't have convoys driving around Afghanistan. We can't have massive military bases with PXs in them. This is what did in the Soviets. You need to stay low-vis. It needs to be a couple of guys. And when intel comes and says, hey, we think there's enemy over the mountain, it takes me about 5 days to get a conventional or conventional SF unit to go check it out. These guys go, okay, we'll put two guys in a, in an SUV and drive over to the ridge and take a look, and then I get feedback right away.

So he was a huge advocate of nimbleness, and, you know, uh, less is better, which I think I carried with me through all of Afghanistan, which was, you know, respecting the xenophobia of the Afghans. Any large formation, they're going to hate. Any, you know, any massive mistakes, collateral damage, they're going to turn against you. We have to be incredibly surgical, incredibly low-vis about everything we do. And so I appreciated that. And he saw the opportunity. He knew what they— they went to Pakistan. All right, let's fucking go get them. But our— my own chain of command, the Joint Special Operations Command, was busy making up rules to make sure that Anaconda slash, you know, Shy Coat never happened again, and, uh, that these, you know, lower-ranking guys never were able to find, fix, and destroy an enemy in battle again without the massive talks. So anyway, I finished my briefing, and then they went around the room, and each Pakistani general spent between 5 and 10 minutes beating the living shit out of me. They all said basically the same thing. You have no— you've never been to Pakistan before. You don't understand our culture.

You don't understand the Northwest Frontier Province. We know what's happening in our own country. There's no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, in Pakistan. Thank you, sir. And then the next guy, and then the next guy, and then the next guy. And it got so bad, my buddy Spider, who's, in addition to being a great leader, great operator, is a great diplomat. And he had actually, he had experience in Pakistan. I won't say what that was, extensive experience, and knew, you know, a number of Pak military guys. So he was very well versed at the culture and everything. He, he just, you know, took the floor and he said, said, you know, gentlemen, we understand your hesitation to believe this. We're not trying to convince you this to blame you or to put you into a position to try to force you to do something. We're just telling you what we just experienced and what we saw. And the reason is we have your best interests in mind. If they're here, people are going to die here. In the Northwest Frontier Province. That's what kind of people these are. And, you know, they waved him off. In the end, they, you know, they— the head general, the chief of staff, summed it up.

He said, but we, we appreciate you coming here, but you haven't convinced us of anything. Nothing has changed. There's no al-Qaeda in Pakistan. There's no Taliban in Pakistan. and consider UBL was there at that time also. So that ended the meeting. We left that meeting, drove back— it was in Islamabad— to the embassy where we were staying at the time and met with the chief of station. And Spider goes to me before we walk in, he goes, hey man, I just want to tell you ahead of time, don't fucking go off. When you— when this— when we start talking, have I ever gone off on anybody? Because I hadn't. I'm not a, you know, explosive emotional guy. And he goes, no, but you might on this guy. And I'm like, all right, what the fuck is this going to be? So we get it, open the door, we'll go into his palatial office, and he's sitting, you know, in the little side chairs. There's a coffee table, 3 chairs. He's in the one that's raised up He's a short guy, and the first thing I'm— you know, it's part— I already described how we were dressed, how disheveled we were, you know, hair and everything.

And so contrast draws interest in the human brain, and I was like just taken aback first by his hair. His hair was permed, and it looked like he took a basketball and cut out a section for his face and put the basketball on his head. That's how his hair was, perfectly permed. I think you use a pick to make a perm perfect. He was in this suit that, you know, probably cost at the time $1,000. It had a handkerchief, you know, perfectly, uh, triangled in the pocket. And he goes, So I heard your meeting didn't go well. I'm like, you know, Spider's taking over. I'm staying quiet. And he's like, yeah, you know, they've got it in their minds that there's no Al-Qaeda here, but we need to convince them. We need to, you know, this is a mistake because if they allow this to happen, they're going to build up here, know that they've got a safe zone of operation, and then they're going to just start launching attacks. We want them to make it uncomfortable for Al-Qaeda, push them back into Afghanistan where we can neutralize them. And the chief of station goes, huh, well, I don't know what you two have been smoking, but I'm the one who controls intelligence in Pakistan.

And I'll tell you, those generals were telling you the truth. There's no Al-Qaeda here. I don't care what you saw at the border. Nobody, nobody passed over that border. There's no Al-Qaeda in the Northwest Frontier Province. And now I, then I was like, now I know why he told me not to go off. So I just bit my tongue again. And he, we, I did speak up a couple of times. We tried to, we showed him that we had pictures, you know, bandages. We had pictures of the dead guys. You know, I don't know if you saw those, those pics, the guys up on top of Takur Ghar. We had guys down in the valley. These are foreign fighters. These are not amateurs. These are hardcore fighters. Look at these guys. I mean, I'd be proud to have these guys in my unit. That's what, that's what these guys were like. That's what you saw when you realized the dedication, the tenacity that they showed. But he was having nothing to do with it. Waved us off. He goes, you guys, you guys can stay here a few more days, but I'm not supporting your assertion that there's al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

And by the way, the ambassador wants to talk to you. Like, okay, well, maybe that's another chance to convince somebody. So we walk out of there. Spider turns to me and goes, see what I mean? And I go, fuck, dude, this is unbelievable. So we walked down to the ambassador's office. Secretary says, uh, have a seat, she's not ready yet. Okay, so we sit there. Hour and a half later from the appointed time, the secretary goes, you can go in her office now. We walk in her office, it's empty, there's nothing on the desk. Like, it's just a fucking joke. We just waited a half hour for her to be available, and she's not, you know, she's not even sitting behind her desk. All of a sudden, the speakerphone on her desk, it's the secretary. Madam Ambassador, are you ready to talk to the two military, the two men? And I was going to say the name, but I don't want to say the names. She says, yes, I am. I'm like, okay. So she says, okay, uh, I'm listening. And you gotta be— Spider goes to me, uh, ma'am, I just— I have to ask this because, you know, protocol for the agency.

How do I know who I'm talking to and where are you? Uh, this is a conversation that should be face to face. She goes, well, when the war started, I took leave. I'm back in Virginia. And, um, it doesn't matter. I'm still the ambassador. I'm still making decisions. What is it that you want? She went right to that. Holy shit. So think of how surreal this is. We're sitting in the ambassador's office. It's fucking dark. There's like one little light on. We're talking to a speakerphone to the ambassador during the initial phases of the war in Afghanistan, and she's not even in Islamabad. She's the ambassador for Pakistan back in Virginia. And we start talking. We go, here's, here's, here's what happened. And she said, okay, okay. So what do you want? What do you want from me? We go, well, we'd like to go forward. We'd like to go to Miramshah with our Pakistani counterparts. We'd like to check it out. Ideally, we'd like to set up a base there and monitor the situation. And collect intelligence to figure out what exactly they're doing and how many of them are here. Oh, that's not going to happen.

That's not going to happen. And by the way, do you have guns on you? And we were both fucking, you know, had our sidearms on us at the time. Yeah, she goes, you're not allowed to have those guns in Islamabad. Who gave you permission to have them? And, you know, I kept wanting to speak up. I want to go, we don't need your fucking permission. Spider, ever the diplomat, you know, said— I can't remember what, but somehow said, we have to have them for force protection. Not approved. Disapproved. And you're not going forward. And, uh, I've got another meeting, so unless you have something else, uh, I'm done with this meeting. Like, okay. Instead of saying thank you, we just hit the button on the phone, the fucking you know, that was to her. And we walked out of there. So now, fuck, all the generals, the chief of station, the ambassador. So we go back, get on our secure internet, send this note back. We CC the CENTCOM liaison so that Franks can get it and go, every one of them says there's no one here. We have no idea why they're so adamant there's no al-Qaeda here.

It's not like it's embarrassing. It's not like it's some indictment of what they've been doing. There's just real enemy here and we followed them. We have proof that they're here. We just want to check it out as part of, you know, bin Laden might be here. We threw that in. That got to Franks the next day. We got a spider got it. It's now it's coming through agency channels. From the chief of station. Apparently you have some high-placed supporters because I've been overruled and I've been told that you're supposed to go to Miran Shah tomorrow with the PAX. I won't say the name of the unit, their special ops unit, but I'm going to tell you, you're wasting your time. There's no one, there's no al-Qaeda in Pakistan. And we're like, okay, well, we're fine with that, but At least, you know, we'll figure it out once we get on the ground in Miramshah. So we leave all that shit behind. We, the Pakistanis, are incredibly sensitive, you know, to Americans in Pakistan. We understood this. We actually were in Pakistani military uniforms when we went forward. So we go to the most forward outpost Pakistan has in Miramshah.

And it's this ancient base that we arrive at. And I immediately— I told you about the, you know, the stepchild of the British military. When we walk into the base, there's 5 shoeless soldiers painting rocks that line the walkway into the base. That lead to the commander's office. So we walk by these guys and, you know, I'm already going, fuck, this is going to be interesting. We get in there, the inside of the headquarters is like a shrine to British occupation. It was literally a museum with pictures from, you know, the Great Game, the years that before Afghanistan threw all the Brits out and, you know, showed them, showed the lineage of the military, the British military. There were special teacups that were drank by 4-star generals. There were all these items. It was like a museum. And then they bring us in to see the commander. He's a colonel. And We walk into his office and he just starts yelling at us. What are you— what do you think? You're going to come in. I'm supposed to sit here and listen to you now. You're going to tell me that there's al-Qaeda in my sector, my operation.

I have men out every day. There's nobody here. There's no one in. There's no al-Qaeda in Pakistan. And I, quite frankly, I'm being forced to talk to you. I would not talk to you if I wasn't being ordered to talk to you. I think Franks called the president of Afghanistan at the time, I think was Zia, who was very cooperative. And, and by the way, when I say this about Pakistan, I'm not criticizing the Paks. In full objective truth, if it weren't for the Pakistani ISI and military, they're the ones who captured Abu Zubaydah. They're the ones who captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed. We wouldn't have the two biggest trophies of the War on Terror without the PACs. So, you know, this is another institution that's, you know, constantly at odds with itself, with the bureaucrats, the people who aren't real leaders, and those who care, like that lower-level commander, Lieutenant Colonel, talking about the 9 million Hondas and his kids getting to go to a school that had competent teachers. That's the dynamic, you know, in every country. So he's shouting at us, and we— then he goes, okay, so what do you want? What do you want to tell me?

So we present our case very calmly, both me and Spider, showed him the pictures, and he goes, none of this, none of this matters to me. Okay, I've had enough of this. Lieutenant, you know, he calls his They call him same, just like the Brits, Lieutenant. Yes, sir. Comes in, snaps to attention, you know, we're like, wow. He goes, show them the item. I'm like, fucking item, man. So the lieutenant walks over to a lockbox. He's got the key. It's like attached to one of those like lanyards. Yes, lanyards. Pulls it out, opens the lockbox. Pulls out a key with— no shit, the ring was that big and there was that many keys on it. And he turns to this cage door and he starts going through keys to open the cage door. On about the 10th key, gets the cage open. Behind that there's a steel door. 10 more keys gets the steel door open. Goes into this room. We're like, wow, this must fucking really be something, this evidence he's going to show us, this You know, this, you can't come back after you see this. Finally, the lieutenant comes out with this little like cigar box thing that's also locked.

And he comes out, stands at attention to the colonel. Here it is, sir. And open it, the commander yells at him. You fucking swine. You know, he said something in Pakistani. Open it, you swine. And the kid goes through the keys, you know, his hands shaking. Finally opens it, and the colonel reaches in and pulls it out and goes, "What do you say to this?" And I'm having— I don't know if you were a Monty Python fan, but I'm having flashbacks. You know the shrubbery thing? Yeah. "A shrubbery!" It's like, what the fuck? So I'm— that just popped in my head. You know, this is a fucking hairy situation, but it shows you how humor an insider indelibly linked. And so I'm thinking, it's fucking shrubbery, man. It's just a piece of paper he's got in there, some kind of commercial wrapper of something. And what's funny about it is I wiped this— literally, you know, without using my hand, I wiped the smile off my face because I then thought, this is getting fucking explosive. You know, like, my senses are telling me this is getting dangerous. And so I went from a Monty Python flashback to, if they start shooting, you know, we were both armed, I'm gonna fucking drop this colonel and then we're going out that window and we're gonna fucking run the 13 kilometers back to the border and fucking escape this place.

So, you know, that's why I say humor and insight. So Spider goes, what is it? And he goes, you look at it and tell me. And we fucking hold it in front of us. It's a Danish MRE cracker wrapper. So the Danes, the, the Jaegers, had a small contingent, which we loved the Jaegers. We had trained with them multiple times before 9/11, had multiple personal relationships. They came over. They were not being used. We tried to get them attached to us. They were down in Kandahar with that big— it was run by, I think, a SEAL— that big conglomeration in Kandahar. We tried to get them attached to us, but I knew— I stayed in contact with them, and I knew they did an OP mission up on the border. And then, you know, they told me about it after it happened. We did an OP, it was nothing. We went up, sat on the border for 2 nights, came back. I'm like, well, that's I go, "Not bad, because at least you're, you know, getting into the shit." I go, "What'd you find?" They're like, "Nothing." So immediately it clicked to me that this Danish team, recce team, was up there, but this was an MRE wrapper that probably one of them had, you know, discarded, and it blew across the border into Pakistan.

And so he's going, "You've been here the whole time. You've been inside Pakistan trying to say that The Al-Qaeda is here the whole time. This is a setup. And, you know, at some point you just— when you're staring in the eyes of a madman, you just stop trying to— you— one thing you don't want to do is be a madman like him and start, you know, trying to convince a madman of something they're not going to be convinced of. So Spider, you know, just said, okay, Colonel, you know, where, where are we staying? The, the order was that you would have a a spot for us to set up our op center and that we could begin monitoring the situation for the next, I think, 6 weeks. And he goes, I don't have any room. You're gonna— you're sleeping out in the soccer field. And I'm like, it was nice out, you know, it was— the weather was okay. Pakistan's very temperate, and, uh, there were trees out there and shit. And I'm like, I'll put up my fucking poncho. Spider's like, I'm like, that's not happening. That is not happening. Uh, you— I don't care if you don't have room, you move somebody out of that room right now and, uh, we're taking over that room.

You're gonna get us a room with a roof over our head and a room that we can put up an antenna. This is a travesty. So again, I'm looking at the window, fucking touching my sidearm. So we walk out of there, we get on the SATCOM. Top hat antenna, call back. Spider calls back to the, you know, agency headquarters, which was totally on his side, just like Frank's was on our side. Not an hour passed and out he came sheepishly, okay, I have a room for you. And we set up our op center there in Miramshah. And You know, yeah. So 6 days after we set that up, 6 days after the shrubbery conversation, 23 Pakistani soldiers were killed by 3 al-Qaeda members. They went to a house that's really a fort. The Pakistanis had a full platoon lined up in front of the house. They pounded on it. Open up! We've been told that we are allowed to come inside. The door opened. Two guys with AKs, fucking on automatic, just leveled the whole platoon. 23 dead. I think there were 30, so only 7 lived. And from that moment on, uh, they started supporting us, and they realized there were al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Any word from the generals, the ambassador, or the chief of station?

Never. No, no. Uh, sorry about that. Not that fucking— we gave a shit. I never saw any of them again.

I was hoping you were gonna say they all got fired.

I don't think so. The one guy was on CNN a ton after that, and, uh, the station chief, uh, you know, told everyone he knew everything that was happening in Afghanistan the whole time, and Every time I saw him on CNN, I'm like, that fucking hairdo, man. You got to get rid of that perm, dude. It's distracting as shit. So anyway, so that was Pakistan.

We're going to have to find out who this is.

Yeah. So Pakistan ended, and this is my third tour. It's winter of 2002, Christmas time. And the rumor had come up that we're going to go into Iraq next. And all of us, agency, SF, you know, unit guys, no one believed this was going to happen.

Why didn't you believe that?

Yeah, yeah, good question. Because I didn't think about it at the time, but only reflecting, I think we were that way because first, this is a year in, almost a year in. You know, because we came in in really November, December of '01. So it's a year in. And in a year of work in the situation, we understood, you know, not only where we were in the effort to find UBL, kill or capture UBL, but also prevent the enemy from using Afghanistan as a safe haven to launch ops against the West. And we had made huge progress. I'd say the majority of the progress had already been made. There were no foreign fighters, or if there were, they were onesies-twosies left in Afghanistan. The Afghans themselves, what a lot of people don't understand is there's plenty of Afghans who believe in freedom, and they're freedom-loving Afghans, just like the ones we left. The majority of the military we left behind in the disgraceful exit of '21 were freedom-loving Afghans. And so we always connected with those guys. We had personal relationships with those guys. So in one sense, we were personally invested in Afghanistan. But at the same time, we understood how the gravity of this, the importance of it, and the effort that it was going to take to finish this off.

And we had leads at the time on UBL. So hearing that we're going to go jump and do Iraq was more like a, why the fuck would we go do that right now? You know, if it's a real threat, Saddam's been there for years. Can't we wait, you know, 3 years, 2 years? Because all the guys who are here now, all the guys I work with, are the same guys that will have to be moved out in order to really take Iraq. So none of us believed, we just believed it was all bluff. It was all over the news, all the UN shit and that. So we believed it was just a bluff. And then it was announced that CENTCOM was starting planning conferences down in Tampa. So they were planning the war in Iraq before any of the UN stuff had happened. and in conjunction with that, they were sending out, here's what we know so far. So we got, and it was right about Christmas, I can't remember before or after because we didn't really celebrate Christmas. We were doing ops. It was in the Christmas time. We got a packet. Here's the packet Colin Powell is going to eventually brief the UN on.

Here's the logic of why we have to invade Iraq. And so me and Spider went into a room to look at these satellite photos. Now, again, the history, the one year in Afghanistan was, could also be called a year of disproving the validity of any satellite photo. Because every satellite photo, remember you asked me before about Shahikot, there were, I was told there's no one there. We've got satellite photos and, you know, all their low-tech guile defeated those satellite photos. They had tarps, tarps over their dish because satellite photo didn't see any of those. Of course, you don't see people because they're sleeping, they're camouflaged, they're in their tents, whatever. So, like, you know, a guy on the ground foundational lesson is never believe a satellite photo or never take it as a foundational fact. It can be a corollary, a contributing fact. So we start looking at these, and these are the famous, I think there's 7 pictures, same one, 7 satellite photos that Colin Powell showed the UN. We had all 7. They were all different versions of the same thing. They were convoys lined up next to buildings in Baghdad and next to buildings in a remote outpost about 40 miles into the desert.

The middle of the desert, western desert from Baghdad. And we just started looking at them. And a satellite photo, an intel satellite photo always comes, it's the photo, but the photo doesn't mean anything. You right away default to the call-out boxes that have little lines to tell you what each thing is. And so, you know, we started reading the call-out boxes and this truck was a decontamination truck. That's what the call-out box said. The guys around it were security members, obviously securing a high-value type item. And the buildings they were next to all had this common denominator. They had this square thing on the roof about 6 feet by 6 feet and about 3 or 4 feet high on top of the roof. Each of the buildings had this thing, which the call-out box called an air purification system. So this guy, my agency counterpart, in addition to being, you know, a great leader and diplomat, he's also funny as shit. So he immediately switches to a Pulp Fiction-like voice, and he goes, Okay, let me, let me just get this shit straight. So this fucking thing right here, this decontamination truck, looks a hell of a lot like every water truck we've seen driving around in Iraq for, for years.

And if you were driving 40 miles out into the middle of the desert to a place that doesn't have any water, wouldn't you take a water truck with you? I'm like, fucking A, man. And he goes, next thing, these air purification systems, these air, uh, you know, that, that purify the air, doesn't that look like the same thing we got on top of our buildings, an HVAC system? And wouldn't you have a heating and air conditioning system on top of every building where the temperature fluctuates between 107 and 38 degrees, which is constant in Iraq. The nighttime is freezing, the days are hot as shit. And I'm like, spot on. And I go, and those security guys standing guard, take it, zoom in on that one. And we had it on a big screen and attached it up, and he zooms in, and the guy's fucking taking a piss, very clearly taking a piss. He's not pulling security. So these are the 7 satellite photos. This is— oh my gosh. And again, the lesson out of that that I'd pass on to everyone who's listening is anytime you see a photo that's— or a video that's narrated, or a photo with call-out boxes, get rid of the call-out boxes, get rid of the narration, watch the video without the narration, look at the satellite photos without the call-out boxes, then pop those up and see if it matches what you take away from what you see.

That's common sense. That's allowing your common sense to operate without being prejudiced by someone trying to hand jam to please their masters. You know, those intel guys were probably told, this is for sure WMD activity, you know, prove it, show me that this picture is that. And that's why they put those call-out boxes on there. So we were kind of in shock. We didn't know Colin Powell was going to use those at the UN. We were kind of in shock. As I told you, there was already a planning conference. So we both, you know, as we did so many times, went up both our chains of command and said, hey, I don't see what they're saying in those satellite photos. It looks like water truck. Everybody takes a water truck wherever they go. There's no water out in the desert. So that place has to have a water truck visit it. That's why he's there two different times. It probably comes every week to refill their tanks. And every building in Iraq has an HVAC system on top of it, just like they do in America. Um, but you know, that went nowhere. That went nowhere.

That went nowhere.

Yeah. And only, you know, only like when I rethought of that, uh, when you asked me to come back and talk about it and I started putting Iraq into the context of today. So today it's 2026. So we're 23 years removed from that moment. And in 23 years, we never have found any evidence of chemical or biologic weapons in Iraq. And that's not though the lesson. The lesson is this, and it's so applicable when you put it in context of 2026 and these color revolutions. That again, these unelected government administrators from the State Department and CIA have executed all across the world, including Ukraine, as we talked about. We, that was totally manufactured. Maidan revolution protests, same thing they did in the US in '17 and '18. That's what a color revolution is. It's the tech approach, the indirect approach to doing what we did in the war of Iraq, regime change, overthrowing a government, installing your friendly boy Friday straw man. Yeah, to be the president. And so when you think about that, when you think about this, this strategy of taking out heads of state or governments as, as a strategy, and the— in order to execute that strategy you're using an intelligence system that has been proven, empirically proven over and over to be fundamentally flawed.

And that's why color revolutions need to be outlawed. That's why the whole regime force, regime change thing needs to be the absolute last resort because it's usually based on bad intelligence. And in this case, saying that up front, now you're going to hear everything we're doing. And every guy who got killed there, you know, those decision makers have that blood on their hands, those individuals. And so Colin Powell took those 7 slides to the UN on the 6th of February. And just to, you know, re-blue myself on it, I watched the videos, they're still online, of his presentation. And he's Are they really? Yeah, he starts it off with everything I'm going to show you is based in hard empirical facts. There is no gray area here. What I'm about to show you is empirical proof that Saddam has violated the 1991 UN treaty that was made after the UN war that he could not—

We toppled an entire fucking country. Yep, off of a water truck, a guy taking a piss, and some air conditioners on a fucking HVAC system.

Yeah, it's a great way to put it. And it's why we need to fucking outlaw this shit, because these people who don't know anything, they've never experienced the real world, they don't have any operational experience, are making conclusions to support their own emotional proclivities. They're usually steeped in politics.

Is it emotional though?

It's not logical.

Why do you think we went in there?

Uh, I think oil has a lot to do with it, but it was just a thing. I think the hubris of, look, we just fucking were successful in Afghanistan. We weren't yet, but the first year was highly successful in Afghanistan. No one thought we'd kick the Taliban out be able to put a new government that seemed like it was for the people in power that quickly. So I think hubris was a big part of it, overconfidence. And then just, I've never liked this guy. This is where the emotion comes in. I've never liked Saddam. We should have gotten him in back in '91. It was a mistake not to get him in '91. Remember, Bush I did '91, Bush II did the Iraq War. So there's a connection there too. He's emotionally focused. And then what I told you about the Ukraine war with Trump initially getting nothing but fucking horrifically bad intelligence from the individuals around him, I believe that that's the main flaw of Bush. Bush wasn't an independent thinker. He wasn't a critical thinker, so he defaulted Cheney and Rumsfeld, two septuagenarians who also didn't know shit about shit, both $25 millionaires and above, $25 to $50 million each.

Didn't—

Cheney did know a lot about something, and that's logistics. He did, with his fucking company, KBR. So all that, which ran all logistics in both wars.

Exactly.

There's the fucking connection.

Exactly. Dick Cheney Corporate profit obsessed, no doubt. And dude, and then, but they, you know, the ignorance, the naivete, and then, you know, what's disgusting is their inability to think forward in time. You know, fucking guys are gonna die, civilians are gonna die, and because you're fucking hand jamming something through that you know is not hard evidence. You just think it's good enough because you already know we need to get rid of Saddam. We need a friendly government in Iraq, which we still don't have today.

But gee, I wonder why.

Exactly. Because we can't— that's the flaw of the color revolution. You can't pick the best leader for a country. You cannot. The country needs to pick the best leader for the country, and we've now seen what that looks like. It's someone who loves their people, loves their country. Mission, men, and me puts the country's purpose first, their citizens second, and themselves last. That's been toppled. It's me, mission, and men is last to all these globalists. And I think that was the way Iraq was.

It's It's horrific what they did, but I wonder if there are any other countries in the Middle East that wanted us to topple Iraq.

Almost assuredly. So I'm sure Saudis did, and you know, the Saudis don't like the Iranians either. So, but you know, you've got oil, you've got oil companies, you've got oil lobbyists that influence that. Your point on Cheney is exactly right. It might not have been the main reason, but it's the inertia that makes these decisions final. You know, he's like, fuck, if we do this, I make another $20 million in zero-strike options that were given to me for free for being CEO of that company. So, you know, that's That's why you've got to bring in ground truth. You got to bring in objective thinkers. You got to bring in people who don't have agendas.

I mean, that, that amount of greed to topple a country and put your own people at risk, which— how many people died in Iraq? Do you know?

I think it's 4,000.

How many amputees?

Yeah. Burned.

How many horrific burn victims? Cancers. That are still going on today from all the fucking PTSD, traumatic brain injury. I mean, it is divorce, fatherless kids, all for a fucking logistics company. Yeah, enough. A water— and they fucking called a water truck, a fucking air conditioner, and a guy taking a piss. They manipulated the fucking UN. Yeah, with a water—

yep, it's on.

It is, it's just, it's so far out there it doesn't even fucking seem real.

Yeah. And I, you know, I was still, you know, until really even these last 5 years ago with the pandemic and the 2020 election and whatnot, I still always believed, you know, our government, the— will collectively make the right decision. They can't be this fucking dumb. Yeah, they can't be this fucking ignorant. They can't. There's no such thing as, as government-wide conspiracies. They're— it's, you know, so none of us still believed, even we sent all this back you know, sent it back to— I mentioned the CENTCOM planning thing. And I had my point of contact, I was, you know, still the ops officer. So I sent back to my ops NCO, hey, I need you to go down to CENTCOM planning conference tomorrow. Here's the list of what I want you to tell them. And we've redone the satellite photos with with our own call-out boxes. I want you to present them. He's, roger that, sir, can't wait. Calls me back next day. I'm like, how's it going? He goes, they won't let me come to the meeting. I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, the CENTCOM planning meetings are for 06s and above only. And right there I was like, we are fucked.

And, you know, I'm promotable to 06, so I'm not like saying there's some I wasn't even going to go to the conference. I was going to send my guys to it. I had guys who had been to Iraq in other capacities that I won't mention. They'd also been through all the combat in Afghanistan, which Afghanistan, the lesson of Afghanistan was through with and by. So when he told me that, I was like, "Fuck, this thing is spiraling out of control." So we started, we started running brainstorming sessions in Afghanistan. We're at Bagram, you know, still a South Bronx shithole at the time. We're in some crappy-ass hangar. We had these brainstorming sessions at night, and I had SF guys, I had agency guys, and I had unit guys, and whoever else was around. And we were like, okay, what are the main lessons from Afghanistan that apply to that apply to Iraq. Let's talk about them. Let's get them down on paper and let's send them to them because if they're going to do this thing, let's at least take advantage. So number one was, and this is not— this had been an idea rolling around from the beginning of Afghanistan.

There needs to be a hyphenated American database where, and it's not a secret database. Everybody in that database has been approached and has volunteered to be eligible to serve. And what that is, is it's got Iraqi Americans, Chinese Americans, Afghan Americans, every hyphenated type American, first generation, who, by the way, are some of the most patriotic people, the ones who come here for the right reasons, some of the most patriotic Americans you find. It's always been that way, first generation, because they know what freedom, how important freedom is. And so that was an idea, and I said, we need that.

It's a good point. Fucking immigration might be the only damn thing keeping this country alive.

Yeah.

First-generation Americans.

Yeah.

I'd never even thought of that.

But individuals who come here for what we stand for, freedom, not come here to fucking steal money and fucking infiltrate and all that other horseshit, bring their religion. you know, because this is a free country. It's freedom of religion. You can do whatever you want yourself. So the first thing was the -8 American database. Start it now. Find every Iraqi American. Find out how many we can advise, because that leads to point 2. We've got to have Iraqi American cultural advisors from the first day. If we're going to do this thing, every unit needs to have an Iraqi American cultural advisor. Why is it so important to have that hyphenated? Because that guy understands the culture of his old country through the culture lens of his new country, and he can translate that to you. Here's why they do that. Here's why this is important to them. He speaks both languages. If you think about it, you know, the main reason I tell anyone that the history of expeditionary warfare is, is a history of a lopsided record of like 4,000 to zero. Expeditionary warfare has never worked. You can't go to a country and force decisions on that country if you're not going to live there with the decisions, because you make different decisions if you got to live there, if your family's there, if your kid's got to grow up there.

Those are a whole different set of decisions. The same ones you make in your neighborhood should be made when we go overseas to another country, but that's not what happens. We just make flippant— you have guys who know their tour's ending in a few months, do this, do that. And so we needed these Iraqi Americans with us. When we went into Afghanistan, I was fortunate because I was co— I was the entire time I was co-located with the agency, and the agency had a handful of Afghan Americans. I had a Wall Street lawyer, an Afghan-American Wall Street lawyer, who was with me the entire time leading up to Anaconda. All the intel we gathered, I never would have been able to gather that without him. If I had to, you know, pick an all-star team from those first phases, this guy would be on that all-star team with a couple of the heroes that, you know, who worked with me during that time. That's how important they are. And if you think about it, if you can't just at the most basic language, communication language, if you can't communicate, how the fuck are you ever going to find common ground with anybody?

Enemy, friendly, neutral? How are you going to persuade them of why you're there, the case you're trying to make for why you need to find these foreign fighters and get them out of their country. You can't even do that. So, you know, to think you can operate in another country without connecting with the people and communicating, which, you know, that's the history of our species can be traced back to the history of language. Once we could speak, you know, the arc of human evolution just skyrocketed. Because we could share knowledge. Think about not being able to share knowledge and all the miscommunications that happen because of that. The Jessica Lynch convoy drove into a hornet's nest of enemy while— because they couldn't read the signs, the highway signs, and they couldn't understand what the people were jumping up and down screaming at them, telling them in Arabic Do not go in there. It's full of enemy forces. They're going to kill you. That's on video. They were screaming that at these trucks as they drove obliviously into Nazaria. So language matters, and that was why we were so passionate. Have these guys ready, and every unit that goes in needs to have one with them.

And then our final thing was also an extension of the database, we need to be thinking about post-combat. How do we get the country back, stood back up? We already have been studying Iraq quite extensively, and we knew that anybody who had any key job was a Saddam, you know, loyalist. So once you take out Saddam and his administration, all these loyalists who people hate, they shouldn't have been in the job, and I'm talking about the guy who runs the power company, the water company, the sewage company, the gas company, the trash pickup company, they're all gone. And of course, you know, what do you do? How do you start that ship back up post-combat? We need Iraqi Americans who've been city managers, who've worked in, you know, water companies. And all this turned out, all of these turned out to be legitimate. Once they started doing this. And, you know, I— so I sent this— these 3 lessons back, uh, again tried to get them to CENTCOM.

Man, you came up with all this stuff?

My guys, the brainstorming sessions, they were just the aggregate, you know, of guys on the ground who had been in Afghanistan like me, 3 tours. Uh, yeah, I don't— I don't claim authorship of them. I claim You know, I, I organized the brainstorming, but they came up with this shit. It was the collective common sense. That's what you're always trying to aggregate and bring out. And so we sent it back, same thing, uh, we can't get it to them. It's O-6 and above, and, uh, you know, there's no way to get this to them. So earlier, before I came back for that third tour, I had done this briefing up up to, to, uh, the, the, at the Pentagon on how we, you know, found al-Qaeda and where I thought this intel we found after Shahid Kot that told us where UBL was. And guess what? It was intel that came from a source who was related to the courier, the same courier who was shot in the final raid. The one courier that bin Laden used from 2001 till he died in '11 to bring him information from his al-Qaeda underlings. And we were turned on to this guy by— from an interrogation that I got to sit in on.

And the guy was from Tunisia. He was a cobbler from Tunisia, you know, fix shoes. And he knew this guy, uh, he— and he said, if you want to find him, just follow this guy. And so at the time, we even knew where this guy was. So I presented that case to the Pentagon, and they were blown away by it. And remember, there's a rift in the Pentagon between civilian and military. So I'm talking to, to Paul Wolfowitz and his civilian staff, not to the military. I didn't have— they didn't ask to hear, you know, how— what Pete Labor and his AFO guys found out about UBL's location. And he was in Banu, which, uh, you know, I told you we drove to Mirim Shah, we cut through Banu on our way. He was there the whole time. So we gave that intel, and at the end of the briefing, I walked outside, and Wolfowitz's he had this young guy who's the youngest, uh, uh, at— what are they called? SM— what's the— what do they call the general level of civilians in DOD? SMS or something like that? I don't know. Yeah, there's some rank thing they use.

He was the youngest executive ever. Uh, great guy, total patriot. He comes up to me, he goes, look, that— you use blue Everything we thought out of the water. I don't want you to think wrong about this, but here's my card. If you ever have information that you can't— no one will listen to, you can't get anyone to take action on, just call me because that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to bridge this gap, this bureaucratic gap between guys who know what should happen and all the bureaucracy in between. I'm like, fucking A. And I gave him my card and I said, same thing goes, you call me if you ever have a question. So after I was told CENTCOM wouldn't take it, I went to the secure phone and I'm like, I'm gonna fucking try this number. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And I called him, name was Jim. I go, Jim, here's what's going on. Here's what CENTCOM's doing. I have no idea, you probably know better than me. I still don't think we're going to do Iraq, but in case we do, we did this brainstorming session, and here's the 3 things that have to happen if we're going to be successful in Iraq.

He goes, let me have them, Pete, let me have them. I gave him the 3 things I just told you, and unbeknownst to me, he went right at it. Immediately they traveled to Dearborn, Michigan, which is the highest population of Iraqi Americans. They're also in Fresno, 2 places, Fresno, California, and Dearborn, He went to both. Recruitment began right away. And I'm not getting feedback on any of this, but this is what he's doing on his own volition. Again, you know, shows you the value of boundary spanning. If we're going to make government work, we got to be able— you got to be able to connect, randomly connect to other groups, not only go one way. And traditionalists are going to go, he's crazy. That's why we have a chain of command. It's like, no, fucking, that's not why we have a chain of command. You know, the goal is the same for everyone, to accomplish your purpose. And we're crazy not to open our whole system, you know, take advantage of the strength of the whole instead of the individual parts. So that's it. That's finally, uh, I told you Colin Powell gave that speech in February, but I think it was early January where we got the word, you're going back.

We need you to go back. You're going to go back and prepare for operations in Iraq. Like, fuck. We're in the middle of some heavy ops in Afghanistan. But order's order. And I'm like, wow, they must know more shit than those satellite photos. Always believing, always giving the benefit of the doubt. So we flew back. While I was flying back on the C-17, my guy back at the unit faxed, the equivalent of faxed me the CENTCOM plan, which he said, Panther, this thing just went final. And I'm like, what? They've already finalized the plan? I thought we were coming back to help with planning, you know. And so on the plane, it's a 23-hour flight. We were stopping in, uh, Munich, I think, to refuel. On the flight, I, I started reading the plan, and I fucking— same thing, I was just crestfallen. We're not going to use Iraqi, uh, we're not going to bring Iraqi Americans because it'll be too logistically difficult to house and feed them in initial stages. We'll consider it at later stages in the op. We're not concerned about infrastructure repair. We think the Iraqis will be able to do that themselves.

So, it might sound crazy for, you know, a unit guy to be, you know, to be upset over two seemingly administrative things, but you could tell right away, and with the background of all of these experienced combat veterans going, these are the 3 most important things to success. I was just, I was just in shock. So, you know, same thing when I got to Munich. I called my buddy at, you know, DOD again at the SecDef's office, and I'm like, hey, I just read the plan and there's none of this is— and he goes, I know, I know, we're dealing with the same thing here, but give me another couple weeks. We're working this thing, we're gathering these guys, we've got volunteers, uh, we maybe we can make it happen and the right thing will end up getting approved. I'm like, okay, roger that. So get back to the, get back to the rear, start prepping. The other part about the plan was same thing we learned in Afghanistan— don't plan, prepare. Don't— the problem with plans is the prison of the plan. Once you make it and say, this is the plan, you're a prisoner of that plan.

No matter what new information comes out, you can't adjust the plan because the plan's finalized. And with this one, when I got back and called down to the guy who was running the O-6 and above meetings, he said, look, Pete, I get it, but the time for good ideas is over. And I've always hated that expression because the time for good ideas never fucking ends. It doesn't end the moment you start or the moment you're operating. The time for good ideas is right there.

It applies to everything in life. As new information comes in, you need to be able to set your fucking ego down and change your mind. Yeah. And nobody does it. Yeah, nobody does it.

No, but you, you can train yourself to do that.

Slaughtered is a flip-flopper. If you do it just in everyday life, talking about politics, like, no, new information came on and I fucking changed my mind. My thinking has evolved.

I saw your clip yesterday. You said those exact words on that, on that clip from a couple of days ago. And no, you do. And so think about this statement. Freedom of choice can best be summed up as freedom to change your mind. If you don't have freedom to change your mind, you don't have freedom of choice. You just took away your most cherished human feature, your freedom to choose. And you can't choose if you can't change your fucking mind off new information. And so you're never, ever marry yourself to a plan, even if you worked for 1,000 hours on that thing, even if it's your plan. Your, you know, your, your version of what happened. As soon as you find contradicting information, go with the flow, man. This is— that's how nature works. And you're never— no, you can keep going down the wrong path, but you're going to experience the same thing, just like those extinct species I was talking about. You're going to be extinct, and the learning feedback loop will catch up with you. And that's, that's the case here. So, you know, still with all this, I did not believe we were going in.

I thought this was just a bluff, kind of like what I feel like today with Iran, that it's a massive bluff.

But do you think it's a bluff?

I'm— well, that's where I'm astute enough through experience to know that what I think and hope for is not reality. So I'm not sure. Obviously, uh, we're getting to the point where the point of no return, where you can't even— the bluff gets called and you got no other option but attack. And, uh, well, I know we're going to talk about that later, so I don't want to go off topic. But anyway, I still didn't believe, and then we deployed. I was like, okay, we're getting on planes, we're going to Saudi Arabia. And, uh, landed in Saudi Arabia. It was a surreal scene there. The middle of the desert was transformed into a mega metropolis of tents and generators and every accoutrement you could imagine. The logistic capability of our country is, you know, beyond comprehension.

KBR is a powerful company, isn't it?

There you go again. Yep. And you're right. and that's what was happening. And C-17s were landing every 5 minutes. Blackout, land, blackout, takeoff. They'd land, taxi, guys with NODs in forklifts would come flying up to the back of it, unload the pallets. The C-17 did a hot turn right back out to the runway. Not, you know, blackout, night vision goggle, takeoff, gone. 5 minutes later, next one comes in, and that was all night. For every night, for day after day after day. So everything was there. And as soon as we got on the ground, we had to find our way through this maze of tents to the, the JOC, you know, the, the center of everything. And right away, the first thing I came in on, they'd just gotten out of a VTC with Franks, and Franks was pissed off. He was like, this plan sucks. and I didn't mention the operational part of the plan. The plan was basically this: there will be a frontal attack from the south and an airfield seizure of the Baghdad International Airport. And we were like, what in the fuck? Why would they do that? We just learned this lesson of through, with, and by.

We have Kurds in the north, we have all the Shiites in the south, we have a force on both sides of Baghdad that will fight against Saddam and his Sunni henchmen that we can trust. And we know there's no other method, there's no other way to successfully do an expeditionary military operation unless you do it through, with, and by. Because as soon as you do it on your own, that xenophobia and that collateral damage all begins wearing against you. You lose the hearts and minds. You're not making good decisions because you don't live there. But, you know, there was none of that. And Franks luckily called it out. He said, just like Afghanistan, this is all target-oriented instead of enemy-oriented. And, you know, that was the first thing I heard. And I was like, again, I'm giving him credit because credit's due. That's incredibly insightful. That's what everything should have been focused on. Well, that second day, our unit commander got sick, had to be sent back to the States, and I was promotable to colonel. I was already promotable on the command list, so they made me the unit commander. And, you know, the general, the JSOC general, is the same one from Afghanistan.

So, you know, it was not probably a happy moment for him that now I'm the unit commander, but he was under so much pressure from Franks, he had no other choice. And Franks, you know, again, because he knew I was the AFO commander, was a big supporter of me and the unit working like AFO. And so we immediately started coming up with a new plan while we were in Saudi Arabia, brought everyone together again, and we were like, what do we need to do? And we settled on a couple things. First was, we don't— let's not just, you know, do the cookie-cutter approach. What do we need to operate behind enemy lines, and what do we need to do to be successful for the overall mission? The mission was was multi-pronged. It was kill or capture Saddam and his Deca 52 and find WMDs if they're out there. And so we already concluded there's no WMDs.

Sounds like an easy task. Just look for the air conditioner on the roof.

Ain't the guy taking a piss?

Taking a piss on the wall.

Yeah. So we changed it to an effects-based operation. Everything we did had to have an effect. So that's what effects-based operations are. It's not, not the thing you're doing, it's the effect you're trying to achieve. So they weren't going to change the massive frontal attack from the south out of Kuwait, which was divisions lined up. They weren't going to change that, but maybe we could make a little bit more efficient for them by creating an effect that the main attack was really coming from the Western Desert. And so how do you do that? Well, it turns out we were in the coalition part of this thing, so we had the Brits there and they sent an SBS, so the equivalent of, uh, Brit SEALs, uh, the 5th Special Forces Group, the same guys we worked with in Afghanistan, all the same guys were there just like us. They were going to go in, in desert mobility vehicles, and the Aussies were there. The Aussie SAS or SASR was there too. So our thought was we take all 4 elements and, you know, Each of these elements had between 10 and 20 vehicles, desert mobility of all types.

And we thought, when you looked on the map, let's look at this as a whole. Let's use, let's create the impression that the main attack is coming from the west via the swarm. Let's swarm, move forward at the same time, all in a massive, about 100-mile salient. Let's move to the east toward the built-up areas, which is Fallujah, Tikrit, Baji. Let's move like this to create the impression. They'll get calls throughout the sector. Hey, there's guys here. There's guys here. There's guys here. And eventually they'll think the main attack's coming from the west. They'll reposition forces, make it more efficient, thin the lines that are facing the guy, the main attack from the south. So it was effects space ops with swarming. And you would think that'd be a no-brainer, but we immediately got pushback. You can't do that. 1991, every guy, every element that was Scud hunting was rolled up. You know, you know the story of Bravo 2-0. The unit had guys Scud hunting. They had to go on the run. And this is again where, why you have to have updated subject matter experts. We were like, it's no longer relevant. And it's no longer relevant for what we call J squared, which is JDAMs and Javelins.

We now had JDAMs and Javelins. JDAMs give you the ability to point and shoot either with a laser. You can talk them in, but laser is the best way. You can use handheld. Lasers. You just touch that vehicle, that target you want hit, and the aircraft punches in the code, releases the bomb, and the bomb maneuvers its way, precision strike onto target. So JDAMs, and then the Javelin was a game changer for defending against armor. You can engage as far out as you can see. The thermal sight on the Javelin is what makes it, you know, really the weapon that it is, the great weapon. The thermal sight's amazing, uh, and so you just lock in on a target and fire that Javelin, and you'll destroy, especially in 2001, any armored vehicle, uh, in the planet. And so, you know, now it changes the equation. Thin-skinned vehicles can take on an armored formation because you have Javelins. You got to know how to use them and you got to employ them at the right distance, but it changed the equation. So we got approval. Next, we had to get approval from all our foreign and even our SF counterparts.

They were all stationed in Jordan. So we flew over to Jordan, had this great meeting with all of them. They were all like, fuck yeah, it makes so much sense. We're part of the swarm. Then we got down to the details. It's like, okay, Hey, let's exchange frequencies. And all of a sudden, this high-ranking intelligence guy who was there stepped in and goes, you can't do that. You're not allowed to exchange. American freaks cannot be used by foreigners. Doesn't matter who the ally is without special permission from I don't know who. We're like, okay, well, that doesn't make any sense. So we can't talk to them? What if they're ambushed and they need us to come to help? How are they supposed to call out for help? Well, you're going to have to figure that out. I can't violate security protocols. So the next thing we did was we had the Iridium sat phones, and luckily the SF guys had them already. So it was just a matter of exchanging phone numbers. I can't remember if it was the Brits that didn't have them or the Aussies, but we gave them our extra without— once the intel guy was gone, we gave them the iridiums and then we literally exchanged phone numbers.

And that, you know, it sounds, it sounds superfluous, but that became a huge force multiplier because we were updating each other as we went along, getting smarter from each sector. You know, they're already up here ahead of us. They haven't met any resistance, so we can probably move a little faster. you know, on this next leg. And, you know, we had a number of encounters. We hit 4 targets that we were told to hit. They were all dry holes, but they all had people. They all had Iraqis on them. And we learned a lot from each time. We learned there was no plan. No one knew anything about WMDs, and they certainly seemed to be truthful in the way they told us it. We had, we had a battlefield interrogation team with us. So we had, you know, psychs, we had guys who made their living off interrogating people. We brought them with us across the border behind lines. So we were learning, we were exchanging that knowledge. So this swarm, you know, was getting stronger with every mile it passed. And, and we made it. We found no WMDs. We went all the way to where the built-up area starts, Tharthar Lake, Haditha Dam, Fallujah, and now we're entering a new phase of the operation.

And I should add, right before we got there, the SBS had an incident which just underscores why you need Iraqi Americans, why you need cultural advisors, why you need linguists, whatever you want to call them. The SBS, a bunch of Bedouins came up on their position. And, you know, a lot of people don't know this, but the Brits take breaks to have their tea. And they were having tea when these 3 Bedouins came up and they, hey, you know, you want some tea? Tea? No, no, no. And, you know, and it was described to me, one of the guys, it was a weird encounter, but the Bedouins just waved them off. And left. And, you know, we're hearing this and we're like, dude, every fucking Bedouin since, you know, cell phones came out has a cell phone. They all talk to each other. They're all incredibly territorial. If you're on, you know, when you drive through the desert, doesn't matter if it's Iraq, Jordan, you come across these cairns everywhere. Cairn's a pile of rocks. Those mark Bedouins' territory. And other Bedouins know you don't go into that area. That's their desert. And somehow they fucking patrol that shit and know everybody in there exactly where they are.

They know all the terrain. So the SBS sat back down to FT, and minutes later they were surrounded. I don't know how many. I think their initial report said 50 to 100. Uh, the— because they hadn't thought through it, panic set in. Most guys hoofed it, ran, left the vehicles. Uh, the Bedouins captured their desert mobility vehicles.

Holy shit.

Their radios, a bunch of weapon systems. Yeah, it was pretty bad. But that's just—

that's why we don't share freaks.

Exactly, exactly. So that guy But even if you did that, you know, all he could do is get on and call the freak. And freaks change, you know, whatever, every 48 hours.

I'm just being an ass.

No, it's a, it's, it's a natural point. You have to, you have to say that to that guy's, you know, uh, to the point that he made. It's, it's relevant. But it's more, you know, I didn't say this about the, the guys that we had. Desert Mobility has been a unit mission from way before Desert Storm in '91. And again, same, just like, you know, the dog thing, it was guys going, what, what capability do we not have that we might need based on threats in the world? And they started doing desert mobility. And it's, it's, it is tough training. It's time-intensive training. It's arduous training. You're living in the desert. You're freezing, you're hot, you got to figure out fuel loads, you got to figure out routes, you got to be a mobility expert because you're constantly getting stuck. Every off-roader knows this. Uh, you've got to understand how to drive, you know, which requires guys to go to all kinds of off-road driving schools because the techniques are everything. You can, you can go over a boulder, a 5-foot-high boulder, with a vehicle, but you got to know how to do it, how to turn the wheel the right way, how to accelerate the right way.

So, you know, the unit, the, the PhD level of knowledge on desert mobility, I can't, I can't do it justice with adjectives. And these guys embodied that, and they were serious as shit about it. I've been on multiple training exercises, and, uh, you you realized the power of accumulated knowledge. And a big part of that is contingencies, always thinking through things, knowing, you know, if this, then this. You know, I think we talked about lone survivor. If a recon team is ever compromised, there's only one option. It's abort the mission. Once you're compromised, it's abort, uh, unless you're going to disarm a nuclear weapon that's going to blow up the world. That would be maybe the one exception, but you abort the mission. And that's the kind of thing that only training, only talking about it, living it, and then pounding it into the heads of not just your colleagues but the guys, the new guys that come in. And so the unit was incredibly steeped We ran into Bedouins about a week after that. It was just my headquarters element because I came out in the field, and I'll get to that in a second, came forward.

We ran into Bedouins too, but we had our Iraqi Americans with us. I had one of them with me, and we immediately asked them, hey, what can we do for you? What's going on? They want to know who you are. What are we doing? and I told Saif, my Afghan, I said, tell them we're Canadians and we're here to evacuate the Canadian embassy. We're on our way to Baghdad to get the Canadians out. We have no part of this war. We don't want any trouble with you. We're not here to take over your country. We'll be in and out. Bedouins were like, thank you very much. Would you like to have some green tea with us? They put their— they put the tea on. I'm like, I ain't fucking drinking that shit. I put it up to my mouth, you know, because I was the commander. Saif had some, but they left. And, uh, you know, nothing happened. Probably reported, hey, there's a bunch of Canadians out here. And, you know, to Canadians watching your show, uh, I'm sorry I had to—

whoops—

yeah, pretend I was a Canadian. But that was the way it was. We found a a forward operating base. It was the Iraqi equivalent of Area 51. It was the middle of the desert. It was where they did special testing, literally in the middle of the desert. Perfect for us. We turned that into our base of operations. That's where I flew out in a small plane, landed on the highway, got out of the plane and set up my command and control element there, which was 5 guys. And, you know, same thing, lessons learned. Stay small, stay nimble, always command and control as far forward as possible because you have to. If the guys are hungry, if the guys are cold, if the guys are, you know, are injured, are, you know, losing their motivation, you have to live that with them. You have to experience that with them. It's the context I was talking about why a disconnected chain of command can't make good decisions. So the way you do that is you connect. You connect with the environment, and that's what we did. We brought in a— the Rangers— the airfield seizure was called off by Franks, so he had a full regiment of Rangers doing nothing.

So I got a battalion of Rangers attached to me. It was actually two companies. 160th guys, we brought them out, Little Birds specifically. And then we started operating out of this desert hide site and we called ourselves the Wolverines after the famous B-movie. What's it called? Dawn, not Alone, it's Red Dawn. So we called ourselves the Wolverines. And, uh, and that's what we were known as, just operating behind enemy lines. We are what you need us to be. And immediately, because of the phase of operations, you know, the Thunder Run happened, uh, and, you know, the government fell. But Saddam, the Deca 52, is 51 other closest advisors were all on cards, and that's who we were trying to capture. And I was Same thing affects space op. We could either go try to find intel to try to go find all 51 of them, or we can create an effect that forces them to make mistakes. What's that effect? Well, there's only two basic lines of drift with roads on them that you can use to get out of Iraq to the north and west. One's Highway 12, the other's Highway 1. If we block those highways and word gets back they're blocked, they're not even going to try to get out.

They're going to go to ground wherever they're at, Baghdad to Tikrit, and we're going to have a much better chance of finding them all. So our mission flexed. It turned into what we called LOC interdiction. Line of communication is what LOC stands for. Interdiction, and we set up, you know, fixed battle positions on these roads. But to do it, I needed more people. We were already running low, and I needed— we were now in the built-up area, and I told you it was a fecked space. We wanted them to think the main attack was coming from the west. So again, ideas come from the ground up. It was like, sir, we should get some tanks attached to us. I'm like, that's a great great freaking idea. So my buddy who I told you about in Afghanistan, Jimmy, was working as— he had worked— he had, because he was highly respected, was chosen as to be the war liaison officer for the head 3-star general on the ground. So he was his special advisor, you know, not his aide, but his special advisor. So I called Jimmy first. I go, Jimmy, here's, here's what we need to do.

Here's why we need to do it. If you can kind you know, begin desensitizing, get a feel for what the general thinks of this, but make the idea, you know, his idea. Make it seem like this is a great idea. If only we had tanks. And Jimmy did that. I sent the request up through my chain, the JSEC chain, and the first thing the ops officer, JSEC officer, said, it'd never fly. No one's ever attached tanks to a special ops unit, and no one's going to attach them to you guys. Because no one thinks you're going to have anything substantive to do with the attack. I'm like, yeah, well, just pass it up anyway. Pass it up. Approved on the spot. He calls me right back. He goes, I have no idea how this happened, but somehow this got approved. So you need to find a way to get C-17s to allow C-17s to land. We're going to— General Franks is going to send you up a platoon of tanks. So Franks approved 10 M1 Abrams tanks to be sent to this hodgepodge Wolverine group in the middle of the desert. Yeah, we scraped out an airfield.

We had some great CCT guys who set that up. They were with us the whole time. Scraped out an airfield that night, set up the beanbag lights, in come C-17s, disgorged this platoon of of, you know, M1 tank guys with a platoon leader. And I was the first guy to walk up to them, and their first question could have been, are you a freaking alien? What is going on here? How did— I'm like, what were you guys told? They're like, we were told, get your tanks ready to get on an airplane. You're going to link up with the new group, and you're going to be attached to them. I'm like, they didn't tell you who we are? They're like, no. And so I had this conversation with their commander and, you know, he went— I watched him go through all 5 emotional phases of disbelief, shock. But in the end, he's like, this is cool as shit. You know, he was really motivated and they were too. So we had 10 tanks now. So this ruse that we're operating on this effects-based op, we now want to show the Iraqis the tanks. and the city we're nearest to is Tikrit and Baji, and Tikrit is Saddam's hometown.

We knew through intel that his best troops were stationed in Tikrit, so it was a robust defense in Tikrit. It was nothing we were going to be able to do anything against, but, but again, what effect do we want? We want these guys to throw down their weapons. We want them to abandon their tanks. We want them to run for the hills. We don't want them to fight back. We want to create this sense of hopelessness. So as we're planning that and moving to, you know, rehearsing how close we can get to Tikrit, you know, before we're detected, my original group was attacked by what was described as 50 to 100 Fedayeen in pickup trucks. And This was a massive firefight. And again, JDAMs, you know, the J-Squares was supreme. And I should say, I told you about J-Square. We also had D-Squared, which was also two new things on the battlefield. We had dogs and we had drones. So we brought the dogs with us. We brought special kennels. With temperature control in them because they can't handle the total heat. They won't work the same way. So we had special kennels that actually had little mini air conditioners in them embedded in our trucks.

Wow.

And we brought 2 dogs and we had the first, you know, self-piloted drones.

Oh, shit.

Yep. And so we were able to sweep our— whenever we went into patrol base, rest over day position, We were able to sweep our position with concentric circles. And it was while sweeping this position that one of the guys, at the exact same time the dog began to growl, saw this small armada of pickup trucks screaming through the desert right at us. So, you know, probably someone else from a distance saw us, some Bedouin called them. They were heading right for our patrol base. And probably, I think the reports were there were 10 pickups because I said there was, you know, 25 to 50 guys. And they just, you know, annihilated them with JDAMs. There's films of F-16s dropping bombs that literally hit into the back bed of the pickup truck, which is packed full of Fedayeen guys. and then the, you know, the, uh, that's the JDAMs, and then the Javelins were just blowing up pickup trucks from, you know, 4 or 5 kilometers away. So it was great proof of concept right there. Um, but we're doing the recce to figure out how to do this mission, and the mission we came up with was we want to show— do a show of force operation, that's what we called it, on the edge of Tikrit.

Tikrit goes right up against the desert desert. There's a highway, that's Highway 1, that is the demarcation line between pure desert for hundreds of miles and built up, you know, a couple hundred thousand person town. So we, you know, we sent this mission to higher, said this is what we're going to do. It was approved. But as I said to you, the Thunder Run mission had just happened. So everyone was talking about the Thunder Run. you know, and the Thunder Run was M1 tanks and Bradleys that just floored it and went through a bunch of enemy fighters, went right to Baiap Airport, which was undefended. There was no enemy there, occupied Baiap, and that was kind of a dagger through the heart of the Iraqi defense. Once Baghdad International fell, they, you know, panic set in. And they fled. But it had the wrong effect on, you know, these commanders, these generals. They were like, just do a thunder run into Tikrit. Well, we were Panders and Pinsgowers, you know, non-armored vehicles. The tanks, we had been operating for about a week when we pulled the mission off, and we already were down to 5 tanks.

It took 10 tanks to make 5. They they break by the day. And so on that mission, we only had— we were down to 5 tanks. So we went to Tikrit. Uh, the first guys up were our guys in the unarmored vehicles. They went to a cloverleaf intersection. So highways just like in America, they occupied the cloverleaf. The pillars that support the clover were their cover. Because we don't have armor. We're— these are mechanized forces that are out there. And then the tanks crawled forward, and we put the tanks on the 4-car node. It was a, it was a classic cobra leaf, so there were 4 off-ramps. We put 1 tank on each with the 5th tank up on top, and, and then just sat there and monitored, looked at Takrit. I remember it. I was, uh, 3 kilometers out in the desert. My little command and control element, we moved forward with them. I could see the Cloverleaf, I could see Takrit, and, uh, you know, it was dead quiet. Uh, and, you know, the guys were reporting the same from the Cloverleaf. Uh, not a creature is moving, there's no cars, there's no nothing.

And this is again where experience comes in. We learned that whenever a city is completely quiet and without movement or motion, something is awry. And, you know, the sub-element commander there knew that, passed it to his guys. They were like, guys, stay alert, stay alert, there's something going on here. And sure enough, a couple minutes later, it just you know, opened up, Tikrit opened up. There were gun positions on top of buildings. There were gun jeeps that were positioned behind buildings. They would pop out like angry cockroaches, fire machine gun fire at us, pop back in.

Shit.

There were positions everywhere. There were positions in buildings, on top of buildings, garages. And, you know, the tanks, the in the initial, uh, fuselage, the tanks, you know, you're in a losing battle against an M1A2 Abrams tank with their thermal sights because they just started locking in and blowing these, you know, positions away. But what we realized was the only guys who were initially shooting were the guys who were on guard duty. Guys were waking up, and the fire, no matter how many things we blew up The fire continued to intensify. No, and Bill, my, my, the guy who was in charge of the guys on the, on the Cloverleaf, was calling me. He's going, hey, this fire's pretty intensive, uh, you know, uh, we're just continuing to follow the plan. I'm like, roger that, uh, keep your back, you know, the last thing I told him in the briefing, keep your back to the desert at all times. So, uh Bill calls me back a third time, and I can hear the staccato of.50 cal firing in the background, main guns. And I'm like, fuck, this is a fucking all-out battle. And he goes, hey man, it's getting really hairy, uh, you know, what do you want me to do?

And I said, well, as soon as you think it's untenable, I want you to pull back in the desert and pull out. You've already accomplished our mission, which is to make them believe that the main effort is coming from the west and that these tanks have already arrived. So they're— it's hopeless, you know, we've got them surrounded and the guys down south have no escape. And he's like, roger that. Well, as soon as that happened, uh, my SATCOM radio came to life and it was the same general that I talked about in Afghanistan. And he said, what do you think you're doing? Oh man. And I'm like, uh, this McCrystal? No, it's his underling, Daley. And so I just very calmly reiterated to him what the plan was that he had already approved. This is a show of force operation. We're on the edge of the crit in thin-skinned vehicles. We showed them the tanks. That was the purpose. We're returning fire. We've already blown up a number of vehicles, a number of enemy positions. Look, this is at least a brigade of fighters, and there's mechanized vehicles. We can already see the mechanized vehicles.

And, you know, we're— it's a total mismatch. It's not our mission. And he goes, I don't care what you told him. I want you to drive into that city and take out those positions. And then he was like, "Serpent out." I'm like, "Fuck." So Bill gets back on. So all the guys forward have this SATCOM frequency on their radio. So every vehicle hears this. So it's freezing cold out, fucking bullets are cracking, the sonic crack above their heads. They know it's pretty hard to make a unit operator realize he's outgunned and outmanned, but they all knew that. That was a no-brainer. And so Bill calls me, he goes, you know, Panther, what do you want me to do? And I go, no change, continue on with mission. As soon as you think, as soon as you think the time is right, pull back into the desert and head back to our patrol base. And he goes, Roger, I just have one problem right now. One of the tanks ran over some telephone wire when it went into position, and now it's tangled in the track and it can't move. And as soon as he told me that, 5 guys jumped out of, uh, 5 operators jumped out of one of the vehicles and ran down to that vehicle and started working on it with, you know, infrared headlamps, trying to detangle with these tanker guys the wire.

But we couldn't move. So we were stuck. So a couple seconds after that, my Iridium phone rings, and it's one of the general's second, a guy who would go on to become a four-star general. And he goes, hey, Pete, I know what you're saying. And, you know, I just want to tell you that I think it's a mistake. And if you don't go into Tikrit, you know, I don't think you're going to be in command much longer. This is a subordinate. And, you know, I'd already had this conversation with myself in Afghanistan— the mission, the men, and me. You know, what's my mission? It's an effects-based op. My men, they're counting on me. I will never send my men in unarmored, thin-skinned vehicles into— to attack a brigade that's in fighting positions in a city. You know, this group happened to be the same group that was in Somalia. So they'd already experienced a real-world urban swarm and how helpless you are against an enemy who knows the terrain and can swarm you in an urban center. So there was no doubts in their mind about the senselessness of such an order. And I couldn't talk to this guy, and I didn't want to because I was going back and forth with the guys.

Bill's telling me it's still stuck. We're taking some really heavy fire. And I'm like, I just told the guy, hey, I'll get back to you. Roger. Hung it up. Got on another line. I— there— one of our contingencies were if anything happens, there's, uh, um, 160 attack helicopters. They're about 70 miles south of us in a loiter position. They weren't the ones we brought out. So I had their freak. I called them up. I go, gave him the code word, we need you ASAP. Uh, 15 minutes later, I heard him come in, uh, fly forward. They went through their entire basic load of rocket fire, machine gun fire. Uh, two of the Apaches were hit. They had to pull back. Uh, and at that moment, uh, Bill said to me, hey, we got the— we got the— looks like we got the telephone wire untangled. Looks like we can pull back. What do you want me to do? I'll do whatever you tell me. And I said, no change, pull back into the desert, uh, and I'll meet you back at the safe house. Roger that. And, you know, I know he was not going to be on again, but immediately the radio crackled to life, and once again, what did I just hear you say?

I said, sir, it's the same thing. This is the mission that you approved already. They are not capable of going into Tikrit. Now you listen to me. And then dead silence. And so I was like, and so I tried 3 times the standard thing, even though, you know, I was doing it slowly because I want to build off that. And he was already gone. He told me later, he goes, it wouldn't have mattered. We were, once you said that, no, we were not going to turn around. And there was nothing to do. He goes, you know, we would have been cut to pieces. Turned out, I later found out from a guy, a staff officer, he was so pissed off he yanked, you know, he had the, uh, yeah, he yanked the cord from his push-to-talk handset out of the radio thing and broke it and stormed out of the tent. Uh, oh my. So why, what, I mean Yeah, so this is— you can, you can tell this dynamic. Why the fuck would you want to turn a diversion into the main— he wanted another thunder run. He wanted— it's this same thing I was telling you about, hubris, emotion.

You know, I'll be famous, we'll have, we'll have done a thunder run with thin-skinned vehicles. You can do it, they did it. And it's like, we're not a tank division. You know, a tank division has something like 200 tanks. I got 5. And they're all holding on by a thread, and I have nothing to support the 5 with. I have no, like, maintenance group or nothing like that, and my guys are in thin-skinned vehicles. But, you know, it was an eye-opener, and, uh, it was good. It was— in a way, it was positive for me because, uh, you know, it, it was the final thing I needed to learn. You know, I have no interest in compromising my integrity to get to the next rank. And, and so when we got back, it was, you know, sun's coming up. I got— we got back before them. I, like I did every night, I was waiting for them, or every morning waiting for them. They got out of their vehicles, you know, first check themselves and the vehicles for bullet holes and damage, and then The sergeant major of the group, code name Armani, made a beeline for me.

And, and, you know, he was fucking— I can still see him vividly, the classic, uh, you know, example of an operator who's been in combat all night. His equipment is still perfectly ergonomically organized on his body, his weapon's still perfect. His rest of his body is in tatters. His shirt is ripped. His hair is matted down by, you know, the combination of sweat and, you know, the headsets that he's wearing on his head. His face is full of black shit, probably oil coming up from machine guns that he was firing. His eyes, you know, zombie-like eyes from you know, another vampire night of staying up all night on 2 or 3 hours sleep in the day. And he just made a beeline to me and he said, "Sir, we heard every word of the conversation in our vehicle. We were hanging on every word, and I just wanted to shake your hand and say thank you for what you did." And like, that moment to me was like the highlight of my, you know, my military career, tied for the greatest thing that, you know, greatest feedback I ever got my military career. And, uh, you know, that's also just re-emphasizes that's what it's about, you know.

If you're not taking care of your people when you make a decision, then you're making a senseless decision. And, uh, and that's what happened there. But we now had a better expectation for you know, what was about to happen. And, and that very next night we went out again to patrol the desert and we discovered a brigade of mech. And the guys discovered them from a max standoff distance. So they sent, I think, 4 ATVs forward and each of the ATVs had laser pointers and they just sat from about a kilometer and a half in front of this mech brigade, and they just touched each vehicle with a laser and a JDAM evaporated the vehicles. After the first 3, you know, the Iraqis were like, this is some voodoo shit. They just abandoned the rest of their vehicles, and we destroyed a brigade's worth of mech equipment that night. That next night is when the main attack all stalled at the Karbala Gap. I don't know if you remember that. They were all stalled. They were out of gas, couldn't move any further. And, you know, they all set up their nightly VTC with CENTCOM and Franks got on there and he said, you know, the night before they had sent a swarm of Apaches, 100 Apaches to go in and attack this defensive position.

And you might remember that something like 60 The Apaches were shot up, they had to retreat. You know, Apaches can't operate on their own. And so it failed. And Trump— or Trump— Franks got on there and he said, you know, this is why I was against the original plan. Look what you guys are doing. You've just driven into the country, you haven't even made contact yet with any significant enemy. 45 guys up north who just destroyed a brigade worth of armor. And, you know, he counted the vehicles. He's like— and then he read them, like, 46 tanks, 38, uh, you know, rocket launchers, all this shit. And I later was told by one of the guys, uh, who was in one of the divisions, a staff officer, he goes, once, once he did that, he goes, it was very effective because we were like like, if those freaking unit guys can do that in those Pinsgowers, we can do it in M1s. And he said that was a big motivation for, you know, their— the ops that they pulled off, the additional thunder runs they did to take the rest of Baghdad. So, you know, it, it worked out for the better.

Um, I got a call from my contact in DOD. He's like, we're hearing everything. We're listening to radio. It's amazing. And I just want to— but I, I need to get some feedback from you. And I go, yeah, sure. First thing I want to do is thank you for, you know, finding and then being able to send those Iraqi Americans over to me before we launched out. Like, please tell your boss and you, thank you so much for what you did. We couldn't have done anything without the Iraqi Americans. And he goes, oh man, that's good to know because we're getting real heat back here from the Pentagon. About the whole system. And I go, well, what's the heat? And they go, well, it turns out you're the only one who took the Iraqi Americans with you into the, into the box. And I'm like, what? So 30 Iraq— they sent 30 Iraqi Americans over. We interviewed all 30, picked 2, our 2. So there were still 28 of them. The problem was they didn't have security clearances. So even us, before we took off, my higher headquarters intel guy, great guy, comes up to me, goes, Pete, I hate to be the one to say this to you, but you can't take those guys with you.

And I'm like, why? And he goes, because they don't have security clearance and you're the most secure organization in the military. And I go, but they're Americans. And he goes, yeah. And I go, and we're Americans. And he goes, yeah. And I go, to me, that's the only thing they had to pass. Their fellow Americans, they volunteered to leave their jobs and fly to nowhere for no task. No one ever told them what they were going to do. These two are actually on Pinskowers riding into combat. They've participated in 6 combat firefights already. You know, the funny thing about the metamorphosis, if you looked at them, you couldn't even tell at this point they were Iraqi Americans. They had jungle floppy hats on. The guys that outfitted them, they had their own kit. They were, you know, they looked like kind of like support guys for operators or whatever, but they were completely ingrained. And I was just in shock that no one else took them. And I said, look, most of the commanders probably, you know, got treed by a chihuahua over the intel thing or didn't understand how much they'd need them. But I bet you they all understand it now.

So don't let anyone talk you out of it. Get those other 28 and, and keep bringing them in because we're going to need more and more of these guys so we rotate these guys out. And he goes, okay, great. I have one other favor I need of you. He goes, yesterday Ambassador Bremer took over. He's in charge of all ops in Iraq now because Saddam, you know, the government had fallen. And I go, yeah. And he goes, he doesn't have any Iraqi Americans with them and And remember, the plan said no Iraqi Americans because they're too logistically problematic. We got to put them up, we got to feed them. We already have enough guys. And I'm like, okay. And he goes, so if you could give one of your guys who— and I hate to say this, but your best guy to him, you'll be doing something for everybody in country. It'll help him navigate the decisions he's got to make. And there was a rift between DOD. Bremer was State Department. So there was a rift. The DOD did not agree that State, which if you think about it, shame on again the Bush administration, you don't change in the middle of the battle.

You don't turn it over to a State Department guy. And Bremer was flying into the country. He'd never been to Iraq before. Holy shit. So he flew in that day and I said, yeah, I can do it. And he goes, okay, you need to go to the green zone and make contact with them to give it. We were told anyway, we, you know, the 4th ID was coming in, the Marines were coming in, it was time to go back to Baghdad to do, you know, find the rest of the Deck of 52. So we were coming in anyway, and, uh, you know, we drove back into Baghdad, and then I took Saif to the Green Zone to where Bremer was setting up in Saddam's palace. And so when I got there It was a beehive of activity. Contractors were repairing the new skylights that had been made by the JDAMs, the cruise missiles that took the initial group out. The air conditioners were being put in every window. They were even working on the pool, the swimming pool, Saddam's swimming pool at the time. And so Saif, my Iraqi-American, said to me, what I was thinking already as we walked through the, you know, unobtrusive opulence of the palace entryway.

He said, this doesn't feel right. And I was like, fucking, you are so right, man. It does not feel right. And we walked into the palace again, beehive of activity. I asked a guy, hey, is there anyone from the State Department I can talk to who could tell me how to link up with Ambassador Bremer? 'Cause that guy right there is the head guy. Gray ponytail, reading glasses, barking out orders to people. So I walk up to him. Again, I have not showered yet, nothing. I come walking up to him with my Iraqi-American, and I introduced myself, gave him the context. Here's why I'm here. I was asked, I don't know if you know who Paul Wolfowitz is. He's Deputy Secretary of Defense. Uh, his staff asked me to bring— this is one of my most trusted guys— down here so you can have a cultural advisor for all the decisions you can make. And, you know, guys, you could tell he wasn't really— yeah, yeah. And then I finished talking and he goes, okay, so I know who Paul Wolfowitz is, and Paul Wolfowitz is DOD. But let me tell you something, Colonel. This is a Department of State op, and we don't need any DOD assets here, and we don't need any cultural advisors.

Now, your boy here, I can give him $60 a day to be an interpreter at the front gate. We definitely need that, so I can put him in right away. But that's all. And if you'll excuse me, I got to get back to work. And he's like, get that air conditioner over the other side. And I turned to Saif and he goes, he goes, sir, is this for real? Is this guy for the real? I cannot believe this. How are they going to talk? How are they going to work with the people? How are they going to know where the enemy is? How are they going to know how to fix things? How are they going to be able to tell the people, hey, help is coming, we're going to fix this up, it's going— here's what's happening. I'm like, Saif, I don't know, buddy. And I remember the moment because it was the first moment in my life that I felt embarrassment for being like— for my country. This guy embarrassed me, you know, being a fellow American. But, you know, Saif, it was like, that's why you got guys with you. You always want a wingman, you know, to bring you back to reality.

And I'm like, fucking great point. I turn to this guy and I go, look, I go, look, dude, where is Ambassador Bremer right now? And he goes, he's in a meeting. Why do you want to know? And I go, where's the meeting? And he goes, well, it's somewhere where you're not allowed to go to because you don't have an access badge and you're not cleared to hear what he's talking about. So I'm like, you know, this is when you're again staring in the eyes of a madman. Don't, you know, don't become a madman yourself. I look around. In the hallway, this Magic Marker written sign that says conference room and an arrow. And I, and you know, it just made sense. He'd be down this hallway in the conference room if he's having a meeting. And I go, yeah, okay, thanks for your time, Bob, because he was calling me Bob the whole time. And where are you going? And I go, we're going to see Ambassador Bremer. And he goes, you can't go down there. He starts following us. Well, you don't have a clearance. You don't have badges. He's in a meeting. It's a really important meeting.

I go, what's the meeting about? You know, over my shoulder. I'm not going to patronize this guy anymore. And he goes, it's a meeting on what day to pick the trash up. And I go, Saif, what day should they pick the trash up? He goes, it does not matter. Any day but Saturday. You don't pick the trash up on Saturday. And the guy's ignoring Saif. He's like, you know, not good enough. And I go, is that a good enough answer for you? He goes, You are not allowed to go down there. So we come to this, the conference room, and it's, you know, 20-foot-high oak doors, ornately carved. You could tell this was, you know, Saddam's. And the doors were shut. I wiggled the handle, they were locked. But there was a crack in the door. And, you know, I put my face up to the crack and I could see inside. I could see Bremer and I could see all the individuals in the meeting. And the first pattern that jumped out was there were no Iraqis in there. These were all like State Department guys in suits talking about what day to pick the fricking trash up.

And the trash was a problem. Just like the guy said in the brainstorm mission, the infrastructure, there was no water, no power, no electricity. So no electricity, no water, and no sewage. So you couldn't flush toilets and there was no trash pickup. So there were mountains of trash. At this point, they were only like 10 to 20 feet high, but forming on every, every street. So I'm sitting there trying to listen to the meeting. This guy's behind us, he's going, I'm going to tell you one more time, you, you are not allowed in there. Pull your ears and your eyes away from that door, and you two need to get out of here. And this is where Saif, you know, shines. He goes, Sir, you hear something? I know the wind blow really hard around here, and all I can hear is a bunch of hot air right now. And the fucking guy turned around, stormed off in search of somebody to tell. Saif said, what do we do? I said, well, let's wait till the meeting ends. We sat there 4 more hours, and there was a window, you could see the sun going down.

It was martial law, so we had to be back to our safe house before sundown. We had ops that night too. I said, Saif, let's go. And he's like, sir, this can't be really happening. You know, they can't be really going forward without any Iraqi Americans. I'm like, yep, we'll try again. We'll come back. So we tried every day for, I think, the next 2 weeks. I would send a guy with Saif. We brought him up, re-offered every time. They would not take him. 6 weeks later, the trash piles were mountains, rat-infested mountains, no water, no power, no garbage pickup, no employment. Bremer's second day in command, he was allowed, UN allowed him to create decrees with the power of decrees. So decrees are only usually used by Despots and dictators. That's do this with no explanation what it's doing. And he disbanded the Iraqi military on his third day in country that he had never been in before and put 150,000 military men out of work. They already don't get barely paid anything. Now they have no money and they're part of the no power, you know, no sewage, no water, no hope for jobs.

And who are they pissed at?

Exactly, us. And then on top of all this, I told you it's 6 weeks later, there's still not— there's no messages going out to the Iraqi people. You know, the human animal can suffer for unthinkable amounts of time and can accomplish feats that, you know, no one can ever believe. Someone who— a ship sink can swim forever if they just know there's an island up in front of them. So what the most important thing that should have been happening during that time was someone, a combination of radio and pamphlets and guys going out to neighborhoods telling them, hey, here's what's going on. Everything's about to be rebuilt. We're putting these people on water, power. We've got to rewire the electricity to your house. And as Saif said, you can have the garbage picked up in hours. Just tell the guys on each block, if you move that trash to a certain location, you'll make this amount and you can pay them next to nothing. They'll do it because that's the way Iraqis are. So he's also sharing cultural, you know—

Knowledge.

Yeah, knowledge of these people. And that's a great solution. We should have picked that trash up. Not 6 weeks, you know, the first week we should have picked it up and then had these guys, okay, every Tuesday you guys bring the trash to the central location, uh, you'll get paid by weight, however much you bring we'll pay you. And, you know, same thing, that's why we said all the Iraqi Americans who work in sewage plants, water treatment plants, uh, electric generator plants, they all should have been deployed over there waiting, and then on the word, they should have gone to those facilities, hired other Iraqis, used their knowledge, their language, and turned the whole city back on. And a guy named Spider Marks, who was the head intel general during the initial invasion and those initial months after the invasion, along with his Iraqi intel counterpart wrote a paper and they said in that paper, and you can still access it online, it said the insurgency didn't, it's not an organic insurgency. We created that insurgency. The US through Bremer's bad decisions created the insurgency that we ended up fighting for, you know, 15 years.

And, uh, thousands of lives lost, man. So I think that's Iraq.

That is fucking unbelievable.

Yeah, so learn from it, you know. Listen to the guys on the ground. Never stop brainstorming. The time for new ideas never ends. Through, with, and by. Expeditionary warfare does not work. It never has, never will. You have no idea what people you've never lived with or spent time with need and what they expect. You've got to do it through, with, and by, and you've got to trust your subordinates and you got to use common sense. And all that was violated in that war.

That is unfucking believable from start to finish. Water truck, AC guy pissing on a wall, the tanks.

That's why We have to look at whenever they say there's a fucking enemy, we created our own fucking enemy. Yep. Wow.

For a logistics company.

Yeah. And in those first 6 weeks, you could drive anywhere you wanted in Baghdad. We drove. We always ate at the open-air cafes. Everyone we ran into would come up and we were in civilian clothes. We didn't want to, you know, create that, that sense of we were an invading force. Everyone came up to us, thank you for what you've done. Saddam is a tyrant. All we need is just some help getting back on our own feet. We can do this. You know, they wanted to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but we were the ones preventing them. We wanted to do it. And it goes back to your logistics thing. You know, we've got these contractors who should never have been focused focused on refurbishing the palaces. So his decree, his second decree after disbanding the military was a decree that repurposed all Saddam's property, all of his palaces, and there were a lot in-country as new military and State Department headquarters. So the infrastructure moved into all the palaces. We couldn't have done a thing more counterproductive not losing the hearts and minds of the people. Now we're in palaces, and for the State Department who ran the Green Zone, it just became a self-licking ice cream cone.

Their real mission became force protection. And with every IED, every car bomb, they ordered more people, more sandbags, thicker walls, higher walls, And when you order more people to do that, you got to order more food to feed them, more medics to take care of them, more facilities to house them. And so the Green Zone became a self-licking ice cream cone. It was just a thing whose mission was force protection of itself, not making the best decisions for the people, not figuring out, you know, where we needed combat ops and where we didn't.

That entire fucking war was bullshit.

Wow.

I don't even know what to say.

Yeah, except learn from it, you know.

I wonder how much money KBR made.

Billions. Every cafeteria, every—

every cafeteria, every hooch that was made, every Conex box, every air conditioner, every window, every shitter, the mail, the food.

Yep.

The bathrooms, the gas, everything. All of it.

And it was really focused on the wrong thing. We should have had minimal headquarters in that country. We didn't need, we certainly didn't need Bremmer. We certainly didn't need these massive military headquarters. We should have been using that effort to rebuild the infrastructure, the primary aspects of it, water, power, trash pickup, sewage, get that shit going. People got to live. And communicate with them. You know, they need to hear, they need some hope, and they were given no hope. And during that period, it changed from spring to summer, and the average temperature in Baghdad in the summer is 107 degrees. So it gets higher, a little lower, but it's always over 100. It's like living in Phoenix in the summer with no water, no power, no sewage, no job, Nowhere to go, no safety, because you now you got criminals and, you know, gangs terrorizing neighborhoods. So just, you know, the, the most important thing is that we learn from it and we don't ever allow that to happen again.

Man, no wonder they fucking hated us.

Yeah.

Well, want to take a break?

Sounds good.

See you later. World's tallest building.

What do you think, Sean? We're high.

Well, Pete, I just, I just— all that context that you just gave, and it's a lot of shit for people to listen to. In one episode. Yeah. Wow. The whole fucking war, man. So, uh, I can't remember if I asked this on the break or if I asked it before we took the break, but I, I said, I wonder how much money KBR made off the Iraq War. And I've always thought or known that's why we went in there was to enrich Cheney and his buddies. But so are you familiar with Claude?

Yeah.

Claude.

Yeah.

It's like probably not probably is the best AI consumer product out right now. So we pulled up Claude to see how much money Halliburton made off the war. Halliburton by— was by far the biggest corporate beneficiary of the post-9/11 wars. Here's a breakdown of what's known. The headline figure: KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, was estimated to have received at least $39.5 billion in federal contracts related to the Iraq War alone.

Unbelievable.

$39.5 billion fucking dollars. The broader GWAT picture: by 2008, Halliburton KBR had received more than $30 billion just for logistics work under the Pentagon's LOGCAP, Logistics logistics civil augmentation program contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The $39.5 billion figure captures the fuller decade-long picture. How it grew so fast. In 2003 alone, Halliburton received DOD contracts worth $4.3 billion, more than it had received in the entire previous 5 years combined. That year, it posted a record total revenue of $16.3 billion.

Wow.

The political backstory: the concept of privatizing military support services was first initiated in the early 1990s by Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense, and Halliburton got the contract to develop the model. Cheney later served as Halliburton's CEO from 1995 to 2000, then became vice president under Bush. The controversy: once it secured its contracts, Halliburton proceeded to vastly overcharge the Pentagon for basic services, even while doing Shady work that put U.S. troops at risk. The Defense Contract Audit Agency flagged major billing deficiencies, and the Pentagon's Inspector General launched a criminal investigation into fuel overcharging. Many of the deals were awarded without competitive bidding from other firms.

Wow.

In short, roughly $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts contracts over a decade, with an additional Afghanistan and broader GWOT work on top of that, making Halliburton KBR the single largest contractor of the entire post-9/11 war effort. The honest answer on a full total— the Afghanistan-only number was never as large or as cleanly tracked as the Iraq number. Most reporting on KBR's massive totals, the $16 billion KBR won from 2004 to 2006, or the overall $39.5 billion figure that covers Iraq and Afghanistan together, with Iraq being the far dominant share. Afghanistan was always the secondary theater for KBR in terms of contracts. Contract value. A rough estimate based on available data would put KBR Halliburton's Afghanistan-specific work in the range of $4 to $6 billion over the full 20-year war, but that's only an approximation. The bulk of the $39.5 billion figure was Iraq. The two wars were financially lopsided. Iraq was a far bigger contracting hands of—

Wow.

I wonder if anybody has any questions. Wow. On why we went to war in Iraq.

Yep. Even though the guys on the ground were questioning, what are we doing? Why would we leave Afghanistan? He saw it as a money thing. It's incredible.

Water trucks, air conditioners, and people taking a piss on the side of a bucking building. Yeah, and we found the YouTube video of Colin Powell briefing the UN with the slides.

Awesome.

What the fuck?

Yeah, decision-making, problem-solving.

Thanks, Claude.

Zum Beispiel Gartentouch Gartenhandschuhe nur 79 Cent oder einen Blumentopf zum Aufhängen, verschiedene Farben, nur 77 Cent. Entdecke jetzt alle Gartenprodukte in unseren Filialen und in der Action App. Action, kleine Preise, große Freude. Well, you just heard it twice. I knew, you know, I was trying to make up my mind anyway. I never joined the military to be a general or to— I didn't have any— I just wanted to serve. So for me, every year from probably, you know, the first time you can get out is when you're a captain, like 4 to 6 years. So that's the first time you go through, and I've I had fun every assignment that I got, especially those first years. I was— I couldn't imagine a better job, a better profession, better people to hang out with. So I never— but then it was always, hey, develop a situation, you know. I'll stay as long as there's a purpose and I feel like I'm, I'm fulfilling that purpose. So then you get up you know, you get up into your past 10 years and you start heading for 20, and you naturally think about it again, you know, am I going to stay, am I going to get out?

And so it was always on my mind. I told you, you know, I got my MBA through a program that was offered on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and I did it on Saturdays and, and weekends, Saturdays, and then you had to do 2-week thing. At the end, you had to take leave to do it. I took my organizational behavior textbook to Afghanistan with me. Kind of nerdy, but I needed some reading material. And so, you know, business always fascinated me. I never wanted to be an old military guy, you know. I never wanted to be one of these hangers-on. I thought, you know, when you're not operational in the military, you really, you know, there's really no reason to stay in. So all that played into me. But then, you know, first thing happened was Afghanistan. And, you know, I was told, stop coordinating with CIA and the 10th Mountain or commander is going to bring you home. Like, well, I'm not fucking gonna stop coordinating because that'll get my guys killed, and I'm not gonna change, you know, what we're doing because we're about to attack the largest pocket of foreign fighters in Afghanistan, and it's an opportunity cost.

And so I knew right there, because if there's a general that doesn't like you, that's, you know, in your chain of command. They're going to be in that chain of command. They're going to be on every board. And so it just— it wasn't like I thought my career's over. It was more like that, you know, I knew what I was doing when I said, no, I'm going to keep going. And then Iraq, you know, that phone call in the desert and him screaming at me, same guy. And, you know, I wasn't going to get my guys killed there either. And so again, you know, there's selfless and there's selfishness, and they're actually very similar. You can call it selfless, but it's also selfish. You know, you get your guys killed, you're sentencing yourself to— you're going to pay the price for that the rest of your life. You better be able to look at every decision you made, even the ones that didn't work out so well, and you better be able to look back and go, I made it for the right reasons. I made it, you know, I was trying to take care of my guys.

I was trying to accomplish the purpose. So even when things don't go, you know, as you expect them, you know that your motives were pure and that you did what you did, uh, as part of trying to take care of your guys. When you don't do that, you know, I think you're sentencing yourself for a life of guilt and, you know, PTSD-like feelings. So, you know, by the time I hit 20, it was just kind of like a fait accompli. And I, you know, I'm glad you asked it because like, I don't want people to think I was, you know, an outcast or anything. I was a benefactor of the system. I got promoted early to every rank. By the time I was a colonel, I was 4 years ahead of my contemporaries. And, you know, I never— I didn't get in any shouting matches with generals. I was never like that. Even that one, I basically got along with him pretty good, except when it came time to, you know, execute shit, and he tried to micromanage or do senseless, you know, make me follow senseless orders. So it wasn't any of that. And then, you know, Just like we're saying with Cheney and Halliburton, decisions are made not by one thing, by a whole bunch of things.

And so, you know, when you look at a big decision, you never make a major life decision based on one single variable. So getting out is a huge decision, as you know, no matter when you do it in your career, and you've got to think through it. And I luckily, you know, knew how to do that, how to make those big decisions. You you sit down and brainstorm with yourself, write down everything you can think of in bullet form that has to do with, should I stay or should I go? And you see in front of you, your brain can only think of one thing at a time, but your eyes can connect things and make 5 things one thing. So when you put a bunch of bullet points down, your eyes are going to see the usually 5 to 7 most important things in there. And you kind of put a check mark by them, rise them to the top as your priorities. And so I never wanted to be a general. I was always intrigued. I always believed that life's not worth living unless you reinvent yourself every couple of years. And couple meaning whatever makes sense, 5, it can be 2.

But you should reinvent yourself, challenge yourself in new ways, And so it also intrigued me getting out, but I also had, you know, kids at the time. I felt, you know, some guilt about my kids, not, not being there enough for them. And I knew that if I stayed in, you know, my marriage was, was not working out. I knew I would rarely see my kids again. So, and I didn't want that. I wanted to be part of their lives, take care of them.

How old were your kids?

Uh, when I got out, they were, uh, 13 and 11. So, you know, just hitting adolescence and, uh, you know, great ages that you want to be there, take them to events and stuff like that. So, so it was all those reasons. And, uh, you know, I never regretted it for a second. People are always saying, do you miss it? And I'm like, no, because it's kind of like aging. It doesn't— not that it sneaks up on you, you know you're aging. So when you're going through your military career, and my military career, you know, I can't even— I can't put an adjective on that either. It was beyond anything I ever hoped or could have imagined, the opportunities I was given in those 21 years. But you know, you're done when you make Colonel. You've, you've, you know, there's no more great jobs. There's no more operational jobs. There's no more operational leadership. Someone can maybe disagree with that because a Major General occasionally strolls onto the battlefield, but there's no more. The stuff that I came in for is not relevant anymore. And so nothing jazzed me about being a old general, uh, you know, being some boy Friday as a one-star and a two-star, and, you know, genuflecting at the altar of, of, you know, wokeness, compromising your integrity, which you have to do to— you know, I hate to say it, but you do to be a general.

Uh, you gotta agree with those things. When a higher-ranking general tells you, you gotta say yes, sir, and that's it, or you're you're not going any further. So I just never had any interest.

It sounds even worse than being a fucking private.

Yeah, I do.

E-1.

Yeah.

So I mean, if that's all you do as a one, two-star general is just do what you're told. I mean, I get— but I guess it's nothing new because they were like that the whole— yeah, I mean, the ones like you always leave, always fucking leave. Yeah, I'm not trying to guilt-trip you by any—

No, I know. And that's, you know, the number one thing that made me want to stay was guilt, was in guilt to guys. I knew, you know, all things we've talked up, we've talked about. I knew about all the fucked up decisions that get constantly made and these generals who micromanage and push these fucked up decisions down. And so I felt You know, I had a role in— call it what you will— being a shit blocker. You know, shit rolls downhill unless there's something to block it. It's going to land on your guys. And so part of a leader's job is to be a shit blocker. You get hit by the shit so they can stay clean and continue to operate. And so I felt guilty about that. And, you know, like I said, I was on the command list. So, but it was still tough. And, you know, having everything together just, it just made sense for me. It was the right time. And like I said, never, never regretted it, never looked back. You know, every, every second I've been out has been great too. So no remorse at all.

How was it reintegrating with your family?

It was, you know, it was good. It was, you know, they, they were happy that my kids, you know, that I would be home regularly. They didn't know what that was because, you know, I've been gone a lot for most of their lives. And I think Iraq was the first time, you know, when we went to Afghanistan, it wasn't really a war, but Iraq was a war. And like, if you could go back and remember the media depiction, we were going to war, you know, kind of like World War II. And I always remember that because when, when I got dropped off at the unit, uh, I turned around and my kids were both crying in the car, you know. And I always remember, I can still see them crying, you know, worrying about their dad. And, uh, And, you know, when you're in combat, I just cannot remember many times being scared or having trepidations about things. But I was always— the thing that always kept me, you know, making me double sharp was I got to get back, you know, to see my kids. I got to see my kids. I got to get back home.

And I believe, you know, you always hear People say it's kind of a platitude now, you know, guys fight, they're fighting for the country, but they're really fighting for the guy next to them. Yeah, of course you're always fighting for the guy next to you, but you're really fighting to get home, to get back home. You know, war sucks no matter what any take you want to have on it. It sucks. It's a difficult time in your life, and, uh, every human craves normalcy. And home is normalcy, however your home life is. And then kids, you know, are your, your offspring, you know, your genetic code, your responsibility. And so it's hard to reconcile yourself not being there, uh, for them as much as you possibly can.

So, you know, a lot of guys, uh struggle with purpose after service, especially guys that spent 20-plus years. And I mean, how long— how did you find a new purpose?

Yeah, it's a great question. I, I was lucky, you know. I, uh, I started working while I was still on terminal leave. So I went and worked big biotechnology company Amgen in Southern California.

How the hell do you get into biotech right out of Delta?

Yeah, it was convoluted road. I did that Secretary of Defense's corporate fellowship. I had my MBA, I did that fellowship, and I did it at Amgen. I got sent out there and I just established relationships. A couple executives said, so when are you going to get out? I was like, I don't know, you know, it might be a couple years, might be 5 years, I don't know yet. And they were like, well, if you ever do, give us a call, you know, we'd love to bring someone like you in. And the CEO of Amgen was a submariner, Naval Academy guy, you know, really good guy. I owe him a lot for trusting me and bringing me in. And so I had another, I had two other great jobs. One was Triple Canopy. I was going to go to work, you know, for Triple Canopy in a pretty great position, great paycheck, all that. I had another one at a consulting company.

Triple Canopy was Delta heavy, right?

Yeah, it was founded by unit guys. Yeah, ex-unit guys before my time. The two founders, I were before they left, before even '91. And then the, the, the sergeant major who was also my sergeant major even during Iraq, he became the president of that company. Great, super intelligent guy. And then they had a bunch of other super intelligent Sergeant Majors beneath them. I mean, they were a force. They could have done— they could have been successful in a lot of different businesses. So they were a good company. And I would have been honored to go work there, but I also had a principle. I told you I wrote things down. So the next phase of that is write down what will kind of make you happy. And one of the things was purpose, a purpose I can believe in. But the other was, you know, I wrote it, it was like the last bullet I wrote. If at all possible, I would like to do something that has no tentacles to the federal government. So I just did not want to, you know, deal with government bureaucracy anymore. And, you know, maybe I was a little shell-shocked from all that, but I just, I didn't think that was business.

You know, I mean, it is business, obviously, but not pure true business. And so as I then had this choice of 3 places to go, because I called Amgen up, I called my point of contact, he was in an airport. I'm like, hey, I'm getting out. I just want to let you know. And if there was anything available, I would be— He's like, what? You're getting out? Why didn't you tell me? He goes, you got anything lined up? I go, yeah, I got 2 things. He goes, wow, Jesus. I told you to call me when you got out. He's yelling at me on the phone. Sent tickets. A couple of days later, I flew out there, did interviews, and it just— it was the other side of the country from Fort Bragg. It was zero government interaction. It was totally reinvent yourself, learn new information, new knowledge, a real purpose you can believe in. Take care of patients, do things for people who are sick. And so, you know, I just decided on Amgen. And again, I was— never regretted it. It was a great company to work for. I went— I worked in multiple functional areas, but most of my time was in sales and marketing, the commercial side.

Sales and marketing people are just great people, especially in pharma. They're very, very value-based people. Uh, you and I have talked about business, the expression, you know, you eat what you kill. Salespeople, you know, good salespeople, that's the way they are. And, and, you know, good salespeople are good value-based people. Uh, they're hard workers, uh, they're funny, they're personal, you know. And so it would, you know, and I was put in a leadership position too, so I didn't, you know, I didn't have any expectation for that, but I realized how important it is also to go back to leading because, you know, leading's just what I said before. It's, you know, using common sense to make good decisions and solve complex problems that set the conditions for your people to succeed. And that's the same in the military as it is in business. And if you can do that as a leader, you'll be a successful leader. So, you know, I just used common sense, the thing I was taught in the unit right off the bat to lead these teams. And I also had a great beginning because we had a new product, never been— no one had ever used it before.

No one had ever sold it. No doctor had ever heard of it. It was kind of a breakthrough technology. And so, you know, there was no protocol. So it was like, you know, untrampled wilderness in front of you. You got to find a path. Lewis and Clark type thing. And, and so that was a great part of it, too. But to your point, you know, I think it's so important if there's, if there's one thing that, you know, all of us can do to help vets And that, you know, the military can do when they counsel vets who are getting out, it's get them engaged as quickly as possible when they come out of the military. What you said is exactly right. Make sure they, they have a purpose, a purpose they believe in that makes sense to them, but get them engaged. You know, don't give them time. Idle minds, you know, create chaos. Um, and, you know, Part of that getting away, other side of the country, getting away from the federal government is you're not thinking about stuff anymore. You just wash that behind. You're too busy learning mechanism of action and how a molecule communicates with your genes and how it either accelerates or stymies a disease.

And you're learning all this stuff. It's something new. Stimulating you.

How does a molecule communicate with your genes?

Through, you know, through proteins. The cell uses proteins. The proteins are the communicators that send messages, that, you know, send the code back and forth. And your genetic code is riding herd over everything. And you understand that, you know, molecules are what— that's why a mechanism of action is when they isolate what's causing a disease or what's curing it, Now they can reproduce that molecule and they clone the cell that does it. They clone it in a fascinating way inside hamster ovaries, Chinese hamster ovaries. Wow. Yeah, and then they make that cell, reproduce that cell in this massive fermentation process. And then that's what a biologic is. A biologic's not a chemical. It's the cell's own chemistry. It's your cells or the cells you know, the specific cell recreated going back in your body to replace the ones you're deficient at or have too many of, which is what again causes disease. So, you know, I could believe in the process. It was complex enough. I got the lead. So it was just, you know, as good as it can get. But I, you know, my goal has always been to try to do something to pass that on to vets.

Try to hire vets as much as possible. I hired over 500 people at Amgen, and whenever I had a chance to hire a vet, you know, I did. So yeah, it was a great, great, you know, great commercial career. I was an executive, just did really—

I mean, as far as leadership, I am curious. I mean, you're coming from Delta, where, you know, guys, I've interviewed enough of you guys to know it's— you're competing to keep your job every single day you walk through the doors. It's a very high-caliber person. What is it like coming into the civilian world where maybe people aren't as motivated?

Yeah, for me, uh, Well, they're not motivated, but at least at this company they're like elite. You couldn't just be out of college and get a job there. You had to have had a successful track record, 5 to 10 years usually for salespeople at another company. You had to be good, and it was hard to get hired by a company like Amgen. So I had good people, but that's the thing about leadership, and that's why I think that CEOs in a lot of big companies, and especially like billionaire CEOs, they stop leading because you're not leading anymore if you don't have to persuade people. And, you know, one thing about the unit— and you asked last time about being an officer there— uh, you, you don't just flip your hand and tell guys what to do. Because they'll go, fucking doesn't make any sense. And, you know, why do you want me to do that? And if you haven't thought through it, if you don't have the logic of why ready, uh, they're not going to accept it. And there's a good reason for that, because if there's no logic of why, it's probably a senseless decision.

It's not thought through properly. And so, you know, you learn the power of persuasion, you need to learn the power of logic, you learn the power of seeding. You know, you go, you talk to a few guys first. What do you think of that? Well, shit, man, we should do it. Can you, uh, can you put together something? And, you know, you get guys involved. And I think it's the same thing in the corporate world. You know, you've got to have spent time with the relationship part of it, but you cannot be one of these, you know, choose the tag, micromanager, sociopath, Do as I say no matter what or I'll fire you. And the worst thing about doing that is those people are your checks and balances. They're the ones who are going to keep you from making a massive mistake that'll tube your business, tube your reputation, whatever it is you care about. So, you know, it sounds weird, but like, because I came from AFO and then the Wolverines, these, you know, unconventional, unconventional forces, you know, it was just natural for me to go into this thing I'd never, you know, led before and had no real experience with because same thing, common sense is that common ground and common language that connects us all.

So if you're operating off a common sense perspective, and part of that is the ability, the ego that allows you to say, I have no idea. And you should be saying that to your people because you hire your people to be experts at things. And trust is the most important aspect, the glue that holds any organization together. And trust is not a one-way street, getting your people to trust you. You got to trust your people. It's reciprocity. And you show trust when you say to people, you ask them questions. Hey, how does this work? How do you actually do that? How, you know, what's Part B? What's Part A? And let them tell you, because what you're saying without saying is, I trust you. I trust your knowledge. I appreciate your knowledge. Can you share some with me? And I think it has, you know, a compounding effect because, you know, my guys I was obviously different. Some people thought it was, you know, heresy that I was put into positions I was put into with no real experience. But I'd always explain to people, I do have experience. I have this experience in decision-making, problem-solving, and using common sense.

And that's what sales and marketing is. No matter what the product, you've got to immerse yourself in the product. You've got to be a subject matter expert. But that's another advantage military guys have. You've got neocortical discipline. You can engage your brain. You can read shit. You can study shit. And what you find in most corporations is most of the people have stopped doing that. They're not up on the latest product breakthroughs or research and development breakthroughs. And you can carve your own niche by just learning that stuff and, and being competent at it. So, you know, it was, uh, again, I, I couldn't have designed it better. But, you know, going right away, uh, I'm still on terminal leave when I started my job, uh, and, you know, it's just having good people, learning something new. Being away from all the things that frustrated you so you can kind of get them out of sight, out of mind altogether, just made it an ideal situation for me.

What got you into writing?

Like, right away when I was there. So, you know, we talked about guilt. I still had all my friends who were in there still fighting. This is, you know, 2005, '06. So, you know, my buddies, I'm talking to them, I'm meeting them. I traveled to DC a lot, so I'd meet guys in DC, both military and agency. And right off the bat, from all the aggregation of all that, I was angry, frustrated because we weren't learning anything. All the things that are in my first book, always listen to the guy on the ground. When in doubt, humor, you know, creates insight, develop the situation, you know, all these principles, guiding principles were not carrying on. And that's what they were not carrying on. No, they were, you know, so we talked about it like, you know, Tucker Garr, Shai Code, Anaconda. All those lessons were, you know, spit out. I gave 50 presentations after that. And, you know, always listen to the guy on the ground. You know, you don't have to— you don't have to do what the guy on the ground says, but you always should defer. And it's that selfish selfless thing again.

If you want to do what's right, you better use the best check and balance available to any human, and that's the people around you. Bounce it off on And you better have created an atmosphere where your guys can walk up to you and go, boss, you're fucking— you're smoking crack, dude. And, uh, you know, yeah, you laugh like that and you go, okay, tell me what— you know, tell me, uh, what crack pipe I'm smoking on. And they'll explain it to you and you go, fuck, man. All right, thanks for coming up to me. And your guys save you from doing stupid shit. And that's everybody. That's not even just leaders. It's everybody. We need wingmen. We need other perspectives. We need to have some sort of check and balance on our emotions, which are usually the main driver of senseless decisions.

I just did that the other day.

Which?

One of my main guys advised me not to do something, and I fucking did it anyways, and I paid the fucking man for it. But you came back, apologized to him for not listening.

Wow, good for you, man. And you made that video. You—

and that's what that was about.

Good for you, dude. Yeah, so you not only trained yourself that that's, that's the common sense way to, to act when that situation happens, but you also modeled common sense behavior to your guys. And they'll probably remember that for the rest of their lives and pass it on and do it to their own subordinates the same way. So, you know, it just makes so much sense. You're shafting yourself from being a tyrant, being a micromanager, being a sociopath. And so, yeah, I wrote it because I felt like there were, you know, we weren't learning the fundamental foundational lessons of the Global War on Terror. So I wrote the Mission: The Men and Me And, you know, it was an out-of-the-blue thing. Like, if you had asked me before that, you know, what kind of writer I am, I'd say I'm a shit writer. You know, I don't— it's hard, you know, I have to sit there and struggle through stuff. And so, you know, I did a bunch of research on writing, talked to a bunch of people who wrote, and then like anything, you just start, you know. And this is again where military discipline comes in.

I was working full-time, and so it takes time to write a book, you know, 1,000 hours minimum. Uh, and so I realized the only way I'm going to do this is wake up early. I'm kind of more of a morning person than night, so I'd wake up between 5 and 6 and start writing. Before I had to, you know, go into work. I didn't have to be to work till 8, so I could, you know, leave 7:30, 7:45. So I'd get that time in. I wrote all weekend. I'd wake up same time on Saturday and Sundays, right till about 2 o'clock. You know, I had some vacation time, so once I got close to the end, I would— I started taking a day of vacation a week to write full-time on that day. It was exhausting, and And when you take on something like that, something in your life has to give, professional, personal, social. So I became— I call it monk mode because I had a deadline. So I went to monk mode, which is you're a freaking monk. You don't go out anymore, and you can't really work out because the main thing that keeps at least me and a lot of writers from writing is you're tired.

And that's why you either turn into a coffee addict or people do all kinds of stimulants to stay up and write. But stimulants don't work when I'm physically exhausted, which I usually am for the rest of the day after a workout. I can't write. So my writing's got to go before the workout. And for a book, I begin cutting my workout back, you know, instead of 6 to 7 days a week, I go to 4 and, you know, have full days where I do nothing but walk. At the time I lived near the beach, so I'd walk down to the beach in the morning, in the evening. But you have to stop workouts and curtail your social life. But then you get it together and you know, it's anticlimactic. I didn't, I didn't make any money off any of my books really, um, which I didn't write them for. But like The Mission, The Man, and Me, within like 6 months, you know, there was nothing initially, but within 6 months I just started getting this unbelievable feedback from people, you know, hey, I've read your book, I gave it to, you know, every guy in my platoon 'Thank you for writing it.

I've always thought all this, but I could never put it into words,' which is, you know, the ultimate common sense compliment. And I still get that. That book, The Mission: The Man in Me, sells like the same it sold when I launched it.

No kidding.

Yeah, I launched it in 2009, so it's, you know, a 17-year-old book.

The guys inside the institutions are using it for the knowledge.

Yeah. Yep. Yup, it is. And it's very, you know, what, what better reward is there than that? So, um, and then, you know, I worked for 10 years, uh, in the corporate world. And, you know, you asked me this morning, you know, why, why'd you get out? And it was to write this second book, The Common Sense Way: A New Way to Think About Leading and Organizing. And the reason I got out was because this one is much more— my first one, most of it was, you know, like written in my head. All these guiding principles were guiding principles I used constantly, and I had all these fresh examples, so it was fun. This one, I have to explain the biologic underpinnings of common sense in it, and I have to do it in a way, you know, great science writers write so that an 8th grader can understand what they're saying. That's what makes a great science writer. He explain, you know, a cell's mechanism of action to an 8th grader. And so, you know, I was neither well-versed at writing science and I wasn't really at writing either. And then I did more research on biology to write this book than I did in probably the 10 years of working in a biotech company, which I did a lot of research but I had to intensely research this one just to prove it, you know, and to validate what common sense is.

And of course, it's all easily validated. I was just, you know, one of the first ones to put it all together into a book. It's also an interesting thing about writing, you know, writing's a muscle and it's your neocortex thinking brain is what you write with. It's the only part of your brain that can produce or process language. And so the way you strengthen your brain muscle is the same way you strengthen your body muscles. Resistance training. You have to discipline your brain. And the way the neocortex gets stronger and gets an ability to override your emotional brain— emotional brain is the reason you do most of the things you later regret. Are from emotions. And so, you know, your neocortex has to get strong so it can override them, you know, the second you think about it. And the way you do that is resistance training. You resist the temptation to act on your emotions, usually. And think of all the things— eating, drinking, shopping, you know, chasing, uh, whatever it is you chase. Those All those things, all those things you have to, you know, you have to practice resistance training on. And, you know, micro habits are how you get to a macro habit.

And so it starts small. And, you know, you don't drink, but if you're drinking, you should get in the habit. If you, if you're, you're only halfway through your drink and someone says let's go, leave that half drink. Not doing you any good. Deguzzle the other half. You know, you're going down to get— I went down and got dinner, you know, last night. And the guy said, you want something to drink? And I'm like, no thanks, because I don't drink during the week. And, you know, I didn't get there by just instantly going, I'm not going to drink during the week. You have to make the micro habits. And eating is the same way. People with eating problems, you know, shoving a bag of Keebler Ritz chips into your mouth is an emotional thing. You're, you know, trying to, trying to relive your childhood. It's a, it's a crazy thing. And you're getting fat, and you know you're getting fat while you do it. So you just need to apply resistance training. And, you know, for people with weight, that's— that can be as simple as walking with your shopping cart past the dessert aisle.

You know, don't go down that fucking cookie aisle. Because you're going to start throwing shit into your, into your basket. Uh, so all that kind of stuff. And, you know, just very briefly on, on learning, becoming consciously aware of what common sense is and how to access it, the value especially for first responders. And that's what motivated me. I do, I speak, uh, to a lot of quite a few large corporations. I talk about how to use common sense to make good decisions and solve complex problems. But I also do it to all first responder organizations, and I prioritize them whenever they ask. So police, fire, military, and everything about staying alive comes down to understanding how to engage your thinking brain. And And to give you an example, first go back, what is common sense? Well, if you ask 100 people what common sense is, you're going to get 100 different answers. But if you ask those 100 people to write down their definition of common sense or say it out loud, you're going to get 100 different definitions. And you have to ask, why is that? And the reason is because common sense is highly contextual.

You can't say whether something makes sense or not unless you have a full understanding of the context of the moment that it happens. So, you know, what makes sense in one situation can be absolutely senseless in another. So back to what common sense is. Common sense refers to the common way we humans make sense. See, we all make sense a common way via patterns and relationships that we perceive through our common senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Which is why it's called common sense and why we all have two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a brain, and a spinal cord elegantly wrapped in skin. If we made sense any other way, we'd be another species. And what does that tell us? It tells us that common sense is the common ground and the common language upon which our species stands. And the question it begs is, shouldn't it be the way we lead and organize too? And that's the question I set out to answer. How do you use common sense to lead and organize? And as I already mentioned, the beauty of common sense, as opposed to any other leadership technique or decision-making problem-solving technique, is you don't need a special degree or pedigree to live and lead the common sense way.

You have everything you need etched inside each and every cell, each and every one of the 30 trillion cells that make up your body and brain. All that's needed is conscious awareness of how to access it and put it into practice in the context of the moment when you need it the most. And the way, very briefly, to arrive at that level of knowledge is to understand this thing called metacognition. And metacognition is simply how our brains think and make decisions. And it's not complicated. It's not left brain, right brain. It's not memorizing the different cortexes of your brain. It's just when you hear the definition, it makes total sense. Most people think of the brain as one homogeneous organ. So it might surprise a lot of people to learn we actually have 3 brains and they sit one on top of each other in our head in order of evolutionary development. So the first brain that evolved before we were even humans is our reptilian brain. That's why it's called reptilian. We share with reptiles. The reptilian brain is like reptiles. It's cold-blooded. What it's doing right now for both you and me is it's monitoring our survival, our bodily survival functions, heart rate, breathing, metabolism, body temperature.

Your reptilian brain's monitoring all that. Any blip in any of those, it's going to react with a negative emotion that you're going to feel. It's in essence, though, what it's doing to learn that is your reptilian brain is constantly sweeping the environment around you. And its only algorithm is it detects unfamiliar things with negative emotions and ignores familiar things. So familiar faces, familiar places, the route you drive to work every day, the way you tie your shoes, there's no blip from your reptilian brain that's telling you problem, problem, avoid. But when you try something new, your reptilian brain is going to react. So strange faces, strange places, just the thought that you're lost. And everyone knows the feeling. We're lost. You know, you can feel in you the feelings are called feelings for a reason because emotions are neurochemicals that physically exist inside our bodies. That's why we feel them. That's why your face flushes when you're embarrassed. So, you know, the feelings are what your feedback loop is. That's how you know what's happening. But, you know, the reptilian brain will tell you if there's a problem with one of those. And the easiest way to see your reptilian brain is action is to hold your breath.

Even in, you know, so Wim Hof, did you have Wim Hof on here?

No, I should get him on.

You do, man. As you're about to hear, he's one of the heroes of human evolution. And, he did this all on himself, the basis, a big part of what I talk about, he discovered himself. And so, Wim Hof's known as the Iceman because he's got all the world records for swimming under the polar ice cap for the longest distances. Staying in freezing cold water for the longest period of time. He's hiked— he takes people up Mount Kilimanjaro with nothing more than workout shorts on and boots. He wears no pants, no shirt, and he gets his people to do it. Why? Because he's teaching them how to override their reptilian brain. That's your reptilian brain panicking as soon as it feels any gradient of water. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you how to I'll test that in a second when I get to the neocortex. So that's the reptilian brain. And just remember, the reptilian brain doesn't understand language and only reacts to visual stimuli. So advertisers know this. So advertising, so do political propagandists. They know that images are what stimulate the reptilian brain. And the reptilian brain, again, only reacts with negative emotions.

So think anger, fear, and panic. Those are the reptilian brain's go-to for any of those things that are happening, whether it's bodily function or unfamiliar face, place, or situation going on around you. That's why people panic. The next in order of evolutionary development is your limbic brain or emotional brain. And the emotional brain evolved to enable us to learn from our experiences because the reptilian brain— reptiles don't learn. So a crocodile doesn't learn anything. A crocodile can leave its nest, have all its eggs eaten by a snake, and it'll come back and go not learn a thing. It'll just lay another satchel of eggs and then they'll get eaten too.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, they don't learn. They've got no ability to learn because they have no emotion. That's what makes a reptile cold-blooded. That's why we call it— they are cold-blooded, but we call them that. And that's why it's synonymous with being a murderous madman. Yeah. So the emotional brain evolved to enable us to learn through experience, and it does that by attaching emotion to everything you learn. So we definitely need our emotional brain. It's this file system for our memories. So every memory you had when you were happy is filed in the happy memory section. Every memory you have when you were in danger is filed in the fear section. Every memory you have of getting in a fight is filed under the anger section. Why is that important? Because the reptilian brain is also called a one-track mind or your emotional brain. When your emotional brain is riding herd, which is most people, You're only capable of accessing memories that are tagged in that same file cabinet. So when you're angry, you have no memory of the times you won the day through compassion and calm. You only remember other times you were angry. You have no ability to remember the times when you're afraid of that it turned out to be a false alarm, or you showed bravery and squashed that fear.

You only remember times that were when you were afraid and fearful. So that's why the emotional brain's one track. Like the reptilian brain, your emotional brain doesn't understand language, nor can it produce language. And once your emotional brain reacts, it takes all its cues from the reptilian brain's radar. But once it reacts, it's stuck on that moment. So whether someone's jumping out at you or it's the first sight of a bear on the trail ahead of you, that fear now is riding herd over your body. If you allow that to ride herd, you're only capable of accessing those fearful memories. And if someone next to you is trying to talk to you, you're not even understanding it. That's why it's so hard to describe what love is or really any emotion. Words don't apply because is your emotional brain has no ability to correlate the emotions it creates with language. And that goes both ways, understanding and producing. So the third part of our brain is the wrinkly giant thing on top. That's our neocortex. Neo is new, cortex is brain. It's the brain that enables us to think logically, to reason, to problem solve, It enables us to do creative thinking, language, and math.

So those alone would make you think, man, that's the only part of— that's the part of the brain that makes us human. But there's one other thing that makes it just absolutely indispensable to first responders or anyone in a life-or-death situation. Again, it's the only part of the brain that can understand language, and it's the only part of the brain that can monitor ongoing sensory information. So let's go back to that bear that just popped out. If you allow your fear and panic to ride herd over you, what the bear is doing is not registering with you. You're also not cueing your memory to go, what kind of bear is it? Are there cubs with it? Is it black bear, grizzly bear? Is it standing up? Is the hair on the back of its neck? All the things that tell you if a bear is going to charge and then But more importantly, all the options, you know, make yourself big, stay calm, talk calmly to the bear, back up, you know, all the things that are going to save your life, those are only available through your neocortex. So your neocortex, because it's the only part of your brain that can monitor ongoing sensory information and understand language, it's the only part of our brain that can make sense of what's going on around us in a crisis and sensible choices about what to do next.

So how do you turn your neocortex on and override your reptilian and emotional brain? Luckily, biology to the rescue again. It's incredibly simple. There's 3 time-tested— they can work, they'll work anytime you test them— techniques, and you can do them all at the same time. The first is is what's called diaphragmatic breathing, which is belly breathing. So, you know, the proper way to breathe, put your hand on your belly because it adds another neocortical connection. You're feeling your belly. Breathe in through your nose. Usually I do a count of 4. Your belly should go all the way out like you got a cannonball down there, and then breathe out through your mouth. And it should be 6 or 7, count of 6 or 7. And do that 4 times and you vanquish anger, fear, and panic. So to top that off, that's just the breathing. If you breathe while speaking calmly, when we speak calmly, we calm the way we act. And counting, remember I said neocortex, the only part of our brain that can count. So you can calmly count while breathing. And completely vanquish even the worst situation you've ever been in. And more importantly, engage your thinking brain to avail yourself of all the options that are going to allow you to get out of it.

So, you know, the best example, contemporary example of how our three-part brains work happens on the highway. So you're driving down the highway and someone cuts you off, and your first reaction is always going to be reptilian and emotional. And the reason for that is this. Although your neocortex is 3 times the size of your older non-thinking brains, your emotional and your reptilian brain, 3 times the size, it's last to receive bottom-up sensory information. All our nerve endings come up through our spinal cord and then enter the brain through the brainstem. Which the brainstem is the reptilian brain, then pass through the emotional brain and then into the neocortex. So MRI studies show that your reptilian brain is alerted of sensory stimulus, what's going on around you, the bear, in 20 milliseconds, which is not even the time it takes to click my fingers. It's a flash. While it takes 240 milliseconds to reach your thinking brain, about a quarter second later. What does that tell us? It tells us that your first instinctive response, no matter who you are, no matter what unit you are, how elite you are, your first instinctive response to any type stimulus is always unconscious, emotional, and without context.

And so what training and what conscious awareness teaches you is to make it second nature that you immediately breathe, And you'll do it naturally. You don't even have to think about it. You immediately breathe. Whenever you're talking in a crisis, you talk calmly. That too, you have to use practice. You have to do micro habits to make the macro. And that's why special ops guys are naturally able to stay cool, calm in crisis because we do stress inoculation. We train to stress ourselves to a point where there's nothing left. You're like, this will stress the guys. You're like, no, it won't. You know, really the only thing I ever thought toward the end of my time in the unit, the only thing that can get you in that condition red anymore is, is HALO, is jumping out of a plane, you know, where you're— it's all on your own volition. You either pull the ripcord or you're, you're going to burn in because that's the mindset and that's 100% neocortex. You got to breathe. You do verbal repetition. Look, grab, look, grab, pull, pull, check. You go over that 1,000 times. You do it with your hand and arm movements.

So learning how to engage your neocortex and turn off your reptilian and emotional brains, every first responder should be taught to do that. It's breathe, talk calmly, count. By the way, Thomas Jefferson's famous quote, "When angry, count to 10. When very angry, count to 100." And that's if you go back in history, people who can write down what they think have been saying that for 1,000 years. They've been talking about counting, speaking calmly, and breathing. And up till now, we just thought it was yoga and everything else was some voodoo magic. It's not. Yoga is neocortical. It's turning on your neocortex, turning off your emotional reptilian brains. That's how you be in the moment. And you can be in the moment anytime by just breathing deep and intensely focusing on something. So here's the way to kind of put that into practical application to see for yourself. The first thing, I told you about the road rage thing, and everyone should know that because remember, the first, the guy cuts you off. So in 20 milliseconds, your reptilian brain is reacting. Anger, fear, panic. He fucking could have killed me. That's where road rage comes from.

Your emotional brain's taking signals from your reptilian brain going, motherfucker, adding emotions onto that. Again, rage comes, all that comes from your emotional brain. Whereas if you just a quarter second later, when your neocortex turns on, your neocortex makes sense of your emotions. Your neocortex suddenly goes, The driver, that guy's 80 years old, or he's 17 years old, or it looks like a husband driving his wife to the hospital, or they just might not have seen me. That's your neocortex making sense of your emotions. And how appropriate is it? Because if you're getting mad at another driver, you're not thinking about driving anymore. Hazard to yourself. Your job is to get to point B, not to get pissed at people. So that's the order. That's how the three-part brain works together. But there's other things to do that allow you life-saving capacities. And the first I'll talk about is in Wim Hof's expertise. It's cold water. And I will tell you, my entire military career, I've already said this. I just am not a guy who gets scared, and maybe that's constant neocortical training. But the one thing I was very apprehensive about is falling into cold water.

You know, I hated cold water. I don't have a lot of meat on me, so I feel like I get colder than a normal person. I always remember, you know, the— not the modern Titanic movie, but the old ones, you know, them dudes swimming in Newfoundland iceberg water. And it's like, how do you survive? You know, what would I do? Well, Wim Hof has got the answer for you. You breathe. You talk calmly and breathe. And you— and here's how you can understand it. People probably listen to this going, yeah, whatever, I'm, I'm not— that's not going to work. Well, here's how I want I want people to see for themselves. Next shower you're taking, take your normal shower, whatever your temperature is. Everyone's usually hot to warm, somewhere in there. Go through the— first begin while the water is at its normal temperature, do 5 deep belly breaths, diaphragmatic breathing. So while you're in the shower, Do it 5 times. Then reach up to the hot water nozzle and turn it down. I started with going halfway down. You're going to feel what feels like very uncomfortable cold water. Go right back to diaphragmatic breathing, 5 breaths.

On your 2nd to 3rd breath, you're going to be shocked. You're going to think someone's playing a prank on you. Someone set up an automatic temperature control device because the water turns hot even on your first time. It turns, it turns hot. You're going, what the fuck? You're checking the nozzle out. I, and I still do it, although now I'm, I'm so advanced at it. Then go down and do what you're comfortable with your first couple times. I didn't go all the way down till, you know, my third or fourth time. And then go down and breathe again. And you'll find that cold water is actually very comfortable. It's not bothering you at all. I used to jump into a cold pool or whatnot, and you scream when you come up, ah, and you act spastically, right? You try to rub your body. You don't need to do any of that, but see for yourself in the shower. And if you want to take an ice bath, that's how you do the ice baths. And Wim Hof, Wim Hof will train that. He teaches it on his app. He's got a great app. I do Wim Hof every morning.

I wake up, I do 30 diaphragmatic breaths, and then I hold my breath. And remember what I said about breath holding. That's why he does it. As soon as your reptilian brain detects that carbon dioxide, panic sets in. You'll feel panic set in in the first seconds. Of holding your breath. But Wim Hof teaches you, you've already built up, you've already oxygenated your body and your lungs. So now you can survive and you just have to believe. And I can go 3 minutes without breathing. I can hold my breath. But eventually you're going to breathe. And by the end of the 3rd minute, if you're feeling, you're fighting panic like a fistfight. The reptilian brain is telling you, "You are fucking dying." You're not. And, as Wim Hof explains, there's all kinds of benefits of holding your breath. They're finding now it lengthens the telomeres on your cells, the things associated with aging. So, hugely important. And again, it's neocortical discipline. So, whenever I tell that to people, they say, "Yeah, well, what about swimming underwater? How do you breathe then?" That's a good question. So I did the research on that too. And it turns out, I don't know if you've ever heard of the sport of freediving.

Freediving?

Yeah, freediving is huge in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. And it's big in the US too. It's, you know, usually it's in a lake or in the ocean. A cable attached to a buoy is set down to whatever depth they're going for. and then it's anchored to the bottom. And then divers, the competition is they take turns, they guide themselves down along the cable, they get as low as they can, touch the cable or put a, you know, a tag on it at the spot they're able to go down to. And then they have to return to the surface without passing out for the dive to be qualified. Now, some of those guys in the Philippines I know can hold their breath over 7 minutes, 7 to 10 minutes. Yeah. And so how do they do it? So I couldn't find anything online. So I went out and I interviewed and I happened to be doing this gig in Philippines and I went to a competition and I started talking to these guys. It turns out every freediver uses the same technique when they're underwater. The way they turn off their reptilian brain and turn on their neocortex is they sing a song.

And so think of it, you can try this too when you do the breath holding thing, do the Wim Hof, I do 30 deep breaths, then hold your breath. When I hold my breath, I sing a song. So I started with Christmas carols, the only songs you know the words to because you need words, right? And the words you're saying language, right? Remember, so singing adds another, I didn't add it, but your neocortex Cortex is the only part of your brain that can sing or produce music. So a freediver, every freediver is singing to themselves as they're diving down and back up. And the song's important. I got rid of the Christmas carols. I learned a couple rock songs that I sing. It works more than just underwater. So if you're doing anything that requires strain to get to a certain time limit. So a good example is planks. Do you do planks? They're generally considered one of the best ab exercises. Total—

not anymore. I used to.

Yeah, well, they're great and they do them anywhere. So planks, my goal is always to do the plank between 1:45 and 2 minutes to hold the plank. So same thing happens to you. When you get into that position right off the bat, it's your reptilian brain. It's not breath, but it's going, hey, I'm hurting. These muscles are going to give out. You can't keep supporting yourself like this. Panic is setting in. So I sing a song while I'm doing my planks, the same song I use to hold my breath. And it works just as well to get through a difficult, arduous thing. So again, pain is coming from your reptilian and emotional brains, the perception of pain. Neocortex turns that off. It makes sense of the emotion. I'm not in pain. I'm not going to die. I can breathe anytime. All I got to do is open my mouth. There's no reason to panic. Hold, hold, hold. And the micro habits turn into macro. So then the final thing I'd tell you that allows you to apply the triune brain in the common sense way is in a life-or-death situation, everything comes down to situational awareness, right?

And that can be you're walking through— your wife's walking through a parking lot late at night, you know, at the grocery store. If you're not situationally aware, you're vulnerable. So situational awareness is hugely important. Walking through a parking lot is a moving, is a moving example. But But you're still scanning your horizon. So what do you do? How do you make sure you're scanning it, you're not allowing fear? Because remember, I got a bad feeling about this. When you say that, your emotions are creeping into your thought process. Your emotions are beginning to try to ride herd over you. And you've got to shut them off immediately and use your neocortex. So how do you do that? What's the optimal way you do it? Before I even knew about this, before I learned it, it was taught to me by a unit sniper. Pay attention like a cat. And all you got to do is imagine a cat sitting on the edge of a field looking for a mouse. They sit— I wish I had a picture right now— they sit perfectly symmetrical, their ears are peaked up facing the direction, their eyes are wide open to get all the light in they can, they breathe with little short breaths through their nose to smell.

Their hands are down to feel the ground and to feel the temperature. So in any life or death situation, tell yourself, pay attention like a cat. And the other part of that that is important for your neocortex, your neocortex only engages if it has a purpose. So other than the conscious ways of breathing and talking and counting. It needs a purpose. So when you're hungry, you tell your neocortex, I need to find food. When you're thirsty, you tell your neocortex, I need to find water. Neocortex needs a purpose. So telling your neocortex, pay attention like a cat, can save your life. And where I feel like it's made a huge difference for me is driving. When it was taught to me, I was in a static position. We were looking for Pifwicks, people indicted for war crimes in Bosnia. We were in a static position. There was an old guy, went to the market every day, used disguises. We were overlooking the market and we just, with his profile, we had to look at everybody and then imagine, you know, is that him in disguise? And I found it gets pretty boring after day one.

And his pay attention like a cat worked like a charm for me. That was the first part. The second part was in Bosnia. The thing that took the biggest toll on the unit in Bosnia wasn't enemy forces, it was driving, because we drove everywhere. We followed people, we drove to meet sources, and they drive like crazy in Bosnia. Any country that's, you know, been turned upside down, uh, drivers become even crazier. And so we had a lot of guys getting crashes, and I remember we had to drive from Tusla back to the safe house. That was very common. And many times I was tired as hell. You know, you're like literally feel like you could fall asleep while driving. Well, next time you're drowsy while driving and you got to get home, tell yourself, pay attention like a cat and then do it. And you will see because you're breathing, your eyes are wide open, your ears are peaked to try to listen to sounds. Suddenly your hands and your feet become part of this equation. You get better coordination between your foot gas and brake and your hand on the steering wheel, and you'll feel a more in-touch sensation of your steering wheel once you start breathing and paying attention like a cat.

So those are just a couple of the examples, and that's what I teach in that book.

That's very informative.

Yeah, it's— and it's nothing— there's no science You know, you don't need multi-syllable words to describe it. You like the shower thing. To me, it's the most fascinating experiment I've ever conducted, and I still am amazed at it today. Today, I automatically breathe. I can go all the way down to cold water. It doesn't bother me. It feels good. And, and just, you know, a few years ago, I would have been spazzing out. Out, you know, if you threw me into, into cold water. So it works, man.

Some, some really great knowledge there.

Thank you, man. Yeah, thank you. Passing it on.

You're doing a hell of a good job.

Thanks, man. Yeah, get Wim Hof on. He's, uh, he invented— he came up with all that shit himself.

Do you know him?

Uh, nope, I don't. I'd love to meet him. Um, he invented all that stuff. He can do amazing stuff. He actually can control his immune system through breathing, and he shows— he teaches you how to walk out into the freezing cold. He can do this fast, deep breathing that turns him like red. It fills him with air, but it heats his body so he can go out and sustain. And and, you know, not die in freezing cold weather right off the bat. And that's how he does that Kilimanjaro thing. Holy shit. And it goes, you know, it's validated because, you know, if you read what the pilgrims wrote, the most fascinating thing they wrote about the Indians was their disbelief how in the dead of winter Indians can come walking up to their village with the loincloth, uh, you know, a bow and arrow, shirtless pantsless. You know, how were they doing it? Well, humans used to have this capacity, and we have this capacity that once you exercise it, once you establish it, it burns what's called brown fat. We don't do it anymore. It's like a lost trait of humans, but you burn brown fat to keep you warm in the freezing cold.

And that's how Indians did it. But, Indians were cool, calm, and collective. You know, they were breathing, they were doing the breathwork. I'm sure they were talking to each other. All these secrets have been known, you know, for a long time, but just lost in modern society.

Man, damn, Pete, what an interview, man. Holy shit.

Thanks, man.

I did want to talk to you about Venezuela, but but maybe we should do that another time.

Yeah.

Would you come back?

Yeah, of course.

I do want to ask about that damn discombobulator. What the hell is that thing?

Well, I can't go into complete detail, but it works. It's a— it's an offshoot of the noise thing that was canceled between the years '20 and '24.

Why would they cancel it?

It was thought to be inhumane, and, you know, some It was 2020 to 2024 is when senselessness reigned supreme in our country. And, uh, it is. And, you know, the DOD, it's a DOD weapon. And, you know, remember what's his name, Milley or Miley, and Austin, you know. Yeah, enough said. You only need to say their names. And they canceled it, and, uh, it was brought back as it should be. Because it can— it's got all kinds of purposes. And certainly crowd control is one that, you know, it should be looked at.

Have you used it?

I've done— I've been in demonstrations and I've seen it used. Yep.

What does it look like?

Well, the original ones were big, you know, almost look like radar dish type thing or bullhorn type things. But, you know, they come in different configurations. I don't know the ones now. I know they're smaller now. Uh, they've made them more compact, more powerful, and they figured the whole frequency thing out.

See, I, I did a, a very small stint doing some anti-piracy shit, uh, contract. I only did 2 trips, uh, the most boring job I've ever had in my life. But, um, we ran into some British guys that were doing it too, and— but they didn't have weapons, they They had a little satellite dish that would— wow, yes, shoot a sound burst or something.

Yeah, but did that work?

They didn't like it. They said they would rather have the guns than that thing. Yeah, like, we have— we tried this thing a bunch of times and then fucking do a damn thing.

Well, it seems like it must have been a different thing, but no, it seems like it wouldn't work in the ocean because it's totally directional. That's why it's a dish. It's, you know, has a cone-like shape the ones I've seen, because you've got a direction, you've got to, you know, send it in the general direction of whoever it is you're, uh, you're shooting it at. And then I'm— I can't remember all the acoustics of water, but I know there's huge things about water. So, you know, if you're short, it might— the water might be totally neutralizing the effect, or long, or not right on.

Who, who did they demonstrate it on?

We had them demonstrate it on us. We—

Are you serious?

Yeah.

All right. What's the experience like?

It sucks. You know, can you move? Like the first time someone demonstrates the chokehold on you? Yeah. You get discombobulated. You're— I— It's— It works on the brain. The same thing we just talked about. And there must be a frequency that takes your neocortex out of it or whatever, because you, you're confused. I remember confusion, uh, anxiety, you know, especially anxiety, like you don't know whether to hold your ears or, you know, rub your hands together. It's bothering you. And, uh, and, you know, at those levels, that's why it seems to make so much sense as a crowd control device because, you know, you can't defeat a crowd and you're not going to want to slaughter them with machine gunfire. So, yeah, you know, use something non-kinetic that's not going to cause permanent injuries. So, you know, but that was a while ago, and I— and the last time I— anyone told me about it was in 2018 or '19. And that's what I mean. Then it was ready for prime time, but they killed the project. Interesting. And killed all the devices that they had stockpiled at that time.

I'm sure that was a hell of a lot more advanced than the shit the Brits were using for an anti-piracy.

Yeah, I am too. Especially if he had it hold the little thing like that. It's pretty funny.

Well, Pete, Oh man, dude, seriously, what a fucking interview. And, uh, so much knowledge, so much leadership knowledge, so much uncovered lies. And, um, man, the arc of your— just your life is just like no other. It was, it was a real honor, man.

No, right back at you, dude.

Thank you.

Really enjoyed talking to You too.

Thank you.

Cheers.

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