Transcript of RANGER, RRC (JSOC), OMEGA Team Operator | Mike Edwards (throwback episode)

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 240 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. Our boy Adam White is back there in the darkness. D's pressing the buttons and our guest in studio, his third appearance on the show, but the first time in studio. We're really excited to have him here. I haven't seen this dude in person for like 17 years. This is Mike Edwards. Mike served in the 75th Ranger Regiment. We were in 375 back in the day together. And he went on to have a career in the Regimental Reconnaissance Company and then as a military freefall instructor. So we're really excited to have you here, man.

Well, thanks for having me back.

I appreciate it. Yeah.

Good to see you all in person for real.

Yeah.

Hell yeah. And oh, shout out to our new artwork on the wall. That's from Invader Girl. If you guys go check her out at invadergirlart.com or follow her on Instagram.

Yeah. She's got amazing art. Definitely check her stuff out.

She has awesome stuff.

Yeah, that is sweet.

So, Mike, man, I'm going to have you— I'm sorry if I have you repeat yourself a little bit, but I'm going to— I think it got cut off a little bit in our first interview, actually. But I'm going to ask you to tell us a little bit about your origin story and sort of your upbringing and your path towards military service. How did that come about for you?

Yeah. So I grew up living out in the country, just me and my brother playing in the woods, shooting BB guns, hunting squirrels and rabbits and stuff like that. In rural Alabama. Had a normal upbringing, good mother, good father. I love them both. We're still close. My whole family's close, cousins, aunts, uncles. So I had a good bond there with family. Grew up, as I got a little bit older, my dad went in the Army. He went in the Army kind of a little bit later in life, like in his 30s, and he became an officer. So once I got older, I never really thought about joining the military, but I was probably about midway through high school and I just decided, you know, I'm going to try out the military, you know, go in the National Guard. So I joined the National Guard. My dad wanted me to be an officer. So I ended up doing boot camp and AIT for the National Guard, was in the Infantry National Guard, and then went to Marion Military Institute to be an officer. So did 2 years there. And then I was good at ROTC type stuff, the military aspect of it.

But I was too, I was young and immature and wanted to party and I was too worried about travel, you know, drinking and partying and stuff like that. So I didn't focus on grades as well as I should. The military aspect, I made like all hundreds, but then, you know, PT score, good to go. But then some of the other aspects I was struggling on. So I ended up withdrawing from school after 2 years. It was a 2-year military school where you do 2 years, you get your commission as an officer, and then you'd go to like University of Alabama or Auburn or something like that. So I withdrew failing and just decided to just move back in with my mom down in like Gulf Shores, Foley area of Alabama. Lived down there, did some construction work for a little bit, but you know, the Army thing was kind of always in the back of my mind. So I ended up enlisting to go active duty. Started off in 3rd Infantry Division at Kelly Hill on Fort Benning in a mechanized infantry unit. Did a little bit of time there. Have some good friends that still keep in touch from back then, but did some time there.

Ended up wanting to go Special Forces. Always thought like Special Forces Green Beret was like the way to go. My dad was like, hey, Special Forces is the brains, Rangers are the brawn. That's what my dad used to say. And I ended up doing everything to get ready to set up for Special Forces selection. And then did the pre-PT test, had a selection date set up, and then boom, got popped for orders to go to Korea. So I did a year in Korea and then 9/11 popped off and then things changed and I ended up going to the Ranger Regiment. So I guess that's kind of it in a nutshell, kicking it off from childhood up to initial entry in the Army.

What was it like when you were in? Because I don't even know if there is mechanized infantry anymore. Is there?

Yeah, I think the strikers. Yeah.

Bradleys.

Yeah. I was in a Bradley unit. No, it's not.

Oh, it's because it used to be an MOS.

Yes.

11 Mike. Yeah.

No, I don't think the MOS exists. Really?

Yeah. So like what, what was that like compared to like straight leg infantry?

It was, it was completely different. We were at the mercy of those Bradleys, right? So wherever the Bradley went, that was like our little, that was like our shop, you know? So it rolled around, did its thing. We kept all of our gear strapped to the outside of it. Like our rucksacks were strapped on the outside. MREs and stuff like that. It would drop the raft. We would go do light infantry stuff, but then we'd always come back to that Bradley. And it actually, we ended up spending a lot of time in those Bradleys too. I remember one time at NTC, we were driving around. I think we were like 20-something hours straight in the back of the Bradleys. I mean, you're just like sleeping like this and then you're up and then you're sleeping. Like everybody's piled in there. You're stacked in there like sardines, right? And those things, I don't know if a lot of people know, but they have a drain hole plug in the bottom of them because they're made to be amphibious, right? So even the newer ones still have the legacy drain plugs. So we'd be in those things.

You couldn't unhatch that thing. It was like you almost had to have orders to let the ramp down. So 20-something hours in there, like we were popping those drain holes out and peeing out of the drain holes. It was nasty in the back of those things. Just to be quick with it. But yeah, it was, it was different, a lot different than light infantry.

Yeah.

I never really experienced light infantry until I got to the Ranger Regiment.

Yeah. What was it like for you in Korea? Because that's, uh, that's kind of a hardship tour, right? For, for infantry.

Yeah.

That's what, I mean, that's what they call it. So for me, when I went there, it was prior to 9/11. When I initially got there, um, it was, uh, we had a Sergeant Major that was big on PT. So I mean, that kind of set me up for the Ranger Regiment. He was like, I want everybody to run a marathon before the time you leave here. So in 12 months of your year, he's like, we're going to do a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. So we do these incredibly slow but yet long runs. So by the time that year was up, I had run a marathon in a battalion formation. Wow. Mind you, like, probably two-thirds of the formation was gone because we were on Camp Casey and then there was another base called Camp Hovey. So we'd run around Camp Casey, then run around Camp Hovey, then run around Camp Casey and then around Camp Hovey. Super small bases. Every time we passed by battalion area, like formation would just sheath off. You know what I mean? Like, oh, my knee. So, but, you know, I couldn't quit because I had that drive that got me to the Ranger Regiment.

So that set me up for it. We did a lot of ruck marching and stuff. And then 9/11, but you were stuck there on the base. There wasn't a whole, we did a little bit of training, probably trained a little bit more than I did stateside in the mechanized infantry. But then 9/11 happened and they like locked the base down. They had us pulling security. We were doing like roving patrols around the base. And everybody was like on, you know, super high alert. But the thing that really got me was that here we are now at war, right? Or like at the very beginning, we thought we were going to war, but they amped up security. Yet I was carrying around an M16. With no ammo in it. Literally no ammo. Or at first they had us with ax handles. Like, what the heck am I going to do with an ax handle, man? But they had us with ax handles carrying it around. Then they gave us rifles, but like you had to inspect the crap out of them and then you could walk around, but you had no ammo. Then eventually it finally got to where we could have ammo, but your magazine, every round was counted and tape was over the top of it and it was stuffed in the magazine well with tape on the top of it.

So if you wanted to shoot anybody, you had to take it out, take the tape off, put it back in and rack it. So it was frustrating. So I really had a, like a disdain for the Army. I really hated it and I really wanted to get out. And I noticed that before that, we would guard empty concrete pads for like hours while everybody was out. And I'm like, why am I wasting my time doing this? And then 9/11 kind of perpetuated that, but I was, you know, now we're at war and that's what I joined the military for.. So I just looked to reenlist and so I reenlisted for Ranger Battalion and that's where I went from there.

And what was it that took you to the Rangers instead of SF like you had planned?

Well, there was a guy that was in my unit out there actually. And speaking of that, it was one of the things they did in Korea was the Manchu Mile. So what they called it, it's like a 30-mile ruck march. And I love ruck marching so much. So we're like hut, hut, hut, like rucking. About 15 miles into this ruck march, and I'm just like, everybody's sucking, but I'm like, dude, I love this stuff. And this dude was like, if you love this, you need to be a Ranger. And I was like, I was thinking about doing Special Forces, but he was like, nah, you want to go to the Ranger Regiment. He's like, you go to Ranger Regiment, you're going to kill bad guys. If you want to do this kind of stuff and ruck march—

hook you up with all the ruck marching you desire, all your heart's desire.

So I said, okay, well, I was So I started asking more questions. I didn't know anything about Rangers. And then, you know, that's ended up being the route that I went. I went and re-enlisted and I wasn't sure that I was going to go to Ranger Battalion because I think they mixed it up with a Ranger School at first. But luckily through the coaching of that NCO, I was able to make sure that I went to Ranger Battalion. And so I went and did that and then almost didn't make it. Like I was telling Adam today, I almost didn't even make it into RIP because, you know, they do vehicle inspections at the very beginning of RIP. Well, I had a taillight that was out in my vehicle and I can't remember exactly how it happened, but one of the cadre was like, it's no big deal. You're not going to drive it while you're in RIP. So it's just going to have to be parked. You can get it fixed after RIP. And I said, okay, cool. So then I ended up getting questioned by another one of the cadre and I was like, well, the cadre said that I could get it fixed afterwards.

They're like, no, you got to get it fixed right now. He never told you that. I'm like, wait, that's what he told me. They're like, well, you're calling Cadre a liar. I was like, I'm just saying that's what he told me. And I'm sorry if you think I'm calling him a liar. They're like, you're dropped from the course. Like right at the beginning. Like I just gotten smoked up a little bit.

Boom.

Dropped from the course. Now I was in holdovers, but I literally went like with tears in my eyes. I was like, please. And like, I begged the Cadre. I was like, please. Please give me another shot. Like, I will do anything. I did not mean to say that he was a liar. I was just saying what I heard, and I wasn't trying to call him a liar. Maybe there was a misunderstanding or whatever, but I was like, please don't kick me out. And so luckily, he had compassion for me and let me start the next RIP class.

It's wild sometimes, like, these edge moments in people's careers, especially military careers, that can make or break them depending on how it goes.

Yeah.

You know, that's totally out of your control.

It's totally out of your control.

There's a lot of that that happens. Yeah.

You know. Yeah. Yeah. So what, so what was it like for you when you got to battalion? You're what rank were you?

I was an E-4.

So you're an import.

Yeah, I was an import, untabbed E-4, no Ranger tab getting there. Luckily, I consider myself squared away. I mean, the guys that knew me may say otherwise, but I thought I was squared away. Like I had, I pretty much had the 7-8 memorized back then. I was in physically, I was in really good shape. I was in way better shape than most of the other privates. So didn't have that hanging over my head. I was knowledgeable. So I kind of was able to kind of stay under the radar for the most part. But I mean, you know how it is as a private ranger battalion.

Yeah.

You can't stay under the radar. You're going to get just destroyed constantly. One of the big things that I remember was we had done a range, talking about Joe Kapp. He was one of my guys in my squad at the time. Like I was a team leader and he was one of my guys, I think at the time, or no, he was maybe it was one of the same platoon, but we went out to a range and it was either him or one other guy I had inspect my gear. We did a live fire. And we had— remember we'd had that dude that got shot with a blank adapter on in the shoot house. Remember that?

That was while I was in Ranger School. Yeah. In 2004, 2003 or 2004.

Sounds about right.

Yeah.

So that was a big deal. I was a brand new corporal and that dude got shot with a live round through a blank adapter. And so they were like really being scrutinizing on like blanks and live ammo, ammo shakedowns, which we did. So we're at this range. I had my dudes, I swear to God, I had my dudes shake me down. I was like, check my stuff. And they checked all my pouches and stuff. Go back, throw my rack into the wall locker. And then about a week later, we had a range where it was a machine gun range and I was a brand new RSO, like corporal.

So they're like, hey, you're going to go be the RSO.

So I'm like, all right. So I go out there to be the range safety officer and didn't shoot, left my kit in the bus the whole time. But then at the end of the range, they were like, everybody bring your stuff out and lay it out. And then they were like, and I was like, do you want me to grab mine, Sergeant? And they're like, yeah, yeah, grab yours too. And I'm like, okay. I go to grab it out of the bus and you know how it is. Like when you grab it and you're like, wait a minute, what's that?

Feels a little heavy.

Yeah. It's a little weird. There's a smoke grenade in one of my pouches, just a smoke grenade. But I'm like, my heart sank right away. I'm like, oh my God. I hope I like, and I know where that came from. They did. They just didn't check that very backpack. It was one of those dump pouches., but that zipped up. I was like, oh my God. So I take this thing out there and I lay it out and I'm just like, I go over to the platoon sergeant. I'm like, hey sergeant, I got bad news for you. I was like, in that pouch, I have a smoke grenade that was left over from another range. They just laid into me.

Oh, that's it.

They like started, they're like, you go stand over there and do pushups. I'm like, I'm doing pushups and pushups and pushups. And then they finished checking everybody else, load everybody on the bus. This is at Red Cloud Range. So not too far from the regiment. Down the street. Yeah, it was like 3 miles or so. They made me— they took the bus back and they made me IMT. Like, I'm up, he sees me, I'm down. I'm up, he sees me, I'm down. All the way back, 3 miles of IMTs, dude. This is the beginning of it, right? And meanwhile, the bus just left me. They sent the Humvee back to like monitor me IMTing all the way back. So I get back. Then my squad leader says, I want you to go all the way up. He basically briefs me on all this stuff. He's like, you're going to understand accountability of your equipment and how important this all is and making sure you've got all your stuff. And I'm like, how does this even have anything to do with me having a smoker name? But he made me IMT to the barracks and grab just like the canteen cup, come all the way back.

That IMT all the way back. IMT, for the crowd out there, is individual movement techniques. Like I'm up running, Like you're being shot at. Yeah. Like you're being shot at. You're taking cover the whole way. So you can't just run there and back. So it takes a while. So I go, then I get the canteen, then I come back, get the canteen cover. Then I go get the Alice clips until all of my TA-50, all of my entire issue. This was about 8 hours later.

Oh my God.

All of my issue was laid out in formation. So I never ever took that, you know, ammo shakedowns, not serious ever again after that. Because, but yeah, it was embarrassing though, as a corporal, brand new NCO, so they call it.

Right.

And then here I am just being just made to look like crap in front of all the privates. It was the most embarrassing moment. Yeah. But it's a lesson that you'll never forget, that's for sure.

Yeah.

Did they have, when you were the, skipping forward a little bit, but when you were the mortar platoon sergeant, did they still have the huge amnesty box? Because one of the guys from mortars brought like an 81mm. Round back from the range once? They had like an embassy box. Literally, you could open it up and like put things.

I don't remember that. That'd be a good question for Les Sandusky. I mean, yeah, I don't remember that. But dude, those guys are out of control. The mortar guys, they were some good dudes, man. I love working with those guys. But dude, as I got to, and I don't want to jump out too much, but in the mortar platoon, the discipline was still strong there. Like when I went back to 3rd Ranger Battalion, I mean, discipline was still good in the regiment compared to anywhere else, but those guys really held it to the next level still. And like, I had to like, kind of like turn a blind eye because a lot of what they were doing was like not authorized, but I'm like, I'm good with it. You know what I mean? I'm with you and smoke the crap out of those dudes, but I'm over here. Yeah.

Years ago we had, uh, remember Ian Karusha guy and he was describing mortar section. He's like, I think he described it as the most terrifying place in Ranger Battalion.

Oh, I wouldn't. Yeah, it's, it's no joke. And there's some of the smartest guys too. Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to be, you know, these dudes could do a lot of that math in their head and you're talking trigonometry, dude. And these guys are just like cranking it out in their head. Ah, like boom, boom, boom, boom. No big deal. Yeah. Um, it's a, I had an under-respect for that place until I went there to be the platoon sergeant. I was like, man, these dudes are all geniuses. They just want to do the best that they can. They all wish they were shooters in the line. So one of the big things I tried to do there was bring in, um, something new for them, you know? Uh, I was like, man, these guys are not being utilized overseas the way they should. So I was like, what can we do? So thinking about like what I did in RRC. So I was like, okay, I'd send dudes over to RRC to do classes on like battlefield interrogation. Cause I'm like, that's cool. It's something, a new skill they didn't get to do., but they could go over there and learn how to battlefield interrogate. So now they're a force multiplier overseas. If they're not shooting mortars, they'd be like, hey, I can interrogate, right?

Um, sent a bunch of guys to Army sniper school too. Um, the sniper platoon, as you know, like, I don't know if it was that way when you were there, but definitely when I was mortar platoon sergeant, we had our black side weapons, which were all the weapons that were like issued by JSOC. And then you had the regular Army sniper rifles. Well, nobody ever used the regular Army sniper rifles, but at that time it was actually a pretty good rifle. It was the SAS, I think it was the camera, what that stands for.

But oh, you're talking about the, yeah, the 5.56.

No, not the SPR. You're talking about SPR.

Yeah.

This was a 7.62 gas gun. It was an AR-10 platform that the Army had come up with like the SR-25.

Okay. So the M110. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

That's it. The M110. So they had those, but nobody used them, but it was a solid gun.

Right.

Um, but the, all the snipers would use the, uh, 300 Win Mags or they would use the, uh, freaking SR-25s. Cause it was cooler, you know what I mean? But so they didn't use those others. So I got all the sniper rifles assigned to the mortar platoon. So I had 5 dudes that went to regular Army sniper school. They were sniper qualified and then they had their own assigned sniper rifles. Um, I tried to send them to cross-train lots of different stuff like that so they could be force multipliers. We actually sent a couple dudes to SODIC too, you know, the Special Forces Sniper Course too. So, um, because they were just undervalued guys. I mean, not that they were undervalued, but, you know, they weren't utilized to the best of their ability. I mean, they were taking them out, they were taking mortar tubes. A lot of times they weren't even taking the mortar tubes. So it's like they're just an extra dude sitting on a BP.

So you can justify it though. I mean, you need security around the mortar section when they're in the field.

Yeah.

And, you know, that's just added value for the soldier, whatever it is, you know, he brings to the table.

And you think about on the BPs, they're at a spot where they're going to get some reach anyway. They're going to have some standoff. It's a good spot for a sniper. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And it adds flexibility to them.

So, you're in Ranger Battalion, misspent youth as a corporal. That was about the time when I met you, actually, when you came back from Ranger School and Then you went on to become a squad leader in 2nd Platoon, right?

Um, 3rd Platoon.

3rd Platoon. Sorry.

Yeah. So I was a squad leader in 3rd Platoon. Did a couple trips to Iraq. Um, we did, um, one of the more notable trips was, uh, that one to Mosul up there, which you were with us on that one. Um, we did a bunch of raids. We stayed hitting, I think it was that deck of cards or whatever, the bad guys that they had. And we, we had a really high success rate up there. Mosul, I remember, I can't remember the exact stats, but I think we had like a 90-something percent success rate. It was at that time, that trip, our platoon specifically, that task force at least had the highest success rate, I think, of Iraq at the time.

Do you have any recollection of like how many raids we did on that deployment?

Because I probably a thousand or more. I mean, we were doing 2 to 3 a day.

Yeah.

Every single day. Yeah. Pretty much.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember we had two platoons there. So we had a platoon that would go in daytime hits because it was that busy that we were cranking targets during the day, which was not normal for us. And then cranking targets at night.

Well, then we went to 24 hours on and 24 off.

Oh, I remember. Just a ball crusher. Yeah. Yeah. And dudes were coming back just getting tanked with IVs, like about to pass out.

We're all so exhausted by the end of that deployment. By then you, you told the story that, you know, on one of the previous interviews we did, but when we were getting these missions going down in the Tal Afar a lot and both of our platoons got into nasty firefights down there every time we did that. And you guys were in a pretty substantial firefight down there too.

Yep. We, we went to Tal Afar to hit 3 different targets at the time. The regular Army, had this whole city cordoned off and they weren't really going in there because if they were going in, dudes were getting sniped out of the, the, the tanker's hatches, the tank unit down there.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was tanks and they were getting like, they have to pop up out of the tanks so they can see where they're going as they're driving along, you know, because that thing is so big. Um, and the dudes that were popped up, the TC were getting smoked by snipers. So they kind of cordoned it off. We were supposed to go in there, smack some targets and loosen it up. So we went in, um, hit this one target and ended up like killing, like, I think our snipers shot like 2 dudes that tried to flee. Not a big deal. Went to the second target. We never even made it to the third target because we went to the second target. Um, it was kind of a narrow street. Uh, I remember I was like, we rotated who was like the lead assault squad leader too. And I was kind of pissed because it wasn't my day to be the lead assault squad leader. So I was across the way doing cross coverage and we had 2 other squads on the other side., and we get ready to breach and then a Kiowa, like a regular Army Kiowa flew over top and it kind of woke everybody up.

And I remember our platoon leader specifically briefed them, don't fly any birds over top. We want to keep this super quiet. So that bird flies over top. Um, the bad guys start waking up. We hear like comms are saying like, hey, there's movement on the roof and stuff like that. Well, our dude, um, is getting ready to donk the door with like the little battering ram type deal. And, uh, as he's getting ready to rear back, the door opens up and this dude's like staring him in his face and he goes, uh, compromise, right? So the bad guy slams the door and takes off. Our dude boots the door in, goes right in. That dude dropped a frag, like he shut the door, dropped a frag and ran. So soon as that first assault squad went in, all those dudes took a point-blank grenade blast, you know, like all into their legs, you know. And, you know, like, I like to tell people that don't know, because, you know, you see the movies like Commando and stuff like that, dudes are like taking machine gun rounds to the chest and like they just suck that up and keep going.

But grenade blasts like turn them into a pink mist. It's just completely opposite. Like, bullet— like, rifle rounds don't mess around. Like, it causes serious damage. If it hits a bone, you're probably gonna lose that limb. But grenades, eh, I mean, I'm not really too scared of grenades. It's just kind of like, take it in the backside and you're just—

they're so random, sporadic in how they like damage people.

Yeah, they are. I mean, they really are.

These are also like ancient Russian hand grenades that are not probably of the best quality.

Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, I wouldn't want to take an M67 point blank, you know, our frags. Yeah. But the Russian and Chinese ones, I'm not too scared about them. You're right. Now, if they're right on top of you, you're probably going to take, like, like Cap did, lose, end up having to lose a leg. But I've been around countless grenade blasts from like, from me to him. And it's just kind of like, it's like a bee sting, whatever, you know what I mean? Barely goes under the skin. But these dudes were pretty much point blank on it. They were all within like a couple of feet of it. So it really kind of messed them up pretty good. The second squad that was getting ready to go kind of hesitated for a second. Like, I think like, what? Is going on. And then I just took my squad and blew past them, went right into the house. Um, cause I, you know, I was already chomping at the bit cause I love being the first guy in anyway. So I roll in there and it was, it was sketchy, man. We didn't know where this was coming from.

We didn't know if we were going to take fire right off in there. Um, we'd go in, there was like 2 or 3 or like 3 or 4 rooms right away, like a little court, like a corridor with like a couple rooms and then it opened up into a bigger courtyard. And went in, cleared the first room on the left, cleared the first room on the right, and there was literally nobody in there. The first room on the left was one of our guys who was in there kind of like laying up against the wall. Blood was streaming out of his arm. And I was like, hey dude, you good? And he's like, yeah, man, I'm good. I'm like, all right. So we kept going because like my focus wasn't to treat him. It was to keep finding the bad guys.

Right.

Went into the next room, saw another Ranger in there kind of dragging himself back in. He was wounded in his legs. And we told him like, hey dude, do self-aid and start patching yourself up. Medics will be in here shortly. Kept going, went into the next room and I'm like stacked up on the door getting ready to go in. And then I heard like the sound of like, just like in the movie, like clink, clink, like a grenade rolling on the ground. And I like see this thing roll between like from me to your feet from me. I'm looking at this thing and it was kind of like I had all the time in the world. I'm looking at it. I'm like, I'm about to be an ugly son of a gun. This thing's about to blow up right in my face, but I just booted it, kicked it out of the way, and then turned and dove. And we had some Ranger casualties literally about from like right over here, like 5 feet away. So I turned and dove towards them, caught some grenade shrapnel on the back, but it was pretty minor. Long story short, went on to continue to clear that place.

One of my privates took a shot in the shoulder, almost took his arm off, got shot in the knee., with, I think it was, whatever the 7, I can't remember the 7.62, the machine gun.

RPK.

RPK.

Yeah.

Uh, got shot by that. I engaged the guys. There was two dudes over there with a machine gun. I engaged them. Me and some other guys did, took those guys out. Um, one of my team leaders ended up treating that guy, which I didn't even realize. I was kind of in the lead, received some fire, turned, returned fire, suppressed that, went to go ahead and clear this next room that we were getting ready to go in. And we were, moving, you know, meticulously around. So even though I engaged that threat, I continued focus over here. It may not have been the right thing to do at the time, but that's just what we did. Went in that room, cleared it. Nobody was in there. Come out and I'm like, where the heck is my squad? Like, like it was like 5-man assault teams is what we were running back then. So I didn't have a lot of dudes, but, uh, I was like, man, I'm missing some dudes. Well, one was walking down a stairwell. Another one's treating one of the other guys that got shot. And then I had like another 2 dudes with me.

So, uh, I'm like, oh man, one of my dudes is messed up. So then we kind of regrouped. We took a bunch more frags. Actually, at that point in time, I went back out and grenades just started raining down from the roof. Like dudes were on the roof just chucking them. Um, and the grenades kept going off and going off. I took grenade shrapnel in the hand then, uh, or in this wrist, uh, several other dudes got wounded. So then at that point in time, I pulled back and went outside to try to see what was going on. Like our platoon leader and PL were not even on comms. Uh, they were completely pinned down at the time. So I ended up kind of taking charge of that whole situation. I was like, what do our vehicles look like outside? Security was just jacked up. So I went out, reorganized security outside, started bringing our medevac vehicles up. Cause I'm like, I know we got casualties. This dude's jacked up. There's probably even more that I don't know about. Brought the medevac vehicles up and then started just consolidating casualties the best as possible and trying to like coordinate coordinate this firefight.

Meanwhile, our JTACs were calling in airstrikes and doing, uh, trying to do Little Bird gun runs. I don't think they could actually at the time while we were on target. It was just the bad guys were so close in proximity to us that CAS was just not usable.

Yeah.

So, um, once we pulled off, they pretty much leveled that entire city block. I think killed like 200 dudes or something. With an AC-130? Yeah, AC-130, A-10s, probably some F-16s with 2,000-pounders just blowing them up.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was telling you before the show, your direct leadership wanted to put you in for a DSC for that, that whole action. That's crazy. Yeah. And, you know, it kind of, my understanding was it didn't go through because above our platoon level, it was, they felt that it wouldn't look good if, you know, an NCO got a DSC and not an officer.

Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, that's the way it is, dang officers.

It's, it's how it works. Oh, we need to—

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Thanks, guys.

Appreciate it. So talk to us about, you know, I know we're retreading some previous ground here, but I mean, talk to us about, you know, when you decide to go to RRC, like, how did that come about? Like, what, when, when did the idea even come to your head? What did you know about them?

So, you know, I'd, I'd seen the guys around. I saw dudes with like hair, like literally as long as this, um, big long beards over there. And I'm like, just super fit dudes. I mean, like, you know, Rangers are fit dudes compared to even other soft units. They're typically pretty fit guys. Um, but it was just a whole nother level of fitness, man. And like more mature guys, you know, older guys. I'm like, who are these guys? I'm like, are these dudes CIA? You know what I mean? Like when I was in Ranger Battalion, like, who are these CIA dudes like walking around here? I had no clue. I went to PLDC as an E-5 and met a guy named Kirk Conklin, who was at the time, he was in the company, was RRD at the time and went to PLDC with him. And we talked about it. I was like, oh, you're over there? Like, what do they do? And like, he, Couldn't tell me a whole lot because they were like super secretive, but it was enough that it kind of intrigued me. So I was like, I kind of want to do that.

I was already kind of getting tired of Groundhog Day in Ranger Battalion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, cause you get a new private and you kind of got to start back at the basics all over again. Um, yeah, you got good gear and you got great training opportunities, but you're always having to kind of back it down a little bit and then ramp it back up. Um, for the most part. And then, so I was kind of tired of that. I wanted something new. I was going to, go to Delta Force selection or, and now I heard about RRD. And so I was considering that, got wounded on that trip in Tal Afar, had to get some surgeries and stuff, and then did another deployment. And then after that, I went to be a RIP instructor. I was RIP cadre, did that for a while, enjoyed that. Well, then, you know, the Sergeant Major came to me and was like, hey, we need somebody for this Omega program. Do you want to go do this Omega program? I was like, I don't even know what that is. Sounds good. And he was like, yeah, you get to grow your beard out and grow your hair out and stuff and deploy overseas.

I'm like, selling point.

Yeah. I'm like, sounds good. You know, like, cause you know, as a line battalion Ranger, you're not doing that. You see the snipers get to do it. The battalion recce guys get to do it. Um, but I didn't, you know, didn't know, like occasional guys. So I, I get to go do that and wear civilian clothes overseas. And I thought that was kind of cool. So I deployed and did that. And when, when I went over the first time, I was with my friend Rodney Brown and some of the SEAL Team 6 dudes that he was with there in Gecko. But the second time I did a second trip and we'll talk probably more about the other stuff later. But I did a second trip because you're talking about why did I go to RRD? So the second Omega trip that I did was in 2008 and I was at Oregon E and the guys I swapped out with there was RRC Team 3 at the time, RRD Team 3. And I was like, man, this is what you guys do? This is what you guys do? And they're like, ah, this job's kind of lame.

You know what I mean? We're going on to bigger and better things. And I was like, this is lame? This is like the coolest deployment I've ever done. And to you guys, this is kind of like— to them, it was kind of lame because it was kind of dead at the time. And they were like, yeah, we're doing some other stuff. And so they were like, come to selection. And I was like, okay. So then I was like, that's what I want to go do. So then I just started training up, really running at high altitude up there, trying to get back in good shape again. I mean, I was in shape, but you need to be in really good shape for that selection. And then after that, went back as a RIP cadre and then put in my packet, went to selection. So that's how it started. I bumped into him overseas doing the Omega stuff.

Yeah. And we've talked about selection before with you, but it's it's a unique selection. Like it really, really focused on the demands of the job.

Yeah, there's, you have to be physically fit to pass it. It's similar to, you know, like Delta Force selection. It's really based off of that. A lot of walking in the mountains, navigating long distances with a rucksack on. So you're going to walk, you know, anywhere from, I'd say 15 to 18, 20 miles a day. In the mountains, um, and then you're just getting assessed the entire time. There's dudes out there paying attention to what you're doing. I don't want to go into too many details because I know they like to try to keep that stuff under wraps, um, but I think what's the most unique about it is, is the OTC pipeline. I think they call it RTC now, uh, the Reconnaissance Training Course. But that course, uh, you know, like a lot of the other guys like Delta Force and stuff like that, their program's about 6 months long to go through. Well, RRCs is like 11 or 12 months long. It's almost a full year. And you walk some distance. Like, we walked 40 miles with a tactical recce ruck. Like, I've walked 40 miles with a ruck weighing over £100 before in mountainous terrain just to get to the target.

Like, that was just to get to the mission. Right. And then the mission goes for like several days and then you walk out.

Right.

So, right. We did freefall infiltrations. We were big on freefall stuff. That's how I kind of got into the freefall realm. But yeah, they didn't— there was no holds barred, man. A lot of the training that we did, I'm like, dude, if somebody knew that they left us out here flapping like this, somebody would probably be in trouble because, I mean, no joke, nobody— it's like they didn't care. We're out in the middle of the desert, 20 miles from anything with our own supplies and nobody to talk to at times. I can't believe this is allowed in the military. It was good stuff though.

Made stuff.

And I mean, for people who have not, you know, rucked, you know, maybe you go on hikes. I guess rucking is a new health fad now though.

Yeah.

Rucking. But anyway, for people who haven't rucked, when Mike says that like they were rucking miles over mountainous terrain, 1 mile, 2 miles over a mountain is not like rucking a mile or 2 miles. Because it may be a mile as the crow flies.

Oh yeah. It may be 4 or 5 miles. Yeah.

This isn't some ultralight bullshit either.

Yeah.

They got you carrying radios, batteries, optics, batteries, water.

Yeah. I mean, no joke. On one of them, we were out near Arizona. We walked 40 miles on infill on that one. And I remember the cadre were like, why are you guys going so slow? And we're like, we feel like we're going really fast. You know what I mean? So they're like, hey, meet us at this road intersection. One of the few times that during a movement like that they actually interacted with us. So they told us, hey, meet us at this road intersection. So we meet them at that road intersection. They pull up and they're like, lay your rucksacks out. And they were like, you don't need all that crap.

Get rid of that.

Get rid of this.

So they slimmed our loads down from, I think I was the RTO on that one. And I weighed my ruck. It was like 120-something pounds. And after that it was down to about £100. And some of the guys had a little bit lighter rucks, probably down to 90 or 80-something pounds. But I mean, we just had too much stuff because we didn't want to fail the mission. So we had instead of 2 extra cable for the cable that we had, the primary, we had like 2 extra cables of this, 2 extra batteries for every battery. And we were just carrying way too much stuff. So we, but we learned, I mean, that's what part of it was about, like learning what your limits were and what you can carry. And then also learning other ways to come up with solutions to these problems. Like, for example, water. We got these little purification little deals that we can carry. So we didn't have to carry as much water because water is super heavy. It's the heaviest thing we carry, that and food and batteries. But then we got these little straws that we could literally decontaminate any type of water.

And that saved us so we could carry less water weight and then always just refill if we could just find a water source. That was the key.

And decontaminate. Doesn't necessarily make water taste good.

No, it could still be nasty looking too, right? But, uh, yeah, some of those filters later on got a lot better where it would make it clear too.

Yeah, yeah, back in the day they tasted like charcoal.

Yeah, yeah. Um, I, I missed it a little bit. Uh, Les is like popping off in the chat. We love you, Les. Uh, but he mentioned something about when you were at a Benning having a problem with the woman across from 375, something about a dip can. Did I get that right, Les? I can't get back to that part of the chat.

I used to dip, so it probably had something to do with me dipping. I used to dip Copenhagen back in the day, and a lot of people don't think that's the cleanest habit to have. So I'm sure somebody probably got pissed off at me for a spitter or something. What do you say?

I don't know. Maybe he'll pop back up with it. Yeah, I just wanted to, I saw that earlier in the chat, but what was life like for you going from, so you had seen three, this is your third aspect of the military. You've been mechanized infantry, conventional infantry, and then you had been at Ranger Battalion and now you were at RRD. Did it just feel like life kept getting better or did it open your eyes like different aspects of the military that, you know, that you didn't know were possible?

Yeah. I mean, it did open my eyes because, you know, like in the regular Army, you're only read on to like this very little bit. You get to Ranger Battalion, you're read on to like, you know what Delta Force dudes look like and like you work with them regularly. SEAL Team 6, all that kind of stuff. RRC guys. But then when you get to RRC, like you, you've already known what all those guys are about, but now you know the background behind how they do what they do because you're helping do what they do. Like, you're facilitating it with the reconnaissance piece, and then you're right onto so many different other programs because there's all these different skills that we have to have to do our job that most people don't know about. And that stuff that shouldn't probably be talked about, but just a lot of the tradecraft and stuff that we learn. And I didn't know. I'm like, dang, I get to do this. It was the greatest thing in the world. Like, going through OTC, it was the best time ever. Physically demanding and always under the gun. You know what I mean?

You never know. If, uh, you're gonna get fired at any point in time or if you're not gonna hold the standard, cuz the standards are super high. Um, and you're competing against the other guys that are there with you too. But, um, the, the training was just amazing. I mean, it was some of the coolest stuff. I got to learn how to pick locks and pick out of handcuffs. And like at the, at one point in time I could pick out any set of handcuffs in like a matter of seconds. You know what I mean? Like, you know, 10, 15 seconds. Um, we got to do a lot of cool stuff like that. Learn how to, you you know, resist interrogations and all that kind of stuff. The shooting, you know, long range shooting, pistol shooting. I really got into the pistol shooting there too, because we did a lot of the low-vis concealed carry stuff. So I ended up being a pistol. So we did a lot of pistol shooting courses and that became a passion that I really liked was pistol shooting. It's something you got to really work at a lot to get good at.

Do you want to tell people, maybe for the young Rangers out there who, still to this day don't know what RRC is. Do you want to make the little recruitment pitch and tell people what RRC is, what those guys do?

And it's not just Rangers anymore, it's everybody now.

Yeah, it's open, right?

Yeah, used to be just Rangers, but—

well, I, I think it's, uh, like our— one of our old NCICs said, he said it's like the best-kept secret in the Army. Really, I think it is. The funding is— when I was there was so immense because you've got— we had like 6, 6-man teams at the most, and that was if the teams were full. So So you're talking like 36 operators. And we had just the best funding in the world. Anything, like any training that we wanted to do, we could do. I mean, you, you name it, you think outside the box, you look at online to the most craziest course you could be taught by some wazoo civilian over here about this, whatever it is. If you could justify it, which everything really is justifiable for recce, you know what I mean? Especially when the clandestine and stuff, you submit it and we could do it. I mean, literally, I never— we never got turned down for anything. It was— if it didn't happen, it was because the timing just didn't line up right. So there's that aspect to it. But we got to work with a lot of really good people.

I mean, some of the best guys I've ever met in the military, some of the smartest guys. I mean, you got really smart dudes in all of SOF, but that place had some really smart guys that still to this day, some of the most impressive guys I've ever worked with. Um, excuse me, the physical fitness aspect of it, you've got to be super fit and we had some some ridiculously fit guys there too. But I think it was a great place to work. I mean, I don't know if it's changed since I left, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I mean, I got to interact with all the different agencies, all the other like tier 1 units that were out there. And it was, it was definitely gratifying for sure.

Did you see a lot of, and answer this to your comfort level, obviously, but obviously back in the '90s, RRD was, you know, like a sort of more like a force recon sort of, you know, tactical recce, greenside recce. Yeah. Yeah. It was a tactical recce. And then all of a sudden, I don't say all of a sudden, but, but you, you guys proved your worth so much that you brought more onto the national stage as a national asset as opposed to a regimental asset. Set. Did you, did you see like the training expanding sort of based on the mission sets and things like that?

Yeah, it definitely did. So we did, all the teams were trained in tactical recce, the green side recce, like you were saying. And we were really good at that. And that was our bread and butter. But then we also trained in like the, the AFO piece too, the, the, the CTR type stuff blending in, you know, all the different aspects of tradecraft that you can do there too. And that's where a lot of that other training came along. Learning how to hack into computers and stuff like that. Like, I suck at technology to this day, but when I would go through those courses, I was pretty good at the stuff for a little while. And then if we used it— a lot of stuff we didn't use that often, but it did come in handy. Like, we would have to learn how to encrypt stuff because I may have to travel to a certain location with a civilian computer and have to hide stuff on there. And like, obviously I want somebody to be able to look at it real quick and not be able to find what I have.

Right.

So they taught us to do that. But it came in handy really when we were training the ARU, the Afghan Reconnaissance Unit that we created in Afghanistan. We taught them a lot of tech tradecraft. We taught them a lot of physical tradecraft too, because those dudes were our proxies in Afghanistan. They lived in the world. These dudes were running like a taxi service or a cell phone shop or whatever. Doing what we needed them to do, collecting on how we needed them to collect. But they, but they were out there flapping. They weren't attached to a military base. They were all by themselves with no backup. Like if they were on a mission, you know, if it got really bad, we could possibly leverage some assets to come get them. But most of the time those dudes are just going to be just stuck like Chuck.

Yeah.

I remember you telling me that like it was very rare that you would have like physical face-to-face contact with them because they were just so deep covered.

Yeah, it was. And it was frowned upon a lot, although I did it more than a lot of people did. And I got some heat for that. Where I was at up in Kunduz, it was pretty conducive for me to drive outside the base and go low-vis and link up with these guys. And I can't remember, but for some reason we were collecting a lot of data off the cameras and there's no way to get that except for to physically get the SD card because this was old school.

But right.

And the IT networks in Afghanistan, it's not 5G, right?

No, right. No. Yeah. Back then it was not even close to anything. So we would, what I would do is we, and these guys were trained just like tradecraft that you would, you learn at the agency, you know what I mean? Like similar, but we had to kind of water it down to be within the regs to teach that stuff to them. But I would have my dudes, you know, they were accurate with time too. So I would say, hey, I need you to drive by this location at this exact time, or minus 1 minute. And I want you to put your SD card wrapped up in a napkin in a water bottle because there's trash water bottles everywhere. I guess I'm chucking on the ground. And then I would be driving so that my timing was just so that as this dude went down this street, I was literally about a couple hundred meters behind him or maybe just barely could see him going away. So I see him go, I can see him do the act, the operational act. And then I can come by, pick up the trash. So we never face-to-face contact, but now I have his SD card and I can go back, download the video footage off of it for a target that we were doing.

So it's funny, you know, it's funny that you mentioned like they were good with time because I think for people who didn't have to deal with that aspect of, you know, Afghans or Iraqis or whatever, that when you are dealing with like an inshallah culture, you know, that maybe today, maybe tomorrow, if God wills it, maybe next week, if God wills it, like time isn't always—

Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for the most part.

And, and so to find, you know, people in those cultures that, that can kind of stick to those operational requirements, it's not easy to do.

No, it's not. It's just not part of their culture. So we had to really assess for that and we really harped on it. We put them through a selection and an OTF. DC pipeline too, and we harped on that being timely and being reliable and being predictable and stuff like that. But you're right, I mean, we lost a lot of guys because they just couldn't do something.

You pull the candidates out of the KKA or the Kandak Commandos.

Yeah, that's where most of them came from. They were either, yeah, the KKA or the Commandos, and so they were already elite trained dudes that were trained by Special Forces, knew how to shoot. Yeah, or, or they were trained like the KKA, trained by Rangers and SEAL Team 6 dudes Delta Force guys. Um, but then yeah, we would select from those dudes and then that was the cream of the crop. We would put them through a whole nother selection, OTC. Yeah.

And the other interesting thing about the whole ARU program is that it's not something that most people associate with Rangers. Like your dad said, Rangers are the brawn.

Yeah.

They're not the guys. This isn't a Ranger thing. And I, I just curious if you had any sort of insight into like how that program came about, like whose brainchild was that, where the requirement came from. It was very interesting.

I mean, obviously you guys did it very well, but yeah, thinking about that, I know. So there were some dudes senior to me in the company that were involved in the setting up and creating of that stuff. So I don't know exactly where the, who the brainchild was. It might've come from within the unit, but I'm sure there was probably some direction from JSOC as well. But yeah, we were good at it. I mean, it's, it's not rocket science, you know what I mean? We just had to teach. You just have to be a good teacher. I mean, most guys in a leadership position, any NCO in the military should be a good teacher. And that's all it is. We were teaching them to do what we do. That's all we did. We taught them to do what we did because in that realm, we couldn't actually do that as well because you just stick out. Like, that country, it's like if you take you know, your average, never been in the military New Yorker and drop them in Southeast Alabama where I live, they're going to stick out like a sore thumb.

Right.

You know what I mean?

The way they talk, the way they look, the way they walk. And it's even more of a stark contrast in Afghanistan. You take a 6'2 white American dude and drop them off. Now the white skin color is not the biggest thing because there's a lot of light skin colored people.

Right.

But like the way we walk, the way we carry ourselves, the way we talk.

Well, and also when you get into like cover for status, cover for action type things, like they, because of the culture and because of how they know the culture, like there are things that they can come up with that Americans would never even think of. Like, you know, in, in the sense of a lot of these villages or a lot of these places they were surveilling, um, were very small. Everybody knows everybody else. They know you don't belong to the tribe there.

Yeah.

And so if they get like pulled over and it's like, what are you guys doing here? And they say, oh, my sister, you know, my sister was supposed to get married and she ran away and we're looking for her.

They can play that off.

They can play that off. And they know that. And that's a perfectly valid excuse for them to be like trolling these neighborhoods.

Like, exactly right.

Where's, where's this wayward sister? We have to— that'll lead to beat her, kidnap and take her back to take her back so we can beat her with chains. Yeah. And make her marry this guy. Yeah.

Yeah. No, you're exactly right. And that's why we had to use those guys as our proxies. We could do certain things, but for the most part, we used them and we just trained them and used them, you know, and we would sometimes tag along with them on certain things. We'd go out and we would be out like a lot of times we would also task them with training missions because, you know, the missions weren't always as busy for them as we would necessarily want it to be sometimes. So to keep them from being lazy because, you know, a lot of them just happen to just kind of default into doing whatever they're doing and they just kind of forget about the military, especially when they're living out there like that. So we would bring them in and task them with training targets.

Yeah.

And I would have them recce something and I'd be out in town doing counter surveillance on them just to see if they were actually trying to be sneaky or if they're just like, hey, what's up?

Right.

Standing in the middle of the street, taking a picture, thinking they can get away with it. You know?

Now, how tough was it for you guys providing bona fides for these guys when it was their intel that might be launching a raid, putting American lives at risk, you know, like, like validating their intel to the battle space commander or, you know, whomever to say, yeah.

Typically their intel was just confirmation.

Okay.

So there was already something else like SIGINT or whatever. That we would have, but then we may just need to develop this target a little bit more. So our guys, they're into a lot of times just confirmation. Sometimes they would just build pattern of life. So we knew that there was a dude in and around this area, but then they would just refine the pattern of life.

Or doing the close-in recce that you wouldn't send an American to do, I take it.

Yeah, exactly. Like getting facial recognition photos of this dude at this house. Yeah. I mean, so we have this blurry, crappy picture that, you know, is on your little cards that you got and we're like, was that really him? And then we send the dudes out to mingle around. They get a no joke picture. Now we can update that picture and be like, yeah, that was him, but here's a better picture. Yeah. You know, so stuff like that. Just whatever the task force needed. That's what we tried to provide.

Yeah.

Yeah. And how was it? Because, you know, one of the things that was always challenging in those countries was like teaching people how to read maps, teach them how to look at, look at imagery and understand it from a top-down perspective. Because they just don't have that perspective. How challenging was that for you guys?

That definitely was challenging at times, but you know, our guys, we just, it was part of the training pipeline and they just picked it up after a while. And a lot of these guys just got better as time went. So they would graduate at a certain standard, which would be good enough, but a lot of them would speak a little bit of English. But then after like years of that program running, some of these guys were sending me PowerPoint. I mean, they could do PowerPoint by the end of their OTC. But after like a couple of years, these dudes are sending me PowerPoint in English. So, I mean, it was impressive. I mean, some of the guys really wanted to do good.

Yeah.

And they tried to impress us and it was impressive. They were doing that stuff in English. They were encrypting stuff and send it to us encrypted because everything that we did with them was not associated with the military.

Yeah.

So, I mean, even the computers that we communicated with them on, we're not associates of the military. So we didn't want it to any way tie these guys to us. If for some reason they got busted, you know.

Yeah. How was that for you and for the other guys in RSC? Because you obviously, you have this job, you're in a way action heroes, right? Like you've been through all this training, you're out there to be on the pointy edge and now you're working through proxies. Was it frustrating? Was it gratifying?

It was, I'd say a little bit of both. Some guys hated it. I mean, there were guys that hated it. But I think you just have to look at what you're doing and just, you know, find the good part of it. I actually thought I was going to hate it, but I really enjoyed it.

Yeah.

I really did enjoy it because I mean, we still got to do cool stuff, man. We still got to go. It was like the best of both worlds. When I was up in Kanduz the last time, we had a Delta Force troop there hitting targets every night. And a Ranger platoon there hitting targets every night. So during the daytime, I was going out low-vis, linking up with my dudes, doing dead drops and stuff like that, or maybe going and picking them up, bringing them back, debriefing them or whatever. Or maybe I would be going out with some dudes wrecking routes during the daytime. Like we would wreck some of our own routes in and off of the plateau there. Excuse me. But then at night I was going out kicking in doors with the Rangers or the Delta Force dudes. Every single night. So I got the best of both worlds. I thought it was great, man. I get to do a little bit of this cool stuff that's low-vis, you know, clandestine stuff. And then at night I'm going out doing what Rangers and Delta Force dudes do, you know, kicking in doors and killing bad guys just as much as they were, you know?

Yeah.

So I enjoyed, but it was, so that dynamic was unique, not just for me, but, um, I coming from 3rd Ranger Battalion, I had rapport with Rangers and with Delta Force dudes. There were dudes that had come from the big Army to RRC that didn't know these dudes, so they wouldn't get— they didn't get to go out on missions with them, right? So they were just stuck doing the low-vis stuff when they did it. And, uh, depending on where they were at, it may have been less eventful even. And so a lot of those guys, I think that's why they didn't like it, because they didn't get the best of both worlds. Where it's like me, I knew dudes in the battalions, I knew dudes at Delta Force because I've been working with them my whole career.. So I'd just be like, hey, you guys need anybody extra? Yeah, sure. We need an extra sniper. We need an extra battlefield interrogator. And so I'd go out and do that. A lot of BIT-TQ is what I did. I thought that was where I was most valuable. They got all the shooters they need. They don't need another shooter.

Right. But their squad leaders interrogating dudes were here. I'm a master sergeant. You know, I've got more experience doing it. It leaves him to doing his squad leader stuff. So I did a lot of that stuff.

Yeah. That's cool. I mean, it's also like the total integration of the intelligence piece into the ops.

It really is.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the way I looked at it. And I had my interpreter teaching me Dari. So by— I did like, I think, 3 trips to Kunduz. And by like the 3rd trip to Kunduz, I was able to do battlefield interrogation without an interpreter.

Wow.

Wow.

In Dari. Yeah. I mean, now it was mission-specific stuff. Like I knew pretty much anything that had to do with bombs, explosives, guns, who this guy is. Where are the mosques, where are the schools, you know, how many people are here, north, south, east, west, like what kind of vegetables, you know, like I knew, I had a good grasp of the language, by no means fluent, but target related, I could do. And I could also talk my way through checkpoints and stuff like that too. I learned that much. So, and I, like you said, you went and became, did language stuff. Yeah. I never was interested in it until I got to RRC and I was like, this is beneficial.

Yeah.

Like, if I can prove to the chain of command that I can speak good enough to do this, maybe they'll let me go do more.

Right. Right.

Because there were things that we wanted to do as Americans that I felt confident doing, but the chain of command didn't see it that way.

Right.

So being able to speak the language and stuff like that adds another layer to where they would probably accept it.

And it goes beyond the piece of like, I speak 556 and 762. It, yeah, it opens up a whole new world of interaction with the local populace. Yeah. You know, especially when, when the raids, you know, the intelligence isn't always accurate. Like you need to find out what's going on target or like you said, like all the operations that you guys do, a lot of those ops come from resets. You know, you do your op.

Yeah.

Your battlefield interrogators, you know, and your exploitation guys. Get information and it's like, okay, well, let's go hit this target now so that these guys don't go to ground when they find out they rolled up this guy.

Yep.

Yeah.

A lot of, a lot of our missions were like that. I mean, not so much like RRC, we were always playing a piece in that, but in the line ranger battalions, dude, it was like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like you said, probably a thousand missions on that one deployment, like in 3 months because we were back to back to back. We, they could never react because we were slamming them so fast.

And a lot of those, a a lot of those raids are sort of self-propagating where one raid leads to another one based on the intel you got off that initial raid.

Yeah, we would hit targets in Iraq back in the day and literally the PL would be with his little laptop like this on the back of the striker planning out the grids for the next target because we took intel from that target to go hit the very next target.

Yeah.

Literally planning them on the fly. I remember doing that stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And well, I mean, that led to the whole debate, do operations drive intelligence or does intelligence drive operations? But what you're talking about with the ARU program, that's definitely intelligence driving operations.

Yeah, it was a good program. You know, one of the things, you know, we were talking about it beforehand and that's where I met, well, I met Adam from having done the podcast. He reached out to me before and then he and his good buddy Brian Fitzgibbons came in with me to Project Exodus Relief, which is a nonprofit that I created myself. Rodney Brown, one of my SEAL buddies that I was tied in with, a lot of us got asked to like try to help people with Afghanistan. And I was like, I'll help wherever I can. But then come to find out there was, you know, a lot of these dudes were reaching out to me. Like people were giving these guys my number and actually your podcast podcast, set all this stuff up.

There was a guy— the team house bump.

It did. It really did. Like the thing, like what I do now all really came from the team house. Cause I did the team house. A dude from Alabama saw me on the team house and he reached out to me cause I gave my email up that time. And he was like, hey brother, I know you don't know me from Jack, but he's like, I was in the army, did this, that, and the other. He's like, I worked with someone ARU guys. He worked with them as a contractor when he was working as a civilian after he got out. He was like, not Blackwater, but one of those other contract companies. And he's like, these dudes are asking me to help them in Afghanistan and I have no clue what to do. So he reached out to me. That's how I got involved. Um, brought this ad hoc group of guys that we were just communicating with on Signal chats, you know, like talking about like sharing intel, like where the Taliban are looking for these guys and stuff like that. And then all of a sudden I'm like, dude, we need these groups talking together.

This is— we're military dudes. This needs to be a military cohesive unit. So I started reaching out to Task Force Pineapple with Scott Mann. Super good dude. I love Scott. Reached out to some of his guys. I didn't know him at first, but I was reaching out into his organization trying to like, hey, who's the leader? Let's sync this thing up. Reaching out to Task Force Argo. Flanders Fields is another group. Task Force Freedom Birds. Like, there's tons of other groups out there. And I was reaching out to them. I was like, let's put this together. And nobody seemed to want to, like, really work together at first. So then I just brought all these guys together that I had. We called it Project Exodus Relief. And then, like I said, I met Adam. Adam was on the podcast, reached out to me. He ended up coming on board with us, helping out. He brought on his best buddy, Brian Fitzgibbons, who's an amazing dude. I work with him now with USPA Nationwide Security. And we can get into that stuff later, but that's, you know, it all came about trying to advocate for these guys, these Afghan special ops guys that we trained, some of the best out of the Afghans, the most loyal guys out there.

And nobody was advocating for them. Nobody cared about them. These guys were just left flapping.

Yeah.

Could you give us a little update on where that project is now. You know, after the Afghan, the evacuation as it were, and all these guys that got left behind. And I mean, we've had Scott Mann on the show to talk about it. I'd be interested to hear your perspective of like where that is at.

Mick Mulroy with the Digital Dunkirk.

Yeah, Mick. And I'd be interested to hear like your perspective of like where that effort is at today.

It's really stagnated. We, you know, I've talked to politicians all over the place. I've spoke at the AI World Forum on the Afghan panel, myself and Mike Waltz, the Republican politician from Florida. Me and him and what's his name? He's a Marine. I think y'all might've had him on here too. But anyway, we spoke on that panel and there's a lot of people that seem to be concerned about it, but nothing ever happens.

Right.

You know, a lot of these politicians were like, hey, yeah, yeah, man, we got your back. Back, you know, Democrat and Republican would act like they wanted to help, but nothing ever really happened. We have guys that, you know, legitimately, legit creds have been verified by the Ranger Regiment, worked for the program that we've literally taken their documents, handed it to the House of Representatives. I'm like, can you help us get this guy's SIV approved? Never happens, man. Literally never happens. So where we're at with Project Exodus is we've been, we raised some money, um, through some of the public speaking events that I've gone to and some other things that we've run. And we've been, we've successfully, through, through my, one of my guys, Dean, who's running our ground operations program, super great dude, former Ranger, former 175 dude, Delta Force guy. He runs our ground operations stuff and he's been running a Food Network, where we've been feeding 2,000 ARU dudes and their families. So there's not that many ARU dudes, but there's probably, I don't know, probably still alive 100 ARU guys, maybe less out there. But a lot of these guys are the, basically the Secret Service of Afghanistan that Dean, my guy Dean trained, his guys and we've been feeding them and their families for the last 2 and a half years, I guess, like about 2 years now.

Um, but we just pretty much ran out of money this month.

So wait, is there a, is there someplace people can go to donate money for that?

Yeah, if, uh, if they want to go to blog.proexodusrelief.com, they can go there and check out our website. There's also links to donate at the website too. So if people want to do that, um, it's, uh, it's, it's a good cause, man. Like right now I still advocate for these guys. I've been talking to lawyers. There have been some guys who've trickled their way into the United States, not through our help. Like we've tried to advocate for them, but we didn't specifically get them here. And, but I've written letters of recommendation for some of these guys and it's come back to me through like, I've got a lawyer that reached out to me that's helping advocate for one of our guys, helping him get his like SIV. And so it's been good.

Have, have they, have a lot of these guys managed to get out of Afghanistan and now are in like refugee camps? Camps in other countries? Are they still stuck in Afghanistan?

Most are still stuck in Afghanistan. There's been a handful that have fled to Iran. There's some that have— I've had one of my guys go through Iran all the way to Iraq. Then he went back and now he's back in Afghanistan. Oh shit. Just, they can't find employment. Like Afghans, I didn't realize that in Iran they're looked down upon and they won't employ them there. So these guys were in Iran hanging out and couldn't get a a decent job or do— I had one guy that was in with a Christian group that was trying to get him in. Sad story, but he was in with a so-called Christian group that was trying to move him through into Iraq and Turkey and stuff like that. And he was ending up like he was trafficked, man. Like people were trafficking. This Christian group is trafficking human beings and guns and narcotics. Yeah. So, uh, they're, they're, yeah, it's kind of a lot of corruption out there, man. A lot of these groups that you think are going to be good and helpful, like this guy, I was like, I don't know this group.

Yeah.

I don't want to have anything to do with it. I said, if you, I said, you're the grown man, man, you, you run your household. I can't personally help you. So I said, if you trust these people, I support you all the way. Um, and I'll help you however I can. And the dude ended up getting all of his documents taken. He's trying to get them back. Yeah, some of these guys end up getting beat up and robbed and mugged by these people. But yeah, Christian groups out there, like mugging people, trafficking drugs, trafficking narcotics, all in the underground, man. It's all over the place out there.

Yeah.

It's—

groups that you think would help.

It's so sad. I mean, and, you know, like immigration is, is, you know, a heated topic in the United States, you know, and people take very firm sides. But it's, but it's wild that it was the same thing in Vietnam where it was the effort of like the Special Forces guys and what, to help the— to help the Montagnards and the Hmong and everybody who worked with us. And, and, and now we can't even help these people who, you know, who worked very hard, who shed, you know, blood, sweat and tears alongside of us.

It's because our government literally doesn't want it to happen.

Nothing.

You know, I, I don't know why exactly, but, uh, I don't know if Scott Mann said the same thing, but that's our biggest hurdles that we've run into is our government. Nobody, every, they'll say they want to help, but nobody does anything. Literally, whether it's at the highest level, I don't know where it is, but nobody can make anything happen. I mean, there's all these bills. They try to push these bills up, the Afghan Adjustment Act, stuff like that. And I don't even really follow that stuff that much anymore because it's just frustrating. Like I said, we just have been focusing on using our funds to the best that we can. We can't move people anymore, so we've been using it to feed people, the ones that are stuck hiding from the Taliban or they don't feel safe, they can get out and work or can't get a meaningful job. We've been feeding them supplemental food. We try to let them be really needy before they come to us so that we use the funds in the best manner possible. We don't want to just be like making these people rich.

Right.

So, yeah, we feed the average family about once every 3 months. They'll come back to us for some supplemental food.

Yeah. Yeah. If you could just go and get them to Chile, then they could get in no problem.

I know. I know. It's crazy. Southern border is wide slap open. We got terrorists. We got ISIS. We got Palestinians coming through the southern border like crazy. But our Afghans, we actually had some Afghans that figured their way on their own to get to Brazil. Came up through. And that's another interesting thing. Afghan special ops guys caught at the border are deported never to return again.

Jesus.

Yeah, they are. I mean, there's been multiple guys that it's been in the news. We've like, I helped advocate for some of these guys. One of them was a commando guy. I'm trying to think. I think Flanders Fields was helping that guy. And he got hung at the border. I called some border patrol guys that I knew that tried to help him out. And my border, one of my border patrol buddies told told me straight up, he's like, if I even look into this dude, it's going to spike on the radar. And I was like, really? He's like, any Afghan special ops guy that comes through the border is immediately deported, never to return again. I'm like, but we're letting everybody else through the border. It makes no sense, man. It's been a frustrating battle, but it has been one of the most frustrating things I've ever done in my life, yet also the most rewarding. I mean, because we're helping people out.

Really helping people out. Yeah. Yeah. I was really very disappointed, like, in the American population, left, right, whatever. When we were getting all these Afghans in, people were like, we don't even know who they are. And it's like, a lot of research has been done into the Afghans who are being brought in. Like, people are vouching for them.

I mean, if they were our guys, like, we have their biometrics.

Exactly.

Absolutely.

You know, they're, they're a known entity, you know what I mean? Very well known. Like, a lot of these guys had polis and tons of background checks, essentially some type of security clearance, you know? Not really, but kind of.

Yeah. And a lot of them have fought and, and died next to Americans, and they still remain loyal to this day.

Yeah.

You know? Yeah.

Sad.

It's very sad.

It's fucked up is what it Yeah, yeah, it really is.

Yeah, it really contributes to— and, you know, we've talked about this before on the show— is the moral injury that it creates in the sense of, you know, veterans who, who— because not all veterans were very involved with Afghans or Iraqis, you know, they, you know, but others were. And there's that moral injury that happens that, you know, that we just leave these people that that we know we've kind of left them to the wolves, basically.

Well, there's an organization that, like, I was kind of the beginnings of helping stand that thing up to, along with another guy named Travis Peterson, um, called the Moral Compass Federation. And that's where we kind of finally got all these groups together with Task Force Pineapple, Scott Mann, and those guys, and, uh, and started working as a group advocacy. And that group is still doing a lot of good stuff, advocating on the Hill and stuff like that. Progress is still, like I said, non-existent pretty much. But, um, there, there, yeah, that came up big time. A lot of guys there were having really big issues because when it was in the heyday, like the first 6 months after the collapse of Afghanistan, like I personally was working 18 hours a day. I was on my phone 18 hours a day, texting, coordinating logistics, making phone calls on meetings, VTCs. I mean, it was like running, it was like being the battalion commander of a battalion-sized element. Like we had a 50-man intel cell at one point in time that dudes were pumping me intel. Like it got to the point where I had to have like dudes that just handled the intel because I couldn't handle it all.

We had dudes that were just handling the ground, the ground stuff. We had dudes that were just handling air operations, trying to get guys manifested. But after that all fizzled out, it got to the point where like the onset finally kicked in with like, hey, these dudes are screwed, man.

Yeah.

And we can't— and we're just watching them get killed by the Taliban and there's nothing we can do. So the moral injury thing became a real thing at that point in time. And it's really bothering a lot of those guys.

Yeah. And especially, you know, depending on whether it's this government for us or the next, any government, you know, after this withdrawal, how they deal with the Taliban government is just sort of salt in the wound.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, there were entities from our government liaising with the Taliban this entire time. One of the things that I found out too was that the US State Department was flying 100 Taliban out on US State Department funded aircraft, yet we couldn't get our Afghans on there. Taliban, dude. They were flying them out on US State Department aircraft like crazy. And this was around about like what the year, what was the fall? Was it 2020? Or 2021. I get it all mixed up now. August 2021. So it was like around December 2021, January 2021 when this was happening. I think I went on Newsmax or somewhere talking about that. And it was reported all over the place, but like nothing ever happened. Like, why are we flying Taliban? Oh, we're, it was one of the things that they said, we're flying the Taliban out so that they'll let us fly aircraft in and out. Like really? 100 a week? To the United States.

Come on, man.

What's up with that? So, and it's frustrating when you got these Afghan special ops guys that should be able to get on those planes in, but they don't have the right credentials. They don't have an SIV completed. They can't fly, but a Taliban dude that has nothing can fly here.

Come on, man.

It's, it's a kick to the nuts. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So that adds to that moral injury. A lot of guys just like, just like me saw this happening and We're like, how is this even possible? You know, it's frustrating.

Yeah. Yeah.

But the way I can look back on it is that we did the best that we could.

Right.

And we're still trying to do the best that we can for these guys and we're feeding them, you know, we're, we're there, there have been guys who, who their lives have been made better because of the efforts that we've all done collectively. Not just me, these guys helping out too. The other guys, the Moral Compass Federation and groups like that.

Yeah. How are like, are a lot of those dudes, like for the ARU, are like, are they in hiding basically in Afghanistan? Are they like, do the Taliban know who they are? Are they targeting them, their families?

Yeah. I, well, to take it back, I believe it was worse than we, I believe we thought it was worse than it actually was.

Okay.

So in the beginning we were like, oh man, they were killing some dudes, but they, they were beating a lot of dudes. And actually one of my guys, I had a, an Afgh— one of my ARU dudes, um, that had a source within the Taliban leadership and, and due to the safe house that he was in. So I found out that I was able to get a lot of guys released. I had a lot of guys released. I'd call my guy. I'm like, hey, can you check with the, with the general? That's what we called the guy. I'm like, can you check with the general and see if they have this guy in custody? If so, he's one of our guys, man. Can you have him released? Every single time they release them. So the Taliban would actually release guys through my proxy. Like my source had that much influence with them. And this, um, so I found out, I don't think it was as bad as we thought. I don't know why they were detaining these guys, roughing them up, making it look rough. Uh, but I don't think they were killing them in the numbers that we thought they were at first.

Um, I don't know why it seemed like it was a fear campaign to make them scared and make them hide at first, but now a lot of them have kind of, kind of let up, you know, they're kind of going out and doing their normal stuff.

Blended into society. Yeah.

Now, are we, are we worried? Has there been any indication of the Taliban basically recruiting these guys in the sense of, obviously these guys fought against the Taliban and they're not for the Taliban, but also human nature is just to make life easier for you and your family. So now we have not just the ARU, but we have the Kandak, we have CPPT, we have all these forces that were trained. And I think a lot of the CPPT got out, but we have these forces that have been trained by American special operations. We didn't do right by them. Are we concerned? Has there been any concern that—

They're going to the other side?

Yeah.

There has been concern. Concerned. And there has been some of that happening. Not, not so much with the ARU. I haven't heard of any ARU doing that. I'm sure there probably have been, but not that I've heard of. And the more smaller, more elite units, not so much. I have heard of like rare occurrences of like commandos doing that, and I think it was more of like other different forces out there that were doing. But it has happened. But a lot of them, a lot of the KKA actually joined the National Resistance Front with, was Ahmad Massoud leading that effort? Am I mixing him up with his father? I can't remember. Ahmad Massoud. I think it's Ahmad Massoud, the son that's leading the National Resistance Front.

Yeah, I can't remember which Massoud is the son and the father, but anyway.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's, yeah, I don't know why I'm having a brain fart at the time, but our guy, a lot of the KKA guys were linking up with those guys. They were taking it to the Taliban at first. Like they were literally, they almost pushed the Taliban, the Taliban were pushing up in the, the, um, um, uh, the Panjshir up in that area. And these guys were pushing them all the way back, had pushed them all the way back almost to Kabul. Then Pakistan sent over some drones and did drone strikes on them. Yeah. And killed a bunch of them and kind of thwarted that whole thing and stifled it. But they were, they were this close to taking, taking Kabul back. We were cheering them on. We're like, yes, yes, let's do this. And then Pakistan sent over some, some aircraft and some drones and did strikes on them and pushed them all back, kind of killed that whole effort.

It's so weird to me because it never goes well for Pakistan when they like, like they've always supported the Taliban and AQ and whatnot, but it doesn't go well for them. I think that they just want the problem to be in Afghanistan and not in Pakistan.

Now they got to live with their creation.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right next door.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. A lot of these guys, like I said, they went to the good, what I consider the good side, but they've kind of, I don't, that effort's kind of stifled now too, but there definitely have been some that's gone to the bad side confirmed that I know of, but not as big as, not as as much as you would think.

Right. And, and I imagine for a lot of them, it's not that they're going to the bad side, it's just trying to survive. They're trying to survive.

It's the only thing they've got, man.

Yeah. It's not that, oh, I hate America.

It's like, yeah, it's literally survival mechanism for them. I mean, and I don't blame them one bit. It's just like when, um, when Russia started recruiting them for, for, um, what's the name of that group, uh, the, uh, the Russian, uh, contractor group.

Wagner.

Yeah.

Wagner Group. Yeah.

They were recruiting those guys and I was like, hey, I don't blame them. You know, if you're getting out of here, you know, and they're going to put you up and give you nice accommodations and treat you like one of their civilians, you know, I don't blame them. It's not what I would do, but it's not that I blame. We actually, we had huge efforts to try to get them to Ukraine too. Like with this whole event going on in Ukraine, like, hey, these dudes right here will come fight with you just get them out. Nobody, nobody would touch it. Nobody would touch it with a 10-foot pole. Like I talked to people in parliament in Ukraine. I've talked to people here in the United States advocating for it. It's crazy the dynamic, the same thing is all turned. I actually met with a donor and another interesting thing tying to the Wagner Group was there was this donor that we were told about that, that he had helicopters, fixed wing. He was moving dudes currently out of Afghanistan. We're like, dang, this is like the golden ticket. Like if we can convince him that Project Exodus has the capabilities that we have and we have the quality of dudes that he wants, maybe he'll get them out.

And cause we didn't know why he was trying to help at the time. We were like, we set up a meeting. So we set up a meeting with this dude and, you know, just like a Google Meet. He comes on, his chief of staff comes on. Mind you, this dude's a billionaire. He's a mega billionaire. I can't remember his name, like Garrity or something like that was his last name. This guy supposedly spoke at CPAC. He's like big tight end on the conservative political side. Well, he came onto our meeting. We were talking about different things. We're briefing on all operations we had going on, the food program and this stuff, this, that, and the other. One of my guys was like, hey, we need to caution our guys to stay away from Wagner Group. And we just need to make sure that they're not doing that because because it's just going to look bad in the eyes of the United States and we can't support it. Then boom, this dude and his chief of staff popped off the call. We're like, what the heck, man? This dude just ditched the call. We're like, maybe they lost connection.

So we're like texting on the background like, hey, what happened? Where did the guy drop off? Come to find out the dude was a recruiter for Wagner Group, a US dude tied into—

what?

No shit. Yeah, I have pushed— the dude is a ghost on the internet though. Literally, he's a ghost on the internet. I pushed everything I can to other people. I'm like, dig into this, dude. This is an American citizen. I passed it to the agency. I passed it to the FBI and they're like, we can't do anything. He's an American citizen. I'm like, he's an American citizen, but he's also got British citizenship as well. And he's super wealthy and he's tied into the political sphere here in the United States, but he was recruiting for Wagner Group. That's who he's moving people for too. He admitted, he told that to our people who got this guy on the call. Isn't that crazy? So we're like, what kind of tailspin is this going to take next?

You know, I mean, I can see the CIA saying we can't, like he's an American citizen. What, the FBI?

Like, I'm pretty sure the FBI can prosecute.

That's their—

Yeah, you would think.

Yeah, that's their purview. Yeah.

But well, Treasury too, right? If you're breaking finance laws.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's— I really would like to find out what the truth is behind that guy. Like I said, all I know is what I was told. I was told that he spoke at CPAC. Somebody sent me like a Twitter clip of him speaking there, tied in with a lot of big conservative politicians. And I was like, huh, interesting. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So my thought when a lot of that stuff was going down and what I thought the missed opportunity was, and it's not my job, but my thought is like, we have all these guys we trained up in the KKA, the ARU, the CTPTs, why are we not evacuating them to a third country? Not America, but a third country. That did happen. But I mean, why isn't the agency moving them to a third country? And you have an element that you can use for completely deniable operations.

Oh, absolutely, dude. I've been trying to pitch that to the agency for the last year and a half. Like, I've literally have a guy that I've been talking to and I'm like, hey, this is the capabilities we can bring. We actually had like a covert medical program we were going to use. We had everything. We just needed a little bit more funding. I was like, you guys fund it. Now you have an ambulance company in Kabul, Afghanistan that has access everywhere. We can, we were going to build false bottoms in these vehicles so we could transport people and supplies. We were literally trying to build packages to sell to them. Like, hey, here's a capability. Nobody wants it.

Yeah. I mean, you'd have a group of Afghans who are well-versed in putting, you know, a suppressed .22 to the back of somebody's head. Sounds like maybe something somebody could use.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I don't, I don't know that the agency will touch like medical stuff.

Well, that was just one aspect to it. But we were, we were trying to think of ways to, to have better, the ability. So one of the things that was, people were having issues was moving people around. We're like, we'll create a medical company because there are medical issues that are popping up.

Right, right, right.

So we were going to treat, it was going to be a real medical agency or ambulance company, for the lack of a better term. But we were going to also be able to use it to smuggle people and or supplies under the nose of the Taliban as an ambulance. We had— I mean, we got a pretty good intel network still over there. We've kind of let it go because it's no need to pimp these guys for information all the time when we can't give them anything in return. I can't get you out, man.

Right.

Let's talk a little bit about the further adventures of Mike Edwards, your life after service, after all this stuff, going to work with USPA and others. I know you have some interesting stories there.

Yeah. Like I said, the whole, it stemmed from your podcast, you know, people reaching out. We started Project Exodus. I met Adam and then Brian Fitzgibbons and then, you know, I did some work with those guys. Well, then I ended up, I had a job that I had as a government contractor for a while, ended up losing that job, um, do various things. And then, uh, so I was jobless for about a year. USPA, um, Brian hit me up, Brian Fitzgibbon hit me up and he said, uh, hey, would you like to work with us for this contract? And this was last December. And I said, yeah, sure. He's like, we're going down to Miami. I'll bring you down there. It's just like an executive protection gig. Didn't really know what it was about. I'm like, yeah, sure. He bought me a plane ticket. I was on a plane, flew down there and ended up me and Rodney Brown, one of my SEAL buddies who was with Project Exodus. They contracted him too. Adam was there running the static security. So we had like tons of like 50 guards guarding this art exhibit for Madonna.

It was at like Yves Saint Laurent is what it was called. So Madonna had this sex art show that she had of like pictures of herself naked all over the place inside there.

Yeah.

And all these celebrities, like A-list celebrities, I don't remember the names of any of them. You know, Adam may remember better than me, but Madonna was the key one, the head one.

Right.

So she did that and then had like a big afterparty. So me and Rodney Brown were her personal bodyguards for that event. So it was, you know, it's kind of interesting. Yeah, we were the muscle really just blocking her from the paparazzi. But we did that, managed the security event for that. We do, for the most part, we do nationwide, even international armed executive protection, security bodyguard work and fire watch. Fire watch is a big thing that we do where, for example, if your building is under construction, they may have to shut down the fire sprinkler systems and you don't want to shut the business down. So by law, most places, you have to have basically like boot camp firewatch guys in there paid. And so we do that a lot. We provide that service all over the country. But a key thing with that is 50% of all the earnings from USPA goes into the Kingsmen program. The Kingsmen is the nonprofit arm of USPA. Mike Evans, the owner of the company, such a nice guy, such a big-hearted guy. And Dan Manning, the CEO, like, they that, you know, will accept these different missing persons cases or trafficked children, or for example, battered women cases will come in.

And that's part of the, one of the things I'm paid to do too is advise on that stuff. So we'll, we'll get cases like there was a girl, Ashlyn Gil, up in Massachusetts. Was it Massachusetts? That went, went missing and the cops were looking for, for like 30-something days. We got on the case. And found her within 3 days and had her back to her family.

Wow.

There was another one. I won't say the name, but it was an adult girl down in Florida who was tied in with basically an international con man. This dude had conned many women, like good looking younger girls. He was probably like about my age and then he was getting—

not as handsome.

Yeah, definitely not as handsome. And getting these younger 20-something to 30-year-old girls to spend all their money, literally millions of dollars he sucked out of these girls, just traveling around. And, um, I reached out to some of my network that came from the Project Exodus stuff. Some of that stuff that I was tied in there, uh, was able to bring in a guy that, that can dig on people's phones and basically SIGINT type stuff and find where these people are at. So we used him to find where these people are at and ended up handing off the locations to the, the FBI and to to the sheriff detective down in Florida who actually was in 3rd Ranger Battalion with us in the same platoon, actually, for a little bit. So it was interesting bumping into that guy. But we helped federal law enforcement and local law enforcement apprehend this, basically, like I said, international con man and freed this girl up so that she'd go back to her family. She was willingly with him. So the family asked us to help her, but we couldn't force her to leave. Right.

Like, it's more like a deprogramming in a way, right?

Yeah. And that's what we're going to try to do is kind of call her out, deprogram her to the best of our ability. Yeah. But what we figured out, the most viable route was to just help the cops detain him. Now he's out of the picture and she's free, right? You know, so that's what happened.

Yeah.

Well, we do a lot of that stuff, man. Um, cases that pop up, we try to help people out as much as possible. Like I said, uh, the Kingsman— 50% of our earnings goes to that, to funding these different programs.

Yeah. And those programs are expensive. I mean, when surveillance, the surveillance, the tech, um, you know, if it's like recovery, uh, you know, you know, and I, I don't know if you guys, because you said internationally, right? Or that—

well, most of the recovery stuff we do here in the States.

Yeah.

Um, we could pro— we have done some internationally as well, but most of it's here in the States. But international is like the security stuff. Executive protection stuff all over the place.

Yeah. Yeah. And how are you enjoying that? Like, how is that back to your recce days? Yeah. You know, because one of the things, one of the things we talked about, I can't remember if it was your first time on or your second time on, was like the post-traumatic stress and like the, like pulling people out of cars isn't like necessarily like normal behavior.

Right?

Yeah.

And, and I, and I identify with that 100%, like, you know, where sometimes my girlfriend's like, let this go.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's hard to de-escalate sometimes.

Yeah. How, like, how has it been for you, um, not only with like the post-traumatic stress going back sort of into this world, but also the sense of mission, the sense of purpose that you had and then you're looking for, does this kind of fulfill that role for you?

Yeah, I think that's one of the things when USPA asked me if I wanted to come on full time working with them, I was like, man, I'm so happy that y'all asked me because this is something I can definitely get behind because I knew what they were doing because I kind of helped a little bit on the side with that. But you're right, I've never had PTSD, I guess, per se. I don't know why. But I did have other issues that I had. And we can speak on that stuff if you guys have time, want to. But I never had PTSD. But yeah, it is good. Whenever I retired, I was doing the freefall stuff. I was doing a lot of freefall contracts. I was teaching recce courses and long range shooting courses and stuff to different guys. And I enjoyed that. You're still with the boys, still walking in the mountains, still doing military type stuff.

Right.

When you completely pull away from that, it kind of, it's like a sever that you can feel, you know, it just doesn't feel right. So I pulled away from that for a little bit, but this definitely fulfills, um, it fills that niche, you know what I mean?

Wait, am I, I'm sorry, my memory's horrible, but I did, was it, was it, was it not you? We were talking about like getting angry on the, on the road and road rage.

Um, I did. I, yeah, I used to get like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. That was a period of time. Um, for a while I was just angry at the world, man. I don't know why it was, but I was, I was angry, dude. I mean, you know, a lot of guys are scared to talk about this stuff.

Yeah.

But you know, suicide's a big deal. Like, we've had friends that died from that. Yeah. To be honest with you, I've had a pistol to my head, snatching the slack out of a trigger before.

Yeah.

I'm not scared to tell people about that because that was a weakness that I was at, and I'll never be back there again.

Right.

Know that now. But at the time, man, I was being haunted. I don't know why or what it was called. None of this ever happened while I was in the military, right? It was once I was out of the military and I was just at home with my wife and kid. Um, I was drinking a lot to like kind of mitigate pain and stress and stuff like that, taking like pain pills and Ambien and all that kind of crap. Yeah, self-medicating. I don't know why I was doing it. I felt like I needed it to sleep. I felt like I needed it to be restful. Um, but dude, I would lose control, man. Like, I was angry. I was— I was— I was so mean.

Yeah.

To my wife. Uh, you know, thank God I've got a good Christian wife, and my wife was praying for me all the time. Like, I call her— I tell her— I think I said that on the second one— she's the most valorous soldier that I know. Yeah. Because I was her worst enemy. I was attacking her left and right, and she just prayed for me.

Yeah.

And prayed for me and prayed for me, and then boom, I'm, I'm completely changed. I'm not even close to the same guy I was the last time I was on this podcast, man. Um, you know, that goes into my new passion is like studying the Bible.

Yeah.

Like, I, I have studied the Bible, um, for the last 4 years now. And at first, like I was telling you, I would chuck that thing across the room. I'd get pissed off. I'm like, this book is stupid, it's trash, who could even understand this thing? Um, But now, uh, I've studied it so much that I do understand it now. I do understand it clearly. And, um, and I've— I teach people on the side. I put together Bible studies and lead groups of Bible studies for this. And, uh, there's a lot of people coming around to the truth with this now. Um, one of the most shocking things— a lot of people don't like to accept it, but I mean, the Bible predicted this. The Bible predicted that in the end times, the entire church the entire church would be apostate. Yeah, you know, meaning that it's completely against God, right? Yeah, that's exactly where we are. It says, you know, that the ministers of Satan would become the ministers of righteousness. Yeah, that's what's going on. Like, it literally says false apostles as the apostles of Christ. So all of this— the Bible told us that in the end times Satan's ministers would be in the church teaching false doctrine.

But a lot of people have too much pride to look at the Bible and be like, this teaches totally different than what my preacher said. A lot of times it hits them deep and they just refuse it. Yeah, they refuse it. And like the Bible says, they harden their hearts against it because of pride.

It's interesting, like, uh, from what you've described, it sounds like you're kind of like self-taught. Like you didn't really go to church so much as much as you like forced your way through the Bible initially, like line by line, you know, even I think you said you didn't really take to it. You didn't really understand it, but you kept at it until it started to make sense to you.

Yep, I, I really did. Like, um, a lot of the seminary schools that are out there teach— they teach this corrupted doctrine that's out there. Um, it's anti-biblical, man. If you really do take a forensic study of the Bible itself, it, it takes immense amounts of hours. Like, I mean, I have thousands and thousands of hours of studying of this. Um, and then you start unlocking pieces because there's like, you know, Jesus spoke in different parables and things like that. A lot of those parables, you think there's a surface layer understanding to it, but when you understand more depth of the scriptures, it unlocks the parable's true meaning. And a lot of that stuff, it doesn't come alive until you've really studied in depth. And you're right, I studied on my own, and I believe that's the purest form. And the Bible says that, that we're not supposed to have anyone else interpret scriptures for us. We're supposed to individually—

like between you and the scripture.

It's between us and God. He interprets it for us and it actually interprets itself too.

Yeah.

So I mean, we're not really like a religious podcast per se, but since this is like something that like means something to you and has been like beneficial for you, I would like to ask like in your own words then, what is the Bible to you? What, what, what, what did you take out of it? What are like the big threads that changed you?

Well, I think the Bible is the manifestation of God himself, you know what I mean? Like, it does say, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was God, the Word was with God, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So there's codes in that, right? The Word is the scriptures, and it's saying that the Word was God and is God. And so, like, I believe that studying those scriptures, uh, it cleanses you. It says that it does, and it has cleansed me. Me and my wife don't fight like we used to. I don't drink, uh, like I used to drink every single night all the time. Now I'll have an occasional drink here and there, never get drunk. Um, I don't take any of the pills that I used to take. Um, I've cleaned up my language, you know what I mean? My acts, my culture. Yeah, it just— and I didn't try to do this, it did it for me, right? You know, it was just like it just naturally happens.

Do you, you know, because you talk about this anger and, and, you know, and I think that a lot of veterans— you talk about suicide and things like that. And I think a lot of veterans, especially a lot of special operations veterans, for whatever reason, where it's, you know, there's this blanket sort of idea of post-traumatic stress. But, you know, as we've talked about on the show before, there's also blast injuries and TBI that get meshed in with that because we've, we've, we've all stood way too close to way too many breaches.

Too.

Yeah. Um, and you know, and then there's also going from 60 miles an hour to 0 miles an hour. I think that has a lot to do with it, where you have this purpose. You are an elite, you know, you, you're an elite in the world. Uh, you're like a child actor whose time ends, right? In that, in it, you're at the top You're at the top.

That's a good way to put it.

You're at the top of your game.

Yeah.

With purpose, with a fulfilling mission. And then you're back out in the civilian world where there's none of the camaraderie, none of the purpose, none of that. And so that with the post-traumatic stress that may or may not be there with the blast injuries and TBIs, it all blends together to, to this.

Catastrophic situation.

Yeah, exactly.

It really does. And, and I think, uh, it's easy to be overtaken by that. It's really easy. I mean, I'm telling you, I've been like with a Glock snatching the slack out of the trigger. Like, I was lucky I didn't overpull that thing. I could have easily been one of those statistics. And like, who knows if those guys are doing the same thing, never intended on killing themselves, but just so angry. They're just like, you will— you don't think I'll do this? You know what I mean?

At your wife, You know, and it's very momentary. I mean, I have—

very momentary.

I've kicked in a door and taken a pistol out of a friend's hand before, and, and he's no longer— like, it was a momentary thing.

Yeah.

And, and, and he's not at risk anymore, thank God. But the thing is, is that it's such an insidious spiral that, that we don't we don't see it for ourselves when we're in it.

You're right. You're exactly right. It's like I preach to my buddies all the time and like I got like Rodney Brown, you know, he, he always tells me, he's like, hey, bro, if you ever need me, call me. Like, and he's specifically talking about that. Not because at the time when he would say that to me, it's not because he knew that I had had these events because I definitely didn't tell him.

Right.

You know, because like, I like, I'll talk about this stuff out in the open. I'll tell it to anybody because it's an issue that it does need to be talked about because we all deal with it, right?

You know what I mean?

We all deal with it at some level. Maybe not as bad as that, or like to the point we actually do it, but we all deal with it at some level, and it just depends on how far out of control it gets. But yeah, I wouldn't call him when those times happen. I wasn't calling him, right? You know what I mean? It's one of those things. You're right, you have to— it's hard to get out of, right? It's hard to, to overcome that weakness and admit that you're weak.

Right.

See what I'm saying?

Right. Right. And yeah. And it's one of those things where you're right. Like people don't reach out. Like people who expect like veterans or probably anybody in this country, not just veterans, but people who expect people to reach out to a professional or even a friend. It's not going to happen. That's when you have to like do those buddy checks and like, like you just go in and assume, go in like an assault team, basically. Quickly and, you know, give the knife hand.

And you get lucky. Like there's people that I've worked with that I was lucky to get on the phone with and talk them, I feel, off of it. Guys that worked for me called me one time and was like, hey, there's this one guy that used to be in our group, in our platoon, and he's struggling right now. We think he's going to kill himself. And they were like, call him. And I'm like, please God, let this dude answer the phone. I called, he answered the phone. And I don't know if I helped him. Maybe I got to intervene at that right time. But that's why, like you said, those buddy checks, doing them routinely, because that dude's not going to call you. Right. You know, luckily somebody saw triggers from that guy on like maybe social media.

Right.

And then they started alerting people. That network worked for that guy.

Right.

But it doesn't always work, man. And that's why I think being honest about it, like, that's why, like, I saw one of my buddies, DJ Shipley, who was, um, uh, me and him did some freefall contract stuff together. Uh, I watched the podcast he did on Sean Ryan, and he talked very openly about that. And I was like, dude, like, I can't believe, like, I'm like, if he's talking about that, I should be able to talk about that stuff.

Yeah.

So I'm like, that, that like changed me right there. I was like, dude, that is awesome on him to have spoken out about his weaknesses. You know, SEAL Team 6 operator. Like, uh, admitted his weaknesses, man. More people need to hear that stuff. So when I heard that from him, I was like, dude, I need to do the same thing if I ever get the opportunity. Be honest about it, because, you know, people will realize— because we're bad-to-the-bone special ops guys, right? We can't be weak, right? But in that situation, you have to admit when you're weak.

What was the— what was the turning point for you?

Um, you know, I really don't know. Um, it just— it kind of like slowly happened with my Bible study stuff. Like I said, I just stuck with it and stuck with it. It's like God just took it from me, man. Um, he took the anger away from me.

Wow.

He took the, like, the, the want to, to do that stuff. I don't get angry. Like, the things that my wife used to do that made me angry don't make me angry anymore. I don't make her angry like I used to, because she's changed too. She's in the same boat as me, but on the other side now. So our whole family has changed, um, because of that stuff. I, I just, I can't explain it, man. Yeah, I can't explain it, but it's definitely for the better.

No, that's fantastic. I mean, it really is.

And it's, you know, it's definitely a topic that definitely needs to be talked about more often.

Well, and, you know, we've, we've had people on who have, who have been through this and who have been through psychotropic medicines. I've done that too. You know, stellate ganglion blocks, you know, uh, uh, Forti with like the, uh, the breathing and things like that. Like all these different things, but you know, you're bringing something that, that hasn't really been talked about on this show before, which is, is just faith.

True.

Yeah.

I do believe with everything in my entire being that that is the ticket. It's not the easy ticket though. It comes with, uh, like, like the scripture says, those who diligently seek him him, he will manifest himself to you. So you can't just do it at a surface layer. You can't just half-ass it, you know what I mean? You got to go in at full bore. And that's the way I looked at it. I was like, I'm gonna prove that this is either a legitimate, divinely inspired book, or I'm going to prove it's trash. One of the two. And I went at it myself, tearing it up.

Such a typical Ranger.

There's no way.

Yeah, right, right. It's either good or it's—

yeah, all the way in.

So, but it definitely— I believe that's the ticket because I've tried the different stuff out there. We've got a Ranger buddy, Grantham, Miles Grantham. Yeah.

Good dude.

He travels around and helps guys with the Toad stuff, right? And he came and like, and I don't want to say too many details, but he put me through one of those Toad circles.

I've interviewed him about it before about ayahuasca and stuff like that. So me and Miles were in the same platoon. We were both in snipers together.

Yeah, I knew you were.

And then we reconnected. We stayed in touch after we got out of the military and we used to have dinner once in a while.

And he lived up here in New York.

Yeah, he was doing executive protection stuff. Oh, that's right. And for better or worse, I convinced him he should go to Columbia. He should go and enroll up there. And he majored in political science or no, he majored in computer science and then he got on board with all the, the ayahuasca stuff. And, uh, it did him— I mean, he's talked about it publicly before. I mean, it's done him a world of good. And like you said, now he goes around helping other guys with it.

He called me, like, he was hitting me up. He was like, dude, you need to do this stuff, you need to do this stuff. I'm like, man, I just didn't want to because I was working and I was afraid I'd be like hungover or weird afterwards. A lot of times he was trying to catch me, you know, places, you know, out west, uh, and I'm like, dude, I just can't do this in the middle of a work trip. It's just, I just don't feel right about it. He's like, dude, it's over with like super fast. So then he finally hit me up and everything was so bad with my wife at the time to where she was like, I don't care. She was totally against it. She's like, that stuff's satanic, you know what I mean? And she's like totally against it. But then she's like, I don't care if it'll save our marriage, just do it. I said, all right. So I hit him up and I said, yeah, I'm good if you want to do it. So he, he literally personally did one for me and a couple other guys, another Ranger buddy, and then an SF dude that I met at Walter Reed came down and did it for me in my backyard, man.

And it was, it was the most amazing thing, but I don't think that's what fixed me. I didn't, I still had issues, significant issues after that. I do know that there are guys that do it that say it's life-changing.

Do you think it gave you space to like examine the rest of— like, if it didn't change everything immediately for you, do you feel like it created a space for you to do that, to like examine things?

I believe so, because I do believe— this is what I try to tell people. I like— my wife was against it all, but I was like, God created those things for a reason, right? If, you know, if there's God and he's real, he created these plants, these things for medicine. I believe it's for guys like us who are too hard to break through to that spiritual peace. You know, like, so I think what that did do for me is it showed me, because you go and meet God when you do that stuff. That's what it does. It takes you into what they call the spirit realm. Like, that's literally, I mean, that's what they talk about. You're going into the spirit world and that's where you go with ayahuasca and the toad medicine is even more potent. And that's the stuff that I did. And I think it showed to me that God is real and he's out there. So then that kind of intrigued me because it was about after, right about after that when I really started studying the Bible. So maybe it did kind of catalyze it in because I'm like, yeah, God's real for sure.

Now this book's better be real or wrong. I'd start digging in.

I think Jim Morris, you know, had like a really interesting comment. Like after Vietnam, he started experimenting with LSD. Back when no one knew about them.

Jim Morrison from The Doors?

No, Jim Morris, Special Forces.

Okay. Okay.

In Vietnam. And he said that, you know, the psychedelics can get you out of the box you're in into like the room of the house. But as far as like if you want to explore the rest of the house, you kind of have to do that on your own.

That's a good point. I think he's right about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it did. Because, you know, thinking back on it, maybe it was the catalyst that pushed me into the realm that I'm at now.

Yeah.

Um, cause yeah, it, it, it kind of breaks down, like I think, you know, like how older people get to where, you know, they're stuck in their old ways. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. We tend to compartmentalize ourselves in our brains, like what the norm is, right? And that thing, I do believe it helps step you outside of that box of the norm to where you're like, well, this exists. Let me get busy with that. You know what I mean?

So yeah, no, it's fascinating. I've talked— we've talked to people, I've talked to people personally about the ayahuasca, the ibogaine, the different types of plant-based medicines that are out there. And what's really interesting, because you even mentioned LSD and we can talk about like DMT and Molly or these were all being researched heavily, like in the '50s, or a lot of these were.

Yeah.

And '60s. And then when they broke out of the lab and became part of the counterculture, it was all shut down. But, but it— but there was already efficacy being shown.

Yeah.

Like decades ago.

Yeah, for sure.

With these things.

And it's, you know, all coming back around now, like, and I think you have to be careful with it, but I, I haven't seen any special operations guys that have done it that have had bad negative effects?

Yeah, I've never had one of them come back to me and say like they had a bad experience. Right.

Like another one of my buddies from the Ranger Regiment just did it and I won't say his name because I don't know if he wants that out, but he's just like, he's like me now. Like he's studying the Bible. Like he's digging in hardcore. This is a retired Sergeant Major, you know, he's, He's like, no joke, like he did the ayahuasca and I think the ibogaine. I think the toad— he did like a big thing down in Central or South America where it's like totally legal at. So like they were able to do a longer treatment.

Yeah.

And he was like, man, it changed his life. And yeah, it has. I see it in him. I look at that guy like he's talking to me about the Bible and I'm like, what? It's like me talking about the Bible like a couple years ago. That'd be the last thing you'd hear me talking about. But that guy's talking about it now too.

Yeah.

Man, and I've seen that from a lot of the guys that do it.

It's really interesting to see, like, and I've seen it a lot because I've been out of the military for what, like 12, 13 years now. So I've gotten to see a lot of guys get out of the military and they have their post-military journey transitioning out. And for a lot of them, it is a rough ride. I mean, I had something of a rough ride too. The transition out for a lot of guys, the substance abuse, anger, like a lot of anger.

Yeah.

And then find something. And we've talked about a bunch of different things. People find different things in different ways. For some people, it's more traditional therapy, whatever that happens to be.

Yeah.

And then they sort of like even out and find the next thing in their life. And it's just very interesting. And I find it very, I don't know, like gratifying in a way to watch these guys sort of evolve, you know? And unfortunately, the unfortunate of course, that we've talked about too. Some don't make it.

Yeah, yeah. Thankfully there are some that are making it. And, and to know what the solution to that is, I, I don't know. I do, I do believe that, you know, the whole faith thing, I do believe that's the key. Um, I just don't know. Like I said, even in my own process, I don't know how that came about necessarily.

Well, what's interesting though is the faith thing isn't even— it's not new. Like Alcoholics Anonymous was sort of based around faith, you know, not necessarily Christianity, but a higher power and giving, giving over to that higher power, you know, however a person recognizes it. It's, it's just that, you know, we often, you know, we're a secular country at this point in a lot of ways. And, and we, we stray away from faith we also have people who, like, push the faith a little, you know, too much. Yeah.

And they're pushing it the wrong ways, honestly.

Yeah.

Yeah. There's more to it than that. Yeah.

They make it like a very— they make it like a very scary, judgmental, like, thing.

It's like a social club. Yeah. I mean, it's really like a social club. Like, you just do this thing and hang out here and act like I act and you're cool. But they're just as lost as anybody else, honestly. Yeah. When you dig into the Bible about it. But, um, but you're right, man. It, it definitely— it's, it's something that has gone away because I think, you know, in America we're all about making money, making money, making money. And even you're working hard, you're making tons of money, you have more incentive to work even more hours. But then there's the people that are poor as well. They're working 2 jobs, 3 jobs just to keep afloat, right? On top of that, you got your children in sports, gymnastics, the adolescents, all these things. It occupies all your time. You cannot— you do not have the time that I have to read the Bible. Like, I was unemployed for an entire year. Yeah, that's really what—

your COVID year?

Yeah, yeah, I was unemployed for an entire year, and that entire year I spent a lot of time in the Bible itself. And I, and I found out that that thing is true. Um, and I feel pity for people. I'm like, I just I wish everybody had that time and I wish something would urge them to do it because it is life-changing. But bottom line is in this world, everything is out there to take you away from that instead.

Yeah. So Les said that there used to be a troglodyte that worked at the PX across from the Marine platoon. Good word, Les.

Oh, yes.

Mike went in to purchase dip and she would not allow him to. Even though he was in uniform?

Oh, because I didn't have my ID card. I remember that. I went over there to buy my dip. I literally walked across the street. So like, I forgot, left my ID card or something like that. I'm in uniform, Master Sergeant, right? So I'm like, obviously I'm probably older than 18, you know what I mean? And she would not sell it to me. I got so pissed off.

Did you pull a gun on her?

No, no, probably should have. Dude, that lady was mean.

God, I had, I had one of my privates, uh, in handcuffs at the PX because he, uh, went to go buy a pack of smokes, forgot to pay for it, and walked out the door.

Dang.

Yeah, man, the MPs came and slapped handcuffs on him. First Sergeant had to come down.

Oh yeah, dang.

Yeah, people at the PX can be dicks, man.

Yeah, I, I had, um, I'm trying to remember. I don't even want tell that story. It'll get down a whole nother rabbit hole. I was at the clothing and sales one time. Not a good situation at Fort Benning. A lot of those ladies that worked on places on Fort Benning were not nice.

Have their own anger issues.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and the thing is, is that they, they could take it out on Joes, right? Like privates.

Yeah.

What's a private gonna do to somebody who works at the PX?

They have like a little bit of power.

Yeah.

Yeah, you mouth off, all they got to do is call your boss and you're straight done.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? At that point, you're screwed.

Yeah.

They do have power. I mean, and they, oh, they abuse the crap out of it.

Yeah.

Do we have any questions for Mike?

We do. Let me, uh, let me get into them now. I'm going to, uh, preface these questions by saying I saw a couple of them go by. They're spicy. No, no, no, but there might be like some— there might be like some TTP type questions going on, and I will, I will ask Mike the questions you guys asked. But understand that, um, understand that, uh, give us the nuclear launch codes, bro. Yeah, exactly. Oh, you know, you talk like we don't, we don't like gotcha questions on this channel, uh, and, and whatnot. But we're gonna, we're gonna lay one out. You talked about getting read on all these programs. Tell us about the aliens, man. Tell us about Area 51 and, and what RRC was read onto.

Oh, I wish, I wish I knew. Although, uh, yeah, that's— I, I really wasn't read onto any of that stuff. Um, although there's a guy that has a biblical perspective on that, that, um, that ties— because think about it, you know, New Jerusalem, which is like heaven, comes down from heaven. It's gonna— what is it gonna look like? It's gonna be like 12,000 furlongs by 12,000 furlongs. That's huge. That's gonna be like a massive spaceship, probably. And this one dude's perspective on it— I don't know 100% on it, but he believes it could be a deception, you know what I mean, to like lure people into the false god. Who knows?

The UFO cult. Yeah, yeah.

Who knows?

Um, let's see here. So Brian Fitzgibbons, uh, thank you very much, friend. Um, Mike Edwards and Adam White, two of the greatest of all time.

Wow, I love you too, Adam.

Come over here and sit down, man.

Come, come. Yeah, if you guys have not watched, uh, Mike's previous two shows and Adam's previous show, like, you gotta— uh, Jackson, thank you very much. People have said RRC prepares guys best for Delta selection given RRC selection process and mission. How true is that in your opinion? Also, what's the working relationship with Delta?

Yeah, we work directly with them just like anybody else does within the community. And I would say, yeah, if you wanted to go to Delta Force selection and you've been to RRC selection, you're more likely to be successful because they're very similar. And vice versa. Guys that go to Delta Force selection would be more likely to be successful in RRC because the selections are very, very similar. If I can't say exact, but it's pretty close.

But would it be similar to going from like Apple to IBM that people aren't going to RRC to prep for Delta?

It's not like Delta's not— No, you're wasting your time.

Delta's not like the next step up because they're, they're very, they're like equal, they just do different things.

Yeah, it, it's, it's not like, yeah, you're not going to go to one of those to go to the other one because you're going through this arduous, arduous program to then go to another arduous, arduous program. I, I just think that's ridiculous. Now I've seen guys that have tried every one of them and then finally get to one of them. You're like, you went through all of that? But it's not the, the best route. But you're right, so if you go to RRC, it's because you're interested in more of the recce piece. Or if you're going into Delta Force, you're more going to be interested in the DA piece, like the kicking in doors kind of stuff. So the way I like to explain it is Delta Force, they do a higher level of CQB. Like Ranger Battalion does a ton of it, but those dudes do it at the highest, highest, most precision level out there, you know?

Joe's gotcha. Thank you very much. Uh, yeah.

So this, very interested in SIGINT.

Yeah. So, so, uh, so this is one of those questions. Uh, did RRC have in-house SIGINT capabilities when you were there or did they have to rely on SADAs or TFO to fill that role? No worries if you can't comment.

Yeah, we have our own abilities within the regiment. You know, the regiment's pretty robust. So, Yeah, we have our own capabilities within that.

Jackson, thank you very much. How much shooting CQB training did you do as an RRC operator compared to your time as a Ranger in a line unit? Also, how often do you see Green Berets or SEALs or MARSOC guys at RRC?

We did a lot of shooting, a lot of, like I said, we got a lot more into the pistol shooting piece because it's the concealed carry aspect of it. We need that a lot. Um, so we shot a lot more pistol in RRC than we did in the Ranger battalions. As far as rifle shooting, we probably shot about the same amount, although we probably shot sniper rifles more in RRC. As far as like dealing with Special Forces and MARSOC and guys like that, um, I never really worked with Special Forces or MARSOC dudes overseas that much. I would occasionally see them, but when I worked at the freefall school, I worked with those guys and I helped that if that person doesn't know, I helped, you know, with a buddy of mine, helped create MARSOC's freefall program. We stood up the first couple courses and I helped work all those courses and helped build a lot of the TTPs for it.

So. NTAT Channel, thank you very much. Greetings, gentlemen, listening in and being an artilleryman. That's a task in itself. Sun's out, guns out. That's true. Artillery and mortars are tough jobs.

Yeah, they are, dude. And that goes to Leslie Senduski and all the other mortar guys that were in my platoon back in the day. I was super impressed with those guys. I still keep in touch with a lot of those guys still to this day. They're a whole nother level of Ranger. I mean, no joke. They're so underappreciated. Those guys are some of the smartest guys in the Ranger Regiment and so underappreciated too.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, They carry, like, no matter what everybody's carrying, they're carrying even more.

Yeah, for sure. That's another good point. They're carrying the heaviest loads by far.

Like, you never want those guys coming down the fast rope after you. No, because it's a really fast rope when they're coming down.

Yeah. Um, might as well grease that rope.

Yeah. USPA National Security, thank you very much for the very generous donation. Cheers.

Oh, nice. Awesome. Thanks, guys.

DJ Sneed, thank you very much. How does RRC differ from Force Recon and Air Force Special Reconnaissance? Is it the customer or capability? Is Omega like an AFO team or better?

I think that's— there's like a good question in there. I was speaking to Adam's mic about a lot of people wonder about like the difference between reconnaissance units. There's like G Squadron, Black Squadron. Everyone has their own recon element. If you want to talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, so, uh, like the, the G Squadron and Black Squadron guys, we worked with those guys a lot too. They're more, uh, I'd say they probably delve into slightly different things than we did in RRC, but we had a lot of overlap of capabilities, just like the guys up at, um, in Virginia as well. A lot of overlapping capabilities there. Now the 4th Force Recon guys, I would say like they're super solid dudes. Some of the best guys, like, dude, I love Marines, period. There's a lot of great Marines out there, especially in that realm, but their capabilities and their assets weren't just, weren't near what we had. Like we just had immense funding and, and who else was it that they compared it to? Like, the Air Force, Air Force, Air Force SRR guys. The Air Force Special Reconnaissance started off as like the Air Force weather guys. I actually trained a bunch of those guys last time and they're just, their focus is more on the Air Force aspect of it. So, and I don't want to get into a whole lot of the details on that because a lot of their stuff that they do is pretty classified as well.

Airfields.

Yeah. And like enabling fast movers to do their job. So it's like different than us. Defeating those types of targets. But yeah, it's cool. It's a cool thing, but it's all needed out there. Like, you can't just— like, RRC could probably do all that different stuff and vice versa, but we all have our little niche that we really specialize in. And ours was broad. Like, recce— the recce niche is pretty broad. Yeah. And ours is pretty broad. But a lot of those guys, like the special reconnaissance guys, there's a little bit more focus in this area versus these other guys a little more focus here. The Force Recon guys are more of the tactical recce focus from what I've seen. Totally capable unit though.

I mean, eventually it probably comes down to in a bar, how much do you have to explain your job versus how much do people already know your job? Right.

And that's the thing with RRC. Nobody knows about it.

Right.

Literally nobody knows about it. Like I tell people a lot of times, I was in probably one of the smallest, you know, little secretive units that you never heard of. You know what I mean? Because you probably haven't heard of it.

Yeah, yeah, that's what's cool about it.

Yeah. Can you get a chick by just saying what you did? If not, then nobody knows about it.

Only if you're a Navy SEAL, right? Only if you're— all you got to do, Navy SEAL, boom. Yeah, you got chicks, you got jobs, you got everything. Books, books.

Not anymore.

Uh, RRC era now.

I, I don't know that people know about it though. Like, like, you know about it, but I don't think people know about it. I just answered.

I literally knew about it because Jack Murphy posted on the team house, like, RRC. Like, I, I mean, like, we won't say the numbers. It is fucking remarkably small. Like, we were talking be—

like, like, I was number 79. I think you said 78. I don't remember. I got the coin much later. 78 or 79.

Bear Trap memory.

I remember 78. Okay, 78.

I'll take your 78.

He was number 78 that ever graduated through the pipeline as of when I graduated in 2008 or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah.

2008. Yeah. Somewhere around there.

Yeah.

Baker Hitch, thank you very much. Tell us your UFO stories.

Oh, I will tell you a really cool one actually. Very recent. I don't know what this thing was, but I reached out to a pilot buddy of mine who works for Skunk Works now. And he was like, yeah, we have capabilities in the US military. I was teaching special reconnaissance dudes from the 24 STS guys in their OTC pipeline. We were out in the desert out west. I don't want to say anything specific because dudes want to keep their stuff secret too. But we were out there just doing just some basic patrolling techniques, right? We're like doing it at night with night vision on, stand out there with our 31s I'm looking up and I look at the dude that was with me, who's a Delta Force dude that was, you know, teaching the course with me. And I look up, I'm like, holy crap, look at that. We look up, there's this thing that looks like a boat. It's like ripping across the sky, but it's leaving like a wake behind it. I'm talking it covered from one horizon all the way to the other horizon in a matter of seconds, but it was way up there.

You couldn't tell what it was. Or you couldn't hear anything. There was no sound. It was not as fast as like a shooting star, but near as fast, but it had a wake coming off of it the whole time and then just disappeared. Hypersonics. Yeah, it was like some sort of hypersonic aircraft. And I told my buddy about it, explained it to him. He was like, yeah, we, he's like, we have aircraft like that in the US that are hypersonic. And I was like, holy crap. Hypersonic, I think it's like 7 times the speed of sound. Cause I looked it up, something like that.

I was like, Like, if you ever want to like talk to somebody who will geek out about this stuff and knows their shit and is just a blast to talk to, talk to Alex Hollings. Just get, just get him on a call sometime and just talk with him because he knows so much and he's so fun to talk to because he, he just loves it so much. But he'll talk about hypersonics and like newest developments and all that stuff all day long.

Well, I mean, somebody came out recently me with the UFO stuff and said that, um, that we have like the UFOs. They're like, we have the capability in the US arsenal that crafts that are capable of that kind of stuff you've seen. So I'm like, dang, I wouldn't be surprised.

There's some, there's some weird stuff out there. I have no idea for sure what it is, but I mean, look, the SR-71 was developed back in like the '60s.

So I mean, this, the stuff that I knew we could do in 2006 like it stands to reason.

And for the viewers out there, if we were read onto it, it was probably just this, just the edge of it. There's this much more that was out there. Like everything's so compartmentalized. Like you have to have a need to know. And if you don't have a need to know, you're not knowing about it.

No.

I guarantee you we have stuff that we couldn't even fathom out there.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, think about this. I went to Disney. About 2 years ago, the new Star Wars ride was out there. If anybody's ever been to that, it's mind-boggling. Like, that— I saw stuff happen in that ride that I'm like, how is this even possible? Like, there was this wall that I was leaning up against, all of a sudden it just literally melted. You could feel the heat coming off of it, like someone cut it open with a laser beam. We walked through it and like we were on this ride getting escaped through, like these drones were shooting at us, lasers are flying over burning up the bulkheads. It was like like being in a movie. And the technology that was used for that, I guarantee you could make cloaking devices if you can make a laser, like the whole bulkhead look like a laser beam's flying over.

Yeah.

And feel the heat from it as it flies over. Yeah, dude, it was the most realistic thing I've ever seen in my life.

I think they just— I don't— I didn't do any research in this video, so, uh, you know, I saw it and I didn't really care. But there was a video that I just recently saw that they said was in a Chinese theater and it looked like flames were coming out of the screen and across the top.

Well, I don't know if it was philosophical argument of why we're in The Matrix, right? Because like you start with like, okay, Atari video games were like this, right? And then video games got better and then they got better. And like philosophically, if you can concede those points, that's the argument that we're all in this like Matrix, Matrix, like video game. I'm sorry, that's a philosophical argument.

I'm still waiting for the virtual reality deep dive MMORPG that I can just plug my brain into and like live there. Yeah, you know, gain levels. Exactly, exactly.

My video game is pretty dope.

Uh, Brian Fitzgibbons, uh, thank you very much. Someone call Adam White in from behind the curtain. Well, we got him.

We got him. Yeah, yeah.

Uh, Danny Roberts, thank you very much. Uh, what was Omega like? How were the team roles or how were they made up? Great interview. Thank you guys.

So Omega is not like anything like crazy, spooky secret or anything like that. I don't think it's a tactical element. You have, you know, CIA dudes that are contractors like you were, you know, running or you're a contractor or you're a blue badge guy. Oh, no. But anyway, they doing contract work over there. They're actually controlling the INDIG, running around orchestrating what's going on at target. And for us as the military aspect of it, we were basically like the command and control, right? We were the tie to JSOC. So JSOC could bring in the close air support fires assets. We could bring in the helicopters and things like that because we were there. So we were just a force multiplier. They had their INDIG, the ground branch guys controlled them and handled them there. And then we just were a force multiplier bringing the fires and the assets to the table.

And then you guys had all the authorities that US military had, right? Yeah, the custody.

We could take custody of them. It was just like, I mean, they're over there just kind of helping out the fight and we bring what we can bring to the table too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One thing tying back into Exodus that the audience, like, it deserves mentioning again is that by design these guys did not have affiliation or paperwork with the Afghan government. So when the time came to like try and bring them to the United States, like, the frustrating part was by design they were literally— I mean, it sounds ridiculous in a bar, but they were quite literally part of such a top secret program that they didn't have any of the affiliation.

Oh, right. Yeah, a lot of other guys were like, mind-blowing, and it's sick irony.

That was like, yeah, so you're like, you know, these guys are cutouts, you're so tripping, these cutouts.

But it, they're quite literally, and it makes it hard for them to get out, right?

It was like the, um, but it made me think of the Omega program and the ARU guys, you know.

Yeah, and their guys were probably similar to that too, I mean, if not exactly like that. But I know that's one of the frustrating things of trying to get those guys out is because there's not the best documentation kept on them.

I will say, quite literally by design. Yeah, you know, this is literally mind-blowing frustrating thing is like, no, these guys are— yeah, the Exodus thing was, you know, it's a whole— yeah, yeah, it was like, you know, I cannot explain to you the frustration of like, like these guys are so special, right, that there's literally nothing for me to prove, right?

But you had people vouching for them. Yeah, you have Americans, right?

From the eyes of like, from the State Department, they're just hillbillies from fucking—

right, right, Oklahoma, right, right, right.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Like, you heard it here first, the State Department hates hillbillies.

No, but it was like a Crazy.

Yeah, Appalachian Americans.

Exactly.

Um, they definitely do.

Uh, let's see here. Um, Bobby H, thank you very much. What does, uh, Marsalis Wallace look like?

Isn't that the guy from Pulp Fiction?

Yeah, he's—

he's got afro, doesn't he?

Yeah. Um, Bobby, my name is Paul, this between y'all.

Uh, Any huge difference between G Squadron and CAG Recce? And again, that's—

it's a little different. I mean, that's not my purview to talk about, but like, you know, I've worked with those guys before and I couldn't really speak on that accurately. But, you know, I think, you know, the different aspects, like the G Squadron guys are probably more on like the stuff that we did kind of stuff, you know, more focused. Whereas the Recce guys were more like snipers from what I saw.

You know. Yeah. Uh, do you know if we have anything from Patreon? So, um, questions from you?

Nothing for me right now. All right, all right.

We have, we have one of our, uh, our Patreon get— our Patreon members in studio tonight, like breathing in the excellence.

We got a few from Isaac. I'm just gonna ask one.

Did you work with ISA?

I mean, obviously you did. You were in JSOC. Yeah.

Yeah.

I worked with those guys.

Yeah. So, so where can people find you now if they want to, you know, we've, we talked about USPA Nationwide Security.

Yeah. That's it. That's where I'm at. I'm like the director of VIP security for USPA Nationwide Security. Yeah, do that from day to day, selling security contracts and working that stuff. And then when we have big events, I'll travel and help manage those events with our buddy Brian Fitzgibbons and Dan Manning, the CEO. And then, you know, Mike Evans, the owner of the company, is such a great, gracious guy to bring me on to. I really appreciate everything those guys have done for me. It's literally the best company you could ever dream of working for. I mean, in my opinion. Yeah. I've only worked for a few, but I couldn't imagine anything better.

That's fantastic.

You mentioned, uh, like Mission earlier. It's, it's like far from the flagpole for us. Like we, you know, we bullshit chat. It's like, it gives us like, it's like an Avengers kind of group. Like, and you know, we do real stuff, man. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it's been great. I mean, to be this dude's teammate and friend, like he's Mike Edwards is Mike Edwards, you know. But yeah, it's—

And Adam White is Adam White. We love you, man.

I'm a little camera shy.

I didn't expect to be—

What happened to you?

Yeah.

What happened to you?

A lot, man.

Yeah, a lot. The Hawthorne effect.

And I appreciate Adam for letting me stay with him last night. And he's—

Last night was hilarious. So we just lit a fire, listened to the Last Mohican soundtrack. Tito's and Gatorade and ice cream sandwiches. Yeah. And talked about like the Bible and everything else.

Yeah, it was a good time. The fire was perfect.

Yeah, no, it's a— it's a— it's a—

wait, Tito's and Gatorade? What— what is that called?

I don't know. Taterade? I don't know. Were you guys shirtless when you did this? No, no, just asking.

Well, Last Mohicans was.

I mean, Yeah, I mean, it's— last time we were talking about it, last time we were together, we were in a hotel in Miami and I pulled my hair back to like the Daniel Day-Lewis Last of the Mohicans look. And that's what we were talking about. And then he put on the music.

Yeah, no, I have like the physical CD. Uh, yeah, Last of Us is awesome.

Nothing wrong with that. It's one of the finest movies with one of the finest, uh, that was it, uh, I don't say Māua.

It was a good movie.

The— yeah, but the, the scene where he takes out, like, kill scene. Yeah.

Oh, with a hatchet.

Yeah. Yeah.

Every warrior's dream. Yeah, exactly.

One of the reasons I carried a hatchet for a while. I never got a kill and realized how absolutely uncomfortable it was.

Yeah, what a gaudy thing to be carrying.

Yeah, but if it ever came up, if it ever came up, it would have been amazing. It would have been amazing.

I'd love to hear about like your, uh, uh, military freefall training and like what sort of capabilities you guys were, if you can talk about it, like what sort of training you guys are doing, what, you know, like how, how did that go?

That's a good question. Yeah. I really loved that. Uh, we did, we did a lot of jumps in RRC. We, we, uh, a lot of people consider us being one of the more proficient jump elements out there. Um, but we would jump as high as you go as high as 35,000 feet, free breathing oxygen. Jumping out. Most of what our capabilities we trained around a lot was high altitude, high opening. So jumping the highest you can open a canopy via like US Army regs is 25,000 feet.

Wow.

So we jump out at 20. You can jump higher than that, but you can't open it higher than that. So we jump out at 25,000 feet right off the ramp, deploy right off the ramp. You're under canopy at like 24,500 feet under oxygen nav boards down with like GPS and like modern day with like GPS GPS and stuff like that. And we can literally fly like different distances depending on the winds, like 30, 40 kilometers.

That's amazing.

So the glide ratio, the ones we were jumping at, most of them are about 4 to 1. It depends. There's some out there that are pushing close to 5 to 1. Different types of canopies. The ones that most you guys use are 4 to 1.

So, and when you're talking about a glide ratio, you're talking about the amount you can afford.

4 feet of drive to 1 foot of prop. And it depends on the wind too. So we're always going to jump typically upwind. So we're running with the wind. So it magnifies that. So we can cover a lot of distance, but yeah, we could jump anywhere, land pretty much anywhere at any time in pretty much any environment. Like clouds kind of limit us. We can still jump through them. Uh, but it's super dangerous and a lot of planning considerations. Uh, but I loved it, man. I did it, taught it out the freefall school, taught it as a contractor for a while. I really enjoyed flying the canopy piece of it, teaching the body flight. But my body was just tired of it. So when I took the break, it was like, eh, I guess I'm done with it.

Yeah. What makes a cloud or jumping through a cloud dangerous?

You can't see, especially at nighttime. It's just hard to see. And if you can't, it's hard to see guys anyway. Like when I used to jump with students, like with the MARSOC guys, I would be like, stay height going out because the plane's traveling at 130 knots across the ground. So as every dude goes out, they're getting spread out by hundreds of meters. So you got a 12-man team, like a special forces team or whatever, going out. By the time I'm the last guy out, the other dude's over a kilometer away from me. So at nighttime, picking that dude up, especially when you have city lights in the background and they're all sparkling, you're like looking through night vision and it's really hard to tell where your dudes are, where the strobe is versus the background city lights. So being accurate with everything you do— like, I used to harp on dudes, get out, fly your body deploy, keep your canopy on heading and steer it to, to the direction we need to go to the drop zone. Because one dude could turn the wrong way for 10 seconds, he's a half a kilometer in the wrong direction, right?

And trying to round that dude up is just challenging. So there's a lot of precision that's involved in doing that very well, accurately, and like repeatable.

That's like the most amazing shit though, floating through the clouds like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh dude. Yeah. You'll, you'll see. I only did it in daytime and full disclosure at night. I can't imagine. I've done, I've done jumps before where I didn't see another dude because we were in clouds for 10,000 feet. Wow. And then we popped out of the clouds and like, oh, where's everybody? Oh, everybody's kind of close by. Thank God we didn't collide with each other. You can entangle canopies. I mean, you could run into another dude's canopy and entangle and you wouldn't know it until So it's already happened.

Yeah.

I got a question. What you got?

Why is the MP7 still your favorite gun? I wouldn't say necessarily it's my favorite gun, but it's definitely my favorite low-vis gun at the time. There's probably better stuff out there now, who knows? But it was my favorite gun for low-vis stuff. Like, I, you know, if you're— if I'm going in to kick in doors and kill bad guys, I'm still going to prefer to have like an AR-15. 15 or something, some sort of caliber. But for like low-vis stuff, that was my favorite gun because it was small, kind of at the time it was pretty modular and compact, and then it had that suppressor on it that made it, you know, pretty quiet too. But yeah, it was a unique gun. Yeah, I liked it a lot.

So I have a question because like as an old school Ranger who fielded like the first round of SR-25s that did not have a forward assist. And let me tell you, not having a forward assist on an AR fucking built like gun was horrible when you're trying to be stealthy because you're trying to seat the round sometimes, dropping it hard.

They took the forward assist off the 110, which I had.

Did they ever put a forward assist on an SR-25?

On an SR, I believe they—

I thought they did, but I may be wrong. I think they did on an SR. I'd have to, you know, it was so horrible.

Like if you would like, because obviously I only use it on training exercises, but like you get sand in or whatever and then you sit there and try and seat the round and bake, right?

Chunks. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, you saying that they didn't have a forward assist gets me thinking now because if you were to just ask me, hey, does an SR-25 have a forward assist? I would have been like, Absolutely. Guys, the gun nuts are for melting down right now. They're melting down. It's been a while since I've seen an SR-25.

Yeah.

I bet they are.

I mean, they were cool because they were like, like you guys said, they were based on the AR. They had a suppressor. Like they were so badass, but they didn't have a forward assist, which made it horrible.

That's crazy. I thought they did.

So, yeah. All right. Uh, if there's— no, that's it.

That's it.

Uh, so next week we're gonna have, uh, Yahya Fanousi is going to be on the show. He was a CIA analyst. Dave's going to be out, uh, so we're gonna have a special guest host, James Powell, coming back.

Nice.

Oh, he's gonna be nice doing the interview with me. Uh, and, uh, I also want to shout out to, uh, Casa Carabeo Cigars. Providing the cigars for this show. Good friend of mine. These are the Don Nello Torpedoes that he gave us. Awesome cigars. Hope you guys will go check them out. Casacarabeo.com.

I want to give a shout out to Jack. You love the shadow and the old-timey radio shows. A buddy of mine put together a Cole, C-O-L-E, Steele, S-T-E-E-L-E. It's an old-timey style radio show on all the podcast platforms. It's a comedy, but it's based off the old pulp fiction.

Oh, really?

The old—

like the Phantom?

Yeah, exactly. All the old pulp, like, uh, radio shows. But, uh, check it out on Spotify, Apple, or iTunes, everything else.

So, Mike, Adam, any final thoughts before we roll out tonight?

Thank y'all for bringing me back for a third time. I appreciate it. And good to see you in person again. Yeah, first time in a while.

You guys, you guys you're welcome back on anytime, man. I really, really appreciate you coming all the way out here. Shoot.

Yeah, I enjoyed it.

Anytime, man. Both of you.

Yeah. I mean, I'm just happy to be here, man. This is surreal.

Yeah.

Like my life is a movie. I'm fucking friends with you guys. Yeah.

All right, guys. So, yeah, I will see you guys next Friday with Mr. Powell. And that's awesome. Take care.