Shawn Ryan Show - #102 Chad Robichaux - Force Recon Marine / DEVGRU

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Chad Robichaux is a United States Marine Corps Veteran, former LEO, Best Selling Author, and Founder of Mighty Oaks Foundation, a peer-to-peer resiliency and recovery program for U.S. Veterans. Mighty Oaks has raised over 55M dollars for Veterans and First Responders and has served over 500,000 service members. In addition to helping U.S. Veterans and First Responders, Robichaux helped create Save Our Allies, an organization that played a vital role in assisting the United States' Afghan allies in escaping Afghanistan during the disastrous withdrawal. Now, his humanitarian work has extended to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, where Robichaux and his team are on the ground executing recovery operations. This episode documents his entire life story. Pre-Order the book now: https://www.chadrobichaux.com/mission-without-borders Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://shopify.com/shawn https://mypatriotsupply.com https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://hvmn.com/shawn https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Chad Robichaux Links: Website - https://www.chadrobichaux.com Podcast - https://www.staydangerous.com Twitter / X - https://twitter.com/ChadRobo Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/chadrobichauxofficialpage Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/chadrobo_official TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@chadrobo_official Mighty Oaks - https://www.mightyoaksprograms.org Save Our Allies - https://saveourallies.org PRE-ORDER - https://www.chadrobichaux.com/mission-without-borders Saving Aziz Book - https://savingaziz.org Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two freshly cracked eggs any way you like them. Three strips of naturally smoked bacon and a side of toast. Only $6 at A&W's in Ontario. Experience A&W's classic breakfast on now. Dine in only until 11 a.m. Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built in, so you can change the music.

Oh yeah, Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with tech pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly, cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or ford.ca. Chad Robichoff, dude, welcome to the Shod Ryan show. Super honored to be here, man. I've been looking forward to it for a long time. Me too. Yeah.

I've been following you a long time online. I'm just fascinated with all the good stuff you're doing. You're just, dude, you are just a solid human being and you're doing great stuff in the world. And I can't believe we haven't met before now, but hey, we're here. And I am super excited about this interview. Thank you for being here.

No, thanks so much. But, and then we recorded an awesome podcast last night and had a great dinner and We're a fast timeline here because I know you got to get to Colorado and So let's dig in. Yeah, absolutely first of all, you know, and thanks for doing my show I know you don't do a lot of them But that was really cool to come here and your your staff was so awesome to accommodate us being able to record you So I said about that as well. Well, it was an honor to be on your show, man.

But well, let me give you an introduction. Okay. It's one of the longest introductions I've ever done. But but so here we go. Chad Rovachoff, former Special Operations Force Reconnaissance Marine. You were a DoD contractor on a very high level, eight JSOC deployments. You founded the Mighty Oaks Foundation, which has served over 450,000 service members and first responders. You know what I love, man, is you're helping everybody.

We see a lot of nonprofits. I just interviewed this guy, Johnny Wilson. He says there's 70, over 70 nonprofits that are just for special ops. Yeah. There's so many other guys out there that have done stuff and that are out there suffering. And so thank you for helping everybody.

Absolutely, man. You, everybody has their own unique role to play in the big picture in the military, a special operations guys. We kind of feel like we're the best, but once you go out into combat and operate, you know that nothing happens without the whole system in place.

And, you know, from the administrators, the combat engineers, all those guys. So we gotta take care of everyone. The infantry guys. They have, especially the infantry guys. I mean. And the spouses, we take care of everyone. The infantry guys. Yeah, especially the infantry guys. I mean. And the spouses, we take care of spouses too at our program.

We treat the spouses, even if they're divorced, the same way we treat the active duty service member. We will put the same amount of care. We pay for everything for the spouses, just the same. That's amazing. It's a commitment we made as an organization. You mean almost half a million people. Yeah.

What's that even, I mean, come on, half a million people? And I know we'll get into it. When I started Mighty Oaks, people helped me. And the only reason Mighty Oaks began was God put a deep burden on my heart to pay it forward. And that could have been the one person or half a million people. I just knew that I needed, I knew that somewhat,

what someone did for me, I needed to pay it forward. It was my responsibility. And then, I just knew that I needed, I knew that somewhat what someone did for me, I needed to pay it forward, it was my responsibility. And then, you know, over the years, God just has orchestrated this amazing team and supporters to make this happen. And I get to be a part of it, man. And we've been to really not only impact a lot of people's lives, but, and save people's lives

and restore their families and change their legacies for eternity, because that's what we do. But we get to also empower them to go out and do the same thing. And that's why it's grown the way it has, because we don't just help people, we empower them to go out and make it impact themselves. Yeah, we're gonna dive into that,

but I know you guys are making a huge dent and some of the issues that are going on for first responders and veterans, and I just commend you for that. You also co-founded Save Our Allies, which you guys started basically to go into Afghanistan. We'll get into that. You're the host of the Resilient Podcast, which I was just on yesterday. You were a federal air marshal. You worked with the State Department. You got a Medal of Valor for bravery in law enforcement.

NBA, about to receive another Masters from Harvard, from what I understand. You're a professional MMA fighter, fourth degree black belt in Jiu-Jitsu with an 18 and two record, I believe 17 are from submission. Yeah, I actually, as a Jiu-Jitsu guy, I'm proud of those 17 submissions. I'll bet you are. You're a Christian, a follower of Christ.

You've advised presidential administrations, Congress, the VA and DOD on the effects of PTSD. You're the author of several books, some of which is The Unfair Advantage, Saving of Zs, which is a national bestseller and is now being turned into a real motion picture. Congratulations on that. Thank you.

I know that's a huge part of your story and I can't wait to dive into that. And now your next one that is coming out, when does this release? August 13th, The Mission Without Borders. It's going out through Nelson Thomas Elson Books and I'm super excited about The Mission Without Borders, it's going out through Nelson Thomas Elson books. And I'm super excited about the Mission Without Borders. It's a very personal story between me and my son.

It's about you, the backdrop is Ukraine, but it's about me, my son and I. And it's a problem. That's incredible. Yeah. And you are a husband, a father, a grandfather. You've been married for 28 years. Yeah. Congratulations.

It is no easy task. No, it's good. And especially no easy task when you're deploying as a Marine and as a JSOC operator. Yeah, it's a- And all the stuff that you do now. All the odds are stacked against you for sure. And Cathy's a pretty strong, pretty strong lady.

You founded the nonprofit Fourth Option, which I love. We'll get into that too. What I really like about Fourth Option, that's everything you're doing now, right? Yeah, yeah, everything. I mean, Mighty Oaks is our recovery. We do international efforts at Mighty Oaks, but SeaSpray, who I won't say his name,

but SeaSpray is my partner in a lot of the international stuff we do, humanitarian work and rescue operations. He wanted to start his own effort. partner in a lot of the international stuff we do and humanitarian work and rescue operations he went to found To start his own effort and so I said as chairman of board I helped him stand it up and and we run those international currently running international efforts around the world and he you know see space out And in another country right now literally as we're sitting here rescuing on a rescue operation You know what I love about that. We talked about it this morning is

That's already funded. Yeah, yeah. You don't need to go around and, I mean, it's funded. So you can 100% concentrate on the mission. And I find those to be the most effective nonprofits. Yeah. So.

You know, Mighty Oaks with the effort with veterans and first responders, you know, for me, I'm always fundraising. I have to raise $8 million a year to do our programs. But the humanitarian rescue operations, I'm very blessed to have some good relationships with people who love to just do the right thing

for other humans. And when we come and say, hey, we have an operation and we need to pull the trigger on this operation, because if we don't act in the next 24 hours Someone's gonna live or die and people write checks and and and make it happen And so it's amazing that there's amazing human beings out there that do the right thing when our governments won't yeah, man it's um, some of the stuff you were telling me last night about what you guys are doing and what the government is asking you to do is just

it's mind blowing. But and I want to end this with out of all the stuff that you've done, what comes to my mind is you're humanitarian. You have saved over 17,000 Afghans from potential genocide. You had a major part of the Ben Hall rescue. You have a major part going on and saving lives in Ukraine. And I know you want this out there. You do not support the Biden, Zelensky,

hundreds of millions, billions of dollars going over there. You're only there for the people. And very commendable. Yeah. You know, it's, I think it's hard for people you're only there for the people and very commendable. Yeah. You know, it's, I think it's hard for people to push their politics aside when it comes to just helping people these days

and you're leading my example with doing that. So thank you. I say when I speak a lot, cause a lot of people have given me a hard time about being in Ukraine and they're like, so when she's corrupt, then I'm like, so are politicians in Washington DC, right? But most politicians at the beginning of time,

but if you let your politics get in the way of your heart for people, you should probably change your politics. As humans, we have to be there for one another in our weakest times. And if God opens the door for me to do that, I'm gonna do it. Yeah, yeah.

Well, we got a lot to dive into, but before we do, everybody always gets a gift. If you watch the show, you already know that. Outstanding. You get your own gift bags like, Hey, it's nice. It's actually just from Kroger and we slept a sticker on it. You put a sticker on it. Well, actually, you got you got you got the Sean Ryan bottles and you get the coffee cup sleeves. You know why I do that? It's good branding.

That's why we do it. I used to drink bubbly on here all the time. And we would tag them, shout them out, just because I love the brand. And then they don't like us, probably because we're a little bit political over here. So I was like, you know what? If you don't appreciate the free commercial that hundreds of millions of people

have seen by now, then I'll just give my own branded stuff. They're not the only water, right? Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah. Well, I just had a couple of this. This is awesome. I know me and you were talking a lot about brain health yesterday.

And so I wanted to give you that. That's got a bunch of functional mushroom extract in there, super healthy for your brain. Finest ingredients. They source everything they can in the U.S. Unless they find a better ingredient then they will put that in there. So I think we can all appreciate that.

But I do, yeah. Laird super food creamer. And what else we got here and the real good stuff. Oh, performance mushrooms and vigilance league gummy bears. So can you tell me what these are? Well, they're legal in all 50 states. They don't have to worry about popping on a drug test, but it's just candy, man. It's just kind of beers. Right on.

Everybody loves gummy bears. Right on. Everybody loves gummy bears. I know, right? Got some hydration packs. Yeah, yeah. And stickers in here. That's all good. Let's get on with the interview. Awesome, thank you for the gifts, man.

You're welcome, you're welcome. So Chad, I just, I wanna do a complete life story on you. So we got about five hours to cover it all. And so I want to start with childhood. I know you had faced some childhood trauma and dealt with some really tough things growing up, get into your Marine service, get into what you were doing over at JSOC,

and then at least half the interview needs to be on some of the stuff that you were doing over at JSOC and then at least half the interview needs to be on some of the stuff that you're doing now and within the past couple of years, especially the Afghan withdrawal, saving Aziz, the stuff you're doing in Ukraine and hopefully some of the stuff you guys got coming. Yeah. But so with that being said, where'd you grow up? Southern Louisiana, like really Southern Louisiana, swamp people.

I grew up, my parents and all former grandparents spoke French, so French speaking household. Very- Do you speak French? I could understand where I grew up. It's not French like in France, Cajun French, half English, half French, a lot of slang. And so I was because I was the oldest grandchild and there were so many French speakers where I grew up, it was forbidden to be spoken in school. So I was the first generation of people that

parents are trying to stop from learning French. But because I grew up in that household, I could always understand it. And I think it gave me aptitude to learn languages because I think I was able to learn the languages pretty easy as an adult. Eventually went to language school for Urdu, for Pakistan for Urdu. And then I learned Dari in Afghanistan pretty good. So I feel like I had an aptitude for language because of maybe growing up that way.

How many languages do you speak? I don't speak any other right now than English, but I wouldn't claim to speak any, but when I was in Afghanistan, I felt like I had a pretty good- You could get around. Get around with Dari, and then when I went through language training for Urdu, I spoke it really well.

But when I got to Pakistan, everyone that speaks Urdu, which is a national language, also speaks English. So the tribal areas that I was actually working in, they spoke more Pashtun. And so English actually ended up being more helpful than Urdu for the areas I was in in Pakistan. So they didn't really get to practice Urdu as much as I did Dari.

Interesting. But yeah, so grew up in southern Louisiana and my family on one side of my family was like true cowboying, cattle, hay. The other side of my family were commercial cat fishermen. And so as young as like six years old, I was out in the PRirog hunting with a 410 shotgun and fishing, like kind of grew up that lifestyle where you kind of out her your own and just very much like go back in time, like 50, 60 years and that's kind of how I grew up.

And I really am thankful I grew up that way. My family has about 84 years in military service. So I'm told World War I, so before that, but I don't have any evidence of that, but World War II. In the Army, Korea in the Army, my father was the first Marine in my family. He joined us as an infantryman in 0311, went to Vietnam in that capacity and myself as a fourth recon Marine and then an Afghanistan veteran and then both my sons, my oldest son Hunter joined Marine Corps. It'd be Anglico, which I don't know if you know Anglico, air-enabled gunfire liaison company.

It's a little four-man teams that embed with foreign nationals so they have access to US air support. So they're JTAG's foreign controllers. Yeah. So in fact, he went to Afghanistan, embedded with the Georgian infantry and a four man team to embed with the Georgian infantry and actually got to do fire missions and stuff like that. No way.

Taliban, yeah. So two generations of Afghanistan veterans. My youngest son Hayden is still in the Marine Corps. He actually was on active duty, got out refusing the vaccine that he was one of the ones that got kicked out. And then as soon as they lifted it, he got back in the Marine Corps and the reserves and he's a crash by rescue.

And so the firefighter side. Incredible. Yeah. So that's kind of our military service. But you know, my father is very significant role in my childhood because my father went to Vietnam because he went to Vietnam under... I don't know if you know, like you probably do, if you got drafted, you went into the army.

You didn't go into the Marine Corps. My Marine Corps pretty much volunteer there in Vietnam. And so my father volunteered to go to Marine Corps. And the reason he did is he was driving to high school, and he was goofing off in his car and his best friend was in the passenger seat. He swerved off the road and hit the back of a garbage truck. And his best friend that he was driving died. And so his response to that was to go in the Marine Corps, volunteer as an infantryman

to go to Vietnam. And so he went to the Marine Corps, already broken, probably on a death wish. And when he got home, he was just a very broken person, his whole life. And so he was a very angry man, a very violent man, a lot of physical abuse in my home and, you know, like fist to face. He always wanted to fight me. Like even I remember as a little kid, like didn't want to, not spankings, or he wanted to like physically fight me. And so I had an older brother, who's a year older than me. And anybody that's grown up in a physical abuse of home

like that, you know, siblings get really close. And so my brother and I, being in something we'd always be out in the woods, in the swamps, playing, pretending to be in military, you know, that's like boys do. And we talk about joining the military and escaping that lifestyle. And I remember like I was about 13 and he talk about joining the military and escaping that lifestyle. And I remember like I was about 13

and he was about 14 years old. He's a year older than me. And we watched this video, you probably seen it. It was in, it was, you know, talking to early, late eighties. It was filmed on a strand in Coronado and it was a seal video and it was kind of like a SEAL promo video. And I remember seeing this image of this SEAL coming out of the water.

He had twin 80s on his back. He had a boonie hat on, his face painted green, like seaweed hanging off him and he had the old M16 rifle. And I'm like, I want to do that. Like that's what I want to do. That's who I want to be. Like just that image in my mind. But I was like, I don't want to join the Navy. Yeah. And I say that jokingly, but the truth is,

the reason was that my father, as dysfunctional as my father was, the one thing that always made my dad, the only thing I ever seen in his whole life that made him proud and happy was the fact that he's a United States Marine. Even though he only did it for two years, that two years was so significant in his life.

It was like everything was about being a Marine. And I'm like, if they can make that guy, like miserable guy happy, I want a piece of that. And so I learned about recon Marines and force recon Marines. And as a teenager, I became infatuated with it. I'd read books, they had all these amazing stories of these guys from Vietnam,

third force recon, third recon company. I ended up serving at third force recon later. So that was like a unit that I read as a teenager. And so I started running and swimming and eating healthy, which I don't even know how it was inspired to eat healthy because I'm from Louisiana, but I started really taking care of myself. About a year into me and my brother doing that,

making the commitment to do that together, he was shot and he was killed. And it was just devastating. Hold on, Chad, hold on. We got a lot to unpack here. Let's go back. The traumatic childhood I'm realizing is very common. And there's a lot of people that have been on the show

that I had no idea, you being one of them until we did some research on you. And there's a lot of people going through that kind of stuff right now. And so I always like to unpack what happened to you, if you're willing, and talk about how you escaped it and eventually, if you have any advice, for kids that are going through that right now. So let's go back to what age did that start? I can't remember, you know, it's crazy. And people are thinking crazy for the saying this.

And I actually never even mentioned this publicly before. I had this vision of being, it's almost like I see myself at third party and being a toddler and being held under a bathtub with water while I was trying to cry and being held like drowned under water. And I had that vision in my mind for like ever. Like I'd always, I'd always see my dad holding me under a bathtub water pouring out as a toddler crying and gasping for air because I'm like suffocating. And so one day about 10 years ago, I told my mom that.

And my mom just started crying. And she said that my dad used to do that to me. When I would cry, he would get so frustrated at me crying and I wouldn't stop crying as a baby. That he would take me and hold me under the water. Like you want to cry, you can't like He would take me and hold me under the water. Like you want to cry, you can't like, and so he'd hold me under the water. And so I believe that I remember it all the way

at that infancy age that were, and subconsciously I remember that. Shit. And you know, my mom validated that. And so a guy coming home from combat, frustrated, can't take the pressure of a baby crying. And that was his response to that. And so a guy coming home from combat, frustrated, can't take the pressure of a baby crying. And that was his response to that. And then I could remember being, even as four or five years old,

watching my dad physically beat my mom. And I don't mean like slapping around, I mean like punching her and beating her. At about six years old, that's when my dad left, divorced my mom. And I remember like sitting on a swing in a front yard with my mom watching my dad left, divorced my mom. And I remember sitting on a swing in a front yard with my mom watching my dad leave. And at that young, I could remember the imagery of that.

Holy shit. When would these, call them flashbacks, when would these flashbacks happen with the bathtub? All through my life. Were they triggered by anything specific? No, I think it just, for me, like, I don't have, I don't have a lot of things that, even things like to this day to do with,

I don't have a lot of things that trigger me. It's usually isolation or like sitting still, which probably explains why. You read my bio and people are like, oh, that's amazing bio. I hear that bio and I'm like, that sounds like a very discontent person that was like trying to stay busy and meet the next goal.

Like sometimes I hear my bio and I feel like super uncomfortable because that's what I hear. I hear someone that's discontent that was chasing something. And I think one of the things that as I'm older now, I know that I was chasing, I just had to stay busy. I had to stay moving. Because when things slow down for me, that's when I have,

that's when I start dealing with a lot of things that come back to surface. So like for me, busyness has been a battle because it's almost like addictive behavior. Like some people might drink or do drugs for me. Busyness was a way to not think of those things. So when I'm isolated, when I'm still, which is being still is healthy, when I'm still, that's when those moments would come to remember that some of that stuff. Damn. Did your dad ever reenter the picture?

Yes. So it was pretty, pretty, I went about, so I got, my dad left when my brother died. He couldn't handle a grieving wife. My mother went to live with her parents because she couldn't handle the loss of a son. My dad left and went to Africa and pretty much abandoned me and my sister. My sister was about 20, So I lived with my sister. She was going to college and tried to finish high school and continue that course for the Marine Corps.

And so, you know, fast forward to like adulthood there had been gaps at times that I wouldn't talk to my dad for like five, 10 years, you just disappear. Well, it had been about 10 years that I was away from my dad. And I got a call. This is like, and I know we'll get into starting Mighty Oaks, but this is like, my life's on track now

after tons of stuff going wrong. I'm starting Mighty Oaks. And like, I went through a major forgiveness to me personally in my life. And I get this call from the hospital saying, your dad's in the hospital. He had a heart attack. Simon Thainy's heart attack and a stroke,

and you're his next to Ken. And I remember being like angry, like why would they call me? Like, why does he even have my name associated? Like, I haven't talked to him in 10 years, like why would they call me? Like, I'm just being real angry about that. And then, but then realizing like,

this dude's like train wrecked his life, he doesn't have anybody else. And so I have to go and sign paperwork for him and be his next to Ken for this situation. And that led me on a, that led me to like a real conviction point and because I had just come out of a situation where people forgave me and now I'm not wanting to forgive my dad

because of what he did to me. And so I ended up going and seeing him and that started, and he went from that state to a very like, almost like, like he just, what do you call the word where he's, he was just like, couldn't take care of himself. He was,

he was like, had the stroke, he was stuck in a wheelchair. This is a guy that was like physically strong his whole life mean like like super mean violent and just physically strong to like a guy I was bound the wheelchair and couldn't wipe his butt and and so I Went see him for a couple of times and and we kind of reconnected I felt like I had some forgiveness there for him. I actually was new in my faith prayed with him and And felt like you know, he had he was in a repentant point in his life. And then he disappeared again.

You were new at faith. I was new in faith at the time. Maybe like two years, two years. Which you know, you're kind of on fire in the first two years of your faith. I say that in the first two years, mine had went out. But I was really like, you know, I felt like I have to share what I discovered with him.

And he really like grabbed hold of it, but he disappeared again. And I know why he disappeared, and I couldn't get ahold of him. But then I got an anonymous call that he had hooked up with this woman and they had to put him in, they were using a social security check

and they put him in this drug house and he was just parked in this drug house in Oklahoma. And so I made some phone calls, found out where he was and I got on a plane and rented a car and went and found him. And when I went into the house, it was in the middle of a bad neighborhood, I went into the house and there was tons of people in this house. You could tell they're just hanging out like some guys that were probably in their early 20s.

I went in and I think they thought I was the police because when I seen him, he was parked in the corner in a chair in a hospital gown. He was filthy. He had a feeding tube in him with an empty milk jug that they were pouring stuff in. I just yelled, everybody get the F out of the house. People were like, again, I think they thought I was the police because they just ran out the house and I went out when I went to him he's like he was like kind of like out of it and I looked at his first thing I looked at

his hands his fingernails were like really long and they were full of feces and he was like he was in a he was like in a pair of underwear and it was soiled and he was just filthy. And I kind of panicked. I went to the bathroom and I got somebody's toothbrush in this bowl that was on the table and I got some water and I went and started cleaning his hands. And I called 911, started cleaning his hands with somebody's toothbrush and just washing my dad's hands.

And then they came, picked him up and Health and Human Services came from Oklahoma and they put him in a nursing home. I was trying to get him to the state I was living in at the time I was living in California at the time but because of the way the medical system was they couldn't move him so he couldn't be in the state it was so he didn't have anything. He didn't have a pair of underwear, clothes like so I had to, I bought him a TV, a phone, it's a prepaid cards, and I start calling him, and he would call, and he was like having dementia, so he'd call me on that phone, and he'd say,

Chad, this your daddy, like, I love you, and he never would say his whole life that you love me, but he'd say, and he'd start crying and tell me, I'm sorry, and he'd say it over and over and then say, okay. And then he'd hang up the phone. And about 30 minutes later, he called and had the same conversation again.

And so he was very repentant at the end of his life. And I was pretty sure that point from talking to him that he had found his faith. And then I got a call, not from the convalescent home, but from the funeral home that he had passed. And that was a that's what's seven years ago shit and So yeah, so I you know of all the things that I've been through with my dad

I Realized in all the years that I hated my dad I realized that he was just such a broken person that had never had the opportunity to heal. And that really convicts me to do better for our veterans who coming home because that's a big part of my motivation of why I do what I do at Mighty Oaks for the veterans because I was not only did I go through that myself through my own experience of combat, but I was a recipient of that hardship as a son.

And had my dad been introduced when he came home from Vietnam, then what we do at Mighty Oaks, he would have not lived the life he lived. Our family would have not suffered the way our family suffered. And so I feel a responsibility to take those lessons and know what I do every day. And my dad was just a broken person that never got the healing. And I can say that truthfully and And with compassion now as opposed to like hating him for what he was. He was just he was hurting Damn Chad so that's some heavy stuff

Well, that's my that's the foundation of my childhood. Wow. Let's rewind. Yeah, what did he? What was he doing in Africa? He was working in oil field. When he got out of the Marine Corps, he went to, he went to, into the hydraulic engineering field. So he'd always work in the oil field and hydraulics. And so he'd always take these jobs overseas to make, you know, make more money, tax free money.

And so he was always chasing money. How did you find out he won't move out? He ended up with no money at the end, right? He didn't even have a pair of underwear. He chased money, women, booze. And so much to the point that when he died, I called his sister, I called his brother, I started calling people.

I couldn't have a funeral for him because not one person would even go to a funeral for Him and so his ashes are in my house and I plan on doing something with his ashes I still can't decide what to do with them, but uh, but he didn't even have a funeral because he never one person That would even go to a funeral for him Whoa Yeah, I'm speechless. I think I think I Speak on Marine Corps boot camp all the time and the fact that he was proud

to be a Marine. I got permission already from the Marine Corps to put his ashes on the training grounds of MCRD San Diego where he went to boot camp. Me and my sons went to boot camp as well. So that's where I'll probably put his remains. But I just hadn't done it yet. Did your kids ever meet him? Your wife?

Your kids? They did. My oldest son did. All my kids met him as kids and my wife. My wife did several times. How did you find... Do you know who Victor Marx is? Oh yeah, yeah.

I've been knowing Victor for a long time. In fact, you know what's crazy is Victor and I. So I grew up in that environment Victor grew up in that similar scenario. We were we grew up like six miles down the same street That's right. I'm stressing each other. Whoa. Yeah, we're like six miles apart And that's what I was gonna say man. You guys have a very similar He lived on by a blue by a blue bypass road is, I lived on the end of that. Crazy. I couldn't believe that he was able to find forgiveness for his dad.

And so, I mean, how did you, I mean, shit Chad, you're getting drowned as a three-year-old, as a toddler, possibly before that, the physical abuse, the abuse of your mother, your siblings, and who knows what you're not bringing up. How were you able to, I mean, honestly, I mean, I think I personally struggle with forgiveness. I know a lot of people struggle with forgiveness. And some of the things that I need to forgive people for are when I talk to a man like you, and this is what you're talking about, you were able to forgive people for are, when I talk to a man like you,

and this is what you're talking about, you were able to forgive your dad for that. The shit that I'm talking about is so minuscule, you know, comparatively. And how did you find it? One, I didn't want to give it at first because I had held that anger for so long. But I believe in God's timing.

When I got that phone call from the hospital, like I was living in this moment of grace at that point because I had just had treated my family like a complete lunatic. Like I never physically abused them, but I certainly emotionally and mentally abused my wife and my kids. I was having, you know, a fair affair on my wife. I left my family, like had been the worst husband

and father that possibly could have been. And yet my wife and my kids possibly could have been and yet my wife and my kids had just forgiven me and given me a second chance. And so if they could do that for me in that moment and now I get this call from the hospital to come and help my dad, like how much of a hypocrite would I be to not able to just extend that same kind of grace that I was given and to know that the grace that unforgiveness that God gives us all that offers for us all that I had just been given that to this new chance at life.

And by the way, I don't have a second chance. I've had plenty of second chances in my life. I had just went through that in that moment. And so it was demonstrated for me, it was demonstrated for me by a wife that had absolutely no reason at all to give me a second chance. I didn't deserve it, I didn't earn it.

In my most like despicable times towards her, she's going to the church and praying for me, following her knees and praying for me saying, you know, God, let me see Chad the way you see Chad. Let me love Chad the way you love Chad. Let me forgive Chad the way you forgive Chad. That's what she is praying for me

when she knew I was having an affair with her. Like, let me see Chad the way, not the way she sees me. Let me see him the way God sees him. And like, so just having to just experience that, like, I knew that I had to be able to offer that same grace to the person who I felt in my life had betrayed me the deepest. And that was my dad.

Damn. What was it like for you walking into the hospital, seeing him? I was still angry. And I carried that, during that rebuilding relationship, I carried that for a long time, bite my tongue. It wasn't like, okay, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna be happy about it.

No, I wasn't happy about it. I'm a pretty, I can be a pretty time, bite my tongue. It wasn't like, okay, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna be happy about it. No, I wasn't happy about it. I'm a pretty, I can be a pretty strong willed person. My personality, I'm sure we were a lot like that way. I'm pretty strong willed. I was very grudgeful and like super cynical. Like I'm just gonna open this up for him to hurt me again as soon as it gets healthy. And so, but you know, I knew that wasn't the reason

that I needed to do it. I needed to do it as much for wasn't the reason that I needed to do it. I needed to do it as much for me as for him. I needed to do it for me. Cause I didn't want to live with that anger anymore, like towards him. I just needed to let it go. Man. And it was really just understanding like

what he had been through. And I remember when I first learned about why he joined the Marine Corps and, and I met the sister, I met the sister, the kid that was killed in the car. I was speaking at a church and the kid that was killed in the car when he was driving, went off the road, hit the garbage truck, she came up to me in tears. She had went to high school with my dad. I remember when that happened and she's telling me how she forgave my dad for killing her brother. And she was crying.

This was like years, obviously years later. Man. 40 years later or so. So yeah, it was just something I had to do. And like I said, I had to do it for me too, not just to forgive him. Yeah, yeah. I think people confuse forgiveness though with like, sometimes it feel like, well, if I forgive someone, I have to give them for me too, not just to forgive him. Yeah, yeah. I think people confuse forgiveness though with like,

sometimes it feel like, oh, if I forgive someone, I have to give them a clean slate and forget. And I have to allow myself to be hurt again. That's not always the case. My father wasn't in a position to hurt me again. So that was easy, right? He's not in a position to hurt me again.

He's not gonna physically abuse me. He's not gonna manipulate me or take advantage of me. I'm a grown man. And so that was a little bit different. But sometimes we're in a position to where someone could still hurt us and be vulnerable to us. And we feel like forgiveness makes us,

means that we have to get in the green light to hurt us again. That doesn't always mean the case. Forgiveness could be like, hey, I forgive you. Like I'm letting this go for myself, but I'm not gonna, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to come back and hurt me again.

That doesn't mean we have to be friends. Like forgiveness doesn't always mean that we're gonna restore our friendship or relationship. It just means like, I'm gonna forgive you for that. And I'll pray that you go on and have a good, or successful in your life and productive in your life. And don't do that kind of behavior again, but I don't have to let you back into my life.

So forgetting this is one thing, I chose not only to forgive my dad, but to let him back into my life. And I did feel like I had the ability to protect myself from him ever hurting me again, because I was not in a position for him to anymore. And my family, like he wasn't going to be in a position to hurt my family either. Let's go back to your brother. What happened?

So, very broken family, split family, step dads and step moms and all that stuff. So we were, we had, uh, we went into our other families for the, for a weekend and we had just got there. Like he had just got home to his other family. I had just got home to my other family and he had a half brother on that other side and it was 11 years old and they got in the argument and apparently he had got taking a shotgun 20-gauge shotgun off the gun rack. I Don't know if he loaded it or was loaded. No one knows And he was pointing at him when you're arguing my brother was on the phone telling someone what was going on he had a fire poker in his hand and tried to knock the gun out of the 11 year old's hand and

And again, no one knows did he shoot intentionally or did the gun out of the 11 year old's hand and uh and again no one knows did he shoot intentionally or did the gun go off? I would believe it was probably intentionally because of the fact that we all grew up around guns and you know and just their culture right everybody hunting from like five six years old so um but the gun nonetheless the gun, nonetheless, the gun, intentionally or unintentionally went off Point Blake range in his chest and he died instantly. And no one else was there to witness it. Someone was on the phone. The person on the phone was one street over, told his father, his father ran over in the house and he was already dead. And so very, very, I mean, like I said, when you grow up in that kind of environment,

siblings are who you're closest to. My brother was like every day, super close and extremely devastating to me. I went in a pretty deep isolation and that pushed me into just really focusing on running, swimming, martial arts, like, you know, the martial arts, I was a kid, we did it together.

So I just kind of isolated in that environment. How old were you when that happened? I was 14. I was 14. And by the time I was 15 is when my dad had left. And so from 15 to 16, I'm living with my sister. I get a job roofing, putting shingles on houses in Louisiana and trying to work and go to high school.

And I started failing high school. I wasn't going to graduate. And so I went to Marine Corps Recruiter names. I remember his name to this day, 30 years later, Staff Sergeant Ronald Brown. And I always joke most people remember their recruiter's name because they hate him. I remember this guy's name because I'm just forever grateful.

Like he heard my story and I remember he just like, he was just like, I want to help you. And he helped me get in the Marine Corps without even a high school diploma which in 1993 17 years old you couldn't join the Marine Corps without a high school diploma he wrote a letter to headquarters Marine Corps and said this kid wants to be a Marine his dad was a Marine and this is a story and they let me in and I don't know, but I took the ASPAP test, scored really high, high enough to be, just like Budge, you know, you have to score,

you know, GT score has to be over 115. I had a 116 GT score, so I was high enough to be able to be reconned. They didn't have a recon contract, so I got an infantry contract. And I made a promise to him that when I got an infantry school that I would get my GED and I kept that promise. It wasn't contractual, but I kept that promise. And when I went to boot camp,

got at infantry school, one of the first things I did was went to Copper Mountain College in Twinnan Poems, California, and I got my GED. And all these years later, I got an MBA. And I always joke and speak, I'm like, I can't spell MBA, but I got one. And now I'm about to get my second master's from Harvard, which I don't need another degree right now. I'm not getting it for the degree. I just, I love learning. And there's some courses there that I want to learn from.

Before we move into your military career, is a man who's been through all of that in childhood and like I'd mentioned, there's millions of millions of kids that are in similar situations right now. Yeah. What advice do you have for them? As a book by, I'm trying to remember the name of it as you're talking, Victor Frankl wrote it. Are you familiar with this book?

I'm not. Okay. Victor Frankl was a POW in the Nazi camps, the Jewish POW. He just talked about the one thing that people can't take away, one freedom people can't take away from us is our mind and our thoughts and our connection with God. And you know, people that you're talking about are in a different range of that, right? Some people go talk to their school teacher or their counselor. Some people could go talk to their pastor or church or a counselor.

But some people are like, they have no one they could talk to. We can always talk to God. And God knows our circumstances more than we ever could. And He knows our hardships and hurts more than we ever could. And he knows our hardships and hurts more than we ever could even understand. And I think, you know, when you feel like you have no one and that's just a lie, it's not true. You could always, you know, have a relationship with God,

talk to God and plead your case to God that he'll open the doors and orchestrate miracles to get you out of that environment and situation. If you have the ability to talk to someone, most kids in that situation are scared. I think most people think you're scared to talk to someone else outside of it. Most kids want to protect their parents because at our core, we love our parents. I still, man, what I'm doing right now, I wish my dad could watch this interview because I want him to be proud of me.

Like everybody wants their dad to be proud of them, no matter how terrible they were. And so at your core, you want to protect your parents. So a lot of times kids will live in that environment, not because they're scared to ask for help, because they want to protect their parents and shield them. And to me, the answer to this question, what I would tell those kids is,

you're not protecting them by hiding that. You have to expose what's happening, not just for you, but for them too. They're never going to change. You're never going to get better unless it's exposed. And so you have to talk to someone. And whether it's a counselor at school, a mentor, a neighbor, someone you trust, or get connected in a church and a group and share that with someone. Because a lot of times kids will think, I deserve this. I've been, you know, I'm not a good kid.

I'm stupid. I'm bad. And I deserve this. You don't deserve that. No kid deserves to be physically abused. Especially sexually abused. And I thank God that I've never experienced that. But I know that most people in those situations

deal with sexual abuse as well. And you know, you don't have to deal with that. You should never have to deal with that. So you've got to talk to someone. As scary as it may be. Well, thank you for that advice. You know, you had mentioned two things that I'm piecing together already. And so, you know, we talked about your intro and you see a guy that moves fast, always keeping busy, always one up on himself. I mean, that's what I thought when I read your bio too.

I was like, man, this guy's, he's an overachiever. Which is not always a good thing. You had mentioned you want your dad to be proud. Do you think that you've accomplished so much? Do you think that that plays a role in that as you want your dad to be proud of you and it caused you to consistently outdo yourself? I mean, Marine Special Operations, JSOC,

I know you were over at Dev Group for a while, Mighty Oaks Foundation, Save Our Allies, the new nonprofit that you guys are running, saving, I mean, 17,000 plus people from Afghanistan. You've offered over three books. I mean, I don't know how many books you've authored. You have an MBA, you're getting a master's from Harvard. I mean, is that the stem?

I don't know. I asked myself that too. One, there's a saying, tell me I can't, right? And I had a dad and a stepdad that both told me I couldn't. I remember when my mom's married to this complete degenerate at the time and I'm going to America. My mom, I was 17 so my mom had to sign a paperwork and then we forged my dad's because he was overseas.

And I remember my stepdad who was just a total, like when she met him, he was living in the back of a pickup truck, like just total deadbeat. Usually what deadbeats do is they try to bring everybody else down to their level so they don't feel so bad about themselves. But I remember like telling him like, I'm going, I have an infantry contract

because I want to be a recon Marine. He's like, what are you gonna do when you don't make it? That was his first, what are you gonna do? Cause you're not gonna make it to be a recon Marine. Now you can be stuck in infantry. And I'm like, and I remember like, oh, what are you gonna do? Cause you're not gonna make it to be a recon, or you're not gonna be stuck in infantry. And I remember like, oh, like screw you. Like if anything now, like I'm gonna do it in spite, like to spite you.

And then I felt like even though I never made a promise to my brother, like that I was gonna do it, I felt like we had decided together and I needed to complete that for both of us. And then my dad, he also didn't think I would ever become a recombine. It was like a childhood, you know, and everybody has these childhood fantasies

and we know that 80% of people that go in special operations don't make it. So, you know, it's a, so, you know, they just didn't believe I could. And I was like, you know, can either tell me I can't, I'm gonna, it makes me wanna do it more. And then, but then there was something like that, that was so satisfying about achieving that,

that you want that feeling, and then it's fleeting. It goes away. And so it's like, I have to get the next thing. And you see there's so much of systemic and special operations. Like this next school, what's the next certification. You start chasing certifications and you start chasing units like,

and being a recon Marine wasn't good enough. Now I wanna be a force recon Marine. Why? Cause I didn't even know what really the difference with at the time was. Now I really understand what the difference was. But at the time I just, it was the word. I went with the word force on the front

cause I knew that was the top 25% of the guys. I wanna be a force recon Marine. And now, you know, I heard that recon Marines had opportunities to go to JSOC and serve with, you know, at either Task Force Orange or Delta Force or our dev group. They had slots there, like I wanna do that. Like that's, I went as far as I go in the Marine Corps.

Like I wanna do that. And so's, I went as far as I go into Marine Corps. Like I want to do that. And so I was always like chasing the next thing. And, and it just was never fulfilling and never good enough. And people tell you all the time, I don't know you hear like, thank you for your service. Like, man, a lot of my service, I'm a patriot. I love people.

I love serving, service, serving. I know now that I'm a servant more than anything else, but a lot of that's, a lot of that was selfish. It wasn't about our country, it wasn't about people, it was about me filling the hole inside of me that I couldn't put my finger on something was missing. Those jobs are great by the way, but the problem when you do that is your identity becomes tied to that. When your identity is tied to something, when it gets taken away from you, and it will at some point,

either you retire, you can get hurt or something's gonna happen, you're not gonna do that anymore. It will it will destroy you. And my identity was so tied in that those accolades and those titles and those positions, that when I lost it, it almost cost me everything. So looking back now, it's good to do those things. Those jobs are noble, and it's important. And we need people that have the courage and capability and the mindset to go do those jobs.

But our identity should never be in that. And for me, it was. But as you're trying to build your identity around those things, it's always fleeting. And it's never enough. I mean, I don't have to know any of the guys. You name a guy in special operations that's been to those units, and it's always fleeting and it's never enough. I mean, you'd name, I don't have to know any of the guys, you'd name a guy in special operations that's been to those units and it's the same trajectory.

They're just chasing, they're chasing something. They don't even know what they're chasing. It's just that fulfillment. They're trying to build that identity and it's just, it's never enough. Climb the ladder. But, you know, looking back, after you just said that, would you have changed anything?

No, I wouldn't have. You know, I don't wish the things I've been through in my life on anything for anyone, but I think if you took one of those things out, including a childhood trauma, I would not be who I am today. And I love who I am today. And this is, and a childhood trauma, I would not be who I am today. And I love who I am today. And this is, by the way, like I wouldn't have said that

probably even 10 years ago at Sorry Mighty Oaks. I was ashamed of myself. I felt like a fraud. I always felt like a fraud. No matter where I was at, what unit I was at, where I was at, I felt like I didn't deserve to be there. When you don't feel like you deserve to be there, you feel like a fraud.

I think it's always got to places early. I was always the young guy. I was always the guy that, I was never the fast, I was never the best shooter. I was never the fastest. I was never the strongest. I was never the smartest. I was always just the hardest working.

And so that got me to places that I probably wasn't ready to be at yet, but I earned my way there. And so in my subconscious and my, we're all self-conscious. And so I think underneath that you hide it, but I just never felt like I quite deserved to be everywhere I was. And so just like this kind of like under the radar, like to myself, like I just felt like I had something to prove always.

And I didn't feel like I deserved to be there. Interesting. Well, Chad, let's take a quick break and then we'll get into your entire military career. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. All right. How many of you have logged into your Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, whatever your streaming platform is,

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All right, Chad, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to dive into your military career. So I know you went in as infantry reconnaissance, force reconnaissance, and it just kept going up from there. So let's talk about, you know, what year did you join? 1993. 93, what was going on in the world? It was peacetime.

You know, we just, I came out of the Gulf War, Somalia, and so that, you know, not only was it peace time, but you know, the first, last major war, and not in disrespect to the Gulf War veterans, but last major war had been Vietnam, or sustained war had been Vietnam. And so, you know, the military was a lot different during the 90s when you're going in a peace time military.

And I remember, but I remember going to military is a lot different there in the 90s when you go into the peacetime military. But I remember going to Twin Amp Homes, California, which is where I asked to go because I had somehow, I'd never been to Twin Amp Homes, I'd never seen Twin Amp Homes, but I had just had this image in my mind that the toughest Marines came from Twin Amp Homes because it gets 130 degrees in the summer, it gets down freezing temperatures in the wintertime, like there's tons of field ops going on. So like I'd always heard the toughest Marines come out of Twin Anpoms, California. So I'm like, that's where I want to go.

And then I get there and I'm like, holy crap, where'd I go? But they had all these guys that just got back from Somalia. So they were war veterans, which again, no disrespect to that because Somalia was crazy. Yeah. And which again, no disrespect to that. That was a crazy, Somalia was crazy. But I remember going to barracks and I was like, holy crap, like this was like checking into prison. Like they're cat calling you from the barracks, from the top of the barracks.

They're like, you're gonna get raped. Like, oh my gosh, like what is going on? Like checking into Marine Corps infantry unit at, you know, I turned 18 in boot camp checking in the Marine Corps infantry unit at, you know, I turned 18 in boot camp, checking in the Marine Corps infantry unit is a pretty crazy thing, especially back in the 90s. Bunch of guys that just came back from Somalia, like, you know, getting some fresh, some fresh new meat.

Yeah, yeah, all that. So I, my first unit I checked into, which was, I was kind of, I remember kind of being disappointed at first because in Twain and Poems you have what's called the line battalions, which is the line companies and the major infantry battalions,

one, seven, two, seven, three, seven, like first battalion, seventh Marine, second battalion, seventh Marine, third battalion, seventh Marine, seventh Marine regiment is there. That's where you assume you're going. But there's a few infantry guys that go over to first tank battalion And they have these like cat petoons which are like mech mechanized infantry units one is like a weapons

mechanized weapons unit another one is a Scout platoon toes and toes and scouts like toe Anti-tank missile so that's where I went because I was a tow gunner That's my MOS was and so I remember being disappointed because I'm like I want to go to one the line companies a weapons company ended up going to a first tank battalion and but actually ended up being a pretty cool place to be and And I was there for a short period of time. I tried out I tried out for recon in infantry school Past the recon in dock. I don't know why they gave it to us because they didn't accept anyone that wasn't an NCO, which would have been everyone at infantry school that went through it. And so even though I passed it, it didn't get accepted.

And so when I got 20 poems, I tried out for a state platoon, which if people don't know what state platoon is, it's target acquisition platoon. And that's the snipers. Okay. And so you have it at the battalion level. In the weapons company, it was a state platoon in there. And then also at the regimental level, it was a regimental state platoon. Tried out for state platoon, got in with the state school, which is a five week school. It's like state school and then there's a division level sniper school where you get

the MOS. And so I was there for about six months in Twentieth Poems when I tried out again for recon and then went over. I tried out at First Recon Battalion, went through what's called... The program's a lot different now, but back then you went through what's called... You did indoctrination, get in, get accepted, and then you go to Recon Indoctrination Patoon RIP. Back then, it was all like E4s that were gatekeepers and they didn't want you in their community. It wasn't

really archa-nice training. It was just total hazing and a gut check. Then you make it through that and then you go to basic reconnaissance course. Nowadays, they have a year-long pipeline. You sign up, you go to BRPC, or now they have it, it's called RTAP, a Recon Training Assessment Program. You do four weeks in front of your school, you do RTAP, then you can be there for up to a year, just in RTAP, but you can also be there for three months.

And then you go to basic constants course, which is three and a half months. Then you go to Preschool, Combat Dive, Jump School, Freefall School, Sierra School, and then you go to Unit. So when you go to Unit, you're schooled out. Back then when I went through, after you go to Recon School and get to Recon MOS, then you go into Pertune and eventually you're going to go to Dive School and Jump School and later on you go to Freefall. Interesting you're gonna go to dive school and jump school and later on you go to free fall.

So it's a lot different now. It's the same, you know, in Bud's now you have SQT and they're doing, you know, they're showing up at the unit with free fall. We're back in, you know, I'm sure even your day. No, you didn't show up with free fall. Yeah, now they show up with everything. So what did you find the most challenging

getting into recon? I showed up in really good shape. I mean, I was running like 16 minute, three miles, doing like 40 dead end pull-ups. I was in really good shape. I was super small. But my body wasn't as tough as I thought it was. I was in shape, but I wasn't tough.

And so the school broke me. like my IT bands were shot I went from running starting the school running 60 minute three miles to graduating run 21 minute three miles much different nowadays nowadays they build guys up it just broke me I was I left that school like broken and and I went to a winter class in Coronado and it And it's so cold. I'm small, skinny. And so the cold was just really hard mentally. How long is recon training?

Well, now it's a year-long pipeline. But BRC itself, the Basal Recon Course, is three and a half months. And that's not the dive package. So typically, you have RTAP, which will be there a half months. Okay. And that's outside, that's not the dive package. So typically you have R-Tap, which they'll be in there about three months and then three and a half months for BRC, two weeks for Prescuba, the dive phase is nine weeks.

And then the jump and free fall, and Sierra, that's all after it. But yeah, so that core training, you're probably looking at with R-Tap and basically Constance course, take out the dive portion, you're probably looking at with RTAP and basic reconnaissance course, take out the dive portion. You're talking about eight months. Add the dive portion, you're getting close to a year.

So you get through recon school, you show up to the unit. Where'd you go? First recon battalion at first, they disbanded the battalion at that time in 94, put a platoon in every regiment. I went back to Twentieth and Palms, to Seventh Marines, to the platoon attached to Seventh Marines regiment. At the time, the commander of Seventh Marine regiment was Mad Dog Mattis, he was Colonel Mattis and we were a platoon commander reported directly to him.

So we worked directly under Colonel Mattis, which was pretty awesome. Yeah. I mean, and so I didn't realize at time how blessed we were because he assigned a guy, a gunner and Marine Corps has this rank called gunner. I don't know if you've heard this. Have you heard of gunners? Not gunny gunners. And it's combat advisor. So this guy's a Vietnam veteran recon Marine who adopted opportunity and mentored at our platoon. So we got tremendous amount of training, being in Twenton Poems, field ops all the time. I really felt like I learned how to be a recon Marine there.

I became an excellent navigator and we went through all kinds of foreign weapons training and it was just really a good time. In fact, everybody that came out of the platoon, like a lot of guys came out of the platoon. One guy switched over to Navy and went to Dev Group. A couple of guys, a bunch of guys went to force, bunch of guys went to Marsok. One of the guys is still in at 30, I think he's 34 years in now. He's a gunner himself. And so like just we had really had some guys had

some amazing careers coming out of that platoon. It was 24 of us that went to that platoon. And I was only, when I went there, I was only 18 years old. I had no idea how privileged I was to be there and learn work directly under, I had my platoon commander, this gunner, and then Colonel Mattis working. We were like, he had us reading books and reading Bravo 2.0 and doing case studies on Bravo 2.0.

And I'm 18 years old, I don't really know how much I'm getting pumped into me. Damn, what was it like working under Mattis? I'm in case studies, I'm rival to zero, and I'm 18 years old, I don't really know how much I'm getting pumped into me. Damn. What was it like working under Mattis? I tell you, there's a lot of great things, because he took a lot of personal pride in that platoon, because it was a new thing, he took a lot of personal pride in it.

So we got to interact with him a lot. There was a lot of great things, but I watched him give off sours to two of our team leaders. And I was like, holy cow, like I never went to get in trouble in the Marine Corps after seeing that. I was one of the other team leaders,

there's four team leaders, and the two we had to go in there and watch, he made us go in there and watch. And guys get demoted, restricted, loss of pay. I was like, oh my gosh, like, we had did that gunner that, that gunner, the Vietnam gunner had taught us how to do some snatch missions, like snack, snack and bag missions. And you know, we had like recon teams are six man teams.

So you had like two guys on one side of the road and four guys on the other. And like flash the flashlight and get somebody to look and then you grab them and drag them off. Well, right behind the, we had a right behind the Twentieth Poems is a communication school. And so being young special operations guys, bullies, we were at, we're gonna do it, we're gonna practice and then do it to one of these communication kids. We ended up being one of the instructors.

We, they grabbed him and zip tied him, put duct tape over his mouth and he pissed on himself and was like crying. So they cut him loose and let him go. He went straight to a phone and dial 911 and gave a description. Well, back then the only people with short rifles, we were the only ones with shorter rifles.

And so they, the MPs are smart. They went to the armory. There's only 24 guys on that whole base of, you know, 30,000 people that had short rifles and they were checked out of the armory. And so we got back to the barracks, they were waiting for us and we had a standoff with the MPs and a platoon commander had to come and we all,

I went into, all of us went locked up in the brig all night. You had a standoff with the military police. Yeah, I mean, it's a platoon of us, and there's like 10 MPs that's like, and we're like, we're not going, right? And they're wanting to talk. No one's gonna rat on each other. And so finally a platoon commander to come in,

all right guys, you have to tell them, this guy's pressing charges, you have to tell them who did it. And so none of them ratted out, but the two team leaders fessed up. They took responsibility and we call it Black Wednesday. Yeah.

It's a Black Wednesday. And so I had to go in there and watch Colonel Mattis give the, basically he was like, you guys are bullies and I'm not gonna allow it. And yeah. Yeah, something tells me Matt has had a very small tolerance for bullshit. Yeah.

But I've never had the opportunity to meet him. But what's the attrition rate like for reconnaissance? It's become like a kind of like Buds where it's a wide front gate. It used to have a pretty narrow way to get in a selection process. Now recruiter could sign someone up for recon contract. It's pretty easy to get there from the fleet Marine Corps.

You could put in for a lap move to recon. And so they get a lot of people that show up there. And so about 80% attrition rate is what they're running. Wow. Yeah, so they, you know, I tell you one thing that I'm super proud of in my community. I've been the guest speaker at four now, four graduations. I just learned that I'm the only one

that was ever invited back and I got to do it four times. So it's like super honored to do that. And I just spoke at the last graduating class. And as a recombinant, I'm super proud that all this political pressure, they never have lowered the standard. In fact, a lot of guys from my generation would be like, they didn't have it like we have it,

like we had it harder and stuff like that. We had it different, but it's way more professional now, it's better and it truly produces a better product. It produces a better reconnaissance operator, in my opinion, the program is very professionalized, but I don't think in that professionalization, they've compromised the standard. That's good to hear. In fact, I would even say it's higher.

These kids, like I said, when I graduated, I was like a Holocaust victim. Now as graduating, you hand the certificate and every one of those guys' hands feels like a professional athlete when you shake their hands. They're, you know, rugged from the salt and sand, but they're strong. I'm like, these guys are studs. They're like, you know, they're like professional athletes when they graduate now.

And I see the same thing at SQT. And Buds. Yeah, the guys, they're producing some solid guys. That's good to hear. Yeah. That's good to hear. Because, you know, you always, you don't want to see it. I mean, the military itself has been softening

and weakening. I know, man. I try not to look. I talk to guys that are active still. I don't really want to get into it, but I mean, you hear about the gender stuff coming in and just... you hear about the gender stuff coming in and, and it's just. Well, every one of us,

every one of them are trying to push through a female, right, through every one of these schools. And they tried plenty of times at Recon and they wasn't doing it and they got a female through. And I was like, my first response was, there's no way, absolutely impossible that a female could graduate BRC. That was my, and then,

and so I called some buddies or instructor there and they're like, she did, bro. And, but, but, but she's like a CrossFit professional, like the Fish and One Water Polo. Like, I don't know all the specs, but she was like legitimately like a mutant. Yeah. You know, I wasn't know all the specs, but she was like legitimately like a mutant. Yeah. You know, I wasn't even talking about that.

I was talking about the new age gender talk. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? Like it seems like the woke agenda is just infiltrated everywhere. But it takes the focus off what's important. It's a great, you know, yeah, it's weird. I feel like three years ago,

we were debating if women should be in special ops. Now it's, now we're way beyond that. But what is, I'm just, what is your take on women in special operations? Well, like in a six man recon team, I just don't think, even, you know, not to disrespect this girl that made it through BRC, but, and, you know, the other ones that made it through Q course and, and, uh, I heard a Ranger bat, they lowered the standards vet there.

That's what I heard. I don't know, but not taking anything away from any of them, but it just complicates things way too much. I mean, I mean, if I'm sitting in a hide, shitting in a plastic bag, like, I don't want to do that with her there. I don't want to, I'm sure she doesn't want to do that in a plastic bag. Like, I don't want to do that with her there. I'm sure she doesn't want to do that in front of us. And there's the emotional thing, like men are protectors, especially the men in those communities.

Like now, if we're going through a door and going in a room to kill people, now my focus is on protecting her because you're gonna just men are gonna develop like a little sister personality towards her. I mean, the people that are making these decisions never lived on a ship. They never sat in a hide for six days

and shit in a plastic bag. And they're making these decisions not looking at all the different factors. This is a starship trooper, right? Yeah, I think it's, I'm not saying they don't have a place at all. No. You know, when you break up a team dynamic, the other thing that people don't have exposure to is the,

is the, the camaraderie that happens within the team that builds that team cohesion, you know, and the minute a, another sex is injected into that team, it changes the entire dynamic. It inserts drama, it inserts jealousy, there's sexual relations, there's all the stuff you're talking about, and it just, it breaks up the team dynamic. And, you know, the argument is,

well, the guy should be more professional. Fuck you. The president of the United States several times has had affairs Senators have affairs CEOs have affairs this shit goes on in every every company Every aspect of government all the way up to the highest level So if you don't hold your own fucking president accountable for that shit, don't hold an operator, right? You know what? I mean? Fuck you It gets down to the fundamental level of why the military exists and people just overlook that for all these stuff

The military exists to in wars period. It's not it's not a social experiment. It gets down to the fundamental level of why the military exists and people will just overlook that for all these times. The military exists to win wars, period. It's not a social experiment. It's not a boys club. It's not supposed to be fair. The best person for the job, the best dynamics for the team to have mission accomplishment, the military is for our national defense and protect people around the world. It can't protect themselves to win wars.

And that should always be the first question. Is this better to win wars? This is better. If the answer is no, then what are we doing? No, yeah, exactly. It's, you know, it does, it does have a very high potential to break up team dynamic and that is a horrible thing in a small unit like that. Like you're talking about 24 people, you know, and but anyways, you know,

so when you graduated BRC, became a recon Marine, we talked about making your dad proud. You've carried that with you. It sounds like your whole life. Yeah. How'd that feel? It felt like a aha, like more than a, I wanted to be proud of me,

like I proved that I could do it, right? Who was your first call? I don't think I called anybody in my family. No kidding. Yeah, I don't think, I didn't call anybody in my family. It would have been, I was very, all my adult life until probably about four years into Mighty Oaks,

I was very quiet, very private. The fact that I'm public speaking right now or even on a show is like, I would have thought no way in a billion years I'm even telling anybody I'm in the military. I was just very quiet. I didn't write back to my family. I didn't call my family, tell them about military. I was like, even my wife, Cathy, like, I think one of the things that probably was attractive to me about her is that she never even, and it's not now because it kind of backfired, it became bitter towards her, but that she never even cared about what I did.

Like I could have been a cook in the Air Force and she was like totally oblivious to, she's like, oh, like, you know, she'd, you know, even like while we're, she's around the, you know, platoon, recon, she just didn't, not that she didn know, even like while we're, she's around the, you know, platoon, the recon guys, you just didn't, not that she didn't, she just didn't care. It's just not important to her. And at first I was like, okay, I like that. And then later on I got bitter towards it because I felt like disrespected and unappreciated by her.

But, but yeah, so I never really, I just stayed close to the guys I worked with. And that was enough. Yeah. Interesting. That was always, yeah, I didn't I didn't What time frame is this? 94 is when I became a recon Marine so 94 I know you went and did some stuff down at the border I don't know what came first. Did you become did you go force and then go to the border? No the border borders as as a recon amphib recon Marine

They had what's called JTF six joint terrorism task force or terrorism for terrorism task force six and in those basically the US military working with federal agencies for counter narcotics and the seals back then the seals were doing a lot, you know, out of wartime and recon was doing it quite a bit and we even go cross border, do cross border operations. This is real world, like live ammo, everything back in it. And it's funny because President Clinton was president at that time. And people, I remember people like getting on President Trump for sending troops to the

border. We did. And I'm like, I was doing that under President Clinton in the 90s. And we were catching cartel guys bringing drugs across the border. And then you have to work around, the reason you have to work with the federal law enforcement is these laws called Posse Comitalis laws, which is where US military cannot collect on civilians or be used against civilians. Really?

Yeah. They used to exist? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think they still do exist. They just don't... Oh yeah, they just don't follow the rules. ...laws don't matter anymore. They don't follow the rules anymore. I mean, we actually have border immigration laws too, if you...

We do? If you look it up, yeah. Shit, I had no idea. It's immigration laws. It's all kind of laws that we do. Yeah. Well, let's get out of the legal stuff. What were you guys doing down there? Yeah, cartels bringing drugs into America. So we were working a lot with the DEA and then DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency,

and the Border Patrol. We work with the Border Patrol directly as an asset. So they employ us and primarily primarily six man observation teams. And we'd set up with some of our equipment, some of our observation equipment and catch people like tracking, set observation points, track people come across the border in places that they knew they were coming across

and then walk the border patrol or DEA onto them. And then we also were in the, I think it was called San Clemente National Forest in Southern California, where they had these, they had these grows that were like, like these steel cables, aircraft cables between two valleys and built basically like a false floor of the earth over them and they had all these groves underneath.

And so we were tasked with basically patrolling and finding them. And we had a methodology of finding these groves that we would find. And those were always occupied. So now we're going and actually. So hold on, they would find valleys or gorges and put in a fake floor? Fake, fake, fake.

So you can't see it from aerial imagery. And underneath there are these grows, these greenhouses that they'd have inside there and they'd grow in like, they'd grow in tons of weed. And this is obviously in the 90eties when you couldn't do that. And harvesting them, they'd be totally occupied with, you know, illegal immigrants down there. What was the floor made out of? There'd be like, see, aircraft cable.

So I remember being these steel cables made like a grid, and they'd be like a canvas on top of it, and then dirt and vegetation grown on top of it. So it was like a complete like false floor and it'd be a whole like underground grow underneath these. And so obviously you need irrigation to it. So one of the things we do is move perpendicular to the flow of water and look for these black tubing lines and then follow those into the grove. That's how we were finding them. And then these things would be booby trap.

I remember stepping and there was a rat trap with a 12 gauge shotgun, like show. And then they have like a fishing wire with hooks hanging in it and stuff like that. Damn. Yeah, I was like, yeah. I had no idea that stuff was going on. I was like 19, 20 years old doing that. was like, yeah. I had no idea that stuff was going on. I was like, you know, 19, 20 years old doing that.

It was, yeah. It's peacetime military. You get to do, you know. Were you guys rolling guys up too? No, we were, we were, so we basically go in, we detain people. We had no arrest authority because of these laws, right? We detain people, hold them in the DEA or board patrol, depending on different operations.

That operation, we were doing the GROS, that was DEA. And so DEA would come in, detain them, harvest all the stuff, pose a big picture. We'd be behind the camera and they're all like, you know, holding bad guys, holding marijuana, taking a picture, the DEA just made this big bust. And I thought that was kind of cool actually. Like, you know, they're posing for the paper

and all that stuff and you know. And you guys did it? Nobody knows that we're out there doing it. Man, that's incredible. How long were you doing that for? I think I did like six or seven of those back during my time on active duty. Cause we never deployed, right?

There was no deployments. Yeah. So that's like six or seven of those. And they were like 30 days at a time. So we'd go down, actually we'd stay in Coronado at the barracks in Coronado. And we'd leave right off, we'd fly right off from the airfield,

the helicopter would pick us up there, take us down to the border. And so we'd go, it was super cool for like real world training too. Like you're actually inserting, you're doing insertions and live amp, like, you know, so it's, you know, when you're not getting to operate in combat,

really great experience. Damn. Yeah. Yeah. You got an award down there. I got a, we got several like accommodations for like stiffness accommodation from Colonel Mattis. So for the operations we did down there. Very cool.

Yeah. Very cool. Where did you go from there? I went to Third Force Recon Company on their I&I staff. That's a reserve unit, but they have active duty component. And so I went there and then I decided to switch to the reserves because I wanted to go to college and come back in as an officer.

That was kind of my plan. And so I went to work as a police officer in New Orleans during that time. Went to college, I was doing about 10 days a month at the reserve unit. And then- Let's rewind real quick. Why did you go, why did you leave?

I wanted to be an officer. I thought, hey, I'm gonna make this a career and best way for my family. I just got married. I had my, Hunter was my first son. He was born in Twenton Palms, California. And I'm like, this is probably a good career. I love my job.

I love what I'm doing. This is everything I wanted. And so I wanna be an officer, so I had applied for the MESEP program, but it was, while I was waiting, I just decided, hey, I'm just gonna go into reserves, and I'm gonna go to college. And because I wasn't in the MESEP program yet,

I decided just to get a job. So I got a job as a police officer, ended up thinking that was a better way to do it. And then when I get my degree, I'll get commissioned and I'll go back in as an officer. That was my plan. Interesting. When did you meet your wife?

I met her in 1994. We got married in 95 a year later. And so we were dating when I went through BRC, through recon school, and we spent the weekend on Coronado Beach, because you don't get many days off. Yeah. Yeah, and- How'd you guys meet?

I had a friend that was in the barracks, and he grew up in the same town as her. She lived in Paris Valley, if you know where that's at. I don't. Rivers lived in Paris Valley, if you know where that's at. I don't. Riverside County, California, between San Diego and Twentynine Palms. Okay. It's kind of between there.

He grew up there and he was in the barracks and he'd have a car and I did. And he's like, hey, will you drive me home for the weekend? I'm gonna go, wanna go visit my girlfriend. And so I wasn't doing anything, so I drove him home. And then I met, while he was at his girlfriend's house, my wife was friends with her parents. And so she came over there and Kathy came over

and I met her, right away I was like, you know, California girl, blonde hair, blue eyes. I'm like super interested in her. And so I talked to her that night and then I told my friends like, hey, I wanna meet this girl again. I wanna really get to know this girl. And they told her and she's like, I'm not interested, he's too short.

So she wasn't interested. And so my friends felt bad for me. Said like, hey, in like two weeks come back and we'll set you up on a blind date. So that was what happened. And so they set me up on this blind date with this girl and this girl and this girl was supposed to be like, pretty like wild.

So they were like, you're gonna get lucky tonight. And I remember them saying that. And anyways, I go there and the girl and my friend's girlfriend in the back getting ready. I hadn't seen her yet. They're in the back getting their hair done and makeup and I'm sitting there and my wife pulls up. She sees my truck and realizes I'm there

and she comes in and she says, hi, she was talking to me. And then she realizes like, I'm about to go to blind date with this girl. And when she realizes that, I think the competitiveness came out. She's like, I thought you were interested in me. She didn't say that, but that's what she was thinking. And so me being, you know, a young Marine,

I'm like, I invite her on my, on my blind date with us. I'm like, what are you doing tonight? So this girl's in the back, getting all pretty, and she shows up in sweats, her hair's in a bun. You know, she's not, and I'm like, invite her on this date with us. And so she comes as the, and the other girl, the other girl's a fifth wheel.

And we're all these young people out that night. How does this go? How does this conversation go? I invited her and she said, yeah, I'll come. And then the girl comes out and realizes now there's another girl coming on this blind date. And, you know, and they had one girl that's probably willing to do whatever I want. And the other girl, Kathy's like super conservative. Not willing to do whatever you want. Yeah, she's super conservative. She's like very like, and not that way at all. And that's what I chose at night. And so I ended up kind of ignoring this girl the whole night and spending attention to

Kathy. And we probably spent every moment that I wasn't training or doing something for the next year together. And then a year later we got married. So, yeah, awesome. Not every, not every meeting story is a romantic way. It's a, you want to come on this blind day with us? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's got a, it's got a typical young Marine, like shenanigans.

Right. Right. I'm like, I've never seen what's behind door number two. Yeah. It's kind of you typical young Marine like shenanigans. I'm like, I've never seen what's behind door number two. But I know what's behind door number one. So I'd rather take you. Now if she would have said no, then you know. So you went to force. Did you have to do any training to get in there? No, you don't do any extra training to go to force.

Usually it's based on experience. You know, the guys that have like been, did a whole stint in a recon platoon, kind of a standout. Okay. And in a way, for people to wondering like, recon, force, recon, in a recon battalion, you have Alpha Company, Bravo Company, Charlie Company.

So you have three companies. The fourth company is force. So that's 25% of the recon battalion will be Force. And so it's usually the guys that kind of stand out. It's been around a little longer, a little more experienced, a little older. Maybe nowadays there's probably a couple of diplomats under their belt.

Back then it was just, it wasn't a diplomat's every new belt. So it's just the kind of standouts. How long were you at Force? It wasn't a diploma, it's every new belt. So it's just the kind of standouts. How long were you out for? 1997 as a reservist and active duty in that same unit till 2003 when I went to JSOC.

Okay, so you were, okay, so you were a reservist. Yeah. You're a reservist. Yeah. So you leave, you didn't want to become, you weren't going to become an officer. Yeah, that decision came on 9-11. God, but then it wasn't going to be. That it wasn't going to become an officer.

You went into the PD. Yep. Correct. All right, let's talk about that. Okay. Let's talk about leaving force and focusing more on police work. Yeah. Well, yeah, at that time, the reason I was at the police,

because I was in the reserves, going to go to college, when eventually I'm going to lead the police department to go, or sheriff's department to go back into Marine Corps as an officer. But I graduated police academy, go work undercover in narcotics because I come from the military, special operations background. I looked super young. I go work

in narcotics for a year, move over to patrol. And then about two months out of FTO, I get in a pretty serious shooting incident where I shot and killed someone on duty. It was a pretty significant part of my life, to be honest with you. It's probably one of the more milestone, traumatic things that I've been through in my life, even outside of combat, because things like that aren't supposed to happen. Let's dig in. Why was it so significant? I'll tell you how it happened.

So I'm at a, by the way, where this happened, to give you some geographical context, if you fly into New Orleans airport, you actually don't land in New Orleans, you land in a town called St. Rose. And so in St. Rose, that's where, right? I mean, probably like two miles from New Orleans airport this happened.

I heard a guy named Steve Cantelli get a call. He was working to beat over. We had beats. I was working beat 202. He was working beat 203. Beat 203 was gone. He had a gap. He was 204 actually. So there was a beat going between. When I heard Steve Cantelli get this call, it was a domestic violence call. Just you start paying attention, right? You just want to listen what's going on. And he's like, he was one of my field training officers,

Marine Corps, golf war veteran, like a kind of a bigger than life kind of guy. He's a SWAT team at Jefferson Parish guy. He had already been around a while. He was like, pretty solid guy. And so I'm listening to the radio and I hear his voice come over to radio, saying that someone had a gun

and then he was calling for backup. And when I heard his voice, I knew something was significantly wrong because he's like such a composed guy, like something went wrong. And then the radio system as as timing may have it, was brand new for our department and it went dead. Comps went down.

And so I kind of like had this eminence, like I have to get to him. So going down River Road across the Mississippi River. And as I'm going, got my lights on, got my sirens on, people were stopping in the road, right? They're not pulling over. I remember just being like panicked to get to him. When I pulled up, it was a modular home community. The houses were elevated and it was about 30 people outside of this house. I I could see that Steve's on the porch of this,

the elevated porch with this woman yelling, but he's looking inside. He's looking inside, he's yelling with this woman. So I could see he needed help. I make my way through the crowd and get there. And I knew exactly this house before. The guy had, we had been there before. The guy's name was Russell Stebbins.

Always domestic violence, always, you know, given the police a hard time. So it was a very familiar place. And Steve's like, get this lady out of here because the guy just barricaded himself in the back room with a gun. And so I start trying to talk to her. She's being argumentative.

I talked to some guys down, I'm like, hey, grab her. So I grabbed the lady by the back of her shirt and her pants and I pushed over the rail, like forced her over the rail and then some men grabbed her and pulled her over. And I remember like after she went over, she was like, we were never trying to pull her. And she like fell in this barbecue pit and fell over.

And then her kids were there. Her kids were like, you know, probably like five, six, seven years old, two kids right there. And they were scared and they grabbed the hold of her. And so when I seen that and those guys had her, I went back to the front door where Steve was and Steve went to the window of the room that the guy was in so he wouldn't shoot out the window.

And so he's watching the window. We're trying to get the radio working and I'm standing in there in the doorway. And as I'm standing in the doorway, I'm looking into a living room to my right is a kitchen table. And I remember seeing like food still, they were just having dinner.

Their plates are on a table, family pictures, toys on the floor. Like this is not like the environment. This is not Afghanistan, right? This is like, I lived a few miles away. Like, and when Russell came out of the hallway, he stopped right before the end of the hallway. It was catacorning to me, some in this door, living room,

catacorner is the hallway. I could see a mirror. And when he came to the edge of the hallway. It was catacorny to me, so I'm in this door, living room, catacorny, this is the hallway. I could see a mirror. And when he came to the edge of the, I could see him. He got in the, against, he's barricading himself on the wall and he had the rifle in front of him. And he reaches down and I could tell he presh-checked it. And I'm like, he's checking to see if he's,

he's got a round vent chamber, which, you know, to me is like pretty significant. He's thinking he's gonna get in a gun fight. So I was yelling at him like, hey, put down your gun. I'm talking to him like a policeman, put down your gun, come out, let's talk. He's like, you guys need to leave.

I wanna talk to my wife. That's not gonna happen. We're not leaving. You can talk to your wife, but you need to put down the gun. We'll facilitate that. Just put down your gun. Do not come out with that gun.

And if you'd asked me that day, like even a minute before that happened, if a guy pointed a gun at me, what would I do? I'm gonna smoke him, right? Let's kind of like, as gunfighters, let's what we think we do. But when he turned that corner and he came out, he had the gun over his shoulder.

He didn't have his shoulder, he had it over his shoulder. And his hand was holding the receiver and his finger was by the trigger well. He didn't have his shoulder. He had it over his shoulder and his hand was holding the receiver and his finger was by the trigger. Well, I remember seeing like his finger's not the trigger. It's by the trigger. Well, I don't know why he was holding it that way, but he's pointed it right at me. And based on lethal force,

like I could have killed him right there. But, and that's what I would have probably said if you'd asked me that question, like quiz me before. That's why I would have shot him. But like I said, looking in this guy's home, his kids right behind me, his wife's screaming behind me, there's still food on the table. I felt like I still had control of that situation.

And I felt like I didn't have to kill him in that moment. And I'm like, he had too much to drink, he's taunting us. By the way, Russell's sevens was six three, 263 pounds. I know exactly his height and weight. I was about 125 pounds. I was training a lot. I've been training my whole life in jiu-jitsu and MMA. And so even though he's bigger, I just felt like I still was in control.

And, but, but at that point I went from being a policeman to like just being two dudes. And I remember telling him like, I'm like, I'm going to fucking kill you. That's that's the words I used. And, you know, you know, he'll recourse to five. I won't curse much on the show. But but that's the words I said to him. I was I wanted to know serious. I'm going to fucking kill you.

Put down your gun. And he's like, you put down your gun. And I'm like, I'm gonna fucking kill you. Put down your gun. And he's like, you put down your gun. And I'm like, not gonna put down my gun. And so I moved towards him and I pulled my gun in, like my pistol in to retain my weapon. And I grabbed the barrel of his gun and pointed it away from me.

And when I did that, I kicked him in the nuts, like not like a football kick, but like a push kick to disarm him. And when I kicked and pulled, like nothing happened. He was like holding that thing so hard. And I did it a second time and my arm must have came away from my body and he grabbed my arm.

Now we're, now I've got this giant man who's mad and I'm like way smaller than him being overpowered and we're fighting over two guns. And in that moment, I remember realizing like, he's never gonna give up. Like this is, I have to kill him. And so I just rolled my wrist over to break his grip. And I came over and I fired one round,

boom, like right in the center of his chest. He stepped back and I pulled in and I fired five more, six shots, oh, you know, right in front of me. I remember watching the rounds go into him, like hit his body. And Steve, I didn't even know Steve came behind me, but Steve came, he was shooting right over my shoulder. He shot six times as well.

I could hear his gun. I could watch the casings come out of my Glock. I was watching the casings come out of the top, you know, Glock come out of the top. I was watching him like roll out. I could hear the mechanics of my gun. I could separately hear the mechanics of his gun functioning. I never heard a bang, I just heard like a, that pop.

And my ears never rang or anything. And so we hit him 11 out of 12 times. I didn't drop the round by the way, always that's an important point. And you know, he turned, he turned and he landed on his knees and he looked right back at me conversationally, like totally calm and he's like, you killed me. That's what he said. He's like, you killed me.

That's what he said. That's what he said. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't in pain. It was emotionless. Before he was mad, angry, riled up, it was just like total, total like composed. He just looked right at me and said, you killed me.

Like he knew, he knew he was gonna die. Like at that moment. And I pushed him down and when I pushed him down, he fell and I pulled the rifle out from under him. And I pulled his hands back to handcuff him. And I remember feeling like his, cause his other arm came up when I pulled his hands back to handcuff him. I remember feeling like his, cause his other arm came up when I broke his wrist, his other arm came up in front of him.

So one of those rounds went through his wrist. And so when I grabbed his wrist, it was like a noodle and it blew the bones out. And I had blood, like it was super slippery. I had blood like everywhere on me. And I handcuffed him. And while I was handcuffed him, I heard him like breathe out like his last breath and die.

And then me and Steve start clearing the house, making sure no one else was in the house. I think some guys from down there came up and blocked the doorway. But I remember looking back before we cleared the house, actually I remember looking back, for some reason my first thought was look back at the wife and I just seen her screaming. And I wanted to like, for some reason, my first thought was look back at the wife and I just seen her screaming.

And I wanted to like go out to her like, because we were there for her. But obviously she was probably hated us in that moment. The kids were just like in shock. It was perfect view. Everybody's seen everything. Damn. And cleared the house and then we were there. Every police seemed like at that time,

every police, her sirens, all the police came and separated Steve and I, took our guns away, went back to polygraphs and interviews. And then the next day the newspaper headline said, cold blooded murder. Sub headline say police say justified. Went in about a pretty long period of investigation and then I went before, because the DA didn't wanna

make a position on it, election year, I went before a grand jury for a second degree murder and was cleared and then after we were cleared, Ben, Steve and I got the medal of valor from the governor of Louisiana. Man. So, yeah. It was a, it was like,

well, the reason I say it's such a significant thing is because, you know, you just don't think things like that would happen. Yeah. I know they do every day. But for me, like, I was mad at him that he would, that he made me do that in front of his wife and kids. I was just so like pissed that he made me do that in front of his wife and kids. I was just so pissed that he made me do that in front of his wife and kids.

Is that the first life you've taken? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the most intimate. Yeah. How do you feel about that today? Oh, it's still to this day. Sometimes I like, like sometimes, sometimes I'd be thinking, like those moments are still, still in us, right? I think about that and I'm like, why they like, why did that guy do like, I think about his kids, like, I don't know, like how those

kids, where those kids end up. They saw that, you know, I don't, I don't know who those kids are, where they ended up, but they saw that. And like, why did he have to, why did he have, why couldn't he just put that gun down? Why did he have to do that? He knew he wasn't gonna get, he knew we weren't gonna leave. Like, you know. One of the things that came back in autopsy was that, that corroborated my statement of trying to disarm him and trying to save his life was that his testicles was like

the size of a bowling ball. I'm kicking him. And that's like what, I don't say that to say, I kick hard, but I say that to say like, that's how determined he was not to give up that gun. I kicked him twice, like blasted him. And I was training Muay Thai at the time. He felt it. But he was determined not to give up. Damn, Jed. What, I mean, had he had a history of this stuff? He had a history of being belligerent to the police, but never anything like that.

Too much to drink. Too much to drink. Do you feel like maybe there's a possibility that you saved those kids? I think so. I think he would have got past me. That weapon was loaded. It was off safe. It was chambered. I think he wanted to shoot his wife. and she was in a crowd with the kids and

there was about 30 people in that crowd. And so obviously that's why I wasn't gonna get out of the doorway. He wasn't gonna get past the doorway. And so I think if Steve or I would have let him come out of the house and have access to those people people he would have fired a rifle at his wife or in that crowd of people. How long did the investigations go on? About four months or so. So about four months and I was on administrative, like working at the Detective Bureau doing

administrative work. That's how I ended up in the detective bureau because after we got that award, the medal of valor, I had already built a reputation. People like me in the detective bureau doing administrative work. And then the chief was like, they never promoted anybody to detective

that young, I was only 23 years old. And they promoted me to detective. Did you feel like he deserved it? No. Why? I felt like I got it because I got an award. But then I went in there and crushed it. I mean, you got people that have been in the department like 20, 25 years putting in a

detective and those two slots open and we get, me and Steve, the two guys get the award, get it right that's uh and so people were obviously not happy better and you know gonna run their mouth about it and so that made me realize okay I gotta go out and earn this and prove it so I worked really hard did a great job and they're getting going from general investigations to violent crimes task force investigating homicides. So hold on. You kill a guy who's determined, potentially determined to kill his wife, possibly his kids, maybe more. Mm-hmm.

They put you under a four-month investigation on it, try to burn your ass, wind up giving you a medal, put you in this new unit, and you don't feel like you deserve it? Well, you know, doing something like that doesn't make you a good detective. What does? Good investigative work, intelligence, smart, experience, a lot more experience that I had. But at the same time, like I said, I had the opportunity to do that and I'm going to embrace

it and I ended up out working. I worked there by there. In my time there, in that year there, I worked, I think I worked close to 30 violent crimes, either murders, attempted murders, shootings, and had the highest conviction rate of any detective on those types of cases. And so my last year there, right before 9-11,

I ended up moving over to back to special investigations and became the senior detective at special operations in special investigations, which is like narcotics vice, stuff like that and so yeah, man. Yeah, you rise to the top everywhere you go I just like I said work hard man. Yeah Lots of people work hard yeah, but So 9-eleven happens. Yeah. Yep changed everything for you. Yeah, yeah. Changed everything for you. Yeah, man, I was still in the reserves.

I was the military free fall team leader at third force, the sergeant. And so I remember watching those planes fly into our world traits in our buildings. And I'm like, dude, my life just changed. Like one, I want to participate. Two, I don't wanna go back in as an officer. That was my goal and that immediately changed my goal

because I know, and obviously I'm very thankful and respectful to all the military officers, but in the recon community, if you're a reconnaissance officer, you're an administrator and a planner. You're not an operator. Those who need it, but that's not what I wanted to do. And so despite having the ability to get commissioned at the time, I decided to go out within a week of 9-11.

I resigned from the sheriff's office and was at, I went to third force recon on the active reserve contract Because it was the best way to get back on active duty and And that thought we're gonna deploy right? I everybody that was in reserves everybody thought everyone's going right and and then the attitude of the military at the time was Not like oh my gosh, we're going to war. It was like hey, what's up, sir? Like let's go do this. The military was like super motivated. The country was patriotic and charged up

to do the right thing and retaliate for what happened in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. And so I thought we were gonna deploy right away and we didn't. And so the air marshals came very smart. I had a friend, Danny O'Toole, who was former dev group guy, retired a dev group. And he was one of the original 45 air marshals at the time.

There was about 45 air marshals before 9-11. And so what they did, and it was really smart how they did it, they tasked those 45 guys to build a force up of I won't say the number, a pretty significant force of air marshals. How do you do that, right? It takes like about a year and a half

to get someone through a federal hiring process through OPM, they get somebody a top secret clearance, and then go through FLETC to get trained. So that's the best way to do that. Target the reserve units for guys that already have TS clearances, but aren't military, contraction, navigate to the military.

And so that's where they focus their recruiting efforts. It was pretty smart. And so they came to third force as well as, so that's why the first wave of air marshals were all guys reserve, a lot of team guys, and a lot of SF guys, and then a lot of recon guys. That was the first wave of air marshals were all those type of guys.

They got to be able to pass the shooting standards because at that time the air marshals had what's called, they changed it after about two years, but it's called the TPC, Tactical Pistol Course. I've heard that is- It was brutal. It was crazy. It was the hardest pistol course I've ever shot.

Can you talk about it a little bit? Yeah. I'm super interested in it. I think 30 rounds in less than 30 seconds and and you can only you can you can drop you can only drop three rounds you can't drop them off the paper you can drop three rounds out of the out of the center a what do you call the a thing a box a box yeah 30 rounds 30 and less than 30 seconds yep at, at seven yards. And so the drills are different drills from concealed holster 1.65,

six shot rhythm drill under three seconds. Oh, so it's not 30 all combined. No, no, it's every drill. Back turn, three targets. I think they back turn three targets in 1.8 seconds. So pivot drill, boom, boom, boom. This sounds very familiar to my qualification to get into the agency.

Yeah, it was good, man. I wonder if that's where it came. I'll bet that's where it came from. There's a lot of pressure. Now, after about two years, they got rid of, they dropped it to the ATPC. Why? Why, because the Secret Service took over the leadership.

And so, of their marshals, and anytime the government gets a control of something, they ruin it, and so basically they said, instead of, they said, hey, this is too much. So instead of bringing the shooters up to the standard, they bring the standard down to the shooters, and they want to bring other federal agents in, and that opened the door for people

from all of the federal agencies to lateral and have a better paying job, something a little more sexy. So then you got a ton of guys from like the Bureau of prisons, board patrol, and it wasn't the best of them. So deteriorated pretty quick after that. Damn. Yeah, so it was a good thing at first. And so I went through the second class of that,

a couple of guys from my unit. And then I got to the second class of that, a couple of guys from my unit. And then I got to the Denver field office, myself and Dave Lamone, who's a Navy SEAL. We became the head training officers. I built the combatives program that they started using in the beginning for the air marshals wide. And then Dave was primarily handling the firearms training. And although we worked together, do both. And then Dave was primarily handling the firearms training.

And although we worked together, do both. And then, but I still wanted to deploy. Yeah. And I just, I wanted to go. And then some of my buddies went and a deployment came up for Iraq, early deployment, like pre-invasion deployment. Nice. And so I had the opportunity to do that.

And so that's where I was going. But then while I was preparing for that, then I had some friends from the unit from Delta Force. I don't know if you know the guys from Somalia, Rich Cachoccio, Norm Hooten, Brian Morgan, all those guys from the original. I was friends with a lot of those guys. And, and- Tom Satterly?

I don't know him. Okay. Pat Savage. Mainly Rich Cachoccio was the Q, if you watched the movie Black Hawk Down, the AFO on a bicycle pretending to be a journalist. That's Rich Cachoccio Q. And, and he was a really good friend of mine. And he's like, hey, this is the selection going.

They're looking for some certain qualifications for some guys at JSOC. and he was a really good friend of mine. And he's like, hey, that's the selection going. They're looking for some certain qualifications for some guys at JSOC. I think this would be a really good fit for you. I know what you really wanna do. He's like, I don't think you should do it because I think you should, Air Marshals is a good gig. I think you should, you got three kids at home,

but I know it's what you wanna do. And so if you wanna do it, it's probably the perfect fit for you. You got a degree, you have worked undercover like and as a civilian and And you know you have all this other training like I think you'd be a really good fit for it so I trained up for it and I went to this selection and in got selected so you went to You basically you're probably not gonna say this, but I will.

So you got recruited specifically to go to Delta Selection, made it through Delta Selection, and got to, did you go to OTC? No, so I thought, honestly- For those who don't know Delta, the Delta Training Pipeline is called OTC. No, I thought I was going Delta Selection because the Delta guys recruited me.

So that's where I thought I was going to. And it ended up being a selection specifically for this program. And I didn't even know what the program was until after I got selected to get right into it. So I thought we're doing Delta Selection. We did not do Delta selection. So I did not actually do a Delta selection.

It was a JSOC task force. And then ended up being at the other unit. That's where it went. The reason I don't- Why not be in a dev group? Be in a dev group, yeah. The reason why the Delta guys did it is because they had the experience in an AFO program

and they were also, they weren't the only task group recruiting for it, they were tasked with running some of the training for it. And so that's how I got, and luckily, I say luckily, because had I not run Rich Cachoccio, there was no way I would have got the opportunity to try out for that. So.

What was selection like? Basic skills of being able to do all your fundamental navigation skills and stuff like that. Checking for a lot of different things that was at the long walk. It wasn't a long walk. It wasn't. There's portions of that because these guys are putting it so they want to see that same. They're looking for those mental attributes. For me, nothing physical was anything. It was the interview process that I thought was very significant. Like asking different decisional making criteria. Give us an example. Silly stuff like how you stop a vehicle, shoot the driver, stuff like that.

But then also putting your scenarios like if you're... And I didn't understand all the scenarios first because I didn't know... I mean, you're going to do something like that, so I'm thinking, I'm trying not to be an assaulter. I'm thinking I'm trying not to go and be an assaulter at the unit. And so they start asking questions about being in a business environment and what kind of decisions you're making in a business environment, a foreign business environment.

And they're looking for your business aptitude and then basically asking questions like in a compromise scenario, like not really looking for the right answers, looking for how you process. They wanna know how you think. How you think, yeah. And so I was actually really like taken back,

like, cause I wasn't expecting those type of questions at all. And then, you know, and so I thought I bombed it. I thought, man, cause you're expecting one thing, you get blindsided. And so you automatically think, I wasn't prepared for this, I totally bombed it. And then I find out that if I'm interested

that I could go to the read-in and I got read-in. And that's when I found out that it was the other unit and actually what I'd be doing. And to be honest with you, it was a pleasant surprise. I was stoked. Really? Yeah, I wasn't like, oh man, I thought I was gonna be doing this.

It was like, you're expecting to open, it's Christmas morning, you're expecting to open the present and get a bicycle and it's a freaking Honda 250. I'm like, hell yeah. That was my response. I was like, this is amazing. This is like a tremendous opportunity

and I still look at that today. I'm like, every special operations has this competitiveness between them. And I think that probably the closest is because the closest recon and SEALs like, I think the closest compatible mission wise. And so there's always like this fun competitiveness. But everybody knows that at the premier, NSW unit, there's always like this fun competitiveness. But everybody knows that at the premier NSW unit,

there's a difference. Yeah. So what were you excited about? Were you excited that you were about to attach to development group, which is SEAL Team 6 for those that don't know? Or were you excited about the job description, that it wasn't an assault or that it was some under the radar.

Yeah, I'd say both, but the second more so, because I just felt that, first of all, like that AFO job, advanced force operator job, the clandestine logistics jobs sounds super sexy, but no one wants to do it, especially the assaulters. Like no one wants to do it because it do it because you're not kicking in doors. Like my job wasn't kicking in doors, shooting bad guys in the face.

Like my job was making, the job of AFO is to go as a singleton or maybe a small team in bed with local nationals, build a plausible reason to be in a non-permissive area, meaning where US military is not, you're by yourself. You don't have a radio. You truly are alone.

And now you have to build a clandestinely built infrastructure and operational plan to put the assaulters on target and safely get them off. It sounds super sexy, but the assaulters know, like no one wants to do that job. But for me, I like, this is like exactly right up my alley. This is like exactly what I wanna do. Like I love the independence to be able to think outside the box on my own, to be able to problem solve. I like, I loved undercover work

when I was working undercover. I feel like put me in it put me in a put me in Washington DC working in in the in Congress like I could talk to anybody I could get along with anybody put me into projects I could go hang out with drug dealers like anybody any environment I'm in I feel like get along with anybody and work with anyone and so I love that environment I love to be able to just be with different people and do different things, do different types of things. And I just loved, I loved the idea of that job.

And I wanted that training. And I'd always kind of somewhat heard of it, but I didn't know that job existed in the way that it did. So now I'm being exposed to what it is. And the more they're briefing me, the more I'm like, this sounds like the coolest job on the planet. Yeah.

And the training was incredible. The guys that put together the training, you know, they had input from, input came from Green Team. Wanted some of the stuff that they wanted us to have. Green Team, for those that don't know, is the training pipeline to get in development group, Team Six. Yeah.

So we had input from Green Team on our training package, and it was being built for us. For the first wave of guys that came in, it was being built for us. And then the of guys that came in, it was being built for us. And then the unit guys, the CAD guys that recruited me in, they had a contract from our command to build that program. And so we had with high risk SIR, high risk SIR, which is like corporate cover,

then all the corporate cover training, and then loan operator course, like you're by yourself, the medical stuff that you need to know by yourself, the singleton operations, working by yourself with one other guy for your basic gunfighting skills and stuff like that, and it was just really good training. And I learned a lot in a really short period of time, and then learned the rest of it on the ground as we went.

How many guys showed up to that selection? How many guys were that recruited? Did you see them? No, I didn't see them. No, it's not like a lineup or anything like that. No shit, the selection is just you. Yeah, and I couldn't tell you who I was competing against. I could tell you the guys that they picked,

at that wave it was 12 the guys that they picked, you know, at that wave, it was 12 of us that got picked. Three, three dev group operators, three guys from SF guys, two CAG guys and four, four Shrekan guys. Damn, dude. Yeah. And we're the first wave of all the training. So you're basically a plank owner of whatever you call that. Yeah, yeah. Whatever they want to call it.

Yeah. Yeah, we're the first ones. And it was out of necessity because Dev Group had the mission in Afghanistan. At that time, Delta's focused on Iraq. And that mission skill set was probably more capable for Delta. At that time Delta's focused on Iraq and who had, that mission skillset was probably more capable for Delta, but the Dev Group had to stand that up. Can you talk about some of the training once you got in?

Once I got there? Yeah. I mean, we did recurrent training. We did recurrent training, but after everything else was like, as we went, like I did about, I did about the initial training was about six months. And then I went right at the end, I went right to Afghanistan and on the job training on the job training.

Yeah. And the recurrent, the recurrent training was every year we did driving training. We didn't go, you didn't go back to high risk here, but you, you did a scenario based training. You didn't go back to high risk SIR, but you did a scenario-based training. SDRs, we always did recurrent SDR training because that's what keeps you alive when you're operating as a singleton. Can you explain what an SDR is to the audience? Yeah, surveillance is counter surveillance

and surveillance detection. And then SDRs, surveillance detection routes. So surveillance detection is being able to detect if surveillance is being conducted on you, which is very important when you're operating as a singleton because if surveillance is being conducted on you, then you're going to be able to know that the next phase of surveillance is if you're going to be abducted or attack or something like that, it's going to come behind surveillance usually. Especially in the Taliban. The Taliban doesn't traditionally, you might think oh man, if you're out by yourself as an American and you're in Jalalabad, you're walking around,

the Taliban is just going to grab you, kill you, shoot you, kidnap you. Probably not. They're probably going to go out, let somebody know you're there. Hey, we see American here. And they're going to start surveilling you and then they're going to decide. They want to make sure who you are. It's a slower process. You go downtown Chicago here, you're wrong skin color, you're probably just gonna get shot, right? Like, so there's not really like a lot of violent crimes

of opportunity in that scenario. So surveillance is usually gonna come first. So it's advanced detection is being able to detect surveillance. So it's veiled detection routes is using a strategy and I won't get into TTPs, techniques, tactics, and procedures of SDR routes, but it's basically, you use a surveillance detection route

to expose surveillance. So you do certain methodologies, and you put them in your daily agenda to help to expose any potential surveillance you have on you. And so it is a survival tool for people that operate in the Singleton capacities.

So what are they briefing you you're going to do when you get to Afghanistan? Well, I mean, it would be no secret to say that that command's agenda was the top 10, right? Bin Laden, whoever's on the top 10 list, they were in the menu, that's what they're going to get. That's the whole focus of that command being in Afghanistan. And so the assault forces are gonna,

guys are gonna go in and capture or kill those guys. And so most of those targets are gonna be in non-permissive areas, either Eastern Afghanistan and the mountains of Afghanistan and areas that don't have conventional military or across in the Dafaqa, the federal minister tribal area or even further across the border in the Pakistan. So our job was to set up infrastructure

through building a plausible reason. You could probably use your imagination of how you would build a plausible reason for Americans to be in certain areas. So I have to create a reason, not a shallow one, because you got to have some legitimacy to it. Create a reason to be there, create a presence there, create a footprint of traffic

that you can hide real operations in, and then build all the clanness infrastructure to be able to put assaulters on target in a non-conventional way. When I say non-conventional, I don't mean fast roping into a compound with the CH-46 is pretty conventional, but how do you do that in a non-conventional way where guys can slip in and slip out? That requires a lot of on the ground in advance prior logistical coordination like safe houses, venue staging, local national weapons and get, you know, procuring local national weapons, going in and, you know, buy local national weapons, procuring them, building safe rums that could be fortified,

it could be fought from, you know, AK-47s and PKMs and hand grenades and RPGs and building fighting positions in those safe houses having money, clothes, passports, blood, like who the assaults come with. It's everybody's blood type. Let's get blood. Let's have blood standing by a cash type facility and capabilities inside of a safe house. And then all the routes to and from, like all the contingencies, all the contingencies that could be, that could go wrong in operation like that. All that has to be in place. From the moment you move them,

move them from wherever that staging area is to the target, to the back off the target, to the back on Baga Mare base safe, and we're still out there. We stay out there. All over. So you're basically, you're a facilitator. That's it. You're a facilitator that sets up every aspect surrounding the actual operation with plausible deniability. Yes. For everyone.

Foreign weapons, foreign IDs, foreign everything. Yeah, I mean in Afghanistan every time you go in Yeah, you you like a lot of different areas. You got a different different license plate You know if you go to a different checkpoint you have to have different permits for different areas If you don't know any of that and don't have that in place You might you might have the best operation in the world when you get stopped at a first checkpoint never gets pulled out of vehicle It's over right now all that has to be facilitated in advance. By the way, you can't do that without local national element involved. I did with Aziz, who was my teammate and interpreter,

I did about 100 of those in my E deployments. You facilitated 100? Yeah, operations like that. Operations? Not all, and I'll say just so people don't get confused, not every one of them was a capture kill hit, but over 100 operations facilitated. Is there anything in particular that stands out that you want to talk about?

Number six. As he said, I put the command on number six and they killed him. So that's the highest I got up on the list. We tried for number two. Obviously, we were all after number one. But number six six we got and But we almost didn't because it because it was ease we did you want to go into it. Yeah. Yeah so

Batakut Afghanistan Batakut's little forming village hi. Everybody thinks of Afghanistan is like Desert right like a Kandahar, but man, Afghanistan's, when I think Afghanistan, I'm thinking Rocky Mountains, Colorado, gray, granite, rocks, pine trees, smell of pine, creeks, beautiful. That's Batakut.

High mountain forming villages, very cold. We were there, so Aziz and I had been there a couple of weeks and to set up the operation. And we've been working together for a while. Aziz, not just assigned to me as my teammate, my friend, he's my brother. And very, like when I say witting, like as witting as parts of the operation

that I couldn't say here, but I could definitely not say on this show. He knew and seen and was aware of this dude. I won't get into this story, not that I can't, but not to get off track, but he was, he's the only Afghan I know that was recognized by Congress for the rescue of four seals, dev group guys. And it was me and him.

We got a call from the command to go clandestinely extract these four seals. Not that dev group couldn't have went and get him, right? They could have sent a QRF in and killed that right in the village and got those guys out. No problem. But they wanted to maintain the operation and they didn't want any collateral damage

because it was Taliban infested village. And so they asked us to go in and get it. And Aziz was like, it's the middle of the night. Aziz didn't know these guys. Hold on. Hold on. They're a totally different story now. Let's just do this story.

Let's talk about the entire thing. Then we'll go back to number six. Yeah. Actually, let me stop right there. Why don't I think this is a good point in time to talk about who exactly Aziz was and why he's so important to you. Yeah. And how he plays a role in your life.

Yeah. So when I get to Afghanistan, the very first time, I land at Bagram Air Force Base, I'll start there. I landed at Bagram Air Force Base, I was started there. I didn't fly, most people might be picturing like you fly there with your unit on deployment. That wasn't the experience I had or the type of job I had. I flew an unmanifested plane out of Norfolk with a couple of other operators I'd never met before

with a rafting bag with two million dollars in it, a cash that I snapped to my ankle because some big Neanderthal named Mo from the command was like, hey, I got some ambient right here. Why don't you take two? They all knew I had that money. And so they didn't know me, but they knew what it was. And they were just giving me a hard time. You know how guys are they give me a hard time. And so I curled up like a cat on top of a pallet flew there. Those guys, you know, those guys, the Salter guys went off to their thing they've been in and out. They were being in and out in and

out there all the time. And I was told to wait there to meet the XO was coming was coming to meet me. So I was sitting there waiting and I was standing on the edge of, this is 2003, so I'm on the edge of the airfield and there was these Hesco barriers in Constantine O'Wire. I remember in that moment, being by myself in the dark, I remember my first moment was like, this feels like 29 poems, like something about it. It felt like familiar, like 29 poems. But then I remember like thinking like, holy crap, like this is real.

They like hit me like, I'm in Afghanistan. I've never been to war before. Not only am I in war now, but I'm doing this freaking crazy job that I've just got, that I've never done before. I've got training in it, but the reality hit me. Somewhere on the other side of this, in the dark on the other side of this, Hesco Bears and Constantine wires are Taliban, the enemy.

Over the next few months, I'm going to try to facilitate killing them and they're going to try to kill me. That's really what's about to happen. Ask yourself, am I ready to do this? Am I ready to do what the Marine Corps entrusted me to represent them at this incredible unit that I'm like feeling like super privileged, like honored to be a part of like, am I ready? And we were talking last night about these four pillars of resiliency and mind, body, spirit and social.

Like if I had gave that inventory mentally, I was motivated, I knew my job, I had tremendous training in my job, I really had a confidence in myself. Physically, I was in the best shape of my life. Socially, I'm with the premier special operations unit in the world, the support you get there, like why am I excited to go there? Man, what can't they get?

Like any resources you need, right? You can get there. But spiritually, you know, I had to wear a Christian stamped on my dog tag, but the truth is that was a chink in my armor. Like I was, I believe looking back now, when I got there, I made this decision, cause my wife was like pressuring me, like, you're going to God, like,

I'm praying for you and stuff like that. My wife was like, like pushing me towards like God. And I was like, you know what like that. My wife was pushing me towards God and I was like, you know what, right now in my life, I have to choose between being a warrior or being a person of faith because I believed that the two couldn't coexist. I believed that that was something you had to choose between

because I thought I'm gonna have to be violent. I'm gonna have to, and as AFL, I'm gonna have to lie to people, manipulate people, not just a Taliban. I'm gonna take good people, people, manipulate people, not just the Taliban. I'm gonna like take good people, civilians, buy cars in their name, because I'm getting trained to like buy houses in their name and set them up between my command and me and the Taliban.

So when the chips fall, they're gonna be the ones that, some manipulating people, lying to people. So I just felt like I had to pick between this job, being a warrior and being a person of faith. So I believe I made a deliberate decision to put God out of my life in that moment, something I could do and not get older and be a warrior.

And I wish I would have knew the truth, what the truth is, there's nothing more powerful in the battlefield of Afghanistan or life than the men of God and people of God. And that you not only can coexist, but when they do coexist, they're the most powerful people on the planet. And I wish I knew that.

And because I chose to put that aside, I believe that it left a giant hole inside of me that over the years filled with anger and rage and bitterness and just a real darkness took over me. But the back disease like through all that I had a partner because the while that job against might sound kind of cool to some people some people like us that's I would never want to do that job you spend a lot of time alone out of those eight deployments I spent

my price spent two weeks on Bagram all my time was off I was off base. I lived out in a community. I wore civilian clothes. As awesome as the guys at the command was and and I was proud to be at that unit. I really got to work with them except for putting them on target and putting them off target. And so Aziz was my, besides a few guys that I worked with on my team, primarily Aziz was my teammate. He was assigned to me as my interpreter, but he eventually worked his way into being, you know, a number two guy in our teammate and even part of planning operations and someone I really became to trust and lean on on how to pull off some of the stuff we were doing.

Because there's no textbook for doing it and even if you have one, you go in a new environment, a new common environment, everything changes, right? You have to be adaptable and be able to, you create it as you go. And not only that, like we were given complete, like talk about enough rope to hang yourself, like, you know, they're like, figure it out. Like, you know, I remember like, I won't say the name of,

you know, the CEO of Rexo, like telling me like, hey, we need remember like, I won't say the name of, you know, the CEO or EXO like telling me like, hey, we need to get, we need to establish a presence here. I'm like, we can't, there's no presence. Like there's no plausible presence there. And they're just like, yeah, good luck. Like figure this shit out. Like, and you're gonna make it happen. Cause that command is depending on you,

given a plausible reason to be there. So when those assaulters get on target, they're gonna make it happen because that commands depending on you give an applause or reason to be there So when those assaults are getting on target They're gonna be safe and they're gonna not only be safe But they're gonna you know capture kill whoever they're going after and so you got to figure it out and they give you tons Like all the leeway you got all the resources and all the money to make it happen but you got all the leeway to succeed or fail and and you know you got to figure that out and by yourself and you got to, and you sit in the meetings

and you're like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't know why you trust me to do this, but I'm going to keep that to myself and I'm going to figure it out. And then when they leave and the briefing is over and they leave and you're like, Aziz, help me out brother. Like how are we going to figure this out? And every time he'd figure it out, we'd figure it out, man.

So because of that, we became someone that I tremendously trusted. And I watched him over the years, put his life on the line for Americans that he never met before, for me, saved my life multiple times. And again, we'll get into sharing the mission for number six. But one example is with those four team guys.

They were doing an operation. I can't say what asset, they had an asset, a technical asset that was part of this program. Again, I can't talk about it exactly, but because they were with this asset, they couldn't leave this asset in place and they couldn't just leave it there so they couldn't just beat beat move They had to stay with it if they would have put a QRF in there to get those guys

The operation would have been compromised and need the operation to continue and they probably killed a lot of people in that village that Didn't need to die. And so the command called us and said hey 14 guys here they need you guys to go get them and we're looking the environment, we're like, this place is like freaking a hornet's nest for Taliban. And I'm like, Aziz, how are we going to do it? And he's like, came up with, I won't say exactly the details, but he came up with a way to go get them. And I'm like, I trust you.

And he and I got in a car and we drove through the night and scooped those guys up and got them out of there. And man. What was it like when they figured out, I mean, how were they when you found them? It was actually pretty funny and not the most tactical or sexy scene. Like we're looking for them where they're supposed to be.

And we're like, where the heck are these guys? And we didn't have any comps with them and we had one of those They like behind this bush like a cock Here we are a death group most elite guys in the world can't mind a bush and Yeah Most elite guys in the world, Kaka and Bina Bush. And yeah. Holy shit. That's hilarious. I don't even kill us because they're like waiting for them to kill us. You know, it's me. And yeah, but the man like, it was nothing super technical. Like if you're looking for like a super technical, like operational story with that, if it's

just who he was, like, like I remember his words when he's like, I'm like trying to figure it out. I'm like, you're down. He's like, those are my brothers that he never met before. But because he felt part of the unit that he was at for 16 years, by the way, those are my brothers.

Like, and he was, he wanted to go get them. And I mean, it was, it was sketchy. The area was sketchy just going in that area. And you know, he had to get us through, he had to get us through all the checkpoints to get us there and we had to figure it we had to figure it out Not we didn't have weeks to figure out we had a couple hours to figure it out Making phone calls making it happen putting himself at risk and and that's why we made sure that he got recognized for that operate That that movement he had recognized by by Congress

on the house floor for the movement of those four seals. And I was super proud of him to see that when he got that. Because I think he's the only Afghan interpreter I know to be recognized at that level. Wow. For that operation. And he deserved it too. I cried when they were reading that thing.

Oh man. That's incredible, man. Yeah. Yeah, and then fast forward, number six, we were there weeks before setting up the operation. We were in Batacout, again, this forming village. And we parked like in these pine trees. We were in a Hilux, parked in these pine trees,

and he wanted to walk across this field. And I remember being kind of irritated with him because it was freaking cold, windy, like snowing and his field was like muddy and I'm like tromping through wet snowy mud. Like I'm like, what are you taking us through this mud for? Are you guys dressed in local garm? Oh yeah, totally local.

All that stuff. Yeah, and not trying to just throw man jammies on and like, it wasn't like dress up normally. I saw it, we dressed every day. Like, I don't mean like some cargo pants and shoes and like not all Afghans wear man jammies, right? So, just dressed like a normal Afghan. I had a pretty gnarly beard, like a year old.

And I always had peanut butter from protein bar stuck in it. But, and those things are like super important too. Like, hey, you can wear a pakul in this area. And you're cool, you wear a pakul here, and you're getting pulled over. Like, I mean, don't walk there, don't eat that. Don't talk to that person.

If you talk right now, they're gonna know you're not a door speaker and they're gonna kill us. Like, he saved my life every single day through just that, right? Don't wear that hat. This little picture of Masood we're gonna have hanging on our windshield,

on our rear view mirror, which works in this town, but take that crap off in this town because we're gonna get shot for having it. All that stuff, like every single day, like he keeps, he got me alive. You know, not just in those, you know, life saving moments. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, so we're walking across this field

and I'm being a total like butt head towards him, like giving him hard time. And we get across this field and there's this old man that's like, you know, sitting on the side of the road in the middle of the snow in the wind, just squatting there. I don't know why Afghans do that. Like, just sitting here squatting on the side of the road in the snow and we see him and as he starts talking to him and I could tell like it was a pretty serious conversation.

I couldn't understand everything they were saying. But he was telling Aziz like, you need to get him, me out of there because the Taliban was in the area and they're looking for the foreigner, which was me. That's a lot of foreigners in Badakut, Afghanistan, besides me. And so somehow they didn't know I was there,

probably just being seen there and they were looking for us. And so as he's like, hey brother, we have to go. Cause it wasn't like they're around the area like he had just seen them. And so we start walking back across this field. You warned me, I don't wanna tip your table over. Yeah, we start walking back across this field

and you find something like that out by the way, You warned me, I don't wanna tip your table over. Yeah, we start walking back across this field and, when you find something like that out, by the way, like it's easy for me just to say that. But if you think about the mindset of that, I'm in Batacout, Bagrams, if you drove to Bagram, it would take a day and a half. I don't have a radio, there's no QRF coming to get me. I have an AKS.

Aziz has an AK-47. We have a few magazines in our bags. Hand grade in our bags. Pistol and a waistband. That's it. And so imagine that. that's the scenario. You're by yourself in that feeling of the Taliban's here, a couple of truckloads and they're looking for you.

So walking back across that field, that's a large open danger area now. And so the first thing I tell Aziz is, because again, these guys are in the area, like, hey man, if we get hit through this field, because it's a hey man like if we get hit through this field because the big if we get hit through this field like we had trained before together like we're gonna we're gonna have to bound out of here like we're in this open danger we literally were talking about that and we're about 100 yards from that road and and they drive behind us three trucks and the three holex trucks by the way they were so confident to be in there. They had their black flags flying with the white riding on and Taliban flags. I still can't remember, usually I have vivid memory of these things, but I can't remember if one or two of the trucks had a PKM on it on the top.

But they hit the brakes, start backing up and now the bottleling, right? And they stop and they get out and me as he's still talking during that time, by the way, not that it matters, but no reason to get into details. Me and me as he's changed guns and gun bags because that AKS was having some problems and he felt like I was a better shooter. He's like, here, take this rifle. And I didn't argue with him.

We just switched guns. And we were talking about, you talking about basically bounding out of there if anything happened. But at that time, I went from being nervous to like super calm because I was thinking like maybe my confidence overtook me. I wasn't complacent, but my confidence overtook me. Like what I was talking about earlier

is there are no random, I don't see random violence happening. They can't drive in that field. That field I was complaining about, now I know they can't drive in it, so I felt good about that, because they would get stuck. And they're not gonna just randomly kill us,

because they don't know who we are, right? So I'm like, if we just ignore them and keep walking, we're good to go. That's what I was thinking. So I hear them start yelling, and I didn't understand what they were saying. They were definitely speaking in Pashtun, and not Dari,

but then I heard the word stop Bosch Bosch Bosch and and and they're out so now they're yelling it aggressively so they're yelling us to stop and probably the only thing I stopped is my heart like in a moment now but I still was like you know we just keep up with disease and disease just hey brother just keep looking straight keep walking I'm trying to walk towards the tree line and And I heard a, I don't know what I heard first. Have I heard the gun go off or that boom over my head, the air crack over your head? I don't know what I heard first,

but I remember hearing both distinctly. Like I heard a gunshot and I heard the air crack over our heads. And in that moment, man, it's like, if I run, they're gonna kill us in that muddy field. And if we give up, they're gonna capture us or kill us. And so I just felt like the only option to do was to fight. And that's really, really is the only option.

And so I just, I told Aziz, man, get ready to move. And I just did a about face. And the first person I saw, I shot. Like I turned and as my gun came up, I saw a guy, I saw a red Hilux truck, a bunch of guys, but I saw this guy standing there and he has AK in his hand. And he's just standing by the passenger door.

And I just shot two rounds right center of mass. And when I did, I thought I missed him because the window, the first thing I saw was the window behind him. And so I thought I missed him and hit the window. And, but then he fell. I think he went back and hit the window. He fell and when he fell, I fired those two rounds and I was kind of

didn't know what to expect, but I was expecting like a gunfight and I'm yelling for Z's to move. I'm expecting a gunfight and they all just like stopped. I think they didn't think we would fight back and they got shocked then. So everybody just stopped like, like if you shoot a deer and then one deer falls

and all the deer are like, that's kind of what it was like. And then they all rushed, instead of shooting back, they all converged between two vehicles to go get cover behind the vehicle. And so I just went between the two. I didn't aim anybody. I just went to the convergence point and just started emptying my magazine

and that convergence points. I'm just yelling, Aziz to move. Aziz starts moving and I... What distance are you? 100 yards, super close for that. Yeah. And then after I got behind the vehicle, before Aziz got set, I started hearing the gunshots.

It started slow, it started popping and then just like chaos. And then when I heard Aziz start shooting and he yelled, he yelled, I started moving. And I don't know how, like we're in the mud. So normally you would see like dirt flying up everywhere. I didn't see any of that. Like I've seen that before. I didn't see any of that.

And I don't know, I can't explain how, like God protecting us or whatever. I never seen dirt fly up, nothing from around us. 100 yards away, 20 to 30 guys. Never seen any of that. Holy shit. And so the third iteration of us starting to move, I remember like, and this all happened obviously very fast.

As I'm shooting, I saw Z stop. And for those that know about lateral Australian peel or bounding, and the reason we're going laterally is backwards was just field. We were just going down range. So we're going laterally backwards was this field, we were just going down range. So we were going laterally to the tree line. We were going laterally, right, staying right in front of them. And the reason you're doing,

you're holding a base of fire is not just to cover the guy, but to draw fire to get attention off that guy while he's moving. And so you never stop, you never shoot. You don't shoot and move because you want me to draw, I wanna draw fire for him to move and we're doing it right out in the open. And so as soon as he stopped,

and I remember peripheral thing and why is he stopping? And then I seen him shoulder his rifle and I'm like, what is he doing? And then he shot and when he shot, he had seen something I didn't see. It was a guy come up with RPG and he felt like and he felt like, if he felt like, if he would have kept moving,

I was drawing a fire to me, the guy would have fired an RPG and hit me. So he stopped, exposed himself and shot that guy before that RPG went off and saved my life. I didn't see it. He would have fired off. I would have, a hundred yards, I would have been dead. And when that happened, and I realized what happened,

I think at that point, I see we're close enough to the tree line and the tactics went out the window. I'm just like, run. And we just ran like, like neither one of us shooting anymore, we just ran to the tree line. And we got to that tree line, we got to our truck, went back to the safe house and got in touch with the command. It took us a little while to figure out how to communicate.

We told them what happened, and the command was like, basically trying to decide, is this a compromise or chance contact? Right, that's important. Yeah. Right. Is the operation compromise, or was this just Taliban out there, there's a foreigner, they wanna know who it is. And it was Aziz that said,

he could have got us out of the operation, got himself out of it. But he's like, no, man, these guys don't know anything about what we're doing, we need to stay here. We gotta finish this. Not even a question. And the command trusted his decision off that. And I don't think the command told really,

it was like, I think everybody was like, hey, let's not make it a big deal because we don't wanna- Sweep this one under the rug. We don't wanna let it get in the way of the operation. Yeah. And because everybody wants, when you get a top 10 guy, everybody wants him.

So, and so, yeah, so they kept going and about 10 days later, I couldn't, not exactly about in about 10 days later. I can exactly but about 10 days later They we launched it and then they killed him. They killed him or number six. Oh so Yeah, and that's it that's who is he's is and that was one of like three times that probably that specifically that he saved my life and and but he again he saved my life every day and and then, you know, the unique thing about Aziz was that Aziz didn't, Aziz and I, like, I didn't go back to base.

And when he went home, we were done operating. I went to his home. I lived in his home. Like, I mean, I was telling somebody the other day, like, what's the longest I've been with a shower? I'm like, probably like five weeks, like me and Aziz out in those cold mountains. Like, you know, that's before my cold plunging days.

I didn't want to take a bath in the river. And, you know, when we were done, like, and you just crave like a real warm, good meal. And it was his wife, Hotra, that made that first warm meal coming out of his mountains after operating. And I didn't go back to the child hall or anything like that. I went to his home and ate there. And I held Mahshoud and Mahshouda,

his oldest son and daughter, when they were born as babies. Like this dude's my family. Like he's my brother. And he's one of the most important. It's like few people in the world that I would like, I mean, everybody talks about like laying your life down for somebody, but like it's few people in the world

that I would like lay everything down for. Like, you know, just no questions asked, lay my life down for, and Izzy's one of them. Man. Yeah, like he's one of the most incredible human beings I've ever met. And people talk about patriotism and freedom and democracy. This dude, I remember being like blown away.

Like I'm obviously wearing these long drives all the time. We're living in a car together and we'd be, and he'd just be talking about freedom and democracy in a way that I never even heard it before. And I'm thinking, like, this is a guy that never even experienced it, and gets it more than I even get it, or people here get it. And he was willing so much to lock arms with Americans so that his daughters could be teachers or journalists, anything but a sex slave, right? His daughters could be free and he did not want his sons to have to be forced to be Taliban fighters and grew up the way he grew up.

He was willing to give everything for it and he did. I think he's one of the most phenomenal examples of the allies, wartime allies that fought beside all of our troops, not just special operations, but all our troops for the last 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. Man, he sounds like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him.

Yeah. Yeah. He's smart, too. He speaks, I think, eight languages. And he's an incredible human being. Well, Chad, let's an incredible human being. Well, Chad, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll just pick right up here.

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We just talked about the number six, going after number six and the gunfight you have with Taliban. Let's talk about, there's another significant thing that happened over there. Yeah. Let's talk about that. Yeah. So I started like, I started dealing with like a lot of like the pressure of it, right? I started dealing with like a lot of anxiety and stuff, but I was able to hold

it together until we have what I would say is a major compromise in our operation. We had like, we had a number of local nationals working for this program, obviously, because of what we're doing. A lot of them were recruited from the Northern Alliance. They were OGA trained for a specific program and then given to our program. Guys that were vetted. We had a number of them and one of them flipped over to the Taliban. His name was Bashir. So Bashir flips over to the Taliban and don't know why, when I say like this guy and I slept on the side of a

mountain together. We built operations together. He was one of my favorite guys outside of Aziz to work with. He was just super solid, tons of combat experience. But for whatever reason, maybe they extorted his family or whatever, he flips to experience. For whatever reason, you know, maybe they extorted his family, whatever, he flips to the Taliban. Compromised our operation. 12 of our teammates are captured, held, and then killed. Two Americans, contractors, and 10 Afghans.

And, you know, people listening may not, you hear about a Z, so maybe a little more context, but may not think it's as big a deal for these Afghans to be killed and not Americans, but man, these guys were like my brothers. Like these guys lived in a plate soccer with their kids, slept in their homes, ate dinner with their families. Like these guys would have died for me

and I would have died for them. And I do believe they did die for me in trying to protect our operation and died for everybody, I would have died for them. And I do believe they did die for me in trying to protect our operation and died for everybody, every American on here listening. These guys were solid, solid dudes. So when that happened, Aziz's family was contacted and he was targeted. So now he's compromised.

And he chose, at that moment, I watched him choose to stay on the program, continue operating and move his wife and kids into hiding and not have contact with his father, his in-laws, anyone they chose that for us, to continue operating. That's how committed he was. In addition to that, we had a V-bed driven

in one of my houses in vehicle-borne IED to blow up our house. The intent was obviously to kill me and my friends. Luckily, we weren't there at the time, but we do believe that one of our guards were there. We never heard from him again, so we assumed he was killed when they, I mean, the house was level.

And then at that time, we had all been pulled out to be briefed, everyone across the board was like, okay, that happened, but we're still in. Like, we were like, this is too important. And so I went back into a neighboring country that I'd been working in. I won't say the name, because it's in my book, Saving Aziz, the Pentagon reviewed it and redacted it and they redacted the name of that country,

but not very hard to do the math, right? I'm in this neighboring country and then I get abducted by a foreign intelligence agency. How? About sunrise, I had a knock on my door. And I knew, first of all, the guy who led this abduction wasn't like a stranger. As soon as I went into that country, I started working with their country's Bureau of Business Affairs and they immediately attached him to me. And I knew he was from that intelligence

agency. I mean, it was very easy to figure out. So this is this country's version of CIA. Yeah, yeah. So basically he would have been like assigning to me and he's supposed to be a business guy. He wasn't very good at his cover. It was very obvious. And he was always coming in our house,

like taking things, took a thumb drive off my desk. It was constant, constant, constant. And then I had another- Just sloppy trade craft. Very sloppy trade craft. I mean, like, hey, come in my office. I do the same business as you. I go in this office and like the flyers

for the business is still warm. Like the picture's like fresh on the wall. Like, and the secretary behind the desk is like, like, you know, it's very sloppy. We were walking, I thought one of the most interesting things is we were walking, I had a suit on, you might not, I'm wearing a suit and I'm walking across this courtyard

and I walked in the dust and my shoes got dusty and I did this, like military, like shine my toes in it. He stopped and he goes, why'd you do that? Were you in the military? I was like, yeah, I was, were you? Like, but he was just, that was like day one with him. And, you know, always leaving phones, listening devices, like, hey, your house, like,

I'm really worried about your security here. So I'm going to get, I have a cousin, he's a retired general. He's going to build up, put an alarm in the house for you. I'm like, no, no, I'm good. He's like, no, I insist, to put a listening platform inside your house. And so it was that constantly. And then I had one person corner me at a hotel

and say, hey, I got something to tell you. Took me to an American hotel, tell me. And I'm like, please don't tell me. Like, I don't want you to tell me that Jack is this guy's, that's he said his name was Jack. Jack is a spy. Like, please don't tell me. And sure enough, he told me he wanted to confide in me

because he wanted something from me. And then now I have to act like a normal person would act. So I have to get on the phone and open line and call and hey, you know, hey, you sponsored my visa and you sent me here and now I've got the government after me, I'm trying to do business here. And so I had to, so it was a lot of pressure all the time. And so you ask how the abduction happened.

About sunrise, I had a knock on my door. It's Jack. He's got another guy with him, both in suits. And when I opened the door, two big dudes, both in suits as well, come out, and that is four of them, and four stay away in the doorway. And they're like,

hey, we wanna show you a piece of property. I'm like, at five in the morning, you wanna come get me, show me a piece of property? Who are these guys? And they're like, it's a property that we think you'd be interested in buying. And I'm like, no, I'm not going, right? Like, I'm kind of refusing to go. And they're like, no, I'm not going right. Like I'm kind of refusing to go.

And they're like, no, you don't understand. Like you're coming with us. And so, you know, I didn't put up a fight because it was a fight that I felt like I could maybe talk my way out of. And, but when I got in the car, I realized that a price shouldn't have gotten the car. And, and, you know, two guys in front, I'm in the back, in the center. And they start driving and started asking some questions.

And then they stopped and everything got silent. I said some things and I realized we're not having a conversation now. They're driving me somewhere. And drove out of the major city, into the woods, you know, the side of a mountain. And they, you know, stopped the car and took me out of the car. And I was thinking, you know, the side of a mountain. And they, you know, stopped the car and took

me out of the car. And I was, I was thinking, you know, I don't have anything to defend myself with. If a gun comes out, you know, gonna fight for my life. But, but I thought I thought that was, I thought I thought it was gonna die right there. I thought they were gonna question me interrogate me and kill me. kill me. I was pretty convinced in that moment. Have you ever been in another situation where you thought you were that certain that you were going to die? No. What's going through your head? Other than you're going to die, because eventually that wears off.

Yeah, I say no, but there was moments around that time that I had such eminence that I would put sticky notes in the lid of my suitcase from my wife telling her, love her, give her permission to move on with her life. My oldest son, they could be the man of the house now, tell my daughter or my other son that I love them. I'd put those sticky notes in the lid of my suitcase, go out on operation, come back, and I'd throw them away because I didn't want anybody to find them. And then I'd do that over and over again.

Because I think of my personal effects of making homes, I put it in the lid. I was doing that. So I probably had that sense of eminence that I was probably going to get killed because things were getting so sketchy. But in that moment, I knew I was gonna die at that moment.

I mean, in a gunfight, you might live, you might die. You shot, but I'm like, there's, I'm like, 1000% in advance, like, they're gonna kill me. Yeah, they're gonna kill me right here. This is where it ends. Yeah. Yeah. It's one thing like being, it's one thing like, when you know you're, when you believe that and know you're gonna die like and it's not happening I'm just gonna it's it's pretty heavy thing people talk about all the time like lightly But like it's pretty heavy thing and I believed in that moment. I was going I was going to die

That's the only time in my life ever like believed in that moment. I'm gonna die I always like I'm gonna work myself out of this. I'll figure it out but I didn't feel like I could I Got figured I could talk my way in the delay, but I didn't feel like I could talk my way out of that situation at that point. At what point you realized when the conversation stopped, this is, you're about to get assassinated. In the car ride. In the car ride, yeah.

In the car. When they stopped talking and we left the city, I knew they were bringing me somewhere to where they were gonna kill me. And that whole time I'm thinking like, I'm thinking like, do I try to jump out the car? Do I try to like fight right here? And, but I just didn't feel like there was a right moment.

And like, because like I said, I always before thought I could work my CFI on this. I kept looking, I kept before thought I could work my CFI this. I kept looking, I kept thinking and looking and plotting for the right moment. But I just felt like there was never the right moment. And so get out, I was hesitant to get out of the car but I'm like, if they want to kill me they could kill me in the car.

So I just get out at least maybe I could run or something like that. And, and they, some heavy, heavy heavy questions very direct questions not so much about me about the program manager who had been in that country before who they had received them who I knew they had received information I know who he was I don't want to say how because I don't get the guy in trouble and he's a friend but uh they had information I know who he was. I don't want to say how because I don't want to get the guy in trouble. He's a friend, but they had information and know who he was. And so the questions were more about him. And they were very direct. They knew things that they shouldn't

have known. And they basically also validated and insinuated that they were going to kill me. Right there. How did they say that? Well, they said, you're not going to leave this side of this mountain. And they were sort of saying things like that. But then they start shifting to, I know a couple of times you talked about being in a prison. The reason I know that, because I've had dreams, I've had terrible nightmares about since being in a prison

and the kind of things that they do to get information on people in a prison. They're like saying, this is a kind interview. Like basically, if we take you down in one of our prisons, it's not gonna be the same way. And so I thought that's what I kind of a little bit of hope. Like, okay, maybe they're not gonna kill me here. Maybe they're gonna take me to a secondary interrogation

in a prison. But then that actually probably was probably a little bit more scary to me. But then there was just a moment at that time I felt them kind of, I felt them kind of concede. I mean, look, you could get anything out of anybody if people think they could hold up an interrogation. You get anything out of anyone

you want. I got some missing toenails right now I mean imagine you start ticking pins in those missing toenails right now like um but they they never went that far and so I don't know why they didn't. I couldn't tell you to this day why they didn't go that far they didn't physically abuse me that far. They didn't physically abuse me. It was just intimidation and threats. So maybe they, maybe, and so because it never got to that point, I just felt like they don't know what they think. They don't, they're not, they know but they're not certain. And they're gonna, and I started seeing this hope that they're gonna, they're gonna let me go to let this play out. And that's exactly what happened.

They told me to get in the car, never say anything again, drop me off at the din and say a word when they dropped me off back at my house. But it was like two hours. And at that point, obviously, I went back to, I went to Dubai, met my program manager in Dubai, gave a debrief, talked to guys at CI, CI guys wanted to talk to me,

did a debrief with them. And then knowing what I know now, I don't know how this happened, but we proceeded and I went back. You went back? I went back. And honestly- Is a compromised operative? You went back. I went back and and honestly, is a compromised operative. You went back, I went back. I didn't. What was the reasoning behind that?

Because because of who was next on the list in the operation that was pending. It was just it was too important, everyone. And so I'll tell you this, like one thing I didn't know at the time. Hold on. Yeah, I don't understand that. Yeah. You're a compromised operative. The whole operation is compromised in my opinion at that time. Yeah, me too. Yeah, but especially you. Especially me. So what is the rationale sending a compromised operative back into?

So much, so I think so much was invested and they were so target focused that nothing else mattered besides the mission. You know, nothing else mattered besides the mission. I believe that at time the or so would have known, the chief of station would have known of that country, the ambassador of that country would have known I was there. I later found out after this compromise that none of them even knew I was in that country. So, which is obviously ended up being a pretty big deal and pretty problematic for some of the people

at that time in the command that had me there operating without none of those people knew. So obviously you're in somebody else's territory doing operations. And so for me being, you could call it interviewed or interrogated or abducted, whatever you want to call it, by a foreign intelligence agency in that country

and then the ambassador, Chief of Station, or so to not know that person was there and it'd been a pretty big deal. Chief of Stations, the head CIA person in any particular country. Yeah, yeah. They didn't even know you were there. They didn't know I was there.

The whole time I didn't even like- What are you thinking when you get sent back in? Well, they did ask me, what did they ask you? Am I willing to go, right? And of course I'm like, yes, cause I'm so bought in as well. I flew in through, I did a layover in Beijing.

And when I landed in Beijing, they came on the plane and sprayed for bird flu. And I didn't know it at the time, but I had a panic attack. I thought I had allergic reaction to whatever it sprayed. And I wanted to get off the plane and they wouldn't let me in the plane. I couldn't breathe. That was the first panic attack I ever had. I landed in that country and I went to, I didn't go back to my house.

I went, because I didn't want to go back to my house because of what had happened. I went to a little hostel and like a little bed and breakfast kind of place. And that whole night I did panic attacks for the first time. And I did one more operation there. And I was in such a, I was in such distress that I couldn't even remember what happened.

And I called, executed an E&E contingency for leaving that country and bought a round trip ticket in case anybody's watching. I left all my personal effects, all my operational stuff, went to Dubai again. And that was my basically E&E. I was inside, I remember being at the airport and going through customs and I'm like, I was trying to play it off like, because I wasn't having this panic attack,

I'm like, every policeman there is for me. Like, I'm like, there's more police here than normal. Like, every policeman is there for me. And then the flight was delayed. I remember like, that movie Argo, like watching the clock tick, like, because my flight was delayed leaving, I'm like, did delaying the flight for me. I remember like that movie, Argo, like watching the clock tick, like my flight was delayed leaving. I'm like, did delaying the flight for me.

And when I got on that plane and it cleared those mountains and I was heading to Dubai, I was like, just this relief. And then I get there and I think, okay, if I get there, I'm gonna be good. But when I land, they're like, sit in your hotel and stay there. And I'm like, I'm gonna die. Like right now I'm dying.

Like if anybody's had a panic attack, like physically, like I am 1000% convinced I'm dying right now. They don't call anyone, stay in your hotel. I call my grandmother, who's like my mom, and basically telling her like I'm dying. I'm not supposed to, but I did. I call my wife and my wife freaks out.

My grandmother comes to my house to watch my kid. My wife buys a plane ticket to Dubai. Somebody from the command goes to my house to stop my wife, like trying to shut it down. And they're like trying to calm me down over the phone. And I'm there for like four days. I went to a little pharmacy, bought a Valium, took some Valium to try to calm me down.

I could not calm down. And then finally I get back to the States and had a CID briefing again, got pollied. And then at that time I was no longer in the military. I was actually on a contract to my command. And after about two weeks I got read out. And so I'm dealing with being ratted on my program, which for those, that means I can't do my job anymore. I don't have access to that job.

Not only that, but all my friends, I don't have access to talk to them about it. I get put before a clinical psychologist, they diagnose me with PTSD, severe chronic PTSD. So I'm dealing with these panic attacks. I literally feel like I'm gonna, like the only way I know to describe it is like, if you're drowning to death,

like, I mean, that like, that eminence of panic, but you never die like that state of panic 24 seven, like that's where I was at. On top of that, I was embarrassed, right? Cause I'm like, I worked my whole life to get there. Like, and I felt privileged to be there and, you know, to be getting rank warring, infantry and recon and force recon and go to that unit and be there and then get put in this premiere operation

and be where I was at that operation, like the point where we're at. And I felt like all the eggs were in one basket on me. And I felt like it was like if I played football and made it to NFL and it was a game winning play, like I fumbled the ball, like I was just embarrassed. Like I was ashamed. And so I'd be like panic, like shame, failure. Like I'm just like I was just embarrassed. Like I was ashamed. And so panic, like shame, failure, like I'm just, I was just freaking a mess. What was the mission?

Can you talk about that at all? I can't say who, but it was, you know, on the top of that list. And so my job at that moment was doing a feasibility study. And so I had just did right before that, I had just did a feasibility study. And so I had just did right before that, I had just did a feasibility study. They had a, the target was in this area of in the Fata region,

but on the other side of Afghan border. And so he's in this area and they said, can you get in that region, basically about 20 miles from the target, get a rifle in there and fire that rifle off without any kind of like compromise. And so I went and got hunting permits, got all the permits, got a rifle,

traveled for a couple of days through the mountains, spent two weeks up in the mountains and went on an Ibeck hunt and killed a Ibeck in his small mountain village. And that was a successful feasibility study, which green lighted operation to go get that target. And so it was a feasibility study and I got to shoot an Ibeck. What the hell is an Ibeck? It's one of the pretty prestigious like hunt for the big game hunters, big mountain sheep.

Nice. It's cool, really cool horns. I didn't even know at the time that guy was shooting something that people pay a lot of money to go hunting. But yeah, so my job was doing that feasibility study and then that green lighted operation. So I would have been doing all of the clandestine logistics to put probably a sniper team in that same area. And so I was so vested in doing that. And we were the whole program was so vested in doing that because we were so close. And I felt like they put all those eggs in one basket and I had to hold it together until the end. And so because I felt, you know, Phillip,

I felt a tremendously level of guilt to my friends, to my country, like to this operation. And it was embarrassing, man. I mean, there's no other way to like, I can't describe it any other way, but I was just embarrassed. I was ashamed of myself. Like I felt like, like I, you know, I failed, you know.

And for a long time I felt that way. Shit. I know now that I gave all I could give, you know. Yeah. There was nothing more I could give, but, but at the time I was, and for a long time, I was completely ashamed. I didn't want to show my face

around any of my friends or anybody. And, and by the way, some of the guys that I worked with validated that and told me that I failed. So, you know the community. Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're like counting on you. Like, yeah, I know you did. Like, you know, so, it stung like deep.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so it was stung like deep. Yeah. Yeah. You get home. Yeah. How's your wife receive you? My wife, I think this is the only time in my life that my wife says she's ever seen me weak. She's always looked at me as strong, as a protector and provider.

She said I was just completely broken and docile and she didn't know how to handle it. I mean literally like she would just play cards with me. We played cards, like a card game I grew up just to keep my mind busy because if my mind stopped, if my mind stopped I wouldn't have straightened out panic attack. That first medicine they gave me made me feel like a zombie. The second one. What was it? It's the SSRIs.

Noes. Seroquel? I think Seroquel. And then Ativan. They had me at Ativan like every day and I just felt like a zombie. And then they put me on Lexapro, which not that Lexapro was a bad thing for me,

but in my mind, my paranoia, I felt like it was killing me. I felt like it was poisoning me. So I'm like, I don't wanna take it, because it's gonna kill me. And then anything physical, any physical activity, I thought I was got a heart attack. And so my wife and my counselor were like

trying to snap me out of it and get me to do something. And that's when they talked me in. Talked me into getting into mats and doing jujitsu. For those that don't know jujitsu, Brazilian jujitsu, grappling based martial art. I'd say I did it since I was little, but I'm still little. I did it since I was five years old. And I was already a professional MMA fighter on the side.

So at five years old, I started Judo, traditional Jiu-Jitsu, martial arts, trained my whole life. In 1995, I started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I'd already fought professionally in MMA. So for me, like getting those mats was something that I was familiar with. And when I got into mats and grappled for the first time, it was like, I found the cure.

Because you can't think about Afghanistan and do jiu-jitsu, right? You got to be mentally present or you get beat up. And so I just really like felt like it was the cure. But I always say when I do a lot of speaking on this, but... Let's rewind. Yeah, go ahead. Before we get into jiu-jitsu. How bad was the home life?

I was a mess. Were you drinking? No, because the reason I wasn't is because I was scared of it. I was scared that if I would start drinking, I wouldn't stop. And if I would have not been so, I thought my body was failing. And so I thought if I drink too much alcohol it's gonna kill me like I was I just felt this imminent sense of like death I felt like my

body was gonna stop working in any moment and so alcohol scared me and so I'm thankful for that actually because I probably would have it probably would have numbed me and I would have probably stuck with it. And that's why Jiu-Jitsu kind of worked because- What was going on at home? Well, at first, you know, at first Kathy just wanted to support me, but then that, that, that,

that's very hard to do with somebody that's not accepting it. And my, my, my behavior of man is vested in, And that's very hard to do with somebody that's not accepting it. My behavior of man is vested in was frustration, which resulted in anger and outlashes. Even before that happened, coming home from Afghanistan, I would yell at my wife and kids like a Marine Corps drill instructor, slam doors, punch holes in the wall, break things, like throw a temper tantrum. I remember being in traffic one day and I don't even know what my wife said but my three kids in car seats in the back and and

I like flip out and yelling I start kicking in the dashboard and and she's trying to drive off and and I so I tried to kick the shifter off the thing I was totally like temper tantrum like a 15 year old child like kids kids in the back screaming, grabbing the freaking visor, ripping it off. Like I would just lose control. And that's not, like anybody that knows me knows that's not my behavior at all. I'm like a super kind, like, you know, I could be a violent person,

but I'm a pretty like gentle person. I'm just that way. And so I was just, it was so out of character for me that she really had a hard time. She would just start crying. She didn't know how to handle it. And one time I was home from my daughter's birthday party, I always love to share this story.

Not that I love to share it because it's super embarrassing, but it's just like to me one of the most grotesque illustrations of how I was behaving that day was that time. My daughter's having her birthday party and she's like super opinionated and she didn't like the icing on her cake, something super simple. And like grab my little girl's birthday cake and pick it up and I threw it against the wall

and destroyed my little girl's birthday. And like in that moment, I remember thinking like, who behaves that way? Like what kind of dad behaves that way and ruins a little girl's birthday? And in those moments that did that, because that was just one example, in those moments that did that,

I knew I was wrong, but I didn't want to have that admission of guilt, so I would justify it and double down. Yeah, but everyone's an idiot. Like she disrespected me. Like, she should learn to be more respectful. Like you guys are idiots. Like, and so I just doubled down and dig in.

And so recognizing that behavior before that crash and during and after, instead of correcting that behavior, I just distanced myself from my family. I just figured that was a better, this better, safer option was to distance myself from them. During, it was more deployments, training between deployments, staying busy. After I came home and was diagnosed with PTSD

and dealing with these panic attacks, it was still like, okay, now it's the mats. I'm just gonna stay in the mats as much as possible and train as much as possible because it's gonna keep me away from them. And it progressed into starting to fight again, fighting professionally and using that as avoidance. And by the way, like, and speaking of jiu-jitsu,

like I love jiu-jitsu. I think physical outlets are a great cure for the physical and emotional and mental stuff. But I also think you could have medicine cure for physical and emotional mental stuff. But I also think you could have medicine for being sick and abuse that medicine. And that's kind of what I did with Jiu-Jitsu. Man, even now to this day, being in veterans ministry, man, I have a bad day

because it's so difficult dealing with freaking veterans. I go to a gym and I find some 20 year old stud and then choke him out and it makes me feel better. Like, I love Jiu-Jitsu, but at that moment, I just used it as a place to hide and not get better. And my family, because of that, my wife who was trying to support me, it became more and more distant,

and she became more and more bitter towards me, and meaner, I was still being mean and spiteful to her, and eventually the distance grew. And I'd sleep in the gym, I'd sleep at friends' houses, I'd sleep in my kids' bedroom. Probably the loneliest place Kathy and I would say we ever been is in our own beds with our backs turned toward each other

and just this dead marriage. And we both would have said at the time that we just despised each other and hated each other and were there for the kids and just coexisting for the kids. How old were your kids? At that time, they would have been seven, nine and 12. Seven, nine and 12.

So they remember. That's what they did in the time range. They remember, yeah. And especially my oldest son, because he's always been my best friend attached to my hip. And I was coaching them at the time. They were doing Jiu-Jitsu. They've done Jiu-Jitsu since they could walk.

And so they're always around me. They were at the gym all the time. And I mean, when you get an environment like that, it's not as a lot of girls around. And I'm starting to be successful. My Jiu-Jitsu school ends up very quickly with like a thousand students in two years and open a business and just crushed it And then I started fighting professionally again. I went a world title

ranked number six in the world I'm fighting on Showtime and MTV and and NBC sports and fought in all these big shows and ended up being 18 and 2 as a professional like You know, so on the, it looked like everything was successful, but below that false facade of success was still just broken home and broken person. Then with this broken marriage, it wasn't hard to start stepping in relationships with other women. Ended up in a full-blown affair. When Cathy found out, instead of saying, let's fix this, I said, you know what? I'm glad you found out because now it gives give me a reason to leave we sold our home filed for divorce signed two separate 12-month leases on two separate apartments so

we're pretty committed I remember like packing our house it's pretty like sounds pretty twisted probably we're packing our house our family sits together we're crying together holding each other supporting each other and in It's pretty like sounds pretty twisted probably. We're packing our house, our family sits together. We're crying together, holding each other, supporting each other. And they're leaning on me as a dad and a husband. And I still feel put stuff in at U-Haul and separate our family.

And I thought the problem was, you know, I thought the problem were different things. I thought she didn't understand and I'm too destructive and this can never be sorted out. And it was better for the kids. That's what I was believing was better for them. That's a lie that most divorced people think, right? This could be better for the kids.

They're not gonna have to get to Christmases and I got to deal with the fighting anymore. They got to be exposed to all these things. It's gonna be better for them. We all know that's a lie. The statistics show that's a lie. Unless there's violence in the home, it's usually not better.

It's better to fight for your family and work it out. But we did anyway. And so my wife and I had two very different responses. My wife went to a church. She switched churches to a small church where she felt she could be connected. And that's when she started praying for me. That's when she went and went,

and I mean on Sundays, she went like almost every day of the week praying, you know, that prayer, you know, God, let me see Chad the way you see Chad. Let me forgive Chad the way you forgive Chad. Let me love Chad the way you love Chad, despite what I was doing to her. Meanwhile, I set up this apartment

and within two or three days, I had my bachelor pad. Like it's all decorated, stuff on the wall. It's actually makes me very embarrassed to say this and super disgusted to say this about myself, but I think it's important for me to be transparent about it. Like I didn't even put my family pictures out in the living room because I didn't want girls to come in there and see that. Like I had a shelf in my closet that I put put my family pictures out in the living room because I didn't want girls to come in there and see that. I had a shelf in my closet that I put all my family pictures on

because I wanted to look like a single guy. That's the state of selfishness that I was in. I signed up for a fight on Strike Force because I wanted something to work towards and I took that fight. Tim Kennedy and I were fighting. Daniel Cormier was on the card. It was an amazing card. Daniel Cormier is on the card.

It's when the UFC owned Strikeforce and it was a pretty big deal. I focused on training for this fight and I fought a kid named Roberto de Leon. I was undefeated. He was like a stud coming up and I had submitted everyone at a time so they were talking about me not being able to strike and Tim. And so I fight Humberto and I decided I wanted to stand in the middle of the cage and strike with him. And 10,000 people in there, Toyota Center, Houston, Texas. And every round, like if you like fights, like this is like my Rocky bubble.

Like every round I kicked him in the face, knocked his mouthpiece out, knocked him down. He punched me in the head, knocked his mouthpiece out, knocked him down. He punched me in the head, knocked me down his back and forth. And so for the first time in my professional career, I go to decision and I'm asking my corner like who won? And they like, I don't know, it was close. And one judge, the first judge calls for Humberto

and I'm like, I just lost my first professional fight. Second judge calls for me, this could be a split decision. The third judge calls for me, my hands raised and it's a very surreal feeling, right? You're in the middle of that cage, 10,000 people, it's super loud, everyone's screaming, all the weights off because I just won this fight, been training for it for three months.

And then I remember like having this moment where like time, someone stands still and everything gets quiet. And I remember looking around thinking, of all these people here, my family's not there. Kathy, who had been in my fights before, the kids, Kathy's not there. And I remember thinking, I just fought so hard

to win this stupid fight. I love this sport, right, but stupid in context. And meanwhile, I hadn't been fighting for my family and I probably walked out that cage of my head held Low that night and Tim Kennedy and I had after fight. He fought Jocker Ray that night. He lost a very controversial I thought he was robbed decision so we had after fight party Ranger up through after fight party for us at Buffalo Wild Wings I stopped in and you know and Said hi to Tim and you know told him that I thought he'll won the you know, and said hi to Tim and you know, told him that I thought he

won the fight and try to lift him up and everybody's congratulating me on my win and I just want to go home. So I got in the car, went home by myself and I remember like I got home and I got in bed and I'm laying in bed and my mind starts spinning and I'm thinking like of all the damage I caused like everybody in my life I was mad at like my father, people in the military right for the way I left the command and you know people they didn't understand or trying to make me feel guilty. I was like just mad and my wife never understanding me like everyone's an idiot. That was my mentality.

But in that moment I'm like you know what the common denominator is? It's me like I'm the problem and in in that moment, this thought came over to me that maybe my family would be sad without me, but they would be better off, right? Maybe my family would be sad without me, but they'd be better off. And I think probably everybody listening to your show probably knows that the same hopeless thought

finds a home in the hearts of, you know, whatever the status, 17, 22, 45, you know or one a day is too many, but that same hopeless heart finds a home in the hearts of people every single day. That made my family and my loved ones be sad without me, but they'll be better off. And veteran suicide's kind of a weird thing. A lot of people say that it's coward's way out. How selfish could you be to take your life?

I do believe, and I'm not defending it by any means. This must have been my life, committed my life to fighting against, but I do believe a and I'm not defending it by any means, this must have been my life, committed my life to fighting against, but I do believe a lot of people, and I say this not just because of my situation, I'm just talking to survivors, I believe a lot of people believe that they are the problem and if they remove themselves from the situation, it's going to be better for those around them. This Marine Pete that I know stood in the back of his pickup truck, surrounded by police. The last thing he said was, tell my wife I love her and I'm doing this for her.

He blew his brains out. Heather, his wife, talked about putting her head on his chest at the funeral, demanding to see him even though he had shot himself in the head and they didn't want her to see him at the funeral at the morgue. She said something that really stuck out to me. She said, Pete thought he was taking away the pain, but all he did was transfer it to everyone who loved him. And that really stuck out to me.

Cause in that moment, that's what I believed. I believed that I was gonna take away everyone else's problems by taking my life. And I thought that was a solution for my family. That's the best thing I could do. Like I had my time. I did something cool and important in it, but that season's over.

I can't do that job anymore. The MMA things, fun, but it's not, you know, it's nothing that's significant in the world, right? It's a sport. I'm never gonna be able to do something as important as I did again. And I don't have a purpose anymore.

I'm just ruining the people that love lives, ruining the people's lives that I love most. So I made the decision. I had a Glock 22 pistol, a.40 caliber pistol. I was sitting on the floor of my closet and I pulled those pictures of my family off that shelf and I put them in a circle on the floor around me and I would just stare at them for a while. And I tried to build the courage to pull the trigger. I was so deliberate about it

that I didn't even think about the angle. Like I didn't want to be fast. But I do believe this was divine because every time I put that gun to my head, I would have a vision of who was gonna find me because someone's gonna hear it or you're not gonna show up somewhere or you're gonna start smelling, right?

Eventually someone's gonna find you. And the only other person that had a key to my apartment at that time was my oldest son Hunter. He was 13 at that time. And the thought of my son being part of finding me that way was enough to pump the brakes. But I was in such a dark place that, I was in such a dark place that I would be back

like that day or the next day. And for a period of almost two weeks, I was just battling back and forth, trying to make the decision. And it was one morning, I was in that closet. I didn't have the gun to my head. I remember having it on the floor, like kind of holding it on the floor.

And I had those pictures and I was looking at those pictures and I was just, my mind was just spinning having it on the floor, like kind of holding it on the floor. And I had those pictures and I was looking at those pictures and my mind was just spinning and I heard a knock on my door and I wasn't gonna answer it. I was just gonna ignore it. I didn't know who it was. But when I heard Cathy's voice announce herself, I totally panicked.

She would never came in my apartment. She didn't have a key. She certainly wouldn't have came in my closet. But I think I was so ashamed that I hid the gun under a blanket, even though she would have never came to see it. I hid it. That's probably how ashamed I was of what I was doing. Then my next reaction was, and this probably sounds pretty twisted to people, but it's

just what happened. I was just so mad that she interrupted me killing myself. How dare her come there to my apartment that I didn't ask her to come to and interrupt that. And I ran to the door and I was just like open the door and totally berated her. And she was standing there. She's not a very calm argue by the way,

but in that moment, I think I gave her like this calmness and she was super calm. And because she was so calm, I was trying to get her out of there. And I literally like, I grabbed her purse out of her hand, and I took it and I threw it over the balcony, like out in the parking lot, like just to get her to leave. Like all her stuff went everywhere.

Total like D bag for doing something like that. And I was just trying to get her out of there, I was telling her to leave. And she asked me a question, and again, she's like super calm, which is totally out of character for her. Now I'm the calm one now. She's just like, how could you do everything

that I've seen you do in your life? I mean, we were 17 and 18 when we met. She saw me go to BRC. You've been through, that's like what it takes. She saw that, right? She saw me riding 80 page patrols on my only day off. She saw me doing training for operations and pre-deployment stuff and going to schools

and training and how committed I was to do stuff. She told me, get my MBA when I was working, when I was already working 80 hours a week. She saw me train for fights and cut 35 pounds of weight and the discipline it takes to do that. And when no one's around, I won't even lick the nacho cheese, I'll go back to my chip.

Cause I'm like, like that kind of discipline. Like she's like seeing all this stuff of my professional work. And she's like, how could you do all of that? And when it comes to your family, you'll quit. And you know, I don't know about people listening, but man, to me, there's no more soul cutting word than to be called a quitter.

And she was absolutely right. I had been successful at professional things, but when it came to the most important things, like being a husband, being a father, being a young 17-year-old kid that raised his hand and made a commitment to do something important, I couldn't all those things. It included my will to live. And I'm a pretty radical decision-maker, and in that moment I made a decision to get back in the fight. But I knew I couldn't do it alone and I knew I couldn't do it with the people I'd

surrounded myself by. And I had in that Jiu Jitsu gym, black belt, winning MMA fights, everybody told me everything I wanted to hear and not what I needed to hear. I had systematically pushed accountability out of my life and I had no one to tell me the hard things I needed to hear. And somehow like inside of me, I knew that. And so I asked Cathy, is there someone at this church you're going to, some man that could hold me accountable

to trying to put my life back together? I didn't care about God, I didn't care about her church. In fact, I didn't want anything to do with that, but I wanted someone outside of my circle. And she called the church, and there was an elder on call named Steve Toth. He is not an MMA fighter. He's not a jujitsu guy or military guy

or anything like that. In fact, he was gonna meet me to connect me with a retired CO named Mike Charbonneau. I don't know if you know Mike Charbonne is, but he's a retired CEO, his sons are Seals. And he's also a pastoral counselor. So that's who he was gonna meet me to meet. But I ended up never meeting Mike.

I know Mike Charbonne now, but I ended up not getting counseled by Mike because I just, me and Steve just clicked. I met Steve at a Starbucks coffee shop. And while he wasn't in the retire ceiling or anything like that with Steve, hi, it was the gift. He's got ADD, like really bad.

And that was a gift. That was a perfect gift for me. And when I say he's got ADD, like when you go eat lunch with Steve, like still to this day, I hang out with him. He's worked up together a lot. He'll like go eat out, eat lunch at a restaurant. As he's getting up, he's pulling his keys out of his pocket

and he runs across the parking lot, because his attention deficit's so bad that he feels like walking's a waste of time. And so the reason that was, that's his personality, he's a total weirdo, but the reason that was such a gift for me is because I had already decided in my mind, my new goal was to get my family back.

So I was like, what do I have to do to manipulate this situation, sweep everything in the rug and get a clean slate? So I wrote a five paragraph order, op order of how I was gonna fix my life. It was super good. I'm kind of academically like orientated with stuff and it was super good.

It was very impressive. And I went to this meeting with Steve prepared to do that. But because he's freaking got ADD, he wouldn't even look at it. Like I put it on a table, I slid it over to him and I'm like, hey, check this out. Show it to my wife so I can get her back. She knows I'm serious now.

She's gonna forgive me. Everything's gonna be good. He puts his hand on that paper without even looking at it, slides it back over to me and tells me I'm gonna fail. And I remember being like, who is this jerk? Like he didn't even look at it. And he tapped on that paper and he said something that was probably the most important thing

I ever heard in my life. He said, if your plan doesn't have anything to do with your relationship with God, I'm not gonna waste your time and I'm not gonna let you waste mine. The person that Steve had mentored right before me, I didn't know this till later, the person he had mentored right before me,

he had been passive with and the guy took his life. And I'm the next person and he knows he has to be direct with the guy took his life. And he, I'm the next person. And he knows he has to be direct with me and bold with me. So this plan does everything to do with your relationship with God. You're gonna fail, you're gonna fall on your face. You end up right back where you are. And you know, in that moment, Sean,

I had tried everything, man. I had been through counseling, I had been on medication, I had been through VA counseling, civilian counseling, programs, medication, jujitsu, wedding and MMA, making money. Some of those things are good, some of those things are bad, but then those things change my situation. And from that, we have a saying at Mighty Oaks Foundation

now, it's, if what you're doing isn't working, then why not try something different? Right, everything I tried didn't work. Why not try something different? So this guy's telling me, you know, that half that faith. And back when I had Erfrel and Bagram standing on that fence,

I knew that was the one thing I didn't have. There was a chink in my four pillars of resiliency. There was a chink in the armor because I didn't have that spiritual pillar. And I'm like, you know, thinking like, what do I have to lose? I tried everything else, what do I have to lose? Why not try?

And so I made a decision at that moment to trust this guy Steve, and I surrendered my life to Jesus, became a Christian. I didn't really even understand what that meant, but beyond that decision, Steve discipled me, or for those that aren't familiar with the disciple word Christian, Christian disciple word mentored me

for a year in biblical living. And what was so profound for me looking back at that was at the end of that year, what I realized was that all these bad things that happened to me, losing 15 friends over my eight deployments, Foster Harrington, who served in my wedding and was there when all three of my kids were born, we did three units together.

We were on Black Wednesday together with Colonel Mattis where he was standing there across from me when Colonel Mattis gave his office hours. Like, you know, Foster was like one of the greatest people I knew and, you know, when he died, we were both on our first deployment and just being so angry. And that was one thing.

And then like all these bad things had happened in my childhood, Afghanistan, all this stuff, as bad as those things were, those things didn't lead me to be in a closet with a pistol in my hand. What led me there were the choices that I made in response to those things. And I never lost the power and ability to make choices. I was just making bad ones.

And so what the Bible had taught me and it's the mentorship that Steve gave me, it taught me was how to make better choices. And I think we were talking about this last night, right? The Bible doesn't, I mean, people say life doesn't have a handbook. It actually does have a handbook. We just don't read it. And that's the Bible doesn't have a handbook. It actually does have a handbook, we just don't read it.

And that's the Bible. It's our handbook. And by reading that, like, yeah, man, and learning that I still get anxiety, that I still get depressed at times, I still get angry and frustrated. Of course I did, I've been through a lot of stuff and I'm human.

But I was able to have a blueprint to make better choices in response to that. And by making better choices and being super intentional about biblical living, the result was restoration in my marriage and my family. 28 years of marriage now, three kids that are married, three granddaughters, a grandson on the way, my brand new daughter, Summer,

that we just brought her home and adopted into our family, is my daughter now. And two of my kids went to Bible college. Two of my two sons went in the Marine Corps and served honorably. They're in ministry now full time. Like I had restoration, my family had restoration. It was PTSD, anxiety, depression. Those things were able to be resolved.

I found hope again. And ultimately I found purpose. And purpose is what we were creating. When people are lessening the degree of my faith or believing God or not, like the truth is you were created that purpose. And if you don't have purpose in your life, like whether up and die,

that's why veterans kill themselves. Not because we're seen or dead, it's because you had important purpose, a mission, you get out and that purpose is gone. And a mission is gone because your identity was signed in a job and not who you were created to be. And not something deeper in a foundational relationship with your creator, like, and it wither up and die

because we have to have purposes. Mark Twain is one of my favorite quotes. The two most important days in a person's life are the day that they're born and the day that they find out why. And when Steve Toth introduced me to life that I believe I was created to live, I found out the why and God put a deep burden on my heart to pay that forward to others and that manifested

in what I do today in the founding of Mighty Oaks Foundation. That is incredible, man. That is incredible. That's why when I say I have second chance I have, like I'm just blessed for it, man. We're doing a hell of a job for somebody that is veteran first responder, just anybody, you know? Yeah.

That's going through a tough spot in life. And you know, there's a lot of people nowadays that are turning towards faith, the Bible, Christ, God, and they don't know where to start, but there is a wave happening. I'm part of it. I mean, I'm recent, you know? And, but you've been here a lot longer than me.

What advice would you have for somebody that's, But you've been here a lot longer than me. What advice would you have for somebody that's looking to dig in? Where do they start? How do they build the relationship? One, there is no real faith unless it's through a relationship with Jesus. That's millions of faiths, I don't know how I mean it says thousands of different faiths around the world Why Christianity and I'd point to people to someone I told you about voting Baucam has an incredible message Voting Baucams a Christian apologizes incredible message called why I choose to believe the Bible why I believe the Bible

I'd point people to go listen to that It's one of the I can't tell you in a few words And what that message if you message, if you're questioning why to believe the Bible, why to believe Christianity, that is the most powerful, succinct message on why the Bible. Secondly, faith is sustainable. In those pillars, right, you could have the mind,

body, spirit, social, you could have all those other things, but faith is a sustainable one. I believe there's a million ways in this world to get injured, to get hurt. Veterans do not have a monopoly. The first responders do not have a monopoly on trauma. I believe there's only one way to get well, and that's through a relationship with Jesus and aligning your life systematically with the life you were created to live.

Most of the problems we have in our life are because we're not living life the way we were intended to live it. It's like if I had a brand new Corvette and I went and drove it off road in the mountains and you're like, this thing's a piece of junk, it's a piece of crap. No, I'm not using it for what it was meant to be. It was meant to be on a hardball road.

And so you're not using it for, you're not living your life the way it was meant to be lived. And so when we align it, that's why I say when you align your life, and the only way you can align your life with the life you were meant to live is to read the handbook. And that's what the Bible does. So I'd start there

because you don't need anyone else to do that, right? You could start by reading God's word and understanding. Where would you start? I would start in- It's 2,000 pages. Yeah, I would start in the book of John. In the book of John is 20, 21 chapters, because it's the most succinct message of the gospel.

So I did the book of John. And then maybe read a Proverbs a day for a month, because Proverbs is 31 Proverbs, one for every day of the month. And by the way, you can go back and do it every month for the rest of your life, and you're going to get something out of it. It's called the living word

because it's gonna be different every time you read it. And that's where I would start reading. And then you need to get connected to someone who has, like you said, has been on that path a little bit longer, someone that's trustworthy, that they can mentor you along that path and share that journey with. And I can tell you the one thing that I've learned

through my faith journey is that I will never do it alone. I have put myself alone plenty of times and I don't trust myself enough to ever do it alone, especially my faith journey. When I was a young recombinant, I learned this thing called plus minus equals. And the analogy is that I always train with someone better than me, that's the plus that I can learn from.

I always train with someone a little bit below me so I can pour into them, because it makes me, anytime you teach something, you're gonna be better in giving back, so you're not just building yourself, now you're building in the community and next generation. And you always have the equals, someone that you go neck to neck with

because they push you to be in a competitive realm, push you to be better. And so I actually carried that in the jiu-jitsu. When I go train every day, I find someone that's better than me, that's gonna smash me. I don't wanna just walk out of the gym winning all the time. I wanted somebody that's gonna smash me.

Someone that I could, I'm better than, because I can refine my technique and I feel better. Like builds my confidence up a little bit and I'm investing in the team and the next generation. And then someone equal to me that I'm like, before we go, I like wipe the sweat off my palms and slap hands, cause I know we're freaking about to go to war. Like Tina Martinez in California, Jared Chafein,

like I know my guys and everywhere I train, like that's the guys that we're gonna, you know, Sam and Rob in Prescott, Arizona, like we're gonna, man, we're about to get after it. And we just like push each other and grind. Like, and so I took those things into my Christian walk. And so now in my life, I have someone that is always that plus person in me, mentoring me,

something I can lean on, discipling me, someone that I can pour into and that person I'm just like doing life with. I wanna have those three people in my life all the time. And that's a rule that I'll probably never till the day I die, not implement in my life. Man, do you mind if I add something? Please.

When you decide to take that leap, you have to remember always because people get really judgmental in this realm. And it's about your relationship with God and your relationship with Christ and your relationship with the Holy Spirit, not anybody else's. You shouldn't be feeling guilty. You shouldn't be feeling judged. It's about you and your Creator. And that's it. It is. And you have to, like, people have to understand, like, you can't be who you're created to be

unless you have a relationship with the creator. There's no shortcuts around that. And so it starts there. Like a lot of people look at churches and you say like, oh man, the church is full of hypocrites. Hospitals are full of sick people. Like, I mean, that's what they're there for. Like church is full of broken people. Don't look at the church. Don't look at the pastor, don't look at humans to evaluate your view of God. Those are good things to be a part of. In the community, we're supposed to be part of community and a community of other believers.

And I know last night we talked about different ways to do that, but the primary fundamental relationship should be your relationship with Jesus. And that comes through prayer and studying God's word and then surround yourself with like-minded believers that are gonna challenge you and take you to the next level. Thank you. Amen.

And I'll say it again, man, your profession of faith like encouraged so many people I hear it all the time, and I'm super proud of your courage to do that. Thank you again. Yeah, yeah. The Mighty Oaks Foundation. Yeah. How was it born?

Well, it was born out of that. It was born out of that desire to pay it forward. So I'm in this dark place, and when you're in a dark place like that, you feel like you're all alone. Like no one could be struggling like me. No one could feel the way I feel. No one's marriage can be so bad. No one's life could be so bad that they don't live anymore.

And I realized coming out of the side that I wasn't the only one. People were killing themselves every day. People were divorcing every day. People were in depression every day. I'm like, not only am I not the only one, but this is an epidemic. And I found the solution. And epidemic. And I found the solution.

And I believe that I found the solution. And it was like, if you were dying of cancer and someone gave you the cure, just keep that for yourself. You get in a rooftop and you tell, hey man, the cure is in here, like, come on, like come get some. And that's why I felt like I felt like I was obligated to share that with people from my community and everybody who might be infected by this belief and system that

they, you know, are going to make permanent decisions, temporary problems, take their life and destroy their families and lose hope. Like I want to share hope and God just really burdened me to do that. And so I felt like the best way to do that was to walk away from everything I was doing in my life. I'm at that peak of my MMA career. I'm making money in my gym, but I didn't want to do dabble. I figured if I dabble with it, there was a safety net to fall back to.

I wanted to cut the tether, jump in the deep end, and go all in with us. And so we started Mighty Oaks Foundation. And that was 12 years ago. And for those that don't know what Mighty Oaks Foundation is, we do four things that we stay pretty narrow focused, and we do four things really well. We do resiliency events where primarily I go to the bases

around the world by requested active duty military and speak on resiliency, suicide prevention, spiritual resiliency, that spiritual pillar of those four pillars. And I've spoken to over about a half a million troops over the last 12 years. One of the places being Marine Corps boot camp every quarter for the last almost 10 years, nine years or so at San Diego, I've spoken to Marine Corps boot camp every quarter for the last almost 10 years, nine years or so at San Diego, I've spoken Marine Corps boot camp. Now for about two or three years now I've been in Parris Island, been to tons of SF groups,

all the recon infantry battalions. I've spoke at the highest level, first Marine Division, division-wide, all hands, but commanded by CG event and, you know, NSW done tons of different types of commands and it's just been incredible. And then we've written several books, have three books series that you got in your bag called Path to Resiliency, The Truth About PTSD, which is a creation perspective of PTSD, and Not the Solution, Winning The Battle Against Suicide. In those three books, we've given away about half, about 400,000 copies to the troops and equipped them. We make them to where like 45 minute reads

that can fit in your cargo pocket. And we distribute those all over. In fact, just this morning we had a bunch sent out to, not just in my speaking, but we sent events, but we sent them, we just sent a bunch out to Korea. I got a text this morning to Korea, some troops there. And so that's the prevention plan. And I really believe in that

because I like an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. If you stop it in the front end by inoculating people, by being resilient and being ready. Then we have a recovery program, which is where we have our camps. And we have ranches in California, Ohio, Virginia, two in Texas. And we bring activity service members,

veterans, first responders, and spouses. We pay for everything, including their travel. We do about $8 million a year in programming. And that's just a great foundation of patriots. Donate to Mighty Oaks is a nonprofit, and we make that free. Those programs are a week long and they're non-clinical peer-to-peer mentoring, and we make that free to, and those programs are a week long

and in their non-clinical peer to peer mentoring, teaching people essentially how to make good choices and take responsibility for their situation and make better choices every day in response to their trauma and not just relying on medication. We're not like saying no medication ever. We're saying that if medication is the only part of your plan, it's probably not a good plan. You got to take responsibility, you got to make better choices and take control of your life. And that is the ultimate solution through aligning your life with

the life you create to live. And then beyond that week, they could sign up for our aftercare program and we have about, we manage about 80 outposts around the country where people can meet weekly, but we have partnered with about a thousand that people can meet weekly. And then we have a leadership program that graduates, alumni could come through, get trained by us to pay it forward, whether in their communities or through our program. And about 28% of our graduates sign up to that leadership program and paying it forward. So we have that. By the way, we've had 5,500 graduates

over 12 years, but now we're doing about 1,000 per year. So we've got exponential growth. We have, we're building our global headquarters in Texas. The successes we've had in faith-based program have allowed me to go to DC, testify before Congress and Senate, I've advised, I was, President Trump appointed me as the chairman of the White House Faith-Based Coalition for Veteran Affairs. And I was able to consult with like Deputy Director of VA.

We got executive orders signed. We got, we worked in the Prevents Bill for President's Roadmap to Empower Veterans in the National Tragedy of Veteran Suicide. We just were really impactful with getting faith-based programs available to active duty service members of veterans. Because without getting into the super history of it,

like President Bush made the Opportunity in Faith Initiative, brung faith-based programs and community programs available to veterans. President Obama signed executive order in 2009 that killed that. And then, so in 2016, when President Trump was on the campaign trail, General Boykin, if you know who General Boykin is,

he's been a great mentor and friend of mine. He was leading a town hall for veterans, and candidate Trump was coming through, and six veterans were going to get to ask candidate Trump any question they wanted, and so I was selected to be one of them. So I could ask any question I wanted, wanted. And so I was selected to be one of them. And so I could ask any question I wanted. And the question I asked was that,

and the reason I asked this, because when President Obama signed that executive order, the suicide rate was 16 a day. They killed the community and faith programs. They dropped, put billions of dollars into add 1,500 new clinical programs. And the suicide rate went from 16 a day to 22 a day between from two years from when he signed

the executive order, it spiked. And so for me, I'm like, and we're killed, faith-based programs work, we know they work. And even if they don't work, veterans of anybody should have an option, right? They should have the freedom to choose that route. And so when I got to ask candidate Trump any question, it was that, if you become president of the United States,

will you overturn this executive order? And he said, yes. And then he kept talking, right? And so the media kind of twisted it and I had the opportunity to defend him. I went on bill O'Reilly, defended what he said on Fox News. And then General Flynn called me.

They put me together with the team. I was part of the VA transition team when he took office and eventually was able to come and help get some of those things done for that executive order mainly. And so our advocacy side in Mighty Oaks has been very impactful for policy. And then the last thing we do is our international program. That's where we take some of our mighty Oaks graduates, train them, and allow them to go around the world and pay it forward to our ally partners around the world by teaching them how to do the same programs we do.

We've done that all over the world, Peru. We just got a team come back. My son was on it. They just trained. I think right now they've trained and certified about 100 chaplains in Ukraine because they don't really have a chaplaincy. So you got all these civilian conscripted soldiers and now their pastors from their community want to go and provide a chaplaincy service to them. But they're just pastors from Orthodox church. They don't really understand chaplaincy or how to work with military trauma.

And so we're going in and training those chaplains and certifying them through Mighty Oaks. Man. So that's Mighty Oaks in a nutshell. Amazing work. Amazing work, man. Yeah. You know, it's, wow.

You're really making a dent. And not just a dent, you're 450,000 plus people have gone through there. Yeah, through our resiliency programs and then recovery programs, I think we're approaching about 6,000 now in our recovery programs. And that's our guys that come stay with us.

Wow. And again, we pay that come stay with us. Wow. And again, we pay for every bit of it. And there's no strings attached at all. How can people help? Well, I mean, mightyoaksprograms.org, people could donate there. And as important, actually probably more important than people donating, is if any veterans,

first responders, or spouses are listening and need that help, you don't have to do it alone. You're never meant to do it alone. And again, you don't have to reach out to us. You apply online. There's an application, a homepage application button, mightyoaksprograms.org, click the application button.

The application is super simple. We make it simple on purpose. We'll get everything we need later. And one of our team will contact you. And we have, I think this year we have almost 50 programs going. So there's lots of dates to choose from. If anything, you're gonna go to amazing facility.

Our facilities are insane, insane. So nice. And the food's amazing. So if anything, you're gonna go to an awesome place for a week and you're gonna get fat with amazing food. And, but you can be around good people who've been where you've been and maybe a few steps ahead and help you lead the right direction,

lead you in the right direction. I find it hope again. Solid work, brother. Yeah. Very solid work. Yeah. One of the most incredible things, to tie all those four things we do in perspective,

I mentioned this guy, Pete, that's in the back of a pickup truck and shot himself. He was in a church service when I gave an invitation. I was in church service in Brooklyn, Oklahoma. I gave an invitation for all the veterans that came to come to Mighty Oaks. Pete turned to his wife. everyone on a pulpit, you start talking, you say something like that,

you see the wife snudging the husbands. So Heather probably nudged him and was like, you need to go to that. But he told his wife that, I know I need to go to that because he's diagnosed with PTSD, but somebody needs it more. He chose not to go and he killed himself. In that same congregation was a guy named Reed Hasty. Reed chose to come.

Reed came to Mighty Oaks. It took us months to get in there because he couldn't fly because his panic attacks were so bad he couldn't fly. And most, he spent usually like one day a week, he'd go to inpatient VA. He talks about how humiliating it was because he was like a sergeant in the army,

responsible for millions of dollars of equipment and men. But when he'd go into VA inpatient, they'd take away his shoelaces because he couldn't be trusted with them and how inhumilating that was. And so through his anxiety, we were able to get him on a plane, got him to California.

He comes to our program, has a radical encounter with Jesus, becomes a Christian, comes back to our program, flying no problem, becomes a team leader, does 50 programs, becomes a team leader instructor trainer, starts training our team leaders, goes home in his community, builds one of those weekly outposts, starts building it.

He said, some weeks he would go there to be one person, some weeks he'd go there to be no one. He talked about endurance, like, and he just reads Bible by himself, he studied by himself. Another week he'd go there to be one person, some weeks he'd go there to be no one. He talked about endurance, like, and he just reads Bible by himself. He studied by himself. Another week he'd go there to be two people. Today, this is eight years ago, he has 13 outposts in Brooklyn, Oklahoma.

300 men meet once a week there. He's still team leading for us, team leading instructing for us. He's broken into Tulsa Police Department. 130 police officers from Tulsa Police Department have come to Mighty Oaks because of him and the people he's brought through. The chief said it's changed the culture of that complete department. On top of all that, this guy who couldn't get on a plane to come to California program

last year gets on a plane with me from Houston, flies to Krakow, Poland, gets in a car. We drive across when everybody's coming from out of Ukraine, he drives across the border into Ukraine. He drives across the border into Ukraine. We go all the way across 18 hours across To Kiev spend the night in Kiev then drive to car Kiev, which is under attack every single day We drive in the car Kiev I remember driving the car keep in the middle of night and read a night in a car and our Ukrainian guy with us said Come what the radio comes across the radio and he says, the only thing that lives in Kharkiv

is Will Smith and his dog. Everything's just blown up and dead and it's like the end of the world. And we spend the night in this old bunker and we get IDF indirect fire in the middle of the night, hits about 400 yards from us. And I wake up and I go out and Reed's cool as a cucumber. The next day we go out behind Russian lines

to speak to these Ukrainian troops and Reed pulls up a chair and starts sharing his testimony in front of these Ukrainian troops. I was sitting there watching him thinking, this guy couldn't fly to California. He went all the way over there to share his testimony and with these guys in Ukraine. Like that's the full scope of like finding purpose again, a mission again, and what we

able to do. And I've seen that. It was like the most full circle moment for me to watch a redo that. That's incredible, brother. Yeah, that's super cool. Super cool. I get to work with some amazing people, man. Yeah, I'll say. Wow. I mean, that's one of the most impressive organizations that's after this suicide epidemic that I've ever heard of. Congratulations. Thank you, brother.

It really is. We have always said from the beginning, we want the hardest cases. We want the guys that, when the wounded warrior battalion from Marine Corps calls and said, hey man, this guy tried everything, he's gonna kill himself, instead of locking him behind a glass, piece of glass, like we wanna send him to you,

to have that confidence from the Marine Corps wounded warrior battalion, to know that they could send him to the psych ward, or send him to us and trust him with us. Like that's, that's a, that's, that's a privilege. Yeah. We have, we have a, uh, one, you know, the reference one of your guys, a COA, the guy Collin Fields, you will get so many judges that send people to us, wives and judges.

And uh, you know, he was, he was his wife and the judge said, you go to this or, or you go into jail and you're getting divorced. He was facing jail and divorce. I don't know if you know Collin, Collin Field. I think I do. So he's an East coaster. What's that? Was an East coast guy.

He's an East coast guy and a corpsman. He was a corpsman. Well, he's been to Ukraine a lot with us, but he would allow me to share the story. But he tells the judge, tells his wife, tells the judge for his wife and tells his wife for his kids. But he's gonna drive to Mighty Oaks. We went to fly him,

but he said he didn't want to fly him with the drive. The reason he wanted to drive is because he was telling him that he was gonna crash his truck into a tree on the way there and make it look like he killed himself, make it look like he accidentally died and it was a kill himself. Took a seatbelt off, left, and drove 10 hours to our ranch and looking for a tree the whole time.

He said, I kept looking, kept looking, and ended up at this ranch. And he was the graduation speaker at our class and became one of our best team leaders and has been going to Ukraine with us and sharing that story. God is definitely working through you, brother. I never hit that tree. Wow. Let's move into the Afghanistan withdrawal.

You brought out, not just you, I don't want to make you uncomfortable by giving you all the credit, but you guys, a very small number of you guys, evacuated over 17,000 Afghans when the US government had completely failed and decided they're going to start working with the Taliban. Yeah, crazy. I just, it feels, I can't even believe this is coming out of my mouth, you know? But it was the veterans that served there that made shit happen and you were a huge part of that. It was a, I'll start off with saying, yeah, like crazy to think that the entire international community

were participating in the fighting Taliban in Afghanistan. Baku Air Force Base, and arguably is the most strategic place in the fighting in Taliban and Afghanistan, Baku Air Force Base, unarguably, is the most strategic place in the globe between Iraq, Iran, Russia, and China in today's current climate, right? That is the most strategic piece of land. The entire international community were participating there, supporting and advising Afghan National Army

and Afghan National Police to fight the Taliban. So this all stems in this lie that the American people in the mainstream media, American people are told by the mainstream media in the White House that America was in a 20-year war, in this endless war, and we have to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately. The right thing to do, if they actually cared, would have been to claim a victory, the war on terror is over, and share the Balagam that Balgam Air Force base with the international community,

turn it over to the international community and continue to support and advise the Afghan National Army like we do all over the world, right? We had 2,500 troops there at one time. We have 4,000 at the time of the withdrawal. I can name 12 places right now that we have 2,500 troops, all of Africa, everywhere, right? So they lie to American people and say,

we can't keep killing America's sons and daughters. Total, total bull. We can't keep killing America's sons and daughters. Total bull. Yeah. We can't keep killing America's sons and daughters. Let's start two more wars. Let's start two more wars. Right? I mean, in contrast, some people may be listening and be like, oh, you just want to stay in

Afghanistan. Look, there's 80,000 troops still in Japan since World War II, 40,000 troops in Germany since World War II, 45,000 troops in Germany since World War II, 45,000 troops in South Korea sitting on that 30th parallel, keeping the North Koreans from coming over. America having contingencies like this doesn't keep us in wars, it prevents wars. It creates international stability.

And it's very important for America's leader. Now, whether we wanna be a leader or not, we are. And one of the things you said was, we worked with the Taliban. We didn't tell the international community we were withdrawing. We didn't talk to the Afghan government about it. We could coordinate it. When I say we, the White House coordinated with the Taliban and they signed what's called the Doha Agreement, which means the Taliban will not allow terrorism to happen in Afghanistan in exchange for us leaving Afghanistan. Now, that's a conflict of terms, right? Because the Taliban is a terrorist organization.

If I go over there and give the Taliban a bag full of cash to move SIV out of Afghanistan, I'm going to jail because I'm funding a terrorist organization. But the White House is able to say that they're a legitimate government. They plan it both ways. We should never have left Afghanistan. We could have declared a war over it. We should never have left Afghanistan.

I believe the American people were lied to. The only beneficiaries of that, and I know this would be a whole separate episode, the only beneficiaries of that were Iran and China and all of the world, the enemies of the United States and freedom. China wanted the Hindu Kush mineral rights. I said it in 2021, the beginning of 2021, that they would be the beneficiary of this, and I was called the conspiracist. You said it too, man. that would be the beneficiary of this, and I was called the conspiracist. By-

You said it too, man. Yeah, and then what happened, the day we left, the Taliban gave China the mineral rights for the Hindu cause, trillions of dollars worth of lithium. They were able to move sanctioned oil. When we're trying to do a green initiative. Right, right, yeah, exactly.

We could have used that. Yeah. It shows who's pulling the strings here. For sure. At the White House. Yeah, China is. They moved sanctioned oil from Iran through Afghanistan that was blocked by US bill or it's not now into China. So China's able to move sanctioned oil without having to do it by ship. So there's lots of things that I was upset about with the withdrawal and I think everybody who gets it or pays attention was, but I couldn't change any of that. But the one thing I could do is not allow my friend Aziz

to be there, be left behind. Him and his wife and six kids, I had been putting through the SIV, Special Immigrant Visa process for six years to get them their visas. And by the way, then in 2009, immigrant visa process for six years to get them their visas. By the way, then in 2009, we had a contractual agreement with Interpreters that if they've completed their commitment to service, that they would be in a nine-month process to have

access to United States under special immigrant visa. We did not uphold that promise to them. Aziz had been in a process for six years. Someone who served at a tier one special operations unit for 16 years, saved American lives was not given that. So I knew people in Congress, I know people in Senate, I was pulling all the strings I could. It wasn't gonna happen.

And so I made a decision that I was gonna go get Aziz, his wife and six kids. And in that decision, I knew that the people I had to call on would be veterans that I was going to go get a Z's his wife and six kids. And, and in that decision, I knew that the people had to call on would be veterans that I trust from the special operations community that had a couple and it was a couple of Cree car tip criteria. I was looking for mature guys who already had their combat lust zone and, and cared about actually going and getting a Z's out and not going there and getting in the fight with the Taliban.

And that was, that was super important to me. The first person that I called was, you know, he recently came on a show was Tim Kennedy. And, you know, and Tim, I've known Tim for a long time. A lot of people don't know Tim's like not just a green bray ASO level three guy has done clan log stuff before very mature human, very mature combat experience. Tim, everybody thinks Tim is a big braggadocious guy. Tim does not brag because if Tim bragged, you probably wouldn't believe half the stories of some of the stuff he's done. He's got some amazing experience in combat.

And man, he just, I remember calling him and I knew he was getting asked to be like some jobs with Afghanistan. He was turning stuff down because he has so many businesses he runs and he's busy. And when I told him I'm going to get disease and his wife and family, he was like, I'm in, where do you need me to be?

Let's go get him right away. No questions asked. And we ended up putting a team together, probably about 12 guys initially. It built a little time. I don't know exactly how many at that time. And Sarah Verrardo, contact Sarah Verrardo. She runs the Independence Fund.

Her husband was a catastrophically wounded guy from Afghanistan. She knows a lot of people in DC. Started putting this plan together. We'll get a Zs, his wife and six kids. And as we're putting it together, one of the guys brung up the fact that there was these 3,000 orphans that were being left behind. And that was kind of a game changer of information because everybody was fleeing, you know, people were surviving because that thing was happening faster and faster. And we knew at that moment that we had to do more than help just to see this family.

I think everybody that was involved in this thing was people of faith. And so we all felt like God really burdened our hearts to help as many people as we could. And that's what we originally called it. Mighty Oaks started the Saber Allies Coalition, which ultimately we used the Saber Allies Coalition from Mighty Oaks and founded Saber Allies as its own entity. But it started as that in the operation force that we call the task force six eight from Isaiah six eight. Here am I, send me.

And that's why we called it that because we all felt God just burdened our hearts to go help those people. And we made a decision like, hey, let's just lean in and see what happens. Let's help Aziz his wife and six kids. But as many Americans, as many interpreters, their families, women, hey, let's just lean in and see what happens. Let's help Aziz, his wife and six kids, but as many Americans, as many interpreters, their families, women, children, Christians,

every person, let's see how many people we could help. And so the first thing was see, can we get on HKIA, Amir Karzai International Airport, in belt to go outside the wire and rescue people? Because right now we know that the White House took the NEO operation, non-combatant evacuation operation, away from the DOD and gave it to the State Department, which by the way, that should never have happened.

If you want to why a lot of problems happen, it's because of that because now the State Department treats HKIA like an embassy and the military is used as a protective force of the embassy or the airport. And then the outer perimeter is given to the Taliban. Well, when the Taliban was given the outer perimeter, anybody that knows combat knows that whoever controls the outer ground space controls and access to that ground space. And so now they have the White House telling Americans,

if you wanna leave, go to the airport. Well, you got some 21 year old girl who went there to teach English or be a humanitarian aid worker or be an evangelist, and she's gonna show her blue passport to the Taliban who's executing people in the streets because that's what was happening. Of course not, right?

So that's the environment. And then the military is not being allowed to go outside the wire to go rescue their own civilians. And so how are they gonna allow us? It's an impossibility. So the reason I say that is this, and I appreciate you saying that, you know, about not putting the onus on me about doing this.

Like we felt that burden and we were obedient to lean forward, but what happened in rescuing Aziz's wife and six kids and 17,000 other people? I wanna make sure everybody in the area hears me talk about this, knows this. I am not smart enough, capable enough to pull that off. Logistically, it was impossibility.

There was so many obstacles that made this thing impossible. And the only thing I could point to when people ask, how did we do it? It was a modern day miracle from God. God orchestrated something that was completely impossible. It's starting with us being able to have access to the airport. So many amazing veterans and organizations wanted to move people and a lot of people

did a lot of great job, great jobs doing that. But for some reason, we were the only ones that got access to get on the airport and go outside. And the reason why is because we had got permission from the Joint Chief's office to do that. And again, I don't know how you would think, why would they not allow the military to do it? Why would they allow us to do it?

Maybe Sarah Verorio has pictures of General Milley in high heels. I don't know. I don't know why. She's probably not the only one. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know why. She's probably not the only one. Yeah. I don't know why, but we got the permission to be able to do that. And, you know, Sean Gabler and SeaSpray on the ground, able to get our own airstrip to be able to move people. All this stuff was happening at one time.

But now that we have permission to do this, right? And not only that, but vet people, manifest people through those protocols. Now we have to move people who don't have visas outside of across the other country's border. That's illegal, right? I get people in airport, once they get in the airport, what good is it that governments can only be there

for a little while, right? Eventually they can leave and those people that got inside the airport will be gone. it that the US government's gonna be there for a little while, right, eventually they could leave and those people that got inside the airport would be gone. We have to be able to move them out. And without visas, I can't move them. A lot of people gave us a lot of crap in the beginning because everybody's arm-tracked quarterback. You guys are moving people,

who you're bringing to the States, like we don't even know who these people are. First of all, I'm not the State Department. I don't have any authority to bring anybody to the United States. I could get somebody out to another country, but I don't have any authority. Only the State Department could do that.

Secondly, we vetted more people than the US government did. The people who were moving were vetted. The people that are going on those planes that the D&D were moving, no fault to the troops, fault to the White House and State Department. They were not vetted. We were moving people that we were vetting. We had a process to do it, And we're doing our due diligence, but now we have to move them across border.

How do you do that? We need to build a fund to the country. The only place you can move people across border without a visa is Laredo, Texas. But in the real world, you have to follow rules and laws. And so we contacted the UAE, the country of the UAE. We had a connection there. We had two connection there.

We had two connections actually, but Joe Robert was a recon marine that I knew. And then Sean Gabler had another backdoor connection. Joe Robert grew up with the Royal Family, with the Prince. And he was able to secure me a phone call. I got a phone call, got him, Santa Six, because his name's Santa Six. Dan O was on a phone call. Joe Robert was on a phone call. We had, I think Sean Gabler was on a phone call.

We had a couple of senators and congressmen that I got on for credibility. And we got on a phone with the UAE and the officials there and the Royal Family and presented the plan and they listened. And at the end, they said, not only will we support you to bring them here and give you a humanitarian center, we're gonna give you a C-17 plane and pilots, let's help. You've gotta be shitting me. Yeah. That plane was a UAE plane.

The main plane that we had was UAE-2 and we got two. And so now we have a ability to go rescue people. We have a place to bring them. We have aircraft to do it, but we knew the problem was going to be bigger. And so we need it. We, this is not going to cost thousands of dollars. It costs millions of dollars to be able to pull something like this off.

We don't have time to ramp up for this. This is happening like now. And, and, and, and I'm going to need more aircraft. And those aircraft, by the way, are like 500 to $800,000 of flight. So I'm like, now how do I solve aircraft, by the way, are like 500 to $800,000 a flight. So I'm like, now how do I solve this problem? And all this happened in three days, by the way.

I get a random call from someone I've known for a while, Glenn Beck. He had heard I was getting involved, and so Glenn called me, and Glenn said, Chad, I want to do something. I didn't know what to do. I just felt like it was wrong, what was happening. I got on the radio to raise money, and I thought I'd raise a few thousand dollars.

It's like I already had $21 million come in. Those of you that have been around SRS for a while know that we take mental health very seriously here. So seriously that in almost every episode, you'll find a segment where we discuss how to improve your mental health. And part of improving your mental health. And part of improving your mental health is keeping your mind sharp. And part of keeping your mind sharp is giving it the fuel that it needs to balance energy, focus, cognition, and just regenerating your brain. That triggered me to go on a journey to find the supplement that supports brain health

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Just wanna say thank you guys. You are our top supporters and you're what makes this show actually happen. If you're not on Vigilance League Patreon, I wanna tell you a little bit about what's going on in there. So we do a little bit of everything. There's plenty of behind the scenes content from the actual Sean Ryan show.

On top of that, basically what I do is I take a lot of the questions that I get from you guys or the patrons and then I turn them into videos. So we get right now there's a lot of concern about self-defense, home defense, crimes on the rise all throughout the country, actually all throughout the world. And so we talk about everything from how to prep your home, how to clear your home, how to get familiar with a firearm, both rifle and pistol. For beginners and advanced, we talk about mindset,

we talk about defensive driving. We have an end of the month live chat that I'm on at the end of every month where we can talk about whatever topics you guys have it's actually done on zoom You might enjoy it check it out And if zoom's not your thing or you don't like live chats Like I said, there's a library of well over a hundred videos on

Where to start with prepping all the firearm stuff pretty much anything you can think of It's on there. So anyways go to www.patreon.com slash Vigilance Elite or just go in the link in the description, it'll take you right there. And if you don't want to and you just want to continue to watch the show, that's fine too. I appreciate it either way. Love you all. Let's get back to the show. Thank you

Like what do I do with it ultimately had over 40 million dollars come in I said we need to start chartering planes and so mercury wants his organization. They partnered with us And mighty oaks. They've been a great partner mighty oaks and then a Rudy Attala started working aircraft for us And and so that was a lot of a lot of the other NGOs and veterans are working and Mighty Oaks and a guy named Rudy Attala started working aircraft for us. And so that was a lot of the other NGOs and veterans that were working, that were getting people in aircraft were all in those aircrafts like coordinating through us to get on those aircraft. And so, man, everything happened so fast.

But when I say like a series of miracles happen, none of those things independently are possible and they all had to happen in the right sequence. And that allowed us the ability to belt to logistically pull this off. And we got in the UAE and we're in the UAE in Abu Dhabi at the Humanitarian Center running operations. We have a team back in Washington DC taking people that are sending information.

People are coming in, help us get out. Veterans are hearing about it. So veterans are sending their interpreters. We're telling them, hey, this is the paperwork we need. And they're getting us the right paperwork on the ground. We're doing the bona fides and making sure there's the right people. Our ground team on the ground at HKIA,

Sean Gabler, Tim Kennedy, Dave Johnson, SeaSpray on the ground. SeaSpray and Sean Gabler, like the main like heroes of this thing. They're underground going outside the wire. Like literally, like from the guys in Abu Dhabi to the ground force, to the guy, if anyone stopped for five minutes,

like you were literally trading five minutes sleep for someone's life. Like that's how fast everything was happening. Like Sea Spray, he lost 37 pounds in 10 days. He just would not stop. And, you know, talking about the guy, like, you know, I told you a little bit yesterday, I can't say in details, but traded his career that he worked his whole life for

to stay on the ground and help those people that he didn't know himself. Like the level of desperation, like people seeing airplanes, people falling off airplanes, the best description I have is, is imagine a,000 people swarming a gate to get in, that kind of chaos. Women get trampled to death.

Not all Afghans are good, not all Arabis anywhere is good. So you got the men pushing to the front. It's just chaos. Taliban are in there shooting people. It's total chaos. And women are so desperate that their babies won't grow up to be sex slaves as little girls

or Taliban as little boys. And they take their baby, kissing it by, knowing they're never gonna see it again, put it in a crowd of 10,000 people, crowd surf it like a beach ball to the wall. And then someone grabs that baby and throws it as hard and as high as they can, hoping a US service member catches it on the other side to the wall. And then someone grabs that baby and throws it as hard and as high as they can, hoping a US service member catches it

on the other side of that wall. What they didn't know was on the other side of that wire was six feet high and about 20 feet deep of Constantine razor wire. My buddy Joe counted six babies that were blood to death in that wire. That was the level of desperation on the ground there. And we just kept pushing to get as many people as we could. And then at day 10,

we didn't realize at the time, we had got 12,000 people out by day 10, and a suicide bomber hit Abbey Gate. 13 of our service members were killed. And the US military was forced to weld the gate shut and the ground evacuations there were over. I remember when that happened, Tim and Seaspring were just at the Abbey gate and we thought, and then we got a thumbs up, they were good. But at that time, when that ends at HKAIA, we, you know, when that ends at HKIA, I thought, man, like, the US military is being forced to leave, but, hey, we don't have to. And my big thing at that time,

you know, because Zizari out, his wife and kids are out, but at that time, like, the White House is saying, there's a hundred Americans left out there. And I knew, anybody on the ground knew, there was thousands of Americans still out there. In fact, the White House before had said there were 16,000 Americans there, which they were guesstimating because no one registers with the State Department. They were saying 16,000, but we got 6,000 out. So I'm not that great at math, but

6,000 minus 16,000 isn't 100. But the truth is, even if they were 10,000 or 100, you don't leave one American behind, like ever, anywhere. This America does. Yeah, not me. And not where we came from, right? Like, I mean, man. I can't believe how much the country's changed, Jed. Where I come from,

they're like, we'll scorch the earth and we'll get an American. Yeah. Like, you know, like, if there's an American somewhere, right? You trade, you know, you like this American somewhere Right, you know like a team run like hey, we're gonna lose we could probably lose somebody Yeah, let's go get him. Like that's the promise that every American should have That was another time. Yeah

What meaning the president had got on the got on television and said that right before we will not leave an American behind well had that change so fast? So I don't know how those numbers were okay and a hundred would be acceptable, but we knew there were thousands. And by the way, it came out later in the Senate hearings, there was thousands of Americans we left behind.

And that's not to mention our allies, right? How do we ever defend our position in the world again when we come into a place and say, hey, we're gonna be in this region and we need wartime allies. We're gonna do you right. No, you won't. Your word means nothing.

Like you did right for the people in Afghanistan that you fought beside for 20 years. So we chose to stay. And everything shifted to a place called Mazza Sharif. We led a coalition there, amazing organizations, Task Force Argo, Scott Mann, Pineapple Express guys, like everybody was participating

and helping to get people out. And we ended up getting another, I think total on it, coalition got like another 5,000 people out. That's what, you know, total number of 17,000 people. But when that was over, we had heard that the resistance force, my Masoud's son was leading a resistance force and they were moving all the women and children to a place called the Panjshir Valley.

And they went to cross them over into the country of Tajikistan. And when I heard that, I was very familiar with that region. I operated in a region before, mountain peaks, like 20,000 foot peaks. You might make it through a valley and get to the Panjshir River, which is the border, and it might be a thousand foot cliff. If you make it in a river, it's category five rapids, ice melt water. Afghan women, by the way, don't swim. They're not going out in the bikinis on the weekends, and usually they're pregnant or have a kid. So, geographically, to belt across that river would be like impossibility for Afghan women.

And then in addition to that, the Tajik border guard was there. The Taliban saturated there to prevent that, exactly that. And then the Russian military was there in force. That wasn't on the news. The Chinese military was there. Chinese special operations was on that border. So what I knew we had to, that was the best thing we could provide

was to go on the other side of the river, come into Afghanistan and help provide information of where to cross and how to cross. And in our world, that's called fording reps. Fording rep is telling people how to cross. The information needed to cross a river. And so there's a guy named Dennis Price, who's a Staff Sergeant in Marine Corps,

a force recon sniper, and he really wanted to be involved. And he was really bugging me to be involved. And I felt like he had the right skill sets to do it. And so, but the problem was he was still in the reserves. And cause he had just switched from active duty to reserves. And I'm like, man, you're not gonna be able to go cause you're in the Marine Corps still. And so I called this commander.

I know his commander well, Lieutenant Colonel Tommy Waller. He was commander of third force recon company. And I was like, hey sir, like I got this Marine, Forrest Recon team leader of the year, like he's a stud, like he really wants to get involved in help, what's the chance that you cut him loose? He's like, impossible, like he's,

Marine Corps is not allowed to send anybody. So like, I kind of went in a little bit longer and he's like, you know what, just put it in writing. So I did and he approved it. God bless him, he approved it. Oh shit. So Dennis Price came with me to just stand fact He's he's he got he's been nominated and he's gonna get the marine Navy Marine Corps medal, which is the highest non-combat

award for military service and for this so Dennis Dennis price and I fly into Tajikistan and and we go by 12 hours through the Tajikistan mountains and get on that border. And for 10 days, we did about 97 miles of border reconnaissance, route reps, lots of spot reports.

I had to border a deal with our intelligence agency to say, hey, I need imagery on that river. Because they wanted spot reports of the Russians and Chinese there. And I'm like, I'll imagery on that river. Because they wanted spot reports of the Russians and Chinese there. And I'm like, I'll give you spot reports, but I want something in return, I want imagery. And so we were able to get some imagery of, you know, where that river and get some good real time imagery

of where the Taliban checkpoints were and stuff like that. So we had that going into it and able to trade that information back to you know to our intelligence agencies and and then provide it to other NGOs and and to the to the resistance force that were trying to get their women and children out. And and so for over those ten days we we every night we went we we identify a spot that we thought was a good crossing and and when under darkness, Dennis and I would swim across the Panjari River in Afghanistan

and do a fording rep, figure out how deep the river is, how fast the water is, how cold it is, how wide it is. Where's the covering consumer on both sides? What do the entry points look like? Where are all the bad guys? What's the routes to and from? And where are the anchor are for rope bridges. Then if we identified that as a crossable place, then we'd stage the right equipment

for them and give a 10-point, 10-degree grid coordinates of where that equipment was staged with instructions out across. We did that every night for 10 days. It's close. Like sometimes, I mean, we've had some... It's kind of outlined in the book Saving the Disease, we had some very close proximity within 30 yards of the Taliban at one point.

And it was a pretty, the buildup to doing that was, The buildup to doing that was, I had to really deal with Afghanistan from the first time in dealing with that. Go and get a Zs. By the way, who actually grabbed a Zs was a PJ unit. So we were able to, we were walking, it took a Zs like eight attempts

and you gotta hear from from Aziz side of story of him getting to the airport and his personal story with all this. His perspective of story is amazing. But when we had got Aziz to the gate, Sean gave Lourdes another side of the airport. Aziz went to the wrong side and he was not gonna be able to make it.

His wife was bleeding. She had a ruptured appendix surgery. The kids were scared to death because they were getting shot at. And so we had a PJ unit that was working with us and went outside the wire and got him in through the gate. And so getting a Zs was like one thing, but staying there was something else on me personally

and especially on my wife. Because my original intent was just to get a Zs, his wife and kids. This all kind of grew and developed and as God kept opening doors, I'm like, man, God's opening these doors, creating this opportunity. I got to keep helping. I got to keep helping. And it just kept growing and kept growing. And then it can point to where we're going, we're just moving forward. And we're going to cross that river. And my wife's driving me to the airport for Dennis and I to go to Tajikistan. And she's like, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this?

You got a Zs, you got his wife and six kids, like you guys got 17,000 people out now, like what are you trying to prove? And she was scared. What do you, and why are you doing this? And I'm like, if God's opening these doors, we have to keep helping. And she just couldn't understand that.

And I said this, and this is the best way I know to explain, what if it was us? What if it was our sons that would be forced into madrasas to become Taliban? What if it was our daughter Haley that'd be raped and sexually enslaved the rest of her life? They'd already start taking girls to do that at nine years old to be sex slaves the rest of their life.

20 million women and little girls left in Afghanistan to be subjected to that. Like, what if it was us? Wouldn't we be praying that someone somewhere would come help us? I know I would be. Like somewhere, there's a dad, there's a mom, there's a little girl praying that we're gonna come.

As long as God opens these doors, we're gonna walk through them. And if the door gets shut, and it feels like I'm making it happen for my own pride or ego, or my own desire to do something, then I'll stop. And she actually had that moment, she's like, you know what, like with that,

she's like, you need to go. And I got on a plane and because of what she was saying, I remember flying and I had this fear come over me and anybody that's dealt with anything like that knows when fear starts creeping in, if you let it take root, it'll destroy you. And I started, the fear was, what if I get out there in those mountains

and I have a panic attack again? And Dennis is out there with, what if I have a stroke, like, right, because I've been in ER with blood pressure, 200 over 130, than when I was having those panic attacks. What if Dennis' wife and four little kids at home, like I started thinking that. And then when that fear came in, that pillar, right? That pillar, that fourth pillar, I said, man,

I've been for 12 years or at the time 10 years, I've been going basically around the world, speaking to hundreds, thousands of troops, selling on this story that with the four pillars, you have all four of those pillars, mind, body, spirit, social, that you're about to endure anything. And I talk about a time when I was in Afghanistan, I had just the mind, the body, and the social,

I didn't have the spirit and it almost cost me everything. But now I've had the fourth pillar, right? I could do it. And I'm like, now here's my chance to test it. And my mind's not quite where it used to be. My body certainly isn't. I tore my freaking muscle off the bone right before this operation, by the way.

My longest muscle off the pelvic bone. So I'm going out there injured. Mine's not there, body's not where it used to be. Socially, I love Dennis, but he's not J Sock. But the only pillar I do have is that spiritual pillar. And in that moment, I just prayed in that fight. I'm like, God, if you're burdened on my heart, like you're burdened on my heart to do this,

I feel called by you to do this. If you want me to be here to help these women and little girls, like you need to take away this anxiety. I need to be able to do this without fear, without hesitation. I need to be able to be focused and do this. I'm not gonna sleep while I'm there. I need you to give me energy, keep us safe.

And when I prayed that, like I just said, just tremendous peace come over me. And I told Dennis in that moment, like we landed, and I told Dennis what had happened. I wanted to share with someone. He's like, bro, I'm dealing with the same thing. Like, let's pray. And we prayed together.

And we got on that plane and we flew there. And then there was one moment we were gonna swim across and I know there's arm track quarterbacks everywhere, so somebody listen to us and probably tell us we were stupid for doing that, because I've heard it all before. But we were about to swim across and there was a point in the river,

like when you're doing a four rep, it has to be that goalie lock spot because the road bridge has to be close enough for the road bridge to work. If it's too far, right, then it's too far. If it's too far for the road bridge, if it's too narrow, the current's too strong, it has to be at goal. So this was like the perfect spot, perfect covering,

consuming on both sides, there was like a little mud wall, and there was a tree line, I mean this spot's perfect. But right now in this moment, there's three Taliban on this roof, about 100 yards from that crossing. To the left, to the right on this side of the river, there's a Chinese BMP with a PKM, heavy machine gun on the roof, and a spotlight on this side of the river, there's a Chinese BMP with a PKM, heavy machine gun on the roof, and a spotlight for people swimming across the river.

We have to get this information now, and when that BMP moves and the Taliban aren't there, this can be the perfect spot to cross. And so we're gonna have to swim between these people. And that was the only time during that whole week that I felt that fear creeping back up. And I walked off by myself, and I stood on the bank of the river

and I didn't have my Bible because you don't wanna bring a Bible obviously at that point in the world. I had a burner phone and so my Bible verses that I have this little verses on there. And so I went to memory and I also always tell people like Victor Franco talks about in the book, I said earlier, you gotta memorize God's word

because if it's in your heart and it's in your mind, you're a soul, then nothing can take it away from you, right, because you control that. And I recite it, Psalm 23. Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides quiet waters. He refreshes my soul.

He guides me in the right path for his name's sake. And even though I walk through a darkest valley, I will fear no evil, because he is with me. His rod and his staff, they comfort me. And he prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies, and he anoints my head with oil, and my cup overflows. And surely his goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

And one of my favorite parts of that verse is the very first words, like, the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. I don't need anything else, right? If he's my shepherd, I don't need anything else. And that gave me this tremendous peace and Dennis and I, we swam across the river that night in our underwear, clothes and rafting bags and did that route, and that ended up being,

from what I know, best of my knowledge, the route that ended up being the most fruitful. Damn, damn, man. And so that's why I went out, that pillager resiliency to me, four days after I came out of that water, I went straight to a speaking event at Marine Corps boot camp San Diego and gave that same speech that I gave all those times before. And I felt like this isn't theory anymore.

I'm telling you something that I know. I just came out of that river a few days ago and I'm sitting there in Marine Corps boot camp like I feel just fine. I'm fine right now. I'm not shaking up. Like I'm here telling you something I believe that's real. I've got you, yeah. The Lord is your shepherd, you lack nothing.

Good for you, man. Yeah. Wow. You did what no government could do Your team yeah, you guys as a collective I mean, you know, it's you know what you saved so many lives Well, what did it feel like when it? You saw Aziz here in the US and you guys reconnected Well, I first saw him in Abu Dhabi.

I came back from that. I came back from, it was a time in between. I went there, Nick Pommaschano was with me and I went to see his, we coordinated it. Knocked his door, he answered the door and we just grabbed each other and hugged each other. He's a big old dude. And we just both start crying.

And then his son, Mash Kor, who calls me Uncle Chad, we've been teaching each other English over the phone for a while. And he comes and he's like, Uncle Chad, and he wraps his arms around me, his legs around me, gives me a big like monkey hug, and puts berries in his face in my neck. And man, I just started crying more

and the other kids came hug me. And then Hatra stood in the backside of the room. And here's the interesting part about that. When back in time, when I'm in Afghanistan, Aziz sees my wife on WhatsApp, Yahoo Messenger, and which was a big deal for Afghan to see someone else's wife. To him, it was a big deal for Afghan to see someone else's wife. To him, it was a big deal.

He felt very thankful and privileged. And she just said in passing, like, hey, take care of my husband. And he's like, oh, like that's, I have to protect your husband now. He took that very seriously. And he felt indebted for me to see his wife. And which is, if you know anything about Afghan culture,

like not only, not only any Afghan, especially a foreigner, especially like an infidel, right, to see your wife. He wanted me to see his wife. So it was like a big deal, like orchestrated this. He's nervous, I'm nervous. She's at the end of the hall in a bedroom. She's got a, like not a burqa on, but like her face is covered, she's got her eyes showing.

And so she pops out and I see her and she's gone. And everybody's nervous and I'm like, she's gone. And everybody's nervous. And I'm like, oh my, I'm like super uncomfortable. I'm like, I just committed a lot, like a crime. Like, and that's how I first met her. And then it was super funny. So over the years I've seen her more and more and then she like sneak out, making some food

and I'd see her and her face and she like, you could tell like, let you see her face full of it and cover it up. Like she was, it was just pushing the limits. So now I come there and I'm in Abu Dhabi, give Aziza a hug, his kids are there. And she's in the other side of the room in the back corner, stays in that back corner, her face is uncovered.

And she's huge smile. And she puts her hand over her heart and says, Tasha Kerr, which is thank you. And I say, Tasha Kerr Nest, which is you're welcome. And she holds her hand over her heart for a long extended time. And that was like, even though all those years, that was the closest we ever been.

Fast forward, they finally land in Texas. I'm coming back from Ukraine, I rushed back from Ukraine. I almost didn't, I did almost like a week there without a shower. And I'm like, I'm not gonna have a shower, but time to get a shower to make my flight. And everybody's gonna have to smell me the way home. But I had enough time, I got didn't, I did almost like a week there without a shower. And I'm like, I'm not gonna have a shower, but time to get a shower to make my flight. And everybody's gonna have to smell me the way home. But I had to, I didn't have enough time.

I got a shower, flew back to see Aziz and them because they had just got back. My staff picked them up in the airport, intercepted them from USCIS so they wouldn't get stuck in that freaking horrible process. They had my staff pick them up, took custody of them, brought them to my house, and sort of wait until my driver went to come back

from Ukraine. And Aziz comes out and hugs me in little mosh cars running through my yard with my Vichla dog playing in the front yard of Texas home. It was so cool to see that. And Hotra comes up and throws her arms around me and gives me a giant Texas hug and says, thank you, brother. Like, man, that's That's the full, and man, she's so fun. Like this woman's been caged up her whole life.

I was telling her, she's like, I want to ride a roller coaster. Took her to New York, New York, we're gonna roller coaster her hands up. She's like, wants to do zip lines and everything. She just wants to enjoy America and freedom. She's so cool. Yeah. Man, I loved her on that.

Yeah, yeah. Aziz is working for Mighty Oaks. He's on our international team. We, one of the things that, so you said earlier, right? We did what the American government wouldn't do. Yes, and when the governments of the world failed, especially later on, good people, good patriots stood up and did the right thing.

And I was upset at first. I remember sitting in a meeting, the Minister of Interior for UAE, all these lawyers, all these generals, I'm like super like, I'm very patriotic and proud, and I'm having to apologize for our country. I'm having to thank them for helping me get Americans out. And Ken Isaac from Samaritan's Purse told me, you know what? Like, yeah, our government did this, but look who's here doing it right. Like, this is this, our government did this,

but Americans are doing it or doing the right thing in spite of our government. And I was like, you know what? I was embarrassed about government, but I've never been more proud to be an American in that moment to see Americans coming up and doing the right thing in spite of our government. It was really like a kind of paradox thing for me to see that. Yeah. Yeah.

Man. And oh yeah, so I wanted to say that one of the other faults of our government and the SIVs that we did get here, Special Immigrant Bases like Aziza did get here, that Special Immigrant Bs is like, as easy as dig it here. You got to think these, you did 20 deployments. I did eight deployments like my, Ian did, my buddy Ian at works from IDEO,

16 deployments at Delta fours, like all these deployments with, but the Afghans, like they didn't do deployments. They did 20 years straight award. They did one deployment. One deployment, yeah. It was 20 years long. In their backyard, right? One of the most disgusting things Joe Biden said 20 years straight award. They did one deployment. One deployment, yeah. It was 20 years long.

In their backyard, right? One of the most disgusting things Joe Biden said was when he said, if they can't fight for their country, why should we be there fighting for them? 60,000 of them died fighting for their country. 60,000 of them died fighting for their country. And so when they come here, they don't have a VA. They can't go to the VA.

Who's gonna help them deal with PTSD, combat trauma? Not to mention the withdrawal, losing their home, losing everything, and not have to start a new life and a new culture. There's nothing for them. And so when we recognize that at Mighty Elks, we said, you know what? No one's going to fill that gap.

And that amazing donor step in and support this big time. We're going to start an SIV program. So Aziz, for the last year, helped build the SIV program. And so we just ran our first program. We took 17 double zero CIA interpreters through our program. All but one, 17 Muslims, one Christian, all went through our Christian Mighty Oaks program.

And it was phenomenal results. And they're all sending, when they went back, they sent tons of other people. So we got all kind of, we had a huge demand now for, and we're gonna keep serving those guys and loving those guys. They can't go to the VA. We're gonna have a place for them to help integrate them

the right way in America. Damn, Chad. Yeah. You're an amazing human, brother. I mean, I'm super big. I mean, you, the people working with you, like everybody that's put this together. I wish there were more people like you in this world.

I mean, I feel the same for you, man, as especially with the, you know, everything you're doing with this platform. And in his man, I tell you with that, though, my son Hunter, who's on an international program, you know, he's Afghanistan's close to his heart as a Afghan veteran, Aziz, our team there, man, they just knocked out of the park with this. They work so hard to build that program. Yeah. Yeah. As a quote, Mother Teresa said, God will never give you more to get handle. I just wish she didn't trust me so much.

That's that's been the last few years of my life. but she didn't trust me so much. That's been the last few years of my life. Well, Chad, I want to sit here and dwell on that and talk about all the positivity, but we're running out of time and I want to get to your next book, which is coming out, A Mission Without Borders, some of the stuff you guys are doing over in Ukraine,

especially the rescue mission. I want to start off with that. So first of all, this is the first time I'm mentioning this book. So I thank you for allowing me to. It's a, we're, you know, pre-sales on books or everything. If you can't pre-sell a book, you're not gonna sell opening day.

So pre-selling books are important to the success of a book. And why I care about the success of any of my books is because it's tied directly to our mission and what we do. This book, I even did an author's note because it's about Ukraine and a lot of Americans, myself included, are frustrated with Ukraine. Hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars are going to Ukraine in a prolonged war that could be ended in a week if we had the right leadership in our White House. Meanwhile, our southern border and all the things that we have in our country.

It's a disaster. How does this even get cleaned up? I don't know if you can. Eventually, the herd's going to be thinned. That's how it gets cleaned up. Yeah. Yeah, I do not support that money being sent there. Not a...

It's corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine's been corrupt for a long time, but so has Washington, DC. A lot of the corruption in Ukraine is directly tied to Washington, DC. We said earlier, I'm not going to ever let politics get in the way of my compassion and heart for people. I went into Ukraine. Sea Spray was in Ukraine a few days before because we knew it was going to happen. When the Russians came across, Sea Spray was always there. I went there to meet him there.

Initially, we went there not in the capacity of what Mighty Oaks does, we went there to help get Americans out because our White House had pulled our embassy, pulled our troops out, which green lighted the Russians across, by the way, in my opinion. And so we were there to help move Americans that were stuck there out. And that's what we did.

And I get into all the different things that we'd done, but one was the rescue of Benjamin Hall. But, and I rescue of Benjamin Hall. And I'll share that story. But when I started this, Hunter, my oldest son, had really, was really a little sour with me because he wanted to be more on the ground involved in Afghanistan evacuations. When he first wanted to come to Abu Dhabi with me,

took him to Abu Dhabi with me, he ran the operation center there. He was like, I want to go there. I'm like, no way I'm taking you. You're my son. He's like, I'm an Afghanistan veteran. I had an interpreter. It's important to me too. And I'm like, okay, well, I'll keep you where it's safe. And then he wants to come to Ukraine with me. And I'm like, not happening. Right. And why am I doing that? Because I'm his dad and I love him and I want to protect him and I care about him. And I fear for a man when he went to Afghanistan in 2018 and deployed to Afghanistan, I knew he was getting, he wasn't going as a support and advisory role. He's getting embedded with the Georgian infantry. Like he's going to see

combat and he did kinetic combat. And he shot a Ved. And then his old Sergeant Major was, oh, recon with me. So they like write me bragging, like, your son just shot a V-Bed. And I'm like, I'd rather not know that. Like, I appreciate that. I'm proud of him, but I appreciate not knowing that. Like, so like, and you know, he's just,

he's very much like me and he wants to go out there and get after it. So I'm like, I've got to put the reins on him. And so all that really is, is fear. I mean, when he was in Afghanistan, that's my only time I ever had a panic attack again, outside of coming home and resurface again, because, but look, look, I got amazing people around me at mighty Oaks. I leaned on them and, and, and I addressed it and, and I use the same thing.

I, I'm not ashamed to say that either as As I found out of an organization that runs that, I struggled again. Why? My son's in combat and I'm worried he's gonna die. Like I've been buried for 15 friends from there. Something would probably be wrong with me if it didn't bother me. But I just leaned into what we do at Mighty Oaks and just use the support I have

and it was snapping me back out of it. But there was this realization that I had during that time that my friends mentored me to is like, hey, you love Hunter, but as much as you love Hunter, God loves him more. And yeah, as a dad, you could protect Hunter, but God can protect him more. And Hunter could die driving to the grocery store,

or he could die doing what God burdens is hard to do in Afghanistan. And I had to really accept that as a father, but I was still in the fence about it He could die doing what God burdens is hard to do in Afghanistan. I had to really accept that as a father. I was still in offense about it when things had control over being the running Mighty Oaks Foundation. I'm like, I'm going to keep you safe because it's my job. I wasn't letting him come to Ukraine.

We ended up building this network, this communication network, all Ukraine, which ended up being pretty profound. We are able to connect all the NGOs and everybody through the building this communications network because we were like, what's going to happen? How can Russia really take them out? If they knock out the communication network, none of these NGOs could get fuel, they get food, they can move people. So we need to build a clandestine communication network.

So we built that right out of the gate. We got thousands of comms packages all over Ukraine developed so people could communicate. I needed someone that knew comms equipment to build to go around the US and procure that equipment because you can't go buy 200 iridium sat phones. Now you got to go around and get them, especially when everybody's buying them up. I tasked Hunter out to do that. He showed up in Ukraine with I think 21 of those big duffel bags. He got all the equipment, went out on a country ball,

all that equipment, flew that stuff there himself, gets there, and all that equipment's set there. And I'm like, all right, thanks, go home. And then C-Spray's like, you gonna set this stuff up? Like, I'm not setting this stuff up. So Hunter's like, I'll set it up. So he works his way into staying and setting all that comms equipment up.

And then now he's building our talk. Got the flat screens. You could track all this equipment. Now I could watch all this equipment real time going to Ukraine as we're distributing it. We could see, hey, somebody needs to be moved here. Now I don't have to go get that person. They got somebody else right here, right there.

I'll be damned. Just like his old man, huh? The work ethic. Yeah, he's just out there. He's got him in there. He's grinding, yeah, he's just grinding, man. He's just grinding it out. And so he sprays like,

you know you can't send him home, we need him now. I'm like, God dang it. But we're in Poland, right? So I'm like, we're good, we're in Poland. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, huh, Chad? Yeah, yeah, he's like a little mini me. He looks like a mini me. You mentioned. That's how you got into all these places was the work ethic.

It's true. It is. It is. He just earned it. He earned his right to stay there. And then the call comes in for Benjamin Hall. I know you were interested in. When the US government can't do, can't or won't do something, they could use surrogates. A surrogate would be someone outside the government, meaning not paid. So there's no attribution of the US government and they can do it.

And there's patrons all around the world that do, use their companies, use their other things. The nonprofit world, if you think of government organizations, the government institutions, and then you have NGOs. I'm not telling you anything that's a secret here. Government organizations, NGOs, non-government organizations, non-profits do things outside the government. The government could at any time request an NGO to do something as a surrogate for them.

And it happens all the time, especially the intelligence agencies do it all the time. And so as we're there, you have relationships and friendships and people know you. And so as we're there setting up, we had got a request from a special operations liaison officer of the central intelligence agency to go get Benjamin Hall. At the same time, simultaneously, we had a call from the Pentagon, from Fox News correspondent, because Benjamin Hall worked for Fox News. And that request was to go get Benjamin Hall. For those that don't know, Benjamin Hall is Fox News correspondent. He was in Kiev at the time of the heavy attack. And so when Kiev was under a

heavy attack, his vehicle got hit, whether it's intentional a heavy attack his vehicle got hit. Whether it's intentional or not his vehicle got hit and the two Ukrainians in a vehicle with him were disintegrated. His combat correspondent Sasha lost everything. The only thing remaining of her was her arm. Pierre, his 25 year Fox court cameraman, amazing guy, covered a lot in Afghanistan, just one of the, everybody talks about him,

talks about an incredible human being. He was killed instantly and Benjamin Hall was catastrophically wounded. Lost his, lost the foot, lost a leg, should have kept his hand, but it's pretty bad, lost an eye. They didn't think he was gonna make it. Brain, traumatic a leg, kept his hand but it's pretty bad, lost an eye. They didn't think he was going to make it. Brain, traumatic brain injury. He was blown up really bad. Ukrainian troops saw him. They took him to a military hospital. So the call was, I remember we were in the

living room. There was nine of us in the living room. And the sea sprays on the phone and we see him start to write, like, everybody be quiet, something serious is going on. Everybody knows right away, like everybody's laughing, it's goofing off, but something serious is going on and sea spray starts writing stuff down. He hangs up the phone and he's like, hey, Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, been catastrophically wounded. He's got a wife, two little girls at home. US military's not gonna go get him, the agency not going to go get him. The agency's not going to go get him.

If we don't go get him right now, he's going to die. Who's in? Nine people in that room. Eight former military guys, one professional baseball player just happened to be in the room at the time, Adam LaRouche. And everybody was like, let's go get him. Not one person hesitated, including my son. Let's go get him. And you know, I always talk about these things being miracles, but you can't argue and God does something to set something up.

An hour before that phone call, we had just got two ambulances, yellow EMT vest, badges made, and paperwork to make us look like EMTs because we knew that was the only way to pass through checkpoints at night, an hour before that call. If we wouldn't have had those assets in place, we were building those assets in place to both have access, you know, access and placement. If we didn't have those assets in place at that time of that call, we wouldn't have been able to do it. An hour before that call, Dakota Myers was there.

Radek, Dr. Radek, like all these guys, like the bright, we had Dr. Radek, who's a surgeon, the trauma surgeon who ran a, ran a, I think he was a JMAMO unit, like all these, everything was in the right place to be able to pull a trigger and just say, grab your bags, let's go. And I believe God orchestrated that. Within about 30 minutes, we got in the vehicles and loading up. And as we were loading up, I seen Hunter throw his bag in the back of an ambulance to go. And SeaSpray looks at me and goes, is Hunter coming? And I'm like, if you say he's coming, I'm not going to make the decision.

If you say he's coming, he's coming. I was going to relinquish that. Seaspray said, man, I need somebody to run the talk. Sean's going to stay back and run the talk. The solo from the J-se- this solo guy is going to come, sit in the talk, but I need Hunter here because he knows how all this stuff works. And I'm like, if I tell him he's gonna think I'm holding him back, he's like, I'll tell him.

And so Siege Bray told him he had to stay back. And I could tell he was just like, hey, he said, where you need me, that's where I'm gonna be, but he wanted to come. And it tore my heart out to see him. I know he wanted to be there. And we drove, we got in the vehicles, we drove across. A vehicle, B vehicle, C spray was leading one vehicle,

I was leading another. Me, Adam, and Dakota was one. We stopped outside the city as a kind of backup element, QRF backup element, C spray and then went in the city, grabbed Benjamin Hall. I can't say exactly how it all happened because there's some things that I don't think I'm, I think I'd probably get in trouble for saying,

but got him in the vehicle and got him eventually. I mean, he was, his feet were gone. He's striding all through his throat. His brains, they have a tube in his brain. His hands blown off, not blown off, but pretty bad. And he's like, Dr. Attucks, like he's, we have to move him. And we knew in that moment, like if we didn't move him then,

like he was going to die. We knew in that moment, if we didn't move him then, he was going to die. And C-Spray and him had to move him out of the hospital and the hospital was like, hey, we can only release him. So they just stole him. Just stole him at the hospital. Cause they were like arguing, you guys doctors, who are you guys? And we're just like, just took him out.

And so got him across the border and got him across the border. The 82nd Airborne was waiting in a helicopter, a sea spray and bow, loaded him on the helicopter and then flew him to Aeromedical C-130. Got him on the Aeromedical C-130 and flew him to launch to Germany and eventually to the Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas,

where he recovered. The next day we were asked to go get the body of Pierre. And I was like, I'll make the call, like no, we're not gonna go get a body. Kiev's still like getting rocketed, it's under heavy attack. The Russians trying to, they've circled the city, they were trying to close in on it.

We're not gonna go. And I mean, we've been in other cities since then, but we're not gonna go in just for a body. And then his wife, Michelle showed up and was like, I want my son, I want my husband. And we were like, yes ma'am. And we went in and I actually drove, I actually drove Pierre's body out in a hearse.

He was in a hearse. He was in a hearse and the guy was trying to use the hearse to get out of. He's like, hey, I need to drive him out of my hearse. And I'm like, hey, we're gonna buy your hearse from you. And he's like, no, I'm not selling my hearse. And I'm like, yeah, you don't understand either. You're selling your hearse, we're gonna steal your hearse. We're taking this.

We didn't wanna remove that casket from the hearse and put them on a, I'm like, hey, get on the phone, Fox News, make the deal of your life. They're gonna pay you for whatever you want for this car. And they'll transfer your money. And we got that hearse. But I remember like going in the back and we had to open it and verify it was his body.

And at this moment, he's from Ireland, and they had an Irish flag. And they had really set him up, dignified, but they had an Irish flag in the back. And I remember it made me realize, our guys, when they come home, and how on the casket we put the blue at the head, and the stripes go down to the feet. And so I quickly Googled, how's the Irish flag go? It's the green orange of the head. And so I quickly Googled like, how's the Irish flag go? You know, green, it's a green orange of the head. And so I looked it up, I Googled real quick and I started putting it over

and I actually got like really frantic and I was trying to tape it on and Sea Spirit came back and grabbed my hand. He's like, you all right, brother? And I'm like, yeah, I just want to do this right, man. We were taking him to his wife and we took our time, we put the flag on and I drove the Hurst and Sea Spirit were in front of me and I ambalanced and we got him across the border and delivered him to his wife in a dignified way.

And since then we've gotten some other bodies. Dan Swift, the Navy SEAL, his mother reached out and the US State Department told her, treated her terribly, treated her terribly. Some conflict with his service and it's like, who cares? He's a Navy SEAL that is there trying to help people. We're going to get him out and get him home to his mom and his kids. And so we got his body out and then we've gotten to do so many amazing things and our team's been all over. I mean, but through that process,

I was kind of fast forwarding to this. There was a moment where things progressed and Hunter eventually got to come across the border into Ukraine. He and I went and I was like, it's a pretty safe kind of trip. And I took him, just me and him, and I watched him, his composure. I watched that hand throw down. I'm like, it's a pretty safe kind of trip. And I took him, just me and him, and I watched him, his composure.

I watched that hand throw down. I'm like, you know what? God's done just called me to do these things. Like, he's called other people to include Hunter. And if God has a calling on Hunter's heart to do these things, who am I to keep him from doing these things, right? I don't want to spend my whole life

keeping him from doing the things that God's called him to do. I wouldn't want anybody doing that to me. And so I had to relinquish, but I had to go back to the promise in 2018 to realize God loves him more than I can. God could protect him better than I can. And God has a call in his life too.

And I made the decision to relinquish that as hard as it was as a dad to do that and let him kind of run. And man, we got asked to go to a place called Izum, And we got asked to go to a place called Izum, Seaspray and I, Izum, Ukraine. And the Russians had occupied Izum for about six months. And the Ukrainians were claiming that they had executed about 1,400 women and children and put them in a mass grave. And the agency was worried that that was propaganda, that they were just using it for propaganda to get more money. We were asked by the solo, hey, will you make sure

that this is for real? Make sure this is real. In that same area, there's a Marine that was fighting for the Ukraine. He got shot in the stomach and we had, we heard that he was captured and we were potentially could get him. So we mean, me and C-Spray started heading that area to do those two things. The Marine went MIA, we couldn't find him. We couldn't find out where he went.

And then Hunter at the same time went to a place called Bakmut. Bakmut probably since the invasion is every minute on the minute since the invasion has been bombed. And he was going there to bring some medical equipment to some troops there as four guys, like a CAG guy, Hunter, a Marsai guy,

and I think a Vorshrie-Khan guy, like all pretty experienced guys. And they were going, and Hunter was leading that team in the Bakhmut. And so I'm in a Zoom, Hunter's in Bakhmut, two separate things, about three hours apart. And we go and we identify those mass graves, which those were mass graves by the way there. And then we go to this other place with the national chief of police for all the Ukraine. And while we're there, the Russians close the line behind us.

And when they close the line behind us, we get caught in the middle of some probably the most kinetic, some of the most kinetic stuff I had ever seen. We were driving and I seen two Migs fly over. And I was like, and I was in a tow seat. Well, those Migs. And he's like, yeah, I'm like, seats, well those Migs and he's like, yeah, I'm like, did you ever see that before? He's like, no, bro, those are Migs.

And they hit, they did a bombing run like, I don't know how far away, but enough. We seen the plume come up and then started having IDF. And then we were caught by this building and then it got pretty, pretty like within 100, 200 yards indirect fire. I mean, dirt flying over, like dirt landing on us. We got against this building.

The windows got blown out of the building. Like literally, like I'm showing you some of the pictures earlier, some of the Russian troops that was that day. Like, like I could hear the, I remember here, I could hear the buffer springs in the, in the AKs. Like, like as, as the rounds were, as they were, they were functioning, like, like I could hear, I could hear the weapons functioning.

Damn. And it was, and so I called Hunter on the phone, on the sat phone to tell him what's going on. And when I call Hunter, I could hear the indirect fire landing around him. And so at the same time, me and him were taking indirect fire and about three hours apart. And I went to being worried about about me to being worried about him. Seeing after how he handled himself in that situation and just instilled the confidence in me that I'm carrying with me right now. He just got back a few days ago from another trip in Ukraine.

I think he's been there 13, 14 times 14 times now. And he just, you know, does an incredible job at what he's doing. He's leading a team. Now they're doing more taking people out to train the chaplain teams and stuff like that. And at this point, we've reached a point to where we've done everything we could do there. Now it's train the trainer and let them have it. So it's pretty much a mission complete for us there and focus on other areas of the world. But for us there and focus on other areas of the world. But he's made me just extremely proud. And so this book is telling that story. It's a story of fear to faith.

The fear as a father to the faith and saying, sometimes there's things we have to let go and that we can't control. And we just have to have faith that God can control them better than us. Man, A Mission Without Borders is borders is for presale right now. For presale right now, and I would so much appreciate people supporting it.

Everything I do, by the way, all my books and stuff like that supports the work that we do. And so that's- It all goes to the Mighty Oak Foundation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Supports the work that we do, and so it's getting minor support. And when you pre-order a book,

a lot of people are like, oh, I don't wanna wait for it. But not just me, any author, or like, I know whenever you do something one day, and any of these guys you support, when you pre-order a book, what it does is tells the vendors that people are interested in the book,

and it helps get the advanced purchase, which gets them to put more marketing behind it. So one of the best ways to support authors, especially in our community that wanna is always pre-order the book for them. Yeah. So yeah, and you know, I wanna close with one thing on this. There's a lot of verses I love in the Bible.

This, I probably have a different favorite verse all the time, but I think the most powerful verse in all the Bible is Genesis 1.1. I've read the Bible cover to cover, right? It makes some pretty bold claims, by the way, all of which I believe are true, and I've read it cover to cover. But the most powerful verse in all the Bible to me

is Genesis 1.1, the first 10 words of the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. Like in the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. Why would I say that's the most powerful verse in all the Bible? Because if you believe that, like if you believe that first 10 words that God created all,

then you have to understand that God has authority overall. And if God has authority over everything, well then he's sovereign. And if God has authority over everything, well then He's sovereign. And if God's sovereign, then He holds all of our fears, our insecurities, He holds everything in the palm of our hands. And that knowledge of knowing that God holds all in the palm of His hands, what actually do we have to be scared of, right, if God's in control of all? So to me, that's the most powerful thing,

to understand that God created the heavens and earth. He created all. He has authority over all. He's sovereign and He's good. And He loves us and cares about us. And He loves our cares about our kids too. Even if they're in a place like Ukraine, right? God bless you, Chad.

You're doing amazing stuff. God's working through you. It's a real honor to have you here. Oh man, I appreciate you being here. That's just something I looked forward to for a long time and I'm glad it's, and I believe, podcast aside, I like it. I believe it's the beginning for a friendship. Me too.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for coming out. Absolutely, brother. Absolutely. And, link will be in the description on that. If you want to support Mighty Oaks Foundation,

links down there too. Everybody check it out. Very apparent. You are doing amazing things So thank you and then once again Chad, it's an honor. God Guys, you've heard me talk about my passion for ketone supplements and how they boost your workouts by helping your body use fatty acids for fuel. I take a shot of HVMN's ketone supplement before my morning workout and before I record my show. It's not an energy drink, but what it does do is it gives me the energy

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