Shawn Ryan Show - #153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Kris "Tanto" Paronto is a former Army Ranger and CIA security contractor known for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack, where he helped save over 20 lives while fighting off terrorists for 13 hours. He served four years in the Army Rangers and four years in the Army National Guard, achieving the rank of sergeant before commissioning in 2003. Paronto later worked as a private security contractor in various regions, including South America, Central America, the Middle East, and North Africa. After his time with the CIA, Paronto became an author and public speaker, sharing his experiences from the Benghazi attack. He co-authored "13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi," which was adapted into a film. Additionally, he wrote "The Ranger Way: Living the Code On and Off the Battlefield" and "The Patriot's Creed: Inspiration and Advice for Living a Heroic Life." Currently, he is the lead instructor at Battleline Tactical, hosts the Battleline Podcast, and speaks at seminars and conferences worldwide. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://americanfinancing.net/srs https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://ramp.com/srs https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Kris "Tanto" Paronto Links: Website - https://kristantoparonto.com Books - https://www.tantosgearlocker.com/booksanddvds YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/BattlelinePodcast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/real_kris_tanto_paronto Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TantoTribe X - https://x.com/KTantoP LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristantoparonto 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

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Uber Reserve, see Uber app for details. Chris Peranto, welcome to the show, man. Long time coming, I already said it, but thanks for, and you to the show, man. It's a long time coming. I would probably have said it, but thanks for, and you're so tolerant, man. That was so cool that you were just willing to wait and then just, hey, I'm going to be in town and I hope you don't have to bump anybody. If you did, sorry guys, but just,

you've always been a standup guy with me. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's really cool. Yeah, thanks, bud. My pleasure. I'm just happy you're here and I'm extremely patient. So.

There aren't many standup guys in there in the world and even coming out of our community anymore in this public figure world. So it's nice to still find a few out there like yourself. I try to be, but I'm not always a standup guy. Oh, I'm sure you are. Talk to my wife, man. I need to bring you home, talk to my wife

about how nice and reasonable I am because I don't get that respect at home, man. Well, Chris, I want to do a life story on you. Yeah. And obviously talk a lot about Benghazi and what you're doing now, but we're going to cover the full spectrum here. And so everybody starts off with an introduction.

So first- Are you gonna read? Don't make me feel like a pretentious asshole. Oh no, you're good. Everybody gets one. Chris Bronto, former army ranger, second battalion, 75th regiment. You responded to the Benghazi 2012 attack.

You're the author of the Ranger Way and the Patriots Creed, co-author of 13 Hours, the inside account of what really happened in Benghazi. You're motivational and public speaker and the co-host on Battle Line Podcast. Yeah. You're the founder of the 14th Hour Foundation, owner of Battle Line Tactical and co-owner of Tonto Vodka.

You're the host of a pro-military documentary series, War Heroes. You co-founded E3 Firearms Association and you're the father, you're a father, husband and a Christian. That's the most important there at the bottom. That's right. You could have cut out everything else

and just read that at the bottom and I would have been perfectly happy about it. That right there just tells everybody what a great man you are. I appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks, man, thank you, that's cool of you to say. You're welcome.

What is the E3 Firearms Association? Well, you know, it, thank you. And thanks, man, thank you, it was cool of you to say. You're welcome. What is the E3 Firearms Association? You know, it's so difficult. I don't know if you know Adam Paint Shot, Adam was a SIG Firearms Truck, he started SIG Academy. Okay. Trooper in New Hampshire. It is a training website. It has been so difficult, though,

to get that thing off the ground. It was just running the roadblock after roadblock Because of Google. Hmm, because hey, and if you don't think there's state-run media and state-run State run internet web there is if you have to be dumb in a bag of hammers to not see that out there But it's it's we've tried to get it going. There's a lot of training materials on their videos out there and It's, we've tried to get it going. There's a lot of training materials on there, videos out there. And you get sponsorships to come to Battle Line tackle courses, if you remember, you come to my courses for free.

Oh wow. I mean, it's just, it's a- So is it online training? It's an online training platform, but it's a paid online training. How many lessons are on there? Oh man. I know just hip pocket training stuff

where I'll just jump on and do a 10 minute video. We've got to have 50 or 60 videos on. Oh, right on. And Adam's a wonderful, wonderful instructor. He is, I am the loosey goosey, hey man, let's just go out and shoot. I'm gonna give you some lessons. Adam is, which is great, it's a great dynamic

because he, you do, there are people that respond to that kind of training better the By the book lesson about where some guys respond to just tell me what I need to do And this is what you need to do, but you know it's it's been We've had it going for a few years now And it's just always trying to improve the website get that flowing It's e3 does a and it's a whole association, so it's not just farms, get that flowing. It's E3 does a whole association. So it's not just firearms, there's camping, it's outdoor.

Oh wow. Camping, aviation, John Rainwaters runs the aviation side of it. RVing, off-roading. And so I tell the E3 owner, his name's Brian, Brian Johnson, I tell him firearms is like the redhead stepchild of E3, because all those are cruising, and ours is just, it's been very difficult.

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

Well, I spoke at an FBI Academy, a conference, which had a lot of law enforcement officers, a lot of former FBI trainers. And I sat down with them and they're great guys, you know, of course, it's not all formal functions. I'm with a bunch of cops, man, so of course, we're going to go to the bar a little bit and enjoy, have some food, but I remember coming back

and I sat with one of the officers and he goes, you know, you've had Don Shipley on, I know, he goes, you know, I watched Don's videos, but now it's starting to bother me, a lot of these videos out there, because they're teaching all these tactics and they have no control of who's getting them. And the Dallas police chief of police came in

and they had that tactical shooting where some officers died. And he was one of the speakers at that event as well. And it kind of hit home to me. I was like, man, he's exactly right. We're putting all these videos and God bless him. I have nothing wrong to say about that. I don't know, Don, we've never met.

I support what he does. I think, you know, he's a, from what I've seen, he looks like he's a standup guy. And I'm just throwing that as an example because that's what the law enforcement officer said, the police, he was from Philadelphia. He's like, we just, you know, we're really, we're really getting, not upset,

but he says, we're really worried that the bad guys are starting to watch these videos out there. Well, I mean, there's a caveat to that too. You know, I mean, what the are people supposed to do? We've defunded the police. The border is wide open. They are actively sending $87 million a week to the Taliban.

Sorry, man, you know what I mean? But people have to be able to defend themselves and that's where they go to do it. And they go on it and so. And that stuff's out there no matter what. And that's where it's just, it's where I can at least have some control though. And you know what I mean?

I mean, people are, I 100% get your point. And it didn't make sense to me till he said it too. Yeah, till he said it. Like I never really thought about it. But there is context. Things aren't the same as they used to be. Not at all. I mean, the people, it's dangerous out there.

I mean, Chicago is the murder capital of the country and more people are dying there than they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's no shock that that is one of my most, I have arranged with the Chicago cop, odd defense, Daniel Lombard, tremendous guy. We've got a range called the compound. I don't think that's any coincidence that the majority,

those are the biggest classes that I will have when I teach out there. At the compound in Crete, Illinois, it's run by Daniel Lombard, Divide Defense, is his training company, but he's a lead farm instructor for the Chicago PD. He's getting older now, so he's off the street. Now he's teaching.

But you're right. It's just this, where do I find some responsibility? And again, I never thought of it that way until I talked to him. I was like, you know, he's got a point. So I'm not going to stop doing videos. Don't get, no, that's not going to happen. But where can I at least have some control?

I'm not going to stop teaching tactics with my classes. Well, Dono, you're a hypocrite. No, I at least have some control. I know who I'm teaching. I at least have something. And if we turn students away when I couldn't verify whether they could carry a criminal, yeah, we have. I've done that.

So I'm not ever going to tell guys to stop teaching tactics. And it's an outlet for us too. It's therapeutic for us. But I would just say after talking to that police officer and then getting back to the E3 stuff, being a paid website, I'm a problem with it being paid because we have some control of at least who the members are and who's watching.

And if it's somebody that maybe is a criminal, shouldn't be owning a weapon, we have some little control that we can, all right. I'm like, I can't stop them from learning from other guys, but you're out, we can't teach you anymore. But getting back to the E3 again, it has been an uphill climb with it because it is a paid website

and you can get the training for free on YouTube or Instagram. But from tactics are tactics are tactics. Shooting is fundamentals. There is no secret sauce. There's no Jedi mind trick. I'm not gonna be teaching how to use the force. The way I shoot, you can go watch another shooter

and you're gonna get the same stuff. It's just a presentation. Who do you like? What resonates with you? So yeah, E3 has been good and I think it's wonderful because we're part of an outdoor, we're telling people, hey, go do something. Firearm shooting is outdoor.

Shooting is relaxing. At least in my opinion, shooting is you're outside in the fresh air or you're at least doing something active. It's a sport. It really is. I mean, shit, you have the competitions, the USCCA, you have all those, the tag games.

It's a sport now. And it should be like that. The reason I'm getting into why I talk about it and the paid and not paid is really why I don't do more unpaid YouTube videos online. I don't do that. That's why I don't is because I don't have control who's watching it. And it was that conversation

with that Philadelphia police officer. And then listening to, he spoke before I spoke, the Dallas chief of police and not he wasn't condemning it at all. He's just saying this guy knew what he was doing. He had some tactics, and I'd say know what he was doing. He knew how to pie. He knew how to edge a corner.

Yeah. Well, Chris, before we get too deep into the interview, everybody gets a gift. Oh, man, you're all gifted. Nothing but hospitality. Man, you're all gifted. Nothing but hospitality. Man, they're gummies. That's right. Those are legal in all 50 states.

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately for you, I don't know. But they are made here in the USA. Oh, that's what this is. Yeah, so there you go. Some Vigilance League gummy bears. Those are hard to come by by the list Is actually this is going on my side by side when I get home nice. I don't say it'll be at the range man Nice, and I thank you. They're welcome so much, you know

Do you we need to bring manufacturing back to this country man? The only thing we manufacture now is drama and freaking political bullshit That's right. He's more manufacturing. Thank you, man. You're welcome. Hey. One last thing. Yeah. Before we get in, I got a Patreon account. They're my top supporters. They've been here with me since the beginning.

And they're the reason I'm here and you're here. So one of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. Uh-oh. And so this one is from Moose. What's up, Moose? What was it like for you to see the Obama administration blatantly lie about something you saw firsthand?

Blame the attack on something unrelated and refuse to call it a terrorist attack. How did it feel to be on the ground at the annex and realize that help was not coming? Let's do one question first. Well, let's go first, first with the help not coming. So let's go on a timeline there. We can skip that.

We'll do that. Okay, so give me number, because the feeling. What was it like for you to see the Obama administration blatantly lie about something you saw first? Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, watch Fox and Friends, the last interview I ever did on Fox and Friends with Pete Hexeth. It was back in 2014 or 15,

where somebody caught him on a cell phone. It was either at Loyola or one of those liberal colleges there in Chicago. I can't remember which one. And he said Benghazi was a conspiracy. He didn't know he was being filmed. And of course they threw it on the TV. It's at six in the morning.

I was actually in Springfield. I was gonna go speak at an event that was sponsored by the guy that owns Bass Pro. So I was staying out at the Bass Pro resort up there. And told Pete I couldn't be there. I said, I gotta zoom in. So I zoomed in at 6 a.m. and I'm half asleep. This was my fifth speaking event in like seven days,

just spent and pissed me off. Well, why would I? Of course, it pissed me. I mean, all those lines continually. It was angry at me. It made me feel a hate. And what did I say? You can watch it, it's out there on YouTube somewhere,

I'm sure. He said, what did you feel after you watched the Benghazi call it a conspiracy? And I said, well, Pete. I said, I wanted to reach through the TV and I wanted to choke his ass. I wanted to choke him out. And Pete, his eyes got big.

He goes, you probably don't want to be threatening a former US president. I said, Peter, you asked me. And that was my last ever Fox interview actually, I ever did. And I did get visited by the secret service two weeks later. Luckily I knew the guys. They showed up at my house. Like Chris, we gotta be here,

you're threatening the president on national TV. And, but if that tells you my anger, right there. I mean, without even thinking, skipping a beat and it wasn't to create, it wasn't a troll accounts, it wasn't to do click bait, it was an immediate reaction. As soon as I saw it, it was like that mother. And I didn't even wanna kill her, let'm like, let's get in the ring. I'm gonna put you in a lock and let's see how you feel.

Oh man, that's what I felt. So of course I was angry. I was angry for a lot of years. And I think if you watch even your speeches that I've done out there, I just still do corporate talks. I just, you know, that's why I'm in Nashville and do your show. And I did a talk at the Gaylord there.

In the early days, the speeches were very, very angry because nobody was being held accountable. And there were people that were calling us liars. And it's hard to be called a liar, guys. When I saw Rhone and I was shooting over their heads when those three mortars threw a fire for effect, hit right on top of Building C. The fifth attack that night and I was shooting over their heads when that last, those three mortars, through a fire for effect, hit right on top of Building C. The fifth attack that night.

And I was shooting and it wasn't, the movie showed us daytime. It was actually, it was before morning, an article, Twilight. You know, it was right before this, you know, you know what that is. Your viewers can Google that. It's right before the sun comes up, so it's still dark.

So my night vision was still on. My 15s were on. And remember the sun comes up, so it's still dark. So my night vision was still on. My 15s were on. And remember the first one hit, blew up on the backside of buildings. He was right over the top, rung spun. He went cyclic on that belt fed, which was pretty freaking awesome. Cause all I'm seeing is a laser beam as he turns

and they're coming to attack us through the sheep slaughterhouse area. I put a few rounds over his head. because I want to get in a fight, even though I can't see that because I'm back behind them on building A, he's on building C. Dave's, Dave Ubin shoots, Roz is up there, he shoots,

Bubba's up there, he's shooting. So I'm seeing all this fire. Shooting, I'm thinking, shit, mortars this way. They got to be bringing that whole force following those mortars in. So I turn around, make sure nobody's coming. Nobody's there, come back, two more shots. I see one hit directly right on top. They gotta be bringing a whole force following those mortars in. So I turn around, make sure nobody's coming. Nobody's there, come back, two more shots.

I see one hit directly right on top. Night vision goes completely white. You know, this is overbundance like white. As it comes back, I saw four and now there's three. So guy disappeared and I can hear him screaming. Even in all that, I can still hear him. It was Dave, I didn't know it at the time, but it was Ubin.

Just shared his shirt, his shirt, his leg off, sheared his arm. They were hanging. So he's not completely gone, but he's legs this way, arms this way. How do I know that Tig got up there when he saw Dave? Tig told me what his arm, his arms and legs looked like. Take a few more shots, cause what can you do? We're still getting attacked.

We're in the middle of a fight. You know what it is. You don't, you can't stop fighting. What am I gonna do? Run off my building and go, hell, cause you got three guys up there. I gotta keep fighting. I got my sector behind me I gotta take.

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

And as it comes back, all I see is the pixie dust. It got quiet, it got silent, really weird. I thought they were gonna keep coming. And all I saw was the charged particles because blow up explosion, the debris, the dust gets either heated or charged and it looks like it does. It looks like pixie dust coming down with those, with my night vision starts to come back

and refocus from the white light. And they were all gone. And it, my brain, my brain said, your team just got turned to dust. It's like, holy, I mean, it was, it was, it was, and it maybe it felt like longer than what it was. It was only a few seconds, but I put my head down and I remember thinking,

it was the one time negatively I thought that, every other time there was a negative things happened. That was the one time where it was like that, holy shit, we might lose this. And I said, man, we can't beat this. I'm thinking to myself, we don't have any air support. They're gonna fucking keep hammering us. You know, God was there all night, man.

And God kicked me in my ass and said, get your gun up, Ranger. And I know people are gonna, oh, fuck, that's, no, God, God was there all night, man. And God kicked me in my ass and said, get your gun up, Ranger. And I know people are gonna, oh fuck, that's, no, making, no, that's what happened. What do you mean God kicked you in the ass and said, get up? Quit whining, quit feeling like a victim. So you-

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

You don't quit. Get your gun up, keep fighting. And I said, get your gun up, Ranger. That's what I heard. And that's being a Ranger too, and that's what Rangers are. When you're at the 75th, get your gun up, get your gun up. You're not quitting, keep fighting, keep pressing through. You learn that from RIP, which is option 40 now,

a RAS now, you learn that throughout. That's what's instilled in you. Rangers before you, what'd they do in Vietnam? The hunter killer teams, they ran towards the fight. What'd they do when they jumped into Rio Hato? They ran towards the fight. There's no cover, they shot their way off the earth, the tarmac and grenade, what'd they do?

They ran towards the fight. Now get your gun up, Ranger. Why, and so why am I so angry? Because when somebody calls it conspiracy and I watched, I watched Rone, I watched Rone and Bub and Dave and Dawes at the time, I thought all the time, I watched them evaporate.

That's what I do with my friends, like holy shit, those guys are, they're gone. I've seen death before, but if you ever saw where your friends holy shit, those guys are, they're gone. I've seen death before, but have you ever saw where your friends just, like they're there and they're not. So when he said it was a conspiracy, it's like, hell yeah, I was pissed off. And I was pissed off for many, many years.

And it did hurt a lot of the relationship, hurt my relationship with my wife and my kids at the time. So that's, I mean, it's a great question, but it also points to how irresponsible politicians are with their words and how they don't give a shit, and him especially. You know, Hillary got what she deserved. She wasn't present.

She was humiliated. She lost. Is she gonna get more? Yeah, she's gonna get more. When she stands before her maker with God, God's gonna judge her and I hope he judges her and he's going to, he's gonna judge her well. How she should.

Obama is the one that got over Scott Free. He was the commander in chief. Come on, man. Who's supposed to help get people to us? Is it Hillary and State Department? Granted, she was hugely responsible. So was Leon Panetta? General Ham could have done something. But who was the commander in chief?

Who was General Ham? He was the Eurocom commander. He was the one that- And everybody knows Leon Panetta was director of CIA at the time. At the time, and then he went to the SEC, and became SEC DEF and all that. But actually, but he could have done something too, but Obama is the one that really is the one

that's held responsible, should have been held responsible for it all, and also with the rhetoric, Al Qaeda, people forget that, what was his platform at the time? Al Qaeda was on the run, terrorism is dead, he knew it wasn't, that's who attacked us. You had Saron, she knows a better name, but who was the one that masterminded that? Zawahiri. He's number two al-Qaeda.

So, but the guy that got away with it, and then continued to try to press a narrative which we see happens now. Well, I got a question. I don't want to get too deep. No, no, go ahead. I wasn't expecting to get this deep. I'm sorry, that's just me, man.

I go down rabbit coast all the time What I want to ask though is is I can see I can see the rage returning right? It does it come of course it's gonna come so what what was the? What was the turning point that kind of eased that rage that interview was one? because that kind of eased that rage? That interview was one because... With Pete Hegseth? Yeah, because it was the last mainstream interview I ever did. Your terms are theirs.

I said I'm not gonna do anymore. I told them, I'm done. It was mine, I'm not doing that. Because I did get asked two times to go on Tucker. And nothing against him, I like him. I just, I'm not doing that. Because I did get asked two times to go on Tucker. And nothing against him, I like him. I just, I'm not doing that because that's what they want to get. I started realizing that's what they want to get out of me.

They know Tonnell's going to come in and say something that's going to click bait and going to be pissed off because that's how I always was. I am very, I get, I'm animated. I'm going to say what's on my mind. And if it pisses somebody, so what? I'm going to tell you how I feel. And that's great for ratings, it is.

And nothing against, I got friends down there. Sean's a nice, Hannity's a nice guy, man. You know, the Deucees, they're nice people. You know, Martha McCollum, she's treated me very, very well. They're not, it just was, it was really my family and my relationship, because I got divorced at that time as well, so that anger had carried over to where my wife and my kids are like, we don't want you around anymore.

Your toxicity is here, you're just always pissed off, you're never happy, and we had gotten divorced. So when I did that, we were actually divorced at that time, and it was, I got to get myself right, because. So it was doing the interviews that brought the rage back. I think just reliving it all and not being able to handle it and finding a silver lining to it, which there always is a silver lining.

God gives us a silver lining for everything that we do. We just got to find it. How do you feel about doing this interview? I'm good, because I'm at peace with it all. I don't have a problem getting angry. I know it's going to bring anger out of me, but does it make me angry when I leave? No, I come home to see my kids.

And I want to tell this because I still talk to Ty's mom, Cheryl Bennett, wonderfully, love her. She's like, I'm her second mom. I mean, she's my second mom. And telling this keeps their memories alive. Where back then it was more of, it's about me. I need to show you how angry I am. I need to show you how pissed off I am.

It was selfish. Now it's, I'm gonna tell you, because I want people to know that so when they hear a liberal, they hear on Obama, they hear a Hillary, they hear a Biden say, no, it's conspiracy, no, it's videoing a protest. They can say, no, I know that dude's telling the truth

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

But that was a turning point somewhat because six months later I did put a gun in my head. We'll get there. Yeah. For starters, where did you grow up? Well, it's that time of year again. The holiday season is officially here, and we've got an amazing holiday offer from my partners

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Consult with your tax attorney or financial professional before making an investment decision. Colorado, Alamosa, Colorado. Love it. Grandmother and grandmother, my grandmother and grandfather were immigrants from Mexico. My Garcia, man, my mom's, dad's West Texas, mom's a Garcia.

But so we grew up, we grew up in the lower middle class, but it was wonderful childhood. Alamos is a small little town in the Sangre de Crystal Range out there in Southern Colorado. And then we go to visit my grandmother and grandfather who were pickers and then they own their own farm. So I saw them, just the hard work, man. It was amazing.

I loved being a Pyrronto, but I also loved being a Garcia. I mean, my middle name is after my grandfather, Joaquin, Christian Joaquin. So it was awesome. And it was just always happy, you know? Always playing, I'd play with the wet. We called them the wetbacks.

I know that's a politically incorrect term, but that's what we, the migrant workers that would come over and work at my grandfather's farm grandfather's farm, webbacks, man, pickers. Yeah, I remember going out and that we would play baseball with them when they come from the field. I remember one actually saved my life. I played hide and seek in a pack of potato truck

and I was running away from my cousin, hit a bar that was across the top, cracked my head open, and I laid there for about five minutes before one of them carried me out, found me bleeding all over, and he carried me out to my grandmother's house. I mean, it was amazing, fun. It was a rough childhood.

You know, it was a rough, fun, stand your knee up, ride dirt bikes, take your lab out, go little hunting with the 22, or with a pellet gun. It was wonderful, man. Crack your head open once or twice. Brothers and sisters? I have two.

I have a brother and a sister. Me and my sister, we have our issues, but we're close, it's a close family. It's not like there's any hatred. My brother, no, my brother, he's awesome. I even, it's one of those relationships, though, where it's like he'll call and they all say, what's up, jackass?

Hey, I say, yeah, what's up, douchebag? It's that guy, but he's like, I love you, man. And two years younger than me, we played sports together growing up, and athletics was huge in the family. My dad was a football coach, NCAA football coach. So when we were at Alamosa, he was the head coach at Adams State

and the athletic director. Then we moved to Brigham Young. We moved to Utah because he got a job as an assistant at Brigham Young University. And that was a one hell of an experience. I look back at it now and it's like, wow, I was blessed. Cause that was during their glorious. So I got to hang around a clubhouse with Jim McMahon

and Steve Young and Robbie Bosco and national championship team. And you're taking it for granted. You had Lavelle Edwards, who they don't make coaches. That was like the iconic coaches when coaches were actually coaches and not public figures. Lavelle Edwards, Paul Bear Bryant, guys like that. Woody, it's just the old school.

He was awesome. But you know, you had Mike Holmgren there, who was the offensive coordinator, who later became the coach of the Packers, won two Super Bowls. Norm Chow, who was a legend in the NCAA, went to USC. Wow. Andy Reed was a graduate assistant there at the time.

Coach, so, you know, I looked back, I'm like, man, I was around some cool, and all I'm doing, I'm a kid running around the clubhouse playing catch with Steve Young, going to the grad school. Yeah, so sports were big, and I wanted to play football, and I played football. We moved to Oregon State, my dad got a job at Oregon State, and it was wonderful there.

Got to be around the Pac-10, I was a ball boy on the sidelines for the Pac-10. That was so fun, just being at the games. That was Pac-10 at the time. I mean, that's Washington, UCLA, USC, when they were, I mean, they're still good, I guess, but it was amazing. It was just a good time being around college when college was college, when it wasn't propaganda.

Let's protest about everything. It was college. It wasn't propaganda, let's protest about everything. It was college, it was PCU, man. It was where people would make fun of that. Let's go have a, you know, so, and it was college towns. Now, bringing me on was a little different, it's more, man, you know, you're not gonna find a lot of drink in there. But, and then he got a job in Colorado, back in Colorado, and we moved, and so we're still coaching at Mesa.

It's called Colorado Mesa. It's called Mesa College at the time. It's called Colorado Mesa University now. And we moved there and of course, being around sports forever. And my dad was a football player. My mom was a pretty good athlete in her own right. You know, I got some good genes in me

and I managed to get a scholarship to play football. And I played football for four years at, actually I did. No kidding. Yeah, I was, I had a good time, man. So I- Your dad wasn't the coach. He was the AD.

I went to that college. And to be quite- What does that mean? He was the athletic director at that college. But I didn't go there first. I wasn't, I was a typical college football player. I'd rather drink and party than go to clients. So my first year at Mesa, I flunked out of college

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

It was awesome. That was a wonderful experience because Dixie was like the program where BYU, UNOV, University of Utah would send all these truants to get their grades up. So we were a football family. We were awesome. We were number one in the nation.

We finished number two one year. So I'm around there and I'm around gangsters, man. I'm around the Donner Street Crips. I'm around West Coast Bloods, Tonga Crip gangsters. Then you got farm kids coming from Utah, big farm boys. Then we had this, it was such a wonderful experience. It was a wonderful to see so many, I was out of, you know, so many people

of different backgrounds and nationalities come together for a focus to win games. Sounds like the military. It does. And it sounds like, you know, that's why I laugh when I hear all these DEI, pro-albus. So we had diversity way back then, guys. And guess what? We were called the Dixie Rebels too.

And not one black dude gave two shits. We were proud to be called the Rebels. That's what we were. And I wasn't as true, I mean, they were hardcore. I just flunked out of school. Now, I ain't gonna lie, my ethnicity did help. It does, he's Mexican, dude. And my grandpa, yeah, it allowed me

to at least have a foot in the door where we can kind of trust this guy. And stereotypes, stereotypes for a reason. I'm no problem with that. But it was one hell of an experience because we were so good. It was fun playing on a team of so many different characters. And what got me is that was back in the day

when Bloods and Crips, they were, you know, that was a big deal. There's gang violence all the time. And there was a guy named Stacy. He was a West Coast blood. He came from Los Angeles. And then we had a guy named Chucky, who was best athletes I've ever seen in my life.

He was a Donahue Street Crip from Vegas. And I went to Stacey one day, because I didn't get, I'm this naive kid from Colorado, you know, I don't know what I can ask or what I can't. I say, hey, how come you guys aren't killing each other? You know, I'm being an idiot. Should I say that? I don't know, I'm 19 years old.

What am I saying the right thing? And Stacey looks at me and he goes, he goes on the streets, man. Yeah, he said we would. I said, I'd shoot that motherfucker. But here, I just want to win. It's like, wow, that just makes so much sense. Wow.

And that's also when I started going to military and then even GRS, a lot of people don't know. Oz and I don't get along. We never have. I was going to wait till the end of the interview. No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump into that. Well, I mean, you brought it up. Let's do it.

I mean, obviously I've been following you guys. I mean, we were in the same profession. Of course, yeah. And I remember after it happened, you guys, you know, you did the book. Yeah. We came out, lots of speaking events. I thought you guys used to speak together.

We had to, yeah. And then it seemed like everything kind of, I mean, look, what happened? Why don't you guys get along? Well, it's just personalities. There's nothing, Oz is a wonderful, wonderful person. He is in his own right. It's just personalities.

Very, I'm very outspoken. Whenever we do speeches or things like that, he always wanted to kind of play like the politician. I got to make both sides. I was like, screw this. Say what happened? So we went at Oz, but even when we were downrange, it just was personalities, man.

It just was, you just, there's just some guys you don't get along. Did you guys butt heads before Benghazi? With the first place we worked at together. I'd never worked in before. That was the first base that I worked with Oz at. And immediately butted heads. It's just one of those bases where, you know,

the guy comes in and you're like, man, we just don't jive. He doesn't like my Jack Ashery. I don't like him being so damn uptight. But we were both professional enough. And this is a kudos to Rhone as well. Rhone really was our team leader. We had an official team leader.

Rhone was our assistant team leader. We had a staffer that was our team leader. But Rhone is who we listen to. The staffer we never listen to. Isn't it funny how that's like the common theme? When you don't hold the staffer the same- Every GRS team that the staffer is always the weakest link.

When you don't hold them to the same standard, then they're not always gonna be the weakest. They get mad at me when I say this stuff. Tough shit, dude. It's the truth. I mean, I can count good staffers, and I'll tell the staff, there are some that,

but the majority of the good staffers were the ones that had the same background. We'll get into this later. But anyway, yeah, with Oz, with Oz, it was nothing where, and it wasn't a hatred, it just was, we don't like each other, man. And you get to an age at 42 at that point,

we're maybe in the early days in our 30s, maybe we would have, F you, F you, but it wasn't like that. It was just, he's 45, I'm 42. It's like, there's no reason to create any more drama, deal with how we need to, just win. Cause that still kept going in my head with what Stacey said to me about the Crips and the Bloods.

We just wanna win. Put the differences aside so we can win. The focus, and that's also Rome keeping us on, hey, what's the main focus here, guys? Everybody goes home. Put your stupid differences aside, shut the hell up and do your jobs. You got your right and left limits,

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

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

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

I saw him. I told you in the beginning, I saw a guy get up and try to shoot after that more mortar stopped and he, the gun kept falling because he would get up and he'd shoot and I'd see the rounds of people. Well, his arm, he hadn't realized his arm had gone and fall. So when you watch 13 hours and you see him getting up like that, that happened, that wasn't moving magic, that happened.

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

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

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

It's that simple. And I think that's why when I talk to corporations, I tell them that's part of my speech. Just win. That's the goal, let's win. Put the differences aside. And that's why also when we were out doing our speaking and you're seeing us on TV,

all right, we got to put on a united front here. We're stronger together. And because there wasn't hatred there, it just was a dislike. Just didn't like, didn't care. Our personalities just didn't mesh. It wasn't that hard to go in there and do an interview together.

And Oz had great things to say because he was there. He saw things that I didn't that helped expose the BS. Cause we were in different spots the whole time. Let's move back to kind of growing up. We're past childhood. I want to get to this, but I want it to all be in one piece if that's okay. Yeah, no, no, no, no, you're good.

And so what, so you're football college. Football, got football. Yeah, yeah. What got your interest in the military? God, this path, when you're short and you're slow, you're not gonna go to the next level. And I was really short, but I was super slow, so the NFL didn't come knocking at my door.

So I remember I was just walking through the Student Union Building there at Colorado Mesa, Mesa College was called that time. And at the graduation, there's job fairs at these colleges. If you go to college, you're always gonna see a job fair. And I'm walking through and all these jobs are there. But of course, who's there with all the occupations, all the corporations?

The vultures are over there in the corner. The Army recruiter, the Marine recruiter, the Navy recruiter, the Air Force recruiter. And long story short on that one, which is not gonna be the theme here, but they yelled, they said, hey you, I was a stupid enough one to look in that direction. I walked over there, they said, hey,

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

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

I'm seeing all the cool stuff. You know, the Marines, they're landing on the beach. You know, they're showing me recon guys. The Air Force One, I always make this a joke. I say, I saw the Air Force One and they were in an air conditioned room, nice, comfortable with good food. Now they're showing me the jets and things.

And I just thought the Rangers was the best one for me. And so I said, signed up. I signed up, I enlisted right there after I got my bachelor's degree. No kidding. And 30 days later, I'm off to Fort Benning. And did that. You literally signed up right there at the job.

Yeah, and the scariest thing that I'll be, shit, talk about an impulse. It was like, what am I gonna do? And I had, well, FBI, they said military. And I do remember telling the recruiter, I asked him, I go, is that hard? He goes, yeah, I go to people quit. He goes, yeah, all right, let's do it.

And so move on and we go to Fort Benning, Georgia. And it did, I was like a round peg in a round hole. I just fit, you know, I went to, it was Sand Hill at the time, it was Echo Company 258, called the House of Pain. I was supposed to be the hardest one there, but come on, they're all the hardest. Every basic training depot is the hardest one. But the Stingers Honor graduate, I did really well.

It just fit, it just made, you know, it was physically fit. I got the, the athletics completely prepped me for it. You know, the teamwork aspect of it. You just had to get used to the yelling and they were still smacking us around. It was 1995, which if you didn't deserve to get smacked around then you didn't get smacked. And that made sense to me.

It was based on merit. You work your ass, it's merit based. You're gonna perform, you're gonna do what you're told, we're gonna move you up. You're gonna be a smart ass, you're gonna be lazy, you're gonna be a fat body. No, then you don't. It's easy.

It's a piece of cake. And went to airborne school, but I was married to my first wife at the time, and nothing against, she's a wonderful person. We just got married way too young. Just nothing bad to say about her, but she was having an affair. So I got my Jodi letter, hey, I want a divorce.

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

Airborne school is easy. All you gotta do is learn how to fall and break yourself and then jump out of a plane. It was, it was memorable. There was a memorable thing about airborne school though that was awesome. Again, God looking out. My first two jumps, first day jump, first night jump, I was the first one out the door.

It was so awesome. Being able to have the door open, first jump, and I'm watching, that was cool. Now it's memorable. I still, and the night jump too, I was like, how lucky am I to be, how did that happen? I got lucky to be the first one out the door. So, you know, your door opens, you get to watch

all that shit for about 30 seconds before you go. But airborne school, then went through RIP, got through Ranger RIP, went second bat, and we're there, I was there for about eight months. And you know, you're an untapped guy and you've been around Rangers, you know if we're untapped at Ranger Battalion, we're shit. We're getting hazed, I mean it's just, it's miserable.

You're hiding in your team room on the weekends because you don't want the tab spec four to come in there and smoke your balls and haze the shit out of you. So you just like either hide or you take off for the weekend. And, but went on a JRX training mission at Bragg about eight months in, I was at Battalion and the joint readiness exercise.

So we're doing a joint readiness exercise with blue, green, some PJs and then the Air Force guys at Pope, the Spec Ops, the specter and you know. And the task forces are two night stalkers were there too. So it's a big thing. Yeah, it was, it was pretty awesome. So I mean, I'm a private, I'm just, but I'm fighting this divorce.

I mean, I'm my wife's cheating on me, you know, and it's just killing me. Did you know who she was cheating? No, I mean, I, at that, that first two week, it was, it was a, it was a two week JRX, the first week. I still hadn't figured it out. I was in denial more than anything. That's no way she's doing that.

And this is for the admitted cell phone. Cell phones are a big thing, so to go home to call, you had to go actually go to a pay phone. So it wasn't like I could call and check all the time like you could now. Maybe that would have made it worse. Maybe this made it better this way. But I'm a new private, I'm around all these tier one guys. I could call and check all the time like you could now. Maybe that would have made it worse. Maybe this made it better this way.

But I'm a new private. I'm around all these tier one guys. I'm just, holy shit, dude. I'm, should I, you know, and when you're a new guy, you have that bravado, but should I be here? You know, Tabs spec fours, you got Tabs squad leaders, Tab E fives, these guys, this is old hat to them. I'm like, oh my gosh.

And so the stress levels for me, don't fuck up, don't fuck up. I got two hernias on my first jump too. So I don't want to tell anybody because I got two little aliens going there when we jumped in. Is it Sicily at Bragg? I can't remember the drop zone.

But anyway, it all came to a head and I called home and I could show an answer. So I finally called my brother, Mike, left him. I go, hey, what's going on with Stacy, man? He goes, dude, I don't wanna tell you. And as soon as he said that, you know, I was like, girl, so it was in denial. And I went home on block leave,

because it was right after that, we're going on block leave, it was right before Christmas. And I just, I went to the guy's house and I was hitting his bushes, I was gonna kill him. And I came to my senses, which was great on my end because I got out of there. But it was also where I even felt like a bigger failure because like, man, I can't even do this.

I'm the biggest pussy in the world. But God has got me, you know, God has. But of course everybody found out, small town, Grand Junction, Colorado. Military found out, of course, because it was very lucky. Instead of going to jail, I got to go to the VA there in Grand Junction. They threw me in the metal work, like to check on me.

So the military, so the wheels are turning that I'm gonna get. So hold on, did you get caught? Actually, what I did is I went back home, I drank myself silly and my friend found me on the floor. My ranger buddy who I joined with, it was home too on leave, he found me on the floor. I was just drunk and took a bunch of Tylenol.

So you tried to kill yourself. 1997, six or seven, 96, then 96. Holy shit, guys. And yeah, it's just one of those things, because you're young, you're pissed vinegar, you're full of fire, you're a ranger, dude. Someone was gonna, you know, but I wasn't ready. It just was being young and stupid

and doing stupid things impulsively that young people do, especially young guys like yourself and myself, we're just, we're not thinking, we're just action first consequences later. And, but the military found out. And of course they are. And of course we called the commander and the commander found out.

And I had wonderful, so blessed. First Sergeant was Frank Grippi, Ranger legend, Sergeant Major Grippi. He was dropping mortars and tubes in Torboar in Anaconda when he was 10th Mountain. He was a Sergeant Major. He was my first Sergeant. And we also had Captain Paul O'Camara,

who I think he's a three-star general now. He may have just retired, but he was my CO. And they, I mean, I wasn't gonna stay in. There's no way I could stay in. But I managed to get an honorable discharge. I didn't deserve it. So I only finished two years out of my first four-year contract.

Well, how long did it take you to snap out of that? Well, I went home. It took me two years. Well, I had two years to have a choice. The- Well, you got out, let me, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you left-

I left the army. You left the army. At the end of 1996. At the end of 1996, and then went back to your hometown? I went back to my hometown, and I was like, I can't do this anymore. And- What were you doing in your hometown?

Nothing. Just being miserable? Just being miserable. Because you know you're- It was as miserable as, but as with family. You know, my family, my. Because you know you're... It was, I was miserable. I was, but as with family, you know my family, my mom's there, my dad's there, my brothers are there.

So I'm surrounded by family. My friends are still there because I'd just really been two years out of college. I still had guys I'd played football with that are still finishing up. And I had a buddy of mine named Brian Edwards. He goes, did you look like shit? And I moved in with them.

I hung out with my buddies. You know, my parents were there, but I moved into a room at one of their old ex football players. They were still playing with my teammates houses. And they went on, and that's what I recommend everybody to do when you go through divorce. I went to South Padre Island for spring break.

Spring break. He goes, what happened there, Chris? He's like, dude, you look miserable. We're going to spring break. Come on, get in the car, we're going. I was like, okay, we went. And I went to South Parjara for spring break. And I remember this, the Lord, I am beyond,

the Lord works mysterious ways. I'm serious. It's just so, I look back at it now, I'm like, my gosh, God really does have control. I go there. Hold on, can I make a prediction? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you meet your current wife there?

Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious? Oh shit, I went there. Hold on, hold on. How long had you been, were you divorced yet? Yeah, well, we had been officially divorced for only about six months, but she had tried to divorce me

and get rid of me at basic training. So it'd been- So you're like depressed at home, drinking yourself to death. Yes. Tried to commit suicide with a bottle of Tylenol. And now I'm gonna, what am I gonna do with my life? Now your buddy's like,

we're going to South Pottery Island. We're going to South Pottery, Springbrook. I need you to smile again. And Brian, I love Brian. He is all, he is, and he was a, he was a, he was really good for Wolper. Outstanding wide receiver out there. But we go there, and this is what's so funny.

And it's funny, but I also, I do believe there's Cupid is out there. Cause we're at Charlie's, it's a bar there. No, it's Louie's, we're at Louie's. Louie's bar and something. And I'm dancing, you know, but I'm still jacked. I'm a Ranger, shredded. Yeah, I'm jacked up, shirts off.

Cause I'm woohoo, I'm spring breakanger, shredded, I'm jacked up, shirts off, because I'm, woohoo, I'm spring break drinking, drinking, and all of a sudden this searing pain all flows down the side of my face and my eyes. Well, it was before fireball, so they had those shots of cinnamon snops that the little ladies would carry around. Somebody had knocked the whole thing on me. And I look, and it was my wife, my current wife. I look, it's like Cupid's arrow.

Wow. And we danced, we were inseparable that whole spring break. I stayed with her. Wait, hold on. What was the one liner? Who picked up who? Actually, I still think she's, and I tell her, I said, you spilled that cinnamon schnapps on me on purpose, didn't you? Because you saw my heaving chest and I was short. And she was like, that was, so there, but that's the, that was actually the joke.

And it was that, because I still believe that, you saw me and you did that on purpose, didn't you? Just so I look at you. And I looked at her and she was a volleyball player from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. And she said, you know, volleyball players, come on. Watch college volleyball. And you know, she's taller than me.

She's 5'10". I'm 5'9", she's 5'10". And just athletic. And man, that was it. And then again, the whole spring break. So there wasn't a one-liner, but it was, I do give her shit for that. I said, you did that shit on purpose

because you saw my man boobs from all them pushups. And it was awesome. And so when I went home, it gave me a direction. So I went back home, like, okay, the stipulations, my honorable discharge, is I had to stay out for two years. I couldn't re-enlist for two years. It came in my file. And my dad had his doctorate.

My mother, she was a teacher. She had her master's. What's the logical step here? Let's go back to college. So I applied to University of Nebraska Omaha, took the GRE, got accepted, and I got into my Bronco II, and luckily I made it to Omaha.

And I lived in a $100 and 10 a month room in the slums of Omaha. Omaha is a wonderful place, but it was the poorest station of Omaha. No air conditioning, nothing, and it was wonderful. It's wonderful. It was just, it was just, it was like I'm an out

of a terrible element and here I am by myself, no money, Bronco twos don't run, so it's in a crappy car. I'm still fighting double hernia surgery because I hadn't got my hernias fixed yet. But it was like, man, this is awesome. And the only person I know is this woman that spilled drinks on me that I spent four days with at Sumpire Island. And she was, she was awesome. The first person I know is this woman that spilled drinks on me that I spent four days with at Sound Podcast.

And she was awesome. And we just, we dated and I just got my life together. I went back to school, the VA got my shit fixed. I got my hernias fixed there where I was there. Grad school to me was, the school, I say it's easy, but the ability to go to school and then also work, and it wasn't hard because the military was so, you know, it was regimented. You could do multiple things and not get enough sleep

and still get it done. Well, it was easy. So I got a job at the Ministry of Omaha working as a security guard, go to school, and my classes I could take at UNO, a lot of the grad classes were in the evening. So I would take classes and a lot of those graduate school classes,

I was in for criminal justice. I was still thinking maybe the feds down the line, even though I'm done, but it was one a week. So one three hour class a week I could take and then it was just study, study, study. And to me studying was awesome. A library was peaceful. So I would get an internship.

So I worked at the library. I could study. I worked at Musial Omaha during the day. So I was making money over there. And I was going to school and I was with this woman that was, well this young woman that was just hotter than all hell. As you would, I mean,

volleyball players, man, squats and jumps. Obviously you can tell what kind of man I am. She was amazing. And she turned out to be just a very wonderful person that, you know, in social media you see all the women on social media, she's not that, she's not on a social media account, she doesn't believe it.

She's just a good, homegrown, Nebraska girl. Nice. And she took care of me, and she really did. She got me back up on my feet. just a good homegrown, Nebraska girl. Nice. And she took care of me and she really did. She got me back up on my feet. She got me, she just got my, the whole situation, she got my life back together, but she was the main focal point on that. And now two years ago, my master's degree,

I actually went from being a security guard to where I became an insurance adjuster. So when you watch the movie where they say, you'll be happy being on that, that argument did happen. I fell asleep during the ambassador's speech. I heard so much political, I didn't care. I would have been up half the night, dude. I was up half the night, I got up in the morning,

like, screw this, do I really have to go wrong? He's like, Tom, I'll get in there. And I'm sitting in the back, but anyway, when the argument said, yeah, there that happened, he goes, you'd be happy going back home and being an insurance adjuster. Well, it's because I was. I still am a licensed national flood insurance program,

FEMA insurance adjuster to this day. I still can run claims if I want, but that's what I did. I went to, got that certification and started working at Meshel, Omaha. And eventually I got back in the military and I remember it was hard. I went through eight different recruiters because nobody was going to help me

when they found out what I did, even though I had an honorable discharge. My rent recode was a three, which is very bad. That means you got an honorable discharge, but there's an asterisk there. And the last guy I saw, it was a recruiting command. It was right by my house too. I'd missed it for two years.

I don't know what happened. Lord works mysterious ways, my friend. I'm driving home to go home. I'm like, well, I guess the military's done. I got my masters, but I guess the military's out of question. I see it in the corner and I'm like, how did I miss this for years? It's been right by my house.

And my one room in the house I lived and I drive in there and the Nebraska Recruiting Command Sergeant Major is in there. I walk in, he's in there, I'm talking to the recruiter. He overhears me telling, pleading my case to this recruiter. Hey, man, you please, I really wanna go in. I need to finish what I started. He walks in, he says, I'm hearing what you're saying.

He said, do you really want to go back in soon? I said, yes, Sergeant Major. He goes, Roger that. He signs me the paperwork over, I sign it. He takes it back from me. As he's holding it, he goes, there's just one stipulation. You have to do it all over again. Roger that.

So I did all over again. Basic Airborne Ranger, did it twice and went back in. I, and I, I just- You did all, all twice. Yeah, yeah. If you want something bad enough though, was it, you'll do it.

And it really, a lot of that, and you know what this is, especially when you're early on, it's a mind game, it's fuck, fuck games. I knew it was coming. I was in great shape. Cause that's all I did. I worked, I went to school,

I hung out with my girlfriend at the time, who was a volleyball player there, so what did I do? She was half the time, she was at the gym, I worked out all the time. I was running five minute miles. You know, I could do 120 pushups in two minutes. I mean, I was, you know, I'm very lucky I had good genes from my family, you know,

playing sports helped as well. So when I went in, I could outdo the drill sergeants. But I saw, I saw how the military in those three years went from, or it was actually four years. And I was, yeah, from 1995, when I first went into basic training till when I went back in in the beginning of 1999, how had it gotten easier?

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

or been in their deserts. I mean, they were hardcore. The one that didn't, and he was one of my drill sergeants, drill sergeant Hardney, the devil, loved that man. Big black dude, six, seven, looked like a demon from hell, but I love him. He was actually the NCOIC for a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, if that tells you anything about his qualifications.

He may not have his tab, but do you think he's disciplined? Yeah, standing eight hours at, yeah. So when I went in the second time, two guys had tabs, no CIVs, not that much in shape. The only two guys, the senior drill instructor, he was from third bat, so he was a ranger. He was tabbed and then our commander, our CO was tabbed. And it was easier.

They weren't throwing us around. They couldn't even get in our face. They could still do the shark attack, but it was, the standards had lowered. The mile max, the two mile run was 11.54 when I first went in, it moved down to 13. So it was easy. I was like, Jesus, this is cake.

I was, you know, every, all the standards had lowered. And it wasn't, it was, it was just, it was a hell of a lot easier. And of course it was a lot easier because I knew what was coming. Airborne school was easy. RIP was hard like RIP should be. I mean, it was just, it was a kick in the ass.

RIP should be a kick in the ass. The only thing is, is two of the instructors there, I had joined in 1995. So when I came back through, there were both E6s, E5s, one was E5, one was E6. And they're like, what the hell are you doing? So I mean, why I tell people that is because it was, I didn't feel the, oh shit, you know, the nervous,

you know, like you do when you went through Hell Week or these guys are mean. It's like, I know that dude. I could outrun him five years ago. So it was, and then going back to battalion, went there, got my tab, became a team leader. And then my platoon leader found out I had my master's degree

and that I'd been at battalion before. And he says, you need to become an officer son. And so I became an officer, I got my commission. No kidding, you became an officer? Don't tell my buddy. I did not, I did not know that. You would have not been invited to the show. No, no, no. It wasn't long lasted though, I did not know that. You would have not been invited to the show.

It wasn't long lasted though, because I did. I got my commission. And in 2003, I was going through IOBC, I'm a Tree Officer's Base, of course. I actually joined 19 Special Forces Group too. So I stayed enlisted in the Guard as I was getting, because I did Green to Gold. I didn't go to Officer Canada School.

I just had to do a year of Green to Gold at Creighton University. So I joined the Guard, 19 Special Forces Group is where I linked up with my partner that does my vodka with me, Ben Morgan from First Ranger Bat. He was on ODA 993. They brought me into ODA 993.

So we were friends and we grew up in Grand Junction, but that's where we really developed a great friendship because he went to a different high school. We didn't really hung out. But anyway, I still had, I got my commission and I was infantry, got it. And at the end of the course, I was standing out there at the Malone ranges

and my stomach was really hurting bad, terrible, was feeling awful. But I'd just been out the can in the night before drinking. I was like, it's normal shit. We're out here sweating our balls off, just drinking. I ate a ton of pizza, of course. And I had passed gas, I let a fart go, and I charted, I chipped myself.

But the pain actually increased when that happened. So I was like, that ain't right. And I went and dropped trial and I had blood all over. Just I had blood. I had blood just, I had, well, they rushed me to Martin-Almond Hospital and I figured I had ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease. And it was really bad.

And I remember the GI doctor, yeah, I just had blood all over the place. I had shit blood. Because that's what I would, when it becomes extremely inflamed, for those don't know what ulcerative colitis is and ulcranies is, your lower intestines and your colon become inflamed

and they just have ulcers all over them. It looks like you've got road rash. It's like when you, you know, I've had it for years, I just didn't really, you know, I didn't really notice it because I was going at such a high level.

And I think the focus was there to finish what I started that I wasn't gonna let anything hamper that. But it got so bad that now it was affecting my nutrients. It was affecting my energy levels because I couldn't, that's where you process all your food. That's where when you eat everything. And when it's all like that, your food, it doesn't process. It just shoots right through you.

It's blood, mucus and food. And that's what was starting to happen. Wow. Yeah, I got discharged. I got discharged in 2003. And I was a kick in the balls, dude. That was my one time in my life where God was, I was mad or I was like,

man, I wonder if God really exists. Because like, holy crap, I went through all this, all this. And I remember lying on that gurney, looking up at him going, really? Why, what the hell? And that's all right, he has pain. God always has patience. See, he pities us, which he always pities the one

that needs the most pitying too, was that that time was me. And went home and I lost 30 pounds. I mean, it was like Ranger school over again. I lost 30 pounds in about a week, because I couldn't eat. Were you just like completely devastated that you were being discharged again?

Yes, because that wasn't the plan. The plan was I had already- What did you think you were gonna do? I had no idea. I had no idea. No idea. I didn't know. My wife was there, she was very supportive.

We had actually got married. We had got married before I went to Ranger School. That's how wonderful she is. We got married at a courthouse and I was off to Ranger School the next week. But she was there. What did your wife do at the time? At the time she was actually, she stayed in Omaha

and she was managing Gold's Gym. So she was a Gold's Gym. She was just working. She had a business degree and that was, you know, a fitter. She's athletic. Gold's Gym at the time, that was when Gold's was really big. So she had a good job. So not that, you know, it was about 40 grand a year.

That's tough for two people to live on. Couldn't do that anymore. But that time we were okay. We're living in an apartment and all she cares about, we're just healing. So I'm trying to find natural remedies to heal myself. I'm going to nature store, because I'm on prednisone, but prednisone is rough.

So through the next year, all I'm doing is, first of all, I'm eating things. And if it goes right through all, I'm eating things, and if it goes right through me, I write it down, I can't eat it anymore. So I'm figuring out what I could eat, my diet. And then I'm taking the medication, and then I'm going to nature food stores,

organic food stores. It wasn't the whole foods at the time. You had to find the little mom and pop ones, and trying to find out what could I eat to start to build my body back up. Because I couldn't take away protein. I couldn't do anything that was dairy related. And I just tried to build my body up for the next year. And I found this goat clostrum,

which they use, they don't, I wish they still made it goat milk. I could do that. And then I could eat corn stuff. I could eat stuff that was rice related. I could eat anything in the Bible. If it was manna, manna bread. I could eat that stuff. I could eat stuff that was rice related. I could eat anything in the Bible. If it was manna, manna bread, I could eat that for some reason.

It didn't disagree with me. And I built my body back up for the next year. And at the end of 2003, I got a call on the phone from Blackwater security. Blackwater called me first, and then 30 minutes later, Triple Canopy called. How did they get in? I mean, did you?

At that time, it was just word of mouth. And I remember they got a hold because one of my Ranger buddies at both places were already working for him and they had recommended my name to him. Interesting. And yeah, they were good. Actually, Blackwater was a gentleman,

and he's a great guy, Brian Mastrofini was his name. And he had recommended that as Rangers, and he's a great guy. Brian Mastrofini was his name, and he had recommended that S. Rangers, let's give him a shot. He didn't know I was sick though either. But they got my phone number, because he was a friend, he had the phone number, so he's like, here it is, and they called me. And the only reason I was Blackwater's

is because they called me first. And at that time, they were both great organizations. Eric running that, and it was still relatively small. And they had Lee Van Arsdell running, who's a Delta legend, running Triple Canopy. It was pretty good shit. And they said- Was it for OGA?

No, that time there wasn't, there was peak, it was called Polar Quest, was just starting to come online. But at that time it was Bre it was the Bremer Detail. What year is this? 2004, end of 2003, beginning of 2004. So Karzai had already been going. The Karzai Detail, where a lot of your brothers were on,

on that Karzai, and they had just started to move into Iraq and they were starting to pick up guys to go on the Bremer Detail, which was going to be the Negroponte Detail down the line. It wasn't State Department either, it was the Coalition Provisional Authority. It's interesting. How'd you like that?

The beginning it was great, because it was like OGA. I remember showing up at GRS and everybody was talking about the ground. Yeah, that was the good old days. That was when it was State Department really didn't have their hand in it. So it was the Wild West. I mean, that's where SACS started., you know, that's where Saks started.

Saks was, he was, that's where he became really a legend over there within the GRS was he was on the original Bremer guys, I love Saks. But anyway, yeah, that's, that's what I, and I went and I went to the first class where I met Boone. Boone and I were in that first, it was called a- Did you work with Saks in that? Not in the Bremer detail.

No? No, he moved on. He was one of the first guys to move over to the GRS. Okay. Sachs was the trendsetter on contracting, but rightfully should be. What a great guy, man. He is, that's the one thing.

He is an opera, but he's just a nice guy. I love that dude. He was, obviously I'm mentioning him, so he had an effect on my life, a positive effect. But yeah, I went there and went through the training which was basically three weeks at Mojoc of Delta, Long Tabbers, White Soft, Blue, Rangers, and Marines fighting with each other.

And it never changed throughout your entire contracting. It did, it was so hilarious. and it never changed throughout your entire contracting career. It was so hilarious. We didn't learn a damn thing during that. We went through all the shootings, so you had to pass the shooting, but as far as the PSD stuff, we didn't learn a thing. Because they were just always, everybody was always fighting.

And then you're having the white, it was the white stuff, the seal, the white, the Vanellas, the seal, the white, the vanilla, the seal teams outside of blue. The me's. They were. The regular shitbag Navy Seals. Come on, shit, I believe you, man. I'd rather work, the vanilla guys knew infantry stuff

better than the blue guys. I always said, man, you guys know your infantry shit down, you guys had it. Mike Haines, Saw Bones was a guy who worked quite often. He was awesome and he hated blue. It's like, fuck that. But he was awesome, Bones was the man. And anyway, they're running the course. So do you think a blue guy's gonna take shit from them

or Delta? And it was, I remember sitting on the bleachers, week two, and we're trying to do through, we're trying to learn basic formations, walking formations, diamond, you know, and then how to react to contact within those formations. And it just turned into a big argument shoving. From a bunch of guys that none of them have done personal protection.

No, the other ones that were teaching it. It's all been assaulting. Yeah, and the ones that were teaching it, you know, they'd been down range for what six Hey guys, we're gonna go on defense now What's that? What's that? I don't know figure it out and teach it That's what it was so but it was it was it was awesome because it was a beautiful day You know, it's it's it's early spring in North Carolina Moriak its sun's out, it's starting to set,

I'm in the bleachers, and one of the instructors come over to me, his name was Carl Simon Schreck, he come over to me and he goes, what you smiling at, Four Ranger? I said, you guys are paying me, because I hadn't made shit for a year. You guys are paying me 250 bucks a day to sit out here in this beautiful weather,

get a shoot gun, and I get to watch you guys just clown show, but this is awesome. I'm just unbelievable. How lucky am I to be right here watching this shit show go on? And it was so awesome. It was wonderful. And then I finished the course.

I had to go home for like two months because my clearance still hadn't cleared yet. And I hadn't got my clearance yet from state department. That's when we started to figure out, oh, DOD, NSA, CIA have their own clearances? Oh, I didn't know that. I thought as you got one, they don't cross over. So I had to wait for my state department clearance,

got it, went home to my wife. I said, please don't divorce me, but I'm going to Iraq. That's when the contracting life for the next 10 years took over, man. That was it. And early days, and it was the Wild West. And it was, man, sitting up on top of a building on Haifa Street with my ranger buddy and Pigeon shit, over watching one of our PSD teams,

watching Bradley shoot down Haifa Street, spinning, the guys in their turrets, they spinning because they're, that was, I still remember, that was so cool. So they, cause they're, they're gun, the up gunners, they're spinning, making sure they're looking and they're not going to get shot. Cause Highford was bad at that time.

That was real bad. And, you know, I'm ducking cause they don't know if I'm a good guy, but I don't want to shoot me, but just, that was wonderful times, man. Driving down Biop, driving down Irish, route Irish at 100 kilometers an hour, fucking making sure that you don't get hit on that overpass or on that.

There are not a lot of people that say they've had a great time running up and down route Irish. One of the few. I loved it, and I had an awesome team. We had a wonderful, just an awesome team. Again, another one, just guys that just, I don't know got along, but it just, it worked. And-

So for those listening that don't know about Route Irish, Route Irish is most likely unanimously the most dangerous road in Baghdad. It was for a time. I mean, there were other dangerous roads too, like Haifa Street was very dangerous. Route Wild, when you got up to Sadr, was pretty damn dangerous.

And even Route 10 at some points were dangerous. And then of course, Route 10, when it got into Ramadi and Fallujah, of course were extremely dangerous. And God bless them, Helveston and the guys, that got hung and died there. But Irish was always hot always something he was dying or getting hit on Irish and I loved every minute of it and I had the best drivers in the world and when you see when when you see a motorcade with three cars and they

know the drivers know what they're doing and I was very lucky enough that I moved being from the trunk monkey to eventually I became the team leader. So I'm on that rear vehicle making the calls and just watching drivers do their thing, blocking and screening at a hundred K, dude, it is beautiful. And I just get chills thinking about it. Cause I was like, man, it got to a point where it was like a great football team

where coach didn't need to say a thing. Everybody knew what they were doing and they just did it. It was amazing. Having my two left and right door gunners cracking doors, if they needed to hit somebody, they'd hit them. If they didn't, they didn't. You know, getting out. And even when I got to be a door gunner on the left rear,

when you're going 100K and you got to crack that door and you're hanging out the side, like that's almost the same as hanging on bench of a little bird as it's spanking in. It's wonderful, man. Who gets to do that? That was fun times. And we were up and down that thing

in a two month period at one point, we had to run it six times a day. That was stupid. It was state department. Six times a day? You had to, if you, whoa. Six times a day? Six times a day. You had to, if you, whoa. Six times a day on Route Irish? We were protecting the Rhino bus,

and we got cast for that. Holy shit. And six times a day, and it was, we violated every security principle that you're supposed to have. Were you guys one of the crews that had the, Which, what? I don't know what it is. Somebody dressed up like a dinosaur supposed to have. Were you guys one of the crews that had the... Which one? I don't know what the answer is. Somebody dressed up like a dinosaur

in the bag of a truck and rode that day. No, no, that wasn't us as far as you know. I don't think. No, it wasn't us, it wasn't us, it wasn't us. That was later down the line. It was a Dine Corps team after. That was later down the line. Yeah, that was down the line.

It was team five, I believe, that did the DynCore team. Cause we would rotate with DynCore on this cause we were still didn't have enough people. So we would take it, then they would take something. I love the DynCore guys too. But now that wasn't us. Seriously, that was the DynCore team, which I wish it would have been.

That was some funny shit. That was hilarious. YouTube that stuff guys, dinosaur route Irish. But yeah, we were time and place predictable. We were a big target and we were slow. Everything you didn't want to be on Route Irish, we were in a- Did you guys take contact?

Just sniper fire from a way, right when you hit Route Irish, you had those that were the, where the Edinburgh risk guys got hit. That's that famous, I say famous, that infamous video where those guys are on and there's an SF guy in there that everybody hammered because he ran and hit in a little ditch.

I've not seen that. It was Edinburgh Risk where, it's right at the beginning, when you get out of the green zone and you start hitting around Irish, it's still Iraqi urban areas right there. And it's about 300 meters off the road and they would sit PKMs or snipers on there.

Cause there was also a building that had been bombed and burnt out that they would sniper fire about a hundred meters away when you're going. And so anyway, we would take every once in a while, but we didn't get hit with a car bomb. We got very lucky. The Dyncore team that took over for us got hit the next week.

So we would just take, and you know, you're like, ping, all right, well, we're good. Everybody good? Yeah, all right. It just added to the flavor, man. And you know, it was something to say that for the team is well, how awesome they were, and how good motorcade operations,

if you're running it right, they're gonna hit somebody that's not doing it right. But I do remember that it was, when we got the task to do it and I was a TL, I was like, can you guys do this? Well, yeah, you know, what am I gonna say, no? Of course we can do it. But I went to the team and you should have seen the looks,

man, half of them were stoked, the other half were like, I'm not going home. Yeah. And you're trying to keep everybody pumped up and in my head going, holy shit, six times a day? Just the odds. Yeah. That we're gonna get hit with a VBID.

I said, we can take small arms for her because we're gonna keep moving. We're gonna keep pushing through. Just don't stop. Don't create your own kill zone like the Edinburgh risk guys did that got hit where you get caught in a traffic jam there and then you push everybody out right and left.

So you're basically, you've just given them an ambush zone. You've given a big target, but we could just keep pushing. Don't worry about the Rhino. It's got a much armor on it. It's the State Department armored bus that M1 Abrams has. It's gonna be able to take a hit. Just be able to med-vac them or get them out of there if it goes down. But just keep moving and it was very, we just did everything right and we got lucky.

You know, a lot of night. You never got blown up on Irish. That is like, from running six times a day, time and place predictable with a huge bus as a target. I mean, that is incredible. It's lucky. It is very lucky. Cause again, I said, when Deinquart took over

the next week, team five, they got hit, the car bomb hit them, hit the rhino right off the head. Boom, and you know, I want to attribute it to that, okay, yeah, we were just that awesome. No, we were just that lucky. Yeah, that's luck. We were just that lucky. But it still brought the team together.

It was wonderful, and it was very tiring days because you were distressed. I'm not diminishing your team, by the way, by saying that it's just luck, I'm just saying., by the way, by saying that it's just luck. I'm just saying. No, no, yeah. But I'm telling you it's just luck. Even with those DFPs and shit.

I mean, there was. Well, and they were starting to drop the grenades with the little shoots off the overpasses as well. Of course, there is some, hey, we did what we had control of. We planned what we had to. We ran the route right. The motor kit operations were great. We were doing what we needed to do. We control of we planned what we had to we ran the raft right the motor kit

Operations were great. We were doing what we need to do. We kept moving. We didn't ever stop Let me let me say sorry. No go ahead. I get yelled at if I don't know about these acronyms so an EFP for the audience an EFP is basically a It's a platter charge. It's a force projectile. Yeah. I want to say, I always say, I always say electrically, but that's not right. I don't know why my head say it. It's a platter charge.

They put a piece of copper on it. It's a force projectile. I always forget what the E stands for. You guys can hammer on me later about that, but it's where it goes. And then that platter of that copper turns into molten lava. So it'll go through the armor. And then when it goes through it cools

and then it becomes a projectile, a hard projectile. And they were starting, yeah, remember that? They were starting to hit us with that. And that was always a good start. Well, they would even put those thermal sensors on. So when they sense the heat of the engine, that's what would turn off. Because we were able to counter their,

first of all, their wires, we could see them a lot of times, which, you know, you just, but we were able to, with all the counter measures, we could counter the cell phone. So that was huge, yeah. And yeah, we had a buddy that, next month, a guy named Wee Man, they got hit with the EFP

when they were driving the Mambas around, Blackwater had those white South African, and it went right through that armor. Yeah. And, you know, I always say I love Wee Man, I love Chris, he was a great guy. He was actually our, he worked in the mail. I mean, it sounds kind of cliche,

but he worked in the mailroom. He came in and he didn't have, he was not special ops. He worked in a small town police department and he came in and he wanted to get on the road and we would never let him on the road. We're like, no, dude, you don't qualify. This is where you belong right here. And finally he got out on the road

and got hit with an AFP and he fucked him up. Damn, man. And I still love him to death, but I'll be honest, I think, I don't wanna say he wanted that, cause I would never say it on anybody, but I do remember when they, cause we didn't go pick him up, but the QRF team that responded, they went to help.

My team was the PSD team. And I do remember when they came back, one of the guys on the QRF team kept saying, I said, did you see Wee Man? He goes, yeah. He goes, what was he saying? He said, he kept asking me to take a picture of him. It's like, sometimes you get what you wish for, man.

Man. And yeah, I'm not, not to guess, he is awesome. Wee is, and he's braver than shit, he is. But be careful what you, I always, that's always a reminder to me, be careful what you wish for. But yeah, we did that. And then I did another year and then I went back home

and in between I was instructing at Blackwater, so I was a firearms and tactics instructor in between contracts. So I really never went home. Even when I- So did you move to Moyoc? No, I stayed in Omaha, she had a great job. So it was one of those things where we were just apart a lot.

It was, I was gone, or I'd go home for a month and it was hard because my son was born. My first, my 19 year old, he was born, first two months I was over in, in Baghdad, my first two months on the contract. So I did come home to see his birth. And then I went right back for another seven months. Yeah.

And then I, and, but that was, you know, at that time that's what I wanted. There's nobody to blame but myself. And what is it, what is it? My whole career was pre-kids. And so, but as you know, today was my son's first day of school. Congrats on you. I am so happy that he's just like, dad, I'm out, man.

Yeah, well, I was expecting like a little, you know, I'm gonna miss you, mom and dad. No, he's like, I don't give a shit. I'm like, see you guys later. But, but I am, I, I missed his first open house because of a, I interviewed Trump. Yeah.

And otherwise there's no way I would have missed it. You gotta do what you gotta do. You gotta think twice. I'll tell you man, when my wife sent me pictures of my son like with his backpack on walking into that school, I was like, you know, and it just, every time I have an experience like that, I just wonder like, how did my buddies do it back in the day?

How do you? Yeah, how do you rationalize that? I wanna know what it's like to come home, you met your son when he was a, when he was a baby. He was born. He was one month. And then you come back, he's seven months old.

Now today, at that time, it was just what it was. It was this is what I'm doing. This is what I gotta do. I'm providing for him. You rationalize it because this is what I'm providing for my family. Yeah. But it's also a little ego.

This is what I wanna do. This is what I've always wanted to do. And when I got discharged from the military, my buddies were jumping into Afghanistan. So I thought I missed my war. You know how I, yeah. Well, no, I got my war. This is where I need to be.

I'm going. And I did have a good time. I was enjoying it. It was wonderful. Now, looking back now and experiencing, you're getting experienced the little kid time with my nine-year-old that I have been with him growing up. Now it's hurts.

And now it's like, man, damn. Do you feel it? I missed him. And we had a coming to Jesus when he was 16 because we didn't know each other. And even when I was home as a contractor, there's no decompression, there's no demobe. You're off a plane, a commercial jet and you're going home.

And it takes about 30 days just to get your head right. You're not home. And then you have 30 days of downtime and then you're back out again. So that's why I think it was even easier for me. Just I think maybe that was a defense mechanism for me. I don't wanna go home and be angry and just let me keep working. That's and I'd go back and continue to instruct at MOIAC

and I wouldn't go home for more than a couple of weeks or I'd fly them out to me. It was good. At that time, it wasn't hard because I thought we were doing it for something bigger than, you know, it was patriotism. They attacked us. We're now looking back, I'm like, man, gosh, I miss that. I would have enjoyed being a father then.

And luckily for us, him and I are very close now. I'm happy to hear that. Yeah, but so we were able to come to terms, same with my daughter too. What did that, I mean, did it come to a head and there was a conversation? Yeah, yeah, yeah to terms, same with my daughter. What did that mean? Did it come to a head and there was a conversation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, when he was 16. What was that conversation?

My wife and I had reconciled. We were back together. It was, I'm sorry, when he was 16, so it was right around the year of 2018 where I got my shit together. And him or her and I back together. And we're out at a family dinner and we're out of Olive Garden,

Council Bluffs, Iowa, I remember vividly. And my little guy, I'm being able to be a father with him, even though I'm speaking and I'm starting to whittle the speaking down, I'm starting to be home a lot more. I'm hugging all over him. The stuff I really didn't do with the other two, because I was just so detached when I was home.

I wanted to, but I didn't know how. I mean, it really was, because I wasn't always there. My brain was sandbox, Afghanistan. Half brain's there, half brain's family. Where now my brain is all there with the family. And my little guy did something, and I'm sorry, I can't say it, my wife,

well, many people know, but I just, my wife is all good. My little guy, Peanut, all my kids have call signs, Peanut. He does something that the other two at Olive Garden, he's doing something, he's starting to get angry, have a tantrum, because he got those little games there at Olive Garden. You can play on the little bonters. In the past, when my other two, Kiki and Bubba,

when they were growing up, I'd get angry, just lose it. Because I was back home, laugh the handle. I'm not getting mad at him. I'm actually being a dad. I mean, I'm being disciplined, but I'm not getting mad at him. I'm actually being a dad. I'm actually, I mean, I'm being disciplined, but I'm having some patience. He looked at me and it killed me, dude. It did.

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

he's not gonna understand that. And that was where I realized that he was angry with me for being gone for many years. And Kiki, my daughter, same way, because I was. He, my little guy, Peanut, got treated a lot better, a lot less hand spanking on the bottoms or whatever than the other two. And that's attributed to my mind state being coming back.

Cause you know, you come back and you have that excuse. I mean, what are you guys crying about? You see this little Iraqi kid, he's on the street, you have nothing to eat and you're trying to compare the two, you know, but it's completely different. But that's how I am coming back. That's my rationalization.

I may be yelling at you, but you could have it a lot worse. And a lot of guys, a lot of fathers now are realizing that because we're comparing their lives to these Afghani, the Afghani that's walking down the street carrying water up a five miles up a hill or, you know, or the kids that are caught in a crossfire because our car bomb goes off and it blows up a busload of kids going to school.

You know, we're trying to compare that. And they don to compare that. They don't understand that. And that's not a fair comparison. But that's how I was until I was finally home more and able to come to terms with what was going on over there that that was a life, but now my life is as a father here. And my actions were completely different

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

Son, I love you, man. Or even now that, and with the Adventist cell phones, that's one positive is that I can just always say, I love you, Bubba. And even if I get back, yeah, see, he's a teenager, he knows. And you know, I know we reconciled because his junior year, he was an athlete as well,

when he played basketball, he played football as freshmen and sophomore year, but he had three concussions, so I pulled him out. I said, no more, you're done with football. Play something else. He loved soccer anyway, so he went to soccer. He changed his number to 13. I was like-

No way. I went to a game and in my, I was, you know, my wife Tanya was sitting there, I was like, is that? Oh shit, I said his name, sorry. Is that Bubba? Thank there. I said, is that? Oh shit, I said his name, sorry. Is that Bubba? Thank you. I said, is that Bubba?

She goes, yeah. He goes, he's number 13. She goes, yeah. And that's when I knew that he'd finally forgiven me. And we were very close now. Yeah, I love that boy to death. And he is just a good kid. His mom raised him.

He is, he was, He's nothing like me. He doesn't drink. He went to a school, he had a soccer scholarship to go play at Northwestern College there. It's a Christian school in Iowa. And he's up there and I thought it'd be all right. And he's like, dad, I don't do any, all the guys go to Sioux Falls and drink.

And he goes, I don't do that. He goes, I go, well then come home and you have a track scholarship to the small college in Kansas, write that coach up and tell him you want to come in. That's what he did. So he was wonderful, man. He's just, how about your daughter?

She's headstrong, man. But now we're starting to get better because the daughter's way different Little boys, you know boys you can be a little firmer Girls, you you don't really want to in my opinion you don't because you don't want them falling in with a man that The bosses them around but you also you know, she's still your daughter. She got a discipline. So what do I do? Mama handle this. But it came to a point to where, yeah,

and my daughter's, as far as her outspokenness is like me, my oldest son, he's not, you know, he's very, very quiet. He's strong, but he, you know, he doesn't argue back. He doesn't, he knows that I got it, I'll fix it. My daughter, she's gonna argue, argue, argue, argue. And there were times where we would be, yeah, we'd be yelling at each other. Because the disrespect that was there.

And my wife finally said, she goes, just let me handle it. And this was a couple of years ago and so done. He just default to my wife who, and my daughter responds better to her mom. And a lot of it has to do with me being gone a lot. But now we're, no, we're getting back again. We're reconciling and we're at a point where,

and she's not very, I think she got, she's not very affectionate. She doesn't like the hugs and the kisses like my little guy does. And my oldest son, I said, I'm gonna hug you till you're 40, till you're 50 years old, son. They like it. I mean, my son doesn't hug back, but he lets me.

She doesn't like it. And I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, her growing up and me and her mom, sometimes having some issues. We got divorced at one point and me being an angry, angry man coming back from deployments. But she knows I love her. And there was an issue at her school that I love it. She wrote a letter to the school saying

how she had a problem with one of the dress code issues. I'm like, heck yeah. And I remember I called, I said, I got your back darling, because I believe you. I said, I know you're doing the right thing. And that's what I love because that is something Honto would do, like telling Pete Hicks that you're going to choke out a former president.

Hey, she got her opinion. Hell yeah, I got you. And I called her and she was, you know, so it's a lot of time I'll tell her I love her. I love you, Donna. Yeah, Dad. I love you. I love you too.

Because I called her and I said, you write what you want. You know I got your back. Tell them how you feel. I said, I love you. And she goes, I love you too, Dad. And that was actually just last week. Good for you, man. So it's being a father, man.

You just have to figure it out. And it's okay to be a disciplinarian. There's nothing wrong with that. But you also, your kids are all different. And for us at Deployed, we do have to relearn. We have to change ourselves. Warriors don't retire, like Ron said. And I know we put it in the movie, but he said that. But it's the truth, but we don't ever retire,

but we can't be a warrior at home. You can be a dad, but you have to figure out a way how to reach your kids. And luckily for me, my kids are smarter than me, so they would maybe not tell me, but they would say things where I was a suit enough to pick it up, like my son or like my daughter. And they don't always have to say they love you,

just in an action, like my son were number 13. I just know right then, I was like, he forgives me. We're good. And we have been perfect since. I'm happy to hear that. Thanks man. That's pretty good. Chris, let's, we're good. And we have been perfect since. I'm happy to hear that. Thanks man. That's pretty awesome. Well Chris, let's take a quick break.

Yeah. When we come back, we will get into how you got into the OGA contract. You got it brother. Perfect. I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show and their support allows us to keep doing what we do.

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We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, Chris, we're back from the break. Yeah. And we just went through a small portion of your career. Well, I guess not a small portion.

We went through a portion. It's of my life, small portion of my life, let's put it that way. But now we're getting ready to get into how you got picked up for OGA. That was, you know, again, and I keep referring to this, God's path. The Lord works works mysterious ways.

It really, it wasn't anything I wanted to do. I was doing fine, doing, I was working with Blackwater, doing state department stuff, but then also I was working with Greystone, which was Eric's, he was trying to make like kind of an executive outcome sort of, but it was Greystone, so it was still Blackwater, but it was like a little offshoot.

We would going on. What's executive outcomes? That was the old South African PMC, where it was really a PMC mercenaries. Oh, that was like the De Beers shit. Yeah, that was where they were going and actually getting hired by governments to take down terrorist organizations

or actually do direct action missions. That wasn't the De Beers shit. That wasn't the De Beers shit. That wasn't the De Beers shit. No, this was the old- And real mercenaries. Yes, were the term mercenary, I would say, well, term mercenaries back at the beginning of time, but that was where the government stopped in

and said, we gotta stop doing this because there were 60 South African, those guys were 60 South Africans strong from a military and they were taking out huge armies at the behest of some of the African governments. Read about them, it was pretty interesting stuff. They were bad asses. What is this called again? They were called executive outcomes.

How the hell do I not know about this? I know, so I'm surprised too, man. That's a big deal. I'm a dumb ass sometimes. I don't know if anybody's still alive from any of those. You know, it was early long 70s, 80s, I think it was. But anyway, Greystone was supposed to be, Eric's kind of like a offshoot of that.

So it was Blackwater, but we were called Greystone. But what were- I didn't know Greystone either. Yeah, yeah. Man, dude, I got left in the dark on somebody there. It was very small and it just lasted. But it was Eric wanted to keep that. Was it the agency stuff?

No, it was private stuff. We were going out to South America and training local South Americans to go and protect bases overseas. So protect blackwater bases more. So instead of using the Nepalese, the Gurkha Gurkhas, you know, we were trying to. All right, hold on.

Let's go, let's talk about Greystone. I've had Eric on here three separate times. We have not talked about Greystone. It was, I don't think it lasted very long. It was very small. It really was more training going down there and vetting locals that we could use from South America, Central America.

So I went to Peru and El Salvador, and then we all said teams going to Columbia. And it wasn't anything nefarious. It's not like we were going on there and starting to execute. We weren't pulling inks. Let's put it that way. We weren't doing that.

And we were going out there to train and then working with the four of us at Especial and helping them train a little bit. So it was like a FID mission. It really was. But I think ERC wanted to get to a point where it was like its own self-sustaining army. But it just never morphed into that

because then that's when, those times is when State Department started to take over the CP, now it was high threat protection. Then it went to that WIPs, Worldwide Personal Protective, and State Department getting their hands in, and that's when the microscope started going up Eric's keister, where they were trying to come back from for stuff.

And whatever, I like Eric. I protected his family in between contracts. I'd go to Tyson's Corner, and I'd go run with him in the morning, because I was the only guy that could, he was a beast, he was, I'd go run with him in the morning because I was the only guy that could, he was a beast, he was physically, I could run with him in the morning and I'd go take his kids to school because that Code Pink, that liberal terrorist,

crazy women group was always threatening them. So we had a team that would help him and I was on that as well. I was the detail leader for that. But anyway, we did that and I got to go, so I went to South America in between contracts. So I was state department and then, do you want to go to Greystone?

You want to go to South America? Hell yeah. So we went to Piedra, Peru, went to San Salvador, went to Lima, Peru and it was fun. It was a good time. And again, my Spanish comes back. So I don't really feel like it's a deployment to me. You know, and ate some good food,

went to a couple spin classes there in Lima, you know, Shakira on bikes in Spandex, what can go, anyway. Anyway, it was a great, and then the training too, you know, and working with the Forza de Especial, especially in El Salvador was pretty cool. But then I came back and I was still teaching high threat protection, getting ready to do another contract

and Marty Strong, who's still a Lieutenant, great guy. He's written a few books himself, but great guy. He was one of the program managers on the Blackwater contract, the State Department contract and Randy Leonard was running, starting to run the OGA side house. We call it the Victory, we call it the Victory Program, and AOB, Army of Blackwater Program,

which was the static CIA guys, the base security guys. Marty comes to me and says, hey, you want to go work OGA? And like Marty, man, I'm in the State Department, and I thought the requirements were still like eight years or nine years spec ops. I only had six. So I was like, I don't qualify. And it was six, but he goes, you qualify.

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

He goes, you qualify. All right, sure put my name in the hat. And then the next day, Randy came and there was seven of us instructors that had been working contracts. And there was the victory program, which we ran to get guys certified for OGA. It was easy.

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

And these are all tough guys, man. All pipeters, right? Cool as everything, I can do anything. And Randy comes in and TDC had gotten a name for itself. It was hard. People fail. A lot of people were failing. And so Randy comes in and there's seven of us.

He goes, we have a slot for TDC. Who wants to go? It was crickets. All these pipe hitters, man. Everybody's, look, you know what? Look in, somebody say something. I was like, fuck it. I'll go.

I was like, I'll do it. And it was like everybody went, ha. Because if one of us didn't volunteer, Randy was going to pick one. And if you don't pass it, well then, maybe it will come back on whips, but you're never working. It was, it was literally pass or fail.

You pass, if you fail, never OGA ever again. Those listening, OGA stands for other government agency. So we weren't calling. We're getting into the intelligence world. The intelligence stuff. They had the clowns in action. We're getting into the clowns in action. Sure, true.

But we didn't call it GRS. I didn't know what that was called. I didn't know it was GRS. You know, he said OGA, which I knew what it was, but it wasn't called GRS at that time. If it was, that wasn't the term used around the headshed there. Yeah. So I say, and Randy says, okay, we need to get your spun up.

And he brought in Dan Simpson, Dirty Dan, one of the original makers of TDC with Randy. They started with Dan, another Dan, he started GRS, great guy. I wish I could remember his last name, I can't. It's probably better you don't. Don't, you're right. Even though he's, well, he left and started

Osen Hunter Group, which was- Oh, maybe different. So he's a bit, no worries. Anyway, he goes, we need to get you spun up. And if you're a Ranger, and you see those, you guys use pistols. SF, they get good at pistols. Rangers, we get a pistol, we're throwing it in a rucksack.

We don't shoot it. It's like, we're rifling a machine. That's our thing. Rifles, machine guns, Gustafs, that's our thing. And Randy goes, get out there, I need to start training. And at the time too, I wasn't using broom handles, which, oh shit, you know, because we don't, that wasn't, you guys did.

Blue and White Soft did. A broom handle is a forward grip that goes on the front of an AR-15. That wasn't a thing. High readies. Or M4. M4, AR-15, SBR, PDW, whatever you get. All you gun porn people can call it whatever you want.

They figure it out. Yeah, exactly. But I remember, and we never did a high-ready. That wasn't a thing. It was low-ready, low-carry, low-carry, low-ready. So that's Ranger, right? You got to teach your high ready. So I get out there with Dan,

the high ready actually came pretty natural. The broom handle, I love, it's like, man, why have I not been using that thing? And it was just, I used the Deater. I liked the Deater for the fore grip, the CQD fore grip. It was excellent, it was perfect, fit my hand right? And so I got the rifle stuff down. That was pretty quick.

The pistol, je geez, I mean, I could pass a State Department quality pistol, which is a joke. The TDC pistol was not a joke. That was like, whoa, how am I gonna do this? And we worked on that continually for about a week. And then it was like, you're gone, go see ya. And we went, my TDC course was held in Danville, not Danville, ITI.

That's where it started, the racetrack out there, ITI, what is that, West Point, Maryland? I don't remember, it was called ITI. It's in Virginia. It's in Virginia, yeah. But we did it there, went there you did the PT test easy I mean actually I'm running five minute miles. It's nothing. I think I ran that Whatever was in nine minutes where you had to run a half mile carry the body run back. I mean I was just

Very blessed. I've been blessed with good Aztec running jeans The rifle part, I mean it was tough it was challenging. I'm gonna say it was easy. It was, I mean, it was tough. It was challenging. I'm gonna say it was easy. It was challenging. No, it's tough. It was the time standards, they're tough. Got through that.

The night stuff, again, we use night shit. I was used to infrared lasers. I was used to, I was so, it was awesome to actually not have a 14, a Cyclops on. And it wasn't the 15s we were using that time. There were 23s, they were a little bit bigger. Oh damn, those old school ones. Those old school ones, they were real heavy,

but it still was all right. You get used to it, because we had stronger necks back then. We were tougher back then. The vehicle stuff was piece of, it was just tactics. It was battle drill one alpha, man. React to contract, break contract. You know, it was from battle drill, squad attack,

battle drill 1 alpha. And then you're either break contract or you flank. And it was the vehicle attacks were pretty simple. It was just bounding. All things sex, it was infantry. And how stuff, no problem. Just don't flag your buddy. The higher ready eliminates that,

which made it a lot easier. And just get on your target, think. That's where I started. This needs to start kicking in more than this. More than the shooting. It's a chess game. Be three steps ahead of your enemy. If you're racing towards your gun, you're already screwed.

You've screwed yourself. That's why I don't get into the YouTube, let's go fast. Cause if you have to go fast, you've fucked up somewhere. And that was what was, that's what Randy really, Dev Guru Ran, SEAL Team, Horse Cock Randy, Coles, you know where his Holocaust site came. He really harped into that with me, along with my platoon Sergeant Randy Battalion,

which I didn't really start to put together till TDC. Be three steps ahead so you don't have to react fast. It's a chess game. And we had an MI5 and MI6 guys trained in there too. B three steps ahead so you don't have to react fast. It's a chess game. And we had an MI5 and MI6 guys trained in there too. They were part of our vetting team too. And for some reason, I don't know if this was your, every MI5, MI6 guy I met was either named Mick or Mo.

We had a Mick and we had a Mo. Standard issue call sign. But they were, one was an SBS guy. The other one was a Royal Marine that went to SAS. And they were a part of our instructing cadre too. Okay. And they were, those guys think. I mean, it's find, fix, and then eliminate.

But they're always thinking. And that's, so it really became now where things started to slow down. You know, you're adrenaline, fire breathing, let's kick through that door. That's actually where I started, hey, take a breath, so let's start to slow it down, Ranger, all right? Be aggressive if we need to, then bring it down.

And it really, it just started to all make sense. So the room clearing was actually, it was great. It was like, man, I'm getting this. I'm actually becoming an operator, you know? And it only took 10 years, but I'm there, I'm getting there. And the pistol though, I was so worried. When I did the pistol and you get, I don't remember, was it two tries?

You do practices, they have us do some practice runs through. So it's not like they put you on their coals, you're practicing. This has changed. And I don't remember, because we had a day of practice runs, yeah, that morning. And then they said, okay, call.

We went out and called. I below the head. All right, you get one alibi. And I went and the body was fine. I was making the times. I couldn't hit the head. Cause my grip was, I just didn't have the the times, I couldn't hit the head. Cause my grip was, I just didn't have the right grip. I didn't have the mechanics.

I was really, cause I didn't shoot a pistol a ton at range battalion. We just didn't do it. Yeah. So I mean out there, and I mean, luckily for me, fundamentals are fundamentals are fundamentals. So I'm trying to find the front side, trying to do whatever I can do within that timeframe,

which the one that got, the one that was getting me was the two to the body. And then you have to, you know, you start at the 10 and you have to run to the two and put one in the head. So it was like, go, draw, you run, and you have to put two to the body. Then you have to run down to the five or it was the seven. And then you got to put one in the head within like,

it was stupid, it was like three seconds or something. I think these are different quals. They might be different now, they might be. And I still got my quals. If you ever want me to send them to you, I've still got those quals, because I used to teach the course after. Yeah.

So I've still got those. You've got them too. And I'd like to see what you have. So I mean, I can always use more training material, man. I love a call us, but it was, that was getting me. I could get the body and then you had to run fast down to the three. It was like 10 to the three or no, I'm sorry.

10, yeah, it was 10 to the three. I'd have to look guys, forgive me guys. You guys all know, I will, maybe I'll send that. We'll put online, but it was, it wasn't ungodly. It was tough. And I kept blowing the headshot. Because you did that twice, and if you didn't get in the A-Box both times, it didn't matter, you failed.

You could get everybody shot in the world, but you had to hit A-Box, not outside. Basically what he's talking about is there's a slap that we call the credit card. The credit card. In the head. The prefrontal cortex lobe, right? The eyes.

And um... So if you miss, if you hit outside of the credit card, you're done. You're done. It's on those IPSC targets, the I-S-P-C, I-P-S-C targets. And um... The last one I got, I didn't do anything different, I just got lucky as shit. Body was fine, physically I was fine,

I was fast though, still could run fast. I got there, so my job was okay, get there, get those bodies out, you're gonna hit them, because they're easy, all you do is A or B, which is here or here. That's a big spot from 10 yards. That's not hard to do, especially if you've been shooting a lot. Probably couldn't do it now, but no, back then.

But, and then use my speed and run as fast as I could so I could get a stable position and then just pray. So it was run like this and pray and I did it, got it. Nice. And I got it. I hit the first one center and I broke the line on this. Break the line, it counts. Yeah.

And I was like, oh, ah. And that was it, I made it to your rest and went back and it was a good feeling because you aren't looking down at guys, but it was like, yeah, cause not many guys had passed TDC. We lost half the course that we had. And all of them were Rangers Seals.

We had one D-Boy and SF. And we had 10 guys, five pass, five fail. And yeah, I went back and they said, where do you wanna go? I said, I don't care. And they sent my first trip. I went to the secondary, went to Afghanistan, went to Kabul. And that was the end of 05, beginning of 06. Man, I forgot we called it the secondary.

I remember the main and the secondary. What, when did you realize that the OGA contract was for CIA? At TDC. At TDC. Yeah, well, yeah, because they would sit us down that the OGA contract was for CIA? Um, at TDC. At TDC. Yeah, they told you. Yeah, because they would sit us down and they would tell us.

Afterwards or during the course? During the course. During the course, we would know. And Randy, Randy started the program. He'd been agency for a while. Gotcha. We knew. I mean, he didn't have to, it was,

hey guys, this is OJ, wink, wink. You know, we knew. Yeah. It wasn't, but officially when we got there, because it was a, it was a cordon off training area. It was like a private training area where there were no outsiders. A private training area within a private training area.

Yeah, exactly. So we were at the same spot all the way in the back. Yep. Yep. And so that's when I knew and what I was so cool about is that the teams, for me, the pay was better. It was, it was great. It was great pay.

Granted, we weren't getting paid well before, but it was still great. But the smaller teams was it was cool to me. I thought that was neat. Being you and a buddy and that's it. You're out there on your own. And then sometimes you're out on your own, but on your own, on your own.

Where I did a lot walking within the cities on my own, which was awesome. I love that. Find me. Where was your first deployment? Kabul, Ariana. And I, when I grow this out, I can blend pretty good. Not that I wear Chama Kameses,

but I could look like a business. You don't have to draw on the man, wear the man jammies. There's a lot of government workers out there. Yeah. Just wear what they're wearing. They wear button down shirts, man. And in the winter time, they wear long coats and you could buy one off at the park

down by the movie theater, you know, right where the, not the Serena Hotel, that's the one that got hit, but there's that other hotel downtown that they had that park and you could just go buy stuff. And I would, I'd stop and I'd buy local stuff, throw it on. Yeah, you know, just make sure you de-louse.

De-louse, you can smell a little bit, but it worked and I loved walking on my own. Like, and Saks, he trusted me. Or maybe he just thought, well, he's expending on what? I don't know, Saks. But he liked Gaitano. He's like, do you want to go for a walk? And I loved doing it.

A lot of guys didn't, and I get it, man. I mean, when you're a white dude, tatted up down to here and you eat well and you're always buffed out, you're not going gonna blend very well. I get that. It wasn't that they were afraid, it's just they didn't blend.

I'm a little guy. I have a brown complexion. I know how to handle myself and I wanted to. And so I got it, man. I went to the Mottie Market, walking. It was like Indiana Jones. I got to walk in some of those alleyways. It was, I have pictures of it. Now sometimes I'll post them.

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

I wore just local, I wore just what they were. I wore khakis and a button down shirt. And we went back, it was by CNN Circle. It was back by the soccer field, where you go across the river, and the Maude Market's where the river was. And then if you come out the back, the front side, it's where that two story mosque, their famous mosque is.

Well, if you get down on the market in the river, there's the river here, and then you see people walking to shopping. There's a whole other shopping alleyways through that. And you have to find your way in there. It was so cool. You just walk in and it's like, it is like the movies. It's like this tight alleyway. And then you get through it

and a whole other world of shopping opens up. You've got spices, you've got fighting quails that are about this big. You've got non everywhere. And there's people being crazy everywhere. I'm not crazy, but it's just people shopping, Afghani shopping. You've got police.

I remember walking in one, and you do have a lot of shit and a lot of trash piled up on us because the open sewers and so forth. I remember walking and we were right on this right, left alley and there was this police officer with a blackjack, beating sticks. He was beating the shit out of some Afghani, just whooping the back of his legs,

like just disciplining him. And I remember walking and we did have a local guy. So that was a plus. I have a local Afghani with us, so he's with us. And I said, what the hell, man? I just beat the shit out of him. And you know, first instinct as an American is to step in, I got to stop this.

No, no, no, let it, it's Afghan, let it go. What they would do is when they would go shopping, they'd hire guys to pull those, you see guys carrying, pulling donkey carts around? That was for people that didn't wanna carry all their supplies back to their vehicles or their home. They'd hire these guys to put in the donkey carts and they'd walk them.

The, kind of like a little tuk-tuks, I guess, you go, ah, donkey carts is a better explanation, little pole wheelbarrows. I said, why is he kicking the shit out of him? And he goes, he was parked his donkey cart in the wrong spot. It's like, there's Afghanistan for you. But it was fun, because I wasn't on a military base.

I wasn't always being a DA guy. I was getting out and doing surveillance and counter surveillance and just getting atmospherics. And that was fun. That was so cool. And getting to experience the food and hanging with the locals a little bit. And it was awesome, that first trip.

And all the trips after were awesome. Because after I would do a couple of those, and Sachs and the agency found I was a guy that they could rely on to do that, they sent me out to do a lot of stuff. I'd go out in the Makurian district and they said, can you go take pictures of this apartment building? We think there's a government worker

that's part of the Taliban. And I'd go, yeah, sure. And we'd set it up so I'd have QF around, great guys I could trust, like Popeye was one, Sax was another, you know, Otto, Marine buddy that runs Fortanus Defense, he was a GRS guy. So they'd be close by, they'd be orbiting the area.

So if I was 911 dude, I'm getting wrapped up, come help me. But I could go out there and they just let me go and I would just walk around the city. It was fun, I loved it. Yeah. That was the job on GRS that I loved. But that was, anyway, that was the beginning of GRS, was right there where I got the taste

and that's where the bug got me. It wasn't even the protection, it was that, holy crap, I have freedom to actually get to know these cities and see the stuff that I only saw in movies and National Geographic. That was awesome. Those were good times. Yeah, yeah. Those were good times, for the most part.

For the most part, just dealing with the, and then you had to come back to the agency and put up with the bullshit or go, you know, try to stay clear of the Talibar. So somebody's getting in a fight or drinking too much. You weren't a Talibar guy? I went in there a couple of times, but I wasn't a big drinker.

No, I was. It was too much drama. Yeah. There's drama or, you know, some. A lot of drama. A lot of drama. A lot of drama. You just stay away from there. And you know, a lot of women, the women that were there,

you know- A lot of things happened on that table. Yeah. You said it. I didn't. But it was too much drama. And it's just, you know, it's just alpha men, women, alpha males and females.

And no, I always said I was my best person And it's just alpha males and females. No, I always said I was my best person when I was overseas because I focused on the job. I had fun. The gyms were good. There always was a gym and I could always work out. I didn't have a problem running around the area and I loved running even though,

with how you're getting all that crap in your lungs, well, I'm getting the crap of my lungs in the gym with the little mini with the little, it's mini splits, you know? Yeah. So, I loved it. And that first trip was all, first seven, eight months was off and on to Kabul. That's where I went.

Kept going, kept going, kept going. It was fun. I had a great time. Where was your favorite place to work? Kandahar. Gheko. Gheko by far. Because all the ops were at night, so you could sleep all day. Favorite place in Afghanistan? Kandahar? Gecko. Gecko by far, because all the ops were at night,

so you could sleep all day. Favorite place in Afghanistan or favorite place? Favorite place for me was Gecko. No shit. I did love it. I love Kandahar. And I love, I got to do a lot of flyaways there. A lot of, Losh hadn't spun up yet.

So we were setting up Losh Gagarin spin. Those places were still, they were thinking about setting them up. So we were doing a lot of fly guard and spin. Those places were still, they were thinking about setting them up. So we were doing a lot of flyaways and landing in the middle of the night in a soccer field, running off the back of a hip, which I hated flying on those things. I felt like I was flying in a death trap

because you know how slow they, it's just, but landing in a soccer field in the middle of the night, having the local guard force can pick you up. Then you'd go stay in a bombed out building with some ratty old blankets. But you'd go with your Kandahar security force too, so we'd always take guys with us. And I got real close to him.

And I was also in charge of the training. So I'd run the training with the locals too, with our local QSF guys, the local guys that worked with us. So that was fun. So I'd run the training with the locals too, with our local QSF guys, the local guys that worked with us. So that was fun. So I'd go over there, and even though there was a language barrier, I'd go in there with their CO, with their head guy,

and I'd drink chai, and we'd just sit and we'd try to communicate, and it was fun. I enjoyed it. Played soccer on that rocky soccer field where PT was. I remember PJ, whenever he, I'm not gonna say his name, but he broke his ankle out there because there's just rocks everywhere, you know.

And then we'd run up Gecko, you know, run up the mountain, do PT in the morning. And it was just, it was awesome. And we had a great team there. No, the team was, that team rivaled the Benghazi team. That was one of the best teams where everybody got along. Myself, Curly, the TL we had there, Rebel, he was awesome. One of the best TLs.

Again, another guy that qualified if he was a contractor, but he became a staffer, one of the good staffers. Curly X, Bixler Joseph, who passed away in a motorcycle accident the following year. He just got hit while he was driving his motorcycle too fast. And Mushroom, who was an old force crewman, old Marine, who doesn't like an old, old, crusty Marine, great guy. And then Joe Dirt, Joe's, Joe's art, Joe Dirt, Dirt, Joe Dirt, 10 Special Forces group guy.

And everybody just got along. It was wonderful. It was just, and everybody, it was one of those, again, teams where you could go out and do stuff and nobody really needed to say anything. And you didn't even work together. Everybody just knew what everybody was gonna do. And you just roll out.

I loved it because it was all at night. And going out and wrapping up guys at night was fun. I mean, it was hot so we didn't get a lot of ops. It wasn't like you guys, where you guys were constantly going. But when it was, it was fun. Yeah. And it was like, and then at that time too,

is when also when we lost Jeremy Wise and we lost Southside at Coast. So, you know, so that's when the tactics changed too, or the standards operating procedures changed where we had to search people that were actually coming in. They wouldn't just let them on the base because, you know, if for those that don't know, I don't think the movie's that great,

but I do like that scene actually is pretty, pretty good. It was Zero Dark 30, where they showed what happened where the CIA chief of base let the double agent on too far and he blew up. That was accurate. That was Southside, that was Jeremy. Doc Wyatt didn't die. He came to Tripoli later, but he was one of the most injured

and they lost that real good targetter. But that's what we had to do as well. And there was one, I remember, there was a defining moment for me there of how to handle it, because we'd have Taliban people coming on or we'd go grab them and we'd have to bring them in and we'd search them again there on a facility outside.

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

and we were searching him, he wouldn't let us search him. But we're out of outer facility. So if anybody gets blown up, it's gonna be us. You know, I say, we're expendable. It's all right. Well, he wouldn't let him. I remember, and it was, he was trying to search him. And we had the Afghan, we had one of our interpreters there

and I'm trying to play good cop. We're trying to get a good cop, bad cop. I'm trying to be the nice guy. And X is grabbing him and trying to get him to do what we're telling him to do. And he was just fighting it. He's Italian, he's fighting it. And I go and say, what's going on, man?

Why is he not letting him search him? Is he hiding something? Is there a bomb here? Because now my spider senses are going up because I think he's going to blow us up. And he goes, no, no, he says, he's got his Quran in his top pocket. He's got it in his charmer, Kamees up here.

And I always carried my pocket Bible and the little green ones we get going down the range. The New Testament, I had, here's this up here. And I always carried my pocket Bible and the little green ones we get going down range. The New Testament, I had one here. I always carried it every day. I pulled it out of my pocket. I said, here, you give this to him and you tell him he can touch it. We're saying, God, I believe in God.

I respect his God. He respects my God. We're good to go. And I said, you say that. And you always said, you know the troopers. I said, you say that exactly how I said it. Don't change it. Don't try to change the words.

You say it just like that. And he did it in Pashto. And the Taliban guy stopped fighting. He looked at me and he says, okay. I said, shake his head. I said, I go, so we good? We cool? He goes, yeah, we're cool.

And he let me search him. And I was like, man, you know what? Just a little diplomatic relation, but also the religious side, man. God is God. I don't wanna disrespect your God. You don't disrespect my God. We have to search him.

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

But there's gotta be more way to remedy it. This is just throwing his ass around and all of us getting scuffed up a little bit. Cause nobody, roadhouse man Patrick Swayze, the great philosopher Patrick Swayze said, no one wins a fight. And he's right. All of us are gonna get scuffed up a little bit.

We're gonna win cause we're gonna throw him down. But some of them's gonna get scratched, some of them's gonna get beat, some of them's gonna get hurt. Screw it, let's try to do this. Be the nice guy first. And it worked and he gave us good info. Case officers were very happy with us

because they didn't get a belligerent guy trying to give information. He gave up, at least that's what they said. I don't get into it. But that was Kandahar. And that was how Kandahar was for me because it just, the team fit, the work fit. I enjoyed going out at night.

I enjoyed that it was very hot. Guys were getting, or you had, I don't know if you talked about, but you had Bradley on Don, lucky. He got massive carb on there when you were with the teams. I mean, that was Kandahar. But then also, I love that we got to punch out all over Nalashkigar, and the Hellman Province,

and the Kandahar Province, and we got to fly. It really felt like cloak and dagger type shit. It was really cool. Yeah, that was a good place to work. It was, that was a good place to work. It was, it was. Let's move into, let's move into Libio. Yeah. You ready?

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's do it. You want to skip right to it? I'm good for whatever you are, brother. Every, if I, if it hurts, then that's what I'm supposed to feel. That's what people need to see. You lead the way and I'll guide.

Yeah, yeah. I went to Tripoli first. My first trip wasn't in Benghazi. It was to Tripoli. And one of the things that I enjoyed about GRS, and especially then, is by that time I had started to stop moving, I stopped working for like the secondary companies.

I wasn't doing contracts for Blackwater or SOC who took over the contract or those were the main two. I don't know who has them anymore. Osen Hunter, we had another contract where I would do teaching with Osen Hunter. That's where I got to, I mean, that's me and Evan Hafer worked on those contracts together, great contracts. But they started a program called

the Direct Hire Independent Contractor. Do you know that you've worked it? To those that don't, it's funny, because what's the acronym, DHIC, we were dicks. And that was a joke, we're dicks. You want to be a dick? Sure, I'll be a dick. So they would come recruiting from the Blackwaters and whoever else.

And if you had a good record, you've done a lot of time, and you're a C1 at those places would write you a good eval, you could come and be a dick. And that's what I did after Kandahar, actually. I said, yeah, do you want to go? Because it gave us the opportunity to not just, because it gets mundane going from the secondary

to the main to the secondary. I mean, you're going to Afghanistan, right? When you're doing that 10 years, it just, you get bored. So it gave me the opportunity to go out to different places and Libya was one of them. So I was like, yeah. So I went to Libya, went to Tripoli. It was fun.

Again, it was another place where, you know, you get from the American government that these dictators and all, they're just awful people in these countries, they're shitholes. And I went there and I'm like, this isn't a shithole. Wow.

All right, there's still, the hotels are still open. Man, there's still a Sheridan here that's still open. Man, this little resort down by the Mediterranean is still open, even though there's a burning tank down the road. I mean, that's where I didn't ever really question foreign policy and things like that until Libya. It's like, okay, I'm not really sure this was right,

but who cares? That's not my job. I'm not really sure this was right, but who cares? That's not my job. I don't, it's not, I'm here to do what my job is. And it was fun. That's where I met Bob. I met Glenn. He was there. And it was just, it was less protection

and more atmospheric. So it was more surveillance, counter surveillance. And trying to see if there were terrorists that were moving into the country because of the vacuum of power. Who was on our side? Who was not on our side? And that was fun.

Because it wasn't so much protection anymore, doing like we did in a lot in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was more, just a lot more trade corrupt. It was, it was fun. And it was a lot of times where you're getting to see things or like even getting to go places that you wouldn't get to go in Iraq or Afghanistan. I'm talking about just nature.

There's the ocean right there. You got Leptis Magna, the old Roman Coliseums that are right there. And a lot of this job took us to those places. So you're getting to work in some historic places. They're like, wow, I didn't know Rome was here in Libya. Or you're seeing the Battle of Tripoli and you're seeing the Marine grave sites.

Or, and we wrote about in 13 hours, when there was a consulate that was attacked in Libya way before ours, and we write about in 13 hours, when there was a consulate that was attacked in Libya way before ours, and we write about in the book and getting to go see that. So it was almost, it's not like a museum. I'm on a job, but I'm also on a historical tour. And it was awesome, man. And the guys were great,

because if you're on the DICK program, you're generally, you've been there for a while. So everybody, Cause if you're on the Dick program, you're generally, you've been there for awhile. So everybody, even if you didn't know, hadn't worked that person, maybe in an area, cause I worked in Kurdistan as well. Love that place. I love Suley and I loved her, Bill, and I loved the hook. But you would know the guys.

So the guy you hear the name, oh yeah, I've heard of him. Oh yeah, I know, he knows it. So you're not getting a new guy coming in with a chip on his shoulder. Everybody's, man, they're chill, man. They're like you, they're like me. I'm probably the most wired. They're like you, they're just chill.

Got a job to do, we start the job, flip the switch on, let's go kick some heads in, then turn the switch off and just relax. And that's how it was. And the agency there, you know, I had learned how to deal with them. You know, I knew what to expect. And Bub was awesome.

Bub was always a CrossFitter. He was always out working out. So was I, loved working out, but he did the CrossFit stuff. I wasn't a big CrossFitter. We'd watch, you know, we'd go watch movies in our downtime. He was the only guy that would watch Black Dynamite with me. I love that black exploitation movie.

And every guy hated it there except for Buck. He was the only one that would sit through it with me. But the first trip was pretty, just normal. Nothing really big was happening. You'd see some black flags going on. You'd see the terrorist flags, Al-Qaeda flags. You're used to that time and you see them everywhere. So what, there's some black flags. But you're used to that time. And you see them everywhere. So what?

There's some black flags. You weren't really thinking of it. Went home and then the next trip, they said, you're going to Tripoli. So I'm getting ready to go to Tripoli. And then right when I got to Souda Bay Greece, which is where our stopping point was, where part of the 555th Fighter Wing is,

they said, no, we need people in Benghazi are going to Benghazi. I said, okay, Tripoli Benghazi, so what? Head out there, I get there. And you just felt it was different. You just walk, you get on Benina and the movie did an excellent job showing that, man. You just got off a plane.

We do have an expediter there. We always, you know, we have expeditors in all these airports, but you have a guy waiting for you, a GRS guy waiting for you by himself. So, cause that was where we were doing a lot of movements, single person, one person movements, which was even better. That was even more fun. Guy waiting on himself.

You get off a plane, Libyan Air probably, flying in, flying that first class flight, which is, love how the movie did it just right. You have a first class ticket, but on those planes there's no first class, so you just get the whole road to yourself. So you watch the movie again, Jack's flying first class, he has that whole road to himself. That's just a little thing, so they got it right.

Well, you get off the plane, you go in there, they get you off, and then you go to the base. And it just, like it wasn't secure. You know, other places there's shit going on, but it's felt somewhat secure. At least there's, Big Brother's kind of watching you. There you just, you did, you were like, I don't know, which was fine, but it just felt different.

And there was, the work was pretty, the work was fun. Enjoyed it. Did a lot of, again, a lot of trade craft, more surveillance than any protection. I remember towards the end though, and this is where it started to get hairy, where we were just, me and Boone are there, and Boone's been out a long time.

He was started, he's been doing longer, just as long as I have. And we're out on an op and it was about three weeks before the attack and Sarah, you've had Sarah on. She's like, hey, we've got reports at AQIC here. There's this camp and we had all on our Falcon view, we had all the terrorist camps marked and we were spot on. We had 10 digit grids on each one.

Rafales Ahate, Ansela Sharia, AQIM. And she goes, there's a Rafala Sahate camp that they think there's AQI in there. Can you guys go sit on it? Now Boone said, for those that don't know, Boone's black, Mexican, I grew my beard out. Now I always thought he was Mexican. I could never figure out, he's weird looking.

I thought he was Tongan once, and I thought he was Polynesian, or he's black, and then he's like, are you Mexican? But he's mulatto, but what I'm saying is he looks, he can fit, he can blend. So we take our local car out, and we go to this Rufalo Sahate camp, so I says, go to this one,

and we sit on it for a little bit. And there's this opening within the compound that their camp is. It's walled, but there's an opening, and we're sitting there in our vehicle and we can see through it. And actually we do look like locals and nobody's gonna monitor us.

And this guy walks by and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. And I looked at Boone and I said, do you see that man? He goes, yeah, that's AQI. I was like, fuck yeah, that's Al Qaeda, man. They're here. And it looked just, that's Al Qaeda, man. They're here. In a way, it looked just like people were fighting in Iraq, man.

He looked, just, you could even, the dead eye, I mean, it was, I don't know, and we weren't super close. Something like that, but it was just, it was, you just knew. It was like, that's AQI. Holy crap, we rushed back, like, sir, they're here, man. You guys are getting reports, AQI's here. And we got chewed out for that.

Yeah. For what? That was beyond our scope of duties. We weren't supposed to be sitting on camps. Bob came and chewed our ass out. And chewed Sarah out. She goes, you guys, and Sarah was pissed. She's like, dude, I just got chewed out. Bob came and got us because you guys are going beyond.

You don't need to be doing that. That's not what our job is here. And me and Boone are like, yes it is. It's like chief, that is our job. And Boone's pretty laid back. I said like chief, yeah, that is our job. That's our job. And he did rip Sarah more than us though,

because he can, she's a staffer. And she was pissed. She was just, and you know Sarah, she's a pit bull man. Yeah. I remember that after that, she said, we can't go sit on camps anymore, we're not doing that. I said, well, what the fuck are we doing here then? Because it was towards the end,

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

And it was like, man, it almost like they knew it. And I still don't understand why the job that we're supposed to be doing. We found a target, we verified that target, let's action that motherfucking target. Why we got in trouble for that? And the only one that can ever answer that is Bob. Maybe our TO.

I never got an answer. Sarah, maybe she knows, but I don't know if she really does or not. Because I don't think she even got an answer. She got reprimanded. But that was Benghazi. It was like, it was. We were, and that was even Libya. Even some of the State Department offices will tell you, the RSOs, it's like we were fighting al Qaeda

in our own offices. Yeah. And that was it. It was a lot of just doing a lot of great work, getting to be on our own a lot, singles, but then when we did our jobs, we'd get reprimanded for it. We took some, we got another time we got reprimanded as well. Before that happened, it was Sarah.

Some BT Garve guys came in, the listener guys. And there was a hospital there that they wanted. And that's part of our job. We'll take them around, we'll drive by the areas that they think they can hear and if they have or gather information, suck out text messages with their little stuff that they do, their cool stuff. And we took them out,

because there was a hospital that they thought Iranians were in. And so we drove by it to see if they could find out. And as we came back, we came in, Bob was outside, he was waiting on us, like we were in trouble for something. And he's called the BT car, like guys in the staff, there were staffers and called him in.

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

I said, man, why? I don't have an answer. I still, I don't know why. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing. We're getting good intel. We're getting action. Guys were in there. Somebody had brought them in for some reason.

We did what we're supposed to do. And every time we do something and get headway where we could action on a target, because we're not the action guys. You know, we're the collectors, we're the protectors. But when we did, it would get, we'd get condemned for it. He would jump on our shit.

And it was just, I just like, and I did it a lot of times. What the hell are we doing here? Why are we even here then? I don't get it, what's the deal? And then the attack happened on 9-11, 2012. And there were some precursors to that. The British ambassador had got hit by RPG. I didn't respond to that.

I was in Tripoli when that happened. The GRS guys that were there at that time did respond to it. That's when they moved out of the country. They got hammered. One of their security officers got the RPG lodged in them. But they were out. Red Cross had been attacked once, which is news. That was a big news thing. or one of their security officers got the RPG lodged in him. But they were out. Red Cross had been attacked once, which is news. That was a big news thing.

And they had also blown a hole in the consulate once already before the attack. They had tried to breach the wall. So the signs were already there. Yeah. And we were always over there at the consulate. They were good guys. Alec was a good guy.

They were. Dave was awesome. I have nothing bad to say about them. They were just, they were overwhelmed. These are the state guys? Yeah. Alec Henderson, Scott Wicklund, who was the ambassador's body man, Dave Ubin,

were the three guys that were mainly there. They were chicken shit. What would you have done? You got a massive 40 man force running in, you're out there smoking, who could chill and relax? And you don't got nothing but M4s and you're not allowed to even carry them because state department policy says

when you're on the compound and you're not pulling work, you got to keep them in your armory, which was over by the kitchen. I don't blame them doing what they're doing. They ran, they did what they needed to do. Scott ran towards the ambassador to protect him. That was his job. Alec ran to the talk.

That's where he was supposed to go. Dave ran to get a weapon. They were just overwhelmed like that. It was done. But that being said, you know, our conversations with them, we would constantly warn them. And that's the scene from the movie where Pablo, or me being that asshole, I did do that.

I remember looking at their compound, we came and we did a evaluation of their compound before the attack. And I remember looking at Scott, looking at Alec, I was looking at the walls, there was a big building over here that I thought you could put, sorry about that, put sniper fire in.

And I remember looking at them and I said, guys, your walls are soft, your guards ain't for shit. You know, they're local guards, half your guys don't even have guns. Blue Mountain group didn't even carry guns. I said, you're a sniper's paradise. I said, any big element gets in here, all gonna fucking die.

And I remember Scott's eyes went, oh, and I did feel bad a little bit. I did, but Roland was there, he covered, he's like, guys, if you ever need us come get you and We they had radios we gave my radios We all had icons to talk to each other and they did request more security There are so Eric Nordstrom in Libya and Tripoli did so they did try they were just turned down They requested 240 Bravo

They requested more armed security and it was turned down by Patrick Kennedy and Charlene Lamb. Patrick was the Secretary for Hillary, and so was Charlene. She was in charge of base security and all that. Those people also get away scot-free. They should have been held accountable as well, very much accountable. But when the attack happened, it still was a shock to me

because the ambassador at that time, he did have a security detail attached to him. It was 10 Special Forces Group. It was the SIF team. That was his security. For some reason, they had been pulled off him when he came to Benghazi. I don't know why. Oh shit, I did not know that.

When you watch the movie and it says, JSOC team repositioning to four position, that was his team. They had been pushed out for a training mission in either Croatia or Spain. I can't remember. Interesting. Yeah, but I knew because a lot of those guys,

when I was in 19th Special Forces group, a lot of those guys from 19th, I was in Colorado, that when they did active duty time, there were 10 Special Forces. So we knew a lot of the same people. And they'd come eat with us when I was in Tripoli because their food at the State Department facility sucked. So they'd come and eat dinner with us.

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

And they were hardcore pipers. There was a SIF team and they pulled him out. So that's why we stayed and three of us did extend. Myself and Boon and Rowan are supposed to go home two weeks earlier before the attack. And we stayed because three of us did extend. Myself and Boone and Ron are supposed to go home two weeks earlier before the attack. And we stayed because we had a great team. We didn't want to mess that chemistry up. You know, and some guys out pissed some people off

because of course if Ron would have went home, he'd still be alive, of course. But I know Ron wouldn't change it because if he wouldn't have stayed and we would have new players in there, not saying that we're awesome tactically any better than anybody else, we just had a good team. I don't think the outcome would have been the same.

Not because of skill sets or anything. Everybody's got great skill sets. You worked your asses. You know the deal. We all got great skill sets, but it's the team. Yeah. Yeah. And that team, whether we got along or not,

we meshed well. And yeah, so people have been, oh, why'd you guys make it so drama-sized that when you said during that film that three guys are supposed to, three guys extended? Well, because three of us did extend, myself, Boone and Ron. And it's also very telling

of how awesome Rhone was and maybe just foretold everything. Before the attack, we had just done, and I don't, Ozmay have said this during his, I don't know, because it really sticks out with all of us. The day before the attack, we had just done a full-on CAS-EVAC training op where Rhone put us through a huge scenario of if the compound gets attacked,

this is what we need to do medevac wise. And we had Ketchov, we had Chernikitz, who were teaching all the CIC case officers, going through a huge CASAVAC plan. Wow. And it was just, isn't that just the most, I said, the Lord, I love God. I just love, I mean, I do.

As much as God looks at me and goes, man, that, man, I cannot keep this guy straight. Isn't it? It's just, he did it. And I didn't want to go to him. Me being Tom, I'm like, bro, eat shit. I've done enough. I don't want to do this shit, man.

Tom, get out there. Oh, fine. And yeah, it saved lives. It did. It was just, it was 24, 36 hours before the attack. We went through base wide training, medivac, Casavac plan, how do we handle mass casualties? Mass casualties.

Damn. Yeah, so that just shows you how awesome RON is. Yeah. But the attack happened. I remember we were just laying there and me and Boone were on Q-R-F. We always had a team on QRF standby. Every team would be up

and then we always had guys that were on it. That's all they did all day, 24 hours. We were on that QRF. So end of the day, we're thinking why a day, my gosh, almost time to go home. I got a few more days left, extension. I even remember we were watching two of the greatest movies ever made.

I had just watched Battleship and I was watching Wrath of the Titans. And we get a call on the radio and you can hear the gunfire, but it's not really, cause there's always gunfire. I thought maybe somebody's having a wedding or something, I can't hear the prr, prr. And we get a call on the radio,

and it's from our team leader, G.R.S., he goes, G.R.S. needs you in the team room. And it was about that monotone, not a lot of excitement, and at least I didn't think it was, I didn't hear the excitement. So Boone did roll over me, and he's like, dude, he's like, what the fuck did you do now? I told him, because he thought I pissed somebody off again.

And I go, dude, I ain't done anything. I've been a saint all day. Dude, I swear, I just want to go away of again. Cause nine times out of 10, if we got called, I did something, I either put, I had a placard from the movie, Chopped with Thunder, where Sergeant Cyrus, Robert Downey Jr. character, I actually wasn't a placard.

It was a piece of paper and I'd laminated it and it said, never go full retard. And if a CIC case officer did something stupid, I'd put it on their desk so they'd see it in the morning. And so I'd do stuff like that. I just love picking, I love picking on them. The Jason Bourns. So-

The Jason Bourns. So Boone's been with me for 10 years. I mean, we hadn't worked together, continued but we've been in different spots for 10 years from State Department on to OGA. So he knows me. He's like, dude, what the hell did you do now? You son of a bitch.

It's like, I'm nothing, bud. I've been good, I promise you. And then the urgency came. It was about 30 seconds later though. Said, Juris, we need you in the team room now. And you just know, you've been doing this long enough, I've been doing this long enough. All right, it's time to go. And I look at Boone, and we're getting our gear, because we kept some of our gear in our lockers, but our quick ready gear, our body armor, and our M4s, our P-shooters,

we kept right by our bed on QRF. So it was right there. Raiders were right there, of course. All the night vision, all the heavy weapons were still in our lockers in the team room. We start getting our shit on and Gunn's smiling. I'm smiling. It's awesome. I'm smiling just like this. I still remember.

I still remember looking at him. He's smiling, I'm smiling. I go, man, we did do some fun tonight. And we headed out our door. And as soon as you got out the door, our door from our, we were in building Charlie, where it opened up, the annex was directed at our 12 o'clock. So as we opened the door, you know,

you're seeing the treasurer, you can see the firefight, it's going on. So now all that popping, you know, now it's starting to, oh, that's what it is. You know, the brain is starting to realize, oh, this is just some crazy night in Libya. This is, holy shit, Konsla is getting attacked. And the Jason Bourns, the ones I saw were like,

it was like cast lighting firecrackers at them. They're just going everywhere. And I saw a team, I saw Rhone. We all had tasks, you know, I had responsibilities. My responsibility was heavy weapon, Mark 46, get that. And then I was gonna drive the SUV. Boone's responsibility was to get the keys for it, get it out.

My responsibility was to make sure we had it ready to go. And then actually we all had our different tasks and it was beautiful, dude. It was just beautiful. I saw leaders acting like leaders and it wasn't the barking orders, it wasn't the yelling at each other as everybody shut the fuck up and did their jobs.

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

And it was like Mozart. It's just wonderful. And that's what it reminded me. I mean, I was like seeing notes, man. And we're five minutes, we're ready to go. Five minutes, it's time to go. And I remember I looked at Rhone, he's got the sedan, he's got Jack and Tegan that, Boone's a to go. And I remember I looked at Rhone, he's got the sedan, he's got Jack and taking that.

Boone's a rock star, he's got our shit together. The SUV's ready to go. I got my 46, you know, we're geared up. We got our night vision on it. We got all the stuff that's in our lockers. Got the ammo. Rhone goes like this. I look at him, that's all I need.

He's good, dude? Good. Chief's here. Our team leader's here. They're on their cell phones. I go, Chief, that's all I need. He's good, good, good. Chief's here, our team leader's here, they're on their cell phones. I go, Chief, we're ready to go. He didn't bother even to look at me. I said, Chief, we're ready to go. He looks at the team leader,

still isn't looking at me. On his phone, talking to somebody. I don't know who it was, still to this day. He says to the team leader, tell these guys they need to wait. That motherfucking different thing. Fine, and the same word, I'm just watching. The team leader looks at me, he starts to tell me that,

I go, dude, I got it, I fucking got it. I walk back to my car, everyone's like, dude, Tonno, what's happening, what's going on, man? I said, boss, tell us we gotta wait. Now, the movie where Jack and Ron got stopped and we tried to get to him in the beginning, that happened, but it was at night. So we had already been through that before.

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

But we'd already been through that where he would not let us go. But we're waiting. We're still thinking at that point in time, maybe he still does know something we don't. Maybe the SIF team is on its way. Maybe they're sending a bird in, maybe something's coming in. Maybe there's Marines off the coast and they're,

we're trying to play the benefit of the doubt by not creating more drama, because more yelling and screaming is not gonna do any good. It's not. And that's why that team was so awesome, is we all knew that. If we had all been younger with Piss and Vinegar,

we probably would have been fighting with them. And what would that have done? Nothing. So we're waiting. We're continually going scenarios, at least I am through my head. I know the team is, you know, you're wargaming, you're what-if-ing through your head.

You're going through your head going, going through scenarios that you win to keep the adrenaline in check. So I'm going through my head. You're going through your head, going through scenarios that you win to keep the adrenaline in check. So I'm going through my head, I'm going, okay, if we get hit with mortars here, what am I gonna do? How do we win this fight? Fine. We get out the gate, we get ambushed.

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

and a lot of experience. So I was able to pull from that. And I know the other guys were doing the same thing because nobody was panicking. Everybody was, Rowan's taking the lead. He's our charge. He's gonna take care of this. And we trusted that.

So Rowan's talking to the chief. he's our charge. He's gonna take care of this. And we trusted that. So Roland's talking to the chief, Tig's there too. Tig's talking to the chief and the time's just going by. The fighting is intensifying. And then instead of just hearing AK and PKM fire, and you know what this is, we start hearing that ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. Holy shit, dude.

That's a dish camp. Holy fuck, we gotta go. Can't do it, we're still waiting. And that's when I saw Tig and Bob arguing. That's when the one huge interaction, we didn't put in the movie. It wasn't gonna have a place in the movie, didn't need to. But they were arguing, it's in the book.

And that's where Tig was told, but Tig's like, mother fuck, we gotta go, we gotta go. We gotta go now. And that's what Bob told Standout. You guys gotta stand out. He told Tig and Tyrone and Jack's car right there. And I don't think it was malicious. I don't think it was nefarious.

I think he just was shitting down his leg. The later was nefarious with the military not coming. That was purely political nefarious actions from the power that be, the commander in chief and secretary of state and all them. But that, I could be wrong, but regardless, we were told to stand down. And so we're told to wait once, stand down 15 minutes later.

And then at the 25 minute mark of us waiting there, because remember the state department guys have our freaks, have our icon freaks, they're calling us on the radios. And that was heartbreaking, man. That really was, because we're listening to them and they're like, GRS, where are you? GRS, where the fuck are you? We need you, GRS, we've been overrun. GRS, they're lighting the buildings on fire. We're hearing all this and we're like, GRS, where are you? GRS, where the fuck are you? We need you. GRS, we've been overrun.

GRS, they're lighting the buildings on fire. We're hearing all this. And we're like, guys, rise of that. Is the chief of base hearing this? Yes. It's all on the talk, because they're open mics. I mean, so he's hearing this, and he's still not letting you go.

What was the relationship like then before this night? We didn't get along. He was kind of sitting as hell. I didn't get along with him. I didn't like him. I didn't care for him. We worked in Mosul together as well. Didn't like him there. I thought we made him pretty.

Well, I think that was the combination of characters. We had a team leader and we had the chief. Chief was very passive. What's this guy doing now? He got his sis. So he got his top tier to retire as a CIS, CIS level, and then he became a contract instructor at the farm.

Now I don't know if he's still doing that. Are you fucking kidding me? They took that fucking clown and put him at the farm to train all the upcoming guys? He may not be doing that. He's made enough. I mean, cis-level retirement. What a fucking joke. I know.

So he's- What a fucking joke. I would- Take that guy and put him in charge of the fucking up and coming case officers. Wow. And that's why that fucking agency doesn't do shit anymore. It's a shit show.

It's a clown show. What if? You know, he's probably retired now, living in Williamsburg or somewhere nice with a thousand acre. I mean, he's made plenty of money. He got the CIA, you know, he got the highest level of the CIA.

What do you think he thinks about every day? I don't think they give a shit, dude. You don't think they give a shit? I think they can sleep well at night. I hope he doesn't. But it's like asking me, you know, does Kamala Harris sleep well at night. I hope he doesn't. But it's like asking me, does Kamala Harris sleep well at night? You know she sleeps like a bitch.

Because they think they're right all the time. He was, I'm right, you're wrong. I know where I'm getting ahead of myself, but you know where he seriously was gonna stay there to collect intel when we were leaving out. After the mortar hit, after the bomb hit, after Ronan Bub died, we had to force his ass out of the compound

because he still was gonna stay there and collect intel. And that was him. They're elitists, and they just think they're the smartest people in the room. And that's one of the reasons why I always would fuck with them is they're not. And here's this knucklehead hayseed from Kansas giving you shit,

because you think you're the smartest person in the room. But that was him. And when we heard Alec, and he's in the talk, so he's watching his team basically get decimated, they're lighting the buildings on fire, he's watching all on the CCTV cameras. He says, Jerez, if you don't get her, we're all gonna fucking die.

Just, it wasn't movie magic. That's what he said Tyrone went like eight times awesome. He's in the sedan you weren't armored vehicles Can't roll the windows down so he cracks the door and he just does this I was like wow that is I Still get chills thinking about it cuz you know, I don't he was big so I'm sure like that And he looked he had a beard like Leonidas. He had died at black So he looked like Leonidas should give me she has like you're had a beard like Leonidas. He had dyed it black. So he looked like Leonidas.

He should have given me shills. I was like, you're trying to look like Leonidas, aren't you? He's like, yeah. But I remember thinking to myself when I saw that, I was like, man, I got to do combat with Leonidas. This is fucking awesome. And I gave him a thumbs up and we started to head out the gate.

Now we didn't quite make it out the gate because, and I, you know, like I said, I'm more gaming. We're still going through our heads. It's a chess game. Stay three steps ahead. Don't run, you don't, if you're racing to your gun, you failed somewhere. We need something.

I don't know what we need. And then I realized it. I said, we need, we need, we need them all. I'm not gonna tell you his real name, but the interpreter. We gotta get them all. Now, he looked pretty good in the movie, like young guy, kind of young, 40s in shape.

He didn't look like that. He looked like Bob Newhart, seriously. He looked like an Egyptian Bob Newhart. He was adorable, glasses, droopy cheeks, old dude, bald. We need him though, we don't have combat turps. So I'm calling him and trying to find him. You have faith, I'm gonna find him. I say, stop the cars, I get out of the car.

I'm thinking I'm gonna have to run around this damn base to try to find this guy. And Lord works in mysterious ways, brother. I get out, I come to the front of my hood, think I'm gonna have to run to his hooch and then run to the skip to find him and he's walking right in front of my car. Thank you. I said, we need you, man.

And it was awesome. It was awesome, because he did. He got an argument, not an argument, he was just shitting his pants because he doesn't want to go. Bob Newhart doesn't go to combat, man. It doesn't happen. And his eyes are huge.

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

because of a language barrier, blue on green. And I said, dude, we need you, man. And he goes, Tano, I'm not a combat trip. I said, I know that, brother. He goes, I'm not combat trip. I said, I know that, brother. He goes, I'm not weapons qualified. I said, I know that. And I had a Glock 19 on my hip. I handed it to him.

I said, here, now go get your stuff. It was fricking awesome. He took it and he ran back into building C. And initially I thought I lost my weapon. Boone did too. Boone was looking at me, shaking his head when he ran away. But he came back out and he ran back out.

And it was awesome. Cause he didn't have the cool Gucci gear like we do. You know, the form fitting shit, looking cool. He had to borrow somebody's helmet. It was way too big for him. So it was all jingling on his head. I mean, it could even be down backwards. I mean, it just didn't fit him.

He didn't have body armor. He had a flat jacket cause that's all he could find. He's got his finger in the trigger well as he's running towards me. He's got his finger in the trigger where all that is running towards me. He's flagging this shit out of me. And all I could do was marvel at it that whole time. I just marveled like, this is freaking awesome.

This little dude, it looks like a little turtle is running towards me right now, flagging this shit out of me with this gun. And I have never felt more motivated in my life because this dude had no business going. He's not a SEAL, he's not a Marine, he's not a Ranger, he's not security, he's not law enforcement,

he's a little interpreter that he is giving of himself and he's coming with us. And I'm like, that is what heroism is. That's bravery. Selfless service, that's it, man. And he got in the car. I did take his finger out of the trigger. Well, I said, put your gun in, because I didn't want to shoot him in the back.

He had to go behind me. And then we took off and we started to head down there. That was our trek towards the consulate. And then it just got even hairier from there. But we get there. We stopped on a road called Gunfighter. It was called Gunfighter. It wasn't movie magic.

That's what we called it. We had a Gunfighter here and Adidas was the other road on the other side. And there was locals there. They were, looked like they were shooting back. Now it looks like when the movie we get up and it's creeping up, they actually were already in a firefight.

They were already shooting back and forth. We didn't know who a friend or foe was, but they weren't shooting at us. So we get out of the car. Boone and myself did tell Henry, we said, Henry, get this figured out. We had our TL with us in the car. So we said, you just stick with the TL,

tell us what the hell's going on. And then again, leaders took over. Leaders do what leaders do. Roan parked, Jack parked, Tig parked, we parked behind him and we started moving position to engage And you get close to that wall and you start hearing those cracks Because you know both are going by your head breaking the sound but you're hearing a shit every once in a while And then there was a block center block wall behind us So you'd hear a smack from around 762 hitting a wall hit the wall and it was freaking

It was all you know, it's us fucking awesome It's awesome and I saw Ron start to engage nobody said a word and everybody just started to engage and we started to move and Tig got us a dig out our 203, you know I went to a three crafter breach put that HEDP round and that high explosive dual-purpose round he just started sort of throwing rounds downrange and Boone came up to me and said as we're shooting he goes You know

We knew there was a building off in the distance that we thought we could get up there and put machine gun fire sniper fire And says he goes tunnel. Let's get high man. Let's get high Roger that So he went and got his SR 25. I ran grabbed the 46. I had my M46 M4 covered. I was wearing shorts. Hey boy, that's, you're wearing shorts? Yeah, I was. Actually, they were just a grayer version of the, they were a tan version of these.

They were shorts I'd made in Canada or from old True Spec pants. I was also wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt, but we couldn't put that in the movie. Cause I guess Disney didn't like Mickey Mouse shooting terrorists, but I had Mickey Mouse. Probably the closest thing he could get was the panda shirt, but it was a Mickey Mouse shirt.

But yeah, and we just started climbing walls, man. And it was hard. I wasn't ready. I wasn't no spring chicken anymore. Eight foot high block walls with all that gear on. That, you know, a 200 round drum on, I didn't shake it anymore. Eight foot high block walls with all that gear on. I turn around drum on, a nutsack on the, 100 rounds on the 46, magazines all over me, magazines all in my pocket, and just sucked it up.

I tell you what, the first wall we climbed over, I was just getting ready to get shot in the butt or the head. So I looked over, didn't see anything, and then I went butt first. So I figured, well, I'll get shot in the butt or the head. So I looked over, didn't see anything, and then I went butt first. So I figured, well, I'll get shot in the butt. I could still probably fight. If I get shot in the head, I'm fucking out.

But I'll be quite honest, the third, fourth wall, I didn't care anymore. Just so smoke, get me over this wall. And we, it's only 400 meters. We're 400 meters from the compound at that point. Jack, Tyronerone and Tig went down and fought their way down and suppressed the weapons, just like the movie did.

They went down the main alleyway to the front gate and they suppressed, because Tig had that 203 and he's just knocking them back. And we had some local help, PKM, a guy with a PKM and some AK-47 guys, and about half of them didn't know what the hell they were doing anyway, but at least it was, it was gunfire.

Boone and I did have two locals that we took with us. They did, the movie is two guys came to me before he jumped out first wall and said, hey, mister, can we go with you? And I looked at him and they were kids. And at first I just felt like I could trust him. I go 17 Feb, they said, yeah, I said, come on. And Boone's like, what the fuck are you doing?

I said, dude, I said said force a fire team, man And I said I'll stay in the front you just stay in the back if they pull then you kill them So and they went with us that whole time and we jumped walls got onto that building and it was it was that disheartening If you again watch the movie, it's pretty spot-on We cleared that building and you know, you know, I just clearing buildings, going upstairs, and I got that gear, and I'm clearing it with a 46. And I'm smoked, and we get to the top of that building. You know, Boone's got his M4, but he's also

got an SR25 on him, so he's smoked too. And we get up there, and we look down, and we couldn't see anything. It was like, man, all this energy you wasted. Because the consulate, there are trees that surround the consulate, well, they're all on fire. So you just couldn't see anything in there. And it's like, God, man.

Because you're trying not to get pessimistic, but you know how many calories I just, what, just how much water, just doing all this and for nothing, put it out of your head. And what snapped me out of it too is Rowan came across the radio because he's still moving, because he needs us to suppress.

At least that's what he thinks anyway. He's doing a damn good job on his own, all three of those guys. He goes, Tauno, I need your eyes, man. I need your eyes. I go, Rowan, this roost is a bus, man. I said, shoot, move, and communicate. I'll meet you in the middle.

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

I wanted him to push it open with his car. So it's like, push this open this car. He goes, wait, Mr. Wait. And he got there before he jumped over the back gate. I wanted him to push it open with his car. So it's like, push this open this car. He goes, wait, Mr. Wait. And he got on his phone and he started dialing a phone number. And I was like, who the fuck are you calling, man? He's like, just wait, wait. I go, who you calling?

He goes, I'm calling the bad guys. I'm negotiating surrender. I said, who the fuck? I said, you doing the what? He said, motherfucker. And Boone's yelling at me, cause he's already inside. He climbed over the gate already.

And Tig's yelling at me to get inside on the radio. He's like, we need you Tano, quit fucking around. And I just let it go. And he was one of the guys that was gonna facilitate the counter attack later, but I didn't know. And so that little argument you see me get in with, that actually did happen, that happened as well. And I got in there and we fought,

we pushed them off, it's a nine-acre compound. And for the next hour, we just were trying to find the ambassador running in the burning building, trying to locate all the State Department guys, because they were spaced out everywhere, why fighting off the bad guys, trying to locate all the State Department guys because they were spaced out everywhere while biting off the bad guys, pushing them off. We're really that initial, when we got on there, I think they were so shocked it was Americans.

And luckily we have that still that era of intimidation. Americans are coming, we gotta go. There wasn't much of a gunfight coming up on. We got in there, Americans here, we got our night vision on. Even though I'm wearing shorts, I still look pretty Terminator-ish gunfight coming up on. We got in there, Americans here, we got our night vision on, even though I'm wearing shorts, I still look pretty Terminator-ish with all the gear on. And they ran away and we found Alec,

you know, got him out of the skiff. Dave did awesome. Dave was already out. He was already trying to find the ambassador. He was already over at the consulate trying to find the ambassador. And then we just took turns running in that burning building trying to find the ambassador. He was already over at the consulate trying to find the ambassador. And then we just took turns running in that burning building, trying to find it.

And it was tough. We almost lost Rhone. Rhone went in the most. Jack and Rhone went in the most. Tig was probably close to it. Me and Boone pulled a lot of security and then we'd take our turns. We'd spell people.

But I tell you what, I would, and I, oh, I admire, thank you, all your firefighters out there. I admire the hell out you. I'd rather get shot out again than ever running into a burning building filled with diesel smoke ever again. I remember going in and trying to go in the first time and I tried to run in and the doors were wide open and you can see and it's open.

There's fire, you know, alive on the ceilings and there's, it's just smoke everywhere. And I hit, I ran in the, and it's almost like I hit an invisible wall. I just, ooh, that is hot as shit. It was so hot, I felt like my eyeballs were gonna melt. And it's like, you really have to just, I just had to go, suck it up, don't,

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

I went in there like twice, because they just kept going in. And it was hard to find. We did lose Rowan almost when he got caught way back in the back, and we had to play Marco Polo with him to get it out. We had like, Rowan, we're here. Jack kept yelling from Rowan this way, Rowan, Rowan, Rowan,

cause he got stuck and he almost lost his way cause he got disoriented from his role. But that just shows how bad ass and Tig as well. Tig's lungs are permanently fucked, so are Jack's screwed. Eventually Scott got out, and I have no qualms against Scott, nothing at all. People, why did he left the ambassador?

Well, what the hell would you have done, Dave? Seriously? You're dying of fire and the heat. I can tell you the test from the heat, that was unreal. What would you have done, man? Really? Okay. But he got himself out

and that's when it started to go to hell again, because that's when they started to counter attack. And I do remember before that they did find Sean's body, Dave Ubin, Tague and Jack managed to pull him out of a window. And the movie, I wish they would have put this in the movie more so than what they did. They did a little bit of it, but it was pretty remarkable.

It was one of the most defining moments to me of human spirit and sacrifice that I'd ever seen in my life. Cause Sean was out and I see him pull, Jack pulls him out. Dave's pulling him out. Ubin, Tig is, and Scott's on some stairs and he's sitting there and he just keeps rocking back and forth and he keeps saying, he was just with me. He was just with me, he was just with me.

And I see Jack for some reason, he starts to do chest compressions and CPR on a dead body. Jack knows he's dead. Then these deaths, Sean's dead, it's obvious. He's blue, he's dead. And I couldn't figure it out. I was like, I'm sitting there watching this whole thing unfold from about, from me to probably that desk there,

about that far. And I wanna say something, but before I get the word out, it hits me, cause I'm looking at Jack, and every time he does a chest compression, he looks up at Scott and he goes, "'We're still in this fight, man.'" He is being positive over a dead body to get Scott out of his shock

so we don't have another casualty. He's just, it's unbelievable. It's just like, and I'm sitting there just marveling at going, wow, these fucking dudes are awesome. I love this. I love Jack and I still love Jack. But it just, to me, it just defined selfless service again. And you know, people think selfless service

is giving yourself, giving up your life. Well, essentially he did, because that, he's doing just compression on the dead body to get some guy back up on his feet to back in the fight. Who thinks like that? Obviously he did. And it was awesome. Another motivating thing,

just another reason why Benghazi was the greatest night of my life. One of them, for a second, but it was defining. We get it, Scott comes out of his shock, because Big Tyrone, like Superman, I don't know where he came from. It's like he flew out of the bushes, but I know he's in the building,

but he just, and I see Tyrone come out of nowhere and he just puts his arms around Scott and he goes, man, we are still in this fight. We need you. And you just see Scott from right back. And it was like, wow, this is awesome. I love these guys. That's why Ronan is so, that's why he was Superman to us.

But we lost Scott's body on Tig and Jack and Dave Ubin did. They put him in the back of our SUV that our team leader and the interpreter drove up after we cleared it. Said it was clear. Our team leader, yeah, he waited till we cleared it. Then they drove up. I don't blame the interpreter for doing that, but come on, Teal.

But anyway, we go back to pulling security and then- Was the Teal, like, was he even- He was former Secret Service. No military. I know who he is. I know who he is. I was gonna say, you know- What I'm asking is, was he...

Scared? I know he was scared. I know who he is. I'm trying to figure out how to ask this question the right way. Hey, I gotta get a drink of water. Take your time. I guess what I'm trying to ask was,

did you guys even keep him informed? Was he even really part of the team or did you have you totally just dropped him? Just like any blue, he had his uses. He would give us get Intel cause he was a blue badge. So, but as far, you know, just everyday activities. He had the runs control the runs, you know, and but really me I Let ron handle that I stayed I mean, it's just a liaison. It really was that's what he was basically and that night

He was with us and no we didn't pay attention. It wasn't we were relying him to pull cover We're relying 99% of the staffers in GRS, they're just liaisons. They're not operators. They're just like, They aren't. Just go liaison. Go liaison, give us the intel.

And that's kind of what he was at. We don't even really know what you do here. What do you do here? Not qualified to be here. You do here, still favorite movies there. I can't fucking stand them. I'm sorry. I'm just, I can't stand them.

It's probably something I'll never get over. But you're- The amount of worthless fucks that were in charge of me and you and all these other like stellar performers and then you get these chumps. When you don't hold people to the standards that everybody else has upheld to,

that high level standards, what do you think you're gonna get? And we're divvying off a little bit, but I'm gonna say it. Look at the Secret Service that is protecting Trump. Yeah. That is what you got with GRS-TLs. For them, unless they were former spec ops guys

that were contractors that went there. I think they were always just supposed to be liaisons though. And then at some point in time, they inserted themselves to be some fucking leader. And it's like, back to your desk, go get your fucking pen or your pencil and get the fuck out of my face. And that was him.

But you can't say that because it'll fire you. But you can still- You say it anyways. I did. And then you get fired. Well, I did. I got told after I fell asleep, I had an argument with Bob and then the TL called me in

and we had an argument. We were like, he was like, Tony, I know who you are. I saved his ass from getting his ass beat by a bunch of seals when his first trip went to coast. Why did you do that? Because I felt sorry for him. It was his first trip. I didn't, I didn't, be honest with you.

I did. I didn't know him. He's the first trip I'm trying to be that guy that's your first trip. Let me tell you how it is, bud. All right, don't go in there like you're knowing everything you're working with a bunch of top-notch dudes go in there Shut your mouth and fucking listen. Yeah, but he didn't it been you know, that was 2006 now, it's 2012 So he's got years six years now. He's salty But um real experience. Yeah, it showed to you didn't it? Oh, it is

Yeah, it was funny cuz when we did our debrief to they did ask about and they said what'd you think of the TL? I said he did a great job. I could because he stayed the fuck out of the way Oh, man, the headshed at Langley the GRS got they didn't want to hear that but that's what I said Boone started laughing was doing our AR when we got back to after Benghazi. You said that I said Right to the it's me dude. I don't give it. What are you? I said, direct to the, it's me, dude. I don't give a, what are you gonna do? Fire me then. If you haven't fired me yet, you're not gonna fire me.

But the argument I had with him, where in Libya, after I got dressed down by Bob, which I was just, the one dress, like eat shit. I've been through enough of this pomp and circumstance crap enough, rah rah, politics in progress, million fucking times. I don't have to stay awake through this shit, it's the same shit.

Well, he pulled me in, he goes, I'm gonna write, I got written up, you know, I got wrote up. I did get written up. And they wrote me up and he goes, I'm gonna write you up for this because you fell asleep, you're being disrespectful. And I remember I said to him, cause I saw GRS kind of go into more like a

state department, button down. I saw it and I said, we're going more state department, aren't we? Button down, need guys that say yes or no. Nobody talks back. No fucking guys that cuss every once in a while. You know, you don't need guys like me anymore, do you? I guess guys like me are dinosaurs, aren't they?

And he said, yeah, pretty much. I signed my thing. When we got home, I sent him an email. I said, good thing you have dinosaurs like me, huh? That night, and I didn't get a response back from him. I still got the email. I had AOL. I said, my AOL shows you how old I am.

But he said that, and I said, looks like guys like me are dinosaurs. I'm sorry, when did he try to write you up? He wrote me up right after I fell asleep for the ambassador. It was right before the attack. So when I fell asleep and Bob dressed me down, where we got in that argument, he says, well, I'll write you up.

Well, I did get written up. We didn't put it in the movie because how boring is that seeing some guy get written up? But I went back to my room. You mean people don't want to watch a pussy pencil pusher write up a real man? I'm going to write you up, because I'm not a real man,

I'm just a bitch. I got written up. I got a black mark on me. An hour later, he called me in, and I got written up. I was like, I don't give a shit, fine. It's like getting a ticket, but you got 100 million parking tickets.

Pay your parking tickets, y'all, but you know what I'm saying? And I threw it in like, whatever. It's probably what he was doing before this. He was actually, he was, for those that you know him, but he wasn't a, he was in Fort, check forgery. And that was his, in the- Check forgery. It was in that division, the secret store. They check forgery and that was his you know check forgery was in that division the secret store

They do Forgery money laundry. So whatever anyway, but uh, they drove up. Yeah, he's and that night Really was it we just if we need your buddy just Stay in the rear man. If you want to add your gun to the fight fine. Just keep just make sure there's no ammo Just do just stay away from, but he didn't fire his gun that night and he stayed hidden, he stayed protected. And we didn't really worry about it

because we knew he wasn't getting the fight. It wasn't gonna happen. So that's what we put, we put, we put, I don't know, I don't know what the name of it was, so we put Amal with him, but eventually Amal even saw what was going on and Amal got attached to Jack. Mall kept following Jack around

when Jack wasn't running in the burning buildings. So we go back and we unfurl the ambassador and I remember on the backside of the villa here, because we're pulling security because that back gate was left open. I told that fucking commander, close the back gate when you bring your guys through before I really knew who he was.

I thought he was friendly. He left it wide open. And I'm like, that motherfucker forgot to close the back gate when you bring your guys through before I really knew who he was. I thought he was friendly. He left it wide open. And I'm like, motherfucker forgot to close the back gate. I said, guys, this jackass didn't close the back gate. I said, get ready. Cause I knew it was gonna, I mean, you just know, it's like, shit dude. And I'm kicking myself for not going back there

and closing it as well and trusting, right? I knew I shouldn't have. And then all of a sudden I take a knee and I hear a big explosion goes off. So I'm here, explosion blows off this way on the barren villa. And because the angle, so lucky again, thank you. Because the angle shrapnel's this way. But I do catch the overpressure

because I'm not more than 20 feet away from the explosion. So it knocks me, catch the overpressure, but the force that goes this way, I didn't hear the initial boom. So I didn't think it was an RPG. I mean, you know, unless you're from a very far distance, RPGs don't go, and you see vapor trails, and it goes, it's not like that.

Unless, you know, it's a way distance, and then you might see it later after it hits, you'll see maybe a little puff of smoke or something. But you always hear a boom because that's the propellant that makes it go. It doesn't, there's a boom. As I go back to post security, get back up on my feet because I'm thinking some guy runs in front of me

and he's missing his hand. He's holding his wrist. So I go his profile and I go up and his hand's missing, he's holding his wrist like trying to stem the bleeding, it's just mangled. And then his buddy comes out, runs from behind him and he's holding pieces of his buddies. And it's no farther than me and you.

I'm like right here following him. I go, what the fuck, what happened? I don't even know how to speak English. But that's all I can get out of my head because I'm a little rattled, brain's knocked a little bit. I'm seeing this dude running by with no hand, he's just bleeding everywhere.

I'm seeing his buddy chase him, that's holding pieces of his hand. So I'm looking at him and I'm in my head going, dude, you forgot your hand. Go back and get it. That's what I'm going through my head. And I like, I say what happened. I didn't say that.

All I could get out was what happened? That guy goes grenade. The guy holding pieces of it because grenade. All I could get out was what happened? The guy goes, grenade. The guy holding pieces of it, he goes, grenade. So I'm thinking, oh, you're a fucking idiot. Next time when you cook a grenade off, I'm thinking this in my head. You hold it for two seconds instead of three before you throw it.

And I'm thinking of my dad, West Texas from Lubbock, Texas. His voice comes in my head and all I hear is Robeson Dirt on it, you'll be all right, kid. And as I come back to pull security, because they're not a threat, I do hear a boom from a distance. Like, shit, I know that's an RPG. I go pull security and I just go like this,

because I know I'm dead. If it's anywhere near on this side, I'm dead. There's nothing I can do. There's no cover. I can get down and roll, but by that time I hear that boom from that distance where it's only a hundred, not even more than, I would say 75 meters away if that, I'm dead.

So I'm just hoping I hear the second boom. Because if I do, I know I'm alive. And I do. I hear it, boom, blows up. This one actually is closer and I catch building. I catch the concrete, knocks me down in the middle of the road. Again, because of that angle,

and I know that's what saved me, it was the shrapnel most of it went that direction or got embedded in the wall. And the movie showed me getting up and having a wall for cover, I did. I got knocked in the middle of that road that was shotgunned from the front gate to the back gate. And all that came in my head was, Ranger Battalion.

What's your cover, Ranger? Bullets. What do you do when somebody's shooting at you? You shoot back. And I took a knee on that road and I just started shooting. And I shot and I shot and I shot. And I was thinking of the guys from Rio Hado because we get hammered panning.

Rangers got a great history. Urgent Fury, Just Cause, Somalia. We shoot. Fuck you guys. Fucking you coming at me, you're gonna catch a bullet in the tooth. And that's all I'm thinking. And I'm just putting around.

And I remember Boone, he told me later, he says, I was watching you and all I could think of was you're a fucking idiot, take cover. And I've never felt the hand of God before, I've never felt it again, I fit that night. And I know, I do really believe we all get one, one hand of God moment where they, he steps in and protection.

I did, I said like, he's looking down at me. And I say this during my speeches too, cause I honestly believe this. I think my guardian angels like on this chair, God's up here on this chair, my guardian angel and God are looking at this idiot getting shot at cause there's the world's opened up. There's just crap, crap, crap, crap this chair. My guardian angel and God are looking at this idiot getting shot at, because the world's opened up.

There's just crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. It's all going around me. And my guardian angel is looking at God going, see what you tasked me with, God? You tasked me with this fucking idiot that doesn't have half a brain. And God's like, pity, God pity is the one that needs to be pitied.

And he says, I got you. And I felt pity is the one that needs to be pitied and he says I got you I felt the golden cocoon come on top me and that's not I'm not saying that it any reasons. That's what I felt You actually felt it in that moment was a golden egg. That's why I'm not golden egg. I got you just warm just Was it was it like a intuitive feeling? It was a physical feeling. No, it was physical. It was warm, gold. I got you in.

I guess intuitive too. It's just safe. I'm good. And I kept shooting and then... Did it give you confidence? Yeah, I wasn't, well, I got this. No one's gonna get me. I'm safe.

You felt it before you started shooting or in the middle of it? In the middle of it. No, when I was shooting. How long were you there? In that position there, about five seconds before I felt that. And I'd already went, I was already hammering away.

Cause you know, that was a, it was really easy. I'm just, just nobody's coming through there. It was there, about five seconds. I mean, five to 10, it was, it was, it was awesome though. And then I am taking a knee. I'm not, I'm not getting in the prone. So I'm just, I feel fine. God's got me.

My right ear drum blows out. I remember that. And I look and there was a Libyan that had taken a knee right next to me as AK-47 and was shooting with me right next to my head. And that was amazing. Cause I was just thinking to myself, ain't this the damnedest thing?

God just gave me a Lillipian angel and put him right next to me. Because he had a button down shirt, slacks on, like he got off work, and he's sitting there with his AK-47 shooting with me. I never saw him again here that night, I didn't know where he went. And then Boone, I'm running, Boone comes

and Boone takes a knee right on the other side of the road and he starts shooting with me. And then Tate gets his gun into the mix on the top of the roof and it was awesome. It was just fricking awesome. Now we moved a little bit after that, we started to move back to vehicles and started to kind of peel out

because we had to get out of there. But that moment there for me was, and I always tell people that. And I said, guys, I'm not saying hand to God's air all the time. I again, I've never felt it after, I didn't felt it before, but I felt it people that. And I should, guys, I'm not saying the hand of God is there all the time. Again, I've never felt it after, I never felt it before, but I felt it that night. So when people say, do you believe in God? I say, no, I know there's God.

And he took pity on somebody like me that's probably broken every command, well, not probably, has broken every commandment that we're supposed to keep. No, it was there, I felt it. And people went, oh, bullshit. Fine, you don't believe me, I don't care. I don't think it's bullshit.

And I know, and it was amazing. Again, I wish I could sit, but it was a golden egg. It was like a Willy Walker golden egg. Warm, protected, nothing's gonna get you, I got you. And we fought them off, and we peeled out. And it was hard to leave because we did have a drone overhead watching everything. The ISR had come on station and Ron's like,

guys, we gotta go. They're massing, they're gonna attack the annex. We gotta get out of them. Like Ron, we ain't found the ambassador yet. He's like, I know, but we gotta go and you gotta make a decision. Leaders always make decisions, even if they're hard decisions.

It sticks with me because you know our credo dude Part of the fist as a range of creed is you never leave a fallen car ride to fall in the hands of the enemy Every unit has that same out of those words the same thing you leave no man behind and we did Because we had to get back to the annex and it wasn't the wrong decision We would have lost 24 if we hadn't gotten back, but it still bothers the fuck out of me. Because we left him. We left him. Now we didn't know he was there.

That's still no excuse. We still could have kept trying to find him. But he had gotten so far back in that safe haven area that we just couldn't get back there. And when the fire died down and the fighting moved back to our annex, the locals pulled him out. He was dead of smoke inhalation.

There's been talk that he was mutilated and all that. I didn't see it. And I inspected his body when they brought him to the airfield. I looked at it. I didn't pull his drawers down. I didn't do that. I mean, they may, they did cut his genitals off.

I'm not gonna, I'm sorry. I'm just, guys, I'm not gonna do that to me. I looked at it, because what I'm thinking, again, Ranger Battalion, what am I thinking? Randy Shugart, Gary Gordon, dragging his body through the streets. So of course I'm gonna look. I'm gonna see if he's scuffed up.

I'm gonna see if his face is scuffed up. I'm gonna see if he is cut in places I can see, but he was clothed and I didn't see any marks on his face. I just saw lifeless eyes and he still had like, these smoke from the diesel. So what I saw, I didn't see mutilation, but am I a hundred percent sure? No, because I didn't pull his pants down.

And for those that wanted me to do that, they can go fuck themselves. I'll do that. No, I'll leave that. I mean, if I was an autopsy, guys, sure. But not in that situation. No, that's, and I wasn't thinking mutilation. I was thinking dragging through the streets too.

Yeah. But we left them. But I stand by the decision and all of us still do. And as leaders, you've been a leader, you know you make hard decisions, you have to. And sometimes those hard decisions, even if they're the right ones, they're gonna stick with you for the rest of your life.

And that's one that does. But it was the right decision. And we got back to our annex. We had Sean's body in the back of the vehicle. So that was a little surreal because we all piled into one vehicle. So we had Tyrone, we had Tig, we had Tyrone, we had Tig,

we had myself, we had the interpreter, we had the TL and Jack was sitting on the top of Sean's body. That's what driving back in the SUV. And they trailed us, they were following us. We could, it was easy to pick up. And we're like, and I wish they would put this in the SUV and they trailed us. You know, they were following us. It was easy to pick up and we're like, and I wish they would have put this in the movie. It's in the book, but I wish they would have put this in.

I actually was making the call us back. I was like, guys, I was telling the gate, gates get the gate ready. Everyone's like, get the gate ready. And they said, what's your status? You know, you always say we're coming in red, we're coming in black, we're coming in yellow. And I said, or we're coming in hot, we're coming in cold. And I said, or we're coming in hot, we're coming in cold.

And I don't know, I was just trying to make somebody laugh. I said, guys, we're coming in lukewarm. It was stupid. It was like, I'm just trying to get people to laugh because we've been through a lot at that point. We come in the gate and the State Department guys, where they tried to get out of there, you know, where we got them out, the ones that were still,

they did go the wrong direction. They went towards Adidas. Two houses down was where Ansel Sharia had a safe house. The consulate was right next to the terrorist safe house. State department knew it. We told them a million times, we'd taken pictures of it. There's a scene in the movie where you see us driving by and I'm taking a picture of those fuckers

and they're flipping me off. That's it, that happened. They didn't do a damn thing about it. So when they went out the gate, Jack kept telling them and you hear on the radio too. And that was during the fire, that's where the confusion happened because when we were getting attacked and I was shooting,

that's when we were trying to get them out of there. It was during all that chaos that Jack, I heard on the radio, because I've got a piece in and I hear Jack saying Jackson guys are you're going the wrong way, you're going the wrong way. Because we said go to gunfire when you go out the gate, do not go to Adidas. You go left, you do not go right. They went right and they got crushed. And so when we pulled in the armor held, they managed to get back on run flats to our place. That car was just on fire just flames everywhere

And I thought they all are dead, but none of them died armor held Scott did a great job pushing through so did Dave getting through they just went through a gauntlet of gunfire and RPG fire and got Chased until they got back to our compound. So that wasn't movie magic at all They got a hammer and it just was in the chaos. He just went the wrong direction. And luckily for them, and again, I, I cooters a lot to Dave. Dave Ubin did an awesome job, but I wouldn't in that vehicle. But if I was to guess, I would say they all kept their heads

pretty good, but Dave probably did the one. I was like, get the foot, we'd go push through, push through, push through. We got back, It's on fire We get We get refitted with whatever we need as far as ammo. Um, tig did did drop our grenade launcher That was a movie magic. He actually dropped it. He didn't it was a 69 hk 69 He hadn't rechanged the the normal lanyard that's on it

You know, we get that the lanyard that comes with it sucks because it just slides through. We usually cut it and we put 550 cord on it or something that sticks and he didn't. So when he was running it fell off and it fell on the ground. But it was weird and I don't have an answer for you. I wish I did, but we had a second one as well.

And for some reason I was looking for it and I couldn't find it. I don't know what happened to it. I ran around for five minutes before I went up on my rooftop looking for that other grenade launcher because things like dude I'm sorry I dropped it. It's like son of a bitch dig and I ran around you know and you know how we are we stage it where it needs to be it's in the team room it's in one of the gun lockers that's where it needs to be. I didn't take it with me because I had a 46 and and he had the 69 and we, that's where it needs to be. I didn't take it with me because I had a 46

and he had the 69 and we didn't put it in the QRF vehicle. So I ran, I couldn't find it. And I thought, well, maybe Boone did put it in our vehicle. So I ran and looked in the vehicle, I could not find it. It disappeared. To this day, I have no idea what happened to that 69. And I'm thinking, why on earth would Bob one? I'm thinking malicious, but what would that have done?

So I don't know. So I couldn't find another 69 and we had to but I couldn't find it. Um, I and uh, grab more ammo Round up the building first. So we went up to building a Vanish point was terrible and then we jumped at the building see where we could see over zombie land in this sheep slaughterhouse so we had compounds building here, building here, building here, building here, front gate here, zombie land, parking lot where they were massing, family's houses right there that they were using

to come through before they got into zombie land as cover because they knew we weren't gonna shoot the kids because there were kids in there. So we weren't gonna shoot the buildings. And then the sheep slaughter house, the sheep was over here. So we got up there. A was not a good vantage point.

So me and Boone moved over to C. Oz and Tigger in a little fighting position right here overlooking zombie land. And they just start moving on us. And you're just seeing it through the night vision. And it was like kids playing hide and seek, man. So either just, I don't think they thought we had night, we had night vision or they didn't think it was that good

because they were just running from bush to bush. And Ron was awesome. And I talked about Nick and Paul, Raven 23 guys. That was heavy on our minds at that time because they had gotten to prison for defending themselves. So we weren't gonna shoot. We're like, Ron, man, I don't see guns, but they're moving on us, man. They're moving.

The drones even overhead feeding us intel. You got asymmetric movement, you know, stuff's coming. Roland's like, do not fucking shoot. You see a gun first, then I'll give the command to shoot. And he goes, cause I don't want to go to prison. And he was referencing three guys. So that was on our heads. So we just let him get, they just kept coming and coming.

And it got closer and closer. And then finally Boone goes, I got AKs. And they were probably about 25 meters from Oz's position when he saw that. And then this fist comes over the back gate, right? When he says that, and it was a gelatina bomb. And I saw it, because gelatina bombs is like a stick of dynamite, they light a wick, so you can see in our

night vision, it comes over the back gate. And it goes over to Oz's and takes position, and I'm like, man, this is gonna miss him, man, this is gonna miss him, this is good news. And then this figure comes out of nowhere, and this bomb's coming this way, and Ticket's got out of position to go get water. What are the fucking odds, man? I mean, the odds are, it's like winning the lottery.

He's here, the bomb's coming. I'm just watching in slow motion and it just blows up. And all I see is the white light coming and the world opens up. You know, that was the indicator to start the attack. And they just started shooting and we fucking destroyed them. I mean, we had our sectors of fire down.

We had all the avenues of approach locked down. We knew the dead space. I mean, I wish I would have had that 203. We would have killed a lot more of them, but we just crushed them. And everybody was so disciplined. Sector, sector, we stayed within our sectors. We trusted each other on their sectors

and it was interlocking sectors of fire and it was like coming into a fricking wood chopper. And we just, everybody did awesome. It only took about five minutes, really. It's about as long as it was. And a lot of you guys have been in fire, unless you've been in Afghanistan at a base where they just keep hammering you,

most firefights are only about that long. Yeah. They're gonna, and it's like a boxing match, you know? Real quick, and then there's some dead time, unless there's just a massive, massive force, or you get stuck and they got the advantage. But if they're losing their ass, they're gonna break contact,

get back and figure out something. And they did. Well, when that ended, I looked and I'm thinking, I'm gonna go get, let's go pick up Ted, because I figured he was dead. How many, I mean, do you guys have any estimate? In your head, how many do you think that was? I think, and I think the majority, I mean, it was hard,

but I think we got attacked by maybe over that whole course of impure, not at one time, 200, 300 people. Two to 300. But not, it was like, that initial one was probably 40. 40 guys fought them off and then there's another 40. So it could have been the same guys. We didn't kill 40, I wish we were that good.

And we're good at what we do, but come, let's be realistic. But, and then at the anic, at the consulate, yeah, easily 40, 50 that we got counter, I mean, it was 40, 50 at a pop. And yeah, we were killing them. We'd shoot them and that's the, a lot of us, unless it's within, a lot of us that have been in combat,

and I'm not saying in a bravado thing or a ego thing, it's just how it is. At a distance, five, five, six, if you hit somebody, sometimes it doesn't keep them down. If close you're in, it's going to. If it's me to you and I hit you, yeah, you're going down. You're not getting back up. But at 50, 75, 100 meters, you might,

but generally they're gonna be able to get back up and they'll probably bleed out or they're out of the fight depending on where you hit them. But that was where it could have been. How many guys, we have estimates, I've seen estimates have been, you know, how many guys, I would, we have estimates, I've seen estimates of Wikipedia, like a thousand, no, 200, 300 over the whole night. And who knows, some of those could have been attackers,

the same attackers. We killed, I don't know, I've got reports again, I've seen reports, no, I think we killed, I know I didn't've seen reports that, no, I think we killed. I know I didn't, I think 100, 200, I think we did. Oz had our, had contact at the hospital there and Oz and I still talk. We get along or not, we still talk every once in a while. And I remember when we got back, I asked him,

I said, do you have your contact? Because now, we're Americans, we like to keep score, right? And I said, dude, did you ever get a word how many we got, man, how many we killed? And he goes, I didn't ever get a number, but my contact at the hospital said that they just kept bringing bodies and injured in all night. So I was like, well, that's good enough for me.

I mean, after that, it didn't matter cause it was nice seeing them turn tail and run. That's even more mental. And yeah, we fought him off. And the reason Tig didn't die, the gelatina bomb hit him and it landed right by his feet and blew up, it's just cause he's so big. It would have stopped my heart.

You know, it's just a big, it's just a huge flashbang. It's used for fishing. It's for dropping in the Mediterranean and blowing, fish come up, you know, it's Mediterranean redneck fishing And uh, but it fucked him up. He still has problems shoulder goes now I'm his backs out of whack, but he got up and that's a testament to how tough he is He got up and he got back in the fight and he actually got hit around

We round hit his armor It was a piece of the round it hit a hit the metal post and it sheared either the post or something, hit him and knocked him down. He got up and kept fighting. And he's a tough son of a bitch. He's a tough redneck, takes good people, man. But it was awesome. And they gave us a wave of confidence.

It did, it's like, okay, we got this. Our battle plan, our force protection plan, our sectors of fire, they're on. All right, let's keep doing what we're doing. And throughout that timeframe, we're still thinking Americans are gonna help. We're still thinking that the IRS is seeing everything. And we're thinking somebody's coming, cavalry's coming,

but they weren't. But at that time we still had some faith that they were, because they normally did. Everywhere else I was at, cavalry came. Whether it was another GRS team, whether it was a Scorpion team, an NSA, the GRS equivalent at the NSA, whether it was military, somebody was Brits,

somebody was Brits, somebody was common. Between that two hour lull of 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. where the next attack happened, that's where we started to come to realization, nobody's come. And the reason is because we had a, we didn't put him in the movie, but we had a old Vietnam veteran that manned our radios.

Our 117, he was a staffer with the agency, great guy. RTO in Vietnam, wonderful guy. He still cries every time we see him because he apologizes for not getting us help. We already had Cure of Elements on station. It was, we had a 911 call. We could had QRF elements on station. You know, it was, we had a 911 call. We could call because that's what we do. GRS, that's what our jobs is,

is to coordinate with the other units. So if we need people, we can just hit a button, go on 10 Alpha Comment on the 117s and say, we need help. And we have 117. And every so often throughout the next couple hours, Boone would come to me and say, hey, we gotta hold the Delta, man.

They're on their way. And little did we know they were coming, but they got diverted to Croatia. 555th Fighter Wing, that was our big, we always thought we had them. They had two jets of Suda Bay Grease. Suda Bay Grease is five minutes with afterburners to Libya. And then they had the 555th Fighter Wing,

the whole unit up in Aviano. It's a QRF base. That's what's there for. We figured they were coming. Boone's like, no, they're not coming. The fast company Marines, there was one in Spain and there was one in the Med near Siganella and we thought they were coming.

He'd keep coming back to me every, after he'd tell me somebody was coming, he'd come back and say, no, they're not. We're not getting words. There's no confirmation they're coming. And then that CIF, the Ambassador's old, the Ambassador's primary security team, the Panthers and the Stremis force

that had been in Croatia and got repositioned to the staging area. That was when I really knew nobody was coming. Cause when he said not there, they're not on their way anymore. They became, Hey, that's 15. The commander's team's coming. You guys actually went through this entire checklist. That's his job. And that's our job.

And yes, we went down the line. Every that's why politicians and that's why the. And yes, we went down the line. That's why politicians, and that's why the CIA pisses me off. That's our job. They know that. Well, politicians may not know that, but the agency knows that. That's what our main response is, GRS.

We're protective services, and it's also to protect our assets if something happens, to get the assets needed, assets that are in the area to us if we need them. So we had them all, we knew them all. It was, I was in charge of that when I was here, but it's always, you know, every time it's passed down to somebody.

So it's always refined and improved and refined and approved. So it was the RTO, the Vietnam RTO, that was his job. And he was very good at it, and he was very supportive of us. And the reason he cries when he sees us now, I remember, and I remember I saw him in Texas when I was doing a lot of speaking back in 2016 and I got pissed at him.

We were out, did a speaking event there in Fort Worth and his wife's wonderful lady, they came to have a drink with me and I think Tig was there as well and I got pissed, I got drunk and he hadn't said anything as far as testimony yet and he can blow the doors off all the help that was around there, he could verify what we saw. And I'm like, put me in a fucking pussy, dude. Just go tell him what happened. And he got up and I saw, I feel bad. He got up, I saw him, tears in his eyes,

and he walked away. His wife's sitting there, his wife's Texas from Hardison Dallas. I go, ma'am, I'm sorry. She goes, no, I've been telling him the same thing to tell. And I said, well, why hasn't he? He goes, because they're gonna pull his pension if he does, where he don't get his retirement.

And I was like, okay. I never say anything about it again. I love the guy, I love him. And he has a lot of info out there, but I do respect people and their family. And if that's Not for my selfish reasons or anything else I understand that I never bugged him about it again I'm and I never will again because I respect that I do is it right now I don't think it's right, but I still respect his decision, and he did try he did try his ass off

well 3 a.m. We get hit again. And it was like the movie show and we just it was just they did the same tactics and we just crushed him. It's like waves hitting retaining wall man. And it was a it was very, very satisfying but but it was, man, how long is this gonna keep up? Because we had a ton of M4 ammo, tons, but we're eventually gonna run out. We're eventually gonna get tired.

We're eventually, they're eventually gonna get it figured out and hit us with a car bomb. I was so shocked they hadn't hit us with a car bomb yet, because that was, when Iraq or Afghanistan, that's probably what they would have just done, drove a car and blow up the wall, but they hadn't. So I was really shocked at that. But you know, you think about your family a little bit

and before that second attack, I had thought about my family and I just remembered the phone call and I just remembered it briefly. And I thought about them and I just remembered that the last thing they heard from me, did I tell them I loved them? And I did, so I was okay.

Didn't think about the rest of the night. It was the last words. And my daughter, my son, and my wife know that I love them. Before I got off the phone, yeah, I told them I loved them. Down in my head, the rest of the night. And by 3 a.m., you're starting to get, and what I was doing at that point in time, having some self-reflection,

getting motivated that they are going to breach the walls probably eventually and that I'm not, I got to get it in my head that we may need to start, it's going to get close quarter and we're going to maybe start stabbing, it's going to start knifing and that's a totally different animal than shooting. It's intimate and that's a mind. If you're used to that, there's something wrong with you meant to my opinion. I mean, shooting, I understand, I've done that. It's kind of impersonal. And because of the way we're trained,

it's almost like you can imagine targets and also they're terrorists who gives a fuck. But when you're up and you got to stab, that's different, at least to me, maybe not to others, but it is. And I gotta get my mind right if that's gonna happen. So I'm starting to get the mindset of hand to hand. So I respect those guys from World War II and World War I. Trench fighting, wow.

It's like, God, those guys are bad. I ain't shit, those guys are bad ass. But, and the tunnel rats from Vietnam. But we get word Bub's coming in. And I didn't know this for several years, but Bub actually ponied up money from his own bank account to rent that old executive's jet. I don't know if he was ever paid back.

Are you kidding? I found that out, actually, I found it out from his best friend, Sean, who runs Bub's Naturals. But he came on my podcast, and I had no idea that I didn't know that. Wow. But that tells you how Bubb is.

Yeah. Pointing up money. I'm sure he was, I think what Sean said is the Seal Foundation came in and actually reimbursed. I don't have to see I ever paid him, which, fuck them anyway. But anyway, that's Bubb, man.

That's Bubb. His own money. And they rented, man. That's Bob. His own money. And they rented our executive jet. It was, it was like a G6. It was nice. It did have flight attendance on it. Serious, no shit flight attendance because they were waiting for us when we got to the Benita. And, but he gets there

and they got there actually at midnight. And they just, it took them so long to coordinate to get the 10 kilometers to our place. By the time they got to our place, it was about 5 a.m. And they get there and I remember them coming in and I remember I was being my smart ass self. I was saying, hey, welcome to the party, motherfuckers. Better late than never, man.

Should bring me something to drink. And I remember Bob walked by and the TL that was with him, he was a former BW guy that went to the dark side because he started sleeping with a case officer. So he got married her though. Wasn't bad, he married her, but even become a staffer. But they both went, they walked by me and they did like fucking tonneau

and they both flipped me off. I was giving them shit. And they went back, all the GRS guys aside from Bub went into building C, there were two Delta guys that worked with us in Tripoli. They went into building C too, and Bub was the only one that came up to build, I mean building, yeah, building C, yeah,

the headquarters building. And then Bub went on top of building C. So like I said, keep in mind here. I'm on building a building C's. I'm sorry building a here building C here B there and B. I'm sorry. That's a quarter building building B and then building a or building. Uh, I'm getting confused here.

A B C D sorry. A they went in building C D's here. Jack's here. Boone's still up here. I went on the front gate building, D, sorry. A, they went in building C, D's here, Jack's here. Boone's still up here. I went on the front gate building, which is A. And I need to take a crap. Couldn't get anybody to relieve me. And Boone said, go take a shit.

So I skivvy down, you know, body functions still happening, you know that. They don't stop. Scurried down the stairs, took my shit, got back up. And all of a sudden, and it didn't sound like a mortar. It didn't. And I don't know, my hearing had been shot out. I had a earpiece in one ear,

but I didn't wear hearing protection in the other. So, and Boone had been shooting SR25 by my ear all night. And I'm shooting either my M4 or 46. So my hearing's gone. And I went, did you guys hear that? It sounded like somebody's, you know what it sounded like when we used to hear the 107s come in and I heard that,

that's what it sounded like, I thought it was a rocket. I said, did you guys hear that? And then I don't know, something in me said, Mortar, I go, Mortar's Mortar's, and so I said, take cover, the first one hit, and it hit on the backside of building C. And that's when the world opened up again. And I remember Rhone, he just spun.

He spun and he went cyclic on that other 46 and he's just over where the sheep slaughterhouses, they're trying to come through there. Like idiots, they're walking their troops into where the mortars are coming. Fine with me, they can take out their own guys if they want. But Rowan is just, so I'm seeing this laser beam

because it's not daylight. The movie shows this daylight is actually was a before morning nautical twilight. So it's right when the sun's made, but the night vision, you still need your night vision. So I'm watching all this. I'm seeing one guy turn and start to shoot that direction. I'm seeing another guy turn, which was Oz.

The next guy was Bob. Then the next guy was Dave Oubin. And of course I want to get my gun in the fight, but I can't see the targets because they're here. I'm here. The targets, they're coming from this direction. Mortars are coming from this way. So I'm shooting over their heads.

I put a couple of rounds down and I look and I think we kind of already went through this before but I look behind me and make sure there's nobody coming from my six because I still got areas of responsibility. Nobody's there. I turn, I get a couple more shots and I see the next one hit. And this one hits on building C.

It hits right by the parapet wall. Boom, blows up. As my night vision goes white and it comes back, those four guys that were shooting are now three. So it's like, it was, it's like, you know, close your eyes, you see four, open your eyes, there's three. Dave's hit, Dave got hit with a 81. It sheared half his leg off, it sheared half his arm off.

They were on, but they were just hanging by tendons. And he's screaming. And he, I realized, how did you hear that? I don't know how I heard it, but I heard him screaming. I'm here. He's yelling. He's screaming. I heard all I could hear it I'm still shooting. They're still shooting. I turn around and make sure nobody's coming again because I still got my six We still got a fight. We got to finish it. You can't quit They got to take care of Dave. I'm not run off my position and help him somebody I'm just expecting maybe the Delta guys or somebody come up and help but who I don't know we got a

fight to go I put three rounds over the top of their head I went boom boom boom and as soon as I did that three around three mortars fire for effect boom boom boom and when they did that my night vision went completely white? Because they overbundance the light and as it came back, they were gone. And I saw the pixie dust. I saw the charged particles because any of those explosions, if it's fine particles or dust and there's not a lot of wind and there wasn't, you can see the particles coming down because they get charged or heated. So I'm watching the pixie dust come down.

And it really did look like they got turned to dust. My brain's like, cause they're gone. All of a sudden they're gone. Then there's a cloud of dust. I'm like, man, we can't beat this. We don't have air support. And I put my head down, I sit for a minute and God's, and I know it was God.

It was God or my mom. And she said, get your gun up, Ranger. I kept fighting and Jack kept fighting and Boo kept fighting. And we fought those guys off that were coming for us. Boo and Jack Perma, they had better avenue feels of fire than I did. And they did awesome. But the mortar stopped. And at the time I was like, wow, but the mortar stopped.

And at the time I was like, wow, wonder why they stopped. I mean, they hit with the building they wanted to hit. It was far for effect. They had that thing locked in, that's our main building, that's Skiff, that's where all of our troops are, that's where all of our equipment is, that's where all of our comms are, is that building. They knew which building to hit.

And unlike David Petraeus, who needs his ranger tab pulled, it said, well, it must've been a truck and they just ran a truck and they just haphazardly put a mortar tube in the back of a truck. Come on, man. Come on, man. What's up, infantry officer? And I got respect for Petraeus,

but when he said that, I'm like, dude, come on. Anyway, the reason they stopped the movie, I wish they would have edited it a little bit better. You see the militia take off before the mortars came. They actually took off after that first shh. When I heard that shh, they must've heard it. They had good, I don't know. They must've known what it was more than me,

which I didn't, my hearing had gone to shit. They took off and then that first one hit, they went and took the mortar team out for us. Their commander had actually come in with our team and he was in the building C when those mortars were hitting. So there, that first one, they scattered because that's their tactics.

They knew something was coming, mortar was coming in, scattered because that's their tactics. They knew something was coming, a mortar was coming in, so they're moving their vehicles. So they're not part of the carnage. And then I could hear in the distance, tires screeching, gunfire, in the direction where the mortars were coming from. And they went and took the mortar team out for us because their commander had got caught

in building C when the attack happened. Lord works mysterious ways, brother. Yeah, no kidding. And the ironic thing is too is the mortar team, that whole militia belonged, they were former Omar Qaddafi commanders. Wow. We got to save Omar Qaddafi.

So, yeah, so for anybody to save Omar Qadhafi. So yeah, so for anybody to think that we went in there to overthrow Omar Qadhafi, that's bullshit. We went in there to destabilize a region so the Muslim Brotherhood could come in and stabilize it under that foreign policy under the Obama administration. And we needed Qadhafi's weapons to go and give to the friendly militias as McCain would say.

But anyway, they saved us and mortar stopped. And then at 7 a.m., a militia was coming in. And I remember there was just me and Boone and Jack left. Nobody, and it would piss me. Nobody would come and relieve us. It was like, dude, it was like, guys, GRS guys, Delta, would somebody come give us a break?

I mean, come on, it's like having a patrol base and you gotta give guys breaks. Nobody would come relieve us. So we stayed up there and I remember Bob said, Tom. The Delta guys didn't come up? No, no, and I got no heartache with them. I did for a big time.

What were they doing? I don't know. It's a good question. What were they doing? I don't know. It's a good question. I have no idea. And they're Delta. I know they do hardcore shit. And I got no heartache with them. I'm not trying to throw them on the bus here.

It's just, it is what it is. And I know they're fucking warriors because they're Delta. You kind of have to be at the unit. Now I've seen guys Bolo shoots from the unit too, going through TDC and going, but like anybody, they have bad days, but I just, I don't know. Maybe they're on our different,

I would like to know. If you ever get them on, I would love to know what the hell they were doing. Maybe it was document destruction, destroying classified documents of why we were there. I don't know. I mean, that's what we put in the movie. Michael Bay actually has a pretty good,

he has a pretty good, he has his own peeps within the agency that feed him shit and DOD because they love him because he makes them look really good, which he should, he's honoring, he loves veterans. So maybe that's, maybe he put that in there because that's what they were doing. I don't know. But all I know is they wouldn't relieve us

because I kept calling for him. And then I kept making fun. Like, hey, D-boys, you think you can come and relieve us? I got to get a drink of water. I was just on the open mic so everybody could hear it. So I was being my normal jackass, pissed off. So anyway, when the militia was coming in, Bob says to me, he goes,

"'Tano, you got the front gate." He goes, "'Make sure this militia that we got coming is friendly.'" All I had left was my M4. That's all I had ammo left for. That's all I had, my P-shooter. It's daytime now. And I remember asking Bob,

I go, "'Roger that, Chief. I got front gate, I go, Roger that chief, I got front gate, understood. Can you give me some description of who I'm looking for? He goes, I don't know, Tano. I said, Bob, I said, chief, do you have vehicle colors? Insignia, I can ID. He goes, we don't have any of that information. And the TL needs to be start chipping in.

I'm asking the TL the same things. I go, are there uniforms I can look for? Do I have communication via cell phone? My burn phone, can I call somebody? You guys have communication. We lost communication. I go, give me a number, Bob, at least. He goes, our team leader comes across the radio

and he goes, Tonno, the number's between 30 to 50. They're all technicals. Like, holy fuck. And I got on the radio and we didn't put it in the movie, but I said, and you guys expect me to fight these fuckers off with a P shooter? I said, Roger that. I ain't getting no response

because why keep poking the bear? Cause I'll keep giving them shit. I just said to him, I go on the radio, I clicked it one more time. I said, Bob, you've been a plethora of information, I really appreciate him being a smartass. And I went dark and I saw him coming. Pablo played it, I still breaks, I mean, it does, it breaks my heart when I see it because

he played it so spot on because that's how exactly I felt. I'm watching these technicals and it is a huge militia. You know what technicals are? It's those Hiluxes with those Discus or anti-aircraft guns in the back or a PCAM mounted and it's badass militia. And as they're coming in, I get behind that parapet wall at three foot high and I made myself as small as I could. And I had an EOTech, it was on, and I put the EOTech on the passenger, because I'm thinking to myself,

you know, hey, this ain't over. It's not over till it all over. It's not over till it ends, man. And I'm dead, or they're dead. It's probably gonna be me. And all I'm thinking is that Disca is gonna rip me in half, and I hope it's quick. But I'm thinking to myself,

I'm at least gonna get one of them. And I got my infrared die, I mean, my EOTech on the passenger, who looks like a commander, I'm at least gonna get one of them. And I got my infrared, I mean my EOTech on the passenger who looks like a commander, I don't know, but he's a pastor. And then I'm just rotating back and forth from the diske gunner to the pastor. Cause if I see the diske gunner move and he hits that fly, I'm gonna hit that fly then, fly trigger.

I'm gonna pull my trigger and at least get him. And then I'll get ripped up. But I just couldn't think of anything else. I had no way to connect them. I learned the jambo in Mosul at Merez because we had Sudanese guards and every time we leave the gate, they would throw up the jambo to me in 2008.

So one day I stopped and asked them, I said, what does that mean? They, it means good morning. It officially is Swahili, it means good morning. You'll see it on shirts and after, it's a jumbo. But because the shock is much cooler, it's be cool, they've kind of adopted that.

That's what they told us. So it just means be cool. So I would throw that up. And every time I threw it up, if I wanted to see if somebody was friendly, if I got it back, well, I'm here. So nine times out of 10, it was friendly. And I couldn't take anything else and I went

like this and I Man, I was I was you could have put a lump of coal at my ass. It would have been a diamond like that I was like just tight and They're both chewing cot. I remember the cocks that big was a cot in her mouth for those that don't know what caught is It's an amphetamine. they dip before they go into battle. It's like a leaf, but it's like chewing, it's like mixing Copenhagen with cocaine and steroids. That's what it is.

And it rots your teeth, it turns your mouth brown, you chew it all enough, it makes you look like a heroin addict if you chew it. I mean, it looked like they'd been chewing it forever, just gross and caught everywhere. And I remember doing this, I went like this and I'm thinking to myself, this is gonna hurt. And the pastor reached out and he smiled at me.

He smiled, huge caught brown teeth. And he went, and he was that close. I could see him that vividly. And he smiled through the job well, and the disca gunner got, the jumble, open the disc, a gunner took one hand off the fly, took off that disc in the back, and he went like this. No.

And it was shit. And I said, people watched the movement, like, that's so dramatized. Like, oh, that's the fuck what happened. And I said, my wife is gorgeous. My kids are beautiful, beautiful smiles, but they know this. And I told them, I said,

honey, I love you, you got a beautiful smile. But that smile that caught Phil's still just the most beautiful smile I've ever seen in my life. And I did lose it. It was like, for briefly, I did. It just kind of let it out. And I got on the radio It was like, for briefly, I did. It just kind of let it out. And I got on the radio and I went, there was us, there was us.

And I mean, I'm hoping the movie, what all them felt, like you've seen the movie, I'm hoping that's how they felt and they were just was somebody. What had happened? And I don't know how Bob didn't get this fucking information since the commander was right in there. The buddies that took the militia,

the militia that took the mortar team out, they wouldn't got more of their buddies. So they just got more Gaddafi people. So we got saved by Gaddafi twice. Wow. And then we got out of there, you know, and got to the airfield and there were some, there were some fights over our vehicles.

I mean, in the movie, it showed a few guys. There was actually probably about 15 guys that wanted our vehicles. It was kind of comical because some guy, indeed, is AK when they were fighting over our vehicles. So we're in the middle and we're trying to get people on. And in this game, this is a respect I have for Oz. And I've said it before.

I think it was either with you or with, but again, you respect, even if you don't like people, you respect and give respect when it's due. And again, he did, he was John Wayne. He said the coolest fucking thing, and he did say this. When we got there, we were trying to help him off the back of the truck and get on the plane, and he wouldn't let us help him.

He climbed his own, for, for real, no, he climbed his own ass down from the building bleeding. I don't know if he said it during his interview, he may have, but that was pretty fucking impressive. He was down, pepper-trapped, my arms flung off and he climbed down a ladder one-handed, he slipped on a rung and caught himself with his elbow and then he walked himself down.

So me and Oz may not get along, but he's one of the toughest son bitches I've ever been with. And when he said that, I was like, God dang, I wish I would have said that. I said, damn, that's some John Wayne Clint Eastwood shit right there. And he walked in there and the flight attendants were out. Did he say again?

I walked into this country, I'm gonna walk out. He said it wasn't movie, it wasn't script. That's what he said. We're all standing there. And all of us were like, damn. Man, I'll say it's just nice to hear you guys have a healthy respect for each other. You do, you have to.

You go through that and I said, you're not gonna get along with everybody. You can't hang out with her. I'm not for everybody. Believe me, they'd be like, man, I hate that son of a bitch, but if I need him and I want him on with me in the front with me. And there's some that don't, some of that,

I hate that son of a bitch, I don't want him anywhere near me. And there's some that, man, if we go through the gates of hell, I want you standing right next to me. That's just, that's just humans. That's just how we are. You're not gonna like everybody.

But if you have a job to do, and this goes in corporate world, this goes in the military, anywhere, private military, you have a goal. You need to reach that goal. You better be all in the same focus, the same path. Now, you may have different jobs, but don't create more drama by not liking each other.

And that's a good leader that puts you in positions that don't make you co-mingle all the time, which Rowan did. He put us in jobs and responsibilities that if we had to do stuff together, we did, but if it wasn't necessary, then he wasn't forcing us. So we had a healthy dose of each other when we needed, but if we didn't, we didn't ride all together.

It wasn't necessary for us to hit me and him, do the, I can't call him, you know, it's got names for him. It wasn't necessary for us to do the meetings and the pickups and all that together. You didn't do that. And you had leaders that would force guys to ride. Well, you don't want, no, we didn't like each other.

So there's other guys, Oz, Tom, you just don't have to ride together. There's plenty of other people here and they put us in different vehicles. Yeah. So, but what was funny and comical on that is, it only showed in the movie that the flight attendant put one towel down on the stairs

because Oz was bleeding over everything. She actually came down and was putting multiple towels all along the stairs and was putting them in the fuselage. Shit, because she was more worried about blood getting all over the plane than helping Oz into the plane. She didn't give him a hand, nothing. She just let him walk up. They're like, wow, if that ain't,

honestly, that's probably more closer to humanity today than how people are today than it really was back then. But he got on there and Dave, God bless Bob, dude. Bob sacrificed his life, saved two guys. He gave himself, John 15, 13, man. He exemplified that. Dave and Oz would have bled out. Dave was bleeding out.

He went into convulsions twice because his tourniquets kept coming loose. So he was losing so much blood. We were out of IVs. But because that plane was there, we had a little bit of a problem when we got everybody on the plane. As we got everybody on the plane,

we were to pop. Somebody shot their gun on the plane. The heating her be on the plane. We were to pop somebody shot their gun on the plane the heating and air guy Had a pistol of all the contractors had sidearms if they were weapons qualified our HVAC guy That was a contractor there with us. He had a pistol. He took it out to clear it Dropped the magazine and instead of racking the slide. He pulled the trigger and he shot the plane So the plane sat there for an extra 10 minutes while we tried to locate the bullet

because the pilot wouldn't fly if there was a hole in the fuselage. And we got lucky, it lodged in one of the iron frames with the back of a seat. Wow. To insult the injury and just comical, comical shit. Wow. And finally found it.

That's when it got out of there. And there was a Libyan, a Western trained Libyan doctor. And one of the deltas had 18 deltas had got back to Tripoli from that. I don't know if it was from the SIF team or he'd come in from Djibouti or, but there was a Delta that was waiting there in 18 Delta from one of the groups that was working in the region.

And I still don't know who it was. I just know it was an NSF guy. And they got him stabilized, Dave stabilized, Dave good to go, they got Oz good to go. And then we sat and waited. And that's when I inspected the ambassador's body. They brought his body on, I opened up the body bag. And again, I don't think he was destined, you know, his genitals were mutilated. I didn't look and I didn't see blood down there, I opened up the body bag. And again, I don't think he was destined,

you know, his genitals were mutilated. I didn't look and I didn't see blood down there, but that didn't mean nothing. They could have cleaned it up and just pulled his pants on. But I didn't see any marks that indicated he was drug through the streets, which is what I was looking for. Tig looked at him too.

And Tig didn't see anything that indicated that as well. So we're saying no. Could it have happened? Sure it could have, but we didn't see it. A C-130 landed at 1030. And as I'm seeing it come in, you know, you've been around, you know the telltale signs even from a distance of what a 130 looks like coming in.

It's beautiful coming in, doing just cracking, looking at the tail boom. And I'm thinking to myself, fine, well, better late than never, America. Who? And as it gets closer and I'm thinking to myself, fine, well, better late than never, America. Who? And as it gets closer, I'm like, my eyes deceive me, man, that's red, green and black. That's not an American flag.

And as it gets closer, I verified it's a Libyan flag and it lands. And I remember thinking, what? It's like still, and I said it to myself, out loud to myself, I said, still no Americans. Whatever, goes down, I figure we're gonna hotload it, so it's gonna drive, it's gonna drop its ramp, and we're gonna, it's gonna turn,

and then we're just gonna run in and take off. It didn't, it went by us, went down about 400 to 600 meters, banked a right, shut its engines down. You know, I guess's odd, okay. Well, maybe they need to refuel. And I look at my T, I look at the TL, I go, is that for us? He goes, I don't know.

And our country TL was there as well. And I asked him, I go, is that for us? We jumped in some cars that we had left. We jumped in, we had another interpreter that was our expediter from the airport. He had a vehicle, jumped down there. They were all sitting in the room drinking chai. They were maxing relaxing.

Went to the pilots. We're like, is this for, and they had no idea what had just happened. They had no idea what had just happened. And we ended up talking them into flying us out. Have faith, man. Wow. Have faith, God.

I always tell people, never lose your faith. It's amazing that if you have faith, your luck increases. It just showed up. And that was something that honestly I pushed when we were doing all the testimonies and nobody really ever cared. Wow. So I just let it go.

I don't push it anymore. But I like to tell about it because it is a question. It is a man, God still in control, man. And I am gonna talk about that. I do because this is why I don't, like Obama or anyone, Mike Rogers, he's Republican, he talks shit about Benghazi, he's a terrible man, whenever they call it conspiracy, or they say,

oh, it didn't happen the way they said they did. We got on that plane, and forgive me, Katie and Bub's family but I do wanna talk, cause this is why politicians need to shut their fucking mouths is Bub's rigor mortis had set in. So his arm was when we got on the plane, we load the bodies in,

we didn't have body bags for everybody. So we had to put sheets, a sheet over Bub cause we didn't have enough. And he had gotten dropped off the roof by the D-boys. They dropped them. I don't know why, again, I've come to terms with that. I'm not gonna beat those guys up. They're A-men, they're D-boys.

I know they serve their country well and they did well. If you ever have them on, you can ask them. But his arm was up in the air. So it was, you know, we had him covered with a sheet, but his arm was like this the whole time. It's like an elephant in the room. You're on a C-130 and I'm on the, we're sitting on this side on the webbing

and they're sitting on that side on the webbing. And you're seeing these dead bodies here and everybody's pretty much covered up, but Bob's arm is out there and everybody's just staring at it. And I was like, what the fuck? Okay, I was like, fuck, if I have to be the one to do it, and I didn't say it, but that's what I thought,

and I walked over there, and I thought it was disrespectful to leave him like that. So I just grabbed his arm, and I went, wrap, and I ripped it down, and I felt everything rip, but I could tuck his arm and I went, and I ripped it down and I felt everything rip, but I could tuck his arm underneath the sheet so we couldn't see it anymore. You know, I don't know if that was right or not,

but I just, I couldn't write an hour watching it. And everybody was staring at it. And it was just silent on the plane. It's like, nobody wanted to acknowledge it, that that was going on or maybe what had just happened. And it was like, fuck. And maybe this is the, everybody have a little social pattern.

It's like, man, do I always have to be the one to do the dirty shit? That's what I kind of felt, but I'm glad I did, because I know, I thought it was more disrespectful to leave his arm up in the air and leave him in that position and get him settled, get his arm underneath and have him be in a respectful position. And that still bothers me.

And I don't really talk, I don't talk about that too much because one of all, I don't talk about it a lot because it bothers a shit. I mean, obviously, but because I don't want to disrespect the Doherty family by saying that, that maybe they would think of it like a desecration and that's not what it was for me. Chris, I mean, you did it out of respect, man.

That's what it was and that's not a rationalization. But I also, you all- You're just doing the best you can. That's it. You always respect family though. You always respect other people's family, especially people you serve because you want them to respect your family.

And I love, I think Katie and what she's done with the Glenn Dherty Memorial Foundation and Glenn's brother, they're amazing people. And Mrs. Doherty passed away, I think a few years ago, but I have the utmost respect for them because they lost their son needlessly. And I just didn't want to harp on that, but I do want people to understand and know that.

So when they hear a politician say Benghazi is a conspiracy or Benghazi didn't happen, or those guys are not telling the story, I don't want them to hear stuff like that because that's why I get angry. Nobody believes politicians, right? I hope not. I get angry. Nobody believes politicians, right? I hope not.

They don't. I hope not. Well, regardless, that happened and we got back to Tripoli and we went back and we got off the plane. We went to the annex there in Tripoli. I took a shower and got some food and I was a big Copenhagen nipper at the time. So I was like, man, does somebody have Copenhagen?

I need some co big dip in. There's actually a picture. There was one picture taken of me sitting on the steps of the annex and Tripoli. I borrowed somebody's New York Yankees hat. I didn't have any clothes because I wasn't able to get my gear. So I borrowed somebody's white under T-shirt.

I had somebody's pants on that didn't fit me. So it looks like I'm a lot bigger than what I am down there, but I'm not, cause they were tight, too tight on me. And I have a big old dip in and my sunglasses on. And I'm trying to come to terms with it all. And I got some food in my belly. And then, then we, they load all the contractors, none of the staffers.

They load all the contractors on a motorcade. The JERS guys are there, we loading our cars, we drive down the airfield. The Air Force crew chief, she was awesome. Broke every reg in the world to let us load those flag draped coffins. They already had the flag, she was incredible. She already had them flag draped coffins ready to go. Christine, you couldn't have done any better than at Dover. She was incredible. She already had them flag draped coffins ready to go. Christine, it was, you couldn't have done any better

than at Dover. She was incredible. And the pilot, Eric Stahl, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Stahl, who was a C-17, wonderful. Every rig in the world they broke to accommodate us. They had already loaded. Oz was already on. I got, I'm not gonna post it because it's for Oz, you know,

but I got a picture of him where he's in his gurney, IV's in, he's coherent. Oz was already on. I'm not gonna post it, because it's for Oz, you know, but I got a picture of him where he's in his gurney, IV's in, he's coherent, he's doing this to me. But he's on the plane, Dave is sedated, of course. He's out, because he's massive, massive trauma. Get the coffins on, ramp closes, we take off, and we fly to Germany.

And then we get to Germany and plane lands. I didn't let go of my rifle all the time or my ammo. Give two fucks. It's not going anywhere. Stay right next to me with my ammo. So we get there and I wish I would have known what I know now about General Ham, but he's on the way to greet us. Eurocom commander. He's the one that controls the Eurocom forces.

He's the one that can sacrifice his position and tell Obama and Hillary to go f themselves and send us troops. Well he gets on and I don't even remember what he said to be honest with you. I just remember he said something positive to us. You know, he's an infatuation guy, Ranger Tab, all that. And all I remember is I remember going up to him and saying, hey, sir, is there an amnesty box anywhere? Cause I got a bunch of ammo I need to download. And that's my conversation with him.

But if I'd have known that he didn't, he could have sent people and he didn't, and I probably would have had a different conversation, but I didn't know at the time. Yeah, he goes, yes sir, he's a good job. He goes, great job, man. And he goes, it's right over there. And I walk over there and there's a Sergeant in arms, like a Sergeant, I would say Sergeant in arms,

but whatever the ammo draw, and there's a Sergeant there. And I gave a tech Sergeant, Air Force guy. I gave him the ammo drop and there's a sergeant there. And I gave a tech sergeant, Air Force guy, I gave him the ammo. And that's why I always tell people support the USO, because they were already there waiting for us. And this lady, she was the nicest lady, 50 something lady, blonde hair, about five foot six. She comes up to me and she goes,

they already know what happened. They know what happened. They know the story. They know where we're coming from. Anyway, they don't know where agency, they just know that there was a battle. There's some deaths, there's some military and some civilians coming in, get your shit ready. And they already had stuff laid out, like toiletries,

underwear, clothes, shoes. And she comes up to me and she goes, what'd you lose? She goes, what'd you, you okay? I said, yes ma'am. She goes, what'd you lose? I said, ma'am, I lost everything. She goes, okay. And she started taking me around and I got some money.

I got some jammies, I got some sweats, USO sweats, and I got my toiletries. And then we got to the end of it, she goes, write down what you need. I said, ma'am, she goes, no, I need you to write down what you need because you might be here for about four what you need. I said, ma'am, she goes, no, I need you to write down what you need because you might be here for about four or five days. I said, every what?

And she goes, anything. So I'm just doing, you know, I lost my tennis shoes, I lost my jeans, I lost my t-shirts, and I gave her a list and it was a full page of stuff I lost. I wasn't being a dick. I lost my PlayStation. I was like, I handed it to her and I go back to my room and they put us into a nice room.

It's Air Force. It's nice rooms, man. It's like a hotel. It felt like a hotel. Put us in, we're right next to the BX, which Air Force Base Exchange, Army, PX, Post Exchange, but it's Air Force BX. And I lay down for a second.

I can't sleep. I knock on my door at 1 a.m. Cause we got in real late. We got in like at 11 to Germany when we finally got there. And it was her and she had two bags. She goes here. She goes, I got your stuff. And I didn't break down in front of her,

but I did when I closed the door. Cause it was... First time I'd felt where someone generally cared, like actually gave a shit, not like Bob who came after her when we were at AAA and he goes, thanks man, thank you. And I think he was trying to be sincere, but when you're that long in the agency,

your sincerity is never out there anymore. Or having somebody say, man, great job. It wasn't in the GRS guys, they don't know what's, you know, what do we say? You know, I know it's sincere, but it's a good job, fist bump. But actual like a mother figure saying, carrying, it meant a lot.

And then I put the clothes on, she got me some jeans, she got me some running shoes, I felt normal. And the torturer took a shower. And then I slept for about four or five hours. And then I got up and I turned the TV on and I saw Susan Rice already on TV. And I remember I called Jack and they were saying video and a protest.

And I said, are you seeing this fucking shit? And we turned it on and I just turned it off. And he turned it off. And we didn't want to watch it. Because we figured at that point, we're like, somebody's gonna tell the truth. You still have some optimism that there's some heart and some integrity within the government

that somebody is gonna say something. And we still had that at that point, it had only been a day. Who knows if I'd have known what I know now, 12 years later, probably would have been more vocal at that point in time. But we still had that faith that there was still integrity and ethics and morality in DC.

We hadn't seen behind the curtain yet. We had a little bit, but not really, because that wasn't our job. And we stayed on there. And then I remember that night we got super pissed drunk. There's still a picture that I'll post every once in a while of me, Jack, Boone, and Tig. And actually the safe part, Alec was on one side,

but I'll crop him out because I just, I don't know if he wants to be seen. And I'm smiling a little bit. And I still, I honestly feel bad that I'm doing know if he wants to be seen and I'm smiling a little bit and I Still I honestly feel bad that I'm doing like what the I'm looking at going. What the fuck am I smiling at? But I remember that I'm just trying to get through it and I remember that I was I would drunker and shit, dude I was so drunk and we had been laughing together

Healing together before that picture was taken. Because Tig was telling me, man, this is what I did, and boom, and some of the shit is comical. That's why I'm glad we got the comical shit in the movie, because that happens, man. They miss the bravado's there in all the movies. Lone Survivor, American Sniper, Black Hawk Down, even ours, but they miss a lot of the Jack Ashery.

And that's one thing we like, Mike, we gotta get that in there because that happens. That's actually more relevant, more prevalent than the bravado. And so I remember we were telling a story, and I can't remember the story that it was, but we were laughing because I was like, holy shit, I can't believe that just happened.

I think it was Tig talking when he said, when he, one of the, one of the espos, one of the base security guys that we had there, called Tig into the office, said, can you come look at the monitor? I've got some problems in the sheep slaughterhouse area. And he went down there to look and the sheep were jumping on each other.

And he's like, yeah, I went down there and I was just watching these videos and the sheep were running around in a circle and they're jumping on each other and jumping on each other. Well, all the sheep are doing, they're trying to get away, but they can't get away

because they're in a pen and a circle and it looks like they're humping. And he did say that the spogos, so do you think people are sneaking under there? He goes, I don't know, is he or that or the sheep are humping? And the spogos, well, what do you think it is? He goes, he goes, man, is he or that or the sheep are humping? And the spog ho is, well, what do you think it is? He goes, man, it was like 2.30 at night.

He goes, I don't know nothing about sheep. So it was just funny. It was dumb, but it was funny. Because it was just, again, ludicrous shit. So when you see that in the movie, you're like, was that part of the, no, that actually, that happened and that's what's so funny about, and it is funny and with 13 hours,

but it's just the night in itself is just the stupid shit, the stupid stuff that we said just to make each other laugh or just stuff that comes out of your mouth or rub some dirt on a kid, after a guy blows his hand off, I mean, it's there and I still remember laughing and getting in that picture because of that story that Tig told.

But when I look back at the pic though, it still hurts me a little bit because I, there's nothing I need to be smiling about there. We had just lost two guys. We just lost an ambassador. We lost Sean who hadn't seen, that's two weeks. I've been doing that for 10 years and I've been pretty relatively unscathed.

He's dead. And here I am smiling a day after the attack, all of us were. And it bothers me, that picture, I still will post it because I do wanna tell us, any picture that said I post on social media, I know it's not the cool thing to do, I'll always have a story behind it,

because I want, it's therapeutic for me, but also maybe somebody will learn from it. Yeah, I know, but yeah, we there, and then we went home. The reason they kept all the staffers there, including Sarah, she can tell you more about than I can. She has already, she's already you more about than I can. She has already, she's already talked about it. And they flew us out just because they didn't want

our input on how they were gonna write the report of what took place. So they flew all of us contractors out. I didn't know that either. If any of us would have known that, we thought they were just being cool. It's like, oh, they're getting us out of here. We gotta go home. It was no, because they're gonna flap at Trey and Sam

so they can get debriefed without us. Here's agency for it. Wow. That's it. Wow. We went back to Langley. You know, you just stop, you turn in your passport, you do your debrief.

That's where we did our big debrief up on the seventh, up on seventh floor and we went through, this is what happened. We mapped it all out. We stayed there for an extra day. We went through what we all did. And you know, they did a big, like really it was just a big AAR like you do in the military.

We were up there and this is where we moved. So we're gonna, and then we went downstairs and we sat with all the GRS head shed out of, that worked out of Langley there, the guys that worked out of the building. And that's where we went through another AR. So like, what'd you do? What happened?

And that's when they asked me, like, I just said, whenever we talked about it earlier about our TL, they go, so how'd the TL do? And they said his name. And I said, he did great. And they said, really? And Boone kind of looked at me like, and I said I said, he did great. And they said, really? And Boone kind of looked at me like, and I said, yeah, he did great.

Cause he stayed out of the fucking way. What was their reaction? What are they gonna say to me? It was one put his head down and snickered cause he knew who he was. The other two, they just looked at me. They didn't say a word. And I didn't say a word.

And I looked right back at him and Boone was laughing the whole time too. Boone's laughing. So what could they say? I got no idea. What are they gonna say to me? Hey, I'm not a... been around long enough. I know who you guys are. You know I am. We can... and I... What would a normal human being say to you? Nothing. These people, who the hell knows? Well, I was also, and not that I'm, I've gotten my ass kicked enough times, but I'll fight if we need to fight.

And that's what it was. Like, he stayed out the fucking way. And it was stay out the fucking way, and then with my eyes I'm going, what the fuck are you guys gonna do about it? Yeah. And yeah, they probably wouldn't mind, I'm a little guy, I get my ass. I'll get my legs.

I get the situation. But it's that. I mean, there's just so many staffers that have no concept of what that might be like because they haven't done it. They've never done anything. And. Nothing.

And do you know what? That's why I didn't get any response back. Because if they would have had a set of balls, they would have, somebody would have said something. But I do also think the one that was laughing, that snickering and smiling, giving a little smirk, he had been down range before I'd worked him a few times. They also knew the truth.

They knew, what were they gonna, they knew. They knew that he wasn't gonna do anything. So that's why one was in the corner going, you know, it's good. Boone's sitting there going, after he looks at me and I said it, he's like, he just started laughing. Boone doesn't laugh, you all like that? He just started laughing.

And everybody's on our side snicker. And so what are they gonna say? They know I'm right. And if they did, then they would, but nobody said, nobody said anything. And then I also- Did I continue to work? What's that?

Staffer. Who did? Oh yeah, he's still working. And then I also- Did Tig continue to work? What's that? Staffer. Who did? Oh yeah, he's still working. The T.O.? He's still working? Pretty sure, he's still working. He's still on, come on, you know the deal. He ain't going nowhere.

He played the role, he didn't say a word. When he testified, he testified against everything that we said. He never testified with us. He testified on his own. He testified once with Tig, because Tig was still working. Tig was the last one to quit.

All of us went to Yemen, Tig went to Lebanon. So myself and Jack went to Sanaa after we took our 60 days off, and then we went back to Sanaa. Boone went to Aden, Tig went to Lebanon. You only took 60 days off? I took 75, I took an extra couple weeks. Yeah.

That's it. I had to get back on that horse, man. What was the, what was the first conversation like with your wife and kids? Ike actually called her from the airfield. There's a wonderful, wonderful, I'm glad they got this right in the movie.

You just see Jack's perspective where he calls home. We paraphrase in the movie, because we got what we all said, then they had a wonderful writer named Chuck Hogan who mashed it together and got all of our, based our words into that monologue when Jack's on his phone or Krasinski. And I remember I called her on the Atarmack and I said,

hey, you're gonna see something on the news. That's us. I said, I'm fine. I love you. I said, I'll be home as soon as I can. And then she goes, what happened? I said, I can't really talk about it, but we lost one. And I meant Rome. And yeah, this still bothers me a little bit too, because I really't really talk about it, but we lost one. And I meant Rome.

And yeah, this still bothers me a little bit too, because I really wasn't thinking about Bob. I was thinking of the teammate, even though Bob had tripled. But I said, we lost. And I said on open line, I said, we lost Rome. And I said, that's all I can say. I said, I'll talk to you when I get to,

and I didn't know where I was going. I said, I'll talk to you when I can to, and I didn't know where I was going. I said, I'll talk to you when I can talk to you. And I hung up the phone. And yeah, every one of us had a phone call like that. Jack was the closest to Ron, out of all of us there. Ron and Bob. So his conversation was a little bit more emotional than ours, but it was, it still was,

hey, you're gonna see someone on the news. It's over. We're okay. I'm okay. Yeah, we lost some people. Be home when we can. Love you, bye. And then my conversation when I got to Germany

was a little bit more in depth, but I had to be careful because we're on open lines. And it wasn't, I was worried about the bad guys listening to us. It was, I started to figure it out. Yeah. You know, Toto started to open that curtain where the great and powerful Oz was.

And I started to see who the enemies, not really are, because the terrorists are the enemies too, but that we also have enemies in our own house that don't want the truth to come out. So I was more careful about what I would talk about on an open line. And then when we got back to Langley and all that, you know, there are debriefs.

I did also tell them as well, because of that 203 incident where Tig lost the 203 and I couldn't find that other one. I sat down with them, because you can bitch about a problem, but if you're gonna bitch about a problem, have a solution to it. And I remember sitting there with him,

I go, you guys know that for some reason, we didn't have enough 69s out there. I said, if we would have had enough 203s for all of us, the fight would have ended way before it did, you know, at 530, we would have crushed them. They would never have touched this again. So in the future, every GRS operator has to be just like when we were in the military.

Everybody has to have a 46. Everybody has to have M4. Everybody has to have a 203. Everybody has to have a 46 everybody has to have him for everybody has to have a 203 Everybody has to have an sr. 25 everybody has to have the right gear for the right op And then they get a pick which gear they need when they head out Because this is bullshit. I said we're the agency and we don't have enough 203s I said, what the fuck is that? Obviously it fell on delt death ears

But I even said, I said, even ground branch has every weapon system they need. And I get it, they're DA, we're not. But that's horse shit. This is why everybody needs every weapon system. Because if this happens again and we lose one, we're not out an entire weapon system that could have been a game changer,

a force multiplier, like a 203. And from what I heard, and you kept working, I don't think, I think that fell on deaf ears. It didn't. It fell on deaf ears. So fuck those, fuck those pieces of shit. It's how hard is it to get an extra 203 or an extra 46 for the guys,

especially when there's only five guys on a team, or an extra GLM, something. But I remember saying that to him, because I was pretty pissed. I was pissed at that. Because again, I felt like we're the runt of the litter. And so what if we are, but guess what, this runt of the litter just turned the tables without any assets at all.

It's not easy being a Ranger or Delta or SEAL, it's not. You're doing DA stuff, but it is nice and it is heartening to have a Spectre gunship fucking overlooking you. It is nice if you are a SEAL team going out there to have a platoon of Rangers that got your back or vice versa. When you're on your own and that's it

and you don't have all those assets, it can be a little bit more scary that you don't have all those assets, it can be a little bit more scary that you don't have all those protections. And so that's why, give us everything we need. And I'm not asking for much. It's not like I'm asking for a DAP cover. I'm not asking for, I'm just asking for, can y'all get us, at least each of us have a 203?

How long did it take you, Christopher? I mean, you were abandoned by the US government in all aspects. I wish I could tell you different, but that's what happened. How long did it take you to rid yourself of that anger? The end of 2017, 2018, when I reconciled my wife, I tried to, from 14 on.

Six years. Six years, yep. Cause all that time in between, and that's when we had gotten divorced, I was sleeping around, you know, that's why we got divorced. It was me and my infidelity. I was drinking a shit load. I was drinking a shitload.

I was drinking all the time. I was gone all the time. I was speaking. How did you reconcile that? First you have to reconcile with God, man. How'd you do that? Stood in the mirror and said, God, I need your help. Carry me, I can't do this anymore.

After, I don't even remember exactly what I was, I was at home by myself. As you know, they'd lived out, I lived by myself. I was a divorcee. I still had our little guy. Our little guy was still a baby. So that was hard. Cause I was like, holy shit, I'm missing a child again.

Cause of my own stupidity. But I remember I was like, holy shit, I'm missing a child again, because of my own stupidity. But I remember I was in the shower, doing the crying game thing in the shower, it was like, my life sucks, this is awful. And I had millions of followers. This was before I shaked all my social media accounts. So I had like, ah, shit, I don't even know, 275,000 followers on Instagram.

And I think I had 300 on Twitter when it was Twitter and social Facebook was like, that was what was important in my life, right? That is so fucking ego centric, vapid. But that's what was my focus was, was myself, ego. And I realized that that was leaving me hollow than the toxic relationships. Then trying to fill it with alcohol,

then trying to fill it with money. I had a lot of money, tons of money. Didn't make me happy. And it was when I realized that I can't do this anymore. God, I need you. I do, I need you. I was in the shower, I did the crying game thing, crying in the shower naked.

Got out of the shower. I had the crying game thing, crying in the shower naked, got out of the shower. I had my Glock, it was right there. And I looked in the mirror and I did, I put it right here. And I thought back, I thought, just briefly, I said, okay, hard life, yeah, you've had it, not hard as, but you know, rough. You got this disease that you're winning. You're winning the Crohn's disease fight.

You got it under control. You got kicked out of the military. You fought your way to get back in. You made it. And you got through Ranger school and you did what you wanna do there. You conquered that even though their odds were against you. Your grandson of immigrants that worked their asses off

to give you everything. You've got that gene of that you don't give up like your grandma, your abuela and abuela. Abuela and abuelo. And then 10 years overseas, seeing death and seeing life and getting through all that, making a bad call in Iraq that I made a bad call in Iraq where a little Iraqi girl died that I could have saved her in 2005 in the Mansour district.

He went through Benghazi and he got through that. And now the devil's gonna win this battle for your soul. That's what I thought. And I looked in the mirror and that's when I said, I looked in my eyes and said, God, carry me, I can't do this. And I just put the gun down and I stopped crying. And I went and grabbed the phone and I called my, she was my ex-wife at the time, Tanya,

and they were on vacation at Disney World. They had taken off for Christmas. They were going on vacation. In the divorce, she got the DFC membership. But they were there. And I said, can I come spend Christmas with you guys? And no hesitation, she goes, yes, come on. And I mean, it's like God answered me like that. There was no delay, there was nothing.

I got on, by that time I had more miles to orbit the sun on every freaking airplane in the world. I got on a Delta, got a ticket, flew out the next day and they were staying at the Polynesian Village at one of the little huts there on the water and it was freaking awesome. Best vacation ever. And with that, that was the life, really that was it. The life changed.

Stopped doing the media. I did one more written Fox interview for the Fox e-media. It was, and that's where I said, I'm done. Anger's gone. God's got Hillary. God's'm done. Anger's gone. God's got Hillary. God's got Obama. He will take care of them. I don't need to judge anybody.

Who am I to judge anybody? They will be judged, let it go. And life's been great ever since. I stopped doing so much social, I stopped doing a lot of, I don't do 60, 70 talks a year anymore. I do like 10. I shit can all my social media.

I just got rid of all of it. Now I got back on when I got my head right, my wife is a big part of that too. So she's, it's not just me, it's me and her. I do it, but that was huge. That was so toxic. And that's why I don't, I give people shit for protecting those accounts, for making them so important

because they're not at all. And I got rid of all of them. And business-wise, went a different direction as too, as far as business goes, which means I minimized it. Still had some battle-line stuff, but I stopped doing the traveling courses as much, and I focused on being home. And we also ended up getting remarried,

so worked on a relationship. It took time. And how that worked is we just started dating again. It wasn't like we got right back in it. It was, we still lived separately and then we would just start going on dates. How did your kids react when you came back in the picture? They, I mean, they were happy that dad was there,

especially at Disney where I'm fun. But it was awkward for the two older ones because they really didn't know what to think. I mean, is dad going again? Is he gonna be here this time? Is he leaving? But also at that time, they were so used to me being gone anyway,

even when we were married from the point, it wasn't anything that it was odd and they were pushing me away. And also because mom and dad aren't arguing anymore. They're not yelling at each other anymore. So it was happier environment. If it was like a normal, I had a normal job, nine to five, or all of a sudden I disappeared and I came back, maybe they would have been a little bit more,

it would have creeped them out, weirded them out a little bit. But because dad was always gone anyway, I saw them being a little happier, but as we talked about earlier, they still were very reserved and, I don't know if this is for real. Dad was mean when he ever would come back from Iraq,

he's gonna be mean dad and he makes mom cry. And that's what they would see. So it just took time, a year of dating, of just more dating, of then spending more time together, of then the kids and maybe staying over, then eventually it just ended up too, like just like a normal where you're dating somebody and it develops into a relationship that a marriage

and we had to do it that way. And it was a little weird, but it was fun doing it that way. Cause I got to, you know, I got to do things that maybe I didn't do the first time I quartered where I did. So it was like a do-over. And it was awesome. No, it was great.

Everything was fantastic. I did have some where I would still get angry from times because just because it's just seeing what you saw, not anything where it was infidelity or anything like that. No, that's terrible. I'm a terrible person. I hate even saying, but I'm gonna be honest with you, man. And she, I mean, obviously she knows.

I wrote about it in some of the books that I've written this, but there are times still where I would get angry, you know? The, and post-traumatic stress, or whatever you wanna call it, shell shock. You just, you remember, and you just, the anxiety was there, but I said the CBD really did help.

I did get it on an anxiety medication, but all the VA does is just, but I said the CBD really did help. I did get on an anxiety medication, but all the VA does is just, and I got good VA. Midwest they do take care of you, but all that does is just create more problems. The CBD helped. I stopped drinking. Even though I have my own vodka, when I say I stopped drinking,

I have a drink with my wife, maybe once a month. And I also made it a point to be a father, be home. This is where I wanna be. And I did realize that in 2017, 2018, I did a contract. My last contract, it was to Costa Rica. It was an anti-kidnapping contract for a private firm in Texas to find an American that had gotten kidnapped.

And so I was still contracting a little bit. Wasn't going to the Middle East anymore, but I was still doing some South American stuff. And it was Halloween time and I was there for Halloween and my wife sent me a picture of my son, Peanut, my daughter going out to the trick or treat. And you know, that feeling that you gotta go down range, I gotta, it was gone.

Cause all I could see was the picture and all I'm thinking to myself is what in the fuck am I still doing this for? And, you know, I finished my contract. Those, and luckily those things are real short. You know, they're, you find the guy or you don't. You're gonna find find him alive in a few weeks or you're gonna pass it on to the next guy or he's gonna Be dead and he did it was an American that they held for ransom They they did find the culprits and we found he was dead. They but contracts over I flew back and

But contract's over, I flew back, and man, it's just everything. My son, I reconciled my 16-year-old boy, we had that inning at Olive Garden, that incident where... It's like- How'd you propose your wife? The first time? Second time. The second time?

I didn't get down on my knee. She's not that kind of woman, dude. She's not that kind of woman. She's not that type of woman it was honestly, very nonchalant and it was just You know, we saw the rings and I put my ring back on she was you still wearing your ring Why am now I said, where's your ring? It's in the box. I

Said you want to do this again? And of course, I knew the answer. She's tough as nails, dude. And it was back at Disney. And most people hate Disney. And I do. Their politics are horseshit. But it still can be a happy place for the family. A lot of happy things happen there. And we were actually running around, what's it's called, the Polynesian village. There's another one out there where there's a massage place. The white one, it's like a Southern resort, Southern, I can't remember the name of it,

but we're running out there jogging and we stopped. And I said, will you marry me again? And she just laughed. It's just like, cause it was so corny. I'm such a nerd. It is so corny. And she laughed and just, yeah. And really it was the smile.

And she has a beautiful smile. When she really wants to smile, she doesn't like smiling. She thinks her smile's ugly, but it's gorgeous. And she just gave me her gorgeous, squinty-eyed, big ass smile. And we sold her house. She had a second house in Omaha. We went back, she got a radio for sale.

We sold it. She moved back into my house in Omaha, or I say our house, because it was our house. That's what we bought it together when I was in the military. And then we stayed there for a few years and it was, it was, it was our house. That's what we brought it together when I was in the military. And then we stayed there for a few years and it was, it was married. I was, and I was, I was a husband finally. She was always a wife.

I couldn't ask for a better wife. Couldn't ask for a better partner. Couldn't ask for a better woman because she's just, she's just a wonderful, wonderful person. And she's wonderful for me because she's not sappy. If I'd have went down on my knee and did all that stuff, she would have told me no. It had to be doing something athletic.

We're out running, because that's how she is. And me just throwing it at her. And her being- And that's how you are. And that's how I am, yeah. And she knows that. And she put her ring back on, and I even asked her, I said, I'll buy you a huge,

because I had a little bit of money at that time, and I said, I'll buy you a huge rock. What do you want? I'll get you a huge rock. She goes, you know I don't want those huge, I don't need diamonds, I don't wear, I wouldn't wear that, because I'm fine with what I have. And it was our original ring that I bought her.

We got married in the courthouse in Tacoma before I went to Ranger school when I was at second Ranger battalion. And then we stayed there in Omaha for a while and Omaha changed just like all cities do. And it wasn't the Omaha that I remember, you know, good values and there's good people in Omaha. There are wonderful people in Omaha,

but it started to turn like cities do. Amazon moved in, Google moved in, Warren Buffett is Warren Buffett, the tearing down cornfields. There was even riots and protests in Omaha at the time. And we're like, we're out. We're not here. And we moved to Kansas. That is a good woman.

She is, she is wonderful. And then we, cause nobody, you were the first person that's asked me that. Cause nobody's ever asked me that. And I think it's an awesome, I do, I think it's awesome because it, an awesome, I do, I think it's awesome because it just, to me, it reminds me of how awesome she is and how she's not a girly girl.

She doesn't want the girly girl stuff. And I did think about proposing to her, like doing the proposing and on and down, and because we're in Disney and we're at the resort, I wish I could remember that damn, it's right next to Polynesian Village, it's the old Southern Resort, it's the perfect place for it. You know, got the gazebos, and, but I never would do that, like there's no way.

Because I did think about that, like man, I gotta propose her the right, come on, on a beach somewhere, and it's like no way. If I did that, she would think I was such a, she wouldn't believe me, first of all. She'd be like, what did you do? And not yet. It was out running and being athletic.

It was out and it was perfect for us. And then what'd we do after that? We went to the gym and we worked out together. And it was awesome. And I was so high, I was just, it was the best and I still have those feelings when I go home. That's why I love where I live, where I just walk in and everything is just, and I don't need anything.

I don't need anything else but that. It's wonderful and she's there and she has her life. She doesn't need me to, we don't need to be doing things together all the time. She coaches volleyball. She's very independent, but she'll still come home if she wants to and she'll make dinner.

I don't need to add, but it's not required. I like to cook too. Or she'll come home and she'll say, "'Get your ass up and go make me some food.'" I like to cook too, but you know, she'll, or she'll come home and she'll say, get your ass up and go make me some food. Yes, ma'am. Yes, darling. And now she's my angel. And I have a tattoo up here.

And you know, I had a cross that she gave me. She gave me this before Libya. I've had it since Libya. But I had another one that I had, she gave me one as a military, and it said, love on her courage. And I have a tattoo of her on my chest, is that cross. And then I haven't put peanut on there yet,

but it has the call signs of all my other kids. It says, she's Angel. My wife's Angel. My daughter used to be Princess, but now she's like my wife. She's not a Princess, don't call me that, but that was her call sign when she was little but now she's like my wife. She's not a princess. Dad, I'm not a princess. Don't call me that. But that was her call sign when she was little.

Now she's Kiki. And then I have Bubba, because Bubba is Bubba. And that's them. They're always right there. Amazing. Well, Chris, there's a lot more we could dive into,

but I think that's a perfect way to end it, brother. And I just want to tell you, man, I saw you speak. I saw how much pain you were in, you know, probably getting close to 10 years, not quite. Where did you? Vocal ratone. You saw that? Yeah. Probably getting close to 10 years, not quite. Where did you? Vocal ratone. You saw that?

Yeah. Oh my God, that was, that was, that was, that was demon time. And uh. Wow. I'm just really happy for you, man. Thank you. I can tell you're at peace now and sounds like you got a great family and an amazing life and uh, you deserve it.

Thank you, bro. And right back at you. I appreciate you being patient with me, and that's cool that you did see that. And seeing your pictures downstairs with your kids and your wife, it sounds like you ain't the boss of the house either, aren't you, bro?

And we don't need to be. We need somebody that's gonna boss us around and tell us, hey, our shit stinks sometimes. And it's a wonderful house. So thank you, bro. Thanks for having me. It was an honor tell us, hey, our shit stinks sometimes. And it's wonderful. Thank you, brother. Thanks for having me. It was an honor, brother. No, the honor's not.

Thanks for letting me go down the aisle. It's like I did with just me, brother. Thank you. God bless, Chris. God bless you too, brother. Thank you. He named one of the best personal finance podcasts, the Stacking Benjamin Show with Joe and his friends makes financial literacy fun. Draymond Green has a podcast.

He was asking Mark Cuban why at the beginning of 2024, Cuban sold a huge part of his company. He's like, did you see how much money I got? and why at the beginning of 2024, Cuban sold a huge part of his company. He's like, did you see how much money I got? I'm sure there's a more graceful answer than that, but dude, I bought it for 200 million and sold it for 6 billion. Like what the heck? Of course I sold it.

I don't think it was that much more graceful than that. Find out more by searching the Stacking Benjamins podcast, wherever you listen.