Shawn Ryan Show - #27 Rob O'Neill - The Man Who Killed Bin Laden

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Former SEAL Team Six/Devgru Operator Robert J. O'Neill gives a full recap of his career in the SEAL Teams. From start to finish we cover it all. This is a side of Rob you haven't seen before. We get philosophical on topics such as "Should we have ever gone to Iraq?" and "Would we have been friends with our enemies under different circumstances?" And of course... We get the first hand account of the night Rob killed Bin Laden. You have never heard this side from the Man who killed Osama Bin Laden. 🚨 Vigilance Elite Newsletter 🚨 https://www.shawnryanshow.com/newsletter Please leave us a review on Apple/Spotify Podcasts: Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shawn-ryan-show/id1492492083 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5eodRZd3qR9VT1ip1wI7xQ?si=59f9d106e56a4509 #VIGILANCEELITE #SHAWNRYANSHOW Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit rebelcreamery.com to find a store near you. Hey everybody, welcome back. I hope you're having a fantastic week, even though it's only Monday. But hey, if you're not and it's off to a rough start it's about to get better because I have a phenomenal interview lined up for you guys. Rob has been a long time coming on this show and we finally got it done and I think you guys are really gonna enjoy it. We talk about his entire career and we get into some

philosophical type stuff that I think you all are going to find extremely interesting as well. And I want to tell you all about the vigilance elite newsletter that we're kicking off. All kinds of good stuff coming through that, especially the exclusive content that's only for newsletter people. And all kinds of other stuff, one that gummy bears are going to release, new products, of other stuff. One of the gummy bears are going to release new products, all that stuff. It's all coming out on the newsletter. It's our only way to get directly to you without any algorithms in the way. So anyways, it's free sign up links in the description and on another note I just want to personally thank all of you for being here. I love you all. Thank you and enjoy the show. You guys are here because this is not a drill.

This is real. We found a thing and this thing is in a house. And this house is in a bowl, and this bowl is in a country. And you guys are going to, you're going to go get this thing, and you're going to bring it back to us and show it to us. Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world. The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world.

The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. I said, you guys realize this isn't one way mission. We're not coming back from this one. We're targeting Al Qaeda in places where they've never seen guys like us. The reason you guys are here is this is as close as we've ever been to a Somal Bin Laden. Good evening, the Al-Qaeda leader, a Somal Bin Laden, is dead, killed by American special forces who raided his high-doubts in Pakistan

in the early hours of the morning. And I remember putting my first foot came out and I'm looking at Bin Laden's house, and I remember thinking, fuck it, I guess we'll start the war from here. These remarkable pictures from right inside his compound show us exactly where Osama Bin Laden was finally killed. The woman that found Minlodin said, I don't know what it looks like inside, but there will be a stairwell going to the second floor, and you will run into Khalid Bin Laden. And he's 20 years old, that's Bin Laden's son,

and that is his last line of defense. He will be armed on the stairwell. The blood you can see on the floor, evidence of how he was shot in the head through his left eye. Simply because he went this way, I turned this way, and standing three feet in front of his assomnet and he's got his hands on a mall, his wife's shoulders. I turn around and I kind of froze and I'm okay. We get...

Other Navy SEALs are not coming in. A lot of guys are in there and one of my guys came up to me and he said, Are you good? And I said no. No. What are we supposed to do now? The End I'm going to go to the next one. Rob O'Neill. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me.

I'm happy to be here. It's been a long time coming. It has. I think we've been promising to do this for a while Yeah, shit never never got around to it. I even I even live near here for a couple years And I don't know how I didn't make it here. Yeah. Well So life gets in the way right? Yeah, just life happens around you But well, we had a great conversation about the upcoming alien invasion that's gonna happen

I'm at a point right now where nothing would surprise me. Right? And even if aliens showed up I would question, are those really aliens or is just the government just the final push? That's what I'm saying. And I don't know what to believe. I mean I've seen enough stuff to believe. I believe a lot of things now and there's other stuff that I'm not sure if I believe it. So it's a crazy world. It's to the point where no matter what happens, I'm not gonna be surprised. No.

I mean, consider a few years ago that a lockdown was just something you see in a movie. There's no way this would really happen and it did. And you fell for it. Yeah, hook line and sinker. All of us, even if you're, you know, the anti-mask or you still stayed in your house, not like you're, you're not gonna fly without it.

You're not traveling without it, so. Well, actually, I got everybody, I get everybody a gift, and I was gonna get you a Delta Sky Miles. Oh, thank you. Oh, fuck, can I open it now? Yeah, go ahead. What have we got here? These are gummy bears those are gummy bears

Well, thank you go good with the our beer company. That's great. That's right. Oh, you're awesome I need to get some of that beer to put on the other I'll definitely get some But this is brewing company. We'll send you out as soon as we get done with this Yeah, I'll put it right there on the bar very cool. You know, we'll drink it during the show Yeah, we have we have a beer for every branch. We have jarhead soldier beer, catch-out for pilots, special hops, which I thought was pretty quick. Special hops.

Special hops in IPA. It's really good. We just came out with Neptune's beer to sort of commemorate Neptune's spear, which is commonly mispronounced. It's Neptune's spear as in King Neptune's spear. Negrostate. People say Neptune's spear, but that's,

you know, two S's in a row. Yeah. You got any, what's your favorite flavor? IPA. IPA. Special hot, yeah. This is my favorite. Special hot. But when Neptune's beer is available,

it's gonna be I think 12%. So that might be my new favorite. Nice. Nice. You're gonna get into hard stuff at all or still? Not just yet, but if the opportunity arises, probably. Well, I'm sure that's gonna come. But, well, hey, I just wanna start. You got a hell of a career.

Let's go through your entire career. You know, hit the high points. Obviously, they've been law and raid. But I wanna start with, you start with where you grew up, Montana, what was your childhood like? Well, it was kind of living in a bubble. You know, there's nothing on the other side of that mountain. But Montana is the center of the universe,

and people from anywhere else are probably going to be better than you. Kind of a weird situation, a fair of success, I guess. So I grew up hunting, that was a normal thing. It was normal to hunt elk, it was normal to go mule deer, white tail hunting, fishing. And I played a lot of basketball. That was gonna be my plan.

I was gonna get so good at basketball that I would get college paid for. And then I was gonna stand view Montana and be a stockbroker or something like that. You know, get an MBA maybe from Montana Tech, where I did go for a year. Nice. Were you pretty tired with your old van?

Yeah, yeah. We kind of did everything together. We started hunting basically the same reason I joined the Navy because he got dumped. He got a second divorce and we just had to do something so we started hunting. I think the first time we went hunting, it was in a... It was in a two door dots and car, my uncle Jacks.

And we didn't know what we were doing, we didn't know how to sign in a weapon. Kind of went out, we got a dough tag for an analogue. And we went out and all we knew how to do was get the cooler stock. Yeah. I mean, like sodas and twinkies and sandwiches and stuff. Yeah, we used to call it the buffet.

And that was kind of it. It was, there was basketball season, there was hunting season, there was fishing. And then hanging out and booting on Tana, which I thought was a big city at the time, because we didn't really go anywhere. Do you miss it there? I do. I love to go back. I sometimes get jealous of people that have a normal job in a normal life.

Nine to five. You know, wake up in the morning, kiss your kids, go to work, have lunch, come home, be with your kids. I totally understand that. Yeah. Just, you know, I normal life. I mean, yeah, it's kind of cool. I don't have really a shit to worry about. Yeah. It's but, yeah, what did your old man do? He was a stockbroker. Oh, he was a stockbroker. Now he does weird shit. Like, he bought a really fast Harley and he's 73 and I think it scares him. But he bought it and he's actually taking his road tests soon. The cone thing. Oh shit. He's like brand new on a bike.

Yeah. He had one before. He had a Honda shadow. I remember growing up, but I don't think I ever rode it. I think he just had it. Yeah. But he's good. He's a he's a till a fly fisherman.

He just put a basket ball basketball court in his backyard. Oh, nice. He plays in the winter in Montana. He'll go out and shovel it and shoot for Ethan. He's still really good. It's got a good shot. So, if that was the plan, how the hell did the SEAL teams and the Navy even come up?

Well, the SEAL teams was an accident. Because it wasn't necessarily getting dumped by a girl, but it was a situation that, you know, I started, well, once I joined the Navy, I realized most people are similar. You get to an age where I just got to get out of here. And that was where I was at. Bad relationship, basketball wasn't, I was playing,

but it wasn't fun anymore. And I need to go on an adventure. And I had two friends that always wanted to be Marines, growing, I grew up with them. Jim McBride and Benoit Shesky. And they all, I'm talking high-end tights, growing up, Marine Corps stickers on their first trucks, they're, you know, they were Marines.

And then I would see them come, they were two years older than me. I would see them come back to Bute Montana. And like, it was like watching someone from Full Metal Jacket walk into the, I was at the Vuvilla and Ben walked in. I'm like, holy shit, I mean that's a Marine. Like that guy, I still wasn't gonna join.

I was still playing basketball. And I was like, that's a fucking Marine though. It's like, I'm gonna watch this guy kick someone's ass in here. It's gonna be great because that was potential. And then when it was time to leave, as you can be great as always. You can touch him. And then when it was time to leave, like as a young man, you can go out and see the world

for free by joining the military. And I, like I had full metal jacket, like everyone else, I watched that a thousand times. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do that because I guarantee boot camp is gonna suck, but I wanna meet that drill instructor. Just how funny he is, but brutal. And I wanna be tough like a Marine,

so I went to join the Marine Corps. Just went down there, and there was, my wife calls me the luckiest, unlucky man in the world. I think whatever's saying, like through life. I think whatever's saying is, you could trip over your dick, but you're gonna land in a pot of gold. Right.

So I went in to join the Marine Corps and as luck would have it, the Marine wasn't there. He was literally out to lunch. And the Navy guy was, the Navy guy was. Now she said. And I went over to him because my two friends, and everyone's heard this joke before, but my two friends, Ben and Jim said,

the Marine Corps is actually part of the department of the Navy, it's just the men's department. And that's why I went in there because with their part of the department, he'll know where he is and then he'll, you know, and I said, hey, where's the Marine? What's he gonna be back in? You know, so he's sitting there, he's the Navy chief,

tackies, anchors, I didn't know what the shit that meant, but he's a chief, so he's clever. And he said, why do you want the Marine? I said, I don't wanna be a sniper. And I said, why do you want the marinas? I don't want to be a sniper. And I grew up hunting. Marines have the best snipers in the world. I read Carlos Hathcock's book, like I want to do that. And he goes, look no further, my friend.

We have snipers in the Navy. All you have to do is become a Navy seal first and no big deal. We'll send you right to snipers. And I didn't know what that was, right? I'm from Montana, and I didn't know how to swim. And me being a naive young man, I thought, you know, I don't know what that was, right? I'm from Montana and I didn't know how to swim. And me being a naive young man, I thought, you know, I don't know what a seal is,

but this guy here is a professional recruiter. Why would he lie to me? And I signed it and I signed the contract to go. The only thing I did right was I learned early in life to get it in writing, whatever you're doing. Fine, we can do business on a handshake, but sign this first. Yeah.

So I got in writing, it was called the Dive Faire Program. The Dive Faire Program? The Dive Faire Program, which meant you get like a $2,500 bonus, you are guaranteed a chance to go to Buds, basically on a water to demolition seal training. You're guaranteed a chance. And I didn't, I mean, I didn't know that all that meant

is you can go and fail, and then you're going to just fleet. Yeah. And so I signed that, and yeah, that was it. And then he started showing me videos of buds. I didn't know what that was. The only thing I knew about Navy Seals was watching Charlie Sheen's character jump off the bridge

in the movie Navy SEALs. Eddie Braun is his name. He's still his stuntman, which is awesome. Very good guy, very good stuntman. I guess during that scene too, I'm kind of jumping around. Eddie Braun said, all right, I'm gonna do this. You get one take.

And the famous jumping up the bridge. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's what I thought it was. And then I knew something about, sit ups with 2,000 pound logs. My buddies that I grew something about, sit-ups with 2,000 pound logs. My buddies that I grew up with that I thought knew a lot about the military said,

there's no fucking way in hell you're gonna make it through. See what I said, what did you just do? I took my mom to the recruiting station to have her watch videos and she didn't tell me to my face but she's like, there's no fucking way you can make it through this train.

And the only person that says that I think really believed to me was my father. Just because of our attitudes with free throws, and master the basics, free throws, if I could describe life, it would be to be successful in life free throws, because it's master the basics Do your thing shoot here?

Muscle memory you want to be great do it a thousand times you want to be really great do a ten thousand times Do everything like you do anything we would we would do drills my father and me we would play every single day and Anything from an hour of one-on-one to three hours of five on five But we were not allowed to leave the gym until one of us made at least 20 free throws in a row. So that start with a make and then you keep shooting. And that's something else too about, like, stances with shooting and all that stuff.

When you make your first free throw, you don't move. You're in the position. I hate watching basketball players now, they make a free throw and I gotta go give everyone five. Fuck you, it's your job. You made a free throw, make the second one, and then talk about it, awesome, you are. But we couldn't leave the gym until one of us made 20 in a row,

and that could take five minutes, that could take three hours. Yeah. But we got so good at it, we made ourselves, there's a steakhouse in Mutantana called the Derby. And like Montana, like I said, how we don't know how good it is because we're just there don't realize how great the stakes are at the derby in buteman tana We would start our season off 20 in a row to leave the gym 20 for a stake now a stay is at 20 to leave the gym but now it goes up by five 25 for stake 31 stake 35 for a stake 20 lead to Jim 50 for a stake. And we had to the point my father made 91 in a row. And that was the family record for a week, because the next week I made 105 in a row.

In a row? In a row. And you know, it's funny. He's like, a lot, well, a lot of things in life, only two of us saw it. So he can take my word for it or tell me how it goes. But yeah, so he believed in me. And so being lucky instead of good, I had my student ID to Montana Tech, they had a pool. So that man I could still get into the pool like at five in the morning.

And I went up there and I'm like, okay, the breaststroke is one of the strokes. It can't be that hard. It's 25 meters down, 25 meters back. I'll swim a thousand meters and gauge it from there. And like anything, with like everything was going fine until I entered the water, and that's when the problem started.

I made it to the deep end. I almost didn't make it back. And I was like, I'm fucked. I just signed a contract with the government to be a Navy SEAL, and I don't know how to swim. Holy shit. So I was trying and I'm busing my ass to him whatever and my friend, so I'm in there for just dying.

I'm trying to get out and my friend, Mike Driscoll, I went to high school with him. One of the few people in Montana who did swim and I believe he did go on to swim at Notre Dame. And he said, Rob, don't take this the wrong way. It's great to see you. I've just literally never seen you in the pool before. What he is. And I said, I just, I just joined the Navy. I'm going to be a seal and he goes, oh, no, not like that. And then he showed me, he showed me the how to do the breaststroke, how to do the sidestroke. And so with

repetition, I just, I would go there every day. And I still have my, there's a little packet you get when you join the Navy that folder and even like there's the buds warning order and all that stuff. I still have that with my, I would write my times down for the 500 yards

one that you had to do. No shit, you still have that. I still have it. I found it in one of the kit bags that we all keep because I might need this sleeping bag something. Yeah. But then I was up there. I was getting pretty decent.

And then Jim McBride, the Marine, who actually, he was in the list that he actually, I think he just retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, which is awesome, semperfied that's what he was going to do. He was going to be a Marine. He went to Air Crew School in the Marine Corps. And they taught him how to really do the combat recovery

stroke. And he goes, just do this a couple times. And just like when I saw Ben in the Vuvila, I was watching Jim swim. And I'm like, OK, this is next level shit. Now I got to get this. And so I just, you know, I got proficient, I thought. And then I did get to boot camp.

And I actually failed the screening test the first time. Because I took it like an asshole after you'd get those 90 shots and you're just sick as a dog, caught in mouth, and whatever. And I remember sitting there, how many people try out in boot camp? At the time, there must have been 400 people. What year is this? 1996. 96. And looking at this bleachersers and I still had that

Small-town mentality. I remember looking at the Navy seal flag the unofficial Navy seal flag I'm watching this arrogant team guy. I didn't know what to think of Navy. So he came out there and I did this Perfect dive that like Greg Luganis would have loved for a number of reasons But and then he got out and kind of just gave us the stink eye and I remember looking thinking there's no fucking way. Why, look at all these guys trying out. And then, but then I started talking to other guys that were from Brooklyn, some dudes that joined the Navy to get out of Compton, guys from South Florida.

And I started to realize that, okay, everyone's scared. Everyone's kind of the same. We're all the same. And then it started to sink. I mean, later on in life, I realized that, I don't give a shit if you're the CEO of a major company. You're the guy in Bin Laden's bedroom. We've all had our first day.

Yeah. And we've all been scared. I mean, we'll talk about the one percenters later, which exists that aren't scared. It will pass. But the rest of us get scared. The rest of us have been nervous. But if you can just take it increment at a time. And so the next time I got there, I lost the intimidation. I gave up the bullshit with it. I just got shots. No, fuck that. Do the swim. Do the pull-up. Do the sit-up. Do the push. Do the dam run and get on with your life. And that was it.

I mean, just being in boot camp, and I'm a big believer in wherever you are, be there. So I got into the classes we were taking. Okay, I'm gonna be a Navy SEAL, but I wanna learn about naval customs and courtesy tradition. I wanna learn with the horn, I paid attention, I was interested in this. The whatever they- I was interested in how to make a bed, how to fold your shirts. I still do it. And I got into it and then I

did, you know, I got the contract in there with the, you know, and I you're with a Navy SEAL chief and you know, you're gonna get your orders. Yeah. And part of the Difer program, I didn't realize this was you have to be a corpsman. Okay. I didn't see that in the fine print, but I finagled my way when you go up to get your rates. I made up some bullshit and I found out

what the shortest A school was so I could get to budge right away. And it was a aircrew survival equipment for a parachute rigger. So I would get that. I knew I would finish boot camp, go to Millington, Tennessee. It was like a two or three week A school. And I was with Marines now,

but I mean, I'm talking huge, dude. I had, there's one huge Marine, one white dude, one black dude, huge Marines. I'm still intimidated by Marines. And then this big black Marine, this, I'll never forget he's a staff sergeant. He taught me how to wind a bobbin and how to sew. And at first I thought, okay, I'm into some shit, but I don't know and then I'm like, wait a minute, sewing might be an awesome trade. I'm gonna pay attention. This is a big, tough Marine. Talk me how to sew. I learned about

Scythacrate of fire for a console machine, you know what, was bullshit. And in the teams, I chose that to be a good thing, but before we had on the high speed kit, that you need to cut this pocket off, so it here, where do you want your stuff? And but never telling when you're good at it, cause then in your first LPO, you'll have your sewing everyone's uniforms.

You have a year workup to get all 100 of these blouses or whatever. Yeah, I went to Millington and went back to Buteman, Tana, for leave and then drove my truck to Coronado. And the first place I stopped in Coronado was right by the hotel Del. And I which wanted to get in the ocean to, you know, if I was talking to 19 year old Rob O'Neill now, I'm like, dude, you're gonna get ocean time. Just say out. Yeah.

Don't take cold showers. You just, my thing about the cold showers when I talk to young kids, young men that wanna be seals and they'll say, what should I be doing to get ready for buds? And I'll say, well, let me answer your question with a question. What are you doing to get ready for buds? And they say, taking cold showers, you get used to it. a question. What are you doing to get ready for buds? And they say, take them cold showers,

you get used to it. And I'm like, you know, it's stopped at right now. And I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna give you an example. If I told you, in 30 days, I'm gonna kick you in the nuts as hard as I can. And in order to get ready for it, you had your best friend kick you in the nuts. Every single day, guess what?

It's still gonna suck when I do it. Don't prepare for shit. It's just take it like a man. Every single time. Yeah, so I got there and it was a Thursday night and I was in the, I got into the, the, the, the, the, the Pacific Ocean and all of a sudden there were these, these boats rolling by and there was chemlights on the side of them and it took me a second to realize, oh shit, I'm checking in class 208, that's 207. And this is hell week. And I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

Like, damn. Boy, you talk about swimming, you just jumped in with both feet, and it's about to be on. And then, yeah, I got a hotel, I checked in on a Friday, which was stupid, wait till Monday. Like, why do you want quarter deck watch when you can at least go have your last beer and peace? Yeah, and then 208 started, Buds class 208.

You know, and it's typical starts off with, at the time I think we call it the PTRR. Yeah, that's what they call it. They didn't have quite the pipeline they do now. They're doing a better now with actually getting guys ready with prepping nutrition. Yeah. You know, this is back in the day when you had a Navy SEAL as a Skydive instructor and

you eat shit. He doesn't tell you how to work your canopy to laugh at you. They have so many guys signing up now. Apparently, this is from this family that I used to train when I did tactics and stuff. He, this kid went in. If so many people signing up to be seals now that, or go to Buds, I guess, that they have to, they can't even take them all.

Really? Yeah, they're showing up and they sent this guy out to the fleet for two years. But broke his contract. That's how many people are signing. Well, that's what tells you about a contract with the government. They can tell you, you'll fuck yourself.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've seen plenty of that lately. Yeah. But, um, so you're not checking in though, it goes from watching a special on a cable news special about some reporter that went to, now you're at Buds, and I don't know what the fuck. And they brought us into a classroom,

and we were still on our whites, our dressable whites with like the, I think what you have one little service metal or what. Yeah. Yeah. And we check in and this instructor came in and he goes, Hey, anybody want to quit? And he was fucking around. Like a came guy joke. This dude goes, I do.

Right off the bat. And he never thought of joke. He's like, no, he just, he got orders to buzz to get off the ship. No shit. And he quickly knew to buzz to get off the ship. No, shh. And he quickly knew to get like three weeks on. Should we do whatever the hell he wants? Yeah, so then he quit. And then we had an instructor named Ashelman.

And he's a legend if anyone knows who he, a legend. And he said, this is how I started to realize that they're training you how to be successful in life. He said, all right, I know, I mean, and he, buzz instructors are not historically nice guys, but this guy was like, he would say, stuff, look guys, I'm not here to intimidate, I'm here to motivate.

He was our class proctor, so that is the one that helps you through. And he said, I know you've seen the movies and probably read the books, regardless of what you've been told, this course is not impossible. Okay, people graduate, look at me. I am living proof. So I will never ask you to do anything impossible.

But I will make you do something very hard, followed by something very hard, followed by something very hard day after day after day for eight straight months. And that sounds like a lot to get from not eight months from now but don't think about that because that is not how you achieve a long-term goal. You do it like this, you wake up in the morning on time, then you make your bed the right way then your brush your teeth. You just started the day with three victories, that's three wins already. Make it to the 5 a.m. PT on time and as I'm beating you do not

think about the pain you're going through, concentrate on your next goal in life, which is breakfast. After breakfast, make it to lunch. After lunch, your next goal in life is dinner. And after dinner, do everything you need to do to get back into that perfectly made bed. And because you took the time, in the morning to make your bed the right way,

regardless of how bad today was. And it will be bad. Tomorrow is a clean slate slate tomorrow is a fresh start and when you feel like quitting what you will, do not quit right now. That's a motion. I want you to quit tomorrow. If you can keep quitting tomorrow,

you can do anything in life. And that's what I, I mean, I thought I wasn't gonna make, I had to get a 15 minutes early to put on sunscreen. Like I thought that would be a reason, a sunburn would get me out of buds. You know, little shit like that, but it started to enforce and me fuck that. I'm gonna put sunscreen on.

I'm gonna fail a swim, but I'm not gonna quit. And then, you start seeing guys quit. And one thing, one problem too is, I called it sympathetic quitting, when someone that you think is tougher than you because he's louder than you quits. Well, if he can't make it, I can't make it. And I'm sure you saw it too, but someone, well, should they just follow him. It's like, fuck him.

I keep it in the movies when you see someone go into the bell and other students are like, no, no, it's like, fuck you, quit. I don't want you. Yeah, join him. I'm not quitting. Yeah. And then it just, you know then it just turns into hell week. And all of a sudden it's breakout.

Like we're in the tent, I know it's coming and breakout starts, which is organized chaos. They're, you know, get a muster, get the bokeh and like, fuck, you're not going to. They got instructors like that are retired in there to fuck with you. Just to realize the chaos. And there was a guy that quit right off the bat

and break out. And I'm like, dude, this is the best part. Like this is done in the movies. And then again, it's just the, I did have someone say, you're obviously your next goal is your next meal. Your long-term goal right now is sunrise of Wednesday. And if you can live the sunrise,

you'll probably be so dooped up from lack of sleep that you can double just push you through. And then all of a sudden it's Friday. And then we didn't, you know, the mud pits, the famous shit at the end, like the bacteria and festive cesspool, whatever. And I remember we had Admiral Richards was going to secure us. And in typical Admiral, he was three hours late. So they have to beat us. We're next to three. Someone just, she couldn't. Can I get a gay rate? Just let us go. Yeah.

Hey, I remember he said he's shaking everyone's hands and he's like the first admiral I remember that. And he was like, congratulations, O'Neal. Thank you, admiral. He was like, what the shit off your face? I'm like, Roger that. Yeah, then all of a sudden, he'll be sober. And then you're in the walk week

where they're actually letting you recover. And then I'll, I'll never forget our first swim because now you're done with Hell Week. And obviously, Hell Week, I think, is the reason that Navy Seals in combat will walk three miles out of their way to avoid getting their boots wet. Yeah. You get tortured. And, um, our first two miles swim, they had us line up and face the ocean. The first time getting in the ocean after Hell Week, and they made us line up and we're just. The first time getting in the ocean after Hell Week and they made us line up and we're just staring at it and the same instructor, Eselman, he comes walking up and down. He's like, first time in the ocean since Hell Week, I chance kind of spooky, isn't it? And then you do that, you do the hydro-recon and then boom, you get your blue helmet,

you're in Diffus. What did you find, did you make it through all at once? You were in a original? Yeah, well that's not very many of those. I know, and it didn't make sense to me, because I mean, pool comp, they have you do the test on Friday twice, and if you fail, you have to do it Monday. And then if you fail, that, you're done.

And then a lot of people don't realize a lot of dudes fail pool comp, and you can get kicked out for failing pool comp. Most guys get rolled, you know, and they'll make it again. But I failed twice on Friday, and then I remember just practicing, on time nots, practice breath holds, how am I gonna get through this?

And that started to, started to enforce that failure is sometimes a learning less. You can learn. Don't be afraid of failure. Just don't quit. And then I went through and I think I untied most of the knots and you know you come up at the end, I feel fine and then this is Strucker's here.

And it's here, O'Neill, pass. I'm like, fuck yeah! And he grabbed me and he goes, you untied three of my whammy knots, fucker. And then he get out in an in-die phase. And now, and that goes, you untied three of my whammy nods, fucker. And then he get out and then you're in die phase. And now, and that's where you learn that the Navy can make anything suck. Because diving, scuba diving, I don't know if you know

this is fun. Not in the fucking Navy. No. So, you know, you do a little bit of open circus stuff. Then you do the cool 120 feet dive in the Pacific, which is, then you get into a dragger and then just learning how to count kicks and then ship a tack, shit kicks and then ship attack, shit,

and dive medicine, dive physics, and the classroom stuff where now this is where the meat heads who can run five miles they fail. Because now you gotta learn about boils law. You gotta learn about the bends, learn about AGEs or gas embolisms, shit like that. And all of a sudden you're done with that.

And now it's third phase. And at this point, knowing it, knowing it told me that San Clement Island is by far the worst part. I mean, I thought Hell Week was bad. I thought Pull Comp was bad. The fucking island for me was the worst. Now it's got 40 straight days of nothing but getting beat. And I'm convinced the instructors are, you know, hitting the sauce a little bit out there. Oh, yeah. They're reminding us that no one, you know, we're, we're killing you on one of the nicest beaches in the world. Nobody can hear little bit out there. They're reminding us that we're killing you on one of the nicest beaches in the world.

Nobody can hear you scream out here. That's it. And, you know, it's, and their thing was, wet and sandy every hour on the hour, for 24 hours. It doesn't matter what you're doing. You need to run to the surf, and your swim buddy goes with you every hour on the hour. And I have pictures like, I mean,

you can be in your, there's no point in even going to bed. Just hour on the hour. And I have pictures like, I mean, you can be in your, there's no point in even going to bed. Just sleep on the floor and then they're watching or we think they're watching. Yeah. I mean, they might not be able to what if they are. You know, yeah, I had a, my swim buddy, he just got some sort of homesick

or some sort of island fever and he kept fucking everything up. He, like he forgot to put the buffer in his gun in the spring. And the instructor said, did you do a function check on this? And he's like, yes, I did. And he's like, he pulls it back to the spring. So obviously the gun doesn't work. And he goes, all right, you two went and sandy,

every hour. So I'm getting punished for this guy for my swim buddy. And then I'll never forget, I think SEAL team three was out there. So the buds compound is here. And then the'll never forget, I think SEAL team three was out there. So the Buds compound is here, and then the kickass SEAL compound, like for Navy SEALs. And they're still legends to us. They fucked up a demo shot in the bay there.

They didn't double fucking, whatever. It didn't go off, it didn't go off. So now you got all these charges, the water don't go off, and there's like this, I'm gonna screw up the regulations for the Navy, but I think it's 48 hours, no one can even get in. The EOD can't even go in there, because it might go. And everyone knows that an explosion of water

is way worse than an explosion on land, because water doesn't compress. So my buddy fucked up again, and they're like, okay, God, and the instructor goes, well, I can't get you guys wet everywhere on the, I can't put you in the surf everywhere on the air because they're demo shots and I go, I will hit him with the fucking hose everywhere on the air.

Let me do it. Lay us, spray this motherfucker. So yeah, but then the island ends. You know, you've take the C130 back and now they're saying, okay, well, they read our orders on the island where we're going. So, and I don't know if they still do this, but we used to do a dream sheet. You put your top three seal teams in a row. To me it was like, this is cool. Where do I want to go? And I think a guy that I knew said, don't put, I mean, obviously put which team

you want first, but then put the other teams on that coast. Because you might not get two, but you will get eights, which is awesome. Whatever you do, do not put SDV anywhere. Yeah. I mean, it sounded like a good deal at the time because you get freefall, and that's like the only good deal. But apparently, SDV is a motherfucker.

Yeah. So I put seal team two, seal team eight, seal team four, because they're a mother-fucker. Yeah. So I put CL Team 2, CL Team 8, CL Team 4, because they're all in East Coast. And at the time, the only real work we were getting was Bosnia, Kosovo, and CL Team 2, that was their A-L. So I kind of wanted to go to CL Team 2, plus, you know, one of the first two CL teams. Yeah.

To me, just seemed like a, to me, I still love to say CL Team 2, that's awesome. And I'll never forget they were reading our orders and they're like, so and so, seal team three, so and so, seal team one, they go, O'Neill, SDV, sorry, seal team two, in that one second, I'm like, no! SDV two!

You're ready to quit right through. I made it all the way through, you're like, I'm not. That's like, you're like 12 hour dives in the Chesapeake Bay in February. Fuck that. No, thank you. Yeah, but I got to see you with you too.

And then, and then I'll be sudden, you know, go to medical, get your shit done, go to dental, get checked up, and then go to forabending. And it's like, holy shit, buds is over. Yeah. Now what? I have to be in ABC, what does it even mean? And then you go to bedding, and I'd never worked

with the army before. And it was just cool, again, because I again, because I looked up to the army, the Rangers are fucking studs. And they're, these are kids that look like me in army uniforms. And they're asking me about buds and I'm asking them about basic. And then we're going through Airborne, which is just a clown show. Yeah. Because the army makes those instructors do that to keep your attention, that ridiculous just a clown show. Yeah. Just, I mean, because the Army makes those instructors

to keep your attention, that ridiculous dance on around shit. Well, they hate us, too. Oh, they hate us. I would hate us. Yeah, they're good. The worst thing that they could have done is said, I didn't mean to say clown show.

Airborne obviously, rich history, and just some of the shit they did was clown show. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, imagine taking someone at 19 or 20 years old, just finished the hardest military training in the world, and your punishment is to do 10 push-ups. You need to do two pull-ups before you go to the chow-hole.

All right. Two pull-ups how many times a hundred? But no, I mean, that was cool. And then, in their defense too. And obviously, inner service, we make fun of each other. But then the first jump, I it took a while like I'm convinced you can teach someone how to fall and push them out of the plate in one day but they take their time and you're

in those gravel pits or whatever falling. But the first time I jumped the first time under canopy and I landed in one of the black hats. What any structure said I was that and I was like that is the coolest thing I've ever done. So that was awesome. And then all of a sudden, I was that, and I was like, that is the coolest thing I've ever done. So that was awesome. And then all of a sudden, bam, you go to SEAL team too. You didn't have SKT back then?

No, no, we went through SEAL tactical training. What was that? I went through SKT, so I don't know what that was. It was, well, it's a 13 week course that they ran two times a year. So you get there, you're in the training department with the older guys and then you, you wait until you're classed up. So you can volunteer to, you're, you know, picking up brass and shit.

Okay. Actually, that's why I met Don Shipley, senior chief Don Shipley. I think one of the first sales I ever met, he came in, just, if Don Chippley to this day, it's one of the coolest motherfuckers I ever met. He came in in his cack, I'm a new guy, like I'm trying to blend into nothing. And he came in in his cack, he's, he goes, oh fuck, who wants to come with me, the Chiefs Club,

get a beer? I was like, I would love to, no, you're not going to. I would. And Chippley just turned out to be one, like he was so cool and we did, we would, I would volunteer to jump with the platoons Um, just to get I want to get the gold wings that's your next go. I don't have a try to yet You have to get through

Seal tactical training which is 13 weeks Uh, and then a six month per base period. So I want to get the gold wings at least So I'm I'm a new meat, but I'm not that new yeah, and I remember jumping once with Don shipley and just like I mean, so these tackle and jumps and he turns back, he's doing the jump master win thing and kind of goes, we had dudes in the trees, like, yeah, we're not staring this canopy, just get out. And then SSTT was, was run it, we first part was in Puerto Rico for combat diving. And that was different than

then Bud's diving, because now I mean they're legitimately teaching you how to dive, how to do you kick, how to get your shit right, and you're wearing the wets that you want or don't want, what makes you comfortable, and then just doing like a turtle backing, which you know, that's the worst part, but then you do the four-hour dives and two a day, and then up to camp, uh, or Fort Apihill in North of Virginia. And then you do all the land warfare. It's basically land warfare, uh, then demo, a lot of demo. One of the best, uh, demo experiences I had, best and worst was, um, so master chief pig Wagner was running, he's a Vietnam guy, and, and he's up there running the show because he didn't give a fuck.

And we had always read that you can light sea for on fire and it won't do anything. It'll turn into a vapor. We'd read it. I ain't doing it, right? So he pulled us out the first day and he's like, yeah, okay, you two are gonna come up here and you're gonna like this around the class and prove.

And I remember, I don't know if I had a lighter or Bob, my buddy had a lighter, but one of us did. And as soon as it flipped, he set off a four pound charge from the woods. Oh, no. They did that same shit to me. Did you blush over there? They did that, and I said, yeah,

apparently it's a good go-to. Yeah. It works. But then you're lighting, like, you can do this. And then you learn about C4, you can do anything to C4 It's not I mean it needs that violent blasting count. Yeah, basically Yeah, so we did that and then you go back to seal team two and then they have a

Six months of you're in They're observing you like and so seal team two they're keeping time how fast you run the o-course how fast was your base tour How fast was your swim? They're timing you and they're watching and they're being pricked and I had a dude check in His last name was courier master chief. I didn't know he was a master. I didn't know he was about to be the command master chief Because young looking guy red hair looks nice and He seemed like a nice guy. He had a damn locker room. And I'd never seen him before. And he's a young looking dude.

I'm like, that's kind of, I'm about to be a team guy. And so anyway, so we went to, we're going to the O-course. So there's two O-course is at Little Creek, because you know, there's a small one in the big one. And the small one is just for time. It's like you're running in your monkey bars or whatever, parallel out of the college. And then you jump over this run, you're running in your you know monkey bars or whatever Parallel out of the college and then you jump over this run you're running it for time You do three of those that do a big loop and do three more and then you go back to the team and you know whoever wins wins

And I was chasing art Tolkien. So I'm a new guy 20 years old and art Tolkien's one of the one percenters who he will he will beat you at everything So I'm I want, I can run fast. I'm still fast from buzz. And so I'm like going through the thing, and then I'm going through the tires, and I hear that dude Currier yelling at me, stop skipping every other tire, just trying to haul ass. So I'm running around,

and he yells at me from one of the, he's yelling across now at the, oh, of course it me. He's like, I thought I said you should stop skipping every other tire, and I yelled at him. And if you were I thought I said you should stop skipping every entire night, yelling him. And if you were fucking fast enough, you see me skipping every other monkey bar. So I'm just yelling at a team guy, because my trident board is that day.

Now I get my cammies on. I go to the trident board, guess who's in the center of it? That guy, Mark Carrier, the command master chief. Oh, shit. Yeah, and I just told him to fuck himself on the Okors. So he decided with it, I got to try it, and he goes, you're the guy skipping every other monkey bar. Why do you do that?

You need a cheat, and I said, I go, gotta beat our token, you do. So that was a long try to board. I did get it that day, and then, and then now you get assigned to a platoon. Right on. And that's just one, I mean, that's like a brief, it's every moment in time of how to get there, and then now you just one, I mean, that's, that's like a brief, it's every moment

in time of how to get there. And then now you get, then you get you tried it, and then you get your blood wings. I'm not, they're allowed to do that. Yeah. And now you're Navy SEAL. So looking back through that whole pipeline was, was there ever time you wanted to quit? Every day in buds. Yeah, what got you through? Um, everyone who said I couldn't do it. Just I'm not gonna go home with this. Seems to be the common amount. I think it is.

I mean, it's not because, well, because it wasn't hard. I want to quit every day. Fuck those ocean swims. Yeah. Fuck the conditioning runs. The mind, the mind games on the soft sand runs, when you're fine, they come back after five miles

and you go right to the compound or right past it. What was the hardest part for you? I think the swims, just because my times were just there. They put me with a good swimmer because I wasn't a good swimmer and he could guide. As we know, the key to ocean swims is guiding, getting there straight because if you're doing this number you're just adding two and so.

I would just stare at Monty and he would swim, and I would just kick. And we, you know, got through that. Yeah, that was that. So you got into team two, right? Started team two and what were you guys doing? What was going on in the world? A little bit of Bosnia, still. Sarajevo. And I don't think anybody had killed anybody yet,

so we didn't really know what was happening, but that's kind of what it was. And I was assigned to a Marg Platoon on an Amphibship. The USS Austin, which is an Austin class LPD, which means it's the original. So we crossed the ocean on a flat bottom LPD, which means it's the original. So we crossed the ocean on a flat bottom LPD, which is horrific. And as an AVC on a boat, you don't know much to do. I did. I took advantage of it. I would go around to different shops and see how they worked, what the quarter

of master's doing, what they're doing there a lot of times, what's searing like and boats has made. Cool motherfuckers. And that's another part where a lot of team guys, if you can imagine are cocky to fleet sailors. And I would tell a lot of seals, could I do a couple cruises on ships? I would say, you know, there are guys in the ship that work a hell lot harder than you do. Navy lives no joke.

Yeah. And I just tried to learn about it. And I met the Marines we had. I was my first time working with amphibious reconnaissance, cool dudes, great dudes. And we went over there. And all we were gonna do was training exercises. We went to rotospan, I don't know how many times.

Italy like 11 times. And we did get, so I actually, I'm sorry, I went through sniper school before that deployment. So it turns out chief John Judy, who was my recruiter, did not lie to me. They would send me to sniper school and just get through Buds first. I'd love to see him again.

I mean, that was awesome. He was never mean to me. He just kind of, you're good. And so I did go to sniper school camp at Aterbury, which is awesome. And that sniper course is based off of the Marine Corps sniper school. So when I got on the ship, when we're not doing anything, I would get with the recon snipers and we would just talk about ballistics and talk about minutes of angle

and how you do this. How do you set up your hides? What do you prefer as far as taking shots and picking their brains? Because there's no internet and you can read your books, you can lift. What are you gonna do for the next 10 hours? So bullshit with them.

And then we actually got called in to, at the time it was a real world mission, to go into Albania because there was an exercise going on with some admirals and I think the president of Albania. And then there was a terrorist threat. So this is 1998 and that was the first time in the Navy that I'd heard Osama Bin Laden. Oh no, shit.

So Al Qaeda is threatening this exercise. Al-Qaeda is run by a, like one of the briefs, Osama Bin Laden, like I heard him because of the thing in 93 when they bond. Yeah, okay, I know who that is, but he wasn't, Osama Bin Laden yet. And so I mean, I did get briefed on it and we're never gonna see him,

but I gotta set up like my first range card. I'm over watching this award ceremony I was just kind of cool. I mean, if I'll kind of pop some I'll just shoot one of them And that'll be it. That'll be it. We'll go get a beer. That's it. No, but that was like the first thing like we did we did some security on on the housing complex the embassy

And that's actually the first time I saw seal team six guys because I had been told they they were doing PSD personal protection on a lot of big wigs at the embassy. And I had been told that COT6 had been disbanded, it doesn't exist anymore. And I saw one of the older guys, the particulars, yeah, those are debu guys, that's COT6. I was like, I was fucking guys, or legends. Yeah.

First time I saw them, first time I've been lying, and then we go back to Virginia Beach after eight months to see and start another workout. And then a part of the team guy life where they call them the one hump jumps. The most cocky guys at a seal team are the guys with one platoon because I know everything now. I don't meet anymore. Yeah, you are to somebody. I ran into a guy, you know your heritage. You're a meat to somebody. You're a new guy to somebody. I ran into it. So you know your heritage. You're a meat to somebody. You're a new guy to somebody.

I ran into it, so I'm a cocky one hump chomp. I met the seal reunion in Virginia Beach. And you know how you see those old school badass dudes like the big tried-in hats? Yeah. And I saw this old dude, he's a little too old, whatever, maybe a cocky and I go, hey, what bud's class were you?

Oh, shit. And he said, well, I went through Hell Week in 1944. And I said, there was no Hell Week in 1940. He said, there was on Omaha Beach. Know your heritage. I'm like, holy shit. Damn, dude. Hey, old school guy.

I mean, that's, again, goosebumps. Holy shit. So that's when I learned, you don't know, don't talk shit. You don't know who knows what. Yeah. Never start a fight because you're probably gonna lose. That's fucking cool.

Yeah, that's kind of, that's a cool thing. It's like, so I want to fuck with it old guy. Like, come on. Yeah. Yeah. And then another platoon, we got spun up quickly to do a strike platoon on the USS Kennedy. So we did a short and work up.

And they actually, the only reason I got in, they made a quick platoon of experience guys. I don't know why, but I got picked because I was a sniper and then you're a sniper one of our guys was a Radio guy they picked him and another guy I just a linguist or some shit and then we got into a pretty stacked platoon and we went overseas and and we did a couple things we We we were doing them the interdiction operations in the Persian Gulf, like you're taking down Dao's, a date smuggler. We took down the Russian tanker Volganevt, which was a big deal at the time. It was smuggled at Raki Oil. I mean, the closest we got to combat was I think

we confiscated their steak knives, and then we drove it to Oman and then we finished Appletone and then a time to another platoon. And I did a Yukon this time so I went to Germany. Were you getting discouraged at all or? No, because I thought I was getting real work. I mean, we really went in with loaded weapons, we really took down ships and not a lot going on. Yeah. And then I knew we'd get to, we'd do a pump and co-servo on this one for sure. And I'm like, okay, that's, I mean, there have been a couple shoot, shootouts there.

I will get to, to try out my hide side skills. And because I guess a lot of the, a lot of the seals, a lot of, we're doing it, we're getting compromised by farmers. And that's how you start learning, okay? You're in someone's backyard, they're gonna recognize you. Yeah. And so we learned about that. I did a couple of high sites in Kosovo,

camp, bond steel, eight really good food. And then we left. Back to Germany, and now I've been to Kosovo. This is my third platoon. I can be the shit at JB's gallery of girls when I go back home or whatever. Is that place still there? I have no idea.

I love that place. It was called Stopless Goat. Not Topless. Because they had little things on. Wasn't it right next to the bar right next to it? It was right next to it. The brass bell. The brass bell.

Yeah. I wonder if that's supposed to be there. I don't know if it's still there. I haven't been back there. But yeah, so we're back in at Unit 2 up in Germany, just finished Coast of O, and then I was in the operations room. Type, we did have email at the time, because it was September, 2001.

And we saw the TV come on, and they had a picture of the Twin Towers, the North Towers on fire. And they said, obviously this is breaking news. A small plane has hit the World Trade Center. And we're looking at it. And we're trying to think through it. Like that's a nice day, man. That's clear.

And that is not a small hole, because that's a huge building. That's a big fucking hole, man. And then the second one hit. Yeah. And we're kind of, and someone did say, that's Osama bin Laden, that's Al Q kind of man, everything, everything that we know just changed right now. So we're deployed and it's like, well, all right, I mean, where do you want us to go? We're overseas and didn't

happen. They did obviously send guys right in and then we went back and I put it, that's when I put in my, my package for green team, I want to go to the Silicon six now. So when you saw the, And I put it, that's when I put it my package for green tea. Do I want to go to the seal team six now? So when you saw the, when you saw the plans at the towers, did you have any recollection of Ben Laden's name from before when you were going? No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because we talked about al-Qaeda, just in some briefs here and there. Okay. Yeah, and we knew they were a threat, but we never noticed that. We, when they first hit, we're thinking, we're going to Sudan or some, we're going to be fighting in Africa or whatever. And I think obviously figured out knew they were a threat, but we never knew it was that. When they first hit, we're thinking we're going to Sudan or some, we're going to fight in Africa or whatever. And I think obviously figured out where they were.

And I put on my package and I had enough time between going to Green Team to do another deployment. So I got on another, another Mark deployment. And I'm like, this is going to be sweet because we're going to go in with the Marines through Turkey. And we're going to, because now it's 2003, I mean, that's kind of a jump some time there. But we're gonna, now we're invading Iraq. And we talked about this earlier, like for whatever Iraq was worth, I was excited because we're gonna invade a country. I'm a Navy SEAL and we're gonna, we're gonna kill. Yeah. And I want to, because we're all still fired up about, I mean, that that's how we got away with invading Iraq because of what happened on 9-11 And then with me being the I don't know what it is about me, but there they're turned out to be a

Problem in Monroeville library with the embassy. There was a civil war and They wanted to evacuate the embassy so they literally turned us around so the Marines are off. Oh, oh, They're going to man I mean and we did talk to them afterwards and they invaded Iraq. I mean, that's fucking an invasion. So, but we went back and so instead of going into a gunfight, I did my first and only real-world hydrographic reconnaissance. So, and the funniest part of that was, because, you know, you always get briefed on dangerous marine life, but whatever, I don't give a shit, they're not going to hurt you. But this one we pay attention to, and they said, because you're going to be swimming in on the coast of Africa, and there's every man eating shark. You can imagine is here. And there shouldn't be any,

but if you see saltwater crocodiles, there are 20 feet long, they'll eat you. And then now, there aren't any hippos, but those are the deadliest animal in Africa. They kill more people than anything. Oh, and here's your landing point. It's called black mamba point. The reason it's called black mamba point

is because it's full of Black Mamas, and they're very aggressive. They'll chase you and they'll kill you. After that, it's like, all right. And then even when we flooded the well deck of the USS LaSalle to get off, there were hammer heads that were like swimming into the ship. Holy shit.

What the fuck is this? Yeah. So can we just go to the fucking invasion? Can we go to Iraq? Yeah, but I know we did a when I did a did a hydro recon That was kind of cool because we did the the no ship thing and the Marines did come I think the Marines came in by helicopter. It's like you're welcome Oh, man, dude, but yeah, then we so we didn't have time to invade Iraq and then we went back and then I was a master

Orange at seal team four for Like January to March when green team started. So I ran PT and then went to selection. And so then you go over there and it's like, all right here. Fuck, because I mean, green team is you're putting your tried and you're betting your tried it right now because you'll either be the guy that made it or the guy that tried and didn't. Yeah. That's a lot, I mean, that's a lot to deal with. And you can get kicked out of selection for anything. Like I've seen really, really good dudes

just fuck something up and they're going. Yeah. Have a bad day and everyone has a bad day. Throw the wrong shot though, you're fucking out. Back when you went through though, it probably wasn't as many guys going to green team. No, I don't think so. How many guys were going in?

We went with about 60. And we got like 30 through. Okay. Plus half. I think 60. I mean, they did spin up to the point where they were doing two green teams a year. Yeah.

And that was just a different animal. Because you're not gonna get quitter. You usually won't get quitter's. So they're trying to find guys who can think through problems, who can think, who can make decisions, you know, rapidly. Who's not going to freeze at the door. And I've seen dudes do it. You know, in a close quarters combat situation, you got a breaching problem. I've seen guys freeze at the door, like they forget to look for the hinge, they forget which goes where and it's all right. And it's sort of the, if you want to be fast, slow down.

If you want to deal with chaos, breathe. And I tell people that now at boardrooms, if you're having a shitty meeting, stand up and breathe. And that's, you know, learning the slowest smoothest smoothest fast and you get through it. And I've had days where, because CQB is a notoriously hardest part of green team because they really just ham-read for shit. I've had days where I can do no wrong.

Three runs in a row, everything smooth, it's fucking easy to the point where the last run of the day, they have me carrying a broom because they told me I'm not safe with a gun. Just getting in your head. And what they will do there is punish you for things you didn't screw up, but hammer you for it.

Like what, can you give me an example? Over penetration, you're supposed to be six inches from the wall, you're four inches from the lookout side. And they just are hammering you, tire drags, sweating, dehydrated, getting in your own head. What did I do? I know I didn't fuck that up, They know you didn't fuck it up,

but you don't know that they know that you didn't fuck up. Because, and as soon as you're done getting beat, they put you right back in the front of the train and this is when you haul after that. You're not slowing down and as you're running fast because what they're telling you is, we've just punished you for something. You didn't fuck up.

Can you get over it or is it going to stay in your head? Okay. And some of the best advice again in life is whatever it is, get over it. Learn from it and get the fuck over it or as you can stay in your head. Okay. And some of the best advice again in life is whatever it is, get over it. Learn from it and get the fuck over it. You know, you're not getting that playback, learn and move on.

Well, how would you compare green team to buds? Is it harder? Harder? Different. Because you're doing the 10 mile run in the morning, but then it's just tactics. With skydiving, it's just a lot of shit. because you're doing the 10 mile run in the morning, but then it's just tactics. With skydiving, it's just a lot of shit.

Hey, Jose Lowe's, Combat Jumps, all that stuff. And then the CQB is just, it's repetition. And it's just, it's a constant scrutiny. It's so many instructors hammering you at once. It's just a constant scrutiny. It's so many instructors hammering you at once. It's just a mind game. I mean, it is the best time of your life. It's just hard. Yeah.

What would you say there's like a certain attribute they're looking for in an operator to get over there? Or, you know, it's hard to say because it's like buds where you can't pick who's going to make it and who's not. I mean you can he's going to make he's going to make he's but I don't know about these guys that the Gray Man is going to the Gray Man wins there too. I think but green teams more of a if they like you from the beginning or if like it's kind of a good old boy network too, like someone says, hey, you do want this guy,

they're going to, I mean, they're gonna hammer him, they're not gonna know that they're kind of looking out for him. But if they don't like you, you're fucked. Like if they pass your picture around the team rooms and someone knows you from CP Shuckers, oh, fuck him. That's it. That's all it takes. That could be, damn. That's it. That's all it takes.

That could be. Damn. That's how it was, I think then. And I was fortunate. I was liked by a few guys, and I fucked things up. I mean, everyone fucked things up, but I think I kind of got it. Just slowing it down. The realization, it's like with a golf swing.

If you watch yourself swing, how fast you're bringing it slow, the fuck down. Keep your head still. Let's take a quick break and then we'll get into the rest of it. I don't know about you guys, but summer is my favorite time of year. And if you're a business owner like I am, the last thing you want to do is spend

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You're showing up, you're done. How do they figure out what's squirre? Well, once you do realize that COT6 exists, and it's not a development, it is. I mean, you're developing shit, but then you're shooting people. With it. The squatters at the time, or the two original squatterings, were blue and gold for Navy.

And actually, the reason it's called SEAL Team 6 is because of Mark Dick Marseille, just a phenomenal, ultimate Navy SEAL, who was the commanding officer. He called it 6 because he knew Russia would say, there's SEAL Team 1, 2, and 6. Where the hell are 3, 4, and 5? Not just a hat rack. But when I got there, there was blue and gold and then gold, they absorbed into red squadron, which is the one I wanted to go to. Why did you want to go there? Um, well, because of Neil Roberts, he was obviously Robert Rich, and that was Red Squadron,

Red Team at the time. They went into talker-gar and he fell out of the helicopter. That's the first time it really sunk in that we are fighting some fucking animals. This is al-Qaeda. And they're not going to just kill you. Did you know, Neil? I did. He was one of the first Navy SEALs I met. I met Don Chip, I met Neil Roberts.

Neil Roberts took me and my friend Matt to lunch at Arby's. I'll never forget that. Brand new guy, Ciel team 2. And he was just always so willing to help you with anything. From the finance rate you're getting on that car at that stupid use car lot off base, to here's where you put your 60 patches. Okay, look, this girl's crazy. Get away from her.

Neil Roberts is the guy. And he's, you know, his name is Neil Roberts, Robert O'Neill. And he was red here. I mean, it completely stopped. Like, he was way better than me. Like, I think his old course time is on his headstone still, because he had the record for so long, which I think is fucking awesome.

But he was just the, he was a one percenter. And, but in every way, it's all through the earth. Nice guy in the world, he can murder you with a knife. Like just awesome guy. And just because of the fight at Tuckergar, the story of what happened, everything from Chapman to Slab, what they did on that mountain, Brett Morgani, the guys, how they just never leave anyone behind

and they went back and they got one of the worst gun fights you can imagine. Close quarters with PKM's getting shot at you at night. And just to hear, and I'm not gonna tell their story, I wasn't there, but just to hear them debrief us. It's like, okay, I want to go to, I mean, the bones, man, blue team, awesome, gold team, doesn't take shit, awesome, but I just wanted red. I mean, I'll go to the other

ones because I mean it was even cool to go through green team because the instructors were all at squatters and as a new guy looking at the trident I felt like that looking at the bones looking at the at the crusader yeah looking at the the the red man and I just wanted red team I just I felt it. Did they give you a choice or no, that you get picked. They have, um, they, uh, they, they actually have drafts. And, um, every year one team is first. And then you rotate and then every, every time you're at your pick, one troop or one team gets their first pick. So you actually go through a, you actually go through a process, I actually picked DJ Shipley. And I'll never forget when I might turn to pick.

I was like, that guy's still available. Fuck. Our team just got better. Oh shit, so how does it work then? Do you, the instructor's given you a... Yeah, yeah, cause you had insight. Yeah, you're playing Good Old Boy Network. Like, the red team instructors are coming up

to red team saying, I'm not gonna say anything you want. This guy, here's the order that you wanna go. And we want them in the squadron, but like, if your team can get him, yeah, it's fucking awesome. So I just, I got red and I don't know why, but I remember they posted lists on the, on the cork board.

And it's like, okay, you see the guys is like, oh, sweet man, you know, Reeves got gold. And that's awesome. And my Coke is going to go and all look at me and Nate were at red and this. And I mean, it's, you see it. You're, you all made it. So you're going to know each other. We call it the second deck. Once you get to the second deck is when you're part of a squadron. And then going into the second deck for the first day is um shit I'm a new guy again and the first thing I remember walking into the red team room was uh obviously it's the way it's just the the way it's designed the memorabilia shit. Amneel Roberts fucking bent saw is up there in a frame above the desk where he used to sit.

Wow. But it's like, it's from reading history to being now you're a part of it. But now it's like, holy fuck, I'm scared of these guys. What impressed me the most was how fast they could do CQB. Like if you're not in the front, you're gone. They're gonna dust this place. But the second thing was how funny they were. The humor and the camaraderie. Like, oh my God, I thought I was funny.

I got to step up because he's just funny. And they're just good dudes. And I maintain that up until the last day, my last day at SEAL Team 6, I was lucky because every single day I got to go to work with people who were better than me. And we didn't necessarily undermine each other. We would ask each other questions,

well, you do this, why does that work? And what do you think about that? How should I carry this? I got to a point where I was telling my guys, you don't need a carry of pistol. And they're like, why is that? And I'm like, well, if you get into a room and your primary goes down, your buddy already killed them.

And if you go outside with a pistol, just bring a cleaning rod or throw rocks at him. Clean your fucking gun. But this pistol's not doing shit. It's a wait. You're gonna wait. Take that shit off your gun. It's not a space gun.

You need your eotech into the laser and an extra battery through your nods because it's gonna fail. Yeah. Change your batteries every day. But yeah, the first day they're just watching them work and then seeing how they work together and the humor and the camaraderie. And that's what I think makes a great team is morale.

They always make sure morale was high. Little things like, you guys have anything to do? Go home. Be with your kids. We're not doing shit today. Leave. And it was a big-boy mentality. Like, our first mustard is gonna be 10 a.m. I'm just assuming you will have gone in and worked out by them. And we did. And it wasn't like organized PT or March to the surf zone. It's like, do your thing. Can you carry me if I can shot in my body, armor?

You're doing those workouts, then we have no problem. And then you do that, we got there, we're doing a work, and it was just like, now it's like, over there, it wasn't new guy, it was like newer guy. And instead of like, fuck you, you idiot, it's like, here, let me show you how that, come on. Let me show you a quick way to make that seven foot charges, you sex woman, watch this.

So it's actually pretty fucking welcoming. Yeah, it is. Green team, they fucking hammer you. Yeah. But they all go through it. And then once you're through, like I saw green team instructors that I thought were the meanest motherfuckers in the world. But once you get to the second deck, it's forgotten. It's a game.

Which is, I want you, it's the same in Buds. They're fucking hammering you because I will have to go to war with you. I might Can you can you do it now? but then you get up there and it's like you get you get friends everywhere you know everybody and And now we're going to war and I mean other than a couple things We weren't losing a lot of fights So didn't really hit you know my first, well, that's what it hit. My first deployment was to Jolalabad, Afghanistan. We were running a safe house, which is some guys cooler than me, and probably a three-letter

agency carried a briefcase full of money and bought a small hotel, and then hired locals to be security and plumbers and shit cooks and then here's your safe house. And it's a safe house because you're stimulating the economy, you're paying the guards and they will work for money. You're chopping in the bizards, you're eating shormas out in town and then the family around you doesn't want to get mortars, so they'll make sure that Taliban doesn't come in. And that's my first one. And I didn't, I'd never been to war. And I'd only seen it on TV.

So I assumed it was as bad as it was on TV. I assumed there's a suicide bomber around every corner. Everyone's gonna be shooting at you. It's gonna blow up all the time. And it took a while to realize that in a war zone, most of the people just wanna get on with their lives and raise their families. Most of the people are want to get on with their lives and raise their families. Most of the people are not combatants.

They're just fucking over it. But the first few times we were doing some new technology in Jalalabad, so it's now we're doing Mao in Jbed. So hold on, just for the audience, Mao. No, that's your operation, urban terrain. So it's urban fighting. So it's like everywhere, it's not just a 360 range. It's everything range and you can get shot at from anywhere and you don't even know why something can blow up everything next you can blow up. And I remember thinking that I'm

kind of wasting my energy jumping behind shit and you know there's I think we have four dudes. That's four guys from Red Team to include so so three seals won a EOD, but at that time EOD was going through green team with us, so I mean they're shooters. And I remember jumping around, like looking at, and I looked at my boss who was, he was involved in Operation Anaconda where Robert Tritch happened,

and he'd been awarded the Silver Star for some of the shit they did. And I was watching him, and I remember looking over, and he's got like body armor, short sleeves, big old beard, like he's got one of those, one of those cop radios. And just, and I remember looking at him thinking, I wanna be cool like that.

I wanna look cool like that. And we got back, and I told him, I'm not kissing your ass, but how weren't you afraid? And he goes, well, how do you know I wasn't afraid? I said, because you didn't look like it, and he goes, well, that's right. You don't know if I'm afraid, but if I show you that I'm calm, you'll become.

Calm is contagious. And that's how you learn. It's like, okay, that's fucking cool. I just got to look cool. And so we did a couple things here and there. Well, like one of the funniest things I saw was, we learned that if you run into a foreign fighter, is anyone not from Afghanistan, or if you're not Iraq, anyone not from Iraq. So you got Jordanians or Saudi Arabians.

And if you run into them, they look different, they speak Arabic. They're there for one reason. They're not teach in school. They're al-Qaeda. We ran into, I got a very short course in how to be a battlefield interrogator, so my job was to, and we invented these tactics as we went along. As soon as we took a house down, shots fired or not, whoever's surviving, we're interrogating them right now, put the interpreter behind him, I'm interrogating you because you catch

him with the pants down, they're nervous they don't know how to act. I ran into a Saudi Arabian's big fat dude, and I instantly started laughing. I said to him through the interpreter, I said, you don't know what that t-shirt you're wearing says, do you? And he had no idea. His t-shirt said, it's not a beer belly, it's a fuel tank for a sex machine.

Buzzer. Buzzer. Buzzer. And so I'm like, you just saved yourself a beating, because that's awesome. Buzzer. Buzzer. I wish you had a picture of that.

Yeah, I wish I had that shirt. If I've been known in bed, I would've taken from it. And Ft out of it. But yeah, I mean, so we were doing that kind of stuff and it was, that's what we do. I'm getting to know the locals. I'm getting to know a little bit of the traditions, how you do this, getting to the local food,

you know, even driving to a sod ofabout up the Kona River at the time because we were doing it right and we didn't, we had pissed off everyone yet but there's IEDs. But one night, we would drive dirt bikes around town, locals that we would purchase the local bikes, you know, put on the protect drive to, this is when the airfield wasn't built up. This is, like, there were still Russian shit there.

And like the rangers stayed there, rangers sniper teams were there, a couple Marines were there and stuff, and we, they're putting up a few tents here and there, and they said, hey, some guys from the East Coast just flew in some helicopters. I was like, fuck, let's go see ya. And so we drove over there,

that turned out to be a turbine 3-3, and I bullshitted with some of those dudes Talked to Dan Healy about Sam Adams went to sniper school with Dan Healy and he loved Sam Adams He's a new Englander and we're like what's the what's the deal and they said We just inserted four snipers into The Koringall the Koringa Valley they're looking for a modshaw And then once they find him with eyes on We're gonna go hit the house and we were like fuck yeah, can we go?

and so we were we were trying to work at skiing because our our head shed from from six was in Bob room and They told us no no one from ceil team six is getting on those helicopters. We think there's missiles and We're like yeah yeah, cool man, fucking have a good fight. And I had some of my guys were down front, maybe, and so we took them back to our safe house. And we had some contingency funds

that you're supposed to use to build up the infrastructure. So we had some dude build this stupid cold tub, like the size of a hot tub, but it's cold. And we were just sitting there, we could get Heineken over there. So we were sitting there having, and actually the Heineken story is funny because when I first got there, they had a place where we could send the interpreter

to get booze for us. I mean, obviously no one drinks overseas, but we sent them there, and the price was, I want to say, 20 bucks for a bottle of Stolitz and Iavodka and 30 bucks for a case of Heineken. And so we sent the terms out. My trip was Larry because we couldn't pronounce his name, so he's just Larry.

And you sent him out to get some stuff. And I'm the newer guy there, but I'm over there. And he came back with nothing. He said, yeah, the guy running the shop said, I know who you're selling this to. These are for the Americans. And the prices went from 20 and 30 to 50 and 60. I'm like, fuck this. Are you kidding me and get your shit on it?

So we roll over there and we go to the guy, look, I can appreciate inflation. At 20 30, you go to 25 35, that's fine. You raise it that high. You can't sell booze in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. I'm gonna take it all for free and put you in jail. And he goes 25 and 35, it's fine in my friend. I'm like, motherfucker, couldn't we just

done this in the first place? Baaah! So, we're in the, we're at the safe house. And we were actually, technically, a Ranger Major was in charge of us. We did have a senior enlistee guys with us, but the Ranger Major was kind of running it between Jolalabad, Airfield and our safe house and he came out. So we're drinking Hayekin in this tub and he said, hey, your boys just got fucked up. We got to go.

Oh shit. And we're like, whoa, what do you mean? He was like, they just shot a heel down and we got to, we got to, we got to go. That was your first deployment over there? Yeah, first one. How long were you in country? Oh, sure. I was almost done, so three and a half months, and that was, this is June. And we rolled over. I ran into a few guys I knew from Seal Team 2

that had put me through training master chiefs over there. And, you know, and the other helicopter that got missed, and I don't know if it was 3, 4, or 3, 2, got missed. The pilots landed in the wrong spot on the different base on Ingelolabad because they were something happened. So other guys were coming in, they didn't get shot down. And I remember, they said, yeah, it just came out of the valley and turned and it hit and it went down and it went down and

One of them missed us Damn, so we're talking to guys that just got shot up by surface to air missiles even though technically that's not what happened They're telling me face-to-face missiles were coming out of that valley and It was so it was more of a holy shit I mean it's good to see you because the world still a decent place because you're still alive or whatever the fuck we're saying. And they came out and said, look, we need to, there's a crash site we got to get up there. And they're not going to fly us because they're shooting down helicopters now. So figure it out. And we're running around this makeshift airfield. And

I'll, there was like a beehut full of Rangers and we're like hey, we here's the situation and we told them and we're like I need five guys and All 20 of them jumped up and said we should you know, we should take us 10 minutes to get ready We'll be out in three and then they came out the we decided go get whatever vehicle you can steal shit Comment here we're driving as far as we can and and then we're humping up into the valley. And we didn't know if there were survivors, we didn't know what happened, but we knew Taliban was up there. And so we drove as far as we could, and then we started

walking up up, and this is daytime, it's, I don't know, 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, humidity, and we're humping up to, to I mean to the point where there were dudes like I carry too many max Because it's so you're there were dudes passing shit back to like like who's taking it? Just drop it if it's so to keep water maybe we can get airlift or something and then we you know we humped up for for 10 hours So we're not quite there yet. And I remember looking around and saying,

hey, do any of you guys call home before we left on this thing? And they're like, no, why? And it's like, well, all our families know is a bunch of seals from Virginia just got killed and they haven't heard from us. And so that's going through your mind too. We're sticking each other with IVs, hanging them in trees

and stuff. And I remember looking at a guy saying, you know, this is why training is so hard because if we were going to quit right now, where the fuck are we going to go? We're here. So we kept going up, they did fly in, they did fly in a helicopter from Bogom, more of Red Squadron, they got to the crash site first. So they, I mean, I don't know who wants that job, but they got the job and they're going

to go to the crash site, find it. And some of the stories that I've heard were like Lou Langless was looking at the crash site. And he said, I'm going to go try to get some intel from the village. And he looked over and said, I just never want to die like that. And Lou was on Extortion 1.7. Damn. And these are just hearsay stories about, you know, it's life is fragile, man.

And so we started humping back down. We're trying to leave the sun's going down and then we spotted some Taliban on the opposite ridge line and, you know, like, fuck it. Let's call it, who wants to hit them? And the cloud cover was coming in and nobody wanted to get under it. You know, because you're in the Western Himalayas, man. This is a new cushion.

But the A10s would. And that's the first time I've seen an A10 get called in. And it was so low and it came over us. And the A10 obviously shoots, how many are about 3,000 rounds a minute or something? It's insane. I don't know. Someone's going to correct me, but it's a lot. It's so much it sounds like a growl. And when it when it came over us, the first thing we heard was the bullet's going supersonic. Then we heard it. No, so we saw the smoke heard him supersonic heard him hit then we heard shoot. So. And like that's when he there was a marine. I'm I'm I'm no people have heard this seen the meme, but I'm pretty sure it was coined that day. he there was a marine I'm I'm I'm no people have heard this

seen the meme but I'm pretty sure it was coined that day there was like a marine or a young private in the army that said it is true what they say but doesn't kill you makes you stronger except in 810 an 810 I'll fucking kill you oh shit so well then well then we we walked down and we're closer to Asadabad and we've been maybe two days. And we're closer to Asadabad that we are to Jalalabad. So we're gonna go to A-Bad

and we're gonna rack out there. They've got beds or floor, I don't give a shit. We've been awake for so long. And that's when the dude that got the note from Marcus heat showed up. So he's got this. You were there when the guy showed up and because we had an argument with the you know I'm not trying to roughly any feathers here But we had an argument with the agency because they don't they never want to burn a source Which is fine. There's a thing gathering intel

but this guy knows where Marcus is and You're taking us there right now and and I don't give a shit if they kill you What's a worth thinking there agency yelling and they something along the lines of, well, we're not sure if this is him because he didn't cross the T's in his name, LaTrell. And we're like, yeah, but it's on tack notes and he got his fucking social right. It's him. We're going. So there was a big argument there. I'm pretty sure I know a guy got fired for that. One of the Rangers got fired. I think banned from the country, but he made the call. We're gonna go. So then we got back in the car.

We drove around the Pesh River Valley. You're going around A-Bad, up to Pesh, which now you're in No Man's Land. And Marcus, I guess, had gone from the Korangal into the Shariaq Valley, which are two, I mean, these are two neighboring valleys, and people don't understand, and Afghanistan. There have been families living in these valleys

for 10,000 years that have never met. Yeah. Like they don't, you don't, you're not allowed in. And hate each other. Hate, yeah. They'll cut your head off and like put like old school Dracula put it on a steak type ship. So we're driving in there and this is a part where I've seen Afghanistan's a different world. And people don't understand that.

If they, if they, when I first got to red team, I was asking guys, what's Afghanistan like? They said, you just have to see it because you're not gonna believe me. Yeah. And so we went up there and they didn't have water. And I remember seeing, I'm a father, and I'm seeing these kids. I remember handing a bottle of water to a little girl.

She opened it, dumped it out, so she could play with the plastic. So then we're pumping up again, another mountain, and it's just steep terrain and then we knew he was up and over. Marcus is down in this village and we got up almost to the top and one of my guys said,

one of my guys said, I got to sit down, I can't go anymore. We've been awake for three and a half days, I can't go on and I said, that's okay. We'll just tell Mrs. and a half days. I can't go. I said, okay, we'll just tell Mrs. the troll Marcus is mom that we didn't, we were this close, but we didn't get him because you got tired.

And he goes, yeah, you're right. And I said, do me a favor. Tell that shit to me in one minute, because I don't think I can go any further. And so we're just whatever trying to get up to the top. And that's, you know, Rangers came in, he loves. They did get Marcus out. And then, now we're just in the Shariaq Valley.

It's like, all right, well, let's try to live our way out of this one. So wait, you weren't with the Rangers? It was just for you guys. No, no, no, no, we were with Rangers. And we were with, there were Marines in shit there. I'll never forget seeing Marines because, like, we gotta choose what we would wear.

I had, I had nobody on my, a a couple mags and a shirt. They're wearing foot like first start and told me I need to wear all this shit. I'm in my like I said in the beginning Marines are fucking bad motherfuckers. They will they will take shitty gear and make it suck even more. Semper five maybe. But yeah the Rangers flew in and and and that was ballsy too because one of our options was I mean we we, well, let me back up. When we had that dude, Afghanistan, might as well be the 13th century.

We showed this guy an aerial photo of his village on an iPad. I might as well have just showed him an actual picture of Allah. This dude looking at an iPad, iPad like one minute you're fucking your animal now you're looking at an iPad. So we were gonna fly and he could couldn't really pick it up and we thought this could be a mudsuck we're just gonna walk. Burendra's fucking being rangers man they will do it and they did and they got it. And then we lived our way out and then the you know the remaining two or three

weeks as a miserable deployment. We lost so many great guys on that on that heal. Yeah. And then so that's deployment number one. Damn dude. Yeah. That's a it was intense. I mean because we I mean, at first we were just having fun and it wasn't real. I mean, it was real. But like to find over army, the green braze and CIA to care that shit. They bought the fuck out of we're just we're gonna rebuild or something. And then Delta's gonna find Ben Laden. We're just gonna do this. The food was great. Yeah. What so what were you guys doing before that? We were just testing new technology trying to find

we found a few minor alkyda guys in town. We actually there's a video online where we put these there was an alkytag guy working at a gas station. He was laundering money and funding shit because that's one of the major ways. There's only a few roads obviously. And the RRD Rangers, and they're awesome dudes. They went out on an, on R&S and they really watched this damn gas station in it for five days, which just sucks, like in the heat. And then we, they know they had eyes on whatever they, and we rolled from the safe house, 30 seconds, grabbed the student and rolled out with them. There's a video that they made of us rolling up where there's ridiculous, haji gear.

I mean, I don't blend in. I don't know if you know. You don't blend in? Yeah, we go to work with Scott, and I'm in there. But in a we roll, we run in, we run out, we got this dude in the van, takes away, they made a video, if you could find it online, it says a snatch and grab at the grab and go.

And it's literally a 30 second mission. And that was, we just rolled him out through a flounder program. But we were just, we were using technology to track Al Qaeda and see what they're doing. And mainly, I mean, we're just rolling them up to get intel. We're trying to build the network to find, there's not a lot of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan at this point.

They all went to Pakistan. Okay. So not a lot. I mean, a couple dudes and up in the Korongal. But most of them went over to the federally administrative tribal area, the Fata. and then all over there on that side. And that's another story that I have two deployments later. Let's go and do it.

Okay, well, I mean, we did go to Iraq next. We'll go, we'll jump to this and then we'll go to Iraq. Okay, so my next deployment to Afghanistan, I would instead of being a member at the Jbad Safehouse, I was in charge of the Asada Bad Safehouse. So I'm the team leader there, which means I have one other guy with me from from Red Team. And then we have a few augments that are that are probably going to screen for Debt Group, but aren't there yet, so they come over to learn what we're doing, and then we're working with the agency. Running sources back and forth,

and mainly this is just for drone strikes, so we can get in, sell, hit these guys or whatever. And we were getting bored. And a very important lesson I learned on this deployment is never die because you got bored. Do everything like you do anything and always follow your rules. People die because they take shortcuts or they get bored. I got bored.

And I came up with a plan with this, the chief of base who was a, he had actually been with the agency fighting with the Moonshadeen against the Russians. So this dude knew the area. And so he and I over cocktails. I think the agency calls it fellowship. Over fellowship, we came up with a plan that we know as per rules of engagement, if we have troops in contact and positive identification

on the border, we can pursue, I wanna say, 10 clicks inside of Pakistan. So we knew there was about a click in and a click and a half in there were two al-Qaeda safe houses. So we figured if we go up there on the border and sort of show ourselves, they'll shoot at us, we'll call air support, we can hit these houses. That's going to be a good mission cross border This is bad ass. So that's the plan. And everything went to shit because we get up there, I got a couple army guys and then a few Afghans.

And we had actually, we had put on the brown tiger stripe stuff and I don't even know if that's legal. So we don't look like Americans. So we're trying to, if the, if the, if al Qaeda or the Taliban sees us, they're not worried about air support because this is simply, you know, A&A, Afghan army. Yeah. We'll kill them. We didn't, we didn't put that together because like a truck came up and some dudes got out and it's like, it's like I'm almost a flash checkpoint and they walk up and they're yelling us to come talk to them for tea and I was like yeah

you guys go talk to him don't tell them there's Americans here whatever so they went down there and they kind of came back and they said yeah they want a tea but we're not falling for that so they went to this thing we're we got the high ground here it's it's 11 30 in the morning we we stayed overnight we're up there it's 11 30 in the morning and then another truck came up a full of guys and then another truck came up full of guys and then another one a full of guys. And then another truck came full of guys. And then another one. Now we have a little bit of high ground,

but there's a lot of dudes down there, and this is some serious fucking ambush shit. I'm in charge, I'm, you know, a 637, but I'm the ground force commander of this one. It's my call, it's like, well, I mean, we can get the fuck out of here right now. They might not notice. So I'm like, yeah, we're gonna beat it.

So we had some guys below us, a semi-mortar team, but they weren't US Army. We didn't know if they could do it. So we're running down to them. I'm explaining what's happening. And we got a hall ass, or maybe we can get X-filled. And that's when one of the Afghan guys I was with said the first words I ever heard

him speak in English. He pointed up and yelled, bad guys. And I remember looking up and now this is going to be a real gunfight in the mountains at high noon. And watching dudes run that fast in the head brown, brown, like brown uniforms almost on. So these are, it turns out to be a mix of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Pac-mil, Pakistan military. And I'm were looking up and they're surrounding us and they're fallen ass. And they just start zipping rings at us. And you can hear them, you know, zips, zips, hear them, and the scariest ones were the ricochets.

Zing, so we're like, we can't move now. We're pinned, and they got us on like three sides. We had separated. I had a new guy, he was a shield team four. He was my radio guy. He had never called in real-world close air support, and I need him now. And he's, I may be a hundred yards away.

I had heard up to this point, some of our standard operating procedures that originated from Vietnam were lines of gear. How you wear your gear in lines? First line, second line, third line. Your first line gear is your most important shit. It's closest to your body, it's on your belt. It's an extra mag and a pocket and Copenhagen, whatever.

Cash. Second line gear is your second most important stuff. Magazines, grenades, maybe some more water. And your third line gear is your least important stuff in your Rucksack. So that's your sleeping bag and ground pad, extra socks, foot powder. The reason, so I've been told, you keep it that way,

is because if you need to run, you can start ditching your shit in order to get lighter. Now that's the first time I've ever heard anyone doing it. I dropped my rock, I sprint over to Tony. I gotta get to him, and the people just eat and dirt. I lay next to him and I said, okay, here's the deal. Up on the thing where they set the flash checkpoint, hit that first and he said, I can't.

We don't have any air support. I'm like, okay, this is bad. You've got to get some, whatever it takes us. We've been up there for day and a half, they've lost interest in whatever and other people, whatever. So we're laying there and I'm just right next to him and the rounds are getting so close that they were hitting air bursts above us with RPGs

where explosion, and there's shooting mortars at us too, that you'd hear an explosion and look back to, or my leg's still there. Shhh. I mean, nothing was hit, and I don't know how. They, it got so bad. We did, we did this for an hour, where it's not even,

the worst feeling I've ever had in the world is having someone shoot, affect, the fire at me, but realizing I can't shoot back because my rounds probably won't reach him, and I find that with my head up, I'm done. Like, we were seeing tracers right between us. And how many of you guys ordered? A total of five or six Americans.

That's it. Maybe 15 Afghans. How about the opposed to... Oh, I don't know. There was a lot. There was three or four truckloads full. Shit. And so we're up to this is all happening. And now they were at the point, they were so close that I had a dude shooting at me.

He looked like me. He had a red beard, a white guy shooting a PKM, but he's yelling a la ho Akbar. God is great in Arabic. So now I'm seeing this shit, and again, we don't have, I don't even have night vision because I don't need it, it's daytime, it's in my, whatever.

And that's when you start to think, okay, not only is that al-Qaeda, that's a chechen. This is where you save at least one bullet for yourself. Yeah. I'm not, those guys will skin you alive. And we, and this is all all happening and finally Tony said, all right, I got one. I got one.

I said, also get that fuck a checkpoint, get it in here now and he said, okay, I can't. So the batteries in my radio just died because we had been out there and they just died. And so one of my jokes about this is, I don't believe in micromanaging. You just teach your people how to do it and let them do it. But right now I figured it was a proper time

to micromanage. I said, change the fucking batteries. And he said, I can't. I'm not carrying the spares. Remember, you are. They're in the Rucksack that I dropped. Yeah. So I said something, I mean, I don't have a choice at this point.

I said something along the lines of don't tell mom I did this. And I ran, so I'm running to that thing, and I don't know, I don't know, I'm saying 100 yards. And I don't know how I had been hit at this point. And naturally I know where they're packed, and probably at the bottom of this fucking thing, and open to this damn thing. I grabbed the two old school batteries,

now I'm running back, fuck the Rucksack, I have the batteries and I chucked him to him and now we're calling an air support. And there was a funny story, something, okay, what he said was, bombs away two minutes out. And I'm like, two minutes. What did he fucking drop this from the space shuttle?

Is that the first, nothing takes two minutes to fall anywhere. Well, it turns out it was, I think it was a, it was bones. It was a B1. And he was at 60,000 feet. And he just dropped three J-Dams, three 2,000 pounders. Shhh. And it stains your clothes, but like, whatever. And uh...

Uh, one of the guys said to me, this is danger close. What do we do if it hits us? And I said, not a problem. Plug your ears. And then they don't, they don't, they don't whistle. They sizzle.

It sounded like bacon. Zzzzz lit the whole hillside lit up. And like I'm watching dudes on fire running around that we just hit with, that's the first time I was like, I will never make another joke about the Air Force. That is a thank you. I heard that was America. Just now they're running.

Al Qaeda is, and I'm, now I find the getting some shots off. I think I killed the Chechen. They're running up the hill. We're fucking lighten them up. And it turned the tide there and then we called them in again. It actually got to the point where we bombed Pakistan for four hours. One of the guys we called in his call sign was dude one two, which I thought was just awesome. And he was, you know, now we're calling him where he's flying upside down. And he's like wanting us to describe what we see. And it's like, you know, can you see the peak with the snow?

Yes, can you see the intersection of the river? Yes, that's one unit of measure. I want you to take two of those units, please, at 097 Magnetic, all this bullshit. But like the first thing that the conversation that I had with him was so awesome, because you know, we had adrenaline going. He wants you to calm down.

So he said, just talk to me like I'm a man. And I said, I see why women find you attractive. So we get done with that. And we can find, and then at this point, you know, we got more fast movers. The coyotes showed up and they're just bad motherfuckers. And then we can call into a couple of 60s. We have some army pilots coming,

they're gonna pick us up, we're gonna bounce. So they've called us in, I got on this starboard side, the right side of this blackhawk, and we're now leaving. And it's a, it's a, maybe a 10 minute flag back to A, that's a close we were to this, right on the border. And that's the first time I saw the, the battlefield that we just created and it is scorched earth. And I'm thinking, oh man, we just bomb Pakistan. That is an international incident.

Yeah. Then I thought, I'm in charge. I'm probably gonna hear about this. Oh shit. And I was right, because we landed at A-Bad and they had already flown a two star general in there to meet with us and he said, and I'm in a good mood at this point. I was gonna die for the past six hours. Now I'm gonna live and I'm in a good mood.

And he said, Hey, O'Neil, you realize we're not a war with Pakistan, right? And I said, yeah, man, but we were today, and you should have fucking... Yes, sir. And then he said, yeah, there's gonna be an investigation, obviously, and you're either gonna get a silver star or you're gonna spend the rest of your life on level worth.

Shit. And you think waiting an hour for a bomb is a long time. Try waiting three weeks for that decision to be made. We got lucky, though, and the footage is still on the internet where Pakistan was saying it was an unprovoked attack by American forces. Like they always do because it turns out Pakistan fucking lies to us. They had the footage as they're getting the stuff that could go really well. Now look at this. Here's your guys attacking my guys. And they said there were something like a 21 martyrs from the pack. We killed a 21 Pakistanis that were fighting us. Wow. So that's like a

So I did get a silver star that you did. Yeah. Yeah, that was my first silver star What's actually funny is I've been I've been lying to my mom my entire career because it's easier to go to war than to send someone you love to war So but they're worrying is not gonna affect how you do so don't make them worry just lie to them Now we're not doing shit. Don't worry mom. I react not what you think. We're not at the blood of her. My mother came down to Virginia Beach for the presentation of the Silver Star and they actually read the unclassified version of what happened and she's sitting there listening.

And I remember saying mom, I promise you I'll never get another Silver Star. Now fast forwarding to the day after the bin Laden raid, I said, Mom, I think I lied to you. I think I'm getting sick at Silver Star. Shit. Yeah. Damn, dude. That's crazy.

And that was just because another rule in life, you don't need to go looking for it. Don't go looking for it. No. If it's meant to find you, it'll just find you. Like, well, like, thanks to Jiu Jitsu. Don't find anyone on a bar. You don't know who's a black belt. Very true. Don't go looking for it. If you get in a bar fight and someone starts with a leg kick, apologize, a biobad drink. Not my bad. I was wrong.

Exhale through the nose. Damn. Yeah. Well, let's, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back. We'll talk about we'll get in Iraq. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back. We'll talk about, we'll get in direct. Cool. I want to take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Patreon support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one-of-a-kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com, slash vigilance, elite, and support the Sean Ryan show today. All right, so we're back from the break. Let's talk about our rack.

I rack again was one of those things where I hadn't been and I knew it was more dangerous than Afghanistan at the time because foreign fighters had realized it'll be easier to kill Americans in Iraq because we can get there a lot easier to go to Afghanistan. And they had learned our tactics. They knew what we were doing. They knew that one of our tactics was if there's an open door, we're going to run into it because a lot of this stupid, not stupid, but just

arrogant, special forces, not special forces, always. It's gonna be a fight anyway that just get it over with. That was the mentality and time. I'll kind of do that. So leave the door open, have machine gunners inside and just drill the first four guys in the room. They did that. And so we went over there.

Our army counterparts took some pretty heavy casualties, and that's when we kind of started to learn that one of the worst things you can... And nothing on them, those guys are complete studs. But one of the worst things you can say when you're running a team is, well, this is the way we've always done it. It's like, wait a minute. Why are we running in there? How about we just...

Why don't we just clear the room from the door? We invented combat clearance. Why are we sprinting at night through houses with white lights when we can put our nods down and own it? And why are we yelling? Stop yelling. When you turn a corner and you point your gun up,

I don't need to hear you yell, stay well, I'll assume there's a stairwell. Shut the fuck up. So we started training on silent runs and we learned when we were silent, not only we were faster and more efficient, we were communicating at the highest levels, simply by reading off each other.

There's no reason to give someone your position. So we just started reinventing tactics. Not just we at Red Squad or CLT6, Delta was on board with all this stuff and we're all, and we were really good about two, I mean, I mentioned a cross, a rivalry type thing between services. That wasn't us or Delta.

We would cross train with each other. And then most importantly, the guys just got back, would debrief the guys about to go over. And we would take them on, even when we got, like, when we're leaving our relief squad, and we would take them on a shakeout op. Like, here's what we're doing, here's how it works. Everything from Intel to workout schedules to, here's what you should do, and here's the dangerous part. Here's what we're looking for. We did a lot of that stuff, and it was everything from snipers realizing that they're climbing

the roots. I'm not saying I agree with this and I rack, but I don't need body armor. I need to be light. I don't need this many magazines. I haven't shot that much. But again, too, be careful what you wish for. I had a sniper in mind that I was telling him, because he's climbing every building. And he's the first one out there leading the patrol.

And we're doing, you know, we realize that you don't need to land on the X. Land over here, we'll walk in. And when they figure that out, we'll take motorbike center and then we'll walk in. I had one sniper that I was saying, we had an argument at six. I was a sniper at two,

but then I said, you can be an assaulter was a sniper at two, but then I said, you can be an assalter or a sniper at SEAL Team Six. And I said, I wanna be an assalter, my joke will. And again, joking, but not seeing the future. I said, I know snipers are gonna kill more people, but I think assalters are gonna kill more famous people. You said that. Yeah.

It's a joke. It's like the theme of my mom, we're not doing anything. Sniper's will kill more people, assalters will kill more famous people. You said that. Yeah. It's a joke. It's like the thing with my mom, we're not doing anything. Sniper's will kill more people, assaulters will kill more famous people. Yeah, I'm talking about throwing some shit out into the universe. I'm saying. So we had my, there's one sniper and he got to the point, I think, where he was carrying one mag of 556.

He loved the 556 with the 14 inch opera. And then one mag in a harness and like no water like that's his loadout That's it and on my dude. I know where I know our plan is to only be here during one cycle of darkness But you're gonna eventually you're gonna want more bullets than that and I think our last gunfight on that trip to To Iraq he was a we were in a weird gunfight this snifes were up top and he was blasted out My nickname was nizro Navy seal SEAL Rob O'Neil. Nizro, that's with my friends at the bar. Could you go, what up, my Nizro?

And he yelled, dad, he goes, Nizro, I need a mag. And I said, no, dude, I told you to carry more bullets. And he literally goes, come on, I can still hear him screaming. But we were learning stuff like that. We learned you don't need to rush through the first kill that I ever got wasn't on that interactive deployment. And it's when we just decided, because we were still in between the nods up

or even look under them white light fast, we said we're going to go slow. We're going to go in quiet. We're not going to blow the door. We're going to pick the lock. We figured out ways to break the glass quietly and open it. Just go inside, wake them up. You know, catch them when they're sleeping.

See how many guys you can touch while they're sleeping? We started having competitions. How many al-Qaeda guys can you check for a suicide bomb and they'll wake them up by saying, shh, shh, shh. And then watching a grown man shit is pants. That was one of the greatest things ever. But one of the nights we were going into this thing,

we had a lane, a hallway, and like the first time we're trying this quiet, and we're walking it, this alkyte to do it hops out. He's got an AK-47, he could have killed every single one of us, but he couldn't see us. So we hop back in the room, and now we, okay, there's shit. We had a guy with us, Andy, who is a special boat service guy an SBS and Britz are the fucking best there there is funny

Or it if not funnier than we are but I compare them like we're the normal keys They're the sharp keys on a piano like it sounds good, but it's just a little off He had a cloud of death over him the The other Brit said, you're going with Andy. He gets in fights. It follows him. You're going to get in a fight. And so Andy happened to be with us. And then one of our guys goes through,

he'll be clear to the room. And one of our guys, his first kill blasted this guy, split some white open. And then we're kind of looking over there. And Andy, who's been in fight since the invasion, was like, Andy, can you go check that guy? He walked over with a white lad and goes, oh, he's fuck made.

So at this point now that they heard a shoot inside, we got the D-boys hitting another target. Our snipers are going hot. So myself and one of my guys were like, we gotta get out and get into the ice. These are our first kills. This actually turned out to be the sniper who initiated the fire to rescue Captain Phillips and small pyres. We got our first kills. This actually turned out to be the sniper who initiated the fire to rescue cat and Phillips

and small pyres. We got our first kills together. We went outside and we did this cross pan that we'd always been working on. If you're on this side, you cover this way, you cover this way. And then you wave and move or whatever. So we're out here. These two dudes pop up like pepper poppers. Bap, bap, bap.

So we got our first two kills and I'm like, shit, I just killed that guy. And he goes, yeah, I just killed that guy. I go, okay, what do we do now? And he goes, maybe we should try one of those bounding things. And then it kind of sinks in. And that's another, you know, we finished that up. We killed a bunch of dudes. We got, that was our first major fight in Iraq,

where the tactics were using work, but how did they adjust to us? How do we, we might need to readjust to this. And that was another thing where now CLE Team 6 was getting and fighting, getting kills. And it was just sort of, okay, now, and this is before the Afghanistan huge fights. And okay, now I have my first kill.

Now I'm part of the club, and this is it. I'm in. And then, you know, we finish Iraq and we learn stuff, and then we go back and we train, and then we keep talking to the other guys that are over there, learn new tactics, what's's working what's not working Do you like which barrel which magnifier are using with your optics? We had to tell some army guys like look that that that laser this thing that pistol grip and all this is great in Iraq when you get to 10,000 feet

And if you're not gonna want that because weight is measured in ounces and ounces equal pounds and it's gonna suck What do you need you need you need an eotech and an iron sight. You're good. That's it. So, yeah, so that was Iraq. So we bounced from Afghanistan, Iraq. Afghanistan, Iraq. I was part, my fourth appointment was, we called it the deployment that never was. Because we had, so the commander of SEAL Team 6 just got us authorized. For some reason, we were not authorized to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. We were supposed to only after Al Qaeda.

Really? Yeah, it was weird. It makes sense sort of you want to just send the Tier 1 guys after the Tier 1 targets, but we're getting bored and there's a lot of fighting in Canada. So that, so they authorize team six to start targeting Taliban. That's when blue team went in there and just fucking crushed them.

Got in fights like epic shit that you can, I mean, there's books out there, mob six by chef that's fucking amazing. And then he's just a fucking stud. And just, and so our group went, they wanted all the stuff, Ganshan to include the headshed. So the bosses, the CEO of the whole team and they're all there. And they sent like a troop of us, 15 news to Iraq. And our boss, his name is Rich Davinion, I can say that because he's made himself a public stud too. He was a guy that taught me nobody ever worked for me.

They worked with me. And he agreed to work for Delta. Like a lot of arrogant team guys wouldn't want to work for them. But he's like, you know what, if we're going to get work, it's going to be for them. Because like you're not the army runs the show. So we started working for Delta. And it happened to be during the surge of the awakening when, when, um, Stan McChrystal and General, excuse me,

but Crystal realized if we start killing al Qaeda, which are Sunnis that are hijacking Sunnis, we can get them to rise up and help us and we can win this war. And they did guys like Stan McChrystal, Bill McRaven, they were on the right track and they were, you know, I would follow those guys to hell. But we started hitting those targets on basically kill missions every night. And we were to a point where with, if we only killed 11 dudes, it was a waste of our time. No shit. It was

insane. We're targeting al-Qaeda in places where they've never seen guys like us. Like, even in terror, we learn how to interrogate people. Like, you get a cocky al-Qaeda guy. It's like, I've seen Americans before and you say, do they look like me And they kind of look at your tattoos. I had a demon hundred patch beard like I'm not here by accident my friend. I'm here for you like just fucking awesome shit psychological warfare And we call that the deployment that never was because everyone's in Afghanistan from our crew And they're fighting and they don't give a shit about us So as long as we keep doing this It's on and And that was, I mean, I think the Iraq war

was completely fucked up, but that was one of the best summers of my life, because at the time, we were warriors, and that's where we're here to kill you. And we fucked them up. We didn't have one of our guys hurt. I don't know how many kills we got, but it was guys like Rich that were running the team like, like, we would hit a target. And because of the Intel on target, the battlefield interrogation, we would hit a fall on target. So it's like, and so we would go out of Rangers and love working with them because you know, they're obviously capable of doing all this,

but they generally would put like a machine gunner and they're kind of blocking as we hit the point target. Once you hear the Rangers going hot, and you know Rangers know like two things, Ruck hump and fucking kill it. So there's awesome guys. Obviously they're better than that. I just I love rangers. But once you hear them outside like 240 going hot to do do do. It's like okay it's a fight. So we would go from house to house and we're I'm talking we're getting we're getting kills in every room and we're

doing a quick like a quick brief to the boss. We got to hit this building right here. And I think, I'm talking too fast. I talk fast, and he's not looking at Rickson. Said, all right, you know what, sir? I'm sorry, you're in charge. And he looked at me and said, oh, make no mistake. I'm not in charge.

I'm responsible. And that's a great fucking leader right there. Yeah. And so we would do that. We had missions where, so you were, hold on, so you were just, you go hit a house, you would do an interrogation and then immediately from there. Depending on what we found, but we generally found, we generally found the guy we're looking for in the first house

or someone that knew who was, there was, Jesus, there was one guy in New Bend, Iraq to Iraq, it's fucked up place too. We were going after a guy called, like, Mola Muhammad, one arm, because he's a mola, and he's got one arm. We grabbed a mola, pulled them back, his name was Mola Muhammad, one arm, but he was missing the wrong arm.

There was another one, we grabbed the wrong guy. Holy shit. But we would do stuff like, the way that it worked for us is we started an alasade out west and we were hitting targets up into Syria. And then we cleared it to, you know, we got into Fuluj, we got into Ramadi, got into Baghdad, North of Baghdad, and it's not just us,

but we're working with the army, with the Air Force, with the Marines, and we're getting shit done, and we're really winning this war. And like there were times, what I love about special operators is they really know how to solve problems. They came to us with, there was a problem north of Baghdad. I think it was called Bakuba, whatever. But it was a peninsula.

And it was a small peninsula. But it hadn't been touched since the invasion in 03. So this is 2007. This place hasn't been touched because there's a 19, a kiatagai's there, and their IED makers are improvised explosive device makers. We haven't gotten to them because there's one road in. No one wants to drive that road. They're going to blow you up.

We're not going to carpet bomb them because there are so many innocent civilians there. I mean, you do have certain collateral damage, but we're not going to kill that many innocent people. Plus, they're getting bullied by al-Qaeda, tortured. Like, we can't fast-rope. They're going to shoot us down. So, they came to us and they said, can you guys solve this problem? And being Navy SEALs will like, well, yeah, it's gonna suck, but we can swim in. And it's not a swim, like a bud's ocean swim,

it's like a swampy shitty nasty, whatever. And you know, there's water in Iraq and people don't realize that, but we did, we went in with 17 SEALs and two dogs, two Malinois's, and they're important to the story because we got in there immediately, immediately a meet-again fight, but we cleared 10 houses, we killed all 19 guys, didn't hurt one woman or a child, and then we left.

Swam out. The next day, the locals woke up, and the usual terror rain by these al-Qaeda fucks, but now there's no one, they're dead, they're gone, and they had a block party. So we have assets above, and they're watching, but now there's no one, they're dead, they're gone. And they had a block party. So we have assets above. And they're watching because you want to see who, you know, I'm not going to give away tactics, but you want to see what happens after for following it. And there's this block party going on. The block party got so big, a reporter from Baghdad, when a newspaper reporter

from Baghdad went up there and interviewed the people in the houses that we had taken down and asked who came last night and the headline on the newspaper said they were ninjas and they came with lions no shit yeah fucking lions how goes that that's pretty bad I guess so but that's what we did for that we we got I mean that I mean watching what I was you know just proud of my guys that's when I realized that that right now, and this is probably me just being arrogant, right now, red team is the finest fighting force in the world. There's no one that does, I mean, obviously,

there are guys that do it like that, but I'm here, I see it, now this is my bubble, these, but I fucking love these guys. Yeah. And I think that was the most combat that we'd ever seen, and that was that 2007 deployment to Iraq. Damn, how long are the deployments out there, four months?

And you guys are just hitting it every night. Yep. Son of a bitch. We were in places where we put up makeshift tents to sleep. Like that, not like, but I mean, it's not secure. Like there's concertina wire maybe

in some of my raki guards. Like you could be in it every you know But then like no internet no TVs the chow hall is a mile and a half aware whatever and uh There's so nothing to do like I remember guys singing I learned the Cincinnati Bengals fight song because I was sleeping in between two dudes from Cincinnati Still knowing let's go into a little more detail. So you swim in Yeah, it's not so much even a swim. It's just a really shitty swamp where you're grabbing the dogs by their handles and just inserting to, like you get under palm groves

and the big grapes with the huge rats running across it. Yeah. And the closer you get to target the dogs or barking, they know you're coming and then you get through their snipers start climbing and then once the snipers get up there and you just you hear them go hot, it's just on. But I mean it was we were we were good at it. So we're moving quickly through houses.

I mean not too but like we were killing dudes in in houses. Clearing one man in blast him and then move down the thing and you're killing other dudes at the time it's cool. Yeah. You know, the further you get away from from that it's you know you start wondering and you're killing other dudes. And at the time it's cool. Yeah. The further you get away from that, you start wondering what you're doing. Yeah. He's a busy father. Yeah, yeah.

There are certain guys I think about. There's one guy in particular that I think about that I killed. He was a second guy I killed in this house. I entered the house, killed a guy in the front. I went into a bedroom, I took a one-man entry because I'm an idiot. And there was a guy that was in bed with his wife. And he gave him the courtesy of calm down, you're waking up, just, you know, obviously a guy with a green

faces in your room and it's scary. Calm down. And there's a fucking AK-47 next zone. Like, come on, don't do that. He went for it. I blasted him killed him and And then his wife sees it. So I just shot this guy next to his wife and You start to wonder like now the only reason I shot that guy is because I am in his house and we were born on two Separate parts of the planet. Yeah, and I don't know I don't know him and then he's I mean the further you get away from it It's like What if we had met somewhere else like in in a coffee shop in France, would we have shared a joke? Was it funny? Didn't matter.

Damn. Yeah, I think I found the further you get away from more, the more it starts to sink in, that a lot of guys are killing each other because a lot of narcissists that are in charge, have you do it? Do you think... I often wonder that too. What would we have got along? I know, it's crazy. And I feel like I would have liked half of those people

more than... More than the people that I'm around right now. I'm more in common, you know. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah, it is fucking crazy. It's insane to think about it. I mean, because the humanity of it, people don't realize the humanity that,

I mean, this is people in, these are dudes in their house with their families. Okay, he's going for a gun, he's got a gun, he's aiming at me. Now, is he protecting his family? And is he a carpenter? Yeah. He needs an AK, because he lives in fucking Ramadi.

And again, I think it's just because one thing I started, the more senior that I got, one thing that I disagreed with was patrol the contact and strike to develop. It's like, look man, you're gonna go to a house and find someone with a gun and kill them because you went to a, you're in this house. I mean, I remember one of the things that where I started to not turn, but like say no more, was I went into the wrong house and I'm on, I was in a swamp

and I was walking across this white carpet and the only two people in the house were a woman and her 10 year old daughter. And I looked down at the white carpet and I remember thinking, I understand why they hate us. Imagine someone doing that here, you know? Yeah. So I mean, the shitty thing is you get,

you get the more time you get to think about it, the more you think about it, and you start to realize that it's a big planet, it's a small world. And you know, it's just a couple of people sending us, I mean, he believed in his cause, I believe in my cause. That's where I was gonna go, too, is it's, I mean, he believed in his cause, I believe in my cause. That's, yeah, that's where I was gonna go to, is it's, I mean, I don't know what the percentage

of people that actually stand up for what they believe in, but I thought it was a lot bigger, a lot bigger until 2020 came around and then I realized, man, the majority of these fucking people are just sheep, they will just do whatever they're told. Whatever they're fucking told. And they turn it, they turn it political. Yeah, and we're going up against the whatever percent,

let's just call it the top one percent that actually stands up for what they believe in. And it's just on the other side of the world and they just believe something different than what we do. That's what they believe in. And they just believe in their cause. I mean, yes, they're the bad guys to us, but we're also the bad guys to them.

Yeah. I mean, they attack us because we're the great Satan. Yeah. And I tell, I think about the crazy aunt you have at Thanksgiving dinner that is so religious that she knows everything. They're just like her. They just believe something else.

I mean, the more deep you get, it's frustrating. Yeah. I'm gonna start to wonder who's calling the shots. But I mean, that's what we did. Like I said, at the time, 27, 30 year old, 32 year old, fucking bring it. I'll find anybody here. And then you start to question, I mean,

I mean, I've had guys say, do you think, you know, are we, are we going to get passed this? Like, are we going to be good? Like with life? So and you know, that's, you know, I think the PTSD comes, it comes with it. And that's real. It's unfortunate. And a lot of guys, and a lot of men and women went through a lot of shit because some politician told them they had to. You're absolutely right. I think that's why they recruited me young too. That's crazy.

But even now thinking about Iraq, I can just, I can sometimes sit there and think, so Iraq, the fuck was that all about? I think about that too. I think it was all Halleburden. It was Halleburden. Someone's getting paid. Someone's getting paid for the anthrax vaccination,

smallpox, all the vehicles that we left and the shit we brought over, every single round, all the body armor, someone's getting paid for it. Oh, that's a big contrast. Yeah, well, I mean, Hollywood and did what they were, Oh, yeah, everything. They were the carpenters, they were the chefs,

they were the trash people, they were the fuel people, they were the cleaning crew, they were everything. Every aspect of life in Iraq that was on an American base was held together by Halibur. Who was tied to Jeanne? Yeah, you know, but anyways, moving on. Yeah.

Moving on. So where did you go after Iraq? So we did Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq, and then the rest was Afghanistan. I'm trying to think of which ones I went to, we sent a small team, so then reversed. The majority went to Iraq, because they got the debriefs on what we were doing.

Now the fight is in Iraq, so they sent a small group of us up to Bagram, and I'm talking a small group, eight guys. And we were just, we had the ability to augment other groups. And we, like, if we went out on hits, which were rare, we did find some IED guys, we did get some shoot-outs there. Wintertime, Afghanistan, so not a lot to do. We got to know each other really well. We held training, reaching charges, how to get better at stuff, working out, a lot of MMA stuff, which is a pain in the ass, when you're sparring with guys that are

bored that know how to fight. Because they just want to get after it. You know, a couple of things here and there, we wasn't very exciting, but we kind of did that. I'm trying to think of the other ones. Well, let's talk about the Alabama. Okay, so that was in 2009. We were sort of aware of the mayor's Alabama getting hit by some of the pirates, but we didn't know what was gonna happen.

And I was actually, so we're a state-sided, we were the national mission force for something like that that gonna happen. And I was actually, so we're a state side and we were the national mission force for something like that that would happen. I happened to be at my daughter's Easter Tea Party at her preschool on my birthday. Was good Friday, April 10th, 2009. So it was an Easter Tea Party. And we were just giving the kids treats.

I had a pink plate in my hand, I'm giving her cookies and cupcakes, and we got the call. Captain Phillips, the Santa secode that we knew it was, and basically what they're saying is, okay, he got captured, you're going to get him right now. So your shit had better be ready. You have a certain amount of time to get in there, and a certain amount of time to take off.

And we had been, seal team6 was designed to do this, to rescue American hostages at sea. It had never been done not one time. It was, yeah, like the first one. 28 years had never been done. And we had been selling that we can take, I don't wanna give away the timeline, but we can take off in a certain amount of hours.

And we had the commanding officer of CLT6 on my bird and we took off at, you know, 59 minutes to, you know, whatever 59, like, I could see that, okay, we did it in certain amount. Now we're, now we're flying. And in that amount of time, we, not just me, but we as COT6, we have thought of everything. Every imaginable at sea rescue, a nuclear problem, a yacht, whatever. We had never thought of a lifeboat, a fully enclosed orange lifeboat being towed by a Navy destroyer. No one thought of that for some reason. So we, okay, we're like, well, we have, we have 15 hours to come up with something. So everybody, I, we're like, well, we have, we have 15 hours to come up with something. So everybody, I don't, the newest goddamn guy in this plane, think of

something, a rammit with one of our birds, what are both a, he, think of something, and we're gonna list all of them. And then we're gonna start crossing them off, and we'll take the top five, and then from there we'll get to the best one. And we did not go over there to kill those pirates. We went there to get Richard Phillips. Like we're just gonna, if we can, we'll just negotiate. I mean, we didn't, you know, they're already negotiating. They didn't send an entire squad or negotiate. We're, plus we know we've been killing people

all over the world. So we, but we didn't, we put the snipers down when we got there to watch them, make sure nothing unsafe happens as we're preparing for the rescue. And as we were preparing for the rescue, something very unsafe and they shot. That's how it happened. There was, there was no three to one execute. It was just boom, boom. So it was all just bam. Yeah, someone shot to the red of each other. Like the plan that I thought was gonna work that we came up with was,

and I thought this was brilliant. This is why I was actually getting coffee in the chief's mess because we're gonna do this plan. Was, yeah, I didn't do shit on that fucking thing. Yeah, hold on, you didn't, that was off camera. So you were getting coffee. I was, I had just made chief and I was so happy to be in the chief's mess

on a Navy ship that I'm in there bullshitting with like the bosses made chief and we're talking about Who are the redskins gonna draw after some shit or really just whatever and the snipers took the shot The plan that we came up with meaning me and my team leader was These are not terrorists. This is brilliant. These are not terrorists. They're criminals. And now they're scared. And they're seasick, which they don't like, and they're out of cock, the drug they take. Yeah. All we gotta do is bring them some water and some radios.

Get them some radios to the village elders. Let them talk. And tell them we're gonna bring them in. They just wanna go home now. We get them close. You know, the sun comes down, jam the comms, pull them a couple clicks up, and my team will be on the beach,

and once they get off, we'll handle it. We either, hey, we're friends, beat it, or we shoot him, and then we take him. So that's the plan that I thought was gonna work, so I'm talking football with BMC. And we got a message that someone said, yeah, we got him. And I was like, got who? Dude, we got him, we got Captain Phillips, God, who? Dude, we got him.

We got Captain Phillips. Like, holy shit, you guys are awesome. Yeah, they got him. And they took the shots. I think one of the coolest stories that doesn't get enough credit is, you know the slide for life, the obstacle we have at Buds. Where you climb up and you slide down a rope

and like the Marines have it, Army has it. I remember seeing that thinking, the fuck is the use of this? No one is ever gonna need to know how to do this. One guy needed to do it one time. And it was after they shot, that sniper needed to go down and pull Phillips out. I'll tell you a story now, this is not my story,

it's just a good story, so I'm assuming it happened this way the sniper said and he's probably full shit But he said when he was going in there He had to go to his pistol and he did carry pistol. Thank God and he said but I'm going into the small space and This is the only time in my life that I get to rescue someone So I got to think it's something cool to say right do I say we're a seal team? Oh my god.

And he said he went in there and they'd been using this entire boat as a toilet for like four days and it's in the African heat. And now there's three dudes laying in it and their heads are split open. And he said that he kind of think something cool to say, he looks at Richard Phillips and said, I'm definitely gonna need therapy after this.

Fuck! That's what I say. He therapy. Holy shit. I mean, the thing about that though was, from Virginia Beach, 15 hours and 46 minutes later, we had a full head count in the Indian Ocean. We rescued Richard Phillips on Easter Sunday.

The thing that people don't think about is, I mentioned we hadn't done that in 28 years. So imagine those snipers when they're on beds in Virginia, beach four days before that, on a long weekend. It's a long weekend. We've never done this. I'm going to skip work and I'll sit in my gun on Tuesday. You know, their guns did not need to be cited in for the most difficult shots of their lives, but their guns were cited in for the most difficult shots of their lives because they were prepared.

Well, crazy. Those snipers are just complete badasses. How many snipers were there? I mean, we jumped in with 103 people. Like, this is the only... Everyone jumped in with 103 people. I think, yeah, I think we had 98 canopies, five tandem, some shit.

Yeah, I mean, everybody, every swing and dick that was in Virginia Beach was going on this mission. And just because everybody wanted to go. Everybody wanted to be on the off. This is a real jump. Yeah, the first one. I want to say, I mean, say you brought 108 people. We had dudes, I swear to God, riding desks that were like,

yep, I haven't tried it. I haven't operated 12 years, but I'm jumping I can still remember this stuff We had dudes that Their first that was their first jump that were tandem in Con guys Oh, wow, so I mean there's there's a sniper team there, but I there was three. I want to say the shot shit I thought it was this I thought it was like five or six you guys that didn't really should brought everybody in the There was there was dudes in there before us Shit, I thought it was this, I thought it was like five or six, you guys. I didn't really should brought everybody in the house.

There was dudes in there before us from a more advanced squadron that I'm not going to get into. They were sort of there, but then we, they were already overseas. They brought us in from Virginia Beach. And those snipers, I think that's just cool. So was it three simultaneous shots? I don't think so, but that's what the debrief said. All right.

I wasn't there. I mean, I wasn't there. Yeah. But I know they got them. Well, it's cool that you're a part of it. Yeah, yeah, it was so. It's actually pretty fucking funny you're in the Chief's Mess bitch and bell fight.

I think it's awesome because if people say, you know, you're telling stories that aren't true, it's like, no, I really was in the Chief's Mess. Like, whatever do you in the cheapest me. Like, whatever do you mean? Holy shit. So yeah, then that was that. So now that's the pinnacle.

We've done the hostage rescue. We've been in the gun fights. We've done this. And then we're going to go, I'm going to go to Afghanistan again. And this time, so I'd been in an outstation, I'd been on the strike teams, I'd run the outstations, now I'm the senior enlisted, running all of them. I'm the senior enlisted for all the outstations.

And my job simply now is to work with the agency, get intel from these different places, try to find cross-border operations again. And so at this point, Osama bin Laden is a ghost. And he's not even on my fucking radar. I was at the point just being in SEAL Team 6, I remember thinking, I hope I get to meet the guy from Delta that kills bin Laden.

This is as close as I, this is awesome. I hope I meet him. So like one of the big, we did a, the biggest thing we did on this one was we found an al-Qaeda guy Abu Iqlis al-Mazri or some shit like that who was a tier one target in Korngall and we did a snatch and grab on a on a highway and got him um this other strike team we're doing we're doing stuff one of one of the newer guys first deployment with red team actually got six

kills at once with a saw Which I thought that's that's pretty cool. Yeah, but we'll watch this and then but it's so this is this is January 2011 and that's all we're doing and you know trying to develop shit, but we're I'm more planning training trips when we get back Making sure the guys in my team are running their trips the right way where we're going to go. We planned the first trip back for my team. My true, actually, was to go to Miami to dive because our biggest concern is more piracy. The pirates have been adjusting to what we're doing. They have mother ships. Can we do open water dives on a ship that's not an anchored? Is anchored? How do we find it?. Can we do open water dives on a ship that's not an,

or a ship that is anchored? How do we find it? What can we do? We're just coming up with shit. But we're done with deployment, and we're also in South Beach. So I want guys to have fun. We're gonna train, but then we're gonna go to Happy Hour.

Yeah. Hang on the beach, have some drinks, then we're gonna train them more. And we were down there, we're staying at the courtyard very out near South Beach, and we're outside. Well, before we went on this trip, our boss, the commanding officer at Red Squadron, was coming on the trip, and we're kind of like,

that's a drag, because we can't have as much fun with the CEO there, but he got pulled. Yeah, he got to go to DC for some, so we're good. We didn't know why the CEO and the Master Chief went to DC, but we're down there and then my boss got a call, my troop commander and he said, hey, we got to go back to Virginia Beach. So pack your ship as soon as you can. We get the first flights out of here.

Look, what the hell? All right, what's going on? I don't know. So we flew back to Virginia Beach and they brought 20 Gated of us into a room. Now we've got guys on different trips that got pulled in. Senior guys from like there was a rock climbing trip in Nevada, but the senior guys got called in and then other guys came in from Arizona and we're here and other dudes are junior guys at CLT 6 are there,

but they're not in this secret room and they said, all right, you guys are here because this is not a drill. This is real. We found a thing and this thing is in a house. And this house is in a bowl and this bowl is in a country. And you guys are gonna, you're gonna go get this thing and you're gonna bring it back to us and show it to us. And we're like, okay, no sweat.

First we're wondering why you asked, but okay, well, what's the thing? Well, we can't, can't tell you. Okay, well, how are we getting there, can't tell you? What country is this? We can't tell you. How are we getting there? Can't tell you, how much air support?

None, like, all right, that's an answer. No air support, so all we know. And they said also, we're not, we're only bringing shooters. Only these seals are going on this. So we can't bring our kick ass Air Force CCT, the radio guys, we can't bring the PJs, who are paramedics, fucking medics.

So if you know any medical shit, you bring some medical shit, if you know how to use a radio, you're the radio guy. And keep it light, because we only have a certain, so we're like, what the fuck is going on? And so we would walk around, we're trying to get our shit ready. We knew there would be two birds.

That's all we knew. We assumed it would be offsprays, off of a flat top going into Libya, because the Arab Spring had just started, and we were gonna go get coffee, and they wanna interrogate him, so we're gonna get him and bring, that's gotta be that.

But we're walking down, we're in the new building where all the cages are together on the bottom and we're running into guys from other squatters and they're like, hey man, what, we heard something's going on, what's going on. And we're literally like, I have no fucking idea. And they got mad at us because they thought we were lying to them.

It's like, I, and we'd run into them when we'd go out at night. Like, guys, I don't know what we're doing. But we're getting our shit ready. This went on until Friday and they said, okay, everyone, go home, be with your kids and you're coming back on Sunday and we're gonna drive you somewhere

and we're gonna read you in on what this is. And we're like, okay, who's to be there at the reading? And the tired bosses were like, oh, probably the vice president, the secretary defense secretary, the navy, and we're like, oh my god. And then they're going down the list. They said something blah, blah, blah. They said, CTC pad, blah, blah, blah. And they're going down the list. I'm like CTC pad. That's CIAIA counterterrorism, Pakistan Afghanistan. If we're going to Libya, and I didn't say anything,

but we went home hung out with the kids. We came back on Sunday, and they split us up in advance. We had four guys in my van. I got my buddy drive and my other buddy up front, my troop commander, my boss is right here, and then I'm sitting here, and I explained to the down the drive down,

we're going to someone in North Carolina and I explained to them exactly What I just said here and I said this isn't Kadoffi They found bin Laden and my boss looked at me and there was no cheers. He goes That's exactly what I was thinking So we just start talking about this and My buddy driving the van. I'll never forget the way he looked at me in the mirror. And he said, man, on Neil, if we kill Osama bin Laden, I will suck yo dick.

BAM! HA! And we had a laugh about it. And then, you know, fast forwarding, obviously, three weeks to the day. We're looking down at bin Laden in his house. And I said, well, now's a good time, is any, I guess. He's like, oh, fuck you.

And I'm like, you're bet. But we got down there and they put us all into a room and the commanding officer of CLT 6. So each squadron had a commanding officer, but 6 was like a group. So that commander, that CEO came in, and I'll never forget the way he said, the reason you guys are here is this is as close

as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden. And I mean, it sinks in, but there's, you know, we're professionals and we're like, okay, are we going right now? I mean, we're ready. And they explained to us, they brought in the agency team, which is mostly women, and explained to us, they went into such depth of how they found him

in his long brief, we're all almost like, look, we believe you. I don't need to know this shit. Just you tell me where he is. I'll carry the gun in the sledgehammer. And they, you know, they were very cool the way they talked to us. And then they had a, they told us that the president had, he had about five options to get him.

And they said, you know, obviously, Klapper bonned the fuck out of it. And I think the Air Force wanted like 22J dams to make sure and it's like, oh, holy shit. You're gonna kill everyone around. Yeah. So that's a, I mean, we'll never know if we got them.

They, there was something about, they called them the pacer, they could see him walking outside. We can hit him with one bomb, but I mean, we know how that works. You fuck up that one,. You'll never find them again They we actually laughed at this one. They said we can do a joint op with the Pakistanis and it was like oh, yeah Tell them about it. Yeah, he's fucking out of there

Or you're an option and then you guys can figure out a way and so you know, we're thinking everything jumping in No, can't do this and whatever and But and even the the president didn't know about the, I guess the, the chief of staff of the Air Force said, well, there is one more option. And he told him about the helicopters that no one knew about. And so then we just started training and that, that wasn't option. So we trained there. It wasn't to, it was, you know, to, obviously to get to know the, the exterior, but don't tell me about the interior.

I'll figure that out when I get there. So obviously to get to know the exterior, but don't tell me about the interior. I'll figure that out when I get there. Don't tell me there's seven men and 10 women and 16 children. You tell me how many people you think are there, and I'll figure out what they are when I get their typeship. And we're just kind of coming up with contingency plans.

We wanted to prove to them the powers that be that we are a good option, that we know what we're doing. And even got to the point where President Obama said, I was never 100% convinced Ben Laden was there, but I was convinced you guys could go in and find out and come home. And so we trained on that and we tried to think of contingencies, try to brainstorm everything,

you know, what if the cars leave, what if we get squirters, who's doing what, coming up to this and then we would go back to the hotel or whatever we're staying at and somebody at the CIA had made a two scale model of Bin Laden's house. I'm talking to the... No, shit. And so we're talking about it. And we're training 12 hour days and talking about it every night and doing it over. Heal those fat, we mean we fastrope so much. I have severe tendonitis still

from just grabbing that dam rope. Almost to the point like, can we just simulate we fastrope, I know how to do it. I can fall. Yeah. But one night, one of the bosses said, all right, what's the worst thing that could happen? And the youngest guy in the room said,

the helicopter crashed in the front yard. and we're like, what the fuck? Why would you bring that karma here? And he goes, I don't know, shouldn't we talk about that for 30 seconds? So we did that, and then we went out west to a certain place, and we were even to a point where like I'm known for morale. I want to keep morale high, crack jokes, have fun.

But guys were joking around the table one night. I said, you guys realize this is a one-way mission. You should take this a little bit more seriously. We're not coming back from this one. And yeah, they're like, yeah, yeah, shit. And so we get out there, though. And they brought us into the movie Zero Dark 30 kind of plays it right where the seals walk in,

they see those helicopters. And I remember I started laughing, and they're like, what's so funny now? And I said, well, before I thought there was a 90% chance we're gonna die, but I didn't know they were sending us in on Transformers. Sorry. And that was kind of, and it's like I mean, and these things, someone designed it.

The pilots that came out, they gave us the four best pilots in the world, army pilots. They had never flown these things. And we trained on those for four days. And then we went one more time home to see our kids. And then we forward stage to Jolabat. Because if President Obama gives us the green light, we want to be right there.

So, and you know, you're still okay. And the reason they picked us is because we had a team already in Afghanistan. We had the National Mission Force, which is for a contingency. But if that team in Afghanistan stopped working and just started training, someone might notice. If the National Mission Force leaves training someone might notice if the national mission force leaves someone might notice This squadron is supposed to be leaving no one's gonna care that was us so It's better to be lucky than good

So we went over there there was a squadron over there and We came in to do the bin Laden raid and they knew it Can you a mat and they I'll tell you what I cannot say enough good about them. I would have been Fuck you guys We're seal team six and we're and you guys come to do it They could not have been more welcome welcoming to us, you know I mean they were pissed but they they were complete pros. Wow and and then we waited there We would play poker with those guys and they said we actually weren't fun to play poker with because like fuck it

I'm all into I'm gonna die tomorrow Just you know dark humor But then we did we did get the green light And we're gonna launch we have Saturday or Sunday to launch because that's our 48 hours of zero percent illumination and if we miss that window though We got to wait 30 days and we're going in zero percent And we got lucky because the rumor was that Ben Laden was going to leave on September 11th of that year to a new place. That's the rumor.

It couldn't be false, but that's what I heard. So we got the green light. We didn't launch on Saturday because of the correspondence dinner. And we figured if the entire cabinet and the president in the room with the entire press core and they all get up and leave, the press goes and was like, huh, what's that all about? Yeah. And I guess even Hillary Clinton was like, wait, we're not launching on Saturday because

of a, fuck those guys, we launched. Yeah. Which I, I mean, Hillary Clinton, you know, I never vote for her, but I'd take her in a foxhole. But then yeah, we did on, so we did on Sunday, we're going to go Sunday and it's 100% we're going and we went to we went into a hangar to get the final brief. We're going over everything that we're going to do and we we're good. We know the exterior, we know who's supposedly there, we talked to the Intel analyst. They're with us still in in J bed and Admiral Bill McCraven he he's given us the last speech and he said you know guys last night

I watched my favorite movie Hoosiers and the best part of that movie is when this team from Hickory Indiana makes it to the state championship and they walk into this gym and it's an arena and they're a star struck and they're just looking around and coach had one of the guys grab a tape measure and say what's the distance from the back of the rim of the free throw line. He said it's 15 feet coach. All right, get on his shoulders, get some. What's the distance from the hoop to the floor? And he said 10 feet coach and he goes, I'm sure you'll find these are the exact measurements in your gym in Hickory. This is just a bigger arena. And he goes, you guys do this every night. This is just a bigger arena. And then we were leaving. And I remember we went to zoom and said, Hey Admiral, you're so

fucking busy. I doubt you watched Hoosiers last night, but you were born to give us that speech right now. Yeah. And so then we left, we took a team picture and then we had a gear on and like you know, said, said goodbye to the guys that were there. And we actually, you know, we're going with the shooters to the first two birds. And instead of, instead of like giving them a fist pound, giving the guys hugs and it's like I see on the ground. And then we left, you do the last thing, take a piss. One of my concerns was how are we gonna pee on the way? I don't wanna get out and have to pee.

Someone came up with these, I don't know if they have another pry common. Those little diapers you unfold, you can pee in them. But I actually, I don't even trust these things. I'm peeing in a bottle and I'll throw it out. I actually kept the damn bottle of piss on my pocket the whole mission. I forgot about it. Pretty excited. I mean, to the point where we were, we were, we were given access to everything. Like, didn't even need to be approved for use yet. If it works, you can have it.

But we're now we're measured like we're trying to cut guys off for like, they're too heavy, these two guys don't carry that because certain pounds of fuel to get there. Because we don't have refuelable that. It was that calculated. We were trying to keep it to that 32 minutes on the ground. We had a dude come in, this, I don't remember what the hell he was trying to sell us, but he said, here's this box that it jams everything.

Like it jams cell, but like it can jam landlines, it jams this shit, and it weighs, and it's like the kilometer radius. And one of the guys goes, has it been tested in a helicopter? And he goes, hmm, no. and he goes, oh no. And he goes, I have a better idea. Can you invent something that's only 30 pounds?

It's the radius of this room and it jams bad ideas. That's a good issue. Anyway, so we went out there and we got in the birds, and then we took off and we left. And we had a 90- minute flight into his house. Now we actually had more birds behind us. There was actually a blue team guys in 47, it's Chinook's behind us, 45 minutes.

And then there was more on the border with Rangers. And then there was more. Oh wow. Because the word I got, I wasn't there. And this is some South side Chicago fucking politics. Was when they told President Obama our plan that like yeah, they're gonna get here. The first, if they get contact with the Pac-Mill

or the Pac Police, we're gonna hard point. We don't wanna get to shoot out with them because they're not our enemy. And then you can send someone to negotiate with the Pakistanis and pull them out and he goes, that's interesting. And then he looked at the chief of staff of the Air Force and said,

what do you need to rain hell on Pakistan? My guys are fucking surrendering to anybody. No shit. That's what I heard. And that's pretty cool. And that was, so this is a mission now where politics is out the window. And then you've got to figure, President Obama,

he's gonna lose reelection if we all die. And that not that that matters, but does to him. But he's making the fucking call because this is what we're gonna do. So we have birds behind us like if we need to get If we need a cure an IRF and a QRF we got our guys coming in and we're fucking we're fighting and we know I know we have Shit above us, but they didn't really tell us because we got enough on our plate like I'm assuming someone that's invisible has some bombs up there so we're flying in

90 minutes to get into Bin Laden's house. And we can get shot down now at any time. We don't know if this technology works. We don't know if the most high-speed Pakistani new guy is manning the radar system point in that way, and he'll shoot us down. And we can't even be mad at him, because we're invading. But worrying about that missile isn't going to stop it.

So if you're worrying about something that it doesn't stop worrying, you're wasting your energy. If we die, we die. And so I'm looking around at other guys in this bird, how are they handling it? And do just sleep. And I remember thinking,

you were asleep on the ride to Ben Laden's house. You have ice in your veins, man. That's just fucking insane. And I'm sitting next to Cairo, the dog, and then cheese, you wrote the book, no ordinary dog. They're back there, and Cairo's just, you know, being a good boy, and I was counting to keep,

I learned in Kosovo as a sniper to count when you got, when you're glassin' something, and you just count. Zero to a thousand, thousand to zero, and then change your cadence, keep your mind working, but keep focused. And, you know, we're like 90 minutes in, or 80 minutes into a 90 minute flight,

and we banked to the South, and I don't know how I remembered it, but I was counting five, fifty, six, five, fifty, seven. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a face that's coward and freedom will be defended. You know, politics, whatever, that's what George Bush said at 9-11, and I was like, shit, I'm going to keep saying that.

And it's like, wow, I'm on this mission, we're on this mission, we're going to fucking kill him. So we did another bank, and then the air crew guys open the door, and now we're looking out, it's not even, and that's something they don't get credit for. The air crew guys, they put their asses in those seats too, if we get shot down, they're dying as well. And their job was to keep the bird flying and open the fucking door. Okay, credit for. The air crew guys, they put their asses in those seats too. If we get shot down, they're dying as well. And their job was to keep the bird flying and open the fucking door. What if we couldn't figure out how to open the door? Something that simple.

You know how to do it? He opens it up. Now it's a, about a bad Pakistan as a resort town. And there's electricity. This is not a training area. This is not Afghanistan. This is some serious Navy SEAL shit we're about to do. So the perfect plan was, I was in the second bird,

the first bird's gonna go right in between the Lonshaus and the guest house, they're gonna fast rope everyone out. We're gonna insert a sniper, some snipers a dog, an interpreter, a machine gun, then my team's gonna go to the roof. We're gonna fast rope down onto the roof and then we're gonna figure out how to get to the balcony and basically that's I'm gonna fucking jump And I'm gonna shoot it out. There's probably a window there bin lines and the woman told me

Third floor bin line is in this house and that's what's gonna happen and then I went to shit because I guess there was an updraft there was the weather was different or something and the the pilot realized that if he If an inexperienced pilot would have tried to power it up and that would have flipped it or something. He explained that later and he said, the safest thing now, if I can pin it to the ground and put the tail on the fence, we could live. So he did that and he saved everyone's lives,

just making the access to it. And it was on purpose. And then our, so we took off to go to the roof, but our pilot, now the communications is kind of sketch here. Our pilot saw him do that, and he realized it, well, shit, if he can't hover, I'm not trying it up there.

So we just went back down. So all we know is we went up and we came down, and the pilots basically say, get out. And I remember putting my, my first foot came out, I'm looking up in La N Sous, and I remember thinking, fuck it, I guess we'll start the war from here. And I remember putting my, my first foot came out, I'm looking up in Laudan's house, and I remember thinking, fuck it, I guess we'll start the war from here. And I knew Dan Well, there's a wall,

because we trained so much, there's a door on the wall, north-east corner, which is off to my left. And so the breacher decided to go up and put a seven foot charge of C6 on it. So now because we're hitting this side, they're somewhere in there, I think, we're gonna go into the house this way, and we can just, we can go up with him.

He blasted the door, it opened like a tin can, and there's a brick wall behind it. So on the wall, there's a wall, and the preacher said, all right, failed, breaches, this is bad. He said, no, this is good. That's a fake door. Nobody does that. He's in there. So then we know there's another door over here, which is the car port, which we know opens because the car is going in and out. And we didn't know what happened.

We heard them saying dash one going around. But what they were saying was dash one going down. So we just gave him a courtesy. Hey, we're going to blast the car port. And they said, don't blast it. We'll open it. And the door opened and the thumb came out with a glove that I recognized. Last it will open it and the door opened and the thumb came out with a glove that I recognized And that now we're to point life where it doesn't matter Why you're here? You just are yeah, I tell football teams at all the time it doesn't matter why it's second and 15. It just is Times kicking let's move so we walk in It didn't make sense to me why they're in there. I saw the air crew standing there. I saw American flags, but different gear.

I remember thinking, who the fuck are these guys? Whatever. There's already gun fight, stuff's going on. Explosions, we go into the main house. There's guys going down the hallway, this is the first floor of the Londes house, and we're back into this room. And I'm like looking around for bombs. Like they're gonna blow this house up.

If anyone's gonna mart or himself, it's been loud. I don't see any, but I'm seeing guys knowing that they could blow up but it's not affecting them. They're doing their jobs and being proud of them. Like this is, do you guys are fucking cool? And the guy next to me in the room,

he whispered and he said, helicopter crashed. And I said, what helicopter? And I thought some of the birds behind us had crashed. But he said, bro, our helicopter crashed in the front yard, you walked right past it. Holy shit. And it's like, okay, that makes no sense.

Let's take a break. Let's take a break. Yeah. I hope you're enjoying the Sean Ryan show. Let me take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our Patreon community receives exclusive behind-the-scenes content from the Sean Ryan show. As well, is an extensive library of Vigilance Elite videos not seen anywhere else. I also engage in live video chat with tier 3 members once in a month where we discuss a variety of topics.

Vigilance Elite Patreon is what makes the Sean Ryan show possible. Thank you for listening, thank you for your support, and head over to patreon.com Slash Vigilance Elite and get your subscription today. and get your subscription today. So I'm watching guys do their jobs, even though we're in, this is an extremely high threat situation. And dudes are dealing with problems, but what I remember seeing,

the guy just told me the helicopter crashed, I'm like what helicopter crashed? And I thought one of the other heels had been shot down. And he goes, bro, our helicopter crash in the front yard. You walked right past it. And I remember just sort of trying to justify my, I'm like, well, I must have been looking this way because that's been Laud's house.

But I'm watching dudes run from different rooms to grab kids that have been separated from their families to bring them back to their family. So those kids would not be as afraid as they are right now. And I remember thinking, you know, being proud of the guys, but then thinking that is what the good guys do. Yeah. Al Qaeda is not doing that when they come to our house. No. You're going to shoot it out. They're going to cut people's heads off. We do that because we're the good guys. And I'm sure you've seen it in combat. Yeah. But now we're in, we're on the first floor,

and then they reach the second to the second floor. The woman that found Ben Laden said, I don't know what it looks like inside, but there will be a stairwell going to the second floor and you will run into Khalid Ben Laden. And he's 20 years old, it's Ben Laden's son and that is his last line of defense. He will be armed on the stairwell.

And she was so badass, she said, here's the way she put it, if you can ace him, you get a shot at the big guy. And that's a cool brief right there for a badass. So she was right, and it turns out, she was a 100% right on every single person in and out of the house. That means she nailed it.

But when we get to the stairwell, and it comes up, it comes back. So the stairs go this way, there's a little area, and then it comes this way, and Khalid was there, and he jumped behind a banister. And I'm at this point now,

because I had the front row seat to the coolest mission in modern history. I'm just watching cool guys, right? And they're going up the stairs, and he jumps back, and I'm a certain amount of guys back. And normally in an urban setting, if work fighting up, I will pull guys out. I only want a certain amount of guys on there just to avoid uncertain, I'm an unnecessary death if he starts dropping shit on us like grenades and whatnot or takes a shot down

the stairs. But I figure we're going to die anyway, so I want to see how this goes down. And I understand, I don't have a shot. And now we're back to being quiet and it's dark. And the point man said something like, and I'm going to fuck this up, it was something like Khalid, Irf Aidek, Khalid Delta, Russia, something like that, but it was basically come here, come here in two different languages that he knew Khalid spoke Which I think is incredible because I would have thought he would append it try to get a shot off and Khalid simply got confused And he leaned over the thing and went what?

No, shit, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen in combat. How tactically savvy are you to think of doing that? That is the coolest thing I've ever seen in combat. How tactically savvy are you to think of doing that? Like, well, he doesn't know. We might be Pakistanis here to move him. He doesn't know. I'll just call him out. And he did. So he's armed perfectly within his rules of engagement.

We step around him. We go up to the last, this is the second deck, the last set of stairs. And I moved from this point from like eight, the eighth guy to the second guy, because everyone else went to the right and to the left, because they're gonna, you wanna clear obviously the area before you move on,

but now we're down to two, and we're pointing at the last set of stairs. And above it, there was a curtain. It looked kind of like a shower curtain, but it was like a green olive drab type thing. And we can see there's sort of backlit, there's people moving. And we assume those are the suicide bombers,

but Ben Laden's in there. And the guy in front of me took a shot before we got there, and they're moving around, and I'm the two man, and my job as the two man is to hold him and wait. His job is to simply look forward. Don't drop security, and I got you, and through effective communication, when it's your time to go, I will squeeze you, it's on. I'm just telling you and through effective communication when it's your time to go I will squeeze you it's on. I'm just

telling you through effective communication we have enough guys but we don't have enough guys. We're out of guys. It's two of us. And I'm wait I want I want four more I'll take two but he starts saying we gotta go. Come on we gotta go. He doesn't know it's me. he knows it's one of his guys. And what he's saying is, those are basically suggesting those are the suicide bombers, but if we go right now, we can beat him.

And I remember taking a deep breath and it wasn't, it was, no by no means bravery on my part. It was more of a, okay, we're gonna blow up now and I'm tired of thinking about it, let's fucking get over with. So I get in the squeeze and he goes up and he moves the curtain and there are,

there are three people standing there. He didn't have, even enough time, he just jumped on him. How he doesn't have a medal of honor is beyond me. He jumped on the grenade so the guy behind him can get the shot. Damn. And simply because he went this way, I turned this way. And standing three feet in front of me

is a son of a lad and he's got his hands on a mall, his wife's shoulders. And I don't know what he's doing. He's not surrendering. He's maneuvering somehow. His hands are on her. And I remember thinking he's taller than I thought. He's skinnier than I thought

So you knew it was him right away turn corner. Yep, his beard is gray He's not surrendering. He's got to have a suicide belt. So I shot him twice when he was standing up I shot him again on the floor and then I moved a mall out of the way so I can he I can hear been lying taking his last breath He's when I shot him he fell to the foot of the bed. We're just shooting him. I shot him in the face three times. I moved him all, and his two-year-old son is now standing there, and this is the humanity of everything. This kid has got nothing to do with this. I'm a father, and I picked him up, and I moved him,

and I moved him to the back of the bed, and she'd been shot, and I turn around, and I kind of froze, and I'm okay, other Navy SEALs are not coming in there. A lot of guys are in there, and one of my guys came up to me, and he said, are you good? And I said, no, no, what are we supposed to do now? And he said, now we find the computers. We do this every night, hundreds of times, and I said, yeah, no. What are we supposed to do now? And he said, now we find the computers. We do this every night, hundreds of times.

And I said, yeah, you're right. I'm back, holy shit. And he said to me, yeah, you just killed Osama bin Laden. Your life just changed. Get the fucking work. And so we did. They started, we actually took, we do have pictures of bin Laden. And it's actually Mike Gloves in there,

which putting his head together for the picture dumping water on him. And like, I think the pictures haven't been released because it's one of those things where you, you really don't need to know how justice looks when it's served. It just, it just is. So those pics on the internet? No, they're fake. It's split from, he's split from here to here. Okay. I mean, he got hit three times with it. I'm shooting 77 great hollow point at three feet. Oh. It's a devastating. Yeah. And so they're dressing him up.

Guys are doing SSC and I went down to the sensitive site exploitation, finding Intel. I went down to the second floor. I had two other dudes with me and we're going through. Now we found these huge offices with, I'm talking computers, hard drives, like the old school towers.

I grew, pulling big kit bags from underneath the bed and we're opening them and I thought it was Freeze-dried steaks and it's like wow these guys are in there for the long haul This is and it's like wait a minute. No, this is raw opium They're trying to make money off these and so we're finding all that shit And we were we were finding so much stuff from from pictures to hard to hard drive, like cracking those open pull in the hard drives, CDs, papers, handwritten letters, and we're just shoving it into these. It was to the point where we wanted, you know, we wanted 32 minutes on the floor. I think we were there for 47. And now it's like, okay, come on, we now let's, let's, let's get the fuck out of here. I went back upstairs. I actually carried, I helped two, three other

seals carry. We carried bin Laden down all the stairs, we just came up. And I remember yelling at guys, guys, fuck them, we're leaving, get out, we're figuring this out. Outside, I think the ground force commander coordinated away for another bird to come in to get us. We're gonna put him on our bird, the first team going on on that, they're gonna go refuel with another bird on a mount top. We went out with the body, we actually sat it down next to the lead sniper from the Captain Phillips raid

and said, here's your guy and he looked at and he goes, you got to be shit in me. No, we got him. He goes, let's fucking leave. So they took off with them. We went around to the other, I think it's to the east side of the compound. We're calling in 47, but we don't, like I said, we don't have our CCTV guys. So we're calling it in and we're rusty. Yeah. And I remember seeing the,

there's a guy on Twitter who was tweeting. He was live tweeting, why would they be doing helicopter operations on a Sunday or some weird shit? And I remember seeing him thinking, if we were in Iraq, I'd blast this dude because he's outside of a target with a phone, but we're in fact, they have no fucking idea that we're here. So then we're calling this bird in and I remember we're saying, hey, so we have to blow

up the bird inside. We're going to leave it. We're blowing it up. But I asked someone, what what what was the the time? Fuse on that thing and they're like well, I'm like holy shit aboard We had a we had to actually call off the the bird coming in to get us because we were gonna blow it out of the sky So they were bored and turned then the fucking thing blew up like we almost blew our own helicopter out of the sky then they came back in we get on that thing

and then we take off. And now we're leaving. Now, on a mission where we're supposed to die, but now we're leaving. And if we can live for another 90 minutes, if we can cross the border to Afghanistan, we get to see our kids again. We get to live another 50 years.

But they know they got to know we're here and they can shoot us down probably with an F-16 that we sold them, the packies. But worrying about that is not going to stop it, so I'm not going to worry. So we're sitting there in this bird. I have the lead sniper from the cat and Phillips raid. There was a weird thing with jealousy when this sniper initiated the fire because sometimes when people are so close of doing something, they get angry.

And they were giving him a lot of shit talking about firing. And I remember saying to him at work after the Phillips raid, hey man, don't pay attention to that shit. You're a fucking hero. Don't you ever forget it. Take a copenhagen from me.

Take mine. You're a hero. And I would remind him that he was going through a really rough time. We're sitting on this bird flying out and I'm trying to absorb what the fuck just happened and I see this copenhagen coming in front of my nods and he said, take one of mine.

Now you know what it feels like to be a fucking hero. Which is just insane. A dude next to me from the other squad or in Blue Squad that was there, he's from New York and he asked a question that every seal asked when they found out Ben Laden was dead. He said, who got him? And I said, I think I did.

And he said, on behalf of my family, thank you. So now it's deep and we gotta, you know, can't worry about the shit. So we just start our watches and so we're counting. We gotta live the 90 minutes, but it's deep and we gotta, you know, can't worry about the shit, so we just start our watches and so we're counting. Gotta live the 90 minutes, but it's been 10 minutes. Now it's been 20 minutes, now it's been 30 minutes, and now it's 40 minutes, 50 minutes. We gotta get to 90 minutes, but it's been 60 minutes.

Then I start thinking about like all the weird sports analogies, like watching a no hititter at the top of this seventh at Fenway Park. Like I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to jinx it, you know, but it's been 70. Now it's been 80 minutes. Then I start thinking about one of the greatest games I've ever played when the Team USA hockey team beat the Russians in Lake Placid. A team they're not supposed to beat, but now they're winning four to three. And you can hear the crowd counting down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6.

We got to 85 minutes into the flight and the pilot came over the radio and just as cool as ever said, all right, gentlemen, for the first time in your life, you're going to be happy to hear this. Welcome to Afghanistan. So, yeah, so I mean, and that now it's like, holy shit, we did it. We land, now the other bird had to go to a mountain top and refuel there in the other stealth bird with another 47, they're still coming back and so it's like, okay, come on guys, they land.

And like, no one's hurt. And then Bin Laden's over here. The guy that was in front of me to go up the stairs into into bin Laden's room Where like hey man you and I need to talk and we go over into the corner and he's like what the fuck happened on that stairwell? I'm like It was just down to us. I don't know. I mean that and then he looks over to the the woman that found bin Laden said Well, there she is You got to go give her, and you own this. It's like, yeah, you're right.

And I walked over to her, and I pulled the magazine out of my gun, I jacked the last round out, and I said, do you have room for this in your backpack? And she said, I think I do. And then I said, well, we have something to show you. Now, in the movie Zero Dark 30, they brought the woman over to Bin Laden's body, and it was like a moment of pause,

and they opened it, she looked, and she was all thoughtful and she cried and left. That's not at all what happened. Here's what happened. I gave her the magnum and said we have something to show you. Now, it starts to, again, moments were sinking in but it's like, you know what, this is historic. This will be in history books. You know, she found him though. She's the reason this happened. She gave up her life for this. She doesn't have a husband, she doesn't have kids, and she's been working on this 20 hours a day for years. And then I'm like, you know, this is like, this could go down with Evil Gima. But then as being the

arrogant lady, she's like, put the pressure on myself myself shit. I got to think of something cool to say. So we're walking over to the body and I thought this would have been good enough. I looked down and I said, is that your guy? And she looked down for a second one. I guess I'm out of a fucking job. And left. You got to be shit. Right.

At that. Yeah. So then we McCraven was there he actually he there now there when the process of we do have some DNA That's we got a lot of pictures he was talking to to the White House and He had one of our snipers laid on next to him because our sniper was six two Our tallest guy was six two and He said yeah, I just I just had one of our tallest guys lay down and he's shorter than I think

it's him in the president says, let me get this straight. You can blow up one of our $200 million helicopters, but you can't afford a 99 cent tape measure. So they do have to climb up to, I remember Craven just, we're standing there. He came up to me and he kind of just put, he didn't say anything, but just put his hand on my shoulder like this. And it was like a, just a fucking moment. Went up to Bobram. I mean, everyone, we're still looking around at each other.

Now we got everything laid out. The smart, Bin Laden's body is laying there. We're laying out all the stuff in order of which room, which floor, which building. And they're going through it. There's a dude, a dude in DNA test, and we're just kind of standing around the army brought in these, these, those big green tubs full of breakfast sandwiches. And we have the news on.

There's a big TV on. And you can hear it kind of, you can hear it building up like they know what's happening. Heraldos out there with people in front of the White House. And our guys are on the phone with the White House, and they're just trying to, the President wants a full count. How many were wounded? How many are killed? What's the total? And we're just standing there. There have been lines right here.

And I remember everything quiet down. The President is on TV with a red tie walking down red carpet. Came up very presidential to the podium and said tonight I can report to the American people and to the world the United States conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. I hear the president of the United States say Osama bin Laden. I look at Osama bin Laden and I thought how in the world did I get here from Buteman Tana. Damn dude. And that's it and then here's where it gets cool. I mean just come rotary things like well you know we should shower up because we're flying home and I could use a drink. Where the fucking sea beast? You're gonna find everything you're gonna find showers.

You're gonna find pizza. You're gonna find beer everything, you're going to find showers, you're going to find pizza, you're going to find beer and prize and whiskey. So we went over there and it was, you know, that's when it started to get a little awkward because we, they do have the internet over there, we're getting everything, blood seal team six, seal team six, been a lot. You know, and then that's, it gets, this is going to be bad. But for now, it's going to be good. And actually, the ground force command when we went back, the ground force commander who is probably the smartest guy I've ever met. Photographic memory, he could operate on an hour, sleep a night and be fine. And he's by the book, but he pulled the appointment and me into a room and he poured

us a shot and we all took a shot together and he's a great job boys. We hop on a plane, we leave. shot and we all took a shot together and it's a great job boys. We hop on a plane, we leave. Pop and Ambien, which you know was awesome and we slept at Virginia Beach, we landed there and then it was almost like a scene where there were people waiting for us. Other seals were there with a couple buses, Coolers full of beer and cheers and high fives and then we went to the command and and that was that was it and I like, we're gonna be the best friends in the world forever. Man, that's fucking. That's insane.

Wow. I need to tell a part that I didn't, you can edit in. If you don't mind, I'm just gonna hit it. Okay. So we're having this conversation when I asked what helicopter crashed and he said, dude, our helicopter crashed in the front yard. Because I thought it was something else.

As we're having this conversation, one of our snipers was running around the compound with Cairo and his job was to circle it twice to make sure no one's squirted, ran out of the building. And when we're having this conversation inside, he ran into the point where the pilot had the tail on the fence.

So he's looking up and sees this tail. He didn't know they crashed either. And he came over the radio and said, guys inside, be on alert, they are ready for us. They have a training mock-up of our super-secret helicopter in the front yard. And there was a weird silence and the boss came over the radio and goes, no jackass, that's ours because we crashed. And he said, he said over the radio, yeah, that makes a lot more sense in this shit.

I was just saying, carry on. Holy shit. Yeah, we did that out. Damn. Yeah, we got to Virginia Beach, so and then it just turned into, as opposed to being in the shadows, everybody wants to come down and meet us. They want to fly us places to meet us. The Secretary of Defense came down,

and it started to suck because there were dudes that had been at Red Squadron for 16 years that moved on to operations, and then they wouldn't let them in the debrief with the Secretary of Defense. And it's just like, there's some bad bloods going to start because of this shit. And you know, and a lot of guys work, a lot of guys do want to be the 30-year Navy SEAL

who retires and then lives in Coronado undercover forever. And they kind of got that violated. Yeah. I mean, one of the funny stories though is, like I was mentioning earlier, when the first question people asked was who got them and they would say Nisro got them and I guess the most common answer was how fuck we're never gonna hear the end of this damn dude that's um man that's an awesome fucking fucking I don't even know what to say yeah I mean it mean, it's what it's like it's like it was written that way or scripted

It's just the way it worked Great team the pilots that got us in and out. I mean that takes balls of fly I should know if that far in a pack stand to pick up guys that are already in gun fights with al-Qaeda And I think we killed um like three of the top four that night No, if we had we did within the next few days and there was like like 11 other ops that J.S.O.K. did that night in Afghanistan. Like, it was a fucking... I mean, it was part of... Being part of something great and it couldn't be more proud.

That's insane. Yeah. That's insane. Let's take a quick break. Yeah. That was heavy. Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute,

head over to iTunes and leave The Sean Ryan show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan show review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, so we just covered the whole raid. Everything that happened. There's a lot of conspiracies out there.

A whole lot of conspiracies out there, a whole lot of conspiracies out there on whether it was double. But why did they dump the body into the ocean? They had told us that's what's going to happen even before we left. And I remember we were asking, why is that? You're going to dump them in the ocean. And they said, well, because we don't want to shrine to him where people can worship. And I remember explaining to them, you don't understand Sunni Islam.

You don't...there is one God. You worship a lot. You do not false prophets. They would not do that to bin Laden. You don't worship him because they don't believe in that shit. You can do something else with him, but they were convinced they wanted to do that. There are pictures of them that I've heard are in cabinets at Langley. I don't know, but yeah, all I know is we handed him over to some senior guys from the army and they flew him to the USS Vincennes.

I believe I said that right. It could be wrong, but it's that ship. And they have the coordinates of where they dropped him, and I didn't see it. I believe it. I mean, I know he's dead. I know we have pictures. I wish they were to they dropped them and I didn't see it. I believe it. I mean I know he's dead. I know we have pictures. I wish they'd release them but I didn't see it. So you know as far as I know he could be freeze-dried somewhere too. I mean I don't know. I said they told you that before you even went on a raid that okay we're gonna dump them in the ocean. Yes. Why would they even I don't know I mean I had a lot of different options

for him but that was it. That was that's going to happen. Just bring them out. And I mean, they they labeled it. They did the test. They have the test, but they someone took the body away and then we never saw it again. Interesting. Yeah. It is. If they ever done that with anybody else, I'm not as far as I know, but yeah, I've never heard it. Yeah. They were saying they brought them to that ship They gave them a proper burial and then they threw them over and no one was allowed to watch I guess a proper burial Well proper it let's see As far as getting thrown over the side of a ship

Kick him off the fucking fan tail. That's about it But yeah, they've wrote down the coordinates and they apparently marked the pad eye on the ship, which means whatever, but yeah. And there were guys that said they were on the ship that they know what happened, but I don't, I mean, I've never seen footage of it, so I mean, I can understand, too, the conspiracies around it. Like why, you know.

I mean, it's definitely not. There's no doubt about that. Yeah. You know? Like I said, there's not going to be worshipers for him. And even now with that, it kind of is the mystique of did they really get him, type shit. Yeah.

No. So when did you decide you were going to come out and say you're the shooter? I didn't do it at first but my name did go around really quickly in Virginia Beach and Coronado and in DC in New York because people just know people around there and I was getting calls that the next night from people saying hey man tell us what happened all this chill like that. You know and there was a people kind of new and and and they would single me out

in in different briefs. I really didn't care for that because I've always said it's a team effort. I did, it's not me guys, it's a, look at the pilots, thank them because of the smart guys, thank the Intel officers that found them. And then it's just started to get, started to get awkward. I decided, you know, it's, I might move on. And then we went from the best time in our career to the worst time because soon after,

on August 6th, on August 7th, we shot down, we lost 31 Americans. And we went from planning missions to planning funerals. And it's like, you know what, it's time to leave. I need to, I wanna see my kids get married. But because we lost so many guys at gold, we need to backfill, so I'm going to do one more deployment.

So I actually left Red Squadron and went to Silver Squadron to go immediately to Afghanistan, because my entire point was I came in through the front door and I'm going to leave through the front door. I'm going to do one more deployment to prove you got, you know, I'm not in this for the fame. I'm not trying, I'm not writing a book. There was rumors that I'm writing a book like someone actually pulled me aside and said one of one of my officers I said I heard you just got a 17 million dollar advance to write a book and I said well

I don't think you know how books work because you don't get a 17 million dollar advance unless you're a president But yeah, but that there was just you know rumors flying around and all this shit I did go to Afghanistan and I extended. And I got out in August of 2012. And then I started working. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what the hell I was qualified for. No degree.

I started working in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill with different people. And I met a Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney from New York. And she said, you know, you should probably donate something to an online 9-11 memorial. And I did because it's, if you haven't been to the memorial, you got to go. It's insane. It's in chronological order of what happened on 9-11. And at the end, I anonymously donated my shirt with an American flag just so people could see this shirt was in the room with Ben Laden. The CIA analyst donated a coin that she had and it's kind of there. But when I donated it, I went into a room where there

were 30 some people. I didn't realize I was going to be speaking right then. They had all lost someone in the towers. And I'm up on stage and I, this is the first time in public. I told the story and to see their responses to crying in their hands, you know, wanting to give me a hug. And they were saying that there's never going to be closure, but this helps with the healing we can put a face with what happened. Because like we just said, we buried him and see you don't really know, but I'm telling you what happened because I was there. And I said, I actually had a film crew there to document me donating its for his historical reasons. But I was like, if I can, if I can help 30 people with the

healing, I can help thousands. If I tell the story and then it was a tough decision. But I, I, I got my story approved, the only one approved through the Pentagon. And, and I, and I came up with a story just, you know, I've assumed risk before and I'll do it again. It's worth it. Yeah. So you went to silver after that. I did. What were you guys doing over there?

Another winter deployment to Afghanistan. Okay. I actually, Ben Laden wasn't the last guy I killed with that gun. No, she just kept it with me. Actually, we did, I think my last mission was my very first L ambush Which I think is cool because yeah, well when we were trying to sell it because you're selling it to staff officers Basically that if I don't know how they don't know we saw this this truck would leave this place go around a mountain and drive through the snow and wait to

ambush go around a mountain and drive through the snow and wait to ambush Americans. And they did it like on Tuesday and Intel saw them and then they did it on Wednesday and then they did it again on Thursday but they're not finding anybody and my troop chief and I were like, hey, if they do this on Friday, the day of prayer, they're definitely doing it on a Saturday.

So we came up with a plan like, well, we'll just insert where they drive, get behind these rocks rocks put snipers up And we're selling it to him and then and we sold to this army officer like then we're gonna set up an L ambush and the officer said what's an L ambush and I said sir an L ambush is the second thing they teach you in the army right after that Iraq this is an L ambush and He goes well who invented it?

And I said, I think Sun-Zoo invented the art of war. And he goes, well, I said, well, we're going to set up an L. I'm going to form a line of death. I'll be in the middle here. And when he's coming at me, I'm going to stop him. And he goes, what if he doesn't stop? I said, I'm going to shoot him. Like, this is what planet are you on stop? I said, I'm gonna shoot him.

What planet are you on? Wow. So we did, we set it up and naturally, like the ISR's watched them. They can't get their car started, and you know, because it's Murphy's Law. And so we're literally smoking cigars, the sun's up, and we're waiting for this dude to drive around. No one's gonna be there.

And we kept it simple. Like ISR's gonna tell us green light, yellow light, red light. That's when you jump out and you stop them. And it's in the white open area. And sure enough they're coming. They finally got the car started. Green light, yellow light, red light. We hop out. And then I'm looking at this guy. And he's driving this a car, not even a truck. And I think this is the first words he ever spoke in English where he put it in reverse. And he goes, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck and the the cars peeling out and I'm looking at this dude and there's a you know two to three dudes at the back and I'm like hey man get out of the car get out of the

car you need to get out of the car because we got snipers and one dude hopped out to go to the trunk this guy's head blasted off and then it turned into a shootout and we killed all of them and it's like well that's an L an L.A.I.M. Bush, that was my last mission. Has an ACO. And then I got out and then, you know, transition out and learn, you gotta learn that there's a lot of life after the military. Military is unique because you can get in an 18

and retire at 38 and 38. You got a lot of life, I hope, left in you. And then that's when the real work starts. What do we do now? What was it like getting out? I mean, you killed the most one in bed and the fucking history of the world. Everybody wants to meet you.

Everybody wants something from you. Everybody wants to hear the story. I mean, there couldn't have been any time for just you and... No, there's not now, too. And you know, I'll get shut on the internet to like, why, uh, I am Rob O'Neill, I haven't talked about Bin Laden for five minutes. It's like, yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, stop asking. And I'll stop saying it. You gotta figure, every person I ever meet wants to hear that story. They want to know what happened. And that's fine. That's great. I mean, if I helped this country and our cause,

whatever that was, then I mean, obviously, what that was, I'll do it. And it's always in person, it's a good thing. I mean, the only issue I have in person is we'll be at an airport bar and someone will recognize me and want to do a shot. I'm like, yeah, cool. And it's, but someone else will see me.

And they want a shot. And then, you know, all of a sudden, it's like, okay, you 10 guys had a shot. I had 10 shots. It's a bad. Damn. But no, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it was uncharted territory because, you know, even,

I was talking to different agents about speaking. And he said, I'm trying to figure out, you know, it's trying to price the guy that killed Hitler. And I'm like, well, Hitler killed himself and he goes exactly. And so it's just, you know, everything's been new. And I didn't know what first, what's gonna happen. I don't know now what's gonna happen.

But, you know, I mean, it's been, people have been good. Yeah. I mean, it created a lot of animosity, you know, and obviously throughout the community. And, you know, we kind of talked a little about that, a little bit off camera, but how are you, because there's a lot of hate in this community.

Oh, there's a lot of hate. No, it's tough at first because you want to be light, and your reputation means everything. But then you got to realize that, you know, what someone thinks about you is none of your business. Stop wasting the negative energy on what they're thinking of you. And if they're pissed, there's nothing I can do about it. If they ever want to work with me, I'll work with them. That's fine. If you want help, ask, I'll help. But if you're just hating, then you know, take it somewhere else. I mean, there's a point

where you just got to stop caring. I don't care. But you know, and it's like, there's even been points where they're like, well, you know, we hear you didn't to stop caring. I don't care. Yeah. But, you know, and it's like, there's even been points where they're like, well, you know, we hear you didn't kill the lot and I'm like, some days I wish I didn't. I'm just telling you what happened. Yeah. How long did it take you to get to that point? Oh, a couple of years. Yeah, I bet.

Well, because all you know, all you know in the SEAL teams is the SEAL teams. And you're in that bubble. I mean, even when you, you know, you know other SEALs seals and you know the bartenders and everyone around you is doing the same shit. I mean, as far as work and, and, you know, I found myself in a spot where I'm just in a spot where anyone could have done it. I just happened to turn the corner and it's just, um, I mean, it sucks. You know, you want to be like, but there comes a point where what you worry about is, isn't going to stop it. So, know, you want to be like, but there comes a point where what you worry about isn't gonna stop it So yeah get on with it

Well, I think the reason I'm asking is I think a lot of guys need to hear that because you know, I don't I don't fucking care I'll just say whatever something I know that's you know, the problem the nicest thing I've But it's it's it's in this community, you know, it seems like we like I said we talked about this earlier But I want other guys that are coming out to hear this shit is you know And this community everybody likes each other until you're doing better than they are And then you're the fucking hate target the target and and you know, there's I mean it's 2022 now guys are getting out with full careers, you know, first time ever where guys have been in combat their entire career, they're going to get out, they're going to write books,

they're going to start companies, and they're going to get a lot of hate from the guys that are in. And it seems like as soon as you come out, public with anything, it's like, use your resume, there's nothing wrong with that. And my, one of my first days at Red Squad, and the CEO of Red Squad, and said, you know, when we got out, we could all be millionaires, we could take over the world, but we're never gonna. CEO of Red Squad and said, you know, when we got out, we could all be millionaires. We could take over the world, but we're never gonna. Cause he recognized it as well, just the animos, for some reason.

Like everyone's successful, but then they hate success. Yeah. I mean, I don't get it. I mean, it bothered me for a while, but I'm not losing sleep over right now. Well, that's good. Yeah, that's good. But, but, yeah, let's talk about what you're doing now.

Yeah, so I transitioned out of the military. And what I realized is that I didn't know what to do. I had no idea, am I going to sell sunglasses or t-shirts, am I going to do whatever. But I learned that a lot of people want the traits that we have. As Navy SEALs, as special operators, effective communication, problem solving.

The ability to have the difficult decision with people to run a team, to promote who needs to be in fire, who needs to be, so I started a foundation, it was first called your Grateful Nation, but now it's called Special Operators Transition Foundation, and it just helps special operators find out where they wanna live, what industry they wanna be in. Because I've had employers now,

with some of the products coming out of universities, they don't want that shit. They said, give me one of these guys, men or women, and I'll teach them how to do this job. I want that attitude in the boardroom. So I've done that transition foundation, and then I got myself into public speaking. I've been on TV, analyzing different stuff. I worked for Fox News for quite a while.

I started an apparel company, RJO apparel, stuff like a front-tour enemy, which to me kind of summarizes everything. Front towards your problem. Yeah. And on the guess what's in the back, the back. Like even the hoodies we have is this front-tour enemy and the back says back. It is a it's not a hoodie. It's it's an instruction manual on how to wear a hoodie. So you know we did that. I'm involved with a beer company now called Arm Forces Brewing Company, which is veteran-owned, me and a couple of seals, McTeams and Ray CashCare. We have different beer for different branches, Army. We actually, for Army Navy game, we had beat army and beat Navy cans. We sold out at the Army Navy game. We're getting distribution in 50 states. Just because it's cool and it's a beer and it's for veterans. Not just for veterans, but for Americans.

Veteran owned for American. And Americans like beer and they like veterans. So anything like that, just entrepreneur stuff. Like I said, if you know, the more special operators, more Navy's heels, I can work with the better because we're going to do better. And it's just, it is what you make it. I mean, you can sit at home and feel sorry for yourself or you can go do it. Yeah, that's, that's, that's for damn sure. So what about the new book, the way forward. The Way Forward I wrote with Dakota Meyer, who was a Medal of Honor recipient, Marine Gangegal Valley,

one of the worst fights I've ever heard. His story is incredible, I'm not even gonna tell it. Read the book, it's amazing. He's similar to me shooting that guy in the room. He got in a fight where he's rescuing his entire team guy, and he's pulling him out, and he got hit in the back back a butt stroke from a Taliban guy And he actually got into a fist fight to the death with a dude

To the point where he was getting choked out and I don't know if he faked being choked out But he ended up turning around he shot him with a 40 mic mic Did you know he didn't it didn't arm, but it hit him and then he ended up killing this guy with a rock Oh, yeah, and it's the point. And again, I don't want to tell his story, but it's like he says, there's a point in a man's life where you're looking him in the eyes and you both know it's coming.

And then the books called The Way Forward because it's not what. We did all this fight and we did all this killing. You start to question why we're killing these people and what's the way forward. Everything from anxiety to abusing the bottle to suicides, what do we do next? And I think, you know, everyone, everyone has what do we do now? We talked about the CEOs that have their first day, what next. And that's what it's about. Dakota's awesome. But again, with the animosity, like,

he's got stories where he's got, I stories where I thought the Marines were the tightest group. That's what I think. And he's got in the middle of honor physically ripped off of his neck at a Marine Corbal. You got to be shitting me. And so it kind of addresses the, what the fuck guys? So I mean, it's a great book. The stories are incredible because I talk about everything from,

it's the transition from the military to the adventures that I get into. The story about my wedding that Kid Rock is in, how we lost the wedding rings, and I had to get my buddy shorty to find them, and how he, I had brand new security at, I mean, a church in, in, in Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and I hired local cops to be security, except some celebrities there, like I said, kid rock was there. And I don't know who's gonna show up because it's a public wedding. This guy found the rings.

And what I told these cops was what you got to look for is their hands. And especially if a vehicle screams up. My buddy was screaming up to the thing after he found the rings, hops out, reaches for the rings out of his pocket, he's getting drawn down on... Pfft! By these cops and just sprints and hands me the rings. And then it goes on to other Kentucky Derby stuff.

But the one story I have in the way forward is, I'm not gonna ruin it at all, but it's a hunting story. With me, some guys I grew up with, my father, my nephew, my brother, and some Boston police officers. And I've been called out more on that story being bullshit than they've been law and rape. Oh shit.

The story's hilarious. What's your... What's your... Well, the way it started, I don't want to ruin the book, but I brought my brother with me. My brother's a DJ, a morning show DJ. He's not a hunter at all. Never been a hunter.

But I brought him out to the powder river in Eastern Montana, which has some of the best hunting in the world. And we're gonna split up. I sent my brother Tom with my buddy Smooth, and they're gonna go this way. What I didn't realize at the time was Smooth is a former army guy. He loves to hunt. Like he's he's hiking, Tom, he's not.

He doesn't like to do that shit. So he's humping up this hill. We're on the other side. I got some of the Boston police guys there. And another truck went up looking for elk. And I guess my brother was lagging a little bit far back. My buddy Smooth said, you know what, you stay here, I'll keep you and I shot.

I'm gonna keep walking up. And I almost said my brother Tommy started roasting a bowl. He comes back, my buddy, smooth comes back cause what the fuck are you doing? And he goes, what do you want, son? And he goes, what about the deer? And he goes, fuck the deer, I didn't bring enough of the deer. So, they're doing this.

I'm on one end and we're trying to set up another ambush. We have radios which is totally illegal. Now my buddy Swift and Ed are in a truck driving up. On the way out here, they had stopped at a gas station and Ed decided to buy a Rubin and a gas station that had probably been under the heat lamp for a solid three days, not a good idea. So we got these radios, he immediately got some

really bad diarrhea and I hear over the radio, oh my god Ed just shot himself. And I said what, he shot himself and he goes no Ed just shit himself And I'm like well how bad is it and he goes pretty bad. He filled his socks They're driving down my buddy shit is passed my brothers getting high I'm up here. I'm like look we're gonna call this a day get out of the mountains So we go back to the cabin, break out the whiskey, and I said the next day, we're gonna hunt the white tails

because we're in the mountains looking for Mule Deer and Elluk. Now we're just gonna go to the white tails, they're down by the river that's, you know, a couple hundred meters this way. Me and Smooth, they're gonna walk through here, we're gonna push these white tails out. They're gonna see the bend in the river, some will cross, but some will come to you.

So I sent my father down to one end with my nephew. And I said to my dad, Dad, here's the deal. All you got to do is nothing. Just sit here. Nothing. So we go out there. We put the cops out here. We're pushing them. We're now we're doing a sort of an ambush again. The deer come out there, run to the cops. They blast a few. We get in here. a buck comes past me, I shoot him. And then my buddy Smooth, who just couldn't get a break on this trip, she just monster, White Tail Buck, and I can see Smooth pointing at it,

and he just kind of puts a gun down and he yells, God dammit! And I said, what, why didn't you shoot? And he goes, the only two things I saw in the scope was that huge buck and you're fucking dad My dad got up and was just walking through there like a geriatric or whatever and He felt so bad. He my dad just goes next time just shoot So it's like I call whatever. No before we do this. Sorry. Tommy was worn out my brother, from the day before.

So when I was knocking on the door, I was like, come on, we're hunting. He's like, no, we aren't doing anything. I'm sleeping. So I go to my, to dear that I killed, we're gutting a man's smooth, and then Swift comes out on a four wheeler, obviously with Kurslites because it is seven in the morning.

And he said, hey, congratulations. Oh, Tommy got his buck too. And I said, no, that's not possible. Tommy's asleep and he goes, no, congratulations. Oh, Tommy got his buck too. And I said, no, that's not possible. Tommy's asleep and he goes, no, Tom shot a buck. And what turned out to happen is Swift was on the, we started this ambush, Swift saw these bucks running towards the thing. And he'd already filled his tag.

And so he's knocking on Tommy's door. He's like, Tommy, get out here. And so Tommy came out and then probably had joined his hand. And he said, well, shit, someone had an am a gun and he shot this buck that was coming, whatever. And we go, Tommy, how'd you shoot that buck? And he goes, he was coming right for us.

I was in my best pork's camouflage. Holy shit. And he goes, so what do I do now? And they go, now you put on orange and we go get the damn thing. Damn, damn. So yeah, but people said there's no way that happened but that's that's one of the stories well I'll link I'll link all the everything below you know for people to go by and hey man I don't you know we've been going for a quite a while so might as well end it but awesome that thanks for having me yeah thank you for coming and sharing for all those first-hand accounts. My pleasure. Best love to you. Appreciate it.

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So things are going well, I guess. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from Inside Washington and around the world You document in a very compelling way all of the positive things have come out of this but it also feels like we have this massive hangover No shouting or grandstanding principles over partisanship the bullwalk podcast wherever you listen wherever you listen.