Shawn Ryan Show - #88 Chris Miller - Former Secretary of Defense on Toppling the Taliban | Part 1

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Chris Miller is the former Secretary of Defense with a 27 year career in the United States Army. Throughout his career, he oversaw multiple special operations organizations, culminating with his command of the 2nd Battalion, 5th SFG(A). In Part One of three part series, we cover Miller's background spanning his impressive career. Miller breaks down one of his most important tasks–toppling the Taliban government and supporting the local resistance initiatives. This is an inside look at United States' strategy in the Global War on Terror. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://puretalk.com/ryan https://preparewithshawn.com https://blackbuffalo.com - USE CODE "SRS" Chris Miller Links: X / Twitter - https://twitter.com/cmillertigerhwk Book - https://www.amazon.com/Soldier-Secretary-Warnings-Battlefield-Dangerous/dp/1546002448 Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, what's up everybody? It's that time of the week again. And this week, I'm interviewing the former Secretary of Defense we cover his military background and some of the decisions that he had to make as Secretary of Defense. Ladies and gents, if you get anything out of these interviews, please like, comment, and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Some of you know we also have a Clips channel, Shamrion Clips. And if you can't do that, please head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you're

listening to this. Leave us a review. Tell us who you'd like to see on the show and how we're doing. Patreon. us review. Tell us who you'd like to see on the show and how we're doing. Patreon, thank you for all the support. It's because of you guys that the show rolls on. It really, really is. In fact, the team is expanding because of you new equipment, because of you, and we may have a potential new studio because of your support. So much love to you.

Thank you for being our top supporters. And without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Chris Miller to the Sean Ryan Show. Chris Miller, welcome to the show. I can't believe I had to write a book to get on your show, Sean. I can't believe I'm sitting across from a former sucked out. Please, please. I saw, I did my research, of course.

I've heard, obviously, knew about you. Did my research before, went through their 53 podcasts. You've got more in the can, I know, but 53 are posted. I didn't look at every single one of them, looked at a lot of them. Um, and like legendary figures, and I can't believe I'm here with you. Seriously, I'm just like kid from Iowa. I went here I am with on your podcast. Number 10 in the country, let's get this,

we're gonna get this thing juiced of like, what do you think? We get to two or three on this one. Hey, we'll see what happens. We are currently sitting at the number 10 slot on Spotify and out of all categories in the country. Congrats. Which I believe there's over 8 billion podcasts.

So we're doing everybody in their sister has a dog on podcast right now. And you're number 10. It's got to be really rewarding. I just, hey, can I go off script for a minute? Yeah, go ahead. Thanks. Thanks for being a veteran. Thanks for serving.

But more importantly, thank you for being an example of what veterans can do. Because a lot of us get out and the military is kind of beat into our head that we're only good at one thing being in the military. I think they do that on purpose actually. I think like if you're a business person, you'd like, I don't want to incentivize these people to leave after I spent millions of dollars on training them. I get them all this experience and this leadership. I send them all over the world and then they just get up and go away. So I think there's the incentive structures built to keep

people in for 20, 20 plus years. You had to encourage to leave the service after your initial couple tours and you're showing people that veterans, like, hey, you can do things other than the old, oh, I'll go be a contractor for a booze island. Oh, I'll go, you know, work it, do security work and all that. You've done that, I know. And that's important. I think it's really important to know, like, the first job you get when you leave the service is not the job that you're going to have for the rest of your life.

And you know how we were raised like oh I went into the Navy, you went in the Navy, I went in the Army, and you stick with them, and they have one employer, right? That's not how the world works once you get out, so that first job is not the one that is going to be your last job. And you, my friend, have threaded the needle. I think Navy SEALs do it a heck of a lot better than the rest of us, but you, your journey is to me as an example of how talented veterans are and you're self-taught. Did you go to film school? Did I miss that in your resume?

Did you go to film school? No, I didn't. You didn't go to Columbia film school? Did I miss that in your resume? Did you go to film school? No, I didn't. You didn't go to Columbia? You didn't go to UCLA? They wouldn't let me in there. They will now. I went to a community college for a year. Well, I had a buddy. I got out. 2014 left left government. You know, I was enlisted in the Army in 1983 in the Army Reserve. 17 years old, got out of high school, wanted to serve, uncles had served, my dad had served. I was just like, I guess you served. I didn't know any better. You just served, right? What do you do now? I guess I joined the military. I was going to college too. So I went into the reserve, you know, one weekend a month, two weeks during the year. And did

that retired in 2014, going to details if you want a state and government, though, because I didn't know anything else and I needed a job. So I just basically took off my uniform one, one day, should back up in the office the next day, weren't it? else and I needed a job. So I just basically took off my uniform one day, should back up in the office the next day, weren't it, well, it was a little later, you know, we're in a crappy suit from Joseph A. Banks. So I got five of those things for like 200 bucks, man, because I didn't have any money, right?

Yeah. So should back up. And then I finally get done with government in 2014, at 1201, on the 20th of January, 2021, when the administration changed. I was the acting secretary of defense, the Pentagon. You walk out one minute after noon because officially the new president gets sworn in at 12 noon. President Biden went like three minutes early.

So I had three minutes where I really didn't have a job and just sit around y'all can it up with the people. Walked out, didn't have any job. Didn't know what I was doing. And I met a Greenberry buddy of mine from this special forces group, Scotty Nail. He runs horse soldiers bourbon. I didn't want to talk to him, but I ran into him,

because he's busy. He owned this restaurant in St. Petersburg. I forgot the name of it, really nice place. Went in there, I was like, wow, this is nice. Ran into him. And I said, wow, this is a really nice place. It gives Chris, what did you expect that it was gonna be half-ass because I'm a green beret?

I said, well, yeah, actually, I thought it would be kinda half-ass. I was like, yeah, I mean, I thought it'd be good enough because we're a premium brand, we're top shelf brand, everything I have to do, everything we do has to reinforce that brand. And at that point, you know, I'm like, this guy knows what he's talking about.

I said, how'd you learn this? He goes, spent one year, one year, asking questions, listening. Hey, so when you're making bourbon, why do you do it that way and not this way? When you're asking the bank for a loan, why do you structure it this way? So I was just, just green- beret, asking questions, listening.

I said, after one year, I figured it out. I was like, okay, it's time to go. I thought about that. I gave myself a year just to learn. You did the same thing, I think. Did you feel the same way when you decided to go in to this business? How long did it take before you decided like I'm starting to figure this out?

It probably took about a year, you know, I am very big on self-reliance and I noticed you do everything here man. I know you have staff now. I have a staff now, I have a very small team. We're very extreme. My team's like a family. Nobody gets in or out of here. We, you know, once you're in the circle, you don't leave unless you do something really bad. But I work with, I'm not the kind of guy that if you show up and you fuck something

up, I kick you out. I'm going to kind of guy that if you show up and you fuck something up, I kick you out. I'm gonna work with you. In fact, sometimes my team gets a little annoyed with me because once I invest in you, I'm gonna continue to invest in you. I suspect that somewhere in your career, maybe in the Navy, somebody said, I'm gonna give this guy another chance.

I just suspect and then that kind of was ingrained into your leadership ethos. I'm just making, I'm guessing. Well, I wish you were right, but you never, maybe a couple times at the agency, but not in the teams, not really much in the agency. And that's something that I learned is that shit doesn't work.

Just going through people because I, you know, I see potential in people and I want to bring that potential out and I would rather invest my time and work to bring that potential out than just kick them to the fucking curb like everybody else does and it worked. But, but as far as starting my business, yeah, you know, I'm like your guy that you were just talking about that started the whiskey bourbon company. You know, he, he sounds like he's an observer. I'm also an observer. I observe whatever everybody's doing. I see that 99% of the population goes one direction like a bunch of sheep. And I find something to make everything that I do different than what everybody else is doing.

And so that's kind of how I built it. And I don't have the money. Like I said, when I was talking about self-reliance, I didn't have the money to hire a crew. And when we moved up here from South Florida, I had one film crew that I would, it was extremely affordable, but then it was flying them up here, putting them in hotels and that just wasn't sustainable for the income I was making. So I flew them up one time, I made them teach me everything that they knew about cameras and video editing, which I knew nothing about.

And they gave me a very basic baseline about it. And then it was YouTube University. And it started with a two camera set up on the on the first show to, and my wife was running back and forth because the cameras that we have were cheap and they had a 30 minute time limit. So she's running back and forth. So yeah, I'm talking about... Reboot in this crowd.

I'm talking to my friend Mike Glover, and she's running back and forth, reset and cameras. If he was talking, she would reset mine. If I was talking, she would reset his. If I was talking, she would reset his, I'm running the sound while I'm trying to interview him. And then that went into a three camera setup and then into a four camera setup. I don't even know. Four to five.

Four to five. Well, you got like secret cameras all over this place. I sometimes I have a guy that'll come in and do some gimbal, like some moving shots. Hey, you know what you need to do next? What's a drone? You should have like, inside here. Hey, I'm just saying. You know what you're talking about doing?

Inside, you could have like, you know, get a microwave drone. Yeah. They have these 360 cameras. We thought about maybe doing a 360 camera setup so people can see. Oh, you could do the lines too like NFL games Oh, that's a good string. That's probably better in the drum because the drone you're gonna have that buzz

You're probably I'm sorry You're showing I'm already doing eight two things So thanks for thanks for showing what veterans can do thanks for helping veterans out out now. Third thing, you brought up a great leadership point about underwriting people in that first episode. I went last night, I'm a little tired now because I got addicted to watching your podcasts and your first one with Glover. I never worked with him, but you had a kid on there

that you had mentored. You were like, the kid with the beard, you talked about, remember? And you had him on your cell phone where he called in and talked to Glover. It was really, really cool, man. It was really awesome. Yeah, so that hurts. That hurts. Not again, man.

Did you really do that again? Yeah. You know, I appreciate the compliment and bringing light to what I'm doing here. I really appreciate it. And to elaborate on it. But you still have the dimensions. You know, I think, and not just special operations veterans,

just veterans across the board. Nobody, I don't Nobody, I don't think the civilian population understands the drive and determination and how quick veterans are to pick up what it is they're doing and run with it, especially if they're driven and they like what they're doing. And I don't think veterans give themselves enough credit either. You know, the drive and the determination and the loyalty, you know, that you can get from... Work ethic from veterans.

You know, we tend to discredit ourselves a lot. You got any theory why that is? Like, you know, my book, I highlight only 7% of America, Americans are veterans now. I think that's a great problem to have, by the way. Isn't that great? Like, we're not in armed society anymore. So I'm not like, oh, only said, this is ridiculous, you know?

But there is, that does create a gap, because probably back in the day like what in the 50s 60s I'm guessing 50% 45% of Americans Probably higher than that either had served or were a family member if somebody had served you don't world war two Korea, Vietnam, etc etc. And there's an understanding about how the military worked and the things that you talk about people intuitively know new and now I think that's really incumbent on us is

to like share our experiences and I know we don't like I don't like talk about myself man I know that's crazy. I'm on your podcast. I hate talking about myself And I speak for one veteran. I don't speak for any other veterans community. I speak for myself. But I wonder right now, it seems like there's a disconnect with what you said, like the American public, we're not all crazed, you know, psychopaths. Yeah, we're just Americans, you know? And sure, we've all here to serve. 99% is, you know, 99% of serving in the military is absolutely a gas.

So much fun, right? I mean, come on, deploying, pretty good life. 1% really kind of the scales even out on that one. That's all right, that's what the nation asked us to do. But I wanted to ask you, do you, what can we do better to like show the American public? And people that are hiring,

like, no, this is the right person to invest in because I, I'm telling you, there's this undercurrent in a lot of places that, you know, oh, do we want to take the risk on bringing this veteran in? You know he could go crazy. You know there is out there. Oh, I know. We're not supposed to talk about that, though.

The police have always talked about that. The government agency is ever any government organization. I mean, it's been leaked, you know, that, especially during the Obama administration that the veteran resumes go at the bottom of the stack. I want to tell you about a product that personally resonates with me as a former long-time Dipper in the military, and that's Black Buffalo. You see, when I was in the SEAL teams, almost everybody in my platoon dipped tobacco, including myself, but I'm the leader of my own pack

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That's not conspiracy bullshit, that is a fact. And, but to show people, I don't know how, I don't know how you bring that out, I guess things like this show. Look at one thing that I like to talk about, or actually I have never talked about it publicly, but look at all of the vetroprenures out there and how fast some of these companies have found success. I mean, I'm a hard worker, I'm very determined.

We now have a top 10 podcast in the country out of over 8 million podcasts. You know, Mike Glover with Field Craft Survival, Black Rifle Coffee. I mean, there's tons of veteran entrepreneurs that have just taken off and just think, and this is after an entire career of going to war and serving this country, and we're already rising to the top of the food chain again starting a completely new career that we know nothing about. I don't know shit about business. I still don't think I know shit about business. And I'll bet if you ask all these other guys that are DJ Shipley's running GBRS that's only a couple years old. He's the top trainer,

top tactics and tactician in the country right now, you know, a couple years old Rose right through the ranks like it was nothing blew past everybody, you know Travis Kennedy very successful business David McCormick CEO bridgewater They do they make any money at bridgewater. No, I watched that one. I was like, you got David McCormick? Sold as initial company for $500 million at age 37. Just talked to another guy. He's not a veteran, but wanted to be a seal,

then did some stuff with the agency. Sold a company at age 29 for $4 billion. You know, now he's making these energy weapons. So he's not technically a veteran, but he did serve the government. He did serve the country, excuse me. I think he did some stuff with NSA maybe or the ORA CIA. But anyways, you watch these guys just hit the ground running and rise so fast, just think if we would have never gone to war and we would have just been entrepreneurs the entire time.

Make sure you wonder, doesn't it? You know, how much help did you get from other veterans? From other veterans? How much help did you get when you decided to go off and leave a government service? I got two calls. It's really nice. They're both 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, guys. government service. I got two calls. It's really nice. They wrote 160 special operations aviation regiment guys. Both very successful. They called me, said, hey, they were the only two people. I

didn't get anybody from my community. Like I kind of thought, shit, I kind of put the work in, kind of nice or something called. Yeah. Now, I had to figure it out myself. And that's where I'm really committed. I don't do it well. And I probably every day feel guilty for not doing more. But our generation of veterans is different. I've noticed, and you've seen this, I love the American Legion, love the VFW, very hierarchical top driven organizations.

They did unbelievable work for veterans in America. Our generation, you know, I'm a different generation than you. I should say our generation of veterans. It seems to me, I've noticed, it's very much more organic. It's very much more bottom up. It's very much more collaborative. And we don't like, we don don't want we don't need some higher Archa cult top-down thing. Have you noticed that? Yeah, I think it's also I think the I

Think it's very detrimental to our community, but I think that the competitiveness within the veteran community is Way more competitive than it needs to be whereas if we could come together, we could run this shit. I've stumbled in because we think a lot the same way. I'm like, how come we have three special forces charitable organizations? They're all Balkanizing. They're all trying to recruit off the same population. They're all Balkanizing the donor base. You just described it. It's like hyper competitive. And I'm like, why doesn't everybody just, why don't we have one group? Where do you think the competitiveness comes from? Of course,

it's in our DNA. Right. I know, because that's a good point, and that's something I always try to take into consideration, is like, these are the things that made as extremely successful as an army, as a special operations force, a military service. So, yeah, that is exactly it. So, how do you use that for more positive reasons? And maybe you just can't do it. I'm literally at the point now, like maybe it's just siss of this, you know, pushing the

rock up the hill. I mean, maybe you just don't do it. I think it's just, you know, maybe seals got their stuff right. I mean, it was a it was a food fight when they joined merge their two organizations like I'm sure they're people I know it was a huge Emotional issue, but you finally got it together and and I Think you guys do it really really well, but oh, man Somebody should do Netflix series about that. I think you could see it from the inside But well good on you that you keep it inside. Yeah.

You know, I just, I think, I think it could be changed just by leading from example. You know, there's, I've been, I've always been raised to root for the underdog and, and, and lift people up, put a leg in behind, and, and maybe that'll come back around in the future. But not a lot of people do that because they see other vets as competition. I think a lot of guys get left behind and they don't get the exposure they deserve because the space is so competitive. I personally think that that competitiveness, I can't say that for all the veterans, I can say that for special operations veterans,

because that's our community, right? I feel that the competitiveness comes from day one week one of training, because everything is a competition, the runs are competition, the swims are competition. Who's the best shooter? Who's the best sniper? Who's the best in the kill house? Who's the best driver? Who has the most kills? Who's got the most deployments?

Who's, you know, you're right. And I think that... And that's what drives us and builds a camaraderie when we're in, right? But then when you come out, it just turns into a disaster. camaraderie when we're in, right? But then when you come out, it just turns into a disaster. My one of my favorite aphorisms that I share with my children is,

and everybody greatest strength, you're greatest weakness, right? And that competitiveness truly is, I think maybe that's, I love to tease that out, because I like some people, I got to, I was obvious the same way, but you hit a point where you're like, no, it's about giving back now. And that happens at a different time

in everybody's life. Some people are blessedly, you know, decide this at a very early age. It wasn't that for me because you're like, I don't put food in the table. Got to do well, got to do well, got to do well. Yeah. Because it's personal, professional standards. It's the way I was raised. You know, anything you do, you do it the best you can and all those things. And unfortunately, probably too late in life it came to the conclusion like,

no, it's all that given back now, you know. And maybe some people just never get there. But, you know, I'd hope that we all kind of hit that point. We, because as veterans were growing up together now, we're all kind of out now, handful of people still in. But I try to share and I try to fail to do with a lot of the people is, we can't do, we had to do better than, like you said,

you didn't get any help. It was like, maybe you probably didn't need it, to be perfectly honest with you. At the end of the day, I was gonna figure it out myself anyhow, but it still would have been nice. It still would have been nice. I said, we had to do better than the last generation, and we can't leave people behind, man.

And I don't know how to do it. I'm trying where I can. And all you can do is like, where you sit is where you stand, right? Which I can't believe I'm sitting in this great chair. Then what dude, I went so dark last night watching all of your podcasts. I'm like, two in the morning.

I'm like, I need to get some sleep. Oh, it's just amazing. And then of course, the legendary chair. I'm like, I'm in the legendary chair. So, okay, thanks for having me. We kind of went off script I know chair, I'm like, I'm in the legendary chair. So, okay, thanks for having me. We kind of went off script, I know, but I just wanted, one of the key themes

you always bring up is veteran stuff. And it's not topical, it's not superficial. It's like for real. And I think there's the conversations that we need to have and share with other people that don't understand us. I agree with that. Going back just just real quick. Yeah, real quick.

You were asking at the beginning that anybody step up and help and the answer was no. There is one person who I've always relied on for help though and I'm going to give him credits. My best friend, David Rutherford, has always been there to pick me up when I'm down. And yeah, can I? He's always been there to pick me up when I'm down. Yeah.

Can I, so I end up, you know, serving, that's what I did, end up, you know, I accepted, I was asked to be the, I had a great gig. It was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. And I was, I got like sickeningly focused. I made a mistake in Iraq in 2006, 2007. You were there. Sotter City was, was a enclave of Shia militants.

There was this guy named Muttado Al-Sotter. They had the Sotter fed, they had some name for his fighting force. And there was, you remember there's civil war going on. Every night, you know, she is, we're killing Sunni, Sunni's we're killing she is. They called it extra judicial violence. I call it a civil war, but that wasn't cool. They're like, we can't, we can never say it's a civil war, heaven forbid. You know, we tore this country apart. Now there it a civil war, but that wasn't cool. They're like, we can't, we can never say it's a civil war, having forbidden, you know, we tore this country apart, and now there's a civil war.

We'll call it extra judicial killings, EJK. Did you do any work on that? No. Not that I know. I think you did and didn't even know it, because we are kinda, our, our tours there overlap. And I just remember, like, you know, we've got the Civil War going on,

and we're working it. And then, where was I going with this? I completely found a mistake. What's that? A mistake. Oh yeah. So, 10 Special Forces Group, we rotate between 10 Special Forces Group out of four cars and we are fifth Special Forces Group out of four Campbell.

We just rotate every six, eight months. And the guy who replaced, had become hyper focused on killing this guy. I forgot his name, Hodgy Sumpthen, he had a white camel. That's all I remember. Your white camel? Whitegie something, he had a white camel. That's all I remember. Your white camel? White camel. I was like, white camel? This dude had a white camel,

and he would feed it Coca-Cola because it's on YouTube. You can find it. I forgot this guy's name. My buddy became obsessed with killing this guy, and they go up in Sotter City every night. I got there, I'm like, hey, you know, like, come on, let's, we got to think more than just this one target. And it got to be bigger picture, you know, the way I was trained. And I realized he had the right idea. It's like, you got to get hyper focused on one thing. So when I had the

opportunity to get back into counterterrorism after I left the government, terrorism after I left the government or after I left the service. It's like, we need to defeat El Cata. Everybody's like, you can't defeat terrorism. It's like, I didn't say defeat terrorism. Terrorism... Now versus verb, we can defeat El Cata. Now, we can defeat El Cata. Now, we can't defeat terrorism, verb, got it. El Cata's a fighting force,

definition to defeat is to render your enemy incapable of imposing their will on you. It can be temporary state. It's not always forever, they can bounce back. So I got fixated on that because of the mistake I'd made in Iraq, not focusing on that key leader, right? So I'm at the National Counterterrorism Center. I had been in the National Security Council,

which is the staff that works for the president right next door to the White House. His head, I got a job from my buddy, dear friend of mine, got me the job, has in charge of counterterrorism and transnational threats, drug, human trafficking, all that stuff, for the president. And I had this crazy idea, always do your net assessment, right? You go in, you look at your enemy, and Aisha, don't tell anybody, oh, we're on TV. I had lost a focus on counterterrorism

after I left the service, I left in 14, it's now 17, 18, so I need to get back up the speed and what the enemy's doing. Find out, focus on talking to the young intelligence analysts. Don't talk to the head people because they have to give the party line. Go down to the people that, like, how long you been studying this? Six years, sir. Nobody's ever asked me a question about, you know, whatever.

Go listen to those people, determine that there are seven key leaders left in Al-Qaeda. Zau, hearing number one, go all the way through his son, Hamza, I can go through the names, but no one cares. I said, what happens if we kill those seven? Like Al-Qaeda ceases to exist. Remember Al-Qaeda is like a hierarchical charismatic-driven organization, very elite.

It's like special operations, let's be honest. So if you can't replace special operators quick, Al-Qaeda was the equivalent of special operations, extremely elite, well-trained, loyal, etc. So what happens if we kill off these seven? They're like, well, LKD will no longer, they'll be defeated. So I came up with this insanely namely stupid idea. I said, why don't we kill off the final seven by the 20th anniversary of September 11th, 2001? And we'll drop the mic into Claire Victory and be done with this thing.

I got so much pushback, but I was like, I don't care because- Why would you get pushback from that? You wanna know what I think it was? Seriously? bureaucracy. We had created, you know, we talked about the military industrial complex,

we had created a counterterrorism industrial complex where budgets went to organizations. We expanded the intelligence community incredibly. I think they were like, I don't think it was malicious, you know, like, oh, we want this war to continue forever. I just don't think I was helpful, you know, by saying, no, we haven't, we're going to win. You know, we don't want to go political, but, you know, I served, you know, 30-some seven years in uniform or as a civilian for any president.

Left, right, in between, didn't care. I spent one year working for President Trump. Obviously, very partisan times. We don't even have to go there. It's not that's not your show. I got that. But, you know, he did say we're about winning. He did say that. So I was like, well, let's go win. I think there was just like, we had gotten so used to just like the grind. You lived the grind, man. It seemed like nobody knew what the hell the goal was, you know, and we're, when I was in, I appeared that we were going after low hanging fruit. And they're just, I just, and then, and then you have this plan where you wanna take out the last seven alkydoleters and nobody gets behind it.

And it's, I've always wondered, not always, once I left and I started looking into all this stuff, it just, and I continue to wonder what, what was the goal of this? I thought it was the win. And we came up with the plan. And I was like, let's go do this and work back and forth and just kept working and working at this, just grinding away because in government, it's all about endurance. It was a war of attrition. It's like, I'm just going to outlast them. And we'll keep going on this. But you know, I'm just random. There was a point of where I was trying to go with this. I know it's, I'm just like, sounds like I'm rambling. Just got absolutely fixated on this idea of defeat in El Cata.

Because I thought it was, I talked to all, I did an informal survey of like tons of veterans. It's like, what do you think we should do in FDN to stand? It's time to come home. And I was really worried about what those who had lost loved ones there thought, or those that had been injured, cross-supported, or was like, we gave it our best shot.

But I thought that by doing this, we could declare victory pull out meaningfully. So that was a whole, that was a whole hustle. That was a whole idea of like, okay, I'm going to do this. I know it sounds ridiculous. Like my dumbass comes up with this idea. So we kept pushing on that. And I ended up going to the National Counterterrorism Center. I was like, this is perfect. I can have more of a role because it's higher position. But then the president, the president was unhappy with Mark Asperer's Secretary of Defense at the time. I wanted to change. So there are only three of us to serve in an acting capacity. This is going to be legalistic, but it's important to understand for some people like the three people that actually care about this that are listening. You have to be appointed by the president and you have to be

confirmed by the Senate, meaning you have to go up there and they wire Russia, you know, and then they vote you out. You can't just take over a cabinet position, a high level position, like just shit the rag man off the street. You can't do that. You can, but it's not going to work. You have to be presently appointed Senate confirmed. That way the Senate has had their congresses had their say. So there were only three of us. I was one of them.

the Senate has had their congresses had their say. So there were only three of us. I was one of them President called and asked that I replace them. So obviously I accepted that because that's what we do, right? Go in there, I'm like 73 days, like I've been to Ranger School, Ranger School 60 days. You know this, I know, because you had some Rangers on the show. It's really good. I like that episode a lot with the Delta preacher. I forgot his name, man. Chris Van Zahn. Yeah, that was really cool. He gave a great description about the difference between being Ranger qualified and being a United States Army Ranger. I love that. Best description I've ever heard. So I'm like, I can stand on my head for 73 days, done it for 60, not realizing everything that was going into this that would happen.

But that's how I ended up doing that. But I left, then I left. Like boom, you're done. And I had no understanding, no idea what I was gonna do, not a clue, and didn't really, like I said, I got two calls, and that had to figure it out myself, just like you, and just off we go, and here we start again.

Yeah, we'll figure it out, right? Well, let's, I haven't even given in intro yet, so we'll start the, we'll start now. But so I just want to give a brief intro just so everybody knows who you are if they don't already. But military career 1983 to 2014 and listed as the Army Reserve is an infantryman in 1983 and served in the DC National Guard as an MP. Then you commissioned to become an officer in 1987

with a bachelor's degree in history from George Washington University. You transferred to special forces in 1993, honor graduate from Army Ranger School, numerous command and staff positions within fifth special forces group, multiple deployments during the G-Wat, both to Iraq and Afghanistan, company commander of fifth special forces in Afghanistan in 2001.

Many more deployments and other theaters. I know you worked extensively with CIA and Bosnia back, I believe, in the 90s post military career defense contractor for the clan of the desnines special operations and intelligence under secretaries of defense for intelligence and policy acting assistance secretary defense for special operations low intensity conflict deputy assistant. Oh, deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism director of national counter terrorism center former acting secretary of defense. And finally, the author of soldier secret, or soldier secretary warnings from

the battlefield and the Pentagon about America's most dangerous enemies, which I cannot wait to jump into that. And just some other stuff you oversaw the COVID-19 vaccine roll out. I would love to talk about that. Oversaw, personal reductions in Iraq and Afghanistan handle requesting questions and testify about the January 6th response, massive activation of the National Guard members. And you took out some of the top terrorists in the world throughout your career. And most of them, I can breathe again.

That's quite the career. And a quarter, well, if you're at Starbucks, it'll be like $4.50, we'll get you a cup of coffee, man. I mean, you know, most importantly, try to be a good husband, try to be a good father, and try to be good American. Yeah, so thanks, man. Thanks, I always get bored, listen to that.

It's really just, you you know kid from Iowa who came from a family of public servants my dad was a cop and My mom he said there's vow there's in there's there's intrinsic value in public service. You know get paid a lot and He he literally answered JFK's call. He was drafted, serving the Korean War, as an 11 Charlie Mortarman, and like really got in it.

Korea War, come on man, like what do they do? Couple of years and it was just like high intensity war. And came back and literally he said, I heard that JFK, what, what, ask not what to do blah, blah, blah. And he said, I'm gonna go into government. I'm gonna try to make a change. And he's always like, there's,

there's intrinsic value in public service. Like, I took that, I took that shit to heart, you know? So just was really incredibly fortunate to be able to serve our country, man. That's a... I know, that sounds like really cliche. That's an incredible career. Man, I just did my job, dude.

Everybody that comes on gets a gift. What? Well, you were up till 2 a.m. watching the show last night. Any guesses? Nice. Nice. The Jolans Elite gummy bears. Yes. Those. Nice. The Jolans Elite gummy bears.

Yes. Those are amazing. And believe it or not, they're legal in all 50 states. Ah! Ah! Well done. And they're made in the USA. That's what you do, right?

Give me a back. And yeah, made in the USA. You don't hear that very often anymore, right? I really appreciate it. And my wife will be tickled pink, usually. Cause come on, Sean, usually I go on these things, I don't, walk away with like, lost six hours. Not this one though.

This is, I'm really excited about this one because you talk about things that matter and are important. And thank you. I don't think I have anything to add to tell you the truth, but we'll let your audience decide when, you know, we get like, wow, we got 20,000 viewers. We went from 5 million last week to 20,000. Yeah.

But I do not think that's gonna happen. We have a lot to talk about. I wanna, I don want to spend too much time on your career because it will be here a week covering all of that. But I do want to stress some of the important things that you're a part of. So let's start with where you grew up. We'll talk about some of the big missions that you did

and some of the key leaders that you've taken out. And then we'll dig into some of the ship that's going on in the country and in the world today. So, I know you grew up in Iowa. Yep, I was city, Iowa. Spent some time in these coasts in Newark, Delaware, moved back to Iowa City. I think it was probably 10. My parents are from there.

Dig decided to go home. I think my mom probably pushed him a lot harder than that. I'm just guessing there's still a live 94 years old living in Iowa. I'm still living alone. DeG father has the opportunity to live at the nursing home now because he's no longer as mobile as he should be.

So, but yeah, I just like kind of that. I got no bad news from my youth. Like it's buccolic, man. It was like great parents, great community. It was that age of where you just went off and did crap all day long, and your parents didn't care. And you didn't have a cell phone.

It was just magical. And just, and then just was like, I gotta get out, I was CDI. What about you? You were in Missouri, man. Did you have, I just got this thing where I was like, it's a big world out there. And I was really fortunate, my parents

like always instilled in my sister and me like this sense of adventure, this sense of inquisitiveness, you know? Like there's a big world. I'm like, I gotta go see it. This little town's gonna be the death ofiveness, you know, like there's a big world. I'm like, I gotta go see it. This little town's gonna be the death of me, you know. I was gonna be a Bruce Springsteen song, you know. What about you?

What about me? Why'd you leave Missouri? You know, I just left Missouri for the military and I joined. You did 17 or 18? Yeah, I joined at 17 in the, in the future parents to sign off for you. Yeah, I had to get my dad to sign off for it.

You know, I, I joined them, I didn't feel like I had any other options. Okay. I wasn't a great student. I didn't really take sports very seriously. Nor was I very good at any of them. I was pretty much into chasing women and drinking beer. And what kind of cards, yeah?

I had a Ford Probe. Dude, I thought you were gonna give me Trans Am. I wish. Oh man. At a 1982 truck that I destroyed immediately by taking off road and then I got a Ford probe. You're not taking that off road. And one, nope.

Nope. And, but yeah, that's, I didn't feel like I had any other options. And honestly, I was always drawn to the military. Yeah, why? So my dad did a stent in the military when I was in or when I was a young kid fourth grade. I think he joined and At that time the golf floor was going on. We got deployed to Germany. My dad was in the medical field So I saw a lot of these guys coming in and out of Germany. I saw all the books. I bought all the books

I thought all the GI Joe's and I just always infatuated with. It's not weird. It's not weird. Like somehow that trigger something in some of us and other people like, don't care. I had the same thing, man. You know, Vietnam had wrapped down. I was born in 65.

And I remember there are only three TV channels then remember you could get like the fourth UHF, you could get some weird thing out of Philadelphia where you could watch Speed Race or something. But you know when my dad came home, it was like now my kids watch whatever they want, 2000 channels, watch whatever you want. In those days, the old man came home. My mom, I've never allowed to call my dad the old man. I said that once to my mom, only time she got upset

with me. She's like, you do not refer to your father as the old man. I was like, whoa. So I take it back. Mom, my father would come home from work. And guess what? He took over the TV. You're gonna watch CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. It was like, I don't wanna do homework. What are you gonna do? You're gonna watch the news. So I'm like, I was just this weirdo kid

who was watching the news and, you know, and then you had to read the paper. That was like one of the things, like some assignment, so I'm reading, like Vietnam and stuff, I'm like holy crap. And somehow that just, you know, and then my uncles, my dad, I just, like I guess you have to serve.

And but it didn't, you know, it bothered me at first, you know, when you're like, when you're younger and you're seeing caskets coming home with flags on them, and I remember asking my dad, it's like, what are they, I mean, flags, he goes, flags are put on caskets only if you've served. And I don't know if that's true or not, I have no idea, I don't think it's actually true.

But that, you know, when you're like five, six years old, and you have these weird things, like that resonated. And I'm like, so if I don't serve, I'm not gonna have, this is the connection I made. So adolescent, you know, just terrified, the thought, but I was like, I'm gonna serve. I mean, that's what we do.

So what, I don't come from a family of like, oh, you know, my great-grandfather served in the Civil War. You know, or revolutionary war. As a matter of fact, my family left Germany in 1848. They were draft Dodgers because that was like when the Prussians or whoever the hell it was. So you know, fighting and they got draft and they're like, we're out of here. So I think it's hilarious that I come from a long line of draft dodgers.

So, but you know what, I always wonder, something triggered in us, this desire to go serve combat, yeah, that's what we do, right? That's why would you join if that wasn't the goal? Oh, I want to get my college money. Hey, good with you if you want your college money, but you know, going to Navy SEALs or Army Special Operations if you're looking for college money, right?

Yeah. You don't. Yeah, I think it's one of those questions. I still kind of wonder about it. And then I'll tell you that the only thing that really mattered in my military career was response to September 11, 2001. I say my book. I'd been an officer, I got commissioned in 87, go do public math 13, 14 years.

I was in fifth special forces group just up the road. I'm heading up there after this to see some folks. And I just, I had a really tough boss, tying command, or not going to, not going to tell you his name. It's really, really tough, man. And I was like, why am I putting up with this bullshit anymore? And I went home on the 10th of September. I swear to, I swear this is true story. Got two little, we have three kids. They're all screwing off.

My wife and I always have a cocktail, kind of days over, you know, let's catch up. Man, I got, that day I got really deep. I was probably into my fourth beer and I said, these are small times for small people. I said, we're getting out. I'm leaving, I'm leaving the service. My wife is like, good, about time.

My wife, you know, you're way more talented than the stupid army crap. And of course, I didn't believe her. And I lit it September 11th. I went into work and I was going to resign my commission that day. Uh, go run. Do you have you been for Campbell? There's this thing called Clarks.

There's this thing you got to go. You got to go up there. There's this thing called Clarksville base. It's Cold War Legacy, crazy story. Won't bore you, whole areas. I'm out there with the sergeant I worked with. I was a company commander, he was a company sergeant major, just a magnificent man.

Went for a run, just the two of us. Didn't go with the unit or anything. It was our time to talk shop, right? Got in the car and I'm driving back to work and John Boyne Billy show. That's still on. The John Boyne Billy show is still on. It was new then.

It was really edgy, edgy morning talk show. And they were always hooting it up and comedic and whatnot. And all of a sudden they stopped. They're like, hey, we have a report of a plane hitting one of the towers of the World Trade Center. And like the whole tone of the discussion, it went from jocular like, oh, you know, fart jokes or something to like just stop.

And it was completely, and it got serious. I was like, oh damn. Then somebody came on, they're like, oh, a plane hit the Empire State Building in 1944 or something. Maybe it's just an accident. I was like, this is an accident. Got back to work, walked into the military intelligence shop because we didn't have TVs everywhere then.

So crappy barracks, crappy workspace. The only TVs were in the military intelligence section. I walked in there and I saw the second plane hit. And I was like, is that a rerun? And everybody was like, no. Was that a rerun of the first attack? So saw that and at that point, it was like, I guess I'm not getting out of the service. And the most important thing I did in my entire professional life was

respond to that attack. And went in, went down, went down to Tampa, Florida, where the United States Central Command is, the command that's overseas the Middle East, and the United States Special Operations Command is there as well. So I went down to my boss, who I had known from a previous assignment, asked me to go down with one sergeant to be the planner. So we get down there. It's called Special Operations Command Central, SACSENT, Central Command's Special Operations Component.

They were out in this old Cold War bunker, ammo bunker, show up out there. I'm a major, new major, you know, pretty junior. And the counterterrorism task force had taken over. And they're lead planners. And I'm a green beret. So I'm nothing, right? I'm that special mission unit guy. I'm just like, oh, you're like, they called it white soft then, you know, white and black soft. Black was the secret like, you know, seal team six and delta force and all those folks, right? So they're, they take over the planning space.

Fortunately, I knew a buddy who was, and he let me in. So I'm like, shit, green beret, man, I figure this stuff out and I'm in there. And they planned the initial operations where they took, Rangers jumped into that airfield, objective rhino out in the desert. You had a guy on that talked about it. And then they also stormed Mula Omar who was the head of the Taliban.

He had this beautiful compound that he built in Kandahar. They raided that thing and Omar was gone, but they shot the shit out of place. It was brilliant operations. It was kind of our first big operation of the war. Helicopter hard landed, it had some bad problems. I don't think we, nobody got killed. A couple of people got injured on some hard landings. So I go down there to help plan.

All of a sudden one day, this counterterrorism experts just disappear, they're gone. Poof, and somebody yells, do we have any green berets here? And somebody yells, do we have any green berets here? What do you need? They're like, we need to plan an unconventional warfare campaign. Unconventional warfare is where green berets go behind enemy lines.

Think World War II France, where small commandos jumped in behind enemy lines, linked up with the resistance, the McKee, the French resistance, got the man munition, helped them train, helped plan, and then helped lead them to tear up the German forces that were behind the beaches that we were landing at. That's unconventional warfare. Go behind enemy enemy lines link up with the resistance force or to overthrow the government and that we had never done that before in the history of special forces we were found in 1951 So like I know how to do that. So we planned we did the campaign

I was part of the planning element that did the campaign Then I got to go do it. You got to do it. So I always find your replacement. I'm like, I'm gonna get stuck down here, missing another war. I missed Panama, I missed Desert Storm, I missed everything. And you taught, Sean, you brought it up.

You're like, that's super bowl, right? You don't join like, oh, I just want to stay here and, you know, for Campbell and, you know, take my kids to the daycare center and coach soccer. I missed everything and I saw it happen. And again, I'm like, I'm going to get stuck down here. While my unit goes and prosecutes this war, always find your replacement.

Got a guy to come in to backfill me. Off I go, pick up the remainder, so the entire group had deployed to a Karshi Kanaba, a news back stand, which was our Ford operating base or our dance operating base. So we set up a news back stand, which we now know is a toxic waste dump

with radiological material. I can go on all day about that, but at the time we didn't care because like we are going to bring vengeance on behalf of the United States, the people of the United States, we are going to be your vengeance to these sons of bitches. So we go to his back stand, the group's over there. I show back up, you know, to do, to do, to do. I'm back. There are five A teams left. A team is 12 special green berets.

It's the unit of choice for special forces. You know, you've heard this before, you've got two weapons experts, you've got two medical experts that are like doctors. You've got two engineers that know demolition and construction. You have two communicators that know how to do signal, you know, to work the radius. You've got two senior NCOs that do intelligence and operations and then you have two officers. You have a war and officer.

Those 12 people go behind enemy lines and they can train, they can lead up to 1200 indigenous forces, you know, gorillas. So that's what we're going to do, right? I show up, everybody's gone. We have 5-8 teams left, get the call, Miller, bring over the final 5-8 teams. Go over, fly over, and get to Uzbekistan. This is Thanksgiving Day of 20, 2001. Get an inside look at Hollywood with Michael Rosenbaum. Let's get inside of my father, John Deliver. You know, we watch talk, Phil, and most of these episodes I never saw. I didn't watch the show. You never once saw yourself on small bill.

In the beginning, I used to look at myself all the time and love to. And then as I get older, I stopped. Why is that? I don't know, maybe because I'm older. I was going to talk to you about that, because you're 79. Yeah, how will you feel?

11. Inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum. Wherever you listen. Those of you that have been around SRS for a while know that we take mental health very seriously here. So seriously that in almost every episode you'll find a segment where we discuss how to improve your mental health.

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Let's get back to the show. Attack went in. Yeah, Thanksgiving day. And then there's this book's Studs Teracle wrote this book called the Good War. This book about World War II, any interview to this oral history, interviewed all these famous people, senators, Titans of industry, you know, all these people that are fabulously successful and he asked what was the most important thing he did in the career. They were like June 6, 1944.

It's an 18 year old machine gunner in the first infantry division. They're like holy crap, your speaker or the house of representatives. Now you're one of the most powerful people in the world. They're like, none of this compares, that was the most important thing I did. I feel the same way about that operation.

You ask, like, tell me about your career. None of it really matters except that one operation where I was like, I couldn't believe that I'd been given the opportunity to be in the unit. This Special Forces Group, which everybody made fun of, like why would you ever go there? You know, there are five Special Forces Groups. Why don't you go to the 10th group where you can go to Germany or 7th group to South America. They're all regionally aligned, you know,

and ours is the Middle East. Nobody wants no offense. Like, oh, I can go to, I can go to Cartagena in Columbia and make Max Perdem, like $200 a day. Have a really good time. Or if you're in the first Special Forces group in the Pacific, like, Hey, Thailand training with Thai Special Forces, that's pretty good gig, right?

We had the Middle East. We were the laughing stock. But when the war came to us, you know, I was in the unit that went there, just at the end of the day, it just blind chance, work hard, holy cow, pure luck that I was there. But that, everything I'll say to you in my career, my career period, don't matter. Well, it's a pretty extensive career.

How did that operation go? We took the joint special operations command or was responsible for getting bin Laden, our job, and special forces was to take down the Taliban. On conventional warfare, we were overthrowing a government with indigenous forces, resistance forces, guerrilla forces. So our job was to overthrow the Taliban government. We were, let's see, attacked us on September 11th. We took the government changed

on December 7th. So it happened that fast. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought we did. I think in that fast. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought we did. I think historically it will go down as the most brilliant, regular warfare, unconventional warfare campaign probably in the history of the world. Has it really been studied yet? I'm kind of hoping somebody does some serious study on it. The issue is we ended up losing, right? Well, we ended up losing. Before we go the whole length, if you want somebody to study it, then let's dig in right now. So, what was step one in your planning process? That's a huge task.

I was intimidated. I had checked this out at a certain point, you're in office or you go to this thing called the command and general staff college usually about 10 years Of service and you go and get your master's degree and you learn about operational art being war stuff, right? I got to go to that new port road island So I'd learned that stuff but then all of a sudden you're having to do it. And you're like, wow, this isn't school work anymore.

You know what I got lucky with that? What's that? Who is this senior Warren officer? A Warren officer is between a non-commissioned officer, sergeant and a commissioned officer, lieutenant, captain, et cetera. Here's this beautiful, and you have them in the Navy SEALs. Limited duty officers and ped, or,

you have warrant officers and we have warrants. Warrants officers are, they do one thing, their whole career, so they become subject matter experts and professionals. Usually they're helicopter pilots or intelligence people. Special forces also has warrant officers. So they are the continuity, they are the experts on everything, and there was this old grizzled worn officer, and he was a little bit of an iconoclast. He used to paint one of his pinky fingernail. He would

pinky fingernail. He would like do artwork on it. I was like, that's moxie. I mean, you know you've got some throw weight when you can paint your fingernail and nobody says to remove the fingernail polish. This guy was a genius and I said, chief, what do I do? You know what he? Come on, sir. So he had it. He like figured it out. We worked together over two nights and because we were moving really, really fast, Sean. We were moving fast. This isn't like, oh, you know, do a concept development and submit it in 60 days and then we'll review it and send you back feedback in 60 days. And I didn't, they talk about special forces. Like you're going to do strategically important things that will be tracked by the White House. And I was like, yeah, whatever.

Come on. Save, save me the public relations campaign. We're doing that. like this chief and I are Feeding we're not the ones briefing about we're feeding this concept in that literally is not taken 60 days It's going from us don't doom Pentagon White House. Yeah, yeah, so we got it done man So can we get a little I mean if we can't can we get a little If we can I would love we get a little, I mean, if we can't, can we get a little, if we can, I would love to get a little more elaborate. I mean, you'd just been tasked with taking out the

Taliban government going behind enemy lines, linking up with a resistance force. Who's the resistance force? How are you going to link up with them? How are you going to overthrow that government? How are you going to insert, I mean, where do you, this is huge picture. I mean, this is big picture way above my pay great. What do you start of mine too? What was what's step one step one was what is the resistance potential?

Are there any groups that we can link up with that will accept us and of course there was this thing called the northern Alliance the leader of the northern alliance was ockman Masood, who had been killed by this al-Qaeda attack where they had a deception op where they showed up on the 10th of September with a film crew from some Arabic television station. The film crew, the camera was rigged with explosives. They blew the thing up and killed Masised, destroying the leadership of the Northern Alliance. So there was already in existence this resistance group that was all up north, that was really very segmented, Balkanized. They've been pushed back there about to get the

feed. So it was pretty simple at that point. We got the north, right? Your point though, like, how do you get there? My boss at the time was this guy named, he's now retired general, John Mojoland. Mojoland, just absolute epitome of commander, gentleman, really Vince Lombardi, that really, really hard on you. Like, you're going to perform He's the commander of the fifth special forces group

And we got to fly we got to fly helicopters through the Hindu Kush to Himalaya mountains, right To link up with these Groups of the northern alliance that had been selected So you got a 12 per 12-18 up in Uzbekistan. They're going to get on a helicopter. They're going to fly down. They're going to land in the middle of the night, literally middle of the night on a grid coordinate,

with the expectation that when they get off that helicopter, and they show, you know, they've got the red flints flashlight and you, you know, turn, like, when you come off the helicopter, turn to 62 degrees magnetic and click your flashlight four times. This is what these, this is what these kids are doing. Man, this is old school. I remember it's, do you remember these days? This is, like, this is old school. You know what our GPS were? We bought Garmin E-Trek. It was the first generation of commercially available GPS. Government, what did the military have?

They had this huge like low-tran, like GPS things that was this big. Remember, and you only got like one of those per 400 people, right? You didn't have that. We all had these first generation e-trucks, you know. But that was about as technologically sophisticated as we had. But here is where I was going with this.

Mulholland is getting his ass beat by the Pentagon because each night the weather conditions would collapse, and he wouldn't launch forces and helicopters because he's like, they're gonna crash, right? And that's moral courage, you know, can you imagine? He's an O6, that's relatively junior person and the whole scheme of things. We have four star generals. He's in charge of the response, an O6 colonel, a special forces, and he keeps

saying no to, and they call it infiltration, as you know, right? Conditions don't match. We're going to lose a helicopter. Finally, the sky's open. And we make our first successful infill. The guy that, well, horse soldiers, go on all day. But Mahaland, I understand they were planning the Pentagon was planning to fire him because they didn't think he was aggressive enough. Who is the sect of? Rumsfeld's secretary of defense. Rumsfeld comes out to his back of stand several weeks later. Mohaland has him fly on a 160th special operations aviation regiment. MH 47 should look like helicopter, big helicopter, the route that the first infiltration went in.

They're pictures of them. You can find them online. These, they're literally going through canyons like this with 10 feet on each side of the road or because remember how high it was. They're already flying it. You know, you can probably get, I don't know, we're gonna get some comments about, you don't know what an NMH 47 is capable of, but it's like 20,000 foot bird.

These things are working at the absolute extreme end of the envelope because they're in the Himalayas, right? And then anecdotally, and I think it's true, Rumsfeld goes, oh, I get it now. Like he's terrified. So we get in there, right? The boys get in there, link up, and then it's game on. And big army, big military, I think the whole plan was like, this is gonna take, you know, the whole idea was we would get resistance potential and we would winter over because there like no one's ever won an Afghanistan in the winter. And the idea was that we would link up with the Northern

Alliance, make it on clave, secure on clave in the North, because there's a key bridge that runs between Uzbekistan, Freedom Bridge, I forgot the name of the river, I forgot all this stuff, but this key bridge, and then the military was gonna bring down an armor division by rail. And they're gonna get off.

They're gonna move these armor division across this bridge and then in the spring, we were gonna have, we're gonna march on Berlin again. It was gonna be great. Tank's going through that tunnel. Did you know that was the plan? I did not know that was the plan. Yeah, I'm not making this up, man.

So we're like, we're green braids, we're an exploit success, and we're going to exploit success every place we get. And you've done Afghan to stand. Once you have, once you have the momentum, everybody start its surrender. And you got green braids, they've got their Afghan, northern alliance forces, got B-52s coming over. You've heard these stories where like,

there would be a Taliban control town or an LK to control town. Green braze with their gorillas would show up. The gorillas, they all had icon radios, you know, very simple like walkie talkies essentially, right? They would talk to the Taliban or Al-Qaeda force who they already knew because it was their cousin or something, they're like, hey man,

like, it shits up for you guys. You really want to do this? Like, well, we have to like, say face, so they'd be like, you know, the Taliban, kakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakak next sort of is coming right on you. You see what we can do? They're like, we're done. So we got momentum, right? We're just moving, but the problem's the south. So we get the bagged out, bagged out. Oh my God, all these names. Is that hilarious, dude?

Hit Cobble. Get the Bagram, which is the major air base, Soviet setup. Okay, we got the north, problems the south, dude. That's where Mula Omar headed the Taliban. Their government capital is in Canter-Har, you've been. And we're like, oh, damn, no northern alliance up there. There were some elements down there. Gulagashirzai, Karzai, Karzai, who saw which way things are going.

They're like, okay, when do we get some green for a game on, dude, so we went down there. I went in, I was, I make fun of this, but it's true. Salt landing credit, you're familiar with the salt landing credit, you get a special badge if you are in an initial assault, like it's D-Day stuff. You get a special, like if you rolled into D-Day on June the 6th, 1944, you got a special ribbon.

It's a salt landing credit, it's a big deal, man. It's like one of those, if you see somebody with that ribbon, you're like, they're the real deal. You know, it's not an every man mental. Salt landing credit ended on, I think the fifth of December of 2001. I literally, I end up, they say 200 people, 200 intelligence officers from CIA paramilitary and special operators from the military, 200 of us are credited with defeating the Taliban. Dude, I am 199.

I landed at literally the equivalent of 2359, 59 on June 6, 1944, where all the fightons over bodies in the water, I'm just like, step, you know, I'm like, I was like literally the second to the last person to land in Afghanistan to be part of that 200. So I want to be very, very clear. Such a small part of that operation, like I got in at the, literally the last moment.

We dropped on December 5th, we accidentally dropped to 2000 pound joint direct attack munition bomb on our own position. I'm it was back to stand. I had established a quick reaction for us with the company with the team I was with. force with the team I was with. On that day, I had been desperate to get a mission. Desperate to get a mission. And I see the war ending, right? It's very easy to see the wars coming to an end.

And I'm like, it's happening again. And every day I would go in and write up a concept of operation and try to sell it to the leadership. Like,, I we really need to go in not I we really need to go in to do whatever It's having no luck and it was December 5th. I got up that morning I said I'm not I'm not doing it anymore. I'm failing I went to the we had this crappy tent for a gym with this like shitty boflex. Remember the boflex?

Yeah. And Sean, it had this exercise bike. They must have got it at JC Penney's in like 1965. This thing. It couldn't run because the Air Force Red Horse engineers at Setup the Camp had used these huge stones, like not gravel. The gravel was like this big. It couldn't run because you break your ankle. So I'm on that stupid exercise bike. It's dark out freezing. Then I'd go to the Bowflex thing and I walk back to go to the chow hall,

because I was done for the day. You know what all my guys were doing? You know what all the guys were doing? They brought this huge big screen TV. Like this was before flat screens. It was the one, you know, that weighs like 600 pounds. Remember those things? With the vacuum with the tube and back?

They sat there, they set that up in our tent and they watched every episode still CDs. It wasn't Netflix. They brought like they watched every episode of the sopranos Friends you name it and here I'm working right they're just screwing off. They're like screw the major He'll figure this out. So that day I was gonna watch the dog on Soprano's with everybody. And as I'm going to the chow hall, I see this frenzy activity over at the operations center. And I walk over and they said,

ODA 574, which was the 18, 12 person 18 that was with Carzai's forces, Just called, they've got mass casualty. I was like, oh, damn. Okay, what's going on? And I listened and the kid, Jason Amorine is the team later. Dude, did you ever see this? I've read some time once about,

you can tell a true leader, because the more pressure they're under, the calmer their voice is, I have. I'm not that way, man, I'm screeching. I'm like, ah, that one's coming to an end, help me. I hear Jason on the radio, and I knew Jason is team leader in the company. I commanded, we had six, eight teams,

he was team leader, but the free fall team. And Jason gives a situation report over the radio, absolutely, as if he was talking on the phone to his girlfriend, just completely smooth. I was like, I got emotional, man, still do. And he's like, game on, man, he's like, we've been hit by a large explosive. They didn't know at the time, it was like, game on man. He's like, we've been hit by a large explosive. They didn't know at the time.

It was a friendly fire. I've got three dead. Everybody's wounded. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, just going down the list. I was like, okay, that's what we make the quick reaction for us for. Walked over to the tent. All the fellas are like watching Sopranos.

I was like, get your shit on. And I'm like a happy-go-lucky guy, right? And I'm like laughing and joking and all. And they looked up at me. And they're like, they thought it was a joke. I was like, I'm not bullshit. Get your shit on, we're going. And then you can kind of see,

like when the team starts like, get your shit on, we're going. And then you can kind of see, like, the team starts like, get your shit on, let's go. And we flew down there and replaced the destroyed team and then with Candahar and ended the war two days later. Well, ended the war, I should say, we ended that phase of the war. Yeah. That was way too long the story, man.

You need to like, you need to like, you need to give me, you can, you can edit all that crap out. What, what happened when you got down there? Hit town, landed, all right. So I'm gonna use Beck's stand. We need to get to Candahar.'s like what is that like 2000 miles?

It's a long ass way We get on to an MC 130 special operation combat tailon Special operations want see 130 We we get on the truck, we're all sitting there. And all of a sudden the supply sergeant comes running out and starts giving us stuff. Like, here's your radios.

Got our bloodshits, remember? Like when you go into combat, you have your bloodshit, you get out of jail free card. Like if we will pay you what is is it a million dollars now or whatever, you know the one I'm talking about. So we're getting this in the back of this two and a half ton truck. We're all lined up in there. We've got our kit. I take my Rucksack. Nobody else does. They take small, I take my sleep in bag like so Sean on the guy with this big ass rucksack everybody else has three day pack This is before this great kit that we have now. I mean this is like pretty rudimentary

We're sitting there We're like okay, let's go Supply Sergeant starts giving us this stuff out. I'm like wow. This is just great We finally get all our kit when we're getting on the helicopter going to combat, but that's all right. Now we got our, got some radios, got our crypto, you know all that crap. Drive out to the MC130, ramps down,

get on that thing and who's back to stand and there are a whole bunch of dudes on there already. All right, I don't know about you, man. But the way I was trained was like, train how you're going to fight and all that stuff. It's like, I'm like, whatever. We get on about 20 of us. And we're flying, dude. And it's a long flight, man. It's a long way. We're going to fly into Rhino, which is the marines head cap. Rangers had dropped in on Rhino, which was this air strip in the middle of the desert that the Middle Eastern Persian

Gulf royalty would fly out to, it was a private air strip where they would go falconing. I'm not making this up. Really? I'm not making this up. So we captured. Marines came up captured that. So we're gonna fly in to Objective Rhino, which is now an air strip.

So long as flight, and then I'm sitting there, and the pilot goes, who's in charge here? Kind of look around, you've been in this, like you never wanna, you never wanna hear who's in charge, right to, you never want to hear who's in charge, right? Nothing good's going to come from who's in charge, right? I'm saying, shit, I guess I am. Then I realize who the other people are. It's a forward surgical team.

These are all doctors. So, because we had a mass casualty, so they loaded up, it, going to the guns, right? You got to love that, right? Like these dudes are like, there's some Americans in need. They're, we're going. I don't even know if they had approval to tell you the truth. I don't care. So you got like, you got all these doctors

and medical technicians and they all outrank me. I was like, shit, they're, they're not real often, they are real officers, but they're not tactical officers. So I pull out, you remember you're writing the rain, a pad? Remember? Yeah, the green notebook. The green notebook.

Pull my pad out, sit in there. I still have this, I write mission. I can't remember what is. We will infiltrate to just defeat Taliban, blah, blah, blah. Commanders intent, you know, I just do a really quick field order, really quick, signed it, and I just handed it off to the person. I said, pass it around. So everybody reads this thing, it comes back to me.

I looked at it recently. It was like the worst operation order I've ever written. I mean, it was pathetic. But I was like, I have to make sure everybody knows what's going on and what we're going to do here and get everybody focused. Fly, fly, fly. You're like, what are you going into, right? And landed, landed, we landed it objective right now We're gonna get off we're gonna run across about 75 meters to two Spec MH 53

Best helicopter ever made special operations helicopters when to get on those We're in a flight of can we're gonna fly to North Can, to Hard, where the mass casually was. We would get off casualties, we'd get rolled on, we would then replace them and continue to fight. So we get down there to dog on, man, I'm talking too much. No, keep going. We get down there to objective Rhino.

I flashed back to Ranger School and I was like, I'll be the last one off the MC130 because one of these morons is gonna leave something important. They're gonna forget something. You know what I'm talking about. I do. So like, so they all get run off. It's like Talc and Powder, Brown. So they all get run off.

It's like talcum powder, brown. You've been in brown out. You know what I'm talking about. It's literally, you can't see the sun, there's so much because as C-130 engines are ripping 53 rotors, this is like, it's the darks, it's just really, you can't see shit. They literally go off into the dust with my flat, my surefire, checking everything out. Okay. Nobody left anything or somebody actually did leave something, but I was like, it's not that important. I was worried. So I could jump off the back of the C1-30 running, thinking I'm pretty cool, Sean.

This will work in the movie. Step in a pothole. Full of, couldn't see it, right? Because there's full of dust. I just flip dude. And I was like, oh shit, I just broke my ankle. Oh damn. Ha ha ha ha.

Have you broken? No, I was like, damn. I'm like, and I look in this marine, no T-shirt, wearing this, remember this shitty tanker goggles? Yeah, comes running up, because he sees me flip, he's right near me. He's like, jeez, yeah, I should cry, start you all right.

And I'm like, oh man, it's gonna hurt. Then he sees my rank, because I have my rank on. And of course, like true Marine. He's like, oh my god, sir, I'm so sorry. I'm like, it's all right, it's all right, it's all right. Sean, I look back, so I'm lying there. C-130 ramped down. I'm looking into that.

I'm like, I could just get back onto that plane and just fly back to his back, a stand to be done with this whole thing. I clearly have injured myself, right? I was like, that was, it probably was a nanosecond, but it seemed like this really drawn out like, you know, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, playing the whole videoch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch- I was swelling. I was a dumbass and I didn't have my med kit was in, I had it in my back. Yeah, because we didn't know what we were doing that dude.

We didn't know what we were doing. I had my medical kit. I'm crammed onto this 53. I can't move. Certainly can't even get to my, it's so loud, I can't tell somebody, hey, can you get me my med kit? I'm like, I'm just gonna ride this one in. We fly.

And what I remember, I've photos of this, the helicopter, you would feel like your pressure was going down, like you were getting jammed into your seat, and then all of a sudden you go weightless. We didn't have, we're not, no seats in this, sent training anymore. You're not belted in. You know, now you have those hooks that you hook into. We didn't have any

of that crap then. It's just like, man, and then I realized they were, you know, special operators never fly during daylight. And we're doing a daylight and we're doing a daylight mission. So they're doing nape of the earth because the idea is the lower you can get, I don't know why we do this in the desert. I get it when you're doing it in like in forest. The idea is you fly so low that they can't shoot at you or a surface the air missile can't lock on before you pass over. I'm like, I don't think that shit's going to work in the desert. But hey, far be it for me, right? We were doing cold-work tactics, right?

Mm-hmm. Hey, fly naked earth, and then there, you know, how they had the mountains, they'd like, like that, and that would be us getting pushed into the chair, and then, dude, you would come off the knife's edge. I don't know. It was probably 10 feet. It felt like you could have reached out and touched the ground. And then they would just dump it right back. And then you go, wait, let's write it. It was like that vomit, comet thing for the astronauts. And I was like, okay, this is the real deal here, man. We're not, this isn't training anymore flat level.

Yeah. We land, get out on no shit, pink Floyd dark side of the moon is what I thought. We get off that thing, I'm looking around, this, it's a stone age man, I was like, holy shit. And uh, linked up, there's a CIA officer there. So we get off the helicopter. You know what you're supposed to do? Set up like a perimeter.

You know how you run off and you throw yourself down. And they're thousands of Afghans just rambling around. They don't, that's not a training scenario. You get a buzz, isn't it? We're in a workup. No. I've never seen this scenario. We're like, well, are we supposed to shoot these

months? What are we supposed to do? And I'm like, we're not going to do a damn thing. So I said, we're not, I just walked off, say, come on, let's go. And now this is the leadership thing where I know the fellas are like, Miller, we always knew he was an idiot. We always thought he was an idiot. Now we know he's an idiot. Because we're not doing the playbook. I just walk down, I see a road, I walk to the road, and we just sat down next to the road, had a cigarette, just sat there. Combo guide puts his radio up, tries to make comms, nothing. The dog on pickup trip, high lux comes whipping by this guy, legendary CIA officer who I won't refer to here, but you've met with this great bushy bus mustache,

go, hey cowboy, need a lift? You could not be able with a feather, right? So surrealist and I'm like, yeah, we do. We load up in the truck, we go down to where Karzai is in this schoolhouse. 2,000 pounder came in and this hill right above him. There's a schoolhouse, there's a medical clinic. Karzai got mirror fell and cracked him in the head or some crap whatever. But we get to the schoolhouse

and we're like Karzai he's going to be the next president of this country. Taliban are that way. Got a mass casualty. We get off, they start hauling there, two other 47, 53s. So we see, we get off and we see you over here, they're moving all the casualties on these two other birds. So we didn't backfill them like we planned. I didn't care at that point, right? And final point, it's like, so you're in combat now, right? Which, super bowl, right? Yeah, got a bum leg already.

I'm limping around, I'm like, oh my God, this is quintessential Christmas. I'm like, oh gee, I finally get to the big show and hurt myself. It's all right. So we put in, everybody was obviously pretty shattered. Either injured, can cost, well, that's same thing. You know what I mean?

But the force that was there was, we're like, we just got to give them some time off. So we put in security around there, right? And I remember jumping in this hole, you know where this goes. It's like this good fighting position. That's where the JDAM hit. And I remember looking down Sean, and I was like, who the fuck is being eating hamburger out here?

Oh man. Dude, I didn't know that that's what happened to human body when it's eviscerated. And I was like, damn, this is for real. And so that was my arrival in Afghanistan. We moved on the capital of, and it was, I always like to say we captured, I was like a captured canard dude,

it was just like a, we just drove. There was no resistance, the enemy was defeated and the war ended, that stage of the war ended a couple of days later. Damn. Let's take a quick break. Sure, when we come back. I'm spending too much time on silly stuff, I know.

No, no, it's good, it's good. Let's take a quick break. Next on the Sean Ryan show. The leader of ISIS was Abu Bakr, El Baghdaddi. show. The leader of ISIS was Abu Bakr, El Baghdaddi. So what I have to say to all my loved ones in Presbyn is that I will always love you. I mean I usually don't do good nieveo when you're talking about your enemy I don't think it's helpful I think it colors your judgment. I've been here too long and I've been of evil. He was an evil man, beautiful young woman, helped people. She

was there to help people. Bagdaddy, evil of evil. But everybody's looking for him. His tradecraft is really good. He would burn people alive. We had them put kids in cages. When our intelligence officers put their mind to it, and our special operators put their mind to it, you can run but you can't hide. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in Former Navy SEAL Mike Ritland keeps it real on the Mike Drop podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage Rudy Reyes. The ethics of martial art is why I joined the Marine Corps. I never thought I was going to join the military because I'd been around so much gun violence and I wanted to be the antithesis of that.

I love fighting hand-to-hand, it's fair. You don't have to kill your opponent. You can beat them with ability and skill. Bike drop, raw, unfiltered, intellectually sound, wherever you listen.