#45 - From Covert Ops to Creative Triumphs: with CIA Contractor Drew Coussens

This week on The Wild Chaos Podcast, we sit down with Drew Coussens, a former narcotics interdiction officer turned successful author. With a career spanning elite federal operations, intelligence work, and missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Drew shares intense behind-the-scenes stories from his time in the field. From inter-agency conflicts to life in war zones, he breaks down the tactical ingenuity, survival skills, and unique grit of Marines in global security roles. Beyond combat, Drew gets real about mental health, and how writing became his path to healing. Don’t miss this powerful conversation on resilience, redemption, and the unexpected twists of life.

To receive a copy of A Failed State, by Andrew Coussens, CLICK HERE

Instagram: @warnovel.author

Chapters

• 0:09 Federal Agency and Special Operations Recruitment
• 10:41 Covert Operations in Unstable Regions
• 22:41 Living Conditions and Military Operations
• 33:08 Marine Leadership and Global Conflict
• 42:04 Near-Disastrous Encounters in Afghanistan
• 52:27 Veteran Mental Health and Treatment Options
• 1:02:40 Military Trauma and Therapeutic Writing
• 1:11:57 Private Military Response in Afghanistan
• 1:20:48 Military Experience in Hollywood Productions
• 1:33:31 Faith and Family After Tragedy
• 1:46:42 Parenting, Faith, and Adoption Stories
• 1:57:19 Military Experiences in Podcast Conversations

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

We're just going to roll right into it because you have quite the backstory of operations all over probably the world. You worked with a three-letter agency. You wrote a pretty successful book. I guess let's just get into it.

Speaker 2: 0:24

You want like the name ranks yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:26

Daybreak Social, let's do it.

Speaker 2: 0:28

Yeah, Drew Cousins, my surname. My actual name is Andrew Cousins, but my mom called me Andrew, so I was over that as soon as I got to 18, I was like Done.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Yeah stop calling me for dinner, mom. You know the backstory is interesting man. I was a fed for a while doing narcotics interdiction for a CBP and kind of at the time I wasn't really into the law enforcement end of it. There's just too much. I mean I could go into huge detail but you know red tape and duty officer stuff. Before that I did some wildland firefighting, hot shots, hell repel stuff, search and rescue. So I started to gravitate more towards the search and rescue end of it, which is called Boar Star for CBP and in 2002, the Winter Olympics. Interesting story here and definitely something I feel was the result of several prayers I don't know if his Paul.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Schubert's going to pick that up, are you? It's funny. Is he in the camera? No, for anybody that's hearing some chewing. That sounds like a ball in a giant dog's mouth. All you see is that. We got a pretty awesome service dog with us today, so yeah, but he, yeah, he's.

Speaker 2: 1:46

He's usually pretty calm, so I probably should have omitted the ball, but he likes it on the bear rug there. Yeah, um. So it was post 9-11 and everybody thought we were going to get hit right. Everybody wanted to play. All the federal agencies wanted to come to the party, so the only thing they had available was a 16,000 square foot hangar in Mountain Green, utah, on the other side of the Wasass Range which faced the Super G which was going to be at Snow Basin, so that was a huge operation.

Speaker 2: 2:15

You know I had worked consequently with the FBI before and with NEEMO teams, National Incident Management Organization, teams, which tries to bring everything together. We did the Columbia shuttle disaster recovery Really and I knew from experience that the FBI didn't really play well with others. They used their own frequencies. It was very difficult getting a briefing.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Why is that? I don't know. You see it even in movies and shows. Fbi shows up. You hear stories and nobody likes to work with the FBI 100%.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Now, with the exception of the HRT guys. So I got to meet HRT guys while I was downrange at Bagram. Okay, bagram's got a compound kind of dedicated to federal agencies, three-letter agencies to kind of be separate, task force stuff to be separate than the rest of the mill, although they did work closely with CJ SOTIF, which is the Combined Joint Special Operations Force there, and the HRT guys are really squared away, probably because they co-train a lot with their tier one partners with CAG.

Speaker 1: 3:27

They're not at the flagpole playing, correct, playing the political game. These guys are actually out training and making a difference, correct, so they're not I think they're given a lot of latitude there to kind of be their own operator.

Speaker 2: 3:39

But I just found it really difficult. We were all kind of broken up into quadrants and just had difficulties there, especially when it came to air. We had helicopters fly by and didn't realize another helicopter was in our airspace. No shit, yeah, that's kind of sketch it is, it is. So let me go through the hit list for the agencies that were at Mountain Green. I believe it was Secret Service, secret service, uh, us marshals, and it was. Of course they had their regular element and then some of them sometimes would have their, their special operations, their special um unit element, um, they're like SRT or whatever. But um, FBI, uh, D, DHS had just formed it. A lot of the D, these agencies were coming under the DHS had just formed and a lot of these agencies were coming under the DHS umbrella.

Speaker 2: 4:29

So, they were being collected under the DHS umbrella, and then a couple guys from the State Department right. So we were flying guys up. We were doing hide site location for HRT, which wasn't on site yet. We were identifying those. We had military advisors there. Nobody really could identify who they were at the time.

Speaker 1: 4:48

And this is all for the Olympics 100% In 2002?

Speaker 2: 4:51

And it was a task force. It falls under a task force that comes together for special events and it's called the NSSC, which I believe is National Security Special Events. Okay, and that usually comes together for foreign dignitaries. You know, if you got like a uk prime minister in town and he's visiting the president. They want to do all kinds of they bring in this many agencies.

Speaker 2: 5:11

They did for that, for this because I think, everybody on their mind, 9-11 was on everybody's mind for sure and they still felt that it could. Something else could could touch off. Although we do know us is probably the safest place post 9-11, right, Conventional thought says that things are probably going to be pretty safe for a little while. Regardless, it's like playtime for all the agencies and stuff. So we were flying, after we did a couple of security overflights, we flew some guys up to the comms towers that wanted to hang some from it and do some work inside and I'm not a tech guy so I'm just like sure you know Flew up there, landed, hung out with the guys for three or four days and in the back end of that they were like hey, there's a program that we think you'd be great for if you're interested.

Speaker 2: 5:59

And then another buddy had told me about it too, another Marine had told me about it, and I was like, yeah, okay, sure, I don't like it. And they're like, well, you'd be home more but you'd be downrange part of the time. Got a number to call, called a phone number, realized in my latent wisdom that they were not State Department, although that's often said when you ask somebody from. Okay, you know the cia who they're with. It's always state department so this is so.

Speaker 1: 6:29

We're at that time when you get, you're prepping everything and every. You know you're there working with all these other agents. What was your role and position?

Speaker 2: 6:36

then. So essentially we were just a ferry, we were just a helicopter. Helicopter was on station oh, okay helicopter ferry because I had been used to doing, you know, search and rescue stuff. So I kind of doubled as kind of an impromptu, you know.

Speaker 1: 6:50

Yeah, so you're just transporting these guys and so that's all it took. Huh Right, working with them and you were just getting to know them, networking, just having a conversation, just being friendly, obviously being there for any needs they have.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Yeah, you, coffee, do you want? A water? Do you want? You know what do you guys think about? You know, lunch and stuff like that, just being you know super. You know, like I did with with anybody, it was just kind of absolutely I do business. But, um, yeah, I, you know, like I they're like, hey, can you do you think you could qualify for a top secret sci clearance and I go, I doubt it, you know, because your mind starts going through all the stuff you've done.

Speaker 1: 7:23

Oh yeah, For sure. How far back are they digging?

Speaker 2: 7:26

Somebody's going to find out something yeah, stole candy from the 7-Eleven, but yeah, so a year goes by, I'm kind of doing my own thing, just kind of totally forgot about it, and I get a call and they're like hey, we need you in North Carolina at the US Training Center in two weeks, north Carolina at the U? S training center, in two weeks. Your clearance came through Really Holy cow. And then the next several weeks paperwork came through and my wife's looking at like a diplomatic passport paperwork and embassy paperwork and some of these foreign countries that I was in, and she's like what?

Speaker 1: 8:00

And it's a lot. That's a lot of paperwork. Yeah, so with this during this time. I mean, are you pretty excited? It's not every day. You get, I guess, technically recruited by the CIA, Correct In a way, and then now you just get a green light that it's going through.

Speaker 2: 8:18

Yeah, I didn't know what to expect, man, I really didn't know what to expect. A lot of the questions that I got later were as I was, you know, and I had obviously, you know, had plenty of experience with AR-15s. You know, both personally and professionally. Glocks, you know, I had a chance to fire. We did some aerial gunnery work from Helos when I was kind of the Bore Star, bore Tac side. But they were like hey, can you hit a tombstone with a 249? And I was like I don't know, like I think so you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 8:59

And exposure to other weapon systems that a lot of and everybody in the program was either, you know, combat marine 0311, 0321, or they were former you know soft guys Got it. In fact, when I got downrange to the first country, some of the guys were. One guy was Red Cell, marcinko's Red Cell. What's Red Cell? It was the task force that Dick Marcinko had put together to infiltrate naval bases all over the US and in foreign countries there were US naval bases, to see how impenetrable or non-impenetrable they were Really yeah, that'd be a fun gig, extremely fun gig, and at the end of the day, don't knock over anything.

Speaker 2: 9:40

Dexter, oh Dex, here aft anything.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Dexter, oh, here, off, off, good boy um at the end of the day I was like, wow, man, these guys are like people I read about. So you get your clearances, everything goes through. What's the process of getting hired by the cia? I mean it's that's a pretty exciting thing formal, okay.

Speaker 2: 10:02

Um, other than the clearance part which you know I I kind of knew a little bit about what the clearance took when investigators were visiting my neighbors. I'd get calls from people be like hey man, there's a guy here asking all kinds of questions about you Deep, yeah, really deep and former employers, school friends, former girlfriends. I was married. At the time I was like, wow, that's hardcore. Is that going to be okay?

Speaker 1: 10:33

Yeah, it'll be fine. I'm sure we'll pick it up.

Speaker 2: 10:39

And I obviously qualled. You go through attack, fam, and you've got to be able to manipulate an eight, eight, uh, an ak, that's probably loud dexter here.

Speaker 1: 10:49

Thanks, we need to get you a quieter house. You want to grab that? I'll give him that. Oh, he wants it, poor pup there you go, that's your cost.

Speaker 1: 11:01

All right, he gets a little treat. Um, I got water beside you too. If you need it, it on the floor right next to you. Yeah, it's even labeled. Oh no, these are. I didn't do it in the beginning but yeah, no, I sent everybody home with a cigar. So this guy he's a Marine combat Marine got out, became a cop in Chicago, got shot in the line of duty. So I try. Got shot in the line of duty, so I I try to give small businesses veteran owned law enforcement opportunities to send in things and that way we could give them the guests. And then the other one he's a recon marine. He started sea state coffee so everybody gets going with a bag of coffee and some cold brews and go from there. But yeah, yeah, so anyways, back to. So now you're in or you're going through what's well, and I'm supposed to be read out.

Speaker 2: 11:43

I'm supposed to be read out in December. Of course, you don't hear anything until it happens, right?

Speaker 1: 11:47

Okay.

Speaker 2: 11:49

And consequently, a friend who I had met in my travels, who used to work for the NSA but now works for, kind of a data collection company that does work for the NSA, which will remain unnamed. He's like hey, your clearance is with Scattered Castle, which is like a closed network. It's usually like the NSA, cia Okay, it's like a separate. So when somebody says, hey, I have a TS, I have a top secret clearance, they can't find you because they don't have access to Scattered Castle. Only those agencies that are part of Scattered Castle have access to it.

Speaker 1: 12:23

I didn't know to it. Everybody else is under jp, okay, yeah everybody else is under jpass.

Speaker 2: 12:26

Okay, dod doj. And he goes do you want me to port your clearance to jpass and you'll just have a dod top secret?

Speaker 2: 12:34

and I go, yeah, because at the time I started my company, um, uh, you know protective principles, which we'll talk about a little bit, and I wanted to have that clearance so I could have a facility for sure clearance. And I could, you know protective principles, which we'll talk about a little bit, and I wanted to have that clearance so I could have a facility for sure and I could, you know, handle documents et cetera. So for sure, absolutely, yeah, um, but so I'm trying to see how much I can talk about Um and I won't talk about specific locations. But the first destination was Pakistan and that was an interesting deployment.

Speaker 1: 13:00

So you get in, go through. What was the training? Like you talk about training, it wasn't it wasn't so much.

Speaker 2: 13:06

I mean, we did IED and it's weird they, depending on your, your role, right, you go different ways. So I had a medical and search and rescue background, although that was secondary to security, right To making sure that the client can do all the collection and and and do anything they want to do. Um, I, I had to go to courses like live tissue and stuff like that, while other guys go to.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Got to go to like lock picking and surveillance and stuff so they had you already designated, obviously with the, what you had as a background fire, rescue, medical right, that type of stuff. So that's your direction when you got hired by the CIA. So now you're doing live tissue. Did they do the pig training?

Speaker 2: 13:51

100% Poresign model pig training. That was really interesting. I did get to go to the farm, which is Camp Erie, and do IED identification and mitigation, which was was pretty cool. It was a pretty cool course and it was pretty intensive. You were never off the clock so you could be going to chow and there's an id you know simulated id that blows up on the roadside and you have to you know, take evasive action really stuff.

Speaker 2: 14:19

Yeah, so that was that was. You know, I like how immersive that stuff is, it's definitely pretty cool. And then we did all kind of stuff. We did, oh geez. We did baton. We did, uh, edge weapon training and just stuff you never really thought you'd need, but I guess at some point or another they didn't know what really to expect. Are you at this?

Speaker 1: 14:39

point, when you're learning these things, you're like, well, why am I, why am I needing to learn this? Like, what are these guys about to put me into it? It?

Speaker 2: 14:49

it gets more interesting because um pakistan was really unstable at the time.

Speaker 2: 14:54

It still is, but it was considered one of the most unstable okay regions and again, I can't go into specifics about the operations or anything like that, but we were never hit. I think there was an understanding that if we just focused on our mission and left everything else we saw alone, that we could remain in place without much interference. However, we were probed a lot because we were gee. I mean, the Pakistani Taliban is one of the most powerful organizations. You know they run the Haqqani Network, which is like a global syndicate.

Speaker 1: 15:30

They got the funding. So if they have the money, they got the power.

Speaker 2: 15:33

Yeah, and Al-Qaeda and Akhani are very, very tight and that's unnerving.

Speaker 1: 15:39

So what are you ignoring over there? That's going on. So obviously I mean you say you can't get too much. What are you ignoring over there? That's going on?

Speaker 2: 15:48

so obviously I mean with you say you can't get too much, are you guys?

Speaker 1: 15:50

there, protecting, observing. Yeah, I can't, I can't, okay.

Speaker 2: 15:52

Okay much detail until I know, I'm read out and then I I can shoot, pick and choose what I say. Okay, um, I, I think over there we were really surprised that the government that was facilitating this didn't want us there. Really, yeah, it's a weird dichotomy, okay, um. So, that being said, there were times that we got squeezed manpower wise and like we thought that. We thought that, um, drawdown was because we were going to get hit and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 16:19

Um, almost setting you guys up, making you so you're not as strong 100 we didn't have a lot of guys on station anyway, it wasn't like there was um. Yeah, you're not as strong 100%.

Speaker 2: 16:24

We didn't have a lot of guys on station anyway, it wasn't like there was a two-size element.

Speaker 1: 16:27

Yeah, you're not running a platoon. Yeah, so when they're shrinking you down, I mean, are you going down to single digits?

Speaker 2: 16:34

Low double digit, low double digit numbers. Really that's scary, this includes analysts and targeters and all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 1: 16:41

Which aren't going to really be in the fight, correct? So when you guys are in Pakistan, I mean you're turning a blind eye to things. What's going? I mean are you watching, just are you knowing who's cartel or cartel, who's Taliban? And you're just, hey, we're here. But Wild West, brother, wild.

Speaker 2: 17:00

West. I remember we were taking a shuttle flight from one location another and picked up a guy who got on. You could swear this guy was solid taliban, you know. And uh, he, he sits on the plane and looks at all of us. You know, beard, saw our camise like the man dress the whole nine yards dirty face and stuff, and I was just like holy cow. And then he, he busts out a can of copenhagen and taps it and I was like, oh, this guy's, this guy's an american?

Speaker 2: 17:31

no shit, he's like what's up, really, really it's like, wow, man, I mean, granted, we were, we weren't wearing, you know, camis, either we were, you know, pretty, pretty casual, or some guys are wearing, um, you know, multi-am bottoms or whatever here.

Speaker 1: 17:48

But you would have put money on it that this dude was straight-up Taliban.

Speaker 2: 17:51

Oh yeah, and like this is what I mean. Like you don't know who's friend, who's foe, who's working for the good guys, working for the bad guys. I requested time over at another site in J-Bad was my first Afghanistan assignment and I fell in love with not only the team but the location. We got treated like rock stars. We got the best food, you name it. I got so many stories from over there, but I've got even better stories from another spot in Afghanistan. So I was in Afghanistan at the time when the and I was actually on the base when the bin Laden assassination happened and we were co-located with Ground Branch, right. So Ground Branch worked in conjunction with Omega, which was a task force that was know, that was comprised of tier one assets and and GB, and they would kick doors with the locals and um you know their special operations, guys Um, and they turned. They landed the birds that you saw, obviously on zero, dark 30.

Speaker 1: 19:01

The birds that didn't exist.

Speaker 2: 19:02

That didn't exist and then turned all the lights out. Well, we were sitting in the talk with it with, uh, ir cameras. So we, they're like they came in and they go, hey, don't turn the ir cameras on the birds. And we're like cool. And then a couple guys were like you know what I mean? Oh, for sure, and um, I I just was like man, this is crazy, but I liked it so much better. But when that that went down, the PACs were like everybody out, everybody get the F out, you know, because?

Speaker 2: 19:31

it was just kind of a it was really kind of an affront to their goodwill, so to speak. So we got booted out of there, a lot of them, and then, around that same time is when Hillary pulled all the people's, all the guys', dip passports. She's like we're not using State Department cover for any of these guys anymore. You guys are on your own. So, yeah, it was a lot different, because guys were coming to our, our unit, from uh combat operations, okay, and they weren't, didn't know what to expect you and they got off the plane with it.

Speaker 2: 20:11

You know the hoorah and all that stuff and it would they people like we don't, we don't do that here, man like different world yeah, it's like a whole different and guys were like, oh my gosh, like and um, yeah, I mean, I could go down the rabbit hole pretty deep with you, but it just it was just a very, uh, different operation and, um, we had a lot more latitude than guys were used to. You know, guys are used to having a platoon leader and, yeah, you know, commanding officer and stuff, and you know we just had a couple of guys are like hey, here's your parameters, here's what we need done and we expect you guys to do it so what's the day-to-day out there?

Speaker 2: 20:51

it changes all the time, man. I mean, if somebody were to ask um what operations were like, I'm like watch 13 hours, you know yeah, okay because, like it, it could change day-to-day.

Speaker 2: 21:03

You're, you're shuttled, you're a shuttle driver one day, driving you know, guys, guys, because, like it, it could change day to day. You're, you're shuttled, you're a shuttle driver one day, driving, you know, guys, guys, around. One day, you're, you know, flying in helos. The next you're, you're, um, you know, grabbing an asset or processing an asset. Then it just it's. It was a very, very interesting. Wearing a lot of hats is very interesting, and that keeps the boredom at bay.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Oh, I'm sure keeps the boredom at bay oh, I'm sure, because with boredom I mean you get complacent. That's what guys start screwing up complaining right, complaining was an art form when it was boring, um, it really is. And then it just, if it doesn't change, it, turns to cancer. That's, that's a big problem with platoons you know it's like yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2: 21:41

You know what? Where were you when you were in afghan? Where? What parts kabul?

Speaker 1: 21:44

I was right at the embassy the whole time. So, yeah, yep, and that play. I mean that was miserable because the conditions were horrible. We all had dysentery holy cow it was, it was because we were working with the um ana no, who were the, the gurkhas?

Speaker 1: 22:04

oh and so they had. We were, we're hand in hand with these gurkhas and they're coming from nepal or all over the four, all over the you know their region, and so they don't have the best hygiene, yeah, standards. And and then we have afghanis, the local afghanis that they had vetted, and they're working chow halls and stuff. I mean, you see it, and we'd watch a guy carry a bowl of fruit and he'd sneeze straight into the bowl of fruit and then put it up for breakfast and we're all sitting there like no man. And so, yeah, we all, a bunch of us all had I lost.

Speaker 2: 22:37

I lost like 20 pounds immediately I mean, did they put you on cipro?

Speaker 1: 22:40

they put us on anything. I was calling the wife telling her to send me just packs of tuna and peanut butter and stuff, and I had that. I don't know if they're still around, but there's a company called nuts and more.

Speaker 1: 22:51

You know they had like that high protein peanut butter, different flavors and stuff. She was sending me cases of that and I was. I was paying my terp to go out in town and give me those chablis kebabs, you know, those that fry which, oh man dude. So yeah, that and a box of dates. I that's. All I lived off was peanut butter, dates, some fucked up Afghani meat, it was all. It was better than what they're feeding us and it the the living conditions are horrible because the Gurkhas would just there's leaving shower babies. Everywhere they're blowing snot, rockets. I mean the mirrors and things were covered in just loogie it, and seeing her covered in just loogie it was horrible living conditions. And then when they ended up moving my team from, we were just up from the ISAF base. They moved us out in town and we were living in these villas that I guess at the time it wasn't Blackwater but Z or Academy, whatever they changed the name to like. The third time it was us. The CIA had a building in our compound.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Yeah, that was the Hotel Ariana. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I had some time there.

Speaker 1: 23:47

Okay. So yeah, that was my last place until I got fired there, but that's where we were staying. And so those, the Gurkhas were cool there. I mean they were cooking breakfast every morning. I mean those guys were squirted. But when on the main contractor base, that's where it was. Yeah, because they had built those right. When we switched over and went to the hotels, they built those big almost like barracks buildings and they were all like commingled showers and stuff. That's where everybody was getting sick. Yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 2: 24:18

Have you ever been to the Telebar? Have you been to the Telebar? It's like the bar, that's kind of down the street from. No, that have you been to the.

Speaker 2: 24:23

Televar, it's like the bar that's kind of down the street from no, that was a big, famous hangout. But we actually and I wasn't there at the time, but we actually got hit a couple of times at Ariana. They had tried to, you know, infiltrate man. There wasn't a place that I was at that we weren't, you know constantly being attacked, either by mobile ground, you know foot mobiles.

Speaker 1: 24:50

What's that like being? I mean CIA, in a small town, I mean or a small unit. What's your guys' protocol? I mean when you guys are you on base with other ISAF military?

Speaker 2: 24:55

Sometimes, sometimes we're not. It just depends on the location. Yeah, you know, pac was weird. We had for a long time we had um, indige weapons, um, so you're running ak's and rpks, rpg7s. We had really, really with incendiary rounds and I was like, and we're um in the location we were at. We were pretty offset from not too far off from a town and I was like I'm not firing incendiary rounds, putting them downrange at anybody, when there's a town of a couple hundred people right there. And guys would be like, well, of course we are. And I was like, bro, we'll burn that place down to the ground. And I remember firing the dish a couple of times and I was thinking how do people not taste their own spinal fluid from the over pressure from that thing?

Speaker 2: 25:46

explain a dish for people listening it's just like a, it's like almost like a ma deuce, like an m2 on steroids and it it fires the same size round.

Speaker 2: 25:54

But it's god awful it's horrible, like the, the 45 degree angle, that the the blast comes off the muzzle and it. Man, I don't know, I was just like man, I I don't want to use that thing if I don't have to. We had to learn how to uh, which is weird, because we had to learn how to take that thing apart until we got mod. We eventually did get american armaments, but heavy weapons and cruiser weapons, but until we did, we had to learn how to take that thing apart in the dark and stuff.

Speaker 1: 26:20

And I was like my gosh man, this is a lot how I've never disassembled one, is it compared to a mod dude? Because I was a heavy machine gun instructor, so I loved the mod deuce. Mark 19 were my babies and so timing, oh yeah that's why? Because the the dish that shoots a much faster rate of fire, doesn't it? It does it does.

Speaker 2: 26:38

And then the mod deuce. There's definitely, um, you know, a difference there, but uh, I just I don't don't know. It was so complicated and I think initially I can remember a couple locations it had that anti-aircraft setup and I just was like I don't Were these things on tripods, or did you have mounted in vehicles?

Speaker 2: 26:59

No, they were hard mounted into AN2 matting if it was stationary. And then we had a couple in vehicles that were hard mounted into the bed of these trucks, but we couldn't use military vehicles. So we were using either Indige vehicles or we actually had a couple of Ford F-350 steak trucks. Oh, that's nice, it's nice, but we didn't have any AR-500 armor.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Of course not. I was like what's the point here?

Speaker 2: 27:26

Yeah, Swiss cheese, yeah, so essentially the plan was to butt those vehicles up to some cutout pieces of land and use that as cover while other units bounded. I don't know, it was weird, man. We had a guy show up who was a former the forward air control guy, okay, and he was like okay, this is what you got to do. This is how you got to call for fire. And somebody raised their hand and they go hey, are we calling for fire from our own guys? He's like no, you, probably, probably you did your. And everybody was like, oh my, like it just changed the narrative completely he's teaching you how to call a fire from the, the local, yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:12

Yeah, the local military and nobody wanted anything to do with it. Hell, no, I'm not going to take rounds. No, I don't know, it was so weird.

Speaker 1: 28:20

And then the fact that you're even talking to them.

Speaker 2: 28:23

that's sketchy we had an E&E plan that somebody scrutinized and one of the guys looked at it and he goes. He goes we're doing this mobile and the guy's like, yeah, either mobile or on foot. He goes you realize this is a location of one of the most hardcore tribes in the region. He goes we'll make it a couple hundred meters before we get cut down, because they're watching everything that you're doing.

Speaker 2: 28:51

Yeah, of course they are. Why wouldn't they? You know, it just makes sense to glass people that you don't trust and keep them on.

Speaker 1: 28:58

you know Are you guys set outside of the town or are you buried?

Speaker 2: 29:01

in. No, we're set outside of the town, so it was easier for them to watch inside out.

Speaker 2: 29:07

We did blackout conditions, so we were running nods at night as best we could and, you know, doing completely blackout conditions. But it was just a strange man. It was just a strange way of doing things and nobody could get their handle on it. And you take guys from so many different units, right, one guy and here's a story for you, man, you'll love this One guy on paper looked like man. He looked like Alexander the Great. Okay, I won't talk about his name, but he was 10th group. He was a sergeant major. He was a weapons sergeant. He had all kinds of time with all these heavy weapons and had put time in. And you look at his resume and you're like, wow, man, that's crazy. And he gets to site and he's setting up all these defensive positions and these guys are coming from combat units and they're like and guys are like what are you doing, man? There's no like interlocking fields of fire, like this guy just started rubbing people the wrong way. But he was the battle captain for the unit.

Speaker 1: 30:07

So he's coming from a military mindset, not free agency. Well, you guys are playing on a completely different game.

Speaker 2: 30:14

I mean, like I said, on paper he looked like Captain America, he looked amazing. And then guys realized that this guy probably didn't play nice with others and he was on loan to the Air Force training the Air Force guys heavy weapons usage and at one point we were doing chalk rounds on the thumpers. We had some thumpers. We had some hk69s hk69s were used more in the afghan theater, okay, um at the time. And so he loads a chalk round. He sees the maintenance guys walking on, uh, the airstrip and he loads a chalk round and fires it and one of the maintenance guys that he's buddies with you could kill somebody with a chalk round 100%.

Speaker 2: 30:54

It would have taken his head clean off.

Speaker 1: 30:56

I mean, does he not realize the steel plate that goes in there?

Speaker 2: 30:59

Yeah, and that was the last straw for people Like everybody collectively was like we're not dealing with this guy anymore and so they kicked him out of the country. That's embarrassing, it was extremely embarrassing. And then he gets hired by a major um well-known firing range to be an instructor with people like michael vick you know vickers and do you know what I mean like guys that have like um, a history, uh, with training elite. Yeah, and this guy gets picked up. This guy gets picked up because again, they look at his paper.

Speaker 2: 31:34

Yeah, the paper says it all yeah, they don't get a peer review, they don't get anything, and it was just a huge surprise really yeah that's interesting.

Speaker 1: 31:42

So is that how it works over there for you guys? You guys can just peer people out in a way. It took it took a while to get that moving, that moving.

Speaker 2: 31:49

you know, I think that a lot of it was stovepiped because, like they figure, oh, this guy's got a security clearance that costs a quarter million dollars to procure. He did time with you know, an elite unit most of the time, so he's immediately, they assume you're squared away. He passed.

Speaker 1: 32:10

So they want before they pull the plug because he's got millions of dollars dumped into him to probably get to that point they want to make sure it's enough 100%. Yeah, that's hilarious that he didn't know. I mean, even if you're screwing around with a buddy people that don't know a chalk, what he's talking about, what Drew's talking about, is technically a 203 round and it's got a blue cap on it and it's full of orange. We call it cheeto dust or this orange chalk but there's a thick steel plate. So when that grenade round hits that steel plate, crushes the tip of your round, it explodes.

Speaker 2: 32:45

Chalk everywhere to mark and you could one and those things are cruising, I mean yeah, it takes a while for that to arm, like when they're you know the golden eggs, the hdp. Yeah, it takes a while for that to arm, like when they're you know the golden eggs, the hdp. Yeah, it takes a while for it to arm, but you're still dealing with that steel plate, you're still dealing with the projectile, that's hauling ass.

Speaker 1: 33:01

That's bigger than a golf ball. That's gonna hit your ass. That's wild yeah it, man it.

Speaker 2: 33:08

It just was it like I'm sure you know from contract in. You know afghanistan, you know Afghanistan and stuff. It was a little bit like the Wild West but it was big boy rules. You know you expected guys to you know be their best and you know help others and you know put the work in and stuff. We were very SEAL heavy when I first got there and you could tell man they ordered hair products and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 33:34

You know a lot of guys from the teams oh yeah and then it it slowly became team marine because I think the client realized that you get a lot of hard work out of marines. You can depend on them. Um, they don't complain, you know as much as other units do. Um, and so we got a lot of guys that were eventually MARSOC but a lot of guys that were, you know, recon, force recon. You know some 0311s that had, you know, from some units like the regimental combat teams that were, you know, kicking ass down range and stuff.

Speaker 1: 34:07

So I think Marines are the best, the best hands down people you can ever employ, because you're treated like absolute dog shit, you're giving unrealistic expectations and missions to accomplish with absolute dog shit gear and they make it happen every single time. No matter how shitty the conditions are, it can always be worse, and so I was actually just having this conversation with a guy on new year's. He's, um, he hires a lot, he's, he works in the security world and does some you know cool guy shit. And he was because we're bullshit. He's like you know who the worst employees that I have are. I was like who's that? He's like navy seals. And I started laughing because I've said it for years, because I've hired a lot and when I had my security company, I had 155 employees at my max. So I had a lot of guys from all over, from rangers and seals, and I agree I was like 100 and I know I'm gonna get shit for this.

Speaker 1: 35:03

But the seals, the seals are great at here's your mission go, they have all the tools, all the intel in the world, they conduct the mission and come back and then that's it.

Speaker 1: 35:16

But then you take a Marine unit and I mean you have some Lance Corporal that's dumped in the middle of some city and he's given a fire team and a map and they're told to make it happen. And this kid just the leadership skills are so much different between, I would say, an 0311 Marine corps grunt. I would take all day when it came to leading and building over some special ops guy because, yes, cool, they could conduct the mission and they're great at it, they're very intelligent. But that's how their minds are built. When you take a grunt, it's like here's, here's this mountain, here's your platoon fucking attack and figure it out. And that's just like the marine mindset. So when it comes to work, hands down, I'd hire, I'd hire a thousand marines all day, yeah, and because you just know. And then when the work sucks, like hey, guys, this shit sucks, we got to get it done.

Speaker 2: 36:00

Fuck, roger, that and it did happen. Hey, you know string and concertina wire, you know for days, all night, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's hilarious.

Speaker 1: 36:08

I was just talking with, I was just in court lane yesterday with a buddy of mine. We were talking, we took over a city outside of a city, we burned it off and we called it an ant hill and it was like this hundred foot just hill in the middle of the desert and our command was like we need to build an outpost on it. We had the drag, all the hess goes up there to build a whole entire shack on the top of the thing. And then you do, you guys, hand fill it, hand filled it. We dug so the hole so deep on the back side of itself.

Speaker 1: 36:36

You stepped out of the back at night and weren't paying attention. You fell. You're fucking done like there was that. But we would. We would patrol all day, search vehicles all day. Soon as it got dark, half the team was stringing concertino wire for a week around our, our fob. It was just our vehicles pretty much in a wagon wheel outside of the city. So we built concertino wire, three strands, you know, the two on the bottom, one on the top and the other half were filling sandbags all night, just filling sandbags and walking them up.

Speaker 2: 37:03

I mean, and that was it nobody, you wouldn't say a word about it one of the most hilarious stories was a guy that I had deployed with a couple of times. I think he was from 9th Marines, dog handler, and he was telling me that when they took over Ramadi, the Marines took over Ramadi from the Army. They would foot patrol it and they'd ask the Army. They're like hey, tell us about what you had going on. Like I don't know, we just load up in the Bradleys and drive from one side of the road through the town to the other.

Speaker 2: 37:35

And then get shot the whole time. So the Marines are going house to house to clear it out and I was like holy cow. He was telling me that it was probably one of the most ridiculous deployments he had. I mean, he was just thinking he for sure wasn't coming home.

Speaker 1: 37:52

Ramadi. We did Ramadi, we were on the outside of it, but our other half of the unit took through Ramadi I believe they split it with the Army and for Operation Steel Curtain, and I mean those guys you rolled through afterward. I mean there was not, there wasn't a single building that didn't have a bowl hole in it. I mean that city was turned toiss cheese in a matter of days and it was. It was pretty incredible to watch and and see all that go down. But god damn, like this you could just tell the difference. You know when marines would roll up to be to hear the stories about how marines are replacing army units, and you'd pull up this Army unit and fuck engaged every day. Then, as soon as they hear Marines roll in, I mean it was quiet, yeah, and they knew.

Speaker 1: 38:39

I think the rumors were yeah circulating and I think if they obviously with the president at the time and all that shit, and you take Afghan, if they would have just taken the leashes off, you put every top Marine unitunt unit from that has all the war fighters, they would have turned them loose in afghan or iraq. Fuck, dude it.

Speaker 2: 39:01

I think it would have been a much different outcome yeah, I think the way that I figured out how the war was somewhat unwinnable was the fact that you know that Al Qaeda was really direct in saying, hey, we're very patient, you know, and we're still dealing with it today, obviously.

Speaker 1: 39:20

They've been dealing with it for thousands of years. They got the waiting game dialed.

Speaker 2: 39:24

They do and you know they're going to plan to outlive a lot of the societies because they're procreating at a rate that the western nations are not, and you can tell the way the immigration's stacking up in europe that it's going to be a whole different world for our kids, you know, than it is for you know, for us right now for sure, even though we can kind of see that that tipping point, it's interesting and they don't.

Speaker 1: 39:51

We don't see it enough on the news here about what's going on over there, about the, the amounts of muslims taking over these countries. I mean it's sad you see some of these communities and everybody's been driven out uk man, I just was.

Speaker 2: 40:07

We were in the uk in 2017. I was there with my kids, we were visiting relatives and hanging out and stuff and it was still, you know, a pretty nice area and the streets didn't look how they do now and you know, you got lots of Sikhs and lots of you know different immigrants, but not not on the level. You don't have immigration on the level it is now and it's just. It's just a whole different world. And and I work with a para here, a guy that was a british para, who actually did security for the royal family in saudi okay, and he he won't go home anymore. He won't go back to the uk, even though he's got relatives there and, you know, brothers and cousins and stuff like that he just he won't go back it's sad it's even happening.

Speaker 1: 40:51

Where's the Great Mall of America?

Speaker 2: 40:57

Oh, in was it Minnesota. What city Is it Dearborn?

Speaker 1: 41:01

No, it's not. No, anyway, you look at it there. Yeah, it's completely converted. Now it looks like you're in downtown Fallujah. Yeah, with the slums and the trash, downtown Fallujah with the slums and the trash.

Speaker 2: 41:17

I mean we can get into that because when the stuff went down with these terrorism attacks in the last couple weeks I got on the horn with still staying in touch with a lot of guys that were in that are out. You probably know some of these names. Write some of these down, because these would be good guys to have on. Andrew Bustamante is from the case officer Mike Baker. He's a local guy and still does a lot of um uh work, I think indirectly, for the agency and then does other stuff. He's got a bunch of shows on discovery channel he's local here.

Speaker 1: 41:44

Yeah, okay, mike baker's a great guy I feel I you're saying the name and I I feel like I know. Well, he's been on Rogan yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:52

Eight eight times.

Speaker 1: 41:53

Okay, maybe that's where I know him from Seven eight times, Okay.

Speaker 2: 41:56

And then obviously Doug Patterson, which is another case officer that came out of the Iraq-Afghanistan theater. Yeah, these are guys that I talk to on a semi-regular basis. They're all doing kind of like I am doing piecemeal work. You know, some consulting here, some advising here, some uh, facilitation of sales there, Um, but they, um, they had some opinions and, it's funny, A lot of it came true. The Sam guy that was on um, that appeared on uh Ryan show, uh, I didn't sit right with me and that's the first thing I did is get on the phone with these guys and they were like, yeah, that's, that doesn't sound right.

Speaker 1: 42:34

They got picked apart there's some really weird shit going on, so I would you want to dump into this well, we can get give your thoughts at least, I mean I don't want to get ahead.

Speaker 2: 42:47

I feel like we skipped so much well, let me, let me go back, because I got a couple good stories, yeah I want to.

Speaker 1: 42:52

I want to hear all this, and then I'll make them.

Speaker 2: 42:56

I'll make them interesting for you because they were funny. Um, we we got uh deployed to a uh a base in uh eastern afghanistan sorry, western afghanistan which unfortunately was along the iran border, which was under a lot of surveillance by at the time from the US, because they were worried about nuke production, for sure. So one of the things that that at the time that we were getting done was resupply from contractors, and they didn't care who the contractors were, as long as the materials were not sensitive, okay. So one of the aircraft coming in at the time was a bunch of Russian contractors, if you can believe that, into western Afghanistan at an airstrip that we were meeting them, predisposed to meet them, at Pretty unremarkable airstrip, yeah, what made?

Speaker 2: 43:51

it run that no support. There wasn't a us. Okay, uh, air force presence there this is just a strip it's just a strip, okay.

Speaker 2: 43:59

And this antinoff came in at night, um early in the morning, but still still, um, you know, pre, uh, sunrise, and um we were waiting for this thing to come in with some supplies, like, like I said, that were unremarkable, you know. And so this thing comes in and it lands and shears off the landing gear. On landing it's an Antonov 7 Victor, which is an old Soviet air bomber, medium bomber, okay, with all the you know, munitions and everything stripped out of it, and starts on fire on the airstrip. So the belly starts on fire, skids to a stop and we don't have anything to do, any kind of search. They're looking at me and I'm like I'm not going in there with a fire extinguisher.

Speaker 1: 44:44

You guys are just sitting here waiting and this plane comes in and just crashes.

Speaker 2: 44:47

Yeah, and everybody's looking at it like, well, these guys are dead and there goes all our stuff right. And a few minutes go by and somebody's like look, and somebody's kicking out the nose cone because they got those nose cones where they put the guns. And somebody's kicking out the nose cone and, one by one, these guys, these Russians in coveralls, jump out of this nose cone. One guy's still on fire, like batting it out. You know what I mean? He's kind of walking over towards us, casually walking, not running, like you would think you know you'd do if you were American.

Speaker 1: 45:20

The other day at the office.

Speaker 2: 45:22

yeah, the other day at the office and they're just walking over and as they're putting the fire out on their coveralls, and one guy's carrying a bottle of vodka and they're speaking Russian to us and the one guy hands a bottle of vodka like we're going to partake and we're like no man. What the fuck is going on? Like I couldn't believe this dude.

Speaker 2: 45:39

They're all just tore up and they just look back at their aircraft and they're like ah, you know, and they're just, I don't speak a lick of Russian but man, it was the hilarious it burned in my mind.

Speaker 2: 45:56

Oh, for sure, as a memory, for sure, you guys lost everything on that plane that you were supposed to and the whole thing just burned. We were there for the, because we had to be. We were there for the next couple of days when they took pieces of the fuselage and brought it to a boneyard over at the airbase the shindan airbase, which is close by and just left it there, um, you know, to rot. So we had to go check on it. You know, go through it, make sure there was nothing sensitive in there that you know was picked apart by the locals, stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 46:21

So it was just insane um leave it to the russians I know right that.

Speaker 1: 46:26

That sounds like if you would just explain that story. But like, who do you think was flying at russians? Not a care in the world.

Speaker 2: 46:32

None. And then my last deployment actually was in JABAD and we were obviously working in some fashion with the Afghan Special Operations guys. They'd train, they'd run that road that is kind of a big oval, almost like a racetrack around Fenty they call it Fob Fenty but we stayed in one side of the compound and then next to us was the parade grounds and kind of the special operations, afghan special operations side, and then across the way was, I think, the Raqasans, and then there was First Group over on the other side and then a variety of other branches, air Force, marines, what have you? And we were, I think, going to be headed over in that area, and a C-130, and you can look it up, I think it was Torque 62, was idling on the ground loading JSOC contractors and JSOC equipment on board to take off, I believe, to demobilize those guys. Okay, and they had put a Nod's case, pitch black, because they're flying in pitch black, because they're afraid to get hit right. So they'd corkscrew in Yep and they put a Nod's case. One of of the pilots did under one of the flap controls, and I don't, I'm not a pilot, so I don't, I don't know specifically which control or which flap, but you know, you couldn't see it because they're all in their nods and they have blackout conditions in the cockpit. So they load these guys on.

Speaker 2: 48:08

I think we're headed in that general direction about 435 in the morning or so, so 430 or 500. And these guys load up, their loadmaster gives the thumbs up and they begin to take off and because that flap is impeded by the Nod's case, the aircraft gets lit full of fuel and starts to yaw to the right and goes nose down right into the parade grounds which is from us, is only a couple hundred meters away, and the fireball I mean you could feel it, the fireball, and it's full of americans on it well, full of americans, correct. And as it, as it noses in, kills everybody on board and then splashes jph, splashes jet fuel all over all the Afghans that were mustering in the parade grounds. So we start heading over there and it's like a cartoon man.

Speaker 2: 49:02

I see guys completely on fire, running like just coated in JPA, like burning fuel, running across the parade grounds. One of the guys I saw him just hauling and then I realized later he's running for the showers because that's the direction he was going. This guy lives 16 hours longer, complete, like 90, third degree. You know what I mean, just a crispy critter. And I was like what is going on? And that was like the last memory of deploy, of any deployment I had taken, of seeing all this happen and like there's aircraft parts everywhere it's.

Speaker 1: 49:40

It was just insane so these dudes are standing in formation, or just?

Speaker 2: 49:44

they're starting to.

Speaker 1: 49:45

They're starting to muster this plane crashes right and just splashes them with 100 all the guards in the towers got partial burns.

Speaker 2: 49:52

And how many people died in this incident? Well, I know it was. I think it was three or four jsoc contractors. It was, uh, the air crew which, on a c-130, I believe, was what?

Speaker 2: 50:02

five, six, five that's a decent at least I'd say four or five yeah, and then um, I think at least you know, probably a, maybe less than half, a less than a dozen, so somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen um afghans and I I was just the memory from that is weird I came home, um and um, because we were back from deployment to my front door in 24 hours because we chartered so we didn't garrison.

Speaker 2: 50:32

There was none of that. It was like literally back there and I remember seeing my wife hadn't raked the leaves, you know, it was fall, and uh, and I told her I go bring the kids inside. And I remember, just, I was so full of like yeah, I don't even know that I was throwing stuff around my garage like into the sheet rock and like I was screaming out there and I, just I I can't even begin to tell you like how weird of a transition it was and then I had to go get there's no transition yeah, and then I had to go get cereal for my kids and I'm like standing in the cereal albertsons, like looking at all the food and we ate, you know of like a small variety of stuff just going.

Speaker 2: 51:12

Oh my gosh, I can't, can't process this. So, um, yeah, just a really, really weird last deployment memory well, that quick yeah, that quick yeah, and then they just, they just like oh, okay, and then nice life.

Speaker 1: 51:27

I see you, you know isn't it weird how the government does that to us. I mean I'm categorizing you as military, you know how you take these guys and they're dealing with that. I have a perfect example of a vet we worked with. He's a very good friend of mine. Now His best friend got shot and died in his arms and the next day he's literally on a flight back to the U? S and he says he's on this flight and he's looking at his fingernails and they're just coated. He's digging his best friend's blood out of his fingernails.

Speaker 1: 52:03

And then he lands and he's back home within 24 hours and his buddies were like you want to play Xbox and you know you. We wonder why there's so many issues of these guys and watching a bunch of people burn or dealing with kids and then you get back and the government's just have a nice life. Thanks for your service and here's society.

Speaker 2: 52:27

Good luck. Even in garrison they don't do anything for you. No, absolutely not. You go back to picking up trash. I mean it doesn't make much sense and the stories just abound. I know Mission 43 has got a program. That's really remarkable. Yeah, they do some pretty incredible things here. Some buddies of mine, that guys that I work out with at the gym one guy was a sapper, one guy was an 11 Bravo have taken that program that they offer there and it's like an immersive 30-day program and they said it's just, it's worked.

Speaker 1: 52:58

Good, it's working yeah, I know a lot of vets that have utilized them. They're there, they do some now. They have that facility. I mean they're probably doing stepped it up even more. Oh yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2: 53:09

Have you been in there? I haven't yet. No, gorgeous man, that's gorgeous man.

Speaker 1: 53:11

You've got to go check it out. Yeah, I need to. I need to, but it just fascinates me of how. And then they wonder why so many dudes are getting on the bottle or the pills and end up down these dark roads.

Speaker 1: 53:25

Because the VA isn't what it's supposed to be, man. And then you look at Ukraine and how much money we're dumping into that and we have homeless veterans. We have veterans that can't even get their prosthetics fit because they're eight months out, because they live in bumfuck nowhere and their va is absolute garbage in their state and you know like that's the frustrating stuff. And then you see these guys like my wife. I was actually on a meeting and I have like this weekly psychologist or I guess she's a shrink, whatever it's a therapy meeting, it's a group therapy. And my wife, she logged in for me because I was I think I was either doing a podcast or I was in a meeting and she just logs in just so I don't miss a thing. And she listened to it. And when I came downstairs she was like I understand why motherfuckers are killing themselves.

Speaker 1: 54:16

She's like the fact she's and just listening to this va rep. Okay, we're gonna talk about our inner feelings today. What dude wants to sit and listen to this shit?

Speaker 2: 54:27

no, we had a psychologist come over to jbad and I mean, here's a bunch of guys from like ground branch man that have operated for 20 plus years, um, and she was telling us how to breathe, like, how to do breathing exercises and guys like, but it was mandatory, you know, I get, there's going to be guys that utilize it.

Speaker 1: 54:47

I sit in that stupid ass phone call every week and there's a guy in there and he's just he's all super engaged, has a million points to talk about, and then there's a the whole rest of the class. You can tell these dudes are just fucking kill me, man, get me out of here. Like I'm here because the va makes me sign into this bullshit. And so I think if we put that money that we're putting into other countries and put in the different programs or put it in the organizations that are actually making a difference, you know, yeah, but at the same time, how long are we going to go through this? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 55:20

I don't know, and I experience it on a regular basis with guys that are still dealing with the after effects.

Speaker 1: 55:27

You know I did.

Speaker 2: 55:27

I did EMDR. One of the guys I deployed with the pack was a former ranger and interesting story he was. They were slugging it out with Hakani and they weren't sure if they were over the border or not in Kunar province area and ran out of ammo and ended up like some of it went hand to hand and then he was majorly screwed up and nobody really detected it until it was too late and came home, got in trouble with the law, lost his wife, lost his kids to divorce and child custody battles and I lost track of him for a while and I was like John. You know, I'd reach out John, what are you doing, john, are you okay? And stuff. So I figured he was him. For a while I was like John reach out, john, what are you doing, john, are you okay? I figured he was in prison. He gets a hold of me later and he goes.

Speaker 2: 56:19

You're not going to believe what I'm doing now. I was expecting the worst. He goes. I'm a psychologist at the VA. I go. You're kidding me. You're like you. Well, exactly.

Speaker 1: 56:33

You're not trying to be mean, but I go tell me how you got there.

Speaker 2: 56:36

And he goes, man I, he goes. I was facing all kinds of legal ramifications and stuff and he goes and I took um you know, the bull by the horns and I went and got four treatments of ketamine therapy really invasive ketamine therapy and he goes and I could tell by the way he was talking he was a different guy and I was like man, I gotta try that. So I tried that, I tried emdr how is?

Speaker 2: 57:02

ketamine okay, so let's. The ketamine therapy is cool because you don't have to relive your experiences. It's like your brain kind of works around those trauma centers, builds new neural pathways on its own, okay, from from. However, the drug works. It's almost ketamine, I would imagine is probably a lot like ayahuasca, okay, or dmt it's got some of the same properties or psilocybin on a larger scale. The thing I didn't like about emdr is I had to unpack every memory and then I had to hold the paddles and go through all that crap, and that was just awful that's kind of the same with ayahuasca.

Speaker 1: 57:36

You mean, you're, you're facing all your demons, stuff, which a lot of guys want to do, and I'm fascinated this because, you know, working with vets over over a decade now, I've seen what works, what doesn't work, and I feel very few when it comes to talking to a shrink. You know, just from my personal experience, it's seeing the outcome, it's not, it's not a lot. You know the guys that are like oh man, my therapist really got me through it. There's a there's a good group amount of them. But the guys that we're working with that have survivor's remorse to watch buddies get killed, had to do things like that, right, that shit. The majority of them are like absolutely not. But then I've been seeing the last few years a lot of these guys are more going to these treatment centers and they're coming back.

Speaker 2: 58:26

Private treatment centers.

Speaker 1: 58:27

Yes, private treatment centers which?

Speaker 2: 58:29

is interesting because you think the funding will be there. Maybe it will be with the new administration.

Speaker 1: 58:34

Hopefully.

Speaker 2: 58:34

He's always kind of dedicated to his time to changing the paradigm a little bit. But man, private treatment centers it shouldn't have to be like that, imagine.

Speaker 1: 58:47

I can go to the VA. I don't know if I've talked about it on the podcast or not before, but I went in just to do my initial check, check-in. Cool, this is what's up. You know you talk to yeah, talking to all these different doctors. You sleep, no, I do this whole thing. And so I see the last doctor of the day and they're like cool, stop by the pharmacy on the way out, we'll get you what you need and you'll be on your way. And I'm like cool. So I give my little pull, my little number, give my id, sit there for a few minutes. They call me up and this woman puts this giant paper bag on the counter. Like I'm looking at this bag, I'm like god damn, like what the hell is in this? Pulls out a second one, puts it up there. She's like okay, this is everything that's been prescribed to you today. And I'm I'm exactly like that's the exact.

Speaker 1: 59:25

Look on my face. I'm like, looking at this, like so I grab these two, not grocery bags, but they're not lunch bags, it's. They're a decent paper bag, they're all folded, got my little staple in it and my receipt thing on it and I'm walking my truck like what in the fuck is in this that I that I need to take? So I throw them in the truck, get home, I give them. I walk in the house and the wife's like no, give give me it all yeah flush it, she, she goes through them and she's like nope, nope, no.

Speaker 1: 59:57

We're reading the side effects of these things may cause suicidal thoughts and tendencies and lack of sleep. But then, oh, I need to take this pill because this pill is giving me these side effects, so I have to take another pill to counter the second side effects. It was mind-blowing. But here we are and you have. That's why, like, why can't we prescribe them edibles? Why can't you just get a block of pre-rolled joints delivered to your door every every month or every whatever year it is? They have no problem sending me the biggest jar of pills of narcotics on the planet, no questions asked. But I can't get.

Speaker 2: 1:00:36

I can't get a like a jar of edible sent to me medicine man, you know you see, what? It's?

Speaker 1: 1:00:40

just a racket, because they know it works and I work with these vets that horrible nightmares, no sleep. I have one vet that was a partial paraplegic, like almost completely severed a spinal cord, but it didn't, it was just enough. They had this dude on 15 different pills for breakfast. I'll never forget this. I walk in this guy's room to wake him up, make sure he's up. We're on a hunting trip. I walk in his room and he's got 15 pills bottles all lined up with the lids in front of them and each lid had two to three pills in it. And I look at this guy and I'm like bro, what the hell? He's like breakfast of champions and he just starts taking them. This guy started to get down a rabbit hole, went completely detox himself and started hitting a weed pen and he's like this is all I need this.

Speaker 1: 1:01:34

You know, smoke a joint and that's probably getting trouble for it in some states too 100 and he's like dude, now I now I gotta go find like a drug dealer behind a dumpster, behind chilies at night and he's like getting this or the, the va, and he literally shows me he has a plastic tote of just pills. It's like you need anything here. This is what the via give me, but I'll go to jail if I actually use something that helps me and that that kills the pain in my back, that helps me sleep at night. All from a flower or a leaf, whatever they want to use and extract and and. But here we are in 2025 and they're just shoving pills down dude's throats.

Speaker 1: 1:02:12

So to get into the, the medical treatment. This is why I'm fascinated. I actually had a. I had an air force vet. She came on. She's big into this stuff. So, yeah, I would like to hear if your experience if you don't mind sharing about this, because there's a, there's a lot of curiosity. I think joe rogan kind of put it on the map. He started talking about stuff. That kind of sparked a lot of people's interest. I'm obviously being in the, the veteran community, I hear these stories, guys going on all these different trips so I would love to hear your experience. So, and how, it helped.

Speaker 2: 1:02:40

So, uh, unfortunately for me, what stopped my deployments? Because I I guarantee I'd probably still be deployed today somewhere, um, if god didn't kind of step in and turn tragedy to victory. So I lost my wife in 2016. She dealt with depression and alcoholism and I was home getting ready for my 21st deployment. Now deployments are shorter, but I was leaving in three days and she ended up taking her life in our home.

Speaker 2: 1:03:15

And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that she couldn't figure out where I was at. I was angry all the time. I was, you know, dealing with my own stuff and I didn't have time really for her. I couldn't, I couldn't put, I couldn't pour attention on her when I'm not whole myself and that kind of shut everything down right there.

Speaker 2: 1:03:33

Um, I did end up when my kids got older, I did end up going uh to a deploy, a couple deployments to africa for the client, and then um was asked to go to honduras and that that was the story I told you where, yeah, I didn't want to take the shot, the covid shot, to fly a dodc 130, but it didn't matter because uh, um, ukraine had kicked off and I definitely didn't feel like going to ukraine and did a casualty there.

Speaker 2: 1:04:00

So I, um, I started looking for my own um remedies, um talking to a lot of guys that had, like I said, that had, like I said, that had done EMDR or had done ketamine um ayahuasca. I know I was um definitely doing psilocybin um in a microdose fashion for a while, uh, which did help actually, um, but one thing that I did is I knew I needed to kind of like continue mission, which is like obviously a big thing with guys in the core and stuff like that. Is that, um, a big thing with guys in the Corps and stuff like that, is that I needed to find, you know, a new fight here, domestically at least. So for me that involved initially writing an autobiography which you know got so redacted by the Publications Review Board at the agency that it wasn't even readable, which is a whole other mountain to climb, and that's why I wrote fiction. So that's why I wrote A Failed State and wrote my first fiction novel as a means of therapy.

Speaker 1: 1:05:00

And so your fiction story, that was kind of the go around to be able to write, to write some things that you've experienced in your life not you, but somebody else.

Speaker 2: 1:05:12

Hey, they improved it. So I mean, the cool thing is is I was able to take um my character in the book, which is the damien collins is the name of the main character, and I got to have a lot of um creative autonomy there. Okay, so he's good. I just don't want him to bump into that camera.

Speaker 1: 1:05:35

That's hilarious, I wish you could get that one. I can see it's good.

Speaker 2: 1:05:39

That's hilarious, and I had other guys that were dealing with so much crap. One guy I won't tell his real name but his call sign was Rocket Rocket came home early because he had an abscessed tooth or something. And they don't screw around with dental stuff because it could go systemic and guys could deal with a lot of, a lot of problems. So he goes home early, decides to surprise his wife and there's elements of this in the book um walks in and hears another voice in his bedroom and realizes that his wife is in bed with another guy. Oh god, and he, you know they get into an argument. His daughter's is just in the room down the down the hall.

Speaker 2: 1:06:22

Um, the cops show up, uh, because of it, and the first thing the cops always do is separate the two people. And he goes to a motel, stays, stays the night and this is in the book too and by the time he gets back to talk to her in the morning and work things out, she's got a protection order and they're like you need to come to court in six months for this protection order. You're not allowed on the premises, you're not allowed to see your daughter, your wife, any of that stuff. And he's like you know, and finds out that she used his job as you know means to. He's like oh, he's a killer, he's got all kinds of guns in the house and stuff. He's like that's what I do for a living, you know, and I infused that in the book because it made the character so rich and stuff and it was true, yeah, and I just feel like I needed to tell that story, you know, because other guys are like man. I'm not alone in this, you know. I've I've experienced something similar.

Speaker 2: 1:07:19

Um, and when I wrote the book, uh, it was from a hybrid publisher. Um, it got picked up right away on a few podcasts. Um, shot show was a couple of months away. And then right before, like six weeks before, shot show, mike baker mentions it on joe rogan. Yeah, his first podcast with joe rogan. He's like, hey, um, they were talking about a couple books and he mentioned mine, had a copy of it there, gave it to joe rogan and of course it gets listed on the joe rogan recommended reading list and it just takes off on amazon.

Speaker 1: 1:07:51

It just good for you, yeah, good for you, and you got into that as as a form of therapy. I did I did.

Speaker 2: 1:07:56

It was purely therapy. It wasn't going to publish it. But then somebody's like, oh, you got to get that story out there because it's going to benefit yeah someone. And then go to shot show, have a book signing at the eberly stock yep booth and yep sell a whole bunch of copies there. And, um, you know, get to have a couple of guys, including 2LAM. 2lam is the former SIF guy.

Speaker 1: 1:08:24

I'm sure if I saw his face.

Speaker 2: 1:08:27

Did support work for Delta. And then the most famous guy, the MMA guy, green Beret MMA Tim Tim Kennedy. Tim Kennedy Plugged it too.

Speaker 1: 1:08:39

He's in a lot of shit right now. A lot of shit.

Speaker 2: 1:08:41

Well, this is what happens when your stories, somebody else's stories, become your stories. I know that happens in the military a lot. I was with a guy last night who said, look, I'm not going to fault a guy for like gravitating. It happens all the time where like somebody's like that was me that did that. You were there, but that was me because guys just misremember and they end up you know just the amalgamation of stories being told over the kitchen table, the bar top or something like that. Man, I don't know you, you can, you can probably give me your own take on it. But tim tim's probably taking it to a new level, but he's probably never really dealt with a lot of stuff he's seen and done.

Speaker 1: 1:09:21

He hasn't, yeah, he hasn't had to. But now it's crazy, been watching the, the sf community, just completely unravel lately. I mean it's been, it's been quite the show sitting back is just the marine watching. You know all these guys. And now they're almost going cannibalistic on each other. Nobody's nobody's standing up for him. But I understand I get why they're crucifying dim over everything I've.

Speaker 1: 1:09:44

I've called it for years like the first time I ever met that dude was at shot show. I was walking down the hallway and he came up and we were kind of crossing paths and he's like, hey, I'm, and I'm like yeah, like you know, I was just walking by him. He's like you want an autograph and I thought he was talking to this random guy behind me. And I like looked back and the guy looked at me and I looked at Tim and I was like I'm good. He's like okay, it just walks right by me and the guy guy, this random guy, was walking with me. He was like what the fuck was that? I'm like I don't even know. Like I thought he was talking to you. He's like I thought I was talking to you, but you know, that was my, my first run-in with him. But I've man, I just I don't know some of the stories. Like him talking about the afghan pullout and saving hundreds of thousands of people, and so buddy, my buddy, that one of my team leads was there.

Speaker 1: 1:10:33

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:10:33

This guy. He's in my book as Loki. His call sign is still Loki, believe it or not. Austin is his first name, former second bat ranger. Okay, and he has done so many contract deployments, for he was with Scorpion. The NSA Scorpion contract Would come back to the CIA leave again, and now he's in Ukraine and I was supposed to. This is a whole other story, but I mean, I wrote an article about this, for it was called the what's it called? The Decentralized Con Op, and I wrote it for Recoil Magazine. Okay, because at the time I had another buddy named Byron who was recruited by the guys that were doing the Venezuelan Maduro operation I don't know if you remember that and that recruitment was done at the Circle Bar.

Speaker 1: 1:11:35

At SHOT Show. At SHOT Show, no shit.

Speaker 2: 1:11:37

I'm like who's going to recruit a bunch of mercenaries for a hit job or a snatch and grab at a circle bar in SHOT?

Speaker 1: 1:11:46

Show. I mean, where else are you getting that many caliber of humans? In one area at a time, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 1:11:53

Every swinging dick that thinks they're.

Speaker 1: 1:11:55

Anything goes to SHOT Show.

Speaker 2: 1:11:57

So then, right after that, of course shortly after that's when Cobble fell and I started getting a bunch of phone calls from guys I deployed with and they're like, hey, let's put a team together. We can, you know, because I knew the landscape well and we had a lot of assets on the ground that we never heard from after that. The guys that were, you know, either Afghan soft or that worked for NDS, which is their version of the CIA over there. Oh, those dudes are gone now, oh I know.

Speaker 2: 1:12:21

And he's like hey, let's put a team together. And we were working along with GSMSG about getting aircraft a 737 on the ground in there on our own. We were going to be linked up with what became Pineapple. And Loki was like he goes, I'm going, no matter what. And then he calls me later. He's like hey, I need you at Dulles Airport on this day, at this time. We got a private jet. It's privately funded. Bring your kit. Yeah, bring your kit. And I was like, okay, I'm in, because I was still addicted to the lifestyle then, even though I had been out for a while.

Speaker 2: 1:12:56

It calls you back, yeah, and I got you back, yeah, and I got covid really, and and I tried to get a hold of him a couple of times like I can't make it, I can't make it. So he comes back and he tells me that he that first of all, tim kennedy, was being, you know, facetious about a lot of the details, um, and was kind of annoying guys on the team because he was loosely part of that organization for whatever time frame and on top of that the State Department visited a lot of these guys because they had brought children, put children on the aircraft, yeah, so like either you shut the fuck up about this or we're going to charge all you guys with child trafficking. And he was like done no shit Because that. That it doesn't matter what your virtue is, no, or what your intentions are. If you do something without involving the state department, um, and just do it privately like they were doing, you can get a whole lot of trouble.

Speaker 2: 1:13:56

And on top of that, I think, whether tim mentioned this or not, it does a disservice, because a lot of guys lost their lives over there doing this privately for no money, because they wanted to. And I get it, you know. But my connection to that was palpable, so I wrote the article because at one point I'm talking to a guy who's doing, you know he's got his own talk set up in DC. Who's doing, you know he's got his own talk set up in in dc and he's on the phone on sat phones to tully, sat phones with guys, uh, thrias, sorry thrias sat phones with guys down range trying to get locations for some of these guys to kind of centralize them, to get them out and stuff. And I was like this is insane that this is not being done. You know collectively A lot of private.

Speaker 2: 1:14:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:14:44

A lot of guys just wanted to help. Yeah, and they needed it. I mean, you look at what we were going through military-wise 100%. We couldn't count on Biden or anybody from the State Department.

Speaker 2: 1:14:54

The administration was really good at selling everybody out for sure on that one, and the State Department actually credited themselves with a lot of what Pineapple had done putting you on that one. Yeah, the state department actually credited themselves with a lot of what pineapple had done putting you know, afghans on aircraft.

Speaker 1: 1:15:06

But a lot of them were unvetted too, and we might be dealing with after effects from that right now, 100 gonna be 100. Yeah, I mean they didn't know they were snatching and grabbing. I mean they were already throwing people out of helicopters when they're still extracting, right I? What's crazy to me is it was weeks prior, weeks prior to the pullout of afghan. I probably still got it on my facebook messages. I had still had buddies out.

Speaker 1: 1:15:29

You know I was on contract with over there that I do. We're burning everything. I'm like what do you mean? And they had pits that they did on the base. They dug these giant pits and this was weeks, weeks prior to the announcement. So they already knew that they were pulling out and they were had. They were just loading filing cabinets, they were taking everything out of the embassy, all offices, they were just putting them in trucks and they were dumping these trucks and just throwing tanks of diesel and incendiary grenades and they were just. I mean, this was a good month, I would say. Prior to even hitting the news that we're pulling from afghan, they were already burning and they were incendiary so you?

Speaker 2: 1:16:08

so you're a cobble like. I spent a lot of time in cobble myself and then I was at bogram. I was like why didn't they use bogram for you know?

Speaker 1: 1:16:16

for uh, you would think, why can't you just shift those people right there?

Speaker 2: 1:16:20

yeah, I just I haven't been on the ground in cobble, especially at the cobble air center, a couple of times. This is the worst place, imagine.

Speaker 1: 1:16:29

Yeah because then you have what? Masood circle, or was it gray? What did they call that other round? There was a giant roundabout. Masood circle was right outside the embassy, the front gate of the embassy. Then you, there was that giant roundabout right by the airport and we're all. That's where we'd have dudes come up and just you know, you'd be sitting in a Land Cruiser or whatever, and some dude would walk up, take your picture and you're just like I'm trying to remember the route to Ariana because we took that so many times from Cavalier Center.

Speaker 2: 1:16:57

But that place is a shithole, man, you couldn't get in or out of there. The traffic was just all day. Every day. There was a couple guys that were headed from the hotel to the air center. I remember where gal had pulled up on a with a burka on, on a little one of those little mini bike you know those little scooters, motorized scooters they have and and then ended up punching a V bid right next to a bus full of American engineers because she looked in the window and saw a bunch of, you know, white faces and just and took out a whole bunch of those. Cause it wasn't an up armored, yeah, it was just a shuttle, yup and just. That was just.

Speaker 1: 1:17:37

Yeah, that was just a place is definitely the wild west. Yeah, that was just a nut.

Speaker 2: 1:17:42

That place is definitely the Wild West. It was interesting. So a couple of shot shows in Circle Bar was an interesting experience and then I ended up at, like everybody does, at, the Cry Precision Party. Those are wild, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 1:17:57

Those are wild.

Speaker 2: 1:17:59

Million-dollar parties, you know. So the one I was at that's memorable was the one that they had in some stadium Okay, it was mothball or whatever and they had put a bunch of sand in there. They brought in truckloads of sand and built a motocross track around the outside, put in palm trees. They had some DJ I think it was Deadmau5 or some DJ playing, a bunch of dancer girls. Of course, everything's free. And I'm standing there with a bunch of guys from CAG at that and you know we're watching the motocross race. We're on the outside of it and I get a tap on my shoulder. I turn around. It's one of the logistics officers I deployed with from the CIA. He's like what's up, dude? It was the weirdest. It was almost like and I was still dealing with a lot of after effects, ptsd and it was like it. I realized that's what I went there for was just to see stupid stuff like that. Make myself feel like I'm not alone in all this crap.

Speaker 1: 1:18:57

You know what I mean. Yeah, I think the last cry party I went to was they had midgets, yeah, on these bands that they were flinging them everywhere. Then they had the the mario kart track and the dudes were chucking shit at each other. The last one.

Speaker 2: 1:19:14

I went to um and it's been a couple years. I've kind of been keeping at arm lengths now that I'm fully reintegrated into society. Right, yeah, um was the one they had at the quarry, was?

Speaker 2: 1:19:25

he had a dress like fred flintstone oh yeah, no, I didn't go to that so we pull up to that I've got dexter and we pull up to that and there's cops like like nobody had told the local pd about it and they're having this shit. I mean, I've got a video on my phone. It's like an acre or two of like stuff, like it looks like a carnival.

Speaker 2: 1:19:44

Yeah, nowhere yeah and um it, just it, it blew me away, man, I we had to take a slide down this slide to get into it and stuff, and I'm like those guys go all out.

Speaker 1: 1:19:56

For sure it's. It's hilarious. What's your uh from your book? What's your favorite story in there? What's one that stands out to you?

Speaker 2: 1:20:05

man, there's so many um, oh, there's so many. I've got some some funny ones, I've got some tragic ones.

Speaker 1: 1:20:14

Pick one or pick a couple. That's what I like to hear.

Speaker 2: 1:20:18

I like to hear the well I didn't, didn't put the Russian contractor aircraft in there. I think I might have put it in the second one, which is called Relapse. Okay, and that's the one I'm going to give you Relapse, the Cost of War. So you'll have to read the first one over Audible or over e-book. Yep, the first one's out of print man, it probably was the dog fighting one in kabul, like, uh, doing a snatch and grab at a dog at a dog fight. Let me hear this one. Just, they have these huge mastiffs that they fight and usually the taliban aren't, um, supportive of it. Right, because of the fact that it's gambling, yeah, and uh, there was an asset there that needed to be grabbed. Um, that has some information.

Speaker 2: 1:21:09

And you can only pass off as american, as indige, when you're an american for so long, right, especially because a lot of guys have, like, red or blonde hair. You know what I mean. Doesn't matter how big your beard is. Like you, the gate, you want the way you move yourself. We're not them. Yeah, yeah, you can be wearing the same clothes. You know, although I'm telling you right now the fact that a lot of these vehicles, especially these land cruises that we use, have these vhf antennas that reach into the sky. That's a dead giveaway.

Speaker 2: 1:21:43

So that was an interesting one I used ironically enough, I used Intel. That never came about that somebody had passed, probably illegitimately. So it wasn't Intel that I was need to know. I didn't have need to know about terrorist activity in Europe, where some of these cutouts for Al-Qaeda would steal like a heavy loader or a garbage truck or you know what their version of version of you know semi would be over here in the us and drive it through crowds, and I put that in the book. And the irony is is I didn't really think any of that would come to pass here, necessarily. And now it's starting to manifest itself out because it's easier to do a large-scale mass killing with a vehicle than it would be, unless you're going to build a bomb here.

Speaker 2: 1:22:48

You can have guys all you want, squirters with AKs or AR-15s that they can steal or buy or whatever, but you're never going to get the same body count. You would, as you would with a stolen truck. And look, new Orleans is a good example of that. Right, that was just a full-size chevy. It wasn't even a dump truck or a semi or something like that, and those streets weren't even packed either, right, you know. So they got picked a really, really bad time to do that. I know the argument at the time is that hey, um, these guys were were veterans, they weren't indig, you know. So it's not like the border was an issue and I'm like where do you think they got all their? You know logistics and support talking to them yeah, who's talking?

Speaker 2: 1:23:32

who's providing them with? You know, operational plans and target packages. So it just, it just seems like it you know?

Speaker 1: 1:23:40

yeah, oh for sure, and I it's. It's basic tactics, too basic. I mean, you don't need anything besides, you don't even need a driver's license. Yeah, you know, and that's what was. I was. New year's blows my mind that. How many people pack downtown new york city for new year's, knowing 100? Damn well what is in our country right now. I mean, you see what's going on across the borders. You see what's going on across the borders. You see what's going on. How many people are coming across the border. I would.

Speaker 2: 1:24:07

You're not finding me anywhere in here no anywhere near, I think that's a common thread with veterans. You know, um, in the book I wrote about oktoberfest in munich, you know, and this guy, um, they recruit an algerian because there's so many algerians in germany anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:24:22

Yeah, they recruit an Algerian because there's so many Algerians in Germany, anyway yeah they recruit an Algerian and I believe in the way I had it in the book is they hold his family at leverage as leverage and he ends up or they recruit sorry, they recruit the Algerian. He ends up like finding another Algerian that's driving a garbage truck, who's gainfully employed, shooting them and then obviously driving it himself and then running through the crowds at Oktoberfest, which is, you know, geez, hundreds of thousands of people, and I never really wanted any of that stuff to be not a template, but, you know, motivation for somebody here. But, holy cow, we're look, we're living in a circle for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:25:05

I think that's just the beginning too. It's that's where it's. It's kind of scary. It's that easy, it's that easy and we live so comfortably that people just they don't even give it a thought.

Speaker 2: 1:25:16

Yeah, yeah, zero thought, so, um. So I guess to fast forward a little bit, um wrote the second book. Second book didn't get as much attention, obviously is the first, which it usually never does, yeah, and then the third book. I was in the process of writing when covet hit and then everybody was like audible, and all the publishers were like you're gonna wait years to get this published and just just because of so many people were putting books out at that time, or everybody was looking for a project to do at home.

Speaker 2: 1:25:44

Okay, all of a sudden, you know, it's just like we've got a backlog, are?

Speaker 1: 1:25:48

you going to circle back on it?

Speaker 2: 1:25:50

I might, um, the projects I'm doing now are are, I think, a lot more exciting and this kind of leads me into my exposure with Hollywood. Yeah, um and this is definitely worth mentioning is I gotta be befriended a guy who was a former pathfinder and did a bunch of contract work in in iraq and afghanistan with some of the soft guys and he ended up falling into doing costuming, a high-end military costuming for movies.

Speaker 2: 1:26:21

What is it like um looking over ever like being the subject matter expert, what's not just subject matter expert, but actually designing costumes, not just for the military but also for the any, for the indige, like if you're, if you're taliban or if you're, yeah, okay, uh, uh, somali, you know, somali warlord, stuff like that. And because he had exposure to it and he did such a good job, he called me. He's like, hey, man, he goes, how would you like to come out? We're filming Terminalist Dark Wolf. How would you like to come out and, you know, lend a hand with doing some tech advising and, you know, maybe you know, have a small role in one of the scenes, stuff like that. I mean I'd love to do that, but I had reservations because I had assumed Hollywood was so woke and DEI infused. And it is, it's your first instinct, correct.

Speaker 2: 1:27:13

But being on the set with such a great cast I mean Chris Pratt, taylor Kitsch, guys that are patriots, christians, you know, and not to mention the fact that most of the writing staff are former Marines, former SEALs Like it just felt like a community.

Speaker 2: 1:27:35

It was such a positive experience which I've kind of started to gravitate towards. More of that line of work are guys that you know had done, you know, five, six years in the team. Seven years in the teams had been, you know, green Berets or Recon Marines and stuff like that, and I feel like I just really found a home. So I'm really working diligently to kind of get back on the sequel to Terminalist 1, which is where Chris Pratt the next line of work for him is in the novel series. Yeah, and then on top of it I got the opportunity to meet and kind of become initially before all this kicked off become friends with Jack Carr. All this kicked off, become friends with Jack Carr, and we traded books and we suited them up and let the dogs, you know, do bite work on them and stuff at SHOT.

Speaker 2: 1:28:27

Show and stayed in touch with them and then Amazon picked up the series and then it was just like you know, people get so busy they don't have time to do much else other than you know, do their craft and provide for their family. So, um, he was on set. I got to hang out with him again, which was really nice. Um became friends with a lot of guys, including taylor kitch, who's an amazing individual. Does veteran work um in um, where is he? In montana, um, one of those small towns in montana he's got a place in and he kind of has a veterans outreach program there.

Speaker 2: 1:29:09

Loves to fish, fly fish, which I thought was awesome and has distanced himself quite a bit from Hollywood. So just a great experience. Man. And and I think it comes out this spring dark wolf does, which is a, which is a kind of an offshoot um of the book series. Okay, but it goes and it tailors um his uh character's development as now an agency asset coming off of the seal teams and stuff like that. So, and it they did a really good job, man, I, I, um you know it's sensationalized as most, um you know most series are yeah, they do a really good job with uh, with portraying it and tactics and stuff are pretty pretty on point.

Speaker 1: 1:29:57

That's good I see some things every now and then I'm like, oh god, like they didn't have anybody on set to help with this.

Speaker 2: 1:30:03

So what blew me away? One of the first things that blew me away and actually got me in contact with Ian, who does the costuming for a lot of these. He did it for Oppenheimer, he did it for, I mean, just a ton of series. He did something recently for the new Spider-Man reboot.

Speaker 1: 1:30:21

Oh really.

Speaker 2: 1:30:21

I think Spider-Man has like World War I theme now or something like that, I can't remember.

Speaker 1: 1:30:26

You got to know your shit for that you do. You take providences, regions, countries everything changes.

Speaker 2: 1:30:37

All the medals they wear, you name it, man. It has to be on point. He's an amazing guy for that it's pretty impressive.

Speaker 2: 1:30:43

But he did that lioness and that's how we got to know each other is I was like when I saw the first lioness, I was like who did this? I was like somebody, somebody knew something. And he reached out over, uh, instagram. He's like that was me, man, he goes, I got, I did a lot of it, I did the costuming and some of the advising and and I was like, no way we formed a great friendship. And then he's like oh, I'm not on Lioness 2. And I'm like, well, I'm going to see how accurate Lioness 2 is versus Lioness 1. And we compared and contrasted together and laughed about some stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:31:11

We just finished that, did you? Yeah, it was actually well done. I wanted to hate it because I am woman, hear me roar bullshit and you know it's just like you know. The whole entire time she's trying to prove herself but she's having a fucking meltdown in every episode because her family's falling apart. But if you took all of that aside and like the whole wannabe GI Jane, shit, it was done pretty decent, you know, and so it was at least entertaining enough that they had.

Speaker 1: 1:31:41

I like the team more than anything. You know the dynamic of inside the team. I hate how everything automatically like has a turn gay and there's a lesbian part to every single. You're like god damn, this is the most, this is the luckiest freaking you know informant that you guys have, or whatever that one chick was. But yeah, other than that, I mean I thought it was, I thought it was done decently. And I've talked to some marine buddies like hey, they watched it. I'm like what'd you think? It wasn't bad. So instead of you know, you think they'd be trashing the whole thing just because who we are. And yeah, I thought it was at least the equipment, the gear, the lingo. I mean that was all on, taylor.

Speaker 2: 1:32:14

Taylor. Sheridan got his his spot in that, oh he has to that dude.

Speaker 1: 1:32:18

You know I every, every season and every show that that guy's involved, I'm like where's his debut? You know 100 he's got to show his face and everything which is honestly like I, um, I, I liked it too.

Speaker 2: 1:32:30

I think one was better yeah you know from what I understood. But there there's some things you can pick apart. But I realized when you're on set and I realized it's because I had friends in the writer room for Dark Wolf. You have to balance it between what the director wants, because directors want, let's get this helicopter with the sun in the background, and they want all these grandiose.

Speaker 2: 1:32:50

And then you gotta you gotta be really purposefully political, for sure, and make it seem like it's their idea. What do you think about this? Because this normally doesn't happen. So what do you think about this? And they're like let's do that. You know what I mean, and that you have to.

Speaker 1: 1:33:06

It's almost like a, it's almost like a negotiation for oh, yeah, because, yeah, because they, then the creators, are creator correct, you know, and then it's their vision, it's we want this helicopter scraped 20 feet off the ground. You're like that's not gonna going to happen.

Speaker 1: 1:33:21

So I get. There's probably a good give and take relationship and having to let them know this is never going to happen 100%. But, dude, I want to shift gears a little bit. You've been through a lot Lost your wife, which I couldn't even imagine. Did you have faith through all that? Or when did the Good point and I probably should have addressed that later.

Speaker 2: 1:33:40

So, like a lot of guys downrange, your faith kind of wanes quite a bit. You know, you see some things, you do some things. You question God a lot A hundred percent.

Speaker 2: 1:33:52

Like a lot of veterans, a lot of guys downrange do A hundred percent. You know, I was saved since I was 16. So I carried God and when I dropped him which people tend to do a lot, absolutely he always has a way of kind of working himself back into your life, especially through people. And, um, shortly after losing my wife, I, I, um, I literally heard an audible voice during a pretty low moment I think. Me and the kids were headed to Sun Valley. I hadn't had Dexter yet but I had the other family dog to load the kids up. I just wanted to get out of town, out of the maelstrom sort of of everything going on with the family and people calling out of the blue and stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:34:34

And I stepped out into a snowstorm in January in Fairfield, halfway there, and I remember praying, just getting whipped in the face by high winds and snow somewhere along the way, and I remember God saying to me, saying watch me rebuild you. And I remember that was like the most powerful, even when I recant it now, probably one of the most powerful moments I've ever had, actually hearing a still small, audible voice, you know, and I let him do that. Like you know, obviously nothing is a direct line. You know you go through pitfalls and peaks and stuff, but he's done a really good job of that. And that was the other thing I was going to say about Hollywood. That really restored my faith in not just Christianity but people is there were so many people of great faith, so many people with great faith on that set and people that would just steal off to say a prayer or mention God. Chris Pratt's a very professed.

Speaker 2: 1:35:39

Christian. There's other people that were just there for the right reasons, and I think glorifying God is something that I always put in the back burner and nowadays it's just always one of the first things that I discuss, because, you know, I know it's becoming kind of all the rage right now in the NFL and the NCAA, but I think the military does a really good job of honoring the Almighty and really just giving credit for, you know, blessings that you know, hey, we're still here, we're still alive. The ones that have passed obviously are in a better place. We're the ones that have to kind of carry that torch, so to speak. So, yeah, super strong with me and you know, doing the due diligence of trying to pass it along to my children For sure.

Speaker 2: 1:36:29

I've got a great men's group that I go to, a bunch of F-16 pilots. Where do you go to church? So I don't go to church at this men's group location, which is East Wind Community out by me, so I'm all the way in East Boise. I do go to Rock Harbor and I split it between Rock Harbor and Calvary quite a bit, which kind of worked for me. I want a very masculine message because unfortunately, church nowadays leans towards more of the effeminate Keith does.

Speaker 1: 1:37:00

I feel Keith does a really good job. I think they just moved, but he's two streets back, right here, really his kids used to mow the lawn and tear up my sprinklers all the time. No, nonsense.

Speaker 2: 1:37:09

And even on christmas eve, which which was service we went to, he was, you know, he was like, hey, I'm gonna lay it down, like I'm for sure we're battling for souls here, for sure, on the, on the, uh, the one yard line, and I love that man, I love that direct I, yeah, we I'm.

Speaker 1: 1:37:25

I never thought it'd be like I don't. I guess it's considered a megachurch. It's massive and it's growing every day. It's it's. That's the only shitty part about that.

Speaker 1: 1:37:33

But when we first went we sat down in front and we ended up in the youth section, like the teen youth section, and so I was paying attention because I grew up a pastor's kid and same thing military right, the things you got to deal with life, the atmosphere. You fall apart, you fall away real quick and so it's taking me a long time to get reeled back into it. But when we went to rock harbor, I sat in that behind the youth and there I don't know if it's a youth section, but there's all teens there and I was watching because I have a young teenager and and I wanted to see in all every one of those kids. I thought they'd be on their phones and they were in the scripture and they were highlighting and they're in their bibles and they're taking notes, so that's good and I look at it as if you can capture the mind of a teenager during a service.

Speaker 1: 1:38:21

You're doing something right and yeah, we started going and she goes to youth group every wednesday there and she loves it and so, um, we haven't been a little bit, but obviously you know life and there's no excuse. So but yeah, it's a great church and we, we really enjoy it there. I mean, he speaks to the point. I like how the thing that I enjoy from him the most is that he speaks from the Bible no interpretation, this is it. This is how it is, this is how it's laid out.

Speaker 1: 1:38:51

And I like when he goes into the relationship the covenant relationship between a husband and wife and goes into sex, and how he'll even say he's like hey, we're talking sex for the next couple weeks If goes into sex, and how he'll even say he's like hey, we're talking sex for the next couple of weeks, if you don't want your kids here, he's like you can email me all you want. This is part of the Bible we're going through. He doesn't steer to the crowd's liking and give the audience what they want. He's right, goes right along with it, and I've always respected that and that's what I look for in a church 100%.

Speaker 2: 1:39:16

Yeah, like a lot of guys did, I thought I wasn't coming home from these deployments and I'd made peace with it. So when I did lose my wife to suicide and had to raise my kids, I was angry. But as time went on, I realized I always wanted to be a dad, you know, and I hadn't gotten the opportunity and, like I said to you before, I'd still be deployed if she was alive and I'd still be addicted to that risk, like a lot of guys are. I know guys that are still deploying. That shouldn't be One guy in particular. He died from the after effects of a motorcycle wreck but his call sign was Dragon. He was a former 12th group Now 12th group's been disbanded but he jumped out of an airplane with a tactical nuke because he was part of those green light teams and his back was so screwed up and he would barely make the PFT, you know, to qualify because he was so addicted to it and I just didn't want that life.

Speaker 2: 1:40:18

I wanted to be around my kids and it's funny how things that you thought were a curse really were a blessing. So to be a single dad raising three kids on my own, from, you know, 2016 on, I was like God, you've been so good to me. I've been to every football game, every ballet recital, you know everything, my every moment. My kids had their first car, their first prom, and that's a huge blessing for me, man, and I can't deny that God, like literally, gave that to me through tragedy, which he often does through the Bible, right. But if you look at the Bible and I, I, I, uh, I take solace in this is like God has used some of the most corrupt. I take solace in this is like God has used some of the most corrupt, awful people.

Speaker 2: 1:41:04

Murderers, rapists, Rapists yeah, you name it, man, and I read that all the time. I read into that all the time because I realize I'm so imperfect and that's exactly why we're given grace, right, mm-hmm, so yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:41:24

If you don't mind me asking, how has it been for your kids? Obviously this has been almost 10, 9 years ish. Yeah, we're at nine. We're at nine years. How have they coped and dealt? If you don't want me to ask, I don't want to get personal.

Speaker 2: 1:41:32

It was the hardest on my oldest um. He heard the 911 call and it's funny because I had seen so many head wounds and you know I could go on and on about some of the stuff I saw downrange. And then, of course, when I was here, I was running calls with eagle fire, so suicides, you name it. I'd seen it, um, so to have it happen to my own family and be on uh 9-1-1 calling for, you know, assist in the middle of the night when they were asleep, because that's when it happened. He heard that whole conversation and I was hard on him because he would do things like stress, heat and hoard and do things that were manifesting his ptsd. And it wasn't the way I I dealt with grief. It's the way he was dealing with grief and I was very difficult on him because of that, um, because I didn't understand it.

Speaker 1: 1:42:23

I only understood my grief well, and you're probably also trying to learn how to be a father too, correct?

Speaker 2: 1:42:29

which I had, like I was the guy at the, at the soccer games that didn't have any warm clothes or snacks, because I didn't realize that's what you brought. Now I became good at that, you know. Um, god was really good to allow me to learn, you know, the trade of being what moms do most of the time, so that I'm, you know, honestly, like. I got this and I got an extra coat and a pair of gloves and, you know, some snacks if your kid's hungry, if nobody else brought them. So I got there, but it was a process for me For sure, but it was a process for me For sure.

Speaker 2: 1:43:07

So I think now that they're 19, 17, and 15, they're in a good spot. They're having to kind of figure out their way and it's a different world for them than it was for us. But we try to emphasize that, hey, no one's going to be there for you the old adage of no one's come to save you but God. So if you're feeling lost, if you're feeling down, you know, pray, because that's going to be your biggest and best connection. I'm not always going to be here either.

Speaker 1: 1:43:32

Yeah, so I'm sure it's been quite the challenge. I mean because now, especially again being a guy from your caliber you're not just, I don't Especially being a guy from your caliber, you have son and daughters.

Speaker 2: 1:43:43

Two sons, 19 and 17, and my daughter's 15.

Speaker 1: 1:43:46

Yeah, so now I mean you're learning the sensitive side of things.

Speaker 2: 1:43:55

Teenagers no offense, teenagers is the most stress I've ever had. I would rather have a child, a toddler, puking and pooping at the same time, you know, and cleaning that up, yeah, than doing with teenagers. And I think a lot of it is trying to ensure that. Because my kid, one of my, my oldest son, is taking a gap year and he's working and he's not going to college. I'm like, no, you're not working 30 hours a week, seeing your girlfriend every day, like I don't mind that he goes to the gym because that's his therapy, I go, but you're not going to. You know what I mean? Just live this life. I go because when life is difficult in your 20s, it's going to be easier in your 30s, but you're living it. So it's easier in your 20s, so it's going to be difficult in your 30s. So I really need you to nature. Yeah, you know it's nature, I'm sure you, I.

Speaker 1: 1:44:35

That's why I'm out of joining the military. You know it's where a lot of us you know it's. I feel it's just it's part of that. It's just part of the, the evolution, not in you know, science term, but as as far as a young buck and finding his way and all that and plus he's also, you know, gone through a lot of trauma and shit. So that's deep-rooted in there and I can only imagine. But now you've got to play the dad tough guy role, then you've got to fill in for the emotions and sensitive side of things and I'm sure that has taken some while Because I play the DI better than I play the nurturing, loving mother.

Speaker 1: 1:45:20

And it doesn't, you know, know, but that doesn't work, for it doesn't can't fix everything with a hammer man.

Speaker 2: 1:45:25

You know what I mean, and that's the only tool in my toolbox sometimes. So, um, yeah, it's, it's. It's what this has been one of.

Speaker 1: 1:45:32

My being a father to teenagers has been one of my hardest missions ever, ever it's crazy to think huh, and especially how involved I'm sure you are just being, you, oh heavily. You know, because a lot of dads it's like, oh, not bad, or they have whatever. Their excuse is because they get to go to it and disappear for whenever they want. But now I mean you're entrenched in it?

Speaker 2: 1:45:53

Oh, I am, and it's kept me from accepting job offers that, would you know, take me away from the home and away from them, because I want to see this through yeah and, honestly, I think that's god's plan.

Speaker 2: 1:46:04

I think god's like that's exactly what I want you to do, is I want you to to see this through. So lean on me, um, with your concerns, I'm gonna provide for you which he has, yeah and um, you know, maybe on the other side of this, um, you know, there, you, you can do something new, and that means, like you know, two weeks in LA on a film set or two weeks in Africa doing, you know, advanced teamwork. You know that's understandable. When they're teenagers, grandma can come over and watch them, but I'm not going to be the father that you know. It leaves them to their own devices, man.

Speaker 1: 1:46:38

For sure.

Speaker 2: 1:46:38

It's just not in the cards.

Speaker 1: 1:46:42

And you can't. You know, especially nowadays, these kids are getting attacked from every angle. It's every, every platform is after them. There's an agenda being pushed and you know it's. That's where the I think the teenage years are a super crucial years of their life.

Speaker 2: 1:46:57

I think it's. I think the world's kind of fallen into the demonic man.

Speaker 1: 1:47:01

It's good versus evil. That's what my wife and I were talking about not too long ago. Is this election? It wasn't left versus right, it was good versus evil.

Speaker 2: 1:47:10

To some extent. You know everybody's susceptible to corruption. I do think the cabal, the whole Clinton, biden Bush cabal is is susceptible to corruption, and a lot more than, obviously, the the Trump side you know I just pray like I would for even when Biden was in office.

Speaker 2: 1:47:30

That God kind of keeps, you know, the car current president to be, um, you know, in his good graces and uh you know, and just keeps them focused on, you know, the people of this country and, and what's right for us for sure, um, you know that doesn't uh, that doesn't keep me from worrying, but I just I try to give that to God. Every time I do, I'm like this is yours, I'm laying at your feet, take it, so I don't have to stress about it, and that that's been amazing on the heels of all this, um, like we talked about, of all this ptsd, um, you know, trauma mitigation, um, just giving everything to the almighty and saying I'm concerned about this, now it's yours. Yeah, has provided me with so much stress relief I can't even begin to tell you like the most thing I think I mostly stress about now, instead of work or bills or mortgages is is oh, what's my teenager thinking? What's he doing you?

Speaker 1: 1:48:23

know well, you got a 15 year old daughter, so now the boys are sniffing, yeah well true, but she's, she's actually the good one.

Speaker 2: 1:48:30

I don't know how old your daughter is, but my daughter 60 yeah see, my daughter's got it together, she's got amazing grades, she's got good set of friends. I know the parents very well. Good, um, you know she's gone, she's done her, her, uh, her prom, but very respectful, and so I really did, did extremely well with her.

Speaker 1: 1:48:47

Good makes life much easier, much easier. I brag about her all the time. She's got to hear me talk about it. But yeah, it's. It's nice when you have that relationship and I still always stress, I'll still always be that dad. But I could look back and be like, okay, when she's like hey, we're just doing this, cool, I'm not a hundred percent you know I, I get it.

Speaker 1: 1:49:09

I know where she's at, I know her morals, values, cool, go have fun, you know. But it's just. The world is in these boys. You got two of them. They're, they're little. They're little shits. Man. They're creative, they are crafty, that they're good at their art. These days they go after what they want.

Speaker 2: 1:49:26

For sure, I had a buddy that was second id, I believe okay was a member of the swat team for ada county for a while.

Speaker 2: 1:49:37

When he got back and his daughter was like set to go to the air force. She was, she almost had a basketball scholarship, she was in the CrossFit and then we lost touch and next thing I know I was like hey, how's your, how's your daughter? And he's like oh, she's dancing at, uh, one of the strip clubs here and I was like I'm like why don? She's an adult, she's 18, 19 years old, almost 19. She's like I can't, I can't do anything, because I've tried to talk to her and stuff like that and I'm like just pray about it. And he's like I'm not a religious guy and maybe it's time to start.

Speaker 1: 1:50:10

Yeah, I know right man.

Speaker 2: 1:50:12

That freaked me out. I was like, oh boy, and now I'm not dealing with stuff on that level with the boys, but they're just doing what they want boys are boys, man we're yeah it just it's that, they just it's a switch you ever get? The dad doesn't know anything. You don't know anything, dad like I get that all the time, man, yeah, fortunate with her.

Speaker 1: 1:50:30

I think the little one's gonna be, but my little one's my clone, so I'm sure she's already like to the world.

Speaker 2: 1:50:35

She just walks around and challenges everything.

Speaker 1: 1:50:38

I'm like. You don't have to be like me, you know, but um no, she's a riot. But I have buddies and they're in that stage right now and where they're you don't know what I'm going through. It's like we do. We were.

Speaker 2: 1:50:51

We were teenagers on the other side of it now.

Speaker 1: 1:50:54

Yeah, I've made it through I'm here because I've been through these tracks, so yeah yeah, I it's.

Speaker 1: 1:50:59

I'm sure it's very interesting. I mean, I I talk to my buddies all the time about how I think you know I was blessed by having being a girl dad. I don't know how would I handled sons because, being that hardcore, gotta do this, be that dad, marine, jock, all that shit. Now it's. Now I'm like, okay, thank god I have girls, have girls because one had to really really soften me and make me look at life completely different versus a son where a little bit harder, but at the same time I treat my daughters obviously not as a son, because they're completely different. You know firsthand. You know firsthand.

Speaker 1: 1:51:44

And so the more sensitive and emotional and listening more in in the that's what's really drawn it out of me is okay, I gotta just shut the fuck up and listen, you know. And so, yeah, it's been. But I think that's what god knew I could handle. And and my wife swears that it's a marine thing. She's like all you all were dirtbags. All they're a bunch of dirtbag young marines running around the world. She's like this is why all you have daughters now.

Speaker 2: 1:52:05

She's like you all have all of you asked for it yeah, well, ours mine is actually an in-family adoption, so now it was a lot of tragedy. And my wife's other family. So now it was, um, my wife's brother's illegitimate child, okay, and my wife wanted her. And here you go. Here's a great way to close this out with faith. I was running calls to keep my medical stuff current with Eagle Fire and we were going to a meeting, a department meeting, and I was like we're not adopting a daughter. I'm gone eight months out of the year. We've got two healthy boys. I'm not doing this. And she's like I want you to pray, I want you to pray about it. And I go, I'll give it one prayer. So I prayed on the way to the meeting and I sat down next to my captain, who's now battalion chief. I was just hanging out with him yesterday at Eagle Fire, rob Shoplock and I go hey, we're adopting the foster child that we, you know that. We just like that. Yeah. And I go and I go why, why'd you do that? And he did he quotes the scripture. You know, it's our duty to care for orphans and widows and stuff like that. And I was like, wow. So I was just like, okay, I hear what you're telling me you know, so I drive back and I said I I'm in.

Speaker 2: 1:53:19

But I stepped off for another deployment and baby was born at the time. She had lost her brother to suicide as well. He dealt with a lot of addiction issues, just like she did, and the girlfriend at the time of his was a big drinker. She drank through all three trimesters, so I fully expected it to be a fetal alcohol syndrome baby and she sent me a photo and she was gorgeous and I was just like God, I'm just leaving this with you and stuff. And she's turned out to be just a super bright child, very strong-willed, very good in school, very focused, and I've just been exceedingly blessed. Good, um, because of her and I think I listening to god I did the right thing how old was she when you guys got the right out of the womb?

Speaker 2: 1:54:08

oh, that's your kid, yeah obviously, you know I'm legally the father. Yeah, um, you know. And and one of the nice things about naya is that she's still my, her brother's blood, like, not my blood but her brother's blood, because it's still part of that family network.

Speaker 2: 1:54:22

But man, I just, I just don't see it any other way. And I, and I told her I go, if you want to see your, your birth mom, you can. And she asked a lot of questions in her early teens and she just hasn't said anything about it ever since. And just, you know, because I know god's so huge on family, so I know that I get blessed sometimes, even though I'm, like you said, like a shit bag on occasion, because I put my family, you know, first and you know, and we're willing to have some difficult months here and there, just because I want to be close to my family, I want to raise my kids and stuff like that. So I was going to ask you how did you get Madison up here, man? Did he? Did you have to like carry him up and then it?

Speaker 2: 1:55:06

was a challenge yeah, I was gonna say he.

Speaker 1: 1:55:08

So I told him straight up. I was like, hey, dude, I've been doing this for 11 years. I've carried vets up and down mountains, we've shot elk and packed vets and elk out on my back like we've run tough mutters, literally ran a tough mutter with a triple amputee. That was horrible and I was like, dude, just let me, I'll just scoop you up and the wife will carry you. He's like no, I'll just hands and knees it, grab my ankles, and so he like bear claws it and I help him up. And, yeah, he came up to the top, loaded him in the chair. What are some of his plans now? Um, I don't know if I could go into super details on this. I'll ask him if we'll edit this out. But, um, right now he's looking at taking on number two spot at department of homeland security, so he'll either maybe go tsa or border patrol, that type of thing. So he's got some stuff planned. It's all in the works and he's a great kid man.

Speaker 1: 1:55:59

Trump likes him. Yeah, yep, trump likes him. He beat he's the only one to ever beat anybody that trump's endorsed, which was pretty crazy. And, uh, he's accomplished a lot. He's, he's very good at his job and I think he's got a hell of a future ahead of him, especially how young he is and playing the game.

Speaker 1: 1:56:17

And he's got the gift of gab so he could talk and people love him. He's got that all-american look to him. He's got a crazy story gab, so he can talk and people love him. He's got that all-American look to him. He's got a crazy story. Yeah, it was incredible. I mean especially us, as you know, it's just my daughter and I doing this platform yeah, and to have somebody like him on and I mean just sit here and have a conversation and break. Normally we have bread for everybody, but we just got back in the town last night and not everything was ready for you, but I'll have to make sure to get you a loaf, but yeah, he cuts into a loaf of bread in the middle of the episode, yeah, so it was just fun. He's a good dude and, yeah, he's got a pretty incredible future ahead of him.

Speaker 1: 1:56:54

Well, dude, I really appreciate your time Just coming on, I get to know you, dude.

Speaker 2: 1:57:02

We got some mutual friends and um they said we should definitely sit down and have a conversation. And yeah, if you want a list of, uh, of guests, man, I think I could I would love a list of guests.

Speaker 1: 1:57:08

I just I. That's the thing with this. I just wanted to sit down and have conversations and you I mean going through your faith and what you've had to deal with. People are able to relate to anything, which is weird. I never realized.

Speaker 1: 1:57:24

Pre-podcast, I listened to a couple of my buddies. I was big into Sean Ryan until he kind of went way, way too extreme for me. Every time I listen I feel like the world is ending and everything's dooming ending and everything's just negative for that. But so yeah, so I'm not one of the type of people that will sit and write to somebody after listening to an episode. If I connect with them, I'm like man, that was a badass guy on there and that's it.

Speaker 1: 1:57:51

But since we've launched this, the amount of engagement we get from every episode of people, civilians being able to relate to military guys just in the trade world of with man I didn't know, guys struggled like this or this these guys are. I struggle the same way. Or man I got. I went through that as a child and you know my, my parents battled that type of stuff and I dealt with the same thing. So it's been pretty cool to be able to people that truly listen and get something from these episodes and love it. And it's just a conversation, you know, I don't. I don't want to drive it in a way where it's we're talking about this and these political topics, and I think there's enough of that out in the world. There's plenty of it. I want to give people just some entertainment, to be able to listen to a guy that's done some crazy things, and plenty of it, man yeah so that's kind of what it comes down to indeed Indeed, my friend.

Speaker 1: 1:58:39

Well, I appreciate your time, dude.

Speaker 2: 1:58:40

Thank you very much For the opportunity.

Speaker 1: 1:58:43

Oh, Puppers, he's like get me out of here I will get you a book.

Speaker 2: 1:58:46

I would love one In short order, man.

Speaker 1: 1:58:47

I actually went to down to get the audio book.