Phill Hanson: Confessions of a Special Forces Sergeant Major

Phill Hanson has lived a life most people only read about. A retired U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant major, he spent decades operating at the highest levels of military and national security — from Southeast Asia to Central America, to some of the most clandestine missions in American history. In short, Phill has seen some s---. In this episode of the Kudzu Project, we sit down with SGM Hanson to hear firsthand stories from a career that included early involvement with Delta Force, participation in Operation Eagle Claw during the Iran hostage crisis, and years of experience in counterterrorism and special ops. While you won't need a top secret clearance to listen to this episode, you will need an open mind and a sense of awe. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:18

I read your bio, the bio that Bob Johnson introduced to us, the commander of the BOW post fifty-two oh six. He's been a great source of personalities from my podcast. And so I read your bio and incredible story of service to our country spanning two decades, from the Vietnam War all the way up to Panama and beyond, working as a civilian contractor for three decades. You've done a lot, sir. And I just wanted to give you a little bit of an introduction because I don't want to screw this up. Sergeant Major, U.S. Army retired Phil Hanson. Great to have you on the podcast. You're a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Sergeant Major with a long career in elite military and security operations. You enlisted in 1969, the year I was born, and served for two decades, including work in Vietnam, Panama, and as an explosive specialist. You were an early member of Delta Force and participated in major operations such as the Iran hostage rescue attempt, codenamed Operation Eagle Claw, as well as missions involving the invasion of Grenada, Olympic security and protection of high-ranking U.S. officials. After retiring from the military, you spent nearly three decades leading an international security firm and later worked with the Department of Homeland Security helping develop advanced counterterrorism and training programs. So in military parlance, you've seen some S.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. And while we're at it, I appreciate your service too. Yes, sir. I mean, you know, we're all we're all brothers of the cloth.

SPEAKER_06 2:00

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So uh well it's an honor to have you on. I I kind of don't know where to start. So I'm gonna start with with a with a shared pass what seems to be a shared passion that we have. I was intrigued uh by your entire bio, but specifically by your scuba experience. And I and I say that because I was the editor, writer, photographer of a scuba diving magazine for 15 years of my life. And then I went on to I started a television show about scuba diving uh with a buddy from the dive industry. Okay. So I I did 20 years in in the scuba diving world, and so you we obviously have that shared uh passion. So can't wait to hear all about your your stories, but uh yeah, I want to hear more about the scuba stuff. But your your journey began in Oregon. You were born in Oregon.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Yes, central Oregon, uh little town of Primeville at the time. Primeville probably had 1,200 people when I was born in 1950. Uh I tease people or or kid about it because uh Prineville, Oregon is in Crook County. On the banks of the Crooked River. And I was born in the Crook County. Come on. Uh in the Crook County, now believe it or not, Crook County Hospital, but then they baptized me in the Rogue River. That's awesome. So I had a hard time staying on the good side, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_06 3:36

Law enforcement has its work cut up for it, yeah. Yeah, part of Oregon. And and there are, to people who aren't aware, there are some rural eastern areas of central and eastern areas of Oregon that aren't at all like Portland.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

No, no, no, no. In fact, most there's a lot of people that live in western Oregon that want to succeed from Oregon and and join Idaho and go up there because they're very, very conservative. Uh there was an old joke that the um, I'm sure you've read the book, The Grapes of Wrath. Yep. A lot of those people that migrated out west during the Dust Bowl, which my grandfather was one of them, uh, but he came from Wisconsin. Uh a lot of them settled around Primeville, Oregon. And there was a joke that if you lived in Primeville, Oregon longer than five years, you became an honorary oaky. Slang word for people from Oklahoma. Yeah. But uh yeah, but dad was in construction, so we moved all over the state. I mean, I lived uh up in the northern part of the state, down in the southern part of the state. My grandfather actually, when he moved in the 30s, and and my aunts tell me it the vehicle looked in just like was described in Grapes of Aff. And they left Wisconsin and they went out to Oregon, and he bought a half a homestead in Venita, Oregon, outside Eugene, Oregon. Uh they uh built their own buildings. They uh, you know, they the the old sawmill was still sitting in the woods when I was a young guy and all that other kind of good stuff. But uh, but yeah, that I I I I the largest town I lived in growing up, uh, my father, when they were building Interstate 5 that runs north and south, uh when they were going from Oregon over the Siskiyou Mountains into California, um, my father during that time period we lived in Ashland, Oregon, and it had a population of 10,000. That was the biggest town I ever lived in growing up. And and consequently, uh, good or bad, I mean, we had I was a freshman in high school before, and we lived in Klamath Falls, Oregon for one month, uh, which was uh a pain in the butt. But uh that was there was one black family that lived in town. But the people that were discriminated against when I grew up were primarily the American Indians out west.

SPEAKER_06 6:15

Yeah. So was that uh was that an impetus for you to join the military? Did you did you feel like it was you want to see the world?

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Well, I'm the oldest of nine children. Wow. Um again, I've I've got one brother that's uh living in Alaska, he's the next one in line. Uh, and then I've got seven sisters, and they live in Oregon and Washington. And my brother and I have decided to let him have those two states. He'll stay in Alaska and I'll stay on the West Coast. But no, what happened was uh I kind of wanted to go to college. Um and at the time my girlfriend became fiance and stuff was one year ahead of me due to our moving around. I had to take the fourth grade over. So uh instead of graduating at 68, I ended up graduating 69. Um, but the uh my good friend at the time, I had two good friends, one of them left early and joined the Navy. And he, you know, he said, Well, I can finish the GED, do all that other kind of stuff. Why don't you come join the Navy? And I said, Look, I can walk a lot farther than I can swim. And then my next buddy, we actually came in under the buddy program. Uh and our plan was to come in because everybody was being drafted back then, Vietnam War. If we joined, we had to serve an extra year, but we got to choose the military occupational specialty, the MOS, that you wanted. You got to choose that, and I was going to get the GI Bill to go to college because otherwise you would I would have had to go to college, attend school, have a job, pay my own way through, and all that, and maintain at the time you had to maintain above a C average in college, or you'd get drafted anyway. So I decided, well, let's go in the military to get the GI Bill and do that. My plan was to, believe it or not, my plan was to uh come in the military, do a little bit of time in the military, uh get out of the military and become a uh game warden in the state of Washington. So uh that that was the plan. But uh when I did come into the military, uh that you're gonna find this button. So my buddy and I signed up to be Combat Missile System Control Repairment. That was the name, that was the job title. And they were the guys that worked on the old Nike rockets that we had back then and all those other ones, you know, that uh during the 60s when we had to deal with Cuba and all those those. These guys repaired them. And the school was at Redstone Arsenal, but the school was 54 weeks long. Long school, guaranteed promotion to E4, and a guaranteed, if you got out in four years, guaranteed job as a GS to go to work for NASA. Very attractive offer. Very attractive offer. So I said, that looks like what we want to do because we went through it in fine-tooth comb. Then we get to basic training, and everybody's going to Vietnam. I don't care what your job is, they're going to find a job for you in Vietnam, and you're going to end up, I'm going, shit. Excuse my language, but uh uh I'm going to learn all this electronics and all this other kind of good stuff, and then I'm going to be in Vietnam, and I'm not sure, you know, I had visions of being a rifleman in the jungle, and I'm not going to be able to survive. And so maybe I'd do something, you know. So what happened was I was naive when I came in the military. I really was. And this may have been in some of what you read. So when you take your battery a test, I've taken some tests, we'd done the physical in Portland, Oregon, and that stuff, and I got sent up to Fort Lewis, Washington. We're in Fort Lewis, Washington, old World War II buildings and all this other kind of good stuff. And and uh so we take tests, we're all in this big building, and we take the test, and uh then you get a 10-15-minute break, and then you come in and take some more. So during the during right as we were getting ready to take the break, I got called and they said, uh uh Private Hansen uh would like to speak to you. I said, Oh, did I do something wrong? So I go over there and they said, Uh you scored exceptionally well on the tests you've taken so far. Have you considered going to West Point or asking for an appointment for West Point? And I said, What's West Point? I had no idea what West Point was. And so I said, sure. Uh I said, uh, tell me about West Point. They said, well, it's a four-year military college, and for every year you serve, you got to give them a year. I said, okay. And uh my next question, because I was engaged to be married after I got out of basic training. I said, Well, can I go there and be married? And they said, No. And I said, Then I don't want to hear any more about it. Thank you. Dumb kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I I mean, uh I I was 18 years old, hadn't turned 19 yet. And so we take some more tests, and next thing they do is they come out and they call my name again. I said, Okay, they're gonna go at it again. And and uh this time they said, How would you like to go to OCS? And I said, What's OCS? And they said, Oh, that's officer candidate school. And of course, our uh drill sergeant had been drilling into us because we were right next to McCord Air Force Base, all these C-141s going over. And he says, Okay, you guys, look up there. See those? They're full of CMHs, and I don't mean Congressional Medal of Honor. I mean caskets with metal handles for people who came through this course and didn't pay attention. So he had my attention.

SPEAKER_04 12:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

You know, he had a lot of guys' attention. Anyway, so they they ask about that, and I said, you know, look, I've only been in the military three or four days. I'm afraid to speak to a PFC and a sergeant, let alone an officer, you know. I mean, uh the hierarchy had intimidated me quite a bit, you know, when you first come in. It it does. And I said, I don't think I'm ready to be an officer, but you know, at some point in the in in the future, possibly. And uh so I kind of turned that down. And so we were getting ready and we we went back in, took some more tests, and this old crusty green beret guy shows up, sergeant first class, got a green beret on, got a chest full of ribbons and all this, and he calls out, he says, uh, I'd like to see these seven people. And in the seven people, my name was called. And uh he said, Well, you've scored high on your tests, and most of you know you've you've done very well, but uh if you're interested in going into special forces with green berets, we've got another battery of tests that you would have to pass in addition to these other tests. And if you pass those tests, we can offer you a chance. Now, do you want to take the test or do you want to go back and do police call? I'll take the test. And all of us take took the test. Well, we all took the test and we sat there and he graded the test and uh came back in and uh he said, All you all of you can leave except uh Private Hanson, I need to talk to you. And he said, You're the only one that passed the test. Wow. I said, Wow. And he says, Here's what I can do: I can offer you a chance to go into special forces. I can't guarantee you anything. You'll have to volunteer to go airborne, become a paratrooper, and then you'll do your special forces training. And if you fail anywhere along the way, you're going to go to the needs of the army and probably become cannon fodder. Now, being in artillery, you understand cannon fodder. Being a new guy in the army, I had no idea what cannon fodder was. So my next question was, what's cannon fodder? And he patiently explained. And then I said, Well, can I still have my leave after basic training? Because I was planning on getting married. And he kind of rolled his eyes at me at that one. And uh, and I said, What school am I going to go to? And you know, and and he said, Well, what we're going to do is look at your aptitude test and compare it with what we have in special forces, and we'll we'll we'll pick an MOS. So I said that and I said, Do I have to decide right now? And he said, No, I'll give you 24 hours. So that evening I called my parents, uh, because you know they knew what I was doing, and and and uh they said, uh, look, if you're old enough to decide that you want to go in the military and do stuff, you can decide what you want to do in the military. We're not going to influence you. And then I called my minister, believe it or not. And his uh uh comeback was, oh, I've heard of the Green Berets, especially they're baby killers. You don't want to go with them, they commit war crimes. Wow. And and and and that was what he came. And I said, Well, you know, I've talked to people and I I I don't see that, you know. And he says, anyway, so we had a little disagreement over that, and uh so next day I called and said, Yeah, I'll do it. I'll I had to waive my other school and all that other kind of good stuff, and and said I'd do it. So when I graduated uh basic training, I got two sets of orders. One set of orders was to report right now to Fort Leonardwood, and the other one was go to combat missile system control repair school with leave in route so I could go get married. So I got my wallet and got the number to the recruiter, and I called him up and I said, Here's the problem. I said, you know, I wanted that leave after basic training because I was getting married and this stuff. And he said, Stay right there, I'll be there in 30 minutes. He came over with three sets of orders. He had a set of orders that revoked the revoked the uh Indian head, not Indian head, uh Redstone Arsenal, combat missile, revoked those orders, revoked the other orders to reply it right now, and had another set of orders that said, you know, one week leave in route to go to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, uh, to be a combat engineer. That's what they decided was best suiting for me to become an engineer. So and uh that's that's how it started. That's how it started. And and knock on wood, nowhere along the way did I get sick enough to be recycled or hurt to be recycled or fail anything. Wow. So that uh that did that. Um my I uh finished jump school in like November of '69.

SPEAKER_06 17:24

That was Benning.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Yep, Fort Benning. I went from Fort Lewis, Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, uh, then Fort Benning, Fort Benning to Fort Bragg, got there in December, about uh middle of December. We got there, went, came up on a bus. And uh my wife, when I was at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, had an aunt and an uncle that lived close to there. So she stayed with them and I could see her on the weekends. And uh while I was at Benning, she was in Indianapolis with her grandmother. And then when I got to Fort Bragg, she came out there and we were gonna go find a trail or someplace to live in and stuff. So uh, and we were supposed to have be authorized one week. So I went down to the first sergeant, and and uh it was funny because I went down there to sign out on leave, and he said, What are you doing on leave? And I said, Well, my wife just pulled up in the parking lot and we're gonna go try and find a place to live and do this. And he said, Well, there's no reason for you to come back and we take two weeks. And and and he gave me two weeks. Wow. Now there's a funny story about my first sergeant. His name was Olson. So when President Kennedy came down uh and met General Yarborough, uh and he actually then sent us and gave us permission to wear the Green Beret, presidential authorization to wear it, which the conventional army hated because you gotta have a president take away a presidential, you know. Anyway, so he's down there. One of the things we did at Fort Bragg, there's the old Gabriel demonstration. If you watch the movie of the Green Berets, the guys at the very first are kind of like the old Gabriel demonstration. And uh he came across this one deal where they're talking about survival, and the guy's got a live rattlesnake. And he was a staff sergeant. He just got promoted to staff sergeant. And uh the president asked him, he said, Well, if you had no knife or anything, how would you kill that rattlesnake sergeant? And he had it by the head and he just grips all bites the neck and bites the head off and throws it away. Wow. Hence the you know, the the the term snake eaters and all this other kind of stuff, because that was part of the spiel. We could actually catch animals to include snakes and eat them and and stuff. President said promote him almost immediately. So that was back in the early 60s. So by the time I got there in 69, he was now an E8 and he was the first sergeant of the when when I first came in.

SPEAKER_06 19:58

Intimidating.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Well, well, yeah, I mean, somebody, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you had a lot of lot a lot of old guys doing that kind of stuff. But uh then I started my training. Uh then in June, one of the things we do in in special forces, you have five primary MOSs or five jobs. You got communications, weapons, medical operations and intelligence, and engineering. So you've got those five, and you've got two guys in each one, usually a senior and a junior guy in each one. And then you've got two officers. So you can split that team and be much much like the uh the movie 12 strong, uh you can split that team up. And and special forces is designed to be a not do a lot of direct action, uh, but they're supposed to they're a force multiplier. They go out and train other people. You know, they're they're they they can they can train a uh battalion. You can take a special forces team and train a battalion. If you look at you know the movie 12 Strong, you took some special forces team, put them in Afghanistan. They did the UW operation, working with the Northern Alliance, training, equipping them, helping them out, and they take over a whole country.

SPEAKER_06 21:18

Yeah, you know, those different jobs are the foundation of pretty much any operations.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah, any operations. If you've got communications, if you've got medical, now our medical guys also get some veterinary training so they can help locals with their their animals and and and their animal husbandry and and and those type things. And so within the weapons, usually you had at the time you had 12 bra uh 11 Bravos and 11 Charlies. Eleven Charlies were uh the big guns, more like artillery and mortar and that other kind of stuff, where the 11 Bravo was the small gun. So you had what we referred to it as heavy weapons and light weapons, and then you got your engineers that can build shit or blow shit up and do all that other stuff. Uh you can Learn about intelligence and all that other kind of all those things. And everybody's E5 or rank is higher. So you get on a mature team, there's probably even no E5s on it. It's E6s, E7s, and an E8 team leader. Then you got a captain. When I came in initially, it was a first lieutenant that was a the XO, but they've since changed that. It's now a warrant officer. But essentially it hasn't changed.

SPEAKER_06 22:28

I think that's you.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Oh, that's me. No, that's not my rington.

SPEAKER_06 22:37

I don't know why that's ringing through my computer.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Not a problem. The reason I I was explaining all this is part of your your last phase of your special forces training. You do some, and and in Special Forces you do it continually, but the last phase you do some uh it's called cross training. And so part of that is we went and spent a couple days to see what the COMO guys did and learn about the radios. And we went and got to shoot all the different weapons, you know, with the weapons guys, so we'd know about the operation of those weapons. And uh the day came that we were going to go out and everybody was going to do the cross training on uh demolition. We went to Coleman Demolition Range on Fort Bragg. This was in June of 1970. Um we had an accident, some of my classmates got blown up. And uh that was that was kind of an eye-opener, you know, right then then too. But uh then I deployed Southeast Asia. I ended up in 46th Special Forces Company, we stopped in Vietnam, uh, let some people off the airplane. We stopped several times on the way over. We stopped in Hawaii, I think we stopped in Guam or uh Guam. Anyway, but we uh eventually I got to uh to Thailand. And the job in Thailand was I got sent to a team, I had to wait a couple days to get an interim top secret clearance. I had a secret clearance, but I had to get an interim top secret because we were working with the agency. The agency was recruiting indigenous people in Cambodia, primarily uh Laos, and they would put them on Air America, bring them to us in Thailand. We had a camp with a runway and all that stuff, and we would essentially give them through the interpreters basic and AIT training and uh equip them, put them back on the birds, send them back under CIA control, and they would go interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So that's uh uh you know that was that was our contribution to do that. So in in the period that I was there, the year that I was there, uh it it hooked me on special forces. I'm out in the middle of a jungle in a jungle camp doing what I was trained to do, which was train indigenous, working with the Tais. The Tais own the camp. Camp's still operational today and still working, and first Special Forces group guys still go over there and and and and do stuff. Uh but I got to work with Thai's Cambodians and Laotians, and uh uh it it was a great experience, and I decided I love this. You know, that that that this is something I can I can I can relate to. So it came time to leave Thailand. I said, I want to stay in Thailand. They said, no, you can't stay in Thailand unless you get a certified letter to the commander from your wife that says it'll cause no hardship. That wasn't going to happen. Uh and then I said, Well, let me go to Vietnam. My brother was in Denang, where 5th Group Headquarters was at the time, 5th Special Forces Group, and they said, Well, we'd rather not have both of you in Vietnam at the same time. They said, Look, there's a there's an engineer slot open in Germany with 10th Special Force Group, or there's an engineer slot with 8th Special Forces Group in Panama. And having grown up in Oregon and Washington being cold, I kind of like that tropical heat after I got used to it. Send me to Panama. So uh ended up going to Panama for five years and and and working down in Panama in Central and South America.

SPEAKER_06 26:42

So you were spared being in the jungle with the grunts in in Vietnam.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah, in in Vietnam. We we we we did we did exercises uh around our camp, and because the they called them CT communist terrorists is is what the Thai's were calling them at the time. Uh instead of counterterrorism, it was communist terrorists, and we had communist terrorist training uh stuff, but they were infiltrating and giving out Mao's little book and stuff. And uh we did get warning that they wanted to hit our camp one time, so the Thai army came up with an armor unit actually and did a big sweep around our camp and uh ended up arresting like 30-some people and getting a hundred and some weapons that they'd they'd confiscated and stuff. But that that was primarily the Thai army uh doing those things. And and we had some emergency drills in case somebody did hit the camp. Here's here's what you got to go do. And my job was to go essentially run the mortar and keep illumination rounds in the sky so we can see what the heck was going on.

SPEAKER_06 27:49

So the camp was in Thailand.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Yes, okay, yeah, but you were training Laotians, yeah, and Cambodians and yeah, right.

SPEAKER_06 27:56

Because uh our American forces weren't allowed to infiltrate into Laos and Cambodia for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Yeah, so they were they were they were some were there, but that was very, very hush hush. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we lost we lost people on Laos and we lost people in Cambodia. We had special forces uh did a lot of cross-border operations and and and those type things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:19

So and then on to Panama. Panama, I got to Panama. And what year would this have been when you went to the 1970.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

1970. So uh I get to Panama, and there's a big demonstration. Uh Noriega wasn't around anymore. Torrijos was the was the military dictator at the time. And they were starting all that, give us back our canal, and the big thing going on. So I get down there and we're we're isolated. So I called, I'm on the Atlantic side, and Special Forces were all on the uh, I'm sorry, I'm on the Pacific side, and the Caribbean Atlantic side is where Special Forces was. And so I called over there, and what happened was in the month that it taken me to get there, and they already knew this, they had decided over a period of time that they were going to deactivate Eighth Special Forces Group. And when I got there, I called over and they said, Well, yeah, you are assigned. You can't come over right now because of the demonstrations and stuff, but we're going to cut you loose uh because we are 160% over strength. Now, what I didn't realize about Eight Special Forces Group in Panama, not only were they working Central and South America, but it's where the old timers, I say old timers, SF guys went that may have got a little bit uh got wounded, had some been in Vietnam a couple of years, want to spend time with their family and want to say climatized and wanted to go back. So you had a lot of those guys in Vietnam. That's a place where if you got injured in Vietnam, while you're healing, it takes you a year to get healed up. You can go go to Panama, stay climatized, stay with special forces, keep all your skills up, working in the training and and all that other kind of stuff. So I got it sent to 193rd Brigade, the 518th Engineer Company, which this was in 1970 and 71, they were designated as the best light engineer company in the United States Army. I can only say this. If that was the best, and I would have had to re-enlist while I was there, I would have got out of the military. I mean, it was just we had I had a guy that worked for me, and the only reason he was staying in Panama was because uh methamphetamines were real cheap downtown. If you knew what you you could walk into a pharmacy downtown and go buy them. Uh, we had a couple other guys that were busted uh big time, lots of drugs going on uh at that time.

SPEAKER_06 31:16

Uh is that why Van Halen sang about Panama?

SPEAKER_02 31:20

I don't know. Anyway, the uh so 10 months later I kept calling every month, calling Special Forces. Ten months later they called and said, we got a slot. So I put in my transfer papers, and that was my only 10 month of conventional time I didn't uh except for schools and other things. I I I did uh ended up going to 8th Special Forces Group for one week. Then they changed to uh 3rd Battalion of the 7th Special Forces Group and stayed there until uh uh 76. And when I left, I was offered to go to Key West to be a scuba instructor there because I've been working on the scuba team down there. I wasn't assigned to the scuba team because it a lot of the choice assignments in West Special Forces are based on uh data rank and qualifications. So if you got two guys that are both scuba qualified and one of them outranks the other and he wants to be on the scuba team, uh, you know, the the ranks he's gonna pull the rank and get the slot. Well, so but what did happen is in 1974 I came back to the United States for school for the engineered advanced course at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Uh I took leave on the way back down, and at the time, Patty International, Patty at the time had two colleges. They had one out in California and they had one in Jacksonville, Florida. And they had where you can go through the whole course, you don't know nothing about scuba, start from zero. I was already a certified dive master, and I'd already been an assistant instructor for uh civilian courses. So on the way, I took leave, went down to Patty College, uh, spent 10 days and got certified as a Patty open water instructor. 6093 was my number. Uh, I forget they're up into double did or four or five. I mean, way up there. And I I maintained my certification as an instructor through Patty for uh 45 years. Wow. And uh I got also got certified for underwater photography through Patty, underwater hunting and collecting, and I also did uh equipment repair and stuff, working on on the scuba stuff. Cool. But uh, and it was it was uh I'll go off tangent here a little bit on on Panama in that Jacques Cousteau was real big at the time. So I've got a bunch, and I still have a bunch of his books. But if you go look at Jacques Cousteau's first books and the photographs he's got in there underwater, they're shitty. Yeah. I I mean they're bad photographs. They're they're blurry, they're kind of but but they give you an idea of what's going on. Yeah. So I'm looking at those, and so I get into underwater photography and I grab a Nikonus camera, which, you know, in in Panama, you take the film, you got to send it in, you got to wait for it to come back and be developed and all that other kind of good stuff, particularly color film. Um and I would only get two or three good pictures out of rolled film. And I'm going, oh, this is so depressing. Then I started looking at Cousteau's book and going, oh, his ain't much better. And if his aren't, if his aren't much better, I'd I'm I'm I'm not, you know, I not got not got a problem. So that was uh uh that that was a lot of that was a lot of fun doing those things. And I got some micro lenses where I could get up close to stuff. And uh at the time, believe it or not, the Nikonas camera came with a flash, but it used the old egg-size flashbulbs that you had. And you could still buy them, but what I did is I had like a bandolier, I had a piece of rubber inner tube with holes punched in it, and that carried my flashbulbs underwater to take my picture.

SPEAKER_06 35:22

Yeah, you mentioned the Nikonos camera. That was my I started with the magazine with scuba diving magazine in 1992. No, yeah. 1992. And no, excuse me, 1993. My first underwater camera was Nikonos, and we always used to say it wasn't a matter of if but when it would flood. Because it's you know, people aren't familiar. It was a camera, it was a submersible camera that relied on these giant O-rings where the the film back went onto the, you know, closed onto the camera and the lens connected to the camera. If those O-rings went, if you had a hair in that O-ring, it was going to leak. And and the shallower you were, the worse off you were, because there wasn't as much pressure on those O-rings to keep it tight as if you went deeper. So it was, yeah, what a challenge.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

I was driving off of Portobello in Panama off of Drake's Island. Uh, hadn't had a lot of good diving down there. And I had gone on air reserve, we were spearfishing and photographing. And my team sergeant, my special force team sergeant, he had, I'd run him through a course and he'd buy the Nikonas camera. And I'm coming out of the deep with a spear gun in my hand and about a 30-pound red snapper. And he just thought that was the greatest picture of me coming out of the deep. And he's trying to get me down and take a picture. And I'm out of air. I've pulled my reserve, I got I'm sucking dimples in my scuba tank. And I'm trying to come up. Finally, I waved him off and said no and pointed to his camera, you know, and he turned around and looked, and the lens is half full of water. The the plug in the bottom that you could put it in a tripod or something, he had taken it out and that bull ring hadn't sealed or anyway. And it yeah, his camera was half full of salt water and stuff. But that was uh yeah. So I remember good old days. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 37:16

Yeah. You know, putting that film in the camera, closing it up, and then diving, you always in the back of your mind, you're like, I need to save a couple frames in case I see something really amazing. And so you would be very, you'd be very sparing with the photos you took because you had to, you know, make them last. And and you would go somewhere really cool and you you had to wait till you got back and developed the photos before you knew if you got even got anything.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 37:43

And now it's like you can just spray and pray. And yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Well, I've still got an underwater housing for a larger uh well, for small, medium size, about this big uh camcorder. Yeah, but I've still got a housing with the lit. And you can't really fly with the the it's got lead weights to hold it down. Right. You know, so if I take that camera, yeah, and make sure the old rings are good and get everything and get everything all triggered up in there. I've got to carry like, because it's that big around and about that long, I've got to carry like 15 pounds of lead weight, and it's all lead shot weight, you know, and it's all sewn in a bag and goes in the bottom of the container to help help help do those things. But the uh yeah, it's uh uh I I enjoyed it. Well, I got I got some I got some good dive uh in the middle 70s. I don't know if it was 70, probably about 73, 74. Maybe 74, 7, yeah, 74, 75. The British rebuilt a model of the uh Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind, and they were going to do a round-the-world cruise. And they stopped in Panama. But Sir Francis Drake is buried off of Portobello near Drake's Island, and it just said he was in a leaded coffin, and they wanted to go out there and dive. Well, that's where we did our deep water qualification for everybody. I mean, I I can go back and look, and I was work, you know, work working part-time, and and we would do a deep dive out there and do a what recreation dive. And a lot of times we'd go out on a Friday night and camp and come back on Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon, you know, spend out there. And if uh some of the students, we'd take advanced students and basic students, advanced students wanted to do a night dive, we'd go out there and do because Portobello was named Beautiful Port by Christopher Columbus. Yeah, you know, I mean it's been around there a long time, but uh we knew the ground and we knew I say the ground underwater better than the Panamanians. And this was supposed to be a joint British Panamanian, but the British wanted to talk to us because we knew all this. And so the Panamanian answer to that was ban all Americans from diving for six months while this expedition was going on. I had found at 90 feet, I found this thing that was about the size of a coffin, and it was uh and it was lead because I took up and and I took my knife out and it was all encrusted, and I scraped under the encrusting lead. Well, that could, you know. And I told them where it was, and they went and found it, but it was actually a ballast weight for a sailboat.

SPEAKER_05 40:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

Uh, but it was the same size. And we knew where there was another shipwreck. One of the things they did, they did side scanning uh radar and stuff, and there's a lot of mud in the lagoon around around Portobello and stuff. And I think they found 13 different ships that were buried, some of them 12 to 14 feet of mud down underneath that that that found, but they never found Sir Francis Drake's body. There was a shipwreck on one of the outer reefs that we used to go on our advanced dives on the back side of on the back side of uh Drake Island. You go out about another half mile, mile, and you see a big boy out, the ocean boy out there, and it marks a reef. And there had been a shipwreck on there, an old shipwreck on there. And uh some of the things were uh crawl encrusted and all this other kind of stuff. So we'd told them about that. They went out there with the Panamanians, and the Panamanian military divers that were diving with them said, well, we can use a little explosive and loosen this coral heads up and stuff and maybe, you know, see what we can find. They blew that reef out of the water and turned it in. It looked like somebody poured, you know, 500 pounds of flour into the water. You know, I mean, they just they demolished the reef and anything under they used too much explosive.

SPEAKER_06 41:42

Real environmentally friendly uh activity.

SPEAKER_02 41:45

My best diving I did in Panama, so 1855 was the first transcontinental railroad because of the gold rush. Gold was discovered. The quickest way to get to the gold fields was to take a steamer ship down to the mouth of the Chagras River, get in a canoe, go up the Chagras River to Las Cruces, get on a mule train, go into Panama City, catch another steamship, and go to San Francisco. That was the quickest way to get to the gold fields. And uh, of course, there was a Yankee Chagras that on the far side of the Chagras that came up and and and and came overnight and and all this. So they decided they're going to build a railroad. And uh a lot of the speculators went down there and bought, they figured it would go up, follow the same route by the Chagras River, but they didn't. Anyway, they uh they started building the railroad. The Americans built that railroad. The engineer in charge of it was Aspenwall. And Cologne, Panama, at the time, Panama belonged to Columbia. But Cologne at the time was named Aspinwall after the American engineer. And the Colombians got mad and said, we aren't delivering any mail to any place dressed Aspenwall and stuff. But what they what happened was they built this railroad across in 1855, it was finished. And it took, it was quite an engineering feat to get across. And I think it cost $100 to ride it one way and $25 or $50 to walk the white ride of way if you just wanted to get off the ship and walk all the way across. Anyway, a lot of these little towns sprung up. And one of the towns uh that was there was Ahorlagarto, and it was on the mouth of the Shagras, it was on the banks of the Chagras River, and it had a little tributary coming in, and it had been there before the Spanish came. It was an old native village and stuff. And then you had a lot of runaway slaves and and uh uh uh people that had ran up to these rivers. And uh, there were all these little towns, and when they built Gatun Lake, Gatun Lake. Lake was the biggest man-made lake in the world when it was finished. The canal zone opened the same day World War I started. And their first couple attempts to put a ship through didn't quite, they weren't sure it was going to, it was all theory, you know, and it didn't quite they finally figured out how to do it, but but they got it through. But it took them seven years to fill up that lake. When they filled up that lake, they flooded 27 towns and villages. Wow. And of course, some of them been there before the Spanish, like a Jorlogarto. Lion Hill that we dove in was uh a little railroad town where they'd stopped and done stuff. So I started diving for antique bottles and stuff down there. And these and they were about seven, about 70 foot underwater was our average, 60 to 70 foot underwater. Some places it dropped off deeper. Horogarto, you can go and there was a railroad bridge that crossed the little tributary river that came in, and the top of where the abutments are made out of great big blocks of stone, uh is at 70 feet, but then it drops off another 50 feet down to where the bottom of the river was. And how we found these places is the railroad beds are still there. And what we ended up doing, we knew where one of the places was, Line Hill, we dove a lot in Line Hill. Um, but we just take our weekends and and and sometimes it'd take us a month to find another place, but we'd follow the railroad bed, but then we'd just kind of guy would drop down and zigzag left and right and left and right and left and right until he found some of the houses didn't stand, some of the foundations were still there and and stuff, and and find those structures, and then he would pop a buoy and we'd say, Okay, we we we found this, and then we'd come down and dive on it and stuff.

SPEAKER_06 45:50

What was the visibility like?

SPEAKER_02 45:52

Visibility was probably from yeah, here to the far wall in there with the mirrors. Okay. But the minute you stirred it up, the silt was like 18 to 24 inches. And I went through a pair of cotton gloves diving every time because you stuck your hands underneath the silt and you felt. You didn't see stuff, you felt for stuff. Uh, you can still see the in in one place in Lion Hill that I'll tell you this story.

SPEAKER_06 46:18

So hope your tetanus shots were up to date.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Oh yeah. Uh I went down and we went down. Uh, this was in 1989. We went down, I took my special forces company down, back down to Panama, and we were there to augment the other special forces there prior to the invasion in case something happened and we had to go early and stuff. So I decided one weekend I said, who wants to go diving in an old town? And uh I had my scuba team with me, and we were able, guys that were scuba qualified, go over to scuba locker and rent scuba tanks and stuff. And so uh we we got a couple of our military zodiac boats that we had, and we go out there and I said, Okay, come on, we launched the boats, and they go out and I'm I'm I'm trying to remember my old dead reckoning points. And I said, Okay, drop the anchor here. They said, Sergeant Major, how do you know there's something here? And I said, Trust me, there's something here. So everybody was getting ready, and I got ready and dropped over the side, went down to 60 feet, and which was which is an easy dive. And uh what happened? I I went down, I'd been in there before, and I I was just looking around and I was feeling around. I found an old pot and I set it on a fence post, you know, and and found another thing and threw it over. Well, 10 minutes later, some of my guys come behind me. The water visibility is clear, and he's man, there's stuff everywhere. It's hanging on the fence post. And seven or eight of the things that I found and hung on fence posts and threw these guys brought back up because what we would do is take a uh military laundry bag and we would use, and you I don't know if you remember the old May West uh we used them in parachute jumps, but they had a they were about this square, and you had one under this armpit, one under this armpit, and you pulled them and a big balloon came up here, and a big balloon came up back in the back, but it's uh, you know, uh uh Y fest essentially for when you're doing that and you didn't pop them until you got in the water. Well, as those got salvaged, I'd get salvaged one of those, and I could take one of those and attach it to a bag, and I knew because air's going to expand, only put four breaths of air in it. Take the regular air out, one breath. And by the time it got to the surface and you had your name written on the bag, it's taken the bag. So if you had a couple bags with you, you know, you fill them up with bottles, you send them up, and then then during your surface interval, you're washing off the bottles, and oh, look at this one, and oh, look at that one. But I probably made as much money diving in Panama as I did in my military pay.

SPEAKER_06 48:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 48:56

And I hated it when they told me I was gonna have to come back. But uh, and and not only that, I mean I knew where to go spear fishing. I always had some grouper and red snapper and lobster in the freezer, and and you know, out of the lake we'd get peacock bass.

SPEAKER_06 49:11

Uh is that a brackish water lake or no, no, it's it's freshwater?

SPEAKER_02 49:15

Yeah, yeah, it's freshwater. Okay. It's freshwater. Uh and some of the peacock bass had been planted in there, some of them were that big. Uh I just came back from uh trout fishing in Pennsylvania with one of my buddies who was down there with me in 1970 since 1972. And he and I, on weekends, we'd get a bunch of us together, if not teams, then would, you know, a bunch of SF guys together, and we'd a couple of us go out, like Mark and I used to get out, get the boat, go out early in the morning, and we'd go spear fishing and get a whole bunch of peacock bass. Come back to the Aquativity Center, which was a big picnic area and all that, turn in the boat, clean off our gear. They had hoses there. We actually, the Panamanians that worked there, for the fish skeletons and the fish heads to make soup, they would fillet your fish for you and just give you a bag full of fish fillets. Nice. So we'd hand them the stringer of fish, they hand us back a couple big bags full of fish fillets.

SPEAKER_06 50:12

They would keep their cut.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yeah, and and uh my team had, I inherited, I've still got it. You've seen the old single burner squad stoves that ran on propane? Did you ever see a platoon stove? It has two burners, and it's two, two, two of them like that, but it comes in a stainless steel case. The stainless steel case is about this high, and it has a stainless steel lid on it. So you take it off. The lid can be turned over and used as a grill. The carrying case can just be wiped out. It's stainless steel, and you cook soup or do whatever you want in there. Well, we filled it up with oil, fired them up, and we're deep frying. We would cut the fish in cubes, season them, and we would do uh a batch of fish cubes, dump them out on paper towels, cool off, and we'd do potatoes. Just cut up some potatoes, so it's all finger food. So the kids are running around drinking Kool-Aid, you know, and eating fish and potatoes, you know, with some tartar sauce and and and mustard or tartar sauce and ketchup to dip them in and stuff. And the adults are, now that we're done diving, we could have an adult beverage and sit back and watch the kids and eat our finger food. But I don't know how many Saturdays and stuff we we we we did things like that. It was it was it, I did not want to leave Panama after five years, and and uh we got a new general in that was in Southcom, and he said, anybody that's been here longer than three or four years is homesteading, and we're gonna, even though the military wanted to save money and keep you down there, not move you and your family and everything, he said, we're gonna move you back. So when I left, I was offered a job either to go to Key West and be a scuba instructor for our combat divers course that the Air Force and Marine Corps went to at that time, still too, or go to the schoolhouse at Fort Bragg and uh go to the engineer committee and teach. And at the time uh I was having trouble in my first marriage. Uh she didn't like the tropics. Uh she wanted to go to Fort Bragg where it got cold in the winter and stuff. So to appease her, I took the assignment to Fort Bragg and went to the schoolhouse. And while I was at the schoolhouse, I taught all the advanced and improvised explosive techniques to include building IEDs and all the that that type thing. That was that was one of the things I did. And uh a year after we came back, we were separated on the way to divorce and and stuff. And uh I went to the command sergeant major and I said, you know, when I came up here, I was offered a job down at Key West. I would like to leave the engineering committee and go back down to Key West. And he said, what I didn't realize is nobody from the Special Warfare Center School had made it through scuba school in five years. It's a tough school. They got like a 70% attrition rate. Easy. And uh he didn't think I was going to make it. He said, if you go through the school again, I want you to go through before you go down there and teach so you can see exactly what's going on. I want you to go through the school, and if you make it through, I'll get you a slot down there. And he didn't think I he didn't tell me this. I didn't find this out until later.

SPEAKER_06 53:38

Uh well you were saying you could walk better than you could swim.

SPEAKER_02 53:41

Well, now I can after after after being an instructor for all this time, I could, I could, I could swim real good. Anyway, I ended up on uh I was an honor graduate uh of the course down there, and I made it, and then I came back and said, Okay, I'm ready. This was the end of 1977, I'm ready to go down there. And he said, Well, finish the cycle you're in, because I had students and stuff, and I don't have a replacement for you. And as soon as you finish the cycle, then we can. Well, in November of 77, Delta started. And uh about three or four of the instructors that had put me through the course had came up and joined Delta already. And then there were a couple guys there that had been in my scuba course who had had trouble who I'd helped on the side and helped them out. And one lunch hour we ran into each other and they said, Phil, what are you doing? I said, I'm trying to get down to Key West. And he said, No, no, no, you don't want to go to Key West. You want to come over here. I said, Why? What are y'all doing? Uh, we can't tell you what we're doing and what, but trust me, you want to come over here. And and so I finished cycle, and instead of going to Key West, I tried for Delta Force selection assessment, made it the first time. There were like for the first initial briefing, there were 400 and some people that showed up. Uh and I don't remember how many people actually went to the woods for selection. Uh, one of two, two of them were my old buddies, had been on my team in Panama, and they didn't make it. But at the end, there were 16 people standing. And after you went through the uh commander's board, there were 14 that were accepted. Me being one of them. So that was uh beginning in 1978.

SPEAKER_06 55:33

So, to people who aren't familiar, what is Delta Force?

SPEAKER_02 55:38

Well, up until 2009, the US government said it didn't exist. But they are the Army's premier counterterrorism force.

unknown 55:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 55:48

And uh that's the main objective is counterterrorism.

SPEAKER_02 55:51

Count counterterrorism was was what they were designed for originally. Uh hostage rescue, POW rescue, uh, you know, and and uh since then they that they have involved. Uh there haven't been uh there's been a lot of sport people, uh the exact numbers and everything, but I I you know uh I was telling people Saturday because I had a uh special forces chapter meeting that uh forty-six years ago this last Saturday, I was standing in the dirt and the dust in Desert One and we lost some people there.

SPEAKER_06 56:34

That was Eagle Claw.

SPEAKER_02 56:35

Yeah. Yeah. I I didn't know the name Eagle Claw until that mission was had been over for quite a while because initially it was called Rice Bowl. In fact, I have got a uh from serving at Delta, one of the things somebody was doing was they were taking a like an 8x10 or 10 by 14 piece of leather and hand tooling different stuff on it, you know, about your about your service and what you did there, and uh has your name on it and all that other kind of stuff. And I've got one that has an actually a rice bowl with a chopstick sticking in because that's what we knew it as. And and the reason that was done is because if somebody found out about what's this Operation Rice Bowl, they figured it was going to be a humanitarian, something humanitarian. And it they didn't change the name to Eagle Claw until a couple days or be before that, but we were never told that. I didn't, I never heard that people say Eagle Claw and go, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, because we we really didn't know that.

SPEAKER_06 57:41

So this is 1979?

SPEAKER_02 57:44

No, well, 1980 was uh April 1980 was was the attempt in Desert One. Okay. They took the hostages were taken November the 4th of uh 79.

SPEAKER_06 57:55

And how many d hostages were taken? They were American Embassy.

SPEAKER_02 57:59

Yeah, yeah. Originally there was sixty I'm trying to think. I forget. Uh anyways, the the some of the females were turned loose, some of the black soldiers and black people were turned loose, and then you had, if you've seen the movie Argyll, some of the people were out for lunch and they went to the the uh Swiss embassy and and got out that way.

SPEAKER_06 58:28

Uh they were held for something like 444. 444 days.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Yeah, but it was actually everybody said we went in to rescue 52 hostages. No, we went in to rescue 53 hostages. But what happened was one of the hostages started developing a very serious sickness. And so even after our hostage rescue attempt, they turned one more guy loose because they didn't want him to die on their watch. The Iranians didn't want him to watch, so they turned him loose. So when Reagan took office, 52 were the last 52 were turned loose. Okay, which was uh uh quite amazing. Some of those guys were pretty pretty neat guys.

SPEAKER_06 59:09

And that was kind of a turning point, wasn't it? With you know, it it was uh Reagan won on basically the failure of of Carter to in in in the public's eyes, Carter failed.

SPEAKER_02 59:23

Yeah. So well, they said, you know, there's there's been a lot of talk in the special operations community that that was the most successful failure we ever had because we were embarrassed, a lot of things went wrong. You we the higher powers in the Pentagon said, you know, if we need a special operations force, you can't just make them in 24 days or 10 days or or whatever. I mean, they were taken on the November the 4th. We went into isolation on November 6th. We still didn't know what we were going to do, you know. Uh, and that was quite interesting because I'd bought a house down in Fayetteville. I was single, and I'd gone to the commissary and stocked my refrigerator full, and uh I got a call that I was going to be gone for a couple weeks. They said, grab your alert shit and grab a couple extra pair of jeans because you'll be gone a couple weeks. I didn't see my house again till like the 22nd of December.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

And uh it it it opened a lot of eyes for us. I mean, the the the first time we had to isolate like that for a long period of time. I mean, I ended up having to send my keys back through uh one of our contacts who gave them to the wife of one of the guys I worked with who was in the neighborhood who had to go get all of my mail, go, I had draw instructions, go get my checkbook and all this because there's bills due.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:53

Gotta pay bills.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

Yeah, you gotta pay bills, you know. Uh and and so uh we there were some valuable lessons in that light that were learned during that time period uh that we've we figured out how to do things a little bit better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:07

But uh so you were on the ground in Iran during that operation. Yes. Um can you talk about how you evaded being captured by Iranians who I'm sure Well, they didn't know we were there.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

Even when Carter called them up and said, hey, look, we went in there, they said, No, you didn't. They they didn't believe us until they finally got somebody to the site.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

Uh we we we told them that, you know, uh, I don't know what channels we worked, but initially that they didn't even believe we were in there because we went in low level.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:42

Uh and we had a contingency that if we couldn't get out of there that night, we were going to come back and do it again the next night. And that's kind of what we were trying to execute because we didn't get the helicopters like we were supposed to. Uh, I mean, in I'm I'm just gonna say it up front, Delta didn't fail. We were passengers. The Air Force got us to Desert One. The Navy and Marine helicopters and pilots were supposed to get us to Desert Two, which was an overnight RON. We're supposed to leave there when the helicopter fueled up, fly there, and then we get in vehicles and we go in and do our thing. We don't see the helicopter pilots until they come in and land in the uh soccer stadium that was next to the embassy to exfiltrate us and the hostages uh to the airfield uh two nights two nights later. Uh I don't think we we had a problem with the pilots all the time. I I mean I'm I'm gonna say one of the biggest problems was the pilots. Um they just the most experienced pilots were the Air Force pilots who had been flying, going behind enemy lines in Vietnam and doing that. And you still had those. But because this was a big exercise and they wanted everybody involved, okay, we're gonna give you this piece of pine. We're gonna give we started out with Navy pilots initially. We went through three to five sets of pilots. Oh, in from November to April, we went through, I know at least three or four sets of pilots. And on our final little exercise that we did, I suggested we replace the pilots again. But uh, you know, they said we we just don't have time to train them up or do anything because they were trying to learn to fly at night because here okay, so the guys flying the planes could fly off a carrier and they're flying uh CH-53s that were minesweepers, which you usually fly a bright daylight grid pattern over open ocean. You know, you're not flying at night, you're not flying through habus, you're not flying with one guy wearing night vision or anything, because they'd never flown with night vision. You know, so they're having to one learn to fly at night, two, fly with night vision, do all that other kind of stuff. Uh which and and you had some pilots just refuse to fly. You know, this volunteer mission, right? I'm not volunteering. Uh and uh when you look at each helicopter that flew in had a destruct package sitting between the pilot and co-pilot. Big ammo can with explosives and white phosphorus and time fuse, and all you had to do is open it up, pull the fuses, lay the lid back down, and it would destroy the entire helicopter. If you look at the aftermath of Desert One, you'll see a couple helicopters just sitting there. They were full of gas and set and ran out of gas. The pilots, when when when we had the accident, and the uh helicopter pilot flew into the C-130. We didn't know if we were under attack from the Iranian Air Force. We didn't know what was going on. And a bunch of the pilots just and the crews just got out of their helicopters and ran to get on the first C-130 that was leaving and just left everything, like just left everything.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:21

Didn't pull the fuse.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:22

Didn't pull the fuse. Now a couple of pilots did, but there were two helicopters that didn't. Uh and and so they sat there and ran out of fuel, and it took the the the Iranians finally put them back into their armed forces, but they had to truck aviation fuel all the way out in the middle of the desert to get these things up and get them running again and and and and finally get them moved. But uh yeah, the uh you you'll see you'll see a couple other pictures of burn up helicopters at Desert One. That wasn't the that was not the uh accident where the C 130 and the CH 53 came together. That was the uh uh destruction package that destroyed them and left them there. Because what had happened is they had even called back and asked uh Carter to maybe launch a fighters or some fighters with some bombs to come and bomb and destroy those things. So the plan was we're gonna get on the airplanes, we're gonna fly back, and we're gonna come back the next night and try it again. In the process of moving the helicopter out of the way so the planes could take off, that's when the accident happened. So that kind of blew that, blew that completely out of the water.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:40

And when you say desert one and desert two, you're talking about remote desert areas in Iran. Inside Iran.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:47

Yeah, yeah. One of them was about 50 miles from Tehran. Desert one was where we came in and because they were we tried all different kinds of ways. How are we going to refuel? You know, I mean, uh our closest friendly base, essentially, uh, we launched out of Egypt. We had to fly around Saudi Arabia, they wouldn't let us fly directly over. We had to fly around, we went to Muscat Oman, uh, Muscat Oman, Little Island. We stayed at a British base there, but the closest American base that we could rely on was Diego Garcia, which is clear out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, you know. So uh, you know, the the the the things we had to do, uh, you know, we we one OPSEC was real big and and other things. The uh uh I don't agree with all the findings that were in the Holloway report. Uh I don't think the Holloway report, because it was done by a Navy Admiral, uh put as much blame on the Navy slash Marine Corps pilots as should have been put on. Uh but you know, that's who they decided was gonna do the report and do those. But being the biggest failure, what happened? We were embarrassed. So everybody decided if we're gonna have this capability, one, do we need the capability? Yes. Two, if we're gonna have it, we're gonna have to dedicate the assets, the training, and the other stuff to have it. So that was a big change. So the Air Force started their air wing and and and their stuff. The Navy actually, after Desert One, uh late in in uh uh 1980, started SEAL Team 6. SEAL Team 6 was a result of this too. Uh JSOG was formed, Joint Special Operations Command down at actually Pope Air, now it's Pope Airfield, uh used to be part of Pope Air Force Base, but now that Pope Air Force Base doesn't exist anymore, JSOG's right there in Fort Bragg. Uh and then later on, you ended up with the U.S. Special Operations Command. Uh the the Navy, the Marine Corps now has Marsaw. It took them a while to come on board and stuff, and they upgraded their stuff. Uh, the Army, one of the reasons uh you know, helicopters and stuff, that was one of the reasons. Uh at the time it was Task Force 160, now it's the 160th Aviation Brigade, the Night Stalkers. All of that are all of those things are results of the failure. Yeah. Which are all good things for America because when you look at what just happened in Venezuela, yeah, you wouldn't have been able to pull off something like that. You know, you you you you look at you look at the capabilities that the that that they have now, and uh yeah, there's some there's some I'm awful proud of all of them that are out there uh you know doing what they're doing.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:58

Now, having been behind enemy lines in Iran when you heard that we were attacking Iran, how did you feel?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:07

What do you it's about time?

SPEAKER_06 1:10:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:10

I I mean I think let's go back 46 years. If we would have held a harder line with the Iranians, with the Ayatollah, who, you know, and and the Shah had been a good friend, even though, yeah, there were some things going on, but he's he was fighting radical Islam. We didn't under, I don't think we really understood radical Islam, but I think he did at the time. Uh when you go back and take a look at uh those things, and there was a lot going on in the Middle East during that time. I mean, there was there was uh during the 70s, yeah, I mean, it was ripe with a bunch of stuff. And and even through the 80s, it was ripe with a bunch of stuff going on. Uh but uh, you know, we allowed them, you know, Hezbollah, all these different organizations, you know, we've kind of just kind of allowed them to exist and we fight them occasionally when they get to be, you know, it's kind of like, okay, there's a lot of flies in the house. Let's put up some fly paper and catch some of them, but you know, and we'll deal with it. But you know, next year you got the same same doggone thing. Yeah. And uh, they I can understand how the Iranians think, you know, even when that failed, they they said Allah was protecting them, you know, and and uh what have we done to other than a few sanctions and stuff that they've been able to work around? What, you know, so finally coming down, it's almost like the first Gulf War. Uh Saddam Hussein didn't think we were going to do anything, thought we were a paper tagger. You know, it's like the I I relate it to like the mother in the store, grocery store, and we've probably all seen these, where a child is misbehaving. If you don't stop that, I'm gonna spank you. If I I'm gonna spank you, she never spanks him. And the kid keeps acting up.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:12

Well, some of these countries are the same way. The Arabs having worked in Saudi Arabia, lived over there and stuff, one of the things they understand is a big stick, you know. And if you're just gonna wander around and say, I got a big stick, yeah, well, when are you gonna hit somebody with it? Yeah, yeah. And if you never do, they're gonna say, see, then that we we don't have to worry about it. You know. Uh yeah, and there's been a few retaliations for a couple of things, but most of the time, you know, we they they've they've they've they've gone away.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:45

I think conventional wisdom for a long time was that if if we start poking around in Iran, it's it's going to turn into World War III. Yeah. So because it's a vast nation. What is it? It's twice as big as Alaska.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:58

Yeah. Yeah, it's a b it's it's a big place. Yeah. Uh it's uh it's interesting. Their mindset is different than ours, you know. Uh they're they're uh it's just I I don't know how to explain it. Uh you know, and and I was reading something here uh uh they were somebody said something about uh radical Islam and the guy came back counterpoint. There is no radical Islam, it's just Islam, you know. Uh and there's some people that are out practicing other tenets of it and stuff right now. But uh, you know, and and their their job uh it is I I believe Islam wants to take over the world. They always have. Go back to the Crusades, you know, go back to the Malta, and you know, when the the Knights of Malta stopped the stopped the hordes from, you know, and save the world for Christendom, you know, and and now they slowly come over and they come over, and and then once they come over and they come as refugees and you know, they're really not assimilating. Uh, then as they get a bigger, stronger point, okay, this is what we want, to where you get in, you know, you get in Britain now and they don't want people walking dogs around them, you know, they don't want you to say Merry Christmas or have any Christmas decorations up and stuff, and they get more and more and more demanding and and uh and violent. And I think it's we we've just become too complacent, I think, over the years. And and uh I I think in the long run what we've done in Iran is probably going to uh change uh uh some of the world history. Uh if if they got a night, you know, if they can keep it safe and sound over there and some of those, and we get uh the other thing is getting, you know, Russia and China out of the Western Hemisphere. You know, uh Venezuela. Venezuela was given, you know, trading lots of lots of uh oil for other things, you know. One time they were the richest country in sent in in South America and then they became almost the poorest with the worst inflation and shit. Because the the the socialism just you know doesn't work. Look, you know, Cuba, you know, I mean, uh and and some of those.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:40

But uh thinking that's probably next.

unknown 1:15:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:43

Cuba. Well, I'm North Korea's he's up there raising his hand around in two, you know, and and starting to make noise, you know. Uh maybe somebody needs, you know, one client at a time, your turn will come. But uh yeah, I just uh um I'm I'm I'm I'm kind of glad but apprehensive about what we're doing in Iran. You know, let's get this straight to Hormous thing squared away and and uh uh you know uh to where the oil can flow freely and people aren't threatening because essentially by threatening that you're threatening the whole world. You're you're screwing with everybody, you know, like a spoiled kid.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:30

Yeah. Well, they're even ticking off all the Arab nations around them because they're you know holding them back.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:37

And and the Arab nations to a certain extent, from my experience, have been have been a little bit afraid, you know. But you've got to go clear back. People don't understand a lot of the history in the Middle East. So you go back, I spent six months undercover in Beirut. Uh and I ever I once said if I could find a place where I could go in the wintertime and go scuba diving in warm water and go snow skiing, I'd move there. You can do that in Lebanon. You can go to the top of the mountains before you break over to the Bacaw Valley, and there were ski lifts up there, teapoles and stuff where you could go skiing, and then you go all the way down the hill to the Mediterranean and you go diving in the Mediterranean, you know. Beautiful country. But what happened was if you go clear on back, uh a bunch of the, and I'll use Palestinian PLO, whatever, when the Arabs attacked Israel, a bunch of them went to Jordan. And so the first King Hussein, the father of the current king, allowed him to come into Jordan. They decided they were going to overthrow the Jordanian kingdom and government. So he went in and wiped out a bunch of them. This was the PLO, and they became persona non grata, and they fled. They fled to Lebanon. At the time in Lebanon, this is the early 70s, Lebanon had a population of 800,000. That ain't much for a whole country. A million Palestinian refugees came in with their own army, their own police, their own taxes, their own religion, everything. And up until then, Beirut had been known as the Paraso of the Orient. And their constitution said the prime minister will always be Moslem, the president will always be Christian, and they had it broke down for the power sharing. Well, they came over and they said, okay, well, no, let's essentially they started a civil war in 1976 in Lebanon. And uh, you know, that uh I I was over there four years later, you know, and and uh everybody I met on both sides were wonderful people, you know, but they believed this garbage about each other, you know. Uh and uh it you know it it it was just sad to see what was going on. But we did have, you know, there there were different sections and different factions and different things, and a lot of people really didn't understand, you know, what was going on. I mean, a couple of times I know we were saved from the ambassador getting killed and the motorcade getting uh attacked because the Druze or the PSP, People's Socialist Party, uh controlled around the old embassy, the old embassy that got blown up and all that. And uh back then the other groups would say, Hey, we want to come into your area, set up an ambush to kill the American ambassador. And and the leadership said no. And sometimes they would come to us, Wally Junblock, who was the head of the PSP, came to the embassy and said, Hey, look, they're out gunning for you. And I told them no, but that doesn't mean they won't do it anyway. You know. So uh, but but you know, and then Israel invaded later on in the 80s and they all left and went to Tunisia. You know, they kind of ran them out, but a bunch of them stayed there. Uh and and uh, you know, they're using these pro little proxy wars and stuff. But uh the people I'm I really like over there that have even back then uh are the Israelis. There's you know, the Israelis can't afford to lose anything, you know. Uh but yeah, they they they did some operations while I was in Beirut that I I kind of smiled and said, good for you, you know, good for you.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:47

Yeah. But just that little sliver of land in the middle of the you know the Middle East, surrounded by their adversaries. Yeah, yeah. They've got to be diligent.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:57

Yeah. But Lebanon had a neat, you know, the Lebanon's mentioned in the Bible several times. Tyre, which is southern Lebanon, is where Christ, you know, threw the the the the uh what do I want to say, the devils into the swine of pigs that ran into the ocean, you know, and you've got Byblos in uh north of Beirut. Byblos is why it's called Byblos because that's where they started writing the first Bibles and stuff. So they got a lot of great history, and it it it could be such a beautiful country, you know, if it wasn't for all the strife and everything that went on. But again, everybody I met uh you know I got along great with. I r I really did. So and sometimes I mean, you know, we had in in uh when was it we had our station chief kidnapped over there uh after I left anyway, but I mean I was good enough friends that I could walk, I usually walked back and forth to the apartment I rented. And uh, of course I carried handguns and stuff, and and a couple of times some of the people from the PSP, one at one of them, uh Solly, Solly had been at UNC Chapel Hill as the soccer coach for six years until he found out shit was going on in his country and he wanted to go home. This is back in the 60s or 70s, you know, and he went back over there. I'd walk out and they'd be sitting there in the car and they hey Phil, come on over here. Let us let us give you a ride home. I said, Well, no, it's a good day for walking. They said, No, it's not a good day for walking. Why don't you jump in the car and we'll take you home? You know, so they knew something was up and they were looking out for me. Wow, you know, so thank thank thank goodness, thank goodness. But uh yeah, it's uh the the the the the Middle East is is uh Yeah, I understand what what you mean by the noise now.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:05

Uh garbage truck.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:06

Yeah. The uh you know having have having spent time in Egypt and having spent time in Saudi Arabia and you know uh a bunch of the other countries over there, yeah, it is uh it's it it's it's very complicated, you know, but finally let's get rid of the bully on the block and and maybe that'll yeah that that'll help some.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:33

Yeah, you know. So you did your 20 years, you saw some shit, you got out, you started a security company.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:42

Well, actually, I went to work for somebody else for nine months or ten months, learned how not to do business. Uh yeah, uh I went to work for these other people, and I said, Oh, no, no, no. And and some people approached me and said, Well, why don't you start your own company? Had a couple other guys approach me and said, Why don't you start? And I said, I didn't have the money to start my own company. And they said, Well, if we get four or five guys together, we can maybe do this. I said, Okay, let's go ahead and do this. So we came up with a concept, started the company, and uh initially we were making no money. Uh 18 months later, I'm the only guy standing. All my partners are kind of, one of them got arrested because uh he was actually he actually owned some gyms in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but his side job was selling marijuana. Oh. And his daytime job was he was the treasurer for Fayetteville Technical Community College.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:46

A jack of all trades.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:47

Yeah, and when they came and locked him up, uh a couple of other guys said, well, we don't want to be associated with him. And since this was one of his actually actually knock on wood, we were lucky because uh we didn't have barely anything in the bank account, but because he was one of the officers of the country, they they seized our bank account. Oh wow because they, you know, we never did get that money back, but because he was he was the guy writing the checks and doing all that, and he was the guy selling marijuana, you know, they caught him. I think they they caught him with his Cadillac with two bales of marijuana in the back of his uh trunk or some shit.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:24

These weren't special forces guys. No, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:26

None of none of the guys that that I initially started with were special forces guys. And then later on, I brought on a guy uh who had been in Delta with me. Uh he wasn't my squadron, indifferent squadron. He came on, and uh later on we got into a conflict and he was uh stealing from the company and got caught red-handed. And uh, you know, that kind of ended that friendship and and and the other stuff. Yeah. But uh yeah, I I did that. Uh the the other thing while while I was in the military a couple ones and people wanted me to talk about these, I'm probably going to do it for uh the Veterans Museum in Western North Carolina. I've given a couple talks over there, and I was supposed to go down and talk to Furman about the Iranian thing uh here sometime. But uh I was also on the uh Killy Laurel when it was hijacked. Oh, yeah. Uh SEAL Team 6 was primarily responsible for that. And and and you know, when they forced the plane down Sigonel, Sicily, and everything, but they did not have EOD explosive ordinance disposal capability at the time. So what they did is called me and a couple other guys up from the unit and said, hey, you get to deploy with us. And I was uh I was starting to do you know a little PowerPoint presentation so I could talk about this. And and I started looking, and I remember you'll have to go back and find it, but the old movie Joggernaut, which is about a ship that gets ends up with seven 55-gallon drums bombs on board of it, you know, and red wire, blue wire, red wire, blue wire. One of those things. And uh they said they may have bought some explosives on board to Killy Laurel, and your job's gonna be to deal with them and stuff. So that was that whole incident was very interesting. Also, in uh '81, before Christmas of 1981, General Dozier was kidnapped by the Red Brigades in Italy. Uh and right after Christmas, uh, I went over, my team and I went over with our part of our medical package to help the help the Italians uh try and recover him. Uh and uh actually uh police force, a little police SWAT team. They were supposed, what was supposed to happen if anybody got any intel, they were supposed to forward it to the National Hen Corner. The national people and us go take care of him. Uh the guys found out and they said, Uh, do we have to send this information up to National? We'd like to go rescue him. And their boss said, I'll give you like one hour. And if you can't get it done in the next hour, we got to send the info up. And they went and got him and released him. So I was, and I thank that because it was I came back to the United States on that Sunday, and on Wednesday I met my current wife. So that's been nice. A little over this year we'll celebrate 44 years.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:38

Wow. Congratulations. So how'd you wind up in this area?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:43

How'd I wind up in this area? Well, when I graduated high school, let me back up, clear back up to where I graduated from a little town called White Salmon, Washington, which is on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains. Right across the river, the Columbia River, is Hood River. You're in the apple belt of Oregon and Washington. Imagine that. Here I am in the apple country in North Carolina on the eastern slope of the Appalachians. But what ended up here was uh we'd retired, my wife was still working. Uh we were living in Charlotte, uh, and I had taken a job with Homeland Security trying to keep my company running too, but uh I just couldn't get uh enough people that care about your business as much as you care about your business to do it. So I'd gone through some managers and stuff. But anyway, I went back to work for the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard at the Special Missions Training Center down at Camp Lejeune. So we were living in Charlotte. I would leave Sunday afternoon, go down, and on most weeks I had my schedule to where I could work four, 10-hour days. And then I would come back Thursday night, do honeydews on that, and then would find something to do on Saturday and Sunday morning, and then I'd go do it again. So I did that for almost nine years. And she was she was working, she was still making money and and and doing stuff and putting money in the bank. And during that time period, we kind of decided, having lived down at Camp Lejeune for that time period, I said, I don't necessarily want to live on the beach. I'm sick of the beach and and and stuff. So we decided, well, we like the mountains a little bit. So we actually about 11, 12 years ago, we bought a I bought a cabin. I call it a cabin, it's a mountain home, over in by Gilkie, North Carolina, up north of Rutherford, about 15 minutes the other side of Lake Lore. And being a big hunter, I have the wife does not allow any dead heads in our our we kind of call it his and her houses. But anyway, so we had that. So what we would do is she would get off work Friday night, we would come up to the cabin, and we would do stuff around the cabin and stuff, and Sunday go get breakfast, and then Sunday afternoon drive back down. I'd drop her, drop her off in Charlotte, and I'd take off and go down to the coast. Well, that went along, and then if we got any long weekends, we would spend up there and stuff. Of course, we came over here to come to the little theater, we'd come to seasons, we'd come on because it's only 45 minutes away. And so we really enjoyed this area over here. So when it got close to her retirement, the cabin, the only problem with the cabin is it's too far away from she likes a downtown, you know, and stores, you know, and you got you got to do a little drive from the cabin to go to the store and go do any shopping or anything because it it is rural over there. And uh so we we uh ask a real estate agent to show us around down here. Now my wife grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. Okay. Uh she was actually born in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, but uh when she was six years old, they moved too, and she she grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. Her brother's still down there. We've got a niece that's still down there. Her parents passed, my parents passed. Uh so and she came up to camp and stuff up here and and and those things. So she she was familiar with the area. So we said, well, let's look around the area because we liked Hendersonville. And even before we bought the cabin, there's a place over this side of the airport called Barkwells. Barkwells has got, I think, six or seven log cabins in it on the facility. The total area is fenced off. There's a big pond, a big play area. It's a place you take your dogs on vacation and you can go to. But each of the each of the cabins uh is is set up nice, and you can walk off the front porch, and then there's a fence around there, and then there's a fence around the whole area. So if you have a dog and he gets out, he can't he can't go anywhere. And when you check in, it doesn't say welcome you and your spouse. It says welcome whatever your pets' names are. And there's a closet, and there's dog treats for them, and there's a closet full of like sheets and towels to dry them off so they can get on the furniture and do all that. Well, we were coming over there and spending time up here in the mountains driving around before we even bought the cabin. Then we bought the cabin and spent a lot of time over there. So uh we we we got to know the area very, very well. Real estate agent, uh, we said we'd just like to see the area and see what's available. And the current house we live in in Flat Rock was the first house she took us to. Uh, my wife walked in and goes, This is it. And it had been on the market for a little over a year, so we figured we had plenty of time. And then she showed us one in Kienmuir, because I live in Claremont, right across the street from Kienmuir.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:04

We looked at one in Kianmere. Uh, neither one of us are golfers, so we just looked at the house. Uh, and then we looked at another one that was uh a little bit out of town here, rural, a little bit of rural, and we looked around, and my wife said, I really want to go back and look at that other house. Well, uh, so the real estate agent told the owners, you know, we'd like to make another appointment at some other time to come back and look at it again for a second time. And we went home. We went home, and like 24 hours later, the real estate agent calls and said, Hey, somebody else looked at that house and has put an offer in on it. But the owners are not gonna accept it since you said you wanted to look at it again until you come and look at it again. So we came back up here and and wife said, This is what I really want. So we we made an offer. We hadn't even put our got ready to put our house on the market and all that. We had to call the financial advisor and say, okay, now how do we do this? What do we, you know, well how how are we going to finance this? What are we gonna do? And so we uh ended ended up purchasing this home. Nice. So uh uh yeah, we love it up here. I mean, this this this is this is a great area. I I you know I I'm over in Rutherfordton probably twice a week a little bit. Uh go to Bavar and volunteer a little bit, but uh yeah, I we we love it here. Yeah, you know, and the wife's got real involved with uh some of the some of the other things here. She's uh she's the flat rock representative to the county uh commission for the preservation and historic stuff. The historic preservation committee or whatever it is. She's part of that. She's uh on the historic flat rock. She's the secretary for the Historic Flat Rock Foundation. Uh uh she's involved in the Flat Rock Genealogy Society. She's involved in well, she's the treasurer of our homeowners association for the uh Claremont. Uh so she's got her fingers in a bunch of bunch of bunch of little things that that she enjoys doing and stuff. We're both big history buffs. Yeah, and there's great history up here and stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:30

Flat Rock has really um done a good job of preserving its history and it's the biggest historic district in North Carolina. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:38

Yeah, huh? Yeah, Flat Rock is the biggest historic district. Cool. And there used to be like these old houses that were built by this by the Charlestonians that came out because it was the little Charleston of the Mountains. Right. There used to be 50 some of them. There's only like 26 of them left over there or something, you know. They're they're trying to preserve those and take care of those, but very very interesting history.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:59

Fascinating history. Yeah. So what's next for Philip Hanson?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:04

Uh I'm kind of enjoying life. I'm I'm I'm still keeping my fingers in. For instance, uh later on this coming month, I'm going back down to Fort Bragg. Uh I go down there about every six months, but um assisting in the presentation of the top shooter award for the new guys that my old unit that came through, named after one of my former students, Matt Reerson, who died in Somalia. Uh presentation of that award to the top shooter down there, and I get to go down there and talk to those guys and see those guys at least twice a year. Uh, we usually have uh uh the anniversary and stuff. Uh this this time of year, usually we have a big picnic and stuff, but it's been called off because everybody's real busy this time. So uh there's nobody around to go to the picnic. Yeah. Uh but uh yeah, it's uh you know, I'm I'm I'm just staying busy. I build some I build some firearms for almost as long as I was a scuba instructor. Well, not as long as I was a scuba instructor from mid-80s till two years ago. I had a federal firearms license. In fact, at my company I had two of them. You build firearms? I now I help guys build help guys, but I had a federal firearms license, so I sold guns. Uh the company I had, Corporate Security International, we had I built it kind of, I envisioned a little occupus. So we had a sales division, we had private investigators, we had an armored car service, we had a courier service, I had armed guards, unarmed guards, and private investigators. And at one time, we were also a company police agency. So it if one thing wasn't doing something pulling in money, the other side wouldn't. Plus, I had a class three dealer's license, which deals in suppressors and machine guns and submachine guns and and those type of things. But uh I just got to where, you know, the the cost of the license and the the uh uh some of the things that were going on in the industry I I really didn't agree with. Uh there were ATF was kicking in people's doors in the middle of the night and surprise, surprise, and some some guys that some guys ended up getting killed that shouldn't have been killed. And I didn't want anybody kicking in my door in the middle of the night and saying surprise, surprise, because I would probably pick up a pistol and and uh somebody may be dead and it may be me, you know. So I don't I don't need that in this time of my life. So, you know, I'm I'm uh I'm involved with the I'm the president of the Special Forces of Chapter, Special Forces Association, which is international, uh Chapter 17, which is Western North Carolina, uh, for all the special forces in the area. And if anybody hears that that's not involved and wants to get involved, give me a call. Uh what we just had a meeting up here at Guidon Brewery on Saturday. Uh they they hosted us up there. Um but uh so I'm staying busy with that. I've been trying to volunteer. Uh I haven't done any yet this year, but I got to get back on the roster. Uh the Veterans Museum of Western North Carolina, which is there was a bill proposed last year to make it the Veterans Museum for North Carolina. Uh, but they're over in Brevard, they got a great bunch of people over there, and I met some really great people. I'll tell you a funny little story. So back when we were staying at Barkwells, this is probably nine, ten years ago, I'm guessing, uh we went into Bouvard for the first time. And while we were there, I saw the museum, Veterans Museum. Let's walk through here. So I walked through and I said, Man, this is a nice little museum. This is pretty good. So we walked outside and I asked my wife, I said, Well, what do you think? She says, Well, I know where all your crap's going when you die now.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:20

You had mentioned that on the phone when I spoke with you, and I thought that was hilarious. Yeah. Your wife sounds funny.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:25

Yeah, she is. Well, she she had she had she knew nothing about the military when we met. And of course, I was in civilian clothes and had long hair. I didn't look like a military guy.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:36

And uh because you weren't supposed to look like a military guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:39

No. And and uh then when we got serious, and I told her, okay, got to sit down, I gotta tell you what I really do, you know, and and what my and she says, you don't have to feed me a line. I've already, you know, we're already committed and all this other. You don't you don't have to feed me some line about some being some exotic guy or something? And I said, No, no, you need to understand this is what I really no, really, no, really, this is what I really do. And and so that was a uh kind of an awakening for her. Uh and uh we we we've had we've had fun with it over over a period of time. I mean, I remember we'd only been married not even a year, and uh we ended up going to Hawaii. It was our belated honeymoon. Military sent me over there to do recruiting for the unit, and I'm recruiting in the morning, but I had afternoons off, and then I took leave and route to spend extra time over there. So we're downtown, Honolulu, Hawaii, sitting at a nice restaurant sitting here, and there's a couple GIs sitting next to us with a couple females, and they're trying to impress them. And, you know, if you ever get a chance, go to Fort Bragg. Man, they got some of the best military guys down there. Well, they got the 82nd Airborne, you know, and the 82nd is just the cream of the paratroopers and all that. And then some the other guy says, Yeah, but on the other side of the post, they got the special for the green berets, and they are really they're they're a step above these other guys. And I I've I've seen a couple of them, and uh, and I've known one. And the other guy goes, Well, I know a guy who knows a guy who's been in the Delta compound, and that's very hush-hush. And you want to see they are the best in the army. You could be sitting next to them and not even nothing about them, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:43:32

Please tell me you informed them.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:34

No, I don't either. No, no, we just sat there and listened to them. You know, I know a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy, you know, that seemed that saw something. And little does he know. Yeah, little does he know. The other the other thing that happened is uh, you know, uh we're quote quiet professionals, and and uh when I first started my company, I'd been gone about a year and a guy came in and brought a resume and said, I'd like to talk to you about a job. And he sat down, and lo and behold, he started taking credit for shit I'd done. He didn't realize you know that I had done it and I was that. And actually he sat down in front of my desk and I didn't have a name placard on there, and they just said, That's the boss, he's got to decide, you know. And he didn't, I just said, hi, I'm Phil, and he told me his name. And and uh I reached in the desk and I had the my my name thing and I put it on the front of the desk and I said, now explain to me again about this sink in extremist force you trained. And he looked at that and looked at me. Are you that Phil Hansen? And I go, Yeah, I'm that Phil Hansen. He says, Okay, I'm sorry. May I have the resume back? And I said, I suggest I suggest you adjust it before you show it to many other people, because this is a very small even though it seems big, it's a very small somebody knows somebody that knows somebody. Wow. You know, that that you can always find out what's what's going on. But uh yeah, uh you know, the invasion of Granada was good, and then uh one of the last things was uh General Downing, who was the deputy commander of of uh US Special Forces uh down at Fort Bragg. This was in 1980, end of 1986. Everything was so busy, the SEALs were busy, the unit was busy, everybody had a full plate. They decided that they needed a, it's now called the Commander's in extremist force. Back then it was the uh commander-in-chief's in extremist force, but Rumsfeld changed that. He said there's only one commander-in-chief, you know, these other military commanders around aren't, but they called them SIFs, sink in extremist force. And essentially what it was was develop a tier two unit, Delta and SEAL Team 6 being tier one units, along with a couple others that are out there. Uh but essentially develop a tier two unit that, let's just say, as an example, the embassy gets taken in Colombia. Well, Colombia is the responsibility of like 7th Special Forces Group. They're in and out of there, and they've been training with them, they're Central and South America and Latin America and stuff. So what would happen is if there was a kidnapping and somebody had to go right now and SEAL Team 6 or Delta could not get in there, these guys could go do it. But they had to have some more training. However, if Delta could get there and didn't have weapons, they had the same weapon systems, so they could interchange. If Del only part of Delta could get there and they needed some more people, these people could augment them and get in there. If all of Delta could get in, these guys could provide intel and provide the outside perimeter and be interpreters, because most of them were all Spanish speakers, and not everybody at the unit was a Spanish speaker. So uh each major command, first special forces group, which was Asia, had a CIF. Uh Charlie Company, third of the seventh, which was my old company, uh, was the first CIF that went through formal training at Fort Bragg. Uh but General Downing came and got me after I'd left the unit. And they'd went to the unit and they'd said, Look, we need uh we need to train these people up and we'd like you to do it. They said, our plate is full, we just can't do it. But uh somebody said, Well, there's somebody we know who can do it. And they said, you know, Sergeant Major Hansen just left here, he's over in the 7th Special Enforcement Group. You know, he was a senior instructor trainer here, and there's not one of our courses he can't, so Downey gives me a call and says, Come here, young Sergeant Major. I want you to write the curriculum, train the trainers, and then run the first course. And uh that's kind of what I did when I when I first got out of there. And that became, you know, later later on that became, and that course is still kind of going on. Uh and it's called by different names and and stuff now down at Fort Bragg. But uh that was that was kind of one of the first, and then I went back to seventh group and was in and out of Central and South America and Panama for the last two years of my career. Uh and that was part of payback because the guys who taught me, when I got to Panama and got back in Special Forces, I got put on the, they called it the over the hill gang. These were all combat veterans, all older special forces guys who had lots of experience. And I was not the youngest guy in the battalion, but I would, even though I'd spent a year overseas and already been in special forces, these guys said, look, we're going to teach you how to stay alive, how to be successful in this job, and do very good at this job. We only ask you one thing. As long as you're able, pass it on to the young soldiers and the other ones that need to know this. So that's kind of why, you know, when I left the unit, I went back over into special forces to sit there and and talk to the guys and pass on a lot of this, a lot of this other information that we had. And even when I was a GS working for the Department of Homeland Security, that's what I was doing with the Coast Guard, Navy, and Marine Corps down down at Camp Lejeune. Uh, you know, trying to pass on those TTP they call them now, detective tactics, techniques, and procedures.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:49

But uh what would you tell your younger self if you could?

SPEAKER_02 1:49:56

Probably um You know, that's a very good question. Earlier in my career, I probably wasn't as serious as I should have been. But I had an awakening when I graduated special forces training. Um and I and I'll explain. So if you were in the top five percent, you got a promotion. And so when I went through my special forces after I got and started special forces training, you had subjects that were common to all, and then you broke down and you went through MOS training. I was already a combat engineer, but we went back through how special forces uses a combat engineer and what you're expected to do. To include the last part of our engineer course in Special Forces, they sent us to Fort Belvoir, where at the time was the officers, military engineer, uh, army officer engineer course. That's where new engineer officers went through and did all their training. They ran us through that training without all the BS, just the subjects like uh soil compaction test, uh slump test for concrete, uh, all the technical things that a special that an engineer officer had to know. We were enlisted, but we got that, and we got the got the other side. Well, if you were doing good and you were in the top 5%, when you graduated, you'd get promoted to E6. Well, we were going through and we were in a class on bridge classification. And back then there were no calculators, and you know, the nobody nobody used a slide rule, so it's all long-hand math. And this bridge classification formula had about 12 steps in it. And you make one little mistake, forget to carry something, do what your answer is going to be incorrect. So I've been staying up at, you know, one, two, three, four within the standing of the 50 guys I was in the course with. And we took this test and I dropped down to number 10. I'm going, oh shit, I'll never make on a graduate now. So I kind of subconsciously decided I wasn't going to try as hard. And I didn't try as hard. Came graduation time. The first guy got promoted to E6. The second guy said, I'm I don't think I'm ready to be E6. Can I have the promotion in one year? Let me, you know, go out and do this and get it in one year. And they said, Yeah, we can maybe make that happen, but we need to promote somebody. So they promoted the third guy. Guess who the fourth guy was? The guy who didn't try. And I said, you know, maybe that that was a screw up on my part. So from now on, when they are sending me to school, focus on the school, not out partying and doing all that other kind of good stuff. And the taxpayers are paying you money. Get everything you can. So uh after that, uh I went to jump master's course. Uh, they didn't have an honor graduate of that. When I got to Panama, I had to go to the NCO Academy. I made honor graduate out of the NCO Academy and got another medal. And it's kind of like a double ticket punch. And uh there's a whole story behind that one, too. Uh then I went to the advanced course, the engineer course, and I made a distinguished graduate up there. General Roper put me in for a direct commission as an as an officer. And I kind of said, well, yes and no. Uh they said it'd take two or three years to get a uh reserve commission as an engineer officer, even though it was an engineering, and they said we can do it much faster if you want to go infantry. So I went ahead and what happened was I became dual component. I got a reserve commission. Actually, Colonel Beckwith swore me in. I'd started the paperwork before I left Panama, and by the time I got to Delta, I'd gone through the deal. Colonel Beckwith swore me in as a first lieutenant. Uh I did the basic course, the advanced course, and all that. Prior to retirement, I'd got promoted to major. And I had also added the special operations MOS for officers. I had a uh 11 MOS and an 18 MOS, which were both officer MOSs. And my active duty was uh a sergeant major. Um but uh then I went to the I was in the top 5% of all my uh peer group. And if you're in the top five percent, you get to pick what Sergeant Major's Academy you went to. And uh I picked the Air Force Sergeant Major's Academy. I went down there, it was TDY, it was in uh Montgomery, Alabama, uh, and I made distinguished graduate there, which was another double ticket punch. So when I got promoted to E9 sergeant major, the average time in the military that a sergeant major had when he got promoted was 26 years. I made the list in 15 years and pinned it in 16 years. Wow. Yeah, I that's crazy. Yeah, they called out a fast burner. And what I didn't realize is at the time is a lot of the old sergeant majors resented that.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:49

Yeah, we're the same range. Yeah, we're both the same.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:52

Yeah, and sorry it took you so long.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:53

Yeah. Well, I had guys, I had guys when I was a staff sergeant in Panama, one of the team sergeants was an E7. When I came out of Delta as a sergeant major, he was an E8. So I'd gone seven, eight, nine. Well, he had gone up one step and he's now he's now working working for me. And I'm going, wow, this is this this is kind of where I knew him, you know, way way back when. But it was uh it it was quite interesting. But that that, you know, if I would have taken things more seriously, you know, uh, do I regret getting married the first time and having kids? Not really, but should I have waited? Yeah, that probably would have been a good idea, you know. Uh I'm not sure I won't really wanted to go to West Point or be go to OCS because I've enjoyed being an enlisted guy. I really have. Uh but uh yeah, that's uh well, you seem to do pretty well for yourself. I try. Yeah, I try.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:00

I appreciate you coming on the podcast and telling your story. It's remarkable. So anytime. Thank you, Mr. Hansen. You're welcome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:48

Learn more at LucyAgency.com. That's L-U-C-E-YAGC.com.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:59

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