#11 The Blackwater Massacre

After thirteen years of political persecution and wrongful imprisonment, four U. S. veterans reunited last Christmas with their loyal families after receiving Presidential pardons that some described as “an affront to justice.” In their first joint interview on The Shawn Ryan Show, the four men of Blackwater USA’s Raven 23 Tactical Support Team sit down with Shawn Ryan to discuss the most controversial gunfight of the entire Iraq War, the complete system failure of the U. S. government, a corrupt court system, and incompetent journalists that demonized them as war criminals and convicted them before standing trial, despite their innocence. In an extensive interview, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nick Slatten and Paul Slough discuss their ordeal as well as their experience in battle, their time in prison, their faith, and reuniting with their families. Special appearances from Gina Keating and Eddie Gallagher Donate to these men HERE: https://pipehitterfoundation.org Proof of Evidence/Documents/Emails/Cables https://static.bashcrash.io/2013.03.12%20Letter%20from%20McCool%20to%20AUSAs.pdf https://static.bashcrash.io/2019.08.14%20%20Transcript%20of%20Sentencing.pdf https://static.bashcrash.io/Ex%20H.pdf https://static.bashcrash.io/Haithem%20email.jpeg https://static.bashcrash.io/IMG_0473003.jpeghttps://static.bashcrash.io/IMG_0474.jpeg https://static.bashcrash.io/IMG_0475.jpeg https://static.bashcrash.io/IMG_0477.jpeg https://static.bashcrash.io/JessicaNewspaper.jpeg https://static.bashcrash.io/Raven%2023%20cables-Clinton%20email.pdf https://static.bashcrash.io/123_1.jpeg https://www.supportraven23.com Raven 23 Presumption of Guilt Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/raven-23-presumption-of-guilt/id1468783839 Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  On October 2nd.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Ravenette.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:03Shawn Ryan?

  All right, guys, so September 16th, 2007, what's known as the Blackwater massacre, Raven 23 incident. I want to get each and every one of yours firsthand accounts of what happened.

• 1:25Shawn Ryan?

  Blackwater security guards shot more than 30 unarmed Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Blackwater security contractors were serving time for killing 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  Four Americans received lengthy prison sentences today for an infamous incident during the Iraq war. All four are former Blackwater security contractors convicted in the killings of 14 unarmed Iraqis, including women and children in Baghdad in 2007.

• 2:08Shawn Ryan?

  Especially in 2007, with it being deemed the most violent, bloody year of the entire war. They said that in 2007, there was an average of 180 engagements from insurgents a day.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  As soon as we came to a stop, within a minute or less, I started hearing the pings on the side of my vehicle. And at the same time, I heard, I don't know if I heard Paul yell it out on the radio or just yell it out down the turret that there was a white Kia that was presenting a threat and it was coming towards the vehicle, so.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  So he landed in the middle of this gun battle and just walked over as we were loading the, our brother's remains. We had already put him in body bags and we were dragging him back up the hill. And he just lands in the middle of the gunfight, lands his bird and then he gets out. He wanted to see that it was his brother and then as soon as he seen it was his brother, he got back up and they started laying down suppressive fire for us again. But like, it was just a crazy moment, you know, that it was just, it was tragic, man. Like I said, it was the worst day of my life for sure.

• 3:38Speaker 06

  He had just taken a drag off his cigarette and EFP came through the window compartment and he lost his arm. And the only reason why he was the driver is he took his hand off the wheel to do something. I don't know if it's the light one, take a puff or what, but he lost his arm behind it.

• 4:00Speaker 07

  The other thing that he said that was so critical that didn't get introduced at trial was that these Iraqi witnesses said the white Kia punched forward like a car bomb.

• 4:13Shawn Ryan?

  I have a really good friend on the line here. You guys might know, his name's Eddie Gallagher.

• 4:26Shawn Ryan?

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. This is episode 011, the very first episode in our brand-new studio. I want to start off by saying thank you because we had a massive influx of patrons after the last episode, and it's patrons like you that make this entire production possible. If you can't support us on Patreon, head down to the description, please click the iTunes tab, go over there, leave us a review, even if it's just one word, that helps us more than you know, so please leave us a review.

• 5:11Shawn Ryan?

  Now let's get on with it. In SRS 011, what you are about to hear is an untold side of the most controversial gunfight in the Iraq War, also known as the Blackwater Massacre. These gentlemen have never been given the opportunity to tell their side of what happened in the Sira Square, Baghdad, Iraq, that day. Please welcome Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Nick Slatten, and Dustin Hurt. Raven23, enjoy the show.

• 6:05Shawn Ryan?

  Alright gents, welcome to the Sean Ryan Show. So, just for the audience, you gentlemen are from Raven23, also known as the Blackwater Massacre, and which is the most controversial gunfight in all of the Iraq War and possibly in American history. So, kinda how this happened is how I got introduced to you guys is Evan, you know, I was checking messages on Instagram and checked the outbox, and there's a message from Evan, and I'm pretty sure it just said...

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, just said I loved your podcast and was a big fan.

• 6:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Thank you for everything you're doing.

• 6:54Shawn Ryan?

  And you were part of Raven 23.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 6:58Shawn Ryan?

  I was like, it's been a long time since I heard that name, so I jumped off real quick, Googled it. And I blew my mind. I was like, holy shit, you know, I didn't even know you guys were out. And so I reached back out to you and I think you kind of got cold feet. And you know, you're like, I didn't think you were actually going to reach back out. And I was like, well, here I am, you know, let's do this shit. And got in touch with the rest of you guys. And so here we are. But you know, kind of taking this thing on, this is, I just want to say, this is the biggest, probably most important interview I will ever do.

• 7:40Shawn Ryan?

  And I'm going to do my damnedest to, to give you the best interview you will ever have. And, and I want to give you guys a platform, as we all discussed, for you guys to tell your side of what happened. And you've never been given the chance or the opportunity to do that. And so that's exactly what we want to do here is give you guys the opportunity to get everything off your chest and 100% your side of, of what exactly happened back on September 16th, 2007. So when I took this, you know, and I agreed to do it and I started digging in, I got overwhelmed with the amount of information and just how in-depth this case went.

• 8:26Shawn Ryan?

  And so kind of before we get going, I just want to say, you know, thank you to you guys and your families for,

• 8:36Shawn Ryan?

  for helping me with all the information. Gina Keating did an amazing job on her podcast, which is the number one thing that I used. And that's linked below. It is full of information that you can't find in the regular press, the mainstream media. Bill Cofield helped a lot. And support Raven23.com. There's a ton of information on there.

• 9:04Shawn Ryan?

  And we'll be talking about some documents, some videos, all kinds of stuff, email chains, cables from State Department, and just for the audience, that will all be linked in the description. None of this shit is being made up. It's all fact. It's documented, and the links are below. If you don't believe me or these guys, don't take our word for it. All the proof is linked below. So, kind of where I want to take this interview with you guys is, there's a lot of people that probably don't know exactly what Blackwater was. So,

• 9:47Shawn Ryan?

  I kind of want to start at the beginning, or what it took to get in. So I want to go around the room and get an introduction from you guys, kind of what you were doing before you went to Blackwater, how you got into Blackwater, what was the vetting and training like, when did you guys all meet, what was the op tempo and the deployment schedule when you guys got in. Then we'll walk us into the incident, the Raven 23, Blackwater massacre, and then the indictment, prison, what you guys are doing now. So, let's just start with Paul. You know, what were you doing before?

• 10:29Speaker 08

  Before, I'd just come back from a rotation in Iraq with the National Guard Unit. We were primary convoy security and then a PSD for our battalion commander and our S3 shop.

• 10:49Speaker 08

  I'd come home and basically was working at a Home Depot. And it just wasn't a good fit. I missed the mission. I missed being in what I felt was

• 11:05Speaker 08

  An honorable task for the nation in helping another nation just come out of a horrific season that they had been in. And so I ironically enough went to a job fair and there was a Blackwater rep there. And I met him and I'd heard the name before and I had a very limited understanding of really what Blackwater was other than being in Iraq. And so I conversed with him and he said, yeah, give me your resume and give me your DD 214, all that good stuff and we'll go from here. And so the process was really just kind of a back and forth, filling out the packet and then being accepted and going to the vetting process there in Moya.

• 11:50Shawn Ryan?

  So you've been, you'd had combat tours before with military?

• 11:54Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 11:55Shawn Ryan?

  How many tours did you do?

• 11:56Speaker 08

  That year, just, just prior to that.

• 11:59Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 12:00Speaker 08

  In the guard, yeah.

• 12:04Shawn Ryan?

  Where were you when 9/11 happened?

• 12:06Speaker 08

  I was at Hunter Army Airfield. We were on a tarmac. Weirdly enough, we were on what was red cycle at that time. And so we were attached to a tank battalion and a ranger battalion and we were set up as a response force for, for the globe in the, in the, in the, you know, if there was a need for that. And so, um, yeah, we were sitting on a tarmac. Our lieutenant came outside and said, hey, guys, we're under attack. And, and at the moment, we were all just kind of ribbing one another because we were on this red cycle, right? That we were going to go deploy here, deploy there, deploy, you know, any other number

• 12:49Speaker 08

  of the places in the, in the world. Anyway, he said, yeah, he said, for real, we're, we're under attack. And at the time, his father-in-law was a chaplain at the Pentagon and was reading Last Rites when he called him and, and said, it's, it's, it's really happening.

• 13:08Shawn Ryan?

  Nick?

• 13:10Speaker 05

  So I was in the 82nd Airborne Division. I was a infantry sniper and I was a team leader.

• 13:17Speaker 05

  I was at the point of reenlistment, you know, deciding to stay in or get out. And they were pushing me to either go to Division Lurse or to go to SFAS. And so I had to get out of the 82nd. In order to do that, I had to like out process. And part of that out process is you have to go to job fairs as well. And it was a triple canopy recruiter that picked me up first. They said, hey, you know, you're sniper qualified. We could use you. And they said, you can get into the OGA after you do some time on state. So that was my goal. Anyway, that's what I wanted to do. And, you know, Blackwater ended up winning the contract. So it switched from triple canopy to Blackwater. They, they took me to training and it was,

• 14:02Speaker 05

  it was amazing, man. There was, you know, high level SEALs, high level CAG dudes, high level SF dudes, you know, I was still a kid. I was like 22. And so they were, they had been fighting longer than I'd been alive, you know? So it was awesome. Just, and they took me under their wing. Cause I came with a real humble attitude, you know, and I was just like, man, I don't know this stuff. I need you to help me. And they did, you know, they were, they were very awesome. And that was the best training I'd ever received. It was just out of this world how good we were trained.

• 14:34Shawn Ryan?

  Just for the audience that's civilian types, well, can you describe what SFAS is?

• 14:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's just the entry selection. I think it's called for Special Forces Assessment. So it's like...

• 14:48Shawn Ryan?

  They wanted you to become a Green Beret.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  Yes, sir. You're trying out for Green Berets.

• 14:53Shawn Ryan?

  And you'd done combat tours before?

• 14:55Speaker 05

  Yes, sir. I had two tours with 82nd. My first tour was right around the Fallujah area. And then that was, we're basically attached to Special Forces units and, and CAG and stuff, doing raids where we would just be after high value targets. You know, this is the guy we're looking for. We either capture or kill this guy. And then after that, I came home.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  They slotted me for sniper school, went to sniper school, and then my second deployment was more of like a peacekeeping mission. It was just in the Kurdistan region. Nothing was really going on there. So it was just, it was very nice. You know, I didn't like it at the time because I was an infantryman. I was like, I need to be fighting. But looking back on it, it was nice because I got to see the, the dark side of Iraq and also the good side of Iraq there. The Kurdish people, they loved us. You know, first mission I went on, I was a team leader and it was a very good chance we were going to get ambushed because it was basically a village that's set back in this mountainside. And it was almost like a cul-de-sac, the mountains. So there was only one way in and one way

• 16:03Speaker 05

  out. So I call a hauk and I'm like, I'm just going to push up. And if anything happens to me, y'all just leave me. You know, I was like, come back and get me later, call airstrike or whatever. And so as I'm pushing up, I notice these local villagers, they're kind of going in and out of their, their huts. And I see this woman come running out and she's holding something. So I look at her in my optic and she's got a tea kettle and she's screaming and Kurdish saying bekarabik, which is like welcome. And she sets the tea kettle on the fire and then she starts dragging chairs out of her house. And I'm like, where are we at, man? You know, it was like night and day difference. So it was very awesome just to see the, you know, my first tour, they were, they were shooting at us, they

• 16:47Speaker 05

  were blowing us up. Versus come, come have some tea with us. You know, that was, that was really good.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Right on. Evan? Well, I grew up in New Hampshire, doing a lot of outdoor stuff, fly fishing, camping, hiking, things like that, playing, playing sports, basketball. I was a big runner when I was a kid. And pretty much decided I was going to go in the Marine Corps pretty early. In 1998, when I was a junior in high school, I signed up for the delayed entry program. And me and my best friend, we're going to go in the Marine Corps together once we graduated.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  One of the big mistakes I made when I was a kid was basically just deciding pretty quick that I was gonna go in the Marine Corps, but not really giving a lot of thought into what job I wanted to do. I just knew, oh, you know, my uncle was a Marine, the Marines are the toughest branch, I wanna do something challenging, so I just signed up and then I had a female recruiter and she asked me, "What do you wanna do for a job?" So she gave me the pamphlet and I started looking through it and of course you see machine

• 18:11Speaker 04

  gunner, um, security forces, MP, things like that, so I said, "You know what, I think I wanna be in security forces," you know, I didn't do any research or anything like that, we didn't have the internet, so I just, uh, it sounded cool and I was like, "Yeah, I'll do that." Um, so she came back within a week and said, "You know what, uh, because of the date that you and your best friend wanna go to boot camp, there's gonna be a big, uh, time gap between graduation of boot camp and when you can go to security forces school." So, she said, "Pick something else." So I said, "You know what, uh, put me in

• 18:51Speaker 04

  for MP, I wanna be in military police." So, same thing, a week later she comes back and says, "Well, bad news, you have to be nineteen to go to MP school, you're only seventeen right now, so go ahead and pick something else." So, you know, typical, typical kid, I went off doing whatever I was up to in those days, and about a month later, she calls me and said, "You know what, I, I found an MOS for ya, I, I put it in for you, uh, it's my MOS, you're gonna love it. It's, uh, you know, go to work in the morning, you're done

• 19:32Speaker 04

  by sixteen thirty, and that's it." And I'm like, "Whoa, that doesn't sound like the Marine Corps that I'm imagining." What, what, uh, what job is it? And she said, "Supply." And my heart sunk. I was like, "What, what is that? What, what do you do with supply?" And she kinda explained it to me. And I was sick, man. I, I was like, "Man, I wanna be in the Marine Corps, but I wanna do something badass." So, I go off to boot camp. I'm hearing all these guys talk about how they're going infantry, they're doing machine gunner, they, they wanna be a sniper and all this. And I'm stewing. I feel like I got screwed, but the paperwork was in.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  I was a young kid, and I just went along with it. Uh, after boot camp, of course, you go to your MOS school. And, um, the school is only a few weeks long. It's a joke. So, I went to the school, got stationed in North Carolina. And from the moment I got to North Carolina, I was trying to get out of that MOS. Any, by any way possible. So, I'd, uh, I'd volunteer for different duties. I'd volunteer for different classes. I'd go to the rifle range when I didn't need to go to the rifle range. I'd go on different exercises. Um, and I was kinda proving myself as a good Marine,

• 20:59Speaker 04

  but my higher-ups knew I was not into the job that I was doing. So, after about six months, my, uh, Master Gunnery Sergeant came in with a Marine Corps Times newspaper. And he said, "Hey, I, I think you should go down to, uh, talk to this recruiter." And, and he threw the paper at me, and it was for Marine Security Guard School. And I said, "What's, what's Marine Security Guard?" And he said, "Well, there's an embassy, basically, in every country, and there's a detachment of Marines at every embassy that protects the embassy, protects classified materials,

• 21:42Speaker 04

  and protects the diplomats that are in the embassy." You know, the American, Americans working abroad. So, I got excited. And there was quite a process to get, um, get ready for the interview. Just to basically prove that you were qualified to go to the school. So I went to the recruiter and I sat down with him and he looked over my file and he said, "You know what, you look like you're a good Marine. You're a little young, but you're qualified. The only problem is you have to be at your duty station for one year."

• 22:20Speaker 04

  So he said, "I'm gonna put you in the class slated for right after you get one year on station." I'm like, "Okay, perfect." I go back to my unit and all these guys are Lance Corpsers, Corpsers, Sergeants. They've been stuck in this MOS and they hate it and they've been there two, three, almost four years. So I came back and I say, "Yeah, they selected me. I'm going to Marine Security Guard School." And they said, "No fucking way, man. You just got here. You've been here like five, six months. You're not going to Marine Security Guard School." I've been here in whole enlistment. So I said, "I don't know." That's what he said.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  About a month later, the message comes out and sure enough, my name's on the list to go to the school. So soon as I hit a year on station in Camp Lejeune, I left. Went to Marine Security Guard School in Quantico. And my first embassy was Cairo. I spent about 18 months in Cairo. And I'll backtrack a little bit. 9/11 happened right after I got selected for a Marine Security Guard School. And then the invasion of Iraq happened around the time I was in Egypt.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  So yeah, I was in the Middle East, but not necessarily in combat. And then my second duty station was Cairo, Egypt. I mean, Guantanamo City. So anyways, throughout my enlistment, all this combat's going on. And I'm pretty much dying to get over there and take part in it because I feel like, "Hey, this is my duty." You know, like after 9/11, I just felt this huge feeling of patriotism and I wanted to contribute to that cause. So when I came to the end of my enlistment... I was thinking, well, do I try to get off Marine Security Guard,

• 24:26Speaker 04

  get out of Marine Security Guard Battalion? And let move to a different MOS and get over there in Iraq or Afghanistan? Or I could get out and go in the private sector and go with Blackwater or DynCorp at the time? And pretty much guaranteed to be over there within a couple of months? So.

• 24:49Shawn Ryan?

  Before you go on, how did you hear about Blackwater and DynCorp? Were you peers or?

• 24:55Speaker 04

  Well, at the time, the only thing I knew about Blackwater was the big incident that happened in 2004 in Fallujah, where four Blackwater guys got ambushed and pretty much burned alive and drug behind their vehicles and strung up on a bridge. And it was a big international incident. It was in the media a lot. So I knew that that happened right around the same timeframe.

• 25:23Shawn Ryan?

  And you wanted to go in after you saw that?

• 25:25Speaker 04

  Well, I would, I, that caused me to backtrack a little bit because my friend was writing me emails back and forth, saying, hey, you know, I think we should go with Blackwater. You know, it's a, it's a quick way to get over to Iraq. And I said, hey, have you been watching the news? Like, four guys just got strung up on this bridge. He's like, well, you know, it's, it's always a risk in combat. And, you know, he's trying to justify it. And at the end of the day, I, I knew that was my fastest way to get over there. And I didn't know how long Iraq or Afghanistan was going to last. I mean, little did I know, 20 years later, they're still in Afghanistan. But at the time, you didn't know that.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  You just thought, hey, I'm 21 years old. This is my chance, you know? I'm in the Marine Corps. I'm patriotic. I want to serve my country in pretty much the highest way possible.

• 26:22Shawn Ryan?

  In the fullest capacity.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  Right, so, yeah, I, I emailed a Blackwater recruiter and I said, hey, it was really informal. I just kind of outlined, hey, I'm a Marine. I'm a sergeant. I'm a Marine Security Guard Battalion. I have a security clearance. I've worked alongside the State Department and I'm interested in working for Blackwater. So I got a response, filled out some paperwork, and they accepted me. And I got out of the Marine Corps in November of 2004.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  And within 60 days, I was in North Carolina, training at Blackwater.

• 27:10Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. For those listening, the incident that he's talking about that happened in 2004, those were Blackwater contractors, correct? All four of those men were prior Special Forces or Special Operations. I believe they were all Special Forces Green Berets, correct me if I'm wrong. But they were stopped at a checkpoint by Iraqi insurgents who were dressed as police. You get a police uniform over there for, what, 20, 30 bucks?

• 27:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:42Shawn Ryan?

  And so they stopped, thinking they were police, cracked seals on the vehicle. They were shot and killed by the insurgents dressed as police. Then they stripped them down, strung them upside down, and burned their corpses from a bridge while the local population cheered and celebrated.

• 28:08Speaker 09

  The company said they were guarding convoys delivering food around Fallujah. A small crowd descended on the burning cars. What happened next was gruesome. The bodies of the four Americans were pulled from the flames, poked, prodded, and beaten. One charred body was tied behind a car and dragged through the streets, a procession that included children. Two mangled corpses were hanged on a bridge over the Euphrates River.

• 28:42Shawn Ryan?

  Participated in it. Yeah, and participated in, and you know, there's, that's well documented, that's a well documented event. I had a friend who was actually part of that, but that's, so I'm kind of bringing that up because I want to paint the picture of, you know, this is who we're dealing with over there with general population and bad guys dressed as friendlies. So Dustin?

• 29:11Speaker 06

  I'm a Marine as well. I joined back in 2004, or 2000 and got out oh four. I went into Marine Infantry and then I went to FAST Company, which is in the Security Force Battalion. It's the same school that he went through, but I did that after my machine gun stuff. I spent two years or three years with FAST and then I spent another year with second Battalion Eighth Marines as a machine gunner. You know, you're talking about nine eleven earlier. We were out doing a site security exercise, which is if the embassy gets in trouble or anything like that, we roll in and we take it, we hold it, we do whatever

• 29:54Speaker 06

  it is. With FAST, you're basically on call somewhere in the world. They got different stations and if something happens, they send us in to reinforce, take different things like embassies or whatever they want done. And so we've actually set up around our armory saying, hey, you know, this is how we would do this. We set everything up, we put our machine guns into position and my captain comes out and said, hey, planes just hit the twin towers. And we're like, okay, this is part of the drill. And he's like, no, really, this is not part of the drill. This is real life.

• 30:34Speaker 06

  And it's still not sinking in. Well, we went from having no ammunition because we're on American soil, just doing exercise to they start passing out ammo. And when they did, me being a machine gunner, I went through advanced machine gun leadership school. And it was me and one of my buddies that I'll talk about later, we did the machine guns. And he said, hey, herd, go lock and load the fifty. And I'm like, sir, we're aimed in on base housing. If you want me to lock and load it, somebody hits the butterfly, we're gonna shoot into the housing. And he's like, I understand, but lock and load? And I'm like, oh damn. Shit just got real. And so we ended up doing a normal rotation to Bahrain.

• 31:18Speaker 06

  And we were there, I think, three, four months, I don't know exactly. And then we got the order to go to Kuwait for the buildup. So when, before any troops crossed the border, we were in Kuwait doing, hanging out, waiting for a task for the buildup itself. And we ended up hitting the oil platforms off the coast of Iraq with one of the SEAL teams and the Polish Special Forces, the Grom. And then we came back to Kuwait. We went in and did a trap mission for one of our F-somethings that got shot down. Went recovered the officer's body, I think it was Lieutenant White, if I'm not mistaken.

• 32:00Speaker 06

  And the SEALs dove the lake and got out the stuff that needed to be taken out. That way, you didn't have the classified stuff just sitting in the bottom of the lake in Iraq, outside of Kerbalar. So we rotated back to Kuwait again. Well, we'd already been deployed for so long, they went ahead and sent us home after that. That was the first time that I went to Iraq was the trap mission and then hitting the oil platforms.

• 32:28Shawn Ryan?

  You were the, you were hitting the oil platforms? You were with a good friend of mine, Mike Redwind, uh, who I interviewed on here as well. And he was on those ops. I should connect to you guys.

• 32:40Speaker 06

  That'd be cool.

• 32:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 06

  Mongo, the SEAL I was talking about, that I seen later on whenever I was with Blackwater, you know, he was one of the SEALs that was on there too. And so we rotated back. Well, my, my wife at the time, what we're girlfriend at the time, fiance, we're supposed to get married sometime in the spring. Well, whenever I left fast and I went to Second Battalion, Eighth Marines, they said, oh, by the way, heard we're going to Afghanistan here in a couple of months. And I'm like, okay, cool. So I called Kelly and I'm like, hey, we got two choices, get married now or get married later. So we decided to go get married. And then my honeymoon, literally, I got married on the Marine Corps

• 33:21Speaker 06

  birthday, November tenth. And that next week, I was back in Afghanistan, or, you know, first time I've been to Afghanistan, but what I'm saying, back in the Middle East. So we're over there, we do our rotation there. We was in a pretty light area. We just got blown up a couple of times and a few little stuff. We rotated back and I got out of the Marine Corps, October, November, I was in vetting, December, I was back in Iraq again with Blackwater. And so for me, it was just a, you know, left one, I got a job at a liquor store just because I didn't have any income coming in. And then I got called and said,

• 34:05Speaker 06

  hey, your package went through, you got a school date. And so I went to school and went through the vetting portion and went through the training portion, you know, doing the movements and all that stuff. And then I was back in Iraq, December two thousand four.

• 34:21Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 34:22Speaker 06

  I stayed there till November two thousand seven.

• 34:27Shawn Ryan?

  So how did you hear about Blackwater?

• 34:30Speaker 06

  Well, my buddy Billy actually, uh, went to a job fair that I was unable to attend. And he came back and he said, hey, man, uh, we need to get a bio and a resume together because I was talking to one of the recruiters for Blackwater and he wants us to submit our stuff. And Billy and I did the same thing all the way through the Corps. We're both machine gunners. We went to advanced machine gun leadership school. He's got a driving course that I didn't get, but other than that, our resume and bio is almost identical. And so, uh, he went with me too after FAST, the second battalion, eight Marines to Afghanistan. And so he's the one that's like, hey dude, we need to get together on this.

• 35:15Speaker 06

  And we talked to the same recruiter and he helped us get everything in order. And then we went to the same, uh, class together for Blackwater.

• 35:26Shawn Ryan?

  Good.

• 35:28Shawn Ryan?

  So open forum now, when you guys were talking to the recruiters, um, at Blackwater. Blackwater is a massive, it turned into a massive company. It was the biggest private military contracting company, uh, in the world. And, uh, I believe that, I don't think it will ever be outdone. But with that being said, they had several different contracts. They had state department contract, a couple of different state department contracts. I believe they had, um, air contracts for pilots. They had OGA contracts, um, other government agencies. I believe they had, did they have the DEA project as well? I'm not sure.

• 36:14Shawn Ryan?

  Or was that DynCorp? It might have been. But all these different government agencies had separate contracts. And just because you worked for, Blackwater wasn't all grouped into one. They had several different, uh, whatever you want to call it, divisions, uh, which were different contracts for different organizations. And so when you guys were talking to the recruiters, were they telling you about all the different contracts? Or were they, did they have one specific one in mind, like you had mentioned, OGA?

• 36:47Speaker 04

  In my case anyways, I didn't know those other contracts were available. I think when I told the recruiter my history with the State Department, Marine Security Guard Battalion, he pretty much decided right there that my best fit would be with the State Department contract in Iraq. So I didn't know those options were available. They might have been to these other guys, but not in my case.

• 37:12Speaker 08

  Mine was pretty similar to Evan. I'd been, I was active duty before going into the Guard and I'd been to Bosnia and done some things. For me, it seemed like the best fit that was kind of proposed to me was the WIPS contract. And besides that, I didn't really know anything other than that, so yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, OGA was what I was wanting to do, but he said that this was like a foot in the door. He's like, you know, you get in and you get a reputation as a guy that's reliable and does his job well, then he's like, they'll pick you up for sure. So that was, that was my plan all along. That's what I wanted to do.

• 37:53Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 37:54Speaker 06

  I really didn't know. It was just whatever they wanted me to do, I was, I was game.

• 38:00Speaker 08

  Was there any type of sales pitch at all, or did they?

• 38:04Speaker 04

  No, not really.

• 38:05Speaker 08

  Nothing?

• 38:06Speaker 04

  I was so on board with anything. I just, I just wanted to get over there. I didn't give a shit, you know? I was, I felt like I was missing out, especially having the MOS that I had originally and then being stuck at the embassies. All through 9/11, invasion of Iraq, all that, I was just anxious to get over there.

• 38:29Speaker 08

  I shared a lot of those same sentiments of wanting to get back to the mission because it felt like when we left, we were gaining traction. And to Nick's point, when you go past Mosul and you're up in Kurdistan. You you can see just the the differences between Northern Iraq and Southern Iraq. And it's like, wow, why why can't this be mirrored south of here? What what is the the bifurcation?

• 38:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I could definitely see that.

• 38:56Speaker 06

  You know, continuing on with the mission to service to the country. I just wasn't ready to hang it up. I was debating on reenlisting or if Blackwater didn't work out. I I wasn't going to continue just that little piddle job doing a liquor store. I worked for a great dude, but when you served as a Marine and everything else, and then you're sitting there while everybody else is still doing service to their country. They're out there fighting that fight and you're just sitting there. And it's like, this is not what I was made for. I was made to continue the service.

• 39:30Shawn Ryan?

  Wasn't fulfilling enough?

• 39:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is this just is not me, you know?

• 39:37Speaker 06

  Stopping a shelf at a liquor store and, you know, helping people do that. And it's like, man, I've got a skill set that needs to be used. Because stateside, there's no use for a machine gunner. There's no use for stuff like that unless you go law enforcement or something like that. And it just really didn't fit with who I am. You know, I wanted to go out and continue to serve the country in any manner. It didn't really matter to me, so.

• 40:06Shawn Ryan?

  What was the training like when you guys got there? How many different, you know, how many guys were in the course? And or how long, actually, sorry, how long after you guys talked to the recruiters, were you offered a position or an opportunity to prove yourself in vetting and training?

• 40:27Speaker 06

  Well, I know I went through, I think it's DS class fourteen or fifteen. I went through some of the very earliest classes they had, you know, because they were running them like every week, every two weeks. And so you had like three or four classes still going through as I was going. And, you know, later on, we had to go back and recall on like two oh threes and stuff like that because we wasn't authorized. And I know we showed up. I don't remember how many we had, but the vetting portion of just the shooting, the rifle, the pistol, the shotgun, the two forty, the saw, the fan fire, the AK, the CQB and stuff like that. It's, I can't tell you how many dudes that we dropped during all that.

• 41:13Speaker 06

  Because it was, for us, it was show up, perform, or you get the window or aisle seat going home. And so, I don't know how many we started out with, but I know we lost tons of dudes in that. And dudes that are supposed to be, you know, top tier guys. But it's either they're out of shape, they haven't shot in a long time. They just, for whatever reason, they didn't make it through the vetting portion. And then, you know, then you had to learn the movements, which is mirrored, uh, like the Secret Service moves off of the formations to move principals around when you're doing the protective detail. And so you had to learn all that, and it was, it was awesome.

• 41:58Speaker 06

  I mean, just learning the different stuff. Because in the Marine Corps, I was never exposed to any of that.

• 42:06Shawn Ryan?

  What about you guys? How long after you talked to the recruiter, did you wind up at vetting? Was it months? Was it a year? Was it?

• 42:14Speaker 04

  No, weeks. In my case, it was weeks. And when I initially got over to Moyauk, North Carolina, that's where the Blackwater training was. I was just impressed by the facility because, you know, it's thousands of acres with long range, shoot ranges, and, you know, CQB houses. There's a driving track, there's, I mean, everything you can imagine is there. So, uh, it was, it was pretty impressive. And then, as far as the class goes, there was maybe fifteen guys in the class. I was right behind him, so he was class fourteen.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  I think I was seventeen or eighteen, so maybe a month or so later. Um, and like I said, the class was relatively small, but I was the absolute youngest guy. And, and by a long shot. So, you had guys that had been in the SEALs for twenty years, you had former Green Berets. You had guys that have seen, you know, a lot of combat, and I was pretty intimidated, you know? But a lot of the training was just ensuring that you were qualified and you could actually do what you said on your resume.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  For example, qualifying with weapons, qualifying, land navigation came a little bit later, medical stuff, CQB stuff. But the one thing that they did actually teach you there and not just verify that you were who you said you were was, like he said, executive protection type stuff because most guys in the military aren't doing that type of mission. So that was the one thing that we did, they did hammer that home because that was going to be our mission overseas. And just like him, we dropped a lot of guys. And I think we started with maybe 15 and we graduated or we finished with less than 10 for sure.

• 44:18Speaker 05

  Okay. So it's like a, what, 30% attrition rate?

• 44:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, the attrition rate was even higher in mine when I went through. I had a similar experience. The shooting was basically just a vetting like you had talked about, like you can either do it or you can't. We had dropped a lot of people in that. But when it changed over to the personal security, they, like, I remember one of the instructors, he really took me under his wing and, because he knew I was just an infantry guy, you know? He knew I'd never done this kind of stuff before and he really helped me and I learned a lot from that man. I mean, he had been over there, you know, walking the box for years in Baghdad, so he knew exactly what he was talking about and he gave me a lot of tips that kept me alive when I was over there.

• 45:05Speaker 05

  And after I graduated that, they sent me to the DDM course and they said it was completely opposite. You know, everybody was nervous they were going to fail the first course. This course was like, look, we're just here to make you shoot better. They're like, the only person that's ever failed this course, he lied on his resume. He said he was a sniper and he wasn't, you know? And, you know, you can talk to somebody for five minutes and figure out whether or not they were really a sniper, right? So it was awesome. They just showed us a lot of holdoffs. You know, I had done a lot of dialing, you know?

• 45:38Speaker 04

  DDM is designated marksman direct?

• 45:40Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. So they, that was the most fun I think I've ever had, you know? We just shot a lot and those guys had been over. All over the world, you know, as a sniper and they were, they were very helpful. It was really cool, you know, because I was a kid. I was in 22, so I had all these older guys that just took me under their wing and, you know, they gave me the shirt off their back, so to speak. They filled me with knowledge and sent me over there and a lot of things they showed me, you know, kept us alive, you know, when I was at DDM. The things they showed me, it worked, you know, in a real world situation. So it was awesome.

• 46:20Speaker 08

  I share a lot of similar sentiments. I was 25, 26, maybe when I went to Moyoc and was just completely blown away by the professionalism at every turn. I mean, from the chow hall to, to the classroom time to being behind a firearm or being behind the wheel of a car. Every instructor there was professional to the letter. And I'd never walked the box before. I didn't know what that was and frankly, I'd never driven in the manner that they wanted you to drive. Meaning, you know, you got the lead and the limo and the follow and, and so your, your ultimate purpose is to be in between a threat and that principle, period.

• 47:06Speaker 08

  However, it works out, that, that principle comes home alive and that was our mission. And so again, to be around a lot of these guys, one of them, his name was Carlos and forgive me, I can't remember his last name, but he was an SF guy, had, had been around this line of work for years, almost as long as I'd been alive. And I think he sensed that, that I was willing to learn and I was a, a coachable kid. And, and he taught me a lot of things that, that had a lot of carryover in, into that, that position and that, that environment.

• 47:42Shawn Ryan?

  Could you explain what walk in a box is?

• 47:45Speaker 08

  Yeah, so walk in a box is, um, basically you've got plates on principle. If you're walking from point A to point B, you have plates on at any, any given angle. Um, because you're in a 3D battlefield. And so you've got typically one to two guys on the flank. You've got your lead agent and you've got your follow agent. Um, and it can be other layers of protection outside of that, but that box is what's plates on principle in the event that that rounds come in.

• 48:15Shawn Ryan?

  When you're talking plates, you're talking armored plates. You're, you're literally putting yourself with a

• 48:21Speaker 08

  You're the sponge between the threat and the principle. Yeah.

• 48:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 48:28Shawn Ryan?

  Blackwater's had a bad rap for a long time. And, um, I remember when I was in, uh, the SEAL teams, I heard a lot of bad things about it. And then later on, I also worked for Blackwater and, uh, found a lot of that to be bullshit. So what I want to do now is, you know, when, when I was in, they were, it was, we're hiring Walmart security guards. That's the kind of shit I was hearing. And then when I actually showed up for my vetting, it was a state of the art facility. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before in all my time in the SEAL teams. I had never seen anything, uh, that state of the art.

• 49:08Shawn Ryan?

  And we used it a lot. We would fly in, uh, from the teams right down, cause you know, Moyauk's right down the road from, um, the SEAL teams. And so we would train there. And so kind of what I want to get at now is the fact that it wasn't, there were no fucking Walmart security guards working there. And, um, so I kind of want to walk through, and this is just once again, open forum, what was it like day one when you showed up to training at Blackwater? You know, what was, what happened? Were they welcoming? What were you guys doing? Was it right to training?

• 49:47Speaker 06

  Well, day one for us, you know, we went right into the, if I remember correctly, you're gonna think that's been almost twenty years ago.

• 49:57Speaker 06

  Getting pretty close on that, but I know the first thing, if I remember correctly, that we did was the PT test. And coming out of the corps, it was like a joke after, you know, what we did. And it was like a mile and a half run instead of three, you did some sit-ups, some pull-ups, uh, dummy drag, stuff like that. And then, you know, it's one of those things that you're sweating everything. Because you're basically told when you show up, show up and perform or go home. And it's not a, it's not a here, let me show you what to do. And so,

• 50:37Speaker 06

  there was a lot of pressure with it. And it's one of those things that when you're not used to that environment, when you're used to being military and everything else and you're used to having somebody say, alright, well, look, you did it this, you did this wrong, do it this way. It brings a whole different, um,

• 50:59Speaker 06

  mental aspect to it because it's one of those things that show up or perform or window or aisle, whichever. And so, you know, it's, it was, that portion of it was just a mental game as far as having to get through it.

• 51:16Shawn Ryan?

  So the first thing was, was the physical fitness test?

• 51:19Speaker 04

  Right. Well, I think in my case, I probably had a little, uh, different experience because I remember when I showed up at the airport, like I said, I was twenty-one-year-old kid. So I showed up at the airport and there was supposed to be somebody there to pick me up. This is the day before training supposed to start, so. Um, I'm looking around, I don't see anybody, I'm calling, I can't get in touch with anybody, there's no cell phones, I'm, I'm using a payphone, so. Um, I called my dad and he said, listen, because I was about ready to say, no, I'm out of here, you know? You know, I just, I'm kind of reconsidering it, you know, maybe, maybe this is a sign, maybe I shouldn't go.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  Cause this is right after the four Blackwater guys got hung up on the bridge. So, um, he said, listen, get a hotel, uh, go tomorrow, do the training, everything's gonna be alright. So, of course, everybody else was already at the, at the classroom. And somebody picked me up at the, the hotel, brought me over there. And they had already done like a, a physical exam, you know, like checking you over.

• 52:29Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, they were giving physicals was the first thing.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, for in my case. So I remember, you know, 21 year old kid, I walk into this classroom, there's a bunch of whatever, 30, 40 year old guys in there. And there's a female nurse. And she said, alright, well, uh, drop your pants, we gotta do a hernia check. Literally like right in front of everybody, she did the hernia check. And I'm like, okay, well, welcome to Blackwater, I guess. I was so embarrassed. But yeah, after, after I got over that horrible experience, uh, the first thing after that was I think the PT test. And I didn't have an issue with it. Uh, I've always been pretty good at stuff like that.

• 53:16Speaker 04

  Um, one thing that was different than Marine Corps, uh, PFT test was like a dummy drag. So I think they have a hundred pound dummy or something. You have to drag it a certain distance in a certain timeframe. Um, and then I think we moved into the weapons qual. And like Dustin said, you gotta qual on M4, you gotta qualify on Glock 19 shotgun, 203, I believe, uh, M249 saw, all that stuff. And, um, yeah, got through that and moved on to the next thing. I can't really remember the exact order of things, but the, the training was outstanding.

• 53:59Speaker 05

  They tried to make it as realistic as possible, what you were going to face once you got on the ground in Baghdad, and they did an excellent job as far as vetting, you know, the weapons qual, like they said, it was just either you pass or you don't, but the actual personal security side of it, they really took time to teach us the correct way to operate overseas. And yeah, I was just grateful to all those instructors, man, they're awesome, awesome people.

• 54:27Shawn Ryan?

  When you showed up, was it the same, was it physical, physical fitness, shoot qual's? Yes, sir. Paul?

• 54:35Speaker 08

  Yeah, same, get to the hotel, and it was really almost like a conveyor belt, for lack of a better term, of just, you know, you hit this station, station, station, station, and it was, it was either pass fail, it wasn't, well, you know what, you need to improve here, go there, it was just either pass fail, yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 06

  And then, one thing I will say, that later on, I know Evan and I both had to go back for a requal, because the State Department brought in 203 grenade launchers, and originally, when we went through, they were, you know, not authorized, and then they, you know, started bringing them in, well, the guys that had been there for a while, like Evan and I, we had to fly back to the States and go through WPPS 2 qualification, which was just basically abbreviated version of the original qual vet that we went through, and then, you know,

• 55:33Speaker 06

  we went in and requalified on all the weapons, we went out to the 203 range, did that, and I think we did the simulated attack on principals and stuff like that before we went back out. And I know that from the first time I was there to the second time, I mean, it was just a world of difference, they actually had the Conex Box Town the last time I went there, and so, you know, Blackwater was always improving, it was, you know, always going. And one thing I will say that was just excellent, was the driving course, because it wasn't just...

• 56:13Speaker 06

  A high-speed track toward you just drive. They actually had people bump you with cars and you learned how to ram through, push through, you know, learn how to pit people. But the, the thing that was awesome about it too, is they had simulated IEDs.

• 56:30Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 56:30Speaker 06

  Along the side of the road. And so you'd be driving and hear, you know, it'd be projected up, but hear an explosion would happen. And then, you know, you went into your medical stuff behind it. And so it was, it was good, good stuff.

• 56:46Shawn Ryan?

  So when you guys showed up, it was physical, physical fitness, weapons quals. How many weapons quals and exactly what weapon systems were, were just pass fail?

• 56:57Speaker 06

  It was.

• 56:58Shawn Ryan?

  There was no instruction, correct? It was.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  No instruction.

• 57:01Shawn Ryan?

  Here's the weapon system, here's the qualification, you got one shot.

• 57:05Speaker 06

  It was the Glock.

• 57:06Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck it up, you're out.

• 57:07Speaker 06

  Glock nine millimeter. It was the M4. Um, it was the Sol 249. It was the 240, I don't know, Bravo, I think. We had Golfs in the Corps. We had AK. And then later on, like I said, when we went back, you had to do the 203s.

• 57:26Shawn Ryan?

  And they.

• 57:27Speaker 06

  And a shotgun as well.

• 57:28Shawn Ryan?

  And the shotgun as well. And they actually, they actually yanked you guys off of deployment in Iraq to fly you back just to recall, just to qualify on a.

• 57:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:39Shawn Ryan?

  On a new weapon systems that's, that's been implemented.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 57:42Shawn Ryan?

  So like, they were extremely proactive to make sure you guys were up to snuff and up to speed on everything that you might.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  And there, there was guys, um, you know, that couldn't meet the standards and they were out of there before the end of the day. I mean, it was pass or fail. You, you couldn't qualify on a weapon? Too bad. See you later. I mean, you had to meet the standards and everybody did.

• 58:06Shawn Ryan?

  Is there, so after the weapons call, I like this because they're literally getting rid of people. The minute you show up, they're eliminating the weak links, starting with things that people can't control, you know, the physical. And then physical fitness, if you don't show up prepared, get the hell out of here.

• 58:25Speaker 08

  Yeah, even with the PT test, there were some guys that, that didn't pass the PT test. I was like, wait a minute.

• 58:30Speaker 04

  The medical training was good, too. I remember there was one simulation where they put you in a vehicle and you're blindfolded and there's two other people in the vehicle, they're trainers. And you could, they're simulating that you're driving down a road in Iraq. And when they tell you to pull the blindfold off, you have to react to whatever situation they present to you. So, you know, they, they're just talking back and forth, they're pretending they're on, you know, whatever mission in Iraq, moving down Route Irish, for example. And then they throw like a flashbang or something to simulate an explosion.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  You pull the blindfold off, you look at your driver, the driver's got his eyeball hanging out. The guy in the backseat's got his leg blown off. And I remember I did really well in that because it was drilled into me that security is first, you know, treating your teammates for whatever injuries they may have comes after security. So I provided security, laid down some fire where the threat was, and then started working on the guy with the leg that was blown off because he was the, pretty much the the most serious injury. And then I moved on to the guy with the eye injury. And yeah, I did really well in that, but that knocked out a lot of people as well.

• 59:57Shawn Ryan?

  So they, so it was a process, how many days did it take to get through the weapons call on a PT test?

• 1:00:03Speaker 06

  I don't recall.

• 1:00:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, various days. It took a little while.

• 1:00:07Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe a week?

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, it, it, it might have been a week. And then you moved on to the next thing. Like I said, I can't remember exactly the order of things. But in every step of the way, you would lose somebody, you know. If somebody was good at PT, maybe they, they couldn't shoot certain weapons, or maybe they couldn't perform in the medical training or the attacks on principle, they were a little shaky and they just get rid of them.

• 1:00:36Shawn Ryan?

  How long altogether was vetting slash training?

• 1:00:40Speaker 05

  I think the certificate says one hundred and sixty-four hours, so I don't know how many days it was broke down to. Over a month? Yeah, I wanna say it was a month and some change.

• 1:00:49Shawn Ryan?

  About a month?

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. And then the DDM course was like half that after that.

• 1:00:54Shawn Ryan?

  So you went through about a month and a half of of evaluations?

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  Yes, sir.

• 1:00:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's not even really, it doesn't even sound like it's really training, it's more they wanna see how you react in certain scenarios and they're evaluated, they're constantly evaluating.

• 1:01:08Speaker 06

  And then you had the peer evaluation too?

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was a big one, yeah.

• 1:01:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, if you're sliding through but your peers see it, then you can be peer, uh, peered out. And so, you know, that's, that got a few people too, was somebody just doing something stupid the instructors didn't see and, you know, basically we could be like, hey, man, you fucked up. You did this and take it to the instructor and they'd send them home.

• 1:01:41Shawn Ryan?

  And then the, the training blocks were

• 1:01:46Shawn Ryan?

  CQB, which is close quarters battle, let's just talk about that specific uh, training block, how, how was it? What did they, what were they doing? Were you guys hitting houses? Were you hitting?

• 1:01:57Speaker 06

  Shoot house.

• 1:01:58Shawn Ryan?

  Shoot house?

• 1:01:59Speaker 06

  It was, for us, it was because everybody's got a different background as far as, you know, each unit has their own type of CQB they do, whether, you know, you got a man high, a man low, around the corner, different things and so what they did is they walked us through it one time and they said, I don't care how you did it, where you come from, this is how I want you to do it here. And so, that way, everybody's running like a standard format.

• 1:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Speaker 06

  And we went through the shoot house several times. I think the first time was a dry run, second time was SIM, and then if I'm not mistaken, the third time was live fire. And so, it was a

• 1:02:41Shawn Ryan?

  Fast pace.

• 1:02:41Speaker 06

  Fast pace and if you couldn't keep up or perform, it was.

• 1:02:45Shawn Ryan?

  Get out.

• 1:02:46Speaker 06

  Window or aisle.

• 1:02:47Speaker 04

  One big thing during that portion specifically was safety. So if you're in a stack about to go into a room and you flag somebody, even you know, the lower part of their leg and for people that don't know, when you flag somebody, it's basically you're pointing your weapon at some, something that you don't intend to shoot. So.

• 1:03:06Shawn Ryan?

  Even if it's just for a split second.

• 1:03:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Shawn Ryan?

  Just want to reiterate that. So if I'm holding a gun and I go like this and sweep you guys, even if it's just for a split second, that that's an ejection from the course.

• 1:03:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, they took safety, safety violations big. That was a, that was a serious thing.

• 1:03:24Speaker 08

  Yeah, to Dustin's point, um, and not to step on you Nick, but uh, it, it was trying to get everybody on the same page a- as, as what the stack looked like. And, and how they wanted you to move and flow through a room or through a hallway or whatever presented itself. And how everybody had their specific responsibilities. And to Dustin's point again, it wasn't necessarily, you know, you had guys from Marsoc, you had guys from SF units, from SEAL teams. And they just wanted everybody to be on the same sheet of music moving forward, um, to see really kind of how you operated as a team, if you were able and willing to do that.

• 1:04:00Shawn Ryan?

  That's extremely hard to do, you know, when you're coming, I mean, I remember doing it uh, on the OGA side and I thought it was a huge pain in the ass trying to get on the same page as the Marsoc guys, as the Green Berets, as the CAG guys. You know, the Rangers and then, you know, and then when you throw soft, unconventional, unconventional together, then it gets even trickier. So that's uh, no easy task at all because everybody has a different way of doing that. And um, so. Do you, the reason you were probably doing CQB because it's a reactive unit, correct? So, do you think the reason you were doing CQB is if the principal was taken hostage,

• 1:04:45Shawn Ryan?

  you would have to go in and, and extract that principal that you're protecting?

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  You've also got something that is called Alamo up. And what that is, if somebody Alamo's up, is a principal gets hit on venue, right? Well, if they, if the team can't make it out to their vehicles, what they're gonna do is they're gonna go find a hard point. And they're gonna hold that hard point and basically put shooters throughout wherever they need to be. Then they're gonna put the principal somewhere where it's safe, as safe as they can get him. And like us, uh, you know, we're all Raven two, three, which is one of the TST teams. And so, as a TST team, when something goes boom or bang, we're the ones that would go. And so, with the CQB stuff that we were doing, if a team's Alamo'd up, let's say on the

• 1:05:36Speaker 06

  10th floor of a building in Iraq, well, then as a unit, we've got to be able to clear up and get them, and then clear back down on the way back out. So, I mean, it was real life. You know, it wasn't just, hey, you're gonna do this to check this box. It's, hey, you know, whenever you get to your team, everybody's gonna start doing their own form and get whatever needs to be done. But I mean, it was stuff that we could actually use. It wasn't just check a box.

• 1:06:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What does TST stand for?

• 1:06:06Speaker 06

  Tactical Support Team.

• 1:06:08Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:09Speaker 06

  It's Quick React Force. All it is is QRF. And most of our vehicles had, uh, two 240s. One in the front, one in the back, except for one that just had a teacup up on the top, which was one 240.

• 1:06:25Shawn Ryan?

  How long was the CQB portion? And how, how complex did it get? Were they throwing in live role players on that as well with hostage scenarios?

• 1:06:35Speaker 05

  It was. It was, uh, it was three days of CQB training without the role players. And then at the end, basically it was like accumulation. It was like they taught us all this stuff along the way and it was like vetting. And then at the end, your final vetting was attacks on principles. So it was like, basically this is all we've taught you. This is all you've learned and then they put it to the test. And you know, the instructors were the bad guys. They're the ones shooting at us. So yeah, it was really good. And they, you know, they had run those scenarios countless times. And so you're coming into it fresh. So it's, they've got the upper hand for sure. The instructors know that area like the back of their hand. So it was, it was awesome. It was great training.

• 1:07:17Shawn Ryan?

  How about the driving?

• 1:07:19Speaker 05

  Awesome. For sure.

• 1:07:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was probably the funnest part. Yeah.

• 1:07:24Speaker 08

  When you get to do a pit maneuver on a BMW is something like you don't get to do every day.

• 1:07:28Speaker 06

  When you get to smash through vehicles that are parked and ram through, punch through. That's when you're wrecking vehicles and you see how much abuse that vehicle can take and still keep running for a time. I mean, it's, opens your eyes to what you're going to be doing in country.

• 1:07:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Why, why would they have you wrecking into vehicles? What?

• 1:07:49Speaker 06

  Because if you're driving the streets of Baghdad and they try to set up a blockade to keep you from moving toward you get an L-shaped ambush or anything else, you gotta learn how to, where to hit the vehicles to push through everything. You gotta know, be able to drive out.

• 1:08:05Speaker 08

  Or reverse out if you have to, yeah.

• 1:08:09Shawn Ryan?

  And how long was the driving portion?

• 1:08:12Speaker 05

  I think it was three days. What was it, three or four days?

• 1:08:14Speaker 06

  Something like that. I think everything was three or four days.

• 1:08:17Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:08:18Speaker 06

  Some, I mean, each block, each one was its own individual block. So it's like you did one block, then you move to the next block and then to the next one, the next one until you're done.

• 1:08:30Shawn Ryan?

  Medical?

• 1:08:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, you had to do a full psyche valve to make sure that you wasn't off your rocker.

• 1:08:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, they did that as part of the physical?

• 1:08:42Speaker 06

  They did that as part of your overall evaluation and you went in there, I know me personally, the lady, which they try to trip you up just to see if you got anything. So you sit down and they're asking you questions. And they just pick something and they just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And then finally you're like, what have I done? And they're like, okay, you're good. But they want to make sure that you're sound of mind before you continue.

• 1:09:13Shawn Ryan?

  What I was, what I was getting at, that's good to know, but what I was getting at is the medical training.

• 1:09:19Speaker 06

  Oh, my bad.

• 1:09:19Shawn Ryan?

  The T triple C. Did they, how in depth did they go with that? What kind of stuff were you guys learning? Did you do any live tissue labs? What was that like?

• 1:09:29Speaker 05

  It was what he was talking about. Mostly it was scenarios like you would come upon whatever on the battlefield and then they were evaluating, you know, do you know how to put on a turn kit? It was just basically like combat lifesaver stuff, basically like, I can patch you up good enough to get you to the cache kind of thing. So they had really awesome props, like they had arms that were amputated that like would, would pump out liquid and stuff. So like it was, it was, we hadn't seen anything like it in the military, you know?

• 1:10:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 05

  So it was, the scenarios were very well thought out. And I think it was just because they had such a good collective of guys, you know, like I said, they had all those high tier level guys that kind of put their heads together and they're like, well, what worked in your unit? What didn't work? And they kind of just put all that together and got rid of the stuff that didn't make no sense about the military and use the stuff that did make sense, right? And so I think it was just, by the time I got there, you know, I was the last one in. By the time I got there, it had involved, it had evolved into something that was just amazing. You know, everybody talked about how well the training was. I've never heard anybody say that it wasn't good training, you know?

• 1:10:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Speaker 08

  The continuance of that training too, with the medics on your team was always, I mean, they wanted everybody to be as proficient as they were in the event that, that they were taken out.

• 1:11:01Shawn Ryan?

  Was there any more training? Did they give you a final exercise?

• 1:11:06Speaker 05

  That was the tax on principle that we were talking about, the scenario.

• 1:11:09Speaker 04

  And like Paul said, once you finish the vetting and you're qualified to get deployed, the training doesn't stop there. It's not, oh, you're good to do a whole contract and you don't have to train. We'd rotate workdays, off days, but when we were off, we would be training. So we would continue on with the CQB stuff, the vehicle maneuvering. You know, you go to the rifle range a lot, more than I would in the military anyways, because all that stuff was available. So, yeah, I got a lot out of the training in country as well, because you, like Paul said, you learn from the experienced guys on the team

• 1:11:49Speaker 04

  that have been in country and have probably seen every possible scenario that you can encounter over there. So, yeah, that was very beneficial to meet you.

• 1:12:01Shawn Ryan?

  We didn't talk about the PSD training, the personal security detail training. How in-depth was that?

• 1:12:10Speaker 04

  I think that was one of the portions that they really went in detail with, because that, like I said, there's nothing, there's not really many units in the military that are doing executive protection type stuff in high-threat environments. So, if for me at least, I got a lot out of that, because I hadn't had any experience with it. So, I don't know about you guys.

• 1:12:38Speaker 05

  Definitely.

• 1:12:39Speaker 06

  They, I mean, that's what I was saying earlier is, we didn't do any of that stuff in the Marine Corps. We never learned how to walk formation, how to, you know, stand on the doors and wait till everybody's set. And when you're running a three-car motorcade, you've got shooters that are in the front, they're in the backseat of each vehicle. You've got shooters that are in the backseat of the other vehicle, and everybody's got to move into a position to where everybody but the driver gets out. There's always a driver with the car. And then that way, if something happens at any time... You know, you gotta be able to go in a heartbeat. And so, learning how to go from carrying

• 1:13:21Speaker 06

  a machine gun to moving a principal around, that was the only portion that really wasn't vetting quote unquote until the end, because they wanted to make sure that you understood what you were doing and how you were doing, not just, hey, you move over here. So, I know, like at the hotel at night, we had matchbox cars. And we would say, hey, you know, the door guys are moving to here, the AIC is gonna get out, and whenever everybody gets set, and they call set over the radio, then they're gonna say, hey, cracking the door, open the door, whatever terminology. And then, they open the principal, where the guys on the far side of the vehicle is gonna come around to the principal's side, catch up the principal,

• 1:14:06Speaker 06

  and then you're gonna have one guy in the front, one guy in the back, and at least one guy on each side of them, sometimes two guys on each side. And everybody in there's got a sector of job to do. The AIC, the person, it's the agent in charge, what AIC means. He's gonna be right behind the principal. And so, he's within arm's reach to where if something happens, his job is to reach up and grab him by the collar of the shirt, and then just take him to a vehicle, get him in, climb on top of him, put his body on top of the principal's body, to move him out of the hostile situation. And then, you worry about everything else later.

• 1:14:52Speaker 08

  Yeah, with that, there was also advanced team training as well, as far as what the advanced team is to look for, because the advanced team is the one that's gonna receive the three-car motorcade. And so, you're going through all your steps and processes and boxes that you have to check to be, to be ready for this principal, because you've gotta set up the time, the person that they're meeting, all the extemporaneous stuff that goes into the meeting, plus you have your own team that's onsite security, that's got the scene locked down, ready to receive the principal.

• 1:15:21Shawn Ryan?

  And that was, so that was the only portion that wasn't pass fail?

• 1:15:25Speaker 06

  Until the end.

• 1:15:25Shawn Ryan?

  You mess up, you're out.

• 1:15:26Speaker 08

  In the end, yeah, it was, it was.

• 1:15:29Shawn Ryan?

  It was.

• 1:15:29Speaker 08

  But during, but during the, the training itself, it was, it was training.

• 1:15:36Shawn Ryan?

  I remember, um...

• 1:15:38Speaker 05

  During that training, when you were talking about if you didn't pick it up quick enough, like they would get fed up, they sent a couple of people home during that portion. They're like, "Look, if you, we've told you this many times. If you don't reform this movement the way you're supposed to, you're out." And a couple of guys just, they couldn't grasp it for whatever, whatever reason. But yeah, they broke it down very simple. I felt like they, they, because that was like the meat and potatoes of what we were gonna do over there, you know? So they were like, "Get this, you know, this is very important." And basically, they just said, you know, "You, you are the one that gets shot, not the principal. So you're stepping in front of any danger. You're

• 1:16:20Speaker 05

  taking that round. You're, you're killing whoever's trying to kill your principal. It's all about getting him back safe." You know, they told us that those people are worth more than you are. They're worth more than anybody over here. You do whatever you gotta do to get them home to their family. And so, you know, that's what we did.

• 1:16:38Shawn Ryan?

  And so throughout the entire vetting slash training, they're just constantly running you through scenario after scenario, whether it's a medical scenario, whether it's a, a PSD scenario, driving scenario, CQB scenario, um, target ID scenarios, and they're just constantly throwing shit at you, evaluating you, and jet launching dudes that can't, that can't keep up, out.

• 1:17:06Speaker 05

  Yes, sir.

• 1:17:06Shawn Ryan?

  So, and then, so you guys all got through it? And what happened then? They give you a contract?

• 1:17:16Speaker 06

  I know for me, I got through, um, I graduated the vetting course there. I went home for like a week or so. And then I know it was like, Around December fifteenth, December twentieth, I was back in Baghdad. And I stayed in Baghdad for most of the three years that I was there. And I know whenever we first got there, Dyna Core and Blackwater shared the contract. And so they were still building what was known as the man camp. And we actually lived in a big warehouse with all the KBR and everybody else guys, because they were still building the facilities there.

• 1:17:57Speaker 06

  And so, you know, I'll never forget, back whenever I first got there, like around Christmas and stuff, we'd go up on the roof of the trailers and you'd watch the fireworks show out in the town. And they were dropping JDAMs, they were, you know, IEDs, you could see the tracer around skipping. And I mean, it was, it was wild. Cause back in those days, I mean, it was, it was full on, they were, they were going hard out there.

• 1:18:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I, I deployed pretty quickly because like I said, when I was on Marine Security Guard duty, I had a top secret clearance already. So with Blackwater, I believe the, the security clearance was secret, so it was below that. So I, I deployed pretty quickly. And it was kind of like a culture shock when I got over there. Uh, these guys might have already had experience in Bag- Baghdad, but for me, it was a kind of like, okay, here we go, cause this is, this is what you asked for. So I remember when I got over there, they put me, they assigned me to a team. And I met with the team leader and he said, listen,

• 1:19:09Speaker 04

  our team is being tasked to go out in the middle of the desert and protect some scientists that are digging up a mass grave site. Uh, they're preparing for Saddam's trial. So if you're not willing to do that, or you're not prepared to do that, I could put you on another team. So. I said I was willing to do it, so uh we, I think we went out in the desert. It must have been two weeks after I got there. And I was actually on the advanced team to go out there, so it was me and two other guys. And uh I think the Arm- Army transported us out there, so we're flying out in two Blackhawk helicopters.

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  And there's nothing to see for miles around, all dirt. And then all of a sudden, we're getting close to where the mass gravesite is. And you look down and there's a perfect square of grass. And that was exactly where all the bodies of the people that Saddam had killed were buried. So we were out there maybe, I think it was over a month. And you just slowly watched the scientists dig up the dirt with a tractor first. And then um each step of the process, they they got smaller and smaller tools until they're like um using brushes and uncovering all these skeletons.

• 1:20:32Speaker 04

  So you would see uh what I assume would be a woman with a small baby skeleton with a bullet hole in in the skull. And it was, it was a, it was a shocking uh moment for me. But it kind of uh validated why I was over there. And um it, it made the mission even more important because um it was a historic thing, you know. Uh we took Saddam out of power and he was gonna pay for all the things that he did to those people.

• 1:21:14Shawn Ryan?

  How many bodies were in there?

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Uh I think there was over a hundred.

• 1:21:17Shawn Ryan?

  Were they all skeletons or were there?

• 1:21:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, they had been in there a while and you could tell, they must have said uh, you know, pack up all your belongings, we're gonna put you in a, in a different place or move you somewhere else. I don't think these people knew they were gonna get marched out in the middle of the desert and. Basically be shot in the back of the head because you could see layers and layers of clothing. A lot of the clothing was still there, but it was just skeletons and uh just bodies stacked up on top of each other.

• 1:21:48Shawn Ryan?

  So is the first thing you did?

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  The very first thing I did when I got to Iraq.

• 1:21:53Speaker 06

  We found another one of those down around Hill of Najaf is I went out with a team of, I guess it was the same scientists or different ones that were looking for mass graves and we found another one out there and they actually started digging until they found something. They covered it back up and then later on they went out and retrieved the bodies out of that one too.

• 1:22:18Speaker 05

  So after Whip's training, I went to the DDM course and then after graduation of the DDM course, I think like the next day, they shipped me over to Baghdad and they said, based on my background in the infantry, they wanted to put me straight on Raven two three. And like they said, you know, that was a tactical support team and within a few months, uh January twenty third happened where they shot down one of our helicopters and killed five of our brothers. Um what had happened was the door gunner of one of the helicopters had taken a round to the head and

• 1:23:00Speaker 05

  they flew him back to the cache and the other little bird, they always operated in pairs, right? So the other little bird elected to stay with the team that was in contact on venue. And so we were tasked with, at first we were tasked with extracting the principal team. And so when we were in route, we got ambushed and they shot out one of our tires out of our lead vehicle. So we had to execute a tire change. After we fought our way out of that ambush and then as soon as we got the new tire on, we get a new mission that the secondary little bird that stayed with the team on venue had been shot down and that we had to recover them.

• 1:23:42Speaker 05

  And the last grid that they gave us was actually over the river. So we were like, man, this bird crashed into the river. So we were driving all these dead end back alley roads and we were just getting shot up, man. We, you know, it's, it's a miracle that we even made it to the crash site. And we fought our way through five ambushes just to get to the site. Five ambushes? Yes. And so, once we made it to the site, we realized that we were completely overwhelmed with enemy combatants. There were way too many of them and the army shows up and they save us, you know, like we, we would've, we would've died. There was like nineteen or twenty of us and the Apache helicopter.

• 1:24:23Speaker 05

  I remember being up in the machine gun and one of my buddies was in the lead vehicle. I was in the second vehicle and we had set up in what's like called a herringbone so that more effective field of fire. So like this vehicle pulls that way, the second one, the third one and the fourth one, right? So that you've got better angles to shoot. And there was a five-story building that was probably about eight hundred meters away. So pretty, pretty long ways away. And all of a sudden, round hits in the street in between my vehicle and the lead vehicle. And I call out, I was like, there's a sniper, like I call it out on the radio.

• 1:25:08Speaker 05

  Second shot, it hits my vehicle. And so I'm just, I'm laying waste towards where I think he's at. He's in the, in the third, I think he's in the third level and my buddy thinks he's in the fifth level. And so I'm shooting at the third story, my buddy's shooting at the fifth story. And then I can just picture in my mind, dude's got me in his crosshairs like I'm about to get shot, right? And then all of a sudden Apache just flies overhead and it puts a hellfire missile in the fifth one and in the third one. And then the building just pancakes like that and we didn't take any more fire from that building. You know, he, I don't know who that Apache pilot was, but I'm thankful, man, because he definitely saved us that day.

• 1:25:53Speaker 05

  And so we. We fought for about three and a half hours and we finally recovered our brother's remains and I found out that it was Art. He was one of my boys that I went to whips with and he was, he was a really good guy. He was actually a Vietnam helicopter pilot. So he was an older gentleman, but he was, he was an awesome pilot and you know, those guys, they elected to stay when they didn't have to, you know, they, they put their lives on the line to protect that principal team until that principal was able to be extracted and moved back to the green zone and you know, they gave their lives for it. And yeah, it was, it was the worst day of my life, man, for sure.

• 1:26:41Shawn Ryan?

  Was this the gentleman you were telling me whose twin brother was also flying?

• 1:26:45Speaker 05

  Yes. So he landed in the middle of this gun battle and just walked over as we were loading the, our, our brother's remains. We had already put them in body bags and we were dragging them back up the hill and he just lands in the middle of the gunfight. He lands his bird and then he gets out. He wanted to see that it was his brother and then as soon as he seen it was his brother, he got back up and then they started laying down suppressive fire for us again, but like it was just a crazy moment, you know, that it was just, it was tragic, man. Like I said, it was the worst day of my life for sure.

• 1:27:24Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry to hear that, man.

• 1:27:33Speaker 08

  Yeah, so we, we graduated. They called a ceasefire and said, if you're still standing, you made it, you're deploying and.

• 1:27:49Speaker 08

  So it was probably a month after that, I guess, I deployed. And I show up to Baghdad and he said that they needed bodies in Kirkuk, which is in northern Iraq, Kurdistan. Having been up there before, I was somewhat familiar with it. The embassy up there was not much bigger than a postage stamp. And it was a little bitty. We were known as a Spartan element, I believe. It was us, some members from British Parliament, and I want to say some Kiwis were there, too.

• 1:28:29Speaker 08

  I know there were some Kiwi, New Zealand security forces there. But for the most part, in that region, it was, it was pretty quiet. In other words, when, when there were times when we would go to Solomonia, we would take off our kit because it was such a welcoming environment. They, they really wanted us there and, and it was almost like having an extra layer of security being in that area. That said, there were, of course, car bombs here and there. There was an attack on the front gate, but it wasn't, it wasn't Baghdad. And once DynCorp took over that contract, we were all moved down to Baghdad and, and

• 1:29:12Speaker 08

  set up as, as an advance team for Ambassador Khalilazad. And we operated from that point as, as APD Green, Ambassador Protection Detail Green. And so we were the advanced element for him. At that time, we, I was not part of Raven 23, but January 23rd, to Nick's point, is, that's, that's one of the bracelets that we all wear because it was, yeah, a horrible day.

• 1:29:54Speaker 08

  Shane Stanfield, which was the first gunner he talked about was

• 1:30:00Speaker 08

  the first Hilo gunner that was that was met with around and then

• 1:30:07Speaker 08

  all of us were listening to the radio while they were out. We were in Suburbans, we weren't in fighting platforms, so we were really kind of handicapped.

• 1:30:18Speaker 08

  But every one of us staged and were were ready to move at any given moment and there was almost just a line of Suburbans from every gate that was in the IZ all the way back to the man camp of people lined up, ready to go at any moment's call.

• 1:30:37Speaker 08

  And it was probably one of the most helpless feelings that I've ever experienced. Because here you have a team that is actively engaged and and pardon my language, but there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it. Except stand by and wait for some directives because in the end it could have been way worse of us getting in the way in in non-fighting vehicles. But yeah, that day will probably live in infamy for for my lifetime.

• 1:31:12Shawn Ryan?

  How many, when you guys got in the country and you were all in Baghdad at the man camp, how many how many State Department contractors lived there?

• 1:31:22Speaker 06

  I thought it was a 600 capacity man camp.

• 1:31:25Shawn Ryan?

  600 State Department contractors?

• 1:31:27Speaker 06

  Now, you gotta think, there's people rotating in and out basically Monday through Friday, they're running flights. I don't know if it was two days a week, three days a week, or five days a week, I'm not sure. But I know that you would fly from wherever you're at the US to Jordan, from Jordan you would fly into Baghdad. From Baghdad you'd be picked up by another Blackwater element that was called the Team House. And then they would take you in and drop you off at the man camp when they finally got it finished. And so I think it was 600 capacity. Now, how many rooms were open at a given time? I have no idea. But you

• 1:32:12Speaker 06

  I know we had twenty six teams out of Baghdad, if I'm not mistaken.

• 1:32:16Shawn Ryan?

  Twenty six teams?

• 1:32:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Shawn Ryan?

  How many people on a team?

• 1:32:20Speaker 06

  What nineteen, twenty? Cause you had, or twenty two, twenty three, something because you had to give guys days off. Because sometimes the off tempo, you just, you had to give a guy a day off if he needed it. And so that's not counting all the outline sites like Hila, um, up there where he was at. And then you had some just different locations. And so there was, there was a bunch of us. They called it the man camp. And there was females in there, but I mean, that's what it was dubbed. And so I don't, I can't tell you how many people were there at a time.

• 1:33:00Shawn Ryan?

  Was that part of the green zone?

• 1:33:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:33:02Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys flying into Biop?

• 1:33:04Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:33:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Taking route Irish? Uh huh. Which was the most dangerous road, as long as I know.

• 1:33:11Speaker 06

  That, to be honest with you though, yeah, we got hit on there, but it was when we ran down Haifa Street. That you're almost guaranteed to get hit. Everybody talks about Biop being a, a bad place, but I'll tell you right now that every time that we made a run down Haifa Street. It's, I was there for the founding of two, three, when they stood up the team. I was already doing, uh, PSD. I did that for like a year and some change before I went over there to the T S D teams. And, um, every time, I know in the beginning days before we realized how bad that area was to run down. That we'd run down it and we got hit every time we went down it.

• 1:33:52Speaker 06

  We got grenadeed, IED'd or something one day by IPs, Iraqi police. Because they actually closed the checkpoint behind us. And when they did, everybody's like, oh shit, here we go. And sure enough, it happened.

• 1:34:09Speaker 06

  So, I mean, by, yeah, we made countless runs down that and, yeah, we'd get hit every once in a while by it, but it wasn't like some of the other roads.

• 1:34:20Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:34:24Shawn Ryan?

  What was the, what was, uh, your deployment schedule like? Was it two months on, one month off? Was it different for everybody? Were you guys working with the same guys the entire, your entire career?

• 1:34:36Speaker 04

  I think, um, for the most part, they do rotations of ninety days in country and then thirty days vacation. And you could sell your leave back sometime, um, if you wanted to stay. But they didn't really, um, like that all the time because if you stay over there too long, like these guys were saying, the threat level was so high and you never get a break from that, that stress. Um, it's, it starts to take a toll on you. Um, so you, you had an option of doing a, a year contract. At least when I first got there, they had year contracts where you could do the, the ninety thirty rotation for a year. And they also had a six-month contract.

• 1:35:21Speaker 04

  So you did ninety, go home for thirty, uh, then do another ninety and that was the completion of your contract. And I switched teams a few times. So the first contract I did was the team that went to the desert and, uh, did the mass grave site security. And when we weren't in the desert, we did traditional PSD movements. And, uh, then I got moved to another team where we had a, um, like a permanent principal. A lot of times you're not protecting the same person. A lot of times you just get a run sheet from the embassy and, uh, it could be whoever, whatever diplomat needs to go out

• 1:36:04Speaker 04

  in, in the red zone and meet with an Iraqi official. So you go to the embassy, um, you bring them out and bring them back and, and that's what it is. And you're, the person that you're protecting could change day to day. Uh, with the second team I was on, we had a designated principal. So we rode with this guy every day. He worked in the green zone, but would, uh, go out in the red zone a lot. And then I took a short break between contracts. Between my second and third contract, I believe. It was just, you know, a month or so, or a couple of months. And when I came back, they were gonna assign me to the ambassador detail.

• 1:36:48Speaker 04

  The ambassador's detail, so I wasn't real keen on that. I didn't really wanna go to the ambassador's detail because there's so much support and there's

• 1:37:00Speaker 04

  is so much, you're the inner layer of security. So you're never really on the front lines, so to speak. So I kinda put up a little bit of a fight to the detail leader or whoever was assigning me. I said, "Listen, there's no way you can put me on another team." And he said, "Well, I can put you on red detail." And red detail is made up of the teams that were quick reaction force teams, the tactical support teams. And that was right up my alley. So I said, "Yeah, go ahead and put me on that." And that's when I moved over to Raven 23. I believe Dustin was already on the team.

• 1:37:43Speaker 04

  And then I showed up and then Nick and Paul came later.

• 1:37:48Shawn Ryan?

  So none of you guys knew each other until you were all attached to Raven 23?

• 1:37:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:37:54Shawn Ryan?

  And that was what, 20 man team, 19 man team?

• 1:37:57Speaker 06

  I'll say this, there's, when you're in such a large camp, there's a lot of people that you know. You recognize faces, but you may not know names. So still to this day, whenever I see people that reaches out to us and everything else, I'm like, "Who is this?" Because one, it's been so long. And two, over there with just so many of us that were there, it's like, "Oh, I know that dude by his face, but I didn't know his name." And so for us, we're, you know, Evan and I were on two different, I was on team six originally. And so he was on a different team. And your team is kind of the tighter knit group. You know every dude on there because you're going in and out of the red zone in Baghdad.

• 1:38:42Speaker 06

  And so like, like I said, whenever...

• 1:38:46Speaker 06

  We started up two, three. I was one of the founding members of it and um then Evan came. I got to know him. He was in the truck with me in the back. And then later on, if I'm not mistaken, Paul came and you're pretty much in the uh ERV. Or uh.

• 1:39:04Speaker 08

  Follow.

• 1:39:05Speaker 06

  Follow. Oh, no, you were in the follow with me?

• 1:39:07Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:08Speaker 06

  Okay, so Paul was in the follow with me. Then Nick came and you know, that's how we all got uh kinda got to know each other was. We had the different, when they bring you together on a team is whenever you really start beating people.

• 1:39:24Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know if this still holds true today, but um I remember hearing Prince say that. Blackwater is the only private military contracting company that never lost a principal. Is that, do you guys know if that's still true to this?

• 1:39:39Speaker 04

  I believe that is true. It's true. And the figures, I'm not uh exactly sure of the exact figure, but. It was over a hundred thousand missions and we never lost a principal. Not even a principal injured. So that's a pretty amazing job with one of the most difficult tasks there were over there.

• 1:39:59Speaker 08

  Especially in two thousand seven with it being deemed the most violent, bloody year of the entire war.

• 1:40:04Shawn Ryan?

  They said that in two thousand seven, there was an average of a hundred and eighty engagements from insurgents a day.

• 1:40:11Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:12Shawn Ryan?

  In Baghdad alone.

• 1:40:13Speaker 06

  We did lose forty-three of us.

• 1:40:15Shawn Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:40:16Speaker 06

  Of all the different contracts. There's the number that we know that I know is forty-three. And so there was forty-three contractors and whatever. A lot of it was on the WPPS contract because we was running Baghdad every day and. You know, where the other ones are at, I I'm not real sure, but you know, it's, we never lost one. And we ate a lot though.

• 1:40:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:42Speaker 06

  You know, a lot of our brothers died, a lot of your brothers died.

• 1:40:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:45Speaker 06

  In this, so.

• 1:40:47Shawn Ryan?

  It was the most effective.

• 1:40:50Shawn Ryan?

  Protection unit in the entire world.

• 1:40:52Speaker 04

  And that was with some standards that were put down from the State Department. For example, they dictated that the PSD teams roll around in high-profile convoys in black Suburbans and big vehicles that everybody in the city knows there's an important American in there, there's an important diplomat in there, and they just create a huge target. And despite that, we still didn't lose a single principal.

• 1:41:22Shawn Ryan?

  That's incredible. But hey, guys, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk about just kind of the daily routine and the op tempo of what you guys were facing once you all met.

• 1:42:31Shawn Ryan?

  All right, guys, we're back from the break. You guys have just all met. You're a part of Raven 23 now, and so I want to kind of go over, like I said earlier, the op tempo of kind of what your day-to-day life was and what the operational environment was, what the threat was. But just before we get into that, Paul, if you could talk a little bit about use of force and the steps that you guys would take that were mandated from State Department, your rules of engagement before you actually fire a shot.

• 1:43:05Speaker 08

  Yeah, so with with the environment that it was, there was there was always the use of force. There was the use of force continuum and it started with literally just your voice and and the hand motion to stop or kiff. And then it could elevate to water bottles and then to pin flares and then to if you if you had to, you had to engage a threat directly, be it in the engine of the vehicle or the driver or or the the threat themselves. And so that those were the steps that were always, I mean, just pounded into your psyche at that point. They were part of your everyday vernacular and and just

• 1:43:50Speaker 08

  a big piece of your toolbox. And it was something that that all of us followed to a T. I think we probably threw more water bottles than anything. And and a lot of times, it wasn't even necessarily a threat. It was somebody just not paying attention, or it was someone in a car that was pulling out into traffic and they they just didn't see you coming. It's just an honest mistake. So it wasn't always this environment of of just total chaos and destruction.

• 1:44:16Shawn Ryan?

  Did you guys have signs on the back of vehicles that said in Arabic and in English, stay back 100 feet or you will be shot?

• 1:44:25Speaker 04

  Yes, sir.

• 1:44:26Shawn Ryan?

  So so that was the first thing they would see. Second thing would be vocal yelling. Third thing would be water bottles.

• 1:44:36Speaker 04

  Hand signals.

• 1:44:37Shawn Ryan?

  Hand signals?

• 1:44:38Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, it could be both in the same.

• 1:44:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, throwing a water bottle at the vehicle.

• 1:44:42Speaker 04

  Pin flare.

• 1:44:44Shawn Ryan?

  Pencil flares, which are it's basically a nine millimeter flare. And and then disable the vehicle.

• 1:44:55Speaker 04

  Then if the threat keeps coming, you can raise your weapon. And then if it continues to come, you can put a round into the grill. And if they continue to come after that, you can go to the windshield and neutralize the threat.

• 1:45:07Shawn Ryan?

  So the reason you guys are doing that is because of all the vehicle borne IEDs out there. And I just want to throw a couple of examples up real quick of exactly what a vehicle borne IED is. So what happens over there is you'll get a white Corolla, because that's probably the most common vehicle, a white Toyota Corolla. And they would come out of traffic, whether you're stopped at a checkpoint, they'd blend in with the gen population. And they would speed up while you guys are giving these signals, you know, hey, stop, that way if it is somebody that is not a car bomb, then they get it, they see, hey, don't go any closer, or I'm gonna be neutralized.

• 1:45:51Shawn Ryan?

  But if it is a car bomb, you guys have to protect your boys. And as I'm talking, there's, there's video up right now of different examples of what exactly that looks like, and how devastating a car bomb can be.

• 1:46:04Speaker 04

  Right, and what people have to understand is, everyone in the city, every Iraqi knows the rules of engagement. They know that they shouldn't get close to a convoy. And our convoys, like I said before, they are super high profile. It's not like we're riding around in taxis and trying to blend in with the crowd. We have shiny black Suburbans, we have big armored vehicles. So it's pretty common knowledge that, okay, when you see a convoy come through, you stop, you pull off to the side of the road, let them go by, and then continue on with your day.

• 1:46:42Speaker 04

  And another thing, in a V-Bid explosion, every meter is very important. So when people watch in the movies, I guess, they might get an image of a V-Bid, like, okay, well, if I'm 100 feet away from this thing, and it goes off, oh, I'll be all right. No, there's explosions, there were explosions during that time period that will level a building. We were just talking about a specific incident where an explosion happened, I think it was 600 or more pounds of explosives went off early morning.

• 1:47:21Speaker 04

  And it blew up a hotel. And this explosion was literally miles away from where I was. And I was sleeping at the time. And I had one of those old webcams on my table. And the shock from that explosion that was miles away was so strong, it knocked the camera off my table. And I jumped on the ground because I thought it was a rocket that hit right outside my, my trailer. And when I opened the door, I couldn't believe it because I could see the, um, the smoke rising from, you know, miles and miles away.

• 1:47:56Shawn Ryan?

  So when you're talking about, just for the audience, when you're talking about every meter counts, what you're talking about is how fast a blast wave can die down. And just one meter could possibly save your life. Maybe you'll keep a couple of limbs, you know? And so, you know, obviously the farther you are, you know, the, the, the weaker the blast wave gets. And that happens, um, you know, with, with a regular IED, it happens faster than something like a 600 pounder. But so with that being said, it's imperative that you go through that use of force continuum, you know, fairly fast because

• 1:48:40Shawn Ryan?

  the greater the distance, the better the probability that you're going to survive the blast. And so I just wanted to, you know, say that for, for the audience who haven't, who hasn't experienced, you know, getting blown the fuck up.

• 1:48:55Speaker 06

  One thing to add on the use of force. That was dictated to us specifically by State Department. That wasn't something that we made up ourselves. And you have a, a big issue with the military because they had a different continuum of force, use of force. And so they had a problem with some of the ways that State Department set the guidelines that we should follow. They didn't think that certain things should be done this way, that way, or whatever. But at the end of the day, our boss was US Department of State. It was not the military. It wasn't Blackwater. It was US Department of State.

• 1:49:33Speaker 06

  And so when the embassy puts out, it says, hey, I want you to take this step, this step, this step before you do anything. The military might say, well, you got to do all these other steps before you can do something. But the problem was, is we didn't work for them. And a lot of the friction that we had with military units and everybody else that was in the area was that the commander thought that he should be able to dictate what goes on in his area of operation. That's fine if he's running his area for the military. But whenever it come to us, we were set in stone, the steps that we had to follow by

• 1:50:14Speaker 06

  state. And so it's not something that we took lightly because if we overstepped our bounds, then we were responsible for what we did. At the end of the day, if we did something messed up, you could get charged or you could be fired like this. So it's not something that's we took lightly.

• 1:50:37Speaker 04

  Another thing in regards to the rules of engagement, Blackwater was the largest contractor in Iraq at certain times, and it was the highest profile name. But there were many, many companies from other countries as well that were operating in Iraq that didn't have those same rules of engagement. So when they would go out and they're not wearing a military uniform, the local Iraqis would assume it was Blackwater. But 99% of the time, it was just some other contracting company that may have engaged a car or a person and not followed the same strict rules of engagement that we had. But because the only name that

• 1:51:22Speaker 04

  they knew was Blackwater, we got thrown under the bus for it. That's a good point. I didn't think about that.

• 1:51:27Speaker 06

  If somebody asked you, who do you work for because you did something messed up? Are you going to tell them, hey, man, I work for Triple Can? If you're going to be like, oh, no, I work for Blackwater.

• 1:51:36Speaker 04

  That's a good point.

• 1:51:37Speaker 06

  Take it up with them. So a lot of the dirt that was put on us that smeared with the, you know, you talked about this, the notoriety that had to do with Blackwater during that time, everybody thought we were trigger happy. But you got to think, how much was actually us versus how much was other companies that were doing things that? Instead of saying, "Hey, I'm DynaCor, I'm KBR, I'm Triple Canopy, I'm whoever." Uh, no, "Hey, we work for Blackwater. Go ahead and call the embassy with your complaint."

• 1:52:08Speaker 08

  I forget what the percentages are, but Eric Prince said once in a, in an interview that our percentage of, or our ratio between actually engaging a target and disengaging and getting out of the area was, I want to say like, single digits.

• 1:52:23Speaker 04

  It's less than one-half of 1%.

• 1:52:26Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, the percentage is just unreal. If you look at the narrative as opposed to the actual percentage, it doesn't even line up.

• 1:52:35Speaker 04

  And another thing people have to keep in mind is it depends on what team you are working with in Blackwater. So you had PSD teams that were doing protection for diplomats, and then you had the Quick Reaction Force teams, or the TST teams that we were on. So if you're on a PSD team, the likelihood of you shooting was relatively slim because of your mission, you know? You're trying to move your principal from A to B safely, let him do his business, and bring him back to the green zone safely and as quickly as possible. Um, so I, I worked over there for two contracts on PSD teams,

• 1:53:17Speaker 04

  and I didn't shoot a single round. It was only till I moved to a TSD team where we were actually going to the engagements, where I saw more, uh, firefights and shot rounds. So when people say, "Oh, these guys sound like they're into a lot," well, we were into a lot because our teams were getting hit a lot.

• 1:53:37Shawn Ryan?

  So Raven 2.3 was only mobilized when there was an active engagement happening to people that, to your teammates and the principal who's being protected.

• 1:53:50Speaker 06

  No, the way that worked is there was three TSD teams. You had 2.2, 2.3, and 2.6. Alright, what we did is we did a three-day rotation. We did one day on, one day off, one day, or one, I'm sorry, one day on, one training day, one day off. And most of the time, it didn't work out that way. Most of the time... If you're secondary primary, you're both working and then the the third team is on standby in case something happens. And even if we're training, we're still fully loaded out because at any time that we could be called. I showed you the picture that we'd just come from the gym and we're in gym shorts and we got our armor,

• 1:54:31Speaker 06

  our weapons on because we had to go out because we were off. We're all in the gym, we're all doing this and that, and we got the call. And every second that you take to get gone is people are in a bind. And so what they would do with us is let's say that you got five teams running in this part of Baghdad. You got five teams running over here in this part of Baghdad. Well, they would get one T S T team to cover these guys, one to cover these guys. Now, we may go out to a different location in Baghdad to stage. And then the other one may stay in the green zone at one of the checkpoints, waiting to see if something happened.

• 1:55:11Speaker 06

  Or we get a call in like on May 23rd, like we'll talk about a little bit. All three T S T teams ended up showing up for that event.

• 1:55:20Shawn Ryan?

  I guess what I was getting at is you're only mobilized, you're only going to go into the red zone. If there's an active gunfight happening and people need support, you're not there to do surveillance, reconnaissance, the, the, the, uh, what I want to say, traditional PSD work. You're, you're there for when shit hits the fan and that's it.

• 1:55:47Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:55:48Speaker 05

  No, go ahead. Oh, the only other function we served as going out in the red zone was kind of what he was hitting at. Is like, say, the venue was a high threat venue. And so the PSD team was worried, you know, arrivals and departures is usually when they would get hit. You know, when they're showing up to the venue, they would get attacked. That happened a lot. So we would basically escort them in to the venue with these big trucks with big guns, you know, kind of like a show of force to, so the insurgents would be like, oh, these guys got backup. Let's leave them alone. So we would do that sometimes as well. But yeah, mostly our function was what you said. Uh, we're just waiting and if anything happens, we're going to help whoever needs help.

• 1:56:32Shawn Ryan?

  If you guys leave, things have already gotten bad.

• 1:56:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:35Shawn Ryan?

  Or they're expected to be extremely bad.

• 1:56:37Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 1:56:38Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:56:41Shawn Ryan?

  So, kind of moving on to, you know, day-to-day operations, which we kind of, you know, covered in a nutshell, but I want to kind of give like what the deployments were like and, uh, and how many engagements would you guys say you would get in a week?

• 1:57:01Speaker 04

  Well, personally, when, uh, when I, like I said, when I, when I was on my first couple of contracts, and I didn't shoot a single round. So, on a PSD team in 2005 and midway through 2006, we didn't see, uh, mu- much combat at all. When I moved over to 2-3, and it started to get progressively worse in, uh, in Iraq because of, uh, different situations on the ground, um, I think we were getting engagements a few times a week. Especially towards the summer of 2007, leading, leading up to this incident that happened, we were, uh, wherever going out multiple, multiple times a week.

• 1:57:45Speaker 08

  On top of that, with, uh, the rocket attacks, the mortar attacks, um, we, we were, you know, talking downstairs earlier about the, the TCNs who, who worked in the, in the kitchen and the chow hall. These were people that you saw every day. You, you actually developed relationships with these guys and, and one rocket attack, attack in particular, we, we went and, and scooped up bodies, um, and they were in the bags and in the back of the Bearcat. We were taking them to, to the cache and, and so it was, I don't know, it, it was almost layer upon layer and, and it was like a, you could feel like the momentum just picking up all the time. And it was like,

• 1:58:26Speaker 08

  where, where does it stop? Cause at some point, it's gotta come to a stop, right? And it, it felt like... The enemy were were getting more brazen, more aggressive and more tactical. Um, it it wasn't anymore, just kind of engaging and then it would just break off. I mean, they were starting to button hook around corners and I mean, they were they were getting sharp.

• 1:58:50Speaker 06

  Back in the old days, you'd hear mortar, you can tell the difference in between outgoing and incoming. And you'd hear that thump in the background and you'd hear it fly off. You're like, oh, that's nice. And then it progressively got more and more and towards the end of two thousand and seven, right about the time that our stuff was happening. It's like you'd be sitting outside, we used to hang out in like folding camp chairs and we'd all sit around and everything. And you'd look at your watch and be like, well, it's getting to be about that time. And then in the background, you can hear all the thumps of the mortars and the rockets being launched. And it wasn't anymore, oh, that's nice. One just went by.

• 1:59:31Speaker 06

  It was time to hit bunkers and get behind sandbags because I mean, they're raining on us hard. You know, used to, it was just if they got lucky, they might get somebody. Then they got the embassy dialed in, which we're right across from this embassy in the uh LZ Washington. So I mean, there was shit coming in on us and I know one night, um, forgive me, I don't recall the name, Katush something.

• 1:59:58Speaker 08

  Katusha rocket.

• 1:59:59Speaker 06

  Katusha rocket hit right in the middle of our camp. I'm talking hit the top of a sandbag bunker. One of our guys was actually on Skype with his wife and a piece went through his eye and lodged in the back of his head. Well, the T S T teams, there's three of us. Our job was to go in and make sure nobody was dead or injured in the camp. And so we had a guy that was on another team with me. He got hit in the leg and we were actively working, our medics were working on him, trying to get him. Patched up to where we could take him to the cache and the next volley started coming in. And instead of the medics leaving, they hunkered down over the top of this guy.

• 2:00:44Speaker 06

  And, you know, we're still receiving rockets and mortars. And when that guy got hit, somebody kicked in his door. And they thought he's dead because he had shit coming out of the eye. What they didn't know is that his feed of Skype or whatever it was, Vonage Skype, whatever was still going. And his wife could hear everything that was going on. And he ended up living through it. But, I mean, we were getting hit hard from all angles. I'm talking just getting the shit kicked out of us.

• 2:01:17Shawn Ryan?

  I remember when I was there in oh five, it became pretty routine and, and it was every night. And then bullets were coming through the Connex box, you know, just you'd be sleeping and like.

• 2:01:30Speaker 06

  Especially when a soccer game happened.

• 2:01:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that specific incident, I was actually sit, sitting right outside on that block with my best friend over there, Tommy Lopez, who passed away um in the States later. But, uh, yeah, he, he actually heard the rocket coming in. So he was the one that warned me. We popped up out of our chairs to dive in the dunk, uh bunker and it hit, like Dustin said, and destroyed this guy's trailer. So, um, that, that explosion was, uh, so big, we were kind of out of it. And we're in the middle of the smoke and I, it was like out of a movie because I looked at Tommy

• 2:02:12Speaker 04

  and we had been going through a lot of shit recently, you know, he was on two, three also. And I said, Tommy, are you all right? You know? What's wrong? Are you all right? And he just looked out of it and he didn't answer me. And that very next day, he quit and went home. He just couldn't take it anymore.

• 2:02:33Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:02:38Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about some day-to-day operations and some of the engagements that you guys got in leading up to 16th September.

• 2:02:49Speaker 05

  So you want to talk about the next one that we talked about January 23rd?

• 2:02:54Shawn Ryan?

  We did.

• 2:02:54Speaker 05

  So the next one that I recall would be considered the Central Rail Station Incident. That was in February. So we get called out that there's a team in contact on venue at Central Rail and that one of the DDMs has been shot. And so as we were driving up, we noticed it's the Iraqi army is engaging our team. So the people that are supposed to be on our side are killing our brothers up there. And the helicopter lands on the rooftop as we were pulling up. Blackwater assets load up the injured guy. He actually lived.

• 2:03:36Speaker 05

  He got shot through the wall and I believe it lodged in his hip.

• 2:03:40Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think it went through his side into his hip.

• 2:03:43Speaker 05

  So he actually lived though and they got him to the cache. And again, you know, the air assets, they, one of the birds elected to stay with us while the other one took him back. So we had a close air support from that helicopter and we got into probably 25-minute engagement there and it was taking too long. And I remember I was, you know, I was pretty fresh to the team. I'd been through the January 23rd incident. And so I was the machine gunner that day as well in my vehicle. And I remember I was in the command vehicle that day on the gun. And I remember it was taking too long to get the principal to us.

• 2:04:28Speaker 05

  And so I said, you know, open the back doors. And so we opened the back doors and we just backed the Barrcat, you know? The Barrcat is almost like a BRING security truck. It was like the worst vehicle we had, you know? It sucked. But anyway, that day it was very beneficial because it had two doors that opened up. And they just, the driver was awesome. He just sandwiched it against the side of the building. And so they just brought the principal and literally like chucked him in there to us. And so we were able to close the doors and we got the PSD team into our motorcade and we drove out. But I just thought it was. Just crazy that it was the Iraqi army engaging us and they they clearly knew

• 2:05:09Speaker 05

  that this was Americans that were having business here and it was just like it was like our first really taste or my first taste of like Iraqi army, you know, turning against us. And then we and then we saw that like they were talking about the tempo in 2007 and I believe that was like the the troop surge time. Is that correct? It was. So it was like the more troops that got over there, the just the hotter it got and it just kept picking up.

• 2:05:37Speaker 05

  And then, uh, anybody want to talk about the next one was, uh, May 23rd?

• 2:05:41Speaker 06

  23rd. So we had a, what I was talking about when a team Alamo's up, they had a guy jump across the fence and pop a few rounds or something. They had some fire from the buildings too. And, uh, we was not too far away at one of the camps. I believe we was eating lunch at Shields if I'm not mistaken. And we come rolling into the traffic circle and we start picking up fire. Well, by the time that we were done, we ended up having all three T S T teams there. But we had a army team come up behind us and they ended up opening up with AT4s and a 50 cal.

• 2:06:22Speaker 06

  And then Apaches came on station about the time that we were leaving and they hit some stuff after we had left. And so, you know, it's by the time you get three T S D teams all in one area, it's it's a bad day. It's a, it's not just a, hey, we're in a skirmish, we're popping some rounds and then we're moving on. Our job was to stand there and take it until they could get the principal out. Until they deemed it was safe to move the principal. So we stood there and went toe to toe. I don't know how long. I know it was a long time. And so. How many rounds that we went through that day is a lot. That's the one that I gave you the video clip of.

• 2:07:05Speaker 06

  So, I mean, when you get an army convoy opening up with their 50s and everything else, plus you get all three TSD teams, and then the PSD team was actually in the venue, and they're shooting over the top of us into the building.

• 2:07:36Speaker 09

  Is there anybody sticking their head out? See anybody sticking their head out, tell them.

• 2:07:45Speaker 09

  Got it, got it.

• 2:07:57Speaker 09

  Hey, follow us, is that US Army or, uh, IMG?

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Roger, two seven, roger, two seven, roger, two three, tell me if the target is ready.

• 2:08:15Speaker 09

  Yo, let me get some.

• 2:08:22Speaker 00

  We need 1240.

• 2:08:28Speaker 01

  Three, six, six, we just got five, five, we're engaged.

• 2:08:42Speaker 01

  Roger, two, three, two, two, seven.

• 2:08:47Speaker 01

  Two, seven, they use a target value as well.

• 2:08:51Speaker 01

  We own our weapon, if the target, you want to, let me know. Roger, this target, target is ready.

• 2:09:04Speaker 06

  Into the building that we're taking fire from, and what people don't understand... Is when they think they see in the movies of war, you got a guy standing there, you got another guy standing there. And you see each one of them bring their weapon up. What they like to do is they like to take and get on the the rail of the building, the lip and just hang their AKs over and just spray down at you. And so it's not like you can kill that dude with one shot. It takes multiple shots and getting lucky. He's got to look up to see where it's at and be firing before you can actually hit him. It's hard to hit the end of a barrel that's being shot at you. So when you're just standing there.

• 2:09:45Speaker 06

  You would think that, hey, man, we can roll in here. We can take care of this. But the difference in between what we're doing at that time versus the military, the military you close with and destroy the enemy by fire maneuver. We didn't do that. We would stand there and fight until they got ready to leave. And then once they, once they leave, we can disengage.

• 2:10:06Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys able to communicate with the Apaches or was that military communicating?

• 2:10:11Speaker 05

  They didn't have comms with them.

• 2:10:12Speaker 06

  What the way that we.

• 2:10:13Shawn Ryan?

  So you didn't really know if they were going to show up or not?

• 2:10:15Speaker 06

  No, the way that we could communicate though, was actually calling back to the base. And in our talk, the tactical operations center, I think there's military assets in there and they could communicate, but we had no direct comms with military.

• 2:10:30Speaker 05

  I will say that anytime we got into a major engagement though, the Apaches were there within minutes. Like those guys were spot on. Whoever, I don't, like I said, I don't know who those Apache pilots were, but they saved our lives more times than I can count. Like, like I would be dead if it wasn't for those guys. So.

• 2:10:49Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you if you're seeing this.

• 2:10:50Speaker 06

  We appreciate it, Joe.

• 2:10:52Speaker 04

  Saved our lives. On that specific firefight, me and Dustin kind of had a close call. We were telling you about earlier, um, as we were rolling out. We both kind of experienced something weird at the same time and we didn't really realize at the moment, but we were, you know, pushing back to the green zone. We're just rolling out of the circle and I felt like something wet on the back of my neck. So I reached up and my initial thought just popped in my head. I thought he got shot. I thought it was his blood because it was warm liquid on the back of my neck. So I just went like this and it was clear and I went about my business and we rolled back to the green zone. When we

• 2:11:36Speaker 04

  back, when we got back to the green zone, somebody that was on one of the other teams, I believe, he said to Dustin, hey, who was the gunners in the follow vehicle? And he said, oh, it was me. And he said, hey, you guys almost got shot. So around or multiple rounds must have came through this case of waters that we had on the top of the trucks and they exploded on the back of each of our necks. So.

• 2:12:06Speaker 06

  You're talking not that far behind me, a water box disintegrated.

• 2:12:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:14Shawn Ryan?

  How many vehicles did you guys go through?

• 2:12:19Speaker 04

  They would break quite often. It seemed like we had such good mechanics that they always were able to piecemeal us a motorcade together. You know, like you rarely had the same truck. Like it would last for a while and it would take damage. And then by the time you started work the next day, they would have you a replacement. Like they were just, we had some, we had some great mechanics. They worked. I never seen them not working. Like they were always in there fixing something.

• 2:12:48Speaker 05

  At night they'd have the lights set off.

• 2:12:51Speaker 04

  Those dudes were awesome.

• 2:12:52Speaker 06

  I think we lost, what, four vehicles?

• 2:12:55Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 2:12:55Speaker 06

  The EFPs and IEDs?

• 2:12:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:59Speaker 06

  And stuff like that. Total is, I know two that just got mangled. And now, I mean, they'd get shot, but it wouldn't really do nothing to them. But the EFPs would. Would mangle them.

• 2:13:13Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys ever hit with uh IEDs or EFPs or car bombs?

• 2:13:18Speaker 06

  Uh, I was on half a, I don't know if it was a grenade or IED, I'm pretty sure it was a grenade. I know we got hit then with one, but I don't think two, three ever took a EFP or a car bomb, but I know, I think it was two, two and two, six. I'm pretty sure they both did. And that was our sister teams. And uh, one of our guys, he had just taken a drag off a cigarette and EFP came through the window compartment. And he lost his arm and the only reason why he's the driver is he took his hand off the wheel to do something. I don't know if it's the light one. Take a puff or what, but he lost his, his arm behind it. And then another one.

• 2:14:03Shawn Ryan?

  Was an EFP?

• 2:14:04Speaker 06

  Yeah. Another EFP hit the vehicle and I know we went out and recovered the vehicle and the, the guns and radio and everything out of machine guns. And the damn barrel of the two forty was bent like this because I don't know if that vehicle thumped and then came back up or what, but through the armor of that vehicle in the engine compartment, there was a hole about like this. And the EFP went through the armor of the vehicle and lodged in the center of the motor. Our uh intel analyst went out with this, her name was Mia and she actually, I was there when she did it. She recovered the piece

• 2:14:45Speaker 06

  of the EFP that was in the motor compartment. And so our team never took a blast like that, but our sister teams did.

• 2:14:55Shawn Ryan?

  I think they, they got smarter as time went on with those EFPs as well. Because they started, you know, using uh, what am I?

• 2:15:08Shawn Ryan?

  Temperature controlled detonators, you know, to trigger the EFP. So that when, instead of like a remote detonator, like a garage door opener or a cellphone, or whatever the hell they were using that day. These vehicles would come by, they would pick up the temperature of the engine, and that would set the EFP off. Well, then, I remember when I was there, I saw vehicles starting to put ammo cans on poles out front. Because then they were also doing, just regular motion would set it off.

• 2:15:49Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it would hit the ammo can, and it would detonate right in front of the vehicle. So then they started putting them on a time delay, like a second delay or something, so the EFP would be triggered, wait a second for the vehicle to pass, and then, you know, and it just got more and more and more effective, you know, as time went on. And so I just want to, you know, put that out there.

• 2:16:17Speaker 05

  That reminded me of what happened that day. Because we got, you know, AARs and debriefed on any incident that had to do with any, any kind of insurgent improvement that you were talking about, how they got smarter in their tactics. But they had actually, the Iraqi police had stopped traffic and waved our sister team through. And they had a watermelon stand set up. And they had put the EFP inside the watermelon stand. I think it was multiple array, I think it was more than one actual projectile. But they had a laser that they could turn on and off. And so they would turn it off, you know, for normal traffic.

• 2:16:58Speaker 05

  But when we were coming through, our sister team, they turned it on and detonated it. So like, the cops were complicit with it, you know, they let them set it up. The cops were probably the ones that actually set it up. But they, yeah, they blew our guys up. Didn't kill any of them, but he got ejected from the turret and hurt really bad. One of them lost his arm, I believe, and then uh there was a follow-up attack. So these guys are having to

• 2:17:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:26Speaker 05

  Having to cross-load the casualties, they're having to engage the enemy secondary attack, and then they're having to burn the vehicle because it's immobile, they can't get it out of there. So they're having to thermite the vehicle all within a matter of, you know, seconds, because seconds count at that point, so. Yeah, those guys did a great job. By the time we got out there to help them, they were already, they had already took care of business and sanitized the vehicle. All we did was hook up to the vehicle and drag it out. So I mean, they were squared away.

• 2:17:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they would use IEDs to initiate the ambushes and they would hide them in trash bags, cars, concrete, T-walls, um curbs, whatever they could, whatever would just blend in. And then it got, it got so ridiculous every time you'd see a trash bag on the side of the road, it was. To this day, that still triggers.

• 2:18:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I still have a problem with that. If I see a trash on the side of the road.

• 2:18:21Speaker 06

  Dead animals, I mean, just anything that they could put them in.

• 2:18:24Shawn Ryan?

  Bodies.

• 2:18:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:18:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Everything.

• 2:18:27Speaker 06

  So, I mean, you know, it's uh, I think the next one was right around the corner from, I don't remember the date, but the traffic circle is here where my vehicle was in this lane. And then we arched in this way. We got another one in between the next traffic circle, same exact venue, Amanaut City Hall. And I know that, I don't think that one was as bad as the, the first one. I don't think we stayed there as long. But it's, you lose track whenever you're out there. You, you know, it's, sometimes it feels like you've been there forever and you've only been there a minute.

• 2:19:10Speaker 06

  Sometimes it feels like you hadn't been there very long, but you've been there forever. And so, you know, one of the things that we was discussing earlier is when they ask us, well, what was this guy doing? I don't know what this guy's doing. I have a sector of fire that I'm responsible for. In me being the very tell-in gunner of the convoy, I have a whole range to cover. And so, you know, there's times like in that one. I had guys with AKs that were moving down. Well, if I engaged as a machine gunner, I'm accuracy by volume of fire. So in other words, I'm not shooting one round and laying it down.

• 2:19:52Speaker 06

  I'm shooting a burst. If I was to shoot a burst into where those guys were in that particular one, I'd have been hitting all kinds of traffic and everything else around. And that's where Nick came into play. Is I said over the radio, I'm like, hey, man, I got a problem back here. Can you take care of it? And he took care of the issue. And so, um, I'll let somebody else go into the rest of that one.

• 2:20:17Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you particularly have a reputation, I believe it you, of being extremely,

• 2:20:25Shawn Ryan?

  you err on the side of caution when it comes to firing around.

• 2:20:30Speaker 06

  Well,

• 2:20:31Shawn Ryan?

  Am I correct? Is that you?

• 2:20:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, it, and it's not that I err on the side of caution, but unlike 90% of our team, actually probably, I know that there's only like one or two actual machine gunners that were on there that's been to machine gun school and done everything like that. Um, I, I fully understand what that weapon does. And so, it's, it's an area weapon. It's not a precision weapon. And so, whenever I'm taking a shot with it, I've got to know my target and what lies beyond. Because if I hit somebody with a machine gun, it's not going to stop there. And if I hit somebody with a burst,

• 2:21:14Speaker 06

  yeah, I may get you with one or two rounds, but I've also got a lot of rounds pushing through an area. And so, I've got to know what's behind it. Now granted, if you're in a fight for your life, you do whatever it takes to survive because you don't have a choice. But if there's a different tool for the job, why hit something with a hammer whenever it can be done with a screwdriver? And so, you know, that's like Nick being the DDM. He can take a precision shot because he's got an optic. And so there was so much traffic stuff from where I was at. That if I put a big burst into those guys that were back there, I would have ate all kinds of stuff.

• 2:21:57Speaker 06

  And I wasn't comfortable with doing it. And now later on, some of those guys were coming through alleyways and everything else. And that's fine because there's no collateral damage. And so I've got to know what I'm hitting. I got to know what's beyond my target because a two forty for me is a small weapon. I'm used to fifty cows and mark nine teens. And so whenever you start playing with fifties and marks, that's a lot more damage causing weapon. And whenever you shoot those into things, it'll punch through a wall and keep on going. You know what I mean? It'll go through a car and keep going. So it's not that I'm cautious. I understand the weapon system.

• 2:22:42Shawn Ryan?

  It was, I meant that as a compliment.

• 2:22:44Speaker 06

  But it's, I'm, I'm not saying it negative towards you. I'm just saying it's, I understand what that thing's capable of.

• 2:22:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:53Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's, as best as I remember, the, the principle was hard pointed. And we pulled up and if I, if memory served me well, it was almost immediate. It wasn't a pause. It was, um, as soon as the drivers put the vehicles in park or maybe they may even put it in park yet. We were just, we just kind of settled into our, our area. We started receiving small arms fire. Um, I remember hearing over the radio of, uh, someone saying, watch the Dshka. Because the cops were starting to get up towards the vehicles where the Dshkas were mounted. Um, and had that opened up on us, we, I mean, you're not going to stand up against that. Um, a Dshka just being the, the Russian version of the, of the fifty cal.

• 2:23:39Speaker 08

  And so I think what what Dustin was talking about, the guys he was trying to engage, they were coming down the alleyway, trying to button hook towards me, which was the broadside of our Bearcat. And at the same time, we were receiving small arms fire from a guy up on a, you remember the great big water, red water towers that were on top of the houses? There was a guy up there that had me in his sights. And it was a lead gunner, whoever, I can't remember who that was, had stopped that threat because had they not, I mean, it had me dead to rights. I was in the middle of doing a reload with the two forty.

• 2:24:27Speaker 08

  And then we broke contact pretty quickly. I don't think we were there very long.

• 2:24:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, that one didn't last too long. Yeah, it was about ten minutes total, I think. I think we were probably like five minutes on the scene. And then we got the principal in our motorcade. That's what we would do a lot of times. We would, once the PSD team had the principal loaded, we would just put him in our package. So we'd have two vehicles in front. We'd put their three, three vehicle motorcade inside of our motorcade. And then we'd have two vehicles behind that. So we would just kind of escort them in to the green zone. That happened quite a bit. And they had ambush set up on both sides of the river, I remember.

• 2:25:12Speaker 05

  And it was kind of stressful because they actually, traffic was blocked. And so we actually had to get out and deploy the fire team on foot. So we were taking contact while we were on foot and we had to clear out traffic, you know, and we got that done pretty quick because we were taking rounds while we were out there. So we had to leave the safety of the skin of the vehicle and get out there on our feet and take contact. And we got the vehicles out of the way finally and, yeah, it was ten minutes.

• 2:25:40Speaker 08

  For me, that was the first time I had actually seen them bounding towards us. And they were coming down the bank of the river. And yeah, it was, that was a mess. And the guys, like you say, they'd gotten out of the suburbans to try to clear traffic. And, you know, fortunately, we got out of there, but.

• 2:26:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:26:02Shawn Ryan?

  What was your guys' relationship with the principals with the State Department?

• 2:26:06Speaker 05

  We didn't know.

• 2:26:07Speaker 06

  Didn't have a clue. Didn't have a clue who it was, who they were, what they were doing or anything else.

• 2:26:12Shawn Ryan?

  Never worked with the same one?

• 2:26:14Speaker 06

  Now.

• 2:26:14Speaker 05

  Sometimes.

• 2:26:15Speaker 06

  When it was on PSD, yes, but on the tactical teams.

• 2:26:19Shawn Ryan?

  Not, no association.

• 2:26:21Speaker 06

  No clue who they were or anything, it didn't matter.

• 2:26:25Speaker 05

  Only time we ever saw them is when they were in trouble and we were dragging them out of somewhere. That's the only time we, on a, you know, that's my only experience with a principal because I was on the, I was on two, three the whole time, so I never had any encounters with principals or State Department officials unless they were in trouble and they were calling for our help to come get them.

• 2:26:47Speaker 08

  As the advance team for Ambassador Kalilazad, he,

• 2:26:52Speaker 08

  he seemed to really have a lot of respect for us, um, because he, I'm, I'm not going to speak for the man, but he, I think he really understood what it was in that environment because he'd been there for so long. And, and he, I think he truly appreciated everything that we put on the line for, for he and his staff. Um, and again, I don't mean to put words in the man's mouth or, or that, or by any means, any of that, but, um, just given my very limited interaction with him, um, he really seemed to, to respect us and, and to care about us, you know, there wasn't a, a disconnect there at all.

• 2:27:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's good. What, what were you guys, were you guys getting fed intel at all? Did you get any intel briefings, BOLO lists, anything?

• 2:27:44Speaker 08

  Every morning.

• 2:27:45Shawn Ryan?

  Every morning?

• 2:27:46Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 2:27:46Shawn Ryan?

  BOLO list for the audiences, be on the lookout for, blank, whatever.

• 2:27:52Speaker 06

  White Kia Opel always was on the list.

• 2:27:55Shawn Ryan?

  White Kia?

• 2:27:55Speaker 06

  I mean, like you're saying earlier, the Toyota, it was Kia's Toyota.

• 2:28:00Speaker 08

  Motorcycle.

• 2:28:01Speaker 06

  Motorcycles.

• 2:28:01Shawn Ryan?

  Taxis.

• 2:28:02Speaker 06

  Taxis.

• 2:28:03Speaker 05

  Bongo trucks. Yeah, ambulance, they always stole the ambulances and blew those up too.

• 2:28:08Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:28:08Speaker 05

  Always.

• 2:28:09Speaker 08

  That was the first thing we saw that one day, that was our last day. I remember seeing that thing thinking, alright, here we go.

• 2:28:17Shawn Ryan?

  Every, every morning you guys were getting an intel dump and who was giving that to, was it?

• 2:28:21Speaker 06

  Mia. Mia, our intel analyst.

• 2:28:23Shawn Ryan?

  Was, uh, she, she was Blackwater? Do you know where she was getting the intel from? Was it military?

• 2:28:28Speaker 06

  Embassy, I don't.

• 2:28:29Speaker 04

  State Department, I assume.

• 2:28:31Speaker 05

  All those, all those assets had a, uh, like he said earlier, they had a talk and they would all share. And we didn't, we didn't know, we never went to the talk, but the way, the way that we were, we were informed is this was a, a united effort, basically all inter-agency cooperation. They would kind of lay out and they had sources out there at the time. And this is what's going on in the city. We had really reliable intelligence as far as routes. Like they had really good assets on the ground that would tell us, these are the routes where you're gonna get hit. So we advise you to take this route and it was usually spot on.

• 2:29:09Speaker 04

  As far as the routes go, we, we are traveling to the same places a lot of times with the PSD teams are traveling to the same places. So there's only so many routes you can go. I mean, you could pick three different routes, but normally only maybe two of them are useful, maybe one. So there's no, uh, way around it. You gotta go down the same streets, normally around the same time, uh, all the time. So you're just a huge rolling target.

• 2:29:38Speaker 08

  One of the biggest needs too for like coordinating intelligence is you may have an army asset team over here, doing whatever it is they're doing and it's, it's your objective at that point then to kind of stay out of their way. Because you don't want to, you don't want to cross paths unnecessarily and you don't want to, to interrupt what's going on. So for instance, if a, if a principal is over here at say Ministry of Oil, and your route happens to cut right through, um, where some military operations are going, obviously you, you don't want to do that if you, if you can help it. And so that's where that inter-agency cooperation really helped, um, for, for any kind of blue on blue incident. Because that's obviously the last thing you would ever want to happen.

• 2:30:24Speaker 06

  Friendly fires never friendly.

• 2:30:29Shawn Ryan?

  How well did you guys know the city?

• 2:30:32Speaker 06

  They were great from backwards.

• 2:30:34Speaker 08

  Corey knew it like the back of his hand.

• 2:30:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, very well.

• 2:30:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, our tactical commander, he was, he had his shit together. He knew, he knew all the back streets, all the main avenues. Like Dustin said, he's, he was normally the, the rear gunner in the follow vehicle. So he's, he's looking at the city rolling backwards all the time. So if you turned him around, you might get lost, but. Uh, yeah, we knew, we.

• 2:31:00Speaker 06

  Drive backwards, I can tell you where to turn.

• 2:31:03Speaker 04

  We, we knew the city pretty well.

• 2:31:07Speaker 06

  I mean, it's, you know, there's places like Solder City and stuff that they didn't want military going in. But if we had a meeting there, if the principals had a meeting, we didn't have a choice but to go wherever it was that they were going. And so, I mean, when it was, the military couldn't go, we still would. And so, because if the boss says, hey, you gotta take somebody here, you're taking them there. It doesn't matter. The only place that I knew that was blacklisted to drive into was Ministry of Health. And most of the time they would fly a team in, drop some people in, let the diplomat do his meeting and then fly them back out.

• 2:31:54Shawn Ryan?

  Is there anything specific you guys want to cover before we move in to September sixteenth?

• 2:32:01Speaker 05

  There was also the, the DART incident as well. So, there was a helicopter that was shot down at one of our sister camps, which was like south of us. It was called Hilla, right?

• 2:32:14Speaker 08

  Yeah, it was halfway between Hilla and Baghdad.

• 2:32:16Speaker 05

  So they were flying, they were taking guys for their leave. They would fly them back to Baghdad so that they could hop on a plane and come back to the States. And like you said, they were halfway in between. So it was about, it's probably like a fifteen minute flight from where we were to the crash site where they had got shot down. And they always traveled in pairs. So the air guys were squared away. As soon as that helicopter got shot by RPG, it crash landed. All occupants, all of our brothers on there survived and the other one. Set down and immediately cross loaded and they were able to get them all back to safety in

• 2:32:58Speaker 05

  the green zone, but the the bird was still out there. So our mission was.

• 2:33:02Speaker 08

  Right quick if I can. The pilot got his tail rotor shot off and he landed his bird under high line wires.

• 2:33:11Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 2:33:12Speaker 08

  To put it in context of how good a pilot this man was, or two pilots. So it yeah, it was amazing that that, I mean, the biggest thing I think was a scratch, maybe a couple of guys, but in in in context of a good pilot, that that's what he.

• 2:33:28Speaker 05

  He was, he was my neighbor, actually. I knew, I knew the man and he was a Vietnam era pilot. We had like Vietnam era aircraft. We had Hueys and we had little birds and the Huey, he was flying that. I think he was one of the only guys that had been through the RPG simulator back in Vietnam. So I think he had been shot down like three different times by RPG fire. And all of his crew always lived like everybody, like he knew how to crash land. Like he was, he was a very good pilot. But so our mission was, we're supposed to fly out there and set up security, which was like 10 or 15 minute flight. And then we had to wait for them to

• 2:34:12Speaker 05

  fly back and load up mechanics, bring mechanics out, take the sensitive stuff off the bird. And then that was going to be our mission. So as we were flying out there, they tell us, you're going to land in a hot LZ. There's active enemy combatants out there. And so as we were flying closer, I realized that the army is already on station and there was Apache gunships that were circling. There was two of them. And there was a mine sweeping vehicle, a Bradley and an Humvee out there already, right beside the crash site. So when we landed, I noticed and a lot of the guys were talking about how the Apaches were, they were engaging

• 2:34:55Speaker 05

  with their chain gun. They were lighting up this tree line and this village. Where they, where the RPG attack had come from. And so we set up security around the bird and I, I linked up with the, the local assets, the, I think he was a lieutenant and a sergeant is who I talked to and, and another guy on our team talked. And we're just saying, all right, look, y'all got the big guns. We're, we're here, told them what our mission was. He was like, all right. And so we're sitting there for a minute and then we notice all these locals start coming out of the woodwork. And there was this crowd that had, um, men, women and children in it.

• 2:35:37Speaker 05

  And they're looking through the optics on the Bradley and they're telling me this and they've got people with AKs, but they've also got civilians intermixed in this crowd. And so what the Apache did, he just kind of flew low and kind of dispersed the crowd. And so they all kind of peeled off and they started chucking their weapons into the fields. And a lot of times what they would do, they would just put them in a feed sack and pitch them out in the field. So we've been there maybe two minutes, three minutes, and then they just started coming back out of their houses. When the Apaches gained elevation again, they started pulling their weapons back out and they started engaging us. And then firefight broke out and then somewhere in the middle of that, the mechanics show up.

• 2:36:18Speaker 05

  And then, and then they start, uh, they start helping us engage. And then, uh, the Apaches, they, uh, I guess they were asking for permission to use hellfires. And we, we eventually got the Apache logs later and they laid down a lot of ordinance. Like they, they blew up a couple of buildings and a tree line. And then we didn't take any more contact after that. They killed all the bad guys. And then we, uh, yeah, that was it. We took the, the, uh, the mechanics took the sensitive stuff off the bird. And we loaded back up, flew back.

• 2:36:53Speaker 06

  I know. This is not on this subject, but you said before we moved to September sixteenth. Uh, we'd be all over Baghdad, all over the city and everything, right? And one of the, the things that they like to do to convoys in general over there with the military. It's cut off the last vehicle and then everybody else would have to turn around and come back. And so, you know, you're always on the watch for ambush and everything else. Well, it was my vehicle. We had a car right as we were coming across a bridge. That jacked out in front of us. I'm talking just pulled. Well, my driver did what he's supposed to do. He drove through to keep us from getting ambushed. I don't recall if we took rounds that day.

• 2:37:38Shawn Ryan?

  Did.

• 2:37:39Speaker 06

  I don't. I got my bell rung. I actually broke my back. I got two rods, six screws in my lumbar and. I couldn't tell you if we took a single round because we hit so hard that it almost ejected the front gunner. It rang everybody's bell inside of it. And I ended up, I knew I hurt, got hurt, but I didn't realize how bad. And so, you know, the threat that we faced every day was all day, every day of. Shit could happen at any second, anytime and we wasn't a team that didn't leave the wire. In other words, we wasn't sitting around just playing on our computer and.

• 2:38:23Speaker 06

  Doing whatever. We were constantly on the go because somebody needed us for something, whether it's just. Like they're saying earlier, okay, they bring in the heavy trucks and it's a show of force. Or whether it's something that went boom or bang that we're actually responding to. But you know, we're under the threat of attack all day, every day. And that's what people don't understand is the prosecution sold the square. Like this is right outside of here in Nashville, that it's a safe place, that nothing ever happens there.

• 2:38:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:55Speaker 06

  But. You know Baghdad wasn't like that Baghdad was like the wild west of.

• 2:39:02Speaker 08

  What was it about a month prior or two that the car bomb went off underneath the square?

• 2:39:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:39:07Speaker 08

  And blew a crater in that thing the size of something you'd see on the move.

• 2:39:11Shawn Ryan?

  Bill Colfield said that that crater, I believe, was fifty meters deep. And seventy-five meters wide.

• 2:39:19Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:39:19Shawn Ryan?

  That's how big that fucking car bomb was.

• 2:39:22Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 2:39:23Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 2:39:23Speaker 08

  And it was sold as if it were DuPont Circle in Washington DC.

• 2:39:28Speaker 05

  It it was rivers of blood. When we went out there, like it was like, you know how you you hear that? That term rivers of blood or? Like blood flowing in the streets, it was literally like.

• 2:39:42Speaker 05

  Just people like there they didn't even know how many people got killed like it was a crowded. Thing dude drove it, I think it was actually in April, I think it was a few months before that, but. But he actually drew drove his car underneath. There was like a tunnel that went underneath it. And the people were milling about that circle and he detonated and it and it just. I mean.

• 2:40:05Speaker 05

  Blew people to pieces, man. And like we we had drove through there and it was just, it was insane.

• 2:40:10Speaker 08

  Still being repaired that day.

• 2:40:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, and all those months later, September, like they were still repairing it, the tunnel wasn't open yet, I don't believe.

• 2:40:19Shawn Ryan?

  Bill Colfield also said. That that's why the circle was so crowded that day was because that. That entire section was shut down.

• 2:40:28Speaker 05

  That's right. And there's we'll get into this later, but. And the threat was real, whether they want to admit it or not, and that's why. When the FBI team eventually showed up three weeks after it happened. They didn't just walk out there and and try to take pictures of the curb and pick up supposed evidence. They went out there with a platoon of security guys as well because they didn't want to get blown up.

• 2:40:53Speaker 08

  Full kit.

• 2:40:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:55Speaker 06

  Apache's on station. And when Apache's come in, it's a game changer, you don't want to jack with a flying tank.

• 2:41:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:03Speaker 06

  And so whenever they're there to start with, things are a lot less likely to happen.

• 2:41:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:12Shawn Ryan?

  They were definitely, they had the privilege of being the full protection, air, ground, everything. And you guys didn't. But, um, let's take one more quick break. When we come back, we'll, we'll get into the September 16th.

• 2:42:27Shawn Ryan?

  Alright guys, so September 16th, 2007, what's known as the Blackwater massacre, Raven 23 incident. I want to get each and every one of your firsthand accounts of what happened when you got that call. So, let's start with Nick.

• 2:42:48Speaker 05

  So, we were all in the green zone. There was a huge explosion. And immediately, we started moving to the vehicles. We were all running. They called us on the radio, said that one of our teams had been, got hit by a V-bid.

• 2:43:04Speaker 05

  As we rolled out, we rolled through checkpoint 12, we ended up in Neesther Square. And as we were rolling into the circle, we noticed, it was strange, man, we noticed a lot of military, Iraqi military and a lot of Iraqi police just on foot scattered throughout the circle and we had never seen anything like that. More than usual? Yes, sir. Usually they were at specific locations like guard posts and stuff, but there was a heavy presence. And so immediately that got my hackles up and I felt like that something was about to happen. And so we were directed that everybody was okay in the team

• 2:43:46Speaker 05

  that the V bit had went off. It had actually exploded outside their venue. So what they were gonna do, they were gonna load up the principal and they were gonna travel through Neesther Square. And so we were just gonna facilitate a fast route for them to get back into the green zone. Then we were gonna put them in our package and drive into the green zone, right? So we had been there for maybe 15 seconds, maybe 30 seconds at the most and we started taking incoming fire. And I heard on the radio, the IPs are engaging us. And so I looked out and I saw multiple Iraqi police. At first, they were kinda like this with their AKs and then they started raising them up and they started engaging.

• 2:44:31Speaker 05

  And then firefight broke out and I heard our vehicle just cut off. And Evan had said that our vehicle's down. I heard that on the radio and we were hearing impacts on the side of our vehicle. And so I was like, man, we're hit. I just knew we were gonna die. And so.

• 2:44:57Speaker 05

  I heard the machine gunners engaging and eventually the firefight ceased and it was probably maybe two or three minutes of back and forth between us and the enemy. And then the shift lead calls for a tow out, which means the second vehicle, our vehicle is the third vehicle, the second vehicle is going to back up and then they're going to dismount fire team members and hook up a tow strap to our vehicle so that we can be pulled out, right? And so they do that, they execute the tow out and we're traveling back to the green zone. And I remember hearing on the radio that the PSD team, Raven 4, that the initial attack had happened.

• 2:45:42Speaker 05

  Our sister team, I believe it was Raven 22, had picked them up and put them in their motorcade and they were receiving contact as well on their route back. So they took another route away from Easter Square, back to the green zone and...

• 2:45:57Shawn Ryan?

  So that was two separate firefights?

• 2:45:59Speaker 05

  Yes, sir.

• 2:46:01Shawn Ryan?

  Within how close of each other?

• 2:46:03Speaker 05

  Within probably two and a half miles, I would say, is the hard compound, that was the compound they were at. It's probably two miles from the circle. So, within that area, I didn't know exactly where they were at, but on their way back to the green zone, they were taking incoming as well. So you've got a, you've got a radio log where we've got multiple engagements going on. We've got, we really believed on a, on an after action report, we really believed that this was a kidnapping attempt. We really believed that they were going to detonate that V-Bid and have the PSD team drive through Easter Square because that was the most direct route back to the green zone.

• 2:46:46Speaker 05

  And there was a huge water truck and a bus, like a big city bus, and they were going to just block off that intersection so that the PSD team would be trapped in there and then they were going to kidnap the principal. That's how I feel about it. But they didn't expect guys with machine guns, up armored vehicles to roll into their, their ambush. So I think they just panicked and initiated their ambush prematurely. And so, we get towed out, we make it back.

• 2:47:20Speaker 05

  Out of the circle and as we're leaving the circle, um, I hear on the radio, we're still receiving fire and somebody else calls out, we'll shoot back. And then he says, I can't shoot back because I can't see where it's coming from. And that was the last thing that I heard on the radio. We made it back to, uh, the parking lot and that was it.

• 2:47:44Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any idea how many people were engaging you?

• 2:47:48Speaker 05

  I saw personally, I saw two people engaging me. I saw two Iraqi cops engaging.

• 2:47:56Shawn Ryan?

  Paul?

• 2:47:58Speaker 08

  Yeah, my, my memory is as much the same as, as far as coming into the circle. It was, it was really, uh, spooky. It was weird because there was a lot of active INGs and IPs and not to beat a dead horse, but it was, it was really something that was not normal. Um, and everybody knew that, that something was wrong. And so as we pulled into the square, it was again, as, as we got settled, it seemed to be almost immediate as far as incoming fire. And at the same time, there was the white vehicle that was pulling out of, of a stop traffic. And, and everybody, including Iraqi witnesses, said

• 2:48:41Speaker 08

  that it was what they, what they thought was, was an apparent V-bid. And so in, in, uh,

• 2:48:52Speaker 08

  the thought process of, of preserving the team and, and engaging a legitimate threat, the thought for me was, was to stop that, that V-bid. And, uh, and so that's what I did. I, I engaged the, the threat and, and following that, there were, uh, five other, if I recall correctly, five other, um, threats that were engaging us. And as the call was, was let out that the, that our command vehicle, um, was, was, uh, disengaged and not able to, to start anymore. I heard Corey Wayne Scott say over the radio, um, command turret gunner take up six because it, basically it was the wall of steel between us and the enemy.

• 2:49:37Speaker 08

  Were we receiving fire from and then the ERV yeah backed up hooked up the tow out. And that's when I witnessed other threats trying to engage what I thought was Dustin.

• 2:49:51Speaker 08

  And so we got the tow out, we got hooked up and we start moving out. And the the volume of fire had had died way down, but there were still there were still other rounds coming in. And and again, like Nick, I heard we're still taking fire, we're still taking fire. And I heard shoot back or fire back and and it was clearly Dustin saying, I don't, I don't have a clear threat. I don't, I don't have a clear target and he popped smoke. And we were, we'd moved back and

• 2:50:31Speaker 08

  we're driving down the, down the right side of the road, button hood back going towards the IZ. There were people up on rooftops of apartment buildings that were watching us clearly. They were, they were watching what we were doing. We got back in the IZ and then went to Patriots and then Nick pulled me out of the turret. Pilled off my kit and my flight suit to check for holes, but I was good.

• 2:51:01Shawn Ryan?

  And the white, the white, was it the Kia? And the white Kia?

• 2:51:07Shawn Ryan?

  Were you being engaged by threats when the white Kia was headed your way?

• 2:51:13Speaker 08

  As I recall, it was all at the same time.

• 2:51:16Shawn Ryan?

  It all happened at the same time, so it was definitely, it appeared to be a coordinated attack.

• 2:51:22Speaker 08

  And that, that same car, if I remember right, was on the BOLO list that morning.

• 2:51:26Shawn Ryan?

  That same car was on the, there was a be on the lookout for the white Kia for a possible.

• 2:51:32Speaker 08

  If I remember correctly.

• 2:51:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:35Shawn Ryan?

  Would all you say that?

• 2:51:40Shawn Ryan?

  Were there any other assets in the air? Did you guys have air or did you have drones? Were those mil there?

• 2:51:46Speaker 08

  So there was a drone. Um, I think Nick can speak a little better to that than I can. Uh, I know that air showed up kinda at the tail end of things. And they were our support as we were coming in.

• 2:51:59Speaker 08

  But as far as I recall, uh, air didn't engage at all.

• 2:52:03Shawn Ryan?

  Air, the helicopters?

• 2:52:05Speaker 08

  The gunfight had pretty much dissipated by then.

• 2:52:09Shawn Ryan?

  And the drone was already on station from the VBIT that had gone off, uh, just a couple of minutes earlier, correct?

• 2:52:15Speaker 08

  As I understand.

• 2:52:16Shawn Ryan?

  It was already up in the air by the time you guys even rolled out of checkpoint 12?

• 2:52:19Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 2:52:23Speaker 04

  So, uh, I was the driver of the command vehicle, the third vehicle of the convoy. So we rolled out, uh, rolled into Nisour Square and I agree with these guys that, um, there was something off about the Iraqi police activity. Uh, it just seemed to be a bigger number of, of Iraqi police and even I think Iraqi National Guard. Um, and typically when you see them, they're either directing traffic by shooting their weapons in the air or they're lounging around in the, in the, in the shade resting. They're not really too active.

• 2:53:02Speaker 04

  So I did notice when we pulled up into the circle, um, it was totally packed with, with traffic. And, um, the IP seemed to be maneuvering around and, and kinda like frantic movements and, and that caught my attention. So pretty much as soon as we came to a stop, within a minute or less, uh, we received incoming fire, small arms fire, and, um, I started hearing the pings on the side of my vehicle. And at the same time I heard, I don't know if I heard Paul yell it out on the radio or just yell it out down the turret that, uh, there was a white Kia that was presenting a threat

• 2:53:46Speaker 04

  and it was coming towards the vehicle, so. I'm kinda scanning the area, looking for threats. I see the activity, I see some IPs raising their AKs, firing at the convoy. And then at the same time, that white Kia is coming forward as well. But as a driver, your job is to safely move the team from point A to point B, and also give the turret gunner a secure platform to protect the team. So while I was looking for threats and scanning the area and calling out things that I was seeing, my job was to drive. So I just happened to glance down at the dashboard, and all of the dashlights were illuminated,

• 2:54:31Speaker 04

  which kinda concerned me because that would mean that the vehicle is turned off. So I turned the key again, and it wouldn't start. It just kinda clicked. So I did it a couple times, and I looked over to the team leader to my right, and I said, "Hey, Hoss, this vehicle's dead, man." And we were kinda in the middle of receiving all that fire. So as we spoke about earlier, we were in armored vehicles, but just because you're in an armored vehicle doesn't mean that you're totally protected. It doesn't mean you're behind a force field. Yes, it does protect against small arms fire,

• 2:55:13Speaker 04

  but once you receive a certain number of small arms rounds, or even explosion, or an RPG, you're gonna have big problems, no matter what armor you have. So one of the images that kinda would pop into my head was that image of the four guys in Fallujah that got burned in that convoy and strung up on that bridge. And, you know, it was a life or death moment. So the team leader kinda snapped me out of my driver mode, because the vehicle's obviously disabled from incoming rounds. And he told me to open the door, so he could engage.

• 2:55:57Speaker 04

  So I swung the door open with my foot, leaned back against the seat, and he leaned over me and fired at some threats that he was identifying.

• 2:56:10Speaker 04

  I'm not sure how many rounds he really shot. It wasn't more than one magazine, but he pulled back. I shut the door and started working on the vehicle again.

• 2:56:23Speaker 04

  Shortly after, I kinda gave up on the vehicle because it was not going to start and it was just...

• 2:56:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was a waste of time. So, he told me to open the door again and that's when we both engaged. I saw IP that was kinda behind a fighting position. There was like some sandbags. And he was actively shooting at the convoy. So, I shot in his direction, neutralized his threat, and shut the door.

• 2:56:58Speaker 04

  I think it was at that time where there was like a little lull in the firefight. And there's a few things that you could do when you're being actively engaged or you get hit by an IED or VBIT. One of the things that you could do is the X is what you call the area when you're...

• 2:57:21Speaker 04

  Basically, it's the danger area where all the fire is going to be directed at the X.

• 2:57:26Shawn Ryan?

  The X is basically the best way to describe the X. The X is the entire focus of the battlefield. It is a magnet for bullets.

• 2:57:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:57:40Shawn Ryan?

  So, you want to get off the X as fast as possible, your vehicle being the X, because it's disabled and they're already shooting at it.

• 2:57:48Speaker 04

  Right, so we were kinda sitting ducks at that point. So, one of the options that we had was for the follow vehicle to actually put their bumper against our rear bumper and push us out. But because of the way the vehicles were positioned, the amount of traffic in the circle and the route that we would have to take to get just off the X, it wasn't feasible. It just would have been too hard to maneuver the vehicle without power steering. So the team leader made the call that we're gonna tow out. And like Nick said, the ERV vehicle, which is the second vehicle in the convoy,

• 2:58:29Speaker 04

  backs up, the follow vehicle, covers, provides cover for the side of the threat. They hook up the tow strap and then they tow you out. So on the way back, I do remember guys calling on the radio that we're receiving fire still from back in the circle. And Dustin came on the radio and said, he didn't have a clear shot. And then, um, just, uh, we, we got pulled back to the green zone, fighting the vehicle the whole time, and that was it. It was a relatively minor engagement in the big scheme of things. It's serious anytime you discharge your weapon, but the amount of, uh, firefights that we had been in, in the weeks leading up to that,

• 2:59:14Speaker 04

  in comparison, it was a relatively minor engagement, in my opinion.

• 2:59:21Speaker 06

  Well, um, as we rolled into the circle, uh, we started receiving fire. I don't recall exactly the timeline of how fast everything happened. I mean, it's been, been some time ago. I just know that we're being shot at from the south down there. There's an area, um, that I could clearly see people engaging us. And I neutralized the threat. And I'm not sure how many people was there. It's just one of those things that you've got a, a problem and you gotta solve it. And like they were saying about the IPs and everything.

• 3:00:02Speaker 06

  One of the things that was dividing my attention is there was a bunker that had a belt fed in it off to the, uh...

• 3:00:11Speaker 06

  It'd be out of that area that we came leaving the checkpoint. We drove right by it. And so not only was I dealing with the, the active threat, but I was also kinda keeping an eye on that too. And so I know that after everything, it was short. There was, it wasn't a big firefight. It was after everything was done, I started throwing smoke on the way out. And that way it covers our exit to where if the enemy can't see you, then they can't shoot you.

• 3:00:43Shawn Ryan?

  You're providing concealment for the entire convoy.

• 3:00:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, I threw every smoke that we had and um, you know, they said that we was acting irrational or, or stuff like that. And so my fire team member, which is the guy inside of the vehicle, he handed me up a thermite. And I looked at that and realized it was a thermite and not a smoke. I could have thrown it. I could have just chunked it wherever and let whatever burn. But instead I handed it back to him saying, hey, man, if we need this, we're gonna need it. You know, I'm not just gonna throw it. So as we were leaving and it'd be to the north of the circle. I could still see shit skipping off the, the pavement around us. And I called out on the radio and I said, hey, we're still taking fire.

• 3:01:31Speaker 06

  And that was after the tow out and everything else. And it wa- it wasn't a lot, but it was still enough to concern me. Well, I actually got hit by something. Um, I don't know what it ricocheted off of, but it hit me in the chin strap in my, my kevlar. And so I had a big old pop knot on my chin and it landed in the bend of my arm right here. And the nomak suits like twelve, fifteen hundred degrees before it's supposed to combust. And I was actually on fire. And so I put the fire out with my glove and everything. And then um, whenever I called and I said, hey, we're taking fire.

• 3:02:16Speaker 06

  I got the order from my team leader saying, "Shoot back." And I called back over the radio. I said, "I can't shoot back. I don't have a target. I'm not just gonna open up." I had 400 rounds linked together. And if I wanted to be malicious, I wouldn't have had a one linked up. I had all kinds of ammo in the truck too. So I had plenty of ammo if I wanted to be malicious. And we got back to the Patriots parking lot. And as soon as we came into the gate, before we got there, I stripped off my armor and had my fire team member check me because I knew I'd been hit by something to make sure that I didn't have a hole in me that I didn't feel because of the adrenaline and everything else.

• 3:02:58Speaker 06

  And so I didn't have any holes in me, which was good. And when we got back to Patriots, I went and got my burns dressed and everything. So that was pretty much the short and sweet of it.

• 3:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  How many other teammates out there, out of the 19 of you guys, were engaging threats? Do you know? Was everybody?

• 3:03:26Speaker 06

  No. It would have been...

• 3:03:29Speaker 05

  I think there was like seven total.

• 3:03:31Shawn Ryan?

  Seven?

• 3:03:31Speaker 05

  Yes. Seven out of the 19, I think, engaged.

• 3:03:34Speaker 04

  The way the trucks were positioned, we were spread out across the southern side of the circle, pretty good. So the distance between the lead vehicle and the follow vehicle would be, what? It was a good, good distance. So what the people in the lead and the second vehicle are looking at is not necessarily the same as the third and fourth vehicle. And there was a median that went basically right where the second and third vehicle were separated. So if you were in those first two vehicles, that street that most of the threats were on was blocked by palm trees in that median.

• 3:04:17Speaker 04

  So, and it's hard to really say with any accuracy how many guys were firing also because we were all in, us three were in one truck. Dustin was in the follow. So, um, like we've said before, when you're in a firefight, you're kind of paying attention to the threat and doing your, doing your thing. You're not really conscious of, hey, this guy in this truck is firing out this porthole, or this gunner is shooting in this direction. You really don't know. So, anything that I would say now would be something I heard after the fact. So, yeah.

• 3:04:54Shawn Ryan?

  How, how much distance was between you guys and the threats that you were engaging?

• 3:05:00Speaker 06

  Seventy-five, hundred meters maybe.

• 3:05:03Speaker 04

  The Kia did get pretty close as well. Um, as far as the IP's maneuvering, yeah, fifty, seventy-five meters.

• 3:05:12Shawn Ryan?

  The Kia was a very controversial topic when you guys got to court. And there was a, another shooter who engaged the Kia who wasn't there?

• 3:05:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:05:29Shawn Ryan?

  That wasn't you guys?

• 3:05:30Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:05:31Speaker 06

  There's actually two other shooters besides us that engaged the Kia. And, um, one was dropped for lack of evidence because nobody saw him shot, or him shoot. He's the one that said in his sworn statement that he shot. And then the other one that's not here with us today took a guilty plea. And, um, he's admitted to killing the passenger, and if not the driver, if I'm not mistaken.

• 3:05:59Shawn Ryan?

  So, just to recap, there was a V-bid, your team got hit, your sister team got hit. They went out to go recover them. There's also in a, there was a, uh, Army engagement also happening at the exact same time, plus your engagement. So, that's three firefights within five mile radius, correct?

• 3:06:25Shawn Ryan?

  Then you showed up. There was already a drone on station who was filming footage. And you had two Blackwater Little Birds on station as well, out there. So, you get back...

• 3:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  Did you guys think anything of it?

• 3:06:42Speaker 06

  No.

• 3:06:42Shawn Ryan?

  It sounds like a pretty minor engagement compared to some of the other stuff that we just talked about.

• 3:06:49Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think our... I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 3:06:52Speaker 06

  When we got back, the main concern was get ready in case we had to go back out.

• 3:06:57Speaker 04

  Yep, I brought the vehicle straight to get repaired and get loaded up and my, uh... My main concern was getting that vehicle, uh, ready to go back out.

• 3:07:10Speaker 08

  Yeah, because there was still other teams out there on venue.

• 3:07:15Shawn Ryan?

  And remember this, there was a hundred and eighty, there was an average of a hundred and eighty engagements a day in the year 2007 when this happened. So...

• 3:07:29Shawn Ryan?

  At what point did you guys get indicted?

• 3:07:34Speaker 04

  Well, uh...

• 3:07:35Speaker 06

  Before...

• 3:07:36Shawn Ryan?

  2009.

• 3:07:37Speaker 06

  Before we go into the indictment, the thing that was weird about this shoot versus others is... Okay, normally the shooters do a statement, okay? At the end of the day, if you shot your weapon, if you discharged it in any manner, you're supposed to do an after-action report, an AAR. And when you do, they, whoever shot is supposed to turn in a statement and to the detail leaders. And then the detail leaders walk that to the embassy. And as soon as we got back in, we was eating chow, and they started looping a video from the tower over and over on CNN.

• 3:08:17Shawn Ryan?

  A video of your guys' firefight?

• 3:08:20Speaker 06

  A video...

• 3:08:20Shawn Ryan?

  Was already on CNN?

• 3:08:22Speaker 04

  After.

• 3:08:23Speaker 06

  Right after.

• 3:08:24Shawn Ryan?

  How fast? How fast are we talking?

• 3:08:26Speaker 06

  About thirty minutes.

• 3:08:27Shawn Ryan?

  Thirty minutes CNN was rolling this?

• 3:08:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, it took us just enough to... Go from cross loading our vehicles to make sure that we're ready to go back out. I got my burns treated. We went back in, we were eating lunch in case we had to roll again. And my whole team is sitting at a table. And there's the big old school TV that's back there in the back, big square one. And it's on CNN. Well, it just starts looping the, the video footage afterwards. And you see one burning vehicle. The Iraqi fire department or whoever it is, hasn't even got there to put it out yet. There's a couple of vehicles that are still there that I guess were disabled back behind the Kia.

• 3:09:13Speaker 06

  And you don't see bodies littered all over the street like what it says. And if I remember correctly, that video was shot within just a few minutes after the, after the firefight itself. And so the thing that struck me odd, like I was saying about the statements is normally the shooters just do a statement. And then it's taken over there to the embassy. If they got questions, they call you. But later that evening, they wanted the whole team to write a statement. And I guess because of the CNN stuff. And so the whole team had to sit down and do their sworn statements, which are guarantee statements.

• 3:09:57Speaker 06

  It's a, says, I declare underneath a penalty of perjury that this can't be used against me as long as I tell the truth. And whatever the statement is, I don't remember the exact heading. I'm sure one of those can be found, the actual statement. And what you do then is you go in and it's a work statement. It's just like a cop. When a cop discharges a weapon on the streets here in the U.S. He's got to go in and he's got to give a work statement. And what he's telling his boss is because of an investigation is going to happen. And so he gives a statement. Well, it was weird that the whole team got called over. So we started doing our statements. Then we went to the embassy internal man in person.

• 3:10:42Speaker 06

  And then I know that we went back like three other times. And there was people that said that they didn't shoot that did. And.

• 3:10:55Speaker 06

  That caused a lot of friction because there was a grenade or two, I don't remember how many, that were shot. And there's only certain people within the motorcade that had grenades. I was one of them, Paul was one of them. And there's, uh, I don't remember who the others were, but there's unaccounted rounds that were spent. And so what created friction was the person that shot that said that they didn't, they started putting, pointing the finger, and it went from just a questioning to a more aggressive interrogation of where did this round come from? Well, if it didn't come from you and it didn't come from him, where do these rounds come

• 3:11:40Speaker 06

  from? It's like, I don't know, dude. I don't know what to tell you. And so after we all did our statements and we kept going back and forth in between the embassy and, uh, the man camp and answering investigators' questions and, you know, being honest. I haven't deviated. I've never said anything outside of my sworn statement and I stand by that. Because what I said right after the incident, whenever I wrote that statement out, everything was fresh in my mind. If I tried to give you a recap of anything that's today, there's been so much talk of

• 3:12:22Speaker 06

  everything else and the years that's gone by, I just couldn't give you an accurate statement because of all the things that we've heard in court, the, you know, in everything else, it's just not fresh. And so I know that after we gave those statements before we were indicted, that there was a State Department agent that actually leaked those to the press. So I know Paul's statement was on CNN. Part of my statement was on CNN. And so they took a protected document and leaked it to the general public.

• 3:13:02Speaker 06

  I don't recall how long after that until we got indicted itself.

• 3:13:06Speaker 04

  Um, I think, so the incident happened September sixteenth two thousand seven. Uh, I stayed until the end of my contract. I wasn't able to go out and work. And like he said, that that initial night when instead I could just call in the shooters, they called everybody over there. And the way they were interviewing everybody, there was definitely something a little different about that. Um, that firefight. So we uh, we kept going on with our days over there, working out, watching TV, hanging out, waiting to go back to work. And then it was about, uh, three weeks later that we received word that the FBI was gonna come over and investigate.

• 3:13:52Speaker 04

  So in my mind, the firefight was a minor engagement. So I invited them to come over and investigate. I'm like, you know what? If this is what it takes to resolve this thing, come on over and do it. So shortly after that, my contract was up, so I went home. And that was the first time I met with a lawyer. And I was so naive at the time, I guess you could say. Or I just didn't have any experience with the justice system. I didn't realize how serious this whole thing was about to get because one of the first things I asked my lawyer, I said, hey,

• 3:14:35Speaker 04

  when can I go back to work? And he said, listen, forget about Blackwater. And right there, I knew it was about to get serious. So it took about a year later when I've I got that final call where he said, listen, I was in Colombia at the time overseas and he said, you gotta come back. They're gonna indict five guys on the team. I don't know if it's you, but you better come back just in case. So I came back and sure enough, I was one of the five.

• 3:15:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's take a quick break and then, um, and then we'll get into what happened in court.

• 3:15:47Shawn Ryan?

  Alright guys, so now it's 2009, two years past the actual incident in the Tsar Square. And you're just now getting indicted, correct? Late 2008. Late 2009? 2008. 2008, so about a year and a half afterwards. So, press says there were seventeen killed, seventeen innocent civilians killed. And I believe twenty, twenty injured.

• 3:16:22Speaker 06

  Twenty-one, if I'm not mistaken. Something like that.

• 3:16:26Shawn Ryan?

  Now, they didn't send an FBI investigative team for, what, three weeks after the incident? So, I don't know what the hell they could have found three weeks after the incident. It had, it had, it had a circle, a major traffic circle in the middle of Baghdad. But they didn't show up for three weeks after the incident. And...

• 3:16:55Shawn Ryan?

  Let's start with what happened when they indicted you guys.

• 3:16:59Speaker 04

  Well.

• 3:17:00Shawn Ryan?

  How many of you got indicted and what were you being indicted for?

• 3:17:04Speaker 04

  Like I said, I got a call from my lawyer saying that he got word that five guys from the team were getting indicted and he wasn't absolutely sure it was me, but it was my best interest to come back to the United States just in case because I was one of the shooters. So, I came back to the States, I met with them and I figured out that it was going to be me, Dustin, Nick and Paul and a fifth guy on the team. And the first thing that popped

• 3:17:43Speaker 04

  in my mind was, well, why us and not the other shooters? And one of the reasons was because simply they took the reports, the protective reports that we wrote and used those against us to figure out who shot, first of all. In the case of one of our teammates, as soon as they started pressuring him and he figured out he was in the middle of a big investigation, he immediately flipped and started to cooperate with the government. And that was the first time where I caught word of that because, you know, in my mind,

• 3:18:27Speaker 04

  no one did anything wrong out there. And I was gonna fight and prove that I was innocent and I sure as hell wasn't gonna cooperate with a faulty investigation and throw my buddies under the bus. So, when I learned that there was a guy on the team willing to do that... I thought, well, maybe he feels like he did something wrong, which to this day, I don't believe he did anything wrong either. I just think that he's weak and he folded when they

• 3:19:05Speaker 04

  pressured him. And, you know, we hear a lot of stories about heroic deeds in combat and people getting medals of honor for jumping on grenades. And in his case, he's actually the total opposite of that. So instead of jumping on a grenade to save his teammates, he was willing to push us on the grenade to save himself. And the only problem with that is that we survived and I'm willing to tell everybody he's a coward.

• 3:19:48Shawn Ryan?

  Now, this specific person they're talking about, Ridgway, correct?

• 3:19:55Shawn Ryan?

  There was beef within the team between, nobody really liked him. He was kind of known as being late all the time. He didn't keep himself in shape. What else?

• 3:20:08Shawn Ryan?

  So there was, there was a grudge between him and the rest of the team, correct?

• 3:20:12Speaker 06

  Well, it's not that nobody didn't like him. It's, he used to hang out with us and would drink beer and scots or whiskey, whatever, in the evenings. And it's the work ethic. You know, it's, all right, we got a mission to do. You need to be on time to do the mission. Personally, he wasn't that bad of a dude. But when it came to work itself, that's where people had a problem with. It was job performance type stuff that was the issue.

• 3:20:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Can I just say one more thing? I would agree with Dustin. My problem with Ridgway is, is nothing stemming from what he did in Iraq or how he interacted on the team. I was friendly with him. We'd joke around, you know, he was a prankster or whatever. His job performance, like Dustin said,

• 3:21:12Speaker 05

  Subpar, but my main problem is what he did when he came back to the States. You know, so I just want to make that clear. It's not like we were at each other's throats overseas. We worked together, we got along fine. Did I agree with everything that he said or everything that he did? No, but you don't really get along with everybody on your team anyways. It wasn't a major problem. My problem is what he did when he came home, when he showed his real colors.

• 3:21:45Shawn Ryan?

  Well, when you say that he flipped and this investigation and the courts, there's so much shit that goes into this. I don't know if we can cover it all, but he reversed his statement, correct?

• 3:22:01Speaker 08

  Five times.

• 3:22:02Shawn Ryan?

  Five times.

• 3:22:04Speaker 08

  There's, I believe, five different FBI 302s.

• 3:22:07Speaker 05

  That's right. Initially, he said that

• 3:22:12Speaker 05

  he was taking enemy fire. He stuck with that. He stuck with that part of the story until like, I think like 2014. And

• 3:22:24Speaker 05

  he just they convinced him that he shouldn't have done what he did as far as people in vehicles. They convinced him that he did something wrong, like he should have done everything he could not to engage a few people that were in vehicles, but he maintained for years that he was taking contact from that bus stop where there was right after the incident, there were brass, pictures of brass taken at that exact location that he maintained that he was receiving enemy fire from.

• 3:22:56Shawn Ryan?

  Pictures of what kind of brass?

• 3:22:58Speaker 05

  AK-47 shell casings were scattered at the exact location.

• 3:23:03Speaker 05

  That he said he was taking fire from and he even that's even in his FBI 302s, right? The initial interviews, he's like, he admits that he was taking fire from here, but his lawyer got him to plead guilty to a count, both counts were like, had to do with vehicles, like that he shouldn't have engaged for some reason. So they basically convinced this guy that he did something wrong. And then they just kept chipping away at him over the years.

• 3:23:28Speaker 06

  It's the same place that I said I took fire from. It's, it's not just him saying that he took fire from there because I engaged threats in that area too. And so it wasn't him just saying, hey, I shot here, here and here. I don't know where all he shot. I've never read his statement, but I can tell you for sure where the AK shells were is where I took fire from 100%.

• 3:23:52Shawn Ryan?

  And there are photos of the shells at the exact location where you guys said that you took fire from.

• 3:24:00Speaker 05

  Yes, sir.

• 3:24:00Shawn Ryan?

  And then he reversed his statement, made a plea deal with the government, saying that, oh, I changed my mind. I was wrong. I wasn't taking, nobody took any fire.

• 3:24:11Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 3:24:13Speaker 06

  The government accepted his first statement saying that, okay, you took fire and we'll let you plead guilty on that. And then the government changed its strategy to, nobody took fire. And when they did that, it was, we're no longer going to give you the plea deal unless you say that you took fire or did not take fire. I apologize. And so he had to go back and say, all right, well, I never took any fire out there that day. I was never engaged at all. I never heard or seen anybody shoot at us.

• 3:24:48Shawn Ryan?

  They said there were 17, 17 bodies, 17 dead, correct? They only found two bodies. No autopsies were done. There was no attempts to match the bullets to the victims and the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police were infiltrated by Iranian influence, uh, Soleimani. So.

• 3:25:22Shawn Ryan?

  You guys gotta hold me out here with the chronological order here because there's so much stuff to cover.

• 3:25:28Speaker 05

  I got some things to say about what you just said about the autopsies, right? So they did pull bullets out of some of the bodies, but they didn't match ours. They were actually AK-47 rounds that they pulled out of some of the dead people that they were trying to put on my brothers. And then they lost those rounds that they had pulled out. So they actually did find bullets in some bodies that they had at the hospital where they supposedly took all these victims to. But when they tried to match them to our weapon systems, they found out that they were more consistent with AK-47 than our weapon systems. So they lost those rounds. They never brought them back to the States.

• 3:26:09Shawn Ryan?

  Who lost those rounds?

• 3:26:10Speaker 05

  The FBI.

• 3:26:11Shawn Ryan?

  The FBI just happened to...

• 3:26:13Speaker 05

  They left them in Iraq. That's right.

• 3:26:16Shawn Ryan?

  What about the drone that was over top? Because that seems like the drone could have proven everything.

• 3:26:22Speaker 05

  They deleted the footage.

• 3:26:24Shawn Ryan?

  They deleted the footage?

• 3:26:26Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So the way that it was presented is there's a beginning and there's an end, but there's no middle. And in the middle, that's the actual engagement. So they're trying to say that it was deleted as a normal course of business. How can the middle of a stream from a drone be deleted? It doesn't make any sense. Why would it be deleted?

• 3:26:56Shawn Ryan?

  So they had drone footage. Were you guys in any of the drone footage? Were your vehicles in any of the drone footage?

• 3:27:01Speaker 08

  Yes, we pulled in. And then there's just a black hole and then us being towed out.

• 3:27:06Shawn Ryan?

  So there's what roughly three to 10 minutes of drone footage pulled?

• 3:27:13Speaker 05

  The drone footage shows our vehicles in the circle. And then it's not till later on that it picks back up in the circle. And it's like, we're already gone out of the circle by then. So I don't know how much time had elapsed. It shows a lot of Iraqi police milling around and it shows a...

• 3:27:40Speaker 05

  That's all it shows, you know, there's, there's a big gap. And we were trying to track down that gap, my lawyers were, and the only answer they could give us was it was deleted as a normal course of business.

• 3:27:53Shawn Ryan?

  But they didn't delete the drone footage of you pulling and setting the vehicles under the circle. They didn't delete that.

• 3:28:00Speaker 05

  That's right. They've got pictures of us, there's still photos of us sitting in the circle. I don't know if it's satellite or drone, but there's, there's beginning drone footage, and there's a middle drone footage that's missing. And then they've got end drone footage, right? So at some point, they took the middle out. And we got them to confirm that yes, at one time, this was whole footage. Like a man from the geospatial agency testified. And he said, yes, at some point, this was complete footage. And so my lawyer was like, so you had it, and now you don't. And he's like, correct. And he's like, no further questions.

• 3:28:42Speaker 06

  And the footage leaving shows the big wet spot on the ground where the radiator was blown out of the vehicle that had to be towed out. So you can see all the radiator fluid. The, the big wet spot on the ground.

• 3:28:58Shawn Ryan?

  So there wasn't much time. They just, they literally just pulled the actual firefight.

• 3:29:04Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 3:29:04Speaker 04

  Right, because I mean, it was over 100 degrees. How long does a, a wet spot on the street last in Iraq?

• 3:29:12Speaker 05

  That's right. That's a good point.

• 3:29:15Shawn Ryan?

  US Army Captain took photos of the documented 762 shell casings. He reported to the FBI that Iraqis were cleaning the shell casings from the exact spot they took the fire from.

• 3:29:38Speaker 06

  That's, there's a picture, or there's a disc that had fifty-two pictures on it. And they turned over to us fifty pictures of the fifty-two. If I remember correctly, that's almost the exact number. And what happened was, is during trial, they let the Iraqis testify. And that's the, the captain that took those pictures. He gave those over to the investigators. Well, midway through trial, after everybody had gone home, they said, "Oh, we found these pictures. It's an honest mistake." Well, what that did for me is I'm like, "All right, cool. This shows exactly where I said I fired at.

• 3:30:22Speaker 06

  This shows that somebody was shooting at us." And then the next pictures that they took, those shell casings are gone. It's AK brass. And our judge said, "Well, it's old brass." How can the judge determine if it's old Chinese, Russian, whatever it is ammo that's been stored in the warehouse or anything else? And where's the forensic analysis of anybody saying that this is old brass, new brass? This stuff had been sitting out there for a week, a month, prior to our stuff. It's, I've never been a conspiracy theorist, but I mean, when you got a picture of one time that they took it, the brass is there.

• 3:31:05Speaker 06

  You got a picture the next time they took it, and the bottle cap that's still sitting on the ground is gone. I mean, that's convenient, just like the drone footage.

• 3:31:14Shawn Ryan?

  And this Army investigator had no, no communication with you guys? No relationship with you guys? You'd never met him? It wasn't, it wasn't like?

• 3:31:25Speaker 04

  No, I, I think what it was is, he was based relatively close to where it happened. So he heard the gunfire and he loaded up his, his platoon and, and headed out. So he was at the scene pretty quickly. And he, he started taking pictures of different things that he thought would be important if something happened there. And one of the things he took a picture was, of was AK-47 shell casings, exactly where everybody was seeing incoming fire. And basically what it comes down, down to is... It just shows from the very beginning, this guy was on the scene minutes after it happened. And there was evidence that supported us.

• 3:32:10Speaker 04

  And then as time elapsed, and even a day later, two days later, three weeks later, when the FBI shows up and tries to do an investigation in a unsecure crime scene, they didn't lock anything off. All the cars were moved. There was only one car that remained in the circle. And that was the white Kia, and that wasn't even secured. It was just pushed on the side of the street.

• 3:32:36Speaker 04

  Basically, what this all shows is from the first minute, those Iraqi police, under their Iraqi police chief, Colonel Ferris, was cleaning all the evidence that supported our theory of incoming fire. And basically piling on all the evidence that would make us look bad. So, you know, if it was five, five, six rounds, or shell casings on the ground, oh, you know, let's, let's show all this on this video and send it to CNN, or, oh, there's magazines over here. There's 203 rounds over here. It was just, it seemed like it was just rigged against us from the very start.

• 3:33:25Shawn Ryan?

  How long did the first, I mean, how long did the first case go on for, before you guys, before it got thrown out?

• 3:33:33Speaker 04

  It was about a year. So, we got indicted. We figured out that Ridgway was cooperating. And, you know, the four of us, we stood strong and said, you know, fuck no. We don't feel like we did anything wrong. We're gonna, we're gonna push this to trial. And we're gonna make you fucking prove that we're guilty. And if not, you gotta leave us the fuck alone. Cause we, at this point, a couple of years has passed, or a year and a half. We were already tired of dealing with this, you know, we, like we said in the very, very beginning, the firefight was not a major engagement. And as it ballooned from there and got media attention and just got, you know, exaggerated.

• 3:34:16Speaker 04

  We, we were just exhausted from this whole process. And we just want it resolved. So, we were fine with pushing it to trial. It was only later that I understood that. That's a bad idea. I don't care who you are. I don't care how innocent you are. If you go to trial, you have less than 1% chance of winning. And most people that are criminals, they understand that. And 90% of people plead guilty before they ever get to trial. We have never been in trouble. I've never had even a speeding ticket. So my experience in the justice system was basically zero before this.

• 3:34:59Speaker 04

  So I figured, I didn't do anything wrong. I'm gonna be cleared. I wanna go back to work. I wanna keep serving my country. Let's go to trial and get this resolved. So it was about a year after the indictment that we were filing, doing the final preparations for trial. And we were presenting different things that the prosecution was doing that was basically illegal. Things having to do with evidence, using our protected reports against us. Basically using those reports to figure out who shot. And we presented this all to the judge.

• 3:35:39Speaker 04

  And we all went home. The hearing for that, all the misconduct that the prosecution was doing, that took a couple of weeks. But our lawyer said, "Listen, don't get too excited. This type of stuff rarely works. Plan on going to trial." So it was about a month or so after that hearing. And you guys can talk about your personal experience when you heard it. But I was driving in New Hampshire, and I got a call from my lawyer. And back then, anytime I got a call from my lawyer, I got sick to my stomach. I was like, "Fucking shit, what now?"

• 3:36:22Speaker 04

  Sometimes I'd get an email. If I was overseas, because I lived in Colombia a lot of times, he would email me and say, "Call me ASAP." And I'd start sweating, because he never had good news. So he called me, and he told me that he had my dad on the other line. But he was, I guess obligated to tell me first that the judge had dropped all the charges against all of us. We were good to go. The prosecution got hammered because of all the illegal shit they were doing. And I can get my passport back. I can go overseas. I can do whatever the fuck I want.

• 3:37:02Speaker 04

  I'm good. And I thought this shit was over. And that was in late 2009. It was on January or December 31st, 2009. And I thought I was totally cleared. And here we are in 2021. We just barely resolved this.

• 3:37:24Shawn Ryan?

  I don't really understand why they hammered you guys, you know, at the beginning. I mean, I kind of, I know now the end game, and we'll get into that later. But, you know, just for an example, in 2005 alone, 17,000 civilians were killed by tribal and/or insurgent violence. And that's according to IraqiBodyCount.org. So, you know, they only found two bodies with you guys that were, you know, civilians. And we already went over that. That was a justified shoot. But...

• 3:38:01Speaker 06

  Well, the original body count, and I'm not real sure on the numbers, but I want to say it was around 10 people total that was reported to the US Embassy before everybody got a hold of it.

• 3:38:15Shawn Ryan?

  That was reported but was not found.

• 3:38:18Speaker 06

  That was reported.

• 3:38:19Shawn Ryan?

  And how they found the report, let's talk about that because the Iraqi police coroner, Kareem?

• 3:38:28Speaker 04

  Faris, yeah.

• 3:38:31Shawn Ryan?

  How did he ID the bodies? Let's talk about how that happened.

• 3:38:37Speaker 04

  Well, I'll go into it a little bit. Basically, we didn't find out his whole history until well down the road. We're talking seven years later. But basically,

• 3:38:53Speaker 04

  He was the main Iraqi investigator in Iraq. So immediately after, he was the guy that was in charge of gathering evidence, gathering up supposed witnesses, organizing statements, and basically doing everything having to do with the investigation. So when the FBI showed up three weeks after the fact, they went straight to him. And of course, he turned over all the evidence that he had collected. And what a coincidence, there was no AK-47 shell casings, even though you could walk down any street in Iraq in that timeframe and pick them up off the street. So he had none of that.

• 3:39:37Speaker 04

  All he had was 556 and he had 203 shell casings and he had everything that basically made us look bad. And then he had all the witness statements organized where you could tell that they were not written by that specific person because they used the same verbiage and the same language throughout all of them. And you have different people from all walks of life that may have been out there that have different levels of education, different vocabulary. But for some reason, in these witness statements, they were all very similar. And one of the things that he did to speed up his investigation

• 3:40:22Speaker 04

  was he basically made an infomercial. And he put it out on Iraqi TV. And he said, "Listen, if you were in this area, if you or anyone else you know was involved in this, come to the police station and make a statement." And in my mind, that was basically...

• 3:40:45Speaker 04

  Promoting people to go down there and make a claim to get possible payment from the US Embassy or some other benefit from the United States as far as asylum or whatever.

• 3:40:59Shawn Ryan?

  Was that in the commercials that they would be paid?

• 3:41:01Speaker 04

  I'm not sure it was in there, but I think it was implied and.

• 3:41:06Speaker 08

  There was one particular witness that sat on the stand and actually testified that the police chief had told him, he said, if I tell somebody to go left, they go left. If I tell somebody to go right, they go right.

• 3:41:16Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:41:16Speaker 08

  Put down on paper what I tell you.

• 3:41:18Speaker 06

  And that same police chief said, hey, if Blackwater pay us X amount of dollars per person and we'll make all the witnesses go away, there won't be any to testify.

• 3:41:32Speaker 04

  So that can basically explain why, right after the incident, the body count is disputed, okay? Was it four, five, six, whatever the number was, it grew over time. Wouldn't they know, pretty much within 24 hours, how many people were involved in this? That commercial put it out across Iraq to basically come down and make a claim and you can possibly benefit from it. And we'll get into this later, but when we finally went to trial,

• 3:42:11Speaker 04

  uh, we, we figured out that that Colonel Ferris had links to two terrorist organizations. And that only later did the government try to distance themselves from him. After all the things, they, they worked hand in hand with this guy for seven years and he was their main guy. And then when it became a little bit public or unsealed that he was a possible terrorist, uh, they didn't want to work with him anymore.

• 3:42:41Shawn Ryan?

  They had video of the US government finding 762 by 39 shells. The US Attorney, Assistant US Attorney hid those photos that you were talking about for seven years of the shell casings at the, I believe it was the bus stop that they were shooting at you guys from. Hid those photos for seven years and there were no repercussions for withholding the evidence on the Assistant US Attorney's side. Was that the first indictment?

• 3:43:10Speaker 06

  Yes, the, no, that was the second indictment, but the judge said that it was a harmless error. And that's how he ruled on that. Because I mean, at that point, you can't cross-examine a witness if they're not in the country.

• 3:43:29Shawn Ryan?

  They have video of gunmen dressed as police changing their shirts and walking away after the gunfight. Did you guys know that?

• 3:43:39Speaker 04

  I didn't know that. I just knew that we had guys in the Little Bird helicopters that witnessed that too. So I knew it was a real thing.

• 3:43:47Shawn Ryan?

  There's actually footage of that. Yep, this says that there was an actual video from pilot.

• 3:43:54Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, and there is a ton of evidence here that was not released that was in your guys' favor.

• 3:44:06Speaker 04

  One thing that people have to keep in mind, when we were trying to prepare for trial throughout the years, we only have access to what the prosecution gives us access to. So it's not like our defense team could fly to Iraq and put in a subpoena and talk to random witnesses and possibly get somebody that was gonna say, "Oh yeah, those Blackwater guys we're getting fired upon." They weren't allowed to do that. This is a very unconventional trial. It's never happened

• 3:44:48Speaker 04

  before like this. So, the FBI team and the prosecution went overseas and they gathered up the people that Colonel Ferris gave them on a platter and they didn't dig and try to find people that supported our side of the story. So, they flew those same people, including the guy that was linked to two terrorist organizations, they flew him over to Washington DC to testify in front of a grand jury and, you know, he could do it, stay in a nice hotel and take a picture in front of the White House. And, we didn't have the freedom to go and actually proactively find people that could support our side of

• 3:45:30Speaker 04

  the case. So, from the very get-go, it was one-sided. It was, it was a, the deck was stacked in their favor and they knew it.

• 3:45:39Speaker 06

  All the vehicles that were supposed to be there, that had anything to do with the incident, was moved to a military base. And if I'm not mistaken, it's the same paper run, infomercial, whatever the, the statement was done, that said, "Hey, if you had a part in this, if your vehicle was there, if you were there, come in." Well, they moved all that stuff to a military base. And, our attorneys actually requested permission to go to Iraq with a forensic team of their own and do a trajectory analysis, analysis, to do just any type of analysis on that, the vehicles itself. Well, those vehicles were later deemed

• 3:46:23Speaker 06

  that they got crushed or lost or something and they were denied the right to go and actually look at the vehicles theirself.

• 3:46:30Shawn Ryan?

  So, the case, the first time you guys got indicted, the case was dismissed for all four of you. Ridgeway flipped. He said, "You guys weren't taking incoming fire. They couldn't have enough, they didn't find enough evidence to convict you, any of you guys." So, they dismissed the entire case, right? How long was it between that case and the next one where you were re-indicted for the second time? How much time has passed?

• 3:46:57Speaker 04

  It took about two years to re-indict us.

• 3:47:01Shawn Ryan?

  So you guys were, you thought everything was fine for two years? Then Biden comes on TV, and what happens?

• 3:47:11Speaker 04

  Right, so when we got the news that we got the case dismissed on December 31st, 2009, I really thought I was cleared, I was celebrating, was gonna go on with my life and put this behind me. And it was about a week later, less than a week later, somebody sent me a link to a video of Vice President Joe Biden in Iraq, addressing the media. And they were questioning him on our case because the Iraqis were outraged about the whole incident, mainly because of the way it was portrayed in the media.

• 3:47:53Speaker 04

  And Vice President Biden basically said, "Listen, dismissal is not an acquittal. We will appeal this and they will be prosecuted." So when I heard that, my heart kinda sunk because when the Vice President says you're gonna be prosecuted, you can damn sure believe that you're gonna get prosecuted. So that happened, so technically, we were cleared. But we knew that the government was gonna appeal that dismissal and possibly bring it back. But I still had confidence that it would never make it to the inside of a courtroom again.

• 3:48:32Speaker 04

  So it took a good two years before they reversed the dismissal and indicted us for a second time.

• 3:48:42Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, so the first case got dismissed, you guys are free. Then Joe Biden comes out, he announces he's going to re-indict you again. And this is where it gets extremely complicated. What I'd like to do is bring in an expert, Gina Keating, the investigative journalist who's been following this for six or seven years now. And so I'd like to get her in here, get her take. She's gonna give us chronological order on exactly what happened.

• 3:49:15Shawn Ryan?

  And then when you guys come back, we'll talk about what happened when you got the verdict.

• 3:49:43Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Gina, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to come down here. We tried to film this and it got a little confusing. There was a lot of emotion. And I don't think anybody knows this case better than you, other than maybe the attorneys. So I just want to say thank you for coming down here and helping us out to get this stuff squared away.

• 3:50:11Speaker 07

  Oh, it's my pleasure. It's nice to be able to use this knowledge again because I accumulated it over five years of covering the case. So, yeah.

• 3:50:20Shawn Ryan?

  You're the expert. Your podcast that you produced was incredible. And it was really hard to find anything that informative that wasn't typical media bullshit. And so it really helped me put this whole thing together.

• 3:50:38Speaker 07

  Thank you. Yeah, it was, I wouldn't say fun to do, but it was really rewarding because we finally got to tell the story of how this could actually happen in the United States to American citizens in the US judicial system.

• 3:50:53Shawn Ryan?

  One thing that I would like to bring up just for the audience, you know, with everything that's going on today in politics and in our country is when I made the phone call, I had no idea that you were a liberal. And I think the first thing that you said to me is, "I just want you to know, I'm a liberal." And which actually I think is great because it brings a new light to this. And it shows that regardless of what everybody sees in the media today, that there are things that...

• 3:51:33Shawn Ryan?

  Democrats and Republicans can come together on for the greater good. And you just, you don't see that anymore anywhere in the media. And so when I get the opportunity, I want to, I want to bring that out and tell people and show people that it's possible that we can still work together, so.

• 3:51:53Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, I mean, absolutely. It was so obvious to me that this is one of the basic things that we all need to agree on is that the criminal justice system needs to work for everybody. There needs to be a presumption of innocence regardless of what your job is or who you work for or who you support politically. And one of the reasons that I kept going on this case for so long and I was so passionate about it is a little selfish, which is I don't ever want this to happen to me or anybody else who I love. And it was such a broadening experience for me because I grew up in a big city. I worked in Los Angeles for a long time. That's most of my media experience.

• 3:52:32Speaker 07

  And I was covering, you know, four red states, small-town guys and their families and really getting to know them and the reason that they think the way that they do and what they expected of the justice system. And that's something that we all agree on regardless of where we're from. So it's really important that we stand up for each other, especially in this kind of thing. It's the most basic thing that we all deserve.

• 3:53:00Shawn Ryan?

  You're a major reason on how these guys got pardoned. And you and the team that you put together on the podcast, you got Trump's attention. And, um, and congratulations because it worked. And, but before we kind of dive into the nitty-gritty stuff that happened in court and all the evidence withholding. How did you get involved in this whole thing?

• 3:53:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's a really kind of funny story and I'll, I'll tell you the whole thing and you know, you can keep it in or not, but I had this shih tzu named Jessica Simpson, who's one of my favorite actresses. I just think she's really cool. And she would go, went outside one day. I mean, she never did this. She got out in the front yard of the house where I was living in Texas with my boyfriend, and she dragged a newspaper in and she'd never done this. And we lived in a really blue collar neighborhood. Not a lot of people got newspapers. So I was like, this is weird. I wonder who's this is. And I just sort of ignored it.

• 3:54:07Speaker 07

  And then over the next few weeks, like she would just every once in a while, get out and drag a paper to our door. And so my boyfriend just picked it up, you know, and he would read it. And one of the times that he dragged, she dragged the paper in, it was the story of the Raven 23 guys getting sentenced in 2015. And he saw Dustin Hurd's name and he said, "I wonder if this is my good friend's kid." But he lives in Maryville, Tennessee, and he said, "But I think this is him." And he said, "There is no way this kid did this. There is no way that he did this."

• 3:54:49Speaker 07

  And he was really upset about it. And you know, obviously I'm an investigative reporter. And he said, "You've got to do something about this." And I said, "No way dude. I'm a business reporter. I don't know anything about foreign policy or the military. I was totally against the Iraq war and I'm not touching this." But he kept bugging me about it. And a few months later, when we went to, back to his hometown, Alny, Texas, we met Stacy Hurd, Dustin's dad, and my boyfriend pushed me, you know, on him and said, "She'll, you know, she can help you with this." And I said, "All right, give me the case file because I've actually done a lot of reporting on, on criminal cases. I've won some awards, investigative awards.

• 3:55:34Speaker 07

  So just give me the case transcript and I'll look at it." So I got it over Christmas and I went over it in 2016 for a few months. And I looked at it and I thought, man, there are a lot of irregularities in this case. There's things that I would have questioned, things that should have resulted in a new trial. Prosecutors had hidden some evidence or, you know, refused or failed to turn it over when they should have. There are just some things here that that really don't seem right. But I'm not a lawyer, so I wasn't sure. And about this same time, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers wrote an amicus brief supporting these guys and saying that they should never have

• 3:56:18Speaker 07

  gone to trial at all, that the case was rife with prosecutorial vindictiveness and misconduct, that the judge had made fatal errors, that there were precedents that were being made in this case that were dangerous for civil liberties. So I then thought, okay, I'm not crazy. There is something really wrong with this case. And that's when I made the decision, okay, I'm gonna go and visit these guys in prison. And if they are good guys and I feel comfortable with this, then I'm gonna take this and try to get some coverage for it or write something. I didn't know what I was gonna do, but that's how I got involved.

• 3:56:57Shawn Ryan?

  So you picked it up pretty much right after they went to prison?

• 3:57:01Speaker 07

  Right, yeah. So they had, they got sentenced, I think it was October of 2015. And then I heard about it, maybe it was April, I heard about it sometime in that same timeframe, like days after they got sentenced, because we saw it in the paper. So it took me about eight months, I would say, to actually convince myself to do it.

• 3:57:23Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. And you dedicated, you pretty much put just about everything on hold and gave damn near six years of your career to get these guys.

• 3:57:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I'll, there were times when it was, like, I went to graduate school during those years also and, you know, had some family things that I had to take care of. But, yeah, I mean, I wrote, I wrote my Netflix book, I did a movie. But this was always on the back burner. I was always trying to find some way to get some publicity for this. But it wasn't clear exactly how that was gonna happen because there was such animus against these guys. You know, they were monsters, they were war criminals and all this stuff. So it, it seemed like a real losing battle. And in fact, I had, you know, colleagues of mine, and in fact, my agent, when I went to him, said, "Don't touch this. Nobody wants to hear about

• 3:58:18Speaker 07

  this. No one's interested in this anymore. Just let it lie. It isn't gonna work." And I just, I could never, I, I couldn't interest anyone in it, you know? And so, and that was the really difficult part, was there were a lot of months when I would be talking to them, either through email, or they would call me from prison. We would try to figure out, you know, what can we do? How can we get some, how can we get some light brought on this case? Because it's, as it unfolded, there were more and more crimes that were committed against them in, in the course of these three trials that took place. I mean, the prosecution was shameless. They just kept violating their rights and nobody seemed to care. That was the most

• 3:59:02Speaker 07

  frustrating thing.

• 3:59:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, let's move into, let's move right into it. So, I'm gonna use this report that you sent to kind of guide me here, because this case is so complicated. But, just before we get started, I just wanna let the audience know that we're gonna be, Gina's going to prompt us if there's actually emails, or documents, videos. Everything is linked below in the description. So if you don't believe us, you don't have to take our fucking word for it. You can go to the description and download the documents yourself. And we'll be splicing videos in, of evidence throughout the interview.

• 3:59:48Speaker 07

  Right.

• 3:59:49Shawn Ryan?

  So, I'm gonna let you pick it off.

• 3:59:53Speaker 07

  Okay, so, um, just to talk about how, you know, how the case got started. Um, so the most important thing to remember here is this case dragged on for thirteen years. Um, it was brought before, uh, the first judge in two thousand eight. That's when the first indictments came out. And it was, um, dismissed by the first judge to hear of it in, uh, on January thirty first of two thousand nine. Um, at that time, uh, the Obama administration was very interested in getting, uh, Nuri Al-Maliki to be elected, um, as prime minister because they felt that they could work with him. But his big beef, when the Blackwater guys were pardoned,

• 4:00:37Speaker 07

  was, you know, I need somebody to blame for all the violence that's going on here. And you just let these guys go and I need a win. I need to not look soft with the Americans. Um, so you need to bring this case back. Um, it was two days after the judge threw the case out. Not on a technicality, but because the prosecutors had violated their constitutional rights so thoroughly that the judge said, you can't bring this case, it's dirty. And, um, and so Hillary Clinton wrote an email to her, um, second in command at the State Department and said, what do we got to do to bring this case back?

• 4:01:19Speaker 07

  And we know that because there were emails leaked from Hillary Clinton's email server that we found, uh, that show exactly that. So that's one document that you can link to is, is Hillary Clinton talking to Harold Cohen, saying, what do we have to do to bring this back? Um, at the time, the State Department, or I'm sorry, the embassy in Baghdad, were writing these cables to Washington DC saying, oh, my gosh, Iraq is going crazy. Baghdad is going crazy. They're so angry that this case was dropped. We need to do something about this. And the three main things that they were upset about were, that they were threatening to do was, kick all of our troops out of the country. This is in two thousand, early two thousand ten.

• 4:02:03Speaker 07

  They wanted to kick all of the contractors out of the country who were protecting US diplomats. And they were talking about nullifying some leases with ExxonMobil. All of those things are in the diplomatic cables that I gave you and people can read them and they can see all of the things that were coming out of Baghdad at the time. The imams were upset about it. The Iraqi Congress was upset about it. Everyone was up in arms about this and blaming these guys and saying that they were getting away with murdering Iraqi civilians. So, this is, if you look at these, it's very obvious where the impetus to try these guys came from.

• 4:02:46Speaker 07

  So for the rest of that year, they went to grand juries trying to come up with a theory of how you can put these guys in prison for a combat-related incident. And that's difficult because if you're going to charge someone with manslaughter or murder, they can't be trying to defend themselves, which is what was happening. There was evidence that is, you can now see, we have a video that we gave you showing army investigators looking at shell casings on top of a bus stop that show that insurgents were shooting at these guys. I think they probably described that there were probably eight to 10 insurgents in the square. And they, when they returned from the incident,

• 4:03:28Speaker 07

  told the State Department investigators exactly where they were. The next day, the State Department went out and found shell casings in the places where they had designated. And the State Department said, "This is a clean shoot. There is no problem with this."

• 4:04:17Speaker 07

  But because of all of these things that were happening politically, they had to go back and reinvestigate it. And, you know, and then they came up with this ridiculous theory that they had. So they go to trial in 2014 and they are convicted. They, the prosecutors bring over the largest number of foreign witnesses ever in any US trial to testify. There was a failure of the defense to challenge the number of victims. So you had all of these people coming to testify on the stand in Washington DC.

• 4:04:57Speaker 07

  And it was, I'm sure, extremely difficult for a jury to rule against these people. I mean, some of them definitely had lost loved ones and had seen horrible carnage. But it's not even really clear whether all of that occurred in Nussers Square, because there were two other incidents that happened that same day. So this was such a flawed investigation that, you know, it just was kind of like a show trial.

• 4:05:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Let's start on this. You have, you've written a great timeline here.

• 4:05:35Speaker 07

  Oh, okay.

• 4:05:35Shawn Ryan?

  And I want to go kind of start from the top. Why did the government indict these men in 2008, but wait almost seven years to try them in 2014?

• 4:05:47Speaker 07

  Okay, so as I, as I said, the first judge to hear this case was Judge Ricardo Urbina, who was a Clinton appointee. And he looked at the case and he said, "No." You know, you, not only do you have some techn- technical issues here with using their statements against them, but you don't have a case. You, you violated their constitutional rights multiple times, so I'm throwing this case out, you can't bring it. So, then it goes to the appeals court, and as I described, you know, the appeals, the appeals court comes back and says, "Yeah, you can try them."

• 4:06:30Speaker 07

  So, all this political stuff is happening at the same time, but it takes such a long time for them to formulate a new theory of the case, to get witnesses like Jeremy Ridgeway, who was their main witness, and Matt Murphy, and some of these other guys, to change their stories and do plea deals, that it took that long to re-indict them and bring them back. And at the same time, the FBI and, and the DOJ was exerting an immense amount of pressure on them, just to plead guilty and testify against each other, because they didn't want to bring this case to trial, because they had no case. So that's why it took so long.

• 4:07:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Just, before we kind of get into all the corruption and evidence that was withheld, they weren't even allowed to try them, or it got extremely tricky, because they had the Military Extra-Territorial Judicial Act.

• 4:07:34Speaker 07

  Right.

• 4:07:35Shawn Ryan?

  And, so basically what that is saying is they couldn't, that was saying they couldn't try them in Iraq, correct? So they had to bring them home.

• 4:07:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's sort, something like that. Okay, so when, they were caught in a very gray zone. All of them are veterans, and had this happened while they were in their respective services, they would have, you know, come home and been tried in, in the military justice system. But because they were civilian contractors, there was an order that Paul Bremer made when he was in charge of Iraq when we first invaded, that said that any civilian contractors or civilian employees of the United States had to come back to the United States to be tried. But...

• 4:08:27Speaker 07

  There was a question as to whether or not they could be tried under MEJA. Because that applied to defense-related contractors.

• 4:08:39Shawn Ryan?

  DoD contractors.

• 4:08:40Speaker 07

  Exactly. So, but the Blackwater was working for the Department of State. They were protecting diplomats. And that was what their job was, because it was so violent in Iraq. There was a lot of overlap with their mission. They would actually get called out to help the DoD on different combat missions. And so because of this, the DOJ wanted to try them under MEJA. Now, they argued, no, that's not right. We shouldn't have to be charged under that. We should just have civilian, you know, civilian contractors under the State Department. But they lost that.

• 4:09:22Speaker 07

  The appellate court said that they actually were on the defense mission, even though the number-two guy testified for the defense and said, "No, I am number-two at the Defense Department. They weren't working for us. They're State Department contractors."

• 4:09:38Shawn Ryan?

  What's interesting is, I think I was talking to Nick offline at dinner the night before I interviewed them. And how they kind of went around that is they saved an Army convoy that got hit. And so they saved active-duty service members' lives. And they used that against them so that they could try them under MEJA.

• 4:10:04Speaker 07

  Right. So, no good deed goes unpunished. I mean, they did that a lot. There were several, leading up to the Nasser Square incident, they were called out a lot to support the Army. So, that just makes it even more galling that they're out there doing an active-duty combat mission, not just protecting diplomats. And they get...

• 4:10:24Shawn Ryan?

  They get hammered.

• 4:10:25Speaker 07

  Hammered for that. It was so hypocritical. It's really hard.

• 4:10:30Speaker 07

  To believe.

• 4:10:31Shawn Ryan?

  So, kind of moving on about the next kind of block we have here is how, why did this take so damn long, which we've kind of covered, but um.

• 4:10:43Speaker 07

  No, it was three, don't forget, it was three trials. So we had the 2014 trial, all of them were convicted. And then they went to the appellate court, and the appellate court said, okay, Nick Slatten should be tried separately, and so he gets a new trial, and these other guys need to be resentenced because this gun charge that you convicted them on does not apply to them. So, that dragged on because the judge was waiting for Nick to be retried. They retried him one time, and the jury found, hung, and they didn't get a conviction. And then they went back again and convicted him three months later. Then the guys were able

• 4:11:23Speaker 07

  to appeal, so, or were resentenced. So, it just, it was horrible. It was so bad of the government to do this. Thirteen years on those families, thirteen years on those guys. It was absolutely a waste of resources.

• 4:11:38Shawn Ryan?

  Nick took a polygraph.

• 4:11:41Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 4:11:42Shawn Ryan?

  And, so, before, not just any polygraph, according to Nick, the top polygrapher from FBI had recently retired and was now, had kind of started his own private business. So they hired him to give Nick the polygraph, and it sounded like the gentleman that gave him the polygraph was, had convinced himself that this guy, that Nick was guilty, and, and had kind of verbalized in that, I'm going to find out that you're lying. And, so Nick takes polygraph, passes the polygraph, and um.

• 4:12:25Shawn Ryan?

  The guy apologized to him, saying, "You didn't do this."

• 4:12:30Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. I mean, that polygraph was kind of like the last desperate act because it was... There was no... First of all, there was no evidence that Nick did what he was accused of. And in fact, the government decided not to include him in the early stages of the case because they didn't have any evidence that he did anything wrong. So after the case was dropped, they decided, you know, we kind of want to put him back in. But they had let the statute of limitations on manslaughter charges expire against him. So they couldn't file really any charges against him, except murder, because that doesn't have a statute of limitations.

• 4:13:14Speaker 07

  So they put him back in the case with this ridiculous theory that somehow, out of the porthole of one of the vehicles, that he was able to shoot someone that wasn't even in the range of his rifle. And that he shot this white driver of the white Kia, even though Paul Slough and every other team member on Raven 23 said Paul Slough did it. Paul Slough made four sworn statements. "I'm the one who shot the Kia driver." Everybody said Paul Slough shot the Kia driver. The FBI told the father of the Kia driver that Paul Slough shot his son.

• 4:13:58Speaker 07

  In fact, the FBI tried to bring the father back to the United States to testify against Nick in his second and third trial. And the guy said, "No, we have that email, too." He told the FBI, "I will not come back and testify against Nick Slatten. You told me for seven years that it was Paul Slough that shot my son. I won't come and participate in this lie." So I don't know what more you need. They had no forensic evidence. In fact, it wasn't even physically possible for him to have shot the Kia driver. You have Paul Slough saying, "I shot it," in all the sworn statements that he made, contemporaneous and for years after that. No one said Nick Slatten

• 4:14:44Speaker 07

  shot the Kia driver, except for the prosecutors. So this attempt to exonerate himself...

• 4:14:53Speaker 07

  And to bring some kind of sanity into these proceedings was him going to the polygrapher and saying, can you just show I'm not lying? But that failed too, because they decided to prosecute him again.

• 4:15:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What? So how did this? How did they just? Because the... This gets so frustrating, uh, because of... How did they just completely dismiss the fact that Paul was the one that shot the white Kia? And now they're bringing it on to Nick? And they used their statements that they made at the end, which was apparently also illegal, uh, to use those? So what happened? They had Ridgeway, who flipped his entire story, who said all along that he was... That they had...

• 4:15:48Shawn Ryan?

  They had taken contact, they were receiving fire, and that it was self-defense.

• 4:15:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:15:55Shawn Ryan?

  Then Ridgeway changes his story. How did... To where that they shot first, how did they switch? How did they take? How did this happen?

• 4:16:07Speaker 07

  I mean, this is the most difficult thing to understand, because it's not like it... You know, nobody knew about this case. The national and international media were covering this case. Um, nothing was done in secret. They just literally, between the time that Judge Erbinan was... Was threw the case out, to when they brought it back and this other judge named Judge Lambert took it over, they simply decided, okay, we're gonna go to a grand jury and instead of letting people testify, the witnesses testify to what they saw, we're gonna write these summaries, and the summaries are going to be whatever we say they are. So we're gonna take all the witness statements and we're gonna edit them, just to say all

• 4:16:51Speaker 07

  the stuff that we want them to say. They kept out everything that was exculpatory towards the guys. All the evidence that they were shot at was removed from these summaries that were presented to the grand jury. They were threatening witnesses. They were hiding evidence from the witnesses who, like Jeremy Ridgeway, who testified, ended up testifying against the guys. So those witnesses felt like, okay, I'm going to be railroaded. I might as well just fall in line here. That was the decision that Ridgeway apparently met, made, because he didn't know he, that, you know, there were shell casings that were found. There were photographs that the prosecutors had.

• 4:17:34Speaker 07

  There was plenty of evidence showing that this was a gun battle and not some kind of freak out by these guys, like the prosecutors were saying. They just completely made up this theory of the case and they shopped it to the grand jury and they got away with it. And there's a wonderful document that I'll give you, which is, was written by a former prosecutor who was representing this guy named Donald Ball, who was also in the case for a while. But this lawyer said to the prosecutors, hey, you better watch out because if you keep doing this, I'm going to report you for misconduct. Because he, they, he saw what they had presented to the grand jury and he said, every single

• 4:18:19Speaker 07

  witness that testified that there was shooting, even the Iraqi witnesses, you've removed that from what you presented to the grand jury. This cannot be right. But by this time, they have this new judge, Judge Lambert, Royce Lambert, who, for some reason, just decides to go along with whatever these prosecutors want. He allows this case to go forward, even with these flawed indictments. And he just kind of went along with the story. When the prosecutors would come to court and they'd get caught not bringing in evidence that the defense eventually found out about, he'd just say, series of harmless errors. So the judge was also complicit in this. And it's not just me saying this.

• 4:19:01Speaker 07

  The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also questioned this judge and his rulings, found him very vindictive, found him violating the men's civil rights. So it was very, it was very disturbing and it happened in broad daylight and no one in the media questioned this, which was very upsetting to me.

• 4:19:25Shawn Ryan?

  You brought up some interesting points in your document about this judge who also had something happen to him in Vietnam.

• 4:19:34Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 4:19:35Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to dive into that a little bit?

• 4:19:36Speaker 07

  Sure. So, that was another thing that was really disturbing to me because when I was trying to get people interested in this story, they would say, "Well, how come the judge is allowing this?" And I thought, "You know what? I gotta figure out who this guy is." So I went and did a good investigation on him. He's a career federal employee. He was a JAG in Vietnam for a year. He went in country. And there is an incident that he talks about a lot that he seems to be very proud of, which I find incredibly hypocritical. And that is that he went into a village to investigate a case in which some Rangers

• 4:20:20Speaker 07

  were accused of capturing some Viet Cong guys and slitting them open and stuffing their bodies with rice. And this obviously is a war crime. They were caught talking about it in a bar. So, he was charged with representing them. And he flew into the place where the bodies were supposed to be. But on the way down, the landing, the helicopter started having engine trouble. He freaked out and grabbed an automatic weapon and started firing into the jungle towards the village, just firing like crazy because he thought that they were being shot at. And they have this hard landing and he realizes,

• 4:21:05Speaker 07

  "Ha ha, nothing was happening. It was just, it was just engine trouble." So, that to me was so incredibly hypocritical that he could sit on the stand and accuse these guys of freaking out and losing their cool. And, you know, they're good men, but they just lost their nerve. Well, that's what happened to you. You ought to know about that. But that isn't what happened to these men, and there's no evidence that they did this. And the other thing about that story that was so hypocritical was that he brags that he wasn't allowed, that he won that case in favor of the Rangers because they couldn't find the victims' bodies. There were no autopsies performed in this case. None.

• 4:21:50Speaker 07

  And so here you have this major case with not one single autopsy performed.

• 4:21:56Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:21:57Speaker 07

  So how do you, how are you proud of that?

• 4:22:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:22:01Speaker 07

  You know, that you're putting these veterans in prison with no evidence whatsoever.

• 4:22:07Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about all of the evidence withholding, starting with maybe the first thing, which I think is the rounds.

• 4:22:18Speaker 07

  Right. Okay, so let me get to the page of that, that page, because there's a lot to go through. There is so, this was so incredibly angering, because this didn't just happen, um, you know, again, there were three trials, so this was a constant element of this case. So in the very first case, um, involving all four of them, there were two major Brady violations. And that's a violation when the prosecution is aware that it has exculpatory evidence,

• 4:22:52Speaker 07

  and doesn't turn it over. So the first thing was, there were photographs taken right after the incident, within minutes of Raven 23 exiting Nasser Square. There was an Army captain named Peter Decaro, who was at a base right near Nasser Square, and he heard the gunshots and came out with a camera to, um, to take photographs to see what had happened. And he also interviewed several of the Iraqi civilians who were walking around in the square at the time. Those civilians described hearing a gunfight. They described seeing gunmen who were shooting at the convoy.

• 4:23:37Speaker 07

  They, he took, they showed, here's, here are the shell casings. So Decaro took pictures of these shell casings, handed over the notes that he took of his interviews with these Iraqi civilians, handed over the, the, uh, film to the Army investigators.

• 4:23:58Speaker 07

  And they were lost. They were lost until halfway through the first trial when the prosecutors magically found them. And the witness statements were lost, were lost forever.

• 4:24:09Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have those pictures by chance?

• 4:24:11Speaker 07

  Yes, I do.

• 4:24:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we'll put them on screen here real quick.

• 4:24:17Speaker 07

  Okay. And we also have, at the time, Army investigators went to the square and took video of this. So we also have video of that, of that investigation where you can see the AK-47 shells.

• 4:24:56Speaker 07

  So that was one. The second thing was during the trial, there was a witness who was very important, who was a traffic cop who was in a kiosk real near the square. And he was right, the closest policeman to the Kia that was shot. And in his testimony during the trial, he testified that the, the driver was shot and like immediately coming into the square. And that, you know, he ran to the car and he was trying to get the mother out and then she was shot and, and he had to retreat because of,

• 4:25:36Speaker 07

  there was so much gunfire. Well, so the guys get convicted and they do something called victim impact statements, which allow people to tell the judge, you know, this is how this affected me and, and this is why you should sentence this person harshly or whatever. So this guy writes a statement that says,

• 4:25:57Speaker 07

  Well, I wasn't actually, I didn't really run up to the car. I actually was so afraid that I stayed in my kiosk. But I could hear the, the boy and his mother in the Kia talking about what to do. Because they were being shot at. And this is completely different from what he testified to. And it proves that Nick Slatten could not have killed that driver. Because prosecution's theory was that he drove into the square, shot the driver so that he could set off this massacre of Iraqi civilians. So clearly, you know, there's a huge discrepancy in this guy's testimony.

• 4:26:37Speaker 07

  That was not disclosed to the defense until about five days before sentencing. And it was buried at the bottom of this massive pile of victim impact statements. They didn't tell anybody. And so when the defense found it, they moved for a new trial and the judge said no.

• 4:26:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:26:57Speaker 07

  So that was the first two in that, in the first trial.

• 4:27:02Shawn Ryan?

  Just for, before we move on with the, for everybody listening, the white Kia was, it did wind up being two innocent people.

• 4:27:11Speaker 07

  Exactly. But the, the other thing that Peter Deckero, the captain, army captain, who testified and who took pictures of the shell casings and talked to the witnesses. The other thing that he said that was so critical that didn't get introduced at trial was that these Iraqi witnesses said, "The white Kia punched forward like a car bomb." And, you know, as they, I'm sure, told you, they had received a security briefing that day saying, "Look out for a white Kia. It might be a car bomb." So there was perfect, it was very tragic, but there was a reason for them. They had a reasonable belief because of the way that this vehicle was behaving, that it was a car bomb.

• 4:27:56Shawn Ryan?

  They, it was a justified engagement. And I believe the court even said that that was a justified engagement, correct?

• 4:28:05Speaker 07

  At one point, yes.

• 4:28:06Shawn Ryan?

  And so, just for everybody listening, the whole reason that was a justified shoot is because that's...

• 4:28:17Shawn Ryan?

  That's their tactics. They load up a car, nine times out of 10, it's a white Corolla or a white Kia.

• 4:28:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:28:25Shawn Ryan?

  And there's signs everywhere. They went through the use of force and the car just kept coming, coming, coming, coming. If it doesn't stop and you're going through use of force, then you have to protect yourself because it may be a car bomb. And there was a V-Bid, was it a V-Bid or regular ID that just went off?

• 4:28:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, like 20 minutes earlier.

• 4:28:51Shawn Ryan?

  20 minutes before they came out.

• 4:28:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it was, it was perfectly reasonable for them to believe that this was an attack on them. And like I said, Iraqi witnesses interviewed by Peter Deckero also believed that it was a car bomb. So, you know, I mean, you, the thing is, the standard for self-defense was met.

• 4:29:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:29:17Speaker 07

  And they should never have been tried. It, it, they shouldn't have. Anyway, so...

• 4:29:22Shawn Ryan?

  And as we talked earlier, these guys only come out, they only leave the green zone if there's an engagement and they need to, and somebody needs backup, somebody needs them to come get them out of a, out of a gunfight. And so they're not just rolling around town looking around for stuff.

• 4:29:39Speaker 07

  Right, exactly. Okay, so I'll, let me go quickly through the rest of this. So then there was also some evidence that, this is so ridiculous, the, there was a drone, an army drone flying over the scene at the time of this incident, and they managed to find out about the footage, the defense did, and said, okay, you need to preserve this. They said this to the government, you need to preserve this so that we can examine it and, and look and see if it helps our case. Well, oh my gosh, what happened? When they finally got to look at it, a huge chunk in the middle was gone. And they, the defense asked the

• 4:30:22Speaker 07

  government and the government said, well, it was your responsibility to get this preserved, which is completely bullshit. And then the second thing was, well, you know, we, we repurposed this.

• 4:30:39Speaker 07

  But if it's repurposed, then why is the beginning and the end still there and the middle's in the middle's gone?

• 4:30:43Shawn Ryan?

  They have, talking to these guys, they had this drone footage actually had them rolling out to Nassar Square. You can see the vehicles rolling out. Then the footage is cut. And then when it picks back up, they said, I think they said it was maybe a 10-minute segment gone, missing. When they, when they, when the drone footage picks back up, you can actually still see where the radiator had leaked all its fluid on the ground. It still hadn't dried up. By the way, it's about 100 and I don't know how many degrees.

• 4:31:20Speaker 07

  Right.

• 4:31:20Shawn Ryan?

  Every day in Baghdad.

• 4:31:23Speaker 07

  Right. And the other thing that we all wanted to know about was there was testimony from some of the helicopter pilots that were flying over at the time and also some civilians that there were gunmen dressed as Iraqi police and Iraqi army who were leaving the scene after this was over and taking off these uniforms and abandoning them. So we, you know, if that was the case, you know, the government's theory that there were no gunmen in the square is completely null and void. Which brings me to one of the other most important Brady violations that occurred during this case, which was the government contended there were no enemy gunmen in the square. There were no terrorists.

• 4:32:08Speaker 07

  And yet they had evidence that the guy who investigated this case, the Iraqi National Police Colonel named Faris Karim, was known to US intelligence as a potential terrorist. He was allegedly selling information about American troop movements to the Badr Corps and the, and the Mahdi Army. And they knew this and they didn't turn this over. When the defense finally asked for evidence, just any kind of background that the government had on witnesses, policemen, army people who were in the square that day.

• 4:32:50Speaker 07

  They came up with two people that had intelligence files on them. One was the guy who headed the investigation and they couldn't figure out who the other one was. So that nullifies the government's theory that there were no terrorists in the square that day. And they didn't get that evidence until 2018.

• 4:33:09Shawn Ryan?

  Is this the same guy that they flew into the US?

• 4:33:13Speaker 07

  And then didn't call him.

• 4:33:15Shawn Ryan?

  To testify.

• 4:33:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:33:17Shawn Ryan?

  And then somebody had leaked to the prosecution that he had two different ties to two different, or two, he had ties to two different terrorist organizations. So they quietly flew him back in the middle of the night before court the next day.

• 4:33:32Speaker 07

  Right. That's the, I heard that theory. I was never able to confirm it. I had no cooperation from the Department of Justice at all. I filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests about this case. I never got one single document. I went to Washington DC during this sentencing and tried to talk to one of the prosecutors, the lead prosecutor there. He ran for me like Little Red Riding Hood from The Wolf. So it's been very difficult, especially talking to them about who these Iraqi witnesses were. I know that none of them had any kind of background checks before they came into the United States.

• 4:34:13Speaker 07

  So, and, and nothing was shared about these people to anyone until Nick Slatten's second trial. So, um, yeah, so we don't, we don't know a lot about what was going on, but it's, it seems pretty clear from the, um, from the summaries that were filed by the government that this guy who was prosecuting American soldiers was a terrorist.

• 4:34:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:34:42Speaker 07

  Is that unbelievable?

• 4:34:45Shawn Ryan?

  That is infuriating, to say the least.

• 4:34:50Speaker 07

  And they don't even know who the second guy is because the judge wouldn't unseal the report. These are 13-year-old reports. Why can't we see them? That's what I want to know.

• 4:35:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. That's a damn good question. Maybe we'll get to Sam someday, but I doubt it.

• 4:35:08Speaker 07

  So that's one. Let's see, where were we? Those were the two, all the biggies, but there were, there were more. I mean, there were so many more things that they did. Oh, let's talk about the DART mission.

• 4:35:18Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:35:19Speaker 07

  That's a good one. Okay, so one of the main things that the government had to do to keep Nick Slatten in the case and prove their theory that he, you know, had this, he was like an Iraqi serial killer who, you know, had this tactic where he would go into these engagements and purposely shoot somebody innocent so that he could, you know, convince the rest of the people around him to just set off a massacre. That was their theory, was that he hated Iraqis so much that he had these, you know, he had these different engagements where, you know, he, he wouldn't really see a threat, but he would try to get everybody to go along with him to kill as many Iraqis as possible. So the only way that they could prove that he had intent to commit murder, which you've got to have,

• 4:36:03Speaker 07

  and premeditation, those are the two main elements that separate manslaughter from murder. And so how do you prove that? When he goes into a combat situation, he's never seen the victim before, and he doesn't know anything about the situation. So this is how they do it. They decide that they're going to prove that he's done this before. So a few days or weeks before the Nusser Square incident, Blackwater gets called to help rescue a downed helicopter. Okay, it's a few miles outside of Baghdad, and the army is already there by the time

• 4:36:45Speaker 07

  Blackwater gets there. Nick is a sniper, and he sees a guy in an apartment building who is, who has a scope and a rifle, and he shoots the guy and takes him out. At the time, the army says, you know, this is a clean shot. It happens. Probably 20 or 30 minutes after

• 4:37:09Speaker 07

  a lot of other ordinance is shot into this building during this engagement by the army. And, and that's really what happens. It's completely unremarkable because it happened every day. But the prosecution seizes on this and because the defense has no record of this incident. They completely reconstruct it to be guess what? Blackwater rolls up and Nick Slatten says to his buddies Jeremy Ridgway and Matt Murphy. Hey guys, I'm gonna just shoot somebody. You just follow my lead. And he gives them a wink and a nod. And that's what the prosecutors say.

• 4:37:47Shawn Ryan?

  Who told the prosecution that? Was it one of the guys?

• 4:37:51Speaker 07

  No, I mean, this is the thing that's so crazy. They had a PowerPoint from the State Department which investigated this. They had Matt Murphy and Jeremy Ridgway's original testimony from this, which described the incident the way that I described it at first. And then they had an Apache helicopter log telling them what the timeline of this all was. But instead of being straight with it, they take this incident and completely rewrite it to where Blackwater gets there first and Nick Slatten sets off this massacre by shooting an unarmed guy in an apartment building. And Nick knew that it was complete bullshit.

• 4:38:34Speaker 07

  But nobody else, but they couldn't prove it because they had no documents showing this until after Nick is sentenced. Someone finally comes up and says, hey, here's what really happened on that DART mission.

• 4:38:51Speaker 07

  They completely fabricated it so that they could make it look like he had a prior incident where he was trying to get his fellow Blackwater guys to shoot at civilians.

• 4:39:05Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:39:06Speaker 07

  Is that unbelievable?

• 4:39:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:39:08Speaker 07

  So they basically, so they get Matt Murphy and Jeremy Ridgway on the stand in the case, knowing that they had already testified to something completely different. Got them on the stand and got them to lie about what happened in that DART mission in Nick's trial. And how these prosecutors are not in jail or disbarred, I don't know. Because I can't think of anything that spells suborning perjury more than that.

• 4:39:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:39:41Shawn Ryan?

  God dang.

• 4:39:42Speaker 07

  Oh, did they tell you about how the FBI used to would chase them down in their hometowns, Nick and?

• 4:39:49Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 4:39:49Speaker 07

  And Dustin? Yeah. So when they were trying to get the guys to plead because they knew that they had no case, they went, they sent agents to Nick's house, to his, his family farm, to try to question him.

• 4:40:11Speaker 07

  And to Dustin's house also, and just parked there and went around town and tried and followed them and tried to intimidate them.

• 4:40:20Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 4:40:21Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:40:21Shawn Ryan?

  They did not tell me about that?

• 4:40:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, they did.

• 4:40:25Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the motives on why this case became so important with the SOFA agreement, with the ExxonMobil contracts coming up. So the SOFA agreement is the Status of Forces Agreement.

• 4:40:41Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 4:40:41Shawn Ryan?

  And the Status of Forces Agreement was between Iraq and the US, which basically stated when we went over there, that our troops would be out by a certain date. I think was it December of 2009? I think is when we were supposed to start withdrawing.

• 4:41:03Speaker 07

  It was. You know, we're gonna have to check this, but it was actually 2011 for the SOFA agreement that we're talking about.

• 4:41:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. I think it was you'll start pulling troops in 2009 and the last ones will be out by December of 2011.

• 4:41:19Speaker 07

  I think that's right, yeah.

• 4:41:21Shawn Ryan?

  So what was going on at that time?

• 4:41:26Shawn Ryan?

  When the Sufa agreement was getting ready to expire.

• 4:41:30Speaker 07

  So, and this, you're talking about like what happened with the Iraqi. Can we talk about the election too, because that kind of feeds into it as well?

• 4:41:41Shawn Ryan?

  That's why, yeah.

• 4:41:42Speaker 07

  Right, so then this is, this was very hard for me, being a Democrat, to talk critically about the Obama administration and Joe Biden.

• 4:41:53Speaker 07

  Because what I saw in these diplomatic cables was really troubling to me. So, at the time, if you, if everybody remembers, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ran in 2008 on getting out of Iraq, and they were about as anti contractor as you could possibly imagine. I mean, they were like fighting each other for which one hated contractors more, which to me was extremely disingenuous. Later, when I found out that by the time Obama got out of office, there were three contractors to every soldier in Afghanistan and two contractors to every soldier in Iraq.

• 4:42:37Speaker 07

  We could not have prosecuted the war without contractors. And the contractors were exactly the same people, in most cases, as the troops. So, to put this blame on contractors, I found really pretty repugnant. So, what was happening in January of 2010, when the you-know-what hit the fan, with Judge Irina dismissing the case, was two things. Number one, Nouri Al-Maliki was about to stand for election in March of 2010. And he was not, according to the polls, gonna win.

• 4:43:21Speaker 07

  But he was the person who we backed, because we felt like we'd put him in when we invaded Iraq and we could deal with him. We felt like he was somebody that we could negotiate with. He was a known quantity. Surprisingly, Iran's Soleimani also backed him, which is kind of ironic, if you think about it. So, when the Blackwater case was dismissed and everything started going crazy in Baghdad.

• 4:43:53Speaker 07

  The Iraqi government threatened to not approve the SOFA agreement, which would let our forces stay in Iraq and stabilize it. And we had some massive things going on that needed to keep on going, which was we needed to withdraw in an orderly fashion and we needed to keep everything kind of calm for the oil companies that were trying to get their leases.

• 4:44:22Shawn Ryan?

  So they did not want, so they wanted to keep, they didn't want the SOFA agreement to expire because we would have had to pull troops out.

• 4:44:29Speaker 07

  Right.

• 4:44:30Shawn Ryan?

  If we pull troops out, that destabilizes the entire country, which makes for a complicated election cycle.

• 4:44:38Speaker 07

  Right.

• 4:44:38Shawn Ryan?

  So Obama and Biden needed that agreement signed so that we could keep troops in country so that they would have a smooth election.

• 4:44:48Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 4:44:49Shawn Ryan?

  Iraqi prime minister did not want to keep the troops there because he wanted these Blackwater guys prosecuted. So he told them, "I'm not signing it. Pull your troops out." We re-indicted.

• 4:45:06Speaker 07

  Well, first, Joe Biden ran over to Iraq and stood up with Iraqi government officials in front of the cameras and said, "Hey, we're really sorry this happened. We're really disappointed at this outcome. We don't think that it's right. And we promise we're going to get justice for the Iraqi people."

• 4:45:24Speaker 10

  Let me take this opportunity to express my personal regret, excuse me, for the violence in Kisour involving Blackwater employees in 2007. The United States is determined, determined to hold accountable anyone who commits crimes against the Iraqi people. While we fully respect the independence and integrity of the US judicial system, we were disappointed by the judge's decision to dismiss the indictment, which was based on the way in which some evidence had been acquired. A dismissal, I want to make clear, is not an acquittal.

• 4:46:04Speaker 10

  And today, I'm announcing that the United States government will appeal this decision. Our Justice Department will file that appeal from the judge's decision next week. Thank you, Mr. President. You're welcome.

• 4:46:21Speaker 07

  Okay, so what, you're, you know, a defendant and the second most powerful man in your country says, "Hey, you're guilty." I mean, that's basically what he's saying when he's over there in a foreign country talking about your case. So, yeah, I mean, he did it essentially because the Iraqis needed, Nouriel Malaki needed to look tough, and that's also in those diplomatic cables in front of the Americans, or he was threatening not to approve the SOFA or allow contractors to stay in the country.

• 4:46:55Shawn Ryan?

  And then, when they did randite, the SOFA agreement was signed, how fast afterwards?

• 4:47:06Shawn Ryan?

  It was the next week?

• 4:47:08Speaker 07

  I don't know. I can't answer that because I can't remember.

• 4:47:11Shawn Ryan?

  I think when I talked to Cofield, Bill Cofield, Evan's attorney, he said that the SOFA agreement was signed the very next week.

• 4:47:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm sure that's probably true. There was no, there was no hiccup with the SOFA agreement. So that, that tells you, you know, tells you everything you need to know.

• 4:47:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What was going on, I'm a little confused with what was going on with the Exxon Mobil contracts at that time.

• 4:47:36Speaker 07

  That was something that was mentioned in one of the very first cables. And when I looked at those, I, Paul Slough's lawyer is the one who found those, and he gave them to me. And I called Robert Ford, who was the charge of affair at the time in Iraq, in Baghdad, and I called him up and went over all these cables with him. I sent them to him and said, "Hey, do you remember sending these?" And he goes, "Well, I didn't write them, but I absolutely remember sending them." And I said, "Well, explain this to me. Explain what was going on here." And, you know, he just, he kind of glossed over that part of it, but he said... What happened here was not their fault. They did exactly what we told them to do.

• 4:48:20Speaker 07

  Everything that they did in Nasser Square was in their contract. They followed the contract. So I can't really speak anymore to the ExxonMobil part, but the fact that he included it as the third paragraph of all the fallout of the dismissal of that case says a lot.

• 4:48:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, interesting. Were there any other political reasons on why they wanted these guys down in prison?

• 4:48:55Speaker 07

  The other thing that was difficult for them was Eric Prince was not popular during the Obama White House years. He's Christian, conservative, rich. They just, you know, they didn't like him. They didn't like that he was making a lot of money on the war. But it wasn't his fault, you know? Reinstitute the draft if you're so upset about contractors, you know? But nobody had the political courage to do that. So it was really convenient to get mad at Eric Prince for being successful at something, which was training veterans and equipping them properly as we should have done when we sent people over to Iraq.

• 4:49:39Speaker 07

  So everything having to do with this case was reflected in the Blackwater logo. That is something they could not escape. They could not escape the association with Blackwater. And I think that that's why it was so easy to convict them in Washington DC. I think that if they had actually tried them where they should have tried them, which was in Salt Lake City, or Tennessee, or Texas, where they were from, there's no way that they would have got this result. But Eric Prince was such a bete noir in Washington DC that they were never going to get a fair trial because of him.

• 4:50:21Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 4:50:23Shawn Ryan?

  Did he jump in and help at all?

• 4:50:27Speaker 07

  Um, that's something you would have to ask, ask the guys about. Um, I, um, I think that probably, you know, he used whatever influence that he had to try to get them freed. I talked to him for my podcast and he did, uh, give me an interview. But I think that he was well aware that any kind of association with him was negative for them. And I had a, um, an expert, um, uh, who actually defends a lot of these cases and is a former federal prosecutor and a former JAG. And I said, how much do you think this case cost the government? And he said, oh, fifty million dollars, easy.

• 4:51:12Shawn Ryan?

  Fifty, they spent fifty million dollars.

• 4:51:14Speaker 07

  Think about it. Three trials, thirteen years, they brought probably forty-five people over from Iraq and put them up. They went to Iraq and back, stored cars that were supposedly in Nasser Square. I mean, collected evidence, think about that, think about how expensive that is.

• 4:51:36Shawn Ryan?

  Well, for, uh, an Iraqi election.

• 4:51:39Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 4:51:41Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the bodies.

• 4:51:43Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 4:51:43Shawn Ryan?

  How many bodies were found?

• 4:51:45Speaker 07

  Um, that's a really good question because they were actually convicted for killing two people whose bodies never showed up, whose bodies were never found.

• 4:51:58Speaker 07

  They were basically people who, uh, whose relatives said that they were in Nasser Square around that time, that same day, but they never came home.

• 4:52:08Shawn Ryan?

  They never found any bodies and they were accused of what, seventeen, killing seventeen and wounding twenty?

• 4:52:14Speaker 07

  Yes, okay, so the body situation was very interesting because when I first started looking at this case, I went back to all of the contemporaneous, uh, news stories that were filed from Baghdad that day. And I also looked at the government, the Iraqi government's statement about the incident, okay? And don't forget, there were three major incidents that day involving contractors and American soldiers, right? Shootouts, okay? So. When I looked

• 4:52:44Shawn Ryan?

  Within just a few miles of each other. We're not even talking all of Baghdad.

• 4:52:48Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 4:52:49Shawn Ryan?

  You could hear.

• 4:52:50Speaker 07

  Right, exactly.

• 4:52:51Shawn Ryan?

  They were so close.

• 4:52:52Speaker 07

  So when I looked at this, the New York Times reporter who was there in Baghdad reported on that day that eight people were taken to the hospital. Eight, okay? In all of Baghdad, that day. The Iraqi government put out a statement that said something like, less than 10 people were killed in that incident. And all of a sudden, you know, they're, uh, the American government is running ads on Iraqi TV asking anybody who might have had something to do with the Nasser Square shooting to please come forward.

• 4:53:33Speaker 07

  And all of a sudden, you get this enormous number of dead and wounded, some of whom, as I mentioned,

• 4:53:41Speaker 07

  were never found. The bodies were never found.

• 4:53:44Shawn Ryan?

  What were, what was in those ads? Was there a reward?

• 4:53:48Speaker 07

  Well, there wasn't. It was a phone number and just a call for, you know, anybody to come forward. But by this time, it was very well known that the US Embassy was paying people cash for being involved in shootings with American personnel. And in the State Department cables, which you will have on your website, you'll see that it was, the standard payment was $10,000 for a dead family member, $5,000 for wounded, and $2,500 for property damage. This was well known by the time the Nasser Square incident happened. This is something I discussed with Robert Ford.

• 4:54:33Speaker 07

  Everybody knew this. Whenever there was a big incident, people would just show up at the embassy and say, hey,

• 4:54:41Speaker 07

  I, I had somebody killed.

• 4:54:43Shawn Ryan?

  We used to get that all the time. I spent 14 in and out of Middle Eastern countries in war zones for 14 years. And every time I would go to the embassy, there was always a line of locals trying to get some kind of compensation for

• 4:55:03Shawn Ryan?

  Dead goat, or a shot car, or a dead family member, and there's never seems to be any proof.

• 4:55:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, that, and you can't blame these people. I mean, their, you know, their society was completely upended by this war, you know. I'd do everything I could to get, to get money as well. But, you know, when you're prosecuting people and taking away their liberty and, you know, putting their family through this hell, you want to have actual bodies, you want to have actual crimes. Anyway, one thing I wanted to read to you, because when I was preparing for this, I wanted, I wanted to say this, because I think that people don't know it. One thing that was really disturbing to me about the way this case was presented to the Washington DC juries was prosecutors acted like, you know, that these guys drove

• 4:55:52Speaker 07

  into Times Square and just started shooting people, like, like it was that kind of atmosphere, where it's just a normal day in Baghdad, and no one was shooting, and no one was dying. But in fact, this was at the height of the killings in Baghdad. There's a very reliable website that I used a lot, just to try to get some kind of perspective on how much, how many casualties were occurring in Baghdad at this time, in 2007, September, right? And you'll remember that this is the time of the surge. And there was a lot of fighting that was going on in opposition to this. So, according to Iraqi body count, the first

• 4:56:37Speaker 07

  eight months of 2007 saw the most massive vehicle bomb-based attacks in Iraq's history. They occurred with greater frequency than in any time during the war. That's right when this was happening. There were 20 bomb attacks, killing 50 people. In one case, 500 civilians were killed. So, the US government was going around to the media and saying, "This is the worst massacre in Iraq history." And if you go on Wikipedia, you're going to see that. "The worst massacre in Iraq history." That is complete bullshit. It is

• 4:57:15Speaker 07

  a total lie. There were somewhere between 868 to 1,326 deaths of civilian bystanders by US-led coalition forces in 2007.

• 4:57:31Speaker 07

  So, I mean, and that includes 88 children, okay? So to say that this was the worst massacre in Iraq in the history of the Iraq war is a total lie. And it shocks me that this continues to be perpetrated in the media. It shocks me when these guys are free and the United Nations makes a statement that this is the worst massacre.

• 4:57:56Shawn Ryan?

  The worst massacre in the entire war.

• 4:57:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, right.

• 4:58:00Shawn Ryan?

  At that time was, what years were they putting that out? Well, up to 2007, so.

• 4:58:07Speaker 07

  Right, yeah.

• 4:58:07Shawn Ryan?

  Four years, I think we went into 03.

• 4:58:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:58:10Shawn Ryan?

  For the first time, four years, and they were only able to recover two bodies.

• 4:58:15Speaker 07

  No, they actually, well, let's put it this way. They recovered no bodies because the bodies were removed from the scene immediately. But of the body count for the Nasser Square incident, they counted two people where they don't even know what happened to them because they had no bodies. They don't have death certificates or anything else. They allowed them to be prosecuted for two people who just disappeared that day.

• 4:58:43Shawn Ryan?

  The two, uh, did they remove the bodies from the Kia?

• 4:58:50Speaker 07

  No, those were still, they were still at the scene, and they were the only two bodies that were still at the scene.

• 4:58:56Shawn Ryan?

  That's kind of what I was getting at.

• 4:58:57Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:58:58Shawn Ryan?

  It's the only recovered two bodies.

• 4:58:59Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 4:59:00Shawn Ryan?

  And that was a justified shoot.

• 4:59:01Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 4:59:02Shawn Ryan?

  So, interesting.

• 4:59:05Speaker 07

  Okay, so I, yeah, we talked about Nick, about the fact that the government just basically set out to defame him, and that's, that was their entire strategy. I mean, they were attributing things that he said to other people. I mean, they, essentially, according to the documents that I reviewed, they interviewed all 19 members of the Raven 23 convoy. And they essentially, from what I could see, took everything negative that every, one of those people said about Iraqis and attributed it to Nick.

• 4:59:50Shawn Ryan?

  You know, what I don't understand is, why did they move it from Paul to Nick? What was, why did they want Nick so bad?

• 5:00:00Speaker 07

  So, this is something that I spoke to Nick's sister, Jessica Slatten, who's a lawyer. And she's even, she is incredible on this case. She knows every single detail. And I asked her that because it just seemed like it'd be so easy to just let him out of the case and just go with the other three guys. And what she told me was that, right after the incident, Nick was talking to Jeremy Ridgeway back in the Green Zone. And they were discussing where they had taken enemy fire. And Ridgeway went to, back to the State Department and said, hey, you know, Nick Slatten saw gunmen in this place, this place, this place.

• 5:00:45Speaker 07

  And then the next day, the State Department investigators went out, this is probably the first time that they'd ever done this, an investigation to this degree of, you know, scrupulousness. They went out and found the shell casings exactly where Nick described they were. Okay, but then they get Ridgeway to flip and say, oh, you know, there wasn't anybody shooting in the square. So if they had not had Nick as a defendant, he could have been called as a witness. He would have been able to verify the State Department report that was introduced. He would have been able to impeach Jeremy Ridgeway.

• 5:01:30Speaker 07

  So he was kind of a dangerous witness.

• 5:01:33Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 5:01:34Speaker 07

  So I think, when I talked to Jessica, that's kind of what she comes up with. But frankly, you know, I'm gonna just say what the National Association of Criminal Defense lawyers says about the prosecution. They were just vindictive. And they wanted to re-indict him, and he said no. And he went to the appeals court, and he won. And that made them angry. So what they decided to do was charge him with murder. And their vindictiveness had no end. I mean, I can tell you stories from that moment to the moment that he was released, that you would not believe. The DOJ continued to go after him while he was in prison. It was terrible.

• 5:02:16Shawn Ryan?

  You weren't allowed to talk to any of these guys at first, correct?

• 5:02:19Speaker 07

  Right, so when I first decided to um to investigate this case, I tried to go into, I applied to the Bureau of Prisons as a journalist and said, you know, I want to come in and and interview them with a recorder or whatever, and they turned me down. They said, no, you can't. So I reapplied as a friend of the family and uh under my maiden name, and they uh let me in. However, um I got to see um Paul, Evan, and Dustin. And I went to Florida to visit Nick in the supermax where he was at the time, and um and the prison wouldn't let me in. So I I I can't explain that.

• 5:03:06Speaker 07

  But the other thing that was, I thought, really horrible was they designated these guys as all high-risk inmates, dangerous inmates because of their training. Um and they had a lot of um a lot of strictures put on them because of this. They weren't allowed to communicate with each other, which I thought was particularly cruel. Um there were a lot of times when I would try to get a hold of Dustin and he would just disappear into um the solitary housing unit for no reason. And I'd call and say, where is he? You know, what's going on? And they wouldn't tell me.

• 5:03:46Speaker 07

  So it was it was terrible. I mean, they were violating their rights, torturing them essentially the entire time they were in prison.

• 5:03:55Shawn Ryan?

  So moving on from that,

• 5:03:58Shawn Ryan?

  you started gaining traction after you after you were able to gain access uh and speak with them and kind of start putting uh your research all together in that amazing podcast.

• 5:04:08Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 5:04:09Shawn Ryan?

  That's out and linked below. But one thing um that I wanted to kind of cover is when you started trying to get uh President Trump's attention to pardon these guys.

• 5:04:22Shawn Ryan?

  At some point, you kind of renamed, was it, I can't remember if it was you, but the case got renamed the Biden four.

• 5:04:28Speaker 07

  Right.

• 5:04:29Shawn Ryan?

  And that, it sounded like is eventually what got his attention.

• 5:04:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was, um, by the time that I started making the podcast, I had the very good fortune of hooking up with a, a very well-known producer, Michael Flaherty, who was the co-founder of Walden Media. We met doing a different project and he asked me one day if I had any other projects. And I was so desperate, I said, I know this is going to sound completely crazy, but you've got to hear about this case. And to his credit, you know, he really researched it and took it in. And he was absolutely outraged. And the great thing about Mike is that he has a lot of, um, contacts in,

• 5:05:16Speaker 07

  on the conservative side of the political spectrum and with the media. So, um, he immediately, as soon as he kind of wrapped his head around what was going on, contacted all of his friends and people he knew on that side of the aisle. And it was wonderful to see, um, how they really dug into it and really looked at the facts before they said anything. But then they came out in great favor of them being pardoned. So, um, Mike knew someone who was very close to the, um, White House Counsel's Office, um, under President Trump.

• 5:05:57Speaker 07

  And that was how we helped get the pardon packet that had already been filed by Paul Slough's lawyer, kind of helped move it along a little. You know, we just sort of combined forces. Those guys knew some people, we knew some people, and it got escalated that way. And then Mike, um, got us, uh, on Fox News together. And he got Kristen Slough, uh, on Laura Ingraham's show. And so very slowly, we started to get traction. David French from the National Review wrote a really wonderful, well-researched, well-thought-out article about why these guys needed to be pardoned. And it, it had extra meaning because he was a JAG and he also was active duty in Iraq.

• 5:06:42Speaker 07

  So when we started to get these credible people saying, hey, I looked at this and this is really wrong. That's when we started to get traction. And the whole idea of renaming them the Biden four, I think, yes, was had to do with the election. But also, you know, just because we we also wanted to send a message to Joe Biden. But this isn't right, what you did, you know, interfering in this way. Doing this in the criminal justice system is wrong. And we want you to know that we saw it.

• 5:07:18Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think he saw it?

• 5:07:20Speaker 07

  I don't know. But I was a little bit happy that, you know, he's taking seriously the need for criminal justice reform because we really need it.

• 5:07:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:07:30Speaker 07

  You know, I'd be extremely angry if, you know, anybody in the Biden administration tries to mess with these guys again. That would be all hands on deck. We would not forget it.

• 5:07:42Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that's possible?

• 5:07:43Speaker 07

  Well, you know what? I was a little worried about it when they first got pardoned. I was really worried when the UN came out negatively against it. That was kind of none of their business. And it made me angry that nobody seemed to research what was going on in this case before making those stupid statements. And then, you know, people in the media, even people I knew coming out who knew me and knew about how I was involved in this case, getting angry that they were pardoned without even knowing what was going on. I mean, if this had happened anywhere else in the United States with any other people, the press should have been outraged that they were in prison. But because they were Blackwater and because of the association with the Iraq war

• 5:08:26Speaker 07

  and because they were contractors, no one will look below the surface of this story.

• 5:08:32Shawn Ryan?

  It's a real shame that it doesn't seem like anybody will look below the surface on any media anymore. Whatever they see is gospel, and that's it.

• 5:08:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:08:42Shawn Ryan?

  And and that's a dangerous spot to be in.

• 5:08:47Speaker 07

  It is. But you know what? The great thing about now is we can post all these documents and videos that show you exactly what was going on, and people can make up their own minds.

• 5:08:58Shawn Ryan?

  Well, so before we kind of wrap this up, there's one last question. I I understand at least why the US government was so.

• 5:09:10Shawn Ryan?

  Motivated to put these guys, to lock these guys up to appease the Iraqi government. What I don't, one piece that I still don't understand is how and why they flipped Ridgway, which was a major turning point in the entire case. So he completely changed his statement and do you know why?

• 5:09:35Speaker 07

  The government, when it used those protected statements that it wasn't allowed to use from the guys, the ones they gave right after the incident to the State Department investigators. When they were not allowed to use that, they decided to change the theory of the case to say, "They just went out into Nasser Square and started shooting people for no reason. They didn't have any reason to discharge their weapons. Therefore, they're guilty of manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, whatever." So they needed somebody to say, someone on the team to say, "No, I didn't see anybody shooting. I don't know why we were shooting." And the person that they got to do that was Jeremy Ridgway.

• 5:10:19Speaker 07

  And my theory about this is that Jeremy Ridgway was one of the most vulnerable members of the team. He had real bad PTSD. He had lied on his Blackwater application about his experience. He was the one person who was described by the other people in the vehicle as having shot a lot, probably a lot more than he needed to. In fact, Tommy Vargas, who was the vehicle commander in that vehicle, told me that at one point during the incident, he grabbed Ridgway, who was up in the turret, and told him to cease fucking firing because he was worried that he was going to melt the barrel

• 5:11:04Speaker 07

  of his weapon because he was shooting so much. So Ridgway was very vulnerable. If there was going to be someone held... accountable for killing civilians, it was gonna be Ridgway and he knew it. So the government worked on him a lot. And then they also, remember, were withholding evidence and they were saying, "We got no physical evidence that you guys were being fired at," which was a total lie, because they had the decoro reports and the decoro photographs that they didn't turn over to the defense. So Jeremy Ridgway is operating in this universe where nobody is gonna believe him. And if anybody gets caught, it's gonna be him.

• 5:11:48Speaker 07

  So he says, "What do you need me to say?" And that's essentially what happened. At the time, like I said, he was suffering from very severe PTSD. And I don't think it was very difficult for them to intimidate him into testifying. He was also older than the rest of the guys. He had a family. And I'm sure he was thinking about that as well.

• 5:12:14Shawn Ryan?

  But he completely reversed his previous statement.

• 5:12:17Speaker 07

  He did. And there were also, you know, he had statements that were made to the State Department. He had emails that were sent to people that were part of the evidence. I don't know if they were shown or not, but he absolutely changed his testimony. From "We did nothing wrong. We were being fired at" to "I didn't see any gunman."

• 5:12:38Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I can tell you, just about everybody that's been on this show has severe PTSD.

• 5:12:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:12:45Shawn Ryan?

  And that has nothing to do with flipping a story.

• 5:12:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:12:50Shawn Ryan?

  So I don't think that's a valid excuse.

• 5:12:54Speaker 07

  No, I don't either, but I think that, you know, he's, he's not the same kind of man as the rest of the guys.

• 5:13:01Shawn Ryan?

  That's for damn sure.

• 5:13:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:13:04Shawn Ryan?

  But...

• 5:13:06Speaker 07

  It was so tough for them. That was, you know, I mean, imagine that you come out of combat. You can't get your life together, really because you have this hanging over your head. And then you have to go to, and every decision went against them. By the time they got to that trial in 2014, their lives had been on hold for seven years. And they, you know, and they, and they all walked in there thinking, there's no way we're gonna get convicted.

• 5:13:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:13:34Speaker 07

  The only one who thought that they would was Nick Slatten because of the experience that he had with the prosecutors and getting charged with murder. But when I saw them, and when I went to visit all the prisons, I ran into Bill Coffield at Evan's Prison in Pennsylvania. And I just said, "Why didn't you put on more of a case?" And he said, "We didn't think we could lose with the evidence that they had. They had no evidence. We shouldn't have lost." And I think they all believed that. Dane Betswinkis, the guy I was telling you about who stood up to Judge Lambert,

• 5:14:14Speaker 07

  he stood up there during Nick's sentencing and said, "I almost left law because of this case."

• 5:14:23Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 5:14:23Speaker 07

  That's one of the most powerful lawyers in this country, and that's what this case did to him.

• 5:14:30Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 5:14:33Speaker 07

  I, I mean, I have that transcript too.

• 5:14:36Shawn Ryan?

  Bucket, let's throw it in.

• 5:14:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:14:39Shawn Ryan?

  Well Gina, I just wanna again say thank you so much for coming up here and jumping in and helping us kinda organize this portion and to try to fit this in, whatever we just did, an hour and a half, two hour segment is no easy task. So I hope everybody can follow along, but once again, all the documents are linked below, you can download them, you can read them yourself. For those that are listening that don't know what a cable is, that is a government email essentially. And, but before we do close out, where can we find you? How can people find you, follow you? I'll link the podcast that you did below, but.

• 5:15:24Speaker 07

  Yep, that's, I really want that to get as much attention as possible because that will tell everybody the story of it. So it's Raven 23, Presumption of Guilt is the name of the podcast. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, I can't remember what my Twitter handle is.

• 5:15:43Shawn Ryan?

  You can't remember?

• 5:15:44Speaker 07

  I can't. I think it's just Gina Keating.

• 5:15:47Shawn Ryan?

  All right. Well, we'll link that below too.

• 5:15:50Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 5:15:51Shawn Ryan?

  So we'll link your Twitter below, the podcast is linked below, all the documents and the videos are all in that file down there. So go check it out. And Gina, thank you again. And if you have not heard of it, Netflix versus the World, which you produced.

• 5:16:09Speaker 07

  I wrote it and produced it.

• 5:16:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wrote it and produced it. Phenomenal doc. So cheers. Thank you.

• 5:16:17Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 5:16:21Speaker 01

  So many of the articles say this is a war crimes trial. The president publicly showing support for the Navy SEAL. He was a great fighter. He was the, one of the ultimate fighters. Tough guy. Not to mention 19 years of service, eight overseas deployments. He was found not guilty of murder and attempted murder and has long proclaimed his innocence.

• 5:16:44Speaker 11

  We overcame this and we're going to continue to make sure that this does not happen again to warriors in this country.

• 5:16:54Speaker 11

  Our family saw behind a curtain we never knew existed. After enduring a very public, two-year trial, overcoming a travesty of justice filled with false allegations, mainstream media slander, political and legal corruption, we came out vindicated.

• 5:17:12Speaker 12

  We learned firsthand how broken and politically corrupt the system is and that our service members and first responders can be unfairly and unjustly targeted, simply for doing their job.

• 5:17:22Speaker 11

  We vowed, having escaped injustice, we would commit ourselves to helping others in similar situations and fight to reform a broken system.

• 5:17:32Speaker 12

  The Pipe Hitter Foundation is dedicated to defending the rights and freedoms of our men and women in uniform, the same rights and freedoms they risk their lives to uphold.

• 5:17:40Speaker 11

  As a 501(c)(3), our mission is to support service members, police, first responders, and their families through financial and legal support, advocacy, and public affairs.

• 5:17:53Speaker 12

  Throughout my career, I was always taught we don't leave our own behind, on and off the battlefield. The Pipe Hitter Foundation will continue that sentiment and make sure our men and women get the due process they deserve by highlighting their stories and supporting them in their fight for justice. Join us. Together, let's fight for those who fought for us.

• 5:18:13Speaker 11

  Donate now at pipehitterfoundation.org.

• 5:18:21Shawn Ryan?

  So you guys just got the verdict.

• 5:18:25Shawn Ryan?

  You're going to prison.

• 5:18:28Shawn Ryan?

  What's going through your heads?

• 5:18:30Speaker 06

  This can't be real. It's, we all prepared for it because you got a 50/50 chance and, you know, it's a yes or no verdict. And I never thought it would happen. I mean, it's always in the back of my mind that it could happen. And it was just complete and utter shock. It was like, you're living in a daze. And whenever they put the cuffs on you, it's like, oh shit. It just got real.

• 5:19:00Shawn Ryan?

  How long?

• 5:19:02Speaker 06

  How long are you going away for? Um, they upped the ante from the original indictment to where we're facing a 30-year indictment if we got convicted for anything. And Nick went from a 30-year indictment, or the original indictment, to a life sentence. And so, I know for me, it's like, well, I just got found guilty. I know it's gonna be at least 30 years that I wanna do, because I'm 33-years-old. I believe is my age at the time, and it's like, I wanna be 60-years-old, 60-plus by the time I walk out of prison.

• 5:19:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was, uh, just devastated, to say the least. Um, throughout trial, I was pretty confident, you know, of course, you never know, and you're scared out of your mind, but I was confident that we were gonna be found not guilty. Um, the jury, when they came back, I remember them walking in the courtroom, and you're, you're standing there, everybody's silent, and you're trying to kinda read the jury to see if you can catch, you know, somebody looking at you, somebody smiling, you know, give you a little indication of what they're about to tell you.

• 5:20:24Speaker 04

  And I remember I saw one of the, one of the younger girls, um, was kinda joking back and forth with the other jury member, and in my mind, I thought, well, you know, if they're so jovial, there's no way they were about to convict anybody. So, the first count that they were gonna read was Nick's count. So, Nick's count was first-degree murder, and it carried, like Dustin said, a life sentence. So, in my mind...

• 5:20:59Speaker 04

  Nick was good. I thought there was no way on earth he was gonna get convicted over that. The standard of evidence for a first degree murder charge is too high. How are you gonna charge somebody with first degree murder in a war zone? The evidence was nonexistent. I thought that was, no doubt about it, he was not guilty. So, they said, "Count one, Nicholas Slatten, guilty." And as soon as they said that, I knew we were all fucked. Because, in our cases, myself, Dustin, and Paul, it was, we were charged with first, uh, with voluntary manslaughter.

• 5:21:44Speaker 04

  So, um, if they found Nick guilty on that, we were all done for. And sure enough, they went down the whole list, and it was multiple counts. It took them, you know, five, 10 minutes to read them all. But you know, as soon as they say guilty on one count, that 30-year mandatory minimum is tacked on there, and you're going away.

• 5:22:10Speaker 05

  So, I always, uh, told these guys, as the trial was progressing, that we were gonna be found guilty. Because of all the stuff that Gina talked about, that they got away with. All the evidence that they hid and stuff. So, it wasn't a shock to me at all. I knew that the jury saw us a certain type of way because we were Blackwater. And they had, it was basically a trial against the name Blackwater. Not, they didn't view us as individuals. And they didn't judge our individual actions, you know? So, it didn't shock me at all.

• 5:22:46Shawn Ryan?

  At what point did you realize that you were just being used for political gain?

• 5:22:51Speaker 05

  I don't know. What would you say, maybe a week into it? I told you all that.

• 5:22:55Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 5:22:56Speaker 06

  Thereabouts.

• 5:22:57Speaker 04

  I, I think I didn't wanna accept reality. And when Nick would, he would constantly say, no, this fucking matters, it's rigged. And I didn't wanna hear that, you know? I thought, no, it can't be fucking rigged. This is the United States, you know? I, I'm a fucking former Marine. I, I was over there serving my country. It's not rigged, you know? These people, all that matters is the people in the jury, what they think. It doesn't matter what the judge says or what the prosecution says. It matters what the jury thinks. And boy, was I wrong. They slammed us on every count.

• 5:23:39Speaker 08

  Yeah, the, the term that I, I've used a lot is just crushed. Um, and I don't, I don't think there's really an English word that, that aptly describes that feeling of hearing the word guilty and knowing what's attached to it.

• 5:23:59Speaker 08

  My wife and, and mother-in-law were, were sitting in the courtroom and, and there was just an audible gasp, um, when Nick's verdict came out because all of us were, were certain that if, if they found Nick guilty, like Evan said, it was open, I mean, it was closed for us.

• 5:24:17Speaker 08

  And so, all of the marshals were lined up against the wall and, uh, they got through the counts and read everything and, and I remember locking eyes with the, the lead attorney, Anthony Ascencio, and, uh, he just blinked and looked back at the judge.

• 5:24:36Speaker 08

  Uh, and, and at that moment, the prosecutors said, you know, with, in light of the heavy sentences that this carries, we think that the defendant should be automatically taken into custody. And so we were, and the marshals came and got us, uh, escorted us to the back and, uh, had us up against the wall. They were iping out our pockets, cutting our shoelaces out and, uh...

• 5:25:06Speaker 08

  It was a feeling of helplessness like I felt on January 23rd. And there was so much uncertainty tied to it that I knew my wife needed to hear something and she deserved more than just seeing my backside leave that courtroom. And the attorneys came back and Linda Bailey was one of the attorneys and she was just grabbing up her wallets and belts and shoelaces and everything, I mean, just handing her a wad of shit and basically told her that, you know, this is it for now. And I told Linda, I mean, at that point, I think I was probably sobbing to tell Kristen,

• 5:25:50Speaker 08

  keep the faith. And that was the last statement I got to give her for a while because they took us directly to DC County Jail.

• 5:26:02Shawn Ryan?

  Nick, you had some errors and stuff to say about being in prison and how you found out and you was sobbing there.

• 5:26:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. So, we left DC Jail, went to Northern Neck, which was like a regional jail. They put me in the hole in there because I was pretty crazy. I was coming down off of a lot of medication, you know, they had me on Xanax and stuff. And they didn't really know what to do with me, you know, they believed what they read in the papers, they thought we were all monsters, but me particularly, for some reason, they just put me in segregation, so I was by myself. And I got a Bible really quick and I remember the first night I was calling out to God and praying and, you know, I was, I had really turned my back on God when I came back from the war.

• 5:26:57Speaker 05

  I was very angry and bitter and I was eating a lot of pills and drinking a lot and I would hurt people, I was really violent, you know, quick to fight. And so, I really believe that God let me go down for something that I did not do just so that I would return to Him. Because, like he was talking about, being broken, that is the most broken you will ever see a human being is when they are separated from society. Like you just... That's about as low as you can get. And I knew that I was gonna be locked up for the rest of my life. I knew that I was facing a life sentence. So, you know, I'm calling out to God. I'm like, "You know I didn't do this. What are you doing?" And like, he answered.

• 5:27:40Speaker 05

  He said, "You don't run this. I run this." And I'm like, "Well, what am I supposed to do?" And he said, "Love God and love your neighbor." And so, that's what I started doing. I started just digging into his Word and seeking his face every day. And, you know, I saw many miracles that happened while I was locked up. You know, this is... It was a daily thing that I had to meet God. I had to pray. I had to get in the Word and talk to Him. But years later down the road, you know, eventually, we were pardoned by the President. It was a miracle. But like, that road, He was just shaving off all the bad pieces of me. The six years, all the anger and all the hate that I had stored up, all the grudges

• 5:28:25Speaker 05

  that I had towards people. He was just slowly chopping those off as I would do what He said. He would just cut those pieces off of me. And I remember, this was after my third trial. You know, Gina talked about all that. But this was after my third trial. I'd actually been found guilty again. And they had me in a little regional jail. And they had a riot in that jail. And so, the prisoners broke the sprinklers, they set the microwaves on fire, they ran the police out. And so, I didn't participate in the riot. I just went and sat on my bunk, got my Bible and started reading it.

• 5:29:07Speaker 05

  And one of my friends, he saw me in there, and he just came by and shut my door. And so, the door is electronically locked, so only the police can open it from the control panel. And so, my cellmate was caught out there in the riot because he was participating in it. So, when the riot team came in with their flashbang grenades and their tear gas canisters, he got pulled out. So, they took him to the hole. So, after that, they weren't being nice to us at all. They were starving us. They, it was about seven days, they just brought us styrofoam trays, but there wasn't hardly anything in them. I mean, there was maybe that much food, a tiny amount of food in each tray. And so, we were hungry.

• 5:29:52Speaker 05

  And I had been reading...

• 5:29:55Speaker 05

  My favorite chapter in the Bible is Psalms 91. And I read that every day. I still do to this day, first thing. So in Psalms 91 and verse 3, it says, "Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare." And that really irked me that day when I read it. Because I was like, here I am, I'm starving. I didn't do this. I've already been to trial three different times. And I'm found guilty again, and I'm getting a whole nother life sentence, right? Like, what are you doing, God? Because you said, "Surely you will save me from the fowler's snare." I was like, that's where I'm at. And I remember I boxed in the word "fowler's snare." And then immediately, I hear on the speaker, there's like a little speaker in your cell where you can push a panic button. You know, something happens.

• 5:30:41Speaker 05

  I hear over that, "Slatten, pack your stuff. You got a presidential pardon." And this was a year and a half before the pardon even happened. There had been no mentions of pardons. It wasn't on any of our radar, none of that. And so I was like, man, I'm going crazy, right? And so, it was a couple of days later. They let us out of our cells finally, to call our family. I called my sister and she's like, "Nick, have you talked to anybody?" I said, "No, I've been locked down." She said, "Well, the New York Times reported that President Trump is considering pardoning soldiers accused of war crimes." And it mentioned you by name. I was in the paper with Gulston and Gallagher and myself.

• 5:31:24Speaker 05

  Those were the three names in the article that was written. And I was like, that's the same day I heard the voice. And I was praying, and I was like, that's the day that the article from the newspaper was dated. I was like, I was like, I told her, I was like, "Look, God told me I'm gonna get pardoned." And she's like, "Yeah, you're going crazy, bro, right?" But it wasn't until a year and a half later that God fulfilled his word. But like, it happened. And then immediately, my lawyer started...

• 5:31:54Speaker 05

  Trying to track down leads, whether this was true or not. And then they had a whole new approach. We were already appealing in the courts. So they had this whole political thing that they were doing. And then I told them, I said, look, it has to be all of us, or I'm not going to take the pardon. And they're like, well, it just says you in the article. I was like, you heard what I said. I'm not going to accept a pardon unless it's all of us. And then Paul's wife ended up hiring a pardon attorney. And he put his head together with my lawyers and they started advocating. They started lobbying and a bunch of like congressmen and people got in our corner. And it was just, God was just showing me that if I would have faith, like he fulfilled it, man. And it was just amazing.

• 5:32:38Speaker 05

  Like it was, it was a complete miracle.

• 5:32:42Speaker 06

  The one thing I'll say is whenever we stood there the first and second time, and you get people speaking on your behalf that you've known all your life. My daughter spoke in my second sentencing. And it's one of the hardest things that you'll ever have to listen to. Because I can tell you right now, my back was to the court. I was at the, the very back. They were sitting sideways and I was trying not to tear up when my daughter got done. It's, when you listen to people speak on your behalf, it's really like listening to your own eulogy. There's no other way to put it.

• 5:33:22Speaker 06

  It's like you're not even there and they're talking about the man that you are, the man that you have been. And then the man that, you know, if the court goes lenient on you, that you can be again. And that's not an easy thing because you're standing there the first time. It's like, okay, well, I know I got a 30 year mandatory minimum. We know life, or Nick's got life. And then the judge says, the prosecution, if I'm not mistaken, the first go around was trying to give me 63, 67, 72, or something, some crazy numbers like that. Basically giving us a life sentence without a life sentence. And the judge. Said, no, I want to give these three guys thirty years and one day.

• 5:34:07Speaker 06

  And then Nick still got life. And until you actually face down odds like that. It's, it's, you, you can't understand that feeling of getting a sentence like that. And basically knowing that, okay, I'm thirty-three, thirty-four years old. And by the time I do my sentence, if they give me a sixty-year sentence that they're trying to do, you're not walking out of there. You'll be carried out in a box. And I can't imagine receiving a life sentence like Nick did. I mean, it's just, you can't, you can't comprehend that. And so to make it through, not once, but twice of listening to stuff like that,

• 5:34:52Speaker 06

  that's probably one of the hardest moments ever is listening. It's like you're dead and gone and people are talking about you.

• 5:35:00Speaker 08

  Maybe to add just a bit to Nick's experience as well is I called myself a Christian for a long time.

• 5:35:11Speaker 08

  And, and I said that I knew Christ and that I followed him, but I'd never really had that intimate relationship. And I'd heard about it, but I didn't understand it. And there's so many, there's so many analogies within the text to our own situation.

• 5:35:34Speaker 08

  And I don't pretend to choose anybody else's worldview, but just reading the story of, of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and what they went through as innocent young men. There are, there's tons of material just within those four men's experiences. And the furnace that the three went through, and then Daniel was in the lion's den.

• 5:36:00Speaker 08

  There, there was no way out in natural terms for those four men. There was none.

• 5:36:07Speaker 08

  But in God's miraculous provision, all three men walked out of that furnace and didn't even have a hint of smoke on them. And Daniel walked out of the lion's den and not a scratch on him.

• 5:36:21Speaker 08

  And so I say that to say this is, is four men are sitting here in front of you today. Again, as, as proof of miraculous providence and God's care.

• 5:36:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well, gents, last night at dinner, Paul, you brought this up. You wanted to say thank you to somebody for the pardon. And I think the best way maybe to do that is go through each one of you guys. And

• 5:36:53Shawn Ryan?

  kind of explain what it was like when you heard that you were getting that pardon.

• 5:36:58Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 5:36:58Shawn Ryan?

  And so

• 5:37:02Shawn Ryan?

  however you guys want to kick this off.

• 5:37:06Shawn Ryan?

  Starting with you, Paul.

• 5:37:07Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 5:37:12Speaker 08

  President Trump, thank you.

• 5:37:16Speaker 08

  And, and thank you, doesn't coverage. You gave me my life back. You gave me my freedom back.

• 5:37:23Speaker 08

  You gave me my, my little girl and my wife back.

• 5:37:33Speaker 08

  And it's something that I

• 5:37:38Speaker 08

  I didn't know I experienced again in this lifetime.

• 5:37:42Speaker 08

  And out of your abundant grace and mercy, you, you gave me a second chance at life with them, with these three men.

• 5:37:57Speaker 08

  Thank you, sir.

• 5:37:59Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 5:38:03Speaker 05

  President Trump, we love you, man. Thank you so much. Like he said, it's like we're back from the dead, you know? We thank God and we thank you. We think, you know, you had more guts than anybody we've ever, ever seen or ever heard of. So you're an awesome man and you're welcome down in Sparta, Tennessee. Anytime you come hang out, anytime you want, we love you. Everybody down there loves you.

• 5:38:32Speaker 04

  Well said, guys. President Trump, thank you. Thank you for having the confidence in us, for having the courage to act despite getting political backlash. Thank you for giving me a second chance. I promise to not let it go to waste and I look forward to seeing you in the White House in 2024.

• 5:38:56Speaker 06

  Sir, I can't thank you enough.

• 5:39:00Speaker 06

  My two children are no longer going to be without their father.

• 5:39:06Speaker 06

  You give us a second chance at life and we're going to try to do our best to make it worthwhile. Thank you very much, sir.

• 5:39:18Shawn Ryan?

  And I just want to say, thank you guys for everything you've done for this country and if anybody deserves the freedom they fought for, it's definitely you guys.

• 5:40:28Shawn Ryan?

  When you guys came here, I said that I wanted to connect you with some people. And I have a really good friend on the line here that you guys might know. His name's Eddie Gallagher. He wound up having a situation very similar to yours, guys. And so, want to introduce him right here. I got him on the line.

• 5:40:55Shawn Ryan?

  Eddie Gallagher.

• 5:40:58Speaker 06

  Eddie, what's up? What's going on? Pleasure.

• 5:41:02Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 5:41:05Shawn Ryan?

  So Eddie runs the Pie Pitters Foundation. And that whole foundation is, you know, to kind of help guys like you. So Eddie, I'm just going to turn it over to you, man.

• 5:41:19Speaker 13

  Hey, man. What's up, fellas? Uh, dude, I can't tell you how awesome it is to see you guys here, especially at Sean's place, man. And like, I can't imagine what you guys went through, man. I got a taste of what it is to be, you know, have our government turn against you and sort of hang you out to dry, man. But, uh, honestly, it's an honor to be able to talk to you guys, man. I'm glad you guys have the platform to tell your side of the story. Uh, but I just, I want to let you know, man, Sean, uh, told me that you guys were going to be on here. We would follow and everything that's been going on at our nonprofit, the Pie Pitter Foundation. Uh, we authorized an emergency relief fund for 10K for you guys.

• 5:41:58Speaker 13

  Uh, and that, uh, one of our board members has also donated, uh, $2,500 on top of that. Um, we also started a fundraising portal on our site, uh, for you guys to raise, to raise all the money you guys need to pay off your legal fees, man. Wow. You know, that's, that's what our amount of profits all about, man. That's what we speak to you, man. Uh, but we're, I'm stoked for you guys and I can't wait to hear you guys side of the story.

• 5:42:23Speaker 04

  Thank you, brother. Thanks, Eddie.

• 5:42:25Speaker 06

  Thank you very much.

• 5:42:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, uh, that'll be linked in the description. So if anybody wants to donate and there's going to be a lot of people that want to donate, the link's below. You can donate to Pipe Hitter's Foundation. There's going to be a porthole, like Eddie said, for, uh, your guys' legal fees specifically. So, um, yeah. Eddie?

• 5:42:48Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 5:42:49Shawn Ryan?

  You're the fucking man, dude.

• 5:42:50Speaker 13

  The PipeHitterFoundation.org. Go there. You'll be able to access it and donate.

• 5:42:56Speaker 06

  We can't thank you enough. We, I followed your story from inside the walls, man. It's, you know, it's awesome to be able to talk to you on this platform and be able to interact.

• 5:43:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, likewise. I, I, I followed, uh, your story closely too. I used to be running up and down the stairs in my unit, watching Fox News and listening about, uh, about your case. And of course, all these other guys I was locked up with would, uh, would assume you were my co-defendant, but I had to tell them, no, I, I'm not on his level. Uh, but, uh, seriously, when, uh, I saw that clip of you walking into court with your uniform on, with that big stack of ribbons, ribbons and medals, it, uh, it made me sick in my stomach because you had handcuffs on and I knew you didn't deserve that. Uh,

• 5:43:49Speaker 04

  you deserved more from your country and I'm glad you got acquitted. I'm glad you're doing well and thanks again.

• 5:43:57Shawn Ryan?

  We love you, brother.

• 5:43:58Speaker 13

  Thank you, brother. I appreciate that.

• 5:44:00Shawn Ryan?

  We love you, brother, man. America loves you. You know, we got your back. If you ever need anything, let us know. We really appreciate you.

• 5:44:06Speaker 06

  Anytime.

• 5:44:07Speaker 13

  Hey, same to you guys, man.

• 5:44:10Speaker 08

  Eddie, you truly set the standard, man, and, and keep showing the rest of us what it looks like. Um, anytime in the future, if there's ever anything that, that we can do for you or your family, your organization, please never hesitate to reach out.

• 5:44:24Speaker 04

  One more thing. I got one more thing. I've seen you on Instagram doing the Murphy workout and I officially want to challenge you, but I need a couple of months to prepare, alright?

• 5:44:42Speaker 13

  We can discuss that.

• 5:44:45Speaker 13

  But hey, the sentiment goes likewise, man. Anything you guys need, reach out, get my contact from Sean. I know how it is, you know, afterwards when all this stuff blows over, it's not easy, man. So anything you guys need, hit me up and, you know, our foundation will be there. So, you know, God bless you guys and I can't wait to hear your guys' side of the story.

• 5:45:07Speaker 04

  God bless you, brother.

• 5:45:08Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 5:45:08Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 5:45:09Speaker 08

  Thanks.

• 5:45:10Speaker 04

  Eddie, thank you, brother.

• 5:45:13Speaker 13

  Thank you, my man.

• 5:45:16Speaker 04

  I'll talk to you soon, man. Love you, bro.

• 5:45:19Speaker 13

  Love you, brother.

• 5:45:21Speaker 04

  You too.

• 5:45:24Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 5:45:26Speaker 04

  Got us.

• 5:45:26Speaker 06

  Awesome.

• 5:45:28Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. He's a good dude, man.

• 5:45:32Speaker 06

  I was sitting here looking at the orange spots on the carpet. I'm like, what the fuck? Those wasn't there a while ago.

• 5:45:36Shawn Ryan?

  Right. Were you guys stuck in that?

• 5:45:38Speaker 06

  No.

• 5:45:39Speaker 04

  No. I'm pretty happy, though.

• 5:45:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 5:45:42Speaker 08

  I was hoping for a cool coffee cup, like.

• 5:45:46Speaker 06

  A shot glass.

• 5:45:47Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 5:45:48Speaker 04

  I thought you were gonna give us some gummy bears or something, you know, I've seen the podcast.

• 5:45:52Shawn Ryan?

  I can give you plenty of gummy bears, but I thought maybe that would be a little bit more special than.

• 5:45:58Speaker 06

  Depends on what type of gummy bears they are.

• 5:46:02Speaker 06

  I'm out.

• 5:46:03Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. But yeah, Eddie is just, you know, he's like you guys, you know, he's just a solid

• 5:46:11Shawn Ryan?

  fucking warfighter who got fucked over and, you know, when, when I was talking to you guys and you had mentioned the legal fees and Nick, like when you were sitting in here yesterday and you said, "The only reason I'm here is to..."

• 5:46:32Shawn Ryan?

  Raise money for the guys that still have legal fees. I mean, man, I just, you know, and I think maybe you think that I took a little offense to that, but dude, I think that is the most honorable thing that, you know, you could do. You're not out here looking for fame. You're not out here, you know, doing anything. You just, you just want to hook your boys up and same with you, Evan, and all you guys, you know?

• 5:46:58Speaker 06

  You know, one thing I'll say-

• 5:46:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's very respectable.

• 5:47:00Speaker 06

  God is good, man. One thing I'll say about this is we got locked up together and we walked out together. They never broke us as a team.

• 5:47:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:47:09Speaker 06

  It's six years, two months. We got, they put the handcuffs on us and then the times may have been a little bit of staggered on which prison let who out, but I know that I talked to everybody directly thereafter. You know, it, it may have taken us a minute to get a hold because of number situations, but you know, one thing I can say about these three men sitting next to me is there's nobody I'd rather sit next to because we rolled in together. We stood there, we took it like men. We didn't turn our backs on each other. We didn't turn our backs on the country and then we walked out with our heads high in the end because I'm not going to take a deal for something that I didn't do.

• 5:47:54Speaker 06

  I'm not going to sell these men out for something that they didn't do to save my own ass. And we can talk about who should have done what, who did what, this, that, the other, but at the end of the day, we went in together and we walked out together. There's no, and my family didn't understand. One day we're sitting inside the visitation room in FCI Memphis. I reached down and I pointed at the floor. I said, you see this spot right here? My ex-wife got all beside herself. I said, there's no place I'd rather be. And she's like, what do you mean? I said, I wouldn't have lived with myself had I took a deal and did what Ridgway did.

• 5:48:39Speaker 06

  I wouldn't have lived with myself at the end of the day if I'd have turned my back on these men. I mean, I'm not even gonna lie to you. I wouldn't have.

• 5:48:48Speaker 06

  I would a to bullet, I would have fucking something, drink myself to death. But instead, I'm sitting here next to these men. And, I mean dude, I can't thank you all enough.

• 5:49:00Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, brother.

• 5:49:01Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 5:49:02Speaker 08

  I'm alive today because of you three. I'm confident in that.

• 5:49:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, y'all saved me more times than I can count over there, for sure.

• 5:49:10Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you guys are definitely a hell of a band of brothers. There's no doubt about it. And, uh, you know, America owes you one. There's no doubt about that either. So, for everybody that's watching, go to the pipe hitters foundation dot org, and donate, and give rid of these guys' fucking legal fees, right now. They deserve it. And, uh, I just wanna say thank you guys for coming out here and getting your side out. I hope that felt good. And, um, I just wish all you guys the best of luck and God bless you.

• 5:49:48Speaker 06

  God bless you.

• 5:49:49Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 5:49:49Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, brother.

• 5:49:50Speaker 06

  Thank you, Sherrod. Godspeed. Thank you, fellas.

• 5:49:53Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.