#124 Captain Brad Geary - Inside the Failed Investigation and Tragic Death of Kyle Mullen

Brad Geary is a Navy Captain and Commanding Officer at Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command. Geary boasts an incredible twenty four year career in NSW. Captain Geary has completed numerous deployments throughout the world while serving in leadership positions at SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team Two, SEAL Team Four, and Naval Special Warfare Tactical Development and Evaluation Squadron Three. Geary's career now hangs in the balance due to a Navy probe into the mysterious death of trainee and Seaman Kyle Mullen, who tragically lost his life during the infamous training period known as "Hell Week." The Navy investigation initially pinned blame on the training cadre, but as pressure from Congress and Geary's testimony grows, a different narrative is coming to light. Geary's attorney stated that "when all the key facts emerge, the Navy's improper actions will be exposed -- and it will be undeniable that Capt. Geary is being scapegoated as part of a larger scheme to cover up massive failures and abuses of power at the highest levels of the Navy." Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://helixsleep.com/srs https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://rocketmoney.com/shawn https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Captain Brad Geary Links: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-geary Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bradleyandamy Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/amelia.grey.5 X - https://x.com/bradleydgeary YouTube - @Bradley-geary Threads - @BradleyandAmy Reddit - u/bradgeary TruthSocial - @deanandgrey Stand With Warriors Foundation - https://secure.anedot.com/stand-with-warriors-action/swwa-donate Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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• 0:29Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:05Shawn Ryan?

  Captain Brad Geary, welcome to the show.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Thanks, Sean. Really appreciate you having me.

• 1:10Shawn Ryan?

  It's my pleasure, and we got a lot to dive into. I've really been looking forward to this interview, and I'm also very nervous about it. I don't want to mess this up. But so, we're going to cover a lot. We're going to do your life story, and then we're going to cover the real reason that you're here. You were the commanding officer for Naval Special Warfare Training Command, correct?

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Basic Training Command, correct.

• 1:36Shawn Ryan?

  Basic Training Command.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  What most people affectionately just refer to as BUDs. But BUDs is just the SEAL side. We did the SWCC side as well. So over the years, they combined to Basic Training Command.

• 1:46Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:49Shawn Ryan?

  The real reason you're here is you were the commanding officer when Kyle Mullen, the SEAL candidate, died in training.

• 1:57Shawn Ryan?

  Rest his soul and tragic event, but it sounds like there is a lot of controversy and maybe some covering up that's happening in regards to how Kyle died and some of the things that have gone on within the Training Command. And so, we will get to that after your life story. I think it would be a good idea for people to kind of understand who you are as a man, where you came from, how you got to the position that you're in now, and then we dive into that stuff. How's that sound? Sounds like a plan. Appreciate it. Perfect. Well, I'm going to give you a introduction here real quick.

• 2:42Shawn Ryan?

  Captain Brad Geary, you are currently the Assistant Chief of Staff for the N9 Innovation for Naval Special Warfare Command. You graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2000 with a bachelor's in mathematics and also earned a master's of arts degree in defense analysis with a focus on unconventional warfare from the Naval Postgraduate School. You completed numerous deployments throughout Europe, South America, and the Middle East, Africa, and Asia while serving in various leadership roles at SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 2, SEAL Team 4, Naval Special Warfare Tactical Development and Evaluation Squadron

• 3:22Shawn Ryan?

  3, and during your first command tour at SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1, SDVT1. You served as Executive Officer for Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command, served three years at the Joint Interagency Task Force National Capital Region, and served as Operation Officer for Naval Special Warfare Group 3 in Joint Base Pearl Harbor, Hickman, Hawaii.

• 3:50Shawn Ryan?

  You completed a second command tour at Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command, the force generation pipeline for all sea, air, and land SEAL and special warfare combat crewmen SWIP maritime commandos. Most recently, you served as the deputy N8 Resources Requirements and Assessments for Naval Special Warfare Command. Commands you have served with have earned the Navy Meritorious Unit Accommodation, the Navy Unit Accommodation, the Joint Meritorious Unit Award, and two Navy Presidential Unit citations. You were the 2020 Pacific Fleet recipient of the Vice Admiral James B.

• 4:34Shawn Ryan?

  Stockdale Award for Inspirational Leadership. You and your wife Amy have four children, and you are a man of deep personal faith. Am I missing anything? That's it, 24 years in a nutshell. Still active duty. It's pretty surreal for me to be sitting in front of a active duty captain, especially under these circumstances. It's a bit odd. Yeah. I'm not sure how many times this has happened. This is my first for me. Me too. But, you know, and I'm just gonna say it right at the beginning, we are, you know, one of the goals here is to get this in front of congressmen, senators, DC political

• 5:16Shawn Ryan?

  types to help bust this thing wide open. That's right. And so, share this everywhere you can. That's right. But, so before we get too serious and too into the weeds, everybody gets a gift on the show. Thank you. So. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Fantastic. Ah, nice. Those are gummy bears. I see that. That's right. Made in the USA. They're legal. I was just gonna, that was my next question. I'm active duty, so like, what kind of gummies are these? They're okay. Just regular candy. Thank you. I really appreciate it. You know, I had Vivek on. You know Vivek? What's that? Do you know Vivek Ramaswamy? Yeah. I had him on and...

• 6:02Shawn Ryan?

  He ripped the bag open and started eating them. I said, "Those effects will kick in in about 30 minutes." I think about shit his pants. It was hilarious.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Very funny interview.

• 6:10Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, but, uh, so one last thing before we get into your life story. I have a Patreon account. There are tops, there are top supporters that have been around since the beginning. They are why I'm able to sit here and why we're able to give you a platform. And so one of the things I do is I give them an opportunity to ask each guest a question. Lot of questions on Hell Week here. Um, so this is from James Reese.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:40Shawn Ryan?

  "Hell Week was designed to be very physically demanding. What changes, if any, would you make to the Hell Week training program?"

• 6:48Speaker 02

  It's a great question. It's actually a perfect question. Let me start off by making sure I say that everything I say here on this interview today is only representative of my own opinions, Brad Geary's thoughts. Nothing is representative of Naval Special Warfare or the Navy's official positions on anything. Disclaimer out of the way. I wouldn't change a thing with Hell Week. And, and this is, it's an interesting question. It's one I got a lot of times when I was the commanding officer of, of, we'll just call it BUDs to make it easier for everyone to understand. Uh, what a lot of people miss is that I did my XO tour back there as well. So I've had now four separate years, uh, two consecutive, not consecutive, but two years at a time consecutive tours. The thing that everyone's interested in is always about the physicality of Hell Week and of BUDs

• 7:32Speaker 02

  in general. But what a lot of people don't realize, and we talked a little bit about this, the physicality piece is really mildly interesting to us. It's, it's what it produces. It's what it highlights. When we put people in positions of physical discomfort, uh, it, it sheds the veneer of who they came to us and, and, and thought they even were. We, we used to say the most uncomfortable thing we show people in BUDs is a mirror. Because when we put you through that, it'll expose the character beneath the surface. And the character's what we're looking for. And when I say character, I mean the character attributes that Naval Special Warfare needs in our future teammates. So when Draper Kaufman conceived of this idea of Hell Week, I think the first one was 1943, um, he designed it around the

• 8:17Speaker 02

  stressors of war. He'd been to, he'd been to the World War II a couple of times before. And so he designed this to produce those stressors of war, to know that This will produce people that won't quit when we're in combat, when we're in the actual scenario. So he did everything he could to get up to that point. And then knew whoever was left standing would remain. And we've, we've left it largely unchanged since then. It's a long time. There's been small changes, micro changes, some curriculum shifts here or there. We've added a lot of safety precautions in place and backside support to make sure we're managing that risk effectively. Turns out people back in the 40s and 50s, you know, might've been a little bit more reckless than we are today. But as far as like the spirit of what Hell Week is, we've not changed much and we never

• 9:01Speaker 02

  want to change it because it's a formula that works. You have to be very, very careful with those. You don't want to tweak those formulas because you could end up accidentally or incidentally diluting the product we get on the backside. And that's not, that's not what we want to do, especially given how Naval Special War over has performed through the duration of our, of our, of our community.

• 9:22Shawn Ryan?

  I got a personal question.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:23Shawn Ryan?

  And it sounds like not a whole lot has changed from what you just said from the beginning to now, but I mean, you know, being a veteran of the SEAL community, there is a lot of hearsay going on, you know, about, about the, the newest product coming out of training, showing up to the teams.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:44Shawn Ryan?

  Is today a more diluted product?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  No, not yet. And that's part of why I'm here.

• 9:52Shawn Ryan?

  We're close.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  I want to prevent that from ever happening. I have concerns.

• 9:56Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we'll get into that, but for starters.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  I'd offer, let me, sorry, let me just throw this out. The, the product that we are delivering to the American public, and this is something we'll get into as well, we very much view the American public as our customer. We are producing SEAL and SWIC warfighters, I say we are, I was, for the American public. What we were delivering to the, to the doorsteps of the SEAL teams and the boat teams. Those guys run circles around what you and I were doing back in the day when we graduated. The program has grown and this generation of warfighters that came to our front door, absolutely, they're just unstoppable. So I would offer, while the curriculum hasn't changed much for the core element,

• 10:44Speaker 02

  what we've added to it as far as qualification training, these guys are just, and girls are absolutely phenomenal.

• 10:53Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. That is very reassuring to hear, especially with where we're at in the world today.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Oh, this tour gave me hope, hope in America's future. When I got to see these young Americans, America is still producing patriots, and they're still coming to our door and volunteering to do our program, which is very hopeful, very encouraging.

• 11:12Shawn Ryan?

  I love to hear that. I love to hear that. Let's dive into your life story a little bit here. So where did you grow up?

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Grew up in central Florida. My father and mother met there after my father left from the north and my mother as well. And very pivotal for me, seeing my father's background, he was raised in a very broken family, very emotionally abusive, sexually abusive, just a lot of hurt, a lot of pain, and that seems to carry on generationally. When he made a break from that, he likes to say he had, he met Jesus on a mountaintop moment and decided at that point, he was gonna pick a different path and he was committing his life to not revisiting the sins of the Father, not doing what happened to him. He wanted to do something different.

• 12:07Shawn Ryan?

  Was that before you came along?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes. So he met my mother and then I came along. And his mission in life was really to provide us a stable, loving environment. He was, I like to say, driving by Braille. He didn't know what to do as a father who didn't have a good example to lean on. But he did a fantastic job. And all I ever wanted to do growing up was be like him, provide this house, this stable environment for my family, and try to do what he did for us. He was a trailblazer, really, for the Gary family. He was the first Gary to ever go to college, and he paid his own way to get there.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  And then after having a couple of us, I have a brother and a sister. He later realized if he wanted to promote in his job field, he needed a master's degree. So while raising a family, he started taking night classes on his own, again, paid his own way, and got his master's degree to just keep providing more for our family. It was really just a... Looking back, I see now, you know, as a kid, your dad's gone here and there, and you don't understand why. But looking back, what I see is a work ethic and a sense of principle and commitment to a goal that really, I can tell now, ingrained itself into us as kids.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  What did your dad do? What was his occupation? Well,

• 13:35Speaker 02

  he's kind of been all over the map. But he basically... The way I like to describe him to another military man, he's kind of like an executive officer. And he's an entrepreneur, to some degree entrepreneur, I mispronounced that.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  And has bounced around with a bunch of different companies, working with people that did these startups. And has done very, very well. Is kind of the operations guy, finding efficiencies. He's got a master's in business, and so he applies that, plus all of his experience in a couple of different industries now, to just look for efficiencies, bring better return on the investment, and earn profit. What were you into as a kid? I was... I was a bit of a nerd, actually. I was in the band. I was in the marching band. They say not all heroes wear capes, but some do. And I had a cape with my marching band uniform. Played trumpet, first chair at one point. No big deal.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  I used to joke at graduations, actually, that I'm pretty sure that's why my wife married me. It's the muscular lips. She, you know...

• 14:39Speaker 02

  You guys met in elementary school? We did. We met in elementary school at our local church. We've known each other for that long. We didn't start dating until much later in life, college, really. But we've known each other for quite some time. Family, friends, different schools, but same church. So family get-togethers for years, for years, yeah.

• 14:58Shawn Ryan?

  No wonder for that long and not dating her until college. What was the tipping point there?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  So I was coming home from my freshman year of college. And my, one of my best friends at the time was dating her identical twin sister. And I said, hey, I want to hang out this summer. Uh, let's, let's do some stuff. I only have a few weeks off. He said, well, I'm, I'm, I'm dating Emily. Let's, let's do some double dates. You know, Amy, you guys are friends. This will be fun. Easy peasy. I said, that sounds great. And it was about one and a half dates into that. Uh, we both knew something was a little different. That was it.

• 15:29Shawn Ryan?

  Very cool. What got your interest in the military? When did that happen?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  So I swam, uh, in addition to being in the, in the band. And, uh, the Naval Academy recruited me for swimming. It was the first school that ever reached out and that kind of blew me away. I didn't know what it was at the time. I just thought they taught people to drive boats. So I, I almost threw the, the document away thinking, ah, this is weird. But my swim coach was a history teacher, thankfully. And he said, hey, Brad, take a look at this. Pay attention. This is important. Like at least write back and see what they have to offer. The more I looked into it, the more I liked what I saw. Uh, opportunity to serve, free college, not such, not such a bad deal. And guaranteed job afterward. It looked like a lot of neat opportunities, uh, to build some life experience, to build some leadership. Leadership always interested me from a young age. And, um, so it just made sense.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  So we just ended up taking each next step until it brought us to the Naval Academy and there we were.

• 16:24Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding. So you had no aspirations to join the military until, even until well into college?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, college was Naval Academy, but yeah, like it was, it was probably around sophomore, junior year of high school is when it first started becoming interesting to me. I, I, I really didn't like the idea of wearing uniforms and, um, being told what to do and where to go and how to do things, which is probably how I ended up in the SEAL teams because we're not quite the normal military. Uh, yeah.

• 16:56Shawn Ryan?

  Did any other schools reach out?

• 16:58Speaker 02

  There were a few, but once I started getting interested in Navy, I kind of started just narrowing my focus to them and I looked at West Point as well. Once I decided that that lifestyle looks interesting to me and it's worth giving up some of the freedoms that I was holding on to at the time, it became very appealing to me to where I really narrowed in on those two by the end.

• 17:22Shawn Ryan?

  So what was it about the Navy or what occupation drew you to the academy?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  So when I looked at Naval Academy versus West Point, knowing I was, I think I was 17 years old at the time, it seemed to me that the Naval Academy offered more options. And I was, I was smart enough to know that I didn't know what I wanted to do yet in my life. So I liked the idea of, hey, while the next four years takes place and I mature and grow and get exposed to different things, I have a wider array of things available, from submarines to surface to pilot to Marine Corps if I wanted to go ground. And the SEALs sounded interesting as well.

• 18:01Shawn Ryan?

  So the SEALs was on your radar?

• 18:02Speaker 02

  It was. Interestingly, though, back then, the Navy didn't do laser surgery for eyes and my eyes were too bad. So once I got there and I got an assessment, turns out I was only eligible for like Marine Corps ground or surface or subs, really. That was about it. So I kind of committed to go to the Marine Corps. It was my goal at the time. Believe it or not, I had a high and tight and I was all in. And I did a summer training cruise with an amphib with some Marines on board. And it just so happens back in the day, if you remember, I'm sure you do, we used to put SEAL platoons on the ARGs. And the ship I ended up getting a cruise with also had a SEAL platoon on board. And so I ended up meeting those guys, really becoming very interested in what they do. And at that point, they started saying, we're going to approve laser surgery

• 18:47Speaker 02

  on a case by case basis. So I came home from that, I'll never forget. At that point, while we weren't engaged, I knew, we both knew we were getting married and so she was all in. And I was wringing my hands all night long, not sleeping, looking at the ceiling, thinking about, how do I have this conversation with Amy about, you know, she thought I was going Marines, SEALs is a little bit different. How do I, how do I pitch that? So I worked on it all night long. I'll never forget calling her from a dumb payphone on the base. I said, hey, what do you think about SEALs? And it wasn't maybe like a second pause. She said, yeah, that makes way more sense. You should do that. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I worried about this all night long and I had you at hello. So I put in the waiver, got the laser surgery approved. You had to

• 19:31Speaker 02

  pay for it yourself back then, do it on your own time. So I did all that and then never looked back. What year is this? So that was, golly, going into my junior year. So that was 98. Oh, so you were, okay, I thought, so you did a cruise? I don't know how the academy works. Yeah, I'm sorry. I should have explained that. So every summer at the academy, what they do is they break it into three chunks and they make you do two of those three training blocks. So you have to go experience something in the Navy. So one of them is a gray hole cruise for four weeks. They'll send you out on a ship and you ride that ship for four weeks. You put on the dunga jams. I don't think they wear those anymore, but you know, chip paint, do all the things and just learn about life as a sailor.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  I'm just curious, what was that experience like for you? It was fantastic. It was? Well, I mean, yeah, it's eye opening. It's exciting, right? Anything I've known up until then is only, I was a kid and then academics. And so you're starting to see the real Navy. You're starting to get to talk to sailors and know what it's like to put in a hard day's work. And it was fun for me, just getting to know these guys and girls and working hard and building rapport with them, right? And then, and every time I worked hard, I was acknowledged and the chief would say, hey, I'm going to give you this next job. You've shown yourself worthy. We're going to add to that. And I liked this idea

• 20:54Speaker 02

  of somewhat of a meritocracy where, oh, wow, hard work and relationships matter. And it was fun for me. I really enjoyed it. And that's where you met?

• 21:02Shawn Ryan?

  The SEAL platoon.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 21:04Shawn Ryan?

  What were they doing at the time?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  So it was a float. We were going from Norfolk out to the Med and we're going to go to Rhode of Spain. And so the whole cruise was pretty much spent crossing the Med. And they were just fantastic. They took me under their wing. Hey, why don't you check out our guns? Check. I walked up, asked, what do you guys do? How's this work? What do you do while you're on board? And I just saw them really embrace me. At one point, they said, hey, we're dropping our ribs off the side of the boat when we're almost dead Saturday Atlantic and we're going to go over the horizon from the ships, nothing in sight, and we're going to go swimming. Do you want to come with us? I said, well, of course I do.

• 21:39Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like a trap.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, knowing what I know now about SEALs, I probably should have been more skeptical. But at the time, I was, you know, just super jazzed that they were going to do that for me. And so, so nothing ended up happening. We had a great time. And I just thought, these guys are incredible. Look at the freedom and autonomy they have. Look at the trust they have with the captain of the ship to be able to do these kinds of things. No one else was doing that kind of stuff off the ship. And they just, they welcomed me with open arms. And I started asking them, hey, well, how hard is BUDS really? And like, what do you think? Like, I'm a little nervous about this. And every single one of those guys was just, they kept reinforcing everything that I have seen and know now that, yeah, BUDS is hard physically, but it's cognitively is the challenge. That's, that's the part

• 22:22Speaker 02

  that trips people up. And so the more I talked about it with them, the more confidence I built that, yeah, I think I can do this.

• 22:30Shawn Ryan?

  So then you go back to the Naval Academy and, and what is the, what's kind of the pipeline for a Naval Academy guy to get into BUDS?

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's changed a little bit over the years, but it's largely the same. You put your name in the hat, you say, I'm interested in this. And then you're competing with everyone else. So they look at everything, your physical scores, your, your, your grades, what other curricular activities you're doing. I ended up swimming at the Naval Academy, became swim team captain. That's always nice because it helps. It's leadership. And then what you'll do is before your senior year, so that summer right before your senior year, they would send us out to Mini BUDS is what they called it back then. And it was basically exposure to what BUDS is. It's a Mini BUDS. It's a clever name. It was time under the boat, time under the law, getting an experience in the cadre there. Then watch and see, how does this person interact? How does, how does this person conduct peer leadership?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  How does this person suffer? Does he suffer well? Is he a whiner? Does he complain? Does he keep his head under the boat? And then all that data gets, gets pulled together and recommendations are made and a ranking. And then your senior year, they put these huge boards together and they look at every candidate, every applicant, and they make decisions. And that year, I think we had 16 people that were able to select. About that time, we had about 50 apply within the Naval Academy. Now it's changed. It's called SOAS, SEAL Officer Assessment and Selection. It's a little more robust and more thorough for sure on, we're much better today looking at a candidate and saying, we know what attributes we're looking for and we know specifically how to look for it in the evolutions that we conduct.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  But it's virtually the same concept, getting a pre-read on an officer. It's always been very important for our community. Ideally, we'd have all the resources in the world to bring every potential candidate to BUDS out early or SWCC school out early to get that look at them before we say, yeah, you're welcome to come to the front door. We just live in a world of limited resources. And so what they decided years ago was, well, let's, let's focus on the officer cohort. Because we know when leaders make it through BUDS or quit, they have a following either way. And you've seen that, I've seen it, anecdotally, everyone out there's seen it. When a leader in the class, it doesn't have to be an officer, there's tons of dudes who step up into leadership roles. When they quit, people leave. So we invested heavy into developing that leadership, getting a good read on them to

• 24:52Speaker 02

  make sure we're stacking the deck in our favor when we say, come to the front door.

• 24:55Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:57Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. So, so you graduate the Naval Academy. How much time do you have before you go to?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  I graduated, I drove immediately down to Florida, married Amy the next week. We did a honeymoon and then hopped in the car and drove to San Diego to check in.

• 25:14Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Started our life together.

• 25:16Shawn Ryan?

  What's it like, the first SEAL officer I've had on the show? And so I'm curious, what, what's it like checking into BUDS as, as a junior officer fresh out of the academy?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  It's probably like checking in anywhere. You get the, you come through the quarter deck and you get the salute and they say, "Welcome, Ensign," with a little bit of disdain in their voice.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  As you know, there's just, I think, good banter and fun with young junior officers. So it was, it was, I don't know, I don't know that it was much different from anyone else, because especially checking into BUDS, we're just there to learn. You know, I, I've got this four-year education at the Naval Academy. That doesn't mean I know how to lead. In any organization, you need to establish yourself as a teammate before you can actually be trusted upon to lead. So that was really it for me, was, hey, I'm showing up humble and just excited to be here. Thankfully, opportunity. Let's get to it.

• 26:15Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I guess I realize you have no point of reference on what it would be like to show up as anything else, but I mean, just for perspective, when I showed up, I was 18, and I was likely looking at guys like you out of the Naval Academy.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:30Shawn Ryan?

  Swimmer, head of the swim team, and I'm like, "How am I even here?" And then, and then you got guys like you who are showing up, who are, I mean, obviously green, but I would think that the, that the, there's a certain amount of added pressure to an officer showing up to BUDS with, with, with the added responsibility of, I mean, you've, you have people under you.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah, that's interesting.

• 27:01Shawn Ryan?

  And so kind of what I'm getting at is, and it's such, it's not, not that the people that show up to BUDS are anything special, you know, but they, they are volunteering for something. It's a certain caliber of person that even would consider going into a career like that.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:18Shawn Ryan?

  And so you're, you're a leader, you're, you're, you're a junior leader amongst men's men.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:26Shawn Ryan?

  And so that's, that's gotta be a certain amount of pressure.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  There certainly was, yeah. I'm glad you framed it out that way. Here's the big secret. None of us knew what we were doing.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  But, but yes, there was pressure and, and offer, I'd offer too, there's a lot of pressure because the Naval Academy has a pretty good track record of producing officer candidates that then do well at BUDs. And you knew, these, these were friends. The 50 guys, when it gets whittled down to senior, and there's about, you know, 30 to 50 real good contenders for 16 spots at the time, your spot, you're taking it from someone else that, that you cared about, that might've deserved it more than you. I mean, you know, in these selection boards, like, there's always selection error baked into these things. We never get it perfect. And so there's definitely a sense of responsibility coming out of the Naval Academy to, man, I better not mess this opportunity up. I've got to figure this out fast.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  I've got to learn and I've got to, I've got to succeed in this program because if I didn't, then this spot was wasted. And someone else that might've deserved it more than me and might've actually been a better SEAL officer didn't get that opportunity for whatever reason. So that was a lot of pressure, was just feeling, not wanting to let down your friends that, that didn't get the nod.

• 28:44Shawn Ryan?

  How, how do your, how do your enlisted counterparts in BUDs treat you?

• 28:54Speaker 02

  So that's one of the things that drew me to the SEAL teams the most. So I'm glad you asked that. When, when you're at the Naval Academy, they have all these other officers and enlisted from the various subsets of the Navy, right? The SWOAs, the submariners, the SEALs, the Marines, everyone. And I, I was very interested in the relationship I saw between the SEAL officer and the SEAL enlisted compared to everybody else. And it was one of the things that intrigued me and drew me because while there was still a respect for the hierarchy, the chain of command, roles and responsibilities, what I, what I identified was more of a relationship. It was less, it, it was almost a, it crossed the threshold of, you could tell those guys

• 29:39Speaker 02

  were friends too. And they weren't friends to the point of being unprofessional. But you could tell they genuinely cared about each other. And that really resonated with me. And then when I started learning more, realizing, oh, it's because they all go through the same training together, the same standards is expected of both. There is no, for us and for them, it's all the same. And I realized, oh, that's a really, that's a different model that you don't see in a lot of other places. And that really interested me because then, you know, coming out of BUDs, we have mutual respect. We know exactly what each of us have been through, and it's not different or harder or better or worse. Now we can go to the SEAL platoons and fall into our roles and responsibilities, but there's absolute mutual respect across the whole force.

• 30:21Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have to, I mean, I would imagine that the Naval Special Warfare, how am I trying, what am I trying to say here? I would imagine that the leadership style within Naval Special Warfare is a lot different than what was ingrained in you in the academy.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  100%.

• 30:44Shawn Ryan?

  How did it, I mean, how did you rewire yourself to that type of leadership? How long did it take?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  I, it's interesting. It didn't take long at all for me. But I think that comes back to before even the Naval Academy, I was resistant to these ideas of too much control. And I think Naval Special Warfare offered a nice middle ground between, we're in the Navy, good order and discipline are absolutely paramount, but we're not quite right in the head either. And we are given autonomy to make decisions unlike where I think I've seen anywhere else. And the Navy's that way, which is great, but Naval Special Warfare even more so. McRaven, or not McRaven, I'm sorry, McChrystal coined the term, I think he coined it, command by negation, right?

• 31:35Speaker 02

  When we're downrange and instead of asking for permission and then gaining permission to then execute, hey, I know my left and rights, I understand my commander's intent, I'm just making decisions and moving. And I'm going to let my boss know what I'm doing, not ask to do it. Now, as the authority figure, he can always negate that and say, no, no, no, I have more context than you, there's something you don't understand, I'm going to pull you back, pull that, pull that leash back. But other than those moments, you have command by negation to make decisions and move.

• 32:03Shawn Ryan?

  You know, from some of our previous conversations, I can tell that you really, it seems to me that you really value the opinion of the guys under you and that you take a great responsibility in standing up for them, making sure everything's good on their front end. And I could imagine that also, I mean, that starts the BUDs, right?

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:28Shawn Ryan?

  With you guys. And so, kind of what I'm getting at, and I'm gonna ask you this when we get into your career as a SEAL, but what was a, what was a point in time where you realized you'd end BUDs, that you had won the trust of the guys under you?

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a great question. I don't know. I'm not sure if there was one moment. Well, all right, I'll tell you, all right, I'll tell you a story that I think is relevant. I was 234, BUDs 234, so we showed up and were told, hey, Discovery Channel's gonna film you guys. This was right around the time, this was early 2000s, so pre-9/11. This was right when the time when like Survivor was catching on all these reality shows. And the way it was communicated to us was Naval Special Warfare. I was looking to recruit, build more awareness into what the SEAL teams are, so we're bringing out this film crew to film you guys from first phase through third. Of course, we wanted to be quiet professionals.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  This is why we were trying to join the SEAL teams. We didn't want the exposure. So, in our infinite wisdom as a class, we decided to do a class protest on the grinder and inform the cadre that we did not agree with this decision. Your reaction tells me you know exactly how that went. So, anyway, we're getting filmed by Discovery Channel, because obviously they didn't care about what we thought. Thanks for your opinions. Shut up. Get back to, hit the surf and let's get moving. So, one of the moments I knew, I struck something important when you talk about peer leadership, because that's really what the SEAL teams are. If we all go through BUDs together, we're leading peers. We're all the same. We've been in the same place. We've done the different things. I might wear a different rank. I

• 34:14Speaker 02

  might have a different role and responsibility, but it's truly peer leadership. And

• 34:20Speaker 02

  As you know, when you roll with the people we roll with, there's no... You're an idiot if you think you might be better than them because of some rank that you might wear. These guys are incredible, and girls, they're absolutely some of the nation's best. When you said earlier, nothing so special about just going to BUDs, those are my words, not yours, but it's something like that. I disagree in the sense that I've looked at the numbers, less than, it's like 0.001% of Americans even get to our front door. So that's one of the things we would tell all these candidates, hey, no matter how this goes for you, you are already the top 0.001% of American youth. Hold your head high, hold your shoulders back. You had the guts to come here and try

• 35:03Speaker 02

  this program. That's more than most people. A lot of people out there will spend money on a weekend experience and talk about how they coulda, shoulda, woulda. You had the guts to come try. That takes a lot of guts, knowing we have a very high attrition rate.

• 35:17Shawn Ryan?

  You would say this to the candidates as the commanding officer?

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 35:21Shawn Ryan?

  So you're giving, you're giving positive affirmation for these guys?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 35:28Shawn Ryan?

  From day one?

• 35:29Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 35:31Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't get that.

• 35:32Speaker 00

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• 36:02Speaker 02

  You didn't get positive affirmation? Weird. I didn't either, as a candidate either. It was one of the things I wanted to kind of change a little bit. And we didn't, you know, positive affirmation, we didn't coddle. I was very stern. But we absolutely give credit where credit's due, and we look for those moments to positively affirm someone. We see something special. Hey, I like what you did there. I want you to do more of that. You're on the right track. When I'd see an officer in the middle of Hell Week, as they're getting their burrito night camp surf, make sure his whole boat crew and the whole class goes ahead of him, and he took last place. And I watched it. I saw it all happen with my command and master chief. And no one told him to do it. I walked over, grabbed him. Hey, man, why'd you do that? I saw that. I don't know, sir, it just seemed like the right thing to do. Well, you were right. Keep doing things like that. We're watching for those things.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  These are the moments we write down. Hey, this guy showed good character, good leadership. That goes in his file. That's now a data point we have on assessing that guy's character. I've deviated, though, from your initial question. So, so the first time I really think I stumbled upon what it means to lead a naval special warfare involves Matty Roberts. So, we went into Hell Week, and it was very cold Hell Week. We got reduced down pretty quickly in numbers. And Matty was in my boat crew. And we were pretty good performers. We weren't the smurf crew, and our smurf crew were crushing it. But, but we were pretty good performers. At some point in Hell Week, and I don't remember when, we started dragging. And, and Matty was just having a hard time. And he, he was, he couldn't explain it. But we knew him to be a, a trustworthy teammate and, and someone who's selfless.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  He didn't duck boat, ever. He kept his shoulder under lock every single time. He was always rallying dudes. He was one of our stronger guys. But all of a sudden, he's dragging, and we're losing every race. And you know what it's like to lose every race. You start paying the man a lot more. And at one point, we start doing the internal grumbling, right? Everyone's starting to get into pointing of the fingers and anger. The emotions come out, the veneer drops. And I don't remember what was said, but probably some, some nice things to Matty about, hey, dude, you gotta put out or, or DOR. Like, you're hurting your boat crew. And I'll never forget, well, how I remember it is, he said something to the effect of, hey, guys, I don't know what's wrong, but I'm just hurting more than normal. I can't explain it. I'm not gonna quit. And you know me, please, stick with me.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  And we made a decision as a boat crew, then, in that moment, okay, yeah. We're only as fast as our slowest man. We're gonna rally around Matty because he's earned it, and he deserves it. And if we lose every race from here through the rest of Hell Week, who cares? Oh, no. So, we're gonna be wet and sandy? You mean like we were anyway? And once we turned that corner and I realized, oh, this is, this is leadership. Collective suffering for one of our own who deserves it. And then not just suffering and no bitching about it, but embracing it. And then almost like, bring it on. We don't even care anymore. We're still gonna put out, but who cares if we lose? We're in this for Matty. And so we got through Hell Week, and I would never say we carried him through Hell Week because that dude is a monster, as you know. I've met him. He's an animal.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  He's an animal. And all the more so, and this is what I saw. The end of Hell Week happens, we limp to the finish line, as you know how that goes. We do the med screening at the time and he gets the x-rays and come to find out is both tib fibs were at like a, something like a 70 something percent stress fracture, if I remember correctly. So the dude was walking around on toothpicks that were about ready to snap at any given moment, and yet he finished Hell Week. They medically rolled him to the next class right there. Like they weren't gonna let him continue in our class. So he was there for the beginning, but I remember thinking at the time as a young officer, like, whoa, what if, what if we had run him out of our boat crew? Just out of anger, spite, we weren't winning? We would have missed out on a dude who, at the time, we saw a momentary weakness.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  In reality, that was incredible resolve and resiliency and hardness and grit and everything we want in our teammates. And then you know the story of Matty, he ended up, he's a war hero. You know, ate a PKM in Iraq with lifelong injuries as a result. Like the guy is just revered on the West Coast. Later came back to be an instructor and was, is still contracting out as an instructor there, still pouring into the next generations. That's another story I would tell our candidates when I was CO. 20 something years later, hey, let me tell you the story about Matty Roberts. This is why you don't run dudes out of your boat crew. You never know who that guy is and what he's gonna do for you as a teammate. And you might misinterpret some signs. Do you tell them about what Matty went through? Absolutely.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Do you wanna go into it right here?

• 40:37Speaker 02

  It's not my story to share, I think.

• 40:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's okay.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  And I know he's been involved in a documentary that's coming out soon. So I'm going to save that one for him to tell when that comes out. But I care very much for the man, and I know a lot of people do. And he is, America should be very thankful that we have men like him that stood the watch.

• 40:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Let's move on. Did you have any hangups and buds?

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Of course. I mean, they filmed the whole thing. You can watch it and find my hangups. I had one or two, one or two through the time. But no, I mean, I was fortunate. I wasn't, I wasn't targeted like some guys were. You know how that goes. One last story, we'll move on. I remember right before Hell Week, Terry Geddes was our OIC. And for whatever reason, the cadre decided they didn't like him. And so we're doing the movie hour and the pizzas as we're getting ready to, to go to the tents for breakout. And instructors come in and call Terry out. Off he goes, comes back in and he's ghost white. And I walked over, I was like, hey, what was all about Terry? And he said, well, all of First Phase cadre pulled me to the office and said that it's their mission in life to make me quit in, in Hell Week.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  And I remember, I think I said something smart ass like, well, it sucks to be you. And I'm glad I'm not in your boat crew.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  But I was fortunate not to have that happen. Yet what I'd offer is, what a stud to have that kind of pressure on him. Still is our class OIC. Not only did he not quit, he led incredibly effectively through our class with his LPO, Luis Rivera. That was really the first, almost the leader, right? Like NSW leader that I started looking up to like, man, that guy, that's a dude worth following. He can deal with that kind of pressure when he knows the entire, you know, the instructors, they're scary. They told him they want him out of this community. And he refused to take that for an answer. And he, he, he gritted through Hell Week. And then the cool thing about that, the other side of that coin is when he got through Hell Week, all of a sudden, everybody loved him.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  All the cadre were like, all right, I guess you're okay. And we thrived as a class under him and Lou's leadership after that. I mean, we could do no wrong almost.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Where did you go after graduation? After you graduated BUDS? I, so, so, again, different times. We graduated BUDS, they stopped filming. We went into SEAL qualification training at the time. I was the last SQT class in the beta kind of model. So, we did not get our tridents after SQT. The next class did. And so, as I finished SQT, we're at an island doing land warfare. That's where 9/11 happened. I had already had my orders at that point to SDV Team 2. So, I was incredibly disappointed there because everyone looked like they were going to the war and to the desert. And, and I was going to do some diving for extended periods of time. And the other interesting thing is, our entire time through the pipeline, all of our instructors

• 43:34Speaker 02

  were telling us, "Hey, the days of long-term warfare are over. Vietnam is done. That'll never happen again. You have Panama Grenada, Haiti. For the most part, those are quick skirmishes." One guy said, "I've been in the SEAL team 17 years, I've never seen a combat op. So, manage your expectations, gents." So, I said, "Okay, that's fine." Then 9/11 happens. Clearly changed everything. So, I wasn't too happy to be going to SDV. Can you explain what SDV is? I'm sorry, yeah, yeah, thank you. SEAL delivery vehicles. So, it's our undersea component within Naval Special Warfare. While all SEALs are combat divers, there are certain teams that, that take that to the next level and really specialize in that combat diving piece and use powered mini-submersibles, partner with the submarine force, and go places on extended dives that most people

• 44:19Speaker 02

  really can't go, go. That involves, they say in BUDS, you'll be colder and wetter in the teams, for sure, if you go SDVs. That was where I met Danny Dietz. We were new guys together and partnered together in the front of the boat. And I stopped counting our dive hours after about 2,000 together at some point. 2,000 dive hours? Lot of diving. I remember the first night... First night I did a long dive, and I mean like a 10-hour dive. I got off bag that night, that morning. It was a nighttime dive, so we pretty much went underneath as the sun was setting and came up about the time it was rising. And I was telling my mom about it, and she's like, Brad, you just, she's like, you did an entire workday, but under the water, like on a breathing apparatus.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  I says, oh, yeah, it's bizarre. Danny and I met, new guys, he was 2:32, a couple of classes ahead of me, but we met officially at SDV Team Two, partnered as new guys in the same platoon together. And we did a whole tour in the front of the boat together. I mentioned 2,000 something dive hours. You get to know a person very well when you're spending more time on dive status with them than you are with your wife in regular hours. Learn to read movements, understand what he's thinking, talk through bubbles, and, you know, comms are very spotty underneath the water. So we became very, very good friends, very fast friends, and really loved each other. Yeah.

• 45:46Shawn Ryan?

  Can you go into a little bit more about the SDV mission?

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:52Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what is the SDV mission?

• 45:54Speaker 02

  So think of it like, think of the SDV like a minivan underwater. But it's not, it's not, it's not a dry submersible, it's wet, it's just a vehicle, so it fills with water. So we're in there, in the water, in wetsuits, breathing on full-face mask regulators with comms, and it's powered. And what that does is it hosts with a larger platform, either a surface vessel or a submarine. So what that does is buys us longer legs for the dive. We can now go further on a vessel, SDV from that vessel now go further to a target. So it extends our reach and our capability, but the only way to do that is spending a lot of time underwater in very miserable conditions.

• 46:37Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of depth are you at?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Um, I don't want to get too into that, because we could start to talk TTPs that might be, you know.

• 46:47Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  But, but generally speaking, it gets colder as you go deeper. So we try to stay as shallow as we can, to stay as warm as we can, unless the mission calls for us to go deeper, for sure.

• 46:58Shawn Ryan?

  And you can communicate under there?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's not great, it's not like this, but yes, there are communication.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Systems, yes. Can I ask how you navigate? Yeah, there's a series of sonars and Doppler and just GPSs. So you can do GPS updates by raising up an antenna. And you just overlay maps and grids and plot out courses, just exactly like LANNAV. It's exactly like LANNAV, but just under the water. Okay, so there's there's screens and all that kind of stuff under there. Saltwater and electronics. What could possibly go wrong? I've never been in one of those. Oh, it's it's it's an incredible capability and it's miserable. So where was your first deployment?

• 47:44Speaker 02

  We actually went to Rota, Spain.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  It was a UCOM deployment. It was another frustration of ours because now at that point, I think we had both wars kicked off. So we called it the global war on tourism for us in Rota. Danny just got married right before the deployment, which is typical Danny because everyone said, hey, you met this girl, wait a while, like make sure she's, you know, all in and she can handle the deployment in the teams. And just like Danny does, he said, Mom, I do my own thing. I know she's the one. So off to the courthouse and PF Chang's for a

• 48:20Speaker 02

  reception afterward. It was it was fantastic. Nice. Fantastic. So we go to Rota and yeah, just bounced around. We were training for some potential SDV missions at the time, ended up not happening for us. But we bounced all over the Med and did various interop training events with some foreigners and just worked, worked. Had anybody had any wartime experience? Not in my platoon, not in my platoon at that point because since the war kicked off, everyone at SDV had pretty much still been at SDV. So we were just starting to hear some of the stories come back. I remember Steph Bass had come from SDV, had just had the op, Mazza Sharif. Are you familiar with that one?

• 49:05Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Okay, he got partnered with the SAS. And this was early, early Afghanistan. And they went, uh, they went to try to rescue two agency guys who got taken during a prison overthrow. And so they rolled in as this small element, you know, Steph and a group of the SAS or SBS, I can't remember now, ended up being one of the worst gunfights, certainly early in the war. Steph got the Navy Cross for it. A lot of discussion about should he have gotten the Medal of Honor? I think so. He was knighted in Britain for this thing. So he's technically the only enlisted SEAL that everyone should call sir. He ended up being my command master chief later at basic training command when I was an XO.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  But he was coming back through to answer your question at that time and starting to give us the AAR on what they were learning. And it was one of the first real gunfights that we had someone come back from. And he was on a road show just telling us, hey, we've learned a lot really fast. There was a lot we were doing wrong. We were in a hyper learning environment now. And here's the things we have to adapt to very, very quickly or we're gonna, we're gonna fall behind.

• 50:11Shawn Ryan?

  Reason I'm asking is I want to know what it's like as a, as a, as an officer, as a leader in the community.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:20Shawn Ryan?

  Showing up to a SEAL team amongst people that already have experience.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So it's humbling because you're walking into this position and no one throws you right in charge, you know, there's this, you're cutting your teeth. And a lot of what I would tell my JOs when I was now a more senior officer was, hey, your first job as an officer is to learn what it means to become a SEAL. Like that's step one. So don't step into this thinking like, follow me, everybody, you're gonna lead. You have to earn the respect of the team. And you're only gonna earn the respect of the team if you know what it's like to be one of them too. So, so I would grab a broom and sweep up. I would do all the jobs that all the new guys were doing. Didn't matter that I was an officer. It would piss off Danny sometimes because he'd be like, you gotta stop doing that because the chief's gonna be mad at me because I let an officer, you know, do this.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  And I was like, yeah, but Danny, I'm a new guy. I'm no different than you. So what? I've got a different rank. So that's what it's like is figuring out what it means to be a team guy before you can figure out what it means to lead team guys. So it's an exploratory period. It's a very short one. You don't have a lot of time because very quickly you're now the officer in charge down the road. Versus, I think there's a longer runway for a brand-new enlisted guy till he gets to LPO, right? So we have a shorter time that we have to learn how to lead and then be ready to go. Interesting. Yeah. Were you, were you at SDV II when Danny went to Afghanistan? I was. So we finished our first platoon together and rolled into a second platoon together.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  And we both got back of the boat op that time, or I should say, mission set at that time. We did our time in the front of the boat as pilot navigator. Now we're in the back of the boat as mission specialist, and he was the comms guy. So we did an entire workup doing recce together in these four-man teams that would go out and do reconnaissance. This was right around the era where ISR was starting to come on scene, so there wasn't a lot of it. So there was still a need for these recce teams to go out and surveil areas. And that's what we specialized in out of the back of that boat. So we did our entire workup together. And at the time, with the wars going on, there was usually a decision point somewhere in the workup where they said, hey, if there's not an SDV op that specifically we're training

• 52:37Speaker 02

  for, we're gonna break and we're gonna outsource the platoon to augment all the other forces downrange to help because, because the war was ramping up and they needed manpower. So we hit that decision point, and they offered up to us, where do you want to go? Iraq or Afghanistan? The platoon kind of split, and we were supposed to go to Afghanistan together. So I very much was supposed to be doing everything with Danny that he ended up doing. It was an administrative error that changed that. I was already negotiating for my next set of orders. They wanted me to do something disassociated outside of the community, so I volunteered to go to Monterey to do my postgraduate degree.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  And I got pulled in the office and said, hey, something got hap, something happened, your orders got messed up. It turns out, you're gonna have to cut away to Monterey, like halfway through the deployment, so you're not gonna be able to deploy. We can't send you out there to do this. Which frustrated me. Because you do all the work, you want to go deploy. And they said, well, what if we do this instead? At the time, Dev Group was doing three-month deployments out there. So why don't we let you augment them? And you can get a faster rotation and still be back in time for your orders. And then that'll work out. At least you get to go forward and do something. I said, well, that sounds better than nothing. Let's do that. And not better than nothing. I was excited for the opportunity to augment, for sure. But I wanted to be with my boys, too.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  I wanted to be with Danny and the guys. As it stands, though, we all ended up in Bagram at the same time, anyway. Just right down the road from each other in different compounds. So while they were starting to do their ops and I was doing my augment, Danny and me and a couple of their dudes had coffee at the Green Bean right there in Bagram multiple times, just talking about our shared experiences. Danny and I dreaming big about the future together. You know, talked about, should we both screen for Dev Group after this? I don't know. What do you think? He was asking me what I was seeing. And so, yeah, we were there at the same time. What were you saying? I was impressed with what I was seeing. And it was inspiring to me. And that was one of the things that convinced me to screen was what I saw.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  When I first married my wife and we were doing this career, I said, hey, I'll never ask you for that because that seems like it's... The tempo is up a notch. And I know I'm already asking a lot of us as a family at this point. We'd already had our first son. And but one of the days when I was augmenting, she drove me into work to drop a bag or something. So she, we're sitting there in the car. Pull my three-year-old out of the seat. And he's sitting there as these little birds come screaming in. And these monsters, these animals are hanging off the sides. The little birds with these beards and sunglasses and kit. And I'll never forget, as they touch and go, like 30 yards from where I'm parked, just dropping a bag off at the gate.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  This one dude just looks over and gives my boy a little bit of a little salute. And he starts waving as they, you know, off they go. And I looked down and my wife's in the driver's seat. And she goes, you're telling me you don't want to do that?

• 55:43Speaker 02

  So that was it, you know, and getting to see the level that those guys were performing and being a part of that, it really was impressive. And it definitely provoked and interested me that I was talking about with Danny then while we were on that deployment together.

• 56:00Shawn Ryan?

  Where were you when you got the news about Red Links?

• 56:06Speaker 02

  So that was a tough one. I ended up coming home from the deployment, per the administrative mess up. I get home and then they say, "Turns out the mess up was a mess up, so you could have deployed with Danny and the boys anyway, sorry about that. But you're home now, so we're gonna put you in a staff job and, you know, it'll be okay." So I was pretty frustrated, and I was only home about a week or two. And I was at dinner with my wife at the Olive Garden, and I got a call. So now I'm the only guy from the platoon home. Everyone else is still forward, just the way it worked out. And they said, "You gotta get over to Patsy's house. Something's happened. Danny's status is unknown." And so we immediately dropped our son with friends and off we went.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  And then we spent the next, about a week there with Patsy, and then brought in his mom and dad and brother and sister as well. We just stayed glued to the news. What a lot of people don't realize, you know, we remember June 28th, but people don't realize that we didn't know they were dead until July 4th. So from the moment we knew they were status unknown, for almost a week there, we just sat on pins and needles, watched the news, hoped. You hear rumors about one guy might be on the loose, running free. You start convincing yourself, "That's gotta be Danny," you know, and telling stories to build hope. Going into work, checking in, "What are the intel updates? What do we have? What can I say?" Drive back to the house.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  We didn't have much at that time. And, yeah, so I was there.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, at one point, it was horrible. We finished off and some of the other spouses were with us and we went to eat at like an all night diner. And we're sitting there just fatigued from the strain. And I got a call from my boss and he said, hey, don't tell the family yet, but all forces are recovered. Everyone made it. And the letdown that we had in that moment, there was like four or five of us and we're all crying. We're so excited. And then he said, but don't go telling me. And we're like, all right, we're gonna hang here. And as soon as you give us the word, we're gonna go right. We were like a couple hundred yards from Danny's house at that point. We were right there.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  And like 20 minutes later, he calls back, hey, it was a false report. Still status unknown. You didn't go tell her, did you? I was like, thank God, no. And then it was only about a day later that we got the official news. It was a roller coaster of a week. How did you handle that?

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Most difficult moment of my life?

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, we I got the word, be at the house. CEO and the chaplain are inbound. And so I get there.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  I see him kind of hiding in the shadows, so I go partner up. I sent Amy inside. I said, hey, get in there and be ready. I think that's how it went down. And we go to the front door and then the rest is just these flashbulb moments of grief. I remember, I remember Patsy.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  I remember her dropping to the floor and then bouncing up and running from the house. Like just, it's just, it was such a she was just trying to run from reality. And we had to chase her down, bring her back to the house. And then we're still standing there, just no one knows what to say. There's no right thing to say, you know?

• 59:48Speaker 02

  I'll never forget. Her body did what it could only do in a moment like that. And she fell to the ground and started throwing up on the carpet. And Amy and I were holding her hair back as she vomited.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Terrible day.

• 1:00:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, terrible day. She's Patsy's family.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  She always will be. She's a special woman, as you know.

• 1:00:26Shawn Ryan?

  It sounds like nobody was closer with them than you and Amy.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  I would never claim that.

• 1:00:33Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you guys deployed together.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Shawn Ryan?

  You sat in the front of the SDV together. You sat in the back of the SDV. You spent a lot of time.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  We did, we did.

• 1:00:40Shawn Ryan?

  More time with him than you have with your own wife.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:43Shawn Ryan?

  From your own words.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  That's fair. And I think you're right in that most of the guys in the platoon would say that. But I would never claim to be his best friend, right? Danny had a lot of best friends because he was the guy that made everyone feel valued. Didn't matter if you were a SEAL, diver, support technician, corpsman. That dude just loved everybody and made everybody laugh all the time. And so, one of the neatest things I saw after he died was people would come forward and start telling these stories about he made them feel like they were the most important person in the world. And they couldn't believe that this young SEAL would treat them that way. And so, I had to take a step back and I wanted to always make sure I never

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  I never claim that part of him, right? He was special to a lot of people. But yes, I loved him. I loved him dearly.

• 1:01:36Shawn Ryan?

  I guess where I'm going is is because you were so close,

• 1:01:43Shawn Ryan?

  how did you support Patsy through that time?

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Show up.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  And there were days where

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  you don't know what to say because like I said, there's nothing to say and you just be. And you don't judge. If I've learned anything from my career, that was the first of many unfortunate tragedies of our career, but you never know how a grieving spouse, or mom, or family member will behave. And there's a spectrum of what will happen, and you never know what to expect. And so you just be, and you love as best you can, sometimes not knowing what that looks like, but in hindsight, just be in there. And hugging when they need it, and giving them space when they need it. That's another thing, too, is sometimes they get overwhelmed with the support, and they just need space. And so, we were very clear with her, hey, you just let us know, you're never gonna offend us.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  That's the thing about Patsy, like, even in the midst of her grief, she was worried about upsetting other people, and, you know, I don't wanna hurt your feelings, no, no, this is not, my feelings are not important right now. So we just, we accommodate whatever we could, and we were brutally honest, and said, be brutally honest with us what you need from us, and if you need space, then you get it. You get it. And you tell stories, when they wanna hear them, you know? Especially the funny ones, cuz we all need to laugh in those moments.

• 1:03:09Shawn Ryan?

  You know, DJ Shipley's who's connected us, and DJ, if you're listening, thank you for the connection. Where I'm going with this is DJ married Patsy later on in life. And, so I wanna know, you know, as somebody who was that close to Danny's family, what was, what was it like for you to see Patsy?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  It was beautiful.

• 1:03:38Shawn Ryan?

  Move on?

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  It was beautiful. And what I mean is, DJ never felt threatened by Danny's memory. And I've seen other people who are, and they feel like they have to compete with this memory, which you can never compete with. Like, Danny will always have a special place in Patsy's heart, and DJ never felt threatened by that. And not only that, like, here are some of the early stories Patsy told me, cuz of course, she's family now, right? And so, anyone that comes, you know, to the doorstep, we were curious about, is this guy gonna treat her right or not?

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Here was one of the first dates they went on, once they realized there was a romantic connection. He said, "Do you have Danny's last set of camis?" He knew that she did. The ones she had, she hadn't even washed them, they still smelled like Danny at the time. She said, "Yeah." He goes, "I want you to put them on and be ready. I'm gonna pick you up Saturday morning, whatever, we're gonna go on a date, but you're gonna be wearing Danny's camis." She's like, "All right." So he takes her to the drop zone out there in Suffolk, and he had set up a tandem jump for her, and he was gonna jump with her. And he said, "This is Danny's last jump with you and with me." That's a dude that is so secure in his love for her, and not threatened by Danny. Like, "Okay, how could you not love that guy?" Immediately, we fell in love with him, and absolutely, like, this is, "Okay, you guys

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  are meant to be." And his dad, he'd put me through a portion of training back in the day, too, so I knew of him. So it wasn't a surprise at all for us, and their relationship just took off from there. There was another thing, like, at one point, he's looking at Danny's shadow box in the room, you know? And he realized one of his medals hadn't been updated. At some point, I think Danny was given the Bronze Star, but then it got upgraded to the Navy Cross later, when the paperwork finally came through, and the initial shadow box didn't have the cross. And DJ saw it, and he goes, "Hey, would you mind, I don't wanna upset you," he said, "would you mind if I just take that and go get it fixed and updated for Danny?" And of course, she didn't mind, so we did. Like, "Okay, good to go, dude. Good to go. Welcome to the family." Wow.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's pretty cool to hear. Oh, man, we loved them. We ended up being in their wedding, too. Amy was a bridesmaid, I was a groomsman, like, huge celebration. That had to be surreal, huh? It was very surreal, and it was so good. I mean, you never move on from death, but you can move forward, and I think we need to move forward. We can't, we can't sit in grief forever. It'll always be with us, the scars always remain, but we have to move forward in life. And, and you can do that in a way where you're carrying their memory and honoring it, but not in an unhealthy way, and I think that's what we saw Patsy do. She poured back into the teams after Danny, she didn't isolate herself.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  And then she married back into the teams and kept giving to this nation. She's given more than most women out there. Yeah. Yeah, that's for damn sure. I mean, did you see?

• 1:06:41Shawn Ryan?

  Like a sense of freedom in her when DJ came along?

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, you see hope, you know, because I'm sure, I can't know for sure, but I can imagine having put myself in their shoes as best as I can, surviving spouses, there's probably a sense of fear. Am I ever going to find that love again? She was young, man, I mean, she was young. He was too, we were all, we were all young. We were starting our lives together. Like, this was like, we're all buying houses at the same time and furnishing them. And that's an exciting period of life to get it just cut off so abruptly. And I'm sure there's a sense of fear, like, am I ever going to find that again? You know, we were on track, we were making plans, we had a future set. We all do these things and there's probably, it's a huge setback.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  And then I can imagine also there's a sense of fear that, what if it does happen again? Is that bad? There's gotta be some guilt, you know? Am I giving up love for my first by loving another one? And I don't know, those are difficult emotions to grapple with. But, but yes, to answer your question, like, I saw her, we saw her happy. I wish it made us happy.

• 1:07:56Shawn Ryan?

  That's great to hear.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was great to be a part of.

• 1:08:01Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move on to, where did you go after SDV two?

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  Went out to Monterey for that post-grad degree. And then I came out to SEAL Team Four for my platoon command tour and deployed to Iraq. Great platoon, probably not worth, worth spending time there so we can get to more of the stuff. But significant leadership opportunity for me to go out to the middle of nowhere. We were at an outstation where me and a marine captain, so two O3s, were the senior guys on this outpost in the middle of Alhambra Province. We just had the time of our lives. Great opportunity, fantastic SEAL platoon. I learned a lot as a leader there. And we made some difficult decisions, but grew a lot through that process. It was a great deployment.

• 1:08:48Shawn Ryan?

  Was it a kinetic deployment?

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  At the time, for me, yes, it was something. We were doing raids. We weren't getting into a lot of gunfights at that point. Things had started to quiet down, but we still did a lot of raids. We stayed very, very busy. I say that because at the time, it was exciting. It was nothing for what was my next season of life to come, for sure.

• 1:09:10Shawn Ryan?

  You had mentioned some, I think you said, difficult decisions. What were some of those?

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  They're just leadership challenges, being out in the middle of nowhere. There's, you know, for the first time ever, now I'm actually in a leadership position in a combat zone, and that's not black and white. There's gray landscape to navigate in war, and the right decision isn't always so obvious. And so, there's a...

• 1:09:42Shawn Ryan?

  Let me rephrase that a little bit. You know, academy to BUDs to SDV. It sounds like not a whole lot of combat experience yet. Maybe you got some at the augment with Damak.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  Not really. No, it was pretty quiet. So, yeah, this was my first real...

• 1:10:01Shawn Ryan?

  So, now you are showing up to SEAL Team Four. I shouldn't assume anything, but I'm...

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  No idea what I'm doing.

• 1:10:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but you're surrounded by people. What year is this?

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  This was 2000. I showed up 2007, and then we deployed 2008 through the winter into 2009.

• 1:10:19Shawn Ryan?

  So, there's got to be quite a bit of experience.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. It was humbling. You know, I tell these young junior officers these days. I'm like, hey, man, here's the big secret. None of us really knew what we were doing when we're in those leadership roles. You're doing the best you can, but the point is, if you establish yourself as a learner fast and just commit to the learning process and be humble enough to seek counsel and advice and mentorship, you'll be okay. And that's what I did there, is I recognized, I was coming into these platoons. I mean, I was rolling into a platoon. They had just come off of Clark Schweather's loss, Clarky, that previous deployment. And that guy that carried his body off target was my LPO for the next platoon. He rolled that entire platoon, and he left the bloodstains on his H gear.

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  He refused to wash it. And I'm that dude's OIC, and I have no combat experience. It was incredibly intimidating rolling with these people. And I knew I had to learn fast. And back to being a new officer, okay, I gotta earn their trust. I gotta earn their respect as a SEAL before they're gonna listen to me as an officer.

• 1:11:24Shawn Ryan?

  And you're the OIC?

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, I was the OIC, the platoon.

• 1:11:27Shawn Ryan?

  So for those listening, that means you are in charge of the platoon.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:32Shawn Ryan?

  So how, I mean, how do you show up there and earn the respect of a bunch of combat guys with a ton of experience who've been there and done that? Probably several of them multiple times.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Shawn Ryan?

  And you're showing up green.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  It's a balance. It's a balance because you can't show that you, you can't be too vulnerable. You have to lead. You have to show that you, hey, I know what I'm doing for the most part here. But yet still be curious enough and humble enough to ask the questions and understand that, hey, I might need a little more help. So I grab my platoon chief, hey, man, help protect me from myself here. You know, I'm coming from a lot of undersea time. I'm a fast learner, but will you take me to the house and walk me through some stuff? Like, let's run some drills together before I do it in front of the platoon. Because I'm gonna mess up from time to time, but I don't want to fail catastrophically and lose their respect. I also did that with my troop chief. He was a godsend. He had just come from damn neck and was our troop chief.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  So I grabbed him like immediately, hey, I need mentorship. Help me, man. That guy poured into me. It was fantastic. I would not be who I am today without people like that pouring into me and humbling themselves and teaching me, just this young, curious J O, to help keep me from falling too catastrophically.

• 1:12:52Shawn Ryan?

  So you're putting in the extra work right off the bat?

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:57Shawn Ryan?

  That alone will earn a

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:00Shawn Ryan?

  tremendous amount of respect.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:13:02Shawn Ryan?

  When you got overseas, I mean, were you, were you on a lot of these raids with the platoon?

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like for you the first time that the platoon, that your guys went out without you?

• 1:13:16Shawn Ryan?

  What's going through your head?

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Um, when they went out without me?

• 1:13:20Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Hmm. So, it's a great question, actually. We had to send a group up to Mosul. I had to split up the platoon and send it because we were, they were just breaking ground. The army was moving up to Mosul. And so I had to send my A O I C with my platoon chief up there. And it was very difficult because, and I sat him down and had the conversation about Danny. And I said, hey, I was supposed to deploy with him and I didn't get to. And we all know how that ended. Now, I don't, I spent some time playing the what-if scenario. What if I had been there? Would things have been different? I don't know. It's not very, it's not very healthy to spend too much time in that world. But I, but I used that in this moment. This is very important to me that you guys understand. Uh, my commanders intend for you to go up there.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  My left and rights, you know, as, as your O I C, call me when you have questions and let's have discussions about your decisions. But when we don't have time for that, you make decisions and you do the best you know how to do. And so it was a huge piece of, oh my goodness, I'm having to trust these guys to go do stuff. And I know it's at stake because I've suffered, I've suffered when it goes poorly. Um, and so it was very communicative with them about what that looks like and what my concerns were.

• 1:14:32Shawn Ryan?

  Were you terrified that you would lose somebody under your watch?

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  Not terrified. It's always in the back of your head, especially after experiencing loss. But, I, you know, SEALs, as you know, and SWCCs too. It's one of, it's a double edged sword, our sense of confidence. Uh, I think it's what allows us to do some of the things that, that are impossible to other people. But, but at the same time, it's what makes us a little vulnerable because sometimes we can, we can be overly ambitious. Um, so I wasn't terrified. I had a sense of confidence that I knew how well we'd been trained. I was very comfortable with the platoon. I was very comfortable with how we operated. And I knew they'd make the right decisions. That said, as I've learned, you can make all the right decisions in the world. The enemy still gets a vote and Murphy still gets a vote.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  That's always in the back of my head that, okay, this might be, the longer I do this, this seems to be somewhat of a statistical inevitability. It will happen again. Uh, thankfully it didn't happen there.

• 1:15:33Shawn Ryan?

  So, once again, I'll ask, what was it that you saw?

• 1:15:40Shawn Ryan?

  Switch in the platoon to gain, gain the confidence or gain, gain your, you know where I'm getting at.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:48Shawn Ryan?

  When they trusted you to be their, their OIC, their leader.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  I think it's a series of small things and it's a, it was these small moments where I showed them that I trusted them. And I showed them I would back them when they, when they were under the gun. And we had a couple of things happen, which I disagreed with, and I made it pretty clear, hey, I don't like the way that happened over there. We're going to do things differently, uh, because we're going to hold ourselves to a different standard. And so as that happens in these micro moments, these micro decisions, it builds trust. And then by the time you're deploying forward together, there's no question, there's no question. We all know that we trust each other and that's a great place to be. Uh, it wasn't one moment, I can't, I can't think of one moment.

• 1:16:38Shawn Ryan?

  It was that you had your guys back.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and not in an unhealthy way, right? There's a lot of people that abuse that, that mantra, uh, take care of the boys, yes.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Take care of the boys, okay. What does it mean, what does it mean to have their back? Well, it means to love them. What does it mean to love? It doesn't mean to be liked. It, it means to love. I love my kids. Um, I, I don't think of them and I don't think of my team as my kids. That's, that's too far of a stretch, but, but, but the principles of love apply, right? We, we trust, uh, we love, we lead, coach and mentor, we learn. I've learned more as a parent, uh, you know, about, about myself and about, man, I messed that up, I can do better. All of that is the same thing in leadership. And as we do that and we show that we're doing it and we're transparent and genuine in doing it, it just builds trust and cohesion. And all of a sudden we can go. And, and not only do I trust them to do what we need to do, but they trust me to, to.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  To lead them and they trust me to hold them proportionally accountable when we mess up. And that's a huge piece, the proportionate word. There's a lot of leaders out there who will say, oh, you gotta earn my trust. Okay. It's bilateral, though. As a leader, we have to earn their trust. And what does that mean? It means I'm not gonna knee jerk react and I'm not gonna lop a dude's head off for making a small mistake. We're gonna provide opportunity to fall forward. We're gonna both learn from this. Proportionate accountability. We can't be reckless with our trust and just send it, guys. Have fun. No, no, there has to be proportionate. There's be trust, but proportionate accountability when we mess up. And when we do that, that builds trust. Cause then they'll see, oh, I messed something up.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  If that platoon over there, this had happened in, that would have been crucified, sent to captain's mast, whatever. This platoon here, Brad and the platoon chief thought that was a survivable failure, a teachable moment. So we kept it at our level and we mentored him through it and we provided that opportunity. He fell forward and was fine. Or we messaged up the chain if it was appropriate. Hey, this is what happened. Our guy messed up, but here's how we want him to survive it. Here's what we wanna do. We're asking you to let us, let us run with this. And when the dudes see that, okay, this guy has our back. There's still a high standard. We don't compromise the standard, but they're gonna help me when I mess up.

• 1:18:53Shawn Ryan?

  We're getting ready to take a break.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Shawn Ryan?

  And then we'll move into what happened after, after this deployment. But, but real quick, I just, we got a lot of people that listen to the show that are, that are wanting to go to BUDS.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Shawn Ryan?

  Wanting to go SF, MARSOC. We got a lot of people that wanna be in special operations and, and a handful of those are looking to go the officer route. And so what are a couple of leadership attributes that you pass on to being the commanding officer over at Naval Special Warfare?

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Shawn Ryan?

  Training?

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a great question. We're gonna hit a couple of these as we go through, but if you wanna lead people, you have to be curious about people. And I'd offer, you almost need to become a student in what makes us tick as human beings. So we have to understand first, human nature, psychology. I wasn't a psych major, but I've read about it quite a bit.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  Beyond that, we have to break it down. Now, what's the organization I want to lead in? I'll have to become a skilled tradesman in that organization before people are going to be... You don't have to be the best. I don't have to be the best sniper, jumper, diver, shooter, whatever. But I have to at least be a skilled tradesman in that craft before I can expect that people are going to follow me. Then I have to understand the culture of the people that are in this organization. Who gets attracted to NSW? Like I mentioned earlier, we're not quite right in the head. We're not the normal part of society. We're generally on the fringes of normal behavior. Shocking, we get into bar fights every once in a while, and our young guys do too. Okay, let's manage that. So understand, human nature, understand the nature of the people that are drawn to the organization you want to lead in, and then understand the culture of those organizations.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  And sometimes that involves subcultures. You've seen this. Different teams, different troops sometimes have subcultures. Sometimes those cultures are healthy, sometimes they're not. If they're healthy, well, shoot, let's jump on that, capitalize on it, squirt fuel on the fire and run. If it's unhealthy, okay, well, let's start talking about what we need to do to shift that culture. But it's really becoming a student in that world of understanding human beings and what makes them tick. And then, when we make decisions as leaders, well, why are we making that decision? Are we making... We're generally looking to incentivize a certain behavior or disincentivize a certain behavior. And so as we make those decisions, based upon all those other factors, human nature, organizational culture, then, did I produce the right behavior that I was hoping to with this decision? Or do we accidentally go the other way?

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Whoops, unintended consequences. And then having the humility as a leader, okay, let's revisit that decision, let's pull it back and shift fire. Because if really what we're talking about is this, then let's figure out how to get there. What does that look like? What do those decisions look like? And how do we get buy-in for those decisions? Someone much smarter than me said to me years ago, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast every single day." And what he meant is, you might have the best strategy in the world to solve a problem, to get an end state, but if your decisions to get there are counter-cultural, you'll fail every day. So we have to align our end goals as leaders and our decisions into the culture in order to get to where we want to be.

• 1:22:03Shawn Ryan?

  Very well said. Thank you for that.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  I appreciate it.

• 1:22:06Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Sounds good.

• 1:22:10Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:23:19Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Brad, we're back from the break. Let's get into Green Team. So I know you screened for Dev Group.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:23:26Shawn Ryan?

  Let's start right there.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, came back from that Iraq deployment, right into Green Team 2009, and moved on from there to the squadron, and...

• 1:23:37Shawn Ryan?

  How was Green Team?

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  Green Team is brutal. Brutal. Harder than buds. And I say that physically, it's probably... It's a difficult scale because you're older, so everything hurts a little bit more. So if you did them both side-by-side comparison, probably not as hard as buds. But there's no hell week, right? But what I mean harder, too, is the cognitive piece. The psychological aspect is incredibly difficult because you're already a proven SEAL now. You've got a reputation. And in a sense, you're putting everything on the line to go over there and say, hey, yeah, measure me and assess me and tell me if you're what we're looking for. One guy said it really well. He said, you know, we were about to go into the house and do some runs in Green Team.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  And you go in there and, looking up in the rafters, you just see these animals up there, beard, sunglasses, long hair.

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  Just pouring over the rafters. There's more of them up there than there are of you down here. And you know that every single one of them is judging every single thing you do, every move, every micro move. That's incredibly intimidating. And one of the guys said, I've been on combat operations in Afghanistan where we were troops in contact, no kidding, gunfights. And I'm more stressed right now, going into this house with those dudes in the rafters looking at me. And I'm like, yeah, I feel the same thing. Like, your heart rate's just going through the roof. It's just a lot of performance anxiety. And it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming.

• 1:25:02Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody I've interviewed about it says the same thing. It's harder than buds. But I'm curious, what is, what is, what is the selection like for an officer going in?

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  So it's changed. I don't know what it is today. Keep in mind, this is now, golly, what, what are we talking, like, almost a decade and a half ago. But at the time, it was all the normal stuff that anyone else has to go to, the physical fitness test, the psych profile, all that stuff. But then what they did for the officers on top of that at the time was they'd bring you into a room, just you, provide you a bunch of intelligence and say, plan a mission. You have X amount of time to plan it. And then we're going to come back in the room and you're going to brief it. Start now. And so you had to by yourself, put together a cobbled plan with what assets they gave you. It's all notional. It's all just, just a planning exercise. And then you had to brief it competently back to these senior officers at dev group, which was, you know, just a little intimidating.

• 1:25:56Shawn Ryan?

  How much time do you get?

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  I can't remember. It's been so long. I want to say, I want to say they gave me like 40 minutes at the time.

• 1:26:04Shawn Ryan?

  Forty minutes?

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. It wasn't much. It wasn't much. And part of the drill is they know you're not going to get everything. Like, there's just too much. Part of it is an information processing drill, right? Can you figure out, scanning through this stuff, what's the important information, distill it down to some salient talking points, pick the relevant ones, and then brief them effectively, and manage risk from a planning perspective based off of all these factors. It's almost like in college where they give you too much work, and they know you can't get it all done. So you have to figure out how to prioritize what you prioritize, and now message it effectively, as if you're briefing an op for approval.

• 1:26:41Shawn Ryan?

  Can you talk, do you remember the scenario?

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  It was some sort of a helo assault force op. It was somewhat generic at the time. I think they evolved the scenarios they provide, but it's the typical. They give you sometimes too many assets. So they want to see, are you going to use everything and say that I need all these things? When in reality, hey, you don't. That's overkill. So there's a fine line they're looking for in there too. On, hey, are you being prudent? Are you being wise in your decision making and what you ask for and what you recommend? So it wasn't even the scenario. It's almost as if they knew we were ill experienced as officers to even handle some of the assets they threw at us. I didn't know what the capabilities of some of these things were. I hadn't studied them because I didn't have access to those things until that moment. They know that.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  They know you're going to come up with probably a crappy plan. And you'll misuse the assets because you don't really know what you're doing even to some degree. It's really more of a planning exercise. And then, you know, I did, I made a couple of mistakes. I remember and they called me on it after I briefed. Hey, well, did you know that you can't fit that many people? You know, a 47? And I was like, no, I didn't, you know? And so then there's that, I have to wonder what they were looking for there. Am I going to be humble enough to acknowledge, hey, I messed that up? And then they said, well, now that you know, would you do something different? Well, yeah, I would. I would do this, this, and this. And so they're looking for how are you assessing risk? How are you managing assets? And then are you humble as a leader? Are you going to be willing to shift fire?

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  But then, you know, not be a pushover either.

• 1:28:15Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I've never, I've known a lot of enlisted guys that screened and made it over there.

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know, and I know you're the only one that I personally know now that I've talked to about kind of jumping the fence and going over there. I've seen a lot of officers fail at their attempts to make it over to dev group. What do you think that they are looking for specifically in an officer?

• 1:28:41Speaker 02

  Someone said it really well. He's not a SEAL, but he's a good friend of mine, and he's studied us for quite some time. He said, "Dam Neck is looking for wolves with table manners." And I really liked that, this idea that you're a borderline monster. And to borrow how Jordan Peterson describes virtue, I like this a lot. I've used it a lot over my career. And I didn't understand it. I couldn't articulate it like Jordan does now, but when I heard him say it, I was like, "Ah, that's what he's talking about. That's what I've experienced." This idea of becoming a monster who chooses not to do monstrous things, someone who has that capability but buffers it with restraint. They're looking for that in their officers there because they're looking for it, and they're enlisted.

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  And it's why, just like BUDS, officers go through green team the same as enlisted, and the same is expected of them in the house. You have to be able to perform tactically. There's a lot of people out there over the years that have argued philosophically, "Why are we grading officers in green team on their house runs when, in reality, on target, they're the ground force commander, not necessarily the number two man in the train?" Well, because that's NSW. We expect the people that lead us to be competent in what the trade is. You don't have to be the best, again, and you're not going to be the best because you're not going to get the reps that the other guys are getting, but you've got to show that you can do it. You've got to show that you have bridled aggression, and that's what they're looking for. And the cultural fit, like back to the culture

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  and strategy. I know for a fact they look for cultural fit there. That's a major, major piece of the puzzle. I heard one story of one guy, an officer, this was a couple of years later, so I'm telling it now second, third hand, but there was a perception that he might have been a yes-man officer that just went with the flow. Whatever the opinions was, he would go there. And so they actually staged a scenario where they took a couple of guys and said, "Hey, I want you to be talking about a controversial issue, and I want your position to be this." And then he's going to come through the room, and we're going to grab him and bring him over and see where he stands on it. "Sounds good." So they did it. He jumps on board. Everyone's very animated, and he agrees. "Oh, I 100% agree with you guys. Absolutely. Yeah." And they said, "Okay, give it a couple of days." They said, "Take a different group of guys. Hey, we're going to be talking about this

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  topic. Now it's the opposite side of the equation. We're going to come through the room. We're going to ask him to come over and ask for his opinion on things." Same scenario. Comes over. "100% agree." They dropped him from the program.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  We don't want someone like you, man. Like, you may be a competent tactical SEAL officer, but we need people that have an opinion on things, even if it's a controversial opinion. Be yourself, have a position, be able to defend your position and have an intelligent discussion about it. We don't need yes men here.

• 1:31:21Shawn Ryan?

  They want somebody to have a spine.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:31:26Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, that one was fascinating. What an interesting human experiment.

• 1:31:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's pretty slick.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  And I'm glad it happened. Like, I'm glad.

• 1:31:35Shawn Ryan?

  Did you see that happen?

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  No, I only heard about it. I was already in the squadron at that point and someone's like, "You won't believe what happened the other day." I'm like, "What's going on?" But those kinds of human experiments, just back to being curious about humanity and human nature, those always interested me. We did, that's the best part about being a SEAL at BUDS later, was running those kinds of experiments just to see a dude's character, or a girl. I say dude, let's just determine now that dude is a all encompassing term because I use it a lot. I've been told I use it too many times, but generally it feels, it refers to the people.

• 1:32:09Shawn Ryan?

  How many officers screened to go with you? Do you remember?

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  Ooh, I want to say there were 11 or 12 of us that got into green team and four of us got through it.

• 1:32:20Shawn Ryan?

  Only four?

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  It was a really high attrition year, yeah. Yeah, and it was intimidating because I came in the door looking at these peers of mine and they are, I mean, they're studs. I was intimidated, like, oh, my gosh. I'm rolling with these guys and I'm being assessed compared to them and I know they don't need all of us, so they're going to be looking for mistakes.

• 1:32:43Shawn Ryan?

  Is there any difference or is there any more training or selection that you go through as an officer versus an enlisted guy when it comes to green team?

• 1:32:54Speaker 02

  Yes and no. You don't go into a different program, but there are different portions of the training where they'll pull you aside as an officer and say, "Hey, we're going to practice some ground force commanding stuff now. Like, we're going to get you on the radio. We're going to start having you run some ops. We're going to bring in one of the troop commanders and start mentoring you." And so at some point, when you show you're good enough at CQC, then they will kind of start pulling you back and you start doing more of what you'll be doing when you actually get to the squadrons.

• 1:33:18Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so that's, they're not going to invest any extra time into you until you've proven yourself in CQC?

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Precisely.

• 1:33:27Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about when you showed up. Where did you go after Green Team?

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  Uh, went up to Gold Squadron.

• 1:33:32Shawn Ryan?

  How was that?

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  Fantastic. Everything I always hoped it would be.

• 1:33:36Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about day one, walking in.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  Overwhelming. I mean, chandeliers made of AK-47s.

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just like, okay, like, this is man town, you know? Like, it was, it was an incredible experience. I was so humbled. And you walk in, again, there's this theme, right? That these guys, you feel so overwhelmed by the level of the professionals around you that it just makes you raise your game to that level. It just, it sharpens your sword and drives you to want to be better at what you do. I've got to be the best dang officer in the world because these guys deserve that. And I'm not there yet, and I probably won't ever be there if I'm honest with myself. So, all right, how do I refine that? How do I get better at that? Who do I need to talk to? Where do I need to, what are my gaps? How do I identify what I need to do?

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  Some of it I may not even know yet. It's just, it's a, it just, it's a contagious environment of just, um, hyper-performance.

• 1:34:42Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, once again, you're showing up to a place as a leader, as an officer, into a, another culture or

• 1:34:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:53Shawn Ryan?

  another unit that has

• 1:34:56Shawn Ryan?

  a level of experience that is just astronomically higher than what you're currently at. And so, once again, how do you, how do you, as a leader, a development group, prove yourself

• 1:35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:12Shawn Ryan?

  to them?

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  Same lessons, just applied at a different level, right?

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  Recognizing I don't know fully what I'm doing yet. I got to understand this culture. There's a squadron culture and there's a troop culture there. I got put into the troop that was the Fight Club troop. These dudes are just, I mean, they're fighters, and I was not a fighter. I mean, every SEAL is, but, but, uh, I had to learn fast how to fight. I'm pretty sure that's where my nose got crooked. I don't know 100%, I can't remember, but.

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  These guys were monsters and I had to become a monster.

• 1:35:50Speaker 02

  Same exact principles that I rolled with Danny. How do I do that? Well, I gotta learn what it means to be one of these guys. I gotta fight with them. I gotta fight knowing I'm gonna lose sometimes. I was holding pads for one of these guys. He's one of the scariest human beings in the world. And at some point, I'm holding tie pads as we're doing every day. We're just doing boxing and kicking together. And he actually gave me stress fractures in my forearms because his kicks were that powerful through the three-inch tie pads. I had to take a break and I felt like such a weakling saying, I need to like, hey dude, like, I gotta throttle it back for a while. You gave me stress fractures.

• 1:36:28Speaker 02

  I mean, you feel like a quitter, you know? And of course, he probably called me a quitter at the time, which doesn't help, but yeah, I had to become this. I had to become this thing in order to lead in these environments.

• 1:36:43Shawn Ryan?

  What rank are you?

• 1:36:45Speaker 02

  I was lieutenant commander at that time.

• 1:36:46Shawn Ryan?

  Lieutenant commander, feeling like a new guy.

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  Feeling like a new guy, once again. That doesn't really change. It's all, I feel like that's been almost everywhere. Every time I go into a new role, you're like, golly, I'm the new guy again. Like, I gotta learn a whole nother environment, whole nother culture, whole nother command, whole nother leadership job. But that's what's fun, too, is that it's just a constant. Every time you get it figured out, I don't know if it's the same thing for everybody, but as an officer, these two-year chunks of your career that are really different. And each one is so different because the whole point is they want to diversify us. So as we climb that ladder of leadership, we now understand what it means to lead a wide array of different subsets and specialties. So you never really get a lot of time in one spot. You're always being diversified.

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  That creates a learning environment where you are always on your heels. I mean, about the time I get it figured out and I think I'm effective in a job, they move me on to another one and I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta learn something entirely new now.

• 1:37:45Shawn Ryan?

  How are you received?

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  Very skeptically, and I'd offered, I think that's one of the harder things to do there is roll into a troop as a troop commander now, fresh out of Green Team, new guy. And some of these guys had been staying in the same troop for five to 10 years. They have an established way of doing business. And the last thing they want is some new officer who they know is going to be there for two years to come in and start telling them how to do business when they know how to do business. Most of those guys had double-digit deployments to Afghanistan at that point. I mean, I couldn't hold a candle to them tactically. There's nothing I was ever going to do to close that gap. So, okay, how do I do that? Well, I have to figure out how to earn their respect.

• 1:38:26Speaker 02

  And then, as a leader, respect the roles and responsibilities we all have, press in when I need to, but also trust that they know how to do this stuff. And they're going to probably do it the right way, better than any way I could think of doing it. So it was a huge exercise in trust.

• 1:38:42Shawn Ryan?

  Where are you deploying to for the first time with gold?

• 1:38:45Speaker 02

  Afghanistan.

• 1:38:46Shawn Ryan?

  Afghanistan.

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty quickly. I got in there, we rolled out within a few months. So, off to the races. No, no tactical pause. Off you go.

• 1:38:55Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  No, you jump right into it, man. You're in the cycle and you're out. You are vetted and expected to perform. And so you do.

• 1:39:05Shawn Ryan?

  So you get over there, you're the troop commander.

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  Well, so at that point, I was, there was a little bit of an overlap. We were waiting for another guy to cycle out. So for that deployment, I ended up being like a troop commander in training, I guess you could say. So I was rolling with them, I was doing ops, but it was very much like an on-the-job training type, type role for at least a few months.

• 1:39:28Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:39:29Speaker 02

  And then I just cycled right into that troop.

• 1:39:31Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:33Shawn Ryan?

  So was it, it was the full deployment?

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:35Shawn Ryan?

  You were in training?

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Shawn Ryan?

  Not training, but...

• 1:39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:39:41Shawn Ryan?

  You were being evaluated to take the position or...

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Of course, yep.

• 1:39:43Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  And that's the deployment we lost, Adam. That's that deployment. That was that deployment, yeah. Do you want to get into specifics? Yeah, I'll say something because I know, I don't want to, I don't want to repeat what's already been discussed by a lot of the guys on your show, but I don't know that, that some of the guys talked about that one, but there's an interesting part to that story that I think is, is worth telling that hasn't been told yet, at least to my knowledge. You know, when Adam died, as you know, he was a man of faith and was on his last deployment, was getting ready to roll back to Arkansas with his wife and kids. And this was it, this was short final, this was the last, the last run. And so when he died, a lot of us had a lot of problems with that, specifically wrestling with God on that one.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  And I remember I did, I said, why would you take Adam over everybody? Not that one person's better than any others, but Adam, I mean, everyone recognized he was just one of our best and most unique and just a fantastic human being. Why would you take him when he was this close to the finish line? And I, I don't think God answers our questions fully. We're never, we're never meant to fully understand, but a piece of it came to light for me. You know, when, when someone dies on a deployment, as you know, we ship them home, they have their hometown memorial service, but we stay forward, we continue to fight. But then the chaplains would usually come around and do the memorial services at all the outstations in memory of our fallen.

• 1:41:09Speaker 02

  So by the time all that happened, this chaplain finally came onto our outstation and said, hey, I'm here, we're going to do this on a night we have off. So we all sat down, the typical plywood hut. I'll never forget, we're all sitting there and he said, I'm going to read you what Adam wrote in his emergency data form. That's that addendum to our will, the last thing we fill out on the way out the door, just in case something happens.

• 1:41:30Speaker 02

  It was interesting. The chaplain said, okay.

• 1:41:34Speaker 02

  You know, he's reading Adam's words now and I'm paraphrasing, it's been a hot minute, but it was something to the effect of, in the event I die, I want the chaplains to go on and do a memorial service in my honor and I want the gospel of Jesus Christ preached unhinged.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  And so he looks up, closes the doors, and you've got all these warfighters in this room. And he goes, "Okay, gents, we're going to talk about Jesus today." And being a man of faith, I remember in that moment being so overwhelmed with, "Oh, my gosh, what an impact Adam is having in his death." I can't imagine another scenario in the world in which you'd get a group of warfighters like us to sit down in a room and listen to a sermon like that, unless it was in honor of one of our fallen brothers. Those were Adam's last wishes, and that chaplain fulfilled it to the T. And every single dude in that room and in every other rail station that they went to heard that message. And some of them received it.

• 1:42:30Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:42:32Speaker 02

  You know, I'm a man of faith, and Scripture says, "We're not going to understand. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding." We're never going to fully understand why God allows what He does, suffering in the world, loss, grief. But He gives glimpses of it sometimes. And this was one of those times He opened up my aperture a little bit. I'd already talked about what I saw after Adam died and what he wrote in his emergency data form. What Amy told me, after talking to some of these surviving spouses at the funerals, is that multiple spouses said their husbands came to know Christ because of Adam's testimony. And so then I realized even more so than I had previously that in his death and in his witness and in his testimony,

• 1:43:16Speaker 02

  these men heard, and it paved the way for their salvation. It was incredible. Now, if I could still wrestle with God, I'd ask, "Yeah, but why did it have to happen anyway? Couldn't we have done something different here?" Back to, "We'll never fully understand these things." But I was very thankful in that moment to have a little bit of closure and a little bit of understanding and insight into what was going on there behind the scenes. It was such a powerful moment for me.

• 1:43:48Shawn Ryan?

  Do you ever think that that was Adam's reward?

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, sure. I mean, we know that things here on earth are fleeting. Our reward's inevitably based upon our willingness to testify here on earth. I think that was absolutely part of it. And I can only imagine the celebration when they joined him. I'm looking forward to joining that table one day.

• 1:44:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:20Speaker 02

  It still doesn't take the sting away, but you realize the impact a man has with his words.

• 1:44:27Shawn Ryan?

  That man is still impacting. Everybody that reads that book, everybody that hears his story. I mean, what a just phenomenal human being.

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, he really was. Still is. I mean, he lives on, right?

• 1:44:41Shawn Ryan?

  He really does.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  His impact will continue for generations.

• 1:44:45Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the first time you were in a leadership role where you were involved in an engagement.

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay. So, fast forward, next deployment out there. We did a couple of other meeting deployments along the way. It was a long, it was a hard season of life. In about a three-year period, I was home less than nine months at any given time. It was just a, we were, we were moving. We were always deployed or always on a training trip, always gone. So, I'm in my leadership role now. We're downrange again and yeah, I'm not sure. It was, it was kind of anticlimactic, actually, the first few for me. I remember thinking like, oh, that's it? We rolled in. We were very good at what we do.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  And we controlled the target, never, never lost control. And I was, it was fun for me to watch these guys work and realize like, oh, this is what this looks like when guys have autonomy, when guys are moving and responding to the enemy. Like I said earlier, you can do all the right things in the world. The enemy gets a vote. But when your guys have autonomy and trust to maneuver to contact as fast as possible, you're responding before the enemy can keep up. And so I saw us all just move as this collective element, the flow. And it was one of those things like target was secure, everything was done. And I'm looking around like, I guess that was it. Like, this is not at all like what the movies make it out to be.

• 1:46:13Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I never thought of that. So you're getting like the bird's eye view of everything all at once.

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  It was fascinating. And now there's always ops that don't go as planned and it ends you being on your heels a little bit. But most of them, I find that we have such tactical patience and our guys know what to do and when to do it. And they're so fluent in that language that nine times out of 10, it's like, ah, just another night. Like, great. I mean, half the time, you almost, I felt bad for like our adversaries or enemies because they wouldn't know what hit them. And some of them, you could see them like getting their kit on, thinking they're about to get in the fight. They don't know they're already dead. We had to beat on them before they even decided. We were just waiting for them to make the decision. Bad choice, that's hostile intent. They had no idea.

• 1:47:07Shawn Ryan?

  I would imagine there's a certain degree of pride in seeing

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:13Shawn Ryan?

  Your troop.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 1:47:15Shawn Ryan?

  Operate at that level.

• 1:47:16Speaker 02

  It's great. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. I mean, it's probably like being on any high performing, like professional sports team where everybody just knows their job, they're reading each other, they're communicating without even speaking, and it just flows. And everyone's doing all the right things every single time. It's really fun to be a part of. Very humbling.

• 1:47:40Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet. I'll bet it is. Was there ever a point in time where you were the troop commander and you lost one of your guys?

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  No. No, I was.

• 1:47:56Speaker 02

  I was on an op where we lost some Rangers, but I wasn't the troop commander on that operation. I was the troop commander when one of my guys got shot, so we had to call in a medevac for that. But, but no, I never lost a man in combat.

• 1:48:13Shawn Ryan?

  Had you ever thought about what you would do if you had?

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  Sure, sure. You do what needs to be done. You respond. It's, the few times I've been overwhelmed on targets or we had things go wrong where you didn't anticipate it, emotion doesn't really catch up till later is what I've noticed. I mean, you're in such work mode. We have an incredible way of compartmentalizing emotions and not letting yourself get wrapped into the moment. Even, even when Extortion 17 happened, there were moments where I felt incredibly calloused and cold and couldn't figure out what was going on. I even brought in a psych at one point, like, hey, man, was there something wrong with me? Like, I'm very, I'm having a hard time.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  There were moments where grief would just be overwhelming, but then other times where I couldn't even cry if I wanted to, and I thought there was something wrong with me. And he said, no, no, you guys do this really well. You compartmentalize. That's what happens from day one of BUDS. You learn to compartmentalize emotion, pain, suffering, and get the job done. That's what you do. You're on target, you get the job done. You let the emotion catch up later.

• 1:49:21Shawn Ryan?

  Does he talk about where that goes?

• 1:49:24Speaker 02

  He didn't at the time, and I'm not sure there's one answer. He's talking about where the emotion goes?

• 1:49:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, where does, I mean, when we compartmentalize.

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:33Shawn Ryan?

  Because I think, I think, I would say the majority of special ops is very good at compartmentalization.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:49:44Shawn Ryan?

  And so, I've never had this conversation, and I wonder it myself, why I've never had this conversation, but where does, we tuck it away and sometimes...

• 1:49:59Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it comes back in other ways, but where does it go?

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  I think it needs a release. We like to pretend like with the big joke is right. You take that, you bottle it up deep down inside and you never let it out. It's impossible. It comes out. It has to. To your point, it comes out manifested in different emotions. I think with men primarily anger. I know for me, anger turned to rage. It has to go somewhere. And so for me, it came out as rage and turned me into an unhealthy person at some point. A lot of guys will then cope with that rage by what? Drinking more? Medicating more? Pain meds, whatever? Whatever you need to do? Or some other addiction, right? Adrenaline junkies.

• 1:50:44Speaker 02

  Like, there's something that numbs that anger. It's the, I think it's grief turned to anger and then we numb it and as best we can until we finally deal with it. Hopefully, we deal with it.

• 1:50:56Shawn Ryan?

  Is there anything that you regret as a leader up to this point?

• 1:51:01Speaker 02

  I like to say I have a lot of regret. I have no guilt. There's always things I would do differently and do better. Especially in our job field, right? We, and as leaders, we are, we are paid to make quick decisions sometimes with imperfect information available to us. And whenever you armchair quarterback those decisions with a much clearer picture from the future, there's always gonna be regrets. I wish I had done this differently. I wish I had thought through that. I wish I had perceived this, but we didn't. And that's the job. We manage risk as best we can with the information that we have available to us and we do it

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  as wisely as we possibly can in those moments, understanding that decisions have to be made. So we make them and then you live with the consequences. And that's the burden, I think, of leadership, especially in our job field, is living with the consequences of imperfect decisions made in imperfect environments by imperfect people that are going to make mistakes. It's gonna happen. That's a burden to bear. That's a tough one.

• 1:52:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:14Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move on to extortion.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Shawn Ryan?

  Biggest loss in SEAL Team history still to this day.

• 1:52:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Very strange that prior to that, Red Wings was and somehow I was directly involved with both.

• 1:52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a tough one, man. It was, uh...

• 1:52:36Speaker 02

  You know what people, some people don't realize, I think, is that it was a troop, it was the largest life, but loss of life, but it was a third of our entire command. And that's a massive chunk of personality to just be gone like that in an instant. I was up in, uh, one of our FOBs at the point, at the time, and we got the word, we were all hanging out, and we got the word, hey, something happened, one of the birds went down. And that's not that uncommon, but usually it's one of those, like, ah, there was a malfunction, they crash landed, there's a couple of broken bones maybe, but, you know, like, all right, let's not overreact, these things happen. I think we'd become numb to that, just repetitive, these birds were just very reliable and the pilots are exceptional, so we're gonna be fine. That was the initial feeling I had, I was like, all right, let's see what happened.

• 1:53:21Speaker 02

  So I remember going in the, in the jock and, um, standing there, and we hadn't heard anything on the radio, we hadn't heard anything on the radio, and I was waiting to hear Jonas's voice come over the radio, Jonas Kelsall, a good friend of mine, and, um,

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  he, he didn't come on the radio. A minute goes by, a minute goes by, I'm watching the ISR footage, and you've seen it, people have seen it from the movies, but we're looking at this black heat spot. And normally, you can see the fuselage, you can see the outline of the helo sitting there, and so they're just looking at this black heat spot, and I was like, hey, man, can you zoom out, like, what are you doing so zoomed in on this one heat spot? Like, God, there's a fire somewhere in the crash site, but like, zoom out and show me the fuselage, like, let's, let's figure out what we're looking at here. And then the guy just looked up at me and said, that's, that's the fuselage, that's the helo. And it was nothing but a heat spot. And it is in that moment I knew, okay,

• 1:54:16Speaker 02

  we lost the entire bird. And then I'm thinking, okay. So then I said, hey, will you print the manifest for the bird? Normally, we would split up into different helos. Normally, there's a lot of reasons for that. But I said, print out the manifest. I want to understand which half of the troop it was. And then they printed out and handed it to me. And I'm going down the list. And I said, no, no, this is, uh, this is the troop roster. I need the manifest. You, you made a mistake. And the guy said, no, sir, that's, that's the manifest. That was who was on the bird. And in that moment, I knew, oh, my God.

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  It's everybody. It's everybody. And so I, I ran quickly. Everyone else is making decisions. I wasn't in the decision making capability here. Other people were solving these problems. We were just observing on standby. And so I ran to the phone and I called my wife. And I said, hey, I need you to hear my voice. I can't tell you what happened, but I need you to hear my voice. And I could hear the quiver in hers. And she said, how bad is it? And I said, it's worse than Danny. And I said, I need you to watch the news. And the minute this thing breaks, you'll know it. And I need you to call my mom and tell her I'm okay.

• 1:55:33Speaker 02

  She said, okay. And then we, uh, we began to figure out what to do next and how to process that, which I don't even know if we ever will. I mean, there's no real way to wrap your head around that kind of a loss.

• 1:55:47Speaker 02

  But you try and you have the team. And we're all in solidarity as the team to suffer through this together. And so we did our best to do that. Here's what I'd offer.

• 1:55:59Speaker 02

  Concepts that I couldn't wrap my head around until this. Thirty-one Americans and seven Afghans, thirty-one, including Bart the Dog.

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  FaceTiming with my wife as we're trying to figure out what to do. No one knew how to process this. The command didn't know what to do. There's no plan for this kind of thing. There was even talk of, do we bring these guys home? What do we do here? This is unprecedented. Are they even in an emotionally healthy enough state to stay in the fight? We always talk about staying in the fight. We're never out of the fight. Is that even possible with the gravity of this situation? And we're all wrestling with that. Of course, none of us wanted to go home. We knew we had to stay for our future, for our sanity. We had to stay. We had to see it to the end. We had to fulfill our duty. I'm on the FaceTime call, or whatever Skype it was at the time, with my wife. And I'll never forget, I'm trying to articulate that need, understanding maybe a glimpse of the pain she's enduring.

• 1:56:53Speaker 02

  And she just looked at me and said, "You stay and you do what you need to do. You finish the task at hand, and then you come home to me." And I'll be forever grateful for that. Because then she went to every single funeral and memorial service while we stayed forward to continue the fight. She endured that. At one point, my daughter, who was really, really young at the time... We try to shield our kids from these horrors. Everyone does, but at some point, they know something's up. And when our babysitter became a live-in nanny, because my wife said another funeral in another black dress, with mascara running again, my daughter asked her, "Mommy, what's going on? These aren't just meetings." I think she was eight at the time, maybe.

• 1:57:38Speaker 02

  And my wife said, "Well, sweetheart, you know how Daddy and his friends go on helicopters as part of their job. Well, one of those helicopters had a crash, and so Daddy's friends got hurt." And her first question was, was Mr. Jonas on board? Because Jonas had previously volunteered to come out and take my place on a deployment so I could come home for that daughter's surgery. So Jonas was very close to our family. And my wife had to say, "Yes, sweetie, he was." And she said, "Are they gonna be okay?" And my wife answered it.

• 1:58:13Speaker 02

  Like only a warfighter spouse can. She said, "No, sweetheart. Their boo-boos were so bad, they had to go to heaven to get fixed."

• 1:58:23Speaker 02

  I can't imagine a more perfect way to frame it for an eight-year-old's mind.

• 1:58:29Speaker 02

  So Amy kept going to the funerals. And I stayed on deployment. And DJ and his boys came out to help. So there's the DJ, small circle again. They came out and took our place. And my troop moved into Jonas' troop's location. And we slept in their beds. We packed up their things.

• 1:58:52Speaker 02

  Walked through their tents with what felt like their lingering ghosts. I mean, it was the eeriest thing, man.

• 1:58:58Speaker 02

  Half-drinked cups of coffee sitting on a desk. Derek Benson's tie shorts on the floor, where it looks like he'd probably just changed out to his op kit. I saw on Matt Mason's desk, a letter from his wife, Jessica,

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  printed on a sonogram of their unborn baby, and a note from her to him.

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  It was just these remnants of life that felt like they were still there and it felt like they could walk in the door at any moment. But you knew they couldn't and they wouldn't. And trying to reconcile those things in your brain was almost an impossibility. It was. I mean, it was. And I think that was part of the beginnings of those emotions getting bottled and put away, which would later become rage. But we did the best we can. We did the ramp ceremony. Two C-17s.

• 1:59:52Speaker 02

  That blew my mind.

• 1:59:55Speaker 02

  Two C-17s. And we sent them home. And then we got back to work. And this comes back to...

• 2:00:04Speaker 02

  This comes back to everything I was talking about earlier about becoming a monster and choosing not to do monstrous things. What this was, this was one of the most difficult leadership challenges I've ever faced because we wanted revenge. We wanted, I mean, man, we wanted to get after it. There was such rage and anger about the loss, knowing that we all signed up for this. This is part of the deal. How do you, how do you lead that when you see it in yourself? I'd offer brutally honest, there was bloodlust. We wanted to get after it.

• 2:00:48Speaker 02

  So we very much looked at ourselves and realized, Dave, we're not careful. We will become the very monsters that we're here fighting. And if we become the monsters that we're here fighting, then what are we doing other than contributing to chaos? And if that's the case, then, then there's nothing virtuous about this anymore. And then that defeats the entire point behind everything we're supposed to be doing and everything we're supposed to stand for as Americans. And so we were very deliberate as a troop about bringing in people to help us process these things and say, hey, help us understand our anger and our rage. Help us understand how to harness that on the battlefield, how to keep that monster bridled and not do the wrong things, not give in to vengeance, instead look for retribution.

• 2:01:29Speaker 02

  And we did it and all eyes were on us and we did it. And it felt so good. It was incredibly difficult because you were bridling something that you almost didn't want to bridle. We wanted to let it off the leash. There was a very strong desire to do it, but we held ourselves in check. And we, we executed those ops with such precision and stayed within the ethical boundaries of warfare. I've never been more proud of, of dudes than I was of what we did following those, those, that catastrophic loss. Man, that's heavy. That is heavy. It was a rough season, man. And then that wasn't even the beginning.

• 2:02:13Speaker 02

  The harder part was coming home.

• 2:02:19Speaker 02

  It was so unhealthy. And it's hard to describe without being embarrassed because I look back at how hard my heart had become and cruel I'd become. I had mentioned the things my wife endured. I mean, she's a fighter. She's a fighter. Riding the clock, walking around buds, you know, going into Hell Week. She's giving me a kiss before going to Hell Week goodbye. And she said, if you quit, don't come home to me. I don't want to quit her for a husband. This is the woman that endured these things for our nation. And I come home to her and I found myself having conversations with her and my mom and my dad and my family, my friends, and they'd ask questions.

• 2:03:00Speaker 02

  And I found myself getting angry at their questions and not even wanting to share with them because in my mind, I thought, you haven't earned the right for me to be vulnerable enough to share my grief with you because you weren't downrange with me, because you didn't endure what I did, because you didn't move into their tents and sleep in their beds with their ghosts. So I will withhold that from you. Why? I don't know. A coping mechanism? Back to where those emotions go? Incredibly unhealthy. I mean, it was destroying, it was destroying me. Anger, I've heard it said, is like taking a poison pill and expecting it to hurt somebody else.

• 2:03:43Speaker 02

  It was destroying me from the inside and thereby destroying my relationships, my relationship with my wife, with my kids. I mean, I already mentioned I wasn't home much already, and now you add to that that when I am home, I'm angry at her for asking questions? If anyone's earned the right to ask those questions and have those conversations, it was her. But I was isolating myself and ostracizing her in that process. And it took someone intervening. It took someone who saw something and had the courage to say it. And I'll never forget the moment I was home from the deployment and I'm wrestling with all these things. And he said, hey, man, you have a rage problem you need to deal with.

• 2:04:27Speaker 02

  And I was very good at not showing it. So good that Amy's father was in the room and he said, Brad, Brad's not an angry person.

• 2:04:36Speaker 02

  I think you've misread him. And, and he said, no, no, no, I didn't say anger. He said, this is so far past anger. Brad has a rage problem and it's wrath. And it's going to tear you up and you need to figure out how to deal with it. Uh, or, or it's going to ruin you. Who is this? Uh, it was a close family friend of ours. Yeah, he was a doctor, actually. He's a doctor and he was, uh, we were there for an appointment with my wife. And, and as she's doing this appointment, he was very, uh, he's very in tune to emotions and, and and he kind of looked over at me. He's like, hey, you mind if I take a look at you and ask a couple, couple of questions? I was like, whatever, bro. So he does and, and he nailed it within five minutes. It was, it was just, he just stripped the veneer right off me. And it was, um, it was really shortly after that.

• 2:05:20Speaker 02

  I realized I was not doing everything as well as I'd convinced myself I was. And I was straying from who I wanted to be. I was a very, very good SEAL officer. I was not a very good husband or father anymore. How could you be? You're absent and you're dealing with dark work, which comes with dark consequences. And can actually, I think, damage your soul over time. And I was letting it. I was almost, I was almost, uh, becoming like a self martyr. Like you convince yourself at some point, like, well, this is what the nation requires. This is what the warfighter ethos requires. And if it costs me everything, then so be it. This is the burden I bear.

• 2:06:02Speaker 02

  Jonah said that to me once, uh, right before his death, we were, we were talking and he said, you know, he said, as hard as this lifestyle is, he said, I will, I will never leave this command unless I'm forced to. And I said, well, why? And he said, because I'm addicted to feeling importance. I was like, golly dude, that's brutal. I feel the same way. Most of us did. We were so addicted to those feelings and, um, this, this self martyrdom of, of the warrior ethos and what it requires of us, that we were willing to do it all and give it all. And it wasn't until that moment that I was kind of shaken free from it. And I, I kind of had this epiphany of looking forward on my deathbed.

• 2:06:43Speaker 02

  And I imagined myself there and I thought, I can't imagine saying, I wish I had one more deployment with the boys.

• 2:06:52Speaker 02

  I can't imagine saying, I wish I had missed one less Christmas. I wish I had one more tickle fight with the kiddos, one more day night with my wife. And we were at a point now where my daughter I mentioned previously was walking around with a framed picture of me on Christmas holidays and putting it at the seat at the dinner table saying, nobody take daddy's seat because I'm off on another deployment. Doing what I felt was my duty, but I just kept withdrawing money from the bank of my family to keep doing it. And I realized that is no longer a tenable solution. I can no longer convince myself that I'm able to do it all. I have to make a decision. When did you realize that?

• 2:07:36Speaker 02

  It was, it was, I mean, shortly after being home from extortion. And I cycled up to the ops officer job. I left my troop and I was scheduled to stay and kind of keep promoting within the squadron. They had, I think, soft slated me to be the executive officer. So I was on the track and I'll never forget when I had that. It was just that moment I was driving into work and it was just like, I was just breaking the steering wheel in half as my stomach's in knots, knowing that I just can't keep doing this. I can't keep fighting myself. And I walked into CO's office that day and said, hey, I'm leaving. I go, I can't. I've loved this place. I hate to leave it, but I, I'm failing as a husband and father and I don't think I like the dude in the mirror anymore.

• 2:08:20Speaker 02

  He's too angry and I need to figure out, I don't know how yet, but I need to figure out how to, how to kill that anger. And I don't think I can do it if I stay here and keep doing this because it just kept fueling that for me. What was his reaction? He was a pro. He was a pro. He didn't skip a beat. He's like, I understand completely. For argument's sake, let's talk about what it would take to keep you. I was like, listen, I'm done. I'm seriously like, I'm, and he said, well, what would it take? And I said, I don't know, maybe, maybe a training command or something where I could go pour into our next generation and just kind of breathe for a while, have shore duty, maybe, maybe. And that's when they pitched to go out to basic training command BUDS and take the XO job there. Wasn't even on my radar.

• 2:09:03Speaker 02

  And they said, one of our legends, Jay Hennessy, was out there about to take command of it as a bonus command tour. Why don't you go be his XO? He'd love to have you. And I said, hey, listen, I, no, like, I'm not picking my family up and moving. We're done. Like, we're just done. And this guy was such a pro. He said, I'll tell you what. I want you to take your wife out on a date for the next month, like multiple dates for the next month. I'm gonna tell everyone you're all in. Don't worry about it. In a month, come back to me. And if you don't, if you have a decision before then, I don't wanna hear about it. I want you to take the full month and then you come back to me with a decision. And if you tell me you're out, then I'll act surprised, no big deal. I'll tell the detailer and we'll find someone else. Like, it'll be okay. But if you're in, well, then, great. We've paved that path and off you go.

• 2:09:46Speaker 02

  It was really good guidance and mentorship because if he was pressing me for an answer, then the answer would have been no. But he gave me that runway and we did it. We had a couple of date nights and I'll never forget one Saturday morning, we brought the kids in and we're sitting there with coffee. He said, well, let's get a family buy-in on this discussion. Like, kids, what do you think? Here's what life looks like if we get out. Here's what the possibilities look like. Or we take this move and we go out there and here's what that looks like. And as we went around the horn and got everyone's input, these are little kids, but we wanted to give them buy-in to the family decision. We all kinda came to the same conclusion about the same time. How do you say no to this? So after a month, I came in and said, we're all in.

• 2:10:28Shawn Ryan?

  Man, how much time? When is the last time before that you had a month with your family?

• 2:10:38Speaker 02

  Never.

• 2:10:39Shawn Ryan?

  How did you reintegrate with your family?

• 2:10:43Speaker 02

  We did a family cruise. I said, hey, we need to be off the grid. So we, I literally found like a travel book. It was in Afghanistan before I even got home and I saw this Disney cruise. I was like, hey, I called home. I'm like, hey, get the passports for the kids. We're doing this thing down to the Caribbean. I don't even know what it's gonna cost and I don't even care. And so I was like, I need to be on a place that my cellphone doesn't work and everyone knows there's no way to get a hold of me. And so that was our first step as a family was we just did that, went off the grid, had a great time, just doing family stuff. Snorkeling, dancing, jokes, tickle fights, all the good stuff.

• 2:11:20Shawn Ryan?

  Was it hard for you to fill that role?

• 2:11:22Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 2:11:23Shawn Ryan?

  As a full-time dad and husband?

• 2:11:25Speaker 02

  No, that was the easy, that was fun because I could tell it was helping and I could tell it was filling me, selfishly, of course. I was filling them too, but the hard parts were these unexpected moments when the anger would come back and I didn't know why. And my instinct was to react to the anger. And it took a long time for me to be able to, hang on a second, acknowledge that I just had an emotion, acknowledge that I had anger and then say, why am I angry? Was it really what my wife just said or what my kid just did? Or is this this deep rooted thing that's coming back at an opportune moment? And are you going to take this out on them? Or are you going to process it? Take a couple of deep breaths and realize this has nothing to do with them. And for you to react with them would be unfair and cruel. That's a long process to get through that.

• 2:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  Very wise.

• 2:12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Painful and slow going, but we got there.

• 2:12:17Shawn Ryan?

  We're going to take a break and then we'll get into into buds.

• 2:12:22Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 2:12:23Shawn Ryan?

  But I do have a question. I'm hesitant to ask it. So I'm not in no disrespect, but I'm.

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

  None taken.

• 2:12:30Shawn Ryan?

  Why were so many guys on one bird?

• 2:12:32Speaker 02

  Hmm. It's a good question and it's one that everyone asks. So it's a very simple answer. And I think it's it's I give a whole class on it. Whoever's interested back in the teams. But but I think there was a couple of things going on at play here. One, there was an over reliance upon the platform, the forty sevens. For years, we'd been coming back from ops where you see an RPG sticking out of the side. They just hadn't detonated or bullet holes. And there was this growing sense of, I think, confidence that these things were just monsters in the air, like indestructible. So there's an over reliance on the platform. I think that was part of the calculus.

• 2:13:16Speaker 02

  Another part of it was a tactical decision because they weren't coming in to rescue the Rangers. There's a lot of people that have that notion. I think that was in the news at some point, so people jumped on it. The Rangers were doing fine. They were in a troops in contact scenario. They were doing fine. The problem was they were bogged down in a troops in contact. And the target they were going after was heading north. And they weren't going to be able to get through their contact and get up to to snag him up. So the whole idea was Jonas and the boys were just going to leapfrog ahead, pin the guy in and then close with and get him. The problem with that was they were in a very constrained environment and the only LZ they could find that would work was a single ship LZ.

• 2:13:58Speaker 02

  So the thought process was, well, if we come in two ships, first one exposes the LZ, now it's a burned LZ and there's already a gunfight going on in the area, the second helo is that much more vulnerable and exposed, that's a lot of risk for that second helo. Versus, we put everyone on one bird, touch and go, we're in and out before anyone knows it. Manageable risk, and the decision was made.

• 2:14:21Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:14:22Speaker 02

  Like I said, right decisions for the right reasons. Looking back, sure, we'd all do something differently, but it made sense at the time. I agree with the decision at the time. With where we were in that time and space, it made sense. But like I've also said, the enemy gets a vote and all it took was one dude on one rooftop with a one in a million shot.

• 2:14:43Shawn Ryan?

  Man. Well, thank you for sharing that.

• 2:14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:51Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 2:14:52Speaker 00

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• 2:15:34Speaker 00

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• 2:16:03Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Brad, we're back from the break. Just covered some really heavy stuff. I appreciate you revisiting that. And now we're getting into you transitioning over to BTC, which is essentially BUDS.

• 2:16:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, a lot of years in between our last discussion and where I found myself in the summer of 2020. A lot of other leadership development opportunities, but this is the meat of what we need to talk about today. So I definitely want to set the scene for what we were walking into. People, people forget what life was like during COVID as we started this whole thing. There was a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainties, a lot of unknowns. All we were seeing was dead people on the news. That was right at the time I moved out from Hawaii and came to BTC and took command was that spring, summer timeframe of 2020. And while most of America was going into teleworking as a norm or 50/50 rotations at work environments

• 2:17:04Speaker 02

  to try to manage the risk of transmission, manage the risk of infection and transmissibility, our guidance at BTC from the SOCOM Commanding General was trained through this, figured out. So without knowing what we've been doing, we tried to do just that. And what we, what we did was create a rapid learning environment with real time and consistent collaboration with our medical professionals as we tried to wrap our heads around, what is this disease? What is this virus? How does it affect our cohort, young Americans who are in really good shape? And then how do we manage that as leaders to train through this without having something catastrophic happen? This was what we talked about every single day.

• 2:17:48Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, so you are the, you are the commanding officer in charge of BTC, of BUDS training, SWOT training.

• 2:17:55Speaker 02

  Yep, that's right. It was a bonus command tour. So I'd already been offered, I'd already successfully completed another commanding officer tour where you have total responsibility of these, of these commands. And what's interesting about this one was what an incredible opportunity because one of the things we kind of blew by, but it's worth at least noting that when I left the extortion 17 scenario, I went to BTC as the XO under Jay Hennessy. That would be second in charge. Yeah, so I was this number two guy, which was a huge piece for me in learning from, I think, one of NSW's legends. I think he's one of the greatest leaders our community's ever produced as my commanding officer. And my command master chief was Steph Bass, one of these tactical legends in our force as well. So I've got these two guys. And back

• 2:18:37Speaker 02

  to what we talked about before, about being completely overwhelmed with the people around you and the level that they are performing to. On a normal XO/CO tour, you're closer in age, but because that was a bonus tour for him, he was seven years my senior. There was a seven-year age gap and experience gap between me as his number two guy and him as the CO. One of the things he did, that's worth highlighting because it plays to how I wanted to lead, was he completely revised the way we select and assess our candidates at BTC. What he came to realize was that over time, we had overvalued physical performance and undervalued character in our candidates. And it wasn't that we didn't value character, it was that we didn't know how to quantify it, and we didn't know how to spot it. And

• 2:19:22Speaker 02

  so what we did was say, well, let's measure runs, swims, and oases. And what did we say? Well, that guy's a stud, so he's probably going to be a good SEAL or SWIC, so let's get him through the pipeline. Well, there's selection error baked in there, because what if he's a physical stud, but terrible man of character? And you can find that when you ask around, hey, did anyone in your buzz class have a guy get through that probably shouldn't have? And almost every time you ask that, people nod. So Jay tackled that problem. How do we identify those people and select them out of the program? So we brought in these organizational psychologists at the time. It was hilarious. They're the ones who taught me culturey strategy for breakfast every day. So they'd go out with our cadre and watch. And a master chief or first phase cadre would be like, well, that guy, that guy's a turd.

• 2:20:05Speaker 02

  And then the psych would be there and saying, well, okay, what does that mean? Like, why is he a turd? Well, he's a turd because he sucks. Okay, so that's not helpful. Those are synonymous right now, but let's get, what are you seeing that you don't like? Well, he's selfish. Oh, okay, now we're talking. What makes him selfish? Well, he ducked boat. Okay, why does that make him selfish? Well, because if he ducks boat, then the rest of the boat crew has to carry the weight. You know this. And so he had a moment of selfishness at the cost of his teammates. That's selfish. That sucks. He's a turd. Okay. So they helped us quantify what we saw and we knew kind of intuitively we don't like when we see that as cadre. Well, help me articulate that. Help me quantify it. And now we can group them into these subgroups and decide, these are the character attributes

• 2:20:49Speaker 02

  we've decided we want in our future teammates need.

• 2:20:52Shawn Ryan?

  So you guys brought in psychologists to identify characteristics?

• 2:20:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It was fascinating.

• 2:20:58Shawn Ryan?

  Was that your call?

• 2:20:59Speaker 02

  It was Jay's call. Jay was the vision. I was the executor. So I helped take his vision and put it into practice. And we had whiteboard session after whiteboard session about this stuff with these psychs. It was a lot of fun. And it brought us to a place where it was really fascinating. I'll never forget the first time Jay did it. He had to call his commander up and he said, hey, I'm making a decision and I'm writing a check that you may have to cash. And commander said, well, what are you talking about? He goes, I'm about to drop a guy from this program who has not failed one physical evolution yet. That's unheard of. We said, well, why? Well, because we integrated in this process, peer reviews and feedbacks and 360 degree surveys from both peers and from cadre.

• 2:21:43Speaker 02

  And what I'm seeing consistently across this guy's 360 feedback is he is a terrible leader who's incredibly selfish and no one wants to go with him into combat. And he's an officer, so it makes it even worse because no one wants to follow him in combat. So I'm dropping him from the program based off of the character attributes we've identified through our new system. That was one of the first like beta tests, like, how's this gonna go? And he did it. And it worked and it was justifiable because we had the data to support it. It was revolutionary.

• 2:22:12Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:22:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's incredible to be a part of it. So imagine.

• 2:22:17Speaker 02

  My excitement now, let's see, that was so one, two, three, four. Five years after that tour, I get to come back and build upon what we did back then when he revolutionized this concept. It was thrilling, so exciting to dive even more back to understanding humans and being curious about them and what makes them tick. Start observing the culture, start observing the classes. What's different? What's changed? What are they looking like? What are they doing differently? What are the problems? What's the risk? Where's our blind risk? How do we identify that? All of these things were just, these are the things we wrestled with every single day. Super interesting. We found, one of my first observations, this generation of candidates, we didn't have cell phones when we went through, right?

• 2:22:57Speaker 02

  And if you remember, you knew tomorrow's schedule at the end of the day, the day before, and that was it. You'd show up and you'd get the schedule. So there was a lot of uncertainty baked into our pipeline back then, where you just had to flex to the next day and understand that, wow, we're not going to know and we just have to move out. Since then, with cellphone generation, with social media, with all these Reddit threads and Signal apps where they can hide their conversations and network that way, the candidates had mapped out our entire curriculum and knew it down to the T. And even had our instructions. And so they knew that, traditionally speaking, most of the evolutions we cared about were

• 2:23:40Speaker 02

  those runs, swims, and no courses, because those are quantifiable metrics. I could say, hey, this guy passed or failed. And so they had kind of started working the system against us and hacking it, in a sense. You don't blame them, right? I mean, this is what anyone would do. So I wasn't mad at them, but we had to solve that problem. The first, one of the first real case studies that came up that was really, really interesting and fun, Firstface came to me and said, hey, sir, we got a problem. We got these guys post hell week, and one of these guys is doing grinder PTs. That's where we all do calisthenics on the pavement, the grinder, where every frogman starts his journey. He can't do pull-ups. I said, what do you mean he can't do pull-ups? He's like, yeah, he's struggling to get like two pull-ups up during the PT sessions. Well, that's weird. Is he injured?

• 2:24:24Speaker 02

  No, well, send him to medical, have him check it out, it comes back clean. Okay. He can't do pull-ups. Keep an eye on this. Let's mentor him. Let's put him on a program. He's post Tellwig, so we're invested in him. Let's see what's going on here. He goes into second phase. Same thing I get from my second-phase officer in charge. Hey, sir, same thing. This guy is not doing pull-ups. It's really, really weird. Okay, well, how's he doing on the Oak Horse? He's crushing it. No big deal. Huh. That's weird. He's gaming it. So, we say, well, let's not jump to conclusions. Let's pulse the peer network. Let's figure out what's going on. So I start grabbing some candidates here and there. Hey, what's going on with your boy that can't do pull-ups? We start pulsing the database where we keep reviews of these guys, and we start seeing trend lines of character on this guy about gaming the system.

• 2:25:09Speaker 02

  So much so that he even was telling his class, hey, I don't care what it takes. I'm going to get through this program. I'm saving myself for the testable evolutions. Even if it brings pain on the class later, you're just going to have to deal with it. Not exactly the kind of guy we want to roll with in the teams. So significant character flaws there. So, we realized, okay. How long has this been going on? How many other guys are taking advantage of it, just not so obviously? This one was right in our face. And how do we solve this problem? Back to, as leaders, we have to make a decision that will be designed to incentivize or disincentivize a certain behavior. But we need to send a message, and we know that they are on these network threads, and word spreads like wildfire. So let's send a message.

• 2:25:54Speaker 02

  How did you find out they were in these network threads? It's not too hard. Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of older than them. You guys in them? I'm not great in social media, but I've got young instructors who are. Oh, Fred. And they're like, oh, sir, here's what's on Reddit. And they start pulling up and showing me. Here's what they're saying. No shit. Okay. Good to know, man. I mean, you know, it's good tradecraft, but we got you. Another thing they were doing, this was a funny one.

• 2:26:20Speaker 02

  Fridays, for whatever reason over our years in our curriculum, as it evolved in our scheduling and how we sequence it, Fridays, we had no testable evolutions. It was all just like land portage or running with the boats on your heads down the beach and back, which were traditionally non-testable evolutions, right? It's really interesting, though. Every Friday morning, more so than any other day, you had this huge line at the medical ramp of people that all of a sudden had owies that couldn't participate for an hour or two while they were getting examined by docs. And so they'd have time out and they wouldn't have to participate in the evolution while we had them checked and assessed. And once they're getting a fit bill of health, okay, back into the pipe. But that dude just missed an hour of landpo, but it wasn't testable. So it was very interesting. And we started realizing and seeing, and once we started looking, we started seeing

• 2:27:05Speaker 02

  indications that they had hacked our curriculum and our schedule and were using it against us. We called those guys the medical ninjas. So we said, okay, well, let's, let's insert uncertainty back into the system. Let's put another timed evolution back onto Friday's schedule. We didn't change the curriculum, we just changed the sequencing of it. Boom, timed evolution on Fridays, let's see what happens. Oh, weird. The ramp shortened. Less people started showing up for medical because they realized, I gotta be at a testable evolution because if I don't show up for one of those, there's a higher chance I'm gonna get dropped from training. Ironically, this is what we talked about a little earlier, what they failed to recognize is the quantifiable testable evolutions, the runsoms and oh courses, we really don't care that much about. That's, okay, you did it, you met a physical standard that's needed, neat.

• 2:27:49Speaker 02

  We actually care much more about watching you under the boat and under the log because that's where we see the true character. That's where we see if you're gonna be a good teammate, if you're gonna be selfless or selfish. My CMC, Dave Hanson, used to say it well, when they look at all these studies on how do we select the right guy to come in the program to increase the chances of success through the program? And he would always say, this is silly because how do you pre-screen for decisions they haven't made yet?

• 2:28:17Speaker 02

  He would say, "The decision to keep your head under the boat, you can't predict that. That's gonna happen in a moment. And it's a small decision a guy will make, or a girl will make, in that moment, to keep their head under the boat, when it hurts. Same thing with the shoulder under the log, or in any other team evolution we do, where we're looking for that team ability piece. Those micro decisions become habits. Those habits become character. That character becomes exactly who we want on our team downrange. Those are the people we're looking for. And if candidates are shortchanging the system by hacking it to avoid those very evolutions, well, I don't know what I'm getting anymore. I can no longer assess for your character attributes, because a four-mile timed run's only gonna tell me so much about you. Neat, you can dig deep and run four miles fast enough on the sand.

• 2:29:01Speaker 02

  It's like, the smallest thing that I care about, as a CO, like mildly interesting at best. I wanna see you perform as a team. I wanna see how you do under the boat. I wanna see, even more than the physicality piece, who's the guy, when you're losing the races, that is still cracking jokes in the boat, and getting everyone to laugh and suffer well together? I wanna see that guy. I wanna see an officer, when they're down and out, somehow figure out how to motivate that boat, even though they just got dead last and got goon squad. How do you motivate them? How do you keep their morale up, in the midst of losing and suffering, which nobody likes? Pays to be a winner, you know that. Those are the things we're looking for. And if the candidates are hacking our system, so I'm not able to even see that? Well, then, they're cheating themselves, first off.

• 2:29:46Speaker 02

  But they're inserting selectionary, because I'm no longer getting their accurate picture. And I say "I," our cadre, are no longer getting the accurate picture of what we need to see out of them. Wow. Things have definitely evolved over there. It's incredible. It's super fun, because you think that it's just plug-and-play curriculum, like we said earlier. I would never change a thing in the curriculum for Hell Week. But it's not plug-and-play. It's the human nuances, and how they're navigating through our system that was the most interesting thing to look at and deal with. The pull-up guy, back to like, sending a message, incentivizing or disincentivizing the right behavior. They were in the classroom in second phase. We said, "Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna walk over there. We're gonna pull him out. We're gonna have the entire second-phase class on the grinder with pull-up bars ready. And I'm gonna have him mount the bar in front of his entire class.

• 2:30:32Speaker 02

  And we're gonna have him crank out pull-ups." And I said, what's the minimum number for enlisted guy to test out of prep? And come to BUDs? I can't remember off the top of my head what it is. Let's say it was 11. I said, all right, it's gotta be 11 is the minimum for an enlisted guy to even qualify to get here. I said, okay, he's gotta get 12. Maybe, I can't remember for sure, but that's arbitrarily what I looked at. So we said, all right, so we told him what's gonna happen. I said, you have a pull-up problem. Oh, yes, sir. I said, okay, we've sent you to medical. You're clear. Yes, sir. Okay. What's going on? I don't know. I can't explain it. You can only do two pull-ups? Like, hey dude, I need you to do more pull-ups than that. So here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna mount the bar and you're gonna knock him out. We'll see. I'm not gonna tell you what number I have in my mind, but you're gonna get to that number. And if you do, you can continue with your class. Lesson learned, we're gonna fall forward.

• 2:31:16Speaker 02

  If you don't get to that number, I'm gonna send you back to day one. Cause you clearly cheated yourself from what this program will develop in you if you pour into it. And we need to make sure you have those things. And he tried to explain himself away and get out of it. I said, no, mount the bar. Knock him out. Entire class, entire cadre, all watching. He didn't get to the number. Get back to day one. Sent it. It was really, really hard decision to make. It broke my heart. Cause I really was hoping that he would knock it out and we could all learn and fall forward through this. And like, hey, man, don't do that. Don't try to pull that here. This is naval special warfare. Nobody gets by in our community by doing the minimum. Absolutely not. That's only, everything we've talked about up until now, being surrounded by high performers

• 2:31:59Speaker 02

  who are constantly looking to get better, not take shortcuts like that. You will not fit in in our community. You are incompatible unless your character's malleable. So show me it's malleable. I'll send you back to day one and you can show me it's malleable. That's the only time I ever sent a guy back to day one. Every time we've remediated under my command, it was always for a purpose. It was to develop something that was lacking. And you don't do that by going back to day one. But in this case, we needed to, because he had cheated himself and he had cheated our program. Now that said, I pulled him aside numerous times as he went back through and said, hey, I need you to make sure you know I'm rooting for you. This was not me being malicious. This is me providing you an opportunity because you shortchanged yourself. You need to show us that you can do this.

• 2:32:44Speaker 02

  So we mentored him through it. It wasn't just back to positively affirm, right? And when I saw things that he did, I would positively affirm him in front of his other peers and his cadre. Case in point, this was a great one. He made it back through Helwick a second time. He's hard as nails, super hard dude. We get back to second phase, he's in the same classroom evolution from the first time where we pulled him out and had him reset. So what we do this time, same thing. Time for redemption. So we pulled him out to the grinder, but this time was different. This time, and I told him, I'm gonna mount the bar with you and your second phase OIC is gonna mount it with you. And we're gonna do pull-ups together, all three of us. Cause I'm gonna reinforce that whatever we expect of our candidates, we expect of ourselves as cadres as well.

• 2:33:29Speaker 02

  And so the three of us knocked out pull-ups until we all fell off the bar. It was fantastic. I lost, by the way. But I think I still got 20. And then, which wasn't so bad for a 45-year-old dude. But here was the beautiful thing, too. He got second, my second phase OIC got first. And this is a prior enlisted officer who was only a few years older than me. And it was such a powerful leadership vignette for us to reinforce to everybody. The standard's the standard. I expected of me as I expected of you. I'm willing to humiliate myself and lose, cause the value is in the effort. And the value is in showing that I hold myself to the standard still. And you got to see as a young buck, there's still older dudes who are beat down, have

• 2:34:14Speaker 02

  had surgeries and are still gonna beat you. So stay hungry. Never stop. It was an incredible moment. Full circle.

• 2:34:25Speaker 02

  Wow. He made it. No. He didn't. He didn't. Turns out his character hadn't really developed that much. It was super tragic. He, he actually, he developed a little bit more. We had some more wins with him over the time. And in the end, it wasn't enough. And I had to drop him from training near the end. It was really heartbreaking for me because more than anyone else, I poured time and energy into this guy. I wrote sit reps about him, like, they were going to like, like, the senate was asking questions about, "How you guys assess and select for character?" We were using him as a vignette to show, "Hey, this is a human experiment to see how malleable character can be." And he made gains, but not enough. And in the end, we ended up dropping him. And I'm thankful we did. We dodged a bullet. He exposed himself. And we'll get to this in a little bit.

• 2:35:10Speaker 02

  He's one of the ones that wrote false testimony about me and my command in the later investigation. And I've since filed allegations of perjury against him for doing so because I have his written testimony from before and what he wrote, which completely contradict each other. So knowingly lied out of vindictiveness because he didn't make it through our program is my assumption.

• 2:35:32Speaker 02

  Good thing he's not in the teams.

• 2:35:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, no kidding.

• 2:35:36Shawn Ryan?

  You just say the Senate is, I mean, how involved is the Senate and Congress in, in training?

• 2:35:44Speaker 02

  We get RFIs all the time, requests for information all the time, all the time. And people are interested in BUDS. People are interested in what we do. I'd offer beyond even that, when Wyman Howard took, now retired Admiral Howard, took command of WarCom, he drove really hard, this idea of cognitive character and leadership attributes. And he, he was really pressing in on how we select and assess at the training level and all the way into serious and significant leadership opportunities down the road. So this was one of his, like, this was his baby he was running out with. And so that provoked questions and people saying, well, what are you guys doing and how are you doing it? Which trickles down to us. How are you doing it at the base level, right at the beginning where it starts?

• 2:36:27Speaker 02

  So we were constantly entertaining questions and even key leader engagements where people would come and want to know, what are you looking for and how do you look for it? How do you select and assess for these things? And how do you make those decisions? Every decision we made on a candidate, whether they stayed or, or, or, or were kicked out of our program, was incredibly methodical and deliberate. We did a phase board where they looked at all the data and information available and made a recommendation. Then an independent training board convened different people now to look at the same problem to make sure, reducing any kind of bias that might be just baked into the system. Then both of those independent boards had come to me with their recommendations and I would make an independent decision based off of all of that. And even at that point, we'd bring the dude in and let him speak for himself. Hey, man, walk me through your thought process.

• 2:37:12Speaker 02

  Why'd you fail here? What happened? Are you worthy of another shot or not? Here's the recommendations I have. It was easy when they both agreed. Drop, drop. Okay, usually pretty easy. It got difficult when one wanted to keep him, one wanted to drop him, and I had to arbitrate and make the ultimate decision. But context always matters.

• 2:37:31Speaker 02

  And we looked at every single candidate independently of the others and assessed who you are as a person, what are the character attributes? And are you trainable? Are you malleable? Are you someone who has potential to be who we want you to be? Who we need you to be? Every single one. Context always matters.

• 2:37:48Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. That's, um... I didn't realize how much oversight there is or how involved the government is. Congress, the Senate, all that. That's fascinating to hear about.

• 2:38:01Speaker 02

  People are very interested in BUDS because it's like we've talked about. It's interesting. You see some fascinating things there. This was also where, going back to my discussions about Jordan Peterson's concept of becoming a monster who chooses not to do monstrous things. This became very important for me as commanding officer as we sat down and looked at our curriculum and said, hey, if all we're doing is teaching capability by executing our curriculum, then we're potentially making a bunch of monsters. We are producing monsters. That's a lot of risk. How do we teach those monsters now not to be monstrous? How do we teach them that the capability we're giving them by teaching them to shoot,

• 2:38:42Speaker 02

  move, and communicate, the need to bridle that and pull it back and show restraint? We use things like Ed Byers Medal of Honor citation to talk about that. A man who can turn it up and turn it down at a moment's notice, who can show lethality and restraint and tender care, all within about a 10-second period. That's what we expect in Naval Special Warfare. We started having our instructors press in and mentor and have discussions about what they've seen in difficult decisions and what it means to be a SEAL or SWIC, not just what it means to be a capable operator. That's easy. We can teach almost anyone to be an operator. How do we teach you to be what our nation expects and needs us to be? How do you live up to our predecessors' expectations of us? Those who handed us the baton?

• 2:39:24Speaker 02

  Those who built this community from when it started and handed it off to us? We've made it better. How do we guarantee you will make it better when we give it to you? These are the things we talked about all the time, all the time. And whenever we would see someone positively do something that helped in that realm, we would reaffirm them and reinforce, this is precisely what we're looking for. Open all hands calls, giving out commanders' coins, or even awards to guys. This is exactly what we're looking for. You are exactly who we're looking for. Small things, small things. One gate guard. Stopped a Chinese foreign national from wandering in the back beach gate. You remember the old beach gate? Small thing, but he had the courage to like, hey, hang on a second. What's going on here? Who are you? And that's like an awkward scenario. Like someone walks in like they know what they're doing.

• 2:40:07Speaker 02

  Takes a little bit of courage to kind of step forward and ask a question, especially as a BUDS candidate, who's like, you're just afraid, you're afraid of pissing off the wrong person. This dude had the courage to do it. Pulled this person aside, ended up detaining him, brought MPs, arrested her, everything. Had a Chinese passport. Like, dude, that was fantastic. Good for you, 18-year-old sailor. So we pulled that dude up in front of everybody. Commander's coin. This is exactly the kind of person we need as teammates that has the courage to do something like that. I don't know if he made it or not, but like, those are the little things we were looking to affirm, to show people. It's a small example. We've got hundreds of them out there, but a lot of fun to start dialing in those attributes and then positively reinforcing what we were looking for. Man, that's great thinking. Was that happening before you arrived?

• 2:40:52Speaker 02

  It's tough to say. I think, I think it depends is probably the answer. I don't know how, yes and no. I think every CO that's important to them, how they tackle the problem is probably different and how we execute getting after those things. My predecessor turned over a great command to me, for sure, for sure. But, but like anyone, we always look to take what the guy did before us and make it better. And I hope that's what we all aspire to do and do. Doesn't mean they were not running a great command. It just means, yeah, I'm building off of the legacy you left me and I hope that the guy behind me does even better. How did you deal with the whole COVID situation? Hmm. Man, that was incredibly difficult.

• 2:41:33Speaker 02

  We were, like I said, nonstop learning environment. Policies and NAV admins were coming out that were directing us to do things in a certain way, which were foolish.

• 2:41:46Speaker 02

  For instance, you know, mask policies. All right, everyone has to wear masks. No questions. Okay. I'm down at the pool and I see our entire class of 200 candidates get in the water because they messed something up. So they get in the water to get wet. They get out, they get in formation to run to the next evolution. They all pull out wet, white cotton masks, put them on and start running, aspirating moisture into their lungs as they run. I'm like, you've got to be freaking kidding me. Like, we are gonna get kids like with pneumonia long before COVID is a problem here because we're doing something that makes absolutely zero sense in our training environment. So immediately we're running waivers up the chain of command. Hey, we need a mask waiver policy. This is not going to work here if we're going to continue training. Close contacts. Hey, follow the CDC guidance. Okay.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  Well, then if I follow the CDC guidance and this guy gets COVID, the entire class is a close contact. Well, can you isolate them? No. Everything is based upon teamwork, under the boat together, under the log together. We can't isolate them from each other. So we were constantly having to figure out how to navigate policies for the masses, which didn't apply to what we were doing and in direct conflict with, how do you train through COVID when the policies are keeping you from doing it? We were seeing strange things like, well, even once we reduced down to, okay, well, we'll determine what a close contact is, which is a little different, and we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll find some common ground there to at least be able to train through this. But then, close contacts would get pulled. And because of all the, the weird decision making that was going on,

• 2:43:16Speaker 02

  this guy would test negative, but then they would say, well, yeah, but he's presumed positive because he was a close contact. Okay, but he's got no symptoms. He wants to keep training and he tested negative, but he just happened to be in the same room as the other guy. I mean, you're telling me I can't train him? Well, yeah, because he's presumed positive. So the whole narrative, like, follow the science? Like, well, you're actually telling me to go opposite of what the science is showing. He's pretty clean. And if he starts to show symptoms, we can pull him then. But, but everything was about trying to reduce that transmissibility. But we weren't seeing a lot of it. Uh, we weren't seeing a lot of it. The classes were managing it well, even when we'd have outbreaks. Like, they managed it well. Not a lot of these guys were really going down hard. Every once in a while, you'd have one. But we were just constantly chasing our tails on trying to navigate through the policies

• 2:44:00Speaker 02

  with exceptions to policy and waivers. Yet sometimes I'd pull a guy, have to pull him. We did a massive administrative report on why we had to pull him, all by their policies. So it's like, I'm following your policy and have to justify to you how I'm following your policy and why I'm following your policy. In the meantime, he can't train. And there's a certain amount of time where if he exceeds that time out of training while we're waiting for the waiver or the exception to come through, it's too late and now we've got to roll him again. And you and I both know, every time you roll a guy in training, especially pre hell week, decreases his chances for success. He's there that much longer, that much more beat down, that much more depressed, that much more probability of having an injury, something like that. So statistically speaking, you significantly reduce success every time you have to roll

• 2:44:45Speaker 02

  a guy. There's the anomalies. One guy, one guy was, I felt so bad for this dude, hard as nails. He got rolled, I think it was two times, the Friday before hell week. So he goes through first phase all the way to the Friday before, his roommate pops positive for COVID. So we had to roll him. So he's sitting up in the building, watching his class do breakout, almost there. So I roll him back to day one. Bummer. Starts over. Gets all the way there, we do another COVID test right before hell week starts, he pops positive. He has no symptoms, feels great. He's like, sir, I'm not COVID positive. All the science was starting to show that might be just dead cells sloughing off at the time. So we're like, hey, let's run a waiver, let's see if we can get him into hell week.

• 2:45:30Speaker 02

  Denied. Nope, roll him. Okay, sorry dude. Rolled him back to day one, third time's the charm, he did it. He made it through and graduated. Hard as nails, like, total stud. But that's an anomaly. Like, that's, you know, that's not normal. Yeah. That's not normal. Now, I love those dudes and they're like, they're the best. You're like, golly dude, like I can learn just watching how tough you are. But you can't expect that of everyone. And so I know we were losing, we were losing candidates regularly because of this, this cycle of roles we had to endure. How long did that last before it kind of went back to normal? My whole tour. The whole tour? The whole tour. And there were other variables. We really pressed in and we're looking at this attrition problem. We dove in hard.

• 2:46:17Speaker 02

  I even predicted it early on to some degree, not to the degree we saw, but we, I mentioned mini buds earlier, we had to do a virtual cyber SOAS, it was called, the SEAL Officer Assessment and Selection, where we wanted to bring these guys out and watch them in person before we selected that officer cohort. But we had to do it virtually because it got shut down for COVID. So we sat in the room and I said, hey, everyone recognizes this officer cohort, we're baking in selection error right now, which means we're going to pick the wrong guys because we haven't seen them here. We don't know what they really are, how they do under the boat as a leader. That means we're going to have higher attrition this year in our officer cohort, which you and I both know, whenever you have that, when

• 2:46:59Speaker 02

  a leader quits, can other, other people will follow every single time. There's always a surge of followers when, when one of the leaders of a class quits. And so statistically and anecdotally, we know that if more officers are going to quit, more enlist are going to quit, which means we're going to have higher attrition this coming season. I said that a month into my commanding officer tour and everyone in the room nodded, thumbs up, we agree, makes sense. Okay. So we know we're buying.

• 2:47:23Shawn Ryan?

  You've mentioned this attrition problem.

• 2:47:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:26Shawn Ryan?

  A couple of different times now. It, I mean, was it, was the attrition rate going up?

• 2:47:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:47:34Shawn Ryan?

  It was?

• 2:47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Our numbers were starting to climb as far as our, our attrition numbers were climbing, which is the same thing as saying our success was, was on a downward spiral.

• 2:47:45Shawn Ryan?

  So I think when me and you around that timeframe went through BUDS, what was like, what, 85%?

• 2:47:52Speaker 02

  Attrition, yeah. Generally, they will say anywhere between 20 to 30% success on average. Some higher, some lower, but that's generally over the 50 year span we've been doing this, that is generally what you can expect in any kind of given year of average.

• 2:48:07Shawn Ryan?

  So what had it increased to?

• 2:48:10Speaker 02

  It's a great question. It depends. I will wait to get into that for our next session because that's a relevant piece that we need to talk about. What I'd offer is

• 2:48:25Speaker 02

  That problem, the attrition problem, got conflated inappropriately with Kyle Mullen's death later. And people started looking at it and then disingenuously looking at the data and making decisions about causality, that if you broke it down into the actual variables and looked at it holistically, you would see what I'm going to show you. But they went with the simple solution of, aha, attrition was higher when you were there, therefore that means you guys must have just been indiscriminately ramping up training, which increases risk, which is directly related to why Kyle Mullen died. Which is just not true. The facts actually show completely otherwise, but that's the easy narrative, and we'll talk about that here in a little bit, a little more.

• 2:49:09Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about risk management for a little bit?

• 2:49:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I do, thank you. That's not a question, but I guess it is. Risk management. One of the biggest challenges in any organization I've found with risk management is complacency, and the risk of complacency, and especially when you're talking about a repeatable curriculum, where we're cutting and pasting every seven weeks a new class, and we're executing the same curriculum. That can be very boring, as it's repetitive, and boring work breeds complacency because people get lazy and realize, I can do this, I've done it a million times. This comes back to the human element, and we talked about this with our cadre all the time, on the curriculum's the curriculum. That's the easy part of what we do. How do you develop their character?

• 2:49:56Speaker 02

  How do you talk about attributes? How do you look for and tease out and reaffirm what we want, and then show people this is also not what we want? Back to incentivizing and disincentivizing. That's the fun part. The other fun part is, where are we accepting blind risk where we didn't quite realize it, because we're just doing something on repeat and not thinking through it? I would always ask my officers, hey, how many of you ever printed out an old ORM sheet, operational risk management sheet, and just cut and pasted the last guy's work? Maybe changed a few variables, put your name on it, and then pushed it up the chain to get signed, because you now convinced somebody that what was once high risk is now medium risk. And you didn't really think about it much.

• 2:50:39Speaker 02

  It became a paperwork drill, it became an approval process drill. Every time I ask that question, every single hand comes up. Non-disclosure environment where people aren't going to be able to count them to that. I said, yeah, I know that happens. That's human nature. Oftentimes, what was a good idea when we turn into a military process or procedure, it can subvert the very idea that was so good in the beginning. Great, let's talk about risk. Let's quantify it. Let's figure out how to think about it. Let's think about how to mitigate it, is the term that we use in the military. But then what it turns into is people that are like, golly, this is just another drill. I've got to print, sign, stamp this thing and move on so I can actually do my job. And so you end up creating complacency and blind risk in doing that. You're no longer thinking about risk.

• 2:51:22Speaker 02

  You've actually disincentivized them thinking about risk. I'd offer even worse, even worse, this notion of mitigating risk. I would talk to my officers all the time and say, I don't like the term mitigating risk because it implies that you took something high risk and made it medium risk. We're taking these candidates off the street. Couple of months ago, they were civilians and we're putting them through some of the most physically arduous training in the world. What's not high risk about that? In what world do we live in that you can convince me that you mitigated that down to medium risk? Absolutely not. It's high risk. It's always high risk. I don't want to hear you talk about mitigating it or buying it down. I think those are foolish notions and they breed more complacency and blind risk.

• 2:52:06Speaker 02

  Instead, I want to hear you convince me why you can manage such high risk? How you manage such high risk? Because you're such professionals? Because you've done your emergency procedures? Because you're coordinating and collaborating with metal? Because you have the conversation with me about how you manage risk effectively, not mitigate it or buy it down for me? You didn't buy down my risk? You didn't buy down any of this risk? It's still high risk. And I'd offer even more than that. I read a book about this years ago and I've used it in almost every tour I've had since then. Back to the Slide for Life example we talked about earlier at breakfast. So for the audience out there, our obstacle course includes a Slide for Life. It's a series of platforms where you climb up and you're about 30 feet off the deck

• 2:52:50Speaker 02

  and there's this rope that comes down and candidates have to inchworm their way down the rope, hanging from it. And by the time they get there, their forearms are smoked. So at some point, every once in a while, someone's forearms give out and they lawn dart headfirst into the sand and it's a catastrophic injury. It's very, very rare, but when it happens, it's catastrophic. So at some point, someone said, "Let's mitigate this risk. Let's buy down this risk." Okay, so they put a net below the rope. So yes, you bought down some risk in a sense, in theory. But what ended up happening was, as we discussed, more people started falling. So we increased the rate of failure. And so what we learned there was, as an organization, in the effort to buy down a risk, all we really did was transfer it somewhere else.

• 2:53:33Speaker 02

  Because now, the candidates weren't able to push themselves past what they thought was their perceived failure. They just fell because we provided them the net. So I think I'm tired, so I fell. Whereas before, more would say, "I think I'm tired, but oh, turns out my life's at stake. I have a little bit more in the tank. I guess I can go further than I thought." So we drove human performance, which ends up helping us manage risk later. Versus if we try to mitigate it right now with a safety measure that sabotages our desire to build human performance, well, that just gets deferred later, and we'll see it somewhere else. But it'd be impossible to draw causality back to this net. But we know philosophically, yeah, that's a risk right there. The net, instead of mitigating risk, actually increases risk. Because now I don't know where it's gonna go.

• 2:54:17Speaker 02

  But it's gonna go somewhere, and we will see it manifest later. It's a small example. We have to be careful not to make it bigger. But philosophically, it's indicative of what can become a systemic problem in an organization if we become so safety-conscious and consumed with mitigating risk that we're actually just deferring it to somewhere else for someone else. I would offer, as we did with the slide for life, sometimes, you have to be careful here. You can't be reckless. But sometimes, it's more appropriate to deliberately increase risk in order to drive human performance to therefore manage risk better. And that's what we see in a micro example of the slide for life, and I can give you 100 other examples operationally where that absolutely makes sense.

• 2:54:59Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense to me.

• 2:55:01Speaker 02

  It's tough, though.

• 2:55:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:03Speaker 02

  Because no one likes to see a guy fall. And we all want to put a measure in place to prevent that from ever happening because that should never happen. Yeah, it's terrible. It's tragic.

• 2:55:13Shawn Ryan?

  Was it, is this, is this, uh, I mean, how long has this been happening about, I mean, how long did we go without a net?

• 2:55:21Speaker 02

  I mean, ages.

• 2:55:23Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 2:55:23Speaker 02

  And that, we, we don't have it anymore. This happened years and years and years ago. And thankfully, whoever the leaders were in charge at the time predated me by far, said, hey, we're not doing a net because we see what's going on. And we don't want that, so take the net out. So it was only there for a short season. Thankfully, those people at that time had the the ability to recognize what was going on. Now, I may be putting words in their mouth. I wasn't there, but, but it's a great example, uh, that is absolutely true.

• 2:55:50Shawn Ryan?

  With, are there other examples of trying to mitigate risk by?

• 2:55:55Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:55:56Shawn Ryan?

  When did this all start happening? I guess is what I'm.

• 2:55:58Speaker 02

  I think it's American society, right? It, it's this, it's this safety conscious society. I'll give you, I'll give you a real world example. I did a hostage rescue blowout where we jumped out of a C-17 into the ocean, Indian Ocean with boats, got on board the USS Enterprise, uh, like the most insane high risk thing in the world. On the Enterprise, my old friend was a Hornet pilot at the time. So we're walking around and he's showing me his jet pilot. We were like academy roommates from back in the day. He's showing me his jet with his name on it. I'm like, wow, this is amazing. I'm showing him our boats. We're climbing up in our boats. And we finish up and I jump off the boat, like maybe from like, I mean, maybe a little higher than this chair to the ground, just, just hop off the boat onto the ground. And he gasps.

• 2:56:40Speaker 02

  You know, cause, cause we're out on the deck of the Enterprise and the, and the, the flag tower's right over here. And I was like, what just happened, dude? He goes, I guarantee you every single officer up there is watching us right now and they all just about had a heart attack when you jumped off to the deck. I'm like, did you see us jump out of the sky a couple hours ago? Like, what was so bad about what I just did? He's like, it's hard to explain, but safety conscious, you know, risk mitigation, like, like we can't do those kinds of things here. They will, they will absolutely, he's like, you'll probably not get talked to because they know who you guys are, but like, if I did something like that, he's like, oh, stand by, man. I'm like, you,

• 2:57:16Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 2:57:17Speaker 02

  You launch and recover your Super Hornet on this deck and they, they get nervous when you jump four feet onto the deck?

• 2:57:24Speaker 02

  Why? I don't know.

• 2:57:27Speaker 02

  I mean, those are interesting kind of cultural insights into society and our this obsession we kind of have right now. I'm speaking generally, of course, but this obsession we have with making things safe. Safe.

• 2:57:41Shawn Ryan?

  When did you notice, I mean, was this happening on a smaller scale when when we were going through training?

• 2:57:49Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 2:57:51Shawn Ryan?

  When did you notice it?

• 2:57:53Speaker 02

  I, I mean, moments like that, like halfway through my career, you start seeing things. You're like, huh? That's weird. I mean, I'm all about managing risk and I'm all about doing incredibly dangerous things. Doing them well and reliably well, but but but back to like safety, like, ah, I think we've abused that word. I think it's a good thing to try to be safe, I guess. But I think we've abused it so much that it's become this dirty concept of, of no, man, you don't get both worlds to some degree. You don't get to build SEALs and SWICS and warfighters and Super Hornet pilots and expect them to go do this incredibly difficult, high risk stuff by saying, we're going to

• 2:58:36Speaker 02

  be so safety conscious that we're going to mitigate and buy down risk to zero. Because back to my philosophical point, no, you're just deferring it to somewhere else. Wow. Now, I'm not saying be reckless, and that's where we have to be careful. It's not, it's not a pendulum. It's not one way or another.

• 2:58:49Shawn Ryan?

  Jumping four feet off a chair isn't reckless.

• 2:58:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:51Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I've seen parents that act like this with their kids.

• 2:58:54Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 2:58:54Shawn Ryan?

  And you see what their kids turn out to be.

• 2:58:56Speaker 02

  It's Well, we're seeing

• 2:58:57Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking disaster.

• 2:58:58Speaker 02

  Speaking of kids, we see that, we see that all over the place now, right? Like, don't climb that tree. That's, that's not safe. What? Or like it's on city property, God forbid, you know? You know, I put a zip line on our front driveway across the sidewalk between two trees and kids are out there having a great time. City came by like, ah, it's too much liability. Somebody could get hurt. This is not safe. We need you to take it down. What?

• 2:59:26Speaker 02

  Whoa, I mean, I kind of understand from a legal perspective, but if we're letting lawyers inform our decisions to the point where they're trying to buy down legal risk, I understand, but that is a piece of advice that decision makers should should consider when making decisions. But for God's sakes, like, let kids climb trees. Some of them are gonna fall. Some of them are gonna break an arm or once in a while. Pain is a powerful teacher. And what you gain from those experiences, they will learn way better than than you teaching them about climbing a tree, but not letting them do it.

• 3:00:02Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. I don't know. I just, um, I don't know what to say to that.

• 3:00:08Speaker 02

  I think it's a problem.

• 3:00:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I think you're right. But, um, well, I don't want to go too much farther in, unless there's something else you want to cover. I know we we gotta get the attorneys in here before we we we get into Kyle Mullen and everything that happened after that.

• 3:00:27Speaker 02

  I think that's, uh, I think that's the majority of it. I think that's the majority of it. There's probably a good pause point for us to bring them in and take it to the next level of discussion.

• 3:00:37Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 3:00:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:38Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 3:00:39Speaker 02

  Great.

• 3:00:43Shawn Ryan?

  I want to give a big thank you out right now to all the Vigilance Elite patrons out there that are watching the show right now. Just want to say thank you, guys. You are our top supporters and you're what makes this show actually happen. If you're not on Vigilance Elite Patreon, I want to tell you a little bit about what's going on in there. So, we do a little bit of everything. There's plenty of behind the scenes content from the actual Sean Ryan Show. On top of that, basically what I do is I take a lot of the questions that I get from you guys, or the patrons, and then I turn them into videos. So, we get, right now, there's a lot of concern about self-defense, home defense, crimes on

• 3:01:26Shawn Ryan?

  the rise, all throughout the country, actually, all throughout the world. And so, we talk about everything from how to prep your home, how to clear your home, how to get familiar with a firearm, both rifle and pistol, for beginners and advanced. We talk about mindset. We talk about defensive driving. We have An end of the month live chat that I'm on at the end of every month where we can talk about whatever topics you guys have. It's actually done on Zoom. You might enjoy it. Check it out. And if Zoom's not your thing, or you don't like live chats, like I said, there's a library of well over 100 videos on where to start with prepping, all

• 3:02:08Shawn Ryan?

  the firearm stuff, pretty much anything you can think of, it's on there. So anyways, go to www.patreon.com/ vigilanceelite, or just go on the link in the description, it'll take you right there. And if you don't want to, and you just want to continue to watch the show, that's fine, too. I appreciate it either way. Love you all. Let's get back to the show. Thank you.

• 3:02:38Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Brad, we're back from the break. We're gonna get into Kyle Mullins' death, and all the controversy and everything that's happening around and encompassing that. And I realize it's a very sensitive subject, so you brought your attorneys on. I'll introduce them real quick. If you guys want to give us some background on yourself, that'd be great. Jason Warren?

• 3:03:01Speaker 03

  Wareham.

• 3:03:01Shawn Ryan?

  Wareham.

• 3:03:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I was a Marine Corps Judge Advocate for many, many years, probably 12 active in total. And I've since transitioned into civilian practice, where I take primarily military, criminal, and national security cases.

• 3:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  And Davis Jansst. Jansst.

• 3:03:21Speaker 04

  Jansst.

• 3:03:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I was in law school when 9/11 happened, so I was a true believer back then. So I joined the Air Force, applied to the JAG Corps, did that active duty for 11 years, prosecutor, defense counsel. Last job, I was Chief of the Military Justice Division at the Air Force JAG School. Left active duty after I'd kind of done every job I wanted to do, and did the reserve thing. So I did guard for a couple of years, and then retired as a Lieutenant Colonel from Air Force Reserve in December of 2022.

• 3:03:50Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, thank you. All right, Brad. Why, this happened a couple of years ago. And so my question is, why are you just now kind of coming out about this?

• 3:04:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good question. It's been almost two and a half years since Kyle died. And in some ways, enough is enough. It's time for the truth to come out. When I first started taking steps toward this, not knowing where it would take us, I wrote, what I stand to gain in this I don't want. What I stand to lose, I desperately wish to keep. And what I meant by that is tried to articulate the risk of someone who's active duty in the special operations community coming forward into the public eye. As you know, one of our tenants is a quiet professional. And so I risk a lot here. I risk a lot to come forward.

• 3:04:43Speaker 02

  No matter what my reasons are, I think there will be people within my community that misinterpret those and or look poorly upon this decision. But, but to me, it's worth coming out for. If I waited until it was all done, if I waited till it was out of the Navy to then come forward, well, then there's no risk to me. But then people might argue, well, that's totally self-serving then. You're just trying to get in the limelight. We talked about it earlier with Bud's 234. We were thrust into the limelight then, didn't want it. I've been thrust into the limelight now, I didn't want it. By coming forward now while I'm still active duty, I'm risking a lot. I'm risking a lot and so.

• 3:05:22Shawn Ryan?

  What are you risking?

• 3:05:23Speaker 02

  Well, it's a great question. There's a very, there's a very thin razor's edge to what an active duty service member can do in the public press. We have the freedom of speech, but there are left and right constraints that keep us very, very tight. And we volunteer for that. You know, I'm a volunteer in the United States Armed Forces. But that gives us very tight left and right lane ropes to stay within, which is why I've got two lawyers on either side to help make sure I stay there. I'll balance between both of them here as we go. So there's a lot of risk that I misstep, especially in an interview like this where it's very free form, very long duration. It's a tell-all. How do I tell-all without walking myself into more trouble, more reprisal? And that's, that's the terrain I'm trying to navigate.

• 3:06:08Speaker 02

  But I think the topic is big enough and worthy enough of that risk. The other day I was talking with a retired Master Chief and above him was a trident on the wall. And it said, quiet professional. And he asked, hey, how you doing? I said, you know, highs and lows, keeping my head above water. I said, I'm about to violate that principle again. I said, I know how a lot of our community feels about that. They've expressed that to me already, and this is going to be bigger. And he paused, and he looked at me and he said, yeah, but they picked a fight with you, and we never backed down from a fight. I said, that's a good point. When we have two conflicting principles, quiet, professional, or never backing down from a fight, or never being out of a fight, at some point, we have to prioritize those

• 3:06:52Speaker 02

  principles into a hierarchy, and sometimes compromise one for the other. And I think it's appropriate for me to compromise being a silent professional right now, even though I've shown a career of being in the shadows and quiet, for why we're going to come forward and what we're going to say. It's important, and it's been suppressed, and that's been an injustice, not just for the Mullen family, for my cadre who were vilified, for medical professionals who were vilified, and for me personally and my family. And enough's enough. Two and a half years is a long time. If, I frame it this way, if, having been an operator, if someone dropped you off in the Khorangal Valley, one of the most dangerous valleys in the history of Afghanistan, without

• 3:07:34Speaker 02

  any weapons, and a small team behind you with any weapons, said, hey, good luck to you, do your best here, trust the process, but by the way, don't pick up that one gun that's over there, you can't, you can do anything but use that, and we're going to culturally pressure you not to use that gun, and that gun was the media, that was the press, that was these kinds of forums, well, you're going to pick up that gun pretty fast to defend the people that are entrusted to your care. That's what I'm doing. I'm picking up a weapon that is typically not looked highly upon within the United States military, and I did it begrudgingly, but I did it because I was thrust in this battlefield, I never wanted to be here, so, okay, let's fight.

• 3:08:15Shawn Ryan?

  What specifically, I mean, we had spoken at breakfast. What specifically do you stand, could you possibly lose by coming out about this and exposing?

• 3:08:24Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, anything's on the table. They could take me to a Trident Review Board and try to take my SEAL bird. They could convene an administrative board and try to take some of my pension, my retirement. They could try to demote me. There's, there's really, the sky's the limit and it's all, it could be subjective based upon someone's interpretation of, did I cross lines here? And there are some people, like I said, that would argue, simply by being here, I've crossed lines. And so there may be people that hunt for those reasons. I'm willing to risk it.

• 3:08:52Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any hints of those type of repercussions?

• 3:08:56Speaker 02

  Not, well, I have hints of reprisals, yes. Not even hints, I have evidence of reprisal. As far as specifically because I went to the press, tough to say. I'd be speculating if I tried to draw a causal line there, but yeah.

• 3:09:10Shawn Ryan?

  What are you hoping to accomplish out of this interview?

• 3:09:14Speaker 02

  I'm hoping to correct the truth record. And I'm hoping that we can right some wrongs because what I have noticed is that when an untruth is allowed to perpetuate, even at a very small level, and even for the right reasons seemingly at first, it can grow into something that is manifested later as institutional deception. And that can rot the organization from the inside out. When we say we have principles like honor, courage, and commitment, when we say things like the SEAL ethos matter, well, then they have to matter. And the principles those are founded upon, we have to adhere to. When we don't, well, then the, the very symbol that's supposed to represent those values and those principles becomes cheap, stamped metal, something you can just buy. I won't tolerate that.

• 3:09:57Speaker 02

  And I won't tolerate people entrusted to my care being vilified due to lies, due to untruths.

• 3:10:03Shawn Ryan?

  Is there, is there a target audience that you're trying to reach?

• 3:10:09Speaker 02

  Specifically, yes. We are trying to gain congressional momentum and, and we need Congress to exercise its authority of the United States Navy and mandate.

• 3:10:23Speaker 02

  Punitive letters of reprimand and, and other measures that they see fit to correct wrongs that were perpetuated by senior people. We are trying to do that by appealing to their constituents. And so our hope coming out of this is that people hear this message are rightly frustrated with it because, and we'll get to this in a minute, the US taxpayer is now a stakeholder in this story. I know we've watched it from a distance as the American public and we've been interested in the news and it's interesting, SEAL scandals are interesting, but they are now stakeholders. They should care and we'll get to why in a little bit here. So if they hear this message and they decide they care enough, we're hoping they contact their congressmen and their senators and then they can start pressuring United States Navy to start owning up to, to what needs to happen here.

• 3:11:08Shawn Ryan?

  We'll try to get it there. Let's start, let's just start with the day Kyle died.

• 3:11:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:11:16Shawn Ryan?

  How did you hear about it? What was the experience?

• 3:11:19Speaker 02

  Heavy day, heavy day. Oh. As we discussed, I've lost a lot of friends in combat, but none necessarily under my command or under my leadership. Let me start with, in the United States Navy, a commanding officer accepts total responsibility for his area of command and I absolutely do that. I accept total responsibility for my time at BTC. With that is the heavy burden of when we lose a life, that happened on my watch. So, so the way it happened, we finished hell week, actually let me rewind the clock just a little bit. We started, I've talked to you about some of our struggles through COVID administrative policy procedures.

• 3:12:00Speaker 02

  We started hearing rumors a couple of weeks before Kyle died of, of potential performance enhancing drugs going on in the candidate population. This has been a problem really in any, any industry that values physical performance. You see it in the professional sports industry all the time. We saw this at BUDS before I was there as an exo. In fact, I showed up right after a recent steroid scandal broke and really since then, so now for over a decade, we've been asking as Naval Special Warfare for authorities and resources to test for performance enhancing drugs. The normal urinalysis that we test for drugs doesn't screen for these things. It does the normal, the street drugs, the heroin, meth, coke, all those things. And so while PEDs have been prohibited as a policy.

• 3:12:47Speaker 02

  We never had the mechanisms to actually reinforce it with a deterrent test. All we really had was tough talk. Don't do this, you better not do it. And educational piece, we would educate the candidates on this is why this isn't healthy for you. We would always take it to another level too. We made every single candidate that came to BUDs or SWCC school, sign an agreement that you're not going to do any of these things. Every single candidate signs it and I sign every single one as well. So we have those on file. It's a written agreement. It's kind of silly because you shouldn't need to have a written agreement about what's already prohibited and you shouldn't be doing in the United States Navy anyway. But we did it. We went that extra step to make sure these people know, hey, this is not healthy here. When we are putting you through what we're about to put you through,

• 3:13:30Speaker 02

  we need to understand the full clinical picture of what's going on inside your body. Because we might have a medical emergency and our corpsmen are some of the best in the world and our doctors are absolutely phenomenal. But if they don't understand what's going on and what's chemically inside your body, they might treat you with something which could contraindicate what they're actually trying to solve and create even more problems. This is a huge risk for what we're about to put you through. You don't need anything other than good, clean chow, icing your knees and hydrate. Just like you and I were taught back in the day. So when we started hearing indications that there might be some PEDs going on, there were just rumors and like I've kind of talked to you a little bit about, we hear rumors all the time. That doesn't mean you have to act yet. You have to figure out, well, what's the scope of the problem? What are we really looking at here?

• 3:14:12Speaker 02

  So we started pressing in, trying to figure that out. We had meetings. Hey, we have their rooms. We search the rooms all the time. We don't really find much. But back to this generation, understanding how to be a little bit more crafty on some things. They probably have some other avenues. I asked, can we search vehicles? Because as of now, we hadn't been allowed to. And we suspected if they're bringing these things onto the base, they're probably hiding them in their vehicles. Legal advisors at the time told us, no, you can't do that. I've since found out that's incorrect advice. We can actually inspect vehicles. We cannot search. It's a bit of a semantics issue, but we were never advised of that. We were just told, no, you can't. So we said, all right, well, let's bring in drug sniffing dogs.

• 3:14:54Speaker 02

  Because even though we found out they don't really, they can't detect these types of drugs. Well, that's at least a deterrent value to show the candidates. We mean business about this stuff and we're on the prowl. We even entertained the idea of bringing in a recent graduate, reinserting him in the pipeline as a student slash spy and having him blow out the network and figure out where they're getting these things, how they're getting it, and how we could actually get after their supply chain and add more deterrent value. So we were.

• 3:15:22Shawn Ryan?

  Was that ever implemented?

• 3:15:23Speaker 02

  No, no. We were, we were, we were discussing all those things with legal advice.

• 3:15:29Shawn Ryan?

  So this really was a problem?

• 3:15:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:15:32Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, if you're going to.

• 3:15:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15:34Shawn Ryan?

  Measures to insert a spy, I mean.

• 3:15:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15:37Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of drugs? What kind of performance enhancing drugs are you finding specifically?

• 3:15:42Speaker 02

  So we didn't know yet because we weren't really finding anything yet. We, we had some weird indications of these offbeat things you can buy at GNC, but, but so far those were more couched as supplements at the time. So we weren't seeing anything heavy yet. So we had reason to be concerned, but again, we didn't have no smoking gun yet for us to really understand the scope of what's going on. But the rumors were starting to get a little bit more specific to where, okay, this is more than just a rumor. We might actually have a problem. We need to start digging in for.

• 3:16:11Shawn Ryan?

  Where were the rumors coming from?

• 3:16:12Speaker 02

  Interesting. Prior, actually one of my old instructors from when I went through BUDS, still active duty and was out on the beach, a couple hundred yards down the way. And a failed candidate happened to strike up a conversation with him and said, hey, by the way, there's a ped problem amongst the candidates. We've heard that before. So, so the instructor, the retired or older instructor was not really that wowed at first, but then the candidate provided some weird specifics like, hey, there's a guy that apparently comes from off base. The candidates will escort him on base. He's got a Pelican case full of drugs, lined, lined guys up, injects them, buttons it all up and off. He's, he's off the base and no one's the wiser and there's no evidence of what, what went down.

• 3:16:55Speaker 02

  That was some pretty specific intel, which made me think, alright, there's probably a problem here. That's not just, I heard something. So, we had a lot of construction going on at the time, massive risk. We brought that up numerous times because all the camera systems were down, so we couldn't actually get any information on verifying if this guy was in fact real, or if this was, again, just a rumor, three times removed, that had no merit to it.

• 3:17:23Speaker 03

  The cameras are down?

• 3:17:24Speaker 02

  Oh, everything was down, yeah. Yeah. Most of the barracks were under construction, all the buildings were under construction. It was a massive facelift for the entire

• 3:17:31Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:17:32Speaker 02

  compound. They were moving all the SEAL teams down further south, and this was all being redone to be strictly training, where historically, we knew where all of NSW existed.

• 3:17:41Speaker 03

  Oh, good.

• 3:17:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, very hard, very hard problem.

• 3:17:47Speaker 03

  Go ahead. It's important to understand the legal environment, or kind of tenuous legal environment he was placed in, through the advice of the command judge advocates at the time. The pat response of "no, you cannot, quote, 'search vehicles,' is a correct one, under the law, unless you have probable cause for a search, that is, a quest for evidence. What he was asking was, "How do I stop drugs coming into my program? How do I stop drugs coming into my base?" And, I mean, everyone who's ever been on base anywhere knows that at the base gate, it's just like, it's the same border rule as if somebody's coming across the border,

• 3:18:29Speaker 03

  right? They can absolutely inspect any and everyone who comes through there, it just isn't any targeted quest for evidence. So, as we first started to peel this onion, and I realized where he was operating, his primary tool that every commander has was removed through junior judge advocates' failures to understand distinctions that are clear and understood by everyone who's ever gone through naval justice school. So, I mean, step one, I consider that malpractice, right? And he's given malpractice-based advice, and now told to operate in an environment where his totally appropriate and necessary tools are taken out of his hand.

• 3:19:12Speaker 02

  It's very interesting juxtaposition because through this entire process, which will be revealed here as we tell the story more, that's the only true causal line that I can draw that says if we had had that authority, we would have searched those cars, we would have found these drugs, we would have stopped Towick immediately with what we found, which we'll talk about in a second, and he would be alive today. Every other causal line they've tried to draw in between my leadership, my cadre, our medical professionals is all speculative in nature and flimsy and even false evidence. It's super interesting that no one ever questioned, hey, why are we not holding Jags accountable for giving improper legal advice, which actually handcuffed us and prevented us from solving this problem from the beginning?

• 3:19:55Shawn Ryan?

  What would the repercussions have been if you would have caught somebody with performance enhancing drugs?

• 3:20:01Speaker 02

  Great question. So the ones we found in Kyle's car are actually considered Schedule III controlled substances. It's a felony in the state of California to have been in your possession. Your possession counts as your car registered to your name. That's guilty, I think, by up to five years in prison and a dishonorable discharge from the United States military. So the only crime here in this entire case, start to finish, is Schedule III controlled substances on a US installation.

• 3:20:28Speaker 03

  Unprescribed Schedule III, right? Schedule III can be prescribed.

• 3:20:31Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 3:20:32Speaker 03

  Right?

• 3:20:32Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 3:20:33Speaker 03

  But unprescribed possession is a violation.

• 3:20:36Shawn Ryan?

  How do you know it was unprescribed?

• 3:20:38Speaker 02

  They were black market form procured.

• 3:20:41Speaker 03

  So, as we understand it.

• 3:20:43Speaker 02

  So the ones we found, and let me also preface this like I did my disclaimer earlier, everything I will say here has actually already been released by various government officials, senior to me, to include a US congressman. It's been piecemealed out there and it's been kind of hidden in the white noise, but it's all been released, which allows me to comment officially on it and not release information that's not been previously disclosed to the press.

• 3:21:05Speaker 03

  And I'll help him out even further. Everything that we say is our own perceptions and opinions of the facts as we've gathered them, right? We, unlike, you know, the Navy, don't think we're 100% correct. We act on the evidence that we find. And so anything we say here, we're not giving it as gospel, but it is based on our work and our investigation and our opinions derived from that investigation.

• 3:21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21:30Speaker 02

  Why do you believe that they are black market? So testosterone, sippinate, injectable with labels that say Karachi, Pakistan. Human growth hormone injectables, labels that say the Netherlands. Anastrobel, sildenafil, which is a generic version of Viagra. Other unknown diluent liquids used in new syringes and alcohol wipes and other, I think there was a couple of miscellaneous things in there. All in a cooler stuffed in a backpack with gel packs, keeping it cool in a car through the duration of Hell Week. Pretty clearly form procured.

• 3:22:09Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure that the Pakistani clean rooms for pharmaceutical injectables are not up to US standards. Probably a good indicator.

• 3:22:19Speaker 03

  And what else is, what else leads us to believe this is what's not there, right? There's no entry in his electronic medical record to our knowledge. No one has brought that forward. And I mean pharmaceutical databases and prescription databases are searchable as well. I would presume, although I don't have a great deal of faith in NCIS at this point on this case, I would have presumed anybody would have run that to see if he had a prescription, right? And would have published that in an investigation. So we haven't seen either of those things. Combined together, I think we can conclude that they were bought on the black market.

• 3:22:53Speaker 02

  So rewind from the discovery. You asked earlier, how do we find out what happened? So when we finished Hell Week, contextually, it's important for me to add here, you remember when you and I graduated Hell Week back in the day, I think the extent of my medical check was, here's a pizza, here's a Gatorade, how do you feel? Here's some vitamin E ointment to rub on your owies. Now walk yourself 300 yards down to building 618 and go to sleep and then tomorrow we'll let you go. That was about it. I mean, I may be, I may be being a little flippant. I'm sure they checked our temperature, but, but that was, it was pretty rudimentary. We have come light years from there. The medical staff we have are absolutely world-class.

• 3:23:35Speaker 02

  The ability to do triage quickly, the ability to do head-to-toe assessments. Every single candidate as they finish hell week goes through a rigorous review with various corpsmen and no kidding physicians. I think three separate physicians saw Kyle after hell week was complete and asked him, head-to-toe, how are you feeling? He had clean vitals, all recorded, all verified. He had no complaints other than, um, my knees hurt. And they identified a little bit of raspiness in his lungs. This is one of the things we have to remember about post hell week. And it's one of the reasons why we're always very careful because what's normal to us is not normal to other people. So someone else might say raspiness in the lungs? That's terrible.

• 3:24:18Speaker 02

  Okay, except, you know, a large percentage of our graduates of hell week have raspiness in their lungs. They've just been exposed to the maritime environment for, for an entire week and, and there's a lack of sleep. So their immune systems are compromised a little bit. We account for that in our calculus. Every single candidate was given prophylactic antibiotics in anticipation of compromised immune systems and the probability that you're going to get an infection of some sort. It was not uncommon for candidates to test positive for bacterial pneumonia per se by the time they finished hell week. But given that they were on prophylactic antibiotics, we were already ahead of those curves. So oftentimes they wouldn't even show symptoms, but we diagnose them and say, okay, well, let's treat it with more antibiotics and rest, which is already on the equation anyway.

• 3:25:02Speaker 02

  So, so the, the, the way they were managing risk is, is through the roof. We were managing risk is through the roof exceptional. Back to other comments about COVID. We were collaborating daily because we were terrified of this, what we called the trifecta. What if someone gets SYP, pneumonia and COVID all at the same time? SYP being swim-induced pulmonary edema, which is moisture that gets trapped in the lungs by being in a, in a, in a maritime environment, just aspirating moisture in the air, happens off the beaches of San Diego quite a bit. Pneumonia, obviously being what it is in COVID, all three attacking the respiratory system. So we were dialed in like really tight on looking for these signs and symptoms and, and had boards to monitor who were our high-risk candidates.

• 3:25:45Speaker 02

  We had metrics we were using to determine who was at what status and when were we going to pull them from training? We were actually doing more real-time studies on SYP. There's not a lot of doctrine out there on how to manage SYP and what is it? And Is it even a fatal thing that we should be worried about? We were the ones breaking ground there. I had my first phase officer in charge, running experiments with medical with the intent of reducing our attrition due to SYP. And what I mean is, hey, what's a causal factor? Well, the water. Okay. Can we change the data between classes if we sequence the land and water evolutions differently? So not changing the curriculum, but the sequencing of curriculum. And we were doing studies in real time to see if we could decrease the number of cases

• 3:26:29Speaker 02

  of SYP we'd get in between one class and the next. And if we did, okay, we're going to make some changes. We're going to manage this, we're going to manage this risk, not mitigate it, and we're going to reduce the number if we can. This was like active and ongoing collaboration. We were, talked about being a learning organization. We were watching the news and started hearing rumors that vitamin C and vitamin D could help reduce the transmissibility of COVID and even the symptoms if you get it. So we procured on our own optar dollars, vitamin C and vitamin D, and got the senior medical officer approval to start issuing that to our most at-risk candidates, the ones going into the hell week and the tour in the seal and sweep pipelines.

• 3:27:11Speaker 02

  So, so this notion that we were just turning a blind eye to medical risk and failed to provide proper medical oversight is, is actually contrary to all the evidence of everything we were doing on a day-by-day basis to manage risk to these candidates. One of the things we were doing to that point was a deliberate effort was as we brought prep, which was a decision that was made to bring it from Great Lakes to, to basic training command under my authorities, we reimagined the entire curriculum leading up to first phase with the explicit goal of reducing attrition due to injuries, impact injuries, stress fractures, shin splints. And we did. If you look at the collective tour of my commanding officer tour, what you'll see is a decrease in attrition due to injuries.

• 3:27:53Speaker 02

  It was a deliberate and, and methodical collaborative effort with our medical professionals, our sports physicians, our sports psychologists. We brought every single expert in the room and said, how can we do this? How can we sequence our curriculum better to crawl, walk, run, to reduce these injuries? So that applied to SYP, pneumonia, COVID, impact injuries, everything. And we were successful in that effort. So all the evidence contradicts this narrative that, oh, you just failed to provide proper medical oversight. It's false. So Hell Week completes. That was a long, long rant about where we were when that Hell Week completed. We do the three med checks, the physicians, the last physician, I just talked

• 3:28:35Speaker 02

  to him the other day that saw Kyle, again, no complaints of breathing, and he walked out of the room on his own, on his own capabilities. Now, he was later provided, I think, a wheelchair just as his knees continued to swell, which happens, you remember, after Hell Week, things just start to swell. But this notion that he was wheeled out of medical was just not true. Multiple witnesses saw him walk out on his own. So at that point, the medical staff does one more walk around with our watchstanders before we break for the night. This is the way we used to do business, before we break for the night. And then everyone goes home for the most part other than our watchstanders, because we've been given the head-to-toe evaluation and everyone's comfortable. So I had left at that point. I was out picking up dinner for my family and I get a phone call that a couple hours later that one

• 3:29:20Speaker 02

  of our candidates was having some troubles and not one I'd been called. So by the time I get back on base, I find out it's actually two candidates that were having breathing problems, one of them being Kyle Mullen. By the time I get there, I hear, one of the two candidates was in the ambulance right in front of me. I talked to him. He seemed great. Had oxygen, was breathing, paramedics were treating him. He was cognizant, seemed fine. I said, all right, let's get you checked out, go take care of yourself, you know? And then at that point, I found out Kyle had been already taken by ER to the closest hospital possible. And my first phase officer in charge had either accompanied or driven separately to be there, and they were working on him. They said they had a hard time on

• 3:30:03Speaker 02

  site and he was coding, I think was the word that was used, and they were working, working him out of the ER at the time. So we brought the team together, started making recalls, bringing people back from Friday night. Do you have a question? Yeah, I do. Real quick. Is this a common occurrence? Coding candidates?

• 3:30:22Shawn Ryan?

  Two people?

• 3:30:23Speaker 02

  No, no, that's pretty, that's pretty rare. I would offer, it is not uncommon to hear the ambulance come running. We have problems that happen on a somewhat regular basis. We have excellent emergency action plans and the local paramedics are, you know, aren't sometimes on a first-name basis. We're that familiar with each other so that we can treat injuries quickly and effectively with the right triage and the medical professionals. On every evolution, we always have our corpsman on site with a four-by-four AMBOO, which is an ad hoc ambulance with, with triage-level medical gear to treat anything immediate, to do any kind of real-world assessments on site as quickly as possible, then make the decision whether 911 needs to be called or we pull them off and go see something

• 3:31:08Speaker 02

  more deliberate.

• 3:31:09Shawn Ryan?

  How many hell weeks previous to this were you commanding officer for?

• 3:31:14Speaker 02

  Oh, lots. I can't remember off the top of my head. But this was February of 22, and I started my command tour summer of 20, so I was getting to the end of mine. We do seven, seven classes a year on the SEAL side, six classes here on the SWCC side, so quite a few.

• 3:31:32Shawn Ryan?

  Had anyone gone in an ambulance for similar reasons after hell week before?

• 3:31:37Speaker 02

  Not, not that I recall for any kind of breathing problems, no.

• 3:31:40Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:31:40Speaker 02

  No. Normally, our emergencies were more, I twisted an ankle, popped a knee, something impact-related. Every once in a while, I'd have a breathing thing. Usually that was indicative of SIP. And when we found was SIP, and what all the conventional wisdom at the time was saying was, give that person some oxygen, their, their O2 saturation levels stabilize, take it off if they can maintain, then, okay, they're going to be fine. Usually, within a day, is usually people would, would bounce forward from that.

• 3:32:06Shawn Ryan?

  What point did the performance-enhancing drug problem kind of come across your radar?

• 3:32:12Speaker 02

  So it wasn't until after I was notified that Kyle had passed? We, at that point, realized we were now in a notification stage of what was going on. And it was a

• 3:32:28Shawn Ryan?

  So there were no rumors of this previous to

• 3:32:30Speaker 02

  We had had the rumors, but, but like I said, we were doing everything we can and we're just meeting some walls. And so we made the, we made the conscious decision to start how we not really, again, knowing the scope of what was going on. We were still digging in, we had a lot of exploration to do, but we made the decision, hey, without knowing this, this could be a rumor, this could be nothing. We need to at least continue training until we understand what we're even talking about.

• 3:32:57Speaker 02

  So we did.

• 3:32:57Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:33:02Speaker 02

  So we, we were notified he'd passed and my first face OIC came back from the hospital and on there, I forget the look on his face. The, the absolute just devastation.

• 3:33:16Speaker 02

  And none of us could, we didn't know yet, right? It was just, it was like, what happened? What happened? And immediately everyone, you know, you start to just think, well, did we miss something like what? There's that, there's that fear, shame and guilt that, that, that automatically takes root in your soul. And just, just grief, you know, this was a man who I'm responsible for.

• 3:33:43Speaker 02

  This is a man that, that sacrificed a lot for his country. He put it all on the line and how the heck did this happen? We were clear after med checks, how does this happen? How does someone decompensate that fast and die with no problems after med checks? We started immediately looking, what did med checks say? Everything was clean. Well, then how do we account for this? And no one could explain it. We said, all right, well, this isn't the time. Right now we need to take care of the family. Right now we need to focus on them. So.

• 3:34:12Speaker 02

  NCIS showed up and it was strange. There happened to be an ice storm in Millington that night. And so all their servers were shut down and we needed to access his online page 13 in order to notify his next of kin, his mother in this case. So we were coordinating with SEALs on the East Coast and a casualty assistance care officer to notify the next morning. But we couldn't do it without the page 13 next of kin. And so NCIS now shows up because we have the deceased candidate. And we said, hey, we're looking everywhere, but the servers are down. We can't find a paper copy anywhere. Will you help us by unlocking his car for us?

• 3:34:56Speaker 02

  To allow us to look in there, maybe he has a file of like all of his hard copy papers. And they grudgingly agreed to it, but they opened his car and at that point, opened his backpack to look in there and came across this cooler, opened the cooler, and then came across this plethora of, like we said, Schedule III controlled illegal drugs. How many drugs were in there? It was enough for me to think it was more than him. Really? Oh, yeah, 100%. So much so that at that point, I said, hey, listen, we've now got this other set of candidates. We've got this entire class now. One other one's in the hospital. There's a concern for the safety of the rest of the candidates

• 3:35:38Speaker 02

  because it looks to me like more people were using this than just Kyle. So we have got to figure this out before we release them the next day. What if there's more in other cars? And we release them and someone goes and injects themselves after we cut them away and now someone else dies? Like that's, that is not in the realm of, I'm never going to allow that to happen. So I said, we need to search every other car at this point. And NCIS told us, no, you don't have probable cause. I said, I've got a dead candidate and I've got a bag full of drugs that are clearly more than what one dude was using. What do you mean I don't have probable cause? Clearly, other guys are using this. Nope, you don't have probable cause. Okay, so I asked my boss. Their legal advice said the same thing. No.

• 3:36:23Speaker 02

  He said, ask the base CO. His JAG can authorize this as the base CO. I called the base XO. He and I are very good friends. And I explained the entire situation. He said, absolutely, this makes so much sense. We've got to search those cars. I'll get you an answer in an hour. Called back. Legal advice says, no, you don't have probable cause. So I was told.

• 3:36:40Speaker 03

  Again, let me, let me parse that a little bit and, and try to keep it non-lawyally in, in that analysis. But, um, you know, even now, Captain Gary uses the term "search," right? Well, "search" is, under the, uh, the Fourth Amendment, right? Um, a, a, an aspect of a criminal investigation requiring probable cause. It is a quest for evidence on a, on a targeted individual or location, right? This is, and these are the terms that NCIS is correct. He didn't have probable cause for all the other candidates on an individual level yet, right? Or that he didn't, uh, you know, that they were looking for evidence in a specific way,

• 3:37:25Speaker 03

  right? To contrast that, if, if everyone had started using the word "inspect" and inspected everyone, it would have been just fine. I mean, absolutely. If, if, uh, if a commander on a base sets up an inspection program that is either totally complete and, and looking at everyone, or randomized, so that there is no inference that a search of an individual in a quest for evidence has occurred, that's 100% within their authorities. And I can't tell you how basic an understanding of, of search and seizure law that is. And so when I first got the investigation and was looking at this, and he was telling me this, I was like, I, I've, I am shocked that all the way up to the base level, I

• 3:38:10Speaker 03

  mean, three levels of, of different lawyers failed to say, hey, guys, we're using the term "search." Hold on. This is confusing the issue. Let's just inspect. Let's inspect everyone. Let's inspect anyone who crosses the base gate line. Let's inspect everyone. And guess what? In an inspection, if you find evidence, you get to use it, right? Because you didn't target, you didn't have to have probable cause, and you didn't have to have a search authorization. And that's a defense counsel saying it. Look, you know, I'm the guy who's not supposed to be telling them how to get this done, right? But I'm even saying I'd have a tough time winning any case where they did a broad base across the board inspection, and they came up with evidence.

• 3:38:54Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 3:38:55Speaker 03

  The other side of that is, even if they did a search of every vehicle, and even if defense counsel everywhere filed motions to suppress that evidence, it still gets to be the command's responsibility to stop the conduct, right? So if we're worried about a drug problem, I'm not worried about prosecution. Maybe we'll hold them accountable, we'll kick them out of the program, whatever. But I'm trying to stop an active health-safety risk? Search the vehicles. We'll figure it out later.

• 3:39:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's inherent command responsibility that was taken away. I mean, even going back just to the authority to search the vehicles. As a commander, you have responsibility. You have health, safety, morale, welfare, authority that was just missed. So, so basic. I mean, I taught at the Air Force Jack School. So basic to what was going on here. And that was just missed. And Jason's right. Who cares if we can't court martial everyone who had Peds in their cars? If we're talking about the safety of these guys, safety of other people, we do it. We do it. Commander, sap that authority.

• 3:39:56Speaker 02

  And ultimately, I did. I said, I'm too concerned about safety to take this advice. And so we searched every, we inspected every other car.

• 3:40:06Speaker 03

  Well done.

• 3:40:07Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:40:10Speaker 02

  So I inspected every close, every other car. We thankfully didn't find anything. But, but it gave me peace of mind that, okay, when we release these guys tomorrow, we've at least managed the risk that they'll have access to any of their drugs for now, until we figure out what's going on here.

• 3:40:23Speaker 03

  How long after you found the drugs in Kyle's car, did you inspect the other vehicles?

• 3:40:32Speaker 02

  Hours.

• 3:40:33Speaker 03

  Hours?

• 3:40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:40:34Speaker 03

  Is there any possibility that the candidates went back to their cars?

• 3:40:38Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 3:40:39Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:40:40Speaker 02

  There were no cameras, remember?

• 3:40:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they had heard about?

• 3:40:43Speaker 02

  There is a chance of that, yes. Because they- Two pieces. One, they have freedom. They're not in jail while they're healing after Hell Week. Two, back to the candidate network, and this will become clear in a few minutes. We know that they were talking with other people who were helping facilitate the use of drugs. And so they could have had other candidates from other classes go clean the cars while we were figuring it out. Absolutely.

• 3:41:11Speaker 03

  Or they even had the option to freeze the entire scene, tell all the candidates that they can't return to their vehicles, and then conduct the inspection. But again, I get frustrated about this because, and I've gotten to know Davis, we're professionals. We're professionals. I consider ourselves held to the same standards of doctors to acquit our duties. Right? Period. And what passes for what was going on at the time, advice in a clear health and safety, and in view of someone who had just passed, it doesn't qualify as professional legal advice. It's nonsensical to me that no one was coming up with solutions here.

• 3:41:50Speaker 02

  Makes sense. So we, at that point, moved forward and did our best. We did a safety stand down for a day to address, we weren't allowed to address the fact that we found the drugs yet, because now it was an open NCIS investigation. So while everyone kind of knew what was going on, we had to just not talk about it, really, was the conventional wisdom that was provided to us. And we made some decisions to continue training at that point. But those were based off of a lot of advice we sought from a lot of graybeard mentors on not taking a knee for too long and allowing this to fester, and these candidates to kind of spiral out of control in grief,

• 3:42:30Speaker 02

  in self-defeat, in just an unhealthy place. Get back to work. Let's get focused on the mission. Back to learn to compartmentalize and move forward, as difficult as that can be. We did provide every candidate that wanted it, access to psychs and chaplains. And I said, A, personally, if anyone feels like this is too much to start, we will pull you and let you administratively roll in another class to let you process what happened. You all knew you're getting into a high-risk field, but this is not something that typically happens in training. So we want to acknowledge that you might not be cognitively resilient enough to deal with some of this, maybe. So we provided all of that. I also said, hey, because we don't know yet, we still didn't have the authorities to test yet, because we don't know who else in the class might have been using.

• 3:43:14Speaker 02

  I said, if anyone as much as sniffles differently than what we normally expect post hell week, we're going to admit him to the ER immediately and send him. So I think we sent seven other people over the next few days who just, I mean, you look a little weird, we're going to send you. It's interesting and it's unfortunate because how that got spun in the media later was, oh, look at this disproportionate number of people that was sent to medical in this class, indicating there was gross failure of leadership to acknowledge the risk that was in front of everybody's eyes. No, that was me being overly cautious with our medical professionals, saying, we're going to take no chances and be conservative if we're going to err anywhere and just admit these guys to the hospital to be safe.

• 3:43:59Speaker 02

  Things can be twisted so quickly into something that just wasn't the case. How long did it take for this to hit the media? I don't know. It wasn't long at all. The drug part took a while to come out. But it hit pretty fast that we had a candidate who died after hell week. That made the news pretty fast. What was the narrative? At first, it was pretty bare bones, just the normal kind of a release, you know, very, very limited information. There was a SEAL candidate who died, a name, you know, from, you know, New Jersey. And there's an ongoing investigation into what happened. And then, of course, the frenzy starts and the speculation and all the rumors and the threads and the comments.

• 3:44:44Speaker 02

  And then slowly, things started getting released, but then we saw things getting twisted pretty quickly. So we brought out the family. We did a memorial service there. We, at that point...

• 3:44:58Speaker 02

  Wanted to shield them from any of those uncomfortable discussions at this point. This was, this was not a time to address things like that. This was a time to grieve and to care for them. And we made a deliberate decision as an organization to do that. To tell them everything we could without compromising the integrity of the investigation was our goal. And to be as empathetic and loving as possible. And so we did. We held a memorial service for him there. And I spoke. It was, it was the most difficult. It was the most difficult moment of my life, I think. It, and we talked earlier about this moment with, with Danny's death.

• 3:45:38Speaker 02

  But to stand in front of a grieving mother and give a talk about her son was next level for me. It was so difficult. I, as we're starting the ceremony, I was overwhelmed with emotion. And it wasn't nervousness, but it was, it was everything. It was grief. It was the magnitude of what happened. It was being in this moment, standing with these people and having to stand up there and talk about this young man. And they're playing the National Anthem. We were indoors but covered him, so I was saluting for the National Anthem like we all do. And in that moment, I was so overwhelmed, my hand was just shaking uncontrollably. Like I could not hold it still.

• 3:46:21Speaker 02

  I was just a wreck. And my wife was with me next to me. And without even saying a word, she ducks her shoulder, steps in, and then pops it back up and holds the weight of my arm for the salute. And it was an incredible moment for me because it's very symbolic of how she has been in my life through everything we talked about before this. And how she continued to support me and carry my weight when I needed her to. In this moment of just guttural loss and.

• 3:46:57Speaker 02

  Mind bending grief, once again, she was there. Even the night we found that he was dead, I called her and I said, hey, this is what we know. And she said, well, what do you need? What can I do? And I said, I don't know. I don't have words. I don't know. I don't know what to even ask for. I just need to get, I just need to figure this out with our team. And we need to, we need to help the family as best as we can. So Amy just showed up. I'm just gonna be here. I don't need to say a word. I'm here. I'm here. And I would look and see her and she was always just there. And always that steady pillar of support through every phase of this. Not just her. I gotta say, before we go further,

• 3:47:39Speaker 02

  what I saw the team do, what I've seen our team do, the collective NSW team, when we lose something like this and someone like this, absolutely inspires me every single time. I wish we didn't have to go through grief to see it. But some of my front office assistant, whose husband was deployed and they have a kid, she comes in, brings her like 10 year old daughter to work at eight o'clock at night to help however she can. And they stayed till midnight. Lets her kid play on the dry erase board while we're dealing with this. Other people did the same exact thing. Like, like when you see the team rally and everyone comes and some of them are there saying, I know exactly how we need to help. They hear it, boom, boom, and they weigh in, they take initiative and they help.

• 3:48:23Speaker 02

  My XO put the whiteboard up and just starts mapping out, here's all the decisions we need to make. Here's what we need to make sure we don't say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. It was incredible. It's so inspiring to see the team just do everything we've been talking about, but now in a different form. It's humbling. It's inspiring and it's so tragic, too. My command master chief, the day, the day I notified Regina Mullen, the morning after she'd been notified by the two SEALs on the East Coast. And so this is my first call to her. And I'm in the room and I said, listen, I've, I've, I've known too many grieving parents

• 3:49:05Speaker 02

  over the years, but, but help me. So we brought in our advisors and we went through all the things that could happen here. We had the psych, the chaplain, we had the, the counselors, we had my wife in the room, we had everyone that was a subject matter expert in this stuff, the, the gold star representative, you know, for the West Coast, um, who's seen this happen far too many times. And I said, give me all the advice, tell me what to avoid, tell me what to, you know, how to, how to, how to be careful here. I don't, I never want to say the wrong thing to someone who's, who's in this moment. And in that moment, as I'm getting ready to pick up the phone, my command master chief, uh, you probably know the name, Dave Hanson, um, a legend on the West Coast, stands up and in front of all these people,

• 3:49:47Speaker 02

  walks across the room, puts his hand on my shoulder and prays out loud for me before I call this grieving mother. I, I have, I don't know if I've ever been in a situation where I felt the power of that moment and the magnitude of this man who, uh, just did that. Same hand, by the way, he's a boxer. It's the same hand he has used to knock people out in the ring. It's the same hand he's used to, uh, take down our nation's worst enemies down range. This comes right back to everything we talked about, being a monster who restrains himself, virtue, how Jordan Peterson just defines virtue. This is the

• 3:50:27Speaker 02

  things you get to see in these moments. Uh, people of virtue, not just SEALs and SWICS, but every single person there just rallied, uh, and exhibited virtue to support and love on this family and do right by them in a, in a unbelievably horrific scenario. Um, so we, we brought him out to the memorial, we did that. Uh, we gave him a tour of the compound.

• 3:50:57Speaker 02

  Talked about a lot of things you and I've talked about, our methodology for training, some of the things Kyle experienced, and then they headed back east from there. And at that point, we did our best to keep in touch. At one point, Dave and I traveled east to go to his memorial service in Jersey for the memorial service with my Commodore and a couple of other people as well, and just continue to try to love on them and stay in touch. And then, you know, I was hearing nothing but affirmation from our force at the time. Brad, you're carrying this rock for Naval Special Warfare. We appreciate the empathy that you're showing here, how you're leading the memorial service, the care for the family. You're doing all the right stuff. We're under the boat with you. That's what I kept hearing. We're under the boat with you. I said, okay.

• 3:51:45Shawn Ryan?

  I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show, and some of the stuff that

• 3:52:30Shawn Ryan?

  she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But

• 3:53:15Shawn Ryan?

  like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

• 3:53:27Speaker 02

  So I was asking for updates. What were they finding? How could I get off these problems? In the meantime, I was kept out of those meetings, but we started finally getting some authorities to start testing for urine and sending it off to labs to start trying to determine if people were in fact using. Interestingly enough, a couple of weeks after Kyle died, one of the guys from his class popped positive for one of the very drugs we found in his car, which verified my initial suspicion that more than one person was using the drugs we found. At that point, that began our hunt, and we started pulling in candidates and confronting them when they had ratios that looked abnormal. We were following the World Anti-Doping Agency's standards for their threshold

• 3:54:12Speaker 02

  and when they would pull someone from a professional sport and say, "You're no longer eligible due to enough suspicion here." And we were doing everything we could, following that professional sports industry, to make the best decisions we could, understanding we were in a learning environment and you get in some weird legalities. We were mainly just administratively dropping guys from training, nothing punitive. We weren't taking them to a captain's master thing after that. Just, "Hey, there's reasons to believe you're unsafe to train." We're administratively dropping you from the program. We managed it as best we could for the next few months there. And fast forward, got to my change of command and Dave's retirement send-off, and we finished that with everything seemed to be on track. Every time I polled anyone, I kept hearing the same things. "We're all into the boat with you, and so far, nothing is showing anything crazy."

• 3:54:57Speaker 02

  We did a safety investigation. They started a command investigation to look into the PEDS problem. NCIS was doing their own investigation. No one interviewed me. I was provided an introductory meeting at one point with the command investigation team, who basically said, "Hey, we're here. We're going to be looking into stuff." I said, "Hey, we're totally transparent. I've told my command. We're going to contribute everything we can here, and no problems at all." That was about the extent of anyone's questions for me, which I found to be strange, given I'm a commanding officer and I have total responsibility to this command. Why would anyone not want to sit down and talk to me about what my observations are and what we saw and didn't see and what we were doing to manage risk? But what kind of questions were they asking your staff?

• 3:55:42Speaker 02

  Great question. Um, I don't 100% know, but I can tell you what that produced. Whatever questions they asked. Uh, let me say a couple more things and I'll get to that answer. So we changed command and I headed east for a three-month course I had to do on the east coast. Took my family with me. We stayed with, with my wife's sister out in Virginia Beach. And I kept calling back, "Hey, any news? Like, anything going on?" Um, "No, we're all under the boat with you. Everything's looking good. Uh, you have nothing to worry about. Uh, everything's showing that it was, it was the drugs." "Okay, sounds good." Then I started getting nervous when all of a sudden news starts breaking. And this answers your other question about, uh, when did things start going crazy? And, and all of a sudden, I'm sitting with my family in Virginia Beach and we're seeing pictures of me on the news, calling me a murderer.

• 3:56:26Speaker 02

  Not really a great moment for the family. And I called back to WarCom, "Hey, is this alarming? Do we expect this? Do we anticipate this?" Usually we have a heads up on press releases. Anyone wanna clue me in to where we're at on this? Last time I talked to everybody, we're all under the boat together and everything was showing that we were clean. "What, what's going on?" "Oh, nothing to worry about, Brad." "Okay, it seems like I have something to worry about. Um, it's certainly uncomfortable being out here in the dark and hearing nothing other than what I'm seeing on the news, which doesn't look great." They're calling you a murderer? Yeah, it was, it was on the press. Is there any context behind that? No. They had no facts to release, nothing. It was just, it was just the family started, I think, um,

• 3:57:11Speaker 02

  speaking out and somewhere in the mix of all that, I don't know who and how, but, but I was coined a murderer and some of the press regurgitated that.

• 3:57:21Speaker 02

  Uh, it's an uncomfortable place to see your kids, see their dad called a murderer on TV. Yeah. Not something I'd ever want them to see. So

• 3:57:31Speaker 02

  I keep getting calls. Finally, they say, "Hey, listen, here's what's gonna happen. The Admiral's gonna come on, have a meeting with you." And what they found is some happy to glad things that could have been better. Obviously, there's always room for command to improve. We found some of those things. By the way, we actually found them before I left command and we actually corrected all the small things we discovered. So thanks for your suggestions, but they've already done. I know, because I implemented them. But got it, yes, we found some small things. Okay, well, the admiral's going to come and he's going to issue you a nonpunitive letter of caution. So again, nonpunitive, but it's still a, it's a, it's a, it's a mark. It's a, it's a, it's an uncomfortable scenario. I said, okay, that's, I didn't anticipate that. I thought I'd done everything right, but okay, I got it. I was in command.

• 3:58:14Speaker 02

  I started calling my attorney friends, who said, hey, have you been able to read the investigations that they're basing this niplock off of? I said, no, no one shared anything with me. I said, well, that doesn't make any sense. You should ask for that. So I did. I was then reprimanded verbally for asking for it. I was told, you're not, you're not warranted that. This is not your investigation. It's someone else's and you don't have a right to see it. And by the way, get back in your box. My words, not his necessarily, but, but the message received was get back in your box and read the CNO's charge of command if you need a reminder about the total responsibility of command. This was coming from a guy who I'd spent almost amount of time, same amount of time in command with, not at the same command, but, but consecutive time in command.

• 3:58:59Speaker 02

  So I, I understand the charge of command. I understand responsibility. I also understand, if you're going to write me even something nonpunitive, but it's a, it's a cautionary letter for something I failed on, you should at least be able to talk to me about what you think I failed on, so I can have a conversation with the man who's issuing this. Couple of days later, I hear, hey, that's off. The niplock's no longer happening. At that point, a couple of my attorney friends said, you need to get a lawyer, man. Something's, something's very strange here. And that's where I first contacted Jason Wareham. My college roommate, Jason Bresler, had gone through something very similar in the Marine Corps. Jason represented him while you were still active duty. He was one of my first calls. Hey, what do I do? He said, call my guy Jason. I called Jason up.

• 3:59:42Speaker 02

  We have an initial conversation. I start thinking about, how can I do this? Is this worth it? It's one of those risk and analysis. Do I really, do I really think something's going on here? Or are we all under the boat together? At that point, I called Cash Patel, who we didn't talk about on camera, but I knew from my joint tour, and he offered up the Fight with Cash Foundation to help and said, "Just, just retain the best lawyer you can find in this field that will, they'll be able to defend you. Something's coming." He said, "It's coming. I can see it, too." So at that point, we called, hired Jason, and it was like, three days later, on a Monday afternoon, they called me and said, "Okay, we need you to go over to the legal office on the base on Norfolk, and there's a JAG that's going to meet you there. They're going to bring you up. They're going to read you your rights, and they're going to issue

• 4:00:27Speaker 02

  you a notice of nonjudicial punishment for dereliction of duty and negligence as a commanding officer. Captain's mast will convene this Friday, virtually. You have four days to prepare. By the way, we need you to continue in the course you're doing right now, and still continue to succeed there, because that could look poorly upon you if you start slacking on your courses to prepare for mast." I said, "Hang on a second. I still haven't read one investigation that was put together that's warranted this kind of a response." So I called Jason up. You were still a reservist at the time.

• 4:01:03Speaker 03

  I was.

• 4:01:03Speaker 02

  With a class, with a, with a, a security clearance.

• 4:01:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, style of clearance.

• 4:01:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I called the, the, the force judge advocate, who was my, who I was talking to, and I said, "Hey, I would like you to send these documents to my lawyer who lives in Colorado. He needs to review them so we can consult on what my, my path forward is." The military attorney they told, they gave me in that moment said, "You're screwed." That was about his counsel. He's like, "There's no surviving this." I think my wife kicked him out of the office at that point. She's like, "Beat it. We don't like quitters in this family." So I was very glad I had retained Jason at that point. What were they coming after you for? So I'll get there. So then, uh, this was, this was right, this was terrible. They...

• 4:01:50Speaker 02

  I said, I need you to send this to my lawyers so we can consult. And they said, no. I said, wait a minute. It's an unclassified document. He has his security clearance anyway. He is my attorney. I've retained him. He's on retainer. We have attorney-client privilege. He's bound by legal ethics.

• 4:02:05Speaker 03

  And I'm bound by clearance and being a reservist. I mean, government had their controls over me as much as they could. There's no way I could take that and just throw it to the press. So there's no reason not to send it to me. It's all unclassified.

• 4:02:19Speaker 02

  So then I asked, are you the deciding authority on that? Well, no.

• 4:02:23Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, who is? Well, the admiral. Okay. Why don't you go ask the actual deciding authority then, instead of pretending like you have that decisional authority at your level? Well, okay, but I'm going to recommend that he disapprove it. Well, of course you are. It was disapproved. So then I had to fly last minute out of pocket to get my attorney to Virginia Beach. And now we're down to about 72 hours left to prepare for NJP.

• 4:02:47Speaker 02

  We looked through the document to answer your question.

• 4:02:49Speaker 03

  Well, there's more context there, right? They didn't even, once we were co-located, give us a copy of the document. They required that we review the document in a SCIF. This is a, this is an unclassified investigation. One you would be entitled to if there were criminal charges, right? Unrestrained. But even if you're not entitled to it yet, they could have handed us a copy, given us an office to work in. But instead, they treated it like TSSCI classified evidence and made us review the entire thing in a SCIF.

• 4:03:21Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think they did that?

• 4:03:22Speaker 03

  Ah, well, why I think they did that. I think they did that because they were, they were scared of any portion of it becoming known publicly, frankly. And even with all the safeguards that someone was tracking, because these people are idiots, even if they're giving bad advice. Someone was tracking the failures of the investigation and the holes of the investigation and the summary nature and conclusions that were made early on. That's why, I'm convinced, that's why Captain Gary was frozen out. That's how the Navy works, right?

• 4:03:59Speaker 03

  They, they come to a conclusion. They draw a line around you kind of administratively. They start asking people around you almost in a, in an echo chamber gossip forum. Draw their conclusions and they didn't want anyone contradicting those conclusions. Right? Let's keep in mind that NJP or Article 15 punishment is entirely within the discretion of the person imposing it, when to hold it. But to give us 72 hours when there's been a death investigation, I've never seen anything like that before. And so all of this points to me, they knew exactly the pile of crap that this investigation was, how unsustainable it was towards any sort of deep dive analysis.

• 4:04:43Speaker 03

  But they wanted to ensure that Camp Gary just took it.

• 4:04:47Speaker 02

  So some of the things we discovered as we read through, there was two investigations that were being used. There was a line of duty investigation and there was a command investigation. The line of duty investigation was pretty astute and it came to the conclusion that he died. They agreed with the autopsy, however, classified and said qualified that and said performance enhancing drugs were likely a contributing factor or words to that effect. This is a recently released document by one of our congressmen who's supporting us. So we said, okay, that seems pretty clean. Like they came to the conclusion that we did. That makes sense to me. We looked at all that evidence. It was pretty clean. The command investigation, on the other hand, was where it got a little dicey. And I started reading testimony that didn't make sense to me. It was from some of my officers in charge who I thought I had a great relationship with.

• 4:05:32Speaker 02

  And I'm reading their testimony and it made me sound like a derelict and negligent leader. And I remember telling Jason, like, wow, this is what my people thought of me. I guess I did fail. Like all this fear, shame and guilt starts getting heaped on me as I'm reading some of these documents. But as we dug through it, we noticed none of them were signed testimonies. They were all summaries of interview. So it was an interview where someone recalled what that person said based off some notes and then just jotted it down. But typically, when you do that, you're supposed to give it back to them to verify, yeah, this is generally what I said. I'm comfortable with this. Let's move forward. I think of the entire investigation, there was maybe two or three that were totally signed. The rest, over two dozen, easy, if I remember correctly, were just unsigned summaries.

• 4:06:16Speaker 03

  Some of them just paragraphs on a blank page. Just random paragraphs on a blank page.

• 4:06:20Speaker 02

  So this one in particular, my SWIC OIC, my SWIC officer in charge, phenomenal warrant officer, incredible reputation. It's like, man, this guy, he's really just crucifying me in this document. This is terrible. So Jason calls him up, hey, by the way, we're just double checking our facts here. We're trying to understand what's going on. And Brad says, there's a discrepancy between how we thought your relationship was and how you viewed him as a leader versus what we saw here. So Jason reads him the document. He says, that's not what I said at all. It's 180 out from what I think about Brad. I never said that. Why does that say my name on it? We couldn't have an answer. Still don't know. So he said, okay, that's interesting. Would you be willing to submit a sworn testimony signed that contradicts this and says how you really feel? Absolutely. So he

• 4:07:03Speaker 02

  did it from his like sailboat that he was out in the Hawaiian water zone. He was retired at that point and like, like heading off to greener pastures and pulls into a port with the sailboat to gen up a actual sworn statement on our support. Another one, we found that a couple of times, by the way. Another one was they fabric, somebody fabricated evidence and said that somewhere along the way, leading up to Kalmon's death, we discovered this backpack full of drugs like steroids. And I'd ignored this evidence and we'd just thrown it away and said, well, weird, not sure where that came from. So this was in, this was in testimony in a couple of them. It was regurgitated a few times, to use Jason's words, as an echo chamber. So Jason's doing his due diligence. This is my attorney, calls the master at arms who handles all evidentiary collection at my command and says, hey, we're just trying to connect the

• 4:07:47Speaker 02

  dots. We see this annotated a few times by a few different people, but there's no actual pictures of this evidence ever. We can't, we can't trace this back to an origination point. He replied in the email, there was never a backpack. What are you talking about?

• 4:08:02Speaker 03

  Completely fictional. Completely fictional. Just created through leading questions by an, I don't mean to say unprofessional as an intentionally bad investigating officer, but someone who was not trained to do investigations was the one that they relied on for command investigations. So a, an uninitiated investigator using leading questions that injected material fact in the investigation of evidence of beds in a backpack that was ignored.

• 4:08:35Speaker 02

  So.

• 4:08:38Shawn Ryan?

  So they're legitimately just making

• 4:08:40Speaker 03

  Making shit up.

• 4:08:41Speaker 02

  Somebody did. False testimony and fabricated evidence.

• 4:08:45Shawn Ryan?

  Is there any legal recourse against that?

• 4:08:48Speaker 02

  We'll get there.

• 4:08:49Speaker 03

  Well, unfortunately not. I mean, the easy answer is not for active duty. No, I mean, outside in in real world, if somebody fabricates something against you, you have a tort for defamation, right? You have a tort for abuse of process. You have a tort for a number of things. In the military, federal torts claim act prohibits you from from bringing any of those claims against other members of the government. So there's there's a get out of jail or get out of

• 4:09:15Shawn Ryan?

  So you can just lie about anything you want?

• 4:09:17Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 4:09:18Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, the government does it all the time. I don't know why.

• 4:09:21Speaker 04

  The government does a very good job of protecting themselves when it comes to active duty, people holding anyone accountable.

• 4:09:28Speaker 02

  Here's what's interesting, too, is we started seeing some other trend lines. Well, you, you know, they mentioned, we mentioned, I mentioned that other supplemental chemical we were finding months before Kyle's death that was couched to us as, hey, this is a GNC supplement. All of a sudden, as we're preparing for mass now, summer of 2022, they point us toward a website. Well, this is an official Navy website which prohibits those substances and requires outprocessing from the Navy. And here's an instruction which talks all about this. And so we're reading these things like, oh, my gosh, you're right. Like, I must have failed here. We must have failed to recognize that I needed to outprocess those people from the Navy for catching these things in their rooms. Wow, okay, got me. Then we look, wait, when was this instruction written?

• 4:10:11Speaker 02

  Oh, a month and a half after Kyle died. When was this website created with this database of prohibited substances? Oh, a month and a half after Kyle died. What did the previous version of that instruction say? Well, it was a nutritional supplement guide that said something about like, eat more protein. So basically, what became pretty clear was because of Kyle's death, everyone snapped too and all of a sudden generated all these instructions and policies to cover themselves and tried to hold me retroactively accountable. For decisions I made which preceded the policies themselves.

• 4:10:41Speaker 03

  Well, it's worse than that, though. I mean, they didn't even realize when that had passed and passed it over to us as if it was live when you were in. And when I specifically asked them, "What standard do you state that he breached here? Where was the error? Where was the notice around this kind of stuff that had to be enforced?" And they gave me this in direct response to that question. And it was only after I was like, "What's the date say on the top?" The date is after any of this happened. So even the people in the chain responsible for the application of the law, again, judge advocates here, who were responsible for delineating

• 4:11:25Speaker 03

  the charges and the basis for the accusation, even at NJP, didn't know their own standards or was intentionally passing it off as a retroactive standard and trying to pass it off as something that existed to get us to accept NJP.

• 4:11:39Shawn Ryan?

  Did the investigators ever ask or talk to you about the fact that you would ask for drug tests for

• 4:11:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:11:47Shawn Ryan?

  for performance-enhancing drugs?

• 4:11:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:11:49Shawn Ryan?

  No, that never came up?

• 4:11:51Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 4:11:52Shawn Ryan?

  Were they aware that you did that?

• 4:11:54Speaker 02

  They were, yeah. Everyone knew that. We were open meetings. We had these discussions, so.

• 4:11:58Speaker 03

  I mean, a fun little anecdote, I guess, if you consider it fun, is while we were doing the SCIF review, we ran into one of the judge advocates who had provided the failed advice in the parking lot.

• 4:12:09Speaker 02

  Randomly. He had only PCSed and we randomly ran into him.

• 4:12:11Speaker 03

  And at the point, I hadn't formed all the conclusions yet that I have now. And I just simply asked to talk to him. Ghosted me. Ghosted me. Wouldn't even come in, have an interview with me, informally.

• 4:12:25Speaker 02

  So, based off what we discovered there, we built a rebuttal. We submitted it to our Admiral for review. And to his credit, he delayed mass through the weekend to consider the evidence we provided, which pretty clearly showed this was an entirely faulty investigation full of nothing but... False testimony and fabricated evidence. Monday, we got word that he was canceling mass, dismissed it. Pulled me into a video teleconference and said, I'm issuing you a non punitive letter of censure. Do you understand? I said, yes, I understand. A JAG slid across the table and he said, this case is closed. We're going to move on and we're going to reinvestigate this down the road. I said, all right, sir. Sounds good. And so that was it. We thought it was done. We thought we won at that point.

• 4:13:10Speaker 02

  We thought we'd reason had prevailed and evidence had prevailed. Thank goodness at the time, our Admiral in charge saw that. He saw what had happened and took corrective measures there. But he shortly retired thereafter and so.

• 4:13:23Speaker 03

  I mean, when we say rebuttal, it was like 20 some pages.

• 4:13:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:13:26Speaker 03

  Single spaced citing to different evidentiary statements.

• 4:13:30Speaker 02

  Put together.

• 4:13:31Speaker 03

  And statements we had pulled together in 72 hours from the actual individuals who'd given

• 4:13:35Speaker 02

  Months.

• 4:13:35Speaker 03

  Statements in the summary of interview.

• 4:13:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13:38Speaker 03

  So.

• 4:13:39Speaker 04

  And I don't think I can emphasize this enough because I don't want this to be missed. This is a Navy captain being accused of violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, committing dereliction of duty. And the standard they cite is one that was not in existence at the time.

• 4:13:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:13:54Speaker 04

  And I was Madge Com selected at that point, too.

• 4:13:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:13:56Speaker 04

  Right. And so you're looking at, you're looking at a Navy SEAL, a Navy captain with his career, with his decorations, who is being just career destroyed over something that wasn't even in play. You didn't follow this regulation. You didn't follow this instruction. So you were derelict in something that didn't even exist at the time. And that passed through all the legal channels, all the Navy levels up to the Admiral. And that's either just incompetence or something else. But they thought, oh, he's just going to take this. He's just going to take Article 15. He's just going to take NJP and not push back. And oh, by the way, we're going to make you and your attorney review thousands of pages in less than 72 hours. How many total pages was it, Jason?

• 4:14:40Speaker 03

  I mean, that investigation, those two sets?

• 4:14:42Speaker 02

  Couple hundred, I think.

• 4:14:42Speaker 03

  Couple hundred. The attachments, I think, altogether were a few hundred.

• 4:14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:14:47Speaker 03

  Four, five hundred. So the one you're thinking about at thousands is the later investigation.

• 4:14:50Speaker 02

  Oh, the later investigation.

• 4:14:51Speaker 03

  But still, to get, to get, I mean, I got about, we got about eight interviews done in that time period.

• 4:14:57Speaker 02

  As much as we could.

• 4:14:58Speaker 03

  Plus the review.

• 4:14:58Speaker 02

  As much as we could.

• 4:14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean.

• 4:14:59Speaker 02

  And every single one we did came back with completely contradicting evidence to what, what had been reported.

• 4:15:04Speaker 04

  But that's just, I mean, again, like, I just, I can't, this is when I, you know, when I first started hearing about this and looking at this is, there's a standard. You're saying you didn't meet the standard. You, Captain Gary, did not meet the standard. The standard didn't exist until then, and that went through. Everybody just missed it. Like.

• 4:15:19Speaker 02

  As, as Amy and I were digging into it, we started to realize, you want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, right? This is our teammates. They said they were under the boat with me. Maybe this was just an accident. Maybe this was just innocent mistakes that, that all wind up in a Swiss cheese moment. But the more we read, the more we realized there was something nefarious here. And, and when we started to understand the scope of that betrayal, again, contextually, from what we've been talked about here on, on what my family's endured for this nation and for the Navy and for Naval Special Warfare. When my wife first understood this, she sobbed so hard, she couldn't breathe. And I had to hold her head in the freezer to catch her breath.

• 4:16:06Speaker 02

  That's something that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It's something my kids saw. You don't unsee your mom sob so hard she can't breathe because we were betrayed by someone within our force

• 4:16:22Speaker 02

  that said they were under the boat with us.

• 4:16:23Shawn Ryan?

  What, at this specific point in time, do you guys have any idea what the motivation behind this is?

• 4:16:30Speaker 02

  Not yet, not yet.

• 4:16:31Speaker 03

  We were all confused. I mean, we're still a little confused, but even, especially then, I was just asking the question, like, what, what is the rush? What, what is the, what's the target here? I don't understand.

• 4:16:45Speaker 02

  So we come back west and I honestly thought I still had hope in our community. I still had this, this, this

• 4:16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, you did.

• 4:16:52Speaker 02

  Undying faith.

• 4:16:53Speaker 03

  You sure did.

• 4:16:54Speaker 02

  And, and I still love our community, let me be clear, but I fully expected we'd come back to a huge apology and an explanation.

• 4:17:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:17:01Speaker 02

  Man, we're so sorry. How did this happen in NSW? Here's what we know. Here's the explanation. Man, that got away from us. We're really, really sorry, Brad, for what we put your family through. Crickets. So I start asking around, hey, why? I'm concerned that nobody else is concerned. Back to the point these two gentlemen make, like, how did we get to a point where you were rushing to take a major command selected captain to mast? I'm not a perfect human being, but I have a pretty good track record of being trustworthy and professional in this force and reliable. How did we rush to going to mast with me? And no one around here is concerned that we had false testimony and fabricated evidence? That's a problem.

• 4:17:44Speaker 02

  Even if it was all innocent, which I hope it still comes back to be, I said, are we not concerned about that? Shouldn't we be like really concerned about that? That sounds to me like a cultural problem we might have that we need to address. Certainly worth identifying that it was innocent versus malicious.

• 4:18:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:18:03Shawn Ryan?

  This is, this is the stuff that, that at breakfast I would say, this reminds me of the Gallagher case under different circumstances and.

• 4:18:11Speaker 03

  I mean, the Navy is always the Navy. Let's be clear. I've been doing this a very long time. I, I wait for people to contradict me that I believe on the longest serving military or Marine Corps Defense Council, continuously serving Marine Corps Defense Council. I did it oh, almost 10 years, right? Most people get rotated out. I've seen this play out in the Marine Corps and the Navy. It's, it's how our institutions run these kind of cases now. If it's public, they will do whatever they want. The rules don't apply. And you've got to have somebody who's ready to get in that knife fight because you can't be confident that anybody's going to conduct themselves honorably. What a shame.

• 4:18:51Speaker 02

  So this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let's get to the meat.

• 4:18:54Speaker 03

  Great.

• 4:18:56Speaker 02

  Fast forward, we hear then, a few months later, I kept Jason on retainer because we had this eerie feeling when no one was concerned that maybe we might be revisiting some of this stuff. So we hear then, hey, the Navy has given this to NETSI, Navy Education and Training Command, to do a new independent investigation that will look into the death of Seaman Kyle Mullen and the circumstances surrounding his death at BTC during your time. I said, okay, that's fine. I was pretty confident at that point, objective evidence would rule the day and we would be vindicated at some point. And right as they started that investigation, they sat down with me in October and I was able to provide testimony to them. That was the first time, October, Kyle had died the previous February.

• 4:19:39Speaker 02

  That was the first time any one, single investigative body, asked me for my perspective on anything.

• 4:19:46Speaker 03

  No one who did the loadie talk to you?

• 4:19:48Speaker 02

  No one.

• 4:19:49Speaker 03

  Who did the command investigation talk to him at any time?

• 4:19:52Speaker 02

  Brief introduction, but nothing substantial.

• 4:19:54Speaker 03

  No interview?

• 4:19:55Speaker 02

  So?

• 4:19:55Speaker 03

  Why?

• 4:19:56Speaker 02

  We had no idea.

• 4:19:57Speaker 03

  Rigged the investigation? That's the only conclusion.

• 4:20:00Speaker 02

  Very strange.

• 4:20:01Speaker 03

  Right? We don't want to include any sort of exculpatory or contradictory information because we've concluded our outcome and so we're going to shape it to meet our outcome.

• 4:20:08Speaker 02

  Who did they talk to? My cadre and a lot of failed candidates.

• 4:20:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 4:20:16Speaker 02

  A lot of failed candidates.

• 4:20:17Speaker 03

  A lot of people that would have an axe to grind, frankly.

• 4:20:19Speaker 02

  Some of them I dropped for ped use, some of them I dropped for character. They talked to those guys quite a bit. So when I do my- Did they talk to any guys that made it? A few, but those, so yes, to be fair, they balanced it out in the eventual NETSI investigation, they did do that. But what I'd offer is, while they had pretty fair between the two, the ones that made it that reported, hey, this was a great professional command, they just kind of buried in the enclosures and they brought to the forefront, really, the visceral testimonies about my command. So they, when they talk about findings of facts, when you talk about the executive narrative, they specifically cherry picked the negative comments from failed candidates and included, so for instance,

• 4:21:02Speaker 02

  the guy that I said we dropped for the same drugs that we found in Kyle's car, his testosteron was included. And there was no indication that you should consider that testimony as less valid than any of the one that you read.

• 4:21:12Speaker 03

  In fact, that context, I don't think was necessarily given.

• 4:21:14Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 4:21:15Speaker 03

  No. They never described. The only reason that I knew that these so-called summarized witness statements were completely impeached by their own character was Kevin Gary. There was no context.

• 4:21:27Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of information was on the witness statement?

• 4:21:30Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 4:21:31Shawn Ryan?

  Not in your favor.

• 4:21:33Speaker 03

  We're going off of two years of memory since they won't.

• 4:21:35Speaker 02

  Some of it was, we recommended that we drop this candidate. Brad overruled us and retained him anyway. I mean, there's things that talked about how I just kind of was running my own show and not listening to counsel from my expert instructors, which is just not true. I've already explained how we methodically manage those scenarios. There was just a lot of stuff like that, making it sound like I was a negligent and just absent-minded commanding officer.

• 4:21:59Speaker 03

  Who looked a blind eye, really?

• 4:22:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really sounded like that.

• 4:22:03Speaker 03

  They intentionally looked a blind eye or took a blind eye away from drug use, you know?

• 4:22:07Speaker 02

  So when Netsi questioned me, one of the things we did was we provided them my rebuttal to that faulty investigation, that initial command investigation. They read it and one of their lead investigating officers told Jason after the fact that was edifying. So we had hope there. We had hope. So we know that they had the initial investigation. They knew, we knew they had my rebuttal. They continued their investigation for the next few months, went silent again for me. During this period of time, all of a sudden, the Navy released a press statement in October of 22, right around the time they were starting that investigation. And the press statement was very, very brief, but it said something new. It said something that confused me. It said, maybe my words, I don't know if I'll get it exactly accurate, but some of

• 4:22:51Speaker 02

  the effect of performance enhancing drugs were not a causing factor in Kyle Mullen's death. I thought that was very strange because in all the documents I had read and all of our rebuttals and digging through documents, we never found that statement anywhere because you can't say that statement. We found the opposite.

• 4:23:11Speaker 03

  We found the opposite.

• 4:23:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I said, the original line of duty we found was was actually said that the drugs were a contributing factor. So about this time, I started asking more questions and I found out that that that initial line of duty investigation had actually, this was a brilliant move by the Admiral, who had who had who had directed it to be done. He gave it to an inspector general representative to Warcom Naval Special Warfare, who was an aviator by trade. So zero bias from an NSW SEAL perspective, an aviator, independent inspector general rep, outing outside of his inspector general role, but still, like, this guy is a trained investigator. Fully trained investigator with a with with with pretty objective, you know, no bias.

• 4:23:55Speaker 02

  He's the one who came back with that PEDs were likely contributing factor conclusive statement. Then the Admiral said, we're gonna take it a step further. I want to take this investigation and outsource it and have Vice Admiral Kitchener, now retired, from Surface Forces Pacific, do an independent review of everything with his force medical officer, force training officer, force judge advocate, and a couple other experts. And they came back with, we we paraphrased, again, my words, not theirs, but not only do we agree with all the findings, we we affirm that drugs were likely contributing factor. And they even went further to add more causal nature to his his heart size being a major factor. His heart was 63% larger than it should have been and had been interiorly restructured over time.

• 4:24:38Speaker 02

  Pretty significant differences in his heart from from yours and mine versus versus what his looked like.

• 4:24:43Speaker 03

  And our basic Google search said, long-term PEDs use can be a cause of that.

• 4:24:48Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:24:48Speaker 03

  Not definitive, but can be. So now we have, you know, some proximate cause relating the two. But almost none of that was ever mentioned.

• 4:24:57Speaker 02

  So as we dig in, what we find is even though that review was independently verified, they send it up to Washington DC to the Pentagon for final review. This all well now predated where I was in time, but we're just now realizing it. And they were told, no. We don't accept the findings. We want you to re-scope this investigation. We are going to limit what you can say. And they redid the entire thing from scratch, even though it had been independently verified by other experts. And the new one now no longer said anything about drugs being a factor at all. They changed the investigation because they didn't like what it said. What's really interesting about it is when I dug into that investigation now.

• 4:25:36Shawn Ryan?

  So this is, I'm sorry, is this three investigations now?

• 4:25:39Speaker 02

  We're at three now, yes, yes. With a fourth ongoing, still.

• 4:25:44Speaker 03

  With a fourth larger one going.

• 4:25:45Speaker 02

  Fourth one's still ongoing, yeah, that's the other one, it's super confusing, yeah.

• 4:25:50Speaker 03

  And just so you know, the regulations, I mean, that's one of the unfairnesses in the military, as far as I'm concerned, is that these administrative investigations are owned by the implementing commander, that person who owns, who orders it. And they can re-scope it, or redirect it, or disapprove findings, anytime that they want. They're in total control. So the fact that we have this concept that command investigations are somehow an unbiased fact-finding development thing, it absolutely is not. It's just another tool to slant the narrative to commander's intent, you know?

• 4:26:24Shawn Ryan?

  So is that how this works when a commanding officer's order orders an investigation?

• 4:26:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:26:32Shawn Ryan?

  Is it, this is how I want this to go?

• 4:26:34Speaker 03

  I, as a commanding officer, am able to order, let's say, junior officer, investigating officer, to conduct this investigation. I give them the scope in the enabling letter, in the promulgating letter. I tell them what to look into. I tell them, I can even set it what not to look into. I've seen some command investigations, in fact, I'm litigating one right now in a different case, where they essentially said, "Don't look for contradictory information," right? But even in cases where that doesn't exist, the minute the investigating officer finishes it, even after it passes a legal review, it can go back up to that same commander, or a superior commander, and they can disapprove it. They can just say, "No, I don't agree, go back and redo it."

• 4:27:19Speaker 03

  Or they can even go so far as to say, "Well, based on what you received, I disapprove finding of fact A, B, and C, and I enter finding of fact D, E, and F," right? So it's totally malleable.

• 4:27:30Speaker 02

  Okay. So as I'm looking at the new investigation now, which says nothing about drugs being a causing factor, I go to the final six enclosures, which are six subject matter expert doctors they consulted. What's very interesting is five of the six all agreed drugs likely or probably or possibly contributed to his death. The sixth doctor abstained from commenting was outside of his field of expertise. So that was strange. You have a five of six, pretty good consensus over here, yet we just left that language out like the original reflected. So if I recall, even the sixth said, I'll rely on one of the guys. Yes. Who, who did. Yeah. Suggest. I defer. Experts. Yeah. So, so at this point, I now start confronting senior leaders. I'm doing exactly what they tell you to do in the Navy, right? You have a problem, you have an ethical dilemma, go up the chain and start asking questions.

• 4:28:15Speaker 02

  So I say, hey, I don't understand, I don't understand why the Navy released a press statement saying drugs were not a contributing cause in his death, when we pretty conclusively know that they were. Well, Brad, you have to understand that these things aren't, aren't that easy. I said, well, okay, help me understand. Like, that's what I'm asking, that's what I'm here for. Well, well, what you don't understand, Brad, is that the original line of investigation was way outside of scopes, they had to narrow it down. Okay, well, that's weird, but either way, why'd they come to a different conclusion? Well, you have to understand the medical professionals didn't have consensus. I said, well, actually, they did. You had five of six, that's pretty good. I mean, that's, that's the majority. So again, why did they say it? Well, Brad, what you have to understand is the autopsy said that drugs weren't a contributing cause. I said, actually, it didn't, because I read that as well.

• 4:29:00Speaker 02

  It was silent. The autopsy was silent on the issue of drugs, never mentioned one drug possible. That is not saying they didn't do it. And then I was told, well, Brad, I'm concerned that you're letting this consume you. You know, we have mental health professionals that you can talk to if you need it. So you're crazy, Brad, you're crazy. You're letting this get to your head. So I don't really appreciate that answer. And this is, this is a man I, I consider a friend. He said that to my face. I mean, it shattered my soul a little bit. I'm coming to you in a vulnerable position with an ethical dilemma, and I, and I can see what's happening. You're deflecting and marginalizing and justifying things that you know to be not true.

• 4:29:41Speaker 02

  And you're trying to spin it back on me as if I have a problem because I'm concerned that we might be lying as United States Navy. So I go to another senior leader and I was told, Brad, this is what we do. We protect the organization. I was in on those conversations. We made a deliberate decision to reinforce that narrative. I said, "Why would we do that? This doesn't make sense to me. Like, I can see what's happening here, and this is going down a very, very dangerous path." How are you protecting the organization? By faulting the organization rather than...

• 4:30:17Speaker 03

  Because the organization had set a narrative, right? The Secretary of the Navy had set a commander's intent of what was going to be the Navy answer, and nothing could contradict that.

• 4:30:32Speaker 02

  So what was revealed to me shortly after that was an insider forwarded us an email. And that's the email that the congressman released to the press, which explained this. It finally at least explained it to me. Still didn't make sense why we did it, but explained at least what we were doing. So as they were debriefing the family on... You have this email? Uh, yep. We'll put it on screen. Yeah, the congressman released it, so it's out there. This email, they were debriefing the family on the findings of the new investigation, which now left out any mention of drugs, even though the previous one did talk about drugs. And in the debrief to her, they showed the family an advanced copy of the press release they were gonna send. And she asked the United States Navy

• 4:31:16Speaker 02

  to change the press release to reflect that drugs did not contribute to her son's death. And they agreed and changed it.

• 4:31:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's clear. I mean, it's absolutely clear. The narrative in the paragraph says, "We gave Ms. Mullins a copy of the press release." She said that we needed to include a statement that PEDs were not a contributing factor because she had been targeted with some harassing calls, blaming her son for trying to cheat. And she needed to, quote, "clear his name." And look, let me tell you, that is entirely the intent a mother should have, right? It just doesn't become policy and factual representations by the US Navy, right? You don't just get to change it.

• 4:32:08Speaker 03

  And that was, that email was the same day, October 12, 2022, that they issued the press release, that still is hanging there with that statement. So they changed it from might not have been or was a contributing factor to not a contributing factor. And if, as people are looking at the email, take a look who's on the toot line, right? Everyone of any consequence in the Navy was notified of this.

• 4:32:37Speaker 02

  The investigating officers who started the Nets investigation around the same time were CC'd on that email. So as they began their new investigation, they had pretty clear commander's intent on what your findings will be, that drugs did not cause his death. Now, what's also, what we also learned as I started asking about this, hey, why did the autopsy not mention drugs at all when all of his physiological symptoms, point for point, were consistent with all the peer-reviewed studies of every drug we found in his car and all the side effects that can cause catastrophic organ failure? It was very interesting, through that process, we learned that the autopsy pathologist deliberately chose not to test for any of the drugs that we recovered, even though NCIS was in the

• 4:33:19Speaker 02

  room and showed that pathologist a list of said drugs. Instead, that pathologist decided to do a standard toxicology screening for the normal street drugs.

• 4:33:29Speaker 03

  Which wouldn't indicate any performance-enhancing drugs.

• 4:33:33Speaker 02

  What I would offer, the laws of logic dictate, I got it, you decided not to test. That's a whole other conversation on why you would have done that, but okay. So we can't medically definitively say that drugs caused his death because we just don't know because you didn't test his body. But if that's the case, then you cannot say the equal and opposite position that drugs did not kill him either. These are the laws of logic. The trade space is in between the two. They might have, possibly, could have, probably, sure, we can negotiate and debate that all day long based upon the contextual evidence.

• 4:34:04Speaker 03

  Or just omit any discussion of that.

• 4:34:07Speaker 02

  But you cannot say that they did not contribute to his death when you never even tested. You don't know that. What did the autopsies? It determined cause of death as pneumonia. And it said contributing factors, I think, were cardiomyopathy. Megaly. Cardiocardiomegaly, so in the large tart, but it ignored the actual internal restructuring as well, even though they annotated it in the notes, they didn't qualify that probably with as much severity. I'm not a doctor, but I've talked to quite a few cardiologists on this thing. And it was very interesting because what a lot of other doctors told me, hey, you don't go from clean vitals to five hours later being dead from pneumonia. Like, nobody decompensates that fast when they're breathing normally and have a good

• 4:34:52Speaker 02

  O2 saturation and good pulse and no fever. Like, that's not how that's not how bacterial pneumonia works, especially considering, like we said, he was on prophylactic antibiotics at the time. And his, his, his last med check after hell week is all been documented. Absolutely. In his med record. Ironclad. It's out there. I mean, that actually has been released to the public as well, all that data. It was, it was, I can't remember who released that one, but I know, I remember for a fact it was. So all this was sounding very interesting. And then it progressed. NETC wrapped up their investigation, I want to say January, February of 2023. And it was interesting, they sent an advance draft to Naval Special Warfare

• 4:35:34Speaker 02

  to review and provide comments. And this is where it gets even, I think, more nefarious. So I'm on the Naval Special Warfare staff at the time. I'm one of the key leaders there. And I'm going to these meetings where they have taken most of the senior leaders, O6s and GS15 government service employees, and said, hey, your primary job is to digest this investigation, come back with recommendations to the admiral. At this point, what was made known to me is, hey, that investigation's about 3,500 pages long. It's like, wait, what? That's massive. So, so it took them a while. This is a massive staff effort. Very weird because they'd be talking about progress in meetings that I was in, and everyone knew I was there and hadn't been briefed on anything, wasn't allowed to be briefed, but they were

• 4:36:18Speaker 02

  talking around it with me in the meeting, incredibly isolating and dysfunctional. But okay, here we go. So they did that for a few months. Insiders fed me information like, hey, did you know that the executive summary of this thing never once mentioned drugs? 3,500 pages didn't even mention drugs. And the charter for the investigation was, remember, investigate all the context surrounding the death of Seaman Colm Mullins relevant to his death. You found the drugs we found and you didn't even mention in the executive summary. So our staff put together a proposal to our admiral, which included 70 pages of rebuttals, which they sent back to NETSI. Now, I don't have the inside information on what was changed,

• 4:37:00Speaker 02

  what was not changed, but basically around this time, I was very, very concerned about the path we were going down, based off what I was hearing and finding. And I wrote two letters to the admiral and said, I'm very concerned. Like, by the way, here's your referenced ethical guidance to the force. Here's some of the evidence I have that there have been ethical violations, not only within your force, but up and out related to this whole case. I don't want to presume to speculate or understand why, but there are major problems I'm seeing here, violations of joint ethics regulations, and I have concerns. I'm asking, this is a cry for help. This is a cry for help. Like, this is not getting, I'm getting very uncomfortable about how this is going, because every time

• 4:37:45Speaker 02

  I ask, all I ever heard was, Brad, you have to trust the process. Brad, you're overreacting. Brad, this is what we do. We protect the organization. All reasons for me to be uncomfortable with where this was going. I could see it coming.

• 4:37:59Speaker 03

  And I will note that in the NETSI investigation, we fully complied, like, you know, against almost every fiber of a defense counsel's being, right? We made the decision to do a full and complete interview with the investigating officer. Unfortunately, even then, I mean, we saw things deliberately misconstrued. Some of your quotes around attrition and things like that.

• 4:38:23Speaker 02

  We're getting there. We're jumping too far ahead because they hadn't published it yet. I want to, I want to pause and provide another piece of context here because we've talked a little bit about, I'm a man of faith and our faith has helped us in my career go through some serious adversity and suffering. And it's what drove a lot of my, as we discussed, philosophies of leadership at BTC, how to love the people entrusted to my care, both cadre and candidates alike. And so I was struggling with this, this, like I struggled with Adam's death. I was like, God, why in the world are we going through this? Like, I'm watching this happen in real time. I'm standing up and down. I'm screaming and waving my arms. I'm asking for help. I'm concerned, nobody else is concerned. Why is this happening?

• 4:39:07Speaker 02

  We have evidence of people betraying us within our own force. But no one seems to care. I just keep getting the same lines. How are we so obtuse? How are we so, how are we so just numb to what we should all be concerned about? And, and we spent some time really deep in prayer, just searching for answers in Scripture and looking for some sort of resolve, some sort of reprieve, some sort of answer. And, and I think we got it. It was interesting. Around this time, side story, that's very relevant to this. I realized, I had, I had a lucid dream one morning as we're in the depths of this despair, just utter despair, just, just dragging, like it's hard for me to get out of bed in the mornings. It's the last thing I think about as I fall asleep.

• 4:39:52Speaker 02

  It's the first thing I think about when I wake up. And I had this lucid dream and it was me climbing this mountain in Afghanistan. And it was one of those nights, you know, the nights where nothing's fitting right. My, my kit's off kilter. It's rubbing me on the wrong places. My gun's banging in my knees. My nods are fogging, my helmet's canted. I'm smacking my elbows on these rocks as I'm climbing these massive bowlers up this mountain. I know it's wartime because I can hear the sounds of war, but it's just me. And I'm there and I'm climbing this mountain and all of a sudden I'm at a funeral for one of my teammates and I'm, I'm pounding his trident into the casket. You know what that's like. And I'm back on the mountain. This was a weird dream. I've never had anything like this happen to me. But I'm heavier. I'm carrying that weight with me and I'm climbing again.

• 4:40:37Speaker 02

  And now I flashback to another funeral, another trident, back to the mountain. This goes back and forth a lot, way too much, to the degree that by the time I get to the top of this mountain, I'm so bone weary fatigued. I'm, I'm hunched over leaning on this beam and I'm sweating and I can, I can't even, I can't even catch my breath.

• 4:41:00Speaker 02

  But finally I do, and I lift my head and I see I'm standing at the foot of the cross. And I see Christ's feet at my head, and they're a bloody pulp. And I hear someone say, "How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of Him who brings good news." And I knew in that moment what I needed to do. And in my dream, I pulled my last trident off and I pounded it in the foot of the cross. And I woke up and I wrestled with that one, and I was praying about it. And I said, "Lord, are you asking me to give you my bird? Are you asking me to take steps which is gonna take this off my chest? Has this become an idol for me that I've held on to too long? You gave me a lot of success through my career, like ridiculous absurd success.

• 4:41:43Speaker 02

  Did you give all that to me so that you then say, "Now give it back to me and show me how much you love me?" And I felt that was what he was doing. I felt that's what he was saying. So then we got to the point where I was about to send these two letters. And I knew, once I cross that threshold and start advertising my knowledge of the ethical violations, this is gonna go one of two ways, but it's probably gonna go the way I think it's gonna go, which is not well for me. And so I started making those decisions. And I was wrestling with the Lord at one point. And I said, "Is this for sure what you want me to do? Like, I need to know this wasn't just a crazy dream. Maybe I had too much whiskey the night before. Is this really what you want me to do? Are you asking me to take this step in faith and give you everything that I've bled for, everything that I've watched my friends die for?"

• 4:42:28Speaker 02

  And it was interesting, I was on this prayer app and I swipe right to the next verse. And as I'm wrestling with the Lord on this, the verse pops up. It's Exodus 20, verses 3 to 4. And I've read this verse in the past, and many people have. No one saw it for what it was. You're gonna dig it. If I had my phone, I'd pull it up, but I'll quote it. Basically, it's Moses coming down off the mountain, and he's telling the Israelites. He says, "You shall have no other gods before me, and you shall not carve for yourself idols of images of beasts of the air, beasts of the ground beneath the air, and beasts of the water beneath the ground." Hmm, wow. Sea, air, and land. Hmm. The trident. It blew my mind, man. Wow. Right as I was praying for, is this really what you want? Are you telling me to give you my idol? That's the verse that comes across my, my phone.

• 4:43:13Speaker 02

  I started sobbing and laughing at the same time. I'm belly laughing now. It's like, you gotta be kidding me. Like, you have an incredible sense of humor. Okay. Message received. Like, I understand. Now, I would offer at the time, I still didn't understand the scope of where this would take me to this moment today. I didn't understand fully. I was still hoping my career could be salvaged at some point. But I knew I was taking definitive steps on a different path at that point. And I was giving up something that had meant a lot to me. But I was doing it for the right reasons. For truth, for the values and the principles that we say matter to us. For all the, the professional development, you and I have sat there where they talk about the need for ethics and the need for principles and the need for standing up to do what's right.

• 4:43:56Speaker 02

  So about this time, right around that time, I find out that they're gonna release the finished Netsi investigation out to the press. I think it was late May, early June of 2023 now. And, and the day before that happened, it was, uh, I think they released on a Thursday. Wednesday night, I was talking to my admiral about it. And I said, hey, sir, pardon my language, I said, how fucked up is it that I've not been briefed on any of this? This was my command. You all say I have total responsibility for my command. Okay. Why have I not been confronted with any of the evidence that, that's been gathered here? Why is the news gonna hear about this before I do?

• 4:44:40Speaker 02

  Why do I stand to learn more about this investigation to my command by watching the news this weekend than I do by my own force? Does that seem odd to anybody else? That sounds terrible, Brad. Really sorry about that. Okay. So they released the investigation. And at that point, what I read redacted indicated to me that there were lies throughout it, and it was even worse than the original CI that we talked about. So at that point, that's when I started appealing Congress and saying, hey, I have problems. All the things I previously highlighted in these letters, I started talking to congressmen about because at that point I was convinced, nobody else is going to be concerned about this. We have to go outside the lifelines. The three congressmen that I appealed to gave me the time of day.

• 4:45:24Speaker 02

  I said, listen, don't listen to me because it's a compelling story or because you like me. Look at the evidence I provide. And if you disagree with me, shoot me straight. Tell me I'm taking crazy pills. Within 24 hours, each of them and their staffs called back, no, we're on your side. This is insane. We are submitting an official congressional inquiry that deliberately questions the investigative integrity of what happened here. And they did. I think it was 40 something questions they submitted to the Special Operations Legislative Affairs Department of the Navy and said, here are our problems with what we see that looks like happening. We want answers to these questions. They were owed a response by July, mid-July of 2023. Here we are, mid-June of 2024, and they've not received a response yet.

• 4:46:04Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing.

• 4:46:05Speaker 02

  Nothing. Nothing.

• 4:46:07Shawn Ryan?

  Since it was your command, could you have ordered your own investigation?

• 4:46:13Speaker 02

  Not at that point.

• 4:46:14Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 4:46:15Speaker 02

  No, no, they were, I was marginalized. I was put in staff purgatory and I was the guy in the back seats of the room. No, no one was paying attention to what I said. And that was one of my other problems too, that I articulated up the chain of command. I said, I'm seeing a lot of people making decisions about things that need to be done over in the training command, yet no one's talked to me. I'm concerned the wrong decisions are being made without the context that I have. Why would nobody want to talk to me about this, especially given the fact that not only did I do a commanding officer tour there, but it was a bonus command tour and I'd done my executive officer tour years ago. Out of all the officers in naval special warfare, not one other person has as much experience than I do in our selection, assessment and training in our pipeline than me.

• 4:47:00Speaker 02

  Not one. But you're making decisions based off of what? What are you missing? I don't know. I was concerned. I think you're missing things. Little did I know how much they were missing.

• 4:47:11Speaker 03

  And let me just tell you, that's fact pattern alpha for how even senior officers are treated when something like this happens. You're ostracized, you're excluded, you are just, you're relegated to this side, and you know, you're lucky if you end up finding out why, in detail.

• 4:47:28Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 4:47:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:47:32Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes, and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 4:47:53Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Brad, we're back from the break. I had a question about some candidates.

• 4:47:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:47:58Shawn Ryan?

  And if anybody witnessed Kyle using...

• 4:48:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:48:02Shawn Ryan?

  So the answer is yes.

• 4:48:02Speaker 02

  ...drugs. To explain that contextually, shortly after we were just talking, I was again charged with NJP. It was only at that point that I was now able to fully see the entire 3,500-page investigation, plus the 1,500 pages of references that it was built from as well. It was insane. And it was the same MO that we had previously experienced, where I could only review it on a standalone laptop, in a closed environment with no print capabilities. I had a redacted version with everything blacked out, that I could print at home. And so I would have to review at home with my wife and attorney on the phone. If we had questionable material, I would walk that into work, review it, side-by-side

• 4:48:46Speaker 02

  comparison on the laptop, handwrite in the information that answered the question whether this is relevant for us to pursue more of or not, and then rinse, repeat for all 3,500 pages.

• 4:48:57Speaker 03

  Keep in mind, our first redacted copy we got from the press.

• 4:49:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:49:00Speaker 03

  That hung it online.

• 4:49:02Speaker 02

  So, very frustrating effort. One of the first things I learned, once I started reading everything, was I came across that original NCIS investigation that started when I was still in the command seat. I finally had access to that. Very interesting because I found out that within a month and a half of his death, NCIS had ripped his phone and came across four separate text threads where Kyle was talking about using drugs, sharing drugs, buying drugs. Can I get the contact info for a drug dealer and then contact with that drug dealer about purchase and exchange of money for goods? That, what was that on? His phone. That NCIS had ripped within a month and a half of his death. And that was in the investigation?

• 4:49:44Speaker 02

  This was in the NCIS investigation that I was now able to finally see in the fall of 23. Is that the same investigation as the 3,500-page report? No, that's just a referenced investigation inside the 3,500-page report. Yeah. Okay. The NCIS Criminal Investigation. It's buried within and hidden and obscured. So I thought that was very strange. Here we had basically confessional, we actually had Kyle on a text thread saying he had a bad reaction to his injection site in his buttocks from apparently a bad batch of tea, indicating he may have gotten a bad batch of testosterone and a, basically a confessional saying he'd injected it himself. What's interesting about that also is we found out through this, and I'm getting to

• 4:50:26Speaker 02

  your question, no one ever tested the contents of the vials for any kind of contaminants, even with that information. So we don't know what he could have contaminated himself with. When I later told the FBI and the DEA about that, they said, what about the fentanyl crisis across the United States? Did anyone think of that? I said, well, that's a good question. You should ask somebody else, but all I know is they didn't bother testing the vials. So we had now confessional text threads of using, injecting with other people and the purchase of drugs. Took me about five minutes to realize, well, hang on a second. Let me run those names through my student database and come to find out, three of those four text threads were with other candidates that were serving underneath my command. So NCIS and Naval Special Warfare had information about people actively using drugs with Kyle

• 4:51:10Speaker 02

  Mullen while I was still in command and withheld that information from me and let me to continue to train them, knowing the risk that was presenting to their health. Never disclosed it to me. I did another database search. One of them graduated and is now a SEAL at SEAL Team 7. So I asked my successor, hey, did anyone fill you in that you were training a guy who confessed to using drugs and buying drugs and sharing drugs in text threads with Kyle Mullen? No.

• 4:51:36Speaker 02

  So we were allowed to accept blind risk. While the narrative was, we care very much about these and we want to stop this problem. But you had direct evidence within a month and a half of his death and everyone ignored it. No follow-up questions by NCIS for any of those people, even though we had their names, phone numbers, everything. I double-checked the Netsi investigation. Did anyone bother to question any of those guys? Not one. Only one of them was questioned at one point. It was before they discovered the text threads about him. He was discovered as talking about how he visited Kyle in his room post hell week med checks. And he gave a description of how Kyle looked and behaved in that moment. So let me get this straight. We've got a guy who confessed to talking with Kyle after med checks were complete when

• 4:52:20Speaker 02

  we all left the area. We also have that same guy on text threads talking about using drugs. We also have drugs found in his car with a cooler and ice packs. I mean, I'm not a detective, but this isn't really that hard to piece together. Maybe you should be one. Maybe I should have been. I didn't stay at a Holly and Expose last night. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, we have that information. What's even worse than that, we've recently discovered a lawyer reached out to us and what's the term I'm looking for, Jason? You got me on this one. Okay, the lawyer reached out to us and said, hey, is anyone? An exculpatory email. Yes, thank you. Recently and said, hey, by the way, I represent some clients. We've been trying to get ahold of Naval Special Warfare.

• 4:53:05Speaker 02

  I emailed them back in September when I was charged with MAST and preparing for my defense. And said, I represent clients that have exculpatory information that will clear the senior medical officer, Brad, and the other officer as well. So Jason reached out to him and said, what's this exculpatory information? He said, well, I have guys who are willing to come forward if they're provided immunity and admit that not only were they using drugs with Kyle, they saw him inject himself post med checks complete right before he died. So we said, well, the next question was, wait a minute, you sent Naval Special Warfare an email about that last September while I was preparing for MAST? Because nobody clued us in that we had a line of exculpatory information that we should pursue in our defense. That's a violation of due process rights.

• 4:53:52Speaker 03

  And let's be clear, where they're gonna come back and try to parse this is, you know, NJP is not a criminal charge. In a criminal charge, it is a rule that all exculpatory information, anything that would be materially helpful to defense, has to be disclosed. I mean, yeah, technically, it's not a written rule that in an administrative proceeding, you should disclose all exculpatory information, but it absolutely echoes in the same due process concerns. You're basically going into something that is quasi-criminal in nature, right? A nonjudicial punishment has charges, specifications. Your option, if you deny MAST or NJP, is to go to court martial, right? To demand court martial. So it's like

• 4:54:37Speaker 03

  just short of the criminal line, right? And here they are, holding an exculpatory piece of evidence, and just failing to disclose it to us in any way, let alone re-scope some of the investigation, let alone start inquiring as to areas that would clear, Ken Gary, right?

• 4:54:57Speaker 02

  Other things we discovered.

• 4:54:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, but talk about accountability and talk about leadership. You still have the big Navy narrative, right? You still have the big Navy narrative, which is, performance-enhancing drugs had nothing to do with this death. We have to look for a scapegoat for this. So they have access to all this information at the highest levels. It's all out there, even before these guys do, let alone that. That's one of the pieces of this that bothers me the most, is they knew that. And they're allowing a false narrative, they're allowing him to catch the blame, they're allowing his cadre to catch the blame, when they have access to all this information.

• 4:55:30Speaker 02

  Other things we discovered. In those references for their total in 5,000 pages of material here, they referenced that initial investigation that we showed through our rebuttal that was false testimony, fabricated evidence, and they had said, "My rebuttal was edifying." Here's what's interesting. They included the investigation we showed was false, they excluded my rebuttal, which I provided them, which they said was edifying. On top of that, they borrowed 12 enclosures of those summaries of interviews, and reused those same 12 enclosures in their new investigation. Copy, paste, now it's ours. I already showed them, the entire investigation was faulty and fabricated, and yet they not only excluded mine, but they used them anyway. Other things we found.

• 4:56:14Speaker 02

  They continued like we talked about grabbed testimonies from failed candidates. The pull-up candidate I talked to about previously, he submitted false testimony. He said something to the effect of, quote, "I believe Kamala is dead because Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command cadre are drunk on duty, remedying outside of curriculum, and denying medical coverage to candidates." I mean, it was the most inflammatory thing I've ever read, absolutely patently untrue, and provably untrue. And yet, these are the testimonies that people were compiling and regurgitating in the narrative. One of the opening lines... Do you have recourse against these? So I have filed, yeah, well, I have filed a complaint, allegations to the CNO,

• 4:56:58Speaker 02

  which the congressman also released, so that's out there now, stating all these, point for point, all of the things I say, they claim this, we said this, actually. So we claim that they knowingly produced a false document, knowingly perpetuated untruths, and we showed evidence to support all of that, to include everything we've said here and more. I've been met with silence so far. Silence.

• 4:57:23Speaker 03

  But besides IG complaints or despite, you know, complaints of the CNO, there's no legal recourse. No. Again, somebody who makes a false statement in uniform is protected by the Federal Courts Claim Act.

• 4:57:38Speaker 02

  Wow. They claimed, point for point, we were reducing interstitial recovery time, we were increasing water time, we were reducing rest, we were creating this scenario with these cadre that were running amok, creating all this risk, and yet, I was able to pull an email dated from about two weeks before Kamala died from my first phase officer in charge, talking about how we're trying to handle the curriculum or the attrition issue we've mentioned. And it, point for point, contradicted exactly what the NETSI report said. He said, "Hey, sir, by the way, I've given candidates an extra 30 minutes per meal of total rest time." By the way, uninterrupted rest time. When you did meals in BUDs and Hell Week, was that uninterrupted rest in your meals?

• 4:58:23Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 4:58:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were harassed, we were messed with. You weren't given rest. You were eating quickly and then getting hazed. So they had an extra two hours per day, 30 minutes per meal of rest than any of us had in our generations. He said, "I moved a night swim from pre-Hell Week to post-Hell Week to reduce water time. I've canceled some of our water immersion events just to reduce the risk of Sip and more attrition. I've mandated heads on beds at a certain time every single night to ensure they're getting enough rest." Did you have heads on beds time before Hell Week?

• 4:58:53Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 4:58:53Speaker 02

  Neither did I.

• 4:58:54Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 4:58:55Speaker 02

  And there were a couple of their quantitative and measurable things he did. All official records, official traffic, emails sent to me and I sent up to my boss. All easy to access. Took me five minutes to find them, just like it took me five minutes to find the text threads were candidates of mine as well that nobody ever followed up on. And yet, point for point, they claim the opposite with 3,500 pages of rumors, conjecture, an echo chamber of failed candidates who like to throw mud at BTC. All of it is hard evidence. I can show contradicts every assertion they made. They claimed we never did an annual high-risk training safety review. Turns out, we did. You were wrong. If that was the only error in the investigation, I would assume maybe that was innocent and unintentional. But in fact, the trend line shows pretty consistent bias here. I found one testimony of a candidate

• 4:59:40Speaker 02

  who I didn't recognize the story. I start digging, pull his name in our database and realize he was dropped from my successor before I ever took command. So you included a testimony from someone that never even served under me as evidence that I was a derelict and negligent commanding officer?

• 4:59:55Shawn Ryan?

  How, I mean, how was there no recourse against this shit?

• 5:00:00Speaker 02

  Not only is there no recourse, that's the very investigation that Congress said there's problems with. And yet, that's the very investigation that was used as basis to levy charges against me again and take me to NJP for the second time now for dereliction of duty and negligence. But all based upon false untruths, knowingly demonstrable untruths. And we showed it point for point. And yet, I said, "Hey, here's all the evidence that we have that contradicts this." Waiting for someone to say we're dropping all charges against you. In the meantime, the two charges levied against us that are important to note, one of them was just the safety reviews which we did. We can show that's just false. We did it. The other one was you failed to provide adequate oversight of your medical department.

• 5:00:44Speaker 02

  We already talked about that a little bit. What's interesting here is, take a step back, I know that Naval Special Warfare outsourced this whole investigation to a team of attorneys who are prosecuting attorneys, the regional legal services office, Reelso. So their job is to hunt for the crime and be able to say we can prosecute these guys in a court. Someone in the room, when they debriefed their findings, came back and said that they told our leadership, not only is there no evidence of a crime by basic training command cadre, there's no evidence to suggest they ever stepped outside of the left and rights of curriculum execution. They stayed in their lanes. This is why that's important. Those two charges levied against me, after they'd had this investigation now for nine months

• 5:01:27Speaker 02

  and digested with their staff that we talked about, all 3,500 pages with another 1,500 pages, at that point, Jason and I decided, hey, we're going to start taking action. Back to putting my trident on the wall, like it's time, or on the cross. So we filed allegations of fraud against the United States Navy, certain officials, for that false press release that we said was a known lie at that point. I notified our chain of command that in fact we did that, and I said, hey, I'm being open and transparent, like any good sailor's supposed to be. Please think of this as independent of anything you're supposed to adjudicate, unrelated, but I have to take action on this. I've expressed why I have a problem with it. Within 24 hours of me notifying them that I did that, an additional

• 5:02:11Speaker 02

  charge was added to my NJP. That charge stated explicitly exactly the opposite of what Reelso had reported. They started alleging that my cadre had stepped outside of the left and rights of curriculum to a degree that brought dishonor to the United States government.

• 5:02:27Speaker 02

  How so? No one can give me any examples. We just know what happened, Brad.

• 5:02:32Speaker 03

  Basically, failure to supervise as a Article 134 general article offense. So not even dereliction of duty, just general failure to enforce standards.

• 5:02:43Speaker 02

  So after nine months of digesting this, coming up with two charges, 24 hours after I say there's a problem over here in the United States Navy, you all of a sudden think of a third charge that happens to contradict all the legal advice you got from prosecuting attorneys? It's very strange.

• 5:02:58Speaker 03

  Which would have to be disclosed to us if they charged him criminally. Again, exculpatory information, right? That they haven't, that if we didn't have people that would come forward to us independently, we would never know about.

• 5:03:10Speaker 02

  It was around this time I finally stopped naively hoping that people would do the right thing. And I started realizing we were being reprised against.

• 5:03:21Speaker 02

  I mean, why? Why? This is happening. It would be speculation if I had to guess, but um... I'd love to hear some speculation. I think, I think there, what I have, I've noticed a trend in the United States government of when somebody dies, uh, there is a desire to get to the conclusion that they died in the line of duty. The reason is, the next of kin get the SGLI life insurance at that point. If his death was associated with misconduct using illegal substances and government property, well, now it gets debatable whether he died in the line of duty or not, so all of a sudden, the life insurance is off the table. I think it was a well-intentioned early twist,

• 5:04:08Speaker 02

  uh, to get to he died in line of duty, and the only way you can get there is by ignoring all the drugs, which is why they didn't test for him, which is why they didn't test the contents of the drugs, which is why they left it all out of all the narratives. So they could say that and then move on, hoping this would all go behind us. Unfortunately, like I talked to you early on, a small lie, even for the right reasons, can turn into institutional deception and can cost people their careers and reputations. And if this had been just, just been me, okay, but... But when you start vilifying my cadre and painting a picture that they were doing precisely the opposite of what they were doing, well, that's a step too far. They served honorably, they were trustworthy, they executed curriculum professionally only every time. I said, "I've got a lot of experience in this world, I'm not an idiot."

• 5:04:52Speaker 02

  We talked about trust and autonomy, but we also talked about proportionate accountability. I trusted them, and I know that they executed my trust because I checked in on them. I would sneak over to Proctor Hour. Lights are out, everyone's gone for the day. You remember Proctor Hours? And I would sit outside the door and listen, and only every single time did I hear nothing but clean mentorship going on. No hazing, no beat downs, no getting wet and sandy, just good, old fashioned, "Here's what you guys did today, here's how I need you to be better, this is what's expected of you in Naval Special Warfare." I must have done that a dozen or so times. I started having internal naysayers back when we saw attrition. Some of our GS employees, our graybeards, were starting to say, "The cadre are running amok, the cadre are running amok." Okay.

• 5:05:35Speaker 02

  I'd go out to first phase, "Hey, when was the last time you saw that person, that GS-13 at an evolution?" "We haven't seen him yet, sir." "Okay, so they're telling me cadre's amok, but they're not here to watch it?" "No." "Okay, well, let me come out then, at least see." So I got under the boat. I got under the boat and ran lamppost with candidates more than I think most CEOs before me. I did it at one point with a broken foot, in a boot, and was told to not be on my feet, yet I found myself under the boat, not because I'm that badass, but because I wanted to see, "How bad is this training really?" I had an Apple Watch on, checking the pace. We were clean, inside of curriculum. Every time I looked, I found nothing. I found nothing but professionalism, and cadre actually leading, coaching, and mentoring,

• 5:06:18Speaker 02

  all the attributes you and I have been talking about all day, and positively reinforcing these guys when they succeeded, and then help them pick them up when they failed. I saw it every single time. I'm not naive. I brought in people to help expose my blind risk. What am I missing, guys? What am I not seeing? I'd ask, I'd ask senior officers, "Hey, show me where I'm wrong. What am I missing?" They would bring up things that were just ludicrous.

• 5:06:42Speaker 02

  I told you about a peer earlier, I think over breakfast, while Brad, you know, I heard that an instructor came to a boat and said, "By the time I'm back on my next shift, these guys, one of you guys will DOR." And then he came back and a guy had DOR'd. So that's evidence to me that your cadre were running amok. "Oh, okay." I looked at my peer and said, "Did that happen in your BUDS class 25 years ago?" "Well, yeah." "Okay, weird. It happened in mine, too. I think it happened in yours, is what you said." "So, so while that's not good instructing, while we don't endorse that kind of behavior, we've established a cultural norm here." "Nothing changed from the last 25 years, at least in that realm." "And by the way, if that's all it took that guy to quit, is that who you really want to go downrange with?" "So what have you, what have you shown me?" "Nothing. Show me something."

• 5:07:26Speaker 02

  "Nobody has yet to give me any quantifiable evidence which shows our instructors were running amok." "To the opposite, actually." "I find nothing but evidence that they were professional and trustworthy the entire time." "Are they perfect?" "Absolutely not. Nobody's perfect, especially SEALs and SWCs. You know that. We've got our rough edges." "But man, they were professional." "I would offer the NETSI investigation, 3,500 pages, as proof of that." "The only thing they found in an entire investigation that was actually like anything close to a bit of evidence was rumor that one of my instructors might have made a joke, offhand comment, about using PEDS at some point." "But for the couple people that reported that might have happened, there were others who said, 'Absolutely not. That guy would have never said something like that.'"

• 5:08:08Speaker 02

  "There was nothing. You dug that hard and you found nothing on us. That's fantastic." "I couldn't be more proud of my command for that."

• 5:08:18Speaker 02

  "That's it. They served honorably." "To the attrition part, uh, golly, um, the thing that's, that was conflated in this whole thing that NETSI jumped on, because back to your point, if you have the end game, that he didn't die from PEDS, well, what did he die from? And then you find that there was large attrition to that period of time, well, you're going to conflate those and say, 'Ah, they're causative.'" "Well, that's overly simplistic." "It's multivariable. We talked about COVID being a big part. We talked about NAV admins coming down." "But the way some of the people that betrayed me framed it was, 'Well, look at the collective data from the two years Brad was there.'"

• 5:08:54Speaker 02

  In that collective data, what you'll see is the attrition rates higher for the time he was there with his first phase OIC. They were deliberately redlining candidates is the argument, and that's the narrative that spun and perpetuated through this investigation. But when you actually break down the data, which is accurate, right? Again, there's misleading things, kind of like when the Navy early on said, "We found drugs in his car. His toxicology came back negative." Okay, those are two independent facts, but when placed together, it implies that your toxicology screen for the drugs, which we know that you didn't, that's misleading, that's deliberately misleading. Same thing with the attrition piece. Yes, if you look at one number in my command tour, it looks like our attrition was higher, which you might be able to reasonably say, "Yeah, clearly that's evidence that you guys might have been ramping things up."

• 5:09:38Speaker 02

  Except when you actually start breaking it down into a graph, which I did, what you'll see is a couple distinct spikes of attrition. Okay, and what's interesting too is the people that started lying about us started at a certain date, which was into my command tour. So why didn't they include all the command tour time? Why did they start here and not back here? Well, because right here where they started is right when that first phase OIC checked on board, and that fits their narrative, that he and I conspired to just redline candidates. Well, the problem with that is, if you back it up a couple of classes, you see that there's actually a bubble of attrition that predates him. Okay, well, so if it predated him, he wasn't the causal factor then. You can at least clear that up. So what was the causal factor?

• 5:10:18Speaker 02

  Well, in that bump, I went back to my old data and found, we actually did a huge detailed analysis on those classes, and what we did was we compared them to the classes from the previous year, because we always do that for the same seasons, because you don't want to compare a summer and a winter class. What we found was that the DORs of the quitting, the quitters, the percentages overall were almost equal year by year. And in fact, in one of my classes, the percentage was better. We had less percentage proportionate, proportionately of DORs than the previous year, who was my predecessor, which was different command, different everybody. Okay, so if the quitters were about the same, what accounts for the growth in attrition? Well, we realized it was, oh, medical. Medical attrition.

• 5:11:01Speaker 02

  Okay, well, the next thought process someone might provide is, well, yeah, you guys clearly ramped up training so hard that you were hurting people, except we've already discussed that one of our clear goals was to reduce medical attrition by revising curriculum, which we accomplished. So when you take down the medical attrition and you break down into those multi variables, you see that the injury is actually reduced. So then what accounts for the medical attrition? Oh, COVID rules. And you can overlay data showing time and space when all these NAV admins are coming down, implementing new policies and new rules and new procedures, which were causing us to have to pull exceptions to policy and slow down our processing. So we had to pull these guys and roll them into another class to then reset for another date, which we talked about, always increases the percentage of attrition. So that accounts for those classes. Well, that's weird. We had all that data.

• 5:11:46Speaker 02

  In fact, the guy that helped me compile the data is the very guy that then later told everyone that, no, it was just Brad and his OIC ramping up training. Huh. So I've got your early analysis showing that it was the medical stuff, all the COVID related stuff. Yet later you're saying something different. Well, that's, it sounds like you perjured yourself. Beyond that, the next spike, very, very interesting for me. I was going to draw it out, but I think I can talk to it. The next spike happened at one precise moment in time and it went off the charts in attrition. Class 351, the class before Kyle Mullen. This was an interesting one. So what happened? Okay, well, if we're going to believe the narrative, then at precisely that moment in time, my OIC and I decided, send it.

• 5:12:31Speaker 02

  Let's just redline these guys and get them all to quit. Why not? Let's just do it for the hell of it. That's an argument you could make. Okay, well, what other variables changed other than that theory? Well, if you look at it, what you'll find is there's two other variables. The first one is 351 was the first class that we had a female get into first phase ever. So the next argument someone could make is, well, Brad's sexist and he was just trying to ramp up training to drive the woman out. Except, my history of proven performance speaks exactly the opposite. We talked in the break about, while I was in command, graduated the first female SWIC operator ever in the history of naval special warfare. While I was a commanding officer at STV Team One, we employed the first female operational Navy diver on a real-world op, ever.

• 5:13:16Speaker 02

  I had nothing but consistent command climate surveys come back talking about equality of opportunity being a major priority of mine. When we talked to that female candidate after she didn't make it in first phase, I sat down with her, my command master chief, "Tell us what we're missing. Tell us what we could have done better. We're trying to make this total equality of opportunity for everyone here. Equal and fair chance." "Sir, I have no suggestions. This place was fantastic. Not only is your staff professional, they mentored me personally when I went through some serious life challenges while I was here, and I can't thank them enough for the impact they had in my life. I was so proud, so proud of my cadre." So the data shows, actually, no, no, no, we were the opposite of sexist. We were providing equality of opportunity, every time, all day, every single day.

• 5:14:01Speaker 02

  So then what's the only variable changed?

• 5:14:03Shawn Ryan?

  I think it might be good if you go into specifics. Was it the female in the SWIC?

• 5:14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:14:12Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go into that, just to show character.

• 5:14:14Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Talking about the story we talked about earlier offline?

• 5:14:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:14:19Speaker 02

  So this was fascinating. It was such an interesting, such an interesting growth for us as a command. At one point, when Congress rescinded the exclusionary rule and we started knowing we're going to be bringing women into these combat roles, Naval Special Warfare was very proactive. And we brought in female instructors from other rates out there in the Navy to instruct and be integrated fully within our cadre for a couple of reasons. One, make sure we're unbiased, make sure we're getting that perspective from a female, usually war vet if possible. Two, provide internal accountability to make sure we weren't gonna, you know, drive things off the rails or even be perceived at that. And three, they provided to be, there were provided to be great mentors for female candidates

• 5:15:03Speaker 02

  that would come through the pipeline, someone who's been there and done that, not as a SEAL or SWAC, but can at least help you understand what this looks like. So we had a female Master Chief as our first, one of our first phase instructors, EOD, absolute, I mean, absolute professional. I mean, just top-notch warfighter, trustworthy professional, one of my closest advisors. So I'd always go to for, hey, give me some context, give me some perspective. So, so she was engaged with this female SWAC as she went through the pipeline. So at some point, our female SWAC candidate failed an evolution. And we did the independent boards and they all came back with the recommendation, hey, you should drop her from training, sir. Like, this is, it's time. I said, okay, well, let me go back and look at her records. Like, we talked about her peer reviews, her data. Turns out she's a pretty dang good performer

• 5:15:48Speaker 02

  overall, like, top half of her class on most stuff. Like, she was pretty consistent and reliable, and showed some great character attributes along the way, like, just really impressive, stand out amongst some peers. So I said, so what's different here? Because we've had other, we've had other male candidates fail this one evolution and we've retained them or given them another chance. You know, sometimes we'll give a second chance, allow them to fall forward. So what's different here? Why, why would I drop her versus them? And one of them said, well, sir, it's because she cried. And I said, all right, well, I get it. I, no, no crying in NSW. It's uncomfortable. It's certainly a foreign thing for us being in a male-dominated industry for so long. But let's break that down then. Let's figure

• 5:16:31Speaker 02

  out what's going on here. So we brought in those female combat veterans and we brought in the psychs and we sat down in a big meeting and said, okay, let's break this down. I said, hey, from my EOD Master Chief, hey, have you ever, have you ever cried in a stressful scenario? She said, well, yeah, sometimes. It's, it's always uncomfortable. But yeah, it's happened. Okay. So, psychs, what's normal? Like, what's the bell curve of normal for male and female when we process stress and how that manifests itself physically? Well, typically, men get angry, apparently, and women cry, apparently. Not true for all, you know, it's, it's the bell curve, but that's the statistical norm of what they see from a psychological perspective. So then, as we broke that down, we then said, well, What's better or worse, crying or being angry? Does it really matter?

• 5:17:15Speaker 02

  And it turns out it doesn't. What really matters is can you perform the task through the stress regardless of what what that stress manifests as emotionally? And then we realized, yeah, I really don't care if you're angry or you're crying as long as you're blasting the enemy's face off with a 50 cal and accomplishing the task. So then we pulled her in the room and said, let's have a discussion about this. Hey, here's a mentor who's had this happen before in a male dominated industry and how she survived it. She's going to lead, coach and mentor you through what this looks like. We're going to give you one more opportunity because you've earned it. We see your track record and it's fantastic. You got to accomplish this. I don't care if you cry anymore. Turns out, we don't really care about that. What we're really selecting and assessing for is can you manage your stress and can you perform the tasks?

• 5:17:58Speaker 02

  So feel free to cry all you want, but we got to get you to accomplish the task. And she did. She totally knocked it out of the park the next time and graduated and went on to be the first female SWAC operator out on the East Coast. And what's beautiful about that, too, it was such a great case study on this is what happens when you hold the standard and she meets it. She's now earned it and we have total equality of opportunity. And then what I saw is when people started naysaying her, we heard that you guys lowered the standard, her cadre came in and defended her. No, no, no, no. Our little sister met the standard. I know because I held the standard and she met it. That was a beautiful thing to see. It's one thing for a commanding officer to come in, no, no, no, we did the right things. Okay, sure.

• 5:18:41Speaker 02

  But when your cadre at the E6 and E5 level are vouching and saying, no, no, no, she earned it. Every single day, every single opportunity, she earned. Now she's our teammate. She's our sister. Go get to work, row. It's incredible learning opportunity. Super fun to be a part of that. So, so the argument that I was running women out of training doesn't, doesn't stand. Yeah. Doesn't stand. So it leaves the only other variable remaining. The only thing that changed between class 350 and 351, and this can be controversial, the mandatory COVID vaccine.

• 5:19:16Speaker 02

  It's the only variable that changed. Now let me qualify that with, I do not want to get into the politicized debate about all the things that happened during COVID. However, what both sides of the aisle have absolutely agreed upon is that the vaccine produces fatigue, as does the virus, sometimes long fatigue. It happens. Having had the vaccine or the virus both times and the vaccine, I can tell you, yeah, it produces a lot of fatigue in me as well. So what's interesting is the mandate for the vaccine came down for class 350, but it was the week before they started Hell Week. So we said, no, no, no, we're going to waive that. That's way too close. It's way too much risk. We don't know what's going to happen. So we let them do it after Hell Week. So 351 was the very first class that we then gave the COVID vaccine to as they started

• 5:20:00Speaker 02

  first phase right beforehand. What's interesting about that, too, is all the attrition data for classes 351, 352, which is where Kyle died, and 353 show that the majority of the attrition happened within the first 48 to 72 hours of those classes, which was another anomaly that was different from everything we'd seen in the past. Well, it kind of makes sense when you think about the fact that these guys were just really fatigued. You gave them a shot that fatigued them and then expected them to perform in some of the most difficult training as we dropped the hammer on day one of first phase, and then we acted surprised when they all quit. I can't remember which class it was, but one of them, over 100 people quit within 72 hours. The helmets had lined the corner. We weren't even done with week one.

• 5:20:43Speaker 02

  I brought in a PhD because I was losing my mind. I'm like, I need you to help me. Like, what is going on? And he said, Brad, I'm telling you, I've looked at this stuff for 14 years. I've studied every single soft branch and selection assessment and training. When this kind of thing happens, it's usually cadre running amok. I was like, come look, please, tell me. Tell me I'm taking crazy pills. He's like, I'm bringing my bias with me, just so you know. I said, bring your bias. He walked away and said, it's not your cadre. At the time, we hadn't isolated it down to that one variable, but he had a lot of other variables he added to the mix, which were absolutely contributory as well. So it's just a false narrative that we were just ramping up training. The data shows it. It's the only variable that changed. What's interesting too is the attrition starts dropping off a few classes later. Well, why?

• 5:21:26Speaker 02

  Well, that would make sense as now people are entering the Navy, going to boot camp, getting their shot at boot camp and having 12 weeks to bleed off the effects of the fatigue before they check into BUDS, then do the seven weeks of prep and then start first phase. So it makes sense the attrition would start spiking down right about the time I changed command, by the way. So inconvenient for me, it looks like, oh, Brad left and things started getting fixed. No. They started self-correcting based upon the variables. Nothing was broken. Nothing needs to be fixed. Nothing needed to be fixed. There were small things, like we said, happy to glad. We fixed those. Nothing else. Has the curriculum changed at all since you've left? Not, well, a couple of things have been changed, yes. I don't know specifically.

• 5:22:07Speaker 02

  Like I said, a lot of people don't talk to me anymore, but for the most part, they've tried to hold the line, but, but this comes back to why I come forward now is I've heard people, I've heard people start to perpetuate the lies inside the force and that's always a dangerous thing because now people start making decisions and saying things like, we fixed a problem. Well, if you implemented a solution to a problem that actually didn't exist, that can create, back to the discussion on risk, more blind risk that we're not even tracking right now. Where did that get deferred to? What did you solve? Did you make things better or worse? I'm hearing a lot of big talking points about, we fixed things. We fixed the toxic culture. There was no toxic culture. I had one of the medical professionals tell me recently, he was one of the last ones standing that was there when I was there.

• 5:22:51Speaker 02

  He said, oh yeah, everyone's now loves to talk about how they fixed medical. He said, there was nothing broken with it. It was fine. It was fantastic, actually. He said, what I would offer, back to our discussion on risk, he said, now the only thing that's changed is we have more policies and procedures in place, which are really cover your ass for accountability, but that's more paperwork and more administrative work for us to do, but we don't have more manpower to do it and we don't have more time in the day to do it. So we're spending more time now doing those things, which make us look like we're doing things better. But that's actually detracting from our real mission of patient care. So are we really doing things better or are we incurring even more risk? There's a couple of things, to be fair, I gotta give credit where credit's due, we're doing better.

• 5:23:34Speaker 02

  We're doing this whole system now where they finish Hellwick and they go into one big room. And we have all their data up and they're wearing heart rate monitors and all the resources that we've been asking for for 10 years and couldn't get are now there. And so they're doing a better job managing awareness on candidate health after Hellwick. That's great. But here's what I'd counter that with. We'd been doing virtually the same thing since 1943 when Jayber Kaufman started Hellwick. And we'd never once had a problem with someone post Hellwick med checks complete going that fast into decomposition and death. So what's the outlying variable? Well, it's the drugs. So if we just remove the drugs, well, then we probably wouldn't need all these other resources to do all this other stuff, which makes it look like we're doing better.

• 5:24:18Speaker 02

  Because there's only a problem because of this unknown variable at the time.

• 5:24:21Shawn Ryan?

  Have they implemented any type of drug policy?

• 5:24:25Speaker 02

  Yes, there is now an official drug policy. And they are testing for it. They have the resources and the authorities for it. So that is happening, which is good, but this is the other.

• 5:24:35Shawn Ryan?

  Why did they implement that? I don't understand.

• 5:24:38Speaker 02

  Great question, because it's hazardous to your health, apparently.

• 5:24:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, if there's never been a problem with that before, then why did they implement it all of a sudden?

• 5:24:46Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 5:24:47Speaker 04

  Why spend the money for the expensive tests for steroids? The additional testing?

• 5:24:52Speaker 02

  Especially if he didn't die due to steroids.

• 5:24:54Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 5:24:55Speaker 02

  The other unintended consequence, two other unintended consequences back to decisions and what are we incentivizing and disincentivizing? The greatest deterrent factor we had for candidates to be afraid of using PEDS was this fear that Kyle had died because of the PEDS, which I think is accurate and fair. That's a natural fear that people are now, who were thinking about taking that risk. Because by the way, these are young, 18 to 24 year old men. They tend to make bad decisions from time to time, I hear. So they were willing to take those risks, but they were fearful now that that could have killed them. So they, a lot of them, woo, I'm going cold turkey here. What I heard from the candidate network, because I kept in touch with quite a few of them. When the Navy released that press statement saying drugs didn't kill him. Well, the candidates believed that.

• 5:25:40Speaker 02

  So we just sabotaged our own efforts. If we really don't want them to use drugs. We just sabotaged that because we removed the fear factor and the only deterrent we really had. Now we're back to square one of, well, it's a policy. And you better not do it, and we mean it. Now we'll start testing for it, that'll help, but. That's absurd to me that we allowed that to happen. We sabotaged our own efforts. Beyond that, I'd offer that by saying that. In any way at all. We've denied the Mullen family closure to their son's death. That's cruel. Because without that as the causative factor, they're always going to pursue an answer. But why did he die? Who failed? Someone must have failed. That's cruel. That's cruel.

• 5:26:23Speaker 02

  It puts them on a never ending search for closure, which I don't think you'll ever find because. You're looking in the wrong direction. Kyle wasn't the villain here. That's not the moral of this story. Kyle was a young man who made a couple of bad decisions. Doesn't make him a bad human being, doesn't make him a man of bad character, makes him. Oh, pretty normal for a 24 year old man who ever once in a while makes bad decisions. Those decisions came with a catastrophic cost, unfortunately. We could be doing so much more in that messaging if we would just be honest about his death.

• 5:26:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I mean, that it's not. It's not Kyle, it's not his family. It's the Navy.

• 5:27:06Speaker 02

  And going back to your why question. I place the blame entirely at the feet of the Secretary of the Navy. 100%. He set the tone here. Almost immediately, early on. And, you know, armed forces do really well to execute on intent. And he set the tone that, that highlighting Kyle Mullen' drug use. Was victim blaming, right? This is the message we get. And that we weren't going to do that.

• 5:27:36Speaker 03

  And so if we're not going to do that, then what does that leave? Well, that leaves all of these permutations. That leaves all of these misconstrued investigations, right? Because we're going to meet that intent. And you know what's insidious about it? And I've seen it play out in so many different cases that resonate at this level. Is that the investigating officers don't know they're doing it sometimes. They don't, I don't think they come in saying, I'm going to be biased. I'm going to be unfair. I'm going to misrepresent. I'm going to misconstrue. But they do execute on it and they do inject investigational bias. And they do, I mean, NCIS, for example, reports directly to the Secretary of the Navy.

• 5:28:18Speaker 03

  It was taken out of the command chain back in the day and is a direct report to the Secretary of the Navy. I am under firm belief that as we continue to prosecute this case in whatever direction, someday we're going to get records access that shows a direct line between the Secretary of the Navy's office and NCIS and an instruction to stop investigating.

• 5:28:39Speaker 02

  Well, I'd offer two, Jason. Some of them may not know. They may be unwitting. I'm not sure, but the trend lines would suggest otherwise. You know, other examples that we didn't even get into is as I was getting into the investigation to build my defense. And I noticed at that point I had that line of duty that had been changed. I asked for access to the original one. If you remember, that had been outsourced to Admiral Kitchener to be independently verified. And what I was told by the force judge advocate at the time, I have an email. Brad, that investigation was never signed or serialized and it was never independently verified by Admiral Kitchener. And I said, well, that's interesting because I just LinkedIn messaged Admiral Kitchener, retired, who said, I stand by my independent review of that investigation. So can you please give it to me now?

• 5:29:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:29:21Speaker 02

  And he delivered it within 24 hours.

• 5:29:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:29:24Speaker 02

  That's very interesting to me because.

• 5:29:26Speaker 03

  To be clear, in Brad's case, I think a lot was done intentionally. I'm speaking generally that I don't even, that I don't think every time an investigating officer is going in here with investigational bias. All the evidence to the contrary in Captain Geary's case, by far.

• 5:29:39Speaker 02

  Another interesting data point, coming into Thanksgiving week as we're preparing for Mass now, again, digging through piles and piles of papers, comparing notes and everything. My boss at the time, who was a GS 15, I was working directly for him as a staff officer. Our command reached out to him and said, hey, we're thinking of tasking Brad with something new. Are you good with that? And he wrote a very robust reply saying absolutely not. First off, Brad's consumed with over 5,000 pages of documents. He's very in-depth with that. Of my, we're doing a human factors council right now, which he's involved in, in measuring out all of our, all of our leaders in our shop.

• 5:30:20Speaker 02

  By the way, of all those, of all those people, Brad is my most redlined human factors individual right now because of the stresses on his life. In addition to all this other stuff, his son just developed an autoimmune disease partly catalyzed by the stress their family's under. His wife was just diagnosed with PTSD from this and has an ongoing ulcer. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, and he said, his tagline at the end was, "At this time, I do not recommend giving Brad any extra work that could be perceived as frustrating his efforts to prepare his legal defense." Wednesday afternoon, after receiving that email of advice from my boss, Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, I get a phone call from our command. Quote, on speakerphone, my wife heard it.

• 5:31:05Speaker 02

  "So Brad, I was talking with the Jags and we're concerned that we're giving you too much time to prepare for NJP because it puts the command at risk. So we're going to give you an additional task." Are you serious? I'm dead serious. Verbatim. I said, let me, I said, what risk? What risk? Can you articulate the risk? Well, we're giving you this so much time, and so we have to give this amount of time to everybody in the future if we charge them. So if we have a fictional future E6 that we charge with MAST, we have to give him this much time. I said, okay, first off, you're, you're saying this based off of a fictional future scenario? That's arbitrary. Second off, if that E6 has 3,500 pages of evidence to review and is being frustrated in his efforts to review it, yeah, you give him this much time.

• 5:31:50Speaker 02

  If he has 100 pages, well, then proportionally, you give him the amount of time he needs to review 100 pages. These are leadership decisions. This isn't risk. So do you hear how stupid that sounds as I say it back to you? I may not have been that brash in my comment back, but it was something to that effect. Well, so you're saying you won't do it? I said, "Well, I'm saying there's a conflict of interest here because, by the way, what you're asking me to do is inappropriate. You're asking me to do a get real, get better survey for our force. By the way, you know very much that part of my allegations are against the very people that authored that saying. So, this is weird. Does anyone else not see this as a conflict of interest and inappropriate right now? Pause. Have a nice Thanksgiving. Hang up. Email on Sunday. Need you to come into work tomorrow. Go into work.

• 5:32:34Speaker 02

  Okay, we're gonna have you do this. All right.

• 5:32:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. And let me, I mean, let me frame it that if we were anywhere outside of the administrative space, if we were in a criminal space, for example, an intentional attempt, stated intent, to frustrate your defense would be unlawful command input. We would dismiss the case. Right? But here we are in administrative.

• 5:32:54Speaker 02

  Having commanded twice, having commanded twice, if one of my sailors came to me and said, "My son was going through the health crisis that our son was dealing with." This was catastrophic. This broke me to my core. I had to fly my wife to a conference in Florida, who was dealing with this autoimmune disease, to figure out some single parent dadding while building my defense and NJP.

• 5:33:17Speaker 03

  While having to go to an AirGAP laptop.

• 5:33:19Speaker 02

  Yes. If any one of my sailors would come to me with a problem like that, the only thing that we would have said was, "Come offline, take care of your family business. You got a lot going on right now, man. You tell us when you're ready to come back." Instead, you're finding things for me to do because you think it's a risk to the command by letting me prepare a defense? When I'm mounted against thousands of documents and it's just me, my wife, and my attorney poring through them, when you had nine months with countless staff officers and legal professionals to digest this for you? It's mind blowing, man. The trend line is insane. It's insane.

• 5:34:01Speaker 02

  All that said, I have to throw this out there. Back to our faith and the journey that God took us on this. And this is how I can sit here and I can have this conversation. This is why I can have this conversation. This is a big part. As I was questioning God, why did you do this? Like I questioned him about Adam. Give me insight into your will here. Help me understand this. He brought me to the book of John. Similar to that other verse that just came across. And it was particularly John 15. And it's Jesus talking and he said, you'll recognize the verse. Verse is, he says, I am the vine. My Father's the vine dresser. You are the branches. Branches that produce, that branches that do not produce fruit are cut off and thrown away.

• 5:34:42Speaker 02

  Branches that do produce fruit are pruned by the Father so that they'll produce more fruit. And I realized this is our season of pruning. I was having a hard time with anger. I talked to you in the past about the wrath and the rage I was experiencing extortion. I had that again. My wife even called it out one morning. She said, I see the spirit of extortion on you. You have got to figure out this anger again. It's back and I haven't seen it in a decade. I was asking for help there and this was the answer. And what I mean is, I realized, back to basic training command. I talked to you about my CMC, putting his hand on me and praying over me. We were men of strong faith and leading by faith-based principles during that time. And we were producing fruit.

• 5:35:27Speaker 02

  We weren't Bible beating, but we were pretty, pretty open about what we stood for. And I was pretty open about my philosophy, being rooted in the fact that I'm called to love my neighbor. And so in doing that, I love my command. I love my cadre and I love my candidates and I'm gonna do the best I can for them. So I knew that we were producing fruit more probably than I've ever produced in my whole career. It was a different, it was a different era and it felt amazing. So this was my reward. This season of punishment, of actual like pain and suffering and just took me to my knees in absolute brokenness, betrayal was my season of pruning.

• 5:36:02Speaker 02

  And if that's the case, well, then this was orchestrated by God the Father as a reward for what I had done in preparation for a coming season in which we'll produce even more fruit. So if that's the case, which I think it is, God is sovereign. He was never surprised by this. Not only was he not surprised by it, he allowed it and ordained it and orchestrated to happen, which means even the people that betrayed me with evil intent and lied about me and perjured themselves about me and built this false narrative about me and my cadre and our senior medical officer, who's one of the best doctors I've ever met, even though they meant us evil intent, well, that doesn't matter. God sabotaged their intent and has used it for his purposes and my good. And I know what that's going to look like in

• 5:36:42Speaker 02

  the coming season, which is goodness. That's how we can get to forgiveness. Because if I'm going to be mad at them, then I gotta be mad at God. But I know what he's doing, so I can't be mad at him. Therefore, I have to forgive. And when I got to that epiphany, it's the most beautiful place in the world, because all of a sudden the anger was gone and there was nothing but peace. I came home and I told Amy about this revelation I'd had, this epiphany. And she starts crying and I'm crying and she says, well, how do you feel? I said, total peace. Total peace. I'm free. I'm free from the anger. It's no longer there because I know what's happening and why it's happening now. Now, all I have to do is endure and know that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And I know where that's going to take us as a family. We're

• 5:37:27Speaker 02

  going to produce a lot of fruit in the coming season and it's going to be magnificent. So now and only then am I free to make this fight, because before it would be a fight based upon vengeance. It'd be a fight based upon my pain. We'd be speaking from our pain, which is never a healthy place to fight from. Now I speak from peace and from love. I'm not fighting you because I'm angry at you and I want vengeance. No, not at all. I'm fighting because it's the right thing to do, which gives me the moral high ground. I'm fighting because it's the right thing to do because I love the United States Navy, because I love naval special warfare. So I'm fighting from a place of love. I wish you no ill will. I hope you come clean and apologize for what you did. I will provide you the grace and mercy that's been provided me. But I can fight now cleanly. I can fight from a moral

• 5:38:09Speaker 02

  high ground. And that's what allows me to do it with a clear conscience and sit here and have these conversations and sleep well at night, because I know the heart I'm coming at from this.

• 5:38:21Speaker 02

  This, this is what love looks like, and this is what I'd offer as we probably get close to wrapping up here soon. I know it's gone late. I want, if you could, if you could say, what do you guys want out of this? I would want congressional immunity administratively and testimonially for those gentlemen who were willing to come forward and provide immunity. I want an official apology from the United States Navy to my command center, the senior medical officer, and all of our families that were involved in this, who have been raked across the coals for two and a half years now.

• 5:39:01Speaker 02

  I would like punitive letters of reprimand written for every single officer that participated in this deceit, or perpetuated, or was even complicit in it and allowed it to keep going. All that said, like I just talked about, and like we've hit on, I'm a flawed man, and I've had, made a lot of mistakes in my career. I was fortunate to have some of those leaders we talked about press in with me, lead coach and mentor me, and provide me grace and mercy when I needed it to fall forward and grow through those trials. I've been provided grace and mercy by our Lord Jesus Christ, and then some. When I was in my dark days of extortion, he left the 99 to come back for me.

• 5:39:43Speaker 02

  And so I have to be willing to provide the same to even my enemies, and I'm willing to do that. And so what I offer is, in spite of all the things that I want, if people come forward, and I hope they hear me right now, if they come forward individually with a public apology that admits what they did, and it includes, "I'm sorry, please forgive me," all that stuff gets wiped clean. I won't pursue anything with them, and in fact, I will be the first advocate to allow them to fall forward and continue their naval service honorably and move forward into the future. This is what love looks like, and this is what I've been taught through this whole thing, and it's the entire reason why we're here, Sean. This is what love looks like. It will risk everything for those entrusted to their care.

• 5:40:26Speaker 02

  I risk it all for my cadre, and for our medical professionals, and for our senior medical officer, everything I lay on the line by sitting here and telling this story and exposing myself. I risk it all for them, and I do it with joy. And this is what love looks like. Forgiveness, grace, and mercy to my enemies if they ask for it. It's theirs.

• 5:40:45Shawn Ryan?

  I'm happy you found that piece. I am very happy you found that piece and It's everything. Sounds like my last question was gonna be, what's your best case scenario? And I think you just described it.

• 5:40:59Speaker 04

  And I would just, I would just say to piggyback on that, and it's hard to add anything to what he just poured out. I mean, think about everything he's been through and what he's done. I mean, that's why I'm here. That's why I'm here sitting next to him as two pastors, guys from Apology Church in Arizona, Jeff Durbin and Luke Pearson, met me because they had a room full of Navy SEALs that didn't know what to do, what to do. They were being threatened with court martial over the COVID mandate. And that was a leadership crisis. That was a moral crisis. They were being lied to. They were being threatened. I got a phone call in the middle of the night. I was there. My brother's in the Navy. So that's why this fight matters. So understand Brad's a target because of his faith. He failed the loyalty test. At multiple points in this, he put the truth and integrity

• 5:41:44Speaker 04

  over the institution and the institutional lie because someone thought, because of woke ideas, because of, you know, you can't blame the victim mentality that's ruining our military. He stood up to that. I get emotional thinking about it. He stood up to that. That's why he's here. He made himself a target by doing the right thing because of his faith. Right? And again, there's so many people that are engaged. I can tell you of all the people that are behind the themes in this, and it all starts, I'm here because of these two pastors. But all of that matters and this fight matters moving forward because what we learned during COVID, when people were doing, were being treated poorly, when they were getting the wrong things happening to them. Over that, they had to stand together. And it was simply saying, I'm not gonna go along with your lie. I'm not gonna go along with your lie. There's things Brad doesn't even wanna talk about,

• 5:42:29Speaker 04

  going into his admiral's office and saying, hey, these guys have a sincere religious objection to the COVID vaccine, and I'm gonna support the guys that have a sincere religious objection to it. And the admiral told him, don't do that. I'm gonna deny all of them. Part of that blanket denied. Why does that matter? I'm telling you, I think the SEALs are one of the last bastions in our country and our military that are willing to put each other, that brotherhood and the truth over everything else. And this case, among other things, is allowing Naval Education and Training Command bureaucrats at the Pentagon to put their hooks into this training. And that's why a lot of this fight matters. We need people like Captain Geary to stand up and put the truth

• 5:43:12Speaker 04

  And put what's right and put their faith over an institution or anything else. Because if we don't do that, if we lose that foundation, our military is gone. And that's the moral crisis we're seeing. 2015, the Army War College did a study. They identified a crisis that there were too many officers willing to simply check off. I completed all our training. I completed the inspection to get to 100%. They were willing to put their career over the truth, even though it was impossible to do all of the training in a calendar year. They were all signing off on that they completed. That was an indication. All of this is a symptom of a moral crisis. And that's why this matters. That's why I got excited about this fight. And then I met this man and get to stand with him. So that matters.

• 5:43:57Speaker 04

  And that's the future of our military. We have to take a stand. We have to stand behind people. Congress needs to do their job and use their constitutional crowns to get the bureaucracy under control and pushed back because we're losing our moral fiber in the military. We're losing it.

• 5:44:15Speaker 02

  One small point of correction. It wasn't the admiral that said I was going to die in my apologies. It was my direct senior, but he wasn't the admiral at the time.

• 5:44:21Speaker 04

  Okay, I understood.

• 5:44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but appreciate it.

• 5:44:23Speaker 04

  But that mentality was there. And I can almost guarantee you there was. I didn't speak to another 06 during COVID that didn't simply.

• 5:44:33Speaker 02

  Deny?

• 5:44:34Speaker 04

  Deny all, recommend deny all.

• 5:44:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:44:37Speaker 04

  In clear violation of federal law and the Constitution.

• 5:44:41Shawn Ryan?

  So a question for the two attorneys. Is that a realistic outcome?

• 5:44:48Speaker 03

  Oh, at Ken Gary's request?

• 5:44:52Speaker 03

  No, it's not a realistic outcome. The realistic best case at this point, it would be for him to take an unqualified retirement, I think.

• 5:45:04Speaker 03

  You know, it's not the outcome I want. It's not the outcome I like, and it's not the outcome he deserves, right? He deserves to go back to full duty and execute, right? But realistically, you know, our best outcome right now is that he just be allowed to move on to what's next.

• 5:45:18Speaker 02

  And that is part of what we're asking now as well.

• 5:45:22Speaker 02

  I just want to leave and I'm actually not even allowed. There are people that are advocating for that, which is good. It's helpful. But at this point, like I said at the beginning, it's been two and a half years. This is. This has gone on far too long. I would like Congress to reach in and mandate that all charges against me in the past just be stricken from the record. Wipe this clean and allow me to retire. And our senior medical officer, he's in the same boat. I mean, this guy, I will be fine. I will find another job. Our senior medical officer, he relies on his medical license to perform medicine in the real world. He doesn't transition to a new career. It's the same career field. And an offer, he's licensed in 12 different states. And two or three of those have already been under review unjustly.

• 5:46:07Speaker 02

  And he got letters from them. He has to pay lawyers to fight this because they said, hey, well, we are tracking that you were charged with NJP associated with the death of Kyle Mullen. Well, here's, back to the deception, Sean. None of our charges on NJP, me or the senior medical officer, reference Kyle's name at all. Specifically because they know we didn't fail. There's nothing in those 3,500 pages which shows causal links between us and Kyle's death. So what they did was clean his name from any of the charges so that it's just, what they'll tell us in a conversation is, this has nothing to do with Kyle. Kyle died, we had an investigation, the investigation exposed these things, we have to hold you accountable for these things. Well, that's somewhat of a half-truth because I know on the other side of the mouth, you're

• 5:46:49Speaker 02

  telling his family that you're finding us accountable Right. For the time period that their son died. You don't get to speak out of both sides of your mouth. So when the senior medical officer advertised, hey, I'm now fighting for my license in a second state based off of a false, false link there. I suggested to him, as his friend, we're very close, he's an incredible human being. I said, hey, why don't you just reach out and say, ask them to say what's already known. Just annotate that Kyle's name is not associated with your NJP charges. That should clean this up with any future medical board. He goes, that's a great idea. So he reached out and at first got a, a, a yes, we will do that for you.

• 5:47:30Speaker 02

  24 hours later, after talking to the JAGs, they rescinded the offer. So you refuse to speak the actual truth about his charges that Kyle's name is not mentioned. Why would you not even be willing to do that?

• 5:47:43Speaker 02

  This guy's gonna keep fighting his medical license. He's gonna keep having to pay lawyers to fight for his ability to provide for his family until we clean this. Back to one of the original reasons why. The taxpayer should care here, man. They are a stakeholder now. Because of these lies, again, when you're searching for closure, what killed Kyle Mullen? The family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the United States Navy. Now, this is a little bit of speculation, but I would offer, the only way you're gonna fight that lawsuit is if you admit the nature of his death and that we weren't wrong as United States Navy in how he died. But in order to do that, you have to admit that we deceived everybody in the process as a Navy.

• 5:48:26Speaker 02

  Well, that's probably not gonna happen, which if I had to speculate, I would say that means there will be some sort of a settlement in which the US taxpayers are going to pay money to conceal the lies further, unless they are forced to expose them. People should care about this, not only for the ethics involved and honor, courage, and commitment, which matter a lot to me, but taxpayer dollars are not gonna go to further conceal these lies.

• 5:48:56Shawn Ryan?

  Will there be any type of retribution to these admirals?

• 5:49:02Speaker 03

  No.

• 5:49:03Shawn Ryan?

  Won't even be a stain on their career?

• 5:49:05Speaker 03

  No. I mean, not based on anything I've ever seen of equivalency. I mean, there's just, admirals don't get punished.

• 5:49:13Shawn Ryan?

  So they'll just do it again?

• 5:49:14Speaker 03

  They'll do it again, yeah.

• 5:49:15Speaker 02

  Well, if they are punished, what that looks like is they'll get a punitive letter of reprimand in their official record, which prevents them from promoting to the next star up, and so they just retire at their current rank. That's about the extent of what you can hope for.

• 5:49:28Speaker 03

  But if you ask if I see that happening in this case, I don't.

• 5:49:32Speaker 02

  I'm an eternal optimist. I tend to like to disagree with Jason.

• 5:49:38Speaker 03

  Congress could do a lot. Congress can do a lot. Now, Congress has authorities, you know, that are intentionally broad compared to anyone within the chain. So, yeah, Congress is the one with the power to make some real change here. No question.

• 5:49:53Shawn Ryan?

  Well, gents, is there anything I should be asking that I haven't asked yet?

• 5:50:00Speaker 02

  Do you mind if I check the gallery behind us?

• 5:50:02Shawn Ryan?

  Absolutely.

• 5:50:04Speaker 02

  Missed it, we got it. She says it's a wrap.

• 5:50:07Shawn Ryan?

  All right. Brad?

• 5:50:09Speaker 02

  Sean, thank you. I really cannot think. Sorry, I just interrupted you.

• 5:50:13Shawn Ryan?

  It was an honor.

• 5:50:14Speaker 02

  It was an honor for me, thank you.

• 5:50:16Shawn Ryan?

  I just, I wish, I wish you the best of luck and, um, looks like you got some really good attorneys behind you and, uh, so, just...

• 5:50:25Speaker 02

  We do. The, beyond the attorneys, I keep saying, this isn't my side, right? This is truth. We've aligned ourselves on the side of truth and truth is unvendable. What we are is relentless.

• 5:50:40Shawn Ryan?

  And more important than that, it sounds like you got a hell of a family behind you and a great woman.

• 5:50:44Speaker 02

  That's for sure. She's a fighter.

• 5:50:46Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 5:50:46Speaker 02

  If they're not afraid of me, they should be afraid of her, for sure. Yeah, I am. Yeah, so did Dave Hansen. He was, he was as well. He admitted that once. Appreciate this, Sean. Thank you for your time. Thank you for giving us a voice. Means the world to us. I think it's gonna make a difference and I appreciate it.

• 5:51:01Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure.

• 5:51:02Speaker 02

  Yes, the love. God bless. Appreciate it. God bless you. Thanks. All right, brother.