Plank Holder of Delta Force | Wade Ishimoto | Ep. 317

Wade Ishimoto was born in Hawaii shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He enlisted in the US Army in 1961and retired 20 years later. His military career saw him serving as a Military Policeman, a counterintelligence agent, a human intelligence case officer, and 14 years in Special Forces. Among his notable assignments were as the Project Gamma Operations Sergeant during the Green Beret Murder case in 1969, Special Force School Instructor of the Year in 1974, a founding member of the Delta Force, and leading a roadblock team on the fateful 1980 attempt to rescue 53 American hostages in Iran (Operation Eagle Claw). After his military retirement, he served on the investigation of the Branch Davidian incident, the Khobar Towers bombing, was the Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, and a Special Assistant to the Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Joint Special Operations University, a Distinguished Member of the Special Forces Regiment, and was inducted into the Special Operations Command Commando Hall of Honor. He has been written about in Delta Force, The Guts to Try, Best Laid Plans, Those Gallant Men, Killer Elite, Never Surrender and A Murder in Wartime Grab Wade’s book “The Intoku Code: Delta Force's Intelligence Officer―Doing Good in Secret” here ⬇️ https://a.co/d/4y83wSe Order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured —————————————————————- Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 50% OFF!!! ____________________________________ Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— To help support the show and for all bonus content including: https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [email protected] 0:00 start #deltaforce #armysmu Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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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• 0:30Jack Murphy?

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• 1:15Speaker 02

  Special operations, covert ops, espionage, The Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:35Jack Murphy?

  Hey everyone, welcome to episode 317 of The Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave, and we're very pleased to have on the show tonight Wade Ishimoto. He's the author of The Intaku Code. I just finished reading this last night. The headline here is Delta Force's Intelligence Officer Doing Good in Secret. Wade served in Vietnam with Special Forces, went on to become one of the original members of Delta Force, was a part of Operation Eagle Claw, the Desert One Incident, and has gone on to do many other amazing things during his career. And we're excited to have you on the show, Wade. Thank you for joining us tonight.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Well, I thank you for having me on.

• 2:17Jack Murphy?

  Such an honor. Yeah, really. And so let's, uh, let's start off at the beginning, Wade. I want to hear about your upbringing and growing up in Hawaii and, and sort of what your childhood was like and how that began to sort of take you towards the military.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Well, I, I was very fortunate to be born and raised in Hawaii and in particular, the kinds of neighborhoods I grew up in because the neighborhoods I grew up in were very diverse. We had people of many races. We all got along with each other. But what I learned was how to take care of others and how others took care of me. And that made a big impression on, on myself. As far as the military was concerned, during the Korean War, a gentleman by the name of Francis Takamoto, who had fought in World War II with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team,

• 3:19Speaker 03

  was a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard. And he commanded a battalion. And at the end of the valley I grew up in, there was a National Guard shooting range. And he would drop by and, and pick me up when his battalion went up there for marshmanship training. And I got introduced into initially firing an M1 Carbine and then graduating to be able to fire a M1 Garand rifle. So the, the military was really sort of imbued in me. Even before that, being raised during World War II.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  But nonetheless, that really made a difference in terms of my wanting someday to be in the military.

• 4:05Jack Murphy?

  You mentioned, I, I think the term in your book, is it Hanae, extended family?

• 4:11Speaker 03

  Hanae, yes.

• 4:14Jack Murphy?

  That I was very interesting to read about that in your book and all the people that were around you and your family. And it sounds like, you know, kind of an ideal childhood.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  It was. It was a great place to grow up. It was semi rural when we moved into Coolio Valley, which is on the eastern side of Oahu. And now it's all residential. But initially, there was a truck farm as you started proceeding up the valley on the main highway, and then a dairy, two chicken farms, another dairy, and a small pig farm. So it was very rural, and that set a different kind of tone in terms of growing up. You learned how to work, you learned how to work around animals, you learned how to make a living for yourself.

• 5:05Jack Murphy?

  And how did you, how did the idea of joining the army come to you as, you know, as you become a young man, 18, 19 years old? Well, how does that come up on your radar?

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Well, when I was in high school, my intentions actually were to join the Air Force after I graduated, along with one of my buddies in in high school. And my parents pled with me to go on to college. And I did so somewhat reluctantly, but nonetheless, I did. And make a long story short, after two years, a professor of mine, Colin Capra Johnson, confronted me one day and called me stupid. And I was about ready to knock his block off. But I said to myself, he's trying to tell me something. In short, what he was trying to tell me was that

• 5:58Speaker 03

  my grades were too low to get me into graduate school. And that for me to succeed in international relations, I needed to have a master's degree or higher.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  So what that turned out to be was I was working sixty to eighty hours a week trying to put myself to school. It was a private school called Luzon Clark College in Portland, Oregon. And he said, you need to transfer. And I did. And then I got too smart for my own britches. I tried to invest my summer savings on the ponies at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California. Lost it all, shrugged my shoulders because I had learned resilience as a young man and said, well, it's time to go in the military. I actually intended to go into the Marine Corps. But when I went in and found a Marine recruiting station,

• 6:52Speaker 03

  there was a sign out to lunch and it was mid afternoon. And I said, what the hell this is? So I said, okay, I'm gonna go in the Air Force again. As I found the Air Force recruiter, they were co-located with the Army recruiter and on the second story of a building. As I walked up the stairs, I felt this tap on the shoulder and it was an Army Master Sergeant. And he said, well, the Air Force recruiter is busy. Come on in, sit down, relax. He sold me a bill of goods and I was in the Army.

• 7:26Jack Murphy?

  And your first assignment, if I recall correctly, you were assigned to a military police company. And I guess this would have been in the 1960s. It sounded like a very wild time to be in the United States Army for you as a young man.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  It was sort of a crazy time because, you know, we're still getting over the Korean conflict, if you will. And other things were happening with the Soviet Union in those days, and in particular in Cuba. So there were all kinds of, different kinds of interesting things that were happening. But, you know, one of the most interesting things that happened to me with that military police company is we were guarding Joe Vlachy, who was the first mafia figure that was made to

• 8:15Jack Murphy?

  Like witness protection?

• 8:18Speaker 03

  before Congress. Not made to, he actually volunteered to testify before Congress. So we were guarding him.

• 8:28Jack Murphy?

  That's so he was like in the witness protection program on your base.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  Yes, and we never knew it in the MP company for about three months. But then two of our MPs found out. They went to one of the well-known publications at that time, the Saturday Evening Post, and spilled the beans. And the Provo Marshal on Fort Mullins went sky order and he ordered us to have built sandbag, machine gun emplacements, have patrols and emplacements around the stockade where Velaci was being held. And we went into a high degree of preparedness, if you will.

• 9:10Jack Murphy?

  And you know, I noticed from the book, it seems like you always had some other ambitions for what you want to do with your army career. And the next stop for you is to become a counterintelligence agent.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  That's true. And it was a matter of my military police company commander initially was a gentleman by the name of Walt Junkins. He had been a master sergeant during World War II and the Korean War and then somehow got commissioned. And he was one of my mentors and took care of me. He wanted me to go to OCS. I refused to do so. So he came up with this idea along with another one of my mentors, Bill Fitzpatrick, that I should go to.

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• 10:25Speaker 03

  And become an Army Criminal Investigative Agent. And they found out, they thought it was all Greece. They found out I was too young, but they also found out that I could get into Army Intelligence School. And so they arranged for me to do so and off I went without understanding what the hell I was getting into.

• 10:47Jack Murphy?

  Well, tell us what you were getting into because I think your first stop was Korea as a CI guy.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Yes, and that was a great assignment because I got assigned to the 191st Military Intelligence Detachment, which was in support of the 1st Cavalry Division. And our commander was a major by the name of Tom Ondo. And Tom took a liking to me, but that also meant that he pushed me very hard. And so he asked me to be the covering counterintelligence agent for the three battalions we had north of the Imjin River. And those basically were sacrificed battalions because had the North Koreans invaded, they would have been cut off and never been able to get back across the Imjin River.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  But they were at a high readiness stage in terms of future combat and patrolled the demilitarized zone every day. And so it was a great place for me to be. And amongst all the other things, Ondo made me the unit photographer. So I was doing counterintelligence and intelligence photography of different sorts. And so I was able to do every facet that a counterintelligence agent does to include recruiting, recruiting sources. So it was just a phenomenal experience.

• 12:20Jack Murphy?

  I thought that was a really interesting part of your book that you mentioned during this period, the DMZ wasn't quite as built up as it became in later years. And so you guys were able to send agents north, but the north was also sending infiltrators south.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Correct, yes. Normally what the North Koreans would do was they would come up with three-man teams. Why three? It's one of the known facts in terms of communist organization and insurgency that you have an odd number because then you never have a split vote, if you will. You're going to have either unanimous or two against one. Okay. So in our case, what we were doing was basically sending individuals across.

• 13:09Jack Murphy?

  And I want to get into your service in Vietnam, but as we begin to talk about Vietnam and how you transition into special forces, I also need to ask you, what is the Intoku Code? If you can tell people what that is.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Okay, Intoku. The Intoku Code is something I picked up in my martial arts experience. And there was a little phrase written by a gentleman by the name of Koichi Tohe, who was one of the ranking Aikido masters in the world. And so he created this thing called Intoku, doing good in secret. And basically, what it says is, sow evil, reap evil. Sow good, and the harvest will be good. So whatever you say can never be done away with. But the whole intention is to do good for other people.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  And that is something that I had lived with even before I began my study of Aikido.

• 14:10Jack Murphy?

  And that's something you took with you through your career, as it's really evident in the book. So talk to us about Vietnam.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, initially, when I went into Vietnam, I went in as a... It was an interesting experience because I came out of Hawaii and I was a staff sergeant at that time. And I had six young soldiers that had, you know, never seen combat or never been overseas other than Hawaii in their lives before. So I took care of them. And when we landed at Tonsonut, there was nobody to greet us. And it was on a president's birthday in February of 1968, after the Tet Offensive.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  So the, the, the young men with me were quite nervous. So I, I gathered them around and I said, okay, you guys stay right here. And, and they asked me, sorry, why right here? And I pointed to a hole in the ceiling and I said, that's probably where a 122 millimeter rocket has come through. And the chances of another rocket coming through that same damn hole are about 10 million to one. So you guys stay here, I'll find somebody to take care of us. And I went off, I finally found somebody and they transported us to Long Bin, which was the replacement depot for US Army Vietnam.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  And I requested assignment to either the 5th Special Forces Group or the 25th Infantry, Infantry Division. And instead, they were gonna assign me to the US Army Vietnam G2 Section, Rear Echelon Organization, right there at Long Bin. And I protested, but they said, you have to go. So I, I had very good fortune because I, I walked in and lo and behold, there was now a major who I had known as a captain in Korea that was in charge of the operation that I was supposed to be working in.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  And I pled with him and he looked at me and he said, okay, I'll let you go provided you do one thing. I said, what's that, sir? He said, you spend the day with me talking about old times. I said, you got it. He, he lived up to his word, he released me. Again, I went back to the replacement depot and I said, 5th SF Group or 25th Infantry Division. They put two and two together and they sent me to the 525th MI Brigade.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  I ended up in what they called the counterintelligence team, the Trang, which covered a five-providence area, doing offensive counterintelligence. So we were recruiting agents, and that was our stock in life and our mission.

• 17:16Jack Murphy?

  That was the B-57 program?

• 17:19Speaker 03

  No, this was Second Battalion, well, CI Team, the Trang.

• 17:24Jack Murphy?

  Okay, okay.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Part of Second Battalion, 525th MI. So I made, or I had an agreement with the operations officer for the battalion, that if I gave him six hard months, he would release me. And I had the privilege of working with a very great warrant officer by the name of Bill Miller. And Bill and I were outranked, he as a warrant officer was outranked by other officers, and I as a staff sergeant was outranked by a couple of other NCOs. But we were the ones that had the experience at human intelligence.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  And so, the ops officer looked at us to be able to turn that whole thing around, because it was candidly not quite productive before Bill Miller came in, along with myself, and took charge of it. So after six months, I went back to the battalion. The operations officer had changed, and there was a,

• 18:36Speaker 03

  I don't want to swear, but a less than honorable person in charge. And he literally called me crazy. And he literally forced me to go and get a psychiatric evaluation, which I did.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  And of course, got a clean bill of health with the psychiatrist asking me, "You need to tell that major to come in here and get counselled himself." I said, "I can't do that, sir, you know that." So I went back, showed my clean bill of health, and the son of a bitch still wouldn't release me. And again, you know, sometimes your life runs in luck. So I protested and filed a complaint. They sent me to the brigade headquarters in Saigon, and there I was met by Colonel Mankin, the deputy commander. And again, he professed that he did not want to release me, regardless of the gentleman's agreement

• 19:35Speaker 03

  that I had with the previous battalion operations officer. And then he asked me one question, which was very fortunate. And he said, "So who are you going to work for in the Fifth Special Forces Group?" And I said, "Well, I am not quite sure, but the one that arranged it was Chief War and Officer Clarence Kawahigashi." And Colonel Mankin got very silent. And then he looked at me and he said, "You know,

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Chief Kawahigashi taught me everything I knew when I was a young lieutenant during the Korean War." He said, "It's only because of him that I'm going to release you." And I said to myself, "Hallelujah, you know, lucked out again." So I went off to the Fifth Special Forces Group,

• 20:32Speaker 03

  signed in in August of 1968, and stayed there until March of 1970. And actually, had intended to extend again, or had extended again, but my cousin, who was like a brother to me, was killed with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. And my sergeant major made me come back on emergency, permanent change of station orders.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  So that in short was, you know, the...

• 21:11Speaker 03

  Little bit shy at three years that I spent in Vietnam.

• 21:14Jack Murphy?

  Well, before we move on, I gotta ask you if you can tell us about B-57, what you guys were doing there and leading into the Green Beret case, which, you know, is pretty well-known, I think, by a lot of people.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Right, so the B-57 was started circa 1965, 1966, and its whole mission in life was to gain intelligence on Cambodia. Tactical intelligence, but the way we were going to do business was not to go in ourselves, but to recruit indigenous personnel, Cambodians, Montagnards, Vietnamese, whatever, that would cross into Cambodia and collect the intelligence for us. So initially, there was another portion of B-57 called Project Cherry,

• 22:12Speaker 03

  which recruited units of Cambodians to go into Cambodia. But that, for whatever reason, was disbanded, and we stuck with trying to recruit indigenous agents. We operated out of ten special forces camps, strung out along the Cambodian border, all the way from Hau Kyen in southern Four Corps, up to Duk Ho in, or Duk Lop in Three Corps in Vietnam.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  So normally, we operated with three to four people on a team. One would be a radio operator, and one would be a special forces person trained in intelligence, and the other probably would be a military intelligence person. And if we had another one, it could be either a special forces or an intelligence person. So we used interpretive principal agents, which we recruited, and they became our way of finding indigenous sources and handling them.

• 23:29Jack Murphy?

  And it sounds like it was overall a really good program, but unfortunately, it sounds like you also experienced where it started to come off the rails a little bit with Alvin Smith.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  In terms of success, what we were told later was that on any given day, B-57 would collect seventy-five percent of the useful

• 23:57Speaker 03

  tactical intelligence on Cambodia. And on its worst day, no less than twenty-five percent. So we were quite a productive unit for being of such small size. So we had an operation co-located at Mokwa and Tantri in four corps. Smith was supposed to be a case officer at one of them in Mokwa. He, after six months, had been totally unsuccessful in terms of getting any agent operation started. He had an interpretable personable agent. So we brought him back to headquarters and we found out that this guy was lazy.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  He candidly was incompetent. And nonetheless, he was looking for a way to justify his failure at Mokwa. And one day, we had received a cassette of film, thirty-five millimeter film, out of our station in Lopin, which is far away from Mokwa. It's located in three corps. And our photographer and myself

• 25:15Speaker 03

  developed the roller film and started printing the pictures out. And Smith came by and started pointing at one and said, "This is my man. This is my man." And I said, "What the hell are you talking about?" And he pointed to an indigenous Vietnamese that was seated in and amongst a number of North Vietnamese. And I said... What the hell are you talking about? So I pulled out his interpreter principal agent's dossier and I saw actually no likeness of the person in the picture and the picture of his interpreter principal agent.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  So Smith then went to the operations officer of B57 and the commander and tried to get them to act on it. And they refused to. Why they refused to, actually, I do not know. Because of the fact that they were gone within a month. They were close to rotating back to the States and did so. The new commander came in with a new operations officer and they fell hook, line and sinker for Smith's story. And there's a protracted number of events that happened after that.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Basically, they lured the interpreter principal agent into Saigon, luring him, telling him that they had a new job for him. And they started interrogating him. They drugged him. They brought him to Nha Trang, put him in a Connex container in the heat of July in Vietnam, and again started interrogating him. And twice, they put him on a polygraph machine. And twice, he showed deception indicated. Well, I contend, who wouldn't, under those kinds of circumstances? But nonetheless, the hierarchy in B57 decides that

• 27:25Speaker 03

  they're going to do away with him. Initially, they went to the CIA and tried to get the CIA to take Twin off of our hands. And basically, the CIA said, he's not our guy. It's your problem. And then they were correct. And so ostensibly, our ops officer, Bud Williams, asked them, "Well, what would you do in our case?" And ostensibly, again, the base agent in the Trang, at the Trang Base where the CIA, said, "Well, we might consider doing away with him with extreme prejudice."

• 28:10Speaker 03

  But he never said they would. So that was in Williams' mind, and they concocted a way that they were going to get rid of Chin, which basically was to take him out in the Trang Bay, shoot him in the head with a suppressed weapon, and then dump his body overboard with chains and to weight his body down in a mailbag. And they did so. Smith was part of that. And then, a month later, he started being anxious or having anxiety and thinking that he was next

• 28:55Speaker 03

  on the list to be assassinated, which was total malarkey. But nonetheless, he turned himself in to, initially to the Army and then to the CIA, asking for asylum. And that opened up the case. And the case went on for several months. And finally, court martial charges were going to be placed against eight individuals to include Colonel Barbaro, who commanded the Fifth Special Forces Group. In October,

• 29:39Speaker 03

  thanks to President Nixon and the intercession of the Army Secretary Stanley Weisor, General Abrams in Vietnam was told to drop the charges, and they were dropped. And...

• 29:56Speaker 03

  The eight people were freed. They were also free to continue their military careers. The only one that didn't was Colonel Roel. Because ostensibly, what they asked him, "Where do you want to be assigned?" He said, "The Fifth Special Forces Group." And the powers to be said, "Colonel, we can't do that. You know that." So he said, "I retire." But everybody else did not have to leave the military.

• 30:27Jack Murphy?

  It sounded like there were also some overzealous prosecutors that made a lot of mistakes and overstepped and that they tried to coerce and intimidate you as well.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  It wasn't so... Well, what I was told by an individual in the Judge Advocate General's office in Longbend was that beware of the chief defense attorney because he's working for the prosecution.

• 31:03Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Everything you tell him, he's going to tell the prosecution. I said, "I got you. Okay." So I asked this young gentleman, who was a Specialist Fourth Class from New York. He was a lawyer, but decided to get drafted rather than serve as a lawyer in the military because he knew he would be assigned as a legal clerk and would not have a long-term payback to the military. So after two years, he could get out.

• 31:39Speaker 00

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• 32:09Speaker 03

  So I wrote a message to him. Tell him how the two C I criminal investigation division bozos had botched the investigation by making threats, false promises, and tried to use coercion. And he got that to the defense attorneys. And so when I testified, they confronted

• 32:34Speaker 03

  the presiding officer in the Article 15 investigation with that statement. And they also raped the CID guy over the cold in concerning his methodology, if you will.

• 32:53Jack Murphy?

  So I mean, quite, quite a adventure through Vietnam and your time there. And, you know, the next place you were at Special Action Force Asia over in Okinawa and bouncing around some other places in the region. Well, I'd love to get you to tell us the story about how you met your wife in Korea.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Well, we, out of the first special forces group, we went up and on an annual exercise called Pole Eagle. And my sergeant major was a good friend by the name of Corn Beef Hollyamo. He had a colorful nickname. So Julian Hollyamo knew that I had been in Korea before. And he asked me, he said, do you know anybody that can help us out in terms of some services that we need? And I said, yeah. And just by chance, a gentleman by the name of Kwon that I had known all the way back in 1964

• 33:57Speaker 03

  was the area exchange manager out of Osan Air Base. So I went to see Kwon and I said, okay, Kwon, can you help us? And he said, what, what do you need? He said, well, my sergeant major wants a rochi kochi, which is a rolling canteen, if you will, that brings, you know, little goodies to eat as well as toiletries to sell. He wants that to come up at least once a day. And he needs a laundry.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  Because we we need to get our uniforms clean. He said, OK, and so I joked with Kwan and I said, whatever you do, send a good looking woman with with you. So lo and behold, my wife shows up running the laundry collection point. And and that's how we met. And what really made me take a liking to her is one evening I I walked in to where she was working and there were a number of Korean Special Forces soldiers around her giving her a hard time. And she had a cup of hot tea in her in her hand and she immediately threw it at them. And I said, that's my kind of gal.

• 35:16Jack Murphy?

  And you guys, you know, she she joined this adventure you were on through the the rest of your military career.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Absolutely, and and has been my pillar for over fifty two years of marriage.

• 35:34Jack Murphy?

  Wow, amazing. So the the next place you were at assigned to the Special Warfare Center. Start to tell us a little bit about that. As I recall, you had you held both enlisted and officer ranks at the same time, active and reserve. Tell us a little bit about that period of your life and meeting Charlie Beckwith and how that came onto your radar.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  OK, well, I came back out of Okinawa, not knowing if I could run or or or jump out of airplanes again. As I was in a a cast for six months after severely breaking my leg on a parachute jump on Okinawa. So I was assigned to the Special Forces School and the Sart major was named Henry Zerniak. And I went to Zerniak and I said, Sart major, I don't know if I can jump. I don't know if I can run again. I am certainly going to give it everything I have. And he looked at me, he said, dumbass, I didn't hire you for your looks. I hired you for your brains. You were assigned to the Ops and Intel Committee.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Yes, Sergeant Major. So I struggled to get back into shape. I was selected as a Special Forces School Instructor of the Year for 1974. And it's another long story, but I had been behind on promotions. And the reason why was the Army went to centralized records. And in my centralized records were four pieces of paper, with the most condemning one being my selection for the first advanced non-commissioned officer educational system class and no completion certificate.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't even know I had been selected because I was on Okinawa. Well, anyway, that was quickly rectified. I was quickly picked up to make Master Sergeant. And then I found out that there were no slots available in Special Forces for another, a new Master Sergeant. Special Forces had declined from a high of around 12,000 in Vietnam to less than 4,000 at that point in time in 1975. So there was no slots available. And two things happened.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  They told me, you might as well count on retiring out of the assignment you're going to, which was a Reserve Officer Training Course assignment at the University of Santa Clara. Because the guy before you spent six years there. And I said, wow. So I went around Fort Bragg at the time to say goodbye to some of my old friends to include Sergeant Major Errol Zaki. And Zaki had been and took a direct commission in Vietnam at the same time I had been offered a direct commission, and I had refused. He took it. And so I, I went to say goodbye to Arab.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  And then I teased him and I said, so why did you lower yourself to become an officer? And he looked at me and he said, seven hundred. And I said, what the hell are you talking about seven hundred? He said, dumbass, seven hundred dollars a month. I said, you were sergeant major. Seven hundred dollars a month. I said, well, some of it. I guess I should have done it. He said, well, look here. You want, there's a reserve commission board meeting right now. If you get your paperwork together tonight. I will get you before the board in the morning, but you gotta get your paperwork together tonight.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  And I did. And I took quite a lot of effort, but you know, my typing and writing skills came to the forefront. So I was ready. Passed the board with flying colors and received, received a reserve commission as a captain in infantry. There was no special forces branch at that time. And so off I went on the ROTC assignment.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  And later in, in 1977, when Delta was about to be started. I was selected to go to the Army Sergeant Major Academy, which I was. I called it extortion, but for a whole bunch of reasons, but, and I did not want to go. But nonetheless, I was forced to go. The day I reported there, my old boss on the Ops and Intel Committee, Forrest Foreman, said, call Beckwith.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  And I said, why? He said, because I told you to. I said, okay, Forrest. I called Beckwith and he, in typical Beckwith fashion, said, asked me, are you ready, boy? And I said, sure, I don't know what you're talking about. You goddamn know what I'm talking about. You're the intel pupil. Well, long story short, when I had left the SF School on that ROTC assignment, I had prepared a three-page letter for Colonel Beckwith, pointing out some ways that the Opt and Intel Committee could improve.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Without badmouthing anybody, but coming up with some plans and rationale in terms of changing things around. And he took that to heart. And so I became his first choice to be the Intelligence Art Major for the Delta Force.

• 41:39Jack Murphy?

  Those early days, I mean, were very interesting. Both there are a lot of interesting people in the unit, but also interesting things happening as you're trying to develop this counterterrorism capability. Do you want to tell us a little bit about, like, who are the people in this unit? How did your training begin? What it was like standing up a unit from scratch, essentially?

• 42:02Speaker 03

  Well, the good thing, the longer story is that Beckwith, when he relinquished command of the Special Forces School in late 1976, was given authorization by then Major General Bob Kingston, who commanded the JFK Center, and in fact was the only general officer in all of what they call Special Operations to date. But General Kingston authorized Beckwith to do a study to create a small British Special Air Service-type organization within US Special Forces.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  And Charlie Beckwith was doing that. Then a couple of things happened. This was late seventy six when he was given that authorization. So he's working on this study. And then in March of nineteen seventy seven, the so-called Hanafi Muslim incident happened in Washington DC, where the Hanafi Muslims, a splinter group with the Nation of Islam, took over three buildings in downtown Washington DC. And the federal government was paralyzed. And Washington Metropolitan Police Department had no capability to do surgical hostage rescue. So a call was made to General Kingston

• 43:28Speaker 03

  and asked if he could send his special forces up there to resolve the incident. And Kingston very honestly answered, "Only if you want the lives of all the hostages to be at risk." Because he knew special forces and the US Army did not have a surgical hostage rescue capability. So, but at that point, Kingston then turned to Beckwith and said, "Change your focus and start working on counterterrorism." And Beckwith did. He formed four others around him. Sergeant Major William Country Grimes.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Then Major Louis Burris. And

• 44:18Jack Murphy?

  Marion.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Hurst. And Chuck Odorizzi, who was a captain or major at that time. And they formed a study group and they started putting together how they were going to start Delta. What kind of people they needed? How are they going to do recruiting? How they were going to do operations? How they were going to do assessment and selection? Because that was something Charlie Beckwith adamantly insisted upon. So it was those five individuals that are most important in the formation of the Delta Force.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  And what happened then is in October of seventy seven, Beckwith happened to be in the Pentagon when Grenschut's Group of Nine, the German counterterrorism force, took back a hijacked airliner in Mogadishu, Somalia, with the help of the British Special Air Service. And one of the questions that was floating around in the Pentagon and National Command Authority was what is a flashbang? And the only guy in the building in the Pentagon that knew what a flashbang was was Charlie Beckwith.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  And that made a name not only for Charlie, but for the organization that he was working on founding. So orders were cut. And those orders were somewhere around nineteen November nineteen seventy seven to actually create the unit. But that unit was going to be created even before that because it had the support of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Plans by the name of then Lieutenant General Edward Meyer that knew he was going to be the next Army Chief of Staff and did.

• 46:24Jack Murphy?

  And some of the interesting guys that I believe Charlie's first deputy, Dick Potter.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely a superb person, officer, planner, and a patriot, yeah.

• 46:41Jack Murphy?

  I've spoken to him on the phone before. He is a great guy. I did not know that he socked someone in the Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Dick Potter played football at a college in Michigan that no longer has a football program, but he's a character and hard, hard as woodpecker lips, as they say, and one of my best friends in life.

• 47:15Jack Murphy?

  Potter went on to command 10th Special Forces Group, of course, and another interesting character, Herman Adler.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Oh, Herman the German, yes, yeah. Yeah, Herman unfortunately passed away a few years ago, but you know, he immigrated from Germany. He had a Volkswagen Kubowaagen, and so, you know, we used to tease him about being a kraut and still wanted to be in the Nazi Army. He was originally from Munich and still had family there, but Herman was really another, you know, most of our people initially were very quiet, very humble, wanting to do a

• 48:02Speaker 03

  job, not seeking to make a name for themselves, but to do something interesting for the country. And Herman, Dick Potter, I can name tons of others who are in the same boat.

• 48:19Jack Murphy?

  Another thing I'd like to ask you about, because you spend some time on this in your book, there was this question at the time, can Delta operate domestically in the United States? And there was some back and forth about this topic. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that conversation and how that evolved over time?

• 48:40Speaker 03

  Yes, well, there were people, yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  To be honest, I guess the people were split on whether we should have a domestic mission or not. At the time, it was overseas terrorism that was driving up the wall.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  And you can't do everything. And in order to do things domestically, what you needed was to have the Posse Comitatus Act waived or the Insurgency Act implemented by the President of the United States. And so that was going to be very problematic. And, you know, we simply, well, we needed to concentrate our efforts overseas. And eventually, that planned out, we had worked very closely with the FBI from day one, even before day one,

• 49:50Speaker 03

  when Beckwith had the special forces school. Okay. So, but they could not get the war with all to start what is called today, the hostage rescue team and their critical incident response group. It took them some years to

• 50:09Speaker 03

  to gain that authority. And there's another story about how that happened. But one of the most, the two most influential ones were

• 50:22Speaker 03

  John Otto, who had been the special agent in charge in Chicago, and in a year encountered two acts of Cheval Croatian terrorism in Chicago. And later became the executive assistant director of the FBI. And the other one was Jim McKenzie, who was the assistant director for Chronicle and the training side of the FBI. And he later would become a special agent in charge of a major field office. So those two were very influential in terms of bringing the FBI around to understanding that they needed.

• 51:06Speaker 03

  A hostage rescue team and dedicated capability.

• 51:11Jack Murphy?

  And I I will just point out for our viewers out there, we've had Danny Colson on the show.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  Twice.

• 51:18Jack Murphy?

  Twice, that's right. If you guys want to go back and look at that. And also Mike Vining, who was one of the original Delta members as well. So you can find those previous episodes.

• 51:27Speaker 05

  Danny Colson was one of the guys responsible for standing up the hostage rescue team. The story is fantastic.

• 51:32Jack Murphy?

  Wade, you wrote about Danny doing an exchange with Delta at one point.

• 51:38Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah. Well, you know, Danny

• 51:42Speaker 03

  came in as an afterthought. I'm being blunt about it, okay? Because the the movement within Division Six and Jim McKenzie was led by something called SOAR.

• 51:56Speaker 04

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• 52:26Speaker 03

  For his special operations,

• 52:30Speaker 03

  it was a unit anyway, and I forget what it was, but they had guys like John Simeoni, who became the first deputy. But Jim was a, or John was a former St. Louis cop, rough and rugged guy, and not, you know, suitable to candidly command.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  And Colson was. Colson was an up-and-comer in the FBI, and so he was picked particularly to lead the hostage rescue team.

• 53:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 53:05Speaker 05

  No, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I interrupted you. Please go ahead.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Initially, what the FBI wanted to do was to do sort of a

• 53:16Speaker 03

  Walk before you run thing. So they sent five guys down to Delta to spend a couple of months with us, led by Danny Coulson. Simeone was another. Jamie Asterton, who was their their major breacher for years, was another. Tom Nicoletti, and then who never became part of the hostage rescue team. But then Jeff Waymire and Jeff had been the SWAT team leader for the Washington Field Office and had been the lead on a mutual exercise

• 53:57Speaker 03

  that we did called Operation Masquerade that proved the capability of Delta and the need for the FBI to do something different other than their regional callouts. And so those five people were to form the cadre, if you will, for the HRT and did with the exception of Tom Nicoletti.

• 54:24Jack Murphy?

  So while all of this is going on, Delta is getting stood up and validated. And this was something interesting that I didn't know. The first mission that came across their desk was the kidnapping of Ambassador Dubs in Afghanistan. And then like a day later, the embassy in Tehran gets seized. Tell us what that timeframe was like.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  Well, it wasn't quite that close, but you know, we were alerted to the kidnapping of Ambassador Dubs in Afghanistan. And we started scrambling, trying to get ourselves out of Fort Bragg. And before we could even get off the ground, Dubs, Ambassador Dubs had been killed in Afghanistan. So that canceled that mission. Okay. In February of 1979.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  You know, the US Embassy in Tehran was taken over for the first time. The Ayatollah interceded and had it immediately turned back to the US government. But the only tricky wicket being they kept one Marine Security Guard, Kim Kraus, hostage for about a week, and they finally released him. But nonetheless, we knew there was just a forerunner to what was going to happen in Iran later. And we asked for permission to go in and do an extensive survey of the embassy and its surrounding areas and to be able to respond accordingly.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  The State Department approved, giving us what they call country clearance. But believe it or not, the United States European Command that had overview of Iran at that point in time denied us what is called theater clearance. So we were incapable of going in and doing a detailed survey of the embassy grounds and the embassy itself. And that cost us. It cost us big time.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  So when Delta was formed, General Meyer had made us do an initial assessment process in July of 1978, whereas what Beckwith had asked for was two years in order to develop a so-called full operational capability, which would have been 1979. So in 1970, we passed that, by the way, in 1978.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  And a so-called operation called Operation Blue Light was forced to close. So in 1979, General Meyer, now the Chief of Staff of the Army...

• 57:36Speaker 03

  Comes up with a plan for us to do an international validation. Because he understood what it would bring to the United States of America. If we had international personnel that vouched for the organization. So we did a exercise at in South Carolina. And the international validators included Ulrich Wegner, the first commander of the Grunschutz Gruppe 9, the German CT force.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  Christiane Plutau, the leader of their Gendarme international counterterrorism team. And Johnny Watts, Brigadier Johnny Watts, who had previously commanded the British 22nd Special Air Service and was the head of their special forces at that time as a Brigadier General. So those were our three key international validators. But it also included senior people from a whole range of US government organizations. So, and we passed. Ironically, we passed on the 4th of November, 1979, which was the day that our embassy

• 59:02Speaker 03

  was taken over again.

• 59:04Jack Murphy?

  Unreal.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  In Iran.

• 59:06Jack Murphy?

  So you are a intelligence officer in Delta. You guys are doing this real world mission. I mean, this is, you know, and you guys are really breaking ground here, doing something that no one's really done before. Can you tell us what it was like building the intelligence packet around this operation during the planning phase? How you went about, you know, putting all of this together?

• 59:30Speaker 03

  You mean initially or for the?

• 59:33Jack Murphy?

  Initially for when it was still Rice Bowl before Eagle Claw.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  Okay, so even before Eagle, well, you know, you have to go back and look at when we started in 1977. The total number of dedicated terrorism analysts in the entire United States government was less than 21.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  Twenty-one, entire US government, okay?

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  When we created Delta, I brought in four analysts, so now the count became twenty-five.

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  So, there was no extent terrorism database. Iran Corporation had sold a bill of goods to the United States Air Force and the Defense Intelligence Agency. And what they touted as a database was in fact just a compilation of events. That's not a database. So we worked with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on creating a true database that could be searched and with analy- analysis placed within those search fields. So that was one of the major things we did. We also began

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  very unique relationships with a number of intergovernmental agencies to include the FBI, CIA, the Department of Energy because of their nuclear emergency search program, and the Federal Aviation Administration because they are hijacking. And they had principal responsibility in those days. So, we had to work hard at establishing all of these relations to include with the Department of State. And so, fast forwarding, when the embassy gets taken down

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  in November nineteen seventy-nine, very quickly we were told that we needed to break all our contact with the Department of State.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  And at that point in time, nineteen seventy-nine, the best analysts of terrorism in the United States government

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  Were found in the State Department Diplomatic Security Watch Center. And there were about six analysts here that absolutely were doing a superb job. They were led by Telford, a former regional security officer, a former Marine. And he knew what the hell needed to be done. And his people did too. So when they would analyze a terrorist event, they would have drawings, schematics, listing of weapons. You know, looking at their methodologies, et cetera, so forth. So more than just a compilation of something that happened. So now we were told that we needed to break

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  our relationship with them and not contact them. The reason why was that Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, and his deputy Warren Christopher had declared that they were adamantly opposed to the use of any US military force to deal with the situation in Iran.

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  And so

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  whether it was President Carter or whoever, but the hierarchy declared that we needed to break those relationships with State Department. And we, we did.

• 1:03:31Jack Murphy?

  And Warren Christopher also. Well, I was just gonna say Warren Christopher went on to screw up in Bosnia too, didn't he?

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  But

• 1:03:45Speaker 03

  but anyway,

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  when, when, when the embassy went on.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  We needed to know a whole bunch of things because of the lack of preparation. We found that there were no good blueprints on the embassy. What happened was CIA and NSA got together. They called some of their people that had served in that embassy before. They got pictures, they got sketches, they got all kinds of things. And they put together a marvelous model, skill model, within a month of the event. Okay, and they also, even though we didn't have per se blueprints,

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  we started having information on doors, the way doors open, locks, and so on and so forth. Not as good as we would have liked to have had, but far better than nothing. Okay, so then there was the issue of how many hostages are there? And that took almost two weeks to determine. And in and amongst that time, it was also found out that in addition to the sixty-six Americans that were taken hostage inside the embassy and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on that day,

• 1:05:15Speaker 03

  that there were six others that the Canadians were hiding out. Joe. But then we needed to find out what are their medical conditions? And that took time. We needed to find out how can we get into Iran and out of Iran? And that took time and time and time. And so it was a very tedious and it took a lot of hours to get our plan together.

• 1:05:47Jack Murphy?

  One fascinating detail that I again was unaware of when I was reading your book. Could you tell us about Bob Plan?

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  Oh, a great American, yes. Uh, Bob during World War II was part of the Office of Strategic Services and served in Yugoslavia.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  Um, he later became a, what they call them, NOC, non-official cover operative for the CIA. And had gone into retirement. And he was retired in Trieste, Italy, right on the border with the former Yugoslavia. And they literally brought him out of retirement. Now, I, I don't know why they brought Bob Plan in particular out of retirement, but they chose the right guy. He had the skills, he had the courage. And he went into Tehran several times. With the first time being close to December of nineteen seventy-nine.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  It took the agency that amount of time to find somebody suitable to, to send into Tehran. And, you know, I can't go into all the details as to what Bob tried. But he tried to make contact with the hostages and had some success. He had a whole bunch of logistics things that he needed to do, like find a warehouse, find trucks, find fuel for the rescue attempt. He did that, uh, in a first-class manner. He did reconnaissance.

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, just too much to expect from one person.

• 1:07:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Speaker 03

  But he did what, what he could.

• 1:07:40Jack Murphy?

  He was, uh, the embodiment of the Intoku Code.

• 1:07:44Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah. Very quiet, uh. I did, I, you know, describing the book how I first met him, you know, stupidly.

• 1:07:56Speaker 03

  I say stupidly, but we were allowed to vet any resource that the agency was going to put in direct support of us. And Bob Plan was one. So I came out of isolation and up to Washington DC to have given the name of a motel that still exists.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  And went there to meet Bob Plan. Knocked on the door and heard a cross voice say, come in. And I went in there and sitting in a dark corner is Bob Plan. I'm looking at him and he's got a gnarled face and you know, suntan and

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  so I went up, I introduced myself to him. He stood up and in his gravelly voice, he started talking to me. And I asked him, I said, I understand you were in retirement. You know, where were you in retirement? So rather than say a yes, he said, in the Mediterranean. And for whatever stupid reason, the movie The Guns of NeverOlflashed in front of my mind. And I'm seeing Bob Plan looking like Anthony Quinn. You know, the partisan that went in and helped destroy these German implacements in the movie Guns of NeverOl. And I said to myself, this is going to work.

• 1:09:25Speaker 03

  This is a good guy.

• 1:09:27Speaker 05

  Out of curiosity, you were, since you were in the intel shop, I'll ask you this. I know it's close hold, but were you aware of the efforts of Grill Flame? While you were of Grill Flame?

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  The operation plan called for one MC 130 combat talent. The operation plan called for one MC 130 combat talent to lift off an hour ahead of the other 130s that were going to leave Monsieur Island. And the reason why was that they would be able to go in.

• 1:10:05Speaker 03

  And if we crash landed on the surface, then the mission would be aborted. Okay. But if we landed safely, then the remotely triggered landing lights would be checked out. And roadblocks, they they went around in an oval and lined up to to land again. And

• 1:10:28Speaker 03

  and they did successfully.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  It was a rough landing, according to most. I did not think it was a rough landing. I was standing on the rear of the aircraft at at the ramp. So I don't know if my adrenaline was flowing so fast or whatever, but I did not experience a rough landing. But everybody else later told me, yeah, it was a a very bad landing.

• 1:10:55Speaker 03

  So we started taxiing, the clamshell rear doors start opening. And I had asked the crew chief to signal me when they were about to stop. And so when I got the signal from him, I had worked out a plan with Staff Sergeant Little John, my ranking ranger, that we would then exit the aircraft. He would move forward and I would go to the rear to establish initial security. And that was very fortunate because shortly afterwards, I'm in the rear or to the rear of the aircraft.

• 1:11:36Speaker 03

  And I hear Bob Rubio, one of my rangers, come up on me on a motorcycle. And the next I get on the back of the motorcycle. And the next thing we see are the lights of a Mercedes bus coming down through down the road. Little John fired a M two O three forty millimeter grenade wrong. It impacted in front of the bus. The bus came to a stop. And I said to Rubio, I said, "Rube, let's go. We can't wait on our other two, who are Kurt Massey and Mike McGurk. They were air sick and a little slow getting off of the airplane. So we start taking off down this dirt track.

• 1:12:19Speaker 00

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• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  On a Yamaha motorcycle. He looks back at me and he says, "Sir." And I said, "I see him. Rube." What we saw were the lights of a vehicle coming at us. So I said, "Go left, go south, lay your bike down, grab one of your light anti-tank weapons that were strapped onto the handlebars of the motorcycle, and come up on me," which he did. I told him, "Move forward of me. Take cover behind the berm. The berm was where a road grader had put up about a one-foot berm on the side of the road." And Rubio did so. I'm standing in the middle of the road, signaling for the vehicle to stop. I know it's a truck

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  because of the height and spread of the lights. I can't tell you honestly how fast that truck is coming. I know I am illuminated by his headlights. He's still coming. I open fire with my M16, knowing in my heart I can't stop a damn truck with an M16. And I had a flashback to Vietnam, which is another story that's not pertinent, but... And our rules of engagement were minimal use of force. So I'm firing at the radiator and headlights, and I finally said, "F this," and I raised my point of aim. He's still coming. "Rube, sir. Cock your law. Ready, sir. Fire."

• 1:14:21Speaker 03

  A geyser of flame is going up

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  from the back of a 3,000 gallon fuel tanker. The truck did not explode, mind you, okay? But what the hell else can go wrong? So I said, "Rue, keep me covered. He's lying behind a berm." And I tried to do, move in on a circle to keep

• 1:14:51Speaker 03

  from being directly illuminated as I, instead of moving forward. And as I came in from the side, I saw another similar truck gasoline tanker come up behind him. And I ran back and to get Rubio. And I said, "There's another truck behind there." He said, "Sir, somebody just jumped out of the cab on the first one." I said, "Okay, let's go, grab the motorcycle." He took a number of kicks before the damn thing kicked over.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  Then Rubio is fumbling with his nitrogen goggles. And I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "My NVGs aren't working, sir." And I went like this. And I said, "Son of a bitch." I had given up my NVJs because we were short of equipment.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  And I'm cussing myself.

• 1:15:47Speaker 03

  But I said, "Okay, we had infrared paper taped over the headlights." So I said, "Rue, just give it your best

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  and take off. And if you go out 10 minutes or 10 miles and can't catch it, come on back." Which he did. And he was not able to catch the second vehicle. Had too much of a head start on us.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  But...

• 1:16:17Speaker 03

  I'm saying what the hell else can go wrong?

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  And in reality, the only other thing that only two other things that went wrong were the helicopters were late coming in.

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  And then one in corner had hydraulic problems. And Ed Seifer, who was the Helo Squadron Commander, declared that it was unflyable. That was imminent failure. And so we were down to five flyable and the mission was aborted. Then the next thing that went wrong was when Jim Schaefer was attempting to fly his helicopter back to the Nimitz, he collided with an EC-130 with Delta Space Squadron onboard. And that led to the death of three Marines and five Air Force people.

• 1:17:20Jack Murphy?

  And it was a little bit dicey, as I recall, for you during the exfiltration as well.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I you know, originally I was assigned three Rangers. For whatever reason, they decided, I don't know who they were candidly, but I was reinforced with seven other people. So now I had, including myself, a total of 11 and two motorcycles. So when the mission was aborted,

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  or even before it was aborted, I started shuttling my people back, two at a time, one on the back of the two motorcycles I had. And so I was the odd guy out. I was walking backwards down the road to keep my eye out towards where vehicles might come from. So I was unaware of the crash of the helicopter into the 130. There was a lot of noise out there, so more noise was meaningless to me in terms of a crash. And I certainly did not see the fire that ensued because I'm walking backwards.

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

  I might not have made it out if it weren't for

• 1:18:51Speaker 03

  the good work of Carl Savery, who was our acting surgeon, who made a jerk by the name of Johnson come back on his jeep to look for me one more time.

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  Otherwise, I'd have been left on my own.

• 1:19:13Jack Murphy?

  You guys evacuated back, began planning a second attempt honey badger. But by that time, the hostages had kind of been spread around, you suspected, and a hostage rescue effort would be not really possible.

• 1:19:29Speaker 03

  Correct, yeah. You know, because they were scattered through the seven winds.

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  You know, it would have been very problematic to go after three to five of them and to see the others undoubtedly be killed in the aftermath.

• 1:19:50Jack Murphy?

  There was one more Army adventure I'd like to ask you about, and that was,

• 1:19:57Jack Murphy?

  I guess, the next mission that the unit rolled into, which was potentially rescuing American POWs in Laos.

• 1:20:08Speaker 03

  That was a sad concoction of lies.

• 1:20:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  Fueled by retired Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel,

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  I can only have despicable words to describe him, yeah. But he lied, he continued with his lies even after the mission was called off because of the lack of true intelligence and the fact that it was in fact known that he had lied about crossing into Laos. But he continued to pursue

• 1:20:51Speaker 03

  what he wanted to do. And the rumor mill had it that he got over a million dollars each from Clint Eastwood and Bill Shatner on his lies.

• 1:21:06Jack Murphy?

  To fund his supposed rescue effort.

• 1:21:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And having supposedly seen live American POWs inside Laos.

• 1:21:17Jack Murphy?

  You point out in the book that the the intelligence was pretty shaky from the get go. I mean, there was an imagery analyst who thought that the shadows of the people in this area were tall enough that they were Caucasian. I mean, this is kind of flaky, right?

• 1:21:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And the other one was the supposed B-52 stamped in the grass around the compound. You know, first off, you had to strain yourself to believe that says B-52. And even if it did, what the hell's the meaning? It made no sense.

• 1:21:57Jack Murphy?

  And I mean, I I gather from your opinion, Wade, that you don't put any stock in this idea that there were American POWs left behind after the war.

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:22:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. I tend to agree with you based I was a little bit too young for that. But based on everything I've read and everyone I've talked to.

• 1:22:20Speaker 03

  You know, we had some defectors. I forget how many.

• 1:22:24Jack Murphy?

  Garfield.

• 1:22:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. But I, you know, real POWs.

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Well, you know, efforts ever since then have continued continually debunked live POWs left in Vietnam and after the Paris Accords and the return of our POWs.

• 1:22:49Jack Murphy?

  Talk to us then a little bit about retirement. How did how did you sort of end your career in the Army?

• 1:22:58Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, I retired very angry.

• 1:23:04Speaker 03

  I described as Bozo Johnson, who had become the Delta Deputy Commander without being either Delta qualified or Special Forces qualified. And

• 1:23:20Speaker 03

  was a lousy officer.

• 1:23:23Speaker 03

  He allegedly won the distinguished service cross in Vietnam. I don't know if he did or not. Well, all I know is he was a lousy officer. So

• 1:23:38Speaker 03

  General Dozier was kidnapped in Italy. And normally, I was one that would be selected to go on a so-called advanced party. So I walked into Johnson's office and I see this black kit bag with a black uniform, a black suppressed MP5, a black helmet. And I said, what the hell is this? And he looked at me and he said, well, you know, I said, no, I goddamn don't know. Well, we gotta be ready for, I said, go F yourself, you know? You're not goddamn qualified, you know? And besides that, you don't understand what the hell we're going there for. We're going there to support the US Embassy and the Italian government.

• 1:24:24Speaker 03

  And if the Italian government Italian government wants us, then we would consider hostage rescue. But you're not qualified. So why are you going with all this crap?

• 1:24:38Speaker 03

  And I walked out through my retirement papers and it was based on another thing that was happening where the Joint Special Operations Command, J2, was accusing me of sabotaging a program that I had created. I was very angry and

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

  I, you know, the term PTSD did not exist in those days. But I had it. And in my case, as I found out later,

• 1:25:09Speaker 03

  the manifestation that I have in terms of PTSD is called anger. And my anger was ready to literally knock the block off or kill this J2 or Johnson. And I said, I can't do that for my wife. It's time to go.

• 1:25:32Jack Murphy?

  And the, I mean, I guess it's somewhat ironic. After retirement, you found yourself working for Charlie Beckwith again.

• 1:25:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, it, it was, it was tough, very honestly.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  Charlie tried to pull the wool over my eyes on, on several things. I never told him, you know, go pounce in because I know what you're doing. But I did know what he was doing, like lowering my salary and so on and so forth. And, but, you know, the, the bottom line is I still wanted he to succeed and the business to succeed. But it came down to the point that there was no way in hell that it was going to succeed. Charlie just simply was not a good businessman, you know?

• 1:26:23Speaker 03

  And the kinds of things that we had intended to do were not doable.

• 1:26:34Speaker 03

  Unless we had a base upon which to lean on to pay the light bills, the salaries, et cetera.

• 1:26:45Speaker 03

  And instead of seed money, what we literally had was a desktop loan, which when the first National Bank of Midland went under, the

• 1:26:58Speaker 03

  The government investigators literally found that desktop loan in the president's desk of the First National Bank of Minnesota. And they were gonna call our company on that loan and have us pay it back. And we're not able to do so. So, shrugging my shoulders, it was on to something else.

• 1:27:20Jack Murphy?

  And you found some work with the Department of Energy and a number of other different contracting positions. And I mean, one of the things that came out through your book, and not all of these contractor jobs you had, but many of them, you sound very frustrated with petty bureaucrats, nepotism in the ranks, how people are being promoted.

• 1:27:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, as well as ethics and morality.

• 1:27:47Jack Murphy?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  And that continues to bother me, you know? Because I see people that get positions of authority without any decent qualifications. And it happens in every administration. So I'm not picking on Republicans or Democrats. I'm not picking on Biden or Trump or anybody, but it happens. But it is frustrating, okay? Because there are ways where the system can work, where you do legitimate selection based on qualifications.

• 1:28:32Speaker 03

  But a lot of times that does not happen. And that's just the way the world goes around, I guess.

• 1:28:40Jack Murphy?

  We can get a little bit more into it, but you know, you did continue to do some good in secret. But one thing I wanted to point out and ask you about was, after 9/11, you started going on Fox News as a sort of military analyst. And I wanted to ask you what it was like to be this person that had lived your life sort of in the shadow as an intelligence professional, and now being on television in front of a camera telling, talking about this stuff.

• 1:29:06Speaker 03

  Okay. Well, my motivation to go on Fox was because there were too many talking heads that absolutely had no concept of what they were talking about.

• 1:29:20Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:21Speaker 03

  And they were lying, they were embellishing things, they were trying to make themselves look good. You know, my intent was to counter what they were doing without revealing classified information. And, you know, some people may disagree with me, but I think I did that very well.

• 1:29:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, we saw, you know, like Wayne Simmons and others that like gained national notoriety on these shows, who were completely, had completely falsified backgrounds.

• 1:29:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. There was a guy named Custer, former Ranger, you know. Custer later, under his company, Custer Battles, was brought under charges for contract fraud in Iraq, for providing something like 200 vehicles without engines, with his claim being that contract did not specify working engines. Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 1:30:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remember his security company in Iraq. I heard that like guys would show up and they'd hand in like these old ratty beat up AKs with a couple of like rusted out magazines and it's like, and like this is their security contract.

• 1:30:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there were, there were other people that,

• 1:30:50Speaker 03

  to include some high ranking officers, Lieutenant General retired Air Force, Tom McInerney.

• 1:30:57Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:30:58Speaker 03

  Had been the Director of the Joint Staff.

• 1:31:02Speaker 03

  He didn't have a clue.

• 1:31:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 03

  In terms of what he was talking about. And so,

• 1:31:10Speaker 03

  yeah, you know, it was, like I say, my motivation was to counter these talking heads that

• 1:31:18Speaker 03

  had no basis in fact for what they were talking about.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  But without revealing classified information. I was pushed hard several times on Fox. Well, tell us about this, tell us about that. You know, I would just smile and say, sorry.

• 1:31:38Jack Murphy?

  But you did go on to do some, I mean, some frustrations, but also it sounds like some good work at ASD Solik, the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Special Operations on Low-Intensity Conflict, for our listeners out there in the Office in the Pentagon. Tell us a little bit about that.

• 1:31:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a mixed bag because, you know, the Assistant Secretary was someone that I had hired to replace me in Delta, and I had nurtured him through all these years. And when he got the call, asking him if he was prepared to be nominated.

• 1:32:19Speaker 00

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• 1:32:49Speaker 03

  Allegedly, he called me and said, "You're the first guy I've talked with, okay." Not allegedly, that's what he told me when he called me. He said, "What do I do?" I said, "You take the damn job." "Well, are you gonna come in and help me?" I said, "I'll come in and help you, provided you allow me to do one thing, and that's to build you a strategic plan." "Okay." Well, God bless Tom O'Connell, he reneged on that. And he reneged on a number of other things that I wanted to do. But regardless, I still was

• 1:33:30Speaker 03

  able to do a lot in ASD Solik. And so when I walked away from that organization, I held my head high. But there were things that still require fixing that I could have fixed, along with the help of others, all the way back in 2004, 5, 6, and 7.

• 1:33:58Jack Murphy?

  Why do you think there was this bureaucratic resistance to that effort, Wade?

• 1:34:10Speaker 03

  I'll describe a phenomenon that I've seen so many bureaucrats come in.

• 1:34:17Speaker 03

  Whether it's in the private sector or in government.

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  If they get handed something that they don't know anything about, instead of trying to learn, they try to hide their inabilities and their lack of knowledge. And one of the ways they do that is to create different ways of describing something, where there's no need to change the terminology.

• 1:34:50Speaker 03

  So the best example I can give you is in the Pentagon, there was a retired Navy captain who only became the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy because his wife worked for Donald Rumsfeld and said she would have to terminate because her husband was being moved. And Rumsfeld says, "I can't have you leaving."

• 1:35:18Speaker 03

  And made them hire this retired Navy captain, who had never done policy in his life, as a principal number two

• 1:35:30Speaker 03

  in defense policy.

• 1:35:32Speaker 05

  That's crazy.

• 1:35:33Speaker 03

  So he could not comprehend what unconventional warfare was. So he created a term called irregular warfare. And all his psychopaths ran around kissing his you-know-what, saying, "Oh, irregular..." I said, "You know, describe for me what the hell irregular warfare is." "Well, you know, no, I don't know, you know." "What is the difference between irregular and regular warfare?" "Well..."

• 1:36:03Speaker 03

  And I get all this tap dancing. And for seven years, there was a one-paragraph definition in JCS Publication 1, the DOD dictionary. And now you've got people trying to say what irregular warfare is. It was a waste of time. It's what I call forcing others to learn.

• 1:36:29Speaker 03

  And you try not to show your stupidity.

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  By creating new terminology and causing people to run off and try to deal with your terminology because you're in a position of authority and power. And that, as you can tell, greatly angers me. And it's one of the reasons that a government is not effective when they put the wrong people in charge.

• 1:36:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you point out a few examples in the book where like people are getting hired because like this person's having an affair with this person, so they're hiring. It's like, oh, my God, really?

• 1:37:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I tried not to name names for the most part because, you know, my intent was to talk more about the good people.

• 1:37:25Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, I get it.

• 1:37:26Speaker 03

  And I hope I did that.

• 1:37:28Jack Murphy?

  You did.

• 1:37:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:30Jack Murphy?

  Um, so I think we're going to have some questions from our viewers and listeners, but my last question tonight, Wade, for you is I'd like to ask, what inspired you to write the Intoku Code? After, you know, again, spending your life in the shadows, what made you decide to come forward and tell your story?

• 1:37:49Speaker 03

  The long story was I made an agreement on March 1, 2007, over 17 years ago. Okay. And it was with a friend by the name of Mizuhiko Bobrovsky. Mizuhiko had been adopted by a Navy sailor, was of Japanese ethnicity, became a naturalized citizen, came into Special Forces and retired from Special Forces as a Sergeant First Class.

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  He had 10% disability from the Veterans Administration, which means he was not getting anything. Okay?

• 1:38:37Speaker 03

  His wife was fighting breast cancer. And his daughter was enrolled in an expensive East Coast university. And he needed to make some more money. So what Mizuho was doing to make money was he was a photojournalist going back and forth to Japan. And so he had this idea. If I write the book, he'll get it translated. He'll get it published. And he'll make, well, he wanted me to make the money. But I was more concerned with him getting the money to take care of his family. And so we made that agreement

• 1:39:20Speaker 03

  on March the first, two thousand and seven. Clearly remember the day. He went home to Los Angeles. In early April, started having stomach pains. And by mid, late April was dead of rampant pancreatic and liver cancer that had metastasized throughout his body. So I lost the interest to write the book. And but over the years, I've had so many of the people I've mentored, people I've helped to say, write your book.

• 1:40:03Speaker 03

  Because there are plenty of lessons to be learned from your life. And so I finally said, OK, I need to get off my butt and get it done. And I did.

• 1:40:18Jack Murphy?

  And I, you know, throughout this interview, we really just covered the wave tips. There's much more in this book in the Intoku Code. I hope you guys will go and pick it up. It's out now. What kind of questions do we have from our listeners?

• 1:40:34Speaker 05

  So what is the pass rate for getting into Delta? And the question is more about like Green Beret and Delta. And then if they fail, is there like shame when they go back to their units?

• 1:40:50Speaker 03

  Okay, from early on, you know, and I can't tell you exactly what the

• 1:40:56Speaker 05

  Or Green Beret Rangers, yeah, Green Beret Rangers, I'm sorry, I don't know if I said that, go ahead.

• 1:41:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay, I can't tell you exactly what the pass rate is for Delta.

• 1:41:08Speaker 03

  In the early days, it was somewhere between 10 and 20% with every class being different, okay? But seldom, if ever, over 20%.

• 1:41:22Speaker 03

  It's a grueling process. In terms of Special Forces, thanks to Dick Potter,

• 1:41:31Speaker 03

  when he was the deputy to Jim Guest at the Special Forces Command, he came up with the idea that SF needed an assessment and selection course, which they came up with and stick to to today. I understand their pass rate is significantly better.

• 1:41:57Speaker 03

  But I don't know, again, what the exact percentages are. But it is significantly better than the Delta Assessment and Selection process.

• 1:42:07Speaker 05

  And then outside of just the initial selection, you would also, like, OTC itself was very challenging, and so guys would would wash out of that for marksmanship or whatever else, right?

• 1:42:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. So the whole idea was, you know, just because you passed Assessment and Selection, you were still not a full-fledged member of the unit until you successfully completed OTC.

• 1:42:42Speaker 05

  So, Lee, thank you. Would a better quality of soldier be produced by the Delta selection if they incorporated jungle training like the SAS into their selection?

• 1:42:56Speaker 03

  Well, that was a hard thing to contend with because,

• 1:43:03Speaker 03

  you know, as we looked at the SAS selection, there are different phases to include a jungle phase and other phases. So we decided, Charlie Beckwith decided, we did not need that in Delta. Because our mission was not to be as broad as the SAS mission is. Even though we might have to operate in the jungle or whatever, but our basic mission was counterterrorism.

• 1:43:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:43:37Speaker 03

  And the basic premise was that for the most part, we're going to do that in urban areas.

• 1:43:46Speaker 03

  And even with what the events in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Syria,

• 1:43:57Speaker 03

  when they're doing their operations, for the most part, they're still conducting them in urban areas.

• 1:44:07Speaker 03

  So why then did we need those jungle skills?

• 1:44:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:44:12Speaker 03

  Not to question anything SAS was doing,

• 1:44:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:44:15Speaker 03

  but their purview is totally different.

• 1:44:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:44:20Speaker 05

  M. Corbin, thank you. What did discovering the Intaku code impress upon you?

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  Well, when I came across it, it verified something that I had already believed in for years. Okay. That is being humble, helping others, and understanding that once you open your mouth, those words never go away. So you better watch what the hell you say. You better stand behind what you say. And you better mean what you say. And so I've lived by that code for a long period of time. Yeah.

• 1:45:08Speaker 05

  Zachary McCoy, thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Let's raise a glass to those who aren't here but paid the ultimate sack price so we could be. Thank you, guys. Great episode and great show. USMC.

• 1:45:22Speaker 05

  So, thanks, thanks Zachary. Joe's got you. Is it true that Dick Meadows played a big part in helping Beckwith train and shape the first Delta operators?

• 1:45:34Speaker 03

  With all due respect to Dick, who was a great friend, he did not, okay? He was brought in basically as a consultant into the Ops section of Delta. The way he was used, for the most part, was because of his charisma to do a lot of briefings to senior officers and to different organizations. Because he would, you know, walk into a room and because of his charisma and because of what had been written about him previously,

• 1:46:17Speaker 03

  everybody would just nod their head in agreement, okay? And I used to tease him. I said, you know, you're like Miss America walking into a room.

• 1:46:27Speaker 04

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• 1:46:58Speaker 03

  And giving the briefing. All the males are going like this. Not because they agree with her, but they're scanning her up and down, you know? And he laughed and it was a standing joke.

• 1:47:11Speaker 05

  Was there, we've just recently heard, you know, sort of about the tension between Beckwith and the Blue Light guys. Were you kind of involved? Were you around that when it happened?

• 1:47:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, to be blunt and candid about it.

• 1:47:34Speaker 03

  What the Blue Light people were made to do was, once they were told that they had to disband, is they were forced to come to a briefing where Beckwith was going to try and recruit them for Delta.

• 1:47:52Speaker 03

  So they came in with a chip on their shoulder because they had believed that they had an opportunity to gain the CT mission.

• 1:48:04Speaker 03

  Frankly, that was not true.

• 1:48:07Speaker 03

  And I can give you all kinds of evidence to prove what I'm saying, but that's not the point. The point is, they came in with a chip on their shoulder. The second point is that Beckwith blew the damn briefing. He could not answer their questions. One of their basic questions was, "Why should we go through your assessment and selection?" "We're Vietnam veterans. We've done this. Some of us went into the Sante raid. We've done that." And on and on. Beckwith just could not answer their questions in an understandable fashion.

• 1:48:49Speaker 05

  So it's kind of a two-way issue?

• 1:48:52Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And unfortunately, I lost some lifelong friends who were on Blue Light that would never talk to me after that.

• 1:49:03Speaker 05

  That's terrible. Yeah, it's unfortunate.

• 1:49:08Speaker 05

  That, Adam, thank you very much. My first time seeing Wade was seeing him testify to Congress about the ATF's raid on Waco. Can I ask how cooperative the ATF were with his work?

• 1:49:24Speaker 03

  Frankly, after we did the report...

• 1:49:28Speaker 03

  I'll tell a story and I'll name a name, okay. Jerry Petrelli was one of the leaders of that operation. He was the resident agent in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the time the raid occurred, okay. And because I'd lived in Albuquerque, I was able to meet Petrelli later on. And, you know, when we met, he called me a whole bunch of names and he said, "You son of a bitch, you know, I read your report with a microscope." And he said, "You son of a bitch, you were right."

• 1:50:09Speaker 03

  And we became good friends after that. The unfortunate thing with ATF was that the two leaders, Winoski out of Houston and Saraband is ASAC out of Houston, were not good leaders. Very inexperienced. And then in the aftermath, they should have been taken to court because they altered evidence for no good reason whatsoever. What they did was they altered the operations plan, again, for no good reason. Because that operations plan

• 1:50:54Speaker 03

  was not going to make what they said or what they tried to do fail or do better, you know. But, anyway. So... But everybody else on that ATF effort gave it their best. And I mean, there were some true heroes there, you know. There is a video which shows a female agent with an arm in her hand. And the arm is raised and she's compressing.

• 1:51:35Speaker 03

  A wound that were the other, the wounded agent would have bled to death. And she held it on him, couldn't find a tourniquet for almost an hour.

• 1:51:46Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:51:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know.

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  And there was a former Marine, Kenny, who was a lieutenant in, who had fallen between the two buildings and lay there with broken bones and wounds for the number of hours it took to, to call a truce. And I mean, Kenny King, I believe it was, was his name. But,

• 1:52:19Speaker 03

  you know, I,

• 1:52:22Speaker 03

  I had nothing but good things to say about the ATF agents. It was their leadership that I had questions about.

• 1:52:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then the last one here, Green, thank you very much. Hey Wade, just curious, despite Delta not having a jungle phase, does that mean they don't train for jungle SR patrol skills during or after, during or after OTC?

• 1:52:49Speaker 03

  Um, I, I don't, you know, candidly, I don't know what they're doing or not doing today. I don't have a need to know. All I know is that in preparation for that La Ocean thing, we did do some jungle training.

• 1:53:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it seems like, and again, I don't know what they do either, but it seems like it'd be one of those more, you know, mission-based type training efforts.

• 1:53:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:20Speaker 05

  You know, they're, they're, they're good at what they do. And, you know, you take what they do and apply it to different environments. You know, it's the environmental challenges that they need to learn to overcome.

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:53:32Speaker 05

  Uh, Dee, was there anything on Patreon? Okay.

• 1:53:35Jack Murphy?

  Okay. Um, so Wade, thank you so much for spending your evening with us and telling us your story and telling us about the Intoku Code.

• 1:53:47Speaker 03

  Well, I hope you enjoyed it and more so, I hope your audience enjoyed it also.

• 1:53:55Jack Murphy?

  It was terrific. Any final thoughts you want to leave us with before we get going? Anything that you wish I had asked that I didn't?

• 1:54:02Speaker 03

  No, well, the only thing I hope is that

• 1:54:08Speaker 03

  the readers will walk away saying,

• 1:54:12Speaker 03

  we need to do better as individuals in terms of providing military, national, or public service to our nation. This is a great nation. God bless America.

• 1:54:27Speaker 03

  We need to get with the program and not be about ourselves.

• 1:54:33Jack Murphy?

  I hope people will go.

• 1:54:34Speaker 04

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:55:04Jack Murphy?

  Pick up the Intoku code. It's out now. And we will be back on Friday with, I believe, Andrew Bragg, 82nd Airborne.

• 1:55:12Speaker 00

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:55:41Jack Murphy?

  Veteran who served overseas in Afghanistan.

• 1:55:46Jack Murphy?

  And that's it, that's it for tonight. Wade, thank you very much for joining.

• 1:55:49Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:56:18Speaker 03

  Okay, thank you, gentlemen. Have a great night.

• 1:56:22Jack Murphy?

  It's such a pleasure, thank you.

• 1:56:24Speaker 03

  Okay, bye.

• 1:56:25Speaker 04

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:56:56Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.