#153 Kris Paronto - Inside the 13-Hour Benghazi Gunfight and the Hillary-Obama Cover-Up

Kris "Tanto" Paronto is a former Army Ranger and CIA security contractor known for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack, where he helped save over 20 lives while fighting off terrorists for 13 hours. He served four years in the Army Rangers and four years in the Army National Guard, achieving the rank of sergeant before commissioning in 2003. Paronto later worked as a private security contractor in various regions, including South America, Central America, the Middle East, and North Africa. After his time with the CIA, Paronto became an author and public speaker, sharing his experiences from the Benghazi attack. He co-authored "13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi," which was adapted into a film. Additionally, he wrote "The Ranger Way: Living the Code On and Off the Battlefield" and "The Patriot's Creed: Inspiration and Advice for Living a Heroic Life." Currently, he is the lead instructor at Battleline Tactical, hosts the Battleline Podcast, and speaks at seminars and conferences worldwide. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://ramp.com/srs https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner https://americanfinancing.net/srs NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.458% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-781-8900 for details about credit costs and terms. Kris "Tanto" Paronto Links: Website - https://kristantoparonto.com Books - https://www.tantosgearlocker.com/booksanddvds YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/BattlelinePodcast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/real_kris_tanto_paronto Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TantoTribe X - https://x.com/KTantoP LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristantoparonto 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

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 0:04Speaker 00

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

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is.

• 0:10Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:24Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not admitted without parent.

• 0:35Shawn Ryan?

  Chris Paronto, welcome to the show, man.

• 0:38Speaker 05

  Long time coming, I would cry if I said it, but thanks for, and you're so tolerant, man. That was so cool that you were just willing to wait and then just, hey, I'm gonna be in town and I hope you didn't have to bump anybody. If you did, sorry, guys, but just, you've always been a stand-up guy with me.

• 0:54Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 0:54Speaker 05

  I appreciate that, it's really cool, yeah, thanks, bud.

• 0:57Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure, I'm just happy you're here and I'm extremely patient, so.

• 1:02Speaker 05

  There aren't many stand-up guys in there, in the world, even coming out of our community anymore in this public figure world, so it's nice to still find a few out there like yourself. I try to be, but I'm not always a stand-up guy, actually.

• 1:17Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I'm sure you are.

• 1:19Speaker 05

  Talk to my wife, man, I need to bring you home, talk to my wife about how nice and reasonable I am, because I don't get that respect at home, man.

• 1:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Chris, I want to do a life story on you.

• 1:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:32Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and obviously talk a lot about Benghazi and what you're doing now, but we're gonna cover the full spectrum here. And so, everybody starts off with an introduction.

• 1:48Speaker 05

  So, are you gonna read? Don't make me feel like a pretentious asshole.

• 1:51Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, no, you're good, everybody gets one. Chris Paronto, former Army Ranger, 2nd Battalion, 75th Regiment. You're sponsored to the Benghazi 2012 attack. You're the author of The Ranger Way and the Patriots Creed, co-author of 13 Hours, the inside account of what really happened in Benghazi. You're a motivational and public speaker and the co-host on Battle Line Podcast.

• 2:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:19Shawn Ryan?

  You're the founder of the 14th Hour Foundation, owner of Battle Line Tactical, and co-owner of Tonto Vodka.

• 2:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:28Shawn Ryan?

  You're the host of a pro-military documentary series, War Heroes. You co-founded E3 Firearms Association, and you're the father, you're a father, husband, and a Christian.

• 2:41Speaker 05

  That's the most important there at the bottom.

• 2:43Shawn Ryan?

  That's right.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  You could've cut out everything else and just read that at the bottom and I would've been perfectly happy, right?

• 2:49Shawn Ryan?

  That right there just tells everybody what a great man you are.

• 2:54Speaker 05

  I appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks, man. Thank you. It's cool of you to say.

• 2:59Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. What is the E3 Firearms Association?

• 3:01Speaker 05

  Well, you know, it's so difficult. I don't know if you know Adam Paintshod. Adam was a SIG firearms instructor. He started SIG Academy.

• 3:10Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  Trooper in New Hampshire. It is a training website. It has been so difficult, though, to get that thing off the ground. It was just running to roadblock after roadblock because of Google.

• 3:23Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  Because, hey, and if you don't think they're state-run media and state-run, state-run internet web, there is. You have to be dumber than a bag of hammers to not see that out there. But it's, we've tried to get it going. There's a lot of training materials on there, videos out there. And, you know, you get sponsorships to come to Battle Line Tackle courses. If you're a member, you come to my courses for free.

• 3:47Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:48Speaker 05

  I mean, it's just, it's a-

• 3:49Shawn Ryan?

  So is it an online training platform?

• 3:51Speaker 05

  It's an online training platform, but it's a paid online training.

• 3:54Shawn Ryan?

  How many, how many lessons are on there?

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Oh, man. I know just hip pocket training stuff where I'll just jump on and do a 10-minute video. We've got to have 50 or 60 videos on.

• 4:04Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, right on.

• 4:05Speaker 05

  And Adam's a wonderful, wonderful instructor. He is, I am the loosey-goosey, "Hey, man, let's just go out and shoot. I'm gonna give you some lessons." Adam is, which is, which is great, it's a great dynamic, because he, you do, there are people that respond to that kind of training better. The buy the book lesson about where some guys respond to just tell me what I need to do. This is what you need to do. But you know, it's been, we've had it going for a few years now. And it's just always trying to improve the website, get that flowing. It's E3 does a, and it's a whole association. So it's not just firearms, there's camping, it's outdoor. Oh, wow. Camping, aviation, John Rain Waters runs the aviation side of it.

• 4:49Speaker 05

  You know, RVing, off-roading. And I say, I, so I tell the E3 owner, his name's Brian, Brian Johnson. I tell him, yeah, firearms is like the redhead stepchild of E3. Cause all those are cruising and ours is just, it's, it's been very difficult. And I, and I get it too, cause you know, it's a paid website where there's a lot of YouTube sensations out there that are showing training and you can get that for free. Yeah. So it is, and it's, I, I won't do the, the free video stuff. And, and the reason being, it's not a money thing. It really is, you, you really don't have any control of who those videos are going to. And where do I get that from?

• 5:28Speaker 05

  Well, I, I spoke at an FBI Academy Conference, which had a lot of law enforcement officers, a lot of former FBI trainers. And I sat down with them and they're great guys, you know, of course, it's not all formal functions. I'm with a bunch of cops, man. So of course we're going to go to the bar a little bit and, and enjoy, enjoy, have some food. But I remember coming back and I sat with one of the officers and he goes, you know, you've had Don Shipley on, I know, he goes, you know, I, I watched Don's videos, but now it's starting to bother me. A lot of these videos out there, cause they're teaching all these tactics and they don't know, they have no control of who's getting them. And the Dallas Police Office, Dallas Chief of Police came in and they had that tactical shooting where some officers died.

• 6:12Speaker 05

  And he was one of the speakers at that event as well. And it kinda hit home to me, I was like, man. He's exactly right. We're putting all these videos and God bless him. I have nothing wrong to say about him. I don't know, Don. We've never met. I support what he does. I think, you know, he's a, from what I've seen, he looks like he's a stand-up guy. And I'm just throwing that as an example because that's what the law enforcement officer said, the police, he was from Philadelphia. He's like, we just, you know, we're really, we're really getting, not upset, but he says, we're really worried that the bad guys are starting to watch these videos out there.

• 6:46Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, there's a caveat to that, too. You know, I mean, what the [bleep] are people supposed to do? We've defunded the police. The border is wide open.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:56Shawn Ryan?

  They are actively sending eighty-seven million dollars a week to the Taliban.

• 7:00Speaker 05

  The Taliban. That's...

• 7:01Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry, man. You know what I mean? But people have to be able to defend themselves, and that's where they go to do it.

• 7:09Speaker 05

  And they go on, and so...

• 7:11Shawn Ryan?

  And that stuff's out there no matter what.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  And that's where it's just, it's where I can at least have some control, though.

• 7:18Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, I mean, I mean, people are, I a hundred percent get your point.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  And it didn't make sense to me till he said it, too. Yeah, till he said it. Like, I never really thought about it.

• 7:27Shawn Ryan?

  But there is context. There's a, things aren't the same as they used to be.

• 7:30Speaker 05

  Not at all.

• 7:30Shawn Ryan?

  And the people, it's dangerous out there. I mean, Chicago is the murder capital of the country, and more people are dying there than they did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• 7:41Speaker 05

  And it's no shock that that is one of my most, I have arranged with a Chicago cop, the VOD Defense, Daniel Lombard, tremendous guy. We've got a range called The Compound. I don't think that's any coincidence that the major, that are, those are the biggest classes that I will have when I teach out there. At The Compound in Crete, Illinois, it's run by Daniel Lombard, the VOD Defense is his training company, but he's a, he's a lead farm instructor for the Chicago PD. He's getting older now, so he's off the street now. He's teaching. But, but you're right. It's just this, where, where do I find some responsibility? And again, I never thought of it that way until I talked to him. I was like, you know, he's, he's got a point. So, I'm not gonna stop doing videos. Don't get me, no, that's not gonna happen. But where can I at least have some control? I'm

• 8:26Speaker 05

  not gonna stop teaching tactics with my classes. Well, Donald, you're a hypocrite. No, I at least have some control. I know who I'm teaching. I at least have something. And if, and have we turned students away when I couldn't verify what they could carry, criminal? Yeah, we have. I've done it. So...

• 8:44Speaker 05

  I'm not ever gonna tell guys to stop teaching tactics.

• 8:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  And it's an outlet for us, too. It's therapeutic for us. But I would just say, after talking to that police officer and getting back to the E3 stuff, being a paid website, I'm a problem with it being paid. Because we have some control of at least who the members are and who's watching. And if it's somebody that maybe is a criminal, shouldn't be owning a weapon, we have some little control that we can, alright, I can't stop them from learning from other guys, but you're out. We can't teach you anymore. But getting back to the E3 again, it has been an uphill climb with it because it is a paid website and you can get the training for free on YouTube. Or Instagram. And

• 9:29Speaker 05

  but you know from tactics are tactics are tactics. Shooting is fundamentals. There is no secret sauce. There's no Jedi mind trick. You're not gonna, I'm not gonna be teaching how to use the force. The way I shoot, you can go watch another shooter and you're gonna get the same stuff.

• 9:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 05

  It's just a presentation. Who do you like? What resonates with you? So, yeah, E3 has been good and I think it's wonderful because we're part of an outdoor or tell them, hey, go do something. Fire and shooting is outdoor. Shooting is relaxing. At least in my opinion, shooting is you're outside in the fresh air or you're at least doing something active. It's a sport.

• 10:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  It really is. I mean shit, you have the competitions, the USCCA, you have all those, the tag games. It's a sport now.

• 10:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Speaker 05

  And it should be like that. The reason I'm getting into, why I talk about it and the paid and not paid is is really why don't do more unpaid YouTube videos online. I don't, I don't do that. That's why I don't is because I don't have control of who's watching it and and it was that conversation with that Philadelphia police officer and then listening to, he spoke before I spoke, the Dallas Chief of Police, and not, he wasn't condemning it at all. He's just saying this guy knew what he was doing. He had some tactics. And let's say know what he was doing. He knew how to pie.

• 10:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  He knew how to, he knew how to edge a corner.

• 10:50Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Chris, before we get too deep into the interview, everybody gets a gift.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  Oh, no, man, you're all gifted.

• 11:01Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing but hospitality.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  Oh, man. They're gummies.

• 11:04Shawn Ryan?

  That's right. Those are legal in all 50 states. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately for you, I don't know. But they are made here in the USA.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  Oh, that's what.

• 11:15Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, yeah, so there you go. Some vigilance to leak gummy.

• 11:19Speaker 05

  Thank you, bro.

• 11:19Shawn Ryan?

  Those are hard to come by, by the way.

• 11:20Speaker 05

  And this is, actually, this is going on my side by side when I get home.

• 11:23Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 11:24Speaker 05

  It'll be at the range, man.

• 11:26Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  And I thank you. Thank you so much. And, uh, do you, we need to bring manufacturing back to this country, man. The only thing we're manufacturing now is drama and fricking political bullshit.

• 11:36Shawn Ryan?

  That's right.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  We need more manufacturing. Thank you, man.

• 11:39Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. One last thing.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:42Shawn Ryan?

  Before we get in, I got a Patreon account. There are my top supporters have been here with me since the beginning. And, um, they're the reason I'm here and you're here.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 11:51Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh, one of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  Uh-oh.

• 11:58Shawn Ryan?

  And so this one is from Moose.

• 12:03Speaker 05

  What's up, Moose?

• 12:06Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like for you to see the Obama administration blatantly lie about something you saw firsthand? Blame the attack on something unrelated and refuse to call it a terrorist attack? How did it feel to be on the ground at the annex and realize that help was not coming? Let's do one question first.

• 12:26Speaker 05

  Well, let's go first first with the help not coming. So that's, we'll just go on a timeline there.

• 12:31Shawn Ryan?

  We can skip that. We'll do that.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  We'll do that. Okay. So, well, give me, give me number, because the feeling.

• 12:36Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like for you to see the Obama administration blatantly lie about something you saw?

• 12:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I can tell, watch Fox and Friends, the last, last, uh, interview I ever did on Fox and Friends with Pete Hexa. It was back in 2014 or 15 where he would, somebody caught him on a cellphone. Uh, it was either at Loyola or one of those, one of those liberal colleges there in Chicago. I can't remember which one. And he said Benghazi was a conspiracy. He didn't know he was being filmed. And of course, they threw it on the TV. It's at 6:00 in the morning. I was just, I was in, actually in Springfield. I was gonna go speak at a, uh, an event that was sponsored by the guy that owns Bass Pro. So I was staying out at the Bass Pro Resort up there and. I told Pete I couldn't be there. I said, I gotta zoom in. So I zoomed in at 6:00 AM.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  And I'm half asleep. I've been, this was my fifth speaking event in like seven days just spent. And pissed me off. Why would it? Of course it pissed me, I mean, all those lines continually, it was angry. It made me full of hate. And what did I say? You can watch it. It's out there on YouTube somewhere. I'm sure. He said, what did you feel after you watched Benghazi call it conspiracy? And I said, well, Pete, I said, I wanted to reach for the TV and I wanted to choke his ass. I wanted to choke him out. And Pete, his eyes got big. He goes, you probably don't want to be threatening his former US president.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  I said, Peter, you asked me. And that was my last ever Fox interview, actually, I ever did. And I did get visited by the Secret Service two weeks later. Luckily, I knew the guys. They showed up at my house. Like, Chris, we gotta be here. You're threatening a president on national TV. And, uh, but if that tells you my anger, right there, I mean, without even thinking, skipping a beat. And it wasn't to create, uh, it wasn't to troll accounts. It wasn't to do clickbait. It was an immediate reaction. As soon as I saw it, it was like, that mother?

• 14:40Speaker 05

  And I didn't want to kill him. I'm like, let's get in the ring, put you in a lock and let's see how you feel, man. That's what I felt. So of course I was angry. I was angry for a lot of years. And I think if you watch even your speeches that I've done out there, I just still do corporate talks. I just didn't, you know, that's why I'm in Nashville and do your show. And I did a talk at the Gaylord there. Um, in the early days, the speeches were very, very angry because nobody was being held accountable. And there were people that were calling us liars. And that's hard to, it's hard to be called a liar, guys. When I saw Rone and I was shooting over their heads when that last, those three mortars through a far for effect hit right on top of Building C.

• 15:22Speaker 05

  The fifth attack that night. And I was shooting and it wasn't, the movie showed as daytime. It was actually, uh, it was, um, before morning nautical twilight. You know, it was right before this, you know, you know what that is. Your viewers can Google that. It's right before the sun comes up. So it's still dark. So my night vision was still on. My 15s were on. And, um, Remember the first one hit, blew up on the backside of building C was right over the top, round spun, he went cyclic on that belt fed, which was pretty freaking awesome. Cause all I'm seeing is a laser beam as he turns and they're coming to attack us through the, through the sheep slaughterhouse here. I put a few rounds over his head, cause I want to get in a fight even though I can't see that, because I'm, I'm back behind them on building A, he's on building C.

• 16:06Speaker 05

  Dave, Dave Ubin shoots, Roz is up there, he shoots, bubba's up there, he's shooting. So I'm seeing all this fire, shooting, I'm thinking, shit mortars this way, they gotta be bringing a whole force following those mortars in. So I turn around, make sure nobody's coming, nobody's there, come back, two more shots. I see one hit directly right on top. Night vision goes completely white, you know, it's over bunnies like white. As it comes back, I saw four and now there's three, so guy disappeared and I can hear him screaming, even in all that, I can still hear him, it was Dave, I didn't know it at the time, but it was Ubin. Just shared, it shared his leg off, shared his arm, they were hanging. So not completely gone, but he's legs this way, arms this way, how do I know that Tig

• 16:47Speaker 05

  got up there when he saw Dave, Tig told me what his arm, his arms or legs looked like. Take a few more shots, cause what can you do, we're still getting attacked, we're in the middle of a fight, you know, as you don't, you can't stop fighting. What am I gonna do, run off my building, go help, he's got three guys up there. I gotta keep fighting, I got my sector behind me, I gotta take. I turn around, I come back, they're still shooting, I took two more shots and then I saw boom, boom, boom. If you've been in artillery, you call for fire and you know what that is, that's fire for effect, they're right where they want to hit. Night vision goes white. And as it comes back, all I see is the pixie dust, it got quiet, it got silent, really weird, I thought they were gonna keep coming.

• 17:27Speaker 05

  And all I saw was the charged particles, cause you know, blow up explosion, the debris, the dust gets either heated or charged and it looks like, it does, it looks like pixie dust coming down with those, with my night vision starts to come back and refocus from the, the white light. And they were all gone. And it, it, my brain, my brain said, your team just got turned to dust. It's like, holy, I mean, it was, it was, it was, and it maybe it felt like longer than what it was. It was only a few seconds, but I put my head down and I remember thinking, and it was the one time negatively, I thought that it, though every other time, man, there was negative things happened, but that was the one time where it was like that, holy shit, we might lose this. And I said, man, we can't beat this.

• 18:11Speaker 05

  I'm thinking to myself, we don't have any ers for. They're gonna fucking keep hammering us. You know, God, God was there all night, man. And God kicked me in my ass and said, get your gun up, Ranger. And I know people are gonna, oh, fuck, that's, no, making, no, that's what happened.

• 18:25Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean, God kicked you in the ass and said, get up?

• 18:29Speaker 05

  Quit whining, quit feeling like a victim.

• 18:31Shawn Ryan?

  Is that a feeling you got? Is that a voice you heard?

• 18:34Speaker 05

  Voice in the back of my head, right there. I still feel it. I still get chills. And maybe it was my mom saying it, you know, but it was, to me, it was that voice of God. It was something saying, we don't quit, you don't quit, get your gun up, keep fighting. And I said, get your gun up, Ranger. That's what I heard. And that's being a Ranger too, and that's what Rangers are. When you're at the 75th, get your gun up, get your gun up. You're not quitting, keep fighting, keep pressing through. You learn that from RIP, which is option 40 now, ARAS now, you learn that throughout. That's what instilled in you. Rangers before you, what'd they do in Vietnam, the 100 killer teams? They ran towards the fight. What'd they do when they jumped into Rio Hado? They ran towards the fight. There's no cover, they shot their way off the, off the earth, the tarmac. And Grenada, what'd they do? They ran towards the fight.

• 19:19Speaker 05

  Now get your gun up, Ranger. Why, and so why am I so angry? Because when somebody calls it conspiracy and I watched, I watched Roan, I watched Roan and Bub and Dave and Oz, at the time, I thought all, I watched them evaporate. That's what I do with my brain, it's like, holy shit, those guys are, they're gone. I've seen death before, but have you ever saw where your friends just, like they're there and they're not? So when he said it was a conspiracy, it's like, hell yeah, I was pissed off. And I was pissed off for many, many years. And it, it did hurt a lot of relations, hurt my relationship with my wife and my kids at the time. Um, so that's, that's, I mean, it's a great question, but it also points to how,

• 20:03Speaker 05

  how irresponsible politicians are with their words.

• 20:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  And, and how they, they don't give a shit, and him especially. You know, Hillary got what she deserved. She wasn't president, she was humiliated, she lost. Is she gonna get more? Yeah, she's gonna get more when she, when she stands before a maker with God. God's gonna judge her and I hope he judges her, and he's going to, he's gonna judge her well. How she should. Obama's the one that got over scot-free. He was the commander in chief. Come on, man. Who's supposed to help get people to us? Is it Hillary and State Department? Granted, she was hugely responsible. So was Leon Panetta? General Ham could have done something. But who was the commander in chief?

• 20:43Shawn Ryan?

  Who was General Ham?

• 20:44Speaker 05

  He was the, he was the Eurocomp commander. He was the one that...

• 20:48Shawn Ryan?

  And everybody knows Leon Panetta was Director of CIA at the time.

• 20:52Speaker 05

  At the time, and then he went to the Sec, you know, and became Sec Def and all that, but actually, um, but, um, you know, he could have done something too. And, uh, but Obama's the one that really is the one that's held responsible, should have been held responsible for it all. You know, and also with the rhetoric, Al Qaeda, remember, people forget that. What was his platform at the time? Al Qaeda was on the run. Terrorism is dead. He knew it wasn't, that's who attacked us. You, you had Sarah on, she knows it better than anybody. Who was the one that masterminded that?

• 21:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 05

  Zawahiri. What is, he's number two Al Qaeda. So, but the, the guy that got away with it and then continued to try to press a narrative which we see happens now.

• 21:35Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I got a question. I don't wanna get too deep.

• 21:37Speaker 05

  No, no, go ahead.

• 21:37Shawn Ryan?

  I wasn't expecting to get this deep, this fast.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, that's just me, man. I go down rabbit holes all the time.

• 21:43Shawn Ryan?

  What I wanna ask though is, is I can see, I can see the rage returning right now.

• 21:49Speaker 05

  It does, of course it's gonna come.

• 21:51Shawn Ryan?

  So what, what was the, what was the turning point that kinda eased that rage?

• 21:57Speaker 05

  That interview was one because...

• 22:02Shawn Ryan?

  With Pete Hegseth?

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was, because it was, it was the last mainstream interview I ever did.

• 22:08Shawn Ryan?

  Is that on your terms or theirs?

• 22:10Speaker 05

  Mine. I said, I'm not gonna do anymore. I told them, I'm done. That was mine, I'm not doing that. Because I got, I did get asked two times to go on Tucker. And nothing against him, I like him. I just, I'm not doing that because that's what they want to get, I started to realize, that's what they want to get out of me. They wanted, they know Tunnel's gonna come in and say something that's gonna clickbait and gonna be pissed off because that's how I always was. I am very, I get, I'm animated, I'm gonna say what's on my mind. And if it pisses somebody, so what? I'm gonna tell you how I feel. And that's great for ratings, it is. And I, but, and nothing against, I got friends down there. Sean's a nice, Hannity's a nice guy, man. You know, the, the Duceys, they're nice people. You know, Martha McCollum, she's a nice, she's treating me very, very well.

• 22:55Speaker 05

  They're not, it just was, it was ruining my family, my relationship. Because I got divorced at that time as well. So that anger had carried over to where my wife and my kids, like, we don't want you around anymore. Your toxicity is here, you're, you're just always pissed off, you're never happy. And we had gotten divorced. So when I did that, we were actually divorced at that time. And it was, I gotta get myself right. Because...

• 23:19Shawn Ryan?

  So it was, it was doing the interviews that brought the rage back?

• 23:22Speaker 05

  I think just reliving it all and not being able to handle it and finding a silver lining to it, which there always is a silver lining. God gives us a silver lining for everything that we do, we just gotta find it.

• 23:32Shawn Ryan?

  How do you feel about doing this interview?

• 23:34Speaker 05

  I'm good, because I'm at peace with it all. I don't have a problem getting, I know it's gonna bring anger out of me, but does it make me angry when I leave? No. Because I'm going home to see my kids. And I want to tell this because I still talk to Ty's mom, Cheryl Bennett, wonderfully, love her. I'm, she's, she, I'm her second mom, I mean, she's my second mom. And telling this keeps their memories alive. Where back then it was more of, it's about me. I need to show you how angry I am. I need to show you how pissed off. I need, it was selfish. It was very, now it's, I'm gonna tell you because I want people to know that, so when they hear a liberal, they hear an Obama, they hear a Hillary, they hear a Biden say, no, it was conspiracy, no, it was video in a protest, they can say, no.

• 24:20Speaker 05

  I know that dude's telling the truth because just look how emotional he gets. And of course, it's emotional. I saw my teammates die. They were my friends. I mean, we weren't best friends or nothing, but they were still my teammates and they still were my friends. And so they tried, the powers that be tried to cover it up. But that was a turning point somewhat because six months later, I did put a gun in my head.

• 24:42Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get there.

• 24:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:44Shawn Ryan?

  For starters.

• 24:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:46Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you grow up?

• 24:47Speaker 06

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• 25:17Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 25:33Speaker 03

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

• 25:38Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 25:42Speaker 01

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

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Uh, Colorado, Alamosa, Colorado. Loved it. Um, grandmother and grandmother, grand, um, my grandmother and grandfather were immigrants from Mexico, my Garcia, man. My mom's, dad's West Texas, mom's a Garcia. But so we grew up, uh, we grew up in the, you know, lower middle class, but it was wonderful, wonderful childhood. Alamosa's a small little town in the Sanger de Cristal Range out there in Southern Colorado. And, uh, then we'd go to visit my grandmother and grandfather who were pickers and then they owned their own farm. So I saw them, just the hard work, man. It was amazing. I loved, I loved being a Paronto, but I also loved being a Garcia. I mean, my middle name is after my grandfather, Joaquin, Christian Joaquin. So it was, it was awesome. And it was just always happy, you know?

• 26:32Speaker 05

  Always playing. I'd play with the wet, we called them the wetbacks. I know that's a, that's a, that's a politically incorrect term, but that's what we, the migrant workers that would come over and work on my grandfather's farm. They're called wetbacks, man. Pickers.

• 26:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remember going out and that we would play baseball with them when they come from the field. Uh, I remember one actually saved my life. I was playing hide and seek in a back potato truck and I was running away from my cousin and hit a bar that was across the top, cracked my head open and I laid there for about five minutes before one of them carried me out, found me bleeding all over and he carried me out to my grandmother's house.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  I mean, it just, it was amazing fun. It was a rough, it was a rough childhood. You know, it was a rough fun. Skin your knee up, ride dirt bikes.

• 27:18Shawn Ryan?

  Great.

• 27:18Speaker 05

  Take your lab out, go little hunting with the 22 or, or with a, with a pellet gun. It was wonderful, man. Skin, crack your head open once or twice.

• 27:29Shawn Ryan?

  Brothers and sisters?

• 27:30Speaker 05

  Bro, I have two. Uh, I have a brother and a sister and you know, me and my sister, we have our issues, but we're close. It's a close family. Now, it's not like there's no any hatred. My brother, no, my brother, he's awesome. Nah, him and I. It's one of those relationships though, where it's like he'll call and he'll say, what's up jackass? Hey, I say, yeah, what's up douchebag? It's like, I love you, man. And two years younger than me, we played sports together growing up and athletics was huge in the family. My dad was a football coach, uh, NCAA football coach. So when we were at Alamo, so he was the head coach at Adam State and the athletic director. Then we moved to Brigham Young. Uh, we moved to Utah because he got a job, uh, as an assistant at Brigham Young University. And that was a one hell of an experience. Uh, you, I look back at it now and it's like, wow, I was blessed.

• 28:15Speaker 05

  Cause that was during their, their glory years. So I got to hang around a clubhouse with Jim McMahon and Steve Young and Robbie Bosco and, and national championship team. And you know, you're taking it for granted. You had Lil' Val Edwards who they don't make coaches. You know, that was like the iconic coaches when coaches were actually coaches and not.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  Public figures, you know, Lavelle Edwards, Paul Bear Bryant, guys like that, Woody, you know, it's just the old school. He was awesome. But you know, you had Mike Holmgren there, who was the offensive coordinator, who later became the coach of the Packers, won two Super Bowls. Norm Chow, who was, he was a legend in the NCAA, went to USC. Wow. Andy Reid was a graduate assistant there at the time, coach. So, you know, I look back, I'm like, man, I was around some cool, and you just, and all I'm doing, I'm that kid running around the clubhouse, playing catch with Steve Young, going to the That is cool. Yes. So, uh, so sports were big, you know, and I wanted to play football, and I played football. Um, we moved to Oregon State, my dad got a job at Oregon State, and we, it was wonderful there. Got to be around, you know, the Pac-10, I was a ball boy on the sidelines

• 29:21Speaker 05

  for the Pac-10, that was so fun, just being at the games, you know, and that was, that was Pac-10 at the time. I mean, that's Washington, UCLA, USC, when they were, I mean, they're still good, I guess, but they was, it was amazing. It was just a good, good time being around college, when college was college, when it wasn't Yeah. propaganda, let's protest about everything. It was, it was college. It was PCU, man. It was where people would make fun of that. Yeah. Let's go have a, you know, so, and it was, it was college towns. Bringing me home was a little different this morning, you know, there's, it's, you're not gonna find a lot of drink in there. But, uh, and then we, he got a job, um, in Colorado, back in Colorado, and, uh, we moved, and, uh, still, he's still coaching at Mesa, it's called Colorado

• 30:05Speaker 05

  Mesa, it's called Mesa College at the time, it's called Colorado Mesa University now. And, uh, we moved there, and of course, being around sports forever, and I, my dad was a football player, my mom was a pretty good athlete in her own right, you know, I got some good genes in me, and I managed to get a scholarship to play football, and I played football for four years at, actually, I did No kidding? Go to Mesa, yeah. I, I, uh, I was, I was, I was, I had a good time, man. Your dad wasn't the coach? Uh, he was the AD. At, I went to that, and to be What does that mean? Well, he was the athletic director at that college. But, um, I didn't go there first. I, I wasn't, I was a typical college football player, I'd rather Drink and party, then go to class.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  So, my first year at Mesa, I flunked out of college. And I had to go to a junior college to get my grades up so I could continue to play football. So I went to, uh, it was called Dixie at the time. Because of the wokeness and political correctness, now it's called something else. But we were called the Dixie Rebels. I'm still a Dixie Rebel for all you, whatever you call the college now. It was awesome. That was a wonderful experience, cuz Dixie was like the program where BYU, UNLV, University of Utah would send all these truants to get their grades up. So we were a football fan, I mean, we were awesome. We were number one in the nation, we finished number two one year. So I'm around there, and I'm around gangsters, man.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  I'm around the Donner Street Crips, I'm around West Coast Bloods, Tonga Crip gangsters. Then you got farm kids coming from Utah, big farm boys, and we had this... It was such a wonderful experience. It was wonderful to see so many... I was out of, you know, so many people of different backgrounds and nationalities come together for a focus to win games.

• 31:53Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like the military.

• 31:54Speaker 05

  It does, and it sounds like, you know, that's why I laugh when I hear all these DEI pro, all this. So we had diversity way back then, guys. And guess what? We were called Dixie Rebels, too. And not one black dude gave two shits. We were proud to be called the Rebels. That's what we were. And I was, you know, I wasn't as true, I mean, they were hardcore. I just flunked out of school. Now, you know, I ain't gonna lie, my ethnicity did help, it does. He's Mexican, dude. And they, my grandpa, you know, it was, it, it, it allowed me to at least have a, have a foot in the door where, okay, we can kinda trust this guy. And stereotypes, stereotypes for a reason. I have no problem with that.

• 32:36Speaker 05

  Um, but it was one hell of an experience because we were so good. It was fun playing on a team of so many different characters. And what got me is that was back in the day when Bloods and Crips, they were, you know, that was a big deal. There's gang violence all the time. And there was a guy named Stacy, he was a West Coast Blood, he came from Los Angeles. And then we had a guy named Chucky, who was best athletes I've ever seen in my life. He was a Donner Street Crip from Vegas. And I went to Stacy one day, cuz I didn't get, I'm this naive kid from Colorado, you know? I don't know what I can ask or what I can't listen. I say, hey, uh... How come you guys aren't killing each other? Yeah, I'm being an idiot. Should I say that? I don't know, I'm 19 years old. What am I saying the right thing? And Stacy looks at me and he goes,

• 33:21Speaker 05

  he goes, "On the streets, man?" Yeah, he said, "We would." I said, "I'd shoot that motherfucker." But here, I just want to win. It's like, wow. That just makes so much sense.

• 33:35Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 33:35Speaker 05

  And that's also when I started going to military and then even GRS. A lot of people don't know Oz and I don't get along. We never have.

• 33:43Shawn Ryan?

  I was gonna wait till the end of the interview.

• 33:45Speaker 05

  No, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump to that.

• 33:48Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, well, I mean, you brought it up. Let's do it. And I've always, I've, I mean, obviously, I've been following you guys. I mean, we were in the same profession.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Of course, yeah.

• 33:59Shawn Ryan?

  And I remember after it happened, you guys, you know, you did the book.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:05Shawn Ryan?

  It came out, lots of speaking events. I thought you guys used to speak together.

• 34:09Speaker 05

  We had to, yeah.

• 34:10Shawn Ryan?

  And then it seemed like everything kind of, I mean, look, what happened? Why don't you guys get along?

• 34:19Speaker 05

  Well, it's just personalities. There's nothing, Oz is a wonderful, wonderful person. He is, in his own right. It's just personalities. Very, I'm very outspoken. Whenever we do speeches or things like that, he always wanted to kind of play like the politician. I gotta make both sides happy. I was like, screw this. Say what happened? So we went at Oz, but even when we were downrange, it just was personalities, man. It just was, you just, there's just some guys you don't get along.

• 34:45Shawn Ryan?

  Did you guys butt heads before Benghazi?

• 34:48Speaker 05

  With the first place we worked at together. I'd never worked in before. That was the first, first base that I worked with Oz at.

• 34:54Shawn Ryan?

  And immediately butted heads?

• 34:56Speaker 05

  It's just one of those bases where, you know, the guy, a guy comes in and you're saying, man, we just don't jive. He doesn't, he doesn't like my Jack Ashery. I don't like him being so damn uptight. But. We were both professional enough, and this is, this is a kudo to Ron as well. Ron really was our, was our team leader. We had an official team leader, Ron was our assistant team leader. We had a, you know, we had a staffer that was our team leader, but Ron is who we listened to, the staffer we never listened to.

• 35:22Shawn Ryan?

  Isn't it funny how that's like the

• 35:24Speaker 05

  I know.

• 35:25Shawn Ryan?

  common theme.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  Well, when you don't hold the staff to the same

• 35:28Shawn Ryan?

  Every, every

• 35:29Speaker 05

  I know.

• 35:29Shawn Ryan?

  GRS team, that the staffer is always the weakest link.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  Well, when you don't hold them to the same standard, then they're not always gonna

• 35:37Shawn Ryan?

  They get mad at me when I say this stuff.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  Tough shit, dude. It's, it's the truth. I mean, I can count good staffers, and I'll tell the staff, there are some that, but the majority of the good staffers were the ones that had the same background.

• 35:48Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get into this later.

• 35:49Speaker 05

  But anyway, yeah, with Oz, with Oz, it, it was nothing where, and it wasn't a hatred, it just was, we don't like each other, man.

• 35:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 05

  And you get to an age at forty-two, at that point, where maybe in the early days in our thirties, maybe we would have F you, F you, just, but it wasn't like that, it was just, you're, you're, I'm forty, he's forty-five, I'm forty-two, it's like, there's no reason to create any more drama. Deal with each other how we need to. Just win, because that still kept going in my head, what Stacy said to me about the Crips and the Bloods, we just wanna win.

• 36:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  Let's put the differences aside, so we can win. The focus, and that's, that's, that's also Ron keeping us on, hey, what's the, what's the main focus here, guys? Everybody goes home, put your stupid differences aside, shut the hell up and do your jobs. You got your right and left limits, you got your right and left limits, and we stayed within those. And it wasn't like a, man, you're a douche, it wasn't like that, it was just, you know, you're in a room, you're just in a room with somebody that you just don't get along with, so you stay in there as long as you can, and then you get out and you go do your thing, and he'll go do his thing. It is a lot more difficult, because you've been on a lot of those bases doing this, where you're on top of each other, so it's harder to get away, get away, but we did, you know, and, you know, and Ron wasn't dumb enough to put his room together in the same room.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  You know, it was one of those things, let's, let's make it as, as possible, and there, you always, at least at that point in time, because of my age and experience, and I think this is important for everybody, even of people you don't like, you find things that you can respect about them, and I do. Again, I, I, he's tough as nails. The dude got hit with a mortar, and tried to get up and shoot, I saw him, I told you in the beginning, I saw a guy get up and try to shoot after that mortar, mortar stopped, and he, the gun kept falling. Because he would get up and he'd shoot, and I'd see the rounds, boom. Well, his arm, he hadn't realized his arm had gone off. So when you watched 13 hours and you see him getting up like that, that hap- that wasn't movie magic. That happened. So do I respect his toughness? Hell, yeah. And he said one of the coolest things I'd ever

• 37:51Speaker 05

  heard in my life. When we drove to the airport, he's bleeding out, his arm's about coming off. We wanted to help get him on that plane, that executive's jet. And he said this, and I'll give him crudos for it, because it was some Clint Eastwood shit. He goes, "I walked into this country and walking out, that wasn't a movie magic, that wasn't a line written, and he said that." And I remember when I heard it, I was like, "All right, Oz may not get along, but that's some cool ass shit right there." Yeah. And so, you cannot get along, so that's fine. But you still find ways to respect each other and work together, because the goal is to win. And I kept thinking about Stacy,

• 38:33Speaker 05

  the West Coast blood. The most intellectual wise thing I heard was from a 20-year-old gangster from Los Angeles. "We just want to win." It's that simple. And I think that's why when I talk to corporations, I tell, that's part of my speech. Just win. That's the goal. Let's win. Yeah. Put the differences aside. And that's why also when we were out doing our speaking and you're seeing us on TV, "All right, we got to put on a united front here. We're stronger together." And because there wasn't hatred there, it just was a dislike, just didn't like, didn't care. Our personalities just didn't mesh. It wasn't that hard to go in there and

• 39:14Speaker 05

  do an interview together. And Oz had great things to say, because he was there. He saw things that I didn't that helped expose the BS, because we were in different spots the whole time.

• 39:28Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move back to

• 39:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:31Shawn Ryan?

  Kind of

• 39:32Speaker 05

  Growing up?

• 39:32Shawn Ryan?

  We're past childhood. I want to get to this, but I want it to all be in one piece, if that's

• 39:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, no, no, no, you're good.

• 39:40Shawn Ryan?

  And so, what, so your football?

• 39:43Speaker 05

  Football, God, football.

• 39:44Shawn Ryan?

  College? What got your interest in the military?

• 39:46Speaker 05

  Uh, God, this path. When you're short and you're slow, you're not gonna go to the next level. You know, I was, I was really short and, but I was super slow, so the NFL didn't come knocking at my door. So I, I remember I, I was just walking through the student union building there at Colorado Mesa, Mesa College was called at the time. And, you know, at the graduation, there's job fairs at these colleges. If you go to college, you are just gonna see a job fair. And I'm walking through and, um, all these jobs are, but of course, who's there with all the, all the occupations, all the corporations? The vultures are over there in the corner. The army recruiter, the marine recruiter, the navy recruiter, the air force recruiter. And, you know, long story short on that one, which is not gonna be the theme here, but they yelled.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  They said, hey you, I was the stupid enough one to look in that direction. I walked over there, they said, hey, uh, what are you gonna do after, and, you know, I had thought about FBI. I had thought about federal police. Every time I went to apply for one, I'd get a call, hey, you need experience. You gotta go become a police officer. You gotta go endure, uh, you gotta go to the military, you gotta, and police just didn't sound fun to me. So I walked over there, I saw the ranger video, I saw the recruiting video, which was a 75th ranger video. So they're jumping out of planes, fast roping. They showed me the SEAL challenge video, the Navy guy did. So I'm watching the helocast and I'm watching the lowcast and I'm seeing all the cool stuff.

• 41:12Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  You know, the Marines, they're landing on the beach. You know, the recon, they're showing me recon guys, uh, the air force one. I always make this a joke, I say, I saw the air force one and Yeah, they were in a air-conditioned room, nice, comfortable with good food. Now, they're showing the jets and things, and I just thought the Rangers was was the best one for me. And so I said, "Signed up." I signed up. I enlisted right there after I got my bachelor's degree.

• 41:37Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 41:37Speaker 05

  And, uh, yeah, thirty days later, I'm off to Fort Benning. And, um, did that.

• 41:43Shawn Ryan?

  You literally signed up right there at the job fair?

• 41:46Speaker 05

  And the scariest thing that I'll tell you.

• 41:48Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. Talk about an impulse move.

• 41:51Speaker 05

  I was like, "What am I gonna do?" And, you know, I had, well, FBI, they said military. And I do remember telling the recruiter, I asked him, I go, "Is that hard?" He goes, "Yeah." I go, "Do people quit?" He goes, "Yeah." "All right, let's do it." And, um, so move on, and we go to Fort Benning, Georgia. And, uh, it did. I was like a, a, a round peg in a round hole. I just fit. You know, I was, I went to, uh, it was Sand Hill at the time. It was Echo Company 258. Called the House of Pain. I was supposed to be the hardest one there, but come on, they're all the hardest. Every, every basic training depot is the hardest one. But, um, the Stingers Honored Graduate, I did really well. It was just, it just fit. It just made, you know, I was physically fit.

• 42:37Speaker 05

  I got the, the athletics completely prepped me for it, you know, the teamwork aspect of it. You just had to get used to the yelling, and they were still smacking us around. It was 1995, which, if you didn't deserve to get smacked around, then you didn't get smacked. And that made sense to me. It was based on merit. You worked your ass, it's merit-based. You're gonna perform, you're gonna do what you're told, we're gonna move you up. You're gonna be a smart ass, you're gonna be lazy, you're gonna be a fat body? No, then you don't. It's easy. It's a piece of cake. And, um, went to airborne school, but I was married to my first wife at the time, and nothing against, she's a wonderful person. We just got married way too young. Just, you know, nothing bad to say about her, but she was having an affair. So I got my Jody letter, you know, "Hey, I want a divorce."

• 43:23Speaker 05

  And it really was hard from there on out airborne school on out because that wasn't something I ever expected. That wasn't something in my family that happened. Divorce didn't happen. To me, that wasn't even on my radar.

• 43:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  And it was, whoa, this is, so I'm fighting airborne school. Airborne school is easy. Just, all you gotta do is learn how to fall and break yourself and then jump out of a plane. It was, it was memorable. There was a memorable thing about airborne school though that was awesome. Again, God looking out. My first two jumps, first day jump, first night jump, I was the first one out the door. It was so awesome. Being able to have the door open, first jump and I'm watching. That was cool. It's memorable. And then night jump too. It's like, how lucky am I to be, how did that happen? I got lucky to be the first one out the door. So, you know, your door opens, you get a watch, all that shit for about 30 seconds before you go. But airborne school then went through RIP, got through Ranger

• 44:18Speaker 05

  RIP, went second bat and were there, I was there for about eight months. And you know, you're an untapped guy and you've been around Rangers. You know, for untapped at Ranger Battalion, we're shit. We're a piece, we're getting hazed. I mean, it's just, it's miserable. You're hiding in your team room on the weekends because you don't want the tab spec four to come in there and smoke your balls and haze the shit out of you. So you're just like, either hide or you take off for the weekend. And, but went on a JRX training mission at Bragg. About eight months in, I was at battalion and the joint readiness exercise. So we're doing a joint readiness exercise with blue, green, some PJs, and

• 44:59Speaker 05

  then the Air Force guys at Pope, the spec ops, the inspector and y'all. And task forces there too, night stalkers were there too. So it's a big thing. Yeah, it was, it was pretty awesome. So, I mean, I'm a private, I'm just, but I'm fighting this divorce. I mean, I'm, my wife's cheating on me. And it's just killing me. Did you know who she was cheating? No, I, I mean, I, at that, that first two week, it was, it was a, it was a two week JRX. The first week, I still hadn't figured it out. I, I was in denial more than anything. You know, that's no way she's doing that. And this is for the admin and cell phone. Cell phones are a big thing. So to go home to call, you had to go actually go to a payphone. So it wasn't like I could call and check all the time like you could now. Which maybe that would have made it worse. Maybe this made it better this way.

• 45:41Speaker 05

  But I'm a new private. I'm around all these tier one guys. I'm just, holy shit, dude. I'm, should I, you know, and, and when you're a new guy, you, you have that bravado, but should I be here? You know, TAS spec fours, you got tabs squad leaders, tab E5s. These guys, this is old hat to them. I'm like, oh my gosh. And so the, the stress levels for me, don't fuck up, don't fuck up. I got two hernias on my first jump too. So I'm, don't want to tell nobody. Cause I got two little aliens going there when we jumped in. Is it Sicily at Bragg? I can't remember the, the drop zone. Um, but anyway, it all came to, to a head and I called home and I couldn't answer. So I finally called my brother, Mike, love him. I go, hey, what's going on with Stacy, man?

• 46:23Speaker 05

  He goes, dude, I, I, I don't want to tell you. And as soon as he said that, you know, I was like, crap. So it was in denial. And I went home on block leave because right after that, we're going on block leave. It's right before Christmas. And, uh, I just, I went to the guy's house and I hid in his bushes. I was going to kill him. And I came to my senses, which was great on my end. Cause I got out of there, but it was also where I even felt like a bigger failure. Cause like, man, I can't even do this. I'm the biggest pussy in the world. But God is, God's got me, you know, God is. And, but of course, everybody found out. Small town, Grand Junction, Colorado. Um, military found out, of course, because I was very lucky.

• 47:06Speaker 05

  I, instead of going to jail, um, I gotta go to the VA there in Grand Junction. They threw me in the mental ward, like to check on me. So the military, so the, the wheels are turning that I'm going to get. So hold on, did you get caught? Um, actually I, what I did is I went back home. I drank myself silly. And my friend found me on the floor. My ranger buddy who I joined with, that was home too on leave. He found me on the floor. Just, I was just drunk and took a bunch of Tylenol and yeah, it's just. So you tried to kill yourself? Yeah. 1997, six or seven, 96, the 96. Holy shit.

• 47:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's just one of those things, because it is, it's, you're young, you're pissed vinegar, you're full of fire, you're a Ranger dude, someone is gonna, you know, but I wasn't ready. It just was being young and stupid and, and doing stupid things impulsively that young people do, especially young guys like myself or myself, we're just, we're not thinking, we're just action first, consequences later. And, um, but the military found out. And of course they are, and we, of course, we called the commander, and the commander found out. And I had, I had wonderful, that so blessed, first sergeant was Frank Grippy, Ranger legend, Sergeant Major Grippy, you know, he was dropping mortars and tubes in, in Torbore in Anaconda

• 48:29Speaker 05

  when he was 10th Mountain, he was the Sergeant Major, he was my first sergeant. And we also had Captain Paula Camera, who I think he's a three-star general now, he may have just retired, but he was my CO. And they, I mean, I wasn't gonna stay in, there's no way I could stay in, but I managed to get an honorable discharge. I didn't, I didn't deserve it. So I only finished two years out of my first four-year contract.

• 48:51Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how long did it take you to snap out of that?

• 48:54Speaker 05

  Well, I, I went home, it took me two years, well, I had two years, I have a choice.

• 48:59Shawn Ryan?

  You got out, let me, sorry.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:02Shawn Ryan?

  So you left?

• 49:04Speaker 05

  I left the Army.

• 49:05Shawn Ryan?

  You left the Army?

• 49:06Speaker 05

  At the end of 1996.

• 49:07Shawn Ryan?

  At the end of 1996, and then went back to your hometown?

• 49:11Speaker 05

  I went back to my hometown, and, uh, it's like, I can't do this anymore.

• 49:15Shawn Ryan?

  What were you doing in your hometown?

• 49:17Speaker 05

  Nothing.

• 49:18Shawn Ryan?

  Just being miserable?

• 49:19Speaker 05

  Being miserable. It was as miserable as, but as with family, you know, my fam, my mom's there, my dad's there, my brothers are there, so I'm surrounded by family, my friends are still there, because I'd just really been two years out of college, I still had guys I'd played football with that are still finishing up. And I had a buddy of mine named Brian Edwards, he goes, "Did you look like shit?" And I moved in with them, I, I hung out with my buddies. You know, my parents were there, but I, I moved into a room of one of their old ex-football players, they were still playing in my teammates' houses. And they went on, and I saw recommend everybody to do when you go through divorce. I went to South Padre Island for spring break. Spring break.

• 49:55Shawn Ryan?

  He goes, what happened there, Chris?

• 49:57Speaker 05

  She's like, dude, you look miserable. We're going to spring break. Come on, get in the car. We're going. I was like, okay, we went. And I went to South Padre for spring break. And I remember this, the Lord, I am beyond, the Lord works mysterious ways. I'm serious. It's just so amazing. I look back at it now. I'm like, oh, my gosh, God really does have control. I go there.

• 50:16Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on, can I, can I make a prediction?

• 50:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:19Shawn Ryan?

  Did you meet your current wife there? Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious?

• 50:24Speaker 05

  No shit, I went there.

• 50:25Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on, hold on. How long had you been, were you divorced?

• 50:29Speaker 05

  We were divorced, yeah. Well, we had been unofficially divorced for only about six months, but we, she had tried to divorce me and get rid of me at basic training. So it'd been.

• 50:38Shawn Ryan?

  So you're like depressed at home.

• 50:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:41Shawn Ryan?

  Drinking yourself to death.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:44Shawn Ryan?

  Tried to commit suicide with a bottle of Tylenol.

• 50:46Speaker 05

  And now I'm like, what am I gonna do with my life?

• 50:48Shawn Ryan?

  Now your buddy's like, we're going to South Padre Island.

• 50:50Speaker 05

  Spring break. I need you to smile again. And Brian, I love Brian. He is, he is all, he is, and he was, he was, he was a really good forebauer. Outstanding wide receiver out there. But we go there, and this is what's so funny. And it's funny, but I also, I do believe there's, Cupid is out there. Cause we're at Charlie's. It's a bar there. No, it's Louis'. We're at Louis'. Louis', Louis', bar and something. And I'm dancing, you know, and, but I'm still jacked. I'm a ranger shredded. Yeah, I'm jacked up, shirt's off, cause I'm, woo hoo, I'm spring break drinking, drinking. And all of a sudden, this searing pain all flows down the side of my face and my eyes. Well, it was before Fireball, so they had those shots of cinnamon snobs that the little ladies would carry around.

• 51:35Speaker 05

  Somebody had knocked the whole thing on me. And I look and it was my wife, my current wife. I look, it's like Cupid's arrow. It's like, wow. And we danced, we were inseparable that whole spring break. I stayed with her.

• 51:51Shawn Ryan?

  Wait, hold on. What was the one liner? They picked up who?

• 51:56Speaker 05

  Actually, I still think she's, I tell her, I said, you spilled that cinnamon schnapps on me on purpose, didn't you? Cause you saw my heaving chest and I was showing her. She was like, that was, so there, but that's the, that was actually the joke. And it was that, cause I still believe that you saw me and you did that on purpose, didn't you? Just so I look at you. And I looked at her and she was a volleyball player from University of Nebraska Omaha. I mean, she's, you know, volleyball players, come on. If you watch, watch college volleyball.

• 52:27Speaker 05

  And, you know, she's taller than me. She's five, 10. I'm five, nine. She's five, 10. And just athletic. And man, that was it. And then again, the whole spring break. So there wasn't a one liner, but it was, I do give her shit for that. So you did that shit on purpose because you saw my man boobs from all them pushups. And it was awesome. And so when I went home, it gave me a direction. So I went back home like, okay. I, the stipulations, my honorable discharge is I had to still, I had to stay out for two years. I couldn't reenlist for two years. It came in the, in my, my file. And my dad had his doctorate. My mother, she was a teacher. She had her masters.

• 53:08Speaker 05

  What's the logical step here? Let's go back to college. So I applied to University of Nebraska Omaha, took the GR, got accepted. And I got into my Bronco too. And luckily I made it to Omaha. And I lived in a hundred dollar and 10 a month room in, in the slums of Omaha. Omaha's a wonderful place, but it was the poorest section of Omaha. No interconditioning, nothing. And it was wonderful. It's wonderful. It was just.

• 53:39Speaker 05

  It was just, it was like I'm out of a terrible element and here I am by myself, no money. Bronco twos don't run, so it's in a crappy car. I'm still fighting double hernia surgery because I hadn't got my hernias fixed yet. But it was like, man, this is awesome. And the only person I know is this woman that spilled drinks on me that I spent four days with.

• 54:02Speaker 05

  And she was, she was awesome and we just, we dated and, and I just got my life together. I went back to school. The VA got my shit fixed. I got my hernias fixed there while I was there.

• 54:15Speaker 05

  Grad school to me was, was, the school, I say it's easy, but the ability to, to go to school and then also work. And it wasn't hard because military was so, you, you, you know, regimented. You, you could do multiple whole things and not get enough sleep and still get it done. It was easy. So I got a job at Michigan of Omaha, working as a security guard. Go to school and my classes I could take at UNO, a lot of the grad classes were in the evening. So I would take classes and a lot of those graduate school classes, I was for criminal justice. I was still thinking maybe the feds down the line even all I'd done. But it was one a week, so one three hour class a week I could take. And then it was just study, study, study. And to me studying was awesome. The library was peaceful.

• 54:59Speaker 05

  So I would get an internship. So I worked at the library. I could study. I worked at Michigan of Omaha during the day, so I was making money over there. And, and I was going to school and I was with this woman that was, this young woman that was just hotter than all hell. As you, I mean, volleyball players, man, squats and jumps. Obviously you can tell what kind of man I am. She was amazing. And, uh, and she turned out to be just, just a, a very wonderful person that, you know, you, on social media, you see all the, all the women on social media. She's not that, she had no social media account. She doesn't believe it. She's just a, just a good, home, homegrown Nebraskan girl. Nice.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  And she took care of me and she really did. She, she got me back up on my feet. She got me, she just got my, the whole situation, she got my life back together, but she was the main focal point on that. And now two years, got my master's degree. I actually went from being a security guard to where I became an insurance adjuster. So when you watch the movie where they say, you know, you'll be happy being on that, that argument did happen. I fell asleep during the ambassador's speech. I heard so much political boy, I, I, I didn't care. I would have been up half the night, dude. I was up half the night. I got up in the morning like, screw this. Do I really have to go wrong? He's like, Tom, I'll get in there. And I'm sitting in the back. But anyway, when the argument said, yeah, there that happened. He goes, you'd be happy going back home and being an insurance adjuster. Well, it's because I was. I still am a licensed

• 56:27Speaker 05

  National Flood Insurance Program FEMA insurance adjuster to, to this day. I still can run claims if I want. But that's what I did. I went to, got that certification and started working at Mutual of Omaha. And, and eventually I got back in the military. And I remember I, I, it was hard. I went through eight different recruiters because nobody was going to help me when they found out what I did, even though I had an honorable discharge. My renchery code was a three, which is very bad. That means you, you got an honorable discharge, but there's an asterisk there. And, uh, the last guy I saw, it was a recruiting command. It was right by my house, too. I came, I'd missed it for two years. I don't know what happened. Lord works mysterious ways, my friend. I'm driving home to go home. I'm

• 57:09Speaker 05

  like, well, I guess the military's done. I, I got my masters, but I guess the military's out of question. I see it in the corner and I'm like, how did I miss this for years? It's been right by my house and my, my one room in the house I lived. And I drive in there and the Nebraska Recruiting Command Sergeant Major's in there. I walk in, he's in there. I'm talking to recruiter. He overhears me telling, pleading my case to this recruiter. Hey man, you please, I really want to go in. I need to finish what I started. He walks in. He says, I'm hearing what you're saying. He said, you really want to go back in soon? I said, yes, Sergeant. He goes, Roger that. He signs me the paperwork over. I sign it.

• 57:50Speaker 05

  He takes it back from me. As he's holding it, he goes, there's just one stipulation. You have to do it all over again.

• 57:58Speaker 05

  Roger, yeah. So I did all of it, basic airborne ranger, did it twice and went back in. And I You did it all twice? Yeah, yeah. If you want something bad enough, though, was it, you'll do it. And it really, a lot of that, and you know this is, especially when you're early on, it's a mind game. It's fuck, fuck games. I knew it was coming. I was in great shape, because that's all I did. I worked, I went to school, I hung out with my girlfriend at the time, who was a volleyball player there. So what did I do? She was, half the time she was at the gym. So I worked out all the time. I was running five-minute miles. You know, I could, I could do 120 push-ups in two minutes. I mean, I was, you know, I'm very lucky, I had good genes from my family, you know, playing sports helped as well.

• 58:43Speaker 05

  So when I went in, I could outdo the drill sergeants. But I saw, I saw how the military in those three years went from, or it was actually four years, yeah, from 1995, when I first went into basic training, till when I went back in in the beginning of 1999. How had it gotten easier?

• 59:02Speaker 06

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• 59:32Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig

• 59:36Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 59:37Speaker 00

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

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  I'm not the first man.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17, not admitted without parent.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  I can't do the drill sergeants. When I went in the first time, Every drill instructor, infantry drill instructor, except for one, was tabbed. They at least had a Ranger tab. They don't come from Ranger Battalion, but they at least had a tab. Or they were mechanized and they'd seen some combat or been in the desert. I mean, they were hardcore. The one that didn't, and he was one of my drill sergeants, Drill Sergeant Hardney, the devil, loved that man. Big black dude, six, seven, looked like a demon from hell, but I love him. He was actually the NCO IC for two of the All-Non Soldiers. If that tells you anything about his qualifications. He may not have his tab, but do you think he's disciplined? Yeah, standing eight hours at... Yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 05

  So, when I went in the second time, two guys had tabs. No CIBs. Not that much in shape. The only two guys, the, the senior drill instructor, he was from third bat, so he was a Ranger. He was tabbed, and then our commander, our CO, was tabbed. And it was easier. They weren't throwing us around. They couldn't even get in our face. They could still do the shark attack. But it was, the, the standards had lowered. The mile max, the two mile run was 1154 when I first went in. It moved down to 13. So it was easy. I was like, jeez, this is cake. I was, you know, every, all the standards had lowered.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  And, uh, and it wasn't, it, it was, it was just, it was a hell of a lot easier. And of course, it was a lot easier because I knew what, what was coming. Airborne school was easy. RIP was hard, like RIP should be. I mean, it was just, it was a kick in the ass. RIP should be a kick in the ass. The only thing is, is though, two of the instructors there, I had joined in, uh, in 1995. So when I came back through, they were both E6s, E5s, and one was E5, one was an E6. And they're like, what the hell are you doing? Yeah. So, I mean, why I tell people that is because it was, I didn't feel the, oh shit, you know, the, the nervous, you know, like, like you do when you went through Hell Week, or you, these guys are me. It's like, I know that dude. I could outrun him five years.

• 1:02:13Speaker 05

  So it was, and then going back to battalion, uh, went there. Got my tab, became a team leader, and then uh my uh team leader found out I had my master's degree and that I'd been at battalion before. And he says, you need to become an officer, son. And so I became an officer. I got my commission.

• 1:02:33Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding? You you became an officer?

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  Don't tell him, buddy.

• 1:02:36Shawn Ryan?

  I did not. I did not know that. You would have not been invited to the show.

• 1:02:43Speaker 05

  It wasn't long lasted though, because I did, I got my commission. Um, and in two thousand three, uh, it was, yeah, two thousand three, I was going through IOBC, I'm sure Officer's Base, of course. Um, I actually joined Nineteen Special Forces Group too. So I I stayed enlisted in the Guard as I was getting, because I did Green to Gold. I didn't go to Officer Canada School. I just had to do a year of Green to Gold at Creighton University. So I joined the Guard. Nineteen Special Forces Group is where I linked up with my partner that does my vodka with me, Ben Morgan, from First Ranger Bat. He was on ODA nine nine three. They brought me into ODA nine nine three. So we were, we got to, we were friends and we grew up in Grand Junction, but that's where we really developed a great friendship because he went to a different high school. We didn't really hang out.

• 1:03:26Shawn Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  But um, anyway, I still had, I got my commission and I, infantry, got it. And uh, at the end of the course, I was standing out there at the Malone Ranges and uh, my stomach was really hurting bad, terrible, was feeling awful. But I'd just been out the cannon the night before drinking, you know, I was like, it's normal shit. We're out there sweating our balls off, just drinking, ate a ton of pizza, of course. And I, you know, I had passed gas, I let it for it go, and I sharted, I shit myself. Um, but it, the pain actually increased when that happened. So I was like, that ain't right. And I went and dropped trou and I had blood all over. Just, I had-

• 1:04:05Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  I had blood, just, I, I had, uh, well, they rushed me to Martin Amman Hospital and I, I figured I, I had also colitis or Crohn's disease. And it was really bad. And I remember the, the GI doctor, yeah, I just had blood all over the place. I had shit blood. Because that's what I, when it becomes extremely inflamed, for those don't know what ulcer colitis is and all Crohn's, you just, your lower intestines and your colon become inflamed and they just have ulcers all over. And it looks like you've got road rash. It's like when you-

• 1:04:35Speaker 05

  I had had it for years. I just didn't really, you know, I didn't really notice it because I was going at such a high level. And I think the focus was there to finish what I started that it I wasn't gonna let anything hamper that. But it got so bad that now it was affecting my nutrients. It was affecting my energy levels because I couldn't, that's where you process all your food. That's where when you eat everything. And when it's all like that, your food, it doesn't process. It just shoots right through you. It's blood, mucus and food. And that's what was starting to happen.

• 1:05:05Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:05:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I got discharged. I got discharged in 2003. And that was a kick in the balls, dude. That was my one, one time where in my life where God was, I was mad. Or I was like, man, I wonder if God really exists. Because like, holy crap, I went through all this, all this. And, and I remember lying on that gurney, looking up at him going, really? Why? What the hell? And, uh,

• 1:05:34Speaker 05

  that's all right. He has patience. God always has patience. And I see, he, you know, he pities us, which he always, he always pities the one that needs the most pitying too. It was at that time was me. And, um, went home and I lost 30 pounds. I mean, it was like Ranger School all over again. I lost 30 pounds in about a week because I couldn't eat.

• 1:05:52Shawn Ryan?

  Were you just like completely devastated that you were being discharged again?

• 1:05:57Speaker 05

  Yes. Because it was, that wasn't the plan. The plan was I'd already,

• 1:06:00Shawn Ryan?

  What did you think you were gonna do?

• 1:06:02Speaker 05

  I had no idea. I had no idea. No idea. I was, I didn't know. My wife was there. She was very supportive. We had actually got married. We got married before I went to Ranger School. She's, that's how wonderful she is. We got married at a courthouse and I was off to Ranger School the next week. But she was there. And, um,

• 1:06:20Shawn Ryan?

  What did your wife do at the time?

• 1:06:22Speaker 05

  At the time, she was actually, she stayed in Omaha and she was managing Gold's Gym. So she was at Gold's Gym. She was just working. She had a business degree and that was, you know, a fitter. She's athletic. Gold's Gym at the time, that was when Gold's was really big. So she had a good job. You know, so not that, you know, it was about 40 grand a year. That's tough for two people to live on. Couldn't do that anymore. But at that time, we were okay. We're living in an apartment. And all I'm, all she cares, we're just healing. So I'm trying to find natural remedies to heal myself. I'm going to Nature's, because I'm on prednisone, but prednisone is rough.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  So through the next year, all I'm doing is, first of all, I'm eating things and if it goes right through me, I write it down, I crash, I can't eat it anymore. So I'm figuring out what I could eat, my diet. And then I'm taking the medication and then I'm going to go into nature food stores, organic food stores. You know, it wasn't a Whole Foods at the time. You had to find the little mom and pop ones and trying to find out what could I eat to start to build my body back up because I couldn't take away protein. I couldn't do anything that was dairy related. And I just tried to build my body up for the next year. And I found this goat clostridium, which they, I wish they still made it goat milk. I could do that. And then I could eat corn stuff. I could eat stuff that was rice

• 1:07:39Speaker 05

  related. I could eat anything in the Bible if it was manna, manna bread. I could eat that for some reason. It didn't disagree with me. And I built my body back up for the next year. And at the end of 2003, I got a call on the phone from Blackwater Security. Blackwater called me first and then 30 minutes later, Triple Canopy called. How did they get in? I mean, At that time, it was just word of mouth. And I remember they got a hold because one of my Ranger buddies at both places were already working for him and they had recommended my name to him. Interesting. And yeah, they were, they were good. Actually, Blackwater was a gentleman, and he's a great guy, Brian Mastafani was his name. And he had recommended that as Rangers,

• 1:08:24Speaker 05

  let's give him a shot. He didn't know I was sick though either. Yeah. But they, they got my phone number because he, you know, he was a friend. He had the phone number. So he's like, here it is. And they called me. And the only reason I went to Blackwater was because they called me first. And at that time, they were both great organizations. You had Eric running that and it was still relatively small. And they had Lee Van Arsdale running, who's a, you know, Delta legend, running Triple Canopy. It was, it was pretty good shit. And,

• 1:08:52Speaker 05

  Was it for um OGA? No, that time there wasn't, there was peak, it was called Polar Quest, was just starting to come online. But at that time, it was Brimmer, the Brimmer Detail. What year is this? Two thousand four, end of two thousand three, beginning two thousand four. So Karzai had already been going, the Karzai Detail, which a lot of your brothers were on, on that Karzai, and they had just started to move into Iraq, and they were starting to pick up guys to go on the Brimmer Detail, which was gonna be the Negro Ponzi Detail down the line. It was, it wasn't State Department either, it was the Coalition Provisional Authority. Interesting. How'd you like that? The beginning, it was great, because it was like OGA. I remember showing up at GRS and everybody was talking about the Brimmer Detail. Yeah, that was, that was the good old days.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  That was when it was State Department really didn't have their hand in it, so it was, it was the Wild West. I mean, that was, you know, that's where Sacks started. Sacks was, he was, that's where he became really a legend over there within the GRS was, he was one of the original Brimmer guys, loved Sacks. But anyway, yeah, that's, that's what I, and I went, and I went to the first class where I met Boone. Boone and I were in that first, it was called the- Did you work with Sacks in that? Not in the Brimmer Detail. No? No, he moved on, he was one of the first guys move over to GRS. Okay. Sacks was the trendsetter on, on contracting, but rightfully should be, and he's, he was just- What a great guy, man. He was just, he is, he's, that's the one thing, he is an operator, but he's just a nice guy. I love that dude. He was, I, obviously I'm mentioning him, so he, he had an effect on my life, a positive effect.

• 1:10:20Speaker 05

  But um, yeah, I went there and uh, went through the training, which was basically three weeks at Moyoc of Delta, Long Tabbers, White Soft, Blue, Rangers and Marines fighting with each other. And it never changed throughout your entire contracting career? It was, dude, it was so hilarious, we didn't learn a damn thing during that. We, we went through all this shooting, so you had to pass the shooting, but as far as the PSD stuff, we didn't learn a thing, because they were just always, everybody was always fighting. Arguing tactics. And then you're having the, the White, it was the White Soft, the, you know, the SEAL, the White, the Vanelas, the, the SEAL teams outside of Blue. The Me's.

• 1:11:05Speaker 05

  They were, they- The regular shitbag Navy SEALs. Come on, shit, I believe you, man, I, I'd rather work- The Vanilla guys knew infantry stuff better than the Blue guys. I was always said, man, you guys know your infantry shit down. You guys had it. Mike Kane Sawbones was a guy worked quite often. He was awesome and he hated Blue. It's like, fuck that. But I, he was awesome. Bones was the man. And anyway, they're running the course. So do you think a Blue guy is gonna take shit from them or Delta? And it was, I remember sitting on the bleachers, week two. And we're trying to do through, we're trying to learn basic formations, walking formations,

• 1:11:47Speaker 05

  diamond, you know, and then how to react to contact, and then those formations. And it just turned into a big argument shoving.

• 1:11:53Shawn Ryan?

  From a bunch of guys that none of them have done personal protection.

• 1:11:56Speaker 05

  No, and the other ones that were teaching it.

• 1:11:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's all been assaulting.

• 1:12:00Speaker 05

  And the ones that were teaching it, you know, they'd been downrange for what, six months?

• 1:12:03Shawn Ryan?

  Hey guys, we're gonna go on defense now. What's that?

• 1:12:06Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 1:12:07Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know. Figure it out and teach it.

• 1:12:09Speaker 05

  That's what it is. It was so, but it was, it was, it was awesome. Cause it was a beautiful day, you know, it's, it's, it's early spring in North Carolina. Moyoc, it's sun's out, it's starting to set. I'm in the bleachers and one of the instructors come over to me, his name was, call sign was Shrek. He come over to me and he goes, "What you smiling at for Ranger?" I said, "You guys are paying me." Cause I hadn't, I hadn't made shit for a year. You guys are paying me 250 bucks a day to sit out here in this beautiful weather, get a shoot gun, and I get to watch you guys just clown show. But this is awesome. And I'm just, I'm just unbelievable. Like, how, how lucky am I to be right here watching the shit show go on? And it was so awesome. It was wonderful.

• 1:12:54Speaker 05

  And then, you know, I finished the course. I had to go home for like two months because my clearance still hadn't cleared yet. And I hadn't got my clearance yet from the State Department, you know? That's when we started to figure out, oh, you know, DOD, NSACI have their own clearances? Oh, I didn't know that. I thought you got one, they all, they don't cross over. So I had to wait for my State Department clearance. Got it. Went home to my wife. I said, "Please don't divorce me, but I'm going to Iraq." That's when the contracting life for the next 10 years took over, man. That was it. And early days and it was, it was the Wild West, you know, and it was, man, sitting up on top of a building on Hypha Street with my Ranger buddy in pigeon shit.

• 1:13:35Speaker 05

  Overwatching one of our PSD teams, watching Bradley shoot down Hyphen Street, spinning, the guys in their turrets, spinning because they're, that was, I still remember, that was so cool. So they, because they're, they're gun, the upgunners, they're spinning, making sure they're looking and they're not going to get shot. Because Hyphen was bad at that time. That was real bad. And, you know, I'm ducking because they don't know if I'm a good guy, but I don't want them to shoot me. But just, that was wonderful times, man. Driving down Biop, driving down Irish, Route Irish at 100 kilometers an hour, fucking making sure that you don't get hit on that overpass or.

• 1:14:10Shawn Ryan?

  There are not a lot of people that say they've had a great time running up and down Route Irish. One of the few.

• 1:14:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I loved it. And I had an awesome team. We had a wonderful, just an awesome team. Again, another one, just guys that just, not all got along, but it just, it worked.

• 1:14:25Shawn Ryan?

  So for those listening that don't know about Route Irish, Route Irish is most likely, unanimously, the most dangerous road in Baghdad.

• 1:14:38Speaker 05

  It was for a time. I mean, there were other dangerous roads too, like Hyphen Street was very dangerous. Route Wild, when you got up to Soder, was pretty damn dangerous. And even Route 10 at some points were dangerous. And then, of course, Route 10, when it got into Ramadi and Fallujah, of course, were extremely dangerous. And God bless them, Helveston and the guys, you know, that got hung and died there. You know, but Irish was always hot. Always something that was dying or getting hit on Irish. And I loved every minute of it. And I had the best drivers in the world. And when you see, when you see a motorcade with three cars, and they know, the drivers know what they're doing. And I was very lucky enough that I moved, being from the trunk monkey, to eventually

• 1:15:22Speaker 05

  I became the team leader. So I'm on that rear vehicle making the calls. And just watching drivers do their thing, blocking and screening at 100K, dude, it is beautiful.

• 1:15:35Speaker 05

  And I just get chills thinking about it because I was like, man, it got to a point where it was like a great football team where a coach didn't need to say a thing. Everybody knew what they were doing and they just did it. It was amazing. Having my two left and right door gunners cracking doors. If they needed to hit somebody, they'd hit them. If they didn't, they didn't. You know, getting out and even when I got to be a door gunner on the left rear. When you're going 100K and you got to crack that door and you're hanging out the side like, that's almost the same as hanging on bench of a little bird as it's spanking in. It's, it's, it's wonderful, man. Who gets to do that? That was, that was fun times and we, we were up and down that thing. In a two-month period at one point, we had to run it six times a day.

• 1:16:17Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 1:16:17Speaker 05

  It was stupid. It was State Department.

• 1:16:18Shawn Ryan?

  Six times a day? You had to.

• 1:16:22Speaker 05

  We were, we were.

• 1:16:22Shawn Ryan?

  Whoa, six times a day on Route Irish?

• 1:16:25Speaker 05

  We were protecting the Rhino bus and we got asked for that.

• 1:16:28Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:16:29Speaker 05

  And, uh, six times a day and it was. We violated every security principle that you're supposed to have.

• 1:16:37Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys one of the crews that had the, uh?

• 1:16:41Speaker 05

  Which, which what?

• 1:16:43Shawn Ryan?

  Somebody dressed up like a dinosaur on the, at the back of a truck and rode that?

• 1:16:47Speaker 05

  No, no, that, that, that wasn't us as far as you know.

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  No, it wasn't us. It wasn't us. It wasn't us. That was later down the line. It was a DynCorp team.

• 1:16:57Shawn Ryan?

  That was later down?

• 1:16:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was down the line. It was Team Five, I believe, that did the DynCorp team because we would rotate with DynCorp on this because we were. Still didn't have enough people. So we would take it and then they would take something. I love the DynCorp guys too. But now that wasn't us. Seriously, that was the DynCorp team, which I wish it would have been. That was, that was some funny shit. That was hilarious. YouTube that stuff, guys. Dinosaur Route Irish. But, um, you know, we were time and place predictable. We were a big target and we were slow. Everything you didn't want to be on Route Irish, we were.

• 1:17:28Shawn Ryan?

  Did you guys, did you guys take contact?

• 1:17:30Speaker 05

  Just sniper fire from away, uh, you know, on, right when you hit Route Irish, you had those that, the, where the, uh. Where the Edinburgh Risk guys got hit. That's that famous, that, I say famous, that infamous video where those guys are on and there's an SF guy in there that. Everybody hammered because he ran and hid in a little ditch.

• 1:17:50Shawn Ryan?

  I've not seen that.

• 1:17:51Speaker 05

  It's, uh, it was Edinburgh Risk where, where, um, it's right at the beginning of when you, when you get out of the green zone, you start hitting Route Irish. It's still Iraqi. Urban areas, right there. And it's about 300 meters off the road and they would sit PKMs or snipers on there and they, because there was also a building that had been bombed and burnt out that they put sniper fire about 100 meters away when you're going. And, uh, so, anyway, we would take every once in a while, but we got, didn't get hit with a car bomb. We got very lucky. The Dyncor team that took over for us got hit the next week. Um, so we would just take, and you know, you're, ping, all right, well, we're good. Everybody good? Yeah,

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  all right. Um, it just added to the flavor, man. And, uh, and you know, it was something to say that for the team as well, how, how awesome they were and how a good motorcade operations, if you're running it right, they're gonna hit somebody that's not doing it right.

• 1:18:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Speaker 05

  And, um, but I do remember that it was, eh, when we got the task to do it, and I was a TL, I was like, can you guys do this? Well, yeah, you know, what am I gonna say? No? Of course, we can do it. But I went to the team and you should have seen the looks, man. Half of them were stoked, the other half were like, I'm not going home.

• 1:19:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Speaker 05

  And you're trying to keep everybody pumped up and in my head going, holy shit, six times a day? Just the odds.

• 1:19:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  That we're, we're gonna get hit with a VBID. I said, we can take small arms fire, because we're gonna keep moving. We're gonna keep pushing through, just don't stop, don't create your own kill zone like the Edinburgh Risk guys did that got hit. Where you get caught in a traffic jam there and then you push everybody out right and left. So you're basically, you, you, you've just given them an ambush zone. You've given them a big target. But we could just keep pushing. Um, don't worry about the Rhino, it's got much armor on it. It's the State Department armored bus that A, and one Abrams has, it's gonna be able to take a hit. Just be able to med vac them or get them out of there if it goes down, but just keep moving. And it was very, we, we just did everything right. And we got lucky, you know, a lot, not even.

• 1:19:55Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you, you never got blown up on Irish?

• 1:19:59Speaker 05

  I got blown up on Irish.

• 1:20:01Shawn Ryan?

  That is, like.

• 1:20:03Speaker 05

  It's a.

• 1:20:04Shawn Ryan?

  For running six times a day, time and place predictable with a huge bus as a target? I mean.

• 1:20:11Speaker 05

  It was.

• 1:20:12Shawn Ryan?

  That is incredible.

• 1:20:14Speaker 05

  It's lucky. I, it is very lucky. It is like, because again, I said, when Dyncor took over the next week, Team Five, they got hit, the car bomb hit them. Hit the, hit the Rhino right off, hit them. Boom. And, you know, I want to attribute to that, hey, we were just that awesome. Nah, we're just that lucky.

• 1:20:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's luck.

• 1:20:30Speaker 05

  We're just that lucky. But it still brought the team together. It was wonderful and it was very tiring days because you were distressed.

• 1:20:38Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not diminishing your team, by the way, by saying that it's just luck. I'm just saying.

• 1:20:42Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 1:20:43Shawn Ryan?

  Even with those EFPs and shit, I mean, there was.

• 1:20:46Speaker 05

  Well, and they were, and they were starting to drop the grenades with the little, little shoots off the overpasses as well. Of course, it, it, there is some, there is some, hey, we did what, we, we did what we had control of. We planned what we had to, we ran the route right, the motor kit operations were great, we were doing what we needed to do, we kept moving, we didn't ever stop.

• 1:21:06Shawn Ryan?

  Let me, let me say, sorry.

• 1:21:08Speaker 05

  No, go ahead.

• 1:21:08Shawn Ryan?

  I get yelled at if I don't talk about these acronyms. So EFP for the audience. An EFP is basically a bomb.

• 1:21:17Speaker 05

  It's a platter charge, it's a force projectile.

• 1:21:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:20Speaker 05

  Um, I want to say, I always say, I always say electrically, but that's not right. I don't know why in my head it's saying, it's a platter charge. They put a piece of copper on it, it's a force projectile. I always forget what the E stands for, you guys can hammer on me later about that. But it's where it goes and then that platter, that copper turns into molten lava, so it'll go through the armor and then when it goes through it, it cools and then it becomes, it becomes a projectile, hard projectile. And they were starting, yeah, remember that? They were starting to hit us with that and, uh, and that was always.

• 1:21:51Shawn Ryan?

  Well, they would even put those thermal sensors on.

• 1:21:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Shawn Ryan?

  So when they, when they sense the heat of the engine, that's what would trigger it.

• 1:21:58Speaker 05

  Because we were able to counter their, first of all, their wires were, we could see them a lot of times, which, you know, you just, but we were able to, with all the countermeasures, we could counter the cell phone. So that was huge, yeah. And, uh, um, yeah, I, we had a buddy that, next month, a guy named Wee Man, that got hit with, they got hit with the EFP when they were driving the Mambas around, you know, Blackwater had those white South African and it went right through that armor.

• 1:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:25Speaker 05

  And, um, you know, I always say, I love Wee Man, I love Chris, he was a great guy. He was actually our, he worked in the mail, I mean, it sounds kind of of of cliche, but he worked in the mailroom. He he came in and he didn't have, he was not special ops. He worked in a small town police department and he came in and he wanted to get on the road and we would never let him on the road. We're like, no, dude, you don't qualify. This is where you belong, right here. And finally, he got out on the road and got hit with an EFP and he fucked him up. Damn, man. And I still love him to death, but I'll be honest, I think, I think, I think, I don't say he wanted that, because I would never say that on anybody, but I

• 1:23:09Speaker 05

  do remember when they, because we didn't go pick him up, the QRF team that responded, they went to to help. My team was the PSD team. And I do remember when they came back, when the guys on the QRF team kept saying, I said, did you see Wee Man? He goes, yeah. He goes, what was he saying? He said, just, he kept asking me to take a picture of him. It's like, man, sometimes you get what you wish for, man. Man. And, yeah, I'm not, not to guess, he's, he is awesome. We, and he's brave and shit, he is. But be careful what you, I always, that's always a reminder to me, be careful what you wish for. Yeah. But, yeah, we did that. And, and then I did another year and then I went back home. And in between, I was instructing at Blackwater, so I was a firearms and tactics instructor

• 1:23:54Speaker 05

  in between contracts. So I really, I really never went home. So did you move to Moyok? No, I stayed in Omaha. He did a great job. So it was, it was one of those things where we were just apart a lot. It was, I was gone. Or I'd go home for a month. And it was hard because my son was born, my first, my 19 year old, he was born, first two months I was over in, in Baghdad, my first two months on the contract. So I did come home to see his birth. And then I went right back for another seven months. Damn. And then I, and, but that was, you know, at that time, that's, that's what I wanted. There's nobody to blame but myself. Man, what is, what is it?

• 1:24:29Speaker 05

  My whole career was pre-kids. And so, I mean, as you know, today was my Yeah. son's first day of school. Congrats on you. And I'm so happy that he's just like, Dad, I'm out, man. Yeah. Well, I was expecting like a little, you know, I'm gonna miss you, Mom and Dad. No, he's like, I don't give a shit. I'm like, hey, see you guys later. But, but I am, I, I

• 1:24:58Shawn Ryan?

  I missed his first open house because of a I interviewed Trump.

• 1:25:04Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:25:05Shawn Ryan?

  And um, otherwise, there's no way I would have missed it.

• 1:25:09Speaker 05

  You gotta do what you gotta do.

• 1:25:10Shawn Ryan?

  But I'll tell you, man, when my wife sent me pictures of my son, like with his backpack on walking into that school, I was like, you know, and and it just, every time I have an experience like that, I just wonder like, how the how did my buddies do it back in the day? How would it, how do you?

• 1:25:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, how do you rationalize that?

• 1:25:34Shawn Ryan?

  I want to know what it's like to come home. You met your son when he was a, when he, when

• 1:25:39Speaker 05

  He was a baby.

• 1:25:40Shawn Ryan?

  He was born.

• 1:25:40Speaker 05

  He was one, one month.

• 1:25:41Shawn Ryan?

  And then you come back, he's seven months old.

• 1:25:44Speaker 06

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• 1:26:13Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 1:26:30Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not admitted without parent.

• 1:26:46Speaker 05

  Now, today, at that time, it was, it was just what it was. It was, this is what I'm doing. This is what I gotta do. I'm providing for, you're rationalizing because this is, I'm providing for my family.

• 1:26:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:56Speaker 05

  But it's also a little ego. This is what I want to do. This is where I've been, this is what I've always wanted to do. And, and you know, when I got discharged from the military, my buddies were jumping into Afghanistan. So, like, I thought I missed my war. You know, I, yeah. God, well, no, I got my war. This is where I need to be. I'm going. And, and I did have a good time. I was enjoying it. It was wonderful. Now, looking back now and experiencing, you're getting experienced, the little kid time with my nine-year-old that I have been with him growing up, now it's, now it hurts. And now it's like, man, damn. Do you feel a- I missed, I missed him and we had to, we had to coming to Jesus when he was 16

• 1:27:39Speaker 05

  because we didn't know each other. And even when I was home as a contractor, you don't get, there's no decompression, there's no demob. You're off a plane, a commercial jet, and you're going home. And it takes about 30 days just to get your head right. You're not home. And then you have 30 days of downtime, and then you're back out again. So that's why I think it was even easier for me. Just, I think maybe that was a defense mechanism for me. I don't want to go home and be angry and just, just let me keep working. And I'd go back and continue to instruct at Moak, and I wouldn't go home for more than a couple of weeks, or I'd fly them out to me. It was, at that time, it wasn't hard because I thought we were doing it for something bigger than, you know, it was patriotism. They attacked

• 1:28:23Speaker 05

  us. We're, now looking back, I'm like, man, gosh, I miss that. I would have enjoyed being a father then. And luckily for us, him and I are very close now. I'm happy to hear- Yeah, but, so we were able to come to terms. Same with my daughter, too. What did that, what did that, I mean, did it come to a head and there was a conversation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, when he was 16. What was that conversation? We, uh, my wife and I had reconciled. We, you know, we were back together. You know, we, it was 2000, I'm sorry, when he was 16, so it was right on the year of 2018, where I got my shit together, and him or her and I back together. And we're out at a family dinner, and, or out at Olive Garden, Council Bluff, Ohio, I remember vividly.

• 1:29:05Speaker 05

  And, you know, my little guy, I'm being able to be a father with him, even though I'm speaking and I'm not, I'm starting to whittle the speaking down, I'm starting to be home a lot more. Um, you know, I'm hugging all over him. The stuff I really didn't do with the other two, because I was just so detached when I was home. It was, I wanted to, but I didn't know how. I mean, it really was, it, it, because I wasn't always there. My, my brain was sandbox, Afghanistan, brains, half-brain's there, half-brain's family. Where now, my brain is all there with the family. And um, my little guy did something and I, I'm sorry, I can't say it. My, my wife, well, you know, many people know, but I just, my wife, it's all good.

• 1:29:49Speaker 05

  Um, my little guy Peanut, oh, my kids have call signs. Peanut, um, he does something that the other two at Olive Garden, he's doing something. He's having, starting to get angry, have a tantrum because he got those little games there at Olive Garden. You can play on the little bonitaries. In the past, when those kid, when my, when my other two, Kiki and Bubba, when they were growing up, I'd get angry, just lose it because I was back home, laugh the handle. I'm not getting mad at him. I'm actually being a dad. I'm actually, I mean, I'm being disciplined, but I'm having some patience. He, he looked at me and it killed me, dude, it did. He looked at me and goes, "Why don't you get mad at him like you used to get mad at me?"

• 1:30:34Speaker 05

  And it was like, whoa, I mean, it's just knife in the chest. And uh, I didn't have an answer. I couldn't tell him what was because of the wars, because of Iraq. I mean, that's an excuse, kind of. He's not going to understand that. And that was where I realized that he was angry with me for being gone for many years. And Kiki, my daughter, same way. Because I was, he, my little guy Peanut got treated a lot better, a lot less hand spanking on the bottoms or whatever than the other two.

• 1:31:16Speaker 05

  And that's attributed to my mind state being, coming back. Because you know, you come back and you have that excuse. I mean, what are you guys crying about? You see this little Iraqi kid, he's on the street, you know, nothing to eat. And you're trying to compare the two, you know, but it's completely different. But that's how I am coming back. That's my rationalization. I may be yelling at you, but you could have it a lot worse. And a lot of guys, a lot of fathers now are realizing that because we're comparing their lives to these Afghani, the Afghani that's walking down the street carrying water up a five miles up a hill or, you know, or this, or the kids that are caught in a crossfire because our car bomb goes off and it blows up a busload of kids going to school, you know, like we're trying to compare that. Yeah.

• 1:32:01Speaker 05

  They don't understand that. And that's not a fair comparison. But that's how I was until I was finally home more and able to come to terms with what was going on over there, that that was a life, but now my life is as a father here. And my actions were completely different with my younger son than it was with the other two. And I didn't realize it until he said that. How did you reconcile this? It became present. I hugged on him more, loved him more. I, I told him, I said, when he pushed away from me, give him his space, but then come back and just be, hey, you okay? Son, I love you, man. Or even now that, and with the advent of cell phones, that's one positive

• 1:32:44Speaker 05

  is that I can just always say, I love you, bubba. And even if I get back, yeah. See, he's a teenager. He knows. And you know, I know we reconciled because his junior year, he was an athlete as well. When he played basketball, he played football as a freshman and sophomore year, but he had three concussions. So I pulled him out. I said, no more. You're done with football. Play something else. He loves soccer anyway. So he went to soccer. He changed his number to 13. No way. I went to a game and in my, I was, you know, my wife, Tanya was sitting there. I was, is that? Oh shit, I said his name. Sorry. Is that bubba? Thank you. I said, is that bubba? She goes, yeah. He goes, he's number 13. She goes, yeah.

• 1:33:29Speaker 05

  And that's when I knew that he'd finally forgiven me. And we're very close now. Yeah. I love, I love that boy to death. And he is just a good kid. His mom raised him. He is, he was, he's nothing like me. He doesn't drink. He went to a school, he had a soccer scholarship to go play at Northwestern College there. It's a Christian school in Iowa. And he's up there and I thought it'd be all right. And he's like, dad, I don't, I don't do any, all the guys go to, go to Sioux Falls and drink and they're, and I actually, he goes, I don't do that. He goes, I go, well, then come home and you have a track scholarship to the small college in college in Kansas, write that coach up and tell him you want to come in. That's what he did. So he was, he was wonderful, man. He's just. How about your daughter?

• 1:34:13Speaker 05

  She's headstrong, man. But now that she, we're starting to, we're starting to get better. Because it's, it's, the daughter's way different. Little boys, you know, boys, you can be a little firmer. Girls, you, you, you don't really want to, in my opinion, you don't, because you don't want them falling in with a man that, that bosses them around. But you also, you know, she's still your daughter. She got to discipline. So what do I do? Mama, handle this.

• 1:34:44Speaker 05

  But it came to a point to where, yeah, and my daughter's, as far as her outspokenness is like me. My oldest son, he's not, you know, he's very, very, very quiet. He's strong, but he, you know, he doesn't argue back. He doesn't. He, he, he knows that I got, he goes, I got it. I'll fix it. My daughter, she's going to argue, argue, argue, argue. And there were times where we would be, yeah, we'd be yelling at each other. Like, because the disrespect that was there. And, uh, my wife finally said, I, she goes, just let me, let me, let me handle it. And this was a couple of years ago. And so done, you just default to my wife who, who, and my daughter responds better to her mom. And a lot of

• 1:35:27Speaker 05

  it has to do with me being gone a lot. But now we're, we're, no, we're getting back again. We're, we're, we're reconciling. And we're at a point where, and she's not very, I, I think she got, she's not very affectionate. She doesn't like the hugs and the, and the kisses like my little guy does and my oldest son, he'll, I said, I'm gonna hug you till you're 40, till you're 50 years old, sons. They like it. I mean, my son doesn't hug back, but he lets me. She's, she doesn't like it. She doesn't. And I, I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, her growing up and me and her mom, you know, sometimes having some issues. We got divorced at one point and me being an angry, angry man coming

• 1:36:10Speaker 05

  back from deployments. But she knows I love her and, you know, there was an issue at her school that, I love it. She wrote a letter to the school saying how she had a problem with one of the, one of the dress code issues. Heck yeah. And I remember I called, I said, I got your back, Don, because I believe you. I said, I know you're doing the right thing. And that's what I love because that is something Tonto would do. Like selling, telling Pete Hegseth that you're gonna choke out a former president.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  Hey, she got her opinion. Hell yeah, I got you. And I called her and she was, she, you know, so it's, it's a lot of time where I'll tell her I love her. I go, I love you, Don. Yeah, Dad. I love you, I love you too. Because I called her and I said, you write what you want. You know I got your back. Tell them how you feel. I said, I love you. And she goes, I love you too, Dad. And that was actually just last week.

• 1:37:04Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you, man.

• 1:37:05Speaker 05

  So it, it just, it's being a father, man. You, you just have to figure it out. And there are, it's okay to be a disciplinarian. There's nothing wrong with that. But you also, your kids are all different. And for us that deployed, we do have to relearn. We have to change ourselves. Warriors don't retire, like Ron said. And I know we put in the movie, but he said that. But it's the truth. But we don't ever retire, but we can't be a warrior at home. You can be a dad, and, but you have to figure out a way how to reach your kids. And luckily for me, my kids are smarter than me, so they would maybe not tell me, but they would say things where I was astute enough to pick it up.

• 1:37:43Speaker 05

  Like my son, or like my daughter. And they don't always have to say they love you, just in an action, like my son wearing number 13. I just know right then, like, he, he, he, he, he forgives me. He's, we're good. And we have been perfect since, and...

• 1:38:01Shawn Ryan?

  I'm happy to hear that.

• 1:38:01Speaker 05

  Ah, thanks, man.

• 1:38:03Shawn Ryan?

  Chris, let's, uh, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we will get into how you got into the OGA contract.

• 1:38:10Speaker 05

  You got it, brother.

• 1:38:11Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 1:38:14Speaker 00

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• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

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• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is.

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  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:38:31Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped moving? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:38:38Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

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

• 1:38:45Shawn Ryan?

  I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch, and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com/vigilanceelite. That's patreon.com/vigilanceelite. Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:39:28Shawn Ryan?

  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. All right, Chris, we're back from the break.

• 1:39:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:49Shawn Ryan?

  And we just went through a small portion of your career. Well, I guess not a small portion.

• 1:39:55Speaker 05

  It's of my life, small portion of my life, let's put it that way.

• 1:39:59Shawn Ryan?

  But now we're getting ready to get into how you got picked up for OGA.

• 1:40:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was, you know, again, and I keep referring this, God's path, Lord works mysterious ways. It really, it wasn't anything. I wanted to do, I was doing fine doing, I was working with Blackwater, uh, doing State Department stuff, but then also I was working with Greystone, which was Eric's, he was trying to make like kind of an executive outcome, sort of, but it was Greystone, so it was still Blackwater, but it was like a little offshoot, we would go down-

• 1:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  What's executive outcomes?

• 1:40:32Speaker 05

  Um, that was the old South African PMC, where it was really PMC mercenaries where-

• 1:40:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, that was like the De Beers shit.

• 1:40:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was where they were going and actually getting hired by governments to take down terrorist organizations or, or actually do direct action missions.

• 1:40:48Shawn Ryan?

  That wasn't the De Beers shit.

• 1:40:49Speaker 05

  That wasn't the De Beers shit, no, this is, this was the old-

• 1:40:53Shawn Ryan?

  Real mercenaries.

• 1:40:54Speaker 05

  Yes, the red, where the term mercenary, I would say, well, the term mercenaries back in the beginning of time, but that was where the government stopped in and said, we gotta stop doing this, because there were sixty South African, you know, those guys were sixty South African strong of former military, and they were taking out huge armies at the behest of some of the African governments. Read about them, it was pretty interesting stuff, they were, they were badasses.

• 1:41:20Shawn Ryan?

  What is this called again?

• 1:41:21Speaker 05

  They were called executive outcomes.

• 1:41:22Shawn Ryan?

  How the hell do I not know about this?

• 1:41:24Speaker 05

  I know, so I'm surprised too, man, that's, that's a big deal, that's like-

• 1:41:27Shawn Ryan?

  I'm a dumbass sometimes.

• 1:41:28Speaker 05

  I don't know if anybody's still alive from any of those, you know, it was early, long seventies, eighties, I think it was, but anyway, Greystone was supposed to be Eric's kind of like a offshoot of that, so it was Blackwater, but we're called Greystone, but what we-

• 1:41:42Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't know Greystone either.

• 1:41:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:44Shawn Ryan?

  Man dude, I got left in the dark on some of that.

• 1:41:46Speaker 05

  It was very small and it just lasted, but it was, Eric wanted to keep that-

• 1:41:49Shawn Ryan?

  Was it the agency stuff?

• 1:41:51Speaker 05

  No, it was private stuff, we were going down to South America and training local South Americans to go and protect bases overseas, so protect Blackwater bases more, so instead of using the Nepalese, the Gurkha Gurkhas, you know, the, we were trying to-

• 1:42:08Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, hold on, let's go, let's talk about Greystone. I've had Eric on here three separate times, we have not talked about Greystone.

• 1:42:15Speaker 05

  It was, I, I don't think it lasted very long, um, it was very small, it really was more training, going down there and vetting locals that we could use from South America to Central America, so I went to Peru and El Salvador, and then we also had teams going to Colombia, and it wasn't anything nefarious, it's not like we were going down there and- Starting to execute. We weren't pulling, we weren't pulling inks. Let's put it that way. We weren't doing that. Then we were, we were going down there to train and then working with the Forza de Especial and helping them train a little bit. So it was like a FID mission. It really was. But I think Eric wanted to get to a point where it was like its own self-sustaining army.

• 1:43:01Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:43:01Speaker 05

  But it just never morphed into that because then, you know, that's when, those times is when State Department started to take over high threat, the CPA now was high threat protection. Then it went to that WIPS, Worldwide Personal Protective and State Department getting their hands in. And that's when the microscope started going up Eric's keister, where they were trying to come at him for stuff. And whatever. I like Eric. I protected his family in between contracts. I'd go to Tyson's Corner and, you know, I'd go run with him in the morning because I was the only guy that could, he was a beast. He was physically, I could run with him in the morning and I'd go take his kids to school because of that Code Pink, that liberal terrorist crazy women group was always threatening them.

• 1:43:42Speaker 05

  So we had a team that would help him and I was on that as well. I was the detail leader for that. But anyway, we did that and I got to go. So I went to South America in between contracts. So I was State Department and then, do you want to go Greystone? You want to go to South America? Hell yeah. So we went to Piérez, Peru, went to San Salvador, went to Lima, Peru. And it was fun. It was a good time. And again, my Spanish comes back, so I don't really feel like it's a deployment to me. You know, and ate some good food, went to a couple spin classes there in Lima, you know, Shakira on bikes and spandex. What can go, anyway. Anyway, it was a great, and then it was, and then the training too, you know, and

• 1:44:23Speaker 05

  and working with the Forza de Especial, especially in El Salvador was pretty cool. But then I came back and I was still teaching high threat protection, getting ready to do another contract. And Marty Strong, who was SEAL Lieutenant, great guy. He's written a few books himself, but great guy. He was one of the program managers on the Blackwater contract, the State Department contract. And Randy Leonard was running, starting to run the OGA side house. We call it the Victory. We call it the Victory Program and AOB, Army of Blackwater Program, which was the static CIA guys, the base security guys. Marty comes to me and says, "Hey, you wanna go work OGA?" And like Marty, man, I'm State Department,

• 1:45:07Speaker 05

  and I thought the requirements were still like eight years or nine years spec ops. I only had six. So I was like, "I don't qualify." And it was six, but he goes, "You qualify." I go, "All right," because I was jogging in Moyak. I lived out in the back at the PTC, the private training center where he was out. So I was jogging one day and he was driving home, and that's when he yelled out his window. He goes, "You wanna go do OGA?" I was like, "Marty, I don't qualify." And I'm still trying to run. He goes, "You qualify." "All right, sure, put my name in the hat." And then the next day, Randy came and there were seven of us instructors that had been working contracts. And there was the Victory Program, which we ran to get guys certified for OGA. It was, it was easy. It wasn't anything tough,

• 1:45:51Speaker 05

  to be quite honest with you. We're coming back and I remember, you know, we're getting done training, we're teaching a class for the day to send guys over on the whips contract. I was doing the high threat protection side of the house on that side. And he pulls all these guys and what, these are all tough guys, man, all pipe hitters, right? Cool, everything, I can do anything. And Randy comes in and TDC had gotten a name for itself. It was hard. People fail. A lot of people were failing. And so Randy comes in and there's seven of us. He goes, "We have a slot for TDC. Who wants to go?" It was crickets. All these pipe hitters, man, everybody's looking, somebody say

• 1:46:31Speaker 05

  something. I was like, "Fuck it. I'll go." I was like, "I'll do it." And it was like everybody would, "Ha, ha." Because if one of us didn't volunteer, Randy was gonna pick one. And, you know, if you, if you don't pass it, well, then maybe it'll come back on whips, but you're never working. It was, it was literally pass or fail. You pass, if you fail, never OGA ever again.

• 1:46:55Shawn Ryan?

  For those listening, OGA stands for Other Government Agency.

• 1:46:58Speaker 05

  So we weren't calling-

• 1:46:59Shawn Ryan?

  We're getting into the intelligence world.

• 1:47:01Speaker 05

  Into all this stuff. They had the clowns in action. We're getting into the clowns in action. It's true, true. But we didn't call it GRS. I didn't know what that was called. I didn't know it was GRS, you know, he said OGA, which I knew what it was, but it wasn't called GRS at that time. If it was, it wasn't, that wasn't the term used around the head shed there.

• 1:47:22Speaker 05

  So I say, and Randy says, okay, we need to get you spun up. And he brought in Dan Simpson, Dirty Dan, one of the original makers of TDC with Randy. They, I mean, they started with Dan, another Dan, he started JRS, great guy. I wish I could remember his last name, I can't.

• 1:47:39Shawn Ryan?

  It's probably better you don't.

• 1:47:41Speaker 05

  No, you're right. Even though he's pro- well, he left and started Osin Hunter Group.

• 1:47:46Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, maybe different.

• 1:47:47Speaker 05

  So he's up, but no worries. Anyway.

• 1:47:52Speaker 05

  He goes, we need to get you spun up. And if you're a Ranger and SEALs, you guys use pistols. SF, they get good at pistols. Rangers, we get a pistol, we're throwing it in our rucksack. We don't shoot. We're rifling a machine, we can, that's our thing. Rifles, machine guns, Gustavs, that's our thing. And Randy goes, get out there, I need to start training. And at the time too, I wasn't using broom handles, which.

• 1:48:17Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:48:18Speaker 05

  You know, because we don't, that wasn't, you guys did. Blue, Blue and White Soft did.

• 1:48:24Shawn Ryan?

  A broom handle is a forward grip that goes on the front of an AR-15.

• 1:48:27Speaker 05

  That wasn't a thing. High readies.

• 1:48:29Shawn Ryan?

  Or M4.

• 1:48:30Speaker 05

  M4, M4, AR-15, SBR, PDW, whatever. You get, all you gun porn people can, can call it whatever you want.

• 1:48:38Shawn Ryan?

  They figure it out.

• 1:48:39Speaker 05

  Exactly. But I remember, and I never, we never did high ready. That wasn't a thing. It was ready, low carry, low carry, low ready. So that's Rangers, right? You got to teach your high ready. So I get out there with Dan, the high ready actually came pretty natural. The broom handle, I love, it's like, man, where did, why have I not been using that thing? And it was this, I used a Dieter, I liked the Dieter four, the foregrip, the CQD foregrip. It was excellent. It was perfect, fit my hand right. And so I got the rifle stuff down. That was pretty quick. The pistol, jeez, I mean, I could pass a State Department call at the pistol, which is a joke.

• 1:49:19Speaker 05

  The TDC pistol was.

• 1:49:21Shawn Ryan?

  Not a joke.

• 1:49:22Speaker 05

  That was like, whoa, how am I gonna do this? There's, and we worked on that continually for about a week. And then it was like, you're gone. Go see ya. And we went, uh, my TDC course was held in, um, Danville, not Danville, uh, ITI. That's where it started. The, the racetrack, the, the out there, ITI, uh, what's, what is that? West Point, Maryland? I don't remember. It was called ITI.

• 1:49:44Shawn Ryan?

  It's, uh, it's in Virginia.

• 1:49:46Speaker 05

  It's in Virginia. Yeah. But we did it there, went there, you know, did the PT test, easy. I mean, actually I'm running five minute miles. It's nothing. I think I ran that, whatever was in nine minutes where you had to run a half mile, carry the body, run back. I mean, I was just, it's, it's, I was very blessed. I've been blessed with good Aztec running genes.

• 1:50:09Speaker 05

  The rifle part, I mean, it was tough. It was challenging. I didn't say it was easy. It was challenging. No, it's tough. It was, the, the time standards, they're, they're tough.

• 1:50:20Speaker 05

  Got through that. The night stuff, again, we use night shit. I, I was used to infrared lasers. I was used to, I was so, it was awesome to actually not have a 14, a Cyclops on. And it wasn't the 15s we were using that time. They were 23s. They were a little bit bigger.

• 1:50:34Shawn Ryan?

  Oh damn, those old school.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  Those old school ones. They were real heavy, but it still was all right. You got used to it because we had stronger necks back then. We were tougher back then. The vehicle stuff was piece of, it was just tactics. It was Battle Drill 1 Alpha, man. React Contract, Brake Contract. You know, it's from Battle Drill Squad Attack. Battle Drill 1 Alpha. And then you're either Brake Contract or you flank. And it was, the vehicle attacks were pretty simple. It was just bounding. All things six, it was infantry. And house stuff, no problem. Just don't flag your buddy. The high ready eliminates that, which made it a lot easier. And just get on your target, think. That's where I started. This needs to start kicking in more than this. More than the shooting. It's a chess game. Be three steps ahead of your enemy.

• 1:51:20Speaker 05

  If you're racing towards your gun, you're already screwed. You've screwed yourself. That's why I don't get into the YouTube. Let's go fast, because if you have to go fast, you fucked up somewhere. And that was what was, that's what Randy really, Dev Grue ran SEAL Team, Horse Cock Randy. You know where his Hall of Cowsite came? He really harped into that with me, along with my platoon Sergeant Randy Battalion, which I didn't really start to put together till TDC. Be three steps ahead so you don't have to react fast. It's a chess game. And we had an MI5 and MI6 guys trained in there too. They were part of our vetting team too. They were, and for some reason, I don't know if this was your, every MI5, MI6 guy I met was either named Mick or Mo. We had a Mick and we had a Mo.

• 1:52:06Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, well. Standard issue call sign.

• 1:52:08Speaker 05

  But they were, one was an SBS guy, the other one was a Royal Marine that went to SAS. And they were a part of our instructing cadre too.

• 1:52:14Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:52:15Speaker 05

  And they were, those guys think. That, I mean, it's find, fix, and then eliminate. But they're always thinking and that's, so it really became now where things started to slow down. You know, your adrenaline, fire breathing, let's kick through that door. That's actually where I started, hey, take a breath, let's start to slow it down, Ranger. All right, be aggressive we need to, then bring it down. And it really, it just started to all make sense. So the room clearing was actually, it was great. It was, it's like, man, I'm getting this. I'm actually becoming an operator, you know? And, you know, it only took 10 years, but I'm there, I'm getting there. And the pistol though, I was so worried. When I did the pistol and

• 1:52:59Speaker 05

  you get, I don't remember, was it two tries? You get, you do practices, they have us do some practice runs through. So it's not like they put you on there cold, you're practicing.

• 1:53:10Speaker 05

  This has changed. And I don't remember, because we got, we had a day of practice, practice runs. Yeah, that morning. And then they said, okay, call. We went out and called. I blowed the head. All right, you get one alibi. And I went and I, the body was fine. I was making the times. I couldn't hit the head. Cause I, my grip was ju- I just didn't have the right grip. I didn't have the mechanics. I was really, cause I didn't shoot a pistol a ton. Um, at range battalion. We just didn't do it.

• 1:53:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Speaker 05

  Um, so I mean out there and I mean luckily for me fundamentals are fundamentals are fundamentals. So I'm trying to find the front sight, trying to do whatever, do it within that timeframe, which the one that got the, the one that was getting me was the two to the body and then you have to, you know, you start at the 10, then you have to run to the two and put one in the head. So it's like, go draw, you run and you have to put two to the body. Then you have to run down to the five or it was the seven. And then you gotta put one in the head within like, it was, it was stupid. It was like three seconds or something like that.

• 1:54:14Shawn Ryan?

  I think these are different quals than what I'm at.

• 1:54:16Speaker 05

  They might be different now. They might be. Um, and I still got my quals. If you ever want me to send them to you, I, I've still got those quals. Cause I used to teach the course after.

• 1:54:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:25Speaker 05

  I got you. So I've still got those.

• 1:54:26Shawn Ryan?

  Got them too.

• 1:54:27Speaker 05

  And they may, I'd like to see what you have. So I, I mean, I can always use more training material, man. I love a quals, but it was, that was getting me. I could get the body and then you had to run fast down to the three. And it was like 10 to the three or no, I'm sorry. 10, yeah, it was 10 to the three. I'd have to look guys, forgive me guys. You guys all know, I will, maybe I'll, I'll send that, we'll put it online, but it was, it wasn't ungodly. It was tough. And I kept blowing the, blowing the headshot because you did that twice. And if you didn't get in that, the, the A box both times, it didn't matter. You failed.

• 1:55:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:02Speaker 05

  You could get every body shot in the world, but you had to hit A box, not outside yet. And, um.

• 1:55:08Shawn Ryan?

  Basically what he's talking about is there's a slot that we call the credit card.

• 1:55:11Speaker 05

  Credit card.

• 1:55:12Shawn Ryan?

  In the head.

• 1:55:13Speaker 05

  The prefrontal cortex lobe, right?

• 1:55:15Shawn Ryan?

  The eyes.

• 1:55:17Speaker 05

  And, um, but it's.

• 1:55:20Shawn Ryan?

  So if you miss, if you hit outside of the credit card.

• 1:55:23Speaker 05

  You're, you're.

• 1:55:23Shawn Ryan?

  You're done.

• 1:55:24Speaker 05

  You're done. It's, it's on those Ipcic targets, the I S P C, I, I P F C targets. And, um.

• 1:55:32Speaker 05

  The last one I got, I didn't do anything different. I just got lucky as shit. Body was fine. Physically, I was fine. I was fast still, still could run fast. I got there. So my job was okay. Get there, get those bodies out. You're gonna hit them because they're easy. You know, all you do is A or B, which is here or here. That's a big spot from 10 yards. That's, that's not hard to do, especially if you've been shooting a lot. Probably couldn't do it now, but no, but back then, but and then use my speed and run as fast as I could. So I could get a stable position and then just pray. So it was run like this and pray and I did it, got it.

• 1:56:12Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 1:56:13Speaker 05

  And I got it. I hit the first one center and I broke the line on this. Break the line, it counts.

• 1:56:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:20Speaker 05

  And like, oh, and that was it. I made it to your rest and uh, went back and it was a good feeling. Because you weren't looking down at guys, literally. Yeah. Cause not many guys had passed TDC. We lost half the course that we had and all of them were Ranger SEALs. Um, we had one D boy and uh, SF and we, we had 10 guys, five pass, five fail.

• 1:56:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:46Speaker 05

  And it, and uh, yeah, went back and uh, they said, where do you want to go? I said, I don't care. And I, they sent my first trip. I went to the secondary, went to Afghanistan, went to Kabul. And that was the end of oh, five, beginning of oh, six.

• 1:56:58Shawn Ryan?

  And I forgot we called it the secondary.

• 1:57:00Speaker 05

  The second, I remember the main and the secondary.

• 1:57:02Shawn Ryan?

  What um, when did you realize that the OGA contract was for CIA?

• 1:57:11Speaker 05

  Um, at TDC.

• 1:57:13Shawn Ryan?

  At TDC.

• 1:57:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, they were, yeah, because they would sit us down and they would tell us.

• 1:57:17Shawn Ryan?

  Afterwards or during the course?

• 1:57:19Speaker 05

  During the course, during the course, we, we would, we would know. Um, and. Randy, Randy started the program. He'd been agency for a while.

• 1:57:29Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:57:29Speaker 05

  We knew. I mean, he didn't have to, it was, hey, guys, this is OJ, wink, wink, you know, we, we knew.

• 1:57:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:36Speaker 05

  It wasn't, but officially, when we got there, because it was a, it was a Cordon of training area. It was like a private training area where there were no outsiders.

• 1:57:47Shawn Ryan?

  A private training area within a private training area.

• 1:57:50Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:57:50Shawn Ryan?

  So we were at the same spot, all the way in the back.

• 1:57:53Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:57:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:54Speaker 05

  And, um, so I, so that, that's when I knew and, and, uh, what I was so cool about is that the teams, that was, the, the, for me, the pay was better. It was, it was great. It was great pay. Grant and I weren't getting paid well before, but it was still great. But the, the smaller teams were what was cool to me. I thought that was neat, being you and a buddy, and that's it.

• 1:58:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:16Speaker 05

  And you're out there on your own, and then sometimes you're out on your own, on your own, on your own, where I did a lot walking within the cities on my own. Which was awesome. I loved that.

• 1:58:26Shawn Ryan?

  Where was your first deployment?

• 1:58:27Speaker 05

  Kabul, Ariana. Um, and I, uh, when I grow this out, I can blend pretty good. Not that I wear Shawn Kamisas, but I could look like a business. You don't have to draw on the man, wear the manjammies. There's a lot of government workers out there.

• 1:58:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:42Speaker 05

  You know, just wear what they're wearing. They were button down shirts, man. And in the wintertime, they wore long coats and you could buy one off at the park down by the movie theater, you know, right where the, uh, not the Serena Hotel, that's the one that got hit, but there's that other hotel downtown that they had that park and you could just go buy stuff. And I would, I'd stop and I'd buy local stuff. Throw it on. Yeah. You know, just make sure you're de laus. De laus, you can smell a little bit, but it worked and, and I loved walking on my own, like, and Sax, he trusted me. Or maybe he just thought, well, he's expendable. I don't know, Sax. But he'd like, he'd talk, he's like, do you want to go for a walk?

• 1:59:22Speaker 05

  And I loved it. A lot of guys didn't, and I get it. I mean, when you're a white dude, tatted up, down to here, and you eat well, and you're always buffed out, you're not going to blend very well. I get that. It wasn't that they were afraid. It's just they didn't blend. I'm a little guy. I'm, I have a, I have a brown complexion, you know, I know how to handle myself and I wanted to. And so I got, man, I went to the Mardi market, walking, it was like Indiana Jones. I gotta walk in some of those alleyways. It was, I, I have pictures of it. Now, sometimes I'll post them. It was, it was where I was acting and I was walking with a CIA case officer. We were back there doing a recon, just seeing, and I think, honestly, I think she just wanted to go back there to see what's cool.

• 2:00:07Speaker 05

  And this was, I threw an MP5 in a computer bag, and my Glock 19 on me. I wore just local, I wore just what they were. I wore khakis and a button down shirt. And we went back, it was by CNN Circle, it was back like by the soccer field, where you go across the river, and the Mardi market's where the river was. And then if you come out the back, the front side, it's where that two-story mosque, their, their famous mosque is. Well, if you get down in the market in the river, there's the river here, and then you see people walking to shop, and there's a whole other shopping alleyways through that, and you have to find your way in there. It was so cool. You just walk in, and it's like, it is like the movies.

• 2:00:49Speaker 05

  It's like this tight alleyway, and then you get through it, and a whole other world of shopping opens up. You've got spices, you've got fighting quails that are about this big, you've got non everywhere, and there's people being crazy everywhere. There's, I'm not crazy, but just, it's just people shopping, Afghani shopping. You've got police, I remember walking in one, and you do have a lot of shit and a lot of trash piled up on us because, you know, the open sewers and so forth. I remember walking, and we walked out of this right, left alley, and there was this police officer with a blackjack, you know, beating sticks. He was beating the shit out of some Afghani, just whooping the back of his legs, like just disciplining him.

• 2:01:33Speaker 05

  And I remember walking, and we did have a local guide, so that was a, that was, you know, that's a plus. I have a local Afghani with us, so he's with us. And I said, "What the hell, man? He's beating the shit out of him." And, you know, first instinct as an American is to step in. "I gotta stop this." "No, no, no, let it, it's Afghan, let it go." Well, what they would do is, is when they would go shopping, they'd hire guys to pull those, you see guys carrying, pulling donkey carts around? That was for people that didn't want to carry all their supplies back to their vehicles or their home, they'd hire these guys to put in the donkey carts and they'd walk them. The, the, like, kinda like a little tuk tuk's, I guess. I don't know. Donkey carts is a better explanation. Little, little, little pole wheelbarrows. I said, "Why is he kicking the shit out of them?"

• 2:02:17Speaker 05

  And he goes, "He was parked his donkey cart in the wrong spot." It's like, there's Afghanistan for you. But it was, it just, it was fun, cause I got to, I wasn't on a military base. You know, I wasn't always being a DA guy. I was, I was getting out and doing surveillance and counter-surveillance and just getting atmospherics. And that was fun. That was so cool. And getting to experience the food and hanging with the locals a little bit. And, and, uh, it was, it was awesome, that first trip. And all the trips after were awesome. Because after I would do a couple of those, and Saks and the agency found I was a guy that could, they could rely on to do that, they sent me out to do a lot of stuff.

• 2:03:00Speaker 05

  I'd go out in the Makarrian district and they said, "Can you go take pictures of this apartment building? We think there's a government worker that's part of the Taliban." And I'd go, "Yeah, sure." And we'd set it up, so I'd have Kirov around, great guys I could trust, like Popeye was one, um, Saks was another, you know, uh, Otto, Marine buddy that runs Fotonis Defense, he was a GRS guy. So, they'd be close by, they'd be orbiting the area, so if I was 911, dude, I'm getting wrapped up, come help me. But I could go out there and I, they just let me go, and I was just walking around the city.

• 2:03:36Speaker 05

  It was fun. I loved it.

• 2:03:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:38Speaker 05

  That was the job on GRS that I loved. But that was, anyway, that was the beginning of GRS, was right there, where I got the taste, and that's where the bug got me. It was, it wasn't even the protection, it was that, holy crap, I have freedom to actually get to know these cities and see the stuff that I only saw in movies and National Geographic.

• 2:03:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:00Speaker 05

  It was awesome.

• 2:04:02Speaker 05

  Those were good times. Yeah, yeah. Those were good times, for the most part. For the most part, just dealing with the, and then you had to come back to the, to the agency and put, with the bullshit, or, or go, you know, try to stay clear of the Talib Bar, so, somebody's getting in a fight or drinking too much. You weren't a Talib Bar guy? I went in there a couple of times, but I wasn't a big drinker. Nah, I wasn't. It was too much drama. Yeah. There's drama, or, you know. A lot of drama. Lot of drama. Just stay away from there, and you know, a lot of women, the women that were there, you know. Lot of things happened on that table.

• 2:04:41Speaker 05

  You said it. I didn't. I didn't, but it was too much drama. It was just, you know, it was just alpha women, alpha males and females, and, no, I always said I was my best person when I was overseas, because I focused on the job. I had fun. Gyms were good. There always was a gym where I could always work out. I had no problem running around the area, and I loved running, even though, oh, you're getting all that crap in your lungs. Well, I'm getting the crap in my lungs in the gym with the, with the little, with the little, uh, mini splits, you know. Yeah. So, um, I loved it. And that first trip was all, first seven, eight months was off and on to Kabul. That's where I went. Kept going, kept going, kept going. It was fun, and I had a great time.

• 2:05:25Speaker 05

  Where was your favorite place to work? Kandahar, Gecko. Gecko by far, because all the ops were at night, so you could sleep all day. Favorite place in Afghanistan, or favorite place? Favorite place for me was Gecko. No shit? Yeah, I did love it. I loved Kandahar, and I love, I got to do a lot of flyaways there. A lot of, Lash, Lash hadn't spun up yet, so we were setting up Lash Gagar and Spin. Those places were still, they were thinking about setting them up, so we were doing a lot of flyaways and landing in the middle of the night in a soccer field, running off the back of a, of a hip, which I hated flying on those things. I felt like I was flying in a death trap, because you know, I was slow there. It's just, but, laying in a soccer field in the middle of the night, having the local guard force can pick you up,

• 2:06:10Speaker 05

  then you'd go stay in a bombed out building. With some ratty old blankets and with, but you'd go with your Kandar Security Force too. So we'd always take guys with us and I, I got real close to him and I was also in part, I was also in charge of the training. So we, I'd run the training with the locals too, with our local QSF guys, you know, the local guys that worked with us. So that was fun. So I, you know, I'd go over there and even though there was a language barrier, I'd go in there and with their CO, with their head guy and we, I'd drink chai and we'd just sit and we'd try to communicate and it was fun. I enjoyed it. Played soccer on that rocky ass soccer field where PT was.

• 2:06:50Speaker 05

  Uh, I remember PJ whenever he, I'm gonna say his name, but he broke his ankle out there because there was just rocks everywhere, you know, and then we'd run up Gecko, you know, run up the mountain, do PT in the morning and it was just, it was, it was awesome. And we had a great team there. Now the team was, that team rivaled the Benghazi team. That was one of the best teams where everybody got along. Myself, Curly, the TL we had there, Rebel, he was awesome. One of the best TLs, again, another guy that qualified if he was a contractor, but he became a staffer, one of the good staffers.

• 2:07:23Speaker 05

  Curly, ex Bixler Joseph, who passed away in a motorcycle accident, you know, then following year, he just got hit while he was driving his motorcycle too fast. And Mushroom, who was an old Force Recom Marine, old Marine, who doesn't like an old, old crusty Marine, great guy. And then Joe Dirt, Joe's, uh, Joe Zar, Joe Dirt, Dirtake, but Dirt, Joe Dirt, 10 Special Forces Group guy. And everybody just got along. It was wonderful. It was just, and everybody, it was one of those, again, teams where you could go out and do stuff and nobody really needed to say anything. You didn't even work together. You just, everybody just knew what everybody was gonna do. Yeah. And you just roll out and I loved it because it was all at night and going out and wrapping up guys at night was fun.

• 2:08:09Speaker 05

  I mean, we didn't, it was hot, so we didn't get a lot of ops. It wasn't like you guys, where you guys were constantly going and, but when it was, it was fun. Yeah. And it was like, and then, um, at that time too, is when also when, um, we lost Jeremy Wise and we lost Southside at Coast. So, you know, so that's when the tactics changed too, or the, the, uh, the, um, Standards, uh, operating procedures changed where we had to search people that were actually coming in. They wouldn't just let them on the base because, you know, if for those that don't know, um, I don't think the movie's that great, but I do like that scene actually

• 2:08:48Speaker 05

  is pretty, pretty good was, um, Zero Dark Thirty, where they showed what happened where the CIA chief of base let the double agent on too, too, too far and it blew up. That's, that was accurate. That, that was south side. That was Jeremy. Doc Wyatt didn't die. He came to Tripoli later, but he was one of the most injured and they lost that real good targeter. Um, but that's what we had to do as well. And I, there was one, I remember. There was a defining moment for me there of how to handle it because we would, we'd have Taliban people coming on or we'd go grab them and then we have to bring them in and we'd search them again there on a facility outside. And X was hardcore SEAL.

• 2:09:30Speaker 05

  He wanted to kill every, I loved it not, but he just was mean. He, he nicest guy does, but Taliban, I don't care who you are. You do what I tell you to do. You do it now or I'm gonna slam you. And we brought this Taliban guy in and we were searching him. He wouldn't let us search him. But we're out of outer facility. So it's, so if anybody gets blown up, it's gonna be us, you know? Say we're expendable. It's all right. Well, he wouldn't let him. I remember and it was, uh, he was trying to search him and that we had the Afghan, we had one of our interpreters there and, and I'm trying to play good cop. We're finding like a good cop, bad cop. I'm trying to be the nice guy. And X is grabbing him and trying to get him to do what we're telling him to do. And he was fighting it. He's a Taliban. He's fighting. And I, I go, what's going on, man? Why, why is he not letting

• 2:10:15Speaker 05

  him search him? Is he hiding something? Is there a bomb here? Cause now my spider senses are going up because I think he's gonna blow us up. And, uh, he goes, no, no, he's, he says, cause he's got his Koran in his top pocket. He's got it in his Chama Kamesh up here. And I always carried my pocket Bible, you know, the little green ones we get going down range, the New Testament, I had one here. I always carried it every day. I pulled it out of my pocket. I said, here, you give this to him and you tell him he can touch it. We're saying, God, I believe in God, I respect his God, he respects my God, we're good to go. And I said, you say that, and you always said, you know, the Terpist, I said, you say that exactly how I said it. Don't change it. Don't try to change the

• 2:10:55Speaker 05

  words. You say it just like that. And he did it in, in Pashto. And the Taliban guy stopped fighting. He looked at me. And he says, okay. He, I said, shook his head. I said, I go, so we good? We cool? He goes, yeah, we're cool. And he let me search you. And I was like, man, you know what? The little diplomatic relation, but also the religious side, man, God is God. I don't want to disrespect your God. You don't disrespect my God. We have to search you. I said, tell him, and I did tell him this, that we tell him we have to search him because I don't want him killing me with a bomb. And he said it and

• 2:11:37Speaker 05

  we searched him. Now, X was in all his rights to throw that guy around. And believe me, I wanted to as well. He's Taliban, man. But there's got to be more way to remedy this than just throwing his ass around and all of us getting scuffed up a little bit because nobody, Roadhouse, Patrick Swayze, the great philosopher, Patrick Swayze, said, no one wins a fight. And he's right. Somebody, all of us are going to get scuffed up a little bit. We're going to win because we're going to throw him down. But somebody's going to get scratched, somebody's going to get beat, somebody's going to get hurt. You know, screw it. Let's try to do this. Be the nice guy first. And it worked and he gave us good

• 2:12:17Speaker 05

  info. And case officers were very happy with us because they didn't get a belligerent guy trying to give information. He gave up, at least that's what they said. I don't get into it. But that was Kandahar and that was how Kandahar was for me because it just it it the team fit, the work fit. I enjoyed going out at night. I enjoyed that it was very hot. You know, guys were getting, or you had, I don't know if you talked about, but you had Bradley on Don, Lucky, you know, he got massive carb on there when you were with the teams. I mean, that was, that was Kandahar.

• 2:12:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:54Speaker 05

  But then also, I love that we got to punch out all over in the Loscagran, a helmet, the helmet province in the Kandahar province and we got to fly and

• 2:13:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:03Speaker 05

  It really felt like cloak and dagger type shit. It was really cool.

• 2:13:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that was a good place to work.

• 2:13:10Speaker 05

  It was, it was.

• 2:13:12Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move into, let's move into Libya.

• 2:13:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:18Shawn Ryan?

  You ready?

• 2:13:19Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it.

• 2:13:24Shawn Ryan?

  You want to skip right to it?

• 2:13:25Speaker 05

  I'm good for whatever you are, brother. Every, I, if I, if it hurts, then that's what I'm supposed to feel. That's what people need to see.

• 2:13:34Shawn Ryan?

  You lead the way and I'll guide.

• 2:13:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Um, I went to Tripoli first. My first trip wasn't in Benghazi. It was to Tripoli and, um, it, one of the things that I enjoyed about GRS at the, especially then is by that time I had started to stop moving. I stopped working for like the, the secondary companies. I, I wasn't doing contracts for Blackwater or SOC who took over the contract or, or, um, those were the main two. I don't know who has them anymore. Um, Ocean Hunter, we had another contractor. I would do teaching with Ocean Hunter. That's where I got to, I mean, that's me and Evan Hafer worked on those contracts together. Great contracts. But they started a program called the Direct Hire Independent Contractor. You know that you've

• 2:14:20Speaker 05

  worked it. To those that don't, It's funny, because what's the acronym? D H I C. We were dicks. And that was the joke. We're dicks. You want to be a dick? Sure, I'll be a dick. So they would come recruiting for, from this, if, from the Black Waters and whoever else. And if you had a good record, you'd done a lot of time. And you're C1 at those places would write you a good eval. You could come and be a, be a dirt, be a dick. And that's what I did after Kandahar, actually. Yeah, do you want to go? Because it, it gave us the opportunity to just, because it gets mundane going from the secondary to the main, to the secondary. I mean, you're going Afghanistan, Iraq. When you're doing that 10 years, it just, you get bored. So it gave me the opportunity to go out to different places.

• 2:15:05Speaker 05

  And Libya was one of them. So I was like, yeah. And so I went to Libya, went to Tripoli. It was fun. Again, it was another place where, you know, you, you, you get from the American government that these, these dictators and all, they're just awful people and these countries are shit holes. And I went there and like, this isn't a shit hole. Wow. All right, there's still, the hotels are still open. Man, there's still a Sheraton here that's still open. Man, this, this little resort down by the Mediterranean is still open, even though it was a burning tank down the road. I mean, it was, it, it, that's where I, I, I didn't ever really question foreign policy and things like that until Libya.

• 2:15:47Speaker 05

  It's like, okay, I'm not really sure this was right, but who cares? That's not my job. I don't, it's not. I'm here to do what my job is. And it was fun. That's where I met Bob. I met Glenn. He was there. And, um, and it was just, it was less protection and more atmospherics. It was more surveillance, counter-surveillance. And trying to see if there were terrorists that were moving into the country because of the vacuum of power. Who was on our side? Who was not on our side? And that was fun. Because it wasn't so much protection anymore, doing like we did in a lot in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was more. Just a lot more tradecraft. It was. It was fun.

• 2:16:29Speaker 05

  And, and, and it was, it was a lot of times where, where you're getting to see things, or like even getting to go places that you wouldn't get to go in Iraq or Afghanistan. I'm not talking about just nature. There's the ocean right there. You know, you've got Lepus Magna, the old Roman Colosseums that are right there. And a lot of this job took us to those places. So you're getting to work in some historic places that are like, wow. I didn't know Rome was here in Libya. Or you're seeing, you know, the Battle of Tripoli and you're seeing the marine grave sites. Or, and we wrote about in 13 hours, when the, there was a consulate that was attacked in Libya way before ours.

• 2:17:14Speaker 05

  And we write about in the book and getting to go see that. So it was almost, you know, it's like a music. I'm on, I'm on a job, but I'm also on a historical. Tour. Tour. And it was awesome, man. And the guys were great. Cause if you're on the, on the dick program, you're generally, you've been there for a while. So everybody, even if you didn't know, hadn't worked that person, maybe in an area, cause I worked in Kurdistan as well. Loved that place. I loved Sulayman, I loved Erbil and I loved the hook. But you would know the guys. So the guy, you hear the name, oh yeah, I've heard of him. Oh yeah, I know. He knows it. So you're not getting a new guy coming in with a chip on his shoulder. Everybody's, man, chill, man. They're like you. They're like me. I'm probably the most wired. They're like you. They're just chill. Got a job to do?

• 2:17:59Speaker 05

  We start to do the job, flip the switch on, let's go kick some heads in, then turn the switch off and just relax. And that's how it was. And the agency there, you know, I, I learned, I had learned how to deal with them. You know, I, I knew what, I knew what to expect. And um, Bub was awesome. Bub was always a CrossFitter. He was always out working out. And so was I. Loved working out, but he did the CrossFit stuff. I wasn't a big CrossFitter. We'd watch, you know, we'd go watch movies in our downtime. He was the only guy that would watch Black Dynamite with me. I love that blaxploitation movie. And every guy hated it there except for Bub. He was the only one that would sit through it with me. But the first trip was pretty, just normal. Nothing really big was happening.

• 2:18:44Speaker 05

  You'd see some black flags going on. You'd see the terrorist flags, Al Qaeda flags. But you're used to that time and you see them everywhere. So what? There's some black flag. You weren't really thinking of it. Went home and then the next trip, they said, you're going to Tripoli. So I'm getting ready to go to Tripoli. And then right when I got to Suda Bay, Greece, which is where our stopping point was, um, where part of the 555th Fighter Wing is, um, they said, no, we need people in Benghazi. You're going to Benghazi. It's like, okay, Tripoli, Benghazi. So what? Head out there. I get there and you know, you just felt it was different. You just walk, you get on Benina and the movie did an excellent job showing showing that, man. You just got off the plane.

• 2:19:29Speaker 05

  We do have an expediter there. We always, you know, we have expeditors at all these airports, but you have a guy waiting for you, a GRS guy waiting for you by himself. So, cause that was where we were doing a lot of movements, single person, one person movements, which was even better. That was even more fun. Guy waiting on himself. You get off a plane, Libyan air probably flying in, you know, flying that first class flight, which is love how the movie did it just right. You have a first class ticket, but on those planes, there's no first class. So you just get the whole road to yourself. So you watch the movie again, Jack's flying first class. He has that whole road to himself. That's just those little things that they got right. Well, you got the plane, you go in there, they get you off and then

• 2:20:12Speaker 05

  you go to, you go to the base and it just like, it wasn't secure. You know, other places, there's shit going on, but it's felt somewhat secure. At least there's big brothers kind of watching it. There you just, you did, you were like, which was fine, but it just felt different. And, uh, there was, the work was pretty, the work was fun. Enjoyed it. Did a lot of, again, a lot of tradecraft, more surveillance than any protection. Um, I remember towards the end though, and this is where it started to get hairy, where we were just, me and Boone are there and Boone's been at it a long time. He was started, he's been doing longer, just as long as I have. And we're out on an op and it was about three

• 2:20:53Speaker 05

  weeks before the attack. And Sarah, you've had Sarah on. She's like, hey, we've got reports at AQIC here.

• 2:21:01Speaker 05

  There's this camp and we had all on our Falcon View, we had all the terrorist camps marked. And we were spot on. We had 10 digit grids on each one. Rafalasahate, Ansar Sharia, AQIM. And she goes, there's a Rafalasahate camp that they think there's AQI in there. Can you guys go sit on it? Now Boone's, for those that don't know, Boone's black, Mexican. I grew my beard out. Now, I always thought he was Mexican. I could never figure out. He's weird looking. I thought he was Tongan once and I thought he was Polynesian, or he was black. And then he's like, are you Mexican? But he's mulatto, but what I'm saying is he looks, he can blend. Yep. So we take our local car out and we go to this Rafalasahate camp. Sarah says, go to this one. And we sit on it for a little bit.

• 2:21:44Speaker 05

  And there's this opening within the, within the compound that their camp is. It's walled, but there's an opening and we can, we're sitting there in our vehicle and we can see through it. And actually, we do look like locals and nobody's monitoring us. And this guy walks by and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. And I looked at Boone and I said, do you see that, man? He goes, yeah, that's AQI. I was like, fuck, yeah, that's Akhada, man. They're here. And it looked just like we were, people were fighting in Iraq, man. He looked, just, you know, you could even, the dead eye. I mean, we're, it was, I don't know, and we weren't super close, something like that, but it was just, it was, you just knew.

• 2:22:25Speaker 05

  It was like, that's AQI. Holy crap. We rushed back like, Sarah, they're here, man. You guys give them reports, AQI is here. And we got chewed out for that. Yeah, for what? That was beyond our scope of duties. We weren't supposed to be sitting on camps. Bob came and chewed our ass out and chewed Sarah out. And she goes, you guys, and Sarah was pissed. She's like, dude, I just got chewed out. Bob came and got us because you guys are going beyond. You don't need to be doing that. That's not what our job is here. And me and Boone are like, yes, it is. It's like, chief, that is our job. And Boone's pretty laid back. I was like, chief, yeah, that is our job. That's our job.

• 2:23:05Speaker 05

  And he did rip Sarah more than us though, because he can, she's a staffer. And she was pissed. She was just, and you know Sarah, she does, she's a pit bull, man. Yeah. And, um,

• 2:23:21Speaker 05

  I remember that after that, she said, "We can't go sit on camps anymore. You just can't. We're not doing that." I said, "Well, what the fuck are we doing here then?" Because it was towards the end. I'd already gone through the fights with all the CIA case officers, made fun of them, you know, chubbed their shit. I'd been doing that for two months now. And I was like, "Well, what the fuck are we even doing here?" And, um, two weeks later, the attack happened. Two, three weeks. And, um, it was like, man, it almost like they knew it. And I still don't understand why

• 2:24:03Speaker 05

  the job that we're supposed to be doing, we found a target, we verified that target, let's action that motherfucking target. Why we got in trouble for that? And the only one that can ever answer that is Bob, maybe our TO. I never got an answer. Sarah, maybe she knows, but I don't know if she really does or not, because I don't think she even got an answer. She got reprimanded. But that was Benghazi. It was like, it was, we were, and that was even Libya, even some of the State Department officers will tell you, the RSOs. It's like we were fighting Al Qaeda in our own offices.

• 2:24:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:35Speaker 05

  And, um, and that was, that was it. It was, it was a lot of just doing a lot of great work, getting to be on our own a lot, singles, but then when we did our jobs, we'd get reprimanded for it. We took some, we got another time, we got reprimanded as well. Before that happened, it was Sarah. We, some BT garb guys came in, the listener guys. And there was a hospital there that they, we were, they wanted, and that's part of our job. We'll take them around, we'll drive by the areas that they think they can hear, and if they have, or gather information, suck out text messages with their little stuff that they do, the cool stuff. And, and we took them out, because there was a hospital that they thought Iranians were in. And so we drove by it to see if they could find out. And

• 2:25:20Speaker 05

  as we came back, we came in, Bob was outside, he was waiting on us like we were in trouble for something. And, um, he called the BT garb, like, guys, and the staff, there were staffers, and called them in. They were on a plane out the next day. And I was like, "What happened?" It's like, "He didn't want you going and listening in on this hospital, or, and he doesn't want you doing any of that stuff. And these guys shouldn't have done that. They weren't supposed to."

• 2:25:48Speaker 05

  I don't have an answer. I asked him, "Why?" I don't have an answer. I don't know why. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing. We're getting good intel. We're getting action. Guys were in there. Somebody had brought them in for some reason. Yeah. We did what we're supposed to do. And every time we'd do something and get headway where we could action on a target, because we're not the action guys. We're the collectors. We're the protectors. But when we did, it would get, we'd get, it'd get, we'd get condemned for it. He would jump on our shit. And it was, it was just, I just like, and I did it a lot of times. "What the hell are we doing here? Why are we even here then? I don't get it. What's the deal?" And then the attack happened on 9/11/2012. And, you know, there were some precursors to that.

• 2:26:33Speaker 05

  The British ambassador had got hit by RPG. I didn't respond to that. I was in Tripoli when that happened. The JRS guys that were there at that time did respond to it. And that's when they moved out of the country. They got hammered. One of their security officers got the RPG lodged in him. But they were out. Red Cross had been attacked once, which is news. That was a big news thing. And they had also blown a hole in the consulate once already before the attack. They had tried to breach the wall. So the signs were already there. Yeah. And, you know, we were always over there at the consulate. They were good guys. Alec was a good guy. You know, they were. Dave was awesome. I have nothing bad to say about them. They were just, they were overwhelmed.

• 2:27:18Speaker 05

  These are the state guys? Yeah. Alec Henderson, Scott Wicklund, who was the ambassador's body man, Dave Uben, were the three guys that were mainly there. People are like, "Oh, they were chicken shit." What would you have done? You've got a massive 40-man force running in. You're out there smoking. Who could chill and relax? You don't got nothing but M4s. And you're not allowed to even carry them because State Department policy says when you're on the compound and you're not pulling work, you've got to keep them in your armory, which was over by the kitchen. I don't blame them doing what they're doing. They ran, they did what they needed to do. Scott ran towards the ambassador to protect him. That was his job. Alec ran to the talk. That's where he was supposed to go. Dave ran to get a weapon. They were just overwhelmed like that. It was done.

• 2:28:01Speaker 05

  But, that being said, you know, our conversations with them, we would constantly warn them. And that's the scene from the movie where Pablo, or me being that asshole, I did do that. I remember looking at their compound. We came and we did a evaluation of their compound before the attack. And I remember looking at Scott, looking at Alec, I was looking at the walls. There was a big building overhead that I thought you could put, sorry about that, put sniper fire in. And I remember looking at him and I said, guys, your walls are soft. Your guards ain't for shit. You know, they're local guards. Half your guys don't even have guns. Blue Mountain Group didn't even carry guns. I said, your sniper's paradise. I said, any big element gets in here, all gonna fucking die. And I remember

• 2:28:44Speaker 05

  Scott's eyes went, and I did feel bad a little bit. I did. But Ron was there, he covered. He's like, guys, if you ever need us, we'll come get you. And they had radios, we gave them our radios. We all had ICOMs to talk to each other. And they did request more security. There are also Eric Nordstrom in Libya and Tripoli did. So they did try. They were just turned down. They requested 240 Bravo. They requested more armed security. And it was turned down by Patrick Kennedy and Charlene Lamb. Patrick was the undersecretary for Hillary, and so was Charlene. She was in charge of state security and all that. Those people also get away scot-free. They should have been held accountable as well, very much accountable. But when the attack happened, it still was a shock to me because

• 2:29:29Speaker 05

  the ambassador, at that time, he did have a security detail attached to him. It was 10 Special Forces Group. It was the SIF team. That was his security. For some reason, they had been pulled off him when he came to Benghazi. I don't know why. No shit. I didn't know that. When you watch the movie and it says JSOC team repositioning to forward position, that was his team. They had been pushed out for a training mission in either Croatia or Spain. I can't remember. Interesting. Yeah, but I knew, because a lot of those guys, when I was in 19th Special Forces Group, a lot of those guys from 19th, I was in Colorado, when they did Act of Detonation, there were 10 Special Forces. So we knew a lot of the same people. And they'd come eat with us when I was in Tripoli because their food at the State Department facility

• 2:30:14Speaker 05

  sucked. So they'd come and eat dinner with us. And that's why, like I said, that's why in the movie, when we're talking to Bob and the bashers coming, and we had that conversation, like, the bashers coming, you guys, you know, and I was like, so who gives a fuck? We're in the State Department. And Bob's like, dude, he's not coming with his detail.

• 2:30:37Speaker 05

  I was like, where the fuck is his detail? They're not with him. And they were hardcore pipeters. There was a SIF team and they pulled him out. So that's why we stayed and three of us did extend. Myself and Boone and Roan are supposed to go home to each other. Before the attack and we stayed because we had a great team. We didn't want to mess that chemistry up. You know, and some guys pissed some people off because of course if Boone would have went home, he'd still be alive, of course. But I know Roan wouldn't change it because if he wouldn't have stayed and we would have new players in there. Not saying that we're awesome tactically, any better than anybody else. We just had a good team. I don't think the outcome would have been the same. Not because of skill sets or anything. Everybody's got great skill sets. You worked yours as well.

• 2:31:22Speaker 05

  You know the deal. We all got great skill sets. But it's the team.

• 2:31:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 2:31:27Speaker 05

  And that team, whether we got along or not, we meshed well. And yeah, so people have, "Oh, why'd you guys make it so dramatized that when you said during that film that three guys were supposed to, three guys extended?" Well, because three of us did extend. Myself, Boone and Roan. And you know, it's also very telling of how awesome Roan was and maybe he just foretold everything before the attack. We had just done, and Oz may have said this during his, I don't know, because it really sticks out with all of us. The day before the attack, we had just done a full-on CASVAC training op where Roan put

• 2:32:08Speaker 05

  us through a huge scenario of if the compound gets attacked, this is what we need to do medevac wise. And we had catch up, we had churnicists who were teaching all the CIA case officers going through a huge CASVAC plan.

• 2:32:22Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:32:22Speaker 05

  It was just, isn't that just the most, the Lord, I love God. I just love, I mean, I do. As much as God looks at me and goes, "Man, I cannot keep this guy straight." Isn't it? It's just, he did it. And I didn't want to go to, me being Tom, like, "Roan, eat shit. I've done enough. I don't want to do this shit, man." "Tom, get out there." "Oh, fine." And yeah, it saved lives. It did. It was just, it was 24, 36 hours before the attack. We went through base-wide training, medevac, CASVAC plan, how do we handle mass CAS?

• 2:32:57Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:32:58Speaker 05

  Mass casualties.

• 2:32:58Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:32:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. So that just shows you how awesome Roan is.

• 2:33:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:03Speaker 05

  But the attack happened. I remember, I remember we were just laying there and me and Boone were on QRF. We always had, you know, we always had a team on QRF standby. Every team would be off and then we always had guys that were on it. That's all they did all day, 24 steps, 24 hours.

• 2:33:21Speaker 05

  We were on that QRF. So end of the day, we're thinking, why a day? My gosh, almost time to go home. You know, I got a few more days left, extension. I even remember, um, we were watching two of the greatest movies ever made. I had just watched Battleship and I was watching Wrath of the Titans. And, um, we get a call on the radio and you can hear the gunfire, but it's not really, because there's always gunfire. Yeah. I thought maybe somebody's having a wedding or something. You hear the and, um, we get a call on the radio and it's from our, our team leader, Juris. He goes, Juris, we need you in the team room. And it was about that monotone, not a lot of excitement. And at least I didn't think it was. I didn't hear the excitement. So Boone did roll over me and he's

• 2:34:04Speaker 05

  like, dude, he's like, what the fuck did you do now? Because he thought I pissed somebody off again. And I go, dude, I ain't done anything. I've been a saint all day, dude. I swear. I just want to go home, man. Because nine times out of 10, if we got called, I, I did something. I either put, I had a placard from the movie Tropic Thunder where Sergeant Cyrus, the Robert Downey Jr. character, I had, actually it wasn't a placard. It was a piece of paper and I'd laminated it and it said, never go full retard. And if a CI case officer did something stupid, I'd put it on their desk so they'd see it in the morning. So I'd do stuff like that. I just love picking. I love picking on them. The Jason Bourne's. So The Jason Bourne's. So, so Boone, Boone, and that Boone's been with me for 10 years. I mean, we hadn't worked together

• 2:34:49Speaker 05

  continuously, but we've been at different spots for 10 years, from State Department on to OGA. So he knows me. He's like, dude, what the hell did you do now? You son of a bitch. It's like, I, nothing bud. I've been good. I promise you. And then the, then the urgency came. It was about 30 seconds later though, it said, Juris, we need you in the team room now. And it was, and you just, you, you've been doing this long enough. I've been doing this long enough. Alright, it's time to go. And I look at Boone, and we're getting our gear, because we kept some of our gear in our lockers, but our quick-ready gear, our body armor and our M4s, our pea shooters, we kept right by our bed on QRF, so it was right there. Radios were right there, of course.

• 2:35:32Speaker 05

  All the night vision, all the heavy weapons were still in our lockers in the team room. We start getting our shit on, and Boone's smiling, I'm smiling. It's awesome, I'm smiling just like this. I still remember, I still remember looking at him, he's smiling, I'm smiling. I go, "Man, we could do some fun tonight." And we headed out our door, and as soon as you got out the door, our door from, we were in building Charlie, where it opened up, the annex was directed at 12 o'clock, so as we opened the door, you know, and we're seeing the treasures, you can see the firefight, it's going off. Damn. So now, all that popping, you know, now it's starting to... Oh, that's what it is, you know, the brain's starting to realize, "Oh, this is just some crazy night in Libya, this is, holy shit, constant's getting attacked."

• 2:36:16Speaker 05

  And the Jason Borns, the ones I saw, were like, it was like, cats lighting firecrackers at them, they're just going everywhere. And I saw a team, I saw Roan, we all had tasks, we all had responsibilities. My responsibility was, heavy weapon, Mark 46, get that. And then I was gonna drive the SUV. Boone's responsibility was to get the keys for it, get it out. My responsibility was to make sure we had it ready to go. And actually, we all had our different tasks, and it was beautiful, dude. It was just beautiful. I saw leaders acting like leaders. And it wasn't the barking orders, it wasn't the yelling at each other, it's everybody shut the fuck up and did their jobs. And it was, it was awesome.

• 2:37:00Speaker 05

  Because even in that elements there, you don't always get that. You're always gonna have maybe one guy that thinks he's in charge. And everybody respected enough each other and trusted each other enough that nobody needed to say a word. And it was like Mozart. It's just wonderful. And that's sort of reminded me, I mean, I was like seeing notes, man. And, um...

• 2:37:24Speaker 05

  We're five minutes, we're ready to go. Five minutes. It's time to go. And I remember I looked at Roan, he's got the sedan, he's got Jack in taking that. Boone's, Boone's, Boone's a rock star. He's got our shit together. SUV's ready to go. I got my forty-six. You know, we're geared up. We got our night vision on that. We got all the stuff that's in our lockers. Got the ammo.

• 2:37:45Speaker 05

  Roan goes like this. I look at him, that's all I need. He's good, dude? Good. Chief's here. Our team leader's here. They're on their cell phones. I go, "Chief, we're ready to go." He didn't bother even looking at me. I said, "Chief, we're ready to go." He looks at the team leader. Still isn't looking at me. On his phone, talking to somebody. I don't know who it was. Still to this day. He says to the team leader, "Tell these guys they need to wait."

• 2:38:16Speaker 05

  That motherfucking... Fine. In the same way, I'm just watching. The team leader looks at me. He starts to tell me that. I go, "Dude, I got it. I fucking got it." I walk back to my car. Roan's like, "Dude, Tana, what's happening? What's going on, man?" I said, "Boss, tell us we gotta wait." Now, the movie where Jack and Roan got stopped and we tried to get to him in the beginning? That happened, but it was at night. So we had already been through that before. So we're like, "Shit, he ain't gonna let us go again." So that wasn't part of the movie magic. It just, the only thing we changed it to, it was nighttime when that happened and Roan did bluff his way out of it. And he just had a CIA chief of support lady with him when that happened. It's pretty awesome.

• 2:39:01Speaker 05

  But we'd already been through that where he would not let us go.

• 2:39:06Speaker 05

  But we're waiting. You know, we're, we're, we're still thinking at that point in time. Maybe he still does know something we don't. Maybe the SIF team is on its way. Maybe they're sending a, a bird in. Maybe something's coming in. Maybe there's Marines off the coast and they're, you know, we are, we're trying to play the benefit of the doubt.

• 2:39:26Speaker 05

  By not creating more drama, because more yelling and screaming is not going to do any good. It's not. And that's why that team was so awesome, is we all knew that. If we had all been younger with piss and vinegar, we probably would have been fighting with them. And what would that have done? Nothing. So, we're waiting. We're continually going scenarios, at least I am, through my head. I know the team is, you know, you're wargaming, you're what effing through your head. You're going through your head, going, going through scenarios that you win, to keep the adrenaline in check. So I'm going through my head, I'm going, okay, if we get hit with mortars here, what am I gonna do? How do we win this fight? Fine. We get out the gate, we get ambushed, on this road, what do I do? How do we win that fight? So you're, you're just, it's, it's what you do in the corporate world too, when, so you don't, like this, you're just going through scenarios that you win, and you, and the only

• 2:40:11Speaker 05

  way you can do that is through hard training, or experience, or both. And by that time, I'd been through a lot of hard training, and a lot of experience. So I was able to pull from that. And I know the other guys were doing the same thing, because nobody was panicking. Everybody was, Ron's taking the lead, he's our charge, he's gonna take care of this. And we trusted that. So Ron's talking to, to the chief, Tig's there too. Tig's talking to the chief, and then time's just going by, the, the fighting is intensifying, and then instead of just hearing AK and PKM far, and you know what this sound, we start hearing a ch ch ch ch ch ch. It's like, holy shit, that's a dish cam. Holy fuck, we gotta go. And, uh, can't do it, we're still waiting.

• 2:40:56Speaker 05

  And that's when I saw Tig and Bob arguing. That's when the, the, the one huge interaction, we didn't put in the movie, it wasn't gonna have a place in the movie, it did need to. Um, but they were arguing, it's in the book, um, where, and that's where Tig was told, Bob, Tig's like, motherfucker, we gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go now, now, and, uh, that's where Bob told, stand down. You guys gotta stand out. He told Tig and Tyrone and Jack's car, right there. And I don't think it was malicious, I don't think it was nefarious, I think he just was shitting down his leg. The, later it was nefarious, with the military not coming. That was purely political, nefarious actions from the power that be, Commander in Chief, and Secretary of State, and all them.

• 2:41:41Speaker 05

  But that, I could be wrong, but regardless, we were told to stand down.

• 2:41:48Speaker 05

  And um, so we're told to wait once, stand down 15 minutes later, and then at the 25 minute mark of us waiting there, because remember, the State Department guys have our freaks, have our icon freaks, they're calling us on the radios, and that was heartbreaking, man. That really was, because we're listening to them, and they're like, "GRS, where are you? GRS, where the fuck are you? We need you. GRS, they're, we've been overrun. GRS, they're lighting the buildings on fire." We're hearing all this, and we're like, "Guys, Roger that."

• 2:42:16Shawn Ryan?

  Is the, is the chief of base hearing this?

• 2:42:19Speaker 05

  Yes, on that, it's all on the talk, because they're open mics.

• 2:42:22Shawn Ryan?

  What's, I mean, so he's hearing this, and he's still not letting you go? What was the relationship like then before this night?

• 2:42:30Speaker 05

  Uh, we didn't get along. I, he was condescending as hell. I didn't get along with him, I didn't like him, I didn't care for him. We worked in Mosul together as well, didn't like him there. Um, I thought we made him pretty. Well, I think that was the combination of characters. Uh, we, we had a team leader, and we had the chief. Chief was very passionate.

• 2:42:47Shawn Ryan?

  What's this guy doing now?

• 2:42:49Speaker 05

  He became, he got his CIS, so he got his, he got his, his top tier to retire as a CIS, CIS level, and then he became a, uh, contract instructor at the farm. Now, I don't know if he's still doing that.

• 2:43:01Shawn Ryan?

  Are you fucking kidding me? They took that fucking clown?

• 2:43:05Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:43:06Shawn Ryan?

  And put him at the farm to train all the upcoming guys?

• 2:43:09Speaker 05

  Now, he may not be doing that. He's made enough, I mean, CIS level retirement.

• 2:43:13Shawn Ryan?

  What a fucking joke.

• 2:43:13Speaker 05

  I know. So he's, he's-

• 2:43:15Shawn Ryan?

  What a fucking joke. Take that guy and put him in charge of the fucking up and coming case officers. Wow. And that's why that fucking agency doesn't do shit anymore.

• 2:43:27Speaker 05

  It's a shit show. It's a clown show.

• 2:43:30Shawn Ryan?

  What afe?

• 2:43:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, bro, he's probably retired now, living in Williamsburg or somewhere nice with a thousand acre, I mean, he's made plenty of money. He got the CIA, you know, he got the highest level of the CIA.

• 2:43:43Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think he thinks about every day?

• 2:43:45Speaker 05

  I don't think they give a shit, dude.

• 2:43:47Shawn Ryan?

  You don't think he gives a shit?

• 2:43:48Speaker 05

  I hope he does. But it's like asking me, you know, "Does Kamala Harris sleep well at night?" You know she sleeps like a bitch, because they think they're right all the time. He was, "I'm right, you're wrong."

• 2:44:04Speaker 05

  I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but you know, we're, we, we, he seriously was gonna stay there to collect intel when we were leaving out, when, after the mortars hit, after the bombs hit, after Ronan Bub died, we had to force his ass out of the compound, cause he still was gonna stay there and collect intel.

• 2:44:29Speaker 05

  And that's, that was him. They're, they are so elite, they're, they are the, they're elitist, and they just think they're the smartest people in the room. And that's one of the reasons why I always would fuck with them, is they're not. And here's this knucklehead hayseed from Kansas, giving you shit, cause you think you're the smartest person in the room, but that was him.

• 2:44:53Speaker 05

  And, uh, when we heard Alec, and he's in the talks, so he's watching his team basically get decimated, their lighting the buildings on fire, he's watching all on the CCTV cameras. He says, "Jiras, if you don't get her, all gonna fucking die." It was a movie magic, that's what he said. Tyrone went like, he, Tyrone's awesome, he's in the sedan, he wore an armored vehicle, he can't roll the windows down, so he cracks the door and he just does this.

• 2:45:20Speaker 05

  I was like, wow, that is, I still get chills thinking about it, cause you know, he was big, arms were like that. And he looked, he had a beard like Leonidas, he had dyed it black, so he looked like Leonidas. She was giving me shit, I was like, "You're trying to look like Leonidas, aren't you?" He's like, "Yeah."

• 2:45:37Speaker 05

  But, I remember thinking to myself, when I saw that, I was like, "Man, I go to your combat, Leonidas, this is fucking awesome." And I gave him a thumbs up, and we started to head out the gate. Now, we didn't quite make it out the gate, because, and I, I, you know, I, like I said, I'm war gaming, we're still going through our heads, it's a chess game, stay three steps ahead, don't run, you don't, if you're racing to your gun, you failed somewhere.

• 2:46:00Speaker 05

  We need something. I don't know what we need, and then I realize it. I said, "We need, we need them all." I'm not gonna tell you his real name, but the interpreter. We gotta get them all. Now, dude, he looked pretty good in the movie, like, young guy, kinda young, 40s, in shape. He didn't, dude, he didn't look like that. He was, he looked like Bob Newhart, seriously. He looked like an Egyptian Bob Newhart. He was adorable. Glasses, droopy cheeks, old dude, bald. "We need him, though. We don't have combat troops, so..." Calling him and trying to find him. "Yeah, faith, I'm gonna find him." I say, "Stop the cars." We get, I get out of the car. I'm thinking I'm gonna have to run around this damn base to try to find this guy. And, Lord works mysterious ways,

• 2:46:45Speaker 05

  brother. I get out, I come in the front of my hood, thinking I'm gonna have to run to his hooch and then run to the skiff to find him, and he's walking right in front of my car. "Thank you." I said, "We need you, man." And it was awesome. It was awes- 'cause he, he did. He, he got in an argument, not an argument, he was just shitting his pants, 'cause he, he doesn't wanna go. Bob Newhart doesn't go to combat, man. Doesn't happen. And his eyes are huge, and I said, "Dude, uh, we need you, man. We, we need you. I don't speak Arabic well enough. None of us do. We don't want blue, blue on green. You know what that is, but for the, your listeners that don't, a friendly fire incident with the foreign force because of a language barrier, blue on green." And, uh, I said, "Dude, we need you, man." And he goes, "Tah, I'm not, I'm not a combat troop." I said, "I know

• 2:47:30Speaker 05

  that, brother." He goes, "I'm not weapons qualified." I said, "I know that." And I had a Glock 19 on my hip. I handed it to him. I says, "You're in, I'll go get your stuff." It was frickin' awesome. He took it, and he ran back in the building, see? And initially, I thought I lost my weapon. Boone did too. Boone, Boone was looking at me, shaking his head when he ran away. But he came back out, and he ran back out, and it was awesome, 'cause it was, he was, he, he didn't have the cool Gucci gear like we do, you know, the form-fitting shit, looking cool. He had to borrow somebody's helmet. It was way too big for him, so it was all jingling on his head. I mean, it could even be now backwards, I mean, it just didn't fit him. He didn't have body armor, he had a flak jacket, 'cause that's all he could find. He's got his finger in the trigger rail as he's running towards me. He's flagging the shit out of me, and all I could do was

• 2:48:14Speaker 05

  marvel at it that whole time. I just marvel, like, this is frickin' aw- this little dude that looks like a little turtle is running towards me right now, flagging the shit out of me with this gun. And I have never felt more motivated in my life because this dude had no business going. He's not a SEAL, he's not a Marine, he's not a Ranger, he's not a security, he's not law enforcement. He's a little interpreter that he is giving of himself and he's coming with us. And I'm like, that is what heroism is. That's braver.

• 2:48:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:47Speaker 05

  Selfless service. That's it, man. And he got in the car. I did take his finger out of the trigger well. I said, put your gun, because I didn't want to shoot me in the back. He had to go behind me. And then we took off and we started to head down there. And that was our trek towards the consulate. And then it just got even hairier from there. Um, but we get there. We stopped on a road called Gunfighter. It was called Gunfighter. It wasn't movie magic. That's what we called it. We had a gunfighter here and Adidas was the other road on the other side. And there was locals there. They were, looked like they were shooting back. Now, it looks like when the movie, we get up and it's creeping up, they actually were already in a firefight. They were already shooting back and forth.

• 2:49:28Speaker 05

  Um, we didn't know who friend or foe was, but they weren't shooting at us. So we get out of the car. Um, Boone and myself did tell Henry, we said, Henry, get this figured out. We had our T O with us in the car. So we said, you just stick with the T O. Tell us what the hell is going on. And then again, leaders took over. Leaders do what leaders do. Rome parked, Jack parked, Tig parked, we parked behind him and we started to move in position to engage. And you get close to that wall and you start hearing those cracks. It's crack, crack, crack, crack, because you know, bullets are going by your head, breaking the sound, but you're hearing a shh every once in a while. And then there was a block, center block wall behind us. So you'd hear a smack from around 762 hitting a wall, hitting a wall.

• 2:50:11Speaker 05

  And it was fricking, it was all, you know, it's fucking awesome. It's awesome. And I saw Rome start to engage. Nobody said a word and everybody just started to engage and we started to move. And Tig got his, Tig got our 203, you know, our 1203, cracked the breach, put that H E D P round and that high explosive dual purpose round. And he just started, started throwing rounds downrange and. Boone came up to me and said, uh, as we're shooting, he goes, you know, we knew there was a building off in the distance that we thought we could get up there and put machine gun fire, sniper fire, and so he goes, "Tunnel, let's get high, man, let's get high." I said, "Roger that." So, he went and got his SR-25. I ran and grabbed the 46. I had my M46, M4 covered. I was wearing shorts.

• 2:50:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, boy, that's, "Wearing shorts?" Yeah, I was. Actually, they were just a grayer version of the, they were a tan version of these. They were shorts I'd made in Canada from old True Spec pants. I was also wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt, but we couldn't put that in the movie. Cause, uh, I guess Disney didn't like Mickey Mouse shooting terrorists, but I had a Mickey Mouse. Probably the closest thing he could get was the, was the, was the panda shirt. But it was a Mickey Mouse shirt. Um, but yeah, we, uh, and we just started climbing walls, man. And it was hard. I, I wasn't ready. I wasn't no spring chicken anymore. Eight foot high block walls with all that gear on. That, you know, a 200, a 200 round drum on, a nutsack on the, uh, 100 rounds on the 46, you know,

• 2:51:36Speaker 05

  magazines all over me, magazines all in my pocket. And just sucked it up. And you just, and you know, I tell you what, the, the first wall we climbed over, I was just getting ready to get shot in the butt or the head. So I, I, I did, I looked over, didn't see anything, and then I went butt first. So I figured, well, I'll get shot in the butt, I could still probably fight. If I get shot in the head, I'm fucking out. But I'll be quite honest, the third, fourth wall, I didn't even care anymore. Just so smoke, get me over this wall. And we, it's only 400 meters. We're 400 meters from the compound at that point.

• 2:52:11Speaker 05

  Jack, Tyrone, and Tig went down and fought their way down and suppressed the weapon, just like the movie did. They went down the main alleyway to the front gate and they suppressed, cause Tig had that 203, and he's just knocking them back. And we had some local help, PKM, a guy with a PKM and some AK-47 guys, and about half of them didn't know what the hell they were doing anyway. But at least it was, it was gunfire. Boone and I did have two locals that we took with us. They did. The movie is, two guys came to me before we jumped that first wall and said, "Hey, mister, can we go with you?" And I looked at them and they were kids. And at first, I just felt like I could trust them. I go 17 Feb, they said, "Yeah." I said, "Come on." And Boone's like, "What the fuck are you doing?" I said, "Dude, I said, "Force a fire team, man."

• 2:52:54Speaker 05

  And I said, I'll stay in the front. You just stay in the back. If they pull, then you kill them. So, and they went with us that whole time. And we jumped walls, got onto that building and it was, it was that disheartening. If you, again, watched the movie. It's pretty spot on. We cleared that building. And, you know, you know how I just clearing buildings, going upstairs and I got that gear and I'm clearing it with a forty six and I'm smoked and we get to the top of that building, you know, Boone's got his M four, but he's also got an SR twenty five on him. So he's smoked too. And we get up there and we look down and we couldn't see anything. It was like, man, all this energy you wasted. Cause the consulate, there are trees that surround the consulate. Well, they're all on fire. Damn. You, you just couldn't see anything in there. And it's like, God, man.

• 2:53:39Speaker 05

  Cause you're trying not to get pessimistic, but like, you know how many calories I just watched? How much water, just doing all this and for nothing? Put it out of your head. And what snapped me out of it too is Ron came across the radio, cause he's still moving, cause he needs our, he, he needs us to suppress. He, at least that's what he thinks. Anyway, he's doing a damn good job on his own. That, they, all three of those guys. He goes, Tonno, I need your eyes, man. I need your eyes. I go, uh, I go, Ron, this roost is a bust, man. I said, shoot, move and communicate. I'll meet you in the middle. And that's what we did. And we ran down the stairs and went to the back gate and just like the movie, we just climbed over the back gate. What was awesome is

• 2:54:20Speaker 05

  there was a commander that pulled up, just like that movie. He pulled up with his vehicle and I actually wanted him before we jumped over the gate. He got there before we jumped over the back gate. I wanted him to push it open with his car. So it's like, push this open with this car. He goes, wait, Mr. Wait. And he got on his phone and he started dialing a phone number. And I was like, who the fuck are you calling, man? It's like, just wait, wait. I go, who you calling? He goes, I, I'm calling the bad guys. I'm negotiating surrender. I said, who the, I said, you doing the what? It's a motherfucker. And.

• 2:54:51Speaker 05

  Boone's yelling at me because he's already inside. He climbed over the gate already. And Tig's yelling at me to get inside on the radio. He's like, "We need you, Tano. Quit fucking around." And I just let it go. And he was one of the guys that was gonna facilitate the counterattack later, but I didn't know. And so that little argument you see me get in with, that wasn't that, that actually did happen. That happened as well. And I got in there and we fought. We pushed them off. It's a nine acre compound. And for the next hour, we just were trying to find the ambassador, running in the burning building, trying to locate all the State Department guys because they were spaced out everywhere, while fighting off the bad guys, pushing them off.

• 2:55:34Speaker 05

  We're really that initial, when we got on there, I think they were so shocked it was Americans. And luckily, we have that, still that air of intimidation. "Americans are coming. We gotta go." There wasn't much of a gunfight coming up on. We got in there. "Americans here." We got our night vision on. Even though I'm wearing shorts, I still look pretty Terminator-ish with all the gear on. And they ran away. And we found Alec. You know, got him out of the skiff. Dave was, Dave did awesome. Dave was already out. He was already trying to find the ambassador. He was already over at the consulate trying to find the ambassador. And then we just took turns running in that burning building, trying to find it. And it was tough. We almost lost Roan.

• 2:56:18Speaker 05

  Roan went in the most. Jack and Roan went in the most. Tig was probably close to it. Me and Boone pulled a lot of security and then we'd take our turns. We'd spell people. But I tell you what, I would, and I admire and thank all you firefighters out there. I admire the hell out of you. I'd rather get shot at again than ever running into a burning building filled with diesel smoke ever again. I remember going in and trying to go in the first time. And I tried to run in and the doors were wide open and you can see and it's open. There's fire, you know, alive on the ceilings and there's, it's just smoke everywhere.

• 2:56:49Speaker 05

  And um, I hit, I ran in the, and it's almost like I hit an invisible wall. I just, whoo, that is hot as shit. It was so hot, I felt like my eyeballs were gonna melt. And it's like, you really have to just, I just had to go, suck it up, don't, it's gonna hurt, just go. And it was awful. And you know, your body gets used to it a little bit, but it was so hot. It's like running into a pizza oven filled with diesel. Damn. And Ron did that. I mean, that's how badass Ron and Jack are. They went in there multiple times. I went in there like twice. Cause they just kept going in. And it was hard to find. We did lose Ron almost once where he got caught way back in the back and we had to play Marco Polo with him to get it out. We had like, Ron, we're here. Jack kept yelling for him. Ron, this way.

• 2:57:31Speaker 05

  Ron, Ron, Ron. Cause he got stuck and he almost lost his way. Cause he got disoriented from his mode. But that just shows how badass, and Tig as well. You know, Tig's lungs are permanently fucked. So are Jack's screwed. Eventually Scott got out, you know, and I, I have no qualms against Scott. Nothing at all. People, uh, why he left the ambassador. Well, what the hell would you have done, dude? Seriously? You're, you're dying of fire and the heat. I, I can tell you, testing the heat, that was unreal. What would you have done? Man, really? Okay. But he got himself out. And uh, that's when it started to go to hell again. Cause that's when they started to counter

• 2:58:10Speaker 05

  attack. And uh, I do remember before that, they did find Sean's body. Um, Dave Ubin, Tig and Jack managed to pull him out of a window. And um, the movie, I wish they would have put this in the movie more so than what they did. They did a little bit of it, but it was pretty remarkable. It was one of the most defining moments to me of human spirit and sacrifice that I'd ever seen in my life. Cause Sean was out and I see him pull, Jack pulls him out, Dave's pulling him out, uh, Ubin, Tig is, and Scott's on some stairs and he's sitting there and he just keeps rocking back and forth. And he keeps saying, he was just with me. He was just with me. He was just with me.

• 2:58:53Speaker 05

  And I see Jack, Jack, for some reason, he starts to do chest compressions and CPR on a dead body. Jack knows he's dead. Then he's dead. Sean's dead. It's obvious. His blue, he's dead. And I couldn't figure it out. I was like, I'm sitting there watching this whole thing unfold from about, from me to probably that desk there, about that far.

• 2:59:12Speaker 05

  And I wanna say something, but before I get the word out, it hits me. Cause I'm looking at Jack and every time he does a chest compression, he looks up at Scott and he goes, "We're still in this fight, man." He is being positive over a dead body to get Scott out of his shock so we don't have another casualty. He's just, it's unbelievable. It's just like, and I'm sitting there just marveling it going,

• 2:59:36Speaker 05

  "Wow, these fucking dudes are awesome. I love this. I love Jack. And I still love Jack." But it just, to me, it just defined selfless service again. And you know, people think selfless service is giving yourself, giving up your life. Well, essentially he did, cause that, he's doing chest compressions on a dead body to get some guy back up on his feet to back in the fight. Who thinks like that?

• 2:59:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:58Speaker 05

  Obviously, he did. And it was awesome. And another motivating thing, just, another reason why Benghazi was the greatest night of my life. One of them, per se, but it was defining. We get it. Scott comes out of his shock, cause you know, big Tyrone, like Superman, I don't know where he came from. It's like he flew out of the bushes, but I, I know he's written the bill, but he's just, and you, I see Tyrone come out of nowhere and he just puts his arms around Scott and he goes, "Man, we are still in this fight. We need you." And you just see Scott from right back. And it was like, wow, this is awesome. I love these guys. That's why Ron is so, that's why he was Superman to us.

• 3:00:36Speaker 05

  But we load Scott's body on, Tig and Jack and Dave Lubin did. They put him in the back of our SUV that our team leader and the interpreter drove up after we cleared it. Said it was clear.

• 3:00:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, our team leader, yeah, he waited till we cleared it, then they drove up. Um, I don't blame the interpreter for doing that, but come on, Teal. But anyway, we go back to pulling security and then-

• 3:01:00Shawn Ryan?

  Was, was the Teal, like, was he even-

• 3:01:02Speaker 05

  He was former Secret Service. No military.

• 3:01:06Shawn Ryan?

  I know who he is. I know who-

• 3:01:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was gonna say, you know who he is.

• 3:01:10Shawn Ryan?

  What I'm asking is, was he-

• 3:01:14Speaker 05

  Scared?

• 3:01:17Shawn Ryan?

  I know he was scared. I know who he is. I'm trying to figure out how to ask this question the right way.

• 3:01:24Speaker 05

  Hey, I'll wait. I, I gotta get a drink of water. Take your time.

• 3:01:27Shawn Ryan?

  I guess what I'm trying to ask was-

• 3:01:31Shawn Ryan?

  Did you guys even keep him informed? Was he even really part of the team? Or did you, have you totally just dropped him?

• 3:01:42Speaker 05

  He had, just like any blue, he had his, you know, he had his uses. You know, he could, he would give us, get intel because he was, you know, he was a blue badge. So, but as far, you know, just everyday activities, he had the runs, controlled the runs, you know. And, but really me, I let Ron handle that. I stayed.

• 3:02:00Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, he's just a liaison.

• 3:02:02Speaker 05

  It really was, that's what he was. And that night, he was with us and, no, we didn't pay attention. It wasn't, we were relying him to pull cover.

• 3:02:09Shawn Ryan?

  Like 99% of the staffers in GRS, they're just liaisons. They're not operators, they're just like.

• 3:02:18Speaker 05

  They aren't.

• 3:02:19Shawn Ryan?

  Just go liaison.

• 3:02:21Speaker 05

  Go liaison, give us the intel. And that's kind of what he was.

• 3:02:24Shawn Ryan?

  We don't even really know what you do here.

• 3:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  Not qualified to be here.

• 3:02:28Speaker 05

  What do you do here? Still favorite movie to do.

• 3:02:30Shawn Ryan?

  I can't fucking stand them. I'm, I'm just, I can't stand them. It's probably something I'll never get over. The amount of worthless fucks that were in charge of me and you and all these other, like stellar performers. And then you get these chumps.

• 3:02:49Speaker 05

  When you don't hold people to the standards that everybody else is upheld to, that high level standards, what do you think you're gonna get? And we're, we're divvying off a little bit, but I'm gonna say it. Look at the Secret Service that was protecting Trump.

• 3:03:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:03:04Speaker 05

  That is what you got with GRS TLs. For them, unless they were former spec ops guys that were contractors that went there.

• 3:03:13Shawn Ryan?

  I think they were always just supposed to be liaisons though. And then at some point in time, they like inserted themselves to be some fucking leader. And it's like.

• 3:03:23Shawn Ryan?

  Back to your desk, go get your fucking pen or your pencil and get the fuck out of my face.

• 3:03:29Speaker 05

  And that was him.

• 3:03:32Shawn Ryan?

  But you can't say that because they'll fire you.

• 3:03:34Speaker 05

  But you can still.

• 3:03:35Shawn Ryan?

  You say it anyways.

• 3:03:36Speaker 05

  You can still, I did.

• 3:03:37Shawn Ryan?

  And then you get fired.

• 3:03:38Speaker 05

  Well, I, I, I, I, I did. I, I got, I got told after, after I fell asleep. I had an argument with Bob and then the TL called me in and we had an argument. We were like, he's like, Tony, I know who you are. I saved his ass from getting his ass beat by a bunch of seals when his first trip went to coast.

• 3:03:58Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you do that?

• 3:03:59Speaker 05

  Cause I felt sorry for him. It was his first trip. I didn't, I didn't, be honest with you. I did. I didn't know him. I'm like, he's the first trip. I'm trying to be that guy that's your first trip. Let me tell you how it is, bud. All right. Don't go in there like you're knowing everything. You're working with a bunch of top notch dudes. Go in there, shut your mouth and fucking listen.

• 3:04:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:19Speaker 05

  But he didn't, it'd been, you know, that was 2006 and now it's 2012. So he's got years, six years now. He's salty. But, um.

• 3:04:27Shawn Ryan?

  Real experience. Showed too.

• 3:04:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, didn't it?

• 3:04:30Shawn Ryan?

  Showed.

• 3:04:30Speaker 05

  It is. Yeah. It was funny because when we did our debrief too, they did ask about it and they said, what'd you think of the TL? I said, he did a great job. I go, cause he stayed the fuck out of the way. Oh man, the head shit at the GRS, they didn't want to hear that. But that's what I said. Boone started laughing. It was during our AR when we got back to after Benghazi.

• 3:04:49Shawn Ryan?

  You said that?

• 3:04:49Speaker 05

  I said, it's right to the, it's me dude. I don't give a, what are you gonna do? Fire, fire me then? If you haven't fired me yet, you're not gonna fire me. But the argument I had with him, we were in Libya. After I got dressed down by Bob, which I was just, the one dress, like eat shit, dude. I've been through enough of this pomp and circumstance crap enough, rah rah, politics and progress, million fucking times. I, I don't stay awake through this shit. It's the same shit. Well, he pulled me in. He goes, I'm gonna write, I got written up. You know how we get, I got rid up, wrote up. I did get written up and they wrote me up and he goes, I'm gonna write you up for this because you fell asleep. You're being disrespectful. And I remember I said to him, cause I saw GRS kinda go into more like a State Department. Button down.

• 3:05:34Speaker 05

  I saw it and I said, we're going more State Department, aren't we? Button down, need guys that say yes, sir. Nobody talks back. No fucking guys that cuss every once in a while, you know? You don't need guys like me anymore, do you? I guess guys like me are dinosaurs, aren't they? And he said, yeah, pretty much. I saw my thing. When we got home, I sent him an email. I said, good thing you have dinosaurs like me, huh? That night, and I didn't get a response back from him. I still got the email. My A O, I had AOL. That's my AOL, shows how old I am. But he said that, and I said, you, it looks like guys like me are dinosaurs.

• 3:06:09Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sorry, when did he try to write you up?

• 3:06:11Speaker 05

  He wrote me up right after I got ripped, right after I fell asleep before the ambassador. It was right before, it was before the attack. So when I fell asleep and the Bob, Bob dressed me down, or we got in that argument.

• 3:06:24Speaker 05

  He says, well, I'll write you up. Well, I did get written up. We didn't put it in the movie, because how boring is that, seeing some guy get written up? But I went back to my room.

• 3:06:32Shawn Ryan?

  You mean people don't wanna watch a, a pussy pencil pusher? Write up, write up a real man? I'm gonna write you up, cause I'm not a real man, I'm just a bitch.

• 3:06:44Speaker 05

  So I got, I got written up.

• 3:06:45Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking hate these people.

• 3:06:47Speaker 05

  An hour later, he called me in and I, I got written up. I don't give a shit, fine. It's like getting a, you know, a ticket, you got a hundred million parking ticket. Pay your parking tickets, y'all, but you know what I'm saying? And I threw it in like, whatever.

• 3:06:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's probably what he was doing before this.

• 3:07:01Speaker 05

  Exactly. He was, actually he was a, for those that, you know him, but he wasn't, he wasn't a, he was in Fort, Czech forgery. And that was his, in the.

• 3:07:11Shawn Ryan?

  Czech forgery?

• 3:07:11Speaker 05

  It was in that division, the secret store where they do forgery and money laundering, so.

• 3:07:16Shawn Ryan?

  Whatever.

• 3:07:17Speaker 05

  Anyway, but uh, they drove up, yeah, he's, and that night, it was, we just, if, if we need you, buddy, just stay in the rear, man. If you wanna add your gun to the fight, fine, just.

• 3:07:28Shawn Ryan?

  Just make sure there's no ammo in it.

• 3:07:30Speaker 05

  Just, dude, just stay away from, but he didn't fire his gun that night, and he stayed hidden. He stayed protected. And we didn't really worry about it, because we knew he wasn't getting in a fight. It wasn't gonna happen. So that's why we put, we put, um, we put, um, I don't wanna say his real name, I almost did. So we put Amal with him, but eventually Amal even saw what was going on, and Amal got attached to Jack. Amal kept following Jack around, when Jack wasn't running in the burning buildings. So, um, we go back, and we haven't found the ambassador, and, uh, I remember on the backside of the villa, here, because we're pulling security, because that, that gate was left open. I told that fucking commander, "Close the back gate when you bring your guys through," before I really knew who he was. I thought he was friendly. He left it wide open.

• 3:08:13Speaker 05

  And I'm like, "That motherfucker forgot to close the back gate." I said, "Guys, this jackass didn't close the back gate." I said, "Get ready," because I knew what was gonna, I mean, you just know, it's like, shit, dude. And I'm kicking myself for not going back there and closing it as well, and trusting, right? I knew I shouldn't have. And then all of a sudden, I take a knee, and I hear a big explosion goes off, so I'm here. Explosion blows off this way, on the barren villa, and because the angle, so lucky again. Thank you. Because the angle, shrapnel's this way. But I do catch the overpressure, because I'm not more than, you know, 20 feet away from the explosion. So it knocks me, catch the overpressure, but the force that goes this way. I didn't hear the initial boom, so I didn't think it was an RPG.

• 3:08:57Speaker 05

  I mean, you know, unless you're from a very far distance, RPGs don't go shh, and you see vapor trails, and it goes, it's not like that. Um, unless, you know, it's a way distance, and then you might see it later, after it hits. You'll see maybe a little puff of smoke or something. But you always hear boom, because that's the propellant that makes it go, it doesn't, there's a boom, and, uh... As I go back to pull security, get back up on my feet, because I'm thinking, some guy runs in front of me, and he's missing his hand, he's holding his wrist. So I go his profile, and I go up and... His hands missing, he's holding his wrist like trying to stem the bleeding, it's just mangled. And then his buddy comes out, runs from behind him and he's holding pieces of his buddy. And it's no farther than me and you.

• 3:09:40Speaker 05

  I'm like, right here following him. I go, what the fuck? What happened? I don't even speak English. But that's all I can get out of my head, because I'm a little rattled. Brain's knocked a little bit. I'm seeing this dude running by with no hand, he's just bleeding everywhere. I'm seeing his buddy chase him, that's holding pieces of his hand. So I'm looking at him and I'm in my head going, dude, you forgot your hand. That's what I'm going through my head. And I like, I say what happened? I didn't say that. All I could get out was, what happened? Guy goes grenade. The guy holding pieces of it, he goes grenade. So I'm thinking, oh, you're a fucking idiot. Next time when you cook a grenade off, I'm thinking this in my head. You hold it for two seconds instead of three before you throw it.

• 3:10:23Speaker 05

  And I'm thinking of my dad, West Texas, from Lubbock, Texas. His voice comes in my head and all I hear is, rub this with dirt on it, you'll be alright, kid. And as I come back to pull security, because they're not a threat. I do hear a boom from a distance. Like shit, I know that's an RPG. I go pull security. And I just go like this, because I know I'm dead. If it's anywhere near on this side, I'm dead. There's nothing I can do, there's no cover. I can get down and roll, but by that time I hear that boom from that distance where it's only 100 meters, not even more than, I would say 75 meters away if that. I'm dead. So I'm just hoping I hear the second boom.

• 3:11:07Speaker 05

  Because if I do, I know I'm alive. And I do. I hear it, boom, blows up. This one actually is closer. And I catch building, I catch the concrete. Knocks me down in the middle of the road. Again, because of that angle, and I know that's what saved me. It was the shrapnel, most of it went that direction or got embedded in the wall. And the movie showed me getting up and having a wall for cover, I didn't. I got knocked in the middle of that road. That was shotgun from the front gate to the back gate. And all that came in my head was Ranger Battalion.

• 3:11:45Speaker 05

  What's your cover Ranger? Bullets. What do you do when somebody's shooting at you? You shoot back. And I took a knee on that road and I just started shooting. And I shot and I shot and I shot. And I was thinking of the guys from Rio Hado, because we get hammered, you know, Rangers got a gray history, you know, Urgent Fury, Just Cause, Somalia.

• 3:12:08Speaker 05

  We shoot. Fuck you guys, fucking you coming out, I'm gonna catch a bullet in a tooth. And that's all I'm thinking and I'm just putting around. And I remember Boone, he told me later, he says, I was watching you and all I could think of was, you're a fucking idiot to take cover. And I've never felt the hand of God before, I've never felt it again. I felt that night and I know, I do really believe we all get one, one, one hand of God moment. Where they, he steps in and protection, I did, I was like, he's looking down at me, and I say this during my speeches too, because I honestly believe this, I think my guardian angels, like on this chair, God's up here on this chair, my guardian angel and God are looking at this idiot,

• 3:12:51Speaker 05

  getting shot at, because there's, the world's opened up, there's just crap, crap, crap, crap, it's all going around me. And my guardian angel's looking at God going, see what you tasked me with, God? You tasked me with this fucking idiot? That doesn't have half a brain? And God's like, pity, God pity's the one that needs to be pitied. And he says, I got you, I felt the golden cocoon come on top of me. And that's not, I, I, I'm not saying that at any reasons, that's what I felt.

• 3:13:19Shawn Ryan?

  You actually felt it in that moment?

• 3:13:21Speaker 05

  It was a golden egg. Sorry, I'm a golden egg, I got you, just warm, just.

• 3:13:26Shawn Ryan?

  Was it, was it like an intuitive feeling?

• 3:13:29Speaker 05

  It was a physical feeling. No, it was physical, it was warm, gold, I got you, and I guess intuitive too. It's just safe, I'm, I'm good. And I kept shooting and then.

• 3:13:41Shawn Ryan?

  Did it give you confidence?

• 3:13:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wasn't, I got this, nobody's gonna get me.

• 3:13:45Shawn Ryan?

  You felt it before you started shooting or in the middle of it?

• 3:13:47Speaker 05

  In the middle of it, no.

• 3:13:49Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you there?

• 3:13:50Speaker 05

  In that position there, about five seconds before I felt that. And I'd already went, I was already hammering away. Because, you know, that was a, it was really easy, I'm just, I'm just, nobody's coming through there. It was about five seconds. I mean, five to 10, it was. Wow. It was awesome, though. And then, uh, I am taking a knee. I'm not, I'm not getting in the prone. So I'm just, I feel fine. I'm, I'm, God's got me. My right eardrum blows out. I remember that. And I look and there was a Libyan that had taken a knee right next to me. His AK-47 was shooting with me right next to my head. And that was amazing because I was thinking to myself, ain't this the damnedest thing? God just gave me a little Libyan angel and put him right next to me because he had a button dasher, slacks on,

• 3:14:35Speaker 05

  like he got off work and he's sitting there with his AK-47 shooting with me. I never saw him again here that night. I don't know where he went. And then boom, I'm running, boom comes and boom takes a knee right on the other side of the road. And he starts shooting with me and then Tig gets his gun into the mix on the top of the roof. And it was awesome, dude. It was just fricking awesome. And we moved a little bit. After that, we started to move back to vehicles and started to kind of peel out because we had to get out of there. But that moment there for me was, and I, I, I, I always tell people that. And I said, guys, I'm not saying hand of God is there all the time. I, again, I've never felt it after. I didn't felt it before, but I felt it that night. So when people say, do you believe in God?

• 3:15:17Speaker 05

  I say, no, I know there's God. And he took pity on somebody like me that's a probably broken every command, or not probably, has broken every commandment that we're supposed to keep. No, it was there. I felt it. And people are, ah, bullshit. Fine. You don't believe me. I don't care. I don't think it's bullshit. And I know, and, and it was amazing. Again, I wish I could sit, but it was a golden egg. It was like, like a Willy Walker golden egg, warm, protected, nothing's gonna get you. I got you. And we fought them off and we peeled out and it was hard to leave because we did have a drone overhead watching everything. The ISAR had come on station and Ron's like, guys, we gotta go. We get, they're, they're massing.

• 3:15:59Speaker 05

  They're gonna attack the annex. We gotta get out. And I'm like, Ron, we ain't found the ambassador yet. He's like, I know, but we gotta go. And you, you gotta make a decision. Leaders always make decisions, even if they're hard decision. And it sticks with me because you know our credo, dude. Part of the fist dance of the Ranger Creed is you never leave a fallen karma to fall in the hands of the enemy. Every unit has that same, not in those words, the same thing. You leave no man behind. And we did. Because we had to get back to the annex and it wasn't the wrong decision. We would have lost 24 if we hadn't gotten back, but it still bothers the fuck out of him.

• 3:16:34Speaker 05

  Because we left him, we left him. Now, we didn't know he was there. That's still no excuse. We still could have kept trying to find him. But he, he had gotten so far back in that safe haven area that we just couldn't get back there. And when the fire died down and the fighting moved back to our annex, the locals pulled him out. He was dead of smoke inhalation. There's been talk that he was mutilated and all that. I didn't see it and I inspected his body when they brought him to the airfield.

• 3:17:01Shawn Ryan?

  You inspected his body?

• 3:17:02Speaker 05

  I looked at it. I didn't, no, I didn't pull his drawers down. You know, I didn't do that. I mean, they, maybe they did cut his genitals off. I, I'm not gonna, I'm sorry. I'm just, guys, I'm not gonna do that. To me, I, I looked at it because what I'm thinking, again, Ranger Battalion, what am I thinking? Randy Shugart, Gary Gordon, dragging his body through the streets. So of course I'm gonna look. I'm gonna see if he's scuffed up. I'm gonna see if his face is scuffed up. I'm gonna see if he is cut in places I can see. But he was clothed and I didn't see any marks on his face. I just saw lifeless eyes and he had, he still had like, you know, smoke from the diesel all over. So what I saw, I didn't see, I didn't see mutilation. But am I 100% sure? No, because I didn't pull his pants down.

• 3:17:46Speaker 05

  And for those that wanted me to do that, they can go fuck themselves. Don't do that. No. I'll leave that. I mean, if I was an autopsy guy, sure. But not in that situation. No, that's, and I wasn't thinking mutilation. I was thinking dragging through the streets too.

• 3:18:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:04Speaker 05

  But we left him. But I, I, I, I stand by the decision and all of us still do. And as, you know, leaders, you've been a leader, you know, you make hard decisions. You have to. And sometimes those hard decisions, even if they're the right ones, are gonna stick with you for the rest of your life. And that's one that does. And uh, but it was the right decision and we got back to our annex. Um, we had Sean's body in the back of the vehicle. So that was a little surreal because we all piled into one vehicle. So we had Tyrone, we had Tig, uh, we had Tyrone, we had, yeah, Tig. We had myself, we had the interpreter, we had the TL and Jack was sitting on the top of Sean's body.

• 3:18:46Speaker 05

  So we're driving back in the SUV and they trailed us, you know, they were following us. We could, it was easy to pick up and we're like, and I, I wish they would have put this in the movie, it's in the book, but I wish they would have put this in there. I actually was making the calls back. I was like, guys, I was telling the gate, gates, get, get the gate ready. Everyone's like, get the gate ready. And they said, what's your status? You know, you always say, we're coming in red, we're coming in black, we're coming in yellow, but then I said, or we're coming in hot, we're coming in cold. And I don't know, I was just trying to make somebody laugh. I said, guys, we're coming in lukewarm. It was stupid. It was like, I'm just trying to get people to laugh because we've been through a lot at that point. We come in the gate and um, the State Department guys, where they tried to get out of there, you know, where we, we got them out, the ones that were still, they, they did go the wrong direction.

• 3:19:32Speaker 05

  They went towards Adidas. Two houses down was where Ansar Sharia had a safe house. The consulate was right next to the terrorist safe house. State Department knew it. We told them a million times. We'd taken pictures of it. There's a scene in the movie where you see us driving by and I'm taking a picture of those fuckers and you're flipping me off? That's it, that happened. They didn't do a damn thing about it. So when they went out the gate, Jack kept telling them and you hear on the radio too. And that was during the fire, that's where the confusion happened. Because when we were getting attacked and I was shooting, that's when we were trying to get them out of there. It was during all that chaos that Jack's, I heard on the radio, because I'm, I'm got a piece in and I hear Jackson, guys, you're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way.

• 3:20:15Speaker 05

  Because we said, go to gunfire when you go out the gate. Do not go to Adidas. You go left, you do not go right. They went right and they got crushed. And so when we pulled in, the armor held, they managed to get back on run flats to our place. That car was just on fire, just flames everywhere. And I thought, you know, they all were dead. But none of them died. The armor held. Scott did a great job pushing through. So did Dave getting through. They just went through a gauntlet of gunfire and RPG fire and got chased until they got back to our compound. So that wasn't movie magic at all. They got hammered. And it it just was in the chaos. He just went the wrong direction. And luckily for them, and again, I I kudos a lot to Dave. Dave Ubin did an awesome job.

• 3:20:59Speaker 05

  But I wouldn't in that vehicle. But if I was to guess, I would say. They all kept their heads pretty good, but Dave probably did. The one was like, get the fuck, we go push through, push through, push through, you know? We got back, it's on fire. We get. We get refitted with whatever we need as far as ammo. Um Tig did did drop our grenade launcher. That wasn't movie magic. He actually dropped it. He didn't. It was a sixty nine, HK sixty nine. He hadn't. Rechanged the the normal lanyard that's on it. You know, we get that the lanyard that comes with it sucks because it just slides through. We usually cut it and we put five fifty cord on it or something that sticks and. He didn't. So when he was running, it fell off and it fell on the ground and.

• 3:21:41Speaker 05

  Um, but it was weird and I I don't have an answer for you. I wish I did, but we had a second one as well. And for some reason I was looking for it and I couldn't find it. I don't know what happened to it. I ran around for five minutes before I went up on my rooftop. Looking for that other grenade launcher because Tig's like, dude, I'm sorry. I dropped it. It's like, son of a bitch, Tig. And I ran around. You know, and you know how we are. We stage it where it needs to be. It's in the team room. It's in. One of the gun lockers. That's where it needs to be. I didn't take it with me because I had a forty six. And and he had the sixty nine and we didn't put it in the QRF vehicle. So I ran. I couldn't find it. And I thought, well, maybe Boone did put it in our vehicle. So I ran and looked in the vehicle. I could not find it. It disappeared. To this day, I have no idea what happened to that sixty nine. And I'm thinking.

• 3:22:26Speaker 05

  Why on earth would would Bob one? I'm thinking malicious, but like, what would that have done? So I don't know. So I couldn't find another sixty nine and we had two, but I couldn't find it. Um, I and uh. Grab more ammo. Ran up to building. First, we went up to building A. Vantage point was terrible. And then we jumped up to building C. Where we could see over zombie land and this sheep slaughterhouse. So we had. Compounds, building here, building here, building here, building here, front gate here, zombie land, parking lot where they were amassing, families' houses right there that they were using to come through before they got into zombie land as cover, because they knew we weren't going to shoot the kids, because there were kids in there, so we weren't going to shoot the buildings.

• 3:23:08Speaker 05

  And then the sheep slaughterhouse, the sheep was over here. So we got up there. A was not a good vantage point, so me and Boone moved over to C. Oz and Tigger in a little fighting position right here overlooking zombie land, and they just start moving on us. And you're just seeing it through the night vision, and it was like kids playing hide and seek, man. So they're just, I don't think they thought we had night vision, or they didn't think it was that good, because they were just running from bush to bush. And Ron was awesome, and I talked about Nick and Paul, the Raven 23 guys. That was heavy on our minds at that time, because they had gone to prison for defending themselves. Yeah. So, we weren't going to shoot. We're like, Ron, man, I don't see guns, but they're moving on us, man, they're moving.

• 3:23:53Speaker 05

  The drones even overhead feeding us intel. You got asymmetric movement, you know, stuff's coming. Um, Ron's like, do not fucking shoot. You see a gun first, then I'll give the command to shoot. And he goes, because I don't want to go to prison. And he was referencing the 23 guys. So that was on our heads, so we just let them get, they just kept coming and coming, and they got closer and closer. And then finally Boone goes, I got AKs. And they were probably about 25 meters from Oz's position when he saw that. And then this fist comes over the back gate, right when he says that, and it was a gelatina bomb. And I saw it, because gelatina bombs is like a stick of dynamite, they light a wick, so you can see in their night vision, and it comes over the back gate.

• 3:24:37Speaker 05

  And it goes over Oz's and takes position, and I'm like, man, this is going to miss him, man, this is going to miss him, this is good news. And then this figure comes out of nowhere, and this bomb's coming this way, and Tigger's got out of position to go get water. What are the fucking odds? I mean, the odds are just like winning the lottery. He's here, the bomb's coming, I'm just watching in slow motion and it just blows up. And all I see is the white light coming and the world opens up. And that was the, that was the, that was the indicator to start the attack. And they just started shooting and we fucking destroyed them. I mean, we were, we had our sectors of fire down. We had our, our, we had all the avenues of approach locked down. We knew the dead space. I mean, I wish I would have had that 203, we would have killed a lot more of them.

• 3:25:22Speaker 05

  But we just crushed them. And everybody was so disciplined. Sector, sector, we stayed within our sectors. We trusted each other on their sectors and it was interlocking sectors of fire. And it was like coming, it was like coming into a fricking wood chopper. And we're just, everybody did awesome. Well, it only took about five minutes, really. It's about as long as it was. And a lot of you guys been in firefight, unless you've been in Afghanistan at a base where they just keep hammering you. Most firefights are only about that long.

• 3:25:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:51Speaker 05

  They're gonna, and um, it's like a boxing match, you know, you're real quick. And then there's some dead time unless there's just a massive, massive force or you get stuck and they got the advantage. But they're losing their ass, they're gonna break contact, get back and figure out something. And they did. Well, when that ended, I looked and I'm thinking, I'm gonna go get Ted, let's go pick up Ted, cause I figured he was dead.

• 3:26:10Shawn Ryan?

  How many uh, I mean, did you guys have any estimate? In your, in your head?

• 3:26:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:26:16Shawn Ryan?

  How many do you think?

• 3:26:17Speaker 05

  I, I think, and I think the major, I mean, it's, it's, it was hard, but I think we got attacked by maybe over that whole course of, not at one time. Two hundred, three hundred people?

• 3:26:27Shawn Ryan?

  Two to three hundred.

• 3:26:28Speaker 05

  But not, it, you know, it was like, that initial one was probably forty. Forty guys fought them off. And then there's another forty. So it could have been the same guys. I mean, we didn't kill forty, I wish we were that good. You know, I, you know, and we're good at what we do, but come, let's be realistic. But, you know, and then at the attic, at the consulate, yeah, easily, forty, fifty that we got countered. I mean, it was forty, fifty at a pop. Um, and yeah, we were killing them. We'd shoot them and that's, that's the, that's the, you know, a lot of us, unless it's within, a lot of us that have been in combat, and I'm not saying in a bravado thing or an ego thing, it's just how it is, at a distance five, five, six, if you hit somebody, sometimes it doesn't keep them down.

• 3:27:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:10Speaker 05

  If close you're in, it's going to, if it's me to you and I hit you, yeah, you're going down, you're not getting back up. But at fifty, seventy-five, a hundred meters, you might, but generally, they're gonna be able to get back up and they'll, they'll probably bleed out or throw out of the fight, depending on where you hit them, I mean, or, but, that was where it could have been, you know, how many, I would, we have estimates, I've seen estimates at Wikipedia, like a thousand? No. Two hundred, three hundred over the whole night. And who knows, some of those could have been attackers, the same attackers. We killed, I don't know, I've got reports, again, I've seen reports, a thou, no.

• 3:27:51Speaker 05

  I think we killed, I, I know, I think a hundred, two hundred, I think we did. Oz had our, had, um, had contact at the, been at the hospital there and, you know, Oz and I still talk, we get along or not, we still talk every once in a while. And I remember when we got back, I asked him, I said, "Do you have your contact?", 'cause, you know, we're Americans, we like to keep score, right? And I said, "Dude, did you ever get a word how many we got, man, how many we killed?", and he goes, "I didn't ever get a number, but he, my contact at the hospital said that they just kept bringing bodies and injured in all night." So I was like, "Wow, that's good enough for me." A minute after that, it didn't matter, 'cause it was nice seeing them turn tail and run, that's even more, and, uh, but yeah, we fought them off and the reason Tig didn't die,

• 3:28:36Speaker 05

  the gelatina bomb hit him and it landed right by his feet and blew up, it's just 'cause he's so big. It would have stopped my heart, you know, it's just a big, it's just a huge flashbang, it's used for fishing. It's for dropping in the Mediterranean and blowing fish come up, you know, it's Mediterranean redneck fishing. And, uh, but it fucked him up. He still has problems, shoulder goes numb, his back's out of whack, but he got up and that's a testament to how tough he is. He got up and he got back in the fight and he actually got hit, a round, we, round hit his armor, it was a piece of a round, it hit a, hit the metal post and it surety of the post or something, it hit him and knocked him down and he got up and he kept fighting. And he's a tough son of a bitch. He's a tough redneck. Takes good, good people, man. Yeah.

• 3:29:20Speaker 05

  And, um, but that was, it was awesome. And they gave us a wave of confidence. It did. It's like, okay, we got this. We, we, our, we, our battle plan, our force protection plan, our sectors of fire, they're on. All right, let's keep doing what we're doing. And throughout that timeframe,

• 3:29:37Speaker 05

  you know, we're still thinking Americans are gonna help. We're still thinking that the ISRs are seeing everything. And we're thinking, somebody's coming. Cavalry's coming. But they weren't. But at that time in time, we still had some faith that they were, because they normally did. Everywhere else I was at, cavalry came. Whether it was another GRS team, whether it was a Scorpion team, an NSA, you know, the GRS equivalent at the NSA, whether it was military, um, somebody was Brits, somebody was coming. And, um,

• 3:30:15Speaker 05

  between that two hour lull of 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. where the next attack happened,

• 3:30:22Speaker 05

  that's where we started to come to realization, nobody's coming. And, um, and the reason is because we had a, uh, we didn't put him in the movie, um, but we had a old Vietnam veteran that manned our radios, our 117. He was a staffer with the agency, great guy, R T O N, Vietnam. Wonderful guy. He still cries every time we see him because he apologizes for not getting us help. Um, we already had QRF elements on station. You know, it was, you know, we had a 911 call. We could call because that's what we do. GRS, that's what our jobs is, is to coordinate with the other units. So if we need people, we can just hit a button, go on 10

• 3:31:03Speaker 05

  Alpha Command on 117, on the 117s and say, we need help. And we have 117. And

• 3:31:10Speaker 05

  every so often throughout the next couple of hours, Boone would come to me and say, hey, we got a hold of Delta, man. They're on our way, on their way. And little did we know they had, were coming, but they got diverted to, I think it's Croatia. Um, 555th Fighter Wing, that was our big, we, we always thought we had them. They had two jets at Sudabey, Greece. Sudabey, Greece is five minutes with afterburners to Libya. And then they had the 555th Fighter Wing, the whole unit up in Aviano. It's a QRF base. That's what's there for. We figured they were coming. Boone's like, no, they're not coming.

• 3:31:44Speaker 05

  The Fast Company Marines, there was one in Spain and there was one in the Med near Saganella and we thought they were coming. They, he'd keep coming back to me every, after he'd tell me somebody was coming, he'd come back and say, "No, they're not, we're not getting words, there's no confirmation they're coming." And then that SIF, the Ambassador's old, the Ambassador's primary security team, the Commander's and the Stremis force that had been in Croatia and got repositioned to the staging area, that was when I really knew nobody was coming, because when he said, "No, they're, they're not on their way anymore either," he came and said, "Hey, that SIF team, the Commander's team's coming."

• 3:32:22Shawn Ryan?

  You guys actually went through this entire checklist?

• 3:32:24Speaker 05

  That's his job and that's our job. And yes, we went down the line. Every, that's why politicians, and that's why the CIA pisses me off. That's our job, they know that. Politicians may not know that, but the agency knows that. That's what our main response is, GRS, we're protective services and it's also to protect our asses if something happens, to get the assets needed that we, assets that are in the area to us if we need them. So we had them all, we knew them all. It was, I, I was in charge of that when I was there, but it's always, you know, every time it's passed down to somebody. So it's always refined and improved and refined and approved, so it was, the RTO, the Vietnam

• 3:33:05Speaker 05

  RTO, that was, that was his job and he was very good at it and he was very supportive of us. And the reason he cries when he sees us now, I remember, and I remember I saw him in Texas when I was doing a lot of speaking back in 2016 and I got pissed at him, we were, did a speaking event there in Fort Worth and his wife's wonderful lady, they came to have a drink with me and I think Tig was there as well. And I got pissed, I got drunk. And he hadn't said anything as far as testimony yet. And he can blow the doors off all the help that was around there, he could verify what we saw.

• 3:33:49Speaker 05

  And I'm like, "Stop being a fucking pussy dude, stop, go tell them what happened."

• 3:33:57Speaker 05

  And he got up and I saw, I felt bad. He got up, I saw him, tears in his eyes and he walked away. His wife's sitting there, his wife's Texas woman, hard as nails. I go ma'am, I'm sorry. She goes, no, I've been telling him the same thing to tell. And I said, well, why hasn't he? He goes, because they're gonna pull his pension if he does. Where he don't get his retirement. And I, I was like, okay. I'd never say anything about it again. I love the guy. I love him. And he has a lot of info out there, but I do respect people and their family. And if that's not for my selfish reasons or anything else, I understand that and I never bugged him about it again. And I never will again, because I respect that. I do.

• 3:34:40Speaker 05

  Is it right? No, I don't think it's right, but I still respect his decision. And he did try. He did try his ass off. Well, 3am, we get hit again.

• 3:34:53Speaker 05

  And um, it was like the movie show and we just, it was just, they did the same tactics and we just crushed them. It's like waves hitting a retaining wall, man. And it was, it was very, very satisfying, but it was, man, how long is this gonna keep up? Because we had a ton of M4 ammo, tons, but we're eventually gonna run out. We're eventually gonna get tired. We're eventually, they're eventually gonna get it figured out and hit us with a car bomb. I was so shocked they hadn't hit us with a car bomb yet. Because that was, when Iraq or Afghanistan, that's probably what they would have just done.

• 3:35:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:29Speaker 05

  Throw a car and blow up the wall, but they hadn't. So I was really shocked at that, but

• 3:35:35Speaker 05

  you know, you think about your family a little bit. And before that second attack, I had thought about my family and I just remembered the phone call and I just remembered it briefly and I, I thought about them and I just remembered, did the last thing they heard from me, did I tell them I loved them? And I did, so I was okay. Didn't think about it the rest of the night. It was the last words. And my daughter, my son and my wife know that I love them. Before I got off the phone, yeah, I told them I loved them. Down in my head the rest of the night.

• 3:36:01Speaker 05

  And by 3am, you're starting to get, and what I was doing at that point in time, having some self-reflection.

• 3:36:10Speaker 05

  Getting motivated that they are gonna breach the walls probably eventually and then I'm like, I gotta get in my head that we may need to start, it's gonna get close quarter and we're gonna maybe start stabbing, it's gonna start knifing and that's a totally different animal than shooting. It's intimate and that's a mind, if you're used to that, there's something wrong with you, in my opinion. I mean, shooting, I understand, I've done that, it's kinda impersonal and because of the way we're trained, it's almost like you can imagine targets and also they're terrorists, who gives a fuck? But when they're up and you gotta stab,

• 3:36:43Speaker 05

  that's different, at least to me, maybe not to others, but it is. And I, I gotta get my mind right if that's gonna happen. So I'm starting to get the mindset of hand to hand, you know, so I respect those guys from World War II and World War I. Fighting trench fighting, wow, it's like, God, those guys are badass, I ain't shit, those guys are badass. But, um, and a ton of rats, you know, from Vietnam. But, uh,

• 3:37:10Speaker 05

  we get word Bub's coming in and, um, I didn't know this for, for several years, but Bub actually ponied up money from his own bank account to rent that old executive's jet. I don't know if he was ever paid back. Are you kidding? I found that out, actually, I found it out from his, his best friend Sean, who runs Bub's, Natrals. But he came on my podcast and I had no idea that, I didn't know that. Wow. But that tells you how Bub is. Yeah. Ponied up money, I'm sure he was, I think, I think what Sean said is the SEAL Foundation came in and actually reimbursed. I don't see I ever paid him, which, fuck them anyway. But anyway, that's Bub, man, that's Bub, his own money.

• 3:37:51Speaker 05

  And they rented his, our executive's jet, it was, it was like a G6, it was, it was nice. It did have flight attendants on it, serious, no shit flight attendants, because they were waiting for us when we got to the Menina. And, um, But he gets there and they got there actually at midnight and they just it took them so long to coordinate to get the 10 kilometers to our place. By the time they got to our place, it was about 5 a.m. And um, they get there and I remember them coming in and I remember I was being my smart ass self. I'm saying, "Hey, fucking welcome to the party, motherfuckers. Better late than never, man. Did you bring me something to drink?" And I remember bub bub walked by and the TL that was with them,

• 3:38:32Speaker 05

  he was a former BW guy that went to the dark side because he started sleeping with a case off. He married her though. It wasn't bad. He married her, but he even become the staffer, but they both went, they walked by me and they did like fucking Tano and they both flipped me off. I was giving them shit. And um, they went back. All them, all the GRS guys aside from bub, went into building C. There were two Delta guys that were, worked with us in Tripoli. They went into building C too, and bub was the only one that came up to bill, I mean, building uh, building, yeah, building C. Yeah, the, the headquarters building. And then bub went on top of building C. So, like I said, keep in mind here, I'm on building A. Building C's, uh, I'm sorry.

• 3:39:14Speaker 05

  Building A here, building C here. B, they're in B. I'm sorry, that's the headquarters building. Building B and then building A. Or building uh, I'm getting confused here. A, B, C, D. Sorry. A, they went in building C. D's here, Jack's here. Boone's still up here. I went on the front gate building, which is A.

• 3:39:36Speaker 05

  And I need to take a crap. Couldn't get anybody to relieve me. And uh, Boone said, "Go take a shit." So I scurried down, you know, bodily functions still happen when all this, you know that. They don't stop. Scurried down the stairs, took my shit, got back up. And uh, all of a sudden there was a shh. And it didn't sound like a mortar. It didn't. And I don't know, my hearing had been shot out. You know, I had an earpiece in one ear, but I didn't wear hearing protection in the other, so. And Boone been shooting, and that's our 25 by my ear all night. And I'm shooting either my M4 or 46, so my hearing's gone. And I went, "Did you guys hear that?" It sounded like somebody's, you know what it sounded like when we used to hear the, the 107s come in and I were out here?

• 3:40:19Speaker 05

  That's what it sounded like. I thought it was a rocket. I said, "Did you guys hear that?" And then, I don't know, something in me said, "Mortars." I go, "Mortars, mortars." And so this is to take cover the first one hit and hit on the backside of Building C. And that's when the world opened up again. And I remember Roan, he just spun. He spun and he went cyclic on that other 46 and he's just over where the sheep slaughterhouse is. They're trying to come through there. Like idiots, they're walking their troops into where the mortars are coming. Fine with me. They can take out their own guys if they want. But Roan is just... So I'm seeing this laser beam because it's not daylight. The movie it shows is daylight is actually was a before morning nautical twilight.

• 3:41:01Speaker 05

  So it's, you know, it's right where the sun's maybe, but night vision, you still need your night vision. So I'm watching all this. I'm seeing one guy turn and start to shoot that direction. I'm seeing another guy turn, which was Oz. The next guy was Bob, and the next guy was Dave Ubben. And of course, I want to get my gun in the fight, but I can't see the targets because they're here. I'm here. The targets, they're coming from this direction. The mortars are coming from this way. So I'm shooting over their heads. I put a couple rounds down and I look and I think, you know, we kind of already went through this before, but I look behind me and make sure there's nobody coming from my six because I still got areas of responsibility. Nobody's there. I turn around, hit a couple more shots, and I see the next one hit. And this one hits on Building C.

• 3:41:44Speaker 05

  Hits right by the parapet wall. Boom, blows up. As my night vision goes white and it comes back, those four guys that were shooting are now three. So it's like, it was, it's like, you know, close your eyes, you see four, open your eyes, there's three. Dave's hit. Dave got hit with an 81. It sheared half his leg off. It sheared half his arm off. They were on, but they were just hanging by tendons. And he's screaming. And I go, "How did you hear that?" I don't know how I heard it, but I heard him screaming. I'm hit. He's yelling. He's screaming. I heard all, I could hear it. I'm still shooting. They're still shooting. I turn around and make sure nobody's coming again because I still got my six. We still got to fight. We got to finish it. You can't quit.

• 3:42:25Speaker 05

  They got to take care of Dave. I'm not running off my position and help him. Somebody, I'm just expecting maybe the Delta guys or somebody to come up and help, but who, I don't know. We got a fight to go. I put three rounds over the top of their head. I went boom, boom, boom. And as soon as I did that, three rounds, three mortars, fire for effect. Boom, boom, boom.

• 3:42:45Speaker 05

  And when they did that, my night vision went completely white because they overburdened the light and as it came back, they were gone. And I saw the pixie dust. I saw the charged particles because any of those explosions, if it's fine particles or dust and, and there's not a lot of wind and there wasn't, and there's not, you can see the particles coming down because they could get charged or heated. So I'm watching the pixie dust come down and it, it really did look like they got turned to dust. My brain's like, because they're gone. All of a sudden they're gone, then there's a cloud of dust. I'm like, man, I, I can't beat this. We don't have any air support. And I put my head down, said, and God's, and I know it was God. It was God

• 3:43:30Speaker 05

  on my mom. And he said, get your gun up Ranger. I kept fighting and Jack kept fighting and Boo kept fighting. And we fought those guys off that were coming for us. Boo and Jack primarily, they had better avenues of fire than I did. But, and they did awesome. But, um, the mortar stopped. And at the time I was like, wow, I wonder why they stopped. I mean, they hit with the building they wanted to hit. It was far from effect. They had that thing locked in. That's our main building. That's a skiff. That's where all of our troops are. That's where all of our equipment is. That's where all of our, all of our comms are is that building. They knew which building to hit. And unlike David Petraeus, who needs his Ranger tab pulled that said, well, it must've been a truck and they just ran a truck and they just rap hap- happily put a mortar

• 3:44:15Speaker 05

  tube in the back of a truck. Come on, man. Come on, man. What's up infantry officer? I got respect for Petraeus, but when he said that, I'm like, dude, come. Anyway, the reason they stopped, the movie, I wish they would have edited it a little bit better. You see the militia take off before the mortars came. They actually took off after that first, when I heard that, they must've heard it.

• 3:44:46Speaker 05

  They had good, I don't know, they must have known what it was more than me, which I didn't my hearing had gone to shit. They took off and then that first one hit, they went and took the mortar team out for us. Their commander had actually come in with our team and he was in building C when those mortars were hitting. So there, that first one there, they scattered because that's their tactics. They knew something was coming, mortar was coming in, so they're moving their vehicles. So they're not part of the carnage. And then I could hear in the distance, tire screeching, gunfire, in the direction of the mortars were coming from. And they went and took the mortar team out for us because their commander

• 3:45:26Speaker 05

  had got caught in building C when the attack happened. Lord works in mysterious ways, bruh. Yeah, no kidding. And um, the ironic thing is too is the mortar team, that whole militia belonged, they were former Omar Gaddafi commanders. Wow.

• 3:45:47Speaker 05

  We got to save, you know, we got to save Omar Gaddafi. So yeah, so for anybody to think that we went in there to overthrow Omar Gaddafi, that's bullshit. We went in there to stabilize a region so the Muslim Brotherhood could come in and stabilize it under that foreign policy under the Obama administration. And we needed Gaddafi's weapons to go and give to the friendly militias, as McCain would say. But anyway, they saved us and mortar stopped and then at 7 a.m., you know, a militia was coming in and I remember there were just me and Boone and Jack left. Nobody, and it would piss me, nobody would come and relieve us. It was like, dude, it was like, guys, GRS guys, Delta, would somebody

• 3:46:32Speaker 05

  come give us a break? I mean, come on, it's like having a patrol base and you know, you gotta give guys breaks. Nobody would come relieve us. So we stayed up there and I remember Bob said, Tom. The Delta guys didn't come up? No, no, and I'm, I got no heartache with, I did for a big time. What were they doing? I don't know. That's a good question. I have no idea. And they're Delta. I know they do hardcore shit. And I got no heartache with them. I'm not trying to throw them under the bus here. It's just, it is what it is. And I know they're fucking warriors because they're Delta. You kind of have to be to be at the unit. Now I've seen guys, Bolo shoots from the unit too, going through TDC.

• 3:47:13Speaker 05

  And going, but like anybody, they have bad days, but they're, I just, I don't know. Maybe they're on a different, I would like to know. If you ever get them on, I would love to know what the hell they were doing. Maybe it was document destruction, destroying classified documents of why we're there. I don't know. I mean, that's what we put in the movie. Michael Bay actually has a pretty good. He has a pretty good, he has his own peeps within the agency that feed him shit DOD. Because they love him, because he makes them look really good, which he should. He's honoring, he loves veterans. So maybe that's, maybe he put that in there because that's what they were doing. I don't know. And, but all I know is they couldn't, they wouldn't relieve us. Cause I kept calling for them. Then I kept making fun.

• 3:47:57Speaker 05

  Like, "Hey, uh, D-Boys, you think you could come relieve us? I gotta get a drink of water." You know, I was just on the open mic so everybody could hear it. So I was being my normal jackass pissed off stuff. Anyway, when the militia was coming in, Bob says to me, he goes, "Tono, you got the front gate." He goes, "Make sure this militia that we got coming is friendly." All I had left was my M4. That's all I had ammo left for. That's all I had. My pea shooter. It was daytime now. And I remember asking Bob. I go, "Roger that, Chief. I got front gate. Understood. Can you give me some description of who I'm looking for?" He goes, "I don't know, Tono." I said, "Bob, I said, Chief, do you have vehicle colors?

• 3:48:41Speaker 05

  Insignia, I can ID." He goes, "We don't have any of that information." And the TL needs to be start chipping in. I'm asking the TL the same things. I go, "Are there uniforms I can look for? Do I have communication via cellphone? My burn phone, can I call somebody? You guys have communication?" We lost communication. I go, "Give me a number, Bob, at least." He goes, "Our team leader comes across right and he goes, 'Tono, the number's between 30 to 50. They're all technicals.'" I was like, "Holy fuck." And I got on the radio and we didn't put it in the movie, but I said, "And you guys expect me to fight these fuckers off with a pea shooter?"

• 3:49:18Speaker 05

  I said, "Roger that." I think, no response, because why keep poking the bear? Because I'll keep giving them shit.

• 3:49:27Speaker 05

  I just said to him, and I go on my radio, I clicked it one more time. I said, "Bob, you've been a plethora of information, and I really appreciate..." And being a smartass. And I went dark, and I saw him coming. Pablo played it. It still breaks, I mean, it does. It breaks my heart when I see it, because he played it so spot on. Because that's how exactly I felt. I'm watching these technicals, and it is a huge militia. They bat, you know, you know what technicals are? It's those Hiluxes with those Dishkas or anti-aircraft guns in the back, or a PKM mounted, and it's badass militia. And as they're coming in, I get behind that parapet wall at three foot high, and I made myself as small as I could. And I had an Eotech.

• 3:50:10Speaker 05

  It was on, and I put the Eotech on the passenger. Because I'm thinking to myself, you know, hey, this ain't over. It's not over till it all over. It's not over till it ends, man, and I'm dead, or they're dead. It's probably gonna be me. And all I'm thinking is that Dishka's gonna rip me in half, and I hope it's quick. But I'm thinking to myself, I'm at least gonna get one of them. And I got my infrared, I mean, my Eotech on the passenger, who looks like a commander, I don't know, but he's passenger. And then I'm just rotating back and forth from the Dishka gunner to the passenger. Because if I see the Dishka gunner move, and he hits that fly, I'm gonna hit that fly, then, fly trigger. I'm gonna pull, pull my trigger and at least get him. And then I'll get ripped up. But I just couldn't think of anything else. I had no way to connect them.

• 3:50:55Speaker 05

  I learned the jumbo in Mosul at Merez, because we had Sudanese guards, and every time we'd leave the gate, they would throw up the jumbo to me in 2008. So one day, I stopped and asked them. I said, "What does that mean to you?" They, it means "good morning." It officially is Swahili, it means "good morning." You'll see it on shirts and aprons, "jumbo." But because the shaka's much cooler, and be cool, they've kind of adopted that. That's what they told me. I said, "So it just means be cool." So I would throw that up. And every time I threw it up, if I wanted to see if somebody was friendly, if I got it back. Well, I'm here, so nine times out of ten, it was friendly. And I couldn't think anything else. And I went like this and I, man, I was, I, I was, you could have put a lump of coal in my ass. It would have been a diamond like that.

• 3:51:40Speaker 05

  I was like, just tight. And they're both chewing cot. I remember the cock said, big wads of cot in her mouth. For those that don't know what cot is, it's amphetamine they dip before they go into battle. It's a, it's like a leaf, but it's, it's like chewing copa. It's like mixing Copenhagen with cocaine and steroids. That's what it is. And it rots your teeth, it turns your mouth brown, you chew it all enough. It's, it's, it makes you look like a heroin addict if you chew it. And they look like they've been chewing it forever, just gross and cot everywhere. I remember doing this, I went like this and I, I'm thinking to myself, this is gonna hurt. And the pastor reached out and he smiled at me.

• 3:52:21Speaker 05

  He smiled, huge cot, brown teeth and he went, and he was that close. I could see him that vividly and he smiled. Threw the jambo up and the dishka gunner got, took it one hand off the fly, took off that dish to the back and he went like this. No. And it was. Shit. And I said, people watch the movie and like, that's so, that's so dramatized, like, oh, that's the fuck what happened? And I said, my wife is gorgeous, my kids are beautiful, beautiful smiles. But they know this and I told them, I said, honey, I love you, you got a beautiful smile. But that smile that that cot fills, still just the most beautiful smile I've ever seen in my life.

• 3:53:05Speaker 05

  And, and I did, I did lose it. It was like, for briefly, I did. I just kind of let it out. And I got on the radio and I went, there with us, there with us. And I, I mean, I'm hoping the movie, what all them felt like you seen the movie. I'm hoping that's how they felt in there where it just was. Somebody, what had happened, and I don't know how Bob didn't get this fucking information since the commander was right in there. The buddies that took the militia, the militia that took the mortar team out, they went and got more of their buddies. So they just got more Gaddafi people. So we got saved by Gaddafi twice.

• 3:53:44Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:53:45Speaker 05

  And then we got out of there, you know, and got to the airfield and there was some, there was some fights over our vehicles. I mean, in the movie, it showed a few guys. There was actually probably about 15 guys that wanted our vehicles. It was kind of comical because some guy ended his AK when they were fighting over. So we're in the middle and we're trying to get people on. And in this game, this is a respect I have for Oz and I've said it before. I think it was either with you or with, uh,

• 3:54:12Speaker 05

  but again, you respect, even if you don't like people, you respect and give respect when it's due. And again, he did. He was John Wayne. He said the coolest fucking thing and he did say this. When we got there, we were trying to help him off the back of the truck and get on the plane and he wouldn't let us help him. He climbed his own, yeah, for real. No, he climbed his own ass down from the building bleeding. I don't know if he said it during his interview. He may have, but that was pretty fucking impressive. He was down pepper shrapnel arms flying off and he, he climbed down a ladder one handed. He slipped on a rung and caught himself with his elbow and then he walked himself down. So me and Oz may not get along, but he's one of the toughest son of bitches I've ever been with.

• 3:54:55Speaker 05

  And when he said that, I was like, God dang, I wish I would have said that. I said, damn, that's some John Wayne Clint Eastwood shit right there. And he walked in there and the flight attendants were out there.

• 3:55:07Shawn Ryan?

  What did he say again?

• 3:55:08Speaker 05

  I walked into this country, I'm gonna walk out. He said, it wasn't movie, it wasn't script. That's what he said. We were all standing there and all of us were like,

• 3:55:19Speaker 05

  damn.

• 3:55:20Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I'll say it's, um,

• 3:55:23Shawn Ryan?

  it's just nice to hear you guys have a healthy respect for each other.

• 3:55:26Speaker 05

  You do. You have to. You go through that and, uh, I said, you don't, you, you're not gonna get along with everybody. You can't hang out with everybody. I'm not for everybody. Believe, believe me, they'd be like, man, I hate that son of a bitch, but if I need him and I want him on with me in the front with me. And there's some that don't. Some of them, I hate that son of a bitch. I don't want him anywhere near me. And there's some that, man, if we go through the gates of hell, I want you standing right next to me. That's just, that's just humans. That's just how we are. You're not gonna like everybody. But if you have a job to do, and this goes in corporate world, this goes in the military, anywhere, private military. You have a goal, you need to reach that goal. You better be all in the same focus, the same path. Now, you may have different jobs, but don't create more drama by not liking each other.

• 3:56:10Speaker 05

  And that's a good leader that puts you in positions that don't make you co-mingle all the time, which Ron did. He put us in jobs and responsibilities that if we had to do stuff together, we did. But if it wasn't necessary, then he wasn't forcing us. So we had a healthy dose of each other when we needed. But if we didn't like, we didn't ride all together. It wasn't necessary for us to, me and him to do, do the, do the, I can't call him, you know, it's got names for him. It wasn't necessary for us to do the meetings and the pickups and all that together. You didn't do that. You didn't, and you had leaders that would force guys to ride. You don't want, no, we didn't like each other. So there's other guys, Oz, Tom, you just don't have to ride together. There's plenty of other people here, and they put us in different vehicles.

• 3:56:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:56Speaker 05

  So, um, but what was funny and comical on that is, is it only showed in the movie that the flight attendant put one towel down on the stairs because Oz was bleeding over everything. She actually came down, was putting multiple towels all along the stairs and was putting them in the fuselage. Shit, because she was more worried about blood getting all over the plane than, than Oz, helping Oz into the plane. She didn't give him a hand, nothing. She just let him walk up. They're like, wow, if that ain't, honestly, that's probably more closer to humanity today, how people are today, than it really was back then. But he got on there and Dave, God bless Bob, dude.

• 3:57:39Speaker 05

  Bob sacrificed his life, saved two guys. He gave himself, John 15 13, man. He exemplified that. Dave and Oz would have bled out. Dave was bleeding out. He went into, uh, he went into convulsions twice because his tourniquets kept coming loose. He was losing so much blood, we were out of IVs.

• 3:58:00Speaker 05

  But because that plane was there, we had a little bit of a miss, a little bit of a problem when we got everybody on the plane. As we got everybody on the plane, we heard a pop, somebody shot their gun on the plane. The heating and air guy had a pistol, all the contractors had sidearms if they were weapons qualified. Our HVAC guy that was a contractor there with us, he had a pistol. He took it out to clear it, dropped the magazine, and instead of racking the slide, he pulled the trigger and he shot the plane. So the plane sat there for an extra 10 minutes while we tried to locate the bullet, because the pilot wouldn't fly if there was a hole in the fuselage. And we got lucky, it lodged in one of the iron frames of the back of a seat. Wow.

• 3:58:43Speaker 05

  Insult to injury and just comical, comical shit. Wow. And finally found it, that's when it got out of there. And there was a Libyan, a Western-trained Libyan doctor, and one of the deltas had, 18 deltas had got back to AAA from that. I don't know if it was from the SIF team, or he'd come in from Djibouti or something, but there was a delta that was waiting there, an 18 delta, from one of the groups that was working in the region. And I still don't know who it was, I just know it was an NSF guy. And they got, they got him stabilized, Dave stabilized, Dave good to go, they got Oz good to go. And then we sat and waited, and that's when I inspected

• 3:59:25Speaker 05

  the ambassador's body. They brought his body on, I opened up the body bag, and again, I don't think he was destined, you know, his genitals were mutilated. I didn't look, and I didn't see blood down there, but that doesn't mean nothing. They could have cleaned it up and just pulled his pants on. But I didn't see any marks that indicated he was drugged through the strudgeon, which is what I was looking for. Tig looked at him too, and Tig didn't see anything that indicated that as well. So we're saying no. Could it have happened? Sure it could have, but we didn't see it. A C-130 landed at 10:30, and as I'm seeing it come in, you, you, you know, you've been around, you know the telltale signs even from a distance of what a 130 looks like coming in. It's beautiful, coming in, dueling, just cracking, looking at the tail boom, and I'm thinking to myself, fine, well, better

• 4:00:09Speaker 05

  late than never, America, whoa. And as it gets closer, I'm like...

• 4:00:16Speaker 05

  My eyes just see we made that that's red, green and black. That's not an American flag. And as it gets closer, I verified it's a Libyan flag and it lands. And I remember thinking, what? It's like still. And I said it to myself, out loud to myself. I said, still no Americans.

• 4:00:33Speaker 05

  Whatever. Goes down. I figure we're gonna hot load it. So it's gonna drive. It's gonna drop its ramp and we're gonna, it's gonna turn and then we're just gonna run in and take off. It didn't. It went by us, went down about 400 to 600 meters, banked a right, shut its engines down. And I guess odd, okay. Well, maybe they need to refuel. And I look at my T, I look at the TL, I go, is that for us? He goes, I don't know. And our country TL was there as well. And I asked him, I go, is that for us? We jumped in some cars that we had left. We jumped in our, we had another interpreter that was our expediter from the airport. He had a vehicle, jumped down there.

• 4:01:18Speaker 05

  They were all sitting in the room drinking chai. They were, they were maxing, relaxing. Went to the pilots, were like, is this for? And they had no idea what had just happened. They had no idea what had just happened. And we ended up talking them into flying us out.

• 4:01:37Speaker 05

  Have faith, man. Wow. Have faith, God. I always tell people, never lose your faith. It's amazing that if you have faith, your luck increases. It just showed up. And that was something that honestly I pushed when we were doing all the testimonies and I, and nobody really ever cared. Wow. Um, so I just let it go. I, I don't push it anymore. But I like to tell about it because it is a question, it is a, man.

• 4:02:03Speaker 05

  God's still in control, man. Yeah. And, um, I am gonna talk about that, I do, because this is why I don't, like Obama or anyone, Mike Rogers, you were poking, he talks shit about Benghazi. He's a terrible man. Whenever they call a conspiracy or they say, oh, it didn't happen the way they said they did it. When we got on that plane.

• 4:02:29Speaker 05

  And forgive me Katie and Bob's family, but I do want to talk because this is, this is why politicians need to shut their fucking mouths. Is Bob's rigor mortis had set in. So his arm was, when we got on the plane, we loved the bodies and we didn't have body bags for everybody. So we had to put sheets, a sheet over Bob because we didn't have enough.

• 4:02:51Speaker 05

  And he had, he had gotten dropped off the roof by the D-boys. They dropped him. I don't know why, again, I, I've come to terms with that. I'm not going to beat those guys up. They're, they're, they're. Amen. They're D-boys. I know they served their country well and they're, they're, they did well. You, if you ever have one, you can ask them.

• 4:03:11Speaker 05

  But his arm was up in the air. So it was, you know, we had him covered with a sheet, but his arm was like this the whole time. It's like an elephant in the room. You're on a C-130 and I'm on the, we're sitting on this side on the webbing and they're sitting on that side on the webbing. And you're seeing these dead bodies here and everybody's pretty much covered up, but Bob's arm is out there and, and everybody's just staring at it.

• 4:03:34Speaker 05

  And I was like, what the fuck? Okay. I was like, well, fuck, if I have to be the one to do it, and I didn't say it, but that's what I thought. And I walked over there. And I thought it was disrespectful to leave him like that. So I just grabbed his arm and I went rap and I ripped it down and I felt everything ripped.

• 4:03:53Speaker 05

  But I could tuck his arm underneath the, the sheet so it could.

• 4:03:59Speaker 05

  So we couldn't see it anymore.

• 4:04:02Speaker 05

  And, um.

• 4:04:04Speaker 05

  You know, I, I, I don't, I don't know if that was right or not, but I just, I couldn't ride an hour watching his. And everybody was staring at it and it was just silent on the plane. It's like, nobody wanted to acknowledge that that had, that was going on or maybe what had just happened. And it was like, fuck, it was, and it, maybe this is the, I have, everybody, I have a little sociopath. It's like, man, do I always have to be the one to do the dirty shit? That's what I kinda felt, but I'm glad I did, because I know... I thought it was more disrespectful to leave his arm up in the air and leave him in that position and get him settled, get his arm underneath and have him be in a respectful position.

• 4:04:49Speaker 05

  And that still bothers me. And I don't really talk, I don't talk about that too much, because, one of all, I don't talk about it a lot because it bothers the shit out of me, obviously. But because I don't want to disrespect the Doherty family by saying that, that, you know, maybe they would think of it like a desecration, and that's not what it was.

• 4:05:10Shawn Ryan?

  Chris, I mean, you did it out of respect, man.

• 4:05:12Speaker 05

  And that's what it was, and it's not a rationalization, but I also...

• 4:05:18Shawn Ryan?

  You're just doing the best you can.

• 4:05:20Speaker 05

  That's it. You always respect family, though. You always respect other people's family, because especially people you serve, because you want them to respect your family. And I love, I think, Katie and what she's done with the Glenn Doherty Memorial Foundation and Glenn's brother, they're amazing people. And Mrs. Doherty passed away, I think, a few years ago. But I have the utmost respect for them, because they lost their son needlessly. And I just don't want to harp on that, but I do want people to understand and know that, so when they hear a politician say Benghazi is a conspiracy, or Benghazi didn't happen, or those guys are not telling the story right,

• 4:06:04Speaker 05

  I want them to hear stuff like that, because that's why I get angry.

• 4:06:09Shawn Ryan?

  Nobody believes politicians, man. They don't.

• 4:06:12Speaker 05

  I hope not. Regardless, it happened, and we got back to Tripoli. And we went back, and, you know, we got off the plane. We went to the annex there in Tripoli. I took a shower and got some food and...

• 4:06:30Speaker 05

  I was a big Copenhagen dipper at the time, so I was like, man, does somebody have Copenhagen? I need some big dip in. There's actually a picture, there was one picture taken of me sitting on the steps of the annex in Tripoli. I borrowed somebody's New York Yankees hat. I didn't have any clothes, so I wasn't able to get my gear. So I borrowed somebody's white under T-shirt. I had somebody's pants on that didn't fit me, so it looks like I'm a lot bigger than what I am down there, but I'm not, because they were too tight on me. And I have a big old dip in. And my sunglasses on, and I'm trying to come to terms with it all, and I got some food in my belly. And then they load all the contractors, now the staffers, they load all the contractors on a motorcade. The Jers guys are there, we

• 4:07:15Speaker 05

  loading their cars, we drive down the airfield. The Air Force Crew Chief, she was awesome. Broke every reg in the world to let us load those flag draped coffins. They already had the flag. She was incredible. She already had them, flag draped coffins, ready to go. Pristine. It was, you couldn't have done any better than at Dover. She was incredible. And the pilot, Eric Stahl, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Stahl, who was a C-17, wonderful. Every reg in the world, they broke to accommodate us. They had already loaded. Oz was already on. I'm not going to post it, because it's for Oz, you know, but I got a picture of him where he's in his gurney. IV's in, he's coherent, he's doing this to me. But he's on the plane.

• 4:08:00Speaker 05

  Dave is sedated, of course. He's out, because he's massive, massive trauma. Get the coffins on. Ramp closes, we take off, and we fly to Germany. And then we get to Germany, and plane lands. I didn't let go of my rifle the whole time, or my ammo. Give two fucks. It's not going anywhere. Stayed right next to me with my ammo. So we get there, and I wish I would have known what I know now about General Ham, but he's on a raid to greet us. Eurocom commander, he's the one that controls the Eurocom forces. He's the one that can sacrifice his position and tell Obama and Hillary to go F themselves and send us troops.

• 4:08:45Speaker 05

  Well, he gets on and I don't even remember what he said, to be honest with you. I just remember he said something positive to us, you know, he's an infantry guy, Ranger Cav, all that. And all I remember is I remember going up to him and saying, "Hey, sir, is there an amnesty box anywhere? Cause I got a bunch of ammo I need to, I need to download." And that's my conversation with him, but if I'd have known that he did, he could have sent people and he didn't, then I probably would have had a different conversation, but I didn't know at the time. Yeah, he goes, "Yes, sir." He says, "He's a good job." He goes, "Great job, man." And he goes, "It's right over there." And I walk over there and there's a sergeant in arms, like a sergeant, I would say sergeant in arms, but whatever, the ammo drop, and there's a, there's a sergeant there.

• 4:09:29Speaker 05

  Uh, and I gave, a tech sergeant, air force guy, I gave him the ammo. And, uh, that's why I always tell people, support the USO, cause they were already there waiting for us. And this lady come, she was the nicest lady, fifty something lady, blonde hair, about five foot six, she comes up to me and she goes, she goes, she, they already know what hap, they know what happened, they know the story, they know where we're coming from. Um, anyway, they don't know our agency, they just know that there was a battle, there's some deaths, there's some military and some civilians coming in, get your shit ready. And they already had stuff laid out, like toiletries, underwear, you know, clothes, shoes. And she comes up to me and she goes, "What'd you lose?" She goes, "What'd you, you okay?" I said, "Yes, ma'am." She goes, "What'd you lose?"

• 4:10:14Speaker 05

  I said, "Ma'am, I lost everything." She goes, "Okay." And she started taking me around and I got some money, you know, I got some jammies, I got some sweats, USO sweats, and, and I got my toiletries. And then we got to the end of it, she goes, "Write down what you need." I said, "Ma'am?" She goes, "No, I need you to write down what you need, cause you might be here for about four or five days." I said, "Every, what?" And she goes, "Anything." So I'm just doing, you know, I lost my tennis shoes, I lost my jeans, I lost my t-shirts. And I gave her a list and it was, it was a full page of stuff I lost. I wasn't being a dick, I lost, I, you know, I lost my Playstation, I, it's like, stuff, I, I handed it to her and... I go back to my room and they put us into a nice room. It's Air Force. It's nice rooms,

• 4:10:56Speaker 05

  man. It's like a hotel. It felt like a hotel. They put us in. We're right next to BX, which is Air Force Base Exchange, Army PX, Post Exchange, but it's Air Force BX. And I lay down for a second. I can't sleep. I knock on my door at 1 a.m. because we got in real late. We got in like at 11 to Germany when we finally got there. And it was her and she had two bags. She goes, here, she goes, I got your stuff. And I didn't, I didn't break down in front of her, but I did. What I closed the door because it was

• 4:11:35Speaker 05

  well, for first time I'd felt or someone generally cared, like actually gave a shit. Not like Bob who came after her when we were at Tripoli and he goes, thanks, man. Thank you. And I think he was trying to be sincere, but when you're that long in the agency, your sincerity is never, no, not there anymore. Or having somebody say, hey, man, great job. It wasn't. And the GRS guys, they don't know what's, you know, what do we say, you know? It, I know it's sincere, but it's a, it's a good job, fist bump. But actual like a mother

• 4:12:12Speaker 05

  figure saying, caring, it meant a lot. And, um, and then I, you know, I put the clothes on. She got me some jeans. She got me some running shoes. I felt normal and Victoria took a shower. And then I slept for about four or five hours. And then I got up and I turned the TV on and I saw Susan Rice already on TV. And I remember I called Jack and they were saying video in a protest and I was like, I said, are you seeing this fucking shit? And we turned it on and I just turned it off and he turned it off. We didn't want to watch it. Because we figured at that point, we're like, somebody's going to tell the truth. You still have some optimism that there's some heart and

• 4:12:57Speaker 05

  some integrity within the government that somebody is going to say something. And we still had that at that point. It had only been a day, you know? Who knows? If I'd have known what I know now.

• 4:13:11Speaker 05

  12 years later, I probably would have been more vocal at that point in time. But we still had that, we still had that faith that there was still integrity and ethics and morality in DC. We hadn't seen behind the curtain yet. We had a little bit, but not really, you know, because we didn't, that wasn't our job. And we stayed on there. And then I remember that night, we got super pissed drunk. There's still a picture that I'll post every once in a while of me, Jack, Boone, and Tig. And actually, the safe part, Alec was on one side, but I'll crop him out because I just, I don't know if he wants to be seen. And I'm smiling a little bit. And I still, I honestly feel bad that I'm

• 4:13:53Speaker 05

  doing that. Like, what the, I'm looking at going, what the fuck am I smiling at? But I remember that I'm just trying to get through it. And I remember that I was, I was drunker than shit, dude. I was so drunk. And we had been laughing together, healing together before that picture was taken. Because Tig was telling me, man, this is what I did. And Boone was, and some of the shit is comical. That's why I'm glad we got the comical shit in the movie. Because that's, you know, that happens, man. They miss, the bravado's there in all the movies. Lone Survivor, American Sniper, Black Hawk Down, you know, even ours. But they miss a lot of the jackassery. And that's one thing we like, Mike, we gotta get that in there. Because that, that happens. That's actually more relevant, more prevalent

• 4:14:36Speaker 05

  than the bravado. And so I remember we were telling a story, and I can't remember the story that it was, but we were laughing because I was like, holy shit, I can't believe that just happened. I think it was, I think it was Tig talking when he said, when he, one of the, one of the spokes, one of the base security guys that we had there, called Tig into the office, said, can you come look at the monitor? I've got some problems in the sheep slaughterhouse area. And he went down there to look, and the sheep were jumping on each other.

• 4:15:08Speaker 05

  And he's like, "Yeah, I went down there and I was watching these videos and the sheep were running around in a circle and they're jumping on each other and jumping on each other." Well, all the sheep are doing, they're trying to get away, but they can't get away because they're in a pen, they're in a circle, and it looks like they're humping. And he did say that the spog goes, "So do you think people are sneaking under there?" He goes, "I don't know, it's here, that, or the sheep are humping." And the spog goes, "Well, what do you think it is?" He goes, "He goes, "Man, it was like 2:30 at night, he goes, "I don't know nothing about sheep." So, it was just funny. It was dumb, but it was funny, because it was just, again, ludicrous shit. So, when you see that in the movie, you're like, "Was that part of the..." No, that actually, that, that happened, and that's, that's what's so funny about...

• 4:15:51Speaker 05

  And it is funny, and, and with 13 hours, but it's just the night in itself is just, just the stupid shit, the stupid stuff that we said to, just to make each other laugh, or just stuff that comes out of your mouth, or rub some dirt on a kid, you know, after a guy blows his hand off. I mean, it, it's, it's there, and, and I, I still remember laughing and getting in that picture because of that story that Tig told, and... But when I look back at the pic, though, it still hurts me a little bit, because I, there's nothing that I need to be smiling about there. We had just lost two guys. We just lost an ambassador. We lost Sean, who hadn't seen, that's two weeks, I've been doing that for 10 years, and I've been pretty relatively unscathed.

• 4:16:36Speaker 05

  He's dead. And here I am, smiling, a day after the attack, all of us were. And it, it bothers me. That picture, I still will post it, because I do want to tell us, always, any pictures that I post on social media, I know it's not the cool thing to do, always has a story behind it, because I want, it's therapeutic for me, but also, maybe somebody will learn from it. Yeah, I know, but, yeah, we there, and then we went home.

• 4:17:04Speaker 05

  Um, the reason they kept all the staffers there, um, including Sarah, she's, she can tell you more about than I can. She has already. She's already talked about it. And they flew us out is because they didn't want our input on how they were gonna write the report of what took place. So they flew all of us contractors out. I didn't know that either. If any of us would have known that, we thought they were just being cool. It's like, oh, they're getting us out of here. We gotta go home. It was no, because they're gonna flap a tray us in so they can get debriefed without us. There's agency for it. That's it.

• 4:17:39Speaker 05

  We went back to, um, went back to Langley, you know, you, you stop, you turn in your dip passport, you do your debrief. That's where I, we did our, our big debrief up on the seventh, up on, um, seventh floor and we went through, this is what happened. We, we mapped it all out. We stayed there for an extra day. We went through what we all did. And, um, you know, they did a big, like, uh, really was just a, a big AAR like you do in the military. We're up there and this is for removes. And then we went downstairs and we sat with all the GRS head shed out of, you know, that worked out of, out of Langley there, the, the guys that worked out of the building. And that's where we went through another AR. They're like, what'd you do? What happened? And that's when they

• 4:18:21Speaker 05

  asked me, like I just said, whenever we talked about it earlier about our TL, they go, so how'd the TL do? And they said his name. And I said, he did great. And they're really? And Boone kind of looked at me like, and I said, yeah, he did great. Cause he stayed out of the fucking way. What was their reaction? What were they gonna say to me? It was, one put his head down and snickered because he knew who he was. The other two, they just looked at me. Didn't say a word. And I didn't say a word and I looked right back at him. And Boone was laughing the whole time too. Boone's laughing.

• 4:18:56Speaker 05

  So what could they say? I got no right. What are they gonna say to me? Hey, not a bit. Been around long enough. I know who you guys are. You know who I am. We can, and I would.

• 4:19:06Shawn Ryan?

  What would a normal human being say to you? Nothing.

• 4:19:10Speaker 05

  And, uh.

• 4:19:11Shawn Ryan?

  These people? Who the hell knows?

• 4:19:13Speaker 05

  Well, I was also, and not that I'm, I got, I've got, I've got my ass kicked enough times, but I'll fight if we need to fight. And that's what it was. Like, he stayed out of the fucking way. And it was the other fucking way. And then with my eyes, I'm going, what the fuck are you guys gonna do about it?

• 4:19:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:19:31Speaker 05

  And yeah, they probably, I'm a little guy. I'll get my ass.

• 4:19:33Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, no, no. I get, I get the situation.

• 4:19:36Speaker 05

  But it's, it's that.

• 4:19:36Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's just so many staffers that have no concept of what that might be like. Because.

• 4:19:43Speaker 05

  They haven't done it.

• 4:19:44Shawn Ryan?

  They've never done anything.

• 4:19:45Speaker 05

  And, uh.

• 4:19:47Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing.

• 4:19:47Speaker 05

  And do you know what? That's, I don't, that's why I didn't get any response back. Because if they would have had a set of balls, they would have, somebody would have said something. But I do also think the one that was laughing, that snickering and smiling, giving a little smirk, he had been downrange before I'd worked him a few times. They also knew the truth. They knew, what were they gonna, they knew. They knew that he wasn't gonna do anything. So that's why one was in the corner going, you know, it's good. Boone's sitting there going, after he looks at me and I said it, he's like, he just started laughing. Boone doesn't laugh, y'all like that? He just started laughing. And everybody's on our side snickering. So what are they gonna say? They know I'm right. And if they did, then they would, but nobody said, nobody said anything. And then I also.

• 4:20:28Shawn Ryan?

  Did I continue to work?

• 4:20:30Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 4:20:30Shawn Ryan?

  Staffer.

• 4:20:31Speaker 05

  Did who did? Oh, yeah, he's still working. The, our, the T O?

• 4:20:34Shawn Ryan?

  He's still working?

• 4:20:35Speaker 05

  I'm pretty sure he's still working. He's still, come on, you know the deal. He ain't going nowhere. He, he, he played the role. He didn't say a word. When he testified, he testified against everything that we said. He, he never testified with us. He testified on his own. He testified once with Tig, because Tig was still working. Tig was the last one to quit. All of us went to Yemen, Tig went to Lebanon. So myself and Jack went to Sanaa after, we took our thirty day, our sixty days off. And then we went back, went to Sanaa. Boone went to Aiden. Tig went to Lebanon.

• 4:21:12Shawn Ryan?

  You only took sixty days off?

• 4:21:14Speaker 05

  I took seventy-five. I took an extra couple of weeks. Yeah.

• 4:21:17Shawn Ryan?

  That's a.

• 4:21:18Speaker 05

  I had to get back on that horse, man.

• 4:21:20Shawn Ryan?

  What was the?

• 4:21:24Shawn Ryan?

  What was the first conversation like with your wife and kids?

• 4:21:27Speaker 05

  I actually called her from the airfield. There's a wonderful, wonderful, I'm glad they got this right in the movie. You just see Jack's perspective where he calls home. We paraphrase in the movie because we got what we all said then. They had a wonderful writer named Chuck Hogan who mashed it together and got all of our, based our words into that monologue when Jack's on his phone or Krasinski. And I remember I called her on the Atari Mac and I said, "Hey, you're gonna see something on the news. That's us." I said, "I'm fine. I love you. I said, "I'll be home as soon as I can."

• 4:22:05Speaker 05

  And then she goes, "What happened?" I said, "I can't really talk about it, but we lost one." And I meant Rome. And, you know, this still bothers me a little bit too because I really wasn't thinking about Bob. I was thinking of the teammate, even though Bob had been from Tripoli. But I said, "We lost," and I said on open line, I said, "We lost Rome." And, um, I said, "That's all I can say." I said, "I'll talk to you when I get to," and I didn't know where I was going. I said, "I'll talk to you when I talk to you." Hung up the phone. And, uh, yeah, I, every one of us had a phone call like that. Jack's, Jack was the closest to Rome out of all of us there, Rome and Bob. So his conversation was a little bit more emotional than, than ours.

• 4:22:48Speaker 05

  But it was, it still was, "Hey, you're gonna see something on the news. It's over. We're okay, or I'm okay. You know, we, we lost some people. Be home when we can, love you, bye." And then, uh, my conversation when I got to Germany was a little bit more in depth, but I had to be careful because we're on open lines. And it wasn't, I was worried about the bad guys listening to us. It was, I started to figure it out.

• 4:23:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:23:20Speaker 05

  You know, Toto started to open that curtain where the great and powerful Oz was, and I started to see.

• 4:23:27Speaker 05

  Who the enemies not really are, because the terrorists are the enemies too, but that we also have enemies in our own house that don't want the truth to come out. So I was, I was more careful about what I would talk about on an open line. And then when we got back to Langley and all that, you know, there are debriefs, I did also tell them as well, because that, because of that 203 incident where Tig lost the 203 and I couldn't find that other one, I sat down with them, because you can bitch about a problem, but if you're gonna bitch about a problem, have a solution to it. And I remember sitting there with him, I go, you guys know that for some reason, we didn't have enough 69s out there. I said, if we would

• 4:24:10Speaker 05

  have had enough 203s for all of us, the fight would have ended way before it did, you know, at 5:30. We would have crushed them, they would never have touched this again. So in the future, every JRS operator has to be just like when we were in the military. Everybody has to have a 46. Everybody has to have M4. Everybody has to have a 203. Everybody has to have an SR25. Everybody has to have the right gear for the right op, and then they get to pick which gear they need when they head out. Because this is bullshit. I said, we're the agency, and we don't have enough 203s. I said, what the fuck is that? Obviously, it fell on deaf ears. And I even said, I said, even ground branch has every weapon

• 4:24:53Speaker 05

  system they need. And I get it, they're DA, we're not. But that's horseshit. This is why everybody needs every weapon system. Because if this happens again, and we lose one, we're not out an entire weapon system that could have been a game changer, a force multiplier, like a 203. And from what I heard, and you kept working, I don't think, I think that fell on deaf ears, it didn't.

• 4:25:17Shawn Ryan?

  It fell on deaf ears.

• 4:25:18Speaker 05

  So fuck those, fuck those pieces of shit. How hard is it to get an extra 203 or an extra 46 for the guys? When, especially when there's only five guys on a, on a team? Or an extra GLM, something, you know? But I remember saying that to him, because I was pretty pissed. I was, I was pissed at that. Because again, I felt like... We're the runt of the litter. And so what if we are, but guess what? This runt of the litter just turned the tables without any assets at all. It's not easy being a Ranger or Delta or SEAL. It's not. You're doing DA stuff, but it is nice. And it is heartening to have a Spectre gunship fucking overlooking you. It is nice if you are a SEAL team going out there and have a platoon of Rangers that got your back, or vice versa.

• 4:26:03Speaker 05

  When you're on your own and that's it, and you don't have all those assets. It's, it can be a, it can, it can be a little bit more scary that you don't have all those protections. And so that's why, give us everything we need. And I'm not asking for much. It's not like I'm asking for a DAP cover. I'm not asking for, I'm just asking for, can y'all get us at least, each of us have a two or three?

• 4:26:29Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take you, Christopher? I mean, I mean, you were abandoned by the US government.

• 4:26:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:26:38Shawn Ryan?

  And all aspects.

• 4:26:39Speaker 05

  That's, that's, I wish I could tell you different, but that's, that's what happened.

• 4:26:43Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take you to rid yourself of that anger?

• 4:26:47Speaker 05

  Two thousand, um, the end of two thousand seventeen, two thousand eighteen, when I reconciled my wife. I tried to, from fourteen on.

• 4:26:57Shawn Ryan?

  Six years.

• 4:26:58Speaker 05

  Six years, yep. Cause all that time in between, and that's when we had gotten divorced, was sleeping around. And that's why we got divorced. It was me and my, me and my infidelity. I was drinking a shitload. I was drinking all the time. Um, I was gone all the time. I was speaking.

• 4:27:18Shawn Ryan?

  How did you reconcile that?

• 4:27:21Speaker 05

  First you have to reconcile with God, man.

• 4:27:23Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you do that?

• 4:27:24Speaker 05

  Stood in the mirror and said, God, I need your help. Carry me. I can't do this anymore. After, uh, I don't even remember exactly what I was. I was, I was, uh, at home by myself. Cause you know, they'd lived out, I lived by my own, I was by myself. I was, I was a divorcee. Our little, I still had our little guy. Our little guy was still a baby. So that was hard because I was like, holy shit, I'm missing childhood, a child again. Because of my own stupidity. But I remember I was in the shower, doing the crying game thing in the shower. It was like, my life sucks. This is awful. You know, and I had, you know, I had millions of followers. So this is before I shit canned all my social media accounts. So I had like, gosh, shit, I don't remember, 275,000 followers on Instagram.

• 4:28:09Speaker 05

  And I think I had 300 on Twitter when it was Twitter and Facebook was like 400. That was what was important in my life, right? That is so fucking ego centered, vapid. But that's what my focus was, was myself, ego. And I realized that that wasn't, that was leaving me hollow. Then the toxic relationships, then trying to fill it with alcohol, then trying to fill it with money. I had a lot of money, tons of money, didn't make me happy.

• 4:28:41Speaker 05

  And it was when I realized that I can't do this anymore. God, I need you. I do. I need you. I was in the shower, did the crying game thing, crying in the shower, naked. Got out of the shower. I had my Glock. It was right there. And I looked in the mirror and I did, I put it right here.

• 4:29:01Speaker 05

  And I thought back, you know, I thought, I just briefly, I said, okay. Hard life, yeah, you've had it not hard as, but you know, it was rough. You, you, you got this disease that you're, you're winning. You're winning the Crohn's disease fight. You got it under control. You got kicked out of the military. You fought your way to get back in, you made it. And you got through Ranger School and you did what you want to do there. You conquered that, even though the odds were against you. Your grandson of immigrants that worked their asses off to give you everything. You've got that gene of that you don't give up, like your grandma, your abuela and abuela, abuela and abuelo.

• 4:29:41Speaker 05

  And then 10 years overseas, seeing death and seeing life and getting through all that, making a bad call in Iraq, that I made a bad call in Iraq where a little Iraqi girl died that I could have saved her in 2005 in the Montsour district. Went through Benghazi and you got through that. And now the devil's gonna win this battle for your soul. That's what I thought. And I looked in the mirror and that's when I said, I looked in the mirror, I said, "God, carry me, I can't do this." And I honest put the gun down and I stopped crying. And I went and grabbed the phone and I called my, my, she was my ex-wife at the time, Tanya, and they were on vacation at Disney World.

• 4:30:24Speaker 05

  They had taken off for Christmas, they were going on vacation. In the divorce, she got the DVC membership. But they were there. And I said, "Can I come spend Christmas with you guys?" And no hesitation, she goes, "Yes, come on." And, and, I mean, it's like God answered me like that. There was no, there was no delay, there was nothing. I got a play, I got on, I got on, by that time I had more miles to orbit the sun on every frickin' airplane in the world. I got on Delta, got a ticket, flew out the next day and they were staying at the Polynesian

• 4:31:06Speaker 05

  Village in one of the little huts there on the water and it was frickin' awesome. Best vacation ever. And with that, that was the life, really, that was it. The life changed. Stopped doing the media. I did one more written Fox interview for the Fox E-Media. It was, and that's where I said, "I'm done. Anger's gone." God's got Hillary, God's got Obama, he will take care of them. I don't need to judge anybody. Who am I to judge anybody? They will be judged, let it go. And life's been gravy ever since. I stopped doing so much social, I stopped doing a lot of, I don't do sixty, seventy talks a year anymore, I do like ten.

• 4:31:49Speaker 05

  I shit canned all my social media, I just got rid of all of it. Now, I got back on when I got my head right. My wife is a big part of that too, so she's, it's not just me, it's me and her. I do it, but that was huge. It was, that was so toxic. And, and that's why I, I don't, I, I give guys, people shit for protecting those accounts or making them so important, because they're not at all. And I got rid of all of them. And, uh, business-wise, went a different direction as too, as far as business goes, which means I minimized it. Still had some battle line stuff, but I stopped doing the traveling course, courses as much, and I focused on being home. And we also ended up getting remarried, so worked on a relationship. It took time.

• 4:32:32Speaker 05

  And how that worked is we just started dating again. It wasn't like we got right back in it, it was, we still lived separately and then we would just start going on dates.

• 4:32:42Shawn Ryan?

  How did your kids react when you came back in the picture?

• 4:32:45Speaker 05

  They, I mean, they were happy that dad was there, especially at Disney, we're having fun and, but it was, it was awkward for the two older ones. Because they really didn't know what to think. I mean, is dad going again? Is he gonna be here this time? Is he leaving? But also, at that time, they were so used to me being gone anyway, even when we were remarried from the point, it wasn't, it wasn't anything that it was odd and they were pushing me away. And also because mom and dad aren't arguing anymore, they're not yelling at each other anymore. So it was, it was happier environment. Um, if it was like a, a, a normal, I had a normal job, nine to five, or all of a sudden I disappeared and I came back, maybe they would have been a little bit more, uh, it would have creeped them out, worried them out a little bit, but because dad was always gone anyway,

• 4:33:31Speaker 05

  I, I saw as them being a little happier, but as we talked about earlier, they still were very reserved and.

• 4:33:40Speaker 05

  I don't know if this is for real, you know. My dad was mean when he ever come back from actually gonna be mean dad and and he makes, he makes mom cry. And that's what they would see, you know, and so it just took time, a year of dating, of just more dating, of then spending more time together, of then the kids and maybe staying over, then eventually it just ended up to like, just like a normal where you're dating somebody and it develops into a into a relationship that, a marriage and we had to do it that way and it was, it was a little weird. But it was fun doing it that way because I, I got to,

• 4:34:22Speaker 05

  you know, I got to do things that maybe I didn't do the first time I quartered where I did. So it was, it was like a do-over. And it was awesome. Oh, it was great. It was, everything was fantastic. I did have some, I, I did have some where I would still get angry from times because, just because it's just seeing what you saw, not anything where it was infidelity or anything like that. And I, that's terrible. I'm a terrible person. I hate even saying, but I, I'm gonna be honest with you, man. And she, I mean, obviously she knows. I wrote about it in some of the books that I've written. It's, but there were times still where I would get angry, you know, the, the, and

• 4:35:02Speaker 05

  post-traumatic stress, whatever you wanna call it, shell shock, you just, you remember, and you just, the, the anxiety was there, but I said the CBD really did help. I did get on an anxiety medication, but all the VA does is just, and I, I got good VA. Midwest, they do take care of you, but all that does is just create more problems. The CBD helped. I stopped drinking. You know, even though I have my own vodka, when I say I stopped drinking, I have a drink with my wife, maybe once a month, you know. And I also made it a point to be a father. Be home. This is where I wanna be. And

• 4:35:40Speaker 05

  I did realize that in 2017, 2018, I did a contract. My last contract, it was to Costa Rica. It was an anti kidnapping contract for a private firm in Texas to find an American that had gotten kidnapped. And so I was still contracting a little bit. Wasn't going to the Middle East anymore, but I was still doing some South America stuff. And I was, it was Halloween time and I was there for Halloween and my wife sent me a picture of my son Peanut, my daughter, going out to the trick or treating. And, you know, that feeling that you gotta go down range, I gotta, it was gone. Cause all I could see was the picture and all I'm thinking to myself is what in the fuck am I still doing this for?

• 4:36:24Speaker 05

  And, you know, I finished my contract. Those, and luckily those things are real short. You know, they're, you find the guy or you don't. You're gonna find him alive in a few weeks or you're gonna pass it on to the next guy or he's gonna be dead. And he did, it was an American that they hailed for ransom. They, they did find the culprits and we found, he was dead. They, he was, but contract's over. I flew back and man, just everything wrecked. My son, I reconciled my 16 year old boy. We had that inning at Olive Garden, that incident where.

• 4:36:59Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you propose to your wife?

• 4:37:01Speaker 05

  The first time?

• 4:37:03Shawn Ryan?

  Second time.

• 4:37:03Speaker 05

  The second time? I didn't get down on my knee or, she's not that kind of woman, dude. She's not that type of woman. It was honestly very nonchalant and it, it was just, you know, we saw the rings and I put my ring back on. She goes, you're still wearing your ring? I said, well, I am now. I said, where's your ring? She goes, it's in the box. I said, you wanna do this again? And of course I knew the answer and she's tough as nails, dude. And, um, it was back at Disney. You know, and most people hate Disney and I do, their, their politics are horseshit. But it still can be a happy place for the family. A lot of happy things happen there.

• 4:37:46Speaker 05

  And we were actually running around, uh, what's it's called? The, um, Polynesian Village, there's another one out there where there's a massage place. The white ones, it's, it's like a southern resort, southern, I can't remember the name of it. But we're running out there jogging and we stopped.

• 4:38:07Speaker 05

  And I said, will you marry me again? And she just laughed, it's just like, because it was so corny, I'm such a nerd. It is so corny. And she laughed and just, yeah. And really it was the smile, and she has a beautiful smile when she really wants to smile. She doesn't like smiling because she thinks her smile is ugly, but it's gorgeous. And she just gave me her gorgeous, squinty-eyed, big ass smile. And um, we sold her house, she had a second house in Omaha, we went back, she got ready to sell, we sold it, she moved back into my house in Omaha. Or say our house, because it was our house, that's what we bought it together when I was in the military.

• 4:38:50Speaker 05

  And um, then we stayed there for a few years and it was, it was, it was married, I was, and I was, I was a husband, finally. She was always a wife. I couldn't ask for a better wife, you know, couldn't ask for a better partner, couldn't ask for a better woman, because she's just, she's just a wonderful, wonderful person. And she's wonderful for me because she's not sappy. If I'd have went down on my knee and did all that stuff, she would have told me no. It had to be doing something athletic, where we're out running, because that's how she is. And me just throwing it at her, and her being like, and-

• 4:39:24Shawn Ryan?

  And that's how you are.

• 4:39:25Speaker 05

  And that's how I am, yeah. And she knows that. And she put her ring back on and, and I even asked her, I said, I'll buy you a huge, because you know, I had a little bit of money at that time, I'd, and um, I said, I'll buy you a huge rock, what do you want? I'll get you a huge rock. She goes, you know I don't want those huge, I don't need diamonds, I don't, I don't wear, I wouldn't wear that. She goes, I'm fine with what I have. And it was our original ring that I bought her, when we got married in the courthouse in Tacoma before I went to Ranger School when I was a second Ranger Battalion. And um, and then we stayed there in Omaha for a while, and Omaha changed, just like all cities do. And it wasn't the Omaha that I remember.

• 4:40:08Speaker 05

  You know, good values and there's good people in Omaha. There are wonderful people in Omaha, but it started to turn like cities do. Amazon moved in, Google moved in. Warren Buffett is Warren Buffett. Hmm. The tearing down cornfields. Uh, there was even riots and protests in Omaha at the time. And we're like, we're out. We're not here and, and, um, we moved to Kansas. And I.

• 4:40:38Shawn Ryan?

  That is a good woman.

• 4:40:39Speaker 05

  She is, she is wonderful. And, and there we, cause nobody, you were the first person that's asked me that. Cause nobody's ever asked me that. And I think it's an awesome, I do, I think it's awesome because it, it just, to me, it reminds me of how awesome she is and how she's not a girly girl. She doesn't want the girly girl stuff. And, and I did think about proposing to her, like doing the proposing and on and down. Cause we're in, we're in Disney and we're, we're at the resort. I wish I could remember that damn, it's right next to Polynesian Village. It's the old Southern Resort. It's the perfect place for it. You know, got the gazebos and, and, uh, and, but I never would do that. I go like, there's no way.

• 4:41:24Speaker 05

  Cause I did think about that. Like, man, I gotta propose to her the right, come on, on a beach somewhere. It's like, no way. If I did that, she would think I was such a, she wouldn't believe me, first of all. She'd be like, what did you do? And not you. It was out, running and being athletic. It was out and it was, it was perfect for us. And then what'd we do after that? We went to the gym and we worked out together. And it was awesome. And I was so, I was just, it was, it was the, the best. And it's still, I still have those feelings when I go home. That's why I love where I live, where I just walk in and everything is just. And I don't need anything. I don't need any, anything else but that. It's, it's wonderful.

• 4:42:09Speaker 05

  And she's there and she has her life, you know, she doesn't, she doesn't need me to, we don't need to be doing things together all the time. She coaches volleyball. She's very independent. But she'll still come home if she wants to and she'll make dinner. I don't need to add, but it's not required. I like to cook too. But, you know, she'll, or she'll come home and she'll say, get your ass up and go make me some food. Yes ma'am. Yes darling. And um, now she's, she's my angel. And I have a tattoo up here. You know, I had a cross that she gave me. This is, she gave me this before Libya. I've had it since Libya. But I had another one that I had, uh, she gave me when I was in military and it said, love, love on her courage.

• 4:42:52Speaker 05

  And I have a tattoo up here on my chest is that cross. And then I haven't put peanut on there yet, but it has the call signs of all my other kids. It says, one said, she's angel. My wife's angel. My daughter used to be princess, but now she's like my, her wife. She's not a print, dad, I'm not a princess. Don't call me that. But that was her call sign when she was little. Now she's Kiki. And then I have bubba, cause bubba is bubba. And that's them. They're always right there.

• 4:43:24Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Chris, there's a lot more we could dive into, but I think that's a perfect way to end it, brother. And uh, I just wanna tell you, man. I saw you speak. I saw how much pain you were in, you know, probably, probably getting close to, probably getting close to 10 years. Not quite.

• 4:43:50Speaker 05

  Where did you, did, where did you?

• 4:43:51Shawn Ryan?

  Boca Raton.

• 4:43:52Speaker 05

  You saw that?

• 4:43:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:43:54Speaker 05

  Oh my God. That was, that was, that was, that was demon time.

• 4:43:58Shawn Ryan?

  And uh,

• 4:43:59Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 4:44:00Shawn Ryan?

  I'm just really happy for you, man.

• 4:44:02Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 4:44:03Shawn Ryan?

  I can tell you're at peace now and it sounds like you got a great family and an amazing wife and uh, You deserve it.

• 4:44:11Speaker 05

  Thank you, bro. And I'm right back at you. Appreciate you being patient with me. And that's cool that you did see that. And seeing your pictures downstairs with your kids and your wife. It sounds like you ain't the boss of the house either, are you, bro? And we don't need to be. We need somebody that's gonna boss us around and tell us, hey, our shit stinks sometimes.

• 4:44:30Shawn Ryan?

  That's right.

• 4:44:31Speaker 05

  It's a wonderful house. So, thank you, bro. Thanks for having me.

• 4:44:33Shawn Ryan?

  It was an honor, bro.

• 4:44:34Speaker 05

  No, the honor's not. Thanks for letting me go down that road. Like I do with just me, bro. Thank you.

• 4:44:39Shawn Ryan?

  God bless, Chris.

• 4:44:40Speaker 05

  God bless you too, brother. Thank you.