#88 Chris Miller - The Hunt for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi | Part 2

Chris Miller is the former Secretary of Defense with a 27 year career in the United States Army. Throughout his career, he oversaw multiple special operations organizations, culminating with his command of the 2nd Battalion, 5th SFG(A). In Part Two, Miller recounts the horrific abduction and murder of human rights activist Kayla Mueller by ISIS forces. This atrocity would later result in "Operation Kayla Mueller," the mission that targeted and killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://bubsnaturals.com - USE CODE "SHAWN" https://meetfabric.com/shawn Chris Miller Links: X / Twitter - https://twitter.com/cmillertigerhwk Book - https://www.amazon.com/Soldier-Secretary-Warnings-Battlefield-Dangerous/dp/1546002448 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment. With the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu. Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is.

• 0:40Speaker 00

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

• 0:44Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:51Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:55Speaker 01

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

• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

  Previously on The Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Something triggered in us. This desire to go serve. Combat, yeah, that's what we do, right? Why would you join if that wasn't the goal? Oh, I want to get my college money. Hey, good with you if you want your college money, but you don't go into Navy SEALs or Army Special Operations if you're looking for college money, right? Yeah, you don't. The only thing that really mattered in my military career was response to September 11, 2001. Doggone pickup trip, Hilux comes whipping by. This guy, legendary CIA officer, who I won't refer to here, but you've met, with this great bushy mustache, goes, "Hey cowboy, need a lift?" And I remember jumping into this hole.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  That's where the JDAM hit. And I remember looking down, Sean, and I was like, what's been eating hamburger out here? Oh, man. You're showing people that veterans, like, hey, you can do things other than the old, "Oh, I'll go be a contractor." Which I believe there's over 8 billion podcasts of. Yeah, everybody and their sister has a doggone podcast right now, and you're number 10. It's gotta be really rewarding.

• 2:18Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Chris, we're back from the break. I want to cover a little bit more about your career. At what point in your career were you at when we got Baghdadi?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  I had left government. I mean, I hit, or I'd left the service. I'd, I hit, I got promoted to Colonel. And then I got selected to continue on in command. And I just, yeah, well, I'll just tell you, I needed to take the year off. I needed to be at home. I made a vow to myself. My family could care less, but I said, each kid, their senior year of high school, I will be in the United States, for I will not deploy. Sounds silly, but that was just a personal thing I wanted to do. They could, kids could care less. Not like, oh, Dad, let's go hang

• 3:10Speaker 01

  out together. They didn't want to hang out with me, but I wanted to be there for that year. I'd been selected for Command, oh six Command, Colonel Command, big deal, right? And it would have required me to deploy the year of my eldest kid's senior year of high school. And I asked for, you know, a waiver, could I do this later? I said, hey, I'll go anyplace in the world next year. I just need one year here. And they're like, thank you very much. No. So I declined taking Command. And at that point, I knew my career was over because you do that. And that's fine, you know, I'm not, it's like, hey, no regrets,

• 3:55Speaker 01

  you know. But at that point, I knew my career was over and I was ready to leave. And, because you take, you take that job in the Army, it means you're on the shortlist to, you know, advance.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And I had to look myself in the mirror and I said, I never have done anything in my army career, you know, for myself. It's always been selfless service. And if I did this, it wouldn't be about self. Cause I get all my buds like, you gotta do this, man. We need you. I said, if I do this, this will be about ego and it'll be about me. And how can you look yourself in the mirror and say that you're true to yourself if you do this? So it sounds kind of really like, I know, flighty, but that's where I was in my life at the time, you know, and decided to leave the service, retired and became a contractor at the Pentagon, which was fascinating because

• 4:58Speaker 01

  you go from being, you know, the guy at the head of the table to be the person that can't even be brought into the meeting that you would have chaired the day before. And now they're like, which I thought was great, you know, it's really hubris humility. It's, it was great to do that. And, uh, but man, the contracting gig, I don't know how it was for you. I was like, I need, I couldn't figure out, I need a stable job. So if you're in a government town, what do you do? Go into government. Got a permanent government job, um, call it general serve GS job, you know, like where you can't be fired. And you get like 30 days off a year or something. I'm like, I like

• 5:41Speaker 01

  this. My parents are older. I always need to have some time off. And

• 5:48Speaker 01

  became a government employee and I had the worst job in the history. Like I was the guy I used to make fun of. I was in a thing called intelligence oversight. Do you remember where you, you'd have to like initial your safe each night that you closed it to show that it was locked or the door? Remember the door? You know, you had to spin the lock and initial, I'm the guy who goes around to inspect, to make sure that you initialed that. Yeah. Like this is-

• 6:16Shawn Ryan?

  You went from being a special operations colonel to that?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:21Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I literally, it was eight hours a day. I crammed one hour of work into eight hours. It was- Amazing. And my friend, thank God, called me one day, Chris Costa, he was running counterterrorism at the White House, was leaving, said, would you like to interview for my job? I always tell my children, always interview for a job, you're gonna learn something, and who knows, you might get it. And so I interviewed, I got his job. So I'm a government employee on loan from the Pentagon to the White House to run counterterrorism. That's

• 7:03Speaker 01

  where I get the crazy idea to defeat Al Qaeda. Part of that is ISIS. President Trump, you know, comes in, says, we're gonna defeat ISIS, like enough of this messing around, decentralizes decision making, lets warfighters make decisions on how to operate. And the leader of ISIS was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Brilliant guy. But, I mean, I usually don't do good and evil. When you're talking about your enemy, I don't think it's helpful. I think it colors your judgment. This guy was the definition of evil. He was an evil man.

• 7:45Shawn Ryan?

  Can you describe some of the stuff?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  He, well, the most, the most dramatic one is this, this missionary, Kayla Mueller, American missionary, trying to help out over there, was kidnapped, and, and he, she became his, you know, basically slave. Unbelievable, just barbaric, not just with her, but other people. And he was the head of ISIS, and we're like, you know, obviously, we've gotta kill this guy. And

• 8:22Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's get a little more in detail. What was he doing to her? Because I want, this is, this is gonna be history here.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's already been said. I really, I know the family, and I really don't want to cause any more heartache. But it was barbaric. All, you take the worst thing you could imagine, and he was doing that to Kayla Mueller. We did an operation to go in there one night.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  To get her, uh, she was not there. We, when I say that, our, our counterterrorism forces did. Man, it was a hell of a fight. They, it was epic, but I wasn't there for that. I was in the White House. Uh, but yeah, so that's why I'm really reluctant. Like the, the pain and suffering the family's been through. Uh, but you, you use your imagination and then some.

• 9:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's talk about just ISIS in general then, you know, so.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  The way they, the way they took Yazidi women, which is this weird Christian sect and turned them into sex slaves. The way they, uh, well, you remember seeing the videos where they burned the Jordanian pilot? Think about the mass executions, beheadings. I mean, that was just par for the course and he was the leader of that thing. And, you know, leadership matters and they, his, his forces were a representation of his, you know, barbarity, you know?

• 9:42Shawn Ryan?

  He would burn people alive, behead them, put kids in cages, burn them alive, put kids in cages, put them into rivers, drown them to death, just, just groups of kids.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Just pick it.

• 9:54Shawn Ryan?

  You know, heads on poles, all the worst of the worst shit. And, you know, there was a lot of controversy around when he was killed. If I remember correctly, that was roughly, what was that? September or no? Was that December or January of 2019?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:13Shawn Ryan?

  Tw- December of 2019, I think it was.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  What were you picking up? I don't, the controversy was.

• 10:19Shawn Ryan?

  There was a lot of controversy, um, when we killed him with the drone strike.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Oh, no, this, we, we put ground force in and killed them.

• 10:29Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, I'm thinking of something.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  This is the American in Yemen.

• 10:33Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  That they killed, uh, what was that guy's name? He was an American citizen that went over there. Uh, there's a book about, yeah, that's the guy. You're, that was huge controversy because it's the first time we killed an American citizen, right?

• 10:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yemen, wasn't it?

• 10:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Okay. But so Baghdadi, back to Baghdadi.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Baghdadi, evil of evil. Uh, everybody's looking for him. His trade craft is really good. Like he's not, he's using couriers. Nobody gets near him with a cell phone. He's moving. But man, Sean, you know this.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  When our intelligence officers put their mind to it and our special operators put their mind to it, you can run, but you can't hide. Mm hmm. And we just kept on that guy's trail. And just incrementally, you kept collapsing his space where he could maneuver. And you get, we didn't have good reporting for quite a while. But finally, you know, I think it was a driver or one of, it was one of these functionaries around Baghdadi. Said something to one of our, one of our people, one of our sources. And the word comes back like, hey, Baghdadi is in this compound.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Here we go again, right? How many times have we heard this? At this point, the whole operation goes, I get cut out of it. Like, I'm running counterterrorism. But CIA and our counterterrorism forces decide that they're going to keep this very close, rightfully so, I get that. But I'm, I'm in charge of counterterrorism, so I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit butthurt. I'll tell you just straight up, like, what the hell? The, the thing that I think a lot of those people, the senior officials believe is that they can control, like, they know more than we do. The problem was, I'd been a Green Beret, I had a whole network of people all over the

• 12:37Speaker 01

  military, and we had a person who was on the task force for Baghdadi, who was a friend, who is keeping us up to date on what's going on. So I had a whole separate, and this isn't like some leak thing or anything, we're all red on to, like, they just didn't want to share that particular information to us. So I'm tracking this thing. They don't even know we're tracking it. We get a, we, we finally get positive identification that, oh yeah, he's there, definitely there. And then, and it's this very, it's an example of how we can do things really well in our

• 13:20Speaker 01

  government, when you just let people in the field do it, right? Like, keep, keep headquarters out of it. Intelligence officers in the field, the special operators in the field, just going great, collaborating, you know, maybe the special operators need a tracking tool that they don't have access to, but the intelligence community does, just working great, man. So finally, gets down to like positive identification, definitely there, forces trained, here's, you had a great part in one of your episodes, previous episode, where you kind of talked about the evolution of our counterterrorism forces. In the past, like, think about Sante, which was this great first commando raid during

• 14:03Speaker 01

  the Vietnam War, famous raid, think about the bin Laden raid, where you took special, you took forces, brought them together and trained them specifically for that mission. And then they did it, and then they came home. We had advanced so much in our tactics, techniques, in our procedures, in our professionalism of our counterterrorism forces, that the force that was in Iraq, Syria at the time, the counterterrorism force, they just took the mission. They're like, another, another mission, no big deal, can you believe that? No. Like, just- And then it was just a- The dudes in the field are like, we got this. Holy shit. When are we going?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Backwards plan, plan our crap, send it back for approval. Like, what's the timeline here? Oh, you know, quick, like, somebody will correct me, it seemed like maybe three days. That's it, for that kind of an operation? Yeah, and that, now, president's got to sign off on that, right? Because we're taking forces that are in this contested area in Syria that is kind of under, it's not under Assad, the leader of Syria's control, it's like, the rebel area, that's where we are, we're going to fly our forces in, because, Baghdad, he's smart,

• 15:26Speaker 01

  he's like, I'm going to stay in an area under Assad's control, because it'll be more secure, because the Americans aren't going to come in here, right? It'll be an international incident or whatever. So of course, we're gonna go into Assad's backyard. Idlib, I think it was Idlib, I think that's the province, I forgot. So President's getting briefed on this, right? I'm not briefed, but I know what's going on. So I'm like, alright, that's okay. Call my buddy at Pentagon. He acts like he doesn't know what's going on. I'm like, some friend you are, that's okay. Get a call, it's a Saturday.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Get a call about 1:00 in the afternoon from our source in the counterterrorism task force. It's going tonight.

• 16:19Speaker 04

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• 16:50Speaker 00

  FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu. Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  They all heap the blame on me.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is.

• 17:29Speaker 00

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

• 17:33Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze it, that's what.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Digger, see the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent. He's like, thanks. Get you out of my car, go to work. Go to the White House Situation Room, you know, walk in, go to the White House Situation Room. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley's there. He's got his two communicators, you know, these two, these two kids, they are kids, but these two signal computer experts and their job, because on the screen, they're going to have two screens that have the Predator, the video feeds coming in live of the target and all this stuff.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And I sit down at the big table. My boss is Robert O'Brien. He's the National Security Advisor. He had not told me what was going on either. He comes walking in later, sees me sitting there. It's like, Chris, what are you doing here? I'm like, I'm the head of counterterrorism for the president. My job's to be here. How did you know? I'm like, Robert, it's my job to know. So we're in the, we're in the Situation Room, you know, the kid from Iowa, right? My holy crap, I'm in the Situation Room. We're going to do one of the, one of the probably more important, like this is going to be up there with Bin Laden, Zawahiri,

• 19:08Speaker 01

  this is going to be up there as the top five commando hits of all time, right? And I'm there and the operation, the president is playing golf that day. And, you know, they wanted to keep him playing golf so that the press wouldn't pick up on any changes of a routine. So he's out there about five o'clock our time in Washington, DC, the assault force launches in their helicopters. And I can't remember how many helicopters it was, 12 helicopters. The issue now, you know this, but for those that aren't, you know, haven't been part of

• 19:48Speaker 01

  these things or are learning, flat desert, Syrian, Russian, control Russians are there, remember? We're over here, they have their radars on so they can see exactly what's happening. Because remember, it's flat, it's like billiards, it's like a pool table.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  So the assault force picks up right away. The chairman says something like, I hope this isn't the start of World War III. I hadn't really thought of it that way. Like, oh, damn, yeah, Russians, helicopters, if they shoot. There was also, the Russians had a fighter up like a suit, MiG 29. I can't remember what it was, you know, advanced, doing combat air patrol over kind of the area. Okay. So now you got Russian radar on, Russian Syrian radar on, you gotta talk on fourth generation fighter orbiting, and they all see our assault force pick up.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  And as they start flying and they cross the border, you know, that's like the come to Jesus time, right? Are the Russians gonna fire or not? If they fire, we're done. And the Russian radars go, I guess, I don't know this for a fact, but I guess, you know, they, they can have their, their status is like enemy, or continue to monitor or something. And they turn their radars, not off, but they turn their radars to passive, meaning, I guess in the, in the air defense world, that means like you're not gonna fire. It was like, oh, man, okay.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  And then we saw the MiG 29 move south. So somebody made a call, like, we're not screwing with these guys. Like, let them go. Nothing to see here. Like, look the other way, la, la, la, la, la, la. But that, I, no kidding, you know, I'd never been in the headquarters for something like that, right? I'd always either been in the truck or in, in a helicopter or something, not of anything this important, obviously. But to see it from that perspective was completely different. How did that feel, just being in there? Yeah, come on, man. Part of me is like, I would literally give my left you-know-what to be on that helicopter right now.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  But that's not my job anymore. My job is to be here to provide advice and counsel to the president if he asks. And

• 22:31Speaker 01

  So I thought that was a hell of a presidential decision because he knew that he knew the decision calculus on that. He knew this whole thing could go bad, really, really like epically bad, like desert one at in Iran in 1979, you know, that bad, like that can ruin, you know, that can end your presidency, right?

• 22:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  And he made the call to go ahead and execute because the other one was like, why don't we just put missile strike in on it? Heck with it. And we're like, no, we gotta know we got the guy. Because in this area, this era of information warfare, like they're still arguing about if so and so is still alive, you know, we're like, no, we need to go like, we need to have some his flesh to do DNA testing on. Off goes the assault force. You got your drones up filming everything. Assault force goes in, lands, and here's the other one. Did you ever do callouts? Like, remember in our day, you just went in

• 23:31Speaker 01

  and just like blew down the door, assaulted the the house or building, didn't give any warning. Well, during the course of the war, as the situations changed, they now they did a call out, meaning the assault force surrounded the house, dude with a micro, you know, what do you call it?

• 23:54Shawn Ryan?

  Bullhorn.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Bullhorn is like, hey, let you're surrounded, come out with your hands up. And lo and behold, like, bunch of women and kids start streaming out, like, I can't remember how many, like 20 of them, come streaming out of this house. Translators and interpreters are like, what's going on? Is Baghdadi? And they're like, oh, yeah, he's in there. He's in there. He's got a suicide vest on. And he's got three women with him that are also his wives, one of which was like 14 or something, you know, can you believe this? Can you believe that crap?

• 24:34Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I believe it now because the shit's going on right here in the home, in the home front, you know?

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Man.

• 24:40Shawn Ryan?

  It's getting, well, that's another conversation.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Do the call out, or like, he's in there. Okay, well, we're gonna go get, time to, time to dig him out.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  And they send the dog in, they said, uh, no, I think they sent a robot in, robot in first.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Oh, he's here. He had built out like a fighting position slash slash safe room in the back. They're like, oh no, he's here. And yeah, there are three women here. And the only way we're going to get this done is gonna have to put some commandos in here to dig him out, kill his ass, right? And, uh, so then. What unit is this? Uh, this is the army. Okay. Did you see me wink? This is the army counterterrorism element that remains nameless. That is, that you all know, and you can say it, but I can't say it. Uh, and you've had many of their members on your show before. Yeah. They, cause they were the task force that was in Syria, Iraq at the time. Okay.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  So they did the operation and, uh, President, we're all watching the screen, you know, and you know how watching ISR is, it's kind of like murky and you can't really tell what's going on. But you can see it's game on time. You can see the explosions, boom, boom, boom. You're sitting there like, what's going on? But you don't want to ask because you know they're busy. And I got to tell you this. President, Vice President, Milley, uh, senior military leadership were all extremely, you know, patient because there's nothing worse. Remember when you're getting yelled at by your boss? You're like, hey, I'm working right now. I'll give you a situation report.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  When it's done, stop bothering me. I was really impressed that nobody, nobody put any stress on.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  You can see explosions going off and you're like, oh man, I, this is, this is the fatal funnel, you know? We, nothing we can do about it. Let's see what happens. But not too much later, the report comes back, yep, uh, that, uh, suspect or whatever, you know, the target detonated himself. And we're now going to collect DNA to see if it was him.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  And. Did you say we're now going to collect or we are not going? We are, they are. And then I'm flashing back to like the poor kid who's on sensitive site exploitation, right? He's like, I gotta go in there and he has suicide vest on and you know what happens with suicide vest, the dude's head's gonna pop off, right? Remember? I tell in my book, the story, I had a buddy next to me, he was flashing back to being in Iraq, when he had to go find the head. And of course, I know what's going on, like, okay, they're gonna find the head, they're gonna do the forensics and they're gonna do the biometrics and they'll look at the distance between the eyes, ears, you know, all that crap. But you gotta find the head first. And I'm just sitting there going, oh, man,

• 27:46Speaker 01

  can you imagine that kid in there with his surefire, smoke billowing, probably fire going on, looking for the guy's head? And the task force commander, the ground force commander, really was impressive that he would not, they call it, you know, calling jackpot, jackpot indicating that the target that you were going after is either captured or killed. And he would not call jackpot, even though we know it's Baghdadi, right? It's like, not calling jackpot. Finally, this, the four star commander that's overseeing the operations, this guy's General McKenzie, he calls and goes, ground force commander is not going

• 28:29Speaker 01

  to call jackpot right now, but he assesses with a strong degree of confidence that the target has been killed. And at that point, you know, you're like, oh, man. Thing gets done, president leaves, I'm not leaving, Milley's not leaving, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because we're like, they're still on target, man. Oh, and then gunfights start blowing up all around, right? Because it's the, it's the classic.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Wow, something's going on. So things are getting heated up, right? And gunships are making gun runs now. And President's like, what's going on here? We're like, Mr. President, there is a gunfight going on right now. Okay. So. Is that what he said? Okay. Yeah, he's like, okay, all right.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Then the, because we're not going to leave until the task force is back in friendly territory, because there's a lot of bad stuff can still happen. So pretty much everybody's gone. I'm there. Milley's there. Maybe a couple of other people. President's gone. Vice President's gone. Secretary of Defense is gone. All these people have gone because it's like, mission over. See you later. I'm like, yeah, they're still on target, you know? And

• 29:41Speaker 01

  because there's still some, you know, for us, there's still tension. Everybody, people that don't know about operations are like, whatever. High five on the way. Yeah, we want to see our guys come home. Right. So Milley and I are there. And casualty report comes in.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  One assaulter had stepped on a nail that had gone through his boot. That was the only casualty. That's it? And I said. Amazing. I said,

• 30:12Speaker 01

  the American public, I'm worried because this was the most flawless operation that I've ever seen conducted. And the American public now is going to come to expect that level of performance, which is so hard to achieve in the military, right? Fog friction. And they got it done. It came back and we're shutting it down. And everybody, all the commanders in the military people now are like,

• 30:46Speaker 01

  you know, tension is, and it's not euphoric, but everybody's kind of, you know, becoming friendly because we went through this together. And McKenzie, the four-star general that oversaw the operation from Tampa, calls in to Milley, who's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who's advising the president. He's only a couple of us left. And he goes, Chairman, do you want to know what the task force name was?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Because usually they just come up with some bullshit number, right? Task Force fifty-two-nine, or whatever the hell it was. Uh, we're like, yeah, sure. They go, it was, they named it after, uh, Kalen Mueller.

• 31:34Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 31:36Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Is that cool?

• 31:38Shawn Ryan?

  That is amazing.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  They're like, justice will be served, man. Don't, don't be f- with the United States. I mean, come on, Sean. What was that guy thinking? Like, he thought he was gonna get away with this crap? Like, we will hunt you to the end of the earth. It might take us twenty-five, thirty damn years, man. I, it just, I don't understand why our enemies think that. And I know there's this narrative now, like, oh, we're soft. Anybody who believes that crap? And there's a lot of reasons they could believe it. Man, I don't know. You put, put an American fighting man pissed off, I'll go with him any day, man. That guy, I'd love to, like, man, I'd love to. Bin Laden thought the same thing, didn't he? Oh, they're soft, they won't fight. I wonder what he'd say now, man.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  We will, we will hunt your ass to the end of the earth, man.

• 32:28Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, why do you think people think that?

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, we could go on all day. We give them plenty of reasons to think it, don't we?

• 32:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Their constant babble about stupid stuff and, you know, we give them plenty of information that would support their conclusion that somehow, you know, we've lost our, our martial spirit or, man.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  How many people have made that mistake?

• 32:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think a lot of it comes from, we, I mean, we saw a lot of it in this war, you know? These last two wars and prosecuting our own guys for doing their job.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  That's the other thing, man, with only seven. I think most people that have served, when they heard those stories, like, yeah, that's the nature of war, that happens. You know, I still can't tell a lot of those stories exactly what happened, but

• 33:23Speaker 01

  that's my thing, is like,

• 33:26Speaker 01

  hey, when we open the can of whoop ass, when the United States decides to open the can of whoop ass, this is no joke.

• 33:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  And back-

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Bad things are gonna happen. People are gonna be injured or killed. Innocents are gonna be killed. Families are gonna be destroyed, man. Like destroyed. Cause you know, like, the point over and over again, that just destroys marital relationships. Pathologies come out from all of that stress that is completely predictable. And that's why we have to take going to war a hell of a lot more seriously, if you ask me. And I'm, I'm good with going to war. Don't get me wrong. But let's just accept upfront that we're gonna destroy a generation of people. That's, that's my thing. And if it's worth it, let's do it. This was worth it.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Afghanistan was worth it. You think?

• 34:24Shawn Ryan?

  I think in the beginning stages it was.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should have left.

• 34:27Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I do, I think in the beginning stages it was and then, you know, and then exactly what you say, you know, the PXs started getting built. Burger King showed up.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:39Shawn Ryan?

  You know, Green Bean Coffee showed up. Pizza Hut showed up.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  I went to the Nashville airport. I chuckled when I came in yesterday. It's like, Green Bean's here.

• 34:48Shawn Ryan?

  And then, and then you begin, you start to realize, this is a fucking business.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:54Shawn Ryan?

  This isn't war. This is a fucking business.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  It's a business.

• 34:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, this is war made to conduct business.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:02Shawn Ryan?

  And that's, that's when I started to realize, a lot of this is bullshit. But, um.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  The hustle.

• 35:09Shawn Ryan?

  But I do, I do think in the beginning stages that, yeah.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Should have dropped the hammer and left.

• 35:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. It was when the bureaucracy came in, they tied our hands behind their back. It's like fighting with one leg.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I always said, it should, Afghanistan should have stayed at 200, 300 special operators. That way, uh, and I get yelled at now by like the generals and the senior people. Like, you don't understand, Chris. It's like, no, I think I do, actually. I was there.

• 35:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  We should have kept that a special operations war. We should have just used indigenous, we should have used the host nation. You can't want it more than they do, right? And when we industrialized that thing, like you described, and everybody started getting paid, it's all over then.

• 35:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah, you know, just, it's.

• 36:03Shawn Ryan?

  It got to a point where I felt like I was fooled to go in.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  You had the same thing. I felt like now I know who this sucker is. It's me.

• 36:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  You had the same thing?

• 36:14Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  What'd that feel like?

• 36:17Shawn Ryan?

  It still bothers me.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Still not over it. I say the same thing.

• 36:21Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and it sucks. I don't know what to tell kids. You know, I mean, I have a big media presence. Everybody knows I was a SEAL. Everybody knows that I contracted for CIA and a lot of, I get a lot of emails and messages and DMs and from youth that wanted to fall into those footsteps just like we did. And I gotta be honest, Chris, I don't know what to tell them these days.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that breaks my heart.

• 36:53Shawn Ryan?

  What would you tell them?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Back to my dad, like, there's absolute integrity in service. If that's something that's drawn to you. But take care of yourself, too.

• 37:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I mean, there's great nobility in service. And, you know, we always talk about, who do you fight for? The guy and the person on left and right? Yeah, I guess it really comes down to that. But I,

• 37:21Speaker 01

  man, it's like accountability, dude. I mean,

• 37:26Speaker 01

  I sense that our leadership, their example is breaking faith with those that are serving under them.

• 37:36Shawn Ryan?

  That's, yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Because I was always raised like, do as I say, do as I do. And I'm telling you, man, working at the Pentagon and you get exposed to all the politics and how that works and the general officers and how advancement goes there. I literally was like, I'm seeing people that are do as I say, not do as I say, not as I do.

• 38:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  And I'm like, that's bullshit, because that's not the way I was raised. And I'll tell you what.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  I'm hearing it. When you see these dumbass, these decisions. Now, the political civilian leadership can make any decision they want. They're allowed to. That's how it works. There's that military, senior military level that is supposed to provide their advice. And the, and the fact, there's a disconnect, I think, with a lot of the people that are seeing stupid civilian decisions that are being made and military leadership not standing up and saying this is wrong. And so they're down there in the, they're down there in the trenches, right? They're down there in the team room. And they're being brought up in a certain way. Speak your mind, integrity, ethics, morality, all that stuff that we were, was embedded

• 38:53Speaker 01

  in us as warriors, right? And then they see their leadership not acting the same way. There's, there's a dichotomy, a disconnect. And that's, that to me is like, that's what really worries me, man. It's like, there's, there's a break, breaking of faith and trust and confidence. I, that's what I'm seeing.

• 39:14Shawn Ryan?

  I see it too. And you know, the few, the few acquaintances, friends that I have left in the community and the special operations community, which is not very many anymore. They all say the same thing. They don't trust the leadership. You know?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Did you feel that way when you were in SEAL teams?

• 39:35Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  There was always one.

• 39:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  There was always one officer. A handful, you're like, but you knew who they were.

• 39:41Shawn Ryan?

  All in all, no, I didn't feel like that. I did start to feel like that. You know, I'm gonna get my years messed up. I really started to feel like that. I did a deployment with the agency in a, in Lash Karga.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:02Shawn Ryan?

  And that was supposed to be, from what I was briefed, the biggest offensive force since, since Fallujah.

• 40:11Shawn Ryan?

  And I remember when the ROEs came out. Now, I didn't fall under those ROEs. That was, that was the Marine, um, the Marines that were gonna take that entire, I think it was, they were gonna take the entire province, if I remember correctly. But I remember when the ROEs came out from the administration at the time, which was the Obama administration's, it was, if you are shot at, and the enemy drops their weapon, you're not allowed to shoot back. And when I heard that come out, that was a turning point in my mindset where I was like, these fucking people that we're fighting for give a shit more about our enemy

• 40:55Shawn Ryan?

  than they do about us. These people are chopping our heads off, they're dismembering us and stuffing our fucking privates in our mouths, they're burning people alive, they're beheading people, they're raping fucking girls. And boys. And they're raping boys, that, I mean, they've... And, and this is, this is our ROE? The fuck are we doing here? Yeah. And half, and it seemed, I mean, you never know, cuz it's the media, right? But, a- and they do a great job at propaganda, but, you know, and then, and then you look at the media and it, they make it appear like

• 41:37Shawn Ryan?

  everybody in America back home is like for this shit. And it, and, and, and you get the feeling like, what the fuck am I doing over here, man? These people, they don't even, they don't give a fuck if I'm over here. The VA's a disaster. It's a disaster for all these guys coming home. I've told multiple, I haven't told, but that's, that's what this show started as, is a platform for guys to tell their story. And look at the fucking trauma these guys are dealing with when they come home.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  But we made a decision, this country, and this is why this is important to me, beyond here, you know, we made a decision as a country, like, strategy matters. I don't know what that means, to tell you the truth, but we decided to fight a war with one formation, our special operations formation, right? They deployed again and again and again. Now, big army, big Marine Corps, they deployed as well. So I'm not like, this isn't like, giving the finger to all those that served as well. Because it was necessary, well, it probably wasn't necessary if you would have just kept it a special operations war, but nonetheless. So I always get yelled at, like, oh, you're diminishing the sacrifice of conventional forces. No, I'm not.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  But the force that fought this counterinsurgency, counterterrorism war, counterterrorism war, were special operators across all the services, you know? And like, the sacrifice, man, and that, like, I just remember, uh, there's this thing called, mission first men oys. This was some sort of act, some sort of thing that we always were trained on, mission first men oys. I was like, I don't know what that means. And I'd always get yelled at for asking this question, like, hey, what does that mean? Well, and I'd get this tap to ask, I'm like, actually, they're mutually exclusive in combat.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Because, I'd be like, but there's going to be a time where you have to go, this man is going to be destroyed to accomplish the mission. So what are you saying? Why don't we just call it like it is? Let's just be honest with each other. The mission comes first. Yeah. And I'm good with that, but my problem is, we sold the military as some sort of, you know, opportunity for improvement and all that stuff. And that's good. But at the end of the day, it's about going, it's about combat. And you, as a fighter...

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Like, just, you need to recognize you're completely expendable. I always knew I was. Uh, but I, I would always get, I felt bad. You know, the moral guilt thing is when you'd have a kid and you're like, get in the truck. Huh? No, we're going up that road and somebody's gonna get blown up and it could be you.

• 44:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  And the kid would look at you and be like, I was like, this is what we do. I think if we were just more honest about the essence of combat, but then that comes back to your question, your point. Would anybody ever join if they knew? I think they would, actually. I think if we were just honest with everybody and didn't see this as some sort of jobs program or some shit like that, it's like, no. That's my, that's my hobby horse, man. I was like, just be honest about the nature of what we do or what they do in the military. And I think there's too much confusion about that. We do, we, one formation, I mean, yeah, and you just like, it's all right.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  But the trauma that has been inflicted on a whole generation of special operators is, uh, you see it.

• 45:31Shawn Ryan?

  It's a shame, you know, and.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  You think it's preventable?

• 45:35Shawn Ryan?

  I think it would help a hell of, I think it would help a hell of a lot if the country was behind us.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  I think it would help a hell of a lot too, if we fought our wars, understanding that you can't. Like, that comes down to special force, special operators can't be mass produced. You know, like Shinseki, Army Chief of Staff, gets fired because he said, don't fight a 12 division war with 10 divisions. When we went into Iraq, Rumsfeld fires his ass, right? But he's absolutely right. Like, these are the decisions that matter. And the American public needs to understand, like, oh, how much we spend on defense matters, how big our army is. And then, like, don't take on a 12 division war with 10 divisions. Don't take on a special operations war with too few special operators. Dude, we just burned through them. We just burned through them.

• 46:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Didn't we?

• 46:24Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, we did.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  It's like, hey, some, hey, real quick, I'd be in there and, you know, your commander, you care about your men, like, desperately, right? But you still have to make your mission. Like, well, we're in, okay, we're back. We're back from Iraq, refit.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Get our equipment ready, get everybody's paperwork ready, take two weeks off, come back and get ready to start pre-mission prep and training for the next rotation. And the only two people that I could really trust to tell me what's going on, Chaplin and the surgeon, the doctor. I just say like, how are we looking? And they're like, sir, coming undone. It's like, can we get him out the door again? Doc would be like, everybody's on, I'm, I'm literally shoveling sleeping pills out the door. I'm shoveling consults with therapy and all this out the door. I say, can we get him out the door again, doc? He goes, we'll get him out the door again, sir.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  But that's what's required, you know? When you fight a war with too few people. And we just shattered them, man. You're like, oh, man. So you know your people, right? You're like, a marriage isn't going to survive another deployment. You know, you go in, you're like, hey, so and so and so. Why don't we, why don't you stay behind this, this trip on rear detachment? No, sir, I gotta go. Can't leave my team behind, right?

• 47:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  So that's my, all right, that was pretty dark, huh?

• 48:01Shawn Ryan?

  It is pretty dark.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought we were going to be more happy. I thought we were going to be like, I thought we were going to be more positive. That's some dark, that's some dark stuff, man.

• 48:08Shawn Ryan?

  It is, but you know, people need to talk about it. People need to understand, you know? People need to appreciate what the we were doing over there. You know, they do. And a lot of them don't. But where were you on Gaddafi when we got him?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  I was. You know, your lead in episode, the lead in thing was what you carry, right? And I told you, I want to go in to a denied area with a credit card and a passport. I actually tried to get into Libya. That thing, you know, Obama administration put the red line in and they're like, started bombing them. So I was the Pentagon. I got my boss to agree that I could go to Stuttgart, Germany on a, on a visit. And I just told my boss, I'm like, hey, I'm going to Libya. I just want to be completely clear with you. Like, I know I'm at the Pentagon. I know this isn't supposed to happen, but I'm going over there and I'm going to go to Libya and I'm going to raise a guerrilla army.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  I'm not, you could, you could laugh. So I got my ass over there. My buddy was running a task force, link up with him and tell folks upstairs over the coffee shop. I knew because I've been through training with them. I was like, okay, I'm your guy. Tell me when I infill. They're like, okay. Uh, the Brits, the Brits ended up, you know, the Brits went in and got rolled up uh by, I couldn't tell what faction, you know, there were two, there were all these different factions. The Brits went in, it's all public record. So it's not secret. They rolled in, you, we were talking about link up in Afghanistan. They did that, but at a commercial

• 49:52Speaker 01

  airfield and the opposition element said, thank you for visiting Tripoli or wherever, clink, clink, you know, your worst nightmare, right? Getting compromised on infill. And uh, I was like, I don't care. I'm still good. The secretary of defense at the time was Gates. And he said, there will be no American boots in the ground. I thought he met everybody but intel officers and special operators. He met everybody until it got in there eventually. So no, never got to do it. Um, but was desperate to, but when they got Gaddafi, I was back at the Pentagon.

• 50:28Shawn Ryan?

  You were?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:29Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have any, any part in that?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  No, you, you know, anybody?

• 50:34Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Hey, so I just remember this old dude, Vietnam vet. It's like, this is bad. This country, uh, Libya is going to come undone. All the weapons stores, because Gaddafi had like tons of guns and ammo. He said, all the terrorist elements are going to come up from the south, get all that shit and take it back south down to Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and it's going to be game on. I just remember listening to that old guy. And I'm like, God, here he goes again, giving a history lesson. Was he right?

• 51:15Speaker 01

  We opened that can of worms. Dealing with it now, right?

• 51:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Shawn Ryan?

  How did you get the Secretary of Defense to position?

• 51:30Speaker 01

  I think that Baghdadi operation actually had something to do with it. The President didn't know me from anybody. I'm a government employee, remember? I'm just, I work for whatever President. I'm on loan from the Pentagon. I'm doing counterterrorism for the President. President didn't know me from anybody. I told you I had this idea about Al Qaeda. I had a partner that came in with me, Cash Patel, who had access to the President. And so I explained what I was doing, what we wanted for Al Qaeda. Cash is the only person that can make this call is the President because Secretary of Defense, head of the CIA, head of State Department, aren't interested in this.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  So we're gonna have to have the President get involved. And I'm like, you talk to him a lot, right? He goes, oh, yeah, I talk to him a lot. I'm like, let's partner.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  The Baghdadi hit. The next day, the President gives a public announcement and does the, you know, the rollout. And I got to go to it and I got to see how it works behind the scenes. He goes and gives a speech. He comes out and he turns to me, me, my crappy Joseph A. Banks suit. Remember the one I was telling you about? Five for $200. I'm probably wearing one of those. I think I just threw it out or donated it. And he turns to me, the President of the United States turns to me and goes, Chris. And I'm literally like,

• 53:04Speaker 01

  uh huh.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  I was like, shit. I go up to the President and he goes, don't let them walk back my comments.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  I was like,

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Roger, sir. Goes, "Said some stuff in there on purpose. Don't let them walk back my comments." I was like, "Okay." And I left and I went back to my office and I sent a note out to the community, heads of the community. I said, "The president was very deliberate about what he was saying today. His target audience was not the American people. It was young people thinking about joining ISIS. That's why it was very bombastic. The president was like, you know, "You will die, you know, you will die if you join ISIS. Don't even think about it."

• 54:05Speaker 01

  I know information operations, psychological operations. I was Green Beret. I knew exactly what he was doing, right? It's like, his target audience is not, you know, my mom. It's the world where kids are thinking about joining ISIS. I said, "We've completed this phase of the operation. With the death of Baghdadi, we can transition to a more steady state." You know, I used all the buzzwords. "More steady state, counterterrorism operations. Thank you for all you have done. If you have any questions about this announcement and the next stage, feel free to call me."

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Nobody, normally, you know, in Washington DC, somebody like, "That was a little..." I don't, I'm gonna go talk to the press and say, "That's not exactly what happened. Nothing leaked." So I think that was the one where the president goes, "This guy, the tall, white-haired guy, wearing..." I had better glasses then, you know, "That guy with the cheap suit, he can get stuff done." And that's where I came to the president's attention. And then...

• 55:18Speaker 01

  There was a guy that had worked on the campaign, a young, young gentleman, who was basically an administrative assistant secretary type, who, like you, I work with everybody. I don't care what your rank, station in life is. If you're interested, come on along. I met this guy. His brother was going to school at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. I said, oh, my God. And he, he had worked on the campaign. And I helped develop him as a counterterrorism person and took him to meetings that he normally wouldn't get to go to. And having, I have to go back to the Pentagon.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  I told you I had the worst job in the history of the Pentagon in intelligence oversight. I have to go back to that, Sean. And I'm like, walking across the street between going into the White House, he's coming out. He goes, Chris, how are you doing? I said, I am, and I'm, I'm cup half-full guy. I was like, I'm in a bad place. He goes, what's going on? He says, I gotta go back to the Pentagon. He goes, do you want a political job? I was like, what's that? Do you want to be appointed as a political official? I was like, I'll do anything, anything to not have to go back to the Pentagon. He goes, come with me. Now, this guy that everybody kind of was just, you know,

• 56:44Speaker 01

  off in the corner, nobody knew what he was. We walk in to the personnel office. He walks in, looks at one of the senior officials and goes, hey, get Chris a job. They all like jumped to attention. This 24-year-old kid was a big hit. He's a serious player in the political side. I didn't know it. And so I got a political job and I went back to the Pentagon. So I changed from a government employee, right, to, there are usually about 3,000 political appointees that the administration gets to pick. And then you go in and you run the large agencies, in this case, the Department of Defense. There are probably a couple hundred civilian officials and they rotate out

• 57:29Speaker 01

  every time the administration changes. And I got one of those jobs. It started there and then.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  I got a call that said, hey, would we think you can do more? I'm like, I'm good because I'm fighting Al Qaeda, right? I'm good. Pentagon, $18 billion for special operations, 68,000 forces? I'm good. And they offered me to go to take a presidentially appointed Senate confirmed position, which I talked about, which means you are now you're no longer just a you're a political appointee, but you're at the top of the top shelf. And back to greatest strength, greatest weakness. Parents always said, if you're going to do something, do the very best you can. You don't do it halfway. So I'm like, well, sure, I'm interested. I mean, it's the way I was raised.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  President asked you to serve. So then I got that job at the National Counterterrorism Center. I'm out there loving life. All good. Don't want anything else. Anybody who knows any if you're doing what you're supposed to do, you always have your reconnaissance network out, just keeping track on what's going on, seeing what tacks are coming in on you. And the word was out that Esper, who was the Secretary of Defense, was going to get was President was unhappy to him after Lafayette Square, George Floyd, all that stuff. You know, where the President went out, you know, they cleared, remember that?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Where they cleared the the park? The President went across the street to that church? I do. Yeah, well, Esper got a lot of flak for that and started kind of getting waffly about his role in that. And that ups, what I understand is that upset the President. And then the other one, which let's talk about later was.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  War on drugs, like, the president was flipping serious about securing our border. Everybody thinks it's just about like immigration. No, it's everything. And, you know, the Department of Defense was not doing enough to stop the illicit flow of narcotics into the United States. I know this. So the president was upset that he wasn't getting support from the Pentagon. And so I'm hearing all this, and there are only three of us that are eligible to replace him. Because you have to be presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed. There are only three of us that have some military background that are eligible. I did not politic. I didn't want the job.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  And, oh, and was, you get these calls. You better be ready, something might happen. I was like, oh, man, what? You know, just be ready for a phone call.

• 1:00:25Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:01:10Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:01:41Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:02:22Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:03:05Shawn Ryan?

  You guys are gonna love this stuff. I guarantee it.

• 1:03:16Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Nothing happens. Thank God. Election happens. There was some thought that he was gonna clean house that night. That doesn't happen. I'm like, thank God. I'm just gonna stay here at the National Counterterrorism Center. I love these people. I love this mission. Al Qaeda, we're making progress. This is awesome. And Monday morning, I go into work. It's COVID. Nobody's there. I'm like the only one in the office. Get in there early. Beautiful day, man. Drinking my Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Phone rings. Nobody picks it up. Finally, I'm like, some better get the phone. Hello? Like, Director Miller? Yes? Get to the White House now.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  I'm like, no. They're like, yep. So the President made the decision and selected me. I think it was probably because of my coworker, Cash Patel. So I'm working counterterrorism at the White House. Cash is working with me. When I leave, he replaces me. So I'm just guessing. I don't know. I don't know. But you get the call and you go over there. And it's in my book. It's a pretty funny story. I was dressed pretty poorly. And they always ask you, you know, they're not gonna send you in to see the President if you're gonna say no. So, you know, like, hey, President's gonna offer you this job. Are you gonna take it?

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's so funny, you can watch The West Wing. You know, that show from whenever with Martin Sheen or whatever. Serve at the pleasure of the President. You know, it's like this great show where everybody just serves, you know? But that seems to work for that show. But it actually works for my show too. Because when the President of the United States asks you to serve, I don't know, where are you on this? I'm like, I don't care what flavor, fashion, or whatever. The President of the United States and they're asking you to serve, you're gonna serve. So obviously, I said, yeah. Knowing it was gonna be a hell of a ride, which it was.

• 1:05:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it sounds like it. What was, so what did that conversation go like when you got into the White House?

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Go in there. I'm wearing crappy shoes because I was, I decided that I was gonna turn the National Counterterrorism Center into business casual. Like, try to change the, you know, the, the culture. So I'm wearing crappy shoes. I've got khaki slacks on. I didn't have a tie. I had to borrow a tie. Fortunately, I'd thrown a blue blazer into my car. And all I can think of is the president's gonna look at my shoes and go, I've got a better idea. You know, what, what's wrong with you? So I'm hiding, I'm trying to hide my feet. You go in, president's sitting behind the resolute, his desk, right? There's a chair in front of him and I sit down.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  And I say, you know, morning, Mr. President. He goes, hey, Chris, I'm firing Esper. You're up. I was like, got it, sir. He said, okay, you ready? I'm like, yes, sir, I'm ready. He said, okay, come back this evening, we'll talk more. That was it. Salute and execute, move out. Went back that evening and got guidance, which was pretty simple. It's like, hey, listen. I've been saying we're gonna wind down these wars. Nobody's listening to me. Do it. Of course, I believe in that. We talked about that. I'm like, yeah, I got it, I'm with you, sir. He goes, okay, go get it done. I said, all right. There was no talk about like, oh, let's overthrow the government using the military. People, you see this crazy conspiracy shit.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  It's like most professional conversation, boss gave guidance. Salute and execute. Totally within the boundaries. I'm like, got this, let's go do it. And off we went.

• 1:07:34Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have time to come up with a plan on how to wind those down? Or did you have any idea how you were gonna?

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  I've been thinking about it.

• 1:07:40Shawn Ryan?

  How were you gonna do it?

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Well, the, I looked at Afghanistan. We had eighty-five hundred, no, eighty-eight hundred there. This was, I was working, when I was working at the White House in counterterrorism.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  When I was still a government employee, when I was, you know, on loan from the Pentagon, you could see that negotiations were ongoing. It didn't take like, it didn't take like a genius, it didn't take Henry Kissinger to figure out that this war's coming to an end, there's going to be a negotiated settlement. I mean, not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm like, oh yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna get in agreement. It's not gonna be pretty, wars aren't, ending wars is tough, you know? Nobody's gonna be happy, but we got an agreement going, so we need to figure out what Afghanistan will look like with our presence post peace agreement.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  So the Department of Defense was like, if we, our minimum force required to protect the United States from attack from Afghanistan is 8,800 people. I was like, that's bullshit. Here they go again. Cause I'd been through this circus before, where they would give a number and they'd like, the world will come to an end if one, and then we, we drop below and nothing bad would happen. Syria is an example. If we go below 1,600, the world will come to an end. Went to 800, or 800 there now. Nothing like, what? World didn't come to an end.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  So check this one out. I commissioned a young government employee to do a war game with all of the key players to determine what the minimum force structure in Afghanistan was necessary to do this. Keep intel on Al Qaeda or, or terrorist groups that could pose a threat to the United States. Have a strike force sufficient to execute targets when they're identified. And then, so they all worked it.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  And we used mid-level people because the senior level people didn't want to participate because they knew, I suspect they knew that it was bullshit, right? That 8,800. So they are like, we're not doing this. So I did a bunch of bureaucratic tricks and forced them to provide subject matter experts, which is what I really wanted. I didn't want like political figures, you know? I didn't want to like stuffed shirt, stuffed suit talking heads. I want to like professionals in there. So government works great when you just let the professionals talk and take politics out of it. So they all did this big war game and they came up with, we want to have one operating base. We need 800 people there.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  Commandos, we need helicopter pilots, we need cooks and bottle washers. They did the whole thing. And we'll have one counterterrorism base that we can keep fly predators out of, all that stuff. I was like, thanks. This is in the, you know, someday, somebody's going to get those things for you declassified. Cause I still get tons of shit from like people like, that didn't happen, that didn't happen. Well, I wasn't stupid. It's in the, it's in the official records of, of the White House and they're all classified. That's fine. Someday, you know, people are going to look at it like, oh, wow, that really did happen. I can't, I don't have anything, like, I can't give you a briefing chart.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Maybe the kid from Mass, whatever, from the Massachusetts Air National Guard has them. That was a bad joke.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  That was a bad joke, wasn't it?

• 1:11:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  But it was kind of funny.

• 1:11:39Shawn Ryan?

  It was good to go.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  I feel, I mean, not for that kid. You know, the kid who got rolled up yesterday.

• 1:11:44Shawn Ryan?

  I know who you're talking about. The kid that just got rolled up for embarrassing the US government?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, with all the secret slides from the Pentagon and other places. Yeah. So maybe he's got the, maybe he has the official record of this war game that indicated 800 people was the minimum force required to maintain a counterterrorism presence and protect America. I then went out and I talked to the commander on the ground who I'd grown up with and said, hey, well, president wanted to go to zero. I knew the number was 800. When the decision was made, a bunch of us agreed that 2,500, we would draw down from 8,800 to 2,500.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  And reason we did that is I thought it was it's weird because I thought that was one of the really good decisions we made where we gave plenty of trade space for the next administration. We're like, we didn't go to zero. We didn't go to 800, which is minimum force because we knew that. We actually went to 2,500. And I talked to the ground, the commander there. I said, 2,500, can you work it? He goes, we can do it. We're good. Got it. So lo and behold, I actually talked to the people on the ground because the echo chamber in DC was all 8,800, 8,800, 8,800. So at that point, the president made

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  this, the president had made the decision, go to 2,500. And that's what we left with in Afghanistan because quite honestly, and it's in the books right now, most people don't care about this. I understand that. And, you know, it's all right. But it's still pretty raw, I think, for a lot of us in our generation that did that. You know, I thought it was like 2,500, we can maintain pressure and it will give the incoming administration a chance to recalibrate if they want to. I actually thought it was a good, solid plan. Of course, it's been destroyed. Like now that we're, we jammed the Biden administration.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Hey, can I give you my final, not CYA, but bitch? I'd learned in the military that you can blame the last guy for 30 days. Up to 30 days, you get out of jail free card. It's all the last guy. I would never have done that. But once you go over 30 days as a commander and as a leader, you own it, right? Have you ever heard that? I haven't. Yeah, I wonder if I just heard that wrong. That's why I was asking. But I always learned that, like, you got 30 days. So this is why this whole thing, like, we got jammed by the Trump administration. It was a shitty deal. You had, you had a chance to change things. I thought we gave enough trade space in there, maneuver space to do something.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Well, they would have started killing, they would have started fighting again. Who cares? We were gonna drop the hammer on them, man. Like, our counterterrorism forces, they'd pulled back an operational tempo to the point where, you know, you can talk to people, they'd be like, "This is the most boring deployment I've ever done." I'm thinking, "Thank God, we only hit one target in three months." You know, you're like, "Okay." But during that time, our counterterrorism forces had built out, like, the target list. And everybody was getting lazy. The enemy was getting lazy.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  And we had on the table, like, Vietnam War, you know, they did the bombing, like, when the North Vietnamese attacked in the South in 73, they did this huge bombing offensive, right? Literally bombed them back to the negotiating table. Clearly, counterinsurgency is different war. You know, you didn't have tanks coming down, coming down the main supply routes and the main roads. But I felt we had the capability, if they decided to start attacking us again, they being the Taliban primarily, that we would have dropped the hammer on them. And it would have hurt them so bad, it would have been like, "Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, take the foot off the gas."

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Like, can we meet for conversations again? Can we start the negotiations? So I was not, I thought we had a meaningful way to terminate the war in a way that wouldn't be embarrassing to the United States and would still allow us to keep a counterterrorism presence there. That's pretty heavy, man, but it'll all come out in history someday. Right now, it's just too political. Everybody's like...

• 1:16:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. It's, it's, um, I mean, what were your thoughts when you saw how it all went down?

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  So, Friday the 13th, fitting, right? Where were you?

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, just at work, just a normal workday. Got up, was watching the news. Uh, knew, knew the Taliban was on the offensive.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Uh, knew that the technique we use, remember when I was telling about like call them on the walkie talkie? They were doing it in reverse this time, right? They were calling the Afghan security forces and going, you know, Uncle Ahmed, uh, this is cousin or this is your nephew. Stand by, uh, you want to surrender? Nope.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  White flag goes up. I'm your hello. How do I become a member of the Taliban? Uh, so I, I'm like pattern recognition. They're doing it now. They've got the momentum. It's working well. Very predictable.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  You'd hear this, you'd hear this Dantorian voices of like, oh, the Taliban won't take over the country for 90 days or something. I'm like, this thing's over, right? I'm like, this thing, they've got the momentum. They're doing exactly what we did, but in reverse. Got up that morning, Friday the 13th, turn on the news. They said, uh, Taliban forces are amassed on the outskirts of Kabul. And I flashback, forgot the name of the circle at the south of, you've been there, the south of Kabul. That's on highway one. That's like, you'd always use that as a rally point when you were heading south on the road. Or when you were coming back in, you'd always use that as like a place where you kind of like

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  rally and stuff. And I had this vision of like a line of high lux pickup trucks full of Taliban fighters. Right? You got the picture? Yeah. You got the picture? I saw them lined up there. I was, I could just see it in my mind. I'm like, We got them right where we want them. Because what's the one good, one thing we do well as an American military? We can blow shit up with air power. And the whole problem with counterinsurgency is getting the enemy to mass, right? When you get them to mass, like, don't do that because we are gonna bring in, we're gonna drop a hammer on you. I was like, we got them right where we want them. We're gonna smoke their ass.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  And we're gonna, we're gonna bounce them back for a couple of weeks. They're gonna have to refit, rearm, probably retrain. And then about an hour later, the announcement comes to the Pentagon that the United States will provide no additional support to Afghan government. And I was like, the war is lost.

• 1:19:30Shawn Ryan?

  That's infuriating.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  I was a mess.

• 1:19:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I think a lot of us were.

• 1:19:41Shawn Ryan?

  Well, on that note.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Here we are. Yeah, man. I had a complete meltdown, dude.

• 1:19:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  And I'm, I'm supposed to be a well-adjusted veteran, right? Ooh. I'm like, wow, if I'm feeling this way, can you imagine? What others are feeling, man? I just felt horrible.

• 1:20:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Too much information, my friend.

• 1:20:13Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's take a break.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:20:16Shawn Ryan?

  Next, on the Sean Ryan Show. I've heard you say that the biggest threat to the United States right now is the fentanyl crisis.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:27Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think that? Over everything else, over China, over Russia, over all the other things that we're facing?

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  First meeting, I got to go into the Oval Office. A Mormon segment had been attacked and a bunch of people had been killed. Americans had been killed. One of the drunk cartels took over a town in the south of Mexico and just like was, basically took a town over because I was doing transnational threats as well as counterterrorism. And at the time, the president said,

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  77,000 Americans are being killed each year due to illicit drugs coming in from south of the border.