Mayhem in Ramadi | Lee Deckleman | Ep. 364

This episode features Lee Deckleman, a former Green Beret, Army Ranger, and private security contractor, who shares his experiences from combat zones like Ramadi. He discusses his journey from a high-stakes, violent career to finding peace and purpose through mindfulness, yoga, and walking the Appalachian Trail. Grab Lee's book here: https://www.amazon.com/INTERNAL-Where-Monster-Mindfulness-Become/dp/B09251YC1K Subscribe to our new newsletter!!!! https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Brunt Workwear ⬇️ Get $10 Off @BRUNT with code TEAMHOUSE at https://www.bruntworkwear.com/TEAMHOUSE #BRUNTpod ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics... JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 - Start 15:30 - Joining the military and Special Forces 35:29 - Career shift to civilian security 54:45 - First combat experience in Ramadi 58:16 - The concept of "internal volume" 01:00:03 - Walking the Appalachian Trail 01:30:05 - Security work at Facebook and DEI 01:52:54 - Discovering yoga for trauma 02:00:05 - The book The Body Keeps the Score 02:12:34 - Advice for veterans 02:12:59 - Final thoughts on integrity Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:32Speaker 03

  Special Operations.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Coburn Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  Hey everybody, welcome to Team House, episode 364. I'm Dave Park. Joining us tonight is Lee Dekelmann. Lee is a former Ranger, former SF, a plank holder at Triple Canopy.

• 2:09Speaker 04

  Has done a lot of great things, a lot of wild things. A general man about town, international man of mystery, as it were. Thanks for joining us tonight, Lee.

• 2:21Speaker 05

  Thanks, Dave. I appreciate you having me. I'm grateful anytime I can unpack my life story.

• 2:30Speaker 05

  And, you know, among my tribe.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  It is a hell of a story, too. Lee wrote a book about his life. I mean, going all the way back. Actually, your birthday is only one day after mine.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  So you're Aquarius?

• 2:47Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  But the name of the book is Internal Volume. And as we get more into your story, you can tell us where Internal Volume comes from. Because it's really, it's not just a story about your life, but a story about, I don't want to say your dysfunction, but your trauma. And not just, you know, trauma from war, or trauma from combat, trauma from security, or whatever, but just the traumas of childhood. Like, your childhood was not, was not a pleasant one. And sort of how that manifested throughout your life and things like that. You also founded Be Yoga Strong.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  And, right, Be Yoga Strong is the name of your life?

• 3:39Speaker 05

  Right, well, that- Five years ago, um, when I founded Be Yoga Strong, um, COVID hit right after that. And so I've struggled to kind of hold on to the foundation and, and grow that. And so where that's at right now is, is kind of on pause.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 4:00Speaker 05

  But, um, that was outside of just getting healthy and, um, getting my own internal volume to a real low and good place. Um, you know, the only other purpose I had was wanting to provide free yoga, um, to my community. You know, um, you know, for, as a form of free therapy, um, seven days a week where people would have a soft place for free to land, um, at the end of a hard day.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  And, um, so that, that, that's the goal. Um, you know, we'll probably get into it a little bit later when I can explain how that's kind of shifted.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  Sure, absolutely. So let's start from the beginning. Uh, we like to ask everybody, what is your origin story? What made you the man you are today?

• 4:53Speaker 05

  Well, um, I started out in life below average, so not even average. Um, when I was born, I was two and a half months premature and, um, I was cross-eyed. And I spent months in an incubator in the ICU before I went to foster home. At about age six, my parents, um, my birth parents, um, came back and got me. And along with my other sisters who were also in foster care. Um, and we moved from Baltimore.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  Maryland to Tennessee a couple of years after that. And just a couple of days after getting to Tennessee at age nine, you know, my father died. So I was on another planet. Um, we were Jewish in middle Tennessee in the nineteen seventies. I was nine years old, um, had just come from foster home. I really hadn't even got assimilated with my new family properly. And my dad was gone, so that was a, a really, that was the first trauma I remember. That was a real tough spot. Um, and, uh, my mother was homicidal and suicidal.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  And, um, so it was a very dysfunctional situation after that. It got worse instead of better, um, once we moved here. And, um,

• 6:26Speaker 05

  football, my father was really good at football and I didn't know my father, but I knew he was a World War Two veteran and he was really good at football. And so I wanted to be really good at football. The only problem was is I was the smallest kid in my grade every year. And, um, I talked funny because I was from up north. And, um, you know, a, a little Jewish boy and everybody was Christian. So, um, I did feel like I was on another planet. And, um, that led to really focusing on football and that's really kind of what saved me. And when football was over and I didn't have the size or the grades to go to college, um, that was a, a real low spot in my life right after I graduated high school.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  And so I decided to join the army. I, I never wanted to be in the military. I didn't like discipline. Um, you know, I was kind of a wild eyed southern boy, um, a rebel. Um, you know, in my nature and um, so I didn't want to go in the military. But I did and and since I was gonna go in, I decided, well, I'm not gonna just go in. I want to do something special. Because when you grow up as a traumatized kid with nothing and you feel like you're nothing, you have to become something. Right? So that's your ego. Like I, you have to attach yourself to something. I have to be something. And so being a ranger um, was was important. That was my life mission.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  So you know, you talk a little bit about the trauma of childhood. You go into a lot of depth in the book. But I'd like to kind of rewind a little bit. Because when your parents came, you you were with your foster parents for seven years, correct?

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Well, for the first year, um, there was a lot of transition. So about six years, yeah.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  Okay, and and the first year you were one year old, so.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you weren't really keeping a diary. But but you know, if you don't mind me talking a little bit about what's in the book, because I do want people to understand sort of like the depth of the trauma and where it started. And then, you know, because it gets, you know, it ends up with yoga. But your mother was on Valium and a number of other things or whatever when you were born, which is why you're premi- uh, premature. Uh, she went into a deep depression and you were made wards of the state.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  You never like, you never really lived with your parents. You your foster parents were your parents. And you know, you said that your parents came, that your biological parents came and got you. But you, in the book, you talk about how they came and got you. And it wasn't just traumatizing for you, it was traumatizing for your for your foster parents.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  That's right. My my foster mother was crushed. Rose was crushed. That's all I really remember leaving was that she was crushed and.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Because they just showed up, right? They just showed up and said, here we are. Come on, kids. And that would, so this woman who had been raising you for six years as as her children, just watched you walk out the door.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  That's right, and, and, and the unfortunate part is, is, you know, they tried to find me my whole life and get back in touch with me because my parents cut off any kind of, they, they never, they never spoke of them, never mentioned their name. And so it was through social media that my older foster and brother, um, from that family finally found me. And it wasn't that long ago, it was around 2013. I was working at Facebook at the time and, uh, they contacted me and, um, you know,

• 10:25Speaker 05

  it was kind of magical, um, to be able to talk to them and fill some, some voids, um, fill some gaps and, um, get some, you know, uh, and, and so I ultimately went and took my son and, and went and met them. And, uh, so that, that was nice, but it wa- Rose had already died, so I didn't get an opportunity to see her as an adult and, you know, if anything makes me sad about that, it's, it's that.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Hmm. So, you, you feel adrift, you get out of high school, you join the army. Um, what was that like for you? Um, you know, joining the army, you didn't want to be disciplined, you're kind of a wild one. Um, and now, you know, you don't just join the army, but you go to RIT, you know, you, you do all this stuff and then you go to battalion. What was that, that, that like for you?

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Well, as much as I didn't like discipline, I hated being a nobody. I hated just being empty, um, you know, and, uh, so I had to fill that. So, um, it's kind of like, uh...

• 11:46Speaker 05

  You do things you normally wouldn't do when you want something bad enough.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  And so I was willing to do and put up with whatever they put me through. I would have done practically anything. Um, and so, uh, the hardest part for me about becoming a Ranger and getting into regiment was just getting there. Um, you know, the, the, the problems or how problematic that can be when you sign up for the army thinking that you're going to Ranger Regiment and you find out that you're just going to a, an infantry unit and you don't realize that until you're in basic training. And so that fight to finally get into regiment, fighting against the army and the original contract, uh, you know, that, that was the hardest part.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. So you, as your book kind of lays out fairly well, you're a bit of a scrapper and you're, you're not crazy about authority or people abusing their authority or speaking to you, you know, in disrespectful ways. How did that mesh with, you know, being young Cherry Lee, you know?

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So when I was growing up in the seventies in the South, you could fist fight. Like that was, that was just normal behavior. Like, uh, the teachers would, would just go out on the playground and they would gather and talk and you'd sort out whatever you needed to. Um, so being violent, being monstrous, uh, behaving like a sociopath, um, wasn't unacceptable. And so getting into the military, especially into Ranger Regiment, you're almost, um, it's almost an advantage to be a sociopath or to have, be on that spectrum.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 13:46Speaker 05

  To have a camaraderie. To be able to compartmentalize in that sense. And, and the difference between a good Ranger and a bad Ranger, or a good SEAL or a bad SEAL, is are you wearing a white hat? Are you wearing a black hat? Cause we're almost all on this, on the spectrum of being sociopaths. So, um, and every now and then you meet a psychopath. Who's like, you know, it's like, wow, that guy has ice going through his veins. Like, I don't want to ever cross him, but, um, yeah. That was, um, it was a dream come true. Um, and it was the, um, you know, the, the eighteen Delta course, graduating at eighteen Delta course,

• 14:30Speaker 05

  was definitely a highlight of my military career. But my time in Ranger Battalion and my squad in Ranger Battalion, Bravo Company, third between second squad. Um, you know, out of my military career, that's my most beautiful memory.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 05

  You know, I cherish that. And so it's kind of tough watching some of these GWAT, um, special ops guys kind of make us look like idiots. Um, with lying and, and making up these stories, you know? The best way to go about telling your war stories is leave a few things out. And that way you make sure you're not, uh, you're not going to get in trouble or, or, or be called out for, um, exaggerating too much.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. So you, um, did your time in Ranger Battalion? Uh, are there any highlights that you want to cover when, while you're there?

• 15:26Speaker 05

  Well, um, I've, uh, I've got a pretty funny story. It had to do with my son being born while I was in Ranger Battalion.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  Please.

• 15:37Speaker 05

  Other than that, no, it was, it was peacetime.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  So being in Ranger Battalion in peacetime was hard. It, it was just training. You know, when I finally went to combat, it was like, okay, it's only hard when it's hard. It's not just hard on purpose. You know, people aren't trying to make combat hard. Your leadership isn't trying to make it harder on you. You know, so combat was a break for me. I thought peacetime Ranger Battalion was the hardest thing I had ever done.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. So you, uh, do you want to tell the story about your son?

• 16:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, so when I was in, when I was in Battalion, um, I had my second child and um, Josh, and he actually ended up going to Bravo Company, First Range Battalion, um, after he graduated high school, but he was born there and um, the way that happened, um, you know, uh, well, it's not, it's, it's kind of a long story.

• 16:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  So we might wanna, i- it's in the book, but it's kind of a long story, so.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  All right, buy the book. Oh, where can people find your book? Is it on Amazon?

• 16:49Speaker 05

  It's on Amazon. Just if you put internal volume or put my name in, um, you'll see that beautiful art on the front cover and, and that's the logo for the foundation, which again, it's on pause, not doing anything with it currently, but I have been teaching over the last five years for free.

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  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 18:48Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

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• 20:01Speaker 04

  So you leave Ranger Battalion and you leave the Army, right? You ETS and you join-

• 20:08Speaker 05

  No, no, no. So the first, so the first time I was in the Army, I went to Ranger School as an infantryman.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  I couldn't get into regiment. I had to get out and then go back in.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 20:21Speaker 05

  Um, to get, to ultimately be in Ranger Battalion. After Desert Storm, after 20th Special Forces Group.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Okay, that's right. Because you went to Desert Storm with a conventional unit.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  With a National Guard unit.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 05

  It was a disaster.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. So then you, um, because you got out a couple times. So you, right, so you go to Ranger Battalion?

• 20:52Speaker 05

  I did, I did. I, I, I, I went in in 85 and ETS in 88. I got activated for Desert Storm in 90 to 91. And then I, when I got back from there, I joined the 20th Special Forces, um, Guard Unit. And then in 95, went back on active duty to First Ranger Battalion. Until I was medically retired.

• 21:18Speaker 06

  Hey, Lee, I got a question because we never really have too many, a ton of people that ask, that talk about Desert Storm. What was that trip like for you?

• 21:27Speaker 05

  Um, for my unit, for my experience, it should have just been, you know, considered a training exercise. Um, you know, we really weren't, my, my unit didn't have a purpose there. And so when you're in a situation like that and you don't have really a functional purpose, you're not really participating, um, in the war, they have to make up something for you to do. And so that's kind of what our unit, uh, that's the space our unit landed in. And so, um-

• 22:04Speaker 05

  I think the, what I got out of Desert Storm was what the news says about war can be a hundred percent opposite of what's really going on at the time. I think that's the first time I ever realized that because of what CNN was putting out versus what I was seeing with my own eyes. And the other thing I think I got out of Desert Storm was, you know, you just get that first combat deployment out under your belt. You know, it's, it's a little, unless you don't have a, a center in your brain that gets scared, you know, the amygdala,

• 22:45Speaker 05

  unless you don't have one, like some of those cliff climbers, it's a little nerve wracking trying to keep it together and, you know, your first time going into a war where it's just an unknown. It's a complete unknown. And so getting that out of the way really helped.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  So you, you come back from Desert Storm, you, you go to Ranger Battalion, because you didn't do the Q course while you were in 20th Group, right?

• 23:16Speaker 05

  That's right. I just did selection.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  Okay. So you go to 175?

• 23:23Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Okay. Sorry about that. And then at the end of that time, do you get out again or do you go, do you roll right into SF from there?

• 23:34Speaker 05

  I, I leave. I was gonna, I, I became, I was in Battalion, uh, first bat and became a team leader and I wanted to stay and become a squad leader. Cause you know, I kinda wanted to go to the unit. And, um, my platoon sergeant at the time was a real dick. And I'm not gonna call him out on here. But, uh, everything else about my platoon and everything else about Battalion, I loved except this guy. And, um, so I just decided to put in a 4187 to transfer to the Q course since I had already been to selection and I had already been selected.

• 24:21Speaker 05

  It was just time to move on.

• 24:23Speaker 04

  Okay. Um, so, so you don't get out, you, you roll into the Q course?

• 24:31Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Okay. Um, and how was that for you?

• 24:37Speaker 04

  How was that?

• 24:37Speaker 05

  It was the best, it was the, I spent almost 15 years total in the military. It was the best two years of my military career.

• 24:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. San Antonio is that good?

• 24:49Speaker 05

  No, no, I was the first class at BRAG.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 24:53Speaker 05

  The, the, I was the first class where it was all at BRAG. Um, you had to pass the National Register Paramedic Course, so SOCOM became this beast of a medical course to get through. And, um, so it was very challenging. But if, if, if something's done right, you know, being challenged is a good thing. You know, a certain type of stress is a good thing.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:21Speaker 05

  Um, you know, in the right environment. So great instructors, very professional, um, operation. Um, everything that was done there was, you know, respectable, honorable. There was, you know, there was a, there was a high standard. Um, you know, the opposite of anything that Tim Kennedy has been putting out there. Um, you know, the Ranger Regiment, the, the Green Berets, uh, community, you know, those are really special places.

• 25:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. So you finish, uh, the Q course, uh, you like top medic, right? And, and out of the 18 Delta course?

• 26:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, it was, there was 18 teams. So out of my class, I think there were, no, 14 teams, 14 or 18 teams. But it was SEALs, Green Berets, that was back when the PJ still went there. Um, the independent corpsmen, so everybody, everybody went to the short course or long course there. And, um, so out of my class, everybody was divided up. And it was a 26 mile land nav course and every couple of miles or kilometers, there would be a medical scenario, you know, and it was a pass or fail and the fail

• 26:46Speaker 05

  added 15 minutes to your time of pass, you just continue to move and the it's kind of like the Tour de France. The first group to finish with the lowest time or the shortest amount of time wins. And so I was with the team that that won. It was four. It was four Rangers. So it was two guys from a third Ranger Battalion, myself, and then a stud of a Ranger. I can't think of his name right now, but he was in best Ranger competition. He placed in best Ranger competition, but I can't think of his name right now. But yeah, so we won the best medic competition. I don't think they did it. I don't think they

• 27:27Speaker 05

  do it anymore. Logistically, I think it was real hard and I think a lot of students didn't like it. Like the SEALs did not like it. I'm pretty sure the PJs didn't like it either. The PJs just had their own way of doing things. So I think that's why they ultimately came up with their own 18 Delta course.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  And so out of the 18 Delta course, what group did you get assigned to?

• 27:54Speaker 05

  Third group.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  I wanted I wanted seventh group because it was peacetime. A seventh group was the only guys going down range with magazines and their guns.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  And so that's that's what I wanted to do, you know. I didn't mind J sets or anything like that, but I wanted to go shoot back people.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  I wanted to be that guy.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Sure. And seventh group was getting it on, you know?

• 28:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  With their second families down in Panama.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that could do. That could do a Netflix series about seventh group during that time that lasts about 10 years.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  So you got a third group focused on Africa. How was that for you?

• 28:50Speaker 05

  It was a disappointment. So, you know, I can be a purist sometimes, or I can be, you know, on my high horse sometimes, or, you know, I went through a lot to get there and I had a high expectation. So when I went to Swaziland, Africa, for the first time, I wanted to cure everybody. And, you know, if there was somebody in the village that was having complications with a, a delivery, or whatever it was, and that was the scenario that happened, that I'm, that I'm, was first upset about, you know, I want to be able to go and, and, and at least help. And, um, you know, not being able to do that, you know, having those kind of restrictions,

• 29:34Speaker 05

  um, you know, uh, I, I just didn't understand it. It didn't make sense to me, um, to, to have the type of restrictions. Just like in wartime, sometimes the ROE is geared towards favoring the enemy. And, um, I don't care about the political or, or what the, the narrative is, you know, the guys on the ground know and what's right and what's wrong. And, and, um, so, uh, yeah, anyways, I, I get, get, get sidetracked with that.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  So it's, it's interesting because you're not even complaining that you guys would get a crate of MREs while 10th group was eating foie gras and, and bratwurst. You're, you're just more taken back by the fact you couldn't do your job?

• 30:26Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, yes. No, I, I, I thought the shit with the sugar was part of the beauty of being, you know, an elite operator, was, you know, being able to take the shit with the sugar. Um, I was fine with that. Not, you know, being lied to or being manipulated, um, or ultimately being bullied, uh, which would happen sometimes in your career. Um, yeah, I, um, I, the, the...

• 30:58Speaker 05

  The part of me that wanted to be successful in the military couldn't control the part of me that, you know, wasn't going to put up with that.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:08Speaker 05

  And so, you know, I'm not the best example. If you read my book, I give some good advice, but I'm not the best example of how to be a great soldier.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Well, advice, advice comes from learning and you've done a lot of learning, right?

• 31:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. So you, so what was it like? So what timeframe, what years are we talking about right now?

• 31:29Speaker 05

  For, for, for which job?

• 31:31Speaker 04

  For, for S F, uh, while you're in third group.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  Okay, okay.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  What?

• 31:38Speaker 05

  So I, I joined twentieth group, um, in ninety-one or ninety-two. I went on active duty. In ninety-five, I went to the Q course in ninety-six. And so I got medically retired in two thousand.

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Okay. So, so about four years bouncing around Africa. What, what was the, what was your mission? What was the situation like? Cause you talk about these restrictions. What were the concerns at the time?

• 32:12Speaker 05

  Well, we had be, you know how S F guys are. I mean, we went over there and everybody around us, you know, was in love with us, you know? We, we went over there, won the hearts and minds of people and not through just pure manipulation, but through just actually caring, you know? I mean, you know, if you're going to be a Green Beret, you should actually care about helping people because that's part of what your, you know, job is. And so it's not just killing people. It might be healing them and just helping them might be the mission. So, um, what, what specific? I'm, I forgot specifically what that's.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  That's okay. I'm just saying for, for you, because we don't hear about the GWAT as much anymore, or we don't hear about the time prior to the GWAT as much anymore. So in Africa at the time, you know, ISIS wasn't a concern. Like what, what was your mission in Africa?

• 33:05Speaker 05

  Training.

• 33:06Speaker 04

  Training.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Training, training. Yeah, training. You know, you, you, you might do medical support.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  Um, but it was usually um a training mission or a J-SET mission. And um, there was just a lot of downtime for the medics to do medical stuff.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 33:25Speaker 05

  You know, I mean, I had one person in Swaziland bring their grandfather in a wheelbarrow like eight miles

• 33:35Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  through the mountains in Swaziland to be seen. And, you know, he had polio. So there was nothing I could do, but that was the environment I was in. I wanted to be a doctor. You know, that was a a phase of my life where I I wouldn't I it it it wasn't important to run around and shoot people. Like, I wanted to heal people. Like, I really loved um being a medic. And usually when I love something, I'm really good at it. So um, and then I kind of lost my love for it um over time and and uh and just moved on.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Was that burnout or was it due to bureaucracy, just the army doing the army thing?

• 34:23Speaker 05

  It mainly the medical field with the paperwork.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  Um, that would be the biggest thing is the paperwork in the medical field has gotten so bad. If paperwork or schoolwork or sitting still and writing and thinking like that and behaving like that, if that stresses you out because you're too much like a chimpanzee like I am, um, then then it wasn't attractive anymore. If I could go treat people and not have to do the paperwork, I would stand on my feet and treat people from daylight till dark. Um, so that was that was the main thing. The other thing was the trauma.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  Is over time, when I became a nine one one paramedic, um, I didn't realize how traumatized I was. I didn't realize that I was walking around with an internal volume that was so high that I was constantly stressed out. My blood pressure was constantly up. Um, and uh, so.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  I started seeing, you know, um, murder, suicide stuff and, um, veterans coming home and, um, you know, dying and, and, uh, I just didn't want to see it anymore.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Now, are you talking about when you were, after you were out or when you were?

• 35:51Speaker 05

  Right, right. This was, this was after Ramadi.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 05

  So this was after killing a bunch of folks, surviving a bunch of attacks, feeling like Superman, coming back home and realizing that you're nothing.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 36:05Speaker 05

  Like just, yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  So you got medically discharged in 2000. Now, I don't want to go,

• 36:13Speaker 04

  you, the story of your medical condition is,

• 36:22Speaker 04

  people have to buy the book. People have to read it. Like, it, it is, um, I, I had to take it in chunks because I could feel everything. Um, it's amazing. It's amazing. Um.

• 36:37Speaker 05

  You want me to give a sample?

• 36:39Speaker 04

  Uh, you can give a teaser, but I really want to.

• 36:42Speaker 05

  No, no, no, that's right. That's right. I, we talked about that earlier. Um, yeah, we'll, we'll wait.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay. Um, oh, is this, is this what you're gonna talk about, uh, in, in the?

• 36:53Speaker 05

  No, in case you did, but if you wanted to just, just mention it, I was medically retired from the army because they did a surgery on my bladder that went sideways. And they had to go back in and do an emergency surgery, um, right after the initial surgery. And when they did that, they ripped open the head of my penis and multiple surgeries came after that. I was discharged with incontinence and, you know, I was still in my 30s in a green beret and, um, when, when all that was going on. So, and, uh, it led to a divorce with my wife and kids. And, and so it was the worst, most traumatic time of my life. Um.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  And it's a story that, you know, I've never heard anybody else tell.

• 37:42Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  From that aspect of having trauma to your penis. Short of that guy that had his penis cut off by his wife or girlfriend.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  Oh, bomb.

• 37:51Speaker 05

  She drove down the road and threw it out the window. He's got me beat, but he's the only guy I know of that's got me beat.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess he made a recovery because didn't he go on to do porn or a porn after that?

• 38:04Speaker 05

  Well, you know, with today's technology, they could put a big old black penis on you, you know? And you could be in porn and have, and have, and have, make a lot of money doing that, I'm sure.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  Everybody's got a path.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  So, yeah, and, and, and what you just described is, is the perfect kind of teaser for it. But you go into some, some detail that, like I said, I, I could feel it. But anyway, so you leave, you leave in 2000, 2001. What did you do between, between that and nine 11?

• 38:57Speaker 05

  So, okay, so I got medically retired in May of 2000. The next day I went to work as a paramedic in Rutherford County in Middle Tennessee.

• 39:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:07Speaker 05

  In Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The next day I, I went to work. I, I was of the generation and the mindset that if you didn't have a job, you were worthless.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:18Speaker 05

  You were sorry as hell. So, you know, when I realized I was getting put out of the military, the only certification I had was being a nationally registered paramedic. Everything else that I had done in the military wouldn't get me a job doing anything.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  So, you know, you can't even get a job as a cop. Anymore being a Green Beret or a Ranger unless you have a college degree.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 05

  So, um, so I just did, I, I just, I just went with it. And so the next day I was working as a nine one one paramedic and I did that for the next two years until ultimately I went to become a federal air marshal because of nine 11.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  And, and I do, I, I want to say that we are skipping a lot of personal stories and anecdotes and everything. Because while you were a paramedic, at the station was the, I believe, second ass kicking you delivered that is detailed in this book.

• 40:22Speaker 05

  In that year, yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 05

  I used to.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  In that year.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I think most people from our community, um, either were, were like myself or, you know, their best friend was like me or something, you know, we, we're not too far away from being that or whatever. So, you know, I grew up fighting, um, I didn't like being bullied, um, and so, uh,

• 40:49Speaker 05

  I had just got put out of the military, the trauma from that surgery, the trauma from my divorce, my best friend was having an affair with my wife. I let that go and the divorce was going fine. And as soon as I started seeing this hot female cop, my ex-wife started causing drama and my ex-best friend started causing drama. So it, it's very detailed in the book, but I just told him, I said, well, let's just meet and settle it. So my best friend in my life had become my nemesis and I put him in the ER. And, uh, so maybe six months after that, my hand had healed up pretty good.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Um, you know, being a paramedic, short of being an air marshal, being a paramedic was the best job I had for, um, getting dates, uh, that would be a, uh, appropriate way of putting it. And, um, so I was getting all the dates I wanted and, um, this one nurse that I had contacted, one of the other paramedics. Was seeing her and so he had a problem with it.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  And she.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  I was cool. I was like, I was like, I'm sorry.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  No, you said you contacted her, but she gave you her number and told you, told you she was single.

• 42:13Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  That's an important part. Yeah. So, um, so anyways, she was just one of three or four nurses or paramedics. I was messing around with at the time and, um, he was engaged to somebody and seeing people on the side. And so when that conflicted, um, you know, he called me up and addressed it. And, um, I actually liked the guy, like I liked him and he was just being a real jerk to me, just talking down to me. And so within a minute or so, I just got mad and what, once, once a fighting age male crosses me, all I want to do is kill him.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  So I just become a chimpanzee, a sociopath. And so all I wanted to do was after that, so, um, there was no rush. Um, I was like, okay, all right. That's how you feel about it. That's your woman. I need to stay away. I get it. So about two weeks later, I bump into him at shift changeover and I tell him to meet me out in the garage and, um, we sorted it out.

• 43:24Speaker 06

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• 45:36Speaker 06

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• 45:54Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 46:08Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 46:19Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 46:24Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 46:30Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 46:51Jack Murphy?

  Hey, guys. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House Podcast, the Eyes On Podcast, and the High Side News Outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox, and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Eyes On and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the High Side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy, and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox, and it will have the greatest hits of that week. It's really good. I'm checking it out.

• 47:35Jack Murphy?

  The website for it is teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Go there, and you enter into your email list, or you enter your email into the little thing on the website, and you're good to go, and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up.

• 47:58Speaker 12

  Where's the link?

• 47:59Jack Murphy?

  The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.kit, K-I-T, kiloindiatango.com backslash join.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, yes. Um, so from there, from being a paramedic, and that's, it's in the book, guys. Get the book. It's entertaining as hell. You'll love it. So, um, 9/11 happens, there's that big surge for air marshals, and initially, before they started lowering the standards, they had incredibly high standards, right? And, and a lot of former soft guys were going into it. It was kind of a network. Um, and, uh, and so you went through all this training. They have very precise shooting standards because you're

• 48:55Speaker 04

  an air marshal. Um, apparently you also meet a lot of, uh, women on the job. Um, and what happened with you is what happened with a lot of the guys, which I think is one of the reasons why the standards lowered, was triple canopy starts up. It's kind of word of mouth. It's all like tier one, tier two, tier three guy. It's all soft guys initially. That's, that's all they're taking. The pay is, what, 600, 1200 a day? Like, the pay is outrageous, right?

• 49:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, you're, you're, you're exactly right. I mean, the two things that I think, um, removed all the good people, uh, or most of the good people, um, from that program, or pushed them out, was when the Secret Service took over and kind of changed the way they ran that department. A lot of people were like, "I'm not, yeah, we're not doing this. This isn't what we signed on for." And I was part of that group. And, um, so, uh...

• 50:13Speaker 05

  There were so many opportunities, you know, because they recruited so high for the air marshal program, the standards were so high that a lot of people that became air marshals qualified in that initial push in 2003, 2004 to Iraq and Afghanistan is contrashit, you know, met that standard. So it was an easy transition.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  Because Triple Canopy, people may not know this, but Triple Canopy was known as the soft, like Triple Canopy was the elite security company and they had a very rigorous qualification course.

• 50:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I don't, you know, this is the part of my career that I think, you know, is more interesting to me. So, but I was there from the beginning and I know all the key players very well. And I, my last deployment with Triple Canopy, I started in February of 04 and my last deployment with Triple Canopy was in 2012. So I saw the beginning and the ending of Triple Canopy and the company that I started with, there's nothing I've done in my lifetime that compares to that organization. It was amazing. I mean, absolutely

• 51:42Speaker 05

  amazing. I was a very average guy that was very grateful to be there. 12, you know, in 2012, when I went back, it was the most budget bullshit company I'd ever deployed with.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 05

  You know, so it was a shell of itself. And, and so what happens is, is they, what Triple Canopy did in the beginning was they said, we're going to have the best men, the best pay and the best equipment. And for the first seven months, they did that.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:23Speaker 05

  The next seven months, they lost sight of that.

• 52:28Speaker 05

  Fourteen months into it, they started changing. And each year, over time, they got further and further away from what they initially started as. And because in the beginning, they cared about the guys on the ground. When you have a corporate office that that's full of operators, that knows that they're there to support the guys with body armor on, it's different than, because I worked in corporate with EODT later on. The corporate security culture thinks the corporation is the important part. And the guys on the ground need to listen up and do what they're told. And it's the complete opposite.

• 53:13Speaker 05

  If you want to operate the right way, if you want it to be non-toxic, healthy, if you want everything to be on the right frequency, Triple Canopy did it right for the first seven months. And now, I'm not saying Blackwater, because I worked several years with Blackwater. And Blackwater and Eric Prince was a great company to work for. But they still weren't Triple Canopy in the beginning. Nobody did what they did.

• 53:40Speaker 04

  Right. Well, and you know, when you just think of, I guess, the economics of it, you know, you have all, the GWOT starts and you have all these soft guys that are within three to five years of getting out, right? Um, maybe, you know, staying up on their skills, whatever else. Well, that pool dries up eventually. And, and not only that, but where Triple Canopy can pay guys eight, nine hundred dollars a day, um, because they're, they're giving like the cream of the crop. Their pitch is, we're, it's all soft.

• 54:20Speaker 04

  Like, these guys, they're all professionals, you know, they all know what they're doing. But then you have companies like Custer Battles and these other, like, shit shows.

• 54:30Speaker 05

  I haven't heard that, I haven't heard that name in a long time.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  Right. You have these other shit shows. First off, you need more and more people and you need them faster. The second thing is, you have all these other companies coming in going, well, you know, they say they're gonna do it for, you know, twenty-two hundred dollars per mandate. We can do it for, you know, twelve hundred per mandate. And, and we can get those same guys. They can't, but nobody ever checks that afterwards.

• 54:57Speaker 05

  You're absolutely correct. It becomes what they call lean management style. Mm-hmm. From a corporate aspect, it's just about the margins of profit. It, and it literally becomes just a business model. Yeah. And, um, like EODT, like whoever thought it would be a good idea to take South Africans, white, South Afrikanes, and put them in charge of black Ugandans? But that's what they did and, and other companies followed because you were once paying uh, an expat, whether it be, uh, you know, somebody from America or, um, you know,

• 55:38Speaker 05

  a qualified person from Britain or, or, or wherever else, but you were once paying that person, let's just say you're paying them $500 at the low end, um, to, to do the security at the front gate or, or whatever, you know, shit work that nobody wants to do, um, that needs to be done and it needs to be done by somebody that cares just enough to stay awake and, and do their job. And, um, so when you can pay Ugandans five or $600 a month to do the same job and they'll actually take more pride in it because it's so much more money than they can make. It's an opportunity worth leaving Uganda to be away from their family, to be in harm's

• 56:22Speaker 05

  way. It makes that big of a difference, but yet they're being managed by South Africans. So I was actually involved in, uh, I don't know if you remember, but in Baghdad, there was a, um, a South African that was killed by a Ugandan and then the Ugandan killed himself at one of the bases and I did the investigation on that and it, and it was, it was, it was that whole concept of just racism. You know, they had just harassed those guys so much and all those guys wanted to do was pull security, make money for their family, go home. Right, right.

• 57:05Speaker 05

  And, um, and so, you know, they would do things like have them up all night running from one guard shack to the other. Five minutes later, you know, run again. So they would just run them. So they couldn't fall asleep. Um, you know, just, just real brutal kind of things. So, um, again, I, I can get off track on that and get into a whole different chapter of, of life. So, um, it was pretty awful. After 2004, 2005, I, in 2006, I went to work for the, for USIS with

• 57:44Speaker 05

  the ATA program. And that was other than being part of Team Miami in Ramadi, Iraq, with Triple Canopy, you know, an original member of that team. Um, this was the next best job I'd ever had. Um, working with the Anti-Terrorist Assistance Program. Um, it was wonderful. But after that, I started bouncing to SOC. I went to EOD Corporate. I, um, went to Blackwater, um, you know, um, I've been with Tiger Swan, um, with Olive Group. Um, and I may be missing a few, unfortunately. I can't even remember all of them. But, but

• 58:25Speaker 05

  it, but most of it was shit. Most of it was shit. Blackwater, when Eric was there, they had it right. Um, they did some cowboy stuff. But I'm not, you know, I'm not going to judge how savage people are going to be in a scenario because I know the scenarios I had to be in. The, what I criticize people and, and what I can't stand and what I'm against is people lying about what they did or didn't do. Um, especially to profit from it. So, um, I don't have a problem, people that trained all their life to go kill folks and they go over there to kill folks. Cause that's what we sent people to do and, and we should, um, support that a little bit more than what we do.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  Let, let's talk about your time. Because, you know, you talk about being in combat. And for anybody who thinks that you weren't in combat because you were working for Triple Canopy, let's talk about your time and, uh, you know, Team Miami, Ramadi at that time. How many, how many, uh, ambushes or contacts would you say you, you were in during that like three or four year period?

• 59:37Speaker 05

  Okay, so in 2004 in Ramadi and not just in Ramadi, but we were the team assigned to Ramadi. Um, we were attacked over 20 times. And when I say attacked, it involved an RPG, a machine gun. We were attacked. It wasn't like somebody walked across the street with AK-47 and looked at us hard. You know, we, we were attacked over 20 times. Um, and, uh, so our principal was attacked, um, even before the team got there.

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:00:12Speaker 05

  Um, in Ramadi and, um,

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  The ambassador.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  His limo was, his limo was down hard and there was a DC reporter in the vehicle as well. And it was after that event, I think that was January or February 04. And, um, I don't know that a news reporter after that ever went to Ramadi. They would go to Fallujah, they would go to Camp Fallujah. Um, but I don't know of one single reporter or anything that after Ramadi, I mean, nobody wanted to go to Ramadi.

• 1:00:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Now, in the book, you tell a funny story about, uh, your principal, the ambassador, right? Uh, need, would, it needed to be at a lot of the same meetings that Mattis, Mattis needed to be at. And that he was, I don't want to say he was your canary in the coal mine because ba- basically you guys wanted to get out. You wanted to get out ahead of him, right?

• 1:01:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, it, it's a funny story now. Um, but you know, when, when you start realizing that every time you go to a meeting that General, General Mattis is at, he gets attacked going or coming back from every time. And so when you realize that pattern, you know, um, operating at tier one level, you have the freedom of going, we're going to change tactics. You know, when you're in the conventional military and they say the convoy speed's going to be 45 to 50 miles an hour. Or you can't come in and say, hey dude, we're doing 120 today. We're going to have a kilometer in between us.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  By the time you make contact, I'll be rolling up far enough back where I can dismount, take the attention off. You know what I mean? We started doing things different and, and it worked.

• 1:02:05Speaker 04

  But with Mattis, you guys started like making sure that you always left before his convoy did.

• 1:02:11Speaker 05

  That's right. That was our, um, that was our primary launch indicator was we had to leave Camp Ramadi, we had to leave, um, the government center, we had to leave Camp Fallujah, wherever it was that we were meeting, we had to leave, um, before General Mattis because he stopped and fought. So in protection, you're taught to run.

• 1:02:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  To go against your instinct. Well, for some people, it's their instinct to run. But, you know, when you're attacked, you're supposed to fight back. You're, you're, um, supposed to be trained to that level that your instinct is to fight back. And, uh, General Mattis, um, I don't know if he'll ever write a book, but, you know, tell me another two-star general that you know of, that every time he got attacked, which was regularly, um, they stopped and fought. Um, and, and he was right there with his Marines, um, doing that. So, and, and I've got a story of General Kelly also, you know, we took him down to Hillam and he told a story about, uh, you know, the first guy he killed over there, uh, from his Humvee.

• 1:03:27Speaker 05

  And so, you know, these are general officers that are getting out there with their men, um, and participating in the war. And so I have nothing but respect for General Mattis. But yes, um, we got attacked a lot, but he got attacked every time he left the base as far as I can remember.

• 1:03:48Speaker 04

  What was that, uh, cause you know, you had been in Ranger Battalion, you'd been in SF, all sort of in a peacetime military. What was that first contact like for you?

• 1:04:00Speaker 05

  Um.

• 1:04:04Speaker 05

  The first contact I was in,

• 1:04:10Speaker 05

  it went great at first. So when, when we got ambushed, we had the principal with us. I was in the follow vehicle and I saw four gunmen out my, out my window. And so, and we were going pretty slow. And so the call came,

• 1:04:34Speaker 05

  you know, RPG gunners, uh, reverse out, reverse out. And so one guy, the, the video's online of this attack, but it's from one vehicle. So you're only hearing him on the radio in his vehicle because it's being recorded by the camera. Um, there's five, you know, there's five vehicles totaling, five different versions of what's going on. But unlike with Tim Kennedy, everybody basically tells the same story just from their perspective.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  How many grenades, how many grenades did you guys throw that day? I, I want to know how many grenades you threw personally.

• 1:05:12Speaker 05

  Well, out of the 50 that I had, there was only three or four. I'm just kidding. I had one grenade and it was strapped, um, you know, to my, to my kit. Um, and, uh, but I never used that in battle.

• 1:05:30Speaker 04

  Amateur hour, amateur.

• 1:05:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I was, I was literally taking the slack. Now we're in armored vehicles, so if you're going to crack the door,

• 1:05:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  you better know what you're doing because you don't want to unbutton your armor unless you really need to, and you've thought that through. And, um, I had them dead to rights. And we were starting to turn around and I literally have the perfect scenario. If you're right-handed cracking the back door on the left side, looking back at three gunmen on a porch and one in the yard, and they're both, you know, kind of at the, they're all at the low ready.

• 1:06:15Speaker 05

  So I kinda had them dead to rights. So I'm taking the slack out and then he hit the gas and that slung me. And so now I'm sliding across the seat in the BMW, in the leather seat, to get to the other window so I can keep an eye to, so I can still see them because now we're turning around and that's when the RPG hit the road and shattered my window and flattened all the tires.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so, I mean, I assume you guys had run flats. You didn't need to do a recovery. You didn't have to do a recovery or anything like that. You could like?

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  That, that, that's, we would have been dead.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Speaker 05

  A day that, out of all the scenarios I've been in, and from a protection standpoint, I've been in a lot of scenarios from a protection standpoint of how to play these things out. And um, if, if any of our vehicles that day would have stopped rolling, um, everybody in that vehicle, um, would have been in trouble.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 05

  Would have been in trouble. They had us on both sides of the road. It, it was a, it was a major ambush, um, that they were setting up and, uh, it just looked like we caught them off guard.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, you know, you talk about internal volume and you had mentioned it a couple of times, like before this, uh, before this incident or be, before this time of your life. Can you tell us what the, the, the internal volume meant for you?

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. So if you, I guess the best way to explain this, if you go sit in a room where it's quiet, turn your phone off, turn the TV, it's just quiet. There's nothing.

• 1:08:04Speaker 05

  And sit there for 15 minutes. Now, if that seems like torture, your internal volume's probably high.

• 1:08:10Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:10Speaker 05

  You, you, you, you're probably gritting your teeth. You're probably, well, what animal in nature can't just sit?

• 1:08:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:19Speaker 05

  And be calm and relax in the quiet. So if you can't do that, which I couldn't, um, that's an example of, you know, you're, so we've got all these lies and excuses and these biases. We tell ourselves to justify our behavior. Our self-talk can justify almost anything we want it to. And so, um,

• 1:08:43Speaker 05

  What I realized um was my internal volume. It wasn't whether I had a new car. It wasn't whether I had a great job. It wasn't whether I had the beautiful hottest girlfriend. What made me happy was how I felt on the inside.

• 1:09:04Speaker 12

  Hmm.

• 1:09:05Speaker 05

  That internal volume. And when it was low, those were the best times of my life. And it was like, so how do you have a low internal? It's like, oh, you have to be mindful.

• 1:09:15Speaker 12

  Hmm.

• 1:09:16Speaker 05

  What does that mean? Well, so then you start down that road. And so I took the path of mindfulness by walking the Appalachian Trail. And that was when I woke up to what? To to actually recognize that what's going on inside me is my life. What everybody else thinks and what everything else is going on is something totally different. This experience, whether you believe in the Bible, whether you believe we're a computer program like the Matrix, no matter what you believe, you know, um, at the end of the day, how you feel about this experience, you know, how you feel in your container.

• 1:10:01Speaker 05

  You know, we all look a little different, some fat, some tall, some gifted, some not, whatever. It's a temporary container made up of bacteria, fungus, all kinds of stuff from the universe that we're in right now, traveling through this experience. And how you feel is what mattered. And I discovered that on the Appalachian Trail, walking that, spending that four months by myself. You know, I found organically how to just be present. Like, I got to a point, Dave, where I couldn't think about the future or the past. Now imagine going to sleep and not thinking about what happened today.

• 1:10:43Speaker 12

  Hmm.

• 1:10:43Speaker 05

  Imagine going to sleep and not thinking about your childhood. Imagine waking up and not worried about work. Like, I got to a state of nirvana naturally by just being in the woods. And if you look historically at. Mythology and, and, and all teachings from the east. People go out into the forest. They go out into the woods. They go out to the desert. They go and spend time alone as something happens. And that's something that happens is real and it's a detox. So your ego is toxic and the bigger your ego, the more toxic. And so I want to mention this, what I love about your podcast, Day.

• 1:11:28Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:11:43Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:11:54Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:11:59Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:12:05Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:12:25Speaker 05

  If you and Jack, if you guys are the real deal, but you guys don't have an ego, like your platform, your mannerisms, your attitudes, the way you guys do things, it isn't from this egotistical place. And, and I dig that. So, um. Thank you. Killing the ego is what my life is about now. And the hard thing with killing your ego is, is the most painful thing you'll ever do. Because to kill your ego means I'm not a Green Beret anymore. I'm not a Ranger. Right. I'm not some badass fist fighter.

• 1:13:04Speaker 05

  From back in the day, you know, I'm just an organism in this universe and how I feel is what matters. How I, um, the energy I put out, the frequency I operate, how I interact with animals and humans, all that matters. And so it's a, it's a paradigm shift. It's a complete awakening, um, where you just search for truth. There's no more manipulation. There's no more room for lies. Like it's, it's the truth and, um, and that's all you want.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  So it's, it's very interesting and, and I, you know, look forward to when we like get into sort of that, that journey of self-discovery. But one of the reasons I asked you about internal volume is because I, I think that, you know, there, there are a lot of like ideas or terms around it, but I like the idea of internal volume. And I think that for a lot of guys in the soft community or a lot of people, not guys, but girls, a lot of people who join the military or high performing types of jobs, that they have that drive and they have that internal volume and they're always kind of like seeking, right? And I think one of the

• 1:14:20Speaker 04

  things that many of us loved about war was that finally the external volume matched the internal volume. And finally,

• 1:14:30Speaker 05

  You got your gray light.

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  Right? Finally, we're oper- finally, the world has come up to our standard.

• 1:14:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Speaker 04

  And, and it's not screaming anymore because now there's equilibrium. And I think that so many people, when they finally find that and then they lose it, it's worse than not having found it.

• 1:14:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I like that. I, I, I think, um, I'm, I'm glad you kept talking about this because what I failed to connect with the militaries, we're familiar with inflate and deflate. You gotta be able to inflate, deflate, be a tier two guy, especially a tier, operated tier one level. You gotta be able to inflate and deflate well. And so what does that mean? So internal volume, think about a volume dog set on zero or set on 10. When you set that on zero,

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  Just peace, just calm, just stillness. And that's what we really want. We all, deep down, wanna feel safe. We wanna feel value, you know, worth. We wanna be calm, you know, uh, like you feel when you're romantic or having a nice meal. That parasympathetic part of your brain. We don't wanna live in that chimpanzee part of our brain. That sympathetic response, that fight, flight, you know, freeze, fawn, um, you know, hide. You know, we don't wanna live in that. So, learning how to inflate and deflate properly is something we learn well. And since they promote a monstrous side of us, so when you have that rage, that internal volume,

• 1:16:08Speaker 05

  that unpacked trauma from your childhood, you know, all this stuff that you're, um, suppressing so that you can be successful. Because if you couldn't suppress that, you'd be in prison.

• 1:16:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:16:22Speaker 05

  Right? The guys that can suppress it become cops. And military guys, the guys that can't suppress it, um, become criminals. You know? And, um, so, yeah, when you think about that knob, you know, it's like, okay, I'm at a, I'm, I'm flying into the objective. If I'm mindful, I'm at a two. I'm focused on my breathing. I know my job. When I step off, I'm going left. I need to make sure I don't do this. Next phase, we're gonna be here. I need to make sure I don't do that. You know, you're calm, you're thinking it in, you're ready. You're ready for anything. You're ready to flow and go, right? But when that guy comes through that door, you know, you need to go from a two to an eight. You don't need to go to a 10.

• 1:17:07Speaker 05

  You don't need to freak out, but you, you need to get on it, right? And then you need to come back down, go back to your breathing. So that's a mindful approach to being an operator in combat. And, um, so I think when you get the green light, to be monstrous, that monster, and everybody has it. And Carl, uh, Carl Jung, you know, talks a great deal about the shadow. You know, the monstrous. Jordan Peterson talks about, you know, the monster, or like us, monster killers, you know? Um, when you get the green light. To do what you've been trained to do. And the freedom to do it, um, it's intoxicating.

• 1:17:52Speaker 05

  Um, it was the highlight of my life.

• 1:17:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a purity.

• 1:17:58Speaker 05

  Serving in Ramadi with triple canopy was the highlight of my life. If I would have died there or died when I've got home, I would have lived a complete life. So everything I'm doing now is, is extra. It's a cherry on top.

• 1:18:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:18:13Speaker 05

  Like, like you said, once you come home and you don't have that, it's tough. And it was, man, you know, I, I spent a couple of years homeless. Um, you know, it, it, it hasn't been hugs and, and singing sweet songs. You know, it's been tough.

• 1:18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, so let's talk about that then, because you know, you, you spend that time in Ramadi. And then, then you do more of the J set, right? You do more of the training, the supervision, the corporate stuff. And, um, you know, and I, I think one of the things that you said hits on why a lot of veterans have a hard time dealing with their trauma and not just trauma from war, but trauma that's been carried forward and then just sort of like condensed in, in war. Um, is that it was the highlight of your life and it's hard to find anything. And so, you know, guys and girls come home from that experience.

• 1:19:13Speaker 04

  And it was the highlight and now they have to deal with paying bills. They have to deal with, you know, taxes. They have to deal with like social etiquette, all this other stuff. And, and I think a lot of, for a lot of, you know, like it all gets lumped under post-traumatic stress. But I think for a lot of them, it's like, I think for a lot of them, it's like, I did what I wanted to do. Like what, what do I got now, another 30, 40 years? Like, what am I going to do for 30 or 40 years?

• 1:19:42Speaker 05

  Right. That's a great point. I think it's all under the umbrella of PTSD. I agree with you when people talk about it. But like, like you're saying, there's, there's lots of subcategories.

• 1:19:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Speaker 05

  Um, that fall under that and, um, Yeah, uh, I can tell you from experience that part of the reason why veterans are blowing their brains out in the VA parking lot is because the way they're treated at the VA.

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:09Speaker 05

  I can tell you that when you come home from killing folks and almost being killed several times, and everybody on your team makes it home, and you're so grateful that that's your story, that everybody on your team came home after all that, and you struggle, um, to get medical care and dental care and, and, and end up not getting those things. Um, but then illegal people, like it's being promoted on television, like half of America

• 1:20:49Speaker 05

  or a third of America supports illegal people in this country getting full medical benefits and combat veterans aren't.

• 1:21:01Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:21:01Speaker 05

  You know, if you're not a hundred percent disabled, you don't have dental care in the VA.

• 1:21:06Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:21:07Speaker 05

  And so unless you have a job, um, that provides dental care after that, which, you know, there, there's problems there. So from a mental health standpoint, when you're looking at, okay, I'm getting older, and getting old is not for sissies. Like it's tough getting old and not being able to do what you used to do on your mental, you know, your mental health is challenged as, as you get old. And so it's, it's a lot tougher when you turn on the news and you see Americans fighting, politicians fighting for illegals, and you've been left out there, um, basically to rot. It makes you question everything.

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:21:51Speaker 04

  So during this, this high part of the GWOT, not just, you know, not just your time in Ramadi, but when security is still like a very thriving industry, right? They're still, they're still throwing money at it. The pay for the individuals have gone down. The equipment's gone down, but the contracts are bigger, right? And you're, you know, finding your way through this. What are you thinking? Are you looking for a career? Are you looking for satisfaction? Are you looking for a rush? Like, what are you doing?

• 1:22:28Speaker 05

  Well, when, when I was with Triple Can, if you know, four, I thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with them. Um, and then just, you know, Blackwater won the contract and they offered me like $300 less to do the same job in Ramadi. And I was like, no, this was a new team. I knew how dangerous Ramadi. I was like, no, I'm good. And so I, you know, that's the only reason why I turned it down. And, um, uh, so when I left there and went to UCIS ATA program, I was like, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life doing this job. I mean, I loved it and it was sustainable. Like it wasn't dangerous.

• 1:23:08Speaker 05

  It had everything that, that you would want, except, you know, not being shot at or blown up like I was in Ramadi, um, which I enjoyed. Um, but long-term, you know, that's not,

• 1:23:23Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:23:24Speaker 05

  you don't want to keep doing that long-term. So it was a great, you know, I did what I wanted to do. I proved to myself that I was a man. You know, that's what we want to do, right? We want approval. We want to be somebody, you know? At the end of the day,

• 1:23:39Speaker 05

  if you really slow down and look in the mirror deep enough, there's still a little boy in there. You know, and so if, if, if, if you don't bring that little boy with you along the way, he's still in there somewhere curled up and, uh, you know, that traumatized little boy. So, um, You know, all that came to fruition. Everything culminated in my life. And so it was like being a professional football player and winning the Super Bowl. Like, I know what it feels like now to be that person. It's the same internal feeling to be at the top of your game and the top of organization

• 1:24:20Speaker 05

  in the most dangerous little city in the world, doing what you do at the highest level. Um, yeah. Uh, and then to, to walk away from that and have another opportunity was great. So after, but I'm getting sidetracked. My ex-wife sent me an email and said, if I didn't come home, what had happened is she had got pregnant with her, my ex-best friend, and they were going to get married. And so now everything changed. So the deal I made with her for child support, my deployment rotation, everything was perfect. Everybody was happy.

• 1:25:03Speaker 05

  And then she got pregnant and decided to get married and everything changed. And so I had to resign from that position, come home and be a full-time parent to, so that I wouldn't lose custody of my children. And so I left that job, probably the best job I could have ever had, because I didn't want to give up custody of my children. And I know a lot of guys with our background would have kept working, but I, I just, um, you know, at that time, my kids meant everything to me.

• 1:25:34Speaker 04

  Sure. Can you tell us a little bit about the job? Because, you know, a lot of people may not be familiar with USAS or ATA or?

• 1:25:41Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, it's nine, nine-week deployments for the, um, bomb teams or the incident countermeasure teams. So what we would do was we'd go into a place like Indonesia or India, a place where, uh, friends of our country. And, um, this program had been around at the time for 20 something years. And it, it's just kind of a, um, a rapport builder with nations, a nation builder. So we would go over and teach the Indonesian Special Operations Bomb Unit.

• 1:26:23Speaker 05

  Um, how to um, build and how to disrupt IEDs of all different origins. And then after they learned how to disrupt those IEDs, we would teach them post blast scene analysis, you know, how to come in. So like when we were in Indonesia, uh, uh, Bali had the second attack and I was actually in Cuda in Bali at the time of that attack. And so for that team to go in there after the Rajah restaurant was uh, blown up, you know, they would go in and look for evidence of of bomb parts and and things of that nature. So we would teach them

• 1:27:07Speaker 05

  uh, those basic things um, and uh, then just go to another country. So you would set up, get your equipment set up for a week and then you teach them for eight weeks straight and fly home. And it was great money, great work environment, um, great mission. And I could have done that until retirement. But again, you know, um, life takes you where it takes you. And you gotta meet life where it takes you and and that's something I've definitely learned now. So um, I really fought it at the time. Um, if it was to happen again, I wouldn't have. I would have just

• 1:27:49Speaker 05

  um, you know, went along with it and not got so upset and um, tried to, you know, work from that from a more mindful place. But I just, I just said, okay, I'll just resign and go home and just sit at home to spite her. Because now that I'm home, I don't have to pay $2,000 a month child support. So she just cut her nose off to spite her face and so did I.

• 1:28:14Speaker 04

  Hmm. So, so you come back to the States. And what's the job market like for you here? What's, what, what is the future for Lee? When he looks at it?

• 1:28:28Speaker 05

  If I don't deploy, see, I was, I was in demand. You know, I'd just come out of Ramadi for 14 months. Um, there was a lot of things going on in Israel and other places. There was a lot of opportunities that I turned down, um, because I couldn't deploy anymore. I mean, really, really good, the agency stuff, lot of stuff, and I just couldn't do it. So luckily, um, when I was in 20th Group, um, a buddy of mine, John Nettles, um, was working with Alan Brosnan.

• 1:29:07Speaker 05

  Alan owned, um, Tees in West Memphis, which became Olive Group. And then Olive sold it back to, to Alan. Um, but, uh, um, where was I going with that?

• 1:29:23Speaker 04

  Um, like, your, your future, like, you're.

• 1:29:26Speaker 05

  Right, right. So, so because of my relationship with John, because John knew, um, we're over in Iraq at the same time doing different things. He knew I had been in Ramadi and Fallujah, um, shooting folks, um, while doing protection work. So they got a contract to teach pre-deployment, um, uh, training for the SEAL teams in West Memphis. And so they contacted me to be the lead instructor for all their pre-deployment, uh, PSD work, their protection work, high-threat protection work.

• 1:30:07Speaker 05

  So I put together a live-fire, eight, eight-day live-fire course from scratch, specifically for the SEALs. And, um, and if it weren't for that, um, I wouldn't have been connected to the community at all anymore. And so I was working part-time as a paramedic again. Luckily, I left there on good terms and they welcomed me back part-time. And so I was teaching part-time, doing paramedic part-time. And, um, I did that for a couple few years, um, until things had changed enough to where, um, she allowed me to start, uh, deploying again.

• 1:30:49Speaker 04

  And you know, it's interesting because you mentioned like high threat PSD,

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  like personal security detail.

• 1:31:00Speaker 04

  That's, that was something new that came out of the GWAT, right? You can't go to Executive International or whatever, whatever those schools are, and learn how to be a bodyguard in that kind of environment. Like you have, you almost have to have a military background in order to do that job.

• 1:31:23Speaker 05

  You have to have a soft background, I think. I'll go a step further and say you have to have a soft. High threat PSD is a thinking man's game. Doing PSD in a combat zone is a tier one mission. And so you're 100% correct prior to GWAT. I know maybe, maybe Dev Group did some stuff like that, but you know, Delta was the only guys really doing PSD, you know, like they did Schwartz cost detail. So Mad Max that ran the first two selection classes for triple canopy.

• 1:32:04Speaker 05

  So if you were in the first class or the second class in the original triple canopy in the beginning in 04, you had to pass Mad Max's standards. And they were very high. They were Delta standards. And they're, they're no joke. Anybody went through there, I'll tell you, they were Delta standards. They couldn't get enough people through the pipeline. So they removed Mad Max and put him in another capacity. So they could get larger classes through because the contract grew. And that would be the second, that would, then that's when you start looking at the second seven months of triple canopy in the beginning.

• 1:32:46Speaker 05

  And that's when you start talking about things you talked about too. You know, you start getting a different level of guy in 04 or from 04 to 05, from 05 to 06. You start, the pay gets less. Higher level guys go do different things, lesser qualified guys replace those guys. And by the end in Afghanistan and Iraq, you had guys that didn't have soft backgrounds. Some guys that just had law enforcement doing jobs that once were only held by soft guys. And there's a reason.

• 1:33:25Speaker 05

  Now, I'm not saying, let me caveat this. My experience in Ramadi, the two four Marines and two five Marines that infantry did more than the special ops and what we did ever did. So these infantry guys that we send to war to places like Fallujah and Ramadi that fight day and night, every day in their deployment, saw a lot more and did a lot more than anybody like me ever did. So I'm not trying to say that.

• 1:33:56Speaker 05

  I just want to make sure I make that distinguish. But for these skill sets, these tier one type jobs, you know, you need to have a soft background because you need to be able to lead a team or be the bottom man on the team. You need to be able to do, you know, you need to be able to inflate and deflate to the full spectrum of whatever might happen because like when we were protecting Ambassador Stu Jones going to Hillah, going to Baghdad, going to Fallujah, going to downtown Ramadi, going, uh, crossing the border into Jordan, we didn't have military support.

• 1:34:41Speaker 05

  We were five vehicles, 15 men with one principal roaming all of Iraq.

• 1:34:50Speaker 05

  You know, and a lot of times we got shot, I got shot at four different times by friendly fire and somebody from, I was on a podcast once and I said this wrong, somebody from Cornell, I said Stanford, but it was Cornell, somebody from Cornell that was doing their doctorate or whatever on Frach's side contacted me because they had heard.

• 1:35:18Speaker 05

  That I had four different incidents where I had been shot at by friendly fire and they, so they wanted to talk to me about that. But um yeah, it was it was oh four during that time really was a it was a it was a crazy time.

• 1:35:35Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, a friend of.

• 1:35:36Speaker 05

  Oh, I gotta point this out. I gotta point this out because I don't want to forget it. It's in my book and it's driving me crazy. The the devil of Ramadi sniper was not Chris Kyle. Okay. In 2004, the devil of Ramadi sniper was killing Marines and Army men and contractors left and right. And the devil of Ramadi was Juba. Um, and he ultimately killed one of the replacements, Bama.

• 1:36:07Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:36:21Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:36:32Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:36:37Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:36:43Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:37:03Speaker 05

  Um, that replaced me when Blackwater took out, replaced us. He ultimately killed him about two weeks later. But um, Chris Kyle was not the devil of Ramadi. That was a sniper that was killing Americans, not an American that was killing bad guys. That was a bad guy that was killing Americans was the devil of Ramadi.

• 1:37:30Speaker 04

  Thank you for clarifying that.

• 1:37:35Speaker 04

  So, sorry, I lost my train of thought. Okay, so

• 1:37:43Speaker 04

  you start to work for Olive Group, or you get in with that, you get in with Tiger Swan, with some of that sexy pipeline infiltration?

• 1:37:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, yeah. So I was, I was living like John J. Rambo. You know, I was homeless, working for cash, you know, construction jobs, or whatever else, you know, that's where some of us did, you know, end up. And so, a guy from Blackwater reached out to me and said, you know, there was this dapple protest at Stanley Rock, and they were paying like $500 a day to pull security. And I was like, heck yeah, man, I was, I was in bad shape, you know,

• 1:38:33Speaker 05

  and so that was a chance for me to try to get straightened out financially and, and get my feet back under me. And I went to work there, and in a few months, like, so if I go somewhere and I like it, it's something, it usually goes well. And when I go somewhere I don't, it usually doesn't. So I went there and it went well. The next thing I know, I'm the deputy project manager for Tiger Swan, running the entire state of Iowa, where the pipeline ran through, where the valve sites run through. And during 2017, there were two females that were leading this

• 1:39:14Speaker 05

  band of domestic terrorists who were doing millions of dollars of damage on the valve sites with the pipeline, the control centers, and putting holes in the actual pipes. So the FBI finally closed in on them, and they finally...

• 1:39:34Speaker 05

  Arrested them and that job just went away. So, you know, I I had been promoted up to a deputy project manager, JP, who I worked for, who was the program manager. Like, I was like, okay, like, this is gonna work out. Like, I'll stay with these guys. This is another Delta operated company like Triple Canopy. Like, I'm doing well. I fit in well. They like my leadership style. And I'm happy. And I really was. My mental health was great. And so, people like us, if we're in a position where we feel good about ourselves, we release good hormones.

• 1:40:17Speaker 05

  We thrive. We lose our belly fat, you know, we get off our ass. We, we, you know, and and when we don't, when we're in a job where we don't feel like we're high enough, or we're in a job we don't want to do, and we have to do, or whatever, you know, we, we have a lot of negative energy and negative self-talk, and we can lie to ourselves and ignore that, but it can make us, you know, not a good version of ourselves. And that's where addiction, separating from our suffering, that's where all that stuff plays in. And that's where yoga and mindfulness, you know, that's where I was able to wake up to just how monstrous

• 1:41:00Speaker 05

  I am, and just how much in denial I was about all of that.

• 1:41:07Speaker 04

  So, after Tiger Swant, like, that goes away, was Facebook next for you?

• 1:41:15Speaker 05

  No, Facebook was before that. But Facebook went away because of two reasons. And I'm gonna say the first reason, because I don't want to sound like I'm making any excuses, they politely asked me to leave. Um, but the secondary reason for that is is D E I. So Facebook was operating by D E I before there was D E I. They just didn't know it, but I did, you know? So they didn't want, they wanted guys like me and guys like Steve that, um, I won't mention his last name because I don't know if he would like that. But Steve from up in Washington State came down from Paul Allen and Bill Gates's detail to work at Facebook.

• 1:42:00Speaker 05

  And I came there at the same time and I worked the day shift and he worked the night shift. And our job was develop, um, Facebook's, uh, how to operate as a protection detail. And, uh, they didn't want to, uh, we, we, we helped get them to kind of a basic level, but they didn't want to really do things right.

• 1:42:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:42:24Speaker 05

  And after two thousand four with Triple Canopy, I was going to do things right or I was going to bitch about it and leave. You know, I couldn't not do things right anymore. I couldn't, I couldn't not do it. So, um, I made things kind of hard for some people there and they were frustrated with me. And, uh, and they, uh, you know, they, they asked me to leave. And so, um, you know, that was part of that not being a good place. If I would have went to Facebook and they would have said, the way you are is exactly what we're looking for, which is what Tiger Swan did, which is what Triple Canopy did, which is what Blackwater did. If I would have got that reception, I'd still be at Facebook.

• 1:43:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times, you know, th- those, those company, you know, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, uh, Adelson, uh, A- A- uh, Adelson is his name, right? Out in Vegas, like, you, you know, they, they want the soft guys, but they want more of a cop mentality.

• 1:43:31Speaker 05

  Well, um.

• 1:43:34Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, in a way like McDonald's details, some of those details are very cop, secret service kind of oriented. Right. So you're all right, but, but I don't mind saying this, and I know what I say, your channel doesn't represent, but what Facebook wanted was gays and lesbians and blacks and whites and Korean, they wanted their protection detail to look like Facebook, and that's what they did. Right. So there was, there was lots of unqualified people that I vetted coming into the team that were voted in that were not qualified, uh, they weren't qualified to be on a local,

• 1:44:19Speaker 05

  a little local garden, you know, like a Verizon, uh, cellphone store. Right. You know, uh, much less, you know, protecting billionaire, um, CEOs and COOs of, of corporations that have the intellectual properties of Facebook in his brain. Right. You know, um, you're protecting that. And, um, so, a- and, and not to mention the embarrassment, like who wants to be on a protection detail? And the only thing guys remember is you're the guy that let that happen to Zuckerberg? Like, I remember that, everybody in the world remembers that, you know, so you don't want to be working with idiots. And, uh, so my standard was high and it still is.

• 1:45:04Speaker 05

  So if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it right. If not, you know, just do it without me, I'll, I'll go do something else. Right. But, uh, yeah, they wanted, and they did, they, there was one black guy, um, that was gay, we had one female that was a lesbian openly, um, they were all young, um, and it, it was just chaos. People didn't, you know, you would drive at the client to S- to San Francisco with no backup vehicle. So we literally had Sheryl Sandberg, the COO, a self-made billionaire herself, on the side of the interstate.

• 1:45:42Speaker 05

  Broke down with um the shift leader because the shift leader came from safety service and didn't even have the wherewithal to to have a backup vehicle, but I've been screaming that stuff, you know, having ghost vehicles, doing things right.

• 1:45:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:46:00Speaker 05

  You know, the money was there, let's do it right, but um it's kind of like the government. Like, people just want, just get along, everybody be happy, and if something terrible happens, just point fingers and then fix it.

• 1:46:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:46:13Speaker 05

  It's like, well, let's be proactive.

• 1:46:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:16Speaker 05

  You know? Let's be a little proactive.

• 1:46:18Speaker 04

  And you know, and I think that like a lot of people misinterpret like the idea of, it doesn't matter if if somebody, if a guy is a black gay guy or a woman is an an open lesbian, if they know how to do the job, the problem is is when you start hiring because of who they are instead of what they know and what they can do.

• 1:46:43Speaker 05

  Let me clarify that because I know that could be sensitive to people. You're exactly right. That's what I meant. Um, you know, I grew up a poor little Jewish boy in Tennessee. Like, I I don't have some kind of racism towards, you know, anybody. I've I've I've been bullied and had my own experiences in my own life and my own problems. Um, I'm about um being qualified. So, yeah, every everybody on the team could have been a gay or lesbian if they were qualified.

• 1:47:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:47:14Speaker 05

  If they if if they had the qualification, but these people didn't.

• 1:47:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:47:18Speaker 05

  And so the the motivation, just like with D E I, the whole problem with D E I is, do you, and here's what I ask people. You're in a bad car accident and you look up and there's a paramedic.

• 1:47:36Speaker 05

  Do you want a paramedic that is highly trained? Or do you want a paramedic that is hired because of the way they look and their ideology? Now, if you ask anybody that's in a life or death situation, what do they want? If you're on an airplane and it's getting hijacked? Do you want somebody like me that's gonna stand up with a pistol? And do whatever I gotta do to get between you and the threat and get busy? Or do you want somebody that just looks and believes in a certain ideology?

• 1:48:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:48:12Speaker 05

  In that position? Because I went through the Federal Law Enforcement Academy with a black female. Now, I've worked with black females that could outdo me in a lot of things. But this black female couldn't get out of a first-class seat. That's how big she was. She couldn't pass the basic shooting standards that were dropped to the FBI standards. From the initial, um, uh, it was the TPC, the Tactical Pistol Course, reduced down to the, um, whatever the federal standard, the PCT, the Tactical Pistol Course.

• 1:48:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:50Speaker 05

  So it was a much lower standard as she couldn't pass it. So, but guess what? She graduated. So, people can think whatever they want to, but when you're on an air, when it's a job, a fireman has to carry you out of a burning building? You gotta ask yourself, you gotta stop all this fighting, um, and ask yourself, what would you want? Who would you hire to do those jobs? Do you want them to meet a standard? Or you, do you just want them to look a certain way? And so, you know, I, I, I grew up with common sense. And I'm gonna hold on to that.

• 1:49:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, Face, so Facebook was before Tiger Swann. So, Facebook and then, uh, and then the yacht detail, right? The, or the, uh?

• 1:49:44Speaker 05

  That was, man, I, you know, we could do a podcast with just one of these. Like, there's so many things when you mention them. I'm so glad you read the book, Dave, you know, um, uh, cause there's so much in there that never gets to.

• 1:49:58Speaker 04

  Once, once again, I want to say it is highly entertaining. Like, your personality shines through. It's, it's, it's an enjoyable read.

• 1:50:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, so the, so the yacht thing was out of desperation. Uh, and, and it turned into the Facebook thing. So to go to the yacht thing, we have to back up.

• 1:50:18Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:50:19Speaker 05

  Before the Facebook thing, but, um, let me tell you, doing yacht security and protection is shit work, man. It's shit work. If you have to live with the crew, just watch a couple of episodes of Below Deck.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  Um, it's, it's a, it's a tough life.

• 1:50:39Speaker 04

  It's not.

• 1:50:39Speaker 05

  For somebody like us to go spend a couple of months on a yacht.

• 1:50:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:50:43Speaker 05

  But I got to work with several billionaires in my life in that capacity. I got to see them with their, you know, literally with their, you know, their shirts off or their, um, you know, drunk with their guard down. And, you know, I got to see, um, personal sides of them. You know, you get to hear them in the backseat talking business with other people. You know, you're just privy to things, um, that I won't, um, obviously share of those type of things. But, um, it, it's really, it's, it's really interesting. You know, I got to meet the father of the DVD, um, uh, Lieberfahrer.

• 1:51:26Speaker 05

  He was the father of DVD and he spent about a month on the yacht. You know, he's good friends with Kevin Costner and he just had, you know, you get to hear all these amazing stories from these people and, uh, exposed to different things. And then you get to see that, you know, billionaires can be miserable. Um, you know, there were some people that I worked with and I won't point out who, because I worked with several, but there were some of them. Um, like Sheryl Sandberg is one of the, probably the best human beings I've ever met in my life. I've also met some of the worst in that group. So being a billionaire doesn't mean you're happy. There was no correlation between being a good person and being happy. There's no correlation

• 1:52:08Speaker 05

  with those things. Putting these people on pedestals like we do is ridiculous. Like, when you get to see them who they really are, most of them, you wouldn't hire to mow your yard. Most of them, I wouldn't hire to babysit my children. Like, you know, so, yeah, it helped me wake up to a lot of things.

• 1:52:29Speaker 04

  So, so the yacht, Facebook, Tiger Swan, and then Tiger Swan goes away. So what's next?

• 1:52:38Speaker 05

  So I take, I work overseas a couple gigs during the hurricane disaster. Nothing noteworthy there. Just typical armed security shit work. 12 hour shift, seven days a week. Good pay, shit work, shit leadership, you know, good pay. And you're working with good guys, guys you've worked with before. So, just, just another gig, no big deal. You learn what not to do, usually on those type of gigs. And that led to, I'm not doing this no more. I'm gonna, there's an Air Force base in my hometown, Arnold Air Force Base, Telahoma, Tennessee's my hometown. It's mainly civilians that work there. They work on, you know, rockets and,

• 1:53:23Speaker 05

  and weapons systems and things like that out there. So it's mainly civilians. And I'm gonna get a security job out there. They pay 20 something dollars an hour. It's easy work. There's never been a threat there. It's my hometown. It's, it's no big deal, right? I'll just do that. They have good medical insurance. And so I did that. And about a year and a half into it, it turned out it was shit work, terrible work. The worst, one of the worst jobs I've ever had. And from a security standpoint, the leadership and the tactics and the mindset was the worst I had ever had up until that point. And it was a military base, an Air Force base. So what are you gonna do?

• 1:54:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:54:06Speaker 05

  I'd just show up and get your paycheck. And it's a joke? It's a joke. And so about a year and a half into it, I hurt my shoulder from an incident in Iraq and then an incident in Africa. And then I hurt it again during this job. And so I took leave. And as soon as I took leave, workman's comp, they started trying to fire me.

• 1:54:31Speaker 05

  Well, when you're trying to fire me, or you're trying to do anything to me, and you don't have a good reason, um, you're gonna bring out my monster. And I'm gonna feel like I'm getting bullied. And when I feel like I'm getting bullied, I don't care who you are, I don't care what it is, I'm gonna fight back. And so, um, I got a lawyer, and, um, I fought back, and, and they decided that they didn't wanna fire me anymore. And the day I was supposed to re- report back to work, I resigned because, um, I was gonna resign all along after that, um, because of that ordeal, it went on for a few months. I was gonna resign all along after that, and, um,

• 1:55:15Speaker 05

  I got contacted about protecting the president of Haiti in 2019, and so, um, I jumped on that. And that, that's the last job I ever took.

• 1:55:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:30Speaker 05

  Except for becoming a yoga teacher. So, 2019, the deployment to Haiti, um, it turned out to be the worst deployment of my life, and I resigned.

• 1:55:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. What, what was so bad about it? Was it the leadership, uh, and not?

• 1:55:48Speaker 05

  It was the leader, so, so, so the mission was real. Like, President Javonel got assassinated like a year later.

• 1:55:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:55:55Speaker 05

  So, the mission was real, the threat was real, I knew it was real. Um, I was brought down there as the senior, um, not the, not the senior leader, but the senior, um, expert on protection. I was the person that dealt with the president and his wife. I was the only person, including on our detail, and including on his detail, I was the only person that was allowed to be with the president with a weapon. So that was my role. I was the AIC, um, the agent in charge, um, but I wasn't overall in

• 1:56:34Speaker 05

  charge. I couldn't make the ultimate decisions. Um, and so we were doing some cowboy shit when all we really needed to be doing was keeping an eye on him and his wife. And we were doing everything but that. And it was some of that cowboy stuff. It was some of the stuff that, you know, Blackwater got accused of in the early days. It was some of the stuff that, um, Custer Battles was accused of back in the early days. Just some cowboy stuff. And, um, this was a mature group of men down there doing this mission. Um, we had the right people. We just didn't have the right mindset, the right leadership, and we were focused on the

• 1:57:18Speaker 05

  wrong part of the story. And I'm glad that I resigned and left there because one of the guys that was on my team I fired because of how bad he was. And he and another guy that I had worked with a couple of months later, killed a couple in Nashville for money and they're doing life in prison in Tennessee right now. Two, uh, two Marines, one Force, uh, Marine and one, what's the other organization? Marsoc, one Marsoc and one Force guy. Uh, yeah, I've worked with both of them. And, um, so that was the kind of people, some of the stuff that, yeah. And I was just like, no, I'm, I'm leaving on my terms. I'm resigning. I'm

• 1:58:01Speaker 05

  going home. Um, you, you guys can have this if that's how you're going to operate. So I'm glad I did.

• 1:58:10Speaker 04

  So through all this and through, you know, all these years, you have this internal volume, you have this trauma that, that you haven't dealt with. I don't even know if you've recognized it. What, what started you on this path first to walk the Appalachian Trail? And then what took you to yoga of all things?

• 1:58:32Speaker 05

  I was gonna kill my boss. I'm glad you brought that out. I left that out, I think. I don't think I brought that up. So when I walked Appalachian Trail, I felt healed. When I got back off the Appalachian Trail, I slowly became me again.

• 1:58:52Speaker 12

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:53Speaker 05

  The busy world, the noise, the stress, it all worked its way back in. And I had forgotten how to be, to just be. I had detoxed and now I got back on the heroin, so to speak.

• 1:59:09Speaker 12

  Sure.

• 1:59:10Speaker 05

  And um, so the other pivotal point was, is I had had it. I was finally done. I was done with the stress, the high blood pressure. I was done with being told what to do. I was, you know, by stupid people. I was done with all, no, I was done with all this stuff. Now, I'm not saying I was right about anything. I'm just answering your question. I felt like I was just completely done. And when my boss, who was a little retired Air Force officer, um, when he tried to fire me for using inappropriate language at work, that's what they were trying to fire me for, a bunch of security guys and cops

• 1:59:54Speaker 05

  at an Air Force base, and he's trying to fire me for inappropriate language. So of course, when I got my lawyers anyways, so, but when he called me into office and told me he was gonna, you know, fire me. And um, when I left there, I was so upset

• 2:00:14Speaker 05

  that I decided I was gonna wait for him to get off work.

• 2:00:18Speaker 05

  I was gonna follow him home and kill him. And that's what I was gonna do. Well, and I didn't have another, it, it, there wasn't, um, there wasn't another thought on my mind.

• 2:00:30Speaker 12

  And, and.

• 2:00:30Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ashkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:00:45Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:00:56Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:01:01Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:01:07Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 2:01:27Speaker 04

  You know, we didn't, you know, we didn't cover this. It's in the book. But when we talked about those two fights you had in that one year, the first fight almost ended that way, too. The guy was saved by families showing up in the park.

• 2:01:45Speaker 05

  That was the, that was the first time in my life. So that was after being a Green Beret, but before Ramadi and Triple Canopy. It was in between there. That was the first time, that wasn't the first time in my life I had chased somebody with a gun or something like that. But that was the first time in my life where I knew I gave myself the green light to kill somebody. When you get, when you're somebody like us, that have all these skill sets, all these abilities, all these experiences, but you obviously keep those things in check. When you give yourself the green light to do whatever the fuck you

• 2:02:30Speaker 05

  want, it's liberating. It's liberating. And when you feel like it's just because it's a really bad person that was trying to do something bad to you, it's just, it's like just because the rest of society won't fight back and, and teach you a lesson, I will. So when I hear about a coworker goes to work and kills somebody, or like when that guy killed that insurance guy in New York, I don't go, oh my God, go catch this guy or whatever. I go, I wonder what the story is. Because I bet half the time, the person getting...

• 2:03:07Speaker 05

  What they got might have had it coming.

• 2:03:09Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 2:03:10Speaker 05

  That's how, you know, that's how I look at those things. So I was in a scenario where I was gonna be that guy. X, everything goes and kills his boss and I'm gonna be the bad guy.

• 2:03:25Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 2:03:25Speaker 05

  You know, his story, or my story's not gonna be the narrative.

• 2:03:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:03:30Speaker 05

  His story is gonna be the narrative. He's gonna be the government. He's gonna be the media in this scenario and I'm gonna be on the shit end of the stick. And that, you know, that's how those things work.

• 2:03:43Speaker 04

  So you were, so this was your plan or this was your thought? And what changed?

• 2:03:53Speaker 05

  So in, in two thousand fourteen, when I worked at Facebook, the guys that came down from Washington State, from Bill Gates's detail and Paul Allen's detail, they were used to smoking and doing marijuana because it was legal and the corporations don't have a policy against it. So, um, Facebook was the same way. So it's legal in California to do weed if you have a medical marijuana card and it's legal to, to do weed if you work at Facebook. I mean, they, the campus at Facebook, each section has its own bar.

• 2:04:34Speaker 05

  You know, I mean, it's, it's a very liberal kind of, um, it's interesting. It's, it's fascinating kind of the dynamics out there. But back to, um, back to the point, um,

• 2:04:50Speaker 05

  I got back to my camper. I was living in a camper at the time. And I got back to the camper and I had been doing Ashtanga yoga. It's a type of yoga. I won't get into it because it's not important. Um, but I was doing an Ashtanga practice. It takes about ninety minutes. So I thought, okay, if I do yoga, I usually feel better after yoga. If I do yoga, maybe I'll feel better because my internal volume was at a ten.

• 2:05:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:05:24Speaker 05

  Like I was gonna kill him and I wasn't just gonna kill him.

• 2:05:29Speaker 05

  I was gonna hurt him. And then I was gonna kill him. I was as upset, everything in my life that had ever pissed me off. Any, everything in my life that I wanted to do or say to get back at somebody, he was gonna get.

• 2:05:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:05:46Speaker 05

  And I knew.

• 2:05:47Speaker 04

  You had just hit, you had hit your breaking points. You had hit your breaking point.

• 2:05:52Speaker 05

  I, I do it, and, and since I had, you know, once you kill a few people in a few different scenarios, you realize how easy it is.

• 2:06:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:06:00Speaker 05

  That's not the hard part. Killing people's not hard. It's giving yourself the great light to do it.

• 2:06:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:06:06Speaker 05

  And so, um, that's the hard part.

• 2:06:08Speaker 04

  And getting away with it.

• 2:06:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, I did. Well, that's, that's where the conundrum came in. So I did ninety minutes of yoga, and I still wanted to kill him. And I started thinking, okay, if I go kill him, at that time, there was about three people or four people I wanted to kill. Honestly, that had done me wrong in my life. And if, you know, if they made it legal, I'd go kill those people and sleep like a baby. So I started thinking, do I go kill those people? If so, in what order? So my mind starts getting really busy. And the only thing that ever worked for me was weed. And so I called up, um, a friend of mine.

• 2:06:54Speaker 05

  And, um, I got some weed, and I smoked a bunch of weed, and I got really high. And I did some more yoga, and I felt like giving people hugs. I, I, I didn't, I didn't wanna hurt him. Um, but I didn't wanna go back to that job. I didn't know what to do. I, I thought, you know, um, maybe I should commit myself. You know, I need help. Like, I, I noticed in that moment, like, I gotta do something. Like, you gotta do something, dude.

• 2:07:26Speaker 04

  Is this, is this?

• 2:07:28Speaker 05

  And so I, I, I decided to become a yoga teacher.

• 2:07:32Speaker 04

  I, I wanna ask you real quick before you, you, you move on. Is this the first time, you know, cause? You know, a lot of spiritual development happens after, or potentially, but a lot of the spiritual development happens after, I don't want to call it a nervous breakdown, but after people, like, after the ego is destroyed, right? Once, when the ego blows up, it gives us some clarity for a little while, or it can, it doesn't always. But was this the first time that you had? I mean, I know you'd been angry before, you know, you jacked up those guys in the

• 2:08:15Speaker 04

  fight, stuff like that, but is this the first time that it got to that point, to where it was just like, like a bubble bursting for you?

• 2:08:24Speaker 05

  No, I had been that mad before, but it was before I'd killed people. So going and killing them wasn't like, you know, in your multiple choices, it just wasn't a choice.

• 2:08:37Speaker 04

  But what I mean is, is this the first, was this, oh, go ahead, go ahead, please.

• 2:08:42Speaker 05

  But what you said is a very valuable point for everybody. When you have an ego death, it's the hardest, darkest thing, and that's where I'm at now.

• 2:08:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:53Speaker 05

  So that was the beginning. So that was the beginning, the segue into the enlightenment, the awakening, the higher consciousness. There's a lot of ways of talking about it, the darkness, embracing the darkness, becoming one, becoming the real you. You know, because most of us don't want to admit, you know, I'll say something funny, simple, but it can be profound. Like, most people don't want to admit they masturbate, right? So they'll lie about it. Well, there's a lot of things that people don't want to admit that to lie about, but once you wake up, only the truth can work.

• 2:09:34Speaker 05

  You know, and so when you kill your ego and you only operate with truth, there's no facade, I'm not going to be this fake person, I'm not going to go try to act, I'm not going to try to make this person happy. Like, when you eliminate all those, you know, it's a game changer, but when you kill your ego, and I'm in the process of doing that, the depression, or what feels like depression, is that... Stuff that you have to go through. And when you end up on the other side of an ego death, you're free. You don't live in this material world any longer.

• 2:10:18Speaker 05

  You don't respond to the news and the ups and downs and all this nonsense. In this fake world it's been created, you're grounded in your body, which means you're not in the future or the past in your mind. So when people say, what do you mean grounded in your body? Of course I'm in your body. It's like, no. You spend 95% of your conscious day unconscious. And I better in the subconscious, so or in the unconscious mind. Um, you know, there's about 5% of the time the average person is in their body. And what I mean is grounded in right now.

• 2:10:57Speaker 05

  Right now, this podcast is forcing me to be grounded in right now and pay attention to you. But how many times during the day are we thinking about something else? Driving down the road, thinking about the future past, laying in bed, thinking about, you're not in your body. Once you're grounded in your body, that's mindfulness. You're present. And people read all these books and do all these things. It's like, that's all you have to do. You don't have to read anything. Just start being present. Stop being distracted. Stop being, you know, and so that's my, that's my little spill on that.

• 2:11:38Speaker 04

  You had already been doing yoga up to this point. Was yoga just initially, was it just, you know, a way for an older guy with a beat up body to kind of stay in shape?

• 2:11:53Speaker 05

  That's a great question that we didn't talk about. So when I finished the Appalachian Trail in 2015, a friend of mine bought me the book and every veteran should read this book. Everybody with childhood trauma should read this book or listen to it. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Koe. I read that book, started reading that book in 2015 and I started crying. I wasn't ready. And so in 2019, I was ready to read it.

• 2:12:29Speaker 05

  And when I read in that book, Vessel Van Der Koke or some of his colleagues or people in that realm, did a study in 2014 with traumatized, sexually assaulted, abused, raped incest women, a large group of that, they did an extensive study in 2014. And they found out that yoga does more to help trauma than any medication on the market. And so I'm a very logical, critical thinking type person in this phase of my life. And so it was like, oh, okay.

• 2:13:10Speaker 05

  Well, I need something to do. I need a passion, a purpose in life. Sheryl Sandberg's foundation Lean In is this beautiful thing. She's this beautiful person. Well, I want to be a beautiful thing. I want to do beautiful things. So I'm going to have this foundation and I'm going to teach yoga for free. And it started out great at first. And COVID hit. And COVID, which I truly believed then and now was

• 2:13:44Speaker 05

  a false flag attack. COVID crushed people that were doing things like me, hairdressers, people that own gyms, MMA. So, you know, they crushed people that were doing things like that. So I was trying to give back something free to the community. I was teaching six times or two times a day, six times a week at the American Legion. And so that's where I got that idea. It was from that book. Somebody that could speak our language, that had dealt with veterans for 40 something years, he invented the term PTSD. So where better to learn about what that means? Where does that come from? What's that about?

• 2:14:27Speaker 05

  And so you want to talk about why we act the way we do or why people act the way we do? It's like, if I'm present.

• 2:14:37Speaker 05

  And you say something, there's a gap between what you say and how I respond. If I'm not present, somebody beats on that door right now, starts screaming, boom, I'm not present anymore. That 95% that chimpanzee part of my brain is now in charge. And now I turn and I react to the door. And if it's trouble, I'm ready to meet it. I'm ready to inflate to 10 just like that. Well, you can't operate in a civilized society like that. So that's what we're dealing with. Right. That's what we're dealing with. It's that simple. It's a part of our brain that operates how we behave.

• 2:15:17Speaker 05

  And if we're not mindful and stay in that other part of our brain, the part I'm in right now, that's when those things are gonna happen. And so practicing through neuropress, through neuroplasticity and through time. What is neuroplasticity? It's the same thing Ivan Pavlov did with his dogs. He would ring a bell, they'd salivate and then he'd feed them. It's conditioning people. That's what they do to humans. You know, we were conditioned to act a certain way during COVID, right? You know, it's a conditioning. So you can condition yourself to do good things as well as bad things.

• 2:15:57Speaker 05

  So what you do and what you think about on a daily basis will change you through neuroplasticity. And the younger you are, the easier and faster that change will happen. But you still can be my age and change. Do I think at 59 years old, you know, I'm gonna be as, you know, have zero violence inside of me and be this totally different person? No, I'm always gonna be me. I just need to be mindful. And that's the purpose of my book, you know, where a monster and mindfulness become one. You know, that's the subtitle of the story of my book.

• 2:16:39Speaker 04

  So, so when you had this moment, you're like, something has to change. And you'd already been practicing yoga. So you are already aware that.

• 2:16:51Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:17:06Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:17:17Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:17:22Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:17:28Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:17:48Speaker 04

  Like, obviously, you knew that you had trauma in your past. But it's coming, it's bubbling up and becoming, you're more aware of it. How has your practice of yoga, how has anything else you've been doing? How has that? Or, I should say, has that? Have you, have you worked through some of that? Has, have you purged or cleansed or even, you know, made friends with, with, with your past or with that trauma?

• 2:18:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I've been at this five years and in the last year, um, I would say has been the biggest breakthrough. I'd say in the last year, two years, but more of the last year, I would say I'm really feeling the effects of the ego death. You know, um, uh, I practice meditating, um, you know, I have animals and a hobby farm. And, you know, I don't focus on, you know, doing great things anymore, you know, getting attention anymore. And, you know, earlier, you know, especially last year, you know, it's like I'm a minimalist. Um, I got on social media to try to promote my book because if the book does good,

• 2:19:16Speaker 05

  I can have the money for a free yoga studio and pay instructors to give yoga for free, you know, it'll all come to fruition. But what I found out was chasing that was wanting something. And that's my ego, you know, and, and you start going, well, hold on. It's like, no. Like if you really want to get down to it, if you really want to do this right, that's what it's about. It's about just being, just being right here, just being calm, being mindful, um, not letting everything else affect you. And I'm not there yet. Like I still deal with anxiety and depression and I have really bad days sometimes.

• 2:20:00Speaker 05

  But what I'm doing right now, I'm at the part of the ego death. If you look into what Carl, Carl Jung or a lot of the experts talk about the ego death, you know, and it was great that you understand that and we're talking to that, but, um, you know, when you get to that, there's a antisocial, isolation, quiet stillness aspect of that that can make you not want to be around humans. And so I kind of realized that in my quest, I was being a little hypocritical. I was talking about being, you know, killing my ego.

• 2:20:43Speaker 05

  And I'm out here trying to get on podcasts and trying to promote my book and on most social media and whatever. It's like, Um, I'm lying to myself. So that's where you have to back up. And with those biases and that self-talk and that justification and go, hey, man, you know, if I, if my book's supposed to do well, it's just gonna do well. I wrote it and that's karma. And karma's not punishment. Karma is what you do. And so if you do great things, great things are gonna happen in your life. You reap what you sow. It is a cause and effects. It's a real thing and I believe in it 100%.

• 2:21:27Speaker 05

  I think when I die, everything that I did to somebody else, I'm gonna experience. And that's karma. I'm gonna experience myself, what I did to people. Everybody I killed in Iraq, I'm gonna experience what it was like to get killed by me. Every girl that I ever lied to or cheated on or hurt, um, you know, or monstrous towards, I'm gonna experience what I did to them, you know? And that's what hell is to me. You know, that's, that's how I look at things. And so, you know, when I look at karma now, um, it's serious.

• 2:22:08Speaker 05

  And I wanna make sure that whatever I'm putting out and whatever I've experienced with animals or humans or other living things is as beautiful and kind and as loving as I'm capable of. But there's no guarantees, I'm still me. And if I'm not mindful and things get crazy enough, I'm gonna, I'm gonna act like a, an alpha team leader in Ranger Battalion or a, you know, a shooter in Iraq.

• 2:22:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Thank you so much, Lee, for, for sharing. Well, first off, for writing this book. It's, it's amazing. Um, and also for coming on and, and sharing your story with us. Really appreciate it.

• 2:22:53Speaker 05

  It's my, it's my pleasure. I, you know, out of the, there's, there's some great podcasts out there with, uh, in the, within the special ops community, but you know, within that realm, um, you know, you guys have been my favorite for a while. I just like your style. I like the way you guys do business. Very respectful. Uh, there, there's no ego, even though you guys could, you guys have incredible backgrounds and what you're both doing right now is still, um, doing great things. So, you know, I appreciate, you know, I'm nobody, you know, to, to be somebody in our community, you, you, you gotta do something that gets in the news and you gotta do something for valor. And so I'm just grateful that I could unpack,

• 2:23:38Speaker 05

  that I could have an honor, an, an opportunity to say that you can be a below average person. And then find a way to, to catch up to the group and spend the rest of your life just surrounding yourself with good people and try to work above average, even if you started out below average, you know, um, you can manifest whatever you want. Um, but you gotta start paying attention to your internal narrative. If you're talking negative and talking shit, but acting nice to people, you're full of shit. You're two different fucking people. You know, the outside's gotta match the inside. And if it doesn't, you need to look in the mirror until it does.

• 2:24:22Speaker 04

  That's so true. Um, internal volume, find it on Amazon. Um, you know, uh, you guys, it, it's a hell of a read. I'll just say that. It is, it is quite exciting. Um, is there anything that? We missed anything that I failed to talk about or ask you about that you?

• 2:24:49Speaker 05

  We're probably, we've probably gone a long time, so I don't want to drag it out. I just want to say a shout out to Joe Price. I hope that we can get justice one day for Joe Price and John Chapman and folks like that. I hope we can clean up the special ops community a little better like with what you guys are doing with Tim Kennedy. You know, guys like me really appreciate that. It's really triggering for things like that to happen in our community. So seeing people policing that up quickly and holding a standard, it makes me proud again that I was a Green Beret and that I was a Ranger. So I really appreciate that.

• 2:25:31Speaker 05

  And I just want to say that if anybody, you know, I just finally got 100% VA after 20 something years of fighting. I got a great guy, if anybody wants to reach out at Lee Deckleman at gmail.com, I'll hook you up with a great guy. He got me and my sister 100%, you know, in about a year, a year and a half. And so I know I got a lot of guys are fighting to just get the basic care. If you need help, please reach out and Tunnels to Towers, that's where I give my money. They're doing great things for homeless veterans. And so I just want to shout out to them.

• 2:26:13Speaker 05

  You know, anything we can do as veterans to help veterans lift them up. And the veterans that have been lifted up by lies, let's bring them back down. And let's bring that harmonious balance back to our community. And that'd be a great thing to see happen before I die.

• 2:26:33Speaker 04

  It would be amazing. Uh, Dee, do we have any questions? No? Okay. Um, where can people, uh, are you on social media at all? Or where can people find you?

• 2:26:43Speaker 05

  No, no, if somebody wants to reach out to me about anything, um, I'm living small, you know, I'm not gonna be a public, even if this book does real good, you know, I just wanna kinda do my thing. But if I can help anybody, or if anybody has any questions, or, you know, Lee Deckleman, D E C K E L M A N at gmail dot com. Um, you know, I'd help anybody in any way I can. But, you know, my book's about a traumatic life that has a little bit of war in it. Um, it's not a war story.

• 2:27:14Speaker 04

  Oh, it, it's a war story, like, the whole book is a war story.

• 2:27:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, in a way, it is.

• 2:27:20Speaker 04

  There may not, there may not, it may not be in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it's a war story.

• 2:27:26Speaker 05

  Well, the last thing I wanna say is, I'm no hero. I've never done anything heroic, but everything in that book is true.

• 2:27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and I think, you know, um, you know, a lot of our viewers are history buffs, or they like the military, or, you know, the intelligence community, or special operations community. If, you know, this is a book, um, honestly, because it's not just about the military. Um, I, I, it's a book that, like, everybody can relate to in one way or another. Um, you know, it's, it's your story. So, um, you know, I, I really hope people do, uh, pick this up and read it. Um, we're gonna go now. Uh, we are gonna do a, uh, Team House After Dark, uh, for our Patreon subscribers after this.

• 2:28:19Speaker 04

  Uh, so if you're a Patreon subscriber and you want some spicy tales, uh, that's where you'll find them. Um, so, thank you, everybody, we really appreciate it. Lee, thank you so much for your time.

• 2:28:31Speaker 05

  Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

• 2:28:35Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House Podcast, the Eyes On Podcast, and the High Side News Outlet, which I run with Shawn Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week, it's going to come into your inbox, and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Eyes On and the Team House, and whatever's topical or current on the High Side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you, as social media algorithms are pretty iffy, and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email, it'll slide into your inbox, and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good, man. Checking it out.

• 2:29:19Jack Murphy?

  The website for it is teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Go there, and you enter into your email list, or you enter your email into the little thing on the website, and you're good to go. And that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support, and hope you'll consider signing up.

• 2:29:42Speaker 12

  Where's the link?

• 2:29:43Jack Murphy?

  The link will also be down in the description, if you're looking for it.

• 2:29:47Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:30:01Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:30:12Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.

• 2:30:17Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:30:23Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 2:30:43Speaker 04

  There. And that's teamhousepodcast.kit, K-I-T, kiloindiatango.com backslash.

• 2:30:53Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:31:07Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:31:18Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:31:23Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:31:29Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:31:50Speaker 04

  Join.

• 2:31:56Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:32:10Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:32:21Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:32:26Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:32:32Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:32:59Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:33:14Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:33:25Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:33:30Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:33:36Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:34:01Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:34:16Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:34:27Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:34:32Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:34:38Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:35:03Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:35:18Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:35:29Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:35:34Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:35:40Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:36:06Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:36:21Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:36:32Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:36:37Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:36:43Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:37:03Speaker 00

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 2:37:16Speaker 01

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair,

• 2:38:00Speaker 01

  paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

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  Relax and get ready for bed with Dr. Teal's magnesium spray. Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt. Dr. Teal's magnesium spray is designed to help you unwind and get in a nighttime state of mind. Dr. Teal's magnesium spray is wellness you can feel, and you can find it in your local bath aisle. Dr. Teal's. Yep, you needed that.

• 2:38:32Speaker 14

  Monday night brings one more big matchup to settle into. And when every play matters, the last thing you want to do is step away to figure out dinner. That's where DiGiorno comes in. Get a DiGiorno pizza ready before kickoff, then enjoy restaurant-quality taste fresh from your own oven while you stay locked into every play. Stock up on DiGiorno over the weekend so when Monday night rolls around, the only thing you sweat is the game. Shop now at the link in the episode description. It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno.