413: Reach Out. Stay Connected. People Need People. With Frank Larkin

The story of Navy SEAL, Ryan Larkin. The physical and mental toll of service lasts long after the uniform is retired. Many of those who are suffering are not seeking help or treatment, or they may not even know how to vocalize what they are feeling. They may pull away from family and friends and isolate themselves, a known precursor to suicidal ideation. They may be suffering from undiagnosed traumatic brain injuries that mimics psychological ailments or PTSD. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 413 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Ryan Larkin deployed on heavy combat tours between 2008 and 2013, where he would blow through thick walls and doors, fire weapons with a powerful blast, and be exposed to improvised bombs.

• 0:24Jocko Willink?

  In one video, he is seen as he stands by, his fingers in his ears, as another soldier blasts a rocket launcher a few feet away.

• 0:34Jocko Willink?

  "He would say to me, 'Mom, it would just clear out my sinuses, and you could feel it. It was so unbelievable,' Jill Larkin said.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  The vibrations left microscopic tears in her son's brain, so small that MRIs and PET scans couldn't detect the damage while he was living.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  Survivors of explosive attacks often report headaches, difficulty sleeping, trouble concentrating, irritability, and memory problems.

• 1:06Jocko Willink?

  A 2017 study of eight deceased military personnel found that blast exposure produces scarring lesions in the brain.

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  When Larkin returned home after his third tour, his brain had changed.

• 1:25Jocko Willink?

  'He was a different kid, totally,' his mother said. Larkin started having trouble sleeping. He complained of headaches and became short-fused. He stopped smiling, and his relationships started to erode. He deployed on his final tour in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, an area with a high rate of enemy contact.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  When he returned home, he was more anxious and confused. He was hard to talk to, his parents said. When he was able to sleep, he would have nightmares. Larkin began teaching other SEALs explosive breaching techniques in San Diego, where he was exposed to blast waves daily.

• 2:07Jocko Willink?

  Eventually, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  The Navy referred him to several programs. Some were helpful, others destructive.

• 2:20Jocko Willink?

  The common theme was a prescription for medication, his parents said. Boxes of medication would arrive at their house.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  Every time we turned around, somebody was writing a new prescription for some type of drug, Frank Larkin, Ryan's father, said. Over two years, Ryan Larkin was prescribed over forty medications, his father reported. The drugs made him feel worse, and he was labeled operationally unfit and mentally unstable. Without a customized care plan, he started losing trust in the institution he loved above all else. "He's the only one that said something was wrong with his head," Frank Larkin said. "Ryan would say, 'Something is wrong with my head. I don't know what it is, but they keep telling me I'm nuts. I'm crazy.'"

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  He was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2016. He was referred to a veterans' hospital for treatment, which felt like being abandoned. The lack of science explaining traumatic brain injuries led the Larkins to countless doctors and therapists, but they never got a definitive diagnosis. "You become very vulnerable with a lack of good science to help support your decisions," Frank Larkin said. He said they almost spent themselves into bankruptcy on different treatments.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  "When you see someone like Ryan circling the drain, you'll do anything," he said. And those are some excerpts from an article from the Washington Post by Lily Price from February of 2020. And Frank and Jill, Ryan's mom and dad, did everything that they could. Ryan's dad Frank had also been in the SEAL teams in the late 70s and early 80s. Ryan is what's known as a legacy, a SEAL whose father was also a SEAL.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  But despite his father's understanding of the Navy and the SEAL teams and of the job, Ryan continued to suffer. And on April 23, 2017, he killed himself.

• 4:52Jocko Willink?

  He had told his dad months before he killed himself that he wanted his brain to be studied. He knew there was something wrong. And after he died, his brain was studied at Walter Reed National Military Center, where a doctor discovered a severe level of microscopic brain injury uniquely related to blast exposure.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  But it was too late.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  And in an effort to prevent this from happening to more service members in the future, Frank Larkin has made it his mission to get the funding, research, and protocols in place to help our service members before it's too late.

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  And it's an honor to have Frank Larkin with us here tonight to discuss his life, his son's life, and the lessons he learned through service and sacrifice for him and his family. Frank, thanks for coming down and joining us.

• 6:02Jocko Willink?

  Clearly, just a horrific scenario. And I spent the last few days talking to, talking to people that worked with Ryan over the years, his master chiefs, some of his chiefs. And you just get this picture of a kid who is what you want a young frogman to be. He was fired up, he was hardworking, he was squared away at everything he did. And what everyone said was, he took a turn that was totally out of character of who he, what he was like prior to.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  And this is a story that I heard as well, I've heard before from other SEALs. And SEALs family members who see a different person after a certain period of time in the SEAL teams. And just a tragic scenario. And obviously, no one knows that better than you. And it's, it's an honor to have you on here just to be able to share what you've learned. What you discovered and what we can do to try and prevent this kind of thing in the future. Uh, thanks for joining us.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Thanks Jaco and Echo Charles here.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Glad to be here and you know, my intent is just to help folks understand so that we. No one else has to walk this path of pain.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  So let's get into your background a little bit. You're, where are you from? How'd you grow up?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  So I'm originally from Philadelphia and so I, I talk fast and with my hands. You know, an Irish kid grew up in a Italian neighborhood.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  You know, just, uh, nothing out of the ordinary, just, uh, had a good childhood, you know, came from a large family.

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  What, what'd your, what'd your mom and dad do?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  My dad was a, uh, was into advertising and marketing. And then my mom was a homemaker for many years and then went back to school, became a nurse and eventually a real estate agent. And you know, became that independent woman that said, you know, I, I can do this on my own. And, uh, so she's, my dad's not, uh, you know, he, he passed, uh, 25 plus years ago. Uh, but my mom's still alive and, uh, kind of, uh, on her, on her final runway. Uh, you know, probably soon to depart.

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any veterans in the family growing up?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  No, I was the first, so I, I kind of broke the ice.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  So how, how'd you hear about the, how'd you hear about the Navy?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  So I was in high school and I'll be honest with you Jaco, I mean I was an average kind of you know student. You know my grades were so-so until my senior year and then all of a sudden the light came on and you know I went from you know a CD student to straight A's. But honest with you, you know I as a lot of my you know fellow students were pointed in going to college, I just felt that I wasn't ready yet. You know I need to grow up a little bit. So

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  Did you play sports or anything?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I played soccer, I ran track, some wrestling. Liked to mix it up. I also you know was working, I've been working since I was 11 years old. You know I started delivering papers you know, you know on a bicycle and the next thing you know I was working at a grocery store slamming cans in the shelves and pushing carts back you know into the bin and from there you know I said you know, once I graduated from high school that you know, the other thing is Vietnam was still you know churning along. We were starting to wind down but you know the draft was still active. I had a low draft number. And

• 10:03Speaker 02

  I said even though my grades were good in my senior year, they weren't good enough to get into the schools I wanted to get into. So I said, well let me you know kind of take the bull by the horns, which is kind of a metaphor for how I looked at life. It was all about adventure and taking control. I said, well I'm gonna listen to Navy and that's what I did.

• 10:25Jocko Willink?

  Did you know what the SEALs were at the time?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  No, no. I had, actually I had been in for a period of time. I had a buddy that had had had just started training and he told me about it and it caught my attention.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  This is once you were already in the Navy?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:45Jocko Willink?

  What did you go in the Navy to do?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was a corpsman.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  And he was, he was down, gone through training and I had never heard of it. So

• 10:57Speaker 02

  You know, one thing led to another. I put my application in through my command. I was told no. And, uh, and then I, you know, went back to my buddy and said, hey, look, you know, they're denying my, you know, my application, you know, to come down here. And he says, well, let me, let me, uh, talk to some folks.

• 11:15Jocko Willink?

  Where were you stationed when this was going down?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  At Camp Pendleton.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  So you were with the Marines?

• 11:19Speaker 02

  I was with the Marines. So, uh, I'll, I'll never forget.

• 11:22Jocko Willink?

  And this is what, 1970?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Seventy-three, seventy-four. And then, uh, and then the next thing you know, you know, I've, I've got, uh, you know, called into the CO's office and, and he's pissed. And he's saying, I don't know what you did, but I've got orders for you, you know, to, you know, to go to Coronado. I told you I was going to deny any of your requests, but, you know, and the next thing you know, he said, uh, his departing words were, you fail, you're coming right back to me. That's the deal I cut. And that was my motivator. So. But, um, you know, tremendous experience. It was really, uh, foundational for me. You know, it was the first real team dynamic that I had been involved in.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Some, um, I, I, I just think, you know, I, I credit it with, you know, the successes that I, I've been able, you know, fortunate to have in my life. And, and then, you know, to come back and circle back with the teams later in life, uh, not only with my son, you know, as he joined the teams, but, uh, you know, directly supporting the teams, you know, during the global war on terror. And we can get into that.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What, so what class were you in? What Bud's class were you in?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Eighty-four.

• 12:39Jocko Willink?

  So what, what class got, wasn't that around the class that everyone quit or didn't, no one made it? What was that class? Eighty or something like that?

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, there's something, you know, one of the classes, I don't know the specifics of it, but, uh, one of them lost a lot of, a lot of folks.

• 12:55Jocko Willink?

  There is a class that they, cause when I went through, which was in the, in 1990 or 1991, they would tell us about, I think it was class like eighty or class eighty-two or something like this. It was one of these classes. They called it the class that never was. And basically they had so many people quit or get dropped that they were down to a handful of guys and they just rolled all of them into the next class. So there's a class that just didn't exist.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think weather had a lot to do with it. It was a really harsh, you know, winter period and you know, it can get pretty bad. You know, um, on that coast coastline.

• 13:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  You know, especially if, you know.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  It ain't Baywatch.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  People think San Diego's Baywatch.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 13:35Jocko Willink?

  And then they show up here, touch that water, and they go, yo.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Well, and I'll tell you what, and your nuts go right to the back of your throat. So, you know, at least you know where they are.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  So, wh- when you showed up to Bud's, were you in good shape? Did you start training for it? Did your buddy that had gone through, was he telling you, hey, this is what you need to do to be ready?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, there wasn't much, you know, uh, out there about it. Uh, so I started running the hills, you know, up in Camp Pendleton. And, uh, you know, all times of the day, you know, depending on, you know, what my work schedule was. And then, you know, when I was, wasn't working, I was working as a, uh, wildland firefighter, uh, part-time.

• 14:11Jocko Willink?

  Damn right on.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  And that would, you know, really tighten you up.

• 14:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no doubt.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. So, you know, you're up there in some extreme conditions, you know, you're, you're moving into a fire, uh, while, you know, everything that's still alive is moving away from it, you know? So, you know, rattlesnakes are crawling between your legs, and rabbits and everything else are going the other direction. But I think that that kind of set me up. But, um, no matter how good I think you go down there, what the physical condition obviously is important. It's really what's in your head and your heart. And, uh...

• 14:41Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any major challenges? How were you in the water?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Um, I was pretty good. I wasn't the fastest, you know? But I think, you know, the folks that were the fastest and the slowest got most of the attention.

• 14:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  So, if you kind of hung in the middle, you know, you were kind of blending in a little bit more. My, my, uh, best evolution was the O course. You know, because I was, you know, you, you can tell, you know, obviously, nobody can see me here, you know, physically, but, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm this hulking, you know, five foot eight, you know, one sixty pound, you know, giant. Uh, but I, I could throw myself over, you know, the obstacles, you know, pretty easily. And, and they had a lot, you know, some pretty good upper, you know, body strength, which, you know, now in my, my late sixties is, you know, you know,

• 15:29Speaker 02

  not in the same place it was, uh, but still, you know? But it, it's, you know, I think it's an experience. It's, you know, as you know, and, and, you know, a lot of the, the folks that have been through it, it's, it's, it's definitely something that, you know, cars, uh, uh, you know, a, a pretty deep. imprint into you know who you are and and shapes it who you're gonna be and I think everybody obviously has different experiences but I will say mine were were good I had you know cross paths with some tremendous leaders back then whether you liked them or not I worked for Dick Marcinco you know guys like Bob Shamberger you know God rest his soul you know he and I were

• 16:12Speaker 02

  roommates you know he was one of the first you know

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  what was Marcinco your skipper at team two

• 16:19Speaker 02

  yeah

• 16:20Jocko Willink?

  oh right on

• 16:21Speaker 02

  and he either liked you or he didn't there was no middle ground so it was a pretty you know solid line that separated those two

• 16:32Jocko Willink?

  yeah yeah I I know you know Marcinco is definitely a polarizing figure one of my platoon commanders who is a prior enlisted guy who is a prior senior chief who was a had been stationed all over the place and just a highly respected guy and definitely the leader that I've always tried to emulate one time we were talking and this was in the 90s I mean so I guess the book Rogue Warrior had come out in 1990 maybe so now it's probably 1993 1994 and I'm talking to this guy and he had been you know a plank owner with with Marcinco working for Marcinco and I said to him I said hey

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  you know hey sir what what was what was Marcinco really like what's he like and he just looked at me he said best skipper ever that's what he that's all he said and this guy wasn't you know this guy was just a straight shooter and I've always remembered that like all the things you hear about Marcinco look he's definitely a character definitely a definitely brought a lot of attention to himself and the teams and but when a guy like the person that told me this just looked at me and said best skipper ever and this guy that told me this is not

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  He doesn't really fit that mold, you know, like this guy's more of a straight shooter and a little bit more, uh, I would say a little bit more Navy, like big Navy type, traditional type, type military guy. Just looked at me and said, best skipper ever. So I know that the guys that, that worked for Marcinco definitely in, in many cases, they loved him and admired him. So, uh, so you, so you get done with Bud's. Did you get rolled back or anything?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:15Jocko Willink?

  Just made it through first time, every time?

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, went to two, uh, did a hop skate.

• 18:19Jocko Willink?

  Could you, could you go, could you have gotten stationed at UDT back then? Cause you, this is still in UDT.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  How did they pick who was going to SEAL Team?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  You know, uh, I don't know. Uh, you know, I think they asked us West Coast, East Coast. I elected the East Coast and, um, you know, wound up at two, uh, working for, um, you know, Rudy Bosch.

• 18:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Uh, which is a legend.

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Bull Knox, another name from, from the past. Um, you know, these were, and a lot of the guys were just, you know, coming off Vietnam.

• 18:55Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, yeah, you're getting there in 19, so you get there in 1975.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Seventy-five. It's, uh, you know, the guys are coming in and, uh, you know, you, um, really have some combat experienced, you know, folks, you know, no nonsense. Um, you know, they played hard, they worked hard, but they were also carrying some burdens coming back. You know, some of them got beat up pretty good.

• 19:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was talking to one of my friends that checked into SEAL Team One in like 1972. And he said, like, they went out and PT'd and he's back there taking a shower and like, you could see, I, I, I mean, basically every guy's wounded. Every guy had scars. Every guy had bullet holes in him. He said, it was definitely a, a very interesting time. There's only, there was only 150 SEALs, period. And so it was, it was a very, very small community.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  And I, I remember cutting metal out of guys, you know, for.

• 19:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, sorry, cause you were a corpsman.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, years later, you know, I was cutting metals, you know, cause it would, the body would eventually start to push that out.

• 19:57Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  And, um,

• 20:00Speaker 02

  But you know, getting back to Demo Dick, you know, I would characterize the same thing. Whether you agreed with him or not, you know, he took care of his people. And, you know, he, you know, there was no door that he wasn't gonna go through. He drew, you know, he moved to contact and drew fire. He had his way and you either got on board or, you know, you found yourself squashed. You know, like a bug. But yeah, the guys that came out, you know, you know, probably the closest one I was, you know, was Sham Berger, you know, and actually, you know, we had taken one of the dogs that had come back from Nam as, you know, took him home.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  You know, by then he was getting old, big old German Shepherd by the name of Rennie. Rennie. Rennie, yeah. And, you know, Sham, Sham was a, you know, kept things close to the vest, you know, had a great rep in the teams. Of course, you know, he, you know, we lost him, you know, in, in the op down in the Caribbean. Where, you know, we lost three others on a drop. But, you know, it was a different time. And then, the reason I bring that out is because, you know, as I watched, you know, my son, you know, get in, go into training, you know, get into the teams and so forth, you could definitely see the difference, the contrast.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  And I'm sure you could see that, you know, with some of the younger guys that, you know, you work with. It's a different time. And, you know, not surprising because nothing ever stays the same. Things changed, you know, we're, we're, you know, it had, things have been flowed depending on the geopolitical, you know, state within the world and, and what we're challenged with. But, you know, as we get more and more into, you know, a modern warfare state, there're gonna be new challenges that, you know, we need to be able to. You know, operate in, you know, to have that level of maneuverability.

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  So when you showed up in nineteen, so was it nineteen seventy-five when you got to Team Two?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 22:08Jocko Willink?

  And you show up there, you get put into a platoon?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, got put into platoon and, you know, by then, you know, you're, you know, the roaches on the floor are treated better. You know, um, you know, you do all the scut work and that's okay. You go in there knowing it and just keep your mouth shut. And otherwise, someone's going to shut it for you and, and it's not going to be, you know, it's not going to be somebody coming up and putting their arm around you or anything, you know, you're going to get a hard pop in the face or, or next thing you know, you're going to be looking at the floorboards. Uh, it was a different time, but definitely made its impression.

• 22:50Jocko Willink?

  And so was this Team Two, was they, were they still doing the European like workup and stuff? Were you training on skis and all that stuff?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, you'd have your deployments to Norway and Canada. You know, you'd have joint exercises with, um, you know, other coalition nations, uh, which was good because you got to see things. I remember doing a tour and with the Berlin Brigade, you know, which was kind of interesting. The wall was still up, you know, kind of going through checkpoint Charlie and, you know, doing some pretty interesting things, you know, with the unit that was there, you know, in the midst of Berlin that, you know, still was, was, you know, very much, uh, the, the impression of World War Two was still alive.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  And, and now you had this, this, you know, very stark separation of, you know, looking across the wall and seeing nothing but gray and black. And then you'd look on, you know, the, the free side and, and it'd be all these neon lights and a lot of color and movement and so forth. So I remember those days, but kind of an interesting piece of terrain to, to operate in and, uh, really, you know, kind of.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  You know, wires up a whole different level of senses to be able to to to move in an environment like that, just knowing that, you know, my takeaway when I came out of there was, you know, I couldn't put any of my finger on actually what was the, you know, the basis for the economy there, other than the fact that everybody was following somebody. So, you know, it was a whole kind of societal mix of people just following other people and, you know, it was pretty, pretty interesting place.

• 24:37Jocko Willink?

  Now, this is post Vietnam, the Navy, the whole military is downsizing. I know they took guys after Vietnam, the guys got sent from the SEAL teams to the fleet. Like there's a guy, the Dirty Dozen from SEAL Team One, they took guys from the SEAL Team that had been in the SEAL Team, made it through BUDs, and they took those guys and said, yeah, we don't need you in the SEAL Teams anymore, and they sent them to the fleet. The fleet made them do it. What was that downsizing? Like, were you seeing that?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  You know, it was, it was interesting because, you know, at the time, you know, big Navy was not exactly treating, you know, Naval Special Warfare very well. And, you know, after the war, there's a lot of questions.

• 25:21Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes Naval Special Warfare doesn't treat the big Navy very well.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, yeah, it's a two-way street.

• 25:25Jocko Willink?

  It's a two-way street.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  And again, I, you know, I guess we could have a whole show on that.

• 25:30Jocko Willink?

  Have you read Ben Milligan's book, By Water Beneath the Walls?

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was just with him not too long ago.

• 25:34Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that, that really is just an incredible book.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  And really lays out so much, and it shows you that even though it can be a tenuous relationship between the big Navy and the SEAL Teams and Naval Special Warfare, ultimately, when that relationship works, it's, it's, it's amazing. And, but, you know, when, when the SEAL Teams aren't needed, like... As much, it's very easy for them to get sloughed off to the side and that's what was happening in the seventies.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, when, when they're, when they're kind of, you know, reaching deep, you know, into the couch cushions and all for the coins to, to be able to build new ships and, and just even to be able to rehab ships that needed work, you know, or, or planes, you know, back then it was, you know, a lot of the aviation wings were, were, you know, almost non-operational because they just couldn't get, you know, keep airplanes flying. And I, I remember being on the ranges, you know, we would need some vehicles and we couldn't get any vehicles. So we'd go out and, you know, these, these old, you know, beat up Jeeps and, you know, six buys and four buys, you know, we, we would, you know, haul them off the, the range and start pulling parts off them and build a whole new vehicle, you know, that, you know, we would, we would use, you know, and, and it's just the way it is, you

• 26:48Speaker 02

  know, throw some new paint on it and, you know, kind of, you know, go to town. But yeah, or we'd go out, you know, to camping stores and stuff and, and, you know, because the stuff that we were getting. And this was like a big contrast between what you see now, the kit that, you know.

• 27:04Jocko Willink?

  They get some good gear right now. It's epic.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. But back then, I remember, you know, we would be spray painting red sleeping bags, you know, you know, that, you know, were, you know, you know, top of the line, you know, you know, pieces of gear that just, you know, weren't our, our color to, to use operationally. So we had to kind of, you know, do our thing. And, and so a lot of, a lot of guys would, you know, out of pocket, you know, kind of gear themselves up, you know, for, for the job. Back then, you know, you had some, some interesting activity going on. You started seeing the rise of terrorism. You know, the Red Army faction, the Red Brigade was lifting its head up, you know, in Europe. You had, you had some

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Cuban infiltration going on down in Central America, around the canal zone and other places. And Africa was always, you know, a place that, you know, kind of.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  You know, resided below the the surface, but you knew bad things were gone there. He just didn't have the throw weight or the reach in Africa to to, you know, to understand exactly what was taking place.

• 28:16Jocko Willink?

  So how many deployments did you do at SEAL Team Two?

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Well, the deployments that that I had were were kind of, you know, short trips out to do, you know, training, or we would do, you know, maybe a recon op. So it wasn't the deployments in the traditional sense that we saw, you know, like I saw with my son, you know, six or 12 month, you know, pumps. You know, they still had the the MAR going on where, you know, you'd float for a while with a, you know, a marine detachment for six months. That was about it. Never made one of those. I didn't have an interest to really do one of those.

• 28:53Jocko Willink?

  So were you guys doing basically like a deploy for purpose? Like if you if there was a a J set or an exercise to be done over in Europe, you'd fly over there, do the exercise and come back home?

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Exactly it.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Right. And they had they had a couple, you know, exchange programs going where they would send guys over for a period of time and then come back. And same with, you know, for instance, the Germans, the Brits would send folks over.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  You had some Koreans, you know, Rock Marines, you know, coming over. But it was a different time. You know, the money was really tight. And so you pretty much a lot of, you know, your your preparation, you know, for, you know, doing what you needed to do was was, you know, done at AP Hill or or, you know, you know, which, you know, in hindsight, I should have bought property there, you know, vacation property along the Repahannock would have been beneficial. But anyway, spent a lot of time there. And then I don't think you saw the the. Almost the the next evolution, you know, what I would say positive evolution came after

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Desert One. You know, where you saw the stand up of Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations Command, and then, you know, the establishment of our counterterrorism force. And then, you know, all the feeders and support elements that went into that. And that was, you know, after my my time.

• 30:25Jocko Willink?

  So you ended up getting out of active duty in what year?

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Seventy-eight and then stayed active reserve until eighty-one.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  When you say active reserves, I mean, you were like working every day? Is that what active reserve is?

• 30:39Speaker 02

  No, you you come in and, you know, you do your time, you know, once a month and then come in and do a deployment or some type of training op during the summer, you know, then that could be, that could be, you know, a couple of weeks all the way to a couple of months, depending on where, you know, the tasking was. You know, I was a student at the time. I was going to the university up in Philadelphia. And so I would try to, you know, spend as much time, you know, in that, you know, active summer period or as much time as I could in the summer period on active status, so.

• 31:14Jocko Willink?

  Get that money.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was good money.

• 31:17Jocko Willink?

  And what were you going to school for?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Sociology and criminal justice.

• 31:21Jocko Willink?

  Were you looking at like I'm I want to be a cop?

• 31:23Speaker 02

  You know, I was looking to come back in.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, and.

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  Were you trying to get a commission?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yep, yep, just going to come back in, but got bitten by the law enforcement bug and, you know, next thing you know, you know, I'm I'm walking a beat in the Philadelphia area. Probably one of the more, you know, formative experiences that I've had in my life, you know, as a, as a, you know, middle-class, you know, white bread, you know, dude suddenly dropped into, you know, a neighborhood where I I no doubt I was the outsider.

• 31:55Jocko Willink?

  So what was, you graduated from college and then you went to what, police academy?

• 32:02Speaker 02

  No, so I was still in college, finishing up my senior year when I took took on the job with the police department. So I finished my senior year. Over the course of two years, uh, just because I had to dodge shift work and.

• 32:16Jocko Willink?

  Got it. How was the police academy? How long was that?

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Uh, that was about six months.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh. Did you learn anything? Was it cool? Was it mostly legal?

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of legal, you know, how to operate in those environments, you know, a lot of weapons training, which, you know, I've been through a lot of different weapons training programs depending on what I was involved in. So you have to kind of park all, all your prior experience and do it their way. Otherwise, again, you, you draw fire and that, you know, literally, and, and, you know, don't make friends. Uh, so it, it was, it was a good experience. I mean, you know, you had to know the law. You had to know how to maneuver in that space and so to keep yourself out of trouble. And, uh, it was a tough, tough department. Um.

• 33:00Jocko Willink?

  Where, where were you? Were you, so you were a beat cop?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  And where, where were you? What town? What city?

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Just outside of Philadelphia and, and a town, urban element called Norris Town. Uh, just on the edge of Philadelphia, a real tough neighborhood, uh, or, or piece of terrain. And, uh, it, it taught me how, you know, walking the beat, uh, really taught me, you know, how to kind of integrate into, um, a neighborhood that, you know, didn't want me. You know, they hadn't had to be cop in like 20 years working there. And, um, you know, I got to know the people and I, I just started with the basics, you know, of, of just, you know, just talking to people. Um, I'd see, you know, elderly, you know, women, you know,

• 33:49Speaker 02

  dragging, you know, shopping bags home from, you know, the store and, you know, you know, shuttling their way up the, the sidewalk and I'd come up and I'd pick up their bags and carry their bags for them. Or you could have a kid that, you know, didn't have a bicycle. I'd go look for a bicycle for them, you know, uh, so that he could, you know, kind of, you know, be with the other kids.

• 34:10Jocko Willink?

  Teach them to build relationships with the folks in the neighborhood, basically.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And, and it wasn't about locking everybody up for every little, you know, freaking crime or, or, or, you know, incident. It was about, you know, being accessible and that's kind of how, you know, what I try to share with, you know, new officers that I talk to, you know, today, they're just coming out of the academy. And, and I share a story that, you know, um. You know, I had three principles that, you know, I always stuck to is that one was, you know, treat others the way you want to be treated. And then, then you got to ask that question in reverse. How do you think they want to be treated? Which we don't always ask that question.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  And then the second one was, treat everybody with respect, no matter what, you know. You know, a lot of them don't have control over, you know, their, their environments, or, you know, it's kind of what they were handed. And the third was, never take somebody's dignity away. That's when you're going to get a fight. And, uh, so in, in doing that, you know, I think I was able to, you know, build relationships in it. And, you know, one night, um, you know, late afternoon, I came around the corner and there was a, a, a pretty prominent drug leader, uh, dealer, uh, doing business, uh, with his

• 35:34Speaker 02

  gang, um, and came around, you know, at probably the worst time and got caught, caught up right in the middle of the deal and it turned into a, you know, a street brawl right there. And, and, and you know, from, you know, doing your-

• 35:50Jocko Willink?

  Street brawl meaning what? Like-

• 35:52Speaker 02

  All out.

• 35:53Jocko Willink?

  You grabbed the guy?

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:55Jocko Willink?

  You tried to arrest him? People are running, people are swinging at you? Like, what happened?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's basically it. I mean, you, you're into it. You know, you know, punching, flying, you're, you're trying to, you know, drag onto people.

• 36:05Jocko Willink?

  You're going to partner with you?

• 36:07Speaker 02

  No.

• 36:08Jocko Willink?

  Just solo operation?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Solo operations, just basically got a radio call out that I needed help, didn't even know if it got out. And, uh, you feel people reaching for your gun and you're trying to protect your weapon. And, uh, and I just remember that, you know, things started getting dark. You, you know, how the, you know, you know, everything comes in from the periphery and it gets more narrow and narrow and, you know, you're just trying to, you know, and probably the last thing I heard were, were sounds of sirens, you know, coming. But the next thing I remember is that, you know, uh, these folks from the neighborhood were helping me back up to on the street and and back up hadn't gotten there yet. And, you know, as I kinda, you know, kinda got my balance again and kinda my wits about

• 36:52Speaker 02

  me, I I saw, you know, three of these, you know, you know, dudes, you know, down out cold on the street. And the fourth one was slammed up against the wall. And I remember this woman, you know, she she she had her finger going into his chest and, you know, that's our cop. You don't mess with them, you know, don't ever, ever, you know, that, don't ever mess with them. You'll, next time it's gonna be you down there and you're gonna be dead. You know, we're gonna take care of you. Don't mess with them.

• 37:20Jocko Willink?

  So some of the local neighborhood people came out and saved you?

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it just came out of the out of the woodwork. You know, they saw what was going on, you know, um, I mean, they didn't like this gang being, you know, operating on the street, you know, you know, mo- most of these gangs terrorize the locals anyway. You know, they bully them. And then, uh, you know, when I got, and you know, it's, you know, there's a different code on the street, you know, it's all about fairness, you know, they they have their own fairness code. And then when they saw me, you know, with four on one, uh, that wasn't fair. Plus, you know, I had built this relationship over the prior nine months or so and, you know, uh, as fast as it happened, it was over. And, uh, but it taught me a real powerful lesson, you know, and how relationships mean

• 38:08Speaker 02

  everything. And and, you know, again, you know, treating people, you know, the the way they wanna be treated with respect and and dignity, uh, can take you a long way. And and that's that's part of the thing I I think I I would share about leadership, uh, you know, as a core principle is is, you know, i- it's not not to lose your compassion, not to lose your sense of, you know, empathy. Once you do that and, you know, if you become a cold bastard, a cold leader, I I think you.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Go to a different place, you know, and that's not saying that you can't be a tough leader. But when you lose your sense of, you know, compassion and empathy, I think that puts you at higher risk for being a bad leader.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, I always tell people like, look, you can't make your decision based on emotions, but you have to put them in the calculus of the decisions that you're making. And that's not just your emotions, but the emotions of the team, too. Are they frustrated? Are they mad? Are they tired? Like, what are they feeling? And if you start doing things that don't make sense from an emotional standpoint, you're gonna end up with problems. And so, look, we don't want to make our decisions based on emotion, but that doesn't mean we're devoid of emotion, because otherwise you're gonna have problems. So how long did you end up staying on that, like, as a beat cop for?

• 39:35Speaker 02

  For about a year, and then I got into the patrol, and then from there moved into, jumped to a different part of law enforcement, into plainclothes, working some narcotics investigations for a while, and then went into homicide. I was the youngest homicide detective on the department. So, and that was experience, you know, doing, you know, death investigations and so forth, which is, you know, something I can elaborate on more as we talk about, you know, veteran suicide, you know, unless we want to talk about it now.

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  Go ahead.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, so we get these numbers that get put out by the VA, or, you know, whoever is projecting, you know, is it a 22 veterans a day that would lose a suicide? Is it 17, whatever? You know, as a student of statistics, I know you can manipulate numbers, but not saying, you know, you know, their calculus is wrong. But as a homicide detective, you know, doing death investigations, I know that, you know, you call your findings based on evidence. So, you know, if you've got evidence that's a homicide, then it's a homicide. If it's a suicide, you know, there may have been a note, there may have been some other,

• 40:57Speaker 02

  you know, evidence, you know, on scene to consider. That definitely puts it into the suicide category. Or an unattended death because, you know, they had been sick, or they had made a cancer, or it was a, you know, got hit by a car. But there's this big gray area that sits in the middle where you don't have enough evidence to call it one way or the other. But yet, it's an unattended death. And, and so I think that there's an undercounting of what really exists. And then there's this other piece that comes in, and it's, it's part of the reality is

• 41:38Speaker 02

  that because suicide is such a stigma in our society that I think is starting to, to, to soften. But you, you have somebody that's taken their life, and then you look at the family. And sometimes, you know, the, you know, way you classify a situation like that may not be a suicide in order to protect the family. Because the family will have nothing if it's, if it's declared a suicide. You know, very often they will not get insurance, they will not get other, you know, benefits, and, and then have to, to live with potentially the stigma of that suicide.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  So, I just throw that out there, you know, it's kind of out of this, you know, sequence of what we're talking about. But my homicide experience definitely, I think, has given me credibility to go back at some of those numbers that are being projected every year by the VA and others that, you know... Probably not, you know, you know, the inaccurate picture of how many we're actually losing. And, and because each state reports differently, we don't have a, you know, a national database that actually, you know, records these suicides in, in a common format. So there's a lot of, lot of, like I said, gray area for those numbers to be, you know, pulled in different directions.

• 43:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. When you're in that job of homicide detective, like how many homicides are there? Like, how many cases are you working at a time? Is it, is it, in the, in the area you were working, was it like one murder a month? Was it 10? What was it like?

• 43:24Speaker 02

  It comes ebbs and flows. Holidays are the worst. But basically you're, you're taking caseloads. You might have three or four, you know, homicides that you may be working in at a time. Depending on, on the caseload, availability of, you know, manpower. Some of the cases are, are pretty clear cut, you know, you know, you know, a dispute that goes bad between two people that know each other versus, you know, probably the most, the hardest, you know, investigations where you have a situation where somebody comes in outs, from outside the area, is not known, doesn't really leave a lot of signatures as far as their presence there and winds up, you know, killing somebody and you're trying to figure out, you know, who, who may be responsible and, and they've already left

• 44:09Speaker 02

  the area and, you know, very little traces to, you know, who, what they were.

• 44:15Jocko Willink?

  What does that do into your, you know, when you're coming home at night and you've just been looking at whatever crime scenes, murder scenes all day? What is, what's that like coming home at night?

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Well, I can tell you that, you know, you know, you're human too, you know? And so as, as much as you build up some, some insulation and you try to inoculate yourself and, and stay professional, it, it does, you know, kind of wear on you. And because of my medical background, I would get all the homicides or suspicious death investigations that involve kids. And that, that was tough to deal with. And, and it, it almost caused some, some problems with my marriage because, you know, you know, having. Contact with these type of scenarios, I didn't want to bring any kids into the world.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Whereas my wife, you know, yeah, she, she, she wanted to have kids and I didn't want to have kids for a period of time. So, you know, at some point I made the decision to move on. And, and that's when, you know, I applied to the Secret Service and the FBI and subsequently was, was hired in as a special agent with the Secret Service.

• 45:31Jocko Willink?

  When, when you're talking about kids getting killed, like who's, what, what's a scenario where a kid gets murdered? Is this child abuse gone to an extreme? That, is that like the most common thing?

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, what I see are parents that aren't prepared to be parents. A lot of them have been raised up in, in households that there was a lot of abuse. So they didn't know any better, you know, so you get your shaken baby syndrome or, or kid wouldn't stop crying. And I remember one case, you know, the father had stuffed a, you know, a stuffed toy down the kid's throat, you know, toddler's throat. In other cases, they, they would, you know, burn the kid to, to try to get him to stop, you know, screaming or yelling. And in some

• 46:19Speaker 02

  cases, you know, it was, believe it or not, the, the, the parent, you know, felt that the kid was taking all their attention away from the other parent. And so, you know, in, in their, you know, kind of limited way of processing, you know, eliminating the competition. I mean, it's, it's pretty, and then you'd have the neglect scenarios where they wouldn't feed the kid or they keep the kid locked up in a room or, you know, so tough cases.

• 46:48Jocko Willink?

  How do you kind of control yourself? You know, I've always said I'd be the worst cop ever because like I run into a situation like that. I feel like it'd be very difficult to, you know, see a parent that clearly had killed their own kid or be burned their own kid to death. That's gotta be an exercise in restraint unlike any other.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I mean, you gotta reach deep. I'll be honest with you. You know, you definitely want to exercise some street justice in those scenarios and, you know, how could anybody fault you for it? Some cases, you know, the individual that's responsible has got some, you know, serious mental health issues and like I said, may have some family extension, you know, some experiences on how they were raised. They don't know any different. But yet that's hard to kind of, you know, kind of justify and resolve, you know, when you're in the heat of that investigation and you're seeing the consequence of that abusive behavior. It's tough. It's tough. And, you know, a lot of times you lean on each other to kind of keep yourselves, you know, from falling into that, that, not unlike, you know, in

• 47:56Speaker 02

  some cases, you know, the battlefield, you know, when, when you experience a horrible situation where you lose a teammate and, you know, the immediate reaction is to, to exercise that, that immediate justice. And how do you control that?

• 48:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's definitely something that the leadership, from a leadership perspective, you gotta, you gotta get, make sure you're taking, keeping control of the guys, because that, if, if the emotional reaction is allowed, then it's going to be a problem. And guys are going to get in trouble. That's something that every leader's got to contend with to make sure that they're keeping that in check. What you, how long had you been married? What year did you get married?

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Eighty-one, when I was in the police academy.

• 48:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And so after this horrible job, I mean, for all practical purposes, you, you decide to get out of law enforcement and you go into the secret service? Is that when you went to secret service?

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Which is still a quasi-law enforcement, federal law enforcement. So I, I, you know, got into the secret service, went through their training, which was, you know, six plus months of training. You know, they, to me, I call them the special operations of law enforcement, just by the way they, you know, they behave, the way they operate, you know, they're not a nine to five job. You know, most of my career, I lived that up, you know, you know, a kit bag, you know, because we were on the move all the time. Got to give credit to my wife for raising my two kids, you know. But, you know.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  What, because I know there's different parts of the Secret Service. What, what job? What job did you have when you went into Secret Service?

• 49:39Speaker 02

  So initially I started up in the Philadelphia Field Office as a special agent working criminal investigations.

• 49:45Jocko Willink?

  And they do what? Counterfeiting money?

• 49:47Speaker 02

  They do counterfeiting, they, they do fraud investigations. Basically, they, you know, they're responsible for, you know, protecting the integrity of our, our monetary system here in the United States, which is both, you know, involves paper money and digital funds, you know, so they get into a lot of fraud investigations and, and

• 50:09Speaker 02

  you know, counterfeiting, you know, was, was really kind of a, a street level crime that, you know, you know, we would get, it's almost like dope. You know, you get down on the street levels dealing with people who are passing, you know, bad money and and, you know, you take into some interesting investigations, credit card fraud. Again, it's another money instrument. They had an intelligence arm, which, you know, protective intelligence arm, which, you know, would deal with any threats against the president, vice president, or, or, you know, anybody in a senior leadership position. And then they had other specialty units that, you know, depending on,

• 50:53Speaker 02

  you know, the assignment would, would come into play, but protection was, was really what the agency was known for. You know, protecting the president, protecting the vice president, heads of state, or anybody else that's designated, you know, by presidential order. You would have to, you know, build that protection element around them and, and that was a 24/7 job. So, you know, a lot of holidays away from home, birthdays.

• 51:20Jocko Willink?

  So did you work in each one of those different categories at some point?

• 51:23Speaker 02

  I did. Yeah. So I, my, my, my span of service was from the Reagan administration through Bush 43.

• 51:33Jocko Willink?

  Were you on duty when Reagan got shot?

• 51:35Speaker 02

  I was not.

• 51:35Jocko Willink?

  Was that prior to?

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Actually, that was one of my motivators for, for applying to the Secret Service. And right after that's when I applied and, you know, eventually got processed in.

• 51:48Jocko Willink?

  So where are you? So you're a pretty old dude at this point to be starting out in that job. Am I right?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:57Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're, you went in the Navy in seventy four?

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Three.

• 52:01Jocko Willink?

  Seventy three? So you're like ten years older than the other people? Maybe twelve years older?

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:06Jocko Willink?

  Just the old guy on campus, huh?

• 52:08Speaker 02

  But you know, never, never thought of it, you know, that way. I mean, I'm in my late sixties now. And as I shared with you earlier, I'm a firefighter, paramedic with the city of Annapolis.

• 52:20Jocko Willink?

  How old are you? Late sixties? How old are you?

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Sixty eight.

• 52:22Jocko Willink?

  Sixty eight. And you're an active duty, full-time firefighter?

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:27Jocko Willink?

  Paramedic, doing calls?

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 52:29Jocko Willink?

  Getting after it?

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Working a twenty-four hour schedule on, seventy-two hour schedule off. Work with a bunch of great men and women in Annapolis. And they keep me young. You know, it's, it's that tribal connection.

• 52:41Jocko Willink?

  What do you, talk about tangential. So are you, what kind of workouts are you doing?

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Um, you know, at this age, a lot of it's aerobic. You know, you're doing some strength workout, basically to keep yourself toned. But you know, not, you know, with the heavy weights that I used to do.

• 52:57Jocko Willink?

  You still do pull-ups and push-ups and dips?

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I can't do as many as I, I, I used to, but I use, um, a lot of, you know, uh, weight resistance. Um, you know, uh, you know, training.

• 53:12Jocko Willink?

  So if you're doing, if you're doing a workout, how many pull-ups are you doing in a workout?

• 53:16Speaker 02

  About ten.

• 53:17Jocko Willink?

  Ten at a time?

• 53:18Speaker 02

  At a time.

• 53:19Jocko Willink?

  So you'll do like sets of ten?

• 53:21Speaker 02

  No, I'll do ten and then, uh, you know, if I feel like I can't get, uh, that full ten, then I'll use, uh, like a,

• 53:29Jocko Willink?

  A band or whatever?

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Uh, to, to try to, to continue to, to work that resistance and that strength. But, uh, I had some shoulder surgery, so I had to completely reconstruction my shoulder a couple of years ago. So that's taken a while to come back, but so probably use the bands more than I, I would like to, but it's.

• 53:48Jocko Willink?

  But you're on the comeback trail.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's, failure's not an option. I mean, I, I, I learned a long time ago, um, investment, uh, you know, in your health and, and your fitness. And, and I think it's a testimony of where I am today. I'm still doing what I want to do. I still have a, you know, kind of a, you know. Well, it depends on who you ask. I mean, I still think, you know, my head's, you know, back in my twenties and thirties, which can get me into trouble because I still think I can do stuff. Whereas my wife will tell you that, no, it's my, my head's in a lot younger, you know, probably adolescent, uh, period. But, you know, she, she's, uh, I, when I met, when

• 54:30Speaker 02

  I came out of the service, I met her. Um, I was working as a paramedic in the Philadelphia area while I was going to school and she was a, a brand new, uh, emergency room nurse, uh, ripe for the picking. And, uh, and so, um, you know, one thing led to another, we got married. So she's, you know, kind of been in the business too, you know. Um, but if you, you know, if you ever have come in contact with any emergency room nurses, you, you, you know, they, they, they suffer no fools. I mean, they, they see a lot too. And, uh, so I, I've gotten away with very little in my life. She keeps me pretty humble.

• 55:07Jocko Willink?

  What about food? What are you eating?

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, I try to stay away from sugar. Uh, coffee, I drink black coffee. I, I don't, uh, you know, pour any, any stuff into it. Um, a lot of fruit, uh, fiber, um, meat. I've been pushing away from, uh, meat lately and trying to get, you know, I love fish, you know, any type of fish, um, you know, chicken. So I, I tried to, you know, find a balanced, uh, you know, diet, which I, I feel better. And I don't eat as much as I used to, you know, I used to, you know.

• 55:41Jocko Willink?

  You used to get your Philly cheese steaks on.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, but then you feel like a load afterwards. And, and so I think the, the older you get, there are changes in your body, your metabolism. So you've got to stay on top of that if you want to feel good.

• 55:55Jocko Willink?

  You run every day?

• 55:56Speaker 02

  No, no, I don't run every day. Uh, I'm really trying to preserve, uh, my knees. They took a pretty hard hit, uh, up in New York, uh, on nine 11. Um, you know, we can get into that, but um, since that time, uh, my running has, has really kinda, you know, feathered uh, down uh, to, to where, you know, I love to run. I love to run outside. Hate to run on a, on a treadmill, but I'll, I'll use an elliptical more. Uh, I go get in the pool and swim, which I think is probably the, the best exercise uh, these days, you know, for me, besides my, my Chuck Norris Total Gym uh, that I have at home.

• 56:38Jocko Willink?

  You got the Chuck, Chuck Norris Total Gym? That's some things kinda like a Pilates situation, isn't it? Echo Charles?

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:44Jocko Willink?

  Fitness expert?

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 56:46Jocko Willink?

  It's like you're, you're using pulleys to kind of drag your body weight up and down. You can set at different levels.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  And I'll tell you what, you know, um, I'm not, I'm plugging, you know, it, you know, his, his uh, kit, but um, you get a pretty good workout.

• 56:59Jocko Willink?

  How long have you been on the Chuck Norris Total Body Workout Program?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  About three years.

• 57:03Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna sell some Chuck Norris.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Total Gym?

• 57:06Jocko Willink?

  Total Gym workouts. I mean, Chuck Norris is in good shape. How old is Chuck Norris?

• 57:09Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 57:10Jocko Willink?

  I mean, he was in the Air Force in Vietnam, so he's at least 70, right?

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:14Jocko Willink?

  70 plus.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:16Jocko Willink?

  He's still getting after it.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thi- I think it's about, you know, uh, continuing to pay it forward, eating right. You know, sleep is big, you know, sleep, you know, is challenging as you get older, cause your sleep patterns change, but still sleep is really important. So, you know, I, I've got a couple of wearables that, you know, kinda tell me how I'm sleeping. Of course, you know, when I'm working a firefighting shift, you know, you know how that goes, you know?

• 57:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Two o'clock in the morning and, I mean, the other night I worked uh, 20, actually uh, you know, uh, when I flew out of here yesterday, I'd just gotten off a shift and, and, you know, it just seemed that, you know, I swore to, to my partner that every time my head went in contact with a pillow in the bunk room, we got toned out for a call. And I swore that the dispatch center had some type of sensor in my pillow, could, could, could see when I had put my head down because they would pop us out again. So. Yeah, sometimes you get the bear and the bear gets you. Yes, but yeah, so it's uh.

• 58:16Jocko Willink?

  So, so what capacity were you in? You just mentioned nine eleven. What capacity were you in? Were you with the Secret Service at that time?

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I had, um, as you said, started at Philadelphia and from Philadelphia I went down and uh took a job in our training division. Uh, after uh being with the service about three years, I took over their emergency medicine training program. All the agents are trained in in emergency medicine at different levels. All the way from, you know, first responder to ENT to, you know, they have a cadre of paramedics. And then, um, and part of that's because, you know, we recognized early on that you got to keep your operational force healthy. And if they're gone down because they're sick or they're hurt, uh, and and working the schedules that we worked, uh, that can happen pretty quickly. And then with all the overseas deployments,

• 59:09Speaker 02

  you're in places that, you know, you're not in a nine one one system.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  And this is because you're going Advon to go because the president's visiting wherever and you're going Advon, checking it out, setting everything up, and then he's there. If you're on that team, you're there while he's there and then he leaves and then you pack up and go to the next place?

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's not always with the president. Yeah, I mean, it could be the national security advisor that you're traveling with. You know, like right now we have, you know, you know, the activity going on and uh the Middle East. Well, I had done a lot of time, you know, in the West Bank and and the Gaza Strip uh back, you know, when they were broker in peace uh in the mid nineties, you know, with Arafat uh and the Israelis. And so I, you know, interesting working with, you know, uh, the Shin Bet and Mossad. Um, you know, in in that environment.

• 1:00:01Jocko Willink?

  What would you go into Gaza and do?

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  Well, because we, again, by presidential order, we were directed to uh protect the uh, the uh US envoy that was trying to broker the the peace agreement back then. So we would, you know, go into Gaza to meet with Arafat at his headquarters. What was your assessment back then? It was a Wild West show. Yeah, I mean, you, obviously, we go in under, you know, the protection of the Israeli Defense Forces, but, you know, we partnered up with the Shin Bet, and we would go in for these meetings. And, you know, while we're having the meetings, you know, somebody's cranking off an AK-47 in the background. You hear explosions and so forth. I remember one time, we were, we were trekking to one of the-

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  So this is like early 90s?

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Mid 90s. Mid 90s? Yeah. Okay, so we're talking Bill Clinton- 94, 95. 94, 95, yeah, tracking. Yep, so, you know, we get into that. That was an experience. Another time, I'm with a National Security Advisor, you know, in the middle of Africa, in Burundi, Rwanda, Zaire.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  You know, the Tutsis and the Hutus were slaying each other, you know, by the thousands. I was off the coast of, I was off the coast of Rwanda at that time in a SEAL platoon, get on standby, all spun up, ready to go help out. They didn't send us, though. Yeah, yeah, we, we rolled in there, a small element of us that had, you know, tactical background. You know, the guy from, you know, a couple of guys, the former tier, tier one guys, who were agents, and then myself. And I, of course, I had the medical, tactical, medical background, too. And then a fourth guy that came out of SF, were the protection element for this envoy that was trying to get in between these two warring tribes.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  And I'll never forget, you know, we get on the ground in an unmarked plane. We had worked our way in through Europe, down through, you know, top of Africa, and, and, you know, doing refueling stops. Land at this airport that, you know, there's, there's, you know, smoke coming up, and crashed airplanes at the end of runway. And, and, you know, we jump into some vehicles. And I remember heading to the embassy, you know, and, and we get there, and, and it was, it's like, you know, we pull up and we get out and we go again. And there's just like this little, you know, like metal, you know, door, and, and into a bigger door that slides aside and says, you know, who is it?

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  And here, you know, you know, our embassy staff had been hunkered down behind the walls and hadn't gone outside. And we wind up going to a field hospital that had, the day before, had been attacked and people had been pretty, you know, butchered up. You know, it was an environment that, you know, no matter where you went, every bullet, every house had a bullet hole, an RPG hit, you know, it's pretty, you know, bodies strewn all over the place, you know, just, you know, rotting out.

• 1:03:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's eight hundred thousand Tootsies killed in a hundred days.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  It's like one of the most efficient exterminations of human life in history. It was in total insanity.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  And, and, and I, I remember we, we ran into, you know, element of French Foreign Legion and, and they said, you know, what are you guys doing here? And we told them, they said, you gotta be kidding me. We don't even go out there, you know? So, you know, again, you know, sometimes you find yourself at places that you just say to yourself, you know, and we had our own E and E plan and it was going to be a violent, you know, push out if we had to, you know, we, the four of us had kind of made a pact that, you know, if things go bad, we're going to take as many of them as we can. But we were going to push out and try to get to the, to the lake and then commandeer a boat and, you know, put some distance between us. But, you know, we, we had a number of sites that

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  we had gone to that were pretty, you know, to say the least, sketchy. But, but again, you know, the job took you to a lot of different places that, you know, you never hear about, you never talk about, you know, you, you know, as far as, you know, media coverage.

• 1:04:27Jocko Willink?

  Are they looking for a dude like you that's going to do those gigs? And meanwhile, like Mr. Clean Cut dude's going to get the presidential detail running alongside the limo?

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  Well, I've done that too.

• 1:04:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so it doesn't matter?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on, you know, who's got the skills. And again, it was another opportunity to work with a high caliber, you know, group of folks that. You know, just we're very professional. So, you know, fortunate to come out of the teams, do that. You know, I had my basic street law enforcement experience, which gave me a whole different side of life. But then, Secret Service was pretty, like I said, you know, I equate them to the special ops of law enforcement. You know, nobody operates like, like the Secret Service does. You know, they, you know, obviously, they drew some attention a number of years ago. You know, it's, they're not without, you know, stumbling, but, you know, they don't get a second chance. You know, they gotta do it right the first

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  time, all the time, especially when it comes to the protection of the president.

• 1:05:27Jocko Willink?

  So, you have this wide range of experiences now, and so what's your duty, what was your duty on September 11th? Where were you? What was going on?

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  So, I was up in the New York field office as a senior supervisor.

• 1:05:39Jocko Willink?

  So, that's where you were actually stationed? You had moved to New York?

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Our largest field office, you know, because the UN's up there, a lot of foreign heads of state coming in New York.

• 1:05:48Jocko Willink?

  And now, you're married? You got two kids at this time?

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  I got two kids. My daughter was, I think, 15 at the time. My son was 13 or 14.

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  Where, where in New York? Do you live in New York? Where do you live?

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  No, I lived in Jersey, just west of the city, you know, in a town called Chatham and Summit, which literally, because it was called Summit, you know, had a little bit of higher elevation and had an unobstructed view of the whole New York City skyline, which is important because on that day, I just basically followed my routine. I would get up early in the morning, like, you know, 5 o'clock in the morning. I, you know, had my, my workout gear and I, you know, get into the field office. The whole objective was getting through the tunnel before it got clogged up. So, I'd get into the field office and then I'd go for a run on the, along the Hudson. And I was, you know, a pretty good

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  runner. And that's how I got my day going. Come back into the gym, start pumping some iron, you know. And I remember that day, I was running back and... I remember looking up at the towers and it was just a beautiful sight. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The towers were just pristine, you know, just shining. The sun was shining off of them. I'm thinking to myself, wow, you know, we're so lucky that nothing's happened. I mean, it's just, it's just, this is one of the days you just live for. And the reason I said that, because I had been in New York in 93. God. You know, right after the first bombing and saw the destruction there and how close, you know, you know, our adversaries came to drop in the building that day, which, you

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  know, it came pretty close. But yet, the, the experience of that particular incident calculated into what happened later that day on, on 9/11. I got, you know, back off my run. I was in the shower, stepping out, you know, stark naked. And all of a sudden, the lights flickered and, and, and I started razzing the guys, you know, Secret Service agents, you know, they're, they're, they're at the wet sink. They got their hair dryers going, you know, because the hair's got to be in the right place. And I said to them, you know, you've got, you're going to light yourself up, you know, with those dryers and, and, you know, all, all that water. And the next thing you know, somebody came over the

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  speakers and said, hey, there's been a massive explosion in Tower One. And then I came back and said, hey, this is, this is not a drill. And within 30 seconds of that, they said, you know, evacuate the building. This is not a drill. We've had a major explosion in Tower One. Of course, our office was in Tower Seven, which was, besides Tower One and Tower Two, which are the two, you know, you know, notable World Trade Center buildings. Tower Seven was a 49-story building right next to Tower One. And so I remember, you know,

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  You know, everybody's running out, you know, you know, their boxer shorts, whatever, you know, grabbing clothes. I remember going back to my locker and, you know, put my, you know, suit back on, tied my tie, you know, got, you know, and I walked out and walked down to my office and, and, uh, and I was able to look out the window and look up at Tower One and I could see the fire just boiling out of, you know, Tower One. And at that point, uh, the agent in charge came by my office and said he was evacuating everybody to a certain location, you know, uh, down the street. And I said to him, look, uh, because of my, you know, prior law enforcement and EMS experience, I said, look, I'll go

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  down with Ford Police and Fire Command and be your, you know, I'll, I'll make contact with them and let you know what's going on. So I grabbed a bunch of radios and pagers and so forth and, uh, I had NYPD radio with me and went down. You know, first of all, I broke all the rules in the sense that, you know, I, I went to the stairwell and it was all jammed up full of people. And I said, there's no freaking way I'm getting down, you know, to, to the street here. So I went to the elevator and they tell you never go to the elevator when you have to evacuate a building, but I pushed the button, door opened up, nobody was on it, took it right to the first floor and next thing you know, I'm out. And I'm walking out, you know, in front of, uh, World Trade Seven towards,

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  uh, Building One. And something had, had, uh, distracted me and I, I don't know what it was. I think it was a sound or something and I had stopped and turned just as, uh, just a, an ungodly thud, uh, uh, hit, you know, right in front of, you know, where I was about to walk. And here it was somebody that, you know, had just jumped out of the building from the upper floor. Definitely would have killed me, you know, instantly. Um, and, uh, and that was just, uh, kind of like, you know, holy shit. What is happening? You know, and, you know, debris's falling on the street and, you know, you look up and this, you know, it's just this, this, you know, unconscionable sight of, uh, it's

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  a real, surreal sight of, you know, people just raining out of the sky, you know, and, you know, you just say, what's going on? And, uh, so I was able to, to get with Police and Fire Command. You know, our people, again, because they were medically trained or running in trying to help with evacuation and get, you know, injured people out, get them to triage areas, which, you know, equipment was just starting to arrive. You know, we had, we had a firehouse that was on the perimeter of the World Trade Center complex. They, they were probably first on the scene from the fire department, police are constantly there. And got with police and fire command, you know, to try to get a sense of what's going on. And I can tell you, you know, we weren't sure that a plane had hit the building. You know, we're, we're

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  still in the middle of that early chaos, you know, of, hey, what, what's actually going on here, you know? And, and that's when, you know, I heard this, this, just this sound of, you know, projected energy, you know, coming at us. And that's when the second plane, you know, hit Tower Two from, from the opposite side. And it was like a shotgun blast, all that debris and everything else. I mean, remember like Volkswagen-sized pieces of stuff coming at us and, and, and, you know, you know, yelling, hey, run for cover, get cover, get down. And just as this stuff just started raining on the street, you know, later found out that one of the engines had gone right over the top of us and had embedded

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  in the street a couple of blocks behind. But, so when that happened, it, it was a, it was a, it was a defining moment in that event because we went from having one, you know, major catastrophic incident that needed to rally, you know, police and fire command together in order to deal with it now to split operations, which then really caused, you know, set in motion a lot of confusion and, and really stretched resources. And I remember had a team of agents with me and we were moving towards the plaza, which was

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  in between the two buildings, to try to, again, help evacuate some people and get them out. And, and that's when somebody started yelling, uh, it was right before we got up onto the plaza, somebody started yelling, you know, run, run, it's coming down, it's coming down, and had no idea what was going on, but just started hearing this ungodly rumble start. And we could not see the top of the towers from where we are, because all the wind was blowing the smoke over the top of us, so we were, you know, with the, you know, our ability to see the top of the towers was obstructed, and I remember diving under a fire truck, uh, and the next thing you know, just this horrific rumble, and just, you know, vibration,

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  and just, this, this, you know, um, you know, almost undescribable, you know, uh, feeling. And then, everything went black, and then you couldn't breathe. And, uh, um, I remember, you know, crawling out, um, from underneath, you know, this truck, and over the top of somebody, um, and, you know, it, it, it just, I, I had to, you know, throw my, my face into my armpit to, to try to breathe, because the, the air was just so thick with dust, and, and, uh, you, you know, you could barely make out anything, uh, just some small fires that were burning on the street, you know, some headlights

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  that were on, and then eventually it started clearing to the point where you could start making out corners of buildings and so forth. And, uh, I started yelling for my, for my team, and slowly, we, you know, we started to reconstitute each other, and, you know, saying, what just happened? You know, I, obviously, you know, some type of collapse had happened. And, and then fires were starting, starting in the street from, uh, so when the buildings came down, anything that was lighter than air blew out of the buildings, they had paper, papers, cloth, you name it, and settled onto the ground, and then the jet fuel, uh, the burning jet fuel started igniting that, which then started igniting, you know, gas tanks in the cars that were parked along the streets.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  And then, you know, so we're, we're, and, and you're losing all track of time, and, and you lose communications, uh, you know, all our communications kind of shit the bed, you know, and it got down, you know, to the point of what, what you could physically see and, and reach. Uh, next thing you know, someone's yelling, you know, uh, you know,

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Tower one, tower one, and I started hearing this, like, this sound of this metal failing. And again, the wind was blowing, you know, everything over the top of us. All I could remember seeing was the, was the, the big spike tower, radio tower on top of Tower one. And, and just in a brief break of the clouds and the smoke, I just, I looked at the, you know, up at this, this needle, and the next thing you know, I started seeing it leaning. And at that point, you know, everyone started yelling, "Run for cover, run for cover," I went behind the building. And same thing just happened, you know, that happened before, you know, everything went

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  dark, you know, clouded up with a bunch of dust and smoke. And, you know, eventually started seeing things again, pulled the team back together. And, you know, a lot more fire on the street now. It's almost like a wall of fire that surrounded this whole World Trade Center complexes as, you know, again, more paper and cloth and stuff, you know, came down on, on, on the street, more vehicles on fire. And we, we could see there were some people that were trying to get out from, from deeper inside the, you know, the complex. And we, we, you know, we were within proximity of this old fire engine that was hooked up to a hydrant.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  And I, I remember, you know, saying to the guys, "Hey, grab some hoses, I'm gonna see if I can get this thing working," you know. And with a little bit of knowledge that I had had from, you know, being a volunteer firefighter back, back in the day, I, I got this, you know, the pump working, and we started, you know, knocking down some of the fire so we could create a path for these people to get out. And...

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Next thing you know, we get alerted to a bunch of people that were seriously injured, you know, in one of the, one of the other buildings in the World Trade Center, get in there and there was a fireman and a complex worker that were, you know, badly injured and traumatized and some other, you know, folks that were fortunately still walking wounded. I remember telling my guys, hey, you know, we gotta find, we gotta get these guys out of here, gotta get them some help. And, you know, they found an ambulance from New York Presbyterian Hospital because, you know, up there, it's not only the fire department that responds to emergencies, it's also the hospital-based units. And it had all its

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  windows blown out of it and, but had the keys in the ignition. I don't know where the medics were, but, you know, we loaded these people and onto the litter and onto the bench seat and piled as many as we could into the, into the ambulance. And this is the first time that I had physically touched somebody that day because I've been trying to stay in a command and control position with my, my team. But, you know, two of these, these folks were really in bad, you know, you know, one, one wasn't breathing, another one, you know, was, was, was in bad shape. And got a NY, I'm sorry, Port Authority Police Officer off duty who came in, you know, you know, I guess was leaving this, you know, the, his job when

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  all this took place, hopped up in the front seat. I got another agent too with me in the back and then we start heading down to the Battery Park area, south of the, you know, the Manhattan where the Port Authority Officer said he had heard that they were setting up a triage area. And we're driving down, you know, through the street and I'll never forget, all this wind and stuff is blowing right through the ambulance. I mean, because we had no windows. And we get down to the Battery and, and next thing you know, you know, people come running up to us and, and it was, it was just such a contrast from where we had just come from, you know, like 10, 15 blocks up where now we're down into this area that's

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  pristine, it's green, there's color, people are opening up the doors, you know, we're all covered with soot, got blood running down, you know, our faces. We've got these, you know, bad casualties in the ambulance. And, and, and soon the door opened up and they looked in at us, I mean, you could see the shock on their face. Like, holy cow, what's going on up there? And so we wound up passing them off to the folks down, you know, the medical teams down at the battery. And then I tried to get back up to the scene because my folks are still up there and I wanted to take the ambulance back up there and they wouldn't let me. So I freaking, down the road comes this NYPD motor officer and I get stopped right in

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  front of him, slams his brakes on, he says, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'll tell you what you're gonna do, since you're gonna get me back up there. I got people up there." And he said, "All right, man, hop on." So next thing you know, you know, we're scootering our way up, you know, back into the scene where I reconnected with my guys, you know, lost all track of time, lost about three hours. Was there when our building came down, about five o'clock that night, you know, but after about three o'clock, we weren't finding any more people alive, you know.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  And about five o'clock, our building came down because when Tower One came down, it leaned over into Tower Seven and part of Tower One carved out a, the front of, you know, Building Seven, the fire got in there. And because the city had lost so many firefighters and police officers and their equipment, there was nobody there to fight it. So eventually that fire chewed away at the base of Tower One and the weight of the building just, you know, brought it down about five, five-thirty that night. And I wound up, you know, on the scene for a while and then got, you know, my team and

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  I got back to a place where they were, we heard that they were, you know, rallying up our field office people. Got there and they had set up decon and, you know, by then, you know, I'm covered, you know, with all this, you know, you probably saw the, you know, the videos and stuff, you know.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  And wound up, you know, the only thing that was, you know, the clothes they had were like, you know, XXL, you know, you know. So I put, you know, I looked like Gumby by the time, you know, I was tying knots in my clothes and all and, and I knew I had to get home because I had been reported missing, you know, to my family. And that whole time that this is going on, my kids, of course, you know, everyone immediately gets alerted that something's going on. My wife was a nurse paramedic and she was working a heart attack victim in somebody's living room and turned and saw what was happening on the TV and almost lost it while she's trying to treat this patient. My kids, you know, of course, you know, a lot of, a lot of the kids that they went

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  to school with were, were, you know, parents were Wall Streeters and, and, you know, worked in the World Trade Center and the word went out and next thing you know, the kids are running out of school. But my son witnesses this from, you know, the hillside, you know, west of the city. And, you know, I get reported as missing and, you know, I knew I had to get home. And so I walked through the door about midnight that night and, and the look on their faces when they looked at me was like, you know, my eyes were beet red, you know, I had, you know, cuts and scratches all over me. And, you know, they just, you know, we just hugged, you know, and just kind of, and cried.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  And, and I would tell you, Jaco, it was the first time that day that I actually realized that both buildings had come totally down. Because where we were positioned, we just didn't have that situational awareness of what, what had happened. It wasn't real yet, but I watched it on TV and that's when I, you know, right after I got home. And that's the first, you know, kind of acknowledgement or realization that, you know, I'd been in the middle of that, probably not close enough to, you know, to, you know, lose my life, though I came close about five times that day, definitely.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  But far enough out that we, we could still do what we needed to do. And so I wound up being the ground zero supervisor for the Secret Service and part of the joint task force that was dealing with the rescue and recovery. And a couple of weeks after that day. So does that mean you're going into work the next day? You're going right back down there? Oh, yeah, yeah, I just came home, got about four or five hours sleep. You know, had gotten a suburban from our Newark field office, which was across the river. I had to get back down there, you know, to kind of, you know, understand what happened,

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  protect our, which our office got destroyed, but we had a lot of equipment and so forth that was subsurface down in the garages and so forth. That was very sensitive material. And then, next thing you know, you know, I was asked to brief the president, you know, that Friday, Bush 43, when he came to, to, to Ground Zero, and that's, you know, it's the famous, you know, picture of him standing on top of the pile with a megaphone. But I briefed him, you know, what it was like to be on the street that day, you know, and I said to him, it was, it's a matter of whether you stepped right or left, you know, often determined whether you lived or died that day.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  And so, you know, going back and forth to Ground Zero over the next couple of weeks, and, you know, my wife, you know, hits me up and says, hey, you know, something's wrong with Ryan, and my son, you know, he's about, like I said, about 14. And he's not talking, he's staying up in his room, you know, he looks depressed. So I went up to see him and, and said, you know, what's going on? And he says, look, I, I, I want you to take me down to Ground Zero, I need to understand what happened. And again, he had witnessed all this from the hillside, you know, west of the city. So I said, well, I don't think that's a good idea, and your mom's not gonna go for it. And he said, look, Dad, I, I just need to know what happened.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  And but something, you know how your gut talks to you sometimes, and you can't really put, you know, a lot of, you know, common sense or, or, or logic, but something told me, all right, I needed to do this. So I kind of made a pact with him. Look, I'll take you down there, but if I sense that you're not dealing with this, you know, we're out of there, no questions asked. Because by, by two weeks out, it's a pretty nasty place.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  You know, and uh, and by then they figured out that the air was probably not good to breathe, you know, so now everybody was wearing respirators and helmets and stuff, which is, which was good because that I took them down there and I dressed them up all in all that in a police jacket and we walked around for about three and a half hours because the debris field was so extensive and that's what people just don't understand is when, when, when that happened and those buildings came down, that the breadth of debris and destruction went blocks beyond the World Trade Center. And so I, you know, told them where things were that day and what I was doing and even then it was, you know, kind of hard for me to kind of, you know, resolve it in

• 1:27:38Speaker 02

  my own head because everything looked so different. And just a tremendous amount of destruction, you know, a lot of people working the pile, trying to recover what they could recover and there wasn't much to recover. It had gone from a rescue into a recovery operation then. And anyway, uh, fast forward, you know, I get pulled back to the White House to take over security operations. Um, so on the seventh, December 7th was my last day at Ground Zero and I'll never forget they were pulling an I-beam out of the ground and as they were pulling it out of the ground, they were hosing it down and it was steaming like, you know, it was,

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  there was still fire, you know, boiling underground and I'll never forget that. Came back, you know, started back at the White House and uh, So was this a new assignment at this point? Yeah. So your family are up and moving? Yep, and all that, you know, they didn't want to go, you know, Jobs said, you know, you know the deal, you know, pack it up, you know. Put it in the truck and.

• 1:28:47Jocko Willink?

  And Ryan's what a freshman in high school at this point?

• 1:28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So he comes back to, uh, you know, we, we came back to the Annapolis area, where we had lived before. We got transferred up to New York and he finished, um, out of high school. He was, uh, um, uh, he worked for a neighbor of mine that had a diving salvage company. So, which I think is, was, was pretty important. He was, you know, diving year round, you know, in the Chesapeake Bay, doing, you know, scut work, you know, scraping the bottoms of, you know, rich people's sailboats and, you know, changing out zinks and finding stuff that was, you know, but he was doing it year round. But he graduated high school and I said.

• 1:29:31Jocko Willink?

  Was he playing sports in high school? What was he doing? Did he like high school?

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So lacrosse was, you know, it's a big lacrosse, you know, so he's doing some lacrosse and, uh, but he, but he liked making money. So, you know, he was, you know, on, you know, in the water a lot. And, uh, and then he worked as a, with my daughter who's about a year, year and a half older than him. They worked at a, a restaurant in Annapolis and so, but I said to him, look, uh, you know, after he graduated, I said, I, I give you a year to figure this out, but you know, at that point, I'm going to show you the door and, um, you know, a little tough love, you know? So he came home about six months, uh, no, about nine months later and he's.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  So this is after he graduated high school?

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  After he graduated from high school, we're down in Annapolis area, you know, having transferred.

• 1:30:22Jocko Willink?

  And he's just, uh, once he graduates high school, he's diving, he's making money, working in the restaurant?

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  Yep. And, uh, and had been doing that, you know, since we had, you know, moved back while we were still in high school. But now this is, you know, pretty much all he was doing and, uh, and souping up his car and doing, you know? So anyway, I, I, you know, he comes home one day and, um, he says, uh, I just enlisted in the Navy. And I said, you did what?

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this enlisted in the Navy and, uh, oh, by the way, I volunteered for the SEAL program.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  And just then I look over to my wife and she's reaching into the, into the knife drawer. And all I see is this edged weapon coming out and I'm thinking, and she's saying to, you know, this is your fault, you know, and.

• 1:31:14Jocko Willink?

  Had he talked to you about it all beforehand?

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  Not really, not really. Um, so I said to him, look, do you know what you're getting yourself into? And he says, yeah, I know what I'm getting myself into.

• 1:31:26Jocko Willink?

  The correct statement is you don't know what you're getting yourself into.

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  That's where I was going with it. I said, well, I'll tell you what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have you talk to some, some folks. And so I got a hold of, um, you know, Indianapolis is a big town, uh, and naval academies there. You know, a lot of, you know, um, you know, uh, frogmen, you know, roll through there. And, uh, and we had some friends that sponsored, you know, guys that went to the teams, you know, as why they were in the academy. And we had sponsored some, so I hooked them up with some of the guys that had just come out of theater. And I said to him, hey, look, unvarnished, tell him what it's like and, uh, don't sugarcoat it. And so he sat down with them and, you know, after they were done, I said, okay, what do you think? He says.

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  He went from ninety nine point nine to a hundred percent.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:32:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a thing. You think you're dissuading someone when you tell them what it's about and it's, if they already have that mindset, it's just more.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  But you know, I asked him, uh, Jaco, so why, why are you doing this? And he said, uh, cause, uh, I don't ever want to have happened, um, on nine 11 to ever happen again. He says, I'm going to be part of the solution. And that is a, a, a response that I've heard from so many of the men and women that, you know, following nine 11, who stepped, you know, stood up on the line, raised their hand and said they were going to be part of the solution. And, uh, and off he went, you know, to the Navy, you know, to BUDS.

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  How were you feeling when he went to BUDS? Do you feel like he was ready for it?

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  You know.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  He was running, he was working out. Obviously, you know, he had kind of, you know, sensitized himself, you know, the diving, I think, was a real

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's definitely

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  was key. But, you know, he got there and by then I had retired out of the Secret Service and I had gotten hooked back into Department of Defense, into the Joint IED Defeat Organization, called the JIEDO.

• 1:33:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the JIEDO was a huge component of what was going on in the fights overseas. Basically, for people that don't know what that was, it was a place where they were taking all the various IED intelligence and kind of putting it all together and collaborating that intelligence, putting it into forums where we could use it overseas, take that information and try and keep guys safe. That's what JIEDO was, it was a huge effort because at that time, I want to say about 75% of the casualties in Iraq, I don't know what the number was in Afghanistan, but in Iraq, 75% of the casualties were from IEDs, roadside bombs primarily. And so there'd been a huge effort to get something, to do something

• 1:34:15Jocko Willink?

  about that. And that effort resulted in the formation of the JIEDO, which was just focused on defeating IEDs overseas. And so, what was your, what was your job there?

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  So I, I got, you know, it was almost like a black van pulled up, you know, alongside me one day and this giant arm reaches out and it's a retired four-star Armani Miggs, who, you know, was leading the organization at the time. And, and the, the organization had morphed from a task force in the basement of the Pentagon to now a, an ad hoc organization that the President and SecDef had, had stood up. Because, you know, as you said, you know, the, there was a weapon system that the enemy was using against us. And, and, and, you know, this was causing, you know, the majority of our, our men and women that had, you know,

• 1:35:12Speaker 02

  that were coming home, you know, and flag-drag coffins were exposed to the IEDs and coming home with these horrible amputations and just, just figuring wounds. They had to get on top of this. It was paralyzing our, our, our maneuver on, on the battlefield. So.

• 1:35:30Speaker 02

  You know, I said to to Monty Miggs, who passed away a couple of years ago, he was he was a big brain guy, great leader. I said, why me? And he says, I need somebody to help me think about this in a different way. And he says, you know, you come from an organized crime background, you know, and so, you know, at that point, they were starting to realize that they had up armored, you know, they had, you know, you know, built robots, they had, you know, worked on all the, you know, the hardware stuff that they could and, and, you know, had harvested or picked the low hanging fruit. And they realized that they

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  had to go after the human factor side of this. And so, which meant going after the extremist networks and the bombing networks. So that's when you started seeing a lot of the law enforcement techniques, tactics and procedures, there are TTPs coming into play, you know, where we started enrolling, you know, you know, military age males and other folks that, you know, were detained with biometrics, you know, we'd start to collecting fingerprints, we started collecting, you know, their photos and other identifying information. Iraq was a little bit easier because of the oil for food program database that they had gave us a lot of information about their population. Afghanistan was a

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  totally different story. And so, I went into it, I was, you know, on the ground floor building a platform called the Counter IED Operations and Intelligence Integration Center, we called it the COIC. And it was a big brain of data that we had put together in a non disclosed location out in northern Virginia. With a lot of, you know, active duty and contractor personnel to staff it. A lot of them came out of special operations.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  And we started to pull the thread on these networks that were employing IEDs. And we realized that we weren't going to win this at the point of the blast. We needed to get to the left of it. And, and that's where, you know, the organized crime piece came out of it. And, and the recognition that we had to follow the money. We had to look at their transport networks. We had to look at their supply chain. We had to look at how they were recruiting, you know, what their motivations were in any given part of the battle space. But even more so, we had to recognize that we had to build a relationship with the units that were forward. Because they were the last tactical mile. They had the best, you know, you know, optic of what was going on or what they were confronting.

• 1:38:19Speaker 02

  And so I made the decision that we were going to project people forward. So, you know, 25%, you know, 30% of my workforce went forward to sit in the two and three shops, you know, the intelligence operations shops. And, and what, you know, my model that, you know, kind of, kind of broke the parochial way that, the doctrinal way that, you know, military intelligence does stuff was my folks forward were, and I took a page out of JSOC's playbook for this. You have to send your best people forward, which means it's going to hurt you.

• 1:39:01Speaker 02

  And it's going to make things uncomfortable, you know, in the rear. And, and send them forward and give them the power to make decisions and make things happen. So my philosophy was we worked the problem from the edge back, not from, you know, The rear. The rear forward. Yeah. You know, where everyone was going home at night, back into a warm, comfortable bed, you know, getting three hot meals and, you know, you know, some playtime. The people who, you know, I sent forward were my scouts out. Were my sensors, were my liaisons with the forward commanders. And that's where, you know, we made the money.

• 1:39:45Speaker 02

  Building those relationships and, and feeding them information that they combined with what they were seeing in order to develop, you know, situational awareness to outline and map, you know, the, the bombing networks, which all had their own little style and fingerprint, you know? And, and it was successful, very, very successful. And, and so the reason I, I, I say all that is because it brought me back to the community, which now my son was deployed in these areas. So I had skin in the game.

• 1:40:21Jocko Willink?

  And how'd that feel? I mean, at this time, now we're getting it. So first, your son goes to BUDS. Was he a decent enough runner? Where, obviously he was good in the water. Did he have any issues? Was there any problems? Was he, or did he do alright?

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  So, you know, nothing's without some adventure.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, and the thing is, you either make it or you don't, right?

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:40:43Jocko Willink?

  There's very few people that breeze through SEAL training. So there's gonna be issues, but what, how'd he do?

• 1:40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he, he, he did well. And, and of course you hear, you know, you know, the backstory after, unfortunately after he, he passes, is when I, I, I hear a lot of the backstory on, on, you know, how you did and how people thought of him. But he went into training, he was, he was the middle of the pack guy. You know, he, like I said, he, he was pretty situationally aware. You know, he never wanted to be out front. He never wanted to be last. He blended into the middle. And he was a smart guy. But he went into Hell Week with a, a stress fracture in his leg.

• 1:41:34Speaker 02

  They, they were doing lock PT, they bobbled the lock. He went, you know, out of instinct, went to kinda support it, came down on his leg. So I remember him calling me right before he started Hell Week and he says, my, my leg is like, oh, you know? And I said, do you, he says, you wanna get it checked out? And he said, fuck no.

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  I said, there's no way I'm going to medical with this.

• 1:41:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  I wasn't surprised, you know. And I said, okay, look, man, just, you know, ice it the best you can, you know, try to give it as much rest, don't go out and do anything crazy. And so he went into hell week with this stress fracture on his leg. Well, through the course of hell week, he is compensating, shifting his body weight, doing whatever.

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  Anyway, you know, he started taking some heat from his boat crew, you know, hey, man, you're not carrying your weight. And he's not saying anything, he just tries to adjust and continue. Anyway, they get to Friday and, and, you know, they secure hell week and then everybody collapses, you know, and they start, you know, picking themselves, and Mullen secured their hell week, Admiral Mullen.

• 1:42:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  And so.

• 1:42:49Jocko Willink?

  The chief of naval operations at the time.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  Yep, yep, so, anyway, I forget how many he still had, you know, left in his group, but they had lost a lot too. And so everyone's getting off, picking themselves off the beach and he's not getting up. So, you know, they, they help him up and they help him back to his room. You know, he gets cleaned up and he's laying in his rack, he's not getting out of his rack, everybody's, you know, going over for a chow.

• 1:43:19Jocko Willink?

  Is this 2005, was he in BUDS in 2005?

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  Uh, six.

• 1:43:23Jocko Willink?

  2006.

• 1:43:23Speaker 02

  Six, seven.

• 1:43:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  Six, seven. And anyway, they realized something's not right. So they, they wound up, you know, he's got a lot of pain in his back. Uh, they take him over to the Naval Hospital, San Diego, and they get him into, you know, CAT scan, PET scan, and his whole back lights up like the aurora borealis. He's got stress fractures all the way up his back. So what happened was he's literally, he's broken his back in hell week. As a result of trying to compensate for the injury he went into hell week with. And when his teammates found out, they said, holy shit. He says, here we thought he was, you know, dogging it.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  And not realizing that he was going through with this type of injury. They said, holy cow. And he went up before a review board because they were gonna, they were gonna toss him. Because, you know, the assessment after his injury was identified was, you know, he's got to go on light duty for three months. And so they, they had a review board. And, and I remember, because I got the backstory on this, you know, they, they were gonna suggest that he, you know, he leave. And, um, because of his injury. And, and I forget who the commanding officer was of, of the center at the point, came in and said, so you, so what you're telling me is that this kid, you know, goes into hell

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  week, you know, with an injury like that, he goes all the way through hell week and comes out with, you know, a broken back. And you want to throw him out?

• 1:45:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, not happening.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, this kid can need some pain. And, and so they all kind of looked at each other and said, you know, you're right. So he rolled back a couple of glasses and then, you know, eventually, you know, got out, went through, um, SQT, did well, um, immediately went to SOCOM, Special Operations, Medic, Medic Course down in Fort Bragg, did well there, came out of that, top of his class. And then, uh, you know, they gave him a, maybe a week to pack his bags and he was in Iraq.

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he went straight to Iraq after that?

• 1:45:47Speaker 02

  Yep, yep. And he wasn't there but days before he was in contact.

• 1:45:52Jocko Willink?

  What, did he go, did he get to assign to a team and the team was already on deployment?

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, he was Team Seven.

• 1:45:58Jocko Willink?

  And then he, so he rolls straight to Iraq. Now, you're in full work mode at Jaido at this time.

• 1:46:05Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  So you, you're tracking what's going on.

• 1:46:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:08Jocko Willink?

  This is gonna be like next level stress for you.

• 1:46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I had to discipline myself not to read their, their daily reports. You know, though my guys were keeping an eye on it, I had a special operations, uh, you know, um,

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  Team in my center that that supported, you know, both white and blacks off.

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  So, you know, they would, you know, keep an eye on what he was doing. But even more so, I was able to broker on the pre-deployment cycle of the teams to come through the COIC. Okay. So they can understand what we could do for them. And because it's all about relationships. So, once you understand, you know, what's available at your fingertips, or simply by, you know, a phone call, then that, you know, potentially can give you a lot more capability that you can lean on. And so, they would come through, you know, the platoons would come through, interact with the operators, the analysts.

• 1:47:19Speaker 02

  And that's, that's another dynamic that was non-traditional, is that I had all my operators

• 1:47:28Speaker 02

  sitting with my intel analysts, sitting with my technologists, because we were bending pipe while this was all going on. And then in the second bench, I had my trainers. So, as I rotated people forward to be with the units for six months, in some cases, a year, and some of these unit commanders didn't want to leave their, let my people go, because they had become so dependent on, on that relationship and the information that, you know, we were, you know, exchanging with them. But when they came back, I immediately put them into the training cell, so that they can industrialize the latest, greatest lessons learned that they were bringing back from

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  the forward edge, and then rotate them back into the support cell with the operators and the analysts. So, that rotation really proved to be, you know, I think, you know, the secret sauce that, you know, enabled our success and our ability to support the units forward. But yet, my son's unit being one of them.

• 1:48:31Jocko Willink?

  So he goes on that first deployment without even doing a workup, rolls right over there, probably because he's a medic and he shows up at the team, they're on deployment. So he just rolls over, starts helping out, probably gets thrown into a platoon, starts supporting them. And is he, was he over there for the full deployment? Was it like a six month deployment for him or was he?

• 1:48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And he gets home, what, what's your assessment after he gets done with his first deployment? How's he doing?

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  You know, he, he had, you know, broken his cherry, uh, you know, was coming home with a good rep. Uh, he was jazzed up. He loved, loved, you know, being in the teams, uh, loved his platoon. Uh, they were tight. Uh, he was loyal to a fault to, to his boys. And, uh, so that first pump, you know, in, into Iraq out in Al Anbar was, uh, you know, was, was really formative for him. And, uh, he was looking forward to get back, back, you know, back in the fight.

• 1:49:31Jocko Willink?

  So that's what he does, rolls back into a workup, still at Team Seven, goes through a workup. Uh, are you getting feedback from him as he's going through a workup and stuff?

• 1:49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. You, you know, they're do, they're doing, you know, pretty much what they do in the workups, you know, heavy training.

• 1:49:47Jocko Willink?

  Actually, I was running his workup, you know, I was the, I was the trade at commander at that time and I was a hundred percent putting him through all of his training. So whatever, whatever he said about it was a reflection of me.

• 1:49:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:59Jocko Willink?

  And the training was pretty rough at the time. So.

• 1:50:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I mean, he, he, but you know, he, he was all about training.

• 1:50:05Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  You know, and, uh, I think they had a J, a couple of J sets, uh, mixed in there between his, you know, first, second, third, you know, he went to Honduras one time to work maritime ops and then went into Lebanon, which was a real interesting, um, you know, kind of hornet's nest of, of, um, activity.

• 1:50:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  You know, with Hezbollah there. Um, but you know, he, he loved the training. He had a high standard. Um, I would say if there, if there were, there was a fault that if, you know, uh, he had a little tolerance for incompetence or, or, you know, people not doing their job. And that was no reflection on his teammates. It was like when he had to deal with the rest of the Navy or had to deal with, you know, other components that, you know, would not, you know.

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  Live up to his standard. I would say that that was part of his personality, but he was loyal to the fault to his to his teammates and and, you know, his best friend was an officer. Um, and, you know, he had a lot of really good, close friends, good, good, good troopers.

• 1:51:14Jocko Willink?

  And then where was his next deployment to? Did he go back to Iraq again?

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, he went back to support the task force. Um, uh, you know, the tier one task force, uh, army task force, uh, up north in the HVI, you know, uh, hunting mission and and really got a different perspective up there. That's where he got his, um, you know, they actually put him in, you know, this tier one, um, uh, army, you know, put him in for his Bronze Star up there because of his, you know, his actions. But, um, it was a different side. And that's when I started seeing some changes because they got mixed up into some stuff up there. Um, some of the the torture chambers and so forth that they came upon and some of the other, you know, uh, sites of,

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  you know, I think, uh, it goes to some of the moral injury challenges that, you know, our folks, uh, wrestle with, you know, coming out of, uh, experiences like that.

• 1:52:12Jocko Willink?

  So when you say you notice, so he comes back from that deployment, obviously, if you're working with a tier one element, their op tempo is very, very high. And he comes home from that deployment, or and this is maybe the first time, looking back, you start to assess that he was going through something that was a little bit affecting him mentally?

• 1:52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, but not not really, you know, in a sense that anything was sticking out, but I could see, you know, there was changes. He's maturing, you know, he, you know, very serious. Um, you know, we we would talk about some things, but not everything, you know, uh, because he, like I said, he was very loyal to to his teammates and obviously so there's some things that he was just wasn't going to talk about. Uh, but, you know, through through that experience, um, he, uh, which I would assess was a good experience. Um, word came down that they they needed a, uh, special operations corpsman.

• 1:53:10Speaker 02

  In Afghanistan, they had, I guess somebody got hurt and they needed an experienced medic over there. So they put out a call for, you know, anybody interested and he immediately popped up and says, I'll go. So he finishes his, his second pump in Iraq and comes home for a couple of weeks, resets his kit and then heads out the door for, for Uzcan. Where, you know, he's, you know, now an augmentee to, to another task force and, and they're

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  seeing a lot of action. He winds up, you know, you know, operating at a different altitude, high altitude, winds up getting high altitude sickness on one op, you know, gets banged up a little bit, but you know, again, you know, likes the experience, you know, he's, he's in with a good team element. And then comes home from that. So he's almost been deployed a year now, which is kind of a significant, I guess, piece of this, you know, that, that year-long deployment where you get no reset, I think is, is significant, especially, you know, within a special operations, high, high op tempo environment. But, you know,

• 1:54:33Speaker 02

  when he came back off of that, that's when I started perceiving some, you know, signs that things are definitely changing. What, what are some of the signs? He started complaining he couldn't sleep and that when he did get to sleep, he was having some nightmares, bouts of anxiety. He became short fused, stopped smiling, you know, because he was kind of a jokester. He was one of these guys who was very quiet, but when he said something, you know, it was funny, you know, the people paid attention. And he had this great ability to abstract, you know, think second, third order, you know, steps ahead, you know, so he, he was, you know, kind of made a name for himself

• 1:55:17Speaker 02

  in planning operations and so forth. But after that third deployment, he, like I said, was wrestling with some of these issues, but it was kind of a low, kind of like.

• 1:55:30Jocko Willink?

  And you're only seeing him, so you're you're stay you living in Virginia or whatever.

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  Maryland.

• 1:55:35Jocko Willink?

  Maryland, and he's stationed out on the west coast. So you're not, you're talking to him, but you're not seeing him that often.

• 1:55:41Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:55:42Jocko Willink?

  Just not possible.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  That's right. So, you know, he's got a new family now. You know, the the family that he grew up with, you know, that's transitioned to his.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  That's the secondary family.

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, his teammates, which he's he's gotten really close. He's been, you know, he's spilled blood with him. So, um, but he winds up going to sniper school, you know, comes out the top of his class in sniper school. It was Indiana for for that, you know, period of training. And then, you know, again, back into another workup. This time he goes into um, Helmand Province, goes into a, you know, uh, gets assigned to a wild outpost up above north of uh, of uh, Bastion.

• 1:56:27Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:28Speaker 02

  Um, and Lashkar Ga up towards the Kajaki Dam.

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  And it and it's a, it's like a Fort Apache scenario, you know, they're, you know, they're taking, you know, incoming rounds all the time and constantly locking up with the enemy. But, you know, he's got now the the uh, SEAL sniper designation.

• 1:56:52Speaker 02

  They wind up, I remember him calling me one night, you know, he just had to talk to somebody. They'd just come back from an op and he, they said, uh, he was rattled and he was rattled because uh, it was a near helicopter, um, you know, collision that they, you know, uh, Marine 53s were inserting them and were getting brownouts as they were were coming in for approach and then would pull up and then, you know, they they almost clapped together and then they would circle around and and it wasn't until like the third uh, attempt on insertion into this hot zone that uh, they finally, you know, just ran

• 1:57:31Speaker 02

  off the back ramp. And um, and he said it was just, you know, really, you know, unnerving. Everybody was shaken, shaken up and they had to, you know, quickly get their bearings again to get, you know, to lock into the op, which then turned into a firefight because now, you know, the elements of surprise is gone. And uh, and then wound up.

• 1:57:53Jocko Willink?

  So what are you telling your son after he's, you know, you can see, you can hear it in his voice? Like you, you know, the feeling of like

• 1:58:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  terrible helicopter scenarios where you're like, there's no way we're gonna make it out of this. And then you've somehow make it there. What are you, what are you telling him?

• 1:58:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it wasn't your time. It wasn't your time. And uh, you know, you know, you, you gotta, you gotta try to turn that, you know, around, you know, into a strength, you know, try to, you know, sit down with your boys and talk about this. And, you know, again, you know, you know, when you, you go into these jobs, shit happens. You know, to, to uh, quote that uh, famous philosopher, uh, Forrest Gump.

• 1:58:40Speaker 02

  And, but the only way you can deal with it is really kinda letting it out. And, you know, it's not weakness, it's just, you gotta process it. Otherwise it's, it's gonna chase you. Well, he wound up having another bad helicopter experience again, same with uh, marine aviation. Not, not to throw down on marine aviation, but, you know, I think that part of the, the country had its unique challenges, you know, high dust environment and so forth and, and uh, old aircraft and, and, and folks maybe not as familiar with, you know,

• 1:59:18Speaker 02

  operating with special operations and not like, you know,

• 1:59:23Speaker 02

  you know, the, the type of experience that, you know, you get with the one sixtieth, you know, um, and uh, night stalkers. But, anyway, it is what it is. And uh, but talking to them, telling them, hey, look, you know, I, I've had my own close experience, you know, close in experience with helicopters. You know, they're mechanical, shit breaks, you know, you put all your trust on your pilots. And uh, you know, you're there for the ride.

• 1:59:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that vulnerability, you know, whenever I talk to people about, you know, being a pilot, being a tanker, being anything, I liked more than anything just being on my feet in the ground. Like, to me, give me me and my platoon, and I feel a thousand times safer than when I'm riding in a Humvee, riding in a Bradley, riding in a aircraft of any kind. So, yeah, when you have to do that over and over again, it's one of those things. And you don't, it's also one of those situations where there's very little you can do to control it. And, you know, even when we have, when it's my Humvees and I'm picking the route, and I can gather the intel, and I can use the jammers, and I can get all this stuff to

• 2:00:38Jocko Willink?

  kind of mitigate as much as possible, you're at least feeling that you've controlled what you can control. Man, when you get on board into a Bradley, into a helicopter, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things going on. I mean, like you said, there's mechanical, I mean, those things just crash sometimes, and that happens. So, yeah, if you start to think about that. See, my gig was, I don't think about that. Like, there's some stuff I can't control, I don't focus on it at all. That's right. I'm just, hey, I'm getting this bird, these Marines, these Army, these Air Force pilots, they're gonna do this as good as anybody can do it, and we're gonna rock and roll. I, that's the best I could do, that's what I figured out for me.

• 2:01:20Jocko Willink?

  When I'm relying on, I mean, sitting in the back of a Bradley, driving down a street that's had nine IEDs in the past 48 hours on it, that's not a good feeling. And, and if you think about that, it's gonna really, it's really gonna rough you up mentally. For me, it was always like, cool, yep, these guys know what they're doing, we're gonna rock and roll, and if it's time, it's time, but I'm feeling good tonight, I'm feeling lucky, because that's how I always feel, let's go.

• 2:01:48Jocko Willink?

  When you let that start to creep into your head, it definitely, I don't know. I wouldn't know how to deal with that. Like if I, if you focus on what can go wrong. Cause how many, how many parts are there in a helicopter? How many parts are there in a, in aircraft that you're about to get into and how old is that aircraft? And when was the last, you know, what was the, what was the maintenance dude thinking about when he was doing the maintenance on this piece that everything? You start going down that thought process, it can get pretty ugly, pretty quick. So I always just did my best to, this is what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about what I can control. That's what we're doing. That's what I'm focused on. That's what I tried to get my guys focused on, but it's not always easy to do that.

• 2:02:31Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's actually not very hard to get wrapped into those negative thoughts. And especially you have a close call, you realize that we survived this by a millimeter. And that it's very hard to not focus on that.

• 2:02:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Check. I mean, check and all that. I mean, yeah. And that's same with me. I mean, I, I, I only focus on what, what I think I can influence and control. It's kind of the advice I gave Ryan, you know, it's your time, it's your time. You know, and you don't get visibility of, you know, that, you know, in a lot of cases. I can remember, you know, you talk about 53s, you know, the jolly green, you know? You get on board and you know, freaking hydraulic fluids dripping all over the place. And you know, you pointed out to the crew chief, hey, man, you got, you got, there's a leak here, you got hydraulic fluid, you know, without even, you know, like batting an eye, he says, well, just let me know when it stops dripping, cause then we got problems.

• 2:03:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the way it is. So, so that was his last deployment.

• 2:03:41Speaker 02

  It was.

• 2:03:41Jocko Willink?

  Easy in Afghanistan. And you know, I was talking to my friends, some of my friends in the teams and some of the guys that had worked directly with Ryan. And just, you know, cause I didn't, I didn't remember Ryan from when I put him through training, cause I put a lot of guys through training. And, but I was just talking to you, okay, what, what, what do you remember? And you know, the people that worked with him as first two, three platoons was like freaking stud, team guy you want. Great new guy, then a great one cruise, like just was just on the path to kind of be just. The awesome team guy.

• 2:04:19Jocko Willink?

  What are you seeing? So now by the time he comes home from this fourth deployment? What, what are you noticing? What are you seeing? That's different.

• 2:04:28Speaker 02

  So he's becoming a little bit more vocal and his inability to sleep. Which you know, I mean, we don't get a good night's sleep. You feel like crap the next morning, but he's not getting any sleep. And then, you know, so he's, you know, I think gone to, you know, he's drinking more. You know, trying to get to sleep. He's, you know, wrestling with some pain.

• 2:04:53Speaker 02

  Whether it's, you know, residual pain from, you know, training or, or just, you know,

• 2:05:00Speaker 02

  getting, you know, you're rocked too much in combat, whatever.

• 2:05:06Speaker 02

  So the alcohol is becoming an issue.

• 2:05:08Jocko Willink?

  Do you know that at the time?

• 2:05:10Speaker 02

  I sensed it. I sensed it. I mean, he was pretty straightforward. He was saying, you know, hey, I'm drinking more and I, I don't want to. But, um, you know, I gotta try to get to sleep and then, then he said, when I would get to sleep, I'd have these nightmares. And I know that he had one shooting that involved a kid.

• 2:05:33Speaker 02

  You know,

• 2:05:35Speaker 02

  early teens, you know, I think at 12. I think it was a legitimate shoot. I, I know it was, uh, from what they said, but it bothered him. Uh, I think the kid had a weapon. But still, you know, it's part of that moral injury and you know, and here's the other thing, you know, that I've seen with, you know, that's specific to the medics. Is that, you know, one side of your brain is, you know, you're a shooter and the other side you've got, you know, you're wired to help people.

• 2:06:08Speaker 02

  You know, and sometimes, you know, I, I think that that creates a, you know, kind of a, a tension, you know, an emotional tension.

• 2:06:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the other thing is, you don't always have the capability to save people.

• 2:06:24Speaker 02

  That's right. You're exactly right.

• 2:06:25Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, so, so when you can't, and I definitely saw this with some of my medics, it was like some of my corpsmen was, you see that, look, they're working on guys that can't be saved. Can't, they can't be saved, but it doesn't matter that they can't be saved. It doesn't matter that if you put them on the, with those wounds, on the, with the best surgeon in the world at Johns Hopkins, that no one can save an individual, but they still feel like they, they should have been able to help more.

• 2:06:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:57Jocko Willink?

  So that's, I think is part of it too.

• 2:06:59Speaker 02

  No, you're exactly right, and I think that they, you know, um, you know, carried an increased burden. And it goes back to how do you deal with this stuff? And especially when you lose a teammate, um, you know, it's, it's harder to resolve, you know.

• 2:07:17Jocko Willink?

  Is he coming home on leave back to the East Coast?

• 2:07:19Speaker 02

  You know, occasionally, but you know, his home is out here, you know, we would come out to visit him. Uh, when he would come back, you know, he, it almost, if, what I saw is that he felt more comfortable being deployed than he did being back in Garrison. He liked, he liked being deployed, he liked operating. He didn't like, you know, what he would, I think, characterizes the nonsense that, you know, occurs a lot.

• 2:07:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  When you're, when you're home and, and then I think also that, you know, occasionally you would say, people just don't understand what we've been through or what we've done. So I think that is, is true in the way our society, uh, just doesn't understand our warriors. Certainly the ones that have served, you know, the last 20 plus years of, of conflict, uh, which is part of the challenge I think we have and, and, uh, with our, you know, warrior and veteran community. But, um, yeah, he started, uh,

• 2:08:27Speaker 02

  At that point, you know, coming off that last deployment, he was asked to, you know, become the lead petty officer in SALC, Special Operations Urban Combat Training. As you know, it's really, you know, an important phase of workup before the platoons, you know, lift and shift to combat theater. And I think he was asked to do that because of his experience. And so, and he took that very seriously. I mean, he, you know, was very much into redesigning lesson plans and, you know, wanted to replicate, because he would call home and ask me about different things, replicate the combat environment, you know, as closely as possible and really,

• 2:09:10Speaker 02

  you know, create a level of stress and, and, and performance expectation that would, you know, serve the, the units that were going. And, and he was pretty, I think, straightforward in his critiques of, you know, how different groups, you know, performed. And, but at the same time, you know, he felt that he had to be there right on top of, you know, these evolutions. So when they would breach a door, when they would come in and have a dynamic entry, he, he was right there absorbing all that.

• 2:09:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know how many crashes get thrown? Like, if he's at SALC and you're working SALC and you're crashing rooms, and not just crashes, so the flash crash grenades, for people that don't know, but then we have like fake grenades, like blue body, we call them blue body, but they're, they just have a blasting cap in them. But you might, you might be in a room in, you might get, you might absorb 15 crashes on one run. You know what I mean? Like, there is a lot of, and this is after the, so the breach goes, and then people are crashing rooms, they're throwing blue bodies. By the way, you got a, a Mark 48 machine gun inside of a room that's six by six, shooting out of a window, and you happen to be in there when this is going on.

• 2:10:27Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of, of concussive forces that you're experiencing. And so, just giving some people, if that's what he's doing, working the, the Special Operations Urban Combat block of training, that's what it is. It's just explosion after explosion after explosion all the time. And when you do that, you know, when you're going, when you're in a platoon, You do that block of training, but then you go to spec recon. What are you doing on spec recon? You're quiet in the woods for two weeks, right? Then you go on combat swimmer. What are you doing in combat swimmer? You're under the water for three weeks. Then you go to mar ops. What are you doing? You're in a boat. So you're, if you're in a workup, you're not getting exposed over and over and over again.

• 2:11:10Jocko Willink?

  When you're in training cell and that's what you're teaching? You're just cycling platoons through that over and over and over again. So if you're in land warfare, you're, you know, you're eating rockets all the time. If you're in SAOC, you're eating crashes and, and explosive breaches. And same thing with CQC, you're eating those things. So definitely the exposure that he's getting at this point is very high.

• 2:11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and when he went to sniper school, you know, they're shooting the 50 cal. And so he would come out with, you know, for instance, shooting a 50 cal where they would just shoot endless rounds and, and say that, you know, blood was pouring out of his nose. His ears were ringing. Uh, he'd come off, uh, the SAOC, you know, you know, workups and, you know, he'd have to lay, you know, they go out to the island and, you know, have a heavy day of, uh, weapons and, and, you know, breaching and dynamic entries. He'd come back to his room. He said he had to lay down for like five, six hours on the floor, just, you know, because his head was hurting so much. And then, uh, started complaining about some vision problems and hearing.

• 2:12:13Speaker 02

  But it got to a point where he, he recognized he needed to go get some help. So he, you know, went to medical and, and, you know, they immediately pulled out the prescription pad and wrote him, you know, a prescription for sleep medication. And then they wrote him another prescription for, you know, anxiety. And so he started, you know, taking that, but it really wasn't helping. And together with the alcohol really didn't make a good combin- combination. But he was still doing his job. He was getting out there. He's taking it serious. And then, you know, he had, uh, he had an incident where he, um, hit his head, you know, uh, alcohol related incident and came out of that, um,

• 2:12:59Speaker 02

  You know, that was, I think, the first, you know, incident or event that we really started to understand that something wasn't right. So he like fell down drunk type thing? Yeah, kinda. I don't know where they were. They were in Spain on a, they were going over, I think to Iraq to change out a team and he was going on the trip. And actually it was his reenlistment. He was going out to, he was going to reenlist in theater and wound up, you know, this is like within days of them putting him on this medication. And he wasn't sleeping. I think the combination of it, he, you know, rolled back and, you

• 2:13:43Speaker 02

  know, hit his head and was unconscious. And so, you know, like most of the, you know, the dudes, you know, they get up, they shake it off and he hops back on the plane, goes into Iraq and things aren't right. They, you know, the folks that are on the trip with him said that he's just not right. And they come back out of Iraq and they wound up having to go to Laundstuhl, you know, because, you know, while he was at altitude, he had some type of crisis. And so they evaluate him, you know, in Germany and realize that, you know, something's happened, but they don't know what it is.

• 2:14:26Speaker 02

  So the crisis that he added altitude, this is like he passed out? This is like, what was the situation? I guess there was some type of, something that, that he felt, like an out of body experience where he felt like he was dying. And that's some kinda like maybe panic attack type scenario? Panic attack, right. Something that wasn't, you know, he wasn't thinking right, he wasn't speaking right. So whether change in altitude, maybe had some type of, you know, bleed or insult going on in the head from, you know, obviously having this concussive event, you know, a number of days before, you know, going to altitude was having some type of an effect, but they really couldn't put their finger on it when he got to Germany.

• 2:15:07Speaker 02

  So it wound up, you know, getting him on a civilian flight back to the West Coast where, you know, he was reevaluated again and nobody could really put their finger on it. There's, there's something, just to give people some perspective here.

• 2:15:29Jocko Willink?

  In the teams, and I can really only speak to the teams, but I also know that the Army and the Marine Corps has an element of this as well. But from growing up in the teams, there's an element of everything that we're saying right now that I'm sure people are like, oh my gosh, this is like, be red alert, you know, this is a huge red flag.

• 2:15:47Jocko Willink?

  But in the SEAL teams, for someone to be drinking, for someone to be, you know, acting a little bit crazy, for, these are things that, for lack of a better word, in many cases, are normal. It is normal for a guy, or for three guys to show up on a Monday morning, one guy's got a black eye, another guy, they're still hungover, maybe they're still a little bit drunk, hey, guys, get your shit together, like, I'm not saying it's good, but I'm telling you, it's the reality. When you, this is, this is, these men are not, uh, Boy Scouts. These are guys with a high testosterone level. These are guys that are

• 2:16:27Jocko Willink?

  taking, have a very risky job. These are guys that seek combat. That's who they are. And so, the, the, the types of things that we're talking about, these aren't huge, like, maybe if you worked at an accounting firm, and Fred comes into work on Monday, and he's got a black eye, and he's really hungover, you might be thinking, oh my gosh, and if he does that next weekend, you're like, whoa, we got a problem here. In the SEAL teams, that's a 23-year-old dude that's been on multiple deployments, and I'm just saying, it's not such a red flag for, for, for a normal SEAL. And there's, there's many, many SEALs that, that's what they did, and they did it from age 22 to age 29, and

• 2:17:10Jocko Willink?

  then they, all of a sudden, they got married, and they had a family, they just kind of carried on, and everything goes normal, right? They, they, myself included, I was a wild freaking 23-year-old, I was a wild 25-year-old, I was a wild 21-year-old. I was drinking, I was getting in fights, we were all, that's what we were doing. That's what we were doing. And then, you know, get a little bit older, all of a sudden, you're, you know, you're, get a little bit of responsibility, and then you end up getting married, and you have kids, and you kind of just grow. And, and that, that is a fairly normal progression for a SEAL, at least back in the day. There's actually less of it now, I believe. But I just want to give that, kind of set that data point for people to think, oh my gosh, you got a guy that says he can't sleep? Right, go talk to a SEAL platoon. Guys like, oh yeah, I didn't sleep last night.

• 2:17:54Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I didn't sleep last night because I went out to a party, I met a girl, I did this, got lost in an Uber, came home, couldn't find my ID and I had to jump over the fence. This is a normal story. So, I just want to set that so people aren't thinking, oh, these are huge. Like, why didn't, why didn't everybody focus on this immediately? It's because it's fairly, for lack of a better word, normal.

• 2:18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I would agree. You know, and again, this goes back to what I said earlier is that, you know, they come back to a society or to an environment that, you know, you know, they don't understand what these warriors have been through. And so, in some cases, like, you know, these warriors, you know, there's this expectation that, you know, they come home, that everything's going to be normal. You know, they, you know, they walk in the house and it's going to be the way they left it, you know, six months ago or a year ago. And that, um, you know, they're going to behave, you know, just like everybody else. And that's not the case. I mean, you can't create this level of warrior and, and put the level,

• 2:19:02Speaker 02

  and put the expectation on them that this nation does to go do, you know, some of its toughest, you know, tasks.

• 2:19:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:12Speaker 02

  And not, you know, it's at a consequence. And, you know, to your point, this is, this is, you know, it may, might appear to be abnormal to everybody else, but this is kind of like the,

• 2:19:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:26Speaker 02

  the normal for, for this cadre of, of special operator.

• 2:19:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep, and, and it's not. It's a normal course that eventually kind of levels out and becomes again, I was talking to one of my buddies yesterday about Ryan and you know, we're, we're both older. And so when the war is going on, guess what I was doing when I came home from combat? I had a wife and three kids and then four kids. I, my kids didn't care. You know, they weren't like, hey, wait, you know, what, what have you been through? No, I had to go home and be a dad and that kind of forced, it kind of forces you to like, get, it, it, it forces you to correct your behavior and get, you know, there, there's no, hey, you're, you're now 35 years old. You got three kids at home and a wife. The kids going, they want to go to the, you know, wrestling tournament that you gotta go and spend 12 hours there. You

• 2:20:15Jocko Willink?

  can't be freaking drunk, you can be, but it's not going to be as conducive. You have a, there's a bigger tendency for you to get forced back into sort of a better behavior pattern than when you're single. Cause when you're single and you come home, well, what are you gonna do? You can go out with your friends. What are your, your friends gonna do? You're gonna go out drinking. What are you gonna do? You're gonna go out drinking, you're gonna find some girls, you're gonna get into fights. We're gonna, we're gonna do what a 23, 24, 25 year old does. And again, it's not a red flag. You gotta pay attention to it, but I, I'm just trying to point that out. What the same thing you're saying. It's just a little bit, I know it sounds crazy, but it's not totally abnormal.

• 2:20:54Jocko Willink?

  It is a fairly normal behavior. It's not a, it's, it's, what is this, what is a 23 year old SEAL do? When he gets home from a trip on a Friday, goes out, has some beers with his friends, meets some girls, stays out all night. What's he do the next day? Wakes up early because he still told his friends he'd be there at the gym to work out. So he only got three hours of sleep, four hours of sleep. By the way, couldn't sleep that great anyways, probably because he drank too much. Like there's all these things that just kind of slowly add up. And if they don't get, they, they can kind of self correct, but sometimes they don't.

• 2:21:26Speaker 02

  Yep. Exactly right. I mean,

• 2:21:30Speaker 02

  So, you know, it's, it's, I think, you know, how do they deal with that? And what's acceptable and what's not? And I think that part of the challenge here, you know, goes even within our medical community is they didn't have an understanding of that.

• 2:21:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:21:49Speaker 02

  So, you know, it kind of creates this perfect storm. You know, and I, and I think a point that you made that's important to understand is that there's, there's, there is a different dynamic for those that have families and have other responsibilities than those who are coming out, you know, who are single.

• 2:22:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:22:10Speaker 02

  And, and there's, you know, the different, you know, responsibility or accountability. It's nothing like a wife to, to pull you back, you know, on that center line.

• 2:22:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, 90% divorce rate in the SEAL teams, but if you're not getting divorced, guess what you're doing? You're freaking mowing the lawn and you're, you know, taking care of the kids on the weekend that you're home.

• 2:22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and, and kids can be, you know, pretty humbling, you know, they, they, they can, they'll call you out in a minute, you know, they'll, they'll hold you to task. But, so we started seeing these changes and you went to get help, but after that concussion incident and that trip in and out of Iraq, then we started looking at NICO, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at Walter Reed Bethesda, to get him in, to, to get, because that's when he started talking about, I think something's wrong with my head. And, you know, especially after having some of these experiences with severe headaches,

• 2:23:13Speaker 02

  nosebleeds, you know, changes in his vision, ringing in the ears, all that. So he calls me up and says, hey, look, I'm trying to get to NICO, but they're not letting me go. And I said, what do you mean they're not letting you go? Well, you know, I'm not sure that they believe in what NICO's doing. And I said, is that right? So at that point, you know, I'm the Senate Sergeant at Arms. So, you know, I pick up the phone. And within a couple hours, he's got a slot at NICO.

• 2:23:49Jocko Willink?

  And the NICO, so just so people understand, so NICO is a program, where is it, in Virginia?

• 2:23:54Speaker 02

  It's, it's, no, it's, it's in Maryland. It's at Bethesda, Maryland. It's the old Bethesda Naval Hospital that now is a joint service, you know, National Medical Center.

• 2:24:05Jocko Willink?

  So it takes guys that have been in combat, that have been exposed to combat, and it does, it's, it's like, what is it, about 30 days? It's like a month long. And you go there and it's like a real comprehensive assessment of, you know, assessment of blood work, uh, scans, and then they're putting you in art therapy and uh, yoga and good, clean diet. They're doing all these things to try and get guys sort of reset and back on a good path. I've, I've, I've heard, uh, some guys that went and just like loved it, said it was great, helped them so much.

• 2:24:47Jocko Willink?

  Um, other guys, nope, didn't buy into it type thing. So I think a little bit of it is what, what your take on it is going to be. And there's also this. Human beings are not all the same at all. And I, I, I usually, when I talk about this type of stuff, I talk about Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Muhammad Ali, you know, well, George Foreman, they, they're both heavyweight fighters. They're both heavyweight champions. They're both had a long career. George Foreman, you, you see George Foreman today, he's totally normal, intact, mentally talks, you know, he's, he's fine. He suffered how many, God knows how many thousands of concussions he took in his career. He's fine. Muhammad Ali.

• 2:25:33Jocko Willink?

  Not fine. You know, he had something called pugilistic disease, which is something that some boxers get. Freddie Roach, same thing. Freddie Roach is a fighter. How does he end up? He ends up, you know, he's got that pugilistic disease where you've taken a bunch of concussions, but not every boxer gets it. Why is that? Well, it's because human beings are different. And so there's some human beings that might not be impacted by certain protocols and some that might be, both on the healing side and on the the negative impact side. So it's very difficult to form a pattern off of something like blast injuries when there's a whole spectrum of people and how they're going

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  to react to it. People have different reactions to these things and and we don't understand those things. So as we're sending guys out, you know, someone might be looking at Ryan thinking, well, he's quote, only done four deployments. And you think, well, first of all, what do those deployments consist of? Then what was he doing when he was working at Trade Ed? And then what is his, what is his biological reactants to this stuff? Because everybody's different. So these are the kind of things that are coming into play as we start looking at what what guys are going through.

• 2:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I couldn't say it better. You're exactly right. Everybody's different. They're wired different. You know, genetics comes into play. You know, it's just like, you know, you could put, you know, five folks in a line, you know, and take the same knife and cut them in the same place. And they're all, five of them are going to heal differently. You know, some will get an infection. Some will heal within a couple of days. Others will take two weeks to heal. I mean, and that's, that's part of the reality. And this is, you know, part of what we're trying to understand.

• 2:27:26Speaker 02

  You know, as we we deal with some of these challenges, but I couldn't have said it better.

• 2:27:30Jocko Willink?

  How worried were you? When, you know, when he's getting sent to Niko? Well, how worried are you? From what you could tell from talking to him?

• 2:27:42Jocko Willink?

  How worried were you?

• 2:27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, by then, my, my, my, all my antennas are up. You know, I realized something's wrong. You know, we're seeing changes in him that are not him. And, and coming out of NICO, it was interesting. They, you know, put him through all the, the heavy imaging studies. You know, PET scan, CAT scan, regular X-ray, you know, spectr scans. You know, they, they, they looked at him from, you know, you know, tooth to tail. Blood work, you know, they could see cognitive changes in him. There were definitely cognitive changes in him. He had memory issues. He had vision changes. He had, you know, ringing in the ears. He had balance issues.

• 2:28:26Speaker 02

  They started, his testosterone was in the tank, which are, you know, the case with a lot of operators. And his cortisol levels, which is your overdrive, was off the charts. And, and, you know, we see operators get stuck, you know, at, at, at both ends of this. And, and then you, you look at sleep, which has, you know, you know, the very strong influence in the calculus of all this. You know, the quality of sleep that they get. And, and you mentioned, you know, eating. How do they eat? You know, because you are what you eat. You know, so if you're putting junk in your body, then your body's going to react to that as opposed to, you know, the right nutrients and so forth. Exercise is another piece. But then it goes back to your head.

• 2:29:08Speaker 02

  You know, you know, you're, you're, you know, that brain housing group is your command and control center for what goes on in your body. And if it's not in a good place, then that makes this all, you know, that more difficult. You know, whether we're talking about mental health, whether we're talking about the biophysiology of the brain, neurophysiology, all that comes in balance. You know, so if you're seeing hormonal changes, something's not right. If you're seeing other chemical changes in the brain, something's not right. If you're seeing, you know, cognitive dysfunction or, or irregularities, something's not right.

• 2:29:48Speaker 02

  So there, there are signals that are being, you know, transmitted, but we weren't picking up on them because in some cases, we didn't know what we didn't know. You know, the science had not caught up with this. And Part of the problem that I see as I've assessed this is that we first introduced high explosives to the battlefield back in World War I. And ever since then, you know, we have been calling, you know, this condition that comes off the battlefield, you know, soldier's heart, you know, we call it, you know, Battlefield

• 2:30:28Speaker 02

  Psychosis, you know, we call it, you know, we put all these different names on it. And now we call it post-traumatic stress. And, you know, so we really haven't advanced the ball very much on understanding what, you know, happens on the battlefield and why some people come off the battlefield with certain conditions. But what has happened across the board is that it has largely defaulted all towards a psychiatric diagnosis, you know, mental health, where things are scored against the DSM-5 Diagnostic Registry. And in some cases, because that's how people get reimbursed, you know, they got to come up with a diagnosis.

• 2:31:12Speaker 02

  So it's interesting in Ryan's case that they could never put their finger on anything that was happening to them. And, you know, as you said in the introduction, you know, he just became a walking experiment. You know, they were trying this drug, that drug. And in some cases, you know, these drugs, though they have some rescue effect, are not meant to be long-term solutions for what folks are dealing with. But unfortunately, they get lost, you know, in the mix. And they're on these drugs for years at a time. And then when they realize that they shouldn't be on these drugs, it's harder coming off the drugs than it is being on the drugs. And we saw an abrupt change of him coming out of NICO.

• 2:31:56Speaker 02

  He was put on a drug called Effexor, which was a very high-end mood stabilizer. And overnight, we saw a kid who was trying to fly out of the storm suddenly just heal over and nosedive. And when he came back to the West Coast after finishing NICO with a pretty significant write-up, but absent any findings in his brain, as far as, you know, brain damage or anything, they didn't see anything, comes back to the West Coast and... You know, you kind of alluded to this, that, you know, they tried to teach you, you know, first of all, they tried to tell you what is going on, to give you a sense of what may

• 2:32:40Speaker 02

  be causing some of the changes, and some explanation, and then they give you some tools on how to deal with it. But then you come back into an environment where, you know, it's not exactly conducive for following through on that stuff. Because you're back into an deployment cycle, you've got other responsibilities, you know, you don't always get a solid eight hours sleep, and, you know, as we are learning now with circadian rhythm, you know, they say you should go to sleep at the same time every night, you should have a routine. Yeah, come on, you know, here I am as a firefighter, you know, tell me how that works, you know? And then you come back to a medical enterprise that's not, doesn't exactly understand what

• 2:33:23Speaker 02

  NICO's doing, so, you know, they, you know, their opinion is, hey, they're off the reservation, they're gone rogue, and I'm not doing anything that they're recommending. And that's what he came back to. He came back to, you know, a medical enterprise that didn't understand, you know, the challenges that these warriors have been through or going through, didn't understand the NICO assessments, and so, basically openly disregarded any recommendations. And then, on top of that, you've got the operational realities of being with the teams. So, though NICO was a good experience, the impact of NICO was minimal.

• 2:34:07Speaker 02

  And so he comes back, and he starts to realize his own self-assessment, that he's got to do something about, you know, the alcohol. But he says, "Look, alcohol's not my problem." He says, "I can stop drinking." So he, you know, got himself voluntarily admitted to an outpatient alcohol rehab program up at Point Loma, where he attended, but wound up failing in his last week there. He was doing very well, but was still having problems sleeping. And I'll take you back to when they prescribed him sleep aids, Ambien.

• 2:34:51Speaker 02

  He took some Ambien, and woke up one morning... Literally his last week in the treatment program. And there was a whole six pack of empty beer cans on his. Um, living room table. And he had no recollection of it. And, and when he went into the center that, that morning, you know, cause they have him blowing the pipe. He, he popped positive for alcohol in the system and you know, they, you know. Said you're out. Which to me was upside down.

• 2:35:27Jocko Willink?

  That was you're out of the program?

• 2:35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, no, no, out of the program. You know, you failed the, you know, the SARC program, the substance abuse rehab program. Because that was our rule, you can't be drinking. But to me, that was kinda like so counterintuitive because you gotta expect that some folks are gonna fall off the, the wagon and you gotta pull them back in because this, you know, addiction's not an easy thing to deal with.

• 2:35:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it seems like you get rolled back, not dropped from the program.

• 2:35:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So anyway, um. But then we came to learn that, you know, and, and, and, you know, you get great clarity after some incidents. But he had taken Ambien before and there have been some, some events. I remember he was home and he took Ambien one time. And he, you know, fell into a wall in the house. And, and then crawled back into bed. And the next day, you know, I, I go into his room and there's a freaking big hole in the drywall. And, you know, and he's, you know, getting up, you know, out of bed and I said, what happened? And he says, I don't know, I didn't do that.

• 2:36:37Speaker 02

  And so we came to find out that when he was on this Ambien, which is a side effect, he had amnesia. You know, and, and it's not an uncommon side effect that you hear from some people and that's why they're pulling, pulling away from using drugs like Ambien. You know? So, you know, this was part of the calculus of, you know, what happened with this, this alcohol incident. But as we went into. The, uh, the end of 2015, um, the things just, you know, he was, they were trying to med board him out and unfortunately, I, you know, at that time, um, you know, med boards were

• 2:37:19Speaker 02

  looked at as, uh, not a favorable, you know, exit strategy, uh, by the community. There were some personalities in the community that felt that folks that were seeking medical boards were, um, you know, playing the system. And, uh, so his medical providers were, were trying to get him a, legitimately trying to get him a medical board. And, you know, here's, here's the thing. He didn't want to leave the Navy, but he knew, you know, it was his own decision that he says, I, I, you know, I'm afraid that I'm going to get somebody hurt. Uh, cause here's a kid who used to be on top of the mountain and now is, you know, slid, you know, is sliding down the slope, trying to understand what

• 2:38:03Speaker 02

  hap- who's gone, what's happening to him and he's not getting any answers. And then he's becoming more and more distrustful of the system because information's coming out about him that, you know, he's saying, well, who, who's talking about this? Who's releasing my medical information? Now there's a certain, you know, responsibility that, you know, leadership needs to know, you know, somebody's condition and, and if they're, you know, a, a potential threat or, or safety issue. But, you know, he started, you know, you know, in, instead of looking at, you know, the system and the medical enterprise

• 2:38:42Speaker 02

  as, as, you know, a, a pathway to get help, he started, um, sensing that, you know, they were weaponizing his, his, you know, issues against him. And there was definitely, you know, within a command element, um, a sense that, hey, we don't want to be burdened with these problems. We don't have time for it. So, you know,

• 2:39:10Speaker 02

  Maybe he needs to leave. And the VA would be a better place for him. You know, they're better equipped to handle this stuff. And, you know, we went through the, you know, Christmas, New Year's holiday, which was a rough period. He came home and, you know, he's just coming apart. You know, he's, he feels like he's been betrayed by, you know, by the community that he has put everything into. He feels that he's let his boys down because, you know, he can't do his job anymore, which was a big, big, you know, hit to him.

• 2:39:51Speaker 02

  They were hanging a bunch of labels on him that, you know, you're, you know, you know, you're alcohol abuser, you're a prescription drug abuser. Oh, by the way, they were the ones writing the prescriptions. But in their effort to help him control his pain, they put him on opioids, which is, as we're finding out now, when you put somebody on opioids, they need more opioids to control their pain. You actually dig a deeper hole by putting them on opioids.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  Do you know when he started getting put on opioids?

• 2:40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, the fall of 2015. And, and then together with the alcohol, which he had pulled away from on his own. But, you know, again, he, at that time, they were also realizing that he shouldn't be on Effexor. So the psychiatrist that was treating him wanted to get him off of Effexor and was in the process of writing a medical board for him, and they wound up transferring him completely out of the community. So he lost continuity with his, you know, the people that he had been working with and who he had trusted.

• 2:41:06Speaker 02

  And now he was, you know, starting from square one again and, and in an environment that was not very receptive to, you know, processing these medical boards.

• 2:41:19Speaker 02

  And so he started distrusting the system. And it became adversarial. Now, he, you know, he never gotten in trouble as far as, you know, getting locked up outside or, you know, confronting the authorities. He never hurt anybody. He never did anything that, you know, wound up, you know, calling attention to himself until after he came back from the Christmas, New Year's holiday when, you know, while he was home, he was dealing with pain to a level that he couldn't stand.

• 2:42:00Speaker 02

  He had run out of his prescription medication and had, you know, turned to some marijuana to try to deal with the pain. And when he came back, you know, to the, you know, to his unit after that holiday, you know, he popped positive for, you know, cannabis in his system and wound up, you know, you know, being brought forward for a NJP, you know, captain's mask, of which, you know, and again, I think there were some folks who were legitimately trying to get him help, but at that point, he had, was too far down the road and not trusting the system anymore and had come to a point where he said, "Look, I gotta get out."

• 2:42:45Speaker 02

  And which was tearing him apart because he wanted to stay in. He loved what he was doing. And I think out of loyalty to his teammates, he says, "I gotta go before somebody gets hurt." And I remember that, you know, the day that he had gone, I was not out here for it, the day he had gone through the captain's mask, he had scores of people showing up on his behalf and saying, you know, you know, what kind of operator it was, you know, that this was not him, that, you know, not sure what was happening.

• 2:43:23Speaker 02

  But yet, I think, in my opinion, some of the leadership that was in place at the time really weren't interested in that. They just wanted to get rid of the problem. And he wasn't the only one. I mean, there had been a pattern of behavior. You know, I just...

• 2:43:45Speaker 02

  Like I said, I think it was a dynamic of some folks not knowing what they didn't know. Trying to do the right thing for the right reason, maybe all the wrong way. And then there was some personalities that definitely factored into the calculus. Personalities that definitely had, you know, at a senior command level, the ability to influence, you know, the course of, you know, options that Ryan had. But I think at that point, he had already made the decision, I gotta get out. And I remember they started processing him out and you gotta go through all your, you know,

• 2:44:30Speaker 02

  your final medical examinations. You've gotta turn your kid in and all that. And he was supposed to show up one morning and he didn't show up. So they wound up sending a couple of guys out and they found that he was completely, you know, uptunded. He was, you know, he was hallucinating. He was, you know, he, you know, just, and I have no knowledge of this. And by then, they had already, you know, we had had some folks that you and I know had gone to his apartment and made sure that there's no firearms or anything because the concern

• 2:45:11Speaker 02

  was really starting to, you know, escalate that, you know, maybe he would hurt himself. You know, you know, he was unraveling, you know, emotionally, you know, becoming paranoid, felt that people were watching him and listening to him. And he was getting into a dark place and becoming isolated. And so they sent him out, they sent these guys out to bring him in and determined that he needed to go to Bethesda for, you know, a safety evaluation. And in the course of doing that, um, they, you know, they were basically restricting his movements while he was in the emergency department going through an evaluation and,

• 2:45:53Speaker 02

  and I would submit to you that if you hold any friggin Frogman or SEAL down and physically, you know, constrain them, you know, it is not going to be a good outcome. And he made some threats to his leadership, who he had felt were behind some of that action. And that's all they needed at that point to lock him up in the mental health ward. And once that happens, that's a stain that follows you forever. And he wound up being in there for three, almost four weeks.

• 2:46:35Speaker 02

  And I remember, you know, on one occasion, talking to his providers, um, asking- Was that at Bethesda? That was at Bethesda. Um, I'm sorry, no, let me correct that. It was not Bethesda, it was at San Diego Medical Center. He had gone to Bethesda for the NICU, but he was now back on the west coast and- Are you talking to him? I'm talking to him. And, and, and he, he's even becoming distrustful of me, you know, because, and I gotta, I gotta be honest with you, some of the things he's telling me, I just don't, you know, I mean, just, it can't be, because I'm putting my trust in the command and, and the medical enterprise out there, you know, to do the right thing.

• 2:47:19Speaker 02

  Matter of fact, they said to me, "Hey, Pop, I'm, you know, Dad, I'm glad you're out here, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's good that, you know, you're showing the interest, but, you know, he's ours and we'll take care of him." I'll never forget that. And then, um, and then went to visit him while he was in this lockdown unit and, and, you know, you talk about, um, somebody who-

• 2:47:44Speaker 02

  I didn't even recognize my son anymore. They had completely stripped him of his dignity. He was, you know, guys from his teams would come to visit him and he just couldn't even look at them. He just was just, it was horrible what they did to him. And this place was horrible. And I remember a couple of his clinicians saying to me that he shouldn't be here. And I came to find out that a couple of them stepped up to the command and said, why is he here? He shouldn't be here. And, and again, by then, I should have picked up on the flags, but I didn't. But all the communications turned to lawyers.

• 2:48:28Speaker 02

  And that was a bad sign. Because to me, what I missed was now this was all about building a case for getting rid of him. Not helping him. And one of the clinicians told me that she openly protested something that the medical command wanted her and her team to do. And she said ethically she was not going to do it. I don't know to this day exactly what that was, but it was something that was not going to work in Ryan's favor. And certainly was going to work into the favor of the command's effort to get rid of him. And, and, and this is all verifiable.

• 2:49:12Speaker 02

  She actually, you know, wrote a piece about this that she published. And I'll never forget this. This was February of 2016. And Jaco, he was discharged from the mental health lockdown ward and discharged simultaneously from the Navy.

• 2:49:44Speaker 02

  And not allowed to come back to the team for closure.

• 2:49:49Speaker 02

  And, you know, the staff there said it was the first time they had ever seen anything like that happen. And this kid had never been a threat to anybody. As I said, the only thing he did was threaten, you know, some of his leadership who we felt felt were responsible for, you know, putting him in in that circumstance. Because they were holding him down, you know, on a litter in an emergency department. And I submit to you who wouldn't react that way. But that's what, you know, that was like the icing on the cake. It gave them, you know, their...

• 2:50:25Speaker 02

  It just solidified, you know, their actions and, and, you know, their justification for getting rid of them. But I'll never forget, you know, the personnel, you know, chief that came in and the MAA, when they discharged him and signed him out, had tears running down their, you know, their faces. I mean, they just, you know, they couldn't say anything, but they said, you know, you could just see, you know, the empathy that they had for what was they were being asked to do. And, and my son was just, he had no emotion.

• 2:51:05Speaker 02

  I remember walking him out, you know, from the hospital and he was still wearing, you know, like a hospital scrub top and pair of board shorts and flip flops. And, and my wife and I were looking at him and he didn't even look like our son anymore. And, and, and he stops like halfway before we get to the parking lot and he says, he looks to me, he says, "Dad, you know, why'd they do this to me? All I was trying to do is help. All I was trying to do is help my boys. Why'd they do this to me?"

• 2:51:41Speaker 02

  And surely after that, we moved him up to Palo Alto, to the VA Hospital up there. They had a poly-trauma unit up there that we had gotten him in. And, you know, to put, to put more freaking, you know, kind of, to really cap this thing off. He gets a call from one of his buddies a couple of days later and says, "Hey, man, where are you? We haven't seen you around, but there's posters with your face on it all over the place, you know, be on the lookout, that, you know, you're not allowed, you know, in any of our facilities."

• 2:52:21Speaker 02

  It was a, it was a BOLO that, that had been put out by the Command, saying, "Be on the lookout for this guy." And that immediately sent a shock through my system of, "Holy cow, if, if he is even, you know, seen, you know, anywhere near any of our, our, you know, San Diego Naval Facilities, how are some of these freaking security types gonna react to him?" You know, I, I mean, this was like, this was so bush-like, so like, unprofessional. I had never seen anything about this poster was just a, and, and he laughed it off.

• 2:53:04Speaker 02

  He laughed, but I know it was like somebody had just, you know, stabbed him in the back and twisted the knife. And, and his teammates went around and yanked all those posters down. And, and I just, you know, I, I just felt, you know, there's this new term coming out called institutional betrayal. And, you know, I, I said, you know, in a public forum that was held, you know, a number of years later, where, you know, I had put my trust in the community, I came out of the community, I loved the community, it gave me my foundation, I'm eternally grateful for the experience. My son loved the community, loved being a SEAL.

• 2:53:50Speaker 02

  But they so disappointed us, so disappointed us when we trusted them to do the right thing. And, and as you've expressed, unless you say anything different to me here, Jaco, I have never heard anybody say anything negative about him. That he was always trying to do the right thing. He was a good team player. He was loyal. And yeah, they saw changes in him towards the end, but you know, as we come to learn, there was reason for those changes. But, you know, I, I felt that, you know, some of those command personalities violated our core ethos. They left one of our own behind.

• 2:54:39Jocko Willink?

  Um, a friend of mine named Sarah Wilkinson, who's, who's been on the podcast and

• 2:54:46Speaker 02

  Know her very well.

• 2:54:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That, that was really for me, a, a very enlightening conversation I had with her.

• 2:54:57Jocko Willink?

  What, especially when she started, you know, the thing that always has stuck with me, and I just saw her this past weekend, but the thing that's always stuck with me was how she described, very similar to what you're describing. And that is, you know, she was saying that the person, the person at the end, Chad at the end, that killed himself, simply was not the same person that, that she had married. That's, he, he had changed in a radical way. That was not the same person that she had initially married.

• 2:55:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, uh, and unfortunately, you know, we, um,

• 2:55:49Speaker 02

  ha- have a group of us that have lost love once in this community, then we can finish each other's sentences.

• 2:55:59Jocko Willink?

  Um.

• 2:56:02Jocko Willink?

  As you're, as you're seeing this thing unfold, I mean, you're talking to, you've got friends in the teams. And, and you just weren't getting, or, or was it the trust that you had in them? Was it like, how did that? How were those conversations going?

• 2:56:17Speaker 02

  Well, they had a concern for Ryan, but this was, this happened so fast that they didn't even know he was gone. And, you know, one of the guys says to me, you know, i- if this, you know, he's the guy we looked up to. This is, this is the guy we wanted to be. If, if they could do this to him, you know, if this could happen to him, what does this mean, you know, mean for the rest of us? And, you know, Ryan constantly said that, you know, I'm worried about my boys, their experience in these things. And I, I kept warning him. I said, look, be careful, son, because, you know, very often the bureaucracies kill the messenger. Just be real careful. I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing.

• 2:56:59Speaker 02

  And I said, look, you've got to take care of your own issues first before you worry about everybody else. But he was their doc. You know, when, when something wasn't right, they were coming to him. And he felt that he had let them down. And, and that was a, a big part of the burden that he, he wrestled with. Plus, the labels that they hung on him, you know, you know, operationally, you know, in effect, or, you know, unsat, whatever, you know, just all the labels that they needed to push him out the door. And fortunately, we got him out with an honorable discharge with his trident. But he never hurt anyone. If anything, I think is because of his, to a fault, his loyalty to his boys

• 2:57:43Speaker 02

  and, and to, to the community, you know, wound up setting him up for. How, how things happen. And, you know, this is another interesting point. We're also finding out right now as we do some of these postmortem or forensics on, on some of these incidents. The vulnerability that somebody who separates from service, especially from a, from a team dynamic like this, is it, it's a very critical time, your first one, two, three years out. And how you separate is, is absolutely a factor on how things go. So if you elect to leave or retire because it's your time, you're looking at the new

• 2:58:27Speaker 02

  horizon, new opportunity, new adventure, that's one thing. You've probably scoped out your LZ, your glide slope to get there. But if you're pushed out, or you feel that you have to leave because, as you know, in the team dynamic, you don't ever want to fail your teammates. You, you don't want to, and a lot of times, even though you're close, you know, you know, absolutely close to your brothers, you still don't want them to see that you're hurt. You know, you'll, you'll, they'll put that mask on, you know, and you'll, you'll do everything you can to, to continue to do the job, to be there, you know, to be, to make sure that, you know, they can depend on you.

• 2:59:09Speaker 02

  And when you feel like you can't do that, that creates a whole different level of tension. And I've talked to more guys that have said, the reason I left is because I, I felt that I wasn't able to, to do the job the way it needed to be done, and I didn't want to disappoint my boys. So when you have those kind of negative influences, or less than optimum conditions, where somebody's separating, it, it kind of puts them in a whole different place. And I think that makes them more vulnerable for that period when they, when they separate, where they can become isolated and, and get into some dark places.

• 2:59:52Speaker 02

  And, and this is where this whole issue of institutional betrayal is, is starting to gain some momentum. It's, it's, you know, really, you know, how you separate somebody, how you, you know, the glide path of departure is, is really critical as to how they're going to be able to navigate their way forward from that point on.

• 3:00:16Jocko Willink?

  So it's it's February 2016. That's when is that when he was discharged? And then he's up in Palo Alto. What's he what's he is he is he like in a inpatient up there in Palo Alto?

• 3:00:30Speaker 02

  Well, initially it was an inpatient, then became an outpatient, but it didn't work out. And he wound up coming back east where he then um had another, you know, bad episode where he had to be admitted to the uh the VA in Baltimore for a period of time.

• 3:00:48Speaker 02

  And by then, you know, he's he's just feeling that um you know, nothing's going to get better. Uh we got him into some programs. Uh we got him into the brain treatment program down in uh Texas, the Cerebrum uh Center down there. Um and then we got him in for some um um transcranial magnetic stimulation, you know, on the west coast in Newport. Um we had some other options that we had gotten him, you know, into. But this was in many cases on our own dime. And and you know, when he goes to these places, you know, you're paying for

• 3:01:30Speaker 02

  a hotel room that's, you know, a couple hundred bucks a night, you know, the food, transportation, all that. Um you know, very quickly starts to, you know, deplete your your resources. And like I said, you know, when you got somebody like Ryan, a loved one who's, you know, in this this level of desperation, you'll do anything, you'll do anything to save their life and you become very vulnerable. You know, we we didn't have a good level of situational awareness of what, you know, was available. And uh anyway, he, you know, about a year out from when he left the Navy and he'd been trying to to get answers and go through these programs. He'd, you know, on the positive side, he had started back at the community college.

• 3:02:15Speaker 02

  He was taken, you know, he had an like I said, he was a very intelligent guy, uh had had a tremendous ability to abstract, but. He started taking, he had a real affinity for numbers. So he started taking calculus and algebra and then very quickly advanced into advanced calculus and advanced algebra and he was taking, you know, science courses and, you know, he was looking at, you know, maybe going into PA school, physician's assistant school. But it was interesting, you know, he could do these advanced problems and very often would, when he felt stressed, would, you know, go to the basement of our home and his way

• 3:02:57Speaker 02

  of dealing with stress was to do math problems. But then he was having trouble navigating himself through the day. He would have, you know, these outbursts of anger. He would, you know, you would look at him and his face would be completely, you know, devoid of any emotion. He'd look right through you and you would even like talk to him and he wouldn't respond. He would just be, you know, kind of fixated, looking, you know, right through you, right past you.

• 3:03:28Speaker 02

  He, you know, he wasn't exercising that much. He was still, you know, drinking but not, you know, excessively. He started smoking, which he had never done before, which he said helped to calm his nerves down. He was still having problems with sleeping and, um, and fortunately, you know, one of his former girlfriends had come forward to be with him as a caregiver and she was a very stabilizing influence, but yet to be around somebody like that, it took every bit of her patience and, um, you know, uh, determination to stay with him, to help him. But in the course of being at the VA, the medicines, the drugs just kept on coming, you know.

• 3:04:13Speaker 02

  In my estimation at the VA, it was just such a huge gorilla of a bureaucracy. It was even for somebody like me, and I've got multiple, you know, advanced degrees, I was having trouble navigating through the VA, let alone somebody that is, you know, kind of turned inside out. And I remember that I would take him to the waiting room there at the Baltimore VA and there would be, you know, packed full of, you know, older veterans, all wearing their ball caps, you know, from Korea, from WWII, from, you know, Vietnam, you know, the Gulf War. And I could see the look on his face, you know, as he looked around and you could just

• 3:04:55Speaker 02

  see it. Is this me? Is this going to be me? You know, um, and it was just, um, you know, it just was ripping my heart in half. And, you know, like I said, I got a medical background. My wife's a trauma nurse. I mean, we were completely unprepared for this, you know, and, uh, we're sitting around a fire one night, you know, it was March of, uh, 2017, out behind our house and it's just him and I and, you know, he says to me, you know, Dad, uh, something's wrong with my head, but nobody's listening to me. You know, they just keep telling me I'm crazy. And, you know, I said to him, look, you know, we'll,

• 3:05:36Speaker 02

  we'll get through this, you know, um, you know, we got you out, you know, we're, you're going to school. He says, yeah, I know, but some, something's wrong with my head and I, I, I just, you know, it's just so hard. It's just so hard, he said. And he said, you know, I'm not gonna live to, to an old age. I just want you to know that. Um, I'm just banged up inside. And to look at him, he looked like a gladiator, you know, uh, other than the fact that, you know, some wear and tear over the past year and so forth, but still, you couldn't see, he didn't have any disfiguring wounds. He had both his arms, his legs. Um, he says, yeah, I'm not gonna live to, yeah, I'm just banged up. And, uh,

• 3:06:16Speaker 02

  if anything ever happens to me, I want you to donate my brain, my body for, uh, traumatic brain injury research and, um, Breacher Syndrome research. And I said, well, you know, Ryan, come on. You know, you're gonna be fine. You know, we're, we're, we're, uh, we're gonna get through this, you know? And at the same time, he had, you know, been processing, uh, or worked up for a position at the Secret Service at their training academy. You know, they wanted him to help with their emergency medicine training and some of their tactical training and they were very interested in him. So the things were opening up, you know, he, you know, and they didn't see any of what he had been through as a disability, um, or, or, or, uh, you know, an impediment, but, um,

• 3:07:01Speaker 02

  On April 23rd, 2017, you know, we had just come home from an overnight trip where my wife and I went to a family event and I'll never forget it. It was a Sunday morning and his dog, you know, a Belgian Malinois was like going ape shit, you know, as we, you know, came into the house and something said something's not right. I mean, something, you could feel the spidey sense in him, he's saying something's not right. And I had found that he had taken his life in the basement of our home. He didn't use a firearm, you know, he asphyxiated himself.

• 3:07:46Speaker 02

  He was wearing a SEAL Team 7 t-shirt. He was wearing red, white, and blue board shorts and had illuminated a shadow box that I had made for him that prior Christmas that had all, you know, his medals and insignias and other memorabilia in there. And then he had burned a hard drive in the fireplace with all his deployment photos and stuff. And, you know, Jaco, I, it, you know, I've been through a lot of stuff in my life, you know, seen a lot of, you know, human tragedy. And up to that point, I thought maybe 9/11 was at the top of my list, but I'll tell you, when I found him, my heart just ripped in

• 3:08:30Speaker 02

  half and, and I just, you know, it, you know, I loved him to death. He was my, he was my swim buddy, you know. And I didn't like what he did. I didn't support what he did, but I've grown to understand why he did it. And it was, really was for his boys. He was trying to prove, you know, that something was wrong. And, you know, to lend some evidence to that, as we got into his computer afterwards, he had been reading countless studies on head trauma and, and brain injury and, you

• 3:09:09Speaker 02

  know, researching the drugs that they had been putting him on and, and had written, you know, as I went through his papers, had written some personal reflections of how, you know, he was not being treated the right way, how he felt that, you know, he had been betrayed, you know, by some elements of the command, that, you know, that something was wrong with his head. And, you know, you know, he's gone. And so, you know, you know, the burden that I carry, honestly, is, you know, I've been rescuing other people for

• 3:09:46Speaker 02

  like forty plus years and in the end, I couldn't rescue my own son. And, so, you know, how do you deal with something like that?

• 3:10:00Speaker 02

  How do you deal with that?

• 3:10:03Speaker 02

  And I so desperately wanted to have one more conversation with him and that kind of put me in a bad place. Cause my, you know, what, you know, that was not going to be a good route. So, I, you know, he knew what he was doing. He knew what he wanted me to do. And he had even offered some reflections to some of his friends that said, hey, if anything ever happens to me, make sure my father takes, you know, takes hold of this and tells the story. And, and that's, and that's what I've been doing. You know, his

• 3:10:43Speaker 02

  story has, has really opened up. And, and what happened is a couple of months after he, he took his life, we got, we complied with his wish and got his brain donated for a very intense research project that was looking at, you know, military blast exposure. And,

• 3:11:08Speaker 02

  They came back to us and briefed us out like two months later. And I remember walking into the briefing room to this world renowned neuropathologist who looked at Ryan's brain. And I said, "Look, man, Doc, don't tell me what I want to hear. Just tell me the truth. Just tell me what you found." And he says, "Look, it's not the case." He says, "Your son suffered from a severe level of microscopic brain injury uniquely related to blast exposure." And, you know, and he showed us the slides. He showed us, you know, the extent of the injury.

• 3:11:49Speaker 02

  And for my wife and I, we just like all of a sudden had this weight lifted off our shoulders. We got an explanation that there was, you know, all along, Ryan was right. There was something wrong with his head, but they didn't see it. And we've come to learn because we don't have the technology to see it in a living person. Not too different than from what, you know, like our contact sports players, you know, football players, you know, mixed martial arts, you name it. With CTE and the evolution of CTE in the brain, we can't see that in a living person yet. And so, you know, it became very clear that day what my mission needed to be.

• 3:12:32Speaker 02

  And that's bring attention to this and illuminate this brain health threat that, you know, almost, you know, creates this perfect storm of what we call invisible wounds. You know, invisible wounds is the signature injury of this 20-plus years of conflict and also can be assigned to previous conflicts. But, you know, we've got somebody that looks normal. And, and we don't see anything, you know, wrong, but inside they're broken up. They're hurt. And, you know, they're dealing with, you know, post-traumatic stress. They're dealing with moral injury. We don't talk about that a lot. You know, that's, you know, where you, you know, we raise our kids to value human life, respect each other, follow the rule of law.

• 3:13:17Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden, we're projecting them to places around the world where that's not exactly the, you know, how life's lived. And they're come, they come home conflicted, back to a society. It's very judgmental. So, they don't want to talk about this. You know, it, so it chews away on the inside of them like Pac-Man. And then, everybody we know that's been in this business, and even the fire service, they're all in pain. Some sort of physical pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain. And they're, so they desperately try to deal with that pain. So then, you get these substance use disorders. Alcohol is a big part of it. And then, of course, the opioid crisis where, you know, our, our clinicians, our medical providers were so quick to write that prescription for those, for those painkillers, which have

• 3:14:01Speaker 02

  completely addicted our society. And addiction is not a trivial thing. It's a rewiring of the brain. And now that we find out that there's a growing body of evidence that, you know, exposure to blast, blast over pressure is ripping the circuits, circuitry in our brains. And, really complicating some of this. And to your point earlier, everybody is different. And everybody reacts differently to injury and they heal at different rates. And we're just trying to understand that. The research has not been at the level of urgency with the level of priority that it needs to be, especially after 20 years of dealing with this.

• 3:14:45Speaker 02

  And when I was in GI ATO, we recognized this. Back in 2010, 2011, we started to look at this and Congress told us to back off. It's not our job. And in, in my opinion, we lost them with 10 years of potential research opportunity to understand what was going on. But we're starting to get some answers right now and it's undeniable. It's disruptive. And it's really causing a lot of heartache within the psychiatric mental health community. That, you know, on one hand, you, you've got some clinicians and providers saying, what do you mean? We've been treating all our people wrong, you know, the past, you know, decade, you know, number of decades? It's not what we're seeing. We just didn't know what we didn't know.

• 3:15:27Speaker 02

  But science is always challenging our assumptions. Should always be a driver for us to look at things differently. And that's what's happening right now. And so there's a growing body of evidence that's showing that there's a biological connection to some of what we're seeing. And it would be irresponsible of me to say that psychiatry and mental health don't play a part in this, because it does. It goes hand in glove. It goes hand in glove. Just like some of the medications. I am not an anti-pharmaceutical, you know, you know, person.

• 3:16:08Speaker 02

  I realize that drugs have a tremendous ability to save lives. But in some cases, we just misuse them. And there's a lot of, you know, instances where we have medical providers out there who have no background in this stuff prescribing medications for stuff that they have that, you know, they're not a psychiatrist. They don't, they're not a neuroscientist. They don't know the full effects of these drugs will have on a person. And but yet, because they have M D. behind their name, they can write that drug and prescribe it. And so we're treating symptoms. We're not, we're not identifying what the root cause is. And that's really where my focus is with, with trying to push and advocate for the

• 3:16:53Speaker 02

  science, is we got to get down and understand what's behind all this. And, and I say this to leadership within the community, within special operations community, within defense. Whatever solution we come up with cannot impact our operational effectiveness or our lethality on the battlefield. We can't be afraid to understand what's going on, because that information, that knowledge will help us navigate through this.

• 3:17:28Speaker 02

  In a way that we can buy down this, that buy down on these risks on the front end without impacting, like I said, our performance on the battlefield and the resiliency of our force. And that's what we have to look at is how do we increase the resiliency of our force? And very often I talk to the veterans and the warriors who I come in contact to their struggling. And with this knowledge, I tell them, look, you're not crazy. You very well be be injured. Injured because you did what this nation asked you to do. To go into harm's way, to do the tough jobs that you've done. And you have come home

• 3:18:09Speaker 02

  burdened with these injuries. And when you look at it, how could you not come home burdened with some injuries? You know, when you look at, you know, the operational exposures and so forth, and we're seeing environmental exposures and how they're coming into play, you know, with the discussion about burn pits, let alone blast over pressure and, and, you know, head strikes and so forth. So it really creates this, this rubric that we just need to understand. And I believe that it, you know, we will get through this because it's not because we lack the intellectual capability or the capacity, we lack the unity

• 3:18:47Speaker 02

  of effort to circle the wagons on this, just like we did with the IED. Level the playing field, talk a common language, move in a common direction, guided by the science, we'll figure this out.

• 3:19:08Jocko Willink?

  Are there, where does like the resistance come from? Is it ego? Is it closed minds? Is it this is the way we've been doing it forever? Is it like, why would someone, I mean, clearly, anyone that's listening to this right now would say, okay, we've discovered that there's probably another call, there's another cause for this type of downward spiral for people. How do we fix it? Is there, it sounds like there's resistance to that. What does that come from?

• 3:19:38Speaker 02

  Well, I would say D, all the above. Just a little bit of everything. Yeah, you've got people that, you know, this is not their scope of practice. This is not, you know, where they, this is not, this challenges their comfort square.

• 3:19:54Speaker 02

  This, you know, creates a tension, you know, you know, in the force, so to speak.

• 3:20:04Speaker 02

  And, but we can't be afraid of this. You know, we, we've been up against, you know, other disease processes, you know, cancer. You know, we've been up against, you know, HIV/AIDS. We have been up against COVID and other challenges. And at first, the reaction's fear, you know, let's ignore this. Let's, let's kind of put our head in the sand. Let's make it, you know, wish it that goes away. And then get to this point, a crisis point, where I think we are right now with this head, brain health stuff, is, okay, we have to understand what's going on. And so, am I a little disappointed in Department of Defense and the fact that they have not made this a priority despite spending over $2 billion?

• 3:20:50Speaker 02

  I, you know, with very little to show? $2 billion on what? On, on brain health initiatives, on, on mental health, on suicide prevention. But it is, it has all been kind of a, you know, boutique ad hoc, you know, efforts. I mean, and again, it's not to say that there haven't been some good advances that have happened within defense health, but I'm disappointed in the fact that they have not led the way I feel they could have led on this subject, considering the risk and the threat that this,

• 3:21:27Speaker 02

  you know, puts on our force. And, and we're starting to see the, the effects of this, where recruitments are down. And, and also retention is, is having a problem. And even, I think, within our community, people are worried about, you know, you know, they love, you know, this community and, and you can talk to any special operations or conventional unit that, you know, hey...

• 3:21:56Speaker 02

  They, this was a important part of their life, but at some point they also realized that, hey, if, if I stay too long, or if I have too much exposure, what, you know, am I gonna wind up like that? And, and I, because I'm getting these questions from, from Ryan's contemporaries right now. You know, people who are at the, the time and place in their career, where their level of maturity, you know, their operational maturity, their leadership maturity, um, is, is right, you know, what we need. But if they're, if they're getting out, that's not helping us. So what's being left behind? You know, so, you know, how many people that, um, you know, early promotion or must promote

• 3:22:40Speaker 02

  are, are leaving that equation? And, and what's, what's being left behind within our, our developmental, you know, cadre? I, you know, does that make sense? I mean, does that make sense to you? I don't know. I mean, from your perspective and who you talk to, are, are you seeing, um, you know, reflections of, of that type of behavior right now?

• 3:23:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think that guys are more conscious of their health and wellness than we ever were. You know, everything from nutrition to working out, to, to everything that goes with that. And that's because the whole world has moved forward. And we, we've been at the cutting edge, you know, we, we, we've been pretty far forward on the cutting edge of how to get in good shape, how to stay in good shape, what nutrition we should be doing. But, and I think guys are now more cognizant of that, but they're also more cognizant of, what is this doing to me? Where am I gonna end up? How is this gonna impact me at a later date? And I think there, there has been some protocols implemented now that they're starting to

• 3:23:52Jocko Willink?

  track this stuff. At some level, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure it's not at the level it should be, but I know that they're assessing, you know, like I was talking about earlier, you know, I used to go out on the range as an RSO with got with a platoon out there shooting rockets. And you'd go out there and and stand there and watch 15, 16 guys shoot rockets. And you'd take those blasts, you'd take 16 blasts. Well, now they're limited to three. What did that do to my, you know, my, my timeframe of guys or Ryan's timeframe of guys when he would go out there?

• 3:24:29Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, you're teaching somebody how to throw a crash into a room. Well, you're going to sit there, you're outside the room, but still you're going to do that for a task unit, 40 guys, you're going to huck a crash into a room. And so, so I think it has become, I think people are starting to become aware of it. And I think that they're seeing guys like Chad, guys like Ryan. I mean, the guys that I talked to about Ryan.

• 3:24:54Jocko Willink?

  They, they reported that, hey, here's a guy that was good to go. I mean, just good to go. And by the time he's at trade at, guys are having a hard time like communicating with him. You know, when you were talking about him having like a blank look on his face. That's the feedback that I got. He was sort of like blank stare. Didn't feel like, you know, guys are talking to him. And I think one of the biggest problems for leadership is at that time, they don't, they don't even know what's happening, right? They think, oh, well, what's his problem? Oh, you know, what's his deal? Oh, he's not, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a freaking commander or I'm a master chief. Why is this guy?

• 3:25:35Jocko Willink?

  You know, and I'm telling him he should, he needs to square his shit away. And he looks at me with a blank stare. He's got a bad attitude. Because they don't understand. Where how how much this stuff has impacted someone? And so I think the recognition of knowing what signs we should be looking for, for leaders to say, oh, here's a guy that was totally squared away. And now he's acting like a different person. There's something wrong that I need to address from a medical perspective, not from a disciplinary respective perspective. And that was one of the people I talked to was made that exact point.

• 3:26:15Jocko Willink?

  Is that we as a community have a tendency, or at least had a tendency of someone's not doing what they should be doing. It's not a, it's not a health problem. It's a disciplinary problem. Right. And that's a huge differentiation, you know? Because part of it's because of what I talked about earlier. Hey, you got a guy, you know, one of your guys goes out, gets drunk, gets in a fight. Cool, you discipline him. He's, he stops doing it. We got the problem solved. Well, if he's showing up drunk or not showing up or he's late or he's despondent or he's not responding the way he should be. And you say, hey, man, you're freaking late again. You slept in, you whatever you, you're late again. Discipline, I discipline him. It doesn't correct him. Why doesn't it correct him? Because the problem isn't a discipline problem.

• 3:27:00Jocko Willink?

  The problem is a health problem. I believe that shift is starting to take place or has, has started to take place. I think Ryan, Ryan's one of the reasons why that I think people recognize Right. in, in, in a postmortem that, oh, we failed as a community to see that what we thought was a discipline problem wasn't a discipline problem. It's a health problem. And again, we're very used to, yeah, you know, freaking guy gets in trouble. When a SEAL gets in trouble, they are horrified. They want, for every reason that you just talked about from Ryan's perspective. It's when we get in trouble, it's like, oh, I can't, I'm not going to be able to deploy with my guys. I'm not going to be able to take care of my guys. I'm going to lose, you know, I might lose my Trident.

• 3:27:44Jocko Willink?

  I might, I'm, I'm making the community look bad. Like all those reasons. Troublemakers in the SEAL teams, they, they square themselves away, right? They square themselves away because they don't want to get kicked out. They don't want to have problems. So when we see someone that has continued problems.

• 3:28:04Jocko Willink?

  We should recognize, and again, I believe that we're moving in this direction, that there's probably not a discipline problem. There's probably a problem. There's an underlying health problem that's the issue. Because, look, how many guys have I, I always joke, I only, I only wrote up, I would say I wrote up, I think, three or four guys in my whole career.

• 3:28:26Jocko Willink?

  Three of them, I only wrote them up because I was told to write them up by my boss because something had happened. And I was like, alright, I gotta write you up. That's the way it's going. And then I'd take those things and a couple of weeks later and put them in the shredder. Because 99% of the time, when I pulled the guy aside and said, hey, look dude, you just did this. If you do that shit again, it's gonna be a problem. They'd be like, I got it, boss, no problem. I'll fix it. And it wouldn't be a problem anymore. So, when we see someone that now has a disciplinary problem, and they make a mistake, and they do it again, and they do it again, and they do it again, the recognition that either this guy has like a serious, could be an alcohol problem, could be a drug problem, or we have this other, this other possibility now, which is TBI,

• 3:29:09Jocko Willink?

  which is post-traumatic stress, those kind of things. And unfortunately, also on top of all this, you got guys that they do something stupid, and what they say is, oh, it's because I got PTSD. Hey, shut up dude. They're gaming the system. They're gaming the system. And, and that's a terrible thing. Yes. To have happen as well. Because that delays someone from looking at like Orion and going, hey dude, cut the shit, you know, knock it off. You don't have, hey, I was on a bunch of deployments too. You know, that's another conversation I had in the last few days. We look at guys that had problems, they're on the same deployment as me. Hey, I was on that, I was on that deployment with you. Hey, what are you talking about? Oh, this guy was on that deployment too with you. I know him, he's fine. What's wrong with you?

• 3:29:53Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes it's like, well, guess what? I've had this conversation. Hey, that guy who's doing knucklehead shit, who's saying he has PTSD, he was doing knucklehead shit when he was 25. And he's, and he's still doing knucklehead shit when he was 27. And now he's 42, and he's still doing, it has nothing to do with PTSD. It has to do with the freaking dude's a little bit of a wild character. So we need to put him in a position where we can take care of him and keep him out of trouble. But those, those guys that kind of, as you said, game the system, really hurt. The guys that have legitimate freaking problems and I think there's a huge spectrum. I think you can have guys that are out on, that are out on the same deployment. They go through the same, they can be on the same operations and it can affect them in a radically

• 3:30:37Jocko Willink?

  different way. And that, that's just a fact of life. And this is not my, just my opinion. You look at guys in World War II, you look at guys in Vietnam, you look at guys, the Korean War. Go watch, uh, Band of Brothers, right? Dick Winters talks about that. He talks about, hey, every guy was here. We all did the same thing. Some guys needed to go home. We didn't hold anything against them. And by the way, that's, I forget the name of the character in Band of Brothers, but he's a real person and Dick Winters talks about it in his book on leadership. When that guy broke and he, remember this guy, I can't remember the character's name. I apologize. He's a badass guy that's leading from the front, that's taking all kinds of risks.

• 3:31:17Jocko Willink?

  And he reaches a breaking point and the whole company looks at him and goes, yep, yep, get him home. They hold nothing against him. He reaches breaking point. You take another guy like Spears, who was doing all that stuff as well and kept doing it and did even more dangerous stuff. Never, never impacted him in a negative way. Just kept doing it. Everyone, and, and what Hackworth says in About Face, everybody's got a cup.

• 3:31:42Jocko Willink?

  And when it's a different size for everybody, you put, you put combat trauma into that cup. Some people, it's going to overflow. Some people got a pint. Some people got a gallon. Some people got a teaspoon and it's, and it's, it's almost genetic. I mean, whether it's just genetic or nature or nurture, but however they grew up here or however they ended up, they got a cup. And when that thing overflows, that's it. That you gotta get them out of that combat area. And if you're a good leader, you recognize, hey, they gave everything that they could. And they, both those guys also talk about the fact that if you can take that person before they break and you go, hey, man, you need, you're coming off the front lines for a while. We're going to put you in the rear. We're going to put you in a,

• 3:32:27Jocko Willink?

  in an admin position. We're going to let you do some shore duty. They can recover and they can come back, but once you burn out that engine, it's like the check engine light. I tell, I talk about this a lot. Check engine light comes on. If you're driving a car down the highway, check engine light comes on. What should you do? Pull over, get the engine serviced. They'll change the oil, whatever they gotta do. That engine's gonna be good to go. If you keep driving that thing, what's gonna happen? You're gonna blow up the engine. You're gonna ruin it. And these are, again, so it's not really just my opinion that I've seen this myself, which I have, by the way. I had freaking guys that went through hardcore deployments and came back, were ready to go again.

• 3:33:06Jocko Willink?

  And had guys that went through not as hardcore of a deployment that needed a break and maybe couldn't deploy again. But it's not just me. This is what Dick Winters talked about. This is what Hackworth talks about. This is, this is common for combat, that every individual human being has a different level of resilience. And if you break them, it's gonna be a problem and we need to recognize that.

• 3:33:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I hope everybody's listening to what you just said because I, I'm at a hundred, 200% agreement.

• 3:33:39Speaker 02

  The, the piece, the high, piece of high ground that I'm on is really kind of exposing, you know, what does the brain trauma, how does that factor into this? And right now, we don't have the diagnostics. And I, so I feel for, you know, command leadership. And I, I believe in good order and discipline. People need to be held accountable. It's nothing like a master chief crawling up your ass because, you know, you're not, you know, doing the right thing. And, and that needs to happen and people still need to be held accountable. But I'm convinced we've got some research studies coming out here in the next couple of months

• 3:34:22Speaker 02

  that are really gonna add some fuel to this. It's gonna be disruptive. To your point, not everybody's gonna like what they're, what they're gonna hear. But it's gonna make us rethink what's going on. And with that, We strongly believe that within the next three to five years, we're going to have diagnostics to be able to qualify this a living person, not wait until after they're dead and we're doing a post-mortem examination, which is going to do a couple of things. And you alluded to this earlier, we're starting, and a lot of it is because of Ryan's story and because of a Navy SEAL Admiral who was captured by his story, who grabbed on to

• 3:35:06Speaker 02

  this, took it with him to SOCOM, Special Operations Command, and made this a priority to baseline all the operators and to start tracking so that we could start seeing changes early. And I think as the science comes together, and I look at this like a railroad track that goes off into the distance, you know, one rail is this effort that we're trying to do now is push the science, create the level of urgency and a level of focus. The other rail on this train track is the here and now. We're dealing with people that are challenged right now, you know, active-duty warriors, veterans, first responders.

• 3:35:48Speaker 02

  And you've got these cross ties that hold the tracks, you know, stable and in alignment. And that's where that communication, that's where that knowledge development has to happen, you know, and be shared because it's not one track or the other. But as you look at that track and it goes into the distance, what happens? Those rails come together. And that's our hope, is that we get a lot smarter. Yeah, this is going to be disruptive, and this is going to push people out of their comfort squares, and it's going to make, it's going to force us to think about this differently. But if we can give a commander that's dealing with a situation like this, that appears to be a behavioral problem, that, you know, as you said, in the past is usually remedied

• 3:36:33Speaker 02

  by nonjudicial punishment or some type of punitive action, and we come up and say, hey,

• 3:36:40Speaker 02

  We suspected that because of his operational profile, his deployments, some of the things he's been subjected to, there may be some biological or medical explanation for this. And we have a diagnostic, or a number of diagnostics that can qualify that, that's going to put this in a whole different place. That's going to be valuable information for that leadership team as they make decisions. But that's got to go hand in glove with education, where we, as we cultivate leaders, we give them this information, and leaders at all levels, you know, from the very top to the deck plate, that, hey, you know, this is a consequence of doing this job.

• 3:37:20Speaker 02

  And it's not calling out weakness, it's not, you know, focusing on the injury, but we've got to treat it like an injury. And how do we treat injuries? We cast them up, we put them in splints, we, you know, we put them through rehab because we want, you know, that arm, that leg, to come back into, you know, 100% operational, you know, capability again. Same thing goes with our brain. You said something that was very important, and which I think is a part of the, you know, the contributing factors, is that we had no reset time in the 20-plus years. That door was constantly spinning.

• 3:38:01Speaker 02

  You know, you're deployed, you come home, you go into, you know, most guys are dispersed to other assignments, they go into new training, they start spinning up, and the next thing you know, they're being pumped out the door to another rotation. And without that time to reset, and certainly to reset somebody, just like, you know, what we see now with concussion protocols, you know, with the NFL, somebody gets a knock on the head, they're pulling them offline. And it's because, what we've learned is that if you put... Back into the game too soon, you're actually increasing your chances for having something worse. Because this is, in some cases, accumulative. And another big handicap that we have, and this is why we need the science again, is

• 3:38:44Speaker 02

  we don't know the long-term implications of this. So right now, we're just starting to, you know, kick the door on a lot of this. And we're still moving through the tall grass without a sense of direction. But the science is going to, you know, guide us, guide us forward, which then is going to, you know, help us prevent this on the front end. It's going to help us better monitor this so we can identify somebody early in the evolution as injury or disease, before it gets to the catastrophic point like it did with Ryan, and they take their lives. And there's a strong, very strong connection between, you know, brain damage and suicide. Very strong connection. And then, it's going to help us identify, you know, a precision treatment protocol

• 3:39:29Speaker 02

  for that individual. So that we get away from one size fits all to one size fits one. And we get them down the right rehab path, and we get them back into the team, we get them back operational. Let's face it, some folks may not be able to go back and do the job that they did before, but they're still part of the team, and we still value what they've done for this community, this nation. And this is not just about the SEAL community, but you talk to SF, you talk to Rangers, you talk to, you know, the Marine Raiders, they're all challenged with this. I just had conversations with UK, you know, SAS and SBS types, and Australian, and Denmark,

• 3:40:09Speaker 02

  and other countries that I come in contact with through, you know, some of my other circulation, they're all struggling with these scenarios. And they're all seeing the effects of modern warfare on their warriors and on their veterans. So, I think we're on to something. We just can't be afraid to peel it back. It's going to make us smarter, it's going to make us more resilient as a fighting force. And, but yet, at the same time, we're going to take care of our people. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna live up to our promise to take care of them if something happens. Because we can't ever forget that the whole reason that they're here in the first place

• 3:40:54Speaker 02

  is because they stepped forward to do the job.

• 3:40:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, when I was reading about, um, I had a couple of articles about Ryan and, um, you know, the one of them was like getting called unfit for operationally unfit or something like this. And we're going to get him out of the teams. And I remember one of my guys, Ryan Jobe, um, he'd been shot in the face. He'd been rendered blind and before he decided he was going to get out, he's going to medically retire. You know, he told me like, oh, I want to stay in. And I want to stay in the teams. And I remember I called the Admiral, who I'd worked directly for. And I was like, hey, sir, um, Ryan Jobe wants to stay in the teams.

• 3:41:43Jocko Willink?

  And the Admiral goes, Roger that. We'll, we'll find a job for him. I think he'd be an outstanding BUDS instructor. I'm like, I think you're right. Like he was, and that's exactly how it should be. And if you can find a, a job for a SEAL, which you obviously can, that's blind, then you can absolutely find a, a, a job for a guy that's, hey, guy, guy can't be any around any blast exposures. What do we got for him? There's a thousand other jobs for him to do. And that way he gets to stay in the community, gets to proceed with his career, gets to still be around the guys and continue serving, which is, you know, what they want to do.

• 3:42:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and I believe that if things had gone down a different path and he had been treated, you know, differently, he'd still be here. I, I, I believe that. And I, I will tell you that when I got that briefing, you know, at Bethesda Walter Reed, after he had passed and they had looked at his brain, that the neuropathologist said to me, if Ryan had this information, do you think it would have made a difference? And I said, absolutely, because it would have qualified that he was right, that something was wrong with his head, that he was not crazy. And, and because every one of these folks, these men and women are struggling with what's happened to them as they slide down this slope and they're desperately trying to, to grab onto something and they're not getting the answers. And, um,

• 3:43:07Speaker 02

  You know, we can't, we can't forget, you know, what they've done for us and we can't demonize it and weaponize it against them because then we're leaving people behind. And again, you know, some very, I think, important points to make, that not everybody is righteous and they will game the system. I mean, that's human nature. And unfortunately, it takes away from those that really do need the, the level of attention that we're, we're talking about. And I, I know, because I had a leader call me about a year after Ryan passed, who was dealing with his own issues and, and admitted to me, the reason he was calling

• 3:43:50Speaker 02

  is because he bought into the whole freaking narrative that, hey, Ryan was gaming the system, you know, for a medical board. And then when he, you know, came to learn that, you know, Ryan, you know, had a severe brain damage and that there was something going on, he, he, you know, was upset about that and, and had gotten kind of sucked down a path that, you know, he regretted. And that's why we have to, you know, help at all levels, leadership, you know, you know, arm them with the right information, give them the tools to make

• 3:44:30Speaker 02

  the best decisions. I don't think anybody was out to do any harm to him. I don't think anything, you know, I, I just think it was just the perfect storm and we didn't know what we didn't know, didn't know how to deal with it. I do think, you know, for the exception of a few personalities, there were some, you know, individuals who just couldn't be bothered with it. And, and I will never forget them. And

• 3:45:06Speaker 02

  But it is personality-based. You know, whoever's at that key intersection, if they're sensitive to this, if they got their eyes open, they're looking for it, you know, they're trying to understand it, then they can do a lot of good for folks that are challenged with some of these conditions. If you get the wrong person in that intersection, they can do a lot of damage, a lot of damage. And that's why we need the science. And, you know, leadership is something that obviously, you know, you talk a lot about, I talk a lot about. We're in a new era of leaders right now.

• 3:45:47Speaker 02

  I call it leadership by lawyer. Where, you know, we have leaders who are making decisions without, you know, getting the approval from their lawyer. And it's, in my opinion, it's eroding our edge. What makes us different from our competitors is that, you know, our forces have always been given the license to innovate, to immediately flex and pivot to conditions. And we push that down to the edge.

• 3:46:27Speaker 02

  Where people can adjust immediately on a battlefield or in any condition to accomplish their mission. But we're getting away from that. You know, everything's becoming so politically correct. And I used to remember when I would complain about, you know, risk adverse behavior. Boy, I'll take that back in a minute because now it's no risk behavior. And it's paralyzing us. And I don't know, I don't know.

• 3:46:58Speaker 02

  Other than, you know, putting it right out in people's faces, I don't know how we're going to get around this. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. And maybe I'm taking this conversation in a different direction, but so much of this does come back to leadership and being able to accept the responsibility and be accountable for decisions. And again, it's not a perfect world. It's not a fair world. But you know, you gotta have the freaking nuts to make the decision when you need to make it, especially when the people's lives are at stake or, you know, greater consequence is at stake. And it's not always going to go right. And, and some of the best scenarios that I've been in, which have taken courage

• 3:47:40Speaker 02

  on my part and, and other leaders that I've been with, is then when they let their people go do their job. Yeah, they're going to bang into stuff. And it may not always go the right way. But you know, more times than not, I have been completely overwhelmed with what's come back. Far exceeded my expectations. Far exceeded any level of performance that, that I had for that particular mission or, or operation.

• 3:48:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The fourth law of combat leadership that I talk about is decentralized command, which means you're going to let your subordinates leaders lead. And guess what? When you do that, there's a level of risk. And if you're not willing to take that level of risk, you're going to end up being a micromanager. Now you can't maneuver. Now people aren't making things happen. And now you're going to be slow and now you're going to lose. But it does take a level of trust and a level of...

• 3:48:37Jocko Willink?

  You, you, you gotta be willing to accept the fact that sometimes you're going to get, you're going to get in trouble. You're going to get, your boss is going to look at you and say, what the hell is going on? You're going to say, yep, boss, it's on me. Some, you know, I, I put the guys out there. They did something I didn't expect, but that's, that's not on them. That's on me. I gave them the parameters. I told them what to go execute. They executed. They didn't do it the way I thought they were going to do it. I'll, I'll make sure it doesn't happen again. But that's what went down. And if you have people that aren't willing to take that risk, they're just micromanagers and now things don't move and, and you don't win. That's what happens. So, yeah, leadership, 100%.

• 3:49:13Jocko Willink?

  You've got WarriorCall.org. This is sort of, I would call this sort of the the physical or organizational representation of what you're trying to do. Talk to me through WarriorCall.org. What's its mission? What's it doing?

• 3:49:31Speaker 02

  So, hey, I'm glad you brought that up. It's really a grassroots, deck plate, dirt level effort to reach out to those that are isolated. And, you know, what we found is isolation is a key factor that often plays into some of these suicide scenarios that, you know, we come in contact with. You know, somebody separates from their tribe, you know, especially if it's not on positive terms. And, you know, and again, you know, if they're burdened by labels, which can be extremely damaging, and, you know, they lose their sense of, you know, a purpose, and they lose their dignity and so forth. And with that, they start to lose

• 3:50:16Speaker 02

  hope. And in, you know, many cases, they start distrusting the system. They start sliding into dark places. And it's like, it's like being dropped down into a well. The further you go, the less bright the light is. You know, it starts to shrink. And so does, so does that hope. And I think they get to a place where they feel there's no way out. I think that with a lack of qualification, that if they are injured, or what they're dealing with is as a consequence of their service, if they don't have any level of consequence, you know, confirmation that they're hurt, or that this, as I said, is a consequence of their service,

• 3:51:00Speaker 02

  then, and they're being told, you know, that, you know, they're mentally, you know, unstable, or they got some type of other mental health issue, that doesn't put them in a good spot. If they feel, as I say, if we've been talking, if they've abandoned their brothers, their teammates, that doesn't put them in a good spot. If they feel that they're a burden to their loved ones, that really puts them in a good spot. But then, I would say the fourth thing is this institutional betrayal. That if they've given it all to their, their unit, to their community, to their agency,

• 3:51:40Speaker 02

  service, and that turns on them, that, that, that inflicts a tremendous amount of damage. So, you know, the Warrior Call effort is really to connect up with those folks, make a call, whether it's physical phone call, a text message, or do a drive-by, or take a call from them. If, you know, for whatever reason, it comes out of the blue, that call comes from a veteran or an active duty or a first responder, somebody who's served in uniform, and have an honest conversation. You know, just, you know, get past the, the formalities of, "Hey, how you doing? I haven't talked to you in a while," but, you know, kind of have a, have a regular conversation.

• 3:52:21Speaker 02

  You know, you don't need to be a psychiatrist, or a psychologist, or a so- social worker to have this conversation. It's, it's, it's me calling Jaco saying, "Hey Jaco, man, we haven't talked in a while. How you been? You know, I just, and I was paging through my, my, my, uh, my contacts here. I saw your name. I just thought I'd shoot you a call. And how you been? What have you been up to?" And, you know, through that, you know, the conversation's going to build. And, and, and more times than not, we've gotten reflections back from the guys and gals that we can't put a finger on why the call came when it did, the time it came, whatever, but it came at the right time.

• 3:53:05Speaker 02

  That somebody connected up and pulled them away from the line, let them know that they weren't alone, that somebody cared, and that there was hope. And so that's what Warrior Call is all about. And, uh...

• 3:53:20Speaker 02

  Yesterday, initiative led by Congressman Derek Van Orden in the House passed unanimously to codify National Warrior Call Day. It had already passed in the Senate, so it's got to go into conference right now in order for it to become law. But we wanted this day as a stake, you know, in the ground to say to our general population, let alone our active duty and those that have served in uniform, that this is how they can help. Because we always get asked, "How can I help my veterans? How can I help contribute?" Well, this is one simple way.

• 3:54:02Speaker 02

  You pick up this thing, call it a phone, and you make a call and see where it goes. And if you sense that somebody's not in a good place, then you align them with some resources. You stay connected to them. It's like our old buddy line system. You know, we hook a buddy line onto somebody, you know right away whether that person's going off in a different direction, or lagging behind, or pulling you, you know, out of, you know, out of vector. But it's Warrior Call is just a simple kind of outreach directly related to isolation. And you know something?

• 3:54:45Speaker 02

  We get equal reflection from the caller, who after they've talked to somebody that they haven't connected with in a while, how much that has pumped them up. You know, it was like an injection of, like, energy to them. So, you know, National Warrior Call Day, I'm hoping that we can, you know, drag this into the end zone. Who knows with Congress, like, you know, as my days up there as, you know, the Senate Sergeant at Arms, you know, it was a four-year out-of-body experience. I mean, there's a lot of good people up on Capitol Hill trying to do the right thing, but, you know, as we've seen-

• 3:55:20Jocko Willink?

  There's everybody else.

• 3:55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and as we've seen recently, there's also a lot of distraction and dysfunction. So, I will be, you know, I will not be a happy camper if they don't get this done. And I will, you know, keep poking them, you know, to get it done. But if it doesn't get done, I'm not going to be a happy camper, and I'm going to let them know it.

• 3:55:49Speaker 02

  So hopefully that answers your question, but they can go to warriorcall.org to kind of get more information on this and see how they can help. It's a matter of deputizing everybody that's out there that's listening right now to just simply make a call, take a call, have an honest conversation and stay connected.

• 3:56:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no doubt about it. That's awesome. It sounds like we're waiting on some studies to come out in the next several months that we might have more information, more things to talk about, what those things look like. But other than that, does that kind of, I mean, we've been talking for a few hours now, is it kind of get us up to speed?

• 3:56:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, let's face it, you know, this is a tough subject, you know, losing a son like Ryan, I realize that, you know, there's different sides of this story and I've tried to keep an open mind to it. But, you know, the bottom line is I have a mission and I'm not going to fail. I mean, Ryan's sitting right here with me right now and a lot of what I say is actually him talking through me because he may not be here physically, but that energy goes someplace. And as I said, he knew what he

• 3:57:14Speaker 02

  was doing that day. You know, he wanted to prove a point and his story, I think, is a catalyst for a lot of the changes that you alluded to and certainly has opened up the discussion. I'm hoping that the science is going to put a fine point on this because, you know, you only get good science by doing good science. And so far, you know, we've been handicapped by not having enough good science that has illuminated exactly what's going on here. But I do think that, you know, with our modern warriors, you know, we have

• 3:57:56Speaker 02

  to be prepared to answer these questions for them. We need to give them the confidence that we're going to take care of them in the event that, you know, something happens to them as they go forward and do the jobs that we ask them to do. And it's simple as that. We have that obligation and we cannot leave any more behind. So.

• 3:58:17Speaker 02

  Jaco, I just want to thank you and

• 3:58:23Speaker 02

  what you're doing and certainly for the opportunity to talk about this. You know, this isn't about me. It's never been about me. I just feel fortunate that I've had the opportunity to, you know, come in contact with a lot of great people. And they don't all have titles before their names or after their names. They're just good people who have not lost sight of being a good person and what it, you know, what you need to do to be a good person. And I love this nation. I think that we gotta be careful that we, you know, don't take our eye off the ball

• 3:59:05Speaker 02

  because the enemy definitely has not taken the eye off the ball. I mean, they're, you know, in some cases with some of the behaviors in our society right now, I think, you know, they're sitting back heating up the popcorn and they're just waiting for the right time. And if we don't pay attention, we're gonna find ourselves in a bad spot. And that's not a political statement. It's just fact. You and I have been, you know, at the front end of this and it's not gonna go away. I remember the old saying that they used to, you know, when we were in theater, it was, "You have the watch. We have the time." And they don't forget. And so I'm hoping that,

• 3:59:51Speaker 02

  you know, that flag that we fight for, you know, with all the other stuff that's going on,

• 4:00:01Speaker 02

  you know, folks within our society would not be able to step up and, and, you know, blow their horns and wave their flags if it wasn't for that red, white, and blue flag that has created the environment that has allowed them to do that. And in very few places on this earth does that happen. So I hope that we don't give that up because once it's gone, we'll never get it back.

• 4:00:33Jocko Willink?

  Yep, um, but we won't give it up.

• 4:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Not on my watch anyways.

• 4:00:40Speaker 02

  Not on my watch either.

• 4:00:43Jocko Willink?

  I can't say much after that. Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 4:00:47Speaker 01

  Oh, actually, yeah. So you know, when you guys do like breaching and you know, you talk about the crash grenades and all that is. Do you guys wear like ear protection? Is there any, is there any additional equipment that you wear to like protect yourself from that kind of stuff?

• 4:01:02Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, you have, we used to wear ear pro most of the time.

• 4:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Ear protection, like the literally like the little uh things that you roll up and put in your ear.

• 4:01:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:01:11Jocko Willink?

  In modern times, we now have uh headsets that that are noise cancelling headsets that also have your radio uh my uh. Speaker inside of it. So that's a huge advancement. I will say like back in the day, we would do. Immediate action drills sometimes with no uh ear pro as like ear pro appreciation. So you'd kind of like. According to the master chiefs from Vietnam, be used to it and be ready for it when it happens. Probably not the smartest thing in the world. I think that's like. Getting used to getting getting prepared to get punched in the head by getting punched in the head. It doesn't really help you.

• 4:01:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:01:50Jocko Willink?

  So that's what it is now. I can tell you like in combat and I've you've probably heard me tell the story before, like I watched my breacher. You know, I'm standing, I'm I'm up a ladder on a wall, looking down into a comp- compound that we're about to enter a building and. Breacher puts the breach on the door, starts to try and back away from the breach. There's nowhere to go. There's some, you know, junk or whatever in the in the. In the uh courtyard. So I look at him, I'm watching him. I'm like, oh, he's, what's he gonna do? Oh, he's just gonna lay down right there. Sure enough, lays down right there and. Cracks this breach off. I mean, totally unsafe distance and you know, I like get. Cause I ducked behind the wall, right? The breach, he says, turning steel. I get behind the wall, breach goes, jump over. I mean.

• 4:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Go past him. He looks like he just, you know, he's walking around like he just got, you know, knocked out. Um, and that's kind of a. That's what you do, you know? So guys are exposed to a lot of blasts and you know, just like. It's different for everyone, you know, Junior Seo, um, you know, you know, Junior Seo, I'm sure, I mean, you know, how's that that guy who? Played football like a lot of other people played football, but the impact that it had on him was was terrible. And we don't know why, but we know that that's what happened. So.

• 4:03:12Speaker 01

  The ear protection, you'd think, and I don't know, maybe.

• 4:03:18Speaker 01

  Like ear protection is one thing, but isn't like the vibration in and of itself like more, you know, that's more of an impact than any ear protection.

• 4:03:25Speaker 02

  So what they're finding out is that, you know, with this blast wave propagation over pressure that actually, you know, there's concern that maybe the helmet, the helmet is actually holding some of that blast wave in. And then to your point about ear protection, that's a, that's another way into the brain. So loud noises and so forth actually create trauma to the brain. As does, what we're finding out is a lot of that blast wave is going in through the eye sockets. Now, this is, you know, we'll get some more fidelity on that, this coming up.

• 4:04:04Speaker 02

  But directly affecting the frontal lobe of the brain where our executive functions are. So that makes a lot of sense. Why we may see changes in behavior. So the neuroscience translation from the injury sites, which are literally all through the brain, the gray matter, the white matter, the, the lower brain is showing damage at different degrees depending on the individual and the level of exposure. But it definitely will explain why somebody's having problems with regulation. Why they may not be able to sleep. It's going to give us some hard evidence. Once we perfect the diagnostics, that'll allow us to make better decisions. But

• 4:04:48Speaker 02

  you know, some of the protection that we've had in the past that we've put a level of reliance on, we're finding out is not actually giving us as much protection as we think. There's also visual trauma that happens that we're finding out that somebody sees something, you know, that's horrific, you know, creates that kind of PTS, you know, baseline of, of, of a catastrophic, you know, exposure.

• 4:05:13Speaker 02

  That visualization, even though they don't come in contact with any physical forces, is actually causing changes in the brain. So, we're early on into this. We just need to understand it. And, like I said, this is not about getting rid of folks that are hurt. This is about ensuring that we have the most formidable, resilient fighting force in the future. And how do we take care of our folks when they get hurt? You know, especially when they're doing the job we've asked them to do.

• 4:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Sure. Yeah. Anything else, Frank? Any closing thoughts?

• 4:05:52Speaker 02

  No. I just, like I said, you know, your focus on leadership, I know a lot of people are paying attention. That discussion needs to happen. I'd be glad to come back at any time to give you some more thoughts on that, just based on my, my experience. I don't know all the answers. I just, you know, you know, I've drug around this black cloud that, you know, puts me in places where, you know, shit happens. And you tend to learn, you know, you know, from the good things that happen. You probably learn more from the bad things that happen. And some of my best leadership takeaways have been from some, you know, being in the

• 4:06:34Speaker 02

  company of some horrible leaders, where I, I just come back and say, "Well, there's no freaking way I'm ever gonna do that or treat my people like that." But, I do think there's still a lot of good leaders out there. I hope if they're listening, you know, I'm not saying that you don't need a lawyer at some point to consult on some things, but as I used to remind my lawyers, "You have no decision-making authority. All you do is provide me advice and counsel. It's up to me to choose what I am going to, you know, do." And I own that. I own it.

• 4:07:09Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks for coming out here. I know, like you said, you're a 68-year-old active-duty firefighter. So, thanks for taking the time to come out here and join us. Thanks for your service, you know, in the Secret Service, in the police, in the fire service, of course. Thanks for your service in the teams and, and your son's service as well. Our fellow Frogman, Ryan. We'll remember him. We'll do our best to learn from what he went through, so that his loss is not in vain, your loss is not in vain. And thank you for carrying on his message, speaking for him, so that we can help the veterans that are out there today. Thank you.

• 4:07:55Jocko Willink?

  Thank you, Jaco.

• 4:07:58Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Frank Larkin has left the building.

• 4:08:05Jocko Willink?

  Lots to think about. Lots of things that we can do as people to help other people out.

• 4:08:14Jocko Willink?

  You know,

• 4:08:17Jocko Willink?

  staying on the path. Look, I know it's sort of, what's that word? Maybe it's sort of like trite thing for me to say, "Oh, you'll be on the path," you know? Maybe I say it too much. Maybe I don't explain it properly. Maybe...

• 4:08:36Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I do it too casually sometimes. But the path,

• 4:08:45Jocko Willink?

  man, if you're not on the path, it can really cause you problems. You know what I mean? And, you know, when you hear about Ryan, look, all those issues, and then like you add into that, like, drinking. Just, yeah, man. And you could hear, just like, all of a sudden, he's not drinking, not working out. And then you couple that with these, these brain injuries, man, it's just a nightmare. And definitely a horrible situation. I mean, it's unimaginable. It's just unimaginable to, to, to watch that unfold. And even to hear, you know, his dad tell the story and talk through it is just...

• 4:09:27Jocko Willink?

  It's just a nightmare, man.

• 4:09:31Jocko Willink?

  Look, you gotta, we're talking about mitigating this, you know, in Ryan's case, you're talking about doing your best to mitigate,

• 4:09:41Jocko Willink?

  you know, this, this, these brain injury from all these blasts and stuff. And whatever, the moral injury, like you're trying to mitigate all this stuff, but that, that's what like, that's the best you can do, right? The, what you don't want to do is not try and mitigate it. And this is just so difficult. And I think really for, from my perspective, as I was hearing this, and it probably came through in some of my questions, you know, like what, what were you seeing? Because to me, when I see people that around me and they veer, they veer like off the path, that's when I start getting worried about them, right?

• 4:10:23Jocko Willink?

  When all of a sudden they're doing things that we know they're not good for, right? We know this isn't going to work out. We know this isn't a good move. So that's just another thing going back to this like idea of warriorcall.org. When you've got someone that you know, that's

• 4:10:40Jocko Willink?

  at a broad level, not doing the things that they should be doing, like do your best to reach out, connect with them, try and help them, try and get them pointed right back in the right direction. And having this kind of information is, is very helpful. And, and actually after we stopped recording, you know, Frank pointed out to me that, you know, because of NSW, because of the SEAL teams, there has been a focus on moving, on discovering and learning more about this. And, you know, to, to the point of kind of what I opened up this whole thing about when they found these traumatic injuries to, to Ryan's brain, it's too late. It's too late.

• 4:11:26Jocko Willink?

  And because of that, and because of Frank's efforts, and because of the efforts of SEALs that have, that are still active duty that got on board and said, yeah, this was a, this was a mistake. What do we do to fix it? There is progress and they, and they went to Special Operations Command and started doing these studies, which the results are forthcoming, so.

• 4:11:50Jocko Willink?

  And you know, kind of what I closed out by saying, you know, let's make sure that that Ryan's loss and Frank and his family's loss wasn't in vain by trying to spread the word. It's the, I think it's the best thing we can do in this terrible situation. So

• 4:12:13Jocko Willink?

  terrible story, but we're going to take some lessons from it and try and have an impact out there. So that's what I got. Thanks for listening, everybody. If you are on the path, go get yourself some Jaco fuel. Get yourself some good, some good nutrition for your body. Get your hydrate, get your greens, get your creatine. You on creatine right now?

• 4:12:36Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I am.

• 4:12:37Jocko Willink?

  It's a big deal, isn't it?

• 4:12:38Speaker 01

  It is a big deal.

• 4:12:38Jocko Willink?

  Across the board.

• 4:12:39Speaker 01

  Everyday, everyday protocol.

• 4:12:41Jocko Willink?

  Do you do one of the scoops?

• 4:12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I one and a half.

• 4:12:44Jocko Willink?

  One and a half?

• 4:12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:12:45Jocko Willink?

  How come you up the levels?

• 4:12:47Speaker 01

  Well, because I was reading the real, the protocols.

• 4:12:50Jocko Willink?

  Cause I'm American and born is better.

• 4:12:52Speaker 01

  I was reading the protocols and remember back in the day when creatine first exploded on the scene in my periphery, they were like, there's the loading phase. You gotta take more and all this stuff. So it gets in your all this. So I was reading about that and they were like, yeah, you know, like that's not necessarily true, you know, but you know, all this stuff or whatever. So I was like, hey, if I just take one and a half scoops, I think we're good to go.

• 4:13:11Jocko Willink?

  Let's just round it up.

• 4:13:13Speaker 01

  Yep, that's what I did. And that's what I do. And hey, man.

• 4:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Do you do it before you work out?

• 4:13:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:13:17Jocko Willink?

  You just do it normal. It's pretty daily. It's in your system. It's just flowing. Cause I hear people talking about like they're doing it almost like before a workout.

• 4:13:25Speaker 01

  Like it's a pre-workout. I don't think it works like that.

• 4:13:27Jocko Willink?

  The extra heat for the set.

• 4:13:29Speaker 01

  It doesn't work like that, though, I don't think. Hey, bra.

• 4:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Uh, well, hey. That placebo, though.

• 4:13:33Speaker 01

  Whatever works, whatever works. Yeah, I'm gonna let it ride.

• 4:13:36Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so we got that. We got milk. I know you and I just pounded a milk. So that's good. Get a little, because we were going catabolic, probably both of us. You did squats today, apparently?

• 4:13:44Speaker 01

  Yesterday.

• 4:13:45Jocko Willink?

  Yesterday?

• 4:13:46Speaker 01

  Yesterday.

• 4:13:46Jocko Willink?

  What did you do today?

• 4:13:48Speaker 01

  I didn't do nothing today. Yeah.

• 4:13:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 4:13:51Speaker 01

  I gotta get mentally ready for these.

• 4:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, jocko fuel.com. Go get yourself some stuff. You can get it in stores too, which by the way is like awesome. When you go to a store and you buy some jocko fuel, it's very helpful. It lets people know, lets those stores know that, that, that we're, we're down for the cause. So Wawa, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannaford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Farm Shop Right, HEB down in Teyah, yes. They got the, uh, end pallet, what's it called? End cap.

• 4:14:25Speaker 01

  End cap?

• 4:14:26Jocko Willink?

  You know what that is?

• 4:14:27Speaker 01

  In the store?

• 4:14:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in the store.

• 4:14:28Speaker 01

  It's like the end of the aisle, kind of a scenario.

• 4:14:30Jocko Willink?

  Like a cap on the end of the aisle. We got that going on. Meyer in the Midwest, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields. And then little gyms, you know, little gyms, little CrossFit gyms, if you're doing CrossFit.

• 4:14:42Jocko Willink?

  Whatever you're doing. Jiu Jitsu gym, powerlifting gym, maybe it's just a regular old Globo gym. If you work at one of those or you own one of those, go to JF sales at jocko fuel.com. If you want to sell some jocko fuel. Get yourself on the path, keep your system clean. You know, when people tell me they're tired or they, they can't sleep, I'm like, what are you eating?

• 4:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15:04Jocko Willink?

  Or when they're telling them they don't have energy, what are you eating?

• 4:15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15:06Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 4:15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15:07Jocko Willink?

  It's such a huge thing. It's like, you get, you take your car. And like, I know you drive a Cadillac.

• 4:15:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:15:15Jocko Willink?

  Did I just breach? Protocol here?

• 4:15:17Speaker 01

  No, you're fine.

• 4:15:18Jocko Willink?

  So you got a Cadillac. Let's say you put, uh, Kool-Aid in your Cadillac. You know what I mean?

• 4:15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wouldn't work.

• 4:15:25Jocko Willink?

  We expecting that thing to run well?

• 4:15:26Speaker 01

  It'd be messed up.

• 4:15:27Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 4:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15:28Jocko Willink?

  What if we put kerosene in there?

• 4:15:29Speaker 01

  No, I, I probably wouldn't even sleep well if you put kerosene.

• 4:15:32Jocko Willink?

  With your Cadillac, do you have to put the premium in? The premium gas in there?

• 4:15:37Speaker 01

  You don't have to, but.

• 4:15:38Jocko Willink?

  But you do?

• 4:15:39Speaker 01

  That's the recommended scenario for sure.

• 4:15:41Jocko Willink?

  You put that jocko fuel with.

• 4:15:45Jocko Willink?

  Hey, that's the deal, right? You wanna, you wanna stay clean. That's what you want to do. Jocko Fuel.com. Go get it.

• 4:15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15:53Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 4:15:53Speaker 01

  You, you bring a, a good point. It's a good way to look at it. And I'm not saying this just to say this is for real, a good way to look at it, where it's like, you know, we look at ourselves as like, well, I'm one person, you know? And that's it. But a more. How should I say, helpful way to look at it would be that you are a whole system. You're like in multiple systems working kinda together. And just like any system, you start jamming up one part of the system, it can jam up the other parts of the system. So like if you can't sleep, there are probably other factors in there that's causing you not to be able to go to sleep. Cause you sleep for a reason.

• 4:16:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:16:28Speaker 01

  And if you have less of a quote unquote reason to sleep, then you're probably not gonna sleep that good. And inversely, you stay awake for a reason. And if you give yourself more of a reason to stay awake, when you don't wanna stay awake, you're gonna stay awake still. See what I'm saying? Cause there's something else in the system. And what you eat, what you put in, is part of that system.

• 4:16:45Jocko Willink?

  And, and you know, I forgot to mention, uh, Jaco Go, Discipline Go. It's a, it's an energy drink, but I'll tell you what, this is not, this is so far, I was, we were talking, I was a retailer.

• 4:16:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:16:57Jocko Willink?

  You know, so a store, talking about bringing in Jaco Fuel, and they're like, well, you know, we have an energy drink this and. I go, hold on, ah, yeah. I'm not, look, I didn't, did I get crazy? No, I didn't get crazy.

• 4:17:06Speaker 01

  Are you sure about that?

• 4:17:07Jocko Willink?

  Hey, hold on a second, I was like, cause they have all their, they have like a bunch of different energy drinks, right? And I'm like, well, ours is different. They're like, well, I mean, it's an energy drink, whatever, like blowing me off.

• 4:17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:17:16Jocko Willink?

  Blowing me off, not really blowing me off, but definitely, I was getting some, what we call vibes.

• 4:17:21Speaker 01

  Vibes, okay.

• 4:17:22Jocko Willink?

  And I said, hold on, and I like looked at the can, and the ingredients are like, uh, the whole back of the can. And it's a bunch of nine syllable chemicals and stuff like that. I go, let me tell you what we got in here, I picked up a can and go, and I'm like, uh, here's the ingredients. Filtered, carbonated, water, right? That's number one, natural flavors, citric acid, which is what is like in an orange, tea, cause this is a, the can that I have was a. Yeah, tea, um, monk fruit, and then fermented cane sugar. That's what's in it, that, that's the end of the eat ingredients list. Okay, now, does it have some neutropids in there?

• 4:18:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes, it does, you know, so it's got vitamin B12 and vitamin B6, and it's got caffeine, it's got alpha G. So it's got other ingredients in it, but all these things are good for you, that's why we put them in there, purposefully.

• 4:18:16Jocko Willink?

  So this is not normal, it's not normal, it's a totally different gig. It's a totally different gig. And I wish I could think, I wish I was better at thinking what we should call it. You know what I mean? Cause you can't call it an energy drink, cause it doesn't, it's like,

• 4:18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get the stigma.

• 4:18:35Jocko Willink?

  Different thing. It's a stigma, right? This is, this is literally good for you. So I'm like, I'm, I'm asking this retail person. I said, why would anyone drink anything else when they could have this, which is literally good for you? And she, like, her face was changing.

• 4:18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:18:47Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, read the ingredients on that one. And she like, looks at it and she's like, I can't. I was like, no, you can't. You can't. You don't know what that word is. That's not English language. That's a different foreign language, chemical language.

• 4:18:58Speaker 01

  Chemical.

• 4:18:59Jocko Willink?

  That's the chemical languages. We don't, we're not speaking that over here.

• 4:19:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:19:02Jocko Willink?

  So this is, this is no downside. Get something that's clean for you and it gives you energy. Does that make it an energy drink? Technically, yes, it does. Is it an energy drink like the rest of these disgusting things that are out there being marketed to you? It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. So there you go. Get you some of that too. Jacofuel.com.

• 4:19:25Speaker 01

  Good idea. Speaking of the tea, that was the first, I know it's gonna sound crazy. I never had the new tea, the tea since the flavors got revamped.

• 4:19:32Jocko Willink?

  Assessment.

• 4:19:32Speaker 01

  Good. Very good. I don't know if you noticed how fast I pounded it.

• 4:19:36Jocko Willink?

  Pound it. If I'm gonna go home and tax some steel?

• 4:19:39Speaker 01

  I'm, yeah, for most likely, yes. But yeah, good deal on the tea. Tactical tea, by the way.

• 4:19:45Jocko Willink?

  Tactical tea. Alright, there we go. Uh, originusa.com. Don't forget, you can get awesome, American-made clothing. Ghee. Everything you need. What do you need? At night, you need a ghee. You probably need a rash guard. So you're doing ghee, no ghee class. You're gonna go out for a date with your girl.

• 4:19:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:19:59Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna wear a pair of jeans.

• 4:20:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:20:01Jocko Willink?

  You gotta put boots on for that.

• 4:20:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:20:03Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna wake up in the morning, workout. That's RTX. When you get done working out, you're going hunting. We got hunt gear.

• 4:20:10Speaker 01

  Of course, of course.

• 4:20:11Jocko Willink?

  When you get done with that, it's gonna be cold. You're gonna put a sweatshirt on.

• 4:20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:20:14Jocko Willink?

  We got you covered. And then you're gonna go to work, t-shirt and jeans.

• 4:20:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:20:17Jocko Willink?

  Everything that you need, we got you.

• 4:20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:20:19Jocko Willink?

  All a hundred percent American-made.

• 4:20:20Speaker 01

  And, and I see why, but you did, there was some detailed stuff in there that you did kinda pass over, which is fine, but I don't pass over these things. I noticed these things. Socks. Oh yeah, I wear urgent socks. Belt. Oh yes, I wear urgent belt.

• 4:20:35Jocko Willink?

  Wallet.

• 4:20:35Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 4:20:36Jocko Willink?

  Wait, say that again?

• 4:20:37Speaker 01

  Belt.

• 4:20:39Speaker 01

  Socks.

• 4:20:39Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 4:20:40Speaker 01

  Wallet.

• 4:20:41Jocko Willink?

  So it's interesting. You say wallet and you don't say wallet. Cause normally you say weird things like cotton.

• 4:20:46Speaker 01

  Cause T is the last like letter or whatever, you know? So they say cotton, you say cotton. What else I'm gonna say cotton?

• 4:20:53Jocko Willink?

  That's what I said.

• 4:20:54Speaker 01

  Forget about the T.

• 4:20:54Jocko Willink?

  That's what I said.

• 4:20:55Speaker 01

  No more. So, so if there's letters after the T, you forget about the T.

• 4:20:59Jocko Willink?

  You know who says cotton? My daughter Hannah.

• 4:21:02Speaker 01

  Well, there you go.

• 4:21:03Jocko Willink?

  She was saying that something the other day. She says it's made of cotton. I was like, what? Where are you from?

• 4:21:08Speaker 01

  Cotton, mountain, important.

• 4:21:12Jocko Willink?

  And yet.

• 4:21:14Speaker 01

  Okay. So in Hawaii, there's there, I think it's Japanese though, but the last name is Soto. S O T O.

• 4:21:19Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:21:19Speaker 01

  Say Soto.

• 4:21:21Jocko Willink?

  Soto.

• 4:21:21Speaker 01

  Soto. No, not S O D O.

• 4:21:24Jocko Willink?

  Soto.

• 4:21:25Speaker 01

  It's hard, right?

• 4:21:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of the hard one, if you don't say. Anyway, sidetracked. Um, but yes, the origin has plenty of stuff. Ca- uh, ca- the cotton that Origin uses made in America, by the way.

• 4:21:37Jocko Willink?

  Grown in America. Technically, we're not making cotton.

• 4:21:40Speaker 01

  Made by nature.

• 4:21:41Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool. OriginUSA.com. Go get some.

• 4:21:44Speaker 01

  That's true. Also Jaco Store. He has a store. It's called Jaco Store. Us where you can do discipline equals freedom shirts, hats, hoodies, merch, if you will. It's more than merch though. It's good. It's like wearable. A lot of people say their, their favorite T-shirt comes from Jaco Store. It's one of the, it's the best fitting shirts. That we have there. Also, we have the shirt locker, which is a subscription scenario. You get a new design every month. It's a good one. This next month, so this month.

• 4:22:11Speaker 01

  I should have saved it for January.

• 4:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:22:13Speaker 01

  But I didn't. The count is zero.

• 4:22:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 4:22:16Speaker 01

  Next month. December, the last month of the year was more appropriate for the last month. It is, uh, until the end. But it looks good.

• 4:22:28Jocko Willink?

  You should have flipped those two.

• 4:22:29Speaker 01

  No, I should have put the count is zero for January.

• 4:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I mean.

• 4:22:33Speaker 01

  And then December is still, it's still until the end.

• 4:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Until the end is a good end of the year thing, right?

• 4:22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That now is correct for December. That's a December.

• 4:22:41Jocko Willink?

  So when's the January one?

• 4:22:43Speaker 01

  The January.

• 4:22:44Jocko Willink?

  When's the count to zero?

• 4:22:45Speaker 01

  This, this month, November.

• 4:22:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Bad strategic planning on your part.

• 4:22:50Speaker 01

  It is what it is, you know? Hey, but we're looking, we're gonna, we're looking, looking to improve. Every single month. So yeah, check that out. It's on Jaco's store.

• 4:22:57Jocko Willink?

  All right. Um, also get some, get some steak. Just make yourself feel better with steak. It's medicine. Medical grade steak. Is that a thing?

• 4:23:08Speaker 01

  That doesn't sound.

• 4:23:09Jocko Willink?

  Pharmaceutical grade steak?

• 4:23:10Speaker 01

  No, no, that's bad.

• 4:23:12Jocko Willink?

  How about just nature steak?

• 4:23:13Speaker 01

  Nature steak.

• 4:23:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what we're doing. Uh, Colorado craft beef.com, primalbeef.com. Two awesome companies making awesome steaks for you to put in your oven, on your grill, next to your fire. Or raw, if you just want to get some and just eat it, right? And just get stronger because that's what we're doing. These are awesome steaks, awesome companies. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also jocko underground.com. Also YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube. Check out the Jocko podcast YouTube channel plus the Origin USA YouTube channel, plus the Jaco Fuel YouTube channel. Some various channels to get on. Uh, psychological warfare, flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. A bunch of books. I've written a bunch of books. Get them.

• 4:23:58Jocko Willink?

  At Echelon Front, we have leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. We also have events. We, we, we go to companies and work with companies. We also have events that you can come to.

• 4:24:09Jocko Willink?

  We solve problems through leadership. That's what we do. Whatever problems you're having, they're leadership problems and we will help you solve those problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. We also have an, an online training academy. It's extremeownership.com. We put courses up there that you can take, that you can learn the skill of leadership to use with your family, to use at work, to use with your kids, to use for yourself. Help you become a better leader and that's what will help you in life. Extremeownership.com. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization, awesome organization.

• 4:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org if you want to donate or you want to get involved. Also check out heroesandhorses.org. Micah Fink's organization, Jimmy May's organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org, and of course Frank Larkins, check it out. Warriorcall.org.

• 4:25:06Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to connect on the interwebs, Frank Larkin's organization is at warriorcall.org on the interwebs. He's also got a Twitter at warriorcallday and Facebook at warriorcall. Also Echo and I are both also on there as well. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. Just watch out for the algorithm which wants to suck your brain and your time away and never give it back to you. Thanks once again to Frank Larkin for coming down. Thanks for his service in, in the Navy, in the police, in the Secret Service, in the Fire Service, and thanks for your son's service as well. Ryan Larkin, we will not forget. Thanks to all

• 4:25:51Jocko Willink?

  our military personnel out there and our veterans. And listen, if you need help, reach out. Reach out. Reach out to some of your friends. And if you don't need help, reach out to your friends. If you don't know what people are going through, stay connected. Call your friends. And the same thing goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. Stay connected. Call each other. You keep us safe, keep each other safe as well. And to everyone else out there, you know what? You don't have to be a first

• 4:26:34Jocko Willink?

  responder. You don't have to be in the military. It's the same message. Stay connected to your friends, to your people, to your family. Call, text, swing by. People need people. People need people. Don't let time slip by a week, a month, a year, a few years. People become isolated. They become alone. And that's when bad things happen. Don't let bad things happen. Connect with your friends. We are stronger together. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco.