Delta Force & Ranger Regiment Commander | Pete Blaber (throwback ep)

original airdate 11-3-23 Pete Blaber looks back on his path from the Ranger Regiment to Delta Force, including operations in Panama, Colombia, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the leadership lessons he carried from each. We also dig into his reconstruction of the Pat Tillman friendly-fire incident, the command failures that set the conditions for it, and why accountability and common-sense leadership matter so much in combat. VAER Watches ⬇️ https://www.vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse get a free watch roll with your purchase. 20% for active duty, veteran, leo, & first responders Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Jack's news outlet:⬇️ https://thehighside.substack.com/ Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️ Jon's Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Jon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Jon's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Find Marc P here: https://x.com/Mpolymer Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 Substack ⬇️ https://amilburn.substack.com/ Andy’s book ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations 00:00 – Start 01:09 – Growing Up Outside Chicago 02:48 – Cross Country, Endurance & Learning to Push Through Pain 05:45 – Desert One Inspires Him to Join the Military 07:07 – Trying to Figure Out How to Get Into the Army 08:38 – “I Want to Join Delta Force” 09:04 – OCS & Becoming an Infantry Officer 10:16 – The Fastest Route to Ranger Regiment 10:36 – First Assignment in Korea 11:56 – Joining 2nd Ranger Battalion 12:22 – The Ranger Battalion Commander Who Shaped His Leadership 13:28 – What a Healthy Command Climate Looks Like 15:12 – “The Best Welfare for the Troops Is Getting Them Home” 16:09 – Learning to Stay Calm on the Radio 17:52 – Company Command in the 7th Infantry Division 18:14 – Invading Panama 19:48 – The Friendly Firefight That Changed His Thinking 22:15 – Realizing They Had Been Shooting at Another U. S. Unit 25:21 – Learning Leadership as a Young Lieutenant 27:18 – The Sergeant Major Who Taught Him “Don’t Be in a Hurry to Die” 29:31 – Learning From Bad Leaders 31:07 – Preparing for Delta Selection 32:45 – Passing Selection & Joining the Unit 34:10 – Delta Force in the Early 1990s 35:54 – Counternarcotics Becomes a Major Mission 36:35 – Hunting Pablo Escobar in Colombia 38:17 – Building Teams Around Skills & Personality 39:08 – Learning How to Find People Who Don’t Want to Be Found 40:36 – From Colombia to Mogadishu 41:16 – Why He Distrusted Helicopter-Centric Assaults 42:24 – Black Hawks vs. Little Birds 43:16 – The Low-Visibility Approach He Wanted in Somalia 46:10 – The Hunt for Pablo Escobar 48:27 – How Colombian Forces Ultimately Found Escobar 49:25 – Arriving in Mogadishu After the Battle 49:53 – Searching for Mike Durant 52:00 – What Happened After Black Hawk Down 53:52 – Personality Conflicts & Interoperability Problems 57:51 – Somalia Becomes the Final Nail on Helicopter Assaults 58:48 – How Somalia Changed CQB & Special Operations 1:00:21 – Taking the Fight to the Enemy Instead of Sitting Still 1:02:20 – Bosnia: The “Living Laboratory” for Human Hunting 1:04:58 – Learning Low-Visibility Operations in Bosnia 1:07:11 – Humor, Creativity & Problem Solving in Combat 1:10:01 – Brainstorming Unconventional Ways to Stop a Target 1:19:52 – Transitioning From Career Stories to Common Sense Leadership Matters 1:20:41 – Why Pete Wrote the New Book 1:21:00 – Commanding Delta in Iraq 1:22:34 – Four Operators Wounded on a Baghdad Target 1:27:22 – A Ranger Asks Pete for Help 1:37:15 – Getting Access to the Pat Tillman Investigation 1:40:00 – Discovering the Pattern of Toxic Leadership 1:42:50 – Reconstructing the Pat Tillman Mission 1:43:15 – The Terrain Where Tillman Was Killed 1:45:02 – Why Pete Considered the Area Extremely Dangerous 1:50:00 – The Sync Matrix & Pressure From Higher Headquarters 1:59:59 – The Order to Split the Platoon 2:00:32 – The Platoon Leader Explains Why the Order Makes No Sense 2:02:06 – How Splitting the Platoon Broke Up Organic Teams 2:04:05 – Sending Troops Out Without Reliable Communications 2:09:57 – Why Rangers Are a “National Treasure” 2:14:49 – Who Pat Tillman Really Was as a Soldier 2:16:25 – How Toxic Leadership Set the Conditions for Disaster 2:16:54 – Reconstructing the Day Tillman Was Killed 2:17:29 – Entering the Canyon 2:18:49 – Serial 2 Struggles Through the Terrain 2:26:41 – Crossfire Begins Raining Into the Canyon 2:28:45 – Tillman Moves Into Position on the Spur 2:29:57 – Tillman Takes Fire From the South 2:31:30 – The Position That Became the Most Dangerous Place on the Battlefield 2:35:25 – Serial 2 Opens Fire Toward Tillman’s Position 2:35:42 – Pat Tillman Is Killed 2:36:03 – Why the Rangers Couldn’t Hear Him Yelling 2:38:08 – Could They Actually See Tillman’s Position? 2:40:02 – How the Investigation Judged the Rangers 2:43:40 – Why Pete Believes the Shooters Were Put in an Impossible Situation 2:45:19 – Accountability for Senior Leaders 2:47:04 – “The Cover-Up Was Worse Than the Incident” 2:47:51 – The Decision Not to Tell Kevin Tillman the Truth 2:49:57 – What Leadership Should Have Told the Tillman Family 2:53:54 – What Happened to the Senior Officers? 2:55:14 – Promotions Instead of Accountability 2:56:05 – Why Pat Tillman Was Revered by His Platoon 2:57:40 – Are Senior Officers Protected From Consequences? 3:02:09 – Audience Questions 3:05:44 – Lost Platoons & Conventional Wisdom 3:08:08 – Were Delta Snipers Involved in Escobar’s Death? 3:09:27 – Where Advanced Force Operations Came From 3:13:16 – Other Innovations From the Special Operations Community 3:19:58 – Military Working Dogs & the Evolution of the Program 3:21:49 – How Intelligence Support to Operators Has Evolved 3:22:40 – Could Pack Mules Still Have a Place in Modern Warfare? 3:24:11 – Closing Thoughts 3:24:30 – Pete’s Books & Leadership Trilogy 3:25:43 – Where to Find Pete’s Maps, Photos & Firefight Reconstruction Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:29Speaker 01

  This episode is presented by Verwatches. Go to vaerwatches.com/the team house today and get a free watch roll with your purchase. If you're active duty, a veteran, law enforcement officer, or a first responder, you can also get an additional 20% off. That's vaerwatches.com/the team house. Links are in the description below.

• 0:50Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, welcome to episode 243 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park and our guest on tonight's show is the author of Common Sense Leadership Matters. This is book three in the series Toxic Leadership Destroys by Pete Blaber. Pete served as an officer in Ranger Battalion and then in Delta Force and has gone on to have a successful career after the military. And we're really excited to have him here on the show to talk about his series of books and his career, especially his, his most recent book, which is about the operation in which Pat Tillman was tragically killed. So Pete, thank you for joining us tonight.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, guys.

• 1:33Jack Murphy?

  So as usual on the show, we'll start off at the beginning. Pete, tell us a little bit about, you know, what your upbringing was like and what that, what led you towards military service?

• 1:45Speaker 03

  Sure. So born and raised Oak Park, Illinois, suburb outside of Chicago. Great place to grow up. I was the middle kid of nine kids. Still to this day, I am amazed, my parents and how the heck they did it.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  But my mom was an amazing taskmaster. She used to have a big matrix of jobs that we had three days a week. I usually had to wash and clean the bathrooms and mop the floors, swabbing the decks at an early age. And, you know, just a normal upbringing, played baseball, football, hockey.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Probably my favorite pastime, favorite, what I think should have been a sport was bombing cars, throwing snowballs at cars.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  You know, it's the beginning of my, I think infantryman life. I, I realized I, you know, loved both the thrill of the hunt and the thrill of the chase.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  And so, you know, I took it pretty seriously. And probably again, caused my parents quite a few heartaches, you know, running home, hiding. Why are you hiding? Some guy would come flying through the yard, searching for us.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  In high school, I ran cross-country, played hockey and ran cross-country. And, you know, the cross-country was kind of an extension of that bombing cars. I used, people would go, why, why are you running cross-country? I said, well, I want to, I want to get to a state where nobody can catch me. And I just, I can run forever and no one has any chance of catching me. And, you know, I think cross-country does that. It gives you incredible endurance, you know, teaches you to deal with pain in your own way.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  And, you know, it, it was unbeknownst to time, one more step in the process on the way to, you know, joining the military and becoming an infantryman.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  I was not, you know, like a lot of guys you talk to on the show, I certainly was not a model of scholastic excellence.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  You know, I just, just being in a classroom, all that stuff was not for me. My brothers and sisters were, you know, super smart, straight A students. So, you know, I was like the, you know, the unspoken semi-retarded brother, you know, special ed guy.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  And, you know, it was really just, I could not stand, had no academic discipline and just did not like being in the classroom. So I graduated high school.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  It was time to go to college. I went to Southern Illinois University, which is at the bottom of Illinois. It's the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. And I chose Southern Illinois not for its athletic programs, certainly not for its academic programs. I chose it because it was surrounded by the 275,000 acre Shawnee National Forest. And, you know, my first time down there, coming from a suburb of Chicago, I was, you know, just, it was like Nirvana.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  You know, just this endless rolling hills, a place you could get lost in, you know, camp out, do whatever you wanted. And it was pretty much the, you know, the focus of my college career too. Every weekend I was out hiking in places like Panther's Den and Devil's Kitchen.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  You know, just wilderness in every direction, exploring it. And, you know, just learning to navigate, things like that.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  You know, right when I graduated high school and got into my first year of college, that was the Iran hostage rescue mission. And from that point on, you know, that was, that was the, the thing that turned me toward the military.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  As I mentioned, I didn't know anything about the military. There was no military around Illinois. I don't think I ever even saw a camouflage truck when I was growing up. So I really knew nothing about it. But when that happened and, you know, the news came out about what happened, it just had an incredible effect on me that, that eight, you know, American heroes died in the middle of Desert One. They gave their life to save, to save the hostages in Iran. And so, you know, I was a, again, a runner. I was doing triathlons in college by that point.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  So I would just go on long runs and, and think about my future and think about, you know, what a great country I lived in, what an unbelievable upbringing I had. And, you know, my conclusion was I need to pay something back to the country. And, you know, in my last two years of college, I started going to recruiters to try to figure out what, you know, what was out there. And, you know, Jack, I heard you on one of your podcasts say you didn't know anything. And I, I was the same way. I just did not know a thing about the military. So the first, someone told me to go, you know, to the air force and fly jets.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  And I didn't want to do that, but there was an air force recruiter right there. And I went down, talked to him and it didn't take long for me to, to come to the conclusion that I was in the wrong recruiting office. So I started going to army recruiters and I, I put plural because it took me four recruiters to get one that would just give me what I wanted. They were all trying to get me to, to sign up for things I'd never heard of.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  And, you know, I will add that I was, I was shocked at the time because I, for some reason, I thought everyone, if you're in the army, you're an infantryman. So when they started talking about tankers and artillery and medical corps, and I was like, what? What, who does that? You know? And that's what they all, they tried to get me into. And that's why I kept going to new recruiters and I finally found one. I still remember his name. The name was Terry Story.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  And he said, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I want to join Delta Force. And he goes, well, you can't do that. You can't sign up for that. You could do that when you get in, but you, you gotta have an MOS. And I said, well, like what? And he said, well, you probably should go infantry. And I said, yeah, that's what I want to do. Um, so I signed up, uh, my contract was for infantry OCS. That's what it was called back then. And, um, you know, when I graduated, I hopped on a train and, uh, it took me off the basic training. Uh, you have to make it through basic in order

• 9:44Speaker 03

  to go to OCS. And then, you know, you're a PFC. Um, and if you make it through OCS, you get commissioned. If you don't, you go back to being a PFC. Uh, and you know, OCS is at Fort Benning. So I would have gone, you know, across the, uh, post, uh, to AIT. But I didn't, I made it through, uh, OCS. It was also a great experience. Um, like I said, it was, uh, it was torturous, but I was a, uh, an endurance athlete. So I could do like a thousand pushups at a time and, uh, and, you know, never even wins. So it was, uh, it was fun for me to go to OCS. And then of course,

• 10:28Speaker 03

  um, my first, while I was there, I started picking brains of, uh, of prior service guys or guys who were going to OCS prior enlisted. They were, there were a couple of E7s in there. And, uh, I would ask them, hey, how do I get, I want to go to the Rangers so that I can get to, uh, the unit. How do I get to the Rangers? And they said, yeah, well, you can't go to the Rangers. You gotta go somewhere else first. And I said, well, where? And they said, the quickest way is to go to Korea, do a year in Korea and, uh, you can get to the regiment. And I did that. I went to,

• 11:06Speaker 03

  uh, 1st and 38th Infantry Camp Hove, Korea. Uh, again, amazing first tour of duty. I did, you know, great battalion commander, great company commander, Freddie Rudolph, great first sergeant, first sergeant Johnson, um, Vietnam veteran. Did my, uh, three months on the DMZ. You know, you get to patrol with live ammo and, uh, lay out live claymores. So really a cool thing. Um, you know, in 1986, uh, to be able to do that. Uh, and you know, I, I say that because in the eighties, uh, the prevailing wisdom was there would never be a war again. Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  You know, you, you'd kind of missed everything. And, uh, a lot of us didn't really accept that, but you know, in the back of our heads, we were like, oh my gosh, you know, I may never get to do sea combat in my, my time in. And, uh, so being able to patrol with live ammo and lay out live claymores was, uh, was a really, really cool thing. And, uh, sure enough, you know, I applied to go to the regiment. I got accepted. Uh, came right back from Korea to Oakland and then drove up, uh, to Fort Lewis, Washington. I was assigned to Second Ranger Battalion. And,

• 12:29Speaker 03

  uh, back then they didn't have, you know, rasp or wrist or whatever it's called now. You just went right to the battalion and, uh, uh, you know, I, I went there. I served four years. Uh, it was an incredibly formative period of my life. Uh, the, both the battalion commanders I had were, were amazing. Uh, Colonel Ellis was my first one. My second one was Colonel John J. Mayer. And, uh, you know, he had an effect on me that, uh, would stay with me for my entire military

• 13:06Speaker 03

  career. Uh, he was just a fantastic battalion commander. Um, approachable. He, he would talk to PFCs the same way he would talk to the regimental commander when he, when he came down. Um, I was a, you know, a junior lieutenant, uh, and you know, in the, in the regiment, junior officers usually fear their battalion commander. I had no fear of my battalion commander. He was, uh, funny. He was full of wisdom. Uh, you know, he would, he would, uh, he would correct you when you were wrong. Uh, but he was just an amazing guy. And, uh, that permeated the entire battalion.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  Uh, it taught me what a command climate is. You know, command climate is based on the sum total of choices made by the leaders in that climate system. Uh, and it's a leader's job to monitor that climate. And he did that incredibly well. Um, you know, he, he would, he, he would fire, uh, bad people, get rid of them right away. And, you know, everything he did, he had kind of a principle to. And, uh, he once told me, you know, you could be the funniest, uh,

• 14:31Speaker 03

  best guy to hang around with in the world as a commander. Uh, but if you turned a blind eye to, uh, toxic tyrannical subordinates, your guys will despise you just as much as they despise that tyrant. And he said, one of your primary jobs is to get rid of those guys. That's what the guys are depending on you. They're going home every night miserable going, man, I hope the boss does something about this. And, uh, again, you know, that stuck with me my whole career. Um, he was incredibly tactically astute, you know, uh, he taught me, you never move, uh,

• 15:16Speaker 03

  with any element without leaving a stay behind ambush. And my entire military career, I was always leaving, stay behind ambushes. Um, but his, the real wealth of knowledge was, was not so much military, but life knowledge and, and a spree decor knowledge. Uh, he would say, the best form of welfare for the troops is to get them in home in time to eat dinner with their families. And you guys both been in the Ranger Regiment. So you know, it attracts a lot of these, you know, borderline psychotic type A personalities who, you know, they'll stay till 10:30 at night. Right.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Um, you know, pushing pencils, pushing papers, uh, and trying to stay a little later than the guy, you know, in the next, the next company or whatever. Uh, and so he would, he not only said that, he enforced it. He would go around at six o'clock and, and go, why, why are you still here? You know, who's telling you to stay here? And he'd kick, you know, guys out of their, out of their company areas. And, you know, everyone, not just me, uh, loved that about him. Uh, you know, the other thing he taught me was to always talk calmly on the radio. And, uh, you know, he

• 16:41Speaker 03

  did that during a big, uh, FTX where we were searching for, you know, precious cargo. It was a nuclear device and I was a platoon leader and we found it. And, uh, I got so excited. I got on the radio and squeaked, you know, I found the precious cargo. And, uh, you know, it was embarrassing, uh, to say the least, but only retrospectively when he pointed it out to me, uh, you know, after the mission was over and he, he, he said to me, look, it happens to everybody. Just remember anytime you go to push that, you know, your push to talk button, take a deep breath

• 17:23Speaker 03

  first and speak calmly. Uh, when we speak calmly, we calm the way we act and, uh, calm like panic is contagious. Um, and you know, he's right. That's, that's been proven by science. Um, but you know, in aggregate, again, uh, it just had this amazing effect on me. My, everywhere I went after that, I tried to, you know, not mirror, but recreate that dynamic, that positive, uh, you know, command climate dynamic. And, you know, along with that, you know, be in, in my

• 18:04Speaker 03

  behavior, be like he was, which is, you know, humble, unassuming. You're not the center. It's these guys, the guys on the ground. Your job is to take care of them. Um, and, uh, it served me well. I, my, my company command was, uh, the 7th Infantry Division, Fort Ord, California. Uh, again, uh, 130 of the greatest guys I could ever have asked for in a company. Uh, my first sergeant, another Vietnam veteran, First Sergeant Carver Hall. Um, fantastic guy, taught me a lot. Uh, two months into my command, we invaded Panama and, uh, we were 7th ID. So we didn't jump in,

• 18:48Speaker 03

  we flew in. Uh, and you know, I, I ended up in the center of the city. I got the mission to protect the new presidential, uh, palace. President Endaro was the president who had been in exile. He took over Panama and all of his exiled, uh, subordinates. And, uh, we just ran missions, uh, for about four or five days straight, using the intelligence from these guys who were in exile. They'd just come to us and say, hey, you need to go over here to this, uh, this grid, this

• 19:26Speaker 03

  location. Uh, some of, uh, some of Noriega's lieutenants are hiding there. And we captured a number of his, uh, subordinates. Um, on one mission, we were going, uh, it was a tipper that Noriega was hiding in the Communist Party headquarters. And, uh, you know, to get to our, uh, targets, we basically jogged down the street. Uh, we didn't have Humvees. And, uh, even if we did, I probably wouldn't have used them. You know, imagine trying to get a bunch of light infantrymen in and out of Humvees, uh, in a city. It was much quicker to, to just, uh,

• 20:07Speaker 03

  move at a, a, a fast pace. And it was on that mission that, uh, we were, I had a platoon plus and then me and the first sergeant in the back and, uh, We were about halfway there and all of a sudden, uh, all hell broke loose. Um, you know, a firefight, every guy in the platoon was firing his weapons. Uh, we were in the back, you know, so probably at that point strung out like an accordion, uh, about a block and a half behind the lead guys. And, you know, I was taught be patient, don't get right on the radio and start

• 20:47Speaker 03

  yelling for a sit rep. Let the front guys figure out what they got, give them some time. So, you know, I gave him, uh, what seemed to me like a minute, uh, and, uh, and I just said, you know, one six, this is zero six. What do you got up there? And no answer. I tried it again. No answer. So me and the first sergeant started making our way to the front, which is incredibly difficult to do, uh, in an urban environment, uh, in a firefight because, you know, you're not a line of troops anymore. Everybody is all over the place. There's guys under cars, guys in doorways,

• 21:26Speaker 03

  guys behind garbage cans, uh, and they're all shooting. So, um, you know, the, the potential to get shot was pretty high, but we weaved our way forward and till I came to the lieutenant and he was the front guy laying down, you know, shooting his M16 and, uh, you know, I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, Hey man, what, what's going on? What do you got? What do you got? And he goes, I'm not sure, sir. There, there's enemy up there. And I go, where? And he's up there. And I said, what do you mean up there? And he said, that window over there. I, I said, you mean where those curtains are flapping? And he goes, yeah, he's behind that curtain. I said, you know, they don't have air conditioning here that they keep their windows open. That, that's just a curtain

• 22:11Speaker 03

  flapping in the wind. And he goes, oh, I didn't know that. I said, why didn't you get on the radio and give me a sit rep? And he said, well, I was too busy shooting my gun. Uh, so we immediately called ceasefire to the platoon and, uh, you know, I didn't think much of it. The, I will add the building burned down. Um, uh, but we went to our target, dry hole, got back and, um, about four years later, uh, I was, uh, I was in the unit at the time. I was in an airport and I ran into a guy who I knew from the seventh ID and we started talking and, you know, you always

• 22:51Speaker 03

  search for common ground when you, when you meet somebody. He was like, yeah, and I was in Panama. And I was like, wow, I was too. And he said, uh, yeah, I was in the city. And I was like, yeah, me too. And they started talking about this massive firefight he was in. I was like, where was it? And he gave me the intersection and that was the intersection between our two elements, the demarcation line. And from talking to him, I realized that, uh, it was his company, uh, on the other side of that building. Uh, I don't know if someone had an AD or someone saw something,

• 23:32Speaker 03

  but you know, one shot started it and, uh, it was a, you know, friendly firefight. Uh, very luckily no one, uh, was injured or killed in it. But, you know, I totally went to school off it. It changed my, um, mindset about firefights, uh, from that day forward, including, you know, all, I was in the unit at the time. Uh, so it really changed. I, every, every situation I looked at differently and, you know, asked hard questions of myself if I was in it or, you know, if it was

• 24:12Speaker 03

  a, a kind of lesson learned, historical thing. And, you know, I started realizing how common friendly fire was and how easy it is in a combat environment to get into a friendly firefight.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  Pete, uh, let me, let me just take a quick moment. We got to give a shout out to the sponsor of tonight's show.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Hey, Jack.

• 24:34Jack Murphy?

  What's going on?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Guess who our new presenting sponsor is? Tell us about it.

• 24:39Jack Murphy?

  We've heard a lot over the last few years about whether it's possible to build things in America. Our presenting sponsor today, Vera Watches, is putting that question to the test. Vera was founded in Venice, California in 2016 with a simple goal, to rebuild the US watchmaking while producing watches tough enough to withstand the toughest outdoor environments. Today, Vera is the largest independent watch assembler in America, assembling watches in California, Arizona, Rhode Island, and Alabama, while also manufacturing its leather straps in Illinois and Florida. Every Vera watch is built for active use with a guaranteed waterproof warranty, scratch resistant, sapphire crystals, and high-quality materials and components

• 25:21Jack Murphy?

  throughout. That combination has helped Vera earn more than 10,000 five-star customer reviews, including thousands from people who rely on their watches every day in demanding professional environments. All of us here at the Team House have been wearing our Vera watches for a while now. And you can check mine out right here. This is the Meridian Diver Watch in Navy Blue. It's very classy watch. And this is the actual rubber, um, dive watch band. If you wanted to, you know, take it in salt water, but it also comes with a normal, uh, silver band and a nylon band, if you prefer that. And, uh, Dee, what, what kind of watch are you wearing there?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  I have the C4 Tactical Field Watch. Uh, it's solar powered too. I'm loving it. And it's funny because I had this laying on my coffee table, uh, the other day, actually, and my homie came in and to watch football or whatever. And he's a watch guy. And he's like, oh, is that that Vera one? He, I, I'm not even making this up. Like, I'm not even bullshitting. I'm like, holy shit. Yeah. Like they're going to be presenting sponsor for the Team House. And they sent us all a bunch of watches. Like, yo, I love this watch. And I, I literally sold the watch. I sent them the link, the Team House link. And I'm like, yo, buy a watch from this, from this link. Because if you do buy a watch from that link, which is vera watches.com slash the Team House, you, when you

• 26:45Speaker 01

  purchase a watch, you get a free, uh, watch roll that you could fill up with three watches. So you could travel with your watches and stuff like that. It's really cool. It's leather. Um, yeah. And I was so excited when he was like, yo, is that that Vera watch? I see it all the time. I was like so amped that he came up with that.

• 27:03Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it, it's nice. I really like the, like, nice big watch face.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Uh, you can find them at vera watches.com slash the Team House. That's V A E R watches.com slash the Team House. And if you use our link, you'll get a free watch roll with $59 with your purchase. Also, Vera does, uh, offer a 20% discount for active duty military, veterans, and law enforcement and first responders. So you could check that out at any time if you are any one of those. Uh, yeah, I'm excited about this sponsorship. So I really hope people go and check out there.

• 27:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 27:37Speaker 00

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

• 28:08Speaker 04

  I actually, I wanted to, because a lot of your books are, your books are about leadership and, you know, and you've talked about a couple of the influences, but I want to ask you sort of going back, um, in your leadership journey, what is it like showing up, uh, as, as a, a butter bar, you know, lieutenant in an infantry unit in, in Korea, which is at the time was the hottest thing going, right? The, like, like you said, live ammunition. Um, and you, like, were you given guidance in terms of, because a lot of these guys are as old, if not older than you, in, you know, in your, you know, in your platoon, things like that. How does, how does

• 28:50Speaker 04

  a young lieutenant manage that? Or were there things that you learned while you were there?

• 28:58Speaker 04

  It's got to be challenging, right?

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's a, you know, it's a great question, Dave. It's, I mean, I think it's the rite of passage and it's, it's a little tougher on those new guys for a reason. You've got to prove yourself. You've got to earn your credibility. And, you know, I always felt that way. I always felt, you know, not, not like deficient, but I knew I didn't have experience. And, um, you know, my upbringing taught me, uh, I'm, I'm wrong more than I'm right.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  So, you know, in order to, to flip that ratio, uh, you tap into this wealth of knowledge around you. And, you know, I mentioned, uh, my first sergeants for a reason. I, I, when I talked about my tour as a lieutenant at 275, I, I did not mention that, uh, the sergeant major there was the same sergeant major for my whole four and a half years, Sergeant Major Leon Guerrero. And he took it upon himself, you know, his job is to, to train all the NCOs in the battalion and to mentor them. But he, he took it to another level.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  He also, I believe, saw that his duty was to train the lieutenants and he did. And I, I think that should be in, you know, most sergeant majors should include that in their, in their duty description. Uh, he's the guy who taught me, don't be in a hurry to die. Um, you know, that's what happened on LZ X-Ray. That lieutenant ran off his helicopter into the jungle. He saw a Vietcong, uh, right on the edge of the jungle who took off running and he ran after him and his whole platoon ran after him. Uh, he never told them what he was running after. Uh, and when he finally stopped, they were surrounded and LZ X-Ray was really the, you

• 31:03Speaker 03

  know, the battle to save the wayward platoon. Uh, and he taught us that, you know, and he would say to me all the time and I was, I was that lieutenant. I was overly aggressive, uh, you know, subject to my aggressive impulsiveness. And he taught me, you know, don't be in a hurry to die. Uh, leaders who are impulsive lead their people to their deaths. And, uh, I never forgot that. Um, you know, I, I packed that with me through my whole career and it saved me and my guys countless times. So, you know, as a butter bar, it's kind of the same thing. You got, you've got to earn your credibility, uh, obviously physically, tactically, but

• 31:47Speaker 03

  you got to listen and, um, you know, you've got the wealth of knowledge around you. Uh, so it's only a matter of tapping into it, uh, asking the right questions and, you know, being patient because you're not gonna, you're not gonna be a combat, you know, hardened, wise veteran, uh, in a few months or even a few years. Uh, you just got to keep building on that knowledge.

• 32:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Uh, were there, whether it was in Korea or, uh, Ranger Battalion Battalion, you, you've mentioned like some good leadership examples. Were there some blatantly, whether it was on the officer side or NCO side, some blatantly bad examples that were learning experiences for you?

• 32:31Speaker 03

  Well, um, all my, I think all my battalion commanders, I, I was very lucky. So my battalion commander in Korea was an amazing Vietnam veteran. Uh, you know, just, I can't say anything but good things about him. Same thing when I got to the Ranger Regiment. Uh, both my battalion commanders were great. Uh, you know, probably, uh, peers, you know, I learned more from peers and as a lieutenant, captains, and there were plenty of those. There were, you know, guys who were hypocrites, guys who, you know, were a-holes to their people, uh, guys who were tactically incompetent.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  And, you know, you learn vicariously from those guys, just like you do from the good guys. You, you know, I'm never going to be that way. Uh, I'm never going to do that. I'm never going to treat people that way. And, you know, you can really go to school off of, off of those incompetent people, just like you can off of the incredibly competent ones. So, you know, most of my early military career though, I'd have to say I was just, uh, blessed with great senior leadership and senior non-commissioned officers.

• 33:50Jack Murphy?

  And by the, uh, the time, so you were in 7th ID, a company commander. When does, uh, when does the idea of like going to selection kind of come, come to your head and you start thinking about going and making the leap?

• 34:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it was, it was already in my head. I knew, you know, the criteria was you had to have a successful company command as an officer to go to selection. So, you know, I was, uh, I, I would have stayed in that company for as long as they let me stay, but, you know, in the military, it's two years, uh, and out. And so as my two years were coming up, I started the process, uh, contacting the unit, um, you know, going through all the prerequisite stuff. And, uh, you know, 7th ID was at Fort Ord. So, uh, about a month before I finished command, uh, the unit selection, uh, team was, came

• 34:48Speaker 03

  out to California and I did my psych and PT test at the Presidio of San Francisco. It was still open as a military base. Uh, I ran my two mile, uh, part of the PT test underneath the Golden Gate Bridge with boots on. And, you know, I was kind of a, a running machine at the time. So I was, you know, going to max VO2, trying to set, you know, my, my personal best record. But I can still remember running under that bridge, just going, man, I love the military. It's just such an amazing place to be. And, uh, you know, sure enough, uh, things worked out for me, uh, with the psych and the PT test.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  I went to selection right after I got finished command. I think I finished command in, uh, in August or September. And then I went to, uh, select, the next selection, which was, I believe, October. And, uh, again, fortunate, didn't get injured, made it through that. And, uh, you know, I was in the unit, uh, in the, in 1991. So was, I was only at Ord for, uh, the, the shortest possible period of time. I, I didn't have to serve as a staff officer. Uh, it was just command, uh, go to tryouts and then, uh, you know, off to the unit.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  And, uh, for a long time I was, you know, the only one who, in the unit from the 7th ID, uh, two more guys came, uh, a few years later before they shut it down. But, uh, but yeah, that was, uh, that was my transition. I, you know, it was because I, I was influenced by Desert One before I even got in. I knew that was Delta on the ground. So even though I knew nothing about really what they were, uh, or how they operated, I knew from that day on that I, that's where I wanted to go in the military. So, you know, it worked out.

• 36:52Jack Murphy?

  So in 1991, you get there. I mean, tell us a little bit about like what the vibe was in the unit at the time, what the mission was like. I mean, like if you can take us a little back in time, you know, to the mission and the culture of that era.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's an interesting time and it's, uh, you know, it's, it's, there are some senior NCOs who can explain it much better than me. They've explained it to me and, you know, enlightened me on it. It was kind of a transitionary time, uh, because the military was still kind of transitioning. You know, you had the old, the old school guys who were there in the early, early days and, you know, firing MP5s and wearing those black watch caps, things like that. Uh, and this was definitely, you know, the step into the future. Uh, everything was modernized, you know, weapons, commo, nods, uh, had, you know,

• 37:50Speaker 03

  were taking those massive leaps in the nineties. So it was a, it was a really cool transitionary time. Uh, you know, my first, I went right to a, a troop. I was a troop commander, my first job. Um, and again, because I've seen a number of your episodes, uh, two of the guys in my troop, Gary Harrington and Dale Comstock, we're both in there at the time. Um, and I'm sure many more that you'd recognize, but those are the two I saw on your program. Just, you know, a, I think the unit was kind of, you know, finding its, its new way at

• 38:32Speaker 03

  the time and, you know, missions were changing, but a lot were staying the same. The, you know, aircraft hostage rescue, aircraft takedown, those type of things were the same, but, you know, new missions were coming on. The counter narcotics was, you know, became the biggest mission for the military. A lot of people don't know that, but Bill Clinton, you know, signed a presidential decision directive, making that the number one priority for the military and inevitably, you know, showing the changes. That's what ended up driving

• 39:17Speaker 03

  my first big missions. I went down into Colombia with the first groups after Pablo escaped. I did four tours in Colombia, spent two Christmases there. And again, incredibly, incredibly formative, just, you know, learning how to deal with embassy people, learning up close how the CIA operates. You know, I was, I was still a, I was a senior captain at the time, which is rare in the unit. Usually the junior officers are majors, but because

• 40:00Speaker 03

  I had that, you know, fast pace through command, I was still a senior captain. But here I was down in Colombia, you know, working out of an embassy. I, you know, blend in anywhere is one of the principles. So, you know, I would wear a suit in the embassy and then I'd go out, you know, to visit my guys and spend time with them operationally in Medellin and Cali and all over that country. It was incredibly dangerous time to be down there. Pablo was blowing the shit out of the country. So, you know, there were, there were car bombs,

• 40:39Speaker 03

  there were mailbox bombs. We were armed all the time, you know, even whether you're in a grocery store in Bogota or, you know, you're, you're down in Medellin or, or Cali. And so, you know, again, just the building blocks, I think of the future of the unit were there, you know, forming teams based on, you know, competencies. So, you know, teams like a homogeneous team was not sent down there. Guys were picked from different squadrons. Language was a big part of that. But disposition was a big part of it, too.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  You guys know this, you know, you get the full spectrum of people in any unit you go to. Some guys are just not really capable or wired to be, you know, interacting in an embassy or interacting with foreign, you know, generals, colonels. And, you know, other guys are incredible at it. They're just, you know, you, you watch them in awe as they deal with these people. And so, I learned a lot down there. Mostly it was, it was about, you know, human hunting. Most of the lessons were how you find people who

• 42:02Speaker 03

  don't want to be found. You know, this tireless search for clues and always tapping into anyone who has any type, type of information, you know, totally open mind about it, not getting caught up in, you know, a military approach to things. We saw ourselves down there. We, we would often talk about, you know, what, what do cops do in America when they, when they find, you know, a fugitive? They don't, you know, call in two SWAT teams, surround the place and then, you know, begin an aerial attack. They just, two or three

• 42:46Speaker 03

  guys, you know, figure out what they got. If it's a, if it's a fleeting opportunity, they go in there and they, and they interact with the environment. And that's what it, that was the big lesson for me, you know. And also patience. It, it takes time to find people. It's very difficult. You've got to have guys on the ground and you've got to listen to those guys religiously, or you're never gonna, you're never gonna find who you're looking for. So, just, again, great tours. I went, I actually went left Colombia

• 43:24Speaker 03

  on one tour, flew to New York and then flew to Mogadishu, Somalia for Somalia. And then, when that ended, I flew back to Colombia for another tour, going after, I believe, the Cali cartel on that one.

• 43:47Jack Murphy?

  Did, did, did some of those like man hunting techniques that you, your unit was developing in Colombia kind of transfer over to the, the hunt for a deed and all those guys in, in Mogadishu?

• 43:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. And now, you know, again, you had kind of, you know, your question about the, the unit and the transition, you had, you know, these competing schools of thought. And so, you know, my school of thought in Mogadishu was different than, you know, the, the special operations command above us and the way they wanted that prosecuted, which was helicopter centric. And, you know, if you talk to guys who were there at the time, they know, you know, I was already anti helicopter. And that's not anti helicopter

• 44:39Speaker 03

  pilot or anti get on a helicopter. I just don't believe, I believe it's the last resort as an assault platform. If you can get there on the ground, if you can sneak up and achieve surprise, do not default to the helicopter. And so, my thing with Somalia was, these helicopters are gonna get us, are gonna get blown out of the sky. We, we did, before anyone went over there, before Sea Squadron went over there, we all did rehearsals. And in our nighttime rehearsals, we did, we timed infilling on a Blackhawk and infilling on a Little Bird.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  And, you know, a Little Bird can break flare and hover in about five seconds. So, if it's a roof or a balcony, you can un-ass those guys in about a total of 10 seconds. A Blackhawk, it takes 45 seconds for the best pilots to break, break flare and hover, get the ropes down or, you know, land. And so, it's a huge amount of time. And, you know, you're dealing with, in a place where everyone has a gun. So, our, our thinking was, you know, we should be going to the targets hidden inside, they were called SSTs, shit sucking trucks, because

• 46:06Speaker 03

  they drove throughout Somalia and they were like garbage trucks. No one bothered them because they were sucking up all the shit. And, you know, my thought was, and a bunch of the guys, I, it wasn't my idea, a number of, a number of my guys came up with it was, you know, let's, let's go in low vis, let's swing all the way around. Mogadishu is like an island. Very abruptly turns into scrub desert. So, you know, if we need to get to the other side of the city, let's make a huge arc around and then come in through the desert on the other side. But, you know, the, the helicopter mentality, the, the kind

• 46:50Speaker 03

  of Vietnam direct assault mentality was very prevalent with senior ranking people at the time. And, and, and, you know, that, that kind of won out. But it was, you know, the same thing. The guys were amazing. I know you've talked to guys before, you know, when we were in Mogadishu, we had Pro-Tec helmets on, plastic Pro-Tec helmets. So, the unit's always been at the forefront of research and development. You know, most of the, you know, equipment and rigs that you see today were developed by guys in the unit, either sewing them up themselves or buying them off the shelves and then sewing and modifying

• 47:35Speaker 03

  them, which is the way the whole army should be, in my opinion. And, you know, that was the other thing, going back and forth between the unit and the Rangers. I always thought the Rangers should go back to, you know, the old school Rangers of the, of the, you know, early 80s, where they still had 550 cord in their boots. And, you know, they too were allowed that leeway to, you know, wear their equipment in different ways. And I know there's probably some senior Rangers gasping with me saying that, but I really

• 48:18Speaker 03

  believe that. And, you know, guys should be allowed to modify their equipment so that it's ergonomic, you, you maximize that ergonomic efficiency. You know, everyone's chest is different, their arms. So, you know, let guys explore, invent, you know, and let them build better equipment constantly. And that's what the unit did. And that's what we did start, even in Mogadishu, you know, the, that was the last of the Pro-Tec helmet. After Mogadishu, they were never worn again.

• 48:55Jack Murphy?

  Pete, you know, just one thing I wanted to ask you, why I have you here, is something I, I was told a ways back, but I never really got the whole story on, was about Colombia and that before Pablo Escobar was eventually, you know, killed by the Colombians, that we made like several attempts to like ramp up capture kill missions for him. And I was just wondering if you had any like visibility on that?

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, you know, I'm not sure what, what exactly there might've been times that guys in Medellin thought that was, you know, the best course of action. But what I remember is we were, and no one told us this, we were being micromanaged down there by South County, which was in Panama at the time. So, you know, you had a four-star general in Panama with a bunch of two-star general underlying staff officers. And again, you know, there's no combat. So, uh, this is like the only show in town and they could not keep their fingers off

• 50:06Speaker 03

  it. Um, but, you know, we still operated very freely down there and we came to the conclusion ourselves that, uh, it, you know, unless it can't be avoided, we should stay out of any direct, uh, contact, direct action like mission. And that doesn't mean we can't take them all the way up to the breach point. Uh, we can't advise them. We had, we had shared radios with them, uh, the Agro Bassion, their HRT. Um, but we, you know, in our own

• 50:44Speaker 03

  minds decided, hey, we're here to lead them and these guys need to be the ones to get Pablo and it, it makes the most sense for them. It makes the most sense for the mission and for their country. Um, if it's us, it's going to open up Pandora's box of, of problems. So we were, we were very much, um, you know, set on that. And ultimately that's what happened. You know, Pablo people still are not clear on that, but that was 100% uh, you know, Colombian mission. Those, uh, the young captain who was the son of the Colonel who

• 51:25Speaker 03

  was in charge, uh, he was out there, he was using, uh, you know, US provided direction finding equipment, but it was not any kind of magical technology. It was, you know, literally driving around hoping you pick up a frequency and hoping the voice on that frequency, the, um, you know, the, uh, the tro's and the, the peaks on it match up to his voice profile that we had already embedded in the system. And, and that's what happened. And they, you know, they, direction found him on his phone. Then they happened to see him up in an upstairs window, called in the rest of the Colombians and, uh, and they, they did that 100% on their own.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  And then bouncing back to Somalia, I mean, were, were you there when the battle took place?

• 52:14Speaker 03

  We got there that night. So I was in, uh, A and that was C. So we were, it was actually the, the change overnight. We were there to relieve them. They were going home uh, that next day. So, uh, we were there and then we took over. They were pretty much, you know, decimated by the mission. So we took over, uh, the, uh, you know, hostage rescue mission to find Durant and rescue him. Uh, we flew, uh, you know, I don't know how many missions in and out of there, all on little birds. We didn't use any Blackhawks.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  Um, and, you know, again, uh, a lot of breakthroughs in technology there, uh, lasers. Uh, we learned just how incredibly lethal and valuable lasers were. Um, you know, I, I, we were flying on one mission. Uh, we had four little birds. I was the second little bird offset from the first and we were flying napa to earth. And I looked forward, it was, it was, it just dark, you know, and it just turned dark. And so I had my nods on and I saw ahead of

• 53:30Speaker 03

  the first helicopter, this person run out of a house, uh, into the yard. And, you know, it was a woman. She had something in her hand and, you know, I didn't know, I knew it wasn't a gun, but she had something in her hand. It could have been a spear or anything. And, you know, with a helicopter at that height, you never know. And she pulled it back. It turned out it was a black frying pan, probably her most valuable possession. And she pulled this thing back to throw it. And I, I put my laser on it and at the exact second I put mine on it, three other lasers zeroed in on it and somebody shot and that

• 54:12Speaker 03

  frying pan flew out of her hand as she tried to throw it at the lead little bird. And I'll never forget that shot. I'll never forget, uh, you know, seeing it that I could still see that picture in my nods and, uh, see those lasers converge on the frying pan. Uh, and, uh, so, you know, a lot of that technology was experimental at the time, but it just took off after that. Uh, and, you know, today every, every M4 has a laser on it.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't think we ever have really talked about this aspect of, of Somalia, but so you get there right after the big battle and it's, were you guys like trying to keep the pressure, obviously looking for Mike Durant, but also keeping the pressure on the militias? Was that the, the, the mission at the time?

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, uh, you know, it was crazy because there was a lot of political pressure coming down on the whole thing. If you guys remember, uh, you know, we wanted to go after Adeed, but we didn't want, you know, to kill anybody or get anybody killed. It was crazy. There was no AC 130 up, uh, you know, just senseless decisions made at the national level. Um, so it was kind of a, a flux period. No one knew what was going to happen with the mission. Uh, and so we just did what, you know, any military guys would do. We just, uh, Charlie, Mike, let's, let's continue with the same thing and search for both Adeed

• 55:43Speaker 03

  and Durant at the same time. Um, you know, we had some, there were just some amazing lessons learned on interoperability there. Uh, you know, a lot of things happened, uh, with the Rangers. Uh, they created a lot of, uh, you know, a lot of conflict with those guys. And, uh, you know, those were interoperability things and a lot of them were personality driven. Again, um, you know, leaders who instead of being open and, uh, you know, accommodating were rigid and, uh, and narrowly focused on, you know, what they were going

• 56:26Speaker 03

  to do and how they were going to do it. And, uh, I think that ended up causing a lot of the chaos that occurred during that firefight.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  What, so do you think a lot of that was personality driven? Uh, and, and I'm going to like throw some stuff out, which may or may not be true, but were, were there like, were there officers that were of, of rank higher, whichever unit that thought that that should be respected? Were there Rangers that were sort of the old school, were the best light infantry and you guys are long hairs and that should be respected? Were there any Delta personalities that were like, we're Delta, shut the fuck up and, and, and do what we say? Like what, what were some of the elements that were going on? If you, if you know them?

• 57:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, you know, the, the most were going on with the, there was a, a company commander, Ranger Company Commander and the Ranger Battalion Commander. And, you know, the movie alludes to it a little bit, but, uh, you know, they were, they were just, they were, they were, I guess you said old school. They were old school. Uh, if we're going to do it our way and that's it. And, you know, the Rangers, uh, when the firefight started, we're out there in a, in a convoy, parked in a convoy. And, uh, you know, just everything was set up to go wrong. The battalion commander in his vehicle is leading that

• 57:56Speaker 03

  convoy. Um, you know, that makes no sense. When, you know, who puts a battalion commander in the front vehicle, you know, as a navigator and as a convoy commander? I, I, nobody. And that, you know, that, uh, that caused a, a lot of the problems, certainly a lot of the casualties. Uh, they went back and forth through that kill zone, I think three times. Uh, cause he could not figure out, he was getting, he was being told where to go from a helicopter. So, you know, all of us have been in helicopters circling. No,

• 58:35Speaker 03

  you can't tell a guy in a city to take a left turn or a right turn. Um, and then, you know, make your arc around to come around the other way. They, they took a bunch of wrong turns. I think that front vehicle split from the convoy, uh, you know, on its own, went down an alley away from the convoy. Uh, it, the only thing that stopped it was, uh, a Somali with an RPG at the far end of the alley popped out. So they threw it in reverse and went back. Um, and you know, then there was just, I, I'm not, I can't speak credibly about

• 59:14Speaker 03

  the personality at the, at the company level. I just know that, um, there were unit guys in, in that same building and that company commander would not answer his radio, uh, when guys were calling, uh, one, one ranger bled out in there. Um, and, uh, Scott Miller was the troop commander at the time. Uh, he was trying to call him and he wouldn't answer his radio. Uh, so, you know, who, I'm not being judgmental here. I'm just saying it was a huge interoperability problem.

• 59:52Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 03

  And, um, you know, personalities, uh, you can't come to any other conclusion than personalities because, you know, in those situations, you're, you know, rank means nothing. Your job is to make the best decision and solve any problem using logic and common sense that, that comes up. And if you've got to subordinate yourself to someone of lower rank or of another unit, who cares?

• 1:00:19Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:19Speaker 03

  You know, you're doing it in the name of, of, you know, the mission and your men. And so, uh, it, it, it always just amazes me when I hear stuff like that. And, and that had a big impression on me too. You know, I, I went to school off Somalia. Uh, it was the final nail for me on helicopters. Um, it was, you know, also a nail for, you know, always search for that asymmetrical approach, that out of box approach. Do not default to what every enemy in the world expects America to do, which is to come in on our shiny helicopters, uh, and fast rope on the targets.

• 1:01:03Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, just, uh, like Jack and I saw this in the, in the GWAT, uh, and I'm sure, you know, like everybody else did too, how like tactics evolved, like things that used, people used to think were the standard sort of went by the wayside. Did you see that happen with Somalia too? Were, were there just some like wake up calls, uh, in, in the community for you, for you guys?

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think, uh, you know, our, our, uh, professors, which is all the, you know, troop sergeant majors and team leaders, they totally went to school off it on CQB. A number of things changed on CQB tactics and techniques. Uh, certainly, you know, you know, the, probably one of the biggest lessons was, you know, never go on a daytime mission without your nods and without expecting you're going to be going on a nighttime mission. So, you know, a lot of little things, a lot of equipment things. I already mentioned the Pro-Tec, uh, changed after that. And, you know, I think the, I think in general, the

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  mindset, because, uh, you know, it, it's very clear that that was the most intense combat since the Vietnam War. And it was kind of a wake up call, you know, to everybody that this is the new way. This is the, you know, insurgent warfare, uh, to, you know, asymmetrical sounds trite, but it's true. You're fighting against guys who aren't, they don't have doctrine and they don't have tactics, techniques and procedures. And why, you know, while you can smoke those guys in, you know, incomprehensible numbers, they're still very effective. They're

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  swarming you and you've got to be ready to defeat the swarm. And, um, you know, there were a number of teams, unit teams who did that. Um, they, they did not stay put, um, which I, which I also went to school off of. They, they said, well, I'm not staying in this place. Let's go out and just move and destroy the enemy instead of letting them creep up and, uh, and destroy us. And they did that. Paul Howe, uh, who wrote a book about it, but he's an incredible warrior. And to me.

• 1:03:33Jack Murphy?

  We've had him on the show too.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  Did you? Okay. So he, he, I, I never forgot him. He gave a AR. He wasn't in my, uh, squadron. So I didn't know him that well, but you know, my, my lesson from Somalia was almost everything he said about it. And, uh, and he, the way he prosecuted, the way he reacted, the way he adapted with his team was the way I thought everyone should have, uh, should have performed while they were there. And, uh, you know, he's, you guys know, cause you know him, he's a unbelievable warrior. Um, incredibly competent, incredibly

• 1:04:16Speaker 03

  intelligent and, uh, and his, his approach to me was the takeaway. Never sit against the swarm. You know, it's like when you're being swarmed by bees, you don't just sit still. Uh, you swat them back, you move around, you haul ass away from the swarm. Uh, and he did that. He took the fight to the enemy and, you know, he's a very modest guy, but, uh, you know, what they, what they did accounted for a lot of the casualties, uh, that the Somalis took there.

• 1:04:51Jack Murphy?

  And so after Somalia, you make a, uh, you said you went back to Colombia on one more trip, looking at the, uh, Khalifa cartel after the whole Escobar thing was settled. And, and sort of what, what was like the rest of your duration there before moving on to the next assignment?

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. So just, you know, we went right from, uh, Colombia, Bosnia popped up next. And so you guys asked earlier about, you know, influences on GWAT. To me, the, you know, the PhD in human hunting came in Bosnia. We called it the living laboratory. Um, we now technology, we were able to operationalize technology. So there were no Google maps at the time, but you know, there was special mapping software that you could put on a laptop, a mini libretto laptop and, you know, hook it in, uh, inside your vehicle in a

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  low vis way. Uh, we, you know, we learned how to rig low vis satellite antennas on top of our vehicles. Um, the blend in thing was huge. You know, you, you were always basically undercover. Um, and you know, same thing, just like, just like police, you're not going to be successful unless you're out there hunting for clues, uh, you know, piecing together clues, just like it's a case. Uh, going back, sharing everything you learn with your team, you know, picking up the, the knowledge, the understanding of the environment,

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  uh, collectively, not individually. And, um, you know, doing it while undercover in, in a, you know, it was, it was dangerous, but it was a fairly forgiving environment. Uh, so, you know, we, we could test anything out and test any concept out and we did. And, you know, that went all right up really till, uh, nine one one, uh, that living laboratory. And so, uh, I've said this.

• 1:07:00Jack Murphy?

  I'm sorry to interrupt, but can I get you to scoot like a little closer to the camera? And do you have like a, a light in front of you? If you can flip that around or something, because you're just like so washed out. I'm afraid we got you looking like a space alien on this, uh, on this program.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  Or Bigfoot, which I guess we could talk.

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't mind that.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  Turn that down.

• 1:07:21Jack Murphy?

  That's much, that's much better. We can, we can actually see you now. Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:07:25Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

• 1:07:26Speaker 03

  I don't know what happened there. Yep. So, um,

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  What were we, what were we talking about there?

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  About how things evolved during the Bosnia campaign and all of the TTPs and technologies that you guys evolved.

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, you know, that's where we learned the low vis comms, the operating in a low vis environment.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  And, you know, guys on a continuous mission, we were there for a couple of years, two or three years. So you were rotating in and out. And it was all pretty much NCO run. Our, our sergeant majors were the guys who ran the safe houses. And it was very complex because you had all these low vis vehicles. You had a lot of weapons. A lot of us were, you know, under aliases. So it took a lot of, of, of highly involved organization to keep things from, you know,

• 1:08:30Speaker 03

  falling apart and to keep the continuity because you had to go out of your way to pass on knowledge with each tour, each, you know, new team that came over. We ended up settling on 90 to 120 day tours, which we thought was, you know, about the right number. Anything less was a little too short. Anything more, you know, started really burning guys out. But it really, everything, you know, that I did with AFO or a lot of what I did with AFO in Afghanistan was based on knowledge I learned in low vis environment in Bosnia.

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  And I, you know, I want to turn to your book soon here, so I'm not going to go too deep into Afghanistan. But when the, are you in Sean Naylor's book, Not a Good Day to Die?

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  Uh, yes.

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  Okay, so, yeah, I'm, I'm friends with Sean, so I mean, maybe I can direct people towards his book. Because I, not that I wouldn't love to talk to you about it here, but since we're like an hour and 10 minutes in, I want to make sure that we have plenty of time to, you know, unpack everything in your book. But before moving on, I mean, is there any, anything about, about the Bosnia campaign? Is there any particular operation that you'd like to highlight before we move on to the next thing?

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  Um, you know, yeah, I think the, the, one of the big ops that I write about in my first book, the, the highlight is just how important humor is to imagination. And this kind of goes back to the climate that I talked about initially and how important having that kind of climate is. You know, you guys know this, every military guy who's watching this knows this, you know, we, we survive off laughter. And, you know, without laughter, you know, you're going to be stressed out, you're going to be a zombie, you're going to be frustrated.

• 1:10:42Speaker 03

  Military guys are, you know, like a bunch of amateur comedians, you know, always trying to get a laugh out of even the, you know, some of the darkest circumstances. And so when you're trying to plan an op, you know, one of the most famous, you know, bits of advice that old school senior leaders always give you is, they say, all right, knock off the crap. We got to get serious. It's time to plan. And it turns out that's exactly opposite of the way our brains work. You know, humor and insight are indelibly linked.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  So humor makes you think of creative ideas and insights you'd never come up with unless you were laughing. And a lot of that has to do with contrarian thinking. The brain natural is a natural contrarian like machine. If I say black, you think white, just naturally. So what that emphasizes is even some of the dumbest, like most foolish ideas in history probably gave birth to some of the greatest and insightful ideas, especially in the military. And, you know, we kind of, I kind of knew that just from experience.

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  That was always the way we operated, but Bosnia, we took it to another level. And so, you know, trying to figure out how to stop a vehicle with a very, one of the top three principles that we were going after over there, who is in the vehicle with his security detail and his daughter, you know, how do you stop it in a non kinetic way that will ensure that you're not going to kill that daughter while you're trying to capture this guy? And, you know, we sat in a safe house, it was probably two, three in the morning, and we just started brainstorming and any idea was a good idea.

• 1:12:51Speaker 03

  And, you know, that's where I talk about like the idea of, you know, a gorilla costume. And the idea was get some guy out there who just, you know, makes them go pull their face up to the front windshield and go, what in the fuck is that? And it's that moment where we had a special round. It was called a slam round. And I don't know what happened to this thing. It's a fantastic device. I believe the Austrians came up with it. It's like an RPG round. It's a about, about that big, the round, but it has a stick on it that fits right into your M4 barrel.

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  And you fire that thing, just like you fire a normal round and it, it's called a slam round. It's like a RPG concussion grenade. So when it hits something, it's like a flashbang. It creates a concussive effect that knocks people out for about 10 to 15 seconds or knocks them incoherent. And, you know, that ended up being the concept we came up with. The, the mission ended up changing based on weather and a few other things, but only through laughter and hilarity did we come up with that concept. And, you know, anybody could come up, one of the, one of the great ideas was, came

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  from one of the most junior guys in the group, which again shows that, you know, you know, making good choices is about options. And the more options you have to choose from, the better your choices are going to be. And that's what we learned on that mission. It really, that too stayed with me all through Afghanistan, Iraq. If you're planning, you know, get comfortable, be like you guys are right now, sitting down in a good chair, having something to sit on, seriously, and just, you know, laugh because humor and insight are indelibly linked. So next time you hear someone say, knock off the shit, it's time to get serious and

• 1:14:58Speaker 03

  start planning, you know, raise your hand and tell them that's not how the, the human brain works.

• 1:15:04Speaker 04

  V, I also like, before we move into the book, because the book is, you know, a lot of it has to do with later on the GWOT, with Pat, with Tillman. But I want to say that from, from the unit, you went back to Ranger Battalion and you happened to be there at the same time I was. And I remember like the whispers around the chow hall because, you know, there was Pistol Pete, the guy, you know, who had, you know, who was, he was there. But also I think that your presence, because that was a time when, when Ranger Battalion was in the regiment, but particularly I think Second Battalion. And I think part of it had to do with you being there and your influence.

• 1:15:46Speaker 04

  It's like you, you mentioned, like you got Jerry Barnhart there, you know, which was, you know, a resource that Rangers hadn't had access to up until that point in time. You know, the Gracies, like bringing civilian experts for these things that when you were there is also when we were allowed to go to the tactical tailor and have woolly peat bags sewed in, sewn into our rucksacks and, you know, and have our web gear like altered. But that wasn't something that Rangers were, that, that was something that there were people in Ranger Battalion that were actively resisting and fighting because it wasn't dressed right dress.

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's a great point.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  You know, I was fortunate going back there because I knew now the, you know, platoon sergeants and first sergeants were guys I was, who were team leaders and squad leaders when I was there the first time. And so knowing them and being able to connect to them and, uh, and talk to them about, you know, hey, what do we really need? What, what do you, what is the battalion need to, you know, take that next step? Uh, so their feedback was amazing. Uh, Ted Kennedy, who's in my book, uh, was incredible influence on me. Um, you know, just one of these guys, you just cannot believe the wisdom that comes pouring out of them.

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  So, you know, most of those things you mentioned, Dave, were, you know, were, uh, ended up being executed because of feedback I got from those NCOs. Um, you know, on the equipment side, since we've been talking about that, um, you know, I, I came back and showed, did a demo of why the Rangers need to switch to an AK-47 vest, which is, you know, what we used to wear before it was part of the mole system, before it was part, you know, embedded in your, uh, body armor.

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  Uh, we did a, a demonstration of trying to IMT, trying to get magazines and just showing, you know, this thing that the only reason the Rangers didn't have AK vests was because, you know, they were too cool. And this is where the Rangers, you know, the old school NCOs begin working, some of them against the system, you know, they just do not want to change. And, uh, you know, these guys would tell me that they're like, hey, we've been telling them, you know, for the last couple of years, we need to do CQB, we need to do target discrimination.

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  And, you know, it's the sergeant majors who, at regiment and whatnot, who come back and say, no, no, no, we're Rangers. We kill everything on the target. We don't need to learn how to, you know, discriminate targets. Uh, we don't need to shoot and move. And that was one of the other things that we did while I was there. Uh, we set up the first, uh, maneuver live fire, shoot and move maneuver live fire range on Fort Lewis, where, you know, you started on a fast rope that was between two trees, about a hundred meters apart. You had to crawl that thing in whatever technique you wanted with your weapon. You came out, you shot from a hundred meters down a road at a target.

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  You've, you shot 10 rounds, you picked up, you sprinted forward, you climbed up on top of, uh, what used to be, you know, they had those sheds over all the shooting positions. You climbed up on top of that, you took shots, uh, from a kneeling position on that. You climbed back down, ran over, went through a pipe, uh, and, you know, it was the, the purpose when, when we brought in the regimental commander and the regimental staff, they were like, yeah, well, why do we need to do this? And the reason you need to do it is because, uh, you need to teach yourself how to shoot, uh, when you're out of breath, how to find that respiratory pause.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Speaker 03

  And like, so we've been training all those years, we, the entire military, you know, laying on ranges in a prone position, which is not how you shoot. You're, you're all amped up when you're shooting and that's the way you should train. Uh, and so we did. And again, you know, everything we did there was based on feedback from, uh, those senior NCOs. Uh, same thing with Barnhart, you know, they've been trying to get someone to come and, and teach them shooting techniques, advanced shooting techniques for a while. And so when I came, you know, they said, hey, uh, how can we do this? And I was like, you know, we can do it. And since I was the S3, you know, it was only like

• 1:20:39Speaker 03

  20, 20 grand to get Barnhart or something. And we were spending, you know, a hundred grand to rent the mouth site, you know, it, uh, some obscure post. Uh, and so, you know, I just used that money to, to spend on Jerry Barnhart and, and new equipment and stuff like that. And so, you know, I think more than anything, it speaks of, you know, the value of, uh, of, you know, going back and forth between units, uh, you know, uh, especially on the NCO level. Uh, Greg Birch did that at the end of his career. He was the, uh, battalion and regimental, I, I believe he was regimental sergeant major too.

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, he was in small, in, uh, Afghanistan. So he, he did that of his own accord, you know? He, he had already accomplished everything you could accomplish at the unit and he did it because he started, you know, where I started, A Company 275, and he wanted to go back. He, he's still to this day, you know, uh, he loves Rangers and, uh, so do I, uh, because we see them, you know, as, uh, as the future of the warrior class in the military. And so, you know, they need, they need sanity. Uh, most of the time Rangers have all the right ideas, they just can't get those ideas

• 1:22:05Speaker 03

  uh, and operationalize them. And, uh, you know, sometimes you need a little bit of help to do that.

• 1:22:11Speaker 04

  It was a fascinating time, uh, because it was being pulled like taffy, you know, where you would have people like you come in and, and sort of be innovators and, and these other people who understood what needed to happen. And at the same time, I had a platoon sergeant who said, we don't need to be doing this CQB. We need to do patrol base activities.

• 1:22:29Jack Murphy?

  That's right.

• 1:22:29Speaker 04

  That's what Rangers do, you know? And, and it was a fascinating time for Rangers.

• 1:22:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:37Jack Murphy?

  Pete, I, I would love to have you back again at some other time to talk about the rest of your career. I just don't, uh, I know if we get into it, I'm not going to have any time left to talk about your book here, which I, I definitely want to get into. Um, but if, if people, uh, your first book is The, The Men, The Mission and Me?

• 1:22:55Speaker 03

  Mission, The Men and Me, yep.

• 1:22:56Jack Murphy?

  The Mission, The Men and Me. Um, so people can go and check that out if they want to hear a bit more about Afghanistan and maybe, I'm sure we can have.

• 1:23:03Speaker 04

  Well, that's some, uh, you did a lot in, if I remember right, you did a lot about Bosnia in there too, right?

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  Yes, big Bosnia, that, that story that I just told is in there.

• 1:23:14Jack Murphy?

  And, uh, and then, and then Naylor's book is, uh, Not A Good Day To Die. Um, so, but we didn't have Pete back again to talk about that stuff. Um, so let's launch into this, into book three, Common Sense Leadership Matters. Tell us about like, what was the genesis of this book? Like, how did it come about and why did you write it?

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks. It's, uh, so, uh, you know, indirect, strange thing, but, uh, you know, it started for me, uh, in Baghdad International Airport, 2003. Uh, we, uh, I was actually commanding the unit. Uh, went over to, uh, you know, our staging area for Iraq as the ops officer. The unit commander had a brain aneurysm while jogging, uh, on like the second day we were there. So I became the unit commander, um, for Iraq. And, you know, of course, uh,

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  JSOC was, you know, waiting with bated breath, uh, as that happened. Uh, and, you know, we ended up infilling into Iraq, uh, a huge indirect route into Iraq, uh, after the invasion, which was, I don't know, we were, we were behind enemy lines and out in the field for, I think, 20, 26 or 28 days, uh, something like that. And when we came in, we went to Baghdad International Airport. So it had just been taken, you know, by the thunder run. We occupied that to begin going after, uh, you know, high value targets in the city, specifically Saddam and his henchmen.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  And so I was commanding, you know, in Biap and, uh, we were conducting non-stop ops. And, uh, the reason I, you know, I, I recounted in the book, the reason I remember it so clearly is because, uh, on the 30th, um, yeah, 30th of May, um, we had what ended up being the biggest casualty producing, you know, op that we had, we had had up to that point in either war. Uh, and nobody died, but four guys were injured, two of them seriously, uh, on a target. And it was, uh, a target that, you know, was, they did everything right.

• 1:25:45Speaker 03

  They got in there, they took out the first four or five guys and then, you know, some, uh, crazed dude came running out with his AK on automatic and spraying everybody and he, he hit four guys, uh, on that target. So those guys were flown back to Biap that night and, uh, it was, you know, a typical unit, uh, staff, I had like three guys with me. And so we ran out to the helicopters to take those four guys off the helicopters. And obviously, you know, we couldn't get four stretchers off quickly. And all of a sudden, all these Rangers ran out, uh, 12 Rangers.

• 1:26:28Speaker 03

  And started helping us and we transloaded, we brought them into, we had a Jmail setup there. We brought them in to be triaged. They were going to be flown out to Germany Critical Care Unit, but they were triaged right there. And you know, before one of the guys was put under with anesthesia, he said to me, hey Panther, we sure could have used a few extra guys on the target. Some of these Rangers for security would have, would have been helpful. And I was like, got it, Chris. Hang in there and I'll get working on that right away. So I, you know, they put him under.

• 1:27:10Speaker 03

  I went back, immediate request to join Special Operation Command. Hey, we would like a minimum of a couple squads, but a platoon worth of Rangers to help us out to isolate these targets. And you know, that was, I, I set that mission up that night. Now those guys carrying the stretchers in unbeknownst to me, and as they came out, I thanked each one of them. I, I shook their hands, said, hey, really appreciate it. And you know, when you, when a unit guy like talks to a junior Ranger there, you know, they think it's, they, they were taken back. They were like, wow, this

• 1:27:55Speaker 03

  guy's thanking us. And, but I was genuinely appreciative of it. And that turned out to be, they were all from Second Platoon, A Company, and Tillman was one of the guys who was there. Oh, wow. So the next night, I was, I was, you know, we were doing more ops. I was on the radio and I saw a Ranger come in to our area. I was, coincidentally, my top was set up in the Delta Ticket Counter area. And so I heard this voice and I was like, I know that voice. And it was, you know, one of

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  the guys I mentioned, I'm not going to say his name because he's still active with another government agency. But I knew his name. He was a guy I worked with in both my tours in 275. And you know, I'll call him Sergeant X. And I was like, Sergeant X, what are you, you know, I was really happy to see him because not like personality wise, I was happy to see him because I thought it meant he was coming over as the lead NCO to be my isolation force. And, but that's not why he was over. He, he just looked at me and he said, sir, can I talk to you in private? And I was like, yeah, sure. So I grabbed my long gun and we went out and walked, you know,

• 1:29:17Speaker 03

  along the inactive runway. And I said, what's on your mind? And he just went into this long litany of about the command climate in the second battalion and how toxic it was. And you know, he gave me numerous examples. They're in the book. And you know, he was very clear. It wasn't, it wasn't just one individual. So you know, and I, I tried to get that across in the book. This is why climate is so, so important to understand. It was multiple. And you know, I said to him, well, what can I do to help? I had been out of the Rangers, you know, I left,

• 1:29:59Speaker 03

  Dave, while you were there, I left in 98. So this is 2003. So I've been out five years. I was like, you know, Sergeant X, what, what can I do? And I'll do anything, but what do you need me to do? And he said, I don't know. Can you just talk to someone in our higher headquarters? Maybe get someone to come down and take a look. Anything will help. And he was very apologetic, you know, about bothering me. I'm like, dude, you're not bothering me. Senseless leadership in a combat zone is as deadly serious as it gets. And so I told him I had to go back. We had a mission going, going on, on a target. So I had to go back and I, I said to him, hey,

• 1:30:41Speaker 03

  look, you have my word. I will, I don't know what I'm going to do or how I'm going to do it, but I will find someone and I'm going to make it known. And we're going to get someone over there to, to check out what's going on. And you know, again, back to this theme, because we've talked to 275, we've talked about, you know, our initial battalion. Like when he told me that, it wasn't just a thing, you know, I, all these faces, you know, went flying through my brain. I could see them. And I just was like, man, you know, those guys are struggling, they're sucking. Those are good people. They don't deserve that. And again, you know, it's

• 1:31:22Speaker 03

  deadly serious when that shit happens in a combat zone. So, and after him, two more NCOs grabbed me on the way to the chow hall and said the same thing. So that's three senior NCOs crossing command lines to, to tell someone about a problem. So you know, internally, I only thought about this later, not at the time, but it, you know, it tells you how serious it is. Right. Because Ranger NCOs, I mean, you gotta be like waterboarding them to get them to complain about anything. They don't complain. You know, you gotta coerce a Ranger NCO to tell you what's

• 1:32:06Speaker 03

  bothering him because you know, you learn to suck it up and you learn that, you know, you don't complain. And so I knew, because I understood that about, about, you know, Ranger non-commissioned officers, I knew this had to be pretty serious for them to do what they did. And you know, two nights later, I saw a senior Ranger officer, and I'm anonymizing him just because I anonymize a lot of the guys in the book, but Rangers know who he is. And I approached him and I had a great relationship with this guy. You know, I had, I had been in L and O

• 1:32:49Speaker 03

  with him when I, when I was the S3 of, of the Rangers five years earlier. I knew him then. He was in the Rangers then. He was a rank above me. And I knew him that whole time, leading up to that. Never, you know, I never served with him or anything like that, but I knew him and had a very good relationship. And I, I saw him and I said, he was the most senior guy and he was the only guy who was at BiAP from our higher headquarters. So I said, hey, can I, can I talk to you? And I pulled him aside and we, I said, look, here's, I want to tell you what three very

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  competent NCOs told me, and I, I think it's pretty serious. And you know, you can tell me what you think. And I laid out very carefully, trying to use their words, not to, you know, in any way throw in anything that, that wasn't said to me, anonymizing their names because I understood the ramifications and, and how, you know, the regiment sometimes reacts when, when people complain. So, you know, I, I told him all the examples and he wasn't saying a thing. And it was dark out and he was smoking a cigar at the time. I couldn't see his face. So I just

• 1:34:11Speaker 03

  stopped and said, you know, to let him talk. And he, you know, took another, hit off his cigar, you know, blew the smoke out, hit me in the face. And then he stuck his finger in my chest and said, you don't know, you've been out of the regiment for five years and you don't know anyone in that chain of command. So go back and tell your anonymous NCO sources to stay in their lane, to do what they're told to do. And if I had a nickel for every time a Ranger NCO complained about what he was told to do, I'd be a rich man. And he turned and walked away.

• 1:34:50Speaker 03

  And you know, I, I was not, like I had no expectation of what was going to happen there. I'd never done that before in that type of situation. But I was confident, you know, I, I felt like that was an emotional reaction by him. And I was confident that even the most selfish leader would, with time, consider what he had just said and consider the, the implications of doing nothing. And, and from a selfish standpoint, go, hey, I probably need to look into this because you know, this guy could make me look bad. And so, you know, that's what I

• 1:35:31Speaker 03

  just, I just trusted that something would happen. He would do something. Well, you know, I went back to commanding the unit. Within a week or two, someone came up, told me, hey, you know, 275 just redeployed. By the way, we, our request for augmentees was denied by a higher headquarters. So these guys were sitting around doing nothing. They, they ended up doing nothing. But for some reason, we, you know, they weren't allowed to come and do missions with us. Wow. And they redeployed back to Fort Lewis. And my thinking at the time was that he must have

• 1:36:14Speaker 03

  looked into it, must have found this was going on. And that's why, because why else would you leave in the beginning phases of the Iraq War? Why would you fly back to Fort Lewis, especially when, you know, I've got guys getting shot because we don't have enough guys to isolate targets. So that was my conclusion and I didn't think anything of it. You know, any time after that, I did a tour. It was my war college year after that. I was a, I was promotable to full Colonel. I, I, you know, pinned on when they gave me command of the unit. So I had to do my

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  one year off. And I, so I basically was off the grid. And that next year, I, I didn't know, you know, what if anything happened. And it was many, many years later, after I got out, where, you know, Krakauer wrote that book, and I finally read that book in 2015. And as I was reading it, and I didn't read it because a friend of mine said it was too political, don't waste your time with it. But I read it in 2015, and I came across this passage where Krakauer had Pat Tillman's

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  diaries, and he printed three of his passages from his diary, and they were a biap. And so I'm reading it, and you know, it's, they're in the book, but he says, last night, we helped carry in four wounded Delta Force guys. Somehow, you know, combat became more real. I never thought it would happen. You never know. And then his next passage was, we're, we're flying home at zero, 3:30 tomorrow. I'm not sure the time. Thank fucking God.

• 1:38:20Speaker 03

  And so I read this, and I was like, holy shit. That Pat Tillman was, I didn't even know he was in second, in battalion at the time when they were in Iraq, much less that I know he was one of the guys who carried the stretcher in. So, you know, I started talking to Ranger NCOs and going back and trying to piece this back together. Hey, whatever happened, you know, during that time. And again, one of the guys I mentioned, Ted Kennedy, was, you know, a huge source of enlightenment for me. He told me about, you know, them returning to Fort Lewis, what happened. And he also told me for the

• 1:39:03Speaker 03

  first time that the same chain of command that those guys came and complained about to me was in place in Afghanistan one year later. And that's when, you know, I kind of realized, hey, wow, this is, you know, what do I do with this information? He also told me that Mrs. Tillman was still investigating what happened. She was, you know, talking to a bunch of the guys. She, she wanted to know anything anyone knew about it. And so I felt compelled to provide her with this information, not thinking it was some key clue or anything. I just felt compelled to tell her, you know, about it, and to tell

• 1:39:47Speaker 03

  her that Pat carried my guys in, and, you know, what a great guy he was in Iraq. So, you know, that conversation led to her reading my book and then saying to me, hey, you know, can you, I have this, these investigative documents. I know you were in Afghanistan, you were a Ranger, you know all these people. Could you take a look at it and tell me what you think? And, and I said, you know, the only thing any of us could say to the mother of a fallen comrade, I said, you know, of course. And I drove up there that next day,

• 1:40:28Speaker 03

  400 miles, and picked up the investigative documents, met her, you know, my first words to her were an apology for the Army, and, you know, just to tell her that we're not, you know, everyone I've ever talked to was embarrassed about that. And, you know, I have no idea what happened, but I'll read these documents, and I'll tell you what I think, even if it's not what you may want to hear. Because at the time, she was, you know, she'd been twisted into, you know, just wild ideas about what happened. And

• 1:41:11Speaker 03

  not, not because she was delusional or something, but because she'd been lied to multiple times. She'd been told multiple stories about what happened. And so, you know, that's human nature. Anytime, you know, when you're punched in the nose once, you learn when you're punched in the nose twice, you know, you're like, hey, I'm done. Yeah. And so she was. And so I started reading the documents, talking to every Ranger I could talk to. That was 2017. And, you know, Jack, I think I said this to you in a separate conversation. You know, what was a very difficult thing, I knew when I told her I'd look at it, when

• 1:41:56Speaker 03

  I got home, you know, 3,500 pages of documents, I spread them out in my office. And I just was like, hey, you know, I might as well get started. And I started reading one binder. And nine hours later, and about 100 sticky notes later, I was like, just captivated by it. And I knew there was something there. I knew I needed to go talk to the Rangers who were involved. And, you know, that began my journey, talking to those guys. And, and you know, that, that, you know, collectively, both talking to her, and talking to those

• 1:42:39Speaker 03

  Rangers, just became one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done in my career. And, you know, along the way, just fascinated by, you know, the terrain, the circumstances, everything we've talked about already in this, you know, was, was very obvious, was very obviously going on, on the ground that day, you know, guys making great recommendations, common sense recommendations, being denied, being told, no, you can't do that, or not

• 1:43:19Speaker 03

  even being answered on the radio. You know, and so, as I accumulated that knowledge, it, it kind of came together with what I already knew about bad leadership and toxic leadership. And the more guys I talked to, the more it became, you know, just completely obvious. But the real breakthroughs, you know, were, were from talking to them, and then just diving into the terrain, the timing, the, the radio logs, seeing what people really said. And, you know, I started talking to the guys. It was a slow process at first,

• 1:44:02Speaker 03

  because not many guys wanted to talk about it. It was difficult to find most of them. But with each guy I found, that guy led me to a couple more guys. And, you know, patterns started to avail, just shocking patterns. You know, I don't have PTSD. So to me, it's, I don't know what, I can't like imagine what it is, just like depression. You know, people used to think depression is fake. We know it's not now. And you can't imagine depression if you don't have it. And what shocked me was how many of these guys were

• 1:44:41Speaker 03

  absolutely devastated by what happened. And most of that devastation was, was built on guilt and frustration. And the frustration was, they had no idea what happened. They never were allowed to see any of the investigative documents. They didn't know these decisions were being made behind the scene. They didn't know their platoon leader was being told, no, you can't blow up the vehicle. Keep, keep going. You know, just senseless shit on top of senseless shit. And, you know, it had an effect on me. It really, you know,

• 1:45:24Speaker 03

  instead of detouring me, it, you know, hardened my resolve to get to the bottom of it and, and help these guys out.

• 1:45:34Speaker 04

  Pete, can you, because I think a lot of people now are very familiar with, with Pat Tillman being killed in fratricide. But can you lay out what the mission was, what the scenario was, and where these command decisions and the refusals of, of certain requests were? Can, can you sort of lay out what the scenario was for us?

• 1:46:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. So terrain, it starts with terrain and, um, you know, coincidentally, this area that the Rangers were driving around, uh, looking for weapons caches is what I, I believe there might be another one. It might be tied, but there's probably no more dangerous, hostile place in Afghanistan tribally. Uh, terrain wise, same thing. There might be another chunk of terrain somewhere equally arduous as this area, but not more arduous. So both the terrain and the enemy are as bad as you can get at any time. And how do I know that?

• 1:46:41Speaker 03

  Because I fought, you know, the Battle of Shahi Co, known as Anaconda. And when we chased the foreign fighters, me and my recce guys followed the Trail of Tears on the 13th day as they, the last remnants of the Al Qaeda fighters fled, they fled west. And it turned out, you know, I, I figured this out about a month in, looking at the map, uh, where Pat Tillman was killed was eight kilometers west of Takkargar, which is, you know, the mountain where all those guys died in the, you know, the medals of honor and everything. So we chased them right to the border, uh, right through this area. And as we were in

• 1:47:22Speaker 03

  that area, we knew from intelligence, but we knew firsthand from being in it, how hostile that area was. Um, I had a safe house in Orgon, uh, as the AFO commander, and I also had one in Kaust. So to get from Orgon to Kaust, uh, the straight line is to go right through this area. We would not go through it. And when we had to, which was twice, I drove through it twice, uh, we only had one rule, never go through in a convoy. Go through in low biz vehicles, uh, buy as much time as you can, get through quickly, uh, but do not look like an enemy convoy, because these are the hardest core postoons, uh, that there

• 1:48:06Speaker 03

  are. And it's a smuggling haven between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And so it's not just those tribes. There's other people passing through there all the time. And so I knew how, uh, dangerous and daunting it was. And so when I read their mission, you know, I, I still remember the moment, it was actually in this office, all the papers were on the floor. I dropped the binder that it was in and just, you know, shook my head in disgust that they were just randomly driving around to find weapons caches and hoping that Osama bin

• 1:48:45Speaker 03

  Laden might be out back feeding one of the goats or something. Uh, and, you know, it was the exact opposite thing we should have been doing. And it, it's not even so much the Rangers fault as it is the overall, uh, Afghanistan, you know, strategy. Just the fact they were allowed to go in there to do that, uh, for no specific intelligence is mind boggling.

• 1:49:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:12Speaker 03

  And so these guys, the, the platoon and second battalion flew into, uh, flew into Bagram and within three days, they were in their vehicles, out driving around in the field without coming back.

• 1:49:29Speaker 05

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

• 1:49:59Speaker 03

  Into their base, uh, what ended up being eight days. So these are brand new guys, most of them. A few of them had a, a prior, uh, tour. They were there for, uh, a couple weeks in November of, uh, 2003. But other than that, no real on the ground knowledge. And, and not just that, uh, the, the baseline ground elevation of this area is 6,000 feet. So, you know, lesson learned from Battle of Shahi Co is you don't go into any area above 3,000 feet unless you're properly acclimated. Uh, and, you know, unknown lesson from that

• 1:50:42Speaker 03

  battle is most of those follow on forces that came in were also flown out with altitude sickness. Uh, and that's a lot of these foreign forces, the, uh, you know, other units, conventional units. And we were telling people that, we were saying, look, you need to come to Gardena's first, uh, and acclimate. It's, you know, it's right at, I think, 4,800 feet, um, and acclimate and then go in. But, you know, we were blowing that off. So I would have stopped them just for lack of acclimation. But to go into that area and not understand how

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  dangerous it was, was, you know, already a, a formula for disaster. And when you read the interview notes, uh, you know, you read the S3, the commander, uh, these guys talking, they talk about this firefight they got in, they say, well, you know, it, it was, it was just a, you know, happenstance. Uh, we had been in that area for eight days and all dry holes, you know, no enemy contact. Uh, and I, I'd feel comfortable sending guys back, five Humvees back in there today. Well, again, I dropped my binder when I read that because in Afghanistan, if you're a history, uh, you know, if you've read the history of

• 1:52:06Speaker 03

  Afghanistan, you understand that eight days of no contact means they've been studying you for eight days.

• 1:52:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:52:14Speaker 03

  And you are eight times more likely to be ambushed because that's the only tactic they were using at the time. That's their tactic of choice, the far ambush. Uh, you know, you can go look online at the, the videos of how they did it to the Soviets.

• 1:52:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:52:31Speaker 03

  Uh, they are sizing you up and you bet, you can bet they were sizing those Rangers up. So, uh, you know, on the day this mission happened, they had an inoperable Humvee and they were at a border control point called Border Control Point Five, right on the Pakistani Afghan border. And, uh, the platoon leader called it in and said, hey, this thing's deadlined. It won't start. Uh, recommend we leave it here or you come pick it up in a helicopter and take it back to Kaust. Uh, you know, deny, drag it with you. You guys have been, you're behind schedule, uh, and, you know, the sync matrix, your platoon on

• 1:53:16Speaker 03

  the sync matrix is all red, uh, and we need to get back green. Uh, so, you know, common sense and the response is senselessness. So these guys hooked up a deadlined Humvee to another Humvee using nylon straps, uh, and took off from that border control point five with a helipad, which by the way, uh, you know, a helicopter flew in the last, uh, spare part, flew in the company commander and the EXO to tell the platoon leader, hey, you need to get back on schedule. The old man's really getting pissed. So off they

• 1:53:57Speaker 03

  go. And, you know, guys, you can watch the video online. I, I've posted it online. It was, uh, the fourth investigation videoed the entire canyon. When you see this canyon, it, they literally were dragging a Humvee through the equivalent of the Grand Canyon, like trying to get through the Grand Canyon with a Humvee. And by this time, it, it had no front wheels. It couldn't be steered. So it was elevated. It was just two wheels rolling. And anyone who's done off-road work knows, you know, trying to get a Jenga truck with a, a Humvee on two wheels through that stuff is an exercise in futility. So their

• 1:54:42Speaker 03

  request to blow the vehicle, uh, you know, I, I should say they dragged it for four and a half hours that morning. Uh, their average speed was 1.5 miles an hour. So, you know, that's important, not just for understanding the futility of it, but think of the stress levels in those guys. You're in enemy territory going 1.5 miles an hour in the middle of mountains.

• 1:55:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and to, to paint it for people, because those BCPs were generally on elevated locations. So when you say like the Grand Canyon is like they're, they're towing something down switchbacks, hand carved roads.

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:55:23Speaker 04

  Like that, that hand carved roads that are one vehicle wide, that when you're in the driver's seat or the passenger seat.

• 1:55:31Jack Murphy?

  One Toyota Tacoma wide, not one Humvee wide.

• 1:55:33Speaker 04

  Right, right. Exactly. You can look over the edge and see like the precipice, like it's right there. Was, was the, was the no to blow it in place and no to he, he'll back it out? Was that coming from the battle space owner? Was that coming from their direct chain of command? Where, where was that coming from?

• 1:55:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, so again, um, important lesson here, which, you know, was illuminated to me once again by these senior NCOs who, whose comment was, if you want to know what went wrong in Afghanistan, start with the way we tried to command and control it. And in this case here, they were, they had just switched this, remember, this is only 2004. So we're only really two years into it. Uh, and we've already pretty much lost our way because I was, you know, with the first guys in, in the winter of 2001, 2002.

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  This is the spring of 2004. And there, here's how the command and control was set up at the time. It was called the CFT concept, the cross-functional team concept. And the cross-functional team stipulated every staff was exactly the same around Afghanistan. And there were no more company TOCs, battalion TOCs. There were just these CFTs where everybody, you brought all your staff officers. Uh, everybody was in one place. They lived off their VTCs. That drove their schedule every day. So this platoon, who on this day, as they leave border control point five,

• 1:57:20Speaker 03

  is the only platoon, or so we thought, out in the field at the time. The only rifle platoon. Uh, the other eight rifle platoons are back in planning the next dry hole. Their chain, the way they report is back to the first CFT, which is it Salerno and Caus. And it looks like all of them, there's 10, everyone has a U-table. There's 10 staff officers on each side. 10 of them are supposed to be working on current ops and 10 on future ops. Don't ask me how that ever was explained to anyone. I don't know every op is future, in my opinion. Uh, so 10 and 10, and then the CFT commander, behind him is the lower level command.

• 1:58:04Speaker 03

  So the CFT is a battalion commander or battalion S3. In this case, it was the S3. Um, and behind him is the company commander and company XO. So when the platoon leader, he drove, I told you, the four and a half hours out of BCP5. They pull into this town called Maghara. Uh, it's a Pashtun town, uh, you know, something out of, uh, the history books, 100 years back. They've, you know, barely ever seen a Westerner. And suddenly this convoy of 10 vehicles with Rangers in space age combat gear, get out, uh, with a busted up vehicle. And that's where he's calling back for help.

• 1:58:49Speaker 03

  And his, you know, his first call is, hey, we got a deadline vehicle. It cannot go any further. Uh, recommend we either blow it or you bring in a 47 to lift it out.

• 1:59:05Speaker 03

  They said, Roger, got it.

• 1:59:08Speaker 03

  They reply an hour later. Okay, so, uh, you know, this is another binder dropping moment for me as I'm reading it. One hour later, they reply, you know, uh, permission to blow the vehicle denied. Uh, and we don't have any helicopters. Well, you know, in the interviews, remember, I'm, I'm reading present and, uh, you know, future, I'm reading the interviews of what the chain of command said about their decisions to investigators. In that interview, uh, you know, the battalion commander said, hey, we don't blow vehicles. It's against army policy.

• 1:59:49Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, it's a, it, it just provides propaganda to the enemy. Um, and so, you know, that's why we denied it. Well, that's, you know, preposterous. Uh, I had just blown up an M1A2 tank, 4.5 million dollar tank in Iraq, uh, one year earlier because it flipped over and we were, it would take about a week to get that thing out of the, the hole it was in. Right. So I knew right away that was BS. Uh, and the helicopter, you know, no investigator could ever find a record of a request for helicopter. They just told him, no, keep dragging it. You know, it's very clear they were mad at this platoon

• 2:00:34Speaker 03

  because it had fallen behind schedule. And you guys know, you know, the sync matrix. And this is where I go back to, these are lessons we have to internalize for the future. This modern command and control model is not modern. It's antiquated. Uh, and in my opinion, this is an example of the first time in modern military history where we've gone backwards and we've gone backwards because of technology. In Vietnam, if those guys were out there driving around with those Humvees, their company commander, their, his FO, his two RTOs and a small security team

• 2:01:15Speaker 03

  would have been on the highest centrally located hill camping out until they came back in with a PRC 77 radio. But he would have been on that radio all the time. And anything they needed, he'd be giving them guidance or relaying it to higher to help them out. And in this case, the CFT concept worked exactly against that. Because as it turns out, uh, many of these, uh, these lags in responses are in part due to the fact they've got these VTCs going on with the commanding general. So they're sitting in this TOC, Tactical Operations Center,

• 2:01:58Speaker 03

  you know, just enthralled with the VTC hanging on every word of the general. Right. These guys are struggling with a real world combat problem in the field. And they're either not answering them or going, just tell them to keep dragging it, Ryan. You know, I mean, what, what are they, pussies? Right. And so, and so these guys are told, no, you can't blow it. Uh, we can't lift it. We can get a wrecker out there, but the wrecker's not allowed to go off the KG highway. Again, some obscure, someone made a SOP for the wrecker, which is a tow truck, uh, that it could not leave the Caus de Gardes highway, uh, which was 15 kilometers from these guys.

• 2:02:43Speaker 03

  So what they come back and tell them after four and a half hours in Maghara, uh, being sworn by civilians, it's hot. There's biting flies, they're out of water, they're low on food. And again, for both you two and anyone watching this, you know, you can just imagine they're also probably red hot pissed off at this chain of command for the senselessness. They're told, not only do you gotta keep towing that vehicle, we want you to split the platoon because we need half the platoon to get to this other town called Mana as quickly as possible. No reason, no enemy.

• 2:03:25Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, it wasn't like they just saw, uh, UBL there or, or one of his underlings. It was because the sync matrix was still red for Mana. So they told them, rush off, get to Mana and, uh, you know, that's it. We don't want to hear anything else out of you. Uh, and the lieutenant, you know, uh, in my opinion, did a fantastic job. Uh, he, he gave three reasons why that didn't make sense. And one of the things I recommend in my book is we go to a new concept called logical why, that you don't just give an order, you always have to explain the logic of why it makes sense. And that's how our brains work.

• 2:04:08Speaker 03

  You can't persuade anyone unless they understand the logic of why. And that's usually threefold, firstly, secondly, thirdly. And the lieutenant, this, this is why it's a case study. He did exactly that. He said, here's why it doesn't make sense. First of all, we'll be splitting up the platoon, uh, and we don't have enough, we only have one satcom radio, so we're gonna have, we're not gonna be able to talk to each other. And if something happens, one of them's gonna be, one of us is gonna be left out there without any comms. Second of all, um, we can get to the target. You, second of all, we can't even clear Mana until tomorrow morning, as per battalion SOP.

• 2:04:51Speaker 03

  So why are we in a rush to get there before the sun goes down? Just so we can sit outside the town to clear it the next day? And thirdly, it's much faster if we all move together, go drop the vehicle off at the KG by highway, then turn around and come back and clear the, uh, town. And the answer was no. No logical why, just no. Do what you were told to do and continue mission. And, and so they did. They split the platoon up, um, It's a random split. They wanted certain guys back in the rear for planning. They wanted

• 2:05:30Speaker 03

  the mortars, the snipers, uh, and a couple other specialty guys back. Well, the problem with that is when you're doing motorized ops, every vehicle is set up in a certain way with certain guys doing certain tasks. You know, there's gunners, there's guys who sit in the seats next to the gunners and over the, over time, they come up with their SOPs of how to operate. They're also organic, you know, squads are together. There's half a squad in one vehicle, half in another. So when they split the platoon and they had to split

• 2:06:08Speaker 03

  it based on random criteria, they just disintegrated the organic nature of these teams. So now you had team leaders, uh, working for squad leaders they'd never worked for before. You had soldiers like Pat Tillman, working for, uh, different team leaders and squad leaders. Uh, you had guys attached to different groups and look, we trained to do that. That's not a kiss of death, but it's a very subtle, yet important degradation of that unit's

• 2:06:47Speaker 03

  ability to deal with chaos and complexity. And in a, in a situation where there's no time to even rehearse, to sit there and go, okay, you, you know, squad leaders, you, you're going to do this. If this happens, you do that. They didn't even have time for that. They just took off because they had to get to mana before sundown. And, uh, and you know, that, that takes us into the canyon at that point.

• 2:07:15Speaker 04

  Who, who, what I don't understand, you know, from a leadership position is how can you have an element out there? If you've only got one satcom radio for this element, how can you have, whether it's your, you know, your lead element or the element that stay behind, how can you have an element out there? Do you have no idea, no idea in the world what their situation, you know, what their sit rep is?

• 2:07:38Speaker 03

  Dave, um, you know, same thing. That's why I said, uh, it's another binder dropping moment.

• 2:07:45Speaker 04

  Like what leader is okay with that?

• 2:07:48Speaker 03

  Important. And that's why, you know, that's why the book is important because it's a tactical book and we've got to, not just in this incident, but others like it. We've got to memorialize those lessons. You know, this is basic stuff, you know, transplanted into modern warfare, but it, it tells you that these principles are unassailable. You cannot divide your force randomly and arbitrarily. You can't send someone out to a place that doesn't make any sense just because you want to change a color on a sync matrix.

• 2:08:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:08:27Speaker 03

  Uh, you can't ignore your men in the field, you know, um, in the unit, when I got to the unit, one of the sergeant majors gave me a briefing on it and he said, hey, look, you know, right now we're not at war, but we send out a lot of singleton missions. When one guy is out, is deployed, everybody back here in the rear is in support of that guy. So you might get a call at zero, three in the morning to come in and it might be something incredibly, you know, minimalistic, like this guy might need special laces for his boots that are in one of his kit bags in his locker and we need to get them on a FedEx

• 2:09:12Speaker 03

  plane as quick as possible. When that happens, you, you, that's your mission and you take it as serious as possible. And because I served in Columbia, I understood that. I understood both ends of it, you know, between my tours and while I was out there. And the unit always lived by that. Everybody in the rear is there to support the guys in the field. So this is one rifle platoon is in the field. These CFTs, which I'm sorry, I, uh, you know, we got distracted. The command and control arrangements important to, to understand. You've got this CFT 1010 command in Salerno, which is Kost. They can't do

• 2:09:57Speaker 03

  anything unless the main CFT in Bagram, which is set up the exact same way, but on steroids because it's regimental headquarters. They can't do anything without its, uh, permission. And it's, it doesn't stop there. They're connected with the CFT in Balad, Iraq, which is our joint special operations headquarters, and they can't do anything without the CFT in Balad telling them it's okay. So, you know, it's untraceable, but it's, it's not, uh, you know, it's, it's not speculation to say that each of these requests were not just going to Kost. They were going back to Bagram, back to Balad, back down to Bagram,

• 2:10:42Speaker 03

  back down to Kost, back out to these guys in the field.

• 2:10:46Speaker 04

  Not effective. Yeah.

• 2:10:47Speaker 03

  And no, and it's, uh, in, and this is where, you know, it becomes to me, uh, such a historic lesson. Um, and you know, Jack, I, I saw a podcast you did where you talked about when you joined, uh, you know, motivated by nine one one. And you know, I think you said on it, people forget after nine one one, it was like world war three. Uh, you know, everyone was like, hey, we're at war, we're at war with the world, you know, this is, this is it. Well, it was also like world war two, right? It was like Pearl Harbor. And

• 2:11:28Speaker 03

  it was also like Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin. Um, you know, when, when the shit hits the fan in America, we're a freedom-loving country and most of us grow up like you did, Dave, like you did, like I did. We have our hardships, but we, we have an unbelievable upbringing and we appreciate the freedom we're given. So when the time calls for someone to come protect those freedoms, patriots rise up and they say, send me. And, you know, I, I didn't fully appreciate it till I, I did this research, how 2001 did the same thing.

• 2:12:08Speaker 03

  And many of the members in this platoon were those guys, were those patriots, including Pat Tillman. And, you know, we're all young at that age. Okay. So, uh, I've heard people say, you know, you were a fool if you volunteered for Vietnam. And whenever I read that, I was like, man, I would have volunteered for Vietnam in a second, you know, all the way through. And not because, you know, of some like, uh, policy, uh, principle, but because we want to protect freedom. And so we don't, you cannot understand the logic of why war

• 2:12:50Speaker 03

  happens or why our country goes to war. We trust that our civilian and military leaders are thinking those thoughts and are telling us the truth, that we're going to war for a good reason and that this makes sense. So it's a contract and those guys, those guys like Pat, those guys like Jack, that's our national treasure. The, these are the, the finest humans in our country. And, you know, there's only certain guys who will raise their hand to protect freedom, especially the freedoms of those who won't stand up and protect it themselves. So it's a, it's a small cohort. And when they do that, they

• 2:13:35Speaker 03

  don't really know what they're getting into. And, and that's just reality. It's not, you know, it's not like a reflective of any of our intelligence. We have no idea whether you're 18, 19, or 25 when you're joining. And let's face it, when you're 45 in the military, you still don't fully understand why we're doing what we're doing.

• 2:13:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:13:59Speaker 03

  But at that age, you have no idea and you're trusting. So that's a contract with the leaders, the military and civilian leaders that from here on out, you're going to make good decisions and to the best of your ability, solve complex problems that enable those individuals, that was national treasure to accomplish their purpose. And that was not the case here in Afghanistan and not the case here. And so when you hear about Pat Tillman and, you know, you can go on and look at his videos and they, you know, your eyes will water as you listen to this great American, uh, after nine one one saying, hey,

• 2:14:42Speaker 03

  my grandfather served, my uncle served, you know, my family has served throughout history. I love this country. I love the freedom it's given me. Uh, you know, my job is just, it doesn't matter. And he was a pro football player and he joined, he left that behind and he joined up. And same thing, he's, he's a metaphor for all the rest of us. That contract was in place there, but in order to make that contract legitimate, we've got to start holding these decision makers feet to the fire with accountability. And they have a job to do. And like I said, it's to make good decisions and solve complex problems in a way that takes care of the people that have volunteered in, and that

• 2:15:27Speaker 03

  did not happen in this case.

• 2:15:30Speaker 04

  Pete, you, you mentioned, I'm sorry, Jack. Pete, you mentioned before the show that, you know, people will raise issues saying that the only people, the only reason people care about this issue is because Tillman was a professional football player. He was a national figure. He was known. That's the only reason people care. And like you said, it's like, yeah, maybe like that's a good thing though, in the sense of there, there's a personality that's showing the issues because if it weren't somebody who were known, these things happen. These things happen, you know, on, on a, on a more regular space, on a more regular basis than, than we would like and that, and that people know. And, and

• 2:16:11Speaker 04

  the fact that there's a celebrity that, that is sort of like leading the way.

• 2:16:17Jack Murphy?

  I was, I was about to say, Dave, like maybe the, the reason why it's so well-known is because the government lied about it.

• 2:16:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:16:25Jack Murphy?

  Then you're, you're, you're absolute, you're absolutely right that the government unfortunately lies about a lot of things. And maybe the reason why this story came to prominence was because the government lied about someone who had a level of notoriety and fame.

• 2:16:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:16:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I, guys, that's, that's it. And, you know, he, he's a great American. You know, he was already a great American before he joined, but, you know, what he did when he joined, that's why I use the, the comparison to World War II, where you had, you know, professional baseball players joining up, you know, flying bombers and stuff. That's a sacrifice, you know, he made a sacrifice and, you know, you can go back and, and look on YouTube, he never gave another interview after that interview he gave before he signed up. Even while he was in the Rangers, they were constantly pestering him.

• 2:17:25Speaker 03

  The battalion commander would call him in, and in fact, right before they deployed to Afghanistan, he called him in and, and said, hey, look, got a great opportunity. We'd really like you to be in the Army calendar. And, you know, Tillman turned that down. And don't ask me what the Army calendar is, I have no idea, I can't even imagine what it is today. But he didn't give an interview, he never wanted any attention.

• 2:17:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:17:53Speaker 03

  And when you talk to the guys, you see, he's like, you know, he's, he's one of the guys, he's, but he's a guy everybody liked to talk to, even the NCOs, the, the staff sergeants, squad leaders will tell you, you know, you, he was just one of those guys. He was a great conversationalist, he was not a problem in any way. As I mentioned with myself, and I'm sure you guys were the same way, he was a warrior. He was aggressive by nature, he wanted to take the fight to the enemy.

• 2:18:34Speaker 03

  But, you know, this guy made an incredible sacrifice and he didn't want any credit, very humble. And so, again, it's not so important that he was a pro football player, or, you know, anything about his background. He's a metaphor for all of these guys who joined to stand up for freedom. And if it weren't for him, if he was just Joe Schmedlapp, we wouldn't have learned the lessons we learned from this. And we wouldn't have learned that, you know, toxicity destroys toxic leadership. And we've got to stop sticking our heads in the sand around toxic leadership.

• 2:19:17Speaker 03

  You know, how many of us, and how many conversations have you had where guys go, yeah, my, at that time, my battalion commander was a fucking asshole beyond belief. Well, that guy should have been fired, someone should have done something about that guy. Same thing, sergeant majors, you know, it doesn't matter what level, platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, it doesn't matter.

• 2:19:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:38Speaker 03

  If you're toxic, you need to be out of here because toxic leadership destroys. And that's what happened here, the, just bad decision on top of bad decision, which just led these guys into chaos, into a situation where they, you know, by the time it happened, there was really no hope for getting out of it.

• 2:20:03Speaker 04

  So can you, to the best of your ability, can you walk us through the events of that day?

• 2:20:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they took off, you know, at eighteen hundred exactly. The, so they split the platoon, as I said, into what they called two serials, serial one, serial two. Serial one took off first, they were, Pat Tillman was with them, the platoon leader was there. And they had to get to Mana, so, you know, I have maps in the book. And when you come out of Magara, it comes to a Y intersection, you got to go left to go to Mana. And they took the left and about a kilometer and a half after the Y intersection, you come to the mouth of a canyon.

• 2:20:52Speaker 03

  And it's one of the most dramatic terrain features you can imagine. You can watch it live on my YouTube channel, just go to PeteBlaber.com or go to firefight.peteblaber.com. And you can watch a drive-through during the investigation of the entire canyon. And you just will not believe this terrain, you will not believe how difficult it is to drive any vehicle through it, much less a Jenga truck with a Humvee. So they take off, they pass through that canyon, it's uneventful, nothing happens.

• 2:21:34Speaker 03

  They come out the other end of the canyon, Horseshoe Canyon, and they're, they're at another creek intersection. If they go left, they're going down to Mana, they go right, they're going back up toward the KG Highway. They were a little bit disoriented, which is totally understandable. They did what all infantrymen do, they did a map check. While they were sitting there in their vehicles with their map check, the second platoon had taken off about seven to 10 minutes after them. So they flew through the canyon, serial one, but serial two, remember, is got a Jenga truck dragging a Humvee, and they're in the lead in this serial.

• 2:22:18Speaker 03

  And now, I don't even think they were going 1.5 miles an hour. I think it's less than that because some of the, to get through this creek bed, you literally have to make right angle turns back and forth. And just imagine a Jenga truck, to viewers who've never seen one, is the same as a dump truck. Same size as the dump truck or the garbage truck that picks your garbage up each day. That's how big it is, and the weight's about the same. It's pulling a Humvee on its back wheels, so there's no maneuverability there. And so they're struggling to get through, but they were barely into the canyon, serial two,

• 2:23:01Speaker 03

  when two explosions happened off to their right, which is cardinal direction north, on the slope. There's, you know, no one knows what those were, they could have been RPGs, they could have been mortars. If you read everyone's account, some guys say one, some say the other, it doesn't matter, two explosions. One of them dislodged a rock, you know, about the size of a Humvee came flying down. And so you can imagine watching this rock make its way down the side of this, this canyon wall. And, you know, they, they used common sense and, and zeroed in on it,

• 2:23:46Speaker 03

  and it ended up going right between two vehicles. And about 30 seconds later, RPK fire opened up from the ridge line. And, you know, there's, there's numerous accounts, guys saw guys moving up there. Five guys in serial two and seven in serial one said they saw the guys running around. So serial two's in the canyon, they're lined up behind this Jenga truck towing a Humvee, and they returned fire, you know, deploy, suppress, report, that's what you do in an ambush. But remember, your first immediate action in an ambush is to drive out of the ambush

• 2:24:29Speaker 03

  or run out of the ambush if you can, they couldn't do that. So, you know, all of that accumulated stress from BCP five through Magara is already, you know, flooding their brains. Now, the worst, the, the most traumatic stress inducing event that can happen to the human brain is occurring, and that's claustrophobia. They can't go left, they can't go right, they can't turn around, and they can't go forward. They can't even see forward, and they can barely see the tops of the canyon. Only, only around certain bends can they even see the trees that, that outline the crest of this canyon.

• 2:25:11Speaker 03

  So they do what they should do, which is, you know, suppress the target to get them to stop shooting. Most of the guys just thought, you know, we're, we're walking dead men, we're, we're trapped. And literally, when you watch the video, you can see that the enemy could have killed them with rocks instead of bullets. They could have just started avalanches and, and dislodged large boulders to do the same thing that bullets would have done. But they, you know, Rangers being, you know, expert machine gunners, they opened up with everything they had.

• 2:25:50Speaker 03

  Now, it's important, the terrain is, just like every military engagement, always comes back to terrain. So when I did my research on this, I spent over 100 hours on Google Earth. And I, I don't want to make that sound like it was some really hard thing that I had to suck up. I, I was addicted to it. And if you go on Google Earth and look at this slot canyon, you'll get addicted to it too, because it's absolutely amazing. But what you see in the slot canyon is it's shaped like a mushroom.

• 2:26:29Speaker 03

  So it goes up, over, comes back and down, so exactly like a mushroom, up, out and over. And so they're driving, and these are, remember, non-gyro stabilized weapon systems. They're just on a stiff.

• 2:26:46Speaker 04

  A pedal, yeah.

• 2:26:47Speaker 03

  Anchory, right.

• 2:26:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:48Speaker 03

  So the vehicle is in the toughest off-road terrain on the planet, which means it's bouncing up and down. The driver is, you know, scared shitless, he's doing what he should do, which is drive. But he's got to navigate left, right, like, you know, literally like a Formula One driver to get around these rocks and boulders, trapped behind this Jenga truck. So the guys in serial two, you know, it's, it's, when you understand what they went through before they came out, you begin to understand what happened when they came out. And you also understand what was happening to their fires.

• 2:27:29Speaker 03

  You know, the brain can't keep track of directions unless it has a known point to base it off of. So, you know, our neocortex, our thinking brain, has these things called

• 2:27:46Speaker 03

  grid cells that tell you where you're at based on a known location. So think North Star, Snowcap Peak off in the distance. It has to have that, but they're in a canyon, so they have no known point. They really can't tell anything unless they're looking at the wrist compass, which you can't do because you're being shot at. So as they go around this mushroom, their bullets are, you know, going in directions where, you know, they can't really predict where they're ending up. Now, let's cut, let's leave those guys in the canyon and go to serial one. Remember, they were doing a map check when they heard those mortar or RPG rounds.

• 2:28:31Speaker 03

  As soon as they heard them, they hopped out of their vehicles and they were like, what the hell is that? They didn't know, but they could see the tracer fire arcing up out of the canyon. They knew it was coming from the canyon. Some of the guys, you know, just suspected it was serial two, but most of them had no idea serial two had turned around and was coming back in the same direction as them. So, nobody knew that the other half of the platoon was the one in that firefight. Some guys suspected it, but no one knew it. So, in the heat of the moment, they said, hey, let's go up to a position where we can get overwatch,

• 2:29:14Speaker 03

  where we can see what's happening and conduct overwatching fire in case it is serial two to support them. So they ran up this path that was right next to their vehicles. A smoker run, it was about 700 feet. And they ran until the path petered out. And then they had to stop because they were taking fire. They could see the enemy on the same northern ridge line that serial two was shooting at. So they started shooting too, but as they did that, they began taking unbelievably heavy fire, which, you know, the first investigation suspected was serial two.

• 2:29:56Speaker 03

  And in my analysis, I believe the majority of those fires that were raining down on them were the crossfires from serial two. Remember, 50 cal, 240G, and saw along with mortars, AT4s. So all this ordinance is, you know, flying up and over these ridge lines. We can't discern which is enemy, which is friendly, but they were definitely underneath the crossfire from serial two. So, these guys were in the canyon for about 12 minutes. You know, I told you it was less than 1.5 miles an hour. They're literally moving that slowly, the stress is building up.

• 2:30:41Speaker 03

  Serial one now is up on this spur, this elevated high ground. Unfortunately, the way the terrain is, you cannot see into the canyon from the top of this spur. And unfortunately, if you do a line of sight analysis, their line of sight radios also did not work, so they still had no comms. Their two purposes for running up there to make comms with serial two and to provide overwatch fire support were now, you know, nixed by the terrain. But they didn't have a lot of time. There wasn't, you know, they were smoked. Remember, I talked about equipment, they ran up there with flak vests and helmets.

• 2:31:27Speaker 03

  I believe, you know, that was the SOP, that anytime you left the vehicle, you had to have that on. I would never, you know, a lesson should be, if you're running up into mountains after an insurgent enemy, you do not wear a flak vest or a helmet unless you want to. You know, I think it should be personal choice, but you can't run up a mountain at 6,000 and 6,500 feet with a flak vest and helmet. So they were smoked when they got to the top of that ridge. Remember now, they'd split the platoon, so Pat Tillman, he's a team leader.

• 2:32:06Speaker 03

  He's got one guy that's with him from his team and Afghan who decided to follow them up to the spur. And that's who he's in charge of. The squad is not his squad. He hasn't worked with them before. Squad leader's amazingly competent guy, you know, as good as they come. And Pat got up there, he assessed the situation. The squad was already arrayed by its two fire teams as per their SOP. You know, that left Pat's team, what am I going to do? Pat said, hey, I'm going to go down this south side. There's a couple of big rocks over there, we're going to get behind those and see what we can see.

• 2:32:51Speaker 03

  And squad leader, yeah, sure, sounds good. He, you know, he looked up, it looked like a good position. And Pat, a young private named O'Neil and one Afghan ran down there. And they took position behind a boulder, two boulders. As soon as they got there, they started taking fire from the south. And Pat directed fires south, so this is now the opposite direction, other side of the canyon, then everyone else is firing on the north side. And they're firing at it, you know, to no avail. Pat turns around, he said, hey, I got an idea. Went back up to the squad leader, said, hey, you mind if I drop my,

• 2:33:37Speaker 03

  we drop our gear, we run down to the canyon and go up the other side to see if we can engage that enemy. Now, he never would have gotten up the other side, but as I point out in the book, his idea to drop his, you know, his helmet and his flak vest and to go down to the canyon road, which is a creek, was actually a good idea. And, you know, especially in retrospect, because the spot they were in was the most dangerous and deadly spot, you know, that could have been chosen. So, the squad leader told him, no, you know, we don't, those guys don't know where you're at. Stay put, and he did.

• 2:34:21Speaker 03

  So they're in position, they're down the spur about 25 meters from this squad. The squad had stopped behind the military crest of the spur. Pat went over the military crest, down to these two boulders. No way, you know, for him to know what was about to happen or the squad leader. So it's only a lesson, a retrospective lesson for infantrymen in the future. You know, in uncertainty, never give up that military crest. Always, you know, stay behind it, stay protected, because you got options.

• 2:35:03Speaker 03

  And the problem with going down off the military crest is you have no options. And so they were down, Pat, Private O'Neil, and the Afghan. Now, the Afghan had just joined them that morning. No one knew him, no one knew anything about him. He would not, he obviously didn't speak English, but you don't need to speak English in a firefight. There were thousands of rounds at this point, including mortar rounds, arcing over their heads. You know, you could hear the sonic crack, which we all know when you hear the sonic crack, that means the bullet's under 50 meters above you. That's the noise it makes as it breaks the sound barrier.

• 2:35:49Speaker 03

  So, these rounds are arcing over their heads, mortar and two or three rounds are blowing up. And this Afghan is 10 feet in front of the boulders, standing there with his AK-47, just unloading with his magazines. And Pat and O'Neil tried to get him to come back, to no avail. You know, they tried waving, which again is universal. They tried using their weapons, you know, to get him back, but he would not come back. He stood out 10 feet directly in front of those two boulders, standing up, firing his AK across the road.

• 2:36:29Speaker 03

  Well, now we go back to serial two in the canyon. They've been in there 10 minutes. Changing out barrels, some guys who fired their basic load. They're coming out now going west. So they've they've gone in every cardinal direction inside the canyon. So they're they're, you know, uncertain of which way they're pointing. And remember, they have no idea where serial one is. And serial one has no idea that's even serial two. So when they come out of the canyon, it suddenly opens up and the creep turns around a small spur that that is, you know, a finger off of this larger spur there on.

• 2:37:12Speaker 03

  And that's the first time they turn and look in the same direction they've been shooting at the the same main direction, which is north. They look north again, and there's this Afghan bearded Afghan AK-47 firing on auto right over their head on, as the first investigator says, he might even have been fired at them, mistaking them as, you know, Taliban. So the squad leader, you know, comes around that corner and he's in that front passenger seat. In my opinion, and in a lot, you know, a lot of the other squad leaders said the same thing.

• 2:37:56Speaker 03

  You know, he did what almost anyone would do who's been shooting at an enemy on the northern high ground for 10 to 12 minutes and sees an Afghan on the northern high ground shooting an AK-47. He he looked through his ACOG site and dropped that guy. Unfortunately, his crew were all guys who hadn't worked with him. So they have no preset verbal and hand in arm signals. All all infantrymen know this. You shoot where your team leader or squad leader shoots. When in doubt, shoot where your team leader or squad leader shoots. So all of the cruiser weapons in the back turn to where the squad leader is shooting, which is at the Afghan,

• 2:38:40Speaker 03

  who is 10 feet directly in front of Pat Tillman and the Ranger private, and they open up.

• 2:38:47Speaker 03

  And in that fuselage, which happened, you know, I don't even think it was a full minute that they were shooting in that fuselage right at the end, they Pat was hit and killed. And so in the investigative documents, you know, there's all this conjecture about, you know, Pat and the and the private, they were yelling, they were waving their hands. Well,

• 2:39:16Speaker 03

  every guy in serial two was deaf at this point. So, you know, in the book, I point out that they had no ear protection on. They didn't have pelt doors on, which would have saved them. But the human ear can only take sound waves that are over 127 decibels for 30 seconds. Anything beyond 30 seconds at 127 decibels leads to temporary deafness. And that temporary deafness can last, depending on the length and how far over 127 decibels you go, can last from a minute to an hour to a day to a week.

• 2:39:59Speaker 03

  And so remember, they're they're shooting everything they had for 12 minutes and with no ear protection. So they're all deaf. And in their, it's right into all of their, you know, comments to investigators. You know, squad leader saying, well, and then I turned to, you know, Jones, but Jones was deaf, so I had to shake him. And every guy says the same thing. My my hearing didn't come back for five hours, you know, some guys' ears were bleeding when they came out. So they're deaf. That's number one. So these guys on the spur,

• 2:40:38Speaker 03

  when you look down at the creek bed they came out of, it's clear as day because the creek bed is, you know, all one one, a monochromatic color. It's all tan. So the Humvee, you can see that Humvee clear as day. When you look from the creek bed back at the spur, it's the exact opposite. The spur is this mottled rock formation of, you know, both sandstone and lava. It's got black rock. It's got it's all cracked up, so it's got shadows in between the cracks and it's full of foliage. You know, rare in Afghanistan, but it's it's covered with foliage, green foliage. And so

• 2:41:22Speaker 03

  when I got to this part, you know, I was,

• 2:41:27Speaker 03

  you know, up till I researched that part of it, I I was pretty much, yeah, you know, it sounds like then they made a mistake. They didn't do proper target discrimination. But what you learn when you see the video and you see the pictures that CID took, these high resolution pictures, you cannot see anybody on that spur. They're invisible, totally camouflage, even at 100, even at 75 meters, even at 35 meters. And then you add in the the human eye. When the human eye is moving, rattled up and down, left and right, it can't lock on to a specific target. So they're bouncing in a creek bed, firing their weapons,

• 2:42:09Speaker 03

  looking up at something that's completely camouflage, and all they can make out is it's last light. So that's the final thing. It's minutes before you had to flip your nods down. And all they can see is this bearded Afghan firing his AK. And they just did what they had been doing for 12 minutes and and fired. And it's not, you know, it's not saying they did the right thing or or anything like that. It's not making excuses. It's just reality. And you have to apply reality in combat, especially if you're going to be judgmental about it. And, you know, the chain of command seized on that.

• 2:42:51Speaker 03

  It was a fait accompli. It was an open and shut case from the beginning. These guys fucked up. They they should have known. They they should have target discriminated. They should have seen them. How can you not see and hear someone yelling from 100 meters away? Without doing any of the, you know, the research, without applying practical common sense to a firefight, you know, they convicted these guys and set off, you know, a series of lies because I I believe the chain of command saw it as,

• 2:43:31Speaker 03

  hey, this is the easy out, you know, it's not our decisions. It's not us telling them to drag it, to split the platoon, to go to Mana for no reason, you know, in the middle of the night.

• 2:43:44Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:43:44Speaker 03

  It's in the middle of the dusk. It's them for not properly target discriminating.

• 2:43:51Jack Murphy?

  You know, I I told this to Stephen Elliott, who he wrote that book War Story. He was on this mission. And I mean, they fried the lowest ranking guys possible, the PL and a couple of privates and E4s, right?

• 2:44:09Speaker 03

  They did. And and so the really sad thing, Jack, about that is, you know, I'm not a psychologist, but it's my belief from talking to all these guys that the majority of the PTSD in Stephen's book, I think, is a is a great, you know, a piece, if you want to understand what happened, to read what he wrote in it. The PTSD is more about the investigations than what happened to those guys. Because when they got back to battalion, remember, Pat Tillman, the most famous soldier since, you know, Elvis Presley

• 2:44:51Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:44:52Speaker 03

  was killed. And they they fucking killed him. And, you know, to guys who are unwitting and who don't have the knowledge, they end up doing the chain of command's dirty work and, you know, basically ostracizing and outcasting this platoon. You can read it in the book, you know, my interviews with these guys. No one would talk to them. No one would look at them.

• 2:45:18Speaker 03

  They immediately began disintegrating guys, you know, who weren't forced out of the regiment left because, you know, they couldn't, they just, you know, couldn't take the the that ostracization and the guilt that came along with it. So, you know, on top of everything else, you know, these guys became additional casualties. And because, you know, to a man, the guys I've talked to are, you know, incredible human beings. They do what incredible human beings do, and they take that responsibility.

• 2:46:00Speaker 03

  They know they didn't do it, but they can't explain why it wasn't their fault. But even though they can't, they still take responsibility because they were there, they fired, they should have known. And then they got to live with that. And as the months and years go on, the only way you can live with that is through a bottle, is through drugs, is through depression. And, you know, that guilt adds up to PTSD. And you know, when I would talk to these guys, um, and you know, you can talk to Steven about this, uh, you know, they'd be going along. I go, wait a minute, did you read any of the investigations?

• 2:46:43Speaker 03

  No. Okay. Let me tell you what was going on. Let me tell you what happened to set that up. You, and then I, I go through step by step and tell them. And then, you know, I always ended up telling them, you have nothing to be ashamed of. You were put into a situation where you had no way to get out of it. You had no way to figure out what was happening. You did what you were trained to do. And unfortunately, you were put into a box that once you were in that box, by the time they came out of that canyon, uh, you could watch that video that I referenced and then ask yourself, would I have fired? Because in the video, it's a reenactment. They, the Humvee

• 2:47:26Speaker 03

  comes around that last mini spur, looks up at the spur where the Afghan is in front of Pat Tillman. And they have a guy standing there, uh, you know, an Afghan role player firing his weapon. You'll hear the weapon firing. It's an AK, uh, firing away. You cannot see anything.

• 2:47:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:47Speaker 03

  Uh, you have no idea what's up there. And so you have to ask yourself, would I have shot? And you know, when I asked myself.

• 2:47:54Speaker 00

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

• 2:48:25Speaker 03

  Self, uh, my answer is I almost assuredly I would have shot. Um, I can't.

• 2:48:31Jack Murphy?

  And, and the army, the army lied to the American public and then they kicked these young men out of the regiment.

• 2:48:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:48:40Jack Murphy?

  Told them that they were being released for standards.

• 2:48:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. And ruined just, again, the casualties, uh, Jack, are still occurring. Um, you know, two of the guys still have suicidal thoughts. Uh, there's a number of them who can't work. They're in the prime of their life. They're in the prime of their earning life. These are, I go back to what we started with. These are, are, you know, national treasure. These are patriots who signed up after nine one one. And that's where that contract comes in. And that's why accountability, there should be accountability and we need to make it the standard for the future. Yeah, you could be a, you can be a, a commander. You can be a general officer, but

• 2:49:28Speaker 03

  let me tell you, you'll get all the accoutrement that comes along with that. But let me tell you something, something else comes along with it. Accountability. You better make good decisions. You better be able to solve complex problems or you're going to pay the price, uh, as you deserve to. And that needs to happen because my suspicion is there's a hundred more examples of this, uh, or more in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I've had a number of guys contact me. I've had Canadians contact me and say, you know, hey, this was the most enlightening thing. I was in this firefight, this friendly firefight, and that's exactly what caused it too. It was a

• 2:50:10Speaker 03

  toxic chain of command. Um, you know, I've, I've had guys from other units, uh, call and say the same thing. And, uh, you know, it's, it's cathartic for them to hear this, but you know, the rest of us got to quit sticking our heads in the sand and start, you know, accepting that toxicity has no place in the military. Uh, it needs to be the number one priority for eradication. Uh, when you see toxicity, it needs to be reported. You have a duty to report that. You have a duty to do something about it. And, uh, we got to weed these people out before they kill more of our national treasure.

• 2:50:51Jack Murphy?

  That's, that's the, the first aspect of it. But then in the aftermath of it,

• 2:50:57Jack Murphy?

  you have that, the cover up is worse than the incident itself.

• 2:51:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:51:03Jack Murphy?

  That had they come out and said, we made mistakes and this is what really happened. This, this would have been a very different thing, um, than had they lied about it for so long and, and tried to cover it up. And, and that's what, as you, you mentioned earlier, you know, after you've been lied to once, it sets off this sort of perpetual feeling of like, well, what is the truth? Like, am I lying to you now? Like, what, what, what's going on here?

• 2:51:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, spot on. And, uh, you know, there's a, there's a moment in this that's, you know, a, a huge crossroad. It's when Kevin Tillman, who's part of Serial Two, uh, and you know, his best friend and his brother in arms and brother in blood, he finds out he's, he's been killed. He's back at Salerno. He's flown back with the bodies and the injured platoon leader and RTO. And he's about to accompany Pat's body back to Bagram before it goes back, uh, to Germany and then the States. And he's standing on the ramp of the helicopter and

• 2:52:17Speaker 03

  the battalion commander and the S3 come up and, and talk to him. Um, and they don't say anything about friendly fire. And this is, uh, 40 hours after the event and everyone suspected immediately and within 24 hours knew pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt, uh, within 36 hours in the AER, this, you know, the squad leaders who, who did not shoot him were all taking responsibility, uh, for what happened. And so, you know, in the, in the initial hot wash, they

• 2:52:58Speaker 03

  knew that somehow they killed Pat Tillman. They could not describe it, but they knew it. So these guys know it, uh, the battalion commander, the S3. And what do they do? They, in conjunction with the regimental commander who they've already talked to and agreed, hey, don't tell Kevin, not yet. We don't know enough. They send him off without telling him everything they know. And all they had to do right there was go, Kevin, you know, I, first off, there's nothing I could say that's going to assuage the sorrow that you have and, you know, for the death of your

• 2:53:39Speaker 03

  brother, but I want you to know everything I know about what happened right now. The, the man next to your brother is convinced that he was killed by friendly fire. We don't know because this was a massive chaotic firefight. We won't be able to confirm that till we get the ballistic, the forensic spec, uh, from the autopsy. But right now, uh, we believe that Pat was killed in the crossfire between serial one, serial two and the enemy. As soon as I get more information, I will call you and tell you what it is. And, you know, good, good news, bad news doesn't get any better with age. Uh, the only thing that could happen right there was, you

• 2:54:21Speaker 03

  know, Kevin would have gone, fuck. The, and if anyone could understand the chaos, it was Kevin Tillman. He was in the rear of Serial Two.

• 2:54:30Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:54:31Speaker 03

  His primary weapon, uh, malfunctioned. His secondary weapon had its buttstock torn off by the wall of the canyon. So he was firing his nine millimeter in the canyon up at the enemy, fired eight rounds from a nine mil. So if anyone could understand the chaos of that moment, it would have been him. And instead, you know, they, they didn't tell him. And, you know, these are guys who love to quote the Ranger Creed, but I'm pretty sure there's a line in the Ranger Creed where a Ranger never lies to another Ranger. And so to me.

• 2:55:07Jack Murphy?

  That's Robert Rogers standing orders.

• 2:55:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. So not telling Kevin right there is to me beyond comprehension. Like, uh, you know, that's the moment. And if they'd done that, as soon as Kevin got back to Bagram, he got on the phone to his mom, Pat's wife, Marie, uh, he would have told them, you know, they want to know everything he know, which he told them at the time, you know, what he knew, which was these, the beginning of this fake story, uh, you know, about what happened. And so even he was giving, you know, unwittingly giving misinformation, but he would have been able right there to tell, you know, his mom, uh, Pat's wife, what really happened. And, you

• 2:55:55Speaker 03

  know, they deserved that. They had every right to that knowledge, just like anyone else did. Uh, but they were deprived of it. And then somehow, uh, the chain of command thought it was a good idea to keep it secret for another 35 days. So, you know, this, this adds to the problem, you know, the, the platoon has internalized that they shot him, but they have no, they have no contact and communication with Kevin. So they can't tell him. They've been told the one guy that flew back, uh, to accompany Kevin and the body, he was told, do not say anything about friendly fire till we get all the facts. And, uh, you know, it just went on and on, got worse

• 2:56:40Speaker 03

  and worse. And, uh, you know, 35 days turned into 35 months, turned into, uh, almost 20 years because, uh, you know, this book just came out. It's 19 years from when it happened. And, uh, the truth was always there. It was always in the guys. And, you know, there, that's the added casualties. So none of I, these guys, there might be one or two guys who had PTSD from this, not 20 or 20 plus guys.

• 2:57:13Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:57:14Speaker 03

  Uh, some who's had nervous breakdowns, blaming themselves, uh, were not allowed access to the, the truth, the information, uh, and like good soldiers took responsibility themselves and, uh, you know, had to live, uh, with that guilt and that frustration for almost 20 years.

• 2:57:38Speaker 04

  You know, we mentioned what happened to the PL and the enlisted that were on that. Has there ever been any blowback for the senior leadership that were not on the mission that that created these conditions? Do they just, are they still getting promoted or were they still getting promoted through the system?

• 2:57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the commanding general, so you know, the commanding general who was in charge of the investigation, the JSOC commander read every, had access to everything I had access to. So when you read those, you can read, you can pick one investigation, all except the one done by regimental headquarters. So you can pick any of the other three and you can't read that without going, what the F, man? Who makes these decisions? You can't not come to the conclusion that this chain of command was was toxic and that these guys

• 2:58:38Speaker 03

  were put into a situation that there was no way to come out of other than, you know, the luckiest of luck in happenstance. I mean, they were set up to fail right there. And, you know, they didn't, they didn't say anything. They had the same information. They didn't say anything about it. And to me, you know, they went on, the JSOC commander became a four-star general, the regimental commander became a one-star, battalion commander became a two-star. So they were not just promoted once or twice, some four or five times. And

• 2:59:18Speaker 03

  yeah, there was no accountability on any of them. And, you know, still to this day, what I would always, you know, if I, if I was to meet one of them face to face, I would say to him, okay, even if you claim somehow ignorance, how could you never check up on the rest of the guys in this platoon? Anyone who hears this story knows how devastating this was. Anyone who honestly understands Pat Tillman and his place in this platoon and that he wasn't just admired, he was revered. And he was revered because he was a guy who was doing what all the rest of these guys did from all kinds of backgrounds. He had

• 3:00:03Speaker 03

  options. He had a multimillion dollar contract. He gave it all up. And, and did he ever act condescending toward them? Did he ever act like he was superior? No. He would go out of his way to help anyone out there, to give them advice, to give them some water, some food. Again, Stephen Elliott's book, my favorite part of it is when he arrived in the regi, in 275, his first days wandering through the battalion, trying to find someone to tell him where to go. And he runs into Pat Tillman in the stairwell. And, you know, Pat's like an E4 at the time, who normally would smoke the shit out of you. But Pat's like, hey,

• 3:00:44Speaker 03

  man, what, welcome to the battalion. What do you need? Hey, stay in stairwell, come up, I'll show you where the room is. I'll get you in there so no one sees you, so you don't get smoked. I mean, when you read this, you know, the, your admiration for the guy just skyrockets. He was the kind of leader we need in the military, caring, humble, all those things. And, you know, yet, we, we go and we, we treated, these leaders treated this thing, you know, the way they did and allowed this to happen. And unfortunately, it happened to a guy, you know, who

• 3:01:25Speaker 04

  Do we have questions?

• 3:01:26Speaker 03

  epitomized everything good about our military.

• 3:01:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. Do you, do you see a, you know, as, I think that, you know, we've, we've read and talked about the idea they're more like staff, flag officers, they're, they're more generals now than there ever have been. And, and, you know, the number of like, you know, officers and JSOC, you know, at the, at the staff level is incredible and stuff like that. Is there, obviously, officer, you know, officers are very important, quality officers are very important. Officers make all the difference in, in those elements. But we also like, you know, we'll, we'll bitch about the treatment of officers versus enlisted a lot of times in the sense of nobody's getting a silver star unless your officer

• 3:02:13Speaker 04

  gets a silver star. And then, you know, awards are often based on rank. And then, then we see the times where the senior level officers can do no wrong, right? That their careers are not going to be inhibited by any mistakes they made. Do you see a, a solution for sort of bringing the officer corps, and not all officers, and I don't want to say this, because a lot of officers are warfighters. But is there a solution to the admin officer, the political officer, to that kind of equation?

• 3:02:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I think it's cultural. You know, we have to change the culture, the way we look at it, to your point. In World War II, I believe there were four, four-star generals in the army. And today, there's 44. In World War II, we had, I don't know the exact number, I believe it was like 4 million soldiers. Today, we have 425,000. So we definitely have too many general officers. You know, in 2002, 2003, in Afghanistan,

• 3:03:29Speaker 03

  you couldn't have, the, the standard was no element can operate in Afghanistan unless it has a general officer in charge of it. And that's why, you know, my group, an anaconda shy coat, ended up with a one-star Air Force general commanding us because you had to have a general. And I think we need to culturally eradicate that idea and go in the opposite direction to power down, you know, your, history proves, your, you know, combat happens at the battalion level and below. I'm not saying brigade commanders aren't important

• 3:04:12Speaker 03

  because they should be training battalions, but they're not the ones who should be running ops. And it should be company commanders, platoon leaders, platoon sergeants and squad leaders who are making battlefield decisions. So we, you know, this, again, one of the things that motivated me to, to memorialize it was as a historic lesson, we need to take this away. Our model is not the right model. If we're exporting that to Ukraine right now and these other places, then we're sabotaging them. Because this is not the model. The

• 3:04:50Speaker 03

  CFT, massive talk with, you know, a million dollars worth of, of 54-inch screens and computers running the whole thing. That's not the model. We need to go backwards to the guy on the hill, you know, who can talk and who feels the cold, who feels the altitude, who feels the threat of the enemy making the decisions. And so to me, it's a cultural thing and culture happens from decisions you make. We need to make those decisions. We need to, you know, make up our minds. We're never going to allow this to happen

• 3:05:32Speaker 03

  again. And, and also make it known to everyone that the reason that this thing went south, Afghanistan, was more to do with this command and control monstrosity we created than the enemy itself.

• 3:05:51Speaker 04

  Thanks for that, Pete. That's, it's very insightful. Okay, so questions. Sessar Omen, thank you very much. Love the show. Thanks for making this happen. Has the guerrilla idea or something similar ever been used outside of Bosnia?

• 3:06:08Speaker 03

  I don't know. I, I hope so. I'm sure other, I'm sure plenty of other guys have, have similar ideas. But, you know, it's, to me, it's disguises, deception and diversion. You know, that's what it's about. Any form that takes, you know, contextually should be open. It should be open season. And that's what we need to train our future leaders to think out of the box, to not be constrained by the, you know, helicopter, the, you know,

• 3:06:46Speaker 03

  platoon, company, battalion, brigade model, you know, understand the problem and solve it in the most economical, efficient and sensible way possible. And sometimes that involves dressing up like an ape.

• 3:07:09Speaker 04

  Thanks again for the very generous donation. Sessar Omen, the Daily Mail ran a story that in early 2000s, the SAS was chosen over Delta for having more experience, was sent in to rescue a CIA agent in Afgha, in Afghanistan. Brit tabloids, so grain of salt. But do you have any thoughts on this?

• 3:07:31Speaker 03

  In the year 2000?

• 3:07:33Speaker 04

  Yes, in, in the early 2000s.

• 3:07:37Speaker 03

  Oh, well, I mean, 2001 was, you know, my, my frame of reference starts at 2001. We were the, you know, along with the SF guys in the north, we were first in down in the dry lake beds, south of Condahar. Um, you know, I, I never heard of any mission like that. The, it was actually very difficult. The Brits were there, uh, you know, uh, in our staging base, but they were given very restrictive guidance. They were only allowed, then remember this is before anyone's on the ground. They were told they could only engage a target if it was, had

• 3:08:17Speaker 03

  to do with, uh, poppy production and heroin trafficking. So, uh, the SAS was, you know, begging us to find a way to, to get them in, uh, in, into the fight. And I don't know what happened there. You know, uh, their commander, I, I didn't deal with them much after that, but their commander, when I, you know, when I went up to him and said, you know, this doesn't make any sense, you know, he was defending the anti-drug, uh, mission pretty, uh, vociferously. So, yeah, I, I never heard of any other, any other mission, uh, than that.

• 3:08:58Speaker 04

  I also want to give a quick shout out to one of our audience members. You, uh, you may remember, Paul Cunningham. He was my first, uh, PL when I was in Ranger Battalion.

• 3:09:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:09:07Speaker 04

  There you go. Uh, good to see you again, Paul. Hope you're doing well, buddy. Um, uh, Radioactive Lama, thank you very much. Great content, guys. Better than watching primetime TV. Well, we should hope so. Um,

• 3:09:22Speaker 03

  Good job, guys.

• 3:09:23Speaker 04

  We need that primetime TV moolah, though.

• 3:09:27Speaker 03

  You're gonna get it.

• 3:09:29Speaker 04

  Thanks. Thanks for your support, Pete. Uh, Mike Montgomery, thank you very much. Question, what was the conventional wisdom regarding Los Pepe's while he was in Colombia hunting Escobar?

• 3:09:42Speaker 03

  Um, like conventional wisdom, I mean, the conventional wisdom was, what they were doing was, you know, what should have been done. That was, uh, um, to my knowledge and, and, you know, I was probably as close to it as any American, me and my guys. Uh, there were all kinds of CIA, uh, takes on who the Los Pepe's were, DEA. So the, remember those two were kind of in charge of the mission down there and battling each other all the time. Uh, we were down there, uh, you know, walking this fine line between them. We didn't care who got credit for anything.

• 3:10:26Speaker 03

  Uh, the Los Pepe's to me was, uh, an uprising. It was Colombians, uh, police officers, uh, their members of their federal, uh, law enforcement and their military who off duty were getting together going, hey, you know, the government's not going to stop this. The only way is for us to stop this and we've got to take these guys out ourselves. And the Los Pepe's did just that. Uh, and they, you know, of all the things that brought Escobar to his knees, I believe the Los Pepe's was probably the most, uh, formidable. They took out a number of his lieutenants. Uh,

• 3:11:08Speaker 03

  there, he did not feel safe. His family was not safe. Uh, and so he took all kinds of measures, uh, to get them safe. And ultimately, those measures are what ended up, uh, uh, getting him captured. So the Los Pepe's to me was just a organic uprising of, of people who had had enough of this guy blowing the shit out of airplanes, blowing up, you know, cars in the middle of huge intersections, assassinating police officers by the hundreds. Uh, and they took matters in their own hand and, uh, and were very effective.

• 3:11:47Speaker 04

  Um,

• 3:11:50Speaker 04

  Sashar Omah, thank you again. Uh, were there Delta snipers on Overwatch when they took out Escobar? What are your thoughts on Mark Bowden's theory? It was a unit bullet that killed him?

• 3:12:03Speaker 03

  Uh, I didn't know that was Mark Bowden's theory, but, uh, and normally I would not comment, you know, so the fact that I'm commenting should tell you that it wasn't our snipers, and I've already said it. Um, you know, people who, who, you know, deny that the Colombians, uh, accomplished that on their own are people who, you know, just cannot believe that other countries have freedom-loving, you know, warriors that can be just as effective when motivated as, as we are. And that's what happened there. There was no snipers, uh, you know, there was no unit

• 3:12:46Speaker 03

  guys, um, anywhere near there at the time. Uh, and, uh, anyone else who claims there was, uh, is just, you know, engaging in, uh, in, in theory and, uh, you know, trying to, trying to guess what happened, uh, and make it a little sexier than it really was.

• 3:13:09Speaker 04

  Uh, Joe Zgasha, thank you very much. Would you happen to know the origin of Advanced Force Operations? Did that concept come from Dick Meadows when he went into Iran in 1980 ahead of the Delta Force or the Delta Rescue Force?

• 3:13:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, you know, so since, you know, I was the first AFO commander, I would just say it rose up organically. It was just common sense. We didn't even care. You could have called us, uh, soap dish. And, you know, it would have been this, we would have done the same thing. Uh, we were, before that, Advanced Force Operation was, uh, a verb, not a noun.

• 3:13:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:13:51Speaker 03

  And so it just meant going in ahead of the main, uh, the main effort and prepping the battlefield. And for clandestine ops, that means setting up safe houses, getting vehicles, uh, doing, uh, you know, low vis recce's so that when the guys come in, you can, you know, greet them, tell them the lay of the land, uh, they have resources so they can operate. We turned it into a noun. We just called ourselves AFO. Uh, we were a conglomeration of, uh, all four services, um, and, uh, some other government agency guys. So it was, you know, necessity is the mother of

• 3:14:33Speaker 03

  invention and, uh, um, common sense is the father. And, and that's what, you know, that's how AFO was born, out of necessity and common sense.

• 3:14:44Speaker 04

  You know, you, you mentioned Colombia and then we talk about Bosnia. Um, you know, you talk about like the CIA and the DEA who both had a lot of undercover sort of cover type work. And then in Bosnia, did you guys have a good working relationship with like the CIA, the DIA, uh, uh, other intel units, INSCOM and whatnot, where you weren't like creating this stuff? You weren't in reinventing the wheel, but people were there kind of teaching you guys how to do this stuff?

• 3:15:15Speaker 03

  Uh, we had a great relationship in, you know, after 911 with the CIA. Um, and that again, was born out of Bosnia. We had worked with them extensively in Bosnia. And so we knew each other and, uh, many of the personalities knew each other. In my book, I talk about a guy codenamed Spider. You know, he was a very good friend of mine. We, we had operated together in Bosnia multiple times along with other guys in the unit. He was a warrior, former Marine. Uh, you know, we, we trusted him. Uh, he trusted us. Uh, we shared information, even, you know, even

• 3:16:00Speaker 03

  information people were telling us not to share. And, uh, you know, so that relationship worked because of, of, you know, of personal relationships. Uh, and it, it stayed that way. Afghanistan, the early phases, all the way to Iraq. Uh, he was in Iraq. Um, he came up from the south. I came from the west and the north. We ended up meeting, uh, in Baghdad International Airport, right before the other event I talked about. So it was a good relationship and it's always, uh, emphasized to maintain those relationships and to make sure that they, uh, they flourish. Uh, but they're

• 3:16:43Speaker 03

  very personality dependent. And so when you get someone in there who, who doesn't like, uh, whether it's an agency guy who doesn't like the army or, or the, you know, Navy or vice versa, then that relationship falters.

• 3:17:00Speaker 04

  Um. Sashar Norman, thank you very much. Were there any other noteworthy innovations that came from the unit that you could, that you can talk about during your time or after, other than the police spike mats?

• 3:17:17Speaker 03

  Um, well, dogs, uh, we brought dogs, dogs, operational dogs. So a lot of people don't know this. There were operational dogs were, uh, the use of operational dogs was ended at the end of the Vietnam War. So I think that was 75. From 75 to 98, there were no operational dogs in the military. There were drug sniffing dogs, right? Everyone remembers the, you know, drug sniffing dogs. There were bomb sniffing dogs. The MPs had, there were no operational dogs. Um, you know, back to Dale Comstock, Dale Comstock was a dog

• 3:17:59Speaker 03

  trainer. And, uh, when he was in my troop, he, uh, he had a number of, and I forget what kind of shepherds they were, uh, but he had me out to his house, showed me these dogs. And he was like a lot of guys in the unit, they were saying, hey, we should get dogs. Look at all these things they could do. Um, and so they planted that seed in my brain. When I, uh, became a squadron commander, uh, I had in my squadron, I had one guy who had been classically trained at Lackland Air Force Base. He was certified dog trainer. And I had two guys who were just kind of like amateurs. We did a brainstorming session.

• 3:18:42Speaker 03

  Uh, one of the big missions at the time was, uh, underground tunnels. And, uh, it was pretty obvious that, you know, dogs would make an incredible impact on that mission. So we flew out to Lackland Air Force Base, met with the Colonel who was in charge of dog training. Uh, and again, no one gave us approval for this. We just did it. Uh, and we told him our concept and he was luckily, he was a historical believer in dogs. He was like, finally, you know, somebody sees the light. He goes, we'll support you guys, whatever you need. Uh, just, you know, and we had to get approval from him because, uh,

• 3:19:24Speaker 03

  in the DA Pam, you can't have dogs unless Lackland, the, the dog command at Lackland says you can have them. So he signed off on it. Um, my unit commander, Gary Harold, fantastic guy, just recently passed away. Uh, he saw the, you know, the potential in it too. He said, do it. I, you know, it sounds kind of crazy, but go ahead and do it. So, uh, a week later, we flew two guys off to Belgium, uh, bought two of the finest Belgian Malinois that money could buy, uh, began the training process, uh, and it was a process

• 3:20:05Speaker 03

  of discovery. Uh, you know, who, who's going to handle these dogs? Uh, if you bring in a dog handler, he's going to take a seat on a, you know, a little bird, take a seat in a vehicle. Uh, you know, what about small missions? And we quickly concluded that we needed to make operators dog handlers. And this was a controversial decision. Uh, there were a number of people even in the unit who thought it was heresy, but we did it anyway. Um, went off the dog handling school, got, uh, some proof of concepts, uh, done. Right away, you could see the potential of these animals. Um, and, uh, we got money

• 3:20:48Speaker 03

  to build kennels. Uh, and like I said, that was 98. It took a while. Uh, the program was not solid. Uh, we went to Afghanistan. We took the dogs with us, but there were no specific uses immediately. Then Iraq happened, uh, 2003, we took the dogs with us. We infilled with dogs. We had special vehicles that had air conditioners built into them because dogs are very heat sensitive. Um, they were worth their weight in gold as, uh, think about setting up a, a patrol base, a hide site in the desert. Uh, if you've

• 3:21:30Speaker 03

  got dogs that can detect by smell and hearing anyone, you know, 500 meters away, um, that's an amazing force multiplier. And they were, but they made their mark, uh, back at our safe house. Uh, you know, uh, once we got established in our safe house, once the, the country fell, uh, we had a, uh, a weird, like, I don't know if it was a suicidal attack. Two guys came in, AKs got into the perimeter. We had a big compound, uh, and, uh, we released the dogs. Those were the first, uh, you know, that was the first operational use of the

• 3:22:12Speaker 03

  dogs. Uh, I, I was there. I remember running up. Uh, all I could hear was gurgling and, uh, there was a guy laying there, uh, an AK 47, five feet away, and his face was in the Belgian Malinois mouth. It was, uh, Arco. And he was, uh, that was the gurgling and, uh, uh, from that point on, it was, uh, dogs were on every raid. Uh, the first two dog casualties.

• 3:22:43Speaker 00

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

• 3:23:13Speaker 03

  Happened on the Uday and Kuse raid. Uh, Uday and Kuse were, uh, that is Saddam's sons. They were barricaded on the second floor of, uh, the house they were hiding in. Uh, the team, uh, went in, cleared the first floor, came to the stairwell, uh, went up two steps, uh, fuselage, automatic AK fire, just pounded the top of the steps. Uh, they released the two dogs. Two dogs went up there. Uh, they could hear them. Uh, you know, they could hear the dogs make contact with Uday and Kuse. The team followed after, uh, you know, uh, finished them off. And, uh, one of those dogs was the first casualty. He was,

• 3:23:58Speaker 03

  uh, hit by an AK round, uh, when he got to the top of the stairs. But again, you know, another example, it's CQB. If you can have a dog, you know, uh, move through these, uh, uh, you know, fire funnels and, uh, and to tell you whether there's an enemy there, they're worth their weight in gold. And, uh, they were. And today, everyone has them. Um, you know, we probably got more dogs than we can handle in the military, but, uh, they've got their place and we should keep them there because they're, they're an invaluable asset.

• 3:24:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, those Malinois, uh, they're no joke. Like they are so courageous and

• 3:24:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:24:40Speaker 04

  They're fearless.

• 3:24:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:24:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:24:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, very loyal. Uh, you know, they, a lot of breakthroughs in training. Like, I was skeptical that, you know, when you walk around one of those things, it's like walking around a minefield or a hand grenade with its pin pulled out and the spoon still in. Uh, you know, no matter how comfortable you are with dogs, it's, it, it'll shake you. But, you know, these guys train these dogs. They acclimated them to the squadron and you could walk through the squadron, walk, you know, through our bar area. Uh, and they were, you know, they were, uh, they knew they were one of the team. Uh, and, and that, that did a lot for building trust of everybody. Uh, but it was a training breakthrough

• 3:25:28Speaker 03

  because up to that time, you know, dogs were, you know, just, just the handler and no one else could be around them.

• 3:25:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. I, I think that we have another mutual from 275, uh, Kelly, who was very involved in the dog program, right? Uh, yeah.

• 3:25:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yep.

• 3:25:47Speaker 04

  Uh. Uh, Nation Wood, thank you very much for the donation. Um, Clayton Jensen, good to see you, buddy. Um, if you haven't watched Clayton's show, you should watch it. Uh, he, he caveats this question. He says, no specifics needed, just your overall opinion. And then he says, uh, you touched on Siggin stuff used in Colombia, et cetera. What do you think about the evolution of the IO guys, Ranger OST and JSOC SADs over time?

• 3:26:19Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, well, the evolution is just natural. You know, they've, they've, uh, they learn as they go along. They've become, you know, more, uh, you know, more mission focused. And, uh, you know, that's the key with all that, all that, uh, electronic intelligence. You gotta get it down in the hands of the operators. You gotta test it out. Uh, you gotta give it proof of concept. And, uh, if that all works, you know, you can, you can share it with larger groups.

• 3:26:53Speaker 04

  Um, Gene Colley, thank you very much. And this is the last question.

• 3:26:57Speaker 03

  Shut something real quick.

• 3:26:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:26:59Speaker 03

  I'm listening.

• 3:27:00Speaker 04

  Um, any plans to bring back the operational donkey like Merrill's Marauders had in Burma?

• 3:27:09Jack Murphy?

  Well, they did bring it, they did bring them back in Afghanistan. The pack mules.

• 3:27:13Speaker 03

  I mean, SF was experimenting with them even before nine one one. Uh, we, one of the teams in Shahi Coe, uh, would thought, you know, hey, the way to get our equipment up into the mountains is with the donkey. And I have a video of it. It's, uh, it's the team and me and two others chasing this donkey. Uh, trying to, you know, trying to corral it to see if we could, uh, use it. And it turns into just, you know, a Keystone Cop moment of hilarity. We're laughing so hard, we can't even chase it anymore. And, uh, and that's when we gave up on the donkey idea. But I think it still has potential, all ideas like that.

• 3:27:57Speaker 03

  Um, you know, I know they're, they're trying to create robots now to carry, uh, equipment into, uh, into difficult terrain. But, you know, I think that's a long way off. And if the situation's right and you've got a well-trained donkey and a guy who's handled donkeys before, uh, I don't see why you wouldn't use it.

• 3:28:20Speaker 04

  Uh, and that's it. Uh, Dee, did we have anything on Patreon?

• 3:28:24Jack Murphy?

  Uh, no. Uh, so next, uh, actually the next, the next episode is not going to be Friday. It's going to be Saturday and we're going to have John Dovi on the show, served in the S A D F and then Sandif. Uh, really excited to talk to him. Uh, it's going to be a very unique interview. Um, Pete, thank you for coming on the show, spending your Friday evening with us. And again, uh, his latest book is Common Sense Leadership Matters, Toxic Leadership Destroys, a Case Study, Book Three. I hope you guys will go and check it out.

• 3:28:56Speaker 04

  And also the, the mission, the men and me, and then, um.

• 3:29:02Speaker 03

  Common Sense Way.

• 3:29:03Speaker 04

  The Common Sense Way, right? Yep. Yep. So, um, and it's a trilogy, right? The, in the sense that it all focuses around the idea of, of leadership.

• 3:29:14Speaker 04

  Uh, both positive leadership and toxic leadership.

• 3:29:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, just common, yeah, common sense leadership applied using, uh, military, uh, stories, real world military stories. And, uh, you know, the last one brings up the, the toxic leadership destroys point in it.

• 3:29:33Jack Murphy?

  Perfect. And yeah, Pete, I'd love to have you back sometime, talk about the rest of your career and, and anything else. Um, we'll have to do it again sometime, but I, I mean, thank you for coming on and doing the, doing the show tonight.

• 3:29:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I enjoyed it too, guys. You got a great show and, uh, keep up the good work.

• 3:29:51Jack Murphy?

  Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. And before we roll out, anything else you want to plug, websites, anything else people should go check out? Where can they find you?

• 3:30:00Speaker 03

  You know, yeah, I mean, on that book, there's a lot of good stuff, pictures of the spur. You can see, you know, the view that I described of the squad leader and the lead gunji looking up at the spur, they're colored pictures. Uh, it's on, uh, Pete Labor dot com. And, uh, you can watch the video on firefight.pete labor.com. I would recommend anybody who is interested in not just that event, but, you know, driving off-road or terrain to go watch that video. Uh, it's, it's pretty amazing. And I also have the maps on there that lay out, uh, the sequence of events leading up to the firefight.

• 3:30:41Speaker 03

  Um, so check it out and, uh, enjoy the terrain while you're checking it out.

• 3:30:48Jack Murphy?

  All right. Thank you. And, uh, we will see all of you next Saturday. Thank you. And Pete, we'll talk to you next time.

• 3:30:57Speaker 03

  Sounds good, Jack. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Steve.

• 3:30:59Jack Murphy?

  Take care. Have a good night.

• 3:31:01Speaker 03

  You too.

• 3:31:13Speaker 05

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

• 3:31:55Speaker 00

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

• 3:32:45Speaker 00

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

• 3:33:30Speaker 00

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

• 3:34:08Speaker 05

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

• 3:34:43Speaker 00

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

• 3:35:17Speaker 00

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

• 3:35:53Speaker 00

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

• 3:36:29Speaker 00

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

• 3:36:59Speaker 05

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

• 3:37:41Speaker 05

  With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:37:57Speaker 00

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

• 3:38:40Speaker 00

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

• 3:39:25Speaker 00

  All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

• 3:40:09Speaker 00

  With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.