#332 Alex West - SEAL Team 6 Operator on Crashing a Black Hawk Into Bin Laden's Backyard

Alex West is a retired U. S. Navy SEAL who served 20 years, completed 15 combat deployments, including 13 with DEVGRU, and served as an assault team leader during Operation Neptune Spear. After years of combat, personal loss, and the Extortion 17 tragedy, he confronted the psychological toll of service, found a path toward healing, founded One More Wave, and became a mental health therapist focused on trauma and recovery. Privacy Isn't Paranoia. It's Protection. Download Glacier - https://srs.site/glacierapp Website - https://theglacierapp.com Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Get 10% off at https://tecovas.com/SRS when you sign up for email and texts. See site for details. If you have an iPhone, go to https://ladder.fit/SRS to take a quick quiz and get a free 7-day trial with no credit card required, plus $10 off your first month if you join. Go to https://rorra.com/SRS for an exclusive discount on the Rorra Countertop System and tap into clean water today. Try Amazon Music Unlimited for music, podcasts, and audiobooks all in one app. Your subscription now includes access to audiobooks. https://music.amazon.com Upgrade your eyewear for summer at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide at checkout. Alex West Links: Website - https://alexwest.com Americans for Ibogaine - https://www.americansforibogaine.org One More Wave - https://onemorewave.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alexwestimpact X - https://x.com/alexwestimpact LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-west TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@alexwestimpact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:05Shawn Ryan?

  Alex West, welcome to the show, man.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Sean.

• 0:09Shawn Ryan?

  Thanks for coming. So, uh, we met like several years ago, I think, with, uh...

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Taco.

• 0:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, with Dan Cirillo.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  We sure did, yeah, at lunch and, um, yeah, that was, is interesting now. Here we are a few years later.

• 0:24Shawn Ryan?

  Right?

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:26Shawn Ryan?

  How did you know Dan? I was just curious.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  I knew Dan from the teams, like, west coast. We lightly knew each other, but when I moved out here to Franklin, he was one of the local team guys and we just, friend of a friend, hung out a few times and it's interesting because even after his passing, he had, he was helping out Lipscomb High School on their football team. And I'm now kind of mentoring a young guy who's about 19, uh, that Dan was mentoring randomly.

• 0:53Shawn Ryan?

  No way.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it wasn't even like, it was passed over, this friend of a friend, I was talking to this, this, this guy and he's like, "Yeah, did you know Dan Cirillo?" And I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "Yeah, he was kind of like a mentor of mine in high school." And I was like, "Cool, like, small world, yeah."

• 1:08Shawn Ryan?

  I love that dude, man. He was such a, always in a good mood.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  He was a great guy, yeah. Great mood, yeah, great energy, such a shame.

• 1:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I, I have to say, like, what a way to go. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it sounds weird to say like, "I'm happy for him," but I'm happy for him, you know, like, he went on a hunting trip with his son.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34Shawn Ryan?

  And kids are growing.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36Shawn Ryan?

  They're all doing great, from what I understand.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39Shawn Ryan?

  Daughter's getting ready to get married.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Oh, good for her.

• 1:41Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, and, um, yeah, I don't, yeah, so, I think that's cool, you know what I mean? I think that's, uh, if there's a way to go, that's the way to do it, hopefully a little later in life, but...

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? But, um, what a great dude. But anyways, God bless you, Dan.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02Shawn Ryan?

  So, Alex West, let me give you an introduction here real quick. Alex West, you're a retired Navy SEAL who served for 20 years and completed 15 combat deployments with SEAL Team 3 and DEV Group's Red Squadron. In 2011, you led the Assault Team during Operation Neptune Spear, the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. Months later, the loss of Extortion 17 and years of combat trauma brought you to one of the darkest periods of your life, ultimately setting you on a path towards healing and helping others. While still serving, you founded One More Wave, a nonprofit providing adaptive surf,

• 2:42Shawn Ryan?

  adaptive surfboards and surf therapy to wounded veterans. And today, you're an associate, mental health therapist here in Nashville, and an advocate for treatments such as Ibogaine, helping veterans, first responders, and others rebuild their lives.

• 2:59Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty fucking cool, man.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:04Shawn Ryan?

  You're the first team guy therapist, actually, I think you're the first military therapist.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not many, there's a few, but yeah.

• 3:13Shawn Ryan?

  Is there?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Just a few, yeah. Not many. I, I probably know the majority of them.

• 3:19Shawn Ryan?

  I know we're gonna get into it, but, I mean, I would imagine there's a pretty big draw to you being

• 3:31Shawn Ryan?

  military guy, first responders, law enforcement, I mean, I would think they would just be like, like magnets to you. Anybody that's seeking, am I right on that?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  You're right. And, you know, at first, when I was starting, I thought I would be all about that population, which I am. However, there's something in the therapy world called counter-transference, which just means, like, I feel those, those clients, and it's hard for me to compartmentalize. So, while, yes, I do, I love working with those populations, I can only allow myself to do about a quarter of my clients, because it just is so much for me. And I thought originally it would be, that's all I would see. But now I'm more of a generalist, so I see a lot of first responders, veterans, and then pretty much everybody else, uh, which I enjoy as well. But it has, with the veterans, it, it really has been, um, almost

• 4:23Speaker 01

  nice to be able to connect with them, especially the ones that are closed off, where they don't want to see a therapist. And oftentimes, with my background of having deployed so often, I can, if it's a GWAT, Global War on Terrorism, veteran, I can just ask them, like, "Well, when were you deployed?" And then they'll mention it, and oftentimes, you know, I might be like, "Oh, I remember that base. I remember that gym," or, "Can you remember they had a pancake bar in that, like, how did they get pancake?" And, and then all of a sudden, you see the wall just kind of come down, and then they realize, like, you know, I'm one of them. So, it, it helps a lot to be able to break down that wall.

• 4:57Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I got a, I would have been drawn to you when I was doing therapy. I did, what, three and a half years? Twice a week?

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:05Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, probably should go back. But I was always looking for somebody that could relate to the experiences, uh, that we had. But now, kind of looking back, I think it's,

• 5:21Shawn Ryan?

  I, I, for me, maybe it was better that I didn't, because basically, what I want to ask is, do, do you find,

• 5:31Shawn Ryan?

  how do I say this? Do you find it that, look, a lot of guys from our background, they compare services, or that it becomes a competition? And I'm, I'm just curious, do you, do you ever feel that when you're, do you, do you feel that?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, if there's like a...

• 5:49Shawn Ryan?

  It'd be kind of really hard to compare to somebody, like, with what you've been through.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:54Shawn Ryan?

  In your career path, but, I, I mean, it's competitive in nature.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  It is. And what I've found, sometimes, especially when I was with One More Wave, which I know we'll get to, the surfing nonprofit, I actually didn't share a lot of my background, because I didn't want any of those clients to compare themselves to me, because it was all about them. And, um, so, in some respects, I might get a little bit of comparison from a client here or there, but usually we can find common ground and just, you know, a little bit of joking around, and it just, like, brings it back down. And we're really just the same person. It just happens that I was in the Navy, maybe they're in the Army or the Marine Corps. And, but it wasn't up until recently, um, that I started to open up more about my background, especially around One More Wave, because I didn't want a veteran to be like, "Well, I don't deserve this

• 6:40Speaker 01

  because I wasn't a SEAL or a DEV Group guy or a Delta or whatever." And, uh, my message to them was always like, "I don't care. We don't care as an organization. You served, and we're here to heal, and you deserve to heal."

• 6:54Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, that's cool, man. That's cool. Well, we'll get into more of all that stuff towards the end of the interview, but for starters, everybody gets a gift.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Awesome. Nice. Yeah, the famous gummy bears. Thanks. I'll definitely be chewing on these later.

• 7:10Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, right on. And then, uh, I got a Patreon account. It's a community that we've built, and, uh, to be honest, they're, they're the reason that I get to sit down here with you today. Uh, they've been with me since the beginning, when I was doing this in the attic of my house, and, and, uh, they've supported us the whole way. So, they get the opportunity to ask every guest a question. This is from Ian Lane. "When you're sitting in the surf with an amputee or a guy fighting the darkest kind of PTSD, what's the single most powerful thing you've seen the ocean do that no amount of traditional therapy or medication has ever matched?"

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Great question, Ian. One experience that comes to mind was actually the moment, um, that I felt like the universe was like, "You need to start this nonprofit." And I was with a young Marine, he was maybe 25 years old, uh, he'd lost his leg below the knee, and we were sitting in Del Mar in Southern California, and it was just beautiful, beautiful Southern California day, and he had this huge smile on his face, and I just looked at him thinking, "He's smiling because it's beautiful out." And I said that, I was like, "Wow, it is beautiful out." And he's like, "Yeah, it is, but that's not why I'm smiling. I'm smiling because when I'm in the ocean, I'm no longer getting stared at as the guy missing a leg. And when I catch a wave, there's no more pain,

• 8:30Speaker 01

  even if it's for five, 10 seconds." And, um, and then I remember watching him actually catch a wave, and then, you know, then he kind of wipes out at the end and comes up for air, and there's a whole group of guys that are just cheering him on, just like, like, like, hell, like, fuck, yeah, that was a great wave. And then just seeing this primal smile on this guy, you could tell was struggling right beforehand. And then, and then he explained of why he loved surfing, but I could tell he was still closed off, and then caught that wave, and it's almost like... A lightning bolt just went right into him to just like almost, you know, bring him back to life with a smile. And so that is one moment that sticks out to me. I'm sure as I think I can start, I'll come up with a dozen more.

• 9:15Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  That's the first one that comes to mind.

• 9:17Shawn Ryan?

  How's he doing today?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  You know what? I've, that was in 2015. I have lost track of him. That's a great question. I hope he's doing great and I hope he's still surfing.

• 9:27Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Right on. Well, let's get to you.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 9:31Shawn Ryan?

  You ready?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 9:32Shawn Ryan?

  It's gonna be a long one.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:34Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you grow up?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  So I was born in Lady Brand, South Africa, and I grew up in a small country called Lesotho, which is an African mountain kingdom inside of South Africa. And it was during the apartheid. And so the Lesotho was a home to the African National Congress, which is the faction that Nelson Mandela belonged to. So it was a black, independent, free country. My parents, my dad worked for the World Bank, trying to bring clean drinking water to a billion people. Part of that in Africa. And my mom was a school teacher. But the reason why I was born in South Africa and not Lesotho is because the hospital was better. And so they drove across, my mom went to labor, drove across the Maserro Bridge.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And there's a story that she likes to tell where they couldn't even get over it because there was a bunch of livestock coming the other way. My dad's just like honking the horn, wanting to get out, fight the, you know, the, the, the herder. And my mom's like, get in the car, I'm having to get. So anyway, they, they get to the hospital. And even though the hospital was better, my mom, they didn't have any medication or any epidural or anything for her. It was just kind of straight up. And they gave my dad a fly swatter because there's flies everywhere. So I grew up in Lesotho and then we moved to, we lived there for about five years.

• 10:55Shawn Ryan?

  Were they American?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  They're American, yeah. My, my dad, both, my dad's from Erie, Pennsylvania, and my mom is from Pittsburgh. And, and I think it was my dad when, he was just a very adventurous guy and my mom just followed him. And she had the adventure in her too. And they actually lived in Saudi Arabia before they moved to Lesotho. And then from there, we lived there for, I lived there at least for about five years. I think they lived there for about seven. And then moved to Cairo, Egypt.

• 11:22Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember it?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  I don't recall too much of Lesotho, just because I was young, one to five. But I did have a nanny named Sophia and she was from the Zulu tribe. And my parents both worked. And so during the day, Sophia could, spoke really broken English. So she spoke to me in the local, like, Zulu language. And I would watch cartoons and Afrikaans, which for the listeners is like a Dutch kind of based language in South Africa. And then my parents would come home speaking in English. And so my mom, being a teacher, was worried about me because I was piecing together all of these languages and struggling to communicate. And so she was always worried that I would, I might have to get held back in school.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  But we would end up moving out of Lesotho to Cairo, Egypt after that. There was a stint in Pennsylvania for a year or two in that, but mostly we were in Africa till I was about 10.

• 12:22Shawn Ryan?

  Holy cow.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:25Shawn Ryan?

  In Cairo, you said?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  In Cairo.

• 12:27Shawn Ryan?

  How was that?

• 12:28Speaker 01

  It was awesome. I loved living in Cairo as a kid. I, I felt, that was like a real home for me. And I went to an international school where there's a lot of, it was American curriculum, but there was kids from embassies from all over the world. So I had a lot of, you know, friends that were like French or German, Israeli, you know, from other, you name it. Whatever the country was, because that school was kind of like a nice, a decent private school to get a decent education. So a lot of the embassy people would be there. But what, what I realized later that instilled in me was a lot of core components of like how I see the world, of not judging people from different countries or languages or cultures and actually embracing it. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was just the world I lived in.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  And, and that would help me later on in the SEAL Teams, working with partner forces. Or even as a therapist, just to not judge somebody if they come in and look different than me or talk different, have different values, just to see them more as like, okay, I can look past that. Let me just look at you as a person.

• 13:29Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting. What, what was your dad doing in?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was working for a, an engineering company called Black and Veatch, which was based out of Kansas City. But they were doing the water treatment, but kind of in the same theme of clean drinking water. They're doing a lot of water treatment. One of the largest water treatment programs at the time in the world was in Cairo. And that was his company, was trying to treat water, whether it was wastewater, drinking water, things like that. And then my mom was a school teacher at that school.

• 14:04Shawn Ryan?

  Only child?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  No, I have a sister, Helen. She's about four and a half years younger.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  She was born, that year we were in Pennsylvania, she was born in the States, but we would, she'd come with us, obviously, to Cairo.

• 14:17Shawn Ryan?

  How was it over there? What would you do as a kid?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, a lot of standard kid stuff, you know, riding bicycles, you know, BMXs around, just like you would in the States, at least in the eighties, you know? And so we would have these little crews of kids running around on BMXs in this neighborhood called Madi. And I went to this school, Cairo American College. And, and so we would just ride our bikes around. We would, I remember played baseball. I was always into baseball and sports. And it was a normal-ish childhood. But what was unique about it, and which I'm very fortunate, is for like field trips, we would go to the pyramids, which is crazy, right? Or we would go to the Cairo Museum or some other artifacts.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  So it was very, I feel very blessed that at that age, you know, at 10 years old, you're going to the pyramids on a field trip. And just to be able to grasp the gravity of that and just have that life experience was very novel. And I feel fortunate.

• 15:19Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's pretty cool. So it wasn't?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  It wasn't in Arabic. It was in English.

• 15:24Shawn Ryan?

  Was it dangerous over there? You rode around?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  It was, it was, my whole life in Africa was dangerous. When we were in Lesotho, there's a car bomb that went off on our street. We had to have tall security walls with broken glass and, you know, wet cement to dry. We had armed guards, guard dogs. And then when we were in Cairo, there was a big riot that broke out between, so the army, that when you get conscripted in Egypt, to either go to the army or the law enforcement. With law enforcement's more of like AK-47 type thing. It's not like a B-cop here in the States. And so there was a dispute between who was getting paid and, and all of this. And so they broke out into a riot, almost like a gunfight.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  And I remember being at school on a tennis court, just playing kickball or something like that. I was probably six or seven. And you could hear a bunch of machine gun fire going off. And there was sporadic machine gun fire that was coming all over the place and getting scooped up off the tennis court as a little kid, just not knowing what was going on by a teacher. And then they put us in this big auditorium, called their parents to help get us out. And I remember asking a teacher, like, what is going on? And her just saying, and when I think back on it, she's nervous and just saying, it's just fireworks. It's kind of like the Egyptian Fourth of July. And then just thinking like, oh, okay. And then for the next two weeks, we were in lockdown in our apartment in Cairo,

• 16:50Speaker 01

  where they would have hours that you could go get groceries. But you had to stay, the, the State Department was telling all the American citizens that you have to stay in your apartment and lockdown until this thing calms down.

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• 19:28Speaker 01

  What would your parents tell you about? My dad, who was a veteran, a Vietnam veteran, I remember him being very calm in all of that. I don't know whether it was his past experience in war or whatever it is, but I knew my mom was very concerned. And that was a big reason why we ended up moving to the States when I was 10. I think she was just over the madness of Africa, especially in the eighties. You know, there wasn't obviously internet. You know, you might call, get people to call long distance every now and then to family members, but you just didn't know much that was going on. You'd listen to the BBC radio for news. And but outside of that, we were just in a pocket of the world that was, might as well be on the moon.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  And so I think she wanted us to have an American, safe upbringing. And my dad wanted to stay overseas. I wanted to stay overseas. I remember that's where all my friends were and everything. And but I was 10, I didn't know. And then we would end up moving to Kansas City. Overland Park, specifically a suburb of Kansas City. Wow, that's where I was born. Really? Blue Springs. No way, I didn't know that, small world. We used to play Blue Springs in high school sports.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Wow, so I mean, were you scared as a kid? I- When that stuff would go down over there? You know, I don't, I remember just being exciting. I mean, but it was, Africa is just wide open. I remember even stepping, stopping at a checkpoint. We used to go to this place called Shrumel Sheik, which is on the Sinai Peninsula, because there's world-class scuba diving and my parents were scuba divers. And so we would drive through the desert and even stopping at one of these checkpoints. And I remember a guard who was drunk pulled a gun out and held it to my sister's head and my dad gunned it, basically get off the X. And so there's all of this like craziness going on. Holy shit. Yeah, right. And this is all happening before, you know, 10 and younger.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And so my, how I saw the world was interesting at that point. And when I think back on it, like, wow, that's a lot for a young boy. Yeah. I remember I got beat up by a bunch of Iranian kids because I was American. And I did, I was so confused. I remember they kind of, because they were all at the school, but they were older. And I remember them kind of surrounding me on my BMX and kicking over the BMX. I mean, and my dad was so pissed. I remember him wanting to go beat up all their dads and it never happened. But yeah, so there's like, it was interesting. It was very raw, Africa was very raw. Sounds like it. Yeah. Your dad was a Vietnam vet? He was, he was, he was a TACP.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  So for the listeners that don't know, a guy, a radio man that would call in airstrikes. And he was attached to the first of the seventh air cav, so Custer's old unit, for six months. And then he was, did six months as an advisor for the South Vietnamese Army, where essentially he was an advisor group going out with the South Vietnamese, Arvin or Marines. Are your parents still alive? No, my dad passed away in 2014 from esophageal cancer. Mostly he, from his, he struggled with Vietnam his whole life and drank. And I remember also Agent Orange, he attributes it to Agent Orange,

• 22:50Speaker 01

  whether it was Agent Orange alcoholism or likely a combination of the two. He passed away and, but my mom is still alive and my sister as well. Were you, were you pretty close with your dad? I was, it was a tough upbringing in a sense. Like all my basic Maslow's hierarchy of food, shelter, you know, all that was taken care of. But as I mentioned, the Vietnam War, it never left our home. And, and I remember the deeper he went into his alcoholism and trauma, he and my parents would get divorced, but me being his son, I always felt a lot, like I always felt like he was my dad.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  And so I was always around him and looked up to him. But the, the war never ended for sure. And, and I think that's where my own passion for mental health started. I remember even as a kid, holding space for my dad as he was drunk and he would just tell these horrible war stories from Vietnam. And, but still just like knowing that if I wasn't there to hold space for him, he had no one else. And, which is a strange thing to think about when you're like 12 years old. And, but it would get bad. There's times that, you know, I would call crisis and suicide hotlines to be able to talk to a safe adult.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, just to be, but I had the wherewithal to know that at least if I called them, that it was safe. And that, and I remember them asking like, well, is he hitting you? And just, or touching you or anything? He wasn't, he wasn't, he was just really troubled by the war. And, and so they couldn't do anything, not that I wanted them to do anything. I just wanted an adult that was safe to talk to. What, if you don't mind? Yeah. What, what would have been happening? Like what kind of- So there was no abuse? No, what would happen? We had a furnished basement and I remember he would go down there and, and he would have like a big drink, likely like vodka and maybe soda or something like that.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  And, and he would go down there and I just knew, I remember staring down the stairs and just thinking like, I know he's struggling and I know he and my mom were at odds. You know, obviously that wasn't a great environment for her. So they're on the cusp of divorce. And, and then my sister and my mom had a tight, like a connection. So it was like them and then it was almost like my dad and I. And I just remember thinking, I'll go down there with my dad, even though I didn't want to, but I knew he needed it. He didn't have anyone else. He didn't have a therapist, friends, things like that. It's almost like his trauma had just, he's just isolated. And I would go down and then he would just vent to me about, you know, airstrikes

• 25:41Speaker 01

  and things that went wrong, hung bombs that hit other units or getting shot in his radio. All different, just in really dark things too. And, and just knowing like, I, this is horrible, but I know he, he, I need to just sit here and hear it. So I had like a natural instinct to want to help impact suffering even from a young age. Shit.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  What, what, what would you talk to the, the hotline people about? I would just tell them, you know, I, you know, my dad is saying all these things. He's kind of out of control. Like I'm scared. And they would ask like the questions of, you know, is he hitting you? Or the aforementioned things. And I would just say no, and they would be like, okay, you can stay on as long as you like. And I remember those social workers would, they would stay on. And then they would tell me, you can always call back. And at one point when my parents did get divorced, I remember I was struggling. I was maybe 13 and my mom did get me into therapy.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  But it was, you know, we were middle class, didn't, in the middle of divorce, didn't have that much money. I wouldn't say we were, you know, worried about food or anything like that. But once the insurance rounds of maybe 10 sessions ran out, then that was kind of it. And honestly, I, at like that age, I was just holding it all in and I was just mad. I was just pissed at the world. And I think that would be part of the, what I needed later on in life to get through different selections and buds and all of that was just to ride that anger and that pain. Would he remember the conversations when he was sober? I don't think so. Or, or he was ashamed and would just keep drinking.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  I mean, there was times too where he would pick me up from sports and, and be so drunk that as we're driving home, we'd be weaving in and out. I remember at 13 yelling, just screaming for him to pull over. And finally he did and I ended up driving us home. And, and I remember being so nervous that, because I'd never really driven before. I, I remember at one point, my dad took me in a parking lot once, just like, oh, you might get your driver's permit. Wide open, you know, like empty Walmart parking lot, like let's just kind of do the basics. And that was, and that only happened like once maybe. And that was my only experience driving. And then I'm on a, not a highway, but just a busy road and just like shaking on the steering wheel,

• 28:17Speaker 01

  trying to drive us home safely. But that was the impact of war. Like I've been somehow affected by war since the beginning. You saw it. Yeah. Yeah.

• 28:39Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you decide going to the military?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  It's a good question. I even though all that was going on with my dad, you know, he was my hero. And and we did connect when he wasn't drinking and and he would speak of his time in the military, not just in Vietnam. And I always looked up to the service aspect of it. And and within our family, too, we've I've had a family member in every major American war, which isn't that uncommon. But, you know, whether it was Vietnam, Korea, World War II, World War I, all the way back to the Revolutionary War, like my sister is a daughter of the revolution. None of it was like the general or the none of it. It was all just a bunch of grunts, you know, blue collar guys, like, you know what I mean?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Like, what? Okay, I'll serve. But I think there was some of that. My I was and I was I liked the idea of the military. And I started hearing about special operations and the, you know, the hardest training in the world, whether that's true or not. But at least I remember hearing that of like the SEAL teams and being like, wow, I want to be able to prove something to someone because I felt like I wasn't anyone, especially from some of that trauma and feeling when I moved from Africa to the States, I always felt a little different, a little off. I mean, I was American, I did, but I didn't know any of the pop culture stuff, because we'd been in Africa and that was before the internet.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  So I was a little weird, to be honest, right? I didn't know the basics of American pop culture. I would end up being fine and assimilating, you know, it took a little bit of time, but I always wanted to just go, leave, get away, leave to get away from, you know, kind of my dad, in a sense, which is ironic, but and prove that I was worth it. I was able to accomplish something. And so when I heard about the SEAL teams, the first was the movie Navy SEALs with Charlie Sheen,

• 30:34Speaker 01

  like a lot of guys from our generation, right? And and it's the first I saw, I was like, that's kind of interesting. And and then I read Dick Marcinko's Rogue Warrior and just thought like, wow, that's really cool. And then when I was a junior in high school, my cousin Pete Scobell, who's actually a guest of yours, I went to his bud's graduation. And we because we're first cousins, but we have a small family and Pete and I are different people, but alike in a lot of ways, and almost like brothers. And I went out to his bud's graduation and watched them graduate and just saw the camaraderie and hearing the stories. And and what's ironic is that a lot of those guys that I met when I was in high school, I'd become friends with or teammates later on in the teams.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  But I was very I there's a that was a profound effect on me when I saw all that. And then when I was getting ready to make a decision to whether I was going to go to like, try to play junior college baseball, or get a job, or go to a local Kansas school, none of that really moved the needle for me. I just was like, I'm gonna just go for it and ended up joining at 17 with my parents' permission.

• 31:44Shawn Ryan?

  Shit. How old were you when your parents got divorced?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  I was 13.

• 31:50Shawn Ryan?

  How did that affect you?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  It affected me a lot. Because then my, you know, my dad moved out, my mom's mom, my grandmother moved in. And it was just, you know, there's three women with my sister, and then it was me. My dad was had this kind of like shitty apartment, and he ended up getting fired from his job because of his alcoholism and PTSD. And so I, yeah, that it affected me big time. I was mad. I was able to assimilate in school. I was kind of a jock, I guess. I'd play sports, but I really wasn't in that the jock crew or whatever. I just liked sports. And it was good for me because

• 32:32Speaker 01

  especially like football, I could take out a lot of my anger, you know, and hitting people. And and I was also a swimmer. I think that just got a lot of energy out of me. And then I played baseball, which was my like, real love. But it affected me in that I believe my self confidence was low. And I started probably some struggles with mental health back then. But I did have friends. I'm fortunate that I had friends and did fit in. But it was a it was a tough when I reflect back on it. At the time, I didn't know I was struggling. But now, when I look back on it, I knew I was really struggling.

• 33:14Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 33:19Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure you reflect back a lot back on your dad. I mean, do you do you feel like? Why do you think he was so drawn to Africa?

• 33:31Speaker 01

  I think he was drawn to the excitement of Africa. I think it moved the needle. He could feel like a lot of people struggling with trauma, especially veterans, where finding something that where you can feel some excitement, whether it's with, you know, a hobby or lifestyle. I believe he found the rawness of Africa made him feel, especially in the places we lived, where it was kind of kind of out there.

• 34:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:03Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, plus, you hear a lot about that generation, you know, never really felt like they fit in when they got home. And then and then the adrenaline and all that. I mean, it's.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I feel still to this day for him. And I remember he would always, when I come back from deployments later on, he was in PTSD groups for the VA. And he would always be like, hey, will you come meet in the parking lot, meet all my buddies, we're all a bunch of Vietnam vets. And so I would go hang out with them in the parking lot. And and he would just like show me off. And he was so proud because at the time, you know, I was a SEAL or a dev group and deployments. And I remember one of his friends in particular, just to showcase the guys he was with, introduced himself as Magnet Ass. And I was like, excuse me, Magnet Ass? And I'm like, no, seriously, what's your name? He's like, it's Magnet Ass. And I was like, okay. And I was like, well, why?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Why do they call you Magnet Ass? And he was a door gunner and a Huey and just had he had the reputation that he'd always get shot down. And so that was his nickname was Magnet Ass. And so so it was like, so I'm like, you know, we look commonly, at the time, my dad was living in the Tampa area, going to the VA parking lot. And whenever I'd go visit, and I would hang out with some of his buddies after they got out of group, and and hang out with guys like my dad and Magnet Ass and amongst others. And and it was even then, I remember thinking, man, I wish there was something more for these guys, especially the Vietnam generation, because a PTSD diagnosis wasn't given or even existed until 1980. So a lot of these guys, especially from that generation,

• 35:40Speaker 01

  which I know this is known, or if people don't, you know, they were frowned upon, that generation of veterans of what they did and with that unpopular war. And then when they came back, there was not much for them as far as treatment to include that PTSD diagnosis. And so the majority of them just all just drank. And which a lot of our generation did too, perhaps not as much, but that's all those guys had. And and then so what I was seeing in that parking lot was a lot of guys that were coming in recovery, that were going, all they had was that group and each other, which I remember even noticing it then when I was, you know, my early 30s, late 20s.

• 36:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Where were you in your early? Were you over a dev group?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would have been over a dev group.

• 36:26Shawn Ryan?

  So what's going through your head? I mean, when you're witnessing this?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  I'm thinking, is that going to be me? Is that going to be my friends? Because I started to, especially at that stage, the wars were turning into something that they they weren't. It was no longer Afghan invasion. And some sometimes when I'd visit, it was post the bin Laden raid, right? So it's like, why are we still in Afghanistan? In Iraq, too, it was, you know, you start getting all the information that there was lies about, you know, why we went to war. And so in my mind, I was like, oh, this is like, that's my generation's version of of that is like their versions of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. And so I just I started noticing some of that and then worrying, however, I would just compartmentalize it. So I was probably falling

• 37:15Speaker 01

  into the same loop as a lot of those guys were of just compartmentalizing, like, I'll get to it. But I remember noticing like, is this going to be myself and my friends or generation of veterans? I remember noticing it then in that parking lot.

• 37:30Shawn Ryan?

  So just.

• 37:35Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet there's a lot of kids that are going through what you went through as a kid.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:39Shawn Ryan?

  Right now.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:39Shawn Ryan?

  From the GWAT.

• 37:42Shawn Ryan?

  What advice would you have for a kid that's got an old man that's dealing with that?

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I love that you asked that question. The advice I would have to those kids if they're listening. One, you're not alone. Two, there's help. Right? It's okay to reach out for help and especially. You know, young boys that from our generation before it was always like if you fall down and skin your knee like suck it up. Don't cry, don't show any emotion. And I would tell those kids and any man that's listening that like that doesn't work. You know, it's okay to show emotion. It's okay to ask for help because if you just push it down. All it's going to do is harden and calcify. And then you're just going to be a hard person and you're not going to be.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Your ability to experience love and and hope and laughter and joy is going to start going down. So, um, and also the people around you, your future kids, wife, friends, all of that too. So asking for help, getting into exercise, um, getting in a community, whatever that might be. And in avoiding, if you can, leaning into things like, you know, drinking, um, as as best you can. I get it. There's a lot of. You know, probably pressure from like teenage kids and all of that. I understand that. However, that leads to nowhere and that you can find a lot of that in nature and sports and community and friendships. And that it's, um, and the behaviors and habits that start then could compound later on.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  And also that your dads or mom, um, who are veterans from those wars, the GWAT. That, um. They love you. It's just that right now they're struggling, just like my dad loved me. I knew he did. I I still feel his spirit, um, and how proud he is, um, of me. It's just complex. But just to know that even though their parents might be. You know, drunk or yelling at them abusive at at the core, that's basically them just reflecting their pain. And it's on them to be able to do what they can do with themselves and just all the aforementioned things of reaching out. To get help and friends. And try to avoid substances if you can.

• 39:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'd like to add, um.

• 39:59Shawn Ryan?

  This might sound kind of cheesy, but. I would add. Maybe watch this episode or something like this with with your old man or.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 40:10Shawn Ryan?

  With your mom because.

• 40:13Shawn Ryan?

  Sometimes it takes something like this to. For them to come to the real realization of what's really going on.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:19Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and how it's impacting their kids. And, uh. This is a way to do it where you don't actually have to tell them anything.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I'm glad you said that because I I do think that would be a great thing to do. For what you just mentioned, where it must, it will be hard for that parent to share all of that, just like it was for my dad. However, to be able to sit down and watch it and then maybe be ready for a question or two. Or a, I can relate to that. I think that you're spot on with that.

• 40:50Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:53Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that you?

• 40:56Shawn Ryan?

  Did you join the military for you or did you join the military for your dad?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Hmm. I think I a little bit of both. I think I joined it for me to prove that I was worth something. However, a lot of that stemmed from, uh, the experience with my dad. I also did want to make him proud. Uh, I know he, I remember when I was at seventeen, he asked him for his permission, like, hey, the recruiter needs you to sign this. And him saying like, are you sure? Like, he was, he was like, I don't know if that's a good idea. You know, maybe can you at least wait, you know, go to college for a year, get a job for a year, travel, whatever, just do something. So when you join, you're like nineteen, twenty, you're as opposed to seventeen, eighteen. I kept pressing him though, and and he did sign.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  And so I think part of me was wanting to him to be proud of me. But there was also a part of me wanting to prove to myself that I could do something worthwhile. And I would imagine a lot of guys from our community, uh, especially when I was in the teams. A lot of guys had similar type situations where they just wanted to prove something because they were coming from some challenges at home. So long answer, I think it was a little bit of both.

• 42:12Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:13Shawn Ryan?

  How'd your mom feel about it?

• 42:14Speaker 01

  My mom was scared. She didn't like the idea, uh, and, uh, and didn't want to also. And she was saying the same thing, like, why don't you just go to college or get a job or whatever it is? And I, but I was determined. And since my cousin had already was in the SEAL teams. I would imagine she just thought, and she knew we were close. She just thought like, well, I'm gonna do the best I can to tell him I don't want him to go just yet. But I think she finally kind of succumbed to just like, okay, I'll I'll sign it. And and I didn't go to boot camp at seventeen. I ended up going at eighteen, but I got the paperwork signed at seventeen.

• 42:50Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  So I don't think she was supportive, but in the whole time, even when I would deploy, I knew it would stress her out. On all my deployments, um, but I was just on my own personal mission. And I I did put her through a lot with all the deployments and my sister, as I reflect back on it.

• 43:06Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel like your dad was proud of you right off the bat? Just for signing the papers?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  He was, yeah.

• 43:12Shawn Ryan?

  And he knew what you were going to do?

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yes, he he knew that. Yeah, he knew I wanted to be a SEAL.

• 43:17Shawn Ryan?

  What year was it?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  This would have been in ninety seven. I joined the Navy in ninety eight. I went to boot camp in ninety eight, but if either late ninety seven or maybe it was early ninety eight is when I was still seventeen. Was when I signed up.

• 43:31Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would tell my younger self probably to listen to my parents. If I were to go back, I'd be like, bro, just, yeah, all those things like college, travel, get a job, whatever, just like live a little bit of life. It's not, the SEAL team is is not going anywhere. And of course, of what would later transpire with nine eleven, if you know, there's going to be enough to go around. But, um, yeah, I just was, I was just focused like I wanted, I had to get out of there. Not that there was like. Like I had to get out of this little dramatic, but it was like that was, I was focused on wanting to prove that I was, that I was worth something.

• 44:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So where do we go from there?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  So I, um. Before, before I joined or shipped off to boot camp, I, from Egypt, I stayed in touch with a really close friend of mine. Who, his parents were friends with my parents and his dad worked at the same company in Kansas City. So in the summers, he would come back and live essentially with his, as grandparents home, but in Kansas City, but we would, we're like best friends. And so we'd spend all summers together. And then I would, I'd get in, I'd have jobs. I worked at like a pizza shop in the mall or a road mode lot, standard kid stuff. I, um, worked at a gym and I would save up all my money. And I visited him once in my sophomore year, so I flew back to Cairo my sophomore year and hung out for like a month.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  And then my senior year, I flew back out too, uh, to as to their graduation, right before I went to Egypt. I'm sorry, right before I went to the Navy. And, um, we ended up actually climbing a pyramid while we we had done that.

• 45:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we did. Yeah, we, we, I remember. And it's illegal, you know, to do, you're not supposed to do that because people die falling off those pyramids, trying to climb them all the time. But we were just punk kids and we, um, I remember. Bribe our way. There's guards around there with AK forty sevens and, you know, nothing a little bit of cash can't solve.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  So we bribed the guards that kind of looked the other way. And I remember there's a group of us and it was, um, if it wasn't a full moon, it was pretty close to a full moon. And we, the way you climb the pyramids, at least how we did, you go up the apex or like the edge of it. And each stone is about four feet ish tall and it's limestone, so it kind of is crumbly. But you'd almost do like a muscle up, right? So you like push yourself up and the pyramid we climbed was key ops and it's about. Four hundred and forty feet. I might get checked here, but roughly around four hundred and forty feet. And so there's a lot of those like muscle ups going up all the way up the edge. And I remember seeing it at night, almost climbing into the moon. And on one side you have Cairo, one of the largest cities in the world with the Nile going right by it.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And the others, the Sahara Desert, that's just been illuminated, um, the sand illuminated by the moonlight. So it's this surreal experience. Yeah, and climbing up, but I remember how dangerous it was because chunks of this limestone, you're climbing up and they would just be like boom, boom, boom, like right past. And just thinking like, we didn't have any like climbing gear, helmets. I had like running shoes on and like a T-shirt and like, and like, like pants or whatever, but like. Yeah, but we had the guts of like, and maybe the nativity of, you know, a teenager to just go for it. And I remember being at the top of the pyramid, which is about half the size of the studio or so. And, um, and just standing and watching everything and just being like, this is unreal.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  But, um, we we did that and then we ended up climbing that pyramid with a, a, a family friend of one of the guys who owned a home in Den Haag in the, in Holland. And so after Egypt, we went to Holland for about a month and then I flew back to the States and a month later started boot camp.

• 47:17Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:18Shawn Ryan?

  So you got all the way to the top of that damn thing?

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would not recommend it and it's illegal, so you could get in trouble. But but I would not recommend it, most importantly, from a safety standpoint. Like, if you ask me today, like, let's do it. I'd be like, bro, I'll be happy drinking a cup of coffee, just enjoying the scenery. Right from the ground level. Maybe I'll hop on a camel. I don't know. Get a photo op. Who knows?

• 47:42Shawn Ryan?

  You ever think about how those things were built?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  I I do, and especially when you're standing, I don't know, have you ever been to the pyramids?

• 47:49Shawn Ryan?

  I've been to Cairo. I've never been to the pyramids.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you, I mean, I'd recommend it. I mean, of course, the touristy thing, but just from a life experience. Yeah, I have thought about it, especially when you're standing at the base and looking up at it. You're just like, how the fuck do they do this? And of course, you know, there's the, uh, there's a lot of theories of how, but, um, I could not help to think. That I don't know if man can pull this off. Even then, like this is epic to, you know, I can't think of another word for it. It's like this is unreal, especially being thousands of years old. Like I just, what about you? What do you think on the pyramids?

• 48:23Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I don't know. I mean.

• 48:27Shawn Ryan?

  There's two, there's two things that kind of resonate with me, that maybe, but I'm no physicist either.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 48:35Shawn Ryan?

  You know, Chris Beck?

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:37Shawn Ryan?

  Chris Beck says, I'm gonna butcher this, but he, uh, he was saying, I think they're built on, they're like right on top of a fault line.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 48:47Shawn Ryan?

  I think they're right on top of a fault line or something, and there's, there's like a bed of crystals or something, so that, he says that the ground may always, the ground may always be vibrating, and, and the way I kind of understood it, and he's, whatever, Chris is out there, but he's also really smart.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:06Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, you know, it's kind of like if you put a, a subwoofer under a table, and get it vibrating, you can kind of, you know, things will just start moving without even having to touch it, right? Because the vibration.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:19Shawn Ryan?

  And so I think he was kind of saying that that may have been happening where, where the ground is vibrating or whatever, and you can kind of steer these huge blocks without a tremendous amount of force.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 49:34Shawn Ryan?

  And then the other thing, and I haven't interviewed this guy yet, I probably, I'm sure somebody will go get him now, but

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:41Shawn Ryan?

  There's another guy who is out there saying that

• 49:46Shawn Ryan?

  maybe they were molded on top of each other, so they would take these forms, you know, kind of like, and like, like they would cast

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 49:55Shawn Ryan?

  The blocks on top of each other.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:58Shawn Ryan?

  That's, yeah, that's the, I don't think they got them up there with sticks.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, exactly, and that many of them, I, I just, you know, it's like one thing if it was just something kind of basic, but something that epic, and how precise they, they were with each other, I mean, it's off by, they're not off, they're like precisely planted, it's crazy.

• 50:20Shawn Ryan?

  But then there's all the tunnels and

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:22Shawn Ryan?

  passageways.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  I've actually been in them on tourist version of it, and it, you want to talk about claustrophobia? I mean, I'm not a very claustrophobic person, but I felt it in there, where I was like, okay, this is, can't imagine being some like guy a couple thousand years ago with like a torch crawling around in there, it's just like, okay, I'm, yeah, that's, I'm good on that, I'll do that once.

• 50:44Shawn Ryan?

  Are you an alien? You, you believe in aliens?

• 50:46Speaker 01

  I do believe in aliens, um, I just can't imagine there not being something else out there. It's just so vast, um, but I, I wouldn't say I'm like full blown conspiracy, like I'm up late at night, but I do feel that there's, there's probably something out there, what about you?

• 51:03Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think there is.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean,

• 51:06Shawn Ryan?

  I've, I've, I've really, I did a lot of, a lot of, I've done a lot of episodes on it, but I just,

• 51:15Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think there is.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 51:16Shawn Ryan?

  I think it's just us.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  That could be possible too.

• 51:19Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't have an experience where I'm like, absolutely, that's that, it's my thought is just more of, it's so vast, perhaps.

• 51:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So let's get back to, so you, you joined the Navy? What did, what did you do, what, did you go straight to BUDs or?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  No, I went to, so I joined the Navy in ninety-eight, and then went to Radio Man A School, and, uh, so for the listeners, it's a, essentially you needed a job that to go in those days in the SEAL teams to be able to, um, go to this SEAL team, so a job, basically I got trained in ship communications, so satellite communications, high frequency communications, um, in the beginnings of some like computer IT type stuff, and that particular job would end up being in IT, called IT in the Navy, but I went through Radio Man A School, and then checked into BUDs in, uh, not, uh, January, February of ninety-nine, um, when I was eighteen, and then that started the, the BUDs SEAL journey.

• 52:23Shawn Ryan?

  How was that?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  It was hard. You know, some guys are all like have bravado, like it wasn't as hard as I thought, but for me, I was like, ah, it's pretty hard. Uh, really, okay, wow, what's going on with me, but I, you know, and also, it was hard, I believe, for being that young, you know, I was eighteen, nineteen in BUDs, and were you also young in BUDs?

• 52:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I think.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Same age-ish?

• 52:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'd same, I joined it, signed the papers at seventeen, and then I was in BUDs at eighteen.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, so same thing, and I, I remember being really intimidated by, you know, actually seeing a SEAL instructor and just being like, oh, that's a SEAL. Whoa, and that's one of the instructors, and then being around I probably a lot of the same story a lot of guys tell is, you know, guys are like division one athletes, or just these guys that could be on the cover of a fitness magazine, and uh, and then just looking at them and just being like, I don't look like that, um, I can't run like that, or so, you know, what am I doing? I do not, and I'm still like the, you know, the equivalent of a freshman in college type guy, you know, so and, and, and I came in with kind of low self-esteem anyway, and so seeing that, just thinking like, wow, all these guys are like Adonis's, I don't know if I belong here,

• 53:36Speaker 01

  uh, and then really intimidated by everything, but I just kept showing up. I think I was a very average, uh, BUDs student, and, but I just, I think, just kept showing up, and I just did the advice that one instructor said, which isn't just, I said often, is just make it to the next meal, right, so for the listeners, it's just if something's overwhelming, and I, I use this today in my everyday life, and I use it with my clients as a therapist, that if things feel so overwhelming, then you can't do it, just make it to the next meal, like really truncate it down to something you can do, and if you can't make it to the next meal, just make it to the top of the hour, if you can't make it to the top of the hour, just make it five more minutes. And, and that's just what I did, I just did what they told me, I remember one instructor saying that, and just being like, okay,

• 54:18Speaker 01

  and then I just started using that, and then next thing you know, um, I just kind of kept progressing through BUDs.

• 54:24Shawn Ryan?

  Where was your cousin at when you got there?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  He was at SEAL Team Eight, and, um, and then he had applied and got into the Naval Academy, uh, so actually, when I was in BUDs, he was at SEAL Team Eight, and, and at the time, you know, that was like Kosovo and all that was going on, so that was like the place to be, so I remember being jealous, being like, oh my gosh, she's actually doing the thing.

• 54:44Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys keeping in touch?

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we were, and in those days, you know, it was letters, uh, I didn't have a cell, there's no cell phone, so I'd have, you know, uh, quarters and and payphones, calling cards, you know, like, old school, but yeah, we did keep in touch, and he would, um, he was a source of support for me of just like writing me encouraging letters and things like that, and, um, I think he even visited BUDs once, for some reason he was out there, and, um, and then I got some, some heat from the instructors when they kind of found out I was related to a SEAL, I was trying to keep that under wraps.

• 55:18Shawn Ryan?

  They didn't know.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  They didn't really know, because we had different last names.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  And, uh, but I remember a couple of them put it together, uh, and this one guy, instructor Reno, and Alberto was a great guy, great instructor, very, very tough, but very fair, and I remember him giving me a little extra love, in a good way though, like as far as a little extra attention, but it wasn't bad, he licked out for me too.

• 55:42Shawn Ryan?

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• 56:26Shawn Ryan?

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• 57:05Shawn Ryan?

  Use my link and get a free seven-day trial with no credit card, and ten dollars off your first month if you join.

• 57:15Shawn Ryan?

  What's the best piece of advice P gave you while you were in there?

• 57:22Speaker 01

  I remember him saying, kind of what I was already saying, like you'll see guys that are, you know, elite athletes and don't worry about any of that. Just worry about you, worry about contributing to your boat crew and, and, and not falling behind, you know, just you're a team player, just, um, the stuff that we're all taught, you know, it's show up early, leave late, do the right thing when nobody's looking. I remember him telling me those things before I even got to BUDS. And so when I was hearing them again, it was like, oh, I've heard this before. And so I just, and now that I think about it, a lot of those, those things have stayed with me as I would continue to SEAL teams. And, and even as I went back to grad school even to be like, am I

• 58:05Speaker 01

  supposed to be doing this in my 40s? You know, like all the other students are like 23 years old, but they're really smart. What am I doing with my life? But it allowed me to like, anything hard in my life, it allowed me to just kind of stick to those basics.

• 58:17Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. How was Hell Week for you?

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Hell Week sucked. Um, I remember the night prior, we had, and maybe it was this way for you guys. I don't, I don't know, but we had ordered a bunch of Domino's pizzas. Cause for some reason we always got Domino's pizza. I don't know why, but I remember it was stale and we were watching, um, some movies, maybe it was Braveheart or something like that. There's some on VHS and, uh, I remember not even like knowing I had my own pizza, like a medium pepperoni pizza. And thinking like, I need the calories of this because Hell Week's about to kick off tonight. And I was so nervous, I could barely eat it. Like I felt sick and then just being struggling, be like, you need the fucking calories.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  And so I didn't, I only got maybe a few pieces down and I couldn't hold it down. And then Hell Week started and it was, it was tough. Hypothermia, like most guys, a bunch of chafing, um, felt like it would never end, but I just kept using those analogies of just make it to the next meal, make it to pick a palm tree on, with the boat on your head and you're running around, just make it to that. And then, okay, you got to that. Okay. Now make it to, you see a beach, a car in a parking lot on the beach, like just make it to that red car. And I think just really truncating it down got me through it, but it was definitely the cold water, which I believe is, is unique. Not that other selections don't have cold water, of course they do, but specifically BUDS is a big thing and thinking that was the main mental game.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Especially in surf tortures and all of that where all you're doing is sitting there. For the listeners that don't know, you just interlock your arms with your buddies and you lay in the water until your body temperature just goes down. And then they'll at some point bring you out, try to warm you up or check you to see if you have hypothermia. But, uh, but there's a lot of time in your own head, just being frozen. Um, and that's where a lot of guys quit, as you know. And I remember that was the big mental game for me, especially as a teenager. That was tough, especially seeing the big athletes, the guys, the Adonis type guys that I was talking about, like then they start rolling off and quitting. And then it's like, man, that guy, if he quit, what am I doing? I was at prom this time last year.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? This guy was like, you know, division one champion and, uh, last year, you know, like what is going on? And then just thinking like, well, dude, just keep going. Just make it to the next meal. Just at some point this evolution will end. And you're doing it. And I remember like looking to my like left and right and seeing guys that were my friends is thinking like, okay, like Tom's doing it. I can do it. Like, okay, I know, you know, and if Robin can do it, I can do it. And it just, I know it sounds so basic, but that's what got me through, but it sucked. I'm definitely one of those guys that isn't saying like, it wasn't that bad. I'm one of the guys that was like, yeah, it was horrible.

• 1:01:04Shawn Ryan?

  It is, it is crazy, man. Like, I don't, I don't like injecting my own experiences into the episodes, but

• 1:01:12Shawn Ryan?

  like, I was like a buck 45 maybe. Going, I wrestled 140th senior year in high school and I remember like showing up and I'm like, holy shit. Like these are fucking men.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what, well put.

• 1:01:27Shawn Ryan?

  I just got hair under my armpits like two weeks.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  You nailed it. The men thing. I agree. It was like, I remember thinking that too. Like these are men. I'm like a boy. I'd like to think I'm a man, but I'm, yeah, I'm just getting hair under my armpits.

• 1:01:39Shawn Ryan?

  Then you see him quit and you're like,

• 1:01:44Shawn Ryan?

  how the fuck am I still here?

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Shawn Ryan?

  And it is, it's like,

• 1:01:51Shawn Ryan?

  well, it seems like a whole nother life ago, but it's, it's, it's just, it's, it's, uh, it's really interesting, you know, to see who makes it after the, after it's all over and who's gone and it's, it's pretty wild.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  It really is, isn't it? And you know, I don't know if you get it anymore, but every now and then I'll get somebody will ask me like, you were a SEAL? Even now, I'm like, yeah, they're like, for how long? I'll be like 20 years. And they're like, really? Like they imagine I'm supposed to look like the rock or something, you know what I mean? I'm like, I'm sorry to let you down.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  I guess I've been letting down everybody this whole time. Just some average Joe, you know? I'll get people be like, yeah, it's like, I could just like be next to you in the grocery store and then have no idea. And I'm like, uh, thanks.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do go to the grocery store.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Maybe we'll cross paths. Well, you don't look like the CPA I thought either.

• 1:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. But, uh,

• 1:02:54Shawn Ryan?

  oh, any, did you have any hangups?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  I did. Um, when I, I got rolled and I was rolled in second phase and for the listeners, it's like the dive phase and it's, um, kind of one of the Hell Week in first phase is the big crucible, obviously. And second phase, it's called the pool week. Um, essentially a lot of drills and tests underwater with scuba tanks. And I, um, I remember I failed ditch and dawn. And so for the listeners, all that is, is you, you jump in and you, there's a sequence, you're in the pool and you take your tanks off, your weight, uh, weight belt. All these things in a certain, it has to be in the way they teach it. And I was so intimidated and as I reflect back on it, probably because I was a teenager

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  and was so intimidated by everything. And it wasn't that hard when I think back on it. It was just some basic steps. No reason I should have, but I just kept messing it up and, and I failed it. And I was, um, did, I remember thinking like, I might be booted out of here. I've already been through Hell Week and everything, but, um, I was rolled and I just did a lot. I just kept practicing that, that sequence. They had these, um, when I was rolled back, these balsa wood tanks, scuba tanks. And I remember after the day I would just rep out, I don't know, like 50, a hundred, as long, until I got tired forever, just repped out the sequences every single day. And then, um, when I went back through, I just passed everything first time. Um, so it, there was a setback though.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  I, I was not sure if I was, thankfully they rolled me and didn't boot me on. But yeah, a lot of guys, I mean, I wish I, it's definitely more of a glorious thing in that world. If you're getting booted for pool comp, which is like the big test, but I didn't even make it to that.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  I was so nervous, I didn't even make it to that.

• 1:04:41Shawn Ryan?

  Oh man. What class were you?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  I started with two 25 and finished with two 26.

• 1:04:46Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, right. What class were you? Two 40 and finished with two 41. Nice. Cool. Close. And so where did you go? Where did you want to go?

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I wanted to go to the, to Little Creek, uh, because my cousin was there and also, well, he had just was, and I can't remember if he was still there or was in the process of going to the academy. But it was in that, that essentially it was right around, he was still there. And, and at the time Kosovo, Bosnia, all of that was like going on. And that was like where the action was. And so in the SEAL teams, I was like, that's where you wanted to go. And I remember putting in my dream sheet for the listeners, like they give you the opportunity to list what SEAL teams you go to, whether it's Little Creek or San Diego or perhaps Hawaii. And I picked all Little Creek eight, two, four, I think is what I put. And then they gave me SEAL Team three.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Which is in San Diego, which I wasn't mad about. I was just like, oh man, that means I can't, um, going to Bosnia is out of the question. And you know, doing, uh, you know, being a team with my cousins out of the question. Um, it wasn't, I was mad. I was just like, oh bummer, but it was certainly needs the Navy where the Navy's like, yeah, cool story. You want to go there? You're young and single. We're going to throw you wherever we need you. And I went to SEAL Team three, which was a blessing in disguise, um, at the time. Uh, because when I, I checked into SEAL Team three, there was a platoon, Delta platoon that was looking for new guys. And the platoon chief would end up being one of my biggest mentors, uh, a guy by the name of Todd Sharbat. I don't know if you've ever known Todd or not, but

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  he had been a dev group guy from red squadron and had just left and was now a platoon chief. And I remember, uh, they were looking for new guys and myself and a close friend of mine, Mark Carter,

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  were asked, like, we were, we were just young guys. We're like, we, that's all we need. The young guys, whatever, just get a fresh body in here. And we screened, not screened, we interviewed for this platoon. And I remember going.

• 1:06:44Shawn Ryan?

  Interview for the platoon?

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But this is before, in those days, like.

• 1:06:47Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean they're looking for new guys?

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a great question. So at the time there was SQT wasn't a thing. So we were waiting for STT SEAL Tactical Training. And so we were just like in this pool of guys and this platoon, somebody had gotten in trouble, I think. And they're like, we need a new body to fill that spot. And so they picked Mark and I to interview us before STT started. So the only training we had was BUDS at the time, which was a very unique kind of era in the SEAL. It doesn't happen as, as you know, now, but for the listeners, it doesn't happen like that now. It's a lot more organized. Uh, but I remember going into the platoon hut and they were just asking basic questions, just to get a feel for, will this guy be a good fit for the platoon? And I remember.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  That they were like, you know, like where are you from? Um, you know, what interests you like about the SEAL teams? What would you like to do in the SEAL teams? This and that. Very basic. Cause we were just, there's not much to, I remember them saying like, you're not bringing anything to the platoon, except your youth.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  I remember that specifically like, so you're going to be probably a 60 gunner carrying heavy stuff and you have a problem with that. And I remember thinking like, no, I'll make sure I hit the squat rack, you know? I'll, yeah, no, I'll do whatever. But what, what, how I ended up getting picked up over Mark was, uh, they asked us what our hobbies were. And my hobby was I played guitar ever since I was like 12 and took lessons and played in like garage bands, whatever. It wasn't that great. I was a hobbyist though. And Todd, the platoon chief was like, oh, I just picked up guitar. I, could you give lessons and tune my guitar? And I said, yeah, easy. And he was like, okay. And then I guess when Mark came in, they asked him like, hey, what is your, I'm not making this up. What is your hobby? And he said, oh, rollerblading.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  So, so I remember him telling me that I'm like, you roller blade? He's like, I don't know. I kind of freaked out. I just didn't know what to say. And so I said, roller blade. And so, so anyway, they're like, oh, cool. At least like Alex can give the platoon chief a guitar lesson and tune his guitar. So that's how I got picked up in that. Holy shit. I know. Yeah. So thankfully. Anybody but a roller blade. Yeah. They're like, oh, my God, you blade, bro.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  And I don't even remember him doing it. He just kind of freaked out and said something. And so, yeah, that's how I got in to my first platoon. Yeah, totally. Just like, just starting at a race, just going. And so.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Dude, totally. Just like neon. You're out. Totally. They're like, I was embarrassed. You might need to go over to like SEAL Team Five. I don't know if we have room for you in SEAL Team Three.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  I remember just. Skate your ass down the hall. Totally, totally. I remember thinking like, thank God he said that. Like, I love you, Mark. We were roommates and close friends, but I was like, thank God, dude. Like, he was a sharp guy. I have no doubt he killed that interview up until that part.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I started in that platoon a little bit and then went to STT, which was the precursor SQT for the listeners. And all that is just more advanced training where land warfare, CQB, diving, things like that. So the platoon was starting to work up while I was still in STT and then rolled back in with the platoon. And we were in ARG platoons. What that meant was we were assigned to the the Mew or the Marine Corps on a ship that was going to have this really cool pre nine 11 deployment where we were going to like basically join the Navy, see the world. So we were going to Hawaii and then Guam and Okinawa, Thailand, Australia, all these things. And, and then the last portion of it, we were going to Bahrain for the last

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  three months and doing VBSS or Visit Board Search and Seizure, which essentially for the listeners, it's just ship takedowns. And what was going on was there was an oil embargo on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, post the Gulf War, and they were smuggling oil. And so all those SEAL, that SEAL Team Three was doing, I think some of the other, maybe eight and five did a little bit, but mostly it was the SEAL Team Three mission, because that was our area of operation. We were taking down those ships. None of it was like some crazy gunfights, but that was the thing at that time. Like, my buddies would be like, dude, you're at SEAL Team Three going to Bahrain to do ship takedowns? Like, they were envious. And I was proud and stoked to actually do a real world mission. That was, I just wanted to do one. And I equated

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  to like, if you're a professional baseball player, playing baseball your whole life and never playing a game and just wanting to prove yourself on one game, even if that mission as a SEAL was kind of not that big of a deal, but I wanted to at least do one mission. This is pre nine 11. So that was like the, the platoon before, you know, before we left, that was like the adventure. That was, that was exactly what I signed up for. To be able to do that, you know, just an adventure. Let's rewind real quick. Of course. Did your dad go to your Bud's graduation? He did. How was that? He was really proud. I remember him even being like in like, almost like tears, like

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  holding back tears. And, and I remember him saying like, over and over again, how proud he was of me, almost to the point where it was on repeat. Like, I get it, Dad. Like, thank you. I get it. I get it. But now, when I think back on it, I bet he, he was proud and he knew kind of what had happened in my upbringing, too. He just didn't have the vocabulary or the ability to be able to share that. But I think it came out when I saw how proud he was at Bud's graduation. I bet that felt good, huh? Yeah, it did. It did. And the whole, it was never like with my dad that I hated him or anything like that. It was more of like, I knew he was struggling and together, we'd

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  been through a lot together because of Vietnam. Man. That's cool to hear. Yeah. So back to Team Three. Yeah. So back to Team Three. So, pre nine 11. So we, I remember, you know, we left and we went to Hawaii, which was incredible. You know, we did that whole thing and we found ourselves in Darwin, Australia, which is a northern town of Australia. And we had done some training up there. I think the Marines had also broken off and done some training. And our next thing was we were going to go to East Timor, which is an island chain just north of Australia. And they had this big civil war that had gone through. And we were

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  going to go through there with a humanitarian mission of just dropping off medical supplies and food. And I think some of the construction, CD type guys might fix up some buildings, basically just do something to help this country. That was on the, on the schedule. But then we were out, we'd just done training, we're in Darwin, and we were at this, I'll never forget, at this restaurant bar called Rourke's Drift. And as we're sitting there, we started getting words that we needed to hurry up and get back to the ship. Something had happened. And, you know, we were all mad. Here we were on shore leave, sailors on shore leave, finally getting to like, you know, we'd been training this whole time, finally getting to like, let loose a little bit. And then even guys were like, are you sure?

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Do we need to send everybody? Just send like Alex and the new guys back there. He can figure it out. We'll tell him where we're at. He can come back and tell us if we need to go back. And certainly, I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll do whatever you need me to do. But I remember the word was coming out like, no, everyone needs to go back. Like, all the Marines, everybody. So to get three ships back, filled with Marines and sailors, I have no idea. And the thousands of people who are just scattered across this town, like, we need to get you all back. It's an emergency. And which I didn't, the day was September 11. And, but we had no idea. And I remember just thinking, just like, wow, we finally trained hard. I just want to like, have a fun night in Australia. And so, we go back to the ship. And I remember walking into the galley of the ship I was assigned to, the

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  LPD eight, the USS Dubuque. At the time, it was one of the oldest ships in the Navy, and it's since been decommissioned. But I remember walking into the galley, which is the cafeteria for the listeners, and seeing on these TVs, the Twin Towers, and we're on fire and watching another plane hit. And then just thinking like, just so dumbfounded, like, what is, like, most people, like, what is happening? That must be an accident, like air traffic control, who knows? Or maybe a pilot was dying by suicide. I don't know. And then, sure enough, more and more Marines were coming in, the towers start falling. I remember even watching a guy punch the wall in the, on ships or metal, you know, likely breaking his hand. I have no idea. But, you know, and just seeing all of this

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  emotion, especially from all these Marines and sailors, a lot of them coming in from parting. So they were half in the bag. And then just like watching it and just all of us just crowded in this galley on this ship, watching this, almost like, what is happening? And then, the next day, we got word, hey, you're not allowed to get off the ship. Like, we're something, this has been an attack, especially with the Pentagon and, and all of that. And so we, they kept the East Timor mission going, because we were still kind of in the, what are we going to do as a country? What's happening? And so we did end up going to East Timor, did that humanitarian thing, which was interesting. Nothing to like, move the needle. We just helped people. That was only a couple of days. And then we were steaming

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  for the Pakistan, out the coast of Pakistan to support the invasion of Afghanistan. Shit. Yeah. And I remember calling, right before my platoon, right before we went into Pakistan, actually, we, my platoon was part of a small base at Jakob, Jakobabad, Pakistan. And we had the AFSoC 53s, which were a CSAR mission. They were stationed there. And sometimes there's a AFSoC 130. And we were security for these birds that were flying around, dropping off medevac-ing or dropping off supplies to the ODAs that were doing the invasion with the Northern Alliance. But I remember before we went in, I was, I finally, they turned

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  off, I forgot what the term was on a ship where you don't have any communication, but we weren't allowed to have any communication with anybody at that point. And so finally, they're like, okay, for all the guys getting ready, the SEAL platoon that's getting ready to go in, we'll allow you a phone call, or a couple of phone calls. And I remember calling my mom, and I didn't, I wasn't able to say anything other than, you know, I love you and all of that. And then calling my dad and, and trying to play it cool. Like, I just can't talk to him. He's like, I know where you're going. And I was like, yeah. And he's like, and he kept saying, I wish I was with you and your team so I could help you call in airstrikes. Like, this old man, like, and he meant it. Like, I have no doubt in my mind, if he was able to get teleported there, he would have thrown on kid and gone

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  in and, and helped us. But I always remember that. There was like this warrior spirit was still alive in him. And, but telling him, you know, I love you and, and I'll, I don't know when we'll be able to contact you. And, but we flew into Jakobabad. And then we were doing some of that CSAR type stuff. Nothing crazy. The war was with the ODAs, pushing the Northern Alliance, you know, the Taliban out. And then we went with the Marines into an area called Camp Rhino, which was an old hunting camp outside of Kandahar. And we staged out of that and started doing mechanized reconnaissance with Humvees below the city of Kandahar as it was falling. I would love to say that we got into some like

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  really cool missions and airstrikes and this and that. But the reality was, that didn't happen. But I was so proud to be a part of, you know, a small spoke of the wheel of progress of that invasion. I was somewhat part of it. And I just, especially as a young guy, I was 21, first deployment. You're only 21? I was only 21 on the Afghan invasion and. And there wasn't many guys who partook or protect were part of the Afghan invasion. You know, it's like I said, mostly ODAs, um, special operations, uh, paramilitary guys and, and the Marines, a little bit of the Marines, uh, from the Mew that I was on. But that was very limited and so I felt honored to be on that. And at that time, we had, we thought maybe the war would be over and that's it.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Like, you know, that was 2002, maybe it would be over. We had no idea that it would draw out to what it was. Man, an old hunting camp. Yeah, I, I guess some old hunting camp. How are they hunting? I don't know, something with falcons. I don't know. I remember a lot of it might've been rumors, so I, I don't know. But it was this old camp from Amula Omar, um, the leader of the Taliban, actually. Is this Gecko? This is outside of Gecko. It was not Gecko. Um, I know exactly what you're talking about. It was another one. It's the Camp Ryan. It was further out. And, um, it was just this camp in the middle of nowhere. And what was interesting, even with the mechanized reconnaissance and the SEAL teams, at the time, we didn't have any ground mobility training at all. There was like no Humvees or there's nothing.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  And I remember we had these Humvees that were turned over by SEAL Team Eight, actually. Uh, they had done a couple of small things and that they had somehow acquired them from some CBs or whatever, somehow. And so I remember not even my platoon chief asking me like, hey, you're going to be one of the drivers. Have you ever driven on nods? And I was like, no, I've never driven on nods. I'm like, you can do that? People do that? And he was like, oh my gosh, yes. So he made myself and all the other drivers, because we didn't have a workup on it, just do laps around the airfield at night, just laps and laps, changing tires on night vision. Um, and we had done a lot of like foot patrolling and stuff like that prior on night vision. But it was not the modern units that we would, that would happen, you know, with technology.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  This was pre nine 11, you know, this is just at nine 11. So, you know, things like lasers and all that were still kind of starting out. Suppressors, all of the things, right? This, we were, some of the tactics were, you know, from Vietnam even, uh, which is kind of crazy to think about. The only real action in the SEAL teams, I'm sure you know this, but you know, it was like Grenada, Panama. Um, and those were very short-lived, um, you know, experiences. And I don't mean to minimize the guys that were in those, but it wasn't like a prolonged campaigns where tactics and, um, and technologies could evolve with input from the operator. It was just boom, short and quick. So, yeah, the, the guys who invaded in oh one, their gear, their depth of knowledge

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  was way different than 10 years later, by far, like light years. It was a whole different military. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. Where do we go from here? So that ended, I remember, uh, and then at the time, the SEAL teams were doing this like Force 21, where they were creating a new SEAL team on each coast. So on the west coast, it was SEAL Team Seven and on the east coast, SEAL Team 10. And because of that restructuring, SEAL Team Three, uh, had a short workup. So I came back to just a six month workup before I deployed again. Um, but my platoon chief Todd, I remember him telling me like, hey, man. Um, and him coming from Dev Group, there's something interesting about him where he was just a better shot than everybody, better tactically than everybody.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  He was fit. He just, he had confidence, not that other guys in the SEAL teams didn't have all those attributes, but he was my mentor. So I saw that and was like, I want to be like that. I didn't know much about the development group, other than Rogue Warrior. And especially being on the west coast teams, there wasn't that many, you know, guys coming from Dev Group out there. You know, uh, so it was, most of those guys stayed on the east coast. And so I didn't know much about the development group, but he was telling me, he's like, I think you should screen.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  And, and I thought like, oh, okay, yeah, maybe in like five more years or I'll do a couple more platoons and, uh, yeah, sure. And he's like, no, I think you should screen now. And, uh, and I was young and, uh, I was like, okay. And then, you know, we get back from that deployment and then he tells me, hey, I talked to the training, um, chief from Green Team or from selection, and they're actually looking to try something new where in the past, to go to Dev Group, historically, you know, you were maybe mid to late twenties, you had done at least five years in the SEAL teams. And, um, and then that way, that was like you, older guys, older quote unquote, you know? Um, and that's what I thought. So I was like, oh, Todd, I'm not like that yet. I'd like to be. He's like, well, they're trying to get it to where they are getting a young guy in there.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  They want to try it, a test where there's a younger guy that comes in. So then that way, when he makes it through selection at, let's say 23, um, those extra years are spent learning their tactics and their techniques. And you're getting mentored by them and not, um, and not the SEAL teams. And that, so they're kind of after it. And one of them asked me any potential guys that might be good for that. And I mentioned your name, would you be into it?

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  And then I had this imposter syndrome kind of come up and just thought, well, I can't say no to my mentor. And if he sees something to me that I don't, um, I do trust him. So I just thought, okay, yeah, I'll, I'll give it a shot. And then I, um, so I screened at 22 and I remember the, the cadre saying that like, hey, we're trying this out on you. It's probably not going to work, you know, but we wanted to see what happens. Cause it might change the way that we do selection where, um, if you come in, you'll be the youngest guy we've, we've ever put through selection, but if you do make it, that might open the door for more younger guys. So that they can spend, you know, do limited time on the SEAL teams. And then if they're younger and then come over, so that they can just kind of hang out being a, a, a newer guy for a long time.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  So that then one day they become an assault team leader, they've maximized their potential. They've got a bunch of reps in. And I remember just thinking like, that was way above my head at the time. I was like, okay, I'll give it my best shot. And thankfully I got picked up. Um, I finished my workup on my second platoon at SEAL Team Three. We were a jungle platoon, so we went to Guam and, uh, we were training there and everything was going great. We also had a bunch of other cool trips lined up, like Thailand, Australia, again, all of these like cool places to go. Just if we weren't going to be in Afghanistan, at least there's these cool exercises. And, uh, but then at the time, the Iraq war was starting to gain a little bit of traction.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  And we got reconsolidated in Kuwait, um, with SEAL Team Three. So the all SEAL Team Three minus one platoon, all reconsolidated for the invasion. Um, so we left Guam, uh, to get ready for that.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  Um, it was, our first mission was to take down the oil fields, uh, in the southern peninsula of Basra, which is the southern part of Iraq, on something called the Al Fa peninsula. And what it was, was these big oil fields and then also these oil rigs that were off the coast, uh, pumping stations essentially where ships could come up and get, dump a bunch of oil and, and move on. And so it took all of SEAL Team Three was going to take this down with the British 40th Commando. And, um, so we were doing these big workups. And as far as I know, it was the first time a SEAL team had, together had done a mission. Um, since then, perhaps it's happened, but I know at least in 2003, that was the first time that like the full SEAL team had done something together.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  And my platoon, we were on the oil field and we were essentially, um, going to land on a Air Force 53. We had a DPV or Desert Patrol Vehicle, which was essentially a doom buggy that had a bunch of machine guns on it. That was very, the engine was very underpowered, kind of a legacy type thing, but it fit really well into a helicopter. And, um, so that was going to be that a blocking, the vehicle was going to be a blocking position. My team was going to be a blocking position as the 40th Commando, uh, took down the oil fields. On the workup though, in the Kuwaiti desert, um, I remember, um, part of my job was the appointment of the platoon. Uh, as soon as the helicopter landed, I was going to release a cargo strap for the, the DPV to roll off.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  And I, I have my hands on the cargo strap. And then as, this is just training, um, as the helicopters there starts to brown out. And then it starts to like kind of tilt and then the rotors start hitting the ground and we just crash and the tail snaps off. And I remember I had the, the, my hand on the cargo strap. And as I got flung back to the guy behind me, I released the cargo strap. And then I had my feet on the frame of the DPV as it's almost like launching at me like a dog on a taunt leash, just like wanting to kill me. That's what it felt like. And my feet were on the frame and then it finally just settled. And you could smell all this fuel and everything in the air and the dust was settling. And then we thankfully got out of the helicopter. Nobody was killed.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Guys were banged up a little bit, but that was, um, before the war, that war started.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  And then, you know, during that time, we're living in the desert, quitting Aliyah Salim Air Base, and then finally, the zero hour, zero hour, or the moment of an invasion approached. And I remember, we were flying in on the 53s, and then just feeling the, almost excitement, like another invasion, right? Like, wow, we are invading. This is crazy. I never thought we, I didn't think we would actually do it. I thought it was gonna be a standard military hurry up and wait, train, train, train. And then, all of a sudden, like, okay, calm it down. Politically, we've, we've figured this thing out. But there we were, and they were, pre-assault fires were going on in this oil fields, from Tomahawk cruise missiles

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  to AC-130s. And I remember, when we finally landed, and being the point man, I was, you know, I released that cargo strap, the DPV rolled off, and I took my first step on Iraqi soil. And right as I took my step, I saw a vehicle, a technical, an Iraqi technical, and an A-10 shoot a Maverick right into it. So like, first step, boom. That was like, welcome to Iraq.

• 1:28:51Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. That night, we went Winchester on an AC-130. Just what's, all that means for the listeners is, AC-130 is a big cargo plane with a bunch of, like, a cannon and all sorts of munitions on it, and very good for close air support. And it shot all of its ammunition, and just at different Iraqi targets. But we flew back from that mission. And let me back up. As that was going on, SEAL Team 3 was also taking down these oil platforms, these oil out in the ocean, and this pump station, also that was right on the beach. So there was a lot of coordination that was going on. But all of it was successful. I remember, we had gotten back, and my Master Chief of SEAL Team 3 brought in all the

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  guys that had screened for DEV Group. I had orders, because I had, this was in March, and Green Team was starting, I believe, in April, of, like, so it's really close, like, just a few weeks out. And he pulled this all in, and, and I appreciated him doing this. He said, all right, he was from DEV Group, so I think that's why he wanted, he put a little extra effort in this. And he said, all right, guys, here's the thing. You have a choice. You can fly back now, because you have orders, back to the States, and you can start Green Team. I already talked to the Green Team cadre. They understand, if you want to go with SEAL Team 3 with us, as we drive with the Marines to Baghdad, your orders can be postponed a year. Like, they get it. Like, they understand that, of course, you'd want to be on the invasion. Like, they'll, they'll hold the spot for you. But it's

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  gonna be up to you guys, and I just need to know an answer right now. Because if we start driving to Baghdad, and you change your mind, good fucking luck. Like, I'm not pulling any strings to get you out of there. I need you. And I remember him asking the four of us, and I was the only guy that was single. And I was like, let's go to fucking Baghdad. That's where I was at. But the, the other guys were married and all that, and, and I remember them being like, well, I don't know. And then I remembered that Master Chief saying, also, here's the thing. I don't believe these wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, are going anywhere. Which was different than what most guys were thinking at the time. And he said, if, if you want to hang around and keep fighting in these wars, you're gonna want to be at a JSOC squadron. And so, my recommendation is that, even though I need

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  all of you guys to be with us on the drive to Baghdad, professionally, I would recommend that you just go to the command. But do whatever you want, and let me know by the end of the day. And then, at that point, all the other guys were like, they wanted to go back. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna take his advice. I'm gonna just roll the dice, and hopefully I make it.

• 1:31:18Shawn Ryan?

  It's a tough decision.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. It was. And so, we boarded on, I remember, they were calling them like Freedom Flights, where you just basically chartered a civilian plane, flying back to the States. And I flew back. I didn't have, own much. I had a small storage unit with a little U-Haul trailer. I loaded up my truck and drove across country, and started Green Team within, I don't know, a couple weeks, a week, maybe. And that's when that chapter ended, and the DEV Group chapter started.

• 1:31:47Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Let's take a break.

• 1:31:53Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:34:33Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Alex, we're back from the break. Getting ready to get into Green Team.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was interesting, going from the West Coast to the East Coast. And I didn't really know anyone out there. But I moved in with an old friend of mine in his house while I went through Green Team or selection for the Development Group. And, and being the, at the time at least, the youngest guy to at least attempt it, I also found myself, just like I was in BUDs, feeling almost intimidated, imposter syndrome, around, you know, these instructors. A lot of the instructors were, you know, guys that were at the top of their game, super talented, and even thinking to myself, like, wow, I don't know if I belong here, looking at some of the other guys that were students, who had more time in the SEAL

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Teams, had these big reputations, and just thinking, like, how did I end up here? But then, just going back to that same mentality of just, just make it to the next meal, or make it to the next evolution, or the next house run. And when I went through, I would say I was maybe an average, best student. But, but I just kind of kept kicking the can down the road, and passing different evolutions. And it was about, the one I went through was, in those days, it was about seven months. But I was also, there's a couple of years where they had SEALs, where part of the mobility also. So you went through all the assault section part of it, and then you went through mobility, meaning you would learn more ground

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  mobility stuff, and then also the boats, and drive the boats. But it was only for, like, two years, where guys had both. It was in 2002 and 2003, when I went through in 2003. So the Green Team was about 10 months long, because of that. Because I almost had both Green Teams. It was brutal. And, yeah. However, I'm so glad I had that foundation of mobility, whether it was like waterborne or ground mobility, because that was needed in, when I would become an assault team leader, I had a better understanding of all of mobility assets, but also ground mobility, and specifically Afghanistan up in the mountains. Just getting more, more knowledge in that realm, really gave me a real depth of knowledge as an operator.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  But, so we went through 10 months of that, and then-

• 1:36:57Shawn Ryan?

  You were, you were 23 when you went to Green Team?

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:01Shawn Ryan?

  Were you the, and you were basically a case study?

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  I was a case study, yes, at the time.

• 1:37:06Shawn Ryan?

  So were you the only- Like, how much younger were you than the other?

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  I would say the next youngest guy was probably twenty six or seven. Um, and yeah, and I was twenty three and I just turned twenty three also.

• 1:37:21Shawn Ryan?

  And with one deployment.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, technically two, uh, because, uh, I had that, that second deployment was shortened. It was just six months. So yeah, basically one and a half is what I would say. But, um, yeah, not much. So I had limited experience and was young and, um, and struggled with imposter syndrome. I had all those things kind of like buzzing around where I was like, oh, man. Um, and then thinking, you know, you go to a selection like that and it's like, okay, if you don't make it, where a lot of guys don't, but then I would, you know, in those days I would go to Little Creek, which was fine with me. But I, that wasn't, I didn't move from San Diego to, to go to Little Creek. Um, but I would have just, I knew I'm like, okay, if I don't make it, I'm just going to go to a SEAL team.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Whatever eight, two, four, whatever it was, and just do some more time there and enough time to hopefully get a chance to come back. That was my, my backup plan. Not that I was relying on a backup plan, but I, I was just committed. I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to be the best assaulter, um, that I can possibly be. And that's the place I want to go.

• 1:38:24Shawn Ryan?

  So what is, what is day one of training like? I mean, what it?

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  It was, um, definitely going back in the way back machine a while back, but I recall as a PT. It was, um, you know, pushups, situps, pull ups, swim, run. And, and those are the only, they will say those are, they're giving you the answers to the test. That's the only time you'll get it in green team of this is what you're going to need. These are, you need to do X amount of pull ups, like perfect, like those are the answers to the test. And so, and for me, you know, I was in, in Iraq or Kuwait, trying my best to stay in shape, but there wasn't a pool. There, there wasn't, um, you couldn't really run. A lot of the running was on a treadmill. And, um, and then I had to move. So it wasn't like, it was hard to stay in like peak shape.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  But I was young, so I did have youth on my side and was able to, to pass all that. So the first day is more of like that PRT or that, that workout, that test. And then it was, if I recall, it's more administrative type stuff. So like day one was, um, kind of the workout or the PT test, and then the, it's some administrative stuff. But then you, where the real crux or crucible of that selection was in CQB or close quarters battle. Or for the listeners, shooting inside of live fire inside of rooms, like you might see like a SWAT team do on TV or something like it. But that's what we were doing because it was a national mission hostage rescue unit.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Between a development group and CAG or the army's tier one unit, Delta Force. Those are the two national mission hostage rescue units. So you have to be a true subject matter expert or perform at the level of that within the rooms of shooting close to each other live fire. And so essentially you would really need to be given a technique that you had to do perfectly, the way they want it done. Not the way they did it at SEAL Team three or SEAL Team two, or whatever team you came from. You had to do it the way they wanted it. And if you didn't, then, um, likely you would get rolled out or dismissed from the course. And shooting, so it was very CQB shooting. It was very hard where BUDS was, you know, trying not to get hypothermic. It's horrible physically and mentally.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  But this was more of a performance, like, hey, we get it. You're not going to quit because you've made it through BUDS, but we're going to make it hard. But you have to be, have the aptitude to be able to meet these standards within the kill house and on the range.

• 1:40:50Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, was that, uh, how apparent was that right off the bat?

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  Right off the bat, because we went to, um, a rain, a training facility out in, uh, Mississippi. And we went out there and that was like the, you're out there for over a month and it was just right off the bat. And it was so precise, like if your, your barrel is you're moving your barrel and you, you come close within like 12 inches or, or below to like 10 inches, you get a safety violation. And, and all these instructors were so keen and, and zeroed in on every little movement. That if you didn't do every little technique perfectly, you would get a safety violation or, or some sort of infraction. And if you compiled this, this, this, um, training record of all of these, they would likely let you go.

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  Um, and it wasn't that you weren't a good guy. It was that you just didn't meet the performance.

• 1:41:41Shawn Ryan?

  What if you're not pushing the limits?

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  If you're not put.

• 1:41:44Shawn Ryan?

  And if you're trying to play it too safe, I mean.

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, they would get you too. And they, they would call you out on it. They would notice it and then they would force you to the front. And then you would get a lot of the attention of the instructors. So they actually preferred a guy that was just whatever, I'm going to go for it every time. I'm just going to be aggressive. And if I mess up, I mess up. They preferred that over a guy trying to play it really safe and kind of hide in the back. Because they just saw that as kind of, for lack of a better term of avoidance. I don't want to say use the word cowardice, but like, like, hey, you're, we want you up there. If you're going to fail, fail big. Is kind of what, what it was. And so I just did what they told me. And you know, I was like, okay, I'll just do what you tell me, just like I did with that BUDS instructor was saying, just make it to the next meal.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  I was just like, okay, I'll just do what you tell me. And so I just would always try to be the number one man. Um, so for the listeners, that's like the first guy that goes into a room. I was always trying to just do what they told me to do, just be aggressive and, and leave it all out on the field. And thankfully, I mean, sure, I made mistakes. Um, and there was times I didn't think, I think everybody who's gone through the selection is like, I'm not sure if I'm going to make it today. Uh, I know at least for me, there was days I did not know if I was going to make it. I even had one of the instructors tell me that once, like, like, bro, you're right on the edge. And just thinking like, I know, I know, I know. And, uh, but you know, it's just, I equated to a quarterback at a big game. Who throws an interception where it's like, you throw the interception, you have two choices.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  You can either get all in your head and be like, I can't believe I did that. I made that mistake. Or you can just say, well, fuck it. I'm going to learn from that and I'm just, I gotta get back in there. I'm still the quarterback of my own life. This game is still ongoing. And so, um, I just kind of applied that kind of mentality to it where if I did mess up, it's like, all right, I threw an interception. Um, they'll let me know if I'm dismissed and if not, I'm just going to keep going and, and, you know, using the analogy, keep throwing footballs. And, uh, and I, that's what I did. And thankfully I didn't make enough mistakes to get dismissed.

• 1:43:43Shawn Ryan?

  Did you get to the point where you just?

• 1:43:47Shawn Ryan?

  I don't want to say didn't give a fuck, but I mean,

• 1:43:55Shawn Ryan?

  but I don't know how it was. Are they yelling? You, you know?

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of yelling.

• 1:43:59Shawn Ryan?

  You have to get to a point where I would think you would have to get to a point where that you're just not even listening anymore.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  That's true. Yes. And it was, it's almost like you have to, in my opinion, kind of like quiet the noise a little bit. Um, don't get me wrong. Like I'm listening to instruction and all of that, but there was a lot of yelling. Cause they would try to create a lot of chaos to really make you stressed out. And the why is, you know, it's not just the, the movements, but the shots have to be perfectly placed. There's no, like, if you run in and you're really fast at shooting, they don't give a fuck if, how fast you shoot, as long as the rounds are perfect. They'd rather it be like boom, boom. And like keyhole between the eyes than just some guy coming in and just blasting a bunch of rounds. And so, um, there is so much chaos that they would try to create because it was a national mission hostage rescue unit.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  So it's, it's mimicking maybe the chaos of combat or the stress of like a high level mission. Where maybe it's just not hostage rescue. Maybe it's, you know, like JSO going after army, going after Osama Hussein or, um, Osama bin Laden, whatever it is, it's like the big missions, like they need guys that can handle that and they're testing you for it there. And, um, and it was very hard. Like that's another one where some guys might say, it wasn't that bad. To me, I was like, that was really hard. Like I, I did not know if I was going to make it. Um, but I was young too, and I did get a, a little extra attention because I was young. And most of it was, I really wish I wouldn't have gotten, but I couldn't avoid it.

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  But I do think, and I don't know this for sure, but at the same time for the, from the cadre, cause I would one day become an instructor. That as long as he's making the standard, yeah, we're giving him a lot of shit and just like really ratcheting it up. But he is young and he is like showing up and meeting the standard. So I think it got to a certain point where they're like, all right, we can back off him a little bit, like he's, he might, he might be here for like, make it. So they, they backed off a little bit.

• 1:45:56Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that the, I mean, did you get the impression that a lot of people didn't want you there because you were so young? Do you think maybe they thought you didn't deserve to be there because?

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:06Shawn Ryan?

  You were so young.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  There was, I got the vibe from a couple of instructors, um, where they didn't think that, you know, I was going against tradition. Um, you know, you needed to hack, you know, your time in the SEAL teams. You needed to do at least five years. Um, and then, you know, you tack on BUDS and all that. So you likely have been in the Navy seven, eight, nine years to be like the most junior guy in the class. And here I was with a lot less than that, um, maybe five years, four years, four and a half years. And so there was some old guard that didn't like it. Um, like that's not how it was for me and my friends. Um, that's what makes the best assaulters. So why are we messing with this guy over here? Why are we even entertaining this? Yeah, sure. He's not a bad guy. This one I'm imagining, but you know, like make him go back to SEAL Team, whatever, for a few more years and come back and then we'll pay attention.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  But there was a couple of instructors that I could tell they did care. They were like, whatever. Like if he's showing up and, and like he's here right now, we see the vision of what we're at least attempting to do here. Because if he graduates or makes it through selection at twenty three, then he has, you know, so many more years. Like as I was mentioning before, where he can get mentored, uh, by the guys and more reps and all of that and just hang out. So that one day, you know, he can really maximize his true potential. So there was some more forward thinking guys. But just like in any organization, there were some old school guys that, uh, made sure that, um, I knew that, um, in some ways it wasn't that welcome that I was there, but they, they did treat me like a man. It was just like, they were more.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  Thinking like, just not yet, Alex. Like, it's not that we don't want you here. It's just that you're here a little too early. But then I just kept going and just passing stuff. And I wouldn't say with flying colors at all, but meeting the standard. And then before I knew it, slowly, the end was getting closer.

• 1:47:50Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys did you start with?

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  That's a great question. Those classes were smaller in those days. I would say we started with maybe like thirty-five and probably our thirty and finished with like, I don't know, twenty-two or something like that. The attrition rates would get worse the years after me, when the classes got bigger. But, and to be honest, like, I don't know, because I got split and they took half of the enlisted SEALs and put them in the mobility pipeline. So you were in assault mobility. So out of, I think we had twenty-one enlisted SEALs and ten of us were in like a lottery. Basically, they're like, alright, here's the class, like, okay, this guy's going just assault. This guy's going ground mobility and then back and forth. So I happened to be in that ground mobility group.

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  And so there was ten of us, if I recall, so maybe, I don't know, we, the classes after would be like fifty percent attrition. I don't think ours was as high, but we also didn't have as large of a class, where I think some of the other classes were sixty-something guys.

• 1:48:55Shawn Ryan?

  So you, you went, I'm gonna bounce around here a little bit. So did you go straight to, to red?

• 1:49:01Speaker 01

  I went to gray-red, but, but because I'd been through the assault selection, I was also considered an assaulter. So I had like a red squadron patch. I was

• 1:49:10Shawn Ryan?

  You were, you were, you weren't support, you were?

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I was considered, you know, I yarded in, which basically for the listeners, when you get there, in those days, you'd drink a yard of beer to, in front of everybody to basically say like, welcome, you know, you get almost like hazed in. If, I wouldn't say hazed, initiated in, maybe it was a better way. And yeah, so I, but I was, I would do a lot of the house runs with red squadron, but then sometimes I would break away to do training of driving boats or ground mobility. And, but I was still doing all the deployments as either an assaulter, as an assaulter for the next year.

• 1:49:44Shawn Ryan?

  Cause the other path is a little bit different, right?

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Shawn Ryan?

  The most gray?

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49:49Shawn Ryan?

  What, gray-red, gray, whatever. It's different. It's different green team.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  It is, yeah. Before those two years of two thousand two and two thousand three, before that, it was, SEALs would drive boats at Dev Group and do the, the mobility, but they wouldn't go through the assault version. They would just do the mobility version. So then they wouldn't be considered an assaulter. But those, those two years that I was in qualified me to do both. But then they stopped doing that after my class. And then the SWIC took over driving boats at Dev Group.

• 1:50:21Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  I know it's like a little like nuanced, but yeah, that's just kind of how it went in those days.

• 1:50:29Shawn Ryan?

  What about your classmates? Well, I mean, what do they think about you being, being five, six years younger?

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  They, they loved it. I remember a lot of those guys, cause I was just, you know, I fit in really well with the guys. Still have really close friends with a lot of them. And I think that they were supportive of it. It's just, but they're also worried about their own self of, of passing. So I'd never got any negativity from any of the classmates. It was more of, I mean, I certainly was the young guy and I'm sure, you know, my prefrontal cortex wasn't even developed of my brain when I think back on it. So

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  I, I think that I was accepted and I, I just felt like one of the guy, like, the class made me just feel like I could have been instead of twenty-three, thirty-three. But it was, I think, the old guard of the instructors that kind of had an extra eye out, like, let's keep an eye on this guy, because it was a test. But even them, the most hardcore guys were fair to me. It wasn't like they made up a safety violation to get me out or anything. It was just maybe a little extra attention, like an extra tire drag or, or maybe, you know, I don't know, just a little extra yelled, getting yelled at or something. A little extra love.

• 1:51:39Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, so,

• 1:51:45Shawn Ryan?

  so you were the, you were basically the guy that opened the gates for everybody.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:50Shawn Ryan?

  Cause in my generation, when I didn't screen, I didn't go over there. But in my generation, is when I think they started running two green teams a year.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:52:03Shawn Ryan?

  And

• 1:52:05Shawn Ryan?

  everybody with two platoons was like, yeah, fuck it, I'm going over there. I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna screen, I'm gonna go over there.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:11Shawn Ryan?

  So you were the one that?

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. Because of that, that allowed, just to what you were saying, that allowed for younger guys. Other guys after me were twenty-three. Other guys after me, they tried like one platoon or, or two, you know, where it's like shorter time at the SEAL, as long as their masteries of their SEAL teams were okay with it. But yeah, that was the, when that, that showed, okay, that can happen, then that opened up the door for, for more guys to come, more junior. Yeah.

• 1:52:39Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think, looking back?

• 1:52:42Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think, if you were, if you were in a leadership position, I mean, would you, what do you think?

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  I think it was the right call. Yeah, I think it was the right call. I'm glad they did it. For the right guy, I think. And I wouldn't say I was like super mature. I wasn't immature. I was just like right where I needed to be. I think for the right guy, it is worth a gamble because of what I was mentioning before, where instead of doing another, let's say, four years at a SEAL team, I had four years of just being a junior guy as an assaulter and getting qualifications and just getting more house runs, more time on the range of the way they wanted it done. So, and missions, most importantly, especially in that era. So I was able, so when I got into a leadership position later on, I had a lot more tours than, at the command at least,

• 1:53:28Speaker 01

  than a lot of previous assault team leaders. So I was truly peaking at my, my potential. So I would say with the right guy, that is, that was the right call. I would say if I was the guy that was picking these guys that were twenty-three or, or young, that it, it's okay to say no to some guys, even though they could be the right fit, and let them grow up a little bit more in the SEAL teams. It just depends. It's, it's almost like you have to just pick the right guy, but I do believe that that is a good thing. And some people might disagree with me on that, which is fine, but it's coming from my experience. I, I felt like it set me up professionally to contribute to the squadrons better by getting there earlier.

• 1:54:09Shawn Ryan?

  What did you notice different about the culture?

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  At red squadron?

• 1:54:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  I, they were hardcore. I remember it was, everything was about the house, house runs. Everything was about shooting. We were just training our asses off all the time. Everything ended in the kill house, whether we were doing a jump, you do a jump into something, patrol and kill house, swimming over the beach, you know, kill house, ground mobility, kill, everything was just ended in just CQB. So, and that was something that I personally like loved. I loved assaulting, I loved shooting inside of buildings, I loved the hostage rescue. It just spoke my language and I was mentored by so many incredible operators that like, it truly allowed me to come into my own. But

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  the mentality at red squadron was very intense. And they kind of had that, at least in those days of, to the other squadrons had their own little personalities, but reds was always like intense. Like, it's just, we are proud to be the most extreme, whether that is true or not, is, you know, to be determined, but at least that was the mentality. So SEAL Team Three was great. Great place to kind of grow up in, great people, great mentality. But red squadron was just like this whole, the energy of it was just like, train hard, you know, get there early, leave late, train, train, train, like, we're gonna train harder than everybody. And at least in those days, that's, I believe, we did, I wouldn't say we were better, I'd just say that was the mentality. It's just hardcore.

• 1:55:40Shawn Ryan?

  Do you notice an immediate difference though, from Team Three to that?

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. And what I noticed too was now you have an assault team leader who's perhaps a subject matter expert and has been there for a while. And then the second guy in charge in that team. And then on, it goes down the line and you're getting mentored by these guys that, that are that. And so now I have a ton of mentors that are telling me what to do and different ways to do it. And then now you're at a JSOC unit, so there's a ton of funding to get the top gear in the world. You can bring in world-class, like, let's say, shooting instructors or skydive instructors. So the, the budget was great for that. And then also because it's the machine of JSOC, we were getting a lot more missions. So you were actually able to employ those skills overseas. And so that's,

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  and then that built a confidence, like a true confidence, I, I believe, like gun, like a gunfighter confidence. To where it wasn't just like, I think I can do that. It's like, no, I'm, I'm, I'm fucking ready. Like, let's go.

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  But yeah, so that mentality, not that SEAL Team Three wasn't a bunch of warriors and great guys they are, but it was just, it really was almost like a step up, at least in my experience, to where it's like, what, like taking down a stadium, right? Like taking down a football stadium. It's like, who does that? But those units, it's like, yeah, no problem. You know, and then I remember being a junior guy and being like, what do you mean, no problem? And then, but then seeing these guys being able to do it and then just be like, I want to be like that one day. I might not be there right now, but I've at least seen it done well. And then, yeah, and so I felt like it was where I wanted to be. And the timing for me, however you might look, one looks, looks at it, I believe, I was very fortunate because I got there after the, both invasions in oh-three

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  and then was in red squadron from oh-three until two thousand fourteen. And I, so I deployed every year to Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other locations to combat, every year at least once from oh-one to thirteen. So it was just this grind and learning on the go and the evolution of tactics and techniques and also technologies. You were like right at the forefront of it, of those wars. So they, along, answered your simple question, was it was just the, to me, it was the place to be for tactics, for mentorship and for missions.

• 1:57:58Shawn Ryan?

  Were you treated like, just like everybody else when you got in?

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  Well, no. So the first year I got there, yeah, no, definitely not. First year I got there, I remember I had this, this mentor Lou Langlis, uh, who has killed an extortion, unfortunately, but he was a big mentor of mine and I remember him saying, he was my first team leader. Like, hey, you're not allowed to talk, uh, in a debrief. So basically at the end of a house run, like if you, even if you have something good to say, tell it to me because you're so junior and young, you probably know what the fuck you're talking about. So tell me I'll be the filter and then I'll bring it up. So don't say anything. I was like, yeah, Roger that Lou. And then he's like, and oh, by the way, take the trash out and don't say anything for the first year. And I was like, no problem. And so

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  it was like, but I appreciated that humility of it because it wasn't like, wow, I made it through the selection. It was like, cool story. So is everyone else. Just shut up and listen and absorb stuff. And so, um, yeah. And also I was junior too. I was probably the young guy at Red Squadron. That, you know, for probably four years, uh, right? So I was always like a new batch of new guys would come in and I was still the youngest. And then another batch, the next year, still the youngest. And so, um, but as that was going on, uh, my confidence and was going up in my reps and experience was going up. So I could see what their vision was to give it a shot on

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  young guy like myself, because now I'm like, let's say 26 and, uh, and 27, and finally somebody who's more junior than me gets to Red Squadron. And I've already have a lot of experience and I'm like, now I'm kind of the guy that's mentoring that guy in a way. Or I'm mentoring guys that are older than me, only because I'd been there longer.

• 1:59:43Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. You were the, you were the youngest guy there for four, three to four years.

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:53Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:00:35Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:00:52Shawn Ryan?

  What is that like? Like seeing people that are, have been around longer than you show up?

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:59Shawn Ryan?

  Especially after you've been there three or four years.

• 2:01:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I was, I remember I ended up being a, an LPO, well, a troop LPO. Uh, leading petty officer for the listeners. It's just kind of like a small leadership role. Basically they're in charge of like making sure guys take out the trash and that vehicles are topped off with gasoline. It's nothing that, let's be real, something that crazy, but it was a small leadership position. And I remember there was, uh, guys getting into the squadron who were older and who were chiefs. And, uh, and I just had made it E6 and I was in charge of them because I had tenure at the squadron. So, and I remember some of those guys having issues with, uh, somebody like me, you know, because they had higher rank and all of that, but I had the tenure.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  And then me at that point, having the confidence to be like, I, let's not let this be an issue with you because it's not an issue with me. Like you're working for me, you know? So now I'm like in this, like I'm starting to like fall into my own a little bit. But it was interesting. Uh, and some guys that just didn't, they didn't care, but there's always ego, you know, you know that in this field, like there's always ego in some high performance.

• 2:02:01Shawn Ryan?

  How does that even get expressed? I mean, I mean, it's, it's, yeah. Who do they take issue with? Like this guy's in charge of me? Yeah. He's been here for fucking years. He just showed up.

• 2:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the thing was, you know, you get to, in those roles too, in leadership, especially at that unit, it's like, you're also proving it by your performance. So you're on the, you're still shooting, even though you're in a leadership role, you're still shooting, you're supposed to be at the standard. And so, some guys had an issue with it, some didn't. At the same time, that was on them, not on me. And, um, but it wasn't too many. There's a couple in particular that I think they had some issues with it because they had so much tenure in the normal SEAL, or the white side SEAL teams. That, um, it slowly went away because at a certain point it's like, you have to get over it.

• 2:02:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, one of the, in that era, one of the big experiences for me when I was really young was in 2005 and what had been going on in JSOC, historically, you have the two big units of Delta Force or the Army and Dev Group, SEAL Team Six. And there was this really bad inter-service rivalry going on and there's always inter-service stuff, right? Guys just talking a little shit back and forth, which is fine. But it was stuff that I, I believe, I don't know, uh, but went back maybe the nineties, some like weird head butting rivalry going on. It wasn't very healthy. And General McChrystal at the time was in charge of JSOC and he basically told us like, hey, you guys are more alike than you're different. This is getting ridiculous.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  We're going to start doing exchanges. And so, uh, we were sending teams from each unit, uh, each squadrons over to each other and they'd work up for a little bit and then deploy. Which I thought was really helpful because we are so alike. Um, it was just one guy happens to be in the Navy, one guy's in the Army. You see a guy on nods at night and they look exactly the same. And they're both world-class gunfighters, you know, American warriors, right? There's, um, nothing but praise for the army counterparts and for our own guys. A lot of sacrifice for everyone, but uh, I found myself, um, on, in oh, five, there was a Delta Squadron that was in a very kinetic deployment and they requested more forces from Dev Group.

• 2:04:09Speaker 01

  Cause we already had a team with them of about seven, eight guys. And they're like, hey, do you have any extra guys you can just shoot over? Because we, um, from Afghanistan, we just need young, just assaulters. We don't need anybody that's in charge, but we're taking a lot of casualties. And so fortunately myself, um, Matt Bissonette, who was on, uh, one of your previous podcasts and another guy were sent over because all we were were just shooters. And I remember flying over, this was maybe the first three weeks of deployment. So we flew from Afghanistan over to Iraq and I was assigned to a troop, uh, Delta troop that was in Ramadi. And I was really nervous because I was only on my second deployment with Red, so I was still junior. And, um, and I hadn't done the workup with them where the, our team that was deployed with them had already gone down to Fort Bragg and worked up.

• 2:04:55Speaker 01

  I knew that basically what their tactics and techniques were very similar, but a little bit nuanced, different. And I just knew like likely I'd be hitting the ground right into an operation, which is what happened. But I had never worked up with them. So I'm young, nervous, still dealing with imposter syndrome. And I remember landing on the airfield in Ramadi. Uh, Stork, uh, HLZ, uh, on Shark Base and a, a beat up pickup truck picked me up at, it was, I don't know what time, but the sun was down. And, uh, and this big guy with a beard comes up and he was like, are you Alex? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, I'm, I'm Bob Horgan. Um, I'm going to be your shooting buddy and we're going to be friends.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  And I was like, okay. So this guy, and I didn't know at the time, but Bob was kind of a, a larger than life, uh, figure at Delta and he had already been a team leader. And he was coming to do his last tour before he retired. Uh, he had 19 years in, I believe, and it was like one last pump before he went home. So he was just kind of an assaulter, not in a leadership position, but he was a breacher. And I remember him saying like, do you breach? Explosive breach? And I said, yeah, I, I do. And he's like, okay, we're the, the team breachers of, of our assault team. I'm going to just show you the little, he's like, I know it's the same, but a little different. Let me just show you how we do it. And between Bob and I, we became really close friends and I, to this day, um,

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  I'm so appreciative of Bob because I felt like he noticed me just flying in like that and him being like, you're with me, we're going to be friends and I'll show you everything you needed to know. And we became close friends and, uh, every night he would be the, in those days, we were just explosive breaching the shit out of everything in those days. And, um, from tactics standpoint, we were doing, uh, hostage rescue. There was not any of this other styles of clearance, um, that would come later that were safer. It was just boom, like really aggressive, running into buildings. So did Dev Group at the time. We all did that. And, um, so we would explosive breach and every night we would do at least three, four plus breaches, explosive breaches a night. And Bob and I would swap off as the team breacher. So

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  one night, maybe I would place the, the explosive charge on the door. Bob would be my security guard. That charge would go the next time Bob would place the charge and I would cover for him. And so we would do that, you know, sometimes one op a night, sometimes three operations a night. And we were, uh, in Ramadi and then also out west in Al Assad and Al Qa'im specifically in that era, that's the really hot area of the Iraq war in that time.

• 2:07:26Speaker 01

  And we were just grinding it out. During that time, Bob and I became closer and closer friends. And then one night, we were out and we landed out in Al Qa'im and you could feel there was something different in the air. And what we were doing was we were gonna hit Al Qa'im before the Marines pushed through, almost to try to destabilize the city with taking out high-value targets. So when the Marines moved through, we kind of disoriented the enemy. And so we're foot patrolling in and you could feel this energy. There's something going on, something going on that was about to happen. And I remember we went, we're on the street. It was that night. And it was, one team was gonna hit a house across

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  the street and they're putting a charge on a metal gate. So they're gonna blow the gate, run in, blow the front door, run in. And we were gonna do the same thing on the street over. And so it was Bob's turn to breach randomly on this night. And he had his, his charge out. And I was like, okay, cool. I'm right next to you. We're gonna blow the gate and then we're gonna run up. I'll be the first guy up, so holding security. And you'll have the charge and then you'll put the charge on and blow it. And, and so that's what we were gonna do. We, like I said, we did this tons of times before. And I remember I'm standing right next to him, like, ready to go, just like we did a million times before, not a million, but a ton. And Bob looked at me and he just says, get back. And I was

• 2:08:48Speaker 01

  like, get back? Okay. He was my mentor. I was like, sure. So I stepped back a few steps. Maybe I was like crowding him, whatever. And then he like, looks at me, he's like, get back. And I was like, okay. And so I took a few more steps back. And then I remember he, he drops his gun, it's just slung. And he just starts maneuvering his hand like this, like, get the fuck back. And it's almost, I can still see his nods juggling a little bit as he's saying that. And I'm like, okay, like, what did I do wrong? I'm sure I'll hear about it later, you know, after the op. But I, this, like, okay. And so I started moving back. And then now I see I'm, I'm right next to this charge from the other team that was gonna blow this gate. So I'm standing right in front of it. And I'm thinking, okay, I have

• 2:09:30Speaker 01

  to, I can't eat this charge. I'm gonna get hurt. So I kept going back even further to get out of the way of that charge. So now there's maybe 20 yards, maybe 15 yards between Bob and me. I, I did know when that gate blew that one of the other team members was gonna fill my spot. It's just like pickup basketball. But I didn't want that because he's my shooting buddy. So I just knew, I'm like, okay, as soon as he's go, I'm gonna sprint up as fast as I can to be Bob's security guy. So the charges go. Bob starts to run into the courtyard. I'm sprinting as fast as, as I can to be a security guard, our security guy. But Mike McNulty, another assaulter, slipped

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  right in to where, because he was closer to Bob and as his security guard. And as all of us are sprinting to the front door of this compound, there was something going on where the outdoors, they had lights going on, but inside was all dark. And we were on night vision. And I remember running up and kind of flicking my helmet up to see under my nods. And there was Bob and Mike in front of me and another assaulter as the four of us are running up. And as Bob and Mike enter the door, or before they enter the door, Bob says, it's, oh, he just yells, open, basically saying, like, I'm not gonna throw the charge. He throws his charge to the side to be, just like run in.

• 2:10:48Speaker 01

  And there was two belt-fed machine guns waiting for them. And, and just unloaded on our train as we were running in. And you could feel the bullets going right past your, like, the velocity of the bullets going past. I even had glass in my face from a piece of window that, that I caught in the face. And both Bob and Mike were, fell into the, into the room, or into the threshold of the door. And the rest of us just kind of like, pied off to the side to get out of the way of this volley of intense machine gun fire coming out of, because it was so close. And then, so then we're starting to pie in the doors. And there's like a little bit of gunfire going in through the windows. We're

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  taking some fire from a rooftop. And then Mike gets out, they pull Mike out. And then, one of the bravest things that I've seen is one of the assaulters sees Bob and the threat, this door that just took two belt-fed machine guns that were just unloaded. And you could, he could see Bob's leg. And he just pied it, pied it, exposed himself into the, truly, the heart of darkness, grabbed his foot and yanked him out. And just to get his body out. And so I remember as they pour, pulled Bob out, and I saw what had happened to him, that I had a moment of just losing my mind. And I went like Berserker, essentially, and just saw red that, you know, they had killed not just

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  Mike, who I cared for a lot, but Bob, my mentor, and somebody who I really cared about. And, and then I was, I remember we were all like, we want payback to the, you know, like, we want to get back in there. And how, which tactically, it would make sense. Okay, we got everybody out. Let's just pull back, call in an airstrike and kill the guys in there. But we decided we wanted payback. And this was in a different era. Some people might be like, you guys should have done X, Y, and Z. However, this is before combat clearance and methodical, all these things. So we were all, I believe, seeing red. I don't want to speak for the other guys, but I know for me. And so we took down that hot house. And we started off with something called a thermobaric hand grenade that

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  we threw into the house, which, for the listeners, that particular grenade, it's, doesn't throw pieces of fragmentation or hot metal everywhere. It uses overpressure technology, basically like, overpressurize the building to collapse it or to just overpressurize anybody in the building. So one of those was thrown in. And I was sitting at a wall right next to it. And it went off. And I was gonna be the one man into the building. I remember standing up after it went off. And I'd been concussed by being so close to this grenade and did a pirouette, almost, as stumbling as I was running through the front door. And as I went with the guys behind me, it wasn't just me. It was this whole team. It was very brave that night. And I remember going through the front door and

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  it was a marble floor and just slipping over all of the blood that had been in that, in that threshold of the door and feeling so vulnerable where I'm concussed, I'm slipping all over this marble floor. Bob's blood? Yeah, Bob and Mike's. And, and that was something I would have years later, even flashbacks of, I'd see white marble floors in hotels and just see, almost like the shining, like, blood going right down it. But, but back to, to that night, I remember going in and as we were clearing room by room, there was sandbag bunkers within each room. And we were just clearing it with hand grenades. And, and as that was happening, the bad guys came out the back and the Rangers are

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  blocking position, ended up finishing them. But when that night ended, we were still going, that was just, we had to continue to route out all of these networks that night. And I remember using all my breaching charges. And it was a big night of fighting. And then, and not knowing what happened to Bob and Mike, I figured, certainly Bob, but I wasn't sure about Mike. But when we got back, you know, we were, a lot of us covered in blood. And, and we were told of what happened with Bob that they both passed. And then I remember, you know, those guys were larger than life. And even though I was on an exchange guy, especially Bob, I was just shattered by it. And so was

• 2:15:06Speaker 01

  everybody else. But it was, this campaign's ongoing. Here's an Ambien. Take an Ambien because you have to get back up and we're going back out tomorrow night. And, and that's exactly what happened. Yeah. But it's, in my, and I might be jumping ahead, but in my own healing journeys, whether it's plant medicine, meditation, Bob still comes up for me. The spirit of him, I don't know how or why, but he's always there. I can even feel him here today. I, I feel that he and I, recently, in one of those experiences, he showed up to me. And I asked him, like, why would you not

• 2:15:47Speaker 01

  let me die with you? And, and he said, that's because you have work to do. You need to help show people a healing path. There's so much, there's so much pain and suffering. You have to show people how to heal. And because I had struggled with survivor's guilt for so much because of that, because Mike took my spot, because I didn't die with Bob, that it, I finally got some healing from that, realizing like, okay, I'll do the best I can. I, I don't know what that means, but I'll just keep, basically, it wasn't my time, is what Bob was saying. I had more work to do. But I feel

• 2:16:26Speaker 01

  his spirit. When I'm down, I can feel it in my heart, that he's like pushing me, like, just keep going.

• 2:16:37Shawn Ryan?

  I think you're doing it, man.

• 2:16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thanks, man. I. Yeah, it's when I'm.

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  Where there's times I'm like worried that I'm letting him down, but then I can feel him coming back and and just like giving me shit like calm down, get over yourself, just get the fuck back in there and keep doing it like get out of your head. You have a mission to do.

• 2:17:01Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you feel like you're letting him down? At times.

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  I think.

• 2:17:10Speaker 01

  You know that imposter syndrome stuff where now that I've gotten out and now I work in a lot of different areas of mental health, I just hope that I can, it's almost like Bob, I feel like Bob saved me. So that I can do this and and I want to make sure that I'm upholding his honor.

• 2:17:31Speaker 01

  And fulfilling that mission because of how important he was to me. And and I think that's why every now and then I just get in my own head of. You know that maybe I'm not doing enough, but then I I realize it's almost Bob saying like, dude, it's a marathon, not a sprint. You can't just like boil the ocean, just keep going, just keep trying to do good in the world.

• 2:17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:54Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think he knew it was on the other side of the door?

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do, because I don't know why, there's no reason why he would turn around and tell me to keep moving back. There was no, there wasn't a tactical reason for it.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  I don't recall doing anything that he would have been met like I just really don't. There was something off, you could feel it when we landed in the helicopters that something dark was about to happen. You could feel it when we were placing charges on the gates. I could feel it. You know, I can almost sense like it's something was about to go down. And but when he kept telling me, I, there was no re- and repeatedly, not just like, hey, bro, like, give me some space. It was like, and especially when he was like stopped, dropped his rifle, had a reaching charge in his hand and was like motioning for me to back like, get the fuck back.

• 2:18:48Speaker 01

  And and I, so I feel like he knew something was happening. I don't know for sure, but in my gut, I don't know why he would have acted like that. I can't. Come up with another reason why he would do that. It was just so unlike him to do that.

• 2:19:09Shawn Ryan?

  How many times did you guys breach doors together before that?

• 2:19:14Speaker 01

  Out to fifty, probably.

• 2:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say, I don't know, maybe give or take ten on that. So at least around fifty, easy. In those days, we were just breaching so much. And going out every night, like I was mentioning, like one to three times. So it was, and there's always explosive breaching. And every time we went out, there might be multiple breaches in that, on that operation, because maybe it's we hit one, it's like, oh, we hit the neighbor, he's next door, you know, or or the guy saying like, yeah, this is the wrong house, but there's a whole cell, IED cell down the road, I can lead you there. And it's like, okay, let's go check it out, breach and charge boom. So yeah, we had done probably, I'm just running a number fifty, I'd say.

• 2:19:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:01Shawn Ryan?

  What would you say to him today?

• 2:20:03Speaker 01

  I love him. That I appreciate his mentorship all the way from picking me up from the HLZ right off the bat, not allowing me to feel like I didn't belong of just him saying, you're my shooting buddy, we're going to be friends. Right the the moment. I got into that unit and then he would drag me around, introduce me to everybody and was like a big brother, really, and he was larger than life, to be honest. It wasn't just a guy, it was a guy with a really great reputation, really great sense of humor.

• 2:20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, if he was here, I'd, you know, I miss him and I appreciate everything he did for me and I believe continues to do for me. Like the spirit of him, I can sense it.

• 2:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel like you're at peace with it?

• 2:20:56Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm getting there, especially after the recent experiences of of sensing him and all of that, I I'm getting to a better place of it. I mean, and that was over twenty years ago, twenty one years ago. You know, I have that and on the calendar and I get, I send myself reminders like a week out. You know, and then like six days out, just to remind myself that the day is coming. So that gets easier every time to where it happens and I'm able just to kind of like sit with it. It's not a surprise. But yeah, it's just as the years go on, it's just now starting to lose some of its momentum because I'm becoming at more at peace with it because of the messages I was getting from Bob that I have a job to do.

• 2:21:42Shawn Ryan?

  How did those messages come?

• 2:21:45Speaker 01

  In plant medicine.

• 2:21:48Speaker 01

  He's sat down in front of me and and just told me that. And. Yeah, mostly in plant medicine and just letting me know like, hey, man, we, there's more work to do. There's a lot of suffering going on in this world.

• 2:22:04Speaker 01

  But yeah, mostly plant medicine, but in meditation too, I've had it. And there'll be times even when something tough comes up, whether it's him or the guys from extortion, I will, I'll ask for their support, like, I'm really struggling right now. Can you guys help me? And like recently went through a divorce, that type of a thing. And I can feel them just be like, we've, we've got you, dude. You know, essentially like emotionally, we'll pick you up from the airport and you're our shooting buddy.

• 2:22:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man, I'm sorry.

• 2:22:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:22:41Speaker 01

  I feel also with the healing, just glad that I knew guys like Bob and Mike and a bunch of other friends that passed in those wars. Feel better off knowing them, but because of what an impact they had on me, it was, it has been tough, but.

• 2:23:00Speaker 01

  My, I can't imagine my life without knowing those guys.

• 2:23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:08Shawn Ryan?

  Is that the first? First round that you lost in combat?

• 2:23:12Speaker 01

  There was and

• 2:23:16Speaker 01

  a couple of years later, and the guy was mentioning Mark Carter on the roller blades. He and I were old roommates and stayed friends and he was killed in Iraq. And then it just started, you know, more and more roommates or friends. It just started compiling after that and it just and as that was going on, my combat tours were increasing and and I was either getting hurt or friends were getting hurt or wounded. As that was going on, my drinking started, it's almost like you could follow it as the intensity and trauma started going up, the drinking started going up with it. And then within the culture, as I'm sure you know, in the the military, specifically the SEAL teams or pardon me, special operations,

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  that's just part of it is, you know, you have that, there's no other way to really off gas anything. It's not like, I mean, I guess you could, there's other ways, but that's just the culture of it. That's what you do. And I found myself starting to pick up a bad habit of drinking too much and numbing my pain with alcohol, probably. I would say it started to become a thing around two thousand and eight or so. But it was building up to that and then it would just end up getting worse as the years went on.

• 2:24:29Shawn Ryan?

  What is the day he died?

• 2:24:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, June seventeenth was the the night that Bob and Mike were killed, two thousand and five.

• 2:24:37Shawn Ryan?

  Do you do anything specific on June seventeenth?

• 2:24:40Speaker 01

  I do. I started a tradition with any friends where I take a Chinese lantern, which you can just buy on Amazon, and I'll take a Sharpie and I'll just write a message to the guys, whether if it's Bob and Mike on June seventeenth or extortion, I'll just write messages and then I'll I'll go and I'll have like a moment, either I'll either have a friend with me or I'll do it solo. Sometimes I like doing it solo and I'll just sit with it for a moment and then launch the lantern. And then just from, in a therapy sense, it's called experiential technique, but just like watching it launch off.

• 2:25:19Speaker 01

  And when I started that, not to jump around, but a really, like my best friend, Rob Reeves.

• 2:25:28Speaker 01

  We were in actually Thailand on a vacation and we were at this crazy full moon party. And this is a fun time. And then he said, I want to do something for Nate Hardy and Mike Cook, a couple of other SEALs that had been killed, friends of ours. And in this like crazy madness, he went and bought a couple of Chinese lanterns. And and we actually launched them almost to of a form of.

• 2:25:53Speaker 01

  Like memorize or memorializing them, pardon me. And and because of that, and then Rob would end up being killed in extortion. A year and a half later. And because of that, I do that for all of those guys, all those those dates. I do it as a tip of the hat to Rob also, but it also feels good that I'm almost like writing them a message in Sharpie and launching it. I don't know, it just feels nice. And I would encourage any, anyone who's struggling or with grief of how to handle it. I would encourage maybe exploring something like that Chinese lantern or even writing something down and just burning it in a fire pit or or your sink even.

• 2:26:36Speaker 01

  But it's helped me at least, maybe not for everyone, but for me, it's helped a lot to just deal with the grief.

• 2:26:41Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you been doing that?

• 2:26:43Speaker 01

  I've been doing that for probably the last eight years. Yeah, and it's interesting because. Yeah, you can buy them in like 10 packs on Amazon. Not that anybody's looking for a deal, but it's just easy, just a couple clicks at your door. And and I think I'll continue to do that. And I just can't imagine not doing that. It only takes a few minutes, but it's worth it.

• 2:27:09Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have a family?

• 2:27:11Speaker 01

  I have my my mom and my sister, my cousin Pete. And that's pretty much it. So I just have a small family.

• 2:27:19Shawn Ryan?

  No, did he have?

• 2:27:20Speaker 01

  Oh, did? Oh, pardon me. Did Bob? Yeah, he did. He had a wife. Mike had kids. Yeah, they had wives of a lot of those. Yeah, everybody. Bob and Mike actually were both identical twins.

• 2:27:38Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 2:27:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:39Shawn Ryan?

  They were identical?

• 2:27:40Speaker 01

  No, no, they had identical twins, pardon me. Pardon me. Yeah, but Bob had his own identical twin and Mike. So the randomness of that and I went down to Fort Bragg to the Delta compound. To pay my respects to their memorial service there. And I remember seeing both of their brothers there and they like exactly like them. And and I remember just thinking like, wow, what the the chances of of that happening? Yeah, stranger than fiction almost, but there's. Yeah, it is tough to think of the ripple effect of, you know, it's one thing, you know, they went out like warriors truly in a hail of gunfire, both of them running to the gunfire.

• 2:28:25Speaker 01

  A warrior's death, but at the same time, it is the ripple effect of the families and all of that is. I can't imagine what that must be like for them.

• 2:28:39Shawn Ryan?

  Did you notice any differences between? Delta and Dev Group?

• 2:28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was some nuanced things here and there, like tactics and stuff like that. But the mentality was very similar. And I feel like those exchange programs are those that era did a great job. Because later on, we'd cross paths in Iraq when I was in my Red Squadron troop and the Delta troop would be there and I'd know everybody there, right? Because I was like friends with them. So this whole like kind of asshole sniffing type thing going on, like comparing kind of went away. And it was more of like, because we're more alike than we were different. That way, if if maybe one of the breachers in our team would be like, hey, do you know the breacher over there? So we can kind of, I just want to know how they do things or a sniper wants to talk to a sniper. It'd be easy to just connect them.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  But to answer your question, you know, both those units have all the money you could need. So they have the best technology, the best instruction. The mentality, both hardcore warriors, I believe some of America's top. You know, the only difference I can see is on the Navy side, we're obviously the maritime unit. So we're doing a lot of, you know, maritime type stuff where the army is mostly focused. Not that they don't have some aspects of that, but that's the big thing that's different. Outside of that, though, like, I mean, I know a lot of people want to hear some kind of like crazy comparison. But having done not just that exchange, but more operations with them later on.

• 2:30:13Speaker 01

  I personally have nothing but respect for all of those guys. And and I don't know if there's too much of a difference, to be honest. And it's not just that, but you know, the other units that I was working with, whether it's the Ranger Regiment, just to give a shout out to them. I've been in drag out fights with all three battalions, all great guys, all the Air Force PJs, controllers, TF160, the air crew. You know, certainly, of course, SEAL teams and SF. It was just like this. At the end of the day, there is differences with everyone, but the the but we're all more alike than we are different, I believe. Yeah.

• 2:30:53Shawn Ryan?

  Did you ever do a maritime op over there?

• 2:30:57Speaker 01

  No, I didn't. When the Captain Phillips thing was going down, I was actually a Green Team cadre instructor. And I remember when it was starting to happen, I ran up to my master chief because I was a tandem. A tandem master. And I knew they always needed tandem masters to jump in, whatever intel people or whatever. And so I ran up there with all my stuff and I asked him, I was like, don't worry, pretty much like, I'm here. Like, I got my tandem rig, I'm ready to go. And I remember he just looked at me, Jim looked right at me, goes, Alex, don't worry, we are going to be just fine without you. Like, I need you down in training, go back down to training. I was like, but but he's like, trust me, we don't need you.

• 2:31:41Speaker 01

  And I was like, I know you don't need me, I'm just trying to get on as many officers like, whatever, fine.

• 2:31:48Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 2:31:53Shawn Ryan?

  We didn't talk about your first deployment at all.

• 2:31:56Speaker 01

  First deployment at Red?

• 2:31:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were, I was a part of an Omega team, which Omega, for the listeners, it was essentially JSOC, Special Operations guys that were attached to CIA paramilitary. And the reason why we were attached to them was because within the agency, they don't have the ability to call in airstrikes or medevac or medical helicopters. If there's somebody gets wounded or killed. And so we would be assigned to them. And and I was in this outpost called Shawn, Afghanistan, which was in Pakhtikha province, right on the border of Pakistan, a really bad area. You know, getting rocketed or pretty much every day.

• 2:32:37Speaker 01

  And it's right on, I mean, we were right at the bottom of base of a mountain, which was in Pakistan and the Taliban would just launch rockets at us all day. But that was my my first deployment was in Afghanistan in 04 with with Red Squadron. And we actually had a couple of army guys with us on that exchange.

• 2:32:54Shawn Ryan?

  That's what you guys, when I was contracting.

• 2:33:01Shawn Ryan?

  For GRS, I would, yeah, I would see the Omegas, I'd hang out with you guys. I was wondering what the fuck.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So did we.

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we and we would, I did one there and I did one in Jalalabad. I was, yeah, I was usually somehow affiliated with majority of them, whether, you know, sometimes you'd be in those or you'd be in a strike force, which just meant that you're in a team of SEALs that were, it's just you guys hitting targets. Or you'd rotate in as an Omega, where you're more of an advisor. So, yeah, I enjoy those, that was, you know, 04, man. Technology was still making its, you know, improving, but it was still not what it was, very old school when I think back on it. And but I loved that. It was like wide open. It was like cowboy country. And as a young SEAL and operator, it was like, it was just very cool.

• 2:33:58Speaker 01

  And I, and the experience to do that was was great. And for my first deployment was very cool, too. But yeah, then that second one was with the army and then and then just many more after that.

• 2:34:10Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember the first time you killed somebody?

• 2:34:14Speaker 01

  Yes. I was, that I know for sure, I was. There was, we call this squirter, which just meant a guy ran off of a target that we were targeting. And he went into some bushes and this is in Iraq. And I mean, I'd shot my gun a ton of times at people and probably my rounds hit a guy while somebody else was shooting. This is the first time I know. And we, the ISR, so for the listeners, an airplane was shooting a infrared laser at this bush, saying like, this is where this guy ran to. And so we're like, okay, let's go get him.

• 2:34:54Speaker 01

  And it was at night in a field and we had a military working dog named Spike, who was also killed later on, awesome dog. And so we're kind of online, my team of about five guys or so, towards this bush. And I just, but there's this wind that was going back and forth. So the dog needs the scent, but when it was windy like that, it's really hard for it to kind of really get down to where this guy might be. And we're getting closer and closer to this bush and we ask the ISR, basically the airplane, hey, like, kill that that sensor. Because it's kind of disorienting the closer you get to the bush. So he killed it and we're kind of like looking in it. It doesn't look like there's anybody in there.

• 2:35:36Speaker 01

  And I remember getting right up on the bush and leaning leaning into the bush a little bit to see if I could see it. Because we didn't have thermals in those days. And unbeknownst to me, there was in the bush, there was a guy with a pistol pointing it right, right at me. And we're maybe just three or four feet away from each other. I can't see anything under my night vision. And then finally Spike catches the the scent and then like a missile just jumps right in. And and I could feel his body even like hitting me as as he hits this guy. And he drops the gun or scramble the gun and that's when I engaged and killed him. That was the the first of, you know, dozens.

• 2:36:20Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel?

• 2:36:24Speaker 01

  That was, I remember when it happened, getting a jolt of adrenaline. And, um, and then also I'm, I'm happy with that. When I'm not happy, like I don't want to sound like a psychopath, but like I'm happy that basically Spike saved my life. And that I was able to, to engage that guy. Um, because without Spike, it could have been a very different situation. So it was almost like a killer be killed. So that adrenaline just really dumped.

• 2:36:52Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  Um, and then it was, and yeah, afterwards, like kind of thinking like, wow, I can't believe like that. I actually killed someone like I know before, like I mentioned, I know I'd shot a bunch of people, but never just like that. Um, yeah, but as time went on and as more operations went on and more killing went on. Uh, this funny thing about like the human psyche, it would just become like less and less. And it would just be, and then even as I would notice as more operations were happening. My, um, heart rate, everything would just be more like, just chill, like just very, even if bullets were flying. Don't get me wrong, there's times where I would be amped up. I'm not saying I wasn't scared at times, but with the more reps, it got to the point where it was more machine like. It was more tactics.

• 2:37:38Speaker 01

  It was more, um, to the point where I thought like, almost felt bad for the enemy. Like you're not going to be able to kill me, which sounds arrogant, but that's how I felt at the time. Um, as long as my feet were on the ground with my kid on and my buddies, um, I just didn't feel. I mean, I knew there was a puncher's chance that I could easily get killed, like many guys did. But I just, over time, started feeling more and more confident with it, which is a, as I reflect back on it, kind of a weird place to be. Right? That you're becoming more confident at killing. And, um, but that was just the world that, that we lived in.

• 2:38:18Shawn Ryan?

  You know, you talk about some of your friends coming back to visit you in plant medicine.

• 2:38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:29Shawn Ryan?

  Does the other happen?

• 2:38:31Speaker 01

  Does it ever happen?

• 2:38:31Shawn Ryan?

  Does the other happen? Does the, any of the people that you've killed, did they ever visit you?

• 2:38:36Speaker 01

  They do. Um, yes, I, I've had, when my symptoms of PTSD, I was really struggling and I still do. Um, I have one where I once had to, uh, shoot a man really close. And it must've hit something in between his eyes where it just came out like a hose. Um, and I would have, I, I remember walking, even in like shopping malls or just, and just seeing that somebody approached me and look at me. And almost shoot me with blood out of their, in between their eyes. Um, so things like that, nightmares, night terrors, um, regret. You know, sometimes, you know, we were dealing with a lot of suicide bombers.

• 2:39:16Speaker 01

  And so lots of times, you know, people would run up to us and clack themselves off with a suicide vest or sometime. But what that would result in is the next time you see someone that is like reaching around their waist or whatever. You might be quicker on the, on the trigger. Um, so there was, and then that would lead to maybe a shot you wish you wouldn't have taken. So there was just a lot of, as those wars grinded on and on and on, the enemy got smarter. Uh, it just got darker in those wars. And it, and it got to the point where I was like, what the fuck are we doing over here? And, um, just because it just kept dragging on.

• 2:39:54Speaker 01

  But to answer your question, yeah, I, I struggled and sometimes I still do with, uh, people that I've, I've killed, especially as an assaulter. A lot of that was very up close inside of rooms, like gunfights within rooms. And so it was, you know, when that's happening, you're getting chunks of people's, you know, brain on your gear. Or your, or skull or whatever. It's just up close and personal. It's brutal and something I wish us as humans wouldn't do to each other. Um, now that I look back on it, but it's just, um, because of the toll that it takes on, on this human spirit. You know, just on myself, my mental health. Um, I don't want that for, for a younger version of me who might be in the military. Unless it's like our country's getting attacked or something like that.

• 2:40:39Speaker 01

  But not in something like what would be perhaps the quagmire of Iraq. Um, of like, we did all of that for what? And so, um, and I think that really is a negative for my own mental health. It'd be different if it was, it was worth it. But now it's more of like scratching your head of like, what were we doing? And, you know, we gave this generation of guys, not only whether it's their lives or their physical, um, you know, like their bodies and all that. But it's also their mental health. Cause it is like, what are we doing? Almost like my father's generation of Vietnam, saying the same thing.

• 2:41:14Shawn Ryan?

  When did you arrive there at that mentality?

• 2:41:19Speaker 01

  In probably 2011.

• 2:41:22Shawn Ryan?

  So you were still on?

• 2:41:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I was definitely in, I was still in assault team there. It was after the bin Laden raid, um, is when I started feeling that way. Cause it was like, okay, we got the guy. Um, Al Qaeda is out of Afghanistan. Yeah, sure. There's like some trickling in from time to time. Uh, but it, and I knew, I saw what was happening in Iraq. And I just, I remember being a team leader and just, you know, we would get given these operations that were very, um, dangerous and really tough areas. Like let's say in eastern Afghanistan and Konar and things like that in the Korengal. And thinking like, as a leader, like some of my guys might get killed, um, or wounded. Yeah, we trained hard, but it is war. So is it worth it though?

• 2:42:02Speaker 01

  You know, I remember even as a team leader leaving on deployment and we'd have barbecues and my guys in my team, their wives would tell me like, will you, will you promise me that you'll bring back so and so? Like my husband. And then just looking at them and lying and just saying, of course. But in my mind, being like the pressure, you know, of like the leader, like I can't promise that. And then thinking like, then fast forward to the after mentioned type of missions I was talking about where it's like, the, what are, what are we doing? Like, yeah, that's gonna, yeah, we are the unit we are, but I'm not trying to be gun shy, but what are we doing? And that's when it started for me. And that's also when my mental health started spiraling was, um, after the bin Laden raid, like suicidal ideation and all sorts of things.

• 2:42:44Speaker 01

  Um, which was not good, you know, especially when you're a leader.

• 2:42:56Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I mean, looks like we're gearing up for one right now.

• 2:43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:43:03Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of advice do you have for the guys?

• 2:43:08Shawn Ryan?

  Because they, they're very aware of what's going on. There's no confusion anymore.

• 2:43:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:43:13Shawn Ryan?

  They know this isn't for us.

• 2:43:15Speaker 01

  No, it's not. Um.

• 2:43:19Speaker 01

  I would just tell them, I know what you have to do. I know if you get asked to do something, you have to do it. However, just know the consequences of what you're going to do. If the war gets to a point where things start getting dark and they do in combat, where guys start getting, feeding into the darkness. It's not worth it. Just back off. If you don't need to take the shot, don't take the shot. Don't, if you start feeling the bloodlust, which is a thing, and the guys who are listening, some people might not understand, but some people will who are listening. Probably the guys you're talking about, about the bloodlust. Don't feed into the bloodlust, not for a war like that. Or if our country was being attacked, maybe that's one thing.

• 2:44:02Speaker 01

  But you will pay the fucking price if you feed into the bloodlust for, you know, a, a war that is just unjust. That's my main advice for them. And to be, and my main mission, especially for men, especially for veterans, is to be okay to reach out for mental health. Like it is worth it. It's, you deserve it. And the sooner you can start getting into that, the better. And the less yourself, your family, um, are going to feel the impacts of it.

• 2:44:32Shawn Ryan?

  Thanks for sharing that.

• 2:44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:34Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:44:35Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah.

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• 2:46:14Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:46:38Speaker 01

  All right, Alex, back from the break. Yep. Had a good lunch? Sure did. Let's get into Neptune Spear. All right, let's do it. When did that come across your guys' radar? Yeah, in 2011, we had just gotten back from, at least my troop had just gotten back from Afghanistan. And we'd just gotten off a leave and we went in the team room and all of a sudden they asked for all, at the time I was a team leader. All of the team leaders and they ran off a list, team leaders and two ICs, so the second in charge of each team. So the, pretty much the most senior guys are the more senior guys, we wanted to see all in this office.

• 2:47:19Speaker 01

  And we're in this office and we knew something might be going on, but we had just gotten back from deployment. So probably, who knows, it would be the, some other squadrons were more likely going to do something if we had to go out and do it. But they mentioned that we'd been chosen to do a mission and they didn't mention what it was, but that we would be briefed on it later on. And we all thought at the time, the Arab Spring was going on in Libya and was, we were bombing Libya. And we thought, well, it probably has something to do with Libya and not sure what that meant. But, so we went in, they told us that and they keep it to ourselves, like this was a very, you know, secret thing.

• 2:48:03Speaker 01

  And so we end up driving down to another undisclosed base. And I remember as we walked into this base, seeing a bunch of very high ranking people in the military and intelligence communities and knowing who they were. And I'm talking like the high ranking people and thinking, oh, this is something big. This is not maybe something in Libya. Like directorate? Yeah, yeah, very high, yeah. And like Admiral McRaven was there and yeah, people from the agency, like high ranking. And at that point, I thought, okay, if there's something going on and we sat down and the analyst started briefing us that essentially, we think we know where someone is living.

• 2:48:48Speaker 01

  And when she said that, I remember feeling, because we had chased him for so long or chased his network for so long. And obviously came up with nothing. And I felt like almost puking, just to have a human moment. Yeah, a human moment of like, I mean, I'd like to say that it was like, you know, fuck yeah, let's go get him. And it was, but it was also like, whoa, like we think we have him. And they went on and said, he's in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which is closer to India than it was Afghanistan. So very deep into Pakistan. And they mentioned that we, that Pakistan will not know about this operation and that we have to keep it very close lipped.

• 2:49:29Speaker 01

  And they went on and they talked about the dangers of it as far as surface to air missiles, anti aircraft guns, F-16s that the Pakistanis had, and that we would be flying, once again, deep into Afghanistan, right on the border of India, where they are having historical border skirmishes. So they're on a heightened alert there. And so it was going to be very dangerous to be able to fly in there. The likelihood of being shot down was, I wouldn't say high, but it was a possibility for sure. And so they're briefing us up on that and we didn't know for sure if he was there. Now, the analyst had said, oh, he's there 100%.

• 2:50:12Speaker 01

  And I remember thinking, just from my experience, that you just never say 100%. It's like you jinx it. And I thought to myself, like, they don't know what they're talking about. You know, there's no way anything is 100%. Maybe it's a high chance, but I don't believe that's 100%. Regardless, we started doing some training on some mockups, meaning they built essentially the compound, the wall around the compound, instead of a 20 foot high concrete cinder block wall, was chain link fence, which will come back to bite us in the later. And then also a big plywood building that essentially showcased what the compound was. We didn't know what it was like on the inside, but at that unit or any of those types of units, it's not that big of a deal of what's inside.

• 2:50:56Speaker 01

  We just knew, we'll figure it on the inside. But it was the big movements of how we're going to take down the target contingencies and things like that, that we need to work out. Real quick. Yeah. How many of you guys were there on the brief? There was 23 of us, plus those are 23 operators were going to be on it. We had a couple, if I recall, two to four alternates that would get briefed in. So if one of the 23 guys got hurt in training or had a family emergency, couldn't make it, there was a pool of alternates that would go in there. So I would say, and we had some support from intelligence to communications, things like that. So I mean, I'd say maybe 35 people total. Who's picking these guys? That's a good question.

• 2:51:41Speaker 01

  So it was picked from the top from our squadron, picked us. And at the time, one of the operators brought up a great question, which I don't disagree with, was, why did we not just pick one of our three troops? Because within each troop, it's already designed to be self-contained. Where now you're kind of cherry picking the more experienced guys. So when it came to basic things, like who's the breacher? It's like, oh, let's figure out who the breacher is. Or it's the most simple things of who's going to grab the vans to take us to the range? And you know, within a troop or a platoon or whatever, people just know like, oh, that's so and so's responsibility. But we didn't have any of that. And also there wasn't like, it was weird to work out the hierarchy.

• 2:52:23Speaker 01

  So we were working through our own stuff, but it was not, it was told to us who was going to be on it. Why didn't they just use a group? I don't know. I think their thought was, this is the highest risk and profile mission, at least in the global war on terror. Perhaps maybe in modern military, I don't know, let's just say global war on terror. And so we don't want to mess it up, so we want to pick the most senior guys. I'm not saying I entirely agree with that, if they just kept it with the unit. But at the same time, I wasn't about to complain about it, right? I wasn't going to stick up my hand and be like, because they might be like, all right, cool, Alex, like, yeah, if you want to do it that way, you're going to be on the backup team or whatever. So. What would you have done? A troop. You would have done a troop? I would have picked one of the troops.

• 2:53:08Speaker 01

  I would have probably known if I was the squadron master chief, and this isn't a knock on that squadron master chief at all, because I don't know what he was dealing with or whatever, but I would have picked probably the most proficient, the strongest of my three troops. And I probably would have picked it, but yeah, that's what I would have likely done. It worked out regardless, but just because of all of the who's who, it was a bunch of team leaders. So it was kind of like, who's in charge of the team leaders? Like, is there a senior one? Or, and then there's just a lot of excess bandwidth that went into figuring things out that was already figured out within a troop that had been established. So they, we started our training.

• 2:53:49Speaker 01

  I bet that raises a lot of questions to them, why people are getting pulled out of their teams. Yeah, and then it was hard because they told us this information and it, and everybody, not just from the squadron, other squadrons like, well, what are the red squadron guys up to you? With internally, it's like, and so you're getting hit from every angle from, and you just have to be like, no, I can't talk about it. Like, I know for me, I was not going to be the guy that, that gave it up. I remember even at the time I was single and going out in Virginia Beach and having buddies hit me up like, hey, let's go out to whatever, you know, like chicks oyster bar or whatever, and, and saying, no, I can't go out. I'm not going out because I know like, it's gonna, like, I don't want to be out. One of my buddies is going to be like, here's a shot of tequila, like, let's do it.

• 2:54:32Speaker 01

  And then like, hey, so what's been going on with X, Y, and Z? So I remember thinking to myself, like, I will not go out because I don't even want to put myself in that situation to where I might say something. So I just stayed in my house, just like watching movies, like young, single guy on a Friday night, like, I'm just going to watch a movie. And. How old are you? 31 at the time. Yeah, I had just got in my team as an assault team leader. And I was at the top of my game operationally at that time. And so, yeah, the, so we started planning for it.

• 2:55:09Speaker 01

  The role that I had was, so in the compound, the primary entrance was actually the back door of this primary building. And that's where they felt that Bin Laden and his couriers were, and his son were living. And, and there's another, there's a couple of other small buildings, but our role, my job was to essentially with my team, we would have loved to have not been this aggressive, but we did not have the time or the fuel to do it. So we had to fly our helicopter right to the, right in front of that back door, kick out a fast rope, which to the listeners, a fast rope is essentially a fireman's pole, but it's a rope. So you kick it out and then you slide down it like a fireman's pole, just a way to insert.

• 2:55:53Speaker 01

  And so we were going to fly right there with one sniper overlooking the compound, just in case a guy came out with an AK. And then through the fast rope, fast rope down. And then my team was to essentially go right up the middle of the compound. And so that was our role. Another team was supposed to fast rope on top of the roof and we were going to meet in the middle. And then there was another element that went off to the side too. There's another courier, another small building to take that out. And so that was all supposed to happen simultaneously. Once again, we would have loved to have been able to like land way out in some field and sneak up. That would have been great, but we just didn't have the fuel.

• 2:56:33Speaker 01

  The, one of the main things was, we had to accomplish this mission within 38 minutes because we didn't have the fuel to do it. So if we did not get out in 38 minutes, we were told, you're going to have to just Alamo up. And, and just fight off until that's it, or you become a political prisoner.

• 2:56:53Speaker 01

  What sucked about that also was in the military, there's for people who don't know, there's things called speedballs or essentially bags full of ammunition, extra ammunition, breaching charges, medical equipment. And that's usually what you take on a mission, especially if you knew there's a chance that you might have to Alamo up. And so you would kick out these bags so that you could have a ton of ammunition. But the problem is, we couldn't take those because of the weight restrictions, because we were so deep into Pakistan to burn fuel. So, and they were even asking guys like, hey, are there, is there even weapons and stuff that you guys can ditch? And I was crazy looking back on it. By the time I was like, I can ditch my pistol, because I might not need that. Of course, I needed it, but I was like,

• 2:57:37Speaker 01

  I can ditch that. And I remember thinking, all I had was four magazines. Did you ditch it? I did. And all I had was four, I remember my loadout, it was four magazines. So like, three across my chest, one in my 416, my rifle. I had a frag grenade, a thermal barricade grenade, an internal charge. And that was it. It was just as streamlined as it got, because we just did not have the weight. And I remember even thinking like, well, maybe I'll sneak in a magazine or two and nobody will know the difference. I literally thought that would, I'll probably say here in a minute, but I just, we didn't have the weight. And so the Alamo up thing was a death sentence, essentially, that it's like, we just will not have, no matter how good of shots we are, we just will run out of ammunition if we don't make it past 38 minutes,

• 2:58:22Speaker 01

  or if we, if we stay longer than 38 minutes. So we started, so that was a big factor. Also, each helicopter was, had the ability to do the whole mission by itself, meaning there was a high chance that one of them was going to get shot down on the insertion into Abbottabad by the Pakistani air force. And so instead of a normal mission would be, okay, if a helicopter gets shot down or has engine problems, whatever, the other one will divert. And now the new mission is to recover those guys and figure that out. But on this particular mission, it was, that goes down, we are going, we are already committed, that we'll figure that out later, but that other helicopter has gone straight for it. And that other helicopter had the ability

• 2:59:03Speaker 01

  to take, to do everything. It's obviously with half the guys, but we were already committed. So some of the things that they were looking to do is be able to gather the intelligence from the building, but also to take biometrics from the body of bin Laden, meaning taking tissue samples and things like that. And we also had to plan for a safe room, meaning for the listeners, sometimes when you get in a high ranking people, there might be almost like a safe, like a closet that is fortified, that somebody might lock themselves in. So if we ran into that, that was going to be a time restraint. So how do we get through that? So there was some breaching charges and things like that that we had. But each helicopter had their own in case they had to run into that. Another factor that we had to worry about was,

• 2:59:48Speaker 01

  how do we actually take it down in the speed that we need to? Of course, we want to take it down fast. However, when you take things down fast, you're increasing the chance of a guy getting wounded, because you're not, you're slowing, I mean, you're not going slow, you're going fast. So if a guy does get wounded, and it wasn't that we were worried about myself or one of the guys worried like, I might get wounded, it was kind of, it's a very strong possibility. But it was the speed that it would take to, if a guy does get wounded, one of the guys, now we have to render him aid. Now we have to get him on a stretcher. Now we have to, now it's just time, time, time starts ticking. So it's like, okay, how do we kind of do a hybrid of where we're going fast, but kind of cheating a few like extra slow moments here and there

• 3:00:33Speaker 01

  to buy down risk to getting wounded? Not that we're worried about being wounded, but because of the timeline. Other factors was how do we retrieve all of the intelligence as fast as we can? Because likely the target will go down. And now we're thinking, it's likely going to be a goldmine. But how do we get as much as we can out in a short amount of time? So there's all these little things, these little planning things that we're trying to work out. And then we, and we just keep repping it out. And we're going through different contingencies. What if one helicopter crashes, which is an important thing, because that's what would happen. But it's like, what if one crashes? What do we do? What if, you know, they hop in a vehicle and it drives down the street as we're inserting, does one helicopter go after it and the other take

• 3:01:13Speaker 01

  down the building? There's all these things that we had to work through. And so we keep training, keep training for, if I recall, it was about two and a half weeks or so, we went to some different sites. But one major factor was on that first mockup was the chain link fence. For the helicopter would come in, the chain link fence that was mimicking the 20 foot high cinder block wall. So I'll come back to why that is important here in a minute. But so we kept repping it out. And then finally, we deployed. And I'm still not thinking that it's going to happen. It's just like, no, this is too ballsy of a call for the president to make,

• 3:01:53Speaker 01

  because we're essentially invading a sovereign country without them knowing, to potentially go after a guy who's potentially there, right? And, and if something happens, that team is going to be, like I mentioned, either dead or political prisoners. So that's going to be a whole quagmire to worry about politically. So I personally was like, I still don't know if this is going to happen. Of course, I'm taking it serious. Like that, yes, this is going to happen. But in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, I doubt it. So we still end up, everything's going and we deploy to Afghanistan. And, and once we got there, and we're still just kind of getting ready, and we're still playing this whole not telling everybody what we're doing. And we kind of had

• 3:02:35Speaker 01

  this cover story of, well, we got surged back over because there's a big campaign coming up. That was kind of our story. So if we saw somebody in the chow hall that, because we had just, my troop had just been in Afghanistan in that same base, maybe six weeks prior, maybe five weeks prior. So we were, had to work through a cover story of like, somebody like the guy who works in the chow hall, or one of the ranger platoons that are there that, you know, you might know these guys. And they're like, what are you guys doing back? And our story was like, well, we're here because there's, I don't know, there's some big campaign, I'd rather be back on leave or whatever. So we kind of had to play that game. And so the, the final, one thing, a caveat I want to bring back to, while we were briefing, the president, Obama at the time, asked our

• 3:03:20Speaker 01

  planners, well, what happens? You guys keep talking about these F16s. What if the guys are flying back after the mission? And the Pakistanis scramble their F16s to shoot down the helicopters? What are you guys going to do about that? And the military, I think, and I'm just assuming, they didn't want to come up with too drastic of plans because they wanted the mission to go, or like, they did not believe that it would get approved. So our bosses were kind of like, well, you know, we're going to just, we'll have to figure it out. However, President Obama, to his credit, did say, I want a couple flights of F15s, or whatever it is, whatever fighter jets we have, that will shoot down the Pakistani F16s, if they're coming after our guys, I will, I

• 3:04:02Speaker 01

  will take the hit on it. And I remember hearing that and just being like, that is ballsy. Like, like hats off to him that through all of that, he could have easily just said, well, okay, the military guys are saying they're going to just pedal to the metal on the helicopters and fly out of there. Hopefully they get away from the F16s. But he had the gumption to just be like, I'm not going to let our guys, if we're sending our guys in to do that, and they've, and they're flying back, they're not going to get shot down by F16s. So we're going to have our F15s, or whatever you guys decide in the military, whatever's the best platform, to shoot down their, their airplanes. So, fast forwarding back to the night of the raid, and you know, we were getting How long, how much time had you, before the raid happened?

• 3:04:47Speaker 01

  That we found out? Yeah. I would say From the brief That's a great question. Maybe, I might be off, but it feels like under a month, maybe Under a month? Yeah, because we, we trained for maybe two and a half, three weeks, and then we blew out to Afghanistan. And we were there, if I recall, maybe like seven, eight days before we finally launched. I mean, I might be off a day or two, but it, that's what it feels like. That's what I recall, that it was under a month, that we got the information where we thought we were going to do something in Libya, and then all of a sudden, here we are, flying to Afghanistan, going after the most wanted man in the world. And as we were sitting there,

• 3:05:28Speaker 01

  I remember thinking to myself, you know, my role was, as I mentioned, to take the team, my team right up the middle of the compound. And then also, I was in charge of all the intelligence gathering. That was like my secondary role. And going into it, I knew, we knew, as the higher up you got in Al Qaeda, it wasn't always the case, but the higher up you got, the more fanatical things got. So you would run into more suicide vests, or S vests, more houseborne IEDs, and just people willing to die for the cause, right? This, and this was the baddest dude. So we're likely going to be running into that. And so, knowing that, that like, our role of going right up the middle, like, that was going to be, at least in my mind, that was going to be a time that was going to be a real deciding factor, if somebody's going

• 3:06:13Speaker 01

  to run out with a suicide vest or a houseborne IED, and just blow us up right there. And as, for me, as the assault team leader, which usually you wouldn't do this, but I thought I will be the first one in the door, because I would, like, and that's just not me, Alex West, but a lot of those guys would have done the same thing, that if anybody is going to run into a S vest, it's going to be the guy leading it. And because I know the guys behind me would, are just as qualified, they could have easily picked up where I left off. But I just thought, if I'm going to, I'm not going to tell somebody to do that, unless I'm going to do it. So, as we, I remember, we finally get the, the go, like, it's going to be a go. You guys are, start

• 3:06:57Speaker 01

  kidding up. And I remember What were you guys doing when you got that? We were, if I recall, we had just had some food, maybe it was the equivalent of, I would say, Maybe eight PM local time. So we had just had dinner. We were kind of hanging out. We knew that it was in this window of time because of the alume cycle or the moon cycle that it was likely going to be in this window of time. And if we missed it and didn't launch, that we were either gonna have to wait for the next alume cycle. And so we'd have to stay in Afghanistan for another 30 days or likely around that. Or it was you were just gonna get sent home and and this whole thing would fizzle out. So it was kind of like on the edge of it could have been any one of those three things that could have happened

• 3:07:42Speaker 01

  equally, I believed at least. But the intelligence people kept saying, no, he is there 100%. And then I had that same old thing of like, yeah, I I don't know if anything's 100%. But I mean, I appreciate your your intensity and your confidence. I just don't believe it. But

• 3:08:01Speaker 01

  finally, they came and they said, it's a go. Get your kit on. And so we started kidding up. And I remember we got on the helicopters. And I remember still thinking, there's no way like this is just another spin. And then they started cranking the engines. And I just thought, okay, like, that's interesting. But I'm still not convinced. And then all of a sudden, we started taxing. And I started hearing some radio calls. And then all of a sudden, we started to take off. And I just remember thinking, we'll all be dead. Like, we are doing this thing. And then what would it was an hour and a half flight. And I remember it was a lot of time to sit in your head and think

• 3:08:41Speaker 01

  about what's about to happen. Because what was gonna happen within an hour and a half, a few things was gonna happen. You were either going to get the man and get out of there. You were going to get stuck there in Alamo up and die, you and all of your friends. You're gonna just get stuck there and become a political prisoner. And those were like the three outcomes that could have happened from that. And so as we're flying in, I'm just remember thinking like, okay, and then feeling the pressure of it, just to be human about it. Like, you know, I have a human nervous system. We had human nervous. So it's like, even though, yeah, we were the team, we had the resume, all of I had the confidence to do it. I still was having these human emotions of just like, the weight of it. Because if one, let's say, it was like the Super Bowl, I can

• 3:09:26Speaker 01

  imagine if if I'm an NFL player, it's like, wow, the Super Bowl is coming. Like, a lot of people are watching. This is the pinnacle of my career. It's at the end of the day, you throw a bunch of interceptions and lose the game, you're okay. It's not that big of a deal. On this one, it was, if we mess up, not only are we dead, but we're also making our our unit, our military, our country, New Yorkers, all of these people, we're gonna let them down. So it's the gravity of fucking payback that was on our shoulders, that we were fortunate enough to get picked for, to be able to deliver that for the American people and New Yorkers. And so that weight on us, it was just overwhelming as we were flying in. And I remember just thinking about that. And as I

• 3:10:10Speaker 01

  closed my eyes, I'm visualizing New Yorkers jumping out of the Twin Towers, and just thinking, like, we have to have payback. And then also thinking like, oh, my gosh, the weight of this is crazy. And then the closer we started, you know, then another 20 minutes would pass, another 20 minutes. And I remember just feeling overwhelmed and getting into like, just taking deep breaths, almost of just like, I need to calm down. There's a lot going on here. And then just I remember looking out the window of the helicopter and seeing a bunch of the topography reminded me of like, East County, San Diego, and just thinking, okay, that looks familiar. And then just starting to do some mental reps in my head of like, okay, the reality is, this is not that hard of a target. It I mean, you've done way harder. Your unit has done way harder.

• 3:10:51Speaker 01

  All the guys around you are the best that you've ever served with. So you you guys will you will, as long as you get your feet on the ground, you will at least pull this off, at least on the ground, not getting out, but you'll pull it off. And I just kept doing more deep breaths and visualizing and finally started to like, calm myself down, because that was an hour and a half of just thinking about what if, what if. And then as the closer we get, I remember we're three minutes out. We opened up the the Hilo doors, and we unlocked our undone our D rings. So for the listeners, lots of guys would carry a runner on their belts that could clip into a D ring of the helicopter, so that if the helicopter pulled off to the side, you would not get flung

• 3:11:35Speaker 01

  out of the helicopter. But we had all unclipped those because we were getting close because we were about to fast rope. You don't want to fast rope with that in because you won't go anywhere. So we all unclipped. I'm holding on to the back kit of one of my operator friends, who's who's gonna be the guy who throws the fast rope. And I'm holding on to him. I'm looking around at all the guys, hearing some communications calls. And then I'm hearing one minute out. And I start to see the town. And I can feel just those like, cool, like, like, spring breeze type thing. I had a long sleeve cami top on, and that's it. I could feel a little little cold, nothing crazy. And I'm holding on to him. And I'm just completely dialed in, like, as dialed in as as I've ever been. And

• 3:12:20Speaker 01

  then I just remember we fly finally 30 seconds out. And then all of a sudden, we fly right in front. And I can see the compound, what we have done rehearsed so many times. This so I'm holding one of the operators, another sniper's got his gun pointed towards the main building. And as we start to hold station right there, what had happened was, the when we're doing the chain link fence, the rotor wash from the helicopters would go through through the chain link fence. And also this night, the temperature was a little bit hotter than expected, which is would be one little micro factor here. But when we got in there, and they had these 20 foot high walls, that rotor wash would hit the walls and come back up almost like in a vacuum towards the

• 3:13:04Speaker 01

  helicopter. So it had nowhere to go. All that hot rotor wash would come up and it destabilized the helicopter and spun us in a very violent 45 degree dive while we were right there. So in one moment, I see the building, I'm holding on to my buddy's kit. And the next minute, the whole world goes 45 degrees and spins. Yeah, right in the most like, second one of the operation, right? Where like, just 10 seconds earlier, it was like, okay, don't fuck this up, do this and that. Okay, got it. Got it. Okay, I'm feeling confident too. Okay, the whole world is spinning and we're diving into the into the earth. Thankfully, the pilot being world class was able to bury the nose of the helicopter into the ground, while the rest of the helicopter,

• 3:13:49Speaker 01

  the tail was on a on the 25 foot wall. So it was almost like a 45 degree angle of the helicopter with its nose buried in the ground. We impacted. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it herniated discs in my back, along with a bunch of the other guys on the helicopter, a very common injury we all had, was guys had herniated discs. But you weren't feeling it because you were your adrenaline was through the roof. I remember, though, holding on to my buddy's kit, though. So we impact, and we're starting to teeter back and forth. And I remember from, you know, being in a previous helicopter crash, but also training like, hey, let the rotors settle before you jump out. So I'm thinking to myself, just let the rotor settle. And I'm holding on to him. I look over to look

• 3:14:34Speaker 01

  at the rest of the helicopter, imagining that a lot of our guys got flung out of the helicopter. But I wanted to get some situational awareness of where everybody was at. And the moment I turned my head, the guy that I was holding on to, I let up just ever so slightly. And he just bolted out the door. And he was a big guy. And I remember looking at him and thinking, he's dead. Because I feel us, you could see the the rotors kind of doing this thing, like, his head's gonna get lopped off. And he just kept running right through it. And I was just like, well, I'll be dead. I can't leave him. So then I jumped right after him and some of the other guys. And so I follow him, just trying to keep my head as low as possible. And then we just get out of the rotor

• 3:15:14Speaker 01

  wash. And as we're running for this next gate, one thing I reflected on later was, I never stopped to turn around to look at the helicopter ever again. Because my mentality was, if there's guys killed or wounded, that does not matter right now, which is something I would have never done on a previous operation. It was, America needs us. If it's just the two of us to start this operation and to kick this thing off, then the two of us are going to be what America needs right now. Like, I cannot even spend one second looking at what's going on back there. And so we just kept running. That guy came up, blew one of the gates. And then we ran up. I came up, and I cleared, there's like, this little, almost chicken shed type thing, cleared that

• 3:15:59Speaker 01

  real quick. And as I ran up to the front, basically, it was the back door, the main entrance, I ran up to it, and the rest of my team was behind me. And as I mentioned before, I knew I wanted to be the first guy in. And I saw one of the couriers poke his head down the wall at me, and I shot him through the left eye. And when I saw him, though, fall into his room. And I just thought, like, he's gonna clack himself off. So I went against a lot of our SOPs, because there's a bunch of open doors. And I just thought, he's gonna blow himself up. I'm gonna chase after him. And I just ran sprinted down the hallway to go run after him, across these open doors,

• 3:16:41Speaker 01

  which is kind of dangerous in a way, because you don't want to split yourself and the other guys if there's a bad guy in those. But I thought the the risk was this guy blowing himself up, which not only would it, let's say, killer wound my team, but it would completely throw the mission off. We would never get out in 38 minutes. So I took the chance to sprint down the hallway after him. As I went into the hall into his room, he was crouched over around his waist, and I'm worried about this suicide vest. And I go to take a shot, and his wife jumps on him, like a human shield. And I remember I take one shot, hit him, and I go to take a second, and her arm goes right in front of my barrel, and I shoot through her forearm into her husband's

• 3:17:22Speaker 01

  body. But unbeknownst to me, at the time, somehow, the round must have ricocheted in there. And while she was being a human shield on him, she took a round. And and both were killed. And she was pregnant, and had the baby right there. Holy shit. And had the baby gave birth. Right there. It all happened right there. Like, he was in one moment, I Unfortunately, you know, I killed him. While doing that, she was killed as a human shield. And then she must have been in her third trimester. She was very pregnant. And then when she died, I believe, just like released the baby. And that all happened right there.

• 3:18:02Speaker 01

  So I had that helicopter crash, ran up and those like next like 20 seconds were just extreme. And then I remember when that happened and I look over and there's a small little eight year old girl just standing there staring at me, holding a stuffed animal with pigtails. And I remember just seeing that. And I'm, I know we had just crashed a helicopter that I'm, I'm walking dead. Cause unbeknownst to me, I didn't not know that our QRF, or for the listeners, Quick Reactionary Force, our backup guys from our squadron, our, our command, were in a 47, a helicopter that was screaming for us as fast as it could go.

• 3:18:45Speaker 01

  But that wasn't, we didn't know that at the time. We thought, I thought, okay, we're, we're walking dead. We just crashed, we're not going to get out of here. I did not know backup was coming like that because of the F16s and all of that. But back to that little girl, I knew I was walking dead, but in all the chaos, and I'm even hearing another team that's getting in a gunfight in the background. I know that they're in contact also at the, with one of the other couriers. I hear that and I had the wherewithal in the moment to just take a knee and just put my hand on her shoulder and just tell her how sorry I was. And, and then just snap back into it. And just thought, okay, I've got a job to do. And then went back out and helped clear the rest of the bottom floor.

• 3:19:28Speaker 01

  But while doing that, I remember seeing this steel door that was going, leading up the stairs. And at that moment, I knew he was there. I knew, I'm like, there's no way somebody puts a door like that going up to the, you know, up their stairs. And so at that point, the same breacher, you know, I was, he's starting to put this a charge on there and we're putting on, and I remember saying like, put on the big, a type of charge, which I won't disclose, but our biggest charge. I was like, put on the biggest one. We need to blow the fuck out of this place because we're, we are walking dead and we're not, we're going to finish this and get this guy no matter what it takes because the American people and New Yorkers depend on us. So we threw on this massive charge on the door.

• 3:20:11Speaker 01

  And as that's happening, what the other helicopter was supposed to land, as I mentioned prior, land on the top of the roof. But because of contingencies, because we crashed, they did the right thing to buy down risk and landed in a field, basically a, a lot, a housing lot right next door. They landed, it's a plot of land. They landed and those guys started getting out and started running towards where we were at. So they're finally starting to get there, but as the team there, I'm coordinating with them, hey, don't come in yet. We're about to blow this big charge. You're going to run right into it. So I'm coordinating them to make sure that they don't come running into it. I'm making sure all the other team got our assaulters are out of the way. And there was one moment where I tucked back into, into the room where I'd killed that

• 3:20:56Speaker 01

  family and that little girl was to where there was, I was about to give the call of like, okay, send it on the charge. And I had a beat of a moment where I was like, we're dead. There's no way we're getting the fuck out of here. Send it, boom. And then at that point, the rest of the guys came in, they filled in behind this point man, started going up. They encountered Khalid, which was the son with an AK-47, which is a horrible situation to be in where you're going upstairs while a guy has an AK-47. But he was engaged and killed. And then we started making our way up. And then one of the guys saw the man engaged Bin Laden.

• 3:21:40Speaker 01

  And then, and then the rest of that, those guys went up to that room to finish him off. I was on the second floor, cleared the rest of that. And then immediately I was, as I mentioned, in charge of all the intelligence gathering. So I went right into the mode of like seeing what we had and just thinking, this is a goal mind. Like we have to get as much out of, out of this as possible. I hear more shots upstairs, killing Bin Laden. I wouldn't know at the time, but they, whatever, those guys finished him off. And then at that point, it's just grabbing as much stuff as we can. I'm also thinking to myself, like, we're still like, okay, well, is this, okay, we're

• 3:22:25Speaker 01

  going to grab this stuff and try to get out of here. What's going on? I get an update that our QRF is coming to pick us up. So we, there's a chance we might get out of here. I hear the Geronimo call, which was essentially the call sign saying that we had gotten Bin Laden. And I thought to myself like, wow, we actually pulled it off. Like, thank God we did. I still am not sure we're going to get out of here, but at least we did this. And, and then at that point, they start, my master chief comes over and says like, all right, the group I was in, which is the chalk or for the listeners, that that's just a term for the helicopter. Basically the group of guys that I was in like, hey, you guys are going to be out on this next helicopter. And then they started prepping the other helicopter.

• 3:23:08Speaker 01

  They were going to blow it very, I mean, we didn't have much time. We're doing the best we could do to blow that helicopter so that the Pakistanis wouldn't get it. It was all over the news, of course, or whatever, but we did the best we could on the time constraints we had. And then at that point, the, we, the helicopter comes in, we grabbed the body, Bin Laden's body. And I remember it was one of the guys grabbing, I mean, we were running so fast to try to get out of there that I remember my heart rate must've been like 180 beats a minute, like just dragging his body. I'm covered in like laptops and a bunch of intelligence and all of my gear. And we're just running out to this, essentially this lot that our helicopter came in.

• 3:23:51Speaker 01

  We threw the body in, we jumped on top of, I jumped on top of them amongst the other guys. We flew off, they blew the, the helicopter. And then the QRF helicopter came in and pulled out the rest of the guys. As we start flying back, I just remember, I just kept getting Bin Laden's elbow in my ribs the whole time. And I remember thinking like, this is the scariest man on earth. He's just an old man, brittle, no muscle on him and his elbows in my side and it won't like, I couldn't get comfortable. And, and we, we keep flying. However, I know we're way behind 38 minutes. I'm not sure what we're going to do.

• 3:24:32Speaker 01

  It was kind of beyond the, what I was more worried of the inside of the building. Our leadership was working on, you know, the big picture stuff of logistics of getting us out. And as we're flying out, we had something called a forward area refuel point or FARP. All that means for the listeners is that we had gone into Pakistan in a field and put a fuel bladder in there and made a makeshift gas station. Cause we did not have enough fuel to get out of Pakistan. But as we're flying to that, that FARP, we're flying in and I remember there's lights started flashing in the cockpit. And then the crew came back and said, hey, make sure you're clipped in those D rings again, because we might go back in, we might crash this.

• 3:25:14Speaker 01

  And I remember thinking, whoa, third, things come in threes. You know, this would be my third helicopter crash, second in that day. And, and so I just remember thinking like, wow, okay. And we finally made it though on fumes, landed, got out. I was told to go on the 47 just for weight reasons, myself and another guy. We got back into the helicopters and then started flying for Pakistan. Unbeknownst to us, the Pakistanis had started to scramble their F16s. And we had our F15s that were just standing by right on the border to shoot them down. And so as we're flying back, I remember when we finally crossed over into Afghanistan,

• 3:25:54Speaker 01

  the pilot came on the radio and said, I thought you guys would never think you'd hear this, but we're back in Afghanistan. You never thought be that happy to hear this. And we were just like, fuck, yeah, we're back in Afghanistan. And you know, we're all kind of like fist pumping and like hitting each other up on the, on the bird, on the 47 I was on, as we finally flew in, like we actually pulled it off. We still had to get there, but it was like, wow, we're finally back in Afghanistan. We land and, you know, get all of our stuff out in, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan and pull it all out. And then unbeknownst to me, one of our guys got out and he had been shot in his bolt cutters and had fragged his traps, million dollar wound, thank God.

• 3:26:39Speaker 01

  But everybody else, a little banged up from the helicopter crash, but we were all in one piece. And from there we flew to Bagram, which was the main air force base there. And I remember as we walked in, there was just like the whole world's intelligence communities that are waiting for us. And I remember just being, because I was in charge of it and, and asking them to basically back the fuck off. Because we still had like, you know, guys still had their gear on and everybody wanted a piece of it, which they were fine with. But I just remember thinking like, we, we aren't even organized right now. We're all in like somebody's like soccer, you know, bag. You know, we've got a bunch of hard drives in there that we pulled off target or a pillow case or we just weren't organized and we didn't have time.

• 3:27:21Speaker 01

  So finally we laid everything out and we started the turnover of all of the intelligence. At the time they laid the body out and there's, this has been said before, but one of the guys was the same height as Bin Laden. So they made him lay down just to make sure, okay, he's the right height because we didn't have a tape measure. One of the, yeah, so that was going on, they were taking samples from him. He had been shot in the face. So it was hard to really get a match, but they did take a bunch of his DNA and it came back as a positive on him. We went in and we did our debrief and then we, I remember after the debrief was over and everything was turned over, I was in my camis, my camouflage uniform, still, still sweaty.

• 3:28:05Speaker 01

  And I remember somebody saying, the president is going to make an announcement. And we were just standing there in this hangar on this TV and just watching President Obama come down and just tell the American people that, you know, we had taken out Bin Laden. And it was at that moment, it really hit me because before that I was just in operator mode. But then I finally seen the president say that in the word, those words coming out of his mouth. And as someone who was, you know, on the invasion of Afghanistan, to then be on that mission and just like that, my whole life, like a lot of us veterans, you know, had fought this thing from that generation. And so it was like, I cannot believe we pulled that off. And I remember going back and finally taking a shower and I'm walking back from a shower

• 3:28:50Speaker 01

  trailer and then just thinking to myself like, still like, I cannot believe we pulled this off. I don't know, is that, I can't believe I was fortunate enough to be on that mission and we, and we were alive.

• 3:29:02Speaker 01

  And then we hopped on a plane and we flew straight to Virginia Beach in a C seventeen with in air refueling. It was about seventeen hours straight. And then as we landed and opened the door and our command was there just cheering us on. But that's pretty much like the way the mission. Yeah. I feel so fortunate to have been a part of it, to be a small part of that. And one thing I want to say is it wasn't just, you know, the twenty-three guys and interpreter. It was the years of the intelligence community working their ass off for years. It was the helicopter crews. It was the mechanics. It was all of the people

• 3:29:42Speaker 01

  that contributed to everything. It was not just those twenty-three guys and an interpreter. It was the nation. And that I am so proud that we were able to have payback for the American people and New Yorkers. Man.

• 3:30:02Speaker 01

  How about that was a hell of a feeling?

• 3:30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I even now, when I sometimes forget about it every now and then, and then it'll cross my mind. And I just, it's so nice to be able to be like, wow, I was just a small part of this incredible experience, you know, to, and it wasn't just, it was the ability to, you know, as I said, as we're flying in, imagining New Yorkers jumping out of the Twin Towers, you know, and then and being fortunate enough to do something about it. Yeah, it was an incredible experience and feeling.

• 3:30:42Speaker 01

  Did you meet the president? I did. We did. Let's see here. I can't remember the amount of time, but shortly after, we flew to Fort Campbell, where the president and Vice President Biden at the time, were addressing the one hundred first airborne, and they had us in a separate kind of private room that he came in and, and, you know, we were able to meet him and the Vice President. And that was a super cool experience, too. What did they say? One thing I remember Obama, such a, I've heard this from other people, but maybe it took me meeting him, such an intelligent, well spoken guy, a lot of charisma and swagger.

• 3:31:25Speaker 01

  And he just thanked us and told us he was proud of us and that America was proud of us. And, and it felt very genuine, by the way. It wasn't like a, in my opinion, it wasn't some sort of political stunt or whatever. You could tell he was really proud. And to be honest, I'm surprised and that he actually had the guts to do it. Because that was such a gutsy call, because we did not really know it was a hundred percent. And then to line up the F fifteens and all of that, like that would have all written on him if we wouldn't have gotten out of there. And Alamo'd up and we're all killed, they're political prisoners.

• 3:32:05Speaker 01

  That would have politically been horrible. So to just go for it, I give him respect for that. Damn. Yeah.

• 3:32:18Speaker 01

  What did you say to the little girl?

• 3:32:21Speaker 01

  I told her in that moment that I was so sorry. And I have, and I've struggled with that, with her, ever since. The fact that that happened, I've seen her in my own healing and like plant medicine, and she's visited me. And, and I've even told her in those experience, I don't know if she's still alive or not, but her spirit, I can feel it. And it's more of a, you know, your father was a soldier and I was a soldier, and we met essentially on the battlefield, and I'm sorry that your family got caught in between it. And there's no way that her and I would have ever met, any other circumstances. We're

• 3:33:03Speaker 01

  from two different worlds. But in a way, it was almost like she was a victim, a child who was a victim of war, almost as I was from my father in Vietnam. And I think that should be a cautionary tale for future wars. Not that Bin Laden didn't deserve it, but it's just for, there's that story that I have, there's stories like that from a lot of veterans that have to experience that and carry that. And what's tough about that is I'm so proud of that mission, but it came at a human cost and a human toll, that here I am, years later, still struggling with having that happen in front of that little girl who didn't deserve that. However,

• 3:33:49Speaker 01

  yeah, I don't know how to heal or, I mean, I'm trying to heal from it, but it's just one of those things where just because it was a massive payback, that I still feel it. I still feel the, the weight of that room in particular. Damn, man. Yeah.

• 3:34:19Speaker 01

  What was the day after like? We, I remember, one of my buddies picked me up from the ocean, the airport, the military airport, and took me out to get some dinner, like a steak dinner, I think, and a drink. And I remember, that was enough for me, like I wasn't about to like go party or anything. I was just so tired. And basically, I slept a lot. And my back was really hurting me from the crash and going into medical. And I think the next few days were more of like getting evaluated for injuries and, and a lot of after action. So there's a lot of, you know, I was getting flown up to DC quite a bit, to do after action stuff. But

• 3:35:04Speaker 01

  it was a lot of that. And then, when that dust settled after a couple of weeks, at a unit like that, it's like, okay, get over it, we're getting back in there. You've got house, house runs, you've got trips, you gotta start planning for X, Y, and Z. The war's not over.

• 3:35:22Speaker 01

  What was it like showing back at the, showing back up at the squadron? It was great. You know, I mean, we were so proud. The squadron was proud. You know, other squadrons were, you know, professionally kind of like, man, if we would have done it, we would have never crashed the helicopter. You know, some shit talking here and there, which, you know, touche, that's not, that's pretty funny. But I just think, yeah, guys were so proud. And, and so was I, you know, there was just, it was nice to be able to have that. But it was, in that world, short-lived, because as we, you know, got back into the swing of things, I'm gonna jump around a little bit here, but Gold Squadron deployed

• 3:36:05Speaker 01

  a little bit later that summer. And Two Troop, which was Gold Squadron Two Troop, which I was in that previous deployment, because I was a selection instructor, and my best friend, Rob Reeves, we would always talk about, man, we can never get on a mission together. We've been serving together for so long. We were roommates for a long time. And, you know, we just like, is there a way we can get on a mission together? And so, when in between selection schedules, there's a gap of time, I went over with Gold Squadron Two Troop, so that I could just, you know, get, stay current as an instructor, but also to be able to do missions with Rob. And I ended up getting hurt up in the mountains

• 3:36:45Speaker 01

  on that deployment, coming back early and was an instructor. But then, after the Bin Laden raid, when they deployed again, they were providing a quick reactionary force or backup for an element that needed help. And as they flew in, their call sign was extortion seventeen. And their whole troop of guys was flying in and were shot down and killed. And so, for, which devastated the NSW community, of course, as you know, and also a dev group community, because, you know, you're talking in one moment, you know, you're friends with all these guys, and the next moment, a whole troop of guys

• 3:37:28Speaker 01

  is killed. So you have twelve to twenty phone numbers in your phone, that every single one of them is dead. And so you go from the highs of the Bin Laden raid, May second, to August, where extortion was shot down, you know, so just a few months later, and just the high, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And when that happened, I remember the command just went into full on mode of just like, let's get these casualty officers out. Like, it was mayhem. They did a great job, hats off to the command. But that amount of death toll was the highest amount of loss of the Afghan, of the global

• 3:38:11Speaker 01

  war on terror, and in the highest amount of casualties in the SEAL history. So when that happened, we started going to a bunch of funerals. And I went to Rob's, and then I was getting ready to go to one of my really other close friends, Heath Robinson. He had me in his will as a pallbearer. And I was getting ready to do that. And it was, to my team, like Alex, can you take your team and go back overseas to help backfill the guys? And so I couldn't even do that. And a lot, it wasn't just me, a lot of guys were in that same boat. And so we blew out to go back overseas, to backfill Two Troop. Yeah, as we, we couldn't even bury them, you know, or be pallbearers, or give eulogies, because

• 3:38:55Speaker 01

  we needed to be back out there to, to keep the fight going. And that experience on that era in command just devastated everybody. And that spun me out with my own mental health, which was already on, on edge for how many combat deployments I had done in my own childhood stuff. To now you have, a ton of your best friends were just killed in an instant, and you can't even mourn them because you have to go back overseas. And then that's when I started really spiraling at that point.

• 3:39:27Speaker 01

  Man, I'm sorry, dude.

• 3:39:31Speaker 01

  I appreciate it, man. Yeah.

• 3:39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, and you can't replace two troop. You, those guys were so experienced and talented and obviously just as people incredible. You can replace them in the military, right? You can have, you can fill those spots, but you just, you can't replace that, especially at that type of a unit. You just can't replace them, any guys like that.

• 3:39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, but life went on, unfortunately. I mean, it didn't really go on with the morning, but it was like, okay, back overseas and then kept deploying. And then on my last deployment, I was deployed as we're on assault, uh, strike force team. Basically, I was an assault team leader and we were just hitting targets in eastern Afghanistan. And the wheels were really coming off for me. It was almost like I just couldn't take it anymore. And also the fact that that happened where they were all killed and that, and I didn't know what we were doing in the Afghan war at that point. Like what were we doing? We'd already killed bin Laden. We'd driven the majority of al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and now we're fighting the Taliban. And so it's like, what are we doing?

• 3:40:43Speaker 01

  And they're asking, you know, us or me to lead my assault team in these, on these raids, which I was happy to do. I wasn't backing down, but I was also having all of their wives telling me they'd bring back my husband. And it was for something that I did not believe in. However, being in that leadership position, you had to keep going. And it was during that time that my, as I mentioned, my mental health was starting to spiral. I was like being really outspoken when I normally wouldn't have. I would have kept my mouth shut, uh, you know, to leaders, um, guys I was friends with and where they're like, dude, you're right. Like calm down. It was just coming out that way. And then, and I started getting suicidal ideation going on. And then I remember where it culminated.

• 3:41:28Speaker 01

  I was sitting in my room in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and I remember how just sitting there with my 416, my assault rifle on my lap. And I'm looking at it and I'm just thinking, I just want to end it. And then I'm taking it and I'm like pulling the gun, putting it like, do I go to the forehead? Do I go to the mouth? Like, how do I finish it? I just have to finish it. I'm in so much pain. And then I'm thinking of the irony of this particular rifle that I had killed dozens of combatants with, that this was also going to be the rifle that was going to take my own life. And I'm in this dark, dark place and I'm just talking myself up, do it. No, don't do it. Do it. Don't do it. Repping it, repping it. Do it. No, do it. Rep it. Do it.

• 3:42:12Speaker 01

  Maybe I shouldn't use my rifle, maybe my pistol. What if, I don't want my buddies to have to clean up all my stuff. Maybe I should shoot myself in the chest. All of these things were going on in my head. Rep, rep. And then as that's happening, it's getting closer. I could feel it like I'm almost there. I'm going to do it. And then all of a sudden, boom, boom. And the sirens start going and the Taliban is attacking our base. And in that moment, I snapped out of it. It was like, I have to man a position on the wall as a team leader and grabbed my kit and ran to the wall where I had to meet our JTAC to basically start, if we needed to call in airstrikes to fight off the Taliban. So then I manned the wall and I remember thinking to myself, the irony of in that moment of all moments, right?

• 3:42:55Speaker 01

  That I could have been doing that, that we got attacked by the Taliban. Essentially the Taliban saved my life by attacking the base. Holy shit. Yeah.

• 3:43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would continue to, you know, be struggling and thankfully that was my last tour. I came back from that and I was earmarked to continue on to, uh, work up the pipeline to get into higher forms of leadership within the command. And I went to a traumatic brain injury clinic called the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, or NICO, which is in Bethesda. And that's when I got in there and they started doing a bunch of brain scans and saw, you know, scar tissue in my brain from traumatic brain injury and was diagnosed with, you know, major depressive disorder, PTSD, suicidal ideation, all of these things.

• 3:43:48Speaker 01

  And then I just started thinking like, I am, I don't know if I'm going to make it. I literally did not know if I, if I would make it. And then I kept going back to what I did in BUDs or green team or selection was like, just make it to the next meal. Just that old, that old saying, like, I don't know if I can do that. And it's like, okay, I can't do that. I can't make it to lunch. I don't know if I can do this. Life, dude, this is life. Like I can't, I don't even do it. So, okay, make it five more minutes. Just five more minutes. And they'd be like, okay, cool. 10 more minutes. That's how bad I was struggling. And, um, I made the decision at that point, like I, I can't continue to serve. I can't keep deploying. I'd done 15 combat deployments in a row. And I was like, I have to get out of here.

• 3:44:30Speaker 01

  Um, and so I, um, took orders, I requested and went out to the west coast, to San Diego for my last few years to just work in schoolhouses or training commands. I remember I was offered the ability to medically retire. And, um, I thought about it, but I was at, and when that happened, I was maybe at 17, 18 years. And I, and there's nothing wrong with it, but to me, I was like, you know what? I, I'm just, I'm doing a little bit better, not a lot better, but I'm, you know, now I'm in therapy and at the time I was on medication and I was like surfing more, all these things like, okay, I, I, can I just make it another six months? Like, I kind of want to finish what I started to hit the 20 year mark.

• 3:45:15Speaker 01

  I'm right there. Am I going to regret that? And during that time is when I, um, my psychiatrist had said, hey, I know you're a surfer. There's this surf clinic at the naval hospital. Um, and what they do is they take all of these injured or wounded veterans active duty and they take them out surfing in Del Mar in San Diego. I think it'd be important for you, Alex, to just go and volunteer, help get these guys in, maybe give them the surf, whatever it is, like, and I'm glad he did. He was like, dude, you need to do something. And so, um, and so I started volunteering at the, the surf clinic. And it was just that, like helping veterans get in and out of the water, basic surf lessons. And they were just using surfing as a form of therapy.

• 3:45:59Speaker 01

  And as I was there is when I started to recognize that there was nothing modified in these boards, um, for amputees. In my mind, I was always a very, I had this knack for innovation and creativity. When I was at the development group, I was always into like helping develop gear and things like that, or tactics. Uh, my, I was just always into innovating, just naturally, not any more or less than anybody, but just like, I was driven by it. And so I remember looking at some of these boards and thinking like, I wonder if you could put a handle on there for a guy missing an arm? Or maybe you could reinforce this part of the, of the surfboard so that when a prosthetic goes into it, it doesn't break the board. And then I started noticing and I thought like, maybe I should do something about, is there an organization that does that?

• 3:46:44Speaker 01

  Maybe I'll volunteer for them. And there wasn't. And then I remember seeing a lot of these veterans would have missing legs. They would take their wetsuit and do an overhand knot in the leg and then cut it. And I remember thinking, that doesn't look like, that's fucked up. Like that guy lost his leg. Like we can do better than an overhand knot. And then I remember thinking, I want to start a nonprofit that can modify these surfboards for these guys and gals and, and not just that, but wetsuits, all of this stuff. And, um, and then finally that's when I had that moment I had shared earlier where I was with that young marine who, um, was happy to be surfing, you know, on a beautiful day and how he had mentioned, you know, when I'm surfing, there's no more pain and nobody's staring at me as the guy missing a leg. And it was that moment where I was like, I'm going to start a nonprofit.

• 3:47:29Speaker 01

  I don't know how, I don't know anybody. The only people I know are in the, are in the military. So I drove home and I stopped at the time there's a Borders bookshop and I walked in and I looked at this nonprofit section and I'm staring at it. I'm all excited, like, I'm going to start a nonprofit. And I'm looking at these books and I start pulling them out and it's like the who's who and the most incredible nonprofits in the world. You know, I'm looking at them, I'm like, okay, that's, I'm just looking at something small, like that feels a little overwhelming. I don't know anything like, you know, people who have like MBAs or whatever, they've dedicated their whole life. I'm just like, okay. And I'm, I'm starting to get discouraged. And then I catch a book in the corner of my eye, the bottom of the shelf is this little yellow book. And I pull it out and it's how to start a nonprofit for dummies.

• 3:48:17Speaker 01

  And I just thought, well, damn, I'm not gonna go home empty handed. I'm at least gonna take this nonprofit for dummies book. So then I took it home and that night with a cup of coffee started One More Wave, which is a nonprofit that I found in 2015 that makes custom shaped surfboards for wounded or injured veterans, and we also have community. And so what started what I thought would just be a board or two for the naval hospital slowly started to get more traction because I was still active duty and had my own stuff going on, but by doing that, it was actually therapy for me also because I was now helping, I was introducing this therapeutic modality to other active duty or veterans who are struggling and it was the same modality that helps me or helped me.

• 3:49:02Speaker 01

  And so another, you know, we did our first board and then our second, and then it started to gain some traction and then Starbucks did a documentary on us and it really took off. And then now we've done more adaptive surfboards than any organization in the world. And we have, we have members, four members on Team USA, two world champions that ride one more wave boards. Yeah. And we have eight chapters around the country from Hawaii to California, Florida, North Carolina, New York. We have all these chapters that every third Saturday surf together. Well, the time zones are a little bit different, right? From Hawaii to let's say the East Coast, but every third Saturday, every month, you'll

• 3:49:45Speaker 01

  get three to 400 people surfing on that third Saturday at one more wave. And we also have apps that help facilitate four to six surfs per day. And we've given out 800 grants at $2,500 apiece. So what started with nonprofit for dummies is now, you know, something that is like morphed into something that I would have never thought would happen. Lots of times people think like, you're the founder, did you envision this, this like crazy vision? And I'm the first person to be like, no, no way. I did not envision this. I thought it would be a couple of boards that that's like sustainable, like maybe one event here and there. Okay. And then a couple of boards that feels good. But it was almost like that organization was like, bro, like that's not what's gonna

• 3:50:28Speaker 01

  happen, like either catch up or get out because this thing is launching. And so, um, so yeah, so I, that's, um, there is a guy that runs it right now. His name is Rob Garnett. He's a retired SEAL, close friend of mine and one of, um, is perfect for this right now. Now I'm the chairman of the board, so I'm not as in on that daily activities, but Rob is grinding it day in, day out, and it would not be the same organization without him, along with the rest of the team. So while, yeah, maybe I'm the one that founded it, it took a village and guys like Rob are the ones that are making it happen on a daily basis.

• 3:51:04Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, dude. Damn.

• 3:51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and what we do too, it's a little bit different that I'm proud of a lot in the beginning, lots of times, you know, people were like, you know, make it for just SEALs. That'll be easier mentors. And I just thought, I don't know about that. It doesn't feel right. I mean, not that there's anything wrong with just SEAL stuff, but I felt like SEALs get a lot when we do. Um, and then, you know, people are like, well, then just do SOF. That's easy. It's easy to raise money for SOF. And then I thought back to the parking lot in Tampa with my dad and Magnet S. And those guys were not SOF. They're just veterans. And I just, at that moment, I thought, no, this is for veterans. I don't care if you were SEAL Team Six, Delta Force, I don't care.

• 3:51:52Speaker 01

  I don't care if, if you turned a wrench and you never left, you know, your air force base in North Dakota. I don't care. If you signed up to serve our country, you're eligible for a one more wave grant as long as you meet some certain criteria. And we even started getting into it, I didn't realize it, that there was a lot of veterans from the GWOT who were getting traumatic brain injuries from IEDs. And what was happening is while they were active duty, before we started wrapping our, you know, understanding TBIs, a lot of these veterans in the early stages of the GWOT were now having angry outbursts because of their TBI. And so maybe they were getting in fights or they were, you know, self numbing with alcohol and getting a DUI.

• 3:52:35Speaker 01

  And now they're getting kicked out, but now they're getting kicked out of administration, you know, separated. And now they're not getting VA benefits. So guys who are TBIs were now not getting to the VA and a lot of nonprofits were like, we're not gonna touch guys with a 10 foot pole unless you have a honorable discharge. And I started hearing some of these stories and talking to some of these guys and they were like head down shaking, like, I don't deserve this or that. And it was that moment, I was just like, I don't give, I don't fucking care. What is it? Tell me more about your story. And then they would talk about it and be like, nobody's helping you. And it's like, no. And it's like, and you got blown up in an IED in Ramadi and nobody's helping you? And they're like, well, no. And they kind of got to this thing of like, well, I don't know if I deserve it. I got other than honorable.

• 3:53:19Speaker 01

  I'm like, yeah, but the symptoms of TBI are like angry outbursts and, you know, and self numbing and all of this. And it was that moment, I, our board said, we are going to accept other than honorable and even dishonorable as long as we go through what happened. And just, and as long as you're honest with us, and it doesn't have to be, you know, basically likely you will get a grant from us. We will not leave you hanging. And I'm very proud about that, that we started doing that in the early days. I know other nonprofits are getting on board with some of that, but I just am very proud in those days where it was like, no, not the flashy, just the soft guys. It was everybody. And it was like, tell me more about your TBI and why you got booted out of the military. Okay, you're on our tribe now.

• 3:54:03Shawn Ryan?

  Solid work, man.

• 3:54:04Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 3:54:05Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Holy shit.

• 3:54:09Speaker 01

  There's this one veteran who I'd like to talk about just for a moment. His name's Jose Martinez. And Jose stepped on an IED in Afghanistan and is a triple amputee. And he is my absolute hero because Jose is a member of Team USA and he is a world champion adaptive surfer. And he charges bigger waves than I've ever charged. And he has the biggest smile you've ever seen and he has the most stoke for life of anybody I've ever met. And, um, and it was if, it was guys like that where if, if I would have, if we as an organization would have just stuck with the soft, I would have never been exposed to people like that.

• 3:54:50Speaker 01

  And another SEAL, Dan Knossen, who's a Olympian, Paralympian SEAL, stepped on a landmine, lost both legs above the knee and he's surfing double overhead waves in Indonesia. You know? So it's like, I actually, I could go on and on and just start going down the list, but once I start, I won't stop. So it's just, um, it's amazing what, and I think a lot of it, what surfing does and what I would encourage any listener to, to find therapy, it doesn't have to be surfing. It's anything that helps you get into something called the flow state. Meaning essentially, the way I see it as a clinician, that anxiety hangs out in the future, right? When we start thinking about, I need to do this or that, or this is coming up, that's where anxiety hangs out. Depression hangs out in the past.

• 3:55:34Speaker 01

  What I should have done, I have shame about that. I can't believe I said that to my wife or my husband or whatever. It's like, and there's like depression, it pulls at you. And our nervous system is kind of tapped into that and getting pulled back and forth with all of that. What happens in flow state or catching a wave with surfing, albeit let's say it's five seconds to catch a wave. It actually puts us in a state of flow where nothing else is going on except being in the present and being in the moment of riding that wave to where it gives that nervous system a break. And I get it, it's just for five seconds, but what if you catch 10 waves? That's 50 seconds. And what if you do that three or four times a week? And then now you start going out and out and you get into a practice of it. Now you're building community also that are cheering you on, on, on all those waves. Now, if it's not surfing, I would encourage somebody to find something.

• 3:56:19Speaker 01

  It could be strumming a guitar, reading a book, you know, you get into any kind of mountain biking, whatever it is, fly fishing, which we were talking about earlier, right? It's all of that stuff to where you're in an act of doing something where you have to be fully present with it because that is giving that nervous system a break and allowing us not to hang out in the past or the future.

• 3:56:40Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Alex, let's say a quick break.

• 3:56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:56:43Shawn Ryan?

  We'll come back, we'll, uh, we'll get into what you're doing now.

• 3:56:50Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of people want to talk about tradecraft. How to hide, how to conceal yourself, how to escape, how to evade. But here's the thing, the true professional, that's not the guy that's always on the run.

• 3:57:11Shawn Ryan?

  It's the guy who never shows up on the map to begin with.

• 3:57:19Shawn Ryan?

  Which brings me to my next point.

• 3:57:23Shawn Ryan?

  Your phone is talking.

• 3:57:26Shawn Ryan?

  It's talking through apps. You may or may not use, a lot of them you probably never use.

• 3:57:34Shawn Ryan?

  Talking to servers. That you've never even heard of. That are telling them where you've been, where you are, what you buy. And all kinds of other information that you don't want out.

• 3:57:51Shawn Ryan?

  And that's where Glacier comes in with secure DNS. You hit a button.

• 3:58:00Shawn Ryan?

  Close the app.

• 3:58:03Shawn Ryan?

  You never have to open it ever again. That's concealment. Spent a long time building this app.

• 3:58:13Shawn Ryan?

  Almost a year. It's the perfect app. To conceal yourself. You can get it on the Apple App Store or you can go. To the GlacierApp. Dot com. Remember. Privacy. Isn't paranoia.

• 3:58:36Shawn Ryan?

  It's protection.

• 3:58:38Shawn Ryan?

  The Glacier App.

• 3:58:42Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side, but Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 3:59:12Shawn Ryan?

  Looking for another way to support the Sean Ryan Show? Head to SeanRyanShow.com and check out the latest drops from Vigilance Elite. We just released new gear, including this beautiful moisture wicking VE performance hat and SRS campfire mugs and you guessed it. Vigilance Elite gummy bears. Oh shit! Every purchase directly supports the show and helps us continue bringing you independent conversations without compromise. Visit SeanRyanShow.com and grab yours today.

• 3:59:50Shawn Ryan?

  We're getting ready to get into what you're doing now, but first I got a hot question for you.

• 3:59:57Shawn Ryan?

  You ready?

• 3:59:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:59:59Shawn Ryan?

  Out of 15 deployments, take about about off the table and the other ones that you talked about. What's the one mission you've never been asked about that you still think about today?

• 4:00:11Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay, that's a great question. There was an operation called Operation Nedmac in Afghanistan. And essentially what it was, we were following, this is circa 2010. And we were following this group of Taliban, about 30 of them into this compound, all with weapons. And we were going to bomb it, but at the time, the rules of engagement wouldn't allow us to do that because they saw women and children in that compound. Just a handful of them, let's say four to six. However, there's 30 dudes with our, you know, PKs and RPGs and all of that, so.

• 4:00:51Speaker 01

  We, they sent us in after them and we went in with our side by sides, which were in the back of 47 helicopters and drove in forever, then foot patrolled in. And essentially put an L ambush on this compound. And then, because we knew if we went toe to toe with them, some of our guys were definitely going to get killed or wounded. So we set up this ambush on them up in the mountains in eastern Afghanistan and we knew what the Taliban of often did. When they'd hear helicopters in those valleys, they would just run because they knew if they all went in different directions, they were essentially. Um, we could only go after so many of them. So you had, let's say a one in 30 chance that we would pick you to go after. But we, knowing that we knew like, all right, well, they're going to run, but they're inside the buildings.

• 4:01:36Speaker 01

  So we set up this L ambush. And as like a ruse or a fake out, we brought in a helicopter, an empty helicopter, close to the valley to make a lot of noise. And then they started to get out and run out. And, um, and then we waited for all of them to get out in the open and ambushed all of them.

• 4:01:56Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 4:01:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was the turkey shoot. And then, like, it was like, it was like, and so, um, and there's only maybe 22 of us, uh, that were that, you know, shot all these guys. And so then we had to now work our way through, you know, get to them. So we started bounding through, almost like a land warfare, like bounding through, we had airstrikes coming in, kind of danger close. And then we got in and, um, as that was happening, one of our guys who got shot in the side plate, clearing one of the buildings, but he was fine, thank goodness. But my role was taking my element to clear out these trenches and with hand grenades. And so we're throwing hand grenades into these trenches.

• 4:02:37Speaker 01

  And I remember at one point, I got a little cocky and there's this like bunker from this trench that went in there. Mind you, you know, there's already been like 30 EKIA. I've shot all of my pistol rounds because I was, and I've shot, I only have one magazine left in my rifle. And, um, I'm down to one frag grenade. So I'm like, pretty much use all of my munitions. But I saw this, I'm like, I don't want to crawl into that bunker, but I do want to throw a grenade in it. And so I'm getting too cocky and I'm kind of standing over it. And I have my cover guy that's holding for me and I'm like, all right, I want to throw this grenade and let's roll out, get out of the way. And he's like, okay.

• 4:03:17Speaker 01

  And I pulled the M67 frag grenade and I try to get, I got cocky because I tried to get the perfect angle and not just throw it in, but like, I'm going to get it perfect. And I drop it in perfectly and I turn to, to run and I slip and I start sliding down into the hole of the bunker with the hand grenade.

• 4:03:34Speaker 01

  So I'm like, I could feel it like rolling on my, I could feel it rolling on my shin, the, the hand grenade with the pin pulled. And I roll, and I was like, holy shit, and started crawling my way out. And then finally got out of the bunker that, which was like a hole that I crawled out of and just got out just in time for it to be like, boom.

• 4:03:55Shawn Ryan?

  Whoa.

• 4:03:55Speaker 01

  Almost completely blew myself up. And, um, yeah, so we, uh, so that one, yeah, Operation Nedmac. That was, that was a good one.

• 4:04:04Shawn Ryan?

  Here's a follow up. What was your favorite weapon and what did your kit consist of during your time at SEAL Team Six?

• 4:04:13Speaker 01

  That's a great question. My favorite weapon. You know. You know, we, we got the H and K 416s and that was all the hot ticket for a long time, at least in that era, but I love, I had this Colt M4 that had a floated barrel and a trigger job on it. And it was just completely dialed in and it was about a pound and a half lighter than the H and K. And I always was like, why are we going away from this rifle? It's awesome. And, but whatever we did. And so I would say, I know it's kind of a generic answer, but, uh, my old floated barrel of, uh, M4. Colt M4.

• 4:04:51Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 4:04:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:04:53Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I got you something.

• 4:04:55Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 4:04:56Shawn Ryan?

  You want to see it?

• 4:04:57Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 4:05:06Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. Whoa.

• 4:05:10Shawn Ryan?

  So I got a buddy over at SIG, his name's Jason. Have you heard of him?

• 4:05:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've heard of him, yeah.

• 4:05:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, he's a good dude.

• 4:05:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:05:17Shawn Ryan?

  He's a big fan of yours.

• 4:05:19Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 4:05:20Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, so I know that HK 416 is pretty badass, but this is pretty light.

• 4:05:25Speaker 01

  What?

• 4:05:26Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, yeah, so this is a 556 MCX spear. Short barrel, comes with the optic. Comes with the magnifier. It's got a, uh. Foldable buttstock.

• 4:05:43Shawn Ryan?

  Which I need to break in.

• 4:05:46Shawn Ryan?

  And then, uh, I got some buddies over at silencer shop too. And so silencer shop threw in a suppressor and, um, awesome company. They take, they, they, uh, they donate to second amendment causes and, and, um. Yeah. And SIG's fucking awesome company too.

• 4:06:04Speaker 01

  Oh man.

• 4:06:05Shawn Ryan?

  And Jason's an awesome dude.

• 4:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, SIG.

• 4:06:08Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh. Yeah, here.

• 4:06:11Speaker 01

  Dude, this is amazing what you're saying. Thank you, Sean.

• 4:06:14Shawn Ryan?

  I know it's been a while.

• 4:06:15Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:06:16Shawn Ryan?

  Heard it's been a while since you've shot.

• 4:06:17Speaker 01

  It has been a while.

• 4:06:19Shawn Ryan?

  We want to get back into it, so.

• 4:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. This thing is beautiful. Wow.

• 4:06:24Shawn Ryan?

  It's lighter, right?

• 4:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I wish I had this. Amazing.

• 4:06:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, now you do.

• 4:06:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wow. Yeah. This is amazing. Wow. Thank you.

• 4:06:38Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 4:06:39Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:06:39Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 4:06:40Speaker 01

  Um. Yeah, I have a small gift for you too.

• 4:06:45Shawn Ryan?

  I love gifts. I love gifts.

• 4:06:47Speaker 01

  It's just nothing crazy, just a little one more wave, t-shirt and hat. That, maybe that's cool, this is tricked out.

• 4:06:53Shawn Ryan?

  No, this is awesome.

• 4:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just nothing crazy, just a ball cap and, and t-shirt.

• 4:06:58Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:06:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely, man.

• 4:07:02Speaker 01

  And that, that one, um, I actually.

• 4:07:04Shawn Ryan?

  Oh man, I love the graphic.

• 4:07:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's.

• 4:07:07Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome, dude.

• 4:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:07:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 4:07:14Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:07:15Speaker 01

  That's nothing like.

• 4:07:16Shawn Ryan?

  I'll wear this proudly.

• 4:07:17Speaker 01

  I'll shoot this proudly. Man. Wow. Thank you. Amazing.

• 4:07:24Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 4:07:25Speaker 01

  That is one beautiful weapon.

• 4:07:27Shawn Ryan?

  SIG's awesome dude.

• 4:07:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07:29Shawn Ryan?

  They, uh.

• 4:07:33Shawn Ryan?

  What'd you say?

• 4:07:36Shawn Ryan?

  I got a friend that works over in this, uh, in the sheriff's department at a neighboring county.

• 4:07:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07:42Shawn Ryan?

  Hickman County.

• 4:07:43Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:07:43Shawn Ryan?

  Familiar with it?

• 4:07:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 4:07:46Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, they're.

• 4:07:50Shawn Ryan?

  They don't have a lot of funding for the sheriff's department. And, um, a good friend of mine works over there and, uh, he, he used to work here, you know, and then he moved over there. And, uh, he was telling me about the rifles they've got. And, oh, it's just mixed match, sounds like 20, 25 year old rifles. And, uh, he was telling me about it and he was like, yeah, I'm going to try to.

• 4:08:17Shawn Ryan?

  He, he just took over the SWAT team or is in charge of all the weapons over there, whatever. And, um, he was telling me this, I just started getting fucking angry. I was like, how, how could we be? Hmm, you know, there's a lot of meth over there and.

• 4:08:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:08:32Shawn Ryan?

  Those guys are dealing with a lot and it's like, the last thing you guys need to be worried about is the reliability of your fucking primary weapon system when you're doing drug raids and shit, so.

• 4:08:44Shawn Ryan?

  I just, I went home and I was thinking about it. I was like, you know what, man? I'm gonna fucking buy all these guys. I was like, how many rifles are there?

• 4:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:08:52Shawn Ryan?

  He's like, it was about thirty guys.

• 4:08:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:08:56Shawn Ryan?

  And I was like, fuck it, I'm just gonna buy them all.

• 4:08:58Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 4:08:59Shawn Ryan?

  Brand new, get up. That way they don't have to worry about that shit.

• 4:09:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:09:03Shawn Ryan?

  And um, so I called Jason and I was like, hey, do you guys have any like old stock laying around that I can just pick up for at cost? Or anything? And he was like, let me uh, give me a couple of days, I'll get back with you. And uh, he said, yeah, we have um, I'm gonna butcher this, but it was an old stock. And uh, he goes, we're gonna get them, he goes, we'll give you the, I think it's the MB four hundred pro or something. Uh, short barrel rifle with the optic flashlight, all that stuff.

• 4:09:32Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 4:09:33Shawn Ryan?

  We'll give it to you at cost.

• 4:09:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:09:35Shawn Ryan?

  And I was like, perfect.

• 4:09:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:09:37Shawn Ryan?

  Awesome. And then a couple of weeks went by and I was like, hey, um,

• 4:09:48Shawn Ryan?

  if you're gonna give it to me at cost, can I get some suppressors at cost too for these guys? And he was like, yeah, he's like, no problem. He's like, we'll do that too. And then a couple more weeks went by and uh, he was just said, hey, don't even worry. I was like, where do I send the check? So don't even worry about it.

• 4:10:05Speaker 01

  No way.

• 4:10:05Shawn Ryan?

  We've got it.

• 4:10:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 4:10:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And uh, so they just outfitted that entire sheriff's department with brand new.

• 4:10:12Speaker 01

  Man, good for Sig. And good for you for reaching out too, that to be able, to be willing to do it.

• 4:10:17Shawn Ryan?

  Thanks, man.

• 4:10:17Speaker 01

  And good for Sig.

• 4:10:19Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's just, it's just fucking good company.

• 4:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:10:22Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and they make great shit.

• 4:10:24Speaker 01

  They really do.

• 4:10:24Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, so I can't wait to.

• 4:10:26Speaker 01

  I, yeah, that thing's beautiful. Thank you.

• 4:10:28Shawn Ryan?

  See what you think of that.

• 4:10:29Speaker 01

  Thank you, Sig.

• 4:10:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but um.

• 4:10:32Speaker 01

  I love it already.

• 4:10:34Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe you can get into a flow state with that.

• 4:10:36Speaker 01

  I have no doubt.

• 4:10:38Shawn Ryan?

  We were just talking about flow state.

• 4:10:40Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 4:10:40Shawn Ryan?

  But, so you're a therapist now?

• 4:10:42Speaker 01

  I am, yes. Sure am. Um, after, so I was training, talking about law enforcement, I was at a local company here in Nashville. I was, when I retired, I was running the SWAT team, uh, training program, tactical program of that company for teams, federal, state and local teams around the country. And, and I loved working with cops and, and helping communities that way, but I got to the point where I thought, am I gonna, I think there's something else I wanna do in life. And so I stepped away from that and I um, became a therapist, essentially. I went to grad school. Let me back up. Before I um, you know, resigned from that company and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

• 4:11:26Speaker 01

  After that, I knew it wasn't gonna be in tactical training, not that there's anything wrong with it again, but it was just, what else is there? Can I reinvent myself somehow? And like, who am I outside of slinging an assault rifle type thing? And uh, however, I was still struggling so bad with my mental health that I went to, not to jump ahead too much, but went and uh, got some plant medicine um, treatment with IbaGan out of the country. And um, five MEO DMT. And when I came out of the, the DMT experience, my um, therapist was sitting there, my um, psychedelic assisted therapist. And she was glowing almost as the universe say like, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna be a therapist, a clinician that is able,

• 4:12:11Speaker 01

  um, you know, for veterans. And, and I saw that as I came out of it, she was glowing. I thought, okay, that's a little interesting. But that was during COVID. This was two thousand twenty, March, let's say twelfth or thirteenth. So COVID was just kicking off and we almost barely got out of the country to get back to the States. And when I got back, I had some other little short jobs lined up. They all went away. Little contract tactical jobs just to make some money. They all went away because of COVID. And so I was just sitting there, jobless, not even able to get a job because it was like their first, you know, a few months of COVID. Nobody knew what was going on. And uh, and I just kept thinking to myself, am I gonna listen to that message um, to become a therapist?

• 4:12:54Speaker 01

  And so I, I did and started applying and got into grad school and finished. And now, yeah, I work as a therapist here in Nashville. And um, my, you know, I'm a generalist technically, meaning I help treat people with all different diagnoses, but I have a special interest with trauma um, from my background, but also um, that's just, I, I'm drawn towards it. And um, yeah, so I've just, I use a lot of different modalities, uh, like EMDR, clinical hypnosis. I really like trauma, as I said. I thought I would completely be all veterans and first responders. However, as I was mentioning earlier on, on our break, on one of our breaks, that um,

• 4:13:35Speaker 01

  I thought I would only be for veterans and first responders. However, I'm so close to them. And, and when they're talking about their struggles, it's a lot for me to deal with, something called countertransference. So I have about twenty-five percent of my clients are that. And then the, the rest are just uh, general population or, you know, society, which I think is a really healthy balance for me, even though I wish I could do more for veterans, but with my other work, I'm able to scratch that itch for veterans and first responders. But in, in the therapy office, it's um, kind of as a generalist for most people to include veterans and first responders.

• 4:14:09Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, when, when you went to school to do this, did you start to understand yourself?

• 4:14:15Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely did. I, I think, and that was part of the main thing too, was I wanted to really learn what my traumas and my mental health was about. And I went so deep into it, almost obsessive. Because I, I realized I knew I was really struggling. Um, the ideations, suicidal ideations, all of that. And I, I did not know, you know, if, if I was gonna make it essentially. And so going down that path of therapy, I really was able to be a student of not just others, but myself. And I believe that that is for anyone listening, if they're struggling, I'm not saying you have to be a therapist, but if you're struggling that bad, where you're having suicidal ideations, you have to take your mental health

• 4:14:58Speaker 01

  and put as much effort into it as you would have done anything that you're passionate about. For example, if you're in the military, if it was a, you know, to be a SEAL or a pilot or whatever it is, or if you're a, let's say a musician or whatever the job is that you're passionate about, you have to take as much effort and put it into your mental health because it deserves that. You deserve that. And it can't just be a, I'll just kind of, kind of Band-Aid fix this. It's like, if you want this to extinguish this pain, you have to be all in. And that's what I was doing with um, grad school to become a therapist. Um, so it was to help others, but a lot of it was to help me. Just like One More Wave was to help others, but a lot of it was to help me too, because being able to help others um, has always helped me.

• 4:15:43Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 4:15:48Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I, like I had, I think I had, I can't remember if I mentioned it on the break or in here, but

• 4:15:54Shawn Ryan?

  just uh, I did three and a half years of therapy.

• 4:15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15:58Shawn Ryan?

  Twice a week.

• 4:16:01Shawn Ryan?

  I should probably start again, but for different reasons.

• 4:16:08Shawn Ryan?

  But that's kinda,

• 4:16:12Shawn Ryan?

  I just noticed by hearing myself talk to somebody, I would work my own problems out.

• 4:16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16:20Shawn Ryan?

  Really without that much input.

• 4:16:23Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 4:16:24Shawn Ryan?

  And uh, I learned a lot from it.

• 4:16:29Speaker 01

  Good.

• 4:16:29Shawn Ryan?

  That's how I gear my entire interview.

• 4:16:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:16:32Shawn Ryan?

  Is I just listen.

• 4:16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16:36Shawn Ryan?

  And it's interesting to see like,

• 4:16:41Shawn Ryan?

  some of the men and women that come in here, that you can see them work their own problems out in their head as they're sitting here.

• 4:16:47Speaker 01

  I can imagine.

• 4:16:48Shawn Ryan?

  Going through their stories.

• 4:16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16:50Shawn Ryan?

  I bet you see that all the time.

• 4:16:52Speaker 01

  All the time. And for me as a therapist, you know, sometimes.

• 4:16:58Shawn Ryan?

  Why, go, sorry, go ahead.

• 4:17:00Speaker 01

  So what they sometimes will say, uh, as therapists, it's like, sometimes the best technique is just to be present and to be a human, right? There's all these really cool whiz bang techniques and um, and things that you can do, which is great. A lot of them evidence-based, but sometimes the most important thing you can do is just to be present with someone. And just to allow them to just share their stuff, to what you were just mentioning, they're kind of working it out and making sense of it. Or, you know, giving a narrative. And it's just to be kind of present and allowing your, allowing them to be heard. Can sometimes be the most effective therapeutic tool.

• 4:17:38Shawn Ryan?

  Why? Why does it? Why does it work like that? I mean, we'll sit there and think about the same shit over and over on a fucking loop.

• 4:17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:17:45Shawn Ryan?

  Thousands of times. And then you vocalize it.

• 4:17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:17:49Shawn Ryan?

  One or two times and things start clicking.

• 4:17:52Speaker 01

  I think, I'm sorry.

• 4:17:54Shawn Ryan?

  What's going on? Why does that happen?

• 4:17:56Speaker 01

  I have a couple of thoughts on it. I think one, I think it's an energy exchange. I feel like what happens with pain and, and struggle is it's, it's energy that needs to be like released. And that's why, and if it doesn't get released by, let's say, talking, it could be talking. It could be through EMDR, another technique. It could be through exercise, whatever it is, like things need to get moved. And if they don't, as I was kind of mentioning before, it'll just get pushed down, especially men. You know, we'll just push it down, push it down, push it down, compartmentalize it. And it may come out where, let's say you've had too much to drink and now you've lashed out at your partner. And then the shame spiral follows that, like, I can't believe I did that the next day. And then it just leaves some more issues.

• 4:18:39Speaker 01

  But the thing is, if we keep pushing it down, another thing could be that it just went, as I was saying earlier, hardens and calcifies. And then you just become a hard, bitter person and tough to be around. So now you're not any good to yourself, to your partner, to your kids and all of that. So I think by talking, it just allows some of that to release, kind of bleeds it down a little bit by a little bit. That's kind of how, how I see it. Um, it is interesting though, right? Like there's a form of therapy called narrative therapy, which essentially is just that. It's a form where you allow that person to tell that story. And as a therapist, you kind of jump in and just be like, hey, can you tell me more about that part? Or you kind of keep people within the, you know, the lanes if they start to, you know, go off on a tangent. It's like, wait, let's talk a little bit more about this. Like, can we get back to that?

• 4:19:22Speaker 01

  You're almost like just helping them, uh, share their story, but keeping it on topic. Which can be very effective, which is like, man, you have to go to grad school for that. Yeah, sometimes I'm like, I know, right? Exactly. Did I have to? But the, the reality is that's like one of many techniques. And what's interesting as a therapist, what you're doing, what I do, uh, the style I practice, it's kind of called eclectic, which just means I take from a lot of different therapies and tailor it to the client. So I'm not just like one approach. It's more of like, ah, okay, Sean is, he likes to do that narrative thing, like that's beneficial for him. So I'm going to avoid some other things and I might introduce something else. But what's interesting as a therapist, what I love about it is you're kind of like, it's very cognitive.

• 4:20:04Speaker 01

  Like you're thinking like, okay, like Sean really likes this. Let me just kind of pull this in. Oh, he doesn't like that. Okay, cool. Let me throw this in there. And so it's trying to help people with just, it's just you and the person. And that's what's unique about it. It's like, there's not anybody in there with a video camera to like double check and give you feedback. It's more of like feeling the energy of the other person. And it can be very therapeutic, but some people too, sometimes are just not ready for therapy also. And that's what I would encourage them to lean into community. Actually, I encourage everybody to lean into community, but and that's like at One More Way, for example. Our chapters are so effective because there's a community of people, especially for veterans. Because when we were all, we're in our platoons, squads, teams, whatever you want to call it. And then you get out and you're no longer in that.

• 4:20:49Speaker 01

  You're not, no longer in a community with shared experiences and language. So it's just, um, if someone isn't getting therapy, getting into, you know, your, your community, whatever that might be for them. You know, it could be volunteering at a church. It could be, you know, volunteering for your kids, you know, sports, whatever it is, getting involved with people. Cause a big, uh, side effect of depression or trauma is isolation. That's one of the, the things that we often, I used to do it a lot too. Sometimes I still do it and I have to keep an eye out for it.

• 4:21:20Shawn Ryan?

  How do you?

• 4:21:23Shawn Ryan?

  You're one guy. How many, how, how do you pick and choose who you're going to work with?

• 4:21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, right now, um, the people will, will find me like, let's say on, uh, online or whatever it might be. And then I'll do a, a screening call with them because I want to make sure I'm a good fit for them too. Um, it, let's say it's a, somebody who I don't culturally relate to, whatever it might be. Yeah, of course I will be happy to help them, but I might know someone that, who I'm a therapist friend with or associated with, who deals with, has a specialty with that culture, let's just say. And I, I might tell them like, uh, this might not be a good fit for me, but however, I have the, I know someone who'd be perfect for you. So that's kind of part of my job too, is helping find fits. But, um, but I'll get on a call with somebody, kind of figure out, okay, is this a good fit? What are your goals? Um, okay, that sounds good.

• 4:22:11Speaker 01

  And then we'll, we'll come in, even on that first session, I'll tell the client, hey, this is kind of like, we're feeling each other out here. If at any point at the end of this, if you don't feel like this is a good fit, just let me know. It's all good, right? And, but let me know what you do want. And I'm sure within my network, I can find someone for you. And, and I would encourage anybody listening to this too, that if you find yourself with a therapist and you feel like it's getting nowhere, be your own advocate. You know, it's okay to tell that therapist, like, I'm not feeling it. Can you help, help me find someone else? Uh, you, it's all day long. It's your mental health, it's your resources. And that therapist, if they're a good therapist, should know that. And likely they'll be like, okay, I was kind of feeling that too. Let's get you someone else.

• 4:22:53Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you been sober or, or off booze?

• 4:22:56Speaker 01

  Uh, six and a half years.

• 4:22:57Shawn Ryan?

  Six and a half years?

• 4:22:59Speaker 01

  Six and a half years. Best thing I ever did. I, um, that was the big catalyst for me, uh, with my own mental health. Once I was able to get off that, everything else started falling into place.

• 4:23:11Shawn Ryan?

  How were you, how did you get off that?

• 4:23:13Speaker 01

  I got off of it in two thousand, November 19th, 2019. I was at a fundraiser and I was drinking and I just, one of my close friends pulled me aside and said, I'm worried about you. And, and I trust him. I, I, I mean, he's one of my best friends in the world and so I believed him. But I continued to go big that night and, and, um, and the next day woke up with a horrible hangover and felt something was really off in my head. I don't know what it was. I felt like, like I was getting, I was getting back into the suicidal ideation. I just felt off, felt dangerous. And it was that, that moment where I was like, I know I have to save my own life. If I keep going, I'm going to attempt a suicide.

• 4:23:58Speaker 01

  And so then that same friend kept coming back to me afterwards and was like, we need to get out of the country and do Ibogaine. And I was like, well, Ibogaine, I kind of heard, I've heard another friend went and did it. I'm like, what do you mean? And why? And he's like, well, it's illegal in the States, but a lot of veterans are starting to do this because the current system is just not working with psychotropic medications. And, and at the time I had a great same therapist, she's awesome. And she was helping me through. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't even probably gotten to that point. And he just kept saying, man, I'm worried about you. I, I really don't know. I, I feel like if I'm not saying this to you, that you're going to do something yourself and I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life.

• 4:24:41Shawn Ryan?

  Who is this?

• 4:24:42Speaker 01

  Greg Andrews.

• 4:24:43Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 4:24:44Speaker 01

  He's a SEAL. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome friends. And, um, we had a ton of deployments together. And, um, and so I said, yes, I'll, I guess, I don't know, I have no other choice. And so I stopped drinking, said yes to that, got into, um, a pro, vets sponsored me through a program mission within, at the time it was down in Costa Rica. And we went down there and, uh, I was just thinking, I remember flying in and thinking, what am I doing? I'm flying in a prop plane, landing on a dirt airstrip that looks like Pablo Escobar.

• 4:25:21Speaker 01

  Is going to be running drugs out of it, like literally like flying in and I'm just like, what am I doing? And, and I just resigned from my job as a, a tactical instructor. And I, I was listless and I'm like, I, I don't know what I'm doing. And then I went in and, uh, and it completely changed my life. Uh, to be able, I haven't, and that helped me, I believe. I'd already, um, been off booze for a few months at that point, yeah, two, three months. Uh, but, uh, but I was still having like cravings and things like that from it. It was kind of a struggle. Cause I'd been trying to get off of booze several times before, like I'd do 30 days on, 30 days off. Or I'd do, be able to get off it for a couple of months and then whatever. It was just this endless cycle.

• 4:26:06Speaker 01

  And then finally, when I did Ibogaine, it was like a light switch had gone off. And I have not craved alcohol since. And, and I attribute it to, to Ibogaine. I mean, I'm still in therapy with the same therapist. She helps me with a lot of this stuff. I have been to some meetings from time to time, but I feel like it was the Ibogaine that really, uh, got me off of the alcohol. And another reason why the Ibogaine is so effective for opioid use disorder and things like that is from the addiction properties. But it was that, that really helped me kick the alcohol.

• 4:26:40Shawn Ryan?

  That's the second time, the second time I met you was at, uh, what Tennessee, what was at the house?

• 4:26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for the Hope Treatment Act at the Capitol for Tennesseans for Ibogaine, which I can't thank you enough for being there because we were, to let the audience know, I'm an ambassador for Tennesseans for Ibogaine and Tennessee, uh, and Americans for Ibogaine, essentially trying to, um, get the clinical trials of Ibogaine studied, um, to pass FDA approvals. So we hope, I believe, and our organization believes that Ibogaine has some incredible potential for addiction, specifically around opioid use disorder, but also alcohol, um, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and potentially, um, things like Parkinson's and dementia. However, we don't know. You know, it's anecdotal.

• 4:27:31Speaker 01

  There's some studies that have come out, but that is true. That's, yeah, when we met, it was, you know, fighting for that to get it, uh, clinical trials approved here in the state of Tennessee, um, which is one of the 12 states that we're trying to make that happen. And without your help, I don't know if we could have gotten past that committee, as we were kind of talking about earlier, um, and we can get in or not, but just the, how tough it was, especially here in the South, to get clinical trials of a psychedelic passed. But, um, yeah, the team really worked hard to get that done, and I appreciate the assist that you brought in, because I'm not sure if we could have pushed it across the line without you. We were stuck at that subcommittee.

• 4:28:10Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, you guys did all the work, man. How did you, how'd you meet Ricky?

• 4:28:17Speaker 01

  I met Ricky, uh, and for the listeners, Ricky Harris is an ambassador for Americans for Ibogaine and kind of heads up the Tennesseans for Ibogaine. I met her through a mutual friend, um, who just, she asked me, hey, would you like to help with this and share your story as a veteran and how it has impacted, you know, your life so that we can try to get some of this stuff passed at the state Capitol? And I thought, I was like, absolutely, I'm very passionate about it. It fits in line with my, um, my, my why essentially is to impact human suffering. And so it fit right in. I was like, yes, I've been waiting for this. And so, um, we started going to the Capitol and advocating for the Hope Treatment Act. And, um, and I was, yeah, and Ricky's awesome.

• 4:29:02Speaker 01

  Like her, the, her, she is a force of nature and very sharp woman, and it wasn't for her also, I don't know if any of this would have gotten passed.

• 4:29:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, she's sharp. Yeah, she's a sharp lady. There's no doubt about it. But it did pass though, right?

• 4:29:16Speaker 01

  It did pass, yeah. And then right after that, the larger organization, uh, Americans for Ibogaine with, uh, Brian Hubbard, who's the CEO, and Governor Rick Perry, that they helped drive the executive order from the president, uh, to sign in to allow for, uh, an easier way to study psychedelics. So there's been a lot from that, there's been a ripple effect, uh, that has come from it. And we just have to, as an organization, keep pushing it because there's this, okay, we have all this momentum, let's not let it get too stale, let's keep pushing it for at least the clinical trials and let science show what we think is, is possible so that it can get FDA approved. So it's not just a bunch of veterans that are having to travel out of the country to get treatment.

• 4:30:00Speaker 01

  I mean, and to me, I'm like, well, what about the average Joe and Jane that don't have the connection to do that? Like, and what if they're struggling, let's say with opioid use disorder? Like, can we, because that is systemic, that is generational, there's so much suffering with that. And, and that's why it's important for the clinical trials, right? Let's, let's science, not just my opinion or of its own.

• 4:30:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Man, we covered a lot of ground here.

• 4:30:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:30:30Shawn Ryan?

  Do you miss the teams?

• 4:30:31Speaker 01

  I do. I, I do miss the teams. I mean, there's time, of course, I think of the highlight reel of like all the good times, and I forget the low light reel of just being freezing. But I, I do, I'm, I'm proud of my service, but I feel that that was a chapter in my life that will allow me to do what I'm doing now. Like, I couldn't be the therapist I am now without, have been a SEAL first, or I couldn't have worked in advocacy or even sitting here in front of you without first have done some of that to help, you know, to impact suffering. So I just, yes, I miss the teams, um, but I'm, yeah, yeah, I miss it. I'm kind of onward though from a lot of it. What about you?

• 4:31:12Shawn Ryan?

  I don't miss it anymore.

• 4:31:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:31:15Shawn Ryan?

  I don't.

• 4:31:16Speaker 01

  I hear you.

• 4:31:17Shawn Ryan?

  But I didn't have your career either, so.

• 4:31:19Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, I, there's times I definitely don't too. Let's just be real. There's like, I like, you know, when it's like cold and rainy out, I'm glad, sometimes I think I could be on a boat bobbing around in the Atlantic Ocean right now with a dry suit on. The seasick.

• 4:31:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. No, I've, uh, it took, it took me a long time. It took me a long time, but I have a hundred percent moved on and, uh, I'm doing my best work now.

• 4:31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:31:52Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 4:31:53Speaker 01

  You're a lot of good work.

• 4:31:54Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:31:55Speaker 01

  Your impact on less suffering too.

• 4:31:56Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:31:58Shawn Ryan?

  I'm doing my best.

• 4:31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:32:00Shawn Ryan?

  But, well, man, it was an honor.

• 4:32:05Speaker 01

  Thank you, Sean. Thank you for the opportunity.

• 4:32:07Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:32:08Speaker 01

  I appreciate it.

• 4:32:09Shawn Ryan?

  Got more. No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.