#173 Jared Hudson - The War Against Evil: A Navy SEAL’s Fight to Save Children in America

Jared Hudson served as a SEAL Operator and sniper with Naval Special Warfare, with deployments in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He founded The Shooting Institute (TSI), providing tactical training to law enforcement, military, and civilians, and Covenant Rescue Group (CRG), a nonprofit combating human trafficking and child exploitation through operations, training, and advocacy. Hudson is also a Reserve SWAT Deputy in Alabama and an advocate for constitutional rights. Hudson is an author of "Waging War in the High Places - The Armor of God through the Eyes of a Navy SEAL" and speaks nationwide on faith-based topics. He is a devoted Christian, husband, father of three, and he emphasizes family values and community engagement. He currently leads CRG's efforts to rescue trafficking victims globally while raising awareness about exploitation networks through public speaking and media appearances. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: http://cozyearth.com/srs http://preparewithshawn.com http://helixsleep.com/srs http://amac.us/srs http://meetfabric.com/shawn http://drinkhoist.com/ | Use Code SRS This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. Jared Hudson Links: Website - https://www.thejaredhudson.com/ Covenant Rescue Group - https://www.covenantrescue.org/about-us The Shooting Institute - https://www.theshootinginstitute.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jaredhudson_seal/ Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not admitted without parent.

• 0:42Shawn Ryan?

  Jared Hudson, welcome to the show, man. Hey, thanks for having me, brother. Man, I can't believe, we're just chatting, so we've been connected for like, two years. Yeah, at least, at least two years, yeah. Didn't realize it had been that long. Yeah. So Eddie Gallagher, Eddie Gallagher connected us, said, um, I remember him texting me saying that you were a super good dude, and that you're, that you're going after a lot of these pedophiles and, and human traffickers, and, and, uh, man, that's just a subject that, you know, it just doesn't, it does never, it never gets enough attention, and, um, so, and it's some

• 1:23Shawn Ryan?

  heavy shit, so, nobody wants to hear it, um, but, they need to hear it, and so, we're gonna crank this out, but, but, uh, former Navy SEAL, former law enforcement, running the nonprofit, running a tactics company, I'll give you a proper introduction here shortly, but, but, and, uh, man of faith, I mean, it just, you're just pumping out so much good into the world, and, and, uh, one of the, one of the few out there fighting. Literally the most evil shit that you can gin up and um that just

• 1:59Shawn Ryan?

  God bless you, brother.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  Well, thank you, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here, man. I love to see what you got going and your growth over the last few years. I mean, this is, this is huge. I don't think anybody knows it because not a lot of people see it, but from showing up here till now, I mean, it is, you've got a process, bro. I mean, you've got it worked out. So it's actually a very professional, uh, not just interview, but you know, build a relationship and then you sit down for the interview. So very impressed, brother.

• 2:27Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Not that, you know, not that it means much, you know, but

• 2:30Shawn Ryan?

  I've been to the world today. Thank you for saying that.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, no worries. I do want to give you something before we start. You give it, you've already given me a lot of gifts, but uh, this is from the team at Covenant Rescue Group.

• 2:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, cool.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Box, um, kind of like at Christmas when we give a gift to somebody and I don't know what it is because my wife, you know, got it and wrapped it. This is, uh, this is from the guys on the team. They said, make sure Sean gets this.

• 2:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  There you go. Crush Evil hat.

• 2:56Shawn Ryan?

  This is awesome. Thank you.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  Now we had the, the black on black tee shirt. That's a, uh, buddy of mine, Stuart Hartley, came up with that one. He said, you gotta do black on black.

• 3:09Shawn Ryan?

  Awesome.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Then.

• 3:11Shawn Ryan?

  Patch.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  Patch.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  Oh, yes. We partnered, that's a Wooks, that's a Wooks knife. We partnered with, with them and they've, they made us some cool stuff, some tomahawks and stuff, but, uh, that's a, uh, it's actually a really good skinning knife. I use mine for

• 3:26Shawn Ryan?

  That is cool, man. Thank you. What, Wooks?

• 3:29Speaker 04

  Wooks, yeah. You can look them up. They're, uh, I didn't know about them. They make chassis for guns and stuff. I got a few of their chassis for some rifles. But they, but that wood on that handle is like Italian wood or something. I can't remember. It says it on the box, but they're, uh, hey, Winkler, that's, I think that's how I meet a Winkler up in Boone, North Carolina, you know, uh,

• 3:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  Does all the knives for us. They sell them in their shop. That might've been how I got connected to them.

• 3:53Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, they sell Wook stuff in their shop.

• 3:56Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, man.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, man.

• 3:58Shawn Ryan?

  Patch will go awesome in the studio and yeah, I appreciate it.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  No worries. Well.

• 4:08Shawn Ryan?

  Here's what I want to do. I want to do life story with you, starting a childhood, go through your SEAL career, go through some of your law enforcement stuff, but the majority of the interview, the meat of it, I really want to concentrate on the, on the sex trafficking and how you're combating that and going after pedophiles and finding some commonalities of the, of the, what do you call them, the assailants?

• 4:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, or, you know, just the perpetrator, the, the-

• 4:36Shawn Ryan?

  The pedophile.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Pedophile, whatever you want to say.

• 4:39Shawn Ryan?

  You don't call them maps yet?

• 4:40Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:41Shawn Ryan?

  Minor attracted persons.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, minor attracted people or whatever, yeah.

• 4:44Shawn Ryan?

  That's good. They'll keep that on the west coast, but, uh-

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Keep it on the west coast and in Europe, you know?

• 4:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  That's what they're pushing for in Europe.

• 4:52Shawn Ryan?

  Are they really?

• 4:53Speaker 04

  That's what I heard. I don't know how true it is, but-

• 4:55Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, nice. But, um, but yeah, I want to, I want to, I just want to re, we did a big podcast on this before, it went crazy, but it's always, you know, I want to re-educate people on, you know, especially parents on what they can do and, you know, kids and, and all of that, but we'll get there, uh, towards the, the tail end of the interview. So, everybody gets a, an introduction, so here we go. Jared Hudson, as a US Navy SEAL, you served as a SEAL operator with Naval Special Warfare. You were deployed multiple times to a variety of combat zones in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation

• 5:37Shawn Ryan?

  Enduring Freedom and Operation Foal Eagle and other critical missions. What is Operation Foal Eagle?

• 5:45Speaker 04

  I think that, that's a great question. I think it was a, a big J-SET program we did in Korea, and then, um, at the time, if I'm remembering right, now somebody could probably look it up and tell me I'm wrong, but at the time, I want to say Obama was there and they shot those missiles into the Yellow Sea, and then we dove with the Rock Seals to get those missiles.

• 6:05Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  I think that's what that is. It was a J-SET that turned in a, I don't know what nuclear weapons look like, but I mean, I, I see this thing that the Rock Seals found it and we're diving in the Yellow Sea, this thing, I mean, that, that looks like a nuclear weapon, but it wasn't. It was just a big missile. That's cool, man. It was just weird, you know?

• 6:22Shawn Ryan?

  Together with your wife and, excuse me, together with your wife and a shared passion for helping children who are victims of human trafficking worldwide, you founded the Covenant Rescue Group, a 501(c)(3) organization. You are the CEO of your business, The Shooting Institute, where you have personally trained local law enforcement, military personnel, and civilians in self-defense. You are currently a law enforcement officer as a Blount County, Alabama Sheriff's Deputy, and as a federal task force officer with HSI. What is a federal task force officer?

• 7:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, I'm with Blount County Sheriff's Office in Alabama, so I'm a post, what's called a post-certified law enforcement officer. And if the agency you work for is willing to partner with the feds in that way, this is the way the feds can take you through, for me, it was Title 19 law, I believe, if I remember right. Do two weeks of classes for that federal law, and then you are deputized under Homeland Security, Marshal Service, Secret Service, ATF, FBI, whatever it is. In my case, it's Homeland Security to work child exploitation, as a federal agent. So, that's a federal task force officer. I'm not a full-board GS-whatever federal agent. I'm a post-certified state agent who is sworn under the federal service to work, in my case, child exploitation.

• 7:45Shawn Ryan?

  You also serve as a reserve deputy for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, supporting special operations units, and working as an investigator for the Johnson County Prosecutor's Office. You're an Alabama Peace Officer Standard Training Commission Certified Law Enforcement Agent, and Certified National Wildlife Control Operator Administration Level 1, 2, and 3 Sharpshooter, in addition to holding other advanced law enforcement certifications. And lastly, and I'm sure is probably the most important to you, you are a Christian, a husband... And a proud father of three daughters.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  That's exactly right, yeah. Um, yeah, so with all that, it's kinda like me and you talked about earlier when you, when you show up to Bud's, you remember it was like, "Hey, where are you from?" "Oh, I'm Jared." I'm like, "Nobody cares!" You know? Shut up! You know, everybody's yelling at you, so, um, that's, uh, that's how I feel when we read that. So, thank you for that nice intro. Hopefully, my wife hears it and, and, you know, hears how awesome that makes you sound, right? But, the, um, but no, I am, uh, the, the most important thing, as, as we go through this interview and, and as we talk, I hope that people hear about me, is one, I am a born-again believer in the person Jesus, Jesus Christ. I am a Christian. And you've had Christians on this show, you've had guys that, you know, might not be Christians, but they at least have faith and believe something. I mean, the most important thing to me is that, because it's eternal.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Um, so I will talk heavily about that, but I do wanna preface it with this. That means that I believe Jesus is God reincarnate. He's the Son of God, as John, chapter one says, "In the beginning was the Word; the Word was God; the Word was with God. Everything was made through Him and by Him, and without Him, anything that we see that was made, it wasn't even made." Everything is through Him, and He was the light and life of men, and the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness couldn't overcome it. That's the first five verses in, in John, chapter one, but verse 14, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among men." That's what I believe. I believe Jesus is God reincarnate, uh, and He came to this wor- uh, world, lived a perfect life, died on the cross and rose again on the third day, "For my sins, your sins, and it's through Him we're set free. We have eternity with God."

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Uh, that is the most important thing, because it's eternal. I'm not always gonna be a husband, a father, a seal, a, you know, law enforcement officer, whatever it is. Shawn's not always gonna be doing these great interviews with interesting people. Um, I would be at the bottom of that interesting list, but you're not always gonna be doing this. Um, but how you transact with Christ in this life is eternal. So, that's the first thing. The second thing, I'm a husband and a father. Everything else set aside, God has given me my wife and my kids to God, to direct, to teach, to protect, to provide for. And if I can't do that, then I can't even do all these other things. And it's a scriptural principle. It says, "Be faithful in the little things."

• 10:36Speaker 04

  This is the most important thing, but it's also something little, because if I can't be faithful with the wife and the kids that God has bestowed upon me, then I can't be faithful with my business or with a nonprofit or with anything else. So, those are the two most important things about me, aside from all that other stuff that is interesting, but it's not important. So, and I encourage your listeners, heck, even you, make sure that we look at that every day. I don't always do it perfect. I mess up all the time. Look at that every day. What is the most important thing? Who I am and the person of Jesus Christ, and that woman and those girls that I'm called to raise right now, those are the most important things in my life.

• 11:18Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for saying that.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:20Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of people need to take note. You've mentioned, you've mentioned born again believer, Christian. So, what does that mean?

• 11:30Speaker 04

  That's a good question. Andy Stumpf asked me recently, so what do you mean by evangelical Christian? Born again believer basically just means what I just said. You believe that about Jesus. And Nicodemus actually says to Jesus, he says, "Well, how can a man be born again? Is he gonna go back into his mother's womb?" And Jesus says, "No, that's not it." We are born into sin because we're from the line of Adam, right? If you read Scripture, you understand that Adam and Eve sinned in the beginning. Eve was deceived, Adam disobeyed. Without going too much into the theology or the story, that's what we see. Adam disobeyed. When God said, "What have you done?" Right? God comes at Adam and Eve, looks at Adam and says, "What have you done?"

• 12:12Speaker 04

  He said, "The woman you gave me," calls me to eat of this fruit, or gave me this fruit and said, "Eat." Everybody will say that he's blaming the woman. He's not. He looks at God and he says, "God, the woman you gave me." He blamed God. And that is what our nature is because we come from Adam. We blame God for our shortfalls, for our failure, for our sin. That's what we're born into. But through the person of Jesus Christ, who came and lived that perfect life, I talked about it in John, Chapter 1, died on the cross and rose again. It's through his blood that we can be rebirthed into new life, no longer a life of sin, but a life of perfection and animosity, or indifference towards sin, but only in the person of Jesus. Why?

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Because he obeyed God to the very end, and we see that at the end where he says, "Lord, I know everything is possible for you," he really says, "Father," right, Abba, "I know everything is possible for you, but let this cup pass from me, please." He did not want to go through the cross. "However, not my will, your will be done." That's what Jesus says before he goes to the cross. You can see that in like the movie, The Passion of the Christ, him having that conversation with God. It's in all the Gospels. "Not my will, but your will be done." And the Scripture tells us, "He was obedient to the point of death." And we see that embodied in Job 13:15, "Though he slay me, I will trust him." That's what Job says. "Even if he kills me, I'll trust him." And that's what we see in Jesus. So, the born-again believer is,

• 13:42Speaker 04

  "I live in sin and I die in sin. But in the person of Jesus Christ, I am born into a new life. I'm born into a sinless life. It doesn't mean I'm going to be perfect, even though I strive to be. I still sin. I still ask for forgiveness and repentance. But I am now dead to sin and alive in Christ because I've been born in the new life under the person of Jesus." And that's what being a born-again Christian means, based on the Scriptures.

• 14:08Shawn Ryan?

  So were you always a Christian?

• 14:10Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, so when I was a kid.

• 14:13Shawn Ryan?

  Cause I was, I always thought born a, born again Christian that he kinda went haywire for a little bit and then came back.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  Well, and that would be, that is true. We're all, we are haywire, right? I mean, if you're born into sin, you're born into complete chaos and utter destruction because, uh, uh, the scriptures say none is righteous, no, not one, right? None of us are righteous. David talks about it in the Psalms. All seek after their own gain, but they don't desire God. Um, God tells Cain in Genesis, chapter four, I believe. And I don't mean to get into all this theology with you or whatever, but, uh, Genesis, chapter four, he says, uh, "Don't you know that if you do what is right, it'll be well with you?" Cause saying Cain is sad because his sacrifice wasn't accepted before God. And God says, "Why do you look down?" God's talking to Cain like a granddaddy, right?

• 15:05Speaker 04

  Like our granddad would talk to us. Um, he says, "Don't you know if you do what's right, it'll be well with you? But if you don't, sin is lying in wait at your door and its desire is for you." It actually describes sin like a crouching lion hiding in the bushes, ready to reach out and grab you, but you should rule over it. Um, he had the ability to rule, rule over it at that time because they were still, um, with God. Does that make sense? God gives the ability and that faith in God gives the ability to rule over it. Um, and that's interesting for us to see is that sin's desire is for us. Well, guess what? We're born into it, so it's gonna catch us, just like it did Adam. Um, so it doesn't matter how old you are, you were born into sin. Uh, and in order to be out of sin, you have to accept the person of Jesus Christ.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  Now, one caveat to that is people will say, well, what about the people that didn't know Jesus, uh, before Jesus came?

• 16:36Speaker 05

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• 17:10Speaker 04

  Well, Abraham was a great example. In Genesis, I think, Chapter 24, it says, "Abraham had faith in God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness." So, even those people alive now who might not have heard Jesus's name, God has given enough of Himself to them that they can have faith in God, that He will deliver them from their sinful, physical nature, what we see here on earth, right? What we see going on all around us, the terrible world that we live in that is destruction, right? How can we be delivered from this into the good things that we see, right? The creation that's in animosity toward us because we're the ones who subjected it to sin, right? Paul talks about that in the New Testament.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  So, how can we be one with God? We look to God and have faith that He's gonna work it out in us, whether we know Jesus or not, and that was Abraham. He had faith in what God was gonna do. And then for us, we've heard the name of Jesus, and we look back and we have faith on what God has already done in the person of Jesus Christ. So, really, it's not that difficult. I mean, it really is pretty straightforward and easy. God created a world that could choose Him or deny Him. That's it. It's that simple, because that's what He decided to do.

• 18:28Shawn Ryan?

  Is that what... I think that's what, I think that's the only free will we actually have.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  To accept, to accept or deny God.

• 18:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah. We're created in His image. Am I what?

• 18:39Shawn Ryan?

  You believe that too?

• 18:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, because we're created in His image. We can accept what He has, or we can rebel against Him. He talks about it all the time. The book of Isaiah is full of that with Israel and his people rebelling against what He said. I think Isaiah, chapter 49, He calls them a stiff-necked people whose necks were like steel rods of sinew and whose heads were heads of brass. He was basically saying, "You're hard-headed and stiff-necked. You will not do what I tell you to do." But He created us with His Spirit, which gave us the ability to choose right or wrong, just like He has. He just always chooses right, and we always choose wrong. Being born again is having faith in Him ultimately for us and the person of Jesus Christ, so that we can now become a new creature, as Paul says in the New Testament,

• 19:24Speaker 04

  and live a life, hopefully, free of sin, although that's not going to be the case. But we can strive for that. That's why He says, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." I believe it's, is it Galatians that says that? I can't remember. So, I say all that to say, I was six years old when I got saved. My parents told me, I remember going into their room and saying, "Mom and Dad, I believe that I need to accept Jesus in my life." They walked me through it. My daughters, two of my oldest daughters, at six, they came to me and they want to be saved. They want to, you know, go through the process. And so I spent three or four days going through the Scriptures with them, talking about it, so they understand who you are as a sinful person. Then there's those people who are in their 30s or 40s or 50s or 80s.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  I think my great-granddaddy, if I remember right, according to my dad, my great-granddaddy asked Jesus into his heart on his deathbed. Lived a life apart from God and sin, but he accepted Jesus in his death. I think Charles Darwin did, as a matter of fact. You know, the guy that, the, um... You know, Charles Darwin, the scientist that, you know, that shows where we, you know, or said where we came from monkeys, and I believe, I could be wrong, but you look it up, I believe he accepted Christ on his deathbed.

• 20:37Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, but anyway, it doesn't matter at what point in your life you're in, you're born in sin, you're gonna die in sin, and God has given you the opportunity to be one with Him and live life eternally. And that's, that's what I believe. That's what a born again Christian is. Hopefully, I haven't done a disservice with what I just said.

• 20:57Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  People smarter than, yeah, people smarter than me could probably say it better, but that's what I believe.

• 21:01Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thank you for, for sharing that.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:04Shawn Ryan?

  So, couple more things to crank out here before we get to childhood. So, I've got a Patreon account. They're our top supporters. They've been with us since the beginning. They're the reason I get to sit here and do this, and you get to be here as well. And so, one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and just about every guest a question. And so, this is from Blaze. "In relation to Covenant Rescue Group, what have been some of the reactions by individuals when they realized they are being rescued?"

• 21:42Speaker 04

  Oh, on the rescue side, so, I'll give you a two-part answer to that. The first thing is, most of the time on a rescue, you're, the, and it's primarily women in sex trafficking, which is primarily what we work, so, not all women. They will say, "I'm not being trafficked, I'm not a victim," like, there's not, they are doing what they want to do. In some of them, that might be the case. I found, I heard an interesting, interesting statistic from a lady that we work with, with Wellhouse, who is a forensic interviewer, who said,

• 22:21Speaker 04

  "Seven contacts, it takes seven contacts before a woman will be able to, to say, 'Hey, yeah, I need help, I'm being trafficked, or I've gone through this process,' right?" So, that's interesting to see, too. We might be contact number one, we might be contact number five. But that would be the first thing. The second thing is, if, once you see somebody who... Is like, yes, I need help. Whether a grown up or a child, children always need help. They're always exploited. We'll talk a little bit about that later. Uh, the response is.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  It, it, it's like unbel- unbelievable relief because up to this point. They've had no way out, but now they, it's almost like they see a light or they see a way out. Does that make sense?

• 23:06Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  Um, and that's the only way I can describe it because I've never been in it. My, my wife and my girls have never been in, I've never, I've only seen it. From the outside looking in, I don't know what these people are going through in their life. But you can see that sense of relief of like, you can actually do this for me. And when you see that, um, and, and pull them out of it, that, that would be the best way to describe it is just. Unbelievable relief.

• 23:33Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it's, you had mentioned that a lot of these, a lot of women don't, don't think they're being trafficked at first. And this is something that I always kind of play out in my head. And, uh, cause I've, I've been loosely following the subject for.

• 23:51Shawn Ryan?

  Probably over 10 years now. And, um. First, first. First exposure to this was actually from a tattoo shop. Uh, I got a lot of ink done at, um. Miami Tattoo Company down at South Beach became, uh, pretty decent friends with this, with, uh, the previous owner of that. Name's Amara Sierra. And, uh, she had, she had contacted me about, uh, a friend that she had that was being trafficked. And.

• 24:23Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know where I'm going with this was.

• 24:26Shawn Ryan?

  That friend didn't want to be helped.

• 24:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:28Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, I said, man, you know. I'm sorry, but if she, I, I'm not a law enforcement officer. Uh, I definitely have the ability to, you know, do what you want me to do, but. If this, uh, if this person doesn't want to be saved, then. Um. There really isn't anything I could do.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  Nothing you can do.

• 24:49Shawn Ryan?

  And so what I want to, kind of where I'm going with this is, is, is this.

• 24:56Shawn Ryan?

  I know some people, it's kidnapped and all this stuff, but are some of these women more voluntarily

• 25:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:03Shawn Ryan?

  entering into the trafficking space?

• 25:07Speaker 04

  So the easiest way to look at it, we've done, I probably sat in front of an interview, maybe not 2,500, maybe not that many, but in the thousands of women, like 1,500 to maybe 2,000, maybe not even that much, but quite a few women, like, so I mean, I'm basing this off of just strictly my interviews, and I'm not a forensic interviewer like some of these other people are that would be more educated on this than I would, but sitting in front of them, from Haiti to Zambia to South Sudan to the United States of America, pick a state, I'm sat in front of them, interview these women, and I get the same common thing across the board, for my interviews, every single time I talk to them, they're almost

• 25:47Speaker 04

  offended that you would imply that they need help out of what they're doing. Now, I've been told by ladies here in the southeast, they're like, I had one lady tell me, honey, where do you think I'm gonna go and make $1,500 a day? She makes $1,500 in the evening, doing what she's doing. So, there is that aspect of it. Now, once you interview a girl, once you get a girl that wants to get out, or a guy that wants to get out, and they go through the process, and you take a forensic interviewer to go down through it, one thing that will also say, we've always, we've seen every single time, is that that woman, who might be 25 or 30 or 35, doing this right now, she was victimized when she was four,

• 26:32Speaker 04

  five, six, 15, 16. I had one lady tell me recently, her kids are in the room with her, she goes, I mean, you know, ever since I was a little girl, I remember sitting in a room and watching my mom do this, her mom was a prostitute. And so she grew up in it, and so she started doing this when she was 15 or 16, so she could sell herself. And something what we don't realize in our culture, like, a lot of people love Reba McEntire, right? You know, not talking trash about Reba McEntire, but you hear the song Fancy, Don't Let Me Down, you know? That's exactly what she's singing about. That is what human trafficking is. It's a woman who's selling herself to the highest bidder, to whoever's gonna pay the most for, uh, to elevate herself in life. Sometimes it's out of poverty, right? Sometimes out of poverty they're doing it.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Sometimes it's out of, this is all I'm worth. Uh, it takes, uh, it's a scriptural principle, going back to scripture. Proverbs says that a man of understanding is able to draw out the thoughts and the things that are inside each person, you know, which is deep water. So what it's talking about is that understanding counselor. So some of these forensic interviewers can draw this out. You don't just get that at the first initial, hey, you need help, I'm gonna rescue you. Um, you generally don't get that. I've never gotten that. They all-

• 27:43Shawn Ryan?

  So is, is this similar to, would this be similar to

• 27:50Shawn Ryan?

  trying to help a heroin addict that doesn't want, that doesn't wanna get clean?

• 27:54Speaker 04

  And a lot of them are heroin addicts. A lot of them are, it's, the drug community is tied closely to the prostitution community, which is tied closely to human trafficking. So, one thing I will say is

• 28:07Speaker 04

  every drug user is not a prostitute.

• 28:11Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Uh, every prostitute is not a human trafficking victim.

• 28:15Shawn Ryan?

  That's where it's gonna be my next question.

• 28:16Speaker 04

  However, I would say that every prostitute that I've met, at least that I've met, is a drug user. Right? That are selling themselves, yeah, actually selling themselves, like, we, I mean, they'll get highs caught off fentanyl or heroin or whatever it is they do. Part of it is so they can do what they do. But every prostitute I've met has been a drug user, but not every drug user prostitute, not every prostitute's a human trafficking victim. The reason we focus on the kid piece, what we do, the reason I focus on child exploitation, is by the letter of the law, right? Both federal and state laws, and every state in the nation with the exception of two, maybe, maybe Washington and California, um,

• 28:57Speaker 04

  every state, if it's a child that's been impacted, somebody under whatever the age in that state is, 16, 18, 15, whatever the state law age is. That is a human trafficking victim because they're a child. They don't have the ability to say no or push away. Does that make sense?

• 29:16Shawn Ryan?

  It does.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  When they're of age, they're not always human trafficking victims. And I will also say the letter of the law doesn't always define human trafficking victims very well. So, but we don't always find human trafficking and prostitution, although it's closely tied to it. We do always find human trafficking and child exploitation, which is why we focus on children.

• 29:34Shawn Ryan?

  Another question. What would the, so what would distinguish the difference between just a regular prostitute and a prostitute that's being trafficked?

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, you know, some people would say that, you know, when, again, you get down to the nitty gritty of it, which I don't agree with this, but you get down to the nitty gritty of it, that that woman is trafficked in some shape, form, or fashion, whether it's poverty, whether it happened earlier in her life, and this is what led her to where she is now. There's still an active choice for her to leave or continue. Um, what will, fully just use the state law, you know, if somebody is actively selling her, so somebody working as a pimp, maybe, a husband, a boyfriend, if they're actively selling, under most state laws or under federal law, that you're now looking at a true human trafficking victim. This lady is not receiving money for her services, and it's no longer misdemeanor prostitution

• 30:31Speaker 04

  crime. You've got somebody who is holding her and selling her maybe against her will. Um, she'll say it's not against her will, but selling it against her will, and then they receive money for it, and she doesn't necessarily get paid. So that would be a good example of what we see here, here stateside and overseas. But most of the time, it's children that find, that are stuck in that spot. It's kids who are in that. It's not, it's not grownups as much. Uh, and. I think it's our digital world that's allowed for that. You don't see as many. We still see them, but you don't see as many. They'll call them Johns or whatever, pimps, doesn't matter. You call them whatever you want. A lot of it's symbolism without substance. Um, most women will use digital,

• 31:15Speaker 04

  you know, like the phones, the apps, because it kind of protects them. They'll receive money before somebody shows up. I mean, they're very, and heck, you got some chicks, they'll make a thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollars a night just getting dudes to send them ten dollars on Cash App or something for gas money, and then they'll never show up. Say, "Send me ten more and I'll show up." You get these frigging clowns out there that just keep sending them money. Well, they'll make a bunch of money a night just basically scamming, scamming dudes, which I think is hilarious.

• 31:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  You know, but that is, that is where you see trafficking, and if there's somebody strong-arming them and, and selling them, that would be, that would be human trafficking.

• 31:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 04

  It's rare.

• 31:52Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I got, I got another question. Sorry, I wanted, I wanted to save this to the end, but the questions are just coming, so I don't want to, I don't want to forget them, but, but you know, there, there is, how, how, how many people, how many girls in the porn industry are considered to be trafficked? Because it's my understanding that it's basically, it's essentially the exact same thing as prostitution. There just happens to be a legal document that says, yes, you're gonna give us, you're gonna sign this release form and have us film this. And, and it is, to my understanding, that is, if, if there is a contract signed for filming, then it's no longer considered prostitution.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  Bro, you're hitting the nail on the head. Now, prostitution, as we see it now, I believe is still a federal crime, but it's just not prosecuted, right? Um, but yeah, they, they, they're working on behalf of somebody, that is, that, that would be a form of human trafficking. And most of those women are in a position where they don't want to do it. OnlyFans would be the great example of kind of where it's gone to. People wouldn't look at OnlyFans women and say that they're trafficked. A lot of them are doing it themselves, right? A lot of them are, build their accounts, they'll sell pictures of their feet, or they'll do nude pictures, whatever it is on OnlyFans. Um, and a lot of them will say, well, that's not pornography. Well, it is, it's pornography. And they'll say, well, I'm not, I'm not a prostitute.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  Well, you are, you're just selling pictures of yourself as opposed to selling yourself physically. Um... But we wouldn't look at them and say they're being trafficked, right? Um, cause it's not against their will, uh, even though they might have a husband that makes them do it. There's all kinds of weird situations out there. That's the same way with the prostitution industry. Um, it's just women are more willing to physically engage and get paid for it than the women who just want to sell pictures. There's literally no difference in it.

• 33:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I wa- I wasn't even talking about the pictures. I mean, I.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're talking about the actual act of.

• 33:51Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, I've been, I've been, cause I've been wanting to dive into, sounds weird. I've been wanting to dive into the porn industry and expose, uh, some of the shit that's going on within there. And, and one of the things that I had just come across is, uh, I found this, uh, former porn star who's now a pastor. And I've been kind of looking at his content a little bit and he was talking about, you know? He was talking about the contracts that these young girls sign.

• 34:23Shawn Ryan?

  And it basically says, we're gonna do anything we want to you. You're gonna sign here. And then they get in the middle of the act and all this.

• 34:34Shawn Ryan?

  Just disgusting shit starts happening, uh, to these girls and they're like, sorry, you signed the contract.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  You see that in Hollywood with movies. I mean, you see it with some of the, some of the movies in the seventies. I think Caligula was one of them where they said some of that happened. Look at the, look at Blue Lagoon when the girl was 15. Was it Brooke Shields? That was a whole big ordeal. Those folks had to testify before Congress. So it's been going on like that for a long time. So yes, that is a form of trafficking. Legally by laws, is it a form of trafficking? No, prob- you know, probably not. It's not something I can go out and make an arrest and prosecute somebody on as a, as a law enforcement officer, as a prosecutor, right? Nobody can go get them on that. But yes, that's a form of trafficking. So the biggest thing is, is we don't.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  We don't actually know what trafficking is. We have what we think. It's the movie Taken. You know, girls being taken against their will, but sometimes they willfully do something. They make a foolish decision or whatever, and then they're stuck in it. And I've seen what you just mentioned more often than any of them overseas, wherever they might give their passport up, right? Hey, yeah, hold my passport. And that's kind of how they keep them at this brothel or whatever. And before they know it, they're being soft trafficked. They went there on their own accord. They say, I'll do this because I can make some money. But now they can't get their passport back.

• 35:49Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, some of the shit's just, you know, downtown Miami.

• 35:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh, yeah, dude.

• 35:54Shawn Ryan?

  And it's just, hey, show up to our condo and...

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Oh, bro, we get...

• 35:58Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I've seen newspaper ads, you know?

• 36:01Speaker 04

  We can bring it up in right here in Nashville. I mean, we can go just down the road in Nashville. I mean, anywhere you go, there's not a city everybody's like, oh...

• 36:07Shawn Ryan?

  So what are your thoughts on that? I mean, when you have... Have you dealt with this at all by chance?

• 36:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:14Shawn Ryan?

  What... I mean, because I'm not gonna lie, I got fucking mixed feelings about it. I mean, I think it's fucked up, you know what I mean? But at the same time, it's like, well, I mean, pornography is an industry. It's not like that you just got... It's not like you just fell for this. I mean, you've obviously seen porn and obviously sought out a way to make money selling yourself on camera.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 36:41Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and so is it trafficking?

• 36:46Speaker 04

  No, so it's...

• 36:47Shawn Ryan?

  Are they... You know what I mean? I mean, you... I fucking hate to say it, but it's... Part of me is like, you got yourself into this mess. Like, you fucking got yourself into this mess. You've seen porn. You've seen what they do. Why are you acting surprised now?

• 37:03Speaker 04

  There's a lot, then, there's a lot of that.

• 37:04Shawn Ryan?

  Some of this shit just has to be, I think, like, sorry, you made a fucked up decision, and now you're gonna have to live with these consequences.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  And there's a lot of that, right? There's a lot of... Because there is no criminal nexus to really do anything. There might be a misdemeanor prostitution charge. I think Texas recently made it a felony to pay for sex, which is crazy to me, you know? Is it morally wrong? Yes. Is it criminally wrong on the books? Yeah, most of it's a misdemeanor if it's, you know, this level of prostitution or even pornography to some, you know, some extent, I do believe, has a federal nexus. But all of that being said, uh... It's really a moral issue. I don't think it's anything that you can go after criminally. Now, here's the caveat to that. Most of these women that find themselves in that position, or even a lot of the men that find themselves in that position, were sexually targeted,

• 37:58Speaker 04

  were abused as a child or at a younger age. So, um, there might be a level of victimhood there, where they're at this point where this is what they do. Um, I don't know, because I've never been in that world to the point that I, you know, my mind has been shifted to think that this is all I'm worth, right? Um, but there is that aspect of it, and for us, what we try to go after, going all the way back to what I was saying a little bit ago, a person of understanding draws out the real issues at hand. Um, when it comes to prostitution, when it comes to pornography, when it comes to any of these things, the only thing that we can do is give a safe, um, a safe, uh, on the rescue side, like

• 38:42Speaker 04

  he was talking about, uh, the guy who asked the question, to give a safe environment for the advocates of organizations, that these are women, generally speaking, who are people of understanding. They might have been in that position. We create a safe environment for advocates to go in and do this. Sit down and talk and interview these ladies to try to get them out of this, um, without any law enforcement interference. Because as soon as we say, "Yeah, this is human trafficking and we want to make a case," well, it's our constitution that says that the accused has the right to stand before the accuser in a jury of their peers. Well, what do you think most of these women want to do if they truly are a victim? They don't want to sit in front of their accused. Yeah. Um, and now, and here's the thing. You got people saying, "Well, then they shouldn't have to." Well, yeah, well, then we're going to do away with the US Constitution. It was

• 39:27Speaker 04

  put in place for a reason. So, um, there is the bureaucracy of the US Constitution. That is a good thing. I do believe that the Bill of Rights is a good thing, and it protects us tremendously. Um, but oftentimes, when we call something that, kind of like you said, is it human trafficking or is it not? You know, do we, maybe, maybe not, but this woman doesn't want to testify? Perfect. We can't do anything criminally with it. And it's not on the law enforcement agency to be an advocate on this victim's behalf if she is a victim. Um, and so that's where the NGOs get involved. The problem with the NGOs, they advocate on this victim's behalf, but you've got to get that trafficker. Well, I can't because I can't get your lady to testify.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  Uh, so that's kind of the, that's the dynamic you run into. So again, what we focus on with law enforcement agencies and with our law enforcement credentials, with the guys in our group, wherever they're sworn out of, uh, we build cases,

• 40:24Speaker 04

  specifically targeting individuals who are going after kids because we can't get those felony arrests. We don't have to have anybody testify on that because we're the ones who are testifying on it. We're the ones who set up the operation. We're the ones who provided the training to the law enforcement, uh, officers or the law enforcement agency that set up the, uh, the operation that made these arrests. So we do decoy based operations to catch these individuals that are targeting kids. And guess what? When we rip their phones, when we, uh, all that stuff that you talked to, uh, um, uh, was it Ryan McDonald?

• 40:56Shawn Ryan?

  Ryan Montgomery?

• 40:56Speaker 04

  Montgomery. I said McDonald. Ryan Montgomery about, they rip his phones and find all this data. Well, that's how the law enforcement agency now has a probable cause search warrant or subpoena to rip this person's phone. And now they get all of this information of where they're abusing kids. Haven't, uh, the youngest I've seen a guy having sex with his own 18 month old daughter. But he showed up for a 14 year old girl. We arrested him based on that. We ripped his phone and found out this other thing over here that nobody else knew about. And that was a couple of years ago and, and he got, I think the FBI went forward with him and charged him federally. No, it might've been Homeland that went forward with him and charged him federally. Um, he got state and federal charges. So I say that to say, that's why we focus on that is because sometimes this problem already exists over here and it's going to take counselors and

• 41:42Speaker 04

  the person of Jesus Christ to fix this issue. I don't think we can fix it with, with legislation.

• 41:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  But with the kids, we have legislation in place and we can target the individuals who are targeting others. Our goal is to get predators because that's what these, that's what these guys are doing. They're preying upon all of these people who are, who are weaker than them and in particular women who might be in a bad situation.

• 42:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, thank you for clarifying all that stuff. We're gonna, we're gonna dive in a lot deeper. A little later on, but, but for now, I want to dig into your life story. So

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:18Shawn Ryan?

  let's just start right at the very beginning. Where did you grow up?

• 42:21Speaker 04

  Uh, grew up in, uh, I was actually born in Lynchburg, Virginia. Lived there for a little while. My dad's side of the family was there, but then grew up in, uh, Jefferson County, Alabama. North Jefferson is the, uh, the area. Um, Normal kid, like a middle-class family. Granddaddy had a farm. We lived kind of in like a little neighborhood, so a little bit of country kid slash suburban, you know, played football and baseball for a little bit. I didn't play baseball in high school. Did track some, wrestled, did all the, you know, all that, all that stuff growing up. Hunted and fished and went to church. I mean, that's what we did and. How many brothers and sisters? Two brothers and a sister. We're all relatively close in age.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  And they, I think my, my brother, my youngest brother and sister, they are, they were in the ninth grade when I was in the 12th grade. So what is that, four years? They're four years younger than me. Are you the oldest? I'm the oldest. I'm the oldest of, of the, the four kids. And then one of my brothers is an engineer. My other brother's a, a master welder and now he's on the sales side. So he does a lot with welding and gas and he's, you know, they're both in the, in the business world. And then my sister, she actually recently started working for us. We hired her as our office manager, which was pretty cool to be able to do. And she came on board and started running things in the office, running scheduling and all that for, for our team at Covenant Rescue Group.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  So, but yeah, grew up with him. Dad is a pastor, an ordained minister. He pastors at Hayden First Baptist Church in Hayden, Alabama. And, you know, grew up always being rooted in, in the faith. Nineteen, went, became a firefighter and was in paramedic school, or not nineteen, when I graduated high school, firefighter, paramedic school. And at age nineteen, went on a mission trip with the church and felt, felt called to do something different. And that was kind of my, my track into the SEAL teams. Came home, I taught my dad about it. No kidding? Yeah. How did that happen?

• 45:03Speaker 05

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• 45:37Speaker 04

  I went to Africa and I just, for whatever reason, the Lord laid on my heart. You need to change your trajectory, do something different. And it was the military was kind of in my heart and mind. And, um... What was it? What was going on in Africa? Like, how did that even just enter your head? So, we went over. I went with a church, Gardo First Baptist Church, where my wife and I go now in Gardo, Alabama. We went with GFBC to, uh... I can't even remember where we were in Africa. It was close to Angola. And we're putting wells in, right? Doing wells. And I remember seeing, we put a well in one village. If I'm just giving you a very specific thing that kind of triggered that in me. Putting a well in one village.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  Here I am, an 18-year-old kid, 19, maybe. It's time, just turned 19. And this guy comes over from another village and he's pissed that we put a well in this village and he starts beating this old woman. So, here I am, just some frigging 19-year-old, you know, kid from Mount Olive, Alabama, Gardo, Alabama. And I go over and, you know, grab it. Hey, you're not going to start... And then all of a sudden, it spun up this big thing. Comes to church, "Hey, we're not here to do that. You can't do that." And it kind of pissed me off. And I'm saying, "Well, he's just beating this old lady with like this stick, this like, almost like the things you hit the horses with, you know? Like a, not a whip, but, you know, a horse stick." He's hitting her and beating her because he's mad because we put a well in her village right here and he wanted it in his.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  So, um, that being said, we, uh...

• 47:09Speaker 04

  That kind of channel, I was like, I want to do something where I can actually do something about this if I see it. And I remember thinking that. And so I talked to my dad and we went to recruiters at the time. Bush had just started those contracts. This was like the 04, 05 timeframe with those contracts came into place. So graduate high school, of course, this would have been 05. And I looked at them all. SEAL was the, you know, all special operations program. My dad said, hey, if you're going to do something military special, but do something special. He said, you do special operations if you've got the option to do it. Don't, don't go just to go to the military, be anybody, do something special. Remember in Buzz, they had that thing, you know, be somebody special. You remember that on the old grinder? Yeah. Oh, that was funny that dad, he did say that. He said, do something special. And SEAL

• 47:54Speaker 04

  was the hardest contract out of all of them. He had the SEAL contract. I think Air Force PJ and Combat Control was the second hardest. They had an X-ray contract, I think was the Army Green Beret, and they had something for RASP or some, whatever the Ranger contract was. And the Marine was just, go Marine infantry. And then they had just started spinning up MARSOC for the Raiders. Mm-hmm. Um, there was kind of a process there, but I don't think it was a contract. So I said, all right, God, I'll do whatever you want me to do. And I'll just take the hardest one. If I pass it, that's where I'll go. So I took the ASVAB, the run, the swim, the pull-ups, all the stuff for the SEAL contract and passed it, got the contract. I said, well, this is where God wants me to go. And, uh, you know, marched down that road to be a Navy SEAL. Right on. Did you have any family in the military?

• 48:39Speaker 04

  No, so I had an uncle, um, that was in the Army, but and in my, my, my granddaddy's, my, my great-granddaddy and, uh, my granddaddy, my dad's dad served in the Korean War. My great-granddaddy, my, my mom's granddaddy was war too. He went in on, uh, he was in the Army, went in on D-Day. And his brother was a Marine and was in, I think he was in Iwo Jima in Guadalcanal, if I remember right, from what they said. So I had that, but it was kind of distant. I remember hearing some of the stories. And then I had an uncle, uh, who was in the Army in the 90s, uh, in Bosnia timeframe. I think he deployed to Bosnia, but that's it. I mean, we weren't, uh, I had another uncle that was a Marine, but we weren't really a military family, just kind of Yeah. hodgepodge here and miss and.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  But I went to, went to the military and um, did the uh, did, did the SEAL thing just to, I hate to say happenstance, it's the route that God directed me, but just kinda went through that door.

• 49:37Shawn Ryan?

  What'd you think of BUDs?

• 49:39Speaker 04

  Uh dude, it was uh, I actually wrote a, a, a, a small book, big surprise, right? Team guy writes a book. Um, but it's only forty pages, so I got a bunch of buddies make fun of calling it a pamphlet.

• 49:50Shawn Ryan?

  Pamphlet, nice.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  Armor of God Through the Eyes of a SEAL, um, and, and I, and I write about it in there, um, and it's kinda interesting when you're going through stuff and thinking and writing your thoughts on paper, which I didn't, haven't historically done, I'm a terrible writer, uh, it, but it kinda popped out, I'm like, that was, it wasn't that hard, but it was the hardest thing I ever did, that makes sense, the physical standard, you know, it wasn't, I mean, I couldn't meet it now, you know, nearly forty years old, I mean, it's yeah, but at the time, I remember like, the standard wasn't that hard, I don't know if you remember that, it wasn't, but it was the hardest thing I ever did, and I was, I was thinking, how could that, how could that be?

• 50:31Speaker 04

  It's because, and this is what I believe, it's because they make you bad at what you're good at, they wanna see how you respond to your own failure, and that's the difference in the selection process, that's what I saw, and that's what I thought about it, you know, and this is now years out, looking back on it, I was, I was not gonna make it through BUDs, I was like, this is impossible, um, and uh, 2nd Corinthians 12, uh, 9, uh, where God is talking to Paul, he says, "My grace is sufficient for you, my strength is made perfect in your weakness," this is when Paul asks that the thorn in his flesh be removed three times, and God says, "You're gonna keep it, my grace is sufficient for you, my strength will be made perfect in your weakness."

• 51:14Speaker 04

  I was having some issues, you know, I'd failed some runs, I, no, not, yeah, yeah, I'd failed some runs, I shouldn't have failed, uh, got really good at swimming, I wasn't that great at swimming, um, and I was like, "God, I'm not gonna make it on this, I should be able to, but I'm not gonna make it," and uh, he said, "Hey, don't quit and I'll see you through it," and he did, his grace was sufficient, his strength was made perfect in my weakness, um, and that's uh-

• 51:38Shawn Ryan?

  Was there something in particular?

• 51:41Speaker 04

  Well, I tore my calf muscle in first phase and that really, yeah, that negatively impacted my runs. I went from running pretty well, you know, being able to do the four miler and, you know, 25, 26 minutes to where like when I got to third phase, even I'm talking third phase, like we're done, we're ready to go. I've got dudes pushing me down the beach. I mean, my, my legs just would not go as fast, but I tore that calf muscle in hell week and it never, it never was the same. It's still not the same.

• 52:11Shawn Ryan?

  What did you find to be the toughest portion?

• 52:15Speaker 04

  Uh, probably the cold water, you know, or shallow water blackout was easier than I, than I thought, you know, you're doing the 50 meter underwater swim. I did a little shallow water, but I think most everybody in our class did, right on that one. But I was talking with Stumpf about that recently and, and he was kind of laughing about it, talking through at least what they looked at on the second phase side. But that was hard, but not as hard as you think. But I would say the cold, the cold water across the board. I was not, I'm an Alabama guy, you know, was not prepared for that cold water, that, that hypothermic, those hypothermic conditions. That was, that'll make you, uh, you see that movie, The Hateful Eight, that Tarantino movie, you know?

• 52:58Shawn Ryan?

  No, I haven't.

• 52:59Speaker 04

  Oh, man. So this is, it's not a very good Christian example, let's put it that way. But he's like, man, a man in the cold will do anything to stay warm.

• 53:06Shawn Ryan?

  I can't imagine a Tarantino film being.

• 53:08Speaker 04

  That's right. Had this dude out in the snow, butt naked, you know? Anyway, he's like doing anything to get a blanket, you know, to warm up. And that's, that's what you feel, you know, they're in buds. I mean, that's, that was probably the hardest thing for me. I hated being cold. I still hate being cold.

• 53:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What class were you in?

• 53:25Speaker 04

  Uh, so I classed up with 264. Uh, you probably know, you know, Triumph Systems, Jared Ogden. Um, he did some stuff on the Discovery Channel.

• 53:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I did. I've met him. He's got a target system.

• 53:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, the target system. Yeah, I think it's Triumph Systems. He's a great dude. I still talk with him, but he, uh, he was our OIC. Um, that's why I say that. So that was 264 and I went through hell week with them and then got rolled and then graduated with class 267.

• 53:49Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 53:50Speaker 04

  Graduated BUDS and SQT with 267. Where'd you wind up going? Uh, SEAL Team Three. Team Three? Yep, Team Three. Checked into Team Three and, uh, checked into the, basically the tail end of that Solder City deployment. Um, so my OIF, you know, whatever is not, I mean, it's just checking into the tail end of deployment, didn't really do anything. Went to Germany and, uh, for two months with Group One as they did the transition through, uh, which was pretty neat, meeting a lot of the, the high level brass, driving them around, working with them, and then went- Oh, I'll bet you love that. Yeah. Hey dude, I'll be honest with you, it wasn't, it wasn't that bad. Are you serious? The reason, I will say my experience was different. So if, uh, yeah, I don't know if

• 54:33Speaker 04

  you hear it, but, because you live here in Tennessee now, but I have a little bit of an accent to, to most people, right? Um, so a lot of these Master Chiefs and a lot of these- You may not have noticed, but I got a little bit of an accent. A lot of these Master Chiefs and stuff, these guys, they, and I love the country kid, you know? They got, and, and so I was always treated pretty well. They, they enjoyed riding with me. They, they, you know, taking them to wherever, Stuttgart, to the, uh, Tent Special Forces Group thing out there and the CIF and all that stuff. And so I'm just driving them around and they just love talking and talk to them. And, and I was just this country kid, you know, just talk about anything. Talk about Auburn football, Alabama football, you know, and talk about hunting, fishing, and they just, they, I never had any issues. It wasn't

• 55:17Speaker 04

  bad. It was just, it was easy. Um, and, uh, then went to, met with my platoon chief in Germany. Came through, interviewed us, and, uh, he slated me for sniper school. He told me, he said, "You sound like you'll be a better sniper than you will be a comms guy, because I don't want to hear you on the radio."

• 55:35Speaker 04

  So Benny sent me to sniper school and that's where, I mean, I was probably with the team six months at that time. No shit? So you got sniper like- Right away, right away. Got sniper school and went there and, and man, loves, uh, sniper school was the most fun training. Like, it's like what I was made for is, because what I grew up doing as a kid. Um, so anyway, that was, that was that, that portion of, of, of the, of Team Three. So when you say OIF, I mean, you rotate in Iraq and out of Iraq. Yeah, it sounds cool. I got OIF like all the O6s get OIF. Does that make sense? Yeah. Just go there and get a badge and leave. I'm here.

• 56:14Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about sniper school.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:17Shawn Ryan?

  As a new guy.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  Um, again, it wasn't the, the Lord.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  The Lord blessed me tremendously. It was fun. We did van fights. I mean, all the, the hazen stuff, the new guy stuff. And we would, we would fight and all that, which was fun. I mean, I hear I'm this kid from the country. It's what it was. We had a fight club when I was, we'd have a wrestling team. So we all wrestled in the off season on our own. And we started a fight club. We got in trouble for it, but this is what we did. Well, now I'm getting to do it and I'm not getting in trouble for it. We're growing mid, having van fights or fighting Conex boxes or, or whatever. Um, and, uh, so that was, that was cool. That was fun. Uh, sniper school was great. I learned so much that I didn't have a clue. I could shoot, but I didn't have a clue about it. Let me go ahead and tell you. Uh, even going that, I went to that third test of three hundred windbag.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  You know, you gotta do ninety percent on snaps and movers. You're shooting an eleven inch moving target, you know, the like waist to shoulder. Eleven inches wide at, at eight hundred meters. They said, we're gonna teach you how to rewind and shoot that. I'm like, where I come from, you don't teach anybody to do that. That's just luck. Yeah. I remember saying that and thinking it, you know, but, uh, going to that, uh, that school and learning the sniper craft. Um, was just a blast, you know, and, uh, is in Indiana. The guy I mentioned earlier at some time, I remember it was talking off camera, on camera, Troy D. Hart, buddy of mine. I met him in Indiana. Uh, going to church, uh, there one day and he showed up on base. It's a regular army base and we have our little compound there.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  And, uh, this guy shows up and tying everything and he said, uh, here I am, some guy with like long hair and sideburns. And I said, hey, are you the pastor at church? He goes, no, I'm picking up people to take him to church. I said, all right, wait, I want to come right away. And he had been praying for about six months, he said, that he would meet a SEAL because he knew SEALs were on that base. And I happened to be the guy he met. And then he's been tied close to the community ever since.

• 58:06Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 58:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that was two thousand and seven, I think, two thousand and eight.

• 58:11Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 58:12Speaker 04

  So anyway, um.

• 58:14Shawn Ryan?

  Can you walk us through kind of your pipeline at sniper school?

• 58:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's changed. It's changed now. You got PIC, um, pictographer, pictograph, whatever it is. So we did that at the Strand because it was West Coast guy and then the East Coast guys do whatever in Virginia Beach. Um, and then you have

• 58:31Shawn Ryan?

  What's PIC?

• 58:32Speaker 04

  Uh, pictographer or pictograph where you take a camera, you know, like, and you have to, you know, hold the button so it lets all the light in because, you know, it's the old school PIC, you know, picture stuff. So you have like light up a tag on a car in complete darkness without night vision or without shining a light on it. And, uh, it's basically, uh, surveillance based stuff, right? Um, that would be the PIC portion and learning how to use that equipment.

• 58:56Shawn Ryan?

  Do you mind if I elaborate a little bit?

• 58:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, please do.

• 58:59Shawn Ryan?

  So PIC is a, PIC is the first course in, into the sniper pipeline. And it's basically learning how to use cameras, not be detected, no flashes. You should be able to take a picture and, and what 100% darkness, zero visibility. And, and then they teach you how to kind of compress that in and send it over a communications unit.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 59:25Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, SATCOM.

• 59:27Speaker 04

  What, yeah, whatever, whatever the, the communications platform they have at the time. Has this changed now? They have a different comms platform, but

• 59:34Shawn Ryan?

  So, so yeah, so basically you, you get in, observe a target, conduct surveillance, send that surveillance over the net to somewhere else. Uh, and, and, and that's, I mean, that's, I would say that's probably the majority of, of sniper missions is, is surveillance. And so you need to know how to, how to get that data and be able to send it over, over comms. And then, so after

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  So you're better, that's, that's a great description.

• 1:00:05Shawn Ryan?

  It's the only portion of sniper school I actually completed, so.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  So you got PIC and it's, and it's a, it's a beneficial portion because like you said, even any surveillance operation, that's what we, we do a lot of wherever you're at. And that's important because that's helps, helps you build targets. Uh, scout, you go from PIC into scout and again, the pipeline has changed now. Gets more meshed together. So pick was, was it two or four weeks? You know, it was, it was I can't remember. About a month. It was about a month. I don't think it was a full month, but it was pretty close. Um, somewhere between two and four weeks. And then you go to scout. Scout was six weeks, if I remember right, and that's stalking. So the east coast guys are stalking in the woods, the easiest thing in the flipping world. And the west coast guys are stalking through La Posta. And I mean, they're like watching, seeing trails where you're dragging your sniper bag behind you. See the dust trails kicking up out there in La Posta where you're

• 1:00:53Speaker 04

  stalking, stalking through. Um, and, uh, and you stalk up, you set up a, a hide site, but you still haven't shot a rifle yet. You're not a sniper. You then set up your camera that you learned all about. You set your camera, you take a picture of the target. Um, you have to read a certain card they'll hold up, you know, a card, you get the picture, you read the card, you tell it to them. They're watching your spot. You know, they got the, the instructor in the field who's within five yards of you or whatever. And they're looking in that area to see if they find you, find your camera, find any of that. So that's the scout portion. So it's now implementing pick with staying hidden really, really, really well, right? You're actually, you got your ghillie suit, all that, that junk, right?

• 1:01:37Speaker 04

  Um, and, uh, that is scout. And then finally you go to sniper, uh, which is at the time, I want to say it was, it might've been eight weeks. It might not have been, it might've been six or seven weeks, but I think it was two, it was two months was blocked off for that. So all together, it was like a four month program. Started in December for me, and I think I graduated in April. Um, and the, uh, sniper was great. So you're doing stalks, you're no longer taking pictures, you're taking shots. It, it was, it was great. And it was a lot of fun, a lot of good dudes that you're there with. And you're just, you're just stalking around the woods in, in Indiana, taking shots, you're shooting yard lines every day. Uh, three hundred win mag, uh, so the, the mark thirteen, the, the mark eleven

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  is just, it was phenomenal. And then during, it wasn't deer season at the time, but, um, when you go back to do stuff at sniper school, help instruct or whatever they're doing deer season, you're hunting in Indiana. I mean, it's just. It's fun.

• 1:02:31Shawn Ryan?

  Farthest shot you took in sniper school?

• 1:02:33Speaker 04

  Uh, farthest shot in sniper school was a little over 1,200 meters. I want to say it's like 1,300 yards plus or minus. That's the furthest shot you take, which was interesting because that's when, uh, I want to say of all people, I think it was Chris, Kyle and them developed long-range target interdiction for the west coast and the east coast because the farthest shot we took in sniper school, especially when we got to Afghanistan, wasn't it was like a chump shot, you know, it's like, oh, 1,200 yards, that's great. It's an easy shot compared to the, some of the shots we're taking. The furthest person I killed was 2,345 yards.

• 1:03:06Shawn Ryan?

  You killed somebody at 2,000, how, how far?

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  2,345 yards. They're on a motorcycle. I missed them four times beforehand, but blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again. So, um, so we, so got that and then, uh, some of the guys in the hide site with us, some of them are still in. I'll try not to say their names.

• 1:03:25Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get there. Don't go there. We'll get there.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  But that was interesting to see the furthest sniper school shot did not compare to what we were shooting like regularly in, in Afghanistan or even I, I think sometimes even in Iraq. I mean, guys were taking, you know, some 1,500 meter plugs.

• 1:03:44Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, we did a, we did a lot of sniper stuff in Baghdad. I don't think anybody took a shot over 50 yards.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, especially with a lot of CQB based stuff, you know, you, you won't, but

• 1:03:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, these were, these were

• 1:03:58Speaker 04

  You're in sniper hides.

• 1:03:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  That's interesting.

• 1:04:00Shawn Ryan?

  These are sniper hides. We just

• 1:04:02Speaker 04

  No, Afghanistan, I think I shot one dude from like me to you and I'd already shot him once before from a sniper hide. Yeah. Cleared up on him and he set up with his AK and I, you know, cleared around this little wall on him. I shot him in the stomach.

• 1:04:14Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get there too. Where was that at?

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  Uh, that was in a place called, well, it was close to Kalat would be the big area. It was, it was pretty far. It was like a day's drive from Kalat, but it would have been close to Kalat.

• 1:04:26Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:28Speaker 04

  I think it was called Karam Kail maybe. It doesn't matter.

• 1:04:31Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get there. We'll get to all that, the combat elements. So.

• 1:04:37Shawn Ryan?

  So you get through sniper school, how'd you graduate?

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  Uh, you know what?

• 1:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  Top of the class?

• 1:04:42Speaker 04

  No, no, definitely not top of the class. A guy named, uh, Brian Clayton was at the top of our class. I think he got the, the, the gun. Um, he, he did great. Uh, I actually did pretty good on the stalks. I stalked one day in a, in just a flannel jacket and a pair of blue jeans. And stalked all the way up, stalked around the instructor's little thing there and set up. Um, you know, so I did good on the stalks, cause it's pretty flipping easy. I mean, if you can stalk up on a deer with a bow in the woods, you know, that's what I was doing in Alabama, like kinda slip behind trees, find a spot, jump them, climb up, shoot a deer. If you can do that, you can stalk up on a bunch of flipping teen guys with binos. I mean, that's easy.

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  And so, it's stalking around. Um, but that being said, uh, I didn't, I'm maybe middle of the class, you know, i- is, is where I was. I was not, it's funny how the Lord works. I go in, oh yeah, man, I can shoot. I mean, it's all this arrogance of who, who I am and how great I am and all this. I grew up in the woods, you know, then all of a sudden you realize, no, I suck compared, compared to these guys. But, um, yeah, I think Brian graduated top of our class. There was a lot of good dudes in our class. Um, but, uh, graduated and, uh, that, that's where I decided to, I'd been dating my wife for a little while at the time and, uh, graduation day, the family all comes. You can have family up, friends up, whatever. They all come up, shoot sniper rifles, it was a fun time.

• 1:06:04Speaker 04

  I invited my dad, my brothers and, and her dad. And, uh, me and him were fishing in Troy's pond, and I'm back fishing, and that's where I was. I said, hey, I wanna ask Lauren to, to marry me. Can I ask your daughter to marry me? And he said, he said, you're gonna have to ask her about that, son, but after this weekend, it's perfectly fine with me. He said, they weren't out fishing. He loved the guns and the fishing.

• 1:06:27Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome. How'd you meet your wife?

• 1:06:30Speaker 04

  Uh, it's my dad being a pastor. Her grandparents went to their church. Um, and we kinda knew of each other through that. And then my, my brother and his wife hooked us up on like a blind date. One time when I came home on leave, I came back from that Iraq, Germany thing that, you know, told you about. I came home and they kinda hooked us up on a blind date and we hit it off and started dating. And then six months later, I was asking her dad to, if I could, eight months later, I was asking her dad if I could ask her to marry me.

• 1:07:02Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. Nice. You guys have been married ever since?

• 1:07:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, we've been married 16 years. Yeah.

• 1:07:06Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 1:07:08Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:07:08Shawn Ryan?

  Made it through the SEAL teams.

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  Made it through the SEAL team. Yeah. She was with me the whole time through the SEAL teams. Uh, just not the, the, you know, buds portion, but she did whatever it was.

• 1:07:18Shawn Ryan?

  And you don't hear that very often. You know, it's really weird though. I don't know. I don't know if I'm just choosing. I, I don't know what the hell is going on. Everybody that comes on here lately from our background has, uh, has, has had a successful marriage.

• 1:07:34Speaker 04

  Really? That's good. Well, that's good.

• 1:07:36Shawn Ryan?

  I, it's awesome. It's just, it's such a rarity and, uh, it's, it's just interesting that the,

• 1:07:44Shawn Ryan?

  the latest group of soft veterans that have been on this show, uh, have not been divorced. But, so anyways, I'd like to, what, what do you, what is the, for you and your wife, what's the, what's the secret to a successful marriage?

• 1:08:00Speaker 04

  Christ.

• 1:08:01Shawn Ryan?

  Christ.

• 1:08:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. If, I ain't drawing anything, but let's say this is her over here and then my wife's a great, great woman, by the way. I mean, she's unbelievable. Um, very, of everything she's good at, she's very wise and, and, and I think a lot of women are probably this way. Um, but she's very wise in. Let me know what relationships I should foster, whether business relationships or friendships or whatever, and which ones I should cut off. She's very perceptive of people. I'm not as much, you know. So she's helped me a lot in this. So she's a great woman, but set all that aside, she's here and I'm here, and Christ is at the top and we're both seeking Christ. You know, that's been something we say. We're gonna grow together, grow closer

• 1:08:45Speaker 04

  together as we seek Him. If there's anything else that you seek, because we're never gonna lie on everything. I love everything that's awesome and cool. She loves things that are stupid. That's, that's, that's the way we look at it, right? And so, we're never gonna be going toward the same thing. I wanna hunt and fish. She doesn't care about hunting fish, and she just wants to spend money at stores. And we're never gonna coalesce on that. So, but if we both are growing into Christ, first and foremost, Matthew 6:33, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness," and all these things will be added unto you, you'll grow closer together. And that's been, that has been what's held us together for 16 years. It's, it's been phenomenal to see. She's a believer like, like I am, obviously. So, that, that is easy, an easy question. That's, that's what keeps us together.

• 1:09:29Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect. So what happens after you, after you leave sniper school?

• 1:09:34Speaker 04

  I leave sniper school, go to Team Three Combat Deployment, or do, do a workup, normal workup. And now in an engagement relationship with my wife at that point in time, do the normal workup thing, slated to Afghanistan, go to Afghanistan, it was the Wild West at the time. I didn't realize this, I'll have to go back and look. Like I said, I talked with Stumpf recently, he said, "You got a bad memory." He said, "That deployment was 10 months long." For some reason, I was thinking six, six months, right? Because you know, normal team deployments are, are six months. But, and he was right, it was a 10 month deployment, I think from February till November was when the whole team was, was gone over there.

• 1:10:13Shawn Ryan?

  Were you with him?

• 1:10:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was, so he had done, he put me through second phase, and then he did his, it's not LDO, he was explaining it to me, but it's going to do an officer thing, I forget what it was called, and he checked into Team Three. Because you know, he was over at Development Group, got shot, went to Buzz as an instructor, and that's where I first met him. When he left Buzz as an instructor, he went to, and the only reason I remember this, because he literally was just telling it to me, like last week or the week before, he went to Team Three to do his Team AOIC, or whatever it was, because he was trying to do that officer program. And so he went to Afghanistan with us. And But anyway, we did that deployment.

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  It was, it was the Wild West is what every team guy signed up for. I loved it. It was great. Lots of, you know, just lots of gun, lots of gunfights, you know, you're getting, getting boarded, getting rocketed, killing bad guys.

• 1:11:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'll tell you what, this sounds like it's gonna get really interesting.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Oh, does it?

• 1:11:16Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, alright. So let's, uh, let's take a quick break.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Shawn Ryan?

  When we come back, we'll pick right up with, uh, with Afghanistan.

• 1:11:22Speaker 04

  Alright, sounds good.

• 1:11:35Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, Jared, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into, would you consider this your first deployment?

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, I mean, it's, the Navy wouldn't consider it my first deployment, but yeah, it's my first combat deployment for sure.

• 1:11:48Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:11:49Speaker 04

  So, yeah.

• 1:11:50Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go there, man. Yeah, well, I mean, you had to be pumped, right? You went to, you went to Iraq, but it was kinda just...

• 1:11:59Speaker 04

  Nothing, yeah.

• 1:12:00Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing.

• 1:12:01Speaker 04

  Checked in at the end of the Iraq deployment, um, nothing, because I mean, literally there, I was there for, you know, a week.

• 1:12:10Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:11Speaker 04

  You know, and then went straight over to, uh, where did we go? I can't even remember where we went through.

• 1:12:15Shawn Ryan?

  Well...

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  Went to Germany, did that, so I mean, that's, that's my experience with the SEAL Teams, and now it's sniper school, workup, but now we're going to war. We're going, whatever team guy signs up.

• 1:12:25Shawn Ryan?

  So, did you know you were going to war before sniper school?

• 1:12:28Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:12:29Shawn Ryan?

  Or did you find out after?

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  No, found out after, because, see, you know, and, and I don't, I think they still do a similar training pipeline or program, not training, but a, a deployment cycle, uh, would be your professional development, so pro dev, you know, my pro dev was sniper school, uh, and then ULT, unit level training, which is your, you know, assaults, MAROPS, um, you know, land warfare, all of that stuff, and it was, uh, at the front end of that, they kinda tell you where they think you're slated for each troop within the, within the team, and, uh, which the troop's two platoons, but each troop within the team, they kinda tell you where you're slated for, but I think they kinda decide over that unit level training, who's gonna get to go where, uh, and they, they told us sometime during that process

• 1:13:15Speaker 04

  that, uh, we were slated to go, uh, to Afghanistan and do the, uh... Uh, it turned into the commando mission, uh, and some of the VSO stuff that teams did, you know, later on in the, in the like 2011 through 2016. Can you explain what the VSO thing is with the civilians? Yeah, so VSO would be, it'd be more like a Green Beret mission, right? Where Green Berets go in, they live with the indigenous people in an area and they try to build white space in these, you know, villages they're living in, right? Uh, so it wasn't, it, it was kinetic because everybody knows there's Americans here, so they would come in and they would always try, you know, very defensive in nature, um, on the VSO side.

• 1:13:59Speaker 04

  And so you're trying to build white space so you could bring conventional military in, set up the stuff and start developing these areas that is really, uh, it, it were, I mean, they were out there, they were, it was just, you're just in the middle of nowhere with these folks living on, I mean, their, their electricity was a guy bringing a battery the size of your end table right there, you know, and plug his lights up to it and that was their electricity. Well, water, I mean, it was biblical times farming and stuff like that. So you would live in the villages with the people and you would try to, you know, build white space, pushing the Taliban out. So that's just a real, you know, layman's way of explaining what those VSO operations were. Well, this was at the front end of that. It really wasn't VSO operations, it was also commando missions.

• 1:14:42Speaker 04

  So that's the one for one, um, hey, we're training the Afghani commandos or whatever, you know, that, that you want to call them, the ANA or the AMP, and we have to go out on ops with them for specific targets. So not going after real high value targets, some Taliban commanders and stuff like that, but we're working one for one. This was at the front end of that. So we initially started off not having to do one for one operations. We were doing unilateral ops on our own, um, all over the, the country, but especially within Siege of Sotaf. And then it kinda got, we got key hold to doing the one for one operations with the Afghans. What do you mean one for one? Do you mean one Afghan per? Yeah, one Afghan per, per operator. Holy shit.

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  You know, so it, it didn't start out like that. It was, we're on our own and then it was, you gotta have partner force with you. So we might have four partner force guys per one, or I'm sorry, um, one partner for force guy, you know, for every four SEALs or something like this. You just have a few partner force guys. Then it turned into literally got a partner force guy, got me, um, and.

• 1:15:50Speaker 04

  It really wasn't, it wasn't great. It wasn't terrible. They would normally call a tax in on us, you know, they're doing stuff like that. We'd set up to do a KLE, a key leader engagement. We'd come in at night, send them in the daytime. Sometimes we'd go to areas where we knew we could get a Taliban commander and we might, you know, capture, kill that guy. Again, all lower level targets. It's not like you're going after Bin Laden and any of these, but you're going after

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  valuable people maybe for this, for this area, for whatever the, the big machine, the big green machine being the army or, you know, big blue being NSW there and say, hey, this is, this is who we want to go after. This is what we want. So, a lot of sniper missions, a lot of cool stuff on that. I'm trying to think. I've, I've lost my train of thought. I apologize with, oh, the VSO. So that was the front end of VSO because we were living with the ANA and their compound. We were living like, we call it the Alamo. I didn't have a shower for like 65 days. Just well water from a pump, no electricity, eating crap. Like we're living it, but we're also rolling out and opping. So, I mean, it is complete freedom. It's the Wild West. It's like Josie Wells.

• 1:17:01Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 1:17:02Speaker 04

  Every country kid from Alabama desires when you sign up to go to war, right? And it was literally freedom. I, I did, I felt like Josie Wells every day. If everybody's, hopefully everybody's familiar with outlaw Josie Wells that listens to this. Like you're, you're just out doing the work. And so that was really cool. And then we built a FOB up and moved out from that area with, right next to where they were, but we moved out from there and then had more conventional come in and really started setting up FOB Tapper was the name of the FOB. In, in Nabahar, a place called Nabahar. Eddie was actually there. You're talking about Eddie Gallagher earlier. We did turnover with their, their platoon.

• 1:17:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, no kidding.

• 1:17:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, Ogden, Jared Ogden. He was there. We did a turnover with them. And

• 1:17:46Shawn Ryan?

  What part of Afghanistan is this?

• 1:17:48Speaker 04

  It was right on the border of Pakistan. So it's like, it would be eastern, you know, maybe a little bit northeastern. It was a little bit south of Ghazni. I could show you on a map, but it's just a place called Nabahar. Karim Kell, a town right down from that was a little bit of a Taliban stronghold till we killed some of the Taliban leaders in that area.

• 1:18:09Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let's, let's.

• 1:18:12Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let me, uh, let me get, let's talk about your first, it sounds like a lot of shit happened on this deployment. You got a lot of action. The op tempo sounds pretty damn good. So let's just talk about your first, your first operation.

• 1:18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:29Shawn Ryan?

  Ever.

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  Um, with the DEA, it was, uh, the DEA fast team. Um, and we were out of, this is before I went to Nabahar and we did the, the full turnover. We did a, uh, I forgot where the op was, but they were burning the poppy fields. Remember the DEA fast team?

• 1:18:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 1:18:47Speaker 04

  And burned the poppy fields and it was, uh, us, Bravo platoon, Alpha platoon, the whole task unit. And, uh, we did a op where they went in and burned the poppy fields, found all the, the stuff they're sending out. I think they said like 70% of the world's opiates came from Afghanistan at, at the time. I don't know if that's still true or if it was true at the time. That's what they said. And, uh, we set up sniper over watches and, uh, did the clearance in the village, in the villages for them. And they came in, they cleared alongside us and stuff, but they came in and dealt with the, the opiate side. That was the very first operation. And, uh, dude, I was so, I played high school football. The only, you know, it's like the pregame nerves, your first op, you know,

• 1:19:29Speaker 04

  I'm kinda, kinda nervous, you know, a little bit, but also super pumped. Um, because this is it. This is game day. And no, nothing crazy. I don't remember. We might've, you know, ran into a few guys and shot a few guys. I didn't shoot anybody on that op. But I remember like, this is it. You know, this is what it's all, everything is culminated to this event, right? The, the time to prepare is over because the time to perform is now. I was motivated, super stoked. Um, your team guy with a beard, you know, and all your patches and your, you know, cool guy hair. This is it. And, uh, so I just remember being super excited about going on that first op, flying in the birds there. And, uh, going in it early morning, like nautical twilight, maybe three or four in the morning and getting set up and going through it. And then daytime, key litter engagement, going through the

• 1:20:14Speaker 04

  stuff, weapons caches, burning poppy fields, doing your, uh, your biometrics. We did the, we had the, uh, the guys there with the, you remember the biometric things? They do fingerprint prints and blood and eyes? Doing all that stuff and so that was my, my first operation and uh, I think I got pictures from it. I'll, if I can find them, I'll get Steven to send them over to you, you know, but I just.

• 1:20:35Shawn Ryan?

  That'd be great.

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  Dude, just tickled pink, you know, like a kid on his first deer hunt, just super excited. Um, that was awesome because it was, it was freedom. It was freedom.

• 1:20:44Shawn Ryan?

  What uh, now that, now that um, you know, this is the day after the election, so.

• 1:20:54Speaker 04

  Praise God Trump won.

• 1:20:55Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding, man. Wow. But what I want to ask you is, you know, military recruitment's been super low.

• 1:21:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Shawn Ryan?

  Like catastrophic. That's getting ready to reverse. And uh, so what I want to ask is, now we're going to get all this interest and uh, of, of young men that want to go into special ops units. I mean, I'm sure you get a ton of messages about this. I do too. And um, and with the, the coming influx, because I'm sure it's going to happen now that the, now that it's.

• 1:21:28Speaker 04

  Commander is a worthwhile person.

• 1:21:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. Now that we have somebody that actually backs our military.

• 1:21:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:34Shawn Ryan?

  What, what advice do you have for somebody that's joining a team?

• 1:21:37Speaker 04

  Man.

• 1:21:38Shawn Ryan?

  We always get a lot of people that want to know how to integrate into a team, especially at that, that, that level. What would your advice be?

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  Man, that's a great question. I would say the team is, the team is more important than you. And that's hard for a lot of people, especially in our society to get past. Um, and that's a learned trait. But the team is more important than you as an individual. So if you're looking to go join that team, but you can't get out of the mindset of me, me, me, me, me, you, you, you might want to, you know, wait for a, a new level of maturity to set into your life, or uh, you might want to reassess what you're looking at doing. So that would be the first thing, right? Team is most important. The second thing is if you believe what I believe, and then maybe this should be the

• 1:22:31Speaker 04

  first thing, if you believe what I believe as a Christian, pray and seek God's face about it, because if he prepares that way for you, or you know, if that's the way that you decide you go, he's going to prepare that path and you're going to take those steps and you're going to be successful. And if he doesn't have that way for you, you will not be successful. And so pray and seek his guidance. If you don't know the Lord, if you don't believe what I believe, ask God to reveal himself to you. We'll be in the person of Jesus Christ and he can draw that path out for you. That would be, that's what I tell guys when they call me, that first part, or that part I just told you about, the Lord and Christ. But the second part that I don't tell many people often is, the team is more important than you as an individual. Elevate that above yourself. And if you don't think you're able to do that, you won't be successful.

• 1:23:13Speaker 04

  Great advice. Do you have any hard lessons learned, being a new guy? Yeah, this wasn't as a, as a new guy. And I didn't see this until after I was out. I'll give you two things on this. My chief, Mike Birkenbach, he's retired, he's a red squadron guy, came over, he's the chief of my last platoon at Team Three before I left. And man, I just, especially after that combat deployment, all this, I gave that guy unbelievable hell, you know, just as a, you know, just arrogance. I mean, if you just really want to be honest, if I'm, if I'm being honest with Jared or being honest on, on the show right now, arrogance toward, towards him, toward, this is what we do. I mean, I was, and he was probably one of the best operators I ever worked with. Of course, he came from

• 1:23:56Speaker 04

  development group, you know, and he was, he was there. But I mean, he was unbelievable. He was fair. He was a, he was a good guy. And I'm not saying that he was right about everything that he did, but I did not honor him in the way that God calls a Christian man to honor those who are over him in scripture, right? That would be the first thing. And the Lord laid that heavy on my heart in 2015. It was a group, Life Action, who came through my dad's church, my wife and I were there, and his pastor was preaching, his name's Shane, was preaching, and he's talking about getting right with people that you, that you have wronged, and, and, and being man enough, or is to men and women, or woman enough to own what you've done that's wrong. And man, the Lord just kept laying Mike Birkenbach in my heart, Mike Birkenbach. He was still in the team at the time.

• 1:24:41Speaker 04

  And so I went out, I left in, out of the left service, went out and called him. And I can't remember if he answered then, if he called me back later, but I said, hey man, I just want to let you know, I'm sorry. This is like three years after the fact, two years after the fact. I said, I'm sorry. He said, for what? You know, I ain't talked with you in a couple of years. What are you sorry for? And I, I laid it out for him. So the Lord has laid this on my heart and I can't move on unless I get this right. So, um, and, and we've rekindled that relationship somewhat. I talked to him a couple of years ago when he retired, came up to his retirement. But to me, that was, that was the, the biggest regret I have of the SEAL teams that I could have done something about. Not that, to be honest with you, the bureaucracy of the teams and government in general, you know,

• 1:25:23Speaker 04

  set all that aside. There's plenty of stuff we can nitpick and say is wrong that pissed me off about SEAL teams, that pissed me off about the government, whoever was elected, whatever the bureaucracy was. Jared could have done that better. Um, so that was my biggest regret and probably the biggest thing I learned, but it wasn't until after the teams, it wasn't until it was too late. Um, the biggest thing I learned as a new guy, a million atta boys, uh, can go away with, uh, one single uh-oh. Um, uh, long story short, I shot, set sniper hide, you know, three or four rooms deep and, um, scope cleared and could see the guys in the town, you know, and I was, uh, sniper on the gun. There was another sniper there. I was, I said, no, I'm going to be on the gun, dude. He's like, no, no, you're good. Yeah. Yeah. You'll be on the gun. You're, you're, you're a better shooter than me and all this.

• 1:26:07Speaker 04

  I remember, and I won't say the guy's name. Some of them are still in, but these dudes walk across the little field and got my little UNS on the thing. I mean dope set. They're like 425 yards, easy flipping shot, three hundred wind mag, few rooms deep. Nothing.

• 1:26:24Speaker 04

  Nothing. Something hits me in the face. Man, I shot, you know, those parapets that are like the porch, you know, that the parapet, like you're out on the porch and they've got the little mud, mud walls. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm four rooms deep, shooting. Well, my scope sees overseas them, but my muzzle, I was, I was freaking punching that. So, I mean, we wound up going out and, you know, successfully completing the mission by killing the guys we need to kill and doing the stuff we need to do. But I fired three shots into a wall at, you know, 30 yards where I was, you know, had a great sniper hide and. All them atta boys, all them good sniper things, you know, all that, all that stuff. It completely goes out the window when everybody finds out you shot them all three times.

• 1:27:05Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. How'd you redeem yourself?

• 1:27:08Speaker 04

  Oh, I don't know. Just, just, just continued to work, you know, continued to try to do the right thing. You know, but shot that wall. He's, Park looked at me, he's like, he said, "Bro, I think you're shooting the wall." I'm like, "Ah, there's no way." That third shot, something hit me in the face. I'm like, "I shot the wall."

• 1:27:24Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:27:25Speaker 04

  Did that 300 Win Mag, rattled it out.

• 1:27:28Shawn Ryan?

  Can you explain to the audience why you are three or four rooms deep?

• 1:27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's, uh, funny you mention that. I do this in, did this in the police academy, working CQB. Angles and distance are everything, right? Whether you're in a building, fighting with somebody, or whether you're in a sniper house. So if I can fire a shot from this window right here, uh, looking over a target. You might see me, you might not, but everybody's gonna look up, "Oh, there's a guy in that window." But if I can shoot through that same window and be four more windows away, it's gonna be a whole lot harder for you to find me. So again, for a sniper, or even just an operator doing CQB, I want to use all the angles and distance to my advantage. Cause there's nothing that I can do all the way up here where I'm being seen,

• 1:28:17Speaker 04

  that my rifle can't do better from back here where I'm not seen. And so that's, that's why we were, uh, three rooms deep. I guess that porch would have been technically a fourth room where we were firing out through the, through the rooms, out the, out the doors, and I hit that, hit that parapet. It would have worked great had I not shot the wall.

• 1:28:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Sounds like it. So let's move into, let's move into your first oper, let's move into your first operation.

• 1:28:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:42Shawn Ryan?

  Where you got a kill. Let's move into your first.

• 1:28:44Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, I mean, that, that was, uh... Trying to think, building white space. I can't remember if, I think we just drove ATVs. You remember those side by sides we had? They're like, so I think we just drove those from the fob that we were building up where we were staying at. Sometimes we'd take helos to certain places, but I think we just drove them the whole way. I know we drove them back. We go out, it's dark, you know, it's like 2:00 in the morning. Unilateral, we're looking for these specific people, some guy that was making HME, you know, the homemade explosives in that area. And we set up a sniper hide, me and a guy, I won't use the name, he's still, he's at Red right now. He might be a warner now, that's how old we are. He's a warner now.

• 1:29:29Speaker 04

  So, he, uh, we set up on a hill and we're told, "Hey, let everybody leave the village unless you see anybody leaving with weapons, engage them. And if you see anybody coming into the village, you know, with weapons, engage them." And that was pretty much, and we're in the south sniper hide. Stumpf and his crew were in the north sniper hide, and then there was a couple other guys on the west. And where the, and this, that's where the mountains, that's kind of they set up. This was a real flat, salt flat area by this town, and I cannot remember the name of the town.

• 1:29:59Speaker 04

  But they're doing their clearance. So, we set up, they go through their clearance, they start on nods, they finish at daytime, they bring in the key leader engagement. So they bring in the leaders of the town, they're talking through them, they found some weapons caches and stuff. And people leave the town and this guy burns in. He had, he had his AK slung, he had the saddlebags on his bike that you could see the, I thought it was HME bins or whatever it was, and it was actually empty jugs. I guess he was going in to get HME, but he had all the mortar fuses and all that stuff to hook up the IEDs, that's what it was. So, shot him off motorcycle at 600 meters. And, uh, yeah. Your first kill was at 600 meters?

• 1:30:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, 600 meters. It's about 650 yards, so maybe just inside 600 meters. Damn. He hit a turn. I shot at him a couple times, you know, with that 300 W Mac, you know, and racking that bolt. And he, when he hit a turn, I found a spot where he was gonna slow and kind of turn toward me. And I shot him through the gas tank of that motorcycle, and that hit his leg, and he gets out. He's like trying to figure out where it's coming from, pointing his AK, looking around.

• 1:31:10Speaker 04

  I just dial, I had my dope dialed up. I don't dial my dope down real quick, just flatten it out so I could hold in my reticle, you know? Them old night force scopes with the mil dot, it didn't have like a horse reticle or what we'd shoot now. Um, but I just dropped it down, held in my scope and uh, center punched him when I did, hit him in the belly and he crawled behind this thing and then uh, we broke down the high side and cleared over to him and he was behind this like old uh, broken down wall. You remember, you know how they had like half built buildings out there, old rundown? It was like something like that. Um, and he, he, he kinda sits up around the corner with his AK from about me to you and you know, I threw up the uh, it was a scar I actually had at the time, a seven six two scar heavy.

• 1:31:54Speaker 04

  We're the first ones that we're testing. I think the Rangers were testing them or we were testing them. I deployed that thing and shot him from about me to you in the head with that and ended him and that was, that was first kill. So that was uh,

• 1:32:08Shawn Ryan?

  Point blank with a scar in the head?

• 1:32:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do, I got, might, I don't, I don't know if I've got pictures of all that stuff in deployment, cause you remember you have to take pictures of guys and then you have to bring them in. Uh, at one time I had pictures of that stuff and it's not something we generally share.

• 1:32:22Shawn Ryan?

  We probably won't put that up.

• 1:32:23Speaker 04

  No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't, don't put it up. We can't get, it was like, but it was, it was no, you know, the two, two, three, you shoot somebody in the head, it like canoes their, their dome. This thing just like Gallagher busting a watermelon, that seven six two. Um, but yeah, that was the, that was my first uh, kill and then we, we got in a few little ticks.

• 1:32:43Shawn Ryan?

  What did you, hold on. How did you feel about that? I mean, strong Christian faith in childhood?

• 1:32:50Speaker 04

  I was tickled pink. I mean, that's what we had, we had signed up for. I would say now, you know, looking back on it and did it make any real difference in my life whether I would have done that or, or not? No. Does it make me any more of a man or any less of a man if I kill somebody or not? No. Um, but this guy, this way, I guess I rectified myself as a Christian man. Um, If I'd have met this guy in a coffee shop, maybe I'd tell him about Christ and try to share Christ with him. But Scripture tells us, Paul says, that God has put every man exactly where they are in the exact time, in the exact place, in the exact moment, so that they might reach out and find God. It's our own rebellious hearts that keep us from being able to see what God has for us to share.

• 1:33:31Speaker 04

  And then when you're killed, or when you die of old age, or whatever it is, you have received every bit of time that God was gonna allot you to accept Him. And that's what Scripture tells us. And at this point in time, my job is not to pray for this man's salvation. My job is to kill this man, because if I didn't, he's gonna go place an IED that one of my buddies are gonna run over in a little bit, or some poshtune kid is gonna run over while they're out there playing with, you know, the soccer ball, or whatever. So, that's kinda how I justified it, you know, it's uh... But I do struggle with now, knowing what the government is, especially after the pullout in Afghanistan and working that. I know we might get into that in a little bit.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  I struggle wholeheartedly with why we were there politically, but at the time, I didn't know it. Why? What year was this? This was 2010. This would be 2010. Oh, this is later than I thought. It might be 2000, well, maybe it's 2009. No, it was 2010, that's right, 2010. It's February 2010 is when we went there. Yeah. Um, yeah. What about being there bothers you? Uh, being there in the moment didn't bother me. Missed my wife. Looking back. Looking back, the reasons we were there, the military-industrial complex, the issues that we see, I mean, we see it going on in Ukraine right now.

• 1:34:56Speaker 04

  You've been to enough places in the world, I've been to enough places now, multiple deployments where we can see that I would've been willing to fight anybody who wanted to talk trash about the United States of America, going and doing the patriotic thing as a young man, but now as an older man, and I see the real reasons we were in some of these places, and I see how we left it, that's what bothers me. It bothers me that I... I won't say I lived or believed a lie somewhat, but there is a little bit of that...

• 1:35:28Speaker 04

  Wondering and thought process there, if that makes sense.

• 1:35:31Shawn Ryan?

  It absolutely makes sense. It, when do you think it flipped? When, because we had to go because obviously

• 1:35:38Speaker 04

  For me?

• 1:35:39Shawn Ryan?

  It was a nine eleven.

• 1:35:40Speaker 04

  For me?

• 1:35:40Shawn Ryan?

  What, what point do you think that the interest? Oh. US interests in Afghanistan flipped?

• 1:35:48Speaker 04

  Man, I don't, I don't know. I would, I would have to say probably when, because I came in, when I checked in the teams, I was at the tail end of the Bush administration. So I didn't get to experience much of Bush. Um, I would say it had to be within the Obama administration.

• 1:36:05Speaker 04

  You know, for me is when I noticed it because it was, I mean, we could get nine, we could get nine layers of air. We get air coming in to take a Pashtun guy who was injured out. But one of our guys would be bleeding out and dying. And you couldn't get anybody land to save them, you know? So they elevated, you know, the Pashtun life over ours on one end. But on the other end, look at what they did in the, in the Afghan, in the pullout. They absolutely let those people get crushed. And so I, it's, I, I don't under, I can't understand it. I don't know if, I don't know if I can understand why they do what, when I say they, I'm talking about the system, you know, the whoever's in charge, the administrations. I don't get it. We're not there to win. We're, we're fighting a global war on terror.

• 1:36:49Speaker 04

  What is that? The global war on scariness? You can't fight something that's not an enemy, you know? We're, okay, we're fighting the Russians. There's an enemy, or we're fighting the, the Taliban. There's an enemy, but a war on terror is just like drugs and law enforcement, you know? The, the war on drugs, you can't fight a war on drugs. It's an inanimate object. It, and, and it, it's obvious. We've been doing it since the eighties and it's getting worse, right? Um, the same thing with the war on terror. So that is where I really struggle. I'll say at least where it flipped for me, where I started thinking of this was probably, probably COVID to see how the government acted during COVID, to see how many guys they kicked out and kicked to the curb and what they pushed, um, that we now know was a lie. Uh, and I, we don't have to get into all that, but that was probably where it really clicked for me. Man, it's.

• 1:37:36Speaker 04

  I didn't always trust the government, but I really don't now because they've been caught with their pants down. And then Afghanistan pull out. That was, that was the nail in the coffin

• 1:37:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, me too, man. Me too. When I, when I saw what was going on there, that was, that just solidified all the beliefs that I had.

• 1:37:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:55Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it was.

• 1:37:56Speaker 04

  Or how about when they smoke a carload full of kids? They're, they're trying a guy like Eddie Gallagher for like killing a guy in combat, but they smoke a carload full of flipping kids and some, uh, some, some basically social workers, uh, because they said it's ISIS.

• 1:38:08Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, you're talking about the USAID workers that.

• 1:38:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, and then they, then they lie about it.

• 1:38:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they lied. They, they, they, it was a drone strike.

• 1:38:17Speaker 04

  It was a drone strike. That's right.

• 1:38:18Shawn Ryan?

  Drone strike the car. It was supposedly, was it the, who, who did they think it was?

• 1:38:24Speaker 04

  They thought it was the ISIS K guys is what, is what I was told. I just remember, because we were getting people, pulling people out in the process and I got a call from a buddy.

• 1:38:33Shawn Ryan?

  Um, were you there?

• 1:38:35Speaker 04

  When that happened? Yeah, we were in, I think I was in, I can't remember if I was here getting ready to leave or if I was in Istanbul, ready to go into Tajikistan. But either way, I got a call from a buddy. He said, hey, you hear what happened? And I said, what? He kind of explained, I said, yeah, I heard, you know, the ISIS K guys they smoked? He goes, yeah, no, it was a carload full of, full of kids and, and some, uh, his exact words were social workers, but I mean, uh, he was probably trying to say what you just said, USAID workers.

• 1:39:03Shawn Ryan?

  USAID workers.

• 1:39:04Speaker 04

  But I mean, it's, and then they lie about it.

• 1:39:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they lied, told us it was an ISIS leader. And then it came out, no, actually, Biden, you just killed a couple of kids and some USAID workers.

• 1:39:17Speaker 04

  And it's like, oh.

• 1:39:18Shawn Ryan?

  And, but nobody fucking cares, right?

• 1:39:20Speaker 04

  Nobody cares.

• 1:39:20Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let's prosecute Gallagher.

• 1:39:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, and that is.

• 1:39:24Shawn Ryan?

  For killing a fucking ICE, a real ISIS fighter that was actually ISIS and actually.

• 1:39:31Speaker 04

  Who was shooting at him, not two of us.

• 1:39:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. And that's. Not, not a bunch of fucking kids in a USAID worker.

• 1:39:37Speaker 04

  And that is really where it was the, the, the. The straw that broke the camel's back for me to really look into and now you go into some of the interviews that you've done, some of the people you're talking to about what we've given. I've talked with buddies in Congress about what we've been doing in Afghanistan and a lot of these guys at the political level, they don't even know and I think a lot of them don't care, but a lot of them are obtuse to what's going on because the bureaucracy hides it. That's one of the benefits of Trump going in is he's going to deal with the bureaucracy. I hope he will. That's drain the swamp. That is crush the bureaucracy, which keeps the politician from knowing actually what's going on and keeps the guy on the ground from getting what they actually need to do the job.

• 1:40:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Speaker 04

  So anyway, all that being said, that is, I don't know where the flip or the switch happened. Maybe there was never a switch and it was always that way, but I know for me, when I started seeing the writing on the wall was probably that 2019 to 2021 timeframe of COVID into Afghanistan pullout. It was, it's sickening. It's almost embarrassing to say that you're a part of it.

• 1:40:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't disagree with you. But let's move into, let's move into your sniper kill, the farthest one.

• 1:40:54Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:55Shawn Ryan?

  What were you guys doing?

• 1:40:57Speaker 04

  Uh, it was another task unit size, so two SEAL platoons, clearance and overwatch. Being a sniper, I can't remember what we did, but wherever we inserted, we cleared through this little area, climbed this mountain, we're doing overwatch of, you know, another village that they were clearing through and then they did a key leader engagement. And it was kind of supposed to be a Taliban stronghold in that area and they, they were getting to a lot up north. We didn't have much going on where we were. It was hot, flipping miserable. And these guys come out and of course they're armed to the teeth. They got their Rhodesians on and their AKs. I think one of them had, it wasn't a PKM, but it was one of those

• 1:41:41Speaker 04

  AKs with the long barrel and the big bipod legs, you know. And it was, but it wasn't a PKM. It was just a, it was a RPK. Is that what they're called?

• 1:41:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:51Speaker 04

  So anyway.

• 1:41:53Speaker 04

  They ride out together on a motorcycle and one of the sniper shoots at him and misses. Uh, and then I start shooting at him and the guy that was with me, Greg, he's, he just starts lazing with a big, those, the big viper, remember the big vector, right? One of those humongous things? He's like, hey, you know, 1700. So I, I had my dope set and I remember doing the holdover and I could see that big rawest round from that 50 BMG going, you know, right or left. And they slow turned and Greg, um, I rattled through four shots and then on the fifth one, I remember looking at Greg said, uh, 2345, send it. And he's just giving me the lasers. That was the last one. So I, I looked at my dope card. I cranked my dope to what would have been 2350.

• 1:42:35Speaker 04

  Put the wind hold on that I thought, which was just, it was actually a little bit. So if they're going this way, my wind hold was actually this way. I remember being on about the second mill dot. I, I remember seeing it vividly like I could draw it for you, right? That one thing, but I closed my eyes. My natural point of aim is good. Please lower let it hit. Boom. I remember watching the trace that big bullet go through the sky. I thought I shot over him. It went through his front leg, went through the bike, went through this, the leg on the other side and blew up on the other side. Uh, you know, the rawest rounds and explode when they hit. And he fell over and I was like, ah, man, I thought it went, I saw the trace and it dropped down and it traces, you know, the, the vapor trail of the bullet, you know, for anybody who's listening and

• 1:43:16Speaker 04

  falls over and I was like, see, did I give him? I don't know. I can't tell. We couldn't really see, you know, at that distance. And, uh, the T U commander comes over and said, hey, how far was that person that you just, uh, shot at? Hud? And said, a little over two clicks. He said, that's a long shot, son. He's calling for a medic and a mechanic. And so he laid there and bled out and they were actually able to go get his, uh, some of his ID material, his guns. He just laid there. Nobody came back for him. They got his bike when they cleared over and cleared the, uh, I guess cleared that side of the, of the village. So that was my furthest kill. Uh, definitely not the furthest one out there, but it was like one, a mile and a third. So it was like I said, missed him four times. Well, blonde squirrel finds a nut every now and again. So, you know, it, it worked out.

• 1:44:01Speaker 04

  But yeah, that was, um, and again,

• 1:44:05Speaker 04

  You know what, we were doing that for the specific job that God put me in that place to be a sniper at that time. That's how you justify that. He didn't put me in that place to be a missionary or anything else. I was in that place to be a sniper and protect my guys who were literally clearing the village to go over there where he's going to plant his IEDs and to set up an ambush on these guys.

• 1:44:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:28Speaker 04

  And it's my job to make sure that they get home to mama and the babies. And so that's, that's what we're there to do. And that's why it's important to understand you can't, uh, Proverbs 19:2 says zeal without knowledge calls you to miss the mark. You've got so many people that are zealous for so many things, but they have zero knowledge about what actually went on. Um, I could have all kinds of zeal about the political, you know, climate and what's going on, but if I have no knowledge of what's really happening, I'm gonna totally miss. This is what I know. This guy's trying to kill my buddies and trying to kill me. So I've gotta kill him. And that's, that's just the way it is.

• 1:45:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Is there anything notable on this deployment that you want to bring up?

• 1:45:10Speaker 04

  Um, uh, Brendan Looney, this would be the, the only thing, cause he was such a solid dude. Uh, Brendan Looney, Looney died, uh, toward the end of the deployment, September, I think we rotated. By the time everybody rotated out was November 1. So one and a half left, Looney died and-

• 1:45:30Shawn Ryan?

  How did he die?

• 1:45:31Speaker 04

  Uh, helo crashed. Hilo got shot in the hell. That was, I mean, as you know, most of your buddies, most of my, helos, very rarely. At the front end of the deployment, we had an augment that Andy set up with Gold, cause he was connected. And then we didn't interact with them. And then some of our guys attached to them. Uh, that's when Adam Brown died at the front end of the deployment, like March.

• 1:45:51Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:45:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. So that was, uh, um, so it started off that way with us being kinda tied to them. That's how we got in early and started doing the rip and some of our guys doing the augment with Gold. Um, Adam died and then Green Beret died in the middle of deployment. We had to go out and he, he got shot and drowned in a river and we had to go out and do, look for him under a dam if I remember right. That was the last time I saw Looney. Uh, and then Looney died a couple of months later in that Hilo crash. And then there was a couple of other team guys that died. Um, that I didn't, uh, know really well, but I'd met him. Um, and, uh,

• 1:46:33Speaker 04

  a young guy who I knew is a couple of training classes behind me. If I remember right, I literally ate breakfast with him and, or ate, you know, not breakfast, but just ate dinner, but they cooked eggs and all that stuff. You could choose what you wanted to in, in Kandahar. Ate with him the night before and then he, he, uh, he was on that Hilo, uh, the next day on that turnover op or whatever it was. So, uh, that was, that, that was, that was hard because it was a lot of, it wasn't everybody's first time to experience loss. Team three had suffered a lot of loss from Mikey Mansour to Ryan Jobe to Mark Lee to now, now, uh, you know, all, all those guys now Brendan Looney. So team three had

• 1:47:14Speaker 04

  suffered loss and a lot of guys had experienced it. But at least for me and a couple of the guys who this was really our first real combat deployment is our, went through training with him, his good buddy. That was hard. Um, and then, uh, yeah, yeah. So that would be, that'd be the hardest thing.

• 1:47:31Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, damn.

• 1:47:33Speaker 04

  And Dennis Miranda, by the way, is the guy that I, that I ate with. I don't know if I said that a little bit ago, that, that I kinda knew through a few training classes. He was at team four, I think, doing the turnover op. He, he died as well.

• 1:47:44Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man. How did, um, I mean, how did the team kinda recover from that?

• 1:47:50Speaker 04

  Surprisingly really well, you know, uh,

• 1:47:56Speaker 04

  There's one great thing about any accusation, anybody wants to level against the SEAL teams. And I don't, I love all special operations. I'll never talk trash about Delta, Green Berets, you know, MARSOC and SEAL teams, any of them, because it takes a special person. And even in scripture, God upholds men of war, real men of war. And so special operations, I don't care what anybody says, conventional forces just generally are not doing what special operations are doing. We're always at the front end of the combat. Some special, some conventional forces are, but all of special operations are generally, if there's combat going on, they're going to be somewhere there and near it. And God holds a special place in his heart for the warriors. So all of them do the same. I can't speak to those other organizations though, but what I can do is speak to the SEAL

• 1:48:39Speaker 04

  teams in particular, Group One, bro, the, what they offered and what they do for, for when you do lose a friend, a close one, what they do for the families is hands down the best community I've ever experienced or been around. My wife still talks about that and we were in it for a short amount of time. It's not like I did a 25 year career and retired. The best community to have around you when something like that happens. I mean, you had guys coming out to Danny's from, you know, all the East Coast teams, development group, SDV out in, you know, Hawaii or Oregon, whether, guys were coming into Danny's just to, to honor Brendan Looney and hanging his picture on the wall there.

• 1:49:24Shawn Ryan?

  Danny's is a, Danny's is a, what was, a SEAL, a team bar.

• 1:49:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, a team bar in Coronado.

• 1:49:33Shawn Ryan?

  Lot of tradition there.

• 1:49:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, so they, they did, you'll never hear me level an accusation against NSW about how they treat people, especially when a loss happens. You know, so it was, they, they did very well and the team recovered well and we moved on because it's what we do. That's the hardest thing for, I think, us to understand. Mama and the girls, when daddy dies, they live with that forever. The team, yeah, you remember your boys, but it's the machine that's going to keep going. And I think a lot of times we forget that as team guys, we forget that they're giving up everything in their life. They're giving up daddy, they're giving up my husband. Versus the team, you're a cog in the wheel and yeah, your boys might give up a friend, but you're a cog in the wheel.

• 1:50:19Speaker 04

  And, and that's okay, that's not a bad thing. That's just the way it is.

• 1:50:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Speaker 04

  You mentioned guys that get divorced. I think that's one of our biggest issues is we we're all about the team, all about the machine, and then we don't realize we're a cog in the wheel until we realize we're a cog in the wheel and we're out.

• 1:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:39Speaker 04

  And mama and the girls have been sitting here on the sidelines the whole time giving you up and you've been giving the best of yourself to this machine that's going to keep going whether you're there or not. They're not going to keep going whether you're there or not. If there is an accusation I can level against our community is that we fail to realize that our most important job is our wives and our kids, not the SEAL teams, not the boys. And that's hard to hear and hard to say because I'd die for these guys, but I'd most certainly die for these girls too. And they need a daddy to be there for them. That doesn't mean that you're afraid to die. No, you most certainly go out and do the job and if you die, you die. That's just the way it is. But if I can be here for them and not be off with the boys, hanging out, you know, going out to, you know, to

• 1:51:22Speaker 04

  the bars or wherever with them, and I can be at home with my family, that's where I should be.

• 1:51:26Shawn Ryan?

  Did you come to that realization upon your return home from that deployment?

• 1:51:30Speaker 04

  No, no, I knew that beforehand. And I didn't have kids at the time. Yeah, I mean, it's a scriptural, it's a Christian principle. And so I was rooted in that, that, and I would say any angst I had, it was that the team always wanted you to do this. And it's like, no, I need to be here with her. And then when you have kids, I need to be here with them. And it's hard for guys like us because I definitely wanted to be there with the boys doing X, Y, and Z. Because that's how you build rapport and trust. So, I mean, that's, it's just the culture, I guess, of it. And too many guys don't realize they're just a cog in the machine until they're out and they're no longer a cog in the machine.

• 1:52:10Shawn Ryan?

  Did you do another deployment after that?

• 1:52:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:12Shawn Ryan?

  You did do another?

• 1:52:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, we did, it was, it was an, at the time, I was mad because I wasn't going to Afghanistan with the other guys, and it was a year-long deployment that we did. We rotated in and out. That's when we did the Korea, Yemen, Bahrain, the Cree mission out of there. Took down some ships during that time. That was pretty cool. The Gulf of...

• 1:52:34Shawn Ryan?

  When were you in Yemen?

• 1:52:36Speaker 04

  Uh, 2000 and...

• 1:52:40Speaker 04

  Two thousand and, no, eleven, two thousand twelve, two thousand twelve, because two thousand eleven was finishing our, because extortion happened August of two thousand eleven, and that was at the tail end of our workup, and then we deployed December of that year, two thousand twelve. Yep.

• 1:52:54Shawn Ryan?

  Were you down in Aiden?

• 1:52:55Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, so the way they broke us up, they split up our platoon, uh, we initially all went to, uh, is it the Gulf of Aiden? Is that where the, the, yeah, so, we initially went there, we landed at some, uh, I tell you what, Dave could probably tell you better, it's some airbase, our OIC could tell you better, it's no Russian airbase, just landed there in the middle of the night, um, offloaded, and, uh, it was the same time that some guys from Dev Group got in that gunfight in the street where they're going in to get their haircut, in a, in a, and they got in a gunfight, and it was a, that was a whole ordeal, so it was around that same time, and I think it was February of twenty twelve, landed, and then they split the platoon, so half the platoon stayed there, the other half of us,

• 1:53:39Speaker 04

  we went and did a, a mission with SDV, running Sniper Overwatch for them, out of Bahrain, and we stayed on a ship for a few weeks, running Sniper Overwatch for SDV, and then we went back to Bahrain.

• 1:53:51Shawn Ryan?

  Running Sniper Overwatch for SDV, let's talk about that.

• 1:53:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, it wa, it, it's cool now, it wasn't super sexy, I'll tell you one cool thing, you know, everybody, when I was making fun of, you got the guys that, you combat swimmer, oh, you got microscopic bubbles coming out of your mask, they're gonna find, you remember that? You know, doing the diver, you can't have the bubbles? Dude, that friggin' SDV machine would off gas underwater, like you popped a balloon the size of this room underwater, you mug as bubbles. Um, but I remember being able to look down on NODs and see the glow of the, of the SDV, you know, while running Sniper Overwatch for them, and then we had a half and a half, uh, that was, that was kinda running for them. I can't talk too much about all that they were doing, but they were probing certain areas, from my understanding.

• 1:54:38Speaker 04

  And we were just making sure that they didn't get rolled. There were Iranian vessels in the water, you know, floating around, pointing guns at us. We had some pirates that we dealt with, you know, sank a few little pirate dinghies with the, with the minigun where they get up close to the SDV. I mean, it was.

• 1:54:53Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 1:54:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was pretty neat.

• 1:54:55Shawn Ryan?

  Let's get a little more descriptive.

• 1:54:57Speaker 04

  Uh, just basically these guys would get in these certain areas and, you know, they had the, the door gunners in the, in the helo that we were with and had the little minigun and, you know, most of the time as those guys would come up, a lot of them would jump out of the boat and swim away because here comes this big helo. And whenever that happened, you're just, just like a, like a wood crate, like a John boat or something almost. I mean, it wasn't anything special. You just zip it up with a minigun and, you know, blow it to pieces, let it sink right there and carry on with life, you know, so they couldn't, I guess, continue to do what they're doing. Now they're just stuck out in the water swimming around.

• 1:55:30Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:55:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:31Shawn Ryan?

  Where were you guys doing ship boardings?

• 1:55:33Speaker 04

  Uh, we're doing ship boardings in the same area and then in the, in the Red Sea with the, uh, went to Jordan and did a, a J set with them and did the, uh, did a ship in the Red Sea with their Jordanian, uh, CTU, I don't know, some kind of tier one unit. Uh, met King Abdullah while we were there. I mean, he shook our hand when we flew in. I thought that was really cool, especially now with all that's going on.

• 1:55:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:56Speaker 04

  Uh, went to, I guess it's Casodic, I didn't know it was called Casodic at the time, you know, where they got the tubular assaults and all that stuff in Northern Jordan and Amman. Uh, got to go to Petra while we were there. That was cool to see, but I did training at Casodic or in, uh, um, Amman and Akaba down there. And that, that would be where, uh, we did some of the ship boardings down there and then we did.

• 1:56:19Shawn Ryan?

  What were you doing ship? Were these real ship boardings or?

• 1:56:21Speaker 04

  Uh, no, no, no, no. These are all, so these are all J sets.

• 1:56:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:56:24Speaker 04

  All of them were J sets. Uh, with the exception of one ship boarding that we did out of Bahrain, but that was separate from all these things. These were, uh, hook and climbs with their tier one units on, you know, just ships they had in the Red Sea that they set up to do it on. So, and I'd never done, we did those in the teams going through training, but I'd never done a lot of them. We did some in Korea, uh, and that was cool, uh, especially since I was a Hearst cast master and I didn't have to be in the water doing the climb. I would do the, we'd do the, the rope on the deck. So we did a lot of those with the rock seals too, in the snow. I mean, it's like what you see in the movies. So those were J sets. The, the one real ship boarding was done out of, with the Cree out of Bahrain.

• 1:57:05Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding. What was the, why were you boarding that?

• 1:57:08Speaker 04

  Uh, it was a, uh, that's a great question, like depleted uranium and some weapons and, and stuff. Um, I want to say, somebody fell in the drink and, you know, it was like, it was just like jumping across on the boat. Somebody fell in the drink and, uh, he's out now. I won't say his name, but he fell in the drink and he's, he's fine. And then, uh, another guy, I think they, somebody shot two guys on that boat, um, that were armed. And it was just kind of like the Houthis vessel board they just did in January, very similar to, to that. Just a different sea state and a different vessel. So that was, that was the.

• 1:57:46Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. So you guys boarded a ship.

• 1:57:48Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was.

• 1:57:49Shawn Ryan?

  Depleted uranium and weapons.

• 1:57:51Speaker 04

  Team, team three, 2012.

• 1:57:52Shawn Ryan?

  And got two kills. I don't know, I don't even know anybody that's.

• 1:57:56Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I, no, I didn't get those kills. That was, I'll find, I'll find, I'll text somebody when we leave here and I'll find the name of, and see who the, the team guy was. But yeah, they did that. That was 2012. Um, and then we had guys in Afghanistan and kind of culminating event for that one was, um.

• 1:58:16Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on, hold on. So you went to back to Afghanistan?

• 1:58:19Speaker 04

  No, no, this is a troop of team three in Afghanistan.

• 1:58:22Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:58:23Speaker 04

  Uh, we lost Warson, uh, Thix, and I went through training with Pat. Uh, we lost him and he'll crash Dan earlier in that deployment. I think I was, we were doing the SDV thing at the time. Dan kickstarted that, uh, IED, or I guess he did. And the guy in front of him, Dan Crenshaw, uh, had that ID go off, um, or tripwire, whatever it was, blew him up. So nobody knew how Dan was going to be, you know, because we knew he was in the hospital, he had his eyes and all that. So that was, that had happened. Then we lost, uh, Warson and, and, and Pat.

• 1:59:04Speaker 04

  And so that was kind of, that was heavy. That was very heavy on the team because literally now, and then the year prior, we had lost in, in, in August of 2011 extortion went down. We had, we had done an augment with all of those guys or, or an interop and a, and an augment. So we knew a lot of them. D-Rock came from a Bravo platoon, from my first platoon when I checked in. He was there before he went and screened and went to development group. And then we had buddies went through training with Nick Spiehar. I talked with him the night before he went. So a lot of loss in a very short amount of time. And that was heavy on the community as a whole, but also on us at Team Three because we were all, we all knew those guys, pretty tight with those guys. And so it was literally

• 1:59:48Speaker 04

  always like one funeral right after another. You're constantly nailing your freaking tridents into a coffin. So that was, that wrapped that deployment. And then Benghazi happened. We were overseas when Benghazi was going down and everybody's getting word on that, spinning up. And Ty Woods was a BUDS instructor when I went through. And so I remember his, I mean, it was just like, God, man, the hits keep coming for the, for, for us people we know. So that was, that was pretty much what rounded my career out. I checked into sniper school after that, left Team Three, screened positive for Development Group and, or for Green Team. And was my chief, Mike Burkmock, told me, said, hey, look, if you, if you

• 2:00:30Speaker 04

  stay, you're going to take a slot. If you get out, you need to decide now and you, and you decide. And so I said, I'm going to get out. I'm going to go to the reserve. We're going to go back home. And that's where they found out I had type one diabetes. And that was another year and a half process. And get my benefits, retirement IDs, the healthcare for the family, all the stuff that they all go back and forth and fight on because I could have been in the regular Navy, couldn't be in the SEAL teams with being insulin dependent or couldn't be a SOCOM or JSOC operator and be insulin dependent. But I could be in the conventional military.

• 2:01:07Speaker 04

  And so anyway, all that being said, it worked out good. I got everything I needed and got into law enforcement.

• 2:01:11Shawn Ryan?

  So you decided, you decided to get out before you found out you had diabetes?

• 2:01:15Speaker 04

  The reason they found out I had type one diabetes is because I was doing my medical process out, yeah.

• 2:01:22Shawn Ryan?

  What, what was it? What?

• 2:01:23Speaker 04

  They said it was the anthrax vaccine. And I've had some doctors tell me, well, no, there's no way it can be that. And I had a lot of other doctors tell me that within the, the system that were like doing my blood work, found out, no, this is the anthrax vaccine. So that's what I, that's what I hold it to. Cause the hardest part they had is I, like even my evals, it said, you know, suggested the screen for development group, high performer physically. I mean, like they're like, hey, you know, how can, how can this, this was the Navy said, how can this guy be this high performer, yet he has diabetes? Cause everybody's mind goes to, you know, Wilford Brimley, I guess with diabetes, right? This doesn't make sense. If he's a high performer, we can't medically retire him. So I broke my back a few times for the workups, deployments, all that. Had some, you know, knee surgeries

• 2:02:07Speaker 04

  and TBIs from Afghanistan, IEDs and RPTs. And so they added all that in and that's where I was able to get my, uh, my benefit. Now I say that, I say that tongue in cheek cause a lot of people think that means you can't work, you can't do anything. That's not the way it is. I mean, I'm still, I can still perform. I can still do the job a lot. I just can't be a SOCOM or JSOC operator and be insulin dependent.

• 2:02:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:30Speaker 04

  That's the, that was the ultimate thing.

• 2:02:32Shawn Ryan?

  Shit. Well, what made you, what made you decide to get out?

• 2:02:36Speaker 04

  Uh, I wanted, uh, my wife's school was, uh, was paid for and she, she's a nurse, my wife is, but her school was paid for, but all the schools in San Diego were impacted. Like we couldn't get her into school there. We looked at, hey, if you stay in, go to green team and, and go through that process, you know, what that lead time's going to be. And it, it was easy for her to go to UAB right there in Birmingham, Alabama. And so I said, look, I'll go to the reserve team. You'll go through nursing school. I'll do two years of the reserve team, let you finish school, and then we'll get back in the Navy and go to the East Coast. That was, that was the plan. Yeah.

• 2:03:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Did you have any kids at the time?

• 2:03:13Speaker 04

  No, no kids at the time. Um, but that was kind of our plan. And the, the, the type one diabetes, just the Lord used that to change my trajectory. And I, and I don't complain about it at all. I mean, I can't complain at all. We've been blessed tremendously.

• 2:03:30Shawn Ryan?

  How was it coming home? Once you were out?

• 2:03:33Speaker 04

  It it wasn't.

• 2:03:35Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing at home? It's not even when you were out, just how how was it coming home from knowing you were gonna be done?

• 2:03:40Speaker 04

  Uh, no, it you know, you feel like you're out of prison a little bit. Cause you're in the government, you know, I mean, you uh, it feels good, but nothing changed at home. Everybody gotten older, everybody gotten jobs a little bit, but I mean, it's. Home was still home, but. Everybody just grown up now. We weren't high school kids playing football and fighting and rolling yards or whatever it was anymore. We're now adults with jobs and we can't goof goof butt around all the time, so. That was the only thing, cause the home I left was still the same home, but I was at a different place in my life. And so was all my friends, my brothers, my sisters, everybody. Um, so that that was the only difference and then just just went back and started trying to figure out what we're gonna do for work.

• 2:04:23Speaker 04

  Cause I'm going through my medical process out of the teams, which like I said, it took till twenty fourteen.

• 2:04:29Shawn Ryan?

  Were you? I mean, did you, did you have trouble reintegrating into?

• 2:04:33Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:04:34Shawn Ryan?

  Civilian life back in back in with your wife?

• 2:04:37Speaker 04

  That would, that would probably be a better better question to ask her, but I would say no. Um, and uh, she. I think she would agree with me, um, and things happened so quick, you know, with with the medical, with going through that process. And then, um. Doing some anti piracy contracts with Tronic Group, realizing that I wasn't gonna be able to do that with where I was medically deploying. And getting into law enforcement, uh, from law enforcement, starting my MBA, start or you know, try finishing, trying to, I say finishing. Start my MBA and finishing the MBA, starting my business, like, we just did a lot of stuff in a in a short amount of time. And it there never was a difficulty transitioning, it was just.

• 2:05:21Shawn Ryan?

  No shit, so you didn't have any?

• 2:05:23Speaker 04

  Step, step.

• 2:05:23Shawn Ryan?

  Addictions, depression, anxieties?

• 2:05:26Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:05:26Shawn Ryan?

  Sleeping problems, none of that? Dude.

• 2:05:30Speaker 04

  I had no issues that I can, and I will tell you this. I mean, I've obviously shared my faith. I really think it's the, it's the person of Jesus Christ that, I mean, it says he gives you peace which surpasses all understanding. It says he is the only peace giver. He's the ultimate healer, Jehovah Rapha. If there was any of those issues, I think that he effectively dealt with them for me. I never had anything like that. I was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, testicular cancer, went through that surgery, and that was a whole process. But we had kids, it came from a, they just said it was common in guys our age, OEF and OIF,

• 2:06:11Speaker 04

  you know, basically like our, our age group. It was a common thing and they believed it came from a, what's a depleted uranium, and those Rapha rounds are depleted uranium. I didn't know that at the time. I mean, but they're depleted uranium apparently. And or at least that's what somebody told me, one of those doctors said. And it was, and the, the IED jammers, you remember those things that you're on on like the trucks?

• 2:06:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You're the, you're the second person to tell me this in, in like a week, and I've never heard it before.

• 2:06:43Speaker 04

  Maybe the Lord's telling you need to go get checked out and make sure you're good to go. Cause I mean, that's it now. But here's the thing, that's just what they say. They think it comes from, they can't say. But I think what I had was called a, if I remember right, a stage two common seminoma. And it was testicular cancer. And they just had to remove the one testicle. So I'm, you know, I'm, buddies used to always say, ah, you're one nut for being a princess warrior, bro. Something used to tell me. And so went through that process. And my wife was, was pregnant at the time. And it was different going into the, it's like a place where you get in vitro or whatever, like, you know, one of those

• 2:07:22Speaker 04

  clinics. But we had to go in to, to, to save semen in case we want to have babies later if the surgery on me went bad and wound up making me infertile or whatever. So we're in that process and here she is, eight months pregnant. And we're in this place where she felt really uncomfortable about it. Cause we're in this place where people are struggling to have kids. And she is, she's a small lady, but she was, she was. Obviously pregnant and uh but went through that process. So that was, you know, a thing. And uh I did some work for the the Nacoua stuff, one of a few wildlife control operators. He was shooting the cities. I did it in New York, did it in the Hamptons, culling wildlife. I was looking to go doing wildlife biology stuff and getting all out of the the tactical

• 2:08:04Speaker 04

  world. I wanted to have my first kid, just doing deer deployments. Didn't didn't seem like what I wanted to wanted to do. But I mean, we were shooting deer all over the nation, Guam, um, culling animals, ungulates, pigs and deer.

• 2:08:19Shawn Ryan?

  Wait, so what what was the point?

• 2:08:22Speaker 04

  Uh, so basically.

• 2:08:24Shawn Ryan?

  I thought maybe you were talking about going after poachers or something.

• 2:08:27Speaker 04

  No, no, no, not going after poachers. They uh, so basically, you can look up the organization, White Buffalo, a guy named Pete Chamis, who's still in the SEAL teams. A buddy of mine went through training together. His father-in-law runs an orga- is a like a PhD wildlife biologist. They call him the Deer Doctor, Tony DiNicolino. Dude is great dude, like phenomenal dude. Now, we don't, me and him don't believe like the same. He's not, he's not like conservative, you know, like me or or Christian like me, but he's a, he's a fair, reasonable guy. I could have a conversation with him. Uh, but he's wildlife biologist and they would do control, like uh wildlife control. Well, he asked me to help come teach a class because we connected through Pete. Um, and I taught a class and

• 2:09:11Speaker 04

  he said, hey, would you be interested in doing this? And took me through a few interviews. I did a few shoots with him, went up to his place in Connecticut. And uh, next thing you know, I got, he, he hired me in and and did animal control all over the nation, went to Guam. I mean, we're, I'm, when I say animal control, I'm talking like, I was with him one night. I think I was just spotlighting for these two nights and he was shooting, kind of teaching me what to look for and stuff. We killed 330 deer in two nights in Brookhaven National Laboratory. So I mean, it's areas where there are.

• 2:09:40Speaker 04

  Massive animal like deer and pig problems.

• 2:09:43Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:09:44Speaker 04

  Ungulate control and so that's, that's what they call it, you know, the, the animal is called an ungulate. I did some cool stuff and, you know, with pigs in Michigan, worked with him and Michigan State University. So it was really neat and it was a cool transition away from the tactical world, away from the law enforcement world, because now I've already left full-time law enforcement to go into this because this opportunity seemed better, given all that I was dealing with medically and, and, and what my wife wanted, wanted to grow the business and did that for a few years and, and the Lord just kept bringing up the tactical stuff and, and I wound up leaving that full-time to, to stick with what we, what we know, you know?

• 2:10:23Shawn Ryan?

  So you, you already had another law enforcement career as well by this point?

• 2:10:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is 20, so when I went, I did full-time law enforcement for one year and this opportunity came available.

• 2:10:36Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:10:36Speaker 04

  Uh, and it paid more money and it got me out of night shift work and all of the stuff that you deal with within full-time law enforcement that I know you're familiar with. I mean, you deal with law enforcement guys. Let's talk with one of your guys about law enforcement and kinda what he's dealt with. So I know you're kinda familiar with the, the stuff. And I was like, hey, if I can make more money and have a better schedule, then that's what I'm gonna do. And so I left to go do that.

• 2:11:01Shawn Ryan?

  What year were you a cop?

• 2:11:02Speaker 04

  Uh, 2014 into 2015. Cause I, you know, I left the SEAL teams in 2013.

• 2:11:08Shawn Ryan?

  This is before it got bad to be a cop?

• 2:11:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, it wasn't bad to be a cop at the time. I mean, like it was, it was still hard to get in because so many people submitted for it. Uh, sheriff, um, me and him don't always get along, but I mean, I like him. He's a nice guy. I think he would say, he likes me too. His name's John Sam Diego at a Shelby County Sheriff's Office. Uh, you know, I, I think he's probably getting close to retirement now. I talked to him not long ago on the phone, but he was a chief deputy at the time and I'll be honest with you. Whatever anybody wants to say about, let's say, him as a law enforcement leader. Cause I think leadership in law enforcement is one of the biggest issues. That dude, I can't, all I can say is that if it wasn't for that dude, I wouldn't be in law enforcement today. He got me into law enforcement. He gave me the opportunity that honestly,

• 2:11:55Speaker 04

  yeah, seal, yeah, degree, all that stuff, it would have still been very hard to get had he not made some calls and got the wheels of justice turning, for lack of a better word, to get me into law enforcement, even going through all my medical stuff.

• 2:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 2:12:10Speaker 04

  So I'm very appreciative of that.

• 2:12:11Shawn Ryan?

  So then you started TSI, right?

• 2:12:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, so TSI, I started it when I became a cop, you know, was just doing like training for women and stuff on the side.

• 2:12:21Shawn Ryan?

  What prompted you to do that?

• 2:12:24Speaker 04

  Well, when I was in the teams actually, and I started going through the process of like looking at getting out even before the medical stuff. Go back to that guy Troy DeHart in Indiana, I talked about, I know he said, hey, man, we can make some killer money on the weekends training women. I've been doing this. He had like an RA instructor. He was a cop and he, uh, he had worked his way up through the, the, the system at that time. I think he might've been the chief prosecutor at Johnson County. That's where I wound up going to Johnson County and getting sworn. But anyway, he said, uh, let's do this on the, on the weekends. I said, all right. So when I transitioned out and then they found the medical stuff, I'm going through that, I would, I would fly into Indiana, teach on the weekends with them, you know, and make some money.

• 2:13:05Speaker 04

  And that's where we started TSI. Um, he actually came up with the name, the Shooting Institute. He's worked with me ever since. He's worked on government contracts. I've had him, he's like one of, him and a guy named Mike Reebles are the only two cops that have ever been able to work on a JSOC contract as instructors. Um, so he, uh, he helped me start, kind of get it going and start it up and, and, and ran it. And then he's, you know, he's like, hey, you run your thing. So there's another company called the Shooting Institute out of Indiana. That's not us, you know, um, we work with those guys some, but that's not us. Uh, our Shooting Institute is that, it's the Alabama flag with a bone frog in the center of the flag, that red X with a bone frog. Um, and, uh, anyway, that's what we, uh, that's what I've done since 2014 and.

• 2:13:53Speaker 04

  Did the wildlife work when I left it full time, I left because I kept getting called back to do SWAT trainings, to do government trainings and all that. And there was enough of that that I told, told Tony, "Thank you for the opportunity, but I'm not going to go the wildlife, biology route. I'm going to go back to my roots, what we're doing, and spend more time at home with my wife." And now, you know, Evelyn was born in 2015, so one and a half year old daughter. So I left that and started doing the training.

• 2:14:19Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Right on. Well, Jared, let's take a break. When we come back, let's get into trafficking stuff.

• 2:14:31Shawn Ryan?

  I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force-feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so, one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show. And some of the stuff that

• 2:15:16Shawn Ryan?

  she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing. And so, I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But,

• 2:16:01Shawn Ryan?

  like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

• 2:16:14Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Jared, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into your nonprofit. But we had a pretty, we started a pretty interesting conversation downstairs about, I had asked you if you were gonna run for sheriff again. And you had mentioned, you'd said if God put it on your heart like he did the first time. And then I kinda cut you off, because I wanna, I wanna talk about this. When you say, "God put something on your heart," or told you to do something, or led you to a certain direction, I mean, what does that mean? How do you know, how do you know it's God?

• 2:16:53Speaker 04

  Well, that's, that's a, that is a great question. How do you know it's God? One, in Proverbs, it tells us, "A man's path is before him, but the Lord directs his steps." We know that the Lord can only direct our steps if we are in Him. So the first thing is continuing that relationship with God. So I ask you to send my heart to be my Savior, right? But I spend time in His Word every day. I spend time praying every day. So for me, and I'll tell you the amount of Scripture that I read daily. I write a commentary for each of my daughters each year. So I'm on, I did one for my wife. I did one for my oldest daughter. I'm on my middle daughter right now. I've been doing that for the last three years. So I've read the entire Bible, a little more than the entire Bible,

• 2:17:37Speaker 04

  and wrote something on each chapter in the Bible. Like, each chapter, I find something that stands out to me, or I find a description. So it might not be a commentary necessarily. It might just be something that stands out in my life. How does this apply to me now? I've done that for the last three years. And I've always read, generally speaking, read the Bible throughout the entire year. Like, read the whole Bible in a year, ever since I was, heck, probably 14 years old. So I read a lot of scripture, and I learn something new every time. I don't know it more than anybody, but that's the first thing. God speaks to us through his word. Going back to John, chapter one, "In the beginning was the word." The word is actually logos is the word that's

• 2:18:19Speaker 04

  used in the Greek translation, I believe, and it means a couple of things, but the two primary focuses there is it's the written word of God, it's the plan of God, and it's the spoken word of God. That's actually what it means. So we have the written word of God in the Holy Bible before us. And if you do a study on the Bible, you see it, but it's like, oh, what about the translation and all these interpretations? No, it's actually pretty ducks nuts across the board.

• 2:18:47Shawn Ryan?

  You're losing me a little.

• 2:18:48Speaker 04

  Oh, sorry, sorry.

• 2:18:49Shawn Ryan?

  You're losing me a little bit. Just how do you know it's him?

• 2:18:53Speaker 04

  First, first you stay in his word because you hear his voice there. So when you hear his voice elsewhere, you know what it is. So my wife, give an example. My wife doesn't have to say anything, but I know what she's saying to me. Does that make sense?

• 2:19:08Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:19:09Speaker 04

  Because I know her, because I'm with her all the time. I know God's voice because I'm with him all the time. I read his word. I pray to him. God, guide me in this way. Do this, do that. Forgive me of my sins. I converse with God. I read his word. I know what he sounds like, and that's what's important. And we have it at our fingertips. You have it on your phone in a Bible app. You have it on your.

• 2:19:33Shawn Ryan?

  So what is the feeling? What is the feeling? Because I feel tugged into certain ways too. I'm a believer. I've not read the whole Bible. I don't know scripture, but I do, I feel like my faith is very strong. With that being said.

• 2:19:51Speaker 04

  That's a great, that, that, what is the feeling?

• 2:19:54Shawn Ryan?

  So, you know what I mean? I mean, I, I, I just.

• 2:20:00Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe I got, um, a thought in my head to go pour a drink right now.

• 2:20:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:07Shawn Ryan?

  It's not from God. I haven't drank in

• 2:20:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:10Shawn Ryan?

  two years, two and a half years.

• 2:20:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:12Shawn Ryan?

  You know, or, I don't.

• 2:20:15Speaker 04

  Does it align, does it align with His Word? And the only way you know if it aligns with His Word is if you read His Word. So what does, what does the Bible, say you was drinking, you said pour a drink. Uh, Proverbs 31, I believe it is, the proverb, it might be Proverbs, chapter 30, the Proverbs woman is telling about it, and that woman was Solomon's mother, right? She's telling him what a good woman is like, and he says, "Don't linger over wine, Solomon. Don't desire it for those who are hurt, for those who are perishing, for those who are anguishing, so that they can forget their anguish." The Bible tells us what wine is for. It also tells us on another end, that wine gladdens the heart, and a feast gladdens the heart. So we see wine for two different, for two different things. So Scripture tells us that.

• 2:21:00Speaker 04

  Um, Paul says, "Don't be filled with, or don't be drunk with wine," because they would drink to worship Dionysus, "but don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit." Why did Paul say that? Because what do we know wine does? What do we know alcohol or drink does? It alters our mind, it alters our state. Uh, which is why a lot of guys, you see it in the teams, they're going away from drinking because it creates more issues than it helps, because we're not in our right mind. And that's what Paul's saying. "Don't be drunk with wine, because you don't even know what you're doing. Be filled with the Holy Spirit and do the things of God." And it's not something that I can say, "This is exactly what God sounds like." But when you know Him in your life, you see Him in your life, and most of the time it lines up with His Word.

• 2:21:44Speaker 04

  So I could sit here and say, "God told me this, this, and this," and generally speaking, that's not God talking. That's not God talking if I'm telling you that God, something that God's telling me to tell you to do in your life. God will speak directly to you, but the only way you hear it is in His Word. Otherwise, everything else is confusion.

• 2:22:03Shawn Ryan?

  Let me, hold on, all right. Maybe that was a bad example.

• 2:22:09Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe I want a new car. Let me, let me ask you this. What, what was it? What, when you say that God put that on your heart, or led the way, or whatever, to run for sheriff? How, like, how did you know?

• 2:22:24Speaker 04

  How did I know?

• 2:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  What, what was it?

• 2:22:26Speaker 04

  So when I ran for sheriff-

• 2:22:27Shawn Ryan?

  Was it a feeling? Was it a voice? Was it a bunch of signs that all happened at once? What was it?

• 2:22:35Speaker 04

  I would say all of the above. Um, and I'll try to tie it into scripture. I never would have run or been involved in any politics. The Lord put that in my life. He just kind of placed it in my life. Um, with a specific individual who said, hey, have you ever considered this? And I laughed and I said, no. That stayed in my heart. The Lord kept bringing it to my mind. Issues that we had, that I had with law enforcement leadership. Kept bringing it to my mind. I read in scripture, um, how, uh, leaders, God places leaders. He stands them up and he tears them down. And this was something I thought, man, this is the largest sheriff's office in the state. There's no way, I have no way in to this. This is a big task.

• 2:23:19Speaker 04

  And I keep reading scriptures on how he sets up things and he tears them down, sets up kingdoms and pulls them down. He can put whoever he wants into a position. As I'm reading this, I thought, well, I complain about law enforcement leadership all the time. Lord, is this what you have for me to do? So then, I seek wise counsel. Scripture says that. It says that we should seek wise counsel. My dad, some of the pastors at my church, guys, this is what I'm looking at. This is what I think. What do y'all think? Because where I'm running at, I will probably lose. It's a heavily Democrat county. Uh, it's an impossible task. There's an incumbent Democrat in there. Uh, and it's gonna take, according, I met with a previous sheriff, who lost to the incumbent Democrat. The guy was Republican for, and he said, you're gonna need at least half a million dollars. I gotta come up with a half a million dollars to run a county race that I might lose?

• 2:24:04Speaker 04

  These are all things that we're seeing as to, that would turn you off. Does that make sense? I can't do this. So, um, as I, as I wade through it, it stays on your heart. The Lord keeps it on your heart, whatever it is, you know, for each individual person. And for me, it was-

• 2:24:22Speaker 04

  I can do this, I need to do something about it, even with people saying you can't. And guess what? I still ran and I lost. And I told people that. God hasn't called me to win. He's called me to run. That's what I would tell people. He's called me to run for sheriff. If I win, great, but if I don't win, he's called me to run, I'm gonna do this the best I can. We raised 600,000, just under 600,000 dollars for that campaign. That was one of the prayers and provisions I asked for. God, I don't know how to raise this campaign money. I asked that you would help us raise it. We raised like 560 something thousand dollars, more than any other sheriff's race in the state. And we raised it and campaigned well. People were like, holy cow, man, you're running a sheriff's race? This is like a senate race. Like it was, it was just, I can't explain the provision of the Lord.

• 2:25:05Speaker 04

  So that's how I, I see Him providing and I know, okay, I'm responding to the appropriate call. Oftentimes, if the provision stops, well, maybe God's not calling you to do it, right? It's the same thing He told the disciples.

• 2:25:19Shawn Ryan?

  So you're being, you are being guided along the way.

• 2:25:25Speaker 04

  Oh, 100%, you know, it's never.

• 2:25:27Shawn Ryan?

  Hit these little milestones or accomplishments or whatever, whatever it may be that, that align with what you think the goal is.

• 2:25:35Speaker 04

  That's why Proverbs says that a path is before, uh, before a man and the Lord directs his steps, right? It's each step, Jesus says in His prayers, He says, "Give us this day our daily bread." He doesn't say, "Give us our weekly, monthly, or yearly bread." We look at God in James, chapter four, I believe it is, it says, "Don't say, 'We're gonna go to this city and do trading and that, and we're gonna make all this money and do it,'" He says, "Because you do that in your own arrogance. Say, 'If the Lord wills it, this is what we'll do.'" Um, so it's always about, "God, this is what we need. He provides here." Okay, God, this is what we need for the next step. And as long as the provision's there and you can keep stepping, that's the Lord directing your steps. But at any point in time, if those steps stop, it doesn't mean that it's over.

• 2:26:19Speaker 04

  There might be some turmoil and some friction, uh, but it means that we have to sit back and look, "Okay, God, is this..." Is this what you actually have? And then, once you reassess it, God will give you that answer. And it's different for each person. God came to Saul, who became Paul in the New Testament, in a blinding light. And Paul said, "Who are you, Lord?" He says, "I'm Jesus, the one you're persecuting. Why do you kick against the goats?" Saul was killing Christians. He's changed his name to Paul. And he goes and he talks, goes and spreads the gospel to the Gentiles. God came to, uh, who was it? He came into the whisper after, it was a whisper after the storm. I believe it was Elijah that he came to. It might have been Elisha.

• 2:27:04Speaker 04

  Just a small, calm whisper after the storm. He said, "I saw the tornado. I saw the whirlwind. I saw all this, and you weren't in it. But you were in the whisper after the storm." It's that the call, the, the, the, the word from God is different for each individual. So for Sean Ryan, it's gonna look different than it looks for Jared. But you're gonna know it. And one thing I always have told my wife, she goes, "What Jared, you say? You know, how do you know that this is the voice of God? You know it." The question that we have in our heart most of the time is, are we disobedient to the call? Or are we obedient to the call? Because most of the time, the call is not something that we really wanna do. That's the hard part. Now, you just mentioned, "Hey, get a new car."

• 2:27:48Speaker 04

  These are just the natural things in this life.

• 2:27:50Shawn Ryan?

  Let me, let me, let me, let me try to think of another example.

• 2:27:54Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 2:27:55Shawn Ryan?

  Let's say...

• 2:28:02Shawn Ryan?

  Because those are things of vanity. So, let's say, man, this is tough.

• 2:28:08Speaker 04

  Well, they could be, they could be the things of vanity, but it's not that having a new car is bad. I don't think God cares whether you have a new car or not. Are you gonna glorify Him in that new car? And one thing that we know, it says this in, it might be Ecclesiastes, but it says, "Lord, don't give me so much that I forget who you are and profane your name. And don't give me so little that I have to steal to provide for myself and my family and profane your name." Me what I need right now. Most of the time when we have that, that sexy car, the vanity things, we forget God. We don't rely on him because we rely on these things that we, that we have. Um, and, and that's almost a curse because it removes you from

• 2:28:52Speaker 04

  looking to the one who provided the car as opposed to looking to the car. It talks about that in, uh, Isaiah it says that the man, he, he puts wood in a fire to burn the fire, cooks meal over it. And then he takes another piece of wood and he carves an image out of it. He worships it and says, you're my God. That's what he's talking about.

• 2:29:10Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 2:29:11Speaker 04

  That's what we do.

• 2:29:12Shawn Ryan?

  Let's say you feel very compelled to help somebody. Maybe it's, maybe it's a,

• 2:29:21Shawn Ryan?

  a lot of people feel tugged or, or pushed or moved to help somebody in need. Or maybe somebody that they think might be in need. And so,

• 2:29:33Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure there's a lot of people that are out there that have been extremely generous and wanted to help. Maybe, maybe a heroin addict or maybe a, a trafficked woman or just anybody in need. And then you go down that road only to find out the entire thing was a fucking scam. And so, kind of what I'm asking is, and that's happened, that's happened to me. That's happened. I'm sure that's happened to just about everybody. Where you, you know, it, it, it, it kicks up a lot of resentment and, and it's like, man, I've, I thought this is what I was supposed to do. So kind of what I'm asking is, is, is how do you differentiate or do you?

• 2:30:18Speaker 04

  I don't think you do. Um, you, you don't differentiate because when you, it's better to give than to receive. So let's say it is a scam. That's between them and God, not between you and God. If God called me to do this for a person, if I felt urged or pulled or. In my riches and wealth, I give to somebody and I get scammed out of it. That sucks and I want to look at that and maybe I'm wiser the next time. Getting going, I think I said it earlier, Proverbs 19:2, "Zeal without knowledge, cause you miss the mark." I say, "Man, I missed the mark on this one, but now I've got a little bit of knowledge on what to look for." And then the next time I don't miss it. But was I obedient to God? You see, the outcome of the thing is not so much the important thing. That is on God.

• 2:31:02Speaker 04

  It's the heart getting to the outcome that's the process. So going back to what you said earlier, so it's really just every step of the way. You're looking to say, "God, is this it? God, is this it? That's it." You're always open-handed, asking God, "God, am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing?" And as long as He opens the doors, as long as He's guiding you through it, you will hear His voice. The one caveat to that is you've got to be in His Word. You've got to be spending time with Him. The only example that I can use, really, you know your wife better than anybody, right? You and your wife know each other very well. And you kind of know what she wants without her saying what she wants, a lot of times. And that only gets better with time, right?

• 2:31:46Speaker 04

  Look at my parents, been married 50 years, and it's hilarious seeing them because they literally, they know each other that well. It's unbelievable to see. Me and my wife, 16 years. I know what she wants without her having to say it a lot of times. And I don't always give it to her, right? Sometimes, and then sometimes she'll ask for things even though she doesn't want to ask for things. I'm like, "Hey, help me out. Tell me what you need." It's that same thing with God, but you have to be in tune with God like you are with your wife. And the only way you can be is to read His Word and pray to Him about His Word. And I can't even describe it. He will guide you. So if I'm saying, so the run for sheriff, he put some people in my life that spoke it into existence.

• 2:32:30Speaker 04

  I sought good counsel. Like when I say spoke it into existence, that's a bad, I shouldn't use that. That's bad phraseology. They just said, "Hey, have you considered this? We could use you here." No, I haven't, but I started considering it and praying about it. The Lord opened one door, go to this threshold and say, "Hey, I'm looking at running for sheriff. What do y'all think? These guys are praying." And it just... Kept steamrolling to the point that, wow, we've got a campaign for sheriff. Wow, we got a heck of a team. Wow, we're gonna win this thing. I mean, that's, that's what it was. And I lost by two points to the incumbent Democrat on Election Day. And that was hard. Okay, God, what was all this for? My wife was asking, what was all this for?

• 2:33:12Speaker 04

  And two months later, all the people that supported the campaign started supporting Covenant Rescue Group, the nonprofit, which is what brought me on full-time with Covenant Rescue Group. And so now I know what that was for because it was a, a local grassroots effort. Wasn't tied to, you know, PACs or certain political things that did really well in the Republican Party because I was running as a Republican candidate. And made a lot of connections that actually put Covenant Rescue Group on the map as opposed to being a small hand-to-mouth organization. Put us on the map to the point that they had to bring me and a handful of other guys in full-time to be able to effectively use the funds for the work it was being presented for.

• 2:33:54Speaker 04

  And so, the aim I had was sheriff, but that's not the aim God had. God had it to put Covenant Rescue Group on the map. And God might have it for something else. I don't know. He might have that unsuccessful campaign for something else. I was just the conduit through which that was used to grow Covenant Rescue Group. And so that's, you always see the culmination. And it's, I wouldn't get too wrapped around the axle about simple things. You know, should I buy this car? Should we buy this house? Those were bad examples. Yeah, if, if God's giving you the funds, but even people out there will say that. I mean, my wife, we pray about everything. There's nothing wrong with praying about everything. But if you got the money, get it. There's nothing wrong with it.

• 2:34:37Speaker 04

  But if it starts to remove your heart from the God you worship, if you start to worship it like the guy worships the idol, the piece of wood that he cut into an idol, that's where you have to say, no, I don't need this anymore. And that's kind of the purpose behind it. That's why the scripture is saying what it is. So when you hear the call of God, it's not always a loud voice. To some people it is. It's not always a dream. To some people it is. It's not always the small, calm voice at the back end of the storm, but to some people it is. Interesting. It, it just depends on how God's calling you. It depends on what you need. But the only way you know it's His voice is if you're in His Word. You've got to stay in the Word of God.

• 2:35:17Shawn Ryan?

  So how did Covenant Rescue Group come up? That was because you and your wife started that.

• 2:35:22Speaker 04

  Me and my wife started it in 2018. So I was doing the wildlife work at the time, transitioning to the tactical work with TSI. You know, when I had some contracts with the government coming in and we were doing pretty good and so we would take our, you know, whatever profit we had at the end of the year and use it to go like support OUR. I'd go do operations with Operation Underground Railroad guys, went to Haiti with them some, far-reaching ministries, did some stuff with them in South Sudan. And so, I mean, we're just trying to support wherever we could. Another organization that's no longer around called Orphans Secure, started doing some stuff with them and just volunteering time, you know, and trying to pay for things and then they would pay for some stuff. Everything was just kind of hodgepodge together.

• 2:36:06Speaker 04

  Just felt the call to human trafficking because I'd kind of seen it in law enforcement a little bit and got involved there.

• 2:36:12Shawn Ryan?

  What was your first experience with human trafficking?

• 2:36:14Speaker 04

  My first, I would say probably real human trafficking, Haiti with Operation Underground Railroad was my first real experience with human trafficking. I saw it really what we target more as a law enforcement officer running domestics where you see, you see some of the stuff people live in or serve in warrants where you see some of the, some of the areas people live in and you see these kids living in unbelievable squalor, but their parents, drug addicts or whatever, would sell their kids, they would, you know, physically and sexually abuse their kids. They would, I mean, it's, it's terrible. So, I mean, that is human trafficking by law, but in my mind, I didn't know that to be human trafficking until now, understanding what it actually is.

• 2:36:57Speaker 04

  But they, they would sell their kids, I mean, they would, they would sell their kids to their buddy for sex for, you know, 200 bucks. That, that's the type of people we're, we're talking about. And you see that in law enforcement, cops that are listening to this, they will tell you, yeah, they see it all the time, all over the nation.

• 2:37:13Shawn Ryan?

  How common is this?

• 2:37:15Speaker 04

  Oh, it's super common. Wherever you go, it's super common. Kids selling themselves, people selling themselves. And, and a lot of it's drug and alcohol related. I mean, we know that, we see that being, being an issue, but yeah, it's very common. It's very common. Um, so that's where I really started seeing it. I had a heart for it. And I would say Operation Underground Railroad in Haiti is where I first saw like, holy crap, this is legit. These girls are being held against their will. They're holding their passports. They're from Dominican Republic and, um, you know, did some work with them. So people were just giving us money, like people that, you know, wound up supporting my campaign later. They're like, hey, you're doing good work. And they would, you know, from church or, you know, that I knew they're writing us like five and $10,000 checks. And so you were

• 2:38:00Speaker 04

  sitting with me and my wife, like, took it to my CPA. What do we do with this money? I mean, do I give them an invoice from the Shooting Institute? Or how does this work? He's like, no, you need to start a, you need to start a family foundation, a nonprofit or something. So that's where we looked at a couple of different routes. We started the nonprofit Covenant Rescue Group, got our 501(c)(3) status in 2019. And we're off to the races, uh, primarily looking at overseas stuff. And then when COVID-

• 2:38:26Shawn Ryan?

  Why, why, not that there's anything wrong with that. I don't want to come across like there's something wrong with that. But one thing that does kind of, uh, captivate my interest is, you know, I've looked at a lot of these nonprofits and I will, I do want to say too, it gets, it gets tricky in this, probably, it gets tricky in any nonprofit space, but there does seem to be a lot of,

• 2:38:56Shawn Ryan?

  I'm just gonna say it, shit organizations out there that are, are in the, the combating human trafficking space that, that don't really do anything. And that seems to be kind of a mask. But why do, why are so many of these nonprofits, why are they so concentrated on Haiti, Philippines, Thailand, Colombia, Venezuela?

• 2:39:27Shawn Ryan?

  You know Sudan, all these places, but not here in the US.

• 2:39:32Speaker 04

  Cause it's easy to find there because of prostitution. Remember when I said that all prostitution is not human trafficking, but human trafficking is found in prostitution?

• 2:39:41Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:39:41Speaker 04

  So they're able to go to places and a lot of times you get symbolism without substance. Um, you get, hey, we're fighting human trafficking here and really it's prostitution. You see that here, law enforcement agencies do that. Hey, human trafficking ring, you know, 72 human traffickers rolled up. That's a prostitution sting. And, and it's not human trafficking as we know it. And we kind of talked about that a little bit earlier, kind of some of the issues that exist there. Uh, when you go overseas, it's, you have more leeway to work than you do here stateside because most of what organizations do stateside is illegal. The vigilante stuff, all that is illegal. Um, so that's why you see that and there's a lot of awareness, stuff that people raise a lot of awareness about it. I think a lot of people are aware about it. We just don't, nobody knows exactly, you know, what it is. Do you have people being strong armed?

• 2:40:27Speaker 04

  Yes. Do you have kids being stolen off the streets? Yes, the, the immigrant situation really adds more to that. The illegal immigrant situation, um, puts more people at risk for that. But other than that, you're not at risk of your kids being snatched and thrown into a human trafficking circle and never being found again. It does happen, but it's unbelievably rare. But the statistic, and these are from the DOJ, the American Psychiatric Association. They kind of coalesce and have a few statistics. I'll see if Steven can send them over to you so you have them. But, um, the, uh, the amount of kids, I'm going to dial it in here to kids specifically.

• 2:41:03Speaker 04

  Uh, the amount of kids, if I remember right, it's 37% of children who are, um, abused, sexually abused or, you know, anything like that. It is from, uh, somebody who is, is known. Yeah, yeah, that they know that person. Um, no, no, 37% is family. 37% is family. Uh, 50% is somebody who knows them. A coach, a teacher, anything like that. 37% is a family member. So an uncle, a cousin, a father, a mother, whoever. And then, and then that other 10 or 12%, 13%, whatever's left is just a random person. Okay?

• 2:41:48Speaker 04

  Um, I'll, I'll send you the actual statistics. I'm probably a little bit off on my numbers there. Um, I'm just going off of memory, but the- That is very interesting because when it's family-based, or when it's, you know, a person of trust, right, somebody who knows, who knows the kid, it looks different. It's not, it's reported differently, maybe it's never reported. How many of these things are never reported? And then you see that lead into the prostitution, the pornography, all of that.

• 2:42:17Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's, man, I'll tell you, Jared, ever since I started doing this show and just, I mean, that's, you know, life stories is what I'm best at, I think. And, and the amount of, especially guys like you and I, who've gone to, you know, special operations or, or the agency or wherever, I'll, I'll bet it's over 50% of them that I've interviewed that have helped, that have dealt with some type of sexual trauma as a child, abuse, and I'll bet it's 50% that have come out and said that on camera about their childhood.

• 2:42:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:42:59Shawn Ryan?

  And then there's also a pretty big portion of the interviews where they've, they've told me like, hey, I don't, I don't, I don't want to talk about this because it's been rectified, I've forgiven my dad or my grandpa, whoever it was, and so they don't want to...

• 2:43:17Speaker 04

  And these are men.

• 2:43:18Shawn Ryan?

  These are, these are grown men, uh, who talk about this. And, I mean, shit, the episode we just did on Monday with Dale Stark, he talks about, he talks about it, you know?

• 2:43:32Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:43:33Shawn Ryan?

  Growing up in California and getting in the skateboard scene and, and, and there's so many men have come on, and women, you know, as, you know me, Park, you know, you'd brought that up, but it's alarming how it's, it seems to be more common than not.

• 2:43:53Speaker 04

  Hmm. It, it is, and that's what we've learned, and that percentage is higher, and then what that drives people toward, or what that does to them for the rest of their life, you know, you're looking at something that...

• 2:44:03Speaker 04

  I mean, how do you, how do you reset from that? My dad, like, again, the little girl that we found, her dad was 18 months old. Her dad's having sex with her. She's not old enough to necessarily know, but she knows. I mean, that's, there's something that happens there for the rest of that person's life. And can you, can they work through it and deal with it? Yeah, but it's, it is more common than not. And I don't know that, I don't know that we're seeing any more. We're seeing it more now than probably it used to be seen, but I think it's probably the same amount, right?

• 2:44:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:31Speaker 04

  Um, you know, it's the same problem, different people. But, uh, but looking at the kids, it is people that know them, so that looks different. So I would say here stateside, we really didn't start getting into that. Uh, we focused on overseas initially, like everybody does, because it's, it's easy. It's easy again. And when COVID happened, you talk about the call of the Lord. We, as an organization, I, I set the board down and said, we're not going to be able to go overseas like we were because of COVID. Like, literally shut that down, like, just close the doors on it. However, I'm still law enforcement. We're tied to law enforcement. Me and Mike and some of the team, we're going to go out and see if we can't start doing some operations with local law enforcement agencies. And, uh, that was a hard swing because there's a massive arrogance within law enforcement.

• 2:45:15Speaker 04

  They don't want to do that. So how we hooked it, we offered free tactical training on the front end, free pistol training, the nonprofit covered through TSI, my, my company, Pistol, CQB, whatever it is, we'll give you one day of free tactical training, but here's a trade-off. We've got to be able to do, uh, our sex trafficking operations program, training with y'all, and set up an op and make y'all run it. And that's how we started doing that.

• 2:45:38Shawn Ryan?

  Genius.

• 2:45:39Speaker 04

  So that was the Lord.

• 2:45:40Shawn Ryan?

  How hard was that to sell?

• 2:45:42Speaker 04

  Not hard with the tactical training. Um, and then it was about a year, a year worth of that.

• 2:45:47Shawn Ryan?

  So you, your model, you gift a law enforcement agency, a training, a one-day training package, and the only thing they have to do in return is, is give you access to?

• 2:46:02Speaker 04

  Let us, let us do the training, the child exploitation training, yep. Their jurisdiction, we do the child exploitation training with them and we're not making arrests or prosecutions. We bring the prosecutor's office in, we say, guys, this is how you set up these types of ops. We help them set up that op and they run that op with our oversight. It's like a ground branch type of model where you got, where we just-

• 2:46:20Shawn Ryan?

  That's what you were doing at VS-

• 2:46:21Speaker 04

  That's exactly, VSO stuff, bro. As a combat, combat advisor. That's exactly right. And so that's what we do, that's what we still do.

• 2:46:28Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking genius, man. So you get in, you make friends with them, and then you, you teach them, you take them on an op, you turn it over. This is how you do it.

• 2:46:37Speaker 04

  That's it. And so one of the agencies we first started with, we made 11 arrests with them initially when we were there. No, no, no, that's not true. We made 19 arrests with this agency initially when we were there. Them making it over two nights of operations. We gave them the tactical training and all that. And they have done, I want to say six operations on their own now? Maybe it's four, this is a couple of years ago? But they've arrested like 190 people doing these operations.

• 2:47:03Shawn Ryan?

  190?

• 2:47:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:06Shawn Ryan?

  Just one?

• 2:47:07Speaker 04

  Just under 200, well, no, but over all of the operations they've done over the past few years.

• 2:47:11Shawn Ryan?

  This is one law enforcement agency?

• 2:47:14Speaker 04

  One law enforcement agency.

• 2:47:15Shawn Ryan?

  190?

• 2:47:16Speaker 04

  Yep, close to Indianapolis. So with that being said, they, put it this way, I'd love for them to be over 200. I know they're, they're under 200, right? That's still a lot of people. They've done four, they've done five operations and they've made this many arrests on people showing up to target kids. And they've honed it for them. So we give them a, hey, this is your template, and then they can hone it to match their prosecutorial jurisdiction, to match their agency, so they have a successful apprehension and prosecution. And that's what we do as an organization. We're not out there kicking doors and making arrests. If we are doing that, I'm doing that in my purview as a deputy where I'm sworn in Alabama or as a TFO with Homeland Security, if they say, hey, we've got this we want to do, or

• 2:48:00Speaker 04

  any of our guys that run their cases that are sworn within our organization, which are most of our guys. So we might do that with our agency, but Covenant Rescue Group is a funding platform to fund this training and then an operation for a law enforcement agency to show them, this is how you can target people who are targeting kids in your community, and it happens in every community. We always get buddy of mine, it's a sheriff down in South Alabama, said, "Hey, man, you'll be lucky to get one down here, but you want to offer a SWAT training to us? We'll do it and let you set it up, but I don't think you're gonna have any success." We arrested six in two nights for them.

• 2:48:34Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 2:48:35Speaker 04

  He was blown away. They had one hotel, and it was like a little meth monkey hotel. It was one of the ones, a motel with the outside doors, you know? It wasn't like it was a nice upscale place. And we arrested six dudes showing up for children at that hotel.

• 2:48:49Shawn Ryan?

  You were the one that said that you didn't think you were gonna pick anybody up? Or the sheriff?

• 2:48:52Speaker 04

  The sheriff told me that. I'm friends with the sheriff. Because people don't believe this exists when they're a community. Everybody thinks, "Oh, yeah, that's big. That's a problem in Miami, or that's a problem in LA with the Diddy parties and all that stuff." That's where everybody's mind goes, but what they don't realize is what you just said. Fifty percent of the dudes that you had come here, sit and talk. It happens everywhere across the nation. And the guys that you're rolling, and the ladies that you're rolling on these types of decoy operations, they have real victims. They have real victims, but most of them don't break the law to get caught for anything. You'll never find that kid who's a victim. Because what recourse they have, "This is my dad." Are you gonna go to the cops and tell them, "My dad"? They don't, again, they're a kid. This is a person of trust in their life. It's a guardian over them. Right?

• 2:49:35Speaker 04

  And so, this guardian is doing a terrible job, and they're abusing this child, they're exploiting this child, they might be selling the child, a lot of it's child porn production, yada, yada, yada. But you have to find a way to catch them, and this is how you catch them. And when you make that arrest, you then find the victim. And I can't tell you how many phones we've gotten warrants and ripped the date off the phone, and you've already had a podcast about that, kinda how to find these guys, and all of the stuff that they're into. And you will find victims every single time. And our goal is to teach law enforcement agencies how to target these individuals who are targeting kids. So, they're showing up for a 14-year-old girl, but in reality, they're messing with

• 2:50:19Speaker 04

  their nine-year-old niece. Does that make sense? And that's what we do, and that's what it's morphed into, going all the way back to the...

• 2:50:27Shawn Ryan?

  Let me break it down a little bit more. So, I wanna backtrack and talk about how you found those six individuals. But before that, what I wanna ask is, you know, you're talking about... Finding victims and these victims don't want to come out is, and you're talking about little kids who consider the abuser to be their a guarded, a trusted guardian.

• 2:50:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:50:53Shawn Ryan?

  And so what I want to kind of, where I think you might be going with this is, is, you know, people are probably wondering, well, why wouldn't, why would they want to, why wouldn't they want to dime their dad out even if he is their dad? Because, because he's being raped.

• 2:51:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:51:14Shawn Ryan?

  But, you know, what I want to say is, these kids don't understand, look, this is, this is normal everyday life to them. They don't know any different, they don't know what it, they don't know what life would be like to not be raped by their dad every day, multiple times a day. They have no idea what that's like. That's just their reality. Am I correct?

• 2:51:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, no, that's it.

• 2:51:43Shawn Ryan?

  So, they, they, they, they've accepted that this is just, this is life. They don't, they don't have any other perspective other than just what they've lived.

• 2:51:54Speaker 04

  From what I, from what I've gathered, you just hit the nail on the head. And you've interviewed guys, I mean, how many guys have you interviewed on here where this is them telling you what they've gone through and you said some of them don't want to say it, probably the first time they've talked about it with anybody, maybe outside of their wife, maybe they talked about it with their wife, maybe they didn't, but I mean, it's, it's not something that people, oh yeah, we can just make it better by diming them out and now I'm rescued. No. And then the other problem is, is kids are scared, you know, even if, even if I'm being treated poorly by those who are taking care of me, where do I go when they go to jail? Let's say they do realize that, that this is something wrong, they get put in jail, jail for it, where do I go now? Well, they go to the, the state, most state systems have a D H R or something like that, and there's a process you have to go through.

• 2:52:37Speaker 04

  So it's not like a rescue where like you're all of a sudden united with a great family. There is no good answer. It's not like a fairy tale. It's not a Disney movie where it's all of a sudden better at the end.

• 2:52:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:48Speaker 04

  Every situation when it comes to this is bad, and sometimes it's worse than the previous situation. Um, a real world example, a young lady, I won't give her name, she was 14 when she ran away from home, uh, 15 when she was picked up, 16 when we found her locked in a cage in a backyard. Up in, you know, the northern US, we'll, we'll leave it with, but she ran away from home from her mama and her, her stepdaddy, um, because she was being sexually abused by her stepdaddy. I'm, I'm trying to remember this right. Sexually abused by her stepdaddy. Her mama was in and out of jail, um, in Texas. She ran away, ran back to Michigan and she lived with her dad and her brother. She wasn't being sexually abused by her dad and brother,

• 2:53:33Speaker 04

  but they were physically abusing her, putting her, putting cigarettes out on her, that sort of stuff, physical abuse. So she ran away from them and got picked up by some 23-year-old kid slinging dope on the street. And so he picked her up. Now she's his live-in girlfriend. He's, you know, banging her, all that stuff. And, uh, then he would sell her to his buddies. Now she's being trafficked. She's underage and being trafficked. But for her, this was the better, this was the better of the three lives she lived. So, you know, that, that's the hard part. And, and then when we, we found her, she was locked in a cage in the backyard. Um, went and talked and anyway, without going too much into that, she's- From her boyfriend? Yeah, her boyfriend, he would leave her in the day. He locked her in a cage in

• 2:54:17Speaker 04

  the back. Yeah. We had a little marijuana grow going on back there. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, did you say what kind of cage? A cage. Yeah, like a, you know, like a chicken coop or something. I mean, she could stand up in it, you know, but it's like a, we had a little marijuana grow hidden back there in the fence in the back and she was locked back there. Um, and now she was a runaway. Uh, so technically she wasn't like, and we had to tell some of our board members that, like, can we get videos of her reuniting with the family and all that? There is no reuniting with the family. That's why she's here. And that's where that percentage comes in that most people don't understand is it's, it stems from a family issue. And then there's a lack of trust for law enforcement and it going all the way back to having to have

• 2:55:00Speaker 04

  somebody testify for a crime. Well, most of these, most of these people, especially kids or young women, they're scared to testify because, well, this guy's gonna get out on bail. He's gonna get out and he's gonna come find me and kill me, even though that might not be true. That's, we get that all the time interviewing people, you know, I don't wanna testify. So it's a-

• 2:55:20Speaker 04

  We have a good system, but we have a system that sometimes is not good when it comes to dealing with with these things and it's very precarious, but you hit the nail on the head with it's not as easy as, oh yeah, just turn if your dad's raping you, just turn him in. If your if your mom and dad's selling you, if your uncle's selling you to his buddies for sex, just just turn them in. It's not that easy.

• 2:55:42Shawn Ryan?

  Man, yeah, I think a lot of these, a lot of these kids, they don't, they don't even realize what happened to them is wrong until long after it's happened.

• 2:55:53Speaker 04

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:55:54Shawn Ryan?

  And.

• 2:55:56Speaker 04

  Well, you know that better than anybody. I mean, you've interviewed, you interview enough people to talk with them and see when hindsight's 2020 and they might be able to talk about what they realize. It's kind of like us with Afghanistan and Iraq and all this stuff. I'd be ready to fistfight somebody over talking bad about the US and what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan back when I was in the teams.

• 2:56:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:18Speaker 04

  But now I'm more at, yeah, it's different perspective. It's the same thing with with these people, just on a much more damaging level, I guess.

• 2:56:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What happened to that girl in Michigan? How's she doing?

• 2:56:33Speaker 04

  Man, I have no idea. She's so the state, so most states, they, if they have a missing kid or something like that, a runaway kid, and that's how we found her, they would, uh, uh, work in one of the sheriff's offices up there, the state, like DHR, Child Protection Services, they'll, they'll take over, they'll find a next of kin, or they'll, they'll hold them in it. Again, sometimes that that creates more of a problem than just where they're, where they're at even.

• 2:56:58Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:56:59Speaker 04

  So I mean, it's, again, there's no good answer. So her, I know that DHR, Child Protection Service, whatever it's called, in, in, in that state or in that county, um, I know that they dealt with that, what the disposition of that was, I don't know.

• 2:57:13Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go back to the town where you.

• 2:57:17Shawn Ryan?

  The sheriff didn't think he was gonna

• 2:57:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I don't

• 2:57:19Shawn Ryan?

  He got six.

• 2:57:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:57:20Shawn Ryan?

  Walk us through exactly that entire operation. How did you? How did you? I mean, we're in a, we're in a, is this a town? Is this like a small town?

• 2:57:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, it's small. It's, uh, Henry County, Alabama. So it's a county, it's a small county.

• 2:57:34Shawn Ryan?

  So it's a small town. Nobody thinks this is happening there. How do you, like, you come in, you give a training course? Then what?

• 2:57:41Speaker 04

  So, um, I've known the sheriff. This guy just got elected sheriff. I've known him for a while and, uh, he, uh, he's a good guy. Um, his name is Eric Blankenship. Uh, but anyway, so, uh, EB says, hey dude, let's do the tactical training, but I don't think you're gonna get to hook anybody. I said, well, just let us teach you the process and we'll get what we get. This is not a prostitution sting. Law enforcement commonly do, does prostitution stings. And the reason they do that is because prostitution across the nation is a misdemeanor crime, but that gives them their probable cause for hopefully a felony drug arrest, maybe finding a certain person's forbidden or a warrant. So they're looking at a pretty shoddy, pretty shaky misdemeanor case, although they've

• 2:58:24Speaker 04

  got it, to hopefully lead to a bigger case. Does that make sense? That's why they do prostitution stings. Um, and then sometimes they find human trafficking in prostitution. Um, we don't like that. We like building a felony case on the front end to hopefully find victims, whether they're of age or underage, of real human trafficking. And so we show them how to do that and we say, this is not a prostitution sting. We don't care about drugs. We're not looking for drugs or murder or warrants or any of those things. If we find them, great. We still move forward with them like we normally would, would. But this is our focus and it's solicitation of a minor with an electronic device. And I'll give you, uh, this county in Alabama, for the Alabama state law, it'd be 13A6122,

• 2:59:06Speaker 04

  13A6124, solicitation of a minor and travel to meet a minor for sexual purposes, because they're gonna show up to the location. And then 13A6153, I believe it is, which is human trafficking one attempt in the state of Alabama. It meets state law for human trafficking one attempt. Um, those are the three felony charges we're looking for. The last one that we might get is 13A6111, which is transmitting obscene material to a minor. That's like if somebody sends, uh, a nude picture of themselves or send, you know, sending those bad images to a minor, right? And these guys reach out to us. So we start off with a decoy-based operation on a sex platform. Let's use, Backpage used to be the big thing. I'll just say Back. You remember

• 2:59:49Speaker 04

  when Backpage, you've ever heard of the feds shut it down?

• 2:59:52Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59:54Speaker 04

  But you can run ads on a bunch of different things. I won't name the places that we run ads normally, but you go to one of these, you know, sex sites like Backpage, and you run an ad that says, you know, "Hey, it's a girl, it's 19 years old." And these sites, by the way, they allow us, with our law enforcement email, to run, run these ads without getting kicked off. Because what we'll do is we'll have somebody reach out, "Hey, are you available, you know, for a, a QV, for a quick visit?" And, or "How much for a quick visit?" And so we have our law enforcement investigator that we're teaching how to chat, teaching the lingo, and we're just kind of over their shoulder, "Hey, you need to say this," or maybe we're on the phone with them, showing them what to say, and send it back. "Yeah, are you cool with, you know, young chicks? They're going through the process." Because

• 3:00:37Speaker 04

  we have to establish an age. We're already on a sex site, so we know what they're there for, and we have to establish an age. If we chat a thousand people, I like using the thousand people as an example. If we chat a thousand people, 900 of them want to answer you back when you tell them that you're underage, or you're young. If you tell them you're 15, or 14, or 13, whatever age that the prosecutor requires in the area we're in, because it's different, not just per state, per county, per jurisdiction. So, most of the time, 900 of those thousand people won't even respond. They're, they'll tell you to pound sand. They'll say, "You don't need to be doing this," and they won't answer back. 100 of those people will entertain it. They'll entertain it. So 10% will converse back and forth, entertain.

• 3:01:20Speaker 04

  They might say, "You don't need to be doing this. Let me, let's talk, let's meet..." But they're still, they're entertaining it. 10 of those thousand will show up to the door. Will show up and buy it. And those are the ones we're looking for, because now they've committed the overt act. And now we've got a solid, airtight case that they can't wiggle out of. They're gonna get prosecuted. So we have the apprehension when they show up, and we have the prosecution. We also do mobile stings, we do vehicle takedowns, but they're still showing up to meet us in a vehicle. Um, and that is how we target these specific individuals. Now, when you target that specific individual, our probable cause case is generally built off of messaging through a phone, or whatever messaging platform. So we have to tie those messages together. That's easy. We have that. But when we do that, we get

• 3:02:05Speaker 04

  a warrant to rip- The data off the phone. You're familiar with that with your work with the agency and all that stuff. So we will rip the data off the phone via warrant, sometimes via consent, but very rarely do we get that. Most of the time it's a warrant based on our probable cause arrest. And we rip the data on the phone. That's where you find the victims. You find other people they're messaging. You find other kids that they've either received child porn. So you see child porn distribution, child porn production and distribution, and you start finding other victims. And that's where you find individuals who are truly nefarious. And then also not just kids, but also women. We had a guy who was rolled, he

• 3:02:47Speaker 04

  had a woman locked in a trailer that he was performing sex acts on. She was an illegal immigrant. And he would snatch her, lock her up for three days, do all kinds of stuff and release her. And then it just kind of intermittent would do this. And she had no recourse. She was afraid to go to the police. She was in her 30s. Why was she afraid to go to the police? Well, she thought she'd be deported. Right? So that's real victims. Those are real trafficked people, people who are suffering. Now, she wasn't stolen and put in a circle and sold all over. She would be released a couple of days later, go back to her family. But this is what was happening to her because she had no recourse. So you find victims in this. Now, the rescue doesn't always look what we think it looks like. You know, some, that woman was just like, thank you so much. I can breathe now and go back

• 3:03:32Speaker 04

  to my normal life without this guy doing it, doing this stuff to me. The other thing we see is a lot of illegal immigrants. If we did, we arrested seven last week with a couple of agencies. And three of the seven were illegal immigrants. So they'll be deported. We've seen that tick up even more and more. The six that I was talking about down in Henry County a couple of years ago, when the sheriff said, you won't get anybody, two of those were illegal immigrants. One, we did a pretty extensive interview with, I say we, the Homeland Security guy in charge that did an extensive interview with. And one of the interesting things that the guy said, he's like, hey, I can show you exactly where I crossed the border. I crossed with some really bad people. We're like, what do you mean really bad people? And so he started, he said, all men describing who

• 3:04:16Speaker 04

  they are. I mean, we have terrorist cells in this country that are crossing the border. So there's some of that stuff that you're able to dig deeper into and that then the FBI or Homeland Security, whoever will get a hold of and be able to run that in a little bit deeper. So these operations are kind of a

• 3:04:33Speaker 04

  They span out into multiple things where it might be child exploitation. It might be prostitution based human trafficking. It might be, uh, it might go to labor trafficking. It might go to terrorist cell that is moving people across the border or a terrorist cell. They got moved across the border. So it might just be strict illegal immigration and we now can deport somebody. So it kind of flowers off into a bunch of different petals. Child porn production and distribution. Uh, and so that's why we like running these operations because it generally speaking, when they see it, they're easy to do and it gives the law enforcement office or the law enforcement agency the most bang for their buck there at the local level. The feds then have the ability to adopt that case and whatever state you work in, the US Attorney's Office generally wants to adopt a solid state case.

• 3:05:16Speaker 04

  So if you have a solid state case, they'll look at it and say, do we have a federal nexus here? We have a federal nexus with this one because we've got child porn production and distribution with this guy and his 18 month old daughter. And then the feds will step in and they'll be able to levy, uh, some heavy sent, uh, some heavy charges prosecution and sentencing on that end to coincide with what this guy's already getting at the state level because every state doesn't have that same, uh, heavy lever to pull when it comes to maybe child porn distribution. So the reason I sell that that's how everything works together.

• 3:05:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:51Speaker 04

  It's not always perfect, but the goal is to just target these individuals who are targeting, um, targeting kids. And, uh, generally speaking, when you find that you find they're, they have other victims, other people they're targeting.

• 3:06:04Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. So just webs and webs and webs.

• 3:06:07Speaker 04

  Yep. Never ending web is what it feels like a lot of times.

• 3:06:10Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, damn. What are, what are some of the commonalities you see, um, in the victims?

• 3:06:18Speaker 04

  Women.

• 3:06:19Shawn Ryan?

  All women.

• 3:06:21Speaker 04

  I would say that the biggest demographic that's targeted is women. Um,

• 3:06:26Speaker 04

  And then if it's men, if it's never grown men are targeted, boys are targeted, but women more so than anything. DOJ and American Psychiatric Association statistic on this end is for every, every male, female, or opposite sex encounter, primarily male to female, there are 50 victims before the perpetrator is prosecuted.

• 3:06:54Shawn Ryan?

  Fifty?

• 3:06:55Speaker 04

  Fifty victims, yeah, that's the statistic. I think they said plus or minus 10% in their study, and this study's like 15 years old. For every same-sex, or primarily male to male, right, it's 150 victims, plus or minus 10% before the perpetrator is prosecuted.

• 3:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:14Speaker 04

  So you might get an apprehension, you might actually make an arrest, but if you don't have a prosecution, you've done nothing. It's symbolism without substance, and that's what they're saying. This guy might have been arrested for it, but the 50 victims come before prosecution. The 150 victims come before prosecution, not before arrest. They will still have victims even after they're arrested.

• 3:07:35Shawn Ryan?

  Shit. Damn, man. Damn. Is there more adult women, or more minors?

• 3:07:47Speaker 04

  Well, I would tell you on these style of operations, the only way we get the felony charges on the front end, which is what we want, is to build a case based on minors. With that being said, man, it's probably on the victim's side. I would have to talk to our victim advocate about this, because she tracks with this probably more than I do, but I would say it's pretty 70-ish percent minors, so it's heavy minors, but I mean, you've still got 30%.

• 3:08:16Shawn Ryan?

  70% minors?

• 3:08:17Speaker 04

  Probably, when you see victims, yeah. I'd say the vast majority are minors. Again, because they, they're not going to talk. A grown woman's more apt and more liable to say something or talk than a kid is. But a kid generally is not going to say anything, especially if they trust this person. So, and we see it with coaches, when we say coaches, pastors, doctors, um, you know, it doesn't matter, any side of the aisle, Republican, Democrat, you know, left, right, doesn't really matter, it's, it is, it is sin, it is unbelievable wickedness, and they are targeting the weakest in society. The most prolific, I guess would be the word,

• 3:08:57Speaker 04

  I forget his name, but, uh, one of the most prolific child predators in the US, I think he was out in Indiana, they asked him, they said, "What do you look at, like, when you target a kid? Is there a demographic? Is there, you know, a boy or a girl?" And I think he concentrated more on boys, I think he primarily a white demographic because where he was at in Indiana. But he didn't seem to, he said that that really wasn't what he looked at. He looked at two things. He, one, does this kid have a father? Where was the father at in this kid's life? And was the father a threat? The two things he looked at. One, does this kid have a dad? That's round. Two, is the dad a threat? That blew

• 3:09:38Speaker 04

  my mind. I'll send you the video link, or I'll get Stephen to send it over, um, so you can see it. Was the father a threat? And it's like, holy crap, be a threat for your kid's sake. Now, everybody talks about the mama bear thing, hey, don't go, and mamas will protect their babies, but this is what he said. They said, "What about a single?" I said, "No, father, what about moms?" He said, "No," he said, "I would befriend the mother." And he would be that guy who was, "Hey, look, it's, you know, you're doing great," and he said, "I just really try to be involved in their life if she had a kid I wanted to target, and then, once I've built that rapport with them, hey, look, go out, go to dinner, go spend some time with your super, I'll stay with kids tonight," and that's how he would groom kids.

• 3:10:17Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:10:18Speaker 04

  Um, so, it, it was truly a father that, that he would, that he would try, or that he would look at, that would ward him off, for lack of a better word. Now, imagine if that father that's supposed to be warding people off is the one who's actually doing this to their kid.

• 3:10:33Shawn Ryan?

  How many of these victims are molested, or raped, or exploited by, by...

• 3:10:42Shawn Ryan?

  How do I say this? The, the, what do you call them? The abuser?

• 3:10:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, the perpetrator, the abuser.

• 3:10:49Shawn Ryan?

  How many of these people are, would you consider, you know, at, at first glance, you'd mention doctors, pastors, coaches, teachers. How many of these, how many of these perpetrators are what most people would consider upstanding citizens?

• 3:11:07Speaker 04

  I would say about eighty percent of them.

• 3:11:08Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 3:11:09Speaker 04

  Like, they're not, we're not, that's the whole reason they don't get caught and they're not targeted is because you're generally speaking not going to catch them with, doing, doing something with drugs, or getting rolled for drugs. No, you might get the guy who shows up to pay with drugs, you will get those people and they go, but generally speaking, this is the only thing they're doing that's outside the law, and nothing within law enforcement is targeting these specific people unless, of course, you get a tip or unless, of course, they find them on some digital platform, you know, going after kids, which is, that's hard to do and it's few and far between. Th- these are individuals who are not

• 3:11:48Speaker 04

  generally speaking breaking law. We will get gang members showing up looking to, to steal a girl and take back, and that's, that's a process. I'm, I'm not saying we don't get that, but I would say about eighty percent, um, yeah, about eighty percent are, are, are just regular, everyday folks that you would never, never guess. Uh, we are seeing that shift and change because of the illegal immigration thing, right? So, we don't know much about these illegal immigrants. We don't know their background, where they come from. Uh, we know they're here working, you know, they, they might be here working, but we don't have a lot of information on that individual. Well, the ones that we do have information on, about eighty percent are regular folks.

• 3:12:25Shawn Ryan?

  What about some of these DAs that don't prosecute criminals? I mean, are, are, are you guys running into problems where you put in all this work and then you have like a Soros-funded DA that's not going to do anything to these?

• 3:12:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, so for us, because we work closely with the prosecutor's office most of the time, uh, we bring the prosecutor's office in because, again, we need an apprehension and a prosecution. Uh, we haven't had too many issues. We've had some issues, but it's, uh...

• 3:12:55Speaker 04

  Most of the issues we see exist wind up existing between the current law enforcement agency that we're working with and the prosecutor that we're working, they haven't, they haven't a rubber or a rift for whatever reason. It's never because they don't want to prosecute it. That's one thing I have seen is that across the aisle, for the most part, Republican, Democrat, whatever it is, when you are actively going after those individuals who are targeting kids, most everybody, everybody that we've worked with has been all for it. If we have an issue, a lot of times it's been more so on the law enforcement agency side, not always, but on the law enforcement agency side over the prosecution side. And again, there's

• 3:13:39Speaker 04

  an egocentric thing there for most law enforcement agencies. They want to say we're doing this. They want to say, oh, yeah, yeah, we're doing this, we're doing it. No, you're not. We know you're not because we literally go all over the nation and we see people tell us all the time, hey, we're doing this, and we show them what we're doing. They're like, holy crap, we're not doing that at all. So that's probably where we run more into an issue, but once we make the case and we get a, we get an arrest and a prosecution, it pretty much goes straightforward, pretty easy. Defense attorneys will molest a case now. Defense attorneys will, they will really negatively impact a case and try to get anything thrown out for any reason whatsoever. Now, I do struggle with the profession of attorneys, you know, I mean, it's, I struggle with that.

• 3:14:23Speaker 04

  Defense attorneys will, grab anybody, they'll charge these guys, whatever they're charged, and make a lot of money, and they will try to poke holes in a case. And our goal as an organization is to train the law enforcement agency and the apprehension side, the cops or the sheriff's deputies, whatever, and the prosecution side, the district attorney's office, hey, this is how you make a rock-solid case. So it doesn't matter how many rocks they throw at it, they're never gonna, they're never gonna break the glass, they're never gonna poke a hole in it. You've got a solid case.

• 3:14:49Shawn Ryan?

  Do you see more success when the federal government steps in or local?

• 3:14:53Speaker 04

  No, local. So it's, so think of it this way, it's a

• 3:14:59Speaker 04

  The federal government, or government period, is not good at much of anything, right? We know that because we work for the government. That being said, they do serve a purpose, and they serve the purpose of, hopefully, on the criminal side, protecting victims and putting away the criminal without raining on our God-given rights that come through ultimately the Bill of Rights. We'll make this succinct in just a second. The federal government is a macro sort of thing. Then you have a state government, which is kind of a 30,000-foot view, a little bit smaller than the federal government, but now it's a little bit smaller. And then the federal government can't do what the state laws can do, right? So they have to have, and that is very broad, and it's very difficult on how broad it is.

• 3:15:44Speaker 04

  The state is now still pretty broad, but we're getting a little more pinpointed and focused for that specific targeted shot. But the local agency, that local prosecutor's office, that local municipality or sheriff's office, they're the ones that know the nuances of their community so that not only when we make this arrest, we get this individual showing up to buy a kid, the prosecution knows what we need to say in the chat, what the age of the victim needs to be, all of this stuff to successfully prosecute the case. I'll give you a real-world example real quick, but I won't name the locations. We had a location, or two separate locations, two hours apart from each other, the same state. So the same state law governs these two locations. One location, the prosecutor says,

• 3:16:28Speaker 04

  "I have an older black female demographic than I'm going to get for a jury pool." He said, "Even though these women vote Democrat, they are unbelievably conservative, the older black female demographic." And they will not, they do not care if we chat as a 15-year-old girl, even if, you know, that makes state law, right? If we chat as a 15-year-old girl, it's going to be, they're not going to, they're going to have a hung jury. They're not going to true bill this thing. They're not going to all be unanimous on, "Yep, this guy committed, or this crime was committed. We need to move on." We're going to have to at least be 14-year-olds. Okay, so we changed how we chat. Even though we met state law at 15 because of the jury pool that this prosecutor said he was going to have, we had to change it. He said, "Now, if you chat as a boy..."

• 3:17:12Speaker 04

  He could be 22 years old. Well, that's not within state law to do it. They say he could be 22 years old and because it's a more conservative group of women, that older black female demographic, they're gonna throw this guy under the jail because it was outside the realm of what they agreed with morally. They're Christian women, churchgoers, homosexuality was the unforgivable sin to them. Most of them were married when they were 15, so they're not gonna roll a guy for talking to, you know, trying to have sex with a 15-year-old girl. So does that make, so we see that. Two hours away, I'm talking, this was, and I love this example because it's a real example. That's, that's the most point that I had to deal with at the prosecutor's

• 3:17:53Speaker 04

  office. Two hours away, the, the jury pool was a predominantly white female jury pool, middle-aged, like 40s to 50s age range female. That was the predominant jury pool. So they look at that. And if you chatted as a 18-year-old girl, throw that guy under the jail if he's showing up by her. Because it's that Me Too movement that, you know, they're more liberal, they're more left-leaning, they're every female's a victim sort of idea, right? This guy's showing up by a female, throw him under the jail. But if it was a guy showing up for a 15-year-old boy, they still might say, yeah, he's showing up for a kid, but they were more sympathetic to the homosexual man because they were, because they were more left-leaning.

• 3:18:38Speaker 04

  No shit. So just because we match state law, doesn't mean that we can get something because we gotta prosecute. This person's gonna go before a jury of their peers, right? So when I get subpoenaed to, to testify in a grand jury, when I go to grand jury in states that have that, I have to tell them what we're doing. Well, that jury has to say, yeah, we've, this is, this is, this guy, this guy's committed a crime here. We've gotta, we gotta be able to put him away. And you've gotta have 100% on that. You can't, you can't be hung. So it's not just meeting the law. It's not just, hey, we got the law. It is- Do we have a case that's gonna stand up in front of a jury? Um, and that's our constitution, which is great.

• 3:19:23Speaker 04

  We're just building these cases so there's never a victim, because we've seen that with real victims of human trafficking, they don't wanna go before and they don't wanna testify before a jury or stand in front of their accuser.

• 3:19:34Shawn Ryan?

  So do you get all these statistics and demographics of the jury and, and meet with the DA before you-

• 3:19:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, before we do the operation, yeah, because they're the ones-

• 3:19:42Shawn Ryan?

  So you know exactly what you're looking for?

• 3:19:44Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 3:19:44Shawn Ryan?

  What you have to find-

• 3:19:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 3:19:46Shawn Ryan?

  To get a successful prosecution before you ever set up camp?

• 3:19:49Speaker 04

  Like six months ahead of time.

• 3:19:51Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 3:19:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we're booked out through, I think, August of next year with agencies all over the nation that reach out, and we will sit down and have them meet our, uh, executive director, Mike Reebles, he's been in law enforcement 30 years, he'll meet with them, and then I'll sit down with them and we will Zoom calls, or if they're local, you know, near us, we'll drive to them, but yeah, everything you just said, we sit down and we hash out, "Look, guys, this is what we do, this is what we're looking for, uh, we need your guidance on what works here." A lot of times, we'll study the state law, and we can't figure out what state law we wanna go with, so we'll ask prosecutor, "Hey, which, which one of these charges you wanna go with?" And he'll say, "Uh, neither of those, this is actually the state law we wanna use." And so that's just like, "Oh, okay." So we have to spend a lot of, there's a lot of prep work to be able to do this.

• 3:20:35Speaker 04

  Isn't something you just, you know, go out and swing for the fences on? It is a, it's a process, 'cause you've got to work with that local prosecutor and that local agency for a successful, uh, probable cause felony arrest, apprehension, and then the prosecution.

• 3:20:50Shawn Ryan?

  It's very calculated.

• 3:20:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, very calculated.

• 3:20:52Shawn Ryan?

  Very impressive.

• 3:20:52Speaker 04

  So it's, everybody will say, "Oh, we, we wanna be targeted in law enforcement." Everything law enforcement does, like, let's say, the prostitution thing, it's a buckshot approach. We send some rounds out there and hope we catch a, a felon in the process, maybe we get human trafficking. This is not that. This is very sniper in approach. This is very, this is the target I'm shooting at. If I get any of these other things over here, great, but I am going after this specific individual right, right here. I'm going after the 1%. Remember when I said the 10 of the 1,000 that actually show up? I'm going after the 1% who are showing up to buy a kid, because I know that that 1%, they're the ones who are slipping away all the time. They're that buck who's slipping for the guys that hunt, and they're that buck who's been slipping around, is smart and been watching, are able to slip around the edges of the

• 3:21:37Speaker 04

  field without ever getting busted. That's the ones we're going after. And that's what we teach them to do. So it's very targeted.

• 3:21:44Shawn Ryan?

  How do you, how do you find what departments you're gonna work with? Cause you do this all over the country, correct?

• 3:21:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, we do. Yes, sir. Uh, it used to be, it used to be, um, they would reach out, or I say they would, uh, we would reach out to them like if we had a relationship through somebody and offer the tactical training and they're like, "Yeah, we'll do this. If you give us tactical training for free." Now we don't even offer the tactical training anymore unless they specifically request it because, uh, they're reaching out to us. "Hey, we've heard about your sex trafficking operation program. Will you come in and teach us? We wanna do..."

• 3:22:17Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 3:22:17Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. They're reaching out to us and that's, uh, that's kinda where we're at. Most of it's word of mouth, um, but it, it doesn't cost the agency anything. That's why we raise money. That's why we're nonprofit. Everything is paid for. So the only thing it costs the agency is their manpower, uh, and their, their sometimes overtime hours because they're, they're working, you know, training and then two nights of operations.

• 3:22:41Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. How many, how many inquiries are you getting, let's say, a month?

• 3:22:45Speaker 04

  Man, that's a, I would say a lot. That would be a question to ask Josh or Mike, but they, um, they get a lot. We get a lot of inquiries of just, "Hey, can y'all come here and do this or that?"

• 3:22:57Shawn Ryan?

  Ten, fifty, hundred?

• 3:23:00Speaker 04

  Not a hundred. I would say probably somewhere around, somewhere between twenty to thirty, because we can only do one a month. We can only do one a month.

• 3:23:08Shawn Ryan?

  So it's impossible to service them all?

• 3:23:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. So think of it this way. There's thirty-one hundred sheriff's offices in the nation, plus or minus. We'll use a sheriff's office as an example. Uh, we will never, we're doing one a month, based on the funding that we have, what we bring in. We do one of these a month. We will never be able to hit all those sheriff's offices. Uh, but it would be nice to hit, um, the majority of them because again, if you look at your return on investment, we're trying to work ourselves out of a job because if I can teach this agency, if our team can go in and teach this agency what to do, we don't wanna go back to that agency. We're not wanting to return. We have sometimes. They'll say, "Hey, do you mind coming back and auditing what we're doing to see if we're doing it appropriately?" We'll go back and give them some pointers, but our goal is to fire that one shot, have some success.

• 3:23:54Speaker 04

  Go to the next agency, fire that one shot, have some success with them. Um, and, and then let them hone it and continue to do this on their own. And it's not something they need to do every day or every month. You know, they overfish that hole for lack of a better word, right? They need to, uh, you know, do it twice a year. Do it once a quarter, do it once a year, you know? It doesn't, whatever that leadership wants to do there. But it gives them something they can do that is impacting the community around them in a positive way. So going back to that micro as opposed to macro. They're trying to impact their community in a positive way. And the closest form of the government to the people was the most effective form of government, right? That's John Locke, the second treatise of government, right?

• 3:24:37Speaker 04

  Um, and so that's what this is. The closest form of government is going to impact that community the best. And that's where we really like to focus. And then the feds can get involved on the top end. And if there's something they can adopt and take over and take federally, great. We have those connections to help make that, that happen.

• 3:24:57Shawn Ryan?

  How many people are, are on your team?

• 3:24:59Speaker 04

  Uh, I would say we have a lot of subcontractors that we rotate in every month per operation. Uh, we probably have about 50 subcontractors we rotate through. GRS guys, Marsoc guys, uh, SEALs, uh, SF guys. So all from the special operation community, a lot of them are sworn in other locations. A lot of them are law enforcement officers somewhere else. We have some federal law enforcement agencies, federal law enforcement agents and state law enforcement agents, uh, both retired and active that rotate in and work with us. Uh, so about 50 subcontractors. And then full time on our team, we've got, I think we have, well, uh, Josh just left to go back to full time law enforcement. So we have six full time, uh, people on our team.

• 3:25:44Speaker 04

  And we have one, two, three part-time people. So we have about, we have nine, basically nine employees, uh, total, to include myself.

• 3:25:53Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:25:54Speaker 04

  So we run, we run pretty thin.

• 3:25:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:56Speaker 04

  Um, but it takes us full-time people to set up and prep these operations. And then we rotate in the contractors, um, for whatever agency we're working with and whoever's available. We rotate them in each month. And generally it takes about 20-ish of our people, 15 to 25 people to pull off, pull off an operation, depending on how many people the agency we're working with has.

• 3:26:17Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I'm gonna try to get you guys up here in Williamson County.

• 3:26:20Speaker 04

  Come on, man.

• 3:26:21Shawn Ryan?

  I'm serious.

• 3:26:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, put us in touch with them, we'll come up and make it happen.

• 3:26:25Shawn Ryan?

  I definitely will.

• 3:26:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and, and you'll ca- especially being as close you are to Nashville, you'll pull, you'll pull quite a few out of Nashville. That's one thing that people don't realize that if you're within an hour of a large city, you'll pull people from that large city showing up to target your kids. And that's what we're trying to do, trying to, you know, even act as a deterrent.

• 3:26:42Shawn Ryan?

  They've already caught a ton of people here.

• 3:26:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, so there you go.

• 3:26:45Shawn Ryan?

  They caught a soccer coach.

• 3:26:47Speaker 04

  There it is.

• 3:26:47Shawn Ryan?

  That was drugging little boys and doing that. They caught a priest.

• 3:26:51Speaker 04

  So you've already experienced it, you've seen it, you know?

• 3:26:53Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's, it's, it's rampant.

• 3:26:56Speaker 04

  Now, one thing to say on catching these guys, when you got the, the vigilante groups on, you know, YouTube and all that, then they'll, they'll talk somebody in, the MMA guys will beat them up, they'll make them drink their own piss, all that stuff. One of the things that we've seen is a lot of times, and we see this a lot with people, we, we go after, and it's, this is hard because you want to deal with it appropriately, but it's not criminal in nature. A lot of times you have like autistic kids that, that are on, so that, that there's something wrong here. So now you have something we gotta deal with, because I don't care what you have, I don't care what your mental disability is, whatever, you better not be targeting my kids, does that make sense to me? Because that's gonna negatively impact their life. We've gotta deal with it, but we don't deal with it, it's not criminal in nature.

• 3:27:40Speaker 04

  We don't beat them up, we don't make them drink their piss, we don't put them in jail. Um, and working at the local level, the micro level, we generally see that works better as opposed to just this random blanket, hey, we're chatting these people in, a lot of times they're entrapping them, and then they're showing up and beating them up, and this person is a guy with a mental disability. The law enforcement agency that's local generally has probably dealt with him before, and they can say, oh, hang on a second, who are we looking at? Because we normally know who's showing up before they get there through all of the stuff we can run. And they're sitting here looking at, oh, this guy right here, yeah, look, uh, we need to figure this out, we deal with him all the time, he's got this mental disability, uh, let's do it. And so now we can get the family involved, deal with this appropriately, because it's not criminal in nature.

• 3:28:26Speaker 04

  But it's a problem, and it's a problem that has to be dealt with. That's the other good part to this as well. We can, we can deal with those things more effectively at the local level than you can at a level like at a state, or a federal, or just an organization in a random location chatting people in, uh, because they don't, they don't know the nuances of that community.

• 3:28:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Well, Jared, I think we're, we're kinda wrapping up the interview, and, um, so, uh, one thing I wanna hit bef- what do you need to scale out? What do you need to do two of these, three of these, ten of these a month?

• 3:29:03Speaker 04

  Uh, well, it's, it's basically based on people. So our burn rate a month for our organizational full-time people is basically about thirty thousand dollars to pay salaries, interest, just the stuff to run. Uh, to do an operation, forget the burn rate side of it, it's about fifty thousand dollars per op. So like, local in the southeast, it might be thirty-five grand. We went all the way out to New Mexico last year, it was like eighty-four grand. So, the average to pull one of these trainings and ops off is about fifty thousand dollars. That's pay, travel, all of that stuff. So to scale, you know, if we wanted to do two a month, we need to be able to bring in a hundred thousand dollars a month. Now, uh, this is what I generally say to people. If you wanna support our organization, you don't have to be the person that can write a, a twenty-five thousand dollar check, a

• 3:29:48Speaker 04

  hundred thousand dollar check, a million dollar check. If you, if you can do that and you wanna do that, great. Hey, we would love to have that support. But we really operate on people who have a heart to do the right thing, and they say, you know what? I can give up my Starbucks two weeks out of the month and, and, and write a check for twenty dollars a month. That is, if, if we look at where most of our funding comes from, it comes from hundreds, if not thousands, of people all across the nation, uh, who write checks for twenty dollars a month, uh, or sign up for a direct deposit for twenty dollars a month, whatever it is, or a hundred dollars a month, and they send that every month. That, that's really what we operate on. It's truly a grassroots, uh, effort. We do have big donors,

• 3:30:30Speaker 04

  but most people can't be big donors. Praise God, Trump just won, you know, because in, in Kamala's, you know, country, we, we probably wouldn't be able to donate anything. We'd all be suck and win. But, um, with that being said, we do, uh- We do operate on a grassroots, you know, effort. So don't, I, I don't even think about the cost of the operation.

• 3:30:54Shawn Ryan?

  What is, uh, what's some stuff that parents can do? You know, to, to

• 3:31:01Shawn Ryan?

  educate their kids and just to, to, to make a safer environment to keep, keep from getting trafficked?

• 3:31:07Speaker 04

  That's great. So this, this, this thing right here, this phone, okay? We've all got them. Our kids got them. Um, my kids are too young to have them yet. Uh, when you give your kid a phone, I literally had a buddy call me yesterday asking about this at an app that somebody back in and started targeting his daughter out. His daughter's 14. Um, you give somebody a phone, you give them access to the world and the world access to them was 3G, 5G internet. If it has those capabilities, somebody can go after your kid. We even seen on the gaming headsets. You seen on this, I think a game called number blocks, maybe is, was a recent one we've seen. Uh, we've seen these guys target kids talking through the headsets to them, playing Fortnite. These individuals are out there.

• 3:31:49Speaker 04

  They might not be looking to steal your kid physically, you know, sexually abuse them and all that. They might be, but um, they might be looking to steal their digital footprint. They might be looking to extort them. We call it sextortion. Maybe they send a picture, especially young girls will send a picture and they'll hold it over their head. Hey, send us money or we're going to plaster this all over everything. And so it's a, it's a scam, right? Uh, so they're stealing their digital fingerprint or their digital footprint. They're getting into your family's life. That's generally what we see with that. However, sometimes they are trying to steal your kid, but they don't have to show up in a free candy van. Through these right here, they'll steal your kid's heart and mind, and they'll talk your kid right out of your house. So monitoring those phones, monitoring those social media

• 3:32:33Speaker 04

  uh, um, accounts and platforms, staying involved in what your kid's doing there. I think that's the most important thing you can do and the best way that you can protect your family. Uh, don't worry so much about what you might see out, out and about with other people. If you see something, say something. That's what they always used to say. The problem is, is I don't know the nuances there, but what I do know is with my kids, I've got to be very vigilant. I've got to be a threat, going back to that guy I was talking about. Um, I've got to be a threat. So nobody's going to go after my kids. Monitor what they're doing on that phone. Monitor what they're doing on their social media platforms.

• 3:33:07Shawn Ryan?

  Roger that, Ben. Well Jared, is there anything that I'm missing that you want to talk about?

• 3:33:13Speaker 04

  Man, I appreciate you having me here. I think we've talked long enough and hopefully it's beneficial for everybody and your listeners. Thanks for having me.

• 3:33:19Shawn Ryan?

  It's been very beneficial for me, man. And, uh, man, I just, uh, what a great model that you've developed and, and sounds to be extremely effective. And, uh, man, it's just, it's been an honor to, to get to know you today and, and, uh, I can't wait to get down there and go on an op with you and

• 3:33:40Speaker 04

  Come on, man.

• 3:33:41Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you get, I hope I get you up here to Williamson County, cause, uh, you know, I got kids here.

• 3:33:48Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 3:33:49Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, God bless you, brother. And, uh, all your links and stuff will be down below. So anybody that wants to donate, get in touch with you. Uh, I'll be donating.

• 3:33:58Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you.

• 3:33:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man. It's been an honor.

• 3:34:01Speaker 04

  Man, a pleasure, man. Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks, brother.

• 3:34:04Shawn Ryan?

  God bless.