#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones

Travis Haley is a legend in the armed forces community. As a veteran of the United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, he’s built an illustrious career in both military service and the private sector. After combat tours in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, Haley transitioned to private military contracting with Blackwater USA, where he participated in high-profile operations including the 2004 Battle of Najaf. He later co-founded Magpul Dynamics, revolutionizing firearms training for civilians and professionals alike. In 2011, he founded Haley Strategic Partners, a company dedicated to advanced tactical training and product development for military, law enforcement, and responsible armed citizens. Under Haley's leadership, Haley Strategic Partners has introduced groundbreaking training programs and products that emphasize adaptability, self-awareness, and practical application. The company offers dynamic hands-on training and develops tactical gear such as the D3CR (Disruptive Environments Chest Rig) series. Recently, Haley has expanded his focus to include "mind architecture," helping individuals achieve personal growth through resilience and self-improvement. His work continues to influence the defense industry while fostering a culture of innovation and excellence in tactical training. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: http://amac.us/srs http://drinkhoist.com/ | Use Code SRS http://patriotmobile.com/srs http://meetfabric.com/shawn https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner https://americanfinancing.net/srs NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. Call 866-781-8900 for details about credit costs and terms. 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. Travis Haley Links: Website - https://haleystrategic.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dragonflyhaley/ X.com - https://x.com/haleystrategic YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdqO3qjABeMfqdhErk-A7zg LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-haley-54314a41/ 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

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

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 0:34Speaker 01

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

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 0:46Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:12Shawn Ryan?

  Travis Haley, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Sean. It is an honor to have you here. And I've been trying to make this happen for a long time, and I've been really looking forward to this. And seriously, it's an honor to have you sitting here. So, thank you for making the trip. Thank you. You know, I left the... I left contracting for the agency in 2015 and started a training company. It didn't last very long, but you and then another guy, Dom Razzo, were... I looked at everybody that was doing this stuff, and the level of professionalism that you have in...

• 1:59Shawn Ryan?

  And the, the attention to detail that you put in all of your content, your marketing, your advertising, your products is just second to no one. And it really, really stands out, at least it did for me. And so it's, it's pretty surreal to be sitting here with you right now. Uh, because I did, I studied all of the stuff that you were doing very early on, uh, when I was in that game and it's really cool, man. You've built an empire and it's very inspiring for me and a lot of other people. So, very cool.

• 2:33Speaker 06

  Thank you, man. I acknowledge that. Yes. So my plan worked exactly as planned, I guess.

• 2:38Shawn Ryan?

  It did. It did. But, um, everybody starts off with a introduction here. So Travis Haley, you're a prominent figure in the defense and firearms industry known for your extensive military service and contributions to the tactical training and product development. You're a force reconnaissance, marine, combat entrepreneur, and an eighth generation gunfighter. In 2011, you established Haley Strategic Partners, which focuses on designing cutting-edge tactical equipment and offering science-based training programs. You also serve as a mind architecture and self-improvement coach, helping others find

• 3:20Shawn Ryan?

  post-traumatic growth and shares not just how you, excuse me, not just how to be a survivor to life, but a beneficiary to it. You're a husband to a superwoman, a father of seven children, the founder of seven successful companies, and an adventurous and extreme athlete. As I mentioned before, you are a very, you're just a phenomenal businessman and, um, started several companies, CEO'd several companies. And I remember, I remember watching mag pull training videos, hours and hours on end, when I was, uh, when I was overseas. Uh, it was just, we would just loop it.

• 4:05Shawn Ryan?

  And you're a pro snowboarder, base jumper, windsuit pilot, rock climber.

• 4:12Shawn Ryan?

  And the list just goes on, but like I said, honor to have you here. And you know, something that I wanted to just cover at the very beginning is, you know, when we were downstairs, we had a discussion about veteran suicide. And you had just lost your 36th close friend, not just acquaintance, close friend. And I've lost, I quit counting. I don't want to know the number, but, but I just wanted to open the floor for you on that because it sounds like it's pretty fresh and.

• 4:59Speaker 06

  I told myself the same thing at one point is stop counting, was just to stop paying attention to it and it was really hard to stop paying attention to it. You know, when you get that call in the middle of the night or an email or text next to, hey, bro, you know what happened? And, and so instead of running away from it, which I think I did for a long time in the very beginning, because I'm sure we'll get into it more, but I, I did not know how to deal with loss. I didn't know what it was, didn't know how to define it. And I started, instead of running away from it, diving into it and saying, how can I maybe

• 5:43Speaker 06

  do something to prevent this from happening more? And you're not going to stop it, right? It's not going to stop, but we've got to change the message somehow, some way and, and help people reframe the situation that's in their life, the circumstances that's happening to them at this point in time, as they may not understand them. I mean, I've had my dark, my dark moments where I get reckless in the, in the past. I've, you know, knock on wood, I've never, I've never had suicidal, like, like I'm going to go do this right now. I, and so maybe I'm blessed or maybe I'm not blessed. Maybe I, maybe, you know, some people have had those situations in their life. And even that, I had a friend last night call me and.

• 6:25Speaker 06

  Uh, he was on the edge and he's having bad anxiety panic attacks. And then he said, yeah, I even put a, um, I think it was a, uh, a 44 Magnum in his mouth and couldn't pull the trigger. And I, so I immediately asked him, was it wrong that you put a 44 Magnum in your mouth?

• 6:46Speaker 06

  And it's like, yeah, moment of silence. And he's like, I said, think about the answer before you say it. When was that? He said, while back. I said, was it wrong that you did that? Cause we're still having a conversation right now. And he says, no, I said, say it again. And so we worked through it from a mind architect standpoint to start to understand the meaning of an event, a, a, a decision that you might make, or a word that you might say that's incorrect. Like, look at depression. Everybody's depressed nowadays. Well, maybe you're not depressed. And maybe the best way to solve a problem is to identify there isn't one in the first place. Every time we want to loan time, or we want to like off gas, or I just need to get away from it. Oh, man, I've got these anxieties and, and problems.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  I think that you could look at it as a word. A lot of, of experts are now starting to talk about this more. It's a compression state that you want to go into to compress myself to off gas the chaos and corruption of my day, or my experience that I had. It's not, but you'll label it as depression versus compression. So if we can just maybe identify and, and define the words more that we use, um, the spelling, right? That's why they call them spells, because you're casting a spell every time you say, I'm depressed. Are you? Or you just need some compression time to, because you need that time. Um, and I think we don't understand that. And so we just get more depressed and more anxiety comes on.

• 8:14Speaker 06

  And then next thing you know, I'm like, I want to end it all. I don't want to be here anymore. And, um, and next thing you know, we're, we're creating organizations of trying to stop suicide. And, and I've even talked to the guys a long time ago. I haven't talked to anybody recently at Mission 22. But, you know, 22 vets a day die. Now it's up to 40. Right now, as we speak and sit here, it's up to 40. Well, why is it up to 40? Maybe we're reminding them that it's okay to commit suicide instead of saying it's not okay. How about rebrand your company? I said this one time, they said, "Rebrand it next year as Mission 21, and then Mission 20, and then Mission 19." And they were like, they laughed at that. But, um, so if anybody hears that now, I think that's a good idea, is to talk about, "How do we get rid of it, not just acknowledge it exists?" And that's what I'm trying to do, best that I can.

• 8:59Shawn Ryan?

  I'm curious, did you struggle with, we don't, we're not gonna get into this full-blown now, we'll wait till the appropriate time, but I am curious, did you struggle with drugs, or alcohol, or both?

• 9:09Speaker 06

  No.

• 9:10Shawn Ryan?

  No?

• 9:10Speaker 06

  Luckily, I've never done that, never dealt with it.

• 9:13Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I think that, you know, with the veteran suicide stuff,

• 9:20Shawn Ryan?

  I think of a lot of that, I don't think, I know, a lot of that is coming from

• 9:29Shawn Ryan?

  shitty decision-making, under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

• 9:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:34Shawn Ryan?

  And, I mean, you know how long it takes to pull a trigger? A fraction of a second. And, you can have that thought, you know, with not a clear mind, and all it takes is a fraction of a second to pull that trigger, or swallow those pills, or drive off the road, or jump off a building, or, you know, and, and I think that is, I know that's what's getting a lot of guys, is, is

• 10:05Speaker 06

  Suppression.

• 10:05Shawn Ryan?

  Not having a clear mind. And, under the influence of drug and alcohol, drugs and alcohol, and, you know, it's, it's,

• 10:15Shawn Ryan?

  not that that cures everything, you know what I mean? I don't, I don't think coming off of it is gonna cure depression and all these other things, but I think that, I think the majority of these seem to happen, uh, when somebody's under the influence and they're not in the right state of mind. And, um, maybe that's one of the things that we need to be spending a little bit more time on.

• 10:37Shawn Ryan?

  To get to the real root of the problem, you know, which is, which is the suicide is what we're trying to, to get, you know, to, to, to, to clean up, to stop. And, but I don't think that's gonna stop until the drug, the drugs and the alcohol.

• 10:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:54Shawn Ryan?

  Stop. And, you know, you had brought up another statistic this morning, Travis, that, that you had said, you have the numbers, I don't, but you had mentioned, and I knew this, how many people died in, in OIF and OAF?

• 11:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, the, the global war on terror in 25-ish years now, I guess, is somewhere around 92 or 9300, and don't quote me on exactly that number, but it's, it's somewhere, it's over 9,000. Okay, if we look back to Vietnam and Korea and World War II, we know what the numbers were there, right? You had what, 45,000, 52,000, and then World War II was like, what, 400-plus thousand men died? Okay, damn, that's pretty good. Global war on terror in 25 years, we've only lost nine, I mean, it sounds shitty to say it like this, but we've only lost 9,000-plus people? Okay, technology, better medical facilities, I mean, we can get air, air medevac, you

• 11:52Speaker 06

  know, very quickly nowadays. So like, people would say, well, that's not that bad. But then, you add the suicide numbers, which we're starting to see a lot of numbers come out, and I'm gonna fact-check them. Apparently, like, two months ago, it peaked 140,000 GWAT veterans in 25 years, whether you served somewhere in that timeframe, have committed suicides, who in theory are actual death toll of the war. Again, not everything is combat-related, it could have been some family-issued childhood trauma, something like that, drugs, whatever, that influenced that decision, but they still are considered the GWAT number. That's why I'm kinda fact-checking the number itself, is that actually, it could be 140, but how many are actually combat-related,

• 12:37Speaker 06

  hey, I can't handle the trauma and the nightmares anymore, kinda thing, that's, you'll never figure that out. But if that number is true, of suicides alone in the last 25 years, that means that we're almost at 150,000 dead in this, this war on terror. And if I can personally say, I know 36 of them that are good friends of mine, maybe that's true.

• 12:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 06

  And that makes me wanna fight harder, you know?

• 12:59Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I wanna, I just wanna rephrase. Yeah, I think it is drugs and alcohol. I don't think that is the only problem. I think when you all of this, you know, operator syndrome, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, CTE, and it all gets compiled together and you add drugs and alcohol on top of it, which is, you know, obviously, people think it's a coping mechanism. Uh, I think that's what I was alluding to is, is it, it, I think that's the, the icing on the cake that, that unfortunately is, is like the last straw, you know?

• 13:39Speaker 06

  I think there's another issue starting to happen too. Um, so I've never had a drug or alcohol problem. I don't have an addictive personality. It's weird. I've, I've tried. Doesn't work. I'm actually allergic to alcohol. Um, and that's happened in like the last year and a half. Like I, even if I have like a glass of wine, I got in really big into wine and make my own wines for a while. Um, can't do it anymore. And I'm happy because I don't like waking up like that. Plus, I have TBI and I think there was some stuff going on there that was activating it and, um, certain dyes I can't have, et cetera. But another issue is not to say that I haven't had a problem with drugs or alcohol, but I've tried them. I've done all the experiments. I've, um, I think

• 14:23Speaker 06

  besides Ibogaine is one of the few things that I haven't done. Um, but now I'm hearing guys coming back and when I do it, I do it very, very, very traditionally. I have shamans that everything is free. Nothing is paid for because in that world, and I believe this, if you pay for that service, you, you take away the, the spirit of it. You can

• 14:43Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 14:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. So it's hard to find guys like that. But now I got dudes coming back saying, bro, I just got back from South America. I just did my 12th Ibogaine or my 12th ayahuasca trip. And I'm like That's not how it works, bro. You're now using these medical treatments that we have really found a lot of great things with, from psilocybin to all these other subjects that have, I mean, dude, woken me up. Like, I found myself in some of these situations. But they were like six day long, not one second of sleep for six days, very little food, cold plunging in the snow, running through the mountains, getting beat down by 80 pounds soaking wet, you know, Native Americans that, that put these rite of warrior passages together to off gas you

• 15:28Speaker 06

  from combat. And when you find out, you study ancient warriors, you'll see how much that we used to do as warriors to off gas ourselves from the chaos and corruption before you were allowed to go back to your tent, your teepee, your family, your village. The medicine men would keep you there and say, you're not ready to go home yet. The Romans did it, the Spartans did it, the Samurai's did it, every, every known African tribal warriors did it, natives of this country, every tribe had their own process and it was based around medicines, but it was a graduating process. It wasn't like, we're just gonna keep giving you ibogaine until you're better. I was like, that's another problem on that end of the spectrum I'm starting to see now. And on the other end, it's like, I'm just smoking weed every night and, and, and doing heroin now or, or taking pills because I can't take the pain. And then it's like, where's the balance? And so we need to find that balance as well.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 16:32Speaker 04

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

• 16:36Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 16:40Speaker 02

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

• 16:50Speaker 01

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

• 16:53Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 16:55Speaker 01

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

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You starve, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd, rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 17:26Shawn Ryan?

  I did not realize you were into plant medicine. Yeah, I did, I did the I V game. Nobody's aware of it until now. Yeah, well, now, now everybody knows. But, um, but, uh, you know, it's interesting that you say that about psychedelic therapy. Because that is, and look, I'm a huge, anybody that listens to this knows I'm a huge proponent to psychedelic therapy. It changed my, it changed so many aspects of my life in a positive way. But, um, I'm like you, I don't, uh, a little bit different of a philosophy, but I don't abuse it.

• 18:05Shawn Ryan?

  I'm very, I don't know if ritualistic is the correct word for that, but I, I take it very seriously. Sometimes I think I take, maybe take it too seriously, um, but, but, uh, because I- What do you mean by that? Well, because, man, this is, I'm actually gonna start to contradict myself here, but, because where I was going is it, it, parts of this reminded me of kind of the beginning of the opiate crisis within the veteran community, veteran community. Guys got a little bit of relief from pain, you know, from this stuff, and then they we realize, oh shit, it numbs our mind, my mind's not racing anymore.

• 18:49Shawn Ryan?

  I'm in, you know, and I, I started to see this within psychedelics too, where-

• 18:57Shawn Ryan?

  People want to live in that realm and not take what you need out of that realm and then go live your fucking life here in reality, you know, and, and, and they, that realm becomes like some type of escape. What I was, what I was gonna say when I, when I, when I say maybe I take it a little too seriously and it gets in the way is, is, is more and more of these studies are coming out about microdosing and, and, and, um, maybe having a, a low dose psilocybin tea, you know, in the morning. I don't do that because I, I have to set my space up the way I need it to be.

• 19:41Shawn Ryan?

  I have to do all of the things.

• 19:44Speaker 06

  The ritual aspect, yeah.

• 19:45Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, that I, cause I think that it's a, it is a, in my opinion, it's a medicine that demands a tremendous amount of respect. And, um, and I, I live by a code, uh, that does that. Sometimes I think that code gets in the way a little bit because I need days off in the ass end. I need days off in the beginning. I like to prepare myself and part of me thinks, hey, like, just do it. Just get the benefit, bud. But then I see, I do see people abusing it and, um.

• 20:18Speaker 06

  And I would say microdosing would be abusing it. If you have a, a system or a plan and it's working for you, um, where, and, and a lot of people will take microdosing overboard. You shouldn't feel a microdose.

• 20:30Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:31Speaker 06

  It should, it should be just on the edge to just give you a heightened sense of things.

• 20:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 06

  Um, and this is where a lot of people are like, God, I can't believe you guys are talking about this, man. Like, that's, that's so taboo in your world. It's like, no, it is our world. That's the first thing I tell people that are very confused, like, wait, you, you do, you do plant medicine? Like, just like the last 3,000 years that I've been able to study in warrior cultures, yes, before you go into battle, especially when you get home from battle. The rituals, you look into some of these, dude, I, I mean, I went down, I think it was with the Pima Indians in Arizona. And they put me through a sweat lodge camp. Worst pain in my life. And these guys have hooks on their, I'm sorry, not hooks, scars on their chests.

• 21:17Speaker 06

  The chief of the village, again, beautiful, long, black hair, eighty pounds, soaking wet dude, just wearing like jean shorts and flip flops and running us through the whole scenario. Your butt naked inside with six other dudes in this buffalo hide tent. They stoked the fire for three days. It's like, it's pretty cool, the ritual aspect, and it's all helping, it's giving. It's, it's, you can tell everybody's there for you. It's not, hey, I'm paying you to go to this ten, twelve thousand dollar camp in South America to have ninety other people laying on the floor going through the same experience as I am. It is just you and only you. And then I ask like, chief, what's, I'm curious, the scars on your chest? He's like, and he eventually tells me it's another passage, another rite, a ritual,

• 22:02Speaker 06

  rite of passage for become a warrior. And at a certain age, they hang themselves with hooks. And they hook themselves through their chest muscles and they hang from an oak tree in the village. And they hang there for three days and they have to take the hooks out themselves in order to come off of this rite of passage. And then once they do, they're good. I'm like, why is your chest so fucked up? And he's like, I've done this seven times as a medicine man and demonstrator. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not a warrior. I'm not, I'm not a warrior, dude. That's, I would never do that. So you hear some of the craziest stories from these guys that are still doing it to this day on reservations, not all of them do. It's like you have the, you know, the, they're still the small warrior groups inside of every

• 22:46Speaker 06

  culture and then the rest of them, and same with us, right? You have the small warrior groups inside of the culture and then all of us. And what they do is they introduce you to the spirit aspect of it. And that's what I look for. So even if I'm microing one day, it's because it's for me, I'm gonna be out in the mountains today, I might just run up to Sedona, meet my buddies, we'll go paramotoring through, not, not on medicine, but we'll have this night, this, this campfire, this, you know, we'll, we'll bathe in the, in the mesquite trees, which mesquite trees release a natural DMT into the water. That's what the natives believed. And so they would, we would bathe in the freezing waters, we'd lay out in the sun and meditate and journal, and then we'd go fly. And have this amazing flight.

• 23:30Speaker 06

  Um, and then we land and we off gas hug, high five, man, we go back to our lives. Like that's a, that would be maybe even a full, full journey or maybe just a microdose. Um, some days I just want to be really creative and I just can't get that spirit to work inside me, I will turn on that, that frequency just a little bit. But I won't abuse it. And that's the thing is people don't understand, uh, the divine feminine, divine masculine aspect of all of these drugs. Uh, ayahuasca, they call a grandmother for a reason. She's going to take you on a journey. Psilocybin, it's divine feminine drug, it's going to take you on a journey. Um, DMT is even on the feminine side. THC is on the feminine side.

• 24:14Speaker 06

  But LSD acid or ibogaine, that's divine masculine. You are going here whether you like it or not. And so it's to understand that Shakti and Shiva aspect, the old ancient world of divine feminine, divine masculine, you have to understand that in order to really, I think, get the full benefits of it and be with good people that can share or just give to you.

• 24:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that's interesting. I've not heard that. The feminine and masculine. Where, where did you hear that from?

• 24:47Speaker 06

  Just in my studies. And I, this, I, this wasn't medicine studies. This was like ancient warrior studies. Um, to, because everybody has divine masculine, divine feminine. And you know, that's where our love and our, our, uh, even protecting comes from is on the feminine side of the house. Our words in which we use or the fight or the flight or the, the, the more masculine aspects of what we would do to protect somebody, even a female, that we all have the same thing. And so that's where a lot of the divine, you know, um, that comes out of these plant medicines will, is on that wavelength. And I think if you know that about it, it makes your journey so much better.

• 25:29Speaker 06

  Um, like my biggest journey I ever had, which was last year, maybe a year and a half ago. Um, needed to really unlock some stuff, needed to really, you know, break down some darkness that I had that was residual from something in the past. Um, plus my father just died and that messed me up pretty bad. Still does. Sorry to hear that. Um, you know, greatest hero of my life and all of a sudden it's gone. And it's like, wait a minute. And I, I don't know why I just struggle with it. I, I, I just did a podcast with a good friend of mine, Mark England. He's a, he's a, a mindset coach, um, and breath coach. And he helped me unlock that problem about, it wasn't, it was, my dad's helped so many,

• 26:15Speaker 06

  so many more millions of people than I could ever possibly fathom helping. And when he left, um, I wanted to celebrate him. My family didn't want to celebrate my father. And so I, I did this podcast with Mark and he did a four step process on me to help me slow the story down in my head. Cause like we get tight, we get high and tight, going back to kind of the PTSD a little bit and some of the things that we hold on to. It's in our chest, we're trapped in our chest. And if we can't unlock that breath, we can't, we can't switch from being high and tight because we don't know what it's like to be low and slow in our breath. That's going to get you. So a lot of these guys need to learn to unlock that before they go on a journey.

• 26:59Speaker 06

  So we would even do massive breath work stuff. That's where the cold water comes into play, uh, to really get somebody to, to take it seriously. And then we, we have them dial on their breath and then we'll start educating them on, on what we're going to be doing at this point in time. So like on my last one, it was like seven grams of, of psilocybin, which is what they consider a hero, hero's dose. Um, and then that wasn't working. I think five grams is considered a hero's. Five's hero, seven is a warrior's dose. Shit. That's right. Um, so I did seven, so I did a warrior's dose and, um, That wasn't working for me. It was taking me on a journey, but this is where the coaches

• 27:41Speaker 06

  come into play. We had UFC movement, fighting coaches there, so we fight all night long as well on the medicine. We go through the mountains, through Bryce Canyon, and run through the snow and the mud, and barefooted, it just silkies, man. And you're like, how are we out here, living for four hours in nothingness? It's just like, it's a different world of mindset, you know? And so then, that wasn't working for me, so they said, hey, he needs Divine Masculine. So they dropped in some more, and that was the LSD, and my life has changed since that moment. More so than any other experience.

• 28:21Shawn Ryan?

  What changed?

• 28:22Speaker 06

  The ability to see myself, my past life, my, um, which is what I've been living in. You know, not necessarily a past life, even though I saw some pretty gory, like the most real combat I've ever seen in my life. My hands hurt so bad the next day.

• 28:44Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on. When you say a past life, are you saying a past life, or like,

• 28:51Speaker 06

  Right.

• 28:51Shawn Ryan?

  my previous career is a force reconnaissance marine?

• 28:55Speaker 06

  So both. So I saw a past life image of me standing on top of a pile of bodies, with blood soaking through my hands around a katana. And I remember screaming, how could one man do this? And that scared the shit out of me. Then my past life started coming-

• 29:15Shawn Ryan?

  Why did that scare you?

• 29:16Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 29:17Shawn Ryan?

  What did you think it was? How did you process that?

• 29:19Speaker 06

  I felt like I was just a murderous, uh, it was the most real, I mean, I don't know what it's like to be in a sword fight, but I was like, now I know what it's like to be in a sword fight, after that, that experience. Vivid, like, just real. Screaming, they had to hold me down at times. They had to put a buffalo hide blanket over me and pin me down, um, to try to just calm. And they're very good. They know when to speak, and when to be in there, and when to kind of touch you, and just kind of make you calm back down. And, uh, and I could see then, my current life, past life, you know, being in combat, family traumas, death, everything, and-

• 30:00Speaker 06

  Then I started realizing, I'm living in my past lives when I should be living in my path life. What's my path? My path is created by my past. And that was the first time I've been able to actually see that. It's the first time I've been able to breathe through with coaching and hearing, you know, my best friend Byron going, "Ride the exhale." Ride the exhale. And by seeing all of that, again, showed me who I was and what I was living in and where I should have been living. And so now every day I wake up, I will think

• 30:39Speaker 06

  about what is my path moving forward, not reminiscing on my past and or worrying about something, you know, being in fear of my past and being in anxiety for my future. Like, and that's like the now concept. Everybody understands the now concept. Everything happens right now in this moment, in this time. It's not my dad's time anymore. It's not my ancestors' time anymore. It's like the problem with our country. When's somebody gonna step up? It's you. It's your time. And hopefully many moons from now, our grandchildren will be reading about the history that we created in this country to keep it free, to keep the world free. So those are, those are things that I couldn't really see a whole lot. And

• 31:22Speaker 06

  now I'm seeing a whole clearer message about what do we do moving forward? It's not about what I did. That, that doesn't define me. My traumas don't define me. My childhood traumas don't define me. What I'm doing right now does.

• 31:35Shawn Ryan?

  What do you believe happens when you die?

• 31:40Speaker 06

  I think I'm still trying to figure that one out. Now, not to say I'm not a man of spirit or a man of God, because I am.

• 31:48Shawn Ryan?

  Are you a Christian?

• 31:49Speaker 06

  I am. I am. I was raised Catholic. It's kind of funny. I went to Catholic school, didn't really get along with the, because I went to Jewish Community Center after Catholic school, which my sister hated. And so they, it was this conflict and I got caught saying "Hail Marys" in Yiddish one day and they kicked me out of school.

• 32:10Speaker 06

  Because the the J C C guy, this, I think his name was Tommy, big old jolly fat guy, drives up in this little Volkswagen van and picks me up every day from Catholic school and Sister Pat would just stand there with her, you know, her nun suit on and just like, just scowl at this dude. And he would teach me, he would teach me, you know, to speak a little Yiddish and he taught me Hail Marys in Yiddish and I was out of the, I got a math problem wrong one day in Catholic school and she's like, uh, go to Mother Mary and do your, your Hail Marys. So I'm out there, I'm doing them and all of a sudden I feel this ruler on my shoulder. It was like old school Catholic, you know, ruler stuff and, and parents came in and that didn't work out too well. So then my mom's like, well, maybe Christian school would be a better thing. So she sends me to Christian school

• 32:55Speaker 06

  and that was good. And that was, that was good. I got in a fight with the teacher about dinosaurs one time because I went outside and grabbed a fossil and she said, well, that's because the government put those fossils there to make you think dinosaurs are real. And I'm like, uh, don't they talk about beasts in the Bible? Like, so I was confused and then I brought a link of 20 millimeter shells from my dad's Air Force Times as a pilot and they kicked me out of school for show and tell. Guess you're not allowed to have live rounds in, in school. So anyways, I, I've studied religion. I've really tried to make a habit of it. You know, I've been to some big universities, went to Cornell, oh, I just studied the promised land, Judaism and the Palestinian conflict. Really started diving into the Quran and reading it and trying to understand it and then started even played

• 33:39Speaker 06

  with Buddhism for a little while to understand, not to, to practice and to realize, well, what are people's motives and intentions? Because you know how it is, man, young and dumb, we're in the military, go here, do this. You don't know anything about the people. You know, you're never really given good intel. And so I wanted to try to change that in my life. So for my kids that are growing up, if they decide to serve, which they are, I can educate them from a different place than what the education I got. And I think that's important for people to realize. Because look how many Muslims that we would, we would trust our lives to. We have. We've had best friends, man. Look at this friggin Afghani pullout, man. Like how many dudes on some of those teams that, you know, you know the story there.

• 34:24Speaker 06

  Um, and but there's a misperception.

• 34:27Shawn Ryan?

  I'm curious, how, if you love talking about these, going down these rabbit holes, but if you're a Christian, then how do you, what I'm curious about is how do you tie in multiple lives in different time periods?

• 34:42Speaker 06

  And that's where I don't, I mean, I wouldn't consider myself the most diehard Christian in that regard. Um, I would say that there's definitely an afterlife, and that was what we would consider heaven. Uh, some people will consider that the next density, you know, like we're in a density right now, just like rocks and plants are in a density and animals are in a density. We're in the next density and the next density we move on to is a higher, a higher self, that's heaven. Um, so I love, I love dabbling into those stories too, listening to those people kinda talk about how that works on their scale, you know, the, the frequency of the spirit world. It's like, so, and it's all the same, you know?

• 35:20Shawn Ryan?

  So, so you, do you believe that you'll go on and have another, so this is kinda like reincarnation?

• 35:29Speaker 06

  Right, that's, that's the density aspect, which again is confusing, where most people would think, oh, if you're going on to a next density, what is that? That's like this, you know, spirit alien world. It's like, it could also be heaven. It could be in that next world, then we're put on this earth to get our PhD at a very hard place in the universe. Um, and we're judged for how we respond to it. We're judged for how we help people, how we love, how we, we show our compassion, how we are able to, to be vulnerable and, and, and have the courage to be imperfect. And I think if you do all those things well, you'll be rewarded to the next life or density or heaven. So, and I know some people that, that, uh, you know, I, are diehard in that case, wouldn't

• 36:13Speaker 06

  be like, no, you need to pick a side. It's like, well, I love studying everything and I'm still trying to figure it out at this point in time in my life.

• 36:20Shawn Ryan?

  Um, where did you come to, I guess maybe conclusion isn't the right word because we're still looking into it. When, when did you come into this thought process? How did this happen?

• 36:33Speaker 06

  I think it's been in about the last five or six years of my life.

• 36:37Shawn Ryan?

  Did it come in with plant medicine?

• 36:40Speaker 06

  I actually came in with my fiance. She's diehard Christian, mega church upbringing, mom, dad, own a Christian bookstore. And she can recite the Bible like the back of her hand. But she's also looked into a lot of these other things and has not changed her mind about God or spirit, but it's just more information to understand and to take in and have fun exploring versus being absolute about it. I'm just not an absolute person. I'm not going to say, "Oh, all religions are bad except Christianity." Shame on us for thinking that. You know, why are we so special? You know, faith is faith, spirit is spirit.

• 37:23Speaker 06

  And when you have, like I said earlier, like if you're a man of spirit, a man of faith, well, that's going to help with a lot of things, like being more resilient to things, to trust the process that like, hey, man, first thing is the facts. Nobody gets off this spaceship alive. Yeah. Right? So enjoy it while you're on it and make the best of it. And if you only get this one in 400 trillion chance or whatever it is to become a human being, I'm going to play the most magnificent game I could ever play in that short ass amount of time that I have. That's why I have a dragonfly as my logo. It's because I realize that short life that it has, there's a lot of great aspects to it from the warrior side and the survival side and it's a symbol of life because its

• 38:07Speaker 06

  lifespan is only about 30 days when you see a dragonfly flying around. And so, well, how can something be one of the oldest living creatures on the face of the planet? Again, depending on what you believe in, how can it be the most adaptive, most efficient, the greatest hunter on the face of the planet for its size and its capacity and what it does? How can it be all of these amazing things and only live for 30 days? I can't answer that question, but what I can answer is like, or ask, like every student that comes through our programs or every person that I encounter, I say, "What are you going to do with your 30 days to make the world just a little bit better place than what you came in it?" And that's what that means to me. You know, because my dad gave me that as a kid when a dragonfly landed on my finger

• 38:48Speaker 06

  one time and he told me I had good luck and then taught me all the significance of it. And that was the thing that stood out to me the most was how short our lives really are and how much conflict and how much diversity and everything else that's in this life that we're being tested on. And so I will always make sure that

• 39:09Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, we were talking about haters earlier, right? I will always make sure that I'm hated and not being a hater. It's much better to be in that world. I feel sorry for the ones that are so full of themselves that all they do is hate on others and create common enemy intimacy in the world. That's the biggest problem we have. That's not godlike. That's not, that's not good. And I think if, you know, and I'll speak a lot to God, but I think one of the things that God made primarily over everything else is good. So, and I think with good comes truth. With truth comes love, or love comes from good too. And then uncertainty. You don't know what's gonna happen next. So I think I like to live in the uncertain world where I don't have an answer for everything because I realize that if I, if I try to be too certain about something in my life,

• 39:53Speaker 06

  I'll drive myself batshit crazy trying to figure out what's gonna happen next to me. And then I have to realize like, well, if I, if I knew what was gonna happen tomorrow morning, or knew what was gonna happen even tonight, what would be the point of being alive? What would be the point of waking up tomorrow? If we already knew what was gonna happen. So I don't think certainty is a problem that should ever be, uncertainty should be a problem that's ever solved. And so when I study religion, I go, don't be so certain about it. Let's just keep exploring. Let's keep looking into all of these crazy thoughts and things. And plant medicine, man, dude, I've never touched drugs or alcohol and stuff in my life. I was, I was a pretty straight-laced kid growing up. I was a troublemaker, I mean, bad, attempted murder type trouble that I got into. Wow.

• 40:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, me and DJ actually have a weird, I noticed, listening to him, have an interesting kinda pathway there. Where I was- DJ Shipley? Yeah, I was extremely curious, adventurous, to a point where I would, well, see what happens to this mailbox when it detonates with these types of chemicals or this or that, or whatever. Pipe bombs on cows, or, hey, there's somebody that needs help, let's shoot at them that that's getting hurt. Shoot the person that's hurting the person that needs help. And that was my situation. I wasn't bad, but I was extremely curious. And, and that put me in a lot of bad places. And I probably pissed my parents off and stressed them out more than anybody. But it was all good. That was my upbringing. And, and so the religion was different because I was bouncing around from JCCs to Catholic schools to Christian schools.

• 41:20Speaker 06

  So I think I have always had this kinda everything in my life, and I was never grounded in something. So maybe, maybe my next-

• 41:29Speaker 06

  Next journey in life is to maybe find, you know, something to ground to.

• 41:33Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 41:34Speaker 06

  So I'm on that, I'm on that path.

• 41:35Shawn Ryan?

  You're a deep thinker.

• 41:36Speaker 06

  And medicine has certainly helped me think of a different world of, of spirit and, and code. And it's like, okay, there's, there's something we can't explain here. Is that just medicine doing that to me or is that God? No, that's everybody sees the same thing. So it might, that's, that's a godly thing to me. There's a spirit world to that and I love that man. So constantly asking questions and exploring.

• 41:57Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I, you mentioned something about, I don't know, maybe 10 minutes ago and you, you had said, we were talking about, you know, kind of setting the stage for psychedelic therapy and how serious we both take it. And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm curious. You, you had mentioned something about when things start getting stirred up, you go do it. You, I think you told me you're running eight companies. Obviously very busy, father to seven kids, a wife. You got a lot of shit going on. So what I'm, what I want to ask is, you know, when you feel that stuff stirring up, how, and you're, you, and you're not just going to a clinic, you're going, you're embedding with a, with a, with, with some type of a tribe.

• 42:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:43Shawn Ryan?

  And you're the only one. So how long does it take you to set aside the time to, to work on yourself with that?

• 42:53Speaker 06

  Well, I think that's the biggest problem we all have is the lack of time. Now, and, and try to keep this as succinct as possible. There's a instinctual nature to every human being, right? We all have an instinct. We're all born with something. We're not born with knowledge. We're not born knowing how to do something, but we're born with some type of instinctual thing that they call conation, not cognition. Cognition, I believe, comes from conation, your instinctual self. And in your conation, you have four action modes. Fact finding, how you gather and share information. Following through, which is how you arrange, organize or systemize. Quick starting, which is how you deal with risk or uncertainty, and then implementing how you handle spaces or tangibles, how you build.

• 43:38Speaker 06

  So, like, to give an example, if I said, hey, man, if we had a box from the store, and it's a desk or something we had to build, like, got parts and letters and instructions, what's the first thing you would do? Would you, A, open up the box, pull the instructions out, start laying things out, and do an inventory of every part and piece and make sure it's all there? Would you start organizing every A and B and Cs and Ds, and then start organizing into a system of how I'm gonna start building, and then read all the directions, go, "Okay," and then come back to step one? Or are you the guy that turns the box and looks at the picture and dumps the shit on the floor and goes, "I can do this"? You know? That's what your instinctual makeup is.

• 44:19Speaker 06

  How you problem solve that is exactly the way you problem solved it when you were 12 years old. You do the same thing today. You cannot change it.

• 44:31Speaker 00

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• 45:05Speaker 01

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

• 45:08Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 45:09Speaker 01

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

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing to death, that's what...

• 45:26Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 45:39Speaker 06

  That's the thing that kind of upsets people is that you're gonna score high in two of those categories, higher than the others. So for me, I'm a mid-range fact-finder four. That means I can go either way. I can read a book, but I'm not gonna probably read the whole thing like front to back. I'll highlight stuff and post a note and make notes in it and come back to it later off. 16 books open and I'll come back again. God, I'm never gonna get these books done, but eventually I do. And eventually I get the same amount of information as the person that just reads one book from the back. That's just how I do things. My systemizing is a two. Follow through. Like if you said, "Hey Travis, call me tomorrow at 3 o'clock." I'm like, "All right, Sean. I'll see you tomorrow. Talk to you tomorrow." Dude, don't expect me to call you tomorrow at 3 o'clock because I'm gonna probably seize

• 46:23Speaker 06

  the moment elsewhere. Something's gonna happen. So why do I carry my stupid EDC Apple Watch to go, "Hey Siri, remind me to call Sean tomorrow at 3 o'clock?" Now, why did I do that? Is it because I'm a procrastinator? Is it because I'm like gonna just forget? No. It's because I love being raced against the clock because I'm a seven in Quick Starting. I love risk and uncertainty. I love the uncertainty of life. And so if I understand that, now I'm gonna take a risk. It doesn't mean you're not gonna take a risk if you're higher in these categories and lower here. It just means you're gonna probably systemize, fact-find, like the jump master that's like, "Come on dude, we got this. You got 16 pages of weather reports and you're asking the frickin' nav again for the winds at altitude. We got it. Let's go. Let's jump." That's the Quick Starter talking. "Yeah, I think I

• 47:08Speaker 06

  see the drop zone. Stand by." And you're like, "Taley, don't do it." That's the Quick Starter, right? 60% of the time, it works out every time. And then you have the fact-finder that's really diving into it. So I think, coming back full circle, it depends on how you instinctually operate. So coming back to a guy like me that has seven kids, seven companies, well, eight companies now.

• 47:36Speaker 06

  How do I manage all that? I love the risk and certainty of all those things. I'm good at being a jack of all trades. I'm not good at sitting down and systemizing one thing. I love to build teams. I love to build products and development systems. I love to sit down and go, okay, here's how we're making this product. There's a 16-step product phase to all of this. I'm gonna write that down. I'm gonna build that and then start building on teams and teach them how to do this 16-step product development phase. And then, all right, engineers, ID guys, go ahead and start developing shortcuts to that system. And then, next thing you know, efficiency starts happening. That's what the quick starter does. That's the entrepreneur. That's the musician. That's the creator. That's the artist that just wings it and like, probably your buddy you were talking

• 48:17Speaker 06

  about earlier, where your systemizers are guys that I want as my CFO. That's right, because my CFO, if I walk into Grant's desk and I look at his desk and I go, "How the hell is he getting any work done with a clean desk like this?" Right? His stuff's always organized, but he'll come into my office and go, "How the hell is Haley getting any work done with a messy desk like this?" You see the conflict that just happened in the workplace? So I think if we could all understand our instinctual strengths, which every one of my guys, my gals are psychologically evaluated on this cognitive scale. It's a test called the KOLBE test. K-O-L-B-E. It's an alpha test. Cathy KOLBE developed this many years ago. And it's a test you can't lie on. You cannot lie on it.

• 49:00Speaker 06

  It'll put you in transition if you try to lie on this. But if you've ever taken like a Myers-Briggs or like those Starpoint tests or some of those IQ-type tests, those are cognitive-based tests. You can lie on those. So like, I know a lot of intel agencies, like we were working with the Australians, and they give their guys neuroticism tests. And so I took the test and I scored 98% neurotic. And the dude's like, "Bro, we didn't think you were a neurotic guy." And I'm like, "Yeah, I lied on your test, man." And he's like, "What?" I was like, "It's a cognitive-based test. I lied on it because I want to get a job with you guys. I want to be in it. I want to be a case officer with you guys." And he's like, "Holy shit." I was like, "Yeah. You have neurotic case officers running around." That are neurotic, that lied on your test.

• 49:44Speaker 06

  You need to give them more of an instinctual based test that you can't lie on. So that's why I like working with the Colby Corporation. And so out of hundreds of employees that I have, all of them, I can walk into any department and know exactly what everybody's cognitive instinct is. That's my job as a leader. I have to, because if I can go up to you and say, let's say you're the high fact finding, systemizing engineer and you're like in building a cab bottle, you're into it. And I walk in and go, hey, Sean, come with me real quick. I need you on a project. You're like, like right now? Like, yes, right now. But I, but, but like inside they're saying that, like, don't, please don't make me stop what I'm doing. I need to finish this system. Where if it's me and you come in, I'm in the middle of something, I'm diving really deep, you're like Travis, come here, I got, I want to show you something. All right, man.

• 50:29Speaker 06

  Hey, what's up? So you'll see that in people, you'll see that in your kids. And when you can see that and you can understand their innate motives and intentions and innate force and talents, I can now direct my teams better. I can not have as much conflict in the workplace, I can have collaboration. So going back to the question of how do I manage all that stuff? I do it by really making sure that everybody's operating in their instinctual strengths, not just their cognitive based strengths. That's your resume. Your resume of life is your cognition. That's what you've learned, you're gonna learn and continue to learn. And you'll keep filling out that resume. All right? You didn't know how to jump out of an airplane when you, before you went to free fall school. You were taught to do that, cognition.

• 51:12Speaker 06

  But what made you really fly better than maybe somebody else? Your spatial awareness, your ability to implement and see and mimic somebody else, like watching the instructor in front of me, I could be like, okay, what's he doing with his elbows? I'm gonna try that. Next thing you know, it starts working. Or gripping a gun. I sit there and watch the great ones back in the day, like, how does freaking Robbie Latham doing that, man? I'd rewind and like VHS, like, like, okay, and I'd replicate it. And next thing you know, I'm shooting well. That's the good implementer. Some people can't do that. So even teaching somebody on a range, I'll find out every class, we go through a conation exercise. I have a guy that's an implementer, I'll show him, I'll point, I'll touch, I'll feel. I have somebody that's a fact finder, hey, put the gun away. All right, let's go back to the three points that we talked about in class. What was the first element of the grip?

• 51:56Speaker 06

  It was something about friction and this bone, I forget the name of that bone, the trapezium bone. What does that do? Ah, that's right, it traps, traps the hand. Okay, what does that do as you extend the gun? That's what I'm missing. What is it doing if you think about lever systems and class one and class two levers? A pair of scissors does what versus a pair of Nutcracker does what? Two different tools because the pin's in a different place. Don't put your pin back here when you grip a gun. Put your pin up here and grip a gun and what do you have? Leverage. Good. Try that. I don't even show him. He looks the same as the implementer down at the end of the line because we've taken and put cognitive and cognitive-based outcome training into a firearms program versus to say, "Just keep going. You'll eventually get it. Get a better grip." Like, how? What does that mean? So, I've implemented that

• 52:41Speaker 06

  across my family, across my companies, and it allows me to trust everybody more with their instinctual strengths. And if they mess up, I go, "Hey, quick starter. Why'd you screw up?" "'Cause I was being impulsive, boss." Good. "What are you gonna do next?" "I'm gonna build a system for myself." Why? Because I use my quick starting as a crutch instead of working on the thing that I'm not good at, like setting an alarm to call you because from here on out, if I set that alarm right now to call you tomorrow at 3 o'clock, guess what happens to all my other tasks? It's a race. I have to be there for Sean at 3 o'clock, so I'll knock out this, I'll knock out that, I'll go back in and finish a project, or go and spend some time with my kids. And all of a sudden, my life

• 53:23Speaker 06

  becomes so much fuller because instinctually, that's what I want. I want to be raced against a clock. So, when we brain map this and put it on EEG systems, you will see stress in me trying to organize and systemize. Even if I love it, you will see no stress in flatlining in my delta, beta, alpha, theta waves in my brain. When I'm about to sling-load 450 pounds on a torch jump out of the back of a C-130 and a full wall locker jump, my heart rate actually goes into almost a resting heart rate when I'm in those situations. But me reading and writing and doing taxes?

• 54:01Speaker 06

  Okay, man, what the hell's wrong with me? You know what I mean? So, once you understand that about people, I think it becomes easier. And that was a big struggle for me in the beginning, starting businesses. Quick starting all over the place and failing and getting fired and like, dude, you're not doing the right thing. You're moving too fast, slow down. That system alone has really helped me help people. Interesting. And then in return, I can sit here and say, I can successfully manage, almost successfully manage seven kids. I'm still trying to figure that one out. But the companies, it's like, yeah, they're self-sufficient because I let them have that self-sufficient nature by giving them the trust that they're going to operate in their cognitive instincts well and help others identify when they're

• 54:44Speaker 06

  not operating in their cognitive instincts well. So I don't care about how much you know, because knowledge is just potential power. It doesn't give you any power. The plan of execution gives you power. And that baseline, understanding myself instinctually, okay, now what do I know cognitively? And then how do I affect that with my affect, my emotions? Because that's the three elements of life, right? Your instinct, which grows your cognition, which your cognition then helps develop your emotional state. What I know, what I've seen, what I've done will make me kind of anxiety, make me happy, make me whatever. Like, that's the order of those things. And I think if we understand them as leaders of organizations or family members

• 55:27Speaker 06

  and as individual operators, imagine how many less people I would have fired in the team that couldn't get the, hey, man, if you just keep tumbling for 10,000 feet, bro, you're not going to be on team. You're not going to be on jump team. Sorry. You know, if you can't figure out how to breathe on up your oxygen and you're having trouble and you're in hypercapnia constantly because you don't know how to fin because you never go to the pool and work out, you're fired. It's like, no, I could have taught them differently by using their cognitive instinct. So it's complicated, but when you get into it, you're like, man, this is actually extremely simple. Why aren't we thinking or teaching like this? Imagine if they taught your kids in school with their instinct versus just giving them the shit that the Department of Education gives them, which hopefully that changes.

• 56:05Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. I'm definitely gonna look into that.

• 56:07Speaker 06

  That's one answer that I, that helps me balance. Then, of course, off gassing and doing the other things and trying to make sure I stay as healthy as possible. Uh, I used to love all the extreme sports. I can't do them all anymore. Uh, but as any time I can get out in the elements, that's my, that's my off gassing, you know.

• 56:25Shawn Ryan?

  Thanks for sharing that.

• 56:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Travis, uh, so I want to get into your life story. So we'll go childhood, military, career, transition out, contracting, what you're doing now. And then who knows what we'll get into, what rabbit holes in the middle of all that. But, um, I got, I got you something.

• 56:48Shawn Ryan?

  It's probably the only reason you're here, actually.

• 56:49Speaker 06

  That's it. I've been waiting on these.

• 56:52Shawn Ryan?

  Vigilance League gummy bears. Made right here in the USA. And I got you something else. So your EDC was awesome, by the way.

• 57:01Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:02Shawn Ryan?

  But have you heard of the up phone?

• 57:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I've been watching you talk about this and I've been very curious to dive into this.

• 57:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, so there's a whole slew of features on that phone. Uh, Eric Prince, um, developed it. He got a guy that helped develop Pegasus. Are you familiar with Pegasus?

• 57:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 57:21Shawn Ryan?

  The computer virus.

• 57:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:23Shawn Ryan?

  Um, one of the guys on the dev team, uh, of Pegasus helped develop that phone. So there's just, you know, everybody's worried about big tech and people spying on you and big tech following you and tracking everything you do. And so that that is the best answer that I've found thus far. And, um, you know, I don't, we have a lot of heavy conversations around here that we don't want anybody listening in on and we usually throw our phones in a Faraday box or something. But with that, it's got a kill switch. It throws up a piece of plastic in between the battery and the, and the phone. So they can't, they cannot listen.

• 58:04Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 58:05Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, and then you can even download your social media apps on there. And there's a feature that, um, that enables, it, it enables.

• 58:15Shawn Ryan?

  The social media companies to not track everything that you're doing on your phone. It's got an integrated VPN. It's got an integrated version of Signal on that phone.

• 58:24Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 58:25Shawn Ryan?

  Um, it's, yeah, a lot of cool features.

• 58:28Speaker 06

  That was my biggest question. I'm sure a lot of people will look at this and go, can I, can I operate it as a normal phone?

• 58:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 06

  That I'd be using like an iPhone or a Samsung device or Android or whatever else. Can I, can I still have my lifestyle or do I have to use this for something else? Like, that was my big question.

• 58:41Shawn Ryan?

  You can still use it for your lifestyle and it, it works with, it works with a bunch of different, um, network providers.

• 58:51Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 58:51Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know exactly which. Mine's with T-Mobile, but, um, but I, they're gonna eventually work with all of them. But if you go to the website, it'll tell you, you know, which ones you can, you can use. So it's not its own service. It's, it's a device.

• 59:05Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 59:05Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, I thought, I thought you might like that.

• 59:08Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 59:09Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, perfect.

• 59:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. And somebody offered me gummy bears yesterday on the range and I was like, nope, I'm gonna go see Sean. I can't do that to him.

• 59:17Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. But, um, well Travis, let's start getting into your life story. Where'd you grow up?

• 59:26Speaker 06

  North Florida.

• 59:29Speaker 06

  In the swamps, farm boy.

• 59:34Shawn Ryan?

  What town?

• 59:35Speaker 06

  Little town called Danell in Florida. It's, uh,

• 59:37Shawn Ryan?

  Hell?

• 59:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, Ocala area. And then there's Crystal River. Crystal River's where all the bandities go and the springs there.

• 59:45Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 59:46Speaker 06

  So if you're, if you're looking at Florida, well, I guess it'd be like this from the camera side, uh, it's right in the crook. So you've got the Panhandle of Pensacola, you know, Panama City and stuff is, and then, um, Miami down here. We're right in the Gulf of Mexico side of the house. So, um, you know, lots of river life, growing up on boats, fishing with dad and swimming, um, love the water, scalloping, uh, yeah. Hunting, big, big hog hunter, um, hogs and knives kind of thing back in the day.

• 1:00:16Shawn Ryan?

  Brothers and sisters?

• 1:00:17Speaker 06

  One brother, yeah. Sister, sister died in a car accident when she was, uh, when I was, I was young, five years old, four or five years old.

• 1:00:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:00:27Speaker 06

  Um, and...

• 1:00:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, big athlete, played, played multiple sports. Tried to letter in as many sports as I could in my senior year just because I'm trying to be a jack of all trades. Wanted to be a recon marine, a force recon marine since I was about nine years old. That's what I remember seeing or hearing about, I was like nine or 10 actually. And my brother's almost six years older than me. And I remember seeing a marine walk into his high school, wearing dress blues and, and I wanted to be an A-10 pilot. My dad was a pilot in the air force. Grew up sitting in the seat next to him flying. Like I was, I was soloing and ready to fly at 17 years old.

• 1:01:08Speaker 06

  And had an opportunity to play, play football, a big, big university in Florida. Turned it down, joined Marine Corps instead.

• 1:01:18Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 1:01:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, turned it down. So, was lucky, was, again, like I said earlier, I was a troublemaker. You know, I loved fire, I loved, I loved.

• 1:01:29Shawn Ryan?

  I love fire.

• 1:01:30Speaker 06

  It's bad dude.

• 1:01:32Shawn Ryan?

  What kid doesn't love fire?

• 1:01:33Speaker 06

  It's horrible. Got in some hot water, you know, I, I, I, um, one night, some, some people were breaking into houses and, and they were, you know, meth heads, tweakers and, and we decided to go out and stop them. You know, it was a bunch of kids camping out, wearing camis and we.

• 1:01:54Shawn Ryan?

  How old were you?

• 1:01:55Speaker 06

  I was 15, I think at the time. Had a sawed off 1022 Ruger, no stock, no barrel, like we didn't know. Back then, man. And, and it was black as night, just about one o'clock in the morning. And they said, shoot at them, shoot at them, get them out of here. So I just, I mean, 50 yards at night, just to shoot to make some noise to scare them. And I see this body drop on the dock and I'm like, oh shit.

• 1:02:20Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 1:02:22Speaker 06

  Yeah. And my buddy's like, dude, you hit, you hit that dude. And gave me a high five and then that, they ran out screaming. Turns out they were, they were bad and they got busted for what they were doing. But we didn't know any better. We're just like, hey, let's go get rid of these people. We already held them at gunpoint earlier. My buddy's dad came out with a shotgun and says, hey, y'all get the hell out of here right now, I'm calling the cops. And they lied their ass off and then they went around and, and then dad went back to sleep. So we decided to take it in our own hands. And Who's we? Me and three other buddies that were camping out and running around and partying at night and shooting guns everywhere. It was a total redneck Florida story, man. And so we ran across the street and two guys went left and we went right.

• 1:03:05Speaker 06

  And basically L-shaped ambushed them before we knew what an L shape was and dumped one. They dragged, it turned out to be a female. Um, just scraped her head, uh, didn't kill her, but they, about a year later, they found out and tried to, came to school, hooked me up, threw me in jail for about eight days and, and uh, They found out that you shot her a, over a year later? They arrested, they arrested his dad because he was the only one witnessed with a, with a gun that night. And I was like, dude, what happens if they find out? He's like, he goes, screw my dad. He goes, uh, he abuses me and, and molests me. Fuck him. He can rot in jail. And I was like, uh, okay.

• 1:03:47Speaker 06

  A year later, he breaks and they come in and say, hey, you're under arrest. Um, so that was an attempted murder charge at first, then of course it dropped down as juvenile. So they dropped that down to some assault charges, battery, aggravated battery assault with a deadly weapon. Um, they, I ended up taking a plea and the judge, he used to be a former JAG Colonel. And my recruiter, I'm, I'm in, I'm in delayed entry program at this point in time. And, cause now I'm like 16 and a half by the time this all comes around. And I'm thinking my entire life is ruined. I'm not gonna be able to join the Marines. I'm not gonna be able to go play ball now. Can't do anything. And the judge, he reviews it and my staff sergeant's like, look, I can, I can speak for this kid.

• 1:04:31Speaker 06

  Um, you know, he's helped us immensely in the delayed entry program. Um, my dad worked for Florida Power Corporation, so I had a, I had access to numerous resources on the family farm. So I built an obstacle course on my family farm that was bigger than Paris Island, South Carolina's confidence course. Towers, uh, almost a thousand foot zip line coming out of a 62 foot platform, fast ropes. Like I was a nerd. Wow. I was a nerd. Um, cause a guy that built the original fast ropes had a hangar, hangar right next to my dad's hangar and we'd fly. Colonel John Matthews, he introduced me to him and, cause I used to pull up old wells and the old plastic pipe and I'd hang it in trees like forty feet up and I'd drill holes through it and hang it and I'd slide down it until one night I, I sprained my ankle because it was

• 1:05:15Speaker 06

  wet, hit the ground and my dad was like, "You're not doing it anymore, cut that out of the tree." And then he introduced me to John, he said, "Go ahead and pick one." It was a fat, you know, back as a kid when fast ropes were brand new, like you never heard of this concept, it was always repelling. I see this rope, I'm like, "Holy shit." And so I hung in the tree and I just fast roped every single day of my life. Wow. And, you know, so we'd have delayed entry program meetings at my farm. We'd have like sixty, seventy kids running through the whole course and the recruiter's like, "Who the, who does this?"

• 1:05:55Speaker 06

  So that's how I grew up. I was just a military nerd, grew up on my grandfather and my father's, you know, blood soaked horror stories from war. What I would say, maybe blood soaked horror stories for some, but for me, I was like, "That's my destiny. I feel like I need to do that. I need to serve in some way." Do you feel like, was it pushed on you at all? No, not one bit. It was a hundred percent your decision? Never. My dad never really talked about it a whole lot. My grandfather did, but there was never any, "You should think about this, son." Never. Ultimate support. I think they expected it from me and as soon as I joined up and of course, when the judge goes, "That's exactly what you need is some discipline. So upon completion of your community service and all this other stuff you gotta do, you will join the United States Marine Corps. Do

• 1:06:40Speaker 06

  you understand me?" And I'm like, "Yes, sir." And he goes, "In Staff Sergeant, he goes, "If this kid doesn't do these things, then you will come back to me and we're gonna have another meeting and we'll, we'll readdress your future." And so I did everything I was supposed to do and still had that shot to join the Marine Corps. So I, you know, I equate that back to a lot of guys do bad things, but it doesn't mean they're bad people. And, and I realized that, you know, later, because I really questioned myself, like, "Am I a bad person for trying to help people?" You know, I didn't know the law. I didn't know what I could and couldn't do. And then I still had the shot to go and, and do what I did in my life. I, you know, I'm extremely grateful for that and blessed that I was afforded that opportunity. You're an eighth generation.

• 1:07:24Speaker 06

  My dad, my grandfather, all the way back to

• 1:07:27Shawn Ryan?

  Who fought and more.

• 1:07:27Speaker 06

  American Revolution, yeah. My grandfather's got probably the most unique story. Omaha Beach, first wave, first boots, first ramp to drop. He survives four out of forty in his boat team. Um, makes it to the beachhead. Tries to jump overboard when everybody's getting shot inside the boat. Realizes he can't swim, sees one of the, one of the other soldiers drowning. Um, and jumps back in and the staff sergeant's like, let's go. And he grabs a, a Thompson off of one of the dead guys, an M1 and goes in. Gets injured, goes back to London, does the whole rehabilitation camp stuff. Then he goes back to New York, meets grandma, gets his orders to go back to Europe Command for a second tour.

• 1:08:12Speaker 06

  Gets on the train and about three hours in the train ride, he's like, uh, are we going to New York? And these guys next to him like, no, man, we're going to Camp Pendleton, California. We're Marines. And he's like, what? And he couldn't stop. So by the time, you know, trying to wire to people back then, you ain't getting off the train and going back to Europe or back to New York. So he ends up going to California. They re-task him and then he was in

• 1:08:36Speaker 06

  first wave invasion, Iwo Jima, first ramp to drop, got hit by a kamikaze, came in, ripped off the back of his boat. Um, and then packed their shit up a few months later, went to Okinawa, Japan and was in Okinawa. So he's the only known

• 1:08:49Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:08:49Speaker 06

  warrior that was in both theaters and all three major campaigns. Both of his flags are down in New Orleans World War II Museum, the stories that he has. So I got to grow up on that and I'm like, that's cool. I didn't even know until about 10 years ago, the lineage of my family. I didn't know this growing up. I didn't know anybody beyond my grandfather, World War II, because my dad's like, yeah, I think we're from Germany. I think great grandpa Gershbock is from Germany on, on your mom's side. And then grandpa Haley, you know, we got family. I'm like Haley's not German dad, it's Irish English. And he's like, well, I don't know. And then I found out, ten years ago, I got this whole family tree and I found all the military documentation, all the way back to, uh, James Haley was my seventh generation

• 1:09:31Speaker 06

  grandfather, who was a sergeant in the 11th Virginia infantry in 1776. And then he ran home to his dad, William Haley, who was 52 years old, retired on the farm, and said, "Dad, the revolution's starting, you gotta come out of retirement and fight." So he served as a private under his son, who was a sergeant in the 11th Virginia military, and infantry. And they fought in the revolution. Uh, and I just found last month, another name popped up, John Haley, before him. So now I just found my ninth, but I don't know where he comes from, it doesn't, there's not a whole lot of information on it yet. So I'm still digging into that, cause, and then I go back to my dad, "My dad, we're not from Germany at all, man, we've friggin' been in America." He's like, "Wow, how long?" I said, "I don't

• 1:10:11Speaker 06

  know. We've been here since, at least the 1600s. So we're early settlers in this, in this country, and, you know, uh, every, every, every male has stepped up."

• 1:10:23Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I'm curious, do you think your dad and your grandfather wanted you to join the Marine Corps? Having both have been to war?

• 1:10:37Speaker 06

  I wish I could ask them that question, cause I don't know the answer. I know they were super proud, uh, when I did. Uh, and I think, you know how that generation, both those generations were a little quieter, especially Korea and, and World War II. Now, my grandfather didn't hesitate to talk about slaying Japs and friggin', you know, and, and World War II, or, or, you know, killing the Nazis. Uh, but my dad was quiet about it. Not, not from a trauma standpoint, I don't think, I think he was just a quiet man. And, uh, um, it's probably why I run my mouth too much sometimes. And, cause I, I always wanted him to speak out more, always wanted him to tell more stories. So I, I think that he was extremely proud of me joining, um, cause he never gave me any sense of, you

• 1:11:19Speaker 06

  know, or like any weird frequency or feeling I never got from him. Um, so no, I don't, I'd love to, one day, one day I'll ask him that.

• 1:11:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, the reason I'm asking is we, we, we had a conversation downstairs about your son. And, uh, you know, I ask, uh, I ask a lot of- Gents that come through here, if they that have been to war, you know, in our timeframe, if they want their kids to go to war, I think about it all the time, you know, about my son, and he's only three. But, um, and I think about how I'm gonna project my past to him, and all that kind of stuff. And, and so, do you want your son to serve? Did you want your son to serve?

• 1:12:06Speaker 06

  I think that was the most bittersweet moment when, and, and maybe in that feeling, I may now know what my dad and grandfather might have felt. Um, you know, like I told you, I found out from the recruiter, not my son. And so a lot, because of course, my ex calls, like, did you, you made him join the Marines? Like, I, I said, no, I had nothing to do with this. This is all on him. And so I was confused at first, uh, because I was worried that they weren't picking anything. No job, you know, they talked about a couple of things, but military was never on the table. And all of a sudden, this recruiter's telling me, hey, I'd like to meet with you. Um, he's 18. I know he can do what he wants, but since

• 1:12:49Speaker 06

  he still lives under your house, I want to give you that respect and, and talk to you about his, his desires. And I'm like, okay, find out, get down there. Hayden, what's going on, man? I'm joining the Marines, Dad. Okay. And I'm going recon. I'm like, what? Like, what, you didn't think to talk to me about this? We talk about this all the time. You come out to my classes, you hang out with these guys, you talk to these dudes a lot? Like, you know, why not? Tell me. And, uh, and, and it just wasn't my time for him to tell me that. So maybe he was thinking I would talk him out of it. I think. I think he would, I think he would say that. Maybe. Um, and maybe I should open that transparency up with him and make sure that that's clear. But I did tell him, I said, look, if you do

• 1:13:31Speaker 06

  this, you have to promise me one thing. You are not allowed to walk in my footsteps.

• 1:13:38Speaker 06

  You will make your own. So, because I don't want you, because he's going to get compared to me, of course, you know, you know, I was undergraduate, high shooter, all that stuff in boot camp. He's living under that. And guess what he does? He gets Iron Man and High Shooter and undergraduate, gets E3 promotion, meritorious land school at boot camp. I've never heard of that in my life. So he's already kicking my ass and my brother's ass, who was also Iron Man and High Shooter and undergraduate and then became a Colonel, just retired. And now he's heading to the same path and the same footsteps that I stepped into and you know, like those, those fins, man, when he puts those feet down on that pool deck here coming up soon, he's going to kill it.

• 1:14:20Speaker 06

  And he's doing more now than I was doing, and I was pretty prepared going in. So I think my feelings at first was like pride. Man, he's, he's doing something that most people on the face of the planet would never do. Second emotion, fear, suffering. Just like the old saying, ignorance is bliss. He's ignorant right now. Wisdom is suffering. The pains that we have, the visions, the memories, the, the sounds, the smells, whatever

• 1:15:05Speaker 06

  it is from our past and our combat experience, is, is, is the suffering from how much we now know about it, how much we know about the world. I mean, look at the things we're talking about with the state of America, the border, the drugs, the, you name it, the sex trafficking, the wars, the corrupt, corruption, like, we didn't have that, at least we, I didn't remember that when I went in. I was like, going to go serve my country, put foot to ask for my, my country, you know, against evil people in the world, and that was all I had to worry about. Now our kids are joining the military with all of those things that we're talking about, and they hear podcasts, they hear guys talking about it. He has access to all this information and he's still choosing to join? That's where I go, why? Why are you joining? Because I want to make the world a better place. Okay.

• 1:15:49Speaker 06

  That's a really good start. And so, of course, a lot of people would say, "You sure you want your son joining the military in a time like this? You sure you want him working for this administration?" Of course not. But I worked for some shitty administrations too, just like you did, and just like a lot of us did, just like my grandfather did. There was people that were running the country back then that weren't the best. And you're always gonna have bad leaders, and so you're always gonna have bad people. And I think people forget in all the chaos and the bullshit in the world that we talk about all the time, it's like music, man. There's so much beautiful music in the world, just like the world is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place. The problem is, the bad is louder. That's it. So, my opinion is, the only way to fix a problem, like the problems we're having in a woke-ass

• 1:16:33Speaker 06

  military, in a government that's not prioritizing Americans first, etc., etc., is to put good people into that system, and stop quitting.

• 1:16:43Speaker 06

  Now, I get it, I'm a victim of quitting law enforcement because I was forced out because I was making too good of decisions. I was increasing people's hit probabilities and survivability rates, like astronomically and world record national highs and percentages around the country. Well, that puts out the improper psychological mindset to our communities that we're training killers, not police officers. So, shut it down. Like, "What do you mean? We only do four quals a year. Shut it down. You only need to do one a year." Why? You can't justify that to me? Then goodbye. And I had to throw my badge across the table, because I won't be a part of that when I know I can fight harder outside, on that system. So, I've not told him any of these things. I've not said, "Hey, here's all the corruption and stuff you're gonna be up against. Here's the things that you need to worry about."

• 1:17:27Speaker 06

  No. You need to worry about swimming, running, breath work, meditation. And I'm teaching him old cultural warrior ways, not the new stuff. Like, I'll see him get really stressed out, and all of a sudden, I start going...

• 1:17:47Speaker 06

  And then he goes, and I'm like, damn, I wish I had the senses to do that when I was younger.

• 1:17:53Speaker 06

  So it's not my job to tell him about all my horrors and my suffering and the wisdom that I have. I want him to be a little ignorant. I want him to go in with a good foundation and good parenting strategies, which we can pride ourselves on for, I think, doing a decent job in a hard life that we've all had. You know, broken foam divorces and trauma. Me, I was not the best guy, man. I wasn't around much. That's why I stopped. That's why I left the Marine Corps 15 years and tried to find something else, because I was confused. And I want him to find those lessons on his own.

• 1:18:27Shawn Ryan?

  What bothers you the most? What's your biggest fear about him potentially going to war?

• 1:18:38Speaker 06

  It's a selfish thing, I've realized. I don't want him to have the same darkness that maybe we have afterwards.

• 1:18:51Speaker 06

  But he's going to. And that's the choice he's making. That's the life he's manifesting. And I realize that if you're going to step up and take on that hardship of a life,

• 1:19:04Speaker 06

  I mean, just think about a pipeline alone. Who does that to themselves? Why would you want to, you know, be deprived of food and sleep and be wet and cold all the time and be beat down and mentally and physically exhausted at the end of every day for two solid years? Who does that to themselves? Very special people.

• 1:19:24Speaker 06

  And I know a lot of operators don't consider themselves special, and that's the problem. They are. They are special. And when you get out, you look back at your brothers and you look back at what you did, you're like, there's not a lot of dudes in the world that would do those types of things to themselves and with each other. And that's what creates the bond that we have. I'm excited for him to feel that. Really excited. All the great things that we've encountered in our lives and in the operational community, I want him to feel all of that. I'm scared that he'll feel all the bad. I'm not sure how he'll react to it. But that's the selfishness. That's why I have no business trying to...

• 1:20:00Speaker 06

  Change his physics because that's nonsensical. You can't have that conversation. That's like trying to change the position of the sun. You can't change somebody else's physics, man. And so I want him to be on this journey. I know he's going to be a savage, a compassionate savage. He cares. He's vulnerable. And I want him to find all the hard things and deal with them in his own way. And I hope that I have given him the best that I can with what I have, a structure of how to manage the stressors where I didn't have one. He's, he's gone through the passages, not medicine stuff, the meditation work, the cold stuff. He's a fighter. He, he knows what pain is. And that's the biggest lesson that I want him to understand is the, the difference between those two words, pain and suffering.

• 1:20:45Shawn Ryan?

  Do you worry that he is trying to live up to, to the life that you've manifested?

• 1:20:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's, that's another piece of it that I think when I heard marine first, I'm like, whoa, what? And then all of a sudden he goes, and I want to be a recon marine. I'm like, okay. I, I hope I didn't do something to make you think that you have to take that same path that I did. And after exploring that deeply with him, I don't think it is. I really don't because I had some buddies of mine, um, talked to him. I had him talk to a couple of my buddies that were former force guys, went to PJs down in Tucson, had him talk to a couple of buddies in CAG that came in. And, uh, my buddy in CAG, he's like, he's like, look, man, your son's not joining because he, he wants to be like you. Cause he, he went deep on him and, cause I told him the same exact thing.

• 1:21:35Speaker 06

  I said, man, I'm worried that he's doing this because I'm doing it. And he goes, no, man. He, he wants to get it out of the system. He wants to choose the hardest branch of service. He wants to get the badass uniform, wants to get the ass and he wants to go out and, and be hard. But he goes, I understand. And, and after talking to your son, he is extremely intellectual. Um, I said, yeah, he scored perfect on all his, his tests, a hundred percent on the ASVAB or 99, whatever that is. I was like, he could have any job he wanted, choose his recon. And he's like, he wants to take the hardest thing. And then he started asking me about our world. And I was like, oh, really? He's like, yeah. He goes, a kid like him in four or five years from now, we're going to look for him. That made me feel good, right?

• 1:22:20Speaker 06

  Because especially the hardships that Marines go through and the force reconnaissance or reconnaissance community, the Raiders are getting their, they're always constantly messed with by the Marine Corps. And that's why a lot of guys go contract. That's why a lot of guys go over to the dark side. They, they start their own companies. They get out and they do something different because they're, they're at this point of like, I, I think I've, I think I've maxed out what the Marine Corps can give me at this point. And it's getting better. I hope the Marine Corps starts learning their lesson and starts taking care of their people. Because you have the greatest organization of, of again, brotherhood and camaraderie and this crazy ass psychopathic compassionate fraternity of men that come together to go destroy evil that came together in a bar one night in Pennsylvania said, "We need to kill people." And they started a branch of service in a bar.

• 1:23:02Speaker 06

  Okay, that tells you a lot about the Marine Corps. So, I'm, I'm honored that he's a part of that. And I'm also, you know, I was grateful to hear, and when I started talking to him about, "Hey, what do you think about some special mission stuff?" Later on down the road, he's like, "Oh yeah." He goes, "I would absolutely love to do that." He goes, "I just, I love the water. I love the amphib side." I tried, I said, "Dude, I need you to come down to Cordado, work with some of the teams that I work with, some of my buddies down there. I want you to check out the naval special warfare side of the house." We go down there, hang out, talk to a bunch of my buddies, and he's like, "I'm just not, I don't, I don't feel it. I don't feel it." I was like, "Okay. What about pararescue? What about helping and saving lives, man? You know, so others may live concept." Introduced him, had him work with a team of guys that came in from Tucson, and he's like, "These dudes are badass."

• 1:23:46Speaker 06

  He goes, "They're, he goes incredibly talented. He goes, "I just don't like the medical side too much." I'm like, "All right, okay. What about ASOS? What about this? What about that?" No. I was like, "Well, what do you want to do then, bud?" "I don't know." Recruiter calls me, like, "Ah!" I tried. So I tried to introduce him to as many people as I could, and I think what he'll do is he'll take that path. He'll, he'll go up and then he'll, he'll cross deck and go to the CAG program. I think.

• 1:24:10Shawn Ryan?

  Have you thought about how you would handle it as a father if he doesn't make it?

• 1:24:20Speaker 06

  Of course, I've had that worry.

• 1:24:24Speaker 06

  And so with that worry, I've just said to him like, look, this is a hard life and not everybody makes this through on the first one. It's okay. It's okay if you don't make it through. Some of the selections or vettings or, or, or basic reconnaissance course. You know, so what I want you to do is think about, you know, the, the, the trusting side of the house, all the things that I ever taught you about the braving system, you know, the boundaries, the reliability, the accountability, the vault, the integrity, the non judgment, the generosity that you need to have as a leader before you go and outperform everybody else over here. Uh, I think Simon Sinek talked about that a little bit with SEAL teams. Like he always looks for the, the trusted and performer guy, you know, he's got his full graph that he talks about with that. But I'm like, no, that's, you need to understand what the anatomy

• 1:25:07Speaker 06

  of trust is first. And that is setting healthy boundaries. That is reliability. That is vulnerability and accountability of your actions. Uh, that is, you know, being a quiet professional because there's no such thing as a silent professional. That's something the military is messing us up with bad. That's the problem with a lot of these guys that get into going back to the stress and the PTSD, not to bounce around here, but like they're, they're taught to be a silent professional and that's a problem. There's a, look, again, define the words silent means what?

• 1:25:37Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing.

• 1:25:38Speaker 06

  Quiet, though, means hey, you guys keep your voices down.

• 1:25:42Speaker 06

  Um, you know, and I know, you know, the, the, the teams get their balls busted for writing books and making movies. I wish we did that. I wish we had 5,000 force recon Marines in the world, but we don't. We have maybe 400, actually it's up to 800 now. It's the highest it's ever been. When I was in, 300 dudes, 100 on the east coast, 100 on the west coast, 100 in Okinawa, Japan. That's it. And then your reserve guys, you guys have like 5,000 Navy SEALs in the world right now, or something like that. Uh, why? Because you guys are good at marketing and storytelling and, um, you know, regardless of people busting balls, the Marine Corps won't do that. You look on, on their Instagram channels, you'll have a recon Marine doing something, jumping out of an airplane. It'll say, US Marines doing this, conducting this exercise here and there. I'm like, why don't you talk about it? That's the quiet side. I'm trying to get people to do more of. And so I'm a shocked

• 1:26:25Speaker 06

  that he came to me and, and wanted to do that because I've never really talked about it much of what I did in force recon.

• 1:26:31Shawn Ryan?

  You know, some, I think about this all the time and, you know, I

• 1:26:37Shawn Ryan?

  I really hope my kid doesn't want to join the military. I'd rather him go another path, but I, you know, I think about it all the time and as a dad, and he's, he's three, but he's starting to get into,

• 1:26:54Shawn Ryan?

  he's starting to show a lot more interest in dad. Took him fishing for the first time not long ago, took him camping for the first time not long ago. Do a lot of family hikes, ATV rides, shit like that. And, you know, one of the things that I just always think about is,

• 1:27:13Shawn Ryan?

  is what if he does

• 1:27:16Shawn Ryan?

  try to walk in my footsteps, especially, you know, the career.

• 1:27:25Shawn Ryan?

  It sounds weird, but, uh, cause I'm talking about my own career, but I could see how a kid would be impressed with the military career that I've experienced.

• 1:27:38Shawn Ryan?

  And then to expound on that, the, the podcast that I'm doing now, you know, we're bringing on guys like you and, and, and lots of

• 1:27:50Shawn Ryan?

  soft, so calm, tier one types and, and I wouldn't necessarily say that we glorify it, but, um,

• 1:28:01Shawn Ryan?

  it's everywhere.

• 1:28:02Speaker 06

  You're telling a history and history is important.

• 1:28:04Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, you know, so something that I, that I think often about is even that if he does want to, if he does go that route, which I hope he doesn't, but, uh, if he does, what

• 1:28:20Shawn Ryan?

  how do you let your son know that you're

• 1:28:26Shawn Ryan?

  proud of him? If he fails and what you've succeeded in?

• 1:28:36Shawn Ryan?

  I think that would be the one of the toughest.

• 1:28:40Speaker 06

  I've, I've shared this with him and I think being transparent is important to your kids about those types of things. Um, and saying, look, it was not easy for me. There's things that I failed at. There's things that, um, I, I never thought I would be able to get through and some of them I didn't. And I said, you're gonna find those times. I said, you know, just like you jumped into wrestling in the last two years of your life and you skyrocketed to the top, man. You took top state championships and, and a short amount of time. But how many fights did you lose? He's like, oh, a lot, dad. I said, exactly. So you're gonna continue to lose a lot of fights, especially on this journey. Um, you're not, you're not gonna be the star athlete in this game. You're gonna be with 60 other dudes that are also almost on the same level as you at certain

• 1:29:24Speaker 06

  points in time. Now, of course, you got your tool bags and you got your high performers. Uh, but the mid-range of everybody's gonna be pushing everybody and, and that's, that's what's gonna be addicting to be around those types of guys that wanna push themselves that hard and be that miserable in order to put foot to ass for their country. That says a lot about them and that's what makes it a special organization. Um, so I've, I've shared those, those times like you, you will fail. You understand that, right? And I said, just because I failed, um, doesn't mean I didn't go back and try again. I said, so if you fail it, that doesn't mean you don't, you don't, you go back to the Marine Corps needs, you, you go back to another unit, like you can take that indoc again later. It's gonna happen. Um, there's times I had to spend two and a half years as an

• 1:30:07Speaker 06

  infantryman before I was even allowed to take an indoc. I said, son, you're on a contract. You get to go out of boot camp and walk right into the reconnaissance training center. Like, that's awesome, right? And I said, but I had to live through failure for two years before I even got my chance. And I just so happened to be lucky to pass the vetting and indoc to get into that. But then I failed miserably down the road. I failed at a lot of stuff. And so, I said, when that happens, don't hang your head low and walk away. So, um, you know, and I, of course, I've taught him, don't ever, don't ever ring the bell concept, you know, that's not, that's not in your, in your life. It's a love story. So I, I have shared that with him. I've shared the love story of what it's like to, to want to do that. You know, like when you were kids and you

• 1:30:51Speaker 06

  had a poster on your wall and it had the cool guy stuff. Um, You know, like kids watch the commercials nowadays of the of the special operations guys jumping and diving and doing cool coming out of the water. And it's like, damn, I wish I had that one as a kid. I had that stupid Marine Corps poster with the guy with the K painting a K bar on his LC one. It's like, that was it. It's all I had. And I just happened to find reconnaissance and never studied any other branches of service, never studied SEALs, never studied Air Force, any of that stuff. Even my dad was in the Air Force. I just just gravitated towards this path. And so I think, you know, he is extremely lucky to be in this opportunity to where I think he's set up for success. Because I know there's

• 1:31:33Speaker 06

  a big, they've changed the programs quite a bit, which makes me feel better about his success, because right now, basic recon course has like a 98% pass rate. And people are like, wait, that's a basic school, man. It should be more like BUDs, because but that's a problem with BUDs now, too, because I know you've been talking to a lot of people about that. But I heard last year that they had like a 71% attrition rate. Well, that's a lot of money and a lot of time they're spending. So where's the preparation courses for these guys before they even go into it? That's what recon's doing now. So they're doing a, like, he's starting five weeks of MART, which is Marines Awaiting Reconnaissance Training. Then he goes into a five-week reconnaissance training assessment program where they really start squeezing them and try to figure out who's going to be candidates to go to

• 1:32:14Speaker 06

  to BRC. And then they'll have 13 weeks, basically, on top of their infantry training they just got out of, on top of 13 weeks of boot camp, which is more infantry training in. So they already have a good infantry skill set with land navigation and basic patrols and formations and stuff like that, where I know if you're a Navy side, it's hard to get that if you're not in an infantry-based job. So you're you're trying to get into that school, and then you're learning all the combat tactics. So I think the Marine Corps and the Army has that side a little bit better. And so they've realized that that's the last place we need to have a high attrition rate. Let's burn them out before they even get there, because then we can send them back to infantry or the Marine Corps' needs, before we waste a ton of money or a million bucks into BRC. And so now they've they've they've pretty

• 1:32:56Speaker 06

  much capped that 98%, which is awesome. So I have a good feeling. And he goes, I said, what's the 2% to the staff at CYIC out there? And he goes, it's DORs. It's guys that's still at that point. They get all the way through that, and they get to BRC. I'm like, I just, I changed my mind. I don't want to do this. And that 2%, that's pretty damn good. Yeah. So I think those preparation programs are are very important nowadays. Well, I didn't have that. I just, I took leave to take an indoc, to sneak out of my unit, because my unit's like, you ain't going to recon, you're a light armored reconnaissance Marine. I'm like, that's not recon, that's a tank. I'm driving around and I hate my life. It's hot, it's fucking steamy and and there's sand on my body all the time and I want to go in the water. And they're like, too

• 1:33:37Speaker 06

  bad. So I took leave and I prepped for the indoc. And I found a guy at the pool one day, I had a recon jack on his arm, where we typically tattoo it. And I said, hey, how do I get to recon? He said, just come to Camp Pendleton, take an indoc. I said, just, just come take it? I said, but how do I do that? My unit won't let me. And he's like, bro, if you pass the indoc, recon owns you. Your unit can't do shit about it. I was like, so I had to find out the hard way. And me and a best friend of mine took the indoc and took a week off, went to Camp Pendleton, did surf drills and did everything we thought we needed to do and pass the indoc. And we were three out of 53 people to pass. That's it.

• 1:34:13Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:34:13Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so I, and they said, all right, good job, guys. We'll do your psyche valves. And they send us back to our unit. And they said, in a few months, we'll call you and and get your orders out here. And then six months goes by. And then finally, all of a sudden, orders show up. And dude, I got hammered, started major screaming at me like, what the fuck is this? And I'm just sitting there smiling, big shit in my face. And he's like, you're gonna fail, and you're gonna come back here, you're gonna make your life miserable. And that motivated me. I was like, well, I'm damn sure not feeling it. I don't want to come back to your ass. So I tell him those kind of stories as well. That's, that's, you know, the potential of failure is is greater than that I think he has now. And plus, the kid, like I said, he's a savage, man. He's, he's

• 1:34:53Speaker 06

  swimming 15,000 meters a week before he goes. He's deep into the deep end fitness program that I run with a friend of mine in Scottsdale, under Prime Hall, and the guys that you've had on your show before. And that's, I'm just seeing these kids, man. We got about 10 kids in contract right now in our deep end fitness program. I mean, I would have died to have had an eighth of the training that these kids are getting now. So the resilience and the water survivability stuff and the things they're doing is tenfold more so than what they'll even get in BUDS or or Special Warfare and Air Force or reconnaissance training.

• 1:35:27Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:35:28Speaker 06

  So I'm not as worried.

• 1:35:29Shawn Ryan?

  What is the?

• 1:35:32Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure you've had a lot of talks. What is one piece, and I'm sure he's gonna watch this. What is a piece of advice that you haven't given him yet? That you want him to know?

• 1:36:06Speaker 06

  To soul-search what compassion truly means to the warrior. I believe compassion is the number one trait of a warrior. Why I say that is because, you know, a lot of people would say, "Well, what do you mean? What does that have to do with warfare or gunfighting?" I'm like, "Well, it kinda has everything to do with it." Because if you think about it, the more I care about something, the harder I'm gonna fight for it. It's like if somebody broke into my house and tried to hurt me or my family, and I'm sitting on the curb afterwards, and the cops are like, "Hey, what happened? Why did you shoot that guy 15 times?" I'm not gonna say the typical answer that most people might say, "Well, because his

• 1:36:51Speaker 06

  evil motive or intention, or his capabilities and all the stuff that we have a legal justification of why I did it." That would be reasons, considerations, and potentially excuses of why I did it. The deeper meaning is, "I did it because I care about something so much more precious than that piece of shit, my family. That's why I did it. I didn't wanna do it." The last thing a man that wants, that's seen violence, as you know very well, is more violence. But I will take his ass out of the street and skin him alive and light his ass on fire to make a spectacle for everybody to see what not to mess with. It's like that American flag on the wall. Same thing. I care about that. I care about what it means.

• 1:37:32Speaker 06

  And so that compassion is what drives us to go out and put foot to ask for our country. And...

• 1:37:40Speaker 06

  We forget that at times, and I want him to remember that. That no matter what you're going through, no matter how much pain or suffering you're in, remember how much you give a shit.

• 1:37:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's a great piece of advice.

• 1:38:00Speaker 06

  And the world will be a better place if we all just cared a little bit more.

• 1:38:05Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Let's take a break.

• 1:38:10Shawn 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 in 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

• 1:38:55Shawn Ryan?

  that 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 gonna 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 gonna spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But, like

• 1:39:40Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 1:39:53Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Travis, we're back from the break. Let's get back to you. You're going to, you went in the Marine Corps. You got into reconnaissance. How'd it go?

• 1:40:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I, um, I, uh, like I took that leave, got my orders back about six months later, pissed off my command, uh, got what I wanted, went out there and, uh, loved it. Now, again, I, I'm, I've never seen in my life as a Florida boy, never been in the snow, ever, never saw snow, ever, uh, never saw mountains, you know, came from a small, you know, farm type family, didn't have a whole lot of means, mom and dad worked their ass off for everything we had. Um, and so we didn't take a lot of family vacations unless it was like Disneyland or something like that, which was huge for us, you know? And so I get out there and all of a sudden I fall in love with the mountains in the Rock and California and mountain warfare schools and I just hit every school I could possibly

• 1:40:49Speaker 06

  go to, um, and spent some time out there. Uh, did my first enlistment, got in a relationship, very young and dumb relationship, typical Marine, 21-year-old story, Vegas, I'll just throw that in there.

• 1:41:06Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, Vegas.

• 1:41:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. And, uh...

• 1:41:11Shawn Ryan?

  The old shotgun wedding?

• 1:41:12Speaker 06

  The old shotgun wedding, literally at the chapel of the bells, which was the same, uh, that Chevy Chase in the Vegas, same, same church.

• 1:41:20Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on, we gotta go into this. Let's, let's, how did this happen?

• 1:41:23Speaker 06

  All right. So I check into First Recon Company, um, back before it was a battalion, so some guy's like, what's a recon company? Like, it was First Recon Company at the time, uh, the battalion had disbanded and came back later. And when I check in, I check into the headquarters of the battalion where these, these, uh, girls were working, secretaries, S1, Abin. And they check us in and, you know, my buddy's like, hey, they're pretty cute, let's, let's ask them out. So we both ask them out, start dating both of them, and in two weeks, we're both in Vegas getting married.

• 1:41:56Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 1:41:56Speaker 06

  Um, I don't think I've ever told this story before, out loud. So, he comes home first and goes, dude, now we're surfing, man. We're like living California life. We're just trying to be the bachelors that, you know, we're finally at recon. And, uh, I mean, we're still ropes. We're still in the recon indoctrination program at this point. And he comes home and says, dude, check it out. I got married this weekend. I'm like, what? What are you talking about? Who are you? What do you mean you got married this weekend? He's like, no, check it out. They both work in admin, right? This was an old school thing. I don't suggest anybody do this. That's watching.

• 1:42:31Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I think I know where this is going.

• 1:42:33Speaker 06

  And they can go into accounting and cause both being active duty, you get dual comrades and BAH, housing allowance. And so you can then move out in town when you get this and get an apartment and live the bachelor life. And then we get it in and all and go our separate ways. And that didn't work out. Um, cause she ended up getting pregnant about four months later. Um, and I'm in jump school at this point, or no, I'm still in, I'm still in the indoctrination program. And, and I think BRC started coming around and then jump school and all that stuff. The, there was, the pipeline wasn't the way it was back, back today. Um, so I'm like, when are we going to get this in all? When are we going to get this in all? And she's like, I was like, we haven't told our parents anything. Nobody knows about this.

• 1:43:17Speaker 06

  And she's like, I'm pregnant. And I'm like, uh, what the hell do we do? So we tried to make that work the best we could for about a year and a half. I even got out of the Marine Corps, moved back to Florida with her and Travis Jr., my oldest.

• 1:43:33Speaker 06

  And I was an electrician growing up. My dad was a big electrician. So I went to job, went to work for a buddy. Um, and went to the police academy every night for 26 weeks. I'll just be a cop, man. I'm no longer a Marine. So I do that for about 10 months. Uh, I start working on my post certification for Orange County Sheriff's Office out of Florida to become a deputy. And the guys I'm working with, the field training officers, my recruiter that I'd hang out with and drink beer every night. And I'm just miserable. He's like, dude, sign the papers, go back in. What are you doing? You're miserable. I'm like, I just. No, I gotta be a family man now. I'm just gonna become a cop and I'll be fine. No, do you sign up? I'm not signing the papers. Stop, Dave.

• 1:44:15Speaker 06

  And then, uh, and then everybody was just busting my balls. You're not ready to be a cop yet, man. And so I go home. We didn't get along too well. We were just totally different personalities. And I said, look, I'm sorry. I need to go back and do what I, I set out in my life to do. And so after that 10-month break, I contact the recruiter. I walk in and say, hey, man, give me those papers right now. And he's like, well, I can't get you to recon. I'm like, what do you mean you can't? I'm a recon Marine. What do you mean you can't get me to recon? And he says, I've got, I look, he goes, I got a buddy up at 22 Scout Sniper Platoon, the Staple Toon. He goes, they need a chief scout right now. I'm gonna send you up there, go over to recon, tell them that you're, you're stuck in the infantry and they'll suck you back over.

• 1:44:57Speaker 06

  And I'm like, okay, that's crazy. Why the hell would I go to a sniper platoon? I'm not, I'm not a stay guy. I'm a recon guy. That's not gonna work. And he's like, you'll be fine. Don't worry. So I did it and it was actually a great opportunity to run, you know, Sniper Command Centers and understand that world because I never understood it before being in a reconnaissance side of the house. Um, and so I, I on the job trained in those, with those guys for about nine months. Whenever the sergeant major said, hey, I'm a recon Marine at, at an infantry unit, he's like, what the hell are you doing over there? I said, they told me that they're not taking sergeants at the time back into recon. And he's like, what are you talking about? We need sergeants like crazy. So again, recruiting commands are all screwed up. So I had to go through this whole process when I could've just went back to recon. And then, so they, they found a seat and Second Force Recon, one of the platoons needed a guy.

• 1:45:41Speaker 06

  So I stepped into that and jumped right back into Force Recon and.

• 1:45:45Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. So hold on, let me replay this for you, just so I'm tracking here. So you, you've wanted to be a Force Recon Marine since you were nine years old.

• 1:45:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:56Shawn Ryan?

  You joined the Marine Corps at 18. You become a reconnaissance Marine two years later. You have a fling. You guys get married so that you get the BAH money and you can move out of town only to get out of the military and become a fucking cop.

• 1:46:10Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:46:12Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, Travis. What the fuck?

• 1:46:14Speaker 06

  Totally gets everything that I wanted to do in my life, right? But that was what was happening and I've learned very.

• 1:46:21Speaker 06

  Well, I've learned the hard way that, hey man, what happened, happened. And it happened exactly the way it happened and it didn't happen any other way. You know why? Because it didn't. And so, I get back on my journey and, and so I just had, I had like, I don't know, I wouldn't call it a pause.

• 1:46:37Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:46:37Speaker 06

  It was, I was, that was meant, that was meant to happen for some reason. And of course, I have an amazing, incredible son. You know, Travis Stewart, he's a frigging, he's, he's, he's my, my first love, man. My first kid. And, uh, um, he's working on becoming a professional fisherman, uh, electrician, um, and just all around, just awesome. And,

• 1:47:01Speaker 06

  what, what month is it? I don't even know what month it is.

• 1:47:03Shawn Ryan?

  It's November.

• 1:47:05Speaker 06

  In two months, I've become a granddaddy.

• 1:47:07Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 1:47:09Speaker 06

  So I'm excited about that.

• 1:47:10Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 1:47:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's giving, he's giving me and everybody a wonderful gift. So, um, and of course, that was a struggle though.

• 1:47:18Shawn Ryan?

  The, the one question I have is, wait, how long after you got married, did you get out of the military?

• 1:47:26Speaker 06

  That, that stint with that marriage?

• 1:47:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:28Speaker 06

  It was pretty tight towards the end of that. It was about a year and a half. So, we dated, did the thing, got to recon about two and a half years. And then at the end of that enlistment, I had to make a decision to, to stay in and, and continue to deploy and stuff, which she was not having that. And she was like, we need to just get out, get away from the military. And so on my first, I was on a small extension and I said, I'm, I'm done. I'm leaving.

• 1:47:54Shawn Ryan?

  So was it a, so what was it? A year and a half of marriage before you got out?

• 1:47:58Speaker 06

  About a year and a half, I think, if I remember back.

• 1:48:00Shawn Ryan?

  That's not very much money in BAH Travis.

• 1:48:03Speaker 06

  Right? So now, so then I get out and I'm working as electrician from five in the morning until six at night, going from the law enforcement kind of six at night to about 10 at night, every day for 26 weeks. And I was like, this is, I want to go back and just malinger in the maroon core.

• 1:48:20Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. For those that are wondering what BAH is, BAH is a housing allowance that you get in the military.

• 1:48:26Speaker 06

  That was, back then I remember seven hundred and like nine dollars a month more to live in an apartment in California. Nowadays it's just a little different, but yeah, you're right. It wasn't a lot of money.

• 1:48:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:38Speaker 06

  But no, I deployed, um, you know, I went, caused as many deployments as I could do when I got to second force recon.

• 1:48:45Shawn Ryan?

  Did you deploy, did you, did you deploy with reconnaissance before you left the first time?

• 1:48:51Speaker 06

  No, not on the west coast.

• 1:48:52Shawn Ryan?

  So, where was your first deployment?

• 1:48:54Speaker 06

  It was all schools, all workups. And that's what pissed me off so bad is that I felt like I was leaving my guys down. Cause now I gotta get out and I'm, I'm just now fully getting schooled up. I didn't go to dive school yet, cause dive school was a hard seat to get back then. Um, and then I'm like, I gotta go guys. And I remember Gunny Smith, Ed Smith, I'm sure a lot of the recon dude dudes out there listening know that man's name.

• 1:49:17Speaker 06

  He tried to keep me. He's like, you're an idiot. Don't do this. Come on, man. And he screamed and yelled at me and I was like, I just had to take care of my son now. He's like, we all got kids. We all gotta take care, but the Marine Corps needs you. And I was like, I wasn't listening at that point. And I wish I would have, but again, everything happens for a reason and I maybe I wouldn't be sitting here if those things wouldn't have happened to me.

• 1:49:37Shawn Ryan?

  What year is this?

• 1:49:39Speaker 06

  This would have been ninety eight ish.

• 1:49:42Shawn Ryan?

  Ninety, so not a lot going on in the world anyways.

• 1:49:45Speaker 06

  No, not at all. And, uh, so maybe that was something else too. I'm like, okay, I've spent an entire enlistment here. Nothing's happened and maybe I can just get a, become a cop and take care of my kid now. I fucked up. I'm ashamed of myself, you know, now I gotta figure out how to be a dad and live a life. And then I realized how hard it was. And so, um, I went back in and just fell in love with that love story again, you know, of, of, of being the image that I wanted to become when I was nine, 10 years old. And started schooling out heavily.

• 1:50:20Shawn Ryan?

  What year did you come back in?

• 1:50:21Speaker 06

  Ninety eight.

• 1:50:22Shawn Ryan?

  You came?

• 1:50:23Speaker 06

  Ninety nine. It would have been ninety nine that I came back in. Yeah.

• 1:50:25Shawn Ryan?

  So you were out for like a year, maybe less?

• 1:50:28Speaker 06

  It was less than a year. It was like 10, almost 10, 10 and a half months, maybe if I had to guess. Um. Yeah, it took me a little bit to get in the academy, get my job scored away. And then by the time I graduated the LE Academy, it was 26 weeks later. And I'm like, no, I'm going, I'm getting in. So then I get back to Sega Force, I deploy, couple of combat tours on that.

• 1:50:50Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you go?

• 1:50:51Speaker 06

  That was first wave invasion Mosul. We were the first troops into northern Iraq. And we went off the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. So we're already floating and cutting circles.

• 1:51:03Shawn Ryan?

  So you, so you went in and then did what? You went back in 99, four years, and then finally deployed into a combat room?

• 1:51:11Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, but yeah, what, 2000?

• 1:51:14Shawn Ryan?

  That's some patience.

• 1:51:15Speaker 06

  Oh, 99, I went into Kosovo, which all we did was fill gaps with the SAS there. We saw some interesting stuff. You know, we got some mortars fired on us and navigated around a bunch of landmines for a long time, working with the SAS. So a lot of guys wouldn't consider that a combat deployment, but as an active, like, we're going in and working against the Serbs. Because they were the ones we were watching at the time. So, and then I did a golf deployment in Somalia, I was telling you about, when I first came in, just hit the fleet at 3rd Light Armored Recon Constant, Italian, 29 Palms, boom, balloon goes up, going over, and I spent four months over there on boats and working around, watching people fight over bags of rices on the docks, securing the pier facilities.

• 1:52:00Speaker 06

  So that was cool, because that was, that was first thing, man, first, first step on the parade deck into 29 Palms, just getting out of boot camp in School of Infantry, I'm on a plane heading over to Kuwait. So, I was like, I'm doing it. And then I get this stagnant, like, nothing, this happens, and then I get out, come back in, 99, Kosovo, I'm like, alright, things are starting to happen now, and then 2003 kicks off. And, uh, I was, 2003 is when Det 1, if you remember, the, the first Marine Special Operations team was hand-selected, with Gunny Oates and those guys. Out of 500 candidates that were selected, I was one of them with two other guys in my platoon to go to Det 1. But, me and, and, and I think it was Brian Moss and Ricochet and Sean Mickel, we got selected and, uh...

• 1:52:49Speaker 06

  I remember us having to kind of come to Jesus, meaning like we were already, we're already done with the shooting package, we're ready to deploy. And I was like, I don't think I can leave my guys. And because we got a 25 man tight team that's been working together for six months, we're ready to hit stuff. And so we decided to stay back. And then Sean gets injured and he goes. So he couldn't go on deployment anyway. So he healed up and actually, I think he went and did part of the Det 1 stuff. So then Marine Special Operations is founded and I'm overseas on, on deployment. We get the call to go into Mosul. We stopped in the Cyprus, flew in. And it was a, the battalion landing team from the Mew was supposed

• 1:53:27Speaker 06

  to come in through Turkey. And we land into Mosul in the middle of the night. AAA fire, things on fire flying in. And we're supposed to be going up against the Iraqi 10th Corps Army, which is 10,000 troops. And from what our intel reports were, we, birds take off, we're sitting there in the grass all night long, kind of waiting, find out on comms, hey, BLT is not being authorized to break through the Turkish border, you're on your own. And we're like, okay. So we ended up setting out sniper teams and figuring out the situation before we could finally get other people in there. There was an ODA working in town that we finally linked up with, and a couple of agency dudes running around. Got us some, got in some firefights.

• 1:54:12Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the first one.

• 1:54:13Speaker 06

  Firefight?

• 1:54:14Shawn Ryan?

  Your first firefight.

• 1:54:16Speaker 06

  It's fucking hilarious. So there's a learning lesson on this one, too, that I, it really started making me think about the science, you know, because everybody kind of calls me the science guy in the shooting world a little bit. We were rolling through the ASPs and to describe Mosul, it's a, you know, when you're out in the fields, it's a beautiful rolling, for those that haven't seen it, like grassy plains, you can see for 10,000, it's like 10 clicks, man, you can just see forever. Now, the ASP, which is an ammo supply point, south of the airfield, is one of the biggest ASPs in the world. EOD

• 1:54:59Speaker 06

  guy said it would take like 10 years to systematically clear this thing out. So our job is to go in and secure the ASPs so nobody could get access to all that ordinance. And it was a lot of ordinance, 300 foot deep tunnels and these structures in the ground that kept all their artillery missiles and stuff in and SCUDs. Also looking for chem labs was one of our missions. And so we go out and roll, this is like day four, I think, in country. And the BLT's starting to finally come in and we're like, alright, we're gonna go push out and get out into our AO. And there was four IFAB commando jeeps, six man team in each jeep. So you got a whole platoon of force recon guys.

• 1:55:44Speaker 06

  And our last platoon was probably one of the most stacked platoons in history, I'd have to imagine. I think by the end of deployment, everybody got promoted. It was, I wanna say there was like five or six gunnies in the platoon, which is unheard of, and you know, E7s in the platoon. Everybody else was staff sergeants, which is more like an ODA team, how that would be structured, not necessarily a force recon team where you have a gunny, you know, maybe a staff sergeant, all sergeants as team leaders, and then everybody else is kind of sergeants most of the time. So everybody, I mean, I think we had like 17 school-trained snipers in our platoon, which most scout sniper platoons don't even have that. I think we had like five free fall jump masters, most of us were tandem masters and just dive

• 1:56:29Speaker 06

  supervisor, I mean, it was stacked, man. So, and I'm staging that because of the amount of experience that was in this platoon, you know, looking back laughing now, we're rolling down this hill and we come around, we see this little building in the middle of nowhere, there's nothing else for miles and miles and miles. And the building was probably about 5, 6,000 square feet, one story, couple of windows and a door on the front.

• 1:56:54Speaker 06

  And all of a sudden, I hear one of the guys in the front, Ed, he goes, "Light it up." And we're like, "What the hell?" And I remember hearing something that didn't sound right. But I didn't hear, like, it wasn't that good, the traditional snaps. But I heard something. I was like, "What the fuck is that noise?" And then all of a sudden, I hear "pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup." And I'm like, "Oh shit, we're getting shot at." Now, we're tailing Charlie. And Brian Moss, I believe, who was driving at the time, he just retired. Congratulations, Brian, by the way, if he sees this. And he pulls off through the rocks, and I'm on the 50, trying to get on this window. And it was a left side window that was shooting at us.

• 1:57:36Speaker 06

  And so, I'm like, "Brian, stop, stop, stop." And he's like, "I can't, let me all shape." Because he's trying to pull away so we can pound the building. And I was like, "Fuck it." So I throw the 50 down, I bring up my M4, and I pulled that trigger so fast, man, it was probably three seconds that gun was out of ammo. And I remember coming down, now he stops the vehicle. And I'm like, "Nope." I had a ready mag system on, so I drop a mag, put another mag in, and I remember going, "Damn it, use your 40 Mike Mike." So I'm like, so I grabbed the 203. And one of the policies that I've always had for my teams, and even that team, a lot of us carried them 203s, because if we were in a contact, you know, as a six or four-man recon team, put their heads down, man, put some heat on them first, you know, to make them think

• 1:58:20Speaker 06

  that you're bigger than what you are. And so, my brain just clicked into that mode, it's like, "Hey, pump a 40 Mike Mike into the building, because I don't know where this is really necessarily coming from, except for that window, which everybody was identifying."

• 1:58:31Shawn Ryan?

  40 Mike Mike is a grenade launcher for you civilians.

• 1:58:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, the 40 millimeter grenade, little tube underneath your rifle. And it's already locked and loaded, so I take the safety off, come up. And I remember the first time in my life going... Where the hell do I put the red dot on my aim point? Cause you don't typically shoot a 40 millimeter. This is exactly 50 meters on the road. I mapped it out afterwards. And so I was thinking like from top of the window, maybe a couple of feet above the window. So it's like, you know, fired and went in and detonated and blew up the window. And, uh, um, then I remember, I think Ed sees mine go in the window. So he decides to fire his and it goes like 150 meters over the building. Cause you know, your, your brain goes to what it knows. It's like, and it's like, God damn it. So I busted

• 1:59:16Speaker 06

  his balls for that for a while. We spent, I think, I think three of the 50 cows were almost empty. Okay. Everybody shot at least a mag.

• 1:59:27Shawn Ryan?

  On one window?

• 1:59:27Speaker 06

  Two 40 mic mics were fired. And I think some of the pintle mounted two 40s were, were run down pretty good to at least a hundred rounds were needed to swap a belt. Um, and I'm just like, this building looks like Swiss cheese. I've got to.

• 1:59:40Shawn Ryan?

  That sounds very Marine Corps.

• 1:59:42Speaker 06

  Yeah. But not, I mean, again, going back to the experience of us, right? You think we'd like, oh, there he is. Done. Hey, high five. Let's move on. This building was falling apart, man. We were done with it. And I remember us kind of having a, especially our team having to come to Jesus meeting afterwards, being like, Hey man, if you're gonna pop that puppy's can, don't grease them so hard next time, man. Cause we're almost out of ammo. We gotta go back and refit and regroup now before we can continue our patrol that we just started. Um, and that was kind of the first funny thing. So that, that really triggered me. And I look back on a lot of the stories that, that we have, and whether it's buddies or personal situations that I was in, like that bothered me that I didn't know where to hold that, that red dot. Cause I'm like, well, they don't let us shoot high explosive grenades out of

• 2:00:24Speaker 06

  a two or three in 50 meters in training. Um, I've heard they've done some programs like that now. Cause I know the guys were trying to breach doors with them and stuff. Um, and I started realizing, why, wait a minute, hold on. I don't even remember seeing my red dot for the 30 rounds that I fired before that. Why not? And then I started studying ocular science and I ended up hiring three ocular scientists at Haley Strategic to try to help me understand why we see things a certain way. How can we understand how our eyes can be better? How can I be faster? Uh, how can I increase my visual acuity? Um, how can I calm myself down under critical stress? So every time you get under critical stress, gunfight. Or if you remember back to high school fighting, you're just like going crazy.

• 2:01:09Speaker 06

  It's like, that's the amygdala hijack. That's the, the chimp paradox. Great book. If, if nobody's ever read that, by the way, if they want to know more about that. Um, it's like, once a chimp comes out of the cage, you can't control him. Cause if we had a chimpanzee here right now, we started pissing him off and got in a fight with him. Who's gonna win? He will tear your ass limb from limb. So like, that's your emotions. That's your affect and you need to keep him in the trunk. And, and that's my biggest thing. And one, going back to the medicine and stuff we talked about earlier. I finally met my snake. It's a snake in my world. And I was able to keep him at bay. I'm like, say, hey, I don't need you. I don't need you anymore. You keep fucking up my life. You keep making me talk to my wife the wrong way. You made me treat my children in a way that I don't want to treat them.

• 2:01:53Speaker 06

  You come out when you're not needed, man. Stay asleep. I'll come get you when I need you. And you've done a lot of help for me in my life. You've been there when I needed to destroy things.

• 2:02:03Speaker 06

  But not anymore. I'm in control now. So that's what it kind of helped me with. And so anyways, when you go into this critical stress, this body alarm response that we call it, this blood flow increases to the center field of your vision, which eliminates the possibility for a near sight focus. Which, what have we been taught all our life with handguns? Clear front sight, clear front sight, clear front sight. Well, guess what you can't, you cannot get in critical stress is a clear front sight. So it's like, well, what do you mean? We've been taught that all our life. What do I do? Well, that's where I broke it up into, you have a clear front sight, which I would categorize as precision sight picture. Hostage situation, long target. And then stress sight picture. Well, stress sight picture is when I walk up to a vehicle

• 2:02:46Speaker 06

  and go, hey, good evening, ma'am. I'm Deputy Haley with America. Whoa, and I start doing the matrix and drawing a gun and coming back and I'm getting shot at. Your, your eyes are going to immediately change in geometry. That's the thing. That's the key.

• 2:03:01Speaker 06

  Wishing I knew this information back then, so I may have had better solutions or better, more files in my file box to pull from. When the geometry of the lens, the gushy white ball, changes shape and flattens out, this is looking this way, there are ciliary muscles that go everywhere on the eye. And those ciliary muscles will contract and then flattens the geometry of the lens, which eliminates your possibility to see near focus. It does what? It's a natural defense mechanism for humans to go, hey, the bear is attacking me. Throw the spear, throw the rock, punch, do whatever. So it's like, well, why do we teach that in firearms when nobody else teaches that? Baseball players don't have to go clear red threads, clear red threads and throw all the way from a mound to a pitcher and be perfect.

• 2:03:45Speaker 06

  A sword fighter never said clear sword tip, clear sword tip and stab. You know what I mean? So like, nobody's ever had to do that and now suddenly introduce modern firearms and screw up the way our eyes naturally defend ourself. So it's like, well, what's the answer? And that's when I started working back and forth with a lot of doctors to figure out like, hey, I couldn't see this then. Why? Okay. Here we go. We start diving into it. I understand the eyes. Then we start doing tests back and forth and going, whoa, okay. So we need to have some other type of sighting system, which would be stress sight pitcher. What does that mean? Learn to shoot with my iron sights by focusing downrange on the target. It's a simple plane adjustment is all it is. And then some people are like, well, that's all you had to say. Well, I know, but it took me so long to figure out and dive into, you know, ocular experts

• 2:04:30Speaker 06

  to understand how my eye actually works to come up with a simple solution to go precision sight pitcher. I've got time working for me. Hostage situation. Some guys would say time's not working for you, but you're not coming into a room and going, hey, that's my briefcase, bro. And Tom Cruise and I'm in the street. You're going to be very precise with that shot, even if it is at speed. Your brain will switch in those situations. And what I say is that when the threat is bigger than the threat itself, it might be confusing. If I'm in a hostage situation, I go home and I find a man or threat holding my wife or kids.

• 2:05:04Shawn Ryan?

  When the threat is bigger than the threat itself?

• 2:05:07Speaker 06

  Yes. And so to give you this example, if you walked in and saw horrible case scenario, your wife or child, or somebody that you love or care about being held at gunpoint or knife point, what's the biggest threat?

• 2:05:20Shawn Ryan?

  Your wife dying.

• 2:05:24Speaker 06

  Not the guy with the gun or the knife. So the biggest threat now is, oh my God, the most precious thing in my life might die. If I screw up. So you might want to take some time and then make sure you see your sights. I talked to a lot of guys that have taken shots on hostages or S V S guys. I had a buddy in CAG that took a shot like this. And he said he remembered calculating the brain box math as he's coming around the corner. Hitting a guy on the bed with his wife and kid. About to go higher order, like movie type shit. And I was like, whoa, wait, that's you saw that? Okay, describe that to me. I'm nerding out on what he's seeing because the situation's like, okay, it happens. But and then you ask cops the same thing. Yeah, I remember seeing my sights, just like I was trained. Really?

• 2:06:08Speaker 06

  It was nine PM, you're sprinting down an alley, shooting at a guy at 27 meters. And you hit him once in the back of the head with a single shot fired, single handedly, mind you. Just like you're training? I want to hire, I want to go work for that department. That's how you guys train? Well, that's what I had to write down in my report. Oh, okay, you didn't see shit, did you? No, I was just shooting at the guy. Okay, just like that, that building we started shooting at, I didn't see clear at all. Until my eyes went, hey, you're about to fire a high explosive device. You might want to remember where you're. So now the threat's becoming bigger. Me potentially lobbing a grenade and having frag back or something. And I think that's what triggered my brain. Just like will trigger a hostage shooter. Or a S V S type situation. So in his case, what's the biggest threat?

• 2:06:52Speaker 06

  Him and his entire team about to vaporize. Not the guy with the bomb. It's like, no, we might all die if I don't take this shot and calculate it right now. So I thought those stories were extremely interesting and why I took a really deep dive into the ocular stuff. So yeah, something as simple as a stupid little gunfight in Iraq. Blown up a building. Which turned out to be an ammo supply point, issue point. That's where all the ordinance would come and they would issue that out. So that blew up for days. Wow. Because and that's how we started clearing. We'd have, we worked with the O D A was the next kind of fight we were in. And we pulled up on them and like, hey, what are you guys up to? And they're like, yeah, some assholes shooting at us from one of those A S P towers up there. About 500 meters away. And we're like, well, let's go roll them up. It's like one dude.

• 2:07:36Speaker 06

  So it's us, us and a whole O D A. Let's, let's go get this guy. And they're like, nah, we got a viper on station. It's coming in here. He's I P inbound in about probably two minutes. And we're like. Wait, you're gonna, you're gonna drop a fucking JDAM on that building over there? And they're like, "Yeah." They're like, "Okay." And you said IP inbound two minutes? Like, "Yeah." "Okay, see you later." So we jumped in our shit and started hauling ass up the road. Um, and cause, and they're dropping a, I think it was a 2,000 pounder on the thing. And in an ASP that's 300 feet deep in the ground, full of ordinance. So we're like, "Yeah, we're out of here." And we hauled ass. And then we could kind of see in our mirror, the guy is looking back like, and you could see him calculate the distance. They jump in their Humvees, start hauling ass with us. And then things just go, "Ooh."

• 2:08:20Speaker 06

  That fucker blew up for three days, man, nonstop. Like, I got a video, we sleep at night at the airfield, you see already rounds landing in town. And the good thing was like, "Well, we don't have to patrol for three days. We're good." So, cause nobody can go in there at that point. And that's how some of the ASPs got cleared. Uh, cause it was bad.

• 2:08:38Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. Wow, so you, you were on the initial invasion?

• 2:08:43Speaker 06

  First year, son, yeah.

• 2:08:44Shawn Ryan?

  That is pretty fucking historic.

• 2:08:48Speaker 06

  And it was kind of cool that, you know, we took Mosul and we did a good job. Um, big army came in, 101st took over for us. And that's when the IED war started kicking off. And I, I believe and a lot of other guys talked about how much ordinance there was coming out of that ASP. We believe that may have fed the IED war in the country. And when we lost control of Mosul, um, we didn't gain it back until, um, uh, until Marsoc and I think it was ST, I think SEAL Team 7. Um, I think it was 7, went into Mosul together and took it back in 2017. Um, and they gave us a piece of the, one of the mosques there.

• 2:09:31Speaker 06

  And it's got the trident on it and, uh, and the flag that they flew over the city when we won. So we've got that in our, in our little, you see at Haley's Strategic Headquarters.

• 2:09:40Shawn Ryan?

  That is cool.

• 2:09:41Speaker 06

  Um, to try to, try to say like, "Man, we've lost this for almost 15 years." And we fought and fought and fought with the Iraqis and finally got it back. So, but still a shithole, still a loss.

• 2:09:51Shawn Ryan?

  What was your guys' op tempo on that deployment?

• 2:09:54Speaker 06

  It was short and fast. Um, uh, a lot of movement. And then, um, we left, flew back to the ship.

• 2:10:07Speaker 06

  Now, we're on a full deployment at this point, and we're ready to go home. And so we're heading through almost to the Straits of Gibraltar. And, you know, the MUE, the Marine Expeditionary Units, for people that don't understand how that works, like, right now, there's a MUE in the Mediterranean, probably cutting Gator circles, as we call them, around Israel, just hanging out, waiting for something to happen. And then there's always one in the Pacific. And you always have, but back then, it's changed a little bit, but you always have a force recon team and a SEAL team attached to that MUE. And we work hand to hand as a special operations nucleus of that entire, entire system.

• 2:10:45Speaker 06

  And you're on a carrier, the Gators, the LHDs, which have all the Ospreys and Cobras and, and F-35s. So we can deploy an entire Marine Air Ground Task Force, hovercrafts, tanks, you name it, infantry guys. So we can mobilize anywhere in the world in 24 hours or less. So they call us the 911 of the world. So when a country has a problem, an embassy goes bad, or Afghanistan with the Abbey Gate, that was the 26th Marine Expeditionary, you know, they'd call in to go and help. Like, I think Tyler Vargas, you had Tyler on your show, he, he was on the MUE that went into Afghanistan and got in that shit with Abbey Gate. Do you know Tyler? Oh, yeah, yeah, had him on the podcast and everything. What a fucking awesome. Yeah, I think it might have been the first podcast he did was with me.

• 2:11:29Speaker 06

  Damn, I love that dude. Yeah, he's incredible, resilient man. Yeah. That's, I've learned a lot from him. So we got the 911 to go into Liberia after that. And Liberia was, of course, we were disappointed at first, like, come on, man, we just want to go home. And so it's like, nope, your asses are going in, figure out what's going on. This was a 14-year civil war. Charles Taylor, the president of the country, very highly educated, US-educated guy. He was on a just murderous, he was a genocidal freak all of a sudden, started killing his own people. So he killed about 180,000 of his own people that year.

• 2:12:11Speaker 06

  With his corrupt government forces. So now you have Sierra Leone and a couple of other countries that created rebel groups like the Lerd rebels, they would come down from Sierra Leone and fight against the government. So now you have these corrupt government guys fighting against rebels, trying to overthrow the corrupt government. And guess who's in the middle getting, getting killed? All the innocent people in the country.

• 2:12:37Speaker 06

  That was probably one of my most eye opening experiences culturally, you know, like again, being, being worldly traveled.

• 2:12:47Speaker 06

  Seeing true death and true just, just heads, heads on tables everywhere in the markets.

• 2:12:54Shawn Ryan?

  Human heads?

• 2:12:55Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, piles of bodies.

• 2:12:57Shawn Ryan?

  Why were there human heads on tables?

• 2:12:58Speaker 06

  Cannibalism, it was, it's voodoo, man.

• 2:13:01Shawn Ryan?

  Cannibalism?

• 2:13:01Speaker 06

  It's West Africa. It is like hardcore.

• 2:13:04Shawn Ryan?

  Do you see that happening?

• 2:13:07Speaker 06

  Every day. Like all the, if you, if you, if you type in rebels of Liberia, West Africa, you will see crazy people with wigs and weird glasses and wearing women's dresses and life preservers. And they're out there shooting with AKs and RPGs, kind of Lord of War. Remember the movie Lord of War with, with Nicolas Cage? That is Liberia. And so the, the, the ground, the pavement is all 762 by 39 brass. There's no pavement. It's brass everywhere you go in the streets, just constant gunfights.

• 2:13:37Speaker 06

  And

• 2:13:38Shawn Ryan?

  We would, hold on.

• 2:13:39Speaker 06

  Eventually.

• 2:13:40Shawn Ryan?

  We gotta.

• 2:13:41Speaker 06

  This is a sound war that nobody never heard about.

• 2:13:44Shawn Ryan?

  I've never heard about it. What, what is it? I mean, you saw fucking cannibalism?

• 2:13:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:13:51Shawn Ryan?

  What, I mean, just describe that in detail, the first time you saw it or anything.

• 2:13:58Speaker 06

  So this is the weird part about this, this country. You have people that are just trying to survive and live like almost normal people, like just normal, great people. Um, I love, love is, is a word that's might, might even describe how I feel. Towards the Liberian people, like I, I, there was kids I wanted to adopt and bring home with me, man, it was crazy, yeah, experience. I don't know if that was the same for, for other guys on my team, um, but I, I really immersed myself in places that I go. And sometimes too much. If you've ever seen, what's a good movie, Tears of the Sun with Bruce Willis, Navy SEAL Team, that goes into Cameroon, um, and there's piles of bodies and the stench and everything,

• 2:14:42Speaker 06

  very, very similar. Um, the Nigerians are there whacking and killing people, uh, even though they're supposed to be a, a friendly peacekeeping force for the African ECOWAS or ECOWAS forces, which are, they're kind of small NATO. So in the, in the continent of Africa, if something goes higher order, like something blows up, they will not call NATO in right away. They'll call ECOWAS, which I forget what ECOWAS is, but African nations come together and they, they then determine, does military action need to happen here? And then if it does, they'll say, okay, ECOWAS, military side, let's get Ghana, Senegalese, Ivory Coast, um, Cameroon, Nigeria, you guys can bring in a contingent of armed forces

• 2:15:26Speaker 06

  and help secure this country and stop this war before we need to get bigger people involved. So that's the, that's the level this was at. So United Nations, everybody's watching this. Our job is to go in and do a, a hydrographic survey of the port facility and White's Beach by the, by the, um, by the embassy. So we could determine if we can land hovercrafts, AM tracks, you name it, and send the BLT in to stop. Um, Rumsfeld and Bush at the time needed to get more SA, so they send us and SEAL Team Four in. Um, you know Rourke? Lieutenant Rourke, uh, Denver Rourke, he was the platoon leader for SEAL Team Four

• 2:16:06Speaker 06

  at the time, uh, and now is in the acting world, I think. Um, he played himself in Act of Valor, the movie. So he was, he was, he was Lieutenant Rourke in Act of Valor. Um, and so I know he's done a couple other films. Well, he was the platoon leader there. They and Rob O'Neil was in that team as well. They hit the beach. We hit the port facility. I know they're a little upset about that because we won the mission planning on the port facility, which was a 2,000-meter surface swim. We're trying to go subsurface, but we couldn't because of the amount of intel. Because I was one of the intel guys on the team pulling all the information from S2. There was like three ships laying on their sides in the port, bodies floating in the water,

• 2:16:50Speaker 06

  active gunfights going on on the port facility while we're doing a hydrographic survey. And so what happens is we're back done, recon's done, we're back on the beach, I'm sorry, back on the boat. And about 5:00 AM,

• 2:17:07Speaker 06

  if I remember right, we hear, "Launch QRF, launch QRF," over the 1MC on the boat, the intercom, it's called 1MC. And so Cobras and 46ers took off because something happened. One of the team guys got, I heard, and I'm sure there's a whole, I'd love to hear the story if anybody knows it. I know it's probably embarrassing for those guys, but somebody said that one of the guys got cramped so bad from drinking the night before on the boat. They couldn't get through the surf zone and they brought boats in, they brought the ribs up to grab them and throw them in. And Liberian fishermen were coming out that morning and identified, now we're over the horizon, man. We're not supposed to be there. It's a clandestine operation.

• 2:17:47Speaker 06

  And if you look up Navy SEALs in Liberia, you'll see Rob O'Neil and all his guys and work on the beach holding like a thousand Liberians back going, "Stay back, stay back." And they're like, "Americans, you're here, you're here, you're here." So there was a compromise.

• 2:18:02Speaker 06

  And then they get back to the boat and General Turner's like, "You guys can go back to Signalaw, we don't need you here anymore. Thank you." Now we have to change the entire mission. So they send us back in as a liaison team to work with the Eco Mill forces to try to stop this civil war by running checkpoints and telling the Nigerian Nibak commanders, hey, this is what you're gonna do, this is what you're not gonna do. Then we go sit and grab the Lard rebels and we'd say, hey, sit your ass down. You are not a general, even though you call yourself that, because you know, these little skinny crackheads. When I say crackheads, like crack was extremely bad, heroin was bad, they're constantly chewing cotton. And you're telling them like, hey, stop shooting at civilians. If I catch you shooting at civilians, you're going to die. Do you understand that?

• 2:18:46Speaker 06

  You see that loud, that dumping noise that flies over every once in a while? We will have no problem, no hesitation, blowing your ass up if you're firing a rocket on a bridge across the street into the market. You will stop beating people and stealing their cars, you will stop treating people like shit. And so every night, we'd have these meetings at their bars, we'd walk in and be like, hey, sit down. All right, what can we do? And we, single-handedly, and I say this not out of, you know, being egotistical or narcissist or anything, but we stopped the 14-year civil war in just a couple of months by moving as fast as we did as three recon teams throughout that country. Damn. Keeping the fucking South Africans back, because they would come in and just say, oh, you just kill these people. I'm like, yeah, okay, fuck out of here, you don't care.

• 2:19:30Speaker 06

  And the Nigerians, that's a whole other story. They only get paid about, I think the average infantry Nigerian soldier gets paid back then $600 a year, and equivalent to American money. And they don't get paid while they're there, but they're on a year-long deployment, and they have to go in this Eco Mill deployment for a year and work in Liberia. And then when they get home, they finally get paid. So what do you think those guys are gonna do? Imagine if you took fricking 1,000 Marines that are all privates, put them in a foreign country and said, we'll pay you in a year from now. Yeah. They're gonna rape, pillage, and kill everybody they can. So now they're a problem that we had to work as a liaison force to stop. So it turned into a nightmare, made, I'll be honest, it made Iraq...

• 2:20:14Speaker 06

  Looked like Disneyland, really did. Sounds like it. Especially with the stench and the bodies and people would come up to you in the market with the head like, hey, this is a, you know, government head from a commander. Look what we got, what we got. I'm like, dude, get the fucking head out of my face, man. Like, that's what Liberia was like. And it's, and it's, it was a beautiful country before this all happened. Subtropic, beautiful hotels on the beach. When we got there, looked like some, some horrible tropic, um, uh, like a bomb went off. No windows, holes, Swiss cheese everywhere, casings all over the ground, constant rocket firing back and forth. Um, and then we forced Charles Taylor out. He went into exile. Um, but then paid his special

• 2:20:58Speaker 06

  operations team, which he called the Wild Geese. They would name everything after like weird American movies and stuff. Like the commanders would drive by and it'd say Rambo on the side of their car. And then it'd be John Wayne and it'd be like funny, funny, you know, Josie Wales and the commanders, they got 20 people in the back of the truck with AKs and PKMs and stuff. And you're like, hey, what's up, Rambo? Like, if you see all the pictures on the internet, if you look up Liberian rebels, like I guarantee I know every one of those dudes by name. And the voodoo magic was really interesting because they would wear women's dresses, wigs, life preservers. Life preservers? Yeah, there's a funny, little funny story on that. Um, they would wear these things because they, the, the voodoo magician would bless that article that they're wearing

• 2:21:42Speaker 06

  and it would make them bulletproof. And, uh, one day, one of the guys comes up in a blue dress and a, and a wig and these old weird glasses. And I said, why do you guys wear that shit? And they all speak English. They all speak, it's their first language, which I, this was the coolest part of the whole country, was back during the, you know, they kept calling us brother American, brother American. I'm like, why do you guys call us brother Americans? Like you're not, what do you mean? They're like, we are Americans. And I'm like, last I checked, you're Liberian. Well, I'm an American. No, no, no, no. We are grateful and, and honored for you to be here because we are all brother Americans. We come from America. And I'm like, what are you talking about? You come, Liberians come from America. And then they started educating me and my guys on the history of

• 2:22:24Speaker 06

  our own damn country that we forgot. The emancipation, when the slaves were freed, they had an opportunity to go back to their homeland and Liberia, Monrovia, Liberia was the first colony of American slaves that established a new order and a new government in the, in the continent of Africa. Um, and they are extremely grateful for that. Right?

• 2:22:44Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 2:22:45Speaker 06

  Interesting, you know, misunderstanding potentially. And I was like, really? And so we just dove into the, the culture and the information and they were teaching us, some of these kids, man, that are, they don't even know how old they are, but like 12 to 15 years old, they'll recite parts of our constitution. And you're like, you live in a, you live in a tin shack, dude. It was incredible. That's why I just really have a, a deep love for, for those people.

• 2:23:09Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's interesting, you know, the, the piece of advice that you gave your son is find compassion and you're talking about it right now and one of the worst places imaginable, at least at that time.

• 2:23:21Speaker 06

  Yeah. It made me realize how, how good the world really is, even though it's bad all around you. Uh, even the kids, the kids were amazing. One time we pulled up on this village, just checking in, doing a security assessment. Uh, they got hit the night before, uh, lost a couple of people. Yeah. Cause every night, you know, when you're out, you're trying to patrol as much as you can. You hear about, hey, we got a village over on the east side, just got hit, man. The government came in and he paid his government $44 million in cash to, he goes, look, I'm going to prove that I'm still in power, even though I'm in exile. You guys keep raping, pillaging and killing as many people as you can. And that's what his, his special operations teams were doing. So at night they go out and, and tear people up.

• 2:24:04Speaker 06

  And then the ECO mil forces and us a liaison and we'd have to try to figure out who's what and try to help out all these people and then go in and do an assessment the day after and figure out, hey, what happened? Um, you know, raping, pillaging, cutting nipples off of women so they can't breastfeed their babies.

• 2:24:19Shawn Ryan?

  Are you fucking kidding me?

• 2:24:20Speaker 06

  Child, yeah, uh, child soldiers constantly being taken. This is 2003, man. This was still happening and it still happens in Africa. Um, Liberia is a better place now from what I understand, but that's what it was. And it was life-changing for me because I think a lot of guys don't think about what that was. Um, just because you weren't in a shit ton of gunfights, doesn't mean that you can't learn valuable lessons about cultural, you know, um, differences or, um, you know, like just the kids, man. I had such an appreciation and, and I'm sure a lot of people will when they hear this. We hear all this laughing and screaming and, and we pull around the corner and there's like 15 kids running up and down the street, up this little hill. And we're like, what the hell are they all happy about?

• 2:25:02Speaker 06

  Every time we'd pull into a village, all the women would come out and start dancing and chanting and like thanking God for us to be there. Because now they get to walk free because they're scared of getting raped, killed, their children being stolen, um, and put into child warfare, um, whatever. Like they're just, and it was the greatest feeling to have these people chanting and screaming and laughing and smiling all of a sudden. And it made you, choked you up for a second. And we realized these kids were chasing a toy. And I look at them, I walk up to them, I'm like, what are you guys doing? And they hold up a, a wheel, which was a piece of wire. It's like a piece of hard wire that they found, like a hanger, and they twisted it together and made a wheel. And then they made a stick about three feet long and it had a little L shape on there, like a snake stick.

• 2:25:47Speaker 06

  And they would sit there and roll that wheel with that snake stick down the hill and get it going really fast. And they would chase it up and down and up and down. And they did that shit the entire time we were there. And not one time did anybody quit or like they were constantly having fun. Meanwhile, there's like death and destruction and piles of bodies everywhere. Uh, and they just got hit the night before. So that to me, I'm still trying to understand that. They became accustomed. Cause every time I walk into my kids' rooms and I see all the shit they have, it makes me want to go outside and grab a piece of wire. Um, and I think we need to remember that, you know, we have a ton of resources as an American. Uh, we have everything in the world.

• 2:26:29Speaker 06

  You have every single opportunity to make something of yourself in this world, in this country, especially as an American. Um, and so I think, you know, after my world experiences and traveling and seeing that, I go, how dare you have the audacity to say that you don't, you need more. And, and so again, it comes back to how much resources can you have before you forget how to be resourceful? And that's all those kids are, they're so resourceful. And having the best time doing it in the worst situation you could ever possibly fathom. And that, you know, that scares me now because if something did happen in this country, which every great nation eventually has this problem, um, what are our kids gonna do? Are they gonna be able to have that resilience and that happiness under that situation? Or is it gonna be 10 times worse?

• 2:27:13Speaker 06

  So those little things that you pull out of the battle spaces are what you really truly remember. The gunfights, that's why we were there, man. You pull the trigger, you do your job. Sometimes it hurts, especially when you fuck it up. But the times you do it right, feels good. But what really feels good is making that kid smile, making that woman chant and dance and praise, "Thank you for making us free." Like, Americans don't realize what that means, until you see some shit like that. And you don't need to be in a gunfight to see that, you know, but, yeah, I think that was an interesting one. That was-

• 2:27:53Shawn Ryan?

  I'm very, I agree with everything you said there, and I think that was important, that you brought that up. I want to know about the cannibalism. I've never seen that. What was that experience like?

• 2:28:09Speaker 06

  So it's not like they're eating bones and stuff in front of you in the markets and stuff, but you're hearing the stories constantly of especially the rebels and the corrupt government people that would do that as a fear tactic. And I think it's a part of their culture, man. It really is.

• 2:28:26Shawn Ryan?

  It's a cultural thing?

• 2:28:27Speaker 06

  It is. It's the same thing that comes out. No, I don't think it's a necessity because not everybody does it. Your people that were in positions of power were the ones that did most of it that I had noticed.

• 2:28:36Shawn Ryan?

  This is like satanic ritualistic shit.

• 2:28:41Speaker 06

  Well, if-

• 2:28:42Shawn Ryan?

  It's the elites are eating other fucking human beings.

• 2:28:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, but they're also just, you know, younger operational types too that are teaching the kids to do that stuff. You know, so all the shit you see in movies about, you know, the cannibalism in those countries is not on this like, like you would think like the deepest, darkest little tribes in Africa or in South America only do that. No, normal people that are wearing blue jeans and gold necklaces and run around with AKs and wigs and stuff on are also doing it. It's a part of the culture. It's-

• 2:29:14Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:29:15Speaker 06

  Was it the biggest thing there? No?

• 2:29:18Shawn Ryan?

  Do they cook it?

• 2:29:20Speaker 06

  I think they just cook it and eat it, yeah. Or eat it raw.

• 2:29:24Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:29:25Speaker 06

  Not a big expert in that regard, the cannibalism. Even just asking that question makes me want to look back and go, wait a minute, let me dive into that a little bit more. But it's, it was definitely very apparent and people would tell you about it. And the excuse where we go, wait, is that satanic? They don't know what that is, I don't think. But I, I think there's one line, like in that movie Tears of the Sun, when they walk in and they see the, the mother with the nipples cut off, which is a thing. They pour cornmeal, we'd find women with cornmeal in their mouths as they're getting raped and trying to be suffocated as they're being raped by these kids that were rebel soldiers. And they would steal the, the boys, they would shoot the men, leave the elder alive to tell

• 2:30:10Speaker 06

  the story, they'd rape all the women and impregnate them and then cut their nipples off, like, and.

• 2:30:16Shawn Ryan?

  Gee.

• 2:30:18Speaker 06

  That's just the rest of the world, that's why. It'd be nice if Americans realized what percentage they are of the world, it's very small. And, and, and I'll, I'll maybe close with that later, but I call it the whole concept. But, uh, yeah, it's, that's just what they do. That's the best answer when you say, who in the fuck would do something like this? And then the only response is, it's just what they do. You know, and what drives that? I don't know, but I would be happy to kill every one of those people that do that.

• 2:30:54Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 2:30:55Speaker 06

  To these beautiful souls, as all these people, these kids, these kids were. People in the villages that we encountered, amazing, absolutely amazing. I'd go back in a heartbeat, matter of fact, I did, I went back on my own.

• 2:31:07Shawn Ryan?

  You went back there on your own?

• 2:31:08Speaker 06

  Did some contracting work by myself with a client, yeah.

• 2:31:11Shawn Ryan?

  How were you handling the home life with, with that?

• 2:31:18Speaker 06

  As far as-

• 2:31:19Shawn Ryan?

  Son?

• 2:31:21Speaker 06

  Then?

• 2:31:21Shawn Ryan?

  You have a son now?

• 2:31:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:31:23Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how are you, is this shit coming home?

• 2:31:25Speaker 06

  So this is, this is where things started getting weird in the transition of my life. How did I transition out of the military? Why did I even transition with so many years of active duty service at this point?

• 2:31:36Speaker 06

  After a few deployments, I love, I loved

• 2:31:44Speaker 06

  uh, being away sick. Instead of home, you know how guys get homesick? Like, "I just wanna go home, man." Like you got the army guy with his helmet cocked back and his dragon ass going, "I just hate this. I've been here 13 months. I wanna go home to my family." I get it.

• 2:31:56Speaker 06

  But that's not why you're here. You're here to do the job. And if you really love the job, you shouldn't have to go home. Because you start to realize home is where you are. And I think that's what a lot of us tend to, to

• 2:32:09Speaker 06

  let happen. Because war is a home to us. And I just had this conversation with the Marine Raiders the other day 'cause they keep getting messed with by the big Marine Corps. And I hope it changes. And I said, "You know why you guys are miserable right now?" I said, "'Cause you're not at war." Because when you're at war, you don't have to worry about being disruptive. You are, naturally. But when you come back and you're in garrison, guess what? Everybody's messing with you. You can't have an elite unit inside of an elite unit. What, what's the elite unit? The United States Marine Corps itself is an elite unit. Like, so that's where this silent professional problem comes into play.

• 2:32:44Speaker 06

  And I think is destroying us. Because these guys are afraid to speak out. Um, and they're afraid to play the game. And they need to just learn to play the game while in garrison so they can go back to war before they get disbanded again. And that can happen very quickly. Uh, and SOCOM's pissed off about it. So after I came home from my deployment there in Africa, my son Travis Jr. at the time was about eight years old. And I remember walking into the house and going up to visit him. And she knows I'm coming. Right, I tell her. I walk in and I open the door and he's sitting there playing on the ground in the living room. And I remember saying, "Hey buddy, I'm home." And he looks at me, sitting there.

• 2:33:28Speaker 06

  He looks back at mom. Looks at me again, looks back at mom. And goes, "Mom, who's that?"

• 2:33:35Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:33:42Speaker 06

  And

• 2:33:45Speaker 06

  that was like taking that dagger and stabbing it into my, my heart. And I, I

• 2:33:54Speaker 06

  you know, you've heard me mention this love story, the love story of the poster. I want to be that one day. I love that image. And then I love becoming that image. I love sweating and being sugar cookie'd on a beach with sand in places I never could possibly imagine getting. And I love that perseverance aspect where I'm still here and I'm not ringing that fucking bell. I'm not quitting. I'm not DORing. I can look next to me and say, okay, you may not be here, but I'm still here because perseverance is my only mission. And I love that. And I love becoming that image of hunting evil in the world, man, deploying. And I loved every second of it. I loved uh, being in a tyrannical, war-torn shitty environment because it made me realize and appreciate what I got to come home to eventually.

• 2:34:35Speaker 06

  And that's where the away sickness comes into play. But I loved it too much, I think. And I loved it. It still, it still gets me a little bit.

• 2:34:43Speaker 06

  I loved hunting people. I loved

• 2:34:49Speaker 06

  knowing that I could make the world a better place by, by one, five, five, six round at a time, you know?

• 2:34:55Speaker 06

  I loved

• 2:34:57Speaker 06

  being away so much that I loved everything that loved me. And I loved to leave everything that loved me. And then I started to deal with darkness and death and friends passing. And, and then I started to realize, well, I guess this is just the darkness I need to learn to love because it's never going to go away in my life. And I just sit there and go, I just gotta fake this and imposter syndrome kicks in.

• 2:35:20Speaker 06

  And then you start to realize you better find some, something else that you love. Otherwise it's going to kill you. Going back to maybe the suicide if that helps people. And when I walked in and he said that, I realized that I loved.

• 2:35:44Speaker 06

  I loved war more than I should have loved my own family. That's not okay. That's not okay for any man. And so I go back to my unit and I'm at, I think, fuck 12 years at this point, maybe, maybe. Yeah.

• 2:36:07Speaker 06

  Most of that time now in Force Reconnaissance, Reconnaissance Community. And I tell my platoon commander, who's the greatest platoon commander on the face of the planet, still is, in my opinion, Andy Christian. I said, "Hey, I'm gonna check out." And he's like, "What? You know, the guy that loves it so much? What the fuck are you talking about? You're checking, what do you mean you're checking out? What do you mean you're leaving? How are you, what do you mean you're gonna, what? That doesn't make any sense." Like, it shocked everybody. And I was up for a B-bullet at this point in time. A B-bullet is a staff position, for people that don't know, where I'm gonna be some type of instructor at Free Fall School, which was my first choice. Scott Haming's been a big thing for me. Love it.

• 2:36:51Speaker 06

  And VSW, Very Shallow Water Programs, for working on some top-secret programs in the Navy. Love that stuff. I know they play with dolphins in the Dolphin Program the Navy has. And my mom was on, she was a trainer and on the set of Flipper when I was a kid, growing up. So she did a little bit of stuff with Busch Gardens in Florida. And I was like, "Mom, I might be able to get into a Dolphin Program and train a bunch of flippers in the Navy." And she's like, "Really? That's so cool. What are you gonna be doing?" I was like, "You don't wanna know." But that never happened, because this happened to my son, and I ended up getting out. And I was like, "I don't wanna go to a B-bullet. I still wanna fight. But I need to make my own schedule."

• 2:37:32Speaker 06

  And so I was confused in a dark, dark environment now. And that's when we lost our first... This is transition time, right before I started contracting, I lost one of our teammates. Killed an IED. And we had just moved to Washington DC, because I was working out of DC. And we all met at Arlington National Cemetery to send him off. And I...

• 2:38:05Speaker 06

  Was done at this point. I'm like, I'm, I'm moving on. I'm gonna not contract. I'm not gonna do shit. So none of that's on the table. I'm just gonna start a business and I'm gonna figure it out again. Um, cause I gotta be there for my son. Cause I haven't been at all. It's been a horrible divorce, horrible relationship with mom, which is great now, thank God. Um, but it just, it wasn't our time. And so I sat there at Arlington, you know, and everybody's in their blues, looking sharp, Valhalla, right? It's the Warriors, Noble End. And, uh, this is another, I guess PTSD story that I learned a lot from, a ton, where I'm standing there and I'm like, this is, this is why we do this, you know?

• 2:38:51Speaker 06

  And then I start looking around and I start seeing the faces of people. I start seeing the pain, the suffering, the tears, the, the disappointment, uh, the anger. And then I start to see the color guard moving in and the, the, the gun team. And something I noticed when I was a kid, every time a movie was on, a war movie,

• 2:39:15Speaker 06

  and taps would play, um, taps is the song, the trumpet song you'll typically hear at a funeral or, uh, at nighttime, they play taps to go to bed, 2200, um, to remind of us, of that there's no victory without sacrifice in a nutshell. And every time that song would play, my dad would get up and walk out of the room, every time. And I was like, well, he must be going to get another beer or something. And I, I just kinda made this excuse for him. And then I started to realize, and it wasn't until that moment, when that tap started playing,

• 2:39:50Speaker 06

  that killed me. And I started losing my shit. And I realized like, the fuck, man, where's the nobility in this? Where's the nobility? Look at, she just had a baby while he's on deployment and her two-year-old daughter doesn't even know dad's dead, laying there in front of him.

• 2:40:07Speaker 06

  There is no nobility in this. Why are we doing this? Now I'm, now I'm struggling with this inner fight, like, was it all worth it? Was this worth it? You know? And at the end of the funeral, standing there, losing my shit again. Um, you know, but I'm a Marine, so you're not allowed to cry. Uh, you're not allowed to show emotions, so I'm trying my best to hold it inside, which eventually just turns into trapped resistance and then you suffer. Well, one of my buddies comes over, and I'll never forget this. He, he comes up next to me and I'm standing over Javier's grave and he goes, uh, he goes, "Isn't it awesome, man?" He kind of hits me. And I'm like,

• 2:40:48Speaker 06

  "Dude, what's so fucking awesome about this?" And he's like, "What do you mean? To know a dude that just went all the way." And I'm like, "Okay, what are you talking about, brother?" And he goes,

• 2:41:01Speaker 06

  "To know a dude that just went all the way." Like, a guy that's willing to do that is incredible. He's like, "How do you not get that?" And I'm like, "I, I'm trying to process all this right now, dude. Like, what are you talking about?" And he goes,

• 2:41:17Speaker 06

  "Dude, our fallen brother represents everything that we do, everything that we stand for, everyone that we stand with here and everything that we now stand against." And, uh, it started to click a little bit. And he said, "Don't forget, there's no difference between you and him.

• 2:41:36Speaker 06

  He did that, just like you would do that, just like I would do that. So don't forget

• 2:41:43Speaker 06

  who we are and what we do. All right?" And I just like, tried to keep my shit together and he gives me a hug, walks away. And then that's when the nobility kicked in.

• 2:41:57Speaker 06

  That's when the tears of sadness and sorrow that you'll still see in me, that are tears, but they turn from sadness to sorrow to pride and honor.

• 2:42:09Speaker 06

  And that's when the nobility kicked back in and said, "Without sacrifice, there is no victory." As hard as that is for people to understand in our world,

• 2:42:19Speaker 06

  everybody sacrifices something. You've sacrificed a ton, man. You're sacrificing something right now, being here with me, when you could be doing something different. You could be with your wife or your kid, you know? We've all had sacrifices, and sometimes they're little, sometimes they're massive. And I think they're all necessary. Especially in the face of evil.

• 2:42:39Speaker 06

  There's only one way to get through that, and that's to realize that we need men and women that are willing to go all the way. Because if we don't,

• 2:42:49Speaker 06

  you're not gonna have anything. You'll have nothing. And that's what everybody's scared about right now, is having nothing. So maybe we should all step up and start thinking about this a little bit differently. And that's all I ask people to do. Just think differently than how you think. I'm not trying to change ya. I'm just sharing. We're sharing our experiences and our stories of people that are horrible. That are horrid. Nobody likes telling the war stories, and if they do, they're probably not true. And so, you know, we should listen to those experiences, and listen to what other people around the world tell us. Listen to the concept of the whole, the eight billion people in the world. Who are we? And what are we here to do? That's an important story.

• 2:43:28Speaker 06

  So yeah, man, it's like these little tiny things I have, where it could be just a simple story of an experience in combat, or with my kid walking home, that turned into the greatest lessons of my life, because it allowed me to look into a place. You know, so that was like, I need to look into that. I need to figure out, okay, he's the most important thing right now. And I still fucked it up after that. You know, I still wasn't the best dad, wasn't there all the time. And then I transitioned, "All right, I'll start my own company, I'll start training." And I do, I move out to California to be with my wife, because we were separated for three and a half years with two deployments between that time. She was a doctor at Balboa Naval Hospital as a lieutenant commander, and I was in Camp Lejeune.

• 2:44:09Speaker 06

  Um, enforced recon and we did it well, man. We made it, made it work. We travel every month and see each other. I go out and do free fall school or, you know, jump packages and go meet her. She come to me and, and we made it work. And then we have two beautiful kids out of it, Hayden and Hudson. And, uh, um, but once I got out there to California, she's like, are we finally having a family now? I was like, I think so. I think we can actually be together for, for once. How did you meet her? I was in free fall jump master school and we were, I was Gaslamp District, Buffalo Joe's Disco Night. Everybody wearing Afro's and Ray Bans. She was in there dancing, walks by and goes, hey, hey, what's up? Pulls me on the dance floor. We start dancing.

• 2:44:55Speaker 06

  Um, loud as hell, can't hear a damn thing. It's kind of funny story, actually. Um, and she's like, so what? Uh, I was like, what do you do? I'm a doctor. I'm like, okay, whatever. Nice try. Um, sweating her ass off, dancing on the floor. And she's like, what do you do? I said, I'm a cook. And I pulled the Steven Seagal thing, um, which that guy's another story. Um, and she's like, oh, you're a cook that likes to jump out of airplanes? And I'm like, what are you talking about? She rolls back my tattoo, my jack. And I was like, well, I also, I also cook. And so then we started talking on the phone and she's like, why don't you come out next weekend? I got a good feeling about you. And so we went diving and did some, she was working up on a marathon. So I ran 19 miles with her

• 2:45:37Speaker 06

  and I was like, yeah, I can do that. Um, and next thing you know, I, I, she's like, hey, you want to come back again next weekend and you can stay with me and, and I've got four roommates. One of them's in the Navy, is a lieutenant and the other one's, you know, a barkeeper or something else. Um, so I go there and I open up her closet to put my clothes to hang them up and I see Navy uniforms and I'm like, so why is your? And I thought it was her roommate's uniforms. And then I saw the female rank lieutenant commander. Uh, or lieutenant at the time, I'm sorry. And I was like, Jen, please tell me these aren't uniforms. And please tell me for the last two weeks, you haven't told me that you were in the United States Navy? And she's like, what does it matter? She goes, I'm a doctor. You know how naval docs are, right? They don't even know how to put the ribbons in a rank on their uniforms.

• 2:46:22Speaker 06

  They're wearing scrubs all day. I was like, Jen, this can't happen. This isn't, this isn't a thing that we can do. She goes, I don't care. She goes, and, and we're on different coasts. We'll figure it out. So we did a long distance for years. And, uh, and then eventually we ended up getting married and had two kids and just worked out. And then she got out of the Navy as a commander, uh, at 16 years and started her own practice in dermatology. Became very successful. And, um, and then I was working and started contracting. And that's what happened when I went to San Diego. Finally, I'm sitting there. I got my toes dug into the beach, man. I'm like, am I finally going to have a break in my life? Which is going to be weird for me. Um, damn phone rings and it's one of the project managers of Blackwater.

• 2:47:04Speaker 06

  This is two weeks I'm out in California and I'm like transitioning my entire life to be with her. My son's in Pennsylvania. I'm trying to figure out how to see him more. And I get this call, hey Trav, what's up, man? My name is, uh, so and so from Blackwater. I was like, Blackwater, the contracting company? This is brand new at the time. It's 2004. And I was like, yeah, hey, man, we heard you're out. I'm like, the hell do you guys know I'm out? Like, hey, word travels fast when the operators get out. Uh, we got an opportunity for you. How would you like to be back in Moyok and be here in, in a week from now? I'd like to get you back into Baghdad in two weeks. And I'm like, what? Now I'm jonesing. I'm, I'm hurting and I don't know what to do in my life, but I want to fight. I want to go back. But family's messing with me at this point.

• 2:47:49Speaker 06

  And he's like, look, we'd like to, to ask you to be on Ambassador, Ambassador Bremer's personal detail. Um, he's the most high threat PSD principal in all PSD history. And, uh, out of even every US president combined. Um, and he's, he needs, he needs good hitters to be on his team. And we'd, we'd like you to come out and try out. I was like, uh, yeah, man, I'm honored. Thanks for the call. What do you want me to do? Hey, we'll have tickets for you in a week or two. Just, just be on standby. Roger that. I hang up and she walks up. She's like, hey, who was that? And I'm like, oh, fuck. And I just couldn't stop making those decisions and I know I hurt um and went right back to Iraq two weeks later and so I was on the Brummer detail with Blackwater um started doing a lot of

• 2:48:31Speaker 06

  surveillance work for the Blackwater teams on the advance side even though I was on his detail as a gun gunfighter um. How many people were on his detail? Oh shit man, I it was.

• 2:48:45Speaker 06

  I wanna stay, I could probably be corrected here by ten or twenty. I know there was fifty-two people at the time when I was there approximately for his advance team, just the advance. Now that didn't include the entire company, military, police and strikers and Humvees. That didn't include the civic Iraqi forces that we, oh it was a full-on mission profile. Holy shit, I didn't realize it was that big. Three little bird helicopters that were directly attached to him and him only unless they could be tasked out, which we got tasked out to a lot of things, but that was primary, he had priority all the time. Um, not including the advance team. The advance team would be about twenty dudes at a time and then we had another twenty and we were rotating constantly

• 2:49:27Speaker 06

  because this dude was like the Energizer Bunny, man. He would plug himself in at night or four. He'd come home at four uh like say like midnight and he would wake up at four in the morning. He'd walk in reading into his villa, he'd come out reading out of his villa, he'd plug himself in, keep going all day and all night and we're just like, man, we can't keep up with this dude. Um, and uh, and what else? And then QRF teams on top of that. And then that grew even bigger after I left. So, air support, ground support, you name it, we had it all. Um, probably one of the coolest PSD details I've ever seen in my life. Um, everybody was a hitter, everybody was former special operations uh until standards started dropping and then, as you know, you know, clown shows started to happen.

• 2:50:11Speaker 06

  At that time, I was on the detail and then they asked me to come over to the airside and say, "Hey, who's a surveillance guy here?" I said, "Well, I'm recondo." And they're like, "You know how to run a camera?" I'm like, "Yeah, dude, come on." So I went up in the birds, started doing a lot of intel work and they said, "Hey, would you mind, you know, because you're working all day and then you're going up on the birds at night, wherever you got a chance, why don't you just transition to the bird team if you don't mind? I know you like being on the detail." I was like, "You may not have to ride around and get smashed by IEDs all day? I can look down instead of look up?" "Yeah, absolutely. I love aerial platform stuff." And so I ended up kind of working and developing the program of instruction for Blackwater. I did all the videos. I went back to Eric and said, "Hey, we got a guy in country

• 2:50:53Speaker 06

  that can video film and edit." So that way, when a new gun guy comes on board the team, I can say, "Watch this video. Here's how this works. Here's how we pick up the package. Here's how we drop the package. Here's how we work venues. Here's how we do in and outer concentric rings of security and blah, blah, blah." I filmed this whole thing and then I started working on innovations. Now I'm working on saw mounts for the helicopters and it was a perfect match. So I love being on the little birds and that's when Najaf happened. And April, April 3rd.

• 2:51:24Shawn Ryan?

  So Najaf is a very historic event and this year's the 20th anniversary, correct?

• 2:51:32Speaker 06

  It is.

• 2:51:33Shawn Ryan?

  So I really want to document this piece of history. So if you could be as descriptive as possible.

• 2:51:42Speaker 06

  I'll do my best.

• 2:51:42Shawn Ryan?

  I would appreciate it.

• 2:51:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. And we're still trying to pick up the pieces. I know me and the team leader for the Najaf team just got together, did a podcast on our channel on the bridge and him and I were comparing information back and forth of what happened up north in Baghdad versus what happened down in Najaf.

• 2:52:02Speaker 06

  So I'm on, I'm on detail, I'm on office watch at the time. So when he's working at his desk, somebody's standing in that room at all times, just like super service. And you're hearing every conversation that he has with Rumsfeld, the president, you know, Colin Powell, Connolly's advice, everybody's walking out of the office every day if they're there in country, which was pretty frequent. And I'm hearing all the red phone conversations. And so we started getting word of shit happening down in Najaf. And so I start hearing the traffic going back and forth on the radio. And then I start hearing Bremer talking on

• 2:52:41Speaker 06

  the phone, a Sanchez, General Sanchez, the time the coalition commander, not well liked at the time by a lot of the staff and everybody from, from what I was hearing. So he comes in, Sanchez, what's going on down in Najaf? Uh, it's not a big deal, sir. We're starting to evacuate people. We're good. Everybody's moving from Camp Golf back to Camp Echo. Might have that mixed back and forth, but that was in the Jaf teams. And then the camps are about 20 clicks away from each other. So when they started taking the heat from Tatar Al-Sadar's Mahdi army, they started pushing forces back. Now, at the time, we knew there was a Spanish company of troops that were on the ground. They had LAV 25s,

• 2:53:24Speaker 06

  not necessarily like our LAVs, but they had 25 millimeter bushmaster chain guns on them. They had, I think there was about 100 Spaniards. There was a small contingent platoon size of El Salvadorians who were savage. And then a small Blackwater team protecting Phil Cosnet, who was the CPA official. That was, that was their principal. And that's what White Boy, callsign White Boy, and his team were protecting. We think Phil was on the agency side of the house as well with some stuff that was going on out in town. There was some, some, I heard of a failed agency hit. I don't know any details

• 2:54:06Speaker 06

  about that. I'd love to hear more about that. If anybody knows, I'm sure nobody's gonna talk about it, but it was just like, it's like, what's going on? And then they had local police chiefs out of town that were trying to be, you know, trying to be loyal to the US coalition, but at the same time, al-Sadr said, hey, you'll be loyal to us. Or we're the guys who are gonna kill your police officers. And so, that few nights before, I remember, I think White Boy says it in my podcast, but they had this big, giant meeting with Phil Koz and everybody in this town hall, and the police chiefs and everybody there, the Iraqi police, and they say, hey, you have to show loyalty to the coalition. If you do, we'll help you, we'll support you, we'll push these people out. And so, apparently,

• 2:54:48Speaker 06

  that chief stands up and goes, you have my loyalty. I will be faithful to the coalition. And they all drive out, chief gets in his car, drives out, assassinated as soon as he drops out and goes outside. And I think that was kind of the big, from what I understand, al-Sadr kind of the icing on the cake for him. And he says, you know what? Fuck this coalition provisional authority, take it down. I want it. At this time, it was, I forget that thing where everybody's kind of migrating into Najaf, because it's the golden mosque is in Najaf. It's the most holy city in the entire world, besides Mecca, for the Islam, for the Muslims. And so, there's just people walking all over the place, all over the country, man. As we're flying down, there's like thousands of people on the roads

• 2:55:32Speaker 06

  just walking towards Najaf to pray. And so, now you, just like our border, right, you invite all the assholes, along with the people going to pray, to fight the infidel. And so, al-Sadr built an army of 10,000 Ma'adhi army in the city of Najaf. So, a lot of people don't realize, Najaf, the battle where the Marines go in, is bigger than Fallujah. And we just had the recent anniversary for Fallujah, but Najaf was a bigger offensive than Fallujah was. I did not realize that. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that. And, because it was nasty. It was rough. I think Fallujah was more systemized and organized. You had General Mattis pushing through and his big speeches that kind of make it kind of prominent in history. And we lost

• 2:56:16Speaker 06

  a lot of people in both. But I think we lost more in Fallujah, but Najaf was a very complicated situation. And we weren't a part of the big phase. We were the initial. So I think the reason why they also then pushed into Najaf afterwards is because, and Fallujah, because, you know, Jerry and the guys were just hung on the bridge a few days before all of this. And that stimulated a bunch of people, especially us. And because I actually took Jerry Zokov down that morning and the little birds and transported him down to his new position, dropped him off the next day, they were ambushed and killed and hung from the bridge. So all of us were like, man, we were just hanging out with this guy. You know, that's fucked up what happened. Let's get some revenge. And that could be a problem. So I think

• 2:57:01Speaker 06

  everybody went after, soon as the mighty army kicked it off and started attacking the CPA that day on, I believe that started April 3rd, all of us were like, let's get it on. Let's go down there and mess these dudes up. And of course, contractors have to be reminded from time to time that, look, you fall under the Geneva Convention, you're not allowed to offensively engage in combat operations. If you do, it's against the Geneva Convention. So pump the brakes, hoss. And that was the big conflict with us in the US military. Everybody wants to shoot everybody until it's time to read your ERW and your rules of engagement in the Geneva Convention. So this stuff all starts popping off. And now they're trying to, I think that they were trying to kill Phil specifically and

• 2:57:44Speaker 06

  take that compound down. The Spanish start pumping 25mm, the chain guns, when the initiation starts, I think it was Daisy chain. I think they drove an IED in, popped it off, drove another one, popped the next one off, which is what an IED Daisy chain is. Killed some people. And then that's when the Spaniards started going to work to push the first phase back. The El Salvadorians started running around clearing houses and buildings and pushing people back. Blackwater dudes went into defense mode. And then the Spanish Prime Minister of Spain Then said, "Shut it down, ceasefire. Not one Spanish troop will fire a shot in Iraq, and if you do, you'll be court martialed. We are pulling out of Iraq. We're negotiating

• 2:58:27Speaker 06

  with terrorists because the Madrid bombing had just happened." And instead of them saying, "Fuck you," they said, "No, we're gonna pull out." So we even had a Spanish sniper with a 50 caliber Barrett on the rooftop that day, and we had him smash a dude at 800 meters with a RPG. Takes him out. The Colonel, Colonel Cole, the Spanish Coalition Commander, personally goes up to rooftop, grabs his ass and pulls him off the roof and takes his 50. Are you serious? And we heard he was court martialed for that. Yeah. And I'm trying to grab the 50, and they're like, "Yeah, no, that didn't happen." And so they took all the weapon systems. We couldn't shoot. These guys are sitting in their tanks, buttoned up, while all this shit's happening and nobody's firing around. Now, in the beginning, they did, but they were, they were shut down. Um, so now, and I'm not there at this point in time, right? We're still up in Baghdad,

• 2:59:12Speaker 06

  getting all this information back. Bremer gets pissed off. Here's another phone call, kind of scratchy comms coming in from, from White Boy Chris down in Najaf. And he, he's very broken, unreadable, but you could hear him say, "Hey, we're not going to make it through the night." And those are the words that we all heard on the radio. And so we're like, "Holy shit, we gotta get down there, man." Bremer calls Sanchez back in. "Sir, they're a bunch of fucking contractors. They don't know what they're talking about. Stop listening to them. They're mercs." Now, you don't tell them, "But I'm still a frickin' Staff and SEAL in the Marine Corps. I'm in, I'm in Force..." So I stayed in the reserves through this process as well. So I was out, uh, had a platoon in Hawaii for Force Recon.

• 2:59:54Speaker 06

  And, because that's where she moved to, we would move to Hawaii after DC. And, uh, um, so I'm like, "I'm not a merc, man. I'm just making my own schedule right now. I'm still wearing an American flag, just like you are there, Sanchez." And, uh, so that was pretty disappointing, because, you know, White Boy's a former frickin' retired Navy SEAL, um, and, uh, and most all the dudes on his team were, were hitters. And, and so we're all, I'm standing around, Delta guys all day long, SF dudes, SEALs, Force Recon Marines and Rangers, and it's like, "You're calling us a bunch of mercs?" Like, "No, we, we were, we have the same heart that you do right now. We're in this for the same exact reason." You know, mercenary definition, because people still get this wrong.

• 3:00:38Speaker 06

  This is a derogatory term to call us mercs, because a mercenary is somebody that only does it for their monetary gain, their own ego, their own gains out of it. Where the contractor is still in it for the same reasons that we would all be in it as Americans in a coalition. So he's like, and he screams back at Sanchez, they get in this fight. And I saw, remember he'd ball up his fists a couple of times. And I'm like, this is gonna be the best office watch I've ever been on in my life. So he leaves after this fight, and he says, hey, call your boss in here. I said, Roger that, sir. I was like, Frank, you need to come up to the office. Frank comes up.

• 3:01:14Speaker 06

  Hey, have you heard from White Boy? We're getting broken comms, sir. He goes, last thing we heard is they're not gonna make it through the night. He goes, they're starting to get wired in, or dialed in with mortars, and Spaniards are shut down, nobody's firing a shot. And he's like, why are the Span-? And he's like, oh, yeah, they think about the Spanish situation, and like, they need help. They need help now. And big army has denied all medevacs, and they have one army captain that's now shot. And, because there was a small contingent of US military there on that post as well. The Marines that were there, there was a handful of Marines, they were, I think, mostly, they call it defense systems messaging analysts or something, so they're doing like, you know, server stuff, and sending out comms, and making sure all that. They were just checking in on the servers and the antennas to make sure, I guess, everything

• 3:01:59Speaker 06

  was working that day. So they weren't even basing, they were just popping in and then popping back out. Couple army people, not sure what they were doing there. One female army that was scared to death. Even made a derogatory comment about her in a video that I did in the 10-year anniversary video, 10 years ago.

• 3:02:27Speaker 06

  Because she was screaming, "What are you shooting at? You're shooting women and children." And I remember turning around saying, "Look, if you're not gonna be a part of the solution, you're a part of the fucking problem. If you want to go downstairs and be raped and fricking killed by insurgents that are about to come in and take us all out, you can go do that, or you can sit there and shut your mouth." And I don't have time for that. And I was a different man back then. Wasn't as compassionate as I am now. Or didn't know how to find it, maybe. And she killed herself that day, on the 10-year anniversary. And that bugged me. And that's the only situation she was ever in, in her life. She just happened to be there, in this worst-case scenario, this Alamo situation, and it devastated her to the point where she left her own child behind and committed suicide on the 10-year anniversary.

• 3:03:11Speaker 06

  And, uh, man, that was maybe one. And I was about to go back and delete that whole video, I said, "No, I'm gonna leave that up as a reminder for me, of that you never know what people are going through in their lives. And you don't have to have some resume that you're some badass with 14 combat deployments, or 20 combat deployments, or three, whatever it is, that you have more value over somebody else that's hurting. Like, that's not okay." So I left it up. And, still to this day. So, that's the kind of people that were there. And then you had us up in Baghdad.

• 3:03:47Shawn Ryan?

  Would it bother you if I overlay that video on this?

• 3:03:52Speaker 06

  Oh, even the chick on the roof that was running around yelling, "What are you shooting at? What are you shooting at?" Like I told you on the roof that day, shut the fuck up.

• 3:04:03Speaker 06

  No, I mean, it's out, right? I mean, I'm vulnerably speaking about it, because I fucked up. I feel. You know, most people are like, "Hey, she didn't know any better, you didn't know any better, it was that time." Yeah, we were young and dumb. And it hurts, that, uh, I felt like it added to her pain, maybe. When, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe I should've went up to her and said, "Hey, it's gonna be okay. We're here, okay? And, uh, you know, we'll tell you what to do if you have any issues." Like I would now. Like, if I went into a hostage situation... And there was somebody crying and women were tied up. I wouldn't go, "Hey, fucking suck it up, Buttercup." You know what I mean? Like, that's what the military put into me and I don't like that. And so I would obviously be more calm and compassionate and say, "Hey,

• 3:04:45Speaker 06

  you're gonna be okay, alright? If you need anything, just let us know, but keep quiet. Let us know if you see anything and we're gonna take care of this and we're not hurting anybody. That's good, okay? We're only hurting bad people." And then go back. I wish I could have had that conversation. And so, yeah, I think that's history, man. And even though sometimes it hurts to think about it, our past is only something that we now simply know. That's all it is. And so, yeah, I wouldn't have any problem with that because it's another reminder for me to continue to be living off of my first trait, the warrior trait, which I believe is compassion, like I said earlier. And the second trait of a warrior is being vulnerable, having the courage to be imperfect. And so, yeah, that's why

• 3:05:28Speaker 06

  I left it up, because I realized that that wasn't the right thing to say in the moment. So like, if my son or anybody else is in that situation again and somebody's hurting and somebody's screaming and somebody's suffering and they feel like they're gonna die, you might not want to tell them to shut the fuck up. You might want to be there for them in any capacity that you think is appropriate, based on the situation, of course.

• 3:05:49Shawn Ryan?

  Could you have been there for her?

• 3:05:51Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 3:05:52Shawn Ryan?

  Considering the circumstances?

• 3:05:53Speaker 06

  I think I could have spoke differently to her. I could have...

• 3:05:59Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how many combatants are you guys engaging at any particular moment in time on that day?

• 3:06:06Speaker 06

  Well, it was be between onesie twosies with RPGs, up to about 50 people running down the street at one time. It was probably some of the bigger groups. And then mortar teams setting in on buildings. But there was about a... So, I met a... Speaking of this question, I met a guy in DC one night. I was up there working. I was at a hotel.

• 3:06:29Speaker 06

  I walk outside and this guy's smoking a cigar and I'm making a phone call and I said, "Hey, man, how's it going?" He's like, "Good." He's like, "Hey, who do you serve with?" And I'm like, "What?" And he's like, "Who'd you serve with?" I said, "Uh, I was a Marine." He's like, "Oh, yeah, I was Air Force." I was like, "Oh, okay. What'd you serve?" I said, "Well, um, Iraq, Afghanistan, like Africa, you know, Balkans." And he's like, "He's like, "Where in Iraq?" I said, "Well, all over the place, man, from Baghdad to Bozul to everywhere between Ramadi, Jirid, Najaf." He's like, "Where in Najaf?" I was like, "He just went." I was like, "April 4th, 2004. You may have heard about the big..." He's like, "Dude, I was flying 40s that day. I'm a Viper pilot." And I'm like, "Whoa, what?"

• 3:07:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:07:08Speaker 06

  And he's like, "Yeah." He goes, "That shit was insane." And I'm like, "What did you see?" Because now I'm like, really interested in what he saw, because we see what we see and you can't see from a 20,000-foot perspective. He's like, "Bro," he goes, "I remember getting on com saying, 'You have at least 1,000 insurgents running on you at any given time.'" And I'm like, "Was it that many?" He's like, "Oh, man, I could see it all." He goes, "I don't know how you guys made it out of that." He goes, "That was the..." And this has been told, that was the biggest insurgent assault in US and in the history of the war, in the Iraq war. Um, because they were just massively being pushed at us, pushed at us, pushed at us. For Fallujah, they were hiding like cockroaches inside the buildings. We had to go and hunt them. Uh, this was an actual assault where that didn't happen a whole lot on the insurgency side of the house.

• 3:07:49Shawn Ryan?

  Reason I'm asking that question is I just, I want to, I want to paint a whole picture of what that scenario looked like.

• 3:07:59Speaker 06

  The next day-

• 3:08:01Shawn Ryan?

  When you were talking to that woman.

• 3:08:02Speaker 06

  The next day, US Army said there was 374 dead insurgents in the street.

• 3:08:07Shawn Ryan?

  374 dead insurgents.

• 3:08:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. So... And I don't mind that. I wish it was more. I really do. Um, I shot almost 800 rounds of Mark II 6.2, 77 green out of a sniper rifle in two days. Um... And I was the only guy who had a sniper rifle. Out of just chance. I remember going to the ready room. Eight hundred rounds? It was two, it was almost four total loadouts, man. I was grabbing mags, guys were throwing me mags nonstop. Because I was a guy that could see more than anybody else. Because everybody had Mark 18s or shorty 10 and a half inch guns. And aim points on them, so they couldn't peek in windows. Nobody had any binos, nobody had shit. And I was weird.

• 3:08:54Speaker 06

  I, on the Moffice watch, again, Bremmer calls Frank in. Hey, what's going on? Hey, look, I am, I'm making a big risk here, Frank. From when I remember the conversation, he's like, I am authorizing you by any means necessary to go down and get my man out of there and get your team out of there. And he's like, sir, what do you mean by any means necessary? He's like, you know what I mean? He goes, I will cover you guys under the Geneva Convention. I will write some type of order, whatever it was, that will temporarily authorize you to offensively engage, if you have to, to get our people out. And we're like, whoa, what? And I, I'm, never found that order or anything. But we're like, and Frank looks over, he's like, you ready? I said, you ain't gotta ask me twice, boss.

• 3:09:39Speaker 06

  Hauled ass back, went to the airfield. Sprinted across the airfield, saying, get it up, get ready. And ran back across over to the, across the palace, went through our, our ready room, grabbed the weapons, started kitting out, grabbed as much shit as we could. Grabbed my M4, grabbed an MP5 that I, I bought in a fucking gas station for 70 bucks. Because we had to buy a lot of our own weapons in the first phase. A lot of, a lot of people don't realize that, the contract, because state wasn't able to get guns over to us yet. So some of the early, early contracts, like if you were on a offsite, you had to buy shit. So, I liked guns, saw and HK. I'm like, 70 bucks? All right, I talked him down from 150.

• 3:10:22Speaker 06

  And got a case of beer from a gas station guy that, you know, they had the beer hidden behind, because they weren't allowed to have alcohol. And so anyways, I take that thing. Because I always carried the bird with me as a secondary weapon, to my M4 and a saw. So I have the saw and the bird all the time. That was my primary weapon system. And I remember looking down at the sniper rifle and going. And I remember talking to my partner who was a counter sniper on the team that I would share in and out when I wasn't on the burbs. And I was like, you think I should take that? He's like, maybe. I said, I'm taking it. And I grab it and he's like, hey, hey, here's the dope, man. Here's the dope. Cause I never shot this gun, right? I was, I would sit on it as a counter sniper in the stadiums and stuff and rooftops, but I never shot it. So he would zero the gun before I got there. And he's like, yeah, it's got a hundred yards zero and here's your dope.

• 3:11:06Speaker 06

  I'm like, well, how do you know what your dope is at 800 yards? When you can't shoot 800 yards in the green zone because there's no range that can support that. We're guessing with, with ballistics and you know, what we do back then. So that's why in the video, you can even see me, if you look up the Blackwater Sniper video, you can see me turning the dials on that Leupold like, what the fuck? And you see me turn it back and eventually I'm like, fuck it. Just zero it out, go mill dots only. And I'm like, why am I trying to dial right now? Because he gave me dial numbers, not mill dot numbers. So I'm sitting there trying to figure that out in combat, which is a whole other story that I shared on my classes now and why I pushed precision so hard with our carbines or like I just got done teaching our first sniper class or precision rifle class, not sniper class.

• 3:11:50Speaker 06

  That will be next. And fuel craft, urban stuff. And it's like, no, we dope these guns because I have learned the hard way. I grabbed a rifle that was a shared counter sniper rifle, five, five, six, 20 inch barrel, Leupold mark four scope on it, DMR trigger, and took it into a battle space and had to zero the gun in combat. I don't know where the hell my rounds are hitting. And so I get there, we, we, we actually back up a little bit. We get final mission, Hacksaw, who is my pilot, uh, who actually just called me recently and I just finally got a voice. I haven't talked to him in 20 years since I left the roof with him. And I was like, holy shit.

• 3:12:34Speaker 06

  Like, all these guys are coming back out now, and, and calling, so I can't wait to get, as soon as I get done with this, I'm gonna call him up and, and give him some love, man. Greatest pilot in the world, 160th guy, was one of the, the lead Black Hawk, or Black, uh, Black Hawk Down, Logan D issue, Little Bird drivers. Greatest pilot in the fucking world, anybody would say that about this guy. We go over, he does the full mission briefing, everybody's trying to figure out what to do, and we go. And we haul ass, 100 knots, 100 feet, as fast as we could get in. So we, we land in Babylon first, so there's a fuel air supply, uh, resupply there. We land, we shut down the birds for a minute, we're all kinda stoic and quiet, because we kinda know what we're getting ourselves, we think we know what we're getting ourselves

• 3:13:17Speaker 06

  into, but nobody knows what to really say. And all of a sudden, two gunships come in. Steve goes, "Oh shit, these guys look like they're coming from the west, from Najaf." So the Apaches land, he goes over, the Apache pilots get out, they're like, "Dude, Steve, what's up, man?" He knew one of the guys. And, uh, he's like, "Hey, man, we're going in Najaf." He's like, "Whoa." He goes, "We just got called out of Najaf." And he's like, "What do you mean, you got called off?" He's like, "Yeah, it's too hot, they called us out." It's like, "So when the fuck do Apaches get called out when it's hot? Like, we need you in there right now, our guys aren't gonna make it through the night." He's like, "Yeah, it's something weird, uh, we got Vipers on station right now, uh, dropping ordnance, but we don't know what's happening, and we just got called off mission." And, like, "Well, why were you called?" Nobody could answer the question. So, now I'm thinking, "Okay, is Big Army doing something here?"

• 3:14:02Speaker 06

  This is why they've called this the Big Gaza of Iraq, because there's some weird shit behind it that nobody really knows, still to this day. And I'm not trying to open a can of worms, I'm just trying to talk about the history of these- It's interesting. It's just interesting, right? It's just interesting. Um, and, so, he's like, "Give me those freaks to that, to the Vipers." He's like, "Steve, you know I can't do that, man, you guys are contractors." So he brings back what, what supposed freaks, and they never worked. And Steve goes, "Hey, everybody, come here. He goes, "I need you all to understand that this is a volunteer mission, and, if something happens, it's a volunteer mission, okay? There's no, no guarantees on this one.

• 3:14:43Speaker 06

  Anybody wanna step back right now, and stay here, nobody's gonna hold it against you." And dude, everybody was just kinda, I think we'd looked around at each other, to like, "I fucking dare somebody to say that. I dare somebody to step back," you know? And, of course, nobody did.

• 3:15:00Speaker 06

  We spun up, got off the deck, eighteen miles, ripping as far, hard as fast as we could. We come in, trying to get air, comms with vipers, nothing. We're on final coming into the buildings, we kind of do a loop around, checking everything out, and we're like, wow, this shit's on fire, there's stuff, you know, I could see what I thought was bodies laying down on the road. I see the guys on the roof waving at us like, like crazy, and then all of a sudden, I hear the whole freaking aircraft just goes, and it shakes, like it was getting, like I thought we were going out of the sky, worst turbulence I've ever felt. And I'm hanging out the side of this thing, and I'm like, what the fucking, and Steve's

• 3:15:45Speaker 06

  like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what was that? And the bird's like pitching and rolling, and I was like, I don't know, I don't know. So I checked tail rotor, I checked everything, I'm looking up, I'm like, we look fine, Steve, I don't know, I can't see anything. And I look out, and this building's just going, mushroom cloud coming up, about five hundred meters from us. And it was a viper drop of a fucking JDAM on a mortar position. And from an Anglico, Marine Anglico team apparently, that was calling for, calling fires, missions while we were trying to come in. And we thought we got hit by an RPG or something. So we gained stability, we're okay, we come in, like, we gotta shut down now, man, we got airdropping out of the sky, we don't want to be flying around this place and doing, because we were gonna come in and just do some gun runs, drop some supplies, and see

• 3:16:30Speaker 06

  what's going on, and then fly back out. Well, Steve's like, making an audible, guys, we're going in, we're landing, see what's going on. So we all land in this courtyard, that was, you know, I mean, like, if you could fit scaled down helicopters and put them in this room, two foot off of each wall, two foot of off of each rotor blade, it was super tight, we were sitting there, these guys were phenomenal pilots. So we get out and then guys come up to us, "Holy shit, man. Thanks you guys coming and supporting us, man." "Holy shit, we need to get on, get on the roof, get fighting. We're gonna tell you what's going on here." And we're like, "Well, what are we doing?" They're like, "You ain't flying. It's too hot." So, and then Ben Thomas, who ends up being kind of my quasi-spotter that day, former SEAL,

• 3:17:09Speaker 06

  he says, "Dude, does that sniper rifle?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "Thank God you brought that. Bring it to the roof. We don't have any of that here." So I haul ass, I take my crew helmet off, put my hat on backwards, grab my loadout, and haul ass up to the roof, went to work, and just started identifying things. And the biggest thing I identified when I started shooting at people,

• 3:17:31Speaker 06

  was, "This fucking gun is not doped, and this is not a good thing." So I started saying, "Hey, Ben, hey, see the T-barrier, the T-wall?" I said, "Hey, I'm gonna shoot it. How far is it?" He says, "It's about 100, 105 meters." I'm like, "I shoot, hit." He's like, "Okay, you're about an inch high." I was like, "All right, well, that's an inch high at 100, so the gun's not zeroed for me now." And then I start working out, and we start building a range card. And then all of a sudden, like, "Hey, contact left." We'd start shooting, and I'd come back, and then I'd start doping the gun again. And I had to literally build a dope card and a range in a fucking gunfight, in the biggest insurgent attack of the war. One of my biggest lessons there is, zero your damn gun. More importantly, zero yourself first in order to be able to zero your gun. That's kind of a saying we say in our training classes.

• 3:18:16Speaker 06

  Because you can have a zeroed gun, but if you're not zeroed, you're not gonna be thinking right. So now I'm trying to figure things out. I finally start figuring it out. Start taking dudes out. One guy, on my podcast, there's a footage of a guy with an RPG getting into position, which is real footage. It's the first time I saw this. There was a French reporter embedded with the Mahdi Army, the insurgents, and he was documenting what they were doing against us. And, yeah, you know, lots of freelance reporters was running around battlefield doing that.

• 3:21:01Speaker 06

  With a 556, that's my next lesson is like, I never shot a 556 past 500. Marine Corps boot camp, man, that's it. That's the limitations of that weapon system. Just like if you're a sniper in the Marines or Army, they'll tell you back then, 1,000 yards, that's the limitation in the sniper systems and I'll shoot past that. Like dude, if we knew an eighth of what we know now, back then, we'd have killed so many more people. So now I'm trying to dope a 556 out to 800 yards and it hit guys with rockets and stuff. So yeah, they were, they were coming down pretty hard and fast. Um, one of the, one of the coolest, uh, stories from that, that, that day was, um, you know, a couple of people got shot. Um, but there was one, I have this knife story. It's a resilient story about sharpening your knife.

• 3:21:45Speaker 06

  You know, a lot of people watch my videos and hear me say, hey, stay sharp. Cause I always say, hey, stay sharp, be safe and die free. So, and they mean something, you know?

• 3:21:55Speaker 06

  You know, be safe. Well, that means don't be risk adverse. It means do dangerous shit carefully, like JP says. Um, it's, it's being sharp means that knife, it's not useful unless it's sharp. And so if you gave a knife emotions and put it in a grinder, it would hurt. And I think that's the problem with Americans or people in general in the world is that they're afraid to sharpen themselves because it hurts. And this one guy, the Spanish airborne dude, uh, that was a part of the Spanish contingency there. Uh, I can't remember his name, uh, Tabata or something like that? Forget. Uh, he, he's getting attacked with his squad by the insurgency that broke through the gate.

• 3:22:36Speaker 06

  They're down, down below in these outbuildings and they're going at it with these dudes. All of them run out of ammo. Um, his best friend shot and killed right in front of him. He's got a bunch of his buddies that are on the ground hurting. And all of a sudden like eight insurgents come down the wall. He's out of ammo. He pulls out, if you look up Najaf buck knife, Spanish soldier, you'll see him standing there with his bloody knife in his hand. And I use it as a big, a big presentation. I'm doing my leadership and resilience presentations. And, uh, and he's sitting there with a big shit eating grin on his face with this bloody old timer buck knife, kinda like, I think it was a buck and like the wooden handle with the gold.

• 3:23:17Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I know.

• 3:23:17Speaker 06

  You know, yeah, we all, we all grew up with them. And insurgents come in, dude just starts stabbing these guys, man. Stabs them as many as he can to where they all run away and they didn't even fire a shot and saved his buddy's lives. Um, so he got, I think the Medal of Valor or something when he got back to, to, to Spain. Um, I'm sorry. Geez. I'm sorry. I think he was in El Salvadorian, not Spaniard. He was El Sal. Um, those guys were phenomenal. They were clearing out. We had a sniper in the hospital that was shooting at us, um, who hit Corporal Young, one of the Marines who turned into an infantry Marine really quick. We gave him a saw and said, hey, go to town. Um, then he was running up and downstairs and delivering water and food and getting

• 3:24:01Speaker 06

  more ammo. And I even had him go get some oil from a Humvee. I said, hey, man, my gun's drying up, dude. Like, nobody had oil. That's another funny thing. I'm like, looking back on these after actions, I go, you see all the dudes in Vietnam with oil thing in their band and their helmet and you laugh at it. I was like, does anybody got any oil? Like, nobody had any oil. I mean, guns are seasoned up, guys. So that's where I come in as, as always been the resourceful guy on a team, uh, when you're out of resources. Hey, go drain one of the differentials on a Humvee or on a tank and give me some oil and bring us a fucking pan of oil up here. So I was down, downstairs, I ran down, washed my face and got some oil, dipped it, dipped bolts in it and fricking went back up to the roof. So like, those are lessons that you should know. You should know those things. So in the event that you're in a shitty situation like that, you ain't gonna go, well, my gun's

• 3:24:45Speaker 06

  dry, I guess I'm down. No, you fix it. You fix the problem as fast as you can. It's a risk formula. What do I need to do right now? What's the risk I'm gonna take? What's the resources I have available that'll equal my decision in action? And if I can keep that going in my life, I can make a decision for my kids, my business, my family in combat, and it's a simple formula. It's condensed Oodaloo formula.

• 3:25:06Speaker 06

  So we had one guy get shot in the eye, concrete splashed from the sniper, if I remember right. Army captain got hit through the arm. Uh, one of the, one of the El Sal's got hit through the mouth with an AK and blew his mouth out and there's blood. You'll see pictures of blood all over the rear. That's from him. They're dragging him out and blood squirting everywhere. Um, and then Corporal Young gets hit.

• 3:25:31Speaker 06

  While he's shooting on the saw and this guy was a Kentucky boy. I'm still trying to reach out to you, man. So if you, if you see this, reach out to me. I always make sure he's okay. Because what happened next was, you know, I got a marine next to me now, brotherhood, right? Losing consciousness, not doing well, but then still fighting. He'd get back on the gun. He'd still keep fighting. This guy was a savage, a defense systems messenger, by the way, not a combat ranking or a combat I always got from what I understood. And he fought like, like a dog that day, man. He, he did well. And more importantly, supported everybody else to the point where he started losing consciousness, medevacs, all denied. All denied. What do you mean denied? Why? We have fucking US military personnel that are shot and need to be medevaced immediately.

• 3:26:16Speaker 06

  Negative denied. Like what the fuck's going on, man? That's the weird thing. Like there was times where it wasn't that hot at all. They could have easily came in when he had lulls in battle. And so I go to Steve and I'm like, hey, man, how can we get this dude out of here? We're running low on ammo, running low on food, chow, which doesn't really matter at this point, but we need more ordinance. We need some shit and we need to get these guys out of here. And he's like, well, he goes, I don't know what's going on, Trav, but this is weird. He goes, I've never seen medevacs denied like this. I said, what if we fly his ass back and go get more supplies and come right back? And he's like, what do you mean?

• 3:26:55Speaker 06

  I said, me and you, jump on our bird, put his ass, strap him down the front seat, fly his ass back to the CAS, drop him off, hop over the pad, which is right next door, reload, refit, and me and you fly right back down. He said, Travis, if I get shot, we're dead. I said, I understand that. I'll take left side and support you and protect you best I can. And he goes, we're doing it. So me and Steve, single handedly.

• 3:27:21Speaker 06

  Loaded Young up the front seat, strapped him down. We booked out of there as fast as we could, went back, dropped him off. I threw his ass on the stretcher with all the medics that came out. And Pat Amash asked if you're gonna be good, brother? And he had a round that went through his shoulder and into his, I think his upper, I think his upper quad was long because he was starting to get really draney sounding. And we didn't know what kind of internal damage he had or anything. Shoulder was swollen up like this big. So he gave me a thumbs up. They pushed him away to the casp, went over to the pad. All the Blackwater guys were ready, feeding us with shit.

• 3:28:03Speaker 06

  Right back down to Najaf, went right back to work. And Koko Young, from what I heard, got the Silver Star for that, for his actions in Najaf. I don't know if that was downgraded to a Bronze Star, but he was up for the Silver Star that day by the, I think the Angloco commanders put him in for that. And went back, started pushing people back. SFODAs started coming in and started controlling the area. And then all of a sudden, we find out General Sanchez is on his way down and we can now leave. And so he came in and did a big dog and pony show on the rooftop and made it sound like he stopped the war in Najaf. They had air coming in and like this big dog and pony thing. Who is this?

• 3:28:46Speaker 06

  General Sanchez, the coalition commander at the time in 2004. And stood on that rooftop in a big, like, kinda apoplectic now stance on the rooftop saying, "We did this." Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. Fucking pissed a lot of us off. And again, I don't want to be judgmental because I don't know what he was going through. I don't know what Bremer was going through because both of them are talked badly about. A lot of people talk shit about Bremer. And I didn't see nothing but him trying to do the best job he could. I saw him constantly frustrated on office watch, talking to Bush or Rumsfeld would be screaming at him through the phone. He's like, "Fuck."

• 3:29:24Speaker 06

  And I always wanted to go like, "You alright, sir?" But obviously, I can't do that. And but you could tell he was dealing with a lot of shit, a lot of moral decisions he had to make. That I think he didn't like the decisions that he had to make. Um, and then, of course, Sanchez come in. I mean, all you gotta do is say, "Hey, they're fucking contractors, sir. Don't listen to them." Like, you realize who the team leader of that team is, right? That dude ain't a fucking mercenary. He's a savage former Navy SEAL. Um, and look at all of us on this team that have been protecting Bremer's ass and taking care of your Army guys. When they're out needing help, they'll come to us because they're afraid to go to you. Because every time they'd ask for air support from the Apaches, the Apaches weren't authorized with their ROEs to engage. So they'd come over to our pad and say, "Hey, can you guys fly for support for us?"

• 3:30:05Speaker 06

  So we'd have military police guys going out trying to find bomb builders and stuff that were like, they were making arrests in in town with special operations. They'd have us fly consensual range security for them. Um, because the Apaches weren't authorized to engage on certain people. So we were doing barter trades with operational, you know, um, resources. Uh, to help the Army and then they could help us. Because we wouldn't get ammo and stuff sometimes. So I would go, "Hey, we'll do a mission for you as long as you guys can find us some Lync 556. We can't get any Lync Tracer 556." So I would be bargaining and making equipment and using their machines and stuff to do it. And I was just always the tinker. Um, so we made the program work. It was, but that guy was always a thorn at everybody's side.

• 3:30:47Speaker 06

  So, again, I don't know who was bad in that situation because somebody was. Somebody was making bad decisions that day. Um, luckily, more people didn't die because they should have. If you think about how big that insurgency was. Um, pretty fortunate, you know, to keep those people back. So I took targets 300 and beyond. Everybody else took targets inside of that. Um, and I think we started pushing those guys back to where McTodder finally decided, "I guess we can't take the CPA today because we're losing too many people." And then we pulled out, big Army comes in and goes, "We got it now." And then never talks about it and then redacts all the stories in people's books and everything else. Um, you know, I didn't think that was really cool. Even some of my friends, like, you know, we've talked about, you know, friends of mine that I was on a mission with will will tell me, "Hey, shut your mouth about this."

• 3:31:32Speaker 06

  None of that happened. I'm like... Well, it did. It was just another mission in our lives, another gunfight, because I mean, I've got almost 14 trips and combat tours. So it was just another fight for me. But there's some weird shit about this one that I can't answer a lot of questions to. So maybe we should ask questions. Do we just stop talking about Benghazi? Do we just stop talking about the shit that happened there? Do we just stop talking about all these other conspiracies? No, we should probably open a can of worms on them if it's not now, if it divulges national security information, of course, that's where I'll shut my mouth. But nobody said, Travis, hey, look, we had some bigger issues. There's a national security thing there. Can you keep

• 3:32:14Speaker 06

  this down? Sure, man. Thanks for telling me that. Wow. Roger that. I know what a TSSCI clearance is. I can keep my mouth shut. But when you don't tell me that, and you just say, hey, dude, shut the fuck up, bro. It's like, who got to you? Who got, did the agency get to you? Did somebody get to you and tell you to shut the fuck up? Did your book not do very well? And that's why you're all pissed off at me? Okay. Like, we got to put that aside. And again, I'm just doing it from a historical archiving standpoint, because I think it's good to talk about, you know, guys like Corporal Lana Young, who's a friggin' savage that got medals for that day, that helped us help everybody else keep the insurgency

• 3:32:53Speaker 06

  back. So we can keep that CPA alive, prevent the loss of life, and ultimately finish our mission, which was go in and get those people out and save the Coalition for National Authority, Phil Cosnett, from getting killed by the insurgency.

• 3:33:12Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think was going on?

• 3:33:17Speaker 06

  A rumor that I heard, it's just a rumor, I have nothing more than that, was somebody tried to do a failed hit on McTodder's family. And he was like, okay, fuck you. I'm taking that CPA now. That's what I heard. Now, that could be just a wazoo story rumor. But I think, you know, kind of... You want to start a war, don't kill a king, kidnap a prince concept? And I think that could have been potentially one of the angles. Plus, I know that the guys in Najaf are doing a really good job trying to get the support of the people in Najaf to fight against McTodder's army that was growing rapidly. And they were, like, McTodder's goons were going at night and killed police officers

• 3:34:01Speaker 06

  that were loyal to the coalition. And then our job was to go in and really help them understand why you need to be loyal to us, because we're going to help you. These assholes ain't going to help you. He's going to take over one day. He's an Iranian Shia. He's a cleric. He's going to take over this country. And what did McTodder Al-Sadr do after we pulled out of Iraq? Comes out of Tehran from Iran, takes over the country, and turns into the cesspool that it is, which I believe is another American issue. I don't think we should have been in Iraq in the first place. I think that it's all to make money, just like Liberia. Oh, sure, why do we need to secure the Firestone tire plants? Who gives a fuck?

• 3:34:44Speaker 06

  We're going after this guy that's a scumbag special operations terrorist. Well, just do what you're told. Why? Later to find out, we, at that time, got like 27% of our rubber from Liberia. Nobody went into Rwanda when they killed a million people with machetes? Why not? Because there's no economic assets to protect there. So, I get it. There are certain economic assets we want to protect. It's a part of our job as well. It's why State Department, I guess, exists to some degree. But Israel, it's all about money, man. Nobody gives a fuck about the Palestinians. They care about capitalizing on the largest economy in the Middle East. And who is that? You got the Shia. Nobody gives a fuck about the Shia.

• 3:35:25Speaker 06

  They magically, the president of Iran disappears in a helicopter crash, and his entire chain of command is wiped out in the next six months after that. Then, all of a sudden, Russia, Xi Jinping, and China, and Putin start talking about Middle Eastern reform. All of a sudden, we jump in because Israel gets attacked. And then you have to look back 100 years to the 1922 White Papers from Winston Churchill and see why? Why are we going into the Middle East? Why are we... Trying to get rid of the Shia because they don't make up any of the economy in the Middle East where there was a thorn in the Sunni side. You got the Turks, which is a semisomatic Sunni population. Okay, they're cool, right? You got Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, all the big countries, Egypt, and the list goes on of the Sunni population.

• 3:36:10Speaker 06

  So I believe personally, after studying the promised land a little bit in my life, that this has been contrived ever since the 22 white papers to allow the Zionists to live there, to allow the Arab revolt to happen when they're like, hey, you lied to us. Oh, you want to fight? Now your asses are going to live in open air prisons, Goliath Heights, Gaza, and the West Banks. And now your asses in open air prisons the rest of your life and you're paying in our asses. And so now you have this whole problem of them going back and forth, abrogation of law, everything else, and they're always arguing about who's right, whose land it is, and next thing you know, America and the Western world sitting back going, god damn, we're going to capitalize on this as soon as this stabilizes. Because we're going to make agreements, which we've already done with Saudi Arabia and Egypt

• 3:36:50Speaker 06

  and everybody else that doesn't give a shit about helping the Palestinians, to capitalize on, once we turn that machine on, we make all the money. It's monopoly. That's why Xi Jinping and Putin said six months prior, they need to do Middle Eastern reforms because they're tired of us. And that's where we're like, nope, we can't let them get in because they already own Africa. They already own Central, South, and Latin America, and a lot of the rest of the world. And so we got to make a call, we got to make a move because look at how breaks nations is building quickly.

• 3:37:18Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. I'm very familiar with that.

• 3:37:20Speaker 06

  And so that's all, I think it's all connected, and I think something with Muqtada al-Sadr all the way back to Najaf is a part of all of this shit, a part of everything. I don't know what it is.

• 3:37:30Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 3:37:31Speaker 06

  But it's weird.

• 3:37:32Shawn Ryan?

  It's probably not far off.

• 3:37:33Speaker 06

  So that's why I think a lot of guys will Benghazi factor that a little bit to go, it's a part of the bigger picture of making money in the world. And that's, you know.

• 3:37:42Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's, you know, the connection between Dick Cheney and

• 3:37:46Speaker 06

  Scumbag.

• 3:37:47Shawn Ryan?

  Halliburton is, that's all you need to know.

• 3:37:50Speaker 06

  He made 64 billion dollars in the first year in the war, from what I understood.

• 3:37:55Shawn Ryan?

  That is all you need to know.

• 3:37:56Speaker 06

  You remember how fast Cabe Yard and Halliburton, everybody built up?

• 3:37:59Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:38:00Speaker 06

  They just took over that country and it was like, wow.

• 3:38:02Shawn Ryan?

  And Afghanistan.

• 3:38:03Speaker 06

  This is impressive.

• 3:38:04Shawn Ryan?

  And Afghanistan.

• 3:38:05Speaker 06

  It's all money.

• 3:38:06Shawn Ryan?

  When you see that, you know what it was all about. There's nothing else. You got the fucking vice president connected with the biggest logistics company who's, who's, who's running all logistics for two separate wars. That's it. That's what it was.

• 3:38:21Speaker 06

  No, I don't think, and you and I certainly probably agree to this. We don't want to come off sounding anti-war because there's people that need to be killed in this.

• 3:38:29Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not saying we did anything bad. Oh, I, we did do bad. I'm not saying we shouldn't have been there at all. I'm not saying we didn't do any good because we did rid the fucking world of a lot of bad guys.

• 3:38:42Speaker 06

  We did.

• 3:38:43Shawn Ryan?

  But we did not have to fucking be there, especially in Iraq and the way Afghanistan went. Should we have been there? Yes.

• 3:38:54Speaker 06

  Have you ever had any, any experts on like central banking and all that stuff come in yet?

• 3:38:58Shawn Ryan?

  Not yet.

• 3:38:59Speaker 06

  I'm really interested to see how that all feeds into because like a lot of people say, you know what Hitler and Gaddafi and Hussein and some other big prominent features or people, leaders in the world had in common, they're against the central banking that the Western world wants to do. So they have to get rid of those people in order to destabilize a region, to go back in and fix it and save it. Look what we did. And now we can capitalize on the economy of it. I believe that could be a potential possibility with Saddam because as everybody's agreed, he's the only dude that stabilized the Middle East for as long as, as was stable. He had Iran to fight with back and forth for a while. Big deal, you

• 3:39:44Speaker 06

  know. Now we destabilize the whole thing and then Gaddafi starts squawking and, and making noise and we go, oh, let's get rid of his ass too. Destabilize Libya and all that stuff. Benghazi happens and it's like, well, who's next? Oh, the Iranians. Let's go ahead and wipe those dudes now. So we're starting to wire down to the Sunnis that we want to be able to help. So that's gotta be, that's gotta be a hundred year plan, in my opinion, because it's, it's been consistent since the twenties of our movement into that region. But again, I'm, I'm not educated to, to that, but it smells like that, you know, because we've seen the money, we've seen the, you know, and then of course, all the sex trafficking and drug trafficking that comes on top of that, you know, that's another problem.

• 3:40:28Shawn Ryan?

  How many, how many enemy combatants do you think you might have killed that day?

• 3:40:34Speaker 06

  People have asked me that a lot.

• 3:40:40Speaker 06

  I can't count, but I know I shot a lot of people. I didn't, I didn't sit there and start ticking my stock and things like that. You don't really do that in that type of situation. And then there's people that I know I hit that ran off or, you know, can't confirm.

• 3:40:57Speaker 06

  But when you're sitting there in a prone position on a sniper rifle with groups of 50 people coming at you, or like in the video that I, I put up, there's a bus, a tour bus that they use to try to dump all the insurgents right behind the, the HESCO wall or the T-ball. And we, that's 104 yards, man. And it was full of insurgents. And you can't see it on the grainy video, but through a 10-power scope, I'm sitting there looking at dudes inside of this thing waiting to get off. And I'm just like, you got 100 meters in the prone on a frigging sniper rifle. And everybody else was shooting too, because it was like, hey, it's a bus full of bad guys. Blow them up. Somehow that bus was able to get out of there. It turned around and back to us like, fuck this. And you see the guy driving away, but you could see the windows and everything popping out of it.

• 3:41:39Speaker 06

  And I would have guessed there had to have been at least 25 insurgents on that bus alone.

• 3:41:44Shawn Ryan?

  Did that much killing affect your psyche at all?

• 3:41:48Speaker 06

  Not one bit. No.

• 3:41:51Shawn Ryan?

  Never questioned it?

• 3:41:54Speaker 06

  No.

• 3:42:00Speaker 06

  Because it was right. Meaning it was righteous, right? Like we look back and just go, well, the war, the war may not have been righteous. But you know what? When we're on, on the, on the ground, we're on the battlefield and we're, we're fighting. Yeah, there's that thing that's like, oh, I'm fighting for my brother next to me. Eh, no, that's not what you signed up for. You signed up to kill bad people, you know, and I want my scalps. So I'm okay taking out evil people. I think there's a, a level of, of psychopath in everybody that is involved in that job. And I know people will look at the word psychopath as a very bad, bad, derogatory type word. If you study ancient warriors, you study history.

• 3:42:44Speaker 06

  You know, you study the last 3,000-ish years of hunter-gatherer separation and agriculture and things growing. We don't need hunters as much anymore. We don't need the fighters and the protectors as much anymore. So we get outcasted. And some of us in our blood still have that super sense of justice, that super sense of duty. And I will go out and fight and make sure that our village, our country, whatever we call ours, will be safe because it's just in our blood. And that's the thing like with my son, when he asks, should he go and fight in the military? If he doesn't, where's he gonna go fight? Because he's gonna fight. And I think this is where a lot of guys like myself as a kid, I was already fighting before I was going in. I was

• 3:43:25Speaker 06

  looking for the fight. I was looking for something bad. I was looking for something to blow up because it was cool to understand the experiment that happens in the event that one day in the military, I need to know explosives. I should start learning now by going to Home Depot. You're like, I didn't know any better, but so imagine if I wouldn't have had the chance that I had. I'm already coming out of jail, man. What do you think would have happened to me? I would have fought for somebody else, maybe bad. Maybe, maybe that's the difference. Another phenomenal book is The Wisdom of Psychopaths, what we can learn from spies, serial killers, military and CEOs. Donald Trump is a psychopath, okay? Hillary Clinton is also a psychopath. Two difference, one's righteous, one's evil. You can tell by their intentions.

• 3:44:10Speaker 06

  And I don't care, there's even there's even studies that they've done, looking back to all former US presidents to find this element of the psychoticness inside them. And

• 3:44:24Speaker 06

  JFK was the highest ranking one. No shit. Yeah. And it's like, wait, what? And then you start to realize he cared. He was compassionate. And sometimes that will, that's an element. That's why I think compassion is the number one attribute to a warrior because if you care about something, you're gonna fight for it. And then if you have that tendency inside of you that you will fight for it no matter what, and you will go all the way for your beliefs and your morals and your ethics and who you stand for. That's a pretty fucking good killer, man. And there's nothing bad about that because we need those people in the world. And I'm not labeling myself as that. I've been studying it and trying to figure out why I do the things that I do. Why my heart rate drops under stress versus increases.

• 3:45:06Speaker 06

  I'll see that I'll monitor myself in planes. I do heart rate variability testing in our labs in Scottsdale. And I sit there sometimes like, why, why is it when I'm at six to nine thousand feet, I'm kind of amped up? Heart rate's like 120 in the plane, checking people, having a good time. Then after that 10,000 foot mark hits.

• 3:45:24Speaker 06

  Starts going into this flow state. And then when I'm in free fall, I still measure in the seventies and eighties. And I'm like, interesting, whether I'm free flying, whether I'm doing tandems, whether it's just like my flow state, man, it's where I want to be. So they contribute that to sometimes those tendencies that allow you to go into that mode. So I think the difference, though, between the evil sociopath or psychopath and the righteous one is the suffering that occurs. The evil ones don't suffer. They love it. They love the hurt. They love the pain on other people. They're the malignant narcissists of the world.

• 3:46:07Speaker 06

  They're the ones that really, truly need to be destroyed. And the righteous one will feel the same way about killing until they fuck it up. And this is where I tell my students, 99.999% of your life is everything. It's sitting here right now. It's taking your kids to school, going fishing and hunting and camping and taking your queen to the movies or going out on a date or paperwork, taxes, work, everything in between. Even, even, let's say, you know, you know, riding on a helicopter in a combat and you are doing the fresh rope and doing the thousand yard dash across the field.

• 3:46:51Speaker 06

  You kick the door, you go inside and you touch that trigger, you almost touch it, but the situation in front of you changes immediately. Maybe they dropped their gun. Maybe they have a come to Jesus meeting or something, or Rohamid or Mohammed meeting or whatever. And you're like, to me, that's 99.9% of your life.

• 3:47:11Speaker 06

  So why is it that, you know, why do we teach firearms training? Why do we teach tactics training? The mind tactics, because there's no such thing as physical tactics.

• 3:47:21Speaker 06

  Why do we spend so much time in our life on those skill sets when it's a micro percentage, that point zero zero zero something? And even after all those shots that I've taken in combat, and I know there's guys out there taking way more than me. It's still a micro percentage of our career. The rest of it's humanitarian efforts and laughing and playing with kids in Africa and, you know, wherever the Philippines or, you know, it's like just schools and training. And I think we can screw up and fix a lot of this. I can zig when I should have zagged over here. I could spend money or not spend money, you know, when I should have. I can make a good family or business decision. I can make a bad one, but like, hey, we'll fix it. It's okay. But when you cross that line, because if you think about a 1911, for example, that trigger is only a point zero seven zero of an inch.

• 3:48:06Speaker 06

  An M4 is only point zero eight nine of an inch. That's like that, man. That's the difference between your life changing or not. And so if you, if you go over that line and you do it right, you won't lose any sleep over it. You'll feel good about it. You'll high five your brother like, damn, that was awesome. See that guy's head come apart like, you know, some shitty movie scene. But when you mess it up, um, you know, when I ask people, why do you take that little tiny percentage so seriously? And come out here and train and spend all this time and money with us and our classes? Why do you do that? It's because it's the micro percentage of your life you can't fuck up. When you cross that line and you do it wrong,

• 3:48:49Speaker 06

  you will never, ever be able to come back from that mistake. And that's when you realize the pain. When you take something away that you can't, it's like, dude, it's like a, you know, law enforcement had this joke at crackheads when they drop pieces of the crack. They're so addicted, they'll crawl on the carpets for hours trying to find the pieces they missed to put it back together to, to get that fixed. Right? And so I think of this, this shooting scenario that I could be in, that if I fucked that up, which I have in my life and break that glass, you will sit there with a pair of tweezers and glue and try to put it back together. And if you could imagine trying to take a mirror that shattered on the ground

• 3:49:33Speaker 06

  and try to make it perfect again, you can't. And that's why that training is so important because you can't mess it up.

• 3:49:41Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you fuck that up?

• 3:49:44Speaker 06

  In Africa.

• 3:49:48Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about it?

• 3:49:50Speaker 06

  I, it's a tough one for me, man. I might be able to abbreviate it. Um.

• 3:50:05Speaker 06

  I've been working on this one for a long time to try to be able to come out and tell the story.

• 3:50:11Speaker 06

  This kid, man, this kid who was

• 3:50:18Speaker 06

  the everything to me. Probably about 16 years old. He stayed out of the war efforts. He really wanted to to help educate us. Earlier when I said that when we went to in country, everybody's calling his brother American, he would be the first to say, here's why. And he, this kid, do everything about America. And that's all he wanted to do was go to America one day. And he told me that his mom and dad were killed two weeks before we got there in the Civil War. And there's a lot of kids running around with no parents. And so, you know, when we see him, they're like, hey, kids, you gotta go away. You can't stay here anymore. We have no place to go. We have no place to go. I'm like, okay, well, why don't you go back to your village? Your parents are dead. Okay, so we had these five kids that would always hang out with us on a daily basis.

• 3:51:02Speaker 06

  They would always be looking for work. So we'd give them MREs and food, medicine and stuff. And they'd tell us where to get like eggs in town and little blocks of cheese. Cause like you're eating MREs every day and, you know, there's not a whole lot of food running around in that that country during that war. So he was extremely resourceful. Like one day he ran into town eight miles to get an egg and a block of cheese for me. And a little bowl of bread. And ran eight miles back and came back at the end of the day. And I'm like, where the fuck have you been, man? He goes, I went to get the egg and cheese. I'm like, what took you so long? He's like, I went to town. I'm like, you mean you went, you went to town? You mean you, did you get a ride? No, I ran. Flip flops, man. And I'm like, you ran 18 miles to get me an egg and cheese?

• 3:51:45Speaker 06

  Yes, I guess. You don't know what 18 miles is. Cause it's all they do all day is run and walk everywhere. And I'm like, do you see that vehicle right there? You tell me next time and we'll drive in and grab it, okay? So then we started doing that. I was like, that's how, how cool these kids were. Anyways, um, he would start telling us where weapons caches were. And say, hey, I know a guy that's building guns. He's not bad. He's trying to put food on his family's table. They can't sell weapons to the militia, um, you know, legally, so they're getting busted. These are part of the weapons cache issues that was happening in the city. Cause it's just Lord of War, man. There's guns everywhere. So we would go and do these hits and eventually realize when we turn over the, the, um,

• 3:52:24Speaker 06

  you know, anybody that was a potential threat or issue, the Nigerians would take and cut their hands off on the side of the road. Typical African stuff. Um, they didn't take prisoners because they don't get paid like I talked about earlier. And so they, um, would interrogate, beat the shit out of these people to a point where one day I ran down and put a 1911 in a night bat major's face and almost killed him. And told him, that's not what we do here. We're a peacekeeping force. And he gets in my face and he's like, but we don't get paid. My men don't get paid. He's, what do you want us to do? We can't take prisoners. We can't feed these men. We can't. So we teach them a lesson by cutting a finger or hand off or beating the living shit out of them and sending them back out of town to, as a message. So we're like, guys, we gotta do something different. This ain't working. We gotta, we gotta start going more clan on this.

• 3:53:09Speaker 06

  Um, so we take our shit off at night. We go out, hang out with the rebels and we start listening and, and working on an agreement of how we're going to stop these things. Um, and then this little kid would be like, hey, man, I know this guy is selling weapons down the street, blah, blah, blah. So anyways, this is working, man. Like this is really starting to make people. Cause when you go up and knock on a door and say, hey, US Marines, um, they'd be like, yes, come in, come in. And they would fucking, here it is. And you're like, okay, that was easy. Why has this been so hard? Um, because they don't want you to hurt us. They don't want us to turn you over to the Nigerians or anybody else. And so we're like, okay, well, what if we just start offering food and supplies and medical, being compassionate to these people?

• 3:53:52Speaker 06

  And so at night I would go around sometimes by myself and start talking to these people in villages. And we go out to their Guinness factory. Um, it's funny. It was an import Guinness factory that the rebels, the rebels took over. And that's where they run all their operations out of. And so we go down at night and they'd be dancing and, and partying with their people and drinking and smoking dope and stuff. And, uh, we'd sit down and just bullshit with them and talk and then we'd leave. And then one night we're down there, this kid comes in and I'm not gonna say his name, uh, but he. Says, Travis, I know where a place is. And I'm like, get the fuck out of here, man. You're not supposed to be here. I don't want these people knowing that you associate with us. He was so adamant.

• 3:54:33Speaker 06

  I said, alright, fuck it, let's go. So we, we jump in the vehicle. We did a five-point contingency plan. We jump in the vehicle, we drive down the road, uh, which is right around the back. And I said, hey, if we're not back in 45 minutes, this is the approximate location we're gonna be. And we walk up, same thing, I knock on the door. And, uh,

• 3:54:53Speaker 06

  there's a guy sitting on, on a, on a box in a little tiny room, about the size of a large closet. Uh, a couple candles lit in the room. And he had a mattress on the floor, right around the corner, which the kid told me that there was a couple RPGs and AKs in there. And so I knock on the door and he's got a, I could see an AK beside him, which they could have a rifle in their house. We didn't give a fuck. They were trying to protect themselves, but they just couldn't have caches and be selling guns.

• 3:55:20Speaker 06

  So I said, hey, you know why I'm here? And he goes, uh, he goes, he goes, uh, he goes, yes, I know who you are. I said, okay, can we talk? And he goes, no, you get out of my house. How dare you assault me? And I'm like, okay, this is different. This, never had this conversation. Normally like, yes, come in, come in. You're the Marines that are helping us. Yes, here, give me my food, give me my medicine. Where's the Red Cross? Can I have security? No Nigerians, I want Ghana, Senegalese only. And we'd do a quick negotiation, we'd get out of there. And we would secure that village with security and food, and they would love us.

• 3:55:52Speaker 06

  Well, he's pissed off. And I'm like, why? Dude, what the fuck, man? Hey, I'm gonna talk to you and you're gonna listen to me. I know you're selling weapons and you need to stop. And I know you have them and I'm here to offer you a deal. I'm here to offer you help. You've probably heard what we're doing for you. I know, how dare you insult me? Get out of my house. I don't sell weapons to their government. I'm like, I didn't say you did yet, okay? But... And he starts getting really blithering, all of a sudden, kid runs in.

• 3:56:20Speaker 06

  And starts yelling at him, saying, "You listen to him, you listen to him, he'll help you, he'll help you." And I'm like, "Shut the fuck up." "What the fuck, what is going on here?" And I'm like, "Dude, why are you..." You know, like, I'm trying to say, like, "I don't know this kid, I'm acting fucking weird." And I was like, "Look dude, I don't..." "Shut your mouth, listen, I'm gonna give you 20 American dollars to save your life." "Because you know at the end of the road, there's a Nigerian checkpoint." "Fuck the Nigerians." "Like, yeah, exactly, and you know what's gonna happen if you don't obey me right now, I'm gonna rest your ass and take you down to Nigeria." "Fuck you." And I said, "Hey, dude, 20, 20 American dollars at that time." "The Liberians told us that would be a year's salary for a Liberian." So I'm like, "We're fucking carrying cash all the time, right?"

• 3:57:03Speaker 06

  "Can't drop a Rolex in Liberia, they don't give a shit, they wanted American money." And, um, so they, they, uh, he takes it, and he, or he actually, I'm sorry, I'd go to give it to him, and he slaps my hand away, and I'm like, and he goes, "100 dollars." And I'm like, "Dude, what, this is..." And he goes, "Per AK-47." I'm like, "You motherfucker." And now he just admits it, right, and now he's trying to, uh, trying to, uh, swindle me out of this thing now. And I said, "Fuck you, get up, you're under arrest." And I reached over, and I was sitting on this little stool, and he was about right here. And I reach over and I grab the mattress, and I, I point and go, "See you, motherfucker." And that's when he grabs the AK and puts it in my face. And I was like, "I didn't think about that."

• 3:57:48Speaker 06

  I totally was like, "Stupid idiot, you let your emotions get to you." This is me looking back on the situation. Um, the kid's like screaming, I'm like, "Shut the fuck up." I was like, "Hey, calm down dude, calm down, I'm here to help you again, I'm not here to hurt you." And at that point, I saw two things. I saw his eyes extremely bloodshot, I think he was high up on something. And I remember seeing, of course, the muzzle in my face, and I remember seeing the safety on, on the AK. Now, I'm a big, AK was the first gun I ever owned as a kid, 13 years old, I begged my dad to own an AK. Because in 1986, Clint Eastwood said, "It makes a very distinct sound when fired at you, so remember it." In that movie Heartbreak Ridge about recon Marines. And I went out and studied that gun inside and out, and...

• 3:58:32Speaker 06

  That is the thing that popped in my mind. And at the time, I didn't realize it, didn't process it. But I remember getting so angry, so mad in this moment. And even me trying to explain this whole process, this whole process probably was about two and a half seconds.

• 3:58:48Speaker 06

  I, uh...

• 3:58:51Speaker 06

  I remember going, "You lose," in my mind. I had my 1911 on under concealment and in a Safari Land 071 paddle holster on my side.

• 3:59:06Speaker 06

  I remember realizing, in a nutshell, looking back a little bit, but processing the micro-thoughts that I had, was, "He's gonna try to kill me. Gun's not gonna work. He's gonna relinquish control with his hand to take the safety off like an untrained person does on an AK. By the time he gets his hand back on the gun, that's gonna be about two seconds. I know I can draw my 1911 in less than one second from concealment and smash this motherfucker right now. Pin his AK up against the wall, step into his chest and pull the trigger."

• 3:59:36Speaker 06

  And step 10 happens. And it goes into it. I grab the muzzle, I step up, put my foot into his chest, pin him into the corner, fire two shots and step back.

• 3:59:47Speaker 06

  I fall back. I hear this... I'm holding the barrel, holding the 1911. I hear this fucking scream that was like a... If you could murder a cow and the cow could scream, I don't know why that pops in my head. That's what I heard. And I almost shoot my boy in the face. And I called him my boy, like he was almost my son. Because I felt so sorry for him that what happened to his family. I grab him and he's just bawling, man. And I pin him up against the door jamb. And I'm like, "Don't you ever fucking do this again. Get the fuck out of here." And I throw him outside. He tumbles on the ground and gets up and hauls ass down the alley. And I'm standing there and I... Anyways, I run back.

• 4:00:31Speaker 06

  We get in the vehicle, haul ass. And I'm...

• 4:00:36Speaker 06

  I'm sitting there staring at that fucking AK and I pull the chamber back, the bolt back on it. There's a round chamber like, fuck, man. What the fuck? Why, why did that just happen? Like, why did this kid come in that fucking room? Why did he, why was he so adamant about this tonight when he never does that? Like, what the fuck is going, why did he mudsuck me into that situation? And I thought about it and I sat there all night staring at that AK. And, uh, um, the next morning, didn't sleep one second. Sun comes up, just barely. I, kids aren't there. Kids are always there, every morning. They're out there sitting on the railing, ready to bust rust on our vehicles, ready to get food, ready to. They weren't there.

• 4:01:15Speaker 06

  So I jogged down the hill, getting into town. I see one of the kids walking around in town, one of the older kids, about 19 years old, I think. They don't know how old they are. I go up to him and I say, hey, um, I forget his name. I yell his name and I go up to him and I grab him and he jerks away from me and scared to death. And I'm like, hey, what, dude, what the fuck, guys? Where you at this morning? And he starts shaking his head and getting nervous, like I'm about to cry. And he's backing up away from me. I'm like, dude, what's, what's going on? And, um, I said, I need to see my boy. Where is he? He fucking, I need to talk to him about something that happened last night.

• 4:01:59Speaker 06

  And he backs away and he goes, no, no, you'll never see him again. And I was like, why won't I see him again? What's, and I'm trying to really figure out what the hell is going on here. And he goes, cause last night you killed his father. And he turns around and runs away. And I'm like, the fuck does that mean? What are you talking about, killed his father? I, look, his father's, his father died and so, and it fucking hit me, man.

• 4:02:30Speaker 06

  I dropped to my knees, right there in the village. And, uh,

• 4:02:41Speaker 06

  I realized and then heard the stories later from the villagers that all that boy wanted me to do was get his dad out of the weapons, arms, fucking whatever that was. He was ashamed of his dad.

• 4:03:08Speaker 07

  And he was the

• 4:03:13Speaker 07

  And I was the guy that was supposed to help him.

• 4:03:19Speaker 07

  And I fucked it up.

• 4:03:30Speaker 07

  Because of this fucked up supersets of justice.

• 4:03:36Speaker 07

  This ancestral curse, maybe, to go so far above and beyond to help other people that I hurt them.

• 4:03:57Speaker 07

  I didn't tell anybody about this, except a couple very tight dudes. Um, determined that it was a, it was a good shoot. Fuck whatever that means. And I wanted to quit, like I've never wanted to quit in my life. And, um, thank God it was a week out before we were leaving.

• 4:04:20Speaker 07

  And I just sat back in the recon operations center and just listened to comms traffic the rest of the time and didn't do shit. And we helped so many people.

• 4:04:30Speaker 07

  I believe it contributed to stopping a 14 years of war.

• 4:04:38Speaker 07

  But that was the micro percentage

• 4:04:41Speaker 07

  that I feel, regardless of what people say, and friends have taught me through post-traumatic growth training and breaking down the story and, and telling me. Cause I lied about this. I even told the story one time on a video that, that Magpul did. They forced me to tell the story and I lied. I didn't tell the whole story. I didn't tell anything about the kid. I didn't say anything about the father because I was ashamed of myself. I was fucking ashamed. I didn't tell my wife for probably 12 years. Um, later, I didn't tell anybody. I was afraid, of course, by my own teammates to be fucking scrutinized by running around Liberia trying to help a goddamn save the world.

• 4:05:17Speaker 06

  They still don't know. One of them does.

• 4:05:22Speaker 06

  And I don't know what he thinks of me because I did it, you know, in a way that I thought was helping, but maybe it would have compromised and fucked up the entire team's mission. That's always the thing that I was scared of.

• 4:05:34Speaker 06

  And I've always been scared to tell that story because of the shame that I believe is the worst enemy that we have when we screw up in our life. When all my intentions were to help people. That's it. Just to help. Then I saw the magic working. I saw what we were doing. And then that just crushed my soul.

• 4:05:56Speaker 06

  That's the real reason I got off acting duty.

• 4:06:01Speaker 06

  For fucking, two weeks later, I'd be sitting on the beach. Started to feel it again. I get a phone call. "Hey, go back." And I was not communicating well with my wife at the time. She was like, "Hey, you got this thousand yards there, man. And I don't know what's wrong with you. You're here now. You can leave all that behind you." And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm trying." They get a phone call to say, "Hey, come back to Baghdad." And I go, "That's what I need. I need to go back. I need to be away sick again." Because if I go over there and I get in a shitty situation, I might feel more appreciation and grateful for going through this experience. And, uh...

• 4:06:46Speaker 06

  Man, that was dark. That fucked me up for about eight years. Didn't sleep well. Uh, I hurt people. I hurt my kids. I hurt my teammates as a reservist.

• 4:06:57Speaker 06

  I hurt. I hurt a lot, man. I lied.

• 4:07:03Speaker 06

  My integrity was destroyed. Um, and integrity meaning, you know, not just doing the right thing when nobody's looking, like we say in the military, but also not taking fast, fun, or easy. And I started taking the easy way out of things.

• 4:07:16Speaker 06

  Um, and if it wasn't for a good friend of mine, that, that was a, um, what's a, what's a human lie detector, a polygrapher, or something like that? Uh, he was a law enforcement detective and I, he's like, "Tell me this story, man. I've heard the story online that you told and it's bullshit. You're fucking lying to me." So I dive into the story and, uh, he was a former Golden Gloves boxer. And he comes out of his garage, puts a beer down. After I tell the story, he's like, "Drink that." I said, "I'm not fucking drinking that." And he's like, "You will drink that. I'm gonna beat your ass." And I'm like, "I'm not drinking a Guinness, man, because this happened in a Guinness factory, or it started. And so I've always had this like, not doing it."

• 4:08:01Speaker 06

  "So you don't drink that, I'm gonna beat your ass. We're gonna go." He throws down boxing gloves. I'm like, "Tommy, I'm not beating you. I'm not, I'm not doing that. You're gonna hurt me, I know it, and I'm not giving in." And so, he says, "You're gonna fill in the gaps of this story and we're gonna do it the hard way." And so I started coming out and telling him these other pieces that I'm telling you, uh, that I've really never openly told ever in the world. And it scares me still. It scares that it could compromise the situation. It could, it was a good, good effort in battle. Um, we helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people. Um, but when I hurt one that I don't mean to, even though dad made a bad decision, man, I gotta live with that kid and what he's feeling. Who is he, what does he do now?

• 4:08:46Speaker 06

  Is he a fucking terrorist? Did I turn him into something horrible? Is he happy? Uh, it's told that by a friend of mine who's a monk. Um, just recently, about two years ago, he told me, he's like, "Hey, I, I have a feeling from the spirit that, um, your boy's happy. He's happy for you." And I was like, "How the fuck would he be happy?" He's like, "Because he sees what you've done for the rest of the world." He sees you- Wow. Sharing-

• 4:09:31Speaker 07

  Sharing powerfully.

• 4:09:40Speaker 06

  And that helped, man, that helped a lot when he told me that. Because I couldn't let go of that kid and his face. The last face I saw of him was just the most horrible face.

• 4:09:54Speaker 06

  And I want to believe my friend who told me that. That because you've helped so many people and shared this, you've taken some of your simple situations here, like thinking first. That's why I say, think before you shoot. There's a catchphrase that we always say thinkers before shooters. It's just a thing that came out and it, that's what it means. It means you might want to think about the consequences of your decisions.

• 4:10:21Speaker 06

  Instead of just being a fucking gunfighter, man.

• 4:10:27Speaker 06

  And that's what I always call myself, you know? Always a gunfighter until that moment. I wanted to, again, like I said, I quit everything. But I went back and I did multiple tours after that in Iraq, four more trips to Iraq, I think, took vetting.

• 4:10:44Speaker 06

  Went in Afghanistan a few, three or four times.

• 4:10:50Speaker 06

  And kept chasing the dragon, you know? I kept trying to find myself and it took forever to do that. And I apologize to everybody out there.

• 4:11:04Speaker 06

  That I hurt in those dark times in my life because that's not me anymore. Even though you'll still see the pain and again, even though you might see tears of sadness and sorrow right now, they're not, they're proud moments, they really are. So when I do get emotional, I try to think back to that, you know? My buddy told me, hey, man, we'd all do the same thing. He went all the way and you go all the way. Or that my traumas in my past are now something that I simply just know that I can look back to and go, how do I take that? And how do I share that powerfully and authentically as much as I can with people? So where maybe they don't find themselves in that same situation. And that's why I gravitated to start becoming a tactics and weapons and mindset coach.

• 4:11:48Speaker 06

  Because I didn't have the right story in my head. I may still not. And a lot of people will, when you ask them what a mindset is, combat mindset, warrior mindset, it's all bullshit. It's a very simple explanation, and that is the story that you tell yourself. That's it. Nothing else. So if I'm in a bad situation and I say, "I'm gonna die," which we heard that in Najaf. There was one guy going, "Man, we're not gonna make it through the fucking night, man." And so, you know, what's a guy like me say to a guy like that on the rooftop? Most people say, "Oh, shut up, dude. You know, suck it up, buttercup." No. That becomes infectious. And then everybody starts going, "Holy shit, what if we don't make it through the night?" Yeah, they're dialing mortars in on us. Holy shit.

• 4:12:33Speaker 06

  This is a real thing. I might never see my family again. This is real. Man, maybe I shouldn't have gone on that helicopter. You start questioning everything. And then what happens? This is called a negative thought performance interaction psychologically speaking, and we turn down this toilet bowl of death where I don't want to fail. I hope she says yes. Man, I hope I graduate. I hope I get through the course. I hope I pass vetting. You know, that creates frustration, disappointment, fear, anxiety, you know, high tension, hormone imbalance, and then it goes down to ultimately decreased performance. And then you keep going down the circle, and you just keep telling yourself, "I'm gonna fail."

• 4:13:16Speaker 06

  That's when somebody goes, "We're not gonna make it through the night." Or I say, "I'm never gonna get over this darkness." And I had to take my own medicine, because I've always preached this to people, say, "Hey, have a thought performance interaction that's positive." Today, when I wake up, what am I gonna do for the world? Like this morning, I did that. I woke up early, I went right into the pool, I was like, "Damn it, hotel pool's like 86 degrees." So what do I do? Oh, it's raining outside. I go outside and I sit in the rain and cold meditate for about 30 minutes this morning. Why? Because I wanna manifest a good day with you. I wanna help people. I wanna make the world a better place than when I came in it. And I think that's easy to do, as long as we share authentically. And then I go through the rest of my process.

• 4:14:01Speaker 06

  I had a little bit of pain, and that's what I realized is that that's the lesson out of all of this with trauma management for us. And not just for us as gunfighters, but anybody, right? Rape victims, people in horrible accidents.

• 4:14:18Speaker 06

  Inner child issues that you just cannot figure out what's going on. There's two voices I've broken it down to. There's a voice of pain and the voice of suffering. And the voice of suffering for me is that really sympathetic, annoying, itchy asshole voice that's always on your shoulder telling you, "Man, what are you doing? Why are you here? Why did you do this? You're cold, you're wet, you're tired. Go home, quit, ring the bell." She's not gonna say yes. Don't ask her. "Hey, you're not gonna get this job. Why are you even applying? Stop working so hard. Why do you need to go to the gym for so much? Why do you need to wake up so early? Why are you going in the cold water? It just hurts. Get out of there. You're just gonna suffer." That's the voice of suffering in a nutshell. It's annoying. And a lot of people listen to that voice. Then, on the other hand, there's the pain of, the voice of pain.

• 4:15:01Speaker 06

  And the voice of pain to me is the voice that is very parasympathetic. It's very quiet. It's very stoic. It's the voice that will say, "Hey, man, look, you can listen to that other guy. And he's right. If you quit right now, today will be easier. But tomorrow's gonna be harder, and you know that. So if you can simply just accept, is the key word, the resistance that you have of this thing, this trigger, and accept it, you will realize that resistance is simply the precursor or bedfellow to suffering. That's it. The more you resist in your life, the reality that is, "I'm not happy with my bills. I can't pay them. I can't get a job.

• 4:15:46Speaker 06

  I'm stressed out. My wife hates me. My kids hate me. I'm getting divorced." All this stuff. Keep manifesting that. Keep telling yourself that. Keep telling yourself that today, you're not gonna build a new product. You're not gonna market well. You're not gonna tell a story well. You're not gonna train well. "I'm not gonna shoot well today. I just don't feel like, I don't feel good." You're creating a negative story of suffering. But the pain will tell you that if you can put that knife edge in there and sharpen it and deal with the pain, that pain is absolutely mandatory in your life. Suffering's optional. And that's why I have a big quote above my office desk. It says, "Pain is mandatory. Suffering is optional." Life. And I suffered for so long. I know a lot of guys suffer for so long. And we'll always have something that we'll suffer in, but it's the ability to go back and go,

• 4:16:30Speaker 06

  "Hey, suffering, I don't need you right now, but I do have to endure the pain if I wanna get through this." That is the, the...

• 4:16:41Speaker 06

  Deviation amplification model of post-traumatic growth versus a deviation countering model, which is put under the rug, don't talk about it. You know, hey, we lost a guy today, which I've been a part of this. And all of a sudden, it's like, hey, let's not talk about it, let's move on, let's go to the next target. You're like, hey, what the fuck did we do wrong? Hey, nobody did anything wrong. Don't start shifting blame. Everything's fine, he was a hero. Like in a nutshell story, right? Generalities. And it's like, that's not okay. We need to talk about this. We need to make sure this doesn't happen again. And that's a problem for me. So I think if we can, as human beings, listen to the voice of pain just a little bit more and realize that, yeah, today's gonna be harder, but tomorrow's gonna be easier. And if you can make a routine of that and wake up and try, especially for me, it's hard, man.

• 4:17:26Speaker 06

  It's really hard to get an ideal routine for me to help my mindset. But I do it the best that I can with what I got at the time. And if I can start making a habit of that, what'll happen, I think, one day, somebody will say, who's Travis Haley? When I answer that, I will answer with an undeniable stack of evidence that I am exactly who the fuck I say I am. Because I've been able to put in the work to get over this darkness, this story, this bullshit of my life that's haunted me and hurt others. Because I couldn't be authentic, I couldn't tell the true story, because I was afraid of what was gonna happen. That fear and anxiety alone, I think, makes people put the bottle in the mouth, or the needle in the arm, or the gun to the side of their head. And I don't want that for people.

• 4:18:11Speaker 06

  And that's why I've learned to try to share as powerfully as I can, even if it creates consequences for me. So, thanks for listening.

• 4:18:24Speaker 06

  Thanks for sharing.

• 4:18:28Speaker 06

  That's why that's hard for me to put out. Yeah.

• 4:18:33Speaker 06

  I do tell it in small circles. I tell it in like if I'm teaching an AK class, I'll say, guys, come here, I'm gonna tell you a story. Cause I still have the AK. It's on my wall in the office. I'll show it to you if you're from Scottsdale, so. Yeah. Uh, we re- we de-mailed it, made it a museum piece. So it can be brought back. My team, my team said we're bringing this back. So. It's a reminder, it's a reminder every single day I walk in.

• 4:19:06Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:19:07Speaker 06

  Think. Don't get ahead of your headlights, don't assume. Create a healthy boundary for myself before I step over a line. You know, try to be as reliable as I can for people. Take accountability for this. You own it. You lived it. You did it.

• 4:19:24Shawn Ryan?

  You know, there's a lot of lessons in the conversation that we just had and that's definitely, that is one, man. And, uh, I think that's the perfect way to end this. On that lesson and, uh, damn, man.

• 4:19:48Speaker 06

  Your traumas will always haunt you. It's how you manage them. Um, so it's not about letting go. I've learned this the hard way, as you can still feel and hear, even though I coach and I help people now. It's not about letting go. It's about letting it be. Cause what happened, happened exactly the way it happened. It didn't happen any other fucking way. You know, why? Because it didn't. And if I can find acceptance in that, if I can find peace in that, which I have, and I can share that, somebody else might turn around and share it with somebody else. And next thing you know, we have a better society, a better community, uh, less suicides, you know, more vulnerability and openness. And I think that's in, in, in closing on vulnerability.

• 4:20:33Speaker 06

  When you say that around operators, they go, "Man, I'm not weak." It's like, dude, they're two totally different, totally different definitions, even though they might sound the same. One means the inability, weakness, to defend yourself against criticism or an attack. The other one is the ability to defend yourself against or be open to criticism or attack and have the courage to be imperfect. I think that's a pretty good judge of a man's character that can be vulnerable and open and tell the truth, no matter how bad you fucked up in your life. And things will get better. You may not think so, but I promise you'll start being a shapeshifter. You'll start helping other people and you'll start to be a catalyst in other people's lives. And that's why I will train, I will teach, and I will share stories as long as I possibly can

• 4:21:18Speaker 06

  while my body and mind allow me to.

• 4:21:22Shawn Ryan?

  You're doing a good thing, man. You're doing a real good thing. And, uh, thank you. Thank you for doing it. I know that's gotta be real tough and, uh, to share and to live with. And, um,

• 4:21:41Shawn Ryan?

  man, Travis, you're just, you're just a fucking genuine, good human being. And, um, I'm honored to know you. I'm honored to interview you. And, uh, just thank you for being here, man.

• 4:21:55Speaker 06

  Thank you. I appreciate you.