#174 Joshua Mast - U.S. Marine's Message to President Donald Trump

Major Joshua Mast, a U. S. Marine Corps officer, gained attention for his efforts to adopt an Afghan war orphan. Mast initiated adoption proceedings for a baby girl found on an Afghan battlefield in 2019. His actions, motivated by a desire to ensure the child's safety, led to a complex legal battle involving the Department of Justice and the State Department. In October 2024, a military board substantiated misconduct allegations against Mast but declined to separate him from service. The board found that while Mast acted in a way “unbecoming an officer”, his actions did not warrant dismissal from the Marine Corps. Mast, now 41 and living in Hampstead, North Carolina with his wife Stephanie, continues to advocate for the child's well-being. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: http://helixsleep.com/srs http://amac.us/srs http://meetfabric.com/srs http://preparewithshawn.com 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. 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?

  Joshua and Stephanie Mast. Welcome to the show.

• 1:16Speaker 06

  It's good to be here. Yeah, Sean, we really appreciate you having us.

• 1:19Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you guys have, uh... one hell of a story here, and, um... very complicated. Doing the best I can. We're gonna cover all of it. It's probably gonna be a long show, but, uh... you know, even though nobody knows what we're about to talk about just yet, I just wanna say, like... man, you guys are, like, such honorable people, doing what you're doing, and, um... and I'm really excited to do this and to get this out into the world. So, thank you, guys, for what you're doing, and thank you for being here.

• 1:54Speaker 06

  We really appreciate it. I mean, honestly, we feel blessed to have been a part of this. Like, we're very proud of it. So, uh, and we'd like to put the spotlight on some people who've made it happen along the way. Regular Americans doing their thing at the ground level, and, uh... it's really about them.

• 2:10Shawn Ryan?

  Awesome. Awesome. Well, everybody gets an introduction, so... Major Joshua and Stephanie Mast. Major Joshua Mast, you're a United States Marine Judge Advocate General with a law degree from Liberty University and currently assigned as the Assistant Operations Operator... Officer. Marine Raider Support Group, Marine Special Forces Operation Command. You've served as a civil law attorney, trial counsel, and prosecutor. You deployed to Afghanistan in 2019 and worked in the Resolute Support Headquarters Office of the Staff, Judge, Advocate, where your portfolio responsibilities included

• 2:51Shawn Ryan?

  targeting, collateral damage estimation, and civilian casualty response. You are married to Stephanie, who is a graduate of Thomas Edison State University and has master's degrees from Liberty University and the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, California. Most importantly, you invest your time raising your five children, ages 13, 10, 6, 5, and 4. And I think you guys said downstairs you've been married for 18 years? Years. Congratulations. And it's because of the love you have for one of your children that you're here with us today. So, before we move on, a couple of caveats and disclaimers.

• 3:34Shawn Ryan?

  Before we begin, we need to make some important clarifications. Josh, can I call you Josh, or do you prefer Joshua?

• 3:42Speaker 06

  That's fine.

• 3:44Shawn Ryan?

  You're an active-duty Marine Corps officer. You can clarify if you are speaking on... Can you please clarify if you are speaking on behalf of the Marine Corps, Special Operations Command, SOCOM, or the Department of Defense?

• 3:57Speaker 06

  No, obviously, this is just my personal opinion, our perspective on what's happened in the last few years in our life. And then, normally, I wouldn't even associate with Marsoc, but they've recently acknowledged that I'm a member of the Command. So, that's allows us to be here and be able to acknowledge that today.

• 4:15Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. What are the limitations on what you both can say in this interview due to classification, operational security, and/or ongoing legal matters?

• 4:27Speaker 06

  Okay, so obviously we can't go into classified information. A lot of what we're going to talk about has been declassified and authorized for release into the public domain, so we will talk about that portion of it. And then as far as ongoing legal matters, the only thing we're not going to do is some of the Afghans we've been in other litigation with, we're not allowed to identify those people to third parties, or where they're from, or where their families are from, and so we're not going to do that. It's really not even the focus of today. And then there's a restriction from commenting on some of the state court proceedings, so we're not going to talk about what's happened in the state court. But what we are going to focus on today is there was a recent board of inquiry at Marsoc that I went through in October. And then, so for the first time, that was actually a blessing in disguise for us, because

• 5:12Speaker 06

  for the first time, we had some due process rights to information that we've been asking for for years. And it could be discretionary denied before if it was in a civil case, but in this case, because they was putting your career on the line, they had to give you at least some of that information. And so a lot of this is going to focus on the board of inquiry, and then a little bit on some government misconduct.

• 5:35Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. And I think you just answered this, but I just, I don't want to miss anything, so can you comment on any of the ongoing legal cases?

• 5:43Speaker 06

  No, we're not going to. We'll focus on the board of inquiry, and like I said, some government misconduct along the way.

• 5:48Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect. All right, so I just want to give the audience, this is super complicated what's going on here, so I want to give a quick snapshot on what we're about to cover. So basically, there was an Al Qaeda raid conducted by the Rangers, 100-plus enemy killed in action. There was a baby found on target with fractured, with a fractured skull, fractured left femur, and second-degree burns on her face and neck from her mother blowing herself up, running at a Ranger. Partner force tried to murder the baby because of her foreign origin. The Rangers brought the baby back to the camp, that means back to base where they were.

• 6:28Shawn Ryan?

  The Ranger who saved her killed Amir Omar, the AQIS Amir, on the next mission, took a bullet to the neck, and ended up being treated next to her in the hospital. And now we'll hear about the long story and still incomplete journey. Basically, you guys have adopted her and there seems to be a lot of custody issues going on in the courts and that's what we're here to talk about today. So, once again, thank you guys for being here. Couple of things before we get into the weeds here. I have a Patreon account. They're our top supporters, turned into quite the community and they've been here with me since the beginning.

• 7:13Shawn Ryan?

  They're why I'm here and also why you guys are here. So, one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

• 7:22Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 7:23Shawn Ryan?

  And so, this is from Eric Auger. Major Mast. Beyond the legal and ethical questions, this case has likely put immense strain on your personal life, your marriage, and your career in the military. What has this battle cost you personally in ways that aren't in the headlines? And how have you reconciled those sacrifices with your sense of duty and faith?

• 7:48Speaker 06

  That's a great question.

• 7:49Shawn Ryan?

  It's pretty deep.

• 7:50Speaker 06

  I appreciate it. I think I'm gonna reverse that. So, I'm gonna answer it in reverse. So, the way I've justified the sacrifice is, as an American, you're a constitutional officer, your sworn up holds certain values. And then we put on that uniform, we go down range to represent American values. And so, to me, when you're acting in accordance with those values, the cost is not relevant. At least not, and this was a very easy, like, a very easy call in the moment. The follow-through has been very difficult. But, I mean, from the Rangers on objective to the medical staff who raised her and like really put their career on the line to advocate for her and to make sure she had a long-term, safe solution. To us, we're the public face of that now.

• 8:34Speaker 06

  But it was dozens, if not hundreds of Americans who sacrificed along the way their peace. But none of them did that selfishly. Like, I guess the best analogy I can articulate is if you see a car wreck and a car burning on the long side of the road and you go and help that person get them out, you're not thinking about you. You're showing, I guess, I guess you're showing sacrificial love in the moment. And then whatever the follow through is, is that's, that's just part of the decision making process. So for me, is it has been hard. It has been, you know, strain in our marriage or stress, constant work. Because as an attorney, like, I'm thankful it was us because of the skill set I have that I can work as many hours as I can into the night.

• 9:17Speaker 06

  And then I'm grateful, one of my best friends, Hanam Wright, was a reservist in the Marine Corps and heard about this and he volunteered his time and he's fought with us like every step of the way. When for a long time it was just us and him fighting against some mega law firms and some of this litigation. And seeing those people like willing to sacrifice their time and money to basically put their name on the line and stand in the gap with us, it's just so humbling. So like, there's, there are low points, but, but the people that come along during that journey have been just such incredible people. It's been an encouragement. It, it, it's honestly been an honor. Like, it's been a fight, and I don't say that lightly, a literal fight for her life.

• 10:01Speaker 06

  But that the people we've gotten to meet along the way have just been incredible. Even like, like this, sitting here and talking to you and being able to speak directly to Americans, regular people, without the filter of some of this legacy media folks or spins or agenda, you can just say, hey, this is, this is what happened. This is who we're about. This is why we did what we did. And we do it again. I think that would be the most surprising thing to people is like, we are extremely proud of all of the decision making we've made. And I mean, it is, it is absolutely worth it, I guess, to, um, to see, to see her flourish and safe at home and loved and have a family and a life. Um, we're, we're very grateful for that. Yeah. I don't know if I answered all of his, his, uh, prompts, but, um.

• 10:47Speaker 06

  Do you have anything to add to that?

• 10:48Speaker 07

  I would say, I, I would acknowledge, I think for, there was a period of time, just because we were, we were in a fight, we were like, we're okay, we're okay, we're strong, we, we've got this, we've got this. And as the fight has, you know, dragged on for almost five years now, like the whole process, um, it, it has, I mean, I've realized, we've come to realize that we can acknowledge that it has been hard or challenging and that it, it has put stress on our, our family life and just as we were average Americans, raising young children, just trying to keep up, juggle, normal life, and then this on the side, you know, this as well. And so it certainly has been a challenge, but I think it has, it's made all of us, including our children, grow through this whole process

• 11:32Speaker 07

  and that, and strengthen us in ways that, I mean, if our honest, life is uncomfortable at times, it's challenging at times, but, uh, it is making us rise to, I think, a different level of working together and trusting each other that, um, had we not gone through it, I don't think we would be as strong as we are or we're becoming.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  And I would add one other thing to that is, one benefit that's come from this is, when you're, when you're faced with a lot of criticism and you know it's unjust, but over time, what you do is you look internally like, hey, did I, did I make that decision right? Was I, was I operating? Um, is any of this stuff true? And having to do that soul searching and being like, it's just a nature of the beast of getting criticized for the first time really, in a public way. And, um, and going internal and like, okay, this is my worldview, these are my beliefs, these are the facts. And especially in this war, when you actually get to go back, that's the first time I've actually gone back and looked at some of the stuff in five years. And you're like, holy cow, absolutely, we made the right call. We did the right thing and so did these regular Americans. And, um,

• 12:37Speaker 06

  it, it's just interesting, you're, you're almost getting gaslit on history of what actually happened. And, um, and going back and having to go in granular details, it's, it's honestly. It's difficult because there's so much trauma when you have to go back and think.

• 12:50Speaker 07

  Be living it.

• 12:51Speaker 06

  Especially with the fall. Like, I cry like a baby every time I think about that period in my life. And I wasn't even there, but you know, you're connected with these people on the ground and you're trying to get vulnerable people out and you're trying to get your little girl out. Like, last chance before the Taliban take over. And so like, a lot of that stuff, reflecting on it is difficult. But it is absolutely reinforced, like, the paradigm that we made these decisions in. And I'm excited to kind of talk through what those were.

• 13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, as far as the faith aspect of the question there. I mean, I know you both have a lot of fear that this might not turn out, you know, in you or your daughter's favor. But, you know, the conversation we had right before the camera started rolling is that you both realize there is a bigger picture. And then a lot of the stuff, a lot of the positive stuff would not even happen. It's in God's hands. And so it doesn't, so kind of what I'm getting at here is it doesn't sound like it's really, maybe it's strengthened your faith.

• 13:50Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 13:51Shawn Ryan?

  Rather than diminished it.

• 13:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, so. I would 100% say it is. When you get to see deliverance and faithfulness of God over time, it encourages you to just trust Him for the future. And like, she should have been dead so many times over. And we should have been crushed by the weight of this so many times over. And then it's always been just enough. And so we're confident, however that comes, it will come and she'll be safe forever.

• 14:20Speaker 07

  I would say we've absolutely put our faith to the test. And before, you know, before this period in our lives, we were cruising right along and things were kind of going the way we expected it to go. And this has brought us to the very end of ourselves where, I mean, like.

• 14:36Speaker 06

  Way beyond us.

• 14:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, beyond us, like our personal capacity. And both of us are pretty hard workers and determined. And so for the most part, we're able to accomplish what we put our minds to. But this has been, this process has been so much bigger than that, that it's made us more reliant on our faith. And because we realize that we are not capable of doing it. It's.

• 14:58Speaker 06

  And to ask others for help, like, we've learned that, like, we've never asked for help, ever. But when you're, when it's so far beyond you and you can't do it yourself, like, that's a bit like, that's one of my first things in life where it's like, you can't, between the two of us.

• 15:10Speaker 07

  Pull it off.

• 15:10Speaker 06

  Figure it out.

• 15:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 06

  Pull it off or afford it or like those types of things. But then, when you have so many good people come along and help you through those, just totally unexpected a lot of the times, and this has gained momentum now where it's more of a national news story, but at the beginning, people without any recognition were coming in and stepping in and helping us, and they have literally saved our lives and her life.

• 15:32Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 15:33Speaker 06

  We're thankful for that.

• 15:34Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. And then, before we move on, I just, I want to make a couple things clear at the very beginning, and so this is a custody battle between you guys and who?

• 15:44Speaker 06

  Well, um, so, in reality, I think-

• 15:48Shawn Ryan?

  Is it the Taliban?

• 15:49Speaker 06

  Yes, I think-

• 15:50Shawn Ryan?

  So this is a custody battle between, I don't want to overcomplicate anything yet, don't go all attorney on me.

• 15:56Speaker 06

  Don't, absolutely. You seem to do.

• 15:58Shawn Ryan?

  But this is, this is, this is a custody battle between you guys and the Taliban, a terrorist organization. And so I just, I want to set the tone here, the weight of this interview, that way it's right off the bat, people understand the importance of it, and, um, so we'll go from there.

• 16:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I think that for people to understand, it's essentially a Taliban-Eli Gonzalez situation. That's how we've kind of boiled it down into a one-sentence thing, because we're not really litigating against, um, these Afghans that we've been in litigation with, because they wouldn't actually be in control of this child if she, if she was ever in their custody. There would be someone above them that would be calling the shots, and, um, and I believe that's the Taliban.

• 17:21Shawn Ryan?

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

• 17:25Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.

• 17:29Shawn Ryan?

  They all heap the blame on me.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 17:32Speaker 03

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

• 17:36Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 17:38Speaker 04

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

• 17:42Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 17:47Speaker 02

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

• 17:57Shawn Ryan?

  And then, well, real quick, this will be the only light part of the interview, I'm sure, but, uh... Everybody gets a gift.

• 18:05Speaker 06

  All right.

• 18:08Speaker 06

  Gummy bears.

• 18:09Shawn Ryan?

  The John's League Gummy Bears, made in the US. Just candy, there's no funny business in that.

• 18:14Speaker 06

  Don't worry about the analysis, okay?

• 18:16Shawn Ryan?

  Don't worry, you're gonna pass your drug test.

• 18:20Speaker 07

  Well, our kids will probably confiscate them.

• 18:22Speaker 06

  Well, Sean, we actually, uh... I saw this, I watched a couple of episodes, and saw the gummy bears, so we actually got a gift for you. Uh, to kind of reciprocate, um, but this is, uh... This was made by one of our community resource coordinator at Marsoc. Her husband does these for the Marines, he does a really great job.

• 18:43Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 06

  This is a K-Bar, so I have a tradition at the end of the deployment to, uh, find someone that's impacted me and, uh... Give them my knife, and so I got this for you, and the, uh, the quote says, uh... "Live for an audience of one," and it's a site, 2nd Corinthians 5:10. And that was on my email sig block back in the day, and, um, it's more of a reminder to just do the right thing for the right reasons. And with someone like you has such an audience, it's a good... It's a good quote.

• 19:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 19:10Speaker 06

  Maybe it'll make the cut for the man cave, hopefully.

• 19:13Shawn Ryan?

  It's definitely gonna make the cut. "Live for an audience of one," man, that is, uh... Man, that's fitting. That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, this is... This is gonna look awesome. We're actually building a new studio.

• 19:26Speaker 06

  Okay, good.

• 19:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's gonna be...

• 19:27Speaker 06

  Good timing.

• 19:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, this'll be perfect in there.

• 19:30Speaker 06

  But we really do appreciate you, um, giving us the opportunity.

• 19:34Shawn Ryan?

  Man, thank you. This means a lot. Thank you.

• 19:42Shawn Ryan?

  All right, so here we go. So tell me a little bit, just tell me a little bit about both of your guys' backgrounds. Okay? Um, so, yeah, let's start with you.

• 19:54Speaker 06

  So I never intended to be a lawyer. Uh, my family business is golf. Uh, my dad played the PGA Tour for 40 years, um, Champions Tour. I grew up playing golf. Um, his, his, his father, my grandfather, built a golf course when he was a child. That's how he got into golf. And so golf was kind of our family business. One of my, my brothers is a golf pro. I played D1 in college. I even played on the mini tours for a little bit out of college. Um, but raised in a very traditional, uh, family. Um, and I always wanted to go in the Marine Corps if I didn't do golf. And so we were actually married before I decided to go in the Marine Corps. Um, I was working, I was playing some golf in the mini tours and, um, in Florida and, uh, decided to, decided to try to go into the Marine Corps.

• 20:37Speaker 07

  Well, it was one conversation. We were driving, it was a road trip of somewhere.

• 20:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:41Speaker 07

  And you were talking about the risk and...

• 20:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, so basically like, hey, you want to have a life that matters. You want to have a life that, um, you can be a positive influence, an opportunity to lead and be led. And so the Marine Corps seemed like a good, uh, good fit for that. And I was, I was thinking of either doing law school or the Marine Corps, mostly the Marine Corps. And so I talked to a officer, selection officer, for the first time on a Tuesday, and they're like, go back next year. Like, our slots are full. And I was like, no, I want to go in this year. And so they're like, uh, and then I mentioned I, I had LSAT score. And they're like, oh, the Marine Corps needs lawyers, but the deadline's Friday. And so, uh, it was Tuesday. Like, you got any tattoos? I'm like, nope. And they say, you got any medical issues? Like, I don't think so. So like, okay, we'll show up at Meps tomorrow at 5:00 and then come run your PFT and then we'll see if we can get your application in. And oh, by the way, you have to be accepted to law school.

• 21:27Speaker 06

  So I actually applied and was accepted to the Marine Corps and law school in that four day period.

• 21:33Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, God, are you serious?

• 21:35Speaker 06

  And then I shipped six weeks later to OCS and I knew nothing about the Marine Corps and I just kind of just did what they told me to do and stayed. You know, in the lane and I was fit enough from professional athletics.

• 21:46Shawn Ryan?

  What year is this?

• 21:47Speaker 06

  This was 2010 is when I went in the Marine Corps.

• 21:49Shawn Ryan?

  2010?

• 21:50Speaker 06

  Yep, so it was a break from that and golf has been great. Like, a lot of the times will assign me to play with the general if somebody's in town or run the golf tournament. So it's been a convenience thing and I caddie for my father. Like, I've probably done several hundred events on either the PGA Tour or the Champions Tour as a caddie, so hiking with a pack was no problem. I've done that my whole life. So it was a really great time, though, the way to grow up with my dad and traveling and, you know, different parts of the world and different parts of the country. So it's been helpful with my Marines to be able to identify. Like, a lot of times I've been to their state or their hometown or wherever. And so it's been a big, I guess, icebreaker throughout my career.

• 22:30Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 22:31Speaker 06

  It's not average, but...

• 22:33Shawn Ryan?

  Very interesting. Did you grow up in Florida?

• 22:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida, because of the weather mostly, because it was a year-round golf. And then I have five brothers, so I'm one of six boys, I'm number two. And so we grew up traveling 20-plus weeks out of the year with my father on the tour. And so we had a big RV and towed a car and, like, state and national parks growing up and all the battlefields and museums and it was a great way to grow up, like, learning history by seeing the places. And my mom, because we couldn't be at home in school, she homeschooled us most of our, like, from probably third grade on. So I'll blame it all on homeschooling.

• 23:14Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Interesting. Did you guys grow up together?

• 23:17Speaker 07

  We did. I was 11, I met him when I was 11 and he was 12 and just grew up together, family, friends, and eventually high school sweethearts. But, yeah, so we've pretty much known each other our whole life.

• 23:30Shawn Ryan?

  You guys have known each other since you were 11?

• 23:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, she's the only girl I ever dated and I slapped the table pretty early and it took her a while to, you know, like me. No, she's the only girl I ever dated. We've been blessed, honestly. We grew up in church together, part of the same youth group, it was a really close-knit

• 23:51Speaker 07

  community and just best friends.

• 23:54Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 23:54Speaker 06

  Best friends for a long time. So, and she's put up with me, so I don't know, she should probably get looked at for that.

• 24:01Shawn Ryan?

  Are you a golfer too?

• 24:02Speaker 07

  You know what? I have the head knowledge. I used to go to all his golf lessons when we were dating, but I cannot play golf to save my life. So I joined when he's gone into CrossFit. I joined him in CrossFit, so I had another way to keep up with him, but the golf course was not it. So I was the cheerleader. I would ride along and watch him play.

• 24:21Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, right on. So when did you guys, when did you guys decide to get married?

• 24:26Speaker 06

  So I was finishing up my last year of college and she was in grad school.

• 24:31Speaker 07

  So 2006.

• 24:32Speaker 06

  That's when we got married, yeah. So we both went to Liberty. She worked for the Golf Channel. She worked for the Golf Channel when we first got married and we traveled a year with my dad just so she could kind of see the tour. And we went to, what, 38 states or something?

• 24:44Speaker 07

  A lot.

• 24:45Speaker 06

  And driving.

• 24:46Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 24:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, we got to, we had to really know each other at that point, right? When you've been driving on I-40 for, I don't know, 1,200 miles.

• 24:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:54Speaker 06

  Going coast to coast.

• 24:55Shawn Ryan?

  What are your master's degrees in?

• 24:57Speaker 07

  Communications and mass media.

• 24:59Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 24:59Speaker 07

  And photography, so.

• 25:00Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, nice. Nice. Perfect.

• 25:03Speaker 06

  Which she was finishing up during my deployment to Afghanistan in 2019. So I don't recommend doing master's degrees.

• 25:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, deployments and, yeah, thesis projects.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  Reasing the kids.

• 25:13Shawn Ryan?

  And so, what is, what is kind of, what is the home life like now with five, five kids?

• 25:21Speaker 07

  Five kids.

• 25:21Shawn Ryan?

  Four boys, one girl?

• 25:24Speaker 06

  It's just crazy, as you can imagine.

• 25:26Speaker 07

  It's loud and very...

• 25:27Shawn Ryan?

  You're a stay-at-home mom?

• 25:28Speaker 07

  Yes, I am. I am. So, full-time, full-time stay-at-home mom. And there's never a dull moment. We have no wallflowers in our house. So they are all very big personalities and very confident. We joke that's the mass confidence, that they just, they're all very confident and determined. And, I mean, wonderful kids, but definitely they keep me on my toes.

• 25:51Shawn Ryan?

  Are they, what do they, what do they like doing? Are they in sports? Are they involved? Are they homeschooled?

• 25:56Speaker 06

  They are.

• 25:57Speaker 07

  Now they are.

• 25:57Shawn Ryan?

  Now they're all homeschooled?

• 25:59Speaker 07

  Yes. Well, originally they were going to private school, but with all of the travel that was required with the litigation, it was, we couldn't take them out of school that much. And also just for security concerns and everything, we decided to take them home three years ago. And so I never envisioned myself being a homeschool parent, but here we are. And it's, it's been good. It's made us stronger as a family. And come, I mean, you have to live with each other. You're around each other all day. So it's great. Conflict resolution and learning how to get along and it's it's been a good process.

• 26:32Shawn Ryan?

  Do they like homeschool?

• 26:33Speaker 07

  They do. I was surprised. They do. They probably because they know that once they get through their school, then they have more free time. So there's that's that's a pretty good motivation, but their older two play lacrosse and then the younger three play soccer.

• 26:49Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 26:50Speaker 06

  We have a pretty strong church community too. And then with our in our neighborhood, there's a lot of marine families. So like, there's always neighborhood kids. There's like eight or 10 kids in my backyard every day.

• 27:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, we have a house loaded with Nerf guns. So we're like the cool white house.

• 27:04Speaker 06

  With the trampoline and the swings in the backyard. So the kids will come and congregate. So it's it's very loud at our home.

• 27:12Speaker 07

  It is.

• 27:12Shawn Ryan?

  Cool.

• 27:13Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 27:14Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome. So you're the hangout?

• 27:15Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 27:16Shawn Ryan?

  You guys are the hangout?

• 27:17Speaker 06

  Yes, for the neighborhood kids.

• 27:18Shawn Ryan?

  I think every parent strives, we saw the good ones strive to be the hangout. They want to be the hangout.

• 27:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, we try to keep it in the backyard as much as possible, but there's a Lego room upstairs and like it's just, there's a lot of, a lot of children.

• 27:29Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 27:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we're thinking about, I think we're gonna do the homeschool thing. We talk about it all the time. We don't know what we're getting into, but if you guys can do it with five, then we could do it with two.

• 27:39Speaker 06

  Absolutely. What could go wrong?

• 27:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Right.

• 27:43Speaker 07

  One at a time.

• 27:44Shawn Ryan?

  Right.

• 27:45Speaker 07

  They can grow along with it.

• 27:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Do you guys do the co-op thing at all? Is that?

• 27:49Speaker 06

  We haven't yet. I mean, we thought about it. Again, because of the traveling, we haven't been able to commit to like that type of a routine yet. But we're, you know, I think everybody evolves through the process. Like, hey, I can do it better this year and try to incorporate new things. And we've done that. Sports have been great with with the boys and the little ones. My four year old's starting soccer this year, so we're really excited about that. The other two have played a couple of seasons, but he is ready to go. Like, he's got the cleats. He's enthusiastic.

• 28:16Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you guys been homeschooling?

• 28:18Speaker 07

  This is our third year. So we do it in an online format, so I don't have to do the grading or the lesson planning. It's all done for me. So I really, because we we literally, I mean, life was happening so fast at that time between the traveling that we were doing for the litigation and we moved and then started homeschooling, like all within a couple month period. So we needed something that was very, just, just open it and go. And so that's what we've been doing and the kids like it.

• 28:47Shawn Ryan?

  So what is the most challenging thing about homeschooling?

• 28:52Speaker 07

  Well, I'm a very structured person by nature. So for me personally, it was because they were going to school beforehand. So the school, everybody, that was the structure. So all of a sudden, for that to be put on me and all, I mean, I pretty much adopted the same rhythm as a school. But me setting the structure, that was a learning process for me. And then also just juggling, bouncing back and forth between eighth grade science and then kindergarten reading and phonics. Like, that can bend your, that can be a little bit challenging, switching back and forth in between different grades and modes at times and answering questions. But I'm getting the hang of it, still.

• 29:32Shawn Ryan?

  She's good. Right on. Are you involved in this too?

• 29:35Speaker 07

  Eighth grade math is his.

• 29:36Speaker 06

  Yes, I do math in the mornings before I go to work with my oldest. And then I do PE very well. I'm an excellent PE teacher when I get home.

• 29:45Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 29:47Speaker 06

  But I'm a cheerleader. I'm humbled by how much work she puts into that. It's for moms out there who are home, that is the hardest job that I could possibly imagine.

• 29:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 06

  So my hat's off to her and other mothers out there.

• 30:02Shawn Ryan?

  And so how much are you guys traveling for the litigation?

• 30:05Speaker 06

  It slowed down a little bit, but as far as the traveling goes, but as far as for this recent board of inquiry, that was a grind for months of prep. Like, it's like having a second and third job outside of, like, you do your normal job and then you, you know, stay up late or get up early.

• 30:22Speaker 07

  Well, in the nature of your work, that you don't have your devices.

• 30:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, and we're in an open storage environment, so we don't have cell phones or personal computers. So it really, all your phone calls or whatever, you have to go outside or you have to do it outside of work hours. If you're meeting with attorneys or meeting with, you know, advocates or folks trying to help you, it's all outside of work hours. So it kind of takes up, it sucks up your bandwidth for family and other extracurriculars. And so we're looking forward to getting through this on the other side to be able to have, like, a little bit of peace.

• 30:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 07

  Normal.

• 30:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. And how long has this been dragging on?

• 30:57Speaker 06

  It's been since the fall of Afghanistan. So since 2021.

• 31:03Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, so four, four years.

• 31:06Speaker 06

  And, and really, it started in 2019. So for me, it feels like I'm about to finish up my deployment to Afghanistan.

• 31:12Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez.

• 31:12Speaker 06

  Um, it's been a five-year one. So, uh, we're, so this, this all kicked off in September of 2019, so till today.

• 31:20Shawn Ryan?

  And you had mentioned, uh, you had mentioned, you brought them into homeschool because of security concerns. What kind of security concerns are you guys facing?

• 31:28Speaker 06

  Well, the, uh, because of the, um, this kind of false information operation campaign in the media, uh, that's, uh, out there, the Taliban called us out by name, uh, put us up on their website, made a little video about it. Um, yeah, it's, it's unique to see some, you know, terrorist spokesman like da, da, da, in your name on national television.

• 31:48Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, we've seen it. I had to hire a whole security team because of this shit. Cause, um, cause of the, the withdrawal thing, you know what I mean? Or not the withdrawal thing, sorry, the funding. The, the US, I don't know, they decided to fund the Taliban forty-eighty-seven million dollars a week.

• 32:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, I saw those episodes with, uh, uh, Sarah Adams and just unbelievable. I can't believe that, that Americans would even think, like, how does that even cross your mind?

• 32:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 06

  Um, after what these, what these people have done for 20 years and oppressing their own people even, not to mention, oh, by the way, we've been fighting it for 20 years.

• 32:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Do you guys have any, do you guys, have you guys?

• 32:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, we moved, we sold our first, so when, when our first, our, our address became publicly, um, available, um, through some of this litigation, we moved, um, talked to the, actually, I remember this because I talked to our NCS rep and I was like, hey, the, the, this, this is a child from a, a named objective raid and this person who brought her to the US was, uh, uh, talking to the Taliban shadow governor, uh, and then he said he had Taliban in his phone before we brought him into US lines at the airport for evacuation. And then I watched him flagged on the watch list and I've got some security concerns. And so our force protection officer, this is what he told me, he's like, um, well, you should, you should dial nine-one-one if you feel threatened. And so I was thinking I would get a little more from that at a, you know,

• 33:13Speaker 06

  like how many other people in the command have gotten their name put on the internet by the Taliban. So I was expecting a little more there, didn't get it. So we decided to move. We sold our home, which is great because it helped pay for a lot of the early litigation. And then we, our second home address got leaked, but we're in a pretty, we're in a, we're in a cul-de-sac where we got good visibility everywhere. So we're very vigilant with our kids. We put up a fence. I'm a Marine, we have guns, you know. It's just, you basically, self-help has been our, we are on like with the local law enforcement. They know if we call 911 from our house, they're not going to send a regular unit. They're going to send a SWAT team.

• 33:53Speaker 06

  So like we've taken the precautions that we're able to with our current financial situation as much as we can. But yes, do we, are there people that drive by and take pictures of our house? Yes.

• 34:03Speaker 07

  Have reporters show up at our house and announce?

• 34:04Speaker 06

  Do reporters come knock on the door? Yes. Do crazy people know, you know, can know where we live? Yes. So all of those concerns and, and obviously I think with the veteran community, they could understand why we'd be concerned about that.

• 34:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Let's move into, so let's move into your, what were you doing as a, as an attorney in the Marine Corps?

• 34:24Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 34:25Shawn Ryan?

  You mentioned targeting in your.

• 34:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I, like every judge advocate in the Marine Corps, we start out and you, you build MOS or Military Occupation Specialty credibility by doing a trial bill. So I had done my time in the trial shop about two years. And I had done, while I was doing that, I had, I'd as much as possible tried to be involved in operational law, which is where my interest lied, which is advising commanders in like the law of war and rules of engagement and targeting. And so I got the opportunity to be the Marine Corps representative at this, the Army JAG School in Charlottesville, Virginia. And so there is a section there called CLAMO, which stands for the Center for Law and Military Operations. And what they do is they're kind of like the after-action reports and lessons learned

• 35:08Speaker 06

  across the spectrum of operational law. So there's domestic operational law for like disaster relief and such. There's like noncombatant evacuation ops, targeting. And so the Marines' portfolio in that section is the joint targeting process, collateral damage estimation, and civilian casualty response. And so when you get there, you go through all the training in those disciplines to understand those. And then you're dealing with, you're finding Marines have deployed with a MUE, or deployed to Afghanistan, or deployed to Iraq, or Syria. And as they come back, you're capturing those lessons learned, and then you're publishing and disseminating them. And one of the things I did, I was an editor for what they call the, now they call it the National Security Law Quarterly, where we collect all that

• 35:52Speaker 06

  knowledge and spread it across DOD in the different Judge Advocate communities, so that you learn from those experiences. And that's actually what I was doing in Afghanistan in 2019 when I deployed. I did a very short trip in 2018 to sit with at Camp Alpha and Camp Vance and watch some of the targeting going on live, and talk to them about like, hey, what are you seeing? But, and then the other thing I would do is I would instruct at the schoolhouse during operational law courses, or sometimes they'd have other legal communities ask you to come in and speak on operational law. So explaining to, for lack of a better term, baby JAGs, you know, what is the joint targeting process, what is collateral damage estimation, so that they have credibility when they go in front

• 36:37Speaker 06

  of a commander and get an operational law bill in.

• 36:42Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Interesting. And so what unit were you attached with in Afghanistan?

• 36:49Speaker 06

  Okay, so in 2019, when I deployed, I was attached to the Resolute Support US Forces Afghanistan Judge Advocate's Office. So it's the senior attorney for all of Afghanistan. He's a colonel, sitting on top of probably 10 or 12 attorneys, but he's responsible for all of the attorneys in Afghanistan.

• 37:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. And the incident is Operation Starfish, correct?

• 37:16Speaker 06

  So that's not the actual name of the op, but that was a code name we had had for her amongst the medical staff and the Americans trying to help get a safe outcome for her. They called it Operation Starfish.

• 37:27Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, okay. All right. Let's move into the to the operation, your attachment to it. Let's start right there.

• 37:36Speaker 06

  So I guess you should probably back up and talk about what happened earlier in that year with the deployment was supposed to be earlier in the year.

• 37:44Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it was fall of 2019. We knew that the deployment was coming up. It was going to be short, but still, just, you know, with kids and family life, we were anticipating trying to gear up for it. And then it happened earlier than anticipated. So I was in my final semester of grad school, working on Bithusis project, and you found out that you were going to go. So personal, you know, like on the personal side, it was not the best timing in the world. So I felt like I was scrambling, trying to get ready to, you know, hold down the fort with 300 children and be ready for you to go. So that was an intense time.

• 38:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, she was finishing up her master's degree. So it happened off cycle for us. Like it was it was a short deployment, 90 days, so not a big deal. But I landed on the ground in Bagram on September 6, 2019, which, you know, I learned that out the course of, but that is exactly like down to the hour when she was getting lifted off the X by the Rangers. And that when I learned that two months in, I had goosebumps because it's like, wow, like, what are the odds that you land at the same time? So September 6, 2019 sticks in my head because that's when I got to Afghanistan the second time at about 2:00 in the morning when we landed from Kuwait.

• 38:59Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 39:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:03Shawn Ryan?

  So how did you get attached to this raid?

• 39:06Speaker 06

  So.

• 39:07Shawn Ryan?

  What was it that what was it that you were doing that you got involved?

• 39:09Speaker 06

  So I can tell you exactly where I was. So we were, as an office, we had a we would go and have dinner together at the dining facility. And I will never forget, we're walking to Chao and my colonel's like, with probably eight or 10 attorneys, and my colonel, the senior attorney in Afghanistan, is like, what the hell are we going to do with this baby? And I was like, that was very odd. Like, I'm the new guy, right? I just got there. You're like, what baby? Exactly. I was like, what baby, sir? He's like, oh, well, um, some special operators hid in Al Qaeda training camp, and it was really bad, and they recovered a baby. And we're supposed to figure out what to do with it. And I was like, geez. And they're like, uh... Does that happen often?

• 39:54Speaker 06

  I don't think so. Did they just kill everybody on target? Well, I mean, it depends. Like, I guess... We went through it. It was 100-plus dead. They had, they did a very good job of making sure that no Al Qaeda leaders left. Yeah. Those structures. It's not a hit on them. I'm not saying it was bad. Oh, no, no. I'm just telling you that they were very thorough. And, um, so it was kind of just by the by that we'd first heard about it. And, um, I remember at the time, because I was worried my wife would be upset, um, I was like, well, sir, like, what's the concern? And they're like, oh, well, it's foreign child. Um, we've talked to some of the NGOs like ICRC and such, and they're saying that the situation in the Afghan system at the time wasn't safe for foreign children.

• 40:36Speaker 06

  And so we got to figure out something like a safe outcome. So I was like, well, sir, like, if there's nothing else to be done, like, as a last resort, like, we'd volunteer, like, I've got two kids, like, what's one more? Like, don't leave a child here if there was an option. And he was like, oh, sure, we'll see. Like, you know, uh, it was more just like a gut reaction. And what I came to find out was everybody had that reaction, from the Rangers on the objective to, like, uh, the medical, uh, at the forward surgical team that treated them all when they first got off the golden hour, um, all the wounded and, and her. Um, one of those guys had volunteered, uh, one of the civil affairs officers had volunteered. There was a list of Americans like, hey, we'll, we'll step in and, and take care of this child if there's no other option. How old is the baby?

• 41:21Speaker 06

  So we didn't know. We just were told, we didn't know the gender, nothing. Like, it was just baby, bad, bad mission. Months. Um, we came to find out that she was between six weeks and two months old, like, somewhere in there. She was malnourished, so it was hard to say the exact age. This is about 45 days old. So she had a medically estimated birth date in July of 2019. I actually, um, we had to come up with some day. And so in the office, when we were doing this for her birth certificate, we're like, hey, who's got a birthday in July? And somebody's like, mine's the 24th, so hers, her birthday is July 24th because of that, that marine, who says like... So, uh, he knows who he is out there. Uh, he's a, he's an uncle honorary.

• 42:04Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. So, did you run this by your wife at all?

• 42:10Speaker 06

  I was actually concerned about that. So, um, his-

• 42:13Shawn Ryan?

  Wait a minute. So how did they pick you?

• 42:14Speaker 06

  It, it, it, it just kinda happened and I can go into it, but, so I called her off-cycle. Do you wanna tell that part?

• 42:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, so he calls me and it was the afternoon my time and that was not a normal time for him to call. And so immediately just, you know, your mind is racing. Why is he calling me in the middle of the day? Something happened. And so I picked up the phone urgently and like, are you okay? Everything good? And I'll never forget the first thing he, he said was he's like, honey, he's like, there's this baby. And, and I remember I was in the kitchen and I just stopped and I was like, and I could tell by his tone that something, this was significant. There was something. So he proceeded to tell me that there was a, a baby recovered off an objective, you know, parents were killed and they, you know, they don't know what they're gonna do with this baby. And so I had a similar reaction to him and I was like, well, we'll volunteer. We can do it.

• 43:06Speaker 07

  You know, we, we'll, we'll, we'll help and take the baby if, you know, if there's nothing we can do, if there's nothing can be done if she doesn't, at that time, we didn't know if it was a boy or girl. Um, but like, you can't leave a baby there. And so he's like, well, he's like, slow down. He's like, I'm glad you said that, cause I already volunteered. And he's like, I'm glad to know we're on the same page. He's like, but, you know, they're gonna do a family trace and there's a long, it's a long shot. We're just, you know, we'll see how it plays out, but good to know that we're on the same page. And so that's pretty much where we left it, that first conversation.

• 43:35Speaker 06

  So, so what happened was, um, we, we came to find out through these daily stand-up briefs. So our, our Colonel briefs the General, the Force are in charge of all of Afghanistan every evening. And so in order to prep himself for that, we do a stand-up in the mornings with each of our disciplines, saying, hey, sir, this is what's going on. And you give them a, a two-minute spiel on what's going on in your section. And so we would get updates. Of course, as an office, like a bunch of Americans in, in, in a shop anywhere, if there's something interesting, you're, you're, you're queuing into that. And so the guy handling this was, um, originally an Air Force, uh, judge advocate. And, um, his specialty was not operational law. And, um-

• 44:16Speaker 06

  He had advised the commander, like, hey, we just, it's an Afghan decision. We're gonna, you know, tell them and whatever they say. And so I had heard, you know, indications and warnings in the shop, like, that they thought she was foreign and that it was injured in a hospital. And then we found out that it was actually a little girl several weeks in. And when I'm listening to these briefs and hearing the legal advice, um, there's, for context, there's a little bit of a disparity amongst lawyers about what the appropriate role of a legal advisor is. And what I've been taught in the Marine Corps is that our job is to give a commander legal maneuver space. So we give him his left and right laterals on a decision.

• 45:01Speaker 06

  Like, here's your range of options, sir, that are legally supportable. Based on my, uh, based on the situation, I recommend X. Uh, and then you stand by and you sploot smartly when he, he makes his decision. And he can accept risk anywhere on that spectrum, depending on what his objectives are and what, what he believes will support the mission. And I, I think that's the proper role of a legal advisor. But I think sometimes with inexperienced or people with a, with more of an ego into it, will, will paint commanders into a corner and say, hey, sir, like, the only legal supportable COA is X, because that's what they think. And I, I think that's a mistake. Um, I think it's really up to the commander to take on that risk and, and take on the appropriate level of risk based on you briefing him his space.

• 45:41Speaker 06

  And I really think that's what happened here, is this guy had said this was the option. And, um, when I'm sitting here, like, as a, as a curious young Marine captain, like, well, why do they say she's foreign? I don't know. You know, well, why, why is she in the hospital? I don't know. How old is it? Like, basic questions that you would think you'd need, because a lot of times your legal advice depends on the facts. And so I kind of stepped in, it's like, like, hey, sir, can I, can I help you? Uh, because he outranked me at the time. Can I help you with this? And so I really got involved by trying to get information, like factual information, to make a better legal advice for a commander so he can make a safe decision.

• 46:22Speaker 06

  Because it really wasn't just, you know, let's see what the Afghans say. Because we wouldn't do that, like, for example, in Syria. You would never ask, like, if you had a German or French or British foreign fighter's child, you would not be like, hey, let's leave him in an orphanage in Syria, right? You would try to repatriate them. That was, like, we do that, especially with ISIS, with so many different backgrounds. And so it was trying to get facts for decision makers. And so I got sucked in like that. So I had reached out to one of the other Marines in this joint environment, because it's not Breman and Marines, was the civilian casualty coordinator for US forces in Afghanistan. And so we had met once or twice, and, you know, because of the Marine Corps thing, we at least knew who each other were.

• 47:07Speaker 06

  I was like, hey, man, what do you got on this baby? And so he sends me a KANAP from the Joint Task Force, operating under Task Force 20, to stay up in the clear. And so I had worked with them a little bit on my previous tour to CENTCOM for targeting, watching them do targeting. And so I was like, holy cow. Like, so it's a very developed KANAP with all of the basic intel that supported this strike. And it was very clear that this were foreign fighters and exactly where they were from. And at the time, that was all classified. Where were they from? So the intel that we had was they were from Turkmenistan and that this specific

• 47:46Speaker 06

  10-digit grid compound was a repeat, sending foreign fighters of different nationalities. And they were feeding them into the Hekani network and Taliban victory units or Taliban Red units to work, you know, fight against us. And so they were, this particular group happened to be from Turkmenistan, and we had that high fidelity. It was the, one of the senior leaders in this group, it's called the Turkestan Islamic Party. And we all had that properly declassified through the Foreign Disclosure Officer of US 4A at some point in this process to help inform decision makers about the fidelity of where exactly these people came from.

• 48:28Speaker 06

  And since then, we've actually had numerous conversations with the Rangers who recovered off objective and like, there is literally nothing. To contradict that in US government possession. Wow. It's unbelievable that we're even having this conversation and have to say like, where's she from? Because to me, you have in Afghanistan in 2019, you're what 19 years into the war? You have developed human, you have developed Sagan, you have all sorts of assets for the JTF. Like, it's getting to be winter time, so the fighting season's winding down, so they're chopping most of the assets to the JTF to use, right? Because they're still hunting terrorists because they have a counterterrorism combat mission, right? They're there to kill al-Qaeda, Haqqani Network, and senior Taliban. And at that

• 49:13Speaker 06

  time, interestingly, the president, I think the next day, I think September 7th, the president had canceled the peace negotiations with the Taliban because they had, they did an attack in the Green Zone that killed an American Green Beret, a Staff Sergeant, and a Romanian NATO SOF. And he was so appropriately incensed that they would do these sorts of attacks when we're in good faith negotiating a reduction in violence to try to get to a solution for Afghanistan, that he canceled their flight and turned them around. They were gonna meet at Camp David that weekend and announce the peace deal. And he shut that down, turned it around. And I distinctly remember that because in the ops and intelligence

• 49:56Speaker 06

  brief for the four star, there was, we were trying to bleed them back in the negotiating table. And so like, they were just, the body count went significantly up after the president put pressure on them to punish them for what they, that bad faith. And it was a very distinct shift in the off tempo. And Task Force was, was really doing a good job at that. I, I did a joint casualty assessment team, I think on September 11th, we went out to the west in Hurat, and we picked up an ODA team and pushed them out west. And they already had a SEAL team out that way. And they were just going after people. It was impressive.

• 50:38Speaker 06

  Wow. So, did you, what do we call your daughter?

• 50:46Speaker 01

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

• 50:50Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 50:51Speaker 01

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

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 50:57Speaker 03

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

• 51:01Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 51:03Speaker 04

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

• 51:07Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 51:12Speaker 02

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

• 51:21Speaker 01

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

• 51:25Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 51:26Speaker 01

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

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 51:32Speaker 03

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

• 51:36Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 51:38Speaker 04

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

• 51:42Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 51:45Speaker 04

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 51:47Speaker 02

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

• 51:56Speaker 06

  So, what we decided for this is to, we had called her Sparrow because it was, it was a, we didn't know the gender at the time, so why don't you tell that?

• 52:06Speaker 07

  So, a couple of weeks in, like he mentioned, we get our very first photo. And it's, we call it now, we call it the baby in the box. But, and that was the first time we learned the, that she was a girl and got to see her for the first time. But up until that point, when I got that initial call, and I debated whether or not, I mean, the, the boys were early, or they were pretty young at the time. I wasn't going to really tell them that much, but I was so impressed that there's just like, there is this child out there that is in limbo. It's future, it's fate is in limbo. And so I remember one night, I, it was a Wednesday night, and I was putting the boys to bed.

• 52:48Speaker 07

  And I mentioned to them this baby. And I said, we need to pray for this baby. And I didn't, I didn't know, of course, the name or anything, so it's like, there's a song, like an old hymn that says, "Eyes on the Sparrow." And so we decided to... Call it baby sparrow. And so we would just, you know, when I tucked the boys in bed at night, we'd pray for baby sparrow. And it was a, it was a good shift for myself because um I, and the early part of that deployment being that I was trying to wrap up my uh degree and everything, I, I was kind of like, oh, how am I going to do this? And I was focused on myself. And then all of a sudden, when I heard about this baby, it, and just really, because Joshua would call, when he would call me, he'd describe just what was going, what he was seeing with

• 53:30Speaker 07

  other children, you know, when he'd go out outside the, the gate and it was eye opening that, you know, here I am, safe at home with my children and that there are millions of children in other parts of the world that are not guaranteed safety or a roof or their head or food. And so um baby sparrow was something it gave us, it get instantly shifted my perspective off of myself and, and there was this innocent child that um and that, you know, his whole future was at, at risk. And so uh we, we, that's where sparrow came from was not having a name or knowing anything about it. And then a few weeks later is when we saw the photo and we realized she was a girl.

• 54:14Shawn Ryan?

  And was this the, is this the photo of her wrapped up in a box?

• 54:20Speaker 07

  Home Depot box.

• 54:21Speaker 06

  Home Depot box. Because they didn't have any baby, like we're, we're at a combat trauma center, right? And so these, these young Americans who serve in those positions, the medical staff there, they cobbled together as much as they could to make her as comfortable as she could. She's, she was in a huge amount of discomfort with her, her fractured skull and she had a, a fractured femur um where they had to actually put a rod in to repair it and like burns on her and so.

• 54:41Shawn Ryan?

  And she's like forty-five days old?

• 54:43Speaker 06

  Exactly. And um.

• 54:44Shawn Ryan?

  We're putting this uh photo up on screen right now, by the way, so if you're listening, you can see it.

• 54:49Speaker 06

  So you can kind of, it's blurred out, but you can kind of see her, uh, her left skull um is swollen there. That was one of the reasons why we were trying to get her back to the States quickly is we were trying to get one of those little cranium skulls that you could kind of reshape it. And you couldn't tell now because of her hair, but like uh there was, you know, and then our experience with PTSD and like a TBI from, you know, Marines and soldiers going down range and getting uh IEDs. I have a lot of experiences as a JAD advocate, like working through that, like making sure people are checked out for that stuff when they get back from deployment. And does that have any, has that any play in their misconduct? Like, those are things that commanders just consider and that we advise on. So I'm very familiar with like the long-term concerns for TBI. And so, I mean, all of those things are present.

• 55:33Speaker 06

  And then we're kind of gathering information. Like I mentioned earlier, we got the, the concept of operations from the Ranger companies that went out for that mission. And we were also able to get the tactical interrogation report from the detainee that they picked up off objective. And there's actually one off of this objective. And then some Raiders had done a co or a simultaneous mission on the same network to kill the same night. And so they had also picked up some detainees. And so we were able to get a lot of like capturing material with Al Qaeda fighters, Chinese looking with flags, very consistent with what they were trying to target that night.

• 56:12Speaker 06

  And they even captured the, a video from a terrorist device in this building of the deputy emir of that Al Qaeda group. Like he's, and he's currently in Afghan, or it was in Afghanistan in 2022 and 2023 timeframe. So like, as far as the fidelity of, of what, who was occupying this structure? They had brutal close combat for over an hour and a half, room by room clearing. And I'll kind of go into the story of what we have learned about what happened that night in a minute, but basically.

• 56:46Shawn Ryan?

  So in these interrogations, did they get the information that they were from Turkmenistan?

• 56:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, so I had worked with the regional exploitation, regional exploitation center at Parwan Prison with some projects for General Miller. We were working on detainee prosecutions and how to speed that up. So we had to study from intake on the objective with associated whis or ASWs that were picked up with an objective from a task force mission.

• 57:10Shawn Ryan?

  What are ASWs?

• 57:11Speaker 06

  Like associated whis, so like people on the objective, like military age males on the objective with targets. And so, you know, they, they put their puck around their neck and where they've caught them and take a picture of it and, or their, I think that's a person under control or place of capture, I can't remember what the acronym stands for. But there's a little bag that goes around their neck where they take a picture of it and what they found with them. And then when they put them in the bird and take them to Parwan Prison. Cause that was the terrorist. Holding facility at the time and there was more than 5,000 like terrorists in Parwan Prison when I visited that in the fall of 2019. It was about when the Haqqani III were there because we toured it and we're studying like soup to nuts, how do they, how do they bag and tag these guys? How do they prosecute them under the like counterterrorism laws that we had helped the

• 57:56Speaker 06

  Afghans put in place? Like we met with the judges, we talked, we sat with Task Force 20 and like, hey, we need this type of information when you, you know, to be able to successfully prosecute these and speed up that process. Because they're basically clogging the prison with so many people they were getting. So because of that, that project I had just done, we were able to reach out very easily and get those tactical interrogation reports. And this detainee is like, yeah, I brought these people, like he identified the photos in, that we'd captured on objective as the people occupying this structure and it was the 10 series. So like it's the primary target where they expect the detainee to be, or the, the objective to be rather. And so the mission was to get, to capture, killer capture three named objectives, which

• 58:39Speaker 06

  were senior leadership in this Haqqani group. And there was a leadership compound, which was the 10 series and then about up, up in elevation to about maybe 80 meters away, there was a, a larger compounds that were conjoined and had fighters in them. And so they were expecting more kinetic up there and it actually was very kinetic. But I, I can get into the story, I guess, if we want to.

• 59:02Shawn Ryan?

  Well, yeah. So how long was the baby girl sitting in a Home Depot box wrapped up?

• 59:08Speaker 06

  Well, so they started, so that one of the issues was a fiscal law issues is can we, can we spend US taxpayer dollars and buy baby stuff? Like, not really, we don't have a lot of authorities for that. So a lot of the medical personnel started to volunteer and like purchase stuff off Amazon and purchase stuff off the local economy and we were able to.

• 59:25Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, even that.

• 59:28Speaker 06

  When I was there, it would take a month to get something from them. It was, and so they were just cobbling stuff together and just doing whatever they could to take care of her. What were they feeding her? So they- Were they even sell baby formula in Afghanistan? They did, yeah. They were able to get some stuff off the local economy and, um, around Kandahar Airfield. And that was some of the issues that we were working as a shop, and that's why it kept filtering up in the stand-up briefs. That's where you guys, it was Kandahar Airfield? She, so she was originally picked up, uh, she was golden hour flighted to Terran Cott. And, um, and the, I think eight or nine guys required surgery off the objective, um, and her were operated on to stabilize them. And then they were evacuated to the nearest roll three, uh, in Kandahar.

• 1:00:12Speaker 06

  And so she was there for about a month, and then they, because there was, uh, it was clear indications that she was foreign, and because no one had come forward to claim her, and, uh, they decided to move her to the, the Joint Theater Hospital at Bagram, which had, uh, a larger footprint and be able to, uh, uh, determine what's gonna be her long-term outcome. But they were, there was talks about putting her in, uh, the French hospital, uh, there's a French hospital in, I believe it's in Kabul, it may be in Kandahar, I can't remember exactly, but there was talks about putting her in a civilian hospital, basically, but that would require funding, and we didn't have a mechanism to pay for that. There was, there was different NGO-run orphanages, or I think there was a few state-run orphanages

• 1:00:56Speaker 06

  they were talking about putting her in. And, um, it kept boiling back down to, well, if this is a foreign child, it would be better for her to repatriate her to her country of origin, if we can get fidelity on what that is. And so that's really what drove this, like, fact-gathering mission that we did. But once we got the, um, tactical interrogation report, and the guys said, "Yeah, I brought these people here from Turkmenistan," these were the documents of the compounds, and you're looking at Al Qaeda flags and PKMs and AKs, and you're looking at all this captured enemy material from the objective. And then we had even gotten a few, like, 5W's emails, so I think I provided that where it, for the, for the audience to look at, but there's a email that they declassified

• 1:01:40Speaker 06

  for our board of inquiry that is the joint task force assessment. That it says, you know, she's very likely not, or is very likely foreign.

• 1:01:52Shawn Ryan?

  We'll put that up on screen right now.

• 1:01:54Speaker 06

  And it says, "The father was throwing grenades and shooting at the assault force. The mother was killed in a barricaded shooter incident." And that the family and most of the village had moved to Afghanistan solely to wage violent jihad. And that was the paradigm, like that was the baseline for US forces on the military side of the house. Like, no one even questioned that. They would refer to her as like, "The Uyghur baby." Or, you know, "The Al Qaeda baby" because it was just not even a question. That's why there wasn't even a, normally in these types of things with anything in the military, you do an investigation, right? Like, how did this happen? And you get fidelity on these things. It was such strong intelligence, they didn't even do that.

• 1:02:40Speaker 06

  Because, like, Task Force told us where they came from. And we even had, I don't know if it's in the materials that you all have that were released yet, but there was, I distinctly remember the Task Force SJA saying, "Hey, if you need more than this, we have more on Yellow, on TS." And we never had to because it was so clear in the stuff that we had declassified. And so, now, looking back, it was actually an even more kinetic fight than we'd even realized once we talked to the Rangers and got them to testify.

• 1:03:16Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, have you ever heard of this happening? Have you ever heard of?

• 1:03:20Speaker 06

  No, like, this is-

• 1:03:20Shawn Ryan?

  I've never heard of a unit bringing back a baby.

• 1:03:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, and I think that speaks to the in extremis, like, how bad it was on the subject. Because, I mean, you think-

• 1:03:30Shawn Ryan?

  It was just such a unique situation, is what I'm saying. Like, I've never, I've never, I've never brought a baby back. I've never, I have tons of friends-

• 1:03:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, and, and so, like, this is a-

• 1:03:41Shawn Ryan?

  Tier one, tier two units, never brought a baby back. Never heard of this.

• 1:03:45Speaker 06

  Well, and I think that, as the audience, like, here's what actually happened, they'll understand why these guys did what they did. And honestly, it was heroic, so-

• 1:03:54Shawn Ryan?

  And so, but, hold on, before, I just, we'll get into that, I just want to get, clear my-

• 1:03:58Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:03:59Shawn Ryan?

  Clear out my questions.

• 1:04:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Shawn Ryan?

  So, so how were you the one, I mean, you said, "All these people had volunteered."

• 1:04:06Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:06Shawn Ryan?

  You talked to Stephanie about it.

• 1:04:10Shawn Ryan?

  When did it be like, when did it, when did it get narrowed down to you're the one?

• 1:04:17Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:04:17Shawn Ryan?

  You're the one that's gonna take.

• 1:04:18Speaker 06

  Not for a while, actually. So September 6th, 2019 is when this mission goes. It takes a couple of weeks. Like, we thought that she'd gotten turned over, or the baby had been turned over, and then we found out, no, it wasn't. There was back and forth because the Afghans kept saying, "We don't have capability," which is not uncommon. Like, it's an injured infant. Like, that's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just the facts, right? And we'd done that with other, like, types of logistical support for the Afghans before, you know, from munitions to strikes. You know, you provide that support to enable those, you know, partner forces. But for a baby, we're trying to make sure that they had a safe outcome. And so, again, I had told you, like, we get updates with these stand-ups and asking basic questions, and then providing those informations to decision-makers. And it became more and more clear

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

  that this is a foreign child, and that wasn't the only legal, legally permissible COA. And so I went back to this Air Force major, and I was like, "Hey, sir, like, we need to go back and brief the two-star, like, what we know now." Because we had a significant amount of information that we did not have before. And their attitude was kind of like, "Oh, well, I already kind of made a big stink about having to tell the Afghans, because they weren't going to tell them in the first place. We're just gonna do the right thing and take care of the child." And he had made a big stink about telling them. And then they were like, "We can't, you know, we don't have capability." And he didn't want to go back and brief this two-star. And I was like, "Why?" I don't know. Like, this is not judging. I'm just saying, like, that's what happened.

• 1:05:45Speaker 06

  I don't know why. I think he felt like he had already made a big deal about having to tell the Afghans in the first place. And then when we had fidelity on that she was not Afghan, he didn't want to go back and correct that brief to the commander. And so what ended up happening was I started to look at... Research, okay, well, what are the risk factors? You know, again, like you make legal advice based on facts. So if the commander executes and gives this infant with a fractured skull and a fractured femur to an Afghan institution in 2019 Afghanistan, what does that look like? That's what I wanted to know. And I didn't know. I was new in country. I hadn't really studied the environment for children in Afghanistan.

• 1:06:28Speaker 06

  But as I'm researching on the embassy's website and the State Department's got a lot of formal reports to Congress of these types of things, like trafficking in persons or the risk factors in Afghanistan. So I'm pulling like, agency-level study reports to Congress, and it's scaring the bejesus out of me. It's saying that there's systemic child sexual abuse in every province in Afghanistan. There's even a, if your audience is familiar with Bachi Bazi, there's a practice dating back thousands of years in that region of dressing, and this is somewhat graphic if there's children listening, but dressing up male children as females, and they dance

• 1:07:13Speaker 06

  and they sexually molest these children. And that was happening systemically. Mm-hmm. And, you know, to be honest, I had been trained, like, hey, there's child molestation is part of the culture. It's how it is there. It is how it is there. And I'm not saying that's true. All Afghans, I've got, one of my best friends is an Afghan, and I've got so many friends that we've gotten out through the evacuation that... It's very common. It is. There's good and bad people everywhere on Earth. But in this particular location, there's some evil people. And one of the things that bothered me is that we were advised by State Department, like, oh, that's not illegal here, like, it's just, you know, gotta make deal with it.

• 1:07:56Speaker 06

  And for a decade, you have American service members who have put, you know, some of these people in power. And having to to allow child rape on our installations and saying it's just part of their thing, like you can't do anything about it. And like that mentality to me is just the antithesis of what we should be about as Americans. Because that's wrong everywhere on the globe. And we came downrange to represent this uniform. And if we're enabling child rape on our basis, that's not a hard call to say, hey, this is wrong. We're going to lose moral high ground. How are we going to have the moral high ground to intervene as a country on good causes if we permit evil when we get there? And so in 2019, after that, however long we've been in Afghanistan, finally, through

• 1:08:40Speaker 06

  our influence, we changed the law in Afghanistan and it became illegal. And do you know how many people they prosecuted that year? Three. And in our office, we did the Leahy vetting. So if there was allegations of gross violations of human rights, we would defund that or defund a percentage to that Afghan unit, right? And so we were getting these reports at the operational headquarters of Afghanistan from all over the country about some checkpoint that was killing another checkpoint over who, I mean, who would rape the T-boys that weekend? Like, that's the type of conversations we're having in the office. So when we're just talking about foreign girl, baby, right? And then researching these reports, talking about that even some of the orphanages trafficked children.

• 1:09:24Speaker 06

  And then I think Stephanie touched on this earlier. I did nothing dangerous in Afghanistan. Like, don't, the only thing that we did outside the wire was we would go outside of our compound and we would process claims. So if we had a ground movement and they they they damaged a jingle truck or they ran over some livestock, they would do a message in a bottle and throw it out the window to whoever property they damaged. They wouldn't stop because it could be a target. And that message would say, go to this gate at RS headquarters at this time and on this day, and you can present a claim against the US government and we'll reimburse you for the damage. And so we would process those claims. So we'd take our TERPs, we'd go outside, you know, the checkpoint, and we would interact

• 1:10:05Speaker 06

  with local Afghans that had had some sort of damage done by US military operations. And so I was very, you know, you can be very familiar with the culture and like, hey, this is a $20,000 cow. And like, I don't think so. And and so I had to negotiate down to a reasonable outcome. But one of the the interesting things about that is you would interact with the local street children as you go outside the gate. Until the first time you go out, you're you're you're buying their little bracelet or whatever trinket they're selling and you're trying to help them out as much as you can and like be friendly. And so I distinctly remember this one boy, he was exactly my son's age, he was like seven. And like, really like handsome little boy, like kinda like my kid.

• 1:10:47Speaker 06

  Different complexion, but but just like filthy, dirty and like in this in this environment. So this particular kid, I tried, he was, you know, asking for money, so I gave him like a buck. And I watched him go over to his owner and like give him that dollar, like the guy who owned the kids were begging. And I realized like there is nothing you can do to help this kid.

• 1:11:06Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:07Speaker 06

  And so like after that, we would just get him disposable like food or, you know, stuff from back home, like give him give him a lollipop or something. Just something they could consume right then and no one could take from them. Because if it was anything else, they would take it from them. And and they would particularly get kids with like scoliosis or like kids that were more sympathetic to beg.

• 1:11:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Speaker 06

  As we did that stuff. And so that's kind of the context of like evaluating the safety concerns for in in a tribal society.

• 1:11:33Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, they use these kids to kill people too. I mean, when I was there, they would they would they would fill up their bicycle tires with explosives and have them ride up to the gate or ride up to a convoy or ride up to personnel and then they would, the kid doesn't even know that the bicycle tires have explosives in them and they'd blow the kid up just to kill, just to kill an American. So that's that's that's who we're dealing with here.

• 1:11:57Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:58Shawn Ryan?

  This is who this is who you're in a custody of, Battlebird.

• 1:12:01Speaker 06

  Absolutely, and that's the.

• 1:12:03Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, not to mention, you know, there's videos of this stuff during the Afghanistan withdrawal, when when when that fiasco happened. We had we had mothers who were trying to throw their babies over razor wire. Babies are getting hung up, caught in razor wire, dangling because they didn't make it over the razor wire. You you have babies being killed right outside the right outside the walls of the of the airport where US controls it. US didn't do shit about it. You know what I mean? And and these people are trying to, they're they're hanging on the side of an airplane as it's taking off.

• 1:12:44Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, because of Taliban control, because they know what's coming. And no, no mother is going to.

• 1:12:54Shawn Ryan?

  Throw her baby over, try to throw her baby over razor wire. I mean, there was, there was babies everywhere, just hanging from razor wire that didn't make it over. I mean, it's, that's who we're dealing with. That's who you're in, so I want everybody to know, that's who you're in a custody battle with. That the mega law firms are interfering with, who want your daughter to go back to that. That's who we're dealing with.

• 1:13:20Speaker 07

  Well, I think there's, they've done a very good job at twisting the narrative because I think by and large, the larger American public, we don't, uh, they're not aware of the atrocities, like what you know, service members have seen on the ground, what life is like, actually on the ground in Afghanistan. Most of the American public doesn't know that.

• 1:13:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:38Speaker 07

  And so it sounds very judgmental, or it sounds like, oh, you can't say that, or no, that, that surely that can't be true. But the reality is, reality is, is there's a very, uh, big difference in the value of children. Like, they, they have a very different perspective.

• 1:13:54Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, but this, but they're, they do now, because that shit hit national news. I mean, Tyler Andrew Vargas painted a very good picture of what that looked like during the Afghan withdrawal. And, and, and the footage is everywhere. We'll roll it right here. I mean, just so everybody can see, can see what, what that was like.

• 1:14:16Speaker 07

  Well, what I would add, though, is that the attorneys that we've, what we've dealt with, they make it sound like we're, what would you say, like, like, we're almost like we're making it up.

• 1:14:26Shawn Ryan?

  Like, oh, like it's a conspiracy.

• 1:14:28Speaker 06

  Well, and, and I feel bad for them, even the opposing attorneys, because they have no idea the reality of what they're doing. Like, for a real little girl, like, what's been such a struggle through all of this?

• 1:14:39Shawn Ryan?

  Who the fuck fights this shit? Like, who are these attorneys?

• 1:14:43Speaker 06

  So.

• 1:14:44Shawn Ryan?

  Spineless fucks.

• 1:14:47Speaker 06

  Well, I think that they

• 1:14:48Shawn Ryan?

  Like, seriously, dude? You're gonna take a fucking five-year-old girl and send her back to that shit? For your fucking paycheck? Fuck you!

• 1:14:59Speaker 06

  I think in their mind, that they're gonna keep this what they're gonna give her back

• 1:15:02Shawn Ryan?

  How do they justify it to themselves?

• 1:15:04Speaker 06

  Because I think they think that she's just gonna stay here. They think that she's gonna have this nice little picket fence live with these Afghans here. And what they don't realize is, these people are proxies, are puppets of the Taliban that have their family in Afghanistan. Do you really think that they put Marines' families on national news and then don't know who these people are or how to touch them? Like, absolutely not. Like, this is, that's why we're saying it's really a Taliban-Elie Gonzalez situation, because she's not going to stay here in the United States if we lose custody of her and these people do. They're gonna put a gun to their family's head and make them go home. And then whatever the Taliban says is what's gonna happen to her. And she'll, you know, she's not gonna go to college or marry who she wants or grow up to be who she wants to be. And, you know, that is, I don't know.

• 1:15:48Shawn Ryan?

  If they don't kill her.

• 1:15:49Speaker 06

  Over my dead body. Like, that is basically, like, we have, from day one, we have said, based on everything in US government possession, all of our intel, our billion-dollar intelligence gathering apparatus in Afghanistan says X. We sent helicopters full of special operators to kill these terrorists. And, but the US government can't figure out where she's from? Like, give me a break. Like, you have this information. We've had it all along. And you've had people like us, just regular Americans at the ground level, saying, "Look at the information." Like, if you, if you watch this video, these Rangers in combat with these terrorists, like, they're heroic. They're doing what we tasked them as American people to do: kick down doors and eliminate these terrorists from the face of the earth. And they were doing that.

• 1:16:32Speaker 06

  And, um, I cannot, I cannot express how much appreciation we have for that. Like, you know, you're raised in America. You're patriotic. You care about service members, like, "Thank you for your service," that type of thing. But when you read what these guys have done, or you hear, like, when it gets out from behind, because there's a lot of non-disclosure agreements, there's a lot of stuff that you don't get to talk about, especially with the special mission units. And, um, when you actually dive into that and you get to see some of these experiences they've had, unbelievable. Like, heroic. It's humbling to be able to read some of the stuff and talk to these guys.

• 1:17:07Shawn Ryan?

  And so, so, so when did you? We got a little sidetracked there. Now I'm angry. But, um...

• 1:17:17Shawn Ryan?

  I just, I'll never, I just, attorneys, man, sorry, but I just, I just cannot imagine what it's like on the others. How the fuck do they sleep at night? I just don't, I don't get it. But, um, so at what point did you find out she's gonna be in your care?

• 1:17:37Speaker 06

  Okay, so, um, probably fast forward a couple of months, um, she's been under US care at Bagram. Um, doctors and nurses love her, obviously, trying to make sure she's safe and recovering and all that. Um, we're trying to get more information for decision makers. And then there was a real problem with classification. So we have some NATO folks who don't have a US secret clearance. And we're working with NGOs and some folks at the embassy, that it's not easy to share how much we know. And so, at, at one point, I sat through, um, a meeting where, uh, they were going to use our generals' influence to make the Afghans take her, like, end of story. Like, here, your problem, like, kind

• 1:18:21Speaker 06

  of like an operational, like, it's a distraction from operations, Afghan problem, let's just make, make them take her. And so that was gonna happen. And I was like, I went to my Colonel, I was like, sir, I was like, I don't think I can sleep at night. If we, like, close her eyes and say that she's not gonna get, like, at best case scenario, she's gonna die of neglect. Because, you know, you're talking about Kabul, which is like, uh, Denver, it's a mile high city, it's, uh, it's fall, so it's getting to be cold, there's no heat in the orphanages, there's no running water, electricity, and some of the, like, there's a few nice presentation, uh, facilities in the Capitol that they showed all the NGOs to get people to donate to the system. But in reality, in most places, there's nothing. You know, there's very little infrastructure, there's no medical care, and like, and this

• 1:19:05Speaker 06

  is a kid with a fractured skull, like, holy cow. How, how do we ignore, as Americans, like, the big US, us, how do we ignore what's actually gonna happen? And I have no problem with killing terrorists. Like, her parents died in combat with our guys, no problem with that. But, but we're about protecting innocents. Like, we believe, like, even our worst enemy, it's not that child's fault that their parents were terrorists in a foreign country, or brought them there to, to, to wait shi-ha. And so it was, it was about getting that information to the right, the decision maker. But, uh, I got off track. Your question was... How did we get involved is we appealed. I went to my authority. I was like, hey, sir, can I try to create a legal path to the U.S. for this child?

• 1:19:49Speaker 06

  And he was like, oh, sure, knock yourself out. You know, like, I appreciate where you're coming from. And so I got authorization.

• 1:19:55Shawn Ryan?

  So he didn't take you seriously?

• 1:19:56Speaker 06

  He wasn't not serious. It was just such a crazy, like Gordian knot of a problem set. Like, you know, there was just like, he didn't mind someone trying to take a crack at it. And so I went back to my chew and I call or my housing unit and I called Stephanie and we were just talking about this, like, how are we going to advocate to change the U.S. policy towards the kid and not just ignore it? Because at that time, we ran a lot of important things in Afghanistan, so the airspace, the borders, the infrastructure, security, we provided those things. And so if it was important enough, we would execute. And so our goal was to make her life that important.

• 1:20:41Speaker 06

  And so.

• 1:20:43Shawn Ryan?

  So was this the initial conversation?

• 1:20:46Speaker 07

  Well, no, this is the second big conversation. I'll never forget because it was, once again, the afternoon, odd time. And I think I was doing a school project, I was like photographing or something. And we're, he was talking back and forth, like, how do we elevate this? Like, how do we, we're gonna, we have to get, you know, enough attention on this for a decision to be made. And that's when you said.

• 1:21:09Speaker 06

  Well, I was like, we're gonna have to get this to the president. Like, it's a policy decision ultimately. It's, does the United States value this child's life over operational convenience? And so in order to change the four star, you'd have to, I mean, like nominally the four star, his staff, you'd have to get the U.S. policy to change. And so we're like, who can we? And like, it's been so funny that we've been portrayed in the media as like politically connected. I am a captain in the Marine Corps. We are very by the book for the most part. I'm a judge advocate. Like, I'm very like by the book. And so like, how do we change US policy? And we had a time hack because I believe it was a Thursday and they had a meeting scheduled on the next Monday and they're going to dump her with the Afghans who'd already said we

• 1:21:54Speaker 06

  don't have the capability. And so.

• 1:21:56Speaker 07

  You said, I just remember that line, you're like, we're gonna have to get hold the president. And I was like, it was quiet, I was like, okay.

• 1:22:03Speaker 06

  How do we do that?

• 1:22:03Speaker 07

  How do we do that? And.

• 1:22:05Speaker 06

  And so I did two things. We, I was kind of on the phone Googling like, who's got children in the military, what politicians or whoever, like somebody who might have influence. And I just so happened to see the vice president's son was a Marine and he was a captain, I'm a captain. And so I, I just drafted up an email saying like, basically like, hey dude, I'm downrange. I need an assist on this. I think it's, you know, here's the situation, here's the five W's, I think it's wrong that we're doing this. Like, I made the moral and principled argument that this child's life was at risk by our actions that were basically based on a policy decision. And so we shouldn't do things when there's other options that could hurt kids.

• 1:22:48Speaker 06

  And, and I would say that's true across the board. It was particularly true in her instance because, you know, I, I think all of the evidence shows that she was a foreign Al Qaeda fighter's child. And so we had options.

• 1:23:00Shawn Ryan?

  So you got this to J.D. Vance?

• 1:23:02Speaker 06

  Well, no, it was Pence at the time.

• 1:23:05Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, it was Pence.

• 1:23:06Speaker 06

  So it was Pence's son and then, and honestly, to his credit, like, he, he was like, hey, I'll help. So he, he got that to his dad through his, I believe through his mother.

• 1:23:15Shawn Ryan?

  J.D. Vance was a Marine?

• 1:23:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely. And there, there is a bond with Marines, like, you know, it's just like if, if you're in some of these special mission units, you know, the services, there's, there's a bond there. And he absolutely came through for protecting innocent life. And, you know, we're forever grateful for that. He, he got that through and it was like a bolt of lightning. The vice president reached out, directed US forces in Afghanistan to make every effort to bring her to the States and act in the child's best interest. And that was testimony from a colonel in my board of inquiry that that happened, that, that he was directed by the four star who had been communicating with the office of the vice president. And so we changed US policy. Like, and so we thought that's all it would take. Like, I thought, done, like, safe, she's safe. Like, now we're gonna start working towards a good outcome.

• 1:23:58Speaker 06

  And, and honestly, we kind of like, it'd be kind of unique or, or.

• 1:24:05Speaker 06

  It'd be a great opportunity to be able to be the one who got to take care of her. But like, there were so many other people, I didn't even think that was gonna happen. I just thought she was gonna get to the States, she's gonna be fine.

• 1:24:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, she was gonna be, I remember asking you, I was like, what do you think the odds are that, you know, she would...

• 1:24:19Speaker 06

  10%.

• 1:24:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was smaller than, I think you're like 1%, you said something really small that we would actually be able to...

• 1:24:25Speaker 06

  But we were happy that she was safe.

• 1:24:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Speaker 06

  Because the US policy changed distinctly, and I got yelled at a little bit, but not too bad. My Colonel was like, "I'm flexible, we'll row the ship in the other direction." And he was a good person about it. He actually signed a birthday card saying like, "Congratulations on your new baby." You know, and he signed it like the Vice President or something. They, um, this is my award, my end of tour award from Afghanistan. And they put it, the Colonel put it on the back, so don't make me call the VP again.

• 1:24:57Speaker 06

  And so it's kind of funny how bureaucrats like to like paint reality. You know, they're like, "Oh, you made your mask, you went and, you know, hid and like, nobody knew. And if only the US government known, they'd have shut this down." That's just a lie. Like, we were talking directly with the Vice President's staff and with the Director of US Citizenship Immigration Services, the head of the humanitarian affairs branch. Once the Vice President and US policy changed, our office worked as a shop to accomplish that directive. And I was a part of that. And we used that information, declassified it to inform our Afghan partners and some of these NGOs, like, "Trust us, here's the pictures." Like, we showed them the math a little bit about what we knew about the fidelity of her origin.

• 1:25:41Speaker 06

  And so from there, we thought it was, we're golden. Like, she's gonna be safe, we'll see what happens, but nothing like, "Oh yay, we get to, you know, adopt a little girl from Afghanistan," nothing like that. It was a child, an innocent life. I'd have done it for any, like, we didn't know sight unseen, I thought it was a blown-up child, like, no idea what the condition was, expecting it was gonna be handicapped.

• 1:25:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, a child with special needs, absolutely. We were prepared.

• 1:26:03Speaker 06

  And so what really changed that was the embassy. And like, we talked about heroes and villains in this story. Our first villain, and I'm not necessarily trying to judge her, but I have a very distinct disagreement with her worldview and her practice. The Deputy Chief of Mission at the embassy... I was on the email chain from a senior State Department official back in the States who was working with the Vice President's Office and working with some of the President's staff to accomplish this. They, I said, "Well, we're gonna need to coordinate with the embassy," right, because we're right next door in Kabul. And so she cold emailed Ambassador Bass,

• 1:26:45Speaker 06

  informed him of the situation, and he said, "Okay, we're gonna assign this deputy," I think she was the acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the time, the number two at the embassy, "to handle it." And so we're like, "Great!" And then there was a meeting set up for two days after that. And so that was October 23rd, 2019, is when that meeting occurred. And what's so funny is I've been accused of fraud for knowing there was known family in this meeting that we hadn't with the embassy. And the reality was, is that we were supposed to brief the embassy on the intelligence that DOD had. And I stayed up to like 3:00 in the morning, gathering all the stuff and culling it out, making sure

• 1:27:30Speaker 06

  it was chopped down to the bare essentials to know, like, "What's the name of the guy in this building? Who's this guy in this photo that we got off the objective? Who was the target? Like, where does he fit in this Al Qaeda network? And like, what is the fidelity we have?" And so I had two binders in my hand, one for the Deputy Chief of Mission and one for our two-star, or our Operations Officer. And we were gonna brief the embassy on what we knew. So we show up at this meeting, and for lack of a better word, they ambushed us. So there are Afghans in this meeting, where I'm supposed to talk about US classified documents, and to explain to them how we know where she's from, and that she is a foreign child, and with all the concomitant risks associated with that in the Afghan system at that time. And

• 1:28:17Speaker 06

  Not the first words that ever mouth, but very close to the first words out of this, this deputy chief of missions staff is, now that she's medically complete, how soon can you take her to the Afghans? So this is two days after the vice president of the United States sets US policy, after the four stars like, yep, act in the child's best interest and try to get her back to the States. Like, US forces Afghanistan and DOD is stepping out smartly on the administration's policy. Like, I admit that we advocated for that, like, totally. As a captain, like, we were just, we were trying to inform decision makers, but that was US policy. Absolutely. And they were directly insubordinate to what the administration pulled them to do. They were trying to make it a fait accompli, like she was already gone out of US custody, before it got traction and they had oversight.

• 1:29:02Speaker 06

  And so, they never, ever-

• 1:29:04Speaker 07

  Why?

• 1:29:05Speaker 06

  I have-

• 1:29:06Speaker 07

  Why? Well, we eventually found out why in the board of inquiry.

• 1:29:10Speaker 06

  Oh, that's true. Five years after the fact.

• 1:29:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:29:13Speaker 06

  So, um, so my, my deputy SJ is a Navy commander at the time. And he went and just like, tried to make things nice with the embassy after this meeting, because I basically was like, are you tracking that this child has a fractured skull? Like, and so the Afghans, like, we cannot take a child of these capabilities. And there was some chatter about like, oh, the Red Cross might have been able to, might have located some family. And what, what actually happened was, because of the classification levels, the NATO representative was a Dutch civilian, and she helped deal with like, children caught in conflict, right? She was an advisor on that. And she had said, oh, we might have found an uncle at Parwan. And I was thinking, that's odd, because Parwan's like 100 miles away from where this actually

• 1:29:58Speaker 06

  went on. And I was like, can you send me that traffic? And so she sends me email traffic of a name and a alphanumeric-

• 1:30:07Speaker 06

  Code that I recognize as a detainee number. And so I, I actually had pulled that number and was gonna brief them that no, that was not an uncle. This guy said that these were foreign fighters. He actually described his like disgust for their features, like, ugh, like had mimicked, like throwing up in his interrogations, like, like, these people are disgusting.

• 1:30:28Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:30:29Speaker 06

  And so like the fidelity, it was so crossed wires for these folks without a clearance that that's why we went and declassified it in the first place. So it took us about a week after that.

• 1:30:39Shawn Ryan?

  So now I, now I realize why, so that, yeah. Now I realize it's, it's gonna take a minute to get to when you found the moment.

• 1:30:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, that was the moment.

• 1:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  So I don't wanna brush anything.

• 1:30:51Speaker 06

  Well, that, that was the moment I was like, oh, they don't care about facts. Like, I didn't realize that it wasn't about this child or the truth. It was about whatever political convenience there was. And, um, and I think that centered a lot around the peace deal.

• 1:31:07Shawn Ryan?

  Geez.

• 1:31:09Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break.

• 1:31:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Shawn Ryan?

  And when we get back, we'll, we'll talk about the on target.

• 1:31:15Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:31:16Shawn Ryan?

  Andrew's on target and, uh, and what Sparrow went through.

• 1:31:23Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:32:06Shawn Ryan?

  And some of the stuff 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 going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that.

• 1:32:50Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:33:05Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Josh, Stephanie, we're back from the break. And so we want to, we want to talk about the actions on the objective, the night of the raid, the night of 5 September 2019. We already know there was 100 plus Al Qaeda killed that night. The Rangers did the hit.

• 1:33:28Shawn Ryan?

  Pick it up.

• 1:33:29Speaker 06

  Well, I think that it's important for folks to understand the, both the medical concerns we have, this story, what it, what it, what should stick in the, in the audience's mind is, this is why we were concerned about her long-term medical care and also why we were concerned about who exactly was going to come forward and claim her at any point. Because we're talking about intel that's saying hundreds of these foreign fighters come back from Syria and settling in Afghanistan and task force is actively hunting and killing them. And that's the prelude, that's the context to what this mission was. And so our concern was, if we don't properly vet whoever comes forward, she could be back on the X, on the next objective and not make it. And she barely made it out of this one, which you're about to hear.

• 1:34:10Speaker 06

  But, so I think it's also important, before we go into the stories, how we know this. So we had the Alpha Team leader and the multi-purpose K9 handler come and testify. Their testimony is in evidence at our board of inquiry. So a lot of this stuff is eyewitness sworn testimony. But

• 1:34:31Speaker 06

  Just for ease, I'm gonna kinda talk you through like the story of what happened. So it's period of darkness, five to six September, when we operate, we own the night, right? And task force goes out on a mission to capture, kill, three named objectives. They are Uighur slash Turkestan-y, there's different names for that kinda ethnic group, that are an Al Qaeda branch. And one of their boutique specialties for Al Qaeda is they run some child training camps in Syria and Afghanistan and Pakistan, that's all open source. And they had been part of this group that had left Syria and come back into Afghanistan. There is a UN report publicly available that I provided, so they can see that, of where these people were and what they were doing.

• 1:35:16Speaker 06

  So Rangers get tasked with doing this, and it's a pretty large hit. There's two company-sized elements of Rangers on the objective. And so the primary compound of interest is what they call the 10-series, that's the priority target, and then the other companies hitting this other target. Or, I'm sorry, not company, I meant platoons. There are two platoon-sized elements are hitting this other compound. So you execute undercover darkness, they infiltrate with, you know, one train feature away, outside of earshot, they execute a march in to surround the compounds and isolate them, and they succeeded that. Like, it's quiet on the objective.

• 1:35:57Speaker 06

  They maintain the light-noise discipline, they surprise them. So the first thing they do is, you know, call out, surrender or die. They go through their escalation of force, TTPs. Nobody responds. And, I mean, I think the best assumption, you know, in retrospect was that they were arming up and putting on their vests and getting ready to go. So they continue to escalate force, because there's no response from the 10-series. And they breach one of the compound walls to allow them to kinda gain situational awareness of what's going on in the compound. There's some other ways they have of having situational awareness that we've been asked not to disclose, but...

• 1:36:41Speaker 06

  They start getting voices and seeing movement inside. And so the first glimpse, the multi-purpose clan handler sees her. Is her dad has her and he's using her as a human shield. And he's got an AK. And he's engaging the Rangers at the compound entrance. And he's trying not to shoot this baby while he's killing this terrorist. And he's shooting.

• 1:37:04Shawn Ryan?

  This is Sparrow?

• 1:37:05Speaker 06

  This is Sparrow.

• 1:37:06Shawn Ryan?

  So she was the first?

• 1:37:08Speaker 06

  First, one of the first things they saw. So, like, it was about an hour and a half into the fight that they actually recovered her. But in the first initial stages is when they saw her. So they, and they exchanged grenades. So the Ranger vividly described a grenade rolling out. And he sees it at his feet. And it was like soul notion for him. It was like a homemade explosive. It was just unique. And he covers his dog and yells grenade. Because they're all stacked up at the compound.

• 1:37:39Shawn Ryan?

  So did they kill the guy?

• 1:37:40Speaker 06

  They don't know.

• 1:37:41Shawn Ryan?

  That was using him?

• 1:37:42Speaker 06

  This time, they killed everybody eventually.

• 1:37:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Speaker 06

  But, um.

• 1:37:44Shawn Ryan?

  They don't know if he was.

• 1:37:45Speaker 06

  They don't know. So he, so they, he sees a grenade, yells grenade, covers his dog. And it goes off and he's the closest to grenade, but he isn't hit. His buddies are. So I think they picked up three or four casualties initially from fragmentation. And one of the things that they said saved their life was it was mostly homemade explosives. And so some of them only partially detonated. He said he wouldn't be here if he stepped on a tow popper and going around the building with his dog.

• 1:38:10Shawn Ryan?

  What I meant was the human, the guy that was holding Sparrow was a human shield. Did they kill him right off the bat?

• 1:38:15Speaker 06

  Not, no, not right off the bat. So they, they roll grenades back in at, at him. And he reemerges without her throwing grenades out. And so they have an exchange of grenades. And there's some sympathetic secondary explosions inside the structure. And we're talking about a, a small, like, family-sized compound. Not like a huge open space. So it's, it's pretty contained and they have it isolated with, you know, machine guns. And it's, it's pretty open terrain with a little ravine where they had, they had approached the target through to for cover. Like a river. And so, um, so they have both of these structures pretty isolated with good visibility. And so they continue to room by room, clear this. And so they're, they're breaching these people, people are fighting to death, even with their

• 1:39:00Speaker 06

  family members present. Um, they, they told me that there were detonated grenades with their like children present as they're clearing these structures room by room. They have an Afghan partner force with them that is helping it to some extent, but it's mostly the Rangers was room by room by room, clearing these structures. And so as they're in the first or second room in these structures, it goes really kinetic up the hill at the other compound. And, um, there's, if you can envision like, there's a, there's actually a map chip of this, they put it up on the screen, it might help. But the north compound in the 20, 30 and 40 series, which has been declassified and released

• 1:39:39Speaker 06

  properly, um, they were breaching the center structure and they, the breach as they were stacked up, set off an HME cache and it went sky high. Like I had multiple, like Rangers, it's, it's been on five or six deployments in the Middle East and it's the largest explosion I've ever heard. And, um, they described the chemical taste, it immediately just flooded the area. They thought it was like a booby trap, um, where they actually had to test it to make sure they weren't contaminated and could return to base, um, but they thought they were dead. Um, the Alpha Team leader, I, I, as a lot of them have lung damage from breathing that stuff in, it was that pervasive across the, uh, across the target.

• 1:40:23Speaker 06

  So there's a gunfight down here that's pretty kinetic. Up the hill, it's getting really kinetic and the bullets are going over their head into the trees and like you're hearing it whizzing. Um, they're both using Carl Gustav to breach and to engage different targets within the structures.

• 1:40:40Speaker 06

  But when that HME, that homemade explosive cache went off, it was a monamen nitrate, they had multiple Rangers buried because the compound wall collapsed on them as they were stacked up. And so the dog handler and the platoon sergeant and whoever was available to that could be, you know, least engaged down at the 10 series ran up the hill to dig out their buddies under fire to get them out. They actually had two guys partially paralyzed from that incident. And so they're, they're already getting US casualties. Ultimately, they had, I believe, nearly a dozen US Rangers casualties and about the same amount of partner force casualties. Jeez.

• 1:41:24Speaker 06

  So like, we're talking about a super kinetic event to the point where they're calling for fire from some assets they had available to suppress and to kill squatters and that type of situation. And so the multi-purpose canot handler, some more senior Ranger, and he had a little bit of freedom of movement because he's, you know, make sure there's no booby traps, et cetera, and the breaches are clear for the Rangers to engage and breach these compounds. So they're doing their, they're, they're doing their room clearing and they're experiencing barricaded shooters where they're, you know, shooting at the guys entering the room, throwing grenades, setting off vests over and over again through this compound. So I think, I think they had about four or five barricaded shooters in the, the compound

• 1:42:08Speaker 06

  of interest where they thought the enemy objective was going to be. And we're talking about human pointing to that, SIGET pointing to that, lots of SOAK with ISR assets over the last couple of weeks. And it's been a structure historically used for years as a waypoint for Al Qaeda or foreign fighters flowing into the area of operations. So as they're working their way through this combat, they're, they're into the last room where they think this guy's going to be, or they're getting down to the last couple, you know, rooms left. Hour and a half of room clearing and it's still going kinetic up to the north.

• 1:42:46Speaker 06

  So they, they actually ran out of breaching explosives. And so they used the Carl Gustav gun up on an elevated position to do the last breach. Because they were assuming that all the entrances were fouled because they kept running into IEDs, like implanted in the walls or toe poppers in the ground. And so, um, the Rangers took shelter on, on the far side of the structure while the Carl Gustav gunner, and for your audience who doesn't know what a Carl Gustav, they called a goose gun, but it's like a bazooka. So it's a, or an RPG for lack of a better descriptor. So they blow a hole in the compound, a whole portion of the compound where the last room is, and they're getting RPK fire from this compound.

• 1:43:27Speaker 06

  And that blast kills that guy that they believe was her biological father and blows his body into the compound. And, um, the, the dog handler vividly describes like, uh, making sure he was dead, you know, peeking in, making sure he wasn't moving, making sure he was dead and, um, that he had like his, his little like, uh, man jams and a, uh, like AK Bandolier on his chest. And like distinctly Asian facial features look like the target is what he described under oath. And then he, uh, the first time he sees what was her biological mother is he describes her running from the room, screaming bloody murder. And, uh, he is obliquing off the corner to kind of get an angle at the new breach they just made in the wall.

• 1:44:12Speaker 06

  And he said that she got about 15 feet away from him and then partially detonated. And, um, So she had a vest on? She had a vest on and, and the, the, the Alpha Team leader described it as maybe also kind of like cooking off almost like the, maybe fire had started to set it off. But he said it partially exploded as she was running at him. And, um, so she didn't die immediately. She had, he described overpressure wounds, so almost like a pop without the frag. And so she, he said she was mangled, but he dragged her behind a burn because they're still getting fire from the surrounding structures because, because the two compounds were kinetic, but they're getting fire from surrounding buildings, from other firefighter contingents in those buildings.

• 1:44:54Speaker 06

  And that was confirmed later by the detainee that who was like a lot of those village buildings were, were housing Arab and other nationalities.

• 1:45:05Speaker 06

  So he drags her behind a berm and the first thing he does is like his training. He strips her down to make sure, you know, see where she's bleeding, um, see if they can plug the bleeding first, then tries to create an airway. And it's just pretty graphic of her, her, her coughing up blood and bleeding out, basically. There's nothing they could do. She died in like two minutes. But he strips her down. So they tried to save her after she tried to, she had a suicide vest on? Mm-hmm. Because she's still alive. And what he noticed was, because they have to strip them down, um, that's standard practice to make sure there's no bleeding. Um, he noticed that she had the signs of giving birth. Uh, she had enlarged breasts and a displaced stomach.

• 1:45:44Speaker 06

  And so in his nods, he's, he's like, he does this, and he saw her for the first time moving, sparrow. And he said that there was some fire on the structure from the KG round. And so it was pretty well illuminated in his nods and he saw something moving and it caught his eye and he found her. And, um, so mom expires pretty quickly. Uh, he gets the baby. And, um, at the same time, the Afghan partner force is clearing the last room in that structure and they get engaged by another female with an RPK. And one of their guys gets shot and they, they just exfil and they leave their guy in there. Um, and so he's like, get back in there and get your guy. And like kicking them back into the structure to get their guy.

• 1:46:26Speaker 06

  So they kill that other female fighter, get their guy and come out and, um, he's got the baby. And, um, they're, so the Afghan platoon sergeant, um, from the KKA partner force, he's mad. Dude, like, don't, don't bring this baby, like, like, like fucking throw it in the river. Like, let me shoot it in the head. Like, we don't want her to go be a foreign terrorist in our country. And like, and he's coming back as they exfil off the objective. Um, and they had to do that with call for fire because they're getting effective fire. So these Afghans on the objective, they know she's foreign. They don't want her to grow up in their country and they're mad at our guys.

• 1:47:09Speaker 06

  And can you imagine having your own guys bleeding? You got two paralyzed dudes at this point on stretchers and you're walking wounded in a casualty collection point. You've got a baby that's like, she was this big, like so tiny when I met her. And that was weeks afterwards that I met her. But they have the moral courage, not even a question, like, we're not doing, you know, we're not doing that, like ignoring them, resisting them. And they even had, I believe they'd handed it off to their female engagement team or whatever so comes version of that is. But they had to take them back and have positive control because they were so aggressive in wanting to dispatch this little girl on objective. And like, that's the part I don't think that, you know, regular Americans know about this

• 1:47:54Speaker 06

  brutal civil war is that there's a lot of bad things that happen. And, um, you know, they, they kind of, they were kind of very, the Rangers were very sensitive about telling us these things initially, like, hey, how much do you really want to know about this? But we felt like obligated to at least be able to pass that knowledge on at some point of what happened and, you know, and and it's such a, such a contrast between what's actually these lies on the media. Like this was not an innocent farmer. Our guys got blown up and shot and had brutal close combat with like committed terrorists who were totally fine with killing their own families as long as it meant obtaining

• 1:48:37Speaker 06

  their ultimate objective of fighting us. And these guys kept pressing on even with wounded, like, like talk about a textbook soft raid, like with, with the, even with casualties pushing on through the objective. And then one of the, one of the underscored documents that I got released was, um, it says that structure was destroyed in accordance with JTF ROE. That's like the understatement of the century. Like they deliberately made sure that no Al Qaeda operatives were walking out of that structure when they rolled off the objective. And so I am very confident based on like the ordinance and the assets they were dropping

• 1:49:21Speaker 06

  on that thing, that no one was alive when they left. So they literally saved her life.

• 1:49:26Speaker 07

  Well, I'll also add what he testified, the dog handler testified.

• 1:49:30Speaker 06

  Oh, so, so he said, He was asked at one point in all this, like, what makes you remember that night? And he said, I think that's the first time I was able to put a face to what evil looks like, seeing what he saw that night. And that just struck me because when he, he didn't find out that Sparrow got out and was safe in America until years into this. Wow. And it was actually with a Google photo drive that some of the doctors and nurses put up of all her photos from her time in the hospital with the American forces. And he commented, and he said, I have always wondered what happened to that baby.

• 1:50:14Speaker 06

  He goes, I am so happy that she got out. And it's just been such an honor to be able to share her life with these people whose decisions were probably instinct, right? But to honor that instinct for our guys, because how rare is it that someone would bother, right? No one would have said boo if they left her. No one would have said boo if they let the Afghans do what they wanted to do, kill her. But even with their, in a gunfight with their blood up and their guys, you know, in the heat of the moment with their guys on stretchers, they still had the instinct to protect innocent life. And I mean, that is just, it's what it's all about for Americans, to be able to have

• 1:50:59Speaker 06

  that, a warrior who can still live out our values, like, that's rare. And they displayed that that night. They pushed through the objective, they achieved their mission. It's honestly heroic stuff. But I guess they actually got a little bit of flak for bringing her back because they're like, what are you doing, right? But when they explained the situation, like, they got authorized to pull her off objective and she gets out. And so we didn't know a lot of the details until years later, but we, at the time, at the operational headquarters level, we were getting like indications of warnings like, hey, trust us, this is really bad. And so that was one of the reasons why we're digging into, from a SJA's perspective of like, what happened here? This sounds bad.

• 1:51:44Speaker 06

  And trying to inform decision makers to make a better decision of a safer outcome. But I actually did a lot of research at the time with this specific Al Qaeda group. Like, where do they come from? What are they about? What do we know about them? And there's a lot of open source out there. Bill Rosio with the Long War Journal with the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. He has a lot of articles about this specific group. And what was so interesting is, as time went on, is there started to be, like, this incident happened on September 6th, right? And I told you the president had canceled the peace deal. Well, then there were some more reports about these Turkestanian foreign fighters in Afghanistan,

• 1:52:25Speaker 06

  to the point where the Taliban in early December formally said that those reports are false. They're like, there are no Turkestanian foreign mujahideen in Afghanistan. So they specifically disclaimed this group, that she was living proof was operating in Afghanistan in December of 2019. So all that in the backdrop of trying to get them back to the negotiating table and trying to get the peace deal back on track, that's a strategic, their, this child's existence, this group's existence in Afghanistan at that time was proof that the Taliban were not abiding with their, you know, commitment to not let Al Qaeda operate out of Afghanistan. And I think we all know that now. Like, I've seen so many shows with Sarah Adams and others, experts, talking about Al Qaeda running free in Afghanistan.

• 1:53:09Speaker 06

  But I think there's a lot of evidence they never stopped.

• 1:53:20Shawn Ryan?

  Geez. So she was probably, what, four weeks old?

• 1:53:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think they said six weeks to two months, like, somewhere in there.

• 1:53:29Speaker 07

  She was very small.

• 1:53:30Speaker 06

  She was very undernourished at the time. And so they stabilized her, and like I said, they moved her to the main theater hospital. And she stayed there for five months.

• 1:53:41Shawn Ryan?

  And how many injuries did she have? I mean, just going through all those blasts alone.

• 1:53:45Speaker 06

  Well, that was what we didn't know at the time. And we had found from the hospital when I reached out and asked, like, hey, what do we know about the injuries for this child? Because we were trying to build a picture for our commander to decide, like, what are the risks for her? And so, you know, obviously with a fractured skull, you know, your TBI injuries, and was there any software damage in there? And will that impact her development? And then with her leg... It still impacts her walk. And so the question was, as she develops, how will that, does it hurt the growth plate? Will she be able to walk normally? Would surgery help with that? Those are kind of the concerns that we were worried about. And then also, just cosmetically, trying to make sure that that got reshaped while her skull was still soft enough to mold it. Those were some of the things that, the questions we were asking,

• 1:54:28Speaker 06

  both professionally, and then as we got to be like the person on the seat who had to volunteer to get a visa to the US for her. Those are the questions that we are arranging medical care in the US for, like specifically to evaluate and treat those concerns. I mean, how is she now? She's five and a half now. Does she, did any of those blast injuries? So fortunately, it looks like her brain is fine. That was our biggest concern. We had, we'll get into this a little bit later, but when she was in, you know, when she was outside of US protection, there were reports that she was shaking, her eyes were twitching, she was shaking, and we were very concerned that those were seizures. It sounded like

• 1:55:13Speaker 06

  that's what it was describing. She's been hospitalized several times in the US, to the point where like they took them a couple of days to stabilize her for, she has some severe allergies to a variety of things, but especially almonds and peanuts, where she has like anaphylactic reaction to it. And she also is very asthmatic. So we, you know, she has an inhaler for daily use and for emergency use. And like I said, she's been hospitalized, I think, two or three times for exposure to something. We don't know necessarily what triggers it all every time, but we, you know, she gets hospitalized for it. And she can, she'll get a reaction where she's almost like drowning, because she can't expel the air from her lungs. And so she'll be like, it sounds like she's puffing and she can't.

• 1:55:58Speaker 06

  From the? From asthma. I have no idea. It could be from, I guess that's possible. You've mentioned some kind of toxic. Yeah, from the ammonium nitrate. That's actually, I never even considered that. But the Rangers have had lung problems from that. So that, that makes perfect sense. I never even, put two and two together. But, um, but.

• 1:56:16Speaker 06

  Regardless, like, I think if you reflect on how many times her life was this close to death, it's just staggering. Because I mean, she's got a leg wound here from shrapnel, and she's got some more shrapnel down her leg. But I mean, six inches higher on a baby, that's only, that's this far and you bleed out. She's got a skull fracture that if it's any deeper, she's dead. I mean, she's got, you know, a little bit to the left with a KG round, and you're done. Even with the Afghan partner force, like, if, if these guys weren't committed to protecting innocents, she'd be dead. Like, honestly, if she didn't get, I am not confident, if she had gone through some of the medical emergencies had in the

• 1:56:59Speaker 06

  United States, that she'd have survived if she'd remained in Afghanistan. And then, I mean, I think the elephant in the room is, with the Taliban and can charge after 2021, what type of life is that for a little girl? You don't go to school, you don't go outside, you know, do you get to marry who you want? None of those things can happen for her. So we're so thankful for, for the Americans who have saved her life at those points, and for the ones who got her out of Afghanistan. And we'll get into that a little later in the story, but.

• 1:57:28Shawn Ryan?

  How does she interact?

• 1:57:29Speaker 06

  You.

• 1:57:30Shawn Ryan?

  Today?

• 1:57:32Speaker 07

  Well, I was, case in point, the other day, a woman that I knew, at church, actually, she, she put two and two together finally, that, you know, like, she's my daughter, and, and kind of hearing about the situation, and she's like, that's her? Because our, our kids played soccer together. And she's like, I would have never known. And unless you see her in a swimsuit, or in a shorter pair of shorts, you, the scar is telling, the scar is distinct, but you would never know. She speaks perfect English, she's a typical five year old little girl. And, and I mean, there's moments, even for me, even though we've lived this out, and I know the story through and through, there's just moments where it really

• 1:58:17Speaker 07

  strikes you when you look at her. And she had, like, for instance, when I'm teaching her how to read, how to write, just how amazing it is that she's actually here in person, alive. And just, for her, it's just normal, but she's just a walking testament to just how miraculous sequence of events has, you know, kept her alive. And most, you know, most people see would never even just think that she's American. I've been told that she looks like me, because she has brown hair and brown eyes. But she's normal.

• 1:58:45Speaker 06

  And I think that a lot of GWAT vets could close their eyes right now and see a face of a kid or a person, a vulnerable person, and caught up in a crazy circumstance of war that they wanted to help, tried to help, couldn't help. Or maybe some who did. But I've had so many grown colonels crying in my office, like when I'm telling the story, and that reminds me of, and telling stories about their experience. For instance, I had a colonel, there's a news article, the kids of Camp Eagers, and there was a suicide bombing ISIS child, but he was trying to seek guardianship of an orphan that would come and beg at their camp. And, you know, trying to do it, but there's a lot of red tape, and he said he was introducing

• 1:59:29Speaker 06

  a new lieutenant, saying like, "Hey, indicators of something off in your pattern of life." He was like, "All these jingle trucks, that one's brand new, like, why is that? Like, you should watch for things like that." And the next day, that jingle truck, driven by a 14-year-old ISIS suicide bomber, blew up all those kids and killed this little girl. And so, like, he wanted to help and couldn't. And then he says, "I don't think I've ever told anybody that story before." And I had another, like, these are hardened, soft, like, colonels. Another one in 2007, Fallujah, he said he had a team that was, took IDF mortar rounds, and they missed, and they hit the compound, family compound next to them, and a little four-year-old girl, like, took shrapnel to the abdomen, and they wouldn't send a medical

• 2:00:13Speaker 06

  bird, because it wasn't in conformance of the medical ROE. And he's like screaming at them on the radio, like, "Send this. You know, if you don't send this, I will go over Blackbourn and take her to the hospital, ground her back." And so, this colonel said, like, it was his twin, he had two twin little girls at home that were four at the time-ish, and he said it was about the same age. And so, he asked for volunteers, and he got, like, some mass art and him, and they got in a Humvee and went over Fallujah blacktop roads as fast as they could, risking all the IEDs, and she bled out, like, halfway there. And so, like, these are the memories, are guys that have the same values as these Rangers demonstrated. I bet you that is so common in the war that it's not even funny. Because I probably had, there's more I could talk about.

• 2:00:56Speaker 06

  Like, the medical staff, one of the reasons they were so worried about her was because of their experience with other soft bring backs, where they'd had to shoot through children that were being used as human shields to kill these terrorists, and then treat them, and then return them to the Taliban. And there was one that stood out in my mind. There was a 12-year-old girl that had lost her hand in a, I think, a farming event of some sort. And so the medical staff nursed her back to health for like a month. And then they had some uncle of some sort come to the gate and, you know, to claim her. And 10 minutes after the guy left, they got a call, hey, hey, pick up, come pick up the body, a body at the gate. And this guy had shot this little girl because she had no value as an amputee as far as like marrying her out.

• 2:01:40Speaker 06

  And so these nurses and doctors who nursed this little girl back to health and like prepared her arm and made sure she was as set up as she could, like had to come get her from the ECP because they'd shot her. And so like, in their story after story of, from these medical personnel of like just, like child abuse injuries they had to treat. But it was a local leader, and so they couldn't do anything about it. They couldn't, there was no criminal prosecution. Like to the point where they're putting a titanium skull in a four-year-old because he got his head beat in by, by some of these practices. And again, that's not saying it's across the board, but it happens. And it was happening regularly enough where these people were very concerned.

• 2:02:22Speaker 06

  And so when, back in time, when I reached down to the hospitals like, hey, we're looking at, looking at trying to get a legal path to the US, they were like, we are all in to find a safe outcome for her. Like, we believe we're morally and ethically obligated to try to find a long-term safe outcome. And that's kind of how we got.

• 2:02:40Speaker 07

  Then, so our code name for her was Sparrow, but the medical staff, it was Starfish. And it was based on a poem or a book.

• 2:02:50Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:50Speaker 07

  Where there's a little boy walking along the ocean and he's bending down and he's picking up a starfish and he's throwing it back into the ocean. And he keeps doing it over and over and an adult comes over and says, you know, why are you doing this? Can't you see the beach is filled with starfish? You can't possibly make a difference. And the boy bends down, picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean. And he says, well, it made a difference for that one. And so she, they called her Starfish because she was the unique one that they could help. In this war and all of the terrible things that they were seeing come through the doors. She was the one with the unique set of circumstances that they could actually help this one.

• 2:03:33Speaker 07

  And so, I mean, we've had dozens of medical staff come after they found out that she got out safely. Tell us stories. I mean, I, I've, I've recorded some of the phone calls just because I want her to hear it one day of how loved she was by hundreds of people, not just us. I mean, hundreds of people. One, one man, he was crying on the phone. He's like, I can't believe she made it out. And he's like, I used to hold her at night because the, I guess the female nurses were stressed by her crying so much because of her injuries and early on she was, she cried a lot. And so he said, I, he, I never took care of babies, never changed a diaper in my life. And I was like, I'll hold her.

• 2:04:18Speaker 07

  And so he would hold her because he had the night shift and he would hold her and watch movies or do his college classes and just hold her in his arms the whole time. And so he's like, and like Joshua mentioned, there's so many people who's like, I've always wondered what happened to that baby and like her in particular. And so like Joshua said, it's, you know, all of a sudden we're getting the attention, but it was, it was across the board. Everyone that heard about her, they, they were motivated to do whatever they could to help give her a better future and a safe outcome. And she was loved by hundreds of people.

• 2:04:56Speaker 06

  Like I said, we are so proud of our our participation in her story, but it's not really us. It's really all these unsung people that contributed to her life and safety at that moment in time. And I mean, honestly, we felt obligated to honor that and keep moving that forward. And so how that, what that looked like at the operational headquarters level was, OK, to get a person to a country, you have to have a visa, right? So after we talked about the US policy change, the administration said, you know, act in a child's best interest? That's a no brainer, right? Try to get her back to the States. The US forces in Afghanistan moved forward smartly and did that. And I talked to you about the embassy

• 2:05:41Speaker 06

  initially trying to ambush us and destroy that effort early on, make it a fait accompli. Did you ever find out why? So my deputy SJA is a Navy commander, and he is, he was a reservist on a year deployment to Afghanistan. And he had an intelligence background, worked for the House Intelligence Committee as an attorney in his civilian job. And so he was actually involved in the negotiations with the Taliban in the room, like describing how this is going with the Taliban, what they want and how they're reacting. And he's like briefing us tonight. So we have like a front row seat of what's happening in Doha, like on a regular basis. He happened to be back, you know, because there was multiple rounds of these negotiations. So he tried to go and like make peace with the embassy, like what is the deal?

• 2:06:26Speaker 06

  Because it was very difficult for us to understand, like, why they're on a different wavelength than we were. And so he's like, ma'am, like, so he met with her again. He's like, ma'am, like I said some hostility in the last meeting, like what's going on? And he personally told me this. He's like, she said, we really didn't appreciate you going over our heads to the administration. And so we're like, sorry, we're trying to take care of the child's, like, you know, safety, you know, that type of thing. And so they basically left it as, we're not going to help you. The embassy's perspective was, we're not going to help you, but we won't get in your way. And so DOD was lead for months after that. And we were working to get a visa. So now, before we were advocating for her, when it became, here's the task from the administration

• 2:07:09Speaker 06

  to, you know, make a long-term, safe outcome for this child, we did that. And the first thing was a visa. And so what do you do if you need a visa? You talk to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and they can issue an advanced parole visa. And so ironically, it's what she entered the country on with 120,000 other Afghans, or however many actually came to the States. They were all paroled into the United States under humanitarian parole. Well, there's an advanced humanitarian parole, and that's what we were seeking to get. But there's some basic requirements. And this is where it was pretty miraculous that we were able to be involved, because with a skill set, to track down all these administrative requirements. So to get a humanitarian parole visa for medical care,

• 2:07:53Speaker 06

  to get into the United States, you have to have a certain things. First is a financial sponsor. Under federal immigration law, you can't be a burden on the government. The tax dollars can't pay for you to be here. So you have to have someone that signs on the dotted line and says, I will pay for this person. I will cover their costs. And so we volunteered. Like, that's easy. We'll cover the costs. For medical care, you actually have to have a doctor, have it scheduled and paid for. So we're like, how are we going to do this? Like, it's a Jane Doe baby off of objective. And I'm talking to USCS like, hey, crazy situation. You know, you, this is me. This is what we got. We've got a Jane Doe Al Qaeda infant with a fractured skull. It's not safe here in Afghanistan for child trafficking purposes and lack of medical care.

• 2:08:38Speaker 06

  And there's often a prejudice for foreigners in this country. And so they're all like, well, like, you basically get a list of bureaucratic requirements. And we were just knocking off those lists. Like, go to your authority, ask them what we need to do. They tell us what you do, and then you go work it. And so

• 2:08:59Speaker 06

  I'm literally on the phone with the head of the humanitarian affairs branch. Great guy, like really compassionate for refugees and does a lot of great work. But he's like, well, you need a name for the visa. Like, how am I gonna get a name for this little girl? And I'm just figuring it out, right? This is our office's task. We're all working it there. So the larger office is negotiating with the Afghans to be like, yeah, that's fine. Send her to the US. It happens before with other kids from other strikes. It's not like uncommon. But kind of more of like a face-saving thing, not a actual requirement. It's just like managing good relations, but we're giving your country away to the Taliban anyway. So, you know, it's kind of in that context. So how do we get a name?

• 2:09:42Speaker 06

  So we had had another American attorney, Kim Motley, who is, by the way, an American hero. I'll get into her a little bit later with what she did in the fall of Afghanistan. But she literally saved hundreds of lives. Like, she should be getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to be honest with you. But Kim Motley had volunteered, based on her experience in the Afghan legal system, to act as a guardian ad litem, which is, for folks who don't know, that's a court-appointed representative to look at the child's best interests and no one else's. Now, they don't have that same concept in Afghanistan, so it was like a voluntary, like self-appointed, but our office was working with her to get a safe outcome. She had tried to get documents for her. Asked the Afghan government, no response, right? Nobody wants to take on the risk.

• 2:10:25Speaker 06

  They view you as a foreign child and like it's kind of terrorism-y, so they don't want to touch it. So we're like, how else do we get a name? And then, in addition to that is, how do I arrange for medical care for a minor child in the United States? I don't have any authority to act for her. The government doesn't. Like, who can authorize surgery on a child? Who can authorize, you know, an MRI? Shit. And so like, I'm going through like my wheelhouse, right? Like, I don't know the answer, but I'm a lawyer and I'm gonna research it and find out. And so it has to be a guardian. She has to have a name? Well, a court can appoint a name, right? There aren't any courts in this area of Afghanistan that's controlled by the Taliban for most of the war, right? I mean, if you go up there, you're gonna get a gunfight.

• 2:11:08Speaker 06

  So with the operational realities on the ground, we're like, okay, well, let's see if we can get emergency legal custody. And she's not Afghan. We have high-strength intelligence that she's not Afghan. This group is kind of nomadic Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Western China, like they're from that region, right? A lot of them fighting in Syria and Iraq. We don't know exactly where she was born. Maybe in Afghanistan, maybe in Pakistan, or maybe in Turkmenistan before they crossed the border, we don't know. So the best argument was, she's known foreign. Afghanistan doesn't have birthright citizenship. Most countries don't, so you're not automatically a citizen.

• 2:11:49Speaker 06

  And statelessness is a huge problem in Afghanistan because of all the IDPs and such, that people don't have documentation citizenship, or they don't have citizenship. So we're like, okay, well, the best category for her that she fits into is stateless. And she's in the custody of the United States. And like terrorist detainees in Gitmo have basic rights. So let's advocate, let's make the argument that she's a stateless minor in the custody of the United States. And so we were authorized to declassify this stuff and use it in the court system, and we did. And the next day, so we argued that she is a stateless minor in US government custody.

• 2:12:30Speaker 06

  She's a victim of terrorism, like in this crazy situation, and that no other state would have jurisdiction over her. And based on the evidence, the judge, like the evidence that they were moving every 30 days, they were known to go over multi-jurisdictional boundaries, like over national borders, the judge agreed with that assessment. They found these facts in a ruling. So we were, then her guardians, right? So now I can arrange an appointment at the University of Virginia Medical Center. And they have a world-renowned pediatric ward. So we set her up, like the whole nine yards, a treatment plan, her doctor, we gave her doctor her medical record from DOD.

• 2:13:14Speaker 06

  We got everything set up for her to come back. And like, it's looking like she's coming back, like.

• 2:13:19Speaker 07

  To the point where we bought a crib, and we were ready to go. And I was considering dropping out of my final semester to be ready to take on a child with what we were assuming was special needs, that she'd have needing ongoing medical care.

• 2:13:33Speaker 06

  And so I'm updating my commander, my colonel, every time, like the day after this is granted, we update the colonel. I say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get her registered as a DOD dependent now. Because as a guardian, you can add them as your dependent. I'm talking to Headquarters Marine Corps on the phone, like, like, I'm in Afghanistan at 3:00 in the morning, my time, talking to Headquarters Marine Corps dependency branch, and they formally grant her, I have the documents downstairs, like, like, they formally add her as my dependent, and in the meantime, we also got her a certificate of foreign birth, because in Virginia, there's this, there's a, they had contemplated that foreign children being adopted in Virginia might need a birth certificate, because sometimes from third world countries, you don't have that documentation, and so there's a way

• 2:14:17Speaker 06

  where you can apply for that, and so we did, and we got it, and so we have a name, it says unknown, uh, birthplace, unknown parents, or, or, it was unknown birth place, citizenship unknown, and then us as her parents, and so we provided out that documentation and the court order to the Marine Corps dependency branch, which is the authorized, like, agency official to make those determinations, fully knowing we're in Afghanistan, my wife was on the phone with him, I'm, I'm calling from Kabul, and they, they add her as our dependent. So that provided a way to guarantee payment, right, now she's eligible for TRICARE, so I've, I have the legal authority to arrange healthcare, we do that, and it's literally just to get the visa, right, somebody had to do it, I, we were in the seat, we had

• 2:15:02Speaker 06

  a short timeframe, so we did that, and then, ironically, and this is the crazy part, is when we were going to get her birth certificate, we had a guardianship order, we're legal guardians, we're US law, we go, Steffi goes to the, um,

• 2:15:20Speaker 07

  Vital Statistics.

• 2:15:21Speaker 06

  Vital Statistics office in Richmond, Virginia, and they say, "We don't agree with the judge's interpretation of this statute, we're not going to issue you this birth certificate," and we're like, "We have to have this birth certificate," because they said it's a requirement for the visa, we have a name from the court order, we have a birth certificate as an identity document to apply for this humanitarian parole visa." And they're like, "Well, you know, we don't, we don't agree with his interpretation, we don't think it fits the statute," and so my brother is an attorney, not a family law attorney, but is an attorney, and so he's engaging with them, and the legal advisor for the Vital Statistics office is the Virginia Attorney General's office, and so he's talking to the Attorney General's office, like, "Really, like, you're not going to issue, like, here's

• 2:16:04Speaker 06

  why we need this, we need this for a visa, we need a name and a, and a identity document," and she has none. And they're like, "Well, we would prefer if the judge issues an adoption order because we think that complies with the statute."

• 2:16:19Speaker 06

  So we're like, "So you want us to apply to adopt this child and the judge to do it?" And they're like, "Yes." So we did. Like, it wasn't even our idea. Like, I, I, I, honestly, I didn't even contemplate that. So she, so they, so we filed for adoption. The Attorney General of Virginia recommends the judge grant it under the circumstances because, you know, there's a lot of background that she's stateless, and these were terrorists, et cetera, et cetera. And so they issue this stuff, and I provide it to my command. Like, just, I'm, I'm, I am doing it by the book for a crazy situation, right? Because I think my personal philosophy is I will always try to be administratively correct and morally right, but if it's going to come down between the two of them, I'm

• 2:17:01Speaker 06

  going to be morally right and will try to make this fit because rules or administrative rules are often can't contemplate the crazy situations in life. And so that's why we are a principle-based institution in the military. We operate on principles of like the, you know, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Constitution protects those things. We live out those values, and then we have all these rules to help us do that. But sometimes those conflict in a crazy situation, and this was one of those things. It was unprecedented to have this happen. And, and here's the linchpin of the whole thing.

• 2:17:35Speaker 06

  If the US military's 19-year-old, multi-billion-dollar intelligence gathering apparatus is correct, there's no case to be talking about right now. She is a stateless child. She is, her, her origin was an Al Qaeda foreign fighter. Like, there's, I've never seen evidence in five years to, to even suggest that that wasn't the case.

• 2:17:59Speaker 06

  And so I think the reality is that we're facing is the embassy, and we'll talk about how they did it, but they literally gave this child after she'd been recognized as our daughter by DOD, after she'd been added as a dependent, issued an ID card, after she had insurance and a full ride to the US, like, set up with no one and nothing before that. Claiming her, they handed her over to what's turned out to be non-relative terrorist-affiliated folks. And I think that that is kryptonite for these bureaucrats, because they never thought that some low-level officer would be able to still get her out of Afghanistan at some point, and I didn't think that either.

• 2:18:42Speaker 06

  Like, that was an absolute miracle that she got out and got safe during the evacuation. But I don't think they ever thought they'd be held accountable for what they did to this little girl. But for us, 18 months before Afghanistan fell, we had a little microcosm of the little value they place on human life over whatever bureaucratic policy they're working at that time. And their worldview keeps bumping into reality in very painful ways for real people on the ground. And we saw that with people falling off C-17s in Afghanistan. We've seen that in people, you know, at best, if they're lucky, wasting away in lily pad countries trying to get to the States. And people who've gone to war with us, people who've gone to combat with us, people are

• 2:19:27Speaker 06

  in danger because of our commitments to them. And I think we saw a microcosm of that really early. Like, I never thought that she would get turned over in the way she did. And it was, it ended up being two days before the peace deal was announced, she got dumped to what I think was Taliban proxies coming forward to falsely claim it. And the reason I think that is, in my board of inquiry, a colonel testified, and we had asked for this colonel authorization to testify for three years, and were denied. And he testified that they had six to eight false claimants come forward, and they DNA tested them, negative testing for all of them.

• 2:20:09Speaker 06

  So they, these were non-family members coming forward out of the boonies to claim a child. And the question is, why? Why would six to eight people who are not relatives of the child come forward? And I think the best answer to that is... What was the Taliban's strategic? What was their number one priority right then in Afghanistan? In September to March of 2019, 2020, what was their goal? Is to get the US to leave, right? And what the conditions on the peace deal was that the soil of Afghanistan would not be used by al Qaeda. And she's living proof that they're violating that.

• 2:20:47Speaker 08

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:48Speaker 06

  And then I think if you also think strategically from the embassy's perspective, President Trump had made a decision that this was a bad deal, and he canceled it. And he said, he tweeted, "How many more decades you want to fight?" I was sitting in the chat hall when that went on the news, and I was like, huh, that's awesome, right? Because I saw, I saw this car bombing. This is a guy with kids at home. He got shredded by bull bearings for no strategic purpose. It was just a middle finger from the Taliban. And I think the president rightly said, "This is a bad deal," and killed it. And then both the embassy and the Taliban want to get this done, right? And I don't think, with history as in retrospect, it was a bad deal. Does anybody think that that went well?

• 2:21:33Speaker 06

  Like, does anybody think that made our country safe? Does anybody think that that made Afghanistan stable and not a safe haven for, for the Taliban? And I'm not saying stay there forever, and I'm not advocating for forever wars, but I'm saying that wasn't the abandoning, the total abandonment of Afghanistan was not the plan in 2019. They were going to leave Task Force behind, and they were going to do a counterterrorism mission and mow the grass, because I was sent to study that withdrawal. That was my mission, is how do we transfer all these assets to the Afghans? How do we make this stable? And really, it wasn't until the spring of 2021, and I happened to talk to our JSOC liaison, and they're like, "No, man, they're pulling everybody." I'm like, "What? Like, you're pulling everybody? Like, they're pulling Task Force?"

• 2:22:17Speaker 06

  Because I was sitting in the new Camp Vance that they were building adjacent to Kabul Airport for the SOF to operate out of, till the cows come home and kill al Qaeda. And so I think that, you know, looping this back...

• 2:22:31Speaker 06

  Both the embassy and the Taliban were dealing with a president who doesn't get pushed around. And they were both peddling a bad deal. Like, the embassy was doing it for the American people, and the Taliban was doing it to get us out of Afghanistan. And I think if the, you know, who knows, but a living proof that this Al Qaeda group is still operating in Afghanistan? And here's an interesting fact for your audience. The Taliban was in these, on this objective the next morning, filming a propaganda video. And they released it a couple of days later. It's on Twitter, you can go find it. And they're, you know, accusing, the typical, like, accusing of war crimes, you only killed women and children, etc. And they show some bodies, and it's sad, right? Like, the human cost of war is sad.

• 2:23:13Speaker 06

  But they have Chinese-looking bodies, like little kids, they look Asian, distinctly. You have guys wearing Arabic scarf, like, red check scarves, like, very looks like Syria to me. Like, that's not the Afghan scarf, check pattern, right? They have black flags. But what the message these propaganda videos are saying is, "The Americans have bombed local people, farmers, local people." Yeah. And you're in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan. Why would you feel the need to emphasize that these are local people and farmers in, like, literally the dead center of southern Afghanistan? And I think that messaging, and then, a month later, they say, "There are no Turkistani

• 2:23:57Speaker 06

  foreign mujahideen in Afghanistan." And like, they are very keyed into the fact that this deal just got blown up, and they want to get back to the negotiating table. And that was the directive for SOF at the time, was bleed them back to the negotiating table. And we were doing it. They wanted to get back and negotiate with us. So, I guess, all, I think that, was that, was she the leading, you know, thought in their mind? No, but she was an inconvenient truth for both sides, for both the embassy and the Taliban.

• 2:24:27Shawn Ryan?

  When did you first meet her? Was it in the...

• 2:24:30Speaker 06

  Oh, probably mid-October. I got to go down on a rotator to Bagram and spend a couple of days down there on some other project. I can't remember what it was. Oh, I think it might have been visiting Parwan. But yeah, I got to hold her for the first time. And it makes all the difference. Because seeing a case in paper, like just reading about it in emails, like when you're holding this little life, and you're like, what is gonna happen? Like, we're leaving Afghanistan. This is gonna go south. Like, I'm thinking, you know, not even with the hindsight of history, but at the time going like, what's gonna happen when we leave? Right? There's gonna be a civil war at a minimum. And, you know, just a borderline genocide, this would end up happening. But, you know, holding her like that, it just... Her's so vulnerable.

• 2:25:15Speaker 06

  Like, you felt obligated to protect if you could. And so, I mean, the commander of Task Force Medical Afghanistan, I named my fourth son after him because he was the model of empathy. And like, he risked his career advocating like, hey, we can't... We're morally obligated to DNA test and terrorist vet for this child. Like, you cannot... Like, I, as a doctor, can't abide by this. Like, to the point, he was getting warned he's gonna get fired from a two-star who thought it was a distraction. And, like, he would hold the hands of dying service members, like, made sure that none of our guys died alone. Like, that's the caliber of person this man is. Like, physically fit, just everything you want in a leader, like...

• 2:25:59Speaker 06

  And that's not always the case in the medical corps, but like, this guy, I so admire him.

• 2:26:06Shawn Ryan?

  Who brought her home?

• 2:26:09Speaker 06

  That's a long... So, she was, despite all of that, despite Senator Cruz advocating for her, different folks trying to get her home, the embassy reported falsely that the Afghans didn't want to do a DNA test and that they had confirmed that there was family. That's what they reported.

• 2:26:31Shawn Ryan?

  They just came up with this?

• 2:26:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, so, actually, they didn't just come up with this. That's what they reported, came out of a meeting on December 31st, 2019. They said they met with this senior child protection specialist who's a low-level, like, decision-maker in an Afghan ministry at the time.

• 2:26:50Speaker 06

  We worked for two years to get that guy out of a lily pad country. And you know when he got in the country? Three days before my board of inquiry. That's when he arrived in America. And that was the only time he felt safe to share the other side of the story. And so in our board of inquiry, he testified that at that meeting, he asked the embassy to do a DNA test because they had nothing, no corroboration. It was just a bare claim. This guy said he was an uncle. And he's like, we didn't even have a test key out, their national ID card, like their birth certificate. He goes, we didn't have, we had nothing. The only thing we have is DNA. And the embassy declined to do it. We had committed, like I've got the emails downstairs saying, we will, we will DNA test,

• 2:27:34Speaker 06

  like DOD will DNA test any claimants, any potential family to confirm a DNA match. Because like that's basic safety. And then if there was a match, the plan was to explain her medical needs and offer to send her to the US for medical care. That was the plan. Because we knew she had no immediate family members alive because they were dead.

• 2:27:57Speaker 06

  But the embassy reported out of that meeting that DNA testing wasn't part of the Afghan process and they had confirmed family. And in fact, they had no evidence this claimant was related at all. And it turns out he wasn't. In documentary evidence, this guy said he was related to someone he claimed was a father. This, it was an elderly, I say Taliban elder because he's got a big black turban and he looks like a Taliban, you know, elder. I've got a picture of him.

• 2:28:25Speaker 06

  And when I saw that photo, we found her outside of the government later. But when I saw this guy, I was like, they gave her to the Taliban. It just screams it. And, um, and, you know, we'll get a little bit more into some government misconduct. But this same embassy person in all of our litigation has filed statements saying that, oh, like trying to make it look like they had processes like the right way or that the Red Cross was involved, like. I've got an email downstairs with your people from the Red Cross to this Afghan child protection specialist, like, three days before she was supposed to get turned over to them. And they're like, "Hey, could you please identify who this person is?"

• 2:29:10Speaker 06

  The Red Cross had no idea who she was going to. And they have, the Department of Justice under the previous administration, has filed, like, filings and lawsuits saying the Red Cross was involved. It's like, well, if that's true, how come they're asking for her identity, like, two days before you're supposed to put her out of US custody with no vetting at all? And then, this guy, we have, we acquired his phone number at some point. And then, you know, you plug in, if you plug in, like, a lot of vets know, like, WhatsApp and Signal, you know, we all use those things. It has a profile picture that pops up. Guess what's on this guy's profile picture? Well, it's a little Taliban flag, and it's a little placard bragging that the Taliban

• 2:29:54Speaker 06

  is coming to hear his, like, grandson or something, in their home village, three miles from the objective, recite the Quran. Which, like, whatever, it's your culture, fine, but if you got a flag of, of the Taliban flag over a map of Afghanistan on your profile picture, I kind of think that you're probably sympathetic that way, like... Yeah. And there's a whole series of indicators that we'll get into a little bit later as we go to how she got out of Afghanistan, because that's, that's literally, like, the second half of the story. We're probably finishing with how she got turned over. But basically, because of, the State Department's position was, "We don't want to impact the peace deal." A colonel testified that the Taliban negotiators had mentioned the situation.

• 2:30:39Speaker 06

  I don't know if that's true, I don't have firsthand knowledge of that. And so, it was this...

• 2:30:46Speaker 06

  Series of, what, half-truths? That they were able to IO campaign the administration to be like, oh, well, like, nobody wants to, like, oh, take her away from family that's safe and, oh, maybe we're just wrong. But the embassy had never looked at this classified intel. And we weren't able to, the Colonel from the Pentagon I mentioned earlier that came and testified at our Board of Inquiry, he said they independently corroborated everything we had declassified sent them. They went and talked to Ranger Regiment and verified all that with their targeting system of the Pentagon. He said, yeah, we knew where they were from in Turkmenistan, where they were moving them from, like, high fidelity, who these people were and where they came from.

• 2:31:26Speaker 06

  And so he mentioned to me, he said, I will go to my grave thinking that these were Al Qaeda terrorists that were moving through the region from Turkmenistan. Because there's nothing that would suggest otherwise. And, but at the same time, and this is big picture, at the same time, we have the previous administration's Department of Justice filing, court filing, saying her parents were innocent farmer killed in a crossfire with zero evidence. Like, the eyewitnesses say she blew herself up and, you know, her suicide vest was partially detonated. We have the DOJ saying the ICRC was involved.

• 2:32:05Speaker 06

  And we have, like, I can, I can give you 50 examples, but I've got a couple for your team where they're redacting what we knew at the time from, from the traffic. Because what they'd rather do is they go after a junior officer, like a fairly low-level officer, and attack your credibility and say, no, no, the embassy was, you know, doing safe and there was nothing to see here, basically. And I don't think they, they thought they'd ever be, be in a position where I can prove in court that you were lying and that you did this to this little girl. But they're in that position now. And so that's why they've sought, you know, to gag you and to shut you up and overclassify

• 2:32:46Speaker 06

  things so that the truth of what actually happened and how dangerous it was and how, it's, it's child abuse what they did to this little girl. And like, she has become our daughter, we've had her for years, like, she has no idea any of this ever happened. But it's not right.

• 2:33:04Speaker 06

  From a national perspective, that this should have happened. No one should have to go through what she's gone through and what we've had to go through as a result. Like, we were telling the truth from day one, we're telling the truth now. And if they release that, that intelligence, if they release the video footage of this combat, like, our guys aren't war criminals on objective, they're not fighting innocent farmers. Do civilians die in war? Yes, they do. But that's the result of terrorists who bring their families along on jihad to come fight us. Like, that's the sad reality of war, but that's not our guys. So, I do, I will circle back at some point and then talk about, like, the period from when she was dumped before the peace deal to how she got out of Afghanistan, because that was this incredible story.

• 2:33:49Speaker 06

  But, um, I think it's very important to focus on what the embassy knew and why they did that. Like, uh, well, I guess, a better question is, why didn't they know this intel? Why didn't they DNA test? Like, a DNA test, it's the most biometrically enrolled society on earth. Like, we, we have a lab set up that does it in four days. I have her DNA swab, the DOD did in December of 2019, I have it downstairs. Like, we had her DNA, we tested six or eight other people, why was this person not DNA tested? And what's, my real concern is, did they know it was a negative test when they dumped her? Like, I'd like to know that.

• 2:34:33Speaker 06

  Like, did, did State know these people were not family when they handed her off? Or just assume that risk? Because what happened next was, we found out that they were gonna, to not vet whoever she's being turned over to. And so, we actually, as a captain, we sued in federal court to try to prevent that from happening, saying, "You cannot do this in an objectively dangerous manner, based on everything we know. She's a foreign fighter's child, and that you're likely turning over to non-relative terrorist affiliated." Like, you can go look up the court case, like, it says that. And, and it said all the risk factors, it said who this, the Turkish and Islamic Party was, and some of these pictures of the children in their training camps. Like, we were, we filed it under seal because we didn't want to put any Americans at risk

• 2:35:18Speaker 06

  because we were still had troops on the ground. But- It was just basically what the presumption was from DOD's perspective that this was a foreign child the whole time. And there was literally nothing to contradict that. Some rando claiming a familial relationship. And with children having value as chattel, essentially, like, hey, does anyone want a baby and trolling around in rural Afghanistan? I bet you get people claiming just offering a child because they're valuable. And we were getting reports at the time in Kabul of the conditions on the ground. Like, we're getting reports they were eating cats and dogs, that they were selling like some of their younger children

• 2:36:00Speaker 06

  to pay for food through the winter for the others. So like, the conditions in Afghanistan at that time were really bad. Like, I'm having the docs telling me this stuff, and I'm going and researching it to corroborate it. And I'm like, holy cow. And so, like, then as you become, I guess, once, once we volunteered, and a judge says, hey, you're responsible for this child. Like, it was totally a good Samaritan, like, volunteer, like, like, regular American, do the right thing type of thing. But once the judge says, you're responsible, I mean, we are not, it's like your oath. Like, you know, it's like, when I, when I raise my hand, and I swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign domestic, I mean that with every fiber of my being. And when a judge

• 2:36:43Speaker 06

  says, you're responsible for this child, you're their protector, your guardian, your parent, like, we, that's not a light thing to us. Like, it's just like any other oath I've ever taken in my life. To my marriage, to my country, like, we're gonna go after that with everything we got. And that's why we sued the Secretary of Defense. Like, do you think that's a comfortable moment? I mean, we were terrified, right? I'm thinking, this is career suicide, but I can't sleep at night if she's putting in a harm's way again. Yeah. And, and like, who knows? Like, if this, if this is some, and we believe that they were totally anonymous to the US government. Like, they didn't even know who they were. I think they may have had a name. They didn't have an ID. But our understanding was she was being basically laundered through the Red Cross so that they maintained combatant

• 2:37:27Speaker 06

  immunity, and that she was just taken to southern Afghanistan. Jeez. And, and here, let me tell you what that meant to people who raised her. So- This flag was flown on, I think it was 28th February, let me get the right date so I don't mess this up. Because this is important for your audience to understand. So this is an American flag certificate and it says, "Flown on 28th February 2020 in honor of..." and I won't, don't zoom in too much because I'm not supposed to talk about her name, but it says, "Let it be known that the flag accompanying this certificate was flown in the face of the enemy and bears witness to the removal of terrorist forces threatening the freedom of the United States of America. It was flown with great honor and pride over the eminent soldiers of Craig Joint Theater Hospital, Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, during Operation Freedom Sentinel and North Atlantic

• 2:38:12Speaker 06

  Treaty Organization's Resolute Support Mission, where each day Americans fought the global war on terrorism in remembrance of all who have lost their lives." And it says, "You will never be forgotten," because they thought she was dead. And then every single of the two different iterations on deployment of medical personnel, the ones that were still there, every one of them signed the back of this thing.

• 2:38:34Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:38:34Speaker 06

  And they drafted this poem, basically saying, "Thanks for trying," to us. And I got this after she got dumped with, like, a fish in the sea gone anonymously in Afghanistan in a war zone.

• 2:38:46Speaker 07

  And the Colonel at the board testified that it was, and that's what we've come up against, is that it was almost like we were just these Lone Rangers acting outside of US...

• 2:38:57Speaker 06

  That's the narrative.

• 2:38:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's the narrative that has been put out there, but the reality is, is he said that it was duty policy until it wasn't. And all of a sudden, there was a stark, there was a very distinct shift. And also, it was shut down. And he said in the meeting with the general that basically decided that she was going to be turned over, that it was the most unprofessional dress down, if you want to say that.

• 2:39:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, that was the testimony, is that he'd never observed such an unprofessional meeting, where they basically got shut down, called racist for believing basic intelligence that everybody had believed the whole time, saying like, "We have some serious credibility questions about anyone coming forward and claiming this particular child." Plus, it was in a city 100 miles away from the objective, too. So I can talk about this because it's declassified.

• 2:39:42Speaker 06

  There was a civil affairs officer at the time on the joint staff at Resolute Support, and she came and testified against us in the board. And it was so fascinating to watch because like she had her little prepared portion of her testimony, and then my attorneys were able to question her. And you know what she testified to? She said that they did DNA on our daughter. And that, I think she described Uzbek and a couple of other like other tribes in the northern stands, like the countries north of Afghanistan, consistent with that. And that just blew my mind because they gave her two Pashtun-speaking Pashtuns. What? And they have her, like she testified that they had done their DNA.

• 2:40:25Speaker 06

  And then we had declassified the language that we were picking up in Siget. Like it's Turkmen, right? Like it's a very distinct, non-native language. Like we are, we got declassified for a purpose, right? So they gave them to a different race of people who speak a different language. And maybe after they DNA tested them negatively. So like, it's just mind-boggling to me. And then we, the one thing I'd wanted to ask the civil affairs officer is like, hey, did you ever read the declassified mission summary? Did you ever read the classified underlying intelligence? And she's like, no, the Afghans didn't ask for that, so we didn't, we didn't look at it.

• 2:41:04Speaker 06

  And I'm thinking, like, she was, actually came across as angry at these regular Americans for caring enough to ask the question, like, why are we doing this? Like, what's gonna happen to this baby? Like, it was like some sort of like a distraction. And...

• 2:41:20Speaker 07

  Well, at the board, she testified, she was one of the first people to testify, and I was one of the, I guess, one of the last. And what was surprising in her testimony is she referred to our daughter as an Afghan issue, or I think at one point she even said "problem." And it was, the attitude was, it was like, this is a distraction. And I thought she was maybe mad at us for what we did to advocate for her, but really it was across-the-duty footprint, like the medical footprint. She... And some other bad actors found it disturbing that people were becoming emotionally attached, or they actually cared about her.

• 2:42:00Speaker 07

  And so enough to get baby supplies and do everything that they did to basically love on this little child while she was in their care. And so she saw it as a distraction and be something to be done away with. And so when it became, it was my turn to testify, I was sure, I, that was for the first time, because I've always wondered, why did, why couldn't people see where we were coming from? Like, to me, it was just a natural choice to advocate for an innocent child. But it was at the board that I saw that it was, it was a fundamental, fundamental difference in philosophy, or if you want to say worldview, is that we believed that life, innocent life should be protected and advocated for if you can.

• 2:42:43Speaker 07

  And they were coming from the perspective that it was an inconvenience or a distraction, and just to do away with it, it was another issue. And that was the clash, that was the conflict, was there's one side of the camp that was saying, hey, this child deserves our protection. And then the other side is saying, no, this is, this child doesn't really, it's meaningless. It doesn't have any, anything that affects us, so just do away with it. And what I testified, they asked if perhaps, you know, our motives were ethnocentric, or why were we doing what we're doing? And, and I said, well, I said, as Americans, we believe in life, liberating the pursuit of happiness, and we believe that every human being deserves that.

• 2:43:27Speaker 07

  And so we were operating in every, all of our actions up till this very day has been to advance that for her. And if there's people that out there that disagree with that, then I can agree to disagree because I know what we did, and we can go to bed at night with a clear conscience before God and man, because we did what was right. And the, the certificate and everything, it, it was not just us, it was many people. Yeah.

• 2:43:54Speaker 06

  And this is what the, the Colonel wrote in that certificate. He said, "The enclosed flag was flown over Craig Joint Theater Hospital on 28th February, 2020, the darkest day of my one-year deployment to Afghanistan. My intent was to fly the American flag in celebration of her day of rescue. Instead, the flag was flown to help us remember a baby that had profound positive impact on every member of my tra- trauma hospital, a true butterfly effect." And then he...

• 2:44:20Speaker 06

  He told us that they had grief counselors there because so many people were so shook up about this and they actually had the personal security detail of one of the two stars come down to ensure they didn't physically resist turning her over to these people.

• 2:44:33Speaker 07

  And so the question is, is if this was a good-

• 2:44:35Speaker 06

  So to who? So the ICRC physically flew her to the location, but they didn't actually involve in vetting whoever she's being turned over to. It was a bare claim, like, hey, I'm an uncle. That was the level of detail they had. And they had some local people saying, you know, Joe is who Joe says he is, like, as a pseudonym. But there was no corroboration of the claim and it actually turns out to have been false from the get-go. It was a lie.

• 2:44:59Speaker 07

  But the question is, is what we've, if it was okay, that's what was, when I heard this Colonel that testified at the Board of Inquiry, when I heard, like, how he described her turnover, it was, if they were doing the right thing and they had found family and they knew that she was going to have a safe outcome or she was going to be okay, why would they bring down armed guards and basically tell everybody, stand down, you're not going to do anything, this is what's going to happen? If, why would they be concerned about a resistance among service members if what they were doing was on the up and up and, and right? And in reality, they threatened them, told them to stand down and told them

• 2:45:41Speaker 07

  this is what's going to happen, and then had grief counselors on the back end. And like we said, we've had so many people come out of the woodwork saying, I, I was so devastated and I've always wondered what would happen to her, to the point where they hoped that she would have died because they knew that her life, that she was just destined to a miserable life.

• 2:46:01Speaker 06

  And there's, there's some, there's some just tragic text messages I have for your team from the general while this is happening, saying like, we have DNA, we're morally and ethically obligated to do this, why aren't we doing this? And I agree with him. I'd like to know that question is, if the Afghans asked the embassy to do DNA, why didn't we do it? Like, and if not, like, who made that decision? Was it the deputy chief of mission? Because that person should get fired. And when all this broke in America three years later, she was up for a ambassadorship and she was being vetted for that. And so-

• 2:46:38Speaker 06

  Get this, this is just, this will show you where this person is coming from. During all of this, she's filing affidavits against the court, saying like, "This was all by the book," you know, essentially, "nothing to see here." At that time, this senior child protection specialist, this Afghan, was in a third country not safe, in danger of being deported. He reaches out to the deputy chief of mission, and he says, "An attorney has reached out and asked me to participate in this case, in her case. What should I do?" So what do you think the deputy chief of mission tells him? She says, "I wouldn't respond." If they're really an attorney, they'll, they'll, uh... She advises him not to participate.

• 2:47:22Speaker 06

  He's the only person on earth who can say, "No, that didn't happen in that meeting," and "He did in my board." But he's the only person on earth who can contradict what this person, represented to her own agency and to the Trump administration, about confirmed family and the Afghans, you know, it wasn't, I think the half-truth or the lie was, "It wasn't part of the Afghan process." Well, that's because they're asking you to do it. They're asking you personally to DNA test his child, and we have an Acme lab at Bagram that does it in three days, and we already have her swab. And they had actually sent one of these people out of the woodwork in Afghanistan to get DNA tested. So like, that's what he told him. "I've got it in an email downstairs," where he's asking the embassy, "like, this person

• 2:48:04Speaker 06

  that says that there's a surviving sibling, we now want to do the DNA test." And then, there's this nondescript response from the embassy, and then they get him in person, and they say, "Don't talk to the DOD anymore." Are you serious? Yeah. They, they, they suck, they get an order from the two-star that no one in US4A will advocate for this child. I've got a, I've got the order. It's a draft, it hasn't been, it wasn't signed, it was a verbal order, he never signed. But it was, "You will not advocate for this child, all questions list, we'll go to the embassy." And so...

• 2:48:34Speaker 06

  Something else happened that's very important for viewers to understand. When we threatened to sue, there was a hold by the Secretary of Defense on her movement. Like, they were gonna, they were gonna move her on February 11th, 2020. And they ended up not moving her to the 27th. And so, we thought, okay, we've succeeded. They're gonna do an DNA test, they're gonna vet these people, right? To make sure that, that this is a safe outcome. And so, we thought we'd succeeded. We didn't end up filing that lawsuit until we found out they, they were ignoring it and just gonna go forward with it. But that was because the Afghan, quote, "government," and I air quote that for a reason,

• 2:49:14Speaker 06

  sent two demand letters, in perfect English, to the embassy and US Forces Afghanistan. And it was, the intent of those letters was to rush the administration's decision-making cycle. And guess who you think, who do you think drafted those emails, or those letters? We came through this Afghan that we've now got to the US safely. He's like, "Oh yeah, the embassy drafted this and sent it to us on WhatsApp, so that we could send back to them." So, you've got this embassy drafting letters purportedly in the name of the Afghan government during a discussion about what's the right thing to do here? To rush the decision-making cycle of their own government? I've got the drafts.

• 2:49:54Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:49:55Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so, then they're filing affidavits in court saying, "Oh, well, the Afghan government demanded this to happen." And it's, it's bogus, uh, deep state, ridiculous, uh, I, I, I don't know, it makes me angry as an American.

• 2:50:11Shawn Ryan?

  Manipulation.

• 2:50:12Speaker 06

  Manipulation.

• 2:50:13Shawn Ryan?

  Did the, did the people at the embassy have the, like, the after-action reports?

• 2:50:18Speaker 06

  No, they, they left that meeting where I was supposed to brief them, they left that meeting without it, and they were like, "Yeah, you know, their, their philosophy..." DoD was lead for months. They said, "We're not gonna get in your way, but we're not gonna help." And then they got in our way and killed it. And, and it was totally bogus.

• 2:50:36Speaker 06

  And to the point where-

• 2:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  I just don't, I don't, I don't understand why, why, why, why were they, why would they not allow you to take custody? What was the, what was the big, or what is the big, what's the, why?

• 2:50:57Speaker 06

  I can understand, I understand what the administration, because they were believing the embassy when they said that there was, you know, that they didn't want to do-

• 2:51:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but what, what, I'm not talking to the embassy. Like, what is-

• 2:51:08Speaker 06

  I honestly-

• 2:51:09Shawn Ryan?

  They were pissed that you went over their head?

• 2:51:11Speaker 07

  To an extent that we've heard that, and then the other thing, like I said, with the woman that testified at the board. They, they didn't like that service members were getting attached, or that they were caring enough, like, for about this, like, that's not the mission, this is a distraction, do away with it. Like, literally, it was like, it, the problem, the issue, it was just-

• 2:51:32Speaker 06

  Afghan problem.

• 2:51:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was just very wipe our hands, wipe our hands, but, and walk away.

• 2:51:36Speaker 06

  But I mean, why would we expect differently? They did the same thing with child rape on our bases for a decade. Like, why would we expect different? Like, that's the paradigm where, like, you've got a, you know, it, it's kind of been a struggle for the heart and soul of the Department of Defense and the armed forces, is like, are we going to live out our values, or are we going to be like, jackbooted thugs or robots who do these, you know, whatever you're told? Like, these bureaucrats would fit seamlessly in, like, the Third Reich and doing whatever they're told to do. And, and I think as constitutional officers, as, as service members who, you know, uh, support and defend the Constitution, we're obligated to live out our values downrange. And when we don't, I think that really has strategic implications.

• 2:52:17Speaker 06

  We're, we're supposed to be a city on a hill, we're supposed to be an example of how you should do it. And, and that definitely wasn't it. I don't have an answer as to all the whys, I, I can't, like, I don't, can't judge her heart, I don't know. It might be something as simple as, uh, went over a head or we're in inconvenience, I don't know. But, but there's a lot of questions that I have as an American that I'd like answered. Like, like, did they actually DNA, like, was this a negative DNA test? Like, I had always given them the, the, the benefit of the doubt and said, oh, they couldn't have known they weren't family. You know, I could see where they were just trying to get rid of it and rush the process and not do basic safety precautions. I was kind of giving them a bit of the doubt. But when the Colonel came and said they did it, they tested six to eight people and they're all negative- That sent alarm bells off in my head. It's like, wait a minute.

• 2:53:03Speaker 06

  Did they know they weren't DNA tested? Because it wouldn't make sense to me that the State Department wouldn't initially DNA test. But I think once they started getting several negative tests back, either they didn't do it at all, or they did it anyway. And I don't know the answer to that either. So at a minimum, it's not the standard of care for children that we should exhibit down ranch.

• 2:53:27Speaker 07

  And leading up to that, like Josh was says, naively, is like, at the beginning, you thought that just got to get the facts in front of the right people, and they'll make the right decision. And so that was, you know, your motive was just get the facts in front of the decision makers, and they will see it, and you'd act on her best interest.

• 2:53:45Speaker 06

  I'm a prosecutor and an op law attorney targeting. So I know how to pull the information and build a case, and we did. And I'm telling you what, the reason why there's so much restrictions through the chain of command, and so much restriction of the information in this case, is because if people knew the truth, they'd be livid.

• 2:54:07Shawn Ryan?

  When did they hand off the baby to the?

• 2:54:11Speaker 06

  Taliban there?

• 2:54:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:12Speaker 06

  Two days before the pistol. So the pistol was announced on February 29th, 2020. She was handed off on the 27th.

• 2:54:19Speaker 06

  And she was gone, like, impossible to find.

• 2:54:21Speaker 07

  And we were scrambling up to the very end to try to get a hold of Trump. Did anyone, any decision maker, trying to just?

• 2:54:28Speaker 06

  Not just at the end, like, he, so the president visited Bagram for Thanksgiving. And we were waking people up in Afghanistan, like, go to the chow hall, find the president, have a meter.

• 2:54:40Speaker 07

  There were literally people running around base trying to find him.

• 2:54:43Speaker 06

  Hundred yards from the hospital. Like, go get him, go tell him, because we had gotten, you know, basically to see the life, you know what I mean? And because we had, it was a political face-saving thing from...

• 2:54:58Speaker 06

  I mean, the Afghans, I have the email where the Afghans recommended she be sent to the US, to the Afghan president. The deputy chief of mission personally met with Afghan, or Ghani, that's what she told the FBI in her statement, that she personally met with him to get that shut down. So like, they went out of their way to stop that from happening. So the Afghan Minister of Defense, Afghan Minister of Labor, both recommended the president approve US Forces Afghanistan formal request to send her to a guardian in the US. And that specific email chain I got from this Afghan, this Afghan child protection specialist.

• 2:55:39Speaker 06

  After three years, I've asked for that document in all of these cases for three years, and ignored, denied, never gotten it. I didn't even get it from my board of inquiry, where they're trying to say I went against US foreign policy. Well, I've got the US foreign policy email, because this guy that we got out after two years gave it to us. He was too scared to do it before, because he thought he'd get shut down and deported back to Afghanistan, because he was in a third country with, while his visa for the US is processing, and it had to be renewed every six months. And so he's worried about his wife and two little kids. But you know what he did for us? I'll never forget this. This Afghan, who was really supposed to protect her, she ended up, her life ended up saving his family.

• 2:56:23Speaker 06

  But he told me, he gave me the email, the DNA test request, that I'd also asked for. Because I'd been told this happened, but I couldn't prove it. And we really needed it at a time. And he wasn't safe yet. And so he said, "Take care of my wife and kids if they deport me back to Afghanistan for doing this." And he sent us that email. And that was right before he actually got safely to the US. But he took, he risked everything to make sure that that truth got out. And that made all the difference at the board, because here you are, having the government recycling these arguments we've already proved false in court, over and over again. But they did the verbatim at this board of inquiry.

• 2:57:06Speaker 06

  These same mega law firms that have been representing these litigants were in the board of inquiry, like, working with the prosecutor to try to get us kicked out of the Marine Corps. And um, which was just amazing in and of itself. But when you, when you have the eyewitness testimony, the only other guy in that room saying the State Department, we asked them to do DNA test. And then you provide the emails that the government never released. It's pretty damning, to be honest with you.

• 2:57:36Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a, let's take a quick break.

• 2:57:41Shawn Ryan?

  I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch, and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com/vigilanceelite. That's patreon.com/vigilanceelite.

• 2:58:22Shawn Ryan?

  All right, we're back from the break. We, we had just covered that the baby got turned over to a Pashto man.

• 2:58:30Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:58:31Shawn Ryan?

  And so, just if we covered this, forgive me, but how, how did she get turned over to somebody without a DNA test?

• 2:58:42Speaker 06

  Well, that, that's been our question to this day, but ultimately what, what the decision was made from State Department's concern that it would interfere with the peace deal and that these were confirmed family, which I believe was a false report, like we already talked about. Functionally, they just signed her over to an ICRC representative and they flew her to southern Afghanistan. And then she was gone, like a fish in the sea, needle in a haystack, all of those act, like she was gone.

• 2:59:08Shawn Ryan?

  So what did, what did they, just pick some random guy off the street and go, hey, here's a, here's an infant?

• 2:59:14Speaker 06

  They picked the sixth or ninth random guy off the street and with zero vetting. And then that's one of the things why I think a lot of the restrictions on information on this case in particular is because we have the, we have the homework to show that that's exactly what they did. And I think they're very concerned for their own, I don't know, careers or their own reputation that doesn't come out. But I mean, this is, you don't have to take our word for it, it's documented.

• 2:59:38Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how did that feel you guys? We just spoke downstairs. You had a crib.

• 2:59:42Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 2:59:43Shawn Ryan?

  At the house. You guys were preparing for for another baby to enter the family.

• 2:59:50Speaker 07

  It was it wasn't a matter of if, it was when. Because as we had mentioned before, DOD policy all the way up to that point was make every effort to bring her home. And so we were like, for me, just like you would prepare for any other child, just being ready to have all the supplies, be ready to go to, for us, receive a child that potentially had medical, ongoing medical needs. So just trying to adjust my expectations of what life was going to look like at that time. And I would say, for the most part, we were, we were ready as like as much as you could be. But when, when it looked like they were going to forcefully like just turn her over at the last minute, I think we still, as Americans, just like held out hope like if we get it

• 3:00:34Speaker 07

  in front of the right people, they'll do the right thing. And, and so I think even though that fear was very real, there was a side that was just like, it's gonna come through. It's gotta come through. It's, it's a baby. It's gonna, they're gonna see the, the innocence and they're gonna protect this baby. And I remember that night, it was like one of the worst nights of my life that it was, I don't know what time it was, but I was in bed and like we did everything we could possibly do. And now we were just hoping that for some reason it was going to stop. It was gonna be stopped. And Joshua walked in and the room was dark and, and he's, and I just remember your voice and you're like, she's gone. I just, I, I, I didn't even say anything. I was so shocked.

• 3:01:19Speaker 07

  I was just, it felt like a kick in the gut. Like, I can't believe it. And, and that moment, just if you feel like a failure, because here you are, I mean, we were excited about what we were doing. We were proud of what we were doing. And there was like a full court press of everybody working together for this one child. And, and so it felt just like a failure. And, and I'll never forget what you said. You said, I don't know why, I have no reason to think this, but it's gonna be okay. And of all things for him to say, it was probably the best thing, it was comforting. But I was just like, really? Like, I don't, I, I can't see how there, any good can come from this.

• 3:01:58Shawn Ryan?

  How did you find out she was gone?

• 3:02:01Speaker 06

  So one of the medical staff had, had told us, they were all like, out of their minds worried about it. And like, trying to advocate to Congressman.

• 3:02:09Shawn Ryan?

  What did they say?

• 3:02:11Speaker 06

  They basically said that they're gonna be handed over to an anonymous person through the Red Cross at this time and date. And were just letting us know that that was happening so we could try to stop it. And so we, we filed what's called a temporary restraining order, tried to get one. And it's a, it's a high bar to get that against the government.

• 3:02:28Shawn Ryan?

  You already had adoption papers?

• 3:02:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, we did.

• 3:02:31Shawn Ryan?

  So they're just, they're giving your child.

• 3:02:34Speaker 06

  That's exactly what the judge said.

• 3:02:35Shawn Ryan?

  Away to an anonymous person in Kandahar?

• 3:02:40Speaker 06

  Well, I'm, I'm not supposed to talk about exactly where.

• 3:02:42Shawn Ryan?

  Whatever, in Afghanistan.

• 3:02:44Speaker 06

  Yes. Not even, not anywhere near where she was recovered. And to someone who spoke a different language and was a different race. And to me, knowing what I know now, I'm even more upset than I was then. Because then it was like.

• 3:03:00Shawn Ryan?

  Isn't that fucking kidnapping?

• 3:03:02Speaker 06

  That's how I, that's how we viewed it.

• 3:03:04Shawn Ryan?

  So this is the US government, this is the fucking US government kidnapping your child and handing it to some random fucking person in Afghanistan.

• 3:03:15Speaker 06

  After formally recognizing.

• 3:03:16Speaker 07

  Or if you want to say a little bit more politically, they ignored our legal parental rights. And basically said, yeah, that's, that's you, but we're gonna do this. It's a, it was official US determination and policy and.

• 3:03:28Speaker 06

  But, but again, I think with the administration.

• 3:03:30Shawn Ryan?

  Like.

• 3:03:32Speaker 06

  It, it was a crazy situation.

• 3:03:33Shawn Ryan?

  How the fuck do they do that? How the fuck do they take, they give you adoption papers? And then take your fucking kid and give it to some fucking stranger on the streets of Afghanistan? Are you fucking hearing this, people? Like, this is your government. This is your fucking government.

• 3:03:52Speaker 06

  And that's exactly how we felt because we had gone to the authorities, we'd appealed, we'd informed them about like what we knew about on the ground, on the ground facts that are corroborated to this day. And they had recognized this authority. And I think they ended up citing like a technicality like, oh, you didn't formally notify the Department of Justice about this proceeding. And I've got the email traffic where I give it to my Colonel the next day, four months before all this went down. So they basically cited technicalities like, oh, you didn't do this bureaucratic thing correctly. But like, as far as like, knowing, like, the US government knowing this, like, we were emailing the White House Chief of Staff, we were talking to Senator Cruz's office, they were phenomenal, they were advocating, like, hey, this is insane, we can't turn a child over without

• 3:04:36Speaker 06

  vetting. And so the state, the embassy was representing that the Afghans didn't want to do a DNA test. Well, I've got the email where they requesting it. I've got the testimony.

• 3:04:46Shawn Ryan?

  You have an email where they're requesting a DNA test?

• 3:04:49Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 3:04:49Shawn Ryan?

  And the embassy is saying...

• 3:04:51Speaker 06

  They don't do it in the email because they're smart. They did in the meeting on December 31. And then they iced this guy. And by God's grace, we got him out of a dangerous place and to America. And now he's here today because of her ordeal and getting turned over. This guy who was supposed to protect her, ended up getting saved by her. And that's the case for a lot of the folks we helped in the withdrawal, because I told Siffy, I was like, I don't know why, but I feel like it's gonna be okay. And what we've come to learn from our experience is that that was providential, because I wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have had visa experience, I wouldn't know what USCIS was, I wouldn't know what humanitarian parole was. And we used all of those skill sets to save as many Afghan

• 3:05:33Speaker 06

  interpreters and their families, as we could Marine Corps, folks who did in war with us, based on other Marines vouching, like, this guy was with me in Sangin, this guy was with me in Marja, he was great. And like, during the evacuation, when we're just working our TERPs, like, if I wasn't connected with Afghanistan and at the unit that I was at, like, there was like 30, like, 30 plus people that would not have gotten out, but for her getting handed off. So I know these people meant it, for whatever their intent was, but it was part of the plan, because it saved lives in the end. Her life affected a lot more Afghan allies in the evacuation. Absolutely. And since, even, because we got that other guy out with his wife and two kids.

• 3:06:17Shawn Ryan?

  How long was she... MIA.

• 3:06:21Speaker 06

  Almost, almost eighteen months. Almost eighteen.

• 3:06:24Shawn Ryan?

  She was gone for eighteen months?

• 3:06:26Speaker 06

  Exactly, and we were dying every minute of it. Cause um, we, and, and, and that kind of segues pretty nicely into the next portion of the story is, she's gone like.

• 3:06:36Shawn Ryan?

  So like a forty-five day old?

• 3:06:39Speaker 06

  Well, she was, she was five months old at that point.

• 3:06:41Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:06:42Speaker 06

  And she'd been.

• 3:06:42Shawn Ryan?

  A five-month-old baby.

• 3:06:44Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:06:44Shawn Ryan?

  Is gone for a year and a half?

• 3:06:47Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. And so.

• 3:06:50Shawn Ryan?

  To some random man.

• 3:06:52Speaker 06

  Older, older guy, I believe is a. That wished to remain anonymous. That wanted to remain anonymous, because we had offered to DNA test them, and there's email traffic with them saying, well, we understand that they want to remain anonymous, and we'll keep them anonymous, but we need a DNA test of them. Cause that's what DOD was saying, because that's a reasonable sane policy, right? Is you DNA test people coming out of the woodwork in a, in a country that traffics children. Like, that's not a hard call, right? Um, it, it was no question in our minds that that was our requirement from DOD. But that got dropped by state and then reported up the chain as the Afghans didn't want to do it, or it wasn't part of their process, I think was the white lie they used.

• 3:07:25Shawn Ryan?

  How, how high up does this go, this run state?

• 3:07:28Speaker 06

  I think it just went up to the, the embassy was the one generating bad information for the administration. I believe that that got passed on because they, the, the, the main lies was the, the DNA testing wasn't part of the Afghan process, which is technically true, but they're asking you to do it, so is it true? Not from this guy's, where I said, if the United States lead agency, which was DOD, said, we commit to DNA testing any potential family members in the best interest of the child. And you're, you know, you're in a train, advise, assist mission where you're supposed to uh, train them how to, to have a, a, you know, run a, a country. How to provide security, you know, uh, stability, that type of thing. We're trying to train, advise, assist them to do the right thing. And DOD did that. We were like, hey, it, the best interest of the child, you got a DNA test,

• 3:08:13Speaker 06

  will terrorists vet, and let them know of her medical concerns and, and offer free medical care in the US. That was DOD's policy for months. And we were fine with that policy because it's rational. Where we differed from the US government was when they're like, "Oh, we don't want to interrupt the peace deal, so we're not going to require these things," or "we can't," like, what the State Department will do is like, if they want to do something, they'll say, you know, they'll come up with justification, but if they don't, they'll just cite international law and kind of hand-wave it.

• 3:08:39Shawn Ryan?

  The peace deal between us and the Taliban, is that what you're talking about?

• 3:08:42Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:08:43Shawn Ryan?

  Why does the Taliban give a shit about a baby?

• 3:08:47Speaker 06

  No, most of the Afghans were totally on board with sending her to the US. They're not, they're not...

• 3:08:51Shawn Ryan?

  So how would this interrupt the peace deal?

• 3:08:53Speaker 06

  I agree. It doesn't, I mean, she was living proof it was not worth the paper was written on, but outside of her, you know, being proof that the conditions weren't being met, you know, to allow Al Qaeda to use Afghan soil, I mean, there wasn't. This was a manufactured crisis by the embassy. And I want to hit on something. You said, "How did she get turned over?" She got turned over by a series of letters that the embassy, quote, "received." And they had factual statements in them that were drafted by the embassy that were not true. It said that the Afghans had confirmed there was family, and that they didn't want

• 3:09:35Speaker 06

  to do DNA tests, and that they're demanding her back. And so, we actually had the man who signed those letters, his testimony is in evidence in our board of inquiry. The minister, who was in a third country when he testified, but that was provided by the government in our board of inquiry, his testimony. And this guy can't read, write, or speak English, okay? He signed this document. In his testimony, he contradicts. He said, "Well, the baby's really little. We can't determine where it's from, or who it's, if it's an Afghan citizen or not." But the letter says it's an Afghan citizen. And he says, "My ministry can't grant guardianship to anybody." Like, that's a court's job. But the letter

• 3:10:17Speaker 06

  says they granted custody. Like, everything that the embassy needed it to say, they just put in there and had this guy who can't read English sign it and send it to us. And then, when we threatened to sue...

• 3:10:29Speaker 06

  There was a demand letter that came from this same guy who doesn't speak English in perfect English. And it uses terms like next of kin, which is not an Afghan saying, right? And it's literally a demand letter saying, why was the transfer delayed last week? And like, it was trying to rush the American decision-making cycle. And this child protection specialist that we got to America, he said that that was drafted by US Citizen Services, an employee in that department, sent by WhatsApp for them to send back to the embassy to pretend like it was an Armstrong transaction. It was an Afghan demand. So like, the Afghans were doing whatever the American in charge was having them do. And this was a US embassy decision.

• 3:11:14Speaker 06

  And they did a fake crisis for the benefit of the administration to deceive them. And, I mean, I've got the email traffic. And it's got the Word doc of who drafted it, the embassy. I don't have the demand letter.

• 3:11:27Shawn Ryan?

  Who drafted it?

• 3:11:28Speaker 06

  It was the guy in American Citizen Services. He was a...

• 3:11:32Shawn Ryan?

  You want to throw his name out there?

• 3:11:34Speaker 06

  Oh, I don't think he was... I think he was doing it at the direction of the...

• 3:11:37Shawn Ryan?

  Who gives a shit?

• 3:11:38Speaker 06

  Deputy Chief of Mission. Well, he's an Afghan. He was a... I don't want to put him at risk. But I have the...

• 3:11:45Shawn Ryan?

  He speaks perfect English.

• 3:11:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, he does speak perfect English. And, like I said, I think he's following orders. But here's the fun part.

• 3:11:52Shawn Ryan?

  I hate that excuse.

• 3:11:53Speaker 06

  I hate it too. I think that's like the Nazi excuse.

• 3:11:56Shawn Ryan?

  Following orders.

• 3:11:57Speaker 06

  Absolutely. But here's the kicker. This Deputy Chief of Mission, she came and did a deposition. And we were not allowed...

• 3:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  Where does the following orders end? You know what I mean?

• 3:12:13Speaker 06

  Well, I think he was doing it at the direction... Oh, yeah.

• 3:12:16Shawn Ryan?

  Wait, following order? What the fuck does that mean?

• 3:12:18Speaker 06

  No, I agree with that. I think that you're obligated to follow the lawful orders of the President of the United States and his delegated authority. But I still think that we have an obligation to uphold American values as we're doing that. And we have to do it in the most conscientious way possible.

• 3:12:38Speaker 06

  But I think that an important fact the listeners would be interested to know, talk about government misconduct before. It's not just a, not just an interfering back then. It's been for three years through all of these cases. They've tried to file statements and withhold information from the American public in the courts. That is the responsibility of the previous administration's Department of Justice. Like, you can't lie to courts. You can't file statements that say, "Oh, we received this letter and it was an Armstrong transaction," when it's not true. And we've been raising the Red Star Cluster, if you will, for lack of a better term, all along.

• 3:13:18Speaker 06

  So this Deputy Chief of Mission, while she was up there in her ambassadorship, provided sworn statements and testimony. Get this: The Department of Justice would not let us ask questions in what's called cross-examination. She could only testify about what they wanted her to testify about, what the DOJ wanted them to say, which is that this is nothing to see here and these letters were Armstrong's transactions, the ones her office drafted. They were trying to force those on the courts and say, for the truth of what was in the letters, which was a lie, that they drafted, and we weren't allowed to cross-examine them. Can you imagine the government coming in and saying, and this is focused on government conduct here, not the courts, state courts.

• 3:14:01Speaker 06

  Can you imagine the government coming in and saying something you know is a lie? And you've asked for the document, they won't give it to you. And you can't ask them questions like, "Hey, was that true what was written? Who drafted that? Did anyone in your office draft it?" You can't even ask those questions. They're trying to put this facade of actual due diligence in what they did. And it's a lie. And then on top of it, that same witness, "witness," air quotes, is telling the Afghan, the only person on earth who can contradict her story, not to participate. Like, I've got the email traffic, where he reaches out and asks her for help, and she's like, "I can't help you." And then he's like, "Should I participate?" And she's like, "Oh, I wouldn't."

• 3:14:45Speaker 06

  And, like, who does that?

• 3:14:48Shawn Ryan?

  What's this woman's name?

• 3:14:50Speaker 06

  Her name is Donna Welton. She was the deputy chief mission. Now she's an ambassador.

• 3:14:55Shawn Ryan?

  She is an ambassador now?

• 3:14:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:14:57Shawn Ryan?

  To what?

• 3:14:58Speaker 06

  I think it was team more or less, if that's how you say it, right? At the time, I don't know if she still is or not. I haven't followed her career or life or anything. But, um, like I said, they meant it for evil or for whatever their purpose was. You know, not American values, but it ended up being for good for many people. And so we're honestly thankful that happened. But I mean, we should probably circle back to like, where was she for 18 months? How did she get here? Cause that's, that's really.

• 3:15:22Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, they get, the government has, you know, you're, we were talking about earlier. You're familiar with the Blackwater case? They deleted the drone footage that proved their innocence.

• 3:15:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:15:31Shawn Ryan?

  Like a five minute segment of drone footage.

• 3:15:33Speaker 06

  Well, that's what we've been saying.

• 3:15:34Shawn Ryan?

  Made it out to simply like they killed a bunch of people in Nassau Square back in 2007. Oh, guess what this has to do with? A fucking peace deal or not a peace deal. The status of forces agreement that they kept us in Iraq.

• 3:15:48Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 3:15:48Shawn Ryan?

  Deleted the drone, deleted the fucking drone footage. It's like a five minute segment. You see the thing roll up.

• 3:15:58Shawn Ryan?

  Then the gunfight happens. They delete that five minute segment and they're like, oh, we routinely delete this because we need to save memory. It's like everything before that and everything after, after, like if you were saving, saving memory, then you would have just kept the actual gunfight, which is the important part and deleted all the other shit. But they, they.

• 3:16:22Speaker 06

  But in, I, I.

• 3:16:23Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking hate our government, man.

• 3:16:24Speaker 06

  Because that's so.

• 3:16:26Shawn Ryan?

  I hate them.

• 3:16:27Speaker 06

  I love our people and our government needs to reflect the people. But I think that we have so many documented instances in our case of over classification of clearly unclassified material. I'll give you like specific examples. Um, redactions, um, under pretext to hide that we were communicating with, like that we had fully authorized at every level of government to do what we did. Cause they, they tried to portray that this was major mass, like making this up and hiding it and like going in the background, like we were broadcasting from the rooftops advocating for this little girl. And, and it was a righteous cause. And, and everything since then has been orders changing. Like I had full authorization to testify in my own case.

• 3:17:12Speaker 06

  And guess what? This mega law firm asked their former partner, who worked in the SecDef's legal advisors, to for assistance, and they got revoked the night before one of our hearings. And so like, again, this is focused on government misconduct, not the state court stuff. But who does that? Like, how does the military chain of command authorize you to testify about what you know? And then revoke it the night before what was supposed to be the only hearing where we, like, the last one? And so it was intended to prevent us from putting on a case at all. Like, even me telling you what I knew about Afghanistan or what I knew about the intel. I have, I have a list over here of this is a, this right here is a letter saying what we can and can't talk about from the Department of Justice.

• 3:17:57Speaker 06

  And oh, by the way, the same attorney who defended the government's decision to turn her over to the Taliban in the first place is the gatekeeper of government information. So she gets to decide ultimately what gets released and what doesn't. And do you think that she wants to be proven wrong that they they helped hand a child over to nonrelative terrorists? Or do you think she doesn't want that to come out? Who's this woman? Her name is Kathy Wire. She's a senior civil division, or Department of Justice attorney. She, she, she represented the government in the temporary restraining order hearing, where we're like, hey, all the intel is your attorney's over to nonrelative terrorists. She was the attorney on that. And then she got tasked to this case years later. Is she still involved? Oh, yeah. They're very much involved. So they're the ones orchestrating.

• 3:18:41Speaker 06

  So instead of us getting witnesses and being able to cross-examine them and ask them questions, what they'll do is they'll submit a declaration and a statement of interest of the United States. And it's really just this one person in DOJ, who's pretty high up and who's friends with these mega attorney, mega law firm attorneys. And they'll write, they'll court, they literally help write whatever the witness is going to say. And we had this during COVID, where they would just draft witness statements and they adopt it. And that's the, the statement, you can't question it. It's written by an attorney. It's just signed off by some person with the right background and the right name to do it. And so here's, I think this is the clearest way to show what the government has done.

• 3:19:20Speaker 06

  In this case, like to put their thumb on the scales of justice. It's what we can't talk about. And so this says, notwithstanding the responses and authorizations identified above, the following categories of information have not been authorized and should be excluded, and that's all caps, from any testimony, evidence, or filings in this proceeding. And so this is discussing what's called TUI authorization, which is a law that says, if you learn something in your government duties, it's official information and you have to have permission to testify. And the DOD policy is, is that information like that should be made reasonably available to courts, because they're like a disclosure type of disposition, unless it's classified or restricted for some reason that's justifiable.

• 3:20:04Speaker 06

  So in this case, I've had my orders changed three different times. We've asked for multiple witnesses, gotten denied, right? And what, what, they've used this as a shield and a gag to prevent what actually happened from coming out. And here's, here's a perfect illustration. So, quote, "I can't talk about in court." Like, they can't restrict your first amendment rights outside of that. That's why I'm telling you. But, quote, "information prepared by the Department of Defense for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Afghan social worker." So I've been told that I cannot tell them that my Colonel signed a very similar memorandum for the Afghans as some NGOs and released it to them five years ago, which I had from civil discovery.

• 3:20:49Speaker 06

  I was told I can't mention that in court. And do you know why? Because they filed affidavit saying that Major Mast helped draft this declassified mission summary, and so it's not reliable. So they said I could talk about what I had drafted, and then they attacked me and said that I had made this stuff up, but they told me I couldn't use my Colonel's memo that he signed in the proceeding.

• 3:21:11Speaker 06

  So we got it from the Afghans. It'll be up on your website. And people can go see exactly what the government didn't want you to know. And it's really not, when I say government, it's very loose. Like, I understand they represent the United States, but it's like a couple attorneys that work in Civil Division DOJ that have a lot of discretion, and they've abused it. And they coordinated with, like I said, a former 15-year partner in one of these mega-law firms who was working in the SecDef's office. I've got email traffic with them asking them to do these things. Like, you don't get your orders revoked from on high, you know, by accident. That doesn't, that does not happen. And I've got about three or four times back and forth with my command. And I don't blame my command at all. My commanders are phenomenal warriors. They're like, Marsok is for real, good people.

• 3:21:55Speaker 06

  But it's so high up in the bureaucracy, and it's coming from other agencies, so it sounds like this to your commander. "Oh, there's inter-agency interest in Major Math." And what that really means is, an attorney at this mega-law firm has been a partner with this other person for 15 years who happens to be working in the previous administration's legal advisor to a service secretary or the SecDef's office. And so they have a revolving door with partners that do that, and that's how they use power and get favors from the government. And I'm not even saying, it's not illegal, it's just when they use it for purposes like this, it can be abused, and it has significantly. And so here's the next thing I'm not allowed to talk about. "Information submitted to the US Citizen Integration Services by another office in DoD."

• 3:22:39Speaker 06

  And that's a really, really bland way of saying, "Here is the Deputy Assistant SecDef's, it's the Deputy Assistant SecDef's agency-initiated parole visa request." So this is a DASD level, saying, "Our little girl's a stateless minor, the Mass have received guardianship because of unique circumstances, she's a DoD-dependent," basically formally recognizing this and making a request to USAIS to send her to the US and give her a visa. And we asked for this document for like three years. And it came out, they delayed its release until it couldn't impact the proceedings at all. Because you know, when you, when you're trying to say that Major Mass went behind everyone's

• 3:23:21Speaker 06

  back, well, how do you have a memo signed by the deputy assistant SecDef? And then they said, oh, well, it was Major Mass talking to, or Captain Mass at the time, talking directly to his office. And then they denied the Colonel, who was his action officer, who went and verified all this, because they're professionals. They don't go and go off of some, what some captain says, they go verify it with Ranger Regiment and look at the sensitive site exploitation material that they pulled off Objective. And the Colonel who helped draft this for the deputy assistant SecDef testified at our board, and he's personally told me that there is pictures of the dead biological mother, young, strong Asian facial features. And in contrast with that, it's supposed to be like a 40-year-old Pashtun female mother. So like, not the same person, right?

• 3:24:06Speaker 06

  Those two things can't be true at the same time. And so do you wanna, do you wanna trust the photograph and the intelligence that Task Force created, that Ranger Regiment verified? Or do you wanna trust these bureaucrats who are self-servingly saying, oh, this is an innocent farmer? And calling our, by implication, calling our Rangers were criminals? That's just unacceptable.

• 3:24:28Speaker 06

  And I can go down the list, I've got six more. So I will, what I will do is I'll provide this for, these have all been released by FOIA, or by TUI, or by due process rights for my board. And so I can, I can share this information, and these are all in our whistleblower complaint to Congress, like in detail outlining exactly where it's been live. But I'll belabor the point for one more, one more point.

• 3:24:58Speaker 06

  This says, oh, this, this memo that I told you about from my Colonel. Right now, this, this document here was sent by a Dutch NATO female, a Dutch NATO worker to the Afghans and the ICRC, right? Right now, because of over-classification, in an NCS investigation, in my case, they have marked this secret no foreign. This document that we got in litigation, it was sent to a Gmail account, right? To cover this up because originally they were saying, oh, you're not authorized to talk about it. Well, then we got it from outside the government source because this only applies to information the government provided you. So then we got a hold of it and then they overclassified it as secret no foreign.

• 3:25:43Speaker 06

  By definition, when you provide things to foreign governments, it is not secret no foreign. When it goes from a NATO member to multiple people outside of the government's control, it's not secret no foreign. And so like, that's just, it's blatant abuse of our processes to weaponize the system. And it's to cover what this says because they don't want the American people to see it because it makes them look bad. And this is, you know, the senior attorney for all of Afghanistan signing off on the declassified intel. Like, our office helped draft the declassified mission summary and we routed that up through the FDO process.

• 3:26:23Speaker 06

  But our Colonel used substance of that data to, for specific targeted memorandums to protect this child. And, you know, five years after the fact, they're saying, nobody can see this. And that's just scratching the surface. I don't even want to get into like the terror watch list stuff and all that because I've been so attacked for even having witnessed them flagging the terror watch list that it's a... We joke about it. We've got lots of kids at home, so we say like, we don't talk about Bruno, so we don't talk about Dulles is kind of the joke in our household because they have, these mega law firms have successfully gotten some terrorism records scrubbed off the terror watch list.

• 3:27:07Speaker 06

  They have what? They have gotten some terrorism records related to this scrubbed off the watch list. And I don't know how they did that, but we had marked unclassified FOU documents that I've been told were now been retroactively classified as secret no foreign so they could not be used in this case. Yeah, we've heard this shit before too. It's just like, it's exactly what you said with these Blackwater guys. It's like, why are the five minutes that prove you're innocent gone? You know, why not the rest of it? And that's kind of why... This shit happens all the time. This is how our government works. Well, I think that's changing. I hope it's changing, but this is how it works.

• 3:27:52Speaker 06

  This shit, this shit, said it happened.

• 3:27:55Speaker 06

  And so circling back, um, we, we talked about her being gone for 18 months. And what, what happened in that time period? And I think a lot of Americans would like to know that because it, it, it explains the narrative that's been pushed in the media. So then I, she's gone. There's no, like, no way to find her, like, to an anonymous person. We don't know where they're going to be. Told they might be Pakistani. Um, so this, this, uh, Kim Motley is a phenomenal human rights attorney. She finds her. She had had some experience with, uh, traffic children in Afghanistan where like, um, uh, someone marries a, a Western wife and then they split and they take the kids and go back to Afghanistan.

• 3:28:40Speaker 06

  So she had negotiated with that and then some other like actual child trafficking cases. And, um, so she finds her in like a few days and, um, she sent us some proof of life photos. And that's when we saw this, this, this Taliban, I think. Um, that's my, based on my training and like his appearance.

• 3:28:59Speaker 07

  And we're told that she's in a slum.

• 3:29:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, we were told she was in a slum that was so dangerous, the ICRC wouldn't send people back, that she had started shaking and they had taken her back to the hospital and they said, you know, we don't have the capability to treat her in Afghanistan. And that, um, and then some time starts going by, it's COVID, right? Everything's shut down. And so, um, Kim's goal was simply to get her evaluated, um, sparrow evaluated in Kabul, added a, a, a, a Western hospital that was a private hospital that she helped represent. And so we had gotten authorization from this older man to, to have her checked out, to explain like in your own language, what's, you know, what's wrong with child and, and what the long-term concerns were. And we were told that he had hired and like literally a text message in evidence at our

• 3:29:44Speaker 06

  board says, "I've hired a woman to care for her and I pay her a salary." And, um, and it was this like 16-year-old, 17-year-old girl. Um, and she, and so this, this old guy had pawned her off already with a, an unmarried girl. And we have come to find out over the last few years, she was living in like a group setting, like with 23 other people with extended family members and such. And, um, in what I believe were dangerous situations, I'm, I'm hesitant to, I should probably say one thing before I go into it, but.

• 3:30:20Speaker 06

  This Poshdin guy that we've been in this conflict with, the first thing he told me was that she doesn't live with him, that his dad was responsible to the Taliban for her, and that she lives with some other people that are like parents to her. That's what this guy tells me. And I have an audio clip of this that your guys can provide to the audience to show that. And it's been disguised to protect his identity and all those things to meet those requirements. But that's in evidence in our board. Hi Ahmad, I hope your son's doing better today. I was wondering if you could, at some point, if you have a minute, send him a voice message about asking, just asking how he was doing

• 3:31:03Speaker 06

  or if she's okay with explosions going off or whatever. I'd kind of like to figure out where she is. And I'd also like to know how she's doing, but if you have time, just at some point. Thanks.

• 3:32:02Speaker 06

  So when I say, so I believe him when he said she was not living with him ever, like for any portion of the time. And when she got to the States, one of the things that concerned was is I'm a special victims trial counsel certified, which means I have special training to deal with child victims and victims of sexual assault. And her as a two-year-old.

• 3:32:29Speaker 07

  The sensitive way to say is she was exhibited, she was demonstrating signs of trauma. The girl, the baby at Bagram was no longer there. Like that was the, the bright eyes, big smile, just open face, typical baby. When we finally saw her after that 18 month span, she was closed off. I, it was to the point where I, for a split second, I wondered if it was the same child. Because she was so distinctly different. Her eyes were guarded, her face was closed off, she was like very defensive. And it wasn't until I saw the scar on her leg, which is very distinct. I was like, that's her.

• 3:33:12Speaker 07

  Like it, I was like kind of looking at her face, like just looking for those glimpses that from all the photos from, from the hospital, like looking for that little girl. And she was, to say that she was traumatized, it would be an understatement.

• 3:33:29Speaker 06

  And, and the, the FBI has investigated all these allegations, the media. And the day they came to talk to us, we had just returned from the Carousel Center, which is a child sexual forensic facility in Wilmington. And so we had, based on her behavior and her physical characteristics of her, of her female parts, we were very concerned, she was exhibiting all the signs of sexual abuse. And I don't think this guy did it because he told me he didn't live with him. I think it happened when you're living with 23 other random people in your house, or however the communal living, and you have people going to high school and finishing high school and not having like a, a specific person watching her. And, and in a society where you have a lot of that type of abuse going on.

• 3:34:13Speaker 06

  I a hundred percent believe that she was sexually abused. I don't think this guy in America now did it because he told me she didn't live with him. But we didn't even try to use that in court because I believe in when he said she wasn't living with me. He had no reason to lie at that time, he has a reason to lie now. But.

• 3:34:33Speaker 06

  She was traumatized by her experience there. She was malnourished, like way behind on her growth and weight. She was, like she had, she was, her stool, she had worms. She had, she was infested with lice. All of us got lice. Like, my whole family had to deal with that for like a week. Cause it's like very full grown lice. She's, she's got an allergy to German cockroaches, which is an acquired allergy from, from being around like, like that type of insect, I guess. And it was, it was, we're so thankful she got out. Like, and I think she was young enough where that's not gonna affect her. But she still carries the baggage from that.

• 3:35:16Speaker 06

  And like, everything we're warning about in our lawsuit saying like, sexual abuse, malnourishment, lack of access to medical care. It took her three years to get an MRI. Like that picture of her skull fracture. When people are like, oh, she's medically complete, she'll be fine. Like, that's the embassy's perspective. Like, if you look at that skull fracture and imagine, that's on a two-year-old. What did it look like as an infant? It's a larger area of her head. Like, she looks like a cracked egg. Like, there was legitimate safety concerns.

• 3:35:44Shawn Ryan?

  Do these fucking people know this?

• 3:35:46Speaker 06

  Who's, who's that?

• 3:35:47Shawn Ryan?

  These attorneys, these mega law firms?

• 3:35:49Speaker 06

  I think they've done everything they can to shut that down.

• 3:35:51Shawn Ryan?

  Satanic?

• 3:35:53Speaker 06

  I, I have no idea what they're...

• 3:35:54Shawn Ryan?

  Like, what is this shit?

• 3:35:55Speaker 06

  I, I think they, they just believe the lie.

• 3:35:57Shawn Ryan?

  What do they want to happen?

• 3:35:59Speaker 06

  I, I think in their minds, they think that she's going to have a little white picket fence life with these Afghans here in the States. And, uh, and I don't think they realize the, the real players in this story. Cause it's really not between us and them. I don't, they, they don't have legal authority under their own legal system for this child. They were, they told us half a dozen times, they were responsible to other people. And what blows my mind is this is what happened in the board of inquiry. The FBI interviews these Afghans, like, close to day one. Like, in the country, in the evacuation camps. And do you know what they tell the FBI?

• 3:36:40Speaker 06

  That, this is a quote, "Her two uncles are the authority for her life." Not them, they cite the two other people as authority for life. And the Taliban commander said she couldn't come to America. So that's what they tell the FBI. Do you know what the DOJ, under the previous administration, has filed in our statement of interest to the United States? They've said that these people are her legal guardians and parents. They told them they weren't. They've had that information for three years. And they're hiding that from the court. How do you, as an attorney for the United States government, go tell a court, "These people are parents," when you have statements that are felonies, if they're not true, saying the opposite? How do you do that?

• 3:37:24Speaker 06

  Like, it's these legal positions that the United States, air quotes, "United States," with a civil division, have taken are based on things they know are lies. They actually have rips of their phones from... And this guy told me before he came to American Airlines, he told my TIRP, "Hey, I've got many Taliban militants on my phone. Will that be a problem when I come to US forces?" Because he brought her to get evacuated. And so they've got their phone rips sitting there on their front desk. Like, if I'm Cash Patel, I'd be like, "Let's see if there's any terrorism contacts on there." Because he also flagged on the watch list. And they also said they were responsible to the Taliban governor for her. And they told the FBI they were obligated to the Taliban to go talk to them. And they said, "No."

• 3:38:07Speaker 06

  And so, like, we, during the evacuation, we risked everything to make sure they got out okay. Like, I've got email traffic saying, "I don't want two Taliban murders in my head because I knew the risk." My commander said, "You're going to have to choose between Sparrow and them because the assets we're going to use to collect them, don't give a fuck about Afghans." And that's a quote. "They're going to probably put a gun in their face and take them." And so, like, what I like to say to the American people is... If we were trying to take a child from her quote, "parents," from quote, "family," that would have been a pretty good time to do it. Instead, we delayed the mission from a national mission force that ultimately rescued them

• 3:38:49Speaker 06

  from behind Taliban lines for over 24 hours and tried to get a volunteer group to go get them. Like some of these great Americans who are like going behind Taliban lines to get them out, like Chad Robishow's folks and like other groups. We had them lined up with seats paid for on the aircraft from the Mercury One funding. And we had a group of five, three kids plus Sparrow and these two posthumous, and she was like eight months pregnant. So like, we delayed everything, risked them all to get them out safely. And so like, I guess that's the level of fidelity we had on this. The first time I ever spoke to this posthumous guy was in July of 2021, a couple of months

• 3:39:29Speaker 06

  before, like five weeks before the evacuation ended. Day one, I explained who I am, why I care, like that I worked at the hospital, that my job in Afghan-- or worked for the hospital to try to get a safe outcome for her, that my job in Afghanistan was to make sure only bad people got hurt in our strikes, you know, kind of explaining like at the grassroots level what a targeting attorney does in Afghanistan. We explained that we were told she was foreign, that we had sought legal responsibility in the US, that she had a complete US identity, and the entire-- from day one, it was send her to fly out before the Taliban take over. Like, that's what the pitch was.

• 3:40:10Speaker 06

  And the first thing this guy asked me, what do you think he asked for? He's like, "Could I get a visa for me and my brother-in-law to come to America?" Because everybody wants to come to America. I don't even blame him for that. But that is the first thing on this person's mind. And I think that the best way to explain that to the audience who's not deployed is to say like, it's a very day-to-day survival, like hand-to-mouth environment. It's not even their fault, right? It's, if you're not wealthy there, if you're not making money off the Americans being there, like you're dirt poor. And so a lot of it, they're not planning what they're going to do next month. They're not planning on like their five-year goal. It's, "How do I survive today?" And it was very clear from the get-go that this guy was trying to survive and get whatever

• 3:40:54Speaker 06

  he could out of this. And I'm not even blaming him for that. I'm really, I blame the Americans who enabled these lies and abuses of our systems, but-- Like, as God is my witness from day one in detail. And that's exactly what our interpreter testified to, and that's in evidence at our B O I. That's what... There is no evidence to contradict that, ever, because it's what we did. I mean, how do you... She ultimately got rescued by a national mission force from behind Taliban lines. How do you explain to someone, bearded men with guns are gonna come in helicopters and get this child, and we're gonna bring you two? How do you explain that that's gonna happen to someone, to an Afghan, a Pashto male from southern Afghanistan?

• 3:41:39Speaker 06

  You don't. You have... They used her military I D. to identify her to U. S. forces. Like, he told my interpreter, like, "Don't tell Joshua," that's what he called me, "but I have many Taliban militants on my phone. Will this be a problem when I come to U. S. lines?" And I had a J. SOC. Colonel come and testify at our border inquiry that corroborated all the... Not the allegations, the derogatory information, if that makes sense. But I've got the Department of Justice filing in front of our court saying, "Oh, that was never, never any derogatory, not affiliated with terrorism." I mean, I've got a guy who said, "My dad's responsible to Taliban shadow governor." Not where he lives, where she was recovered from, the guy responsible for those camps.

• 3:42:24Speaker 06

  He said that... And that guy said, "No." I mean, and they're describing this in detail over conversations for like, six weeks, because it took a couple of weeks to trek up there. And if you think about what's going on is, the Taliban started with the northern alliance areas this time, and then they swept down into their natural strongholds in the south. And so Sparrow and these two Pashtuns, they spent like, several, like, a week and a half in their... huddling in their homes while there's like, urban combat in some of these southern Afghan cities. And his biggest concern was, "I'm worried the artillery concussion is gonna hurt my unborn child," because his wife was pregnant. She was like, 19 and eight months old. And so that was his concern. And like, I'm having conversations through an interpreter,

• 3:43:07Speaker 06

  but with this guy. And what, what, come, come to find out, the, the language this interpreter is using is the very strongest language in Pashto for guardian, legally responsible. He's using words, um, Wali, which is an Arabic term, but it's used in Islamic legal, uh, like writings and such. And it means like the responsible person or the, and then Masooliyat, uh, which is, um, another word for like responsibility or the one in charge. And then, uh, I messed this one up a lot. So my Afghan friends will make fun of me later. But Sarprost, which is like, um, uh, the responsible person. And so he's using the strongest words in this guy's native language to explain this to him. And then I have, I'm

• 3:43:50Speaker 06

  on video saying, I will try to fly to Kabul and bring her documents, all her original documents. And so essentially what happened was, this guy tells me, she doesn't live with him. She lives with some other family. She doesn't live with his dad. She lives with some other family. He said, my dad's gone to speak to the shadow governor. And then like, two weeks go by, and it's getting to be about August 14th or 15th, right, right before the Taliban take off. He comes back and he says the Taliban said no. And so we're like, what do you do? And, uh, no, so then the evacuation starts. And so before, there was no way to get all of them out, right? They're like, the Taliban will kill us if,

• 3:44:33Speaker 06

  if we bring her. And he told me, like, oh, sir, you're so kind. Thank you. I think she should go live with you in America, you know, can she go to college? Like, they're asking questions like that. My dad wants to know this. My dad wants to know that. He's always saying his father was the one in charge or had questions. And so like, let me talk to your dad. Let me talk to the Taliban shadow governor. Like, you know what I mean? They, I'm pulling out all stops because I know it's ending. Um, because at, at, at the unit I was at, we had intel reports of how bad it was. And so.

• 3:45:04Speaker 06

  Two days after the evacuation started, I had had the privilege of helping another Marine friend of mine. I saw a plea on Facebook, a friend of a friend. And this Marine was at the war college and he was trying to get his turf out and he was stuck outside the gates. And he'd been there for like three days with a bunch of little kids. And so I was like, hey, man, send me that stuff. I can send it on a red line. And I had reached out to the SOCCENT LNO to ask like, hey, how, what is the process for requesting they evacuate people? And they're like, man, there is no process. We're, we're building this plane and flying it. And so I was like, holy cow. So I, I scrounged around and I got a sipper, a, a, a secret red line to H KIA, where I could talk to the SJA, who was a friend of mine, who I knew.

• 3:45:48Speaker 06

  And I talked to him at the early stages and he's like, I am an O4 SJA in the Marine Corps and I just laid sea wire, concertina wire, and cleared an airport with like 250 Marines. That's what I did today. He's like, this is unbelievable. And like, never seen anything worse. And I mean, a major lays concertina wire, a judge advocate? Like, they were, they were like overrun. And like, as I'm communicating with them, they're, they're saying things like, the situation's not good. Like, the State Department people are leaving. We have no guidance. It's changing. Like, they were afraid they were gonna get overrun again. Like, it was bad. And so like, we, that first group that I got out, or I helped get out, like, that, that major was really plugged in with, it was called the Zaki family.

• 3:46:34Speaker 06

  And they're, they're in the States, they're safe. Thank God. But they got out. And so he got flooded with a bunch of other requests from other Marines. Like, hey, my turf's outside of this gate and over that gate. And so he started filtering those to me because I was able to assist with that original one. And so I got sucked in and like, for the next two weeks, like, totally ad hoc, didn't have to, just did what every other, like, people who had connections tried to do and, and help get our allies out. Like, guys who'd gone to war with us. And if a Marine vouched for them, we would get a Marine to go find them and pull them in. It was unbelievable. So like, like, all these groups, like, you know, Consilium, No One Left Behind, Pineapple Express, you know, Mighty Oaks folks, it, it was,

• 3:47:16Speaker 06

  it was probably the worst two weeks that I personally experienced, just with the huge highs and huge lows of getting people out and knowing there had no hope. But in the midst of that, we experienced a miracle.

• 3:47:31Speaker 06

  With my command authorizing me to try to go to Afghanistan during all of that craziness. And then ultimately with the National Mission Force getting her. But. How did they get her? So as soon as I got word, they were, well, so he came back and said, the Taliban said, no, they'll kill us. We can't go. I was like, disobey the Taliban. The president just got on the TV and said, anyone at risk or anyone who's helped US forces can try to get out. And so I said, if you bring a, she's viewed as a US person by US forces. If you bring her to US forces that's helping the United States, and I will do everything I can to get you out. And then I went downstairs and I talked to my Colonel. I was like, sir, crazy story.

• 3:48:14Speaker 06

  We've been doing, State Department dumped our little girl. Two years ago, we've been working to get her out. You know, she has medical concerns. They've reported like shaking and such. She's coming with a posture male and a pregnant female. And then, oh, by the way, the interpreter that I'm using to speak to him, he's like, hey, sir, my 15 year old sister lives in the Northern Alliance areas in the north. And they just passed, the Taliban just made an edict that they have to provide lists of the 15 to 45 year old unmarried women. And the Taliban fighter is going to marry them and then take them back to Waziristan when they're, when, you know, they're done with their campaign. And he's like, I really like my, my sister not to have to marry a Taliban fighter and go to Waziristan. And I was like, he's like, can we try to get her out?

• 3:48:58Speaker 06

  And so I was working with Kim Motley at the time, and we were helping each other with different connections in Afghanistan. And she got hundreds of women, like at risk women out. And we were helping each other because I could get people over the wall and she could get them seats out. But like she seemed like the Afghan, like female robotics team, like a lot of the staff, so like, I believe it was the New York Times, some of the media agencies, they got them out. And she was like, almost single handedly responsible for hundreds of lives. And she helped us too. And so we, this is, so this is what we did. We moved my interpreter's 15-year-old sister, his like seven or eight-year-old brother, and he had a teenage brother as well, three kids, 180 miles south through Taliban lines.

• 3:49:41Speaker 06

  These two Pashtuns came 280 miles north, and we rented an Airbnb, of all things, in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the fall, about a mile and a half west of the airport, and we used it as a safe house. And I go talk to my colonel, it's like, "Permission to take emergency leave and fly into Kabul commercial through India, because there's still a few flights, because that's how the American volunteers were getting in, and then going behind Taliban lines and getting people out?" It was unbelievable. And so, like, we got sucked into that cycle of just trying to get as many allies out. And in that process,

• 3:50:21Speaker 06

  several instances where we were interacting with the Marines at Abbey Gate, right before it got blown up. So you flew in? I did not, so, no, I'm sorry, I should clarify. I was authorized to fly in, and then my colonel's like, because he's a phenomenal human being, and like, just a special operations warrior, he was like, "That's what I'd do if I was a parent, permission granted." And then he was like, "Well, I should probably tell the general." And so then they routed up to CENTCOM, and they're like, "Heck no, you're not taking emergency leave in Kabul, Afghanistan." So they shut that down, and I was told to hold. But my colonel was former JSOC liaison for our unit, and he got her added to the targeting list of the National Mission Force, and she got elevated.

• 3:51:02Speaker 06

  And so that's when we had that conversation about choosing between her safety and their safety, and I have documentation where like, "I cannot do that." I personally spoke to the two at the National Mission Force, and she personally guaranteed, like, they would take them all, because they had no documents and no connection to the US. And they were using her military ID to get her on a bird. And so they went and snatched them behind Taliban lines, and snatched them up and flew them into the airport in a helicopter. And so our kids and the pregnant lady didn't have to go through the huge crowds, because we'd had other groups like crushed, or like, pregnant women like giving birth prematurely and losing the child, like, it was horrific conditions. And...

• 3:51:48Speaker 06

  And what these, what these people on the ground were going through, like, I'm talking to guys that deployed multiple times in the Middle East, saying it's the worst thing they've ever seen in the GWAT. And, you know, they're throwing their kids at the end, they're, they're like, just for the hope of getting out, they're throwing their kids over the walls and they don't know that there's like sea wire on the other side and that gets getting hung up and the, and then they're bleeding out. And I even had several instances where they would empty out some of the handicapped children's orphanages and use them as like, so, so the, the process was they hand up a child that was very young or, or handicapped, and then they would let them through the gate and they'd link up with them. But a lot of these kids were getting abandoned, right? Because they're being used as a ploy to get into the airport by desperate people.

• 3:52:32Speaker 06

  And so there was collection points for these children. And even to the point where, um, like they're terminally ill children that eventually died in the US and we were trying to find out if anyone somehow could find out who these, so they'd have someone there when the child died in, in the United States. Like, I don't think people realize how crazy that was, like that mission set was. And ironically, my replacement, uh, I, I was the executive officer for Raider Battalion for a while, or Raider Support Battalion. And I replaced, the previous XO was the planner who planned the evacuation ad hoc. And he was like, hey, man, I planned most of this on like my 4G phone and I was briefing the president on a napkin and then all this ad hoc and like, basically what we had done,

• 3:53:17Speaker 06

  what we had experienced was across DOD, all these vets of the wars were trying to get their connections to get their people safely out. Um, and like such a heroic execution of a terrible mission, like a mission that, I mean, I, I think was unnecessary. Um, and based on my, just happenstance, I thought at the time, but like bouncing around Afghanistan in my deployments, you know, seeing the strategic.

• 3:53:43Speaker 06

  Difficulties of flying out of an airport where the population center is right built up onto it. And like, it's just the mercy of the Taliban, they're not shooting down our C-17s. You know, and then listen to some of these other guys on the ground, like you mentioned, I think, earlier, Sergeant Tyler Vargas and his account of like, watched them beat people to death if we rejected them. Like, all that stuff was common knowledge. Like, we were getting reports of other suicide bombers, other attacks. And like, it was a ticking time bomb to get these people out. And the Marines and soldiers just executed, just heroically, a really bad mission set. I still, I cry like a baby every time I think about it.

• 3:54:22Speaker 06

  I watched, we ended up, Steph and I both ended up going to Ramstein to meet our group. Because they got through Doha, we had some Rangers go find them. And I talked to the tower at Doha, and I'm like, "My group just got put on a plane. Where are they going?" He's like, "Sir, we don't have manifests. We have no idea where anybody..." "We're just packing people on planes." And he listed off like 12 tail numbers, and all over the globe, like Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, you know. It was, like, they were going everywhere. And so we guessed, like, the most planes were going to Ramstein, like, 60% of them. So like, the biggest chance was to go to Ramstein to try to meet up with them, because we had all of our documents. We had vouched for these people disobeying the Taliban.

• 3:55:07Speaker 06

  So I was there to advocate, like, "Hey, these people disobeyed the Taliban for us. They brought a US person to US forces, you know, using our military ID." Like, we literally shepherded them through the process. And they knew that from day one.

• 3:55:19Speaker 07

  It was incredible, that part. And it was like, it was chaotic. That wasn't the plan, it was just, the plan evolved as all of this was happening. And I took some pictures along the way, which I think I've shared, of just, because from me, you know, just, I'm a photographer by trade, but it just, it felt like, what Joshua was doing, and the stories, I was just overhearing of all, everything that was transpiring. It was just so significant, it was almost historical. And so I took, for whatever reason, we were driving up to Baltimore to fly out to Ramstein, Germany, and...

• 3:55:57Speaker 07

  Joshua's on the phone and he was trying to get a group of 14, I think, that had visas to Australia. And so he was on the phone with someone on the ground in Kabul. And I just had this urge, I mean, probably not the best idea, driving, but I just picked up my phone and I just hit record. And I started recording him on this phone call because it's just significant. It's not every day that you're speaking to people directly on the ground while all this is going on. And it ended up being the Marine that died, I think, the very next day at Abbey Gate. And she personally, Joshua, was talking to her and he's like, I've got a group. They have visas or it's been verified they can get through. And she's like, well, they're Australians, they're not here.

• 3:56:41Speaker 07

  And he's like, well, wouldn't it be a shame if 14 people can't get through because Australians aren't here? And so she, and so she, go ahead.

• 3:56:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think I should, for her, for their families, for these Marines at Abbey Gate.

• 3:57:00Speaker 06

  They selflessly sacrificed for people they didn't even know. And it was, it wasn't a waste. Like, there's real people with real different lives now because of their sacrifice.

• 3:57:10Speaker 07

  Entire family units.

• 3:57:12Speaker 06

  That particular one was, they had Australian visas. It was a Hazara family and they're Shia Muslims. And so they're both racially and religious minority. And she was a female activist, this matriarch, if you will, of this family. And she had been specifically called out by the Taliban. And because of that, the Australians had granted them visas. And so they've got everything from like a couple of month old baby to like 60 year old men and like 14 people in between. And they are stuck in Abbey Gate, in the ditch at 2:00 in the morning. And a call goes out on the nets, like, does anybody know any Australians? And I knew one Australian I deployed with in Afghanistan. And I still had his number. So I reach out and it's like whatever time in the morning in Australia. I'm like, hey, sir, remember me? You know, this is what I'm doing.

• 3:57:57Speaker 06

  I'm, you know, I'm working these groups. There's Australian visas. I was like, do you know anybody running the Australian response in Kabul? And he's like, oh, well, my brother in law is actually running the op center in Doha right now. Here's his number. I like, my, the only Australian in my phone's brother-in-law is doing that. So I'm like, uh, so I called Doha and I talked to this nice Australian and he's like, "Oh, I'm sorry, our comms are down. We can't reach them right now." I'm like, "What?" I'm just called Doha on my cellphone while driving to Dulles to try to fly out over there, right? And, um, so that's not gonna be good enough. Like, it's, it's not gonna be, you know, fast enough. And so I'm like, "Are there any Americans? Can you see any Americans?" To this lady who speaks broken English. And she's like, "There's one." And so she hands off the phone and I'm like, "Hey, I made your mask.

• 3:58:42Speaker 06

  I've been helping with, you know, vet these paperwork of different Afghans, get them through. My guy's not responding for the gate. Can you please pull these people in and find some Australians?" And she's like, "Sir." She's like, it's a female voice. And, uh, I know she's like, "Hello?" And like, I'm explaining my stuff. And she's like, "The Australians aren't doing 24-hour ops right now. And it's 2:00 in the morning. They don't come on until 6:00." She's like, "What do you want me to do?" I'm like, "I want you to pull these people in and sit them down and wait for Australians." And she's like, "Well, I have to hand you off to my captain." So she hands me off to the captain. I explain the same story. And this is what he says to me. He's like, "Sir, I'm looking at 15,000 people trying to get in this gate. And I'm playing God about who gets to go. What do you want me to do?" And I was like, like she said.

• 3:59:25Speaker 06

  I said, "Wouldn't it be awful if these people have a seat on an Australian aircraft and tickets?" I verified that with the Australians. I just got off the phone with them. "Wouldn't it be awful if they don't get out? Because the Australians aren't doing 24-hour ops right now." And he's like, "Yeah, we'll bring them in." And so they sent me a video from Australia. But, uh, we were in the air flying to Ramstein to meet our group when Abbey Gate happened. And, um, landed. And it was, it was a ghost town. Everybody stopped work. There was, there was no restaurants open, like the mall, all that stuff. Everybody stopped and they volunteered and they were building a tent city the entire length of Ramstein, like bigger than Kuwait or like, if you've been to Ali As-salam or, uh,

• 4:00:09Speaker 06

  and seen some of those bases with all those tents. Like, it looked like that, but on, on the runway. And they put 11,000 Afghans the first day we got there and 17,000 more the next day. And it was... It was building tents as you put people into them. It was craziness and these people looked traumatized because a lot of them had spent, you know, three, four, five days outside, a couple of days to get on an airplane. They cram them in there without, you know, no restrooms, no moving space. Like there were fights on the planes and babies and people dying and uh, and then they, they all got bottlenecked in Doha for the most part in un-air-conditioned, like uh, terminals because we were trying to find our group and they called us saying like, "Hey, we don't feel well, we don't have water," like trying to get them through that process.

• 4:00:53Speaker 06

  So they landed in Germany and um,

• 4:00:59Speaker 06

  we were sitting in the USO in Ramstein alone, like we're probably the only people in the terminal, maybe three other people and um, so seeing some ambulances pull up, like what's that? And then you realize like it's just these, it was our um, our casualties. They were taken and taken to Landstuhl Medical Center there and they just got off the plane and, and there's just so many because there's thirty-something wounded in addition to the killed. And we was just watched them take, you know, body after body of wounded off the aircraft and take them over there. And I remember sitting there with um, there was a State Department lead for, for that basis was a reservist, a Marine.

• 4:01:43Speaker 06

  Phenomenal person and he actually got sent home because he was raising the alarm of how dangerous it was, the child safety issues that were happening at Ramstein. He got sent home to the US because he's like, "Hey, this is dangerous, we need to do better than this." And um, but we're sitting there and just crying our eyes out, watching these Marines come, the birds and uh,

• 4:02:04Speaker 06

  I, I've always wanted to express the gratitude and like um,

• 4:02:10Speaker 06

  just having observed what their, their children went through and um, knowing that they kept that gate open longer because it, it meant life or death for a lot of people. And like just the selflessness of that, um, that decision that those Marines made. And um, you know, the real work cost of that for people they don't even know. But like just for me, I know for a fact that they saved fourteen people's lives and I got their picture from Australia that they were, they got out because of these Marines. And um, I don't know how many others they saved, but I know they saved those people. And uh, they've been so dead and uh, murdered by the Taliban and um, I can't.

• 4:02:51Speaker 06

  To know the ground and to know what people were doing and to express the evil of that bombing, of the just senseless violence. It's just a real focal point of the GWAT, I think, is just the senselessness and the evil we're facing, where people think that that is what, you know, God wants them to do, is to blow themselves up in innocence together. I mean, that is an evil ideology that I'm happy to fight. And I'm thankful for their sacrifice. They saved real people. I'm humbled by having observed it.

• 4:03:31Speaker 06

  But I think, you know, we're... We view what happened to her as providential. She saved lives in getting people out, including these folks, these Palestinians that came with her. And, but I can guarantee the American people from day one, we told them exactly who we were and what we wanted. And this guy thanked us over and over again, like, "Oh, I think it's fine, you know, it'll be, you know, so kind," you know, like the typical, like flowery language stuff. He wanted to come to America, which I don't even blame him for. I think he had some conflict with his spouse at some point. I don't know if, I don't think necessarily culturally

• 4:04:16Speaker 06

  they have the same sort of impetus to have, be in agreement about something. So I don't know what he represented to his wife. But at some point, she was like,

• 4:04:28Speaker 06

  "He promised me that if I came with..." I told him, "If he wants to go to America, you go. I'll stay here in Afghanistan." And, but he promised me if I came that she wouldn't have to leave my side. And so like, I think this guy probably was playing both sides against the middle.

• 4:04:46Speaker 06

  But really, what happened at Dulles, we were trying to be sensitive because, you know, it's a horrendous event, right? To have to go through that period. Leaving everything you know, going through that experience. I mean, these, our particular group got the red carpet. Like, having the National Mission Force pick you up is the best way to get out of Afghanistan. Just saying. But it was still a traumatic event. And so we were trying to expedite them through the refugee stream because of this lady's pregnancy and because of Sparrow's, like, medical concerns. Because we were worried it triggers seizures, basically. But that ended at Dulles. That we weren't going to, I had different obligations kick in at that point.

• 4:05:30Speaker 06

  And that's really the story that hasn't gotten out. And that explains the origin of some of the conflict we've had in the US. And that's been deliberately, intentionally hidden because it makes perfect sense. And it totally undermines the narrative that's been out in the media.

• 4:05:53Shawn Ryan?

  So where did you guys reunite with Sparrow?

• 4:05:56Speaker 06

  We found them at Ramstein.

• 4:05:57Shawn Ryan?

  Good night.

• 4:05:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, we found all of them at Ramstein. We advocated to get them expedited, and then they were. And so we actually were able to get back to the States like 12 hours before they did.

• 4:06:15Shawn Ryan?

  How did you find them, though?

• 4:06:17Speaker 06

  That was a minor miracle as well. So, um...

• 4:06:21Shawn Ryan?

  You were there too, Stephanie?

• 4:06:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:06:22Speaker 07

  We did, yeah, I went with them. That wasn't the plan. Like I said, we were, it was just very responsive as to what was going on. I, at the time, our youngest son was nine months old. I was still nursing at the time. So it was when Joshua's like, we're gonna have to go because we don't know where in the world she's going. And we're her adoptive parents, and so we both need to be there to be present. So I literally gave my nine-month-old baby to my sister and, which she's, I mean, like, a second mom to him anyway. So I gave, I handed him over and we drove up to Baltimore to fly out to Ramstein. And I remember asking Joshua...

• 4:07:01Speaker 07

  At the point, we were like, we didn't know where in the world they were going, like he said. And so he was on the phone with someone at the control tower at Qatar and reading off where all the places were going. And I remember asking him, it's like, if we fly all the way to Germany, and what if they're not there? I mean, like, what's our family? We're gonna look like idiots if we fly across the world and then it's the wrong guess. And he's like, basically, he says, he's an educated guess. He's like, God's brought us this far, we're just gonna go for it and see, you know, basically, see what happens. And so we did. We boarded the flight and we flew to Germany and landed, what, within an hour of each other?

• 4:07:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, we got a call that they landed too. So like, it was pretty impressive. I was basically like, the National Mission Force squadron just recovered her from behind Taliban lines. I think we'll be good.

• 4:07:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:07:49Speaker 06

  You know, so we, we pushed with an educated guess and it ended up being right on the money. We found him. And then what was weird is-

• 4:07:56Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how did you find her? There had to be thousands of people there.

• 4:08:00Speaker 06

  I guess there was 11,000 people there. It was 2:00 in the morning and we're walking-

• 4:08:04Shawn Ryan?

  11,000 people?

• 4:08:05Speaker 06

  11,000 people there. And so we get there, it's like 2:00 in the morning, we get checked in. They only let us stay on base because we had family in the stream and we're trying to get them their documents. Because base was shut down. There was no rental cars available because all the NGOs had come in.

• 4:08:19Speaker 07

  We walked like 50 miles in a matter of a couple of days.

• 4:08:22Speaker 06

  To say that it was, so let me, let me paint the picture. You've got a mile or so long runway with a bunch of hangars and a bunch of tents, and they don't know who belongs to who. Like, there's no documentation. So like, do you treat the second or third wife, 13-year-old wife of some guy as his wife? Or do you treat her as an unaccompanied minor? So these are some of the like, cultural and legal barriers we're trying to figure out without hurting people. And so they split the women. Women and kids 12 and under went into the hangars, men go into the tents. Nobody touched nobody until we figured this out. And like, there were significant child safety concerns, like they had several hundred unaccompanied minors, because you had a bunch of orphans from the bombing, like, now you're an orphan, what do you do?

• 4:09:07Speaker 06

  Or, like, there was one siblings, I distinctly remember, that they were, the Taliban killed their parents. And they were like, the Taliban just shot our parents, what do we do? And so you had these unaccompanied minors, and figuring out how to, or, there was people so desperate at the end, if you had a visa to America, or were getting let in, they're like, here, take my kid, take him to America with you. And so you've got unaccompanied minors with non-family members all over the place. And then on top of that, I spent like, four days in the cages, like, walking around. It was super dangerous. Nobody had any weapons, because you're trying not to make it look like a, like, that would be bad optics, but like, you've got 10,000 dudes in a cage, like, and people are getting upset, you know what I'm saying? Like, it was not safe.

• 4:09:52Speaker 06

  I wouldn't let her go outside of the ECP for that stuff, but I watched, like, they're probably DIA or CIA, like, plainclothes dudes with wanted posters, and like, pulling in the Afghan soft, because you could, they had pieces of their uniform, and they carry themselves differently, like, pulling in, like, the commandos or the KKA guys, and like, go find this dude. And like, they're going and finding, like, bad guys in this refugee stream. And like, I watched that happen over and over again, like, picture, go, like, 15 guys pull them in, they do a school circle, they brief them, they say, go find them. And like, like, pulling dudes out of the refugee stream, so I'm like, holy cow.

• 4:10:33Speaker 06

  And, um, and that kind of, that plus, when they're, when they were processing these groups, they had what they were calling pods. And so, pod, the first pod was like, basic intake, who are you, what documents do you have, what connection to the US? And they're, they're vetting them a little bit, and, and so on and so forth. So we were concerned, because I had gotten them expedited because of the medical concerns, there was a medical priority for some of them, like, pregnant women, or people with diseases, or, or acute problems. And so for both Pharaoh and for this pregnant person, we were trying to get them through. And then, um, Also with my interpreter's three kids, or three siblings, they didn't have any documents at all. Like a birth certificate, that was it. And they had no connection to this group.

• 4:11:18Speaker 06

  So like, making sure that they stayed together and they routed together to the States was very important. And so we, I mean, we were relentless in trying to advocate to get them through. And that succeeded after a few days. But hats off to the staff.

• 4:11:33Speaker 07

  And the USO, I mean, they were...

• 4:11:35Speaker 06

  Oh, the USO was phenomenal. I actually met the deputy commander of base. His wife, at 2:00 in the morning, was volunteering with the USO. And they're like, you know, getting coloring books and blankets and like, just serving. And it was... These people were so... It was such a traumatic experience. Imagine leaving everything you know and love, you know, from the fear of a great evil like the Taliban and then going to someplace...

• 4:12:01Speaker 07

  Your whole life in a garbage bag.

• 4:12:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, your entire life in a garbage bag. And so like, we were serving our hearts out to try to like, to get everybody out. Like, I was... There was...

• 4:12:11Shawn Ryan?

  How did you find her, though?

• 4:12:13Speaker 06

  I think, I think a phone. I think they had like a Wi-Fi signal at some point.

• 4:12:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it was very spot.

• 4:12:18Speaker 06

  But they had it very close.

• 4:12:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, they had a phone, and whenever there was Wi-Fi, they would connect to the interpreter.

• 4:12:24Speaker 06

  They would be able to connect to Wi-Fi and then send us a message. So we found them. But then we would lose them when they processed the next one. So we'd have to find them each day, basically.

• 4:12:30Shawn Ryan?

  You'd have to find them each day?

• 4:12:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:12:31Shawn Ryan?

  So, hold on. I just, I gotta hear some good news.

• 4:12:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:12:35Shawn Ryan?

  What, I mean, what was it like the first time you found her?

• 4:12:38Speaker 06

  Oh, that, that was, it was...

• 4:12:41Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys together?

• 4:12:42Speaker 07

  We were together.

• 4:12:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, we were.

• 4:12:43Speaker 07

  And they brought her out. And so at that point, we were still in the impression, based on what we were told, that she may not be able, she couldn't walk. And so they carried her out. And I was sitting on a bench. And they, they set her, they were holding her at first, and then they set her down so that we could see her. And that was when I first, like, like I said, she was so turned in where she would barely look out. She, she would kind of look up. And her eyes, she has really big, we joked that's like Jasmine, like Princess Jasmine. She has these big eyes. But her eyes were very closed off. And, and she looked like a fur... Brow and to the point where, like I said earlier, I was like, is that her? Cause her hair was short and just like straw like and she was just looked.

• 4:13:28Speaker 06

  Too sick as dog.

• 4:13:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, just dark circles under her eyes and very, you know, she's thin. And I, and I was shocked. And then when I saw, like when she's sitting on the, uh, the woman's lap, I saw the scar on her leg and I was like, that's her. And so they set her down beside me and we took a photo and I have my hand on her back. And I, the reason why I had my hand on her back is just like any young child where you're afraid like they're tippy or they're gonna fall back. I had my hand on her back to make sure to stabilize her. And then she got down and she walked over and then that moment I was like, cause in my mind, we're still operating from the information we had 18 months prior medically disabled. So I was shocked. I was like, she's walking. I, I kinda looked at Joshua like.

• 4:14:12Speaker 06

  And she kinda tottered like.

• 4:14:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, she tottered, but it was such a relief to know that she could even walk at that point because of, we knew the injuries in her leg. I was just like, wow, she, she can walk. And, and so that first moment, it was like, at first it was disbelief, but then it was just relief to see that she's, she can walk, she's alive. And this is actually her and we're here. And that was just a culmination of all of these highs and lows. And like Joshua said, like what, even though this is a long interview, there's so much emotion in like, like, like any good story. There's triumphs and there's failures, there's heroes, there's villains. And we've like, through this experience have had all of that.

• 4:14:56Speaker 07

  And so in that moment, even with meeting them for the first time, there was such joy and relief and it was just like, we made it to this, to this moment and.

• 4:15:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, I felt responsible because I didn't wanna leave.

• 4:15:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, deeply.

• 4:15:09Speaker 06

  I knew the Taliban would kill people if they disobeyed them. And I believe that with every fiber of my being, I think they would have. And just that I didn't, I wasn't responsible for anybody's death was a big relief for me. Like I was, it was exhilaration, but it was also filled with like tragedy. Cause like you just saw these. These kids get blown up and like 170 Afghans and all their surviving orphans and like even some of the National Mission Force families that I believe had tried to adopt some of the orphans because they were right there by Abbey Gate is where the squadrons were operating out of and so they were some of the first on scene to secure the scene and and just scooping up baby, you know, kids that are just recently orphaned and like bonding with them over the next three or four days before they have to evac out on the, I think the

• 4:15:52Speaker 06

  30th because I believe that, I can't remember the date of the bombing off the top of my head, but it was a couple of days afterwards that they, so you had these kids who were recently orphaned with our guys and protecting them and bonding with them. And so like, we had a lot of.

• 4:16:07Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you guys in Ramstein before you took her home?

• 4:16:11Speaker 06

  I think it was four days. She flew home on a rotator with them, with our entire group together. And then we, I think we got her a couple of days after that because Dulles, Dulles happened and then it took them a few days to get their act together and get her back to us. So it was within a week of that that it all occurred, but.

• 4:16:34Shawn Ryan?

  So what was it like coming home with her?

• 4:16:37Speaker 06

  It was honestly awesome. Like, we were so thankful. Like, we have some good video of our kids getting to see her because they'd FaceTime with her or they prayed for her, sent videos to her, sent presents to Afghanistan. And so like to them, it was, you know, it was a very distinct person in their lives.

• 4:16:53Shawn Ryan?

  She's two, two years old?

• 4:16:54Speaker 06

  Two years old, yeah, really tiny. And she was like walking like a baby deer, like a barely walk. She couldn't run. It took her quite a while to build the strength. So her physical therapists were like, this is like the most underdeveloped, like lower body we've seen of a child this age. And so like, she was, it took her a long time to get strong. It took her a long time to get to her body weight again. But Stephanie's a pretty good nutritionist and build that up over time.

• 4:17:21Speaker 07

  Really, we just, we did then what we were planning to do all along. We just poured everything into her. And so medically, like, I mean, I don't know how many times I went up to Duke in Raleigh and medical appointment after medical appointment, like from just a few days in, just went down the line. Everything that we had planned 18 months prior or what, 18 months or more prior, we immediately executed and went down the line and just started to just kind of get a gauge of, okay, where is she at physically, emotionally, just across the board and just poured, poured into her.

• 4:17:54Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take her to?

• 4:17:57Speaker 06

  Smile?

• 4:17:58Shawn Ryan?

  To warm up, to smile?

• 4:18:00Speaker 07

  I didn't even realize that she didn't smile until a couple of weeks in and it was something and you mentioned, she was like, oh, look, she's smiling. And it took a while for her, like, her face is now to today, her face is like her baby photos. It's like any child where when you look at their baby photos, like, oh, I can see, like, I can see the way they look as a kid, you can see it back then. And so, her face is back to the way she was as a baby, where big eyes, open, very expressive when she talks. But it took, it was like layers of an onion, it took time for that child to reemerge. And, and it was-

• 4:18:40Speaker 06

  Well, and I would say her therapist commented that she's, she's displaying behavior that's consistent with an uncertain environment with violence. Because she would, she was quiet and always restricted her, she wouldn't even cry.

• 4:18:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, she knew how to suppress emotion.

• 4:18:58Speaker 06

  She would like, turn in like this and sit there. So, so what she said, what they said is that's very common in, in, in children with an uncertain environment where there could be like emotional outbursts or anger because they've learned to suppress and not-

• 4:19:12Speaker 07

  Rock the boat, yeah.

• 4:19:14Speaker 06

  Not rock the boat. And they also noticed that she had a real aversion to men and then closed spaces. Like, if, if in a therapy session, they would shut the door, she'd start to like, lose it. She didn't want to be alone and she did not want to be around men specifically. It was, it was, but fortunately, like, we have, we have a big family, like, she's got like thirteen or, what, fifteen cousins? So, like, that much love poured on her with all sorts of people, like, learning to go, to trust people, like, it's safe, it's okay. And she started to slowly peel that back where today, like, you couldn't even tell, like, she's the same little girl in the hospital, same bright face, like, hold me. Because she grew up with all these nurses and doctors, like, they would hold her for

• 4:19:59Speaker 06

  her naps and like, rock her to sleep, so she was totally spoiled. And, and then to go to that deprivation and then coming back from that took some time, but like, like I said, she was speaking full sentences in two months, like mommy, daddy, like, unbelievable.

• 4:20:12Speaker 07

  And that's to communicate, yeah, she was communicating, she could communicate early on, but one, there was one time early on that really- Gave me a glimpse of what she must have gone through is we were, I was going to, I was loading the younger kids up into the car to go pick up the older kids from school. And I was carrying her out, so she's kind of at arm's arm or at eye level on the hip. And they're building a new community near, like, right across the road from us. And there were roofers and they were going down the line going pop, pop, pop, pop, pop with a, with a nail gun. And I didn't even notice it. And I was just going out to the car and she looks at me and she goes, oh. And she had this look on her face and she made eye contact with me. And that was very early on where she couldn't talk, but she looked at me and, and the look

• 4:20:57Speaker 07

  said, are we gonna run? It was like danger, are we? And she was looking at my face to see how I was gonna respond, if I was gonna duck and cover, like, if I was gonna run. And in that moment, I looked at her and I just, it broke my heart that a child that young had experienced some form of violence to know what that was, that that was a threat. And, and I, I was like, it's okay, that's just, they're building houses over there. And just tried to, you know, lighten it up and like, it's, you're, we're okay, we're just gonna go get the boys from school. And, but just little glimpses of that, of, it just, you could see little what, like, the

• 4:21:38Speaker 06

  What it does.

• 4:21:39Speaker 07

  What it does to a person. And so

• 4:21:42Speaker 06

  And they had, this guy had talked to me in some of our conversations during the battle for their city in southern Afghanistan. And he described being inside for days and gunfire and all that. And he said he came out thinking it was over. And a guy next to him got shot in the head and, you know, was a casualty from that experience. So like, this guy's like crying on the phone, like, there's no hope, like, there's no way we're getting them out of Afghanistan. Like, no one could predict the historic evacuation at that time, right? So like, I'm dying on the inside, like, man, I'm sorry, like, we'll do whatever we can to help you, but like, you gotta send her before it's too late. Like, Afghanistan's falling. I said 40 days is done and it ended up being like 32 days. And he's, it was funny because he, he came, everything he phrased is questions from his

• 4:22:27Speaker 06

  father, who's responsible. And he's like, my father says the airplane, there's been war here for 40 years and the airplanes have not stopped. I'm like, they're stopping, man. Like, you need to, like, get her here before this runs out. And I'm so thankful that we did. And honestly, we, in retrospect, I probably had too much

• 4:22:46Speaker 06

  I should have had a little more caution, given the circumstances of her recovery. Like, you've got a child from a named objective, who's talking to the shadow governor. But I figured, you know, your average military age male in southern Afghanistan's got to have some connection. You know what I mean? They're familiar with the Taliban, are friends who are. You know, it's a lot of the Pashtun population down that area. So.

• 4:23:07Shawn Ryan?

  Are there any signs of, I mean, is that, like, episodes of fear, has that completely dissipated away now?

• 4:23:16Speaker 07

  I would say, by and large, it has. You could see, like, it's more, when you compare it to like how a child normally behaves, that's when it becomes more apparent. So I never realized when we first got her, she would stay. And still to this day, she's still somewhat like the, kids will run all over the house and go into this room and that room. And she does now. But when she first came, she would stay in one room, like, one area.

• 4:23:42Speaker 06

  Wherever you put her.

• 4:23:43Speaker 07

  And it was like, wherever you put her, she would stay there and not, like, almost the freedom of movement or freedom of play. It was like, she didn't know.

• 4:23:50Speaker 06

  She wouldn't go out of sight.

• 4:23:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, she would stay close to you and stay in one room. And, and so, I would say it's been, even like, going to a playground, going, the kids would go play, she would stay close by or not interact with other kids. So, it's been a process. And, like, I mean, the best thing that I could say is just, she has blossomed with love. And circling back, because there's one point that I wanted to make, when she was turned over, um, out of US custody, I mean, obviously, it was just, her, her whole future was at stake, and that was just grieving in and of itself.

• 4:24:32Speaker 07

  But what bothered me is that she could go through the rest of her life in Afghanistan and never know how loved she was by hundreds of people, that she had a name, that she had an identity, and, and people that fought and loved her fiercely and advocated, that she could go on for the rest of her life and never know that reality. And what has been. So satisfying is to for it to come full circle and for her to feel that love and to see it firsthand. And and one day she'll realize, you know, we we've protected her fiercely from the

• 4:25:15Speaker 07

  harshness of her past and in time it will, you know, will tell her age appropriate things. But what we've wanted her to know is that we believe that her life was preserved for a purpose and and it was protected by many people that, you know, cared for her deeply. And so she's blossomed with that love.

• 4:25:38Speaker 06

  And and I think that we we did right by these these people. We we did what we said we would do. We saved them from what they wanted. They wanted to get away from the Taliban. They wanted out of Afghanistan. And I can't control what lies they say about us. I can't, you know, I have no idea what exactly their why is it? Do they want to go back to Afghanistan? Is the Taliban really the people behind this, like forcing them to do that? I do know that they don't have control over her if they ever get custody of her and they they are subject to duress. And what I really think it boils down to is this. This is not about our rights. This is not about their rights. This is about what's the best interest of the child for this little girl?

• 4:26:23Speaker 06

  And what what I think is so despicable about the government's role in this is they prevented that analysis from even happening. They're trying to, on a technicality based on a lie, short circuit that analysis. She should win, whatever that looks like. She should win. It's not, she's not chattel. She's not property, right? Like, she's absolutely our daughter in every sense of the word. Like, we're mommy and daddy. She doesn't know anything about this, right? She doesn't remember these folks at all. It's that's water under the bridge. And

• 4:26:59Speaker 06

  But even that, it's about her best interests. She deserves freedom. She deserves to grow up, to marry whoever she wants to marry, to be whoever she wants to be. And so many Americans have sacrificed to provide that for her. It is just an abomination for what a miscarriage of justice, what the government's done here to prevent that from happening.

• 4:27:20Shawn Ryan?

  And it's continuing to.

• 4:27:21Speaker 06

  It's to this day, like next week, we have a hearing in front of the Supreme Court of Virginia. And the government is appearing and trying to say they had a foreign policy interest in that that overrode our parental rights. And that they should just blindly give her, like pluck her from her family and her brothers, and everything she's been given by the sacrifices of all these Americans because of a foreign policy interest from a dead government? Or because of negotiating now with the Taliban? Are you kidding me? Like, they filed these, for lack of a better term, creepy statements from the current charged affairs for Afghanistan. Who like, personally, this is a Joshua Mast opinion, should totally get fired. But they fired these, from the charged affairs,

• 4:28:06Speaker 06

  the person responsible for running Afghanistan for the US government, basically saying, "It's hard to negotiate with the Taliban with your case going on. So, you know, void the Mast family's rights and give rid of them." Like, side N C, no evaluation of this. No, no investigation of whether they ever were proper guardians of her. Like, if she was sexually molested and like neglected in Afghanistan, whose fault's that? Like, these people are claiming that they were, she was living with them. I don't know if that's true. I've got a voice message that says, "She doesn't live with me or my family." So I don't know what's true. I don't know how much of the lie is.

• 4:28:44Shawn Ryan?

  And could there be any retribution for them just stealing your child?

• 4:28:50Shawn Ryan?

  And giving them to the Pashtun guy?

• 4:28:52Speaker 06

  I honestly.

• 4:28:54Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, can.

• 4:28:54Speaker 06

  I don't know. I don't know if it's a criminal. I don't know if it rises to criminal. It's absolutely like. We will absolutely sue these people on the back end of this for what they've done with our family. No one should have to go through this stuff. Like, um, to be gagged and lied about by the government is is really hard to take, especially by the very bureaucrats who are responsible for getting dumped so dangerously in the first place. They're the ones, you know, protecting government information and covering up what happened. And like, we can prove in court with all the evidence the US government has that she was turned over to non relatives. Like, like, and I think I should probably bring that up. There is documentation now. I have this guy's, uh, the, the person they say is her biological father.

• 4:29:39Speaker 06

  I don't even think that's, it was, but they claimed a relationship, biological relationship to this guy. That was a lie. Cause after three years of litigation, we, in the board of inquiry, we have the guy's identity card. And so this elderly, this elderly Pashtun man that she was given to in 2020, right before the peace deal. He said, I am the older brother of the slain, like, we'll call him Joe, for lack of a better term. Joe got killed. He was an innocent farmer. Give me his daughter. Right? That's his, his claim. Well, now I got Joe's birth certificate, I got this guy's birth certificate. And you know, in Afghanistan, how they have your father and your father's father? Well, they don't have the same dad. So that's just a lie. He said, I'm the older brother of the slain Joe, call him.

• 4:30:24Speaker 06

  I've got both their IDs. He's not the older brother. And guess what? The slain Joe's five years older. So he's lying about being older and he's lying about being a brother. So how that, that evolved here in the United States is this Pashtun man said, well, he was a older stepbrother. So he's claiming to be a half first cousin. That's the claimed biological relationship, a half first cousin. And that came about when we offered a DNA test. Cause like, duh, the first thing you do, I mean, if, if you're in the audience and someone is claiming to be a relative of a, of a child you've adopted, what do you do? You say, "I'll pay for the DNA test." And so, we did that, two and a half, three years ago, was it three years ago?

• 4:31:09Speaker 06

  Right off the bat, "I will pay for a DNA test to test your claim because I believe you're misinformed or you're lying." But that's what we did. And they absolutely blatantly refused to do that. So, I'll do it right now. Do a DNA test.

• 4:31:32Speaker 06

  But I guess what I'd like to... I don't blame these mega firms for trying to represent our client, right? I have a different ethical standard of how you can do that and what level you can do with courts. I think that they may have crossed that line, but that's up for courts to decide. What I have a real problem with is the Department of Justice parroting verbatim what these mega law firms' narrative are with contrary evidence in their possession that they won't release to us. So, it's like throwing the game. Like, if we've got video of these Rangers in combat, and I've asked three years ago to declassify everything, like, "It's a child, it's an old mission, who cares?" Like, declassify it, right?

• 4:32:16Shawn Ryan?

  War's over.

• 4:32:17Speaker 06

  You surrendered, let's see the footage. But they'd rather let these guys get maligned by these different groups that support, you know, getting detainees and that ilk. Like, same sort of groups, right? The people who fill up Pro bono time, helping terrorist sympathizers. But they're... It dulls.

• 4:32:39Speaker 06

  We had about seven hours it took to process them into the country, once they arrived in America. And I was there because I had her original documents and I had to vouch for these people. Say like, "Hey, they disobeyed the Taliban, they risked their lives to help Americans. That's their connection, that's their eligibility to be paroled here."

• 4:32:58Speaker 06

  And I had to make sure my interpreter's kids got to him, right? Like who he was and how he was helping and all that. And so I sat there for seven hours with like teeming masses of humanity like pouring in and with these overworked customs and multiple agents trying to process all these agents. And most of them don't have documents like, like it's very rudimentary at all. And at the end of that period, I, they're like, okay, you're done processing. You need to go get a COVID test. And it's like midnight, like a COVID test, like really? Like these people, a lot of these people had tuberculosis, right? Yeah. So it was, so I'm thinking, this is crazy.

• 4:33:37Speaker 06

  So we get my guy and about 20, 20, 30 military H males and their families. And they put us in a scissor truck, like those ones that go back and forth between the terminals and can elevate and stuff for different. And they put us in the scissor truck and they drive us way out on Dulles Airport. And it looked like a, like a Bond movie where they're unveiling like a prototype aircraft, like a huge hangar. And it's got like 500 beds in there and they got computers set up over here and they got guys kitted up with like flax and ARs. And I'm like, this does not look like COVID test material. And I watched them go hard at my guy, like, what were you doing in 2014? Like da, da, da, da, like going down the list, just reaming him out and interrogating him.

• 4:34:21Speaker 06

  And before that, he was sitting, and this guy's Pashtun and a lot of our allies are Dari speaker of Persian origin, right? It was different tribes that were helping us for the most part. There were some Pashtun tribes that helped, like, but he had not spoken to a lot of the other refugees because he didn't speak Dari and he was a Pashtun. But he's sitting there in this detention facility, like holding hands and chatting because they hold hands with their friends and he's like chatting away. And that's the first person I'd seen him talk to this, like for five days in the camps. And I'm like, who's his friend to this person who speaks English? And like, oh, this is his friend from his home village, not his home city, his village back in the, back in the boonies where she had been recovered on the mission.

• 4:35:05Speaker 06

  Cause he wasn't from the big city, just lived there later in life. He was from this village where she was recovered. And so he's sitting here in this detention facility, getting reamed up by our guys with another guy from his home village. And so like, I've just got this pattern going of, you know, child from a capture kill mission, Al Qaeda. Talking to the Taliban shadow governor, responsible with those foreign fighter camps, says he has Taliban in his phone, flags Adullas. And I go to the CBP agent, I was like, dude, what is this place? Like, I didn't understand, like, I wasn't sure. He's like, oh, this is where the inconclusives are. I'm like, what is that? And he's like, oh, they flagged on the terror watch list and like, we're vetting them to see if they're a match. And I'm like, you know, I feel immediately responsible. Like, I'm a Marine Corps officer.

• 4:35:49Speaker 06

  I expedited this guy through and I knew all this stuff, right? But, so what I wanted to do was appropriately flag that because I knew they were looking for.

• 4:35:57Speaker 07

  To clarify, you didn't know all that stuff? You didn't know that he had any?

• 4:36:01Speaker 06

  No, no, I didn't know that he flagged on a watch list. I just figured his folks fought for the other team. Like, everybody wants to go to America, even if your folks fought for the other team. I thought he was more disobeying the Taliban and abandoning that, which I was cool with. But at that point, I felt obligated, like, as a service member, I can't not say what I know. And so I immediately flagged that through our NCIS rep and flagged it up to the FBI. And that's how this all got started. And so they were detained for like 24 hours-ish. And then I got, they got released and I was like, what? And so I'm trying to figure out where they're going and like, where, because Lily, or because our little girl was there.

• 4:36:44Speaker 06

  And it ended up being really weird because it was like 2:00 in the morning, kids are asleep. My interpreter got processed through and he didn't have a car ride. So I had to like go and like take him back to his hotel. And so I got sucked away and I was trying to figure out where they were to get back when I went back. And so I'm talking to this agent and he's like, dude, this was a really bad dude. But he brought your little girl to US forces and your organization got him in Afghanistan. So we let him through. And I'm like, what? No, sir. Like, I am not, you know, I don't even know this guy. I've talked to him for six weeks. Like, here's all the things that I was tracking. And so that's, that's when I realized I'd perhaps misplaced some compassion for some of the refugees and the bombing

• 4:37:28Speaker 06

  and all of this emotions, that I could have been, you know, more vigilant than I was. And I think I just conflated a little bit of the compassion with that. And I still don't think this guy is Osama Bin Laden. But do I think that his family fought for the other side and was directly supporting Al Qaeda in their home village? Absolutely, 100%.

• 4:37:49Speaker 06

  And how is it possible the Department of Justice is filing filings in court saying, "Oh, this guy's fine." And JSOC colonels are testifying, "No, we knew that before we picked him up." Like, I can't go into the details of what he shared. But like, he testified under oath that the team, the squadron that pulled him out, was tracking. So like, if I'm going to believe one entity, it's probably not going to be the previous administration's Department of Justice, and it's definitely not going to be the attorney who helped defend the decision to turn over to these people in the first place. I have a problem with if this has gotten scrubbed off the watch list, which I have reason to believe it has been scrubbed, it doesn't exist anymore. I'd like to know why.

• 4:38:32Speaker 06

  Was that a valid national interest purpose, or was that a favor to a mega law firm that gets things like this done?

• 4:38:37Shawn Ryan?

  I think everybody listening to this knows exactly what it is.

• 4:38:44Speaker 07

  Well, to the point where I couldn't even speak about it.

• 4:38:48Speaker 06

  Well, that's a related issue. So they changed my orders where they ordered me not to testify about that, and I didn't testify about it. The judge never knew any of that stuff in our own custody case, like all these warnings. And they tried to shut us up because that counteracts the narrative, because it makes sense, right? If dude flies on a terror watch and we're like, "Yep, separate him," we're not, like, whatever, if he's going to get deported, we're not going to deal with this anymore. We're not, that's the extent of our grace. And, you know, I have an obligation as a constitutional officer to report this and send it up the chain. And I was very concerned with the chaos in the, that people weren't getting properly vetted.

• 4:39:29Speaker 06

  And then as time went on and like these reports coming about of DOD whistleblowers saying they were getting pressured to scrub people off the watch list, and then there was a report by the DOD inspector general talking about how... We weren't because of agreements with partner nations in a in the combat zone. We were only DOD could share information that was gleaned by some of these partner nations. And of all the terrorist database information would normally be housed under the Terrorist Screening Center and normally be in all of our databases shared, there was a subset of combat zone information that was not applied to vetting these Afghans. And so there's a 30-page DOD Inspector General report talking about how they had to give

• 4:40:13Speaker 06

  the data sets of who had been let into the country to the National Ground Intelligence Center, and they re-vetted them and identified a whole bunch of people that had very concerning derogatory on them that were let into the US. And most of them, they didn't even know where they were. And so like, that's the context of where we were at as far as like, I'm a Marine Corps officer, you know, America first, like, report this stuff up the chain. And then it just, and nobody said boo about it. Like, when I reported that stuff up, nobody was like, oh, that's classified. It's marked unclassified. It says unclassified FOUO. The guy sent me a copy, a screenshot, said, hey, this is what we were worried about, just so you know. And it's marked unclassified on the document. So I reported it 10 months before it came back down, and now that is marked secret, no

• 4:40:58Speaker 06

  foreign, in an investigation, saying that I mishandled that information. Like, give me a break. You know, this is an unclassified database. It's in the Federal Register as unclassified. And I'm having to ask this nice NCS agent, who's doing exactly what these medical law firms had him do, which was interrogate me. Like, I fully cooperated. I'm a lawyer. I know my rights. You know, I know my 301 Bravo rights. I know our rights on the Constitution. I voluntarily waived that because I want our country to be safe, and I was trying to figure out what happened with that. And so like, I talked to him, like, so you're saying this is an unclassified database? He's like, yeah. I said, well, how in the world is it secret, no foreign? He's like, well, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is determined as their original classification authority.

• 4:41:43Speaker 06

  But like, I'm an SJA for a SOCOM component, right? I've been around the block. I know what intelligence oversight looks like. I know what classification is. I'm like, dude, did you get that in writing? He's like, no, I was on a phone call. So I was like, you don't even have it in writing that this is secret no foreign now? And what authority that was? And if there was a security classification guide that actually says that? Because you know, you can't just like say stuff is secret no foreign to favor political like, you can't just misclassify information. That's illegal. It violates the executive order. And so he kind of hemmed and hawed a little bit and went back to his lawyers to try to figure that out. But I've got like, there was another document, like, I'll show you one other thing.

• 4:42:28Speaker 06

  So there was a, this, this is the terrorist identity data mark environment tied. I'm sorry, let me, are we, so this is the terrorist identity data mark environment or tied database fact sheet. This is published for the American people publicly on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence website. Okay, this is their fact sheet, basically explaining how we vet terrorists and what we do to keep you safe, right? This document was slammed in front of my face, marked secret no foreign by an intelligence agent.

• 4:43:03Shawn Ryan?

  Are you shitting me?

• 4:43:04Speaker 06

  Saying it's marked right now in my board of inquiry evidence.

• 4:43:08Shawn Ryan?

  What law firm is this?

• 4:43:09Speaker 06

  I probably shouldn't say I'll get sued, but.

• 4:43:13Shawn Ryan?

  How do you get?

• 4:43:14Speaker 06

  So it's represented a lot of people on the political left over the time.

• 4:43:21Shawn Ryan?

  You can get sued for saying the name of the law firm?

• 4:43:25Speaker 06

  You know, you don't want to give them a stick to beat you with. But, but this document, and here's the kicker. It was marked secret no foreign, and then it said pending classification review. And then they lined that out. So post classification review, they're saying a publicly facing website. And I've got a letter from DOJ saying I'm not authorized to use this public document in our case. Because we wanted to use it as an exhibit, as a publicly available, so like.

• 4:43:53Shawn Ryan?

  So they own the court?

• 4:43:55Speaker 06

  They absolutely.

• 4:43:56Shawn Ryan?

  So the mega law firm owns the court?

• 4:44:00Speaker 06

  In this lawsuit, we never got to say any of that stuff.

• 4:44:03Speaker 07

  I could even test.

• 4:44:04Speaker 06

  The only thing we got to do is use his own recording saying he was scared of the Taliban. They disobeyed the Taliban. That's what we're able to use.

• 4:44:11Shawn Ryan?

  Isn't this public knowledge? I mean, isn't this like?

• 4:44:14Speaker 06

  But like.

• 4:44:14Shawn Ryan?

  Can't you look it up? Who the law firm is?

• 4:44:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, if the appropriate oversight asks for the classified documents from my board, please, God, go pull that stuff and look at this document, secret no foreign, and ask yourself, how does a counterintelligence special agent mark a document that's Googleable? It was designed and released for the American public's benefit as secret no foreign. It's insane. And that's like, there's like a half dozen documents like that. So this document was marked higher classification than the KANOP. It was like five I relative, like, you know what I mean? So like you have a Ranger Regiment KANOP that is a lower classification than a publicly available ODNI like fact sheet for the American people?

• 4:44:59Speaker 06

  Give me a break. And so that's the kind of ridiculousness. I'll show you one other example that's just an easy visual. So here is, here's the same document. This is what was released. See the redactions on it? This is a fact sheet made for Brigadier General Taylor, who was working with Sistica with the Afghans, like mentorship program. And this is how it was released for the court, right? This is how it was released for my board. So I've got it. So would you like to know what they redacted so that the judge never knew? And this is, remember, they were attacking our credibility, saying that I made this up and that I was biased and writing this stuff. Well, this is drafted by the SJA shop, not me.

• 4:45:41Speaker 06

  And so they redacted the portion that just corroborated everything we said originally in the declassified mission summary. So it says, multiple photos recovered from the scene included pictures of Turkmen Uighur foreign fighters, weapons and Al Qaeda flags. A detainee captured the night of the operation indicated that the neighboring compounds were occupied by Chinese Uighur fighters from Turkmenistan and identified the pictures attached as foreign fighters who were residents of the compounds that engaged the Afghan-led forces. An additional detainee corroborated that the compounds of interest struck on 5 to 6 September were occupied by Turkmen, foreign fighters and their families.

• 4:46:16Speaker 06

  So the very attorneys that let her be turned over, knowing this, redacted this information for release. And only at the board, when my command gave me as much as they had, they actually gave me information. Man, these people have no souls, man. Well, I think it's like a big law, no holds barred, whatever means necessary to get your outcome. And they pride themselves on achieving that for their clients. And they're very successful and fabulously wealthy. But here's the other question I have is, how do you afford 15 attorneys with a high-power law firm that's $500 plus an hour in three different law firms? How do you afford that? And here's the deal.

• 4:46:58Speaker 06

  What we've come to find out is that there's been fundraising videos in Afghanistan, saying the Taliban's helping us and we need money. So I'd like to know, how's that being paid for? Is that some sheik in the UAE funding this with dark money? Is the Taliban helping with this? Because they publicly released two years ago, saying they're going to go to American authorities and protest. And then I've got the charged affairs filing weird affidavits, sounding a lot like this is messing up our negotiations with the Taliban. And so I've got a lot of reasonable questions. Is the Department of Justice in the previous administration

• 4:47:40Speaker 06

  doing this because the Taliban asked them to? They filed an affidavit from the charged affairs, saying it was interfering with negotiations. What does that mean? Does that mean the Taliban want them to give our kid back to these people who are not relatives and probably on their team? I'd like to know that. I think the American people deserve to know that. And isn't that quite a bit of a different story that was publicly out there? And why would they need to change my orders three or four different times? Why wouldn't they release all the information I asked them to declassify and release for a child's custody hearing? Would we do that for any child? But this child was picked up off a named objective in brutal, close combat, where the eyewitnesses said they tried to kill us,

• 4:48:25Speaker 06

  blowing themselves up in a pitched gunfight.

• 4:48:30Speaker 06

  Where like a dozen Americans are bleeding and I'll never forget the platoon sergeant. He told me, sir, whatever you need with this will come forward like our guys didn't bleed. So she go back to hell like it was that bad. They're that strongly about it. And these guys are being called war criminals by organizations. There was an organization that started a letter writing campaign. That's how one of the reasons I got awarded is they they sent 7,000 letters to Congress. And in those letters, they they talk about how they want to promote their narrative. And they want Major Mas to hold accountable. And, you know, from a child that was recovered in what could have been a war crime anyway. And I'm here to tell you right now, that's defamation. There is no way that this was a war crime, even if even if there were civilians killed.

• 4:49:15Speaker 06

  Like it's a legitimate strike on an Al Qaeda compound of verified intelligence. So like to say that publicly is like calling people rapists. And I'm honestly tired of folks who don't produce or preserve liberty for others attacking our men. I mean, I think I think the SecDef owes it to these guys to clear their name. Like if you've been said, hey, you might be a war criminal and there's a video of it. Do you think those guys deserve that? No, man. But they deserve the truth. You know what I'm saying? They're all under non disclosure agreements, right? They had to get authorization and they actually tried to get these Rangers not to be able to testify. They almost changed the orders. We got some weird emails saying like, what do you need them for? Testify after they were fully approved by USOC.

• 4:50:01Speaker 06

  They're like, what do you need them again? Like, what exactly they need to testify to? I'm trying to screw around with the ability of these eyewitnesses to say what happened. And I know for a fact there's footage of this stuff. I know for a fact there's TS and secret level information that corroborates everything we're saying. And that was so so rewarding at our Board of Inquiry, having the ability to have some due process. Right where the Colonels can come and testify. I think we had five Colonels testify, three of them as witnesses of like what they knew at the time. Because the Department of Justice in in court filings to a court has represented that I made this stuff up. And that I misled this deputy assistant SecDef as a captain. Like, are you kidding me?

• 4:50:44Speaker 06

  Do you don't think his staff and Colonels, they testified in our board? That they corroborated everything independently with their targeting packages or targeting systems they have in the Pentagon? And so you, again, I think I've said this a couple of times.

• 4:50:59Speaker 06

  Law firms can represent their client. We might have some ethical disagreements. The Department of Justice can't parrot lies when they have evidence to the contrary. Like, that's criminal. You can't do that stuff. And if

• 4:51:15Speaker 06

  if the Department of Justice through the FBI has contradictory statements, like saying, "These other people are in authority. The Taliban governor is in authority." If that's what they were told by these people, how do they file saying that they're have legal authority over this child? They told them themselves that they don't. I don't understand how you can lie to a court like that. And so, what we've done, Sean, is I have formally whistleblowed these actions with just the tip of the iceberg, just enough to pick people's interest in Congress and in oversight. I wrote a whistleblower complaint addressed to the President via Congress in formal neighbor letter format. I'm a lawyer. This is what I do, right?

• 4:51:58Speaker 06

  I spent three days in a hole drafting all this stuff and citing the evidence. There's 30 enclosures, hundreds of pages of evidence, right? And this is just the really obvious stuff, like, "Here's the one redacted document and here's the document unredacted. Why do you think that is?" And laying that out for Congress. And what we've been asking is that the President of the United States, the US government, release all this stuff. And look at the evidence. And if there is a lie in what the previous administration's Department of Justice has filed, which there is, fix it. It's not rocket science. Get some oversight of these people, because these are your typical deep state bureaucrats.

• 4:52:41Speaker 06

  They have absolutely weaponized the system. Like, this could be like the poster child event of everything that we've all been dealing with at the grassroots level. Like you said, with the Blackwater guys, like deleting the five minutes that matter in their lives, right? And we've experienced that to the point where, like, I'm a government hack. I'm a prosecutor. Like, I carry that mantle, right? But seeing it from the other side, seeing the system weaponized against, like, if they can do this to To me, they can do it to anybody. It just is if they want to.

• 4:53:13Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:53:14Speaker 06

  And that's blown my.

• 4:53:16Speaker 07

  And what's hard, you know, for me as his wife, sitting here, you know, beside him, living this, you know, going through this with him, is we've been, you know, known each other since we were kids. We're remembered nine 11, watching the Twin Towers fall. And he's as much of a red blooded patriot, you know, American as you can get. And to see someone that has throughout his whole life acted honorably for his, his reputation, everything and, and his morality, everything to be skewed and twisted, to advance a different narrative and to favor another side has been, it's been hard to sit there and watch it, knowing the truth,

• 4:53:59Speaker 07

  watching him literally fight for his life, his career, everything, everything for us is at stake. And it has been at, you know, at stake for a while. And to see a lie seemingly prevail for this long has been difficult. But when we have had the opportunity to share our heart and share our story and share what we've seen, it, it, good people have stepped in and come along and contributed just, just enough.

• 4:54:33Speaker 06

  Well, and that's, that's the point of shutting down debate. I think that's a real danger to our society. Like, we need freedom of speech now more than ever. We need open debate of ideas. We need to be able to talk through these things. And, and what, there's a, a really pernicious, I guess, undercurrent where if powerful people don't want you to, they want a certain outcome, they shut down speech. And that's like, like I told you before with CBS, we, we gave this interview, like seven hour interview, two years ago to CBS, and they did it in a two part series. And then these mega law firms come in and threaten them. And then they change it to some milquetoast. You know, I don't want to say BS, but something that was not the interview. It's like, oh, they say this and you say that. And none of the facts, right?

• 4:55:18Speaker 06

  None of the what's actually going on. I've got an IG complaint that lays out email traffic between these mega law firms and the SecDef's attorneys, and then my orders get changed.

• 4:55:29Shawn Ryan?

  When did the CBS thing happen?

• 4:55:31Speaker 07

  It was in January.

• 4:55:32Speaker 06

  That was two years ago?

• 4:55:33Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:55:33Speaker 06

  Two years ago? And then, um, and...

• 4:55:37Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think any of this changes now that Biden administration is gone?

• 4:55:41Speaker 06

  That's our hope. Like, we are, honestly, morale's high in the military right now, at least in our unit. We're ready to go and focusing on warfighting and not some of this ridiculousness we've had to deal with. Like, um...

• 4:55:55Shawn Ryan?

  Has anything happened since the Trump administration has taken over? Has there been any, any good things, any bad things with your particular case?

• 4:56:05Speaker 06

  Well, I think that they're doing...

• 4:56:06Shawn Ryan?

  Or is it kind of on ice until this next thing you said happens?

• 4:56:09Speaker 06

  No, we're trying to get them. So fortunately, some of the Trump appointees at the Department of Justice have some oversight of these particular attorneys. But right now, the Department of Defense and the Department of State need to evaluate whether they want to continue attacking our family. And, and I think that there's a really good chance that they will make the decision to stop that attacks and release that information, and that would end the case.

• 4:56:33Shawn Ryan?

  So this basically needs to get to Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio.

• 4:56:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, and Pam Bondi. We, we've already had, Congress has sent that whistleblower complaint formally through their Office of Legislative Affairs to those authority makers. But what I'd encourage them, them to do and anyone to do who's interested in this, is this board of inquiry gathered 14 gigabytes of unclassified data and hundreds and hundreds of pages of original reporting in one place. Like, if you want to know the truth, just pull it. Get somebody to send it to you on Sipper. It's condensed with the Marsoc SJA office. It's great. I, I honestly, it's the best thing that could have happened to us. Because it gives us an ability to talk about... The same facts that nobody can gag us because we have a due process right to talk about what the government tried to do to us.

• 4:57:20Speaker 06

  And it collects like real hard evidence in one place and lays it all out. And so I think we've done the right steps as far as we've tried to, I've tried to be a good Marine Corps officer at every stage. And I've never embarrassed the Marine Corps name or my own. And I would, I'd rather die, take a bullet than dishonor our institutions. Like, that's how strongly I feel about it, and I haven't. Now, that's not known, but every service member that sat down and looked at this, like buddies of mine or people in the board, like, the reason they unsubstantiate everything related to the Afghans is because it's a lie. And it's so clearly a lie. And then, you know, one of the things, my attorney made a great point in the closing

• 4:58:05Speaker 06

  argument that won the day. The government got up and they pitched an exact rerun of what these mega law firms already lost two years ago. Like, the judge specifically rejected that stuff. That's in evidence at my board. The government put it in evidence. But they said the exact same argument again. It's like, we're on repeat here. And then the mega law firm attorneys are there assisting the government to try to go after us administratively after they already lost legally. So his most effective, his most effective point was like, members, I'm afraid that our system is being weaponized for nonofficial purposes. And I said, because these allegations were made two years ago.

• 4:58:48Speaker 06

  And all he did was read the court's ruling. He read it verbatim. And it says, I reject the kidnapping narrative, and they attack him for his religious beliefs or something like that. He read it verbatim to the board, and it was exactly what these people have been spewing again in this military board on behalf of these mega law firms. And it shut it down. That's why it was unsubstantiated. And you know what? Senior DOJ and senior Department of Defense attorneys had this written ruling. It was a 38-page ruling. They had it for two years. Guess who didn't have that ruling?

• 4:59:25Speaker 06

  The FBI investigators, the NCIS investigators, and the board, or the recorder, the prosecutor for the government. Wow. They never saw this binding ruling against these parties. So this is a binding, a ruling is binding against the parties, right? So between us and the Afghans, here's the law, right? They never gave it to their own investigators. How do you run a military officer with recycled allegations that were already proven false? And it's that level of, of, uh, I don't know the word to describe it. It's, it's not justice. Let me put it that way. It's not, it's not a scales and equal before the law. It's we favor these people and push hard on the gas.

• 5:00:10Speaker 06

  And it is a miracle that we have survived this far financially, just emotionally with our family, with, uh... Is anyone else gonna cover this? I don't know. So we've been asked, Glenn Beck's asked us to come talk on his show. 60 Minutes is gonna do something, but they're with CBS and they got scared last time, so I doubt they're gonna go into anything. I don't know. I don't, I don't know the answer to that. I, I, I am thankful. Like, you don't know how thankful or to be able to appeal directly to Americans, people who've been deployed in the GWAT, understand the conditions on the ground, understand what classification is, understand what the terror watch list is. They understand the implications of this and what the political... I don't agree with it, but I understand at least the political interest in covering

• 5:00:53Speaker 06

  up people you import that may not have embedded. Like, I understand where they're coming from. I don't agree with it. Does that make sense? But be able to talk to your audience who are like subject matters and targeting, subject matters on what the Ranger Regiment does and what the counterterrorism mission was and how, how much fidelity, like, let's just say the Israelis are not the only people who can thoroughly penetrate terrorist organizations and know exactly what's going on where. You know, we have those capabilities too and we use them. And, um, so to be able to talk to that type of audience and, um, and knowing, you know, your influence on, you know, the political debate or the debate in the country about what issues are important and what should we elevate and what should we prioritize. But we're really in the 11th hour of potentially her going back to the Taliban again.

• 5:01:38Speaker 06

  And that's just unbelievable to me. And it's just, it's just, it's not pitched like that in the media. It's covered up. But like, this is, like I said, this is a Taliban, Elian Gonzalez situation. And we, we... I think the president should intervene and save her from the deep state, who lied to his organization, or his administration the first time around. And if there is anybody willing to look at the evidence objectively, I don't think you come to a different conclusion than that. And I can give you the phone number of the Rangers, I can give you the phone number of the Colonel at JSOC, who can corroborate, this guy's got dirt on him. And like I said, I don't think he's Osama bin Laden. Do I think that they should have accelerated his asylum application?

• 5:02:19Speaker 06

  If the first 800 approved, this guy's asylum application was approved? Because, to gain a litigation advantage? Because, you know, if he's at risk, he doesn't have a status here, it's kind of hard for a judge to say, "Yeah, take this child," right? So over our allies, over the people that went to war with us, this dude I just told you all these derog about, got his asylum application approved by the US government. How does that happen? Like, what's the official purpose in that? Like, I mean, the guy that was a TERP, the first Afghan I got out, he got his denied, right? Zaki? Like, there was a news article, but they wrote a book about him. His initial application got denied. And this guy got approved? I don't understand how that happens, like...

• 5:03:04Speaker 06

  Blows my mind. So, you know, the Tom Homans of the world, like, I really think they should go look at this guy's asylum application and compare it to what JSOC knows. And did this guy lie on an asylum application? Because, fair to middling chance that he said he wasn't affiliated with the Taliban, and there's a fair to middling chance that he is. So like, you know, I don't think we should tolerate that sort of shenanigans when it comes to national security. Because if they'll do it just to win a case, like, whoever was involved in scrubbing this off should actually, like... If they didn't do it for an official purpose and they risked national security, like, you should lose your job for that. Like, you're putting the American people at risk. You know, I just...

• 5:03:52Speaker 06

  I can live with mean, mean words. Like, like, uh, uh, God's made me the type of person I am where I'm gonna do the right thing and I'm not gonna stop until you kill me. Like, that's just who I am. And there's millions of people like me. And that's why we volunteer and we go downrange and we do the things we do in whatever job or MOS that we're given, right? We're there to further and advance American principles and ideas. Like, that's what, like, we don't go downrange just to commit violence. It, it's violence to advance a purpose. That's what makes us different than other militaries. And so, I, I would like... Really, the Rangers bothers me the most. I want these guys, I mean, honestly, they should get awarded the White House.

• 5:04:34Speaker 06

  They should get accolades for having that moral courage in that heat of the moment to do the right thing and save this little girl. They should get recognized for that. They shouldn't be called war criminals. I think we have a moral obligation to expose that.

• 5:04:47Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'll get this to everybody, I know.

• 5:04:51Speaker 06

  I appreciate it.

• 5:04:52Shawn Ryan?

  I know a lot of people. I don't know what they'll do with it. Sometimes they do stuff, sometimes they don't. But, um, fuck, man.

• 5:05:04Shawn Ryan?

  It's, I just gotta say, man, it's an honor to meet you guys, like...

• 5:05:07Speaker 06

  It's a privilege for us. We appreciate it.

• 5:05:08Shawn Ryan?

  Like, whoa.

• 5:05:11Speaker 06

  We, we wouldn't have believed it if we had not lived it. I, I keep saying that to myself, because we've seen absolute miracles and absolute heroism and everything in between.

• 5:05:21Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I'm with you, though. I just, um, I don't see you losing this one. Too many things have fallen into place over the years, just like you had said, and I think God's got a bigger purpose for this than some fucking meta law firm and corrupt DOJ.

• 5:05:42Speaker 06

  Hope so. Honestly, we're really looking forward to some light being shone on this. Because, I mean, honestly, daylight and truth, that's what the American people deserve. That's what regular people deserve. And that's really what's been held from us.

• 5:05:56Speaker 07

  Well, earlier in this, when it became just litigated, I read a quote and it said that you can't rewrite someone's opinion of like of yourself. You can't change their mind about you. All you're responsible to do is to tell the truth and share your story. And that was our motivation coming on here, was not to sit there and fight down all the arguments, everything that's been thrown at us, but really just share the story, share what happened. And like, as Joshua showed, there's a ton of facts out there that support everything, but ultimately, it comes down to a decision that in the moment, just like the Rangers did, just like we did, just like the hospital staff,

• 5:06:38Speaker 07

  and all of the DOD personnel, it was a split second decision to step up and advocate for one child. And for, I hope, most Americans and most people, they'll understand how easy that is. But really, there's not, you know, some sort of twisted motivation, or it's just really, there's an innocent child, there's something that we can do to help it, let's do it.

• 5:06:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like someone drowning in a lake, and you're walking by, and you can do something. Are you obligated to do something?

• 5:07:03Speaker 07

  It's pure instinct. You just step in and you do it. And so, yes, living out the ramifications of that decision has been challenging. I think it's made us grow as people. But, I mean, ultimately, what we've ended the Board of Inquiry, if handed that, like, if we were asked, would we do this over again? Absolutely. We have no regrets.

• 5:07:26Speaker 06

  And to add a positive note, because, you know, in conversation, you've talked about, like, is there anything good in our government? And what I like to counter to that is, yes, there's some really good people at the grassroots level, and we need people volunteering and filling these leadership roles in our government at such a time as this. And so I'd encourage folks who've been waffling about joining the military, join. You know, be the difference in the military and make it great. We have an opportunity now. We've been kind of unshackled for some of these like non-essential things that have kept us from being the most efficient warfighting, war-winning machine that we can be. And honestly, morale's higher than it's been in a long time. Like me, I'm like perking up. I'm probably a terminal major at this point, but I'm like, I'm sticking around, I want

• 5:08:11Speaker 06

  to see this, you know? I want to be an action officer on some of these initiatives. And we have met people at every level of government that have gone out of their way when they didn't have to, to help. Like, once they're armed with facts, they have been just warriors for the right. And so I would say there's hope. I would say that there is a lot of people out there doing the right thing. Even like, the fact that we're here, like, after what's been said about us and like all the allegations that you would honor us with the opportunity to speak directly to the American people and tell the truth, like, that's a pretty big, you know, miracle for us. You know what I mean? Like, that's something remarkable. And I don't mean that lightly with those K bars.

• 5:08:53Speaker 06

  Like, those are symbolic for us, because I really do honor that opportunity. So thank you for having us on here. Thank you for letting us, like, talk directly to people. And I truly believe that, you know, when the truth gets out, that's what's gonna win the day. And that's our hope and our prayer, so.

• 5:09:14Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 5:09:15Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 5:09:16Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for coming. And I think a lot of people are gonna see this, so.

• 5:09:23Speaker 06

  I hope so.

• 5:09:24Shawn Ryan?

  Just, I wish you guys the best of luck and... God bless what you're doing, man.

• 5:09:28Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 5:09:29Shawn Ryan?

  You too.

• 5:09:29Speaker 06

  And, you know, can I thank a couple of people really quick?

• 5:09:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 5:09:35Speaker 06

  To, uh, to the Task Force Medical Afghanistan Commander. Thank you, sir, for setting the example.

• 5:09:43Speaker 06

  I named my son after you for a reason. Um, you are the model leader with compassion and empathy, um, that I hope my son's to be one day. To the platoon sergeant, all the Rangers that sacrificed on that objective. I know that they gave away Afghanistan in a way that I wasn't particularly proud of and didn't feel like it honored our sacrifices over there. But you made a difference with a real little girl, um, that I'll forever be grateful for. We have the privilege of watching her experience, you know, experiences and freedoms and growing and have a life that she would not have except for your decisions on objective. And I know, you know, it was one night and it was, you know, of course we'd do that.

• 5:10:25Speaker 06

  But honoring the, the instinct is important, I think. And I hope you get the recognition you deserve and get recognized for that. Um, I, I honestly think that that should be at the White House.

• 5:10:40Speaker 06

  Who else should I thank? For everyone who's prayed or given or, um...

• 5:10:46Speaker 07

  Our families.

• 5:10:47Speaker 06

  You know, helped our family along the way. Thank you for that. Um, my, my brother, um, Richard, my attorney Hannah Wright, like all my team at McQuire Woods. Um, that's a law firm that's helped us pro bono and they provided like hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal services. We would be drowning if it wasn't for them. Could not afford this, uh, because they price you out of the market with some of these big firms, how they attack you. So, thank you for making a difference. Is there any other I'm missing?

• 5:11:15Speaker 07

  Senator Cruz's staff.

• 5:11:16Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Like, uh, Senator Cruz and his staff, like you all have, you literally saved her life because you delayed her being turned over to what turns out to be, you know... Non-relativeterrorist-affiliated people. Like, literally, that was the fight. And the State Department absolutely misled you. And I know that you ought to have kept fighting if you had been armed with the facts that we know now. But you delayed her getting dumped in an orphanage, and that would have been a black hole, and she'd be dead. And I truly believe those advocacy efforts saved her life, and it delayed her getting turned over to who was more stable and older, and so she was able to survive that ordeal. And thank God she survived the war, and she survived neglect, and she survived abuse. Like, we're so thankful.

• 5:12:00Speaker 06

  And her life saved so many other people that I absolutely see the providential hand of God in her life. Because if she hadn't gotten dumped like that, and they meant it for evil, but it was used for good in the end. And there's real people alive today that would be living under the Taliban but for her life. So, I mean, I've got to be thankful. It makes me grateful, and it makes me humbled to have been a part of this. Like, and we're gonna keep fighting. Like, we are fighting forward. And you better be willing to put it all on the line if you're going to attack us.

• 5:12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:12:42Shawn Ryan?

  Well, if God is on your side, so I'll be praying for you guys, too.

• 5:12:47Speaker 06

  We appreciate it.

• 5:12:48Shawn Ryan?

  God bless.

• 5:12:49Speaker 06

  Thanks.

• 5:12:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.