#189 Thomas "Drago" Dzieran - Navy SEAL / The Terrorist Terrorizer

Thomas "Drago" Dzieran is a retired U. S. Navy SEAL, author, and software engineer. Born in Communist Poland, he spent time as a political prisoner before immigrating to the United States in 1984. After becoming a U. S. citizen in 1991, he joined the Navy and served 20 years, including stints with SEAL Teams 2 and 4, and as a BUD/S instructor. Drago deployed to Iraq multiple times, earning numerous commendations for his valor in combat. He’s the author of The Pledge to America and a vocal advocate for freedom, using his tech skills to combat threats to free speech. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://roka.com - use code SRS https://tryarmra.com/SRS https://BetterHelp.com/SRS https://Blackbuffalo.com https://boncharge.com/SRS https://MeetFabric.com/SHAWN https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD https://Helixsleep.com/SRS https://hexclad.com/SRS https://hillsdale.edu/SRS https://PatriotMobile.com/SRS | 972-PATRIOT https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/SRS Download the app today and use code SRS https://RocketMoney.com/SRS Thomas "Drago" Dzieran Links: The Pledge to America - https://www.dragodzieran.com/book ConnectZing - https://connectzing.com IG - https://www.instagram.com/dragodzieran X - https://x.com/DragoDzieran Website - https://www.dragodzieran.com 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.

• 0:59Speaker 05

  When I were 50s, open on the Humvees, that was like Paul Halbroglows. I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed. As I'm working with the guy, the car comes in, hey, Drago, to stop the grom guy, grom element that's moving on the backyard. And there are three guys in ambush lines. I'm going to knock his front teeth out, and I'm going to make a necklace out of it. So actually, I walk up to him, and like very carefully lift his upper lip and just drop his two front teeth in, just pull them out.

• 1:29Shawn Ryan?

  Did that affect you at all?

• 1:30Speaker 05

  Uh, no.

• 1:32Shawn Ryan?

  No? Killing never affected you?

• 1:39Shawn Ryan?

  Drago, welcome to the show.

• 1:42Speaker 05

  Thank you for the invitation. It's an honor to be here, brother.

• 1:44Shawn Ryan?

  It's an honor to have you. So we have a ton of mutual friends, and I've, I've heard about you since I was in the SEAL teams. And you just have a phenomenal reputation. And I can't believe we haven't not crossed paths until today.

• 2:01Speaker 05

  Well, you know, I was watching you, I watch your channel, I'm subscribed to your channel, but um I never thought, you know, some small guy, a little guy like me, he will show up over here because, you know, the guests that you have, there's like world-class leaders, world-class people, so I never even thought about it, and here I, here I am, so I guess miracles happen. Thank you, brother, for the invitation.

• 2:25Shawn Ryan?

  I would disagree with you, you're definitely not a small guy.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  Physically, man, I'm still sixty-five years old, but still holding my...

• 2:33Shawn Ryan?

  Sixty-five?

• 2:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sixty-five.

• 2:35Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Well, you know, I mean, this is how the show started, you know what I mean, was, was, nobody's a small guy, you know, that we have on.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  True.

• 2:46Shawn Ryan?

  Some people don't have the exposure that, that, that I think that they should have. And, um, you know, when I started this, that's, that's how, that's how I wanted it to be. I wanted to get guys that have, and women, you know, that have had phenomenal careers and, and, and very interesting life stories and have been through a lot of, just a lot of everything, operated at the highest level, traumatic experiences, and, and how they got out of those, because I think, you know, somebody like yourself that brings a lot of hope and, and, I mean, we're both very aware of what's going on in the veteran community

• 3:25Shawn Ryan?

  right now, you know, I think we're up to, what, forty, forty veterans a day commit suicide. And I think that, you know, the show and, and getting stories out like yours, it, it, it puts it on display and it brings, it brings veterans from all walks, an example, and, and it, it just proves that there's a way out of that, out of that rut, you know, in that gap from service into finding success in the civilian world, and, and that they're not the only ones that are going through that kind of experience, there's a lot of us. And, um, and I'm one of them, and I know you're one of them, and pretty much everybody

• 4:08Shawn Ryan?

  we've ever had on this show, uh, from a military standpoint, is also one of them, and so... I've been, you know, I saw when your book came out and I've been kinda watching you from afar on social media and I just, I think you're a great person and so it's an honor for me to have you here as well.

• 4:26Speaker 05

  Thank you very much. It's great to hear it. I appreciate your kind words. I'm just a regular person. I'm American, so I want to be like you guys and that's what drives me.

• 4:41Shawn Ryan?

  You are like us. Cause you are one of us, right?

• 4:45Speaker 05

  I'm American, yes.

• 4:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What, before we get, when did you come over?

• 4:50Speaker 05

  I came in 1984.

• 4:52Shawn Ryan?

  How old were you?

• 4:53Speaker 05

  I was 24 years old. So I was leaving Poland. I left prison when I was 23 years old. And then I came to US Embassy, asked for help and I was given status of political refugee and flown to the United States when I started my life. The funny thing is that I came to America not knowing English, having no money. I had a 10 phoenix German coin in my pocket and bag of clothes.

• 5:21Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Well, we'll get super in-depth on that, but to start off, everybody gets an introduction here and a gift. You know, you got a gift coming if you watch the shelf. But Thomas Drago Jiran, you're a Polish-born warrior who grew up under communist rule. You spent two years in jail as a political prisoner for standing up to a regime that tried to silence you with censorship and oppression. You came to America in 1984 and became a US citizen in 1991. You're a retired US Navy SEAL who served with SEAL Team 2 and SEAL Team 4, running over 100 direct action missions in Iraq, is a lead breacher.

• 6:04Shawn Ryan?

  You are a recipient of the Bronze Star with V for valor. You are the founder of the Navy SEAL Fund, giving back to the brotherhood and ConnectZing, a platform fighting for free speech. You're the author of the book, The Pledge to America. You're a husband to Rachel, who is an Air Force Academy graduate, father of four, and most importantly, a Christian and devout Catholic.

• 6:32Speaker 05

  And American.

• 6:33Shawn Ryan?

  And American, and American. So, everybody kicks it off with a gift, so.

• 6:43Shawn Ryan?

  Those are vigilance league gummy bears.

• 6:45Speaker 05

  Thank you, brother.

• 6:46Shawn Ryan?

  Made here in the USA by Americans.

• 6:49Speaker 05

  You mind if I just open it now?

• 6:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, have at him, have at him.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  I'm all about sweets, you know, like my, I have embargo on sugar and sweet things at home. Uh, but since my wife is not here, then...

• 7:04Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think?

• 7:05Speaker 05

  Oh, I love it.

• 7:07Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect. And then, um,

• 7:11Shawn Ryan?

  since I found out you're a Catholic, I wanted to give you this. So, that, uh, do you know Dom Razzo? He was at, he was at two. He's my generation.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  I know the name. I cannot connect with the face yet.

• 7:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, he's a-

• 7:28Speaker 05

  I know what it is, brother. Thank you.

• 7:30Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 7:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:32Shawn Ryan?

  He's a SEAL and he, he, uh, has these Warriors' rosaries made and, and, uh, he gave me one a long time ago and, um, I carry it everywhere with me for protection. I have mine in my pocket right here.

• 7:46Speaker 05

  It, it is beautiful, but-

• 7:48Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 7:49Speaker 05

  May, but it's also very important. Uh, important for me. For me, it has an extra meaning too, so I really appreciate it.

• 7:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I think that is, you know,

• 8:01Shawn Ryan?

  I grew up Catholic, then I kind of fell out of it, you know, in the SEAL teams. I think most people did. And then, um, kind of found faith again a couple of years ago. And, uh, I'll tell you one thing. I just think the Catholic religion has it right when it comes to protection and, uh, and talking about demonic entities and, and all of that kind of stuff. So I carry mine everywhere I go, but, yes. But, um, so I wanted you to have one.

• 8:29Speaker 05

  Thank you. I really appreciate it, brother.

• 8:31Shawn Ryan?

  Dom's been, uh- Dom's been a mentor of mine when it comes to

• 8:36Speaker 05

  Dom?

• 8:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  I know, we talked about, okay, I got it now, sorry.

• 8:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yes, yeah. Dom.

• 8:42Speaker 05

  Hi Dom, I mean, I, yeah, I just like, if you hear it, yes, I know, I know who he is.

• 8:49Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. Uh, and so, before we get to in the weeds on the interview, which I can't wait, I have a a subscription account on Patreon, and we've built it into one hell of a community. I think we're at about sixty something thousand members now, but, you know, when I I was telling you and your wife downstairs, I started this in my attic, and it was to, it was to basically shine a light on, on veterans who, who've just, who have done amazing things and are doing amazing things now. And, back then, when I was in my attic, nobody wanted to touch me, uh, nobody wanted to fund anything, advertise with me, and so, um, and I needed some income, you know, to

• 9:32Shawn Ryan?

  grow this, and, uh, so I started a community on Patreon, and, uh, that community has just carried me all the way from the attic of my house to the amazing team that I have today, to this, to this studio that we're in now, and now we're, we're building a seven thousand square foot studio out in the woods, and, and, uh, those, that community has just always supported me and always supported our guests as well, and so, one of the things that we do is, uh, we offer our tier three members the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question, and you had quite a few questions.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 10:15Shawn Ryan?

  So this is from Eric Algar.

• 10:19Shawn Ryan?

  "Do you see any parallels between the tactics used by the communist regime in Poland and what's happening in the US today?" And then there's a follow on, and more importantly, "How can the average American recognize and push back before it's too late?"

• 10:37Speaker 05

  Thank you, that's a very important question, I'm glad you, somebody asked it. So, yes, not right now at this point, but in previous administrations, there was a lot of things that to me seems like déjà vu from my socialist state run by communists. I'm saying socialist state. Poland was never communist country. People need to understand it. Neither was Soviet Union communist country, nor any country behind Iron Curtain was ever communist country. They were socialist states, very dangerous totalitarian socialist states, but they were run by communists. It is, we say there's communist state, communist country,

• 11:21Speaker 05

  but in reality, they were socialist states. That's why the distinction now that is being made, that communism was bad, but socialism is good, is a very dangerous distinction. And, yes, there are many things that happened in the last, I would say, four years, were very disturbing for me. And I talk to my wife about it quite often. So, we agree that something needs to change because we're gonna fall, like Europe fell, the Western Europe right now, into depravity and perversion.

• 11:56Speaker 07

  What are some of the things that stick out to you?

• 11:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, censorship is the first one, is the big one. It is easy to explain for people who censor, that the government doesn't censor you. It's just private organizations like Facebook, when I was heavily censored, like LinkedIn. I'm still being heavily censored. But the problem with it is that they are being coerced by the government. This is the very disturbing stuff. You know, like, I'm running my own social media platform, and definitely I censor people posting anti-American posts. I don't want them here, and they are faster than lightning going from my platform. But I think that censorship is very dangerous. Branding political opponents as criminals,

• 12:43Speaker 05

  as terrorists, is very dangerous. This is the same thing exactly what I experienced in a socialist Poland run by communism, by communists, like my father.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  So, the censorship also...

• 13:00Speaker 05

  Denigrating moral values, denigrating patriotism, denigrating the family values. It is important for socialist state to take control of people. But it reminds me the same thing that happened in Poland when I was growing up. There is another thing too, I would like to mention. In America, people do not understand very well concept of desensitization. Desensitiz- desensitiz- desensitiz- Desensitiz- desensitization. Desensitization? Yeah. Oh, I could be a president, President Biden. So I'm getting better.

• 13:41Speaker 05

  But anyway, so they do not understand the concept of desensitization and normalization of evil, and that's what it is. So first you talk about it, you give the different names, which is benign, and then you enforce the, normalize the evil and the entire process. I'll give you example with walk. Walk? Walk, yes. What is walk? Or if you talk to somebody and tell them that the teacher is walk, little bit walk, it's not really alarming. It's just like, oh, maybe a little bit strange guy or woman.

• 14:22Speaker 05

  But if you look behind that word, what it represents, what this word, walk, is hiding, the depraved and perversion, that whole process takes different meaning for most of the people. It's different when you hear, oh, the teacher is little bit walk, but the teacher is pervert. That definitely perts your attention and say, hmm, maybe I don't want to send my children to this class. Uh huh. But so this type of techniques is not well known and described here in the United States because people were never exposed to evil of socialism and communism on mass scale. And let's hope it will never happen.

• 15:01Speaker 05

  But so those are the things when I talk, the censorship, branding political opponents as criminals and terrorists, attack on moral values, family values, and most important, faith. These things that happened last four years were very disturbing for me because I knew where it leads, I knew what can happen if it continues, so, yeah. You know, I think the, I think the, the other question-

• 15:30Shawn Ryan?

  That Eric had was, you know, how can the average American push back before it's too late?

• 15:37Speaker 05

  There is many ways to do it. One of them, uh, we are the, for, for socialists, for the, for the evil. We, me, you, we are a lost generation. We are all, we don't change. They attack our children, and this is what they are after it. So today, nowadays, uh, after seeing what is happening in our schools, it is no longer enough for parents to ask child, "Hey, now, how was your school today?" "Oh, mom, dad, it was really good. Okay, go play." You need to be inquisitive. You need to find out what is the child is being taught, what is being done to him. And, you know, there are great schools in America, but also they are perverted schools. You need to intervene, and this is why there is such a big push

• 16:22Speaker 05

  from the evil side to get control of our children. So we need to take this control back. And if school doesn't let you change the curriculum or perverted teacher, you need to do it on your own. You need to teach your own children. I'm homeschooling my children after I found out that school was teaching seventy-three genders and other perversion, perverted way of thinking, uh, to my kids. So we pulled the kids out of the school. Not everybody has, uh, that, uh, has meaning, have meanings. Not everybody has meanings to homeschool their kids. People have to make a living. They have to work, and they work hard. At least you can come back home instead of spending time drinking beer. Maybe you should spend time with your child, ask him what he's doing,

• 17:07Speaker 05

  and correct what, what school did wrong to your child. This is important. We cannot, we don't need to concentrate on ourselves. We know our moral values are pretty much at this age immutable. But our kids are very vulnerable, and we need to be that example for our kids and stand up to, to, to the depravity and perversion thrown on our kids in our, some of our schools.

• 17:31Speaker 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.

• 18:00Speaker 01

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

• 18:04Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 18:05Speaker 01

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

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 18:11Speaker 03

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

• 18:15Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and the Ravennet.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 18:26Speaker 02

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

• 18:31Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, excellent answer. And, you know, it seems, I moved up here from South Florida, where there's a massive American Cuban population, and they're all saying the same things. It seems like anybody that you talk to that moved here from a communist country or socialist, maybe not all socialist, but Venezuela, Cuba, Poland,

• 18:56Shawn Ryan?

  they're all saying the same stuff. And it's really, it's just really interesting to hear. And I think it's an important conversation, so.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  We'll live that, we will live through it. Those people live through it. They've seen the dangers, they've seen the results of such depravity like communism and socialism. So, they do sound warnings, but again, the censorship with today's technology and government coercion takes its toll. So, people don't hear about it and don't know about it. So, yes, we need to be more proactive, and especially with our children.

• 19:29Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for that. So, Eric's a huge fan, the guy that asked the question, Eric Olger. So, if it's okay with you, I'm gonna have you sign this at the end of the interview.

• 19:37Speaker 05

  I will be on the producer, yes, absolutely.

• 19:39Shawn Ryan?

  We're gonna send it to him. I'm sure he would love that. So, alright, let's get into the interview. So, born in nineteen sixty, grown up in communist or socialist at that time.

• 19:51Speaker 05

  Well, we call it communist, it's commonly known communist. I just, there's a technicality here and people need to understand what we call communist states behind Iron Curtain. Those are socialist states run by mostly by communists.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  We can call it communist state, I call it sometimes.

• 20:09Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like growing up in Poland?

• 20:12Speaker 05

  Well, the first thing to realize is that in nineteen sixties, when I was born, it was only fifteen years from the Second World War. So, the entire generation of people who went through the brutality, to the Holocaust, to experience war personally, live in that societies in Europe, in Poland, I'm talking about in Poland even more so. Because Poland lost around six million people, there's one fifth of population during Second World War murdered by Germans.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  And that was very, I would say that were dangerous time. I don't have a bad, I have more nostalgia, nostalgic feelings to this time when I grew up. But I remember now and now from the perspective of being American, living here in peaceful society. I remember how, and I realized how sometimes depravity was taking over, the brutality was taking over. People were ready to fight on the moment notice. I mean, here you look somebody in the eyes and say, hey, hello, and say hello. In Poland, they would say, what the fuck are you looking at?

• 21:35Speaker 05

  That was the times that the typical reaction would be. And so, fighting, beating people on the streets.

• 21:44Speaker 05

  Was nothing unusual, unusual. It was frowned upon. Nobody liked brutal, vulgar people. But it was very common, to the point that when there was a fight on the street, and usually you can go in town, you can see two, three fights if you actually go to the town. People ran to just across the street, but they didn't even bother to call police. So it will later play a role in my upbringing when I get a little bit older, but 1960s was very, very brutal time for Poland. It was the big transition from the wartime brutality experienced society to peaceful, more peaceful society, and it was also hindered by the socialist

• 22:27Speaker 05

  communist ideology that the transition was not very smooth in Poland. So, and also talking about it, I experienced the both worlds, the living as a privileged kid, when my father, who was a high-ranking communist and government official, so up to seven years old, when I was growing up with him being at home, in home. Then, when he left, and the poverty, the lifestyle that I experienced for the next decade, is nothing unusual in Poland, but it for me was a stark difference. And then I was sent to my father when I was, I

• 23:11Speaker 05

  believe, sixteen years old, to- Why did your father leave? Uh, well, my father was communist. He was entrenched into their ideology, and my mom going to church with us was not acceptable to him. There was two things. One was a fear that he can lose his career. As a communist and as a member of Polish government at the time, it was frowned upon going to church, especially having family and kids going to church. Why was it frowned upon to go to church? Because church is very dangerous. The faith is very dangerous for socialist state. Faith gives you roots, a moral basis that are basically immutable, that you have that

• 23:56Speaker 05

  morals that communists can't, most likely can't change. So this is something that-

• 24:03Speaker 05

  They, the first attacks in a communist state was on faith usually and children. And this is why they tried to eliminate this. And faith is dangerous concept for communist and socialist. And you will see that if you read the history of socialist states, the first attack usually happened upon people's faith and their families. I think we saw some of that here. Yes, we did. In the last four years especially, there was something very disturbing for me. And we need to be aware of it. How did your father leave? Well, he decided it's very dangerous for him, for his career, to stay at home with mom, who was devoted Catholic.

• 24:47Speaker 05

  My entire family, even his own mother, they were Catholics. And they didn't approve what he was doing. I'll tell you later when we get to it. But so he was decided that that's not his way of living. He wants to make a career as a politician. He wants to make a career as a communist. And when I was seven years old, he decided to leave. And he just took off, leaving us, me and my two siblings. So it was three of us and my mom. So he abandoned his three kids and his wife? Yes, yes, he did. And as a communist, he died as a communist, 2021. When I went to visit, his views did not change. He would be ready to murder people on the spot if they were opposed socialism and communism.

• 25:31Speaker 05

  But I will talk about it, we will get to it. His view was very extreme when you get to know him. But when you didn't know him, you would think there's a great older man. It's somebody you would like to have for the neighbor, very well spoken, very commanding Polish language extremely well, because he was the, that was his major and in university. So very nice man until we start probing his views and his internals, internal thinking, that become very disturbing. That's somebody you would not want to have as a neighbor. So, so growing up, if he grew up as a...

• 26:14Speaker 05

  Peasant.

• 26:15Speaker 07

  Is a Catholic?

• 26:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 26:17Speaker 07

  Or a believer?

• 26:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 26:18Speaker 07

  I mean, what, what was it that got into him that changed his entire view? Do you know?

• 26:23Speaker 05

  You know, it's, it's, it's hard to guess, but this is my, uh, uh, understanding of it. So he grew up in peasant family, very, uh, very poor. And, uh, what he was offered by the communist state is, hey, we make you somebody, we make you somebody big and you can progress with us, but you need to discard the faith, into discard the, all the attachments that are superst- they call it superstition. So you need to be free man, they call it free man, so to accept socialism and communist ideology. And, uh, they were like helping him, uh, along the way. He was, uh, very smart. So, uh, he, he's doing very well, he was doing very well at school.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  And eventually they grabbed hold of him and, uh, he, like many other Pauls, uh, gave, gave in, he gave up his faith, his morals, uh, uh, under, uh, his moral views, uh, and accepted so-called relative morality. This is another term that is not very well, uh, not very popular here and not very well understood yet. Uh, so he subscribed to so-called relative morality. And, uh, that's where things start changing. That's where, um, people, uh, that, that way he become, uh, the person he was later in his life.

• 27:46Speaker 07

  What was it like for you when he left?

• 27:51Speaker 05

  So there was dramatic change right away. The first place, uh...

• 27:54Speaker 07

  What did he say to you?

• 27:56Speaker 05

  He didn't say nothing, he just didn't show up.

• 27:58Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 27:59Speaker 05

  So, yeah, we didn't know, uh, where he was. Mama tried to hide it from us. And at that time in Poland, there was also stigma of, uh, for, uh, for people who were divorced, especially for the kids. They had a special name for divorcees. So I remember parents saying, hi, these, these kids are divorced, you don't want to play with them. They, they, they, they got divorced, the parents got divorced, stay away from them. So I remember that and, uh, that was, uh, very, uh, for me, I learned to cope with it, but at that time, I see the kids didn't want to play with us. So that was kind of, uh, uh, uh, way, the way it was, you know, that's, we just, that was the reality and I didn't know any others, so. And so, I mean-

• 28:44Speaker 05

  But also, li- life was different too, because from abundance of everything, from the legal protection, because, you know, when I was kid, I burned the wheat field by accident, uh, we were playing with fire, baking something in the fire in the middle of the wheat field, so we burned the entire wheat field. So of course, the neighbor comes in and, uh, because I was, I was living on the outskirts of little town, Jirinagura, that was established in twelve hundred, year twelve hundred. So those beautiful town. So I burned the wheat field, so when a neighbor came to complain about it, my father said, just chase him out and say, look, you, you cause problems, you, you will have a secret police coming and talking to you. And actually, they did send, uh, the goons from the secret police to explain this guy

• 29:29Speaker 05

  that we are pretty much untouchable, so just leave it and plow the field again. Wow. This is how bad it was. But I didn't know anything about it, it was just my father was, uh, trying to, I guess, protect his family, the way, uh, it is, it is happening in socialist totalitarian states, you know, you don't agree with, I have more power, if you don't agree with me, I will send the police on you and you get either arrested, killed, or disappear. So there was nothing uncommon. Interesting. But then it changed when he left, so I had no protection, if we did something wrong, we should get punished for it, and my mom would never agree with it.

• 30:08Speaker 05

  My mom was always, and it was the biggest fights, that, uh, with, between the, uh, the, the, my mom, who was devout Catholic, and my father, who was totally opposed to any type of faith. He only believed in the party and communist ideology, that was his, that was his god. So there were, there was always fights. And I remember the time, it was before my sister was born, so I had to be at least three years, maybe around four years old, but I vividly remember that, uh, my grandmother, uh, from my maternal side, came to visit us, and of course, she was even more devout. She was like- I would say total fanatic. Uh, and uh, total zero.

• 30:51Speaker 05

  But you know, this is how they survived the Second World War. This is what helped my grandmother and her children, my mom, survive the Second World War. So when she came in, she had chased us, all of us to church. We are going to church someday. So my father, I still remember, standing in front of the door with hand outstretched and say, "No, kids not going to church. Uh, and you are not going to church because if somebody sees you or kids, I'm gonna lose my career, I'm going to lose my job. You aren't going to church." So my grandmother went outside, we were living on the first floor. My mom passed me like a football to the window. So I thought it was fun, I was like, wow, you know, let's play. And then my mom left.

• 31:36Speaker 05

  We did went to church. But my father eventually learned to tolerate it. But he was always on the edge, was always nervous, always wanted us to stop going to church. He called the, uh, the, the religion as superstition. And also he used a technique that I see being deployed here very often. Basically, he was trying to find some articles, some quasi-scientific articles. Like, okay, we just find out new things about Jesus. Let's see what's there, if Jesus was real. And I can pick your curiosity, especially if you start reading and it's like totally end of faith article or book. So my father was bringing it up and just tried to either shove it for us to read

• 32:16Speaker 05

  or read it, try to read it to us, which against protests of my mother. But this is the technique they used to. Wow. To actually, uh, remove people from faith and change their beliefs. How many, you said, two siblings? Two siblings, my younger brother and younger sister. Um, my sister still lives in Poland. Actually, I, I visited her not too long time ago when I went to, uh, as I was testifying, I'm gonna come back to it in, in, in the criminal case in Poland against a judge who actually sentenced me to prison time.

• 32:59Shawn Ryan?

  Where's your brother?

• 33:00Speaker 05

  My brother lives here. He's here in the States. He owns his business. He has his great business. He's doing well. And he's doing good. I don't really have much contact with him.

• 33:11Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, so you're not close with your brother?

• 33:13Speaker 05

  No, no, I'm close with, I'm closer with you guys, with people like you, with fellow teammates. They, they are my brothers. As just a person living in the States.

• 33:24Shawn Ryan?

  Were you close with your siblings growing up?

• 33:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:27Shawn Ryan?

  What would you guys do? Did you guys have any fun?

• 33:30Speaker 05

  Yes, we had a lot of fun. You know, the, the nice thing about it at that time, we did not have. We did not have the direct strict supervision of our parents. Kids used to play, like I was what, six years old? And I was going to kindergarten by myself. I was walking like around the school, going over the, um, the major street. Actually, one of my little friends was killed on that street by the, by the motorcycle. But we are working ourselves. So we had like house shoes in one hand, holding hands with my brother. And just walking to the kindergarten. That was maybe like quarter mile. And to the woods, like, not to the woods, but to the different small streets.

• 34:14Speaker 05

  Mom taught us how to cross the street. You look left, you look right. There's nothing happened. You just go fairly fast to the street, but don't run. And then, and then, six years old, play, yeah, as long as we're back at home before dark, we're fine. So we were roaming the city. We're just sometimes, we find ourselves like a mile, two miles away from the home. God knows where, running some streets and just exploring. So that, that was, that was called, uh, playing with fires. We like, we like to bake things in fire, potatoes and stuff. This is how I burned the wheat field in, uh, by accident. But that time was father was still with us. After he left, I wouldn't get away with it.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  So there was the, I have a fond memory. I was poor, but I didn't know that was poor. I thought that was just normal. This is how everybody lived. And I didn't see at that time, they noticed the richer kids or kids, uh, of party, communist party members that I noticed later in the, in the elementary school. That's what.

• 35:15Shawn Ryan?

  How did your family make money after your father left?

• 35:19Speaker 05

  My mom was a teacher, so she had a little salary. It was not much and there was not enough to, was enough to buy food. If she was quick enough in the morning to stay in line to buy bread. If she was a little bit late, by the time she made to the end of the line, there was no bread. So we didn't eat. But again, it was really not a big deal. It's just, well, we don't have a bread today. Okay, do we have bread from yesterday or something? No, we don't. All right, so maybe some potatoes. So my mom always tried to make something up, but sometimes we went hungry to, hungry to school and there was really nothing there. When I was in elementary school, I learned how to help myself and actually feed myself. But it's like, I'm, I'm not very proud of it now, but at, at the time, I was, I was extorting,

• 36:03Speaker 05

  extorting sandwiches from the kids of the communist party members, so. How would you do that? Well, I just beat them up and I told them, you, you give me the sandwich. Um, but I remember, you know, in Poland at the time, like, people don't want to be seen as poor, right? So a lot of us, like including me, like my, my sandwich, if mom got the bread, very often was a little bit of water, sprinkle on it and sprinkle sugar. If it was good, we have a batter of those batter, a little bit of sugar, if the sugar was, put together and so, like, I don't want people to see it because I see some of the kids eating these big buns, you know, with ham, with tomatoes, mayonnaise, salad. I mean, it was like today, I'm just looking at this, like, I would eat one too.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  So this is something that, um, I've seen it, I didn't want them to see that I'm having like bread and a little bit of sugar on it. So it is another technique too, like take a, a tea and like put the tea on the bread, put some sugar on it. I still like that. And, and so we're eating in the corners, like I don't want anybody to see that I have like that. Nothing, sandwich, nothing. And then most of the kids did too. I didn't notice that, but then I was, when I start feeding myself of the communist party uh uh uh twarps uh uh little kids, then uh then uh yeah, I noticed other kids doing the same things that I did. And there's a story like it still touches my heart, you know, when I, when I talk about it.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  Uh because the first one, I remember I seen the kid, like a little fat kid with a big uh you know, with this like, with everything on it. If you had the sandwich today, you would say, damn, that was really good. So um I say I walk up to him and just like took it from his hand, just rip it half. You can have and just eat it like, wow, this is good. He was about to cry up there, but like, hey, listen, a little shit. Tomorrow you bring two sandwiches like this. How, how old, so you grew up? I was seven years old at the time. You grew up, you grew up fighting for food? I grew up fighting, well, I didn't have to. If my mom find out what I did, I would be, I would be spanked. I, I would, I would be spanked so hard, I would be able to sit on my ass.

• 38:19Speaker 05

  But uh I tried, I had to hide it from her. She would not tolerate it. But yeah, but you know, I, I was hungry, so I figure out these people, the, the, the, the party member, members, kids. They have everything, they have, you can tell them the way they dress, the way they carry themselves, the way what they, you know, what they eat, the most important. So I figure I will just help myself. He has so much, he has abundance of that bread. So I'm sure he will, he will money by eat half of it. So, so yes, sir, yeah, I walk up to him and he says, I told him that if you don't bring tomorrow two sandwiches, you won't have a sandwich because I will eat entire sandwich. Today I just ate half.

• 39:01Speaker 05

  Well, he brought us two sandwiches. He, he found me himself and just gave it to me. So. So as uh from then on, it came to the point that I had to tell my. That, that started at seven years old. Seven years old, yes. Well, and then, so I started noticing other kids doing the same thing. And there was a kid in my class, the first grade, who, we call him all kinds of names. This guy was smaller than rest. We, we torment this guy. We're talking about bullying. And, uh, so, uh, uh, it's brutal. Like, you have no empathy.

• 39:40Speaker 05

  At least, I did not have any empathy for bullying, uh, to, to the kids that were bullied. It changed. So one day, um, so he was like the, the, the black sheep in the class. Nobody wanted to talk to him. Even those poor kids, other poor kids, they call him all kinds of names. So, one day, I was just coming back from, uh, uh, from, from school, and I had to travel across town, had to take a bus, then another bus, and travel to, to, travel, to travel home. And, uh, I don't know, that was, I think, second grade, when I noticed that. And my bus took off. I was too, I was late.

• 40:24Speaker 05

  So I started walking home, and this kid is walking, and he's already scared because now I'm walking behind him and, uh, and, you know, we, we did torment him. But I said, like, "Well, you know what? Hey, what's up?" And I was, "What are, wh- wh- do you live somewhere here? You don't wait on the bus?" I say, "No, I'm living like, uh, maybe like quarter mile from here on the..." So, "Well, cool. So let's, let's go." And I started talking to him. And, uh, find out that he, you know, he's just trying to survive with his mom. He doesn't have a father. And, uh, my curiosity pig, I say, "Hey, can I just, where, where do you live in this building?" And once we made to his place, he say, "I'm going right here." So, "Let me see how you live." I was curious. So, "Okay." So, walk, walk in. It's like, one room, like half the size of this room here.

• 41:09Speaker 05

  Um, there's a table, there is one chair, and one bed. That's it. And the sink, sink like the, you see in the janitorial closets, this deep sink, when you keep them up and stuff. And, uh, and on the table, dirty table, there was a full can of cigarette butts. So I say, "Well, okay, well, uh, well, I see one bed. Where do you sleep?" I say, "I sleep with my mom, because we cannot afford another bed."

• 41:42Speaker 05

  So, um, you know, this is something that still touches me because this guy was, uh, we gave him so much hell. And then I said, okay, so what do you eat? I see one chair. I said, I eat on my mom's lap. So then he says, I say, okay, well, where's your toilet? They had a toilet outside. So where do you keep your food? I don't see any food. Well, we eat every day the food. So we don't have any, we don't have any reserves. We don't have any leftovers. So I said, hmm, okay. So this is actually when, uh, so then I think it was in the second grade or something changed. And I say, okay, well, I hook you up. So, uh, so then I went to another kid who I knew has like the same type of sandwiches.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  You can tell these kids that dress better, they have better food. So I go say, hey, look, tomorrow you bring two sandwiches, one for yourself, one for this kid. So he mouthed off to me and I just beat him up and dragged him in the toilet up there. Because, and because in Poland during the breaks, all the kids walk on the hallway. Just they have to walk. So I dragged him in the toilet and just beat the shit out of him and say tomorrow we'll bring the two sandwiches. And he did. So I say, wow, that worked. So I gave him the sandwich. I say, look, from now on, he will bring you the sandwich. If he does not, you let me know because I'm going to give you half of his sandwich or just entire sandwich to you. He was very grateful. He said, well, I don't know why you do it.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  And then, you know, I didn't let, uh, other kids touch him and let other kids to bully him anymore. And it's changed. So from then on, um, I, I think I look at the kids a little bit differently than, uh, than until this time. And that was in second grade? That was a second grade. Yeah, but I was pretty violent too from the beginning as well. I remember in the first grade when we first class up, our class become, uh, like when you go to your first grade, so they, they divide you, you class A, you'll be with this group, you'll be with this group, class B and C. So one of my friends from kindergarten say, oh, this girl has a crush on you. She, I think she's your girlfriend.

• 43:51Speaker 05

  I got so mad, but not at the kid, but at the girl. I went to the girl and just kicked her as hard as I could. She fell down. They took her to the, uh, the nurse room.

• 44:02Speaker 05

  And this is another lesson that I learned very quick. So she came back all crying to class, this first time in the class in our lives. Her name was Bogusha. And she's crying at the bench and I was like being somewhat calm until my mom walked in. She was a teacher at that school. So she just look around the class, say, look at me. I say, who did you hurt? An entire class like that's it. That girl right there. So I was pulled by from the from the bench by the ear. This is a method in Poland at the time. Walk in the middle of the class, my pants were dropped. And I was being spanked so hard for so long time until I broke down and start crying.

• 44:46Speaker 05

  When I start crying, she's okay, now put your pants up and go out there and apologize. So I did when I apologize. And then I got spanked again when I get home. So I did more explanation why don't do that. I never did again. And that worked.

• 45:01Speaker 01

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

• 45:05Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 45:06Speaker 01

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

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 45:12Speaker 03

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

• 45:16Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 45:18Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  I'm not the earth then.

• 45:27Speaker 02

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

• 45:31Speaker 05

  Uh, but yeah, so there was things that that the times that I still remember and still affect me sometimes. And the second grade later, we moved when I was living away from that school. So I had to take the bus to school. Uh, this is where my father was already gone. So the kids start picking on me. So on the way to school, usually not because it's early in the morning, on the way back from school, I get my ass kicked sometimes by the older kids. They just thought it's funny to to bedevil me. So I feel like, okay, I don't have a father, so I don't have an older brother to go and stand up for me. I just have to handle my own. So what I did, I went find like a rebar.

• 46:16Speaker 05

  Maybe that's that big rebar. And I start carrying it with me. I was carrying in the in my book case. When they on the way back, I I could expect they would harass me, they would try to kick my ass. So I had this thing here with me. In my briefcase, and I knew they were walking, this group of kids is walking behind me, so. I walk into in Poland, those buildings, there was like fairly new buildings at the time. You have a stairways, you walk into the stairways, you go up, and then you walk to your apartments. So I just walk in the stairways, I just wait with this thing, and as soon as first kid walked in. I hope he's alive today, but anyway, so that was it. And so.

• 47:01Speaker 05

  I knocked him out. Yeah, the blood was everywhere, I remember that. And then the other kids ran away, and the next day they repeat itself. The guy was okay, I guess, because he. Show up with the headband, I. So same thing happens again, so I just walk into the. I see these kids walking and already making those warrior grunts.

• 47:26Speaker 05

  So I walk into the stairways, just wait until they walk in, I got two of them this time. So they let me along. After that, they decide, well, we're gonna find another victim. But what it taught me is that violence works. Violence always works, and if it didn't work for you, means you didn't apply enough of it. So that's the that was my lessons, I think the first lessons from my childhood, that you just have to be violent to. To accomplish things, and that if you care. That violence works and they just need to apply it in the right place. Wow. So, but I was what, eight years old, nine years old, those are the first lessons in my life. But society was brutal at the time, it's not excuse.

• 48:11Speaker 05

  I get a lot of flak now in today's society when I talk about it in Poland. Uh, there were podcasts in Poland that I went to and people are very disturbed that that how kid like this, eight years old, almost kills somebody that is so violent. Well, they don't understand that they were different times. Uh, I'm not, but the way I look at it today is this is good, the Polish society is different. They don't tolerate violence. You know, my mom wouldn't tolerate either, but there were things that she did. And that was, that was my upbringing.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  And when I see today, people complaining about this and pointing out how bad and evil it is, I agree with them. And but I'm also kind of happy that they can speak to it, that they can verbalize this. And that is they don't afraid to speak, that there is a government goon, government goons somewhere behind them, looking to how to put them to jail or how to persecute them. They can speak their mind and their minds, they don't have to agree with me. And very often they don't. And I'm kind of happy about it because the Polish society is slowly changing more like in America where we can speak, we don't have to look over our shoulder.

• 49:33Speaker 05

  Uh, well, maybe not the last administration, but we don't have to look on our shoulder. I tell you, you know, you know what, even the last administration, I never felt that I'm saying something can put me to prison, to jail. You know, I can say something, I can lose my job, but I'm not, uh, because being the, I never put myself in that situation, but I never worry about.

• 49:59Speaker 07

  What would get you thrown in jail in Poland for?

• 50:02Speaker 05

  Well, you could stay in the line for bread, like my mom, and you complain that, let's say, that there's never food, there's never enough food for people here. What this government is doing? Well, if there was a neighbor who, next to you, or somebody who knew who you were, and overheard it, and he was working for secret police, or he was a snitch, you could get arrested. It was nothing unusual that police show up on your doorstep, they took you on the police station, say, hey, tell us about your comments here in the bread line, or tell them about your comments you made at your work, about disparaging communist party members.

• 50:45Speaker 05

  So, in my book, actually, I described the case when one of my fellow political prisoners was testifying in his defense. His defense was not a defense, it was offense, it was actually laying straight truth to the judge, and judge even, I remember judge asking, "Well, but this is offending the party member, do you think it is right?" So you can see that the way the socialist state worked up there. So, you could put you to jail then. You know, that was what people were afraid the most to get on the political list in Poland, because once you find yourself there, you had always, you were always that troublemaker, the anti-socialist, anti-communist.

• 51:30Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 51:31Speaker 05

  Take it.

• 51:32Speaker 07

  You know, you had mentioned people disappearing, being murdered by the, it sounds like the state. Did you witness any of that growing up?

• 51:41Speaker 05

  Even today, even today, they are still looking for the mass graves of some of Polish heroes who were executed by socialist state. Just, I think recently, they found the grave of...

• 51:56Speaker 05

  Big Polish hero, Rottmistrz Pilecki, Captain Pilecki, the man who volunteered to go to be locked up in Auschwitz, so he can write reports, what's going on up there, and then he escaped after a while. But those reports went to the west on Churchill's desk, so they knew what was going on in those prison camps. So this guy later fought in Warsaw uprising in 1944. He became a hero in Poland. So after communists took over, he was promptly arrested and executed, sentenced to death and executed, like many, many people. And his grave was never found, I believe, until recently.

• 52:41Speaker 05

  But there are still people that are missing and their graves are being found in the prison yards, decked in somewhere in some unspeakable forests in places. So people are still looking. There's an IPN organization in Poland, the government organization Institute of Polish Remembrance, where they pursue still the searching for Polish heroes who disappeared under communist regime. So there was nothing uncommon to disappear. And also, please remember that every communist system, whether in Poland, a socialist system,

• 53:20Speaker 05

  whether in Poland, whether in Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, they had their, those almost given every four or five years, the upheavals. So in Poland it was 1956, 1960, 1968, 1970, 1976. The people went on the streets and there were more the protesters. They were branded insurrectionists, bandits, terrorists, and shot at. So every so many years, this upheaval happens. And every time that happens, the new crew comes in and say, "Okay, socialism is great.

• 54:04Speaker 05

  These people just didn't know how to social, how to work in socialism system. So we're gonna replace..." And sometimes that government before was either killed or in prison as well, and the new crew come in. To build the better, the real socialism. And it repeats itself every so many years. And every time the new crew, the new gang came in, socialist gang came in. And they were telling people that we will do it the right, the socialism the right way. We will build socialism the right way. You know, that's, you, you never hear in, and there's another thing people need to know. They were not communist states. They were, they didn't even pretend to, to build communist states.

• 54:47Speaker 05

  Even in Soviet Union, you can see, if you read their literature from that time. They all were building socialism, not communism. Communism is, the way my father explained to me, is just a stepping stone to further societal development into communism. But you cannot omit a socialist, the socialism is a very necessary step. So that's, that's how it happened. And you mentioned about, asked me about the parallels. I've seen a lot of parallels in the last administration that were very dangerous. And I was, I was afraid.

• 55:25Speaker 07

  Are you familiar, I'm just curious, the sidetracker. Are you familiar what's going on in Romania? Have you been following that at all?

• 55:32Speaker 05

  Yes, the USAID with European Union, this ban election. They, they, they removed the candidate. This is what I'm saying, the European Union, it reminds me more of the Soviet Union right now than, than with totalitarian control than the European Union that at its inception. I mean, look at it, people are getting arrested in European Union for Facebook posts. And it's not like, well, maybe somewhere you heard about it, it's documented. You can see on the, even on the, on the videos, there's video when police coming in, arrest people for Facebook posts, let's say in Great Britain. And the decay of that society is immense. And I don't know how long it will last.

• 56:17Speaker 05

  But seems like the days of European Union are numbered, I think. That's maybe it's not that good, but you see what happened in Romania. You see what happened in Georgia. You see what the assassination attempt in Slovakia, when the president Fico, Prime Minister Fico barely survived. And the same thing in 2014 in Ukraine. So the USID and there's another organization to working hand to hand with it. I think E and D that did a lot of harm to people trying to subdue them and convert them into the compliant masses.

• 57:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, it sounds, it sounds like it's on the cusp of, I went over to Romania to interview Kalin Georgescu. He had a commanding lead in the, in the election. Then they froze the election. And then I guess they unfroze it and they just pulled him. He's not running anymore. They just completely pulled him.

• 57:25Speaker 05

  This is what I call, like here, people don't, don't hear this term. We call it socialist elections. Socialist elections are elections where communists and socialists always win. So this is socialist election and all the mechanisms behind it was, you know, if you would accuse, let's say in Poland was the same mechanism. You, you cannot vote somebody who you really thought could be good person or politician. You have, you are voting for people that they told you to vote. And the, they were, the mechanism was set up this way that no matter what, that, that person would win elections. If you notice in Eastern Europe, first thing they did when socialist grabbed the power

• 58:06Speaker 05

  was start changing the rules and laws to give them the advantage and give them the opportunity to falsify election, even if they have to, to, to stay at power. Because they know after four, five years of their, that socialist communist ideology, people had, had enough. They did not want any of, of, of that and any of these Marxist goons. And in Poland, when I was growing up, growing up, I remember people would hang those Marxists from the Latin posts if they could get away with it. This is how much hate it was. But there's always segment of the society, like my father, that go, get along to go along

• 58:50Speaker 05

  and try to stay afloat and they will, they, they, they will do whatever it needs to take to stay in the control and control the society. Because we need to notice that.

• 59:06Speaker 05

  Most of the atrocities committed in Poland were not committed by Russians, were committed by Poles. They were trained in Soviet Union by, and not necessarily Russians, there were different nationalities. Ukrainians, there were Belarusians, who were in Soviet, part of the Soviet Union at the time, who trained and who installed that type of the government in Poland at the time. So in Poland, the most atrocities that happened were committed by Polish communists and Poles. The Soviet Union, the most,

• 59:45Speaker 05

  I think no other nation experienced the atrocities and danger of communism, socialism more than Russians. They were the biggest victims of that system. So there was no Poles murdering Russians, there were no Ukrainians murdering Russians. There were Russians killing Russians, because evil ideology will do it to you. This is when you subscribe to so-called the relative morality. And this is what you become part of the system that will actually twist you into this type of behavior, this type of morality. So that's very dangerous. When did you, so when did you get sent back to your father?

• 1:00:31Speaker 05

  I was, I think I was sixteen years old at the time. I was still at the grade of elementary school, but my mama just could not afford to feed the three kids. So she said, "You are the oldest one, so we can go, we'll send you there." And I didn't really want to go, but, you know, I had no choice. The funny thing is, so father came, picked me up, and we, we traveled from my city lots to, after all the court proceedings were done, to his apartment in Warsaw. I remember his wife opened the door, she said, "Okay, so he's, he'll be living with us from now on." I can remember the screams, like, "What? What, what are you talking about? Nobody's going to live here with us."

• 1:01:17Speaker 05

  So, you know, the tension already started. It was not very pleasant, you know, walking to the house and this, you see this, this weird woman screaming and yelling. But I had no choice, so I stayed there. And she had a son, so she was...

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

  You know, giving me a hard time, so I was beating up his, her son. And I was kind of like equalizing. The more I get punishment from her, the more I beat up that other kid. And eventually, I had had enough. And they had enough too, so they kicked me back to my mother's. And that was one year, but also I could see at the time my father's

• 1:01:59Speaker 05

  uh, mental, uh, mental state and his, his values system, he value system.

• 1:02:10Speaker 05

  Like I say, mentioned earlier here, when you seen him, you would think, well, this was a nice, clean man, well spoken and educated man, somebody like would be great to have as a neighbor. But when I start talking to him, I remember I had a conversation at the time that he says, uh, I asked him, you know, what if people were resisting socialism and communism? Well, how, there are some people who will not buy into it, I don't buy into it. Or he says, well, we have a methods to convince people. We, that, that, we will make them do that. But if that doesn't work, uh, we have prisons. So what if prison doesn't work, we still don't change him?

• 1:02:53Speaker 05

  Well, the socialism is such a great system that is worthy sacrifice. So we just eliminate physically these people. That way they don't interfere with us implementing such a great system for everybody. And once people get into the socialist system, they will love it. We just need to eliminate people who oppose it because they derail our efforts. So he wouldn't mind these people being killed. And also what I didn't know at the time, my father was responsible for censorship in Poland. At the time, he was a minister of art, culture, uh, art and culture in Poland. He was a director of the department for theaters, movies and libraries.

• 1:03:37Speaker 05

  So, uh, if you wrote the book that my father did not like, your book never showed up. Not only that, if, if that book was... Skeptical of socialism and communism. None of your books were ever shown up. And if you argue about it, you could end up in prison. So, movies. Somebody pointed out not too long time ago, older person, that do you know that your father was responsible for censoring the very popular comedy that was in Poland at the time? Sami Sfoi. It was named like All Hours. I have a loose translation.

• 1:04:15Speaker 05

  He was responsible for removing parts of that movie and he was arguing with the director that this does not support the socialist point of view. Doesn't, uh, uh, and come, it opposes, uh, what we would say, uh, the nice transition to socialist and communist society. So, we need to cut this, this, and just all the people were to cut that movie and they had to comply. I, I didn't know about that movie. I knew that he was censoring things. Censoring books, censoring artists. So, a lot of, uh, the things that happened in Poland at the time, in post-war era, was you either could adopt the art and people to socialism, or you eliminate it.

• 1:04:59Speaker 05

  So there were statues that socialists, the communists like my father, decided they do not support the communist narrative, the ideology. Well, well, well, just destroy it and remove it so people don't know about it. Or change the meaning of it, knowing that author had creating the, let's say, that painting had this on his mind. Well, kill the, kill the author and explain people what really we think that picture means. So that was just normal methods. And if you were not in line with the socialist state, the terror state, you were cancelled. So, it's not much different that could happen today, that happened today under Laszlo's administration. So.

• 1:05:44Speaker 05

  I'm talking about last administration. I know we're gonna get a lot of flag for it, and I think the YouTube may flag this interview, but I don't know. Bottom line is that a lot of the things that happened in Poland, like you asked me earlier, it's like deja, was like deja vu from, almost like deja vu, I could extrapolate on what is happening in the United States under last administration. The difference is this, that America was built by free, strong people. The culture of freedom, the understanding of freedom and the yearning for freedom is so strong, that it's not as easy to subdue and change and derail it.

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  So, people survived that four years, and now you can see what is happening. People are raising up of their, I would say, standing up again against some of the methods used by the previous administration. And they have to, because if we fail, we have no place to go.

• 1:06:46Speaker 07

  Wow. How often would your dad and you have these conversations?

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  Quite often, because I wasn't a good student, so always to get him over my back, whether I didn't do the homework, or the homework was bad, I asked these questions, and we started arguing about it. And I just roll him up, and, but it also allowed me to understand a little bit more the way he thinks, and it was scary thoughts at the end. The guy has no scruples in implementing the ideology that he was subscribing to, and he wanted everybody to subscribe. If you didn't, he will force you to do it, or he will eliminate you, so you don't derail other people from it.

• 1:07:35Speaker 05

  It's very dangerous, but this is how they operated at the time. Then you could lose your job, and you will not be able to find your job. You couldn't open your business, you couldn't attend the college. Matter of fact, the education was a very big thing for communists and control of the students. So, to get to college, if you were not a member of a youth socialist organization, your chances were smaller to get into university than somebody who was activists and...

• 1:08:11Speaker 05

  Uh, openly, uh, how to say it? Virtue signaling that he is a communist and pro-communist. So these people were sought after and they were given priority to join the universities. There were also people who did get into universities, uh, being opposed to communist system, but they were very rare and few in between. So they control everything and they control that from the schools. It happened to me, uh, you know, when I was in fifth grade. I remember this was the time, fifth grade is the time when kids in Poland had to start learning Russian language.

• 1:08:50Speaker 05

  It become part like math, Polish, physics, uh, mathematics, you had to learn also Russian. So me not being the greatest student, I got pissed off because I hardly have a time and the ability to do homework from this math, physics, the, the Polish language and now it's Russian. So I just don't, don't, don't like it. And I piped up at the school, I say, why do they teach us the, the Russian language? We don't speak Polish very well yet. And on the top of it is a language of occupiers. My grandmother always called Russians occupiers at that time. Um, so I didn't think much of it, there was nothing political at the time about it.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  But the repercussions were because the teacher walked right the way to my bench and grabbed me by my ear and holding my ear through the hallway, took me to principal's office, explained what happened. The principal got on the phone and called police. So the police came, but on the way to school, they stopped my mom. This is fifth grade? Fifth grade, yes. So, what was it, fifth grade, it's like 12, I guess? Something like that, yeah. So they, they detained my mother.

• 1:10:05Speaker 05

  They brought her with them. So there was two secret police, there was two police in uniform, there was four of them. My mom was sitting in the middle, I guess, in this small car they were driving. So they came, they started yelling at us, you know, and they told my mom very straight. If you don't instill more law, more love to socialism in your kids, we're gonna take them away. We will educate them the right way. And, you know, don't do it, there won't be any warning. If we run across that similar situation, similar situation like this. You're, you're as a parent, you, you're parenting, it'll be done. My mom cried, I cried because I didn't know why my mom was crying.

• 1:10:46Speaker 05

  I, I was scared, but, you know, being kid, I really didn't still conceptualize what was really happening until later my mom explained to me. But this is something that from then on, my mom was always, before I was going to school, say, do not talk politics at school. Do not, because they wanna harm our family. Do not talk politics. And that was before we're leaving the school in the morning, to school in the morning. Every time I heard this, just a reminder, it tells you the fear people were living in of the totalitarian socialist state. And I was not the exception, I mean, all my friends were giving the same advices. When I talked to them, they said, well, like, my mom told me not to talk about politics

• 1:11:31Speaker 05

  because it's dangerous. So, yeah, that's happened.

• 1:11:34Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, you know, you see a lot of that going on on the West Coast right now, you know, with, with that, and, I mean, Washington, you know, if, if you don't subscribe to the, to the gender confusion stuff that's going on right now, then the state will come in, take your kids.

• 1:11:53Speaker 05

  Take your kids, yes. And also the cases where, actually, kids were being converted.

• 1:11:59Speaker 05

  In their gender. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, behind parents' back, the parents even didn't know about it. So, and I'm aware of the case where a girl, or the boy was transitioned behind parents' back, and eventually committed suicide because of the, all the things. You know, this is something that is very tragic, and, but I think we need to stand up to it. We need to understand what is going on, we need to understand that normalization of depravity. Especially if you have a therapist, that they are not allowed to treat mental illness because it's politically incorrect, and you can lose your license. It tells you how far some of the groups in our society have fallen.

• 1:12:43Speaker 05

  And that's pure evil, this is what I'm talking about. That this is not the struggle between the republicans and democrats. Really, there are good people on both sides. This is struggle evil against good, good against evil. And evil is not an intellectual concept, it's not something you just think about. Evil is real, and we face real dangerous times right now. Because it seems like sometimes the evil side, the evil has upper hand. But, you know, I'm looking with hope, and I understand that this is not going to take roots in America.

• 1:13:27Speaker 05

  America, American psyche is much stronger than that. You can throw these things on some people, some wicked people will cave in. But America has, and American people will not, that, that freedom on which America was born, from which was born the, the quest for freedom, quest for the being strong, independent, is much stronger than evil, we will win, America will win.

• 1:14:01Speaker 07

  And so, so when you moved in with your father and his, was it his wife?

• 1:14:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it was about more, I already learned my techniques too, uh, uh, how to extort sandwiches. So by this time, I was extorting wines, wine and drinks from, from, from, from other kids at school. Well, it, it didn't start it this way. I just didn't know much better. I was doing boxing at the time. I was training box and I decided to, uh, I remember one time on the, uh, football field, um, soccer field. There was some little kid making, a little kid, not really a little kid, but he was like at my age, making fun of girls. So I was trying to be a tough guy, a hard guy, but just knock him out. But, well, I didn't know the guy was part of the gang at school and I said, see, they, in, in the world, so they had those gangs.

• 1:14:52Speaker 05

  So I then, they, they surrounded me and said, okay, well, we, we just hit our guy. So we're gonna go and, uh, we, we, we, we need to talk. Well, I didn't wait, I just knocked another one. So that just put them on, on, on, on the back foot. But then, uh, they say, okay, now to mend our case, we, we'll cause you any problems, you just bring us a bottle of wine. So I say, a bottle of wine? I just knock on the next one of you. I'm not going, you're not going to shit from me. But then I was thinking like, hmm, that kind of what like I used to do with sandwiches. So maybe I should talk to them. So I did get the wine. I did get the wine and then we started extorting wine from other kids.

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  So that's, uh, that was the, again, violence works. It didn't work for you means you didn't apply enough of it. It has no place in American society. I, I had to be open about it and I had to state it openly. It wouldn't work here. America is different and, uh, but at that time it worked for me, so.

• 1:15:56Shawn Ryan?

  So it lasted with your dad for about a year?

• 1:15:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Shawn Ryan?

  And then you got sent back at what age, seventeen now?

• 1:16:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was like seventeen going, yeah, seventeen years old, yes. So but before I I get so before I get back to my mom, uh, I finished my high, my regular elementary school. And the the high school that I went to was very sought after. Only kids with with the best grades could get to it. My grades was like the worst of the worst. But I had a father coming his father, so we just take one visit at school. And I was greeting like a hero at school, just come on in, pick your class, you know, what do you like to do? And so so so I was treated like very well.

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  And but again, didn't last long because uh, uh, eventually they, his wife got tired of me. His kids get a lot of bumps and black eyes many times, so they just sent me home. And then I started my uh, life back again with my mom.

• 1:17:03Shawn Ryan?

  How was it starting your life back again with your mom?

• 1:17:06Speaker 05

  Well, there was, uh, again, I have a fa- fa- found the memories of my childhood. So today, when I, when I look at it back, yeah, it was poor, it was violent. But when I also, I had the nostalgia for it. So when I came back home, I didn't go back to do boxing. My my home at the time was in Jelena Gora, small town. So I didn't go back to the boxing because the first karate Kyokushin, uh, Kyokushinkai was born in in in in in Jelena Gora, in the town. So I said, I need to get to it, but because you have to be eighteen to join.

• 1:17:46Speaker 05

  I took my uh, school ID and I scraped the date and I changed my date one year earlier. So I was actually eighteen. So I didn't tell my mom about it because my mom was very strict about these these things. And I said, I told my mom that I want to go there, but we couldn't afford it. So she, but she said this, if you stop drinking and stop smoking, as I was a drink and smoker. If you stop drinking and smoking and use, I see your, try to pay for your, uh, uh, training, I will help you. So then I was selling the, uh, what do you call it, like papers? You get the papers, you, like, uh, uh, recycling. I was said, uh, doing the recycling and I was just getting money for it. You could do it in Poland.

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  It takes a lot of stuff to carry heavy stuff to make meaningful money. But I learned I can steal the newspapers, the stack of newspapers. Because in the morning, it was like six, five o'clock in the morning. There were, there was no electronics at the time, there was no internet. So they just throw those newspapers by the places where they are being sold. So I just wait until the guy left and just grab a couple of these bags. It's one maybe like five, six kilograms. That's a lot of, uh, heavy weight. And I just run away with it. I hid in my basement. And, uh, and after, uh, two, three days, I just run up to the, uh, place where they were buying their recycling. And just start making money just to supplement my, uh, uh, uh, my, uh,

• 1:19:18Speaker 05

  karate training. And it worked. My mom seen it and she seen that I tried. I stopped drinking, I stopped smoking, uh, just like this, just one day I stopped. And, uh, started doing karate kikushinkai. It was, it was fun and we does, uh, something that, uh, I very fond memories of it. And that's how my life, uh, moved.

• 1:19:41Shawn Ryan?

  And then you found yourself in prison?

• 1:19:46Speaker 05

  I found myself in prison after, uh, that was nineteen seventy-eight. And, uh, that was when John Paul the Second, Paul, came to Poland. And, uh, at that time, when you were watching on official TV, his, uh, interaction with people, you would think, yeah, just, uh, the way that was explained by communist was, well, one, the crazy guy in a funny dress, showed up and few people show up to talk to him. And when the TV shows, yeah, a few people here, a few people there, but even more protesters, like, "Yeah, the Pope is bad." And that was the communist propaganda. If you look today, and some of the pictures on internet,

• 1:20:32Speaker 05

  there were masses, there were, if not millions, there were hundreds of thousands of people coming to meet the Pope. But you wouldn't know it from official press, from fake news media in Poland at the time. They were, the impression was, there's nobody interested in just funny dude in the white skirt. That's the way how it was explained. And, but, that was very meaningful for Polish nation, because by this time, no matter what the fake news media say, people do not believe that. If they say this is white, people usually comment that it's got to be black, because the communist say it's white. But people had the chance to gather together in those meetings,

• 1:21:16Speaker 05

  where thousands of us show up to meet the Pope, and they had the chance to see that there's not only few of them, there's most of them. There is entire society, you know, that opposing that depravity and that socialist terror. And they start talking, they start dreaming again. And the words that I still remember the Pope said was, you know, "Don't be afraid. Stand up. Get up your knees, fight for your rights. Don't be afraid." This is why what the Vice President J. D. Vans, when he said the same thing to European Marxist goons in that room,

• 1:21:56Speaker 05

  during that visit, he was not speaking to those turds and baboons sitting there. He was speaking to people in European Union. "Stand up, fight for your rights. Don't let these goons and baboons bully you." So that's, that's, those words, what the J. D., Vice President J. D. Vans said, resonated with me and still resonate.

• 1:22:23Speaker 05

  What was it that got you in prison? So, uh, after John Paul the Second's visit in 1978, people started actually organizing. They say, "You know what? He's right. We don't need to live on our knees. It's time to get up. It's time to fight for our rights. We don't need to be afraid." And they, and they started organizing groups in, in, in the different places. And eventually, they decide, "Well, you know, why don't we just legalize our organization as a trade union?" Because mostly they were workplaces, factories, uh, so let's organize and let's legalize. Let's just say, "Fuck the communism. Let's make your organization independent from Communist Party."

• 1:23:06Speaker 05

  And they did. So they, they started building slowly. And of, of course, that, it was a price to pay too, the persecution, the prison times. Sometimes people were beaten to death or suicided. So that's, uh, but that was the price worth to pay. What do you mean suicided? Well, for example, I'll give you a student. I think it was 1978. His name was Piaz. So he was, uh, he was active in opposition, working, trying to... He was a student. So he was found dead. And official, uh, because of that, he followed the stairs. So there was many cases like this.

• 1:23:45Speaker 05

  So they were, they were not afraid to go and, uh, kill people. Just like my father would do it if he had opportunity or if he was required to do it. I have no doubt that he would. If he wouldn't do it himself, he would find somebody to do it. So that, that was normal. So, but people started organizing. And in 1980, finally, the, the people had so much, so enough of the socialist state, they started doing strikes. They, they went on strikes here, there, in Gdyns, Gdynia. And eventually, the entire economy started collapsing. So communist government at the time, in socialist Poland, said, "Okay, well, let's go get some agreement. Let's just do something. Let's try to work it out.

• 1:24:30Speaker 05

  So you guys can go to work. We'll try to change the socialism, be more humane. We, we now know how to fix the socialism. We make socialism better now, like every six years." So people say, "Well, no, not really. Now, we need to be recognized as a trade union's solidarity." They call themselves solidarity.

• 1:24:51Speaker 05

  So that trade union was born. Eventually, the government had to give in and approve. It was the first organization in entire Warsaw Pact that was totally independent from Communist Party. That was the first one. It was the first break that was kicked out from the communist terror wall. Poland did it, and eventually the entire wall crumbled. So, yeah, so this is how it started. But they never gave up. They started making lists of people inconvenient to socialist state. And eventually, in December 13, 1980, they imposed martial law.

• 1:25:35Speaker 05

  So at midnight, they start mass arrests people from that list. There were secret police, army involved, the regular police. They were raiding apartments across entire Poland, arresting people and detaining them. That was at midnight. I remember I was at the Solidarity Headquarters at the time, the trade union movement, which turned into the social movement. That I was on the phone with a friend with Austria, and at midnight, just click, everything is gone. I didn't think much of it because communist socialist equipment didn't work well anyway. So it was like, well, another, I'll call him maybe later.

• 1:26:15Speaker 05

  And then people start coming into our building headquarters, say, "Hey, my son was arrested," or "My father and my mother were arrested." Sometimes they were arresting people, living kids in apartments with no supervision. So that was very, really bad. Because all the telephones, radio, everything was cut at midnight. A lot of people died, people have a heart attack or emergency. They had no means to get help. And people were shoved into the back of their apartments. There was, you could not be on the street past certain time. If you were, you could be arrested, and you were most likely arrested.

• 1:27:01Speaker 05

  And this is where I got even more involved. This is where I started getting involved in underground structures and building the resistance to communist...

• 1:27:12Speaker 05

  Take over through martial law of entire Poland. And yeah, there was a lot of people arrested, some, a lot of people were shot and killed. Uh, but they, they, they were able to subdue the society yet for some time. And this is when I got involved and I started building the structures. Eventually we got caught, we start printing a bulletin. A bulletin. A bulletin, yes, it was be behind, behind the censorship of official fake news media. So there was basically challenge them. They were saying one things, but what we were doing basically collecting the names of people

• 1:27:55Speaker 05

  who were arrested, detained, sent to internment camps and, and what happened to them, the, the court cases. So they, um, they, they, this is what we're printing. It was very dangerous for communist state. Anything beyond what they can censor as perceived by socialists as very dangerous to their, detrimental to their power. So of course they track us down and I got arrested. Uh, and I call it bulletin, they call it newspaper, but it was just a leaflet. It was a leaflet with two, uh, I think two pages maybe.

• 1:28:36Speaker 05

  But it was dangerous enough to, uh, to give me three years prison sentence. How did they arrest you? They arrested me when I came on the point because you know, we, we didn't know much about the, how underground works and how to protect ourselves. So we printed out and just went on the street and giving, we're giving to the people. Uh, so they, uh, they, they track us down and say, okay, these guys are passing the, those illegal newspapers. So.

• 1:29:03Speaker 05

  I guess they follow us and I walked to the point because we're supposed to print the next batch of the newspaper. Then, as I, as I knocked on the door, it was just like, people, I hear people running from upstairs, from downstairs, the doors opened with a gun in my face, it's like, whoa, okay. So, okay, they, they throw me on the ground and after a few kicks, they handcuffed me and they dragged me by my feet to the apartment, they shut the door. And they were waiting, they were hoping that some of the hoes will show up. And so, one of those Secret Service guns, he was sitting in the chair like I sit right here, but he put me in front of it, he said, put his feet on my, on me and just like, I,

• 1:29:47Speaker 05

  I was working as a foot, footstool for his feet, for quite a few hours. And then, like, nobody showed up, uh, because it was only us. So, they took me back to, uh, they took me to political, not political, they took me to a secret police headquarters in my city. Uh, that was my first early stint with the communism and, uh, prison.

• 1:30:13Speaker 07

  And it was, you were there for three years?

• 1:30:16Speaker 05

  No, I was there for less than that, because there was amnesty. So, after around a year and a half, uh, they, they kind of, uh, started releasing us, uh, right before the second visit of Pope to Poland. He demanded that, uh, before he visits Poland, they need to instill, uh, amnesty for political prisoners, so they slowly start releasing them.

• 1:30:39Speaker 07

  What was, what, what was it like in prison?

• 1:30:41Speaker 05

  Well, there was, like, I didn't have a problem, I just, if I had to beat somebody up, I did, I didn't have scruples about it. But I remember the first one, even when I was arrested, they put me into this holding tank with other prisoners. And this is normal technique of, uh, uh, uh, secret police, they will keep you, not freezing, but they keep you cold. They will keep, not keep you... Starving, but they will keep you hungry. So they slowly, they will break down your uh resistance that way. Uh you are easier uh uh to fall down. And they uh so I remember I I they throw me like two o'clock in the morning. Was dark, no windows.

• 1:31:23Speaker 05

  So I just like, didn't know even where to go, or somebody say, I just go along the wall, find that empty spot, sit down, sleep, you gonna figure it out tomorrow. I say, okay. So we have tomorrow uh in the morning and this big dude comes up and say, hey. Uh I didn't eat quite enough, so. I'm going to eat your breakfast today. You are well fed, I guess, you just came back from outside, I'm going to eat your breakfast today. So like, I didn't have much experience with prison time. So I figured out, I just knock him out and that. And just assert myself that nobody's going to eat my breakfast. So I knocked him out, but I after, so he was laying there and I was like thinking like. Say, well.

• 1:32:04Speaker 05

  I'm going to knock his front teeth out and I'm going to make a necklace out of it. So actually, I walk up to him, I like very carefully lift his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in, just pulled them out and. And uh, well. I I got caught with them, I think uh in the in the next prison time, because they want to transform me to a real prison. This was those uh, they start like searching as much better and they found my teeth. So, I'm sorry, I don't have my necklace.

• 1:32:34Speaker 05

  But that was the, that was the. But you know, like it never bothered, nobody never bothered me uh with uh taking my breakfast. It would be a very unlikely in prison that somebody like a real prisoner would just go and try to take your breakfast. There was some punk who think he's somebody. But he was threatening me, yeah, when you go to real prison, I'm going to pass to these guys and uh and they're gonna fuck you up. I was like, alright, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you say it again, I'm going to knock your bottom teeth out, you want that? Uh he locked me up. Um so then I was transferred to eventually when they uh. When they finished with me, they transferred to this intermediate prison where I was waiting for my sentence, sentencing.

• 1:33:16Speaker 05

  And then, after that, they took me to political prisoner prison, political prison on Russian border in city Krupiusz. That's where the pictures in my book and on my websites are from, because when I visited that prison in 2022, I had the chance actually to go inside and tour the place where I spent my time as a prisoner.

• 1:33:39Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 1:33:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:41Speaker 07

  What was it like in that prison? Was there, was there like a re-education program or anything?

• 1:33:46Speaker 05

  But that was, but it was not official re-education program. So from intermediate prison, I was transferred to the, after sentencing, to that political prisoner. But then they kept, there was known, I was one of the harshest prisons in Poland. This is where they kept political prisoners. They were kept them all over the Poland, but it was like the most known harsh prison. And then they, so this is where I met people, professors, engineers, people with a statue, people with, that accomplished something in their life, and even politicians. So that was very educational for me.

• 1:34:29Speaker 05

  It stopped being, I didn't think about it as the punishment, it was more like education for me. I learned about the real history of Poland that was there, and I was, I learned how twisted the official history of Poland was. So that was how, that, that helped me, and this is the way, this is what shaped me in the big part to who I am today. So that, that was. I met a lot of brave people. You know, like when I was sitting in prison, I didn't have a family, I didn't have a wife or kids. And now we have kids, so we know how it is, I understand how was difficult

• 1:35:13Speaker 05

  for all those engineers, all those professors who never had a contact with prison or law enforcement, suddenly being on the receiving end, sitting in prison and worrying about their wives, their kids, and still not giving up, still fighting the system even from prison. For me, that was inspiration. So, yeah. I was so inspired that eventually the prison administration sent a letter to my mother that basically, "Come and help out because I'm not following the rules and my my behavior is highly negative and not up to standard to socialist regulations and stuff."

• 1:35:55Speaker 05

  So I still have it, I need to find it because we just found it maybe like a year ago. And I said, "Okay, I'm going to keep it." And I put it somewhere in the safe place, but I don't know where the safe place is now. So, but I have that letter from prison administration to my mom, calling her and asking to influence me, "Come here and talk to me." So it was funny because they got extra visit from my mom, I didn't expect that, get a visit once a month. And suddenly, my mom shows up, "Hey, you need to go and visit mom." So my mom sees them crying and say, "Well, I'm very proud of you." I say, "Well, I'm sure you are, but what's up?" She say, "Well, this," and she just pulled this letter up. "I'm very proud, twice as proud now." So keep doing what you're doing, don't give in.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  So, yeah, and then we were actually start fighting back. I remember we went on the hunger strike, so we're like for, I don't remember us, three weeks or month where we didn't refuse to eat. We were trying to, it started from beatings, that so one of the political, some of the political prisoners got beat up by guards. So we were hunger strike, but then we say, okay, well, we are ready for like eight, nine days. So why don't we just attach the request for, for status of political prisoner? We are political prisoners, so let's fight for that. So now, so we wrote the letter to administration that the strike will continue until we receive that,

• 1:37:24Speaker 05

  until we receive the status of political prisoner. And then they start bringing our strike, we're starting with the older, more sick prisoners. Some professors were taken to the room and say like, the way, uh, uh, they, by the Polish regulation at the time, they had to feed you forcefully, uh, feed you, uh, after I think two weeks. So they start that, uh, the way they do it is that be the big pipe, looks like a vacuum pipe, but a bit smaller, corrugated pipe, pipe and the funnel on the end. So they handcuff you to the chair, they took this pipe and they shove you, shove this thing up your, up to your stomach.

• 1:38:06Speaker 05

  And then they have a big, what, we don't call it like big thing where they cook stuff, like a yellow glue, glue, glue, glue, and they just put it into your stomach. So what they did is like with older people, they say, look, there's nobody here, it's just you and us. So instead of us shoving this thick, big pipe in your stomach, why don't you just take, take this little cup, so I won't have to put it in, just drink it? People who, or some of the older people say, why, this is very painful, so, well, I just drink it here and I'm still on strike.

• 1:38:50Speaker 05

  So usually they don't even let them finish that drink, because as soon as he grabbed that cup, put in his mouth and make of two, three saps of it, say, okay, now you are not on hunger strike, you feed yourself. Your hunger strike is over, and in transport to different prison or different pavilion or whatever, they just start separating these people. Uh, so a lot of people went this way, they, they were like treated this way. But eventually the letter from the...

• 1:39:19Speaker 05

  From church, from Catholic church in Poland came in. Guys, you will not, you will not get status of political prisoner. You can accomplish other things, but that's not. You need to stop that because you are wasting yourself. Because there were people taken to hospitals, to emergency rooms because of that. And that's how we, uh, eventually the side case is over. We will stop the hunger strike.

• 1:39:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well, what were you guys, how would the hunger, how would the hunger strike have worked if they were censor, if they were censoring all the media? How would anybody know you guys were on the list?

• 1:39:52Speaker 05

  Well, we have the priest that was coming to, they were allowed once a week on Sundays, the priest to come in. And the friend who was passing him the information was, is friend of mine who I'm, we are still friends. And that's how the information was getting out.

• 1:40:09Shawn Ryan?

  So they would leak it to a priest and then the priest would disseminate it through the church?

• 1:40:13Speaker 05

  To the church and to the people. Pass it to the, pass to underground because Poland at the time already had pretty strong underground structures. They were eventually infiltrated by the secret police, but they were working, they were still effective. So there was being spread out through alternate media. So basically the fake news media, of course, we know what to expect. But they were still, there's bulletins like mine, they were being printed and disseminated to people, being just left thrown in the street here so people could pick it up and read it. And that's things spread like wildfire. But also, you know, there's another.

• 1:40:50Shawn Ryan?

  What would the consequences be?

• 1:40:52Speaker 05

  If they caught you with it, or you?

• 1:40:54Shawn Ryan?

  No, no, no, no. What would the consequences be for the government if people knew that? I mean, they're already arresting, they shut down communications at midnight that day.

• 1:41:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:41:04Shawn Ryan?

  And did mass arrests.

• 1:41:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:41:07Shawn Ryan?

  And so what, I guess what I'm asking is what would the, what would the consequences have been for the government had the, when the church would leak out that there was a hunger strike?

• 1:41:18Speaker 05

  Then would be... Not so much within the country, but outside. The western media, yes, the Radio Free Europe, Radio Voice of America. Your Voice of America is a very... In my life, plays a very instrumental role. Because the things I started learning about the communist regime, about the real history of Poland, was started with the Voice of America, where it was transmitted to Poland with real, true information, what was happening in Poland, what was the real Polish history. It was very interesting, but it was illegal to listen to it. So they did not want this information, government, to leak outside,

• 1:42:02Speaker 05

  beside the sanction against communist government by President Reagan, was paying big role in the eventual collapse of the communism and socialism in Poland. But yeah, there were repercussions, they were afraid, and they had enough. People were fighting them on every step they could. Maybe not physically, but intellectually. They call it, in Poland it was coined the name "internal immigration". So basically, people were shutting themselves down away from the government, not cooperating with them, and the entire economy was going to shit. And so they did not want that. Eventually, they realized that they cannot, this minority,

• 1:42:46Speaker 05

  you didn't know, listening to the fake news media, but that minority cannot rule over the majority. That people were realizing there's more and more of them versus the small group of elites, socialist elites, in Poland. So, yeah, they were afraid, they didn't want that. And then eventually, that thing collapsed.

• 1:43:09Speaker 05

  Wow, so you were part of the collapse? I was part of the collapse. Well, by this time I was already in Poland. But it totally collapsed in nineteen, I believe nineteen eighty-seven. This was the transition from communist, from the totalitarian system happened to democracy. By this time, I was already leaving my American dream in America. And how did you get out of prison? So was the Pope? Amnesty. The Pope was coming in and they started releasing political prisoners. So after coming out, it's actually funny story because I was arrested in the wintertime. So all the clothes I had was just winter, like a big old coat, you know, big boots,

• 1:43:51Speaker 05

  the strings were already broken, the hat, the cap. And I remember they let me out and they say, okay, this is your clothes. Now, there's a ticket for to your city and bye, now get out. So when I left, I looked like a bum, you know. So I remember I was walking, like showing my shoes because they were falling, they had strings in it. So until I get to the town, I had to walk from prison, maybe like three miles to town to get the train and they changed the train. So yeah, I do look like a bum and people are like, look at this guy, no, he's a bum. In Poland, it was normal for people, even if they went to take trash out, they wanted to look good. They wanted to dress, they just dressed themselves so they look decent.

• 1:44:36Speaker 05

  There was not like sweatpants or something, it just go. I do it now, right? At that time, you always put something, some nice clothes whenever you were outside. Like for me, I remember I had a special clothes for the Sundays to go to church, so like a church clothes that I was not allowed to wear at home or anywhere else except going to church because it was a special occasion. So people were there, so were seeing me as a bum, were now walking this shoes, untied shoes, you know, big jacket in the summertime, was I think outside for a lot of Polish people there. So, yeah. And where did you go? Do you want back? I walked to the train station, then I took the train to my city.

• 1:45:18Speaker 05

  And there was no cell phones at the time, so like my mom didn't even know anything. And yeah, I just took the, I didn't have the money to pay for the bus ticket. So from the train station, I just...

• 1:45:33Speaker 05

  Part of it started walking, but it was so unpleasant. Eventually, you jump on that bus and say like two, three stops, I just went and then I walked back home. That was it. So my mom was very happy. She couldn't believe, you know, my siblings too. And, uh, but yeah, that was it. Um, and I now I thought, okay, so now I'm in prison. What's next? So try to find a job, try to do something, try to set my life again. And, uh, of course I resumed my training, uh, Tekkondo and kickboxing. I switched Kyokushin Kai to Tekkondo because I like it better. Also, I like the people there. They have a similar mentality to mine. They didn't mind to fight. They like to fight. They like to fight on the streets. So that was just like a, more like a

• 1:46:20Speaker 05

  good group of people, you know, less sport, more fights. And, uh, so I want to try to resume my life. But then coming out from the trainings, very often I had the police car or sometimes civilian cars pulled in, get handcuffed, thrown in the car, drove around the town for a few hours. Sometimes drove outside the town and dropped, or usually they dropped me outside of town. And then I had to walk back home. But it was not so much to terrorize me. They knew they cannot terrorize me. But there was to terrorize people around me. I say, you know what? Don't do that. Don't be, don't hang out with this guy. And, uh, eventually, uh, in daytime was okay. I can take a bus or something and go back home.

• 1:47:04Speaker 05

  But that night where the bus is not working, sometimes I had to walk four, five miles, uh, to home. So eventually I decided one day I may not come back from those excursions. It's time, time to go, time to leave. And, um, I went to US Embassy as for help. I went to US Embassy because at that time, America was

• 1:47:28Speaker 05

  It always is, but it's that beacon of freedom. This is where people look up to. I remember dreaming like why Poland cannot be like America, you know. And what happened too, when I was going to this very exclusive school in Warsaw, that my father set it up for me. I had to travel, change the buses, and the change the bus was, the stop was by the US Embassy. So I remember I love just to go up there because at that time they had those glass displays, where they have the pictures from America, they were information America. So I remember even before the Marshall, even before I got political, I just love to look at it and see wow, you know, I love to dream.

• 1:48:10Speaker 05

  So sometimes it was so nice that I remember missing the bus, you know. I said, fuck this bus, you know, I just want to read this. So I was, I did read that and I was always fascinated. I want to peek through the fence and I see the big, powerful, beautiful cars. I was like, my, this is, this is the country. Those are the free people, why are we dead? Today, those glass displays are taken down for security reason, I guess. And I still, when I went last time, I've seen, I went up there because for me is very nostalgic. But yeah, that was gone. Wow, and so you got, you put in and?

• 1:48:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I asked for, I told them what happened and I say, I would like to just, I would like to escape Poland, I need help. They, you know, I didn't even, the wildest dream, I would think they would allow me to come live in America. It was just like, well, but I have to try, so. So I went to ask, you know, I find out, I asked for, they asked for documents and all that stuff I did. And I got like within, I think, very short time, like documents stating that yes, the visa will be granted to me when I get Polish passport. So I know, basically, that was normal procedure at the time. And a lot of political refugees came to this way, to either to America or different countries. My choice was always America.

• 1:49:40Speaker 05

  And, and so once I got that promise, I could apply, with that I could apply for passport. Otherwise, you cannot get the passport in Poland. So with this, I applied for passport, the passport was given to me. And I got the visa, got the green card, and actually I nine four. That was the first, I think, first document, which was a later exchange for green card. Eventually, I became a US citizen. But yeah, so I, this, this is my, uh, uh, that's where my journey began, became. There's one thing I would like to mention too during martial law. You know, uh, when everything was banned, like the solidarity insignia, solidarity,

• 1:50:24Speaker 05

  like lapel pants, they were just forbidden, you could not wear it. So people started wearing American flag. As, as a resistance, as a show, yeah, we are free, you know, we want to be free. So I remember that, so that we had, all had the American flags. Communists got tired of it, I remember in my city, because at the martial law, they had the roadblocks. So they, once every while, they stop bus or something. Everybody has to disembark, they were checking documents. And so if they found the solidarity trading in your pen, you could get beat up and hold up your ass to jail. But with American flag, they just could not really, uh, do that much, you know, they at least didn't,

• 1:51:07Speaker 05

  they did not, to the point, because I remember with, uh, the, the time that I got stopped in, on the checkpoint, when they pull us out, they rip our, uh, flags, American flags off, and they stomp them, uh, in the ground. So the funny, that's not funny, but, so we're back on the bus. And then, um, the guy, as the bus was moving, the guy say, ah, fuck you, we're gonna get more, we're gonna buy more American flags. And when they stopped the bus, they pull everybody out and they grab the, I think, I don't think it was the guy who, who mouth off to them, there was, they just picked the first guy they could easier grab. They grab him, they drag him, and they, and they drag him to the police van,

• 1:51:51Speaker 05

  while beating him with those rubber, rubber sticks all the way on the way to it. So now you can leave. So we're like, okay, well, maybe we don't say anything, we just buy new American flags. So yeah, that uh that's that American flag was always for us, for many of us. That we can have freedom, that that drive. And then I came to live here.

• 1:52:14Speaker 07

  Did your, did any of your siblings or your mother come with you?

• 1:52:17Speaker 05

  No, no, they stay, they they they stay, they stay there. And my sister is still there, she's still um uh uh she's living her own life, she has her own business now. And they have peaceful, nice life, so they enjoy it. And and I'm I'm here. I, when I was living Poland, I I was saying goodbye to Poland forever. I didn't, I have my passport, I I'm going to post on my website. Uh, my passport is only one way, so it's a step in it. You can cr- can cross Polish border one time only. So I say, well, that's it.

• 1:52:51Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 1:52:52Speaker 05

  And uh, yeah.

• 1:52:54Speaker 07

  Was it hard to say goodbye?

• 1:52:57Speaker 05

  Well, I was, I was anxious, not not really that much, but it was more difficult for my family, my mom. Because they, the way we understood, we're never gonna see uh each other. So for me, it was like, well, you know, I have to go because if I don't, then I'm I I may not last long. And yeah, I remember, I just like, you know, I've had the bag of my clothes. And I had the twenty dollars, because you had to have a twenty dollars. And I walk up to the plane and left. That was it.

• 1:53:28Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 1:53:30Speaker 05

  So yeah, that that's how my journey started. The funny thing is that I always was dreaming about having a tape recorder, like a little tiny tape recorder. Never had one, so I say, well, you know what? I have twenty dollars in Germany, because I flew to Germany, stayed in Germany for like three weeks. And so I go and buy me one. So the all twenty dollars I spent on the tape recorder. So when I landed in New York, I had only ten, the the the change that I got for the tape recorder was ten ten phoenix, so this is like, I think, five cents. It was German uh uh coin. So that's uh that's how I landed in New York, bag of clothes. And I didn't speak English.

• 1:54:13Speaker 07

  Let's take a quick break.

• 1:54:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:15Speaker 07

  When we come back, we'll get into the USA.

• 1:54:18Speaker 05

  That's that's the, no, you can cut out from it, whatever you want to cut out, but uh.

• 1:54:22Speaker 07

  We're not cutting anything.

• 1:54:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:25Speaker 07

  Yeah. That's a, that's a... Wow.

• 1:54:30Speaker 05

  Well, you know what, like, my story, whether in the book or taught here, I don't want people see as a, well, the guy just came and bitch about the socialism and communism. We all know the communists bad. I want them to, this to be a prism, a lens. So they can see America maybe from different vantage point. Because I see very often people, especially the younger, younger generation educated with this anti-American universities, they hate us, outright hate America, you know, and so I want them to see the America through, I would say, different eyes, you know, different, different vantage points.

• 1:55:14Speaker 05

  So maybe they can change their mind. Because, you know, that's, I tell you, I've, I've, some of the hate towards America I've seen from our own citizens, I didn't see the terrorists we are hunting in the Middle East. So that's, that's what is disturbing for me. Not all, but I did run across people with so much hate towards America, our own citizens. And this is a product of these universities, this anti-American universities, this Marxist, with Marxist communist bent and communist professors and teachers, so.

• 1:55:50Speaker 07

  Geez.

• 1:55:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:51Speaker 07

  We did a damn good job painting that picture.

• 1:55:54Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 1:55:54Speaker 07

  You did a damn good job painting that picture.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:56:10Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 1:56:16Speaker 04

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

• 1:56:20Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:56:23Speaker 04

  I'm not the first there.

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

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

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

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

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

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

• 1:56:44Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 1:56:45Speaker 03

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

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:56:51Speaker 04

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

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:56:59Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 1:57:00Speaker 02

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

• 1:57:09Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Jago, we're back from the break. And so a couple of interesting conversations we got to revisit that happened off camera. One, you said you're a bad student. Now you're a software engineer?

• 1:57:21Speaker 05

  Yes, well, you know, this was a bad student because I think that I didn't like to learn. And that was my, I think, maybe my personal challenge to stay focused on something and especially something that I didn't like to do it. I like to play soccer, I like to cake box, I like to fight. So I didn't have, I was not the best student. But yeah, this like, software engineering is fascinating. It's like having a puzzle and you solve the puzzle and it trains your brain to memorize things, to remember things and using the tools. It is fascinating and you build things, you know, just like you are a designer and the

• 1:58:03Speaker 05

  software engineering is more like an art than, it's a science, but it's also big art involved in it because you can solve the problems, it's about solving the problems. And you can solve the problems in so many ways, so many different things you can do to accomplish your task. It's fantastic, I love it. I mean, this is something that is, was very fascinating to me. Matter of fact, the way I started it was in the SEAL teams. So I was the only SEAL who, having a cruise box, cruise box with guns, have another cruise box with books and another one with full computer. There were no laptops at the time, but maybe there were, but I couldn't afford one. So I had a big monitor, big computer, keyboard, mouse, and I traveled with it.

• 1:58:45Speaker 05

  If we deployed to, like when we deployed to Germany or to Bosnia, I had that all shebang with me. Matter of fact, when we came back from deployment, we're carrying guns. Bug into the CO teams. So we picked the case with the guns with the guy who just carried it in. Then picked my case to get to my cage and say, "What the fuck is in this box? Do we get a guns in it or something?" I say, "No, it's just my laptop and my books." Because there was no internet at that time. So I had to have a book, so I carried books with me.

• 1:59:14Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:59:15Speaker 05

  But I love it. It's fascinating world.

• 1:59:18Shawn Ryan?

  And then we had a, we had a conversation too. We have to get this about Taekwondo. And I was talking about Palmer Lucky's cameras. And then somehow that morphed, or helmet. And then somehow that morphed into, oh yeah, morphed into cameras. And then basically you guys critiquing yourself on the street.

• 1:59:37Speaker 05

  Right, we're talking about the cameras. Yes. When I was growing up, there was no cameras. You can have a camera, maybe like the one with this little crank on it. And it was hard to get, like I never had one. And I didn't know even anybody who had one. So for us to progress in that, in fighting, in the kickboxing, in Taekwondo, we just need to critique each other. So a matter of fact, this is why I switched from Karate Kyokushinkai to Taekwondo at the time. It's not like this today. I need to, I know, I don't want to offend anybody who is practicing Taekwondo today in Poland. Today Taekwondo is very inclusive to all kinds of people.

• 2:00:21Speaker 05

  And it's very, very, I would say civilized. It's very, it's very, not only educational, but also very healthy. But at that time, no, we just decided to, especially when our teacher from Laos claimed and was telling us that, you know, fight on the ring is one thing. It's fairly safe. But you need to be good, we want to be good fighters. You need to fight on the street. Well, he didn't have to say twice to us that. We were just like, hey, why don't, let's do it. So the way we did it was just pick the people on the street. Who looked more rough, or like trying to... Somebody who was willing to fight, and it was not difficult to find people like this in Poland at the time.

• 2:01:05Speaker 05

  So, we go and... The way we did it is like, okay, so I'm going to go first, I'm going to beat up this guy, and you guys will watch. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to use this technique, this technique, this technique, and you grade me, basically. They were the cameras of our... The eyes of my fellow buddies from Tackwandol, they were the cameras of our times. So, you know, you go up there, you use your technique, you beat the guy up, and again, I'm not proud of it today, but I have to say clearly, but that was the way I lived a life at the time. So, and you critique me. And so, after the fight was over, the guy was laying unconscious.

• 2:01:47Speaker 05

  The guys come in and say, "Okay, well, you missed your technique right there. You could emphasize a little bit more. That kick was not very strong, or you missed the guy here, where you could actually do more damage, or do this, this." So, those were our techniques. And that's how we... We got really good at it. We got really good at it to the point that we didn't look for a single people anymore. We just wanted like, let's challenge ourselves and just beat two people at the time. So, sometimes it was difficult to find a group of people to beat up. So, if we found one, usually it was like whoever came first was able to beat them up. Sometimes it was so hard to tell, because we were like, "Yeah, the mine, the mine."

• 2:02:32Speaker 05

  We had to draw the strokes who would be beating them up. And this is how we practiced. So, we just walk up to the guy who started the fight, and in Poland again, it was not very difficult to do it, because almost everybody was fighting everywhere. And then we practiced our technique on two, three guys. And it was become more, actually, interesting. Than beating just one guy, it was very simple thing. But now we have two or three guys, and now you can show your art, I would say. You can show your way of how you master your techniques, your reaction time and all that stuff. So, that was very interesting. And some of them, you know, we didn't know, we didn't pick people who... Because you couldn't know if the guy, the guys to beat up were martial artists too or not, but we did...

• 2:03:18Speaker 05

  We, we, we just, you know, like taking the chances and uh Sometimes the guy had actually martial training was Or boxer or wrestler, so they were hard to beat up sometimes, you know, that sometimes like Uh, you have two, three guys and one of them is like You know, it's not reacting to your punches, you have to actually strain yourself to knock the guy out. But that was our training, that was our, the cameras were our eyes and the, the, the review was our critique, how the fight went. Wow. Um, that was, uh, you know what, again. Who, who, whose idea was the safety pin? Oh, I don't know where it came from, but, oh, yeah, that was came from Uh, you know, when you fight, when you were fighting in Poland, when I was fighting in Poland,

• 2:04:02Speaker 05

  I, you know, I ne- I learned very quickly that And I'm sure you experienced that when you start to fight, the guy gets beat up, but I say, okay, I had enough, thank you, you better, let me walk away, I'm fine. That's very dangerous thing to do, what I learned very quickly because usually the guy Recover and attack you again, or come back with his friends. So then you have a fight on your hands, even more people to beat up. So with, with, uh, when, when, when we fought, fight, when you used to fight there, We used to fight until the guy stopped moving, so It's not just really, I had enough, enough, enough, no, no, no, you, you don't tell me That to

• 2:04:46Speaker 05

  And when I end the fight, I will tell you when I end the fight, most likely you will just be moving again. So you just beat the guy until he doesn't move, right? Now he falls down, doesn't move, but then we find out, and it happened to me actually, that That one of the guys, I think, had a thong fall in And he was already getting turning blue and I panicked, I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what happened. And thanks God, there was a nurse and said, give me a safety pin, give me a safety, somebody's safety pin, so Somebody puts her safety pin and she kind of like Hook his tongue and pull it out, roll him to the side, it was good. And say, you know, if something like this happen, you know, you need to make sure that his thong doesn't, That person's thongs doesn't fall in.

• 2:05:28Speaker 05

  So I, uh, I say, well, that's pretty cool, but you know, like If you need to run and what do you do? Well, I guess you take the safety pin and pin his tongue to his lower lip and now he will leave too. So this is how we start doing it and sometimes police in Poland at that time seldom intervene. People were so used to violence there that if there was a fight on the street and you could see two, three fights when you walk through town usually. People just across the street go around you and keep walking down. It's not my business, you know, two people, three people are fighting. Let them fight it out, let them duck it out and just move on.

• 2:06:09Speaker 05

  Uh, but sometimes when police was coming then you will have to leave unconscious guy on the street. So we learned very quickly that the best way is just to use the safety pin, pull his tongue out, pin it to the lower lip, roll him to the side and just leave him there and he will leave, he is not going to die. So, uh, so that was kind of like a technique that we learned very quickly and it's effective, it's life-saving technique. I think last one I applied in Horton Plaza in San Diego already being a seal.

• 2:06:36Shawn Ryan?

  I have to say, I've never, uh, it never occurred to be to pin up guy's tongue to his lip after I beat him up. So it doesn't jump to that.

• 2:06:44Speaker 05

  I, I didn't think either until this guy almost died on my eyes. Uh, well, so that's, uh, I learned there's a safer way. This, uh, I treat the safety pin as a safety device, you know? You just ensure the guy doesn't die, that he's fairly safe, that, um, what was it? Uh, uh, his tongue painted to his lower lip is not going to hurt him, you know, he wake up and. I, I, I never had a, uh, never had anybody complain about, well, maybe they never, they never saw the after. But it was effective, hundred percent, I guess. So that worked, yeah.

• 2:07:23Shawn Ryan?

  So let's get to, so you came to America, you had twenty dollars.

• 2:07:28Speaker 05

  Uh, in Germany.

• 2:07:29Speaker 07

  In Germany.

• 2:07:30Speaker 05

  On the table, tiny table.

• 2:07:31Speaker 07

  You bought the tape recorder, so you had like fi- I think you said five cents when you landed in New York.

• 2:07:36Speaker 05

  Five Fenix. So Fenix is like a German mark has hundred Fenix. So I had the five Fenix in my pocket, bag of clothes from like old clothes from nineteen seventies or whatever my mom could, uh, you know, prepare for me. So I had a sweater. I think I still have it till today somewhere in the closet. I didn't want to throw it away. Uh, with my mom made by his hand, by her hands. So that's, uh, yeah, that's how I came to America. Uh, knowing nothing, knowing no English, only knowing that America is a free country. The people are living free here and I can live as a free man, uh, here on this land. And hopefully one day become American citizen if I'm good enough.

• 2:08:18Speaker 07

  Where do you go? No family, no money, no English, nowhere to live.

• 2:08:25Speaker 05

  People were waiting for me actually. So when I came in, cause I came legally, they organized like apartment for me. They organized the first, helped me find the first job. You know, I, I didn't complain or, or how could I complain? I got a job as a janitor and I was happy as I can be. Uh, Sean, I could pay for my own apartment, my own money. I didn't have to, uh, uh, borrow the money. I could buy my food, you know, and I was living in the apartment with air conditioning with, uh, you know, telephone, there was something unusual in Poland and air conditioning. I only, I didn't even know how it works. I never,

• 2:09:07Speaker 05

  I never seen air conditioning. I heard about this climatizations in apartments, but having apartment with air conditioning. Good God, I felt like a king. You know, there was a project. There was the apartment was like hundred eighty dollars a month. And there was bunch of, you know, lot of crimes, drugs and prostitution, but who cares? You know, I had my own apartment and I could afford it. I could live in it. And, uh, and then, you know, so my goal become now to learn English and to, uh, get. Different job, get better job. And to start English, because I was working as a janitor, so really, you know, physical work. So I had cartoons in my back pocket.

• 2:09:49Speaker 05

  So I had a map in one hand, it's like Jane loves Joe, Joe loves Jane. And I was just mapping the floors and, and it's like, okay. So I need to memorize that. So this is how I learned, basically how I learned English at the time. And this is why my grammar sometimes is still like the fans of Rachel, my wife. She's like, hey, you don't say it this way, you have to say it certain way. Uh, and, and, but yeah, this, this is how I started. This is how I learned English. Eventually, you know, I, I improve and, uh, I went to school and, uh, but that was my, that was my first beginning.

• 2:10:33Speaker 05

  And I tell you, the patience of American friends who helped me, who set me in my life here. Uh, I mean, uh, it's so incredible. Sean, I, I offended so many people unintentionally, not even knowing about it. I remember I was invited by the church, uh, after the mass on Sunday in the room. So I can, the parishioners can meet this new Polish immigrant and stuff. And I can mingle with those great people, great American friends. So I walk into the room and the pastor came with a big plate of cookies and just like so happy. You know, everybody is like smiling and happy.

• 2:11:16Speaker 05

  So I took this cookie and, and Polish language is not such, sound like TH. So somebody advised me to use F, like thank you. That came out like a fuck you. And that's when I took this cookie and I could, I knew that I say something wrong. Because right there, I could hear the gasps. Uh uh. Like everybody, so I'm holding this cookie and it's like, what the hell did I say wrong? I say thank you, but now there was a fuck you. So, but there's like older gentleman came out and say, look, uh, what he's trying to say is, he looks at me and say, thank you. So I'm like, yes, that's what he tried to say.

• 2:12:00Speaker 05

  So, so you know, like there were things like this, the borrowed moments. I was invited to party, like swimming, swimming pool, family party from the parishioners. And they had a grill set up and everything. So of course I want to represent myself the best I could and, you know, be that good American. Uh, I want to be, I just want to look good there. So I went and I found the skimpest, the shortest shorts I could find. Uh, I would call it banana hammock, I guess, today. And I thought, this is really cool. I will look really good. I think these people admire me, you know, that's like, I really represent myself well.

• 2:12:45Speaker 05

  So as soon as I walk into that pool, I can see a whistle and people being ushered out of the swimming pool in there, behind the building somewhere, and somebody calls me, say, hey, come on here. We have a shorts for you. So they took me to the room, they gave me big shorts. Oh, I didn't, I didn't argue, I was just like, yes, sir, yes, sir. You know, in Poland at the time, in nineteen eighties, the shorts like we wear today, only fat people and old people wear. So there was no, um, if somebody has seen you in those shorts, they think that you are just like weird guy. So everybody was there, the skimpest, the shortest, the smallest, the, the, the, the swimming trunks, the better. So I was, I just didn't know.

• 2:13:28Speaker 05

  And, and another thing too, like, I remember first few days, I was staying with older family parishioners in the church. So they, sometimes they give me a ride around the, uh, Memphis. And I was trying, and they give me a dictionary, first dictionary. I have it today with their corrections on it. I have it in my home, actually, I'm going to post on, on my website. So I was trying to tell them, impress them that I'm learning English, I'm using this dictionary. So as we drive, I'm looking, say, this is house. It's like, yeah, yes, good, you know? This is man, this is woman, you know, and just like reading and trying to find out what it means.

• 2:14:13Speaker 05

  And they were pretty happy until we came and I see the black guy walking on the street and just find out what is the black guy? Okay, this is a, the ugly word.

• 2:14:21Speaker 05

  I was not the ugly, it was the ugly word, you know, there's something very offensive to to, to, to, I guess, anybody, to me too, by the time I didn't know. And they almost wrecked the car. This woman jumped out, say, where did you, she's yelling me, I don't understand what. She takes this dictionary from me and slowly, this is bad. No, no, no. Wow. And she scratched that word and wrote, black man, I say, I say, black man. This is black man. And, you know, it was

• 2:14:59Speaker 05

  the last thing on my mind, in my heart, we to offend an American or anybody. Especially American, especially friends. So I just didn't know any better. So as you can see, my, I'm progressing through my, uh, uh, learning how to live in American society. I took it's toll on me too, because I was trying to be so good. And sometimes it just backfired at me, but it was never intentional mistake. Maybe, maybe one, when eventually I get the job as a sub mechanic. That's a story just in itself, how I got the job. And then, uh, so that mechanic, the shop foreman invited me to say, hey, let's have a steak today.

• 2:15:44Speaker 05

  There'll be a couple of other, uh, uh, mechanics coming, so let's go have a party, say, party, yes. So show up and with, he gave me a steak. Sean, that was the first, uh, first time in my life I seen that one big piece of meat in one, in one piece. So I'm looking at it, it's like, I think five or six of them, but I'm, so I'm like, Jim, by this time I spoke a little bit of English. So it's like an entire town is coming here to the party or what? Uh, he say, no, no, it's just, so are you telling me I can eat the whole steak? In Poland, when you had a meat, you slice it like, like a razor blade.

• 2:16:26Speaker 05

  And you use the meat, at least in my home, not to, to fill yourself, use the meat for the taste. But you fill yourself with potatoes or, or, or bread. So I'm just like, how beating an entire, it was the first time I an entire big chewing like a brick of meat in my life. So I was so grateful to him. So they knew I was doing kickboxing earlier and they say, oh, show us something, you know, something, show us something, you know, we have a few beers, I say, okay, I'll show you, I'll show you the basic punch, what I like to punch people with. And can I punch this wall? He say, yeah, sure. I thought it's a concrete wall in Poland, the walls are concrete, all those concrete plates. So I'm hard on this wall, boom.

• 2:17:10Speaker 05

  But there was a freaking, uh, dry sheet wall. So my fist went through one wall and went out in his bedroom on the other side. That was embarrassing. I would say, dude, I am so, Jim, I am so, so sorry, I didn't mean to destroy your house. I just wanted to show you now that's the punch. I didn't think that's, I thought there was a concrete wall. And he just, they thought that was funny. So but I, I say, I'm, I'm going to go and fix it, but say, no, no, no, that was fine. I will keep it for a while. So I have a story to tell. So yeah, so the, the things like that were, were, were a bit different.

• 2:17:45Speaker 07

  How, how old were you when you came to the US?

• 2:17:47Speaker 05

  Twenty-four.

• 2:17:48Speaker 07

  Twenty-four?

• 2:17:48Speaker 05

  No, twenty-three going twenty-four.

• 2:17:50Speaker 07

  How long did it take you to learn English?

• 2:17:53Speaker 05

  I'm still learning English.

• 2:17:55Speaker 07

  Enough to be able to communicate?

• 2:17:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, but to make a community, I think it took me maybe, to be fairly efficient to convey my thoughts, I think maybe a six months, seven months.

• 2:18:06Speaker 07

  Wow, that's.

• 2:18:07Speaker 05

  But remember, I had to do it on my own. So the bad, it's easier to learn the right way than learn the bad way and then correct this. So I still make a lot of mistakes when I speak and which is obvious to people around, maybe not for me so much, but my wife always says like, well, you know, you're just, you're just funny, so I'm not going to correct you because sounds good, sounds, sounds funny, so keep going. So yeah, she's, uh, she, she domesticated me. So I'm like fully, I, well, I consider myself now fully domesticated. She always, when you ask her, she will tell you that I'm still project.

• 2:18:46Speaker 05

  Under construction, so I'm I'm still I still have edges to to to to polish, but I'm I'm working on it. So where did you go? Where did you go from New York? Uh, from New York, I went to Memphis, so Memphis, Tennessee. This is where I started my American dream. And again, this is something that uh I I always say it. I would never succeed, maybe not the way I succeeded. If not, American people, if not, American culture, if not the help I got from people who didn't know me from Adam. There were people coming to my apartment. I had no furniture, so I was thinking, what? This is my apartment is great. Uh, I can sleep on the floor. No, they brought me a bed. They brought me a shelves. They

• 2:19:30Speaker 05

  everything that I had in this apartment, I got from my American friends. They were coming to me, bringing me clothes, because the clothes that I had from like from seventies and really wasn't didn't fit in, I wouldn't fit between people. So they were bringing me clothes. They were bringing me food, if I was, because I think I had like twenty dollars a week left after I pay my bills to buy food. So they were just checking my fridges, coming and say, hey, you know what? I think you need this. Let me bring you some hamburger meat. Let me bring you cereal. Well, with cereal itself, this is something that I I I never seen it before in my life. And then, when I was taken first time to shopping, to grocery shopping. Uh, for me, it was like a

• 2:20:17Speaker 05

  going from the normal world into sci fiction, um, into science fiction movie, right inside it. I've seen so many things I never seen in my life. And happened, I was on the aisle with the cereal box. I didn't know what it was, but it looks, those boxes look so nice, so good that I just loaded up my whole cart with the boxes. My American friends who helped me with the shopping, they were just laughing, saying, dude, you're easy, like, okay, if you want it, yeah, you got it. So I just loaded my whole shopping cart with the cereal. I was eating the cereal for a year later. But I I learned to like it. So my favorite was the Krispies.

• 2:20:54Speaker 05

  This uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. And then the one, that one and the chocolate one. So there was like milk with it. I love that. How did you wind up at Memphis? Um, well, when I came to uh my uh uh journey, I started in Warsaw.

• 2:21:12Speaker 05

  To Germany. In Germany, the political refugees, they had a center there, they're just only for political refugees.

• 2:21:21Speaker 05

  Where we spent time waiting for sponsor or somebody to help us assimilate in American society. So we had the people from State Department coming in through these three weeks, telling about America, you know, what to expect in America, how to live, what's the best way to go about things, what we need to do when we arrive to America. So that was a great help. I was like sponge, trying to soak all the information. And then, I remember I was calling the office and say, "Do I have any preferences where I would like to settle down in America?" I say, "My preference is to settle down in America. I don't care what you put in, but if you ask",

• 2:22:05Speaker 05

  because I was speaking Polish, "If you ask, I would like to go somewhere where it's hot, like hot, hot." "I'm tired of being cold." In Poland, we didn't have a good clothes. I was always freezing. So I'm like, "I'm so sick and tired of being cold. Put me somewhere where it's hot." So it's like, "Well, what do you think about Memphis, Tennessee?" So they took me to the map, showed me the map. "Do you know anything about Memphis, Tennessee?" "Well, I know, I knew that Elvis Presley was from Memphis, Tennessee." So I told him, "Ah, I know Elvis Presley is from Tennessee. Ah, great, you know it." "But is it hot up there?" "I said, "Yeah, it's very hot." I said, "Sign me up. I'm in." And they shipped me up to New York, back to Memphis. This is where I started my life.

• 2:22:50Speaker 05

  Got my first job as a janitor, then as a parts man, then as a mechanic, you know, these funny things like, I didn't have, I never had a car. I didn't even know in Poland anybody, any friend, I didn't, I did not have a friend in Poland who owned the car. So, but those are European cars. Would you like to, can you work on European cars? "Absolutely, yes." So they, they got me on the interview, there was a shilling. Company was there selling the Porsche, Sub and Audi. So the Porsche guy come in say like, "Well, it's kind of expensive car, the guy doesn't speak English, know nothing about cars, so maybe we just set it, maybe not today."

• 2:23:33Speaker 05

  So then the Audi mechanic came in, the same thing. And then we're waiting for the Sub mechanic to come in and I hear this big sound roar of the Harley Davidson. Where the motorcycle just running next to the, in the garage up there. The guy looking like a Sasquatch, maybe, looks like seven feet tall walks in. I say, "Hey, so that guy?" "Uh, yeah." "A Sub?" "I say, "Yeah." He looked at the, Tim Presley was a service manager at the time, I still remember his name. Uh, he looks at Tim, the manager, said, "I need a slave, sign him up."

• 2:24:14Speaker 05

  And here we are, so we, we became the really good friends, if not the best friends. Uh, he told me everything about cars I need to know, I was clueless, I had no idea. So he told me everything about Sub, I became a really good mechanic, to the point that even Mercedes came later and asked me if I want to work for them. So this guy, there's the guy who invited me for the steak party, when I broke his house with my fist. But, uh, so he, I remember trying to learn English, my English was still very difficult. I said, "Jim, I have idea. You're gonna read me the manuals and I will record you, I can listen to it."

• 2:24:57Speaker 05

  I thought he would kill me, it's like, "What did you just say? I'm going to read you like a mama story to children, I read you the ma-" And on the top of the Sub, Sub manual?

• 2:25:09Speaker 05

  I say, yeah, he say, yeah, I was thinking for that. Okay, but if you tell somebody, I fucking kill you. So, so I still have, I still have a Jim's recording somewhere there. Because what helped me, I was explaining to him that if I read the words and I'm listening at the same time, it's easier for me to understand what it is. And also I'm learning English at the same time. So this is the guy, eh eh, half gangster, eh eh, the guy who just wouldn't mind to go and just kill you if he had to. And become like my bigger brother, you know, helping me out. So there is many things that happen later in my life that would not happen if not this guy, you know.

• 2:25:53Speaker 05

  I owe this guy so much. We lost contact after I I left eh for the Navy. But if he is there, if he's listening up there, you know, Jimbo, I remember.

• 2:26:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:26:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:26:08Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man. It wouldn't surprise me if he's listening.

• 2:26:13Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 2:26:13Shawn Ryan?

  It would not surprise me if he's listening.

• 2:26:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, hopefully, or maybe he, I know he had a son too, so they, they're just great people. I owe them so much, I owe Jimbo, eh eh, my, I think the way my career moved on in America is because this guy. So, yeah.

• 2:26:32Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you go from?

• 2:26:34Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 2:26:34Shawn Ryan?

  Mechanics?

• 2:26:35Speaker 05

  From, from Navy, straight to the Navy.

• 2:26:38Shawn Ryan?

  How did the, how did the Navy pop on your radar?

• 2:26:40Speaker 05

  Well, you see, by this time, I already became US citizen. And I was living my American dream. I had everything I wanted. I was skydiving even. I was teaching skydiving. I was teaching AFF, I was AFF jump master. So eh, I was living my life out. Eh eh, whoa, and then the war broke out, the first Persian war. So I say, I am American. And I have such a great life. So what can I do for my American friends and for America? I think I can serve in the war. I remember this funny thing because I decided to join the military. I didn't know navy from army. For me, it was military, it was military. Army was everything.

• 2:27:22Speaker 05

  So I was just one day in the post office and I see this, what is it? Draft cards where everybody needs to fill up, high school kids. So I say, oh, wow, I mean, they are recruiting people even from post offices. I fill it up, I sign up for the army, the war is on, they're gonna get me soon. So I fill it up, mailed it off, came back to my apartment, I was living with some other skydivers, and I start packing myself. I said, like, what are you doing? You cannot just move out, you know, we have a contract here, we have to pay the rent and stuff. No, no, no, I say, I'm not moving out yet, but I'm packing myself because I'm going to war. I'm going to war to fight for America.

• 2:28:05Speaker 05

  And it was like, whoa, wait a minute, we didn't know anything, how did you sign it up? I say, I went to the post office, I filled it up, I sent it off, and I'm just waiting for them to just come and get me. I said, like, no, that doesn't work like that. You need to go actually to recruiting office. And there actually a letter came in that, well, thank you, but no, thank you, you are not required to fill this card, you are already too old for that. So I was like thirty-two at the time. So I say, okay, well, the war is going on and I want to pay my freedom back. So I want to help and support my country, my America.

• 2:28:46Speaker 05

  So I went to the army recruiting office and I said, hey, this is who I am, this is what happened to me, this is why I'm here, and I want to join military, I want to go to war. So it's like, where would you, okay, well, sure, there's only, you need preferences, where would you like to serve? I say, well, whoever goes first to in combat, sign me up. I had no idea. But it's like, sign me up, whatever, go, I want to go to war, fight on behalf of America and American people. So they uh they're like, okay infantry. I said, I don't I don't know what infantry is, but if you say so, um sign me up. So they proceeded with the paperwork and everything.

• 2:29:31Speaker 05

  And that was pretty close to everything being completed. And then Navy SEALs showed up in mannequins, leapfrogs. They were doing some demo jumps. So they came to our drop zone to do some jumps. I started talking to them. And I still remember a guy who I know, he is Tim O'Hara. He he was a firefighter in San Diego. So he is the guy I talked to and he was just, I was like fascinated. He was a really good skydiver. You know, so we did many jumps together with also with his guys. And and he just talked to me and said like, look, you want to go on SEALs? Because you want to skydive, right? In Army, you want to be skydiving. But you like skydiving to combat parachute jumps and stuff? Why don't you go join Navy SEALs? Like, I didn't know what the SEALs were.

• 2:30:14Speaker 05

  For me, it was not important to be a SEAL. It was important to serve America. So um I say, okay. So. But I had to go to Army guys and tell them like, all this work you did for me. I'm sorry, but I'm going next door. So they uh it was awkward because I made friends with them. But I said, well, okay, I'll do it. I want I want to join the Navy. So I went and grabbed the paper, went up there and they finished it up. And they were fair with me because they say, okay, you are thirty two, going thirty three. So you are not eligible for SEAL program because you are too old. The cut of age is twenty eight. But if you sign this paper, you go to boot camp, they make a SEAL out of you.

• 2:30:58Speaker 05

  You know, you look strong guy, so they're gonna make a SEAL out of you. I say, okay, well, this again, my goal was not to join Navy SEALs. My goal goal was to go join America in the war and support. So I say, yeah, that's fine. If not, they're just, I will serve whatever America needs me. Because that was my idea. I didn't know where to go. So so I signed it up.

• 2:31:24Speaker 05

  And they told me, okay, we'll be fair with you. If you go as an designated, the Navy will put you scraping decks or will do something that you might not like. Why don't you go pick the job in the Navy? So after boot camp, you go to your A school and then you go in their SEAL training. If you fall out, I couldn't go in SEAL training at the time, but they didn't tell me that. So you go to SEAL training, you fall out, you will fall back on your job. So you don't go scraping decks. You'll be doing whatever the Navy trained you to do. So I say, okay, so what's the best job? I say, well, you are skydiving, right? I say, yes. Parachute reger. I say, okay, sign me up. Parachute reger.

• 2:32:07Speaker 05

  And so, but they say, okay, if you want to go parachute reger, you will have to leave. So we were doing the paperwork. Maybe like three weeks later, they call me or a month later. I say, okay, to be a parachute reger, there's two options now. You can go to boot camp like next week and right after the boot camp, your A school starts, the parachute reging school, or you have to wait like four, five months and then wherever the next parachute reging school is to coordinate it with you going to boot camp and to school. So I was thinking like, shit, the world may end by this time. So sign me up for the closest one. I call my girlfriend and I say, hey, look, I'm leaving next,

• 2:32:51Speaker 05

  next week I'm, I'm joining the Navy. I'm leaving next week. She's like, what? I say, yeah, let's get married. So, so we just got married. We, we ran, that was a Monday, I think. Tuesday, we ran like in the afternoon, after her work to the, to the office in Memphis. We found the judge who was already leaving, but I think we looked so desperate. He said, okay, let me go sign you up. So he married us. And then I went on, I think on Friday, I went to depth, into depth. Then I was sworn in. And I think Saturday or Sunday, I flew, they flew me and a few other guys from Memphis to Great Lakes

• 2:33:35Speaker 05

  to, to, you know, is that's how my adventure started. So that's, that's my beginning of my Navy time. And again,

• 2:33:45Speaker 05

  I just wanted to serve. It didn't matter where I serve. I would say, my idea was to serve where America needs me. That's whatever they, I can be useful in. And, but I passed the, the, the test, the SEAL test. They did let you try out? They let me try, yes, yes. But, so, but they say that I will have to ask for the waiver for my age. And this is where I met, uh, so in boot camp, but then I had a kidney stone. So they say, okay, now, and I still have this document today that does not disqualify me from SEAL training, from the program.

• 2:34:25Speaker 05

  But, uh, I had to wait for at least a year or two before I can reapply again because the kidney stone may recur. I have the document at home. And then, um, so I say, okay, what is that? It's not a big deal. I just want to serve. And, uh, so I graduated from boot camp as a number one recruit. I'm very proud of it because, you know, like, my English was still not perfect. And, uh, but I'm always, I excel in the, like academics, I excel in the PTE, I excel in everything I did. So I was selected to be the number one graduating recruit from the entire batch. So I got the Military Excellence Award from boot camp. I'm very proud of it.

• 2:35:09Speaker 05

  And then, uh, I had a good instructors too. So then, uh, I went to A school. And this is where I met Jason Cabell, my friend of mine, really good friend of mine. We later met in Iraq, in Baghdad, doing combat together. So, I like, I couldn't swim very well. Uh, because I'd never seen the ocean, I'd never seen the sea. He says, but he was so sure he is going to make. And he couldn't swim. He swam even worse than I do. So he was like very, for me, it was inspirational because he can, I look, this guy is struggling, struggling to just stay on the surface. And he's going to be a SEAL. So I'm going to make it too. So, so we were having, we tried to swim and, and all that stuff.

• 2:35:53Speaker 05

  We got better, of course. He went to baths. I had to wait for my, uh, for my orders, uh, first. But even before I wait for my orders, I went on, in Millington, in the A school. I found the SEAL motivator, it was Les Barrios, Rest in Peace brother. And I went to him, I say, "Look, I have a document, I would like to be a SEAL if possible, but my documents, my medical records states I had a kidney stone, so I cannot apply for the program for like a year or two years." And he looked at me and said, "Okay, well, can you pass the test?" I say, "Yeah, I passed the test." "Bring me your documents." At that time, there was no electronic document, so he wrote me the check.

• 2:36:37Speaker 05

  I ran with it to medical, got my medical record, came to him. I said, "Okay, here it is." I said, "Okay, step outside." Was I step outside and just listen?

• 2:36:51Speaker 05

  "All right, come on in." So, look, he's sitting at his desk, it's like, "Look, I looked through your medical record, I really can't find anything about a kidney stone, can you help me find it?" I say, "Yeah, it's right here." So we look and say, "No, it's not here." He looks at me and say, "Are you sure you had the kidney stone?" And by this time, I'm like, "I'm sure I didn't." "Okay, that's good enough." So, so, so yeah, they put me on hold after the graduate form. I also graduated, I think, one on the top on the class. So then I was waiting for the waivers, and I think the waiver was granted to me because I excel in everything I did, I did so well. And they, I think they seen that maybe, maybe this guy, because of his age,

• 2:37:36Speaker 05

  maybe his age will not inhibit him a lot, but we give him a chance. So eventually, after like maybe two months being on hold in the, in the A school, I got my orders to bats. I called Jason Cabal, I said, "Brother, I'm coming after you." He gave me a tape, I still remember the tape. I still have it at home, the tape that he gave me, it was the little cassette we used to play. So I was just playing it on the, on the, on the road, because I was driving to California, to San Diego. So that's how my Navy career started, how my SEAL career started.

• 2:38:12Speaker 07

  Did you have any idea what a SEAL was at that time?

• 2:38:15Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:38:15Speaker 07

  Other than skydivers?

• 2:38:17Speaker 05

  No, except them. Uh, well, they show me the, uh, uh, the, the, the, the video in the recruiting station. I say, wow, this is really cool, but what's the difference between army? And I was like, it looked like an army to me, but you know, it was, was the unit that this guy recommended to me and if I could get up there is fine. But again, that was not the driving, that's not motivate me to join the Navy. So for me, it was not really that important. But my imagine, the way I imagine, uh, SEAL training was they would be like present. So I, I couldn't think of any other way. Those are special forces. So they will lock you up there in some camp and you will be just going through all these evolutions.

• 2:39:01Speaker 05

  You'll be going through all the training, totally isolated from people. That was my imagination. And I was thinking like, well, you know what? I'm, I'm married now, so it would be kind of sad for my wife. But well, I survived communist prison. That, that, at least here, they don't try to kill you, right? They just try to make you better, unlike in communist prison. So, so I say, I'll be fine. Well, that was just, as you know, is, is not dead. There is no prison. Actually, you have enough freedom. They give you enough rope. So you can hang yourself if you are not careful with what you do in baths. They, they, you just have to manage not only the training, but you need to manage yourself as well.

• 2:39:42Speaker 05

  So, um, I remember a lot of guys going out and partying and, uh, drinking, and I would love to do it too. And I did sometimes too, but for me, it was more often it was Ben Gay, you know, rubbing on my bustles and like, oh God, I need to survive. Tomorrow will be maybe better. Tomorrow I feel better. Let's hope so. So like as they were drinking, I was rubbing the Ben Gay in myself, trying to bring myself better in the bed and trying to go to bed early. But it helped, you know, and I did, I did very well, you know, it's like never, uh, um, I was rolled back only in the, at the beginning of the first phase because I get infection in my leg. Uh, they got the, I got MRSA on the back of my tie.

• 2:40:27Speaker 05

  So swollen so bad that I, I couldn't put my pants on. So actually I had to cut my pants to go to medical. But I figure out this, so okay, I'm not going to tell them anything. I just go through the rest of this week, it was like two more days with the leg like this. On Friday, right after they shut down the evolutions, I run up to Balboa to hospital, let them fix it. So I will have a three days basically to heal and I should be okay. Well, didn't work that way. I went up there, they did cut this big piece, the big white piece out of it. And it was thick like my pinky. And uh, and my leg was coming down a little bit, I could put my pants on.

• 2:41:08Speaker 05

  So uh, but then in the morning, Monday morning, when I was driving to Baza Swal again. So I had no choice, but I had to go to our medical in Baza and tell them what happened. So what I find out is Balboa, just they cut this out and just let me go. Instead of irrigating it for maybe like an hour. And that's what they did. They actually gave me antibiotics, they put me on the gurney. And they put the IV into my, in that big hole in my leg. And they keep irrigating for like two, three hours. And like my legs, the swelling came out and everything was good. So they banned my legs and I came back and said, we have to roll you.

• 2:41:50Speaker 05

  I say, you can't roll me. I say, no, we have to. We have a mud flats where we are going to. You cannot go with leg like this. And the hell week next, you cannot go to hell week with a leg like this. So I was really like broken, you know, I was like, holy shit, and I don't want to be rolled. I said, please let me stay in the class. So I think it was instructor Graves, no, it's instructor Fitz Henry. Um, he says like, okay, if you can run here five, sprint around five times around this thing, I might keep you in the class. So I say, right on, you know, so, but I had to still get a cut on my pants because, you know, I had to, I couldn't put them on. Uh, and I run, I run through all these fives and stuff. I said, can I stay?

• 2:42:32Speaker 05

  It's like, nope, 185. So there was from my 184, right at the beginning before the mud flats, I got rolled 185, I had to start again. But it allowed me to heal my leg. I don't think I would be able to, I would make through hell week with this big open wound on my leg with infection in my leg and like swollen like the elephant leg. Wow. So yeah, so that was, that was my, uh, my first phase.

• 2:42:59Speaker 07

  What did you think? What did you think about it? Did you find it difficult being from your?

• 2:43:04Speaker 05

  I found it physically very difficult, but I didn't find it mentally difficult. Because maybe when I, when I came to Bads, I, I was thinking that this is going to be hell,

• 2:43:20Speaker 05

  that in, is in the hell, that this is going to be extremely, and it was physically, but mentally, like, for some reason, the instructors yelling, calling names and all that stuff didn't faze me. I kind of expected it. I thought that this is, actually, I thought it was funny, because like, I didn't do anything. I yelled it for nothing, so I didn't show it to instructors, and I think it was funny. I took everything seriously. When they say drop down, I didn't question, I dropped down and pushed it out, whatever I was told to do. And I did, I think very well, actually, one of the instructor, instructor, timer, just looked at me and said, "Drop down, fifty." So I just looked, fifty, I think it was a first face, so the first face, you don't do fifty. But, so I did it, I stand up, "Who are you, instructor?"

• 2:44:04Speaker 05

  He just looked at me and said, "Well, you know what? I think I like you. Get the fuck out of here. Go back in the cla- in, in, in, in the class." So, and then in the Hell Week, you remember that there's a time after maybe two, three days, when they get you together, and they ask you, "Okay, tell me why you come, you come here to Bads." And I just had to tell them what's there. So I hear, guys, "Well, I came here to try to be the best. I'm here to, and I will try to finish this training, give my best, and so and so." And so when they asked me, I say, "Fuck, I didn't come here to try. I came here to become a seal." And either I will, my body will break down, or you kick me out, but I, I will come out of this, as a, as a, I will graduate from this program.

• 2:44:46Speaker 05

  I didn't came here to try. I mean, I didn't come here to try. They got mad, but they, I know they liked it, because I, I, I can, I can see them like, right on. And then, you know, so there's a lot of things like this with the knives, you know, we had these knife inspections. So they always called me, because my knife, you know, there was like cheesy knife, but fairly cheap, and they got, you had to maintain them for a while. I could put my knife, just the edge, like on my hand, on my arm, and just let it slide, it would shave your hand. They were that sharp. So they had, they were calling me sometimes to demonstrate to other classes, how, um... How, you know, how to maintain the equipment. Also on the swim, remember I couldn't swim very well, neither was Jason Cabal.

• 2:45:30Speaker 05

  And not only that I couldn't swim very well, I could swim only on one side, the side stroke. So then on the top of it, they put the mask on me. I have never swam with mask in my life. This is the really thing, I thought I would drown. Because I remember I was swimming, I couldn't breathe, the mask closed my nose. And I was, I was breathing as much water, I think as much the air. And when I came out of that pool after the first few swims, my belly was so big that just, I could feel water sloshing in it. And there were times that I remember I was swimming, I was like, I'm about to pass out.

• 2:46:12Speaker 05

  I have so much water in my lungs and I have black spots in my eyes. But that's like, if I stop, they will kick me out. So I know they are watching, there are instructors there. If I pass out, I'm not going to die. So I was just like, you have to trust them. And slowly become easier and easier. By the end of my, that was in the fourth phase, it was a pre-phase. When we finished, I was asked actually to demonstrate the new guys coming into that training, how to do the side stroke. So I was very proud of it.

• 2:46:47Speaker 07

  Wow, wow.

• 2:46:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. And Jason Cabal too, he became a really good swimmer. We are still friends, so we talk to each other. And a great guy, was very inspirational, inspirational for me. So, yeah.

• 2:47:03Speaker 07

  So you graduated BUDs at age thirty-three?

• 2:47:06Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:47:07Speaker 07

  Is that correct?

• 2:47:07Speaker 05

  At thirty-three, yes. And we were checking to team in March two thousand, March nineteen ninety-three, CO Team Two.

• 2:47:18Speaker 07

  Well, not very many people get through BUDs in their thirties.

• 2:47:22Speaker 05

  No, it's, I think there's...

• 2:47:25Speaker 05

  There is very few people that made it. I think I'm one of that few that not only made through bars, but made through the SEAL teams, into the SEAL teams. Because as you know, very often, people who made through bars, they still don't cut. And they are either removed from SQT, or today, before it was SQT, or they were being removed while in the platoon, either pre-World Cup, or during the event after deployments, like, well, you are not the guy. So you need to leave. And I have friends that came with me or after me, who made through bars to that selection, checked into the teams, and they were sent to the fleet.

• 2:48:10Speaker 05

  That was not easy. Not easy for me being old, because especially with my English too. I need to say that, but at that time, I was still at the stage that when you talk to me, I had to translate myself in Polish before I speak to you. I had to translate on English. But I guess I did it so fast, I was able to do it so fast, that people seldom noticed that. That the issues show up in CQB, where you have to be on your feet, you have to be very fast. And that's when I really start

• 2:48:51Speaker 05

  start occurring to me that I need to improve my English. I need to get better with my English. Matter of fact, when I came back from the first deployment, you know, when you come back from deployment, you pick the schools. I want to be a sniper, I want to go to diving schools, jumping school. I want to be instructor here, there. Well, for me, I didn't have a choice. I was sent to English 101 school right away. So it's like the guys were like, hey, we are going to the sniper school. We are going Draga. So I was walking to the center up there, it's like, English 101.

• 2:49:25Speaker 05

  But you know, it helped me. It it it did make the big difference and it allowed me actually to be successful in my career.

• 2:49:33Shawn Ryan?

  How were you greeted at SEAL Team Two when you showed up?

• 2:49:36Speaker 05

  Uh, I think like most of the guys, I was beat up pretty much. Not, you know, not like a beat up, but I remember I didn't even make out of the building. So we checked the quarter deck. I checked in the, uh, with Master Chief, I think with XO, and I was told to, uh, later go to the supply, get my gear. So as soon as I walked out of the building, the big courtyard in the SEAL Team Two, uh, there was other guys waiting over there. I say, okay, yeah, new FNG.

• 2:50:08Speaker 05

  Hop on the bars. I already knew, you know, that's like, you don't argue with these old SEALs. You just do what they say. So I jumped on the bars, the pull-ups, sit-ups. Uh, basically, I did the whole, whole PT, uh, the, the, the, the PT test that we do every year. And then they, they do want to, because my, my uniform, that was the nicest uniform I could have. Change in SEAL Team Two, I just, I press, I just pick every little things, make sure that it's so perfect. So after this first PT on the concrete, that looked like a, like, like, like shit. It was really bad. You know, the store up, sweaty, dirty, dust everywhere. And, you know, my, my, my nice shoes scuffed.

• 2:50:50Speaker 05

  And so then they didn't want to walk me through quarter deck because it was frowned upon. So they took me to the back gate. They woke me up when we started the three miles run. And so, okay, now you run, you have, we'll see your time, what you have. So now you see the dude with the torn-up uniform, holding his hat to his head, running like crazy on the, on base because it was on, on, on, on the, uh, there was nothing in the thing, it was in the base, outside the SEAL Teams. So I'm su- I'm sure people were thinking, what this crazy guy? What happened to this guy here? Uh, so I did that three miles run, came back, they say, okay, I go, go continue with your, uh, staff now. So I went to supply, got my gun, uh, the guns, got my, all my weapons, whatever. The,

• 2:51:30Speaker 05

  that's the, uh, the, all the gear that I needed. I was assigned the cage, uh, in SEAL Team Two, and I moved my staff there. And as my career, my, my adventure with SEAL Teams started. So that was my welcome to SEAL Teams. And, you know, very often that was... Other new guys too, a lot of our new guys. And one day they say, "Okay, guys, you are invited for Friday kegger." At that time in SEAL Team 2, and all the SEAL Teams, I think, Friday ended at noon. So by then, after PT, you just clean your gear, clean yourself, and you can go home. Except, in SEAL Team 2, you're required to attend the kegger. So keg of beer was waiting in the high bay.

• 2:52:12Speaker 05

  So they say, "You guys invited for the kegger today, Friday." So me and other new guys, like, "Dude." So I think they like us, you know, they invite us to have a party with them, to mingle with these old guys, these old experienced SEALs. So I was so excited, I think we all were. But as soon as we walk in, you know, we get jumped, taped, a little bit kicked and beat up, hang on the chains, and just like bats upside down, pull up to the roof of the high bay. While these guys were drinking, you know, so they were drinking, laughing, we just were hanging like a bats, all taped up. Once every while, they roll us down, on the chains, stone chains.

• 2:52:54Speaker 05

  They have the dragger bag, you know, the bag from the diving rig with the pipe. So here, a new guy, stick in your mouth, stick in your mouth, they put the beer in it, and just squeeze, and so it goes everywhere. "All right, drink enough, let's go back to rest." So that was our first days in the teams. Today it doesn't happen, or at least we're not to that extent, because of this frown upon. But at that time, there was like regular welcome to SEAL Teams, and I didn't mind it, I mean, it was okay. I've seen worse.

• 2:53:25Speaker 07

  Where, so where was your, where was your first deployment?

• 2:53:30Speaker 05

  First deployment, we deployed to, it wasn't there when the Bosnia happened. We deployed to Italy, and that was the same time when our pilot got shot down. So my platoon was one of the platoons that were flying over the Adriatic. Because if we could locate him, we could pick him up. So we were searching for him. The other unit actually was tasked with recovering him. But we were on standby, ready to recover him. That was my first deployment. So we were, normally we deployed to Makahannish in England, in Great Britain. But this deployment was to, they put us in Italy. So this is where we stayed, I stayed throughout the first deployment.

• 2:54:15Speaker 05

  Again, we didn't find the guy, that somebody else pulled our pilot out. But I'm proud of participating in these efforts.

• 2:54:23Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, were you upset that you missed the war?

• 2:54:32Speaker 05

  Well, at this time, my concern was that I'm serving America. I'm doing good things for America. And the war, yeah, I wish I could get on it. It was kind of too late, so, you know. What I learned later too, if you chase the war, you will never find, the war will find you, just like happened to me later. But I was happy where I was. You know, my idea was to join the military for the time of war. And I had such a great life, that after the war, I would come back and I would resume my life. But then, the life that I started in the Navy was even, was so fascinating.

• 2:55:18Speaker 05

  I never left, I left 20 years later.

• 2:55:22Speaker 05

  So, I was not upset, but I wish I met the war. I wish I went to that war, but I missed it.

• 2:55:32Shawn Ryan?

  And how was your wife? Did she follow you through all this?

• 2:55:36Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 2:55:37Shawn Ryan?

  Your wife.

• 2:55:38Speaker 05

  My wife, yes, so, yeah, so, that marriage didn't last long.

• 2:55:45Speaker 05

  See, the way, as you know, our schedule is constantly on the road, you're constantly somewhere. The thing is, is in what I learned to understand is, as we do not have that the routine, because our life change every month, every two months, you go do something else. Uh, our spouses usually stay in the same place, they have the same routine, they go to the same places. And eventually they meet somebody they are interested in and very often that marriage ends this way. So I didn't understand at that time, I was really upset, but that's what eventually happened. So we did get eventually divorce and then that's actually what um.

• 2:56:24Speaker 05

  It was later in the, in the CO teams, when I came back from my deployment, then the thing fall apart, but um.

• 2:56:31Speaker 07

  Well, we'll get there.

• 2:56:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:56:33Speaker 07

  When was, where were you when September 11th happened?

• 2:56:36Speaker 05

  When September 11th happened, I was on the, in the gym in CO team two. Were working out, I still vividly remember that. Um, somebody came in and say, hey guys, I just, I just came back from quarter deck. The airplane hit one of the twin towers.

• 2:56:58Speaker 05

  Uh, so like most of us, right, well, some pilot of small airplane got lost. And kill himself, so sad, but let's go to workout. And then the other guy, another guys, there is a, uh, those big jetliner that hit towers. And something is going on, so we left the gym, went to quarter deck on CO team two. Were watching, I was actually watching when these fucking bastards around the, uh, the second airplane, flew the second airplane to another, a second tower, I was watching it. I knew we're gonna be hunting these scumbags.

• 2:57:38Speaker 05

  I knew that their time is up and we'll be killing them hopefully soon.

• 2:57:44Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 2:57:46Speaker 05

  I was watching that and it's still very vivid in my memory.

• 2:57:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:57:56Speaker 07

  What were the prelim conversations that were happening after that at the SEAL Team?

• 2:58:03Speaker 05

  It's time to start killing these bastards. You know, SEAL Teams, I think, the attitude is a bit different. You know, when I went to Iraq, especially after what I've witnessed, what I've seen on September 11, I did not go there to win hearts and minds. Fuck their hearts and their minds. I want them to kill them, kill them, to kill the terrorists. I didn't, that's all I was thinking, that's kill as many as many you can. The only regret I have from Iraq, we didn't kill enough of them. Because, and I'm taking it very seriously, because even today, decades after the war,

• 2:58:48Speaker 05

  what happened there, I still question myself, what if we get that son of the, if we kill this bastard, if we didn't get him, let him get away, if we kill this son of a bitch, maybe one of my brothers, our brothers would come back home, whether it was Army, Marines, or the Navy. You know, that's for us, they're all brothers, and we're all in that fight together. So sometimes I'd, well, maybe if we could kill the bastards, get rid of them, then there would be, some of our brothers would come back. You know, because I believe that, you know, the best way to win war on terror is to terrorize the terrorists. I am terrorist terrorizer.

• 2:59:34Speaker 05

  I have no qualms dealing with these scumbags. You cannot reason with terrorists. You just have to kill them and get rid of them. And that was my attitude when I went to Iraq, to fight on behalf of America and American people.

• 2:59:59Shawn Ryan?

  And so, how long was it, how long was it after September 11th that you?

• 3:00:05Speaker 05

  Well, so, the west coast was already in the war, right? They were fighting, that, that was, I think, I don't know when the invasion happened, like March or something, 2003, in Iraq. Something at the beginning of the year. We deploy, my platoon, SEAL platoon, deployed to Central South America at the time. So, we're working there. In the middle of deployment, I get a call, say, "Hey, Drago, this is a, there is a Polish unit, a SAV unit, operating with SEALs in Baghdad. And I think we need you there, I want you to go and help us out, coordinate that stuff with them."

• 3:00:44Speaker 05

  So, you pack your stuff, you are three months into deployment, I think, so you're gonna spend there for three months, to keep up the six-month cycle.

• 3:00:55Speaker 05

  And then you can, you can back and start your regular workup with your new platoon and stuff. So, in the middle of the platoon, in the middle of deployment, you know, you can imagine the guys being pissed off, because we are aggressive guys. We are type A personalities, so everybody wants to get into the war, everybody wants to fight the war. So, when they find out that I'm just the only I'm leaving to Baghdad, they were, "Drago, I want to go there too, what the hell, how did you pull this off?", you know? Well, I didn't, I was just asked, I was ordered to go there. But they all wanted to go, they, I don't know a SEAL who would not want to go to war.

• 3:01:33Shawn Ryan?

  Me neither.

• 3:01:34Speaker 05

  So, so, I know they were, they were kind of like pissed off, but the good way, you know, they were very supportive. And then, so I left, after the, like, three months in deployment, for the three months. And that was, we were very busy, we were busy every single night, pretty much. And then, when the three months came in, like...

• 3:01:58Speaker 05

  I don't hear anything from my command. And I was calling sometimes Rob O'Neill. We're really good friends. And we did entire platoon with Jaco together. That was the second platoon. And then the platoon I'm talking right now is my third platoon. So we, I call him and say, hey, Rob, just tell the command I'm here, I'm doing fine. I don't need anything. He say, yeah, I got you, Drago. But then three months passed, I don't hear from my command anything. They asked me if I would extend my stay in Baghdad, the Wessex guys. I say, absolutely, yes, sign me up. I'm not going, I want to go back. So then I call Rob O'Neill, I say, hey, Rob, I'm still here.

• 3:02:42Speaker 05

  Just don't tell them anything. Just keep it quiet. I'm still here in Baghdad. So he say, yeah, I don't, Drago. So once every while, I call Rob O'Neill and I write him, I say, I'm still here. I'm doing good. Don't tell them anything. Don't tell them I'm here. And so there's like this, from this three months down to five, six, seven, eight, nine months. And I think I would stay there longer, but my NVGs broke. So I kept to call the command for new NVGs and they got me. They say, hey, where are you at? I say, in Baghdad. How long? Or like, almost a year on deployment.

• 3:03:13Speaker 07

  Well, hold on. So you, so you went to, you deployed to Iraq?

• 3:03:19Speaker 05

  In 2003, yes.

• 3:03:20Speaker 07

  With who?

• 3:03:21Speaker 05

  With, I deployed by myself. They sent me there to work with the SEAL Team Five, to help coordinate SEAL Team Five, the missions between SEAL Team Five and Grom. But we skipped the one platoon because there was a platoon with Jaco that I did before, right before that. So there was the platoon to Middle East. There was a first SEAL Team to Strike Platoon. And we, this is the time when we hijacked the Russian tanker, the Volga Neft, in the year 2000. So that was, that was a very good platoon. So it was Jaco.

• 3:03:59Speaker 05

  And one second, so that was my first, that was my fourth platoon, I think. This is getting mixed up. So first was to Italy, when the Grady got shut down. The second one was to Bosnia. Third one was with Jako, okay, so the third one was with Jako. So after the first platoon, I deployed to Yugoslavia, to Bosnia. This is where I met the strongest guy I think I ever met in CO teams. That was a guy who, when we went to France, to Lorient to train with the Frenchies. These were the ugly guys.

• 3:04:39Speaker 05

  So Chris, he put like so many plates on their bar to do the bench press. He bent that bar, the plates start falling off. So the Frenchies got all pissed off that we intentionally are destroying their equipment. Another robe just was doing the military presses, like 225 pounds or something. I mean, we were strong, we were big, and these little Frenchy guys, they look like the ballerinas. They have those spandex little pants. Well, yeah, I mean, and you know, the nasty part of it is that when on the pebble, we had a French officer with us in CO Team Two, and we just tried to help him and cater to him

• 3:05:24Speaker 05

  the best we could, getting the best trips, best per diem and all that stuff. So when we, he left to France. And then maybe like six months later, when we deployed to Bosnia, we actually had decided to have some exercise with the Frenchies guys, where this guy was stationed. So we called this guy, say, hey, we're coming, you know, are you excited? You know, we're gonna see your old friends. It was like, okay, yeah, just come on in, it's quick. We show up on Lorient, the gate of there, thanks, it was the winter time, it's slipping, raining. We see the bags and our...

• 3:05:59Speaker 05

  On our, uh, you know, gear for like three hours before the bastard showed up. And he showed up not to welcome us, he showed up and say, alright, I know you guys, I know you SEALs. If you fuck up any of our equipment, you're not gonna leave this base until you pay for all the broken equipment that you break. It was like, that's a nice welcome. And then they didn't want to work with us, you know, they, uh, they, uh, like, but, you know, work with us. I mean, look at these guys, they were like 110 pounds ballerinas. And they did actually wear the spandex, like, or these tight pants. So I say, just give them the tutu and you have a perfect baller.

• 3:06:40Speaker 05

  So, uh, and, and, yeah, and then we walk into their gym and they have those like jumping jacks, you know, their, their, their, their weights, like what they were using was like five pounders, six pounders. And we have one of the strongest guy in the SEAL teams, Chris. And he walks in, he breaks their freaking, uh, equipment. They get even more pissed off, they didn't want to jump with us, we didn't do anything with these guys. And, um, so they, they didn't really like, I guess they didn't like us and we stopped liking them too. Because I say, I remember one of the guys asked Chris, Chris Stroop, I can't say his name because I asked him for permission for, for it. So, again, that was one of the strongest, strongest team guy I met, I have met.

• 3:07:25Speaker 05

  And also he cut, created the programs for us, how to get big and strong. By the time we finished that, that, uh, deployment, where entire platoon was over 200 pounds each. So, uh, that was a Chris's, uh, big contribution to make us stronger and better. So they, they, they just, w- w- we just couldn't get along, I guess, very well. And, uh, one of these guys asked Chris, well, you are so big, can you run? I was like, I was like, unlike you, we don't run away from the battlefield, so we, no, I'm, uh, I don't have to run that fast, but I can beat you up. So, it's like, okay, okay, okay. And then, you know, we had a international incident.

• 3:08:12Speaker 05

  Two of them, actually. So first one, we're going to Saint-Maurice to do some exercises there in Switzerland. So we decide we'll fly a C-130 and we jump on the lake in Saint-Maurice. Uh, this big frozen lake. It was pretty beautiful because the C-130 was flying below the top of the two mountains on both sides. And right in the middle of it, so when we jump out of it, we have maybe five, six second delay. We could see the, uh, the mountains just going on both sides in free fall, then we open parachutes. Well, what did, we didn't know, and we decided to get a shortcut instead of ferrying our ammunition through the convoy, through the roads from Germany to Switzerland.

• 3:08:56Speaker 05

  We say, well, to hell with it, we just loaded up our guns, we put the ammo in the, in the rucksacks, and we jump in. So we did, and there was a bunch of civilians on this lake walking, you know, during that. There were like trails made up on this lake, on the ice. So we basically jumped right into the civilian population. And they look at us, so we just unload the gun, you pull the, uh, you know, unload the guns, make safe. And they seen it. Well, it turned out to be that you are not allowed to bring in Switzerland, guns and ammo in the same place, especially loaded guns. So, um, I think we're the first troops in Second World War that landed in Switzerland with loaded guns.

• 3:09:39Speaker 05

  This was like, alright, I know my platoon actually had a lot of explanation to do. But then we got to, we are invited to, it was the time when the Switzerland was accused of stealing, uh, gold from Holocaust victims. And, uh, and there was even lawsuit going, uh, filed because of that. Uh, tried to recover the gold that supposedly Swiss, Swiss stalled from Jewish people and Holocaust victim. But we were invited to dinner up there. We already got over the jumping into the Saint Moritz, into Saint Moritz with loaded guns. So we got over, we barely got over with that.

• 3:10:23Speaker 05

  We are invited to dinner now. So they, they run like at top of the mountain. So we go on this little train, like a choo-choo thing, and go straight up. So we go up there. We are the best restaurant supposedly in Saint Moritz. And the guy who was guiding us say, say, hey, um,

• 3:10:43Speaker 05

  so this is chef, so he's such a great chef known in the entire world. And he has like five golden spoons here. Chef, can you go and bring the spoon? Like, I never held the gold thing, maybe ring, but entire spoon of gold and I've been holding my life. So I was like, holy shit, this is heavy, solid, wow, you know? I can brag about it, I was holding the gold spoon in my hand. So when the spoon went around, everybody until we went to Chris, the strongest guy, he look at this, say like, well chef, so how many, you think that gold of yours, how many Jewish teeth went into that spoon?

• 3:11:27Speaker 05

  That was like, I got quiet. The guy walked up, took the spoon, he left. We never seen the guy again. We were just ushered out very quickly out of the restaurant, go down, and we never were allowed to go to the restaurant again. Holy shit. But you know what? There was legitimate, I guess legitimate questions. I, I believe, in my opinion, the gold, the Swiss were stealing that Holocaust victims' gold. And they were benefiting over the Second World War. So the guy had the balls to ask about it. But you can cut it out if you think it's controversial. But that really happened. So there was like, well, we were all stunned. But like, well, you know, he's right, it's a legitimate question. Yeah. Because that basically, that, that gold, that...

• 3:12:13Speaker 05

  In my opinion, was stolen by Switzerland from Holocaust victims.

• 3:12:17Speaker 07

  That's interesting. I didn't, um, I don't know much about that.

• 3:12:20Speaker 05

  Well, there's a, actually, there was a lawsuit filed by things, by people trying to recover that gold. I don't know. I think there was, came to some agreement, but you can Google it up. I, I, I read about it just not too long time ago as well. There was a time, but I remember there was very common to hear this accusation in nineteen seventy-nine, uh, nineteen seventy-eight, nineteen, uh, I'm sorry, nineteen ninety-eight, uh, timeframe. So, yeah, that's.

• 3:12:52Speaker 07

  Wow, I had no idea. I don't know anything about that. That's.

• 3:12:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:12:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, you know, it's just.

• 3:12:57Speaker 05

  It, it was.

• 3:12:58Speaker 07

  Asking a question.

• 3:12:59Speaker 05

  They, yeah, they, he was just asking the question because these people, they suffer so much. The Holocaust, we, we, we, it's hard to imagine for people, but there is millions of people. They were murdered just for being who they were.

• 3:13:16Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:13:16Speaker 05

  This is, this is something that could only happen in socialist state. Please remember that Germany was socialist state. Adolf Hitler was socialist. So we're talking about national socialism. But you know, whatever flavor of socialism it is, this is, they, they all have many things in common, as we talked earlier. The censorship, persecution of political opponents, jailing political opponents, uh, and the, that, those are the hallmarks of, of socialist state.

• 3:13:47Speaker 07

  So was, was your, was your Iraq deployment the first time you saw actual combat?

• 3:13:54Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, that was the first time I seen the combat, uh.

• 3:13:57Speaker 07

  And so let's, let's, let's talk about that. So you done four?

• 3:14:01Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:14:01Speaker 07

  Four deployments?

• 3:14:03Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:14:04Speaker 07

  And then you finally go to Iraq to see actual combats?

• 3:14:09Speaker 05

  Yes. Uh, we've seen a little bit of, in, in Bosnia, not so much combat, but we've seen the, the war scene. We've seen the, the, the, some of the atrocities committed there in Bosnia, you know, we. Hijack the Russian tanker and that time there was like a holy shit, the super mission, you know, like today is really not a big deal, but at the time, you know, to go and uh uh uh do VBSS on Russian tanker was really something. Let's talk about that then, cause. Oh, that's that's the Russian tanker? Yeah. That that was actually funny. So there was a Jaco's platoon, Jaco and Mr. Queen F. This was SEAL Team Two? SEAL Team. I didn't realize Jaco was ever on the East Coast. Oh yeah, he was my AOC. I've never met him.

• 3:14:53Speaker 05

  This platoon, yeah. Oh, I I tell you, it is a great guy. He's a great leader. That's what I hear. Yes, yes. I was honored to serve under his command. Very aggressive guy. I love that. Um, so we just, when we, when we got the permission to take down the tanker,

• 3:15:14Speaker 05

  you know, there's always competition between the team guys, right? And there's one squad, another squad. It was like, oh yeah, we are better. No, we are better. So uh my squad was taking it down because we had like three Russian speakers. I speak Russian. I speak Russian, Polish and Japanese. You speak Japanese? Yes. Watashi wa Nihongo Hanasu Koto ga dakimasu. Where did you learn Japanese? Uh, when I was doing kickboxing and I figured out then Karate Kukushinkai, some of those commands. I say, well, I can I can understand the commands, but why don't just learn the Japanese? And it happened that my mom, she was a teacher. She had a PhD professor from Hokkaido University working with her, uh, doing some uh study on Polish educational system.

• 3:16:00Speaker 05

  So uh I connected with him and he was teaching me Japanese. I was very proficient with Japanese. Actually, I was guiding Japanese students around my city in Los, especially those new who came. I did not speak Polish, so I was able to help. Um, you know, I forgot now it's like 40 years now, but I forgot a lot, not everything. But so I was Russian speaker. We had Rob, who was Russian speaker. And our OIC, Mr. Queen F, great officer, he was the Russian speaker. So we had the three Russian speakers on the initial assault.

• 3:16:33Speaker 05

  And the problem what is that they already knew they were looking at them. What was, well, hold on, what was the tanker? Volga left, I think Volga left one forty-two. You can, you can Google it up, it's online, a matter of fact, there's, we are in Balaklava, but there is picture of me standing on the bridge in the, in, in, on the Volga left. What, what were you taking the tanker down for? They were smuggling oil from Iraq illegally, there was a Russian tanker who smuggled oil. Uh, so we're tasked to take it down, but they knew it already. Uh, we're on the Monterey, uh, uh, uh, I think, forget, forget, forget? Forget.

• 3:17:12Speaker 05

  Forget, and, uh, the, I, I like the captain, he, he is like, okay, I was told by command that we cannot come closer to that ship than like a maybe mile. So, but, but if you want, if you, if you want to get closer to it, I come close. Uh, because they told me mile, but I can measure that mile with my own stick. So he just put almost next to them, so we look at them. I say, yeah, there's a bunch of like younger guys and, and there were some women. But the concern was because this is Russian tanker, uh, and the Russian flag and young people who might try to resist.

• 3:17:53Speaker 05

  So, you know, Navy has their own, uh, uh, boarding teams and they could do really easy. But because the concern that maybe firefight can ensue, uh, we're gonna take it down. And another thing too is they, they already knew that we were looking at them. So they were skirting, uh, the territorial waters of other countries. Basically, they could just turn left or right, whatever, get into territorial waters. We couldn't get them, we would have to jump off the ship. Not to cause the international incidents, no foreign, foreign, foreign, uh, forces invading or getting into another country. So we had to be quick.

• 3:18:34Speaker 05

  And I remember two o'clock in the night, Rob O'Neill came and waking me up, say dude, let's go, we need to go get dressed. So, uh, it's like, I think it was nine of us, was Jaco, was one of them. Mr. Fionda, we just got like a team. And it's not like the other guys were not team, everybody was A-team, but they just pick us up on the, like what we can do and stuff. So we flew over it, we fast roped on the tanker. We got this tanker down and then I think two minutes, if not the minute. And they were, yeah, they were already turning into the territorial waters. So we just had to go and learn how to turn it over. I have a cool picture with me at the, actually at the helm steering that tanker.

• 3:19:20Speaker 05

  And we did, we turned it over and then we searched the ship, of course, make sure there's no weapons left or anything. And this was the, the competition between the team guys and the squads come in. So we took down the target, the target, we, now we need to change. Because after we were changing like every six hours or every eight hours, whatever the shift was. So we said, okay, well, let's go bring that other squad, the other guys came in, we packed, we left. The other guys came in, we are going to change them, so we are going there and it's like, dude, you just leave all the guns, all the weapons there, you didn't search the ship very well. And can hear this, they had a big bag of clinking, clunking shit in it.

• 3:20:02Speaker 05

  So like, well, what did we miss? You know, that not really good, doesn't look good. And so we look into the bag, it's like freaking spoons, forks and butter knives. It's like, dude, that's not the weapon. Well, it can be used as a weapon, your squad didn't do that well, because that could be used as a weapon, even the butter knife. It's like, come on. Alright, so, so we just whatever, but Jaco, standing on the, on the bridge, the guy is still clunking that, that weapon. He takes the binoculars, oh, cool guys, you can store the butter knives, but what about those axes hanging on the doors up there? Did you mind to take them?

• 3:20:42Speaker 05

  So we go and change. And the first thing, Russians are pissed. You know, they were, they were very, they were good people, I think. They were just, well, good people, they were thieves, they were smoking oil. But they were, um, so they, they are pissed. They were compliant, but when we come back, they are pissed. So like, what's going on? We want our forks and knives and spoons back. It was like, wow, why, why, why do you, we need to eat. Well, eat with your hands, can you eat with your hands? We speak in Russia, they didn't speak English. And they say, well, we would, but we don't have teeth. And just like pull out, it's like, they, they had no teeth.

• 3:21:26Speaker 05

  There was like, uh, if you put all the teeth together from the crew, I don't think you would have a one full set. So, so I, I, I talked to Jack, I explained to him what happened. He said, I was getting the knives back and their forks and their spoons. So we called back and the, the, the boat came in and just, we called the big bag with their spoons. And they were happy like they can be, like there were no issues with them whatsoever. How many of them were there? Uh, I think maybe like fifteen or sixteen, something like that. It was not that, not that many, they're just, and then I had the argument with the. How did you board the ship? Here, we, we, we fast roped on it. So, and I know it was planned already because I was, I was the aero guys.

• 3:22:08Speaker 05

  I was told to rehearse guys on the very tall fast roping. So we're using the hundred twenty foot rope in, uh, in, uh, in Bahrain. I think we were in Bahrain at the time. Uh, we're using hundred twenty foot rope just to practice the, the fast roping right on the mark. And the heroes were practicing it too. So that was sort of the plan, I think, ahead. They knew this ship would come out of Iraq with the Iraqi oil. And we're gonna, we'll try to intercept it. So we practiced that and then it was easy. We just, uh, at two o'clock in the morning, rolled in over the ship, throw the ropes and just slide down it. It was pretty cool at the time, yeah. Right on. That was pretty cool.

• 3:22:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I never did any VBSS in the SEAL teams. Just one training out, that's it.

• 3:22:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, so that's for us, it was at that time, it was a big deal because we did suck small one, we did got couple of dogs with there that were smuggling, maybe something. We didn't bother with that, but take down the big tanker and the Russian flag was something. So we did that. We didn't torment the crew and the crew was not really, you know, they did what they had to do, but they were not not cowering or anything. They were just like normal people, you know?

• 3:23:32Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm. So we'll take another quick break. When we come back, we'll pick back up in Iraq.

• 3:23:41Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:24:22Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 3:24:43Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Drago, we're back from the break. Let's pick up to your first deployment to Iraq, where you saw a lot of combat, it sounds like. So you went from South America to Iraq to be a liaison with SEAL Team Five for the Polish Grom, correct? And so, a lot of questions, but I just, let's start with, what was it like for you to go to combat and to be a liaison with the Polish Grom?

• 3:25:19Shawn Ryan?

  Being Polish?

• 3:25:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, for me, first thing, I didn't know what the Grom was. I was told there was Polish Special Forces, so. And when I checked in Baghdad, I had a brief from my commanders, and they were kind of a bit standoffish, who say, "We don't know who these guys are," and they briefed me on what's expected, what we need to do. But then, I was thinking like, the best way to find out is just to go on the up with them and do it, work with them. But I was like, "Well, we don't know these guys that well, you know, we cannot risk your life." Because you know how it is, it gets dicey, you know, in those missions sometimes, especially

• 3:26:01Speaker 05

  the assaults and direct action mission. And I understand that, because if something was to happen to me while I'm working with Grom, there could be some repercussions to my commanders too, that they allow these things to happen. But I was able to convince them. I said, like, "Now, if we want to be effective, I mean, we need to cooperate closely, but I need to be with them too as well." So they allowed me to for maybe like first three missions, and then it was like, "Oh, I would say, "Yeah, these guys are great. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, do it. You know, that's fine. Let's coordinate. Let's do it." We started doing assaults together. So very often, we needed more people, we bring the Grom guys. If Grom needed more people, he used us on assault. And then

• 3:26:45Speaker 05

  one night, we did the, set up the perimeter, and the Grom was doing assault, I was doing it. And then next day was the vice versa, the Grom was the perimeter and we were doing assaults. So for me it was pretty great, I was like double dipping on the missions and I was, I loved it. So uh.

• 3:27:02Speaker 07

  How were they?

• 3:27:03Speaker 05

  Was that?

• 3:27:03Speaker 07

  Did they operate the same as we do?

• 3:27:05Speaker 05

  They operate pretty much the same way, we find out that their tactics are good, their weapons are pretty much the same. Their manufacturer of their M4 was different at the time and they had some issues in the desert environment with it, but that was just, I think, something minor. They was not disabled to them, we didn't know, we didn't really register it. And they were quick too, their assault techniques were very fast and uh I would say, I don't say brutal, but these guys are probably consumed professionals. They don't tolerate any deviation from their SOPs. You know, unless there's some flexibility is needed to save lives or to accomplish the mission, but otherwise they are, they are well trained and again, like I say, they are fast.

• 3:27:50Speaker 05

  The funny thing is when we, sometimes when we snatched the bandits terrorists, we had to get them with us. So if we got the call and it happened that, hey, we have bad guys moving on the location, you need to bail out, you need to stop what you're doing, get out. Uh so to evacuate sometimes they just, once they handcuffed the guy, we handcuffed the guys. So when we walk them down the stairs, Grom just tossed them to the window, the other guys were waiting to cut them, throw them on the Humvee and here we go. So the other guys were asking sometimes, why they get so fast? Uh I say because they don't fuck around, they're just like, when they, when they have a terrorist in their hands, they just, the guy is just flying out of the window to into Grom's carrying hands and they put him on the Humvee and they are ready to go.

• 3:28:36Speaker 05

  So that, that was a kind of surprise for me too, because I didn't expect them to be so well trained and so well coordinated. Their assaults were working just like ours. You know, it's very similar, if not the same tactics, because they learn from the same people, so they uh they had the exposure, also more exposure to SAS and German special forces. But this was not um. That was uh, that was good because we can actually benefit from their experience as they were benefiting from our experience. It was a mutual, I think, cooperation and work on accomplishing the mission. So our missions were together.

• 3:29:19Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Yeah, I never, I never got to work with them, but I remember when I was contracting for CIA, I saw them. They were co-located to an adjacent forward operating base. And those guys were busy. They were going out several times a night. They had these dune buggy looking things and they were just tearing it up.

• 3:29:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:29:42Shawn Ryan?

  But, and made me extremely jealous to watch. But I was like, oh man. Um, yeah. So what about their like team dynamic? Do they have a good camaraderie and?

• 3:29:56Speaker 05

  Same like ours. There's not much different. Yeah. They, but they are very close with each other. I would say, because they are way smaller than us, they are very close. They, these guys know each other better than they know their family members. Just like us too, you know? Um, so yeah, that's, that, that was a very, not only educational for me, I think for all of us to work with them. It was also very pleasant, very nice to work with them doing the assaults, take down the targets. We, we really enjoy working together. And it was getting to the point even that some of our guys were coming in. I said, hey

• 3:30:37Speaker 05

  Drago, can you help me? Can you talk to Grom guys so I can do assault with them? And just so I can put my record that I, I did work with Grom, I did the direct action missions with them. So yeah, we, I think they, they had, they didn't have a problem with them because they trusted us. So we have quite a few guys going on targets with them if they wanted to. And I have quite a few pictures of it too as well, from our guys working together with Grom.

• 3:31:07Shawn Ryan?

  Did they, did they speak English?

• 3:31:09Speaker 05

  At that time, they did not. Today, there's a requirement. You cannot be in the Grom without speaking English. So they are very proficient. I would say some of them speak better English than I do. Because there's a requirement as they go to regular schools. And besides the training day, everybody had to learn English. Besides, in Poland now, English is very popular. Like before, everybody had to know Russian. Like in my case, we had to learn Russian. Today, nobody forces people to learn English, but people want to learn English. Because it's so productive, because it's so empowering.

• 3:31:43Speaker 07

  What were the, I mean, I'm just curious, what were your conversations with them? I mean, did you have conversations about your childhood?

• 3:31:51Speaker 05

  Well, there were a lot of them. It was very technical ones. Because, you know, doing the assault mission with the direct action mission within the foreign unit is could be very dangerous. So we did rehearse things. You know, I had to learn their way of communication, their tactics. But because I speak Polish, then there was no issue to learn that stuff. But the first conversation was just, yeah, incorporate me into their structures. And that was, yeah, that was a little bit intense. But they were great guys. So they were very helpful. A lot of fun too, a lot of laughing, you know, because my Polish was very rusty at the time. Things that I still do say things that means totally different things than I intend to say.

• 3:32:36Speaker 05

  But at that time, yeah, so they were very helpful. But then we started drinking together. We started having a party together too, whenever there was a chance. It was a bit low, if we could. And that was, this is how we created bonds that persist even today between those team guys who worked with Grom or even those who didn't but helped about our missions with Grom. That big friendship continued too, you know. They still come here sometimes to States. When we go up there, they are always helpful, try to, you know, help you and accommodate our guys. So the friendship that we create on the battlefield continues and still is, we are very close.

• 3:33:19Speaker 07

  Had not been back to Poland since you left, correct?

• 3:33:22Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:33:23Speaker 07

  So, did you have a lot of questions about?

• 3:33:25Speaker 05

  I did, uh, yes, I did. I was asking them about stuff. Well, I did when I went with my SEAL platoon in nineteen ninety-five for brief, a couple of days, three days visiting Dyansk. We didn't work with Groen, we don't, we worked with their commanders from Formosa, uh, unit. And, uh, so I kind of like a little bit seen. For me, it was surreal because I left as a felon, a criminal. And then I was greeted as a hero in Poland when I came back, you know, not maybe as a hero, but I was greeted as a valuable, uh, respectable person. That's was very kind of different for me, uh, that first visit.

• 3:34:07Speaker 05

  And then, uh, but yeah, that was a very short visit. So the first longer visit was later on when I retired from the Navy.

• 3:34:16Speaker 07

  So would, I mean, did they have questions for you about what it was, what your?

• 3:34:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, they did.

• 3:34:20Speaker 07

  Childhood was like in prison and?

• 3:34:22Speaker 05

  You know, for them, the more significant thing was that I was part of the solidarity trade union movement in Poland nineteen eighties. For them, big deal was that I participated in underground structures and I resist communism. For them, it was very fascinating that I was, uh, that I spent time in prison fighting for Poland's freedom. So they were very, uh, respectful of that and, uh, but otherwise, there was a lot of questions about America, you know, like how, how, how is the life? How are the people? How was the, uh, how did it happen that I succeed, uh, that I became who I am? And where some people were not that successful. And, uh, so there was a lot of questions that I had to answer

• 3:35:06Speaker 05

  about America, about my life in America and about my America.

• 3:35:12Speaker 07

  Did they have, I mean?

• 3:35:17Shawn Ryan?

  I know that there was a lot of chatter back and forth about it. Were you very curious about what Poland was like now?

• 3:35:25Speaker 05

  At that time, I was curious because, again, remember, they were part of the Warsaw Pact. They were opposing us, NATO. So they were trained to fight us. And suddenly, here, we are working very close. I think we worked so close with them. I don't remember in combat, working, any other forces from different countries, working that close with us, with SEALs, as Polish Grom did. So they earned a lot of respect in our community. But also, I believe, we earned a lot of respect for them.

• 3:36:04Speaker 05

  For them, I was curious how the foreigner like me can come, somebody like me can come to America and join the more secret forces, the tip of the spear that America has. So they were, yeah, they were a little bit fascinated by this. How is it possible? We know, in our unions, the foreigners cannot serve. You have to be a citizen, you have to have access to secret clearance. You have to have a secret clearance to serve in SEAL teams. So that's something that, for them, was very fascinating. How did I pull it off? I said, dude, this is America. You can be whatever you are able to be. There's nothing holding you back. And if you can do this or that, there's no politicians that are saying that you can't.

• 3:36:49Speaker 05

  There is, in America, there is nobody there to say, holding you back and say, you can't do that. As long as it is legal, as long as this is something that is beneficial, hopefully, it's beneficial for the country, for America, and for other people. You are encouraged to succeed, and people will help you to succeed. This is the big difference between other countries. This is what I want to, they want people to use this book as that vantage point, to see it, how different we are, that America that was built on goodness, on personal freedom, on being strong and independent, and on the faith.

• 3:37:33Speaker 05

  That make America so great. And this also rolls into the the way people in America treat other people. With with compassion, with help. And I experienced every single one of this, so, yeah.

• 3:37:51Speaker 07

  Do you think?

• 3:37:52Speaker 05

  They were fascinated by this.

• 3:37:53Speaker 07

  Did did any of them wanna come over?

• 3:37:55Speaker 05

  Yep, some of them did.

• 3:37:57Speaker 07

  No kidding?

• 3:37:58Speaker 05

  Asking about, hey, can I be a SEAL? I say, why would you want to be a SEAL? You are one of the one, the top tier of the uh special forces. And uh, but you know, somebody was asking, they say, is it possible? Because this is some things.

• 3:38:13Speaker 07

  What did they say when you asked why?

• 3:38:15Speaker 05

  Was that?

• 3:38:16Speaker 07

  What did you, what did they tell you?

• 3:38:17Speaker 05

  They say because SEALs have the reputation they have because we are the best. I didn't inquire too much into it, but some of them were like, hey, if I could do it again, I would just do what you just did. I say, well, no, I didn't do it because uh I I did it because I left Poland because I had to leave Poland. But you don't have to leave Poland, there's no reason for you to do it. I would join the military because I had to, my debt of freedom that I had to pay back. But you don't have to do it, you're living in a free country.

• 3:38:51Speaker 07

  Wow, wow.

• 3:38:53Speaker 05

  So, that's what I told myself when I came to America. And that's what I follow with today. That's that's my pledge to America and American people.

• 3:39:06Speaker 07

  So let's talk to, let's talk about, so you got to Iraq, you start seeing real combat.

• 3:39:12Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 3:39:14Speaker 07

  What was your first engagement in Iraq?

• 3:39:17Speaker 05

  I think first we did snatch couple of the guys in the high riser, so we did breach.

• 3:39:26Speaker 05

  We get the guys out of the... They were so quick that they had no chance to do anything. So we got them. And this is where I learned that not everything that we learned in the breaching school actually works like that. Some of the breaching charges, for example, I don't want to go into details here, were not very effective, were not outright dangerous to... Not so much to us, but to people on target. We found out that most of these targets were hitting, there were terrorists hiding behind women and children. And they tend to put them next to the front door or somewhere close so they can have a route of escape while we stumble over their family members.

• 3:40:11Speaker 05

  And breaching the way we used to do was very... could be potentially life-threatening to people there. And we had to change, as a matter of fact, we had army guys in charge of the theater. I think they called us to scale down with the breaching because they don't want civilians to get hurt. So we had to actually change some of the methods we were doing, make it safer for them, but also for us. But also the breaching charges that actually I was instrumental in developing it and make that charge available to all of us.

• 3:40:52Speaker 05

  And that was widely used later by civil teams in Baghdad and in Iraq. So that was pretty good stuff. I remember I was breaching the steel door with the woman, we didn't know at the time yet, but she was maybe like three feet, two feet away from the steel door. And we breached the... I breached the steel door. When inside, she was uninjured. Well, we trampled her because she got scared and fell down on the floor as we rushed into the apartment, to that house. We trampled her a little bit, but otherwise she was untouched. If I use any of the other charges that we used to train with, I would kill that woman.

• 3:41:35Speaker 05

  So for me, it means a lot to that I contribute not only to killing these people, bad guys, but also to saving those lives that were innocent on target.

• 3:41:50Speaker 07

  What was the...

• 3:41:54Speaker 07

  What was the daily life routine there? Were you guys going out all the time?

• 3:41:59Speaker 05

  We became vampires. But also, the way I look at it is like a customer service, like a government customer service. But, you know, my customers, our customers, were always wrong and we got to kill them. So that's kind of good things. But the life was, um, we wake up in the, maybe three o'clock, sometimes four o'clock in the afternoon. Uh, get ready, rehearse what we need to rehearse, plan for the mission. Uh, in the, at two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, we stagger the time. We didn't use the same time. We, um, uh, gathered the Humvees. We ride to the road to the target or close to the target.

• 3:42:42Speaker 05

  We move on it and we either snudge or kill the bad guys and then move out before they could catch us. The, the thing is that at that time, we didn't have armored vehicles. So we were exposed to the IEDs very much and also to the enemy. So we actually had to remove the doors from the, our Humvees. So we had a couple guy, a few guys on the park, on the back and our seats were facing outwards. We put the, installed the skids on the side of the car outside. So we were sitting facing outside with the guns. We actually looked like a porcupine. Each Humvee was looking like a porcupine. I have like seventeen, seventeen hours video from my helmet camera from those DAs.

• 3:43:26Speaker 05

  So this is something that, um, and when I'm looking now, it's just, uh, it's incredible how we could get away with stuff that, uh, you know, today as the battlefield requirements and the tactics change, may not be able to do so. But at that time, we are, we are, sometimes we were just lucky to do it.

• 3:43:45Speaker 07

  What was the first op where you killed an enemy combatant?

• 3:43:49Speaker 05

  Uh, that was we breached the, uh, we breached the, uh...

• 3:43:57Speaker 05

  There was two apartments next to each other. And we breached one. The other guy, there's two doors were breached. The one guy was uh kind of jumped away. There were the holes pre-made in the opposite wall, the long hallway. And when we went in, uh, just like, it just happened. The guy was just standing next to me, so. And the other one was in the Humvee. We were uh driving, I think we were driving back to base. And there was a vehicle came in and just tried to pull next to us, pull next to us. And he just didn't want to stop, didn't want to back out. And I was kind of suspicious at the time.

• 3:44:42Speaker 05

  It was uh, I think like three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning on the way back. No, I'm sorry, we're just driving on another mission too. Because we were hitting multiple targets at the time. So I just had to stop him and I stopped the guy, so.

• 3:44:55Speaker 07

  Did that affect you at all?

• 3:44:56Speaker 05

  Uh, no.

• 3:44:57Speaker 07

  No? Killing never affected you?

• 3:44:59Speaker 05

  Uh, not really, because I, I did what was right for America. And I, that was just, uh, we were all prepared. I never seen in Iraq anything that I was not prepared to see. I never did in Iraq anything I was not prepared to do by US Navy. So I, really, not really, uh, uh, didn't bother me at all. I wish I could kill more of them. Because, like I say earlier, if we if they, if that one that got away, maybe we were able to kill him.

• 3:45:40Speaker 05

  Some of our brothers would come back to uh, come back home. Maybe that was that guy who got one of us. So that, that weighs in me sometimes at night, I think about those who get away. And I would like to kill.

• 3:45:59Speaker 07

  You guys were doing multiple targets a night?

• 3:46:01Speaker 05

  Yes, sometimes, sometimes at night, sometimes daytime, hitting daytime targets too. It depends, you know, like

• 3:46:11Speaker 05

  we, our missions were dictated by the circumstances, so if we need to get somebody, it was only chance to get him at daytime. We did that daytime, he didn't get the guy. Uh, we prefer nights, of course, most of our missions were at night, but there was nothing unusual to do something in daytime. If we had to do it, we were prepared for either way.

• 3:46:35Speaker 07

  You guys did over a hundred direct actions?

• 3:46:39Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 3:46:40Speaker 07

  And what about a time?

• 3:46:42Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 3:46:43Speaker 07

  What about a time?

• 3:46:45Speaker 05

  Oh, the time frame?

• 3:46:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 3:46:49Speaker 05

  Well, that was within the first year in Iraq.

• 3:46:52Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 3:46:54Speaker 05

  Most of it.

• 3:46:55Speaker 07

  What was your Bronze Star for?

• 3:46:57Speaker 05

  Uh, on target, it was a hand-to-hand combat, uh, with, with the insurgent. And we needed this guy, we needed this guy alive, so, uh, I was able to go and basically kick his ass back and take him and take him out.

• 3:47:13Speaker 07

  Could you be a little more descriptive?

• 3:47:16Speaker 05

  Um, yeah, with, uh, I don't want to go into too much details because, you know, the, the, today's environment. But basically, he, uh, tried too fast, tried to move away, we need to stop him, and I was on the way. So when he rushed through me, he didn't, he didn't make it. And he end up, uh, actually, uh,

• 3:47:41Speaker 05

  tried to do it again, and, uh, he was, uh, pretty aggressive. So the easiest way was to kill the guy, but we needed this guy, so I was able to go, take him down. And eventually, oh yeah, pummel him a little bit and handcuff him and bring him down. So, yeah, that was the guy.

• 3:48:04Speaker 07

  What, who was it?

• 3:48:06Speaker 05

  Uh, that was, I don't remember who he, who he was, but we have the list of the guys. That was.

• 3:48:17Speaker 05

  There were so many of them, I just don't remember this particular guy, who he was. I remember, I see his face, I see his, you know, I still vividly remember that. But, yeah.

• 3:48:29Shawn Ryan?

  How did you get him down?

• 3:48:32Speaker 05

  With my fists, with my legs and my gun. So, I didn't have, I didn't want to shoot him, because again, that was not the guy I wanted to shoot. But it came to the, to the, yeah, to the hand-to-hand combat. So this is what my Bronze Star actually says, that, that what happened, that describes that.

• 3:48:56Shawn Ryan?

  Drago, welcome back.

• 3:48:59Speaker 05

  Nice to be back.

• 3:49:00Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, man, I was hoping you would come back. I mean, one of the hardest parts about interviewing special ops guys that have done just phenomenal stuff is, is trying to break through the humility. Nobody wants to talk about the veracity of what they've done in combat. And, uh, we very lightly breezed over your Bronze Star, and then I was, I was hoping I would get a call from you saying, hey, we should probably go into a little bit more detail on that. I know it's hard to break through the humility and, um, but at the same time, I mean, it's important.

• 3:49:40Shawn Ryan?

  It's important that people understand what, what the sacrifices that were made over there are and, and what it's like. And so I just, I just want to say I really appreciate you coming back to, to give us the full scoop on, on what happened that day with your Bronze Star of Valor.

• 3:49:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you. You know, this is something that, uh, is, is, the, the way I see it, is the stories are being said... Some of the stories have been said quite often. And that makes almost desensitize people to what we go through. We are just human beings, just like anybody else. But people listening to these stories, listening, watching these movies, they don't see us as human beings, often, not everybody. They see often see us as just a little part of the machine. If you fall out, you fa- you you you fall. That just, well, just expect it. Let's get another guy.

• 3:50:40Speaker 05

  And that's what I think is important, that our society doesn't see us that way. We are all individual people. We are all human beings. And everybody that falls is, uh, those heroes, they shouldn't be seen as just little pieces of the machine that can be easily replaced. So I was never, uh, yeah, but I I try not to talk a lot about these stuffs. And nobody ever asked me about it.

• 3:51:07Shawn Ryan?

  It's important, you know, it's it's it's documenting history, you know, and and um, and I don't think anybody sees any of the the guys that I bring in here is just part of the machine or or invincible. Because we do, you know, we started childhood and go all the way through the career. And then the pitfalls afterwards. And and we did that with you and and I do with everybody too. And the reason I do that is to humanize, you know, to humanize.

• 3:51:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is very important.

• 3:51:37Shawn Ryan?

  Who I'm speaking to and to humanize them in front of the audience. And so. But let's let's go in. So let's just start at the very beginning.

• 3:51:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was in fact that I remember that, you know, I did so many of these DAs that they got twenty years later, all get blurred up. This one kind of sticks out because as we, so we move out, like, we always work, we try to work. We did some daytime missions too, but we tried to avoid. So at night, the car came in, we had to get the guy. He was like one of the leaders in finance shares, I believe, who, uh, we don't want to kill him, just need this guy. So, uh, we came to the set point.

• 3:52:20Speaker 05

  And then.

• 3:52:21Shawn Ryan?

  Was this a capture kill?

• 3:52:22Speaker 05

  It was capture of kill, yes, yes, yes, preferably capture. But you know, like, we never had this type of priorities that you cannot kill the guy, you have to cap- you have to capture him. That's a very dangerous concept. But, so for us, it was, you know, like, if we can, we try to capture the guy, but we'll really try it. So, we came to the set point, we disembark, and patrol towards the target. And as we patrol, we were maybe like twenty, thirty yards from that, where we're supposed to cross over the fence, then the whole hell broke loose. And that was just like, the

• 3:53:03Speaker 05

  bullets were flying everywhere. And you know how it is that you don't, in urban environment, it's kind of sometimes difficult pinpoint where the, when the shots are coming from, especially here, from behind you, in front, the sides. And then, you don't see muzzle flash. If you see muzzle flash, yeah, you, you know where, where this is coming from. But, so we just hang it for a second on the side of the fence, and like, we're not gonna be waiting here forever, it's time to go. So, we just move along that fence, there's a few yards back, we, we put the ladders while we, while this, all the shit is going on. We cross that thing, we approach the doors, I breached the door, we blew the door up. What'd you breach it with?

• 3:53:48Speaker 05

  What's that? What did you breach it with? Explosives? Explosives, yeah, yeah, yeah, we breached with explosives. At the time, most of our bridges were with explosives. You know, it gives us that extra couple seconds, where the enemy is disoriented, where the terrorists are disoriented, so we can take the advantage of it. So, it was preferable entry method for us. And then, I, so as we breach, we entered the house, it was pretty big house, and we kind of knew the, how it is set up, because we had the intel, know what to expect, inside, even inside. And that was like, as we entered, it was like short hallway, then it was like, maybe two feet to the right, and there was a wall up, you can see the wall. The guy was standing behind the door

• 3:54:32Speaker 05

  when I blew the door, so he just backed out. Basically, they throw him off a little bit, but he was still on his feet. So there, I was coming into the house as a second guy. So the guy went left, I went right. And that, this guy, so he's doing nothing, just standing there. He's, he's, he's blind from the flash. And so I throw him on the ground, I bag him and tag him. And then I move on to the- What do you mean, bag him and tag him? Well, just, well, basically, make him ready to be move out. And what does that entail for the audience? I know what that means, but what does that mean? Oh, okay, so basically, subdue the guy, handcuff the guy. You know, you can say bag and tag, basically kill the guy, put in the body bag and move him away. But that's not what I mean, I guess.

• 3:55:17Speaker 05

  Just, you know, throw him on the ground, handcuff him, get the guy ready to be move out. So we did that, I joined the guys and clearing the house. And the shed is still going on outside. So when I, uh, we walked to the second floor, I don't remember, it was two or three floors, I think it was two floors, but it was a big house. So as we clear the rooms, on one of the rooms, as we enter it, that was a crazy, I think the craziest thing I've, one of the craziest, the crazier thing that I remember. The guy just charges at full speed. And I don't know if he's tried to charge me, or he's just trying to run away from that room.

• 3:55:58Speaker 05

  Anyway, he just bumps into me, so throws him on the ground, he drops the gun. So now I look at this guy, he has no, he has no gun, the room is pretty much clear. So as I'm getting this guy now, he jumps back again, kicking, screaming and punching. So as the fight is going on, I'm getting the car. Well, I, I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed, so really, that's, there was no, no need to shoot the guy. And as the car, as I'm working with the guy, the car comes in, hey, Drago, in to stop the Grom guy, Grom element is moving on the backyard. And there are three guys in ambush line, so tell them, stop them, tell them to wait, the hero is coming to lace them.

• 3:56:42Speaker 05

  Put the laser beam on them, so the guys know where they are. So I'm here trying to get this guy compliant, and at the same time speaking on the radio. So I, I put my gun at the time, kind of to the side, I had another guy in the room too. But he was busy still doing his stuff, so, uh-

• 3:57:04Speaker 05

  And at the same time, I'm talking to, on the radio, to Polish guys in Polish. They don't move on that balcony, just hold on, the helo is coming. And I will get you there to, uh, uh, they will let you know where the guys are. So they stop, and at the same time, and the bullets are flying into the room through the windows too. So I remember I had like two of them came, and you don't hear the, the, there's not a whistling like you can see on the movies. It's just a crack and there's just the impact on the wall. So, and then the grown guys is calling me too, telling me that, hey, we are moving on this, on, we see these guys now.

• 3:57:48Speaker 05

  We know where they are, there is element maneuvering to the side, so taking the crossfires from the side. And then, uh, so then I relay this to our guys while I'm bagging the guy. So eventually, yeah, I, I bag him, tag him, there was the guy, uh. But I don't know which guy it was, the one that we were after, but I think we were after all of them. So I think we hold like from this target, maybe like four guys or five guys. We left, I think some guys there, they were like, probably not important. But anyway, the car came in high, we need to move out because I think there is a group of guys coming on us.

• 3:58:28Speaker 05

  You know, we have a limited number of people, so we are not set up to run and gun for like an hours. It's very surgical. Yeah, very surgical. So we just grabbed the guys, whoever we had, and bailed out and left. The whole neighborhood. The whole neighborhood, yeah, because the guy was very important. So they had the, they, he had a setup, he had like security set up inside the house and outside the house in the perimeter. The perimeter was the one that opened up on us. And our external security actually was ducking it out with them, took care of them at the same time while we were clearing the house and bagging, tagging the bad guys in the house.

• 3:59:12Speaker 05

  So, yeah, we got them and, like I say, nobody got hurt. Those Iraqis in the house, they pretty quickly realized, okay, that's not a good idea. They, so we got them too. And that was, you know, that was memorable, but it was like one of many of those missions that they, you do it for so long time. That it is, it became like almost like a normal thing. But it's not the most memorable mission like that, that the most like impactful on me mission that I did, so.

• 3:59:47Speaker 07

  When did you find out, well, what was it like leaving? Before we get there, what was it like leaving with the whole neighborhood shooting at you guys?

• 3:59:54Speaker 05

  Well, that was pretty, pretty dicey because at that time, like when we were leaving the house, there was still shit going on. But as we were leaving by the time, it was everything was suppressed. So there was not so much, there was pot shots here and there. You can see, you can hear the bullets cracks. You can hear bullets cracking here and there, but there was no, the intensity that was at the beginning. It was at the beginning, especially when our 50s open on the Humvees. Holy shit, that was like whole hell broke loose. This is where we are breaching the door at the same time. So, yeah, that was, that was, yeah, I remember that. I just never pay attention to like each particular mission for me.

• 4:00:39Speaker 07

  All blends into one.

• 4:00:41Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 4:00:41Speaker 07

  It all blends into one.

• 4:00:42Speaker 05

  All blends into one, especially if you do it for so long. And another thing, like I said, the more impactful for me was the one time we were in the house,

• 4:00:56Speaker 05

  clearing, doing the, clearing the house.

• 4:01:01Speaker 05

  And I was on the left side of the hallway. There was a guy on my right on the other side of the hallway. And you can see commotion in the end of the hallway, hallway. It's like maybe thirty, forty, thirty feet, maybe. That's pretty long hallway in the dark. And you can see the commotion, you can see like feet coming out. And then coming out, you can see like half dresses. And then you see the gun. And then the people come out and you can hear the guys just like, hey, drop the gun, drop the gun. Those Iraqis, I don't think they understood what he was, what they were, what we were saying. Besides, he was so stressed out.

• 4:01:45Speaker 05

  When I look at this, this is like old man, an old woman. He's holding her hand, he's walking with this gun and pissing himself at the same time. He looked like, to me, eighty years old guy. So, and I can hear that, so I had the guy on the top, I had a guy low on the, on the opposite corner. And the guy who came low later, I can, I could almost hear the click. I say, I, I just didn't want the guy to get killed. So, I just say, I got it, I got it. And I'll step in front of these guys, barrels, uh, because I could walk on my side. I just didn't want them, them to shoot this old man.

• 4:02:28Speaker 05

  So I walk up there, I walk to this guy, I had my, that's very short and force. So as I was walking up to this guy, you know, I am in his heart, I mean, I would just pull like, if he would just try to do something. Because he was holding the guns, he didn't aim at me. He was just, for maybe like, little bit, a little bit down. So I walk up to him, I took this gun away from him. And, and then, um, so when, we, we, we took the guy with us, with us, it was one of the guys we needed, uh, who went after. So when we, uh, when we were leaving, his old wife came up to me and say like, thank you very much for not killing us.

• 4:03:11Speaker 05

  Because I told him to put the gun away, but he was, he thought that this may be some insurgents or some people got to kill him. So, thank you for not killing him. Wow. And I, I got a lot of flak from our guys too, because you know, think about it for a second, uh, there was kind of selfish on me, but I just did not want this guy to get killed. Um, because there was very quickly point out to me on the debris, what if this guy were just there and there was other guys just waiting in the dark hallway where you can't see it? We had a, we had a flashlight too, so I would hear that commotion, put the flashlight, see the gun, right? So, uh, and, and you were hiding in front of our guns, we wouldn't be able to do anything. You can't do it.

• 4:03:56Speaker 05

  I understand, I agree with them. It was not tactically, there was wrong thing to do. I don't know.

• 4:04:04Shawn Ryan?

  You felt it.

• 4:04:05Speaker 05

  I just felt it. I just felt, I don't want this guy to get shot. His old wife, you know, they holding hands each other. This guy is just barely walking, they have still those house shoes, those flip flops on and then, yeah, and he's holding this gun, it's shaking like this, and I remember,

• 4:04:24Speaker 05

  you can see the dark spot on his, this pajamas, and I think he still had this funny hat, with his, like, this little funny ball, you know, just like, uh, you see in the cartoons. So, yeah, that sticks out to me for two reasons. One is that, yeah, maybe what I did was wrong because it could endanger me and maybe other guys in the house. I just did not want this guy to get shot, and I think, I was afraid he was about to be shot. And, you know, this woman standing by him.

• 4:04:59Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:05:00Speaker 05

  So, yeah, that was very impactful on me. I know it was brave, I suppose it was stupid, but it was just, I just felt it was the right thing to do. You know, if I, I could get shot, because you know that these guys are not worrying about this stuff. If there was somebody there, there was many times, they just shoot their own people just to get to you. So there wouldn't be any hesitation. And, yeah, I agreed with the guys that, yeah, I was on the wrong. But it was.

• 4:05:28Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I think it was brave. I mean, you know, maybe you weren't thinking about it at the time, but, I mean, not only getting shot by your own guys because everybody's hyped up.

• 4:05:39Speaker 05

  I know I wouldn't. Maybe when the firefight start, they maybe they would have to fire above me, but I trusted these guys.

• 4:05:46Shawn Ryan?

  There's also the possibility that the man would have had a suicide vest on.

• 4:05:51Speaker 05

  True.

• 4:05:51Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and.

• 4:05:52Speaker 05

  But, you know, I didn't think about it. I just see this lost old grandma, grandpa, walking with the gun, scared shitless, so.

• 4:06:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:06:01Speaker 05

  And, you know, he didn't drop the gun, the cows were being made. I don't know if he understood the English. No, he didn't actually, because we, we talked to him later before we took him. And he could barely speak English, but his wife spoke English, so.

• 4:06:15Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:06:16Speaker 05

  But the wife, they were so scared, they wouldn't be able to utter a word up there. And they were walking on our guns, so.

• 4:06:21Shawn Ryan?

  So when you got back. From the, from the mission.

• 4:06:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:06:26Shawn Ryan?

  When did you find out who it was that you had talked?

• 4:06:29Speaker 05

  Um, we already knew who this guy was. I just don't remember. It was the guy who, uh, he was one of the big financiers of those IEDs and, and those terror groups in Baghdad. So he knew a lot. Uh, so in the house, like, we didn't know who is who at the time. So we tried to bag everybody and, uh, and bring in whoever we, we had there. Uh, he was identified later. So, but you know, like with the names, I knew their names because we had to learn for the mission. So you can call, uh, you, you, it was just like normal for me, but now 20 years later, there were so many of these Mohameds that.

• 4:07:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:07:09Speaker 05

  I don't remember.

• 4:07:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:07:12Shawn Ryan?

  What did the, I'm just curious. Do you know, do you remember what the write-up says?

• 4:07:17Speaker 05

  Uh, not really. I know, I know what it says, but, uh, it's, uh, like I don't dwell on it.

• 4:07:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:07:26Speaker 05

  You know, so, uh, it says, uh, nice. I think, uh, some, I'm sure nice, uh, I read it. It's just like, um, yeah, it's, it's, you know, uh, I'm sure somebody else could say it with much better, eloquent, in much better eloquent way. I'm still better with bullets than words. So for me to come and speak about anything is pretty scary. I think one of the bravest thing I have done, being just be able to go and face the camera and microphones and speak, but I'm better with bullets. So, uh, you know, maybe somebody else can tell the story better, but, uh, uh, it is what it is.

• 4:08:11Speaker 05

  You know, we're, we're human beings. We are not robots. We are just, just the people.

• 4:08:19Speaker 07

  And how long, how many times did you go to Iraq?

• 4:08:23Speaker 05

  I went there three times, back to back. So I spent the year first, in the first deployment, came back, there was another SEAL team coming out, and they were slated to work with Grom as well. So I, I asked them if they can just, can take me for, I just wanted to go back. And if they can take me with, with them. They say, yeah, sure, absolutely. So there's supposed to be like two weeks, just the fam, let them have, help them settle down with Grom. But then like four months later, it's like my team is calling and say, hey Drago, you need to come back because we are about to deploy after these guys. It was the, that was the time when the entire SEAL team was deploying.

• 4:09:04Speaker 05

  So they, they say, you can, you need to come back. So I came back and then went back with my platoon again. Their missions changed, the tactics changed at the time. So we were tasked with protecting Iraqi politicians. So my platoon had one of those big weeks Iraqi that we were protecting, those PSD missions mostly. Although wherever I could, I would just like to get away from babysitting the old grown man, old grown fat man, and try to get on the DA mission. So I was still able to, to do that. And some people accuse me, even now, that I was just doing my own DA missions on my own. But it was not really that much on my own, but yeah, I was trying to, to get as, as much into those missions as possible.

• 4:09:49Speaker 05

  But, you know, I've paid the price for it too with being a breacher, you know, the injuries that we sustained, that we didn't know at the time of how dangerous it can be. So that was when, on the, on the first deployment, I think I started feeling first symptoms, first things. But like I say, I was afraid to say anything because I didn't want to be pulled out of the missions, so.

• 4:10:14Speaker 07

  What were the symptoms? What were you feeling?

• 4:10:16Speaker 05

  First was I was, I was not able to read. So what I find out that, I was trying to read, but I couldn't concentrate on the text. Seems like that thing was jumping. And so I figured it out that maybe this is because

• 4:10:33Speaker 05

  the lightning, because we were living in the tents. Outside was very hot and bright, very hot and bright. So most of our activities during the, when we sleep or eat was in the tents or inside. So I said, well, maybe I just, my vision is bad because the dark environment. But then I noticed that I cannot read, even if I can follow the letters, because I forget, if I read the paragraph, I forget what it was paragraph about by the time I finished it. So that was kind of weird and sometimes it took me an hour to get to the page.

• 4:11:14Speaker 05

  So that was odd, but I didn't make much of it. I kind of brushed it off. I still was strong. I was thinking fairly clear. I just couldn't read, so that's no big deal. It's not like I have to read some manuals to terrorists, right? So, so I was fine. And then the balance issues start, issues start showing up that much later and sleep disturbance. So that was, and irritability too as well. So that's when, when I start thinking that something is not quite right then. Yeah. But you know, we were sometimes five feet, six feet from the breaching charge.

• 4:11:59Speaker 05

  And besides me as a breacher, I learned very quick in Iraq to calculate the charge and stand off distance for my team, for my guys by the manual, by the book, but I also did another calculation just for me, if I can't get in the cover, was the minimum.

• 4:12:22Speaker 05

  There is that I can still breach the door without injuring myself. It happened to me, not once, but there's one, but it's a dramatic time where we actually were assaulting the target. We saw us, we look, you know, we get the intel photo, intel pictures. So we look at it, we just, from our best ability, this is what we make. We're gonna go assault these doors. This is how it's gonna go. And this is where we stack our guys. This, as a breacher, I had to brief it before the mission to our guys. And we did, you know, we had a secondary entry point, we had all that stuff, pretty much ready to go. And the picture shows this empty space, maybe like that wide between the concrete wall and the building itself. And then you have the corner here where this just walks straight to the door.

• 4:13:07Speaker 05

  So I say, well, I'm gonna stack the guys right there, the way I breathe, I'm gonna go to the door and blast the door, go inside. Standard mission, we did tens, hundreds of them. And that one time, we didn't know that from the pictures, but that space was filled with the rebels. There was just enough space to stack the guys, and there was no space for me. So, um, so we go out, I kind of see something is not right here. So I go with my, with the security to the door, you know, place the charge, we're going back. The guys go in, but like, there's no place to me, so I was like, climb the wall, this is maybe like six, seven feet tall.

• 4:13:48Speaker 05

  Uh, we found a way later to do something similar, I can talk about it, but that, that point was like invisible. I, I, we can, if we linger, the longer we linger, the bigger chance that they will be alert and, you know, somebody gets killed. So, yeah, so I just, it's no big deal. I mean, I knew the distance was still safe for me. So I get on my knees, I put the gun in front of my face, I pulled up and blast the charge. And, uh, so, yeah, it stunned me a little bit, but, uh, like, I described it in the book, but it's not maybe as dramatic as it is in the book. I did have my nose a little bit bleed, my ear did, but it was not like I was gushing blood or anything.

• 4:14:29Speaker 05

  It was just, I was a little bit stunned, but not enough not to participate in the assault. So I still catch up on the, on the train, on the back of the train, and we did assault, we got, we took the target down, we got the guy. So yeah, that was uh but these things repeating over and over and over when you stay in cross proximity to the breach, it will affect you eventually. And at that time, there was very little known about this. Matter of fact, when the eventually I became a SEAL instructor in baths, but I still had this issue with reading, with sleeping. So I talked to our what do you do? You just go to your family. My family at that time was SEALs. I didn't

• 4:15:11Speaker 05

  have another family. So uh say, hey, what happened? I have this. I wake up every two o'clock in the morning and stuff. So we're like, well, maybe you were drinking too much. No, I was not drinking. And this happens every day. Two o'clock in the morning, I'm wide awake. Or maybe maybe this. So finally, we agreed there was a ghost. The apartment was haunted and there's a ghost up there and the ghost is waking me up. So that was the conclusion. So then I realized that shit, I'm scared of ghosts. I need to find a different apartment because I don't want to be scared sleeping at night that some ghost comes here to scare the hell out of me. So I didn't find an apartment. So finally, I resigned myself to living with the ghost, which eventually turned out to be a TBI, the traumatic brain

• 4:15:51Speaker 05

  injury that caused me Iraq that way. So that tells you how little we knew at the time. It's not the case today. We know we are acutely aware the danger and the damage that can those explosions cause. But at the time, it's not, there was not that uh the funny thing is that uh I think the NSW came out to conclusion the biggest damage occurs during the breaching course because people are exposed to those breaking charges constantly day in, day out. Well, that is just baby walk next to what we did in Iraq when you just have these things going multiple times every night. And it's not just for like two weeks, three weeks or for the month. You spend a year doing it, eventually you start feeling

• 4:16:35Speaker 05

  it. So that's what that's what happened to me. Now, I don't complain. I would do it again if I if I had to do it. But at least now we know what it is and we can actually do something about it.

• 4:16:49Speaker 05

  And not only one who suffer from this. You talk to any breacher. I think they even come with the term breacher brain right now. That's something like this. That's what they call it. Again, I don't complain. This is not complaint. It's just the fact. Maybe somebody who suffers that can recognize the symptoms and things and get himself help. That's what I'm saying.

• 4:17:17Speaker 07

  So after all your Iraq tours, you went to BUDs to be an instructor?

• 4:17:21Speaker 05

  Yes. Well, I had a slight and my orders were to breaching school to be instructor, but I already knew that something was wrong with me, like any even shot, shooting guns next to my head goes like the headache for a day. So I asked if I could change my orders, go somewhere where I am not exposed and the break from the, from the noise, from explosions, from the shock waves. And they said, well, why don't you try BUDs as we still instructor? I said, sure. But then the problem was I already had my orders cut. So I had to actually call. I went, I went behind the back a little bit and the chief, one of the chiefs, he passed away today. He was in Millington. He was, became the detailer in Millington.

• 4:18:06Speaker 05

  So I call him, I say, look, this is what happened to me. This is what I want to do. This is what I want to change and I need your help. So within like a month, I got the change of orders and he called me, say, dude, I got you. You're going to BUDs. So that's how I ended up in SEAL training.

• 4:18:23Speaker 07

  How did you like your BUDs tour?

• 4:18:26Speaker 05

  Uh, it was relaxing. It was fun too.

• 4:18:32Speaker 05

  I kind of, I miss the combat. I miss the, the, that engagements in Iraq that you don't have it here, but. What helped me get to this assignment was understanding that I might be saving lives, I might be getting, making these people as good as possible. So when they go to combat, they they will be extremely effective, they will be mentally prepared, and those who could not achieve that type of readiness, they will be removed from the SEAL training. So I was pretty harsh, but I was a very fair instructor

• 4:19:11Speaker 05

  from what I was told by fellow students, who today are very successful SEALs, some of them already retired from SEAL teams. But I have a fond memory of the young guys going through BUDS. Matter of fact, it's very, I tell you, this is a very humbling experience, because the way when we go through BUDS is most of, at least for me, it was a blur. You just go do, every day you do something, you just try to survive a day, just to the next day, from meal to meal, from hour to hour. And it just goes quick, you just, it's like almost you walk in the room, you get a kick in the balls a few times, then kicking the ass out of the door, you don't. Well, now you are the one who is actually

• 4:19:57Speaker 05

  doing this to these kids, who is demanding from these kids that sacrifice, that pain. And it is very, again, very humbling, because you see these young kids, and they don't quit, they just keep going, no matter what you throw at them. Some of them falter, some of them quit, some of them get injured and being removed. Most of the people I noticed in BUDS, they don't resign, they don't quit, they get injured, they get removed from the training. But seeing these guys, and you could not make them quit, no matter what, some of them, it makes you think that, yeah, America is safe.

• 4:20:41Speaker 05

  When did you, what year did you retire? I retired in 2011. So by this time, I met my wife and How did you meet her? Oh, well, there was a story to itself because, so I was in bars. I didn't have a family at the time. And finally, I came to realize, like, in a year and a half, I'm retiring. I have no family. So I have to find me a wife. So it was not that easy because like, you know, with my English, my, uh, my, uh, the way I was, I guess I was not a very attractive guy. So I asked for my friends and my teammates. And they say, okay, Drago, the best way to do it is go online. You find yourself a chick.

• 4:21:26Speaker 05

  And if you like her, you're gonna marry her. I said, sounds good. So let's do it.

• 4:21:33Speaker 05

  So I had incidents. I mean, I had those misfires, what I would say. So there was a girl I was courting for a long time and eventually we agreed to meet. And then, and we scheduled to meet first time in the coffee shop, like, say, for her place. And it was lunchtime. Good God, it was the place where it was a bunch of like executive chicks were coming in. Like very super nice place, bunch of offices around. I didn't think much of it. But this girl, who I look at the picture, was so beautiful. I say, I'm going to go and pretend I'm smarter than I am. So I took the book. I couldn't still read it, but I just pretend I was reading, so I look smart.

• 4:22:16Speaker 05

  And then, and she's coming and, and so every girl, those girls are coming. I said, this is Ann. So I just like to get myself bigger, look better. And then, there's another of these girls. Uh, so I find like, well, it's almost like 10 minutes late. Maybe she won't show up. And then I see the girl walking, but she had to like walk sideways through the door. So I said, that's not, that's not, cannot be her. So I just like sitting up there and just look at the book that I brought to make myself look smarter. And all these nice, good looking chicks are lined up next to my table. And she's coming and coming. I see the big shadow comes up. It's like, are you Tomas?

• 4:23:00Speaker 05

  Drago, I was like, yeah, how do you know me? It's like, who are you? I'm Wendy, whatever the name was. We talk about it. I was like, damn, and all these chicks I can see are the smirk on their face. It's like, dude, what you got yourself into it? And then, so I said, well, Wendy, just have a seat, sit down. And I'm thinking like, fuck, I mean, how do I make it look like a business meeting? So these chicks are laughing at me. And so I say, so Wendy, tell me, so talking about your company, how many employees do you have? You know, how many people do you manage?

• 4:23:39Speaker 05

  She just looked at me like an idiot, it's like, we're supposed to have a date, not talk about my job. And so this guy is laughing out loud, it's like, dude, you just, so I'm like, okay. Alright, date, okay, let's make it a date. And so we talked for a while and I just wanted to end this thing, it was so humiliating. And then, uh, and she was so loud, you know, and she was like, oh, you're so beautiful. I was like, damn, just go. And she, so we, we go back, I say, could you give me a ride? I have a car on the other side of the mall. And that was in San Diego. I was like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, I'll give you a ride.

• 4:24:24Speaker 05

  So we go to my Jeep, my Jeep is not even on the lift, it's just like, it had bigger tires at the time.

• 4:24:30Speaker 05

  And she cannot get into the Jeep, she is like trying to push herself back, but the doors are too narrow for her. She tries to pull the leg with her hands, putting the Jeep. And hopefully I can push her in it, but that didn't work, she almost fell down. And I was like, I'm getting like already, it's like, what the hell, I got myself into it? And then she said, well, I just walk. I say, yeah, thank you, you just go. And she left. She called me and, hey, it was a great date, you know, you do, you want to meet again? Let's have a date again. I was like, listen, Wendy, first of all, you misrepresent yourself. We could be friends if we didn't lie. You know, I, I, I don't mind befriend with you if you are honest. But you send me all these pictures of some other chicks pretending that this is you.

• 4:25:14Speaker 05

  And then you show up, look like a Jabba the Hutt. And that's not you who the... And so... And I don't want to be rude to her, but I had to tell her I'm not interested in any dates with her. So I told her that. And then, you know, as instructors in pool comp, you remember, you spend like almost all day in the water testing students. So we have students who are broke dicks, the guys who have some injuries. So they cater to us. So they, like, if you have a phone call, they say, instructor Drago, you have a phone call here. Give me the phone. So you're still in the pool, you eat in the pools, like, all day for these two days of pool comp. And one of the guys says, instructor Drago, we have a call message here. I say, okay, bring me the phone.

• 4:25:57Speaker 05

  So he brings the phone, I can see his face like... By this time, I was dating Rachel already. So I will come back to it how we met. And that's, so I'm looking, I see the tits. So I was like, what the hell is this? I call Rachel, I say, Rachel, don't send your naked breasts here. The students are looking every time they pick the phone, they see this. It's like, whose tits are you having, receiving the messages from? Then I look and say, oh shit, that's not the Rachel, that's... So that was that fat chick, uh, uh, calling me about, uh, that's trying to send me the message.

• 4:26:39Speaker 05

  So I, I, Rachel say, call her, tell her, delete her, they tell her not to call you again. So I call her, I say, don't call me anymore. And don't, don't send those naked pictures of you. I say, oh yeah, I'm so sorry, my boyfriend is right above your name. And I just by accident sent you my naked picture. I was like, yeah, right on, you know, just stop lying, just don't call me anymore. So, you know, I, I had a problem, it's like this. So then when I met Rachel online, so I see this chick, I was like, holy shit. I'm in love with that one. So, you know, I tried to wink to her, she did nothing. Wink to her again, nothing. So I told to the guys, hey, who do I talk to? I talked to my family, team guys, sales. What do I do?

• 4:27:23Speaker 05

  How can I get her interested in me? So one of the guys look at the profiles. First of thing, first of, first thing, get yourself some few years off. So make yourself like maybe eight years younger. I say, okay, eight years younger. Then write her some nice letter. Well, I really can't. Can you help me? So this is how it started. So then I had the team guys writing the love letters for me. So I can send it to her. She was writing back to me and actually she liked actually the letters. So we continued this way. You know, with my English, I am proficient with it. I'm proficient in combat, but I'm not really proficient in those lovey dovey things that, you know, like.

• 4:28:07Speaker 05

  Robots. Yeah, yeah, romancing, especially romancing online, you know? So that's something that I had, I turned to my fellow teammates. And, and, and so like she saw, wrote me a letter, whoever I could find, say, hey, write me the response, write me some nice love letter. So just type very quick something in and send it back and continue. It worked. So then eventually the guys got tired, so drag. We don't use so many of these love letters. Now you have, you can make any letter out of it, just copy and paste. So I say, okay, I'll try. I was nervous. So I did that and her profile disappeared from, those American singles website I remember still. So her profile disappeared.

• 4:28:51Speaker 05

  It's like, oh damn, I was already, I was, I was, you know, writing the emails. Well, team guys were writing the emails. I was reading her emails. So there was kind of like I was falling in love. And then her profile disappeared. So I was like, uh, call one of the guys and say, hey, no, help me out with this. This is the email I sent to her and I think maybe she doesn't want to communicate with me anymore. She just looks, look at this like. Yeah dude, yeah, that's fucked up.

• 4:29:24Speaker 05

  I think this is why. So I was mopping for a few days and I was still checking online, she showed up again. And I was like, shit, I just need to, I need to, I need to talk to her, I need to tell her, maybe that letter that I wrote because, because of my English, so she needs to just, I need to talk to her. So eventually, I coerce her to call me and she called me on the private lines, she answered. So we talked for a while and I say, hey, wait a minute, so let me get it straight. You are not on drugs, you're not drunk when you write to me, you just don't speak English. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it, you know, that's it.

• 4:30:04Speaker 05

  So we start talking on the phone and that's eventually I asked her to come and visit me in San Diego. She did come and this is what I find out. Where was she? What's that? Where was she? She was living in Ohio, in Dayton, where I was living, so I flew her to San Diego. And that's funny story actually because after the bad experience with this chick that they were not who they tell, tell me they are. I asked one, a team guy, say, hey, can you go with me? If this is another job of the hat, if this is another person that I'm not, really lied to me, I need you to bail me out, I will run and you tell her that I was called for just some combat mission in Iraq, whatever, just tell her something.

• 4:30:46Speaker 05

  So, so, so we both are waiting and here she is going down the escalator. He recognizes her first, he said, dude, it's that chick, I said, yeah. Did you just rob the cradle? Dude, she's, she's decades younger than you are. How did you pull it off? I say, well, you wrote the love letters and I lie about my age at work. There we go, say, okay, Drago, you got it, you're on your own. She's hot. And he just left. And I was, I remember so nervous. Because, you know, I had all this with my emails. When I just wrote the email, it was really not up to speed, up to her standards.

• 4:31:31Speaker 05

  Now I'm supposed to go and talk to her in person, I was very nervous. So when she came out, I was like, to be like super gentleman, very stiff and saying, "Hi Rachel, I am Drago." And she just looked at me and said, "Yeah, cool, but you know, I didn't fly 2000 miles to shake your hand, give me a hug." I was like, "Holy shit." So I give her the big Drago hug. And then I remember, so we start talking, you know, but she then stepped back and said, "Wait a minute, I think I know you." It's like, you know, for team guys to meet the girl who you don't recognize, and she says she knows you? The first thing through my mind was, "What did I do to her? When?" But they say, "Yeah, you know what?

• 4:32:16Speaker 05

  When you were in the HAPs training, you are the new guy in your platoon with your group of guys, you went the HAPs training and this is where I met you first time. I remember you for your accident and belligerence." I said, "Belligerence?" "Yeah, because you know, like in the HAPs training, we, we, HAPs training is the high, you know what it is, right? There's the chamber ride when they ride you to like 20,000 feet, the air pressure. And then, so you can recognize if, if you have a problem. Let's say if your equipment malfunctions in the real life, in airplane, you can recognize because you learn in the chamber what your symptoms are, how you will react, then you have few seconds actually to remedy the situation

• 4:33:01Speaker 05

  or step away from the ramp in the airplane." And so that's, we're sitting there and they took us up, but Rachel was in the chamber actually. And when they ask, "Who wants to be volunteer to demonstrate the hypoxia, I mean, the, the lack of oxygen?" So like every, I was the new guy, so like that guy right there. It's like, okay, so they told me, they drove us up to twenty five thousand feet, I took my mask. And then I had to do those toys, you know, like throw the square peg into square. Mm hmm. Uh, in the ball square, I get things, they sign my name and stuff. And these guys start egging me, like say, yeah, you can blah, blah, blah.

• 4:33:42Speaker 05

  And I got mad, and I was like, I was threatening to kill everybody of them in the chamber, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to do this, and this, and this. And, and then, uh, you know, I passed out, so they just put their mask on me for the quick, and. And the other guys were on the masks, so I didn't know who was saying this, but they're just saying, you know, Drago, you know, you're gonna pass out, you're gonna do this, you know, I was getting mad. And so when I came to.

• 4:34:06Speaker 05

  That crew in that center, they were, they were excited, they were like, dude, this is awesome. Well, we have example of almost every symptom of the, of that, uh, hypoxia, right? Hypo- hypoxia. Hypoxia. Yeah, but we never had the belligerence, now we just recorded your belligerence, so this is a great educational video, so I'm floating somewhere there. Being the, in the, as the education, educational, uh, aid to show people what the belligerence look like. So she remember me from there, she reminded it. And then we walked to the car, I was very nervous, I couldn't talk to, hardly could talk to her from there, being scared.

• 4:34:47Speaker 05

  And, uh, so, but I had a flower, I had a flower in my jeep, because I say, if the jabba the hutt shows up, I will run, and I'll just give the flower. Throw it away, but, uh, in this case, I was so nervous, so I grabbed this flower, I say, hey, and this is for you. It was like a great paper, wrapped, wrapped up, and I just, I, I was so nervous, I gave, I didn't unwrap it, I still have it upside down, just give it to her, I say, here. Uh, she just look at me, what's this? I was like, flower. So she took this, like, okay, hold on a second, hold on a second. Uh, she told me to wait, she unwrapped it, throw the paper thing, flip it upside down, she grabbed, she grabbed my hand, she went, okay, try it again now, it's like, okay. Here.

• 4:35:32Speaker 05

  So that was my first thing, you know. I tell you, you know, I was more scared at the time than I was before the assault, before the entering on target, because that was so unusual for me. That was so foreign and scary. Uh, but, uh, so, yeah, that was, that was like a pretty scary experience. But this is how I met my wife. And then we started dating, uh, each other. She was coming to visit me. I was coming to visit, uh, uh, to visit her. And, uh, eventually, yeah, we got married. And, uh, we have, um, I, I consider myself fully domesticated now. That is what she, uh, but if you ask her, she say, well, yeah, but I'm still the project

• 4:36:17Speaker 05

  under construction. I'm still being domesticated, making, so she's making me better person, uh, every time. So, yeah, that's, that's how it works. But I still have my pitfalls with, uh, with English, you know. It seems like, you know, so forty years, but things that I sometimes say or the way I pronounce things still get me in trouble sometimes. So I remember I asked her sometimes, one time that to feast me a dessert. I say, well, what would you like for dessert? I say, well, no, I want to eat Kimberley. I was like, I see her like terror in her eyes, like, who is Kimberley? I say, who is Kimberley? You know, the dessert we had at the restaurant two days ago or so.

• 4:37:02Speaker 05

  Like, you mean Kimberley? It's like, yeah, that's what I say. No, you say Kimberley. You don't eat Kimberley. So, so, you know, I, I, I still get that shit. Um, I, I, I'm better now, but, uh, she's still working on me. She say I'm the project under construction. So now we have, uh, you know, two kids together, fifteen years, sixteen years old, old beautiful girl, very smart, and I, I cannot be, uh, she will, I could not beat her in chess games since she was, I think, eight years old. I still can't. I think she's the only person who checked made me in Iraq, maybe five or six moves. So I'm not bad player, but I cannot beat this girl.

• 4:37:45Speaker 05

  And I have a son, he's doing gymnastics, he's fifteen years old, so. And we have also from our previous marriages, the oldest son, Adam, my oldest son, he lives in Tennessee, he's running his own detailing business. My other son Blake is actually a student, he was marine, he spent one year in Afghanistan. He's working now, he's studying electrical engineering in Ohio University. And I have a younger son who is still active duty coast guard, so I'm very proud of my kids. How long have you been married? Oh, that's dangerous question. Uh-oh. Now I'm getting me in trouble. She's down there listening. Yeah, she's down there listening, and she listened then the podcast, then I get myself in trouble.

• 4:38:29Speaker 05

  That's the most kind of dangerous questions for me, but I think since two thousand, I mean since two thousand seven. So we got married in August eighteen, a kind of funny story because August eighteen is the presumed date when Battle of Thermopylae, Thermopylae started, when three hundred Spartans with five thousand other Greeks defend the Greece against two hundred fifty thousand Persians. So that's the presumed date when the battle started, and this is my date of when we got married. And then the place we got married is Laonidas, like the name of the Spartan king. Oh, wow, wow. Yeah, also the, when, uh, when we got engaged was another story too, because

• 4:39:13Speaker 05

  I'm kind of troubled, I'm kind of like a, I'm not very big into this nice, nice things, because I don't know how to do these things. So I asked the guys, what would you do? How can I, how could, where the base engagement? Dude, you need to go to Cancun, you need to go there, get a restaurant, get to make it big. I said, dude, I don't have the money for that, I just have very money to buy the ring. So I was thinking, I say, what I'm going to do is I'm going to invite her on the range to Nile and and let her shoot every gun that we have, and the last gun, M forty-eight. Will be uh, about forty eight will be when she opened the tray,

• 4:39:52Speaker 05

  there's going to be a ring hanging down and there's going to be a piece of paper like marry me. So that I dreamed it up myself. So I said I would like see your way to get getting and ask girl for to marry. So I brought her to Ireland. She had no idea. Uh, then we had to prepare the range. So with the guys we, I put her in the room. I'm I'm still amazed that she didn't complain or anything. There was one old shooting magazine. It was nothing there, you know, like an island out there. There's really no place to leave. And she's sitting in this room while we are setting up the guns, like M four, you know, and this and this and this. Almost every gun that we had, every type of gun we had, inverter, we sign up, line up online.

• 4:40:37Speaker 05

  Then I brought her in, you know, which I have actually video of it. I'm going to post it on my website one day. So she goes from to gun to gun and shoots and actually she should she the M four, she should pretty good, you know, that was like all on target. My heart skipped a bit, skipped a bit. And so we go from gun to gun and the last gun, when she opened the tray, I'm like next to her and she sees the ring and then uh, this piece of paper say marry me. And I was like that. I said, would you marry me? She said, yes.

• 4:41:09Speaker 07

  Beautiful.

• 4:41:10Speaker 05

  Yep. So there was the seal way to get married. And uh,

• 4:41:14Speaker 05

  I got away, you know, like I didn't have the money, so it allowed to be not very expensive way, but it was very memorable way. Was very memorable for her. So, yeah.

• 4:41:25Speaker 07

  So you remember two thousand seven. So that's what?

• 4:41:28Speaker 05

  I was seven, two thousand seventeen and eighteen years.

• 4:41:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, eighteen years.

• 4:41:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:41:35Speaker 07

  Congratulations.

• 4:41:36Speaker 05

  It went so fast. It went so, so fast. It's just the time goes by. Uh, here I'm running and gunning, kicking doors in and suddenly here I'm. I'm being married, taking care of the kids and enjoying my American dream.

• 4:41:52Shawn Ryan?

  So what's your secret to a successful marriage?

• 4:41:56Speaker 05

  To successful marriage, I think, understanding and being reasonable and being loving and being accept that she's another human being that needs respect as well. And we just enjoy our lives together, you know? This is something that the longer it takes, the better it is. Seems like we fought tooth to the nail at the beginning. And now we really don't. But we mesh so well together that, you know, I think that's a love.

• 4:42:34Speaker 05

  So, yeah, that's pretty much my story. Again, I'm telling it, I'm telling this because I want people to see the beautiful America, the America greatness, how unique country it is, how powerful it is. And sometimes it is hard to see if you sit in the trenches, if you are part of it. But when you have a chance to step aside, take a different vantage point, you can see how beautiful country we have.

• 4:43:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's some positivity we don't hear very often here.

• 4:43:11Speaker 05

  Yes, you know, there's another fact is that I live as a free man. I can live as a free man only because the founding fathers, because the ideals the founding fathers were fighting for and the ideals that have been carried to this day by American people, by Americans like you, like other Americans.

• 4:43:36Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:43:39Speaker 07

  I saw that, did you do an ibogaine treatment?

• 4:43:45Speaker 05

  Yes, I did. I've done it, but you know, like, some people say how great experience they had. For me, it was not really nightmare. I didn't meet, like some people, I didn't meet Jesus. I met demons, and it really scared the hell out of me. But yeah, but also changed me. I remember after the treatment, I called my wife and I say, well, because she always say, like, she doesn't like when I'm being called Drago. She said, "Drago is gone, you know, that's, you are Tomas." And she did say, like, "We're gonna lock Drago in the cage, and you are Tomas from now on." I said, "Sure, my wife, you know, she's the boss," or whatever you say.

• 4:44:30Speaker 05

  And but then I called her from there, after the ibogaine treatment, I was coming back. I say, "Look, I buried Drago in the desert, you know, in the ibogaine there, Tomas is coming back."

• 4:44:38Speaker 07

  Did you get any benefits out of that with the TBI?

• 4:44:41Speaker 05

  I stopped drinking immediately. And there's another thing too, it's difficult sometimes to admit. I think even more difficult is to notice that, that you are, you can be alcoholic. And for me, it was like I had to drink, but I didn't feel like I had to. I was like, "Well, this is such a cool thing, skip a few shots here, you know, a few shots there." And I can stop anytime, I just don't stop it today. I'll stop it tomorrow, but tomorrow, so, "Well, you know what, just add a couple more shots and I'll be fine. I'll just stop it tomorrow." I can't stop it, it's very easy, I just told myself I'm not drinking. And it continues, and I couldn't stop. So I came back without drinking. I don't drink, I don't have to drink.

• 4:45:23Speaker 05

  Now I can have a glass of wine with my wife if I need to, but there's nothing that compels me to drink. I start sleeping better. And also, the peace that came in with, I would say, the acceptance of who you are, where you are. And also, but that's not just the ibogaine, I think the faith and God plays a big role in my life right now. And this is only thanks to Rachel, my wife. So, yeah.

• 4:45:56Speaker 07

  Did your fight strengthen after the Abogaine?

• 4:46:00Speaker 05

  Yes, definitely yes. And you know, this may be, I don't know, I don't think she gets mad if I tell, but we, we read books like on faith every night before we go to sleep. So sometimes, most of the time she's reading. And sometimes I, because of my English, let me try to read this. But mostly she's reading and you know, it's so peaceful that she's like, well, you're not listening, you're falling asleep. Because when I snuggle up, she start reading. It's like, hey, you know what? I'm, I'm just like fading away. But yeah, so yes, definitely yes. And the faith plays a big role in our life. And I think this is also another reason why my marriage is so successful.

• 4:46:43Speaker 05

  There's two things, actually, the faith that we both share and her emotional intelligence, that's something that,

• 4:46:52Speaker 05

  how to say it the right way, she knows like if I am angry or there's some, some emotions online, she can disarm me. So this is something that, you know, is, is great. I mean, I love the life. But I think we together work as a team greatly and that's, there's, I, I accredit the Abogaine treatment with, in big part for what happened there. And I think it's important that we pursue it because as a veteran, I know that different people react to different things.

• 4:47:32Speaker 05

  The, the, the different things will help me, may not help you, or may not help somebody else. This is why we cannot restrict people to only want cookie cutter treatment. If you have, let's say, TBI or PTSD or whatever, that this is what we're gonna do to you. It might, it might turn out, I witnessed that, that things didn't work for some guys. But they found relief and, and help doing different things. So we, the, the Abogaine, I think is important that we, we continue with it and try to allow or bring it,

• 4:48:10Speaker 05

  allow people to, to, to get this treatment in the United States. So they don't have to travel to Mexico or like I did to, or to other places.

• 4:48:19Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah, I hope that happens. We, um.

• 4:48:25Shawn Ryan?

  We have the Secretary of the VA coming on soon. And that's a big discussion I'm gonna have with him.

• 4:48:31Speaker 05

  Nice. We need that, I think, because it is very powerful. And I was very skeptical initially from a friend of mine, another team guy called me, say, "Drago, I need to tell you something." And the guy is just as a knuckle Drago as somebody can be. You don't want to fight this guy, you don't want to... This guy is just a badass dude. He calls me and say, "Drago, I need to tell you, I met Jesus." I was like, "What?" "I talked to Jesus, man." I was like, "Rachel, get Navy SEALs fund ready. I think we have another going out of rails." You know, I think that we have a guy and he will need help.

• 4:49:14Speaker 05

  And then I talked to him, and that changed my life, too. So, he... We talked for quite some time. And he explained to me what it was. I didn't know anything about Abogaine at the time, or Ayahuasca. And eventually, another friend of mine, rest in peace, Dan Cirillo, Taco, he called me and said...

• 4:49:40Speaker 05

  How did he say it? He said, "Drago, you need to go. I mean, if you don't go, I'm going to kidnap you. You need to go to this treatment. And you are coming with me." So, he took his time, from his work, from his family, just to help me get to Mexico and get this treatment. So, yeah, I owe him a lot, too.

• 4:49:58Shawn Ryan?

  Man, he was a good friend of mine.

• 4:50:01Speaker 05

  Hmm?

• 4:50:01Shawn Ryan?

  He was a good friend of mine.

• 4:50:02Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 4:50:03Shawn Ryan?

  He was, uh...

• 4:50:06Shawn Ryan?

  For a while there, he was my only friend there. And then, uh...

• 4:50:11Shawn Ryan?

  And then he died of a heart attack on the range.

• 4:50:13Speaker 05

  Very young, I think.

• 4:50:14Shawn Ryan?

  With his son.

• 4:50:16Speaker 07

  But um on a hunting trip, on a hunting trip.

• 4:50:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was doing things for other people.

• 4:50:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:50:23Speaker 05

  When he died.

• 4:50:24Speaker 07

  Awesome human.

• 4:50:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 4:50:26Speaker 07

  And uh I just, I never served with him, but uh.

• 4:50:30Speaker 05

  I did, and it was, that was a warrior, a true warrior.

• 4:50:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, I miss him.

• 4:50:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, me too, I miss him too, miss many guys, you know, there's something that uh I think we uh will ask for, you know, it's almost like a survival guilt, you know, like why, why, why I survive, why, why me, not him, why, why he, he got, why he was killed, not me, we ask those questions that I think we always ask until we die, you know, but there's a faith, you know, and that's how the life goes.

• 4:51:13Speaker 07

  He was a big part of me finding my faith.

• 4:51:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 4:51:17Speaker 07

  He was, I had a uh.

• 4:51:19Speaker 05

  He helped many guys.

• 4:51:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, he's a great guy, man, and uh.

• 4:51:25Speaker 05

  But this is about the teams, you know, what people don't understand, and, and I, I worked some of the programs, some podcasts too with fellow team guys, and this always ends up pretty heavy, you know, but people, so people tend to forget that uh

• 4:51:44Speaker 05

  we're normal people, you know, we just do our job, sometimes, you know, that's the way I look at ourselves, it's like, we, we are not sheepdogs, that is other people capable of doing it, we are wolves, and we hunt wolves, sometimes nations need monsters to fight other monsters, because this is the only way we can fight those monsters, so I think sometimes we have to become those monsters to protect our society, right, so that's, that's the way I, I look at it, and um, yeah, that's, sometimes.

• 4:52:26Speaker 05

  That's life, you know, and we all knew what we are getting into getting in SEAL teams. We, and we all were ready to do what needs to be done to protect our citizens, to protect America, and I'm proud of it.

• 4:52:43Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm proud to know you, man. I think that's, I think that's the perfect way to end this, and I just want to say, Thomas, it was an honor to interview you and just get to know you, and like I said, I've, I've just heard so much about you and, and your reputation speaks for itself, and so I just, it's, it's, I'm really thankful we met.

• 4:53:09Speaker 05

  Thank you so much, but I'm just a product of SEAL teams. I always wanted to be like you guys. I wanted us to keep up with you guys, so I'm nothing special. I'm not different than you. I'm not different than anybody else, so I'm just one of the community members, I'm one of the SEALs, former retired SEALs now, but we are all the same. We are from the same cloth and we did the same job, so it was an honor to be here. I thank you for the invitation, but it gave me also the opportunity to maybe make people pause and look at America from different vantage point, look at how great America is and is worth protecting.

• 4:53:53Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Drago, you got an update on the judge that prosecuted you in Poland?

• 4:54:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was sentenced to three years of prison time, and what happened at the time, there was nothing unusual because those so-called activist judges, they worked for the party, they did openly work for the party, but they were, they did what the political party told them to do. They were just doing their bidding in the society, and... So I was not the only one. There was like thousands of people sentenced by these activist judges to prison time. Some of them were sentenced to death, especially people coming back from the Second World War, who experienced the Western freedom, who experienced the

• 4:54:45Speaker 05

  Western way of life. The communists in Poland, like my father, they did not want these people there. So from the very beginning, they were finding cases to murder them, to kill them, to put them in prison. For example, the top-scoring ace of Polish air force fighting in Battle of Britain, he was arrested very quickly after he returned to Poland and sentenced to death. His death sentence was committed to life in prison. Then, I think, he was let go after ten years of prison time, or fifteen years in prison. No.

• 4:55:26Speaker 05

  I don't remember how many years, but he spent few years in prison and on the death row too. He was lucky, because many of those people were executed, very often just outside the prison cell with the shot in the back of his neck. So that's what happened. And those are, so these activist judges, you would never think, you would never think that something would ever happen to them. They were the masters of life and death for so many Poles. But in 2024, I got a call to, if I could come to Warsaw and testify in the case of one of such judges. It happened to be the same judge who sentenced also me

• 4:56:08Speaker 05

  to prison time. So, yes, I did absolutely. So me and Rachel flew to Warsaw. And the guy, the judge was charged with communist crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against Polish nation, and judicial terror, judicial terrorism. That's what they did, those activist judges. So it was surreal, but also like bittersweet. Because when I walk in with my wife in this courtroom, you know, I had my American flag, and I was like, you can't do anything to me anymore. But it's not. Poland is different now. Poland is very...

• 4:56:56Speaker 05

  How to say, they're law-abiding citizens. They go by the law, but they want to protect themselves from totalitarian systems like communism, socialism, Nazism. They don't, Poles don't want it, they experienced it already. So, there is actually a constitution, a Polish constitution, I believe, I forgot which point it is, that prohibits promotion of totalitarian ideologies in Poland, you can't do it. So, yeah, so I went to Warsaw and I testify against this judge, although, you know, this guy, I don't know what age he is now, maybe like eight years old, and it was forty years

• 4:57:38Speaker 05

  ago, so I would never, it would never cross my mind that judge who was sentencing me to prison time, he will be prosecuted for judicial terror, and he will be, I will be testifying in his case. Also, I learned that I was tortured, you know, the beatings in prison, beatings from the police, I never considered it torture, I thought it just normal, this is, this is how things works, you know, you get caught, they will be beating you up, but never, but now, when testifying, that was classified actually as a torture. So, that's something else that I, down on me when I went a year ago, when I went a year ago to Warsaw.

• 4:58:19Speaker 05

  So, I ask also, I testified in the court, my wife was there too, Rachel, and she was very proud of me, we both had the American flags, you know, and sitting in this courtroom, but I asked for not putting this guy in prison. I appear, I, I, I asked judge to, you know, no matter what they're gonna do, there is no need to put eighty years man in prison. He asked me if I have some against this guy still, if I have some, some feelings and some, some...

• 4:58:59Speaker 05

  Anger against this guy. Uh, and I say, no, you know, it's we, we, I, I, it, it forty years in America changed me. You know, I am a different person than I used to be when I was, when I came to America. So, you know, forgiving, I think I learned too, uh, in America. You know, if you can't forgive somebody, you leave that hate or you leave that, uh, that part. It become part of your life, destroying your life. We just, uh, you know, like, uh, following the God, uh, uh, Jesus teachings. You know, you need to forget. You may disagree, you may not, you, you, you, uh, with the sinner.

• 4:59:40Speaker 05

  Uh, with, uh, you, but you don't condemn the sinner, you condemn the sin. And that's what I ask, you know, condemn his, uh, uh, what he did. But as a human being, you know, in his age, really, there is no, uh, I, I think there will be, there is no, I for, I forgave him. So we, there's no need to put him in prison. So I don't know what, what happened then. I didn't follow up on it. I'm just like, for me, it's just like, uh, I, I, I learned how to forgive. And that's, America changed me.

• 5:00:12Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of people need to learn how to forgive.

• 5:00:16Speaker 05

  We know if you don't, you, you, it, that, that, that, that's. Things goes with you, wherever you go, you don't leave as a free, good man, good man being free. You have this thing on the, uh, uh, on your shoulder. So if we can learn how to forget, how to forgive, you know, like forget, but how to forgive. I think we are better people. America may be a better person.

• 5:00:43Shawn Ryan?

  When you forgive, you free yourself.

• 5:00:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know, you also, uh, you asked me about the, uh, what I feel when I killed a guy. Oh, by the way, I was thinking about it too. So I get so mixed up. The first guy that I killed was the guy in the car who, who following us. He was just, he just pulled from behind the corner. I was in the last car. It was so fast. Then as he was coming at the, you know, like car fifty, I wasn't. I think I was on fifty. So I was on the last car. He pulled out next to the, he was coming to our right. And I see with the, uh, under the, with the flashlight, I mean, with the lights that we have, but also the street lights. There's a guy on the right, sitting with the AK, sitting with AK. So it was like surreal. It's like, what is he thinking? I mean,

• 5:01:28Speaker 05

  we, we just, uh, we, we can just obliterate these guys. But anyway, so he started pulling in. Uh, uh, my concern was that if he has, uh, if this ID, uh, VBI D, we, we can all get hurt. So I didn't think much. It was, she was, it was almost so close. I just pulled the pistol. I killed the guy on the, on the right seat. With the gun and I shot the driver. So they went to, uh, they hit the, the, the light pole. Uh, the kind of funny things is like, so we're driving, I didn't think much of it. I said, okay, guy's gone. And, uh, I got a call from the front, from the OIC, say, hey, do I hear some shots being fired? What's going on, guys? Everything is okay?

• 5:02:10Speaker 05

  I say, yeah, I just stopped the guy. He was just coming, uh, uh, he was, he was coming on us. So I stopped the car. Say, okay, no problem, no question asked. Because we are actually driving, I think, from, no, we were driving to the mission. So, yeah, we didn't want any interruptions. Say, oh yeah, let's see what happened to this guy. There's no time for it. You just take care of the business and move on. So, yeah, but the thing is what you asked me earlier too. I was thinking about it, about the, the, the feelings of it. My, I was never like a feeling touchy guy. For me, there was no, but I say like I didn't feel anything. Uh, I, I didn't because I, I was thinking about it. I, I see myself more as a, like a technical person.

• 5:02:52Speaker 05

  So for me, the, the dwelling on it was more like, what could I do better? How could I kill him better, more efficient way? Not like, oh my God, he's dead now. That, you know, I, I, I, it was my priority was always live Americans, citizens, uh, the well-being of America. Any foreign entity has no value to me in, in, in, has no, I must say, no value. Um. It comes second, you know, like I'm not so eloquent, but, but yeah, the, the, the American life will come before any foreign life.

• 5:03:31Shawn Ryan?

  Number one priority.

• 5:03:32Speaker 05

  It's number one priority, America and American citizens.

• 5:03:36Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Drago, thank you again for coming back and, and setting that record straight and being open and vulnerable and, and, you know, it'll lack for better words, or better, it'll lack for better words, you know, setting humility aside for the, for the full story. I really appreciate it.

• 5:03:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was kind of difficult. Again, like I say, we're talking about these often and people watch all these movies, they stop seeing us as a human beings, they see us more like the, just part of that machine that if you're just broken, something happens, you just bring another one, you, people, some people almost expect you to be hurt and replaced with somebody else. So that's something that maybe I don't like people to see. This is why, like, I don't wear the trident, I was already mentioned about it earlier, I wear American flag because American flag encompasses the trident and everything that is good. And I want, when people see me, to think about me as American and not the Navy SEALs. I'm no longer a Navy SEAL now, of course.

• 5:04:39Speaker 05

  You know, I lived that life for 20 years, I loved it, but now I am just American. There's no hyphen in front of this, American.

• 5:04:47Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 5:04:48Speaker 05

  Thank you.