Army Special Mission Unit Intel Officer | Nic Adams | Ep. 347

Prior to his work on Capitol Hill, Adams served as a commissioned officer in the US Army. He deployed multiple times to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, as well as to Jordan and Iraq during the Global War on Terror. After ten years on active duty, he transitioned to the Army Reserve. Adams holds a BS in political science from Boise State University and a master of international public policy from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. find Nic here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nic-adams208 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Ridge Wallet ⬇️ https://ridge.com/HOUSE for up to 40% off!! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics... JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️ https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.com Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample #armysmu #smu Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

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• 1:32Speaker 03

  Special Operations.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Coburn Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:52Jack Murphy?

  Hey everyone, welcome to episode 347 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here tonight with our guest, Nic Adams. Nick served as an intelligence officer in the Army, both conventional forces and also with a special mission unit, multiple deployments to Afghanistan and elsewhere. We're really excited to have you on the show today, Nick. Thank you for joining us.

• 2:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, thanks, Jack. A pleasure to be on.

• 2:19Jack Murphy?

  So man, let's jump into it. You know, the question, first question for most of our guests about your origin story. Tell us a little bit about how you grew up and how that kind of took you towards the Army.

• 2:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, and I actually love that. That's the first question because I love origin stories, right? Because everyone's got a different story and they're actually fascinating because everyone's got different perspectives. So mine ticked off. I actually, I was more or less born into it. You know, they say the Army is a family business, I guess, in some ways. And so I'm no different in that regard. My dad was an Army NCO, a mechanic, and he was stationed in Germany and a number of other places. So I was actually born over in Germany when he was stationed there. And so I grew up as an Army brat, as they say, right? Moving kind of from town to town and started

• 3:13Speaker 05

  in Europe, spent some time in California, Texas, Belgium, and then finally ended up in Idaho around eighth grade. And that's when my dad decided to retire. But by that time, I mean, I'd been, you know, I'd grown up playing Army, right? Because that's what kids do. And I remember at some point saying like, I think I want to do this when I grow up. I think I want to join the Army. And like any other good Army person, my dad said, you should probably think about joining the Air Force instead.

• 3:43Speaker 05

  We we had that conversation and for a while I was like, yeah, okay. Um, but then, you know, like I being who I am and who I was, I was like, nah, I think the army might be it. And so it was always something that I think as a kid I gravitated toward. Um, I I thought it was, you know, obviously, you know, thought my dad was the coolest guy ever. Still think he's pretty awesome. Um, and so, you know, that that really had an impact on me. But I think, you know, the lifestyle was great, too. And and as a kid, I think at the time, you don't necessarily appreciate moving and leaving your friends. But I think later on, as an adult, you're like, you know what? I saw a lot of the world at a pretty young age. Think I want to keep this going. Um, but what profoundly changed, I think, my conviction to join was nine eleven.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  Um, that's when it kind of went from, hey, this might be something cool to go do. And man, it's really awesome seeing all the, you know, seeing the world and and getting paid to live in Europe. Um, I was a senior in high school when the planes hit, uh, the World Trade Center. And, uh, you know, like most people, I remember waking up that morning. I was out out and out in time, so, you know, it was pretty early, getting ready for school. And, you know, one of my friends calls me, he's like, hey, man, turn on the TV. Uh, you know, one of the planes hit the World Trade Center. And I was like, okay, you know, sure, it was an accident and these things happen, I guess. But I I did no point in that first moment that I think this was a terrorist attack. And then, like, you know, this is before I, I think I didn't have a cell phone at this point. I mean, this is like, this is like two thousand one. I'm driving to school and by the time I got there, the second plane had hit.

• 5:15Speaker 05

  And then, you know, by that time, things were kind of totally chaotic. And then, you know, a lot of rumors, I mean, I'm sure you remember nine eleven. People didn't really know what was what and like what got hit and like, you know, what was what was our response going to be? So, you know, I'm a seventeen year old kid. Um, I've always considered joining and now we're under attack. And so now I was like, okay, I'm one hundred percent like signing somewhere, right? And so I was ready to go right away.

• 5:42Speaker 05

  My, my parents talked some sense into me and said, look, this, uh, you know, this war is not gonna end overnight. Um, you should really think about, uh, you know, going to school, go on the ROTC route. I ended up meeting them halfway. I, I, I enlisted in the reserve at seventeen, under the, the delayed entry program. So, senior in high school, seventeen years old, went to, you know, got my, I had to beg my mom to sign the paperwork. Um, but there I was, uh, you know, signed up and raised my right hand, December two thousand one, and enlisted in the reserve. Um, and from there, um, it, uh, I actually ended up getting picked up for an ROTC scholarship

• 6:22Speaker 05

  at Boise State University, and I commissioned in two thousand six. So, um, so that's kind of when I actually got into the fight, so to speak. Um, you know, that, the way that worked was, once I got my ROTC contract, the, the reserve essentially let me go do that. Um, and so I went to school for the first kind of four years of the GWAT, and then, uh, and then in oh six commissioned at, at that point.

• 6:46Jack Murphy?

  Was there some inkling in the back of your mind of what you wanted to do in the army? If you wanted to be a pilot, or, what, was it always intelligence?

• 6:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a good question. I, um, I wasn't really sure, but I remember having this conversation with my parents and they, you know, my, my dad actually said to me like, hey, you, you know, you, you like, uh, you know, to, at the time, I was like, I was really into, um, Command and Conquer was like a really, I, I might remember this computer game, right?

• 7:13Jack Murphy?

  You and I are the same age, senior year of high school was nine eleven.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Okay, right? So you know what I mean? I mean, I loved, I loved playing that. I loved strategizing. I loved like, you know, sending a little spy plane out and seeing where the, where the bad guys were so I could, you know, get a jump on them, that sort of thing.

• 7:28Jack Murphy?

  I was the guy that liked the Tanya units. That's why I, I ended up.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I I love it. Those are those are great. Tanya, yeah, that yeah, that was a that was great. So anyway, all to say, like, I I thought about it and I was like, I think Intel would be kind of a cool, like, field to get into, to have all these things, you know, to to kind of paint the picture, right? Like, what what is the enemy doing? Um, and, you know, keeping your guys, obviously, alive and and and bringing the pain to the enemy. Like, that was kind of the the thought process. And I kicked around a couple of different ideas. Um, you know, at at at some point, I wanted to go infantry. At some point, I wanted to go artillery. At some point, I thought logistics would be cool because what you what you might be able to do after um you you get out. But like, for me, I was like, where where can I have the most impact? Where can I apply my talents the best?

• 8:14Speaker 05

  And I just kind of had that thought and it was like, I think Intel is is probably where I where I want to be. Um, and so when I was in ROTC, I actually got the opportunity uh my last year to sign, I could either sign for branch or for duty assignment. And they kind of dangle you with this additional three years, right? Where they're like, you you're you're signing up for four, but if you do three more, we can get you either your duty assignment of choice or um or your branch. And so I signed for a branch and I signed for for MI, for military intelligence. Um, and I threw in, like, I'll still put, like, Germany as my top duty assignment, because maybe I'll get it. Uh, and I did. I I kind of got lucky. I got two for the price of one. So I I signed for the additional three,

• 8:57Speaker 05

  served, you know, had had a seven-year active duty um obligation, but uh got both branch and and duty assignment of choice. So it kind of worked out.

• 9:05Jack Murphy?

  So I ROTC, that did you have to go to the basic course and then your uh officer or um intelligence branch? I mean, I I have no idea. I was in an officer. Tell tell us how that works.

• 9:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, they changed it a little bit. And I think it's changed a few times even since oh six. Yeah. So at that point, um, they had this thing called Basic Officer Leaders Course Two, which you, what basically, they they they took OBC, which was the Officer Basic Course, and they broke it up into two different things. I think it's back to one thing now. I'm not 100% sure, but at that time, I, you know, I commissioned in May, um, and then I I went out and did, um, Uh, I did a bullet two at the time at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and that was like your basic soldier FM seven dash eight stuff, right? Like move into contact, convoy ops, patrols, uh, op orders, all the things you did as a cadet anyway, um, through our OTC. And then like now you're like, okay, like it's real now. I mean, still training, but

• 10:02Speaker 05

  now you're actually commissioned. Now you're expected to know what you're doing. Um, and that was I think six weeks. And then from there I went to Fort Wachukah, uh, for, um, um, the officer base, of course, for MI. And that was, I think about between four and six months somewhere. Um, that was great. And a lot of people complain about Fort Wachukah. I gotta say like Arizona is a pretty awesome place to be. Um, you know, especially down there. I mean, there's some cool towns around there. There's Bisbee, there's Tombstone, like, you know, I mean, Tombstone's is cool. Like who doesn't want to go check that out? So in terms of like places to go see, like it was, it was a cool place and the training itself, I think was good too. Interestingly, in oh six, like there was still a lot of, um, you know, we were still doing like the, the high intensity conflict stuff. Um, and

• 10:45Speaker 05

  at the time, everybody was like, we don't need this anymore. We have to do counterinsurgency. This is the only thing that we're going to be doing in the future. Like, you know, the battlefields are going to be in cities and it's interesting now, 20, you know, almost 20 years later, how, how much we're kind of back to, to what we, you know, basically training for high intensity conflict again, um, and how it's come full circle. But at the time, um, you know, the, the shift was obviously toward counterterrorism and, and counterinsurgency.

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• 15:39Jack Murphy?

  Do you want to explain a little bit about like the job of an army intelligence officer? Because it's different than maybe some of the other roles out there. Like at least I imagine they're not training you in like tradecraft. That's not really an intelligence officer's job per se, at least not at this point, right?

• 15:56Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 15:57Jack Murphy?

  What did they actually do in the military?

• 16:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's funny you say that because I think at some point, you know, like when I was like, oh, military intelligence. This sounds cool. It's like James Bond and then you get there and it's not James Bond at all.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  My first unit, I wasn't even, I was in a military intelligence unit and I was, I was the XO of a company. And so like all I did really was like supply and logistics and like

• 16:20Jack Murphy?

  Personnel.

• 16:21Speaker 05

  Exactly, right? Which is great and then we can get into that. But the training, I mean, again, it was, you know, essentially, and I really enjoyed it. I mean, it was like really understanding what it is the enemy is doing and, and being the person that knows how the enemy is going to employ his forces.

• 16:38Jack Murphy?

  Analysis.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  And so in intensity conflict scenario, you know, you're, you have to know the enemy's weapon systems. You have to know the enemy's doctrine. And if you're going up against an adversary, it's your job to know he'll probably use, you know, these, you know, breachers to get through this obstacle. He's got a reserve element he's probably going to put over here. And so you just, you get trained in like that, you know, military decision-making process and understanding how to, you know, employ your sensors to like find where he is. So that's ISR. That is human intelligence, it signals intelligence. It's putting together all of the different intelligence disciplines to really paint a picture. And then it's understanding what it means, right? It's one thing to have all these collectors give you information.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  But if your analysts and the, and your intelligence officers don't understand what it means, then you can't provide the most valuable piece to the commander, which is the so what? Which is why do I care that he's got 50 tanks? Why do I care that, you know, to go to a counter insurgency example? Like, why do I care that he drives a white Toyota Corolla and lives, you know, on this street corner? Like, those are things that like as, as the intelligence professional, you have to spend some time understanding what that means and what the significance of that is. And then being able to understand, you know, like when patterns shift and why that matters. And so, yeah, to your point, it's not tradecraft, right? Like, intelligence officers in the army are not being, you know, told to meet with some dude in some bar in Vienna, like, that's not what we do.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  It's a, it's a whole lot of, hey, you know, we've, we've got this mission and we have to, you know, what, what is the enemy going to do? What can we expect? What, what will he, what, what are his most likely and most dangerous courses of action? Um, and being able to brief the commander and, and in, at the, at the team level or at the, you know, at the platoon level, like the soldiers that are going out, like what, what they're, what they can, can expect to be up against.

• 18:33Jack Murphy?

  All right, so tell us about your first unit. Uh, you said XO in a conventional MI unit?

• 18:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's funny too, like, I, my whole career, I've heard, um, just wait till you get to the, to the real army because things are different there. And I think what people meant with that was like the brigade combat team. Um, that was the big thing in two thousand and six, you know, from, I think, like oh three onward, maybe. And so that was it, right? It was like, ah, that, when you get there, things will be different. But like here, you know, where I started out in Germany at a, at a theater level, um, military intelligence brigade, you know, it was a, it was very much, um, not that. Uh, we, we were not a combat arms unit. Um, there, there were no combat arms, um, soldiers around. It was a lot of intel personnel and in, in oh six at the time, like, there wasn't much happening in Europe. It was pretty sleepy, right?

• 19:21Speaker 05

  And so, like, my first thought when I got there was like, okay, when are we deploying? Like, when are we supporting Afghanistan and Iraq? And this is two thousand and six, right? So there's two wars going on. Um, and I didn't take Germany to stay in Germany. I mean, of course, I, um, I wanted to get back there. I was born there, I've got a lot of family there. Um, and so I was excited to go back, but I, but I also knew in oh six, like that, I didn't want to camp out. And so when I got there, I was actually initially a little disappointed, um, I guess that it was, you know, a, a headquarters unit of an, of an intelligence brigade. Uh, it was actually an intelligence group at the time. But I, you know what, like, at the same time, I was like, okay, there's opportunity to learn here. Right? Like, I'm gonna learn how logistics works. I'm gonna learn how personnel works.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  And as an executive officer of a, of a headquarters and headquarters company, like, you're doing a lot of that. Um, and so got to run my first range. I mean, those are all things you pick up and like things to learn. So in terms of places to be, it actually turned out pretty good. And I had a really good commander and first sergeant. And what I'll tell any lieutenant that listens to this is like, listen to your first sergeant and listen to those NCOs. Um, and that's what my, my dad told me, uh, going in as, as a, you know, as a former NCO. He was like, listen, those guys can make or break your career. So, um, just go in, keep your mouth shut and your ears open for the first little while and you're gonna do just fine.

• 20:41Jack Murphy?

  Sound advice.

• 20:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. It served me well.

• 20:45Jack Murphy?

  I, okay, so how long were you at that unit?

• 20:50Speaker 05

  So I was there for a year. Um, and like I said, it was, it was a good learning experience. Got to run some ranges, uh, got to learn how the army works. Um, and then, uh, about a year in, actually about six months in, I tried to figure out, okay, I'm not deploying here. Like, I'm gonna be doing this for the next three years, foreseeably. Um, where, where can I, how can I deploy? How can I get into the fight? Um, and so at some point, I, I, you know, through the, I guess lieutenant mafia, I heard, well, there's a unit that's getting chopped to us. They were coming, I think they were, before they were like a three twenty-third MI battalion, but they're coming to sixty-sixth MI group, which is where I was. And I was like, okay, well, this is, this is a good opportunity, uh, maybe to, to go there. They were a, um, an aerial exploitation company. So they had a combination of fixed wing aircraft, um, that were manned.

• 21:35Speaker 05

  And then they had a couple of hunter, uh, UAVs at the time, um, which at that time were a program of record. Um, not cool fancy satcom stuff, right? Like, not talking Reapers, but you know, still like UAVs that were, um, that were, that were going over there. And so, um, this unit had just got back from Balad, from a year-long rotation. And so I started making some phone calls. Um, of course, like no top cover, right? I didn't go to my commander and was like, hey, sir, can I, can I get to this unit? Um, I was like, I'm just gonna start calling the S one, seeing what I can make happen here. Um, so I, I, I figured out that like, there was a, you know, this unit's coming over, they're gonna look for a platoon leader. There's a lieutenant coming from the States to replace me.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  But then I was like, but why, but why should they send, you know, why, why should that person go over there? Like, I should go to this unit. Like, I would like to go do that. And I'm already here. I've paid my dues, right?

• 22:26Jack Murphy?

  You do need to get your platoon time in, don't you?

• 22:29Speaker 05

  You know, as it's interesting, like you don't have to, um, and at that point, as an intel guy, like, especially from lieutenant to captain, it was pretty much guaranteed, like the, the, um, the promotion rates, I think it started out four years, it went down to three at some point when I was, uh, there from like, and from like, like commissioning to captain was like a thirty-six month timeline. And that was down from like the four years that had been before. So, um, but yeah, a hundred percent, I wanted to get platoon time, right? Like as a lieutenant, like you wanna be with soldiers, like you don't wanna be stuck at headquarters the whole time. And so this unit was going out to Hohenfels, Germany, which anyone who's been to Germany and like hears Hohenfels, they think like, that's like the box, like that's where all the units get trained.

• 23:08Speaker 05

  Um, nobody wants to go there, but I was, I was like, okay, but as a tenant unit, like I get to go to this really cool base in Southern Germany, like it's beautiful countryside out there. I drove a Dodge Ram two, which up in like, you know, like the Frankfurt area wasn't a great vehicle choice, as it turns out. Um, because parking is, is pretty horrible. But, uh, I ended up like working it out, uh, and they just cut me orders. And then I, at some point I did tell my, my boss, I was like, hey, sir, by the way, like you're losing me anyway, but I'm gonna try to line up a transfer. And he was like, hey, I support it. Why don't you come tell me next time before you start pulling levers? But I had a really good, uh, I had a really good instructor in O B C and she told us, she told every one of us, she was like, don't, like, you gotta manage your own career.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  Because if you let other people manage your career, you're gonna get stuck doing all kinds of stuff and other people are gonna get the assignments you want. I took that to heart, by the way, and uh, and so I started making the calls and I just figured it was like probably better to lean forward and you know, see what I can get and then the whole like ask for for forgiveness rather than permission sort of thing. In that case, it worked out. So I got, I got orders to go down to um, to Home Fills uh, from uh, the Frankfurt area and it was a great move. Um, I was with a aerial exploitation battalion. Um, I was platoon leader of the recon platoon, like it sounded cool. I had soldiers, we had airplanes. And then like a couple of months later, we got orders to Afghanistan. And so I was pumped, right? I was like twenty three, twenty four.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  I was, and I was like, okay, like this is, this is why I'm here. Like this is why in September two thousand one, I got raised my right hand. It wasn't to like, you know, sit at a garrison. Um, and so that kind of started, um, I guess that next phase of my career, which uh, which is kind of when the deployment started and uh, yeah, that, and that was a really cool unit. I mean, that was a, it was a fun place to be. And again, like it was, it was still Germany. So like it was, it was a cool place to be stationed. But then it was like a really cool opportunity to, to actually get out and deploy with those guys.

• 25:06Jack Murphy?

  So tell us about the aerial exploitation unit and you know, what you guys were up to when you got deployed to Afghanistan.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  Sure, yeah. So I think this was like mid or early oh eight, um, and we started looking at um, like where we were going to deploy to. They weren't quite sure. They did a couple of site surveys. So I didn't get to go on those trips, but um, our, our company commander went out there and like they looked at a few different airfields. Um, you know, what they needed for that aircraft at the time, I don't even think we use them anymore, but you know, they were line of sight um, aircraft. So they were tethered to a ground control station and um, but they could carry like an FMV payload, so full, full motion video payload. They could carry a signals intelligence payload. Um, and so at ti- at that time, it was a, you know, pretty advanced piece of equipment, right? Like, like now drones are everywhere and we should get into that at some point because it's, it's crazy how the battlefield's changed.

• 25:59Speaker 05

  But in a way, like we were the only people with drones and we, we were the only ones with anything that flew really um, of any consequence. And so. They were looking for a place to put us. We ended up going to Jalalabad airfield um out in eastern Afghanistan. And so the very first deployment of that unit was was like, like I said, like early oh eight and then my my first deployment ended up being in uh July of oh eight. Um and so, you know, we'd already had established a forward presence. And so the good thing is like, you know, we did all the stuff back home. We packed everything up, shipped it out. I stayed um back with the um the kind of main really like most of the unit. And what we did was kind of an unorthodox way of doing business. Like, we didn't deploy like as a as as a company.

• 26:41Speaker 05

  We deployed a detachment forward, which essentially was being led at that time by our company commander. But then we like kept people in and we just always would cycle people forward, right? And so we'd have, you know, an officer out there as the OIC, we'd have an NCOIC, and then we'd have about fifteen soldiers. Um and then we'd have about fifteen contractors from North of Grumman who were like like keeping the the aircraft fa- uh safe and like maintained. Um and so we had a combination of like mainland soldiers and recon soldiers, and then we would go out there and just like do deployments. And so mine started in July of oh eight. And, you know, I mean, like most people, like when you first show up over there, you're like, what what did I get myself into? Like, what is this place? Um but it was, you know, again, like it was.

• 27:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it got real, right? Like, that was kind of when you realized, like, okay, like, like, we're here, we got a job to do. Um and uh, yeah, it was it was a pretty cool deployment. We started out doing a lot of support for conventional forces, and so most of it was um doing like route clearance scans, right? So we'd put the bird up, we'd fly for, you know, eight hours, however long we had loiter time, and we would just drive up and down route routes, basically. Um but we kind of figured out like that wasn't necessarily the best use of that asset. Uh because, you know, what are the chances of you catching somebody and placing an IED? I mean, it's it's not. And you have to, I mean, it's a soda straw, right? So it's like right place, right time sort of thing. And I don't, I'm not sure that it ever actually happened.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  And so at some point later that year, we we had a siege of sodaf unit on our compound. So I think it was fifth group guys, I I'm not exactly sure like what group it was. But I know that one of the guard groups ended up switching out with them. All to say, like, they were like, hey, you guys have a sigint pod, like, we're trying to like, find like, bad dudes, like, can you guys help us out with that? So this now we're like, yes, like, we should try to figure out this relationship. And so again, it was a kind of a series of like, you know, phone calls and like MOUs. And then we ended up getting like

• 28:44Jack Murphy?

  Manager career.

• 28:45Speaker 05

  Them. Yeah, it was, I mean, it really was. It was like, it's it's almost, it was like entrepreneurial, right? And this was not all my idea, by the way, like, one of our like warrants was like, hey, man, we should, we should try to work with these guys, like, I think it'd be a way better use of the asset. And I was like, totally, let's do it. And so, you know, we worked with our our like theater two and everybody else like, let's let's get chopped to these SF dudes. Which, let's be real, they're cool. And as an intel guy, you want to work with cool guys. You don't want to, you don't necessarily want to fly up on a route, especially if you feel like it's not, it's not yielding anything, right? Like, if we were keeping guys safe in firefights, like a hundred percent, that would have been a different story.

• 29:20Jack Murphy?

  You wanted to find a way to contribute to the fight.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  Absolutely, right? Like, let's get this asset in there. Let's, let's, you know, let's, let's help these guys out. And so we got chopped over. It was, it was funny, too. It was a totally different, like, it was like, like a night and day difference, right? From like, working with the conventional guys and then suddenly, you know, we got, we actually got an MOU. So like, we were chopped over to this, you know, shadowy organization, shall we say at the time, right? Some guy in like a, in a SEAL out, you know, SEAL, Navy SEAL, uh, uniform. Because, yeah, I had no, nothing on him, right? And so at the time, I'm just like blown away by this, like, whoa, who's this cool guy? And he's got no name tag. And he calls himself Joe, and who the hell knows if that's his real name? But like, you know, we're just like, yeah, and so we love it because it's awesome. And they're giving us really cool work to do.

• 30:07Speaker 05

  And and we're doing some pretty good target development for those guys.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  And then, yeah, so that was, that was that. And then, yeah, kind of throughout, like between them and like the, the CJ Sotaf guys, kind of went back and forth, uh, kind of supporting them. And then we were able to, to enable a couple of, um, a couple of actual HPT kind of raids. And, uh, you know, putting guys on, on target, uh, and it led to, uh, in fact, one of them actually made, uh, one of them made CNN, which was kind of wild because I was like, okay, we're like this little hunter unit out here in Eastern Afghanistan. But like at the time, like we, we ended up thwarting this like attack on the, on the governor of the province. And because they had some intel that like, you know, they're, they're, some dudes are planning an attack.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  And so, you know, we did what we did with our, with our equipment and we, we ended up figuring out where they were and, and, uh, and they hit the house. And, uh, it made it, it was kind of a big deal, like for, for that at the time, right? And so like that to me was just like one of those eye opening experiences where I was like, man, okay, this is pretty cool. Like we're able to directly impact the fight. We're supporting people who know how to use us effectively. Um, and we may have just changed the like outcome of the war in our sector, right? Um, and so that's kind of where I got like the bug, right? Where I was like, okay, I kind of want to do this special operations thing. I kind of want to like stay in this fight. Like, you know, they're, they're able to get things quickly. Approvals don't take very long. Um, and we're, we're, we're having strategic level impacts with tactical systems.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  Like how, how, how do I keep doing that? Um, so that was kind of my first kind of, you know, look into that world and, uh, you know, kind of wanted to stay.

• 31:45Jack Murphy?

  Uh, just from a reconnaissance point of view, I, uh, imagine that, what are we in 2008? The, the technology around these drones was still sort of nasient. Um, was it difficult to, to use the, the video systems or other ints that are on these platforms? I mean, what were sort of the technical limitations that you guys found yourselves running into like, man, I, I wish we had three more ti- uh, hours of time and time of flight or whatever.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, uh, what the most frustrating thing honestly was like the the line of sight stuff, right? Like, we could not go up into some of the areas where like the fighting was here. Yes. So we were out of J Bad airfield in Nangar province. We tried to push up to Kunar as much as we could. Um, we were able to get to like other like places kind of around um J Bad. And there was a lot of dudes, as it turns out, like there's a lot of bad dudes in that area that they just didn't fight there because that's where they had like their support zone. But we were still able to roll up people because, you know, they had, they live somewhere. Right. Uh, turns out they don't always live where they fight, and some of them do. But we went up to Kunar a few times and you just, if you get too deep into those mountains, you start losing link. And so, uh, there were a couple of times where we'd be supporting, you know, like conventional dudes up there.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Um, and yeah, we would just, we would just lose link. And then the aircraft would like automatically want to come back and then we'd reacquire it and try to push it back up. And so we had like a, a, a map of like where we could fly. But, you know, I just felt bad for some of the dudes that we'd be supporting, like they'd be on the ground, like humping these mountains right up and down. And then we'd be like, dude, I, I, I cannot, I can't, like, this is as far as this bird will go. And so like, it was frustrating at times. We had conventional guys use this to like call in artillery, like which I don't, you know, we told them like, hey, we're not a, that's not what we, we, I, like legally, I'm not sure you're allowed to do this. They're like, yeah, it's fine. Like, just show us this mountainside. And, and so we did, and you know, they, you know, then you'd see like all this, some rounds coming in.

• 33:38Speaker 05

  Um, you know, and we were like, okay, uh, you know, again, like made it clear that we were doing just the recon piece. But that was the most frustrating thing, um, in that the tech now, I mean, it's so much different, right? Like if you get something that's either satcom, or even if you get somebody with a small quadcopter that you can just throw up in the air, you can walk up and down those mountains all day and you can see what you're looking at, um, especially if you have small attributable systems. So yeah, things changed a lot. What I will say though is like, I, I'm, I'm just grateful that back then I wasn't looking over my shoulder constantly while I was out, like on the flight line, right? Like we had, I mean, J Bad was not a bad place to be deployed. Like we had a couple of times where we got like rocketed, a few times where like, you know, I mean, we didn't have crazy enough. We didn't even have HESCO barriers on our side of the airfield. Like it was a, like it was a fence.

• 34:22Speaker 05

  And I was like, at what point are like, we're gonna get like shot at on the flight line, right? And then we did, and I was like, okay, I can't, like at this point. It's like late one night and uh and and so I'm in the hangar and I'm hearing like it rounds at like two in the morning. I'm like, that's not, that's not like a, that's not the range at two AM, right? So we go out there and we're seeing the tracers like fly out, like fly into like the base and, you know, again, like we're not a combat arms unit. And so, you know, this is all conventional stuff. I'm like, what? Like, you know, I was like, get off the earth. Like, don't, you know, like, the aircraft is not as important as you guys not getting shot. So, so we had a couple of those things happen, but like by and large, like it wasn't like a crazy place to be. But uh I did apply for um, so that was my first deployment.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  I ended up applying for uh SF at that point, because I was like, I was a lieutenant. I was like in the window. I was like, I'm gonna apply for special forces. I wanna, I wanna get into that, into that community. So I had like a recruiter. I was emailing back and forth, but even then, right? Like, comms are not great. Emails sometimes don't always go through. I put a packet together. I sent it to him and we're communicating. And then I were getting back to Germany after my first deployment. Uh, this is well past like the deadline and he emails me. He goes, hey, man, I don't think we've got your paperwork and you sent it again. And I was like, ah, so I did. And I got like an email like, I think like two months later saying, hey, thanks for applying for SFAS, uh, you know, but you know, you're, whatever that like denial letter is that you get, you know?

• 35:46Jack Murphy?

  That's, that's weird because I thought that you could go as a captain.

• 35:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, so there's, there was, basically it was this. It was like you had, you could do it for one year. I think you had to be a one lieutenant, first lieutenant promotable to go. And then you could, then you could get a waiver or something like that. There was like a waiver you could get for a second shot.

• 36:06Speaker 05

  And I don't exactly remember what, what the, what the, you know, stipulations were at the time. Um, but it was like, I was disappointed, right? Because I hadn't like, like, figured I would at least get a shot at SFAS. And if I didn't, like, if I didn't get picked after that, I would have been able to say, well, okay, I, you know, I left it all like out there, but I didn't get picked up. But not to get a shot at like assessment selection, I was like, oh, okay, that's done a little bit. But then I was like, okay, that's fine. Like, I like doing the intel thing. It was pretty cool. Why don't I try to go to, to like SF group as an intel guy? And so after my second deployment with the same unit, Where I was still doing a lot of support for the for the uh the SOAF guys. This one was only three months, same location, same place, same setup.

• 36:51Speaker 05

  Came back from that one and just started working it, right? Like, had a good friend who was down at 10th Special Forces Group, uh, 1st Battalion down in Stuttgart, Germany. And I was like, hey, man, like, how do I get down there? And uh, he was like, well, um, I I can, you know, we could bring you down for an interview. And so it's like, yeah, let's do it, man. Let's let me just come down and like, talk to you, talk to your commander. So I went down, I drove to Stuttgart, had an interview at uh 1st Battalion 10th Group. And this was like right before I got orders for the captain's career course back at Fort Wachuka. And he said, hey, we think you're great. We'll we'll, you know, we'll work it through um HRC, you know, Human Resource Command. We'll we'll try and get you on orders. I said, great. Got to Fort Wachuka and started the captain's course.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  And uh, you know, about halfway through, like, the assignment slates are coming out. And uh, you know, there, I I remember meeting with the branch manager and he was like, well, where do you want to go? I was like, well, I want to go to 10th Group. And he's like, that's back in Germany. You just came from Germany. I'm like, yeah, I know, I want to go back to Germany, A, because it's awesome. But B, like, I want to go down to to 110. I already interviewed with those guys and they're they've, you know, here's my by-name request from the battalion commander. And uh, he was like, that's not how we do things in the army, like, in O5, like, what does this even mean? I don't care. Like, I work for, you know, whatever. And uh, he said, how about Alaska? And I was like, nah, I don't think so, man. Like, we're going to work with that, you know, we'll, I'll figure it out.

• 38:15Speaker 05

  So I I left that interview, you know, convinced that this guy was gonna cut me orders somewhere else. And I just called, I called 110 and I said, hey, listen, uh, I had my branch interview. They they told me to go pound sand. They said a BNR ain't gonna cut it. Uh, and uh, and they want to know, uh, you know, like, what the hell I was even thinking. And they were like, okay, cool. Um, we got it. And two weeks later, I had orders for Stuttgart. So, uh, it worked out. Um, whoever they

• 38:42Jack Murphy?

  Swear to life.

• 38:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, whoever they called, it worked. And, uh, you know, it was just another one of those instances where, uh, again, I was just like, I'm not gonna just wait for the, the big green machine to, to give me orders.

• 38:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:54Speaker 05

  Uh, I'm gonna try to get down to, to group. And so that was it. I was, uh, then I was a group and it was, you know, it was cool because I got to then go work with, um, you know, special forces, which is what I wanted to go do. Um, I got to do it in Germany and I got to do it as an intel guy. So I kinda, I kinda got it all, like, I kinda got everything I wanted. Um, and it kinda worked out.

• 39:15Jack Murphy?

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• 39:54Jack Murphy?

  And that leads to problems with your posture and everything else. Um, so what I like about the Ridge Wallet, it's really a minimalist design. Uh, so most of us are using cards these days, so it can hold all of your cards in here inside these elastic pieces that you can press out. And then there's a clip on the back, you can, um, I, I use it to clip money in when I, when I do use, uh, dollars, um, can clip them in there. They have over 50 colors and styles, uh, so it's not just functional, you can personalize it a bit as well. Um, they have some that feature your favorite NFL teams and so forth. Losing your wallet is also pretty crappy. I've had that happen to me as well.

• 40:36Jack Murphy?

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• 41:19Jack Murphy?

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• 43:05Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about being an intel officer in a special forces group then, because that's a different role. You're not on an ODA, but you're still doing the intelligence support for these operations. I mean, I'd be interested for... Here's some insight from what that's like.

• 43:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was cool. And I think every phase of my career, like, it kind of, you know, got, I guess, like, it was very different each time, right? Like, the conventional thing, like, doing the, like, direct, like, aircraft, like, aerial exploitation support. That was like, I wasn't doing any intel analysis, right? I was collecting. I was a collector, essentially. I was like, here's the, here's the raw stuff. And then it was the guys over at CJ SOTF and at JSOC, and, you know, the people who were supporting, the first ID guys, in some cases. It was their intel bubbas that were going through all that, right? So when I got to group, and really to battalion, to First Battalion, 10th Group, now it was like, okay, you're the, you're the intel guy.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  But what I started out as was not the S2, so I was not the senior intelligence officer of the battalion. I started out as the military intelligence detachment commander. So mid-commander is what they essentially call it, right? So think of like, I guess in the conventional army, it's like a MYCO, like a military intelligence company, that supports a battalion. In a special forces battalion, you've got a debt. And then we had, I think we had close to 50 soldiers. And it was like, we're, we're force providers, right? I had SIGINT guys.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 44:35Jack Murphy?

  The SAD A guys?

• 44:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. I had a bunch of SAD As, some SAD Bs. We had some, um, you know, we had a couple of humaners, uh, some counter intel guys and we had analysts. And so we had the whole kind of package to support the battalion. And, uh, and it was cool. Like I managed a budget. I, I got to send guys to training. I got to make sure we had like the right equipment. We got some stuff installed to help guys do, you know, the analysis better. Uh, we got our SKIF certified on our floor. Like these are all cool things because like it finally like we could, like enabled us to support the, the teams. That were, that were deploying. And so when I got there, like we were again, like kind of the same. Strange with the same setup as my first unit where we had like a, a, a continuous presence in Afghanistan.

• 45:18Speaker 05

  And we would send companies out there, uh, you know, set up an ODB, uh, and now take their ODAs out there and do, and do ops in, in Eastern Afghanistan. And so, so now it's totally different. So, you know, I was, I was in Germany, I think about a year. Um, until I, or maybe about six months or so, um, and then I deployed. I was kind of over there, uh, in now in Kabul. With, uh, with, with, uh, 10th Group, um, pretty, pretty soon, uh, after getting there. And, but now because I'm forward, now I'm the senior intel officer for like that forward task force. And so now it's what you described. Right now it's, it's totally different from the collection piece. It's different from the force provider. Now I'm the guy that's fusing all the different ins together.

• 46:02Speaker 05

  And I think what's interesting about that, um, is that it, it's, you know, it's, it's a very fast paced environment, right? Like guys are going out on, on, on raids. They're, um, doing their, their training. Um, and at the time we were training, uh, an Afghan police unit called the Provincial Response Companies. And so when I got there in August of 2010, 2010, 2011, 2011, August 2011. Uh, we showed up, we're in Kabul, we had a continuous presence, but we had, we had ODAs in like Wardak, Logar. Um, we had some split team ops, um, out in like, uh, I think Sarobi. And so kind of like around the Kabul cluster where we had our ODAs aligned. And like their primary mission was to train these these Afghan police.

• 46:47Jack Murphy?

  Is that the that's different than the Kandak commandos?

• 46:52Speaker 05

  That's right. Yeah, they were different. And so the Kandak guys, I think, were were C G SOTF and like, you know, they then you had like some of the other cool things that, you know, again, like, I think, some of the three letter agencies were doing and and some of the other folks. But we were doing, you know, it was it was very like law enforcement kind of focus. So they were like a branch of the Afghan National Police, but they were they were these conventional response companies. And so like, I remind people too, sometimes like, you know, SF like it's and and SF guys, obviously, that are watching this know this like it like they like it's not designed necessarily to be a door kicker unit, right? Like, that's like, those are like, that's the Rangers, right? Like, we're like, we were supposed to do foreign internal defense, irregular warfare.

• 47:32Speaker 05

  And, you know, going out there with these the locals to do the buy with and through stuff, right? And so that actually was a lot of what we were doing at one ten.

• 47:42Speaker 05

  And, you know, it was, again, it was it was it was an interesting opportunity to be the intel guy that was fusing all these different ins together. And so what what I did was like, I mean, I liaised with all the conventional guys, like, what are you guys pulling in? Because we didn't control our own assets. We had to compete for all of our ISR assets with everybody else. And so, you know, we would try to get aircraft, we would try to, you know, you know, task some of our like partners and we we even had like NATO humaners that would feed us reports too. And so we would pull intel from wherever we could to to paint a picture of like, okay, what's going on in the province that this O D A is in? Who are the power brokers? Who are the main players? Who are the H V Ts? Let's get a good understanding of what these roads look like. When is like the worst time to go up this route?

• 48:27Speaker 05

  You know, when when are we seeing the most incidents? And so the job really became a cross between like finding people, like finding the enemy. And it was also like telling our guys like what what to expect. You know, when they were out doing their missions. And then making sure they had the right assets in place.

• 48:46Jack Murphy?

  So if I understand the job correctly, you were basically trying to take all these different inputs that were coming in and then getting to the A O Bs and the O D As, the information they needed to complete their mission.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. And we had a really good relationship with the eighteen foxes, right? So the intel sergeants on the teams, uh, we would, we would have like, I mean, I regularly had either myself or our NCOIC or our analysts just pick up the phone and call those guys. What was interesting, though, about our mission, I probably should have mentioned this upfront, like, we were, so we were, our ODAs were training the, the Afghans, but with each ODA was another, like, um, I think they called it SOTGs. It was like, we had Romanian partners, we had, um, the Slovak partners, and, um, Hungarian partners. And so because we were a Europe-focused, uh, battalion. I see, yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 05

  We had all these, like, European soft guys that were, like, deployed with us in Kabul and around, right? And so you'd have, like, I mean, it was cool. I came home with, like, a bunch of different uniforms. I guess you trade a bunch of stuff. So I've got, like, got a Hungarian uniform, Romanian uniform somewhere. But like, those guys would go out on these hits, right? And so you'd have, so it was like an added layer of complexity. And as an intel officer, it was, it did an additional layer of complexity, because now I had, like, foreign intelligence officers that were, like, in our jog that I was, like, working with. And of course, in like, you know, and far be it from me to criticize the way we do business, but like, you know, I've got, like, five different computers, right? None of that, none of which talk to each other. I've got one for, you know, like, the nipper, sipper, and like, you know, my J-Wix,

• 50:25Speaker 05

  but then I've also got, um, my BICs, which only talks to certain NATO partners. And then I've got one that only talks to the UK. And so like, by the time you check all your email accounts, right? Like, that, that's a struggle in itself. Um, but like, the dynamic was really interesting, because in some ways, we helped develop our NATO soft partners. So it was like a capacity-building exercise for both the Afghans and the Europeans. Um, but then, of course, we were actually, like, doing, like, no-kidding missions, right? So we would go, like, these guys would go out and, like, roll dudes up. Um, or they would put the, the PRCs, which they were called, which now that acronym means something totally different. But they put these virtual response companies on target. And so it was like, there was a lot of inputs from a lot of different places.

• 51:09Speaker 05

  And again, like, our job was to synthesize it, like, why does it matter? And like, there's a lot of noise and like, what, like, what actually matters and what's noise?

• 51:18Jack Murphy?

  No, that's really cool. And I was gonna point out, and I mean, you mentioned by with and through, the term that was coined by Marc Boyotte, that describes how special forces works going with, accompanying, you know, the host nation partner force on target, or by where you're training them on the base and then you're sending them out on their own to do the mission. And then what you're describing with the European partner forces is through, that we are working with these European partners and they are in turn, training these provincial forces. So you're completing the circuit there.

• 51:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah, that's the best way to point it out. I mean, it's absolutely right. And they were good, right? Like, some of these, these, these guys were hitters. And they, they wanted to get out there and, and get work done.

• 52:02Jack Murphy?

  Those, those used to do European units, some of them are pretty damn good.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we, we built some really good, built a great relationship with those guys. We, you know, when we first got in, I mean, we actually had a KIA, a US KIA, like, within the first few weeks of, like, getting there. And so that really, and it was, it was a pretty tough day. All right. I mean, like, it was like, obviously, like, you know, like, that, that could happen. But you never wanted to. And it was kind of a, it was a bad day, kind of all around. It was like a day that, like, the Capitol got attacked while we had an ODA out on, on target. All of our ISR gets pulled to go support, like, what's happening back in the Capitol. And so...

• 52:44Jack Murphy?

  Was this when the big, the hotel got taken over and all that?

• 52:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was, I think that was, what was that, September 13th, 2021?

• 52:54Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, we, we, we interviewed one of the Kiwis that was there.

• 52:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 52:58Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 52:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, that was, that was pretty crazy. So we were on eastern, like, the eastern part of Kabul at the time. So like, we heard, like, we heard it going down, right? And we're like, okay, like, something's, something's happening, obviously. And we had a convoy of dudes out like in the city that day too, like our guys, like a couple of our guys. And like I was potentially gonna go out there with them, but then I didn't because we had no D A out. And so I was like, let me make sure we have I S R assets for them and like maybe make sure I can like communicate. So it was a good thing I did, like I was, I, you know, able to, to, to the extent that I could, like, like fight for assets. And eventually we did get a bird back out to, to what was going on. But by that time we had troops in contact. Um, and then, you know, like I said, like one of our, one of our guys, one of our team sergeants was actually killed in action.

• 53:40Speaker 05

  Um, which, you know, and that was, I mean, it was, yeah, it sucked. Like that, that really set the tone for at least that part of the deployment. Um, and, and later, and like we always, you know, um, yeah, I mean, you don't, you don't forget that. And so, but it does kind of reinforce like, okay, like let's, let's get after it. Like these are the dudes. Like we're gonna, we're gonna shut these networks down. We're gonna, you know, I mean, you, you're not supposed to take these things personal, but I don't know anyone who doesn't.

• 54:04Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 05

  You know, when, when one of your guys doesn't get back. So, um, so that was, that was seven months. That was twenty eleven to twenty twelve. And, and I think it was pretty productive and we had a couple of pretty good, um, uses of the, you know, again, of, of our special assets that some of the European partners didn't have. Um, but we had, you know, intel about like an attack on Kabul that we were able to, um, you kind of find out like, again, like vector the right people and get some folks on it. Actually, like the Kiwis helped us out with that one, um, and rolled some dudes up. And it was just enough to just like disrupt it. Like, I don't think we got like the H V Ts, but we got some of the dudes that were supposed to be like, you know.

• 54:48Jack Murphy?

  It was enough to thwart it, to di- disrupt their plans.

• 54:51Speaker 05

  That's it, right? And so like, so like, kind of got chatter that like, hey, they were kind of lying low for a little while. They just bought us enough white space to then develop the networks further. And I think like what's interesting about like being the intel guy in, in, especially in an S F unit. Um, and this is probably the case in, in, in conventional in some ways, but like it's, it's a lot of targeting, right? It's a lot of like high value target, like finding people.

• 55:15Jack Murphy?

  And you're having to think a few steps ahead too.

• 55:18Speaker 05

  Hundred percent, right? Yeah. And it's like, what, where, where is he? Like, what is he doing? Like, really getting to know your adversary in a way where now you're, it's almost like, you know, if I compare it to what a lot of my, I think, colleagues were doing in conventional units, it was, it was, you know, we were doing briefings too about the area of operations, right? Like laying out the AOR and that sort of thing. But it was a lot more in the weeds of like finding HVTs and like trying to like, you know, take them down. And so like that was demanding for, for that reason too, because you had to find people. It's hard to find people in Afghanistan, right? Like at one point I was like, why don't these people just have addresses? It'd be really helpful if I could just like plug something into a GPS, right? And like, but like, it didn't exist. It was like a third mud hut from the right sort of thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 05

  And so like, it was, it was kind of a pain. Um, but again, we had all the assets to do it and like, we had some really good teams. And again, the, the, the people we worked with was, were, were great. And so I think the longer you, you, you do it, the more you realize like, okay, like, you know, one, yes, you're trained to do it, but no real amount of training can, can, can really prepare you for like when you're there. And then like the environment's constantly changing. And so like the second time I was there with that unit, we had gone away from like hitting HVTs with US like forces. And then we had transitioned over to like making the, like the Af- putting the Afghans in the lead. And so this was like 2012 timeframe. And, uh, and then we, and we had this thing called evidence-based operations,

• 56:47Speaker 05

  which essentially like we were supposed to like, like when we roll these guys up. FBI agents. Response companies. Yeah, right? Like have some evidence that we can then present to an Afghan judge to put this guy away. And so that briefs really well, right? Like it sounds good. Um, but again, I, I'm not here to like, like armchair quarterback this thing from 2025. But like, I remember in 2012 thinking to myself like, okay, first of all, like, I don't think the Afghans like even have a, like, there, there's not a, there's not a word for like, evidence that means the same thing that, that we think it means, right? Right. Like there's not, that, that, that concept wasn't well-developed. And so then we're taking like our idea like, oh yeah, all we gotta do is catch, catch someone red-handed and then, you know, they'll, they'll go to jail.

• 57:33Speaker 05

  So that there was that and there was like this the rampant corruption and and some of these like ministries where you know you could you could find a person you I think you had seventy two hours and then you had to release them. And it made for like a pretty like it was it was not easy, right? Like it was just a. You know, I I say that like, yeah, you know, it was hard, but it was it was unnecessarily hard, right? Like we we could do hard things. We could find people. We could put them away. But then like when like, uh, you know, two days later, they're like, yeah, we had to let him go. You're like, come on, man. Like we we got him to, you know, we got him there now, like what what was not good enough about, you know, how we found him or or what the.

• 58:08Jack Murphy?

  Was that a evidentiary thing? Or was that what that there was corruption with some of the judges? I mean, wh- why in your experience were some of these guys, you know, going into this catch and release program?

• 58:19Speaker 05

  It was hard. It's hard to say. I think it was a little bit of both. I think it was it was partially like incompetence, right? In the system, like it, we were basically making these guys do things that they just had never done before.

• 58:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 58:30Speaker 05

  Um, if there was corruption, a hundred percent, right? If you if you if you hit a guy that's high up enough, like, you know, he's gonna call his buddy and they're gonna, you know, they're just gonna say, hey, let this guy go. Well, we promise you won't do it again, sort of thing. Um, and so, you know, and some of the stuff is things I heard, right? Like, like secondhand knowledge, right? So it's like not all like direct experience, but. You know, when I when I compared and contrasted like my my four deployments to Afghanistan, like from oh eight to twelve. I kind of, you know, there were there were just like these small warning signs, right? That things weren't going so well, right? And anyone that's been over there knows, like. You know. And I think in twenty twelve was the first time where I started thinking to myself like, we we might not win.

• 59:11Speaker 05

  We may not get out like in oh eight, I was like, oh, man, we got this. This is gonna be, you know, easy day. We we we're we're doing so well. By twenty twelve, things had things were looking a bit different.

• 59:19Jack Murphy?

  Is that because of, you know, you get the feeling that you're trying to like squeeze a round peg into a square hole? It's just not working.

• 59:27Speaker 05

  Gosh, I wonder what, you know, it's a good question. I remember, I think it was like oh nine, right? When the the surge got announced, I was pretty motivated about it because I was like, yeah, like this is what we need, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna clean this up. Um, it worked in Iraq, you know, to some degree, and so we're gonna, it's gonna work here. And I was a lieutenant at the time. And so like, you know, I wasn't necessarily thinking about like. The strategic picture, like I was certainly thinking more about like my kind of slice of the pie there. But. I think, you know.

• 59:55Speaker 05

  There were, there were a lot of things that we're trying to do that I don't know that we thought, like, I, I'm not sure if we thought that they were gonna work, or, you know, if we really ever got to the point where like, we were ever accepted by, you know, some of the folks in, in, you know, some of the locals, right? I mean, I always said win hearts and minds, and I think I think in some cases we did. There were certainly people that loved working with us and were happy that we were there. But there was just enough, um, of a difference, also just culturally too, right? I remember when I got, like, I was driving around Kabul. I just remember thinking to myself, like, this place is so different from, like, you know, back home. And I just think, I think that, and it's easy to say, I think people were like, of course it's different, like, it's Afghanistan, like, what did you expect?

• 1:00:37Speaker 05

  But I didn't realize how different and like, how little in common I think I had with, like, even the Afghans that I interacted with a lot of times. And that's not to say we didn't have good interactions. I had very positive interactions with, with a lot of people over there. Whether it was the, the guys that came on our base, or like, the, the, the bazaar, or like, you know, even interacting with, with people, um, that you would talk to every now and then, um.

• 1:01:00Jack Murphy?

  Just the cultural differences are still.

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  A hundred percent.

• 1:01:03Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Speaker 05

  It was just such, so in that sense, there was some square playground hole. Um, and I just think, again, like, you know, as things kind of worsened, um, it was just, yeah, it was, it was little things, right? Like, you'd hear stories like, oh, man, when I first got here, we would drive soft skins to Bagram. And like, by the time I was driving to Bagram, like, from Kabul, we would do, like, convoys every now and then, and I would love to jump on those because it was like an opportunity to get off the, the fob, right? Because like, again, as, as the intel guy, I'm not kicking in doors, I'm not even out on the, on the objective. So any opportunity to, to kind of leave the wire, I was, I was, you know, happy to, to kind of just go out and experience it and, and contribute. But, you know, you, we would drive up to Bagram in these, like, and this was supposedly the safest route in all of Afghanistan, right?

• 1:01:47Speaker 05

  This was the, the route where they were like, nothing ever happens here. You know, but yet we were up there in like gun trucks, you know, uh, you know, with, with crow systems pointed out and everything else and, um, you know, I, I just thought to myself, man, things have gotten worse. And then in 2012, I remember there was this pretty massive attack on, um, one of those Rhino buses. I don't know if you remember those or not, but they had these.

• 1:02:08Jack Murphy?

  Do you mean like the, the extended MRAP?

• 1:02:12Speaker 05

  Well, so it was, no, it wasn't even that. Like, that would, that would have been fine. They had basically like a bus that they would like weld a whole bunch of armor on to.

• 1:02:21Jack Murphy?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  It's probably a little more sophisticated than that. That's what it looked like.

• 1:02:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  And like, it would pick dudes up from like, you know, Camp Phoenix and you could, you'd go to like Kabul International and it would go down to, uh, um, you know, the, the southernmost base there, I forget the name, at the bottom of the city. But it would basically be like, you would just drive dudes around. And, uh, so if you were getting a flight into Kabul International from, you know, Bagram, but you had to get out to Camp Phoenix, unless you had someone picking you up, you were taking the Rhino. It was just this up armored bus. Now luckily, we had MRAPs and we had people that ca- cared about other people in our unit. So like, we got rides, right? Um, but it wasn't the case for everybody. And like, we had a logistics unit next to ours. And that Rhino got hit by a, like a, um, a vehicle borne IED.

• 1:03:06Speaker 05

  And it killed like twenty people. I think the majority of them ended up being like contractors, but like twenty Americans that were killed in that blast.

• 1:03:12Jack Murphy?

  Jesus.

• 1:03:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, we never, uh, and in Kabul, like, we never had anything, right? Like, we, I mean, I think, again, like, it was, it was pretty chill. We had like gunshots every now and then. Like, I remember going out on like one of our convoys in like the Land Cruisers, because in, in town, we would drive in Land Cruisers all the time. Like, that was no problem. They were up armored, but they were, you know, they weren't the MRAPs. And I got back one time and like the, uh, down in the, in the bumper, there was like a, I was like, was that hole there before, right? Like, so like every now and then, like, we would, like, we would take like potshots, but it was never anything, we never got into a firefight, right? Like, Kabul was very chill in twenty eleven, twenty twelve. But things started changing at that point. We never worried about hitting IEDs on the side of the road. Like, when I first got there, I was always like, oh, trash pile, right? But like,

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  by, by the end of those deployments, it was like, yeah, we don't get hit here. Like, Kabul's pretty safe. But things started to change, like I said. And then, you know, it was around that time, it was when that bus got hit. And then people started thinking twice about like, like, holy crap, we might actually be in a war zone here. Um, and, uh, you know, it wasn't just out in the provinces, like, things were coming to the capital. Um, and that was my last deployment to Afghanistan, um, before I went to the special mission unit. But that, that's where, um, I remember leaving, going home, thinking to myself, like, not as confident today as I was four years ago.

• 1:04:28Jack Murphy?

  So tell us about getting back home and when this idea comes to you that, you know, maybe there's something else you could be doing.

• 1:04:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, that was great. So, yeah, again, four deployments, um.

• 1:04:40Speaker 05

  You know, did some cool stuff. I think, you know, again, like even with tenth group, I think we, I think we did impact the battlefield, you know, successfully, like in our, in our sector, right? And again, you, you look at the great scheme of things, like you, you, you, you try to do what you can where you're at. Um, and I think for the most part, we, we moved the needle um in, in the right direction. Um, you know, to, to, not to speak for the rest of the war necessarily, but we got back. Um, and then this was twenty twenty, yeah, uh, twenty twelve. So in twenty twelve, um, I get assigned to, um, or, uh, like I say, I guess it was end of thirteen. Yeah. So mid, mid thirteen. There we go. Um, and it was kind of like early, late twelve, early thirteen. I, I started kind of getting a couple of ideas, like, okay, I want to do something kind of different.

• 1:05:24Speaker 05

  Like, I don't want to go back to the conventional army. Um, and as a, and as an intel officer, you do, right? Like, you can't just camp out in soft forever, right? Like, you get your three years and like, come on back. You gotta go be a S two at a, you know, whatever. And I was like, all right, I, I, I get it. And like for the career, that might've been the right call. Um, but I was like, what else can I do? And so I started looking into like these various different special mission units. Um, and then I looked at another one, which was not a special mission unit, but it was essentially a, a human program where as an officer, you could get selected to go be a human collector.

• 1:06:00Jack Murphy?

  The inscom stuff.

• 1:06:02Speaker 05

  Yep, that's right. And so I started looking at all of those. And I started getting emails from people that were named like Dan and Roger and Bill and like, that was it, right? Random email addresses. And they were like, hey, you know, we want you to try out for this. And so I actually had like three dates set with three different opportunities um, to go back KONIS uh, and, and just try out for that. And I think again, like I was lucky that I was in a special forces battalion because it like, I think it raised my profile among some of the recruiters in the special mission unit space. Um, which as I, as I found out later, when I was doing the recruiting for my replacement there, like that, that's definitely like a, like it helps.

• 1:06:44Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 05

  Um, because they're, they're looking for a specific mindset and, and like a specific

• 1:06:48Jack Murphy?

  Soft experience. Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. So I just said, all right, like, I'm just gonna go check this out. So I took a flight back to the States. Um, I had uh an assessment. Um, you know, it was, this one was, as I could tell, was less ops focused. There was one that I had that was an ops focused um assessment and selection that was scheduled. This one is more of like an intel focused one. They were like, if we pick you, it's gonna be to be our senior intelligence officer. Um, and we want you to do, we want you to do that. And I said, okay, cool.

• 1:07:20Jack Murphy?

  You, you actually assessed for three different units?

• 1:07:24Speaker 05

  No, no, no. So, yeah, I had three different things on the schedule. Yeah, I had three things on the books. So basically, like, I think it was like, I think it was like, like, March, it was like this one, then I had one scheduled for April, I'm on schedule for May or something like that, right? And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cast a wide net, I'm gonna try to get into one of these cool, like, things. Um, and then, you know, but for this very first one, it was um, it was for an intel officer position in a special mission unit. And so I said, cool, let's do it. And so the assessment was very intel focused, right? It was like, here's a bunch of information. Um, I'll be back in forty-five minutes, like, you know, give me a brief. Um, and it, and it was, I was like, holy crap, first of all, this is way too much information to go through in forty-five minutes.

• 1:08:09Speaker 05

  Like, there's no way I can, like, do all of this. But that's the point, right? The point is for you to, like, figure out in a very difficult situation, you know, under some degree of pressure, like, you know, he wants a brief in forty-five minutes, and you've got, like, eight hundred pages of stuff and a bunch of maps. What matters? And so like, that goes back to, like, you know, what matters, right? Like, what's the noise? Go through the noise, figure out what it is, dump that, figure out what the most important points are, and come up with options. And so when he came back forty-five minutes later, I briefed him on the, the situation. Here's what I think. You know, like your options are and here's, here's like all the ways this can go sideways. And like, he didn't say much and he was like, cool. And he left and I was like, all right,

• 1:08:51Speaker 05

  that either went really well or was like the worst briefies ever gotten. Well, I guess we'll find out. Um, and then there were a few of those types of kind of scenario.

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• 1:10:25Speaker 05

  Over the course of about a week. And, uh, at the end of it was a board, because that's what you get anywhere. Um, and you know, it was, uh, and then it was, and I don't know, like, I'm sure you've been through sports. Like they made you feel like, I mean, I felt like the worst person ever. Like coming up with like, I mean, throwing all kinds of stuff and like, have you ever done this? Have you ever done that? And I'm like, I'm just being honest. I'm like, yep, I've done that.

• 1:10:51Speaker 05

  And, uh, I was thinking to myself, man, there's no way these guys are going to pick me. They're like, this is the worst dude ever. And like, at the end of this like scathing interview, they're like, all right, go back. You know, we'll, we'll call you back. And I was like, all right. So I, you know, It's hard to describe how you feel. You feel a little bit despondent, right? You're like, ah, hopefully.

• 1:11:09Jack Murphy?

  Did they hit you with a lot of like, uh, like scenarios that have like moral quandaries and things like that? Like, I don't know what's the right answer.

• 1:11:17Speaker 05

  Totally. And there's no, that's right. There doesn't seem to be a right answer to anything, right? You're just like, oh, I do that. It's a lot of like gray space, right? But, you know, but look, I mean, at the end of the day, like, I was like, okay, just you've got to do the right thing, even when it's hard, even when no one's looking sort of thing. Cause there were some of that too. Like, well, what if you could get away with it? And it's like, no, you shouldn't do that. And then, you know.

• 1:11:38Jack Murphy?

  A big part of it is like, they want to see that you can keep your cool, right?

• 1:11:42Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:11:42Jack Murphy?

  That's the real point.

• 1:11:44Speaker 05

  That's right. And, you know, those are the things that you kind of figure out.

• 1:11:48Speaker 05

  Like throughout the course of the, the interview, right? Like later, like you don't, at the, during the time, you're just answering questions and then you're getting lightning rounded and there's five, like, you know, very, um, intimidating looking dudes like questioning you and you're just like, well, I hope I don't screw this up. But, uh, yeah, at the end of it, like I was, you know, I, I was, they called me back in and, and, uh, you know, you sit there somewhat meekly, right? We're going through the wringer. And, uh, I just remember the, the president of the board, he just looks me square in the eye. The very last question he asked me was like, all right, well, do you think you're the right man for the job? And I said, yes, sir, I do. And then he said, so do we. And then he like stood up, shook my hand and I was like, you know, okay. And then I still didn't know who these guys were. I got no idea. I just knew they were some special mission unit.

• 1:12:34Speaker 05

  And, uh, I had no idea like really what designation it was, but then they told me, like, okay, here's where you're going to be. Here's what you're going to be doing. Here's who you're going to be working for. But they basically made me commit before they would tell me that. And so that was another one of those things where it was like, are you willing to jump into the deepest end of the pool? You know, not really knowing what's down there, but you know, it's probably pretty cool and you're going to be doing cool stuff. And again, for me, it was not necessarily like, you know,

• 1:13:03Speaker 05

  I want to go be a cool guy. It was like, how do I have the most impact? I mean, this is the height of the war on terror. We're not necessarily like winning everywhere and like we're, you know, this is, by the way, like 2013. I mean, now, you know, ISIS isn't a thing yet, but like AQI is and they're doing a lot of bad stuff, right? And so like this was like for me, it was, it was, you know, it sounds cheesy, but it was a calling, right? I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to go do this. This is how I can be most impactful. It's with this unit at this time. Um, and I, and I said, yeah, absolutely. Sign me up. And so, um, and so that was, that was how that concluded. I flew back to my unit. And then I just called the other two units that I'd had like interviews set up with. And I said, hey, listen, I took something else. I appreciate the opportunity.

• 1:13:47Speaker 05

  And, uh, they were like, cool. Thanks for applying. So it was good.

• 1:13:51Jack Murphy?

  That's awesome. So, uh, tell us about like arriving at a special mission unit, like how this differed from 10th group from conventional forces? I mean, what, what was sort of the atmosphere and the vibe like when you hit the ground?

• 1:14:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's totally different, right? And again, it's funny going back to what I said, kind of the beginning of this, right? Like I was always told, like, I'll just wait till you get to the real army. Things will be different.

• 1:14:14Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:14:14Speaker 05

  And like, I never made it to the real army. So I think for that, like, if anything, like that was my, I guess my, my metric of success was like, how can I stay out of the real army for as long as I can? Um, and this was like the farthest from like the real army, right? And so I show up, um, and the, the, the biggest difference, and this is not taking away from my time at 110, that's not taking away from my time at 66MI. I've worked with professionals everywhere. There were good people everywhere, but this unit was markedly different in that every person there was handpicked. Uh, nobody there just got orders. Um, and like they told us, like, listen, every day is selection, man.

• 1:14:56Speaker 05

  Like, you know, like if you don't want to be here, or if we think you're not cutting it, like we'll move you on. Um, and that's like, that's not a threat. That's just what we do. And we need you to be, you know, we need you to be at the top of your game every day. And I was like, excellent. Like this is where I want to be. Um, you know, Yeah, I I I welcomed that. Um, it was it was really awesome to work with. Um, just incredibly skilled and not just skilled, but like dedicated, right? People that really wanted to be there. There was no one there that was like, ah, well, I'm just gonna do my time here and then I can go do whatever. Um, every every day, people that you worked with showed time and again that they were they were there for a reason.

• 1:15:36Jack Murphy?

  You you hear over and over again, guys talking about how like they say in my unit, I was like the rock star. I was this awesome guy. I was the first in the P T test. I was, you know, this and that. And then they get to this other unit that they they finally wind up in and it's like, oh, I'm just average here.

• 1:15:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally, right? And uh, but but but you, in some ways, it's like. I I think for some people, that's hard to to to get over because they're like, wait a minute, like I'm, you know, I'm supposed to be the the dude. Um, but for me, I just realized like everybody here does a job, right? And there was no, there was no like, oh, you're just an intel guy, you know, why don't you stay in your skiff? It was like you were part of the team and it didn't matter what your job was. If you were there, you were there because you had a job that nobody else could do, right? Like, I couldn't do what the operators did. Uh, I also couldn't do what the logistics did. I couldn't do what the finance guy did, right? But I could do intel and that's what I got hired to do.

• 1:16:34Speaker 05

  Um, and that goes for everybody else. Nobody wanted to do my job because they loved doing theirs, but they knew that I would do mine well. And that they could trust what I provided. And so when I showed up, like, it was awesome. I had a section of dudes. Um, we we wore civilian clothes like almost all the time. Um, you know, I was a I was a captain when I got there. I was the only officer in my section. People called me Nick and that was it. And it was awesome, right? Like, it was like the and and so again, like more more and more of the like.

• 1:17:00Jack Murphy?

  Professional, yeah.

• 1:17:01Speaker 05

  Rank didn't matter as much. It only mattered insofar as like people knew like every rank had a different. Job and yes, at the end of the day, like what that section produced was my responsibility. But the soldiers knew that and the NCOs knew that. And so it wasn't like, uh, you know, like, nobody was like, you know, nobody showed up trying to like, you know, make me or anybody else or themselves look bad. It was like, we all have a job to do and like, this is just the way it is. And so like, yeah, like when I said, hey, we're gonna do it this way. Like, yeah, we did it that way. But like, there wasn't any, you know, there wasn't like griping and complaining necessarily. I'm sure there was, but it wasn't like in other places, right? Like, it was just like, it was, it was a very professional around organization. And I loved it. I mean, from like day one, it was like incredible.

• 1:17:43Speaker 05

  And so I got the opportunity, um, there, uh, I was in that unit for three years from thirteen to sixteen. And this was like, height of war on terror, CT, um, you know, ISIS is, is forming over in Iraq. And so I got a chance to deploy, um, with a couple of the numbered task forces. I got to do, um, three of them overseas and then, and then I got to, uh, do one back at headquarters. Um, you know, doing again, like some of the coolest stuff, uh, I think, um, I think that anybody could say they, they, they've done. Uh, but again, working with some of the most professional people ever.

• 1:18:19Jack Murphy?

  Wha- what can you tell us about, you know, those trips?

• 1:18:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, we would, we would go overseas, um, and then we would typically be, um, you know, called the task force, right? That's what everybody would refer to us as. And, um, you know, the, the first time around was like Middle East focused. And so like our AOR was essentially, um, you know, what is, it was Iraq, Syria, um, we had.

• 1:18:45Jack Murphy?

  We're, we're into the ISIS war at this point.

• 1:18:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. So this was like early fourteen, like the split hadn't happened yet, but like, you know, we were, we were seeing the signs, right? And so there was a lot of things happening in, uh, in Syria. And so we had like, we had a lot of just kind of like, essay on what was going on, but we weren't like necessarily operational yet. And at that point, we were kind of operational in like some of the surrounding areas. Um, where we were doing a lot of the, uh, intel support to like teams in that area. And so, essentially like, you know, and that was a lot of like by with them through some of the local forces.

• 1:19:18Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I, I was gonna say, I'd be very interested to hear, you know, kind of your perspective on that timeframe because, uh, I, I was in Syria in twenty fourteen as a journalist. And my impression was that we didn't have any, and no American military presence on the ground at that time. As, as far as I knew, could be wrong. But I'd be interested like what sort of like your insights were, what you guys were kind of gathering from that situation at that time.

• 1:19:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I was not in Syria, we were not in Syria. I'll just clarify that. So I think you're probably right. I don't know that we had a presence, certainly not the presence that we ended up having later. But this was around the time where, you know, certainly we were still pretty active in Iraq. We had, you know, we had people in Jordan. I think we had some people in Lebanon. We were just kind of all around the periphery. And so, and this is like US forces and like, you know, obviously conventional, you had the Siege of Sotaf guys all over the place. And then you had a few of our guys just kind of like in various different places in the AOR, like usually the very small kind of footprint,

• 1:20:25Speaker 05

  right? Doing direct, direct support to various, to various units and various organizations. And so that's what much of it was. And we saw the split in Syria start to happen. We were like, you know, I had a really good analyst that was working for me at the time. And she was like, this is going to go down. It's going to happen in Iraq. We really need to pay more attention to this because there's going to be a huge thing here.

• 1:20:45Jack Murphy?

  What do you mean when you say the split?

• 1:20:48Speaker 05

  So the split to an AQI and ISIS?

• 1:20:50Jack Murphy?

  Gotcha.

• 1:20:51Speaker 05

  Yep. And Al-Musra, I guess, right? Like Al-Musra and ISIS, like they were kind of like on the same like outside ISIS.

• 1:20:55Jack Murphy?

  In Syria, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:58Speaker 05

  Yep. And then like, that's when like, the actual split happened. And then ISIS like became a thing, right? Established the caliphate, rolled over like, parts of Iraq into Mosul and all of that. And so I remember in like 14, you wrote this like intel white paper, basically saying like, hey, you know, we don't know what it's going to look like. We don't know when it's going to happen. We don't know how it's going to go. But the like this ISIS thing is not just like, this is not like, you know, this is not going to go away. It's going to get a lot worse. And I don't think even we, like, nobody could, like, I don't, I don't know that anybody knew how bad it was going to be. I'm sure there were some people who were probably tracking this. There was probably something that was like, you know, alarm bells ringing. But again, like, it's, you know, some of it's disjointed. And sometimes you, like, not everyone's talking to everybody.

• 1:21:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I wouldn't assume that. If that, if that female analyst was the only person in the US government who came up with that, I'd believe it.

• 1:21:47Speaker 05

  No, no, I'm sure there were, I'm sure there were quite a few. But she had a lot of experience in that AOR. And so she was like, what she was seeing, and again, this goes back to like your analysts, like knowing their stuff, right? And she was like, this is gonna be bad. And so, you know, we at least raised our little warning flag and saying, hey, we think, you know, it's going to get worse before it gets better. And it did. And again, I'm sure there were a number of people in like, I'm sure CIA and NSA and all those guys, they probably saw the same things and were pushing things up through their channels. And, you know, it's not to say nobody listened. I think people probably did. But I think everybody was surprised at the speed at which ISIS like came in and like took over some of those squashes of territory. And then from there, like, it was a pretty long slog, as you know, to, you know, to get them out.

• 1:22:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, ISIS busts across the international border into Iraq. These cities start falling like dominos. Sinjar experiences essentially a genocide. I mean, things got pretty bad. I think the United States military finally got involved when ISIS was kind of moving on to hook. And that was sort of when we really stepped in.

• 1:22:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, that was, it was, yeah, it was, it was crazy to kind of see it. And by the time that that happened, like, I had come back stateside. And so I was like, kind of back in the unit doing like the, you know, the in-between deployment stuff, kind of training and kind of, you know, getting caught up on being back home. But it was a fascinating time period. I was back out 120 days later. And this time it was 120 day rotation, supporting the Africa AOR. And so I had basically started in like Middle East, initially, I guess I started in Afghanistan, right, like Southeast Asia or Southwest Asia.

• 1:23:33Speaker 05

  And then ended up doing the Middle East stuff. And then I ended up over, doing like North Africa stuff for a while. And so like now, we were supporting a lot of things happening in kind of that Sahel region. And really looking at kind of like what's, what's taking place there. And so this is like 14 and then going into 15. And what's interesting about that was like, people weren't really paying attention to like North Africa, right? Like the ISIS fight was in Iraq. We had people looking at that, but like, you know, like there were, there were like elements of Al Qaeda. And not so much ISIS at the time, but Al Qaeda was metastasizing pretty badly in certain parts of Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso.

• 1:24:16Speaker 05

  You know, all the places that are kind of being ignored in some ways. And then Libya, you know, obviously after the Gaddafi regime collapsed. I mean, what's fascinating about that whole place is like, there was, you know, again. Gaddafi, bad dude, hundred percent. But that place was, I mean, like, the Sahel region was pretty stable in terms of like, weapons flows and things like that, right? Soon as that regime collapses, you see weapons flows going from like Libya through Niger, down into Mali, the Azzawad rebellion like breaks out again. You know, a bunch of the AQIM guys, uh, get, you know, they, they get, they get crazy down there. And so now, like, we're doing a lot of support to, um, you know, some of the, some of the folks down there to try to keep, um, basically just to keep tabs on what's going on.

• 1:25:01Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I, correct me if I'm wrong, but like my impression of, you know, sort of the US military presence in that part of the world was that, you know, you had an at-risk population, there's a lot of poverty, there's already an Islamic fundamentalist movement, uh, uh, in some form there. Uh, was the fear that this part of the world was going to turn into the next Afghanistan in the sense that, uh, terrorist organizations were going to be able to camp out there and mount international, you know, external operations?

• 1:25:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think, yeah, a hundred percent. Um, and obviously like our European partners were concerned about that, right? Like, I mean, the, the French had a happy presence down there. Um, and we worked pretty closely with them, right? I mean, the French were great partners. I mean, people want to give France a hard time for stuff. Like when they went out there and like, and they would, they would burn it down. And, uh, it was pretty effective. Um, and so, you know, we, we would, we would partner pretty, pretty closely with, with, with the French. Um, and, you know, we're, we will provide a lot of the support, uh, on the intel side. Um, and again, right, like, you know, counterterrorism is, is just like so much different from even counterinsurgency, because now you're not necessarily, you're not necessarily, there's no evidence-based operations, right? Like, there's none of that, like, that's out the window.

• 1:26:15Speaker 05

  We're not, we're not building schools in these places, like, this is just targeting. Uh, and I think the biggest difference from like being, you know, in my first unit, being in tenth group and then ended up working with like special mission unit is, That the pace of like, you know, operations is just substantially higher. And you're you're very concerned now about strategic fallout from, you know, hitting something somewhere in a in a country that, you know. So there's a lot of work that you have to do. I mean, you have to work with the State Department. Uh, you work with, you know, country teams. You you know, you have to be, you have to make sure that what you're doing is like a hundred percent like good to go. Because like the last thing you want to do is is is cause international incident, cause cause a problem, right?

• 1:27:00Jack Murphy?

  So. Did most of that have to be done through partner forces, like very little unilateral?

• 1:27:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, absolutely right. I mean, we did, we did everything. Almost everything was through partner forces in that part of the world, right? Because we didn't have an action arm. There weren't uh US forces that were that were out, um, you know, doing a lot of stuff. But I will tell you the um, the assets and the support that we had at our disposal in that unit compared to um, compared to where I was, like anywhere else I've been before. I'd I had to, I'd have to fight for ISR. I'd have to do all these things. But, you know, once you come over to like that, the task force side, things are, things kind of open up a little bit more. Um, you're being tasked to find national level targets and and and that's, you know, it's it's it's a different league uh, in some ways.

• 1:27:50Speaker 05

  Um, so again, it kind of goes back to what I said about like showing up there. Like, everybody was there for, you know, for a reason. And knew what they were, what they were asked to do. So when you're forward, it's even more important that, uh, you know, you're you're, yeah, you're you're you're crossing your eyes. You know, or crossing your Ts, dotting your I's, see, there you go, I say, right? But those, it it became very important, right? Because like mistakes out there like were, you know, they they they're bad everywhere, but certainly.

• 1:28:16Jack Murphy?

  An international incident.

• 1:28:17Speaker 05

  Saying at that stage, it's it's no good. So, um, so yeah, mostly partner forces. We did end up, um, there were a couple of uh, kind of like publicized um, things that took place later. Like there was a strike um, in North Africa that took place in twenty fifteen. Which which we enabled and that was um you know that was a it was a pretty big it was a pretty big deal at the time it was

• 1:28:41Jack Murphy?

  Is this the one where we detained a pretty high level bad guy?

• 1:28:45Speaker 05

  That was before, so I can't take credit for that one.

• 1:28:48Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:28:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, um same same general area um and uh but this time it was like we didn't have like we weren't putting like people on the ground. Like now it was uh like it was it like that that ended up being an airstrike just because of where this was.

• 1:29:02Jack Murphy?

  Gotcha.

• 1:29:03Speaker 05

  But again, like this was like certainty, right? Like high value target, but like near certainty uh level of fidelity on the target, right? Which means, you know, as an intel guy, like now you're you're tasked with you're weaving together every int you can imagine, right? Um you've got everything like you got signals intelligence, you've got human intelligence, you've got you know, geospatial stuff, you're pulling together old imagery from like, you know, years ago to see what it looked like then compared to what it looks like now. I mean, the amount of work that goes into like kind of developing a target and then figuring out like, okay, like if we end up putting like like bombs on this house, like who are we gonna kill, right? Like this is like, we gotta know that. Like, it's not just like, okay, we think

• 1:29:47Speaker 05

  so you know, we we spent a lot of time developing that um using various different different intel disciplines and uh and we we built a good enough picture. Uh this went all the way up to the NSC um and you know, got approval um to to go ahead. And so like we were in that and that's we had to convince like and that's the other crazy thing of being in a unit like that, right? Like I'm not yes, I'm concerned about like getting the O five to approve it, but like I'm also at this point like you know, like it's going all the way up to to the NSC and and they're asking questions about like, okay, well, what's going on with this? Like, you know, are are you are you sure you you you counted the slant correctly, right? And it's like, oh, well, yeah, we did it. And like, you know, yours, you gotta show your work.

• 1:30:27Jack Murphy?

  Do you want to explain to the general public out there what a slant is?

• 1:30:31Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. So basically, like, it's it's three numbers, right? And uh and so, you know, um it like a good slant count might be three zero zero, which means there's three. Males, zero females and zero children, right? Like if, if you have that slant count on a, on a building,

• 1:30:52Speaker 05

  or on an objective, like, you know, you're, you're probably blow the pretty good. If your slant is anything like, you know, three, three, one sort of thing, like you're not dropping, right?

• 1:31:01Jack Murphy?

  Three, sixteen, twelve, yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Right? And like we had, I mean, we had a situation in Afghanistan one time. This is actually crazy. It's back when I was with 10th Group. We had an O D A on the ground, um, doing a call out. And so they were just, they, they, we found where this guy was. They went out and like, they, you know, did the soft knock. They had the, the, uh, all go. And then we dropped ordinance on this house. And, uh, which is, you know, of course, like at that point we were, we were cleared, you know, cleared hot to go, right? Not, not us, but like the air force that was flying overhead, they were, they were good to go. We had the I S R up taking a look at it. And, uh, when they went in to kind of, you know, do the, the battle damage assessment and everything else, I mean, there was guys still, still alive in there and like kept fighting. I mean, I just remember like being like, holy crap, man.

• 1:31:48Speaker 05

  Like these guys are, again, right?

• 1:31:51Jack Murphy?

  That, that, that's part of like that, that Pashtun warrior culture that they're like, yeah, we're sending the women out and we're here to mix it up and get it on with you guys. And yeah, of course the U S military is like reticent to send a bunch of assaulters in to get shot up for no reason.

• 1:32:05Speaker 05

  That's right. That's right. And, and it, but it was such a, it, it again underscored like to me, I was like, these dudes are, you know, they're, they're willing to fight and I never did.

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• 1:33:42Speaker 05

  Like a long Iraq deployment, right? Like I've been, I did, I did like short trips over there. I did short trips to Iraq, but I never did like a, like a multiple month deployment to Iraq. And so I didn't really have as much kind of, you know, experience kind of like, like with, with like the insurgency there in terms of like how they would fight. But everything I had heard was like the, like the Taliban, like they, they were, they fought much differently, right? They, they would fight it out to the last man and they would, they would fight you. Whereas sometimes in Iraq, that wasn't always the case. There was a lot of like, you know, hitting a convoy and then melting into the, into the, into

• 1:34:24Speaker 05

  the, you know, society or something like that, right? The Taliban, like they would, they would stick around. And so I think, you know, again, in terms of, you have to like, you have to be able to respect the war-making capabilities of your adversary if you want to understand them. And I think that's one of those things where, you know, people say, well, you know,

• 1:34:46Speaker 05

  Got to be careful. I use the word respect, but like you have to understand your adversary and you have to know what he's capable of. And if you underestimate him, it's, it's, you know, it's going to end up being a bad day for you.

• 1:34:54Jack Murphy?

  So before moving on, I'd like to hear kind of like your impressions about, about that central West Africa sort of experience and how you saw that going. I mean, as we've seen things play out, I mean, the Wagner Group played in that part of the world quite, quite a bit. We got pushed out of Niger. I guess sort of like in the public sphere as far as what we read in the press, like it's sort of a rollback. But what, what do you think of it?

• 1:35:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, look, I think, I think it's a,

• 1:35:26Speaker 05

  it's, it's really unfortunate to see the amount of ground that the Western world has lost in, in Africa, especially in North and West Africa, right? And by the Western world, I mean like the French too, right? Like, I mean, obviously the French were great allies. They've got their own colonial past, colonial past there. And so like that obviously plays into a lot of this stuff. And the adversary is great at using these narratives, right? Like what the Russians and the Chinese are really good at is taking like something out of history and then using that against, against us now, right? So like, again, like the French, the French experience in, in, in North Africa obviously has a legacy. Well, if you're a propagandist, that's, that's great for you because you can just say, well, look, these guys are just here to, to exploit you.

• 1:36:11Speaker 05

  We're, we're not colonialists at all. We're, we're fighting against imperialism, right? And so you have these, you have these like, you know,

• 1:36:20Speaker 05

  these, these, these narratives being pushed by our adversaries that makes it easier for some people to latch on to that. And they've been able to use that pretty effectively to, to, to do some real damage to our standing there. And so, yeah, now look, I think, I think it's, it's an area of the world that we can't really afford to, to let up on, right? I mean, like Africa is a, it's a growing continent. I mean, like I think. I forget where I heard this and I'm probably gonna butcher the the statistic, but like it's it's it's oh like fifty percent of the world by twenty fifty will will be African or something like that or or more like it's a it's a ton. It's a lot of people on its growing economies. And like, we can't just look at that continent and say, eh, well, you know, if if we lose ground there, it's no big deal.

• 1:37:03Speaker 05

  And then on the terrorism aspect, like, take economics aside for a second, just the the sheer um, uh, just capabilities that these terrorist groups will build up in ungoverned spaces. Like, that's, it's hugely problematic, right, to to our our our safety and security. And so no one really talks about terrorism anymore because now every it's all about great power competition. But um, I mean, terrorism is still very much a thing. And, you know, if we cede the ground to you know, Russians or in some cases Chinese, I mean, they're they're not gonna do the type of C T that we did. And it wasn't always effective, but I can say that we had to great effect in some places. I mean, Tunisia is one example

• 1:37:45Speaker 05

  of a country where C T was very effective, great partnership with the Tunisians. Um, you know, took out some pretty bad dudes at the right time. Um, and you have a stable society, uh, you know, decade a decade later. And so like I I kinda wanna dispel some of the the this myth that like American C T efforts have always failed. Like, I don't think that's true at all. Number one, we haven't had another nine eleven. But two, we we actually have had uh incredible success in some of these places where there is stability now because of what we did, uh, not not despite of it.

• 1:38:19Jack Murphy?

  Co- Colombia, Philippines, number of places, yeah.

• 1:38:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, those are great examples, dude.

• 1:38:25Jack Murphy?

  Uh, okay, so what was the next trip after Africa?

• 1:38:30Speaker 05

  Um, that was it. I did two, two of those. Um, and uh, and so I wasn't again, like I should also clarify, like I, we, we, I was like, we were like based out of like the Africom like area. And so like, I didn't like go to Africa, except for like when I would go down every now and then. Um, for um, you know, for like trips, but like um, but but that was kinda how we ran that. And then I just did, I I my my kinda my last, um. Uh, trip was not really a trip. It was like leading the task force intelligence. Um, component like back at headquarters. And so that was a whole different ballgame there, right? Because now like I'm not forward, but it's still like you still work deployment hours.

• 1:39:15Speaker 05

  Um, you're still, you know, showing up and this is end of sixteen. Uh, and it's kind of towards the end of like my, my like active duty career because at that point I've kind of, I'd kind of again made the decision that, uh, you know, I, I kind of wanted to do something different, um, and go in a bit of a different direction. Um, but, uh, but it was a really cool way to kind of finish out the career because it gave me an opportunity to work. Um, you know, kind of our, our entire A O, uh, and like see from the headquarters level. And, you know, enable some pretty, some pretty high profile things. Um, you know, it, it was also where, you know, again, like that was the time, I think it was like twenty sixteen. So you have the attacks in, in Paris, you have the attacks in Brussels.

• 1:39:55Speaker 05

  Um, Europe was on edge, right? During that timeframe. And so we were in the thick of the fight. And, um, it was also around the same time where, you know, we were very effectively. Um, you know, we, the USG pushing back ISIS all across, um, you know, Iraq. And then of course into, uh, back into Syria and that of course concluded later on and I think seventeen or eighteen, but. But we really did like get momentum behind that. Like it was, you know, we like that, that was, that was a lot of what was happening. It was like, how do we, how do we like generate enough momentum? Um, to, uh, to, to start turn the tide because I remember that being a pretty like,

• 1:40:36Speaker 05

  say dark time, but like it was, it was kind of scary, right? Like there was a lot of things popping off in places that were always considered kind of safe. Uh, and they were bringing the war to us in some places. And so even though you didn't have a lot of it happening in the U S at the time, there was a lot of it happening in, in, in, you know, places where Americans went. There was a lot of attacks too. And, you know, I think the Bombco Hotel, uh, got attacked that year. We, we had an American killed. And so, um, again, I think it, it goes back to like, it, there was a lot of work. There was no shortage of it. Um, but, uh, yeah, so it was, it was the height of it. I mean, we were, we were busy, but it's so all to say like it was a really good three years in that unit. Um, we got a lot done and, uh, but you know, it was, um, yeah, at that point I, I'd made another career decision to kind of move on.

• 1:41:21Jack Murphy?

  Before we get to that, any particular moments that stand out for you that you'd like to highlight from that timeframe? Because I mean, you're right, a lot happened during that timeframe. San Bernardino.

• 1:41:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think like, like having the opportunity to, you know, to go out and enable some of the, some of the ops that, that ended up, you know, again, like having strategic level impacts, right? Whether it was like, like an airstrike,

• 1:41:56Speaker 05

  or whether it was, uh, you know, supporting the, the early days of the, of the fight against ISIS to push, to push them back. Uh, I mean, we had some real visionary leaders, um, that, that were leading like elements of, of, of really a number of different special mission units at that time, right? Cause there's, there's definitely, there's, there's a number of them. But we, you know, we, we just had the right people in the right place at the right time. And we just, you know, enabling their, their people to do, uh, the things that they needed to do. Um, it was, it was a really, um, it was, it was, it was great to be, it was great to be part of that team. So I don't know that there's like one specific thing. I mean, it was, it was just the, the ability to, you know, to be in, in trust, right? It came down to that, that level of trust.

• 1:42:40Jack Murphy?

  Were, were you around for the Baghdadi raid?

• 1:42:43Speaker 05

  No, I'd, I'd left there. So I was working in the, I think by that time I was in the, I might've been in the senate by then.

• 1:42:49Jack Murphy?

  Um, okay.

• 1:42:50Speaker 05

  But, uh, but yeah, but those are the types, I mean, that, that's, those are exactly the types of things, right? That are, um, that, that, you know, you, you're, you're entrusted with that type of stuff. And, you know, it's crazy when you think about it as, as a younger, you know, a younger officer, you're like, man, I'm, I'm, I'm about to go do, I'm, I'm doing this. Like I'm looking for, for this person or I'm, or I'm supporting this unit to do that, right? Like those are, those are, like, looking back at it now, it's, it's, it's crazy. And like anytime you get put in a situation, you kind of rise to that challenge and you say, okay, I'm going to go do it. Um, it's going to be awesome.

• 1:43:25Speaker 05

  But you know, but yeah, looking back, I mean, it was definitely like, yeah, I mean, I don't know, like, definitely just like, um, very grateful for the opportunity uh to be able to to be able to work there and and do those things. Um, I could have probably continued, uh, you know, after I think, uh, you know, ILE, um, there was an opportunity to potentially come back. Uh, but at that point, I was like, all right, I think I want to do, I think I want to shift. So I made the career shift at that point. Um, there was a number of reasons. Um, you know, at some point I wanted to like, actually like get married and have a family. It's hard to do that when you're gone all the time. Um, and so, you know, there were, there was personal reasons, but there was professional reasons too.

• 1:44:06Speaker 05

  And again, I think part of it goes back to like, yeah, look, as an intel guy, like, I might have gotten one more bite of that apple, but at some point I was gonna go pay my, my, my dues.

• 1:44:14Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:44:16Speaker 05

  But more than that, I was like, I, like, how can I keep serving at a strategic level? And have the impact that I can have through service that isn't necessarily going to, you know, um, like a conventional unit. And again, I don't want to like make the conventional guys sound like I didn't want to go there. I just think I, for me, it was just like, where can I have that next level impact? And, and so that's kind of what led me down to, down, down my next, the, the next path.

• 1:44:42Jack Murphy?

  Yes, tell, tell us about that. You got involved with, uh, oversight of the intelligence community in the Senate. Um, how did, how did that come about?

• 1:44:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was kind of, kind of crazy how it all happened. Um, and in terms of like, just like, you know, like, like life will throw you kind of roads and you like choose to go down them or not. But like, this was one of those things where I'd never, never in my life thought I was gonna go be a Hill staffer or like go work on Capitol Hill or work for a member of Congress. You know, I mean, I, I, like, again, in the origin story, like, I, I'm from a blue collar family, right? Like, like, it's not like we, we're not connected, like, we're not from like a, you know, politically connected family or anything like that. So, so just the, the thought like, okay, yeah, I could work in, work in policy, like, you know, a- after I left the army, I, I, um, transitioned to the reserve at that time.

• 1:45:30Speaker 05

  And then I ended up going to grad school, I used the GI Bill and, um, and I went, so I went to Johns Hopkins, uh, School of Advanced International Studies here in DC. And I was trying to figure out like, what do I do with like 10 years, almost 11 years of military experience?

• 1:45:47Speaker 05

  And like this education, like how can I, how can I best impact like US foreign policy and national security policy? And so that's what I really wanted to get into. I had a few mentors when I was in, like I said, in the, in the special mission unit that kind of like helped like guide some of my decisions and I bounced some ideas off of. But ultimately I just met some folks that worked on Capitol Hill and they were like, hey, um, you ever thought about doing that? And so I said, yeah, I mean, this sounds cool. Uh, what do you guys do? Right? Let's talk about that. Um, and yeah, I, I just, I met a lot of people, uh, when, when I did a lot of coffees. And ultimately I got a chance to work for a member of the House of Representatives, uh, Brad Wenstrup, uh, Republican Congressman from Ohio, who offered me a job, um, as his military legislative assistant.

• 1:46:30Jack Murphy?

  So was this like working in conjunction with Sissy?

• 1:46:34Speaker 05

  So this is the four Sissy. Um, this is like, I got to the Hill. So like I, I leave Brad's school, I get hired in the House of Representatives as a, as a military legislative assistant. I did that for a year. Um, and then my boss was leading armed services. And so for me, it was like, okay, well now I wanted to do, um, I wanted to keep working on defense things. Got a job working for Senator Joni Ernst as her national security advisor. She's a huge friend to SOF, uh, great member of Congress.

• 1:47:01Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, she loves Rangers.

• 1:47:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, she does. She does. And she, you know, she's the chairwoman of emerging threats and capabilities. And so she's always looking at like, how can she support special operations? Um, and she's been a real champion for a lot of initiatives. And I will say like, not just the, uh, not just like, like the train and equip stuff, but also like the, the health and wellness stuff too, right? Like you help making sure, um, you know, that once these guys come home and, and women too, like once they get home, like that they're taken care of. And so she's a, she's always been real passionate about it. And so like, it was great to work for her. I got to do some really cool things. Um, I got to travel to some cool places. At one point we went and did like a. Like we went did a trip down when Colin Green was down at one of the SEAL teams down on the

• 1:47:45Speaker 05

  west coast. I think he was out at Bud's. Like we went and saw like a Bud's graduation. And so it was cool to like see like those guys like finish and like, you know, like, like that, that phase and kind of be there in a totally different capacity, right? Like, I'm not there in uniform. There with like a tucked in shirt, like holding a Senator's like note bag and sometimes her purse, right? Like, it was like a totally different, totally different experience, but it was so cool to be able to do that. And then I, and then after I worked for her, I, I got an opportunity to work for Senator John Cornyn. And he was, he's obviously a Senator from Texas. And he was on the Intelligence Committee, and he still is. And so I started working out as his National Security Advisor.

• 1:48:28Speaker 05

  And then a year into that, his designee on the committee said, hey, I'm leaving. Do you want my job? I'll tell the boss, I'll put in a good word for you. And so, so he asked me directly, the Senator asked me, he's like, hey, Nick, you've done a good job in my office. Do you want to move over to the committee? And so, you know, what that essentially means is like now, rather than working directly for a member of Congress, I'm now working for an Oversight Committee. And so technically, I worked on, at the time, Senator Marco Rubio's staff as, as a professional staff member. But I was chopped to John Cornyn. Like, that was my, that was my principle. And so for all intents and purposes, like, anything he needed done on that committee, briefings, he wanted to read intel,

• 1:49:10Speaker 05

  he read a ton of intel. I mean, he was, he's one of the best informed members of Congress, because he takes the time to go down to the SCIF, read an intel book, I'll print it out, I'll read all the stuff, I'll highlight stuff, I'll even, like, it wasn't my job to do analysis there. But, you know, I, I had done it for ten and a half-ish years, right? And so-

• 1:49:30Jack Murphy?

  This is what's important for you.

• 1:49:33Speaker 05

  That's right, and it's like briefing a principal. I I've I you know briefed, you know generals and and and in some cases, you know, when I was uh doing the North Africa stuff, we would sometimes brief ambassadors on things that were happening. And so now I was briefing a senator and so it was a natural transition and it was, again, I don't want to use the word easy, nothing, there's nothing easy about it, but like it's just, it's it felt natural and it felt like the right place to be. So that was a real fun job and like it it wasn't just getting to interact with one of, I still think one of the last remaining great statesmen out there. I I think John Cornyn is definitely like that person.

• 1:50:10Speaker 05

  But I, you know, it was the opportunity to do oversight of the intelligence community, uh which is a place where I had spent so much of my time as an intelligence officer in the army. So now, it's so funny because I remember being, you know, a a task force guy out at an embassy and like hosting a Codel and hosting a staff del, right? So congressional delegation and a staff delegation where we would brief members of Congress on like what was happening in our AOR. Well, now, like I was the person doing the staff dels, right? But like what was cool about that is like I so of course, I got assigned to Middle East and counterterrorism because, you know, when I show up and they they're like, what's your background?

• 1:50:53Speaker 05

  It was pretty, pretty clear like what portfolio was going to be assigned for the committee. But I loved it. I mean, I love that region. Um and so every chance I got, you know, I would, I would go, I would go out there and and talk to our our our Foreign Service folks. I would talk to, you know, people that were um that were out there in these embassies, uh State Department and other places and and like ask them like what was happening and and and how we could be helpful.

• 1:51:18Jack Murphy?

  Do you want to tell people about what HIPSE and SISI are and sort of like how they integrate into the intelligence community or interact with the intelligence community?

• 1:51:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, that's a great, great point. So like.

• 1:51:30Speaker 05

  Basically, these committees, they're, um, they're, so yeah, they're congressional committees, right? So in, on, on the Senate Intelligence Committee, we had, I think we had seventeen members.

• 1:51:41Speaker 05

  And so it would essentially be, you know, whoever's in the majority, right? So if the Republicans are in charge, you've got, you know, eight Republicans and, or nine Republicans, eight Democrats. And that number's kind of fluctuated over the years. I think it's like fifteen, it's been fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. But bottom line is like, these are like the seventeen senators that are, that are tasked to authorize everything the intelligence community does. And really all their programs and budgets. And then you've got a number of House members. I don't know exactly the number that, that HIPSE has. But, you know, each chamber has their own oversight committee. Where our, our job is to be the eyes and ears of the American people. To make sure that the intelligence community is executing like appropriations and authorizations

• 1:52:25Speaker 05

  in accordance with the law and policy, right? That, that's, that's what we do. And what's interesting about, um, what's interesting about that is like, you know, there's an armed services committee that does it for DOD. There's a foreign relations committee that does it for the State Department. You know, there's, there's these different committees with different jurisdiction of the federal government. But what's unique about the IC is that there's, there's nobody really looking at it, right? Like, other than the people that are, that are doing it, right? There's no cameras in a CIA skiff somewhere, right? Like, but you, as opposed to like the embedded reporter that's out with like a platoon of Marines and like Anbar, right? Like, that's, that's kind of like, that's like public oversight in some ways, right? Well, that doesn't exist for the IC.

• 1:53:08Speaker 05

  And so like, we had, you know, seventeen members and then we had like about forty staff. About evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. A number of those were, you know, front office staff. And then you had kind of the professional staff members, which is what I did. Where you're assigned a portfolio. And that could be a region, it could be a function, it could be both. So I had Middle East, I had counterterrorism. I had a budget account for one of the agencies that I oversaw. And then I had my boss, right? So they're working for, for Cornyn. And so everything he wanted, plus everything the Vice Chairman, Marco Rubio, wanted on like my portfolio areas. Was kind of my responsibility. And so oversight is everything from, you know, drafting a yearly authorization bill.

• 1:53:55Speaker 05

  It's traveling to various places to do oversight in the field. It's going out to the headquarters to interact with analysts and collectors. And it's really, at the end of the day, like the way I approached it was like, you know, again, people always joke, like the worst phrase.

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• 1:55:37Speaker 05

  ... in the world to hear from anyone. The government is like, I'm here from the government, I'm here to help. But like, I really did take that to a, like, to heart because I wanted to be helpful. Like, I was like, this is, we're one team. And what I found was that if you picked up the phone and called somebody, or you made the effort to go visit them, like, where they are, in like, a really dusty part of the world, maybe, they are...

• 1:55:59Speaker 05

  Like they appreciate that and like you end up getting a lot more done because you're not getting stonewalled. People, you know.

• 1:56:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, ground, ground truth.

• 1:56:08Speaker 05

  Hundred percent ground truth. I'm like, okay, this staffer cares like he got on this, you know, he got on this plane. He flew out here. It's, it's, it's dusty. It's, you know, it's whatever. But he's here and he wants to learn about what we do. And by the way, when I got back and I, and I produced a, a, a report for my colleagues. I then also had the opportunity to write legislation to directly impact.

• 1:56:32Jack Murphy?

  It's cool.

• 1:56:32Speaker 05

  Uh, the work that was happening. Um, and so we actually drafted a couple of bills. It was cool. I got to work on, uh. I got to work for on Chips for America. And so that was one of the, the big kind of semiconductor bills that we wrote. Um, when John Cornyn was the lead sponsor for that, that was before I got to the committee. But then after that, um, I got to help on, on a few things. I got to, um, draft a bill called the Sensible Classification Act of twenty twenty three. And that bill basically was, really the big aim of that was to reestablish trust between. The American people and our elected government because and not just the elected government, but also our, you know. The appointees under, under that elected government. And so there's a lot of just, you know.

• 1:57:14Speaker 05

  There's, there's a lot of misconception out there about what the intelligence community does. There's a lot of conspiracy theories out there about, oh, they, they're, they're doing this, they're doing that. I, I can tell you, we would have probably seen it if that was the case. Um, you know, th- there's a lot of just incredibly dedicated and professional men and women out there doing some really dangerous and really hard stuff. Um, and so like one of the things we did was just like try to, you know, help them with. How they classify things and how we declassify things so that. You know, the American public could know as much as.

• 1:57:46Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:57:47Speaker 05

  They could without endangering sources and methods. And so that, that bill passed into law, um, you know, well, again, some of those things will. Will reign to be seen if, if how effective they are.

• 1:57:56Jack Murphy?

  We, we kind of saw that, I feel like in the run up to the second invasion of Ukraine where we sort of like. I don't know, weaponized is maybe not the right term, but we operationalized intelligence. You know, and a lot of times we collect intelligence and we don't really do anything with it, but in this case. Uh, the United States government used the intelligence we collected to like kind of. Say, hey, Putin's going to invade this country. This is what he's planning to do, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and kind of used it in, in a political way.

• 1:58:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think honestly, like that was some of the, I think they call it intelligence diplomacy. It was some of the most brilliant intelligence diplomacy I've seen, right? In terms of like getting people on board um and and and um and using what we had available to convince partners and one to convince partners to analyze that this was gonna happen.

• 1:58:49Speaker 05

  Because there were people even like, I think to the very last day, right? Where they were like, nah, there's no way this this happens, right? Um, but even I think the Russians themselves probably, um. I mean, again, I can't speak for them, I have no idea, but I would think that there was some disruption there too. Because they were like, holy crap, like the Americans know what's going on, like, how's it going? They're inside the network. That was stuff. Now, what what's interesting, though, by the way, and I should point this out, is like, open source intelligence is so much more ubiquitous now than it's ever been, right? And so now, if you're trying to like, you know, hide that the fact that you're gonna invade it invade a country, you basically have to lie to your people about the fact that you're about to invade a country. So like, I don't think it was shocking that a bunch of these like

• 1:59:33Speaker 05

  Russian kids that got sent to the meat grinder like thought they were on a training exercise until it went down. Yeah. Right? Because they didn't want them saying, like, posting on their social media, like, hey, we're gonna go invade Ukraine tomorrow. And so I think that there was probably some of that. Um, but you know, there's so many open source things now, like like imagery, right? So like, I can buy a bunch of imagery from like, what is it like Planet Labs and Max R and Hawkeye three sixty or whatever. And if I'm looking at open source imagery and I'm seeing refrigeration trucks near the frontline, like, there's only one thing you gotta keep cold and that's about, you know, it's gonna expire in thirty days. So like, when we started seeing that stuff show up, like, it's blood. You're going in, like, that's Oh, I see.

• 2:00:16Speaker 05

  You know, that's that's uh, that's the type of stuff that that was a pretty clear indicator. I think that, uh, you know, again, all unclassified imagery was able to pick up. And people could say that, you know, again, this goes back to like, understanding like what you're looking at. Yeah. But if you're looking at something and you're like, well, what could possibly be so important that they're like bringing this out here? Like, you're not bringing that out here unless you're unless you're ready to go, right? And so I think that now it's such an interesting battle space because you've got all these commercially available technologies. That are that are just available to anybody.

• 2:00:51Jack Murphy?

  And they're starting to restrict them too, from, you know, the the private citizen that's using the satellite imagery. You're seeing some of them like curtail it because they there's political sensitivities around what they're doing.

• 2:01:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally. And that's and that's another thing that, you know, I think people are wrestling with in Congress now. You know, about like, how do you, what's the right, like, what's the right touch? Like, how much should the government get involved? Yeah, I wrote a bill that, you know, again, looking at commercial activities of like former intelligence officers. Like, it was it was not illegal for intelligence officers. Not that people were doing this necessarily, but like, there was no ban on former IC folks from like working for like China necessarily, right? But then we had a bunch of former F-16 pilots that came up in the news where they're they're training the Chinese Air Force. And so that was another thing where we were like, this looks like like a potential problem.

• 2:01:48Speaker 05

  And so, you know, wrote a bill, got enough cosponsors. And it's now, there is now a permanent ban in place for former IC like personnel that work for adversaries. And to me, like, that's not a, like, I I'm probably not really restricting anybody's, like, career ambitions, right? Like, I don't think most people join the IC to go do that.

• 2:02:07Jack Murphy?

  Well, if you are, the hell with them.

• 2:02:10Speaker 05

  But that's fair enough. The other thing, though, I think, is that it closes off a recruitment avenue for the Chinese, right? And I think I think that's what we're looking at now is like, the Chinese are are very good at looking at where to recruit. And like, who can they get to come teach them things? Whether it's, you know, finance, whether it's logistics, whether it's AI tech. I mean, there's all this, like, there's a lot of money being thrown at this. And so intelligence is is another hot commodity. So we were we were able to close off that recruitment avenue to them. And I think that's that's the type of work. That we were able to accomplish in the Senate. Um, and what I loved about working in the Senate is like, there's really, there's no bureaucracy.

• 2:02:52Speaker 05

  Right? Like people who work at DOD, they talk about like, uh, you gotta go through eight le- levels of, of approval. To, you know, do anything and then it takes months to get a memo produced. I mean, literally I, I sat in front of my boss like every week. And I briefed him on, on, on, on the world's happenings and, and handed him a briefing book. Um, and then I wrote legislation and showed him like, you know, hey, does this meet your intent? Or hey, I think we ought to do this. Do you want to introduce this bill? And of course there was some level of approvals with, within his like, you know, his office. He had a chief of staff or anything that in some cases, especially the stuff that wasn't classified that they want to take a look at. But, um, but it was quick. I mean, we could turn that stuff in like an hour, right? Not in like a month or a day or, or something.

• 2:03:38Speaker 05

  And so, um, and so it was an incredible opportunity to work for, for that institution. And in some cases, like I said, like doing some of those oversight trips abroad. Meeting with foreign government representatives, in some cases being the first American in that country in a number of years. Especially in like places like Central Asia where, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot happening there geopolitically now between, you know, the Russians, the Chinese and us. Those were, those were some of the again, like, you know, going back to the time of special mission. And I always say like, that was probably the, the coolest job I ever had. But working in the Senate was, was probably the most fascinating.

• 2:04:13Jack Murphy?

  I, I was gonna say, I mean, I respect you for going over there and doing those trips. And as a former army guy, you were willing to do that. I've heard some pretty funny stories over the years, um, from, uh, CIA officers. Running covert programs around the world and you know, Congress is up their ass. Are you doing the right thing? Are you doing this? Are you doing that? And they'll say, hey, if you don't believe us, send one of your staffers out here to come check it out. And a lot of times they're like, whoa, no, that's okay. Hey, we're, we're good. Don't worry.

• 2:04:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I, you know, I had a kind of tight group of colleagues that I would travel with pretty often. And we had similar portfolios and interests and experiences. And I think, you know, in some ways, we pride ourselves with going to the hard places. You know, there was a number of try, I, I, I did once swing through a developed country or two.

• 2:05:08Speaker 05

  But I was typically in places that, you know, again, like it was, it was kind of what we did back in, in the old days, right? Like HESCOs and in some cases, you know, there, there were things happening. And so going out there as a staffer was a fascinating, just different experience. Because now, you know, you're going out there and you're sitting down. I mean, we went out to Djibouti, right, to go to JCFHOA, right? And you've got a, you know, I'm, I'm interacting with, with, with, with the two-star commander in a way that I just wouldn't have interacted with him as a, as a, you know, as a military officer. Now, you know, it's just a very, very different relationship and it's more of an oversight relationship.

• 2:05:51Speaker 05

  But again, not adversarial, no one's, no one's pulling rank. Like it's just like, let's have a conversation and how can we be helpful? And like, let's get you what you need to accomplish your mission and just educate me on what's going on. So that I can go back and tell my boss and all the other members of this committee about the important work you're doing. So we can keep funding this, or in some cases, like we don't need to fund it. Maybe we need to figure out like what a better solution is, right? Like we can't, we can't get to that solution if, um,

• 2:06:17Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 2:06:17Speaker 05

  if we don't know. So, yeah, so that was it. That was my, my seven years on the Hill and then I, I departed, uh, I departed here in, in, in, um, in February and, and, uh, I'm in the private sector now. And it's fun because now I'm working with a bunch of frontier tech startups. And so all the things I learned in, uh, you know, in, in the army and, and on the Hill and like, how does DC work? Now I'm working with Washington office and like what we do is, is we, we, we work with frontier tech companies that are coming to Washington. And they're like, how do I, how do I work here? How do I, how do I solve a problem for the military? Or like what congressman or congresswoman should I talk to about helping me out with this and that? And that has been, that's been.

• 2:06:59Speaker 05

  Kind of a cool way to keep doing mission focused things without, you know, being like in the government or, you know, active duty military or anything like that. But it's still a pretty cool mission, all things considered.

• 2:07:13Jack Murphy?

  As a starting to wrap up a little bit, I, since this is a topic right now, I'd love to hear some of your, you know, your impression of defense venture capital and this sort of emerging field where a lot of these like VC organizations are getting into defense tech. What are some of the trends that you see from where you are right now?

• 2:07:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, so I will say like, the time to get into like innovative tech is now, right? There's a lot of momentum behind getting, not just new tech, but like also like the right tech and like figure out what that looks like into the hands of warfighters and doing more quickly. Like there's still a pretty big bureaucracy over the Pentagon. There's still, you know, entrenched interests in Congress. Like those are things that you're just going to be up against. I think there's also like the defense primes, right? And like, I think a lot of people are anti-prime right now. And I would caution against that in some ways and say, it's not that we should be against primes because I think if we get into a major

• 2:08:20Speaker 05

  war, like the primes, they are, they know what, they know how to deliver a lot of equipment fast, right?

• 2:08:27Jack Murphy?

  We just have to diversify a bit.

• 2:08:29Speaker 05

  It's, we still need the primes. Like I think, I think people like demonize them because they, you know, like there's, there's this whole thing now about like, oh, they, they've been getting all these lucrative contracts and they haven't innovated and everything else. There's probably some truth to that, but I think it's also because we've, we've set up the wrong incentive structure within the government and like how we reward success. And we aren't making it easy for contracting officers to take risks. And so, you know, when we have a system that rewards stagnation, you're going to get stagnation because that's what you've set up. And so I think the primes absolutely can innovate. They have innovated. They've developed some pretty cool things, but we just need a lot more people building a lot more cool things now. Right? So we need to move away from just four or five defense primes. We really ideally should have like 20 or 25 defense primes. And if you look

• 2:09:14Speaker 05

  at the way things used to be done. Before the consolidations, the 90s, when we thought we were going to have world peace forever after, we used to have a lot of companies producing a lot of things, right? And even during World War II, everybody was producing weapons. And so I don't know that we have to go back to that necessarily, but we do need a far more nimble, agile, and better resourced defense industrial base. And so there's a big push right now. You know, you hear different terms, you hear reindustrialize, you hear, you know, defense tech innovation, but there's real push and real money behind that.

• 2:09:52Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:10:07Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:10:18Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:10:23Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:10:29Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:10:49Speaker 10

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• 2:11:19Speaker 05

  I think what, you know... To to give you a thought about like trends, I think what we need to see in the in the in the coming months and years now is like real production at scale and real return on venture investment in order to prove that that system works. Um, but I think that some of the things we're seeing now are setting the right conditions for that. Um, and so I do think like we have to be cautious, right? Like, I don't think we need to like cancel all these like programs unless we have a viable alternative. But there's no reason we can't like run fast break things and build things quickly too. Like we have to do all of those things. Um, so where I see it like, you know, there's a lot of chaos right now. But um, I think where where a lot of people see chaos, like we see opportunity.

• 2:12:04Speaker 05

  And we see an opportunity for a lot of defense tech startups to get into the game right now and uh and solve real problems that the military has been like begging for for solutions for. Uh, but I think now we're we're seeing some of the the in this, by the way, this didn't just start now. Like this has been there. This trend has been underway for for for a while now. But you're starting to see that that come to fruition, I think, where um you know, tho- those those things are are are happening. I think that, you know, looking at what we've learned from the battlefields in Ukraine. Um, there's a lot of cool companies being uh being stood up here in the US that are taking that uh and taking those lessons learned, providing it to our warfighters now.

• 2:12:45Speaker 05

  And I think we're gonna see um, we're we're gonna see those innovations bear fruit. Um, so yeah, I think I think that I think it's a good environment. Uh, and I think the trends are positive. And uh, so if you're out there and you're thinking about getting into defense tech and and venture backed companies, like there's it's really no better time than now uh to to to jump into that.

• 2:13:03Jack Murphy?

  Uh, do we have any questions for Nick? Oh, okay, no questions. Uh, Nick, thank you for spending your evening with us. Uh, do you have anything you want to plug or like where can people find you online?

• 2:13:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. I think that's really like my only online presence.

• 2:13:22Speaker 05

  And I don't know if I have to put the link in the show notes or whatever, if that makes the most amount of sense. But yeah, that's really the, and it's just NIC Adams, Nic Adams, that's, you should, you'll probably find me. But yeah, I would just, again, I really appreciate the opportunity. I'm happy to have this conversation with, or talk about all the cool things happening in the defense tech space as well. But yeah, if anyone's interested in having that discussion, happy to do it.

• 2:13:52Jack Murphy?

  That's great. Thank you, Nick. Really appreciate your insights tonight. And everyone else, we'll see you guys next week. Thanks for tuning in for this episode and we'll see all of you next time. Thank you. Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it. But you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com/the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of The Team House ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast Eyes On with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad free.

• 2:14:36Jack Murphy?

  And you support the channel and the show and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well.

• 2:15:21Jack Murphy?

  So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, a tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff. So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate.

• 2:15:38Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:15:53Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:16:04Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:16:09Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:16:15Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

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• 2:17:05Jack Murphy?

  Hey, guys. Thank you.

• 2:17:10Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:17:25Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:17:36Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:17:41Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:17:47Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:18:07Speaker 12

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• 2:18:41Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:18:55Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:19:06Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:19:11Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:19:17Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

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• 2:20:14Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:20:28Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:20:39Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:20:44Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:20:50Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

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• 2:21:46Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:22:01Speaker 08

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:22:12Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:22:17Speaker 09

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:22:23Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

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• 2:23:14Speaker 00

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