Operation Red Wings: What Actually Happened | Ed Darack & Ross Schneiderman | Ep. 404

This episode features in-depth discussions with journalists Ed Darack and Ross Schneiderman on Operation Red Wings, exploring the mission's planning, execution, and the myths surrounding it. Gain insights into military decision-making, communication failures, and the importance of accurate reporting. This in-depth interview with Ed Darack and Ross Schneiderman unpacks the complexities, myths, and realities of Operation Red Wings, exploring the tactical details, misperceptions, and lessons learned from this pivotal military event. Ed's website http://opredwings.com/ Politico article https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/03/20/operation-red-wings-lone-survivor-luttrell-00833548 Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️ https://bluechew.com/ Get 1 month free when you buy 2 of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL" Wild Alaskan Company⬇️ https://wildalaskan.com/HOUSE Get $35 off your first order! Good Ranchers ⬇️ https://www.goodranchers.com/ Get $25 off your first order with the code "HOUSE" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ 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 "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 — Start 02:00 — How Ross & Ed teamed up and started re-reporting Red Wings 06:00 — The “Red Wings misinformation” problem and evolving narratives 08:00 — Memory vs reality: how the movie shaped what people think happened 10:00 — SEAL community silence, moral injury, and buried truth 14:30 — What was “held inside”: doubts about Lone Survivor’s accuracy 18:00 — The Lone Survivor book: White House involvement & narrative shaping 22:00 — Hollywood vs reality: how myths about the war were created 25:00 — Mission planning failures: Marines vs SEALs concept of the operation 30:00 — Why the plan changed: ISR limits, frustration, and the 4-man team decision 34:00 — Command & control problems and lack of joint integration 38:00 — No real QRF: confusion between units, aircraft, and responsibilities 42:00 — The helicopter shootdown and ad hoc rescue attempt 57:00 — The ambush: terrain disadvantage and what actually happened 01:02:00 — Enemy force size: myth vs reality (small element, not hundreds) 01:08:00 — Apache response controversy and breakdown in coordination 01:12:00 — What the battle video actually shows (and what’s false online) 01:18:00 — Timeline reconstruction: SIGINT, video, and primary sources 01:24:00 — Broader impact: misinformation, trust, and military credibility 01:31:00 — Lessons learned: Tillman, Jessica Lynch, and institutional trust 01:33:00 — Final thoughts: why the real story never needed embellishment 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.

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• 1:49Jack Murphy?

  Hey, folks. Welcome to the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with our guests today, two journalists and authors, Ed Darack and Ross Schneiderman, who writes as his professional name, R.M. Schneiderman, if you're looking for his work. Both of these guys have done a lot of national security writing over the years. One of the topics that they're probably the most associated with is Operation Red Wings. It's the controversial Navy SEAL reconnaissance mission in Afghanistan that went awry, resulted in a lot of Navy personnel getting killed, some helicopter pilots, and led to Marcus Luttrell's escape and survival, which was eventually turned into

• 2:32Jack Murphy?

  a bestselling book and a bestselling movie.

• 2:37Jack Murphy?

  And, you know, Ed and Ross have kind of covered this topic, I think, a couple of times. Maybe each of you have covered a couple of times, Operation Red Wings. And it reminds me of, Sean Naylor was once describing to me about his writing about Operation Anaconda. There's, of course, a book about it, and then there was some subsequent long-form journalistic pieces. And he said, like, each time it was like he was going a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper. And I feel like that's what you guys have done with Operation Red Wings. And this article that just came out a few days ago, it's on Politico. The title of it is, "This Military Tragedy Became a Blockbuster Movie: Here's What You Didn't Know."

• 3:17Jack Murphy?

  And this is some incredibly in-depth reporting about that mission and about what really happened. Just some incredible sourcing, some folks in there that you'll recognize from Team House episodes in the past. Ed, of course, has been on the show maybe three years ago. But this article has tons of new reporting in it that I'd never seen before. And it really made the rounds in the military community as well. So I just want to say thank you, both of you, for joining us today.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Thanks, Jack. Thanks for having us.

• 3:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you very much.

• 3:52Jack Murphy?

  So, I mean, just to start this off, do you want to talk about how you two linked up and how you decided to, you know, co-author this article together?

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Can I, can I take that one in?

• 4:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  Okay, so I had reported a cover story for Newsweek in 2016 about Mohamed Gulab, who was the Afghan villager, saved Marcus Luttrell, protected him in the village, along with the other villagers too, but he had, you know, more senior position in the village.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  So as I was reporting that, I realized that there was a really complicated story here about the mission itself, and I discovered Ed's book online. I had done, I was an editor at the time, so I had done some reporting about the military and intelligence agencies, but I had never been to Afghanistan. I had never embedded, and I'm reading Ed's book and I'm seeing how excellent it is. And so I call him up because I just want to interview him. And as I talked to him, I realized, oh, this is a guy who really knows about this mission. And because Ed was a journalist, I felt I was using so much reporting that he had already done for his book. I basically told him, I said, I feel really guilty about you being a source of this. You should, you should have at least a tagline and like, join the team. And I was already working with Sammy

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Usafzai, who was like a legendary reporter from Afghanistan, who had reported on Gulab for years. And so Ed and I linked up and we worked on that story together. We worked really well together. We became friends. We kind of kept in touch over the years here and there. And that was the beginning. And after that story came out, one of the families of the fallen from the mission got in touch with Ed with a new nugget of information. And we pursued that for a story for the New York Times Magazine's at war section. And we worked on that story for a little over a year. And we didn't really get the goods, to be honest. I mean, the story ultimately was, you know, got killed because at war shut

• 5:51Speaker 04

  down and we weren't really done with it. And I'm very glad that it didn't run because we didn't have everything that we do now, and we wouldn't have gotten it right. It was very murky and we didn't want to be like the just asking questions guys about red wings. That wasn't like our goal. That only contributes more to misinformation. And so Ed and I just dropped it and took a while for us to reconnect. And then really what happened, Ed, I'll let you take it from here, is you, you, you did the Team House episode and, and you can take it from there and say what happened next.

• 6:23Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, one of the people who had a very high level of oversight on the CJ CJ sort of Alpha side, gets the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan. He was a retired Colonel. At the time, he was, I believe, a major. Frank got in touch with me and, and we started talking and then. You know, it's we Ross and I eventually linked up together. You know, it's been a story. You know, I covered.

• 6:56Speaker 05

  To me, Red Wings is a part, one part of a greater campaign that was going on in that particular area of operations. You know, I started my time with the story started before it was even called Red Wings. It was back in March of 2005 and I embedded at Mountain Warfare Training Center and I met with the battalion that was going to head over there. At the time, the shell of an operation was called Stars, named after the Dallas hockey, hockey team's Stars. And, you know, it, you know, eventually I, I, I published, you know, I did my field work in Afghanistan to just cover the Marines as a photographer and as a writer.

• 7:36Speaker 05

  And then I learned about Red Wings while I was over there. And then when I got back, you know, I, I wrote the book. And shortly after that, I wrote a, an article for the Marine Corps Gazette called

• 7:48Speaker 05

  Operation Red Wings, the Misinformation Aftermath. It was about a lot of the misinformation that had come out. Uh, that came out in January of 2011. And that's what I jokingly now call, um, the Red Wings Truth or Movement 1.0. And we're now in, I don't know, 3.0 or something. But I mean, I was a lone voice at that point in media wise, but a lot of other media types picked up on it, especially when Lone Survivor came out in 2014. Uh, and then Ross very graciously reached out to me. Ross is an amazing journalist. He is a real professional and he does a great job.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  He really is. And, you know, it's for a journalist to do that, to reach out and say, hey, join, join with me and not just try to use work that I don't, because a lot of people do use work that I have done in the past. It's just a testament to how, um, objective and excellent he is as a person, in addition to being an excellent journalist among the great.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Going in. The whole podcast about.

• 8:53Speaker 05

  So we go, uh, you know, you know, and then with Frank, after doing your podcast, he really opened up a lot of, uh, a lot of information for me. And, um, you know, there, I started working on a book. And that book will come out, but I shelved it for Ross and I to do this project. Ross had taken the lead with Politico and, you know, it's an excellent article. So, and that's, that's, that's my quick take on how I would have been involved in the story. And this particular article that just came out, a, a, a long, very in-depth and excellent article that's, you know, very broad-based.

• 9:37Jack Murphy?

  Do you, I, I mean, there's so many threads that we can pick up on and try to pull apart. Um, is there any particular place that you guys would like to start?

• 9:47Jack Murphy?

  You know, the, this, this story is kind of like, um, and, and stories like this, they become part of like the mythology around the war on terror. It's like, you know, they make the movie and the movie is what really happened, not what was actually experienced in the minds of so many people.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  Oh, along the way, we definitely encountered people who, you know, memory is a difficult thing and they had distinct memories of things that they actually watched in the movie. And that's just because they're human and we're all human. It's not because they were liars or, you know, and that was just, that was, one of the difficulties of this was trying to reconstruct this history and Ed and I, to the best extent we could, we tried to rely on his early interviews from the book, because those were from 2005 to 2006, or we tried to rely on primary source documents, including, uh, you know, Merch Chat, uh, Citrep, um, Tadscam from one of the Apaches, uh, their WikiLeaks was a great source in terms of like matching those things up and making sure they were consistent and accurate to the extent that we could.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  I also had a variety of handwritten notes that people had saved over the years that also matched up names, timelines, variety of things, but it's still really challenging. And even our article, honestly, um, you know, we, we don't, we're, we're not the classified historians here, so there are holes and, and questions, but it was the best that we could reconstruct.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Jack, to answer your question, I'd probably start with the SEALs themselves. And like when we were reporting in 2019, what we were reporting on is we got a tip that there were some people who thought that Danny Dietz had made the phone call, or had made it in a phone call in addition to Mike Murphy. And the Dietz family had, his mom and dad had pushed for him to get the Medal of Honor. And it didn't happen. But that was kind of an avenue we were looking at. And we didn't, we didn't necessarily answer the question definitively. And we kind of collectively decided that that was maybe not the question to answer, the more we learned about the story. And we had talked to a variety of SEALs back then, but nobody wanted to go on the record.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  And the reason is they just didn't want to upset the families. They wanted to be respectful to Marcus. You know, it wasn't that they were were scared or anything. They were just trying to be respectful, decent human beings. But what we picked up on, and it took a really long time to realize the importance of it, I think, it took talking to more people.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  Was a lot of these people had lived with this secret of what really happened for a long time. And it was really painful for them. Even though to like, you could read Ed's book, or you could read variety of reports and things for the people who experienced it, feeling like their command had lied to them, and or had just not told them the truth for whatever reason.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  You know, created a lot of moral injury and a lot of pain and messed a lot of people up. And I don't think that that was necessarily the Command's intention or Marcus Luttrell's intention. But it was something that was really evident. It was a human story that I wanted to tell. And I saw that that same thing firsthand. I got involved in some of the Afghan rescues. And it happened because basically some

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Let's say some Afghans at least directly or tangentially related to to Red Wings and its aftermath. Got in touch with me as Kabul was falling and they reached out to me for help and um. As you can imagine, if if I'm the person you call for help in a situation where you need to evacuate a country. Because you're gonna get murdered, you're probably really in trouble because I have zero skills that can help you whatsoever like. Like nothing um. But I was just kind of frantically and Ed, I don't know if you remember this because like I think I texted you at the time too, but I was just frantically. Calling everybody in my phone just thinking, okay, who knows someone who might be on the ground, who's in the military, works for the State Department. Who's in intelligence, you know, in some way.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  And, you know, uh, at least temporarily, at least we're, I was part of a group that kind of helped some people, but I. Most of the people I worked with were were Green Berets and um. I saw how painful it was for them, feeling like. The government and the military had responded to something so ineptly and it got it kind of got us talking. And I thought, well, maybe I can kind of write some sort of book about this whole process like. Not just focus on Red Wings and the disaster and the tragedy, but focus on Afghanistan at large. And then, you know, there's a happy ending in that like, oh, you know, I worked with this group of former Green Berets and we. Helped these people and they're starting a new life in America. Well, that didn't happen because, you know, uh. The um.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  The SAV process and the P one process for Afghan visas is totally basically defunct. A lot of the people I helped at least get out of Afghanistan got totally screwed. Uh, and there was no story to tell and I'm giving, I'm making this story really vague because I have to, I wish I could give more details. Um, but it would put people at risk. But along the way, I had kind of started re-reporting some Red Wing stuff. And um. I saw that the the pain on the part of a lot of these um SEALs and Green Berets and others, and I just felt like, well, they've given me so much of their time, I want to see this. Through and then, you know, the next thing that kind of happened was um a SEAL named Eric Deming went on. Uh, the Antihero Podcast and he basically aired the SEAL lore that had been around forever and like a lot of people have.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  You know, talked about how much of that was true, how much of it wasn't true. Um, I, you know, I was recently on a podcast with Eric and we talked a little bit about it. But basically I knew that some of what he was saying was definitely true. I knew that some of what he was saying might have been true. And then there was other stuff that he was saying. I was just like, there's no way. That's like, that's oral history. That's lore, but it doesn't comport with like actual documents that I've seen. But I was still interested because that oral history was like what these guys had and they didn't all agree about it. But that led a lot of other people to be like, all right, you know what? Fuck it. We're going to talk to somebody. We just want to talk to people who are going to do their homework and we can trust. Because like this has gone on long enough. It's been 20 years. Why is all this stuff still classified? Why are we still dealing with all these myths?

• 15:59Speaker 04

  Um, and there were a couple of seals that were really instrumental and willing to go on the record. And that was Nick Baggett, who was Danny Dietz's father-in-law. And Brett Thomas, who was, um, an officer and in charge of the backup team. Uh, that would have been inserted if there'd been a problem with one of the MH47s. And that's what really kicked it off for us and the reason people suddenly decided to come forward.

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• 22:17Jack Murphy?

  When you talk about some of the family members and survivors that felt like they were keeping this secret, like holding it inside, I mean, what was that? What was that thing that they were holding in?

• 22:28Speaker 04

  What they were holding is, is they felt like the story in Lone Survivor was not true, and it was inaccurate grossly, I would say, in their assessment. Now, some of them disagreed. Some of them felt like, you know, Marcus Luttrell had made stuff up because he wanted to make a buck. I would say most of them, though, felt like he had somehow been directed by his command to tell a heroic narrative. And that's still one of the murkiest parts of the story, to be honest, because we didn't get much back from FOIA.

• 23:00Speaker 04

  NSW doesn't really own the back and forth about the book. It's owned by Big Navy, I believe, so I'm still going to be doing some of those FOIA's and trying to find out. But from the sources that I talked to, there was a desire on the part of Luttrell to write this book from the very beginning. It may not have been his original idea. Like, when he got back to Bagram, people are like, oh, man, someone should write a book about this. You know, almost instantly, people were talking about that. And then, the way he told it in a podcast in 2008 with Michael Smirconish, and you may, I think I told you this, but you may get a kick out. He was in the hospital recovering, apparently, and he heard that someone else was trying to write a book about the mission.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  And in his mind, he was like, well, I was the survivor, like, I should be doing it. The only person I know of, who in 2005, who was writing about this, was at Derek.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, that, and I actually made contact with Naval Special Warfare. I had Marcus Luttrell's name and some of the details of what had happened. And through the Marine Corps, I contacted Naval Special Warfare, Public Affairs. And as soon as I mentioned the name Marcus Luttrell, they got, they were just like, shut down, and they're like, we can't help you. And, you know, after I, you know, several years later, when that, after the book had come out and after I published that article in Record Gazette, several of the family members began contacting me. And it was never about Marcus Luttrell. It was always about, from

• 24:32Speaker 05

  their perspective, we don't feel that what we're being told by the Navy is, is, is accurate. And one of the things about the military that I think a lot of people don't really understand is that the military has a responsibility to present a certain degree of information to the surviving, to the survivors. But they're not there, they don't exist to do in-depth reporting about what had happened. It kind of sounds strange. A lot of people think that, oh, they're going to tell, whatever they say, that, you know, they're going to tell us everything. And that's just not the case. When I did the project on Extortion 17, I really, that really came to light. It's just, you know, for me. But it, there's

• 25:13Speaker 05

  just a lot, there are many people out there who are really wondering about what really happened. And each person, how much information they get, it, it varies on how satisfied they're going to be with the level of information that they have from various sources. And once they start getting conflicting information, they, they get confused and it's, can be really problematic. So that went on with me for several years and it's what led to the, the initial, what Ross was discussing, the initial bit of information about Danny Dietz. So.

• 25:55Jack Murphy?

  I thought one of the, you know, in regards to the book and the auspices under which it was published, I mean, one of the parts of your article that surprised me was that allegedly, at least, and you guys can fill in the blanks here, but I mean, supposedly it went all the way up to the White House.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Patrick Robinson told me that in 2016 and you know, Patrick Robinson is he's this like really charming guy and he's got a way of saying it and you know, he, he, he does George Bush's accent when he gives that quote and like it's, he's got a dramatic flair, you know, he, he has a talent. And I was like really like dubious of that and I never reported it before. Um, and then, and then I realized, oh, he, I found an article online and he's been saying that since the book came out. Like that story has been consistent and then I got in touch with a naval special warfare source and, and the source was like, no, that's a hundred percent true. They were like basically saying that nobody really wanted to tell, like Marcus Luttrell had a desire to tell this story.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  Supposedly genuinely just to honor his fallen teammates. And maybe because he was worried that, you know, other people were going to fill in the blanks and it wasn't going to be true, or maybe just he wanted to make sure it was heroic, whatever the case, I mean, Marcus knows that in himself and what's true. Um, and nobody really wanted to say yes, because Marcus wants to stay on active duty. And so like, how are you going to write a class, how are you going to write a book about a classified mission while you're on active duty? But nobody really wanted to tell him no. And so it eventually went to the White House and it's not like, the reporting said that George Bush told him how to tell the story, but he basically said he can do whatever he wants, like America needs another hero and that was the idea. And from there, apparently naval special warfare was just like, okay, the White House is behind it.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  You can, you know, we'll help you however you need and, and you know, the only thing that they wanted is they wanted to make sure it was told. Heroically, but you know, I have a lot of questions like how much like, supposedly like four people within naval special warfare reviewed the book in some form or fashion. Um, but like, if you know how these things work, like they're not fact checkers. They're just trying to make sure the information isn't classified. So I don't, I like, I can't tell you that they.

• 28:07Jack Murphy?

  That with, um, with Chris Kyle's book where the co-author said, well, this book was approved by DOD, so it's factual. It's like, well, no, they're just checking for classified information. They're not fact checking the book.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  And I think you maybe can make the argument that some of the things in Lone Survivor are not classified because they're not accurate. Like, I don't know.

• 28:27Speaker 05

  They're made up.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you could maybe make that argument, but.

• 28:31Speaker 05

  Unless it was information operations and you could say, well, it's classified IO. If they were to claim ownership of the book and say, well, yeah, this was just a big IO campaign. So it's classified as secret or TS.

• 28:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I don't really know the the answer to that, but if if it was a narrative being shaped per se, like, like actively, it was a pretty sloppy job if you look at it that way, because, you know, Seal of Honor came out a few years after that, and there were totally different facts and Naval Special Warfare was involved in both books. So why would you create two books that have totally like, for instance, like in Lone Survivor, I think he said Marcus says he crawls like seven miles to get to the village. But in Seal of Honor, it more accurately says that it's like less than a mile. And what like, if you're really shaping information, why would you do that? So my sense is they they at certain point, once

• 29:24Speaker 04

  the White House encouraged him to do it, Naval Special Warfare Command encouraged him to do it. And they just said, Hey, make sure you honor the guys. And that's all they were really looking for. It's not like they were sitting around with fact checkers being like, I don't know if you should discuss that part about the fast rope. Now, they did do that for the movie that the DOD did.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  Well, that they hid the fast rope and.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's like a fascinating nugget that we mentioned because in there's a FOIA of the DOD review and the DOD like reviews the script and they say, in the book, Marcus writes that they expertly dropped the fast rope. And I don't think Peter Berg, you should discuss them cutting it in the script. And so they cut it out of the script. But if you actually read Lone Survivor, he does say they cut the fast rope. So it was like the reviewer got it wrong and cut out an important part of the story. But I haven't seen any evidence, and it doesn't mean it didn't happen of that sort of like line by line review of Lone Survivor in that way. It was more of a general shaping of we want this to be

• 30:29Speaker 04

  a heroic story. And in fact, one of the things that was discussed was, look.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  The White House wants us to do it. We think you should do this so that a guy like Sean Naylor won't because they were not happy about Not a Good Day to Die and what he had written about Operation Anaconda. And that that did seemingly have an effect and on the decision to allow him to do it, according to, you know, a former army official with knowledge of it.

• 31:01Jack Murphy?

  So I kid with Sean after reading your article. I mean, does this mean I can partially blame him for the Lone Survivor movie? Is he indirectly responsible?

• 31:11Speaker 05

  I don't know. You know, you know, really, I think, and I've held this opinion since that book came out and then after the movie is that I think that it they didn't it sort of surprised them. It surprised everybody by how well it did. And it just kind of created it's a monster. I I just remember reading it in disbelief at some of the wild exaggerations and outright inaccuracies with it, you know, that I, you know, I think a lot of the subsequent books, because that book came out in 2007, my book came out and shortly after that, some other books came out and I had

• 31:53Speaker 05

  published after my book published, I think it was in 2010, I created this website called Operation Red Wings Misinformation. That's where that Marine Corps Gazette article had come from. And, you know, I there's, you know, it's out there, all the dames and, you know, that what actually happened during the operation that I could determine at the time. And so I I think some of the exaggeration got tempered after that. So, you know, it went from crawling seven miles to I believe it was about point six miles, point seven miles or something like that. So I mean, there's, there's, there's several different pieces of information.

• 32:35Jack Murphy?

  So if we're to talk about the the actual operation itself and some of the misconceptions and the reporting that you guys do in your article, um, do you want to start with sort of like the mission planning and that this mission was given to an SDV team and sort of like how they kind of started off on the wrong foot right from the get go?

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. I mean, Ed, I know you can take the Marine side of it because you have much more knowledge of that. And I could talk a little bit about once everything kind of came together, how the SEALs began conceiving of their part of the mission at least.

• 33:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 33:13Speaker 04

  So, um, and you know, Ed, correct me if I'm wrong, but basically this was originally a Marine mission and it's it. There was an outline of it from the the three, three Marines before the two, three Marines got in country. And it was kind of a rough outline. That was like the shell of this operation. And basically, the Marines wanted to use the helicopters from the 160th. The 160th are part of JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command. And, you know, they wanted the ability to use those helicopters, which is why they wanted to find partner, at least on Siege Sotaf A, which is a task force that was run

• 33:58Speaker 04

  by Colonel Jeffrey Waddell. The distinction is, you know, basically JSOC is fighting the war against Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. Siege Sotaf was the Special Operations Task Force there, fighting the war against Taliban.

• 34:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, real. Let me, let me just jump in real quick and make a couple distinctions here. So you have the highest command is CFC Alpha, Combined Forces Command, Afghanistan. It was run by General, I believe it was Lieutenant General Ikenberry, three star. And then under that, you have CJTF 76 at the time, Combined Joint Task Force 76. At the time, it was run by Major General Jason Camilla. And under that, you have several.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  Commands at the O6 level, the full bird Colonel level, or I guess you just say O6 level to be a Navy. And so, one of those is CJ SOTAF Alpha, and they've got, you know, what you call White SOF. Jack, you know about that. There's White SOF, and then there's Black SOF. Black SOF is JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command. And their task from CENTCOM, US CENTCOM. But they can share assets at the will of the JSOC commander in country at that time. So that would have been Ed Winters, who at the time was a captain, that's an O6 in the Navy.

• 35:25Speaker 05

  And he was able to allow the use of, you know, his, his, his staff allowed the use of the 160th for the White SOF sides for the SEALs under CJ SOTAF. It's a little complicated, a little convoluted. We don't really get into that in the article.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  It's, it's important to make that distinction.

• 35:49Speaker 05

  Because there's some, you know, later on with the recovery efforts, JSOC, they take control of the area with the Just SOA Joint Special Operations area. But anyway, that's that, you know, on the conventional side, 3rd Battalion 3rd Marines had conducted a series of battalion level operations throughout their AO.

• 36:12Speaker 05

  The whole goal was to establish security, to increase security for the upcoming national parliamentary elections in September of 2005. And so they wanted to have a consistent operational tempo. You know, they did Operation Celtics, Operation Stars, Operation Celtics. And then they were developing Stars, which is what turned into Operation Red Wings. Anyway, get back to you, Ross.

• 36:36Speaker 04

  And, and they had the 33 Marines, I believe, and Ed, correct me if I'm wrong, but I just reread Victory Point as we were doing this. But they had worked with Eric Christensen, who was the ground force commander for, for Red Wings on the SEAL side. He was a lieutenant, he was an officer. And so they had a relationship with him. And when, when they wanted to do Red Wings, or the 23 Marines came in country and wanted to do Red Wings, they were told by the, you know, the CJ SOTAF that basically.

• 37:08Speaker 04

  They, if they wanted to use the helicopters that they, um, someone on Waddell's task force basically had to own two phases of the operation. And, um, that was not necessarily something that they, that the three, three Marines had to do in the past. Um, but it was more doc, more of like special forces doctrine at the time. And, um, they were frustrated by that. And so they were trying to find a way to keep up with the tempo and do this mission and.

• 37:34Speaker 05

  Well, let me just, let me, one of the problems is that there, there was not conventional forces, special operation forces doctrine at all at the time. There were concepts about it. Uh, but they were, there was not, you know, it's one of the issues. That I did get into in Victory Point, which was joint integration, joint interoperability. Uh, that was kicked off with the, uh, non, uh, with the, uh, Gold Order's Nichols Act of 1986, but. There was a lot of subsequent to that, there was a lot of growing pains within the Department of Defense and one of them. Uh, that has since been remedied to a great extent is interoperability between special operations forces and conventional forces. Anyway, Ross.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. So to, to make a long story short, to, to do them, to do the mission, the Marines work with SEAL Team 10. Who, uh, you know, again, had had a good relationship in the past. Those SEALs, uh, you know, according for, to Frank Harar had conducted some successful missions at the time. And, uh, but they had, the mission gets changed and, um, at first, so basically the SEALs are going to, uh, be in charge of. The recon part of that mission and there's going to be, um, two talks. Uh, you know, um, I'll let Ed get into splitting the C2 in a little bit, but there, but the idea is that the, the. SEALs are going to be in charge of the recon mission. And at first they want to use ISR.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  They don't want to put any recon team on the ground. Um, and we know this because I, I've seen every iteration of the con op or the mission outline. That the SEALs create. And so, um, but they ultimately, um, the task force, Waddell's task force doesn't want to do it this way because. And, and. And understandably, because they're like, you're not gonna be able to see anything. Uh, you're not gonna really be able to identify the target. And also, you know, ISR was really hard to get at the time from a, from a predator was very difficult. For even the siege of Sodif to get those air assets, let alone, you know, the Marines or whatnot. So then, um, they come up with two other iterations of the plan, one involving 12 guys, another involving eight guys.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Uh, or three, you know, three or four, uh, or a couple recon teams. They're going to, uh, set up in certain very specific areas based on patterns of life of the target Ahmed Shah. Who was, uh, you know, militant commander Taliban linked. Um, and, uh, they can't get the air assets. So those parts of the mission that goes awry. And so they come up with one final plan and the, the SEALs are really frustrated because they, it's not like they didn't do anything during this deployment, but it wasn't a particularly busy deployment. They wanted to get experience. They wanted to get out there and, um, they wanted to do the mission and, um, so they come up with a plan for a four man recon team.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  And the reason they came up with it was in part, they wanted the right number of assaulters to then assault the village after they, uh, um, identified the target. And what one source who, you know, was in the room for all this basically told me was that it, it, they, they came up with this plan a little bit out of pes- petulance. And they're just like, well, fuck it. Like how, how do you want us to do this thing? You keep rejecting all our plans. Like now we've, we've got to be in much worse terrain. With, you know, much more difficult recon mission and just fine, we'll just do it with four guys and, uh, you know, they, what they missed there is they could have still had a larger recon team. Uh, with, you know, more powerful weapons and then they could have just joined the assault. Is what this source later told me, but

• 41:07Speaker 04

  they just weren't thinking clearly about it and they, they, they made a mistake. And so, but the, the mission, uh, was approved by Waddell and by Camia with a four man recon team with, you know, no heavy weaponry in, in Konar, which a lot of people thought was really bad idea based on the terrain, based on, um, the importance of the target. Um, the, there was a lack of contingencies and, um, a variety of other problems. And I'll let you get into the, the C2 and some of those command and control issues. Uh, that are, I think are worth mentioning.

• 41:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, the initial plan that the Marines had was to have Scouts and Air Force Team walk in, right, from Waterpour Village, which is about seven miles away. An operation that I was on, I walked with the Marines along the same pathway to just one valley over from where Red Wings occurred. In fact, we got ambushed right there similarly. To walk in, one of the issues is compromise. You just don't want to be compromised by anybody there. And when you fly in in a helicopter, so the original Marine plan was to walk in, surveil

• 42:25Speaker 05

  the areas of interest, PID the target, positively identify the target, and then at that point, you know, the assault force, that was phase zero shaping. Phase one would be a direct action raid in an hour quarter and an inner quarter. And they would, you know, get the guy and establish presence there in that part of the Corning Gold Valley. And after a month, you know, do presence operations and medical capabilities operations and civil affairs operations and all that kind of stuff, counterinsurgency stuff. But, you know, with the Marine Corps, they have a, you know, they're, they're an, organically, they're a multi-domain combined arms fighting force. I mean, they've got artillery, aviation, et cetera.

• 43:09Speaker 05

  They're, in that scenario, they were integrated into a greater joint task force, you know, and they're under Colonel Donahue, Task Force Devil. And, you know, they, but they didn't have their own aviation assets, they didn't have their own artillery, but they still wanted to function that way. They still wanted to try to maintain a very high level of command and control, which on their respective aspects of the operation they did, and, you know, at least for, you know, planning and then subsequently during the recovery operation parts that they played in that. But this, this operation that they, that how it evolved, it was, you know, there was a supported, supporting type battle handoff.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  So. The Naval Special Warfare, NAFSO, would be the supported element for phases zero through two and then, or zero through, yeah, zero through, yeah, zero, one and two. And then three, four and five would be, or three and four, would, they would be, the Marines would be supported. And so it just was a, and then they had two tactical operations centers. There was, the communication was not very well thought out or planned. And it was just what they call, you know, in a military operation, one of the foundational constructs is you

• 44:36Speaker 05

  need to have unity of command and unity of effort. Needs to be a very solid command and control lines throughout the whole operation. And from the get-go with Red Wings, the way it evolved with the Naval Special Warfare was, that was just thrown out the door. And that command and control just didn't exist. And so if everything just goes exactly as planned, even though there wasn't much of a plan, even if everything just went well for them, you know, like luck should never be part of a plan, right? And they, and say they got lucky, then they would just, you know, progress, you know, phase zero, one, two, three, and four, and then get out of there and everything would be just fine. But

• 45:18Speaker 05

  you can't plan like that. You have to have all the contingencies very carefully planned to include Quick Reaction Force, QRF, to include, you know, any type of emergency egress routes. And they just didn't have that. And they didn't have, so they didn't have the, you know, solid C2 in place. They didn't have good communications. You know, they didn't have unity of effort, unity of command. So it's, that was the fundamental problem. And that's been a fundamental problem with several major military campaigns, including Operation Eagle Claw in 1980. That's where the, that the Goldwater's Nichols Act came

• 46:01Speaker 05

  from, that, you know, the Holloway Commission established the, you know, the construct for that. And then, so then, but at that point in time, The military in general, particularly the Navy and Naval Special Warfare, they're in a period of transition, becoming more joint, you know, to include working more fluidly with conventional forces. And it was, that was an example of growing pains right there, Red Wings. It just wasn't, it just didn't, that was, what I'm describing is the underlying Yeah. foundation of the problem. Institutional failure. Yeah. It, yeah, I mean, it's just a, it's just a great, more than institutional failure. I mean, it's just a, it's just structural across the Department of Defense, really.

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• 51:35Jack Murphy?

  Rush, you want to add something?

• 51:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I wanted to add, and so the four guys that they chose, if you looked at, and we have this, the con op where you see, you know, the eight man team, the 12 man team, they have some pretty experienced guys on those teams from SEAL Team 10. SEAL Team 10 at the time was augmented by two SDV teams. There was SDV Team Two out of Virginia Beach and SDV Team One out of Hawaii. And those are, you know, the guys that are in the mini subs, you know, doing a lot of water missions or missions, you know, not that far from the beach. They both came with a billing as experts in reconnaissance. But the four guys that they chose were pretty inexperienced. They were new guys, young guys, and the more veteran guys that had been part of the larger teams became assaulters.

• 52:21Speaker 04

  And when I asked why, I got a variety of answers, but one, one part of it is just, everybody wants to kick down the doors. Nobody wants to just stay up all night that they're doing nothing on a recon mission. And that was like one part of it. I think also. There's to an extent to which like, how do you get guy, new guys to be more experienced? Do you send them on more missions? And you know, but the, it's not like these guys had never done any missions. But they, you know, they had, you know, supposedly done like a handful of recon missions. And they were not all the same team. Deets was from SDB two, the others were from SDB one. And what a lot of people didn't realize is that team came into country.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  At a time when the SEALs really need to, needed to grow their ranks. So they really need to get bodies over there to get in the war, get in the fight. But there, there had been some issues at SDB one with training is what we discovered. They had failed their, uh, uh, ORE, their overall readiness evaluation, which is supposed to be basically give them the stamp, like you guys are ready to deploy. Um, and they had failed it due to issues with land warfare. Uh, at, at least was one of the reasons. And, um, they were given a quick retest and they were deployed, but there were a lot of questions whether or not this team was really ready. Um, and in fact, as, as we talked about, and it's not to take anything away from them to say

• 53:48Speaker 04

  they weren't young, promising guys, you know, uh, who, uh, had a lot of talent and it, it just, they were new and they were sent on a poorly planned, really treacherous mission. Um, which is, which is another mistake. And to compound that, one of the members of the SEAL team, Michael Murphy, as was originally reported in SEAL of Honor, he had accidentally shot another officer in a training exercise. And the way SEAL of Honor depicts it was, is just this terrible mistake that ended up, you know, ending this other SEAL, uh, this other SEAL's Andy Halfley's career. But, you know, they just moved on and everything was fine. But the, the reality is, is not everybody on that team had moved on. There were some people who still had some bad feelings about it, uh, were wary of it.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  And there was a lot of pressure, uh, on Murphy in general and also just the new guys in general. And so, uh, one of, uh, you know, one of the things we learned was that. Some of the more senior guys didn't want to be out in the field and be led by Murphy on this mission. You know, maybe that was an excuse and they just didn't want to do recon, but they, their original plan, there was a plan to have this senior enlisted, a senior enlisted guy out there with them. That got changed. So you had four new guys out there. The other thing that had happened on the, with the SEAL teams is you've got a lot of new guys and they're, they're following TTPs that had bled over from other theaters that just didn't apply to a rural,

• 55:14Speaker 04

  rural area like Afghanistan. And so the young SEALs on that team saw how other teams were compromised by goat herders on other missions, previous missions. And one team did the right thing, which was to, you know, cuff the herders, end the mission, bring them with them, call for extract, cut them loose, hop on the helicopter. But the other two teams didn't. They just let them go and continued the mission because you know, it's like, the idea was like, oh, we don't want to be like a bunch of pussies and like, and the mission, we're gonna go hard.

• 55:45Jack Murphy?

  When I read that, Ross, it reminded me of one of the interviews we did on this show with a SAS operator and he was telling us a story about the Gulf War and how there's tremendous amount of pressure on the SAS to conduct operations. And one of the SAS commanders got his recon team out there, they landed, and he realized right away, the terrain did not support the operations order that he had written, that there's nowhere for his recon team to hide, it was just flat in every direction. So he aborted the mission, got back and, you know, in some ways it sounds like he was ostracized. Like people thought, is this guy a coward? Like, what's, what's the problem? Another recon team went in and got compromised and that was Bravo

• 56:29Jack Murphy?

  two zero. We all know how that turned out. So I, I think one of the, you, you touch on that well in the article, that there are these like cultural and institutional pressures to conduct operations. Michael Murphy maybe is looking for some redemption here. He's getting his second chance. The other guys want to get outside the wire and all of it kind of spiraled, you know, on itself.

• 56:52Speaker 04

  And I thought it was really important to put that into context because it's really easy to be like a commenter on the internet and be like, oh, these guys, these guys suck or whatever.

• 57:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, cowboys or.

• 57:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, but it's, it's, you're only as good as your training. And you're only as good as, is your mission planning. And these guys were put in a bad place that they were not prepared for. And I think we, we can have compassion for that and we can learn from that. And that was kind of the goal of that. That's why we pointed it out. It wasn't to Monday morning quarterback or anything like that. It was, it was to learn from it and to acknowledge it. And if we had held them up in, in a way, which I think lone survivor does, and again, maybe with good intentions as these battle hardened, seals who don't make any mistakes, then there's nothing to learn. Um, and there, there's nothing to apply, uh, or, or there is at least no, as Ed says, there are no rules to be reinforced.

• 57:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's, that's, I'm glad you brought that up because there really were no lessons to be learned. It was just rules, rules of warfare reinforced. I mean, you shouldn't be learning lessons in any combat theater. Once you deploy there, I mean, I use the term tactical and operational adjustments. Once you're in theater, once you're on the ground or, you know, if you're the Navy on the, in your area of operation.

• 58:14Speaker 05

  Because, but it's just, that's almost like a rhetorical trick to say, oh, there's all these lessons learned. Not really. I mean, what, what, you know, you should be organized, trained and equipped properly prior to deployment to a combat zone. Period. You should never be learning lessons, you know? And I've gone over this with people and training education command with the Marine Corps. And it's not like I'm coming up with this idea on my own. It's train like you fight and be adequately organized, trained and equipped. And they weren't, and that wasn't their fault. That was institutional, that's institutional blame. Big time. And that even goes much, you know, beyond that, like as I was discussing previously with the transition that the DOD.

• 59:00Speaker 05

  And you know, DOD wide was going through at the time and then you apply the pressure, the shock of this type of war that we weren't even thinking about. So it really, there are many, many factors that underlie this. And but, you know, to what Ross brought up, the rules reinforced was, you know, there were several of them, you know, like they, you're going to get compromised. I mean, they were compromised immediately when they, you know, Yeah, what's your SOP? Before they're even on the ground, you know? And so what rule is that? Well, know the terrain, study the battle space and understand that, you know, people are going to hear that and see that and probably because they're amicable to these,

• 59:44Speaker 05

  to Ahmad Shah and these insurgent forces.

• 59:47Jack Murphy?

  Ed, let's, let's go ahead and jump forward a little bit to, to exactly that. We talked about the infiltration a bit, the fast rope incident. Let's, let's kind of jump up to the, to the compromise. Because there's controversy about that and what was reported back to the talk and so on. What did you guys uncover in your reporting?

• 1:00:07Speaker 04

  So we, we got ahold of Merc Chat from the two talks as they're talking to one another. And you immediately could see from that Merc Chat, how having the two talks was confusing for the team in the field and confusing with each other. We also have a sit rep that summarizes the mission and the rescue and parts of the mission, the rescue and recovery. And between those two sources, it fills in a lot of holes of the communication. You know, the story told in lone survivors, they hit the ground and they, they communicate with the AC 130 overhead and, you know, they can, or they communicate through the AC 130 with, you know, everybody saying, you know, we're on the ground, Red Wings go, they're moving on.

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  And then that's the last time they ever have comps. That's it. They lose comps for the rest of the mission. But it's not true. They actually, and there have been a lot of theories and a lot of people talking about all sorts of things like,

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  you know, about this, but the reality is they made comps at least eight times during that mission. At least. So.

• 1:01:11Speaker 04

  And you can see it. And we also talked to somebody who was, you know, familiar with with the logs. And all these things more or less matched up. There are some holes. There's some gaps. There's some debate. But what you see is that they are moving along on their path and they're communicating and they're checking in. They did have some initial trouble. At first with communications. But they figured they must have figured it out. And we don't totally know why exactly like did. Did the crypto shit the bed at a certain point and they had a kick and they fixed it? Maybe. That's what a lot of people theorized when they heard this. We're not sure, but either way. Four o'clock Zulu rolls around the next morning and they've checked in at least five times at that point. They're looking at the target. They realize that they can't quite see it.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  From where they they thought they could. And so they move about 15 minutes away to another place. At about 5:20, they check in with the talk. Everything's going fine. And then like a few minutes later, they're compromised by the goat herders and they call back to Jalalabad. And, you know, in the book, they just can't get through. They just never get through. They can, you know, they they can't really. Talk to anybody. I think that that's right. But and in the movie, they actually they do show this of them getting through to the wrong talk. And they they look for Eric Christiansen and his deputy Mike McGreevy. And they're not there. So then they call Bagram. And they wait on the phone and the call drops before.

• 1:02:42Speaker 04

  Christiansen McGreevy can get to the phone. The talks were manned. There were people there all the time. But here's the thing, that kind of distorts. What's really going on there? Because when I talked to SEALs about that, they were like, it's a field decision. You should know what to do. What you should do is call in for extract. Let them know that you've been soft compromised. But because these guys are newer, either because they were inexperienced or because they were embarrassed, we really can't say which one. But those are the two theories that people like we spoke to came up with. They never told anybody on those two calls that they were compromised. There's no record of emergency communications. And the person Dennis White, who was.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  The communication, a communications technician in the Jalalabad talk didn't know anything about goat herders until after the mission. And so in fact, there's a, there's a message in the Merc chat where he says, the recon team says they're packing up and moving on. So it indicates that they had at least told them, hey, we're going to a new spot. Everything's fine. Then you see in the sit rep at six oh eight. And apparently there's another communication at six 10, according to letters written by Dennis White to the Deets family after the mission. Saying that when they get to that new spot after they had let the goat herders go. They checked in again, basically saying, everything's fine. If you read Marcus Luttrell's original debrief.

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  That call never happened. He never mentions it. He only mentions a later call like an hour later. And says they can't get through.

• 1:04:11Jack Murphy?

  Do we, do we know if the goat herders really had anything to do with what subsequently unfolded? Because the reporting in your article is that the bad guys basically tracked them, you know, old school, tracked their footprints from the insertion point.

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 1:04:26Speaker 05

  It's unlikely.

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. Is it possible they ran into them along the way? Maybe, but you know, they. So they were compromised at like five 20. Five 24 Zulu or something like that. And supposedly the battle begins like at almost nine o'clock Zulu. So they went back to their original OP for hours and sat there, meaning they weren't trying to abort the mission by any means. And by then the militants were already looking for them. They, they had found, one of the things we, we learned from the Rangers is they found a part of the fast rope in the cave. In a cave on the mountain with some of the militants' equipment indicating that they had found it.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  And, um, you know, uh, the way a, uh, member of Shah's militant group later told, uh, uh, you know, an army, uh, unit. Years later, uh, after this person became a source. Was that, yeah, they just followed their footprints, uh, because they could see they found the insertion point. They could see the footprints led away. Uh, from where they had inserted rather than they were picking up and getting on. On a helicopter towards it and they tracked him and that's the same thing that Mohammed Gulav, the Afghan villager who saved Marcus told me in 2016. And so the goat herders, this is the irony is everybody's made such a big deal about the goat herder decision and the soft compromise. Had they done the right thing with the compromise, it possibly could have saved their life,

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  but they had been compromised from the moment they hit the ground.

• 1:05:53Speaker 05

  They were compromised before. One sixtieth pilots reported seeing people on their way in to the LZ, you know, or to the insert point. I mean, it was just, it was.

• 1:06:06Jack Murphy?

  It was a CH47 they came in on. You're not hiding.

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, MH47D and, and it's, it's loud. I mean, you can, depending on the atmospheric conditions, you may be able to hear that upwards of 10 miles away approaching, you know, depending on the atmospheric conditions, of course, but you know, certainly within three miles you can hear it. And they inserted about a mile from Chichol Village. So.

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  Far, farther than that, actually.

• 1:06:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Speaker 04

  Farther than that. And, and you know, there are. And I think I remember you telling me at some point, and I could be wrong about this, but that there are only so many places up there that you could probably land a helicopter. And so the militants, you know, they know that area. They know that terrain. You know, and so it, it, it wouldn't be that hard for them to figure it out. And, you know, where they were hiding, and I think you told me this once too, it was right off one of the main.

• 1:07:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  Oh, trails that went up through that.

• 1:07:03Speaker 05

  15 meters off. I mean, it's right on, in Victory Point, I, I call it the, uh, the super highway. It was my joking, my kind of, I, you know, there's a, there's a Satalasar, the mountain. The North Ridge is, you know, it divides the Shurik Valley from the Corongo Valley. And there's a trail system that runs right along the ridge and there's several other little trails and there's one trail that goes off. What I labeled the Northeast Spur of Satalasar. There, there's no formal name, but you know, geography, you're going to just name things based on descriptive description. Uh, and then the Northeast Gulch is between the Northeast Spur and then the North Ridge.

• 1:07:45Speaker 05

  But, and that's where they were funneled down to in their, in the ambush by Ahmad Shah and his men. So, um, yeah, it, it was just. And one of the. One of the factors, one of the lessons that they should have learned and they were told about prior to this was that, you know, the place is crawling with people and you can't really know who is going to be friendly to the enemy and who isn't. In general, anybody in the Corongole Valley is going to be inimical to coalition forces and American forces. And that was, you know, they saw people and presumably the people heard the helicopters

• 1:08:24Speaker 05

  on their way in, on the infill. So, and, and those goat herders are everywhere. I remember, you know, in October, early October of 2005, embedded with Marines across the Pesh Valley. And, you know, I was looking at Satulasar. In fact, I think I was probably, you know, we were moving to this little village called Tantil now. And out of nowhere, all these goats and this goat, this young goat herders. And I was looking around at the Marines because we were, you know, moving and just, you know, we were dispersed. So I was here and then there was a, you know, Cora Bradley was behind me, maybe 10 meters. And, you know, I was just, it was a little bit shocking, not shocking, but it was a little nerve wracking

• 1:09:07Speaker 05

  because I didn't have a weapon. And, you know, we had heard over the radio that we're, you know, they're Taliban and SEALs are going to ambush. And then I was, out of nowhere, there was these goats, like a sea of goats. And it happens all the time. And I said, what's going on? He's like, oh, this happens all the time. You know, I mean, that was right, wasn't on where, it wasn't right where they were. But I was looking at where they were had been ambushed a couple of miles, a few miles away. That's just the area.

• 1:09:33Jack Murphy?

  Let's talk about the ambush and, you know, the, the mythology versus what you guys uncovered in your reporting. I recall the SEALs were at a pretty severe terrain disadvantage when it happened. And, but I think that most of the new reporting, I think about this in your article is more about what was going on in the TAC as that firefight unfolded. But, but you guys take it the direction you want to go in.

• 1:09:59Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, the ambush was by a small number of Amad Shahn and a small number of his men, and they were communicating with push PTTs, push the talks. They were dispersed in about three groups and they had PK machine guns, 762 by 54, which is a medium machine gun. The SEALs were, you know, they had Sotmat M4s, 556 rounds. I mean, it's, it's just, they were at a positional geometric disadvantage. They were, they engaged them with RPG fire and pledging, interlocking PK medium machine gun fire.

• 1:10:37Speaker 05

  You know, the, the, the important point of that is that they were above them shooting down onto the, to under the SEALs and they funneled them down into the northeast gulch. And that's where they, you know, they were, Axelson survived enough to egress to the north. And then Murphy and Deets were killed and then

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  Luchel egressed down towards Salabon.

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  So I think, Jack, the point of this, and, and, and a lot of people have talked about this online because, you know, Ed was one of the first, it was probably the first journalist to get ahold of the video of that video that is now on the internet. There are, you know, Ed, Ed got a, it's about a nine minute long video with timestamps and those timestamps match up to the Merck and to the sitrep, which allow us to have a better sense of, you know, what was going on when. And we also, you know, translated

• 1:11:37Speaker 04

  that video. There are a lot of these videos on the internet and there are some fake captions out there saying like, oh, you can hear Murphy calling for Marcus. At one point, and I, Ed, I think he probably made fun of me at one point for doing this, but like, I was like, I want to see if this is real. And I like took it to a recording studio and had them analyze it. And it's, it's, it's just basically cognitive bias. It's like, you think you're hearing that, so you do hear it, but it's, it's just the militants talking. There's no, you don't hear American voices on the tape. That, that stuff is not real. But those videos on the internet otherwise are sometimes longer versions of that video, just with the timestamps blocked out. And, you know, Ed reported at the time, you see basically

• 1:12:22Speaker 04

  seven militants, two guys with cameramen. Marines later determined that it could have been eight to 10 and the militant who was interviewed by the Army Special Missions Unit. Offered up the name, the names of, you know, nine people plus Shaw and then said, you know, yeah, there are a couple others. So it was either three, three man teams or three, four man teams, basically, more or less. But the exact number isn't really what's important. Like the, the pre-mission intelligence said 12 to 15 guys plus Ahmed Shaw may have like, couple other bodyguards beyond that, like three to five. There were some reports of him having hundreds of guys, but

• 1:13:03Speaker 04

  that was kind of just dismissed as boasting and exaggeration. We have that in the con op and we put it up there. And, um, you know, as the mission was going on, there were also these reports of like hundreds of guys and all this stuff, but it was all bogus, basically.

• 1:13:16Speaker 05

  I remember reading that and I was like, what is this? I was just shocked by that in the, in Lone Survivor. I was like, I, I can't believe what I'm reading.

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  And what I think happened there, honestly, Jack, is like, it's not like it was pulled out of nowhere. Like again, you can see, for instance, in the sit rep, people talking about, oh, we're hearing reports. They could be hundreds of guys coming in and people really did believe they were facing this like army. It just wasn't true. Um, and, but when it wrapped up, this mythology developed and even among the SEALs that I spoke to, they, they had this belief, like I was just, you know, it was a lot of guys. Like when Marcus was picked up in the village by the Rangers, he insisted from the get go, so many guys. And it just, it felt like a lot of guys and it's really easy to believe that when.

• 1:14:05Jack Murphy?

  It probably felt like 600 guys shooting at you. Like I would feel that way too.

• 1:14:09Speaker 04

  Right, right. Exactly.

• 1:14:10Speaker 05

  I, I, I mean, a few weeks later, I was one valley over and we were ambushed. And it, you know, was PK fire right over our heads. And it definitely felt, I thought, what is there like, you know, 10, 20 guys and.

• 1:14:29Speaker 05

  Keith, the scout sniper team leader, he's like, no, it was, there's two guys. Two guys, one over here and one over here. That's it. And that's, it's just, that's how, and especially if you're getting hit with, you know, we weren't getting ambushed with RPG, but it was PK machine gun fire ambush. It, you know, it's, it can, I can see how they probably thought it was many, many more. But they, they executed, they, they did a very well executed, very well coordinated, light infantry attack ambush. And they funneled them right down. I mean, it's like a, it's a, it's a textbook, you know, for mountain warfare.

• 1:15:10Speaker 05

  You take the high ground and, you know, focus on your enemy, interlock fires. And it was a combined, it was, it was a very well executed, combined arms assault. So.

• 1:15:23Speaker 04

  And this is where you start seeing the mythology the SEALs have of themselves conflict with the reality and the mistakes of the mission again. And, and this is where we get to later where it's so much easier to believe that four Navy SEALs could nearly take down an army of 200 rather than say, it was, you know, eight to 12 guys and it was a result of mistakes in mission planning and training and, and, and execution. And it was very hard, I think, for naval special warfare, at least openly, to admit that. But the people, there were a lot of people who knew that. And, and that was, and so it was very painful to see their community not being able to

• 1:16:07Speaker 04

  address that essentially. And so, again, we're not trying to, in bringing this to light, we're not trying to say, these guys just suck. Look, these like, you know, eight militants took them down. We're saying, no. They did the best they could with the training they had in the bad spot that they were in. They were screwed and it doesn't take anything away from them.

• 1:16:27Speaker 05

  The, in the Mujahideen in the.

• 1:16:31Speaker 05

  Late in the, in the 1980s, they would hold up entire columns of Soviet armor in that area. Just a few guys with, with RPGs and PK machine guns at a choke point. And, you know, they would hit them with a RPG and get a vehicle stopped in the front and one in the rear. And they would just engage up and down the, the column.

• 1:16:53Jack Murphy?

  So

• 1:16:53Speaker 05

  High ground.

• 1:16:55Jack Murphy?

  In the, uh, in the meantime, the, the scene you depict in the article as far as what's going on in the talk sounds kind of chaotic. That the radio operator like went to mid rats. There's a jag sitting on the radio for a minute. He's taking, he's, and when the, when the Kammo guy comes in, it sounds like it's just chaos. And he's on the phone and he doesn't know if he's talking to Dietz or Murphy. And do you want to unpack a little bit of that?

• 1:17:17Speaker 04

  So they, because they didn't know they were soft compromised at all, they had no idea. So Dennis White, he was the main communicator. They were, he was switching off with Mark Tackler, who was the jag about who gets a bite to eat? Who goes to takes a shower, goes to the bathroom or whatever. And so there was no indication that there was a, there was an issue. You know, they, like I, I think they, they, the way White describes it in his letters and, and you can see most of what he says in his letters in the, um, um, in the sit rep and, and in the Merc chat, um, you know, there were some, some holes and some different things, but, um, you know, they hadn't heard from them since six, 10, and then about eight, something rolls around and they start saying, oh, this is like weird. Let's try and get in touch with them.

• 1:18:02Speaker 04

  And that's when, you know, they start getting worried, but they hadn't had no indication. And then somebody calls in, uh, seemingly on the iridium. It's possible it was the radio, but it appears to be the iridium, at least according to White's letters, talking about HLZs. And they think the way it's described, when I read it to people, they were like, oh, it just sounds like the mission is continuing. It, is it possible that they were saying that, you know, hey, we're about to get ambushed? Maybe, but when I read that to a lot of the SEALs and told them, they're like, no, this just sounds like the, the helicopter landing zones that's going to be for the rest of the mission, which suggests they may not have seen this coming.

• 1:18:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. HLZ check.

• 1:18:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then, um, and then the next thing, there's like a call that's on the radio that, uh, you know, we don't see in the sit rep or in the Merc, but apparently happened according to the talk records in Bagram. Um, and there's a chance, by the way, that the talk records in Bagram and Jalalabad don't entirely match up because they're not necessarily like if somebody calls the Iridium in Jalalabad, but they don't call the Iridium in Bagram. It's not clear that they're, they're, they're recording the same things because you can see that there are a few wires crossed in the Merc chat between the two.

• 1:19:13Speaker 05

  And not everything is recorded on Merc either.

• 1:19:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So.

• 1:19:17Speaker 05

  So it's like every time someone calls in and there's, you're not necessarily going to put that on the Merc.

• 1:19:23Speaker 04

  Right. So, you know, so there, there are some, there are some gaps, but eventually it's apparently there's this other call that is like somewhat broken, uh, at around eight 50 or so. And then they don't hear anything. And again, they still don't, there's no reason to think that there's a compromise. They have no idea. And then they get the call in on the Iridium, asking for close air support. They're running down a valley. They don't even, they don't even necessarily say Chal. They kind of the, the tech, the, the Jag and the, and Dennis White have to kind of put that together and figure it out. But Chal is a village that's like very spread out. So saying you're running towards Chal doesn't really tell you where they are. Nobody says, thank you, sir. Like they do in the movie or the book. They're just, you know, they're trying to save their lives and the lives of their

• 1:20:06Speaker 04

  other guys. They're, they're desperate and, um, and so they don't really know where they are. They have their last known location from, you know, hours before, and that's the only thing they have. And so then they try and, you know, gear up the QRF and they realize that, um, you know, they're, they've got, uh, you know, two Apache gunships that they think are supposed to be at Jalalabad. And then they've got four Blackhawks, mostly filled with Marines, some SEALs on them, and they're getting ready to launch this QRF. And then suddenly they realize like, wait, where are the Apaches? And, and the way it happens in the movie is that, you know, the army takes them for some other mission, right? It's always the army's more important than the Navy. But in reality, what,

• 1:20:49Speaker 04

  what happened according to a senior army official with knowledge of this is that. There weren't back mission brief orders that happened before this mission. So everybody was confused about who was supposed to be where and when. So the Apaches did exactly what they were supposed, what they were told they were supposed to do, which is set up in Bagram. You are, you know, it wasn't a dedicated QRF, but you were on QRF shift. We know Red Wings is going on. There are other missions going on too. You'll be in between. You'll be at Bagram and can respond if, if need be, and then the Blackhawks will be waiting at Jalalabad. You'll link up with them. Well, nobody really understood that. The, the SEALs thought the Apaches were going to be at Jalalabad the whole time. And there were other Apaches apparently at Jalalabad, but they were tasked for totally different missions.

• 1:21:34Speaker 05

  This is, this, this is one of the really terrible parts of Red Wings music. A QRF, a Quick Reaction Force is a well-planned, well-rehearsed, down-to-the-person to the actual specific aircraft to be used, and they didn't have that.

• 1:21:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, they were kicking the guys off the aircraft because they couldn't take them to altitude.

• 1:21:55Speaker 05

  Well, it wasn't, this is even using the term Quick Reaction Force isn't really accurate because it, you know, it just wasn't part of their overall plan.

• 1:22:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  So, I mean, it was just, that, that's one of the,

• 1:22:10Speaker 05

  yeah, that's one of the, the travesties of this is, you know, the overall planning was just so poor.

• 1:22:17Jack Murphy?

  The, the.

• 1:22:19Speaker 04

  The Apache pilots to this day, you know, they have a lot of,

• 1:22:24Speaker 04

  they're, they're not happy about how they were depicted in the movie. I can tell you that. They felt like it was depicted like they just abandoned these SEALs. And the truth is, is that by the, when they got the call, and when they, when they were told go, they got together, they got ready and got over there really fast. It just, but everybody was so confused.

• 1:22:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Speaker 04

  It created an issue and then, you know, the SEALs almost immediately, uh, led by Eric Christiansen, the ground force commander, wanted to go in there and save his guys. And so he put together kind of an ad hoc QRF with these MH47s, but that was never part of the plan.

• 1:23:01Jack Murphy?

  You know, that's a really haunting account too, from Don Bentley, who's one of the Apache pilots out there who now the guy's a thriller writer. I met him last year at a book conference, really nice guy.

• 1:23:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:23:14Jack Murphy?

  But when he telling his side of the story, you know, he we interviewed him on this show and you guys interview him in your article. And I mean, it's kind of heartbreaking to read, really.

• 1:23:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Alex Brown, you know, who was in the Apache with Don, he calls it his worst day in the military. And you know, it was, you know, those guys did the best they could. They also got fired on by an RPG and like, were narrowly missed.

• 1:23:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:42Speaker 04

  And it just unbelievable. And they like, they like lost comms at one point while on that mission, they had to pass handwritten notes, like show them in the mirror to each other, just to communicate. That was like something that didn't get in the article, but

• 1:23:56Jack Murphy?

  My God.

• 1:23:56Speaker 04

  crazy part of their story. And so in the meantime, you know, the, the, this shows like some of the command and control issues that Ed talked about earlier, because part of the rescue is now being run out of Jalalabad, where they don't have any, they don't really know what's going on, like two Green Berets, JP Roberts and Tony Diller, like doing the best they can to like, figure out where they're at. But then you've also got people in the Tak and Bagram where Colonel Waddell is and others. And they're all kind of trying to communicate and talking past each other. And it's just, it turns into pure chaos because of the structure of the command and control of the mission.

• 1:24:36Speaker 05

  Um, non, the non-structure.

• 1:24:38Speaker 04

  The non-structure.

• 1:24:39Speaker 05

  Didn't even exist. That's the.

• 1:24:41Jack Murphy?

  Do you want to talk about, what was it, turbine 33 eventually making it out there?

• 1:24:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. So basically, because there's, there are these long delays, turbine 33 eventually is flying ahead. Like when, when Don and Alex Brown go from Bagram and land in Jalalabad, they see that the MH47 is like already buzzing overhead and the Blackhawks are following. They immediately just get in the air and try and follow, but they're behind and the Apaches are supposed to clear. The area of militants provide air cover and they're waiting for the MH forty seven to slow down. And they're waiting and they're waiting and like, man, they're really far ahead. When are they going to slow down? And all you can hear it on the gun tape. All the aircrafts are having trouble communicating with one another like.

• 1:25:27Speaker 04

  Sometimes you can tell who someone is, but sometimes you can't and they don't have comms with everybody. And it's a really confusing situation in the air. Too. And you know, everyone's doing their best to figure it out. And you can hear one of the Blackhawks say heavy metal, which is like asking. Turbine three, three to uh uh to slow down before they insert. And and one important thing to note is that in this mission planning. They had intelligence that Ahmed Shah's goal was to shoot down helicopter with an RPG. Or what he said was also some sort of special weapon. And he wants to let ten seals off, then fire while they're on the fast rope, essentially. And um, J, one of the things that JP Roberts told me.

• 1:26:09Speaker 04

  And that didn't make it into the article because I didn't have another source confirming it, although. I I did, I did learn that it was true after the story published was that. He would have someone stand up in the planning meetings and say. What does Ahmed Shah want to do? And the person would stand up and say Ahmed Shah wants to shoot down a helicopter and wants to shoot down an MH forty seven. He wants to let ten men off and they repeated this like a mantra. And the idea was because the staff under Waddell. Including JP Roberts, including Frank Harar and others. Had a lot of reservations about how they were doing um, this mission and and the way JP said it to me was he said. Ahmed Shah had a plan and he executed it to a T. And so they um, they did not. The the.

• 1:26:53Speaker 04

  The understanding from the Green Berets in uh, both talks, both Jalalabad and Bagram was that. Christensen and uh, the night stalkers were going to do an air wrecking. That they were not going to try and land or let anybody off unless they had voice contact. With the SEAL team on the ground. Now there were some beacon hits going on at the time. But they didn't know if it was somebody from the recon team or a militant who had taken their comms. And nobody actually got on the phone, on the vo, on the phone or on the. Radio on like say guard frequency or something and said, you know, hey, you know, give it gave a code word. And then, you know, they switched over to a different frequency and were able to communicate and like the type of stuff you saw in bat 21, for example, where, you know, you know, pilots were getting rescued and everything. That never happened,

• 1:27:38Speaker 04

  but they they decided to land anyway. They really wanted to save their guys. And it ended in disaster because the militants fired an RPG and shot down the helicopter.

• 1:27:50Jack Murphy?

  And it was determined that, you know, part of the SEAL lore, right, is that it was a surface air missile, but it looks like pretty definitively it was an RPG.

• 1:27:58Speaker 05

  It was an RPG. It was an it was a rocket propelled grenade. The that lore, there are several, there are several technical reasons that.

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• 1:30:01Speaker 05

  That's just um it's it's just almost impossible and it was you know clearly it was a it was an RPG. But that's definitely that's definitely a uh there's a lot of lore out there for whatever reason that it popped up and it's it's has it's has it's had a life of its own.

• 1:30:21Speaker 04

  Well, and I think there I want to go into that a little bit because I think there are good reasons that a lot of guys felt that way. I talked to two seals who for years believed that it was a uh uh some sort of man pads and um because they felt like they uh that's what they saw at the time and in one of my four requests I got four redacted interviews with seals talking about this saying what they witnessed saying what they saw. There's something in a wiki leaks entry about it, so it's not like guys were saying this at the time. And they they they thought they saw something and they talked about it and they felt like they were essentially dismissed without explanation.

• 1:31:04Speaker 04

  And we're just kind of told to shut the fuck up and so uh and then you know again. Then lone survivor comes out and it's this book filled with all these you know exaggerations and other things. And it's totally understandable that they would feel like that they were lied to and I think we should have um some compassion for feeling like. Like one guy said, this was like the moment that he stopped trusting the military and if and and and there was a um there there there was a report by the aircraft shoot down assessment team. And um they did get intelligence at the time from the militants that themselves or sources there. Uh according to former intelligence officer that it was an RPG and then later in 2008.

• 1:31:48Speaker 04

  In the interview that we highlighted, the Army Special Missions Unit learned from one of Shah's men who had become a source that that it was an RPG. And in the video of the battle, you see that they have RPGs. And you know, they were, there was something like, you know, the way, the way it was described by a spokesperson for the Army Shootdown Assessment Team was like, and Ed, you're going to be much better to explain this technically, but the valley was really too narrow and the shot would, it was more effective, actually, based on where they were to fire an RPG because they were, the aircraft was hovering. And so,

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  it's just, the lore exists because nobody ever explained.

• 1:32:35Jack Murphy?

  Alan, Alan Mack points out that the, the flares on the 47 didn't fire off, which it would have if it was a missile.

• 1:32:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, that's, they've got that system. That's a, and the bat looks like, kind of like a multicolored, iridescent, faceted cylinder on the back. Yeah, that's, they, they didn't, there are no flares that, that were ejected. And it's, you know, there's several reasons that being a, would have, I believe they, they claimed it was an SA7 Strela. But those are notoriously difficult because they don't, you have to have a, the seeker head has to remain cool. They use a battery for that. It's a thermocoupler. And not, you know, the batteries are basically dead. I mean, it's just not, I believe they had

• 1:33:27Speaker 05

  a shoot down a couple in Iraq in 2007, but that was a different, totally different situation over there. It's just, and they shot at helicopters all the time with RPGs, all the time. And so, they got, you know, they got it more or less.

• 1:33:45Speaker 05

  Fortuitous geometry for them to take that shot, you know, proximity. And just, you know, where their location was where they had gone to. So they, you know, the guy was probably pretty good with an RPG. So just a real basic.

• 1:34:02Speaker 04

  When they fired at the Apache, they only narrowly missed. And even at the time, the Apache pilots basically said, if we go back, they might not necessarily miss that shot twice. And this was probably an easier shot, you know, than that one.

• 1:34:15Speaker 05

  It was that they were coming into a hover. So, yeah, they were, you know, stationary, essentially stationary.

• 1:34:22Jack Murphy?

  Do, uh, do you guys want to talk about the recovery? Um, you know, I guess we should at least touch upon, you know, the rescue of Marcus Luttrell. But again, you guys, uh, what were your findings from your work?

• 1:34:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, this recovery effort was, was, was crazy. Most of the folks that I talked to, particularly from the Rangers, said it was their hardest day in the military and just everybody was just smoked, basically. And, um, you know, we talked to some of the Rangers who were in the village. I got ahold of a unpublished Green Beret history about finding Marcus. I think one of the things that's interesting that I didn't go into in the story is that the Green Beret history and the recollections of the Rangers, the Green Berets seemed much less pissed off at Marcus Luttrell than the Rangers did. The, the, the Green Berets, you know, I think people might have read the line like Marcus seemed in good spirits and ran into the aircraft, onto the aircraft, like he was like

• 1:35:17Speaker 04

  faking it or like he wasn't actually shot or something. It was, it was more of like, you know, they were just saying that, uh, you know, versus the Rangers were just like, they were a little bitter because he had said, I can't believe the Rangers had to come and save me. And the Green Berets didn't feel like that. They were really happy that he was alive and he was banged up and he was injured, but wasn't incapacitated. And, um, you know, I think that that.

• 1:35:42Speaker 04

  Certainly conflicts with the movie where in, you know, obviously there's artistic license in a, in a movie. Peter Berg is an incredibly talented writer and director. Friday Night Lights, like one of the best shows in my opinion of all times, but like, you know, they picked like Marcus, like near death. And, and that movie has to be like resuscitated and that's not how it happened. He was shot, he was wounded with shrapnel, among other injuries. Uh, I don't want to make light of them and, and, you know, and, and, and say, you know, he made it up, but, um, he was not near death in that way. He was pretty sick, uh, from some contaminated water. And, you know, the other thing that the Rangers talked about, which confirms something that Muhammad Gulab had said was that. Marcus had a lot of magazines in the village.

• 1:36:26Speaker 04

  We, you know, when I talked to Nick Moore about this, he was like, I'm not saying he didn't fire a shot or that he's a coward. I'm just saying that the battle wasn't this prolonged three hour affair. Like, like it was claimed in the book, or even like maybe how Latrell was describing it afterwards, that it was, you know, relatively short. And one sided and, um, you know, they just got rolled up. It's not like he, you know, uh, I know in a later interview, Marcus says that he, he's trying to go save Mike Murphy. And he puts his gun down and he calls himself a coward and he puts his hand over his ears. What I would say to that is maybe that's true, or maybe that's survivor's guilt. It's really hard to know, but I think for a lot of the commenters online, they're kind of.

• 1:37:09Speaker 04

  Looking, either they're looking at this and they're like Marcus Latrell killed 500 Taliban with his bare hands. And, you know, he's Chuck Norris or they're saying, you know, he's, he's, he's a coward and liar and, and, and nothing is true. And he, uh, he admitted that he ran away and like, he's never said that, first of all.

• 1:37:28Speaker 04

  It's a, it's a little bit murky, um, but we tried to describe it as factually and as objectively as possible.

• 1:37:36Speaker 05

  As best that you can with with the information that is available.

• 1:37:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and you know, it's like, it's like, it's like this with everything. And Jack, you know this like, you, you spend a lot of time reporting, you try and verify every single fact and you try to get everything 100% right. But you know, it could happen that you don't and then you correct it and, and you know, you, you correct the record. And so like if, if along the way in the story, we got anything wrong, like we're going to correct it. And you know, so far the response has been really positive. A lot of people saying, thank you for writing it, for telling the truth, for telling the truth in a way that didn't, they didn't feel was gratuitous, that they felt was respectful to the families, to Marcus Luttrell, the people that were lost. And that is what we strove to do.

• 1:38:23Jack Murphy?

  And Ed, you have a book coming out. So the, this isn't actually the final word on Red Wings. You had some additional work that you're going to publish.

• 1:38:32Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I mean, the, it's, the book comes out later next month and it's on, basically, it's just a very highly specific, you know, it gets into the specificities of the operation. Uh, and discusses the underlying foundational issues, uh, historically and technically that led up to it. Because I think for people to really get a, in-depth and wide and to get the depth and breadth of the story, you really have to understand, uh, how, you know, joint interoperability in the history and the development

• 1:39:10Speaker 05

  of modern military operations up to that point. Because there were several issues and that, you know, and Red Wings really was sort of a, um, it just, it just demonstrated all that had been, you know, all the problems with joint interoperability up to that point. So the book does address all that from a historical and technical standpoint, and it gets into the specifics. And there's a focus on the aviation side and the 160 aside. So.

• 1:39:40Jack Murphy?

  What's the, what's, what's the book called, Ed? And where can people find it?

• 1:39:44Speaker 05

  It's, it's a, go to opredwings.com. Operation Red Wings is the titled book. So.

• 1:39:50Jack Murphy?

  Cool.

• 1:39:51Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:39:51Jack Murphy?

  Um, any other, you know, big findings that you guys would like to unpack in this interview? I know quite a bit of it gets into sort of the, the post-operation myth-making that took place and sort of the murkiness of like how that took place. We had talked a little bit about it with the book, but is there anything else you guys would like to get into tonight?

• 1:40:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think the last thing that I would say two things. One, again, people, ever since the Antihero podcast came out and then Marcus had this conversation with Rob O'Neill, where he talks about how the Navy gave him his lawyers and all this stuff, people have said, oh, Marcus just admitted that they wrote the book for him and that, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's not true. I talking to Patrick Robinson, he said Marcus reviewed book, he read every word, he was an active participant in it. Naval Special Warfare was aware of everything they were doing, they can't totally wash their hands of it. And I think that this is just, look, this is a lesson in how not to discuss a tragedy with a community, with their families.

• 1:40:53Speaker 04

  I think there probably was a desire to spare people of the harsh truths. And I think, yes, Lone Survivor inspired some people across America, and that is a good thing, but I think it also, it hid the truth for people and that was a negative thing. And I think these military organizations or government or any organization for that matter, they've got to figure out a way to tell the truth, but be sensitive about it. And when you, when you don't, people are going to see through it, they're going to have questions, especially in this media environment, where, which is very different than the one in, you say, 2005, 2007. And so our leaders need to learn from that. And I think this is, while this is a case study in military operations like Ed is writing

• 1:41:37Speaker 04

  about, it's also a case study in, in that sort of public affairs kind of management, really. And, and I think that that's important because, you know, one of the best things about Ed's article, misinformation article back in the day is kind of something we expand on in this piece, which is, Citizens of a country need to trust their military and they need to trust their government. When they start distrusting it and then distrusting all of our institutions. It's just corrosive for society and you see it everywhere these days, no matter where you stand politically. I'm sure you've got a lot of viewers who are different political ideas, so I'm not going to go into it, but. The reality is, is we are seeing so much institutional distrust everywhere.

• 1:42:18Speaker 04

  And that's really negative and and and Red Wings is kind of like a window into what happens and why. And um, you know. And that's what I think is important and that's why I think. I really commend the SEALs who spoke to me to me, what they did was like really heroic, like they might. They don't want to be heard, they don't want to be called heroes, they don't want to be thought of that way. They certainly didn't want to talk to reporters, they gave me shit all the time. But it's really hard for somebody who was in naval special warfare or military special operations. To go and talk to a mainstream media publication about their biggest disaster. They're gonna get a lot of shit, a lot of people in these group chats and whatever were saying. Nobody talk like, don't talk to the media, you can't trust them, it's gonna be bad about SEALs.

• 1:43:03Speaker 04

  And like, um, they kind of saw through that and they realized, no, it's time to have a discussion as a community. And that's why I think this article resonated with a lot of people, I can't. You know, a ton of people have reached out to say thank you from, you know, Jim Gant, the author of American Spartan.

• 1:43:20Speaker 05

  Great guy, yeah.

• 1:43:21Speaker 04

  Former Green Beret, uh, to a variety of other people i- in naval special warfare. Or or across the military and that was really heartening, you know, to know that um. We we gave our word about what we were trying to do and we executed it the best we could. And um, I hope that it it helps people more than it hurt people.

• 1:43:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's that's that one point in that article that I wrote, you know, many, many years ago that. We re-attacked on it with this one is that, you know, you you when you, when people learn. That a, you know, a governmental institution is lying.

• 1:44:00Speaker 05

  Especially, again, I can't emphasize this enough. I was so, I was just blown away by the egregious level of exaggeration and fabrication in that book that I, you know, that I found, that I saw, you know, Lone Survivor. And when they find out that they, you know, were supportive of this, of the, of this misinformation, they just, it just erodes trust. And, you know, that was just an interesting, it's been an interesting observation of mine, you know, to, you know, 1.0, Red Wings Truth or 1.0, back in 2011, and seeing the response, you know, there are individuals who get ahold of me and say, "Hey, thanks, it's a great article." And, you know, different media organizations discussed

• 1:44:42Speaker 05

  it. But, boy, I mean, there are people out there who are not happy with it. I remember one guy, I read this online forum, it said, "I wish I could unread this article." You know, and I thought, okay, so you just want to be ignorant, you want to be blissfully ignorant and just go along with this nonsense. That doesn't do, you know, the military should be in a continuous state of improvement every year, every fiscal year, every, you know, and it is. But in order to do that, they need to attract, you know, you need two things for a military, you need money and people. And that comes in this country, that comes to the, you know, the population. Congress, voted by the population, approves the budget, and people, they want to join the military. And you just, when you erode

• 1:45:27Speaker 05

  trust through producing and supporting misinformation, it's, the long-term negative effects far outweigh any short-term, you know, recruitment goals.

• 1:45:39Jack Murphy?

  It, uh, it reminds me a little bit about something else that happened right around the same time, which was the death of Pat Tillman. And the government did not tell the truth to the family initially, and didn't tell the truth to the public. And after that, the, the trust had just shattered.

• 1:45:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:45:56Speaker 04

  Jessica Lynch would be another example that people brought up, uh, a lot, too. And, um, you know, um,

• 1:46:06Speaker 04

  It is a lesson going forward. We're gonna have other conflicts. That, that, that actually, I would say, Ed, is an actual lesson learned from the, like, the media environment. I wouldn't call that just a rule reinforced.

• 1:46:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:46:20Speaker 04

  Look, the military has, has had propaganda throughout its history and other things, but the media environment has changed, changed, was so different in 2005 than maybe it was during World War II.

• 1:46:33Speaker 05

  Well,

• 1:46:34Speaker 04

  and certainly now.

• 1:46:36Speaker 05

  My whole position, the whole time, was this is such an amazing story on its own, on its own merits. Why do you need to embellish it?

• 1:46:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Speaker 05

  There's no reason, they, they never needed any embellishment. It never needed any of this hyperbole. It was an incredible story and they didn't, they didn't need to do anything. They just, if all they did was just tell it like I told it in Victory Point. I mean, it was, it, it was, you know, that's, what, why do you need to cartoonishly, you know, this hyperbolic cartoonish nonsense about falling through the, I don't know, I can't remember specifically. It was like hundreds of feet and all this craziness.

• 1:47:14Jack Murphy?

  It's, it's also interesting that, um, you know, Lone Survivor and a few others, I mean, you, you mentioned Act of Valor in the article. I mean, it sort of spawned this like genre of SEAL memoirs and SEAL movies, which kind of mythos, created a mythology around the war itself, like this alternative reality about the global war on terror. And then that's faced with the stark truth of it that we failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I, I wonder if that makes it more difficult for the public to really like wrap their heads around because like Hollywood told us this story, but this is actually what ended up turning out happening.

• 1:47:52Speaker 05

  Well, there, there is, there, one of the things I'm getting into in this book that comes out is there is a whole other war going on that very few people know about that was operated, run by Joint Special Operations Command, and it was very successful. You know, we haven't had another nine eleven. You know, we got all that's, you know, and you can buy that very basic analysis. We won, you know, we won that because, you know, it's, we haven't had anything like that since. So I know that there are going to be people that disagree with that assessment, but there was a whole other war going on and nobody knows anything about it. And, you know, it's interesting, you look at a picture of a destroyed enemy from World War Two, Cologne, Germany, after the bombings,

• 1:48:35Speaker 05

  completely destroyed. There's one church, the Cologne Church. It's, it's a horrible photograph. And then a photograph of victory of, you know, from Joint Special Operations Command would just be a black box because nobody knows what's going. No, it's not advertised. No one knows anything about it. Sean Naylor did a wonderful, his book Relentless Strike. But it's, you know, the operational tempo of Joint Special Operation Command personnel was, I mean, it was multiple raids per night throughout the entire war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. So that's.

• 1:49:11Jack Murphy?

  I mean, it definitely, I mean, I was a part of the task force in Iraq and it definitely feels like you're winning when you're in that environment. And I think we did have, you know, it's a, it's a kind of a classic case of a tactical success, but a strategic failure.

• 1:49:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:49:28Jack Murphy?

  It's one of those things. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm having trouble wrapping my head around that too, sometimes.

• 1:49:33Speaker 04

  I would, I feel similarly to you about that, Jack. You know, it's like there's, there's this, um, there's this great scene in the, the movie, uh, The Gatekeepers, which is a documentary about, uh, the, uh, the longstanding war between, uh, Israel and the Palestinians and, and some of the members of the Shinbad and the, the Mossad. They basically talk about how like we, we won every single battle, but we were losing the war along the way because we weren't, they weren't thinking strategically about where does this end? Where does this go? And, and that ultimately involves politics, right? It's not necessarily just on the, on the battlefield. But, but more speaking to what happened with the SEALs, you know, the SEALs created this mythology of themselves.

• 1:50:17Speaker 04

  Situation. But then when that, you know, When that mythology doesn't match the reality and reality kicks in when people feel lied to, they get angry, they get jaded, they get distrustful. And now you can't say, apparently on the internet, you can't say a good word about the SEALs. And I met some fantastic SEALs along the way. There are tons of successful SEAL missions that you don't hear about. But again, it's an example of it. It helped get them recruitment at the time that they needed it, but the long-term play ultimately harmed the SEAL brand and they're still dealing with it today. Like we're in the middle of a war in Iran and like the SEALs are still dealing with like, what's the truth about the bin Laden raid?

• 1:51:01Speaker 04

  You know, and they're still and and there everything is still, there's still drama involving that. And there's still drama involving Roberts Ridge and Lone Survivor. And that just goes to show you that this strategy, again, just didn't work in in terms of a long term.

• 1:51:18Jack Murphy?

  There's, um, you know, speaking of how the mythology, the Hollywood mythology can affect the force itself. There's a little bit in David Phillips' book, Alpha, if you read that. And he says that Eddie Gallagher was trying to match Chris Kyle's body count, his exaggerated body count as published in books and the movie. So it's like, kind of weird that like a real active duty SEAL trying to match up to something that's totally fictional.

• 1:51:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, that is crazy. That is, that is really, that is really crazy. And that's the thing, though, is that, yes, there were SEALs who knew Lone Survivor. Many of them was bogus, but on some level, certain aspects of that story, many of the SEALs also didn't want to admit either, like they might admit, oh, yeah, Hollywood and the book industry, like, yeah, this guy had like Ahmed Shah had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden. He wasn't really a terrorist, but I don't know, we got some intel at the time. There are a whole lot of guys out there and and and I don't, and I don't blame them because. They are, they're going through BUDs, they're going through this training where they're, you know, their internal story is that they're the best of the best.

• 1:52:33Speaker 04

  And you know, there were guys at SDB one, when I talked about the training issues and they, they said, look, when you're going through it, you don't want to admit that your training isn't as good as you were told it was. We only knew what we knew. And that's a difficult thing to deal with. And I don't, I don't, I don't blame them, but that, that mythology existed within the SEAL community too. It wasn't just outside of it.

• 1:52:55Jack Murphy?

  So again, folks, the name of the article is this military tragedy became a blockbuster movie. Here's what it didn't tell you. It is in Politico, you guys can go and read it right now by Ross Schneiderman and Ed Darack. Um, guys, thank you for doing this interview.

• 1:53:12Speaker 05

  My pleasure.

• 1:53:13Jack Murphy?

  I'll, I'll just kick, kick it back to you one last time. Any, any final thoughts, Ed? Um, anything else you want to get out there? Give people your website one more time.

• 1:53:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, just op redwings.com, O P redwings.com. So if you're interested in a, a more technical military science focused analysis.

• 1:53:34Jack Murphy?

  And we'll have links down in the description of this podcast to the article and to Ed's website. Um, so you guys can go and check all this stuff out.

• 1:53:43Speaker 05

  Awesome.

• 1:53:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, Ross and Ed, thank you for, you know, being such diligent researchers and journalists and uncovering this stuff. Um, uh, do, do you think there's, I guess I have one last question. Do you think there's more to come on Red Wings? Like is another article of this size going to be published in five years? That goes even deeper.

• 1:54:01Speaker 05

  You never, you never know, there might be, you know?

• 1:54:04Speaker 04

  I mean, look, if people out there listen to this podcast and they read the article and there's something else that they think is important, or that even something that we, we missed or we messed up, like Ed's doing his book.

• 1:54:17Speaker 04

  We, we did the best we could with the information that we had. We, we had more access to more information than other writers out there, but you know, we were not the classified historian of that. I mean, that classified history exists. I'm sure it's fascinating. I'm sure there are a variety of other things. If there's something else out there that people think are important, you, we want to tell that story, even if it means saying. That little part that we're missing some context. Here's what you need to know, like we're, we're not precious about that stuff.

• 1:54:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:54:50Speaker 05

  Cool. Thank you.

• 1:54:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, thank you, Ed. Thank you, Ross and everyone else. Thanks for joining us and we will see you guys again next week.

• 1:55:00Jack Murphy?

  Everyone, I want to tell you about my new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, out in June. It is a novel about a regimental reconnaissance company soldier who gets kidnapped while he's on a mission to West Africa. And when he wakes up, he finds that he is now being hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through the wilds of West Africa.

• 1:55:22Jack Murphy?

  This book is based on stories that I heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa. I took that and I took a century old short story, The Most Dangerous Game, and modernized it. And the product is this book, which I think will feel contemporary and resonate with audiences today. Thank you and please check it out.

• 1:55:51Speaker 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.

• 1:56:05Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:56:16Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 1:56:49Jack Murphy?

  Is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 1:57:15Speaker 06

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:57:53Speaker 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.

• 1:58:08Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:58:19Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 1:58:50Jack Murphy?

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically. And grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 1:59:18Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:59:52Speaker 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. 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. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 2:00:37Speaker 07

  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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 2:00:49Jack Murphy?

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:01:52Speaker 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.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:02:18Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 2:02:49Jack Murphy?

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 2:03:14Speaker 02

  com slash parents to learn more. Cash flow crunch on deck small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it covers seasonal dips manage payroll restock inventory or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat with flexible draws transparent pricing and control over repayment get funded quickly and confidently apply today at on deck.com funds could be available as soon as tomorrow depending on certain loan attributes your business loan may be issued by on deck or Celtic Bank on deck does not lend in North Dakota all loans and amounts subject to lender approval

• 2:03:53Speaker 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.

• 2:04:08Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:04:19Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 2:04:50Jack Murphy?

  Chat GPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. Chat GPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com slash parents to learn more.

• 2:05:17Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:05:52Speaker 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.

• 2:06:06Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:06:17Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 2:06:48Jack Murphy?

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:07:16Speaker 07

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on

• 2:07:38Speaker 06

  Certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:07:52Speaker 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. 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. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 2:08:37Speaker 07

  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.

• 2:08:48Jack Murphy?

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:09:16Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 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.

• 2:10:06Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:10:17Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 2:10:48Jack Murphy?

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:11:16Speaker 02

  Cash Flow Crunch, OnDeck's small business line of credit, gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:11:54Speaker 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.

• 2:12:08Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:12:19Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 2:12:50Jack Murphy?

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, Study Mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:13:18Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:13:48Speaker 01

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens. Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir may cause severe, life-threatening allergic reactions. reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolaire should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolaire is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens.

• 2:14:33Speaker 01

  Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolaire.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolaire. This is an advertisement for Zolaire, paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 2:14:47Jack Murphy?

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com PARENTS to learn more.

• 2:15:15Speaker 02

  Cash Flow Crunch on Deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.