#5 Mike Ritland - Navy SEAL / K9 Dog Trainer (Part 1)

In episode #005 of "The Shawn Ryan Show" (a 2 part series), Shawn sits down with Mike Ritland. Mike is a former Navy SEAL who responded to the USS Cole, participated in one of the largest SEAL Team operations that has ever occurred with SEAL Team 3, and kicked off the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. He later became one of the world's most recognized protection K9 dog trainers, a New York Times best selling author three times, and amongst many other accomplishments, he founded the "Warrior Dog Foundation" which is a not for profit organization that rehabilitates and gives attack dogs returning home from war. SimpliSafe is award-winning home security that keeps your home safe around the clock. It's really reliable, easy to use, and there are no contracts. Check out SimpliSafe here: http://simplisafe.com/VE Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:50Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 01

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

• 1:00Speaker 03

  It's time to get away in a new Hyundai vehicle during the Hyundai Getaway Sales Event at Woodhouse Hyundai. The Hyundai lineup of sedans and SUVs has the capability you need and technology and features you want. Like the all-new 2023 Hyundai Palisade and Hyundai Tucson. This holiday season, get into a vehicle that will give you confidence with Hyundai Owner Assurance, America's best 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty. Visit us online at woodhousehyundaiofomaha.com.

• 1:29Shawn Ryan?

  This episode of the Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by SimpliSafe.

• 1:39Speaker 05

  We took a guided missile cruiser, jumped on that, and hauled ass all the way to Bahrain. We were in Bahrain for a little bit, and then we were scheduled to go do some other shit, and then that's when the coal got hit.

• 1:56Speaker 06

  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A total of six sets of remains have been found onboard the coal during the course of today.

• 2:34Shawn Ryan?

  Hey everyone. It's 2020 and the need for security is increasing every single day. SimpliSafe is monitored by professionals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They will call the police if necessary. It's super affordable, 50 cents a day. There's no long-term commitments. And the best part, it's shipped right to your front door. The first thing I did was beef up all of the entry-exit points, starting with the main entrance. I used the doorbell cam to catch porch pirates. Trust me, there's a lot of people that want to grab my package. The next thing I did was use the window indoor sensors

• 3:17Shawn Ryan?

  on every opening window, on every opening door throughout the office. I used the motion sensor to track motion. If the motion sensor's triggered, it alarms my phone. I get a notification, I know if something's moving. I used the glass breaking sensor on all the windows. If the glass is broken, it notifies my phone. It alarms the base station. It notifies everybody that there's been a break-in. For the interior, I used the SimpliCam. It's triggered by motion. There's a carbon monoxide detector. There's a smoke detector. There's a freeze detector that you can put on your pipes. There's a panic button for when I get scared.

• 4:01Shawn Ryan?

  And there's a water detector that'll let you know if your washer is overflowing or maybe there's a flood. All of which will notify my phone if there happens to be a problem. If you want to boost your security, whether it's home, at the office, or anywhere else, go to simplisafe.com/ve. Oh, by the way, you're also supporting The Sean Ryan Show. So, thank you SimpliSafe for supporting the show. And you all be safe.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  As you're walking, you could actually see a fucking dungaree and a boondocker from about the knee down hanging out of the fucking... Where now it's a ceiling, it was a floor, now it's a ceiling, somebody's fucking leg just hanging there.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  We had a 60 gunner and a couple of snipers and a law rocket. Clint Emerson and I actually were the two guys that zeroed in on him and fucking just swarmed him and backed him up and he was like, "Oh shit", you know, had MP5s down his fucking throat.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  I mean, it just, the smell of 19 semi-submerged, blown-up dead bodies trapped in a fucking boat. The bodies were in there still.

• 5:44Shawn Ryan?

  You had a fucking Navy SEAL operator quit on target in the middle of a fucking operation?

• 5:54Speaker 05

  All of a sudden, all fucking hell breaks loose. Like gunfire just erupts and it's every fucking where.

• 6:02Speaker 05

  Like an Iraqi flag, like, coming down and then crushing the fucking skull apart.

• 6:08Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking insane, I mean, you kicked the fucking goddamn war off.

• 6:26Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. This is episode 005. We've brought you a very special guest, but for starters, I want to thank everyone who's become a member and is supporting the show on Patreon. You're gonna see the benefits of that support. We've hired an entire film crew and we're hoping they stick around.

• 6:52Shawn Ryan?

  I would also like to thank all of you who took the time to go over to iTunes and leave us a review. We now have 5,300 reviews on iTunes. We continue to be a top 100 show in the category, and that's because of you. If you haven't done that yet, please go to iTunes, leave us a review, type in a word, even if it's just one word, that's what we need to make this show rank. And lastly, ladies and gentlemen, every single guest that has been on this show is the definition of an American hero.

• 7:34Shawn Ryan?

  We want to bring these heroes the most exposure possible. We want to take this show to Netflix. I've posted a link, I put it at the top of the comments, click the link, request "The Sean Ryan Show," hit "Submit," that lets Netflix know who we are. Let's take this thing to the next level. Which brings me to my next guest, 005. Ladies and gentlemen, he is a world-renowned canine trainer. He trains dogs for the SEAL teams, for the SWAT teams, and just about every other government agency you can think of.

• 8:15Shawn Ryan?

  He's been on the New York Times Bestseller List three times. He is a veterinarian powerhouse that I personally look up to. He was on the initial invasion of Iraq. He responded to the USS Cole. We've broken this into two different shows. The first part, all of his combat time as a SEAL. The second, the life of a canine warrior overseas, in combat, what those dogs go through, and what they deal with when they come home. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very proud to bring you my next guest, Mr. Mike Ritland.

• 9:08Shawn Ryan?

  Mike?

• 9:09Speaker 05

  Sean?

• 9:12Shawn Ryan?

  Svagatum to the Sean Ryan Show. Uh, did I butcher the shit out of that?

• 9:18Speaker 05

  I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to, is that a Norwegian fucking?

• 9:21Shawn Ryan?

  That's my best attempt at saying welcome in Tagali.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 9:25Shawn Ryan?

  Where the fuck did you learn Tagali?

• 9:28Speaker 05

  I learned Tagali, uh, at North Island Naval Base or Naval Air Station, I guess. Um, and it was after my...

• 9:39Speaker 05

  It was after a deployment, uh, and it was during the whole Force 21 thing. And, uh, so our platoon got back from deployment like in mid-February or so. And, uh, and we weren't forming up until the following January because of the whole reorganization bullshit. And so it was kinda like everybody had to go find shit to do. Uh, I had re-enlisted prior or on that deployment for Arabic. Uh, but when we got back and then all of the shuffle and reorg stuff, this was right before 9/11, was that, uh, they said, "Turns out you guys are now a Southeast Asia platoon. You're going to Guam and the Philippines, so if you're not going to Arabic, you're going to Tagali." And I was like, "But I, it's in my contract, I re-enlisted for fucking Arabic." And they're like, "Yeah, tough shit, here you're going to Tagali."

• 10:25Speaker 05

  So I, uh, I spent, um, about, I don't know, I think it was five, six months of all day, every day, Monday through Friday, like that was my job. Me and, uh, there's, I don't know, seven or eight other, uh, other, other people, mostly team guys. There was a couple other, I don't know why, who the fuck they were or why they were in there. But, um, yeah, we sat there all day, every day from this, uh, older Filipino lady that, that was teaching us fucking Tagali. And, uh, of course, like, the, the true team guys that we are, we, you know, conned her into teaching us all the shit that she wasn't supposed to teach us.

• 10:59Shawn Ryan?

  The important stuff.

• 10:59Speaker 05

  And making her blush and feel uncomfortable. How do you, how do you say ass fuckery in, in Tagali? Can you teach us how to say that? But, uh, yeah, so that was the, that's the story behind it. We did end up going to Guam, uh, and, and then ultimately to the Philippines, uh, for about six weeks, which was, which was neat. At the end of that, I wouldn't say that I was fluent in it, but I was, I was conversationally, like for basic conversation, I was, I was pretty close to fluent.

• 11:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Uh, as long as it's been, I, uh... You know, it's, I, I have forgotten a lot of it, you know, I could probably pick it back up in a matter of weeks if I, if I really tried, but a lot of it I don't remember, but.

• 11:41Shawn Ryan?

  You never knock the dust off, see if it's still there?

• 11:43Speaker 05

  Not really. I mean, once in a while, like, you know, I'll run into somebody that's, that you can tell speaks it by, you know, their, their accent, or they tell you they're from, you know, wherever and I'll string together some bullshit and then they'll laugh and, you know, cause I probably butchered half of it.

• 11:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  Uh, or insulted their mom or whatever, but, uh, but yeah, no, that's, I mean, where are you gonna use it in Texas, right?

• 12:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, man, I'm really excited about this and, uh, I've been wanting to have you on for a long time and I think we canceled two or three times, but I just wanna say I am fucking ecstatic that you're here, uh, sitting in that chair and, um, props to you, man. You are a great role model for people and, uh, and I think you're a huge inspiration for guys that are, are starting businesses that are coming home, uh, especially in the veteran, uh, community and the combat, uh, spec ops guys coming home. And, I mean,

• 12:49Shawn Ryan?

  you're one of the guys that honestly, that I really look up to in the business world. Um, you've kept your business all class, you know, and, uh, a lot of these vet companies, it's all fucking tits and ass and, and, uh, fuckery and, and that's all cool, but when your entire model is based off of that, I mean, we've seen it, you, they come and they go and, uh, you've been in business for quite a while and it's stood the test of time and, uh, you just continue to grow and, and, uh, I think anybody that's in the business world, especially the guys, uh, coming back, they got.

• 13:31Shawn Ryan?

  A great example by looking at what you're doing and it's fucking amazing what you've done and I can't wait to dig into it.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, well shit, I almost don't even know what to say to that, other than I appreciate it very much. It's, you know, certainly not anything that I feel like my level of competency has contributed to it. I think I'm just stubborn and have, you know, tried to always do the best I can with what I have and look at it from a long game standpoint. But, you know, I would say, you know, I feel that exact same way about you and yours, you know, I mean, it's really neat to see, you know, guys that I know and trust and like, you know, doing well and being successful and trying new things, you know, you've really set the bar at such an immediate or early phase with your show and it's just, to me,

• 14:25Speaker 05

  it's really neat to see. I love seeing guys that I know, love, trust and like succeed, so hats off to you right back, I appreciate it.

• 14:33Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thank you, man. Well, I always kick this thing off and I love to give presents, so if you look right over there.

• 14:44Speaker 05

  Some Johnny Carson shit right there.

• 14:45Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, you know, any guesses?

• 14:48Speaker 05

  Well, I see my book in there, so.

• 14:52Shawn Ryan?

  Is that your, I wanted, that was just a recommendation. I thought you might like to read that, I know the guy that wrote it.

• 14:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, who's this asshole? That's fucking classic.

• 15:03Shawn Ryan?

  There's two other ones that guy wrote, but they're, believe it or not, they're fucking hard to come by on Amazon.

• 15:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:10Shawn Ryan?

  And they still haven't arrived.

• 15:11Speaker 05

  I must admit, I have cracked into these and, Jesus Christ, they are good. Everybody that says they're the best they've had, I was like, yeah, whatever, they're fucking gummy bears, but on the no bullshit, these are phenomenal fucking gummy bears, thank you. Those will be gone before I leave here, probably.

• 15:26Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 15:27Speaker 05

  Oh, the ass blaster.

• 15:30Shawn Ryan?

  Now that is the ass blaster 4000.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  4000.

• 15:35Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  Dude, that's fucking great, goddamn.

• 15:41Shawn Ryan?

  So the next time we all run out of toilet paper, you're good to go. You know.

• 15:46Speaker 05

  That's fucking great. There's, I'm sure there's some people that are like, "The fuck does that mean?" That didn't watch our, uh,

• 15:53Speaker 05

  our fucking quarantine Zoom call that we all had, but, uh, that's fucking great, man. I love it.

• 15:59Shawn Ryan?

  That's why I'm gonna roll the clip right now from that video. So, uh, for those of you that don't know, here it is.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  Slow B for your ass.

• 16:09Speaker 07

  You have two ass blasters shot at your house?

• 16:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, we did. That's the first thing I did. When I saw there was no shit paper, I was like, "All right, we're getting some of these."

• 16:16Speaker 07

  Mike, he actually sent me the link for like the homemade bidet thing.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  Hell, yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing. Maybe I've been watching too much porn during this quarantine, but ass blaster means something totally different to me.

• 16:32Speaker 05

  Can I crack into these now or what?

• 16:34Shawn Ryan?

  If you want to.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  I'm gonna open them. I'll eat them on camera even.

• 16:40Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh, I checked out your Wikipedia page. There's some, uh, interesting shit on there. So they give you credit for kinda starting the Epstein didn't kill himself.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  Really?

• 16:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, on there. You didn't know that?

• 16:54Speaker 05

  I didn't know that.

• 16:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that, it's right there on, uh, I think the second paragraph, so.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  I also for sure didn't kick that shit off. Joe Rogan did.

• 17:04Shawn Ryan?

  Did he?

• 17:04Speaker 05

  To my knowledge.

• 17:05Shawn Ryan?

  Well, they gave you credits on your Wikipedia page. So do you wanna make another statement? Because, uh, his, uh, right-hand woman is, uh, just got picked up.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  I'm assuming Maxine, Maxine Giswell didn't kill herself either, but.

• 17:20Shawn Ryan?

  Not yet.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's amazing.

• 17:23Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think? She gonna make it to court?

• 17:25Speaker 05

  Um, yeah, I think so. With her, I think, um, it's maybe a little different in that. I think they have far less on her. Obviously, they have enough to arrest her and all that, but I don't think it's as slam dunk probably as it is with Epstein. So I suspect that with, you mean, she for sure has dirt on people, but I think it seems like from everything that I've heard preliminarily is that it's more like he said, she said. It doesn't seem like they have near as much of a case against her. Again, not that they don't have one, but so I think it's largely going to depend on how that shakes out. I think, you know, she's probably not in as

• 18:07Speaker 05

  much danger as he was, but you never know. I mean, I don't, you know, pretend to have any any knowledge of the inner workings of that whole, you know, fucking clown show. So I will say this, like, if something did happen and the country doesn't fucking explode because of it, then we're fucking doomed, you know? I mean, so I do find it odd that they sent her to the exact same fucking place.

• 18:32Shawn Ryan?

  I saw that. I couldn't believe that shit either.

• 18:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I don't know if that's like rubbing our face in it or what, but.

• 18:40Shawn Ryan?

  I honestly thought that was a fucking meme when I saw that, but.

• 18:44Speaker 05

  So, yeah, I don't know. I'm still fucking surprised that that's on the Wikipedia page. I didn't know that, but.

• 18:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you ought to check it out. There's some interesting shit on there.

• 18:54Speaker 05

  Maybe I don't want to look at it.

• 18:57Shawn Ryan?

  But, all right, well,

• 19:02Shawn Ryan?

  I did a lot. Honestly, I thought you were going to be really easy to research because there's so much information out there on you. And it turned out to be the exact opposite. There's so much information out there on you that I just, I wish I could have covered it all, but I couldn't. And I wish I could have you here for a fucking week to dig into that head of yours, but. So I think we're gonna break this up into two podcasts, actually. I'm gonna do this one, uh, which will be all your personal stuff, and then the next one to be, um, all the dog stuff, which is, um, you know, phenomenal information. And, uh, but I just kinda wanna start with, uh,

• 19:44Shawn Ryan?

  you know, quick overview of your childhood. I know you grew up in Iowa, and, um, but just a brief overview, overview of your childhood, and, uh, we'll kinda go from there, so.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  Sure. So I was born in northern Iowa, uh, in the late seventies, and, uh, you know, it's weird looking back on it now. I, I think a lot of people have, uh, feelings of nostalgia towards their childhood, uh, kinda almost wherever they're from, because that, that's what they know, that's their childhood or whatever. But for me, it's become, uh, increasingly so, uh, that way, with the things that are going on now. Like, I find myself kind of longing for that eighties childhood of no cell phones, no internet, you know, riding your fucking bikes everywhere, watching MacGyver, Knight Rider, A-Team, Rambo, playing guns, fucking listening to AC/DC, and fucking Guns N' Roses, and, uh, it was just like, life was so much fucking simpler,

• 20:38Speaker 05

  and not just because we were kids. Um, you know, just, I, I think America was a much simpler place. I think the world was a simpler place that way. I think that's one of the double-edged swords to the internet, but, uh, growing up in, in that environment was, um, it was just a really neat time and place to, to be at, you know, the, the town that I'm from, Waterloo, is, is not a, a big town, but it's not, you know, a town of three hundred either. There's, you know, sixty or seventy thousand people, and, and so you have kinda all the amenities that you would like, but it doesn't have that big city feeling, you know, you can drive ten minutes in any direction and be out in the middle of fucking cornfields, or, uh, you know, be, you know,

• 21:19Speaker 05

  isolated and away from everybody and, and whatever. So it's a pretty slow-paced area. It's, it's not too dissimilar to where you're at here, uh, in terms of kinda the, uh, pace at which people operate, and how they take care of things, and how they treat each other, and, and what have you. So I, I liked that growing up.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  But it was just, just a fun time to be a kid, you know, I swam competitively. I had two older brothers, a younger sister. And our family, you know, it's weird. It was like, fucking leave it to Beaver, honestly. I mean, my parents never fought. To this day, I've never heard my parents argue, not one fucking time. So they're still together? Yeah, still married. They've been married for almost 50 years. And, you know, I've never heard them raise their voice at one another, not once. You know, never, never argued about anything, never fought about anything. You know, they get along great and they, they had a, and I will say, as a father, you know, I look to them, you know, honestly in awe at this fucking point, you know, now that I

• 22:24Speaker 05

  have kids that are teenagers and I don't, I don't know how they, they parented the way that they did. They did a far better job than I'm doing for sure. It's just, you know, I marvel at their ability to be strict enough to, to raise good kids that are well behaved, but not so strict to where your kids are doing shit despite you, you know? And, and that's what I've, I've kind of struggled with. But, you know, so looking back on that aspect of my childhood, my parents were fucking amazing. My family was amazing. You know, the, the school system in which I grew up in was, was mostly good. High school had, had some bumpy parts. How big was your class, graduating class? Graduating class, I think was just shy of 400, maybe.

• 23:09Speaker 05

  The, the school itself had, I think, 2,000, 2,500, it's a pretty big school. But the, in, at that time, it was, you know, the, the early 90s, 92 to 96 is when I was in high school and, you know, race relations then were fairly tense, kind of similar to, to where they're at now. They got better and then now they're worse. I mean, it's fucking weird that way, but my, my high school, there's, there's only two, two, uh, public high schools in my, in my hometown. There's east and west. And the east side of town is, is more predominantly black and the west side of town is more predominantly white. There's a river, the Cedar River, that splits the fucking town in half and, or thereabouts. And so there was a lot of busing.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  It was, you know, a time in, in different states where. Experimenting with, you know, busing a bunch of kids from one side of town to the other side and vice versa. And so there was, there was a fair bit of that going on and it just caused fucking problems. Um, you know, there was, there was, like I said, some racial tension that was pretty significant. Rodney King riots, uh, when they happened is when I was a freshman in high school. And, uh, there was a, you know, some, some rioting that happened in our high school where I got the fuck beat out of me. Um, you know, but, uh, and then so my high school experience, you know, I'd say elementary and junior high was, was pretty, uh, pretty fond to look back on. High school I, I didn't particularly fucking enjoy. It was, uh, it was kind of a mess. I was glad to be done with it.

• 24:39Shawn Ryan?

  Well, on just about every, everything I've researched, you always bring up an incident that happened in high school. And correct me if I'm wrong, but, um, it's one of the things that actually, uh, it was a major motivator for you joining the SEAL teams, if I remember correctly. And, uh, so what kind of happened there? I know you got fucking jumped.

• 24:57Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, um, I, I was a freshman in high school and I was fucking small. Um, I was five foot four and a hundred and five pounds. Um, it was a Friday and, uh, it was during the swim season. And as a freshman swimmer, uh, they do these initiation. They did. They probably don't do them anymore because I'm sure it's considered hazing or something fucking dumb like that. But, um, you know, we had to do stupid shit like where, where your speedos over your clothes, you know, and wear goggles and, you know, just dumb little things like that on Fridays. They would fuck with you and make you wear stupid shit or, or whatever. And, um, but my second oldest brother was a senior when I was a freshman. So we went to lunch together. He had a, had his license and drove my, my

• 25:39Speaker 05

  dad's car. Um, to, uh, to lunch, we came back, we were running a little bit behind, uh, in true fashion of my second oldest brother. Love you Jake, but let's be honest, you're always fucking a little behind. Yeah. Is that the?

• 25:55Speaker 05

  The halls were relatively empty and it was a three storied high school and so I came back and I was on the third floor, I was running down a hallway and I remember a good friend of my dad's actually was a chemistry teacher and he was, he like nodded, you know, tipped his cap or whatever to me as I was running past and kinda shook his head like, you know, there's fucking George's son running behind, you know, laughing or whatever and I went, opened these two double doors to go down a set of stairs, all the way down to the first floor, cause I was going to Spanish. And as soon as I swung the door open, I was like, holy shit. And as I'm getting ready to step down the first step, I just

• 26:36Speaker 05

  see, just boom, I just get fucking blindsided and there was two, two single file column rows of, there's probably between forty and fifty black students that were, you know, taking up the entire stairwell, cause there was that many of them running up and they were just running through the hallways, beating the fuck out of anybody that was white and they were, you know, throwing trash cans through fucking windows and knocking water, drinking fountains off the fucking wall, I mean, just trashing the place and beating up white people. Oh, so this was like, they were fucking kicking the shit out of everybody? Everybody, yeah, it wasn't just me. It was, I mean, it was like a race riot almost. There was a bunch of people that got fucked up. Oh, fuck. And so, I start walking, or I start running down the stairs and again, you know, it

• 27:21Speaker 05

  was like running a gauntlet, I mean, textbook gauntlet scenario. I'm trying to make my way down and as I'm going, it just, you know, they're all taking their fucking turns while they're running up and I'm running down and, you know, luckily, they didn't stop and corner me and, you know, I mean, they probably would've fucking beat me to death, honestly, but I managed to make it all the way down, just again, getting pummeled the whole way down. By the time I got down to the bottom, you know, every time I got hit, again, I was a little fucker and so I'd, I'd run and it was a brick wall, you know, going down and so the whole right side of my face was all fucked up. The whole left side of my face was all swollen and fucked up. And I kinda stumbled into Spanish class.

• 28:05Speaker 05

  And the teacher, the teachers at that point, they knew what was going on. And even then, like our administration and the staff, they were scared of, like they didn't know what to do. You know, like they didn't wanna stop them because, you know, they would probably be considered racist. You know, and they didn't wanna discipline them, so nobody got in trouble. At that, at that point, there were no security cameras either back then. They, so they didn't do shit. You know, they did absolutely nothing about it, you know. And I stumbled in, I sat down and I'll never forget. You know, I was sitting there and there was three or four black guys that came in, came in several minutes after I did, breathing heavy, and I knew they were, they were in on it. And, you know, just that, that was a very pivotal moment for me for a couple of reasons.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  Number one was that the way that my dad responded to it was not what I expected. Looking back on it, I thank fucking, whatever universal power you believe in that he handled it the way that he did, in much more of a tough love scenario. And that a lot of parents, and I think even putting myself in his shoes, would, you know, storm down to the fucking high school and demand some sort of consequence and that action be taken and whatever. And he didn't have the, you know, I'm scared policy at all. It was, life's not fucking fair. People are gonna fuck with you. People are gonna, are gonna do mean shit to you, and you've gotta figure out how to fucking deal with it. I know you're fucking scared, you probably don't wanna go back. You're gonna go back tomorrow and you're gonna face whoever the fuck did it, and you're gonna deal with it. Sure.

• 29:35Speaker 05

  You know, and, you know, for me, like at the time, I was like, what the fuck? You know, it was like, why are you not going and fucking doing something about it? And, and again, I, looking back on it now, I'm, I'm really glad that he handled it that way because it forced me to do that. You know, it, it, it was the shit or get off the pot moment for me as a 14-year-old of realizing that, you know, if, if I can't fucking figure it out, like nobody else is gonna hold my hand and make sure that, that everything is fucking perfect. You know, and, and for me, that was, especially going into the community of naval special warfare, that was a, an incredibly valuable fucking lesson I learned at that age that, you know, don't, don't depend on any motherfucker else. Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 05

  You know, to, to make sure that your shit's taken care of. You, you figure it out, you know, and so. I was, the other kind of part of that, I think that was pivotal is that the motivation that that just instantly fucking instilled in me was huge, you know, like I was already a pretty competitive athlete and, you know, I hated to lose and I, you know, I worked really hard at sports and everything that I gave a shit about. I was really, you know, hyper competitive, but this took it for sure to the next level, you know, because I just kept thinking about that. And even, there were times like in Hell Week and in Bud's Training where, where I kind of flashed back to that if I was, you know, wavering a little bit in motivation or whatever, like the second I thought about that, it was just, I was

• 31:04Speaker 05

  right, I was fucking pissed and I, you know, it put me right back on track of saying, fuck that.

• 31:09Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 31:10Speaker 05

  Like, I'm gonna do this, you know?

• 31:11Shawn Ryan?

  Does that still fire you up to this day?

• 31:13Speaker 05

  No, fuck, I haven't thought about it since the last time somebody asked me about it. I mean, it's, it's for sure not something I think about anymore and haven't for a while. But, but early on, as a young, young man, kind of coming into manhood, it, it absolutely was impactful that way.

• 31:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. How did, how did that, how did that create the motivation for you to go into the SEAL teams?

• 31:39Speaker 05

  So I, I wouldn't say that, that necessarily motivated me to do it. It, it for sure played a role. It was a combination of that, coupled with just being a competitive swimmer growing up, being pretty, pretty competent in the water and just being drawn to, to military service because of my grandfathers. Both of them were in World War II and, and I was always really fascinated by, by their service and that generation and that war and was kind of a history geek that way, growing up. And I was just always, always kind of motivated to want to do something like that. And for me, it was, you know, I read a Popular Mechanics

• 32:19Speaker 05

  article and, and saw this story of, of who the Navy SEALs were in conjunction with watching the movie with Charlie Sheen in it. And I was just like, man, these guys sound fucking awesome. So, you know, all of that kind of combined was, was really what, what drew me into, into doing it. And I spent, you know, the last several years I was in high school, being pretty laser focused on doing nothing but, but that.

• 32:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What, uh, so I know you enlisted or signed up in the delayed entry program at seventeen and then went into eight and eighteen. What year did you join?

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Ninety-six. So I graduated high school, I was still seventeen when I graduated, so I did the delayed entry program right at graduation. I didn't turn eighteen until later that summer and then I went to boot camp, you know, two weeks after I turned eighteen, but.

• 33:17Shawn Ryan?

  Hardest thing for you, bud?

• 33:19Speaker 05

  Uh, San Clemente Island.

• 33:20Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 33:21Speaker 05

  Unquestionably, yeah.

• 33:22Shawn Ryan?

  Why's that?

• 33:24Speaker 05

  It was El, it was El Nino, it was a summer Hell Week. I actually went through Hell Week, uh, it was my, it was my nineteenth birthday, um, I wanna say two days after we finished Hell Week. And, uh, but so that was in July, right? It's fucking warm. Um, and then going out to San Clemente Island in February, January, February, it was an El Nino winter to boot, so, uh, it was kind of extreme weather conditions. It's cold as fuck and I just, you know, it's kinda like, all the things that I'd read and whatever, uh, was that, you know, that's where you actually learn stuff and, you know, you get to fucking blow shit up and shoot guns and, you know, patrol and kinda start to learn real frogman shit and, uh, Jesus Christ, we

• 34:06Speaker 05

  went out there and it was like the staff just hated us, like the third phase Godre just fucking murdered us over and over, yeah. Part of it too was that I got rolled. I started with two fourteen and I got rolled, uh, six days before they went to San Clemente Island.

• 34:22Shawn Ryan?

  Oh damn.

• 34:23Speaker 05

  And so I, then I got rolled back, spent, you know, seven weeks in fucking rollback land and then joined up with two fifteen, day one of third phase. And so, you know, that certainly didn't help, uh, you know, enjoying it. But, yeah, I just, you know, they, they fucking hated us and, uh, I mean, we got about two and a half hours of sleep every night there and just got the fuck beat out of us non-stop, you know, so, uh, I didn't make it easy on myself either. I, uh, there was one night where we patrolled, uh, we did a, a patrol gig where it was, you know, cold and rainy and, you know, cactus and it was just miserable and we got back at like two in the morning and. Admittedly, it was a total shitbag move on my part. Like, we get back, we're in the armory

• 35:08Speaker 05

  cleaning guns and taking care of our shit. And me and two other guys ran to the fucking galley quick to get like hot chocolate because we were just fucking freezing, right? And so while we're in there, I don't even remember what fucking instructor it was, walked in there while we were fucking getting hot cocoa while everybody else is cleaning their shit, you know? And so, of course, he's like, you've gotta be fucking shitting me. You know, he's like, out on the fucking beach now, you know? And so we run out there and dude, I'll tell you, it was probably the worst beating of my entire time at Bud's is that they took our M4s and broke them down in the, to the lowest fucking form possible. I mean, completely

• 35:49Speaker 05

  broke them down and put them in five gallon sodas or buckets that were half full of sand and salt water. Oh shit. And buried them in there and made us fucking, and beat us while they were doing that. We had to disassemble them and it was like Buddy carries down to the beach, fucking surf torture, back, pushups, monkey fuckers, jumping jacks, Buddy carries, you know, just, it was like three hours of just getting the fuck hammered out of us. All because of you? Well, because of me and the two other guys. I mean, it was the three of us. Fuck. And so they took all three of our guns, right, and put it in one bucket, right? So, I mean, down to the fucking sear, the firing pen, you name it, all the way fucking

• 36:30Speaker 05

  down. Three weapons in a bucket full of sand and salt water. And after several hours of getting the shit beat out of us, hand us the bucket and we're like, we'll see you at fucking zero six for a weapons inspection. Shit. And so, you know, we stayed up the whole rest of the night and, you know, we're sitting there, hands all fucked up and frozen, you know, digging through, you know, pouring shit out on the grinder with flashlights, trying to find our shit because they made us sift through it there before we could take it back. And it was fucking miserable. But the whole island was that way for us. I mean, it was just, it was like a nonstop. Kicking in the dick the whole time we were there and it was cold. I mean, the water was like forty-eight to fifty-two degrees the whole time we were there and it was just, it was shitty. Yeah. What was the rest of the class doing when you guys were getting your ass beat?

• 37:15Speaker 05

  They, uh, finished cleaning their weapons and went to bed.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  So, yeah, I mean, we like, we're as we're getting the fuck beat out of us, we see them, you know, trickling out of the fucking armory after all their shit's done hitting the rack, you know? And, uh, I mean, we deserved it. Like, it was, again, it was a good lesson learned, like, even though, like, we were just gonna run and grab hot cocoa, bring it back and try to warm up while we were doing our shit. It was like, just got caught at the wrong place, the wrong fucking time and it happened to be, I think it was a warrant officer was one of the more senior guys walked in and was just like, hell no, you know, and kicked the door open and just fucking trashed us, but. Damn. So, moving on past BUDS, um, you checked in to what team?

• 37:59Speaker 05

  So, I checked, I went to, uh, went to Fort Benning for jump school first. Uh, we went there right after we graduated, before we even went on leave. So, went straight from graduation, Fort Benning, jump school. Uh, then we had thirty days leave and then I checked into SEAL Team Three. You stayed at Team Three the entire time until you became an instructor?

• 38:21Speaker 05

  What was going on at that time period? So, this was, you know, before nine eleven. I mean, this was, uh, I graduated, uh, from BUDS in February of ninety-eight. And so, uh, you know, it was still, you know, Bill Clinton was still fucking president. Um, you know, funding was not great. Uh, morale was okay. And, uh, you know, it was kind of the old school eighties and nineties teams back then still, you know, in terms of the, the way the teams were, were structured. You know, SEAL Team Three was the, the CENTCOM or, or Desert Warfare Platoon. You know, Team Five was jungle. Or I'm sorry, Team One was jungle, Team Five was Korea and cold weather. Uh, you know, and so we all kind of had our.

• 39:05Speaker 05

  Niches, if you will, you know, we were the only ones that were our, our working uniform was desert camis, you know, of the whole community. We were the only ones wearing desert camis back then. And so, everything was kind of structured toward desert everything. I mean, whether it was reconnaissance stuff, or, you know, you name it, is that everything was kind of geared towards long range desert type of operations. And went through SQT, and, you know, did the whole, back then, it was six months of, of getting your, all of your qualifications done. Once, you know, once you graduated, you had that probationary period. And so, it took a while to get your trident. You had to take a chief's board,

• 39:46Speaker 05

  and they fucking grill you for, for hours and ask you every question under the book. And just, it was a pretty painstaking process from the time you graduate, BUDS, until you actually got your trident. It was almost a year. So, I kind of prefer it that way. I think it, it did a better job at kind of policing the, the new guys coming in and making sure that, that they kind of earned their trident the right way. That's my take on it. Of course, I'm a little biased. But, yeah, so, checked in there and, and jumped into a platoon. And it was an ARG Alpha platoon, which is amphibious readiness group, which means we were on a ship. We had an almost two-year workup, and then a six-month deployment. And we spent

• 40:27Speaker 05

  a lot of that time on, on ships. So, I actually spent a, a pretty significant amount of time on a lot of different Navy, Navy ships, which at the time, kind of sucked. But I'm glad I did, because it was good experience, you know, getting to, you know, most team guys now have never been on a fucking boat. If you came in, you know, in the last 15 years, you know, you probably have never even been on a fucking ship.

• 40:47Shawn Ryan?

  I'm one of them. The only time I've ever been on one was doing VBSS training, which for those of you that don't know, that's boarding ships and taking them down. And, but, so that's a rarity nowadays. But rewind in just a little bit. You had mentioned that you really liked hearing the stories of your grandparents serving in World War II. If you could serve in any war, and to include, you know, the ones you did serve in, would you have changed it? Is there any particular war that?

• 41:28Shawn Ryan?

  You would want to serve in?

• 41:30Speaker 05

  I mean, part of me says, uh, World War II, just because of the, the gravity of, of the impact that it had on the entire planet.

• 41:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  To me, that, that war, uh, not that Afghanistan wasn't justified, uh, but it just seems more, more justified.

• 41:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 05

  You know, uh, like the entire fucking country was behind it. And there, there is a part of me, I think, that is almost jealous of, of that time in our nation's history where, I mean, literally, it was like nine 12.

• 42:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  You know, but for five fucking years straight, you know? Um, and so to me, like, that kind of jumps out as being, maybe it's over romanticized because, you know, the way that the press was back then was very different and, and very filtered and, and the American public did not have access to a lot of the same things that it has access to now as it relates to what goes on in war and, and things of that nature. But I still just think that, you know, there was, there was a pretty clear cut line in the sand of good versus evil, or at least it sure fucking seems that way, more so than it does now even, you know, to me.

• 42:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 05

  Um, not that fucking terrorists aren't, aren't evil, it's just the, those lines seem a little muddier now. Uh, and again, maybe it's because we're, we're living in it.

• 42:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  In World War II, we're, we're looking back and weren't a part of it. But, uh, it just seems like such a, such a powerful moment in, in mankind's history.

• 42:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 05

  But I think that would have been, would have been pretty neat to be a part of.

• 42:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, as fucked up as it sounds, it's, it's, uh,

• 42:58Shawn Ryan?

  for United States modern day history, that was definitely our high point. And, uh, it seems like it's been kind of, uh, slowly, you know?

• 43:09Speaker 05

  Watered down.

• 43:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:10Shawn Ryan?

  Ever since, um, that point in time. But, uh, moving past that,

• 43:17Shawn Ryan?

  a lot of times guys have like an area of operation or, or something that they, that, where they want to serve. Uh, did you guys have a dream sheet when you were coming out? Or?

• 43:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, we did. I, uh, I actually picked SEAL Team Two was my number one choice. Uh, SEAL Team Eight was my second choice and Team Three was my third. So I, I did get one of my choices, but. I, you know, I think a lot of us, I, I know for, for my class, or at least that kind of era, it seemed like the instructors played a huge role in inspiring guys where to go, what they wanted to do. Like, we all wanted to really emulate the cadre, especially our third phase guys. But most of the, the SEAL cadre, uh, when I was a student were east coast guys for whatever fucking reason.

• 44:01Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 44:02Speaker 05

  Um, and so, you know, most of us picked east coast teams because, you know, they, they talked fondly and talked shit about, you know, west coast Hollywood fuckers and whatever. And so, uh, yeah, I mean, we all kind of picked that. But there was an element of even back then, this was, you know, prior to nine 11, there was something about Team Three and then just the whole Middle East fucking component that, that, uh, was intriguing to me. And so that's why I put it on the list also, but.

• 44:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, fucking worked out. I mean, out of all the teams, uh, you know, minus Dev Group, but to my knowledge, it seemed like Team Three probably throughout the, uh, at least the earlier years in the war, uh, um, got the most experience.

• 44:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were just, you know, again, like with most things, right place, the right time. And, you know, to be the team that kicked the Iraq war off, uh, you know, and the operation that we did with the Go Platts and the manifold metering station, I mean, the entire, all of SEAL Team Three did, did an operation together. You know, it's never been done before or since.

• 45:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  You know, so to have, you know, all, all fucking, every platoon at SEAL Team Three on one singular huge fucking mission at once was pretty fucking cool, but.

• 45:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we'll get into that in a minute, but, um, why, why Team Two? That was UCOM, correct?

• 45:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. It was just, uh, you know, again, like.

• 45:22Shawn Ryan?

  UCOM is Europe, uh, for those of you that don't know.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  A bunch of, uh, a bunch of the first phase instructors were Team Two guys. Um, and a couple of our third phase instructors that, uh, that just, you know, really, uh, had a huge impact on me were, were Team Two guys also. And so I think, you know, as a fucking 19 year old, it just, I was very impressionable. I was like, well, fuck, these guys seem like badasses and have cool stories. I want to go where they went. You know, it's really that simple, but.

• 45:50Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. I was at eight and then went to two.

• 45:53Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah?

• 45:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. But, um, all right. So you're at Team Three and, um,

• 46:02Shawn Ryan?

  What was the check-in process like for it? Were they welcoming or did they fucking hate your guts?

• 46:07Speaker 05

  It was actually, uh, it was kinda underwhelming. Uh, I, I was expecting it to be more prevalent than it was. I think, you know, they were all busy and it was kinda three sheets to the wind. So it was, it was a lot of like, this is the fucking SEAL team? Like where is everybody? You know, like everybody was fucking gone, like training and I actually had, uh, when I was home on leave, I got a call from Master Chief Huey, uh, who, uh, Al Huey's son, who Camp Al Huey, which is, uh, you know, the camp that, uh, the, the San Clemente Island compound is named after. It's, it's his son was a Master Chief of Team Three, crusty old fucking guy. He, he actually called me on leave. He was like, you, are you fucking coming? And I was like, what?

• 46:48Speaker 05

  You know, I was like, I have 30 days leave. I don't give a fuck. Get over here. I was just like, okay. So if I can, I was like, I guess I gotta go. And I go and check in and, and even then like, he wasn't there. Like finally you're here. He'd like, he just called the whole list of guys that, you know, that, that were gone. It was like, fucking get your ass here, you know, and like SQT was, was starting up. And so they were just like, we, you know, there, there was very little of it. Uh, I mean, they fucked with us a little bit of like, you know, the, the, um, the training cell guys would pull us in the office and be like, sit down. You know, you'd sit down and be like, no, not there. Get out, you know, just fucking with you like that. And like, fill out your, your school's request sheet and, and you better have underwater knife fighting

• 47:32Speaker 05

  and fucking basket weaving on there, you know, and we're just like, okay. And it's like, not even a real form, you know, like, like just stupid, you know, new guy on the job type shit that, that they would fuck with us. But, uh, there was a little bit of that, but otherwise it was really like, I was just like, Jesus Christ, like what, what are you guys doing? You know, and, and so there, there wasn't, you know, a bunch of cool stories about all, all sorts of crazy shit like a lot of guys have. It was, it was very, like I said, underwhelming and, and I, I was only there for a matter of, of a couple of days and then started SQT, which at that time, uh, it was STT, uh, SEAL Tactical Training. And it was, uh, Basically, similarly, it was right as they were starting, all of the new BUDS graduates

• 48:17Speaker 05

  were going through STT together, whether you're going to an East Coast team or whatever. Because right before that, you actually did STT at your own team. Like, each team ran their own little STT where their training cell guys, you know, on top of training, the platoons would train the new guys and put them through a little pipeline with just a handful of them. As you can imagine, that's not really efficient or effective. But there were some pros to it, I think. But so, we were one of the first full class, you know, all BUDS graduates, irrespective of team that you're going to, to go through STT together on the West Coast. And then, once we finished that, then we went back to the team, and then it was more structured.

• 48:59Speaker 05

  But, you know, then I'd been through STT and was assigned to a platoon, and so I kind of jumped right in there fairly quick, and we got started. But, I don't know what it was like for you as a new guy. For me, you know, in the late 90s, as a new guy in a SEAL team, non-war time was fucking brutal. Yeah. You know, and having an almost two-year workup, I mean, we got the fuck hazed out of us all the time. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. We got, I mean, fucking taped up and the shit beat out of us, and mini blast machine getting electrocuted, I mean, fucking you name it. Like, we got fucking hammered all the time, because they were bored, you know, and we had a long time together, so. How many new guys were in there with you? Half the fucking platoon, there was eight of us. No, eight? Eight new guys? Yeah, yep. Damn.

• 49:44Speaker 05

  Glenn Doherty was one of them, you know, so, you know, there's a million fucking stories with him. God rest his soul. It's actually his 50th birthday today, but, yeah, so, eight of us, and it was, the one, I guess, benefit to that is there were so many of us, it was harder for them to haze all of us. They'd have to get us, you know, one or two at a time. Because if all eight of us were together, they'd have a hard time, a hard time with us that way. But, you know, I will say this, I mean, again, it's kind of like the speech that my dad gave me about going back to high schools at the time, it was kind of miserable and sucked, but looking back on it, I don't think you could pay to put yourself in a

• 50:29Speaker 05

  better circumstance as a young man, you know, to be surrounded by barrel-chested fucking pipe hitters that teach you how to be a fucking man, you know, and how to handle things and how to live your life and how to get things done and how to adapt and how to, you know, not make fucking excuses and how to hold you accountable and really, you know, teach you how to fucking kick ass, you know, I mean, you just, to me, I wish every fucking young man that as a 19 and 20-year-old, you know, had the ability to be surrounded by 180 fucking guys like that, the way I did. I mean, I will be forever grateful that I was able to finish growing up in the SEAL teams, you know, my parents laid a great foundation and did a stand-up job. The SEAL teams absolutely fucking finished their job

• 51:14Speaker 05

  and, you know, I would not be where I'm at today and nowhere near it had it not been for those guys. I mean, they really fucking showed me how to do it.

• 51:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm right there with you. I mean, it's definitely a fucking lost art these days and if it teaches you anything, accountability and if you've, and fucking consequences, which are few and far between these days, hard to find people to take accountability and the consequences are fucking so minimal now that I think it's ruined entire generations.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  I agree, and it's also motivated/inspired me to try to be that for whoever I can, you know, male or female, there's, you know, in the canine world, there's a lot of, you know, female potential canine handlers or people that have questions or whatever and, you know, writing the books, you know, has had a tremendous, tremendously rewarding impact on me also that way and getting letters from people and like, hey, I read your book and I just, you know, I joined the Air Force and I'm slated to be a handler and, you know, it's because I read your book and, you know, whatever. Like to me, to be able to do anything even remotely close to what, you know, the generations before us did for us in the SEAL teams, you know, if I can accomplish a fraction of

• 52:34Speaker 05

  that, I'll be glad that I at least was able to do something.

• 52:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 05

  Because if people don't take the time, if they're selfish with their time and just focus on them and not try to put that back into the following subsequent generations, then we as a nation are completely fucked, so.

• 52:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. So, kind of moving past check-in and your beginning time there, what year was that? What year did you finally check in?

• 53:07Speaker 05

  Ninety-eight.

• 53:08Shawn Ryan?

  Ninety-eight? What was your first real op?

• 53:16Speaker 05

  First real op was the USS Cole.

• 53:19Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 53:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:22Shawn Ryan?

  So you went for what, two years before you did anything real?

• 53:25Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, so, you know, when I checked in, like I said, we had a two, I mean, it was like a 22-month workup, right? So, you know, we were training for almost two years before we deployed, and then when we deployed, we deployed on the USS Duluth, part of an amphib deployment. So there was a big group of amphibious ships, you know, all leaving from San Diego, steam all the way to the Middle East and sit there for six months and come back. And we flew, actually, on a fucking C-130 from San Diego to Hawaii, hung out in Hawaii for a few days, met the ship there, did some training, and flew from Hawaii to Kwajalein, Guam, and then ultimately Hawaii, or Australia, and spent about a month in fucking Australia,

• 54:10Speaker 05

  which was awesome for all the reasons you can probably imagine.

• 54:12Shawn Ryan?

  What is a bunch of bored team guys doing in Australia?

• 54:17Speaker 05

  Everything you can think of. We actually did a bunch of dumb shit. We had a couple days off. We were training with the NORFORSE guys, the Northern Force guys up, and we were in Darwin, which is the outback. I mean, it's not like the rest of Australia, it's much more, you know, the McDondee fucking, you know, outback type of experience, but it was still neat. But we had a couple days off, and we actually told our officer in charge that we were just gonna go camp at Litchfield National Park, which was like an hour away, right there in the outback. And we jumped on uh Qantas Airlines and flew all the way to the fucking Gold Coast without

• 54:58Speaker 05

  telling them uh without telling them and and flew there. There was four of us, I think, and dove on the fucking Great Barrier Reef and pub crawled like for three days. Just we were staying in hostels and scuba diving and getting shitfaced and just just totally fucking going nuts, you know, and he thought we were camping an hour away and we were like a fucking five hour flight. But but anyways, we came back, had a good time and then uh ended up going from there. We took a guided missile cruiser, jumped on that and hauled ass all the way to Bahrain. We were in Bahrain for a little bit and then we were scheduled to go do some other shit and then that's when the coal got hit.

• 55:36Speaker 06

  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A total of six sets of remains have been found onboard the coal during the course of today. Um, we are working to identify the remains and to contact the next of kin of those individuals and that notification and identification process continues as we speak.

• 55:59Speaker 08

  My prayers are with the families of those killed and injured and with all the brave men and women in uniform who serve our country every day around the world.

• 56:13Speaker 05

  So we jumped on the USS Tarla and steamed down to um to the coal and then we sat on the coal for two fucking months.

• 56:22Shawn Ryan?

  Rewind real quick. How uh how much note, how many days passed between when the coal got hit and you guys arriving on the coal?

• 56:30Speaker 05

  It was like a day and a half, two days. I mean, it was quick.

• 56:33Shawn Ryan?

  How fucking fired up were you guys to do that?

• 56:36Speaker 05

  Fired up. I mean, it was it was nerve wracking and fired up at the same time. Uh, you know, jumping on a ship that's doing 12 miles an hour, kinda it's almost like the Austin Powers, where he's like getting ready to run the guy over and he sits there screaming for fucking two minutes like, uh, you know, there was an element of like, Jesus Christ, we need to get there, you know, and uh it was a few days. Um, you know, it wasn't as quick as, you know, jumping on a plane and being there that day, but uh but, you know, they weren't hanging out like dogs balls for too too long. But um, yeah, it was it was nerve wracking because again, this it's it's hard to even. Put people in that frame of mind of this was still before September 11th, you know, so.

• 57:20Speaker 05

  Knowing that, you know, I mean, even the name Osama bin Laden, like, it was like, who? Yeah. Even then, it was like Al Qaeda, what the fuck is that? You know, like, I, I had a little bit more inclination on who they were and what they were about because I was the intel rep for the platoon and we were going to the Middle East. So I, I was a little more read in than, than most people. But, uh, but it still, it wasn't obviously anywhere near like it is now. And, and so it was a bigger deal in that respect and that, you know, it's a US warship that suicide bombers fucking pulled a tug laden with explosives alongside and blew themselves up.

• 57:57Speaker 05

  Interestingly, they tasked a guy to, uh, to videotape that whole fucking thing and, uh, and he fell asleep and didn't get it on film, you know, their propaganda wing of Al Qaeda. I mean, I think they, I don't know if they executed him, but, uh, you know, it came out years later that, uh, that they had actually tasked a guy to, to get that on film. I, I kinda wish they had, you know, maybe, maybe that's a sadistic creepy thing to, to think, but,

• 58:23Speaker 05

  you know, for, for their uses, you know, the propaganda tools are, are pretty powerful, but. I mean, that killed like, uh, 15? 19. 19 sailors and then, uh, a lot of casualties. Yeah. And it was, it was fucking creepy, uh, for us because coming on board, you know, obviously the, the crew was to say that they were rattled is a fucking huge understatement, you know, uh, because the, the goal of, of the entire mission was to actually sink that fucking ship. You know, it wasn't just to, to bomb it. And the, the whole reason that we were there was because they threatened to, to sink it. You know, they came, came over the open airwave mar band radio, uh, and threatened the captain and they were like, you know, this is fucking Al Qaeda.

• 59:09Speaker 05

  Your ship is not leaving our fucking harbor, you know, we like, we will sink it or whatever the fuck they said, something to that effect. And so that's why we went down there. And so we sat there for two months and from sundown to sunup. Every fucking night, we had two ribs, two boats, you know, floating around with a couple guys on it. Then we had a sixty gunner and a couple of snipers and a law rocket guy on the bridge of the ship, kind of keeping, you know, overwatch and we were out on the boats. And there was, there was a number of times where small boats would come, you know, test, test the perimeter and see what they could get away with and whatever. And we were always right there. Never mixed it up with them, but a couple of pretty, you know, fairly close calls where, um, you know, if, if things had gone maybe a little

• 59:54Speaker 05

  different, it probably would have, would have gone pretty bad for, for the boats that were trying to come, come any closer, but. Any shots fired? Nothing. At least nothing from any of the boats I was on. And I, I don't recall any, any of the other guys having any. There was a couple of close calls where again, it was like, you know, they went a little too close and guys would get, and haul ass out there and, you know, maybe draw down on them or the fucking, um, you know, fifty cal guys on the rib and fucking be like, hey motherfucker, you know, or whatever. But, so they, they never really tried anything past that because I, I think they knew, you know, that it wasn't going to fucking pan out well for them. But where it was fucking creepy was, um, going inside, you know, the first couple of days we were there, we actually, you know, we

• 1:00:36Speaker 05

  stayed onboard the coal. And, you know, they had nineteen empty racks. Well, guess where we fucking slept, you know? So we're sleeping in these sailors' bunks that were just fucking blown up, you know, and like, you know, there's USS coal fucking coffee mugs with fucking like powder blasts on them in the galley and, and, uh, you know, people's personal effects and, you know, a lot of the crew like, you know, you're laying in some dude that, you know, the, the, the rest of the room is, is fucking devastated and you're like laying in his bunk jerking off. No, I'm kidding. But, uh, but they're looking at you, you know, they're just, they're looking at you like. What the fuck, you know, they just can't, can't wrap their mind around it, you know, and it was,

• 1:01:21Speaker 05

  we didn't know any of them, so it was just very different for us coming on board, but, but, you know, it was a powerful fucking moment for us because, it was the first, you know, kinda like, holy shit, you know, Yeah, shit just got real. A real fucking deal and they're testing the water and so, there was also the, the stench from, you know, being in ninety-four degree fucking water, salt water, you know, and having now a ship that has no running power on it, in terms of AC and stuff, you know, I had floodlights and, and stuff in some of the barracks rooms on enough generator power, but nowhere near enough because of the damage to the ship to, to actually keep it cool. And so, I mean, it just, the smell of, of nineteen

• 1:02:06Speaker 05

  semi-submerged, blown up dead bodies trapped in a fucking boat, you know, in that kinda water and that kinda heat, day in, day out for a couple of months was fucking brutal. They were, the, the bodies were in there still? Yeah, they couldn't get them out. Jesus Christ. There was one instance where, from about the knee down, in, in the galley, so the, the witness reports were, when the, when the blast hit, it hit during lunch. And it was right at mid-ships, which is where the galley was located in that, that area, and so everybody that was in there said that it was like a fuck, the floor was like a fucking sine wave, like the floor went

• 1:02:48Speaker 05

  like that, you know, a metal floor moving like a fucking wave from the blast and so there, there was a section of the, of the ship where the floor became the ceiling and it just fucking meshed up and that was it. And there was one spot where as you're walking, you could actually see a fucking dungaree and a boondocker from about the knee down hanging out of the, out of the fucking, where now it's a ceiling, it was a floor and now it's a ceiling, somebody's fucking leg just hanging there. You know, right there fucking plain as day and, and then the other eighteen people were, you know, in, in different parts of the boat, fucking mangled and, and dead, just sitting there fucking rotting, but. Fuck, man. So you got, damn. How long?

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

  How long were you guys on there? Two months. Two, that boat sat in that harbor and, and ate in for two fucking months? Two fucking months, yeah. So you can imagine, like, the smell didn't get any fucking better. And the, and the bodies were there the entire time? Yeah. What, um, how'd you guys get the boat out? So the, the USS Marlin Spike, which was a floating dry dock, came from Louisiana and came all the way out and it took, you know, between spinning them up and outfitting it to, to accommodate the coal and all of that, it took two fucking months to get there, sixty-three days. And, uh, they came about twelve miles off the coast. And then they took, uh, tugs and bumper boats and shit and, and drug the coal out to it.

• 1:04:17Speaker 05

  And, uh, and then, so the way the, the floating dry dock works is it's this monster fucking boat, right? And it has the ability to, to sink itself. They dragged the boat on and then it raises back up. And so you, I mean, you can Google pictures of Marlin Spike and coal and you'll see this fucking ship that has a USS warship that looks like it's a fucking toy on it. It's, it's that much bigger, you know, so it, it, it fucking dry docks the, uh, the coal on a boat and then it steamed all the way back to Louisiana. Damn. Took them a couple of years to, uh, completely re-refurbish the ship, but they did. They completely repaired it and, and to my knowledge, it's actually back out, uh, back out at sea and doing deployments again. But, uh, one thing,

• 1:04:59Speaker 05

  while it was being drug out there, cause it took, you know, a couple of days, you know, because it was, the one thing, it was, it was severely listed. I mean, I don't know how the fuck it didn't sink, honestly. I mean, I think it speaks volumes to the crew for doing such a good job, uh, damage control wise of having all their ducks in a row and, and handling their processes the way they were supposed to because they kept the, the boat from sinking. It's a monster fucking hole in it. And, uh, So it took them forever to drag it out. Well, while it was being drug out, we actually got spun up to do a ship boarding. You know, we had thought like finally, you know, sixty three days of night after night fucking guarding this goddamn thing, you know, it's dragging out and now we can kind of relax. Well, on its way out, there was a fucking boat hauling

• 1:05:43Speaker 05

  ass straight towards it, you know, that our ship picked up on the radar. So they spun us up. We get all our shit on, hop in the ribs, go fucking assault this, uh, this little miniature fucking tug tanker thing that was, it turned out it was just bringing oil out to the Marlin Spike. I guess there was, you know, they didn't de-conflict or whatever, but there was a Yemeni army officer with a fucking Beretta on board and then the rest was just a crew. And of course, we assaulted it like, like it was Al Qaeda coming back to fuck, you know. We almost shot and killed the fucking Yemeni guy because he, uh, he kind of had an attitude and started to put his hand on his fucking pistol. And Clint

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  Emerson and I actually were the two guys that zeroed in on him and fucking just swarmed him and backed him up. And he was like, oh shit, you know, he had MP5s down his fucking throat and, uh, and he got his hand off his gun immediately and decided he didn't want to fuck around. But, uh, so, you know, once we finally got that done, um, then we, we actually did a follow-on op with, uh, because of that. And so at the time, uh, you know, US ships were pulling in everywhere and that's, that's what was happening with the coal in Yemen is they were just pulling in for a resupply. Um, and so once that happened, uh, the US Navy said no more resupplies anywhere other than Dubai, or actually Jibell Ali,

• 1:07:08Speaker 05

  which is just south of Dubai. And so we went to Dubai. We jumped on a, on a USNS fucking merchant marine ship and hauled ass to, uh, to Dubai. And we were in plain clothes, relaxed grooming, grooming standards, fucking cover stories, the whole bit. Uh, and every fucking Navy ship that came in, we would, uh, dive on the tugboats and ensure that, uh, that they didn't have any bombs on them or explosives or whatever. Went through the whole warehouse, personnel, pallets. We had a sniper overwatch on one of the towers. I mean, we had a whole fucking thing going on of every time a ship pulled in, we made sure that that shit wasn't gonna happen. So we spent about a month in Dubai doing that.

• 1:07:46Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember what your cover was?

• 1:07:48Speaker 05

  It was fucking lame. It was just like we were government contractors doing like electrical work or something stupid like that. It wasn't anything fancy. Of course, if we were out in town, we were a fucking American rugby team or whatever.

• 1:07:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, did you, you know, Yemen is, Yemen is a very fucked up place. And I deployed there several times. And, you know, probably doesn't mean shit to you, but I got to see where the, you know, coal happened. I used to drive by it every fucking day.

• 1:08:20Speaker 05

  Oh shit.

• 1:08:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And, and me and Glover had a couple incidents there. And there was always shit going on in Yemen, especially in Aden. Did you guys get to go out in town at all?

• 1:08:34Speaker 05

  Nope. We, we were on the ship or in that port area and that was it.

• 1:08:38Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  So we had very limited exposure, experience to any of the actual local populace. I mean, a little bit from, you know, people coming and checking it out or, you know, interacting with people on, on board or whatever. I do remember, it just kind of flashed in my memory. You know, at that time I was, I think I'd just turned 21, right before we deployed on that. And so, you know, as a 21 year old, like I'm still pretty young, you know, by parent's standards and whatever. And so anyway, on a sat phone, I scared the shit out of my parents, you know, because they heard about it in the news and they, and they knew I was overseas and they hadn't heard from me in a while. And all of a sudden I call them. And my dad like had, had gone home, like he'd forgot something and, and went back,

• 1:09:22Speaker 05

  you know, after lunch and went back into the house. And, you know, because even this was before really people, everybody had cell phones. And so I call him on a sat phone, at the house phone, and he picked up and he hadn't heard from me in weeks. I was like, guess where I'm staying? And he's like, where? I was like, on, on board the fucking USS Coal Half-Sunk in the water. He's like, what? He's like, Jesus fucking Christ. Like, you know, he's having a heart attack. Like, what the fuck are you doing there? Are you okay? And all this other shit and the... But yeah, it was just one of those moments where, uh, almost like fate, like he, I wouldn't have gotten a hold of him otherwise, but, uh, you know, I had the, had the opportunity to call him and it was just kinda neat. We, we look back on that and laugh once in a while, but.

• 1:10:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, um, just backtracking a little bit more too, uh, even though there was no shots fired, um, just for the audience, I think that always kinda surprises me because there hasn't been shit going on, you know, and, uh, you, you spent two years at the fucking team preparing to go to war and, uh, and, uh, like when I showed up, we knew what we were gonna do and there was nothing going and then this happens, which, you know, gives you the adrenaline and, uh, and, and I'm assuming the entire platoon was hungry as fuck to get some action. And I guess where I'm going is the discipline that it takes to not shoot

• 1:10:46Shawn Ryan?

  a potential threat when you know you can fucking get away with is, uh, it's, it's, uh, there's something to be said about that, you know, and a lot of units don't have that fucking discipline and, and, uh, that's one of the things that separates, uh, special operations units from conventional units. So, uh, I just wanna kinda, uh, reiterate that or bring awareness on how much fucking discipline that actually takes. I mean.

• 1:11:15Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I appreciate it. I think, and I agree. I think half of it, uh, is what you're talking about in terms of, you know, having clear thinking, you know, not overly aggressive people, you know, knowing when to use aggression, how to apply it and also when to turn it the fuck off, when it's appropriate, when it's not, uh, you know, and being clear headed to know the differences is, uh, necessary. But I also think there's an element of leadership that, uh, exists, at least within our chain of command at that time it did where we knew absolutely what the fucking right and left flank were, was. You know, there was a, here was, here was our fucking bubble and nobody comes inside that. I don't care if they're five inches from it, you don't fucking engage them.

• 1:12:01Speaker 05

  You know, and so they they were smart enough to to see and test, you know, our our perimeter and see, you know, if we go here, what happens if we go like and and so we would ratchet it up where, you know, if they were getting close, we'd we'd start heading that way, you know, and they'd get to a certain point and they'd fucking full throttle it out to the edge. And then so that, you know, they honestly, like a fucking dog that is testing a goddamn electric fence, you know, that that's basically what they were doing. And so, you know, they they were measuring our response as it relates to to their behavior and and figured out how far they could get and then what we were gonna do. And that, yeah, there were a couple of times where, uh, you know, we made it abundantly clear, like, a- any fucking further and and your your fucking history.

• 1:12:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Speaker 05

  And I think they just recognized that and decided, you know, it will live to fight another day, and and this isn't worth it.

• 1:12:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, even just the revenge factor, you know, I mean, fuck, you're eating chow with fucking

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:58Shawn Ryan?

  decaying legs hanging through the ceiling and, uh, you know, which are Americans and, um, and, uh, our brothers and sisters, you know, that are serving. So, uh, fucking kudos to you, man, and your team and Clint.

• 1:13:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I I thought, you know, it's funny, I I talked a little bit about this with Nick and Remy, talking about race and and policing and not to get too off on a tangent, but the I I think the the one of the starkest contrasts between the US military and US police forces is is that is that, you know, it's there's elements of police and granted, not all of them, there's plenty of them that that aren't that way. But there I I think that there are there are too many holdovers of when things happen, you know, there's times where cops get away with shit that they probably shouldn't, you know, and there's almost never a time where that happens in the military.

• 1:13:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Speaker 05

  You know, like, you fuck up this much, it's like the Top Gun code, you fuck up this much, you're gonna be flying a rubber, a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong, right? Is it, you know, you fuck up that much and you're gonna be breaking big rocks into little rocks at level and worth, and everybody fucking knows that.

• 1:14:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Speaker 05

  You know, and so to me, like, that's the that's really the secret sauce. It's not even in selection or training or whatever that's gonna take. Years of revamping and billions of fucking dollars in funding. It's like have an accountability system so stringent that people know absolutely like you fucking, this is okay, this isn't okay. Have the leadership, you know, with enough directive and balls and ability to communicate what, you know, the black and white contrasted right and left flank are so the guys understand what the fuck they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do, you know? And I think the military just does a way better job at that.

• 1:14:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, um, let's take a quick commercial break and when we come back, we'll move on.

• 1:14:49Shawn Ryan?

  This episode of the Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by Vigilance Elite Patreon. Vigilance Elite Patreon is how you support the show. It also has an entire library of tactical training and behind the scenes footage of the Sean Ryan Show. Go to vigilanceelite.com, click the Training tab, it'll take you right to Vigilance Elite Training on Patreon. Get a subscription, support the show. Thank you. Let's get on with it.

• 1:15:27Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mike, so we're back from the break. We were just in Yemen, USS Cole, and you said you were there with Clint Emerson, so I just happened to have Clint on the line here.

• 1:15:45Speaker 05

  So. That's fucking great.

• 1:15:49Shawn Ryan?

  Hey Clint, how's it going, man?

• 1:15:51Speaker 09

  Hey, how you guys doing?

• 1:15:53Shawn Ryan?

  Doing pretty good. So I got your buddy Mike Ritland here and he was just talking about boarding a small boat and shoving some MP5s in somebody's face, so I wondered if I could get you guys to kind of relive that.

• 1:16:10Speaker 09

  Yeah, I'm all for it. Oh, I, I, there's only one part of that I remember, and that's grabbing his nuts when it was all over with. That wasn't that fun.

• 1:16:17Speaker 05

  Were they, were they, uh, did he have bigger nuts than, uh, Mike does? Mike Big Balls Rittlin?

• 1:16:24Speaker 09

  Yeah, they were, they were, uh, you know, I don't remember, you know, size, consistency, um, whether they were full, full firm or, uh, soft, but, uh, I just remember that was the highlight of the whole thing, was grabbing his nuts and saying, "Hey, wasn't that fun?"

• 1:16:40Speaker 05

  I actually do remember that. Uh, yeah, we were, we were just getting, like, we were on the, the loading bay or whatever, uh, you know, like, where, where you climb back up on the ship, and I was like, "What the fuck are you doing?"

• 1:16:56Speaker 05

  So, it's no shit, he's not even joking, he did grab my fucking nuts.

• 1:16:58Speaker 09

  Kind of lighten some of those serious situations with humor, you know, I tend to, uh, kind of laugh when I get nervous, and so, uh, I think it only gets worse over time, at least for me, with, uh, just stupid antics to kind of lighten up sometimes the most serious moments.

• 1:17:13Speaker 05

  Oh, you grabbed Mike's nuts, yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 09

  I grabbed his nuts, and that wasn't that fun.

• 1:17:18Speaker 05

  Oh, shit, I thought you grabbed the, uh, Yemenese nuts, the Yemeni guy's nuts.

• 1:17:23Speaker 09

  No, after the Yemeni guy decided he didn't want to, uh, play, then I was like, "Oh, well, I'll just play with Mike instead."

• 1:17:34Speaker 05

  Never a dull moment was, uh, that day.

• 1:17:36Speaker 09

  I, I mean, I don't know how deep you guys have gotten into it, but for me, you know, um, I've told people time and time again, if there's one thing that'll take your, your level of, uh, patriotism up a couple of notches, is rolling up on a, uh, on a really advanced destroyer like that, listing in a, uh, in a Yemenese harbor, you know, it was like, holy shit, you know, this is, uh, this is actually real, and there's that little overwhelming feeling, like, "Wait a minute, these guys are this capable?" Um, you know, it was, uh, it was just a surreal, uh, experience, uh, when we, when we first arrived there, so,

• 1:18:17Speaker 09

  and then everything after that was, uh, without a doubt, kind of first time for a lot of stuff, and, you know, we were all just figuring it out as we, uh, as we moved along.

• 1:18:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was telling him, especially because it was pre nine eleven, you know, so just the the mentality of the SEAL teams and the country and the world at that point was was very different and so it was even more impactful that way. You know, not that it wouldn't be if it happened today again, but it just because it was so out of the blue and and you know, Al Qaeda was was not a household name at that point the way that it is now and and it had it the the crew was pretty rattled and and we were all kind of sobered up real fucking quick coming from Bahrain hanging out fucking off. You know, on the tail end of a of a month in Australia doing the same shit. It was kind of a slap in the face of like, hey, this is pretty fucking serious.

• 1:19:09Shawn Ryan?

  How bad did you guys want to go back to Australia once you were on that ship for about a month?

• 1:19:17Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah, when we were running, we're running out of food and Mike, Mike's memory's far better than mine. He's had to remind me of some of this and then I go, oh, yeah. But like, you know, food wise, I mean, we got down to these rations that, you know, basically said, you know, what was it said, Mike? It was stamped on there like for animal use only or something. And we were eating it every day.

• 1:19:41Speaker 05

  It said for veterinary and military use only.

• 1:19:46Speaker 05

  So, yeah.

• 1:19:47Speaker 09

  Yeah, that's what it was.

• 1:19:47Speaker 05

  To fucking animals, I guess, but.

• 1:19:49Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 1:19:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we're gonna wrap this up here real quick, but you got anything to say to Clint?

• 1:19:56Speaker 05

  Oh, just, you know, keep it, keep it clean over there and then I'll be, I'll be home soon.

• 1:20:02Speaker 09

  Okay, I miss you, honey. You take care. Careful coming home.

• 1:20:06Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Well, hey, Clint, thanks for the call, man, and we gotta get you on here.

• 1:20:12Speaker 09

  Oh, yeah, I'm standing by. Been waiting. All right. You guys take it easy and, yeah, wear your mask, wear your gloves, put your pump plugs in place. All right.

• 1:20:20Shawn Ryan?

  Pump plug is in place. Be safe, man.

• 1:20:23Speaker 09

  All right. Bye bye.

• 1:20:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's classic.

• 1:20:30Shawn Ryan?

  Well, fuck, man. If I would have known you guys were together, then that would have been planned a little better, but...

• 1:20:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was gonna bring him with, but I didn't want to announce it on the show. I guess the cat's out of the bag now.

• 1:20:43Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man. That's cool that you guys got that history.

• 1:20:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Shawn Ryan?

  But, so anyways, let's just keep moving forward. So, we're out of Yemen, and I kinda wanna get to the invasion, or the oil rigs. Whichever one's first. I've heard you talk about both of them in one of your books. And I heard you talk about the oil rigs in one of your books, and the invasion on several different podcasts. But I'd like to go in depth with whichever one of those came first.

• 1:21:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, the deployment that the coal was on was prior to the Iraq invasion deployment. And it was, you know, we did the coal, we were in Dubai for that, you know, month or so, and then scattered around a little bit after that, and then made our way back home. Got back in February. Platoon didn't start up until that following January. We got home in February of 2001, though, so, you know, I went and did a couple different schools, went to Tagalog. We were slated to go to Southeast Asia, which we did, but then 9/11 happened. And I actually did a six-week exercise in Jordan right after 9/11,

• 1:21:58Speaker 05

  which was treated much more differently than just an exercise because of what happened. They almost kinda treated it like a, kind of a forward staging area in case they wanted to, you know, send some guys straight from there. So, we took that exercise quite a bit more serious also. Ended up not doing anything other than just working with Jordanian Special Forces and SEALs there, and then ultimately platooned up, did about a year workup, and then deployed. We still originally went to Southeast Asia. We based out of Guam, went to the Philippines, went to Singapore, went to Thailand. And then kinda got the, "Hey, we're gonna be moving you over to Kuwait. Iraq is probably gonna happen."

• 1:22:43Speaker 05

  You know, because we deployed in October, September, October of 2003, two, rather.

• 1:22:51Speaker 05

  And so early 2003, they said, you know, hey, we're sending you to fucking Kuwait and you guys are gonna stage out of the Kuwaiti naval base in case Iraq kicks off, which we expect it to, you know, and so at that point, you know, we didn't have any of our desert anything. Like, we had to have all, you know, shit shipped over and we're painting guns and Robin Peter to pay Paul trying to get desert stuff together and went over to Kuwait and we staged out of there for about six weeks. And, you know, hearing the stories of the staging for the Bin Laden raid is actually kinda similar in that we had, you know, a solid almost two months and we had the whole

• 1:23:31Speaker 05

  oil platform staked out in the fucking sand, you know, because it was 1,600 meters long, which I don't think people realize how big of a fucking target it was, 16 football fields, you know, that this whole target consisted of that we had to take down. And so, we practiced, you know, the actions on the objective for that over and over and over for six fucking weeks before we hit it.

• 1:23:54Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:23:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, so we were, you know, to say we were, you know, from a CQB and room clearing standpoint, our platoon was as well awilled as any fucking SEAL platoon could have been, you know.

• 1:24:06Shawn Ryan?

  You guys had every fucking detail, contingency, all of it was mapped out?

• 1:24:10Speaker 05

  For the most part. The, where it was a little shaky was the intelligence coming in for that mission was, and I was the intel rep, it was not very easy to corroborate what was accurate or what we thought was accurate or not, because it was very conflicting. Some reports said, you know, there's a handful of people on board and, you know, there's basically, there's no intelligence that indicates that there's gonna be any resistance. On one end of the spectrum, on the other end of the spectrum, there's over 100 people on board, it's rigged with explosives, they're gonna clack it off the second you guys fucking step on. And every fucking thing in between, you know, so there was a lot of conflicting intelligence.

• 1:24:50Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any idea how many different sources they were running for that, or?

• 1:24:54Speaker 05

  It was mostly four, which I can't name which four, but there were four that we were working with predominantly. And even within those four, it was changing, you know, one day it would be this, then it's like, no, there's more people, now there's less people, there's, they've got, you know, anti-aircraft artillery pieces on board, they have fucking, you know, there's, we see that there's pipes rigged with explosives. My-

• 1:25:19Speaker 05

  My AOIC, the Assistant Officer in Charge or Second in Command, and I jumped on a helicopter and flew above it, hanging out the fucking window, taking pictures with our most powerful digital cameras at the time, which, you know, again, this is 2003. A lot of technology has transpired since then, so it wasn't great. And it was super fucking overcast, so we didn't get great intel. But it was kind of a neat, you know, a neat op that way in that it was, you know, a little bit of an offshoot from some shit that we would normally do. But so we took a bunch of pictures of that, came back and really ultimately determined that there are at least a few dozen people on board.

• 1:26:00Speaker 05

  And we've had multiple reports that there are explosives on board and that there's a good chance that, you know, certain pipes are rigged to blow if we try to take it down, you know? So that was kind of, you know, the final picture that was painted for us as we were getting ready to take this thing down. Now, at the same time, there was a manifold and metering station on the coast, which was about 25 miles away from where the GO plat was. And all of the rest of SEAL Team Three was tasked with taking that down at the same time. There was a problem with, you know, this 26 miles of pipeline.

• 1:26:42Speaker 05

  They're 48-inch pipes and there's four of them and they're filled with oil. So if they were to blow, you know, either end or the pipes and that amount of oil spilling, it would have been like 30 Exxon Valdez spills worth of oil in the Gulf and we would have been, you know, the bad guy because it was our fault and blah, blah, blah. So it was imperative that the entire team was, you know, working in cahoots with one another to be able to take all of it down at the same time.

• 1:27:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Speaker 05

  Which, as you can imagine, is a hell of a logistic undertaking.

• 1:27:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:15Speaker 05

  But so we managed to, you know, we get ready to do it. We took Mark Fives out for a ways and the ribs followed us. So we were hanging out in the Mark Five, just kind of relaxing. And then once we got... About, I don't know, three or four miles out, maybe, we jumped in the ribs and got all of our shit on and got ready to go. I mean, we were basically stacked on the ribs, you know, fucking rocking, ready to go and haul ass up there. And we had practiced diving, we had practiced fast roping. Ultimately, we ended up just taking a boat and fucking hauling ass up, jumping off the boat and just taking it down in kind of a swarm type of fashion.

• 1:27:56Shawn Ryan?

  Climbing up?

• 1:27:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, basically just jumping off the boat onto the lowest platform.

• 1:28:01Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:28:02Speaker 05

  You know, and then taking it down bottom to top. Now, at one end, there was a birthing section. And the rest of that sixteen hundred meters, there were little stations every, you know, couple hundred yards. Uh, you know, where there was, you know, a little office or, you know, kind of a building that, uh, you know, was an observer, uh, observation, uh, deck or something like that for the ships pulling up or whatever. But the, the majority of the concentration of people and things that we were worried about were at the birthing at one end. So, uh, we jump on board.

• 1:28:33Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, let me interrupt you. So, how many different, uh, elements are there between the pipeline and the, and the platforms?

• 1:28:43Speaker 05

  Um, I mean, it was really all one big fucking thing. So, um, you know, it was like, uh, I mean, it was almost kinda, it kinda looked like a long tanker in and of itself. But it could accommodate up to four oil tankers, two on each side at the same time. And load them with oil. And the reason why there was significance, uh, strategic significance is that that, it was that, uh, oh, uh, what was it? Uh, Maybot and Kaat, it was the, the Mina Al Bakr Oil, uh, Oil Terminal was the, was the name of, of the facility. How the fuck I remember that, I don't know. But, uh, so four tankers would come up there and that's where Saddam was, uh, you know, fighting or, or, uh, going against the embargo

• 1:29:27Speaker 05

  and smuggling oil even though, you know, there were sanctions against his country to be able to sell oil. That's where they were doing it from, was from that, that terminal. The, the Kaat, the core Al Amaa, uh, Oil Terminal was completely empty. And the, and the Grom guys took that down at the same time that we were doing it. But they, we, we knew that there was nobody on there and that's the, the target. They just wanted to make sure it was secure so nobody could come on and fuck with it. So we, we jump on board and there ends up being, I want to say 26, you know, and whatever you want to call them, enemy fighters on board that were a mixed bag

• 1:30:09Speaker 05

  of Iraqi intelligence, special Republican Guard, Navy, you know, and kind of a handful of other people that just had different roles in Saddam's military. There was a couple of Navy divers and there were a significant amount of explosives on board and they, they threw interrogations afterward, actually revealed to, to the interrogators that, that they were, they were instructed to, you know, put, put the explosives all over the pipes and put them in certain places and blow it when we came on board. But- So they were expecting you guys? Yeah. Do you think it's because of the Hilo op for pulling surveillance? No. That tipped them off?

• 1:30:54Speaker 05

  I, I think it was two reasons is that, you know, the Hilo op, we were at like, I mean, we were stupid high. We were, you know, almost O2 levels or, or close. I mean, we were thousands of feet above and I don't think that that tipped them off. We, we took it down in the first, first Gulf War and from a strategic standpoint, you know, it, it was kind of a no brainer is that they knew it would because that was the only operational oil terminal that Iraq had at the time in the Gulf that they could load tankers with oil. So it was kind of, they just, they knew we would, we would come secure it. It was Saddam's goal, again, learning well after the fact that, like we anticipated, that

• 1:31:35Speaker 05

  it was his goal to, to blow that and, and frame us or pin it on us for, you know, having a huge ecological disaster, you know, because we fucked with it. Just like that, you know, they did with the Kuwaiti oil rigs and the first Gulf War of setting them on fire. They wanted to accomplish that same thing. So it was, it was a pretty high value strategic target for sure and- But we managed to get on board without most of them knowing anyway is that, you know, most of them were asleep. And so, you know, we, we didn't really have any resistance in terms of them firing or putting up a huge fight. There were some of them that were hiding or that were, you know, locked in different rooms and we went through and breached all the fucking doors, shotguns with no air pro.

• 1:32:20Shawn Ryan?

  And you were the breacher?

• 1:32:21Speaker 05

  I was one of them, yeah. Shane and I were the two shotgun breachers. So we breached a fuck ton of doors, caught guys in rooms, you know, and a lot of them had guns and whatever. We just, we were very fortunate and, and, you know, we were able to capture, you know, 20, 27, 26 prisoners and, and, you know, not have any, any casualties on our end whatsoever. So.

• 1:32:44Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. 27 fucking prisoners?

• 1:32:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:32:48Shawn Ryan?

  Did you say you rolled up in a rib?

• 1:32:51Speaker 05

  We did, yeah.

• 1:32:52Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. So rib is kind of like, those of you that don't know, it's a, looks kind of like a Zodiac, which is a rubber boat, but it has a metal bottom and a lot of times they have a canopy over the, it's a center console.

• 1:33:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:06Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, and then I'm just curious, it's kind of a weird question, but what were you guys wearing? Were you wet suits or?

• 1:33:14Speaker 05

  No, it was all flight suits and MP5s.

• 1:33:17Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:33:18Speaker 05

  That's like old school recruiting video.

• 1:33:20Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:33:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:23Shawn Ryan?

  MP5s. Were you guys running optics?

• 1:33:25Speaker 05

  Uh, just, um, what was it? It was the Trigicon.

• 1:33:30Shawn Ryan?

  Reflex.

• 1:33:31Speaker 05

  Reflex sights on pretty much everybody's rig, yeah.

• 1:33:33Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:33:34Speaker 05

  Yep. And, you know, and again, that, you know, that, that platform there was, was appropriate because it was, you know, mostly metal, uh, everything. I mean, fucking everything was made out of metal, close quarters, um, you know, so it, yeah, MP5s, I, uh, you know, even looking back on it, I, I would use those again. I mean, what we were wearing, I think, was, was the right call for it. Uh, we did have body armor and helmets on, but yeah, a classic. Visit board search and seizure, uh, you know, type of kit and, and set up. Nighttime? Say that again? Was it at nighttime? Yeah, it was. It was, uh, it was probably around midnight, one o'clock, somewhere in there.

• 1:34:15Speaker 05

  Uh, and it took us about four and a half hours to secure the whole fucking thing. Uh, obviously, most of that time was down at the birthing area, dealing with all the people. I mean, we hogtied them and put fucking sandbags over their heads and corralled them all into one area. And some guys were crying, some of them literally shit themselves and pissed themselves. Um, you know, some of them were, were, you know, in a man pile to begin with, all fucking, all over each other and like, what the fuck? But, uh, yeah, it was, it was a filthy fucking birthing area, as you can imagine, you know, out, out that far with no, no real resupply other than kind of the bare necessities. So, um, but, you know, ultimately, they, you know, we were able to get on there before they, they could do anything.

• 1:34:59Speaker 05

  They didn't blow anything up and, uh, and we managed to, to capture all of them. So. How many, uh, how many operators were there? There was, uh, I think thirty-one or two of us. We had a, uh, we had an SDV platoon with us, uh, also. So it was two, two SEAL platoons. Did they roll in in the, uh, with the sub or were they on the, uh, ribs? So they, they did a, an op, um, on or with an SDV that, uh, you know, prior to that, uh, from an intelligence gathering standpoint to try to, you know, uh, fill in some of the gaps also, um, and, and really weren't able to provide much, much more intel than, than we already had.

• 1:35:40Speaker 05

  You know, they weren't able to confirm, you know, any of the, the suspicions of, you know, pipes laden with explosives or anything, because ultimately there wasn't, you know, they, they had the explosives on board, but, uh, but they weren't, they weren't rigged, uh, the way that they would have need to have been to, to actually blow everything up when we stepped on. So. They got fucking lazy, huh? Well, I, you know, there, there was one guy that made a comment in, uh, post interrogations that said, uh, you know, they told us to, to do that, but we all kind of looked around and realized like, well, what the fuck are we supposed to do then? You know, we're twenty-five miles off the coast with no boats and you want us to blow this up? Like, well, that's gonna fuck us up too. So I think that's probably most of why they didn't do it is, is they didn't want to turn it into fucking suicide bombers. You know? Wow. They'd have blown themselves up, but.

• 1:36:25Speaker 05

  I've never heard that before. Everybody's always, uh, seems to be, um. Pretty willing to volunteer for that. Yeah, you know, again, I think, you know, when you're talking regular Iraqi military, even the special Republican Guard guys, it's more mafia style than it is, you know, hardline Islamic terrorist, you know, so in dealing with with the actual Iraqi military, most of those guys have no interest in in dying, you know, so or are scared of it at least enough to not do something like that, but. Yeah. Were the prisoners pretty compliant or? Yeah, they were scared shitless. Yeah. You know, they they didn't didn't really fight at all. I mean, some of them a little

• 1:37:06Speaker 05

  bit of scuffle here and there, but it you didn't get the impression that they wanted to fight, that's for sure. Were you guys on running nods then? You were a white light? I mean, there was enough light there already that we just didn't need them. We did have white lights and there were parts of the burling where where we used it, like some bathrooms that were dark or, you know, some sections of it that were, you know, lower lit that we that we white lighted a little bit. But, I mean, then not even all of us had fucking nods, you know, in in terms of, you know, a two, two or a binocular setting, like I had a fucking, I think it's, what is it, a PVS? 14.

• 1:37:49Speaker 05

  The the monocular fucking, yeah, you know, I had to do some driving with with a fucking monocular for for a while, you know, so we were, I think, under outfitted a fair bit, but. Damn, it's fucking crazy how far up. Yeah. Everything's calm, you know, it's relatively short amount of time. Yeah, I mean, there were, you know, once we went in country, we were in in four Humvees, none of them were armored. Two of them didn't even have fucking doors on them, you know, so the two that did, they were those just thin skin, like vinyl doors that we hung body armor on the fucking doors to give us something, something extra, like we'd throw our body armor on the fucking, you know, out the window and over the door to give you some kind of fucking protection on the doors, but.

• 1:38:34Speaker 05

  Damn, dude. Yeah. So is that where that op ended or? Yeah, so we we finished that and then there was a kind of a turnover team. There was, you know, interrogators and I think a Marine fast group came on to.

• 1:38:53Speaker 05

  Basically, you know, hold it for however long until they brought, you know, I don't know, contractors to operate it or what, but yeah, we just, we took it over and when we finished, it was right at when the sun was coming up. And so our replacements showed up on a helo and we jumped on, on back on the ribs and then ultimately we loaded the ribs onto a fucking fast cat, like a big fast catamaran and rode that back to, uh, back to K and B Kuwait Naval Base. So we get back there, do the whole debrief thing. And at that point, I mean, that's basically what started the war, right? And that happened the night before the invasion. So we went from Kuwait Naval Base up to Ali Aslim Air Force Base in the

• 1:39:37Speaker 05

  northern part of Kuwait and loaded all of our shit up. We had to steal a Humvee from the air force because we only had three of them and it was green. So like overnight, we had cans of paint and a couple of paintbrushes and our new guys fucking hand painted a green Humvee tan. And we loaded all of our shit up in it and then drove across the border up and drove all the way to Nazaria in one, one fell swoop.

• 1:40:03Shawn Ryan?

  Well, before we, uh, before we go there, I want to go back. Uh, so that op that we just discussed, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but was that your first interaction with, uh, taking something down with dogs?

• 1:40:21Speaker 05

  No, um, we didn't have dogs on that at all.

• 1:40:24Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't have dogs? Okay.

• 1:40:26Speaker 05

  No, the, the, the first time there was even, uh, mention of them was towards the end of that deployment up in the northern part of the country in Tukret. There was a marine contingent that had an explosive detection dog by where we were at.

• 1:40:41Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:40:42Speaker 05

  So, um, yeah, so we, uh, so we end up going up to Ali Aslim and end up, uh, there was the 15th Marine Expediary Unit, um, was taking some pretty fucking heavy casualties in Nazaria along a main supply route. A lot of the Saddam Fatain guys were heavily concentrated in Nazaria and, uh, they were giving, giving them all, all they could fucking deal with. And so Mattis, who was the CEO of, uh, the First Marine Division at the time. Asked Commodore Harwood if he would let some of our guys come up and ambush the ambushers that were fucking with his supply route. So we went up into Nazaria and spent a couple

• 1:41:26Speaker 05

  of weeks there disrupting every fucking thing we could. And we spent kind of a blue gold, we spent that time doing kind of a blue gold thing with another platoon from Team Three. And so we would go out one night and do operations and they would be our QRF. And then the next night we'd flip flop. We did a couple of, couple of ops where we went out together and, you know, we would drive or they would drive, you know, and kind of all go out as a group. We hit a train station as a group. That was one of the times where I had to drive on nods, totally dark for like three and a half hours in the insert. And we pull up and hit the train station. We establish a perimeter and whatever. And it was on, that was the first

• 1:42:08Speaker 05

  mission where we found, actually found like CBR, the, you know, chemical biological radiological suits and two pam chloride pens and bags of white powder and all kinds of like chemical weapon training suits and a bunch of shit in there that we turned over and never heard anything more about it. What was the pucker factor like? Huge. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, I mean, when you're coming across that shit, you're just like, holy fuck, you know, like, are we stepping into a fucking, you know, cache of goddamn, you know, chemical weapons or what the fuck is this, you know? So, but so we spent two weeks there just again

• 1:42:47Speaker 05

  trying to disrupt operations, spent a lot of time, you know, blowing up fucking like, we'd find caches of weapons of, you know, crates of RPGs, you know, shit like that. We had some, we had a UAV guy at the time that that program was just kind of starting to come online. And so there's a team guy UAV operator that went with us and we'd launch it from the Humvee. And it was awesome because like we would drive along and it would be up above and, you know, at a certain level. On the ground, unless you kind of really know what you're looking at, you can't tell if that's a real fucking plane or a UAV if it's high enough, right? Yeah. You could draw out, you know, the fucking insurgents because they'd start shooting at it.

• 1:43:31Speaker 05

  You know, and so we would use that as much as a fucking decoy as we would, you know, actually getting the real time intelligence of what's ahead is that you draw out people to start shooting at it and stuff. So, you know, we would, you know, spent, like I said, spent a couple of weeks just doing tit for tat, trying to disrupt the network of people that were fucking with the convoy routes for the Marines. And it seems like we did at least an adequate enough job to keep them from getting fucked with anymore, so. What was the resistance like? Were they pretty dedicated or? No, it was real mixed. Most of it was, you know, again, this was at the start of the war, so I think just my kind of assumption was that they didn't really understand.

• 1:44:14Speaker 05

  It was kind of like the guys in Yemen is that it was more like testing what they could get away with or not. Okay. So it was much more cat and mouse kind of shit, you know? And because of that, I think, you know, they based a lot of what they did after that as, you know, teams came in and established fobs and whatever is that, you know, that kind of set the tone, I think, for what they knew they could start to get away with or not, how much of a fight they could put up with before they had to, you know, retreat or bound back or bag ass and live to fight another day, you know? So a lot of it was, you know, and for us too, some of it was us feeling them out, you know, is, you know, if we shoot through these windows and we take fucking shots from here,

• 1:44:57Speaker 05

  you know, how we, how we respond, what does that dictate, you know, in terms of their response and, you know, whether or not we use the UAV? If we, you know, blow up caches, do they come to see what the fucking explosion was? If, you know, if we blow up, like we blew up vehicles, you know, or shot water tanks, like we'd come across little areas that, that we knew, you know, people had just been there, like there was fresh food and little like almost campsites, had different checkpoints and places, you know, or, you know, you'd take shots from somewhere and you'd go check it out and then they would leave and you'd find, you know, crates of fucking ammo and AKs and. And RPG rounds and fuel tanks and vehicles and shit and so we would swoop in there and

• 1:45:41Speaker 05

  just place fucking standard charges on everything and just blow the fuck out of all of it, you know, and then sometimes we would, we would probe in further, sometimes we would go back and see if they would come back. It was just, it was a lot of that kinda, you know, back and forth, cat and mouse bullshit of figuring out, you know, what the fuck they're gonna do based on what we do and vice versa.

• 1:45:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but you got, so you guys were fucking engaging?

• 1:46:02Speaker 05

  Uh, in, in some cases, yeah, you know, it, it was pretty light though, you know, it was, it was very, um, what I guess I would call it, it was more reconnaissance driven, you know, on, on both ends, you know, both in fire and effect and, and everything else. But, um, it wasn't until we went up to the northern part of the country where it was a legitimate fucking like holy fuck gunfight, um, you know, where there was bullets flying every which goddamn direction, um, you know, into the Humvees and right past your fucking head and in the ground next to you. And I mean, it was, it was like kicking over a fucking hornet's nest when we, when we went up there. But between Nazaria and the northern part, we did hang out, uh, we were in Baghdad, we took down a SCUD base.

• 1:46:47Shawn Ryan?

  That's fucking awesome.

• 1:46:49Speaker 05

  Which was pretty neat, especially growing up, you know, in the first Gulf War and seeing, you know, how big of an impact SCUDs had on, uh, everything. And, you know, so this was the, the Iraqi army's main SCUD training facility base. Uh, and there, you know, I took pictures of, of, uh, they had murals, these crazy like anti-American murals that had all sorts of twisted shit, like, it'd have like a blond-haired, blue-eyed, muscular guy on his knees with his hands behind his back and like a muscled out Iraqi looking guy with his shirt off, with an Iraqi flag wrapped around the American's neck, like choking his eyes until they're bulging out and falling out of his head and...

• 1:47:27Shawn Ryan?

  No shit? You got pictures of this?

• 1:47:29Speaker 05

  I do.

• 1:47:30Shawn Ryan?

  I'm gonna put them up, yeah, on screen.

• 1:47:32Speaker 05

  Like a, a skull painted like, like an American flag with a fist painted like an Iraqi flag, like coming down and then crushing the fucking skull apart. Just weird shit like that, you know, and, uh, the like, but, you know, again, thinking of it like if you were to go to... You know, N A B Coronado and like, that's what it was like. There are these crazy anti-American murals like all over the base, you know, it just was weird, but.

• 1:47:56Shawn Ryan?

  You know, people don't fucking realize how anti-American it was over there and how much they wanted to fuck us up and. And in Afghanistan too, I remember seeing the rugs with, uh, did you ever get those? They had the little prayer rugs with the twin towers.

• 1:48:10Speaker 05

  Oh, no, I never got those, but.

• 1:48:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they had rugs with twin towers on them and it had the plane. Uh, the planes crashing into the fucking twin towers. They used to prey on them. And, uh, yeah, but anyways.

• 1:48:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's weird to see that. I mean, when you're in, you know, a foreign country and you're on military bases, you know. Basically fighting, fighting their military and taking their, their facilities down. Seeing that shit, it did again, it's kind of like the, the same sentiment as being on the coals that it. Makes you realize exactly that is like, these people fucking hate us. Like it's ingrained in their culture. It's, you know. Uh, pervasive in their military, like it, it's just, uh, it's ever present, you know, so. Uh, similarly there is that, you know, as soon as we would roll up, a lot of times they would just bag ass and, you know, they'd take pot shots and it'd be a little bit of back and forth, but. They, they ultimately didn't want to fight a whole lot. Um, that was in the northern part of Baghdad. So we spent, you know, some time in Baghdad.

• 1:49:06Speaker 05

  Doing a few different things, um, like that and then. Went up to the northern part of the country and, and for reference, um. The, the entire Iraq campaign originally was supposed to be, I want to say it was the. I think it was the third armored division, um. And the first armored division were supposed to. Come together, uh, basically the, the third A D was supposed to come down out of Turkey. And take Mosul into Creed and, and, uh, even the, the Sunni triangle and then ultimately. Um. Set up shop on the northern part of Baghdad. The first armored division was supposed to come out of Kuwait. And do the same thing, go through Nazaria and, and, uh.

• 1:49:48Speaker 05

  You know, end up at the southern part of Baghdad and then that was gonna be like the meeting point where they kinda crushed Baghdad together from the north and the south at the same time. And so you had a shitload of of army troops that were on ships going through the fucking straits that were gonna go through Turkey and Turkey at the last second decided you can't use our fucking country to assault Iraq from, like right before we were supposed to launch it. So, you know, in in true Murphy's Law fashion, it was all right, well, I guess, you know, change of plan, we're gonna go south to all the way to fucking the Turkey border. And so it was the first A D and the first Marine Division. You know, about half of the the amount of troops as we had planned on using and just

• 1:50:33Speaker 05

  swept from the southern border all the way to the northern border. So it was literally, it was like a front line just moving, you know, similar to you hear shit about World War Two and you watch, you know, documentaries on this front was here and whatever. It was very much old school, conventional military planning that way and and front lines and whatever. And so we were with the the first Marine Division, specifically with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit most of the time. And we would go ahead of their convoys and scout out bridges and routes and make sure areas were were cool for them to to come through or whatever. And so that's most of what we did, you know, from from when we left Naziriyah, moving up north as we accompanied them and just kinda did that.

• 1:51:17Speaker 05

  Were you still in shit Humvees, pulling reconnaissance for them? You weren't in low pro vehicles or anything like that? Nope, shit Humvees with fucking no armor. Jesus Christ, dude, that's fucking ballsy. Yeah. Damn. Yeah, no, and and, you know, and also, mind you, we were going ahead of of where the armor was. You know, so you've got these front lines of, you know, tanks and L A Vs and L A Rs and all this, you know, heavy fucking shit. And we're in these thin-skinned fucking Humvees with nothing but small arms and a couple of Gustaf rounds, fucking driving twenty, thirty miles north of, of where the fucking most Northern American troops are at, scouting out their fucking routes like a bunch of dumb asses.

• 1:51:56Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:51:57Speaker 05

  Um, you know, and we just, uh, yeah, we just fucking pulled it off.

• 1:52:01Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, man. I mean, did you guys get, uh, hit or no IEDs?

• 1:52:06Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:52:07Shawn Ryan?

  I guess it's brand new.

• 1:52:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, at then there, there really weren't any IEDs, any IED threats. There were, you know, pot shots here and there, you know, similarly, like people trying to figure out, I mean, it was almost like hiding in plain sight is that it was so unexpected that it was kinda like catching them with their pants down, cause they're just like, are those our guys or who, like?

• 1:52:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:27Speaker 05

  They would never expect four Humvees by themselves, you know, to be twenty miles fucking north of where American forces are at. So I, I think a lot of times they're just kinda looking around, not knowing what the fu- who the fuck we were, uh, which is dumb, you know, on our part, but, uh, but anyway, so that's what we did.

• 1:52:44Shawn Ryan?

  How far ahead are you, uh, how far, how far ahead of the, uh, the Marines were you?

• 1:52:51Speaker 05

  It, it depended, you know, depended on, on the route, the terrain, how, you know, what direction they were going, you know, we did it multiple times and we would usually do it at night, I mean, we always did it at night.

• 1:53:00Shawn Ryan?

  Five minutes out, twenty-four hours out?

• 1:53:02Speaker 05

  No, I mean, it was, it was usually a few hours, you know?

• 1:53:06Shawn Ryan?

  So if you got into a tick and you took some heavies, you're looking at two hours fucking time before anybody's coming to get your ass.

• 1:53:13Speaker 05

  On the ground, yes. The one, the one saving grace that, uh, for sure made us all feel better about it was we had a, uh, an Air Force fucking, um, CCT guy with us, as well as our comm guy was fucking shit hot. And we did have a dedicated fucking AC-130 above us that, uh, if we needed, and we did, uh, we called them in once and those motherfuckers were on station, I'm not shitting you in like forty-five seconds.

• 1:53:39Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:53:40Speaker 05

  Just, they were fucking right there, you know, so it was awesome. I'll, I'll get to that in a minute, but, uh, so yeah, we, we had, had them on the line, you know, basically accompanying us when we were doing it most of the time, or at least to my knowledge. Um, who knows, maybe ROIC and AIC just said that to make us feel better. Fuck, I don't know, but, but like I said, we did have to call on them once and they were right there. So I'm assuming it's legit, but um, as, as the, uh, you know, Baghdad falls. And so now it's like, okay, well, uh, you know, this is the kind of the, that was the big push that we were worried about. Um, now it was, we've got Decrete and Mosul.

• 1:54:19Speaker 05

  Decrete is Saddam's hometown. So, uh, we end up with the entire first marine division, right? It's like 25,000 fucking troops and it's a couple of miles of tanks and LAVs and LARs and, you know, fucking Humvees and you name it. Yeah. As far as you can see all the way forward and all the way behind you, I mean, miles of convoy and SEAL Team three echo platoon, right? 16 fucking team guys and 25,000 fucking Marines. So we're uh, convoying up to Decrete and the, we're, we're planning on taking it down the next day. So it's getting to be nightfall. We pull up and we're, we're on the southern edge of the city. And it's basically, we're on this main highway that runs into town.

• 1:55:04Speaker 05

  And then there was like a, you know, a commuter ring kind of road that went around the city and we stopped at that intersection. And when we pulled up, there was a, you know, a, a number of headshed Marines that were, uh, sitting there kind of planning out the next day. And when we pulled up, uh, to kind of dirt dye the next days, uh, operations with them, you know, the first thing we asked was like, hey, did you guys fucking secure this area? Like, have you probed out? And oh yeah, everything's fucking good. Okay. So we pull our Humvees up and, you know, like a bunch of assholes, take our boots off and fucking start eating chow and fucking white light headlamps on and, you know, like we're on a fucking SNR mission at Fort Irwin in July, you know, like just totally fucking

• 1:55:47Speaker 05

  no, no discipline, you know, really. Cause again, we're like, dude, we're with 25,000 Marines and they, you know, like they've been here for the last two hours. Like, I think we're good, right? No. So we're literally like maps on the hoods, fucking talking over what we're gonna do and, and they're saying, You know, tomorrow, we're gonna have, you know, this fucking group take this part, this group take that part. Uh, you know, SEAL Team Three Echo, you guys are gonna come in from the east with, with this group and you're gonna, you know, circle up and take this route and hit the fucking palace and take it down. As we're planning this, all of a sudden, all fucking hell breaks loose, like gunfire just erupts.

• 1:56:26Speaker 05

  And it's every fucking where. I mean, you know, there's explosions and looking back on it now, um, the road that we were on in that ring, there was a kind of a little nest of, of trees and then a tree line that, that followed that road heading east. And, uh, there was a group of insurgents that were in that fucking tree nest, literally probably 20 yards from where the fucking convoy paralleled. Just sitting there, fucking ski masks, trench coats, AKs, fucking a little, you know, cachet nest of fucking stuff. Right behind that, they had a couple of vehicles with a couple of technicals that had anti-aircraft fucking pieces on the back. And the, and the beds of the trucks were filled with fucking shells.

• 1:57:10Speaker 05

  And so, um, what ended up happening is two Marines walked out into that field to take a shit. And fucking literally bumped into a group, fucking all on their knees in the dirt, fucking dirt diving how they were gonna ambush us. Uh, so these guys, you know, are like, hey, well, you know, not, not the most brilliant fucking plan, but like they walk out and they startle them instead of just fucking shooting them right there while they're not paying attention, like they confront them. These guys jump up and fucking zipper the fucking Marines up. And that kicks off, now Marines are fucking shooting at them, they're shooting at us and, and we're caught between both the insurgents and the Marines fucking shooting at each other.

• 1:57:52Speaker 05

  And so, uh, there was a Marine AT4 round that hit one of the fucking technical trucks and it blew up. And again, we had no idea that the guys were there or that the trucks were there at the time. We're sitting there just, and I mean, I jumped into, into the front seat. I'm trying to throw my fucking shit on and, I mean, there's rounds coming in the fucking dash, zipping past my fucking head, you know, hitting the fucking engine compartment, hitting the dirt right outside where my feet are at, I mean, hitting the fucking windshield, you name it, all over the fucking place. And uh, and so, you know, we get all of our shit on. We get into like a lazy L ambush facing the contact to try to figure out what the fuck's going on. Cause we also know, hey, there's fucking

• 1:58:32Speaker 05

  blue forces right there. Like what the fuck is going on? And so, um, when that AT4 round hit that technical with all the rounds in it, well, it sent, you know, dozens of fucking anti-aircraft rounds scattered, half detonated all over the fucking place. And they start blowing up sympathetically, like and intermittently, uh, making us all think that, you know, there's this monster force ambushing us, right? Cause all we see is, you know, it's like artillery's fucking going off. And so we get on our fucking night vision and we start to identify, you know, what's what. And there's a fucking dude that's like, um, he's probably 25, 30 yards away, crouched down,

• 1:59:16Speaker 05

  ski mask on, trench coat, fucking AK. And he's just like sitting there crouched down, just kinda turning his head, looking like this, cool as a fucking cucumber. He doesn't have nods at that, at that point, uh, most of our guys did. And, uh, and so we get them on, we get in this L-shaped ambush, we de-conflict with the Marines. We all had suppressors on, so they, they actually didn't even realize we were taking care of that guy and then the nest behind him. But, um, so most of our guys fucking engaged this dude. What was interesting is, uh, there was six or seven of us, I think, that all took shots at basically at the same time, fucking center mass and drilled him. And that motherfucker dropped his gun and ran for probably 50 or 60 yards before he fell down and fucking died.

• 2:00:01Shawn Ryan?

  What, um, this happens a lot. What kind of rounds were you guys using?

• 2:00:05Speaker 05

  Green tip.

• 2:00:06Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking green tip. You know, uh, we had that same shit happen, uh, to us and it still blows my mind that after all the after action reports that were coming out, that we didn't fucking change from green tip because it was just zipping right through.

• 2:00:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:22Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, a lot of times guys didn't even know they were being fucking shot.

• 2:00:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a good case for 300 blackout.

• 2:00:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:29Speaker 05

  Especially a fucking 124 grain, not a, not a 205 grain. But, um, but anyway, so.

• 2:00:37Speaker 05

  So we end up neutralizing that guy. He goes, and there was, there were some interesting things. Once, you know, everything fucking dies down, uh, the two Marines that got zipped up, one of them, I think ended up dying. The other one got medevaced out and, and was actually saved by, he had like a fucking Tom, Tom Clancy novel shoved down his, in between his flak jacket and his fucking chest and one of the rounds fucking stopped halfway through the fucking book.

• 2:01:03Speaker 05

  And had like his, half of his ass shot off too. Like he took an AK round in his ass and blew, you know, most of his ass cheek off. But our, our corpsman fucking helped him out and got, uh, got them as, as patched up as they could and what have you. But, uh, upon further investigation, you know, once we got the Marines to stop shooting, the sympathetic detonations from the, uh,

• 2:01:25Speaker 05

  from the technical fucking artillery pieces stopped going off. And we kind of get in a, in a leapfrog forward, moving through the, the area where we were ambushed from in this nest. And similarly, like these guys were set up for, um, you know, several days worth of food and, you know, lots of ammo and, uh, you know, explosives and fucking, um, uh, RPG rounds and all sorts of shit. But when we finally came across the one, the one guy that, uh, that we shot and, and took off running, he had, uh, some really weird fucking personal effects. He had absolutely no identification on him whatsoever. Like not a wallet, not a driver's

• 2:02:05Speaker 05

  license, nothing. Uh, you know, no, no papers whatsoever, but he had on like a fucking John Wayne gun belt, like a legitimate, like something you would buy out of a fucking store, like a toy. And it was a plastic fucking pistol in it. You gotta be shitting. Yeah. He had a toy, plastic pistol and a, in a cheese dick fucking John Wayne gun belt. He sure as fuck had a real AK. Uh, and when we found the AK, uh, and looked at his hands, uh, this was totally by fucking luck, but both of his hands had bullet wounds right through the meat of his hands and both the pistol grip and the forward grip of the AK had, had bullet holes and blood on the fucking gun where he dropped it and took off running. Good shots.

• 2:02:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, again, totally by accident, but shot the fucking gun out of his hand. And, uh, and then he had, uh, a number of rounds in his fucking chest cavity, uh, but was again, he was about 60 yards away, uh, you know, when we actually found him. So. Needless to say, after that, um, you know, trying to get some sleep and get ready for the next night wasn't the easiest thing. I mean, at that point, again, there's no fobs. Like, the entire time we were there, we were either sleeping in little two-man tents that we brought with us. Most of the time, we would just throw a ground pad underneath the fucking Humvee and sleep under it, you know, and then that's how we slept 90% of the time. And so, no different there. Same, same plan moving forward. We're gonna take down the palace the next day, uh, and take down the entire town of Tucrit with, you know,

• 2:03:34Speaker 05

  25,000 fucking Marines. And so, we did. And, uh, we got up at sunrise, fucking, you know, just a mass swath of fucking US forces swept through the entire town of Tucrit and took the whole fucking thing down in a matter of about a half a day.

• 2:03:48Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:03:49Speaker 05

  And, uh, there were, there was resistance. There were pockets, uh, here and there. It wasn't, you know, Saddam's last stand by any stretch. I think, again, is, is that, you know, they were, they knew how outgunned they were, uh, you know, and they put up fights and tested certain areas here and there and got handily defeated, uh, pretty quickly and decided, you know, we need to figure out a, a more guerrilla warfare insurgent style tactic if we're gonna have any fucking, you know, potential success against these guys. And so, you know, there, again, there were pockets of resistance. There were gunfights here and there, some rooftop shit here and there. Uh, so we go to the palace and, and same thing, like, it, it took us a couple of hours to take that down. Um, and, uh,

• 2:04:31Speaker 05

  and, you know, it was just, I mean, that's about a fucking episode in and of itself in terms of just what the palace was like. I mean, it was just, the, the opulence that existed in that fucking place was, was of biblical proportion. Like, it was just crazy the amount of fucking nice shit in, in there. I mean, from the, the hand, hand-inlaid tile ceilings to fucking, everything's made out of gold to, you know, marble floors, marble pillars, fucking, you know, you had gold soap dishes and gold toilet brushes. And I mean, it was just, it was fucking nuts.

• 2:05:02Shawn Ryan?

  Before we go into that, uh, I can't wait to get there. I'm just curious, like, um, so you guys had pretty fucking shitty living, living conditions, sleeping under fucking Humvees and...

• 2:05:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I mean, no, no running water.

• 2:05:16Shawn Ryan?

  But what I'm curious about is, uh, the morale. I mean, you guys were working your ass off and...

• 2:05:23Speaker 05

  It was high. We were fucking loving it, you know, because it was, it was like, it was finally the fucking big show, you know, because we were at team three when nine eleven happened. We didn't go to Afghanistan and so, and then they were like, yeah, Afghanistan's going off, but you're going to the fucking Philippines. Like, are you fucking kidding me?

• 2:05:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:40Speaker 05

  You know, so then Iraq kicks off and we finally, you know, we trained for almost two months to hit one fucking target where we take down fucking, you know, twenty six, twenty seven dudes with, you know, very little resistance. And so, yeah, it's like now we're, we're finally fucking doing it, you know?

• 2:05:55Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's fucking crazy because you take the gunfight out and, you know, I'm betting that morale would have been at an all time fucking low. And, you know, I've heard you say it a hundred million fucking times about, you know, a dog's not happy unless he's working and you direct, you relate that directly to humans and you guys are doing exactly what the fuck you are trained to do. And if I was a betting man, and I am, I would bet that there is nowhere else in the world you would rather be than ducking down in a ditch, taking gunfire and fucking returning it.

• 2:06:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was the, the finally, you know, feeling, you know, so it was a neat, and it was, it was really neat from a historical standpoint in that it was, it was a very tangible existence in terms of the front lines and, you know, the, the historical, I think, relevance of, of what we were doing and where and when, you know, just it was, it was the initial invasion of, of the Iraq war.

• 2:07:00Shawn Ryan?

  It's fucking insane. I mean, you kicked the fucking goddamn war off.

• 2:07:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:07:05Shawn Ryan?

  That's.

• 2:07:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was pretty neat, for sure.

• 2:07:07Shawn Ryan?

  Pretty fucking badass.

• 2:07:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, just, you know, again, it was the right place at the right time and, you know, so, yeah, we, we enjoyed it. It was, it was a neat, neat time to be there for sure.

• 2:07:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:18Speaker 05

  Um, one thing I didn't mention is we actually had a platoon member quit, uh, after, after the go plat, though, to, not to counter that thought process, but just to, uh, to make people realize like. You know, even even in those circles, there's there's people that decide, you know what? This isn't fucking for me. We had a guy that, uh, yeah, he even leading up to the go plaid. It was his first platoon, uh, and he was fucking scared and, uh, and was basically like, hey, at what point is this just fucking too dangerous and we're not gonna do it? And we were like, it's not motherfucker. We like, we have to fucking do this. You know, like, yeah, I know that the last report I gave you was that there's 115 people on board and and there's four 48 inch fucking oil pipes rigged with explosives to blow up

• 2:08:03Speaker 05

  when we step on board. But guess what? We're still going on it. So, you know, grab a hold of your nuts and and that's what's happening. And, uh, he froze, uh, like when we got on there. I remember I in fact, that the very first, uh, room that I entered on there was a fucking dark ass bathroom. And he was, uh, we went through like this small little corridor and then he was supposed to be the number one guy and he froze right in the fucking doorway. And I grabbed him and fucking just threw him to the fucking side and and me and the the two guys behind me finished clearing that bathroom. I mean, he was like a deer in a headlights, just completely fucking frozen.

• 2:08:39Shawn Ryan?

  You had a fucking Navy SEAL operator quit on target in the middle of a fucking operation?

• 2:08:46Speaker 05

  Yep. And, uh, so our, our OIC grabbed him and just said, get in the fucking back and then hold rear security and stay with me. I mean, at that point, he was a fucking liability, a huge liability.

• 2:08:57Shawn Ryan?

  Might as well be a fucking prisoner.

• 2:08:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so he stayed in the back fucking, you know, scared out of his fucking mind. And, uh, and then when we got back, um, you know, like I said, we went right up to Ali Aslem Air Force Base. We were getting in our vehicles, you know, getting ready to fucking go go into Iraq to drive across the fucking border into Iraq, loaded down to the gills to go ambush the ambushers, so to speak, in in Naziriyah. And he and he stood there right there and said, I can't do it. Like, I can't, I'm sorry, guys, I can't fucking do it.

• 2:09:30Speaker 05

  Holy shit. Like, I got a wife, I wanna have kids, I just, I'm sorry, I can't fucking do this. And we were all like, you motherfucker. He was a sixty gunner for us, too. Fuck. And so, no shit, and, and this guy is now a team guy, I think he's still on, on active duty, so I'm not gonna mention his name, but... As a fucking, as... No, no, not this guy, the, the guy that, that I'm mentioning now, uh, so, he, he left, he went home and fucking got out. Uh, you know, separated and was fucking done. Um, I'll get to him in a minute, the guy, we had an intel rep, right? This guy's an IS3, like, twenty, twenty-one years old. He's been through fucking bootcamp and, and IS school and has been an intel guy for, you know, group one or whatever the fuck for a couple of months.

• 2:10:14Speaker 05

  And, and he's at that same base. And I'm not shitting you, this dude's like, I'll fucking go. And we all kinda looked around and we were like, "You know how to fucking shoot a saw?" And he's like, "Nope." And we're like, "Well, here's the fucking belt and here's the trigger, you're fucking coming with us." Holy shit. And we drug a fucking IS3 that hasn't been through BUDs, hasn't been through SQT, hasn't been on a fucking range with us. Hand him a fucking, a saw, and we go in country with him. And he fucking accompanied us the whole goddamn way. And he and I actually sat on the rooftop, I, I talk about this in, in the Trident book. Sat on the rooftop of Saddam's palace and almost got fucking mortared. That's a whole nother story, but, but this guy, again, and he ended up going through BUDs after that.

• 2:10:58Speaker 05

  He came, came home after that deployment, cuz he stayed after we left, cuz he was on a different rotation. Did his fucking pull there, went to BUDs, graduated, and has been a SEAL for the last fucking twenty years. I think I know this fucker. Yeah. Uh, was he, uh, of Russian descent? I don't think so. Maybe, okay. Yeah, I don't think so. I'll, I'll tell you his name off camera, maybe you know him, but, uh, fucking great dude, you know? I mean, you talk about balls of fucking steel, like, doesn't even know what he's doing, he's like, fuck it, I'll, I'll sit in this fucking spot with a gun out the window, and yeah, he fucking went with us. That's awesome. Yeah, he went with us, uh, you know, for, for, I mean, he went with us on the, uh, to take the palace down, too, you know? I mean, he sat in the fucking back right,

• 2:11:42Speaker 05

  uh, or no, sorry, the back left fucking window with a saw out the fucking window. Pulling fucking vehicle security while we were driving through the town to get up to the uh to get up to the palace.

• 2:11:54Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Kudos to that dude.

• 2:11:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, fuck great, great fucking dude, but when we ended up getting back, uh, nobody would talk to the guy that quit. And I mean, nobody would even fucking look at him, you know, he tried to, hey, guys, fucking welcome back and he was still at the team for like, I don't know, 10 days, a week, two weeks, maybe something like that while he was out processing or whatever and and nobody would even fucking look at him. You know, wouldn't talk to him, nothing.

• 2:12:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:19Speaker 05

  I I say I almost feel bad, I don't, I still don't, fuck that guy.

• 2:12:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:23Speaker 05

  I mean, he fucking left us hanging, he can go fuck himself.

• 2:12:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:26Speaker 05

  And I have no doubt that, uh, you know, he'll spend the rest of his life living in a world of regret for doing that, but he should.

• 2:12:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:34Speaker 05

  You know, so.

• 2:12:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's, uh,

• 2:12:39Shawn Ryan?

  I've never seen that fucking happen, not, well, I have seen that happen, but not in, uh, not in a unit like

• 2:12:47Shawn Ryan?

  the fucking SEAL team.

• 2:12:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:12:48Shawn Ryan?

  Have never, not once.

• 2:12:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:12:51Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:12:54Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh, the palace.

• 2:12:55Speaker 05

  So the palace, um, the palace, again, it was, uh, it was everything you would think, you know, in terms of just how how it was made and how fucking big it was and and the the attention to detail that was put into constructing that fucking thing was mind boggling.

• 2:13:13Shawn Ryan?

  Now, did you get any, uh, souvenirs by chance?

• 2:13:17Speaker 05

  There there were no sou- souvenirs to be had.

• 2:13:19Shawn Ryan?

  Ah.

• 2:13:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, zero, so.

• 2:13:21Shawn Ryan?

  Alright.

• 2:13:22Speaker 05

  Uh, it's completely empty, nothing to it.

• 2:13:25Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing to see here.

• 2:13:26Speaker 05

  Nothing to see here and, uh, there, so, I mean, in all seriousness, it was mostly vacated, uh, in that, you know, that was, while it was his hometown, uh, it was not a palace that he spent a lot of time in, so it wasn't like filled with Saddam's personal effects like like the Baghdad palaces were. There was stuff in it, uh, but not, again, not like he was living there all the time like the ones that he did in Baghdad, but, um.

• 2:13:50Shawn Ryan?

  I know, uh, I mean, I don't. There was a lot of good shit in some of those palaces like.

• 2:13:56Speaker 05

  So I've heard.

• 2:13:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:00Speaker 05

  But, uh, yeah, so the, uh, yeah, the palace was, was again, it was, uh, in, in terms of actually taking it down, it took a couple of hours. It, it wasn't, you know, some heavily guarded fucking institution at that point. It was that part of the town was a ghost town again, I think. There, there were indicators that, um, you know, that people had been there recently, just like a lot of the other places, but had just left. And, you know, thinking of it now and, and looking back on it is that, you know, to have a, a crew of, uh, you know, almost 30,000 US soldiers, many of whom in armored vehicles rolling up towards, you know, how, I don't care how many of you are, there are in a palace, like they're either gonna knock the palace down

• 2:14:44Speaker 05

  or, you know, whatever, like you're, you're not gonna stand a chance. And so I think the pockets of resistance that we did run into were, you know, we either caught them off guard or they were just seeing, you know, how, how hard we would fight back or go after them or, or whatever, but there weren't these like epic fucking four hour gun battles. You know, there were, there were shots here and there and it was no, uh, you know, no real fucking dug in and, and, you know, pulling fucking grenade pins and dragging people out of, out of buildings. It, it just wasn't that, you know, for, for that. But, uh, once we secured the palace though, then we kinda set up shop there. And at that point, like we were finally done moving through the country, you know? We, we had spent that entire time in country constantly, you know, bump, bumping forward and coming back

• 2:15:29Speaker 05

  and bumping forward and coming back, moving our way from, from the, the southern edge of the country all the way to the north. So, I mean, in that respect, it was kinda neat to have fought our way the entire way of the, the entire fucking country, uh, during that initial invasion period. But, um, but once we got to the palace and took it down and set up shop there, then we were, we were static and, and that's where we were the static for the most and for the longest. And so we started doing like some sniper overwatch shit. We'd go out in town from there and, uh, you know, and, and set up similar operations of, of kinda what we were doing down in Nazaria, uh, and in the southern part of Baghdad of just kinda going out and getting our own intel and figuring out what the fuck's going on.

• 2:16:11Speaker 05

  And if, if anything was to be had or to be done, then, then we did it, but. There was a 24/7 watch on the rooftop because it was the highest point in the city. And I remember the air force had bombed the shit out of the airfield into Crete, which underneath it had a cache of, I wouldn't even call it a cache, I'd say it was a weapon storage facility of, you know, like legit airplane munitions and big fucking explosives. And so at nighttime, because they bombed it, you know, all the stuff was going off sympathetically for like fucking two weeks, you know, shit was blowing up nonstop. And then if you looked at like thermal or even on night vision, like it looked like you

• 2:16:54Speaker 05

  were staring at the surface of the sun during like a solar flare flare up, you know, it was just like shit was blowing up fucking nonstop all over the place. Yeah. So it was almost like watching this crazy fucking, you know, apocalyptic, you know, fireworks show. Yeah. But as we're fucking around and me and this guy that, you know, again, was the IS that accompanied us, we're sitting there and all of a sudden, just off to the left and probably 500 or 600 yards away, you see three little flashes of light. And I was like, did you see that? And he's like, yeah. I was like, what the fuck was that? He's like, I don't know. And then all of a sudden, straight south of us, about 300 yards, boom, boom, boom.

• 2:17:36Speaker 05

  And it was like, and we both kind of look at each other and you see three more blips. And then about fucking 200 yards south of us, fucking three big explosions. Shit. And then three more blips. And then now it's just fucking south of us, three more big explosions. And we're, and as soon as we look at each other like, dude, we gotta get the fuck off this rooftop. Yeah. Just as we're starting to go bail down, all of a sudden on the other side of, I can't remember if it's the Tigris or the Euphrates, whatever the fuck river that, that his palace is on into Crete, all of a sudden from the other side of the river, it sounds like a fucking transformer is having a seizure, right? Like Optimus Prime is fucking getting his ass pushed in, I don't know, like it's this weird fucking rumble and whiz and fucking metal moving and, and then you just hear

• 2:18:21Speaker 05

  boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like, and all these flashes of light from across the river. And where those three blips came from just fucking decimated. We didn't even know they were there. There was an army counter artillery battery across the fucking river set up with their fucking whiz bang goddamn satellites and whatever the fuck else. And, and it, it took three iterations for them to pinpoint where they were and then they just fucking nailed them. We had no comms with them. Like I said, we didn't even know they were there.

• 2:18:49Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus.

• 2:18:50Speaker 05

  I mean, I wouldn't be fucking sitting here a hundred percent if they hadn't been there. Cause we, I mean, we couldn't have got off that rooftop. The way it was situated and the way that we were up there, it would have taken us probably thirty, forty seconds to even get just in the first part of the stairwell to, to get down off of there and, and we'd have been fucked.

• 2:19:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:07Speaker 05

  You know, um, but, uh, yeah, just one of those fucking lucky moments, I guess, but.

• 2:19:13Shawn Ryan?

  Lot of those.

• 2:19:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:19:17Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Well, um,

• 2:19:21Shawn Ryan?

  let's go back to, uh,

• 2:19:24Shawn Ryan?

  C-130.

• 2:19:27Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, Scuds.

• 2:19:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. So where the C-130 came into play was, was during that, that ambush that I spoke of.

• 2:19:38Speaker 05

  Our combat control and, and comms guy got on the radio and had, had a C-130 on station fucking right away during that. Um, the downside was, is, is for that specific scenario, while it was awesome that they were right there, where the contact was coming from was 25 yards away. It was just way too fucking danger close to doing anything about it. Um, so we, we weren't able to, to use them in, in that scenario. Um, but they were there, you know, and there were a lot of other times where, when we were out and about, if we had run into anything like that and not had 25,000 Marines with us, we would have been able to, to use them, I think probably a little more effectively. But there were just too many fucking blue forces everywhere for them to be able to engage comfortably, especially then.

• 2:20:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:24Speaker 05

  You know, but.

• 2:20:28Shawn Ryan?

  What were you guys marked with or were you marked, were you using strobes?

• 2:20:32Speaker 05

  Uh, if I remember correct, I think we were just using little fucking uh squares of fucking IR tape on our helmets.

• 2:20:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 2:20:39Speaker 05

  Super old school, yeah.

• 2:20:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh damn.

• 2:20:42Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 2:20:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, at that time, like, a lot of the mechanisms and kind of protocols put in place were put in place because of how little were there when it first started.

• 2:20:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:56Speaker 05

  You know, so.

• 2:20:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, just for the audience, the reason I ask that is because um that's how air deconflicts, that's how they know where the good guys are, is they have a IR strobe that blinks on top of their helmet or um on the vehicle or wherever and uh so that is how air assets like a C-130 knows where the good guys are. And um that way they can be sure they're shooting the right fucking people and not their own. So to not to just have some glint tape.

• 2:21:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:29Shawn Ryan?

  Um is uh that's that that could go bad pretty easy.

• 2:21:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, our comm guy may have had a an IR strobe and a fucking an Islet or something, or not Islet, but a fucking uh

• 2:21:43Shawn Ryan?

  Green Bean?

• 2:21:44Speaker 05

  PEC 5 or something, I mean, I don't know, something. I just, you know, I wasn't the comms guy and so I I don't know what the fuck they had or didn't have. I just remember, I think we all had glint tape on our helmets, you know?

• 2:21:55Shawn Ryan?

  No good. Damn.

• 2:21:59Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's move on.

• 2:22:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. So from there, we spent several weeks in Tukrit, again, just basically, you know, solidifying our presence there. Um, which was uh, you know, the the start of setting up forward operating bases. And and the way I understand it is that that um that fucking

• 2:22:23Speaker 05

  Palace ultimately ended up being like a State Department office or an intel building or something like that and I think is still still manned by US forces today, I believe. But so we basically just kind of handed it over to them and then from there made our way back down to Baghdad and at that point SEAL Team Five was coming in to relieve us. You know, at that point, we had been on deployment for eight months and so SEAL Team Five came in and we did, you know, about the most half-assed turnover with them because it was it was just a quick turn and burn. Like, we didn't have, hey, this is the FOB we've been in for the last six months and here's all of our targeted intel, you know, packages or whatever. There

• 2:23:08Speaker 05

  weren't any. You know, we had just finished basically taking the entire country over and so it was like, okay, now you guys, you've got it. High five and that was it. And so from there, we made our way back down to Kuwait and then flew flew commercial air out of Kuwait back to back to the United States.

• 2:23:28Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. So that was a rough, but a good deployment. And you guys didn't take no casualties?

• 2:23:40Speaker 05

  No, no. We had, you know, one guy got got injured and it was nothing serious. It was it was during the go plaid, actually. He fucked his hand up on during, I think it was breaching one of the the doors and windows is that he fucked his hand up fairly fairly well. I mean, he stayed for the rest of the deployment, but that was it. You know, everybody had, you know, little things here or there, but nothing, nothing that was, you know, deployment ending. So, yeah, we were pretty fortunate. You know, we'd been in a in a number of gunfights, had, you know, taken a number of enemy fucking KIA's with

• 2:24:21Speaker 05

  us and had no, no real fucking problems of any of our guys, other than the one that quit. That was the one casualty we had, I guess. But, but, yeah, we were pretty fortunate.

• 2:24:34Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. I can't believe that fucking guy quit.

• 2:24:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:24:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's uh...

• 2:24:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:24:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:24:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's weird. I mean, I actually got a message from him not that long ago on Instagram. I didn't respond. But it was just like, "Hey, good to see you're doing so well. Fucking cheers," or whatever. And I was just like, "Fuck this guy, man." It was just like, I had that same reaction that I did, you know, when I first saw him when we came back. I was like, "Dude, fuck you."

• 2:25:03Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:25:03Speaker 05

  You know?

• 2:25:05Shawn Ryan?

  Just to fucking reach out.

• 2:25:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, you know, I can't put myself in his position, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't reach out to me if I was that guy. Like, I would...

• 2:25:16Speaker 05

  I just wouldn't do it, you know?

• 2:25:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:18Speaker 05

  But I don't know how you don't feel, you know, the amount of shame to just say, like, "I'm not gonna fucking talk to these guys," you know? I don't know, but...

• 2:25:27Shawn Ryan?

  Probably his way of trying to make good, one way or another. But, um... Well, fuck, man.

• 2:25:36Shawn Ryan?

  Let's just take a quick commercial break and we'll pick up on coming home.

• 2:25:42Speaker 05

  Alright.

• 2:25:56Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you guys are enjoying the show. I think this is a pretty good one. Hit pause, go over to vigilanceelite.com, pick yourself up one of these sweet shirts, and if you're lucky, maybe these hats will be in stock too.

• 2:26:26Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, so we're back from the break and you just had a eighth-month deployment that was fucking completely full of action. You kicked off the war in Iraq, which is something to be said about that for sure. That's fucking incredible. And so now you're coming home and...

• 2:26:50Speaker 05

  Let's go there. What are you doing when you get back? So it was a quick transition, really. I mean, I, when I got home,

• 2:26:59Speaker 05

  it was, it was kind of surreal in that, you know, there, especially then, there was no transition time. You know, so it was literally like when I was, I mean, I remember actually getting pulled over. My parents came to surprise me, you know, to welcome me home and it's my wife at the time.

• 2:27:18Speaker 05

  And, and them, you know, I spent the first, you know, night with the wife and then the next day, my parents, you know, surprised me at the house and then we all went out to dinner and on the way, I got pulled over. I don't even remember what the fuck for, but you know, the cop, you know, was giving me shit about either my license was fucking expired or one of the tags was or whatever. And, and you know, I was like, 36 hours ago, I was in fucking Baghdad and like now you're pulling me over because you know, it was like, I just got home from an eight month fucking deployment or whatever. He was super understanding, but it was that moment that it kind of, it kind of hit me. It was like, there, there should be a better process for integrating back into civilian life after a deployment.

• 2:28:03Speaker 05

  You know, I know that there is now. At least it's better to, to what I understand. But, um, you know, for me, that it was weird going from, from that environment, just being shit right into Southern California civilian fucking life, you know, and having a couple of weeks leave and then I had to check into a SQT, SEAL qualification training as an instructor because my, my time at Team Three was up. So it was, it was a quick turnaround. There wasn't a lot of fiddle fucking around, uh, which I think ultimately was good is that I didn't have, you know, a bunch of time to just fucking sit around. That couple of weeks was filled with doing shit around the house because having been gone for eight months and we, we owned the house and it was an older house.

• 2:28:45Speaker 05

  I had shit to do around there and then get ready to check into, to SQT. And, and my plan from there was to screen and hopefully go to, to a dev group. And, um, when I was about seven or eight months into being an instructor,

• 2:29:03Speaker 05

  I developed valley fever, which I've talked a little bit about. It's a lung fungal lung infection where it spreads through your lungs like mold and I lost about forty percent of my lung capacity. And so I was on convalescent leave for about ten months. And then from there, it was basically they, the infectious disease captain at Balboa tried to medically retire me at that point. And I had a meeting with him and I just said, you know, hey, my first child is on the way. I don't have a college degree. I was planning on staying in and going this route. Can we fucking figure something else out? Like, I don't, I don't

• 2:29:47Speaker 05

  really want to get just medically booted out of the fucking Navy all of a sudden. And so, you know, he said, well, you've got to go somewhere where you're not around lung irritants, you know, for, for a while, for a couple of years and try to let your lungs heal up as best they can. And I was like, well, fuck, everything we do is irritating to our lungs, you know, so the only other place to go where, you know, it was minimal exposure to lung irritants was being a BUDS SEAL instructor. And so the master chief at, at SQT and the master chief at, at, on the basic side, got together and just worked

• 2:30:28Speaker 05

  a fucking deal to send me over there. And I spent my last three years there. I got, got a college degree, had both my kids, and, and then fucking jumped ship out of there. While I was there is when I, you know, really focused heavy on, on dog training, you know, from the end of the deployment to Iraq to when I was first kind of exposed to them. During that time being sick, I, you know, was, like I said, on convalescent leave for almost a year. A lot of free time to focus on training and things of that nature. And then while I was an instructor, I kind of got, got to where I was working a little bit with

• 2:31:09Speaker 05

  the West Coast K9 guys and went to some training with them and was offered a position there as a handler and then turned it down and got out and started my own company. And that's where, that's where that kind of all started.

• 2:31:22Shawn Ryan?

  What did the, what did the lung disease, where did that come from? Do you know?

• 2:31:28Speaker 05

  Uh, my best assumption is, is N Island because it was just based on the incubation period and kind of where they caught it. It was determined that, you know, yeah, I got, I picked it up somewhere out there.

• 2:31:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I'll bet that was, uh, so you, you went to, you went to training and then you wanted to fucking screen to go to Dam Neck to go get some more and then, and then you find out that's slim to none chance?

• 2:31:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, from the guys that I knew that, that I'd done platoons with or knew from the community that had gone there and done well and talking with them about it, you know, it seemed like, and I think for a lot of them too, it seemed like what you thought the SEAL teams would be before you joined, it was more like dev group than the regular SEAL teams were. Not that there wasn't good shit going on in different pockets of the SEAL, regular SEAL teams, but you're always kind of hamstrung by the influx of, of new, new guys into your platoon, kind of resetting that, that lower standard right out of the gate every platoon, you know? So you just can't, you can't grow that

• 2:32:37Speaker 05

  much, I think, in a regular SEAL platoon the way you can at, at Dam Neck. And so my thought process was if I go to SQT as an instructor, because my time at three is up, I could use that as a springboard to still be, you know, within the kind of relevant scope of tactics and training and, and teaching. You know, the guys getting ready to go to SEAL teams and while I'm there, screen to go to to dev group, I could get in in good shape. And it's one thing I will say, the time spent in Iraq, um, you know, did wreaked havoc on on all of our physical conditioning because of the the conditions were so dire. I mean, we were eating two MREs a day and that was

• 2:33:21Speaker 05

  it, you know, and no weights and no fucking, you know, it was wearing, wearing kit around and whatever, but it was, you know, I fuck, I dropped about 30 pounds and was in pretty bad shape physically at the end of that. And so I wanted to, you know, again, get in really good shape and get ready to screen and then and then go. But at least while I was doing something still somewhat relevant or felt more relevant in the community while I was getting ready to do that. But then, once I picked that up, it threw a wrench in fucking everything. So.

• 2:33:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:55Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, definitely, I mean, would you say it turned into a positive?

• 2:33:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, you know, I look at it and even, you know, when I was at the crossroads of whether or not to get out or stay in and be a handler, that was a tough, really tough decision because um, I wanted to be a handler. Uh, it was a fucking, a really kind of enticing and attractive offer to to stay in and do that. Um, where I struggled with that is in twofold is that physically, uh, I knew that that I was not at the capacity, uh, that I was used to operationally, physically is that I honestly, I was fucking scared that uh, that I wouldn't be able to fucking operate at a level I needed to, to not be a fucking liability to everybody else. Uh, you know, to be at a point where your lungs are fucked

• 2:34:42Speaker 05

  up enough in the SEAL teams to get offered a a medical retirement, you know, that doesn't happen for a fucking chest cold.

• 2:34:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:50Speaker 05

  You know, so um, for me to be at that level, I was scared slash worried that that I wouldn't be able to pull my fucking weight and I didn't want to be that fucking guy that. You know, people have to make accommodations for.

• 2:35:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:03Speaker 05

  So that was part of it. The other part was just realizing that, you know, from an impact standpoint, I've always tried to look at every decision I make in the long game of most bang for your buck in terms of what impact that's going to have on my life, big picture. That's why I joined the SEAL teams. That's why I, you know, took the route that I took. That's ultimately why I got out is I felt that, you know, if I imported dogs and trained dogs and handlers and, you know, was a trainer at the MPC Command on the West Coast and, you know, all of the other things that I've done, to me, that's going to have a much broader reach and impact than me with one dog going overseas doing deployments, you know, so.

• 2:35:49Speaker 05

  It was a, for sure, a tough decision, like I said, but ultimately, between those two factors, it just seemed at the time like it made sense and, you know, I'm absolutely glad that I did. I, you know, I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn't be where I'm at now had I done it different, you know, and I am really happy with how my life's turned out, so, you know, I think it was for the best.

• 2:36:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, well, I definitely would say you made the right decision considering, you know, you got dogs at the teams and agencies all over the fucking world and so you're definitely making a major impact. But, so, so, how was, did you hit any like real dark spots coming home from that, being addicted to combat or any of that?

• 2:36:45Speaker 05

  You know, I never did. I never, you know, it's one of the things where I've seen a lot of guys that I know really well and respect the hell out of have a lot of fucking trouble with things.

• 2:36:58Speaker 05

  I never did, you know, it never, there was never a time where I felt like, you know, either I was missing out or that I felt bad about any of the things that we did or, or saw or whatever. It just, you know, I don't know why. Like, I don't know if I'm fortunate, if I'm fucking oblivious, if it's a combination of the things. I really have no, no grasp of why, um, you know, I, again, whether it's things that you saw or did or whatever, or the missing that, you know, being in camaraderie and feeling like, you know, you're not in the fight anymore or whatever. I think for me, I, I would count myself as really fortunate

• 2:37:41Speaker 05

  in that I was able to transition into a career that still had a lot of adrenaline in it, you know, when you, as you'll find out here shortly, is when you jump in a bite suit and have a dog fucking coming after you. Like, that will give you the same fucking rush that a lot of things that we've done in the SEAL teams will do for you. Being around high drive dogs that make your asshole pucker when you just clip a leash to them and they look at you like, fucking, you know, you want some chief? You know, they, they give you that look and it, it's exhilarating for sure. Plus, you know, coming back as a trainer for the West Coast Multipurpose Canine Program a couple of years after I got out, like, I was working with guys that I was, that I'd been in

• 2:38:24Speaker 05

  with, guys that I was instructors with, guys that I'd, you know, been to war with, like, it was, it was really the best of everything, you know, because I was doing what I was passionate about and the dogs. So, being able to select dogs from anywhere in the world, you know, of the highest caliber and, and working with guys that I know, love and trust and, and consider brothers in arms and marrying those two things up together and sending them overseas to, to operate. You know, to me, it's like, how do you fucking get any better than that?

• 2:38:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:55Speaker 05

  You know, so, um, there's no question that played a huge role in me never sinking into that, you know, kind of depressed, like, fuck, I'm not part of the community anymore, or, you know, I'm, I'm not associated with, with the teams, or I don't feel like I'm a SEAL, or, or whatever. Like, I just, whether it's that or working with police departments and, you know, SWAT teams, or, uh, you know, taking in retired Warrior Dog Foundation dogs or whatever, like, I, I still feel... Like I'm still kinda part of it enough, you know, for me to not just, just not have that feeling of darkness or depression with it.

• 2:39:31Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have any, uh, it sounds like you pretty much stepped out and, uh, I mean, it doesn't sound like you had a whole hell of a lot of downtime when you did get out. And so did you kinda step right into your business?

• 2:39:47Speaker 05

  Uh, not exactly. Uh, there was about a, about a year period, um, that I did a little bit of contract work, uh, here in the States, teaching basic pistol and rifle, um, to some army guys as a warfighter focused contract through a, a company in Arkansas. I did that for about, uh, three or four months and, uh, and then transitioned into a job at ExxonMobil as a drill rig supervisor, company man for, uh, for about six months, uh, where I went to, uh, uh, I was the, the drilling rig supervisor on a fucking, on a natural gas, uh, rig in Northern Colorado for two weeks on, two weeks off. And, uh,

• 2:40:32Speaker 05

  you know, my experience with, uh, with oil rigs at that point had been taking them down. That's, that was my knowledge of a fucking oil rig. So I had no, no fucking clue what I was doing. But Exxon takes a neat position in that they hire the type of person that they want and then they teach them what they wanna know and they're very, very good at that doing that. But, uh, at any rate, I was, I did that for about six months and then there was a security supervisor walking through, doing rounds, uh, and kinda got all the, the specs on everybody who was there. And he, he came to me, he's like, what the fuck are you doing here? You know? And I was like, I mean, I didn't hire me. You guys hired me and booked me here. I mean, you know, and he's like, you should be working for me in, in security. You want a job in, you know, being a security advisor? I was

• 2:41:14Speaker 05

  like, yeah. You know, so I, I went and, and tried to do that. That was an executive position. And, uh, you know, for me, I, I realized very quickly that that was not my fucking cup of tea. Um, they wanted to send me to Papua New Guinea to work on this multi-billion dollar, uh, natural gas pipeline project between China, Papua New Guinea and Australia, implementing security protocols into this pipeline project being built. And once I started kinda looking at what they were trying to do and... And the security protocols that they wanted to implement, I realized some changes needed to be made and they didn't want to hear what my changes, they had no interest in what my

• 2:41:54Speaker 05

  opinions were, they just wanted me to do what I was told. And for me at that point, I was at the point where I had my dog business about ready to start anyway. I'll be the first to admit, I mean, my entire plan the whole time with taking that job was a springboard out of the military while I was setting the dog business up. So, you know, my intention was never to be there for very long anyway. But at that point, it just made sense to bail out anyway. It was a little earlier than I wanted to in terms of, you know, my kennel facility wasn't built. I just had a couple of slabs thrown down with some cheesedick, kennel paneling up. And so, you know, for the first year or so, you know, my kennels

• 2:42:38Speaker 05

  were pretty, pretty rough elementary kennels with not a lot of creature comforts. But, you know, like with anything, that's how you start and you build from there. And that's how I did that. And then started the business right after that. So, not a lot of downtime, but I didn't start the dog business right away. I did that for, you know, about 10 months, 11 months.

• 2:43:00Shawn Ryan?

  All right. Well, you know, we did have a conversation the other night about, about boozing and, you know, shit like that. And so, and I kind of want to revisit that here because this part helps a lot of guys. But we both, I think, were, I mean, I definitely was a full, full moon fucking alcoholic, raging alcoholic, bar fighting, and ruined all my relationships, whatever, I've said it a million times, but. How long after you left, did you kind of, uh, I mean, kick that?

• 2:43:42Shawn Ryan?

  You've kicked it now, and that's not fucking easy to do.

• 2:43:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, so for me, I would say, it, it never seemed like it was a problem for me in terms of, of it causing, causing any issues is that what I found for me was that if I casually had a drink, which is typically how I've always been, I've never been a big drinker. But, you know, in getting out, what I found myself doing was, you know, especially like in the winter time and, and living out at the kennel facility and, you know, having a fire going is like, most nights I'd wanna have a, a glass of bourbon. And then it was, I found myself like every night wanting to do that. And for, and for, for me, like, that was enough for me to say, I know where this is going to lead, like, I never, you know, would get drunk.

• 2:44:30Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:44:31Speaker 05

  Or, you know, it was never a problem like that. It was, it was more of a, I, I can see this pattern in going from, you know, having a couple of drinks a month to a couple a week to now, I, I, I, I just like subconsciously find myself having a, a glass of bourbon every night, you know, after dinner or whatever. And, and to me, that, that's when it was like, I, I know, I've seen too many guys go down this fucking path and I know, you know, I have a very OCD personality that way or addictive personality, whether it's chewing tobacco or cigarettes or, you know, fucking fast cars or, or whatever is that, you know, when I do something, like, it's just, you know, it's, it's never enough, you know, like, if, if I'm driving a certain car or whatever, like, it feels fast and then it doesn't, and then I need something faster,

• 2:45:16Speaker 05

  and then that's cool for a little while, and then it feels normal, and then now I, you know, need faster, and it's that way, kinda with everything. And so, again, I think just seeing so many guys go down that path for, for me was enough just for me to realize that it was, it would turn into that if, if I didn't just stop doing it. And so that's why, I mean, it's been, I mean, even, I mean, I've been out for over 10 years now, and, uh, you know, I just, I mean, I, I can say probably in the last eight years. Seven years, maybe, you know, I just, I haven't, I haven't drank hardly at all. You know, it's a couple of times a year and that's really about it.

• 2:45:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:55Speaker 05

  You know, so, um, but my, my personality is very much that way. I think where, again, I just feel very fortunate in that, you know, the, the things that I've allowed to, to become addicted to, you know, are mostly chewing tobacco, which I, you know, we talked about that. I haven't done that in a few years because it was causing problems with my mouth. You know, sweets, same thing. It's like, I just don't keep them in the fucking house. As an example, I open this, this is gone.

• 2:46:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:23Speaker 05

  So, you know, a whole fucking bag, you gotta be there sitting here like, you know, sweets and nicotine and caffeine, you know, things like that. I, I know how I am with stuff like that and I, if it's there, I will fucking take it. So I just stay away from the things that I know if, if you do consume a lot of that, it's gonna cause serious fucking problems. I just stay away from it entirely.

• 2:46:43Shawn Ryan?

  So you just, you know, you do not know moderation?

• 2:46:47Speaker 05

  Not, yeah, I mean, not with the things that I enjoy. It's like, I just, I want as much of it as I can fucking get, you know? So, um, so, yeah, I just, for the things that I know that if you take that, it's gonna cause life-changing implications, I just fucking stay away from it altogether, you know? Including fucking booze, but.

• 2:47:04Shawn Ryan?

  That's some fucking discipline. Do you think you replace that with, with, uh, with your business? Do you know moderation when it comes to business?

• 2:47:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would say there's probably a healthy, or a healthy, not, maybe not the right word to use, a heavy dose of that in that, uh, I, you know, I don't take vacations. I, I don't take time off. I get, you know, a lot of people that are, are close to me regularly telling me, dude, you need to take a fucking vacation or like, you need to take some time off. You need to find something to, you know, to, to relax and, and put that, uh, you know, turn, turn the fucking business mind off and, and work on nothing for a little while or, or whatever, you know? So.

• 2:47:45Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, have you been, I'm curious, cause I have that problem, but uh, have you found any success in fucking turning it off?

• 2:47:53Speaker 05

  Not really. What I have found is, uh, at least for me, and maybe I'm lying to myself, you know, of course, I'm a little biased in thinking maybe I've struck a decent balance and, you know, I work out, uh, I swim, and I like to, I like to drive, you know, like that's kind of a good decompression or go to movies, which even that hasn't, hasn't happened in a few months now that everything being fucking closed, but, uh, or, you know, good, a good meal out to dinner, similarly, you know, those two things have kind of been turned off the last few months, but, uh, to me, instead of trying to carve out days or a week of, of time to, to relax and vacation and get away from,

• 2:48:34Speaker 05

  you know, running my dick into the ground business-wise, um, I, I take shorter breaks because for me, it would, it would be almost torturous for me to go on a vacation where like my phone was off for a week, like I, I would probably lose my fucking mind.

• 2:48:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:50Speaker 05

  You know, uh, cause I would constantly be worried about, well, you know, what, what if something happened out at the kennel with one of the dogs or one of the employees or one of my client dogs, what if there's a problem? Like it's just not, not being able to be gotten a hold of is, is a kind of a problem for me mentally, I think. Um, just because there's a lot of people that depend on me, you know, and it's not uncommon to get a call at any fucking time of day by, you know, a client that has a question about a dog, not necessarily a problem, but maybe the dog got hurt and they don't know what to do, you know, whatever it is. Um, you know, or with, with my kids, uh, you know, or my ex or whatever is that I just, I kind of always have that, um, almost panicky feeling of, you know, if I just unplug and nobody can get a hold of me,

• 2:49:33Speaker 05

  there's, there's too many people that depend on me that I don't want to fucking let them down, you know, and so, uh, one of the downsides of having a kennel with fucking almost thirty dogs in it is that, is that you kind of feel indefinitely chained to the kennel in, in a way and that, you know, it's, it's always there. You know, if the employees decide, you know, I'm fucking tired of this, you know, you're, you're one person being tired of cleaning up dog shit away from meeting to be out there doing it day in, day out, you know, so, uh, it just makes it really hard for me to, to completely unplug. So for me, again, the kind of the way that I've. Kind of tried to take the middle ground with that is, is movies and driving and working

• 2:50:15Speaker 05

  out and swimming and, you know, just taking maybe a half day here or a few hours to go fuck off and do whatever I want or whatever and try to mix that in a few times a week.

• 2:50:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. That's, uh, that's, sounds like pretty sound advice, maybe I should fuckin' take it, but, uh, I mean, had it not been for, uh, you know, business and your passion with dogs, do you think, uh, the drinking would have been a different story?

• 2:50:41Speaker 05

  Probably. I, I think I'd be a fucking miserable wretch if, uh, if I hadn't started my own business and, and done what I've done. If I had to work for somebody else doing some, some other fucking job or like stayed at Exxon, I can't even fucking imagine how, how just much of a miserable piece of shit I would, I would be to be around if, uh, if that was the case. I mean, I'm a big, I'm a big enough pain that it has to be around as it is, right? Um, you know, so yeah, I, I think, uh, I think a lot of things probably would've, would've panned out pretty shitty had I not, uh, you know, followed what, what I'm passionate about. And, and for anybody listening, like, I, I can't stress that enough, you know, is that money isn't gonna make you happy. Stuff doesn't make you happy. Fucking women don't make you happy.

• 2:51:25Speaker 05

  Drugs won't, booze won't, fast cars won't. Uh, all those things, you know, may be satisfying here and there or, you know, augment your life to a certain extent. The only thing that's gonna truly make you fucking satisfied and happy is, is if what you do is something you truly fucking believe in.

• 2:51:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:45Speaker 05

  You know, because if it's not, you're gonna be fucking miserable your whole goddamn life. You're gonna be chasing the next fucking thing, the next paycheck, the next job, the next gig, the next fucking chick, whatever. Is that you're, you're never gonna be satisfied and never gonna be happy if you don't, if you don't strongly believe in what the fuck you're doing.

• 2:52:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:02Speaker 05

  And, and I, I can't, can't fucking stress that enough.

• 2:52:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I definitely would agree with that. I, I think, uh, I think starting a business has actually probably saved a lot of lives because it uh it becomes especially for guys like us coming home uh it it it becomes the new addiction that never fucking ends and uh and it's it's a uh you know it's a positive addiction because you uh you have fucking purpose now and uh I've seen a lot of guys to include myself that have uh pulled themselves out of pretty deep rut and uh once they kind of get going in their business and they see that holy shit this is possible they see guys like you uh

• 2:52:48Shawn Ryan?

  you know who started at the ground level um it's like I said at the beginning of the show it's fucking uh uh it's very inspiring and and uh so I would encourage anybody you know who's in that fucking rut to that's listening to consider becoming an entrepreneur and uh making something of themselves but

• 2:53:10Speaker 05

  I mean you know to me if uh if you don't I mean you can almost guarantee being fucking miserable you know and if you think about you know every great product that's ever been made every you know big fucking decision that ever fucking panned out right or uh you know any any moment in history that was worth fucking writing down right is that prior to that there was a choice to be made and and there was a bold fucking choice to be made that that somebody said you know what I'm gonna grab a hold of my fucking nuts and I'm gonna goddamn do this and they went and did it you know and had they not you didn't it would never have become a historic event you know that shit doesn't happen by accident it doesn't fall in your lap you know you don't just walk out the door going

• 2:53:53Speaker 05

  for a fucking stroll and shit like that happens like you you gotta fucking get after it uh and and a lot of times it is fucking scary you know a lot of times there is no guarantee you you don't know what the fuck's gonna happen next and you can't control a lot of the intangibles that are gonna add stress to your life but you know if you believe in what you're doing uh and you give it everything you have that fucking struggle will fuel you uh you know to be successful and ultimately to be fucking happy with whatever it is that you're doing

• 2:54:23Shawn Ryan?

  Burn on the money man um

• 2:54:28Speaker 05

  Did you, were you always in Texas? Did you start your business in Texas? I did, yeah. I, you know, growing up in Iowa, went to San Diego and was on active duty there the whole time. And then as, as I was getting out, moved to, to the kennel facility property where, where I'm still at. I, I have a different residence that I live in, that's not co-located with the property anymore. But, but I own both of them and, and yeah, I've been here ever since. So it's been 12 years now, almost 12 years now. And on. So how did Tricost start? Tricost was your first company, correct? Tricost was actually my second company. Your second company? It is, yep. So the first company I started, I'm not going to mention the name of it. I, I had

• 2:55:12Speaker 05

  two business partners, one of which was a ranger, one of which was a seal. And it was kind of the perfect trifecta on paper in terms of, you know, I had the dog knowledge and contacts within the industry. One of the other guys had a lot of high level government, you know, connections and contacts and knew all the right people in the right places. And then the last guy was, was an officer, he was a seal officer that, you know, was a, was a pretty decent business mind and had some good connections in, you know, investment banking and hedge fund managers and startup funding and shit like that. And so, you know, again, starting out, it was like, this is a

• 2:55:55Speaker 05

  perfect fucking relationship, you know, we'll do dogs and contracts and, you know, we kind of have all, all bases figured. And ended up having a falling out. I, I'm not going to get into all of the details. It was a pretty shitty fucking scenario for me and, and the other guy. You know, the, the third party just frankly fucked both of us over. And, and so.

• 2:56:18Speaker 05

  At that time, uh, basically fucking disbanded, a bunch of shit happened and I, and I just had to completely fucking start over after, you know, building a, a seven-figure dog company in, in a matter of a few years. Holy shit. And having to completely fucking start over. So Tricost is 2.0. So when I talk about, you know, picking your fucking nuts up and, and just doing it and not letting anything discourage you, I, I don't say that from a, a perch of not having been through any of that, you know, and at that time, I mean, I was coming back from the west coast with about $2,300 in, in my bank account and a brand new fucking Jeep Grand Cherokee that I leased like a fucking idiot, uh, with no job and no fucking company and absolutely

• 2:57:02Speaker 05

  no revenue coming in, going back to a family of, of four with two young fucking kids, a mortgage, the whole fucking ball of wax and no goddamn idea how I was gonna fucking make it. Shit. A good friend of mine, uh, who we went through, we went through Bud's, uh, with together, um, and a guy in, in Colorado that, uh, I will say his name because I, I would not be where I'm at without him. His name's Harvey. And, uh, you know, he, he in conjunction with my buddy Sean, both of them, uh, you know, I kinda told them what was going on because just coincidentally, he wanted to buy a dog from me. You know, he wanted a personal protection dog and, uh, and Harvey was his business mentor. And so, um, you

• 2:57:46Speaker 05

  know, just coincidentally at that same fucking time, you know, he was, he was just like, hey, I wanna get a dog. How's things going? Whatever. I was like, dude, fucking terrible. It's like, here's what happened. He's like, Jesus fucking Christ. He was like, let me, you know, let me talk to Harvey. Let me see what's up. And, and, uh, so they basically helped me get, get started, uh, you know, to at least get the business formed and help with, uh, with some, you know, startup funds and, and, uh, You know, buy, buy some dogs and start selling them and just, you know, at that point, it was, it was just me doing it. But, you know, so the work had now tripled. You know, but there was at least, you know, some, some assistance and, you know, to this day, had it not been for, for his help, I, there's no way I would have made it, I don't think, you know? Yeah.

• 2:58:31Speaker 05

  So, but, so he helped me out to, to get back on my feet, get started, and then I just ran with it from there. And, you know, here we are, if I can, eight years later. Yeah. And, and it's, you know, back far more successful than my first dog company. And it's, and it's just, just me that owns it, you know? So, without a doubt, the, you know, the trials and tribulations and difficulties that exist, you know, are not unique to just you. I don't mean you, I mean, anybody that's listening that thinks like, hey, I got fucked over or whatever, like, you know, there, there's always a fucking way you can figure out, you know, a way around it. There's somebody that you know that, that can help you, or

• 2:59:15Speaker 05

  even if it's just having to rely on you and getting a second fucking job, or, or doing something else, you know, while you set that business up, or, or whatever. There is always a way, you know, that you can get to where you want to be and, and ultimately fucking be successful if, if you just never fucking give up, you know? Yeah. I'll be the first to admit, like, there were times where it was a fucking struggle, you know? It was putting bills on credit cards and fucking moving money around from this credit card to that credit card because it was a lower interest rate, or, or what it was a zero interest for three months. And so, you know, I put three credit card balances on this one because it was a lower interest rate. I mean, there was several years of, of it being that fucking tight, you know, and, and not knowing, you know,

• 3:00:00Speaker 05

  how I was gonna make fucking shit happen this month and next month. And then that's the, that's the rub with owning a business, you know? It's not a guaranteed paycheck. And not only is being an entrepreneur not for everybody, fuck, it's not for most people. Yeah. You know, because that stress of never really knowing, you know, if, if you're gonna fucking make it that month. That usually is is present for a while before you get to a point where you're financially can kind of take a breath and say, you know, even if I didn't have money coming in the rest of the year, we'd still be just fine. Like, it takes a while to get to that fucking point, you know, and so, um, you know, to me, the, again, the lesson is just, no matter how bad it seems, just don't fucking stop, just keep grinding it out and and and that

• 3:00:43Speaker 05

  is the one, the one thing that I've noticed in in all the people I've met in the last, you know, 12 years of owning my own business and networking and selling dogs to incredibly fucking successful people. And and that's the one common denominator with all of them is that, you know, they they've all been through bankruptcies and nasty divorces and getting fucked over by business partners and losing everything and having to start over. And and the one fucking thing that all of them have in common is they just never fucking gave up, you know, and and they fought with everything they had all the fucking time when they were when they were struggling and when they were down.

• 3:01:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I'm I wasn't expecting to go down this road at all, but I'm glad we did. And, uh, you know, I mean, you mentioned that nothing fucking falls in your lap. And, uh, you know, uh, a lot of people, you know, they, uh, they they see where you're at now, or, you know, even me, they see, they think they see where I'm at now, but it's shit's fucking hard, you know, and, uh, you get a lot of the, oh, that must be fucking nice shit.

• 3:01:49Speaker 05

  Shit, that shit.

• 3:01:50Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, you know, they didn't see the fucking sacrifices that you made to get there. They didn't see, you know, everybody's getting fucking paid from your business except you. And, uh, and, uh, I can totally fucking relate to that. I mean, shit, I've been Vigilance Lee's been going for five years and I just took my first fucking paycheck ever, uh, last week.

• 3:02:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, congrats, goddamn.

• 3:02:15Shawn Ryan?

  Thanks. But, um, but, uh, yeah, you know, it's it's easy, uh, for people to, um, write it off and and say, oh, I can't fucking do it, or, you know, that guy's fucking, you never know what the fuck's going on behind the scenes.

• 3:02:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:02:29Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, and, uh, you know, I said it once, I'll say it again, like, it's, it's, it's awesome to see how, I I didn't know that you got fucked over like that. And to start all over from scratch and to see where you're at now, I mean. I think a lot of people would probably be jealous, but I think it's just fucking incredible. You know.

• 3:02:50Speaker 05

  I appreciate it. I, like I said, you know, to me, I see some of that sometimes of the underhanded fucking comments of, you know, must be nice, you know, like something as dumb as like posting a picture of a, of a inexpensive steak or something like, well, I wish I could afford that or whatever. And it's like, if you've got the time to, to post that, then you, then you don't, you're not working hard enough. Like if you've got enough time to sit on your phone on a fucking social media platform and bitch on somebody's feed about how you can't afford something, you're, then you're fucking wrong. You know, then you're not working hard enough. Like you shouldn't be on your phone bitching about how you can't afford something if you can't afford something that you want to buy.

• 3:03:33Speaker 05

  You know, so I can't stand that shit.

• 3:03:36Shawn Ryan?

  Me neither.

• 3:03:37Speaker 05

  But, but it's there and it's always going to be there. And to me, it's, it's just important to, to ignore it. Uh, you know, and let, let your success do the talking, A, and, and if there's any wrongs that have been done. I mean, to me, there, there is no fucking better revenge than success. You know, I don't need to fucking say anything to the people that either doubted me or tried to fuck me over, or, or even still to this day. You know, don't like the fact that, that, you know, the success that I've had, that I've had and, and you know, I don't, I don't need to argue with them about it. I'll just keep doing it, you know, because it's, it's fucking pointless and it's counterproductive. So, but yeah, I hear you a hundred percent.

• 3:04:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, maybe if you get off your fucking ass and do something, you could afford the fucking steak. But, um,

• 3:04:26Shawn Ryan?

  moving on with your business, uh, there seems to be, what I'm learning is there's turning points in business and, uh, I'm kind of wondering if you've had turning points and I'm, what I want to know is was your book a major turning point uh, for your business where you felt like maybe cleared a hump and took it next level?

• 3:04:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know, strangely enough, not really. Uh, I think most people would probably assume that and, and I certainly understand why. And I think, you know, to a large extent, I would have thought that it would have felt that way more than it did. It really didn't. It was cool. You know, it was a great experience. But in terms of like all of a sudden feeling like, wow, I made it. You know, even even hitting number four on the New York Times bestseller list. What does that really fucking get you? Nothing. You know, if that's not accompanied by, you know, a revenue stream that's recurring that, you know, gives you the ability to to have the the freedom and flexibility to retire early or,

• 3:05:31Speaker 05

  uh, you know, invest in somebody else's business or whatever, then then what good does that ultimately do if being an author isn't really what you do for a living? Yeah. You know, so it it really doesn't mean a whole lot, uh, as far as, you know, the the reality or the the tangible application of writing a book that that does really well that way. So when it's with a major publishing house also similarly monetarily is there's not, there's not a lot to that for the author. Really? No, you know, if you if you self-publish, you know, and and, uh, you know, you're making ninety seven cents of every dollar that's spent on that book, then that's a different story. But when you're making fifteen cents, you know, of every dollar spent on that book,

• 3:06:11Speaker 05

  then it's very different. So, um, you know, what I would say is that, and and this, I think that this kind of really highlights my my point of tenacity as it relates to businesses, that there there wasn't any one, like, no shit turning point, even being on Sixty Minutes. Like, there was a nice little bump of interest and whatever. Same with the book, same with, you know, different interviews that have come along, you know, or or big, uh, magazine articles that I've been in or whatever, you know, it gives you a little a little bump. But that swell goes away real fucking quick, you know. And so to me, what what it's been is just, it's it's been a nice, natural, fucking linear progression. Um, and there there hasn't been like a, holy shit, here's where I'm now over the hump.

• 3:06:56Speaker 05

  It's just it just kind of eventually got to that point for me. Okay. Um, and and a and a large part because I just kept kept doing it, you know, um. Once I got to this point, I would, I would take, you know, some of the, the revenue from, from this stream and, and try to create another one. And, and some of them have completely bombed. You know, there's been products or services or things that I've said, yeah, let me try this. I'm gonna dump a bunch of time and money and resources into trying this for a little while and it just doesn't fucking pan out. Um, there's been, there's been a number of them. You know, you can't let that get you down. You're not, you're not gonna knock everyone out of the fucking park. I think, uh, business is largely about base hits, just like the fucking game of baseball is. I mean, everybody wants the

• 3:07:39Speaker 05

  grand fucking slam, but base hits and, and RBIs and shit like that are what win the game, you know, and, and just being consistent and, and in a steady state of, of moving forward and pushing and driving and, and, uh, and going for the, the small wins. You know, if all you ever do is swing for the fucking fences, I think, as I know you can attest to, you're, you're probably gonna strike the fuck out, you know, so, um, yeah, it's just, it's been, it's been that natural progression pretty much the, the whole way. But.

• 3:08:06Shawn Ryan?

  Slow and steady wins the race.

• 3:08:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:08:09Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, your books, were, they were all bestsellers, correct?

• 3:08:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:08:15Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, so, I mean, did, did you feel like a huge, maybe it didn't benefit you that much financially, but, uh, did, was that a huge, uh, did, did you get a great sense of accomplishment after that first one?

• 3:08:31Speaker 05

  I mean, to a certain extent, yes. Um, like I said, I mean, for me, the way I looked at it is just, it was, it was an honor to, to have that as an accomplishment, you know, and so for a little while, it was kinda that like, holy shit, like I'm a New York Times bestselling author. That's fucking weird to even say that.

• 3:08:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:47Speaker 05

  You know, and then the second book, the same thing, and then the third book, the same thing, you know, so yeah, to have three New York Times bestsellers is even more fucking weird. Um, but again, I've always, you know, with most things like that, I've, I've always kinda tampered my enthusiasm with, well, what does that really fucking translate to? You know, and if it doesn't translate to anything that, that I can tangibly fucking wrap my arms around, then I'm not gonna spend very much time dancing in the end, end zone over it, you know?

• 3:09:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:17Speaker 05

  And I, I really feel that way with, with everything is, is that, you know, take the wins, but use what you get from that to, to, you know, now help you try for the next one. Uh, within reason. I mean, to me, you get to a certain point and, you know, I'm certainly not, uh, You know, in a position where I've not, you know, enjoyed things or treated myself in certain ways. I mean, you can't just put every fucking dime back into the business for the rest of your life. And I mean, to me, like, what's the fucking point?

• 3:09:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:48Speaker 05

  You know, but to me, you shouldn't start treating yourself until you're at a point where it really fucking makes sense to, you know, there's, there's a difference between being able to buy something and being able to afford something, you know, and I think, you know, once you realize where that fucking contrast is and where that that line goes from, yeah, I can actually afford this, that's when you you start, you know, whether it's buying a watch or a car or a fucking new house or, you know, whatever it is, like, you know, and enjoy the the fruits of your labor and hard work, just don't be a fucking idiot about it, you know?

• 3:10:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you know, what's cool about the books and and everything you've done is, I mean, you're, you're, this is important to me, and I'm sure it is to you too, but I mean, your name is fucking stapled. I mean, it will always be out there forever, you know, and there's not a whole hell of a lot of people that can fucking say that. So I think that, you know, is very self gratifying to know that when you're gone, your fucking name is going to live.

• 3:10:58Speaker 05

  People are still gonna be wiping their ass with the pages in their book.

• 3:11:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. But, but, and, yeah, so I think that that shit's fucking cool as fuck, man. But how did, how did you kind of start with business? I mean, it seems like you have kind of, fuck, I can't even count all the components of your business, but you've got teamdog.pet, which is a training, online training. You've got Tricost, which is the real training and products, correct?

• 3:11:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:11:33Shawn Ryan?

  Then you have the Mic Drop Podcast, which is a fucking huge success and also staple that will always be there. And you have the Warrior Dog Foundation. So, am I missing anything?

• 3:11:47Speaker 05

  And I'm a dad, you know, to me, that's a, that's a big part of my life and, and something that, you know, is as hard as it is and has been, it's something that I, I take very serious and have a lot of pride in, in seeing the kids grow and, and hopefully turn into productive members of society, you know, so, but yeah, I mean, that, that, other than that, you know, on the, that's more on the personal side, but on the, yeah, on the business side, that's, that's pretty much everything. I mean, I'm always, you know, thinking of new avenues or revenue streams, whether it's products or product-based business, you know, implementing new things into the, the Team Dog training site, or adding another

• 3:12:31Speaker 05

  product, or, you know, things like that. But to me, I, I feel like I'm kind of at a point where, I mean, I don't want to say I feel like I, I kind of have it figured out, but I, I at least feel more comfortable in what I'm doing. And I don't get up every day thinking, just like, holy fuck, I'm overwhelmed and I don't know which goddamn direction is up. I don't, I don't feel that way anymore. I feel like I'm in a pretty good rhythm and, and the, the different components of my business are all operating fairly efficiently and successfully. But I also feel like I'm, you know, that's about as much as I can fucking handle too, you know. There's not, there's not really a whole lot more I, I can add. I mean, and the bitch of it for me, I think, is I have a lot of good ideas, but I'm, I'm realistic to the fact that I can't implement any of them without just

• 3:13:16Speaker 05

  half-assing the shit out of them and ultimately them, them not working. There's times even right now where I feel like I, I probably have more things going on than I should.

• 3:13:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:26Speaker 05

  And, and feel a little behind the power curve scheduling-wise on a, on a pretty fucking regular basis, but.

• 3:13:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I think, I don't know, maybe part of that might be.

• 3:13:38Shawn Ryan?

  I think some of us, uh, with our background, we kind of create that pressure. Because we work well under pressure, um, subconsciously.

• 3:13:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:13:49Shawn Ryan?

  Um, but, but, uh, you know, where, where did you start? You started with three dogs the second time around, uh, correct? You said, uh, your friend helped you and you got three dogs.

• 3:14:03Speaker 05

  Oh, well, so I got a few dogs. I don't remember even exactly how, I think it was maybe five, but, um, you know, it was, it was a combination of doing a, of three main things, which was breeding, importing dogs for, whether it was police departments, military groups, or personal protection candidates, uh, clients rather. And then the actual physical hands-on training, whether it's, you know, doing seminars or working a contract for, you know, police, military, what, what have you. So that was kind of the, those were the main three things that I, that I started working on. And then, and then shortly thereafter, the book, uh, opportunity presented itself. Um, you know, and then that's when I, you know, tried to capitalize on that and did.

• 3:14:47Speaker 05

  And, and then, you know, years went by, um, and, and the Warrior Dog Foundation was a component, you know, early on then too. But, but that was not something that I came up with. It was just, um, there was a couple of dogs that needed a place to go and nobody would take them. Uh, and they were, you know, tier one fucking pipe header dogs that had been on a number of deployments, saved a bunch of fucking dudes' lives. Um, you know, and, and I was like, well, if nobody takes them, what the fuck is gonna happen? They're like, well, we'll probably put them down. I was like, fuck you, send them, I'll take them.

• 3:15:20Shawn Ryan?

  Not having them.

• 3:15:21Speaker 05

  Um, but, uh, you know, so because of that, you know, I was pretty singular focused on, you know, from a, from a business standpoint, all service-based industry stuff. You know, it all required my fucking time.

• 3:15:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:34Speaker 05

  You know, and so after years of that, of, of, and this was probably the, the hardest lesson I learned, the, the no shit hard way, was that, you know, not only people talk about time being money and, and fuck you, time is way more valuable than money.

• 3:15:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:49Speaker 05

  You know, because you can't make any more of it, you know? The time that you and I are spending, it's gone. You know, today is gone, you know, tomorrow when it's done, it's gone. Like you can't reinvest it, you can't make more of it, you can't give some to your kids. Uh, you know, so because of that. You know, I got to a point where I was like, I'm gonna wake up when I'm 60 years old scrubbing dog shit off of fucking kennel walls, you know, road tripping seven fucking ass eaters from, you know, Texas to fucking New York or whatever, um, just running my dick into the ground and I'm gonna wake up and my life is gonna be behind me financially in the same fucking boat I am now if I don't do something different.

• 3:16:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:26Speaker 05

  And that's when it was okay. I need to figure out how to have a more product-based, at least equilibrium business-wise. There's always gonna be a service component to what I do, whether it's, you know, protection dog or a seminar or a fucking phone consult, I mean, whatever, like, people are gonna take my time up, but it can't be just that.

• 3:16:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:47Speaker 05

  And so I've, I've kinda crossed over into the more mainstream and that's where teamdog.pet really comes into play is that that's for your average, everyday dog owner, as well as, you know, a lot of the products that I have, the dog crate, the collar and leash, the CBD oil, the food and treats, they're all, you know, for your average, everyday dog owner. And so, um, it's, it's kinda, you know, heading into that, that realm of, uh, you know, where, you know, it's a product, it's a tangible product that people can buy and, and they don't need my fucking time to, to do it, you know, and so I've, I've kind of spent a fair bit of time bolstering that and trying to get that to where it's a much more, uh, relevant, uh, aspect of the business.

• 3:17:32Shawn Ryan?

  Speaking of team, uh, teamdog.pet, and, uh, I'm getting ready to dive into that as soon as you leave, uh, with Tony.

• 3:17:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:17:42Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, how many, how interactive are you in that? And how many videos are in there? How much content is in that, uh, is in that portion of your business, which is, which is, uh, for those of you that don't know, it's online dog training. Again, teamdog.pet, and, uh, it's all Mike.

• 3:18:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. So really what it is, is that, you know, the, the last book that I wrote, Team Dog, you know, it, it's the, the video representation of that. Uh, and so...

• 3:18:15Speaker 05

  All of the concepts that I talk about and the reason why it's called Team Dog, How to Train Your Dog the Navy SEAL Way is not to teach a labradoodle how to be a fucking bite dog. It's the reason that the SEAL teams have, and this is my bust for, you know, being this complicated in a fucking book title, that was a lesson learned, is I shouldn't have gone that deep in it because most people don't give a fuck. But is that, you know, that the SEAL teams have the reputation they have, not just because SEALs are good operators. You know, if you think about all of the other components that go into SEALs being good operators, it's a hard selection course. It's crazy fucking consistent training and lots of it. It's good funding. It's great fucking intelligence assets. It's high-speed equipment.

• 3:19:00Speaker 05

  It's great fucking leadership. It's all of these other environmental factors and intangibles that, you know, all in conjunction set us up for success to be as good at what we do as we are. And with training a dog, it's no different. Is that if you just focus on training, you know, you're really cutting yourself off at the heels. It's what do you feed the dog? How much mental engagement do you interact with the dog? What is their body composition? Are they a fat fuck? Are they malnourished? Are they getting enough sunlight? You know, are you utilizing the different tools that they have genetically to aid in your training? I.e., you know, a dog that could fucking care less about a tennis ball, then you shouldn't be using a tennis ball to train the dog.

• 3:19:45Speaker 05

  If the dog likes attention versus not liking it, you know, it has high food drive versus not. All of these different things that kind of go into it are what contribute to you being able to teach your dog whatever the fuck you want relatively easy and pretty quickly. And, you know, so I found myself having a lot of these conversations with people, you know, at speaking events or, you know, wherever I was going traveling, people say, oh, I have a dog that's doing this, you know, how the fuck do I fix that? You know, and there's not. It's kinda like saying, hey, I've got a fat gut. Like, what crunch can I do to fucking fix my abs? Like, well, it's not, it's more in the kitchen than it is in the fucking crunch, honestly. Like, and with training, it's that same way. Like, there's not this magic bullet little technique

• 3:20:30Speaker 05

  that fucking fixes everything. It's like, you've gotta put the time in, be consistent, and set all of the other intangibles up for you to be successful, or for the dog to be successful, for you to be successful training the dog. And so, that's what it is. Uh, in terms of how interactive I am, I get in, in the message boards, uh, every, every Monday morning, and I answer questions. Sometimes, depending on my schedule, I may pop in throughout the week here and there, uh, to, you know, grab a question here or there. But most of the time, it's, it's Monday mornings. It's ninety-nine bucks for unlimited access to all the content. There's about nine hundred minutes of videos right now, and, and, uh, I just finished filming a puppy series and a couple of, uh, uh, adult supplementals that, uh, that are gonna get added here shortly.

• 3:21:15Speaker 05

  And my goal is to, you know, is to just, you know, drop in new, new content, you know, when it, when it makes sense, when, when I need to regularly, uh, so that there's kind of a fresh and steady stream of, uh, you know, of new, new things for people to watch. Um, the, the goal with it, and it may sound like, you know, pie in the sky, or, or, you know, unreasonable, but is, is really is to transform, you know, western society in, in terms of how they communicate with their dogs, you know, is that there are so many dogs out there that are just poorly trained, or completely fucking untrained, and, and where it, where I take it personal is, is the shelter stats. Is that, you know, three point three million dogs every year are surrendered

• 3:21:59Speaker 05

  to shelters. That's a lot of fucking dogs. Um, about eight hundred thousand of them are euthanized every year. That comes out to over two thousand dogs every fucking day in this country are getting the blue juice. Damn. You know, over two thousand fucking dogs every fucking day are, are put to sleep in this country, and most of them, not all, but most of them, are because of, we teach them inadvertently behaviors that we don't like, and condition them to do things that make them a pain in our ass. Throw them in a fucking shelter, and they end up getting fucking killed for it. And, and to me, that's a shit fucking deal on, on human beings' part. And so... You know, if I can reach, you know, the bulk majority of the 90 million dog owners

• 3:22:42Speaker 05

  in this country that, that, you know, could use a little bit of assistance and help and teach them how to do it themselves, you know, not that you need to, you know, go spend fucking $5,000 on a board and train and have a professional trainer train your dog. Yeah, there are cases where that makes sense and I recommend it. But for most people, you can do it yourself and frankly, you should do it yourself. You know, it's, it's good from a discipline standpoint. It's fantastic from a relationship standpoint with the dog. Uh, because now he's gonna view you as, this is the motherfucker that trained me. Not, this is the guy that's upkeeping the training that some other asshole did. It's that, you know, this guy taught me every fucking thing I know. You'll be proud of it. Your dog will, will think of you higher for it.

• 3:23:24Speaker 05

  Uh, and your life will be much easier with, with all your dogs, uh, you know, that way because of it. So, uh, I, I really do, you know, it's not just a fucking business idea for me. You know, for me, I truly wanna help, uh, you know, get that number of, of 2,000 plus dogs every day being euthanized down to, you know, as close to zero as possible. Yeah. Um, and I think, you know, it starts with, with you. You know, it starts with, with you as an individual of, you know, putting the fucking time in, you know, being dedicated and, and being consistent and, and giving enough of a shit to try to train your own dog and, and learn how to communicate with him, because it's not complicated. It's, it's really simple stuff. It's just, most people are lazy and consistent and just don't know any better.

• 3:24:09Speaker 05

  2,000 dogs a day, that's, uh, that's pretty disheartening. Yeah. You know, I mean, the good news is, is that, you know, if you do the math on that, that's two and a half million that aren't. But, but the problem is, is that, you know, what, and what you don't want is, is for that two and a half million to be a considerable contributing factor to the, to the 3.3 the next year. And so that the dog is in a fucking hamster wheel, turnstile, revolving door in and out of a shelter because people don't know what the fuck they're doing and, and create more problems. And then, you know, the dog's in and out with three or four different owners over a couple of years and then ultimately gets euthanized because everybody does the same dumb shit with them.

• 3:24:53Speaker 05

  You know, so to me, when you actually look at those numbers and realize like that's a lot of fucking dogs being killed every single day, and there are some of them, you know, admittedly that that's probably the better option is euthanasia, but I will say that it's a fraction of the number that actually are euthanized. You know, most of them didn't start out that way. They weren't abused. They weren't fucking abandoned. You know, they were owned by people that just didn't know what the fuck they were doing, and it was a dog, you know, that probably has some thin nerves and is maybe a little environmentally weak. And when you couple that with inconsistent, confusing, unclear communication, that's a recipe for fucking disaster.

• 3:25:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:38Speaker 05

  And that's unfortunately where a lot of dogs end up, you know, in that position because of.

• 3:25:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Is, did that play a role in you starting the Warrior Dog Foundation?

• 3:25:52Speaker 05

  Um, sort of. I mean, in a manner of speaking in terms of, you know, I didn't, I didn't want the same fate, especially for dogs that have served this country. Yes, absolutely. And that it was born out of necessity is that, you know, there is no federal funding for retired working dogs, whether it's military, police, you name it, you know, Customs, Border Patrol. There is no fund set up, no grants, no facility that they can go to. There's no canine VA. There's nothing, you know? And so if the handler doesn't adopt the dog out, then the dogs get euthanized.

• 3:26:32Shawn Ryan?

  Would you say the majority of handlers do adopt the dog?

• 3:26:35Speaker 05

  They do.

• 3:26:36Shawn Ryan?

  Do they?

• 3:26:37Speaker 05

  The overwhelming majority do.

• 3:26:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's good.

• 3:26:39Speaker 05

  You know, for those of you listening to say, hey, I want to adopt one of those dogs, I love you for wanting to do that. Realize though, that, you know, of the 50 or so thousand working canines in this country at any given time.

• 3:26:55Speaker 05

  You know, forty-nine thousand and change are adopted to their handlers and those are the dogs that you're that you're thinking of when you say, I would adopt one of those dogs. The dogs that we get are the dogs that their handlers can't take or won't take, or that even get washed out before they're even of a retirement age because they've bit too many people too many times and just have too many fucking issues for that department to deal with and realize for a department to get to the point where they're gonna wash a dog that they've got tens of thousands of dollars plus a handler salary and all the equipment and and a couple of years of their time into like they're they're not gonna get rid of that dog at the drop of a hat. You know, it's gotta get to a point where that dog is such a liability to where it's

• 3:27:39Speaker 05

  it's, you know, it's better for them from a liability mitigation standpoint to get rid of the fucking dog, even if it means euthanizing it than it does to keep it on board. Those are the dogs that we get. Okay. So these aren't the dogs that like, oh, I've got, you know, nine grand babies and four chihuahuas and I'd love to take one of these dogs and I got, you know, again, bless your heart, but you know, these dogs are nasty, frankly. I mean, two of my three kennel staff have been bit, like put in the hospital bit in the last fucking week and a half, you know, by two different dogs and that happens, you know, fairly regularly, you know. So these dogs are used to doing that.

• 3:28:21Speaker 05

  They're very confident and comfortable fucking people up and they enjoy it, frankly, most of them, you know. And so, you know, we're taking them, understanding that that liability, A, exists and B, that it's our job to try to rehabilitate that out of them to the best of our ability. And with some dogs, we're successful. You know, there are dogs that we get in that we manage to spend, you know, several months with or even, you know, over a year in some cases and get them to a point where we can actually rehab them sufficiently enough to to live a normal house life, you know, in a civilian home. And we've got a number of dogs we've done that with. We've got a lot of dogs that we've not been able to do that with, that, you know, we're just basically a sanctuary for them and give them an opportunity to to live out their

• 3:29:05Speaker 05

  life, you know, in dignity and grace as best as we can, you know, to to avoid having to just put them down like like they were going to. I remember.

• 3:29:18Shawn Ryan?

  Being at your place, what I think we're going on two years when I came down to do your podcast and and you showed me, you know, the dogs there and I never had the opportunity to work with a dog like that, but to see

• 3:29:34Shawn Ryan?

  to see

• 3:29:37Shawn Ryan?

  it's fucking eerie going in there. I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna bullshit you. I'm not used to that uh, being around them and um, and we're gonna get into a lot more of this dog psychology and, and kind of what they go through with their training and, and what they're actually capable of tomorrow. But um, when we do part two, but that was a real fucking eye opener for me because I was the asshole that you talk about that's like, oh yeah, if a dog's fucking

• 3:30:09Shawn Ryan?

  bite me, I'm just gonna punch the shit out of it and get it off me. And, and the minute we walked in there and I saw those

• 3:30:17Shawn Ryan?

  those dogs, which have

• 3:30:20Shawn Ryan?

  you know, probably seen more fucking combat than me and you both.

• 3:30:26Shawn Ryan?

  I, I was uh, I came to the realization that uh, yeah, that's not gonna happen. So and uh, you know, and, and, and you know, it's fucking crazy is, is to know uh, you know, those dogs have done more than ninety nine point nine percent of the people in this fucking country. That um, sit at home and enjoy their pretty little fucking lives and uh, and then to for you to say that they're getting euthanized after services.

• 3:31:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's criminal.

• 3:31:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, and uh, so I mean, I mean, that's uh, again, that's fucking amazing that you started that and, and uh, and uh, I can't fucking wait to breach into that subject tomorrow.

• 3:31:20Shawn Ryan?

  Um, with the word Dog Foundation and, and everything that those dogs do because it's, it's.

• 3:31:26Speaker 05

  It's remarkable for sure.

• 3:31:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. But, um, but, uh, well, Mike, I kinda wanna wrap this up for now, um, and then we will pick back up tomorrow and it's gonna be all dogs, but, um, you know, if you don't mind giving us your handle on, uh, the IG and YouTube and your websites.

• 3:31:50Speaker 05

  Sure. So, uh, on Instagram, just at M. Ritland, uh, the biggest thing is go to MikeRittland.com or TeamDog.Pet, uh, that's the online training that, uh, I encourage everybody to sign up for, uh, if you have a dog. Um, Twitter, it's same at M. Ritland, Mike Ritland on Facebook, uh, two websites are again, MikeRittland.com and Tricost.com, that's, uh, both of those websites, you can, you can get all the things that I have going on, including stuff on Mic Drop Podcast, um, you know, all the products that I have, dog sales, speaking engagements, you name it. Uh, Warrior Dog Foundation is WarriorDogFoundation.org, uh, and again, you know, we've got 26 dogs right now, I've got another one coming tomorrow, uh, and one or two more coming in the next

• 3:32:34Speaker 05

  probably month, so, uh, no federal funding, uh, I can't thank, you know, those who have already supported, uh, enough for your support, uh, but also realize that, uh, you know, not, there, there are no days off in taking care of them, it's a 24/7 gig and we constantly have dogs coming in, so any, any support from, uh, from folks out there is, uh, greatly appreciated, uh, and that's, uh, that's the gist.

• 3:32:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I think you're gonna be getting a lot of support after this podcast and, uh, for those of you that do have pets, their dogs, go to TeamDog.Pet and, uh, by the time this episode airs, I'll already be deep in the middle of it and, uh, probably talking all kinds of shit to Mike on, uh, why I, uh, on, uh, on, uh, how much my pets have improved, so, and, uh, donate to the Warrior Dog Foundation, if, uh, what I just said isn't enough, then, uh, I guarantee you, part two of this podcast will, uh, strum your fucking heartstrings and force you to open those wallets and fucking make a donation like you should.

• 3:33:41Shawn Ryan?

  So, um, with that being said, Mike, you've got a hell of a fucking story, man. And, um, um, I really wanted to cover your story and not the dog's story yet because I haven't heard, I haven't heard it and I don't think anybody's heard it. And, uh, I just, I mean, you're a fucking warrior and your story is fucking incredible. And everybody that comes here, um, you know, just like we were talking downstairs, a lot of people don't think that, you know, that, uh, their story measures up to, to some, some of the other guys, but I'm here to tell you that your fucking story, uh, definitely

• 3:34:25Shawn Ryan?

  measures up, so.

• 3:34:27Speaker 05

  I appreciate it very much and I can't thank you enough for having me and, uh, you know, the show, the show that you've created in such a short time is, uh, nothing short of fucking mind-boggling, so I'm, I couldn't be prouder of you and happy to see you, uh, not just the success you've had, but continue to, to just blow out of the fucking water. I can't wait to see where it goes, so.

• 3:34:45Shawn Ryan?

  You and me both. Thank you, man.

• 3:34:48Speaker 05

  Amen.

• 3:34:48Shawn Ryan?

  Pick it up tomorrow.

• 3:34:49Speaker 05

  Alright.

• 3:35:41Speaker 10

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