#27 Rob O'Neill - The Man Who Killed Bin Laden

Former SEAL Team Six/Devgru Operator Robert J. O'Neill gives a full recap of his career in the SEAL Teams. From start to finish we cover it all. This is a side of Rob you haven't seen before. We get philosophical on topics such as "Should we have ever gone to Iraq?" and "Would we have been friends with our enemies under different circumstances?" And of course... We get the first hand account of the night Rob killed Bin Laden. You have never heard this side from the Man who killed Osama Bin Laden. 🚨 Vigilance Elite Newsletter 🚨 https://www.shawnryanshow.com/newsletter Please leave us a review on Apple/Spotify Podcasts: Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shawn-ryan-show/id1492492083 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5eodRZd3qR9VT1ip1wI7xQ?si=59f9d106e56a4509 #VIGILANCEELITE #SHAWNRYANSHOW 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

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig. 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.

• 0:53Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I hope you're having a fantastic week, even though it's only Monday. But, uh, but hey, if you're not, and it's off to a rough start, it's about to get better because I have a phenomenal interview lined up for you guys. Rob has been a long time coming on this show, and we finally got it done. And I think you guys are really gonna enjoy it. We talk about his entire career, and we get into some philosophical-type stuff that I think you all are gonna find extremely interesting as well. And I want to tell you all about the Vigilance Elite newsletter that we're kicking off. All kinds of good stuff coming through that, especially the exclusive content

• 1:44Shawn Ryan?

  that's only for newsletter people. And, uh, all kinds of other stuff. When the Gummy Bears are gonna release new products, all that stuff. It's all coming out on the newsletter. It's our only way to get directly to you without any algorithms in the way. So anyways, it's free. Sign up. Link's in the description. And on another note, I just want to personally thank all of you for being here. I love you all. Thank you. And enjoy the show.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  You guys are here because this is not a drill. Uh, this is real. We found a thing, and this thing is in a house. And this house is in a bowl, and this bowl is in a country. And you guys are gonna... You're gonna go get this thing, and you're gonna bring it back to us and show it to us.

• 3:04Speaker 04

  Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world. The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  I said, you guys realize... This is a one-way mission.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  We're not coming back from this one.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  We're targeting, uh, Al Qaeda in places where they've never seen guys like us.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  The reason you guys are here is this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Good evening. The Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by American special forces who raided his hideout in Pakistan in the early hours of the morning. And I remember putting my... My first foot came out, and I'm looking at bin Laden's house, and I remember thinking, "Fuck it, I guess we'll start the war from here."

• 4:15Speaker 05

  These remarkable pictures from right inside his compound show us exactly where Osama bin Laden was finally killed.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  The woman that found Bin Laden said, "I don't know what it looks like inside, but there will be a stairwell going to the second floor and you will run into Khalid Bin Laden." And he's 20 years old, that's Bin Laden's son, and that is his last line of defense. He will be armed on the stairwell.

• 4:48Speaker 05

  The blood you can see on the floor, evidence of how he was shot in the head through his left eye.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Simply because he went this way, I turned this way. And standing three feet in front of me is Osama Bin Laden, and he's got his hands on Amal, his wife's shoulders.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  I turn around and I kind of froze.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Other Navy SEALs are now coming in the room. A lot of guys are in there, and one of my guys came up to me and he said, "Are you good?" And I said, "No, no, what are we supposed to do now?"

• 6:03Shawn Ryan?

  Rob O'Neill, welcome to the show, man.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, I'm happy to be here, it's great.

• 6:07Shawn Ryan?

  Been a long time coming.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  It has, yeah, I think we've been promising to do this for a while.

• 6:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, shit.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Never got around to it. I even lived near here for a couple of years and I don't know how I didn't make it here.

• 6:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, well, life gets in the way, right?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does, life happens around you.

• 6:21Shawn Ryan?

  But, well, we had a great conversation about the upcoming alien invasion that's gonna happen.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  I'm at a point right now where nothing would surprise me.

• 6:31Shawn Ryan?

  Right?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  And even if aliens showed up, I would question, are those really aliens? Or is the government just the final push?

• 6:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  And I don't know what to believe. I mean, I've seen enough stuff to... I believe a lot of things now, and there's other stuff that I'm not sure if I believe it. So it's just a crazy world.

• 6:48Shawn Ryan?

  It's to the point where no matter what happens, I'm not gonna be surprised.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  No. I mean, consider a few years ago that a lockdown was just something you see in a movie. There's no way this would really happen, and it did. And we fell for it.

• 7:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, hook, line, and sinker.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  All of us. Even if you're, you know, the anti-masker, you still stay in your house. It's not like you're... You're not gonna fly without it. You're not traveling without it, so...

• 7:13Shawn Ryan?

  Well, actually, I got everybody... I get everybody a gift. And I was gonna get you a Delta SkyMiles.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 7:22Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh...

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Can I open it now?

• 7:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  What we got here?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  These are gummy bears.

• 7:32Shawn Ryan?

  Those are gummy bears.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Well, thank you.

• 7:35Shawn Ryan?

  Go good with your beer company.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 7:37Shawn Ryan?

  With your beer.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  That's right. Oh, you're awesome.

• 7:40Shawn Ryan?

  I need to get some of that beer to put on my bar.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  I'll definitely get you some. Not a problem at all. Armed Forces Brewing Company. We'll send you out as soon as we get done with this.

• 7:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'll put it right there on the bar.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Very cool.

• 7:49Shawn Ryan?

  You know, we'll drink it during the show.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have a beer for every branch. We have Jarhead, Soldier Beer, Cat Shot for Pilots, Special Hops, which I thought was pretty cool.

• 7:58Shawn Ryan?

  Special Hops?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Special Hops is an IPA. It's really good. We just came out with Neptune's Beer to sort of commemorate Neptune's Spear, which is commonly mispronounced. It's Neptune's Spear, as in King Neptune's Spear.

• 8:11Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  People say Neptune's Spear, but that's, you know, it's the two S's in a row.

• 8:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What you got any... What's your favorite flavor?

• 8:18Speaker 02

  IPA.

• 8:19Shawn Ryan?

  IPA?

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Special Hops, yeah. This is my favorite.

• 8:20Shawn Ryan?

  Special Hops?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  But, but the, um... When Neptune's Beer is available, it's gonna be, I think, 12%. So that might be my new favorite.

• 8:27Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. Nice. You gonna get into hard stuff at all, or...

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Uh, not just yet, but if the opportunity arises, um, probably.

• 8:36Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm sure that's gonna come. But, well, hey, I just wanna start, you got a hell of a career. Let's go through the, your entire career, you know, hit the high points. Obviously, the Bin Laden raid. But I wanna start with, you know, where you grew up, Montana. What was your childhood like?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Well, it was a kind of living in a bubble that you, you know, there's nothing on the other side of that mountain. But Montana, but Montana is the center of the universe. And people from anywhere else are probably gonna be better than you. Kind of a weird situation, a fear of success, I guess. Um, so I, you know, I grew up hunting. That was a normal thing. It was normal to hunt elk. It was normal to go, uh, mule deer, whitetail hunting, fishing. And I played a lot of basketball. Um, that was, that was gonna be my plan. I was gonna get so good at basketball that I would get college paid for. And then I was gonna stay in Butte, Montana and be a stockbroker or something like that, you know, get an MBA maybe from Montana Tech, where I did go for a year.

• 9:29Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. Were you pretty tight with your old man?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we, we kinda did everything together. We started hunting basically the same reason I joined the Navy, cuz he got dumped. He got a second divorce and we just had to do something, so we started hunting. We, I think the first time we went hunting, it was in a, it was in a, a two-door Datsun car. My Uncle Jack's, and we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know how to side in a weapon.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Kinda went out, we got, we got a doe tag for an antelope. And we went out, all we knew how to do was get, uh, the, the cooler stocked.

• 10:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  You know, like sodas and Twinkies and sandwiches and stuff.

• 10:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, we used to call it the buffet. And that was kind of it. It was, uh, there was basketball season, there was hunting season, there was fishing. And then, um, hanging out in Butte, Montana, which I thought was a big city at the time, cuz I didn't, you know, we didn't really go anywhere.

• 10:19Shawn Ryan?

  Do you miss it there?

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Uh, I do. I love to go back. I, I, I sometimes get jealous of people that have a normal job and a normal life. Nine to five, you know, wake up in the morning, kiss your kids. Go to work, have lunch, come home, be with your kids.

• 10:34Shawn Ryan?

  I totally understand that.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, just a, a normal life. I mean, I, yeah, it's kinda cool.

• 10:38Shawn Ryan?

  Don't have to lay shit to worry about.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:40Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, yeah, what, so what did your old man do?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  He was a stockbroker.

• 10:44Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, he was a stockbroker?

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Now he does weird shit, like he bought a, a really fast Harley and he's seventy-three. And, uh, I think it scares him.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  But uh, he bought it and he's uh, actually taking his uh, road test soon, do the cone thing.

• 10:59Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit, he's like, brand new on a bike.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, he, he had one before. He had a Honda Shadow, I remember growing up, but I don't think he ever rode it. I think he just had it.

• 11:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  But he's gonna, he's, he's still a fly fisherman. He just put a, a basketball court in um, in his backyard.

• 11:14Shawn Ryan?

  Oh nice.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  He plays in the winter in Montana. He'll go out and shovel it and uh, shoot free throws. He's still really good. He's got a good shot.

• 11:21Shawn Ryan?

  So, when did you, if that was the plan, what, how the hell did the SEAL teams and the Navy?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Well, the SEAL teams was an accident. Um, cause it was, it wasn't necessarily getting dumped by a girl, but it was a situation that, you know, I started to, well, once I joined the Navy, I realized most people are similar. You get to an age where, I just gotta get out of here. And that was where I was at. I, bad relationship, uh, basketball wasn't, I was playing, but it wasn't fun anymore. And it's, I need to go on an adventure. And I had two friends that always wanted to be Marines. Growing, I grew up with them. Jim McBride and Ben Wallacezewski. And they all, I'm, I'm talking high and tights, growing up. Marine Corps stickers on their first trucks. They're, you know, they, they were Marines. And then, and then I would see them come up, they were two years older than me. I would see them come back to Butte, Montana and like,

• 12:11Speaker 02

  it was like watching someone from Full Metal Jacket walk into, I was at the Vu Villa. And Ben walked in, I'm like, holy shit, I mean, that's a Marine. Like, that guy, I, I still wasn't gonna join, I was still playing basketball. And I was like, that's a fucking Marine though. This, I like, I'm gonna watch this guy kick someone's ass in here. Can touch him. And then when it was time to leave, um, like, cause, as a young man, you, you can go out and see the world for free by joining the military.

• 12:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  And I, I, again, Full Metal Jacket, I, like everyone else, I watched that a thousand times. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do that because I guarantee, um, bootcamp is gonna suck, but I wanna meet that drill instructor. You know, just how funny he is, but brutal. And I wanna be tough like a Marine, so I went to join the Marine Corps. Just went down there and there was um, my wife calls me the luckiest unlucky man in the world. She, I think one of her saying, like, through life, I think one of her sayings is, you could trip over your dick, but you're gonna land in a pot of gold.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  So I went, I went in to join the Marine Corps and as luck would have it, the Marine wasn't there. He was literally out to lunch and the Navy guy was, the Navy guy was.

• 13:22Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  And I went over to him because my two friends and I'm, everyone's heard this joke before, but my two friends, Ben and Jim said, the Marine Corps is actually part of the Department of the Navy. It's just the men's department. And that's why I went in there because if they're part of the department, he'll know where he is and then he'll, you know, and I, I said, um, hey, where's the, where's the Marine? When's he gonna be back? And you know, so he's sitting there. He's a Navy chief, khakis, anchors. I didn't know what the shit that meant, but he's a chief, so he's clever. And he said, why, why do you want the Marine? I said, I want to be a sniper and I grew up hunting. Marines have the best snipers in the world. I read Carlos Hathcock's book, like I want to do that. And he goes, look no further, my friend. We have snipers in the Navy. All you have to do is become a Navy SEAL first. No big deal. We'll send you right to sniper.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  And I didn't know what that was, right? I'm from Montana and I didn't know how to swim. And me being a naive young man, I, I thought, you know, um, I don't know what a SEAL is, but this guy here is a professional recruiter. Why would he lie to me?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  And I signed it and um, I signed the contract to go. The only thing I did right um, was I, I learned early in life to get it in writing. Whatever you're doing, fine. We can do business on a handshake, but sign this first.

• 14:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  So I got in writing. It was called the Dive Farer Program.

• 14:37Shawn Ryan?

  The Dive Farer?

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Dive Farer Program, which meant um, you get like a $2,500 bonus. You are guaranteed a chance to go to BUDS. Basically on a water demolition SEAL training. You're guaranteed a chance and I didn't, I mean, I didn't know all that meant is you can go and fail and then you're going to this fleet.

• 14:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  And so I signed that and um, yeah, that was it. And then, and then he started showing me videos of BUDS. I didn't know what that was. I, the only thing I knew about um, Navy SEALs was um, watching Charlie Sheen's character jump off the bridge in the movie Navy SEAL. Eddie Braun is his name. He's, he still is his stunt man, which is awesome. Uh, very good guy, very good stunt man. I guess during that scene too, I'm kind of jumping around. Eddie Braun said, all right, I'm gonna do this. You get one take and he, then the famous uh, jumping up the bridge scene. Yeah. Anyway, I, that's what I thought it was and then I knew something about. Sit-ups with two thousand pound logs. My buddies that I grew up with that I thought knew a lot about um the military. Said, there's no fucking way in hell you're gonna make it to C L T. What did you just do?

• 15:40Speaker 02

  I took my mom to the recruiting station to have her watch videos and she didn't tell me to my face, but she's like, there's no fucking way you're gonna make it to this training. And uh, the only person that says that I think really believed in me was my father. Um, just because I um, because of our attitudes with uh, free throws. And ma- master the basics. Um, free throws, that's if I could describe life, it would be how to be successful in life, free throws. Because it's ma- master the basics. Do your thing, shoot here, muscle memory. You wanna be great, do it a thousand times. You wanna be really great, do it ten thousand times. Do everything like you do anything. We would, we would do drills, my father and me, uh, we would play every single day.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  And um, anything from an hour of one-on-one to three hours of five-on-five. But we were not allowed to leave the gym until one of us made at least twenty free throws in a row. So that's start with a make and then you keep shooting. And um, that's something else too about uh, like stances with shooting and all that stuff. When you make your first free throw, you don't move. You're in the position. I hate watching basketball players now, they make a free throw and I gotta go give everyone five. Fuck you, it's your job. You made a free throw, make the second one and then talk about how awesome you are. But we couldn't leave the gym until one of us made twenty in a row. And that could take five minutes, that could take three hours.

• 17:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  But we uh, we got, we got so good at it that we made ourselves, there's a, there's a um, a steakhouse in Butte, Montana called The Derby. And like Montana's, like, like I said, how we don't know how good it is because we're just there. Don't realize how great the steaks are at The Derby in Butte, Montana. We would start our season off twenty in a row to leave the gym, twenty for a steak. Now it stays at twenty to leave the gym, but now it goes up by five, twenty-five for a steak, thirty for a steak, thirty-five for a steak, twenty to leave the gym, fifty for a steak. And we got to the point, uh, my father made ninety-one in a row. And that was the family record for a week, cause the next week I made a hundred and five in a row.

• 17:40Shawn Ryan?

  In a row?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  In a row. And you know what's funny is like a lot, well, a lot of things in life, only two of us saw it. So you can take my word for it or tell me all this shit. But um, yeah, so um, um, I, he believed in me. And um, So being lucky instead of good. Um, I had my student ID to Montana Tech. They had a pool, so that meant I could still get into the pool like at five in the morning. And I went up there and I'm like, okay, the breaststroke is one of the strokes. It can't be that hard. It's twenty-five meters down, twenty-five meters back. I'll swim a thousand meters and gauge it from there. And like anything with, like, everything was going fine until I entered the water and that's when the problem started. I made it to the deep end. I almost didn't make it back and I was like,

• 18:27Speaker 02

  I'm fucked. I just signed a contract with the government to be a Navy SEAL and I don't know how to swim. Holy shit.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  So I was trying and I'm busting my ass doing whatever and uh, my friend, so I, I'm in there for, just dying. I'm trying to get out and my friend, Mike Driscoll, I went to high school with him, one of the few people in Montana who did swim and I believe he did go on to swim at Notre Dame. And he said, Rob, don't take this the wrong way. It's great to see you. I've just literally never seen you in the pool before. What gives? And I said, I just, I just joined the Navy. I'm gonna be a SEAL. And he goes, oh no, not like that.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  And then he showed me, um, he showed me the, how to do the breaststroke, how to do the side stroke. And so with repetition, I just, um, I would go there every day and I still have my, um, there's a little packet you get when you join the Navy, that folder and even like there's the Bud's warning order and all that shit. I still have that with my, I would write my times down for the five hundred yard swim that you had to do. No shit? You still have that? I still have it. I found it in a, one of the kit bags that we all keep because I might need this sleeping bag someday.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  But then I was, I was up there, I was getting pretty decent and then Jim McBride, the Marine, he's actually, he, he was enlisted. He actually, I think he just retired as a lieutenant colonel, which is awesome. Semper Fi, that's what he was gonna do. He was going to be a Marine. He, he went to aircrew, um, school in, in the Marine Corps. And they taught him how to really do the combat recovery stroke. And he goes, just do this a couple of times and, and just like when I saw Ben in the Vuvilla, I was watching Jim swim and I'm like, okay, I, this is next level shit. Now I gotta get this. And so I just, you know, I got proficient. I thought. Yeah. And then I, I did get to, to boot camp. And, you know, I actually failed the, the screening test the first time. Cause I, I took it like an asshole, um, after you get those 90 shots and you're just sick as a dog. Cotton mouth or whatever.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Um, and I was, I remember sitting there, there, how many people try out in, in, in boot camp? At the time, there must've been 400 people. What year is this? 1996. 96. And, uh, looking at this bleachers and I still had that small town mentality. I, I remember looking at the Navy SEAL flag, the unofficial Navy SEAL flag. I'm watching this arrogant team guy. I didn't know what to think of Navy SEAL. He came out there and like did this perfect dive that like Greg Louganis would have loved for a number of reasons.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  But, uh, and then he got out and kinda just gave us the, the stink eye and, and he, and I remember looking thinking,

• 20:57Speaker 02

  there's no fucking way. Why, look at all these guys trying out. And, and then, uh, but then I started talking to other guys that were from Brooklyn. Uh, uh, some, some dudes that, that joined the Navy to get out of Compton. Guys from South Florida. And I started to realize that, okay, everyone's scared. Everyone's kinda the same. We're all the same. And, and then, and then it started to sink. I mean, later on in life, I realized that I don't give a shit if you're the CEO of a major company. You're the guy in Bin Laden's bedroom. We've all had our first day. Yeah. And we've all been scared, admitted. I mean, we'll talk about the one percenters later, which exist, um, that aren't scared and will pass their, the, but the rest of us get scared. Um, the rest of us have been nervous.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  But if you can just take it in increments at a time. And so the next time I got there, I, I, I lost the intimidation. I gave up the bullshit with, I just got shots. No, fuck that. Do the swim, do the pull up, do the sit up, do the push up, do the damn run and get on with your life. And, and that was it. I mean, and, uh, you know, just being in boot camp and I kinda, I'm a big believer in, um, wherever you are, be there. So I I got into um the classes we were taking. Okay, I'm gonna be a Navy SEAL. But I want to learn about naval customs and courtesies, tradition. I want to learn with the horn. Like I paid attention. I was interested in this. The the whatever they I I was interested in how to make a bed, how to fold your your shirts. I still do it.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  And um I got into it and then I I did, you know, I got the contract in there with the, you know, now you're with a Navy SEAL chief. And you you you know, you're gonna get your orders.

• 22:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  And uh. Part of the dive fair program, I didn't realize this, was you have to be a corpsman.

• 22:37Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  I didn't see that in the fine print, but I I finagled my way when you go up to get your rates. I made up some bullshit. And I I found out what the shortest A school was, so I could get to BUDS right away. And it was a aircrew survival equipment man. Or a parachute rigger. So I would get that. I knew I would finish boot camp, go to Millington, Tennessee. It it was like a two or three week A school. And I I was with Marines now. But, I mean, I'm talking huge dude. I had there's one huge Marine, one white dude, one black dude, huge Marines. I'm still intimidated by Marines. And then this big black Marine, this I'll never forget, he's a staff sergeant. He taught me how to wind a bobbin and how to sew.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  And at first I thought, okay, I'm into some shit, but I don't know. And then I'm like, wait a minute, sewing might be an awesome. Trait. I'm gonna pay attention. This a big, tough Marine taught me how to sew. I learned about syphilth created fire for a conso machine. You don't want this bullshit. And but and the teams, it turns out to be a good thing. But before we had all the high speed kit that they that you need to. Cut this pocket off, sew it here. Where do you want your stuff? And but never tell anyone you're good at it, because then your first LPO, he'll have you sewing everyone's uniforms.

• 23:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  You have a a year workup to get all one hundred of these blouses or whatever. Yeah, I went to Millington and um. Went back to Butte, Montana for um. Leaving and drove my truck to Coronado. And the first place I stopped in uh in Coronado was uh was right by the Hotel Dell. And I just wanted to get in the ocean to. You know, if I was talking to nineteen year old Rob O'Neil now, I'm like, dude, you're gonna get ocean time. Just stay out.

• 24:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Don't take cold showers. You just, my thing about the cold showers, when I, when um, I talk to young kids, young men that wanna be SEALs and they'll say, what should I be doing to get ready for BUDs? And I'll say, well, let me answer your question with a question. What are you doing to get ready for BUDs? And they say, uh, taking cold showers to get used to it. And I'm like, you know what? Stop that right now. And I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna give you an example. If I told you, in thirty days, I'm gonna kick you in the nuts as hard as I can, and in order to get ready for it, you had your best friend kick you in the nuts every single day, guess what? It's still gonna suck when I do it.

• 24:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Don't prepare for shit. It's just take it like a man.

• 24:52Shawn Ryan?

  Every single time.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I got there and um, it was a Thursday night and I was in the, I got into the, the, um, the Pacific Ocean and all of a sudden, there were these, these boats rowing by and there was chem lights on the side of them. And it took me a second to realize, oh shit, I'm checking into class two zero eight, that's two oh seven, and this is hell week. And I still get goosebumps thinking about it, like,

• 25:17Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Well, you talk about swimming, you just jumped in with both feet and it's about to be on. And then um, yeah, I got a hotel and checked in on a Friday, which was stupid. Wait till Monday.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Like, why do you want quarter neck watch when you can at least go have your last beer in peace? Yeah, and then uh, two zero eight started, BUDs class two zero eight, um, uh, you know, it's typical, uh, starts off with, at the time, I think we called it PTRR.

• 25:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's what they called it.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  They didn't have quite the pipeline they do now. They're doing it better now with actually getting guys ready with prep and nutrition.

• 25:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  You know, this is back in the day when you had a Navy SEAL as a skydiving instructor and you eat shit. He doesn't tell you how to work your canopy, he laughs at you.

• 25:58Shawn Ryan?

  They have so many guys signing up now, apparently, this is, this is uh, from this family that I used to train when I did tactics and stuff. He, this kid went in. They have so many people signing up to be SEALs now that, or go to BUDs, I guess, that they have to, they can't even take them all.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Really?

• 26:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they're, they're showing up and they sent this guy out to the fleet for two years, but broke his contract. That's how many people are signing up.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Well, that's what tells you about a contract with the government. They can tell you to go fuck yourself.

• 26:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we've seen plenty of that lately.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:30Shawn Ryan?

  But, um.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  So you're not checking in though. It goes from watching a special on, on a cable news special about some reporter that went to, but now you're at Bud's.

• 26:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  And, and I don't know what the fuck. And they brought us into a classroom and we were still in our whites, our dress, our dress whites with like the, I didn't, I think, what do you have one little service medal or whatever. Yeah. And we check in and this instructor came, this instructor came in and he goes, hey, anybody want to quit? And he was fucking around like a team guy joke. This dude goes, I do.

• 27:04Shawn Ryan?

  Right off of that?

• 27:05Speaker 02

  I never thought it was a joke. He's like, no, he, he, he just, he got orders to Bud's to get off the ship.

• 27:10Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  He quit because he needed to get like three weeks on.

• 27:15Shawn Ryan?

  To do whatever the hell they want?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So then he quit. And then, um, uh, we had a, uh, an instructor named, uh, Eschelman. And he's a legend. If anyone knows who, a legend. And he said, um, this is how I started, I started to realize that they're training you how to, how to be successful in life. He said, uh, all right, I know, I mean, and he, Bud's instructors are not historically nice guys. But this guy was like, he would say stuff, look, guys, I'm not here to intimidate. I'm here to motivate. He was our class proctor. So that is the one that helps you through. And he said, I, I, um, I know you've seen the movies and probably read the books, regardless of what you've been told, this course is not impossible. Okay. People graduate. Look at me. I am living proof.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  So I will never ask you to do anything impossible, but I will make you do something very hard, followed by something very hard, followed by something very hard, day after day after day for eight straight months. And that sounds like a lot to get from now to eight months from now, but don't think about that because that is not how you achieve a long-term goal. You do it like this. You wake up in the morning on time. Then you make your bed the right way. Then you brush your teeth. You just started the day with three victories. That's three wins already. Make it to the 5:00 AM PT on time. And as I'm beating you, do not think about the pain you're going through. Concentrate on your next goal in life, which is breakfast. After breakfast, make it to lunch. After lunch, your next goal in life is dinner. And after dinner, do everything you need to do to get back into that perfectly made bed. And because you took the time.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  In the morning to make your bed the right way regardless of how bad today was and it will be bad. Tomorrow's a clean slate. Tomorrow is a fresh start and when you feel like quitting, which you will. Do not quit right now. That's a motion. I want you to quit tomorrow. If you can keep quitting tomorrow, you can do anything in life.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  And that's what I, I, I mean, I thought I wasn't gonna make, I had to get up fifteen minutes early to put on sunscreen. Like I thought that would be a reason, a sunburn would get me out of buds. Um, you know, little shit like that, but I, it started to enforce on me. Fuck that. I'm gonna put sunscreen on. I'm gonna fail a swim, but I'm not gonna quit. And, and then you start seeing guys quit. And, and one thing, one problem too is, uh, I called it sympathetic quitting. When, when someone that you think is tougher than you because he's louder than you quits, well, if he can't make it, I can't make it. And they, I'm sure you saw it too in BUDS. Yeah. Someone, well, should they just follow him? Like, it's like, fuck him. Like even in the movies, when you see someone go into the bell and the other students are like, no, no, it's like, fuck you, quit. I don't want you.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, join them. I'm not quitting. Yeah. And then it just, you know, it turns into, uh, hell week. Um, and I, you know, all of a sudden it's breakout. Like we're in the tent. I know it's coming and breakout starts, which is organized chaos. They're, you know, get a muster, get your boat crew and like, fuck, they're not going to, they got, they got instructors like that are retired in there to fuck with you. Yeah. Just to realize the chaos. And, and there was a guy that, that, that quit right off the bat in, in breakout. And I'm like, dude, this is the best part. Like this is, this is done in the movies and then, um, and then again, it's just the, uh, I, I did have someone say, you're, you know, obviously your next goal is, is your next meal. Your long-term goal right now is sunrise of Wednesday.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  And if, if you can live the sunrise, you'll probably be so doped up from lack of sleep that you can, they'll just push you through. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it's Friday and then, uh, um, we did, you know, the mud pits, the famous shit at the end, like the bacteria infested cesspool where whatever. And I remember we had Admiral Richards was gonna secure us and a typical Admiral, he was three hours late. So they have to beat us. We're next to three. It's like, could someone just secure the shit? Can I get a gay rated? Just let us go. Yeah. Hey, I remember he said he's shaking everyone's hands and like, he's like the first Admiral I ever met and I, he's like, congratulations, O'Neil. Thank you, Admiral. He goes, now wipe that shit off your face. I'm like, Roger that.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, then all of a sudden Hell Week's over. And then, um, and then you're in the Walk Week where they're actually letting you recover. And then I'll, I'll never forget our first swim. Because now you're done with Hell Week and obviously Hell Week, I think, is the reason that Navy SEALs in combat will walk three miles out of their way to avoid getting their boots wet.

• 31:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  You get tortured. And, um, our first two mile swim, they had us line up and face the ocean. The first time getting in the ocean after Hell Week. And they made us line up and we're just staring at it and the same instructor, Eschman. He comes walking up and down, he's like, "First time in the ocean since Hell Week, huh, gents? Kinda spooky, isn't it?" And then you do that, you do the hydro recon and then boom, you get your, uh, blue helmet, you're in die face.

• 31:47Shawn Ryan?

  What did you find? Did you, did you make it through all at once?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:51Shawn Ryan?

  You were an original?

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:53Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, that's not very many of those.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  I know, and, and I, it didn't make sense to me because, I mean, pool comp. Uh, they have you do the test on Friday twice and if you fail, you have to do it Monday. And then if you fail that, you're, and a lot of, and people don't realize, a lot of dudes fail pool comp. And you can get kicked out for failing pool comp. Most guys get rolled, you know, to make it again, but. I failed twice on, um, on Friday and then I, I remember just practicing, uh, uh, untying knots. Practice breath holds. How am I gonna get through this? And, and, and that started to, started to enforce that failure is sometimes a, a learning lesson. You can learn. Don't be afraid of failure. Just don't quit.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  And then I, I, I went through and, um, uh, I, I, I think I untied most of the knots and, uh, you know, you come up at the end, "I feel fine." And then this instructor's here and it's here, "O'Neal, pass." I'm like, "Fuck, yeah." And he grabbed me and he goes, "You untied three of my whammy knots, fucker." And then you get out and you're in die face and now. And that's where you learn that the Navy can make anything suck. Cause diving, scuba diving, I don't know if you know this, is fun. Not in the fucking Navy. No. So you do a little bit of open circuit stuff, then you do the cool uh hundred, hundred twenty feet dive in the Pacific, which is neat, then you get into a dragger and then just learning how to count kicks and then ship attack shit and you know dive medicine, uh dive physics and you know the classroom stuff where that now this is where the meatheads who can run five miles, they fail. Yeah.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Cause now you gotta learn about Boyle's Law, you gotta learn about the bends, learn about uh uh AGEs, arterial gas embolisms, shit like that and and all of a sudden you're done with that and now it's third phase. And at this point, no one had, no one had told me that San Clemente Island is by far the worst part. I, I mean, I thought Hell Week was bad. I thought Pool Comp was bad. The fucking island for me was the worst. No shit. Forty straight days of nothing but getting beat and I'm convinced the instructors are, you know, hitting the sauce a little bit out there. Oh yeah. They're reminding us that no one, you know, we're, we're killing you on one of the nicest beaches in the world. Nobody can hear you scream out here. And uh, yeah, we, I mean, you know, it's and their thing was um wet and sandy every hour on the hour for twenty four hours.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter what you're doing. You, you need to run to the surf and your swim buddy goes with you. Every hour on the hour and I have pictures of shit like, I mean, you can be in your, there's no point in even going to bed, just sleep on the floor and then they'll, they're watching. Or we think they're watching. Yeah. I mean, they might not be, but what if they are? You know, um.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I, I had, I had a, uh, my swim buddy kept, he just got uh some sort of homesick or some sort of island fever and he kept fucking everything up. He like, he, he forgot to put the buff, buffer in his gun, the spring. And um, and the instructor said, did you do a function check on this? And he's like, yes, I did. And he's like, he pulls it back. There's no spring. So obviously the gun doesn't work. He goes, all right. You too, wet and sandy every hour. So I'm getting punished for this guy, for my swim buddy. And then uh I'll never forget, I think SEAL Team Three was out there. So the BUDS compound is here and then the kick ass uh SEAL compound like for Navy SEALs. And they're still legends to us. Um, they, they fucked up a, a demo shot in the bay there. Uh, they didn't, they didn't double, double fucking whatever.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  It didn't go off. It didn't go off. So now you got all these charges, the water don't go off and there's like this. I, I'm, I'm gonna screw up the regulations for the Navy, but I think it's uh forty eight hours. No one can even get in. EOD can't even go in there because it might go and and any, everyone knows that an explosion of water is way worse than an explosion on land because water doesn't compress. So, um, my buddy fucked up again and they're like, okay, God, and the instructor goes, well, I can't get you guys wet every hour on the, I can't put you in the surf every hour on the air because they have demo shots. And I go, I will hit him with the fucking hose every hour on the hour. Let me do it. Lay off, spray this motherfucker. So, yeah, but then the island ends. You know, you've take the C-130 back.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  And now they're saying, okay, um, well, they, they read our orders on the island where we're going. So, a- and I, I don't know if they still do this, but we used to do a dream sheet. You put your top three SEAL teams in a row, which to me was like, this is cool. Where, where do I want to go? And I think a, a guy that I knew said, um, don't put, I mean, obviously put which team you want first, but then put the other teams on that coast. Because you might not get two, but you will get eight, which is awesome. Whatever you do, do not put SDV anywhere.

• 36:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  I mean, it sounded like a good deal at the time because you get free fall. And that's like the only good deal. Uh, but apparently SDV is a motherfucker.

• 36:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  So, uh, I put SEAL Team Two, SEAL Team Eight, SEAL Team Four, because they're all on the East Coast. Uh, and at the time, uh, the only real work we were getting was Bosnia, Kosovo, and SEAL Team Two, that was their AL, so I kind of wanted to go to SEAL Team Two. Plus, you know, it was one of the first two SEAL teams. To me, just seemed like a, to me, I still love to say SEAL Team Two, that's awesome. And, um, I'll never forget, they were reading our orders and they're like, so-and-so SEAL Team Three, so-and-so SEAL Team One. They go, O'Neal, SDV, sorry, SEAL Team Two. In that one second, I'm like, no! SDV Two?

• 37:03Shawn Ryan?

  You're ready to quit right there. You made it all the way through.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  That's what you're doing like 12 hour dives in the Chesapeake Bay in February. Fuck that.

• 37:10Shawn Ryan?

  No, thank you.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I got SEAL Team Two and then, and then all of a sudden you're, um, you know, get, go to medical, get your shit done, go to dental, get checked up, and then go to Fort Benning. And it's like, holy shit, Bud's is over.

• 37:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Now what? I have to be an ABC, what does that even mean? And then you go to Benning and, and I'd never worked with the army before. And it was just cool, again, because I, you know, looked up to the army, Rangers are fucking studs. And I went and they're, they're, these are kids that look like me in army uniforms. And like, they're asking me about Bud's and I'm asking them about basic. And then we're going through, um, through airborne, which is just a clown show.

• 37:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Just, I mean, because the army makes those instructors do, to keep your attention, that ridiculous dancing around shit.

• 37:55Shawn Ryan?

  Well, they hate us too.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Oh, they hate, I would hate us. Imagine the, the worst thing that they could have done is send, I didn't mean to say clown show airborne, obviously rich history, just some of the shit they did was clown show.

• 38:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Um, but, um, yeah, I mean, imagine taking someone at nineteen or twenty years old, just finished the hardest military training in the world. You know, your punishment is to do, to do ten pushups. You need to do two pullups before you go into the chow hall. All right.

• 38:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Two pullups, how many times? A hundred? But no, I mean, that was cool. And then, but, but then in their defense too, and obviously, you know, in our service, we make fun of each other. We, you know that. Um, but then the first jump, I, I mean, it took a while, like I'm convinced you can teach someone how to fall and push them out of plane in one day. But they take their time and you're in those gravel pits or whatever, falling. Um, but the first time I jumped, the first time under canopy and I landed in one of the, uh, black hats. One instructor said, how was that? And I was like, that is the coolest thing I've ever done. So that was awesome. And then all of a sudden, Ben, you go to SEAL Team Two.

• 38:55Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't have, uh, SQT back then?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  No, no, we went through SEAL tactical training.

• 39:00Shawn Ryan?

  What was that? I went through SQT, so I don't know what that was.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Well,

• 39:05Speaker 02

  um, it's a thirteen week course that they ran two times a year. So you get there, you're in the training department with the older guys and then you, um, you, um, wait until your class stops. So you can volunteer to, you're a, you know, picking up brass and shit.

• 39:21Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Actually, that's where I met Don Shipley, Senior Chief Don Shipley, the first, I think one of the first SEALs I ever met, he came in, uh, just, if, if, if, Don Shipley, to this day, is one of the coolest motherfuckers I've ever met. He came in in his khakis. I'm a new guy, like I'm trying to blend into the, nothing. He came in in his khakis and goes, oh, fuck it. Who wants to come with me to the Chiefs Club, get a beer? I was like, I would love to. No, you're not going. I would and Shipley just turned out to be like he was he was so cool and we did we would I would volunteer to jump with the platoons. Just to get I want to get the gold wings that's your next go I don't have a try day yet you have to get through. Seal tactical training which is 13 weeks and then a six month probationary period so I want to get the gold wings at least so I'm I'm a new meat but I'm not that new.

• 40:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  And I remember jumping once with Don Shipley and just like I mean so they just tackle and jumps and he turns back he's doing the. The jump master win thing and he kind of goes.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  We had dudes in the trees like.

• 40:19Shawn Ryan?

  He's like uh let's go to the bar.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Well yeah we're not staring this canopy just get out.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  And then so SCT was was run at we first part was in. Puerto Rico for combat diving and that was different than than Bud's diving because now I mean they're legitimately. Teaching you how to dive how to do your kick how to get your your shit right and you're wearing the the wetsuit you want or don't want what makes you comfortable. And then just doing like turtle backing which you know that's the worst part but then you do the four hour dives and two a day and then up to camp or Fort AP Hill in Northern Virginia. And then you do all the land warfare it's basically land warfare then demo a lot of demo. One of the best demo experiences I had best and worst was.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  So Master Chief Pig Wagner was running it he's a Vietnam guy and and he's up there running the show because he didn't give a fuck. And we had always read that you can light C4 on fire. And it won't do anything it'll turn into a vapor we'd read it. I ain't doing it right so he pulled us out the first day and he's like yeah okay you two are gonna come up here and you're gonna like this and round the class and prove. And I remember I don't know if I had lighter or Bob my buddy had lighter but one of us did and as soon as it flicked he set off a four pound charge in the woods.

• 41:40Shawn Ryan?

  They did that same shit to me.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Did you?

• 41:42Shawn Ryan?

  They did, they did that in Bud's.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, apparently it's a good go to.

• 41:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  It worked, but then, then you lied and like, oh, you can do this. And then you learn about C4, like you can, you can do anything to C4. It's not, I mean, it needs that violent blasting cap.

• 41:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Basically. Yeah, so we did that and then go back to SEAL Team 2 and then they have a, um, six months of you're in, uh, they're observing you like, and so SEAL Team 2, they're keeping time, how fast do you run the O course? How fast was your base tour? How fast was your swim? They're timing you and they're watching you and they're being pricks. And I had a dude check in.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  His last name was Courier, Master Chief. I didn't know he was a Master Chief. I didn't know he was about to be the Command Master Chief.

• 42:23Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Young looking guy, red hair, looks nice. And, um.

• 42:29Shawn Ryan?

  He seemed like a nice guy.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  He had a damn locker and I didn't, I'd never seen him before and he's a young looking dude. I'm like, that's, you know, I'm, I'm about to be a team guy. And so anyway, so we went to, uh, we were going to the O course, so that there's two O courses at Little Creek, as you know, and there's, there's a small one and the big one. And the small one is just for time. It's like you're, you're running in your, you know, monkey bars or whatever, uh, uh, parallel ladder, whatever they call that shit. And then you jump over this, run, you're running it for time. You do three of those, then you do a big loop and do three more and then you go back to the team and that, you know, whoever wins, wins. And I was chasing Art Toki. So I'm a new guy, 20 years old. And Art Toki's one of the 1 percenters who he will, he will beat you at everything.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  So I'm, I want to, I can run fast, I'm still fast from Bud's. And so I'm like going through the little thing and then I'm going through the tires and, uh, I hear that dude Courier, um, yelling at me, "Stop skipping every other tire." So I'm just trying to haul ass. So I'm running around and I'm, and he goes, uh, he yells at me from one of the, he's yelling across now at the O course at me. He's like, "I thought I said you should stop skipping every other tire." And I, I yelled at him, "And if you were fucking fast enough, you'd see me skipping every other monkey bar." So, um, I'm just yelling at a team guy, cause my Trident board is that day. Now I get my, my camis on, I go to the Trident board, guess who's in the center of it? That guy, Mark Courier, the Command Master Chief.

• 43:48Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I just told him to fuck himself on the O course. So he decides whether or not I get Trident and he goes, "You're the guy skipping every other monkey bar. Why do you do that? You need to cheat?" And I said, I go, "Yeah, to beat Art Toki, you do."

• 44:02Speaker 02

  So that was a long Trident board. I did get it that day and then, and then now you get assigned to a platoon.

• 44:07Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  And that's just one, I mean, that's, that's like a brief. It's a every moment in time of how to get there. And then now you, then you get your Trident and then you get your Bloodwings. I'm not, they're allowed to do that.

• 44:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  And now you're Navy SEAL.

• 44:20Shawn Ryan?

  So looking back through that whole pipeline, was, was there ever a time you wanted to quit?

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Every day in BUDS.

• 44:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What got you through?

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Um, everyone who said I couldn't do it.

• 44:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Just I don't, I'm not going to go home with this.

• 44:34Shawn Ryan?

  Seems to be the common denominator.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  I think it is. I mean, it's, it's not because, uh, well, because it wasn't hard. I want to quit every day.

• 44:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Fuck those ocean swims.

• 44:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Fuck the, the, the conditioning runs, the mind, the mind games on the soft sand runs when you're finally coming back after five miles and you go right to the compound or right past it.

• 44:52Shawn Ryan?

  What was the hardest part for you?

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Um, I think the swims, just because my times were just there. They, they put me with a, a good swimmer. Because I wasn't a good swimmer and he could guide. Uh, the, you know, as we know, the key to, uh, ocean swims is guiding, getting there straight. Cause if you're doing this number, you're just adding to it. So I would just stare at Monty and, uh, and he would swim. And I would just kick. And we, you know, got to that. Yeah, that was that.

• 45:18Shawn Ryan?

  So you got into team two, right? Started team two and

• 45:24Shawn Ryan?

  what were you guys doing? What was going on in the world?

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Um, a little bit of Bosnia still, um, Sarajevo.

• 45:31Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  And I don't think anybody had killed anybody yet. So we didn't really know what was happening, but that, that's kind of what it was. And, uh, I was assigned to, um, a MARG platoon on an amphibian ship.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  The USS Austin, which is an Austin class LPD, which means it's the original. So we crossed the ocean on a, on a flat bottom LPD, which is horrific. And as a Navy SEAL on a boat, you don't have much to do. Um, I, I did, I took advantage of it. I would go around to different shops and see how, um, how they worked, what the quartermaster's doing, what they do in the airloft, how's the, what's steering like and, and, uh, boats is made, cool motherfuckers. Um, and, and that's, that's another part where a lot of team guys, if you can imagine, are cocky to fleet sailors. And I would tell a lot of SEALs, cause I did a couple of cruises on ships. I would say, you know, there are guys on the ship that work a hell of a lot harder than you do. Navy life's no joke.

• 46:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  And I just tried to learn about it. Um, and, um,

• 46:29Speaker 02

  I met the Marines. We had, it was my first time working with amphibious reconnaissance. Uh, cool dudes, great dudes. And we went over there and all we were gonna do was um, training exercises. We went, I mean, we went to Rota Spain, I don't know how many times, Italy like 11 times. And um, we did get, so I, I actually, I'm sorry, I went through sniper school before that deployment. So they, turns out Chief John Judy, who was my recruiter, did not lie to me. They would send me to sniper school and just get through butts first. I'd love to see him again. I mean, I, I, that was awesome. He was, he was never, he was never mean to me. He just kinda, yeah, you're good. Um, and so I did go to sniper school at Camp Atterbury, which is awesome. And, and that sniper course is based off of uh, the Marine Corps Sniper School. Um, so when I got on, on the ship, when we're not doing anything, I would get with the,

• 47:11Speaker 02

  the recon snipers and we would just talk about ballistics and talk about minutes of angle and how you do this. And how do you set up your height set? What do you prefer as far as taking shots and uh, picking, picking their brains? Cause you know, there's no internet and there's, you can read your books, you can lift. Yeah. What are you gonna do for the next 10 hours? So bullshit with them. Um, and then we, we actually got called in to uh, at the time, it was a real world, real world mission to go into Albania because there was an exercise going on with some admirals and I think the, like the president of Albania. And then there was a terrorist threat. So this is 1998 and that was the first time in the Navy that I'd heard Osama bin Laden. Oh, no shit. Al Qaeda is threatening this exercise. Al Qaeda is run by Osama, like one of the briefs, Osama bin Laden, like I heard of him because of the thing in,

• 47:57Speaker 02

  in 93 when they bombed, yeah, okay, I know who that is. But he wasn't, you know. Yeah. Osama bin Laden, yet. Um, and so we, I mean, I did get briefed on it and you know, we're never gonna see him, but I, I got to set up like my first range card. I'm over watching this award ceremony. I'm like, this is kinda cool. I mean, if Al Qaeda pops out, I'll just, I'll shoot one of them and uh, And that'll be it. That'll be it. We'll go get a beer. That's it. Um, no, but that was like the first thing, like we, we did, we did some security on um, on the housing complex, the embassy. And that's actually the first time I saw SEAL Team Six guys. Because I had been told, they, they were doing um, PSD, personal protection on a lot of uh, bigwigs at the embassy. And uh, I, I'd been told that SEAL Team Six had been disbanded, doesn't exist anymore. And I, I saw them, one of the older guys, the particular, yeah, those are,

• 48:40Speaker 02

  those are dead group guys, that's SEAL Team Six. I was like, those fucking guys are legends. Yeah. First time I saw them, first time I heard bin Laden, and then we go back to Virginia Beach after eight months at sea and um, start another workup.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  And then it's a part of the, the team guy life where, you know, they call them the one hump chumps. The most cocky guys at a SEAL team are the guys with one platoon. Cause I know everything now. I'm not a meat anymore.

• 49:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you are to somebody. I ran into a guy, you know your heritage. You're a meat to somebody. You're a new guy to somebody. I ran into, so I'm a cocky one hump chump. I'm at the SEAL reunion in Virginia Beach. And you know how you see those old school badass dudes like the big trident hats?

• 49:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  And I saw this old dude, he's a little too old, whatever, me being cocky and I go, hey, uh, what, what Bud's class were you?

• 49:28Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  And he said, uh, well, I went through hell week in, um, 1944. And I said, there was no hell week in 1940, 40. He said, there was on Omaha Beach. Know your heritage. I'm like, holy shit.

• 49:41Shawn Ryan?

  Damn dude.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  An old school guy. I mean, that's, again, goosebumps.

• 49:45Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  So that's when I learned to just, you don't know, don't talk shit. You don't know who knows what.

• 49:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Never start a fight because you're probably gonna lose.

• 49:53Shawn Ryan?

  That's fucking cool.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's kind of, that's a cool thing. It's like, I want to fuck with an old guy. Like, come on.

• 49:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And then another platoon, we, uh, we got spun up quickly to do a strike platoon on, um, the USS Kennedy. So we did a shortened workup and they actually, the only reason I got in, they, they made a quick platoon of experienced guys. I don't know why. But I got picked because, uh, I was a sniper and they needed a sniper. One of our guys was a radio guy. They picked him and another guy, um, uh, just a linguist or some shit. And then we got into a, a pretty stacked platoon and, uh, we went overseas and, and we did a couple of things. We, um, we, we were doing the, the interdiction operations in the Persian Gulf. We, like you're taking down DAOs. A date smuggler. We, uh, we, I, uh, we took down the US, or the, the Russian

• 50:41Speaker 02

  tanker Volganeft, which was a big deal at the time. It was a smuggled Iraqi oil. You know, I mean, the, the closest we got to combat was, I think we confiscated their steak knives. And then we drove it to Oman and then we finished that platoon and then timed another platoon. And um, I did a Yukon this time, so I went to Germany.

• 51:00Shawn Ryan?

  Were you getting discouraged at all or?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Uh, no, because I thought I was getting real work. I mean, we really went in with loaded weapons. We really took down ships and not a lot going on.

• 51:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  And then I knew we'd get to, we'd do a pump in Kosovo on this one, for sure. And I'm like, okay, that's, I mean, there have been a couple shootouts there. I will get to um, to try out my hide site skills. Because I guess a lot of the, a lot of the SEALs, a lot of the, we're doing it, we're getting compromised um, by farmers. And that's how you start learning, okay. You're in someone's backyard, they, they're gonna recognize you.

• 51:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  And so we learned about that, you know, I did a couple hide sites in Kosovo. Camp Bonsteel, ate really good food and then we left. Um, back to Germany and now we, I've been to Kosovo. Um, this is my third platoon, you know, I can be the shit at JB's Gallery of Girls when I go back home or whatever.

• 51:52Shawn Ryan?

  Is that place still there?

• 51:53Speaker 02

  I have no idea. That was, I love that place, it was called Stopless Go. Not topless, because they had little things on.

• 51:59Shawn Ryan?

  Wasn't it right next to the uh, what was that bar right next to?

• 52:02Speaker 02

  It was right next to it.

• 52:03Shawn Ryan?

  The brass?

• 52:04Speaker 02

  The brass bell?

• 52:05Shawn Ryan?

  The brass bell.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:07Shawn Ryan?

  I wonder if that's going to still be there.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  I haven't been back there. But yeah, we, we, so we're back in uh, at unit two up in Germany, just finished Kosovo and then I was in the um, uh, operations room, uh, type, we did have email at the time, because it was September two thousand one. And um, we saw the TV come on and they, they had a picture of the Twin Towers, the North Towers on fire. And they said, um, obviously this is breaking news, a, a small plane has hit the World Trade Center. And we're looking at it and, you know, we're trying to think through it, like that's a, that's a nice day, man, that's clear. And that is not a small hole, because that's a huge building. That's a big fucking hole, man, and then the second one hit.

• 52:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  And we're kinda, and someone did say, that's Osama bin Laden, that's Al Qaeda, man. Everything, everything that we know just changed right now. So we're deployed and it's like, well, all right. I mean, where do you want us to go? We're overseas and it didn't happen. Uh, they did obviously send guys right in and, and then we went back and I, I, I put in, that's what I put in my, um, uh, my package for, um, green team. I want to go to SEAL Team Six now.

• 53:12Shawn Ryan?

  So when you saw the, when you saw the planes hit the towers, did, do you have any recollection of Bin Laden's name from before when you were going?

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause we talked about Al Qaeda, just in some, some briefs here and there.

• 53:26Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah. And we knew they were a threat, but we never knew it was that. We, when they first hit, we're thinking we're going to Sudan or some, we're going to be fighting in Africa or whatever. And then they obviously figured out where they were and I put in my package and, and I had, I had enough time between going, going to green team, to do another deployment. So I got on another, another MARG deployment and I'm like, this is going to be sweet because we're going to go in with the Marines through Turkey and we're going to, cause now it's 2003 and that's kind of a, I jumped some time there. But we're going to, now we're invading Iraq and we talked about this earlier, like for whatever Iraq was worth, I was excited because we're going to invade a country. I'm a Navy SEAL and we are going to, we're going to kill.

• 54:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  And I want to, because we're all still fired up about, I mean, that's, that's how we got away with invading Iraq because of what happened on nine 11. Um, and then with me being the, I don't know what it is about me, but there, this turned out to be, um, a problem in Monrovia, Liberia with the embassy. There was a civil war. And they wanted to evacuate the embassy. So they literally turned us around. So the Marines are off.

• 54:29Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  And they're going, oh man, I mean, and they, and we did talk to them afterwards and they invaded Iraq. I mean, that's fucking an invasion. So, um, but we went back and, and, um, so instead of going into a gunfight, I did my, my first and only real world hydrographic reconnaissance.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  So, and the funniest part of that was the, because you know, you always get briefed on dangerous marine life, but whatever, I don't give a shit. They're not gonna hurt you. But this one we paid attention to and they said, because you're gonna be swimming in on the coast of Africa and there's every man-eating shark you can imagine is here and there shouldn't be any, but if you see saltwater crocodiles, they're 20 feet long, they'll eat you. And then now, there aren't any hippos, but those are the deadliest animal in Africa. They kill more people than anything. Oh, and here's your landing point. It's called Black Mamba Point. The reason it's called Black Mamba Point is because it's full of black mamas and they're very aggressive.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  They'll chase you and they'll kill you. After that, it's like, alright, so, and then even when we flooded the well deck of the USS LaSalle to get off, there were hammerheads like swimming into the ship.

• 55:44Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  What the fuck is this?

• 55:46Shawn Ryan?

  Like, can we just go to the fucking invasion?

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Can we go to Iraq? Yeah, but I know we went in to do hydro recon. It was kinda cool because we did the no ship thing and the Marines did come. I think the Marines came in by helicopter. It's like, you're welcome.

• 55:59Shawn Ryan?

  Aw, man, dude.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  But yeah, then we, so we didn't have time to invade Iraq and then we went back and then I was a master at arms at SEAL Team Four for like January to March when Green Team started. So I ran PT and then went to selection. And so then you go over there and it's like, alright, here, fuck, because I mean, Green Team is, you're putting your trident on, you're betting your trident right now because you'll either be the guy that made it or the guy that tried and didn't.

• 56:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  That's a lot, I mean, that's a lot to deal with and you could get kicked out of selection for anything. Like, I've seen really, really good dudes just fuck something up and they're gone.

• 56:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Have a bad day and everyone has a bad day. Throw the wrong shot, though, you're fucking out.

• 56:40Shawn Ryan?

  Back when you went through, though... There probably wasn't as many guys going to green team.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so.

• 56:46Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys were going in?

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Um, we went with about sixty.

• 56:51Shawn Ryan?

  Sixty.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  And we got like thirty through.

• 56:54Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  That's half. I think sixty, but I mean, they did spin up to the point where they did two, they were doing two green teams a year.

• 57:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  And that was just a different animal.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Because you're not gonna get quitters, you usually won't get quitters. So they're trying to, they're trying to find guys who can think through problems, who can think, who can, who can make decisions, you know, rapidly. Who's not gonna freeze at the door. And I've seen dudes do it. You know, uh, in a, in a, in a close quarters combat situation, you got a breaching problem. I've seen guys freeze at the door, like they, they forget to look for the hinges, they forget which goes where and it's, alright. And it's sort of the, if you wanna be fast, slow down.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  If you wanna deal with chaos, breathe. And I tell people that now, uh, at, at boardrooms. If you're having a shitty meeting, stand up and breathe.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Uh, and that's so, you know, learning, learning the, uh, the slowest, smooth, smooth is fast and you'll get through it. And I, you know, I've had days where, uh, cause CQB is the notoriously hardest part of green team. When you're, cause they just, they really just hammer you for shit. Uh, I've had days where I can do no wrong, three runs in a row, everything's smooth, it's fucking easy. To the point where the last run of the day, they have me carrying a broom because they told me I'm not safe with a gun. Just getting in your head. And what they will do there is, uh, punish you for things you didn't screw up. But hammer you for it.

• 58:14Shawn Ryan?

  Like what? Can you give me an example?

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Um, over penetration, you, you, you're supposed to be six, six inches from the wall, you're four inches from the wall, get outside. And they just are hammering you, tire drags, sweating, dehydrated, uh, getting in your own head. What did I, I know I didn't fuck that, they know you didn't fuck it up, but they, you don't know that they know that you didn't fuck up. Because, and as soon as you're done getting beat, they put you right back in the front of the train and you're, and this is when you haul ass through it. You're not slowing down in this, you're running fast because what they're telling you is, um, we've just punished you for something you didn't fuck up, can you get over it or is it gonna stay in your head?

• 58:48Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  And some of the best advice again in life is whatever it is, get over it.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Learn from it and get the fuck over it. You know, you're not getting that playback. Learn and move on.

• 59:01Shawn Ryan?

  How would you compare Green Team to BUDs? Is it?

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Harder, but different. Because you're doing the 10 mile run in the morning, but then it's not, then it's just tactics. With skydiving, it's just a lot of shit.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Hayos, halos, combat jumps, all that stuff. And then the CQB is just, it's repetition and it's just, it's the constant scrutiny. It's so many instructors hammering you at once. It's a mind game. I mean, it is the best time of your life. It's just hard.

• 59:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What,

• 59:42Shawn Ryan?

  would you say there's like a certain attribute they're looking for in an operator to get over there?

• 59:49Speaker 02

  You know, it's hard to say because it's like BUDs where you can't pick who's gonna make it and who's not. I mean, you can, he's gonna make, but I don't know about these guys. The gray man is gonna, the gray man wins there too.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  I think, but Green Team's more of a, if they like you from the beginning, or if, like, it's kind of a good old boy network too. Like, someone says, hey, you do want this guy. They're going to, I mean, you know, they're gonna hammer him. They're not gonna know that they're kind of looking out for him. But if they don't like you, you're fucked. Like, if they pass your picture around the team rooms and someone knows you from CP Shuckers, well, fuck him.

• 1:00:29Shawn Ryan?

  That's it. That's all it takes.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Could be. That's how it was, I think, then. And I was fortunate. I was liked by a few guys. And, you know, I fucked things up. I mean, everyone fucks things up. I think I kind of got it. Just slowing it down, the realization, it's like with a golf swing. If you watch yourself swing, how fast you're bringing it, slow the fuck down. Keep your head still.

• 1:00:53Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break and then we'll get into the rest of it.

• 1:01:03Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:01:43Shawn Ryan?

  No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2 satisfaction ratings as of January 1st, 2022. So soak up all that summer has to offer and let ZipRecruiter do the work. Ready for the URL? Here it is, I'm gonna give it to you anyways. It's ziprecruiter.com/srs. That's where you can try it for free. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/srs. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

• 1:02:22Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, so we kinda got through Green Team.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:02:25Shawn Ryan?

  You're showing up, you're done. How do you, how do they figure out what squadron you're going to?

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Well, you, you, once, once you do realize that SEAL Team 6 exists and it's not a, you know, a development squad, it is, I mean, you're developing SEAL, but then you're shooting people with it. The squadrons at the time, or the two original squadrons, were blue and gold for Navy. And, and actually, the reason it's called SEAL Team 6 is because Marcin, Dick Marcinco, just a phenomenal, ultimate Navy SEAL, who was a commanding officer, he, he called it 6 because he knew Russia would say, there's SEAL Team 1, 2, and 6, where the hell are 3, 4, and 5? Not, you know, not just a hat rack. Yeah. Um, but we, we, there was, so, uh, uh, when I got there, there was, there was blue and gold and then gold, uh, uh, they

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  absorbed into red squadron, which is the one I wanted to go to.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Why did you want to go there? Um, that, well, because of Neil Roberts. Okay. Uh, he was, he was obviously Robert Ridge and that was red squadron, red team at the time. They went into Takagar and he fell out of the helicopter and that, that, that's the first time. It really sunk in that, um, we're fighting some fucking animals. This is Al Qaeda and they're not going to just kill you. Did you know Neil? I did. He was one of the first Navy SEALs I met. I met Don Shipley. I met Neil Roberts. Neil Roberts took me and my friend Matt to lunch at Arby's. I'll never forget that. Brand new guy, SEAL Team Two. And he was just always so willing to help you with anything.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  From the finance rate you're getting on that car at that stupid used car lot off base to here's where you put your 60 pouches. Okay, look, come here, this girl's crazy, get away from her. Neil Roberts is the guy. And you know, his name is Neil Roberts, Robert O'Neill. Uh, and he was a re- red hair. I mean, a complete stud. Like, uh, he was way be- better than I, than me. Like, I, I think his oh course time is on his headstone still. Cause he had the record for so long, which I think is fucking awesome. Yeah. But he was just the, he was a one percenter. Um, and, uh, but in a, in every way, salt of the earth. Um, nicest guy in the world. He can murder you with a knife, like just awesome guy. And just because of, of the, the, the fight at Takagar. The, the, the story of what happened, everything from Chapman to, to slab.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  What they did on that Mount Brent Morgany, the guys, how they, how they just never leave anyone behind and they went back. And they got in one of the worst gunfights you can imagine. Close, close quarters with PKMs getting shot at you at night. And just to hear, I, and I'm not going to tell their story. I wasn't there to, but just to hear them, um, debrief us. It was like, okay, I want to go to, I mean. The Bones, man, blue team, awesome. Gold team, doesn't take shit. Awesome, but I just wanted red. Um, I, I mean, I'll, I'll go to the other ones, cause just, I mean, it was even cool to go through green team, because the instructors were all at squadrons, and as a new guy looking at the Trident, I felt like that looking at the Bones, looking at the, at the, at the Crusader.

• 1:05:24Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Looking at the, the, the, the red man. And I just wanted red team. I just, I felt it.

• 1:05:29Shawn Ryan?

  Did they give you a choice, or?

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  No, you get picked. They have, um, they, uh, they, they actually have drafts. And, um, every year, one team is first.

• 1:05:40Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Rotate, and then every, every time it's your pick, one troop or one team gets their first pick. So you actually go through a, you actually go through a process. I actually picked DJ Shipley. And I'll never forget when it was my turn to pick, I was like, that guy's still available? Fuck. Our team just got better.

• 1:06:00Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. So how's it, how's it work then? Do they, do you?

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 1:06:04Shawn Ryan?

  The instructors giving you?

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, cause you had.

• 1:06:06Shawn Ryan?

  Insight?

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you, you're playing the good old boy network. Like your red team instructors are coming up to red team saying, I'm not gonna say anything you want. This guy, here's the order that you wanna go. And we want him in the squadron, but like if your team can get him. Um, yeah, it's fucking awesome. So I just, I got red, and I don't know why. But I remember they, they posted, uh, uh, uh, lists on the, on the corkboard. And it's like, okay, you see the guys, it's like, oh, sweet man, um, Reeves got gold, and that's awesome, and, um, uh, Mike Koch is going to gold, and all look at me and Nate, we're at, we're at red, and this, and it's just, I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, you all made it. So you're gonna know each other. We call it the second deck. Once you get to the second deck is when you're part of a squadron.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  And then going into the second deck for the first day is, um, shit, I'm a new guy again. And the first thing I remember walking into the red, red team room was, uh, obviously, it's, it's the way it's, just the, the way it's designed, the memorabilia shit. Neil Roberts fucking bent saw is up there in a frame above the desk where he used to sit.

• 1:07:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Now, but it's like, it's from reading history to being, now you're a part of it. But now it's like, holy fuck, I'm scared of these guys. Uh. What impressed me the most was how fast they could do CQB. Like if you're not in the front, you're, they're gone. They're gonna dust this place. But the second thing was how funny they were. The humor and the camaraderie. Like, oh my god, I thought I was funny. I gotta step up because these dudes are funny. And they're just good dudes. Like, and I, I maintain that up until the last day, my last day at SEAL Team Six. I was lucky because every single day I got to go to work with people who were better than me. And, and we didn't necessarily undermine each other. We would, we would ask each other questions. Well, you do this, why, why does that work?

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  And what do you think about that? How should I carry this? I got to a point where I was telling, telling my guys, you don't need to carry a pistol. And they're like, why is that? And I'm like, well, if you get into a room and you, your primary goes down, your buddy already killed him. And if you go outside with a pistol, just fucking bring, bring a cleaning rod. Or throw rocks at them. Clean your fucking gun. But this pistol's not doing shit. It's weight. You're carrying weight. Take that shit off your gun. It's not a space gun. You need, you need your EOT gun and a laser. And an extra battery for your nods because it's gonna fail.

• 1:08:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Change your batteries every day. But yeah, the first day there, just watching them work and then seeing how, how, how they work together and the humor and the camaraderie. And, and that's what I think makes a great team is morale. They always made sure morale was high. Little things like, you guys have anything to do? Go home. Be with your kids. We're not doing shit today. Leave. And it was, it was a big boy mentality. Like, our first muster is gonna be 10 a.m. I'm, I'm just assuming you will have gone in and worked out by then.

• 1:08:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  And we did. And it wasn't like organized PT or march to the surf zone. It's like, do your thing. Can you, can you carry me if I get shot in my body armor? You're doing those workouts? Then we have no problem. And then, uh, and then you do the, you know, we got there, we're doing a work and it was just like now it's like over there, it wasn't new guy, it was like newer guy. And instead of like, fuck you, you idiot, it's like, here, let me show you how that, come on. Let me, uh, let me show you a quicker way to make that seven foot charge, I see six, watch this.

• 1:09:28Shawn Ryan?

  So it's actually pretty fucking welcoming.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. A green team, they fucking hammer you.

• 1:09:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  But it's, they all, they all go through it. And then once you're through, like I, I saw, um, green team instructors that I thought were the, the meanest motherfuckers in the world. But once you get to the second deck, it's forgotten. It's a game. We're just, I want you, uh, it's the same in BUDs, they're fucking hammering you because I will have to go to war with you. I might. Can you, can you do it?

• 1:09:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  But then you get up there and it's like, you, I mean, you get, you got friends everywhere, you know, everybody. And, um, and, and now we're going to war. And I mean, other than a, a couple things, um, we weren't losing a lot of fights. So getting really hit, you know, my, my first deployment, well, that's when it hit. Cause my first deployment was to, um, Jalalabad, Afghanistan. We were running a safe house, which is, um, some guys cooler than me and probably a three letter agency, carried a briefcase full of money and bought a small hotel. And then hired locals to be security and plumbers and shit cooks. And then here's your safe house. And you're, it's a safe house because you're, you're stimulating the economy, you're, you're paying the guards and they will work for money.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Um, you're shopping in the bazaars, you're eating shawarmers out in town. And then, you know, the family around you doesn't want to get murdered. So they'll make sure that Taliban doesn't come in. And that's my first one. And, uh, I didn't, um, I'd never been to war. And I'd only seen it on TV. So I assumed it was as bad as it was on TV. I assumed there's a suicide bomber around every corner. Everyone's going to be shooting at you. It's going to blow up all the time. Um, and it took a while to realize that in a war zone, most of the people just want to get on with their lives and raise their families. Most of the people are not combatants. They're just fucking over it. Um, but the first few times we were doing some new technology in Jalalabad, we're doing, um, so it's now we're doing MOUT. In J bed.

• 1:11:22Shawn Ryan?

  So hold on, just for the audience.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Military operations, urban terrain. So it's, it's urban, urban fighting. So it's like everywhere it's a, it's a, not just a three sixty range, it's everything range and you can get shot at from anywhere. And you don't even know why something can blow up, everything next you can blow up. Um, and I remember thinking that I'm, I'm kind of wasting my energy, jumping behind shit and you know, there's, I think we had four dudes.

• 1:11:45Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  Four guys from red team to include, so.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Three, uh, seals, one E O D. But at that time, uh, E O D was going through green team with us. So I mean, they're shooters. And, uh, I remember jumping around like looking and, and, uh, I looked at my, uh, my boss who was, uh, he was involved in Operation Anaconda where, um, Robert Triggs happened and he'd, he'd been awarded the Silver Star for some of the shit they did. And I was watching him and I remember looking over and he's got like body armor, short sleeves, big old beard. Like he's got one of those, one of those cop radios and just, and I remember looking at him thinking, I want to be cool like that. I want to look cool like that. And, uh, we got, we got back and I, I told him, I'm not kissing your ass, but how, how weren't you afraid? And he goes, well, how do you know I wasn't afraid?

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  I said, because you didn't look like it. And he goes, that's right. You don't know if I'm afraid, but if I show you that I'm calm, you'll be calm. Calm is contagious. And, and that's how you learn. It's like, okay, that's fucking cool. I just gotta look cool. And so we did a couple of things here and there. Um, well, like one of the, one of the funniest things I saw

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  was, um, we, we learned that if, if you run into a, a foreign fighter is, uh, anyone not from Afghanistan, or if you're in Iraq, anyone not from Iraq. So you got Jordanians or Saudi Arabians. And if you run into them, they look different. They'd speak Arabic. They're there for one reason, right? They're not teaching school. They're Al Qaeda.

• 1:13:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  We ran into, uh, I was, uh, I got a, a very short course in how to be a battlefield interrogator. So my job was to, and we, we invented these tactics as we, as we went along. Uh, as soon as we took a house down, shots fired or not, whoever's surviving, we're interrogating them right now. You know, put the interpreter behind him. I'm interrogating you because you catch them with their pants down. They're nervous. They don't know how to, how to act. I ran into a Saudi Arabian's big fat dude and I instantly started laughing. I, I said to him through the interpreter, I said, you don't know what that T-shirt you're wearing says, do you? And he had no idea. His T-shirt said, it's not a beer belly. It's a fuel tank for a sex machine.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  And so I'm like, you just, you just saved yourself a beating, because that's awesome.

• 1:13:50Shawn Ryan?

  I wish you had a picture of that.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, I wish I had that shirt. If I'd have known any better, I would take it from you. Made an NFT out of it. But yeah, I mean, so we were doing that kind of stuff and, and it was, it was, that's what we do. I'm getting to know the locals. I'm getting to know a little bit of the traditions, how, how you do this, getting to know the local food. You know, even driving to Assata Bat up to Konar River. At the time, because we were doing it right, and we didn't, we hadn't pissed off everyone yet with their IEDs. But one, one night, we, we would drive dirt bikes around town. Locals that we would purchase, the, the local bikes, you know, put, put on the, the Protech Drive to, this is when the airfield wasn't built up.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  This is, like, there was still Russian shit there. And like, the Rangers stayed there, the Ranger Sniper Teams were there, a couple Marines were there and stuff. And, and we, they're putting up a few tents here and there. And they said, hey, some guys from the East Coast just flew in, some helicopters. I was like, fuck, let's go see them. And so we drove over there. That turned out to be a turbine 33. And we, I bullshitted with some of those dudes, talked to Dan Healy about Sam Adams. I went to sniper school with Dan Healy, and he loves Sam Adams. He's a New Englander. And we're like, what's the, what's the deal? And they said, we just inserted four snipers into the Korengal. The Korengal Valley, they're looking for Ahmad Shah. And then, once they find him with eyes on, we're gonna go hit the house.

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  And, and we were like, fuck, yeah, can we go? And so we were, we were trying to work at skiing, because our, our head shed from, from six was in Bagram. And they told us, no, no one from SEAL Team Six is getting on those helicopters. We think there's missiles.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  And we were like, yeah, cool, man. Fucking have a, have a good fight. And I had a, some of my guys were down for it, maybe that's, so we took them back to our, our safe house. And we had some contingency funds that you're supposed to use to build up the,

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  The infrastructure. So we had some dude build this stupid cold tub, like the size of a hot tub, but it's cold. And we were just sitting there. We could get Heineken um over there. So we were sitting there having, and actually the the Heineken story is funny because we with the, when I first got there. They had a place where we could send the interpreter to get booze for us. I mean, obviously, no one drinks overseas. But um, we sent him there and the the price was um, I want to say twenty bucks for a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and thirty bucks for a case of Heineken. And so we sent the turps out. My trip was Larry because we couldn't pronounce his name, so he's just Larry. And we sent him out to get some stuff and uh, I'm I'm the newer guy there, but I'm now, you know, I'm I'm over there and uh, he came back with nothing.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  He said, yeah, the the guy running the shop said, I know who you're selling this to. These are for the Americans and the prices went from twenty and thirty to fifty and sixty. I'm like, fuck this. Are you kidding me? Get your shit on. So we roll over there and we go to the guy, look. I can appreciate inflation, uh, twenty, thirty, you go twenty-five, thirty-five, that's fine. You raise it that high. You can't sell booze in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. I'm gonna take it all for free and put you in jail. And he goes, twenty-five and thirty-five is fine, my friend. I'm like, motherfucker, couldn't we just done this in the first?

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  So we're um, we're in the, we're at the safe house and um, we were actually, technically, a ranger major was in charge of us. We did have a um, senior enlisted guys with us. But the ranger major was kind of running it between Jalalabad Airfield and our safe house. And he came out and we're, so we're drinking Heineken in this uh. Tub and he said, hey, uh, your boys just got fucked up. We gotta go.

• 1:17:22Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  And we're like, whoa, what do you, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, they just shot a Hilo down and we we gotta, we gotta, we gotta go.

• 1:17:29Shawn Ryan?

  That was your first deployment over there?

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, first one.

• 1:17:31Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you in country?

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  Oh shit, I was almost done, so three and a half months and that was, this is June. And um, we we rolled over. I ran into a few guys I knew from uh. From SEAL Team Two that had put me through training, Master Chiefs that were there and you know, and the other helicopter that got missed. And I don't know if it was three, four, or three, two. Uh, got missed. The pilots landed in the wrong spot on the, on the a different base on, in Jalalabad because they were, something happened. So other guys were coming in, they didn't get shot down. And I remember, they said, yeah, it just, it just came out of the valley and turned and it, it hit. And it went down. At three, three went down and, and they, one of them missed us.

• 1:18:16Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  So we're talking to guys that just got shot up by surface to air missiles, even though technically that's not what happened. They're telling me, face to face, missiles were coming out of that valley. And it was so, it was more of a holy shit. The, the, I mean, it's good to see you because the world's still a decent place because you're still alive or whatever the fuck we're saying. And they, they came out and said, look, um, we need to, there's a crash site. We gotta get up there and they're not gonna fly us. Because they're shooting down helicopters now, so figure it out. And we're running around this makeshift airfield and I'll, I'll, there's a, there's like a B hut full of Rangers and we're like, hey, we, we, here's the situation. And we told them and we're like, um, I need five guys. And all 20 of them jumped up and said, we should, you know, we should take us 10 minutes to get ready. We'll be out in three.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  And then they came out, the, we decided, go get whatever vehicle you can, steal shit, commandeer it. We're driving as far as we can. And then we're humping up into the, into the valley. And, um, we, you know, we, we didn't know, we didn't know if there were survivors. We didn't know what happened, but we knew Taliban was up there. And so we, um, we drove, drove as far as we could and then we started walking, um, up, up, and this is daytime. It's, I don't know, 90 to 100 degrees. Fahrenheit humidity and we're humping up to, I mean, to the point where there were dudes like, I, I carry too many mags. Um, because it's so, there were dudes passing shit back to like, like who's taking it? Just drop it.

• 1:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  So keep water. Maybe we can get airlift or, or something. And, and then we, you know, we humped up for, um, For ten hours. So we're not quite there yet and I remember looking around saying, hey, did any of you guys call home before we left on this thing? And they're like, no, why? And it's like, well, all our families know is a bunch of SEALs from Virginia just got killed and they haven't heard from us. And so that's going through your mind too. We're, we're sticking each other with IVs, hanging them in trees and stuff. And I remember looking at a guy saying, you know, this is why training is so hard. Because if we were gonna quit right now, where the fuck are we gonna go? We're here. So we, we kept going up. They did fly in, um. They did fly in a helicopter from Bagram, more of Red Squadron. They got to the crash site first.

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  So they, I mean. I don't know who wants that job, but they got the job and they're gonna go to the crash site, find, find it and, um. You know, some of the stories that I've heard were like Lou Langlis was looking at the crash site and he said, I'm gonna go, um.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  Try to get some intel from the village and he looked over and said, I just never want to die like that. You know, and Lou was on Extortion 17. And these are just hearsay stories about, you know, it's, life is fragile, man. And, um, so we started humping back down. We're trying to leave this, the sun's going down and then we, we spotted some, um. Some Taliban on the opposite ridge line and, you know, we're like, fuck it, let's call in, who wants to hit them? And the cloud cover was coming in and nobody, nobody wanted to, to, um. Uh, to, to get under it, you know, because fucking you're in the Western Himalayas, man. This is Hindu Kush shit. But the A10s would. And that's the first time I've seen an A10 get called in. And it just, it was so low and, and, um.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  It came over us and the, an A10 obviously shoots, what is it? How many rounds, 3,000 rounds a minute or something crazy? Some crazy, I don't know, someone's gonna correct me, but it's a lot. It's so much, it sounds like a growl. And when it, when it came over us, the first thing we heard was the bullets going supersonic. Then we heard it, no, so we saw the smoke, heard him supersonic, heard him hit, then we heard shoot. So it's.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  And like, that's when he, there was a Marine, I'm, I'm, I know people have heard this, seen the meme, but I'm pretty sure it was coined that day. There was like a Marine or a young private in the army that said. It is true what they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, except in A10, an A10 will fucking kill you.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  It's awesome.

• 1:22:07Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit. So.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  Well, then, well, then we, we walked down and um, we're closer to Assata Bad than we are and we've, shit, it's been maybe two days. And we're closer to Assata Bad than we are to Jalalabad. So we're gonna go to A Bad. Um, and we're gonna rack out there. They've got beds, um, or floor. I don't give a shit. We've been awake for so long. And that's when the dude that got the note from Marcus, um, he showed up. So he's got this.

• 1:22:32Shawn Ryan?

  You were there when that guy showed up?

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  When the guy showed up. And because we had an argument with the, um, you know, I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers here, but we had an argument with the agency because they don't, they never want to burn a source, which is fine. That's their thing, gathering intel. But this guy knows where Marcus is. And you're taking us there right now. And, and I don't give a shit if they kill you. What's it worth thinking? Their agency's yelling and they, something along the lines of, well, we're not sure if this is him because he didn't cross the Ts in his name, Latrell. And we're like, yeah, but it's on Tac Notes and he got his fucking social right. It's him. We're going. So there was a big argument there. I'm pretty sure, I know a guy got fired for that. Um, one of the Rangers got fired. I think banned from the country, but he made the call. We're gonna go. So then we got back in the car. We drove around Pesh River Valley. Um, you're going around A Bad up to Pesh,

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  which now you're in, in no man's land. And, um, Marcus, I guess, had gone from the Korengal into the Shuriyak Valley, which are two, I mean, these are two neighboring valleys and people don't understand in Afghanistan. There have been families living in these valleys for 10,000 years that have never met.

• 1:23:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Like they don't, you don't, you're not allowed in.

• 1:23:33Shawn Ryan?

  And hate each other.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  Hate, yeah. They'll cut your head off and like, put like old school Dracula, put it on a steak type shit. So we're driving in there and this is a part where I've seen. Afghanistan's a different world and people don't understand that. If they, if they, when I first got to Red Team, I was asking guys, what's Afghanistan like? They said, you just have to see it because you're not gonna believe me.

• 1:23:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  And so we, we went up there and it's, they, they don't have water. And I remember seeing that there's, I'm a father and I'm seeing these kids. I remember handing a bottle of water to a little girl. She opened it, dumped it out so she could play with the plastic.

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  So then we're pumping up again, um, another mountain and it's just steep terrain and then we we knew he was up and over Marcus is down in this village and we got up, um, almost to the top and one of my guys said, um, one of my guys said, um, I gotta sit down. I can't, I can't, I can't go anymore. We've been awake for three, three and a half days. I can't go. And I said, that's okay. We'll just tell Mrs. Latrell Marcus's mom that we didn't, we were this close, but we didn't get him because you got tired. And he goes, yeah, you're right. And I said, do me, I said, do me a favor. Tell that shit to me in one minute because I don't think I can go any further. And so we're just whatever, trying to get up to the top and that's, you know, Rangers came in, helos, they did get Marcus out. And then, um, now we're just in the Shurikak Valley. It's like, all right, well,

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  let's try to live our way out of this one.

• 1:24:56Shawn Ryan?

  So wait, you weren't with the Rangers? It was just for you guys?

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. We, we were with Rangers and we were, there were Marines and shit there too. I'll never forget seeing Marines because like we gotta choose what we would wear. I had, I'd had no body armor, a couple mags and a shirt. They're wearing full, like first sergeant told me I need to wear all this shit. I'm, like I said at the beginning, Marines are fucking bad motherfuckers. They will, they will take shitty gear and make it suck even more.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  Semper Fi, baby. But yeah, the Rangers flew in and that was ballsy too, because one of our options was, um, I mean, we, we, well, I'm, let me back up. When, when we had that dude, uh, Afghanistan might as well be the 13th century. We showed this guy, an aerial photo of his village on an iPad. I might as well have just showed him an actual picture of Allah. This dude looking at an iPad like,

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  one minute you're fucking your animal, now you're looking at an iPad.

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  So we were gonna fly in, he couldn't really pick it up, but we, they, uh, we, we thought this could be a mudsuck, we're just gonna walk. But Rangers, fucking being Rangers, man, they, we'll do it. And they did. And they got him. And then we lived our way out and then the, you know, the remaining two or three weeks is a miserable deployment. We lost so many great guys on that, on that hill.

• 1:26:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  And then, so that's deployment number one.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  Damn dude. Yeah. That's a. It was intense, I mean, cause we, I mean, at fir- at first, we were just having fun and it wasn't real. I mean, it was real. But like, the fighting's over. Army, the Green Berets and CIA took care of that shit. They bombed the fuck out of it. We're, we're just, we're gonna rebuild or something. And then Delta's gonna find Bin Laden. We're just gonna do this. The food was great. Yeah. What, so what were you guys doing before that? Uh, we were just testing new technology, trying to find, um, we found a few minor Al Qaeda guys in town. We, we, we actually, there's a video online where we fa- we, we put these, um, there was an Al Qaeda guy working at a gas station. He was laundering money and funding shit. Because that's one of the major ways, there's only a few roads, obviously.

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  And, um, we, the RRD Rangers, the, the, uh, and they're awesome dudes, um. They went out on an, on RNS and they really watched this damn gas station in, it, for five days, which just sucks, like in the heat. And then we, they know, they, they had eyes on, whatever they, and we rolled from the safe house, thirty seconds, grabbed this dude and then rolled out with him. There's a video that they made of us rolling up, we, we're this ridiculous haji gear. Uh, I, I mean, I don't blend in. I don't know if you know. You don't blend in? No, man, if we go to war with Scotland, I'm, I'm in there. But, um, we, you know, we roll up, we run in, we run out, we got this dude, the van takes away. They, they made a video, if you, if you could find it online, it says, uh, a snatch and grab at the grab and go.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  It is literally a thirty second mission and that, that was, uh, we just rolled him out, threw him, flew him to Pakistan. But we were just, we were using technology to track Al Qaeda and see what they're doing and, and mainly, I mean, we're just rolling them up to get intel. We're trying to, to build the network to find. There's not a lot of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan at this point. They all went to Pakistan. Okay. So not a lot. I mean, a couple dudes and up in the Korengal, uh, but most of them went over to the, uh, federally administrative tribal area, the Fatah. And they're all over there on that side. And that's another story that I have, uh. Two deployments later.

• 1:28:19Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go into it.

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Okay, well, I mean, we did go to Iraq next.

• 1:28:23Shawn Ryan?

  We'll go, we'll, we'll jump to this and then we'll go to Iraq.

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  Okay, um, so my, uh, next deployment to Afghanistan, I would, uh, instead of being a member at the J bad safe house, I was in charge of the Assad of that safe house. So I'm the team leader there, which means I have one other guy, um, with me from, from red team. Uh, and then we have a few augments that are, that are probably going to screen for Dev Group, uh, but aren't there yet. So they come over to learn what we're doing and then, and we're working with the agency. Uh, running sources back and forth, and mainly this is just for drone strikes. So we can get intel, hit these guys or whatever.

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  And, uh, we, we were getting bored and a very important lesson I learned on this deployment is never die because you got bored. Do everything like you do anything and always follow your rules. People die because they take shortcuts or they get bored. I got bored and, uh, I came up with a plan with this, the chief of, of base who was a, he had actually been with the agency fighting, um, with the Mujahideen against Russians. So this dude knew the area. And so he and I over, over cocktails, I think the agency calls it fellowship. Over fellowship, we came up with a plan that we know as per rules of engagement.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  Uh, if we have troops in contact and positive identification on the border, we can pursue. I want to say 10 clicks inside of Pakistan. So we knew there was a, um, about a click in and a click and a half in. There were two Al Qaeda safe houses. So we figured if we go up there on the border and sort of show ourselves, they'll shoot at us. We'll call air support. We can hit these houses. That's going to be a good mission. Cross border. This is badass. So that's the plan. And everything went to shit because we get up there, I got a couple, um, a couple army guys. And then a few Afghans and we had actually, we had put on, um, the brown tiger stripe stuff.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  And I don't even know if that's legal. So we don't look like Americans. So we're trying to, if the, if the, if Al Qaeda or the Taliban sees us, they're not worried about air support because this is simply, you know, A and A Afghan army.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:37Speaker 02

  We'll kill them. We didn't, we didn't put that together because like a truck came up and some dudes got out. And it's like, it's like I'm almost a flash checkpoint and they walk up and they're yelling us to come talk to them for tea. And I was like, yeah, you guys go talk to him. Don't, don't tell him there's Americans here, whatever. So they went down there and they kind of came back and they said, yeah, they wanted tea, but we're not falling for that. So they went to this thing. We got the high ground here. It's, it's 11:30 in the morning. We, we, we stayed overnight. We're up there. It's 11:30 in the morning. And then another truck came up, full of guys. And then another truck came up, full of guys. And then another one.

• 1:31:12Speaker 02

  Now we have a little bit of high ground, but there's a lot of dudes down there and this is some serious fucking ambush shit. I'm in charge. I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, an E6 or E7, but I'm the ground force commander of this one. It's my call. It's like, well, I mean, we can get the fuck out of here right now. They, they want, they might not notice. So I'm like, yeah, you know, we're going to beat it. So, uh, we had some guys below us, a semi mortar team that, but they, you know, whatever. They weren't US Army. We didn't know if they could do it. So we're running down to them. I'm explaining what's happening and we got to haul ass or maybe we can, we can get, uh, exfil. And that's when one of the Afghan guys I was with said the, the first words I ever heard him speak in English.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  He pointed up and yelled, bad guys. And I remember looking up and, uh, now this is going to be a real gunfight in the mountains at high noon. And watching dudes run that fast and, and they had brown, brown shit, like brown uniforms almost on. So these are, these are, it's a, it turns out to be a mix of. Uh, Al Qaeda Taliban and Pak mil, Pakistan military.

• 1:32:20Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  And we're looking up and they're, they're surrounding us and they're hauling ass. And they, they just start zipping rounds at us and you can, you can hear them. You know, zip, zip, zip. And the scariest ones were the, the ricochets. Zing. So we're like, we're like, we, we can't move now. We're pinned. Then they got us on like three sides. Um, we had separated. I had a new guy. It wasn't, he was a, he was a SEAL Team Four. Uh, he, he had, he was my radio guy. He had never ever called in real world close air support and I need him now. And he's, I may be a hundred yards away. Uh, um, I had heard up to this point. Some of our standard operating procedures

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  that originated from Vietnam were lines of gear. How you wear your gear in lines. First line, second line, third line. Your first line gear is your most important shit. It's closest to your body. It's on your belt. It's, it's, it's, um, an, you know, an extra magnet of pocket in Copenhagen, whatever. Uh, a cash. Second line gear is your second most important stuff. Magazines, grenades, maybe some more water. And your third line gear is your least important stuff in your rucksack. So that's your sleeping bag and ground pad. Extra socks, foot powder. The reason, so I'd been told, you keep it that way is because if you need to run, you can start ditching your shit in order to get lighter.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  Now that's the first time I've ever heard, ever heard anyone doing it. I dropped my ruck. I sprint over to Tony. I gotta get to him because, you know, and the people are just eating dirt. I, I lay next to him. And, uh, um, I said, okay, here's the deal that we're up on the thing where they set the flash checkpoint. Um, hit that first. And he said, I can't. We don't have any air support.

• 1:34:12Speaker 02

  I'm like, okay, this is bad. You gotta get some, whatever it takes. You know, we'd been up there for a day and a half. They'd lost interest in whatever and other people, whatever. So we're laying there and I'm just right next to him and the rounds are getting so close that they were hitting air bursts above us with RPGs where explosions and they're shooting mortars at us too. That you'd hear an explosion and look back to, oh, my leg's still there.

• 1:34:35Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  I mean, nothing was hit and I don't know how, I don't know how. It got so bad. We did this for an hour where it's not even, the worst feeling I've ever had in the world is having someone shoot effective fire at me, but realizing I can't shoot back because my rounds probably won't reach him and if I lift my head up, I'm done. Like, we were seeing tracers right between us and.

• 1:34:58Shawn Ryan?

  How many of you guys were there?

• 1:35:00Speaker 02

  A total of

• 1:35:03Speaker 02

  six, five or six Americans.

• 1:35:05Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  Maybe fifteen Afghans.

• 1:35:07Shawn Ryan?

  How about the opposed?

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know. There was a lot. There was three or four truckloads full of them.

• 1:35:13Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  And so we're up there, this is all happening and they, now they were to the point, they were so close that I had a dude shooting at me. He looked like me. He had a red beard, a white guy shooting a PKM, but he's yelling Allah Akbar, God is great, in Arabic. So now I'm seeing this shit and again, we don't have, I don't even have night vision because I don't need it. It's daytime, it's semi, whatever. And that's when you start to think, okay, not only is that Al Qaeda, that's a Chechen.

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  This is where you save at least one bullet for yourself.

• 1:35:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  I'm not, those guys will skin you alive. And this is all happening and finally Tony said, alright, I got one. I got one. I said, awesome, hit that fucking checkpoint, get it in here now. And he said, okay, I can't. The batteries in my radio just died. Because we had been out there and it had been on and they just, they died. And so one of my jokes about this is

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  I don't believe in micromanaging. You should teach your people how to do it and let them do it, but right now I figured it was a proper time to micromanage. I said, change the fucking batteries. And he said, I can't. I'm not carrying the spares, remember? You are.

• 1:36:28Speaker 02

  They're in the rucksack that I dropped. Oh shit. So I said something, I mean, I don't have a choice at this point. I said something along the lines of, "Don't tell mom I did this." And I ran. So I'm running to that thing and I don't know, I don't know, I'm saying a hundred yards. And I don't know how I hadn't been hit at this point. And naturally, I know where they're packed, probably at the bottom of this fucking thing. And open this damn thing. I grabbed the two old school batteries. Now I'm running back. Fuck the rucksack. I have the batteries and I, I chucked into him and now we're calling in air support. And uh, there was a funny story, something, uh, okay, no, what, what he said was, uh, bombs away, two minutes out. And I'm like, two minutes? What did he?

• 1:37:11Speaker 02

  Fucking dropped this from the space shuttle? Was that the first? Nothing takes two minutes to fall anywhere. Well, it turns out it was, I think it was a, it was Bones. It was a B1. And he was at sixty thousand feet and he just dropped three JDAMs, uh, three two thousand pounders. Shit. And it's danger close, but like, whatever. And uh,

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  uh, one of the guys said to me, uh, this is danger close. What do we, what do we do if it hits us? And I said, not a problem. Plug your ears. And then they don't, they don't, they don't whistle, they sizzle. It sounded like bacon.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  And then we lit, the whole hillside lit up. And like, I'm watching dudes on fire, running around that we just hit with, with, that's the, that's the first time I was like, I will never make another joke about the air force. That is, thank you. I heard, that was America. Just that, and now, and now they're running. Al Qaeda is, and I'm, now I'm finally getting some shots off. I think I killed the Chechen. They're running up the hill, fucking lighting them up.

• 1:38:15Speaker 02

  Uh, and it turned the tide there. And then we called them in again. It actually got to the point where we bombed Pakistan for four hours. One of the guys we called in, his call sign was Dude 12, which I thought was just awesome. And he was, you know, and now we're calling in where he's flying upside down. And he's, he's like wanting us to describe what we see. And it's like, you know, can you see the, the peak with the snow? Yes. Can you see the, the intersection of the river? Yes. That's one unit to measure. I want you to take two of those units, please. At zero nine seven magnetic, all this bullshit. But like, the first thing that the conversation I had with him was so awesome. He, cause you know, we had adrenaline going. He wants you to calm down. So he said, "Just talk to me like I'm a man." And I said, I see why women find you attractive.

• 1:38:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we, so we get done with that. And we can find, and then at this point, you know, we got more fast movers, the coyotes showed up and they're just bad motherfuckers. And then we can call into um, a couple sixties, we have some army pilots come, they're gonna pick us up, we're gonna, we're gonna bounce. Uh, so I, I, they, they called us in, I, I got on the starboard side, the right side of this, this, this, uh, this Black Hawk and we're, now we're leaving. And um, it's, it's a, it's a, maybe a 10 minute flight back to Abe, that's how close we were to this, right on the border. And uh, that's the first time I saw the um, um, the battlefield that we just created and it is scorched earth. And I'm thinking, oh man, we just bombed Pakistan.

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  That is an international incident.

• 1:39:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:46Speaker 02

  Then I thought, I'm in charge.

• 1:39:50Speaker 02

  I'm probably gonna hear about this.

• 1:39:51Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:39:52Speaker 02

  And I was right, cuz we landed at Abad and they had already flown a, a two-star general in there. To meet with us and, and he said, uh, I'm, and I'm in a good mood at this point, I, I was gonna die for the past six hours. Now I'm gonna live and I'm in a good mood. And he said, uh, hey O'Neal, you realize we're not at war with Pakistan, right? And I said, yeah man, but we were today and you should have fucking. Yes, sir. And then he, and he, he said, yeah, there's gonna be an investigation, obviously, and uh, you're either gonna get a silver star or you're gonna spend the rest of your life in Leavenworth.

• 1:40:23Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  And you think waiting an hour for a bomb is a long time, try waiting three weeks for that decision to be made. We got lucky though, and, and the, the footage is still on, on, on the internet. Where Pakistan was saying it was an unprovoked attack by American forces like they always do, cuz it turns out Pakistan fucking lies to us. Um, they had the footage as they're getting the stuff, they go, okay, well really now look at this, here's your guys attacking my guys. And they, they said there were, I, something like a 21 martyrs from the Pak, we killed like 21 Pakistanis that were fighting us.

• 1:40:50Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  So that's like a, so I did get a silver star.

• 1:40:54Shawn Ryan?

  That you did?

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that was my first silver star. What's actually funny is I'd been, I'd been lying to my mom my entire career. Because it's easier to go to war than to send someone you love to war. So, but their worrying is not gonna affect how you do, so don't make them worry, just lie to them. No, we're not doing shit, don't worry mom, Iraq's not what you think, we're not, my mother came down to um, To Virginia Beach for my, the presentation of the Silver Star. And they actually read the unclassified version of what happened. And she's sitting there listening. And I remember saying, Mom, I promise you, I'll never get another Silver Star.

• 1:41:30Speaker 02

  Now, fast forwarding to the day after the Bin Laden raid. I said, Mom, I think I lied to you. I think I'm getting sick at Silver Star.

• 1:41:37Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:41:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:39Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, dude.

• 1:41:40Speaker 02

  That's crazy. And that was just because, um, another rule in life, you don't need to go looking for it. Don't go looking for it.

• 1:41:47Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  If it's meant to find you, it'll just find you. Don't like, uh, well, like thanks to Jiu Jitsu. Don't fight anyone in a bar. You don't know who's a blockfella.

• 1:41:56Shawn Ryan?

  Very true.

• 1:41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't go looking for it. If you get in a bar fight and someone starts with a leg kick, apologize or buy him a drink. No, my bad. I was wrong. Exhale through the nose.

• 1:42:06Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:42:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:07Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's, uh, let's take a quick break and then when we come back, we'll talk about, we'll get into Iraq.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:42:17Shawn Ryan?

  I want to take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Patron support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one of a kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com slash Vigilance Elite and support the Sean Ryan Show today.

• 1:42:36Shawn Ryan?

  All right, so we're back from the break. Let's talk about Iraq.

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  Iraq again was one of those things where, um, I hadn't been and I, and I knew it was, it was, it was more dangerous than Afghanistan at the time. Because foreign fighters had realized it'll be easier to kill Americans in Iraq because we can get there a lot easier than to go to Afghanistan. And, um, and they, and they, they had learned our tactics. They, they knew what we were doing. They, they knew that one of our tactics was, um, if there's an open door, we're going to run into it. Because a lot of this stupid, um, not stupid, but just arrogant special forces, um, not special forces, all of us. Where there's going to be a fight anyway, let's just get it over with. That was the mentality at the time. Al Qaeda knew that. So leave the door open, have machine gunners inside and then just drill the first four guys in the room. They, they did that.

• 1:43:26Speaker 02

  Um, and so we went over there, um, our, our, our army counterparts took some pretty heavy casualties. And, and that's when we kind of, um, Started to learn that the one of the worst things you can say, and I have nothing on them. Those guys are complete studs. But one of the worst things you can say when you're running a team is, well, this is the way we've always done it. It's like, wait a minute. Why are we running in, why are we running in there? How about we just, how about we stop? Why don't we just clear the room from the door? We invented combat clearance. We, we, why are we sprinting at night through houses with white lights when we can put our nods down and own it? And, and why are we yelling? Stop yelling. When you turn a corner and you point your gun up, I don't need to hear you yell, stairwell! I'll assume there's a stairwell. Shut the fuck up.

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  Quiet. So we started training on, um, um, silent runs. And we learned when we were silent, not only were we faster and more efficient, we were communicating at the highest levels. Simply by reading off each other. You don't, you know, there's no reason to, um, to give someone your position. And, and then we, so we just started reinventing tactics. Not just we at Red Squadron or SEAL Team Six. Delta was on board with all this stuff and we're all, and we were really good about too. I mean, I mentioned a cross, um, a rivalry type thing between services. That wasn't us or Delta. We, we would cross train with each other. And then most importantly, the guys that just got back would debrief the guys about to go over. And we would take them on, um, even when we got, like when we're leaving our, our relief squadron,

• 1:44:57Speaker 02

  we would take them on a shakeout op. Like, here's what we're doing, here's how it works. Everything from intel, uh, to workout schedules to here's what you should do. Here's the dangerous part, here's what we're looking for. And we, you know, we did a lot of that stuff and, and, um, it was everything from, uh, snipers realizing that they're, they're climbing the roofs, so they, um, okay, I don't, I mean, I'm not saying I agree with this in Iraq, but I don't need body armor. I need to be light. I don't need this many magazines. I haven't shot that much.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  But again, too, be careful what you wish for. We had, I had a sniper in mind that I was telling him, cause he's climbing, he's climbing every building. And he's, you know, he's the first one out there leading the patrol and we're doing, you know, we realized that you don't need to land on the X. Land over here, we'll walk in. And when they figure that out, we'll take motorbikes in and then we'll walk in. Um, I had one sniper that I was saying, um, we had an argument at six. I was a sniper at two. But then I, I said, you can be an assaulter or a sniper. At SEAL Team Six, and I said, I want to be. An assaulter. My joke was, and again joking, but not seeing the future. I said, I know snipers are going to kill more people. But I think assaulters are going to kill more famous people.

• 1:46:06Shawn Ryan?

  You, you said that?

• 1:46:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a joke. It's like the thing with my mom. We're not doing anything. Snipers will kill more people. Assaulters will kill more famous people.

• 1:46:14Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, talk about throwing some shit out into the universe.

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. So we had my, this one sniper, and he, he got to the point, I think. Where he was carrying one mag of five, five, six. He, he loved the five, five, six with the, with the, uh, the fourteen inch upper. And then one mag in a, in a harness. And like, no water. Like, that's his loadout.

• 1:46:31Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 1:46:32Speaker 02

  And I'm like, dude. I know we're, I, I know our plan is to only be here during one cycle of darkness, but you're gonna, eventually you're gonna want more bullets than that. And I, I think our last gunfight on that trip to, uh, to Iraq, he, he was, we were in a weird gunfight and this snipes were up top and he, he was blasted out. He, my nickname was Nizro. Navy SEAL Rob O'Neil. Nizro! That's what my friends at the bar could yell, what up, my Nizro?

• 1:46:58Speaker 02

  Um, and he yelled out, he goes, Nizro! I need a mag. And I said, no dude, I told you to carry more bullets. And he literally goes, come on, I can still hear him screaming.

• 1:47:08Speaker 02

  But, um, but we were, we were learning stuff like that. We learned you don't need to rush through with the, um. Um, the first kill. That I ever got. Was in, on that Iraq deployment is when we just decided. Um, cause we were still in between the nods up and, or even look under them, white light, fast. We said, we're gonna go slow. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna go in quiet. We're not gonna blow the door. We're gonna pick the lock. We figured out ways to break the glass quietly and open it and just go inside. Wake them up. You know, catch them when they're sleeping. See how many guys you can touch while they're sleeping. Well, we, we started having competitions. How many Al Qaeda guys can you check for a suicide bomb and then wake them up by saying, shh? And then watching a grown man shit his pants. That was one of the greatest things ever. But. One of the nights we were going into this thing, we had a, we had a lane.

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Uh, a hallway and like the first time we're trying this quiet. And we're walking in, this Al Qaeda dude hops out. He's got an AK forty seven. He could have killed every single one of us. But he couldn't see us. So we hop back in the room and now we, okay, there's shit.

• 1:48:11Speaker 02

  We had a guy with us, Andy, who is a special boat service guy, an SBS, and Brits are the fucking best. They're, they're as funny, or if not funnier than we are, but I compare them like we're the normal keys, they're the sharp keys on a piano, like it sounds good, but it's a little off. He had a cloud of death over him. The other Brits said, you're going with Andy. He gets in fights, like he just, it follows him. You will get, like, you're gonna get in a fight. And so Andy happened to be with us and then one of our guys goes through, we clear the room and one of our guys, his first kill, blasts this guy, splits him wide open and then we're kind of looking over there and Andy, who's been in fights since the invasion, like, Andy, can you go check that guy? And he walks over with a white light and goes, oh, he's fuckmate.

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  So, at this point now, they heard us shoot inside, we got the D-boys hitting another target. Our snipers are going hot. So, myself and one of my guys were like, well, we gotta get out and get into that. This is, these are our first kills. This actually turned out to be the sniper who initiated the fire to rescue Captain Phillips and Somali pirates. We got our first kills together. We went outside and we did this crosspan that we'd always been working on, like if you're on this side, you cover this way, he covers this way. And then you wave and move or whatever. So we're out here, these two dudes pop up like pepper poppers. So we get our first two kills and I'm like, shit, I just killed that guy. And he goes, yeah, I just killed that guy. I go, okay, what do we do now? And he goes, maybe we should try one of those bounding things?

• 1:49:35Speaker 02

  And then it kind of sinks. Yeah, that's another, you know, we finished that off, we killed a bunch of dudes. We got, that was our first major fight in Iraq, where the tactics we're using worked, but how did they adjust to us? How do we, we might need to readjust to this? And that was another thing where now SEAL Team Six was getting in fighting, getting kills. And it was just sort of, okay, now, and this is before the Afghanistan huge fight. So, okay, now I have my first kill. Now I'm, I'm part of the club and this is it. I'm in. And then, you know, we, we finished Iraq and we learned stuff and then we go back and we train and then we keep talking to the other guys that are over there, learn new tactics, what's working, what's not working. Do you like which barrel, which magnifier you're using with your optics?

• 1:50:17Speaker 02

  We had to tell some army guys, like, look, that, that, that laser, this thing, that pistol grip and all this is great in Iraq. When you get to 10,000 feet in Afghanistan, you're not going to want that. Because weight is measured in ounces and ounces equal pounds and it's gonna suck. What do you need? You need, you need an Eotech and an Ironsight, you're good.

• 1:50:35Speaker 02

  Um, so yeah, so that was Iraq. So we bounced from Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq. We, I was, um, I was part, my fourth deployment was, we called it the deployment that never was. Because we had, um, so the commander of SEAL Team Six just got us authorized. For some reason, we were not authorized to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. We were supposed to go only after Al Qaeda.

• 1:51:03Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was weird. Uh, it was, you know, and it's, it's, I mean, it makes sense, sort of. You want to just send the tier one guys after the tier one targets, but you know, we're getting bored and there's a lot of fighting in Kandahar. So that, so they authorized Team Six to start targeting Taliban. That's when Blue Team went in there and just fucking crushed them. Got in fights like epic shit that you can, I mean, there's books out there, Mob Six by Sheff, that's fucking amazing. And he's just a fucking stud. And, um, just, and so our group went, they wanted to all go to Afghanistan to include the headshots. So the bosses, the CO of the whole team and they're all there. And they sent like a troop of us. Fifteen units to Iraq. And our boss,

• 1:51:44Speaker 02

  his name is Rich Devini, and I can say that because he's made himself a public stud too. He was a guy that taught me, nobody ever worked for me, they worked with me. And he agreed to work for Delta. Like, a lot of arrogant team guys wouldn't want to work for them. He's like, you know what, if we're gonna get work, it's gonna be for them. Cause like it or not, the army runs the show. So we started working for Delta. And it happened to be during the surge of the awakening when, when, um, Stan McChrystal, General, excuse me, McChrystal realized if we start killing Al Qaeda, which are Sunnis that are hijacking Sunnis, we can get them to rise up and help us and we can win this war. And they did. Guys like, um, Stan McChrystal, Bill McRaven. They were on the right track and they were, you know, I would follow those guys to hell.

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  But we started hitting those targets on basically kill missions. Every night and we were to a point where if we only killed eleven dudes, it was a waste of our time.

• 1:52:38Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  It was insane. We're targeting Al Qaeda in places where they've never seen guys like us. Like even interrogate, we learn how to interrogate people like you get a cocky Al Qaeda guy. It's like I've seen Americans before and you say, really? Do they look like me? And they kind of look at your tattoos. I had a demon hunter patch beard like. I'm not here by accident, my friend. I'm here for you. Like just fucking awesome shit. Psychological warfare. And we called it the deployment that never was because everyone's in Afghanistan from our crew. And they're fighting and they don't give a shit about us. So as long as we keep doing this, um, it's on. And that was, I mean. I think the Iraq war was completely fucked up, but that was one of the best summers of my life because at the time. Um, we were warriors and that's we're here to kill you.

• 1:53:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  And we fucked them up. We, we, I, we didn't have one of our guys hurt. We, I don't know how many kills we got. But it was guys like Rich that were running the team. Like, like we would hit a target. And because of the intel on target, the battlefield interrogation, we would hit a follow on target. So it's like, and so we would go off of Rangers and I love working with them because you know, you got, they're obviously capable of doing all this. But they generally would put like a machine gunner and they're kind of blocking as we hit the point target. Once you hear the Rangers going hot and you know, Rangers know. Like two things, ruck hump and fucking kill them. So they're just awesome guys. Obviously they're better than that. I'm just, I love Rangers. Um, but once you hear them outside, like you hear the two forty going hot.

• 1:54:01Speaker 02

  It's like, okay, it's, it's a fight. So we would go from house to house. And I'm talking, we're getting, we're getting kills in, in every, every room. Um, and we're, we're doing a, a quick, um. Like a, a quick brief to the boss like, okay, here, we gotta hit this building right here. And I think, you know, I'm talking too fast. I talk fast. It isn't. I look at Rich and said, all right. You know what, sir? I'm sorry, you're in charge. And he looked at me and said, oh, make no mistake, I'm not in charge. I'm responsible. And that's a great fucking leader right there.

• 1:54:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:30Speaker 02

  And so we would do that. We had, we had missions where, um.

• 1:54:33Shawn Ryan?

  So you were, hold on, so you were just, you would go hit a house, you would do an interrogation, and then immediately from there do a follow on.

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  Depending on what we found, but we generally found, we generally found the guy we're looking for in the first house, or someone that knew, who was, we, there was, Jesus, there was one guy, and you've been to Iraq, it's a fucked up place too. We were going after a guy called, like, Mullah Mohammed One Arm, because he's a mullah, and he's got one arm. We grabbed a mullah, pulled him back, his name was Mullah Mohammed One Arm, but he was missing the wrong arm. There was another one. We grabbed the wrong guy.

• 1:55:09Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:55:10Speaker 02

  But we would do stuff like, the way that it worked for us is we, we started in Al Asad out west, and we were hitting targets up into Syria, and then we cleared it to, you know, we got into Fallujah, got into Ramadi, got into Baghdad, north of Baghdad, and it's not just us, but we're working with the army, with the air force, with the marines, and, and we're getting shit done, and we're really winning this war. And, like, there were times, what I love about special operators is they really know how to solve problems. They came to us with, there was a problem, north of Baghdad, I think it was called Bakuba, whatever, but it was a peninsula, and it was a small peninsula,

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  but it hadn't been touched since the invasion in 03, so this is 2007, this place hasn't been touched, because there's 19 Al Qaeda guys there, and they're IED makers, they're improvised explosive device makers. We haven't gotten to them because there's one road in. No one wants to drive that road, they're gonna blow you up. We're not gonna carpet bomb them, because there are so many innocent civilians there, and I mean, you do have certain collateral damage, but we're not gonna kill that many innocent people. Plus, they're getting bullied by Al Qaeda, tortured, like, we can't fast rope, they're gonna shoot us down. So, they came to us, and they said,

• 1:56:27Speaker 02

  Can you guys solve this problem? And being Navy SEALs were like, well, yeah, it's gonna suck, uh, but we can swim in. And it's not a swim like a Bud's Ocean Swim. It's like a swampy shitty nasty whatever. And you know, there's water in Iraq and people don't realize that. But we did, and we went in with 17 SEALs and two dogs, two Malinois. And they're important to the story because we got in there immediately, immediate gunfight. But we cleared 10 houses. We killed all 19 guys, didn't hurt one woman or child, and then we left. Swam out. Uh, the next day, the locals woke up and you know, they're the usual terror reign by these Al Qaeda fucks. But now there's no one, they're dead, they're gone. And they had a block party.

• 1:57:11Speaker 02

  So we have assets above and they're watching this because you want to see who, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to give away tactics, but you want to see what happens after for following it. And there's this block party going on. The block party got so big, um, a reporter from Baghdad, when a newspaper reporter from Baghdad went up there and interviewed the people in the houses that we had taken down and asked who came last night. And the headline on the newspaper said they were ninjas and they came with lions.

• 1:57:38Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 1:57:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, fucking lions. How cool is that?

• 1:57:41Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty badass.

• 1:57:42Speaker 02

  So, but that's what we did for that. We, um, we got, I mean, I mean, watching, I was, you know, just proud of my guys. That's when I realized that, that right now, and this is probably me just being arrogant. Right now, red team is the finding finest fighting force in the world. There, there's no one that does, I mean, obviously there are guys that do it like that, but I'm here, I see it now. This is my bubble these, but I fucking love these guys.

• 1:58:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:04Speaker 02

  And I think that was the most combat that, that, that we'd ever seen. And that was that 2007 deployment to Iraq.

• 1:58:09Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, how long are the deployments over there? Four months? And you guys are just hitting it every night?

• 1:58:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:58:16Shawn Ryan?

  Son of a bitch.

• 1:58:17Speaker 02

  We were, we were in places where, uh, We put up makeshift tents to sleep like not not like but I mean it's not secure like there's a there's concertina wire maybe and some Iraqi guards like you're you could be in it every you know but like no internet no TVs uh the chow hall is a mile and a half away or whatever and uh there's so nothing to do like I remember a guy singing I learned the Cincinnati Bengals fight song because I was sleeping in between two dudes from Cincinnati still know it.

• 1:58:44Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go into a little more detail so you swam in.

• 1:58:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I mean it was I wouldn't it's not so much even a swim it's just a really shitty swamp where you're grabbing the dogs by the by their um their handles and just inserting to like you get under palm groves and the the big grapes with the huge rats running across it.

• 1:59:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02Speaker 02

  Um and you know the closer you get to target the dogs are barking they know you're coming and then you get through their snipers start climbing and then uh once the snipers get up there and you just you hear them go hot um it's just on but I mean it was we were we were good at it so we're we're moving quickly through houses um I mean not two but like we were killing dudes in in in houses clearing one man in blast him and then move down the thing and you're killing other dudes um and at the time it's cool.

• 1:59:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:30Speaker 02

  You know the further you get away from from that it's you know you start wondering what you're doing.

• 1:59:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Does that bother you?

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, there there are certain guys I think about uh there's there's one guy in particular that I think about that I killed uh he was the second guy I killed in this house I entered the house killed the guy in the front I went into a bedroom I did a one man entry because I'm an idiot and there was a guy that was um in bed with his wife and he he I gave him the courtesy of calm down you know you're waking up just you know obviously a guy with a green faces in your room and it's scary calm down and there's a fucking AK-47 next to him like come on don't do that he went for it I blasted him killed him and uh and then his wife sees it so I just shot this guy next to his wife and um

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  you start to wonder like now the only reason I shot that guy is because I am in his house and we were born on two separate parts of the planet.

• 2:00:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  And I don't know I don't know him and then he's I mean the further you get away from it it's like um what if we had met somewhere else like in in a coffee shop in France would we have shared a joke? Was he funny?

• 2:00:37Speaker 02

  Didn't matter.

• 2:00:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thi- I think I found the further you get away from war, the more it starts to sink in. That a lot of guys are killing each other because a lot of narcissists that are in charge have you do it.

• 2:00:49Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think?

• 2:00:52Shawn Ryan?

  I I often wonder that too. Would would we have got along or?

• 2:00:55Speaker 02

  I know, it's crazy.

• 2:00:56Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I I feel like I would have liked half of those people.

• 2:00:59Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 2:00:59Shawn Ryan?

  More than. More than the people that I'm around.

• 2:01:03Speaker 02

  You probably have a lot more in common with them. It's crazy, isn't it?

• 2:01:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it is fucking crazy.

• 2:01:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Shawn Ryan?

  It's it's insane to think about.

• 2:01:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, because the the um, the humanity of it, people don't realize the the humanity that uh. Um, this, I mean, this is uh, people in, there's, these are dudes in their house with their families. Okay, he's going for a gun. He's got a gun. He's aiming at me. Now, is he protecting his family and has not, is he, is he a carpenter?

• 2:01:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  Needs an AK because he lives in fucking Ramadi? Uh, and and again, it's be- I think it's just because uh. One thing I started, the the more senior that I got, one thing that I disagreed with was uh, um. Patrol to contact and strike to develop. It's like, look, man, you're gonna go to a house and and find someone with a gun and kill him. Because you went to it, you're in his house. I I mean, I remember um, one of the things that where I started to not turn, but like. Say no more, um, was I went into the wrong house and I'm on, I I was in a swamp and I I was walking across. This white carpet and these only two people in the in the house were um, a woman and her. Ten year old daughter. And I looked down at the white carpet and I remember thinking, I understand why they hate us.

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  Imagine someone doing that here, you know?

• 2:02:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:13Speaker 02

  So, I mean, it's uh, the shitty thing is you get. You get a lot, uh, the more time you get to think about it, the more you think about it. And you start to realize like it's it's it's a, it's a big planet, it's a small world. And um, you know, it's just a couple of people sending us, I mean, they they, he believed in his cause, I believed in my cause.

• 2:02:29Shawn Ryan?

  That's, yeah, that's where I was gonna go too, is it's, you're, I mean. I don't know what the percentage of people that actually stand up for what they believe in. But I thought it was a lot better, a lot bigger until, until twenty twenty came around and then I realized. Man, the majority of these fucking people are just sheep.

• 2:02:48Speaker 02

  Sheep.

• 2:02:49Shawn Ryan?

  That will just do.

• 2:02:50Speaker 02

  Whatever they're told.

• 2:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  Whatever they're fucking told.

• 2:02:51Speaker 02

  And they turn it, they turn, they turn it political.

• 2:02:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, and we're, and, and, and, and we're going up against the, the whatever percent, let's just call it the top one percent that actually stands up for what they believe in and it's just on the other side of the world and they just believe something different than what we.

• 2:03:07Speaker 02

  That's what they, and they believe it and, and

• 2:03:11Speaker 02

  they just believe in their cause. I mean, yes, they're the bad guys to us, but we're also the bad guys to them.

• 2:03:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:16Speaker 02

  I mean, they attack us because we're the great Satan.

• 2:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:19Speaker 02

  And they, and I, you know, I tell, I, I, I like, think about the, the crazy aunt you have at um Thanksgiving dinner that is so religious that she knows everything. They're just like her. They just believe something else.

• 2:03:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:31Speaker 02

  I mean, the more, you know, the more deep you get, it's, it's frustrating.

• 2:03:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:36Speaker 02

  Because you start to wonder who's calling the shots. But I mean, that's, that's what we did at, like I said, at the time. Twenty seven, thirty year old, thirty two year old, fucking bring it. I'll fight anybody here. And then, then you start to, to question, I mean. I mean, I've had guys say, do you think, you know, are we, are we gonna get past this? Like, are we gonna be good? Like with life? So, and you know, that's, you know, and the P, I think the PTSD comes, it comes with it. And that's real. It's, it's unfortunate. And a lot of guys, um, and a lot of men and women went through a lot of shit because some politician told them they had to.

• 2:04:11Shawn Ryan?

  You're absolutely right. That's, I think that's why they recruit them young too.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 2:04:16Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 2:04:16Speaker 02

  Even, even now, thinking about Iraq, I can just, I can sometimes sit there and think, so Iraq, huh, the fuck was that all about?

• 2:04:23Shawn Ryan?

  I think about that too. I think it was all Halliburton.

• 2:04:26Speaker 02

  It was Halliburton. Someone's getting paid. Someone's getting paid for the anthrax vaccination, smallpox, all the, all the, the vehicles we left there, the shit we brought over. Every single round, all the body armor. Someone's getting paid for it all. That's a big contract someone.

• 2:04:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, well, I mean, Halliburton did what they were.

• 2:04:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, they were everything.

• 2:04:41Shawn Ryan?

  They were, they were the carpenters, they were the chefs, they were the trash people, they were the fuel people, they were.

• 2:04:46Speaker 02

  They were everything.

• 2:04:47Shawn Ryan?

  Cleaning crew, they were everything. Every aspect of life in Iraq that was on an American base was put together by Halliburton.

• 2:04:58Shawn Ryan?

  Who was tied to Cheney?

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:59Shawn Ryan?

  You know, so, but, but anyways, moving on.

• 2:05:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:03Shawn Ryan?

  Moving on. So, so where did you go after Iraq?

• 2:05:05Speaker 02

  So we did Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq, and then I did, the rest was Afghanistan. I'm trying to think of which ones I went to where we, we sent a small team. So then reversed, um, the majority went to Iraq. Cause they got the debriefs on what we were doing. Now the findings in Iraq, so they sent a small group of us up to Bagram and I'm talking a small group, um, eight guys. And we were just, um, we had the ability to augment other groups. Um, but, and we, like, if we went out on hits, which, which were rare, we got it, we did find some IED guys, we did get some shootout, uh, shootouts there. Um, wintertime Afghanistan, so not a lot to do. We, um, got to know each other really well.

• 2:05:47Speaker 02

  We, you know, held training, reaching charges, how to get better at stuff, working out. Uh, a lot of, um, MMA stuff, which is a pain in the ass when you, when you're sparring with guys that are bored that know how to fight. Cause they just wanna get after it. Um, you know, a couple of things here and there, we, um, uh, wasn't very exciting, but we kinda did that. I'm trying to think of the other ones, um.

• 2:06:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's talk about the Alabama.

• 2:06:13Speaker 02

  Okay, so that, so that was in 2009. And, um,

• 2:06:20Speaker 02

  we were sort of aware of, um, the American Alabama getting hit by Somali pirates, but we didn't know what was gonna happen. And I was actually, so we're stateside and we were, we were the national mission force for it, for something like that that would happen. I happened to be at my daughter's Easter tea party at her preschool on my birthday. Was Good Friday, April 10th, 2009. So it was an Easter tea party and we were just giving the kids treats. I had a pink plate in my hand and giving her cookies and cupcakes and, um, we got the call. Um, Captain Phillips, the, the, they gave, they sent us a code that we knew what it was. And basically what they're saying is, okay, he got captured, you go and get him right now. So your shit had better be ready.

• 2:07:04Speaker 02

  You have a certain amount of time to get in there and a certain amount of time to take off. And we had been, SEAL Team Six was designed to do this, to rescue American hostages at sea. It had never been done, not one time.

• 2:07:16Shawn Ryan?

  No shit, this is the first one.

• 2:07:18Speaker 02

  Twenty-eight years it had never been done. And we had been selling that we can take, I don't want to give away the timeline, but we can take off in a certain amount of hours. And we had the commanding officer of SEAL Team Six on my bird and we took off at, you know, fifty-nine minutes. To, you know, whatever fifty-nine, like, I could see that, okay, we did it in certain amount, now we're taking, now we're flying. And, uh, in that amount of time, we, not just me, but we as SEAL Team Six, we had thought of everything. Every imaginable at sea rescue, a nuclear problem, a yacht, whatever, we had never thought of of a lifeboat,

• 2:08:00Speaker 02

  a fully enclosed orange lifeboat being towed by a Navy destroyer. No one thought of that, for some reason. So, we, okay, we're like, well, we have, um, we have fifteen hours to come up with something. So, everybody, I don't, the newest goddamn guy on this plane, think of something. Ram it with one of our birds, one of our boats, or a helicopter, think of something. And we're gonna list all of them. And then we're gonna start crossing them off and we'll take the top five and then from there we'll get to the best one. And, um, we, we did not go over there to kill those pirates. We, we went there to get Richard Phillips. Like, we're just gonna, if we can, we'll just negotiate. But I mean, we didn't, you know, they're already negotiating, they didn't, they didn't send an entire squadron to negotiate.

• 2:08:44Speaker 02

  We're, plus, we, we know, we've been killing people all over the world. So, we, but we didn't, we put the snipers down when we got there to, um, watch them. Make sure nothing unsafe happens as we're preparing for the rescue. And as we were preparing for the rescue, something very unsafe happened and they shot. That's all, that's how it happened. There was, there was no three, two, one, execute. It was just boom, boom, boom.

• 2:09:06Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. So it was all just bam?

• 2:09:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, someone shot, they ran off each other. Like the plan that I thought was gonna work, that we came up with was, uh, uh, and I thought this was brilliant. This is why I was actually getting coffee in the chief's mess, because we're gonna do this plan. Was, uh, yeah, I didn't do shit on that fucking thing.

• 2:09:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, hold on, you didn't, that was, that was off camera, so you were getting coffee?

• 2:09:26Speaker 02

  I was, I was, I had just made chief and I was so happy to be in the chief's mess on a Navy ship that I'm in there bullshitting with like the Bostons made chief and we're talking about, uh, who are the Redskins gonna draft or some shit? Or who they just, whatever. And the snipers took the shot. The, the plan that we came up with, meaning me and my team leader, was, these are not terrorists. This is brilliant. These are not terrorists. They're criminals. And now they're scared. And they're seasick, which they don't like, and they're out of cot, the drug they take.

• 2:09:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:56Speaker 02

  All we gotta do is bring them some water and some radios. Get them some radios to the village elders. Let them talk. And tell them we're gonna bring them in. They just wanna go home now. We get them close, you know, the sun comes down, jam the comms, pull them, couple clicks up and my team will be on the beach. And then once they get off, we'll handle it. We either, hey, we're friends, beat it, or we shoot them and then we take him. So that's, that's the plan that I thought was gonna work. So I'm talking football with BMC. And, uh, we got a message and someone said, yeah, we got him. And I was like, got who? Dude, we got him. But we got Captain Phillips. Like, holy shit. You guys are awesome. Yeah, they, they got him and, and, um, uh, yeah, they took the shots, um.

• 2:10:42Speaker 02

  I think one of the coolest stories that doesn't get enough credit is, is, uh, you know the slide for life, the obstacle we have at BUDS?

• 2:10:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:48Speaker 02

  Where you climb up and you slide down a rope and like the Marines have it, Army has it. I remember seeing that thinking, um, the fuck is the use of this? No one is ever gonna need to know how to do this. One guy needed to do it one time. And it was after they shot, that sniper needed to go down. And, uh, pulled Phillips out. I'll tell you a story now. This is not my story. It's just a good story. So I'm assuming it happened this way. The sniper said, um, and he's probably full of shit, but he said, um, when he was going in there, he had to go to his pistol and he did carry a pistol, thank God. And he said, but I'm going into the small, um, space. And this is the only time in my life that I get to rescue someone, so I gotta think of something cool to say, right? Do I say we're a SEAL team here, blah, blah, blah?

• 2:11:31Speaker 02

  And he said he went in there and they'd been using this entire boat as a toilet for like four days. And it's in the African heat and now there's three dudes laying in it and their heads are split open. And he said that he, I don't think he said something cool to say. He looks at Richard Phillips and said, "I'm definitely gonna need therapy after this." Fuck! That's what I say. Need therapy? Holy shit. But I mean, the thing about that though was, um, from Virginia Beach, 15 hours and 46 minutes later, we had a full head count in the Indian Ocean. We rescued Richard Phillips on Easter Sunday. The thing that people don't think about is, I mentioned, we hadn't done that in 28 years.

• 2:12:13Speaker 02

  So, imagine those snipers were in their own beds in Virginia Beach four days before that on a long weekend. Um, it's a long weekend. We've never done this. I'm gonna skip work and I'll sight in my gun on, uh, Tuesday. You know, their guns did not need to be sighted in for the most difficult shots of their lives, but their guns were sighted in for the most difficult shots of their lives because they were prepared. Wow. Crazy. Those snipers are just complete badasses. How many snipers were there? I, well, I mean, we, we jumped in with 103 people. Like, this is the only, everyone's. You jumped in with 103 people? I think, yeah, I think we had 98 canopies, five tandems, some shit. Um, yeah, we, I mean, everybody, every swing and dick that was in Virginia Beach was going on this mission. Is it just because everybody wanted to go?

• 2:12:58Speaker 02

  Everybody wanted to be on the op. This is a real jump. Yeah. The first one. Um, I wanna say, I mean. So you brought 108 people? We had dudes, I swear to God, were riding deaths that were like, "Yep, I have a trident. I haven't operated 12 years, but I'm jumping. I can still remember this stuff." Um, we had dudes that, um, their first, that was their first jump, uh, they were tandeming, uh, Tom guys.

• 2:13:21Shawn Ryan?

  Oh wow.

• 2:13:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, there's a sniper team there, but I, there was three I want to see that shot.

• 2:13:26Shawn Ryan?

  Shit, I thought it was this, I thought it was like five or six of you guys. I didn't realize you brought everybody in the fucking kitchen sink.

• 2:13:31Speaker 02

  There was dudes in there before us, um, from a, from a more advanced squadron that I'm not going to get into. They were sort of there. But then they, you know, we, we, they were already overseas. They, they, they brought us in from Virginia Beach.

• 2:13:43Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:13:44Speaker 02

  And I mean, the snipers, that's just, I think that's just cool.

• 2:13:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So was it three simultaneous shots?

• 2:13:49Speaker 02

  You know what? I don't think so, but that's what the debrief said.

• 2:13:52Shawn Ryan?

  Alright.

• 2:13:54Speaker 02

  I wasn't there. I mean, I wasn't there.

• 2:13:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:57Speaker 02

  But they, I know they got them.

• 2:13:59Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it's cool that you're a part of it.

• 2:14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:02Shawn Ryan?

  It's actually pretty fucking funny. You're in the chief's mess bitching about.

• 2:14:05Speaker 02

  I think it's awesome because if people say, um, you know, you're telling stories that aren't true. It's like, no, I really was in the chief's mess. Like, whatever do you mean?

• 2:14:14Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. So.

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  But yeah, then that was that. And, um, so now that's the pinnacle. We've done the hostage rescue. Um, we've been in the gunfights. We've done this and then, um, we're going to go. I'm going to go to Afghanistan again. And this time, so I'd, I'd been at an outstation. I'd been on the strike teams. I'd run the outstations. Now I'm the senior enlisted. Um, running all of them. I'm the senior enlisted for all the outstations. And my job's simply now is to work with the agency, get intel from these different places. Try to find, um, um, cross-border operations again. Um, and so at this point Osama bin Laden is a ghost. And I'm not, he's not even on my fucking radar. I, I was at the point, just being at SEAL Team Six, I was, I remember thinking,

• 2:15:00Speaker 02

  I hope I get to meet the guy from Delta that kills bin Laden. This is as close as I'll, this is awesome. I hope I meet him. So like one of the big, we did a, um, we, the, the biggest thing we did on this one was we found an Al Qaeda guy.

• 2:15:14Speaker 02

  Abu Iklis Al Mazri or some shit like that, who was a tier one target in Korengal. And we did a snatch and grab on a, on a highway and got him. This other strike team were doing, we're doing stuff. One of, one of the newer guys, first deployment with red team actually got six kills at once with a saw. Which I thought like, that's, that's pretty cool.

• 2:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:34Speaker 02

  Uh, but we're watching and then, but it's, so this is, uh, this is, um, uh, January of 2011 and that's all we're doing and, and you know, trying to develop shit. But we're, I'm more planning, uh, training trips for when we get back. Making sure the guys on my team are running their trips the right way, where we're gonna go. And we, we planned, uh, the first,

• 2:15:55Speaker 02

  trip back for my team, my troop actually was to go to Miami to dive. We're, cause our, our biggest concern is more piracy. The pirates have been adjusting to what we're doing. They had motherships. Can we do open water dives on a ship that's not, or a ship that is anchored? How do we find it? What can we do? And we're just coming up with shit. But we're done with deployment and we're also in South Beach. So I want guys to have fun. We're gonna train, but then we're gonna go to happy hour.

• 2:16:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:16:23Speaker 02

  Hang out on the beach, have some drinks, then we're gonna train tomorrow. And, um, we were down there, we're staying at the Courtyard Marriott near South Beach. And we're outside, well, before we went on this trip, our, our boss, the, the commanding officer, red squadron, was coming on the trip and we're kinda like, well, that's a drag because we can't have as much fun with the CO there. But he got pulled, like, yeah, he's gotta go to DC for something. So we're good. We didn't know why the CO and the master chief went to DC, but we're down there and then my boss got a call, uh, my, my troop commander and he said, hey, um, we gotta go, we gotta go back to Virginia Beach. So pack your ship as soon as you can. We're gonna get the first flights out of here. Like, what the hell? Alright, what's going on? Fuck, I don't know. So we flew back,

• 2:17:07Speaker 02

  to Virginia Beach and they brought 28 of us into a room. Now we've got guys on different trips that got pulled in, senior guys from like, uh, there was a rock climbing trip in Nevada. Uh, but they got, the senior guys got, got called in and then other guys came in from Arizona and then we're here. Other dudes are junior guys at SEAL Team Six are there, but they're not into this secret room and they, they said, uh, alright, you guys are here because this is not a drill. Uh, this is real.

• 2:17:36Speaker 02

  We found a thing and this thing is in a house. And this house is in a bowl and this bowl is in a country. And you guys are gonna, you're gonna go get this thing and you're gonna bring it back to us and show it to us. And we're like, okay, no sweat. First we're wondering why us, but okay, well, what's the thing? Well, we can't, can't tell you. Okay, how are we getting there? Can't tell you. What country is this? We can't tell you. How are we getting there? Can't tell you. How much air support? None. Like, alright, that's an answer. No air support. That's all we know. And they said also, we, we're not, we're only bringing shooters. Only SEALs are going on this. Um, so we can't bring our kick-ass Air Force CCT, the radio guys. We can't bring the PJs who are paramedics, fucking medics.

• 2:18:21Speaker 02

  So if you know any medical shit, you bring some medical shit. If you know how to use a radio, you're the radio guy. And keep it light, because we only have a certain, so we're like, what the fuck is going on? And so we would walk around, we're trying to get our shit ready. We, we, we knew there would be two, two birds. That's all we knew. We assumed it would be Ospreys off of a flat top going into Libya. Because the Arab Spring had just started. And they're, we're gonna go get Gaddafi and they wanna interrogate him, so we're gonna get him and bring, it's gotta be that. But we, we're walking down, we're in the new building where the, all of the cages are together on the bottom and we're running into guys from other squad. And they're like, hey, man, what, we heard something's going on. What's going on? And we're literally like, I have no fucking idea. And they, they got mad at us because

• 2:19:04Speaker 02

  they thought we were lying to them. It's like, I, I, and we'd run into them when we'd go out at night. Like, I, I, guys, I don't know what we're doing. But we're getting our shit ready. This went on until Friday. And, um, they said, okay, everyone go home, be with your kids. And you're coming back on Sunday and we're gonna drive you somewhere and we're gonna read you in on what this is. And we're like, okay, what's, who's gonna be there at the read-in? And the tired bosses were like, oh, probably the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy. And we're like, oh my God. And then they're going down the list. They said something, blah, blah, blah. They said CTC PAD, blah, blah, blah.

• 2:19:44Speaker 02

  They're going down the list. I'm like, CTC PAD? That's CIA Counterterrorism, Pakistan, Afghanistan. If we're going to Libya. And I didn't say anything, but you know, we went home, hung out with the kids. We came back on Sunday. They split us up into vans. We, we had four guys in my van. I got my buddy driving, my other buddy up front. My troop commander, my boss is right here and then I'm sitting here and I explained to them on the drive down, we're going to somewhere in North Carolina. And I explained to them exactly what I just said here. And I said, um, this isn't Gaddafi. They found Bin Laden.

• 2:20:19Speaker 02

  And my boss looked at me and, and there was no cheers. He goes, that's exactly what I was thinking. So we just started talking about this and, uh, my buddy driving the van, I'll never forget the way he looked at me in the mirror and he said, "Man O'Neil, if we kill Osama bin Laden, I will suck yo dick."

• 2:20:39Speaker 02

  And we had a laugh about it. Then, um, you know, fast forwarding, obviously three weeks to the day, we're looking down at Bin Laden in his house. And I said, "Well, now's as good a time as any, I guess." And he's like, "Oh, fuck you." And I'm like, "Your bet." But we got down there and, um, they, uh, they, they put us all into a room. And, um, the commanding officer of SEAL Team Six. So we each squadron had a commanding officer, but Six was like a group. So that commander, that CEO came in and I'll never forget the way he said, "The reason you guys are here is this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden."

• 2:21:12Speaker 02

  And I mean, it, it sinks in, but there's, you know, we're professionals and we're like, okay, are we going right now? We, I mean, we're ready. And they, they, they explained to us, they, they brought in the agency team, which is mostly women and explained to us. They, they went into such depth of how they found him in his long briefs were all almost like, "Look, it, we believe you. I don't need to know this shit. Just you tell me where he is. I, I'll carry the gun and the sledgehammer." And, um, they, you know, they were very cool, the way they, they talked to us and, and then they had a, they told us that the president had, uh, he had about five options to get him. And they said, you know, obviously, um, carpet bombed the fuck out of it. And I think the air force wanted like 22 JDAMs to make sure. And it's like, "You're gonna kill everyone around."

• 2:21:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:57Speaker 02

  So that's a, I mean, we'll never know if we got him. They, there was something of a, uh, they, they called him the Pacer. They could see him walking outside. We can hit him with one bomb.

• 2:22:09Speaker 02

  But I mean, we know how that works. You fuck up that one, you'll never find him again. They, we actually laughed at this one. They said, we can do a joint op with the Pakistanis. And it was like, oh yeah, tell them about it.

• 2:22:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:20Speaker 02

  He's fucking out of there. Um, or you're an option and then you guys can figure out a way. And so, you know, we're thinking everything jumping in. No, can't do this and whatever. And, um, but, and, and even the, the president didn't know about the, I guess the, the chief of staff of the air force said, well, there is one more option. And he told him about the helicopters that no one knew about. And so then we just started training and that, that was an option. So we trained there. It wasn't to, uh, it was, you know, to obviously to get to know the, the exterior. But don't tell me about the interior. I'll, I'll figure that out when I get there. Don't, don't tell me there's seven men and 10 women and 16 children. You tell me how many people you think are there and I'll figure out what they are when I get there type shit.

• 2:23:01Speaker 02

  And we're just kind of coming up with contingency plans. Uh, we wanted to prove to them the powers that be that we are a good option, that we know what we're doing. And even, even got to the point where, uh, President Obama said, I was never 100% convinced bin Laden was there, but I was convinced you guys could go in and find out and come, come home. And so we trained on that and we tried to think of contingencies, trying to brainstorm everything, uh, you know, what if the cars leave? What if we get squitters? Who's doing what coming up to this and? And then we would go back to the hotel or whatever we're staying at. And somebody at the CIA had made a two-scale model of bin Laden's house. I'm talking to the

• 2:23:39Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 2:23:40Speaker 02

  And so we're talking about it. Um, just, and we're, you know, we're training 12 hour days and talking about it every night, then doing it over helos. We, we fast roped so much, I, I have severe, uh, tendonitis still, um, from just grabbing that damn rope. Almost to the point like, can we just simulate? We fast roped. I know how to do it. I, I can fall.

• 2:24:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:02Speaker 02

  But one night, um, one of the bosses said, all right, what's the worst thing that could happen? And the youngest guy in the room said, the helicopter could crash in the front yard. And we're like, what the fuck?

• 2:24:15Speaker 02

  Why would you bring that karma here? Yeah. And he goes, I don't know, shouldn't we talk about that for 30 seconds?

• 2:24:21Speaker 02

  So we did that and then we went out west to a, a, a certain place and I, I, we were even to a point where, um, uh, I, like I'm, I'm known for morale. I want to keep morale high, crack jokes, have fun. But guys were joking, uh, around the table one night and I said, you guys realize this is a one-way mission.

• 2:24:41Speaker 02

  You should take this a little bit more seriously. We're, we're not coming back from this one. And then, yeah, they're like, yeah, you're, yeah, shit. And so we get out there though, and they brought us into the, the, you could, the movie Zero Dark Thirty kind of plays it right where the, the SEALs walk in, they see those helicopters. And I remember I started laughing and they're like, what's so, what's so funny now? And I said, well, before I thought there was a 90% chance we're gonna die, but I didn't know they were sending us, uh, in on Transformers. And that was kind of, and it's like, well, these, I mean, and these things, someone designed it, um, the pilots that came out, they gave us the four best pilots in the world, army pilots. They'd never flown these things and they, we trained on those for four days and then, um,

• 2:25:22Speaker 02

  then we, uh, went one more time home to see our kids and then we forward staged to Jalalabad. Because if they, if President Obama gives us the green light, um, we want to be right there. So, and, uh, you know, you still can't, and the reason they picked us is because, um, we had a, a team already in Afghanistan. We had the National Mission Force, which is for a contingency. But if, if that team in Afghanistan stopped working and just started training, someone might notice. If the National Mission Force leaves, someone might notice. This squadron is supposed to be leaving. No one's gonna care. That was us. So, it's better to be lucky than good. So we went over there. There was a squadron over there. And we came in to do the Bin Laden raid and they knew it.

• 2:26:06Speaker 02

  Can you ima- and they, I'll tell you what, I cannot say enough good about them. I would have been, fuck you guys. W- we're SEAL Team Six and we're, and you guys come to do it? They could not have been more welcome, welcoming to us, you know? I mean, they were pissed, but they, they were complete pros. Wow. And, um, and then we waited there. Uh, we, we would play poker with those guys. And they said we actually weren't fun to play poker with because they're like, fuck it, I'm all in too. I'm gonna die tomorrow. Just, you know, dark humor. Uh, but then we did, we did get the green light. Um, and we're gonna launch, we have Saturday or Sunday to launch because that's our, um, forty-eight hours of zero percent illumination. And if we miss that window, though, we gotta wait thirty days and we're going in zero percent.

• 2:26:50Speaker 02

  And we got lucky because the rumor was that Bin Laden was, was going to leave on September eleventh of that year to a new place. That's the rumor, it could be false, but that's what I heard. Um, so we got the green light. We didn't launch on Saturday because of the correspondence dinner.

• 2:27:07Speaker 02

  And, um, we figured if, if, um, the entire cabinet and the president in a room with the entire press corps and they all get up and leave, the press corps is like, huh? What's that all about?

• 2:27:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:27:17Speaker 02

  And I guess even Hillary Clinton was like, wait, we're not launching on Saturday because of, fuck those guys, we're launching.

• 2:27:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:27:23Speaker 02

  Which I, I mean Hillary Clinton, you know, I never vote for her, but I'd take her in a foxhole.

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  Um, but then, yeah, we did on, so we did on Sunday, we're gonna go Sunday and it's, it's, uh, it's a hundred percent we're going and we went to, um, we went into a hangar to get the final brief. We're going over everything that we're gonna do and, and we, I mean, we're good, we, we know the exterior. We know who's supposedly there, we talked to the intel analysts, they're with us still in, in, in JABAD. And, um, uh, Admiral Bill McRaven, he, he, he's giving us the last speech and he said, uh, you know, guys, last night I watched my favorite movie, Hoosiers. And the best part of that movie is when this team from Hickory, Indiana, makes it to the state championship and they walk into this gym and it's an arena and they're starstruck and they're just looking around and

• 2:28:13Speaker 02

  coach had, um, one of the guys grab a tape measure and say, what's the distance from the back of the rim to the free throw line? And he said, it's fifteen feet, coach. Alright, get on his shoulders, gets on his shoulders, what's the distance from the hoop to the floor? And he said, ten feet, coach. And he goes, I'm sure you'll find these are the exact measurements in your gym in Hickory. This is just a bigger arena. And he goes, you guys do this every night. This is just a bigger arena. And then we were leaving, I remember we went up to him and said, "Hey Admiral, um, you're so fucking busy. I doubt you watched Hoosiers last night, but you were born to give us that speech right now."

• 2:28:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:51Speaker 02

  And so then we left, we took a team picture and then uh, uh, we had our gear on and like, you know, said, uh, said goodbye to the guys that were there and, and we, we actually, um, you know, we're going with, uh, the, the shooters to the first two birds and it's, you know, instead of, uh, instead of like, giving them a fist pound, giving the guys hugs and it's like, "Alright, see you on, see you on the, on the ground." And, and then, you know, we left. You do your last thing, take a piss or whatever. Like, one of my concerns was how, how are we gonna pee? Um, on the way. I don't wanna get out and have to pee, like, and they actually, someone came up with these little, I don't know if they have them now, they're probably common. Those little diapers you unfold, you could pee in them. But I, I actually, like, I don't even trust these things. I'm peeing in a bottle and I'll throw it up. I actually kept the damn bottle of piss in my pocket the whole mission, I forgot about it.

• 2:29:35Speaker 02

  Pretty excited. I mean, to the point where we were, um, we were, um, we were given access to everything, like, didn't even need to be approved for use, yet, if, if it works, uh, you can have it. And we, uh, but we're, now we're measured, like, we're trying to cut guys off for, like, "You're too heavy, these two guys, don't carry that because certain pounds of fuel to get there." Cause we don't have refuel.

• 2:29:59Shawn Ryan?

  It was that calculated.

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were trying to keep it to, to, to that. Thirty-two minutes on the ground. We had a dude come in, this, I don't remember what the hell he was trying to sell us, but he said, uh, "Here's this box that, uh, it jams everything." Like, it jams cell, but like, it can, it can jam landlines, it jams this shit and it, it weighs, and it's like the, uh, um, uh, kilometer radius.

• 2:30:24Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:30:25Speaker 02

  And one of the guys goes, "Has it been tested in a helicopter?" And he goes, "Hmm, no." And he goes, "I have a better idea. Can you invent something that's only thirty pounds? Uh, it's the radius of this room and it jams bad ideas." Anyway, so, so we went out there and we got in the birds and then we took off and we left. And we had, um, we had a 90 minute flight into, into his house. We, now, we actually had, we had more birds behind us. There was actually, uh, blue team guys in 47, it's Chinooks behind us. Uh, 45 minutes. And then there was more on the border with Rangers and then there was more. Oh, wow.

• 2:31:07Speaker 02

  Because the word I got, I wasn't there, and this is some South Side Chicago fucking politics, was when they told, um, President Obama our plan, that like, yeah, they're gonna get here. The first, if, if they get contact with the Pak Mill or the Pak Police, we're gonna hard point, uh, we don't want to get in a shootout with them because they're not our enemy and then you can send someone to negotiate with the Pakistanis. And pull them out and he goes, "That's interesting." And then he looked at the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and said, "What do you need to rain hell on Pakistan? My guys aren't fucking surrendering to anybody." No shit. That's what I heard. And that's pretty cool. And that was, so this is a mission now where politics is out the window. And then, you gotta figure, President Obama, he's gonna lose reelection if we all die. And, and that, not that that matters, but does to him. Yeah. But he's making the fucking call because this is what we're gonna do.

• 2:31:49Speaker 02

  So, um, so we're, so we have birds behind us. Like, if we need to get, um, if we need a QR, an IRF and a QRF, we got our guys coming in and we're fucking, we're fighting. And we, I know we have shit above us, but they didn't really tell us because we got enough on our plate. Like, I'm assuming someone that's invisible has some bombs up there. So, we're flying in 90 minutes to get into Bin Laden's house. And, um, um, we can get shot down now at any time. We don't know if this technology works. We don't know if the, the most high-speed Pakistani new guy is manning the radar system pointing that way and he'll shoot us down. And we can't even be mad at him because we're invading. Yeah. Um, but worrying about that missile isn't going to stop it.

• 2:32:34Speaker 02

  So if you're worrying about something, that it doesn't stop worrying. You're wasting your energy. If we die, we die. And so I'm looking around at other guys in this bird, how are they handling it? And dudes are sleeping. And I remember thinking, "You were asleep on the ride to Bin Laden's house."

• 2:32:49Speaker 02

  You have ice in your veins, man. That's just fucking insane. Uh, and I'm, I'm sitting next to Cairo, the dog, and then cheese. He wrote the book, No Ordinary Dog. Uh, they're back there and Cairo's just, you know, being a good boy and, and, uh, I was counting to keep, I learned in Kosovo, I was a sniper to count. When you're, when you got, when you're glassing something and you just count. Zero to a thousand, thousand to zero, and then change your cadence, keep your mind working, but keep focused. And, um, you know, we're about, we're like 90 minutes in, or 80 minutes into a 90 minute flight and we banked to the, to the south and I don't know how I remembered it, but I, I was counting 556, 557. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended. You know, you know, politics, whatever. That's what George Bush said on 9/11. And I was like, shit.

• 2:33:34Speaker 02

  I'm gonna keep saying that. And then it's like, wow, we're, I'm on this mission. We're on this mission. We're gonna fucking kill them. So we, we did another bank and then, uh, the air crew guys opened the door and now we're looking out. It's not even, and that's something they don't get credit for. The air crew guys, they put their asses in those seats too. If we get shot down, they're dying as well. And their job was to keep the bird flying and open the fucking door. What if we couldn't figure out how to open the door? Something that simple. He knew how to do it. He opens it up. Now it's, it's a, Abbottabad, Pakistan is a resort town. And there's electricity. This is not a training area. This is not Afghanistan. This is some serious Navy SEAL shit we're about to do. So the perfect plan was, I was in the second bird. The first bird's gonna go right in between Bin Laden's house and the, and the, um, guest house. They're gonna fast rope everyone out.

• 2:34:19Speaker 02

  We're gonna insert a sniper, um, some sniper's a dog, an interpreter and a machine gun. Then my team's gonna go to the roof. We're gonna fast rope down onto the roof and then we're gonna figure out how to get to the balcony. And basically that's, I'm gonna fucking jump and I'm gonna shoot it out. There's probably a window there. Bin Laden's in the, the woman told me, third floor, Bin Laden is in his house. And that's what's gonna happen. And then I went to shit because I guess there was an updraft. There was, the weather was different or something. And the, the pilot realized that if he, um, If an inexperienced pilot would have tried to power it up, and that would have flipped it or something. He explained that later. He said, "The safest thing now, if I can, if I can pin it to the ground and that put the tail on the, on the fence, we could live."

• 2:35:05Speaker 02

  So he did that, and he saved everyone's lives, just making that decision. And it was on purpose. Um, and then our, so we took off to go to the roof, but our pilot, now the communications is kind of sketch here. Um, our pilot saw him do that, and he realized that, "Well shit, if he can't hover, I'm not trying up there." So he just went back down. So all we know is we went up and we came down, and the pilot's basically saying, "Get out." And I remember putting my, my first foot came out, and I'm looking at Bin Laden's house, and I remember thinking, "Fuck it, I guess we'll start the war from here." And I knew damn well there's a, um, there's a wall, just because we trained so much, there's a door on the wall, northeast corner, which is off to my left. And so the breacher decided to go up and put a, uh, seven-foot charge of C6 on it. So we're, so now because we're hitting this side, they're somewhere in there, I think.

• 2:35:49Speaker 02

  We're gonna go into the house this way, and we can just, we can go up with them. Uh, he blasted the door, it opened like a tin can, and there's a brick wall behind it. So on the wall, there's a wall and a, and the breacher said, "All right, failed breach, this is, this is bad." He said, "No, this is good." That, that's a, that's a fake door. Nobody does that. He's, he's in there. So then we're, we know there's another door over here, which is the carport, which we know opens because the cars go in and out. And we didn't know what hap, we, we heard them saying dash one going around. But what they were saying was dash one going down. So we just gave them a courtesy, "Hey, we're gonna blast the carport," and they said, "Don't blast it, we'll open it." And the door opened and the thumb came out with a glove that I recognized.

• 2:36:32Speaker 02

  And that, now we're at a point in life where it doesn't matter why you're here, you just are.

• 2:36:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:38Speaker 02

  I tell football teams that all the time. It doesn't matter why it's second and 15, it just is. Time's kicking, let's move. So we walk in, um, it didn't make sense to me why they're in there. I saw the air crew standing there. I saw American flags, but different, um, you, different gear. And I, I remember thinking, "Who the fuck are these guys?" Whatever. And so there's already a gunfight, stuff's going on, uh, explosions. We go into the main house, um, there's guys going down the hallway, this is the first floor of Bin Laden's house, and we're backed into this, uh,

• 2:37:08Speaker 02

  Into this room and I'm like looking around for bombs like they're gonna blow this house up if anyone's gonna martyr himself it's Bin Laden I don't see any but I'm seeing guys knowing that they could blow up but they're not it's not affecting them they're doing their jobs and being proud of them like this is just you guys are fucking cool and uh the guy next to me in the room he whispered and he said helicopter crashed and I said what helicopter and I thought some of the birds behind us had crashed but he said bro our helicopter crashed in the front yard you walked right past it

• 2:37:39Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit

• 2:37:40Speaker 02

  That's like okay that makes sense let's take a break

• 2:37:44Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break

• 2:37:48Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you're enjoying the Sean Ryan Show let me take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon our patron community receives exclusive behind the scenes content from the Sean Ryan Show as well as an extensive library of Vigilance Elite videos not seen anywhere else I also engage in live video chat with tier three members once a month where we discuss a variety of topics Vigilance Elite Patreon is what makes the Sean Ryan Show possible thank you for listening thank you for your support and head over to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and get your subscription today

• 2:38:30Speaker 02

  So I'm watching guys do their jobs even though we are in this is an extremely high high threat situation and dudes are dealing with problems but what I remember seeing you know they just the guy just told me the helicopter crashed and I'm like what helicopter crashed and I thought one of the other healers had been shot down and he goes bro our helicopter crashed in the front yard like you walked right past it and I remember sort of trying to justify my I'm like well I must have been looking this way because that's Bin Laden's house but I'm watching dudes run from different rooms to grab kids that have been separated from their families to bring them back to their family so those kids would not be

• 2:39:12Speaker 02

  As afraid as they are right now and and I remember thinking you know being proud of the guys but then thinking that is what the good guys do. Yeah. Al Qaeda is not doing that when they come to our house. No. You're gonna shoot it out, they're gonna cut people's heads off. We do that because we're the good guys and I'm sure you've seen it in combat. Yeah. But now we're in, we're on the first floor and then they they reached a second to the second floor. The woman that found Bin Laden said, I don't know what it looks like inside, but there will be a stairwell going to the second floor and you will run into Khalid Bin Laden. And he's 20 years old, that's Bin Laden's son, and that is his last line of defense. He will be armed on the stairwell. And she was so badass, she said, here's the way she put it, if you can ace him, you get a shot at the big guy.

• 2:39:58Speaker 02

  And that's just, that's a cool brief right there from a badass, you know? Um, so she was right and and it turns out, um, she was a hundred percent right on every single person in and out of that house. No shit. Nailed it. But we get to the stairwell and it comes up, it comes back. So the stairs go this way, there's a little area and then it comes this way and Khalid was there and he he jumped behind a banister and I'm at this point now because I like, I had the front row seat to the coolest hit mission in modern history. I'm just watching cool guys, right? And they're going up the stairs and he jumps back and I'm a certain amount of guys back. And normally in an urban setting, if we're fighting up, I will pull guys out. I only want a certain amount of guys on there just to avoid uncertain, I mean unnecessary

• 2:40:43Speaker 02

  deaths if he starts dropping shit on us like grenades and whatnot or takes a shot down the stairs. But I figure we're going to die anyway, so I want to see how this goes down. And I'm just standing, I don't have a shot. And now we're back to being quiet. And it's dark. And, um, the point man said something like, and I'm gonna fuck this up. It was something like Khalid, Urfa Aidek, Khalid Delta Rasha. Something like that, but it was basically come here, come here in two different languages that he knew Khalid spoke. Which I think is incredible because I would have thought he would have pinned it, tried to get a shot off. And Khalid simply got confused. And he leaned over the thing and went, what?

• 2:41:25Speaker 02

  No shit. That is the coolest thing I'd ever seen in combat. How tactically savvy are you to think of doing that? Like, well, he doesn't know, he doesn't know, we might be Pakistanis here to move him. He doesn't know. I'll just call him out. And he did. So he, and he was armed, perfectly within his rules of engagement. We step around him. We go up to the, the last, the second deck, the last set of stairs. And I, I moved from this point from like eight, the eighth guy to the second guy. Cause everyone else went to the right and to the left, cause they're gonna, you wanna clear, obviously, um, the area before you move on. But now we're down to two and we're pointing at the last set of stairs. And above it, there was a curtain. It looked kinda like a, um, a shower curtain, but it was like a green olive drab type thing. And we can see there's sort of backlit, there's people moving.

• 2:42:09Speaker 02

  Uh, and we assumed those are the suicide bombers. But Bin Laden's in there and I, the guy in front of me took a shot before we got there. And they're moving around and I'm the two man and my job as the two man is to, is to hold him and wait. His job is to simply look forward. Don't drop security and I got you. And through effective communication, when it's your time to go, I will squeeze you, it's on. I'm just telling you through effective communication, we have enough guys. But we don't have enough guys, we're out of guys, it's two of us. And, um, I, I'm, I want, I want four more, I'll take two. But he starts saying, we gotta go.

• 2:42:48Speaker 02

  Come on, we gotta go. He doesn't know it's me, he knows it's one of his guys. And what he's saying is, uh, is, um, those are, basically suggesting those are the suicide bombers, but if we go right now, we can beat him. And I remember taking a deep breath and, uh, it wasn't, it was no, by no means bravery on my part. It was more of a, okay, we're, we're gonna blow up now and I'm tired of, I'm tired of thinking about it, let's fucking get over with. So I get in the squeeze and he, he goes up and he, he moves the curtain and there are, um, there were three people standing there. He didn't have even enough time, he just jumped on them. He, how he doesn't have a Medal of Honor is be- beyond me. He jumped on the grenade so the guy behind him could get the shot.

• 2:43:31Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:43:32Speaker 02

  So he ju- and I be- and simply because he went this way, I turned this way. And standing three feet in front of me is Osama bin Laden, and he's got his hands on Amal, his wife's shoulders. And I don't know what he's doing. He's not surrendering. He's, he's maneuvering somehow. H- h- his hands are on her. And I remember thinking, he's taller than I thought. He's skinnier than I thought.

• 2:43:52Shawn Ryan?

  So you knew it was him?

• 2:43:53Speaker 02

  Right away, right away. Yep. His, his beard is gray. He's not surrendering. He's, he's gotta have a suicide belt. So I shot him twice when he was standing up. I shot him again on the floor, and then I moved Amal out of the way. So I can he- I can hear bin Laden taking his last breath. He, when I shot him, he fell to the foot of the bed.

• 2:44:10Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you shoot him?

• 2:44:10Speaker 02

  I shot him in the face three times. Um, I moved Amal and, uh, and I, his two-year-old son is now standing there. And this is the humanity of everything. This kid has got nothing to do with this. I'm a father, and I picked him up and I move him, I moved him to the back of the bed. And, uh, she'd been shot. And, and, uh, I turned around and, um, I, I kinda froze. And I'm, okay, we, we, other Navy SEALs are now coming in the room. A lot of guys are in there. And one of my guys came up to me and, uh, he said, um,

• 2:44:46Speaker 02

  "Are you good?" And I said, "No, no. Uh, what are we supposed to do now?" And he said, "Now we find the computers. We, we do this every night, hundreds of times." And I said, "Yeah, you're right." I'm like, "Holy shit." And he said to me, "Yeah, you just killed Osama bin Laden. Your life just changed. Get to fucking work." And so we did, um, we, we, uh, they started, we, you know, we actually took, we do have pictures of bin Laden. It's, it's actually my gloves in there. With putting his head together for the picture, dumping water on him. And like, it was, I think the pictures haven't been released because it's, it's one of those things where you, you really don't need to know how justice looks when it's served. It just, it just is.

• 2:45:19Shawn Ryan?

  So those pics on the internet?

• 2:45:20Speaker 02

  No, they're fake. It's, it's split from, from, he's split from here to here.

• 2:45:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:45:25Speaker 02

  I mean, he got hit three times with a, I'm shooting 77 degree hollow point at three feet.

• 2:45:29Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 2:45:29Speaker 02

  It's a devastator.

• 2:45:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:31Speaker 02

  And, um, So they're dressing him up, guys are doing SSC and I went down to the sensitive site exploitation. We're finding intel. I went down to the second floor, I had two other dudes with me and we're going through. Now we found these huge offices with, I'm talking computers, hard drives, like the old school towers. We were pulling big kit bags from underneath the bed and we're opening them and I thought it was a freeze dried steaks. And I was like, wow, these guys are in it for the long haul. And I was like, wait a minute, no, this is raw opium.

• 2:46:03Speaker 02

  They're trying to make money off this. And so we're finding all that shit. And we were finding so much stuff from pictures to hard drive, like we're cracking those open, pulling the hard drives. CDs, papers, handwritten letters. And we're just shoving it into these, it was to the point where we wanted, you know, we wanted 32 minutes on the floor. I think we were there for 47. And now it's like, okay, come on, now let's get the fuck out of here. I went back upstairs, I actually carried, I helped two, three other SEALs carry, we carried Bin Laden down all the stairs we just came up. And I remember yelling at guys, guys, fuck them, we're leaving, get out, we're figuring this out. Outside, I think the ground force commander coordinated a way for another bird to come in to get us.

• 2:46:47Speaker 02

  We're gonna put him on our bird, the first team's going out on that, they're gonna go refuel with another bird on a mountaintop. We went out with the body, we actually sat it down next to the lead sniper from the Captain Phillips raid and said, "Here's your guy." And he looked down, he goes, "You gotta be shitting me." I'm like, "No, we got him." He goes, "Let's fucking leave." So they took off with them, we went around to the other, you know, I think it's to the east side of the compound. We're calling in a 47, but we don't, like I said, we don't have our CCT guys. So we're calling it in and we're rusty.

• 2:47:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:47:21Speaker 02

  And I remember seeing, there's a guy on Twitter who was tweeting. He was live tweeting, "Why would they be doing helicopter operations on a Sunday?" Or some weird shit. And I remember seeing him thinking, if we were in Iraq, I'd blast this dude because he's outside of a target with a phone. But we're in a pack, they have no fucking idea that we're here. So then we're calling this bird in and I remember we're saying, hey, so we have to blow up the bird inside. We're gonna leave it, we're blowing it up. But I asked someone, what was the time fuse on that thing? And they're like, well, I'm like, holy shit, abort. We had to, we had to actually call off the, the bird coming in to get us because we were gonna blow it out of the sky. So they aborted and turned.

• 2:48:06Speaker 02

  Then the fucking thing blew up. Like, we almost blew our own helicopter out of the sky. Then they came back in, we get on that thing and then we take off. And now we're leaving.

• 2:48:19Speaker 02

  Now, on a mission where we're supposed to die, but now we're leaving. And if we can live for another 90 minutes, if we can cross the border to Afghanistan, we get to see our kids again. We get to live another 50 years. But they know, they gotta know we're here and they could shoot us down, probably with an F-16 that we sold them, the Packies. But worrying about that is not gonna stop it. So I'm not gonna worry. So we're sitting there in this bird. I have the, um, the, the lead sniper from the captain, the Phyllis raid. There was a weird thing with, um, with jealousy, um, when, when this sniper initiated the fire. Um, because sometimes when people are so close to doing something, they get angry. And they were giving him a lot of shit, talking about firing him.

• 2:49:04Speaker 02

  And I, I remember saying to him at work, uh, after the Phyllis raid, hey, man, don't pay attention to that shit. You're a fucking hero. Don't you ever forget it. Take a Copenhagen from me. Take mine. You're a hero. And I would remind him that. He was going through a really rough time. We're sitting on this bird flying out and I'm trying to absorb what the fuck just happened. And I see this Copenhagen coming in front of my nods. And he said, take one of mine. Now you know what it feels like to be a fucking hero. Which is just insane. A dude next to me from the other squadron, blue squadron that was there, he's from New York and he asked a, a question that every SEAL asked when they found out Bin Laden was dead. They, he said, who got him? And I said, I think I did. And he said, on behalf of my family, thank you.

• 2:49:47Speaker 02

  So now it's deep and we gotta, you know, can't worry about the shit. So we just start our watches and so we're counting. We gotta live to 90 minutes, but it's been 10 minutes. Now it's been 20 minutes. Now it's been 30 minutes. And now it's 40 minutes, 50 minutes. We gotta get to 90 minutes, but it's been 60 minutes.

• 2:50:06Speaker 02

  Then I start thinking about like all the weird sports analogies, like watching a no hitter at the top of this seventh at Fenway Park, like I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to jinx it, you know, but it's been 70, now it's been 80 minutes. Then I start thinking about one of the greatest games ever played when the Team USA hockey team beat the Russians in Lake Placid. A team they're not supposed to beat, but now they're winning four to three. And you can hear the crowd counting down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. We got to 85 minutes into the flight and the pilot came over the radio and just as cool as ever said, "All right, gentlemen, for the first time in your lives, you're going to be happy to hear this. Welcome to Afghanistan."

• 2:50:49Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so I mean, and now it's like, holy shit, we did it. We land, now the other bird had to go to a mountaintop and refuel there and the other stealth bird with another 47, they're still coming back and so it's like, okay, come on, guys. They land. And like no one's hurt. And then Bin Laden's over here. The guy that was in front of me to go up the stairs into Bin Laden's room, we're like, hey, man, you and I need to talk. And we go over into the corner and he's like, what the fuck happened on that stairwell? I'm like,

• 2:51:22Speaker 02

  it was just down to us, I don't know. I mean, and then he looks over to the woman that found Bin Laden and said, "Well, there she is. You gotta go give her something, man. You own this." I was like, "Yeah, you're right." And I walked over to her and I pulled the magazine out of my gun, I jacked the last round out. And I said, "You have room for this in your backpack?" And she said, "I think I do."

• 2:51:41Speaker 02

  And then I said, well, we have something to show you. Now, in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, they brought the woman over to Bin Laden's body and it was like a moment of pause and they opened it. She looked and she was all thoughtful and she cried and left. That's not at all what happened. Here's what happened. I gave her the mag and we said, we have something to show you now. It starts to, again, moments were sinking in, but it's like, you know what? This is historic. Like this, this will be in the history books. You know, she found him though. She's the reason this happened. She gave up her life for this. She doesn't have a husband. She doesn't have kids and she's been working on this 20 hours a day for years. And then, and then I'm like, uh, you know, this is, this is like, this could go down with Iwo Jima.

• 2:52:25Speaker 02

  Um, but then as being the arrogant Navy SEAL, I'm like, put the pressure on myself. Shit, I gotta think of something cool to say. So we're walking over to the body and I thought this would have been good enough. I looked down and I said, is that your guy?

• 2:52:41Speaker 02

  And she looked down for a second and went, huh, I guess I'm out of a fucking job.

• 2:52:47Speaker 02

  And left. You gotta be shit. Left at that, yeah. So then we, um, we, uh, McRaven was there. He actually, uh, he, they're, now they're in the process of, we do have some DNA tests. We got a lot of pictures. He was talking to, um, to the White House. And he, he had one of our snipers lay down next to him because our sniper was 6'2". Our tallest guy was 6'2" and, uh, he said, yeah, I just, uh, I just had one of our tallest guys lay down and he's shorter than, I think it's him and the president says, let me get this straight. You can blow up one of our $200 million helicopters, but you can't afford a 99 cent tape measure. So they're doing that and we fly him up to, uh, to, and I remember Craven just, I, um, we're standing there. He came up to me and he kind of just put, he didn't say anything, but just put his hand on my shoulder like this.

• 2:53:33Speaker 02

  And it was like a, just a, uh, fuck yeah moment. Went up to Bagram. I, I mean, everyone, we're still looking around at each other. Now we got everything laid out. The, the smart guy, Bin Laden's body is laying there. Um, uh, we're laying out all the stuff in order of which room, which floor, which building. And they're going through it. There's a dude, uh, doing DNA tests and, and, um, we're just kind of standing around. The army brought in these, these, those big green tubs full of breakfast sandwiches. And we have the news on. There's a big TV on and you can hear it kind of, um, You can hear it building up, like, they know what's happening. Geraldo's out there with people in front of the White House. And our guys are on the phone with the White House, and they're just trying to...

• 2:54:17Speaker 02

  The President wants a full count. How many were wounded? How many are killed? What's the total? And we're just standing there. Bin Laden's right here. And I remember everything quieted down. The President is on TV with a red tie, walking down red carpet. Came up very presidential to the podium and said, "Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world. The United States conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda."

• 2:54:44Speaker 02

  I hear the President of the United States say Osama bin Laden. I look at Osama bin Laden, and I thought, "How in the world did I get here from Butte, Montana?"

• 2:54:52Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, dude.

• 2:54:54Speaker 02

  And that's it. And then we... And then here's where it gets cool. I mean, just camaraderie thing is like, well, you know, well, we should shower up because we're flying home. And I could use a drink. Where are the fucking Seabees?

• 2:55:09Speaker 02

  You're gonna find everything in there. You're gonna find showers. You're gonna find pizza. You're gonna find beer and price some whiskey. So we went over there and it was, you know, that's when it started to get a little awkward because they do have the Internet over there. We're getting everything. SEAL Team Six, SEAL Team Six, Bin Laden. You know, and then that's... This is gonna be bad. But for now, it's gonna be good. And actually, the Ground Force Command, when we went back, the Ground Force Commander, who is probably the smartest guy I've ever met, photographic memory, he could operate on an hour's sleep a night and be fine. And he's by the book. But he pulled the appointment and me into a room, and he poured us a shot, and we all took a shot together. And he's like, "Great job, boys." We hop on a plane, we leave.

• 2:55:52Speaker 02

  Pop an Ambien, which, you know, was awesome. And we slept at Virginia Beach. We landed there, and then it was almost like a scene where there were people waiting for us. Other SEALs were there with a couple buses, coolers full of beer and cheers and high fives. And then we went to the Command, and that was it. I was like, "We're gonna be the best friends in the world forever."

• 2:56:13Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 2:56:14Speaker 02

  That's fucking. That's insane. Wow. I need to tell a part that I didn't, you can edit in. If you don't mind, I'm just gonna. Edit it. Okay. Um, so we're having this conversation when I asked what helicopter crashed and he said, dude, our helicopter crashed in the front yard because I thought it was something else. As we're having this conversation, one of our snipers was running around the compound with Cairo. And his job was to circle it twice to make sure no one squirted. Um, you ran out of the, the building and he, when we're having this conversation inside, he ran into the point where the pilot had the, the tail on the fence. So he's looking up and sees this tail. He didn't know they crashed either.

• 2:56:55Speaker 02

  And he came over the radio and said, guys, inside be on alert. They are ready for us. They have a training mock-up of our super secret helicopter in the front yard.

• 2:57:05Speaker 02

  And there was a weird silence and the boss came over the radio and goes, no jackass, that's ours because we crashed. And he said, he, and he said over the radio, yeah, that makes a lot more sense than the shit I was just saying. Carry on.

• 2:57:19Speaker 02

  Holy shit, dude.

• 2:57:22Speaker 02

  Damn. Yeah, we got to Virginia B. So and then, uh, and then it just, you know, turned into, uh, as opposed to being in the shadows, everybody wants to come down and meet us. We, they want to fly us places to meet us. Secretary of Defense came down and it was just, it, it started to suck because there were dudes that had been at Red Squadron for sixteen years that moved on to like the operations. And then they wouldn't let them in the debrief with the Secretary of Defense. And it's just like, this is getting, there's some bad blood's gonna start. Yeah. Because of this shit. And, uh, you know, and a lot of guys work, a lot of guys do want to be the thirty year Navy SEAL who retires and then lives in Coronado undercover forever. And, uh, they kind of got that violated.

• 2:58:04Speaker 02

  Uh, one, I mean, one of the, one of the funny stories though is, is, uh, like I was mentioning earlier, when, when people, the first question people asked was who got him? And, uh, they would say in Israel got him. And I guess the most common answer was, oh, fuck, we're never gonna hear the end of this.

• 2:58:21Shawn Ryan?

  Damn dude. That's um, man.

• 2:58:26Shawn Ryan?

  That's an awesome.

• 2:58:27Speaker 02

  Fucking crazy.

• 2:58:27Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking, I don't even know what to say.

• 2:58:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, but it's, it's like, it's like it was written that way or scripted. It's just the way it worked. Great team, the pilots that got us in and out. I mean, that takes balls to fly a Chinook that far into Pakistan to pick up guys that are already in gunfights with Al Qaeda. And I think we killed um, like three of the top four that night.

• 2:58:45Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 2:58:46Speaker 02

  If we hadn't, we, we did within the next few days. And there was like 11 other ops that JSOC did that night in Afghanistan. Like, it was a fucking. I mean, it was, it was part of, being part of something great and, and I couldn't be more proud.

• 2:58:57Shawn Ryan?

  That's insane. That's insane. Let's take a quick break. That was heavy.

• 2:59:04Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:59:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:59:25Shawn Ryan?

  Everything that happened.

• 2:59:28Shawn Ryan?

  There's a lot of conspiracies out there. A whole lot of conspiracies out there on whether, whether it was a double.

• 2:59:35Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:59:36Shawn Ryan?

  But why, why did they dump the body into the ocean?

• 2:59:40Speaker 02

  We, they had told us that's what's gonna happen even before we left. And I remember we were asking, why is that you're gonna dump him? In, in the ocean. And they said, well, because we don't want a shrine to him where people can worship. And I remember explaining to them, you don't understand Sunni Islam. Um, you don't, uh, there's one God, you worship Allah, not false prophets. They would not do that to Bin Laden. You don't worship him because they don't believe in that shit. Um, you can do something else with him, but they, they were convinced they wanted to do that. Um, there are pictures of him that I've heard are in cabinets at Langley. I don't know, but yeah. All, all I know is we, we handed him over to some senior guys from the army and they flew him to the USS Vincennes.

• 3:00:24Speaker 02

  I believe I said that right. I could be wrong, but it's that ship and that they have the coordinates of where they dropped him and I didn't see it. Um, I believe it. I mean, I know he's dead. I know we have pictures. I wish they would release them, but I didn't see it. So, you know, as far as I know, he could be freeze dried somewhere too.

• 3:00:38Shawn Ryan?

  Huh.

• 3:00:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know.

• 3:00:40Shawn Ryan?

  So they, they told you that before you even went on the raid? They're like, hey, we're gonna dump him in the ocean?

• 3:00:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:00:45Shawn Ryan?

  Why would they even?

• 3:00:46Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, why not? I, I had a lot of different options for him, but that was it. They, they, that was, that's gonna happen. Just bring him out. And I mean, they, they,

• 3:00:56Speaker 02

  they labeled it. They did the test. They have the test, but they, they, someone took the body away and then we never saw it again.

• 3:01:01Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 3:01:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 3:01:04Shawn Ryan?

  Have they ever done that with anybody else?

• 3:01:06Speaker 02

  I'm not as far as I know, but.

• 3:01:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I've never heard anything.

• 3:01:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were, they were saying they brought him to that ship. They gave him a proper burial and then they threw him over and no one was allowed to watch, I guess.

• 3:01:16Shawn Ryan?

  A proper burial, huh?

• 3:01:17Speaker 02

  Well, proper burial. Let's see. As far as getting thrown over the side of a ship, I guess.

• 3:01:24Shawn Ryan?

  Kick him off the fucking fantaill?

• 3:01:26Speaker 02

  That's about it. But yeah, they wrote down the coordinates and they, they apparently marked the, uh, the pad eye on the ship.

• 3:01:34Speaker 02

  Which means whatever, but yeah. And there are guys that said they were on the ship that they know what happened, but I don't, I mean, I've never seen footage of it. So it's, I mean, I can understand too, the conspiracies a- around it, like, why, you know?

• 3:01:47Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's definitely odd. There's no doubt about that.

• 3:01:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, because like, like I said, there's not going to be worshippers for him and, and even now with that, it kind of is the mystique of did they really get him type shit.

• 3:01:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. When did you? When did you decide you were gonna come out and say that you're the, you were the shooter?

• 3:02:07Speaker 02

  I didn't, uh, I didn't do it at first, but, um, my name did go around really quickly in Virginia Beach and Coronado and in DC and New York, cause people just know people around there. And I was getting calls that, uh, the next night from people saying, hey, man, tell us what happened. All this, you know, shit like that. Um, you know, and, and there was a, people kind of knew and, and, and, um, they would single me out in, in different briefs and I really didn't care for that because I've always said it's a team effort. I, I did, it's not me, guys. It's a, look at the pilots, thank them because they're the smart guys. Thank the intel officers that found him. Uh, and then it's, it's just started to get, uh, it started to get awkward. I decided, you know, it's, um, I might move on.

• 3:02:48Speaker 02

  And then we went from the best time in our career to the worst time because soon after on extortion, August 6th extortion 17 was shot down. We lost 31 Americans. And we went from planning missions to planning funerals and it's like, you know, it's time to leave. I need to, I want to see my kids get married. But because we lost so many guys at Gold, we need to backfill. So I'm going to do one more deployment. So I actually left Red Squadron and went to Silver Squadron to go immediately to Afghanistan. Because my entire point was, I'm, I came in through the front door and I'm going to leave through the front door. I'm going to do one more deployment to prove you got, you know, I'm not in this for the fame. I'm not trying, I'm not writing a book. There was rumors that I'm writing a book.

• 3:03:33Speaker 02

  Like someone actually pulled me aside and said, one of my officers said, I heard you just got a $17 million advance to write a book. And I said, well, I don't think you know how books work because you don't get a $17 million advance unless you're a president. But yeah, but that there was just, you know, rumors flying around and all this shit. I did go to Afghanistan and, you know, I extended and I got out in August of 2012. And then, you know, I started work. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what the hell I was qualified for, no degree. I started working in Washington DC on Capitol Hill with different people and I met, I met a Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney from New York and she said, you know, you should, you should probably donate something to the 9/11 memorial. And I did because it's, if you haven't been to the memorial, you gotta go. It's insane.

• 3:04:18Speaker 02

  It's in chronological order of what happened on 9/11. And at the end, I anonymously donated my shirt with an American flag, just so people could see this shirt was in the room with Bin Laden. The CIA analyst donated a coin that she had and it's kind of there. But when I donated it, I went into a room where there were 30 some people. I didn't realize I was going to be speaking right then. They had all lost someone in the towers.

• 3:04:43Speaker 01

  Oh shit.

• 3:04:44Speaker 02

  And I'm up on stage and I, this is the first time in public I told the story and to see their responses to. Crying in their hands, um, you know, wanting to give me a hug. And they were saying that, uh, there's never gonna be closure, but this helps with the healing. We can put a face with what happened. Cause like we just said, we buried him at sea, you don't really know, but I'm telling you what happened because I was there. And I said, uh, I actually had a film crew there to document, um, me donating it for his historical reasons. But I was like, if I, if I can, if I can help thirty people with the healing, I can help thousands. If I tell the story and then, uh, it was a tough decision, but I, I, I got my story approved, the only one approved through the Pentagon.

• 3:05:27Speaker 02

  And, uh, and I, and I came out with a story, just, you know, I've assumed risks before and I'll, I'll do it again. It's, it's worth it.

• 3:05:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What, so you went to Silver after that?

• 3:05:36Speaker 02

  I did.

• 3:05:37Shawn Ryan?

  What were you guys doing over there?

• 3:05:38Speaker 02

  Um, another, another winter deployment to Afghanistan.

• 3:05:41Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:05:42Speaker 02

  I actually, um, uh, Bin Laden wasn't the last guy I killed with that gun.

• 3:05:46Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:05:47Speaker 02

  He just kept it with me. Yeah. Well, actually we, we did a, we did a, my, I think my last mission was my very first L ambush.

• 3:05:56Speaker 02

  Which I think is cool.

• 3:05:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:57Speaker 02

  Well, when we were trying to sell it, because you're selling it to staff officers, basically that if, I don't know how they don't know. We were, we, we saw this, this truck would leave this place, go around a mountain and drive through the snow and wait to ambush Americans. And they did it like on Tuesday and, and intel saw them. And then they did it on Wednesday and then they did it again on Thursday, but they're not finding anybody. And, uh, my troop chief and I were like, hey, if they do this on Friday, the day of prayer, they're definitely doing it on Saturday. So we came up with a plan, like, well, we'll just insert where they drive, get behind these rocks, put snipers up. And we're selling it to them and then, and we sold it to this army officer, like, well, then we're gonna set, set up an L ambush. And the officer said, what's an L ambush?

• 3:06:41Speaker 02

  And, um, I said, sir, an L ambush is the second thing they teach you in the army, right after that's your rack. This is an L ambush. And he goes, well, who invented it? And I said, I think Sun Tzu invented the art of war. Um, and he goes, well, which I said, well, we're gonna set up an L, I'm gonna form a line of death, I'll be in the middle here. And when he's coming at me, I'm gonna stop him. And he goes, what if he doesn't stop? I said, I'm gonna shoot him.

• 3:07:12Speaker 02

  What planet are you on?

• 3:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:07:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so we did, we set it up and naturally like the ISR's watched them. They can't get their car started and you know, because it's Murphy's Law. And so we're, we're literally smoking cigars, the sun's up and we're waiting for this dude to drive around. Uh, no one's gonna be there and you know, and we kept it simple like ISR's gonna tell us, um, green light, yellow light, red light. That's when you jump out and you stop them and it's in the wide open area. And uh, sure enough, they're coming. They finally got the car started. You know, green light, yellow light, red light. We hop out and then I'm looking at this guy and he's driving this uh, a car, not even a truck. And I think this is the first words he ever spoke in English where he put it in reverse and just goes, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." And the, the, the car's peeling out and I'm looking at this dude and there's a, you know, two dudes in front, three dudes in the back and I'm like,

• 3:07:57Speaker 02

  "Hey man, get out of the car. Get out of the car. You need to get out of the car. Cause we got snipers and uh, one dude hopped out to go to the trunk. This guy's head blasted off and then it turned into just a shootout. We killed all of them and, and it's like, well, that's an L ambush. That was my last mission. That was an A C O. And then I, you know, I got out and then um, you know, transition out and learn, you gotta learn that uh, there's a lot of life after the military. You know, military is unique because you, you can get in an 18 and retire at 38. And 38, you got a lot of life, I hope, left in you.

• 3:08:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:29Speaker 02

  And then that, that's when the, the real work starts. Wha- what do we do now?

• 3:08:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well, what was it like, you know, getting out? I mean, you killed the most wanted man in the fucking history of the world. Everybody wants to meet you. Everybody wants something from you. Everybody wants to hear the story. I mean, there couldn't have been any time for just you and family.

• 3:08:51Speaker 02

  No, there's, there's, there's not now too. And, and you know, I'll get shit on the internet. They're like, why uh, "Hi, I'm Rob O'Neill. I haven't talked about Bin Laden for five minutes." It's like, yeah, but you know, stop asking and I'll, I'll stop saying it. You gotta figure, every person I ever meet wants to hear that story. They want to know what happened. And that's fine. That's great. I mean, i- i- if, if I help this country and our cause, whatever that was, um, then I, I mean, obviously what that was, um, I'll, I'll do it. And it, it, it's always in person. It's, it's a good thing. I mean, the only issue I have in person is we'll be at a, an airport bar and someone will recognize me and wanna do a shot. I'm like, "Yeah, cool." But someone else will see me and they want a shot. And then, you know, all of a sudden it's like, "Okay, you 10 guys had a shot. I had 10 shots. This is bad."

• 3:09:36Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:09:37Speaker 02

  But no, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it was uncharted territory because, you know, even I was talking to different agents about speaking and um, he, he said, I'm trying to figure out of, you know, trying to price the guy that killed Hitler. And I'm like, well, Hitler killed himself. And he goes, exactly. And so it's just, you know, it's, everything's been new. And I didn't know at first what's, what's gonna hap- I don't know now what's gonna happen. But you know, I mean, it's been, it's, people have been, been good.

• 3:10:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, it, it created a lot of animosity, you know, obviously throughout the community. And uh,

• 3:10:15Shawn Ryan?

  you know, we kind of talked about that a little bit off camera, but how, how are you? Cause there is, there's a lot of hate in this community.

• 3:10:21Speaker 02

  Oh, there's a lot of hate. And no, it's, it's tough at first because, um, you want, you want to be liked and, and your reputation means everything. But then you got to realize that, you know, what someone thinks about you is none of your business. Stop wasting the negative energy on what they're thinking of you. And if they're pissed, there's nothing I can do about it. If they ever want to work with me, I'll work with them. That's fine. If you want help, ask, I'll help. Um, but if, if you're, if you're just hating, then you know, take it somewhere else. You, I mean, there, there's a point where you just got to stop caring. I don't care.

• 3:10:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:48Speaker 02

  But you know, and, and it's like, there's even been points where they're like, well, you know, we hear you didn't kill bin Laden. And I'm like, some days I wish I didn't. I'm just telling you what happened.

• 3:10:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. How long did it take you to get to that point?

• 3:11:00Speaker 02

  Uh, a couple of years.

• 3:11:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'll bet.

• 3:11:03Speaker 02

  Well, cause all you know, all you know in the SEAL teams is the SEAL teams. And you're in that bubble. I mean, even when you, you know, um, you know, other SEALs and you know, the bartenders. And everyone around you is doing the same shit. I mean, as far as work and, and, you know, I found myself in a spot where I'm just in a spot where anyone could have done it. I just happened to turn the corner and it's just, um, I mean, it sucks. You know, you want to be liked, but there comes a point where what you worry about isn't going to stop it. So.

• 3:11:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:32Speaker 02

  Get, get on with it.

• 3:11:33Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I think a lot, the reason I'm asking is I think a lot of guys need to hear that because, you know, I don't, I don't fucking care. I'll just say whatever's on my mind.

• 3:11:40Speaker 02

  No, that's probably the nicest thing I've ever told.

• 3:11:43Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's, it's, in this community, you know, it seems like, like I said, we talked about this earlier, but I want other guys that are coming out to hear this shit is, you know, In this community, everybody likes each other until you're doing better than they are.

• 3:11:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:11:59Shawn Ryan?

  And then you're the fucking hate target.

• 3:12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're the target.

• 3:12:02Shawn Ryan?

  And, and you know, there's, I mean, it's 2022 now, guys are getting out with full careers. You know, first time ever where guys have been in combat their entire career. They're gonna get out, they're gonna write books, they're gonna start companies. And they're gonna get a lot of hate from the guys that are in and, and.

• 3:12:19Speaker 02

  It seems like as soon as you come out public with anything, it's like, um, use your resume. There's nothing wrong with that. And my, my, I remember my, one of my first days at Red Squadron, the CEO of Red Squadron said, you know, when we got out, we could all be millionaires. We could take over the world, but we're never gonna. Cause he recognized it as well, just, um, just the animosity, for some reason. Like everyone's successful, but then they hate success.

• 3:12:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:42Speaker 02

  I, you know, I don't get it. I mean, it bothered me for a while, but I'm not losing sleep over it now.

• 3:12:45Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's good.

• 3:12:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12:46Shawn Ryan?

  That's good. But, um, well, yeah, let's talk about what you're doing now.

• 3:12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I transitioned out of the, um, the military. And what I realized is that I didn't know what to do. I had no idea, am I gonna sell sunglasses or t-shirts? Am I gonna do whatever? But I learned that a lot of people want the traits that we have. As Navy SEALs, as special operators, um, effective communication, problem solving. The ability to have the difficult decisions with people, to run a team, to promote who needs to be and fire who needs to be. So I started a foundation, it was at first called Your Grateful Nation. But now it's called Special Operators Transition Foundation. And it's helped special operators find out where they want to live, what industry they want to be in. Because I've had employers now with some of the products coming out of universities, they don't want that shit.

• 3:13:36Speaker 02

  They said, give me one of these guys, men or women, and I'll teach them how to do this job. I want that attitude in the boardroom. Uh, so I've done that transition, um, foundation. And then I just, I got myself into public speaking. I've been on TV analyzing different stuff. I, I worked for Fox News for quite a while. Um, I started an apparel company, RJO Apparel, stuff like, uh, Front Toward Enemy, which to me, kind of summarizes everything. Front towards your problem.

• 3:14:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:02Speaker 02

  And on the, guess what's in the back? The back. Like even the hoodies we have, it says front, "Your enemy" and the back says "Back." It is a, it's not a hoodie, it's, it's an instruction manual on how to wear a hoodie. So, you know, we did that.

• 3:14:16Speaker 02

  I'm involved with a beer company now called Armed Forces Brewing Company, which is veteran owned. Me and a couple of SEALs, McTeems and Ray Cash Care. We, we have different beer for different branches, Army. We, we actually threw an Army Navy game, we had beet Army and beet Navy cans. We sold out at the Army Navy game. Uh, we're getting distribution in 50 states. Uh, just because it's a, it's, it's cool and it's a beer and it's for veterans. Uh, not just for veterans, but for Americans, veteran owned for American. And Americans, Americans like beer and they like veterans. So, uh, anything like that, just entrepreneurial stuff. Um, like I said, if, you know, the, the more special operators, more Navy SEALs I can work with, the better, because we're going to do better.

• 3:14:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:57Speaker 02

  And it's just, um, it is what you make it. I mean, you can sit at home and feel sorry for yourself, or you can go do it.

• 3:15:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's for damn sure. So what about the new book, The Way Forward?

• 3:15:07Speaker 02

  The Way Forward, I wrote with Dakota Meyer, who is a Medal of Honor recipient, uh, Marine. Uh, Ganges Gal Valley, one of the worst fights I've ever heard. His, his story's incredible, I'm not even gonna tell it. Read the book, it's amazing. He, similar to, to me shooting that guy in the room. He got in a fight where he's, he's rescuing, uh, his entire team guy and he's pulling him out. And he got hit in the back, a butt stroke from a Taliban guy. And he actually got into a fistfight to the death with a dude. Um, to, to the point where he was getting choked out and I don't know if he faked being choked out, but he ended up turning around, he shot him with a 40 mic, mic that was, you know, he didn't, it didn't arm, but it hit him and then, uh, he ended up killing this guy with a rock.

• 3:15:50Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 3:15:51Speaker 02

  And it's the point, and again, I don't want to tell his story, but it's like, he says, there's a point in a man's life where you're looking him in the eyes and you both know it's coming. And then the book's called The Way Forward because it's now what? You know, we did all this fighting, we did all this killing, you start to question why we're killing these people and what's the way forward? Everything from anxiety to abusing the bottle to suicides. What do we do next? And I think, you know, everyone, everyone has, what do we do now? We talked about the CEOs that have their first day, what next? And that's what it's about. Dakota's awesome. But again, with the animosity, like he's got stories where he's got, I mean, I thought the Marines were the tightest group.

• 3:16:32Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I think. Are they not?

• 3:16:34Speaker 02

  No, he's gotten the Medal of Honor physically ripped off of his neck at a Marine Corps ball.

• 3:16:40Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta be shitting me.

• 3:16:42Speaker 02

  And so it kind of addresses the, what the fuck, guys? So, I mean, it's a great book. The stories are incredible because I talk about everything from, it's the transition from the military to the adventures that I get into. The story about my wedding that Kid Rock is in, how we lost the wedding rings and I had to get my buddy Shorty to find them and how he, I had brand new security at, I'm at a church in Massachusetts, at Cape Cod, and I hired local cops to be security. Cause I have some celebrities there, like I said, Kid Rock was there, and I'm, I don't know who's gonna show up because it's a public wedding. This guy found the rings and what I told these cops was, what you gotta look for is their hands. And especially if a vehicle screams up.

• 3:17:26Speaker 02

  My buddy was screaming up to the thing after he found the rings, hops out, reaches for the rings out of his pocket. He's getting drawn down on by these cops and just sprints in, hands me the rings. And then it goes on to other Kentucky Derby stuff. But the one story I have in The Way Forward is, I'm not gonna ruin it at all, but it's a hunting story. With me, some guys I grew up with, my father, my nephew, my brother, and some Boston police officers. And I have been called out more on that story being bullshit than the Bin Laden raid.

• 3:17:54Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 3:17:55Speaker 02

  The story's hilarious. But you know, let's hear it. Well, um, the way it started, I don't want to ruin the book, but um, I brought my brother with me. My brother's a DJ, a morning show DJ. He's not a hunter at all, never been a hunter. But I brought him out to the Powder River in Eastern Montana, which has some of the best hunting in the world. And we're gonna split up. Um, I sent my brother Tom with my buddy Smooth, and they're gonna go this way. What I didn't realize at the time, is Smooth is a former army guy, and he loves to hunt. Like, he's hiking, Tommy's not. He doesn't like to do that shit. So he's humping up this hill. Um, we're on the other side, I got some of the Boston police guys there, and another truck went up there looking for elk.

• 3:18:39Speaker 02

  And uh, I guess my brother was lagging a little bit far back. My buddy Smooth said, "You know what? You stay here, I'll keep you in eye shot, I'm gonna keep walking up." And all of a sudden, my brother Tommy started roasting a bull. Uh, he comes back, my buddy Smooth comes back, goes, "What the fuck are you doing?" And he goes, "What, do you want some?" He goes, "What about the deer?" And he goes, "Fuck the deer, I didn't bring enough of the deer." So they're doing this, I'm on one end, and we're trying to set up another ambush. We have radios, which is totally illegal. Um, now, my buddy Swift and Ed are in a truck driving up. On the way out here, they'd stopped at a gas station, and Ed decided to buy um, a Reuben at a gas station that had probably been under the heat lamp for a solid three days. Not a good idea.

• 3:19:24Speaker 02

  So we got these radios, he immediately got some really bad diarrhea, and I hear over the radio, "Oh my god, Ed just shot himself." And I said, "What? He shot himself?" And he goes, "No, Ed just shit himself." And I'm like, "Well, how bad is it?" And he goes, "Pretty bad, he filled his socks."

• 3:19:42Speaker 02

  They're driving down, my buddy shit his pants, my brother's getting high, I'm up here, I'm like, "Look, we're gonna call this a day, get out of the mountains." So we go back to the cabin, break out the whiskey, and I said the next day, um... We're gonna hunt the whitetails, because we're in the mountains looking for mule deer and elk. Now, we're just gonna go to the whitetails, they're down by the river, that's, you know, a couple hundred meters this way. Me and Smooth are gonna walk through here. We're gonna push these whitetails out, they're gonna see the bend in the river, some will cross, but some will come to you. So I send my, my father down to one end with my nephew. And I said to my dad, "Dad, here's the deal. All you gotta do is nothing. Just sit here. Nothing." So we go out there, we put the cops out here, we're pushing them, we're, now we're doing a sort of an ambush again.

• 3:20:25Speaker 02

  The deer come out, they run to the cops, they, they blast a few. Uh, we get in here, a buck comes past me, I shoot him. And then, uh, my buddy, uh, Smooth, who just couldn't get a break on this trip. I, I see this monster whitetail buck, and I can see Smooth pointing at it, and he just kinda puts the gun down and yells, "God damn it!" And I said, "What? Why didn't you shoot?" And he goes, "The only two things I saw in the scope was that huge buck and your fucking dad." Oh shit. My dad got up and was just walking through there, like a geriatric or whatever. And, uh, he felt so bad, he, my dad just goes, "Next time, just shoot."

• 3:21:05Speaker 02

  So it's like, alright, cool, whatever. Um, no, before we did this, sorry, Tommy was worn out, my brother Tom, from the hump, the day before, so when I was knocking on the door, I was like, "Come on, we're hunting." He's like, "No, we aren't doing anything, I'm sleeping." So I go to my, um, to the deer that I killed, we're gutting them, me and Smooth, and then Swift comes out on a four-wheeler, obviously with Coors Lights, because it is seven in the morning. And, uh, he said, "Hey, congratulate-" Oh, Tommy got his buck too. And I said, "No, that's, no, it's not possible, Tommy's asleep." And he goes, "No, Tom shot a buck." And what turned out it happened is, uh, Swift was on the, uh, we started this ambush, Swift saw these bucks running towards the thing, and he'd already filled his tag. And so he, uh, he's knocking on Tommy's door, he's like, "Tommy, get, get out here."

• 3:21:46Speaker 02

  And so Tommy came out and probably a joint in his hand and uh he said, well shit, and someone handed him a gun and he shot this buck that was coming, whatever. And we go, Tommy, how'd you shoot that buck? And he goes, he was coming right for us. He goes, I was in my best ports camouflage. And he goes, so what do I do now? And they go, now you put on orange. And we go get the damn thing. So yeah, but people have said, there's no way that happened. But that's, that's one of the stories.

• 3:22:13Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'll link, uh, I'll link all the everything below, you know, for people to go buy it. And um, hey, man, I don't, you know, we've been going for quite a while. So might as well end it, but.

• 3:22:24Speaker 02

  Awesome, man. Thanks for having me.

• 3:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Thank you for coming and, and sharing that for all those firsthand accounts and.

• 3:22:29Speaker 02

  My pleasure.

• 3:22:30Shawn Ryan?

  Best of luck to you.

• 3:22:31Speaker 02

  Appreciate it.

• 3:22:46Speaker 06

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