Pod Insights Shawn Ryan Show #66 DC Long - Army Combat Vet's Mysterious UFO Encounter in Underground Military Base | Part 2 About this episode The Whistleblower Marathon continues with former Army Combat Veteran DC Long. DC and his Father, then government contractors, were tasked with standing up a shoot house at Range 19. Before they knew it, they were ushered underground at gunpoint only to encounter a "Monolithic Slab."
Long shares his story in great detail, recounting the sights and sounds of this UAP / UFO. Long describes a series of events that unfolded post his encounter that would ultimately separate he and his Father for life. This episode is a cold, hard look at how sinister the aftermath of such an encounter can be.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 At HSBC, we know that in a changing world, the difference is knowing when to hold steady and when to act. That takes experience, discipline, and trust in the people beside you. With 160 years of experience, we're there to help you find clarity and make confident decisions backing your ambitions. So whether it's planning for the next generation, strengthening your portfolio, or entering new markets, we're there. HSBC, opening up a world of opportunity.
0:30 Speaker 01 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.
0:33 Speaker 02 On October 2nd.
0:34 Speaker 01 Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
0:39 Speaker 02 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
0:46 Speaker 03 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.
0:51 Speaker 02 With great power comes great deniability.
0:54 Speaker 03 I'm not the first then.
0:55 Speaker 02 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.
1:00 Shawn Ryan? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. You're in the middle of a three-part UFO whistleblower series. This is part two. Today, we have DC Long, an Army combat veteran who witnessed a hovering monolithic structure at an underground facility on an Army base. Ladies and gentlemen, if you like what you see, please like, comment, subscribe to the channel. Go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, leave us a review. And for those of you that are content creators, we've seen you guys pulling our content off of our episodes, and we really appreciate it. We made it easy on you. There's a link below.
1:44 Shawn Ryan? It's got hundreds of raw reels that you can take, download for free, make your own content out of it, monetize it, make money. All we ask is you tag the show. Love you all, enjoy the content, and see you soon.
2:05 Shawn Ryan? DC Long.
2:06 Speaker 05 John.
2:07 Shawn Ryan? Welcome to the show, brother.
2:09 Speaker 05 Pleasure to meet you.
2:10 Shawn Ryan? So, we met also at Dr. Greer's conference in DC with the whistleblower conference. And I just want to say, it's an honor to have you here. I know it takes a lot of courage to come out and talk about what you're talking about after so long. And we're here to get your testimony of what you saw out to the public. What are your goals?
2:36 Speaker 05 It's an honor to be here, first of all. We spoke earlier downstairs. It can't be pushed further. I mean, you have to give yourself more credit because I wouldn't be alive. I wouldn't be sitting in this chair if it wasn't for you. If it wasn't for the people that you've had on before. When I had no strength left, I just happened to come across it. And your reason I'm here just is much. So my goals reflect your goals.
3:08 Shawn Ryan? I'm glad you are here. And I'm glad the show helped you. It's helped a lot of people. And I said it before, I'll say it again, you know, one of the main things we do here is we want to bring hope, especially to vets, you know, overcoming all the trauma that has gone on for the past 20 years. And it will come again, you know, and document history, tell truth, expose corruption, and again, bring hope. And you're a perfect example of that hope. So, thank you for saying that.
3:40 Speaker 05 I appreciate it.
3:42 Shawn Ryan? But now, before we get too sentimental here, I want to give you an introduction. So DC Long, you're in the New York, uh, excuse me, DC Long, you're in the US Army, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. 1997 to 2013 was your service, medically retired from injuries received from a combat jump. Your father was a government contractor also at Fort Bragg. And you had a encounter with a, what we call monolithic slab hovering off the ground at Range 19 at a secret underground bunker. And so, we're here to document that testimony. Before we get started, everybody gets a gift.
4:29 Shawn Ryan? Even you. And, uh, here you go.
4:36 Speaker 05 The only thing I brought you was me.
4:39 Shawn Ryan? That's alright, that's more than enough. You're what it's all about.
4:42 Speaker 05 Thank you so much, man, that means a lot.
4:44 Shawn Ryan? You're welcome, you're welcome. So those are vigilance league gummy bears.
4:48 Speaker 05 Is it legal?
4:49 Shawn Ryan? They are legal in all 50 states. We actually got an email once. And somebody sent me a, somebody sent us an email. And they said, "Man, I'm on my third bag and I still don't feel anything."
5:04 Shawn Ryan? I was like, I was like, dude. You're not supposed to feel anything, they just taste good. But, uh.
5:10 Speaker 05 That's awesome.
5:11 Shawn Ryan? Yeah. But, um, so. We're here to get your eyewitness account on what happened. On that day. When was that? When did this happen?
5:21 Speaker 05 That happened in 2011. At the end of 2010, beginning of 2011, when I was still in Fort Ben, Georgia.
5:29 Shawn Ryan? Were you still active?
5:30 Speaker 05 Yes. I was, um. And incidentally, it, it had nothing to do with my military career. Anything that I did. In service had absolutely nothing to do with it in the sense that. Uh, as you said, my father was a government contractor. And, um. On occasion, I had a 30% stake in the business, so. He would ask me to help him out whenever I could. So I took leave. I came back down, uh, to Carolina to help him out. Uh, that day, the day in question, he was. In the 18th Airborne Headquarters, G5 War Room. Uh, what he was doing there, I didn't ask, he didn't tell me. But that's where I met him.
6:16 Speaker 05 Uh, he told me that we were gonna get an escort from JFK Warfare to take us over to a place called Range 19.
6:25 Speaker 05 Is it thundering outside? It is. Okay. I didn't know if you'd set me up. Well, where was I? I apologize. You got selected to go to Range 19. Yes, sir. Yes. They called us. He called me up. Said that we had an escort coming from JFK Warfare to meet us and take us to a place called Range 19. Just real quick, what was your dad's business as a contractor? It was turnkey. Originally, it started out doing residential and commercial construction from the Monolithic slab to turnkey. Everything was subcontracted in-house.
7:06 Speaker 05 So it's whatever you needed, as long as you had plans. It was construction? Right. That was, that was the main purview. Why do you think you guys got selected to do this? Well, as long as my dad was there, he's always had hunting land in North Carolina. And a lot of the guys from group that he met there would come down to his land, go hunting with him. A couple of the Delta Cats that he knew, take us on their planes. We'd go down to Arkansas and do some duck hunting. It's all over the US. Montana, Colorado, Mesa, elk hunts, bear hunts. And it's just the guys who were into it, that's how they got tied in.
7:50 Speaker 05 And he did submit everything that he did through the Army Corps of Engineers. That's where he would submit all of his bid submittals for the contracts. You know, like the ForceCom building that they built on Fort Bragg. He was responsible for the top three levels of it. And, but as far as how he got tied in to do the work around McKellar's Lodge during the FS, excuse me, SF compounds, I have no idea. And we didn't talk about that in that sense. So, yeah, I just assumed it was the guys that he had met. And I knew him well enough just not to ask questions. Needed to go. Say again?
8:35 Speaker 05 They got the bids into where it needed to go. Right. And it's not like it was a public bid. You know, not everyone could, because I imagine there were things that they weren't supposed to see. And we just weren't naturally curious people.
8:49 Speaker 05 So it's not like they had to worry about us saying anything. Yeah.
8:55 Speaker 05 The day that I met him up there, like I said, the escort comes to meet us. It's one of the guys that he knew that he had hunted with. I didn't know this gentleman.
9:10 Speaker 00 At HSBC, we know that in a changing world, the difference is knowing when to hold steady and when to act. That takes experience, discipline, and trust in the people beside you. With 160 years of experience, we're there to help you find clarity and make confident decisions backing your ambitions. So whether it's planning for the next generation, strengthening your portfolio, or entering new markets, we're there. HSBC, opening up a world of opportunity.
9:39 Speaker 01 Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
9:48 Speaker 02 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.
9:56 Speaker 03 What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze to death. That's what.
10:00 Speaker 02 With great power comes great deniability.
10:03 Speaker 03 I'm not the first daddy.
10:04 Speaker 02 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17.9 and middle without parent.
10:11 Speaker 05 But they pick us up in a van. We get in the back of it. They take us out about 15 minutes. And I could tell it was going towards the direction. I don't know if you're familiar with Fort Bragg. I'm not. Okay, there's only one direction you can go to get to the live fire ranges, to get to the drop zones and things like that. So I assume we were headed towards Sicily or Normandy drop zone because that was the direction we were going. The van that they had us in, it didn't have any windows. You couldn't see to the front. It was just a cattle car. And we were joking they were going to take us away. Ask him what he did. We're
10:50 Speaker 05 going to head to Leavenworth for a little while. But we get there and as soon as the door opened, it looked like a literal dump. There was just trash everywhere, not like people just leaving stuff out. It was an actual dump. There was a 45 degree concrete door setting out of one of these hills that was directly in front of us, no farther than you and I are to each other now. And.
11:18 Speaker 05 So we go inside, meet another escort in there, take us to this freight elevator. We get in there, two series of buttons, didn't have any writing on it. One of the guys looks at my dad as saying to both of us, keep your head down, your eyes on the heels of the man in front of you, or you'll be shot. And we kind of started giggling because, you know, at least I knew that one of the guys was one of his buddies, people that he used to hunt out with. And the other guy, I recognized him as the guy who we went hunting with before. I knew later on that they were both Delta operators.
12:01 Speaker 05 If they were still active, I have no clue.
12:04 Shawn Ryan? Do you know their names?
12:05 Speaker 05 I do.
12:06 Shawn Ryan? Do you want to say their names?
12:08 Speaker 05 Absolutely not.
12:09 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
12:10 Speaker 05 And I'll, I'll tell you later why. But yeah, hell, hell no.
12:17 Shawn Ryan? So you're seeing familiar, you're seeing familiar faces, which makes you comfortable?
12:22 Speaker 05 Right.
12:22 Shawn Ryan? And you don't realize how?
12:25 Speaker 05 The shitstorm I just stepped into? Yeah, absolutely not.
12:29 Shawn Ryan? What, what exactly were you guys there to do?
12:32 Speaker 05 What he told me was that we were going down below ground to set up a shoot house. An indoor live fire range that was going to be underground, nothing new. Again, I didn't think anything of it. We had done other shoot houses before with the open tops that can be viewed from above.
12:52 Shawn Ryan? Mm hmm. With a catwalk?
12:53 Speaker 05 Yeah. So it just, it didn't.
12:57 Shawn Ryan? Didn't even faze you?
12:58 Speaker 05 It was just another day at work.
13:00 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
13:00 Speaker 05 And I was just there to help him out. But we get down, the doors open and the first thing I see is these personnel contacts is off to my right, the, the smaller ones, not the, the larger ones that you see scattered around or like the ones you'd see on a big rig carrying around. These were the small ones. You would throw your personal gear in to go before you get shipped overseas. And.
13:27 Speaker 05 As soon as I I looked past them, I could see this giant monolithic slab just sitting there. Um, at first it didn't, you know, once again, it didn't set off any alarms. I didn't think much of it, but the closer we got to it, I could feel this intense vibration that, but you couldn't hear anything. It was dead silent in there. The, the loudest thing was the, the footsteps that I could hear and. What, what did the vibration feel like? It felt like being at a concert, standing next to one of the speakers. Without the noise. Permeating through your body without the noise. There was zero noise?
14:11 Speaker 05 Zero, absolute zero. I could still hear myself breathing over this, but inside it was such a strange feeling to have. So the closer I got, and I was like, well, I gotta check this out. So I go down to one knee, you know, faking, I gotta tie my boots. And then I glanced up underneath it and there's absolutely nothing underneath this damn thing. Nothing holding it up whatsoever. What did the slab look like? It just looked like a granite slab, but the sheen on it is, is what caught my attention the most. It was kind of in between being polished or just completely translucent. There was something behind it, but you could tell it had a smooth surface to us. And the
14:55 Speaker 05 only lights that were on in that hangar that we were in were directly over our head where we were walking through that walkway. And. How big was the slab? Oh God. It was about 20 foot long. It was about seven foot tall and I couldn't tell how wide it was by that point. I was already directly in front of it. So there's like, absolutely, it would be impossible for a human to even think about picking something like this up. Oh, there's no way. Okay. Even with the construction that we've done, if you had to pick up something like that to move it anywhere, you would need at least three, four cranes. Oh, wow. Pereira could tell you better. Okay.
15:38 Speaker 05 Now, the, the scope of equipment that it would take just to get it off the ground, not even to transport it to a, another location.
15:49 Speaker 05 But at this point, I'm still down on my knee and I'm looking and behind it, I can see two people standing. Only thing I can see is their feet, because there's this boulder directly behind it and it's on the ground. And I glance over my shoulder and there's a guy with his back turned to me, standing in front of another boulder, identical of the other one that I could see up underneath the monolithic slab. And he's just pushing it with one hand. And then I assume he's pushing in the other direction because it's just freely spinning, no wobble. It's like it was attached to the top and the bottom and it was paper mache. That's how easily this guy was just spinning it around. Now at this point, the escort behind me kicks me in the back, says, let's go. So we get
16:32 Speaker 05 up, keep going, go down, a flight of stairs. That's when we get to what we call the shoot house. You could see old lanes where they had actually used it before as a live fire range underground. And we'd probably only been down there 15 minutes, 15, 20 minutes, maybe. Father was taking notes on the dimensions, what we needed, what I guess, he understood what they wanted. And I know that we had to replace the walls, it's inconsequential to the story, but we had to replace the rubber on the walls for the shoot house. And in that amount of time, we go back upstairs, exact same route that we took on the way
17:15 Speaker 05 down. And everything's empty when we get to the hangar again. Everything, the two boulders in the back, the monolithic slab, all of it is absolutely gone. And it was, we weren't, you know, 100 yards below these guys, we were just one flight below them. So whatever it was that were taken out, we would have heard it. Even the, the people making noise around it, you would have still been able to hear. But it was dead silent. Like I said before, there was nothing in there. Just our feet, but coming back through, it was absolutely gone. Everything in there just vacated. And at that point, How much time had passed?
17:59 Speaker 05 Less than 30 minutes. Less than 30 minutes. Because it didn't take us long to do what we had to do downstairs.
18:09 Shawn Ryan? And this was just an assessment. You guys weren't actually, you weren't any, you weren't doing any construction or repairing the walls or anything. It was just a hey, this is what we need to do. So there was no equipment that you were operating that would have, that would have muffled any sound that was going on above the floor.
18:27 Speaker 05 Right. Taking measurements, layouts. The loudest thing was the, you know, the tape measure we were using. Now, that, a roll tape and a notebook. That was it. That was the only thing that.
18:40 Speaker 00 At HSBC, we know that in a changing world, the difference is knowing when to hold steady and when to act. That takes experience, discipline, and trust in the people beside you. With 160 years of experience, we're there to help you find clarity and make confident decisions backing your ambitions. So whether it's planning for the next generation, strengthening your portfolio, or entering new markets, we're there. HSBC, opening up a world of opportunity.
19:09 Speaker 01 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
19:20 Speaker 02 Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.
19:26 Speaker 03 What would happen if I stopped moving? You stall, you freeze in there. That's what...
19:30 Speaker 02 With great power comes great deniability.
19:33 Speaker 03 I'm not the first then.
19:35 Speaker 02 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 not a minute without parent.
19:41 Speaker 05 That was the only thing we had down there.
19:42 Shawn Ryan? How, how far away from the slab did you feel the vibration? Did you feel it before you saw it?
19:51 Speaker 05 No, no. Whenever we, that, when the, the doors of the freight elevator opened and I looked down, I could see it. I could, yeah, I mean, it was no farther than, you know, from here to that camera pod, you know, six, seven feet away from me whenever we were walking in. But what made me stop?
20:09 Shawn Ryan? It was that close?
20:10 Speaker 05 Right. What made me stop was as close as we got. I noticed that in front of me with my dad and the other escort in front of him, it was almost like hopping a tripwire. You know, when you're on the trail, you just get it and go. And that was the first thing I noticed. And then the closer I got to it, that intense vibration, and I was just too curious. I couldn't stand it. I had to figure out what it was. And...
20:37 Speaker 05 I really shouldn't have.
20:38 Shawn Ryan? When did the vibration stop?
20:41 Speaker 05 It didn't stop until I walked away.
20:43 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
20:43 Speaker 05 In the center, looking at the top of it, you could see this black box. I've tried to describe it before and it was extremely difficult. It just looked like a small black GMTK toolbox that a military mechanic would have or carry around. It wasn't very big and it just had two leads that came off of it and it looked like
21:07 Speaker 05 it was wrapped in a casing that you could almost see something inside of it, but it wasn't mechanical, it wasn't moving, it didn't have lights, it was just opaque. But it didn't really seem to serve any purpose, but that, the other boulder had the same thing on top of it.
21:26 Shawn Ryan? So, hold on, I'm sorry. Are you saying you saw two boulders and a slab?
21:30 Speaker 05 Yeah.
21:31 Shawn Ryan? And they were, all three of them at the same time?
21:34 Speaker 05 The slab itself, the monolithic slab, it was about 12 to 15 inches off the ground.
21:39 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
21:40 Speaker 05 And whenever I knelt down to tie my shoes, I could look through it and I saw the first boulder that I noticed and it was just sitting on the ground.
21:49 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
21:49 Speaker 05 And then I glanced back and that's when I saw the other boulder that had the same black box on top that was being moved around.
21:57 Shawn Ryan? And that was, that was levitating?
22:00 Speaker 05 Yes.
22:01 Shawn Ryan? One boulder levitating, one slab levitating, one boulder on the ground?
22:05 Speaker 05 Correct.
22:06 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
22:08 Shawn Ryan? Did the, did the slab have a black box anywhere near it?
22:13 Speaker 05 The monolithic slab? It did.
22:15 Shawn Ryan? It did? Where was that located?
22:17 Speaker 05 It was on the top near the center where I was feeling most of the vibration. It was like, the closer I got to it, that's where it was the most intense, at the, at the center of the slab, where that box was on top of it.
22:30 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
22:35 Speaker 05 Keep going. And after that, we go back upstairs the way we came, like I said.
22:44 Speaker 05 We get out of the door to leave, fans still in the same place. We hop back in. We take that same 15 minute drive back to 18th Airborne Headquarters. They gave us our phone back. I got my ID. And then my dad said something to one of the other guys that I had recognized that he knew that I didn't. I didn't know his name, but
23:15 Speaker 05 that guy took everything that my dad had, minus his phones. He took the notes, he took the tapes, everything from him there and
23:29 Speaker 05 I didn't think much of it at that point. I didn't know if that was something he was going to submit to the Army Corps of Engineer rep that he had. Whoever was going to coordinate, you know, or give him the go ahead to submit a bid to do this project. So to me, again, that didn't set off any bells.
23:48 Speaker 05 We're getting ready to leave. As I said, let me back that up. Before we go and get our phones and our identifications, the second guy that I recognized, the one that I do know, he was upstairs in the G5 War Room in the 18th HHC. And it's just him sitting at the desk as soon as you go into the vault. And he's got two pieces of paper and he's like, I need you to sign this. And it was a non, just an NDA. And I was like, fuck that. I'm not going to sign that. Come on, man. Really? You know me, I don't give a shit. And my dad just kind of played it off to the same thing. He's like, man, I'm not signing that shit.
24:31 Speaker 05 So that's whenever we leave. At that point, I'm getting ready to go back to Georgia. This is roughly 24 hours later, I get a phone call. It was one of my dad's employees. He's like, hey, man, what's going on? I was, no, not much, just headed back to work. He said, well, we can't get to work. So what do you mean? He's like, well, everything, they called it the barn where we had all of our equipment stationed, where they would meet before they would go to Fort Bragg. He said, the barn's locked up and everything's gone. This is the same day? No, this is 24 hours later. Okay. Whenever I'm getting ready to go back home. And I said, well, what do you mean? He's like, everything's gone. So I tried to call my dad. I can't get up with him.
25:16 Speaker 05 I was like, just stand fast, I'm coming down there. So I get down there and like you said, barn's locked up. Everything down there that I could see, I mean, you can still go there to this day. You could see our staging area and how big it was and all the equipment that we had there. It's absolutely barren. There's nothing there. It's all gone. And my dad at the time lived just around the corner from there. I go up there to his house and the doors kicked in. And like the video I showed you earlier downstairs, I did that to illustrate how close me and my father were. Because just telling the story from this point on, it, it, it sounds inconsequential. But like, oh, well, sons and fathers have problems all the time.
26:01 Speaker 05 It's no big deal for bad blood to, you know, to take over and just, people can be too much like each other, bullheaded and not be able to communicate. And that's why I showed you that, so you could see what kind of, I mean, I've called the damn guy my hero because he was. But I get in there and my dad's sitting at his couch. And his office is just to the left of his living room and everything is torn out. Everything is gone. And I was like, what's going on, man? He's like, it's all gone. I was like, do you think this has something to do with Range 19? And he stood up, that man you saw?
26:45 Speaker 05 And he said, don't you ever fucking mention that name to me again. And that was the last time that I got to spend any time face to face with my daddy.
27:04 Speaker 05 Yeah.
27:08 Speaker 05 I'm sorry. It's, uh.
27:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, a life, a business, everything that we built together, and I got no answers. I had no excuses, no reasons, no answers whatsoever, just unreturned phone calls. The few times I ever did get a chance to speak to him, it was only my voice being heard. He'd just hang up on me. He'd hang up on you? Yeah, yeah, I didn't.
27:46 Speaker 05 My God, it wasn't until
27:52 Speaker 05 2021 that I got to see him again. I didn't get to.
28:02 Speaker 05 He would just refuse to see you? Yeah, absolutely.
28:08 Speaker 05 And, uh, yeah, it made me wonder.
28:14 Speaker 05 What could somebody threaten you with to make you turn your back on your own child? I don't know how many children you have, but I kill for my country. What in the hell do you think I would do for my babies?
28:30 Speaker 05 And I'm his only son. I'm his legacy. Every long from the beginning of time to me is if it stops with me, then that's where it stops. But he gave me that. To us, that was important.
28:49 Speaker 05 And yeah, I cut my ties. I just, I let it, I let it go where it.
28:57 Speaker 05 It's so hard to talk about, man. But in, uh,
29:04 Speaker 05 let's get back to my part of the that affects my career and why I was retired.
29:13 Speaker 05 It was, uh.
29:16 Speaker 05 Is your dad still alive? No.
29:20 Speaker 05 He's not. When did he pass?
29:25 Speaker 05 November 10th, 2021.
29:29 Speaker 05 How?
29:31 Speaker 05 Well, that's, um, they said that he had aggressive cancer that they found late. That, uh, he was just rabid. It was all over. And, um,
29:49 Speaker 05 I know shit happens. I'm no stranger to that. With our careers and all the guys in this room, none of us are strangers to, to things happening. We have a better way of accepting it than most people do, I think.
30:05 Speaker 05 Not him, not like that.
30:09 Speaker 05 I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't, I don't get into that part of life. It's just, even some of it to me that I'm aware of, irrefutably makes me feel like it's just absolutely insane. But I will never believe that my father died of cancer or natural causes. A man is, is big and is powerful. Him, not because he couldn't have been taken. We're all measured. It was just, he was healthy. And then in two months, he went from being 240 pounds to 105. Wow. Just, I mean, when I, they called me and told me that he was in the hospital.
30:50 Speaker 05 And I went to go see him. I walked by his room twice. I, I just,
30:57 Speaker 05 honestly, the first thought that crossed my mind is that, man, I feel bad for that guy. That sucks. And then when they told me that's who it was, now I went in and he still couldn't even look at me.
31:13 Speaker 05 And I don't know why. And I just.
31:20 Speaker 05 Now, I took his hand. I said, "Look, man, I don't even know if you can talk." He had the chemo scars or some look like, I assumed, were chemo burns on his mouth. It was just these gnarly burns on his face and his eyes were just cracked with jaundice. And I was like, "Man, we're square. I don't care what happened. I love you." And a tear went down his cheek and I was asked to leave. He started to code and that was the last time I saw him. Now, it's shortly after the incident.
32:04 Speaker 05 It was in late 2011, early 2012. I'm, uh, I've already been J and P I kitted out for a combat jump. Got the full pack, had the 1950s weapons case dangling. And I was the first man in the stick.
32:30 Speaker 05 They gave us, you know, told us the 30 second sign. We're all hooked up, ready to go. John Masters got his arm up, getting ready to hit me in the back. And then we see shuffling and I'm only one of 12 guys that I jumped with every time. It never deviated, no change. That was my team. It didn't matter if it was Conus or Conus. Those were my guys, only 12. And a guy from the back shuffles his way to the front and it's one of the escorts. He is unmistakable. You can't, I mean, you know. Yeah. And at first, it didn't, it just didn't connect with me. It, it just, you know, I just gave him a "Hey, how you doing?"
33:14 Speaker 05 And he just winked at me. As soon as John Masters' arm came up and the green light's getting ready to go off, no sooner than it hit and I felt his arm coming down, I feel something slap me in the side of the face and it was a static line. And that man took off out of the aircraft. And when he did, it snapped my neck. And it pulled me out upside down, deployed my combat gear. Long story short, had a complete oscillation and I just smacked the ground. And I woke up a month later. Career's over.
33:45 Speaker 05 And I'll tell you something else. Do you mean you burned in? Yeah. Your chute didn't. Oh, my chute. What happened? My chute deployed. But whenever I fell out of the aircraft, and I think maybe we were jumping from 800 feet, if I had to guess, that's what it looked like from the horizon. But whenever he hit me going out of the aircraft and the static line went tall and it snapped my neck and I fell out of the craft. I'm not even sure how I fell out, but it deployed my lowering line on the way out. So whenever my canopy did open, it just started a complete oscillation. Okay. I remember looking down and seeing daylight.
34:25 Speaker 05 And just smack. And it was over. You think that was an assassination attempt? I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was. And the only reason I tell you that is because
34:40 Speaker 05 when my father died, not even a week after I buried that man, I'm at my new house at the beach. Nobody knew I'd been there. I hadn't even changed my driver's license over. I hadn't even told the VA that's where I'm living.
34:56 Speaker 05 Not even a week after that man was buried, I get a knock at the door. It's that same guy who cut me out of the door, hands me a note. It said, thinking of you, he's like, hey, sorry about your loss, buddy.
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35:42 Speaker 05 What would you do?
35:45 Speaker 05 And Dr. Greer asked me, he said, well, did you feel like they were trying to intimidate you or they're trying to hurt you? Absolutely not. If that was the case, I would have never seen it coming. To me, it just felt like somebody looking you dead in the eye and said, I can touch you anytime I want.
36:00 Speaker 05 And then everything started flooding back and that's what led us to here. I wrote out that entire story to Dr. Greer.
36:10 Shawn Ryan? You, you fell out and it was a week after you buried your old man, you said? Or the day af- I'm sorry.
36:17 Speaker 05 Whenever he showed up?
36:18 Shawn Ryan? Yes.
36:19 Speaker 05 That was a week after I buried my father. Rudy Merritt Cemetery in Dublin, North Carolina. Nobody knew I was there. Nobody.
36:31 Shawn Ryan? So this is recent, this is 2021?
36:34 Speaker 05 Yes.
36:34 Shawn Ryan? Couple of years ago?
36:36 Speaker 05 Yes.
36:36 Shawn Ryan? And you still, and this happened, when was the accident? When was, well, when was the assassination attempt?
36:42 Speaker 05 2011, 2012.
36:45 Shawn Ryan? Did you recognize him?
36:47 Speaker 05 I've got it written down everywhere. It's so hard to remember. That's when I got this.
36:51 Shawn Ryan? Yeah.
36:51 Speaker 05 And ever since then, it's just been fuzzy. And that's what led us to this. That scared me so damn bad that I had decided I wasn't suicidal. Please don't get me wrong. I was not depressed. I wasn't. I just felt like at that point that it's not about me. I've got my children. If something happens to them, it's my fault. So I figured if I quietly were accusing myself, who's gonna know better? What's it gonna matter? My story's over. Get to see my dad again.
37:36 Speaker 05 And hopefully save my kids from this bullshit. Because everything changes. It's one thing when you lose your brothers. It's one thing when you lose your family, but if you worried about losing your children, that's, that's taking it to a whole nother level.
37:54 Shawn Ryan? Yeah.
37:56 Speaker 05 You know, just because we choose to be peaceful at this point in our lives does not mean that we forgot how to be violent. I'll take the whole damn world down to protect those kids. And I know you would do the same for yours.
38:07 Shawn Ryan? Yeah.
38:09 Speaker 05 But what stopped me was.
38:13 Speaker 05 You.
38:15 Shawn Ryan? Are you in contact with your mom? Is she alive?
38:19 Speaker 05 She's alive.
38:21 Shawn Ryan? Was she still married to your dad when he passed?
38:23 Speaker 05 No.
38:24 Shawn Ryan? Was she still married to your dad in 2011? When this hap- when the... When you witnessed the...
38:34 Shawn Ryan? Monolithic slab?
38:36 Speaker 05 No.
38:37 Shawn Ryan? No? No contact?
38:38 Speaker 05 No. And unfortunately, I remind her a lot of my father. And it's nothing against her. We still have a great rapport. I mean, I'm 43 years old with everything I've been through. I still blow my mom a kiss whenever I leave her. It's not like, you know, we did the same thing my dad did. It's just I know how painful it was for her to lose him. And hearing me speak. You know, we have the same eyes.
39:05 Shawn Ryan? Do you guys ever talk about this?
39:07 Speaker 05 No, no.
39:08 Shawn Ryan? Was there any communication from your dad to your mother that you're aware of?
39:12 Speaker 05 The only way she's gonna know about any of this is by watching the podcast.
39:16 Shawn Ryan? Okay. Alright.
39:23 Speaker 05 But, you know, and that's... I'm ashamed, absolutely ashamed, from...
39:34 Speaker 05 Being too afraid to keep going.
39:38 Speaker 05 You know, I didn't even bring up the homeless bit because I did it to myself. It wasn't some crazy circumstance that I could blame on anybody else. It was my fault because I was afraid.
39:50 Shawn Ryan? So this destroyed your life?
39:52 Speaker 05 You're damn right it did. I'm still... I'm still trying to rebuild, you know, but I don't, I don't ask anybody for anything. I don't, it's not about that to me. You know, I lost all familial contact whenever I lost him in that sense. I mean, the war is bad enough. Watching your brothers go through what you feel like you should have went through. You know, I can't speak for everybody, but survivor's guilt tears me up every day. If there's one thing I hate myself for, isn't not trying, it's just not giving enough.
40:33 Speaker 05 I can't, the names I say at night when I go to sleep, the man that I think about, I just, I miss him so damn bad. Because those guys, I knew that they would die for me. Some of them did.
40:48 Speaker 05 And the one safety net that I had here was him.
40:55 Shawn Ryan? When you went to, it was just you and your old man that went to Range 19 that day? Or were there any other, did you guys have any workers with you?
41:04 Speaker 05 No.
41:05 Shawn Ryan? Just you and your dad?
41:06 Speaker 05 Just he and I.
41:09 Shawn Ryan? What do you, why are you coming forward?
41:14 Shawn Ryan? Why do, why are you coming forward to, to, to educate the public about what you saw that day?
41:20 Speaker 05 Same thing I said at the press conference, I'm damn tired of doing nothing. You know, I can take losing my career, I'm fine with that. I didn't think I was gonna do it forever.
41:35 Speaker 05 I'm fine with losing material possessions, but one thing I will not stand for, to watch people in this country just hand their freedoms over and think that the government's doing them a favor. Watching my brothers who would rather be homeless than have to deal with the bullshit that got us there in the first place. And it's not because we're afraid, it's because we don't feel like we did enough. We feel like we're just putting our burden on other people, and that's something that they don't deserve.
42:05 Speaker 05 You're willing to die for people who don't even damn like you. To me, that's absolutely fucking insane, but that's just the kind of people that we are. And it wasn't until I heard something that Herrera said, "Our oath didn't expire."
42:24 Speaker 05 Good damn luck taking this shit off my neck. Right now, somewhere, there's a little kid sitting somewhere across this world, and he's got his grandpa's combat boots, and one day, he's gonna be old enough to fit in them. And if we sit back and do nothing,
42:41 Speaker 05 if we do not lead by example, they're gonna think that it's okay just to be quiet. I think for too damn long, good Americans, it doesn't matter if you're a combat vet to me. It doesn't matter if you didn't shed the same blood that I did. What matters the most to me is good people who believe in the flag. That one sitting over there, that so many people died for, the one that was flying over Ground Zero. The sacrifice. Whether it was a false flag or not, that flag is important to me. And I'd be damned if whatever life I've got left, I'm gonna sit there and be quiet about it. Because there's a big fight, and if we do nothing, the bad boys are gonna prevail. They're gonna take over, and I don't think we want that.
43:27 Speaker 05 This world could be so much easier if they would just let it out. But somebody wants to make money off of it.
43:37 Shawn Ryan? Well, I commend you for your courage, man. That means a ton to everybody that's listening. And I know what that takes, and I just, I wanna say, man,
43:51 Shawn Ryan? I'm sorry about your old man.
43:55 Shawn Ryan? I'm really sorry to hear about that, and, and...
43:58 Speaker 05 Yeah, but he'd be damn glad that you wouldn't let me go all the way. I appreciate that.
44:05 Speaker 05 That means a lot to me.
44:08 Shawn Ryan? Well, glad you're here, buddy.
44:15 Shawn Ryan? Do you have anything you wanna say before we end it?
44:18 Speaker 05 Appreciate you.
44:20 Shawn Ryan? Appreciate you. Thank you.
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