#204 Larry Vickers - Delta Force: Operation Acid Gambit

Larry Vickers is a 20-year veteran of the U. S. Army, with extensive service in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force). After retiring, he became a leading firearms instructor, CEO of Vickers Tactical, and a key consultant for firearms manufacturers like Heckler & Koch and Wilson Combat. Vickers is also known for his YouTube channel, Vickers Tactical, where he reviews firearms and shares expertise with millions. As a historian and collector, he brings a wealth of knowledge on military tactics, gear, and the evolution of firearms. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: ⁠https://www.americanfinancing.net/srs ⁠ nmls 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org ⁠https://www.tryarmra.com/srs ⁠ ⁠https://www.fastgrowingtrees.com/srs ⁠– USE CODE SRS ⁠https://www.shawnlikesgold.com ⁠ ⁠https://www.hometitlelock.com⁠ – USE CODE SRS Go to ⁠https://www.hometitlelock.com/srs⁠ and use promo code srs to get a free title history report so you can find out if you’re already a victim and 14 days of protection for free! Make sure to check out the Million Dollar TripleLock Protection details when you get there! Exclusions apply. For details visit ⁠https://www.hometitlelock.com/warranty ⁠ ⁠https://www.lumen.me/srs ⁠ ⁠https://www.ziprecruiter.com/srs ⁠ ⁠https://www.rocketmoney.com/srs⁠ Larry Vickers Links: Website - https://lavickers.com IG - https://www.instagram.com/thelarryvickers YT - ​​http://youtube.com/vickerstacticalinc FB - https://www.facebook.com/LarryVickers 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.

• 0:05Shawn Ryan?

  Larry Vickers, welcome to the show, man.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Thank you, brother. I appreciate it.

• 0:09Shawn Ryan?

  I appreciate you being here.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I couldn't be happier to be here.

• 0:14Shawn Ryan?

  This is a legendary interview.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Well, thanks for saying it. I'm humble, bro.

• 0:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I remember, I remember getting connected to you. Tom Satterley texted me and was like, "Hey, do you want to interview Larry Vickers?" And I was like, "Fuck yes, I want to interview Larry Vickers." So, yeah, fast forward, what, maybe six months and here we are. So, I'm really excited, man.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Thanks, bro. I am too. I've been stoked about this for weeks now.

• 0:42Shawn Ryan?

  Good.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, big time.

• 0:43Shawn Ryan?

  Good. Well, we're going to do a life story on you, childhood, Army career, what happened afterwards, some of the mix-ups that you're dealing with right now. But, um, but everybody starts off with an introduction. So, here we go.

• 1:02Shawn Ryan?

  Larry Vickers, retired US Army First SFOD Delta Operator, spending 15 years in the unit, with over 20 years total in special operations, making you one of the most seasoned warriors of your era. Stormed Modelo Prison in Panama during Operation Acid Gambit, rescuing Kurt Muse under heavy fire, earning a Bronze Star with valor for your actions. Survived three helicopter crashes, more than any other operator at the time, and you walked away from every single one of those crashes. You're the mastermind behind the HK416, the rifle that took down Osama bin Laden and a driving force in shaping modern tactical firearms and accessories.

• 1:46Shawn Ryan?

  Founder of Vickers Tactical and author of The Vickers Guide: Setting the Standard for Firearms Scholarship.

• 1:53Shawn Ryan?

  And there's a lot more.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55Shawn Ryan?

  We had to.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Cut it down?

• 1:57Shawn Ryan?

  Cut it down just a little bit, because we'll get into all the other stuff on, on, uh, in the interview. And then, before we start, everybody gets a gift.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Even you, Larry.

• 2:08Shawn Ryan?

  I heard that. So, those are legal in all fifty states still. Until, uh, until they ban dies and all the other shit. But it's just the Jones Lee Gummy Bears, man. Made in the USA. They taste amazing.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24Shawn Ryan?

  They're horrible for you, but I love them, so.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I heard about this. Everybody told me, hey, you're gonna get a gift.

• 2:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man. Everybody gets a gift.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 2:34Shawn Ryan?

  It doesn't beat yours, though. The Vickers Guide Heckler.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. The HK, yeah, volume three.

• 2:40Shawn Ryan?

  That is awesome.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Actually, volume two, excuse me. Volume two, yeah. The MP, the submachine gun book.

• 2:45Shawn Ryan?

  What's volume three?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Roller lock guns, meaning G3, and, you know, like the HK21 series. And then, volume four is coming out this year, which is all the post roller lock guns. It, 416, G36, 417, G11, XM8, all that stuff. That's the one I'm really stoked about because of my time with the 416, being involved with that particular gun.

• 3:11Shawn Ryan?

  Cool.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Really stoked about that one. It's coming out later this year.

• 3:15Shawn Ryan?

  What's your, I mean, you've been around firearms for a long time. You're an innovator. I mean, any, any firearm in the world, what, what's your favorite?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  M4.

• 3:29Shawn Ryan?

  The M4?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  M4-ish, you know what I mean?

• 3:31Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Some automatic, different barrel lengths, just kind of throw them all in the M4 bucket. That would be my favorite.

• 3:39Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Because I have so much time with it, and I, I put the 416 in with that, too. Because it's basically an M4 with a different operating system. That's all it is.

• 3:48Shawn Ryan?

  I love the 416.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:51Shawn Ryan?

  We used to use those. So, thank you.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  But, well, let's get into the interview. Okay. So, we always start at childhood. Where'd you grow up? Ohio, a real small town in Ohio called Adams Mills. We don't even have a traffic light. I mean, we're talking about small. Nice. Uh, born in nineteen sixty-three, classic baby boomer. I was a baby boomer by one year. Nineteen sixty-four is the last year of baby boomers. So, I was a baby boomer by one year. Both my parents were involved in World War II. My dad was a World War II vet in North Africa and Italy. My mom worked on the home front making artillery shells. Oh, no kidding? Yeah, I had a munitions factory making artillery shells. Wow.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, I kinda grew up from that and then that mindset and the great thing about it was

• 4:48Speaker 01

  you had maximum freedom. Like, I would take off at the beginning of the day, you know, the classic deal you've heard about. Take off at the beginning of the day. They wouldn't see me till, you know, time for dinner. You're gone. You're out in the woods. You're taking a BB gun. As I got older, I'd take a bolt-action twenty-two, single-shot twenty-two. I'm hunting, you know, rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, and they, my parents, they'd have no idea where I'm at. They know I'm around and whatnot. And another thing they would do is, hey, it's time to come home. We haven't seen Larry. So, they'd start calling the neighbors. You know what I mean? Real small town. They knew everybody. They knew everybody's phone number. Hey, have you seen Larry? Hey, yeah, I saw him. Hey, send him home. Dinner's ready. That kind of a thing. And we'd be wand, me and my friends,

• 5:33Speaker 01

  we'd wander miles away, miles away. And my parents would have no idea where I was at, and they were totally cool with it. They never got bent out of shape about, why were you down there? Why did you go down by that bridge? Why were you over on top of that hill? They never got bent out of shape about it at all. Maximum freedom. Any brothers and sisters? Yeah, I got a brother who's older and a sister who's older as well. Um, I was the baby of the bunch. I used to think, my parents, they tried one last chance to have another kid. Found out that I was an accident. You know, it wasn't planned at all. I was an accident. My dad was fifty when I was born. My mom was thirty-six. Wow. Yeah. So, they're basically, particularly my dad is old enough to be my grandfather.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  So, he was fifty and my mom was thirty-six when I was born. Wow. Wow. So, you, what age did you start on the BB gun? Oh, man. If I had to guess, I'd say six. Nah, nah, nah, nah. That's that not six, seven, probably about eightish, nineish.

• 6:36Shawn Ryan?

  Eight?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:37Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I got a son. He's three.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  And he's.

• 6:41Shawn Ryan?

  I'm dying. I'm dying to get him started. Nah, he doesn't have one yet. I mean.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  You got him airsoft or?

• 6:48Shawn Ryan?

  No, he he has a cork gun.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 6:51Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I'm talking about? The old school, you pull the PVC pipe.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm trying to teach him. Weapons safety with that. It just, it's, she's not having it.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  He's not having it. He's not dialed in yet.

• 7:02Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  As he gets older, more mature. He'll get it.

• 7:06Shawn Ryan?

  So eight, you started hunting.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  With BB guns, going around trying to shoot squirrel, stuff like that.

• 7:13Shawn Ryan?

  How was, what was your relationship like with your parents?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Um, good. Did you know? Much closer with my mom and my dad. And I was, I've told people this. When they ask these kind of questions, I don't ever remember. I knew my dad loved me. But I don't ever remember him telling me that one time that, hey, Larry, I love you. My nickname was Jake, by the way. They both called me Jake. Still to this day, I have no idea why. But hey, Jake, you know, hey, Jake, hey, Jake, that was my nickname. But I don't ever remember my dad saying, hey, I love you, Jake. I mean, not one time. I knew he did. And honestly, now I'm pinned down. I don't know if my mom ever said it either. They just kind of, yeah. They just kind of came from that era where.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  It was kind of understood. We're, we're, we're putting a roof over your head. We're putting food in your stomach. We're putting clothes on your back. Of course, we love you. That's, that's where my head's at and why they were probably thinking that way, to be honest with.

• 8:12Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not, nothing touch and feel like it is today.

• 8:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Nothing like that.

• 8:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Why were you closer with your mom than your dad? Cause she kinda babied me, you know what I mean? I just, I was just, she, she did, you know, and the old classic thing, I had my mom kinda wrapped around my finger. If I needed something, I'd go to her and she would always give in and all, yeah. So I, you know, I was a mama's boy. Gotcha, gotcha. What, um, I mean, what else were you into as a kid? How were you as a student? Uh, good. I was a classic B student. I could have been an A student with no problem, but to me it was like, I'll put in enough effort to be a B. You know, B student, I really don't wanna put in that extra effort to be an A. If I got an A, it was almost by accident. Hmm.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  If I got a C, it was kinda because I was half ass in it, to be honest with you. But I was a classic B student. I liked to play sports with my friends. Never really did organize sports very much at school. But I, we would play baseball and football and all, and we'd play tackle football with no pads or any of that crap. Um, I did that all the way through, you know, elementary school, junior, junior high and high school. We, we played tackle football with no pads. To us, it was kinda flag football and all that was kinda like, seriously? Why aren't you playing, you know, tackle football? But say I was into sports and whatnot, but from the point of view of playing with my friends, not necessarily organize sports at school.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Did your dad ever, or your mom, did they talk a lot about World War II? My dad a little bit. My mom really never did at all. It was only later I kinda asked her and said, what'd you do? She goes, oh, I worked at a factory, you know, Koshakton, Ohio, which is where I was born. Um, probably fifteen, twenty miles up the road from where I grew up. Right, and she, my mom is from there. You know, I worked in our, you know, manufacturing facility in Koshakton that made artillery shells. And I didn't find that out till late in the game. You know, and then my dad though would talk about it. He was in North Africa and Italy and he had some PTSD. Really? Oh yeah, he sure did. How do you know? Because he would, you know, he would kinda relate and start telling some stories about guys that had died.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  And had been killed that he knew that were friends of his and stuff. And I remember him talking about that on occasion. Not a lot, but on occasion he would kinda, almost ramble. In a way, and I'd listen to him, but he would, yeah, he had PTSD, I mean, for sure, absolutely. Did you, when did your?

• 10:51Shawn Ryan?

  Do I guess, are your parents still with us?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Oh, no. No, my dad died. He was eighty-four. My mom was seventy-seven. And that date, my god, they died in the early nineties. Yeah, they've been, they've been passed away for quite a while now.

• 11:07Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I guess the reason I'm asking is I'm just curious. I mean, did you and your dad ever relate? When you became, you know, a Delta operator?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  A little bit. He, they never, I mean, he knew about me going in the army, obviously. I mean, I went in the army really because of my dad. I mean, you know, I mean, that influence.

• 11:26Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Um, I remember my dad, one time specifically, I went in, I went to jump school and all that, and he said, Jake, he goes, Jake, I don't, he never flew on an airplane. His whole life.

• 11:36Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  His whole life, he never flew on an airplane. Neither did my mom. I mean, neither one of them flew on an airplane. So that was totally alien, alien concept. And for me to jump out of an airplane, my dad said, he goes, Jake, I don't know how you do that.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  He goes, I don't know how you goes that, that's something I just don't even know how you could do. I remember him telling me that. So he related to me going in the army. Um, but there were some things that I was doing that he just couldn't, you know, he couldn't comprehend.

• 12:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Did your, uh, did your brother or sister go join the service at all?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  My brother's actually on the autism spectrum, pretty severe.

• 12:14Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  My sister, she kind of got married early on. She went on and did some occupational therapy stuff. Neither one of them were really interested in going into military at all. I was really the only one. That, you know, my son, my brother couldn't, I mean, because it'd been beyond the spectrum. He, there's no way he could have been in the military. My sister could have, but had no interest in it.

• 12:38Shawn Ryan?

  What, so was your dad that got you interested in the military?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:43Shawn Ryan?

  Solely your dad, or was there any other inspiration or?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Mainly my dad, but you know, there were so many World War II vets in our little town. Almost all the grown men were World War II vets. I can't hardly think of any of them that weren't, that were my dad's age or kind of in that.

• 12:59Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Timeframe. They were all World War II vets. And my uncle was World War II and Korea. He'd served in both. Uncle or Uncle Bill, Bill R, my uncle, was World War II in Korea. So yeah, they were, that had an influence on me. All those World War II vets, for sure. Me playing Army, which was my favorite game, of course, of all time. Um, playing Army as a kid, getting helmets and stuff like that, and going around with sticks. You know, sticks basically for you, you bent in the shape or you snapped in the shape of a gun. Um, but yeah, it was mainly my dad's influence in terms of, that's really the number one reason I went in the military. It was my dad's influence.

• 13:42Shawn Ryan?

  What about, I mean, the Vietnam War was going on at that time. Did that have any influence?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Not really so much. I was still too young for that. Cause you know, Vietnam ended seventy, early seventies. I mean, I was born in nineteen sixty-three.

• 13:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  So when it's ending, I'm seven, eight years old. So not really. Not really. If I'd have been older, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.

• 14:08Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, how did you pick the Army? Why did you pick?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  My dad was in Army, so right off the bat. And you'll love this. This is a great story. I was telling Scott about this on the way up here. Um, my dad always spoke highly of the Rangers. Always be, he really held the Rangers in high esteem, put them on a pedestal. So I thought, well, I'm gonna go in the Army and I'm gonna be a Ranger.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Right? Well, I went down to the Army recruiter and got a little pamphlet about combat arms. And it, you know, had, the first one was infantry and then artillery, had airborne in there and all that jazz and one Rangers. Well, I know, I'm reading about the Rangers. That's where I'm gonna go. Well, I noticed there's one, this is no lie. One more page. I'm like, hmm, I flip it open. Special Forces.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  What's this? I started reading about special forces and then, you know, at the very end, they had me. I mean, I was hooked. It said, if you don't think you can make it, don't even try because only the best can wear the green beret. And that was it. Dude, I was, I said, that's it. I'm gonna be a green beret. I'm gonna be special forces. At that point, their PR department worked on me. I mean, it worked like a champ. They, they wanted to snag somebody and they snagged me like a big dog. A hundred percent. What did, what did, so you could go straight into it back then? At that time, yeah, they had what they called, informally, we called it the SF baby program. And they needed bodies. Cause this is post Vietnam. They needed people.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  So yeah, you could go straight in off the street. Um, as right out of high school and go through the Q course. A matter of fact, I graduated and I was 18 years old. From the Q course. Yeah, I was for about, I graduated May 7th, 1982. And I turned 19, June 27th, 1982. Wow. Yeah, I, I was a green beret for about a month and a half before I turned 19. Holy shit. Yeah, 18 years old. Didn't know anything, dude. I didn't know anything. In hindsight, that SF baby program was stupid. They didn't have it for very long. I think they kind of realized this is dumb. And then they put parameters on it.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  You had to be in the army for a certain amount of time before you could try out for SF and all that kind of stuff. Which made perfect sense. Cause I got, here I'm on SF team. I'm 19 years old. I didn't know anything. I mean, nothing. I, you know, I'm, I'm curious about your thoughts on this. Cause I think that, I think the, didn't the SF baby, I think it came back. They did. They call it the X-ray program, but you have some pretty serious parameters that you gotta meet. I think you have to, now I'm, don't hold me to this. I could be way off base. But I think he, one of the things that allows you to go straight in is like two years of college. I think you have to be a certain age and whatnot. But I think it's called the X-ray program. So it did come back where, and it was a GWOT thing, I think. Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  They wanted people, they needed people, they wanted people. So it was a GWOT style effort that they brought in to, to get people in the special forces. The X-ray program. As far as I know, it's still in effect.

• 17:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm well, when I joined, I mean, that's how I became a SEAL, because I originally wanted to be force recon. They wouldn't take me. Well, then Green Beret, my dad was in the army. They wouldn't, you couldn't do it. You couldn't get in. And then the the Navy recruiter stuck his head out. It was like, hey, you heard of the SEALs? And I was like, no. But um, and they had the program. They had the, I can't remember what the Bud's Challenge Program or something like that. SEAL Challenge Program. But I remember being in and I got, I I had joined, signed up at seventeen, waited till I was eighteen, shipped out.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I did the same thing. I did that sign up at seventeen between junior and senior. You know, senior year, signed up at seventeen. So I had that one year where it was still worked in my favor for pay. Even though of no rank. But I did the same thing. I signed up at seventeen.

• 18:16Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm curious, I'm I'm just curious about your thoughts, because I go, I still think about it. I go back and forth and I remember, uh, the first time we worked with Green Berets with an SF team, we were in Panama, and then we went out to Haiti in two thousand four when Aristide got yanked out. But I remember those guys just giving us all kinds of shit because we were so young and and yes, we were. Especially me, a total immature fucking knucklehead. But but I was a hard charger.

• 18:49Shawn Ryan?

  And I always like back then, I always thought it was dumb to make people go to conventional units and then to come into special operations because

• 19:03Shawn Ryan?

  because I think that what am I trying to, you know, conventional units? They don't think like, like soft guys.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  They don't.

• 19:14Shawn Ryan?

  And sometimes you can get these guys in from a conventional unit, especially in the Navy.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:19Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, because there's nothing, there's no, there's nothing else like it, right? And they come in and they bring what we call that fleet mentality and the very, very chain of command, very. It's not like an open forum like what special operations is supposed to be. Now, on the flip side of that, if you don't send them out there, then you do get a bunch of immature fucking knuckleheads and that can be hard to.

• 19:47Shawn Ryan?

  I can imagine that would be really hard to deal with, but I mean, so do you, you think that people should go to the, to a regular MLS before joining special ops?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Um.

• 19:58Shawn Ryan?

  Or getting the opportunity to try out for special ops?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yes and no. I tell you, if I'd had it to do over again, if I was gonna do it now, I'd go to the Ranger Battalion first.

• 20:08Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. I, I found out, once I got in,

• 20:15Speaker 01

  that's really the route I should have went.

• 20:17Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you say that?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Just because where my head was at, you know, SF, Green Berets, they're force multipliers, man. They go overseas, let's face it, they go overseas and take a bunch of people and train them basic training and try to organize them into a fighting unit. I mean, that's really force multiplier, nation building, that's their thing. As soon as I found that out, I was like, dude, count me out. I had no desire to do that at all.

• 20:44Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 20:45Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't think that was cool at all?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Not at all. I had no desire. I wanted to be a pipe hitter from day one, bro.

• 20:51Shawn Ryan?

  You just wanted to be an assault?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I wanted to be a pipe hitter. And I knew in hindsight, that Ranger Battalion path, before I got in Delta, was a better path for me. I knew it.

• 21:02Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

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• 21:49Speaker 01

  Because I wanted to be a pipe hitter, had no interest in this nation building thing, going to a third world country, training, you know, you know, indigenous people

• 21:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  to become a fighting force, nation building. I just had no interest in that at all. Not at all.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  So for me, Ranger Battalion was a better path. Coming from conventional army in the SOF, that's a tough nut to crack. The good thing about is, if you've got a good selection program, you will weed out the people that don't need to be there. The people that don't think right, that aren't out of the box thinkers, you'll weed a bunch of those people out if you've got the right selection program.

• 22:31Shawn Ryan?

  It's almost like a reprogramming for some of the guys, you know?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:36Shawn Ryan?

  But when you joined, I mean, what was going on in the world at the time? Were we in any conflicts?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  No. The big thing was, and it was a big impact on me, was Ronald Reagan.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Ronald Reagan, and when he came in, and the motivation to basically become, you know, being an American was a good thing again. It was bad under Jimmy Carter, bro. It was bad. Things were not good. Akin to Joe Biden. Akin to Joe Biden. If I had to say two worst presidents that I've been around, without question, Biden, or I say I've been alive for, I should say, Biden and Jimmy Carter. It was not a good time in this country under Jimmy Carter. People were, it was a depressing time. There was no, you know, pride in being an American. It was just, it was bad, dude. Just like the Biden thing. I mean, case in point. If you want, you know,

• 23:37Speaker 01

  if you want an analogy or kind of, hey, I want to be able to relate to that, just look at how it was under Joe Biden. Not a good time. Ronald Reagan comes in, turns everything around. All of a sudden now, it's great to be an American. You have pride in the country, building up the military. Ronald Reagan was the, my dad, of course, put the bug in my ear to go into military, but next to that was Ronald Reagan.

• 24:02Shawn Ryan?

  Your dad put the bug in you?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:04Shawn Ryan?

  Through, through his stories or?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, through, just talking about the Rangers. I mean, I mean, my dad being in the military was a big piece of him, who he was as a person. A real big piece. There was no way around it. And I, you know, so I got engulfed in that, so to speak. And him talking about the Rangers, how he held them in such high esteem. And I started looking into the Rangers and discovered Special Forces, Ronald Reagan coming in. So that's what was going on in my world when I went in. Yeah, I graduated in 1981 and I went into the Army like two weeks later. Dude, I didn't, you know, people are like, aren't you gonna hang out for the summer? I go, nope, I'm going in. Like, two weeks after I graduated, I was in the Army.

• 24:49Shawn Ryan?

  What did your dad say when you told him that you had enlisted?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  He was all for it. He had no issues at all. He, I remember him telling me one time, he said, Jake,

• 25:00Speaker 01

  I don't know what we're gonna do here, because I don't have money to send you to college. And he was always a penny pincher. They kinda had the money, but you know, they grew up during the Depression. And one of those things, so the major penny pincher, day old bread, and one of those deals. So I don't have the money to send you to college. But I said, don't worry about it, I'm going in the Army. I don't, I remember this exact conversation. I said, don't worry about it, I'm going in the Army. So he was totally cool with it. My mom, not so much. When the recruiter came by to pick me up, to take me to the in processing station, she was crying. She was not real happy with it. But my dad had no issues with it all.

• 25:38Shawn Ryan?

  What did he say when you told him you were going to SOF?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I don't think he really knew what it was. I don't, I don't think he ever really absorbed what it was, because it was such an unconventional concept for him. I don't think he ever really knew. And when I joined Delta, they told us, you need to tell your family now that you are in a special mission unit. You need, they, we don't want this to be a surprise to them. So I went home and I gave my mom and dad the bare bones. Hey, I'm in a special mission unit now, very highly specialized, very highly trained. And, you know, because they wanted you to tell them to let you know, hey, you're at risk for you're much greater risk now of injury, getting killed, being deployed.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  I mean, you're, I mean, you're basically the tip of the spear now and in terms of the US Army Special Operations. So I kinda told them the bare minimum. I could tell it just went right over their head. But I checked the block. You know, I checked the block. I told my mom and dad about it. I told my, you know, my family, my mom and dad. But yeah, they, I, my dad, I don't think ever really grasped what SF was all about.

• 26:49Shawn Ryan?

  Never?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 26:51Shawn Ryan?

  Does that bother you at all?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Oh, no. No, not at all.

• 26:56Shawn Ryan?

  Were they proud of you?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Hundred percent.

• 27:02Shawn Ryan?

  Were they, do they know about Panama?

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Nah, not really.

• 27:09Shawn Ryan?

  Why not?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  I think I might've told them about it, but you know, for the longest time, dude, that Modelo prison thing was real hush hush. I mean, big time. We didn't discuss it. It's now decades later, of course. You know, there's been a book written about it. There's in theory, a movie coming out, you know, next year or whatever about it. Um, so it's much more open source now, but boy, for the longest time, it was not discussed at all. It was real under the radar.

• 27:44Shawn Ryan?

  It doesn't bother you that they never really grasped the, the magnitude of what you were doing and?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  No, not really. I mean, they were, cause like I said, they, by the time I got to that point, they were old enough to be my grandparents.

• 27:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  So I didn't, it didn't really, didn't really bother me. Never really did.

• 28:02Shawn Ryan?

  Fair enough.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  They were cool with me being in the military. They were proud. But what I really did in the military, they knew I was special. I was in a special unit and that's about it.

• 28:13Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha. So let's talk about leaving home. How was that for you?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Leaving, going in the army?

• 28:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  I was all about it. By the time that came around, I was chomping at the bit to get on with going in the army. Chomping at the bit. I remember other people's parents would say, oh, as soon as you're out of high school, you wish you were back in. And I was like, I've never felt that. I never felt it when I left. I didn't feel it when I was in the army. I was like, are you kidding me? I don't want to go to high school anymore. I'm done with that. I want to get on with life. So I was all about it. A hundred percent. Didn't, you know, miss my friends. Yeah. But I'd see him when I'd come home on leave and whatnot. But other than that, dude, I was a hundred percent. Like I said, I wanted to be a pipe hitter from day one.

• 29:01Shawn Ryan?

  You wanted to go to war.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Oh, I wanted to strap it on.

• 29:05Shawn Ryan?

  So we'll breeze through the boot camp stuff. Let's talk about your selection.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  SF.

• 29:12Shawn Ryan?

  That's right.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  You know, we were talking about this earlier. I, you know, kind of had some questions pop up. Honestly, it wasn't very hard.

• 29:23Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Nah, it wasn't. You know what? You're gonna laugh at this. You know what the hardest thing was? Was the swim test.

• 29:31Shawn Ryan?

  What was the swim test?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  If I remember correctly, fifteen meters with fatigues and boots, web gear and a rubber duck M16. And see, when I was growing up, I didn't swim very often. I really didn't. We didn't have, I certainly didn't have access to a swimming pool. Um, I just didn't swim very often. It just wasn't that big of a thing. And I kind of went into the swim test, a little bit nervous, but not really understanding what I was getting into. And when I got in that water and started swimming with fatigues and boots on and that web gear and a weapon, dude. I, I, it was scary. I was floundering big time. You could ditch the weapon and still pass. I ditched it immediately.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  And I was frantically trying to get down to fifteen meters. I it that is without a doubt the hardest thing that I dealt with going through the special forces qualification course. I and I passed the swim test, but barely dude. No shit. So that was probably at the very beginning too, huh? Oh yeah, it was. Hundred percent. What what else did you do in there? Well, went to phase one, which at that time, it cause they changed it after I went through. It's been it's changed so much over time. That's one of the dings on the special forces qualification course is they haven't had a lot of continuity. But we did, you know, land navigation, we did survival, right? And they had basically, they tried to weed out the people who didn't want to be there. Uh huh.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? The people that couldn't cut it. So we had some physical stuff to weed them out. Um, we'd land navigation, survival were two big things that we had in phase one. Did some other stuff like repelling, some stuff like that. Um, we did it out at Camp McCall and out in North Carolina, near Fort Bragg, famous, you know, famous for special operations or special forces in particular. Um, we did out, I used to know how many guys started and how many guys finished, but when special for in, you know, the uh, when I went to the Q course. Uh huh. But I do remember this. There were thirteen guys that came from jump school that were SF

• 31:47Speaker 01

  babies. Only two of us finished. Really? Yeah. Eleven guys. Now, I got to caveat that. A couple of them are probably medics who break off for the medic course, which took quite a while longer. And then they come back in and finish the Q course. So there may have been a couple of them or whatever medics that did in fact pass, but they didn't, they didn't finish with me. So I lost situational awareness with them. But out of the guys I knew, thirteen, only two of us finished. Or two of us, you know, put on a green beret. What happened after phase one? Uh, phase two was small arms training because I was a light weapon specialist. So

• 32:30Speaker 01

  we started doing, we also did some heavy weapon stuff, mortars, anti-tank weapons and stuff like that. But it was mainly light weapon stuff was was, you know, was phase two. I got a good story for you.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Before I went in, I knew I was gonna be a light weapon specialist. So I, I got these books, Combat Arms and Small Arms of the World, and I would just absorb them. Looking at pictures, reading about the guns and everything like that. And I really would study the designs and the parts on them and all that, cause the instructor came in, we were doing the disassembly and assembly classes, and we're on break, came back in. Instructor goes, hey, I got a part right here that somebody left out in the parking lot. If you can tell me what it is, and what it's for, I'll, I'll carry your rucksack on the next rucksack march. And I saw it, immediately raised my hand. And he's, what is it? And I go, selector switch for a Thompson submachine gun.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  And he goes, wrong. And as soon as he said it, I went, dumbass. I know what it is, and that ain't it. What an idiot. And then a couple of guys guessed and everything. I rose my hand again, raised my hand again. And he goes, you already guessed. I go, no, I know what it is this time. And he goes, what is? I go, selector switch for an FNFL. Dude, his jaw hit the floor. How did you know that? Cause keep in mind, I'm 18 years old.

• 33:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  And he goes, how did you know that? And I told him the same thing you did. I got these gun books, I studied the pictures, read about them, absorbed them. And sure enough, the dude, the next, whenever we did the rucksack march again, next day or whenever, he carried my rucksack.

• 34:10Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I walked alongside him the whole way.

• 34:14Shawn Ryan?

  Were you the youngest guy in the class?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of the youngest.

• 34:18Shawn Ryan?

  Pretty close.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Pretty damn close, yeah. I think I might have been, kind of rings a bell that I was in fact, the youngest guy in the class. But I know I was certainly one of the youngest, for sure.

• 34:30Shawn Ryan?

  What was your opinion of the, of your colleagues that were going through?

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Oh, you know what's interesting? There was a guy named King that I went, he was the other guy who finished with me and he was a dumpy looking dude. If you saw him, you say, hey, by the way, he just finished the Q course and he's now a Green Beret. He'd be like, what? Get the hell out of here. So you, classic case, you cannot judge a book by its cover, bro. And he, he came, I was in jump school with him, became good friends with him because I went all the way through the Q course with him. And he, he's the other dude between the 13, me and him, another guy finished that was King. Totally unassuming dude, unassuming dude. I mean, classic case of, you know, don't underestimate people.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Cause this guy right here will prove you wrong.

• 35:22Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I'm just curious. I mean, you're one of the youngest guys in the class. You're in a premier unit, you know, at the, at the tip of the spear. It's exactly what you wanted. I mean, the advertising said, don't try if you don't think you're gonna make it, you won't. I mean, so what, what was that like for you being 18 years old going through SFQ course?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Well, there was guys I really looked up to that I was in the class with. Majority of them came from Ranger Battalion.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Majority of them came from Ranger Battalion and guys I really hit it off with. I mean, I really looked up to them. They were studs. I really, really liked them, you know? I really looked up to them, got along with them great, and they were all guys from Ranger Battalion, all of them.

• 36:13Shawn Ryan?

  At, at what point did you realize you should have gone Ranger?

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Probably partway through phase three, especially after phase three and I got assigned to a team. Cause phase three was where we're, now we're going out and, you know, interfacing with guerrillas. And we're going to start training them to become a cohesive fighting unit. And now we're doing that nation building thing and all that jazz. That's where phase three comes in. And that's when I kind of started going.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  This isn't really what I signed up for. This is really not what I want to do. And so it'd been phase three, and then when I got to a team and it became crystal clear, um, what we're really just signed up to do. I was like, dude, this isn't at all what I do. Here's another good one. We were in desert training.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Out in, we're Fort Wachuka, Arizona. We're in desert training when Grenada went down. And we heard about it. And me and a couple of the younger guys were pissed because we were like, wait a minute, we're supposed to be so elite. Super elite Green Berets. Why the hell aren't we down there? And then the guys were like, well, that's not our mission. That's not what we're all about. And dude, that was, that was kind of the final straw for me. When that went down. Cause I thought, wait a minute, we're supposed to be so elite. You know, we're the super elite military unit in the US Army. Why the hell are we, there, there's guys going to combat right now. Why aren't we there?

• 37:59Speaker 01

  And that did not set well with me at all. And, and other guys in the, on the team too.

• 38:05Shawn Ryan?

  What was, so when you say phase three is nation building, can you walk us through some of that?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Um, we jumped in to it. It was, we went through Uwari. We did it in Uwari National Forest, not too far from Fort Bragg, by the way. Um, we jumped in and then we would start, uh, linking up with the guerrillas, which are generally guys from the 82nd. They would bring out 82nd guys to, you know, act as guerrillas for the SF teams. So we'd interface with them. There was bona fides. We had to, you know, hey, this is who we are. This is who you are, yada, yada, yada. We'd go into their guerrilla camp. They'd be very standoffish initially because they don't trust us, that kind of a thing. Then we'd have to prove ourselves to them.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  They had one classic scenario where the guerrilla, you know, leader wants to execute one of his guys. Because the guy, I don't know, whatever, got out of line, slept with somebody's wife, whatever, whatever the scenario was. And the detachment commander had to deal with that and try to talk him out of it. And then never flew, by the way, you know, that was part of the scenario. So the guerrilla leader went out, you know, out a little ways and, you know, fired off a blank and that dude left. And so he was essentially dead for the rest of the exercise. So that was, they purposely put the leadership in that kind of a situation to see how they'd react, the officers,

• 39:35Speaker 01

  because they were held to a much higher standard, as you can imagine, because they're going to leave and go straight to an A-team. And now they're the commander on an A-team.

• 39:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Whereas I go and I'm a junior weapons sergeant. I'm down here, this guy's a, he's a commanding officer, he's the A-team leader. So they would hold him to a much higher standard. So then we would go through the process with them, we would train with them. I gave them small arms training. Uh, they would get some demolition training, stuff like that. And then we would kind of start to integrate with them and they'd start to trust us and that whole nine yards. About a two-week program out in the field from when we jump in to when we're done.

• 40:14Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha. So you get through phase three, graduate, you go to a, you go to a team.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  I went to a team. Here's the thing now. We should have went to language training. It was an option, but it was for guys who volunteered. I didn't volunteer because I didn't realize the importance of it.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Nobody sat me down and said, hey dude, you need to go to a language course. You gotta learn a language. This is, this is a critical thing. I went through kind of that post-Vietnam era where the Q course was, like I told you, it really wasn't that difficult. It was kind of a shit, a little bit of a shit show, bro. It really was. Nobody sat you down and said, hey, look, you need a language, uh, skill. You need a language skill set here. You need to go take a language. You know, whatever it might have been, you know, German, Spanish, whatever. The flavor that, uh, you know, that might have been, but you need to go take a language. Now, I want to say, and I could be wrong, but I'm pretty damn sure for the longest time now, language is mandatory.

• 41:18Shawn Ryan?

  I believe it is.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. You gotta go take a language, which is what it should be. So it's kind of lip service back then? Yeah. You know, they would, they'd have what they call these Gabriel detachment or Gabe team. I don't know if you ever heard of, they'd do these demonstrations about, you know, a special forces A team and they'd have a guy stand up and talk about, yeah, I can speak, you know, German, he'd, he'd, the guy would recite a line in German or Russian. I, you know, I can speak Russian or German. I have a working knowledge of Spanish and it was all bullshit. It was all smoke and mirrors. What team did you wind up going to? Went to five, two, one, one in fifth group, fifth special forces group, which, which, which was a Halo team.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  So I went to Halo school and sniper school and I was 19 years old. Holy shit. Yeah. Yep. I was in the team. I got there, turned 19. Within that year, I went through sniper school and Halo school. Both. I was 19 years old and they, I was qualified and went to sniper school. I got a certificate of attendance at sniper school. Only one of us graduated because we had M21s. And the, the scope mount sucked. They would take the scopes off, put them in one case to put the rifle in another case and they'd go back to the arm room.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Come back out to, to qualify, to shoot, to, you know, to essentially hone your skills with the rifle, take the scope out of the case, bolt it back on, you screw it back on the rifle. Oh yeah, dude. Straight up. Screw it back on and you're out there. Of course the zero's off. Yeah. It's for shit.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I got a certificate of attendance and there was only one guy who actually graduated the course. The rest of us got certificate of attendance. It was because of the marksmanship part of it.

• 43:19Shawn Ryan?

  How was Halo?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Scary dude. I was scared. I, I mean, as time went on, I got comfortable, but boy, that first jump. I was scared and I was, I was wet bred on the first jump. And, um, the instructor brought me and the other guy who jumped with me over and he goes, I'm gonna tell you what. It was like a Friday. He goes, I'm tell you what, next jump was Monday. He goes, you got one more chance. And after that, I'm gonna have to let you go. And I, dude, I sweated it the whole weekend. Lost sleep, was, you know, working on my positioning, the whole nine yards. Came Monday, I jumped much better, passed the other dude. They cut him loose.

• 44:05Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 44:08Shawn Ryan?

  So you get on the team?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got on the team.

• 44:12Shawn Ryan?

  How was that? How was that showing up to an SF team? At nineteen years old?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Well. Yeah, but you know, here's the thing, once again, post Vietnam. Two or three guys on the team smoked marijuana fairly regularly. Which really turned me off right off the bat. I was like, are you serious? What is this all about? You know, I mean, that's before they clamped down and really cleaned up the military for, for any drug use and smoking marijuana. They really cleaned it up. One of the best things they ever did. Huge benefit. Yeah, there's guys on there, you know, smoking dope on a regular basis and stuff. I was like. And, you know, kind of that post Vietnam era thing.

• 44:54Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  And, uh, it, it was, I got along with some of the guys on the team, other guys like the dope smokers, I, I never clicked with those guys at all. I just didn't see where that was coming from. Partially, I was a teetotaler. And coming from my mom. My mom basically read me the riot act one time in the backyard, but I don't want to ever hear you smoking, drinking, nothing. I was like, okay, mom, sure will. And I never did.

• 45:19Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it seems like there would be a lot of guys to look up to and a shit ton of experience on the team being post Vietnam like that.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Not so much, bro.

• 45:28Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, not so much because a lot of those guys were gone, they'd left. It's kind of almost like some of the guys that stayed behind.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  They they didn't leave because they didn't have anywhere else to go. There just wasn't a lot of like real serious pipe hitters to look up to.

• 45:48Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. It was it was kind of a mess, bro. It was that early eighties SF thing. Not real impressive.

• 45:58Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:59Shawn Ryan?

  So what did you?

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Real impressive.

• 46:00Shawn Ryan?

  Did you wind up deploying with them or?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  No. Matter of fact, never jumped free fall on the team.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  The only time I ever jumped free fall was in Halo school. Never one time did I jump on the team free fall. Not one time.

• 46:17Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm telling you.

• 46:20Shawn Ryan?

  So what did you guys do?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  You tell me.

• 46:23Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you there?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Um. I ended up being on the team to it basically took me a year to get through training. I was on that, you know, Q course and all that, not counting Halo school and sniper school. On the team for two years and then they were open up first group and Fort Lewis and I got levied to go. They said, you gotta go. I didn't volunteer. And I said, hey, I want to go. They said, you gotta go. So I went up there for a year. I had a four year stint, more or less a year to get through training. Two years on the team, including, you know, sniper school and and Halo school. And then I went up to Fort Lewis for a year. What sealed the deal for me was when I went up there, they made me the armor, the unit armor.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  I showed up, went into the um battalion sergeant major's office and he goes, hey, you know, Sergeant Vickers, blah, blah, blah. Nice, you know, for you coming. Nice to meet you, whatever. And he goes, I'm the, you know, I probably not want to hear this, but I'm going to make you the unit armor. And I was like. Sergeant Major. I see, yeah, it's Manning board here, the teams and everything. I go, you know, I'm Halo qualified. I'm a weapon sergeant who's Halo qualified and I see you got a guy listed right here. Who's not Halo qualified. On the Halo team. A weapon sergeant. He goes, well, I know, I understand that, but I've already promised him the slot and all that kind of stuff. And right then I was like, I'm done. I was watching the clock. Till I could get out in a year.

• 47:47Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:48Shawn Ryan?

  So so you were on a team for two years. And you guys didn't deploy, didn't do anything?

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 47:55Shawn Ryan?

  What I mean, what was the what was the lifestyle?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  I tell you, you ever heard the deal about picking up pine cones? No. Heard that? No. Oh, yeah, bro. We would get detached to go do stuff like stuff on the post like pick up pine cones. Are you? I'm serious as cancer. And you know, 82nd would be doing it, Special Force, Green Berets would be doing it. But yeah, it that's that, yeah, doing, uh, yeah, Fort Bragg post cleanup. And that that would cycle through you, not all the time, but you would get that, hey, man, we gotta go pick up pine cones. And you would get on a cat, what they called a cattle car, which was essentially a, you know, big, open cattle car.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  For lack of a better term, and you'd get hauled out somewhere and you'd have to fleece up the range or I swear to God, pick up pine cones. I mean, that's where the mentality was at. Wow. I mean, we didn't even have vehicles, like if you had to go over to the hospital or the dental clinic or something like that, you had to take your personal vehicle. You didn't have, you didn't have a team vehicle or anything like that, or a vehicle in the company. You, in order to, to in function, you had to, you didn't, it wasn't like you had an option. You had to take your personal vehicle to get over to do stuff like that. Wow. Nothing changed over at first? No, no, at first was a mess too, hot mess. What'd you do over there? Uh, I was an armor.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  The only thing we did, we deployed to Korea once. I deployed as the armor. And we deployed to Korea once, went in the Seoul, had a good time and all that jazz, but that's all we did. So this is like miserable for you? Oh, yeah. And that, remember I was telling you about, really realized I should have went in the Ranger Battalion? Uh huh. It's stuff like this. Wow. Yep. What a disappointment. Oh, totally. Total disappointment. How many years did you spend in SF? Uh, well, I got out. I got out after four years. I said, I'm out of here. I got out, went back home, went to college, went to a community college for mechanical engineering to get a mechanical engineering

• 50:13Speaker 01

  associate's degree. Cause my thought process was I'll get in, I'll get a mechanical engineering degree and then I'll get into firearms industry. I'll go to work for somebody. FN, HK, whatever. I was really big in FN at the time. So I really, that's kind of where I was. I want to get a mechanical engineering degree and I want to go to work for FN. So that's why I got out to do that.

• 50:35Shawn Ryan?

  You got out the first opportunity you had?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Just four years, I'm out.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  You know, and then I was talking to Scott on the way up here. There was only three options at that time. Get out, which most guys did. Well, actually four. And we used to talk about this. You get out, which most guys did, stay in, which means you're not changing anything. You become part of the problem. You're signing on to become part of the problem. You're not going to change anything. You're like, I'm willing to live with this horse shit and stay in. Three, go be a pilot in the military somewhere. Chopper pilot. I know one guy left, went to the air force to be a pilot. Last, try out for Delta.

• 51:22Shawn Ryan?

  So you knew about Delta?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 51:24Shawn Ryan?

  Why didn't you try out?

• 51:28Speaker 01

  You know, it's a good question.

• 51:30Shawn Ryan?

  Were you worried it would be the same?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Well, no, I didn't think I'd make it because that's the option that had the least success rate, as you can imagine. And I, I met numerous guys that tried out. I did not know a single guy that made it. Until right at the very end, I was getting ready to get out of the army. One of the guys went and made it. And dude, you can imagine, when he came back, you want to talk about a guy who walked on water?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  So I knew one guy that had tried out and everybody talked about how difficult it was. Everybody. So I honestly, I didn't think I could do it. But that planted a seed that never went away. I got out, went to college. I was in reserves. When I was in college, I signed up for the reserves. I was in the 11th group up in Youngstown, Ohio. I'd go up there once a month. Um, enjoyed it. We didn't do shit. You know, we never jumped out of an airplane the entire time I was there. Two years. I had a good time with the guys and everything, but guys in the reserves at that time are National Guard. They really need to get away from the wife for the weekend and go hang out with their buddies.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  That's all it was. The training and everything was kind of a joke. They didn't really, you know, they didn't really put their heart and soul into it. It was, hey, I want to get away from the wife for a weekend, so I'm gonna head out. I'm in the reserves or National Guard.

• 53:02Shawn Ryan?

  Did you keep in touch with the guy that made it through?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  No, saw him later on, no. Saw him later on when I got into the unit. He was in B Squadron. He was an alcoholic. And got more than one DUI. And at that time, they let you slide on one or two. Now, as time went on.

• 53:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  That was, yeah, they didn't, you didn't slide at all. But they let him slide on one or two and when he got another one, he's like, dude, you can't, you gotta go.

• 53:35Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was an alcoholic. Stud. Dude was an animal. He was an animal in SF. Legendary dude. But he was an alcoholic.

• 53:45Shawn Ryan?

  Well Larry, let's take a quick break.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 53:47Shawn Ryan?

  And when we come back, we'll pick up with you getting back in and going to the unit.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  All right.

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• 54:56Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Larry, we're back from the break. You gotten out, went to college. Why'd you go back in?

• 55:05Speaker 01

  I just never, they always that, it's that nagging feeling in the back of my mind about could I make Delta? Could I do it? Because to me, I mean, they were, that's the ultimate pipe hitters to me. I mean, coming from the Army point of view, I mean, that was it. And I knew it. Could I, could I do it? And it just never went away. And I, I came to that fork in the road. It's like, okay, I'm going to be done here with my associate's degree in mechanical engineering soon. I'm going to have to decide, am I going to stay on this path? Get my mechanical and engineering degree, four-year degree, and then go into the firearms industry? Or am I going to go back in and try out for Delta?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Now, this is before you could try out from the reserves or National Guard. So, and I got, there was a guy, captain actually, who kind of coached me and gave me some info. He had tried out for Delta. He ended up coming to my reserve unit in Youngstown, Ohio. And he had notes and stuff. He, I want to say he even had the address for the, the CSM, the, you know, or the sergeant major in charge of selection at Delta. And I wrote a letter to him and said, hey, I'd like to try out. How can I do it? I'm in the reserves right now. And they wrote back and said, you're going, you know, you have to go, you have to enlist in the Army.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  We don't have a mechanism for you to try out from the National Guard or the reserves. So I remember going, oh, man. This is a big deal here, dude. Cause I'm getting ready, if I'm gonna do this, one, long shot to make it. Long shot. Number two, I'm signing up for another four years back in the SF, which I disliked.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  So I remember talking to my friends, I, you know, I said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking about doing. And they were all like, oh dude. They were all like, man, I don't know. I said, you know what though? I, I got it. It's just one of those, I've got to scratch this itch. Or it's just never gonna go away. So I decided, you know, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go back in specifically to try out for Delta Force.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  That's why I went back in.

• 57:28Shawn Ryan?

  How long after you went back in, did you get to try out?

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Um. Six months.

• 57:35Shawn Ryan?

  Six months?

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, six months after I went back in. So let me think about when I went. September, yeah, six months. Six, eight months. For, I didn't make it the first time.

• 57:47Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't?

• 57:47Speaker 01

  No, I did not. I overtrained real bad. Cause when I was out, me and a buddy would lift weights a lot. And we got pretty, pretty big. And I knew all about overtraining, bro. I knew all about it. And I'd overtrained real bad. I trained like a madman right up until I left for selection. So I, my body was tore down. I, I mean, you know what I mean? And you ain't gonna roll into selection with a tore down body and think you're gonna gut your way through it. I mean, at least I didn't. I, I wasn't able to do that. So I didn't make it the first time. Second time though, I fell back. And I went, you know what? I'm gonna learn from my mistake. I'm gonna, two weeks out.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  I'm gonna rest up. I'm not gonna do any PT at all. I'm gonna make sure I'm a hundred percent rested up. And I was gonna skip. You know, I was gonna skip a, a, a selection and I went to the spring, didn't make it. I was gonna skip fall. And end up going to the next spring, but I got back and I started thinking about it, you know? Nah dude, I'm going to the fall. What, I'm just, wha- what was it like when you failed the first time? Well, I voluntarily withdrawn. I said, yeah, I did. And I wouldn't have done that. If I didn't realize how close, because normally they don't let you come back if you voluntarily withdraw. Normally you're done. I didn't know that.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Till I got the exit interview with the, uh, the selection officer and selection sergeant major. And he's like, why'd you voluntarily withdraw? And I said, I, I overtrained real bad. And they're like, explain that, one of those type of things. I go, well, you know, my body was tore down. I know why I was, you know, the mistake I made. You know, like, when I come back, I'm not gonna make it again. And they're like,

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay, we'll let you come back. And I was like, Whoa. I was that close. Wow. To them saying, you ain't coming back. If I'd have known that, I would have just stuck it in there. How, I mean, how long did you go before you voluntarily withdrew? Um.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Stress day one or two, early on. Oh shit, so right away almost. Yeah, I mean, I went through the training part. You know, the train up per se, the land navigation train up. And then when I got into stress phase, It was early on, one, day one or day two, and I knew I was just tore down, man. Could I have gutted it out and made it? I don't know. I just can't tell you I could have. Maybe. Maybe, a big maybe. But I said, you know, I just can't do this and I voluntarily withdrawn and dude, that, No, man, I, I was like, my God, did I dodge a bullet? Cause it was just basically they could have, it's almost like flipping a coin. And they could have went either way. We're like, okay.

• 1:00:46Shawn Ryan?

  We're gonna let you come back.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  I was like, whoa.

• 1:00:49Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Cause I thought it'd be like automatic. Okay, you overtrained. Okay, here you go. We'll see you next time. Yeah, man. That's what I thought.

• 1:00:59Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what is it that you think you have? That they wanted? To allow you to come back?

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  I, I. I think on paper. Because they give you a psych eval. They do, you know, they're testing and before you ever go. So, I mean, you, I say psych eval. You fill out this paperwork. They go through this pretty serious process before you ever go. And I think I was, they looked at and said, this guy is a really good candidate for making. And cause I, after being in the unit and kind of knowing the process. They have their eye on different people.

• 1:01:34Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. They're like, yeah, this guy's a high percentage guy, low percentage. And then they'll start cutting and chopping. Okay, we're not gonna bring him because he's not. We're not seeing the indicators. We're not seeing the key things we need here to bring him up to this category to bring him selection. The, the rule of thumb is that I, they, they bring in 250 applications. And they whittle it down to 100. In my case, it was 88.

• 1:02:02Shawn Ryan?

  88.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  88 dudes out of roughly 250 applications. But they're all, you know, they'll be made some disciplinary stuff. There's gonna be different things on there. They go, no, this guy's. Or, you know, a guy's from, you know. We used to talk about it. You know, when you're going to recruit, why are you going to Fort Hood and these different places? Where the chances of you finding a guy that's gonna make it is almost zero. And they go, well. You, we're looking for that one guy. And they go, you know, if, if we really wanted to get down to it, we'd only go to the SF groups and Ranger battalions. That's it. That's the only place. This is back in the day before they would recruit from the SEALs or the Marines or whatnot.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Um, but that was way before that era. Um, they go, yeah, we would just go to the Ranger battalions and SF groups. And that, that's it. Cause that's your higher percentage guys that are gonna make it. Um, but we want, if that's, there's one guy that comes out of Fort Hood, we want him. Like, okay.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  But yeah, I was that close to not being able to, but that's my call. They, you know, on paper that they were like, hey, this guy's a high percentage chance of making it. Gotcha. Yeah, that's my call. And so you go back? Yeah, I go back Germany, I was stationed in Germany at Bad Tolz. I don't know if I told you that or not. Which was a superb place to train for selection. Superb. Because we had some real serious hills behind us. Real serious. And once a month, maybe every once in a couple of weeks, I would, I would ruck march all the way up this, and I, I've, I've long since forgot the name of the hill. It was big and I would mark match all, ruck march all the way up, down and back down.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  All the way to the top and then back down in superb place to try out, to, to train up for selection. But Bad Tolz, Germany, but I mean superb. So I went back, decided, you know, I'm not going to skip. And there's a good reason I'm glad I didn't. We'll get to that here later. Um, but I'm glad I didn't skip that selection and go to the next spring. I'm glad I went to that fall. And they came out and I want to say, they came out and did a PT test just for me at four, at, at Bad Tolz. Yeah, actually I know for a fact that's what they did. I did the PT, they came just because I was the only guy that said, hey, I want to go.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  And they're like, okay. And they came and gave me a PT test to, to try out. And they came by them, so, you know, I was the only guy. At Bad Tolz trying out. What, do you remember what the PT test was? That was a standard army PT test. Okay. Yeah, at that time. Gotcha. Yeah, we didn't do a, a swim test at that time. That, that one, that's, we did a swim test at selection. When you got to camp, um, Camp Dawson in West Virginia. Um, but it wasn't a swim test. It was just a standard army PT test, you know, push-ups, sit-ups and two mile run. You had, you had minimum standards you had to pass in order to go. And they were pretty low. I mean, you go, well, they have to be up here. They're like, no, you know, we're going to let you pass the, you know, and then it's back on you.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  You know, you, you're the one who has to step up to the plate and get a better PT test score. I mean, that was the thing about Delta Selection is they always put it back on the individual.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  They're not gonna spoon feed you anything. It's they're just gonna put it back on you and see how you deal with it, how you're gonna respond, how you're gonna adapt, overcome. It's all on you. They all put everything on you. So what was it like the second time? Dude, I kicked ass. My head was where it needed to be. Like I said, two weeks out. You know, I I didn't do any PT for two weeks, which drove me crazy. I'm not gonna lie, drove me crazy because I was a PT animal, as you can imagine, getting ready for selection. Two weeks out, I completely stopped doing PT. I rested. The whole nine yards. I told my team sergeant what I'm doing. He's like, okay. And I didn't

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  have to do PT with the team. Nothing like that. And I rolled in and dude, I was.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  I was on my A game and I fucking nailed it. What is it like when you first show up? Um, first show up, you get into, you know, you bring in, they give you more testing. You get more evals. They're kind of honing it down. If initially it was a big, broad brush type of, you know, a coarse screen, now they're getting you in the smaller, they're gonna dial things in where they can get a better handle on what you are like as a person, what you think they're gonna be like as a Delta Force soldier, Delta Force operator, and they're gonna dial you in. Then I do a PT test again. You do another PT test. Day one, once the

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  things get going, do a PT test, standard army PT test, push up, set up, two mile run. Then you do a swim test. Hundred meters, fatigues and boots. Which you can't buff your way through that. You better know how to swim or you're not gonna make it. And I knew that. So I trained up over and over and over. And it got to the point where I could, I timed myself. I swam an hour in fatigues and boots. Because I learned how to do it, not fight the fatigues and boots, just go with the flow. You know what I'm talking about. And so did a swim test and then that night, eighteen mile rucksack march. So one day, day one, PT test, swim test, eighteen mile rucksack march.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Holy shit. If you don't, if you don't make the cut on any of them, you're you're gone. I take that back.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  They will give you a retest on the PT test. I don't, memory serves me correct, no retest on the, on the swim test, no retest on the 18 miler. But they will, the very next day, they'll give you a retest on the PT test. And you can imagine, I knew one guy that passed that, was able to pass it the next day that didn't pass it the day prior, which you kind of go, how was that? But he did, he passed it the second day, but he didn't pass it the day prior. The average guy, it's going to be impossible. After you've done it the first day, failed, done the swim test, passed, and did the 18 miler and passed.

• 1:08:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  You try to make up the PT test the next day, and it ain't going to happen.

• 1:08:43Shawn Ryan?

  Is the 18 miler, is that a land navigation thing too?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  No, just a rucksack march on roads.

• 1:08:49Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Through hilly terrain. Through hilly terrain, very hilly terrain.

• 1:08:54Shawn Ryan?

  How are you treated?

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Um, totally, no encouragement, no discouragement at all. Through the whole course. And they did that on purpose, to try to get you, then once again, they put it all back on you. They don't want it like, hey man, good job, you know what I mean? Or hey dude, you gotta pick up the pace, none of that kind of stuff. It was, you could walk in, I used to tell people, you could walk in with a broken leg and they'd go, color and number. And you have to have a color, and you know, they give you, at the beginning of the day, they give you a color and number so you'd have to remember, you know, Chart 243, Chart 243, show me where you're at and where you came from.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Cause it's all land nav based, through serious hilly terrain. Like a buddy of mine said, there aren't mountains there, but there's some damn big hills. And that's the truth. Camp Dawson is surrounded by damn big hills. So you're doing land navigation and it's like, show me where you're at, show me where you came from. And you show them came, you know, I'm here, came from here. And you, you know, you gotta show them the right thing on the map. You can't, you know, I, you know, if the guy got it wrong, you go, go over there, reassess where you came from. Then you gotta, oh, I came from here, Sergeant, right there. Okay. Your next point's underneath that rock and you'd have a little, you know,

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  laminated piece of, you know, have something laminated, you flip it over and you write down where you're at, you plot it on the map. And you go up, you know, you, you'd say, come on up, chart two forty-three, come on up, show me where you're at, where you're going. I'm here, I'm going here. Have a good one.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  And that cycle repeated over and over and over again through, and you don't know how long. You don't know how much time you got to get from point A to point B, and you don't know how many points you're going that day.

• 1:10:49Shawn Ryan?

  So each point is timed?

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:52Shawn Ryan?

  It's not the full course?

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  No, each, each.

• 1:10:55Shawn Ryan?

  The full course is essentially timed, but you don't really know, you don't really know where exactly you're going.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  No. You might have four points one day, you might have six points the next day.

• 1:11:06Shawn Ryan?

  How long does this last?

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Six days. And then on the seventh day, you do the forty miler.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  This is stress phase. Okay. We talked about the PT test, swim test, eighteen miler. Now after that, you get into basically, for lack of a better term, the training phase. They're going to teach you how to do land navigation. And the reason they did that used to be back in the day, you just went right into stress phase. Um, but they found out this isn't fair. Because there's guys who would probably make it that don't know how to do, they've never had land navigation training.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  So they will put you through 10 days to two weeks ish, more or less 10 days of the best land navigation training in the US Army. It has to be the best land navigation in the US military, probably in the world. I mean magnificent land navigation training. You had Cadre living, Cadre led, you know, land navigation. It was just magnificent. Really, really good. You know, map reading, you know, dead reckoning, you know, you, you know, go around hills, mountains, all that kind. It was just really, really good training. It was superb. But it was also kind of grinding you down.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  So everybody kind of got to a certain level. You have a stud or whatever. He's not going to be a hundred percent going into stress because you're going through the same hills, rocky terrain, twisting your ankle, that kind of stuff. So it's kind of taking even the studs and grinding them down a bit. So when they get ready to do stress phase, they're not on their A game. If they're lucky, they're on their B minus game. Gotcha. And then you start stress. What's stress? Stress phase is that six days with the seventh day being a 40 miler. And you stay out in the woods in a tent in the environment. You're eating MREs. You know, you, you get at the end of the day, you'll get in these trucks or Humvees.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  At the time I did it, it was trucks and you, you don't know where you're going. The guys who don't make it that day go back to Camp Dawson. The guys that make it for that day pass, they go to the base camp and they put up their tent and you eat your MREs and then you crash out and they tell you what time you got to be up. It's on you. They're not going to wake you up in the morning. You gotta be, you know, you gotta get yourself up. You gotta put away all your gear and you gotta be standing by, ready to go when the trucks come in to pick you up and take you. Then they take you back out to another point and they, you know, chart two's 43 or they're, they're going to give you a different color and number that day. Vickers, you know, purple one, two.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Truck number three. And I jump on and I have to remember purple, you know, one, two. That's my color number for that day. And then you go out and they bring you out, purple one, two. Your, your points over there, you go over the same thing, you take it out. And this is where I'm at, this is where I'm going, map. Show me what you got. This is where I'm at, this is where I'm going, have a good one. That's the only encouragement you're gonna, have a good one. That's it.

• 1:14:23Shawn Ryan?

  And the forty miler.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Process. The forty miler, now, before I get to that. There were people that didn't finish one day that still made the course. And you're like, how can that be? I, my call is, and by the way, this, the standards are the holy grail of the unit. There's only a handful of people that have ever known the standards. I mean, they are, that is the deepest, darkest secrets in that organization. I was in the unit for fifteen years and I had no idea what the standards were. I could guess, but I had no idea. Only when you got to a certain point, like the commander

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  or the command sergeant major, or you were the selection commander or selection sergeant major, would you be read in on the, on, you'd be read in on the tea leaves.

• 1:15:16Shawn Ryan?

  So there's only really two people that make the determination if you fit the standard?

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Yes. Really, yes.

• 1:15:22Shawn Ryan?

  The cadre that are there don't know the standard.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  They have no idea. The cadre, oh, they have no idea. None. You would call in the times, you know, purple three, two, Vickers. You'd tell them what time you got here. He, you know, arrived at twelve fifteen. You know, he left at twelve thirty-two.

• 1:15:41Shawn Ryan?

  So does that mean it's solely based off a time? Cause that, to me, that means there's a gray area.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:15:50Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you had mentioned that there are people that didn't maybe make the time, but they still got in.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, here's my call.

• 1:15:57Shawn Ryan?

  Nobody knows the time, it's be, I mean, I would, I, I understand why the, the.

• 1:16:08Shawn Ryan?

  The guys trying out would not understand the time. But for the cadre to not know the time and only two people. Four, it sounds like four out of all of the unit knows the time.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:19Shawn Ryan?

  That there's a gray area there where they may have identified somebody that they want that made.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  No, I never did that. Never did that. I know what you're talking about. Never happened.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  They were Nazis about it, bro.

• 1:16:34Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, wouldn't somebody?

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  They would only select certain people to be. The selection off, you know, selection commander or selection, sorry, major. There was only certain people that did that. That was not. Something where they just randomly come down to a squadron. All right, dude, you come on up to. Oh, you know, S and T, you're going to be the, no, no, no. You were, you were handpicked. Handpicked and you're, you had a track record in the unit. You'd been in the unit for a long time.

• 1:16:59Shawn Ryan?

  No, no, no, no, that's not, I'm sorry. That's not what I meant. That's not where I was going. What I meant was. For the selection, for the guys going through selection.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:08Shawn Ryan?

  If nobody knows the time. Then. Time is obviously important, but they may identify something in, in a, what would you call them? A, a trainee?

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Wait.

• 1:17:20Shawn Ryan?

  The guys going through selection.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, candidate.

• 1:17:23Shawn Ryan?

  A candidate. So they would, they may identify a candidate that doesn't meet the time standard, but they like everything else about.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, wouldn't matter. If you don't meet the time standard, you could be. A rock star and it wouldn't matter.

• 1:17:35Shawn Ryan?

  We had some, how, how would nobody, how would nobody, um, this general, it's a genuine question. I'm, I'm not like poking holes in it. I'm just. Trying to understand. I mean, how would, how would more people not figure out what the time is if you could just go through the times and go, that guy, that guy made it, that guy. Obviously it's under.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  The thing is, all you had was you, you, the only information you had as a cadre. Was your little small vision of the world. You didn't see the whole. You didn't see him at this point, this guy at this point.

• 1:18:08Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  This guy in.

• 1:18:09Shawn Ryan?

  So they compartmentalized.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's compartmentalized. You always only saw your piece of the puzzle. You didn't see what. You know, he was doing, you didn't see what he was reporting in. The only guy that got all that was the S and T's R major. Who's out there running it. Yep. And running the numbers. I mean, it would be something to the point. That you would go walk, you, if you had to go up to his truck or something, he'd be like, stop. And he would take. For everything away, you know, so you couldn't come up and look over his shoulders. Yeah. What do you need? I mean, that was top secret, bro. Top secret. Do you remember your time?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Forty miler, yeah, sixteen. Now, according to book, according to Charlie Beckwood's book, Delta Force, you had twenty hours to do the forty miler. Had to do two hours, two miles an hour in very hilly terrain, very hilly terrain. Some of it on roads, some of it on trails, some of it across country. And you had to do it in twenty hours. I believe that's accurate. I think that's legit. I did sixteen hours, twenty minutes of forty miler. Damn. Let's move in. Yeah, dude, I know some guys who did it in unbelievable times. Unbelievable. What was your strategy?

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  On the forty miler? Yeah. Keep moving. Take the simplest path because I knew people that had tried to take shortcuts and bit them in the ass. They got, they got nailed in mountain wall. And they, they completely lost track of where they're at. They had no idea where they're at. They were trapped. And they, that was it. And they were done. They couldn't get out of it. So I would just take, like, there's one big hill, gigantic monster hill, after you do a river crossing. Um, it's about, I want to say it's about twenty five, not, yeah, about twenty five miles in. And you got, your next point is at the top of the hill. I kept it simple. I basically took, I did the, the switch back road

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  all the way up. A lot of other guys just did this number. And most of them did not make it. Because they would get caught in mountain wall. Well, number one, it would smoke you to death. Yeah. It, the, it would be so incredibly difficult to do that. Twenty five miles into a forty mile rucksack march.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  And you're, you know, you're going dead reckoning at the top of this hill. I mean, I know people that did it, but as a general rule, it was a kiss of death. But I did switch back all the way up till I could see that top road. I cut over to it and came into the point. But I just kept it simple, stayed focused. I didn't try to do anything fancy, kept moving. I stopped one time to have a little bit of an MRE and that was it. I kept moving the whole time. I wasn't worried about running it. I was just trying to stay positive and stay moving the whole time. When do you find out that you passed?

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  The 40 miler? When you get to the last point, they call up, they, you know, Purple 12 is your Vickers and they'll run the numbers. They'll go, okay, you know, send him on up. And you basically, and they go, okay, you know, Vicker or Purple 12, your next point is at the top of that, you know, basically it was a power line clearing. At the very top, maybe a kilometer, not very far at all, you're greeted by the S and T Sarge Major and the S and T Cap or Commander. That's who greet you at the top. And if you don't make it, you go over here. If you do make it, you go over here by the fire. And they're like,

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  you know, Sergeant Vickers, congratulations. You successfully completed distress phase of, you know, Delta Force Selection Assessment. Damn. Dude, I immediately started crying. I mean, I just gushed. I was, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one that did that. Hardest thing I ever did in my life, bar none, bar none. Out of 88 people that tried out, that started, 13 made it and 11 got through OTC. So 11 guys made it through OTC, crossed the hall into one of the Sabre squadrons out of 88. Damn.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Dude, there was classes. They had in the hallway outside OTC, they had all the different class pictures. There's a guy who he was the only dude out of the whole class that finished. No. Ray Pfeifer, yeah, Ray Pfeifer. He's standing there by himself in the picture. Damn. Others three dudes, others two dudes. Stuff like that. I remember one, I was an S and T instructor and we had five, five guys made it through selection. Wow. We had to do OTC class with like nine dudes because we had those five guys and then we had four direct support, basically medics, combo guys, EOD. Oh, no shit. Yeah, they went through, they would go through OTC too. Now, there's certain things

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  they didn't do. They didn't do CQB. But they would do everything else. You know what I mean? All the Hilo operations they would do, they would do patrolling, they'd do everything else because they're going to be augmenting the operators. But they wouldn't do CQB. There are certain things that they didn't do. Yeah, they would go through OTC. So we had nine. What was? One guy broke his ankle. He had to get bumped to the next class. We ended up having eight for an OTC class. Wow.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  What was the conversation like at the campfire?

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  They had some Gluvine. You ever heard of that stuff? Yeah, it's German, right? Yeah. And I don't drink alcohol, so I didn't have any, but they have that. You can partake. You don't drink alcohol? No. You never have? No, I never have. Are you serious? Yeah, courtesy of my mom. I told you. Remember my mom absolutely do not drink because sure, my mom's, my grandfather, who I never met because he'd passed away. My mom's dad had passed away before I was born, was an alcoholic. So my mom was like, uh-uh. This is like unheard of in the special ops. Oh, yeah. Immunity. By the way, dude, in Delta, there was more than a few people that didn't drink. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was not uncommon.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  It was not uncommon. And more than a couple of guys drank when they got there and stopped because they realized if they didn't stop and get it under control, they were going to be booted out.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  They're gonna be shown the door. And I know a couple guys that completely stopped drinking that had come there. Cause they knew if, if something went wrong, if they didn't get it under control, cause they came from SF or wherever. And, and you know, the drinking was a big part of the culture and whatnot. Now they come to Delta and it's not. The drinking's not, not that the guys don't drink, don't get me wrong, but it's not that big culture thing like we're gonna go out and get trashed. Every Saturday night, that kind of a thing. No. Gotcha. And so what was the conversation like at the fire? You remember it? Basically how difficult it was comparing notes.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  Do you, hey, you remember that? Oh yeah. Did you go there? No. Yeah. Cause there was one part which they discontinued. Is you get up to the top of this hill and this was on day one, I think, stress day one. And there's a dude sitting there with a steak dinner. He's in a suit. He's got a table there, you know, glass of wine or whatever the hell it is in a steak dinner. And he's the cadre at the top of the hill. You're like. And he goes, you know, color and number, show me where you're at, where he came from. Your next point's located over there. Okay. Color and number. Show me where you're at, where you're going. Have a good one. Now here's the thing though, not everybody goes to that point.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  So guys start doubting each other. Like, I didn't see that. What are you talking about? Yeah, man, there was a guy up there. Don't you remember that? No, I didn't see it. I didn't, there was no guy with a steak dinner at a table. You know what I mean? That kind of little bit of a psyops thing. Over time, they did away with that. Cause they're kind of like. What really is this bringing to the table for us? So they did away with it. They moved the, um. Swim test to OTC.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you why they did that. At the time, dude, we didn't, that did not go very well in the unit. We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop, timeout. What are you doing? Well, their thing is like, number one, the guys barely go across any bodies of water in the unit. I mean, they're, you know, in selection, in OT, or in selection. You know, there's one river crossing during the forty miler and you, now you go across a bridge, they used to have a pontoon boat that'd take you back and forth. And you go across a couple creeks. So having a guy pass a swim test in order to attend selection doesn't really make much sense because back at his unit, he may not have access to a swimming pool where he could practice.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  So let's bump it. Let's say, let's get the guy through selection, that one or two dudes, whatever that might be. Let's get him through selection and then in OTC at the very beginning now, we'll give him a swim test. And then now he's had, you know, a couple of months, whatever. Now it's on him. Okay. Now you've got to find the sources. You've got to find a pool. You've got to find the ability to go and practice for the swim test. You know what the swim test is and you know you're going to be evaluated on when you get to OTC. As far as I know, there was nobody that failed it. By the time they got to OTC, they're, you know, when they signed in and they got the swim test, it was no problem. Nobody failed it.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  And so what happens the next day after you pass selection? More, well, chilling. You rest. Then more evalu-, more psyche valves. Lots of psyche. Oh dude.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Famous story. What's that? That's, that's the way I always passed them. Think about fuzzy bunnies.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Fuzzy bunny. There's a famous story, and I don't know if it's true, but I don't, I don't necessarily doubt it. That the unit psychs had it nailed down so tight on who would make selection.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  That they would, they put a name, a list of names in an envelope. Gave it to like the S and T Sergeant Major and at the end of the corps, end of selection, they were going to open it up and see what guys finished selection versus the names on the sheet and they nailed it.

• 1:29:15Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  Now that's, that could be a wives tale, it could be an urban, but I, they had it really nailed down. I know more than a few guys who, um, in SF, that once they got to a certain point, they were done, they, they send them, because they just, they narrowed the, the beam down or whatever you, the focus down to the point that they could tell, this guy's not going to work out. And we, you know, because they had, they kind of had institutional knowledge per se of different people in the past and psychological profiles and indicators and, you know, triggers, stuff that they can dial in on and go, this guy is just not going to be a good candidate.

• 1:29:58Shawn Ryan?

  So they would actually, they would actually pull guys that are making the time just because they didn't think.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  Well, what would happen is they would go to the board and then they'd get cut.

• 1:30:08Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, they would go to the board and they get cut. And that's how it would go.

• 1:30:12Shawn Ryan?

  And so when did you start OTC?

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Um, mall selection, finished October, started it right after New Year, signed in the unit in December, got, you know, our, got our gear, all that deal, went on Christmas break and then came back right after New Year and started it.

• 1:30:31Shawn Ryan?

  So you had about, you know, what, three months?

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, ish.

• 1:30:35Shawn Ryan?

  What was that three months, what'd you fill that with?

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  When, basically went back to bad toils and once again, now I'm the guy that walked on water. Because you go back to that unit, I mean, it's, you can go your entire army career and never meet one guy who, who made it into Delta, real easy, real easy. And I went back and they're like, you know, made it and they're like. I mean, right then, dude, you, I mean, you're like now six inches off the ground. And then you're basically, you then you have paperwork, you hand your chain of command. And it said, you know, individuals been, you know, selected for a special missions unit. Orders will be coming down. There is no deferment allowed.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  He will absolutely, you're basically telling them, reading them the riot act. Uh huh. You know, you're, this guy's gonna go to Fort Bragg and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Because he's now, you know, he's been selected at this level. You're at this level, you're not gonna stop. And they had to do that because units, you're losing some of your best guys. Uh huh. This guy's a stud. He's one of the best guys that, you know, on your team or in your battalion, Ranger Battalion or whatnot. And now he's leaving. Now I'm gonna do whatever I can to keep him. Boy, they shut that down. By the time I went through, I'm sure early on, that was a real problem. That's why they give you that piece of paper that you hand, you know, you hand to your, your chain of command. And they, by the time I went through, there was no issues. Everybody, they made Delta, he's gone. So they would kinda just write you off. You're kinda on your own, doing your own PT.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  You know, getting ready, packing up, waiting for the official order to come down. So you know when you're actually leaving.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  How was it checking into OCC?

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  Overwhelming at first. You're like, oh my God, I, I'm coming through the gate into the Delta Force. You come in, totally overwhelming. Then you start seeing the guys you, that you made it through selection with. They're gonna be in your OTC class. You get the initial in brief from the instructors. Different instructors than you saw in West Virginia. That's cadre out of the squadrons. So like a troop, uh, one of the squadrons will go up and rotate through every, you know what I mean? B Squadron might have it this time, C Squadron. And then those are different guys than you see for the OTC instructors. Totally different guys. It's not one and the same. And then you'll get introduced to the instructors and you kinda get your gear together and all that.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  Just pretty overwhelming. Fortunately, they ease you into it. You know what I mean? Then you're doing PT, but it's, their thing is like now, we wanna keep you in shape. But we don't want to break you down because you've already proven that you you you have what it needs from a what you need from a physical point of view. That's what you just proved in West Virginia. Now, we want to train you. You know, we we've we have assessed you and feel like you are the correct raw material to become a Delta operator. Now, we want to train you and evaluate you to see if in fact you can become a functional member of the unit, a Delta operator.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  So that's the difference there. The PT isn't designed to tear you down. I mean, it's designed to keep you in shape, team building. Because now it is, yeah, it's individual, but now it's also, can you can you function as a team?

• 1:34:06Shawn Ryan?

  How are you treated?

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Oh, like adults. Yeah, no, no discouragement, no harassment. Yeah.

• 1:34:14Shawn Ryan?

  Is there is there any interaction between the guys going through OTC and the operators?

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  Very, very little. Basically, no, and it's discouraged. It's very discouraged. Like, they hate, because a lot of the guys know guys in the squadrons. And they're like, you see them in chow hall, you can say hi, but that's it. You don't talk to them. And then the guys in the squadrons are told, don't interact with the guys in OTC. Because you don't want to give them a heads up, you know what I mean? To my buddy, oh, by the way, watch for this, that kind of stuff.

• 1:34:50Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  So you're basically, both sides of the equation. The OTC students are told, don't interact with the guys in the squadrons. The guys in the squadrons are told, don't interact with the guys in OTC.

• 1:35:01Shawn Ryan?

  Can you describe day one of training?

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  You know, right off the bat, it was all about shooting. The first two weeks was all about shooting. Dry fire. We did like.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  I want to say at least, maybe, nah, I don't know if it was a week. At least like three days of dry fire before we ever made it to the range. At least. All day. All day long for the first three days. And I could be wrong in that, it may be longer, but it was all about shooting right from the start. Cause they realized. Shooting in CQB is what that unit's all about. I mean, that's the meat and potatoes. That's the very core of what that organization's about is the op, Delta operator being able to do shooting and conduct close quarters combat.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  And that's everything in that organization revolved around that, everything. Everything, I mean, there was different stuff you did like VIP protection. High speed driving, you know, different airborne operations, you would do helo operations. You know, you do a variety of things, but it all boiled down to what is the meat and potatoes? What's the core of what we're all about? Shooting, CQB. And we started out with marksmanship and then that was a common thread throughout. Were there qualifications? Oh, yeah. What were some of the tougher quals? Well, we'd have accuracy stuff, bullseyes at 25 yards, pistol stuff. What size bullseye?

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Uh, standard B8, so you're talking a five and a half inch. Black. Damn. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, and then you'd score it. You had different scoring rings on it, a possibility of a hundred. You have to score to a certain, and I don't remember what they were, but you have to, you know, you have to score to a certain amount or in order to pass and then you were evaluated on that on a pretty regular basis. Very accuracy oriented. Delta is famous for that. Is there, and that's why you see instructors out, Delta, they're all accuracy based. Cause under, nobody's gonna have to tell you, you go, what about speed? Well, here's the thing, nobody's gonna have to tell you to shoot faster in a gunfight.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  I'm in a gunfight, nobody's gonna have to, "Hey dude, shoot faster." That's never gonna be a factor. The issue is getting hits on target. So you have to make sure, and I have a personal

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  rule of thumb that I go by is under conditions of stress, the best you will be able to perform is 50% of your normal. You know what I mean? If I'm shooting at a certain, on the range, the best, the absolute best I can hope to perform under conditions of stress is 50% of that particular standard. So you have to hold yourself to a high standard. Cause it, you know, I'm only gonna be here when I'm being shot at.

• 1:38:01Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:03Shawn Ryan?

  What about rifle? What were some of the tougher rifle calls?

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  We had stuff, we would do basic rifle marksmanship with M14s when I was there. Initially. Accurized M14, National Match M14s. As time went on, they did away with that. And it was full-size M16A2s. And then they eventually went to the M4. And it was, you know, different positions, standing, kneeling, prone. You know, basically different position shootings, once again, very bullseye oriented. And for score.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  And, and you're evaluated to that stuff. And ranked. And you had to meet a certain standard, or you would generally give, you'd get remedial training, but after a certain point. And then we had guys fail it. And generally they'd be put out of the unit, or they would put, they would be put in a support role in the unit. Where they were not an operator, where shooting wasn't necessarily, you know, not important, it's important for everybody there, but not as important as it is for an operator.

• 1:39:07Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  So they'd put him in a support role. Then, once you got to that point, the real thing that we'd people out was CQB.

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  That was really what it boiled down to. That's what weeded people out because you. You know. You can take a guy through selection, you can have him shooting, but when you go into a room and there's somebody shooting past you by a matter of inches. That there's some people that absolutely cannot handle that. Uh huh. And we saw that with guys. You know, about every class, there'd be somebody, I remember one guy, everybody liked him. He's a great dude. Where every, all the instructors liked him. He just could not do it. He couldn't do it. And he basically said, Hey, I can't. I can't do this. I can't do it. And he, you know, we let him go. How complicated does it get?

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  Pretty complicated. Um, you know, you've, you know, you can do it with protective mask on and all that jazz, but you know, it gets to the point where you're coming in on a, you're fast roping in at night. And you know, door charges, flash bangs. And you live people, you have live bad guys, you gotta shoot past them and targets. You can even get semmunitions going on where you're being shot at with semmunitions, you're shooting back at them with semmunitions. That kind of, it can get very complicated and get really ramped up. And what you see is. It really starts separating people. What you see is guys that, you know, if I'm coming into the house and it's during the day and I can.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  See all the targets. That's one thing, but now I gotta come in on a fast rope and it's in the middle of the night and the helos are flaring and dropping guys off and there's rotor wash. And then we gotta put up door charges and then we gotta use flash bangs and there's a team on this side of the hall and there's a team on this side of the hall. We have to make sure we're not doing crossfire. All that stuff starts coming into play. Then some guys really start coming unraveled. How many, I mean, what, what, what is a?

• 1:41:17Shawn Ryan?

  Does everybody have CQB experience before they show up from their prior unit?

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:41:23Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys?

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  We have some. We have now a lot more because you get, you see Rangers doing it, Green Berets doing it and that kind of stuff because it's trickled down. But let's face it, I mean, guys in, you know, those combat arms, they, I mean, we see in infantry units too. They know, they need to know how to do some basic CQB.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  They need to know how to do it. Because I mean, it's urban combat, you're flown into a room with bad guys. You need, you need to know how to be able to do at least a basic level of CQB. Now, they're told right off the bat, how many guys know how to do CQB here? Nobody puts their hands up. And they go, yeah, you got the memo, right? There's the right way, there's the wrong way, there's the delta way. And you don't know shit about CQB till you show up here. And we will teach you the way we do CQB.

• 1:42:17Shawn Ryan?

  How long do you spend on CQB?

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  Oh dude. OTC is basically six months. Throughout the six months,

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  I'd say three months of it is CQB. If you, you know, it's spread out because now you're doing, you're, you're doing VIP training and you're doing high speed, you're doing, you, you do a POW training, of course, towards the end, but you're doing different segments of the training of OTC, but the constant, the common threads are shooting and CQB. So if you go away for VIP training, when you come back, you're going to roll right back into some shooting and roll right back into CQB. So I would say the shooting and the CQB portion in OTC of six to seven month program is probably half of it.

• 1:43:09Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, CQB just gets so complicated and, you know.

• 1:43:15Shawn Ryan?

  I'm just curious, when you, when you show up at OTC and you have guys that, you know, that, that, that have, and it sounds like back then, there was a lot of people that had zero exposure to CQB.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  I mean, I had none.

• 1:43:28Shawn Ryan?

  People, I, what I'm trying to do here is, is bring to the audience how complicated this can get. You know, and, and so when does it move from, you know, a center fed door with no windows, no exterior doors, no nothing, just targets in there to, to a full building takedown where you gotta worry about exterior doors, you're clearing rooms through windows into the next room, you're clearing other, you're, you're, you know what I'm getting at.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Shawn Ryan?

  And it did, it's not just targets, it's sectors of fire, it's reading off the guy next to you, it's reading, it's, it's, it's green on green stuff, it's shooting through windows, it's clearing rooms before you even enter.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:44:12Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how, how fast is the pace?

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  That gets, that's the bottom, last third, that's the last two months.

• 1:44:18Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  I have a six month program. Six, seven month program, that's the last two months.

• 1:44:25Shawn Ryan?

  How long do you, how long do you spend on just the basic center, you know, a center fed doorway into a room with no, with nothing exterior to worry about?

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that, that basic, basic level, probably a week.

• 1:44:39Shawn Ryan?

  A week.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then it just starts going from, from there. Okay, we're in this room, now we gotta go to that room.

• 1:44:45Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  And then that kind of evolves. So that, that, that really basic stuff, probably two weeks, maybe three. And then different structures on the compound. They had multiple structures to do CQB in.

• 1:45:02Shawn Ryan?

  Stairwells.

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, stairwells, hallways.

• 1:45:04Shawn Ryan?

  Always.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  You get used to this shoot house, since they're used to it, now we come over here.

• 1:45:08Shawn Ryan?

  How many shoot houses are there?

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  If I had to guess now, when I was there, probably 10. 10 different shoot houses? Yep. If I had to guess, I'd say 10. How long is it before you start using live ammunition?

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  Really soon. I'll let you in on something. There's three things that dialed me into this is the NFL. This is the big leagues. Number one, when I got there and we were using gold medal, federal gold medal ammunition for bright, basic rifle. We weren't using standard ball. We were using federal gold medal, gold medal match for our M14s, basically a dollar 50 a round ammo. For our M14s, I knew right then, because I knew enough what that ammo, how expensive it was. I'm like, whoa. We had mag 58s instead M60s before the M240 was adopted.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  And the, you know, Marines were using the M240 or the, you know what I mean? And the Rangers not, we were using them before any of them. I knew right then, head and shoulders gun over the M60 and we had mag 58s.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  Last one, the big one, we carried live ammo all the time, everywhere on Fort Bragg. You saw a guy, a Delta guy out on a four wheeler, on a ruck march or wherever, he's got live ammo on him. On Fort Bragg, really low key. That's something that everybody did, nobody talked about. 82nd, 82nd Airborne didn't know anything about it, unit MPs, I mean, because that's unheard of. In the regular army for guys to be walking around with live ammo. You had live ammo on you all the time. Why is that? To get you used to having live ammo and being responsible with it. You know what I mean? How to manage the load, manage the weight, knowing when you're handling my weapon, my, my weapon's loaded.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  So I have to be aware of muzzle, finger, finger off the trigger. I have to be dialed in on what's going on with this weapon because it's loaded. It's ready to go. Yeah. Whoever dreamed that up, I gotta give them, I mean, way back in the day, the OG Delta guys, I gotta give them credit. How long had Delta been around before you? 1977. I got there 1988, so 11 years.

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  Now, seventy-seven when it started, but that was very much in its infancy.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  So they really, they didn't get ramped up to about seventy-nine and then, um, Desert One was eight nineteen eighty. So really, the unit had been up and running about a decade-ish by when I got there, maybe a little bit less. And you're talking about some MACV SOG pipe hitters organized that unit and started. We're talking about some serious OG pipe hitters got that place going. That knew from what it worked and what didn't work in Vietnam. And they made sure that we didn't do the same mistakes when they started Delta.

• 1:48:09Shawn Ryan?

  So this is where the Vietnam guys went?

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Yes. Guys like Dick Meadows. OG, serious OG pipe hitter. It was a guy that was in on the ground floor. He was retired, but Charlie Beckwith brought him in to get that organization going. And he kind of set the tone, set the standards for the organization, him and others. But, you know, MACV SOG legends like Dick Meadows, those are the guys that laid the groundwork. And I'm sure those are the guys that said, guys are gonna be carrying live ammo all the time.

• 1:48:42Shawn Ryan?

  So you, when you were there, you were probably there with a lot of the plank owners. Do you guys call them plank owners?

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, um.

• 1:48:49Shawn Ryan?

  Plank owners for the audience means that they're the.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Original guys. Yeah, actually, there was quite a few.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  We were there, OTC one, the guys that were there from, that were there from OTC number one and on. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We were there from some of them.

• 1:49:06Shawn Ryan?

  What class were you?

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  OTC twenty-three. Yeah, twenty-three.

• 1:49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I was there, there was about two hundred people that had been Delta Force operators.

• 1:49:19Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  That's it at that time. I have no idea where they're at now. Cause it's been, I've been out of there for twenty years.

• 1:49:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  So I don't know where they're at. But the OTC twenty-three, and there have been about two hundred guys that have been Delta operators.

• 1:49:32Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:49:32Speaker 01

  In, in a decade.

• 1:49:35Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like at graduation?

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  Oh, dude. Well, you know, interestingly enough, they didn't make a big deal about it. Called crossing the hall. You'd come in, you'd get an interview, they'd assess how you did in OTC and you're going A squadron. That's where I went and that was it. You packed up your stuff. Your stuff was already packed up because you were going to be moving that day. You knew whether you passed or not, where you, you know, where you're going to the squadron. You just didn't know what squadron you were going to. And you'd take your stuff over and they'd say, yeah, you're on F team or whatever. And you go into F team, put your stuff in the wall locker. What did they say at your review? Um, I was, interestingly enough, I was the first guy

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  in West Virginia to go in for the board. And I was the first guy at, after OTC to go in for the board out of my OTC class. Very first guy in West Virginia that went in for the board. Very first guy that went in, um, to after OTC. And people said, well, that's nothing to it bullshit.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  That I know for a fact now, because I was on the other end of this, they're bringing in a guy that's a no brainer. That's obviously going to go to the unit or, or he's done, finished OTC. Because that warms up, that gets the, the, the guys who are on the board warmed up to the questions and the sequence and the program of how you're going to interview these guys. And I remember to Tom, well, there's no rhyme or reason to it. Horseshit. I knew at the time I go, that doesn't sound right. You know what I mean? They're going to say the guys are questionable towards the end. And they're going to say those guys are questionable towards the end. The guys that may, they may need to grill, and I'm not really talking about OTC. They pretty much know.

• 1:51:27Speaker 01

  You, you know whether you're going to go to a squadron or not. That's kind of a given. Talking about in West Virginia, after selection. They, they keep those guys to the end that they may have to grill for 30 minutes. And, you know, because they've tracked this guy all the way through. They know what he's done right and what he's done wrong. We've had, got a couple of guys that, I mean, I thought they were good to go. They got bounced on the board and selected. Yeah. What did they say at your board?

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  I made a classic mistake. I, oh my God, I, they asked me a question and they go, why'd you do this? And I go, well, you know, other guys did it too.

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  Oh dude, yeah, I mean, I, that's, that's the kind of comment I made. And I go, well, you know, I'm sure other guys were doing it too. Oh my God.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  They were laid into me on that one. Yeah, as soon as I said it, I was like,

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  why did I say that? And then, they start talking to you and they go, well, you need to understand some sort of vickers. Delta Force is part of the army. You know, you know, you have to be part of the army if you're going to be in, in, in, they kind of lead you up to where you're like, oh my God, they're going to tell me I didn't make it. That they purposely do that. And then at the very end, the commander goes, I want to be the first one to welcome you to the Delta Force.

• 1:52:51Shawn Ryan?

  How'd that feel?

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  I mean, the high of the high. The only one thing was ever higher than that. One thing. Rescuing Kurt Muse out of a Delta prison.

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  In my life.

• 1:53:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  Yep. That's the only thing that is higher than, than him shaking my hand. And then they all come up to shake your hand. So yeah, they bring in, early on, they bring in the guy that's a no brainer. This guy's no brainer. He's going to the unit, or he's going to a squadron, no brainer. And that's just to warm the, the board staff up. The guys are on the board. Cause quite a few of them, it's the first time they've been on a board. They don't really know the sequence and they're, you know, they're coached. Hey, these are the kind of questions you ask. This is the kind of responses you're looking for. But you know, you gotta get them warmed up to being on a board. And they, they, you know, they do, they, early on, you're bringing in guys that are no brainers.

• 1:53:55Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember what they asked while you did?

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  Whatever it is that you did? No, I don't. You remember any of the specific questions? No, I really don't. I just remember that one response. That just opened the door for them that I just realized, oh my God, why did I say that?

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  Well, other guys were doing it, you know, or whatever something. Well, I'm sure other guys were doing it too. That was stupid. I knew it as soon as it came out of my mouth. But I don't remember exactly what the question was. No.

• 1:54:30Speaker 01

  I don't remember exactly what the question was. Where did you go from there? From selection or? From O T C. A squadron. A squadron. Yeah, a squadron. I went to A two troop, F team. And I was a junior guy on F team. How did they greet you? Good. Treated as a professional. No, you didn't look down on anybody, you know, a little bit of hazen and stuff, but real minor stuff. Nothing major. Cause you know, you respected the guy. You probably already gotten word. Hey, this guy is a star. He was one of the best guy, you know what I mean? Or, you know, this guy is kinda needs, you know, he's okay, but. You know, he obviously met the standard, he wouldn't be going to squadron.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  Right? But you may have already kinda gotten the word on the guy. He may be a guy who thinks he walks on water. You might need to knock him down a couple notches.

• 1:55:26Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Or hey, this guy's a stud. We got word, yay, this dude was a, he killed it in O T C. And they're like, really? He goes, yes. The SEAL we had, Kevin Holland. S- superstar came from S T six. We watched him like a hawk. I put him through selection. He was our number one guy. No shit. Oh dude, he killed it. He absolutely killed it. I remember talking to him and at the end I go, dude, do you know any more guys in the SEALs like you? And he goes, yeah, we can. I go, talk to them about coming here. I go, because we need all the guys like you we can get. He was a rock star. We were watching him like a hawk. Like he's a SEAL, you know, he came from S T six.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Dude, he was a rock star, absolute rock star. He was the number one guy in his class. Wow. He killed it.

• 1:56:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely killed it. By the end of it. Any, any, but any, any of the category would have taken him on his team in a New York second.

• 1:56:30Shawn Ryan?

  When you did show up to A Squadron,

• 1:56:35Shawn Ryan?

  how do you, how do you feel that your proficiency in CQB and, and just being an operator in general measured up to the guys that were?

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  Um, you knew you were at a pretty basic level because the guys there had been doing it, many of them for years now.

• 1:56:50Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  You've only done it for a few months. Now, that being said, I went in, I mean, CQB wise, one thing a lot to learn. I, I shot at a very high level as soon as I walked across the hall.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  And I was, you know, within probably the top, top five guys shooting wise, as soon as I walked across the hall in A Squadron.

• 1:57:14Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I've always, one thing I've always, you know, I was, just had the ability to dial in on combat marksmanship and I did, I, I was probably in the top five as soon as I walked across the hall.

• 1:57:27Shawn Ryan?

  Is it competitive?

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:29Shawn Ryan?

  How so?

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  Um, you know, on a team, you don't want, basically you don't want to embarrass yourself. So when you go out and shooting, you know, there's peer pressure. It's not overt. It's not like in your face or nothing like that. But you know, if you don't do real well, you beat yourself up. I mean, you're in Delta Force and this organization is known for shooting. If you don't hold the standard, you're going to beat yourself up. If it gets bad enough, you're going to get talked to. Some, your team sergeant's going to pull you aside and say, dude, you got to put in extra time, you know, if I need to work with you, I will, we'll get you in, dialed in with one of the best shooters here. You know what I mean? If it gets bad, that's pretty rare. That's pretty rare.

• 1:58:14Shawn Ryan?

  What's the culture like? I mean, coming from the SF team,

• 1:58:19Shawn Ryan?

  which you were really unimpressed with, what's the culture like at Delta?

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  You know, SF team, we've talked about this a little bit, kind of a little bit more of the cohesive partying type.

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  We're gonna drink together, you know what I mean? Come over to the house on the weekend. We're gonna watch football and drink, that kind of stuff. Delta is much more, from when I was there, much more fit, mission focused. Really focused about why you're there and what you're all about. Camaraderie and whatnot, but it's like, hey, going over to your house on the weekend and drinking beer with you and watching football, that's over here. What we're about is right here. And it's the organization. And once I go back to the Dick Meadows piece, I don't know how much you know

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  about the guy. There's a fantastic book written about him called Quiet Professional. Um, is that the name of it? I'll think about it. Maybe on break I'll look it up. But, um, and this dude set the standard. Never, he was MACV SOG legend, never lost a man in combat. Wow. In MACV SOG. Thirteen POWs captured. He captured more enemy combats, enemy combat, not POWs, excuse me, enemy combat and anybody. He's the guy that went in and got, he became an officer because of this and eventually became a major, retired major. He went in and he got

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  video footage, him and his team, video footage of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to prove that the Ho Chi Minh Trail actually existed. Oh shit. That was sent back to Congress and Congress was shown, this is Ho Chi Minh Trail. And Dick Meadows is the guy who did it. I mean, we're talking about a MACV SOG legend. And he, he set the standard. He was in charge of the assault force on the Sante raid. So when you went in there, you didn't know it, but he, you had that Dick Meadows umbrella or standard set. Unbelievable planning. I mean, detailed planning down to the absolute smallest detail. And Delta, that's what we're all about. So it was a, a serious focused organization in terms of mission focus. Partying

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  at your house on the weekend for, watching football, that's not very important. This is what's important. So that's, you asked about what's the different culture, what's the different feel? That's it. Delta is all about the mission. SF, and I'm not saying it's not, but it's, you know, you got more of a, you know, it's just more of a, it's just a different feel to it. Like I said, come over to the house, you know, we'll drink beer over the weekend, we'll have a team party, we'll cook out, that's all cool. We did some of that stuff in Delta, but nothing like you saw it elsewhere, nothing. It was all about, and there were some legendary team, team leaders.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  Some of them were absolute Nazis, absolute Nazis about stuff like you're supposed to be in at eight o'clock, like going on the range, you were firing the first shot when eight o'clock hit.

• 2:01:34Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  Not show up and we're heading to the range at eight, you're on the range, pulling the trigger and the first bullet's going down the range when eight o'clock hits. And dude, there were Olympic, and you've seen them too, you were in the CL, so you've seen what I'm talking about, Olympic level athletes. I mean, guys that were, I still can't believe some of the physical accomplishments that they would do.

• 2:02:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  And guys that were Olympic level athletes in, in organizations, you, you've seen it, I've seen it. I mean, you're, you're a stud to get in that organization to begin with, but guys that are on this level.

• 2:02:12Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get into some of your operations.

• 2:03:03Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Larry, we're back from the break. We covered OTC. You're at the unit, you're in A Squadron. How long are you there before you go on your first operation?

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  So, I got there summer of eighty-nine. And we ended up doing Panama in December of eighty-nine, so six months.

• 2:03:29Shawn Ryan?

  Six months and you're on your first mission?

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  Yep. And we'd heard scuttlebutt that there was a guy, we heard it was a CIA guy, that was held in Panama, in a prison. And there was people working on it in terms of a rescue mission. And it followed the squadrons in terms of when you were on alert cycle, you would work on the mission, and then when you came off alert cycle, it would go to the next squadron. You would hand it off. And they would, they would develop the plan and rehearse, and they'd tweak it.

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  And then when they came off alert cycle, they'd hand it off to the next, you know, hey, this is what we got. And we didn't know if it would ever happen. Because it was all part of the bigger picture. In terms of, it was called Blue Spoon and eventually became Just Cause. And it was going down to overthrow Noriega and his government, is really what it was. The Kurt Muse rescue was a piece of that because, one, George Bush Senior had made it a priority, hey, we're going to rescue this guy.

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  And we knew, he was held in Mondelez Prison, which is the number, was the premier prison in Panama City. I mean, it was basically their model prison, or whatever you want to call it. It was the number one prison in the country. And that's where he was being held. It was a block away from the Comandancia, which is essentially the Panamanian Pentagon.

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  So it was basically in right in the heart of the belly of the beast, for lack of a better term. And we knew if we didn't get him at the beginning, he was going to be killed. As soon as the invasion went off. So the Just Cause was initiated by the rescue operation to get Kurt Muse out. That started the sequence of events that became Just Cause and the whole countrywide effort to overthrow Nora Egan as government. Can you describe what was going on in Panama at the time? Well, a lot of, you know, at one time Nora Egan was basically an ally of the United States.

• 2:06:08Speaker 01

  Well, that flipped. The guy's corrupt. I mean, he just, he was a shit bird. And there was a lot of unrest, there was a lot of tension between the Americans and the Panamanians, and it was escalating. It just, over time, it just got worse and worse and worse. And it all came to a head when, just before Just Cause kicked off, A Squadron was on our alert cycle, we'd been training for the Medellin prison raid, because we'd had it, got a hand off. And we were putting our, you know, tweaking it, putting our, our, you know, touches to the mission. We'd been rehearsing it.

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  There was a, I want to say a Marine lieutenant that was killed at a checkpoint, I want to say right near the commandantia. They, they started harassing the guy. If memory serves me correct, the way it worked was he was in a vehicle with a couple other military personnel, and he kind of, they kind of went through this checkpoint, and one of the Panamanians shot at him and hit him and killed him. Shit. Killed this Marine lieutenant. I think it was a Marine. But I know for a fact it was a US military personnel lieutenant that was killed. I remember hearing about that on the news.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  And I went, ooh, this is not going to go well. And sure enough, our beeper went off like that. And I went, oh, I gotta go in. And we went in. I saw Eldon Bargewell, the squadron commander, MACV SOG legend. And he said, Blue Spoon's going down two days from now. Like, whoa. And we got on the birds and we were down and we were the first ones down to Howard Air Force Base before all JSOC came down. And basically descended in SOCOM. JSOC and SOCOM descended on Howard Air Force Base and established that as a, you know, an HQ for the special operations piece

• 2:08:15Speaker 01

  of Just Cause. And this had been building up for a while. We'd been doing rehearsals. I had some pretty major rehearsals for it. Basically, like I said, it was called Operation Blue Spoon and then became Just Cause. And by the way, it's called Acid Gambit now. Or we, I never heard, during the mission, ever heard the, the, the terms Acid Gambit. Never did. It was only till later. Much later. And I'm not sure why that is. You know what I mean?

• 2:08:46Shawn Ryan?

  What were you guys, what was the, the FTXs for? I mean, did you, did you guys have, I know what they were for. Did you guys have a layout of the prison? Did you know where he was? I mean, how Nats ass was the intel back for me guys, to you guys, to plan this?

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  There had been an Army doctor who'd been allowed to go in and see him. I don't think it was once a week. I think it was once a month. And he was in there nine months. I think it was once a month. This Army doctor was, was able to go in and check on his health and welfare. And the Army doctor was debriefed extensively every time he came back.

• 2:09:34Speaker 01

  So we started getting really good intel on where he was held inside the prison. You know, what condition he was in, the layout of the prison. We were able to get some really good intel from this army doctor. We would do flybys. When we were down there initially, we went down initially to train up. Um, we would do flybys with helicopters and look at the top of the prison from a distance. And kind of, you know, take photos and whatnot and kind of get the layout of the top of the prison. You know, because it was right next to a Howard Air Force Base. It was right next to it.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  So it was totally plausible for helicopters to be flying nearby, not right over the prison, but nearby. And we would get visual on the cupola at the top and the, in the door on the cupola and all that kind of stuff. So we had substantial amount of intel.

• 2:10:30Shawn Ryan?

  And would you guys, I mean, I know that there are certain units that can basically build a damn near an exact mockup of the target that they're getting ready to hit. Were you guys, did you guys have that capability at that?

• 2:10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did. Um, we had a great tabletop layout. I think the CIA built it. I'm pretty sure they did. And I assume they still have it at the unit was on display. We had a great tabletop layout, you know, model. There was a big blue spoon operation down in Florida. And they built a mockup of the prison down there.

• 2:11:07Shawn Ryan?

  They built an entire?

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  They built an entire mockup. Prison is four stories. Remember serves me correct. There's pictures of it online. I'd have to look, but I think the prison's four stories. They were only able to complete three stories before we did the rehearsal. But they had a, they had a mockup of the prison built down on, uh,

• 2:11:31Speaker 01

  Eglin Air Force Base and that's where we did the rehearsal out of and then we hit the prison. That was a part of the big blue spoon rehearsal.

• 2:11:40Shawn Ryan?

  Did they, did they move Muse to different cells every time the doctor would come back?

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  No, they settled. I believe initially they, they were moving him around, but he got settled in on the, if memory serves me correct, the second floor. We had to go down two floors to get to him. The second floor, they settled him into one spot. He was kinda in the VIP prison cell by himself. And yeah, we, we'd heard he was kinda in a VIP, little bit bigger prison cell, whatnot, but he was being held in a, you know, we knew where he was at. The doctor and he'd been there a while in that, in that cell.

• 2:12:20Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:12:22Speaker 01

  And the doctor-

• 2:12:23Shawn Ryan?

  That's actually pretty fucking surprising-

• 2:12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:25Shawn Ryan?

  -that they wouldn't move him around every single time the doctor came. Just to, you know, to not have you guys have been a replica of where he's at.

• 2:12:35Speaker 01

  You know, in hindsight, I really don't think they even visualized us coming into that prison to get him.

• 2:12:43Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 2:12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I just think that, cause if you look at it from a layman's point of view, we're gonna break into a prison and get somebody out. It's kinda like, seriously? How the hell is gonna, that gonna happen?

• 2:12:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm wondering the same damn thing, to be honest with you. So, so you go down to Panama, you, you, you, you guys got a mock-up in Florida, you wind up in Panama, you're doing flybys, you're gathering intel. Let's talk about Muse. Who was he?

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  He was an American, good guy, by the way. We're personal friends now. He's, he calls all the guys that were on the mission every, the anniversary, every year, December 20th. He calls them on every single person and thanks them for their, for rescuing him. Great guy. American civilian down there, kinda involved in the community.

• 2:13:36Speaker 01

  Very anti Noriega, it kinda started an anti Noriega cell, so to speak.

• 2:13:42Shawn Ryan?

  Cell doing what?

• 2:13:44Speaker 01

  You know, disruptive activities towards the regime. Like, the most famous one was Noriega was gonna give a speech, and right in the middle of the speech, they cut in with anti Noriega propaganda. Over the, over the radio. That's the one, that's the most famous one they did. Um, exact timeline on that, I'm not sure, but that Kurt said that's the one that really put them on the radar screen.

• 2:14:14Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  Was when they did that, you know, now General Noriega's gonna speech, or speak, bam, they cut in, and they're giving out their propaganda against him. So, he was a dependent, his wife worked as a schoolteacher on Howard Air Force Base. So he was a military civilian dependent. She was a, you know, mil, she was civilian, DOD civilian, and he was a dependent.

• 2:14:47Speaker 01

  Of her.

• 2:14:48Shawn Ryan?

  You had mentioned earlier that you had heard that he was a CIA asset, or a CIA guy. Was, was he?

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  I, you know, he's talking to Kurt.

• 2:14:59Speaker 01

  He said the only support he got from them was real late in the game. He, he met, um, some agency guys in Miami to get radio equipment, to help his cause. That's what Kurt's told us, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. I mean, he's never given me a reason to, that, you know, he was an agency guy, and he's kind of operating undercover or whatnot, I've never gotten that from him, so I can't speak to, other than what he said is, late in the game, he got some assistance from them.

• 2:15:31Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I think that pretty much paints the picture that, I mean, I don't think the CIA is just handing out equipment.

• 2:15:40Speaker 01

  Good point, valid point.

• 2:15:42Shawn Ryan?

  But...

• 2:15:45Shawn Ryan?

  And so he was disrupting, he was basically propaganda against Noriega.

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:15:51Shawn Ryan?

  How many people had he amassed? Do you have any idea?

• 2:15:53Speaker 01

  You know, I only think a handful because he's obviously stayed in touch with him.

• 2:15:58Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:15:58Speaker 01

  I think there was a handful of guys and

• 2:16:04Speaker 01

  he mentions how he got rolled up was basically Noriega went back to his, you know, you basically bribed people, hey, give him up. And one of the wives, if memory serves me correct, one of the wives of his guys, his network gave him up. And that's how he got rolled up. Yeah. Through a broad.

• 2:16:25Shawn Ryan?

  What were they doing to him in prison? Anything?

• 2:16:27Speaker 01

  No, I don't think they really did much. I think psychological warfare, but I don't think they ever did anything physical like that. I do remember. I don't know if you've ever heard of this or not, there was a coup attempt against Noriega by some Panamanian Defense Force officers. And they actually captured and they had Noriega under house arrest. Noriega was able to talk his way out of it. Those officers got scarfed up. I think they were later executed, but Kurt talked about, if memory serves me correct, talked about one of the

• 2:17:07Speaker 01

  um, officers being strung up to the basketball goal out in the common area of the prison and being tortured.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  But I don't think Kurt ever went through any of that. I think he was just psychological warfare. Now, I'm pretty confident he never was physically abused.

• 2:17:25Shawn Ryan?

  How prepared for the mission did you feel?

• 2:17:28Speaker 01

  More prepared than any other mission I've been involved with, bar none. We rehearsed it, went over it, refined it, rehearsed it, went over it, refined it to the nth degree.

• 2:17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, we

• 2:17:44Speaker 01

  that up to, you know, of my time in the military was the gold standard in terms of preparation for a specific operation.

• 2:17:54Shawn Ryan?

  What point did you guys get the green light?

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  Um, once that lieutenant was killed. And you know, beeper went off. I went in, I remember seeing Colonel Bargewell, Squadron Commander. I was going in to fill up my canteens and he's going, Blue Spoon's going down to, you know, 24 or 48 hours from now. And I was like, whoa. And I knew Blue Spoon going down, which became just cause, meant we were going to initiate Modelo prison, you know, right before the actual um, invasion kicked off.

• 2:18:30Speaker 01

  I knew that's what that meant.

• 2:18:31Shawn Ryan?

  What was the briefing like?

• 2:18:35Speaker 01

  Well, everybody knew what they were going to do. Because we'd been rehearsing it. It was A2, actually it was more than just A2 troop, it was a sniper troop as well. A1 troop was on a, basically on standby to react to any of Noriega's henchmen that popped up so they could respond and, you know, scarf them up. Never really happened, by the way, but that's what they were standing by for, A1 troop. A2 troop was involved in the assault and A3 troop, the sniper troop, was involved in the operation as well. And they basically provided security on top of the prison.

• 2:19:13Shawn Ryan?

  So this was legitimately just

• 2:19:17Shawn Ryan?

  A2 and some snipers?

• 2:19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, A2 troop and all the sniper troop.

• 2:19:23Shawn Ryan?

  How, how many guys?

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  Twenty-three. I say all.

• 2:19:29Speaker 01

  Not all, ma- majority. Twenty-three went on the prison, went on the roof. And with Muse coming out, it's 24.

• 2:19:38Shawn Ryan?

  Shit. How, I mean, how big was this prison?

• 2:19:43Speaker 01

  Um, it's pretty good size. Man, it's pretty good size. If you research it on the internet, I'm sure you can find some pictures of it. It's pretty big.

• 2:19:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we'll overlay it right now as we're talking on video.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  Doing our best to try to find the pics, yeah.

• 2:19:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we'll get them. But, I mean, how, what were you guys expecting?

• 2:20:02Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:20:05Speaker 01

  We got word somewhere along the line that they'd ramped up and they expected if we were gonna try to rescue them, it was from the ground. So, there was PDF kinda housed on the ground floor in the prison and an adjacent building.

• 2:20:27Shawn Ryan?

  PDF Panamanian Defense Force?

• 2:20:29Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, Panamanian Defense Force. They were housed down there in theory for a rescue attempt for Kurt Muse.

• 2:20:37Shawn Ryan?

  And they were expecting this?

• 2:20:39Speaker 01

  They were expecting and anticipating it and it was a possibility and they expected us to come in on the ground floor.

• 2:20:48Shawn Ryan?

  And so what was go time like when you got down there?

• 2:20:53Speaker 01

  Well, we knew initially it was gonna be, I wanna say 45 minutes before the invasion kicked, but it ended up being 15 minutes before the actual invasion kicked off. Um, we got situated on the, I remember we were down there, I, you know, we were down there like I told you before anybody. And then all these JSOC people come in, SOCOM people in there. And I remember dude, the night before, I didn't sleep a wink. And I'm sure nobody else did either. Wasn't scared, was just anxious. Edge of my seat, going over in my head, over and

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  over and over and over my, my role, what I was gonna do, my actions, just over and over and over. And I'm gonna tell you what else too. We started getting briefed by the pilots in terms of, okay, if the chopper goes down and we're injured and you need to shut down the rotors, this is how you do it. And I remember looking around the faces of the other guys and dude, everybody had their game face on. I mean, it was, it was for real.

• 2:22:02Speaker 01

  And I remember Colonel Bargewell, MACV SOG legend, distinguished service cross, MACV SOG. I'd heard scuttlebutt, we heard scuttlebutt, he was actually put in for the Medal of Honor. And it was downgraded to the DSC, partially because he was a real rebel in MACV SOG. That's what we'd heard, and I don't doubt it. But I remember him talking to us going, you know, I can see you guys, I've seen this face before, I had it when I was in Vietnam. Everything is going to be fine, we're going to get in there and get him, wring it out, you guys are going to be good to go.

• 2:22:40Speaker 01

  Was it a night up? Oh, yeah. Zero, zero, forty-five hours, fifteen minutes before one in the morning.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  And we were out on the, lined up, four little birds. Interestingly enough, except for one bird, we had six dudes. Two birds had two pilots, three guys on each pod, other two birds had two, one pilot, and three guys on each side, except for one spot for Kurt Muse.

• 2:23:13Speaker 01

  And they had skeletonized the bird, taken out everything. One pilot, I heard him talking about the other day, um, had one round in his pistol, he didn't even have a full magazine ammo. We weighed in every day, our kit.

• 2:23:30Speaker 01

  We didn't even have a hard plate.

• 2:23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, on our body armor, we took the hard, yeah, I'm dead serious. Every single day, we weighed in to make sure that our weight was exactly where it needed to be, every day. Because the weight was that critical, because they wanted as many bodies in there as possible. In case things just totally went sideways, you wanted more bodies, more Delta Operators than less. So it went down to that critical, and they skeletonized the birds. I'd heard scuttlebutt, and I'm pretty sure this was debunked, I don't think this actually happened. They started the bird and then took the battery out to save weight. I later heard that was bullshit. I think that was discussed, but it wasn't actually done. Wow. Yeah. So it was that.

• 2:24:19Speaker 01

  It was that close in terms of weight.

• 2:24:23Shawn Ryan?

  You take off. I mean, this is just, I mean, this is your first real world op.

• 2:24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:29Shawn Ryan?

  Hostage rescue mission in Panama. That's fucking crazy, man.

• 2:24:33Speaker 01

  Well, and what's interesting, I'll never forget it. Guy I went through selection with.

• 2:24:42Speaker 01

  Went through selection with him, went through OTC, went to A Squadron with him, and now we're on a mission together. We're on the pods, you know, sitting on the bench seat on the pod. He's right here, and he's gonna be on the roof with a Mag 58. I actually go into prison. I'm one of the guys that go in. I was actually the first guy to go in. Through the prison door. And I'll get to that in a minute. But he looked at me, I looked at him, he.

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  He stuck his hand out.

• 2:25:15Speaker 01

  I shook his hand. No words were said.

• 2:25:21Speaker 01

  Nothing needed to be said. Never forgot it.

• 2:25:29Speaker 01

  I mean, it was game time.

• 2:25:32Speaker 01

  Nothing needed to be said.

• 2:25:35Speaker 01

  I'll never forget it. And then we took off. Interestingly enough, I think it's the school that Kurt Muse's wife actually taught at. We flew over a school on Howard Air Force Base. It is a school that we did a rehearsal on. We did a rehearsal on it, and one of the little birds had hit a tail rotor. And a Chinook had to come in before daytime. A Chinook had to come in and lift it off and get it off the top of the school. And this was, you know, a few weeks before, two weeks before, whatever the case was. But it was a rehearsal site, and we flew right over that school. So it was kinda like deja vu.

• 2:26:18Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:26:20Speaker 01

  Came in. I was on bird number two going in, and there was birds behind us, two birds behind us.

• 2:26:31Speaker 01

  We'd gotten word that in the major intersection, right going down to the Comandancia and in the prisons over here, there was a machine gun set up, there was PDF, they had to be dealt with, or they were going to fire at the birds coming by. We had a sniper team that came down, they came down off a hill overlooking the, you know, the intersection. Guy had a bolt gun, guy had a mag 58, guy had a, uh, three dudes, guy had an M203. And the theory was they're in position, they're in overwatch,

• 2:27:09Speaker 01

  and as soon as they see one of the PDF do this, they're gonna light them up. And what I understood happened was the first two birds go over, I was in bird number two, the first two birds go over, there was nobody in the intersection, because I remember looking, I was on the right side, I remember looking, looking for anybody, there was nobody there. We went over, they heard the birds, then they come out. And then they're gonna shoot at the, the second set of birds, bird three and four, and they got lit up by the guys in the overwatch position. Interestingly enough, never

• 2:27:46Speaker 01

  forget this, Christmas lights around the top of the prison. It's December 20th, 1989, right before Christmas, there's Christmas lights. I'll never forget it. Wow. And we were offset from the prison, and then the pilots did this number, and then got in line, and line landed right on top of the prison, and it peeled off. I got in position by the couple, I had, uh, security position looking through the window down the stairs, the couple on, on top, and, uh, and then the second two set of birds came in, they dispersed. Breacher on my team went up to put a charge up, and in the process of, of pulling the, you know, the time

• 2:28:30Speaker 01

  fuse, he knocked the charge down.

• 2:28:34Speaker 01

  And it fell right from me about from me to you.

• 2:28:38Speaker 01

  And I was like, what is that? I didn't even, you know what I mean? It didn't even dawn on me. It was the charge. Fortunately, when he went to pull it, he didn't ignite, he did not ignite the time fuse. That probably would have killed me. If memory serves me correct, it was a C6 charge, which was P for plenty, brother. I mean, we were not going to take any chance of getting in that door. It was P for plenty. It probably would have killed me. Cause I, I ended up going from being the guy looking through the window. Now I'm going to be the number one guy, you know, going through the door. And, uh, I was down on a knee and I was like, what is that? I couldn't believe it.

• 2:29:20Speaker 01

  And I remember my team sergeant came up and goes, hey, man, get the backup charge ready. Cause I had a backup charge. And I go, why am I going to get the backup charge ready? Cause the breacher's right there. Well, then the breacher went back around and he said, hey, come, he, he basically had me come up for cover. I covered him on the door. He put the charge back up. We initiated and dude, it was a boom. I'll never forget it. It was a boom.

• 2:29:46Speaker 01

  When I was looking in the cupola window, the lights went on.

• 2:29:51Speaker 01

  I thought the charge knocked out the lights and it was because it was pitch black. What had actually had happened, the snipers, the support guys had hit the generator and killed the lights. I didn't know that till later. They killed the lights in the prison. So it was pitch black.

• 2:30:08Speaker 01

  I come around, door is long gone on the cupola. I step in, there's no landing, Sean. That here's the door. The steps go right up to the door. There's no landing like this where you step in and then go down the steps. It goes right up the door like, you know, out here, you guys got. There's none. So I almost, by the grace of God, I don't know how I didn't trip. Cause it's pitch black. I'm walking into it and by the grace of God, somehow I didn't trip. Went down, the guys were following me and people were like, why are you number one man? I was the most expendable guy. It's that simple. I was the new guy on F team. F team and G team were going in.

• 2:30:49Speaker 01

  F team secured the inside, the route inside the prison, the stairwell, the hallway, that kind of stuff. G team was the ones who are going to extract him. They're going to be the team that gets him out. So you basically set up a corridor? Yeah, we did. Went down, basically me, I can't remember who it was. Me and another guy held that first stairwell. G team fall, fled, you know,

• 2:31:17Speaker 01

  went past us. Now I go down to the next stairwell. There was actually a room that we were going to clear. Well, we didn't clear it because it was padlocked. We're like, okay, not really a threat. Chances are nobody's in there because it's padlocked from the outside. So we didn't clear it. And I was standing there on the stairs. And then about then, the C-130 starts lighting up the commandantia. Shit. Yeah. Yep. Spectre starts lighting up the commandantia. And it was loud. And I could see right out the window. I mean, right there, I'd look right there and I could see the commandantia getting lit up by the Spectre.

• 2:32:01Speaker 01

  And because they'd given us X amount of time, I don't, I'm not sure how much time it was, but not long. Maybe five minutes, maybe not, who knows? I don't even remember. Um, it was not long at all. To get in, get situated, and then they were going to start lighting up commandantia.

• 2:32:23Speaker 01

  So they started lighting it up. We're holding the stairwell.

• 2:32:27Speaker 01

  Somebody, a PDF guy, a guard or whatever, poked his head around. Um, Gary Harrell was there. He was the troop commander. He shot at him. I think he missed him pretty calm. And he claimed later he thought him, but I'm pretty sure he missed him. Not to, because the guy took off. And then they came out with Muse. They put a C4 charge on his door and blew it, blew the door wide open. There was a guard.

• 2:32:56Speaker 01

  That had told Kurt if there was a rescue attempt, he was gonna kill him. Cause Kurt, I think, asked him, "Hey, if there's a rescue attempt for me, what are you gonna do?" And he goes, "I'll kill you." This guy was in the room right across from Kurt. So, the priority was to get down to Kurt as soon as possible to beat this guy, you know, before this guy gets a situation awareness, figures out what's going on, goes over to Kurt's cell and kills him. You guys knew that before you went? Yep, we knew it. Yep. Was he in the cell across? Yeah, he was. He was in the room across. He was in the room across and they, G-Team went in and killed him.

• 2:33:34Speaker 01

  Yep. He was armed with a pistol. I think the guy, I think he was in the shower, if memory serves me correct, G-Team found him in the shower. I think the guy went for his pistol or already had a pistol in his hand and they killed him.

• 2:33:46Speaker 01

  Yep. And they got Muse out, they brought in a little, you know, kit, aviator kit bag, and they had body armor and a helmet. You know, a body armor and a Kevlar helmet. Peeled him out. I remember seeing him go up the stairs. Couple things. We get up, we tell them, "Hey, you know, PC secure." To get the extraction birds out. The reason books call it six minutes to freedom because from when we touched down to when we called, you know, PC secure, called for exfil was six minutes.

• 2:34:19Speaker 01

  Just, not that we were, you know, it's just the way it worked out. Not like we had a set time standard or anything like that. It just happened, it was six minutes from when we sat down on top of the prison to when we were ready to exfil with Kurt Muse was six minutes. Wow. We were at the very top. You know what I mean? Stairwell, I remember I was here, Kurt Muse is here, and that door is here.

• 2:34:43Speaker 01

  Dude, I'll never forget this, as long as I live. It got quiet for a minute. Now, how long? Like a C-130 maybe was, you know, taking a loop around, didn't have a, you know, clear field of fire, whatever. Got quiet and you could hear the prisoners screaming. And when you hear somebody screaming, who honest to God thinks they're gonna die, is a, it's a sound you'll never forget. Now, I'll never forget it. It's nothing like you see in a movie or any of that other bullshit. These people were convinced they were gonna die and they're trapped in these prison cells.

• 2:35:25Speaker 01

  And I'll never forget that sound. Damn. Yep. So we go up Bird's Land. I was on Bird Two.

• 2:35:37Speaker 01

  They get Muse on Bird One. They put him, you know, inside the bird. He's not on the pods. They put him inside the bird and then they out, they G Team who rescued him. And then they're X filling with him. I remember I got on the pod. I was like high fiving. I didn't even bother to hook up. But my, the commo guy hooked me up. Thank God. But when I'm high fiving, I go, we got him, you know, yada, yada, yada. Well, the bird lifts up and Bird One kinda does this number over the prison wall. And goes into the blackness. I mean, it's pitch dark. You can't see him. There was a, um,

• 2:36:21Speaker 01

  cemetery right beside us. We lift up, we go over and I see muzzle flash. Dude shooting at us. And I'm, I didn't get a bead on him, but I put some rounds down at him to get him. And then muzzle flash stopped. And I don't, I'm pretty confident I did not hit the guy, but at least got him to duck. So he's no longer shooting at our bird. Yeah. We lose track of Bird One. We go back to Howard Air Force Base. We land. I'm like, awesome. Bird One went down. Bird One with Kurt Muse went down. What happened was they were seriously, they had two pilots. They had six dudes with Kurt Muse.

• 2:37:05Speaker 01

  They were seriously overloaded and the pilot tried to gain speed and kick back up. But he, there was power lines. So he's worried about hitting the power lines. So he sets down on a road, a street, right on the other side of the cemetery.

• 2:37:24Speaker 01

  Well, four guys from G Team jump off and get out. And they're pulling the security. The pilot like waves them back, come on, cause he's gonna go down. He's essentially going down the street to gain, you know, airspeed and then he's gonna lift off. But they get back on, three of the four guys don't hook back up.

• 2:37:46Speaker 01

  So that becomes critical here in a minute. Anyway, they go down. He takes a left on the street. He starts to lift up and a bird gets hit, crashes. One guy, three of the guys all fell off. One guy was still the team leader was still, he was hooked in. So he was good to go. And Muse, who's in the back is good to go. And there was a guy from my team, my two IC assistant team leader was basically with him escorting him. He was fine, too. Bird goes down, breaks the right strut off. The right strut had landed and one of the

• 2:38:26Speaker 01

  guys who fell off had landed on his foot. He lost his big toe. I want to say on his right foot. He lost his big toe and never, he stayed in the unit, but you can imagine when you lose a big toe, dude, you're never the same. Two of the other guys on the other side got shot. One guy got shot in the leg. One guy got shot the very bottom of the body armor. They got hit. Bird goes down, tilts to the side. The pilots are doing their best to to stop the rotors. There's a rotor still going. Muse gets out. My team assistant team leader who's escort Muse gets out with him. He didn't duck down far enough. My assistant

• 2:39:08Speaker 01

  team leader, he gets clipped upside the head as protec with the rotor. Knocks him out. I mean, he goes down, knocks him out. He wakes up, here's Muse laying down prone. And he, you know, he immediately freaks out. Muse, Muse. He thinks Muse is dead. He wasn't. What happened was Muse sees him go down. So he mimics him. He's, oh, man, he must have gotten shot. I'm gonna get down prone. So he, they both get out of there. They go and they kind of hunker around the station wagon. If memory serves me correct, there was a station wagon. They hunker around. Team leader hunkers them around, gets the wounded guys over there. Muse is there. My assistant team leader who's, you know, got clipped upside

• 2:39:53Speaker 01

  the head, whose bell is rung. They, you know, they kind of hole up around this vehicle. They, some Panamanians are coming out. Muse tells them in Spanish. He speaks magnificent Spanish to get the fuck out of there. Team leader's on the radio telling them what happened.

• 2:40:14Speaker 01

  Eldon Bargewell, squadron commander, is still on top of the prison.

• 2:40:21Speaker 01

  What had happened was, one of the guys on bird three or four did not get on the bird.

• 2:40:29Speaker 01

  Not sure who it was, but he didn't get on the bird, so he missed the exfil. He was left behind. Eldon Bargewell sees this. He jumps off, grabs a machine gunner with him, guy armed with an M60.

• 2:40:46Speaker 01

  And they set up on top, and Eldon Bargewell is on the, you know, on the horn. He's on the radio dictating what's going on. Well, he hears, Eldon Bargewell hears the team leader call, hey, you know, bird one's down. So, once again, I remember how he told you, we rehearsed this thing to the nth degree. We had ground forces coming in, basically in APCs, that were rolling in and were going to basically swarm the area. And sure enough, they rolled in, we had Delta medics, the APC. And they rolled up to the guys, peeled them in, Delta medics started working on them on the spot. And we took them up to exfil, to get exfil to Casavac Station on Howard Air Force Base.

• 2:41:32Speaker 01

  Damn. Yep. We had all that wired for sound. In case a bird goes down, we have to exfil, birds can't come in to get us out. We gotta exfil off the side of the prison via fast rope. How are we gonna do that? So we had this whole exfil procedure down, work like a champ.

• 2:41:55Speaker 01

  Contingency program, contingency plan. I remember hearing later, the, uh, because it was conventional forces that were doing this, the APC guys, right? I mean, it wasn't us operating it, it was the, so we got it, they got attached to us. And I remember hearing some of them go, oh, I mean, and one guy goes, dude, I knew it wasn't gonna be good. When I saw these guys show up in Protext and black body armor, I knew this wasn't gonna be good.

• 2:42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he showed up in black body armor and protects and man, I goes, I just knew this wouldn't be gonna be good.

• 2:42:29Speaker 01

  But yeah, they uh, you know, moved in a good thing they did cuz a good friend of mine was shot in the leg, really good guy, um, probably would have bled to death, almost certainly. If he hadn't gotten medical treatment that quick. Damn. Yeah, he probably would have bled to death. But they were on him in no time. Scarfed him up in the APCs and took off.

• 2:42:54Speaker 01

  And then uh, Black Hawk came in and got Eldon Bargewell, machine gunner, and the other guy out of there. It took a lot of fire and then what happened was if your bird was out of action, you were out of action for the operate for the the entire mission, just cause you were done. So that bird went back, it hovered over the prison, it took fire from the commandant's area, it took hits. And uh, when it by the time he got back to Howard Air Force Base, the bird was done. That was a deadline for the rest of the mission. So that pilot and that bird was out of the fight after that.

• 2:43:41Speaker 01

  How did Kurt get that? Um, Kurt went in, landed basically with the APCs. Cuz they lifted off, what happened was the APCs went up to this top of this hill, adjacent to where those guy, remember the dudes I told you the Overwatch team, they came down from that hill, they went up to the top of that, got on Black Hawk. And then they took off and went back to Howard Air Force Base. Before he left Howard Air Force Base, going back to the United States, he asked to go see the guys that were wounded in the Kazakov Hospital and he did, he went in and said, hi, thank you for rescuing me, you know, saving my life, that whole thing. And then he went on a bird, he was back to the States in no time.

• 2:44:27Speaker 01

  Did you meet him? No, not then. No, I didn't.

• 2:44:31Speaker 01

  Didn't meet him till. Actually, quite a bit later, when he came to A Squadron, came to the unit in A Squadron, and briefed his side of the, you know, of the mission, leading up to it, all that. What did he have to say? Well, he kind of laid out, very articulate guy, very articulate, well spoken. Um, he kind of laid out everything that happened from his point of view. You know, how it led up to it, how he got captured, you know, his time in the prison, his perspective for the rescue, that whole nine yards. He laid out all that stuff from his point of view, his, his timeline and his, his perspective on how the whole thing went down. What was that like to meet him?

• 2:45:16Speaker 01

  It was pretty cool.

• 2:45:19Speaker 01

  And we all dug it. We had, you know, I was telling Scott about this on the way up here. Um, we had a picture, the damn guy who took the photo, the whole thing was out of focus. All the guys that were on the mission, got a picture with, in A Squadron classroom, got a picture with, uh, Muse, the whole goddamn thing was out of focus. Everything was blurry.

• 2:45:43Speaker 01

  And instead of taking multiple, you know, it was one of those, got it. Yeah. Instead of taking multiple pictures, I mean, it's like, come on, dude. So it was useless, picture was useless.

• 2:45:55Speaker 01

  But yeah, it was pretty cool meeting him. I'll bet. Getting him out of there. So that was, the only thing that's trumped me making selection was rescuing him out of, in Modelo Prison.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  I mean, what was it like with the team after that mission? Very tight, tight knit.

• 2:46:17Speaker 01

  The guy who got hit in the head, um, my two IC never really recovered.

• 2:46:23Speaker 01

  He had the injuries, I mean, he's basically never really recovered from that. He had major headaches, that kind of stuff. Bad thing is, about six months later, we were back down in Panama doing jungle train. And we got on, we were about ready to do an impromptu mission on a suspected drug, um, site, you know, basically, you know, jungle drug operation. And Eldon Barge will kind of set it up, it was an impromptu mission, we were gonna go hit it. We lift off in the Blackhawk, all of a sudden we hear these pop, pop, pop. Almost like the bird had been shot. It was, it was one of the engines that went out.

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  So we start crashing down in the jungle. Right? He's sitting on an ammo box. Him and a couple other guys are sitting on an ammo box and the bird comes down and hits and it, it compacts his spine. And he basically never walked again. Same guy who got clipped in the head. My two IC, never walked again. He was wheelchair bound after that. Damn. Yeah. Bird come, I was on the bird. Just so happened, I was sitting by a guy, we were looking to forward, looking through the windshield of the bird and the pilots are doing this stuff to try to keep the bird under control, coming down through the jungle and um,

• 2:47:50Speaker 01

  late, my first of three helo crashes. Um, and he laid back like this and I just so happened to lay back. So when we hit, I was laying flat against the, against the floor of the bird like that. The only thing I was looking forward and my head bounced off the floor and knocked me out temporarily. Shit. My teammate who was beside me, he remained conscious. There was a fire. The bird had caught on fire. Everybody else was knocked out, out of action. He got up, got a, um, fire extinguisher and put the fire out. Basically saved everybody's life. Never got a single award for that.

• 2:48:33Speaker 01

  Never got a single, he should have got a soldier's medal for that. Never got shit. Damn. Delta's real bad about that. Um, and I'm sure they are to this day. The old analogy that, um, I think it was Schumacher, Commander General, Colonel Schumacher said, um, firemen don't get awards for going to fires. That's was his quote. You signed up for this organization, you're expected to do these things and when you do those things, you're not going to get awards for it.

• 2:49:06Speaker 01

  We got Bronze Stars, the guys on the mission all got Bronze Stars with V-Device. The exception of the team leader that rallied the guy, his team around with Muse, he got a Silver Star. Melon Barge will told us, we were in, now we were in a classroom, whatever, he goes, if this had been Vietnam, in Vietnam, you guys would have all gotten Silver Stars, which means that team leader would have got DSC. If this had been Vietnam, you all would have got Silver Stars. And I remember at the time going, ah, and sure enough, he, looking at it back on hindsight, he's right. That's exactly what would have happened. Wow.

• 2:49:42Speaker 01

  But yeah, that guy who put the fire out, didn't get anything, nothing. Didn't get a Soldier's Medal, didn't, you know, barely got a thank you. It's like, for real? Damn. And that unit was real bad about that, and I'm sure they still are. Like, you know, that Payne got the Medal of Honor out of the unit? I'm gonna tell you what, for that guy to get the Medal of Honor and still be alive out of Delta Force, I can only imagine what that guy had to do to get that award. And we're talking about superhuman shit out of that organization to get the Medal of Honor. Cause the other two guys that ever got it, when in Somalia, Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon.

• 2:50:25Speaker 01

  What they did, of course, cost them their lives, but what they did was so far above and beyond in order to get that medal. It wasn't even close. It was a, I remember, um, General Downing came over and he goes, you guys need to put it, put those guys in for the Medal of Honor. Wow. In Somalia.

• 2:50:45Speaker 01

  So for him to get the Medal of, I've never met Payne, I'd love to meet him. But for him to get the Medal of Honor and be alive out of Delta Force, dude, he probably earned it three or four times over.

• 2:51:00Speaker 01

  The unit, like I told you, the unit has been real bad about that. Really bad when I was in. Really bad. What was it like when you guys got back to the States? Eldon Bargewell had a talk with us, you know, and this is a guy, McVesog legend. We all just, and I remember, I said something the other day, I am glad Eldon Bargewell was on that roof. There was one other officer, Gary, Gary Harold was there. Um, he was the troop commander. Eldon Bargewell was there. Well, I'm glad he was there because of his experience. The guy had seen, I mean, McVesog legend. He had a big talk with us and he said, look, I want you guys to understand something. You're coming back here.

• 2:51:45Speaker 01

  You're going to go home, you're going to be with your family, your wives. You guys have done something. That's as high as it gets.

• 2:51:57Speaker 01

  You need to understand they haven't. So you have to come in and adapt to them. They don't need to adapt to you. What you've done for your country.

• 2:52:10Speaker 01

  They, you know, your country can't ask for more. But you need to understand they haven't done that. They haven't been through what you've been through and you need to, you need to go home and adapt to that. They don't need to adapt to you. You need to adapt to them. Remember he had that talk with us. I always hung on every word he'd ever say. Literally, he would get us together and talk to us in the squadron classroom about whatever it might be. And I would, I would pay attention to every single word that guy said.

• 2:52:46Speaker 01

  Like I told you, he's the guy before the mission that said, I'm looking at you guys. I, I recognize, you know, everything is going to be okay. You guys are going to be fine. We're going to get him out of there. Some of your, and I remember him saying, some of your buddies may get hurt, but they're going to be okay.

• 2:53:04Speaker 01

  Man.

• 2:53:07Speaker 01

  That's pretty fucking incredible, man. Six minutes. Six minutes, yeah, from when we landed to call Exfil. Wow.

• 2:53:16Speaker 01

  In a prison. In a prison.

• 2:53:20Speaker 01

  Yep. There's a lot of people along the way. Like that doctor. That contributed stuff, it's hard to measure how important that was. That intel that doctor gave us. It's hard to measure that.

• 2:53:37Speaker 01

  Because we had this, okay, if he's not in that cell.

• 2:53:43Speaker 01

  Where's he at? We gotta start searching the prison for this guy. So for him to go in there and give us that solid intel, you know, in- intelligence on where he's at. What status is, you know, what kind of mental. You know, what kind of mind frame he's at, physically, what's he like? That kind of stuff was, you know, was off the chart. We talked to him too. He came back to the unit and went time and briefed us. Damn, man. That's impressive. Yeah, dude, I'll never forget it. I can tell. Yeah. I get pretty choked up over it, as you can tell. It's kind of hard to fight back the. You know, the emotions. Because there's a few things along there that really bring them out.

• 2:54:28Speaker 01

  That's just crazy too, you know, the apex of your career, right off the bat. I know, dude. You know. Little over a year after, you know, finishing selection and finished it October. Of, you know, eighty-eight. Eight, well, OTC, six months, selection eighty-eight, October of eighty-eight. And then to follow, you know, fast forward a year or two months, December twentieth, eighty-nine. Damn. Six months, right? And here's the thing. Remember I told you it was become critical? Thank God I went to selection that fall. Because if I waited to the spring. I'd have missed the whole thing. Think about that. Remember I told you how that became critical?

• 2:55:13Speaker 01

  That's why, because I, you know, initially my head was, I'll wait a year. And then I just said, no, no, no, I'm gonna go in the fall. I'm gonna do it. Damn. And everything just fell into place.

• 2:55:28Speaker 01

  Where do you go from there? Well, we went hunting scuds in Iraq. I mean, which in itself was awesome, but never to the point of Medellin prison. How were you guys doing that? Well, once again, Elton Bargewell

• 2:55:47Speaker 01

  saw how things were schooling up in Kuwait. That developed over a period of time. He had the foresight to go, you know, we need to be doing desert mobility operations.

• 2:56:00Speaker 01

  You know, we need to be doing that. So we went on training. God, where did we go? Was it Yuma? No, I think it was 29 Palms. Went to 29 Palms and did desert mobility operations. Training up just in case. We had no mission set. We had no, this is what you're getting ready for. He just said, he had the foresight to go, you know what? We may get in a situation with what's going on over there. We may need to do desert mobility operations to operate behind enemy lines. We need to go train on this. And we went out, had a major exercise training. You know, basically sorting out a lot of bugs, shaking a lot of bugs out. You know, getting things sorted out. So we knew what the hell we were doing.

• 2:56:46Speaker 01

  Cause we'd done some of it, but nothing like what we needed to be in order to go over and execute in a combat zone. So we went out, shook over and went to 29 Palms. If memory serves me correct, that's where we went. Um, and I could be wrong on that, but regardless, we went into an area out west and worked on desert mobility. He had the foresight to do that. He was the only squadron commander that did. B squadron and C squadron didn't see that coming.

• 2:57:16Speaker 01

  Schwarzkopf, who ended up, of course, being in charge of the coalition for Desert Storm, very anti-special ops. Did you know that? I didn't. Yeah, very anti. Based on his experience in Vietnam. Kind of saw them as cowboys. Was not a fan of SF. What flipped the script for him was we had, they Delta operators were his VIP protection detail.

• 2:57:45Speaker 01

  Now, he had an AIC, he had, who was an Air Force, I think, officer. But all the guys in, in the detail other than that were all Delta Force operators. And he was so impressed with them and their professionalism that that left an impression on him in terms of what Delta was all about. Then, that was one piece of the puzzle. The last piece of the puzzle is when the Iraqis started launching Scuds in Israel. And the Israelis were, and I've been told this, and I was, this has been confirmed. I asked some people about this, and he said, "Yeah, this is absolutely what happened."

• 2:58:25Speaker 01

  The Israelis were on the airfields, ready to launch into Iraq, which would have blown the coalition to pieces. And they said, "You guys can stand down, we have our best people going in there to deal with these Scuds." And they said, "Who's that?" And they go, "Delta Force." And they said, and the Israelis stood down. I, I'd heard that, and I went, mm, and I asked some people in the Department of Defense, you know, up the food chain, said, "Oh yeah, that's absolutely 100% what happened." So, combine our preparation vis a vis Bargewell saying, "We need to get ready for desert mobility",

• 2:59:09Speaker 01

  Schwarzkopf's impression of Delta, based on, you know, the VIP protection he had, and then the decision from the command authority, International Command Authority, to send in Delta to hunt for these Scuds, that all lined up and A Squadron was back in the, you know, back in the lead again. How were you guys hunting Scuds? Went in, um, got there, you know, in Saudi Arabia, way up close to the border. We're really close to the border. Got our ducks in a row. Went in via helicopter, way deep into Iraq, up by the MSR main supply route.

• 2:59:53Speaker 01

  And the theory was they were bringing these scuds down the MSR. They would branch off the MSR, set up and then launch into Israel. So what we did, we went up there, find some places to hide, which was a bitch. Cause most of the terrain up there is as flat as a pool table. So we went up, laid down, laid low during the day and when we go down, you know, we would pull down south of the MSR, lay low, down in some, you know, gullies and whatnot. And then when it turned dark, we would go back up to the MSR, drop off sniper teams.

• 3:00:35Speaker 01

  We'd withdraw back a little piece just before sunlight. We go back up, get the sniper teams and come back down to our hide positions. And we did that night after night after night. Did you get any scuds? Yeah, we did. No shit. At the very end, at the very end. Um, there's a lot of intel after the fact that some of the scuds we saw were actually decoys. But at the very end, towards the, you know, at the end of our, to which we were out there 19 days. The, the group. You were out there for 19 days? 19 days doing it, yeah. Where before the ground invasion ever happened, we were up there for days before the ground invasion swept in.

• 3:01:18Speaker 01

  Um, towards the very end, we got in a position where we're moving up the MSR. We saw these vehicles kind of coming towards our position at an angle. We stopped, kind of set ourselves up, getting one of these numbers, got on binos and whatnot. We go, mm, this is some Iraqis. We think this is, these guys are coming in with scuds, getting ready to set up. Sure enough, they were. Got on the horn to the air force. They started bringing in F-16s, the whole nine yards and started hammering their ass. And they were, they were there for hours, hammering them, hours. And finally we went, mm, we need to get out of here.

• 3:02:03Speaker 01

  Because we just stirred up a hornet's nest. We need to split. So we took off, went back to our hide spot. We were hoping to get a BDA, bomb damage assessment, so we'd go back up and see the debris and what happened. And we never got it. Because the war basically came to an end. Wow. Yep. So that happened right at the very end of our time there. And then the war ended and basically everything was on a freeze. And we were just waiting to get exfil. Damn, how long was that after Panama? Oh, man, it was ninety-one.

• 3:02:43Speaker 01

  So ninety-eighty-nine, so a year and a half-ish. I'd have to look at the dates. But I'm gonna say a year and a half, maybe not quite two years. What are you doing in the interim? Training? Yeah, training. I remember I went to Philippines for a little bit, did some VIP protection stuff over there. Training and whatnot, doing the normal cycle. You know what I mean? The training cycle in the unit. Type of thing. What happens after Iraq?

• 3:03:13Speaker 01

  Come back.

• 3:03:17Speaker 01

  Normal training cycle.

• 3:03:20Speaker 01

  And then the next thing was Somalia, ninety-three. Fast forward a couple of years. Big event. What's that? Big event. Oh, yeah. Well. We had gotten this mission to go over there. And hunt for a deeds in his henchmen, like C Squadron and all of them did. And we got it. And it was going to be a troop mission, I think.

• 3:03:48Speaker 01

  And we had a shitbird commander in A Squadron. I don't want to mention his name, but he was a shitbird. And he gave away the mission to C Squadron. And it, for whatever reason, God only knows why.

• 3:04:05Speaker 01

  He gave away the mission to C Squadron. And I think his theory was, well, it's a troop mission now. If it bumps up to a squadron level mission, we'll get it back.

• 3:04:16Speaker 01

  Obviously, he was off his meds. Because like that's ever gonna happen? Well, sure enough, C Squadron gets it. They start rehearsing and they go, wait a minute. That troop's not big enough for this. What the hell? And they bump it up to a squadron sized mission. And they end up deploying over to Somalia.

• 3:04:35Speaker 01

  I remember people were pretty butthurt over that. And I go, let me explain something to you.

• 3:04:40Speaker 01

  That was actually fortunate. They're, what do you mean? I go. Just think about October 3rd. With our leadership. And how bad that would have went. And they went, oh, yeah, you're right. I go. C Squadron's leadership at the time.

• 3:04:57Speaker 01

  Much more dialed in. Much more squared away. Than we were. At the upper. Now, I'm not talking about. You know. You know. Troop level, team level. I know what you're talking about. Just the leadership. Yeah, we're talking about this leadership up here. We had losers.

• 3:05:15Speaker 01

  And I just said, you know, it would have been much worse. So did you get over there after that had happened? Yeah, we went over after that to reinforce. Shit, man. Yeah, we went over after to reinforce. Got there.

• 3:05:29Speaker 01

  Two, three days later? Wasn't long. When October 3rd went down. We got spun up and went over. I mean, quick. And we were there. It was just a few days later. Yeah, we rolled in to reinforce. Got a debrief on what happened. You know, on the 3rd, the whole nine yards. Um, we were there actually for. Yeah, the, the. Ceremony. Of the, of the guys who were killed. Did you know those men? Yeah, I knew all the unit guys. Knew them all.

• 3:06:07Speaker 01

  Didn't know the Rangers or the Task Force 160 guys. Didn't know them. But I knew all the unit guys. Absolutely. Hundred percent. How was that? It was pretty spooky. Yeah, it was pretty somber. It was real somber, actually.

• 3:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:27Speaker 01

  It was real somber.

• 3:06:29Speaker 01

  Cause it was, it was a pretty horrific event. Yeah. And there's, I know you talked to Tom and whatnot. There's layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of stories that go along with that mission.

• 3:06:44Speaker 01

  In terms of heroism that probably should have got the medal of honor.

• 3:06:51Speaker 01

  Guys who honestly should have performed better, not really in the unit, but in Ranger's side. You may have heard some of that, I don't know.

• 3:07:01Speaker 01

  Um, there's a lot of nuances to that, to what happened that day, a lot of nuances. What's happened over time is some of that's been forgotten. But when I was there, it was all fresh and I got it from the guys who were on the ground. And they gave me a lot of information of stuff that went right and went wrong. A lot of lessons learned.

• 3:07:25Speaker 01

  Found out that they were basically running those helos. Doing, they were running them as if they were doing them in low light at night. But instead of looking at it from, hey, wait a minute, we're up here in daylight. They can easily see where we're at and what we're doing. We need, we need, we need to change our tactics in terms of the Hilo operations. To better reflect what's happening during the day. But they were doing it like as if it was at night.

• 3:07:58Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:08:00Speaker 01

  There was a lot of lessons learned out of that. It was a pretty, I wouldn't say pretty, it was a very horrific event.

• 3:08:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I did a very extensive interview with Tom Satterley, who's a really good friend of mine now and. Um, like his account was just.

• 3:08:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:08:21Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, just fucking insane.

• 3:08:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, you know, the deal, I mean, you talked to Tom at length about it. I mean, it was horrific and it's, it's hard to really grasp.

• 3:08:38Speaker 01

  The magnitude or the level of what actually happened at that time and the impact it had on not only the unit, but the Ranger Battalion. I mean, it was really kind of hard to, at this point, because we're so far down the road now. You know, we're decades now down the road. During that time, it was, you know, it really made the organization. I'm assuming the same with the Rangers, but certainly Delta really had to take a hard look in the mirror. And what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. Stuff as simple as, why are we wearing Protec helmets? Why are we not wearing, you know, Kevlar helmets? Why are we not wearing helmets that are protected? There was a guy in C Squadron was killed off a ricochet.

• 3:09:23Speaker 01

  I don't know if you knew that or not. I didn't. Yeah, he was killed off a ricochet off the wall. Off of, you know, they're moving down the street. And sure enough, he got killed and went right through his Protec. If he'd have been wearing, you know, a Kevlar helmet or something protective, probably would have saved his life. Damn. Running around with black body armor. What's that all about? You're in desert fatigues with black body armor on. So the unit had to take a real hard look in the mirror. And there was some real serious lessons learned out of that. Some real PTSD out of that. Yeah. You knew what I'm talking about. Yeah.

• 3:10:05Speaker 01

  I mean, some major PTSD. Yeah, pretty, that was a horrific event. Very horrific. And then I told you, I got over there just in time to talk to a real good friend of mine who kind of gave me his data dump of what happened. And then I said, hey, I'll see you tomorrow. I never saw him again. He was killed that night. How was it killed? More that mortar round landed right behind him. He was outside the hangar and I remember hearing boom. Cause we were in a separate hangar. You know, very close, but you know, separate. A squadron. And then, uh, C squadron and the Rangers were still in this primary hangar where they'd been.

• 3:10:49Speaker 01

  And he was outside talking to guys. Um, and a mortar round landed right behind him. And they'd been launching mortar rounds throughout the time they were there, but they'd always landed down by the beach. Way over them. They'd never really be able to vector it in where, where they'd hit in and around the hangars till that night. And a round landed right behind him. And a whole, like all the guys, as far as I know, all the guys he was talking to all got, you know, seriously injured. Like seriously injured. But they all survived. And he was killed immediately. This was a good friend of yours? Oh yeah. A really good friend of mine. Really good friend of mine. Is that the first friend he lost? No. Six months prior to that.

• 3:11:35Speaker 01

  Our mutual friend, we used to shoot competition together, pistol competition. Me, him and another guy.

• 3:11:45Speaker 01

  Our mutual friend, six months prior, got killed, uh, in a parachute accident. Damn. And then six months later, fast forward and my other buddy's killed. And I'd never gotten over that. How do you deal with loss? Uh, just. You know.

• 3:12:06Speaker 01

  Internalize it.

• 3:12:09Speaker 01

  Compartmentalize it? Compartmentalize it. And sometimes it just really comes to the surface. You saw a few minutes ago when the Modelo prison doc. Yeah. Um, it's just hard to keep it suppressed. But yeah, that was a, I'll never forget that year, 1993. I'll never forget it. Lost two of my good friends in a matter of six, six month span. Never forget it.

• 3:12:33Speaker 01

  You know, and I wish I'd have been there on October 3rd to help those guys out. There's no doubt we'd have made a difference with, with C Squadron, no doubt. Cause here's what happened. We got over there. And we said, there was a lesson learned having Rangers out on the outer perimeter. On the roadblocks and, and you know, I don't want to rain on the Rangers too much. That's a time for, and somebody else to talk.

• 3:12:58Speaker 01

  You know, somebody else for you to interview. But as soon as we landed, C Squadron's like, okay, Rangers, you guys are out. A Squadron's going to be on the outer perimeter. The what you guys were doing in, in terms of security now, A Squadron's doing.

• 3:13:16Speaker 01

  That like, as soon as we hit the ground, that was decided.

• 3:13:23Speaker 01

  And then, because at that point, it was all about getting Mike Durant. Who was being held, you know, hostage by the Somalis. It was all about getting him.

• 3:13:36Speaker 01

  And we were, dude, you want to talk about ready to, ready to hammer people? We would fly over at night. And we were begging.

• 3:13:48Speaker 01

  Begging for somebody to shoot at us. Cause we'd have come down on them like the pouring rain. I can imagine. Oh, man, dude, you want to talk about out for blood?

• 3:13:59Speaker 01

  And I, I've heard scuttlebutt, it was the ambassador or the, the assistant ambassador, whatever, went and talked to Adede's people. About Mike Durant and they ended up giving him up, as you know, they, they let him go. But he, I think he told him, he said, you think October 3rd was bad? Cause the Somalis got hammered. I mean, they lost a lot of people. They, C Squadron and Rangers and Task Force 160, they, dude, they went through them. I mean, they hammered them big time. I've heard 45 to one kill ratio. Wow. That's, that's what I've heard for every. 45. 45 to one, that's what I heard.

• 3:14:42Speaker 01

  Cause it's interesting, sad, but interesting. Delta, including my buddy who was killed.

• 3:14:50Speaker 01

  Including him, Delta lost six operators. Rangers lost six Rangers. Task Force one sixty lost six guys. Six, six and six were killed.

• 3:15:04Speaker 01

  Over there.

• 3:15:06Speaker 01

  But I want to say it was either the ambassador or the assistant ambassador was negotiating with the deeds people. And said, you need to give him up. Because the next time they come in here, it's going to make October third look like a walk in the park.

• 3:15:22Speaker 01

  Because it would have been, I mean, it would have been brutal. Yeah. Because there we were out for blood. And sure enough, they gave him up. I remember them. I remember seeing him carry him one to the bird. I remember that. We were lined up and they had carry him on a stretcher onto the bird for him to get exfil. Back to the States.

• 3:15:44Speaker 01

  Where did you go after Somalia?

• 3:15:47Speaker 01

  Back home, um. I'm trying to remember what I did. I went over and did a stint as an O T C instructor. And I think it wasn't that long after. Pretty sure, well, I take that back now. Bosnia. Yeah, Bosnia. That's where I went. What were you guys doing over there? V I P protection. Commander of S four.

• 3:16:09Speaker 01

  Commander of S four, who was Shinseki. I don't know if you knew who that is or not. General Shinseki. Vietnam vet. Kind of an Asian guy, lost. Part of his foot from a mine in Vietnam. We liked him. We got along with the guy great. We really liked working for him. He was a really, really good guy to work for. Fast forward. He was hooked in with the Democrats. I remember Joe Biden. When he was still Senator, came over and had a sit down and went out to dinner with Shinseki. Because from what I understand Shinseki's daughter, and I could be off base on this, but Shinseki's daughter was an intern in his office. So he was tight with the Democrats.

• 3:16:53Speaker 01

  Oh, fast forward, Obama gets in office. Bidens is V P. They put Shinseki in charge of the V A.

• 3:17:02Speaker 01

  Then all that shit comes out where, you know, soldiers and whatnot are not getting treated the way they should and Shinseki gets shown the door. And I remember, you know, people to ask me about it, I said, you know what, we love working for the guy, but he, he was ass clown for hooking up with the Democrats.

• 3:17:25Speaker 01

  And I haven't heard any from him since, but he was a great guy to work for. We really liked him. But yeah, we went over and did VIP protection for 90 days. I did, it was, we rotated, you know, I mean, other guys from the unit did it, but I went over, my team went over. We had two or three teams doing it, but we did VIP protection for Shinseki. Where were your other Hilo crashes? All right. So the first one was Panama. That's six months after Just Cause. That was the worst. Second one was, we were doing desert mobility training and we were in a aircraft, Air Force Hilo before they did away with them. Air Force, I want to say shortly after that, just completely

• 3:18:09Speaker 01

  got out of the Hilo business. Thank God. But we were in the back, we had our vehicle, Pensgauer, in the back of the bird and it was, you know, tied down. The crew chiefs had tied it down and we did a landing in the desert and for whatever reason, for the life of me, I don't know why the guy did it.

• 3:18:31Speaker 01

  The pilots did a rolling landing in the desert. Instead of just sitting it down and stopping, dropping the, you know, the ramp and letting us get out of there, they sat down and they were doing a rolling landing. Well, sure enough, I mean, it's a desert, bro. It hits a gully or hits a, you know, and pulls, it jams the nose wheel right back up in the bird. So now all of a sudden, everybody gets jeered to the front. Thank God, nobody was standing behind the Pensgauer, our vehicle, because it got slammed up against the bulkhead because the crew chiefs had strapped it down wrong.

• 3:19:10Speaker 01

  They strapped it down where, you know, it would, it was limited to go that way, but not that way. And it smacked right up against the bulkhead. If somebody, we were all sitting down. Thank God. If somebody would have happened to been standing behind it, they'd have been crushed. Damn.

• 3:19:28Speaker 01

  And that one was a crash, but it really wasn't. I mean, it technically checks the block for a crash, you know, but the first one and the third one could have been fatal like that. Third one. Task Force 160 is down and we're training on Fort Bragg. Little Birds, Blackhawks, A Squadron. We're hitting the mount site on Bragg. I think we hit a site out somewhere else and we had a following mission to the mount site on Fort Bragg, which me and everybody in A Squadron knew like the back of our hands. I could probably drive a schematic to this day. I mean, we just knew it by the back of our hands. Some

• 3:20:13Speaker 01

  of the TF160 pilots didn't know it as well as us. So, I was on a Little Bird. We're coming down, kind of let's say the east side of the mount site, right? We're coming down to land, right? Well, we were actually supposed to come in and take a left down the street and sit down. Well, the bird I was in one overshot the street. Well, instead of just sitting down, he starts to peel off like this. Right underneath Blackhawks, they're

• 3:20:51Speaker 01

  coming down. Right? And I'm there and I knew it and I was the right front on the pod. Four man team. I was the right front on the pod and the bird's doing this. So I'm the closest to the ground. I knew immediately what was going on. As soon as he started to do that, I knew, I knew where we were at on the mount site. I knew where we were supposed to be, and I knew where the Blackhawks were gonna be landing. And as soon as he did that, I immediately, right up there, and I saw that bird coming down, and I was like, and it's one of those things that happens. I mean, what are you gonna do? Yeah. And rotor wash hits us. If he'd have kept that attitude, we'd have went right in the

• 3:21:36Speaker 01

  ground, and I was, I would have, I would have, I was right in the front of the bird. I would have been the first thing that hit the ground. Without question, would have been fatal. Without question. To his credit, he leveled the bird out, and we plowed into the ground flat.

• 3:21:54Speaker 01

  He, that rotor wash kicked us down. I talked to those guys later. They saw us doing that, and they were like, whoa, and that bird kicked up. The Black Hawk kicked up, rotor wash kicked us down, and to his credit, he, he flattened out, and we hit this, we hit the ground or the sand, because it's a real sandy area, right outside the mount site. We hit the sand flat. Shit. Yeah. And, uh, when we got off, the pods were level with the ground. The bench seats that we were sitting on were level with the ground. The struts were completely buried in the ground. Damn.

• 3:22:36Speaker 01

  And I remember, by that time, it was my third crash, and I was kinda like, for real? Don't fly with Larry Vickers. Oh, yeah, and it became a joke in the unit, dude. Became a joke. And I remember a guy was, my, um, behind me, I can't remember who it was, and I was a team leader, was behind me, and he started to get up, and I stopped him, because the rotors were still going. I said, I stopped him, I pulled him down, and stopped him from getting up till the rotor stopped. We got up, got on the other side, the other guys were fine, shook up, I said, let's go, let's go to the target building. And I remember, one of the guys said later, dude, he goes, I was done, I was admin. I didn't want to do, I go, no, dude, we're

• 3:23:19Speaker 01

  going to the target building. We came in, and you got in late, the damn building was clear and all that shit. And they, they didn't know where we went. They lost track. They were like, where's GT at?

• 3:23:34Speaker 01

  We show up and I said, yeah, we went down. We crashed. They're like, whoa. And then we came back to

• 3:23:42Speaker 01

  the, the compound and went back in the squadron classroom and then the pilots all came in and we just had a big hot wash on what happened.

• 3:23:50Speaker 01

  So the first one, by the grace of God, wasn't fatal. And the third one, by the grace of God, wasn't fatal. Very easily, both of them could have been fatal. Just like that.

• 3:24:02Shawn Ryan?

  So then you go to OTC.

• 3:24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, OTC instructor.

• 3:24:07Shawn Ryan?

  How was that for you?

• 3:24:09Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 3:24:11Speaker 01

  Because the analogy I had made is

• 3:24:15Speaker 01

  maybe not a good analogy, but it's kind of like being a made man. If you are at a standard that they want you to go train the new guys coming in an organization, that is, that's like you're a made man. That's I, I, to me, that was a big deal. And I'm sure all the guys who ever did it would agree. Tom, anybody who's ever been an OTC instructor would agree. I mean, you're in Delta Force. You have

• 3:24:46Speaker 01

  established yourself of such a caliber and such a performer, they want you to go train the new guys coming in out of selection that I really that to me was a big deal. I, you know, really, really high on that. I wore that as a badge of honor.

• 3:25:04Shawn Ryan?

  How would you treat them?

• 3:25:06Speaker 01

  Oh, I think the students, are they candid? Totally professional. Totally professional. Wasn't a dickhead to them, but I didn't cut them any slack either. Hundred percent professional all the time. All the time. Wasn't a Nazi or anything, but I didn't cut them any slack. Cause I knew firsthand what was needed in that squadron. When they go across the hall, I knew firsthand what was needed. What we needed out of these guys. So if they weren't cutting the mustard, or they didn't have the right attitude or whatever, I mean, I, I didn't cut them any slack. But at the same time, I wasn't a dickhead to them either.

• 3:25:47Shawn Ryan?

  What's the instructor-student ratio?

• 3:25:51Speaker 01

  Well, it varies because of the OTC class. Remember the one class, we had nine? We probably had a dozen instructors, so we had more than one instructor per student.

• 3:26:04Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Yeah. It really varies depending on the OTC class that comes out of selection. Gotcha, gotcha.

• 3:26:13Speaker 01

  Is this where you wrap up your career? Well, I went back to A Squadron as team leader.

• 3:26:20Speaker 01

  Nothing super eventful.

• 3:26:24Speaker 01

  Um.

• 3:26:26Speaker 01

  I end up.

• 3:26:30Speaker 01

  What the problem is for me, what ended up happening was all these injuries.

• 3:26:37Speaker 01

  All that stuff really added up. Mm-hmm. And it took a major physical toll on me. By the time I became a troop sergeant. Um, because I was a team leader twice after coming out of OT. Before I went to OTC as a team leader, as an instructor, and I come back after being an OTC instructor. I was a team leader and then I'm coming up to be a troop sergeant, A1 troop sergeant. And I was A1 troop sergeant for a little while. Physically, though, I, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I wasn't, I knew I wasn't cutting it. I just couldn't do it because of the toll that all this stuff had taken on me. Turns out. I had two bone spurs in my lower back pushing on my spinal cord.

• 3:27:25Speaker 01

  And we finally got to, and I just knew, I, I didn't, I knew I wasn't right. And we finally got to the point where we're going to be doing some stuff with the SAS and we're going to have to go up. Um. Caving ladders. You got it, caving ladder. And I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. I knew it. And that's when I went to the chain of command, squadron chain of command, I said, I, I gotta, I'm gonna have to step down. Damn, I bet that was fucking hard. Oh dude, it sucked.

• 3:27:54Speaker 01

  It sucked because the sky was the limit for me in that organization. I could have eventually been CSM for sure. No question about it, been a squadron sergeant major, no question.

• 3:28:07Speaker 01

  No question. That would have happened without question.

• 3:28:11Shawn Ryan?

  I bet you got a ton of respect over there, too.

• 3:28:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I. That was a tough, real tough call.

• 3:28:19Shawn Ryan?

  What did they say?

• 3:28:21Speaker 01

  They said, "We understand." I said, "I just can't. I know I'm not right. I know I'm not right." I just know. And I said, "I can't in good conscience stay in this position as a troop sergeant major." No, and I can't do the job physically. I can't do it. So I did it. Normally, it's a two-year stint. I did it for a year. And I stepped down.

• 3:28:46Speaker 01

  I stepped down.

• 3:28:47Shawn Ryan?

  Is that when you retired?

• 3:28:48Speaker 01

  No, went up to Weapons R and D,

• 3:28:52Speaker 01

  which is where the HK416 story comes about.

• 3:28:57Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect. Let's take a quick break and then we'll get into that.

• 3:29:03Shawn Ryan?

  I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show, and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind-the-scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end-of-the-month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch, and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com/vigilanceelite. That's patreon.com/vigilanceelite.

• 3:29:44Shawn 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.

• 3:30:05Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Larry, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into the 416, but I just reviewed my notes real quick and I just saw a little blurb that says naked in a hotel. What the hell is this?

• 3:30:17Speaker 01

  Okay. So, this is when, at the very end of my career, I did my time up in R and D, weapons R and D, 416, we'll get to that. I ended up going back down to OTC to be an OTC instructor, actually for my second time. This is, I want to say when me and Tom were instructors together. And this is right at the end, before I get out of the Army.

• 3:30:46Speaker 01

  And we're up at Quantico, using FBI HRT shoot house, because our shoot house, this is OTC students we're up there with, our shoot house is down for maintenance, they're rebuilding it. So we go up there. Well, I'm gonna go back before the rest of the cadre and the students head back, I'm gonna go back to start out processing. You know, I mean, I'm putting in my paperwork, all that jazz. So I get up, we have our hotel room, each one of us has our room to ourselves.

• 3:31:20Speaker 01

  The instructors, I'm pretty sure the students were to the room, but I get up naked, right? And I go to the door and it's the day I'm checking out, and I'm used to USA Today.

• 3:31:35Speaker 01

  This is all pre-internet, you know, pre iPhones. A USA Today right in front of my door.

• 3:31:42Speaker 01

  And I open up the door and they used to do one of those deals, the day you're checking out, you wouldn't get a newspaper.

• 3:31:52Speaker 01

  You know, up till the day you're checking out, you'd get a newspaper, but the actual day you're checking out, you wouldn't get a newspaper, which was bullshit. Well, I'm half awake.

• 3:32:03Speaker 01

  All right, I open up the door, I notice there's no USA Today, but right next to me, the door, right in front of this door over here, there is.

• 3:32:13Speaker 01

  So I go to reach over and grab it, cha-chink, and door closes.

• 3:32:20Speaker 01

  And dude, I went from half awake to full awake like that.

• 3:32:26Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh my God.

• 3:32:30Speaker 01

  I'm out in this hallway and I'm naked.

• 3:32:34Speaker 01

  And dude, my heart's racing. I'm like, what? What am I gonna do? So. I do one of these scans. I look down the end of the hall and I see curtain, right? You know, there's a window at the end of the hall curtain. I go, okay, I'm. I'm going down. Just idiotic in and of itself, but I'm gonna go down, pull a curtain down, wrap it around my body and then I'll go down to the front desk and get a new key. Yeah, I know. Well, I go down there and I go to grab that curtain and dude, that curtain's on their homes. There is no pulling that thing down. That's completely out of the question. So right beside me is the stairs. So I go down to the stairs. I think it was third floor.

• 3:33:20Speaker 01

  Or second floor, I can't remember, but I went down to the bottom of the stairs and I can see through the, you know, window at the bottom, the door at the bottom. I'm like, right there is the gym. The hotel gym and there's towels. Like awesome. What didn't dawn on me till later, I would have needed a key to get in the gym anyway. So you know what I mean? But here's the problem. That didn't matter. That was trumped by the fact that right there was the gym with towels that I could have covered myself up with. Right here was the continental breakfast area. Oh, yeah. Nice. Yeah, that's got people in it.

• 3:34:04Speaker 01

  So I went. Well, I recognized one of the guys I work with, Bruce Goss is in there. His back's to he's eating breakfast and whatnot. And I open up the door. I go, Bruce. Bruce and he's like.

• 3:34:18Speaker 01

  One of these deals. I go, Bruce. He turns around. I go.

• 3:34:22Speaker 01

  He comes over. I go, dude, I locked myself out of my room. I'm naked.

• 3:34:29Speaker 01

  And he's like, whoa. And I said, yeah. And he goes, what room you in? I go, whatever. Two oh four or whatever. And he was here. Take my key. I'm in room three fifteen. Go to my room. I'll go to the front desk and get you a new key. And then I'll meet you in my room.

• 3:34:45Speaker 01

  I go, cool. So I go up to that hall, you know, I go up to the room. And or the hallway he's on or whatever it was, you know, second, third floor, and I run down to his room and go in. Nobody saw me amazingly. Cause this is breakfast time, dude. Yeah. So I go down there. I'm hanging out. Sure enough, he comes in. He's got my key. And he said, yeah, I went up to the front desk and said, hey, I, I need a key for room two oh four. Why? Well, trust me.

• 3:35:14Speaker 01

  I need a key for room two oh four to the gal at the desk. And she's like, oh, okay. Here you go. He gives me the key. I grab a towel wrapping around myself. I walk down with a towel right down to the, uh, elevator. There's, I open up, get on the elevator. There's a dude on the elevator standing there, a business guy with his briefcase. I'm standing there. I look up at him and I go, yeah, dude, it's pretty much what you think it is.

• 3:35:40Speaker 01

  And then he didn't say a word. He was just looking at me weird and I got out and went down to my room. Amazingly, nobody actually physically saw me naked. Nice. Nice.

• 3:35:52Speaker 01

  Oh shit. Yeah. Good stuff, man. Larry Vickers naked in another man's hotel room. And I, you know, that story's been told so many times and it's, it's like, you know, we all have those nightmares about being caught in public naked. And I've actually lived it. Yep. Yep. All right. Four sixteen. Okay. So I go up in weapons, R and D, research and development. I got small arms on my plate. You know, I got a guy who's doing long guns, snipers, you know, whatnot. And I'm doing assault weapons. I'm doing pistols, assault rifles, whatnot. First thing I kick off with is a new pistol.

• 3:36:35Speaker 01

  Um, a new service pistol replaced our nineteen elevens. And I had the idea, you know, I need to talk to HK about this. Because I'd had enough interaction with HK to know, you know, how they build guns, how they test them. They're without peer.

• 3:36:53Speaker 01

  And I thought, you know, I need to talk to them about building us a new service pistol, building us an HK 1911. So I line up a trip, go over to Germany. And I meet with them and I meet with the CEO and I go, hey, this is, you know, what we got in mind and yada, yada, yada. And they're like, hmm, I don't know. Maybe we'll look at it. You know what I mean? They weren't, they were on the bubble. Well, I happened to be in the CEO's office, Ernst Malk, and I looked up on the wall and he had a schematic of an M4 with a G36 style gas system.

• 3:37:28Speaker 01

  And I go, what's that? And he said, all that's a concept that we're kicking around. The idea on is putting a G36 gas system in M4. And I go, really? Why is that? And he goes, well, we've read about the Crane Report. I don't know if you've ever heard it or not. Crane Report where some SEALs had issues with high round counts on M4s and we feel like that we can address it with a different gas system. I went,

• 3:37:53Speaker 01

  huh. Well, I knew in the unit, we had the requirement for a reduced size M4 carbine style rifle. Because for CQB, close quarters battle, the M4 at times is too long. It's just simply too big. We cut our teeth on MP5, which is a real easy gun to maneuver. Everybody loves for CQB. Problem is, it's basically a big 9mm pistol. So if I step outside and I shoot at somebody down, you know, down a street or whatever, I'm shooting at them with a big 9mm pistol. So, you know, we want to, we want to be bringing the 556 into, into

• 3:38:35Speaker 01

  combat. We want to bring it to the battle. That means the M4 carbine, which means a gun that's a certain size, which means in certain confined spaces, it's just simply too big. And they looked at different guns. They looked at the G36C, which is a compact G36, and SIG 552, Delta, was looking at these, and none of them really cut the mustard. Also looked at smaller M4 variants, shorter barrels and whatnot. They had fleas in terms of the gas system was just not applicable. If the barrel length's shorter than 14 and a half inches, it's just not a good mix, has fleas. I knew enough about what we needed.

• 3:39:17Speaker 01

  And I knew enough about weapons design to know this is very possibly the answer. So I said, Ernest, what would it take for for that gun to become a reality? He goes, we need a partner. We need an end user partner. That's willing to partner up with us and give us feedback for what we're doing right and doing wrong and what we can bring to the, you know, bring to the market. I said, okay, what's that consist of? He goes, we would need some basically, and I'm using this term guinea pig guns to work on. So I go back to the unit.

• 3:39:57Speaker 01

  Three squadron sergeant majors are in there. I go, okay, here's the deal.

• 3:40:03Speaker 01

  HK is looking at doing an improved M4 style rifle with a different gas system. The, what that's going to do for us is that's going to give us a gun that's significantly smaller, but still very reliable.

• 3:40:18Speaker 01

  And they go, okay. And I, they go, what do they want? I said, all they want is basically guns to modify and work on to, to test this theory. And that's it. They don't want any money? I go, no, they don't want any money at all. They just need guns that we give to them on loan. They're going to give them back. They're going to modify them, test them and basically give them back to us for us to use them and give them feedback. And the squadron sergeant majors are like, there's no downside to this. Yeah, a hundred percent. So we run it up the chain. We're going to give them X amount of guns. I can't remember what it was. It wasn't that many, but it wasn't that many. All of a sudden SOCOM goes, stop.

• 3:41:02Speaker 01

  We don't know legally, we can loan these guns to them. And right then I thought, oh man, we're screwed. This is over. The SOCOM warriors are going to kill this. I just thought we're done. Sure enough, they come back and go, good to go. I was blown away. I couldn't believe it. Now, you can do that because they're US government property. You can legally do it. Basically, transfer it to them and they'll transfer it back. I, I still to this day can't believe it. Damn. So we sent them the guns. They modify them with the G36 style gas system. Send them back to the unit. Guns run like a champ. I mean, from day one, the 416 ran like a champ. They

• 3:41:46Speaker 01

  needed input, though, on the, on the handguard rail system. They need just, you know, it needed some refinement. So we sent them back, um, give them, you know, and then they, they finally start making their own guns from scratch. Not just modifying our guns that we supply them. They start making guns from, from scratch. Prototypes, still pre-production prototypes. The last nut to crack was the rail system. Cause the way the G36 gas system works, you really can't take it out the front. You have to take it out the back, which means in order to get to the gas system, to maintain it, you have to take the handguard off. Well, we needed a free float handguard that we could take on and off and retain zero for

• 3:42:31Speaker 01

  rail mounted lasers. That was like the stumbling block. Hmm. Or like, dude, this could be a problem. How are you going to do this rail? That you can, you know, unbolt, take off, maintain the gas system, put it back on and the laser maintain zero. Yeah.

• 3:42:51Speaker 01

  And I was like, man, I don't know if they're going to be able to do this. Uh, this might be too much. Sure enough, it's HK. I mean, these are the people, remember the Germans got us to the moon. Sure enough, they come up with the rail system and we tested it out at gun site, as a matter of fact. They came out with desert testing. We did desert testing out there. We came and, and did the, did attended the testing with them and tested the rail coming on and off and retaining zero with a laser. No shit. Yep. And now that rail system obviously has been hugely successful in the 416. The other people like Geisli's copied it in terms of how his rail goes on and is attached. Yeah.

• 3:43:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I use the 416 a lot. Love that weapon. Yeah, and it's been a huge success now. Really, it was a big shot in the arm for HK. Big shot in the arm. Now the German military is using a variant of them. It's now their current and replace the G36 or is replacing the G36. A variant of the HK 416, huge success. Huge success. As far as I know. I could be wrong, but it's yet to lose a trial anywhere in the world. Wow. The French adopted it, the Norwegians adopted it, now the Germans have, it's, it's yet to lose any kind of a service rifle trial anywhere in the world, as far as I know.

• 3:44:21Speaker 01

  Wow. That's pretty badass, man. Yeah, huge success. I did not know you were behind that. Yeah, really, it was a partnership with me and Ernst Malk. You take either one of the side of the equation and the gun wouldn't exist. We were the parents of the 416, Ernst Malk on HK side and me on the end user side. That is badass. That's badass. I love that weapon. Awesome. Yeah, it's a great gun. Fantastic weapon. So when did you get out? Got out, really, ended 03.

• 3:44:58Speaker 01

  Technically, beginning of 04, but I was on terminal leave. So might as well say that, you know, very beginning of 04, I got out.

• 3:45:08Speaker 01

  Got out before, I went to work for HK for a while. And then I left, I went back to the unit as a, uh, as a contract instructor, OTC instructor, for about a year. And then I went and worked for another government agency and then I went, won my own with Vickers Tactical. What government agency? TOSA. I don't know if you've ever heard of them or not. They were, yeah, they were Technical Operations Support Activity. And it was a GWOT spinoff thing where they were just throwing money. You remember, you know, during GWOT, they were just throwing money like there's no tomorrow.

• 3:45:42Shawn Ryan?

  What were you doing there?

• 3:45:43Speaker 01

  Uh, just helping set up testing and stuff.

• 3:45:45Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Didn't like it?

• 3:45:48Speaker 01

  No, it was pretty weak.

• 3:45:50Shawn Ryan?

  And then you started Vickers.

• 3:45:51Speaker 01

  And I started Vickers Tactical.

• 3:45:52Shawn Ryan?

  Created an entire tactical empire.

• 3:45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:45:57Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, holy shit, man.

• 3:45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's went pretty well until recently.

• 3:46:04Shawn Ryan?

  Well, what, let's, let's, before we get to recently, let's, I mean, where did you start it? What was, what was the premise at the very beginning?

• 3:46:11Speaker 01

  Uh, training, um, people reaching out to me for training. Hey, will you come do this class? Will you come do that class? And it was growing. And I thought, you know, this could go take off. And I had other people saying, hey dude, you need to make a go of this. And the, what kept, what really gave me the ability to do it is my military retirement. I knew I had my mortgage covered from my military retirement. And that's, if I didn't have that, I'm, I don't know that I would have had the balls to do it. But I knew my military retirement covered the mortgage and then some. And that, that gave me the initiative and the balls to do it.

• 3:46:50Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like for you training civilians after coming out of the, the premier?

• 3:46:55Speaker 01

  Well, that's the, the unit, Delta is so unique in that regard. It's really hard to compare that. You just, you have to set them aside.

• 3:47:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:05Speaker 01

  I mean, you really do.

• 3:47:05Shawn Ryan?

  Were you were able to do that though? A lot of, there's a lot of guys that get into the training game. I mean, after, after, after service, I mean, I was one of them. And I mean, it's, it's hard to

• 3:47:17Speaker 01

  It is hard.

• 3:47:18Shawn Ryan?

  switch your mindset.

• 3:47:20Speaker 01

  It took me a while. I was pretty rough around the edges. As you can imagine. You know what I'm talking about?

• 3:47:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I do.

• 3:47:27Speaker 01

  I was pretty rough around the edges. I had to really adjust my train of thought. It got to the point though, as I did it, the more I liked training civilians. Because, couple of reasons. One, because they were paying for it. In many cases, they were much better students. They would pay attention and apply themselves much better. Cause they were the ones writing the check.

• 3:47:48Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 3:47:49Speaker 01

  Versus MilLE, somebody else, you know, taxpayers writing their check and they're like. With exceptions, I mean, you get some MilLE guys which are rock stars.

• 3:47:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I know what you're saying.

• 3:48:00Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying.

• 3:48:01Shawn Ryan?

  The, you know, what I've found. If you don't mind, if I, I mean, if I share a little bit, what I've found was, um. You, you, I've really liked doing these all women's courses.

• 3:48:12Speaker 01

  Really?

• 3:48:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, because the ego's fucking gone. I mean, you get, you know, you get guys coming in and they're like, oh, I've been shooting since I was eight. And it's like, cool, you're probably shooting wrong since you were eight. And, and you, I saw like a lot of people that.

• 3:48:30Shawn Ryan?

  It's like they regret not going to war.

• 3:48:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:48:33Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and instead of just learning, they have to. They have to throw their ego into it and, and compensate for whatever they feel like they're missing out on in life. And I started doing these all women's courses. And what I found was like, there was a lot of like battered women who had been raped and sexually abused and. Beat on by their husbands or their boyfriends or whatever, and they would come in and. I mean, just like terrified, just to rack a pistol slide.

• 3:49:06Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:49:07Shawn Ryan?

  And.

• 3:49:10Shawn Ryan?

  I mean. I got them pretty damn proficient in one day. I mean, shooting good groups at 10, 15 yards and no. And to watch a woman that has been through any type of abuse that I just listed off. You know, very, very shy, very timid.

• 3:49:32Shawn Ryan?

  Scared, and then to watch them leave with that empowerment, like I know how to work this fucking gun. And I know how to use it. And that was very rewarding for me. That was the most rewarding, uh, experiences that I had. In the firearms industry was watching women leave those courses, knowing that. That's not gonna happen again to them.

• 3:49:57Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 3:49:58Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 3:50:00Shawn Ryan?

  And, and, and like I said, I think, and they were great students because they didn't have any egos. They were just, they were just there to learn, to, to learn firearms proficiency, specifically in pistols. And it's really like, it's really a fucking cool, rewarding experience to, to see that empowerment. But, but so you, who were you training?

• 3:50:23Speaker 01

  Oh, man, everybody. I mean, across the spectrum. They had some women's classes, not many.

• 3:50:30Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 3:50:31Speaker 01

  I had women sprinkled in my classes, but by and large it was men. Lot of civilians, some mil sprinkled, and a fair amount of LE. Um, not so much LE agencies, but individual LE officers in my classes, two, three here, one or two, you know what I mean? So really kind of across the spectrum. Mainly pistol, also carbine, but really it boiled down to mainly pistol. That's really where it ultimately boiled down to. Mainly pistol training. And you know one thing, I'm kind of known in the 1911 world. Um, building 1911s and teaching people how to build them and all that jazz.

• 3:51:11Speaker 01

  But one of my specialty classes became the 1911 class, became a 1911 specific class. Teaching people how to use them, how to detail disassemble them, how to maintain them, how to troubleshoot them. And that, man, I did that class more than I, times more than I can count.

• 3:51:31Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I remember watching you when I was getting started and I was just like, fuck, man, I hope one day. Maybe one day I can get to that level and, you know, I never did, but that, I mean, it was, it was truly inspiring. I mean.

• 3:51:46Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 3:51:46Shawn Ryan?

  What was your first product that you developed, other than the 416?

• 3:51:50Speaker 01

  The sling with Blue Force gear.

• 3:51:52Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I use, man. I use, I have that on all my ARs.

• 3:51:55Speaker 01

  God bless you. Yeah, that's.

• 3:51:56Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not bullshitting you, like I fucking love that sling.

• 3:51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, that's been, was my first product. Uh, absolute grand slam homerun. Scale one to 10, it's a 15. It's been a huge success for me and Blue Force gear. Close personal friends with the owner, Ashley Burn said, I mean, that was the first product and just set the standard. Set the standard. Um, second would be the Glock tangle down parts. Um, Jeff Cahill, tangle down, personal friend of mine. Way back in the day, I started seeing different things that was needed for the Glock. And one is a enhanced magazine release, and that was the first Glock part I came out with. Slightly extended with rounded edges.

• 3:52:42Shawn Ryan?

  No shit, that was you?

• 3:52:43Speaker 01

  Yep. That particular one. Now, there's other ones on the market. But the Vickers Tactical Tango Down one, yeah, came from me. And we molded, you know, we set up the mold and did it. Now we got, I don't even know how many SKUs now. Slide Stop, Slide Racker, Base Plates. A lot of different SKUs for the Glock. And that's been another Grand Slam homerun. We've been doing those for quite a while. We've expanded out into other pistols, but the Glock rules the world.

• 3:53:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:53:10Speaker 01

  Glocks rule the world. So that's been by far our biggest seller. Um, next, been really good friends with Paul Baphoni of Bravo Company. Been a brand ambassador for him. He sponsored my YouTube channel for years. Product development with him, still on board with him. Great, great guy. One of the best people in the tire firearms industry. Fast forward, and I hooked up with James Rootley with Vickers Guide.

• 3:53:41Speaker 01

  And that's been another Grand Slam homerun. We kicked it off 2015. And now we got, Scott was asking me, now, I think about 11 titles, somewhere in there. Yeah.

• 3:53:54Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:53:55Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? It's, it's been a homerun with James. He does the photography and he's co-author with me as well. Lives here in Nashville.

• 3:54:05Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 3:54:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure does.

• 3:54:07Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you gotta link me in with the Bravo Company guy.

• 3:54:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no worries, dude.

• 3:54:11Shawn Ryan?

  Damn things. I can't find him. Where the hell do you even get him? I can't find him.

• 3:54:15Speaker 01

  What do you need? Do you need a gun or?

• 3:54:16Shawn Ryan?

  I need an AR.

• 3:54:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I got you.

• 3:54:18Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I got a lot of ARs, but I don't have a Bravo AR.

• 3:54:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:54:22Shawn Ryan?

  And that's, yeah, man.

• 3:54:23Speaker 01

  I'll tie you in.

• 3:54:24Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. Please do. I'm being serious.

• 3:54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no worries. I got you covered. I'll, I'll hook in.

• 3:54:31Shawn Ryan?

  But, man, you have really crushed that game.

• 3:54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54:36Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you are like the guy when it comes to all of that stuff.

• 3:54:42Speaker 01

  I appreciate it.

• 3:54:43Shawn Ryan?

  How, how long did it take you to grow it into what it is?

• 3:54:50Speaker 01

  Fifteen years.

• 3:54:52Shawn Ryan?

  Fifteen years?

• 3:54:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54:54Shawn Ryan?

  How long has the company been alive?

• 3:54:55Speaker 01

  Oh, five to now.

• 3:54:59Speaker 01

  But to get it really, twenty years now, but to get it really where it was hitting on its all cylinders, fifteen years.

• 3:55:06Shawn Ryan?

  What's your favorite part about it? Is it innovating or is it training?

• 3:55:12Speaker 01

  Both equally, I would say both equally.

• 3:55:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I'd say fifty fifty mix.

• 3:55:19Shawn Ryan?

  How many people do you think you've trained?

• 3:55:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I did a math on it a few years ago and it was over five thousand.

• 3:55:26Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 3:55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, over five thousand. I did the math. I sat down and conservatively, you know, I was conservative.

• 3:55:33Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 3:55:34Speaker 01

  I didn't, you know, blow it out of proportion, but okay, X number of classes over X number of years, X number of students. Let me, you know, yada, yada, yada, and five, five thousand students.

• 3:55:45Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. That is a lot of people, man.

• 3:55:50Speaker 01

  Mainly civilians, bro. Mainly civilians.

• 3:55:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:55:54Speaker 01

  And then some of the civilians multiple times. Some of them will come back for the same class.

• 3:55:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:00Speaker 01

  Over and over.

• 3:56:02Shawn Ryan?

  Pretty cool. Pretty cool. And so now you're in, now you're in a little bit of hot water.

• 3:56:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. My, can't talk a lot about it, but I, I want to talk about how it came about.

• 3:56:16Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:56:16Speaker 01

  Cause it's still ongoing, like a lot of legal, you know, the deal.

• 3:56:21Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I know the deal.

• 3:56:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so. It came about, my greatest asset became my greatest weakness. Meaning my ability to hyper, hyper focus on firearms, really delve in, really just absorb everything. You know, it, that comes with firearms, allowed me, it led me down a pretty dangerous path.

• 3:56:49Speaker 01

  Like I started, you know, violating rules, laws, regulations and whatnot, knowingly doing so.

• 3:56:59Speaker 01

  In order to feed this demon over here, I started doing stuff over here that I shouldn't have been doing and knew it, but you know what? Felt like I'd never get caught.

• 3:57:12Speaker 01

  Felt like I'd never get caught. And sure enough, August 2021, I got caught.

• 3:57:17Shawn Ryan?

  What happened?

• 3:57:18Speaker 01

  ATF rolled in the house in, you know, uh, North Carolina, Huntersville, North Carolina, rolled in and seized my guns. And it was a trickle down effect from somebody else. And it's like I said, it's still ongoing, it's still a sticky mess. So I can't really go into details, but it wasn't me specifically. It was a trickle down. And I was down the food chain. And they rolled in on me and had me dead to rights.

• 3:57:46Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:57:47Speaker 01

  So I ended up, um.

• 3:57:50Shawn Ryan?

  I remember reading about this shit. I thought it was all, I was like, ah, it's probably just some fucking internet.

• 3:57:55Speaker 01

  No, it was real.

• 3:57:56Shawn Ryan?

  It was real.

• 3:57:56Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, too real.

• 3:57:58Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:57:59Speaker 01

  Um, October 23, I pled guilty to counts.

• 3:58:04Shawn Ryan?

  Counts of what?

• 3:58:05Speaker 01

  Um, illegal importation of a firearm and violating an Obama executive, um, order.

• 3:58:14Speaker 01

  Um, and both of them are ongoing. I mean, both of them. You're talking October 23. My attorney said, you most likely will not be sentenced in 2024. I go, really? He goes, I'm serious. Now he's saying he may not be sentenced to 2026 or even 2027.

• 3:58:30Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 3:58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:58:33Speaker 01

  So now, really what boils down to is, I talked to him at length, as you can imagine, and I could have fought it, almost certainly would have lost, almost certainly. He said, Larry.

• 3:58:50Speaker 01

  It's gonna, it would cost you a tremendous amount of money. A tremendous amount of money, might even bankrupt me.

• 3:58:57Speaker 01

  And, and it would just drag my family through hell. Even more hell than they've already been through. So I went ahead and, I went ahead and pled. Couple of things. We're actively pursuing a pardon. And we're also actively pursuing getting my gun rights back. Cause you've probably heard a little bit about that. Have you heard about it? The AG Pam Bondi? You heard about that stuff? No, I haven't. She's came out recently, and I'm talking within the last couple of weeks, and I'm paraphrasing here. My attorney would be, you know, better able to relay this. Saying that if you're a nonviolent felon on a case by case basis, you can get your gun rights back. And you appealed directly to the AG's office to do so.

• 3:59:42Speaker 01

  Have you done that? And we're in the process of doing it right now. Getting our paperwork. It'll be done. What's that? When will it be done? Paperwork soon. Because it's really not that extensive. Uh, I gotta get three letters. I got my three letters lined up. One's from Kurt Muse. Um, and I, so I've got a couple of other guys lined up, officers I was in Delta with. So I got those three letters and then we're gonna combine the package together and send it in. We're trying to, I'm really casting the net out, and I was telling Scott on the way. Trying to, you know, find anybody that might be able to get us in, because what we don't want is we submit it and it just goes into a black hole. You know what I mean? Yeah.

• 4:00:25Speaker 01

  That's what we're, that's what we're worried about. We're trying to prevent that. If there's any way to at least get it, we know it's gonna get in front of the AG or get where it needs to go, that's what we're trying to do. Pardon paperwork, same thing. That's much more extensive. The pardon paperwork is, it's no joke. Yeah. It's much more extensive. So we're working on that. We've tabled it temporarily to get the gun rights paperwork done, get it sent off, and then we're gonna get back on the pardon paperwork. And then we're same thing, casting out, you know, fishing lines, whatever, to try to get it in front of the president. So that's, that's where we're at.

• 4:01:08Speaker 01

  Hoping that my service to the country is gonna buy the goodwill to, you know, hopefully get a pardon.

• 4:01:18Shawn Ryan?

  I got somebody I want to connect you with, or try to connect you with.

• 4:01:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:01:22Shawn Ryan?

  That might be able to help.

• 4:01:24Speaker 01

  I appreciate it, dude.

• 4:01:26Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure.

• 4:01:26Speaker 01

  More than I can say.

• 4:01:27Shawn Ryan?

  All I can do is ask.

• 4:01:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 4:01:30Shawn Ryan?

  I don't want to say his name on here, but.

• 4:01:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no problem.

• 4:01:33Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, he's, he's pretty high up there and, uh, he's definitely got a lead in there, so.

• 4:01:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's it in a nutshell. I, it's on me. I have to take it, you know, it's, I'm to blame.

• 4:01:48Shawn Ryan?

  What are you potentially facing?

• 4:01:50Speaker 01

  You know, we don't know. I mean, potentially five years, a million dollar fine or whatever, but there's so many variables to it. I've asked my attorney that countless times. Um, Jerry Ruder is my attorney, Jerry with a G, Ruder with a T, out of Baltimore. Um, but he, he, I've asked him, he goes, Larry, there are way too many variables to deal with here to be able to accurately tell you that. So I, I'm preparing for the worst, hoping for the best.

• 4:02:20Shawn Ryan?

  So the worst will be five years and a million dollars.

• 4:02:23Speaker 01

  I guess. Ish, you know what I mean?

• 4:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:02:28Speaker 01

  I, I don't know. I've really thought it through and God only knows and, and, and he legitimately tells me, he goes, cause I've asked him more than once. Jerry, what do you really think I'm facing here? He goes, I'm telling you, Larry, there's just so many variables. We really cannot get a handle on where, where this is going to go for you.

• 4:02:45Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man.

• 4:02:47Speaker 01

  So, I mean, he, he was right before. He said, you, my guess is you will not be sentenced in 2024. It'll be 2025 before you're sentenced.

• 4:02:56Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 4:02:56Speaker 01

  And now Trump getting in office, that throws everything up in the air. Cause now the people that would probably be coming after me from the Biden administration or the Biden appointees are gone.

• 4:03:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03:12Speaker 01

  So now, you know, Trump getting in just changes everything, brings a pardon on the table, brings, uh, getting my gun rights on the table.

• 4:03:20Shawn Ryan?

  What did you import? Did you say that already?

• 4:03:22Speaker 01

  Uh, illegal importation of a firearm.

• 4:03:25Shawn Ryan?

  What was it?

• 4:03:26Speaker 01

  Um, basically.

• 4:03:28Speaker 01

  I doctored, for lack of a better term, I, I, I conspired with people to doctor up paper. And I'm just being, you know, I'm kinda winging it here. I get it. Doctored up paperwork to bring in different guns for my collection. It wasn't for, you know, just sell them to the cartel or MS-13 or that. It was for my collection. It's like I told you, I fed this demon over here. Addicted to guns. Addicted to guns. Well, how many guns did you have? Oh, at peak, seven hundred, or, excuse me, six hundred and fifty. Six hundred and fifty? Yeah.

• 4:03:59Speaker 01

  Where the hell do you put them all? Oh dude. They just got stacked up? I had two rooms this sizeful. Holy shit, man. Six fifty. Do you shoot them all? No. What was your most prized? FG forty-two. What is that? Um, World War II German paratrooper rifle. Damn. Yeah, Fallschirmmeier Gevier forty-two, FG forty-two. Yeah, that was my most prized. Made approximately six thousand of them during the war. Uber rare. Wow. Uber rare worth the price of a, you know, nice house. Damn. Yeah. FG forty-two. I had a Type one and a Type two. There are two different types.

• 4:04:44Speaker 01

  Wow. Had a Type one and a Type two FG forty-two.

• 4:04:49Speaker 01

  Now, sold off a lot of the collection after I got cancer.

• 4:04:56Speaker 01

  My wife said, hey, what if you die from cancer and all this stuff gets dumped in my lap? What am I gonna do? You know what? She's got a point. Because like my buddy Ken Hackthorne said, you will always get more for your guns when you're alive than when you're dead. Uh, you know, I took that to heart. So I sold off, oh man.

• 4:05:22Speaker 01

  Eighty percent nah, seventy-five percent, you know, sixty, seventy-five percent of my collection, I sold it off in order to put money in the bank for the family in case I died from cancer.

• 4:05:35Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you get cancer?

• 4:05:37Speaker 01

  I'm confident from the unit, right at time in the army, I'm confident, can't prove it, that I, there's been so many guys from the unit that have had cancer, died from cancer.

• 4:05:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:05:52Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 4:05:54Shawn Ryan?

  Scares the hell out of me, man. It's like every day, you know, I got another buddy or a friend of a friend, or it's just every day, man, somebody else is getting cancer and, and with, with war vets. I mean, it's just, you don't even know where the shit comes from. It's just all these weird cancers keep popping up. I, I interviewed a friend of mine, Chris Fettis, and he was saying that he thinks that, not that he thinks, there's been some studies that say that it came from the jammers, the, uh, you know, for, for jamming frequencies for IEDs and shit. And I mean, it's just, I just got the screening a couple of weeks ago.

• 4:06:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:06:36Shawn Ryan?

  Scared the shit out of me. I'm cancer free right now. But, um, but yeah, the anticipation for that was, so what did you get?

• 4:06:45Speaker 01

  Follicular lymphoma.

• 4:06:47Shawn Ryan?

  What is that?

• 4:06:48Speaker 01

  Basically a blood disease. And honestly though, it's like a friend of mine said, if you're gonna, he had leukemia, but he said, if you're gonna have a cancer, you, you got one that you, you know, to have, obviously you don't want cancer, needless to say, but if you're gonna have a cancer, you got one of the ones that are very treatable, very treatable.

• 4:07:07Shawn Ryan?

  You good now?

• 4:07:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. In remission. Um, like my doc said, a fantastic cancer doc, in Charlotte, fantastic, um, you know, Novant Healthcare Services, I mean, just fantastic care. Um, and he told me, the, the lymphoma you have is treatable, not curable. He goes, it will eventually come back. He goes, but if it does, we treat it again.

• 4:07:36Speaker 01

  And he goes, it might be five years, it might be 20 years. You never know, you may, it may never come back. You may, you know, you may end up taking it to the grave. But he said, it's very treatable. It's not curable. It's treatable. And he, he said, it's like cockroaches. He gives an analogy. You have cockroaches, you turn on the light in the room, they start to scatter. You might kill a bunch of them, but you're not going to kill them all. And he goes, and that's what it's like with follicular lymphoma.

• 4:08:06Speaker 01

  Well, I'm happy to hear you're doing better, man. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Total, you know, remission. You know, I had stem cell transplant. And here's the great thing. It completely wipes out your immune system. I mean, completely, as if you're a newborn baby. I had to have all my immunizations from when I was a little baby up till now. Had them, yes. Dude, I got over my needle phobia. I remember having six shots in one day.

• 4:08:35Speaker 01

  I mean, you name it, measles, mumps, the whole nine yards. Did you go out of country for the stem cell? No, it was here. Yeah, it was in Charlotte at the Novant, um, facility, Novant Cancer Facility. Stuff's working wonders for people, man. Oh dude, magic. I, really, my cancer wasn't that big of a deal. I had, I got nauseous. I'm really not that, I mean, I lost weight, fatigue, but it really, there wasn't really any pain. I mean, I, I mean, I hate to say it, but it really just wasn't that big of a deal. Well, that's a good thing. You know? And you're married? Yeah. Man, I didn't see, uh,

• 4:09:15Speaker 01

  Well, dude, I've been the world's worst dad, the world's worst husband. I mean, I, straight up. Why do you say that? I just neglected the wife, should have never.

• 4:09:28Speaker 01

  I mean, I've just done it wrong. I really have. I've just been, I haven't been a good father to my son. My, my dad was very standoffish. I've been the same way to my son. I just haven't been a good, to be brutally honest, brutally honest, I have not been a good husband or a good, or a good, uh, father. Are you improving? I'm trying to. How old's your son? Twenty-two. And he's had some real struggles and, you know, not all my fault, but definitely I've contributed to that. I, I'm trying to improve and be better, but if I had to, you know, big chink in the armor is I have not been the husband or the father I should have been. I can't sit here and lie to you. I'm not gonna lie to you. That's why we brought up the legal stuff. I'm not gonna bullshit you.

• 4:10:15Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? What would you say to your son right now? I love him and I really want him to do better. He's more on the right track now than he's been for a long time. He's had some real personal struggles, but he's on the right track now. I'm finishing college and whatnot. Just tell him I love him and I want him to continue on the same path he's on now. Are you proud of him? The faith. Oh, yeah.

• 4:10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a good kid. He's real smart. Real smart. He just had some real struggles. And like I said, not all my fault, but I've definitely contributed to it. Not by, by not being the dad I should have been. I, you know, I should be.

• 4:10:54Speaker 01

  And you're still married? Yeah, still married. It's been real rocky. You got anything you wanna say to your wife? Yeah, I love her and I apologize for being the, you know, the improper shitty husband that I, you know, I should have been. She deserved a hundred times better than what I've been for sure. I provided her a good lifestyle. She lives very well, but you know, that doesn't compensate for, for not being there emotionally, not being there supporting her from that point of view. So, yeah, she lives very well, drives nice cars, lives in a nice house. But, you know, there's a big void on the other end of that that I've, I've not filled. How come you don't wear a ring? Um, we're kind on the outs right now.

• 4:11:39Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry to hear that.

• 4:11:40Speaker 01

  Well, I appreciate it. Yeah, we're kind of on the outs. And I'm not a big ring guy. I've never been a big I didn't, even when we were getting along, I didn't always wear it. I just never, you know, that's why I wear this unit ring. But God knows when I'll wear it again.

• 4:11:55Shawn Ryan?

  What's the story behind the unit ring?

• 4:11:56Speaker 01

  Well,

• 4:11:59Speaker 01

  if you're in the unit and you basically have served, you know, honorably, you get the opportunity to buy your own ring. If I remember correctly, it was 300 bucks. I could be way off. Um, but yeah, you can say, hey, you can go buy your own unit ring. And then you set the, the stone color. And then, you know, platinum or whatever you want and get gold and there's a few different flavors. It's the, kind of like a, um, you know, a high school ring or a college ring is really what it is. And then you set your dates in terms of when you came in and when you left. Mine's 88 to 03.

• 4:12:37Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty cool.

• 4:12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and uber rare. Uber rare. I, uh, we, me and Scott, my buddy who came up here with me, were trying to find it on the internet and you can't even find a picture of one.

• 4:12:50Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool.

• 4:12:50Speaker 01

  They're that rare. Your guys got to pick.

• 4:12:54Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:12:55Speaker 01

  Your crew got to pick of it.

• 4:12:56Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. They're, they, uh, they love timepieces and

• 4:13:00Speaker 01

  And, and

• 4:13:01Shawn Ryan?

  sentimental stuff, man. They love that stuff. Everybody does.

• 4:13:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, 100%.

• 4:13:07Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody's, uh, I never envisioned you to be a ring knocker.

• 4:13:11Speaker 01

  No, I'm not.

• 4:13:12Shawn Ryan?

  Just kidding, man. That's the academy guys.

• 4:13:15Speaker 01

  Now, Tom wouldn't, didn't have one? Or did he not bring one, I guess? Or did you say he didn't?

• 4:13:19Shawn Ryan?

  Man, he may have one, but he didn't, he didn't tell me what it was. I don't, I don't know. I wasn't, I wasn't paying attention, but

• 4:13:26Speaker 01

  Well, I purposely wore it so you could check it out because I knew you'd appreciate it.

• 4:13:30Shawn Ryan?

  I do.

• 4:13:30Speaker 01

  I purposely wore it.

• 4:13:31Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Thank you. All right, Larry, we're wrapping up the interview, but I got one thing and I wanted to, I wanted to wait until the end to ask this.

• 4:13:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:13:41Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, I've got a Patreon account. And Patreon's, it's, it's a subscription service that we have. I started at the very beginning when I was doing firearms training and it's grown into like this. Really fucking amazing community and um they're the reason I'm here and the reason you're here and uh so one of the things I do is I um offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

• 4:14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:14:08Shawn Ryan?

  And so this is from Eric Alger. What do you want the next generation of warfighters to learn from your story?

• 4:14:18Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's a good question. Um.

• 4:14:27Speaker 01

  I would say if anything.

• 4:14:32Speaker 01

  Try to always think outside the box. We didn't necessarily hit directly on that in our interview, but there was a lot of elements of that that we talked about. Try to always don't get set. And I learned that from Eldon Bargewell. Um, I've learned that from other guys. Don't get set in your ways to the point where you're no longer thinking out of the box. And Delta to their credit, that's kind of a motto they've always lived by.

• 4:15:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:15:01Speaker 01

  You know, don't, you know, you know, try not to get locked into one particular thing. Try to always think out of the box.

• 4:15:09Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's the way I live my life, not just in that type of community, but just throughout my entire life and business and everything is not only think outside of the box, but what fucking box?

• 4:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15:23Shawn Ryan?

  There is no.

• 4:15:24Speaker 01

  What is? That's right. What box?

• 4:15:26Shawn Ryan?

  But and if you don't mind, I'd like to add something, man.

• 4:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15:29Shawn Ryan?

  Um, because when I think of your stories and your experiences in Delta.

• 4:15:37Shawn Ryan?

  Contingency planning.

• 4:15:41Speaker 01

  Boy, ain't that the truth?

• 4:15:42Shawn Ryan?

  Contingency, contingency contingencies and um you could never have too many of them.

• 4:15:48Speaker 01

  No, you can't anticipate the worst. Because it's probably gonna happen.

• 4:15:56Shawn Ryan?

  Well Larry, I wish you the best of luck in, in your, your law stuff.

• 4:16:03Speaker 01

  I appreciate it.

• 4:16:03Shawn Ryan?

  And I hope, I hope, I'll be praying for you, man.

• 4:16:07Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. I definitely appreciate it.

• 4:16:09Shawn Ryan?

  And probably even more importantly than that, I just wish you the best of luck with your family. I hope everything works out.

• 4:16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks a lot.

• 4:16:17Shawn Ryan?

  And I hope you.

• 4:16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I need to, I need to come clean on that. I could've just said here, "Oh yeah, everything's fine." But I'm not gonna do that. I mean, you brought me up here as a guest. I greatly appreciate it. Uh, I've had a great time talking to you. Fantastic time. Last thing I'm gonna do is bullshit ya and lie to your face.

• 4:16:34Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Thank you. All right, Larry. It was an honored interview, man.

• 4:16:39Speaker 01

  Hey, thank you, bro. I greatly appreciate it. Fantastic time. Fantastic.

• 4:16:43Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.

• 4:16:45Speaker 01

  Thanks, brother. Thank you.